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NOTABILITIES 
 
 FEANCE AND ENGLAND. 
 
NOTABILITIES 
 
 FRAI^CE AND ENGLAND. 
 
 ^itJF nn aiitnliingriipliti, 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILARETE CHASLES, 
 
 PEOFESSOK OF THE PARIS I N S T I T XT T B . 
 
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 G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE. 
 
 M.DCCC.LIII. 
 
 
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 Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1853, 
 
 By G. p. Putnam and Company, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 
 
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 WITHOUT any display, the writer of these sketches 
 reveals much of his early life, and he is very frank 
 in speaking of his own country. From his long exile 
 he returned almost an Englishman in his views of 
 morals and politics. He was subject to none of the 
 illusions to which his native country is so prone, and 
 did not dream of perfectibility by shaking off the fet- 
 ters of monarchy. But he will reveal his views in his 
 own words. 
 
 The title of the work from which I have translated 
 the following pages is, " Studies upon Men and Man- 
 ners of the Nineteenth Century." It consists of recol- 
 lections of youth, contemporary portraits, sketches of 
 travel, and thoughts upon France. The writer is a 
 Professor at the Paris Institute. It is reported that he 
 is coming to this country to lecture ; in that case our 
 interest to know something of him from his works is 
 increased. His stories interested me from the novelty 
 and vividness of his description ; and his observations, 
 from their strong good sense and glow of moral feel- 
 ing. His representations of the state of society in his 
 
6 Preface by the Translator. 
 
 own country concur witli some other writers of his own 
 nation. 
 
 I have translated his prison life entire, — also his 
 stories; his thoughts upon France, which might take 
 the form of essays, fill the limited space that remains ; 
 but I have selected, I think, the most striking of his 
 remarks. The undying interest which is manifested 
 for France, continually brings to light new incidents 
 from revolutionary times, from those of Bonaparte's 
 despotism, and the present tyrannical rule of the 
 ignoble and dastardly usurper. Anecdotes of French 
 saloons, French dungeons, politics, literature &c., 
 abound, and find untiring readers ; which leads me 
 to hope that the translations from this author will not 
 be unacceptable. 
 
fttfaa bg i\t $ni\ax. 
 
 rriHESE modest studies iipon the men and manners of 
 -^ my time form the natural complement to the twelve 
 volumes which preceded.* Intermingled as these me- 
 morials are with scenes in the writer's life, they are far 
 from pretending to the title of memoirs or personal 
 biography. If the author appears sometimes too prom- 
 inent, it is neither his fault nor desire ; but in speak- 
 ing of facts and of men, it was necessary to explain 
 from what point he viewed them, and the modifications 
 that his literary ideas have received from his experience 
 and the events of life. In admiring contemporary 
 talents he followed no school, bowed before no idol ; 
 this was the inevitable consequence of a youth cast on 
 desolate shores, and removed from the ordinary routine. 
 To sketches of travels in the interior of England and 
 Ireland succeed some critical observations, very severe, 
 
 * The volumes referred to are, " Studies upon the most Prominent 
 European Nations of Various Ages," — as the Middle age, — the age of Louis 
 the 14th, — Cromwell's time, — they form the complement of his works, but 
 cannot be necessarily connected with this. 
 
8 Preface by the Author. 
 
 upon the doctrines of tlie times in which I lived, and 
 upon the influence they have exercised upon the peo- 
 ple. These appeared the first time in parts, till they 
 offended a people carried away by the material, and 
 proceeding to the abyss which had been pointed out to 
 them in vain ; since then I collected and entitled them 
 Historical Documents, not lessons or warnings — still 
 less a satire, general or personal, which would not at 
 this day require courage, and would fail in dignity. 
 Added to these criticisms, or strictures, are descriptions 
 of some singular characters whom 1 have known, and 
 who have disappeared from the agitated scene of which 
 we are spectators ; among foreigners are Coleridge, Fos- 
 colo, Bentham ; — French, M. de Chateaubriand ; — with 
 two who played a peculiar part in our revolutionary 
 assembly, Yadier and Amar. 
 
 Whatever may be the severity of the strictures upon 
 certain points in morals and religion which these pages 
 contain, it would be an error to believe that the writer 
 would claim the title of austere moralist and the hon- 
 ours of superior virtue. Eight or wrong, the question 
 is between God and himself; sincere, ardent, frequently 
 sad, he sincerely loves the true and good ; those who 
 have lived between 1815 and 1840 cannot be astonished 
 at the grief which filled his heart when he returned to 
 France that he quitted at a very early age. He then 
 found his country more miserable and agitated than 
 ever. By his good or ill fortune, he was, for the fi?st 
 years after his return to France, condemned to a perfect 
 isolation in the midst of French society, for he could 
 side with no party ; and this impartiality subjected him 
 
Preface by the Author. 9 
 
 to more suffering tliaii others, as he saw much to censure 
 in his beloved country. Originality belongs then to 
 the situation, and not to the writer ; his grief was not 
 the melancholy of caprice, but inevitable from the 
 peculiarity of his situation. 
 
 The papers upon France were addressed to friends 
 of the writer ; to those who placed trust in the sincerity 
 of a studious man and an observer. They perceived 
 that any singularity of thought or style, for which he 
 received praise or censure, proceeded not from eccen- 
 tricity, or from the peevishness and discontent of an 
 ofSce-hunter, but from the strangeness of events. They 
 cannot suspect him of any romantic claims, or affected 
 severity towards his contemporaries ; and now that his 
 previsions are realized, his opinions can produce no 
 surprise. The solitary recluse needs little effort to see 
 justly ; his view is not disturbed by the turmoil and 
 confusion of party. 
 
 Some of these fragmentary pieces date from the dis- 
 tant period of my residence in London, where I occu- 
 pied a small apartment in the vicinity of Hyde Park 
 and Grosvenor Square. I was between fourteen and 
 fifteen when the anathemas of Byron flashed upon 
 us from Italy ; I was in London when the enchanting 
 fictions of Walter Scott were first published. 0, how 
 I luxuriated with these two geniuses in the garden of 
 the Queen, by the serpentine stream. The first balls I 
 attended were those of Grosvenor Square ; and the ar- 
 dent Platonism which at that time took a deep hold of 
 my being may be traced in these studies. Happy he 
 who lives in the inner life ! What a charm in introver- 
 
10 Preface by the Author. 
 
 sion, — to descend into the depths of one's being ; to 
 usher before the tribunal within books and their critics, 
 schools and their disciples, restorations and revolutions, 
 memoirs and histories, reactions and glories ! With 
 what power the passions, compressed in youth, recom- 
 pensed me by energy and activity for what had failed 
 me in vain pleasures ! Above all, I rejoiced in the self- 
 dependence I gained ; I learned from that time to con- 
 temn the renown of authorship ! Our intellectual gifts 
 are imparted to us to elevate us above such vanities. 
 The light of the spirit, kindled at the supreme source, 
 which is God himself, was not given for light purposes. 
 Religious reflection and independence of the praise of 
 man brings calmness in the present and tranquillity in 
 our view of the future ; in action, we are temperate ; 
 in writing, willing to abide our time, and seek not for 
 favour. By uniting with the diseased of the nation in 
 their periodical fury, or sharing with the insensate 
 masses, either as Chartes constitutionalists or worship- 
 pers of despotism, we pretend not to be more wise ; 
 but, alas ! who is wise ? By this independent course a 
 person is better prepared to write the history of his 
 times, and to instruct future generations from the lessons 
 of the past ; thereby we retain our love for truth, which 
 consoles us almost under the absence of every other 
 good. The ardent love of truth has taken possession 
 of my spirit since the sad period of my 3^outh. 
 
 Thanks to her, it may be granted to me at a future 
 day to bequeath to posterity some traces, some living 
 and exact memorials, of the society so given to reaction, 
 80 painfully fluctuating before my eyes, — of her strange 
 
Preface by the Author. 11 
 
 phases, her puffing and parading, her dwarfs who call 
 themselves great, of her valets who style themselves 
 masters, and of her recognised grandeur and virtues. 
 
 Philarete Chasles. 
 
 Institute, I6th December, 1849. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 ArTOBIOGRAPHY, 
 
 Eesidence in England, 
 
 English Society in 1817, 
 
 A Visit to South Stack, 
 
 Scenes of a Life in Ireland, 
 
 Thoughts upon Ireland, 
 
 Sea-shore Scenes, 
 
 An Hour on board the " Stv allow," 
 
 Thoughts upon French Society, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 13 
 67 
 97 
 
 123 
 142 
 155 
 182 
 218 
 234 
 
|ittt0H0j(ra5|a 
 
 EARLY LIFE. 
 
 TT is not the greatness of a man that renders his memoirs 
 interesting ; neither is it his heroism, his rank, nor even 
 his romantic adventures, which enchain our attention, but it 
 is the power of truth. Truth is the basis of the arts ; and 
 even of poetry herself, which is thought to live by fiction. 
 If there is cause to suspect vagueness or reservation in a 
 man's confidences, we turn away with disgust. 
 
 The moving scene of which I was the youthful witness, im- 
 pels me to write. I would not dispose the flambeaux so as in 
 my own person to create an optical illusion ; such displays of 
 vanity inspire me with pity. I speak of my own impressions 
 that I may the better reproduce the actors in the scene ; for 
 emotion is the most lively part of observation : I would be 
 true to fact and feeling. 
 
 My earliest infantile recollections, which will always re- 
 main engraven on my heart, are of a sad and peculiar cast. 
 I recall to mind a square and dark chamber, with closed 
 shutters, the bell mufifled with cotton, the persons within 
 walking upon tiptoe, speaking in whispers, who watched the 
 
14 Autobiography. 
 
 door with fear, and cautiously and slowly half opened the 
 shutter to look out, and flitted like shadows round my bed. 
 Here was I cradled, and here was the scene of my childhood. 
 A heavy cloud overshadowed my infancy, and has hovered 
 over me through life, which I date from this era ; the recol- 
 lection of it is as of yesterday. The twilight of the chamber 
 always has remained, even in my moments of joy and success. 
 A little serinette which aroused the child from his slumbers, 
 but not to dayhght, brought the mother to his cradle at the 
 foot of her bed ; and her presence was as a gleam of sun- 
 shine. Youthful, lovely, blooming, methinks I still see her 
 smile, which always beamed upon me ; still the same, even 
 when enduring sorrow and anguish from her acute sensibility. 
 At twenty-one years of age she married my father, a man of 
 fifty-five, proscribed and crippled. Age had not diminished 
 his ardour of head, heart, or temperament. He was a repre- 
 sentative of that burning fiery zeal peculiar to the eighteenth 
 century. It was the fever of the blood — the ceaseless roar 
 of thunder — a water-spout in place of a breeze, to swell the 
 sail. Our age has no idea of such spirits as then were upon 
 the scenes : the Abbé Raynal, Diderot, Mirabeau, and others. 
 Pity, charity, and generous sentiments, were natural to my 
 father ; the habit of conspiring and declaiming was the life of 
 his life, as with Mably. 
 
 It was then the commencement of the empire. Bonaparte 
 would only suffer Talma to declaim ; to conspire and meddle 
 with his artillery, no one. There rests the explanation of 
 our closed room, and the tomb of my birth. My father lived 
 
Autobiography. 15 
 
 secluded in this little study, reading Rousseau, as I have been 
 told, for he was sincere in his admiration of him. My mother, 
 apparently bright and happy, wept when alone ; she would 
 always give me the morning embrace, for the little bird-organ 
 was faithful to its duty. 
 
 At that time proscription was no joke ; the political game, 
 in which one risks very little in 1846, had then for stake the 
 heads of the players. My father had taken a very active 
 part in the last efforts of the Republic, and he had returned 
 without permission to conceal himself in Paris, with a young 
 wife, (my mother,) and her eldest son, (myself,) whom he had 
 named Philarete. I acknowledge, though I venerate the sin- 
 cerity of my father, I do not share his dogmas. I have none 
 of the enthusiasm of the eighteenth century, and that ardour 
 for the anti-Christian crusade which it embraced. 
 
 The third story of the retreat which so sadly sheltered my 
 father and my infancy, was owned by the uncle of the psychol- 
 ogist, the most subtile and refined of our age — M. Sainte- 
 Beuve. It has now been taken down. It stood in the centre 
 of the old city, and was designed for a parliamentary building; 
 it bore a solemn and citizen-like majesty. My father being 
 comprehended in the general amnesty which extended the 
 imperial mantle over political offenders, then removed from 
 the Isle of the city; to tell the truth, he had placed himself 
 there as in a centre, where the proscribed could easily elude 
 the governmental bloodhounds. Then he purchased a house, 
 (Rue de Postes,) solitary, with a large garden, a terrace, a 
 .lawn, and grove of lofty trees, with a wall and a large gate 
 
16 Autobiography. 
 
 to secure the enclosures. And there he immured himself 
 with his anger, a large dog, and his Deistical library, which 
 contained more than a thousand volumes against Christianity ; 
 and this last was my education. Bonaparte in the mean 
 time occupied himself with the training of Europe, and he 
 reaped his reward in kind. 
 
 All the waifs of the Republic, all the spared heads, or those 
 only slightly chafed by the great tempest, gathered round my 
 father; but his companions visited him as by stealth, feeling 
 their way along, lest they should be entrapped. 
 
 By a singular coincidence of circumstances, in the new 
 house which my father had purchased, there dwelt the father 
 of my contemporary, that very ingenious novelist, M. Mérimée, 
 who was there educated. At this time it is inhabited by 
 M. Michelet. — There is a destiny for houses as for books. 
 
 Thus the broken rigging, the fragments and wrecks of the 
 ship of the Republic rolled along by the waves, stranded upon 
 the beach, and covered with foam, were heaped at the feet of 
 a child. Then this child saw face to face the thundering 
 Titans ; after this he lived with the friends of Byron in Lon- 
 don ; then with those who overthrew absolute monarchy in 
 Paris ; and, in fine, with the enemies of the last. To my in- 
 fantile eyes the Titans of the Revolution seemed only men. I 
 surveyed these historical giants with the keen, scrutinizing 
 eyes of a child ; they seemed to me neither so ferocious nor 
 so sanguinary and terrible as I had been told they were. I 
 soon then began to distrust appearances, and even history ; 
 I began to observe minutely, and to look below, within, and 
 
Autobiography. 17 
 
 behind the scenes. When later I read in memoirs that the 
 ferocious Amar was a wolf, that Mallarmé had presided over 
 the most terrible scenes of the Convention, and that Yadier 
 was a hyena, I did not hearken to it. These wolves and 
 hyenas were very good people, and I painted them such as 
 my childhood had seen them, without partiality. Youth 
 sees justly, and grants no pardons. Childhood, above all, is 
 severe. La Fontaine knew it well. 
 
 All these men were neither good nor bad in themselves, 
 but they abhorred and spoke ill of each other. A. censured 
 B., who amused himself with C, and C. laughed secretly at 
 D., who spared not E. ; E. related good stories of F., which 
 T repeated as apropos to G., H., and I. An intense passion 
 carried each one along, as a torrent the swimmer, lifting him 
 to the top of the waters, as it impels his course. They ap- 
 peared great and redoubtable as they bounded over the san- 
 guinary and tumultuous floods of the Revolution. Out of 
 the impetuous current, and with some few exceptions, they 
 were the most innocent people in the world ; characters 
 feeble, otherwise they would have perished ; ardent, or they 
 would not have been lifted to the summit of the revolutionary 
 billows ; false in their views of themselves, not to perceive 
 that this upheaving of society was not their work, or work 
 for them to engage in ; in fine, mediocre, for the most part, 
 as to intelligence, but not cruel. 
 
 Among the revolutionists whom I scanned in my early days, 
 there were three species, the Archaeists, imitators of antiquity 
 — these proceeded from Jean Jacques ; the Sceptical, progeny 
 
18 Autobiography. 
 
 of Voltaire ; and, last, the Mystics, the most to be feared of 
 all, but they were rare ; it might be that they had chosen as 
 guide Swedenborg, Weisshaupt, Pascal, or Jacob Bœhme. 
 The Yoltairians, in their new organization of the Republic, 
 retained many of the ideas, habits, and customs of the mon- 
 archy ; with the sincere Archseists, the revival of antiquity 
 was a firm belief — the Rome of Brutus was to be resuscitated; 
 as to the Mystics, they accused themselves of only one crime, 
 that of not purchasing the Revolution by more blood. I will 
 endeavour to sketch one or two of these singular men. 
 
 The king of the Voltairian Conventionals was Vadier. Pic 
 ture to yourself Voltaire at eighty years of age, his nose hooked, 
 his chin sharp, his eye twinkling in its orbit, and his figure 
 reduced to the anatomy of a man; moreover, imagine him a 
 Gascon, wooing in courtly strains with the vivacious playful- 
 ness of the Provençal. There you have Vadier! Like his pro- 
 totype, there was a point of interrogation in every phrase — an 
 epigram in each smile — malice in each posture. He was tall, 
 like Saturn,* withered, parched, and bony as he ; a few stray 
 white hairs were scattered here and there, and dangling over 
 his otherwise bald head ; hjs hooked nose and pointed chin 
 nearly met, and each feature and bone in his figure was angular. 
 Near him, and almost always standing, was a tall and beau- 
 
 * Voltaire. 
 
Autobiography. 19 
 
 tiful brunette, whose tint and expression marked her as a 
 Provençale ; her eyes were remarkable, for they were at the 
 same time ardent and fixed, and beneath a bright exterior 
 you saw in the depths a deep melancholy ; this astonished 
 the child as an irreconcilable union. Nothing was more 
 curious also than to meet in the apartment of the monosyllabic 
 Yadier some revolutionary adept of Jean Jacques and of 
 Raynal, ardent and glowing, more eloquent even in his silence 
 and gestures than in his rare discourse ; it was the snow in 
 the neighbourhood of the volcano. 
 
 The aspect of Vadier defied my infant scrutiny, and af- 
 fected me as something mysterious, though the bold destroyers 
 of the ancient regime, by whom I was surrounded, I could 
 see without trepidation. I recall him to mind as if he were 
 still opposite to me, seated at his little round table, of the 
 style of Louis XV., his mantel set out with vials of all de- 
 scriptions; he, bent double over the table, would from time 
 to time raise his white head, from which would issue a low 
 cackling sneer, creaking but not vibrating : I could not with- 
 draw my eyes from the contemplation of this man. I knew 
 not then that in him was the enigma of a whole age. Of the 
 two hundred preceding years in him was the sum of the sar- 
 castic, the denying, and the destructive ; in him was com- 
 pleted the age of cold and inexorable irony. He was of few 
 words, and those were mostly monosyllables ; it would seem 
 as if he uttered himself only to make game of language. The 
 Revolution seemed to him but as the point of an epigram. 
 But, notwithstanding all this, I have seen him give to the 
 
20 Autobiography. 
 
 poor ; he possessed humanity ; and his deep-set eye burned 
 with anger if a story of oppression or cruelty was related in 
 his presence. As to the monarchical ages, he viewed them as 
 profoundly ridiculous, and he spoke of them as a satirist 
 would of a bad writer. Thus the scoffing of a whole age, 
 from Champfort to Fontenelle, was centred and condensed 
 in this extraordinary old man. With more enthusiasm or 
 grace, he would have been less complete : such as I saw him, 
 he was not a man, but a negation. 
 
 He experienced in his revolutionary life one day of triumph ; 
 a great victory obtained at the point of the lance of irony 
 and sarcasm. He was proud of it. I heard him recount 
 this feat of arms ten times, and he had reason to boast ; irony, 
 which constituted the destructive side of the French Revolu- 
 tion, the most powerful side, he had employed on a certain 
 day so apropos, he had manoeuvred so skilfully, that one en- 
 tire phase of the Revolution was his work. He turned the 
 stream from the course which Robespierre had marked out. 
 The religious idea which the last had essayed to revive, 
 Yadier overcame by sarcasm and negation : his cutting words 
 in a moment changed the fickle multitude, and, pronounced in 
 the Directory, prepared the ninth of Thermidon, and killed 
 Robespierre. 
 
 The Mystics of Deism and Naturalism, the enthusiasts of 
 Jean Jacques, or of Swedenborg, Christians and theo-philan- 
 thropists, did not hear of this famous triumph without horror. 
 There were all these divisions in the wrecks of that Con- 
 vention, which an allusion from history has brought out upon. 
 
AuTOBIOi^tRAPH Y. 21 
 
 the canvass as Girondists and Mountains. The most divergent 
 doctrines inflamed them all ; not systematic and meditated, 
 but ardent and instinctive ; from thence proceeded that bitter 
 fury which could only end in blood. Each man was a living 
 idea, frequently vague and confused, but terrible : Anacharsis 
 Clootz stood for the illuminism of Weisshaupt ; La Keveillère- 
 Lèpaux, ^ocinianism ; Amar, Swedenborgianism ; Yadier, 
 irony. In an assembly so frenzied, the cold and immovable 
 statue of irony was so extraordinary as to arrest attention. 
 
 " When the mysteries of Mother Theo are unfolded," said 
 Yadier one day — 
 
 Amar took his hat to depart. 
 
 " Ah ! thou escapest," cried he in his cracked and Gascon 
 voice, *' the persecutor of the Mystics." 
 
 Amar said nothing, but eyed his tormentor askance, as he 
 gently closed the door. The old man continued his recital, 
 and recounted for the tenth time how the imbeciles ranged 
 themselves to say mass ; how Robespierre himself— ^Ae incor- 
 ruptivle *— (and he made this word vibrate with inimitable 
 meridional irony) had become a bigot ; why, the incormptivle 
 put in his claims for high priest ! 
 
 Continuing the same dialect and tone, he said, '' By happy 
 chance, I learned that little mamma Theo, (Theos, God,) 
 summoned her little congregation iu a granary ; and I 
 braced my shoulder to the work ! and I made them frisk and 
 leap, didn't I ? and—" 
 
 * Thus he pronounced the word. 
 
22 Autobiography. 
 
 " We know that story," said the good little Robert Lin- 
 det, somewhat impatiently. " You have told it us a hundred 
 times." 
 
 " Ah I ah !" continued the Voltairian, straightening him- 
 self in spite of his gout, " when I made my report, fanaticism 
 was struck down at a blow — ^it was long before it could lift 
 up its head ; and Rovespierre annihilated — finished — sank 
 in the abyss ! I have done it !" 
 
 And he buried himself again in his cushions with tri- 
 umphant joy. 
 
 AMAE, THE SWEDENBOKGIAN". 
 
 When the alUes entered Paris, and the return of the Bour- 
 bons was announced as probable, a great panic seized those 
 families who had cause for fear, or thought they had. My 
 father and I had frequent intercourse with some of his ancient 
 colleagues. It was at that time I became intimately ac- 
 quainted with him who had been styled the ferocious Amar, 
 and he was to me a subject of curious study. 
 
 There could be nothing more pleasant or courteous than 
 this so-called tiger ; his ancient habits, as king's treasurer and 
 man of the world, were clearly visible in his language and 
 manners. He spoke low ; a large diamond ring which he 
 wore, and which was sometimes, I thought, not unwittingly 
 displayed, betrayed the financier ; the finest and whitest of 
 linen, with ruffles and bosoms embroidered and plaited in the 
 handsomest style, with his other vestments of clear and 
 
Autobiography. 23 
 
 modest shades, but not mournful, were all in keeping. At first 
 sight, all who recollected or had studied the eighteenth cen- 
 tury would have taken him for an economist of the sect de 
 Quesnay. Nevertheless, his large pale face, his fair hair be- 
 coming gray, his head inclined, which seemed hesitating 
 between reverie and calculation, his rayless blue eyes, which 
 seemed to view nothing exterior, but gazed inwardly, im- 
 pressed one with solemnity and almost with fear. Here was 
 evinced an intellect more profound but less complete than 
 that of Y.adier. The last was possessed of an intellect keen 
 and cutting, of which you soon took the gage ; but you knew 
 not what force and depth were concealed beneath the calm, 
 gentle, and meditative exterior of Amar. Some expressions 
 of his which seemed mysterious, that were engraved on my 
 memory in childhood, I now comprehend. 
 
 I have always remarked that the dwelling of a man has a 
 peculiar analogy with his dispositions and tendencies. One 
 must be a mystic or philosopher to love an extended horizon, 
 overlooking vineyards and groves, meadows and gardens; such 
 aspects of nature have a peculiar charm for meditative spirits, 
 whom great cities with their eternal bustle weary and oppress. 
 
 In the third story of a house in la rue Cassette, the ancient 
 treasurer of the king, become republican, had selected a re- 
 treat, which offered a perspective of this description. The 
 greatest simplicity and the most perfect order prevailed 
 within ; I recollect the windows of his study opened upon 
 one of the most beautiful views in Paris. When a child, I 
 was frequently sent to his house, and the sweetmeats and 
 
24 Autobiography. 
 
 cakes with which he treated me could not fail to render these 
 errands agreeable. The impression he made upon me was 
 that of a timid recluse, who had, contrary to his tastes, left 
 the region of abstractions, and descended into the world of 
 realities. He manifested his emotions only by a slight and 
 sudden blush, and a certain dilation of the pupils of the eye. 
 This great calm, sad and gentle, could not consist with many 
 ideas ; surely such as were concealed under such an envelope 
 should be profound and ineffaceable. Shortly after the en- 
 trée of the allies into Paris, I went to see him, and found him 
 more agitated than was usual with him ; he was at the same 
 time more dressed. He v\'as arrayed in a bright chocolate 
 suit, with a white dimity vest, which shone in the sun. It was 
 a suit that he wore in his youth. The window of his study 
 was open, and a ray of light fell upon an ebony representa- 
 tion of Christ. Upon the bureau, opposite the two little 
 windows, an enormous volume was opened. 
 
 As to the dweller in the cabinet, or rather cell, I met him, 
 his head bent forward a little, his arms crossed behind, pacing 
 the room with quick steps ; when I entered he looked at me 
 with a peculiar smile, which seemed expressive of commiser- 
 ation for my youth. Leaning upon my shoulders with his 
 two heavy hands, his rose-tinted nails as carefully cut as those 
 of a lady, he looked at me fixedly, as a magnetizer contem- 
 plates his subject. 
 
 ''Poor little one !" cried he. " Poor soul !" 
 Then with a mysterious air he closed the door, and bolted 
 it. I felt an undefined alarm in presence of this singular 
 
Autobiography. 2f 
 
 person ; it was not liis reputation that awed me, it was he 
 himself. 
 
 " Come along, child," said he ; ''seat yourself by this bu- 
 reau, and read." 
 
 I obeyed him. 
 
 The large Yolume of which I have spoken was before me,, 
 bound in black, ornamented with marks of all colours. Thi:- 
 precious book, much read, and filled with notes, was no other 
 than 'the '' :N'ew Jerusalem" of Swedenborg, the most mystic 
 of all mystical books, as is well known. At the moment when 
 I began reading chapter fourth, he, continuing his walk, 
 stopped before me, and laying his hand extended over the 
 page, which was concealed, he exclaimed, ''This is the 
 great book, young man ; this is the teacher. The present 
 generation comprehend it not. Happy our children if they 
 will hearken. It is this which has' directed my hfe ; it is the 
 only interpreter of the Christian mysteries ; it i? -^he grand 
 revolutionizer." 
 
 Thus the ferocious Amar was a Swedenborgiau mystic : 
 this was the j^rimiwi mobile and secret source of all his con- 
 duct. He willed, as Robespierre and Clootz, to regenerate 
 humanity in spite of herself. During half an hour, concealed 
 in the depths of a large embroidered easy-chair, which would 
 have figured in the saloon of the treasurer of the king at An- 
 gers, he listened, smiling, and with his eyes cast upwards, to my 
 reading of the angels of the third heaven, and their life, such 
 as Swedenborg has revealed it upon his faith as an eyewitness. 
 
 " Ah !" cried he at length, rising with a quick and impet- 
 2 
 
26 Autobiography. 
 
 uous movement, not common in him, " see wliat men would 
 have* become if we had persevered to the end ; if we had 
 dared I But," added he, lowering his tone, and speaking 
 with a cold conviction that made me tremble, '' we have not 
 done enough ; and I ask pardon of God." 
 He wept. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF YOUTH. 
 
 The prison in 1815. 
 
 "We have all tasted of the prison ; your experience has 
 been mine — the universal lot. It is quite a vulgar glory: our 
 fathers have opened the path ; may our sons lose it. I fer- 
 vently hope they will witness that blessed age when the word 
 prison will fill them vrith horror ; when they will shudder 
 upon hearing of the arrest of a neighbour, and will scarcely 
 credit the recitals of 1793, 1815, and 1848 ; when the savage 
 scenes at the castle of Ham, Yincennes, and the Bastile, will 
 seem as phantasmagorias of a fabulous age. 
 
 Look around ; you will find some traces of the prison 
 in your family; you will find them even if you have led a life 
 the most incurious and obscure ; but be not proud of these 
 honours, — they are part of the biographical luggage of each 
 one ; they are inscribed upon our lives as baptism and birth. 
 
 I was a child when the name of Ham echoed in my ear ; 
 recitals of the scenes enacted there were the terror and 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPIIV. "2^ 
 
 amusement of our domestic circle. I kuew her towers, lier 
 corridors, her tortuous staircases, her cells and ramparts, as 
 if I had built them. My father had familiarized me with the 
 dungeou iu which he was confined for some long tedious 
 months. He said : " Her Majesty the Directory had impris- 
 oned him, and her Majesty the People did not draw him out." 
 He dwelt upon the secret springs of the politics of the time. 
 He described the amusements of the prisoners in the court ; 
 their Grecian tragedies and Roman comedies enacted in the 
 prison yard ; the character of the prisoners, their hopes, their 
 past course ; the part they had taken in the revolutionary 
 movement, and how I came to be called Philarète, a name 
 much too ambitious for me, but it was suggested at that time 
 from reading Anacharsis the Younger. Oh ! how I hearkened 
 to the stories of that terrible epoch, father of our enfeebled 
 age, yet how different ! The convictions were then ardent, 
 and frequently resulted in self-sacrifice ; now we have no con- 
 victions, but fruitless hypotheses. Then crimes and virtues 
 were serious, and the seal was affixed to them by sublime or 
 atrocious acts ; now our good and bad qualities resemble a 
 parody; we place ourselves in a theatrical attitude. Then 
 faith excused our errors, and enhanced our virtues ; now 
 reigns sophistry and doubt, with individual vanity; we deco- 
 rate ourselves with the tattered shreds of heroism, and strut 
 upon the stage thinking ourselves sublime. 
 
 The stories of the chateau of Ham were engraved on my 
 heart ; the shadow of the turrets darkened my young dreams, 
 when a reality — a true prison — interrupted my studies, tore 
 
28 Auto BIO G RATH Y. 
 
 me from my classics, and revealed to me the age iu \Yliicli I 
 lived. 
 
 I am sorry to be the hero of my story, not on account 
 of the sufferings I have endured, but as soon as you enter 
 this egotistic path, your personality engrosses you. The 
 me becomes the tyrant, and urges you on. How shall I 
 express myself, and give reality to my theme, without entering 
 into minute and circumstantial details, and wearying my 
 readers with personalities ? In the mean time this is not my 
 fault ; I was unwittingly dashed into the political whirlpool, 
 as leaves are tossed in the tempest. My life might have been 
 a wreck, but I provoked not the raging billows ; if I braved 
 them, it was the romance of childhood, rather than strength 
 and courage. 
 
 In the month of April, 1815, there were many conspiracies 
 in Paris. They were ill contrived, ill woven ; concerted by 
 the infatuated, aided by the men who should have punished, 
 and excited by those who did punish them. This was the last 
 refinement of politics. My crippled father, whose leg was 
 wounded from the bursting of a bomb, had withdrawn from 
 the political arena and lived in complete solitude at the ex- 
 tremity of Paris. He had purchased the old Havacourt 
 hotel, which had domiciled illustrious men^M. Michelet, old 
 Dr. Piuel, M. Mérimée. There the rumour of wars, triumphs, 
 defeats, of monarchies reformed, overthrown, and revived, 
 reached us as the report of a large and distant city in tlame, 
 and awakened as little sensibility as that would in a hermit 
 in his cave. I was, I acknowledge, much more occupied with 
 
Autobiography. 29 
 
 Madame de Staël's Germany, a book that had just appeared, 
 than with all the conspiracies of Europe. My education 
 commenced at five years of age, before my mind opened ; and 
 my father, a sincere and ardent convert to the theories of 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, deemed himself pledged, injustice to 
 his belief, to which he liad proved faithful since 1189, to follow 
 from point to point the évangile proclaimed by the author of 
 Emile ; he believed with him that every man's resource should 
 be in himself ; that the most intellectual training was of no 
 avail, and that each one, even the richest, should earn his 
 bread by the sweat of his brow. My aspirations were dif- 
 ferent. Thus, in my fifteenth year, he proposed to crown an 
 education too intellectual, and pursued with ardour from tlife 
 earUest age, by an apprenticeship to a manual trade. 
 
 My father hastened to fulhl his purpose ; the sooner, from 
 the view he took of the civilized world — above all, of France , 
 sinking funds, critical positions, a threatening future, the 
 tempest nearing, and crowns tottering as the hut of the pea- 
 sant upon the Alps in the fury of the winds. I would not 
 believe him ; him who was as cognisant in revolutionary 
 symptoms as a pilot of Brest in shipwrecks. His was a just 
 view of society, though I thought it exaggerated ; but I was 
 deluded. Look at the world as it is at this day, and see if 
 he was wrong. Our terrors — the earth quaking under our 
 feet — ^prove the truth of his auguries. 
 
 Imagine the feelings of a lad just from College, who has been 
 crowned for Grecian versions and rhetorical declamations; who 
 has read Rousseau, Ossian,Werter, the Genius of Christianity; 
 
30 Autobiography. 
 
 who believes himself a thinker ; who has feasted to the full 
 upon that luxuriant poison, our philosophical romances 
 and our romantic philosophers. Workman ! what a fall ! 
 what a title I what a sacrifice ! A passive filial obedience 
 bent my neck to the yoke of this terrific paternal good sense, 
 which, in the position of our family, might have passed for 
 extravagance, but it wa,s only the fanaticism of reason. Kever 
 was more visionary youth rudely thrust against the spikes 
 and spears of practical life. I deemed myself a hero in 
 yielding without grieving and murmuring to my hard fate ; 
 in accepting this best guarantee against the shocks of fortune, 
 and from the scholar who wrote useless themes, becoming the 
 compositor to print the useful ones. 
 
 There was then in Paris a printing establishment, unique 
 in its kind. Three broken cases of types, exiled .and solitary 
 in the second story of an obscure house, situated in rue Dau- 
 phine, upon a spot that now forms a passage of that name. 
 There were no workmen to arrange these little creative in- 
 struments, that were to give form to thought, for the master 
 was poor, and worse than poor ; he was the butt and sport 
 of fortune. He was feeble and miserable in soul and body. 
 He had been a Jacobin ; one of those beings who had been a 
 violent partisan and passive instrument, but being tasked be- 
 yond his powers, he became a revolutionary waif. How lived 
 he ? I am ignorant. He printed not even an almanac. In 
 the mean time he did crawl upon the face of the earth, and 
 his idle press and dusty types uselessly cumbered the floor. I 
 believe that the police held this house under their immediate 
 
Autobiography. 31 
 
 surveillance ; but of this my father was ignorant. He saw 
 only in the solitude of the atelier a ijrecious opportunity of 
 aiding an unfortunate man, and preserving my youth from the 
 contagion of evil example. Without living in the midst of 
 workmen, I could become one, and obtain my art without 
 danger to my morals. My father then chose for my master 
 poor Jacques, proprietor of a battered press. Every morning 
 during three months, at eight o'clock, I regularly mounted to 
 this desolate atelier in the fourth story, to remain till three. 
 
 Here I lived alone ; here I dreamed. The lessons of the 
 master were rare, or rather, none at all ; and when my fingers 
 became wearied from handling the types, I seated myself with 
 a book. Whoever has not felt disgust with labour in which 
 the mind takes no part, can never perfectly comprehend the 
 delights of reading. You have been engaged with the 
 grosser elements, sand, lead, wood, blind forces which have 
 only a passive resistance, and here the thought rays befor»8 
 you, searching, bold, brilliant, subtile, freighted with diamonds 
 and fruits that will live for ever. I am not astonished that 
 great men have sprung from the ranks of mechanics : for 
 those who have been nurtured exclusively in saloons, litera- 
 ture is a play, an ornament ; but for those who have handled 
 the sword, stood at the helm, or guided the plough, knowl- 
 edge becomes a passion, a force, a beauty, a divine love. It 
 is from oiir shops, and ateliers, and notaries' of&ces, where are 
 piled deeds which taxed not the mind, that issue most of our 
 powerful spirits ; Molière from the upholsterer's shop ; Burns 
 from the plough ; Shakspeare was the son of a draper and 
 
32 Autobiography. 
 
 glover ; Rousseau worked with bis fatber, who was a wheel- 
 wright. Those ardent spirits, long struggling with the 
 grosser elements, happy and enthusiastic, took refuge in the 
 free domain of thought. Even an inferior mind gains strength 
 from an apprenticeship in the mechanic arts ; and if the great 
 reform which engages the thoughts of so many should ever be 
 eifected, and should create all men citizens, I doubt not but 
 good sense will prevail over habit, and the most important 
 improvement in each one's education will consist in the de- 
 velopment of the intellectual and physical powers in union, 
 and a practical application of those powers upon the elements 
 of nature. I should wish all agriculturists to read, and all 
 rich men to practise some mechanic art ; at the present day 
 the ignorance of one class, and corruption of another, conceals 
 God and the sanctity of the human mission. I deem the 
 serious study of physical nature and the knowledge of a trade 
 equally important for the powerful and rich, as the attain- 
 ment of the French language and the study of the Bible for 
 our peasants, artisans, and labourers. 
 
 Not one of these ideas entered my head at the time I have 
 been speaking of. I was just from College ; I had my trag- 
 edy to compose, my reveries to indulge in, and Gessner to 
 read. I carefully accomplished my task, but vrith what 
 pleasure I returned to the mawkish pastorals of Solomon 
 Gessner, whose vapid moralizing then appeared to me the 
 height of good taste and elegance ! Oh! shepherdesses of 
 these idyls ; Oh ! Chloe, Daphne, Leucothel how beautifully 
 ye beamed upon me in my dark and sad abode, draperied 
 
Autobiography. 33 
 
 by spiders ; the little windows and small panes of which ad- 
 mitted only the discordant notes of the hand-organ, the distant 
 rumbhng of carriages ; within the house, from a neighbouring 
 room, there reached my ear the agonizing screams of a poor 
 epileptic and the angry murmurings and invectives from a 
 party of gamblers. My curiosity was much excited by these 
 gamblers ; every day, in the afternoon, I saw some old 
 women, with green reticules, enter a room, from which they 
 would issue forth at ten the next morning : thus spending 
 the night in their orgies. On a certain day I heard a pistol 
 shot from that room. I still see the chamber with the green 
 carpet, across which my eyes would feign penetrate behind 
 the red curtain which concealed the actors in the interior of 
 the den. 
 
 Dependent upon my own resources for entertainment, I 
 invented a means by which I could reconcile my elegiac and 
 literary tastes with the duties which were imposed upon me; 
 it was to print some fragments from my favourite authors, 
 sometimes translated by myself, when they were foreign. It 
 was in this way that I commenced the study of German, first 
 translating, and then becoming the compositor and printer 
 of the Hermann and Dorothea of Goethe. One Saturday 
 evening, after having commenced in this manner the transla- 
 tion, in five hexameters, upon rhyme plates, of the Daphnis 
 of Gessner, I left upon the press the book which had delighted 
 me so much, which yet I could not be induced to read now, 
 uotwithstanding the associated charms. The next morning 
 my father was to drive me into the country, five leagues 
 
34 Autobiography. 
 
 from Paris. The advent of Spring, with its balmy ah' and 
 sunny smile, would not find us reluctant worshippers ; but I 
 could not depart without Gessner, and at seven in the morning 
 I was at the printing office. Another motive united itself to 
 my love of Gessner in leading me to the printer's ; his wife 
 was poor and ill ; her son was subject to the most dreadful 
 of natural maladies, epilepsy : added to which, her husband 
 was a prey to the most deplorable of social infirmities, gloom, 
 envy, and fanaticism. The- interior of this house was 
 wretched ; it required all the insouciance, and dreaminess, 
 and illusions of fifteen, to bring my idyls there ; to mingle 
 with the distress, sickness, and the wretched results of 
 Jacobinism and revolutions the mythology of the boudoir. 
 I was charged with some money for the poor sick woman 
 from my mother. My mother did not share in the enthusi- 
 astic opinions of my father ; a zealous Protestant, she did 
 woi:ks of mercy and distributed alms with that discreet zeal 
 and self-forgetfulness which alleviated her own manifold trials. 
 But this day, her alms, joined to my eclogues, opened for me 
 the gates of the Conciergerie. All this trifling detail was 
 necessary to explain by what chain of little circumstances, 
 (notwithstanding my childish insignificance, and however 
 unworthy that honour,) I vras in the sequel enclosed within 
 the walls of a dungeon. 
 
 On reaching the printer's that memorable morning, I saw 
 two men stationed in the dark passage at the foot of the 
 narrow tortuous staircase leading to Jacques' apartment. I 
 little heeded these sentinels in threadbare coats, though they 
 
AuTOBIOGrwiPHY. 35 
 
 examiued me inquisitively ; but depositing my offering upon 
 a table in a little ante-chamber, I went up to tlie atelier. 
 Returning, book in band, I perceived through the open door 
 of a room a man with a scarf, leaning upon the mantel with 
 a weary, indolent air. I pursued my course, and entered 
 the wretched little chamber of Jacques to inquire for his poor 
 wife. I was ignorant of life ; this scarf should have informed 
 me that I had an affair. Scarcely had I entered the cham- 
 ber when two men seized me ; they proceeded to search me : 
 I was dumb with amazement. The steady and piercing eye 
 of the adjutant of the police was fastened upon me ; my 
 outline of a projected tragedy enclosed in a portfolio, upon 
 which was staked my hope of immortality, was carefully 
 secured and labelled. Kext my name, age, and rank, were 
 demanded ; notes were taken ; then, without deigning to say 
 what they wished to do with me, or why I was arrested, 
 these honourable gentlemen ordered me to follow them. 
 They were dressed in black cravats, and no shirt collars ; 
 each carried a club ; and their office was to lead their 
 unresisting victim to the police office. 
 
 The gentlemen v>-ho escorted me were as polished as the 
 alguazils in comedy. To the amenity pf the cat and tiger, 
 which consists in a rough play with their victims, and distin- 
 guishes those who live by human misery as well as the beast 
 of prey, they joined, I thought, some commiseration for my 
 youth and the simple innocence of my questions. While we 
 were crossing the Pont-Neuf, they endeavoured to comfort 
 and console me. The women, who by intuition discover all 
 
36 A U T E I G R A p n Y . 
 
 our pains, looked compassionately upon me. In answer to 
 my inquiries, my guard replied that tliis summons was all a 
 matter of form, and that I should soon return to my family; 
 iJiat chance which had led me to a printer accused of political 
 dereliction, was not sufficient for detention : in fine, they 
 made me believe I should see my poor mother again in the 
 evening. Thus reassured, I entered fearlessly the whimsical 
 and absurd structure called the Police^ whose walls conceal 
 so many plagues and moral sores. The great and terrible 
 magistracy of Paris, the moral edileship, has omitted nothing 
 that can make her a curse. Instead of consecrating a palace 
 worthy of her name, she is built over a sewer. There my 
 bailiffs quitted me, and I was roughly pushed into an oblong 
 hali, of which the odour was suffocating. 
 
 My education had been delicate and tender to excess ; the 
 Utopian enthusiasm of my father and the adorable instructions 
 of my mother in the tranquil solitudes of home had shielded 
 my youth from any exposure to contemporary vices. I knew 
 nothing of Paris. I was habituated to a simple life, inno- 
 cent, beautiful, even elegant ; and here, as I looked around, 
 I saw men half naked, women clothed in rags, their lewd 
 eyes and blowzed faces wearing marks of the bottle and 
 brothel ; people whom, if you met in the streets of Paris, 
 you would feel contaminated. Here and there were some 
 peaSfints in frocks, who with their arms crossed lay stretched 
 upon the floor ; other groups smoking and playing piquet 
 with greasy cards, seated upon the foul floor ; the stench 
 from so many filthy people congregated around was intoler- 
 
AUTOBIOGRATHY. 3T 
 
 able — was horrible. Here were swarms of vrretclies by 
 night and day ; no egress ; here they must eat, drink, and 
 sleep : thus a field bedstead was supplied, which swarmed 
 with the miserable wretches ; the poor and unhappy, the 
 drunken, the debauched, were all piled upon each other; and 
 this hall was dedicated to St. John I It was here that blind 
 policy, as cruel under the republic as when swayed by 
 monarchy, Briareus armed, seized all in her path ; and to 
 this infernal place my youth was hurried. I seated myself 
 in a corner near the embrasure of a window, and wept. The 
 slang of the thieves prevented me from comprehending any 
 thing that was said around me ; the obscene laugh, lewd 
 gestures, and ferocious effeminacy, special characteristic of 
 vice in great cities, shocked my eyes, filled as they were with 
 tears. These wretches, at the same time haggard and gay, 
 with leer of the eye and a saucy laugh which made their 
 odious wrinkles more visible, came close up, insulting me for 
 my delicate and tender aspect, my tears, and scared look, as 
 they savagely called the confusion and amazement which 
 seized me at this unexpected scene. 
 
 A trembling old man accosted me ; he spoke with diffi- 
 culty ; his lips were always open from decrepitude ; his head 
 was totally bald, and he seemed to shake with the struggling 
 words in their endeavour to escape. He was an ancient 
 advocate, arrested the night before in consequence of an 
 accusation of conspiracy ; in his debility there was to be 
 perceived a remnant of good manners ; but his rayless soul, 
 his voice, which was an inward muttering without the breath 
 
38 Autobiography. 
 
 of life, prevented me from comprehending liis long discourse 
 I could only divine that our arrest was caused from the same 
 suspicion ; he upon the borders of the tomb, I at the thresh- 
 old of life ; and we had both met in this abode of infamy ; 
 in the limbo of the dungeon. 
 
 Among the wretches huddled in this hail, whose sixty 
 visages are still before me, there was one I marked particu- 
 larly as being the most peculiar and interesting of all ; he 
 was a fanatic. The sceptical age had not destroyed the 
 element of love and enthusiasm which survives for ever in 
 the human heart. This being was at the same time a 
 Catholic, a revolutionist, and a magnetizer. Drifted upon 
 the rue de Jerusalem, as a detached wreck from a romance 
 of Walter Scott, he was seized, and here he held forth, 
 casting the shadov^'s of his poetic and wild dreams along 
 these sweepings of society — the inched j^eople^ as they were 
 called in the slang of St. John's. His face was long and 
 wan, and his eye kindled by enthusiasm ; his long black hair 
 waved in natural curls ; he wore no cravat, and his speech 
 was rapid, strange, and incoherent. He preached to those 
 around him, who blasphemed in listening, I know not what 
 Christian heresy of the recreation of society. He predicted 
 that this new order of society was to arise from the triple 
 power of magnetism, Christ, and Robespierre. He left a 
 peculiar and deep impression upon the mind of the child as 
 of a person intrusted with a mission to this assembly. There 
 seem^ed united a flaceidity and softness of the muscular 
 parts in the frame of this monomaniac, which usually 
 
Autobiography. S9 
 
 attaches to irregular lialjits. He was seized at the corner 
 of a street, preaching to the bystanders. I do not know 
 what became of him. 
 
 Yermin infested the crowded bed, and I preferred passing 
 my night in a chair within the embrasure of the window. 
 The next morning the jailer distributed the rations to the 
 prisoners ; to each one was given a slice of black bread. I 
 asked permission to write to my mother — the most tender of 
 mothers, who was suffering from illness, and had received no 
 tidings from me. I vras refused. 
 
 Cut off from the outward world, my sad life, my anxiety, 
 the wretched scenes around me, and distress for my mother, 
 brought on a fever in three days. At length the jailer 
 obtained permission for me to write. I wrote two letters — 
 one to my mother, and one to the prefect of the police ; but 
 I was obliged to despatch them unsealed, according to the 
 rule in these places. In the evening an answer from my 
 mother reached me, and with it a ring from her, Vvhich I 
 have always kept. The next morning at twelve my name 
 was called at the grate, which Avas a summons to the inter- 
 rogation. 
 
 After three days and three nights passed without sleep, 
 and in that stupor of grief which is easy to imagine, my 
 nervous system was violently excited. We failed in water in 
 this hall of piched people. My linen was soiled, my outer 
 garments shal)by and unfit to appear in, and my fever raged. 
 I was ijlaced betvreen tv^'o gendarmes. Through many dark 
 corridors, up stairs and down stairs, through winding pas- 
 
40 Autobiography. 
 
 sages, turn within turn in our tortuous course, we at length 
 reached the notary's office in a lower room. I heard a cry; 
 my mother had risen from the bed of illness, and come to 
 embrace me a moment. The indulgence of the police per- 
 mitted her to see me, and no more ; she embraced me with- 
 out speaking ; she looked at me, and her wistful glance said, 
 how much you are changed. Ko more was permitted ; she 
 was ordered to withdraw, and led away. The paleness of 
 my mother and her tears gave me a shock which I cannot 
 express. For a long time she had been given over by the 
 physicians. Her heart was diseased ; but Corvisart prolonged 
 her life. He told her that violent emotions would destroy 
 her, and it seemed to be by an artificial process that this 
 delicate plant was preserved. A native of Sedan, descended 
 from an old Friesland and Dutch family, whose chiefs, as 
 their names indicate, (Halma, Alma, with the oriental aspi- 
 ration,) belonged to the Araliian wreck, conquered by Charles 
 Martel, she had inherited from her patriarchal race a love 
 for old institutions and ancient usages. Beautiful as an 
 angel, she was married at eighteen to an ardent royalist; 
 they spent the honeymoon of their wedded life in the dun- 
 geons of Sedan, and then the young wife saw her husband 
 perish upon the scaffold. Her second husband, my father, was 
 an ardent repubUcan. Adrift in stormy seas, they were both 
 glad to anchor their little barque in some peaceful haven. 
 
 Before a desk, filled with parchments carefully piled and 
 numbered, was seated in his arm-chair a man whose name I 
 knew not, but who represented a class, that of tools of the 
 
Autobiography. 41 
 
 government. Ilis face was short and square, swarthy and 
 wrinkled, at the same time fat and bony; his low forehead 
 was shortened still more by the peruke which he wore ; his 
 eyebrows were bushy, his skin wrinkled at the corners of his 
 eyes, his shoulders like a hangman, Avith mien of an inquisitor ; 
 he was my jury and judge. I remained standing before 
 this doughty man, who abruptly began his interrogations and 
 vituperations. " Monsieur, you belong to a species that must 
 be cut off; a race of vipers! There will be no peace in 
 France till they are crushed." 
 
 In politics, all races who do not think with us arc vipers. 
 In 1Î93, the defenders of Louis XVI.; in 1Î99, the friends of 
 Carnot ; in 1805, the partisans of the Bourbons ; in 1815, 
 the believers in liberty were the races of vipers. I was 
 surprised at this language, and my reasoning powers were 
 precociously awakened. 
 
 " But, Monsieur," replied I with puerile haughtiness, '' I 
 thought you were going to question me upon facts, and I 
 hear only abuse." This doughty man, whom my shabby 
 and torn dress, together with my puny appearance, encour- 
 aged in his insults, now bounded from his leathern cliair, as a 
 tiger caught in a snare, and rising in all his littleness, and 
 thumping the desk with his doubled fist, he cried, 
 
 ''Eh ! will you teach me what I am to do ? You lecture 
 mr^ Monsieur." I have not forgotten one of his words. 
 
 '' I Vf ill just remind you. Monsieur," rephed I, coolly, " that 
 your business is not with a criminal, neither with a person 
 accused of guilt, but with an innocent young man, who 
 
42 Autobiography. 
 
 knows not why he is here, by what right hnprisoned, or under 
 what pretext detamed." 
 
 '* It is," returned the interrogator, reseating himself, " be- 
 cause you make such fine speeches. You belong, as may be 
 easily seen, to the young liberals. Kegistcr, record all that 
 Monsieur says." 
 
 Then chafing himself in his harness, as the arrogance of 
 my replies augmented his anger, and not being able to obtain 
 from me any clue to the conspiracies of which he souglit the 
 track, for I was a stranger to all political intrigues, and 
 execrated the name of politics, (a feeling which I have pre- 
 served intact to the present day,) this hunter of men, 
 wrathful at not being able to entrap me, took a more direct 
 path ; he opened my confiscated portfolio and commented 
 upon my rough sketch of William Tell. Some verses of my 
 fragments were dedicated to liberty ; and the first couplet of 
 a miserable liberal ode, traced with a pencil, was alleged 
 against me, and I was questioned upon my secret intentions, 
 my ideas, and theories ; and since facts failed him, he took 
 care to inveigle me in my replies. lie asked me if I loved 
 the reigning dynasty ; I was silent a moment, and I then 
 said to him with firmness a little emphatic, which I explain 
 now from my early and precocious reading, with its romantic 
 taint : " I know not, Monsieur, as I love any government ; 
 I have lately left college, and I cannot reply to these 
 questions of theory and personal affection. This sort of in- 
 terrogation, according to my idea, surpasses the functions in 
 which you acquit yourself so well. As to the verses written 
 
Autobiography. 43 
 
 in my portfolio, tliey are some fragments from a tragedy 
 which I shall read to the committee of the Odeon ; they have 
 no connection with the police, and you would do justice if you 
 would restore me to my family, from whence I was arrested 
 under so puerile a pretext." 
 
 Eury seized him. 
 
 " Impertinent reasoner Î know you that I can at this mo- 
 ment send you to the dungeon ?" He ordered me to sign a 
 paper in which was recorded, not all that I had said, but the 
 material part of my replies ; and upon a signal from Mon- 
 sieur, the gendarme led me away to another chamber, in 
 which was an officer of about forty years, who wore the cross 
 of the Legion of Honour. He was accused of conspiracy, and 
 looked upon me with compassion and tenderness, at the same 
 time offering me his hand. 
 
 " Ah !" said he, " do they accuse you of conspiracy ? Of 
 what age are you, young man ?" 
 
 " Fourteen !" 
 
 "This is strange." The Colonel threw himself upon his 
 bed, and remained long silent. 
 
 In the evening two gendarmes came for me in a hack ; 
 they told me to get in, then one placed himself each side of 
 me, and I was driven to the Palace of Justice, whose court 
 at that time led to the entrance of the famous Conciergerie! 
 Kear the large steps which lead to the palace, you discover in a 
 corner to the right a double grating sunk under ground, which 
 conceals the deep dungeons of the Conciergerie ; the weight 
 of the superincumbent buildings seemed to press upon them 
 
44 Autobiography. 
 
 as society crushes tlie victims, innocent or guilty, who are 
 buried therein. Is this a prison, a sewer, a cellar ? You can- 
 not say ; this door of the prison, so low, so narrow, so black, 
 was overshadowed by the projections of the surrounding edi- 
 fices. At the grate was stationed the guard of the hell within ; 
 to the right hung the calendar, or jailer's book ; before you 
 burns, with a feeble gleam, the sombre lamp, which, like a 
 stream of blood, casts its lurid glare along the funereal avenue. 
 I entered, preceded by a gendarme, followed by a gen- 
 darme. My first impression was of death and the tomb. 
 Afterwards, (I confess to the sin of the tragedy hero, but I 
 was educated in France, and among us all is theatrical,) this 
 flagrant iniquity inspired me with courage, and, in view of 
 those craven souls who stood in fear of my childhood, I felt 
 myself elevated to the precocious dignity of a martyr. The 
 consciousness of the pure and elevated feelings and pursuits 
 which engrossed me when surprised by the adjutant of the 
 police, conviction of my own innocence, the disgust with 
 which such barbarity inspired me — perhaps the whimsical 
 pleasure of feeling that I in my early years should struggle 
 against ills the most poignant and bitter tliat maturity could 
 grapple with — strangely exalted me. I felt that I should be 
 equal to any sulFering or affliction which could hereafter 
 befall me, and that I could withstand it all. I threw the 
 glove of defiance at all evils, seen or unseen, which should 
 beset my path, and it has aided me, for I have suffered much 
 in life, (I say it in passing,) but, above all, through my mind 
 and affections. 
 
Autobiography. •^S 
 
 My name v/as inscribed in the jailer's book ; that fact is 
 ittended with ignoble fear ; it proclaims you subdued by 
 physical force ; a chain is rivetted around you : handcuffed 
 and fettered, you are brought to prison as a thief. You be- 
 come the butt of the keeper, you descend from the condition 
 of the man to that of the idol and the brute ; you are classed, 
 cribbed, labelled ; you are as the trunk of a once noble tree, 
 hewn down, separated from its brethren of the forest, and 
 ignobly piled in the outbuilding of its owner. 
 
 The lantern in the doorway threw a feeble and doubtful 
 light upon the objects around. I saw the tattered shreds of 
 a'thief, who, seated upon the bench with me, waited to have 
 his name registered ; then a large man in a brown jacket 
 seized my hand. We ascended staircases, passed along cor- 
 ridors,— the damp wind whistled in these dark passages ; my 
 eyes, 'unaccustomed to this new world, only saw isolated, 
 flickering red spots, waving from distance to distance : these 
 were the lamps attached to the walls. 
 
 " We have our orders, young man," said the jailer ; " you 
 are for the secret cell. I am sorry." 
 '' What is the secret cell ?" 
 
 '' It is a place you cannot quit, and you can see no one." 
 We went down many steps which led to a long corridor, 
 ventilated by spiracles ; many iron bars were opened to give 
 IIS passage, and fell back, reverberating ; the third door of 
 the corridor opened into my dungeon, which was secured by 
 a massive iron door, guarded with all the bolts which the 
 special luxury of those places demand. 
 
46 Autobiography, 
 
 " This is yonr cell," said the jailer, after raising two iron 
 bars, and turning three times the enormous key whose dis- 
 sonant creaking long grated in my ear. 
 
 My cell was eight feet long, five broad, and twelve in 
 height, very dark ; one side of the wall the briny water was 
 dripping down ; another side there was a wooden partition ; 
 the floor was beat hard as a cellar ; above the door, fifteen 
 feet from the floor, was an iron lattice, three feet broad and 
 one high, which admitted an obscure light ; but this mock- 
 ery of a window was shaded by a blind on the outside. 
 These were ingenious precautions I In a corner to the right, 
 opposite the door, were scattered some tresses of old matted 
 straw ; below the window stood a bucket ; near the door, to 
 the left, another bucket, filled with water, and a wooden 
 porringer. I was appalled — I felt a cold shudder. This was 
 the prison of the condemned, the dungeon in all its horror 
 that was allotted to me at my age, when I was not even at- 
 tainted, or suspected of crime. 
 
 Although the authors of this melo-draraa had abused their 
 power, I felt tempted to believe in the commiseration of the 
 jailers ; they see so few cases deserving of pity! and when they 
 chance to meet with one, habituated as they are to the sight 
 of suffering, and v/earied with apathy, they enjoy the relaxa- 
 tion of a little compassion, — of a passing charity. Claude 
 pitied me, and served me well. His wooden figure seemed 
 to dilate and take a softer mould in observing me, and he 
 lingered when I spoke to him ; and it was good for me could 
 I detain him even five minutes. This man in brown jacket 
 
Autobiography. 41 
 
 and leathern girdle, loaded v;itli keys, was more merciful than 
 the interrogator, a man of the world, who dined out, wore 
 black silk breeches, and talked with ihe ladies. Now Mon- 
 sieur's wounded self-love was revenged ; glutted to the full. 
 
 I remained in the dungeon ; some prison-bread was 
 brought me, hard and black ; added to v/hich, it was of an 
 odour so absolutely revolting, that even my hunger could not 
 induce me to touch it. 
 
 '' Do you wish the pistole ?" said Claude. When I had 
 ceased weeping, I asked his meaning. For one hundred 
 francs per month I might obtain a bed, white bread, some 
 nutritious food, a table and a chair. But I thought only of 
 my home, and I asked Claude if I could not communicate 
 with my family. 
 
 "I will send some one," said he, "to bring you news of 
 your mother ; but it is forbidden you to write or receive 
 letters." I gave Claude to understand that my father would 
 not fail to pay the pistole, and to recompense any services 
 rendered to me ; and I asked him to say to my family that 
 my health was good and I vras tranquil. When, in the 
 evening, going his nightly rounds, barring tiie doors and 
 attending to the ordinary cares of a prison, he reached my 
 cell, he told me that he had seen my mother, that she re- 
 mained a long time in the parlour talking to him, and had 
 given him fruit to bring to me. Her maternal grief had 
 touched the heart of Claude. He brought me the pistole, 
 consisting of a tottering table of light Avood, a rush-bottomed 
 chair, damp sheets, and a paltry little gray couch, on the 
 
48 
 
 UT BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 back of wliicli was traced with a pencil these words : M. de 
 Labédoyere has slept here the — the rest was effaced. lie was 
 the unhappy Colonel de Labédoyere, who three days before 
 had quitted this bed to march to that of death. 
 
 In a few days my dungeon was enlivened a little by some 
 books which were sent to me. I had written to my father, 
 but without sealing my letter, and asked him to send me 
 some old books : Mabillon and Ariosto, Sauvai and Jean 
 Jacques, Saint-Foix and Werther. I now commenced my 
 prison studies by an examination of ancient writers. From 
 mere listlessness, and having nothing better to do, I made 
 extracts from those who had collected the historical wrecks 
 of our cities. Not one among them has accomphshed his 
 task poetically, and it is pitiful to see vv'ith what doleful and 
 merciless exactitude they registered and with what elaborate 
 subtility they reasoned upon the ancient monuments, without 
 seizing the real life of the extinguished people. I was inter- 
 ested, however, in deciphering from their cold pages some- 
 thing upon the ancient design of my Conciergerie. 
 
 The Conciergerie, the Palace, the City, was the ancient 
 Lutèce ; there were the loves of Julian. This little island, 
 ■first inhabited by boatmen, is the centre of modern Paris. 
 My thought reverted to the germ of this great city. I saw, 
 in my reverie, the guard-house of the Roman Citadel ; I saw 
 the pit where criminals of the municipal city were immured, 
 without form of trial, by the Roman centurions. Afterwards, 
 this prison was extended to a subterranean hall, under tlie 
 tower of the military chiefs. By degrees, as turrets and 
 
Autobiography. 49 
 
 halls were added, and the building acquired splendour, the 
 subterranean hall was enlarged, dungeons multiplied. The 
 palace under Robert II. was an edifice of signal beauty, 
 (said HeHgond,) that is to say, it was a square tower, flanked 
 with bastions. Fortress, royal residence, and prison ; this 
 was the feudal community, consisting in physical force, 
 priestly hierarchy, and military despotism. The chiefs of the 
 primitive race, foolishly called kings by our own historians, 
 chiefs of savage tribes and armies, defiled before me ; I be- 
 held their whimsical court, composed of Gallic bishops and 
 Leudes ;* of warriors leagued with them ; captives taken 
 in war swelled the triumph ; then, descending the course 
 of ages, I come to Saint Louis, who built the palace anew, 
 with a long row of Gothic colonnades, not forgetting the 
 kitchens ; and Philip the Fair, who followed the example 
 of his predecessor, and aggrandized still more this royal 
 domain. These were the lessons I conned ; facts which I 
 gathered, and which loomed up through the hazy atmos- 
 phere of the Abbé Lebœuf, M. Sauvai, and other archae- 
 ologists. 
 
 Thus the first germ of Paris, the queen city, the cradle of 
 society, the nucleus which enclosed the future of a whole 
 population, and the pivot of a great city, was a prison. 
 From the little island of Lutece, still the heart of Paris, the 
 city enlarged, houses and palaces multiplied, and entire vil- 
 
 * A name given in ancient days to great vassals who voluntarily fol- 
 lowed their chief to war. 
 
50 Autobiography. 
 
 lages were absorbed. But what a lesson ! As soon as the 
 city took form the dungeon was excavated ; Lutèce had no 
 ramparts, but she had her prison ; perhaps the cell allotted 
 to me was the first dungeon. In this subterranean abode, 
 which cradled the queen city, how much anguish has been 
 concealed. This abode, consecrated to tears and misery, 
 has since been called Conciergerie. 
 
 If I have for a long time felt the most entire indifference 
 for the movements of modern society ; — if I have opposed 
 the hopes of progress manifested by my best friends, it is not 
 from heartless scepticism, but a firm negation ; — ^if I have 
 proclaimed from the moment of taking the pen, the imminent 
 decline of Christian Europe, especially France, which has 
 lost the sense of justice and the idea of God, — it may be 
 easily explained by referring to my imprisonment, which was 
 the commencement of my moral life. I meditated long and 
 deeply under those humid walls. But my historical studies 
 were not of long duration ; they soon gave place to reveries 
 more romantic ; often to thoughts more sad ; and they both 
 engrossed my long nights and mournful days, in which there 
 was no outward change from day to day, from week to week. 
 Reverie is the only luxury in a prison. I read Ariosto, 
 stretched upon my sorry couch, my elbows leaning upon the 
 tottering table which held my books. I scribbled some 
 foolish verses, and wrote long sentimental and Ossianic pages, 
 the custom at that time, as true in sentiment as false in 
 style. It is thus the young write. I read Pamela, a failure 
 from a man of genius ; the moral is false from prudery. Then 
 
Autobiography. 61 
 
 through the pages of the sweet Tasso an angel spirit had 
 devised a means of communicating with the youth of fourteen, 
 by underlying many of the words, so as to form sentences, 
 which the youth only could interpret. 
 
 My eyes accustomed themselves in three days to the very 
 feeble and sparing light that the spiracle dispensed to me. 
 But the emotions of the young man were often too powerful 
 to be dissipated by books of history or romance. The first 
 evening of my imprisonment, when all the bars fell, prolong- 
 ing their echo through the long vaults, I shuddered ; my 
 isolation looked me in the face ; I was as one dead, who 
 awakens suddenly to find his tomb closed upon him. The 
 next morning a porringer of milk was brought to me ; I 
 could not restrain my tears ; I contrasted this solitary re- 
 past with the breakfast at home ; and to the little lunch that 
 I would carry into the large garden, and, perched upon a 
 tree, eat the bread whilst reading Werter. Sometimes I 
 heard a heavy carriage stop, the hinges would creak, the 
 gates roll back, the bars of the dungeon fall ; there was 
 tumult in the prison, then all still as death ; — a new pris- 
 oner had been brought. 
 
 My cell was below the level of the court or prison-yard ; over 
 this yard were the windows, or rather perforations intended to 
 admit a glimmer of light, and slightly ventilate the Souricière, 
 a filthy abomination, containing a corrupt mass of human flesh. 
 The Souricière was divided into parts for the two sexes, and 
 it was, I believe, a provisionary prison where criminals were 
 heaped pell-mell, awaiting a more exact division. The Sou- 
 
52 AUTOBIOGRAPHT. 
 
 ricière for females was near enough to my cage for sounds to 
 reach me from thence, and often words. There were love 
 songs sung in any thing but harmonious strains ; sometimes 
 horrible blasphemies uttered in sweet and youthful tones ; 
 obscene narrations from young girls ; stories of robbery and 
 murder with all a culprit's slang ; added to these were bal- 
 lads, boat songs, and bacchanalian tunes, mixed with impre- 
 cations, curses of rage, and shouts of laughter. What was 
 most sad in the scene was the reckless gaiety ; never were 
 Bohemians more merry ; all sadness, all remorse, all ideas of 
 decency and virtue were banished from these women who 
 were the dregs of society and steeped in iniquity. Pardon 
 me these details, which seem frivolous only to frivolous people. 
 This transformation of the human soul impressed me strongly. 
 I shall never forget it, and a large portion of my ideas 
 and studies have resulted from my prison life. I have from 
 that time denied that the system of society was right, that 
 man is an angel, and can dispense with God, or substitute 
 another. I was initiated in no vice; crime was revealed to 
 me only from history, and seen under the shadow of a deep 
 and vague perspective. My innocent childhood was a species 
 of Idyl; I was absorbed in visions and reveries, only inter- 
 rupted by occasional paternal declamations. My childhood, 
 cradled in poetic visions, luxuriating in Gessner, Ossian, and 
 Paul and Virginia, had not prepared me for these frightful 
 revelations. They terrified me as a lurid flame from the 
 tombs. When I heard one of the women sing the popular 
 melody of the Italian Catruflfo, Charming Picture^ &c., the 
 
Autobiography. 53 
 
 contrast was too strong and the dissonance too painful; I 
 could not hear her sing that air. 
 
 One day I heard more stir and bnstle than usual in prison; 
 the bell tolled longer; I heard steps; a clashing of bayonets; 
 the prison door next to mine was opened and shut several 
 times; then there were sobs and groans in that cell. When 
 Claude came into my dungeon he wore his uniform, and was 
 serious. The sobs and cries from the next cell increased in 
 intensity; but the women of the Souricière sang without 
 intermission. I learned from the jailer that a prisoner 
 condemned to death occupied the cell contiguous to mine; 
 that the day for execution had arrived, and the hour had 
 struck ; that the sad confessions of the unhappy wretch 
 occasioned the sobs and groans ; the priest was there, and 
 the condemned, on his knees, phrenzied through intoxication 
 and despair, had received absolution, and there was only ten 
 minutes between life and death. Now all the bells began 
 anew their funereal knell; the rumbling of wheels shook the 
 earth and the prison; the murmur of distant voices echoed 
 from the distant train ; — a few moments, and the quiet of the 
 dungeon succeeded to this tumult. 
 
 A sensitive organization of fourteen could not resist the 
 evil effects of a dungeon life ; the privation of air and exercise, 
 sorrow at not seeing those whom I loved, the sad scenes 
 around me which left an ineffaceable impression, together 
 with the humid atmosphere, did its work, and I became ill. 
 A month had thus passed when the physician petitioned that 
 I should walk in the prison-yard. 
 
54 Autobiography. 
 
 I was led by Claude into an oblong court, excavated ten 
 or twelve feet below the surrounding streets, overshadowed 
 by lofty structures, and secured by high stone walls barbed 
 with iron spikes. Many prisoners with naked and dirty feet 
 were pacing the prison-yard ; all stared at me; some with 
 hairy, brawny arms gathered round me, rudely and roughly 
 inquiring who I was; many in shirts, with no other clothing 
 than coarse gray cloth pantaloons, were stretched upon the 
 sable soil, shouting and playing cards: some of the prisoners 
 were at work upon little fancy articles of straw, of which the 
 delicacy was extreme. I encountered vice, not such as I had 
 seen it in the hall of St. John; less petulant, more resolute, 
 hardened, vindictive, and hideous. In the police hall you saw 
 a torn cravat ; vice wore her tattered shreds ; used a language 
 of some pretension ; was semi-social, and had some of the 
 habits of civilization ; but here was no disguise ; vice, if I may 
 so say, displayed herself in her perfection, studied her atti- 
 tudes, ornamented herself with her shreds, and redoubled her 
 energy. Her only dialect was slang; malignant irony without 
 mercy. A blasting scorn was depicted upon their visages; 
 the eyes of the gamblers seemed to shoot forth hellish flame. 
 In the centre of Paris; in the midst of a consolidated and 
 polished society, but concealed by high walls, is this barba- 
 rous community, who have borrowed from civilization her skill 
 and crafty and employed them against civilization. I was 
 more appalled at these wretches' faces, gestures, and jargon 
 than I should have been at the scaffold. 
 
 Twice I walked in this prison-yard; the third walk was in 
 
Autobiography. 55 
 
 another yard much smaller, of oblong form, and it resembled 
 the bottom of a well with a high wall around. In the cells 
 which lead out from a low narrow passage to this little court 
 were many accused of political crimes ; amongst others a 
 lieutenant of the cavalry, with cheeks of a reddish brown, 
 gray moustaches; he was always in good humour, reckless, 
 giddy ; his health was proof against every exposure ; he 
 amused himself with innocent railleries against his persecutors, 
 and behind his iron grating made himself merry by singing 
 and telling amusing stories. I breathed the air three times 
 in eight days ; then it was perceived my health was sufficiently 
 restored, and I returned to the dungeon and darkness. 
 
 The unfortunate persons engaged in the conspiracy to 
 which it was pretended I was knowing, were condemned to 
 exile or the scaffold.* 
 
 One morning, my juvenile stoicism subdued, I was lying 
 weeping upon my couch, listening to the neighbouring bells 
 of Notre Dame, and contemplating sadly an oblique ray of 
 sunshine which found its way through the spiracle to my 
 
 * It may be asked, Why a child so inoffensive as I was should have been 
 so oppressed ? At a later day I discovered the cause. There was promul- 
 gated a proclamation pretending to be from Marie-Louise, and the police- 
 agent pUed all liis forces to discover the culprit author ; and after three 
 days' useless search he became angry. At length I was discovered, and 
 taken for a true printer's boy, as the adjutant of the police had so designa- 
 ted me. My dress was plain, and ten days' imprisonment had not im- 
 proved its appearance. When he discovered my parentage, lie thought he 
 had the clue by which he might trace the writer, and from my simplicity 
 ho hoped to obtain the secret. 
 
56 Autobiography. 
 
 dungeon, — the sound of steps more heavy and rapid than 
 usual struck my ear. Every thing is exact in a prison; a 
 jailer regularly keeps the same pace, like the pendulum of a 
 clock, never hurrying his steps. Claude turned quickly the 
 large key of my door, and said, 
 
 " You have only to come out, there is a carriage waiting." 
 I knew not, in truth, what to do with my liberty, so much 
 did this news stun me; and I cannot render a just account of 
 my sensations and ideas during an entire day. Claude did 
 up my little packet; and I was driven home. I found my 
 mother in her bed, extremely ill; but I remember, as if it 
 were but yesterday, her tears and kisses ; also the life- 
 inspiring freshness of the lovely May, and the fragrance and 
 sweet odours of the garden where I embraced my father. I 
 never shall forget the deep emotion of the old man ; the tears 
 which fell upon me as they coursed down his furrowed cheeks, 
 and the strange intoxication which, after a month's darkness 
 and isolation, made me tremble violently, and seemed ready 
 to destroy life from the excess of new life and happiness. I 
 recall, also, the words of my father, as proudly leaning upon 
 the crutch which supported his shortened and wounded leg, 
 stationed in the centre of his green lawn, his glowing face 
 uplifted, as if addressing a popular assembly, or occupying 
 his old chair of rhetoric : 
 
 " My son," said he, emphatically, " the land of France is 
 too hot for you. You can do nothing here; day after to- 
 morrow you must depart for England. France is decaying, 
 sinking; all Europe will follow. Jean Jacques, our apostle 
 
Autobiography. 67 
 
 and master, predicted it. You have served your apprentice- 
 ship as Jilmilius; and it only remains for you, like him, to 
 wind up the whole by a tour." 
 
 According to his directions I departed from home; my 
 month's imprisonment decided my destiny. The diverse 
 details of circumstances which procured my enlargement can 
 have no interest excepting for myself. Without entering into 
 egotistic details, which I abhor, I will just say that M. de 
 Chateaubriand, upon the intercession of an angel, demanded 
 my liberation. The voice of a man of genius and the tears 
 of a young girl, united, wrought my emancipation. 
 
 In 1832 I felt impelled to visit, or I may say I was drawn 
 towards the dungeon in which I had passed two months; it 
 was a summons from my soul — a call of the spirit to return 
 to the past, to the remembrance of friends and companions 
 in 1815, of whom I alone survived. God knows, in fifteen 
 years, how the graves surge around man ! The grate where 
 my mother wept spoke to me of her. The darkness, con- 
 fidant of my fears, deep emotions, and affections, would re- 
 open the spring that the cold had frozen. 
 
 And where were you, Conciergerie, black and lugubrious, 
 impassable witness of the Revolution ; horrible staircases, 
 dark passages oozing with the dampness of the sepulchre ? 
 Time, which changes men, moves stones : the prison of 1815 
 had vanished. I saw the new Conciergerie of 1831, but I 
 no more found my jail in this philanthropic prison: this was 
 
 a grief to me. 
 3* 
 
58 Autobiography. 
 
 Now you do not enter the Conciergerie through the court 
 of the Palace of Justice. There is no longer the low door 
 half buried in the earth, nor sepulchral lamp; but the ingress 
 and egress is near the Quai de l'Horloge, and is like that of 
 a lordly manor. On your path to the prison you pass 
 through the kitchens of St. Louis, and through long Gothic 
 and majestic halls, of which the height is remarkably dimin- 
 ished by the filling up of the soil. The whole character of 
 the place has changed; the staircases are commodious. The 
 air circulates ; the pistole is a sinking fund ; you would take the 
 keepers for the attendants and nurses of an hospital. I have 
 seen five or six women walking very quietly in the court- 
 yard. The bread distributed to the prisoners is good 
 enough for soldiers ; and I believe there are few vestiges of 
 the ancient cruelty of prisons. This one now resembles a 
 well-kept hospital. The social changes in France put all 
 upon a level: commoners and the nobility, the shop and the 
 saloon. All civilization proceeds upon the idea of the people's 
 rights ; and there is no line of separation between crime and 
 innocence or infirmity; the house of chastisement is like the 
 retreat for the sick and infirm; the health of the respected 
 criminals, carefully guarded, attests the pror/ress of society. 
 Our civilization perfects itself at the risk of its own destruc- 
 tion. I acknowledge the amelioration, but I had wished to 
 spend some hours alone in my cell of 1815. 
 
 The moral aspect of the jail has not changed. The Sou- 
 ricière sing always; the prison-yard is the same. The great 
 problem of reforming vice fomented in the capitals is not 
 
Autobiography. 59 
 
 resolved. The philanthropists have cleansed the outside 
 without affecting the interior life. 
 
 When I quitted prison I already felt previsions of the 
 decay of France. Even as a boy I had a vague feeling of 
 the chaotic state of society ; from Utopian she became flagi- 
 tious, from false, impious ; I felt that her moral sense was 
 lost, and the love of God extinguished. 
 
 A week later and I was in London, in the land of the 
 faithful ; amongst a people submitting to law even to the 
 point of superstition — loyal, religious, but with less bril- 
 liancy, less genius than my countrymen. 
 
 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND, 
 
 In 181 1 chance carried me to a spot where Chateaubriand 
 had resided in 1798. Living in poverty and obscurity, sad 
 even to despair, by sickness brought to the gates of death, 
 without friends or hope, the great exile left only feeble traces 
 of himself in some minds. I have questioned the few who 
 could give me information, and I now relate the result. 
 
 I perceived Chateaubriand to be more real, that is, more 
 truly great than he is commonly believed ; neither apostate, 
 apostle, sceptic, or fanatic ; not a worldly and ambitious 
 man, nor an ascetic ; nothing of all that ; — ^but a gentle- 
 man educated in the doctrines of Jean Jacques, a passionate 
 disciple of JEmilius ; an ardent admirer of savage life, and 
 very inimical to the state of society of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury ; but he had become a sincere and ardent Christian. 
 
60 Autobiography. 
 
 This point of departure of M. de Chateaubriand was very 
 common ; like Madame de Staël, Napoleon, Coleridge, 
 and Goethe, he became sick of negation, which is so sterile. 
 Before he detached himself, he had been, not sceptical, but 
 a denier^ with all the vehemence of Raynal ; and he took the 
 resolution to go to America, to confiim by the sweat of his 
 brow his faith in the excellence of the savage life and the 
 greatness of primitive man : he returned to England still 
 in the same faith. 
 
 I heard him spoken of when I was in London by the 
 architect, M. Porden, who in his person was a complete 
 epitome of the past : a preserved mummy ; his black silk 
 breeches fell in longitudinal plaits over his lank knees, which 
 were perfectly sharp ; indeed, he was made up of angles, 
 body and spirit. 
 
 As an architect he was a born Gothic ; he made his for- 
 tune by minarets. In his anathema against colonnades he 
 scrupled not to call Homer — dotard^ and M. de Chateau- 
 briand — charlatan. 
 
 One day that Brown, Porden, and myself dined together 
 at the table of the old bookseller Baylis, they questioned me 
 with regard to my transient abode in the Conciergerie, pas- 
 sages in my life of which the English can hardly be made to 
 understand the why and wherefore. 
 
 *' And who took you out of prison ?" said Porden. 
 
 " M. de Chateaubriand," I replied. 
 
 " Ah ! don't speak to me of him," said the old architect. 
 " I have known him as repubhcan, sentimentalist, Wertherian, 
 
Autobiography. 61 
 
 declaimer, deist, and jacobin. There is a beautiful upholder 
 of monarchy 1 and a faithful high-priest for Catholicism !" 
 
 After this ebullition, the angry man appeased, briskly 
 pushed the decanter around, swallowed his glass of claret, 
 smacked his lips, buried his hands in his breeches pockets of 
 rusty old black silk, and threw himself back in his chair, 
 winking his eyes, as if he had achieved a great triumph. 
 Negation was the joy of his heart. In point of poetry, he 
 liked Crabbe ; in architecture the ogive : all which was not 
 pointed, sharp, or at least angular, ill suited him. 
 
 " No, speak not of him," continued he, whilst old Baylis 
 looked at him smiling ; " I know why General Bonaparte 
 saw him with an evil eye ; he is of the same race, the same 
 family. He is a bloated bladder, an empty puff, a passionate 
 fool. I scorn him as much as I do the wearisome Iliad 
 and the imbecile ^neid. I would not give a penny for his 
 songs ! All for the senses, nothing for the intellect. Fie 
 upon him, I abhor him : he is a GreeTcT This was the 
 highest point of the invective. He sipped from his glass of 
 wine, and added, 
 
 " Besides, he is a jacobin." 
 
 " My good lad," then said Baylis the bookseller, a man 
 who amused himself to put down a little the aristocracy of 
 the Anglican architect, ''your love for toryism and the high 
 church makes you unreasonable. I have known this gentle- 
 man in his youth, I have printed his Essay upon Revolutions, 
 and I assure you you are in an error." 
 
 Baylis was a Tory and a Pittite of ancient memory ; 
 
62 Autobiography. 
 
 Brown, a Whig and Foxite ; old Porden was of the high 
 church, and partisan of George lY., for whom he had built 
 the Chinese deformities in Brighton. M. de Chateaubriand 
 was less offensive to Baylis than the two others ; first be- 
 cause Baylis had printed for him ; afterwards because the 
 Tory bookseller loved people of the nobility. 
 
 Father Baylis then took up the defence of M. de Chateau- 
 briand nearly in these terms : 
 
 " You understand not a word of what you say, and you 
 reason as an old cathedral. He has not been a jacobin. He 
 has been, as Fox and as our friend Brown here, intoxicated 
 witl> the ideas of Jean Jacques, and with the philosophy of 
 the eighteenth century. He has been of his time and country. 
 That was his great crime I He has lived here as a mis- 
 anthropist, and been very solitary, because in his exile he was 
 proud and unhappy; that is to say, extremely respectable." 
 
 *' And by ," cried the artist Brown, whose soul was 
 
 poetic, and whose brain was inflamed as soon as the claret 
 circulated, "happy, happy Chateaubriand; — happy for his 
 wandering life, miserable and misanthropical. 
 
 "In society that is sound and healthy the young people are 
 not misanthropes, but in the cursed state of society happy he 
 who is a misanthrope in his adolescence ! He preserves the 
 enamel of his soul ; the down of his wing is not ruffled ; 
 voluptuousness has not enervated him; he heeds not every 
 wind that whistles; he folds his sail; he ardently hates the 
 evil of this ruined world; he execrates from the depths of his 
 soul the stigma of human slavery. At the expiration of the 
 
Autobiography. 63 
 
 eighteenth century all noble spirits were doomed ; all generous 
 hearts were ill : Napoleon, Rousseau, M. de Chateaubriand, 
 as Goethe, Schiller, and Byron. After all, why reproach 
 you, M. de Chateaubriand ? Obermann, René, Werter — 
 fruits upon the same stalk carry the same poison, Werter 
 sought refuge in the tomb, Obermann amid the rocks of 
 Fontainebleau, René in the monastery, and M. de Chateau- 
 briand fled to the wilderness. Enthusiastic priest and apostle 
 of Jean Jacques Rousseau, he has sought the wilds, and prim- 
 itive man. Born in the midst of the ruins of the old world, 
 he anathematized it, then he endeavoured to reconstruct it, 
 and he has ended by sleeping upon the broken capitol." 
 
 '' Bravo! Huzza! Bravo the artist! Three times three 
 cheers for the orator!" cried Baylis. 
 
 Porden was soundly asleep. 
 
 When I had the honour, in 1829, to be introduced to M. 
 de Chateaubriand, I was surprised to find nothing of the 
 gloomy misanthropy and languor which the descriptions of 
 Porden and Brown had led me to expect. Chateaubriand 
 was always young. The smallness and perfection of his foot, 
 the elegance of his contour, the carriage of his head, the 
 grace of his movements, and beautiful intonations of his voice, 
 will alwaj'S belong to a young man, I recollect his elastic 
 step when at sixty years I saw him ascend a flight of steps 
 with all the agility of a musketeer of nineteen. This ardent 
 champion of Christianity has always retained his vigour and 
 
64 Autobiography. 
 
 vivacity ; it is very probable that at his departure for 
 America he was in feeling an older man and more melancholy 
 than when at sixty-five he was the ornament of the Abbaye- 
 aux-Bois. 
 
 The whole physiognomy and figure of this great writer 
 was in strong relief, as were his characteristics ; his bold 
 outlines of feature were also marked by the graceful curve ; 
 his form, which was a Uttle too small for his height, was 
 athletic, at the same time subtile and elastic, and seemed to 
 correspond with the eternal youth of his soul ; his attitudes 
 were dramatic, and appropriate to him ; his gray hair curled 
 over his full, bright, and beaming eye, and he really looked 
 more youthful than Benjamin Constant in his adolescence 
 with his flaxen hair and flowing locks. 
 
 The bright glow of hope irradiated his style ; from the 
 commencement of his writing, hope belonged to the man, and 
 never did it fail ; it carried him along through the madness 
 of the eighteenth century, and in the revulsions of feeling ; 
 it supported him in his crusade against modern philosophy. 
 The convert bore in his penitence the scourge for his sin. 
 
 I never knew a man who had less diplomacy or casuistry"; 
 who was less fitted to analyze opinions or facts. He had the 
 poetic and glowing style which marks the orator ; but his 
 genius spent itself in flights, and was never profound ; the 
 psychological anatomy in which Sterne, Shakspeare, and St. 
 Simon were skilled, was not his forte. Perhaps, with î^apo- 
 leon, his is the last genius completely and intrinsically 
 meridional. His generosity was never cooled by calcula- 
 
Autobiography, 65 
 
 tion, nor his magnanimity abated from prudential considera- 
 tions. 
 
 There was a radiance around the path of Chateaubriand, 
 and a joyousness that was infectious ; but if the light did not 
 always fructify, its lambent beams diffused the spirit of 
 beauty. In such a nature we should scarcely look for the 
 spirit of endurance or martyrdom. He was precisely the 
 man whom the races of the North could least understand. 
 Poor without abjectness, rich without pomp, chief of a lite- 
 rary sect without a code, amorous without risk to his virtue, 
 — how shall we paint him except by contrasts ? As a natural 
 result of this peculiar constitution, he has lost station without 
 degradation, and attained to dignities and honours without 
 exaltation. His nobility is in himself. 
 
 The pupil of Jean Jacques, the ardent convert to Ca- 
 tholicism, was evidently of high descent. His noble bearing, 
 his step of the elasticity and firmness of the Breton, left no 
 doubt upon that point. His enthusiasm for the 'doctrines of 
 ^milius never forsook him. In his old age it was relumined, 
 and inspired the most brilliant pages in his work upon the 
 state of Europe. Then people were astonished and in- 
 dignant, and cried out that he had again become a liberal ; 
 indeed, almost a republican. There was in him an extraor- 
 dinary combination of antagonistic qualities. He was a 
 democratic chevalier, a liberal loyalist, a Catholic freethinker; 
 all in perfect sincerity. 
 
 Upon one occasion he said to me, " The old gothic chapel 
 of St. Malo, and the beautiful gilt-edged bible of my mother, 
 
66 Autobiography. 
 
 which in her hasty flight she left upon my pillow, had the 
 largest share in my conversion." He said the truth, and 
 these words painted him exactly. With a noble soul sus- 
 ceptible to all beautiful impressions, with genius at the same 
 time brilliant and melancholy, this setting sun throws her last 
 splendours upon a decaying society. 
 
 M. de Chateaubriand belongs to the age in which he lived, 
 with him will depart the representative of all peculiar to its 
 greatness and virtue ; all progress is checked, all enthusiasm 
 dies with him. 
 
^esikîta m (Juglanïr. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND. 
 
 rriHE first year of my residence in England, that terra in- 
 -^ cognita, passed away pleasantly, thanks to the excellent 
 friend — then governess to the daughters of the Duke of 
 
 R , to whose care my father had confided me. The hard 
 
 manner in which I viewed the world served to render my 
 exile more supportable ; as I saw in humanity only inbred 
 sin, I thought that the power of enduring life must proceed 
 from strong and manly resignation. I was a young and 
 brave old man, disenchanted, believing only in unhappiness, 
 and the strength and power of resistance ; a vigorous, philo- 
 sophical wrestler. I resolutely applied myself to study the 
 languages of the North, and for pleasures I depended upon my- 
 self—that is, upon brilliant dreams and chimeras. The hope 
 of returning to France w^hen a few years should have passed, 
 and again meeting that adored being in whom my future 
 happiness was bound up, alone sustained me. 
 
68 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 But when two years had thus passed, and autumn, with 
 her cold mists and murky atmosphere, so sad in London, 
 hovered over us, then my health suddenly failed. The 
 elements of life were sapped by the moral struggle. The 
 good Elizabeth, who saw my wan shadow flitting past the 
 London streets, said to me : 
 
 "It is absolutely necessary that you should go into 
 the country, my young friend. Set ofif immediately, for 
 your illness will prove mortal here. I will give you a 
 letter to one of my friends who lives in Northumberland, 
 upon the borders of the ocean ; you must remain a month 
 there, and you will recruit at the same time that you will 
 see much to interest by its novelty. Our small maritime 
 boroughs are very peculiar ; and surpassingly so is the one 
 you will visit. It is not a city enriched by commerce, where 
 amid the tumult of business we see all the luxuries which 
 spring from civilization, but it consists of a group of about 
 twenty huts and a church. You will perceive through all 
 the organs of sensation your proximity to a maritime race ; 
 from the atmosphere around you draw in at every breath a 
 strong decoction of tar and pitch, seasoned with ocean salt. 
 You will take to these poor little black cabins which form the 
 group ; some of them without windows, and half buried in 
 mud; here and there you see one hanging from a crag; then 
 a cluster along the sea-shore, whose foundations are of sand, 
 and which are every day washed by the rolling waves; the 
 only decorations are very appropriate, being fishing-nets, old 
 baskets, fish-hooks, cords, and lines. You will be surrounded 
 
Residence in England. 69 
 
 by blue jackets and red hankerchiefs, which accoutrements 
 mark the mariner. When you have lived a week with this 
 strong, rough race, you will find that you have fallen back 
 five or six centuries in English life. But you will find the 
 natives not a little amusing, I assure you, though illiterate, 
 rough, wily, and rapacious." 
 
 The good Ehzabeth was eloquent, like her sex. She had 
 touched a chord always ready to vibrate in me — awakened a 
 feeling always alive to the strange varieties in the human 
 heart. I thanked her, and she put into my hands a letter 
 
 for Mr. Ezekiel F , a trader, who lived a quarter of a 
 
 mile from the sea, within two gun-shots of the last hut of the 
 borough of Berwick. She gave me also for the same person 
 
 another letter from Mr. Josiah D , a grave physician, 
 
 austere in his manners, faithful in his duties, and very 
 religious. Josiah said to his friend Ezekiel, that I selected 
 Berwick as an economical prescription by which I could 
 obtain the benefits of sea-bathing, without incurring the 
 enormous expense to which those are subjected whom the 
 physicians send to Brighton or Dover to regain the health 
 and lighten the purse. 
 
 Elizabeth took good care to inform me that the family, 
 who without doubt would receive me upon her recommen- 
 dation, was remarkable for regularity of habits, gravity in 
 conversation, and aversion to worldly frivolities ; that I 
 must expect to obey the law in all its strictness : that no 
 light pleasures, not even intellectual, were to be met with, no 
 necessary superfluities essential to the resident of a city. I 
 
70 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 enlisted as a good soldier buckles on his armour; curiosity 
 rendered resignation easy. 
 
 The road that we travelled as we drew near to Berwick 
 was in perfect keeping with the monotonous life I was fore- 
 warned awaited me. A narrow embankment to the right, 
 and marshy plains to the left, looked dreary and desolate. 
 As you neared the ocean, the grass looked like old straw, the 
 yellow reeds erected their speary heads as stiff and pointed as 
 spikes. The vegetation resembled none I had before seen ; 
 springing from a soil watered by the ocean, it was covered 
 with a slimy, weedy deposit, and impregnated with sahne 
 exhalations. The roar of the waves became intense as we 
 approached the borough. Towards the left, partly protected 
 by a broken dam, a tent was pitched upon two poles, which 
 was half draped with tattered garments and shreds of all 
 colours. A turf fire near the slimy and clogged entrance to 
 the tent, served to prepare food for six or seven tattered 
 beings, oddly attired, who prowled around it. My travelling 
 companions informed me that these persons were of the Gip- 
 sey race, whom the Acts of Parliament had not yet ejected. 
 The father, with an armful of fagots went into his tent ; a 
 swarthy woman, half clothed, and her red eyes seeming to 
 start from their sockets, was suckling an infant black and 
 meagre as herself ; at a little distance stood the patriarch 
 ancestor of this nomadic tribe, his head bald and shaking, his 
 frame trembling with cold from the fresh sea-breezes, and his 
 chin resting upon his naked and bleached breast. Two little 
 Gipsey girls, with bronzed faces but regular features, looking 
 
Residence in England. 71 
 
 fierce and bold, with the leer of vice already marked in their 
 visages, came to ask alms, which were given. The person 
 most marked in this scène was the old grandfather, sad, soli- 
 tary, and suffering ; scorned without doubt by his descend- 
 ants, and looked upon as a useless burden. To see him sunk 
 in fixed and immoveable grief, you would have said that his 
 own career of vice and misery passed in review through his 
 mind, and at the same time the foresight of his tribe's in- 
 heritance of the same racked his soul. 
 
 We came from London, the centre of commerce, wealth, 
 and luxury — the bazaar of Europe. Upon our route, we 
 had seen only verdant banks, velvet lawns, cottages and 
 villas so tastefully and charmingly adorned that they might 
 have been mistaken for fairy palaces ; — suddenly, all this is 
 reversed, we lose sight of cultivated nature and rural life, 
 with all her varied attractions, and see in her place nature, 
 the stepmother, with her gaunt figure ; she nourishes no 
 children with kind care. Amid sterile fields and barren 
 shores, but a few paces from fertile j^lains, thus is planted, 
 almost in the midst of civilization, a savage criminal tribe ; 
 a permanent curse, a perpetual anathema ! I remembered 
 my Conciergerie, and comprehended that the world was not 
 designed for enervated enjoyment, but for combat ; the body 
 against physical evils, the soul against spiritual enemies, and 
 the reign of sin. 
 
 I stopped at the tavern sign of Queen Bess, alias Elizabeth. 
 In England, what hamlet is there, if ever so small, that has 
 not its public house ? I never can look back to my intro- 
 
*72 XOTABILITIES IX FrANCE AND ExGLAND. 
 
 duction to this good Queen without amusing myself at the 
 reminiscence ; not a feature was in place, nor were they in 
 harmony ; even the eyes had no connection with each other, 
 for the painter of the sign had put up and down, this side and 
 that, eyes, ears, nose, lips ; like a monk of the middle age, 
 who shook up the letters of a name to make an anagram. 
 
 Before announcing myself to Mr. Ezekiel F , I thought 
 
 I would survey the coast a little. I took the path from 
 Queen Bess down a narrow declivity, so steep and stony it 
 was difficult to gain foothold, and this led to the beach. The 
 receding tide opened to my view an extensive beach, spark- 
 ling with mica. Behind me was the little group of huts 
 clustered around the parish church ; before me was the calm 
 sea, and in her wake steriUty, but still reigned the pictu- 
 resque and grand ; sharp rocks, battered by the ocean and 
 hollowed by the floods, assumed various bold and fantastic 
 forms ; upon these bleached rocks was here and there a 
 dwarf tree, and some marine vegetation draperied their sides, 
 seeming like festoons in mid air, the colours in rude and wild 
 contrast. There was the blue buglose, the black poppy, the 
 gigantic thistle, its flowers of a brilliant claret ; in short, sum- 
 mits the most inaccessible shone resplendent with flowers of 
 all colours and hues, ever varying with the touch of the pow- 
 erful Artist's light and shade. Beds of marine mosses, layer 
 upon layer, diffused through the air their saline particles, and 
 the freshness of the breeze crystallizing these exhalations, led 
 one to imagine the rocks tapestried with a gorgeous tissue 
 or bespangled robe. The only buildings which were visible 
 
Residence in England. 13 
 
 from my position were the old church and alms-house (an 
 ancient monastery transformed into an asylum for the poor) ; 
 as they appeared under their garb of venerable lichens, pur- 
 ple, green, and blue, softened by years into different shades 
 of gray, I felt that they had always been there, coeval with 
 the time-honoured structures. These lichens have been 
 thought so soft and harmonious to the eye, that many gentle 
 men, proprietors of elegant villas, have endeavoured by art 
 to blend the same liquid shades in the trellis work that 
 adorns their walls ; but art cannot improvise ; it is ages that 
 has painted them. 
 
 The wild simplicity and novelty of these views impressed 
 my mind deeply, and filled me with delight. My health of 
 soul and body seemed restored to me as by magic. I forgot 
 for a moment my dangerous scepticism imbibed in my youth; 
 those sad views of man and his destiny with which Jean 
 Jacques, Werter, Ossian, and Lord Byron, then in the zenith 
 of his glory, nourished the generation to which I belonged. 
 I now felt myself renovated, and I recoiled with instinctive 
 fear from presenting myself to my new hosts, with whose good 
 humour I was not very favourably impressed. 
 
 I thought I would ramble about the village, and acquaint 
 myself with the localities before being introduced to the 
 people. In a hut of shabby appearance, sheltered by an 
 overhanging rock, was seated a man with a wooden leg, who 
 wore an old blue frock, the uniform custom of sailors and 
 fishermen. He saw me approaching, and came to meet me, 
 and proffer his services. His vocation was to point out to 
 4 
 
74 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 the travellers who visited his village the various points 
 of view along the coast; a business from which he evidently- 
 received little profit, for all the furniture in his little cabin 
 consisted of a hammock, an old chest, a fishing line, and a 
 telescope. This old man had been in the army, and he 
 described to me some of the battles in which he had borne 
 his part. By the side of his hut he had made a little garden ; 
 if one can honour by that title a space surrounded by wrecks 
 of vessels and dilapidated boats, where a few common plants 
 feebly thrust up their slender stalks. While he recounted to 
 me the names of the brigs and barks of all forms and dimen- 
 sions which lay at anchor; and also those of the masters 
 whom I saw in the distance toiling in rowing that they might 
 reach home before night, I observed a dark column of vapour, 
 thick and heavy at its base, lighter and more elastic as it 
 ascended upward in circles, impelled by the wind, darkening 
 the hamlet till it reached the spot upon which we stood; this 
 was from the ship-yard of the place, where the planks were 
 bent by means of smoke. Occupations, pleasures, pains, 
 remembrances, toils, all spoke of the struggle of man against 
 nature ; all was connected with the ocean, that sleeping giant. 
 I requested the man to show me the way to the house of Mr. 
 
 Ezekiel F . We again passed Queen Bess, and stopped 
 
 before a lonely brick house, in which we could neither see 
 lights nor any one moving. 
 
Residence in England. T5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 T KNOCKED a long time, and found it difficult to gain 
 admittance. The inmates were all asleep in this regular 
 house. A large woman was at length aroused; she came to 
 the window in a brown robe, holding the strings of her bun- 
 ting cap in her hand, and after having questioned me through 
 the window, she proceeded to remove sundry bars and unlock 
 padlocks, which secured all the avenues, and then, after 
 admitting me, barring and locking as carefully again. She 
 told me that the family were asleep, and that I should deliver 
 my letter to Mr. Ezekiel the next morning, and she would 
 prepare me a bed. In passing along I observed that the 
 house resembled a secular monastery. The tone of the 
 servant, one of those women, all bone and muscle, like Sir 
 Walter Scott's Meg Merrilies, was indescribably solemn and 
 lugubrious. But habituated to English ideas, which, in 1818 
 at least yielded free scope to all peculiarities and individ- 
 ualities of character, — warned, besides, through Mr. Josiah 
 
 D , — the aspect around did not much disturb me, and I 
 
 slept peaceably, waiting till the sun should throw light upon 
 this family of the ancient world transplanted into the new. 
 
 I was then far from precisely divining the origin of man- 
 ners so peculiar; but the enigma has been since solved. I 
 
16 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 will here throw out some remarks upon the peculiar character 
 of the English, much decried, but little understood. The 
 most marked characteristic in the Anglo-Saxon race is worship 
 of the past. This savour of antiquity emanates from their 
 insular position, redolent of charms for the imagination; but 
 is attended with real dangers and also benefits. We witness 
 among them, apparently without alteration, old laws and 
 customs. That gothic and shapeless tower of Babel, which 
 the English call their jurisprudence, only supports itself from 
 its antiquity. The barbarity of their legal code is contrary, 
 thanks to the age, to their national good sense, which corrects 
 it in the practice. The country gentleman of 1818 still 
 recalls to your mind, by his habits and costume, Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, the hero of Addison. Thus the city Quaker is 
 the living type of the times of William Penn. In the vicinity 
 of Whitechapel, the eastern extremity of London, you will 
 encounter some colonies of Anabaptists, who, however little 
 to your taste, insist upon you following them to their lofts, 
 where they hold meetings^ and some Boanerges, eloquent as 
 John of Leyden, holds forth, and anathematizes the Amale- 
 kites. From traditions of the past, which live in the present, 
 proceeds that originality of character, which offers so various 
 and rich material for the pencil of the novelist and eye of 
 the observer. You must mingle with the aristocracy of 
 England to see the highest polish and most exquisite refine- 
 ment of manners ; but the originality vanishes as the sharp 
 points are filed away — the individuality which distinguishes 
 one man from another. If, as Diderot, you prefer the strong 
 
Residence in England. X*l 
 
 impress of character, native and rude, " to the uniform 
 roundness of the polished pebbles, heaved upon the strand by 
 the rolling billows, and polished by the attrition," visit 
 Wales, the Orkneys, and Scotland; there you will reap an 
 ample harvest of the humorous and grotesque, — of living 
 antiquities ; you will see notions sanctioned as time-honoured 
 customs, and religious rites adored.* 
 
 Here, for example, enclosed within these brick walls to 
 which chance directed me, where I slept for the first time in 
 a little village scarcely inscribed upon the map, lived at the 
 commencement of the nineteenth century, and perhaps still 
 lives, one of the most curious remnants of ancient Europe 
 that could be imagined. He was a wreck, well preserved, of 
 that ancient and formidable race of Calvinistic Covenanters, 
 who counted as many martyrs as executioners ; who made 
 England what she is, a nation harsh, haughty, taciturn ; 
 austere when possessed of power ; exalted in seasons of per- 
 secution ; as implacable in their resentments as constant in 
 attachments ; retaining for a hundred and fifty years their 
 rancour against that feeble, romantic, and unhappy monarch 
 whom they beheaded ; and consecrating their martyrs to 
 worship till time shall be no more. This people is unswerving 
 in probity, unalterable in feeling, undying in recollections of 
 the past. They marry their children only in their own ranks, 
 and grant the Philistines neither son nor daughter ; praying 
 
 * The foregoing remarks become less applicable every day to Young 
 England. 
 
78 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 to St. Cromwell every day in their secret oratory ; all ready 
 to fight the good fight ; bewailing constantly with grief which 
 is not without hope, the good days when the Saints and the 
 Elect ruled the land. 
 
 In this primitive family I had become a resident. The 
 
 head, Ezekiel F , whose Biblical name announced his 
 
 descent, a trader and Calvinist, was a man of forty. He fol- 
 lowed the business of his ancestors, selling grain, hops, and 
 coal ; he was renowned for his probity, and was rich, tem- 
 perate, calm, and inexorable ; his character was stamped 
 upon his rigid and immoveable features. His six feet of 
 height, which seemed to augment from his slow, solemn step 
 and unbending form, with lips compressed, brow serious ; as 
 soon as you had seen him once you had seen him always ; he 
 would remain for ever engraved in your memory. The Biblical 
 regicides in their long parliament must have borne this phys- 
 iognomy. His Old Testament phraseology and austere manner, 
 never relaxing, completed his resemblance, or rather identity, 
 with the signers of the famous Covenant. I do not remember 
 during the two months that I was an inmate in his house, 
 hearing Ezekiel F pronounce an indiscreet word or un- 
 premeditated phrase ; not a sign or gesture ever betrayed an 
 emotion, or the least gaiety of spirit. He spoke little, and 
 every one yielded prompt obedience to an order uttered in 
 his grave tone with austere mien. No subject was discussed 
 in his presence. I have seen him do a kind act without 
 emotion, and show severity to extreme rigour without testi- 
 fying any regret. He was a patriarch of the ancient law in 
 
Residence in England. 79 
 
 all its rigour, and, it must be added, in all its power and 
 grandeur. 
 
 The Pharisaical precision, the undeviating system, which 
 guided the movements of this family, did not encourage me 
 to expect the warm and glowing welcome with which the 
 people of the South greet their guests. But, in recompense, 
 there was a certain delicacy in my host's attention, generous 
 and urbane, though antique in its demonstration, that left me 
 at liberty to pursue my own path, and that proved by acts, 
 not expressions, his benign watchfulness ; this moved me 
 from one of a tribe so austere. I believed I could not better 
 evince my gratitude than by conforming as far as possible to the 
 rules of the house,' which in the mean time were not imposed. 
 
 The family rose at five through all seasons. An hour was 
 passed in prayer afterwards ; but from this rite my title of 
 foreigner permitted me to abstain; there followed a low, 
 monotonous murmuring of some old rhymes consecrated by 
 the ancient sufferings of the party, and to which the pro- 
 foundness of conviction imparted a certain energy and gran- 
 deur. At eight, at two, and at seven, the large walnut 
 table, blackened by age, but w^ithout tablecloth, was covered 
 with healthy aliments, abundant, though scarcely ever varied. 
 From garret to cellar there was not an article of mahogany 
 to be seen, not a trace of the precious metals, nor of the 
 pleasing and brilliant ornaments which usually embellish the 
 dwellings of the rich; all was of dark polished oak and 
 walnut; several immense chairs, six feet high, straight and 
 polished backs, with low wooden bottoms, suitable for an 
 
80 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 oratory* upon occasion ; one solitary clock, a very useless piece 
 of machinery where liabit alone served for clepsydra and 
 dial; these, vdth the large table before mentioned, were the 
 furniture of the hall or parlour, the walls of which were cov- 
 ered with paper of a solemn gray, without figures or border : in 
 fine, all the abominations of the Egyptians were banished with 
 a severity unknown even to the Quakers. But the utmost care 
 was evident in the arrangement of the waxed and polished 
 furniture; there was the luxury of neatness, but withal a 
 sort of solemn order, which left a mournful impression upon 
 the beholder. At the end of the parlour there were some 
 brown wooden shelves within the wall, symmetrically placed, 
 which served for the tea equipage of Wedgewood ware. 
 My eyes frequently turned towards this precious recess, it 
 being the only ornament of the dwelling. 
 
 I had been about eight days in the house, when, after the 
 
 dinner at two o'clock, Ezekiel F , seeing my eyes fixed 
 
 upon these shelves, which displayed traces of the only 
 worldly luxury that my host permitted himself and his 
 family to indulge in, took my hand, and led me with a 
 mysterious air towards the object of my involuntary atten- 
 tion; he then removed a tea-pot from a wooden tray, and 
 showed me the reverse side, and, what was my surprise! I 
 saw upon the black ground of this tray a magnificent por- 
 trait of Cromwell. You had the man, full length, square 
 built, powerful, hilarious, resolute, the always present idol of 
 
 * In French, " prie-Dieu." 
 
Residence in England. 81 
 
 this house: here was that ardent and powerful head which 
 made his country the queen of Protestantism and the North. 
 He was represented as standing, his hand upon the mace, 
 the eyebrow shaggy and frowning, the upper lip prominent, 
 seeming half moved to merriment — such as the bold Protec- 
 tor of England showed himself, when, with tears in his eyes, 
 and the name of the Most High in his mouth and heart, 
 armed with his short sword, he thrust aside the crafty and 
 imbecile crowd who knelt before him, and took possession 
 of the keys of Parliament, 
 
 A grave smile gleamed through the dark features of 
 Ezekiel, that I had never seen illumined before: the tray 
 retook its position, the tea-pot its stand; all returned to the 
 accustomed silence. See we not here some shadowy and 
 remote recurrence of extinguished glory. With the children 
 of the old familiar saint, with these Trappists of Calvinism, 
 there is^a conviction which attaches itself to Moses, that if 
 their generation subsists, it is to reign in the Millennium. 
 
 Here was revived the old Bible of Esdras, All the mem- 
 bers of the family were overshadowed by the priest and 
 patriarch; to them his words were laws; upon him all was 
 
 modulated. Mts. Sarah F , *' his companion before the 
 
 Lord" — thus he called her — was silent when he was present; 
 but in his absence she held the reins of government. A 
 liberal charity to the poor, judiciously distributed, and 
 economy without avarice, distinguished them both. A son, 
 removed in the fulness of manhood, left to the care of his 
 
 father a young widow with three children, all of tender age. 
 4^= 
 
82 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 Ruth — the name of the Puritan widow — ^had only two 
 thoughts, to pray to the Lord, and to bring up her children. 
 Hers was a beauty pale and fair; her blood circulated 
 slowly, without impulsion or warmth; she had alwavs been 
 holy from temperament and taste.* 
 
 The daughter, Sybilla, with brown complexion and blue 
 eyes, owed to habit and education the devout and precise 
 manner constantly inculcated by her father, f Nature had 
 not so formed her. Beneath this demure look, pensive and 
 solemn, a fearful ardour and intensity of soul was sometimes 
 betrayed. A sudden motion, a flash, a furtive glance, would 
 unconsciously speak of feeling repressed, vivacity subdued. 
 Subjected to this factitious routine of life, she had yielded 
 not as to tyranny, but as to law. She had no suspicion that 
 there was any thing else in life than the care of the house- 
 hold and piety. This untoward struggle between natural 
 feeling and the restraint imposed by education, was mpst evi- 
 dent when a young man of the same cast came to visit the 
 family. Formalist, as all his sect, he dressed throughout the 
 year in brown barrican. Owing to the moderation and 
 sobriety of his life, his complexion retained the brilliant fresh- 
 ness of boyhood; he wore a hat whose broad brim extended 
 five inches in width, overshadowing his fine face, covering a 
 forest of dark, rich, clustering locks, and concealing an eye 
 
 * A veiy inadequate idea of a holy character. — Translator. 
 f We see here, in two passages, that the author uses the word devout 
 as ceremonial in this clause. 
 
Residence in England. 83 
 
 which awed jou from its calmness and depth. He was a 
 youthful Hampden. 
 
 It was not difficult for me to penetrate the views of young 
 Abraham, or see behind the veil of Sybilla's heart; and it 
 was pleasant and touching to watch the development of their 
 loves: grave, sedate, without any discordant note, any pique 
 and reconciliation following; unattended by the sigh of the 
 lover, or any coquetry of the mistress. Certainly a half- 
 comical feeling came over me in observing a courtship in 
 which the lover resembled a confessor, and the beloved a 
 penitent. Nothing, however, is so serious as true passion, 
 and Abraham and Sybilla so evidently existed for and in each 
 other, their pure, grave love, never unconscious of the pres- 
 ence of the Most High, resembling Eternity in its depth and 
 calm, affected me deeply. I was softened even to tears 
 when Sybilla said to Abraham once in parting with him: 
 '' May the Lord be with you !'^ Abraham replied: "And 
 you, my beloved, may you dwell under the shadow of His 
 wings." 
 
84 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 rpHE contrast of this foreign people, so vigorous and chaste, 
 though their habits, no doubt, were formed from erro- 
 neous doctrines, but which accorded so well with the manly- 
 hearts of the English, and the elevation of their society, 
 brought forcibly to my view the emptiness of that scepticism 
 so rife in my own country. But I suffered deeply in seeing how 
 exclusive such a people become; how stern and hard in their 
 sincerity. A sadness came over me ; I felt myself isolated as 
 a stranger who spills the salt under an Arabian's hospitable 
 tent. I found protection and an asylum, but not that fra- 
 ternity of feeling, that sympathy which doubles life, and with- 
 out which all is solitude. I felt humiliated for my race.* 
 Nothing could give me the remembrances, the regrets, the 
 doctrines of my hosts: we were united through benevolence 
 and gratitude, but not by community of ideas; thus they 
 could yield me without a feeling of deprivation to visit other 
 inhabitants of the borough. 
 
 The people here gained their livelihood by the sea, and 
 knew no other element; her they ploughed, and from her they 
 reaped their harvest; they even gathered her wrecks. They 
 
 * Meaning the French or Celtic. 
 
Residence in England. 85 
 
 were sailors, fishermen, corsairs, cordwainers, smugglers, and 
 receivers of stolen goods. If a ship stranded, it was a 
 windfall. Then the men unloaded their boats, and dragged 
 them along the putrid marshy fen, where the efforts of 
 beasts of burden could not gain footing; they mended the 
 keel of a vessel that the winds and waves had split, and 
 for this purpose they piled heaps of peat and coke on the 
 shore, the only native riches of their soil. The corsair lived 
 in a little cabin built upon a crag, which seemed suspended 
 in mid air. Behind this projecting rock were moored the 
 Holland pinnaces, freighted with contraband goods : it is 
 across these thorny bristly reeds and rushes, over putrid 
 marshes, that the horses fly with their illicit charge. When 
 the weather is stormy, you will see men passing down the 
 bleached reefs, and remain watching for hours, concealed 
 between the spiked and thorny weeds, covered with foam, 
 waiting till the ocean shall heave up men and riches. They 
 have perceived from a distance a ship in distress ; they 
 demand from the floods apart of the prey. If the sea heaves 
 up the body of an English mariner, they despoil, and if there 
 are remains of life, frequently despatch him, looking with 
 care all around, from fear that another marauder may come 
 to share their booty. It was upon a shore as desolate, 
 peopled with inhabitants as savage, that an English poet, 
 Lillo — who had some flashes of genius — has laid the scene 
 that he has painted with all the horrors of reality. A fisher- 
 flian and his wife, hunting for prey, find a sailor who still 
 lives, and they cut his throat that they may despoil him: 
 
86 Notabilities in England and France. 
 
 they afterwards recognise in tlie corpse a long-lost and idol- 
 ized son, the only hope of their miserable and criminal old age. 
 
 But the sea, which witnessed so many daring exploits, and 
 brought our men so many wrecks, would sometimes prove to 
 them a devouring element; frequently in her gradual en- 
 croachments she would sweep off the poor fisherman, his 
 cabin, with the sandbank upon which he built. Such is this 
 horde among whom I domiciled: adventurous men without 
 ambition, courageous without any aspirations for glory, fero- 
 cious without remorse. And King George IV. was their 
 king; London was the metropolis of their country. Who 
 would be astonished, then, should they worm themselves to 
 London and Paris ? 
 
 As to the notables of the place, besides Mr. Ezekiel F , 
 
 whom I have described already, I will specify the attorney, 
 famous for rapacity; the mayor, who exemplified a rotundity 
 worthy of his station, whose dress was a brown coat, bor- 
 dered with silver lace two inches in width; then there was 
 the young vicar, a gentle and pleasing person, who bitterly 
 lamented his hard fate in being exilçd upon these inhospitable 
 shores; in fine, the rector, an old Oxford student, an excel- 
 lent Hellenist, whose exemplary industry and virtues obtained 
 the reward of this miserable curacy. His only revenue, the 
 tithes, was a mockery of the law, for the soil was either 
 rocky or entangled with rushes, or a barren sandy shore, 
 upon which would grow neither grain, vines, nor fruit. I 
 pitied this poor and honest priest, with his four daughters, ' 
 beautiful and lovely; he was always occupied in resisting the 
 
Residence in England. 8T 
 
 aggression and opposition from discontented purveyors, or in 
 calming the attorney, who was the terror of the village. 
 The unhappy man w^as sixty-five years old, and his dream of 
 glory still supported him. With the rush-light* prepared 
 in the dilapidated manse, which he used for economy, much 
 as its flickering flame wearied his old eyes, he laboured over 
 his notes Bibliothèque de Photius ; learned notes that he com- 
 pelled me to read. If this modest minister had received 
 pecuniary aid, perhaps England might have claimed a second 
 Bentley. 
 
 I admired sea views, but the intrinsic charm of the ocean, 
 with her ever varied spectacles, which was attraction enough 
 in itself, the taciturnity of my hosts, the duties and the labours 
 of the two ministers, would have sent rne to her shores as a 
 resource in the deficiency of society. The description of 
 ocean scenery, and all the dramatic and heart-stirring scenes 
 of life intermingled with her waves, has gained poetical re- 
 nown for a large part of the great English writers — witness 
 Thomson, who has reproduced them with an exuberance which 
 is quite dazzling ; Crabbe, who has delineated them \Nath the 
 minutiae of a Dutch marine painter ; Byron, who writes with 
 haughty disdain of man, but at home upon the ocean, has 
 upon this theme shown a concentration and depth of thought 
 and feeling, a brilliancy of colouring like the radiating sun- 
 beams wiiich form the crystal in her depths. Southey, also, 
 in language as exuberant as her swelling floods, has gained 
 
 * The poorer classes in England make use of this economical %ht. 
 
88 Notabilities in France and England. ' 
 
 entrance into our heart of hearts. But the reaUty is more 
 ideal than the ideal of the artist. How often, in a fisherman's 
 cabin, the sea calm, have I watched its waves; slowly her vast 
 bosom heaves as if from emotion ; then a wave, swelling as it 
 rolls ; then another and another, which, dying, retreat in 
 silence, floating lightly in the midst of universal repose. Then 
 from afar I would hear the almost imperceptible sound of a 
 breaker, lashing lightly, as if in sport, the flanks of some 
 bark at anchor. 
 
 After the retreat of the tide, the golden beach displayed 
 the treasures of the sea, deposited by the waves ; the 
 medusae, a species of gelid substance, which glitters under 
 the water like pearls, have an exquisite beauty in their ever- 
 varied forms, and are more delicate than the work of a jewel- 
 ler ; the sertullaria, a plant which respires, an animal that 
 vegetates — a paradox of nature, and a chain between the 
 animate and inanimate. From the knotty stalk and branches 
 of this animated tree, one sees through the transparent vesi- 
 cles numerous little talons elongating themselves to find their 
 prey. 
 
 My youthful literatm-e, even the study of Byron, tended 
 to conceal the Most High from me, by calumniating his 
 creatures. Like all my contemporaries, I had hearkened by 
 turns to the Wertherian wail of despair, and utilitarian theory 
 which began to invade Europe. In my musings along the 
 sea- shore, I revolted against the incomplete theism of Rous- 
 seau, the sceptical raillery of Yoltaire, the pantheistic hypo- 
 theses of the Germans, and the mechanism of Bentham. — 
 
Residence in England. 89 
 
 "Yes," said I to myself, " the Glorious, the Beautiful exists; 
 supreme and divine beauty is superior to the useful ; it con- 
 tains and surpasses it. The beauty lavished upon creation 
 attests the ideal ; the glory of nature independent of the 
 useful." Thus the religious idea which had been undeveloped 
 in childhood from adverse influences, arose in my heart as a 
 new source of life. 
 
 Frequently, in the warmest days, I saw myriads of phos- 
 phorescent points, wafted upon the marine mosses. I amused 
 myself by gathering them in the palm of my hand, and letting 
 them escape in a visible flame. I continued my walks even 
 through fogs and tempests. There is something singularly 
 picturesque in the undefined forms of the ships at anchor, as 
 seen through the mist ; and the cries of the sailors, with the 
 noise of the floods, which you cannot see through the haze, 
 increase the effect. Perhaps the weather is decidedly tem- 
 pestuous, the scene upon the coast, grand or beautiful as it may 
 be, becomes wildly sublime ; all the sea-birds, in screaming, 
 announce the tempest, as they wheel around in a cloud, then 
 hover over the sea and raze the foaming billows ; battalions 
 of wild ducks mount up the sky, higher than gun can reach. 
 From all points of the village men descend to the shore in 
 their frocks, with their hooks and grappling irons. The 
 women, almost all fair and pretty, throw the skirts of their 
 gowns over their heads, as a handkerchief, and they follow on. 
 I have seen the men of the village resist the entreaties of their 
 wives, mothers, and loved ones, and, notwithstanding their 
 innate rapacity, brave all the terrors of the tempest, that they 
 
90 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 may save some fellow-creature in distress. The night before, 
 these same men rifled without mercy a poor Holland sloop, 
 and threw into the sea the wretched sailors. Keligion and 
 crime, pity and barbarity, were confounded in an inextricable 
 maze — such is man ! It was then that I comprehended Shaks- 
 peare for the first time ; I had read him with the eyes alone — 
 I now read him with the understanding. I re-read his Mac- 
 beth, and I discovered that the basis of his power lay in his 
 profound knowledge of mankind. Here was my initiation 
 also in Tacitus and Thucydides, whom I never forsook. 
 
 A mile from the village is an islet of rocks, on which is 
 built a Pharos, or lighthouse.* The ocean waves lash it in 
 their fury, but cannot prevail against it — for it is founded 
 upon a rock. This giant of the ocean, with flaming eyes, is 
 always upon guard, lighting the recesses of the deep ; and it 
 is a sublime spectacle in a storm to see the waves besieging 
 this citadel, lashing her sides, ascending her tower up the 
 shelving rocks, inaccessible to human foot, all to no purpose ; 
 then, as the waves heave, the living light reveals the yawn- 
 ing caves of the ocean, opening tombs, ready to swallow man 
 and his frail barks. 
 
 Notwithstanding my frequent absences, my good hosts, the 
 Puritans, satisfied with my punctual attendance at the hours 
 of repast, had, I thought, as much friendship for me as their 
 faith and habits would allow them to feel or express. My 
 regularity of life seemed to them remarkable in a Frenchman. 
 
 * The South Stack lighthouse. 
 
Residence in England. 91 
 
 Abraham had received the confession of Sybilla, with the 
 approbation of her father ; cahn feUcity, with its soft halo, 
 shed its beams over this house. The day for the nuptials 
 was fixed, and I anticipated much pleasure from sharing in 
 these interesting rites. 
 
 Suddenly I heard that the good Elizabeth was ill, three 
 miles from London, and that her life was despaired of. I 
 immediately bid farewell to my hosts, though I acknowledge 
 I quitted with pain this strange household, where I had seen 
 all the virtues flourish, under the most ferocious dogmas, 
 professed with zeal by these innocent souls. I left the lovers 
 upon the point of being united, and the father of the family, 
 with the old mother, in the possession of moderate joy ; in 
 the mean time they seemed sad in losing their guest. Ezekiel, 
 who had not yet pretended to convert me, and had never 
 held forth, (as the Independents express themselves,) that is 
 to say, expounded his doctrines to save me from the Moabites, 
 could not prevent himself from saying to me, as he pressed 
 my hand in parting, that '' The world was the furnace into 
 which Korah, Dathan, and Abiram had fallen ; • so, if I ob- 
 tained not divine grace, I should consume in the flames of 
 the world : I must remember the Lord ; in that case his 
 house should always prove to me the Ark of Noah, in which 
 I should repose without fear." These words, sincere and 
 grave, drawn forth by paternal interest, without a taint of 
 affectation or commonplace civiUty, affected me strangely. 
 
92 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 T HAD the joy to find dear Elizabeth convalescent. After 
 two years passed in London and Scotland, I felt strongly 
 drawn to the little hamlet upon the rocks, to the Puritan 
 family, the portrait of Cromwell beneath the tea-pot, and to 
 my ancient English rector, unique specimen of the old English 
 type, which would require the pen of Richter, the pencil of 
 Goya, or the crayon of Charlet, to describe the mixture of 
 quaintness, shrewdness, and simplicity which characterized 
 him. Upon my arrival, instead of repairing first to the 
 beach, as at my first visit, I hastened to Ezekiel's mansion. 
 
 It was early in the afternoon when I reached Ezekiel's 
 door, where I knocked a long time in vain for admittance ; 
 I could rouse no one ; all seemed dead in the house. Aston- 
 ished, alarmed, I hastened to the hut of the fisherman, who 
 had before piloted me upon these shores. I found him occu- 
 pied in repairing some old nets ; for the dampness of his 
 sorry abode had made him almost blind. I asked him 
 after Ezekiel and family, w^hose house seemed deserted. 
 
 " Ah ! sir," said the old man, " God has dealt rudely with 
 ihem.^ Tf you will come with me you shall see their old ser- 
 
 * This was his literal reply. 
 
Residence in England. 93 
 
 vant, Rachel Blount, who lives yonder in that cabin. She 
 will tell you their whole story, which she knows better than 
 I do, for she has lived with them. She tells the story, weep- 
 ing, every day." 
 
 I followed him to the dwelUng of Rachel Blount — the 
 servant who opened the door for me the evening of my first 
 visit. She knew me, and after the first greetings, she gave 
 me the following account : — 
 
 " Two days after you left us, the marriage of Miss Sybilla 
 
 to the godly young man, Abraham S , was to take place ; 
 
 but God in his anger visited the crimes of men : he had 
 otherwise decreed ; and the next morning all was ended — 
 there was no more happiness for that family. Sad news 
 spread from village to village and reached ours ; there was a 
 war with the United States, and the press-gang scoured the 
 country, seizing as they went along all the young, the middle- 
 ao-ed, and even old men. 
 
 * Master Abraham walked with Miss Sybilla along the 
 beach on the wedding morning. We followed shortly, with- 
 out being able to overtake them, for the brigands seized 
 Abraham, sir ; Oh ! the enemies of God, to seize that inno- 
 cent lamb from the arms of the young girl. They dragged 
 him away with them, the cruel creatures ! notwithstanding 
 the lovers begged that the marriage might first take place. 
 But they refused ; for the glory and joy of such wretches is 
 to break the hearts of families. Master Abraham was hand- 
 cuffed as a robber and carried off in triumph, the wretches 
 shouting and singing as they went along, leaving the father, 
 
94 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 mother, and young girl to bewail their misery. The next 
 morning when the vessel was to sail, — oh Î was there not 
 weeping and wailing in our village ? All the sons, the wives, 
 the daughters, the fathers, stood upon the beach ; and their 
 farewell screams were not heard ; the mothers knelt upon 
 the wet sand, and stretched out their arms towards their 
 children, imploring that they might be allowed to embrace 
 them once more I Not a permission granted — ^not a fare- 
 well — not a last look I We could easily perceive the people 
 upon the deck, but could distinguish no one. Oh, the Moab- 
 ites I oh, the cursed ! What barbarity I" 
 
 The old woman wiped her tears and continued, with her 
 plain good sense, pathetic and simple : " Oh ! sir, what a 
 horrible business is this impressment!* Is it not an abomi- 
 nation before God ? It is said that all this is necessary ; how 
 can that be ? Necessary to send demons with firearms to 
 rend asunder the true love and honest pleasures God has 
 given us in our huts. If they had delayed one week, or one 
 day only, my young mistress would still be living. Every 
 body confesses that this impressment is unjust, wicked, de- 
 testable ; and for sixty years, since I have had the use of my 
 reason, I have seen it practised in every war. Why is it, 
 sir ? Is it because men have not the fear of God before their 
 eyes, nor love of each other in their hearts ?" 
 
 The old woman continued her narrative : " Abraham went 
 
 * The laws concerning impressment have been revised since the time 
 here referred to by Chasles. 
 
Résidence IN England. 95 
 
 with his companions in misfortune, and Sybilla heard that 
 the young man died on the passage. From that time she 
 was never seen to smile ; her head became weak, she spoke 
 low, and talked to herself ; she was always very gentle, 
 patiently supported life, and still prayed, but she was not 
 herself. Th&n, sir, came the fatal mistake of her father: 
 seeing his daughter survive her affliction, and advance in age, 
 he determined she should marry. She gently refused, and all 
 the family supplicated Ezekiel to leave the unhappy girl in 
 peace; but he answered: ' The sacred law had ordained it: 
 Increase and multiply, said the Lord.' Ezekiel willed it; and 
 a preacher of righteousness was selected for a husband for 
 Sybilla, and the day fixed for the wedding. Then, sir, she 
 resisted no longer. Since the departure of Abraham, her 
 mind had never been settled, and during one stormy night, 
 three days before that fixed for the wedding, she threw her- 
 self from a rock into the sea. 
 
 " The body floated upon the beach, and was found covered 
 with black moss. Desolation and despair! Her mother soon 
 died; and her father, who said the hand of God was upon 
 him, shut himself up in his house, and has not been out since. 
 There he lives in misery and wretchedness, reaping the bitter 
 fruits he has sown. He has sent me away, me, his faithful 
 servant; and I think, sir, he will die without opening the 
 door at which you knocked in vain." 
 
 This is the second impressive lesson in my early life. A 
 lesson more powerful than any learned from books has reached 
 me from this humble maritime hamlet, — precious wreck of 
 
96 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 past time. I became conscious of the deep interest which 
 attaches to human Ufe, whether clothed in regal robes or the 
 shreds of poverty. The shades of character and details of 
 ordinary life, which are only despised for want of observation, 
 I learned to appreciate ; and I gained more knowledge of man 
 from attending to them than I could from the highest specu- 
 lations. In fact, generalities and abstractions deceive us; 
 the vast horizon effaces contours and confounds objects; in 
 widening the range of vision all hues are blended and no 
 forms are definite. From hence arises the monotony of 
 history; also the disappointment we experience from reading 
 the narratives of travellers, who too frequently forget that 
 the charm and soul of life consists in its infinite variety. 
 
 From this period I have felt a horror and detestation of 
 every thing false and exaggerated, and this feeling is always 
 on the increase. Instead of the theatrical and factitious, I 
 have witnessed in this hamlet the most sublime views the 
 world can offer — the majesty of nature, truth of passion, and 
 depth of faith. 
 
€'îtjgli^^ Scnrfjî in isi?. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOME TYPES. 
 
 "ÏT7"HEN I returned to London from the solitary shores of 
 Northumberland — to the rush and tide of life in a great 
 city — a new world opened upon my view, with which in my 
 two years' secluded life I had not commingled. I now mixed 
 in the society of London, which was at the same time frivo- 
 lous and grave; I joined her fêtes, and witnessed her am- 
 bitions and luxm-ies. I now tasted for the first time — 
 thanks to my charming meditative retirement when worn and 
 wearied by the bustle and noise of the city — the ardent 
 pleasure of studying man in this panorama of human life ; I 
 also gained my Shaksperian education, which ever after 
 dwelt in the depths of my soul. But a peculiar melancholy, 
 stern in judgment, gentle in demeanour, has never been dis- 
 sipated by time. 
 
 At this period I saw the most celebrated characters of the 
 day; stars, as they were styled; I also became acquainted 
 5 
 
98 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 types of political and fashionable society — which last arc a 
 mixture of wild liberty and narrow convention ; but I feel no 
 right to distinguish these by name. 
 
 One of these types was the Baronet, a tory, and supporter 
 of the ancient constitution, a man who speculatively detested 
 corruption, but his mind was infected with pernicious preju- 
 dices; six times in his life he had paid five thousand pounds 
 sterling for his seat in parliament; besides his assumption of 
 unimpeachable integrity, he lays claim to unbounded charity 
 and mercy, which he has testified by causing the transporta- 
 tion to Botany Bay of the starving wretch who stole a hare 
 from his premises. 
 
 I also became acquainted with an ancient radical, a dis- 
 ciple of Godwin's. His grand refrain was America! his 
 factotum Cobbett ; he thought that a government without 
 imposts was perfection, and the highest political attainment 
 was to hire a cheap president, and obtain food at a low 
 rate. 
 
 His son was a modern radical; he stopped not at such 
 material advantages, but his stand-point was principles: he 
 had a theory of government cut and dried to suit all nations 
 and ages; "he reasoned according to the nature of things" 
 — this was his stereotyped expression. He governed by 
 axioms; society was a piece of mechanism, never out of time 
 or tune. By force of syllogism and excessive clearness he 
 succeeded in making himself unintelligible; by strength of 
 logic he put to flight common sense ; from the excess of his 
 philanthropy he sympathized with no one. When his daugh- 
 
English Society in 181*7. 99 
 
 ter eloped with a captain of dragoons, the father put this 
 clause in his advertisement of the case: "If the young girl 
 refuses to return to her inconsolable parents, she is desired 
 at least to send back the little key of the chest of linen she 
 has carried off." I have known him to visit an asylum for the 
 insane, and argue with the inmates to prove to them that it is 
 very unreasonable to be crazy. Oh, these men of rules and 
 measures, axioms and syllogisms; the grand philosophical re- 
 formers! I have also become somewhat skilled in dandyism, 
 from inspection of the English type. The marks are, an in- 
 effable scorn for his species, whom the dandy spares no pains 
 to insult. He jostles aside all men and women who encum- 
 ber his path, makes a great display of his linen, moves about 
 as a puppet, and from fifteen even till sixty no smiles or tears 
 furrow his smooth visage ; nevertheless there are visible divers 
 strange grimaces, like his type, the monkey. 
 
 But among the most distinguished in London circles was 
 the rich merchant, the man of wealth, par excellence, — aye, 
 honest in the midst of his temptations, for he does not wait 
 to be dunned for payment of his notes; he commits no sins 
 but such as are venial, and easily pardoned; he only oppresses 
 the weak, and never compromises himself. He is renowned 
 for his virtues, of which fortitude must be chief, for he has 
 seen his ancient fellow-student and friend die of hunger with- 
 out wincing. This last type is common and inevitable in a 
 commercial community. 
 
 After discovering the springs which move these types, 
 whether the politician, dandy, or merchant, you are soon 
 
100 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 wearied. I felt myself more attracted towards the eccen- 
 tricities of the day; men strong in their individuality: Ben- 
 tham, Coleridge, Southey, Ugo Foscolo, Wordsworth, all of 
 whom I heard disparaged, which proved to me their worth. 
 My extreme youth enabled me to enjoy the peculiar pleasure 
 of observers — that is, of remaining unnoticed in my corner, 
 and hearing and seeing without disturbing the current. Of 
 those powerful and active elements of society the trace is 
 half effaced. 
 
 With all the polish and splendour of the English aristoc- 
 racy, there is a certain monkish restraint pervades their 
 circles ; indeed, the structure of English society is an 
 anomaly; even in their pleasures they are regulated by rules 
 as arbitrary as in their business; society is subjected to a 
 wearisome slavery to ceremony and etiquette, even to fan- 
 tastic forms of the mode: thus officers and peers of the realm 
 imprison themselves in steel corsets. With this universal 
 vassalage to conventions, and the attendant monotony, they 
 are also characterised by fierce pride, license in morals, and 
 freedom from restraints of law. There are women in high 
 life who disdain not to enter into the arena of pamphleteer 
 warfare to punish a faithless lover, or avenge their own 
 honour. Such was the character of the people among whom 
 I had now come to reside. 
 
 This was the state of society that Lord Byron attacked so 
 virulently. The noble ladies whom he disparaged, and 
 whom he, despising their soirées, quitted for the woods and 
 shores of the Hellespont, repaid his satires with usury. But 
 
English Society in ISlt. 101 
 
 the incense offered at his shrine had been great as the hatred 
 he inspired. 
 
 Afterwards, as if in defiance of scorn, he became a disciple 
 of Brummel; he was initiated by his admirers into the secrets 
 of dandyism, with all its assumptions and puerile haughti- 
 nesses ; he received from them the baptism of the caste : and 
 this hero, satirist, philosopher, and god of song, never lost 
 this frivolous taint, so unnaturally allied with the tragic 
 grandeur to which he aspired. 
 
 In the saloons which I frequented, the talk was of the 
 Satanic dandy who lived upon dry bread through fear of 
 becoming corpulent, and who was weighed every day to 
 assure himself that he had not. He affected the roué, and 
 numerous singular manias; then, sick at heart, he shut him- 
 self up in his library, seeking for some true emotion in con- 
 trast with his heartless dissipation. 
 
 It is true that among the fellow-citizens and contem- 
 poraries of Byron the most simple were possessed with fancies 
 scarcely less strange than were his. Some were zealous and 
 fanatical, as Montgomery and the Reverend Edward Irving, 
 anathematizing unmercifully all the ungodly; others, as the 
 ancient Godwin, professed a philosophical latitude in morals, 
 even to the annulling of marriage. The friends of the good 
 Elizabeth, whom I met at her house, belonged to the rigid 
 ckiss of religionists ; a Calvinist herself, and inclining towards 
 Methodism, she had no connection with the Benthams, the 
 Hazlitts, Gobbets, Hunts, and all that stirring race who are 
 the representatives of the great idea, the perfectibility of 
 
102 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 man ; therefore, seeing England only under her guidance 
 and auspices, one important phase of her society would have 
 remained concealed from my view but for a little circum- 
 stance which I will relate. 
 
 In the most stormy days of the French Revolution my 
 father became intimate with an able English lithographer, 
 who was an old friend of Fox, and, like most of the artists, a 
 determined radical. It was through this person, Thomas 
 Brown, that I became versed in the extraordinary phenom- 
 ena of English parties: extreme Whiggism, the American 
 republicanism, and the utilitarian school. The leaders of 
 these parties, to whom I was introduced, did not feel embar- 
 rassed by my presence, a lad without pretensions, of whom, 
 besides, they might make a convert. My tendency was not 
 sceptical, but in silence of the spirit I hearkened and deliber- 
 ated: I adored truth, but I did not believe she would unveil 
 her face at the first summons. By what right could my 
 modesty be called scepticism ? Do we assay the gold be- 
 cause we doubt its presence ? When will man cease to 
 divide mankind into two classes, the credulous and the in- 
 credulous ? 
 
English Society in 1817. 103 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FOSCOLO. 
 
 mnOMAS BROW:^, whom methinks I still see, in his 
 deep yellow vest, to the cut and colour, alias Fox, his 
 shirt frill displaying some rents, so did Fox's ; his nose a little 
 too red, an unfortunate likeness there; and his boot-tops 
 upon the model of his political rival ; he was the medium of 
 my introduction to the Corypheuses of the parties, sometimes 
 at a club, sometimes at the houses of his friends, as the case 
 might be. Through his good offices I became acquainted 
 with Cobbett, Hunt, Sir Francis Burdett, Bentham, and even 
 that radical Italian, the lion of the age, Ugo Foscolo, who 
 played the eccentric part in London that Byron did in 
 Italy. He was possessed with the fancy of erecting a Gre- 
 cian temple for his private dwelling-house; and this, which 
 was characteristic of the artist and poet, he expected to pay 
 for by his books and articles in reviews. 
 
 In 1819 I was first introduced to Foscolo. All the decora- 
 tions of his house were pagan. He had an Apollo in his 
 boudoir and a Jupiter in his ante-chamber; a little portable 
 altar served him for a stove; and I am sure he lamented 
 that he must wear the modern costume. His flaming eyes, 
 tangled tresses, the curule chair which was his throne, more- 
 
104 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 over the maledictions which he hurled against his enemies in 
 every word he uttered, caused him to be to me an object of 
 astonishment rather than interest. He spared not any whom 
 he considered his poKtical or poetical enemies. I believed I 
 saw an exaggeration of Alfieri, who was himself an exaggera- 
 tion of Dante. He did not talk, he declaimed: he read not, 
 but shouted. He was more theatrical than the theatre. In 
 the mean time this was not affectation; his mad vehemence 
 had become habitual to him. 
 
 One may say that Foscolo inherited democracy from his 
 ancestors, and that he was born a fiery democrat. Accord- 
 ing to tradition his family line dated back to the sixth cen- 
 tury, when a number of fugitive tribes sought refuge among 
 the lagoons of the Adriatic, and there founded the Republic 
 of St. Mark. Foscolo, descended from one of those fugitive 
 families, was born at Zante, between ltï2 and 1776,* he 
 was reared from infancy upon the glory of his ancestors, and 
 inspired it with every breath. Still very young, he drew 
 upon himself, from the temerity of his language, the Argus 
 eyes of the State Inquisition, which even to the last agony 
 preserved its terrible power. Summoned before the inquis- 
 itors, he repaired to the tribunal, and his mother from the 
 threshold of the door, called to him, "Go, my son, and die 
 sooner than dishonour thyself by betraying thy friends." 
 The son was worthy of such a mother; his whole life re- 
 sounded with the echo of these Spartan words. 
 
 ^' The date of his birth is uncertain ; Foscolo has indicated, by turns, 
 1772, '75, and '76, as epochs of his birth. 
 
English Society in 181T. 105 
 
 "Venetian liberty fell, as is well known, under the blows of 
 Austria; the young Foscolo quitted liis country for Milan; 
 and there he became acquainted with the amiable Parini. 
 His education, which was commenced at Yenice, continued 
 at Malta, aided by Parini, and was completed at the univer- 
 sity of Padua. He returned afterwards and passed some 
 weeks at Venice, and then travelled through Tuscany and 
 other parts of Italy. He was never intimate with Alfieri; 
 the resemblance was too prominent for intimacy; it is not 
 from similitude, but contrast, that friendship ensues. Fos- 
 colo could retain no friends, for he could pardon no error. 
 The eccentricities which early separated him from his con- 
 temporaries, surrounded him with enemies to the end of his 
 career. 
 
 He was appointed secretary to the embassy which the re- 
 public of Venice sent to Napoleon; he then saw the liberty 
 of Venice bought and sold as a bale of goods ; the admiration 
 that he had felt for France and her chief turned to scorn. 
 He left Venice, now become an Austrian province, and went 
 to reside in that part of Italy which was then called the Cis- 
 Alpine republic. 
 
 There, goaded by indignation and deep despair, he gave 
 utterance to those feelings in Jacobi Ortis — an extraordinary 
 work of truth and exaggeration, of declamatory rhetoric and 
 sincere eloquence. It is lofty in language, but poor in 
 thought. Reminiscences of ancient tragedy, imitations of the 
 Eloise and Werter, are confounded in this work, which is a 
 fac-simile of the civilization of the south of Europe — a zone 
 6* 
 
106 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 which has been in decadence since two hundred years; these 
 letters, with their efforts to express pathos, passion, and sub- 
 limity, resulting in — nothing, or for the most but in epithets, 
 or pomp and harmony of language, betray the last aspira- 
 tions of a people sensitive rather than sensible. The Letters 
 of Jacobi Ortis, in their fragmentary style and vehement ex- 
 pression, produced an extraordinary sensation. Such gigantic 
 patriotism struck all imaginations; Foscolo had transformed 
 political ideas into passionate poetry. Shortly after this he 
 joined the Italian legion, commanded by French generals. 
 Poet and warrior, he took part in the defence of Genoa, 
 which brought so much honour to Massena. Under the fire 
 of the enemy's batteries, in the midst of the tumult of a 
 siege, his poetical talents were developed and his learning 
 manifested. This was the beautiful epoch of his life. His 
 noble odes, addressed to Louise Pallavicini, were composed at 
 Genoa; and a short time after his commentary upon the poem 
 of Catulle was published in the same city. Italian literature 
 offers few elegiac gems comparable to the odes we have 
 cited; a classic grace respires in every word. The commen- 
 tary is a singular parody; a combination of erudition and 
 mad folly, a wild extravagance which the lyric permits her 
 votaries to indulge in. 
 
 Foscolo, who licensed himself in invectives, expressed with- 
 out let or hindrance his scorn for three or four editions of a 
 journal pubHshed at Milan. Ajax, a tragedy of Foscolo's, 
 furnished them an opportunity for avenging themselves. The 
 
English Society in 1817. lOT 
 
 tragedy was represented in the theatre of that city, in the 
 year 1812. 
 
 A report was circulated that the play, notwithstanding 
 its title, and the ancient persons evoked upon the scene, was 
 an allegorical composition : Ajax was General Moreau ; 
 Agamemnon, Bonaparte. The fears of the police were ex- 
 cited, and a prohibition was sent to the actors, prohibiting 
 them from performing that play. Not contented with the 
 success of this perfidy, the writers sold to the officers of 
 police six articles from their journal to prove, not that Ajax 
 was a poor play, but that Foscolo, from his political opinions, 
 deserved the rigour of government. A trifling circumstance, 
 of which the annals of the stage offers more than one example, 
 increased the dismay of the author of Ajax ; the word Sala- 
 mani, which is the Italian for the inhabitants of Salamis, has 
 another moie popular acceptation ; it is the diminutive of 
 sahune, sausages. Ajax, who, in the tragedy, frequently ad- 
 dresses his dear Salaminiens, was obliged to repeat the word 
 with such ludicrous associations ; imagine the buffoonery of 
 a hero, before an audience disposed to lay hold of the pun, 
 exclaiming: " carissimi Salamini P' or, " dear little sau- 
 sages !" The new tragedy of the young man was, besides, 
 very wearisome. The disloyal arms which his enemies 
 employed caused in Foscolo the keenest irritation. They 
 replied to his fury by epigrams. The best was from Monti. 
 
 " For twenty-two years," said Foscolo to me, " I was the 
 giant of the fable ; encompassed by enemies, disappointed 
 in my political hopes, harassed as a poet, and banished 
 
108 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 from my native city, I passed my time in avenging 
 myself.'^ 
 
 Foscolo wrote a book in the Yulgate Latin, immolating all 
 his enemies in a holocaust. The book has nerve and wit, but 
 it is too bitter for bulBToonery, and too caustic for gaiety. 
 Besides darting his poisoned arrows at his enemies, he plants 
 his heavy artillery against his country, which he thought de- 
 serving of a heavy bombardment. He called his satire an 
 imitation of Sterne's ^'Sentimental Journeij,^'' but it is no more 
 like the original pleasantry and quaint melancholy humour of 
 Sterne, than the vehement Letters o/ Or//s are like the solemn 
 musings of Werter. The admirable poem of Des Tomheaux^ 
 succeeded this anathema. Europe recognizes it as one of the 
 master-pieces of modern literature. He also pronounced an 
 excellent discourse at Milan upon the " Origin and Duties of 
 Literature," which gained him a nomination, after Monti, for 
 Professor of Literature in the University of Pavia. 
 
 The Austrians, when seizing Italy, banished Foscolo for 
 life. He passed to Switzerland, from thence to England. 
 
 Foscolo's literary character was formed from a mixture of 
 different elements ; the misanthropy of Rousseau, was ex- 
 pressed in the turgid style of Seneca. He vras an admirer 
 of classic forms, and was imbued also with a love for the 
 melancholy and depth of English tragedy ; he endeavoured 
 to accomplish a fusion between these two tendencies ; an idea 
 not without its grandeur, but in which the defect of primitive 
 unity was evident. Whatever was strong was sure of his 
 suffrage ; he admired the majesty of the Hebrew poetry ; 
 
English Society in 1817. 109 
 
 the pompous energy of Lucaii ; also the rude and bold sen- 
 tentiousness of Alfieri. He confounded the various sources 
 of the sublime in these writers, and did not perceive that they 
 were incongruous and could not unite. The Italian Ortis ex- 
 pressed the sorrows of Werter in the turgid style of Seneca ; 
 the Homeric Ajax gives vent and grief to his despair with 
 Hamlet's wild fancies and fitful gleams. Alfieri, in subject- 
 ing modern subjects to the severe and stately form of Gre- 
 cian tragedy, fell into the same error. When I became an 
 inmate with this other Alfieri, lyrical and erudite ; when I 
 witnessed his furious misanthropy and classical pedantry, 
 though united with strength and spirit ; when I heard him 
 rave against destiny ; when I saw him in dishabille, with his 
 affections and childish egotism, I felt how much was facti- 
 tious and how little vital in that species of literature and 
 genius. No root unites it to the present living world ; to 
 the real passions of men, to the interests and ideas of the 
 future ; but with so much that was artificial, he did indeed 
 possess real talent, brilliant eloquence, an enthusiastic love of 
 liberty and hatred of oppression, which interested me deeply. 
 Foscolo's literary taste improved and his power augmented 
 after he came to England ; among a practical people, his 
 literary productions were less vehement and declamatory ; 
 but his disposition altered not ; he created as many enemies 
 in London as in Yenice. He published some works in Eng- 
 land ; his hymns to Canova, and poem entitled the Graces, 
 are of admira1)le purity ; he also wrote many excellent arti- 
 cles in the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. 
 
110 Notabilities ix Fkaxce and England. 
 
 It was at the time of his great literary success, when he 
 was patronized by the most distinguished men in England, 
 that I was introduced to him. His vehement manner pro- 
 duced upon me the efifect of theatrical declamation ; patriot- 
 ism, as represented by him, wore a Grecian mask, and was 
 mounted upon the stilts of the Hellenic Medea and Clytem- 
 nestra. This paganism revived ill-suited my taste ; I felt 
 the artifice. 
 
 When Foscolo described to me, true Venetian as he was, 
 the tedium of London and the numerous misadventures that 
 had welcomed him in this land of Cyclops, as he called Eng- 
 land, he was infinitely more entertaining ; he returned to 
 nature. 
 
 " So no Besfia,'^ said he to me, whilst walking the room, 
 " these English are brutes. Doubly Teutonic, these Cyclops 
 cannot comprehend poetry ! Ah ! I bitterly lament my 
 youth, my quarrels at the theatre, the sun of Venice ; my 
 heroic posture in Ajax anathematized. I live a life in this 
 English isle, hemmed in on every side like the stabled ox ; it 
 weighs me down. They dare to patronize me ! I am their 
 pet and idol. I scorn them ! and I wish them to know it." 
 
 He died insolvent, and the Cyclops paid his funeral ex- 
 penses. 
 
English Society in 1811. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A visit to bentham. 
 
 T WENT with my friend Brown to visit that La Fontaine 
 among philosophers, Jeremy Bentham, who was, like his 
 prototype, a true child in the simplicity of his tastes, and in 
 his social life. We found him in a house overlooking West- 
 minster Park, in which house he had passed the last thirty 
 years of his anchorite life ; he rarely went out, and saw but 
 little of the world. The philosopher met us, dressed with 
 philosophic negligence : the collar of his shirt falUng over, his 
 frock-coat, with only one row of buttons, merely for the 
 necessity of closing it ; his half-boots, of antique style, and 
 above them mixed hose ; here was the strange accoutrement 
 which participated at once of the simplicity of the college 
 and the ancient garb still worn by some of the contemporaries 
 of George III. 
 
 It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that 
 which existed between the classical radical, Homeric and 
 vehement, and the English utilitarian radical ; so calm and 
 gentle in demeanour. The vociferous Foscolo founded no 
 school. The peaceable Bentham reduced to a rationale for 
 the use of England the theories of the eighteenth century, 
 
112 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 and never did peaceable philosopher dwelling in abstractions 
 take captive the spirits of men to such an extent. An en- 
 tire party accepted him for their oracle. 
 
 At the commencement of the nineteenth century Jeremy 
 Bentham was in the acme of his glory. At the daw^n of 
 this rising luminary, the Empress Catherine of Russia re- 
 ceived his letters and replied to them. The Emperor Alex- 
 ander, when in London, visited him, and the philosopher had 
 the noble pride of presenting to the autocrat a gilded 
 snufif-box, a gift from the Empress, and adorned with her 
 miniature. 
 
 Between 1820 and 1825, Bentham was but little esteemed 
 by the English, although celebrated throughout Europe, and 
 enjoying from that time an immense popularity in the New 
 World. In 1820 Hobhouse and Rolls were more popular 
 than he in the parks and squares of London. At New York 
 and in Calcutta, Bentham carried the day beyond all con- 
 temporary celebrities. The small number of visitors he re- 
 ceived were admitted one after another, as in a confessional ; 
 chief of a sect, he loved not to talk before witnesses ; and 
 though a great talker, he occupied himself only with facts. 
 
 After welcoming my friend and myself, he proposed to us 
 to take some turns with him in his garden ; a utilitarian 
 recreation by which he could exercise for his health whilst 
 conversing with friends, and indoctrinating them. The old 
 man, whilst pacing the alleys, his spirit effervescing wath a 
 thousand thoughts, dilated with warmth upon the plans he 
 meditated, and the bright future which awaited the people. 
 
English Society in 1817. 113 
 
 I was touched by his evident sincerity, and dissatisfied with 
 his doctrines, which were daughters of calculation and 
 materialism. Whilst he was talking with me, too, I felt that 
 he would repose the same confidence in the first transatlantic 
 adventurer or charlatan whom he should meet, and that he 
 would expound to them, as to me, a constitution for the first 
 desert isle which should fall in his way. During this time he 
 ran, rather than walked. His voice was clear, but piercing, 
 and his sentences frequently broken. He regarded neither 
 elegance of manner, costume, or motion. He at length halted 
 before two magnificent cotton trees, at the extremity of the 
 garden, and, inscribed upon the wall, overshadowed by their 
 summits, he read to me these words: ^'Dedicated to tlte 
 Prince of Poe Is. ''^ In effect, it was in a house situated upon 
 this spot where the great Milton long lived, " My young 
 friend," said he, "I intend to cut down these trees, .and 
 transform the residence of Milton, the cradle of Paradise 
 Lost, into a Chrestomatic School ! Are you still a prey to 
 the poetical illusions of which the world boasts ? So much 
 the worse for you !" 
 
 " Thus," thought I, " in this hallowed spot, where the great 
 poet respired heaven's free air, enjoying in solitude his genius 
 with her celestial visions, will daily assemble a boisterous 
 multitude, desecrating this sacred ground by their profane 
 wrangling !" 
 
 Beutham divined my thought, and replied to it, saying : 
 " I do not contemn Milton, but he belongs to the past, and 
 is of no use to this age." 
 
114 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 After all, Milton, who was the chief of a school, w,as not 
 without resemblance to Bentham ; there was the same puri- 
 tanical gravity or expression, united with gentleness, the 
 same excitability of temperament, corrected by habit and 
 reason; the voices would have chimed, being clear and sono- 
 rous, and the hair of both flowed negligently. I thought, 
 also, I perceived some resemblance between the philosopher 
 and Franklin and Fox, though the countenance of the former 
 was more expressive of sport and humour; Bentham's eye had 
 the restless and ardent gaze upon vacancy as had Fox's; but 
 Bentham's seemed in quest of invisible algebraic problems, 
 and descrying in the distance circles and parallelograms. 
 
 Notwithstanding his gentleness, I was ill at ease with this 
 schoolman and materialist. What sympathy could enter his 
 heart for me ? None. He was in abstract regions, submit- 
 ting the facts he had collected to a dialectic process, and 
 arranging them into a subtle system ; that was his pleasure. 
 There was nothing haughty, arbitrary, or misanthropical in 
 his looks or deportment ; the good-humoured man thought 
 not of himself, nevertheless he thought no more of rae ; he 
 would have given thirty thousand men for one axiom, the 
 whole human race for a theory. 
 
 "I would wish," said he to me, "that each remaining year 
 of my life could be separated from the natural succession, 
 and that after my death I could enjoy one year at the end 
 of so many centuries ; I should then witness the influence 
 that my works had exercised." 
 
 Alas ! will they live so long ? Has Bentham really given 
 
English Society in 1817. 115 
 
 a new impulse to humanity ? No. Algebraist in social 
 science, he allows nothing for the varieties and inconsisten- 
 cies of human nature. " Who, in steering his course," said 
 the poet, " heeds not the caprices of the wind, is not a skil- 
 ful pilot." Bentham, the rigid calculator, treated of man as 
 a reasonable and logical animal, not as an imperfect, pas- 
 sionate, and impulsive being. 0, moralist ! you forget that 
 we are composed of sympathies and antipathies ; that is to 
 say, we are infirm in our nature, and man is not (îod. 
 
 In this consists the error of the nineteenth century, — the 
 deification of man, — the apotheosis of reason. In hearkening 
 to Bentham, I again met the theories in which my youth 
 had been nurtured ; I distrusted this modern and singular 
 sophism. In doing good we feel pleasure, therefore plea- 
 sure is goodness, and goodness is pleasure ; — certainly will 
 has its pleasure ; is not then vice and pleasure the same 
 thing ? What folly ! to confound what should be the result 
 of goodness with the motive ; and to identify animal pleasure 
 with religion and pure happiness. 
 
 These thoughts were passing confusedly through my mind, 
 when a few drops of rain warned us to return to the house. 
 The philosopher seated himself at his piano and began to 
 play ; but first fixed his eyes upon a verdant lawn in order 
 to refresh his spirits, as he told us, for a work upon the 
 reform of prisons. ' He was then engaged in planning a cir- 
 cular panopticon, a sort of transparent hive, where each of 
 the morally diseased could dwell apart ; he was to be placed 
 in the middle, and from that central point take note of the 
 
116 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 acts of each individual ; to preach to his brother man, give 
 him work, remove every temptation to sin ; feed, warm, and 
 clothe him ; then, after having convinced him, partly by 
 force, partly by arguments, that all was for his good, he 
 hoped to open the portals and return the brotherhood to 
 society perfectly sound. 
 
 *' O philosopher !" said I, in quitting him, " you know less 
 upon this point than the mere vagrant in the corner of the 
 streets ; you are ignorant of the seductions and wild enter- 
 prise of the erratic and vagrant life. innocent and gentle 
 philosopher ! you know not what it is to brave peril, feel life 
 keenly, enjoy a ferocious independence." 
 
 The Utopian, in taking leave of me, presented me with an 
 enormous packet of his works, which I still own ; they are 
 in my library side by side with the works of Fourier. Not- 
 withstanding my veneration for the gentle philosopher, 1 
 departed with a feeling of sadness for his monomania. 
 Brown told me he had only a bare support ; his eccentri- 
 cities in taste, and his love of novel and bold speculations, 
 had dissipated his patrimony. The projectors of plans for 
 the amelioration and progress of the human race ruin him ; 
 as soon as their reasoning appears to him solid, his fortune 
 is at their service. He is brother-in-law to Abbott, for- 
 merly speaker in the House of Commons, now Lord Col- 
 chester. When a member of Eton College, poetry was his 
 abomination, but prosody was his pleasure ; that was a nu- 
 merical science. He loved, as a scholar, to scan the verses 
 of Yirgil ; or, like a professor, to discuss the employ of the 
 
English Society in 181Y. 11*1 
 
 Grecian participles. Amateur of the engravings from Ho- 
 garth, he appreciated the analytical sublimity of that artist. 
 One of his useful recreations, which he succeeds in very well, 
 is turning ; he has many little instruments and articles of 
 furniture which display his skill in that art. 
 
 " I understand," replied I to Brown ; " and he takes men 
 for clumps or wooden blocks that he can fashion, turn, and 
 polish." 
 
118 Notabilities in FpwAnce and England. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 IMPROVISATIONS OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 rpHE good Elizabeth was not pleased to hear that I had 
 -^ had an interview with Bentham ; then there was more 
 odium than celebrity attached to his name, and all thorough 
 Calvinists viewed him as an insidious and dangerous inno- 
 vator. Elizabeth, author of many works upon the education 
 of children, was gentle and mild in the domestic circle, in- 
 flexible in doctrines, lovely and benignant in disposition; but 
 severe in her religious requirements, she offered a singular 
 type of an austere and visionary, though worldly fanatic. I 
 had seen nothing similar in my country. 
 
 It was natural that she should not approve of my visit to 
 Jeremy Bentham ; so, as a counterbalance to what she styled 
 my fault, she insisted that I should be introduced to the 
 truly great men, the religious men of her country ; and first 
 and foremost in the ranks stood Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 who dwelt near London, in a modest retreat, where his 
 friends would assemble and listen to his eloquence. Deist- 
 ical philosopher in his youth, and one of the chiefs of the 
 poetical reform, he had become a Christian mystic. He 
 
English Society in 181 1. 119 
 
 alone in England occupied a place analagous with that of 
 Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel ; but the eminently practical 
 spirit of England tendered him more admiration than dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 We arrived at eight at the small but elegant residence of 
 Coleridge ; about thirty persons were already assembled in 
 a small blue room, simply furnished, Coleridge was dis- 
 coursing. Standing in front of the chimney upon which he 
 leaned back, with head erect and arms crossed, his dreamy 
 eyes lost in abstractions, transported by the inspirations of 
 his own genius, he seemed to be addressing, not the auditors, 
 but replying to his own thoughts. His voice was vibratory, 
 rich and full, his features harmonious, his ample brow, 
 shaded by dark brown curls, in which here and there some 
 silver lines intruded, the beautiful contour of his mouth, 
 sweet in expression, also the softness of his expressive eyes, 
 won favour unheard. He recalled to my mind the physiog- 
 nomy of Fox, with more of calm ; that of Mirabeau, with 
 less turbulence; and that of M. Berryer, with a disposition 
 more abstract and dreamy. Like these three remarkable 
 men he was endowed with the first gift for the orator, sym- 
 pathetic force. Surrounded by a circle who enkindled the 
 enthusiasm which was transmitted in full power in return, 
 he went on with an erudite and masterly analysis of the 
 dramatic poets of Greece. It is only in the personal pres- 
 ence of the great Sorcerer that his ideas upon these sublime 
 dramatists can be imparted ; in his own nervous style he 
 described the subtle reasoning and the pathos of Euripides, 
 
120 XOTABILITIES IX FrANGE AND ENGLAND. 
 
 the harmonious and celestial grace that characterized Sopho- 
 cles, and the lofty but solemn eloquence of Eschylus. Du- 
 ring ten minutes, he commented upon the Prometheus of 
 Eschylus, the ode to Destiny, and the pleading of man 
 against Providence. By degrees, as the orator raised the 
 triple veil which enwraps the allegory, his eye gleams, his 
 animation becomes vehemence, and by his anguish and 
 energy he reproduces before our eyes the victim of destiny, 
 marked for the vengeance of the Gods. We see him pouring 
 out his plaints and laments to the winds which war around 
 his devoted head, — sublime emblem of the ancient and ter- 
 rible belief in fatality. Soon the mythological type gives 
 place to the destiny of the Christian man, and in the most 
 bold and brilliant style he follows, and elucidates all the 
 metaphysical theories upon the enigma of life. He traces 
 Hartley through the labyrinth of his aerial tissues, weighs 
 the mystic chain of associations, explains the chimeras of 
 the will, brings all the weight of argument to the metaphy- 
 sical contest between the spiritualists and materialists, and 
 treads with a heavy foot the enchanted domain of Berkley.* 
 He cited the strong eloquence of Tillotson and Clark, and 
 reaching Leibnitz, he followed that great philosopher over 
 the bridge of communication which he extended from earth 
 to heaven. Leibnitz led to Spinoza. We heard him with 
 the ardent glow of genius refute the impalpable pantheism of 
 
 * There are several other names and theories introduced by Coleridge 
 as subjects of discourse, but not of much present interest 
 
English Society in 181Î. 121 
 
 Spinoza, who gave a soul to the universe without individual- 
 ity, and motion to matter without a mover. In the mazes 
 of these metaphysical speculations, the poetic genius of 
 Coleridge would flow on, or disport in circles like the harmo- 
 nious and luminous ocean. From the refutation of Spinoza, 
 " who," says he, '' withdraws God from the universe," he pro- 
 ceeded in beautiful and sublime strains to illustrate the 
 tenets and principles of religion, till, reached to the summit, 
 where he could advance no farther or higher, he bowed himself 
 in humiUty and reverence to the earth, and murmuring some 
 sweet and mysterious verses from Dante's Paradise, he closed. 
 
 I withdrew, filled with the highest and deepest admiration. 
 Never had I seen in human being the union of such glowing 
 eloquence and subtle acumen. 
 
 Three days after this, by my own request I was introduced 
 to him ; and in many conversations, which might rather be 
 called monologues and dithyrambic strains, he condescended 
 to reveal to me the principal points of his great system. He 
 repudiated none of the dogmas of Christianity, for he be- 
 lieved they were conformable with reason, experience, and 
 history. The material mystery of life, or the physical union 
 which produced the phenomena, he thought was electricity, 
 magnetism, and galvanism, which seemed to him to accord 
 with the spiritual mystery of the soul associated to an intel- 
 ligence served by organs. He thought all philosophical doc- 
 trines were explained through Christianity, which contained 
 them all. He believed in progress developing itself through 
 the phases of humanity; and in traditions of the past, vege- 
 6 
 
122 KOTABILITÎES IX FrANCE AND ExGLAND. 
 
 tation becoming animal life in its progress, and the lower 
 animal ascending to the higher. In all his conversations 
 which were not direct instruction, one could not but lament 
 some obscurity and mistiness ; but in listening and endeavour- 
 ing to follow him, I experienced nothing of that weariness 
 and disgust that the systems of Bentham caused in me, 
 neither that vacuum which the theatrical and pompous Fos- 
 colo induced. Yibrating to all emotions, capable of compre- 
 hending all systems, possessing rich treasures of memory and 
 a truly independent spirit, with a taste for all philosophical 
 reveries and caprices, and luxuriating in beauty, with the 
 ability to reproduce his brilliant and deep thought with all 
 the fascinations of genius, Coleridge appeared to me a sort 
 of mystical Diderot. Unhappily, the feebleness of his frame, 
 much increased from his fatal indulgence iu opium, did not 
 permit him to draw up as a whole his magnificent system of 
 aesthetic Christianity, of which he has only bequeathed some 
 vestiges. 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate the variety and depth 
 of studies from which he reaped such fruits. He was familiar 
 with the briUiant prose of Jeremy Taylor, the sonnets of 
 Bowles, and the essays of Addison; also the works of Jean 
 Jacques and Rabelais, Crébillon and Goldsmith, enchanted 
 him. Romance, history, poetry, the dramatic art, the fine 
 arts, he essayed them all, and enjoyed all. The erudite and 
 occult sciences claimed his regard; the metaphysics of Fichte, 
 Kant, Winckelman, and Hegel counted him among their 
 adepts. Coleridge has neared all shores. When the popular 
 
English Society in 181T. 123 
 
 fury crushed the towers of the Bastile, his muse rang the 
 peal of joy; poet, philosopher, artist, critic, man of taste and 
 erudition, he has dispensed but scattered rays of light. The 
 fault is not alone his, but that of his age and country. 
 
 The practical world around cannot comprehend him. The 
 renown of the utilitarian Bentham augmented each day, 
 whilst that of the mystical Coleridge was contested or 
 decried. But time, the great restorer, has set all right. 
 The fragments of Coleridge, his prose so philosophic and 
 brilliant, his inspired poetry, in fine, his admirable autobiog- 
 raphy, in which he shows himself devoid of the egotistical 
 spirit, but psychologically profound, assign him a niche unique 
 among philosophers and poets of the nineteenth century. 
 He was the Novalis of England. 
 
% Wmt ta Soutl] ^taxli 
 
 T'N 1822 I became acquainted with a brave sea captain, 
 named Patrick O'Mealy, from Ireland, as his name indi- 
 cates. I first met with him at the house of the ingenious 
 Porden, architect of George III., and guilty of having built 
 the Chinese Pavilions with little steeples in Brighton, which 
 makes the little city a finished model of bad taste. O'Mealy, 
 like all the Irish, doated upon his country. " The Saxon 
 Isle," he said to me, is nothing; " all there is flat and tame, 
 of no beauty. A stranger who has not seen Ireland is unac- 
 quainted with England. Only devote two months to Ireland, 
 and, my word for it, you will see something. We will start 
 on Monday, steer straight to Anglesea, where I have a small 
 house; from there you can go to Dublin when you choose." 
 
 There is a freshness of feeling in youth, and a power of 
 unhackneyed observation, which gives a peculiar charm to 
 early travels. I joined O'Mealy, and sailed for Ireland. 
 Our intention was to visit South Stack. There is no place 
 less known, more rarely visited, or more curious. As these 
 seas are dangerous, and the material interests of life do not 
 
A YisiT TO South Stack. 125 
 
 call strangers to this coast, you scarcely meet a person. It 
 was necessary to traverse the extent of the English isle, from 
 the county of Middlesex to Bangor in Caernarvon; to quit 
 London, the lap of luxury, for strange and isolated regions, 
 protected by a chain of rocks from the invasion of British 
 ideas and customs. We paused on our route to view Oxford 
 and her colleges, Birmingham with her industrial activity, 
 Worcester, rich in historical recollections. As soon as we 
 entered the country of Wales, we found the names as unpro- 
 nounceable (for instance, Alamvruft, Drwsquantucha) as 
 their acclivities were inaccessible. At the extreme point of 
 this country, on the Irish side, is the island of Anglesea, or 
 Anglo-Sea. A little islet of rocks detached from this angle is 
 called South Stack by the peasants, Holyhead upon the maps. 
 This islet is opposite to the Bay of Dublin, and is separated 
 from it by the narrowest part of the Irish Channel. Nothing 
 can be more tumultuous than the sea in this passage. Rocks 
 and ocean seem to place a barrier between the two inimical 
 countries of England and Ireland. Conceive of ships passing 
 through two jagged coasts, overhung with cliffs and crags, 
 the furious waves lashing their sides as they rush foaming 
 through the crevices of the rocks; add to this the whirlpools 
 ready to engulph the ship as she reels and staggers, now this 
 way, now that, the sport of winds and waves ; fortunate if she 
 escape being locked in, as with grappling irons, between two 
 contiguous rocks in her narrow course.* In the ship's career, 
 
 * Such has been the fate of a vessel ; it mounted aloft between two 
 rocks, but was fi-eed by the skill of the cactain. 
 
126 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 as she is lifted or cast down by a wave, yon see at a distance 
 to the west a revolving light, now red, then pale, scintillat- 
 ing, purple or wan by turns, her uncertain rays illumining 
 the horizon. When the ship mounts the star is eclipsed, 
 when she sinks, and her sails are under water, it reappears. 
 In the surrounding darkness it is a picturesque spectacle, a 
 planet so changeable yet so constant in her evolution. This 
 light indicates to you South Stack, Traversing the same 
 seas by day, you perceive a white tower suspended from a 
 crag; the ship proceeds; then you discover a little islet near 
 by Holyhead, which serves as a base for this turret; then, as 
 you approach, you see a species of wire net-work suspended, 
 which serves as a point of communication between the little 
 isle with the tower and the torn summits of the rock oppo- 
 site. Upon this net-work, which at a distance looks as fragile 
 as the spider's web, you see human beings passing and repass- 
 ing in mid-air. An active circulation is established upon 
 this hanging bridge. Man, a moving atom, how small he 
 appears ! You see around you the ocean, the heavens, and 
 the rocks, and you take pity upon the masters of the world, 
 who appear to you from these summits like pucerons on the 
 pistil of a flower. The excessive tenuity of this bridge sus- 
 pended in the air, and which appears still lighter when com- 
 pared with gigantic nature around, makes it seem as a fairy 
 tissue, upheld by fairy power. 
 
 Captain O'Mealy was right. Nature and art have com- 
 bined and issued their fiat that the South Stack is worthy 
 of commemoration. 
 
A Visit to South Stack. " 127 
 
 I have passed with O'Mealy many delightful hours upon 
 the rocks and strands of this singular shore, and I dub my- 
 self as historiographer in fee simple of this unrecorded 
 domain. My chronicle speaks not of kings dethroned or 
 battles gained, but of conquests obtained over nature's bul- 
 warks, of peculiarities before unremarked ; and the heroes are 
 the inhabitants of the air and the waters. " The lighthouse, 
 whose picturesque aspect we have admired," said O'Mealy, 
 " owed its birth to the perils of these shores. At some 
 seasons the currents and counter-currents in these seas meet 
 in a vortex; then woe to the poor mariners who are drawn 
 within the circle; the firmest and most experienced naviga- 
 tors, the strongest and best-manned ships, cannot escape the 
 yawning gulf. A few years since, the people upon the 
 heights around saw a brig disappear, masts, cordage, rigging, 
 crew, without resistance, or possibility of averting the catas- 
 trophe; they were in a moment ingulphed in the vortex. 
 We frequently, during the long winter nights, hear the signal 
 of distress ; in the morning, some scattered wrecks proclaim 
 that this Charybdis hath swallowed a new prey." 
 
 Arrived at Auglesea, we reposed some days at the house 
 of O'Mealy; then, seizing a favourable day and wind, we 
 embarked in a little yacht which belonged to the captain, 
 and was steered by an experienced Irish pilot, who from his 
 youth had been accustomed to steering along these shores. 
 
 It was a beautiful morning in the beginning of June; a 
 light breeze wafted us from the east, and the sea was calm. 
 However, with all our precautions, we were sometimes in 
 
128 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 peril, both from the reefs and also sand-banks : here were 
 some reefs level with the water, which the natives call platters, 
 and more than one keel of a vessel has been destroyed by 
 these unseen enemies lurking in the deep ; the sand-banks are 
 not less dangerous. Upon our route we remarked the tri- 
 umphant arch built of black Anglesea marble, to commemo- 
 rate the visit of George IV. to the Isle of Mona. 
 
 We passed in our yacht some remarkable forms among 
 the rocks. The hand of the architect could not have formed 
 better colonnades, pillars, arches, and cornices. There never 
 was an aspect of nature more wild, and at the same time 
 more beautiful. Beneath these overhanging rocks which 
 menace us are caves, the entrances to which are lined with 
 figures that seem exquisitely moulded in all the forms of 
 statuary and architecture. When the waters are low you 
 can enter without difficulty within the largest of these sub- 
 terranean palaces. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the 
 portal of this cave as you see it from your yacht. The open- 
 ing is round, as if by measurement of the most perfect geome- 
 trician ; this circle serves as a frame for marine mosses 
 which trellis it. At the risk of slipping over the marine 
 algas, or sinking in the dashing waves which in their retreat 
 would roll back upon us, we entered nature's portal, and 
 passing through fragments of rocks, which seemed, as in a 
 freak of nature, to assume every form of Gothic and ara- 
 besque figure, we reached what the people around call the 
 chamber of iKirliament. There you seat yourself amid a 
 population as prating and bustling as is the crowd of our 
 
A Visit to South Stack. 129 
 
 orators and politicians. Here commences the empire of the 
 birds. When a stranger appears among them, discord and 
 dismay fill the realm. You see them flutter, you hear their 
 wails, for five minutes the air is darkened, the ear is stunned 
 with the flapping of their wings and the noise of their flight. 
 All that lives and moves along these caves and grottoes is 
 the winged race. From every crevice, gap, and dark wind- 
 ing passage issue such swarms of sea-birds, that they fall in 
 heaps before your eyes, their white breasts and black wings, 
 with soft glow-worm lustre peering through the darkness. 
 This region is exclusively the bird region ; birds nestle upon 
 the rocks, they walk upon the waves, the sand-banks and 
 shores. Nothing is more singular than the complete line of 
 demarcation which separates the different tribes of the 
 winged race ; they hold themselves invariably within certain 
 limits which they never pass over, excepting the gulls, whose 
 nature is more volatile, and they circulate with freedom and 
 independence among various tribes. 
 
 In the centre of this amphitheatre of rocks, mostly of 
 jagged and grotesque forms, you see one of enormous sur- 
 face, recently rent by the thunder. There is a singular 
 avenue opened in this rock from the recession of the massive 
 parts. This phenomenon is not uncommon. In the beds of 
 gigantic rocks, you see longitudinal fissures, the work of 
 nature and time, but which appear the beautiful effect of 
 design. Religious traditions have consecrated this passage 
 or gap just mentioned. A pure serpentine stream courses 
 within, which is renowned for its healing virtues, and held in 
 
130 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 great veneration in the country. It is not fifty years since 
 there was to be seen upon the summit of the rock a little 
 chapel, which is now ruined, the Delphos temple of this mys- 
 terious fountain. 
 
 There was a singular fête celebrated at this fountain once 
 a year ; the first three Sundays in July were consecrated to 
 it. The young lads and lasses of the neighbourhood de- 
 scended together to the spring ; there each one, after filling 
 both hands with sand and the mouth with water, was to 
 ascend the narrow sloping path without spilling a grain of 
 sand or losing a drop of water ; the happy youth or maiden 
 who had succeeded in this enterprise was sure to marry 
 within the year the object of love. In 17 TO, there was a 
 morose priest who guarded the flock in these regions, whom 
 this ingenious custom filled with horror. He saw in it the 
 remnants of damnable idolatry; and not content to thunder 
 from the pulpit against the paganism of his flock, he de- 
 stroyed from the foundations the chapel of Lock wood, 
 choked up the avenue, and filled the bed of the stream with 
 gravel and stones. Now all that remains of this rustic 
 chapel is only a few fragments on the top of the rock, which 
 is in keeping with the wild scenery around. In effect, these 
 blocks of rough granite, mingled with the wrecks of Gothic 
 sculpture in this wild place, seems like a ruin. 
 
 You should not approach South Stack, or rather the am- 
 phitheatre of rocks which have that name, in full day ; the 
 lines are not definite ; you lose the characteristics of the 
 scenery j but if you enter the bay at sunrise, every outline 
 
A Visit to South Stack. 131 
 
 will be definitely marked, the hanging bridge suspended from 
 one rock to another, the bend of the bay, and the whimsical 
 forms the rocks and crags assume in the lights and shadows, 
 the mysterious fount of which you trace the course by the 
 discoloured rock, and, to complete the scene, the light of 
 aurora shows up another cavern, by whict our yacht an- 
 chored amid the roaring waves. A large flight of steps cut 
 in the rock led us to the most elevated part of the islet ; 
 before us was the suspended bridge. We had a commanding 
 view of the whole maritime prospect ; but the chronicles of 
 South Stack contain a serie-s of shipwrecks, and to this she 
 owes her ingenious lighthouse, which has given her celebrity. 
 Various are the sad annals of shipwrecks upon this rock- 
 bound coast. One cold winter's night, in 1808, during a 
 tempestuous sno\v-storm, a ship was wrecked against a shelv- 
 ing rock, and the crew were found the next morning in 
 situations w>iich showed that the poor creatures had strug- 
 gled har4 to escape death, and many were frozen in the 
 atten\>^t. The captain seemed to have resigned himself with 
 for-itude to inevitable destiny ; his head reposed upon his 
 aplifted hands, he was sheltered under a projecting rock, and 
 seemed to have fallen asleep in that posture. The sailors 
 were dispersed at different distances, according as their 
 strength permitted them to escape, at a farther or shorter 
 distance from the raging billows ; death had surprised them 
 in the midst of a painful struggle to avoid it. One sailor 
 was frozen in the act of climbing a rock ; another whilst 
 wiping his brow, which was covered with snow ; a third, ex- 
 
132 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 haustod with his efforts, was seating liimself. One of these 
 poor wretches had obtained a secure shelter, when the cur- 
 rent of his blood froze in his veins. 
 
 Frequently, during a fog, ships which had deviated some 
 knots or fathoms were swallowed in the vortex in a moment. 
 In 1826, a fine \)rig, newly built, named Alexander, in a thick 
 fog was drawn towards the vortex, when her keel struck 
 against the reefs. Tti^re the poor ship vacillated as upon a 
 pivot, beating her flanks and her rigging, as a flail thrashes 
 the grain : imagine the situq.tion of the passengers at this 
 crisis. The master carpenter pj'oposed to them a means of 
 escape. The bowsprit nearly touched the point of a rock, and 
 from that crag one might reach a neighbouring plateau, but 
 not without danger. Back of this plateau was an inacces- 
 sible wall of hard and polished stone. A young Englishman 
 from Kingston hazarded the first leap. Two ladies, three 
 children, an English and a Spanish merchant followed, and 
 soon the whole crew reached this plateau, where they were 
 entirely cut off from the world, without power to makt them- 
 selves heard or obtain any relief. The night was cold and 
 dark, the rain fell, the passengers and sailors were pressed to- 
 gether in a small space, which scarcely sufficed for them to 
 stand upon ; the least movement would have precipitated 
 into the flood many of these poor creatures, who were con- 
 strained under penalty of death to remain fixed in the same 
 posture they had first taken. 
 
 The flood threatened to overtake them. They saw the 
 ocean billows mounting towards them, roaring, swelling, 
 
A Visit to South Stack. 133 
 
 sweeping along the base of the little plahi upon which they 
 stood, and rushing on to devour them. How shun this 
 death when they could measure its progress, and calculate 
 its proximity, which was momentarily increasing. The wall 
 behind them appeared inaccessible, and the tide still arose. 
 There was only a foot and a half between them and the sea, 
 when the tide stood still, then began to recede. At length 
 day dawned ; a young cabin-boy climbed upon the shoulders 
 of one of his comrades, and then climbed up the bulwark, 
 and when he reached the summit, he drew, by means of re- 
 iterated signals, the attention of some of the inhabitants of 
 the coast, who threw up cords, and ropes fastened to the 
 rock secured their safety. One alone among them, whose 
 leg struck violently against a rock, fell into the sea, and 
 there perished. 
 
 Captain Evans, master of the harbour of Holyhead, was 
 the first to suggest to the government the idea of construct- 
 ing a lighthouse upon this island, which was with such dif- 
 ficulty visited on account of the dangerous rocks. The 
 numerous accidents rendered such a precaution indispensable. 
 The work was commenced in 1808: a temporary shelter was 
 constructed for the workmen, and the superintendence of the 
 labour was confided to the captain. The communication be- 
 tween the island and the coast Avas then much more difficult 
 than at this day: people could only land upon the island on 
 the south-east side, and then they must consult the tide, and 
 mount with the waves. How could they in such a situation 
 maintain seventy workmen, and not only supply them with 
 
134 XOTABILITIES IN FrAXCE AND ENGLAND. 
 
 food, but also with materials for building and tools to work 
 with, upon an island whose barriers were rocks, and whose 
 Cerberus a whirlpool, and whose only port threatened enor- 
 mous dangers ? A plan was devised and adopted of attach- 
 ing a ferry-boat, by means of very strong cables and pullies, 
 to one of the crags on the coast, and one on the island, and 
 by this means draw up the materials for the workmen. It 
 was expressly prohibited that the workmen should absent 
 themselves more than one day in the week, and that should 
 be Sunday, if the weather was not tempestuous. One young 
 mason, exiled in the solitary isle, received tidings in the 
 middle of the week of the dangerous illness of his mother. 
 The superintendent of the work was absent; the sea was tur- 
 bulent, and the young man in passionate grief at the idea of 
 his mother's agony. After having vainly endeavoured to 
 procure a boat, he took this bold resolution: he secured him- 
 self by cables in the ferry-boat, and was borne in the machine 
 through the air to the rocks of the opposite shore. The 
 astonished and terrified spectators followed him with their 
 eyes during his serial voyage. When the superintendent re- 
 turned, he prohibited under severe penalties that such a 
 dangerous experiment should ever be renewed; but on the 
 young mason, whose filial piety had braved death, there was 
 no chastisement imposed. 
 
 After this there was an addition contrived in the ferry- 
 boat for the accommodation of travellers through the -air ; a 
 species of moveable cradle was attached to the boat — a 
 whimsical affair which for a long time was used, transported 
 
A YisiT TO South Stack. 135 
 
 people bold enough to adventure tlieraselves, or who were 
 forced to make a virtue of necessity. Scarcely a deer would 
 have confided itself without fear even to the difficult foot- 
 path which led to the point of embarcation, and afterwards 
 for a route of one hundred and fifty feet balanced in the air 
 and supported by a cable above the foaming sea. It was 
 necessary to arm one's self with presence of mind and cour- 
 age. Captain Evans first tested this singular car. Some- 
 times three or four workmen would seat themselves there to- 
 gether, and tossed by the sea-breeze, would gaily accomplish 
 their voyage between sky and water. Three English ladies 
 attempted this inconvenient mode of transportation ; the sea 
 became high and the breeze strong, so that half way in her 
 course the men could not impel the machine: the voyagers 
 remained there an hour, cradled in the storm, enjoying at 
 leisure the sublime perspective, listening to the roaring of 
 the floods — an admirable situation for meditating philosophi- 
 cally upon the causes of the picturesque and upon the 
 beauties of nature. Add to this view the whirlpool ready to 
 embrace them, the creaking and whizzing of their air car- 
 riage, and the roar of distant thunder. 
 
 By degrees these difficulties were overcome, and terrors 
 abated. Convenient steps were hollowed from the rock; a 
 simple bridge from crag to crag has taken the place of the 
 cradle, a balustrade, or rather a double wall, protects feeble 
 heads against vertigo. In the mean time, the vibrations 
 and trembling of the wooden bridge extended over cables 
 could not allay the fears of those whose nerves were sensitive. 
 
136 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 Five years after, the wire bridge (whicli stands at this day) 
 was constructed upon the principle of perfect solidity and rare 
 elegance : a troop of horsemen might venture to cross it. 
 
 In the mean time the work went on; the Pharos w^as 
 built, and lighted mariners in February, 1809. It is of 
 simple style, solid, and the w^alls at their base are five feet in 
 thickness. The lantern is two hundred feet above the level 
 of the w^ater. There are three reflectors, and the spring of a 
 clock connected with the mirrors gives them a rotatory move- 
 ment. They revolve in two minutes, which produces a very 
 picturesque effect, as a light constantly changing, but ever 
 fixed in its evolutions. The design of this peculiar mechan- 
 ism is, that it may not be confounded with the light from the 
 Skerry Isles. The light from South Stack is perceived at 
 nine leagues' distance in the most stormy weather. 
 
 One time the sea penetrated through these w^alls of five 
 feet thickness; the fury of the waves destroyed some of the 
 masonry, and caused a gap; also the interior walls of the 
 edifice were constantly damp, and the foundations of the 
 lighthouse itself were undermined. The architect endeavoured 
 to strengthen and secure the base with large bands of copper, 
 then he added new layers of cement to the old. All known 
 means w^ere employed without success, and many new plans 
 were devised. The mixture of iron filings with ashes and 
 lime to fill the interstices and crevices was tried; but even 
 this solid substance could not resist the continued action of 
 the weaves. The water still rushed through. At length an 
 old ship painter, whom Captain Evans knew, communicated 
 
A Visit to South Stack. 13*1 
 
 to him a fact opportunely to save tbe lighthouse of South 
 Stack from imminent peril. A ruin was discovered buried in 
 the earth and decayed, excepting a part painted with oil 
 paint, mixed with fine sand and lead. There was a chemical 
 analysis, and "the ingredients of the paint were ascertained. 
 The experiment was tried with the lighthouse; it was painted 
 with two coats of this paint, and from that time no water has 
 penetrated through the wall, or injured the edifice. 
 
 Thus a wild and sterile island, which was rented for a 
 pound sterling a year, and scarcely could feed two sheep, has 
 become an object worthy of interest. Numerous travellers 
 expose themselves to the dangers of the sea to visit it, fear- 
 ing no longer the Charybdis of these shores. 
 
 There are evident marks in the island, and the region 
 around, of some violent convulsion of nature. The geologist, 
 in a visit to South Stack, will find much to interest. The 
 ornithologist and naturalist might remain there a long time 
 with profit and pleasure. No where do our wdnged friends 
 enjoy more complete liberty. I seated myself upon a pro- 
 jecting rock for two hours, observing their flights, and listen- 
 ing to their intonations as they mingled their lugubrious cries 
 with the roar of the ocean. Trom every chink, gap, and 
 cranny, issue birds; every rock is colonized by birds, but 
 more especially the caverns are their domain. O'Mealy had 
 spoken to me of this cavern, and I determined to visit it; he 
 accompanied me, and we breakfasted gaily there upon some 
 cuts of smoked ham. Now I could truly say that I had 
 lived with the birds. 
 
138 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 We counted in a lateral niche sixty dozen of the sea turtle- 
 dove, and we seated ourselves so as not to lose any of their 
 movements. This race of birds is heavy and ordinary in 
 their exterior. Near them, but without mixing, were the 
 penguins, the dandies of this solitude. When I drew near 
 they paid no attention to me, but they were distant in their 
 manners, and would not be greeted. I admired the familiar- 
 ity of the sea-mew, especially a small species ; this bird 
 flapped against my hair with his wing, then he would fly 
 some feet distant, pouring out his sweet and plaintive notes, 
 and look at me with an air of the most simple surprise. 
 
 Without the cave I saw some isolated eggs upon the 
 smooth acclivity of a rock. " By what instinct or miracle," 
 said I to Captain O'Mealy, "do these eggs hold themselves 
 there ?" He explained the phenomena by saying that a 
 viscous matter attached them to the rock. In fact, once 
 move them, and you cannot place them there again. 
 
 Though so numerous at this day, before the construction 
 of the Pharos I was told that the birds were ten times more 
 numerous. The sound of the hanimer and the rending of 
 rocks offended the bird population, and they flew off en 
 masse ; the emigration was general. Two solitary gulls, in 
 the mean time, had courage to brave the invaders, and they 
 posted themselves upon the peak of a naked rock, where a 
 stone or a gun could easily dislodge them. This confidence 
 was recompensed, however, for orders were given not to 
 molest them. The old birds, familiarizing themselves to the 
 noise of the workmen, profited by the permission granted 
 
A Visit to South Stack. 139 
 
 them, and for five successive years had returned to occupy 
 their old nest. This lesson was not lost upon the race of 
 gulls. After their emigration, finding themselves disturbed 
 by the children who hunted for eggs in the holes in the rocks, 
 they returned to the islands and to their ancient asylums. 
 The orders for their protection and security were renev/ed, 
 the use of firearms was prohibited, and soon the plain was 
 covered with nests. Now, it would be impossible to cross 
 this space after the eggs are deposited without destroying a 
 multitude of them. The sea turtle-doves and penguins have 
 returned also, but in less numbers. 
 
 During half the year, the gulls absent themselves from 
 South Stack ; the night of the 10th of February witnesses 
 their return, which is announced with great clamour ; you 
 would say that in returning again to the scenes of their loves 
 and the home of their young ones, they could not contain 
 their joy. During eight days they flutter around, rather 
 than assemble in a body ; it is a democratic tumult ; after- 
 wards they organize the republic, then each couple separate 
 themselves, and begin to work. It is an interesting spec- 
 tacle. 
 
 Few days pass in which some lads do not peril their lives 
 in searching for the eggs of the sea-gull, or the marine fennel 
 seed. This is a terrific trade, as said Shakspeare. It is 
 astonishing that nine-tenths of these adventurers do not 
 perish in the enterprise. Imagine a youth suspended l)y a 
 cord in the hands of two children younger than himself ; he 
 descends during a tempest or a calm, coasting a precipice, 
 
140 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 the very sight of which makes one tremble ; below him the 
 swelling billows. As soon as he can find a narrow foothold, 
 he halts a moment, then he crawls, climbs, slides, or drags 
 himself until he has attained the modest treasure for which 
 he has hazarded his life more than twenty times. Once a 
 lady in the neighbourhood sent one of her old domestics and a 
 child in quest of fennel ; the child, suspended between the sky 
 and the earth, had already seized the plant, when the old 
 domestic was attacked with vertigo, being little accustomed 
 to stand so near the abyss; she had the presence of mind to 
 call to her aid an old woman who gathered herbs in a neigh- 
 bouring field; she heard her, ran, and seized the cord just as 
 the domestic was dropping it, and saved the child. 
 
 Some vestiges of the Romans are to be seen at South 
 Stack ; particularly some medals of Constantine, recently dis- 
 covered, attest that the Romans formerly dwelt at this point 
 of the coast. The name of Dianae is perpetuated in these 
 shores, as the port and isle of Diana. The sea, in laving the 
 shore, has uncovered tombs and laid bare skeletons; some 
 bodies were found rudely thrust into the ground, heaped pell- 
 mell, as after a battle ; others disposed with great care under 
 plates of lead, and ornaments of all sorts were buried with 
 them. All these bodies are laid with the head to the north. 
 
 I had passed eight days in profound solitude, when the 
 Captain announced that we must sail for Dublin the next 
 evening. I almost regretted having to quit the singular re- 
 gion which had opened scenes in nature so new to me, and so 
 little known to the world. How could human beings exist 
 in such a place ? I had prevailed on the Captain to get a 
 
A YisiT TO South Stack. 141 
 
 permit for us to pass a night in the lighthouse to tallî with 
 the guards; Ireland comprehends all fancies, and this of ours 
 did not surprise the nation. Picture to yourself a lofty and 
 large round column on a high arch, beat by the floods, on the 
 top of the column a cell, and in that cell a man. I said a 
 man: there are two ; when one w^atches, the other sleeps. 
 They hold conversation with the sea-mew, the waves, and the 
 great clock of the Pharos. The watch counts the seconds by 
 the eternal tic-tac of the pendulum wiiilst replenishing his 
 lamp with oil ; the lamp must be always burning. The four 
 long months of winter pass thus ; and woe to the watch if the 
 lamp should be extinguished ; there is no responsibility more 
 weighty, and no prison life harder. The guard with whom I 
 talked, spoke but little. He wore a strange appendage at that 
 time — a beard as long as that of a hermit. The dialect of his 
 native county of Cornouailles, in which he spoke, would have 
 been hardly intelligible to me if the Captain had not trans- 
 lated it into English. This complete isolation has not only 
 rendered him taciturn, but the sense of duty has reached to 
 the degree of morbid sensibility. 
 
 '* If I was to sleep whilst upon guard," said he, " and no one 
 knew it, I should give information of myself as my brother 
 did, whom I replace here, and who died of mortification." 
 
 I recognised here the same touching fanaticism upon the 
 point of duty, as of the sect that became known to me in the 
 other extremity of England, in Northumberland. The next 
 morning we sailed for Dublin, where a people so different, so 
 light and brilliant, would supply material for observation. 
 
^mm of II ITife in |r^lanîr. 
 
 A VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL. 
 
 TTTHILE in Dublin, I visited the Church of St.. Michael 
 with O'Mealy, who accompanied me in all my excur- 
 sions. The church is of the plainest, clumsiest, and heaviest 
 style of Saxon architecture. The old Catholic sacristan showed 
 us the images in his church, and recounted the various legends 
 connected with it ; to which he added stories of the founders 
 and repairers of the church. 
 
 The Captain listened with patience ; as for me, it was 
 with difficulty that I could comprehend any of his Hibernian 
 dialect, of which all the vowels were abridged, and all the 
 hissing sounds multiplied, and uttered with a rapidity very 
 fatiguing to the ear. 
 
 We were just quitting St. Michael's, after paying some 
 pennies to our sacristan cicerone, when he stopped us, saying 
 that we had not seen all ; that St. Michael's Church pos- 
 sessed other curiosities more interesting, and that by Kasis ! 
 (thus he pronounced the name of Christ) we should not 
 leave without visiting the subterranean church, celebrated 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 143 
 
 for the property of preserving uncorrupted the corpses therein 
 laid. The guide went for his lantern, and whilst celebrating 
 with Irish vivacity the preserving charm of this place of in- 
 terment, we descended eight or ten broken steps to the 
 oblong aisle below; the cellar was of just the dimensions of 
 the church above. 
 
 The feeble light of the lantern scarcely dissipated the 
 gloom around. Upon the walls and hard-trodden earthen 
 floor there was no dampness, no odour of decomposition so 
 revolting in approaching a mausoleum. The guide from time 
 to time pushed aside with his foot some troublesome skull 
 which incommoded him. " Have you seen Hamlet played V^ 
 said O'Mealy. " Once, in Covent Garden. The beautiful 
 Irish actress, Miss O'Neall, was Ophelia," Then O'Mealy 
 began to repeat the lines from the English, which have 
 become a proverb : " Did these bones cost no more the 
 breeding than to play at loggats with them ? Mine ache to 
 think on't." The sacristan continued to push with his foot 
 some boires as he came across them : — "Ah ! the knave !" 
 continued O'Mealy, " how he sports with our bones ! This 
 might be the pate of a politician, one that would circumvent 
 God, might it not ?" 
 
 To the right and left of this aisle, corresponding to the 
 chapels above, were the chambers of the dead ; some were 
 enclosed by bars, others were filled with mortal remains 
 heaped confusedly upon one another. I saw with surprise, 
 that time, which had spared the bodies, had not dealt thus 
 kindly with the coffins, for the larger part had decayed. 
 
144 Notabilities ix France axd England. 
 
 The house of the dead was destroyed, the inhabitant was 
 spared. Around the body we saw dust of decomposed wood, 
 like ashes, mixed with the iron w^iich bound the coffin. 
 Sometimes there remained, as if to protect the body, a rem- 
 nant of the coffin, as a lid, or a strip of board, along which 
 you saw the mummy with bronzed skin. 
 
 Our guide held his lantern over those he called his dead ; 
 a population which submitted to his law, and upon which he 
 levied taxes ; at the same time, he related to us, in the Irish 
 brogue, narrations, wdth a queer species of buffoonery, in 
 which you could see that the love of the sombre, common to 
 Northern races, was mingled with brighter hues, and spiced 
 with national humour, which is irresistibly comical. With 
 his shrill and monotonous tones he went on repeating the old 
 lesson ; and these mummies without name, age, or history, 
 excepting such as are given by lying sacristans who gain 
 their bread from exhibiting the bones, struck me with a 
 sentiment so complex and so deep, that I was not tempted 
 to analyze it. 
 
 The mummies were mostly black, wrinkled, and dry. The 
 captain occasionally explained to me some of the narrations 
 of the sacristan, who applied names and dates to these un- 
 known remains, very much as is the custom in histories. 
 We stood before an abbess : " Died a hundred years since," 
 said our cicerone, " in all the odour of sanctity." She who 
 during her life had shunned the notice of the world, was now 
 exposed without veil to all eyes ; and she had for her neigh- 
 bour an assassin, the murderer of her brother. He was an 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 145 
 
 athletic man, whose long, white beard, was in complete pres- 
 ervation, and whose elbow touched the saint by his side. 
 This chemical property in the crypts of St. Michael, which 
 preserves bodies from corruption, acts in a different manner 
 upon different constitutions and ages, and in some it has no 
 virtue ; thus children, in whom the lymphatic element pre- 
 vails, were rapidly decomposed, but old people, from the 
 solidity of their bony system, remained perfectly sound. It 
 appeared also that sobriety or intemperance in habits had no 
 effect in this phenomena. The sacristan pointed out to us a 
 celebrated drunkard and debauchee, who was a sportsman 
 and a baronet, and died in a drunken frolic ; his flesh was 
 in as fine preservation as that of the monk, his neighbour. 
 Rabelais would have here found excellent reasons in favour 
 of his divine bottle. 
 
 After having passed in review a series of corpses, black 
 and hard, resembhng each other, but in a fine state of pres- 
 ervation, we came to one whose arms were folded upon her 
 breast, as if they pressed a cherished object. " This is," said 
 our guide, " a woman who died in giving birth to an infant 
 about fifty years since. She was placed in the coffin with 
 the infant upon her bosom ; the child has returned to dust, 
 but the mother is preserved." That dry and skeleton arm, 
 still folded as if to secure the vanished treasure, was the 
 most forcible and touching symbol of maternal love. 
 
 At the farther end of this cemetery, amongst the newest- 
 looking coffins, we saw a sort of rude couch or boat, ex- 
 cavated from the trunk of an old oak, the outside still retain- 
 7 
 
146 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 ing the bark. When the lantern was directed to this spot, I 
 noticed that the two bodies within were without heads. I 
 drew near, and looking attentively, I perceived that one of 
 the two heads had been placed to the right, near the coffin; 
 while the other, attached to the neck by one of the ligaments, 
 had fallen over the breast of the defunct. I walked round 
 the coffin, and the sacristan read these words from a plate of 
 copper nailed to one of the sides: John and Henry Shears, 
 Brothers, beheaded in Dublin the 10th of April, 1199. ^ 
 
 " Shears I" exclaimed O'Mealy; " the brothers Shears!" 
 and a sudden paleness overspread the usually glo\^^ng cheeks 
 of my companion. He was very much moved. 
 
 " I have been their friend," said he; " the poor Shears!" 
 and he bent over the coffin, weeping. " This one, the small- 
 est of the two, is Henry; by his side is John, the king of 
 men, and true type of the Irish! Never was a soul more 
 generous or brave. It is he! I know him by the length of 
 his form. He was six feet. It is the one to the right, whos3 
 head is off." 
 
 And he touched the human skull. The physiognomy was 
 still recognisable ; the lofty brow, the aquiline and prominent 
 nose, and smiling mouth. 
 
 " As for Henry Shears, near you, he was an excellent lad, 
 distinguished only for an absorbing love of his brother John. 
 I knew them both, and frequently predicted to them what 
 would be the result of their conspiracy." 
 
 Some new visitors arrived, and the voice of a child called 
 the sacristan away to receive them. 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 147 
 
 " Will you wait a moment here, gentlemen," said he to us, 
 ** while I go to see what is desired of me?" 
 
 " Yerj well," said the Captain; and we seated ourselves 
 upon a square stone opposite the mummies, and O'MeaJy 
 continued to talk of the brothers. " Every one in Ireland 
 and England," said he, " knew that they organized, with 
 poor Emmet, the conspiracy of the United Irishmen; but 
 what is not known is the mysterious source that gave rise to 
 this movement in the ardent soul of John, and that for a 
 moment shook the power by which England enthralls us. 
 
 " At eighteen John Shears visited Paris. Your revolution, 
 which marched with a giant's stride, was more violent from 
 its rapidity. All popular phrensies have their Bacchantes.* 
 
 * It may be interesting to some readers who would refresh their 
 memories concerning the pagan rites, from which the title in the text 
 is taken, to read the following extract from the Dublin University Maga- 
 zine : — " The Bacchii ecstasy was not merely drunkenness, but an epidemic 
 madness, induced by long-continued dancing and gesticulation to the sound 
 of cymbals and other noisy instruments. That the Bacchii and Coiybantic 
 plirensies were in all respects identical with the Middle Age dancing 
 mania can hardly be doubted. 
 
 " Plutarch, in his thirteenth example of the ' Vh-tues of Woman,' has 
 this graphic descnptiou of the condition of a band of Bacchantae after one 
 of their orgies : 
 
 " ' When the tyrants of Phocœa had taken Delphos, and the Thebans 
 undertook that war against them which was called the Holy War, certain 
 women devoted to Bacchus, (which they called Thyades,) fell frantic, and 
 went a-gadding by night, and, mistaking their way, came to Amphissa, 
 and being very much tired, and not as yet in their right wits, they flung 
 themselves down in the market-place, and fell asleep, as they scattered up 
 and down, here and there ; but the women of Amphissa ran forth into the 
 mai'ket-place, fearing any indignity might be put upon them, and stood 
 
148 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 In a stormy and tempestuous epoch woman partakes in the 
 excitement, and exalts and keeps aUve the flame. The 
 Bacchante of your revolution was Theroigne de Mericourt; 
 beautiful, reckless, eloquent; from the madness of sensuality 
 she changed to that of spirituality ; from the debauch of the 
 senses to that of the soul ; and in the fury of her orgies she 
 embraced liberty to stain it. Possessed of a nervous tem- 
 perament, which bordered on insanity, she by a certain charm 
 irew others within her circle; without consideration, reason, 
 ^r modesty, Pythoness of social destruction, seducing from 
 the brilliancy of her Oriental beauty, and carrying all before 
 her from her blind impetuosity, this woman John Shears saw 
 and loved. After alluring many to their destruction, that 
 she might obtain support in her vicious tendencies, she then 
 availed herself of her beauty only to create fanatics. She 
 made John Shears, that beautiful young man, who was dis- 
 tractedly in love with her, swear that he would shed for 
 liberty the last drop of his blood. This fair-haired youth 
 was seen following her, when, with dishevelled raven locks, 
 and armed with a spear, she led to Yersailles the crowd of 
 
 silently round about them, neither would they offer them any disturbance 
 while they slept ; but when they were awake they attended their service 
 particularly, and brought them refreshments; and, in fine, by persuasion, 
 obtained leave of their husbands that they might accompany them to bring 
 them in safety to their own borders. As for the Bacclianalian motions, and 
 frisking of the Corjbantes,' says Plutarch, ' there is a way to allay these 
 extravagant transports by changing the measure from the trochaic to the 
 spondaic, and the tone from the Phrygian to the Doric ;' just as with the 
 dancers of St. Vitus and those bit by the tarantula," 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 149 
 
 her Thyades. With her he took part in the siege of the 
 Bastile ; then she forced him to enroll himself in the army of 
 the North. He was wounded upon the field of battle; and, 
 as a chevalier of ancient Europe, the poor boy, under the 
 spell of the sorceress, plead for her hand as a guerdon. John 
 Shears, who was then twenty, would absolutely marry the 
 Bacchante. She refused. ' You may be my lover,' answered 
 she, ' but not my master; I am predestined to liberty.' 
 ' Ah ! indeed !' cried the unhappy youth, ' we will have no 
 bonds if you choose not, but only assure me that you love 
 me.' ' I belong,' she replied, ' to all the lovers of liberty.' 
 
 *'At one time Shears heard that Theroigne and Chenier 
 had gone out together to attend the orgies of liberty. She 
 came back toward midnight. The poor madman pointed to 
 a loaded pistol which he had laid upon the table. ' See,' 
 said he, ' to what you have reduced me, Theroigne.' She 
 went up to the table, took the pistol, and let fly the trigger, 
 saying — ' Coward that you are, and base soul ! Shame on 
 you, to occupy yourself with a woman, instead of thinking of 
 the Republic. Begone immediately, or I shall kill you. I 
 shall never be yours.' 
 
 " He obeyed, and set out for Ireland, never seeing her again. 
 I saw him then. He had written to me all the details which 
 I recount to you. 
 
 " It was 1795. Our unhappy country was in greater tur- 
 moil and confusion than she had been for thirty years. I 
 will not repeat to you the history of the Irish conspiracy; for 
 the annals would re-open the fount of all our miseries. John 
 
150 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 Shears, from temperament and opinions, from his bravery, 
 indiipendence, and long revolutionary education, was a re- 
 doubtable conspirator. Soon, carried along by his zeal, a 
 multitude of inconsiderate and brave spirits took the oath of 
 the Association. Some English spies gained admittance to 
 one of their meetings. Henry Shears, whom his brother had 
 initiated into the plot, and who was a weak and indiscreet 
 man, confided to a traitor who had insinuated himself into 
 his confidence the secret of the Association. All was now 
 lost. The conspirators were arrested in their assembly, and 
 incarcerated in the dungeons of Dublin. Curran, a cele- 
 brated orator, whom our country places by the side of Burke 
 and Sheridan, was counsel for the two brothers Shears. Then 
 was manifested the noble and generous soul of John. He 
 thought only of saving his brother and taking the guilt upon 
 himself, though Henry had ruined his hopes and brought 
 him into this situation. Allowed to speak in his own defence, 
 his pleading was an eloquent appeal to the judges for his 
 brother, led away, said he, by his example, and innocent of 
 any intention, as well as any act, of sedition. They both per- 
 ished, the feeble man and the energetic man, upon the same 
 scaffold, erected before the King's Prison.* Ah ! what a soul 
 w^as that of John Shears ! And why was it that at eighteen 
 years of age he should encounter that demon, torch in hand, 
 under the guise of a woman ! My friend," continued the 
 Captain, "have a care! The first woman whom we love 
 
 * Prison in Dublin, so called. 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 151 
 
 decides our destiny for life : in Rousseau one sees the vulgar 
 sensuality of Madame de Warens ; and the actresses that 
 Lord Byron paid court to in his youth, left their stamp and 
 impress upon his future career, which was one of foppery, 
 ennui, and despair. 
 
 " When John Shears died with the name of Theroigne, the 
 Bacchante was actually mad. I discovered her at the time 
 of the peace of Amiens in one of the cells of Charenton. Near 
 her, in an apartment elegantly adorned, dwelt another child 
 of our sophistical epoch, M. de Sade, confined there by 
 Napoleon. These execrable products of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury were placed near by, and sometimes the superintendent 
 of the hospital would make them dine together ; one, pro- 
 fessor of the atheism of d'llelvetius, which he pushed to the 
 extreme, the other intoxicated with the revived paganism 
 which Mably and Anacharses had introduced to the world in 
 Paris : two fanatics who understood each other very well, as 
 the director of the hospital told me. The negation of God 
 had brought back the libertine gentleman to the obscene 
 rites of Heliogabalus, and the blasée courtesan to the orgies 
 of the Coryljantes. Pity the young and unfortunate John 
 Shears, who loved his country ardently, and whom this wo- 
 man precipitated towards the gulf into which his brother 
 plunged him. There is no history more deplorable. See 
 these two brothers thrown as criminals into the trunk of an 
 oak rudely hollowed out, and of which the law adjudged the 
 dimensions." 
 
 Such was the narrative of my Irish friend, during which 
 
152 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 the sacristan, who had returned, deposited his lantern near 
 the two brothers, and remained tranquilly seated upon the 
 earth, which would soon cover his obscure remains. After- 
 wards, as his turn for speaking came, making the sign of the 
 cross, he continued his strain of panegyric, dwelling upon the 
 sanctity of the place and the constant miracle operating 
 there, thanks to the intervention of St. Michael. 
 
 From chemical analysis, this marvel is discovered to pro- 
 ceed from the absence of all aqueous particles and the con- 
 stant dryness of the walls, which are stuccoed with carbonate 
 of lime and argillaceous earth ; the ground, impregnated with 
 the same substances, absorbs the humidity and neutrahzes 
 putrid effluvia. The animal substances deposited in this 
 cemetery, instead of decaying, dry; flesh and bone change 
 their nature ; one becomes like parchment, the other bleached, 
 without softening, and the proportions of the corpses remain 
 the same. 
 
 Some of the lateral chapels, which are closed by grates, 
 contain mausoleums of many noble families. From the depths 
 of one of these depositories of the dead, I saw a glittering light, 
 which proceeded from two or three coronets laid upon the 
 coffins — ^heraldic symbols of baronets and counts. The metal 
 shone as if the workman had polished it the night before. 
 The sacristan informed us that for five or six years no person 
 had entered those chambers of the dead; and, to prove the 
 truth of his assertion, he passed the lantern along the grate 
 that we might see the walls covered with a tissue of spiders' 
 webs which spread over the coffins; they filled a space four 
 
Scenes of a Life in Ireland. 153 
 
 feet deep and eight broad. This enomious canopy, woven by 
 some thousands of generations of insects, seemed a sort of 
 mockery of the grandeur of the mausoleums. 
 
 When we came out of this little church, O'Mealy said 
 to me, " You are, I believe, the first Frenchman who has 
 visited these burial places ; as for the English and Germans, 
 they never fail. The Northern populations love the dead ; 
 but with the people of the South the sentiment and feeling 
 of life is all-absorbing. A Grecian tomb is always concealed 
 beneath flowers, and in some of the Antilles, every interment 
 is the occasion of a festival, and is followed by a ball. You, 
 charming French, you decorate your graves with all the 
 finery and frippery of a coquette. When, for the first time, 
 I ascended a charming hill which commanded a beautiful 
 view of Paris, I saw gleaming in the rays of your bright sun 
 a crowd of monuments in the form of obelisks, statues, 
 columns, cippes, spires, altars, busts, temples, pyramids, and 
 domes of marble. This was Père la Chaise. Even in your 
 Parisian catacombs, the contrast between the puerile labours 
 of man and the eternal work of death, which in her constant 
 destruction is for ever re-creating, such exaggerated and 
 finical display seems absurd. These fantastic tricks with 
 human wrecks resemble a melodrama enacted by the side of 
 Eternity. I abhor this ranging and dressing out of bones 
 and skeletons, these myriads of classed tibias, arranged, 
 classed symmetrically, as if to decorate a shop-window and 
 attract the gaze of passengers. Your ancestors of the time 
 of Louis the Sixth, your people of the League, of the party of 
 7* 
 
154 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 Burgundy, or your ancestral devotees, your jolly citizens, you 
 force them to lay their bones together as if for theatrical 
 decoration, so much are you deluded by a taste for display." 
 I answered the good O'Mealy only by approving monosyl- 
 lables. These ideas were very diHerent from those which 
 had nurtured my early years. I reflected deeply upon the 
 dead by whom I was surrounded ; the unsightly dead with 
 their black skins ; monks and abbesses ; assassins and drunk- 
 ards ; political victims ; brave men and cowards ; whose 
 bones only served to support generations of sacristans. The 
 dead survived their epitaphs ; the coffins were reduced to 
 dust around their proprietors ; in fine, a poor imbecile show- 
 man drones his lullaby in our ears, perpetually repeating his 
 traditional eulogies before the mummies, who are powerless 
 to deny them. 
 
CljoitgljtB upit Inlaiilr. 
 
 A T the commencement of the seventeenth century, when 
 •^^ the envoy from one of the small kings of Erin presented 
 himself before James I., dressed in a suit of woollen cloth, 
 the ceremonial costume, all the entreaties of his chamberlains 
 could not induce him to sleep in a bed — he preferred lying in 
 the ashes in the chimney-corner. 
 
 The system pursued by England towards Ireland since the 
 reign of Elizabeth has been that of cupidity, avarice, and 
 bigotry. I am not one who can take sides with oppressors ; 
 the right of the strongest is the right of Cain ; and I admit 
 no more the right of cunning, commonly the strength of the 
 weak. The scorn of England for Ireland aggravated itself 
 to hatred in the time of Cromwell, when the savage Catholics 
 of the last fought furiously against their heretical masters. 
 From 1620 to 1830, Calvinism the most intolerant has been, 
 as is well known, the pivot of English policy, and the iniqui- 
 ties of Great Britain towards the neighbouring isle sprung 
 from religious hatred and Calvinistic intolerance more than 
 aggressive power. At this day she is suffering from retrib- 
 
156 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 utive justice. She endeavours to free herself from her tur- 
 bulent neighbours ; and eyeu Protestants fill their ill-rigged 
 vessels with Irish Papists, in tattered shreds and half famished, 
 to shift for themselves in the New World. In 184t three 
 hundred thousand Irish Catholics quitted their natal isle to 
 seek bread or death in the United States. The new cities 
 of North America are filled with these unhappy wretches, 
 who not only increase the already formidable power of a rival 
 nation, but disseminate the contagion of their hatred. 
 
 Now that the anti-Papist panic is subsiding in England, 
 she would inculcate morals to this too long neglected race, 
 which is devoid of principle, and the scourge of her tyrants. 
 In vain do the English give bread to the troublesome Irish : 
 as soon as the poor comprehend that alms are a salvo to keep 
 the peace, they become more idle and poor. " We cannot," 
 said the Limerick Chronicle, of August, 1846, " procure reapers. 
 Our people had rather beg upon the high road, or implore aid 
 from the parish, than work. It is in vain that since last 
 Wednesday the most beautiful spires of wheat greet our eyes 
 upon all sides, bowing their heads from their glorious loads ; 
 there is no hand to gather and no sickle to mow them. In 
 one week we may lose the whole harvest. It is impossible to 
 tear this people away from the pleasures of begging or the 
 enjoyment of their tatters. When they have suffered enough 
 to get over the novelty, they with their quantum of potatoes 
 embark for America, but much more for the object of seeing 
 the country than to escape famine." 
 
 When the Irish judge that the alms proffered are insufii- 
 
TnouCxHTS UPON Ireland. 15t 
 
 cient, or that labour, when they accept it, is too hard, they 
 gather together in revolt, burning and pillaging all before 
 them. It is thus that England is punished for the education 
 she has given her wild young sister. 
 
 Ireland has the same characteristics, both in her higher 
 and lower classes, in the country and in the city. Dublin, 
 which I visited with O'Mealy, is the capital least resorted 
 to of any in Europe, but it is as motley and incongruous as 
 all other parts of the island. You meet occasionally with 
 equipages as splendid as those of London or Vienna, but 
 some quarters are filled with the famished population of 
 which I have spoken. There are cellars peopled with knaves 
 and beggars, a motley crew, more wild and grotesque than 
 those which formerly swarmed in the Court of Miracles. 
 From these dens the movers in sedition recruit their forces, 
 and, for one or two shillings per head, enroll formidable bat- 
 taUons. The days, or rather nights, of grand assembly, when 
 a chief is to be elected, or the disorderly troops to be trained, 
 they suspend, in front of their lair or den of rendezvous, a 
 transparency which represents a half-moon, that lights the in- 
 terior ; this venerated sign prohibits the access of the pro- 
 fane. In the mean while, balls, club-meetings, horse-racing, 
 and all sorts of extravagances, abound ; intrigues, conspira- 
 cies cease not, and this most interesting race are forgetting 
 themselves in the labyrinths of Parisian luxury, and endeav- 
 ouring to keep at bay the inroads of grief. 
 
 My good friend, O'Mealy, said that he would initiate me 
 into this extraordinary world, and introduce me to some 
 
158 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 individuals, fair samples of the Irish character, for an age of 
 theories was not worth a day's observation in familiar inter- 
 course. He added, " I will show you some types among us ; 
 the best and the worst of these are equally bold, brilliant, 
 shrewd, and unprincipled. There is the jovial priest, Martin 
 Doyle, a chubb3^-faced abbot, like those at the time of the 
 Reform, he will appear to you in his glory at the end of a 
 feast, when, in the name of the Virgin, and in hatred of the 
 Saxons, he collects guineas and shillings from the well-fed 
 guests. At the same table you will find Lanty Lawler, a 
 jockey, who sells the government secrets to conspn*ators, and 
 the projects of conspirators to the government. You will 
 also see old Tom Heffernan, a political jockey, who traffics in 
 consciences — an ancient friend of Lord Castlereagh's, who 
 brought to his master the balance due for twelve votes in 
 one morning, jDlaying this game for his own amusement as 
 coolly as one would take part in a game of billiards ; he 
 was as immoral as the thief Fresney, who defrauded the rich 
 to give to the poor. Our popular idol is, in general, some 
 muscular gentleman twenty times ruined, whose creditors 
 dare not molest him, always intoxicated but always clear- 
 headed, of Herculean vigour, and a friend of the people with 
 whom he boxes and carouses. In addition to these accom- 
 plishments, he is a great gamester, strong aristocrat, lavish 
 in almsgiving, has no compeer at firsticuffs, is an adept in 
 duels, and he is one whose ardour is not diminished, nor his 
 popularity lessened, by old age. The celebrated O'Connell 
 unites with these qualities great cunning, wisdom, and elo- 
 
Thoughts upox Ireland. 159 
 
 quence ; thanks to these qualities, O'Connell has been our 
 king these twenty years." 
 
 I commenced, then, under the guidance of Captain O'Mealy, 
 the amusing study of Irish character, which gave me full 
 occupation during my three months' tour. All the person- 
 ages in the motley drama, painted to the life in Irish story, 
 passed before me. I admired the diversity and ever-shifting 
 variety of the scenes. The remarkable contrast between the 
 traits in character of the Scotch, Irish, and Saxon, suggested 
 to me the permanence of race, the power of transmitted 
 blood, — a power which preserves the Magyar and the Sclavic, 
 the Dalmatian and the Gipsey, distinct. 
 
 Among my new Irish friends, I should particularly signal- 
 ize a sub-lieutenant, who was very giddy, and whose adven- 
 tures would scarcely gain credence. I have seen no person 
 carry to such lengths variety, bravery, and heedlessness. 
 To-day he will travel fifty leagues in a post-chaise, during a 
 tempest, to overtake a diligence that has not started. To- 
 morrow he will enact the part of Othello to amuse his friends, 
 and sleep without washing the lampblack from his face ; then 
 at six the next morning he will appear at the military review 
 before' his colonel and the whole major staff, arrayed in uni- 
 form, sword in hand, and with his face blackened as a Moor. 
 Always in pursuit of some fair one, sure to be balked before 
 marriage, he nearly reached his grand climacteric without 
 forming any matrimonial ties. Constantly on the road to 
 great success, there he always remained. His mercurial 
 temperament exposed him to a thousand misadventures. He 
 
160 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 would throw himself mto a whirlpool, expecting by some 
 miracle to escape. Buoyant in hope, though shipwrecked 
 to-day, he would again set sail on the morrow. This knight- 
 errant, always in full tilt for adventures, and adoring the 
 marvellous, this wild Irishman, was the cadet brother of my 
 guide, Captain O'Mealy. 
 
 We met at an ordinary in Dublin where assembled some 
 of the whims and oddities of the place. Refinement, indo- 
 lence, giddiness, coarseness, luxury, poverty, mad folly, were 
 collected ; individuals of all descriptions, originals of every 
 variety, met in this little corner of Europe, placed out of the 
 sphere of English commerce and aristocratical splendours. I 
 saw officers who had only served in Mexico ; priests who 
 would bet and race ; coquettes who would pass for nuns ; 
 canonesses who played the devil ; and learned men more 
 versed in the Celtic than the English tongue. There, also, I 
 became acquainted with a certain Doctor O'Driscol, a friend 
 of Charles O'Mealy, the cadet, a doctor who had not, I be- 
 lieve, his match upon the earth. 
 
 At thirty-five, O'Driscol was always playing off some joke 
 more worthy of Figaro than the gravity looked for in his 
 profession ; in the mean time, he was courteous, brave, sen- 
 sible ; he chattered like a magpie, was fertile in stories of 
 all sorts, spoke not a word of truth in his gay moods, nor 
 uttered falsity in his grave ones. With his five feet, round 
 figure, jocund air, red, chubby cheeks, frizzled hair, and lively 
 repartee, he was such an adept in surgery that his fellow- 
 citizens availed themselves of his skill, and found him a very 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 161 
 
 useful witness in their duels, and eight days would not pass 
 away without his attendance being requested in an affair of 
 honour. Resolved to amuse himself in every way, he claimed 
 descent from Ulysses, {Odtjsseus,) of whose name, said he, 
 O'^Drkcol was only an altered form. He never appeared 
 except clothed in black, and never uttered a syllable that was 
 not followed by shouts of laughter from men, or rather men- 
 children, around. Lever has painted him under the name of 
 Finucane. 
 
 It is well known that the Irish duel is no sham affair ; fight 
 to the death is the true Irish motto, and a duel is an every- 
 day occurrence, thought no more of than dining out in the 
 city. The trade of O'Driscol was to repair the arms and 
 legs injured by this custom. One evening when we came 
 into the smoky atmosphere of the saloon of which I have 
 spoken, towards nine — 
 
 " From whence come you, Doctor ?" called out at once two 
 or three voices at the moment he entered, covered with dust, 
 into the room where we were taking tea. 
 
 "■ What new fun have you for us ?" 
 
 " Life is sad," cried the Doctor in the most easy and disen- 
 gaged tone. '' Poor O'Flaherty, an officer whom you kave all 
 seen frequently, has died of a wound given him by Curzon. I 
 have attended him three days ; it was impossible to save him." 
 
 These words were followed by a general lamentation — spon- 
 taneous offering to the manes of the defunct. 
 
 *' He had drank so many bottles of claret! Managed a 
 horse so well! He was so jovial withal; and adroit in. 
 
162 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 treasury business, and could arrange affairs to the complete 
 satisfaction of debtors !" 
 
 Then the adventures of O'Flaherty were recounted, which 
 was a legend without an end. 
 
 " Apropos to adventures," cried Charles O'Mealy, " you 
 doubtless know that I have been sharer in heroic honours 
 with O'Driscol. 
 
 " No, no!" exclaimed all the company, " tell us, Lieutenant, 
 tell us. Take a cup of tea, and let us hear." 
 
 " It is not too much to my advantage, and you will per- 
 haps laugh at me. I permit the ladies to laugh, from homage 
 to their sex; as to these gentlemen, that is a different thing; 
 — they know me." 
 
 " Keep it up, Lieutenant. God bless you! This duel 
 that now impends will be the twentieth on your own account." 
 
 " It will make my ninety-second on account of others," 
 averred the Doctor, rising. " Speak, my dear O'Mealy." 
 
 " My adventure, then, occurred in 1839. At that time, 
 thanks to the combats between the Orange boys and their 
 enemies, the balls vrhizzed from one end to the other of the 
 Green Isle. I was summoned by a friend, dwelling at Nais, 
 who had an affair of honour. There was not a moment to 
 lose. I was in Dublin when I received the letter, and had 
 only time to run to the hotel to secure the mail-coach, with 
 my little vahse under my arm. Alas! the coach had gone! 
 To fail in friendship was impossible — you know me. Behold 
 me, then, in a driving tempest, with my valise and umbrella, 
 .rolling over the roads in a post-chaise, (such roads!) svrear- 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 163 
 
 ing at the postillion till we reached the little village of 
 Konoby, where the mail-coach halted. I recognised the old 
 driver at a glance; his broad-brimmed hat soaked in the rain, 
 and the water spouting from its rim, with his red face half 
 buried in an enormous cravat of the same colour. He was 
 endeavouring to warm himself before the fire of the hostelry 
 when he saw me, and said: 
 
 " * Do you go with us, sir ? This is an abominable storm, 
 and it will last. Do you calculate upon a seat outside V 
 
 " ' Outside ! What do you mean ? How many passengers 
 have you inside V 
 
 " ' Only one ; he is a queer sort of a being, the funniest chap 
 you ever saw. He has asked me a hundred times if I should 
 have any other passenger. His eye is restless, his face 
 yellow as saffron. I believe he is ill.' 
 
 " ' Know you his name V 
 
 ** ' Xo. He has no luggage ; only two gray paper packets, 
 without label or direction. He will not lose sight of them ; 
 indeed he secures them with a tight grasp.' 
 
 " I deliberated as to passing the night with one of those dis- 
 agreeable beings who sacrifice to their convenience or caprices 
 all the comforts of others. After all, as the rain fell in tor- 
 rents, and the coach was excellent, this neighbourhood of ill- 
 humour would only be an unfortunate accessary in my stormy 
 tour, and I took my seat rather reluctantly, I confess, in the 
 mail-coach. The first thing I stumbled against were the 
 legs of my fellow-passenger. 
 
 " ' Will you allow me, sir, to pass you ?' He replied not ; 
 
164 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 but leaning towards the driver, who was shutting the door, 
 he muttered : 
 
 " ' What the devil does he come here for ; I took my pre- 
 cautions.' 
 
 " ' He followed us in a post-chaise/ said the driver. 
 
 " He closed the door quickly, and the coach rolled along. 
 
 *' The stranger growled, and turned his back towards me ; I 
 was perplexed at his silence and obstinacy, and endeavoured 
 to overcome it, and enter into conversation. 
 
 " * This is horrible weather,' said I. In reality it hailed, 
 and the rain beat against the glasses of the coach door. 
 
 " ' Horrible !' muttered the man, without turning. 
 
 " ' Shocking road !' 
 
 " ' Very bad; and I take care never to risk it without arms.' 
 
 " Saying this, the stranger made a movement, and I heard a 
 clattering of arms, which seemed to proceed from a packet 
 near him. 
 
 '* This gentleman seems to possess a belligerent spirit, 
 thought I ; and after some minutes, falling into a slumber from 
 fatigue, I veered this w^ay and that in such a manner as to 
 fall upon the left shoulder of my neighbour. 
 
 *' * I have an important packet there,' he said to me ; and 
 thrust me oJBf very rudely ; ' you will oblige me if you will 
 move oft from it.' 
 
 " I drew back,without speaking, and in moving I shook out 
 a little pistol that I always carried in my pocket, and it fell 
 into my companion's lap, who trembled. ' Devil ! you are 
 armed also 1' 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 165 
 
 " ' I never go without arms.' 
 
 ** • 1 divined it,' sighed the unknown, giving a long, deep 
 groan. 
 
 " I comprehended nothing of all this, and was quite per- 
 plexed at the bearing of my companion, who after some 
 minutes began to groan anew, as if in great anguish. 
 
 " I again attempted to converse : * You are ill, sir V 
 
 " ' Yes ! They know me in the country round. Ah I if 
 you knew to whom you spoke.' And he again sighed. 
 
 " ' I feel for you, my dear sir, though you are a stranger. 
 I am afflicted that you should be ill in so uncomfortable 
 a situation, — in a carriage, away from home and kind 
 friends.' 
 
 " ' Oh, oh Î What has befallen me ? God knows ! God 
 knows ! I am Barney Covyle, sir !' 
 
 " ' Yery well, sir.' 
 
 " ' Have you not read the journals ? You must be a 
 stranger in the country ; they are filled with my case. I 
 have passed eighteen weeks in the hospital of Dr. Berry, and 
 six in the great hospital, but it has done me no good.' 
 
 " ' Indeed !' replied I. I began to fear for the sanity of 
 my fellow-traveller. 
 
 " ' Alas ! sir, if you knew who I was, you would not be 
 very willing to travel with me.' 
 
 " ' But this was a pleasure I had not looked forward to.' 
 
 " ' Pleasure if you will have it so. When I bit the thumb 
 of poor Thomas Owen, that did not give him great pleasure, 
 I believe.' 
 
166 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 " ' Bite a thumb ?' asked I, trembling, and sinking down to 
 the floor of the carriage ; ' and for what V 
 
 " ' Ah ! Why ! why ! They are not agreed upon that. 
 Some say it is the liver, others the brain ; these, that it is the 
 spine; those, the pericardium ; as for me, I believe they are 
 all wrong alike.' 
 
 '' ' Is there a name for your malady V 
 
 " ' Alas ! there is.' 
 
 *' ' What V 
 
 '"I do not like to say. If I was to have a paroxysm of the 
 phrenzy, this night — but I will endeavour to keep it ofif.' 
 
 " ' How! such attacks! and they suffer you to take a seat 
 in the coach when you are in this condition ?' 
 
 " ' Ah! they know it not. I am sure old Rowney barks 
 and howls now, wretched dog that he is.' 
 
 " ' Rowney ?' 
 
 " * Yes, the dog that bit me. 
 
 '' ' Ah, ah ! Is this disorder of yours called hydrophobia V 
 
 " ' Exactly.' 
 
 "There was silence; during which I scarcely breathed, but 
 remained trembling in all my members, and looking at the 
 carriage-door; the horses travelled at a quick pace. My 
 mad companion continued : 
 
 " ' It is only eight days since I began to bite;' this he said 
 with imperturbable gravity; ' I am in my good moments.' 
 
 " ' But you ought never to have come out,' said I, elevating 
 my voice. 
 
 " ' Speak not so loud, I pray you, that excites me.' 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 167 
 
 " ' Sir/ I said, in a tone soft and gentle, ' it is imprudent 
 for you to be travelling in this condition.' 
 
 " ' Oh 1 if I should not see a river, a fountain, nor running 
 water of any sort, I can go on. It is the water, sir, that I 
 cannot endure. That brings on my paroxysms.' 
 
 " The coach rapidly reached the bridge of Leighlin, and I, 
 as may be easily believed, felt fear creeping through every 
 ■pore. My eye fixed upon my terrible companion, watching 
 fearfully all his movements, my ear catching his faintest 
 breath, I cursed the hour, the folly, and the post-chaise, 
 which had plunged me into this absurd and cruel danger. 
 At length I heard him snore. ' Is this a precursory symp- 
 tom of the access of his disease !' thought I. Hastening to 
 avail myself of his slumber, I gently reached my hand to the 
 sash of the door, slowly and softly letting it sUde down, 
 drawing out my legs by degrees from under the seat, I 
 finished by slowly opening the door, and glided noiselessly 
 down the steps into the muddy road; then with a stentorian 
 voice I cried out to the driver: ' Stop ! I wish to get up 
 upon your coach.' The tempest was more violent than ever. 
 The driver was much surprised to see a young man in a frock- 
 coat, without any outside garment, exposing himself in such 
 a storm. At last, shivering and benumbed with cold, I 
 stopped with the carriage at the hotel Trèfle, at Nois.' 
 
 " Whatever satisfaction I felt in escaping from the hydro- 
 phobe, I was urged on by curiosity to see what became of 
 my insupportable fellow-traveller, and determined, if neces- 
 sary, to set the police upon his track. I let myself down 
 
168 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 lightly, and I saw the hydrophobe with his packets under his 
 arm, which no doubt contained his arms, stepping most 
 peaceably into the hotel. 
 
 " ' Stop that man !' I cried to the driver. 
 " ' Stop whom V 
 
 " * The madman in the green surtout.' 
 " In the mean time, the hydrophobe laid down his two 
 packets on the table in the inn, and, peaceably removing his 
 outside garment, he warmed his feet. Three or four handker- 
 chiefs of wool and silk which guarded his throat, and half 
 muffled his face, were successively removed; and when fol- 
 lowed by the crowd, who were aghast, I entered the hotel, 
 the hydrophobe, turning round, hailed me : 
 
 " * Ah! friend, how have you been since we dined together ? 
 I had not recognised you, nor you me, I think, — had you V 
 
 " * How! Is this you, Dr. O'Driscol, who have been playing 
 the harlequin at my expense, making me pass the night in 
 the battery of a storm V 
 
 " ' A word in thine ear, friend,' said O'Driscol, with a 
 mysterious air ; ' seest thou these two little packets ? They 
 contain fifty thousand pounds sterling, intrusted to my care 
 by young Nelson, who was killed in a duel before my eyes. 
 I was alone in the coach; it was known I w^as carrying 
 money; I took thee, friend, for a thief, and rid myself of thy 
 company as I best could.' " 
 
 These whimsical frivolities amused me much at the time. 
 I was too young to read the riddle of the sphynx, and per- 
 ceive the reahty behind the veil. During this charming sport, 
 
Thoughts upox Ireland. 169 
 
 balls flew, houses were burned, the peasantry killed and 
 mutilated each other. There was no well-being; heroism 
 everywhere, good sense nowhere. The drama unfolded, and 
 yet life was not serious. The people conspired to relieve 
 themselves from ennui, and assassinated a neighbour to pass 
 away time. Every thing conspires against poor Ireland. 
 Even her peculiar geographical position, and her recklessness, 
 continually place her in imminent peril. Over-excitement has 
 become necessary to the people. Their whole life is a drama. 
 They are continually contriving little scenes whose only pur- 
 pose is frolic. In Ireland, as in France, the masses are 
 theatrical ; they love decoration and costume ; they also fol- 
 low instinct, but fail in principle. 
 
 I had seen in England hard and rebellious spirits, pliable 
 under the law, and contributing to the grandeur and glory 
 of the nation; but in this country justice is no longer re- 
 spected. At the assizes, when the list of the accused was 
 larger than ordinary, and the people interested themselves 
 in some among " them, the military force was called out to 
 secure the prisoners; then the village became a camp. Many 
 of the neighbouring hamlets would assemble to lend their 
 aid, and united they would all rush upon the troops to tear 
 from justice the unfortunate victims. Soon women and chil- 
 dren mingle in the combat; the streets are filled with the 
 wounded and dying, and houses are often burned during the 
 affray. At length the justice of peace, who had formerly 
 been a conspirator, but becoming discontented with his 
 accomplices, had betrayed them in good season to secure him- 
 8 
 
ItO Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 self life and the recompense of office, passes sentence upon the 
 offenders mth all the cruelty of a renegade. 
 
 No delineator has drawn to the life, no historian has repro- 
 duced, the Irish; their mad freaks and sudden ebullitions; 
 their burlesques and chaotic straining after the impossible. 
 Ireland is certainly a unique country. 
 
 I would not let O'Mealy rest until he had arranged a tour 
 that I wanted to take vf ith him along the Irish coasts and 
 through the richest districts of that unhappy country. The 
 landscapes of Ireland resemble no others; an expression of 
 melancholy and solitary wildness pervades them. The cragged 
 and sharp outlines of the mountains assume anomalous forms, 
 and give you an impression of strange and almost grotesque 
 wildness. There seems to have been in times past a frolic 
 of Nature ; the wild sports of her giant rocks, if I may so 
 say. But Nature's freaks are most perceptible amid the 
 solemn and heavy superincumbent granite blocks: whenever 
 she detects a flaw or cavity in these old fixtures, she fills 
 it with a soft mould, and up springs a garden of gay colours; 
 scarlet-broom, and other flowers, intermingled with the deep 
 verdure of the fern. Upon the sides of the rocky hills issue 
 a thousand little streams, which in their sinuous path some- 
 times creep, and then again rush foaming over the innu- 
 merable little angles and edges which offer obstruction to 
 their course; and at length, after tumbling and foaming in 
 sparkling jet-d'eaux, they reunite in the hollow of a valley, 
 seeming- to bemoan their imprisonment. All along the coast 
 are glens and ravines, many leagues in length, where you 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 171 
 
 meet no living beings except sheep, without shepherds. The 
 unceasing moan of the winds, the lengthened murmur of the 
 waves, the savage wildness of the peasants' huts, half con- 
 cealed by the scraggy branches of the scarlet-oak, added still 
 to the desolateness of th€ scene. It seemed impossible that 
 human beings could be sheltered by these bits of granite- 
 stones, heaped up without cement, or that they could content 
 themselves within their mud-walls and thatched roofs, which 
 have cost but ten shilHngs in erecting. Upon the summit of 
 an ocean promontory, I saw the outlines of a child watching 
 one or two nanny-goats; his figure, almost denuded, seemed 
 sketched upon the cerulean blue of the heavens. He was 
 singing some old Gaelic air, of which he knew not the mean- 
 ing. Since his birth he has seen only the clouds which flit 
 across the heavens, the will-o'- wisps from the marsh, and one 
 or two rude cabins ; all his lore is the superstitious legends 
 instilled by his mother. The extent of his knowledge of 
 civilization is, that down below is a little chapel, and farther 
 along, between two crags, is a thatched cabin, of which the 
 back is a granite-rock, and its sign waves in the breeze and 
 swings in the storm. This remarkable building is a shebeen, 
 or tavern, seldom visited except by smugglers, and whose 
 only room is at the same time a kitchen and a parlour, a 
 dining-hall and a sleeping-apartment. There the smugglers 
 halt, and recreate themselves by cursing the Saxons, and 
 seeking means to fight them. Frequently a subterranean 
 gallery, excavated within the rocks, serves as a receptacle 
 for barrels of brandy, small bales of lace, fusils, and powder, 
 
172 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 to sell in the interior, or to such persons as foment the peri- 
 odical insurrections of the country. The landlady of the 
 smuggler's inn, of pure Irish race, would be slain sooner 
 than betray her accomplices, who are sailors, pirates, jockeys, 
 and refugees from justice; these are all united by a common 
 hatred against England. 
 
 " The Irishman is worth his weight in gold, 
 And the Saxon the gallows is just fit to hold." 
 
 This refrain, reduced some ages since from two Gaelic 
 verses, and sang in chorus by the whiskey revellers in the 
 shebeen^ still echoes from one end of Ireland to the other. 
 You hear it in the streets of Dublin, and in the midst of the 
 bogs which cover the central part of Ireland ; it is the con- 
 crete of the national sentiment, the indelible thought of 
 Ireland, and her whole political code. 
 
 If you proceed some leagues farther, and gain admittance 
 into a feudal château, you will see two square towers and 
 battlements, which were formerly united to a wall, now 
 destroyed. You will there find the same characteristics ; 
 the same animosity, in its rash and furious impotency, against 
 the stranger and the Saxon. All their miseries, moral and 
 material, are displayed upon a great scale ; a shattered 
 manor, disorderly farm, and fortress in ruins. This singular 
 château is open to the winds on all sides. All you see mani- 
 fests negligence and inveterate idleness. A forest of lawless 
 elms obtrude their branches through the broken parapets. 
 One or two little structures, with pyramidal roofs, and covered 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. It8 
 
 with tiles of broken slate, are attached to the main building. 
 Ploughs in a ruinous condition, and rusty harrows, were 
 thrown pell-mell in the midst of armorial escutcheons and 
 broken ogives ; sheep, oxen, and fox-hounds saunter lazily 
 down broken terraces which descend to the sea; the basins 
 and fish-ponds are half choked np by parasitical plants, which 
 spread afar their putrid miasmas. In fine, if you enter 
 under the vault, you pass through a large court, meeting 
 no other obstruction than broken flag-stones, brambles, and 
 falling stones from the walls. Passing along through large 
 desert corridors, doors opening to the right and left, you see 
 solitary unfurnished apartments. The family, who bear a 
 name more ancient than that of de Coucy, have sought 
 refuge in a tower, half ruined. There they live, sans mil 
 pensemenf, as said La Fontaine, upon the wrecks of glory. 
 The fire blazes in the large chimney ; frequently the echoes 
 of their orgies mingle with the murmurs of the neighbouring 
 ocean. The gouty patriarch, whose embroidered and faded 
 vest has seen better days, and whose eyes sparkle beneath a 
 crown of silvered curling locks, is not the last to curse the 
 Saxon. Half peasant and half gentleman, he is attired in 
 black woollen stockings, old breeches of tawny velvet, buckles 
 which simulate the diamond, ruffles in the style of Louis 
 XY., coat and vest " à la Française." He has passed his 
 life in selling cheap and buying dear, and has " burned the 
 candle at tbc two ends," as said Panurge, His youngest 
 son, lieutenant of the horse, and his eldest, who will inherit 
 his title, follow in the same path. The patrimony having 
 
It4 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 entirely disappeared, they have no more care, and it is a 
 hundred to one if they do not conspire against their op- 
 pressors. Although the real ownership of the domain and 
 ruined château may be an hypothesis, and it has been sub- 
 jected to mortgage upon mortgage for at least six genera- 
 tions past, still no usurious creditor has ever dared to rout 
 the family and take possession. The vassals (as poor as the 
 lord of the manor) would drive off invaders with the fusil or 
 club. Should necessity or chance lead an Englishman to 
 these desert shores, no one would point out his path ; swarms 
 of tattered beggars would surround him, weeping or laugh- 
 ing, and asking alms ; and the poorest mountain peasant 
 would receive a better welcome than the Saxon stranger. 
 
 In returning through the central parts of the island, you 
 find yourself amid the bogs, more desolate and sad than the 
 scenery of rock, hill, and shore, you have quitted. Pro- 
 ceeding farther, you see a large extent of country, and many 
 tanneries scattered along; you meet with multitudes of liv- 
 ing animals, that seem like beasts upon two legs, nearly 
 denuded, and midway between intoxication and famine — 
 between the slumber of the brute and sanguinary combat. 
 
 O'Mealy said to me, in his prelude to my tour: "When 
 you have studied the origin and progress of our miseries, 
 material and moral, you will no more rely upon the sayings 
 of the philosophers and politicians. In Ireland, all that 
 the English esteem is scorned ; and the reverse holds true. 
 Enter one of our thatched cabins, without roof, door, or 
 chimney, the walls half covered with remnants of old garbs, 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 175 
 
 and there you will see squeezed together five or six poor 
 wretches, almost as naked as their asylum, partaking of their 
 bread that was baked six months since, and must be cut 
 with a hatchet. You will find that this family of men, 
 women, and children, seated upon their damp clay floor 
 like beasts in their lair, devouring ill-cooked potatoes, the 
 only luxury for festival-days, not only feel no envy of the 
 small proprietors of English farms, who rise at five in 
 the morning, and gain their living by the sweat of the 
 brow, but they would regard them as vile slaves. And, 
 in fact, the Saxon, who calls himself free, is a slave, 
 from labour and habit. The poor Celt of our bogs is free 
 as the roamer of the woods. The layer above is of the 
 same mould ; full of giddy independence, the frequenters 
 of concerts, theatres, and balls. You will understand the 
 significance of the plaintive and wild melodies of Thomas 
 Moore. Sometimes you hear, mingling with tramp of danc- 
 ing and gaiety of music, groans from rebels flogged under 
 the Governor's window. 
 
 '' The subdivisions of our small farms into still smaller 
 portions, which will scarcely maintain the occupants, are 
 the material causes of the ruin of the country. 
 
 *' The English or Irish proprietor of twelve thousand acres, 
 would fear to live in a country where the smallest farmer or 
 tenant, who was discontented with his lot, might waylay him 
 in the corner of a wood, or behind a hedge, with a pistol or 
 club. He would take no care of his domain, but leave it to 
 the administration of the middle-man, (an agent who pays 
 
176 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 him the rent,) and spend in other countries the revenue 
 accruing to him. In his absence, the land would be divided 
 and subdivided as the middle-man found it for his interest; 
 and the portions, already so small, the renters would let 
 out to others, till the whole would swarm with miserable 
 wretches, vrho multiply in proportion to their distress : true 
 warren of wild animals, of which each one in ordinary times 
 could scarcely live by cultivating his one or two inches, 
 and the first year of dearth, fever, and famine would carry 
 off thousands." The Captain continued his description as 
 having been an eye-witness : " When I visited Donegal, I 
 perceived plainly that the more the land was divided, the 
 more miserable were the peasants. At Raphoe, especially, 
 extreme misery had reduced men and women to the condition 
 of skeletons, and many of the people kept their beds, not 
 having clothes to wear. This frightful life has its charms 
 for our poor savages ! They taste, in their independence, a 
 ferocious joy that they would not exchange for any rational 
 liberty. You might deprive them of life sooner than the 
 hand-breadth of soil which is their pride, although it ruins, 
 instead of supporting them." 
 
 Upon our return to Dublin, I asked Captain O'Mealy if 
 he hoped that Ireland would ever emerge from barbarism.* 
 His answer was, that ** Political formulas would never suf- 
 
 " Many of the ideas in this Essay upon Ireland, of wliich a part 
 appeared in 1848, are precisely those that the great statesman. Sir Robert 
 Peel, endeavoured to enforce; also Sir John Russell, in 1849. It seems 
 indubitable that they would save Ireland. 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. . ITT 
 
 fice, or special parliament of their own. Brilliant metaphors 
 — bold apostrophes — ^would rush upon us, from their eloquent 
 speeches, as cataracts; neither would they fail in the spirit 
 of intrigue, more than in order and eloquence ; but Ireland 
 would gain nothing thereby. Ireland resembles the child 
 who would withdraw itself from the family shelter, and can- 
 not prosper alone or separated ; independent spirits who, to 
 gratify vanity, would compromise life itself. The vital in- 
 terest of Ireland is to remain united to the family group 
 which composes Great Britain. A government of her own 
 would not suit the habits of this people. To attain that, 
 she is* lacking in every suitable quality, and even defective. 
 She has no patience, perseverance, economy, and love of 
 labour; she poorly cultivates her soil, and has not the taste 
 to cultivate it well; she unites the Indian's want of foresight 
 to the taste for luxuries and splendours of civilized life. 
 Peasants, citizens, lords, love extravagance, and even ruin; 
 a quiet and calm life would be an insupportable burden ; 
 they would not give a day of idleness and revelry, combats 
 and adventures, for ten years of the riches of Holland, en- 
 sured by a life of industry. The civilizer, or rather, the 
 restorer, of Ireland, would have to struggle against the use- 
 less virtues and brilliant qualities of this extraordinary race. 
 He would have to redeem a soil let alone for ages, and 
 become a stagnant morass.* 
 
 * Here follow some details upou the resources of Ireland, her com- 
 merce, and the banking system, which might not interest the general 
 reader. 
 
 8* 
 
178 Notabilities ix France and ExglaKd. 
 
 "But the moral metamorphosis is above all things neces- 
 saiy. How proceed to labour in mines and drain land, when 
 one i)art of Ireland would not suffer the introduction of 
 foreign workmen, and another is too proud to labour ? How 
 obtain the capital necessary, if it is thought dishonourable 
 and degrading to use the hatchet and spade, the shorel and 
 mattock ? K our indolent race is appalled at the idea of 
 burning heaths, draining morasses, applying the water-power 
 to manufactures, exidoring mines of copper and coal, the 
 exercise of political rights more extended would prove a 
 weariness to the flesh. 
 
 " It would l>e a sublime work to civilize Ireland. She offers 
 the most beautiful elements to encourage the attempt : a 
 common faith ; a race, keen, shrewd, intelligent, and brave. 
 Whoever lends himself to the great mission, should take 
 warning from the materialists of France, and before pro- 
 ceeding to re-organize Ireland, and promote her material 
 interests, should begin at the source, and revive the divine 
 idea of moral perfection." 
 
 In this, my first tour in Ireland, I descried in the dis- 
 tant horizon that little cloud, slowly arising, which burst 
 in a tempest at the crisis of 1847, when there was not 
 only a famine, but a revolt — prelude to the catastrophes 
 which befell Europe in 1848. Ireland was in the vanguard 
 of our miseries; she sent forth the savage war-whoop before 
 the battle. She suffered more keenly than we in France 
 from the same evils : social iniquities, a population without 
 principle, and without bread ; sensual materialism, giving 
 
Thoughts upox Ireland. 1Ï9 
 
 an imperfect civilization and a false education ; barbarism, 
 springing from the bosom of corruptions ; an ill division 
 of labour and capital ; above all, great crimes from a 
 people over-excited by the horrors of famine. If I speak 
 thus freely of this charming and afflicted race, whom I have 
 seen so intimately, it is because the vices which are destroy- 
 ing them are ours. With Ireland, as with us, the question 
 that is called political is altogether moral. Restore health 
 and activity to these proud and jealous souls, and they will 
 take care of the rest. Instil religion and moraUty, and you 
 will see these bright intelligences reconstruct society. It is 
 in vain to give them formulas. Examine the grievances 
 of France for a hundred years past, and you will perceive 
 that formulas or political constitutions, new organizations 
 without end, and prescriptions which cannot be followed, do 
 not reach the depth. Unless you could change the men, you 
 cannot prevent the j^easant from preferring death in hunger 
 and rags, and the pleasure of fighting his neighbour whec 
 drunk, to living respectably and industriously under a slated 
 roof, and cultivating his own field. Labour is a hard thing; 
 economy induces weariness; go and propose to this people to 
 pursue these virtues, and be recompensed by order, neatness, 
 and comforts — this people, who for five hundred years have 
 revelled in the perils and pleasures of savage life, and they 
 would spurn your counsel. 
 
 The genius of Ireland offers the most singular mélange 
 that the migration of races, in their various stages of culture 
 or ignorance, has ever produced. Celts, Milesians, thrown 
 
180 Notabilities ix Fraxce and England. 
 
 by political chances into a Teutonic-Anglo-Xorman frame, 
 they have preserved their Oriental indolence, subject to 
 terrible outbreaks, with the old Celtic rapidity of action. 
 Like us, they pass quickly from thought to act. To vehe- 
 mence and credulity, to the Asiatic apathy and ardour, the 
 Irish unite the suppleness and versatility of the Celt. Love 
 and war are necessary to them. Their political nullity and 
 commercial inferiority drives them to revelry, which under 
 another sun and another situation might not seduce them, 
 but now it benumbs their sense of pain. When they cannot 
 fight, they simulate the battle whose reahty it is not in their 
 power to enjoy. Even children, coming from school, seek 
 occasion to assail the passengers ; the people mix in the 
 brawl, and attack or defend one another with stones. 
 
 Without end or aim for his activity, however, the Irish- 
 man remains faithful to his country; this is the beautiful side 
 of his character. The Irish type is never obliterated; it is 
 every where recognisable in the spheres of art, poetry, and 
 politics. The young daughter of Ireland, with blue eyes and 
 black hair, full of witchery and caprice, sings her national 
 melodies, wild and sportive, joyous and melancholy, and from 
 the slowest and most mournful ditties darts at once to the 
 most vivacious. In fine, a meridional richness of genius 
 is concealed beneath the barbarism of the North ; a ray 
 shines forth behind the clouds; a gleam of Oriental poetry 
 peers through their tears, and almost irradiates their rags. 
 Strange and sad grandeur ! Even politics is a little mad- 
 in Ireland, at which no person in France has a right to 
 
Thoughts upon Ireland. 181 
 
 be astonished ; shaking her cap and bells, her great men 
 make brilliant harangues; the reckless, giddy multitude are 
 roused to riot, brea.k heads, which all serves their own ruin, 
 and the good of their enemies. But it is not for us, alas! to 
 blame them. 
 
 Such is unfortunate Ireland.* 
 
 * The following remarks from an Edinburgh Review chime in so well 
 with the comparison of Chasles between his own country and Ireland that 
 I insert them here. Speaking of the arbitrary rule of the usurper, the 
 reviewer says : — 
 
 " The natural result of such a tyranny is either a sudden and universal 
 insuiTection, or silent abject submission. There can be no middle course. 
 The French have preferred the latter. They are bold, but not resolute. They 
 are violent and impetuous, but not enthusiastic. The audacity with which 
 the mob has, from time to time, I'isen against the garrison of Paris, mur- 
 dered its outposts, stormed its barracks, and repulsed its assaults, is the 
 fruit, not so much of any love of freedom or hatred of despotism, as of in- 
 difference to what they were hazarding. A life alternating between toil, 
 vice, and debauchery, endeared by few social sympathies, ennobled by no 
 ulterior objects, a mere struggle for existence and amusement, is readily 
 risked, because it is scarcely worth preserving. The èmeuteiir gambles 
 with life, as he is ready to gamble with any thing else that he possesses ; 
 if he wins lie has a week or two of triumph, and boasting, and importance ; 
 if he falls, his troubles are over, and he quits a world in which he had to 
 suffer far more than to enjoy. Such insurgents may sweep away by sud- 
 den assault an unprepared or inadequate regular force. For one day, 
 for two days, and it may be for three, they can repel from their barricades 
 even a considerable army, but they are unfit for a prolonged civil war. 
 They want skill, they want combination, and, above all, they want per- 
 tinacity." 
 
n-B^QXt ^ZtWtB 
 
 THE SMUGGLERS. 
 
 ITfE again crossed the Channel; I parted from O'Mealy 
 at Anglesea, and from thence returned to London. 
 The followmg summer, a young man named Boyce, a poet, 
 and in a decline, interesting and gentle, like all those who 
 feel that life is departing, and who aspire to a better world, 
 was going to visit his family in the little village of Nacton, 
 county of Suffolk ; and he proposed to me to accompany him. 
 I assented with pleasure to this proposition, as I should see 
 the coasts of England under a new point of view, and the 
 varied scenery of the sea-shores, with the eccentricities and 
 peculiarities of the natives, opened a new field of observation. 
 The little village of Xacton is not far from the ocean, and 
 is near the confluence of the rivers Stour and Orwell, which 
 at their embouchure form dangerous alluvions of sandbanks 
 overgrown with grass. Between the river Orwell and Nac- 
 ton there is a large tract of land, renowned to this day for 
 its fertility, called Wolfskettel, which owes its appellation to 
 the bloody battle fought by the Saxon duke of that name 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 183 
 
 figainst the Danes. It would seem that human blood has a 
 wonderful effect m fertilizing the land, or that God recom- 
 penses man by his benefactions for the grievous outrages 
 they inflict upon each other, for almost all fields of battle, 
 and this among others, have become celebrated for the opu- 
 lence of their harvests. In the midst of an arid and desolate 
 shore, a portion of Wolfskettel has been cultivated with suc- 
 cess these ten ages past by a race of farmers, for the most 
 part descendants of the Danish invaders. A large mass of 
 yellow hair flows over the shoulders of these tall, stalwart 
 men, with large breadth of shoulders, as you would know by 
 seeing the hand of one of them, leaning upon the plough-horse 
 of the North, almost as enormous as the master, who guides 
 it in the plough from morning till night along the furrows 
 with imperturbable gravity. The animals and men bear some 
 resemblance to each other, for the silvered mane of the mare, 
 and her strong withers, the large breast, and clear bay colour, 
 harmonize with the fair hair of her leader, as it floats in the 
 wind. The patois of these peasants is of another age and 
 another world. The cry ivhore-r-r-hle , when they finish one 
 furrow and begin another, recalls the old accent of war. The 
 strong gutturals of the North, issuing from these colossal 
 chests, are as unintelligible to the English of London as the 
 language of the Caribbee Islands. Sometimes we see a fair- 
 haired, fair-faced Saxon girl steering one of these horses, 
 without saddle, her little bare legs almost hid in the horse's 
 mane. The women also ride these unsaddled horses without 
 fear; and in the frequent encounters of the smugglers with 
 
184 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 the guard-posts, one frequently sees them — or rather one has 
 seen them, for these customs are passing away — handle man- 
 fully the short-sword of the mariner, and the fusil used in 
 boarding a ship. The names of their counties are as untinged 
 with Norman sounds as their race is unmixed with Norman 
 blood; (as North-folk, Norfolk; South-folk, Suffolk ; East- 
 Saxon, Essex ;) also their family names, Cracknell, Catch- 
 pole, Wringnell, Springtree, true commoners' names, have 
 descended for centuries unallied with the aristocratic nomen- 
 clature of Beauclerc (Beauclerck), des Couray (Churchill), of 
 Normandy. 
 
 The little village of Nacton, in the county of Suffolk, has 
 only one street, which seems to pursue its quiet way, lagging 
 along the edge of a dark ravine, and you ask whether this 
 village is alive or dead. Traversing this deserted street in 
 the night, you are surprised at a low roaring sound which 
 follows you; that is the ocean, which you see not, but it 
 speaks to you, for it is near. The city of Ipswich, built 
 almost at the mouth of the Orwell, is the centre of agricul- 
 ture and commerce of all this district of country. The 
 traveller sees it when, leaving the little village of Nacton, he 
 reaches the summit of a hill, which is called Bishop's Hill; 
 one side looks upon the ocean, the other offers a rich and 
 extensive view of the country. An amphitheatre unequally 
 wooded, where arise before you, as by stages, woods and 
 meadows, and you count twelve little boroughs or cities, 
 known by the spires of twelve Gothic churches. Then in the 
 distance you perceive the serpentine Orwell, which augments 
 
Se A- SHORE Scenes. 185 
 
 as it approaches the sea, waters many valleys, disappears, and 
 reappears in the lights and shadows, describes an elegant 
 curve, and, forming an arc of a circle partly around the 
 pretty town of Ipswich, situated at tlie foot of the hill, rushes 
 on over the dangerous sandbars of which I have spoken, and 
 making a junction with the Stour, is merged in that stream. 
 These shores have frequently been selected by English land- 
 scape painters, to whom they offer a favourite study ; they can 
 rarely find combined maritime views and rustic charms, the 
 contrast of smiling culture and the savage wildness of a deso- 
 late coast. 
 
 During my stay in Nacton I gathered the details of a 
 popular idyl, which I will presently relate. It arose in real 
 life, the most low and savage ; it commenced in the murmur 
 of the roar of the German Ocean, and ended in the murmurs 
 of the Pacific. The facts are authentic, attested by the 
 journals of the time and the records of judicial authority. 
 Justice, who willingly interferes with the romance of the 
 people, was engaged largely here. 
 
 Towards the end of the last century an old superstition 
 was attached to one of the most sterile and elevated points 
 of the coast, called Bawdsey Cliff, which still subsisted, and 
 seemed even to revive. The coast-guards (mostly from Ire- 
 land) were stationed at different distances, in order to watch 
 for the embarkations of the smugglers ; and in their ghost-like 
 wanderings or concealments in dark, mysterious ravines, 
 where they would lie in ambush, contributed not a little to 
 maintain popular agitation; for no people are so superstitious 
 
186 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 as the Irish. In the mean time, thev were active and vigilant, 
 distinguished for their love of fighting and giddy bravery; 
 these qualities, together with the tricks and stratagems 
 which, like the savage, they employed, made them fearful to 
 the enemies of custom-house duties. They braved heat and 
 cold, wind and rain — and the fearful north winds whistled fit- 
 fully over these sands; and still more, their duties exposed 
 them to the hatred and malevolence of the neighbourhood. 
 But they felt no personal animosity; they would kill and be 
 killed with imperturbable good-humour. 
 
 The friends of the smugglers would pardon those Irish 
 coast-guards who would frequently sit at their table and 
 relate marvellous stories : for instance, that upon the de- 
 clivity of Bawdsey Cliff dwelt a legion of phantoms, which 
 were the ghosts of smugglers of past times ; that their 
 apparitions boded ill ; that they vanished in the sands at 
 will, and that all the officers of government hardy enough 
 to follow them were infaliil)Iy ingulfed in subterranean 
 regions. Listen, reader, to the cause of this belief, which, 
 thanks to the oratory of the Irish and the credulity of their 
 auditors, spread far and wide. 
 
 On the summit of Bawdsey Cliff was a poor rude cabin, 
 with a little orchard enclosed by a stone wall, without 
 cement. Near the cabin, behind the wall of the orchard, 
 was an immense well, without curb-stone, remarkable only 
 for the size of the cable and the wooden bucket which 
 served to draw water. The orifice of this well was guarded 
 by heaps of broken pottery and fragments of bottles. It 
 
Sea-shore Scenes 181 
 
 was not without motive that the access was made so difficult. 
 About twelve feet below the ground, in the side of the ^\e\\, 
 which was walled with stones and pebbles, was a small 
 arcade, which served for an entrance to a singular grotto, 
 that was unknown to all the country around, though it 
 was one of the natural curiosities. 
 
 The form of this grotto is as an immense cylinder, as 
 perfect as if constructed by square and compass. There 
 were incontestable marks that this cave had formerly con- 
 tained a mass of waters, which gradually excavated, or 
 ploughed for itself in many concentric circles, a passage to 
 the sea through this vault. The smugglers around this coast 
 had long since availed themselves of this natural resource. 
 They had turned the course of the water, and excavated 
 a path towards the ocean; they also made a subterranean 
 communication from their grotto to the chimney of the 
 cabin, so that the smoke from their fire should find the 
 same vent. In fine, that they might complete the success 
 of so many ingenious contrivances, they had furnished, with 
 some attempt at beauty, their domicil, where one could enter 
 only through the well ; that is to say, take passage in a 
 bucket, and aided by the peasant or his wife, stop before the 
 arcade which served as a doorway to the grotto. The wall 
 concealed the well from those who ascended the cliff by the 
 sea, so that the smugglers, keenly pursued, would wind 
 round the wall, fling themselves into the bucket, stop at 
 the archway by means of a grappling-iron which served 
 them for an anchor, and there hide themselves in their 
 
188 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 obscure retreat, where tliey found food, fire, and shelter. 
 This magical Tanishment of the contrabandists had so often 
 recurred, that at Nacton and Ipswich it had become an 
 article of faith. 
 
 But there was one of the Irish coast-guards whom this 
 supernatural explanation would not satisfy. This man, 
 Patrick O'Brian, was shrewd, and determined to see into 
 the matter. He had remarked the wall around which the 
 pursued always turned, and he was filled with an intense 
 curiosity to look into the interior of the Phantom^ s Well. 
 This cost him dear, as we shall soon see. 
 
 An old labourer and his family lived in the cabin, of 
 whom the smugglers had made friends. Almost all the 
 population of these strands are poor. Many bales of 
 lace, more than one high-priced shawl, and innumerable 
 casks of brandy, rum, gin, which were called in their slang, 
 foam of the sea, found their way to the peasants, who had 
 no desire to take part against illegal industry which supplied 
 them with precious goods at so cheap a rate. The larger 
 part of the peasantry around did not know when the captains 
 of the brigs disembarked with their cargoes, which they 
 still call the cargo of moonshine. The inhabitants of these 
 coasts, like people of all countries, as soon as they can attest 
 their ancient enjoyment of the most lawless freedom, claim it 
 as a right ; and people of the frontiers, as those of the 
 coasts, would willingly arm themselves against the law to 
 defend the contrabandists of the sea or land. The wife 
 of the labourer was of the same opinion, for she had re- 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 189 
 
 ceived more than one jyresent to confirm it, from the captains 
 of the brigs, and was therefore their devoted friend. Poor 
 Pat, the coast-guard, therefore, could not have done a more 
 unwise thing than to express to one of these female partisans 
 his desire to see a little of what passed inside this famous 
 well. She consented without much urging, since he had 
 such a "strange fancy," to aid him. Then she assisted 
 him in placing himself at ease in the bucket ; but the chain 
 unrolling with more rapidity than he expected, he was 
 plunged and replunged in the bottom of this well as often 
 as suited the woman who balanced the chain. In vain 
 by his plaintive cries did he endeavour to soften this fe- 
 male savage. "Jœhel! H'angel ! D'harling!" exclaimed he, 
 with the Oriental guttural. She ceased not to ply the 
 cord, alternately sinking and raising her victim, till she 
 heard him no longer. Pat was now sensible of his fool- 
 hardiness, and holding fast upon the iron ring of the bucket, 
 he moved not. He hoped by feigning death to escape his 
 persecutor, and climb the length of the cable with that skill 
 and agility that mariners frequently exercise on shipboard. 
 He had an affair with bitter enemies, as adroit and more 
 vigilant than he. The advantage was on their side. 
 
 At length he raised his head, and hearing no sound, 
 looked up, called, and hearing no reply he seized the chain, 
 and by the aid of hands and feet soon reached the opening 
 in the wall of the well. At that moment, stopping to draw 
 breath, believing himself safe, his legs were caught by iron 
 pincers, which squeezed them mercilessly ; his hands let go 
 
190 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 their hold, he fell head downwards, and was drawn through 
 the arch into the grotto, where a mattress sheltered his poor 
 head, which run the risk of being broken against the wall of 
 the w^ell. In fine, he was now in the spirits' cave, and 
 his ears were regaled by shouts of laughter, at his expense, 
 which resounded from side to side ; and he saw a dozen 
 sailors whom the misadventures of the too curious coast- 
 guard had excited to extraordinary and noivsy mirth. 
 
 In fact, it so chanced that Pat was introduced to the full 
 assembly of freebooters, however unwittingly ; and if we 
 had a romance to w^rite, we should here paint the interior 
 of the cavern, the flaming torches, the mustachios of these 
 wild men, the fright of Irish Pat, and his belief that hell 
 had opened her yawning gulf to receive him ; but we find 
 nothing of all this in the reports and judiciary documents of 
 the year 1Ï90, when this scene was enacted. We say only, 
 and without entrenching upon the domain of romancers, that 
 our freebooters felt themselves as much embarrassed by their 
 prize as Pat by his intrusion. There were many opinions 
 advanced in this assembly, but that wiiich united the 
 greatest number of voices was very rigorous — nothing less 
 than to destroy poor Pat, as the only means to ensure 
 eternal silence and rid themselves of all fear. Pat, too late, 
 cursed his bold and reckless curiosity; he bad discovered the 
 secret which, if made known, would put these marauders' 
 lives in jeopardy, but he had put his own life in the power of 
 those who hesitated at no crime. These men then prayed 
 the Irishman to take a glass of gin, to comfort his heart and 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 191 
 
 prepare him for his last trip, telling him he should go off in 
 the style that suited him best. " Will you be drowned in 
 the well, or hewn to pieces by the sabre ?" said they. He 
 replied, " I choose neither the one nor the other." Just 
 then, as they were all in merriment, the captain entered, 
 if we can call it an entrance, being let down in a bucket, 
 and crawling through a hole in the wall, as before described. 
 
 Will Laud — for such was his name, and he will frequently 
 appear in our history — was a young man of twenty-five, and 
 recognised for chief by these men. He ordered that the eyes of 
 the poor Irishman should be bandaged, and his face covered 
 with a thick veil, and the chain from the well should be set 
 a-going. Pat, who believed he should be drowned, prayed 
 to Saint Patrick; but, instead of descending, he felt himself 
 drawn up : and when his eyes were uncovered, he found that 
 he was in a very pretty brig, even that of Captain Laud ; 
 they coasted some time near the shore, and at last left him 
 on a desert point upon the eastern shore, and giving him 
 some money for his journey, enjoined silence as the price of 
 the life granted. 
 
 From this account of the smugglers, it may be seen how 
 great were the resources at their disposal, and how deep and 
 extensive was the basis and sphere of their operations. 
 Profiting from these favourable circumstances, and above all, 
 from the interest they inspired am^ongst the larger part of 
 the labourers and peasants, they employed spies, had their 
 fortresses and pleasure-houses, their treasury, their marine, 
 their arsenal, and even their relay horses. It frequently so 
 
192 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 happened that the owners of horses, and the farmers around, 
 would find all their horses missmg for a night, but they dis- 
 quieted not themselves at this momentary disappearance, for 
 they knew that the next morning they would be returned to 
 the stab'^'^s in good condition, accompanied by a generous 
 remuneration. 
 
 Thus was a complete organization established, which — 
 thanks to the connivance of some and the audacity of others 
 ■ — destroyed a part of the revenues of the State. The em- 
 ployees of the government had to struggle, at the same time, 
 9 gainst winter's cold, against storms and tempests, the ill- 
 will of the people around, the tricks and experience of their 
 adversaries, and the open asylum offered by the ocean, which 
 might defeat their best-laid plans. The government officers 
 in this unequal contest felt that their honour was tarnished 
 when they were eluded or outwitted : thus arose a deadly 
 hatred, which made this part of the coast the most dramatic 
 in Europe. It was later than the time I speak of when the 
 war turned to account the activity of the ablest and boldest 
 of these pirates, and enrolled them as mariners in ships of 
 war ; thus the government reduced the contraband trade 
 within more modest limits; and the principal profits also con- 
 centred in the hands of one man. 
 
 In 1841, there died in London a person very well known 
 along the coast of Suffolk and Essex, whom the law had 
 never been able to attaint, and who had never ceased to 
 brave it. He was possessor of twelve brigs, and owner of 
 forty houses and warehouses in various ports. The contra- 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 193 
 
 band dealers acknowledged him for sovereign, and never king 
 had more loyal subjects. No sufficient proof could be alleged 
 against him, nothing j^roved or even indicated him as an 
 accomplice; and his situation and rank in society served to 
 ward off suspicion. A licensed merchant, he freighted three 
 ships for legal commerce, which served to cover the illegal 
 portion of his traffic. The mischances fell upon the people 
 at the head of his expeditions; each brig had her captain, to 
 whom considerable gains were assured in case of success, 
 lurking-places for repairs, food and shelter in case of ill 
 fortune; agents knew there was a policy in carefully conceal- 
 ing the hand which could prove useful to them under all cir- 
 cumstances. Captain Bar wood died rich, without having 
 crossed the seas, from which accrued his gains. He was 
 bold, subtle, cunning, without principle or faith, and pos- 
 sessed a great knowledge of mankind. 
 
 Will Laud, whom w^e have seen so generous, had been 
 cradled amongst the waves; his father's boat was always in 
 employ ferrying people from Harwich to Fort Langor. An 
 arm of the sea between the coast of Essex and Sussex, there 
 made a bend; at one side was Fort Langor, at the other the 
 city of Harwich; the father of Laud, paid by the government 
 for the express between these places, row^ed the boat, aided 
 by his young son. Will Laud; and this was rough work. 
 Captain Barwood remarked this skilful and able young man, 
 gained his confidence, and made him, at twenty-two years, 
 one of his captains, and master of one of his most beautiful 
 brigs. 
 
 9 
 
194 Notabilities ix Fraxce and England. 
 
 It was not surprising that Laud, in spite of the opposition 
 of his father, hearkened and yielded to the seductions of this 
 wily man. The life of the smugglers passed for a heroic and 
 glorious one; whilst the waves rolled over the rocks and 
 sands, the newspapers of London and the interior every day 
 conveyed news to these poor and ignorant rustics of battles, 
 glory achieved, countries vanquished, riches well or ill- 
 acquired, and all concurred to induce the inhabitants of these 
 coasts to tempt fortune, and gain honours and riches. A 
 powerful motive had, above all, induced Laud to choose this 
 perilous career; he was poor, and a lover. He had seen and 
 loved the young Margaret, daughter of a farmer at Nacton, 
 named Catchpole, who was a charming girl, and she was by 
 no means indifferent to him. How assure to his betrothed 
 the independence so desirable ? The regular path of indus- 
 try was long; that of the sea and contraband trade offered 
 immediate profits. Beginning his career, then, without 
 warning Margaret, he accepted the brig offered him by the 
 Captain; and from that time was continually on the route 
 from Holland to England, and from England to Holland. 
 He was one of the boldest and most successful of sea-robbers ; 
 and he gained renown of that sort. " Will Laud," said the 
 Reverend Richard Cobbold, who had known him, and 
 would willingly excuse him, " was the true type of his race 
 and his calling. Brow noble, head erect, an eye of blue, 
 hair fair and curling, Roman nose, imperious and command- 
 ing, mouth resolute, and chin full, his countenance bespoke 
 resolution in tht face of peril, ardent love of enterprises in 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 195 
 
 the mode of life which without doubt his ancestors had fol- 
 lowed—pirates of the North, who came to this country to 
 obtain land more fertile than their home afforded. Margaret 
 Catchpole offered a type quite the contrary, says Cobbold : 
 " complexion olive, and glowing with gipsey blood, hair 
 black and straight, her dark eyes brilliant and intelligent, 
 her cheeks full, her figure slender." 
 
 Such are the personages of this drama: vulgar, assuredly, 
 by their condition and fortune; attractive through their con- 
 trasts, and that another destiny would have led to what men 
 call heroism. Laud possessed bravery and generosity, as his 
 conduct to the poor Irishman testified ; as to Margaret 
 Catchpole, who holds the first place in this narrative, her 
 nature was more remarkable. Give their true rank to 
 popular energies, place in their true position each one of 
 the sons of God, how would the human soul be honoured 
 every where, and the individual be valued as man under 
 any circumstances or accidents ! 
 
 The resolution of William was keenly felt by Margaret, 
 and incurred her just censure. She had always refused 
 to receive the presents of ribbons and laces that the smug- 
 glers had urged upon her. The course of things justified 
 the forebodings of the young maiden and proved the wisdom 
 of her counsels, for the path William had taken was beset 
 with dangers. 
 
 One day the ferryman from Harwich (the government 
 had deprived Laud's father of his little post, to punish 
 him for the sins of his son) brought news to the parent 
 
196' Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 that his son's skull was terribly fractured in a scuffle. Ed- 
 ward Barry, head of the coast-guards upon the shore of 
 Bawdsey, had wounded him in mortal combat. Margaret 
 during a month watched over him, cured his wound, and 
 made him promise that he would engage no more in such 
 hazardous enterprises ; but William had given a promise 
 difficult or impossible for him to adhere to. Once have a 
 taste of the Bohemian life, upon land or water, and one is 
 infatuated with the fatal charms of this independent, way- 
 ward course. William now quitted Nacton, where he had 
 been so tenderly nursed by Margaret, hastened to his brig, 
 adopted the cognomen of Captain Hudson, and continued 
 in the same course. He found in this trick the advantage 
 of passing for dead, and eluding Edward Barry, the coast- 
 guard. 
 
 Barry — and this will charm the systematic spirits who 
 hold to the theory of races — in nothing resembled William 
 Laud. It is well known that the name of Barry is the same 
 as the Norman Barre, a name metamoi^^hosed by their 
 sojourn in England. The name proceeded from an order 
 of friars who wore cloaks spotted with black and white. 
 The Barrys were brave, but perfectly submissive to the laws 
 of their country ; sworn enemies to smugglers and their 
 habits. John Barry, brother to Edward, who fought with 
 Will Laud, was more gentle in character and milder in 
 manners than his brother. He was in the employ of the 
 Alneshbourne farmer, near Margaret's home. He loved 
 Margaret. The character of jRalph, so wonderfully imag- 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 191 
 
 ined and delineated by Madame Sand in her novel of 
 Indiana, recalled to mind John Barry. He knew the senti- 
 ment which filled the heart of Margaret, and he guarded 
 against pleading his love, which he knew could not be 
 returned ; but he continued to dwell near her, like the hero 
 to whom we have alluded, silent, full of delicate attentions, 
 sad, and resigned. The report of the death of Laud in- 
 spired a moment's hope, and he expressed it naturally. 
 Margaret, who had trust in her lover, still believing him 
 captain of a Hollandese vessel, and pursuing lawful trade, 
 replied to Barry that she was betrothed, and that William 
 still lived ; and our Ralph, whose lovely and engaging 
 person, with his beautiful countenance, had not been able 
 to vanquish Margaret's resolution and preconceived attach- 
 ment, returned without complaint to his former hopeless 
 and silent love. 
 
 In the mean time. Captain Hudson, whose identity with 
 William Margaret did not suspect, became quite renowned 
 along the coast. He was the bravest and most fortunate of 
 the lieutenants of the King of the Sea, Captain Barvrood. 
 When the team of eight strong horses drew to the interior, 
 armed as the custom-house train, and these cargoes of 
 moonshine were transformed into bank-notes and guineas, 
 it was he who directed the expedition. All sorts of ma- 
 noeuvres were put in requisition to deceive the coast-guard, 
 Edward Barry, and they generally succeeded — thanks to the 
 combined efforts of William, and the first-mate, Luff, a man 
 of iron, whom Captain Barwood, in accordance with his 
 
198 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 habitual policy, had secretly commissioned to oversee and 
 direct, without betraying himself, the actions of the nominal 
 captain, and had placed him near William for this purpose. 
 Luflf feared nothing, resioected nothing, and was appalled at 
 no difficulty. 
 
 He was less a human being than a beast of prey, nour- 
 ished and reared upon the ocean. William had frequently 
 said that, when once they had made a good capture, all his 
 desire would be to marry Margaret. The name of the 
 young girl, whose image presided over all their exploits, 
 wearied the ear of Luff; "Farbleu!" said he to his captain, 
 "you seem much troubled. Since you will have this girl, put 
 her on board the brig, and that will end the matter." 
 
 " Luff, I wish she should be my wife." 
 
 " Your wife she may be; there are churches in Holland and 
 every where." 
 
 These marauders laid a plot for Margaret to meet her 
 lover upon the borders of the Orwell, behind the large 
 oaks of Wolverhampton-park, near the embouchure. The 
 brig was not to be far distant, and a tender-boat was to 
 mount with the tide to the place of rendezvous and convey 
 Margaret to it. Luff was to personate a Dutch sailor, 
 call at Margaret's door, and speaking a jij>a/025, in order 
 better to deceive the servant, tell her to inform her mistress 
 that her lover, who had only two hours to pass on shore, 
 waited at the place indicated. It was eight months since 
 Margaret had heard any thing from William, and one can 
 imagine her joy. 
 
Se A- s HO RE SCEXES. 199 
 
 John Luff knocked at the door in the midst of the 
 celebration of one of those old Saxon festivals, which they 
 still cling to in that part of England. Such are the Yule- 
 lop, upon the origin of which antiquarians still dispute, 
 and Harvest Home, of which the name is traced back more 
 than a thousand years. At the time of Luff's signal, tha 
 party were celebrating Harvest Home, which was united 
 on these shores with Hallow Largess, that appertains exclu- 
 sively to the southern part of England, and offers a singular 
 medley of two customs of the middle age — the chivalrous 
 cry, largesse, is united with the joyous clamour, hallow, of the 
 Saxons. John Barry was one of the guests, and amidst the 
 rustic gaiety, sustained by large potations of ale, his se- 
 cret love for Margaret became the subject of jokes, which 
 wounded his delicate soul. To shun them, he hastened 
 his return to his father's house, whilst Margaret, her heart 
 beating wildly in agitation at meeting her lover, found some 
 pretext or occasion to quit the company, and putting on in 
 haste her little straw hat and red shawl, without which the 
 most humble girl in England does not think herself resi^ecta- 
 hle, she set forth. 
 
 It was the 29th of September, 1Ï92; for my friend Boyce, 
 whose family were quite familiar with the Catchpoles, has 
 marked the dates with the preciseness of a historiographer. 
 The moon began to peer through the oaks of the priory, and 
 the rustics were continuing their feast with great reinforce- 
 ments of songs and bumpers, when two men in a little 
 sail-boat floated with the tide to the borders of the Orv/ell. 
 
200 Notabilities in Feance and England. 
 
 They coasted along by the river-bank, seeming desirous 
 of eluding notice, for a very singular little boat, oblong, 
 and more like a box or coffin than a boat, followed their 
 track; it was surmounted with floating drapery of various 
 colours, and steered by a whimsical being, such as certes 
 never sprung from the brain of any romancer, and of which 
 the English in almost every sea-port offer one analogous. 
 He was an old man, almost an idiot, who lived in this old 
 bark, botched and rebotched, and yet full of holes; it was 
 adorned with a sail of all colours. His large pyramidal cap, 
 made from his old wife's handkerchief, his long fish-hook, by 
 the help of which he steered his fluttering bark, and the 
 fragments of red calico, green velvet, and faded silk, which 
 composed his harlequin sail, drew the shouts of the children 
 and wonder of the bystanders less than did the innumerable 
 amulets which loaded his person. He was called Rol^inson, 
 and it needed but little to make him pass as sorcerer of the 
 sea. He spent his life in gathering crabs and little fish, 
 which he sold, and the old man was regarded with a sort of 
 superstitious terror by the inhabitants of the coast. He 
 seemed to spy the direction of the boat, and the actions of 
 the two men w^ho came in it, to whom he addressed from time 
 to time some incoherent words. 
 
 At this moment the melancholy and gentle John Barry, 
 the Celadon of the village, past sadly over the plank thrown 
 across the old fosse of the priory; and Margaret, with beat- 
 ing heart, went down towards the sea, over which the setting 
 sun cast a roseate hue. Her interview with William was 
 
Sea-shore Scexes. 201 
 
 long and impassioned — very long in the opinion of John Luff, 
 who was quietly couched in the boat, awaiting the whistle, 
 prelude to the seizure. 
 
 Margaret loved William with her whole soul, but he had 
 not a stronger will than her own was in resolutions that she 
 judged right. The resistance of the young girl whom Wil- 
 liam urged to follow him was energetic and invincible ; she 
 alleged that it would be easy for William, become (as he pre- 
 tended to her) an honest sailor, to find upon shore a situation 
 equivalent to that he occupied on shipboard ; she did not 
 conceal her love, but she would not yield. William thought 
 he might gain her by acknowledging that he had not changed 
 his course of life, that he was the famous Captain Hudson, 
 and that she must follow or renounce him. This confession, 
 far from triumphing over the resistance of Margaret, rendered 
 her more determined. Then she spoke of a young man who 
 loved her, and whose proposal she might accept if William 
 would not renounce the smuggling business. The poor girl 
 endeavoured by this means to draw away her beloved from his 
 dangerous courses. But she only kindled his wrath, which 
 increased when the name of John Barry was mentioned. 
 After that marked combat which had left Laud weltering in 
 his blood, the latter had felt deep hatred against Edward 
 Barry, the brother of John. 
 
 The lovers had wandered along the bank during an hour's 
 
 earnest but distressing conversation, when William, decided 
 
 by the last words of the imprudent Margaret, gave the long 
 
 blast of the whistle; forth issued from their concealment two 
 q% 
 
202 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 men, the muscular John Lufif and the old river maniac* 
 The last remained standing in his boat, his long fish-hook in 
 his hand; he coasted along under the shadow of the oaks 
 which concealed him, but his eyes were cast upon Margaret, 
 whose hands were in those of her lover, whom she was 
 entreating for the last time to abandon his course. This 
 maniac seemed to possess a secret power of divination of all 
 sad events; passions attracted him, also catastrophes; he fore- 
 saw them, he was always at the scene of action, without ill- 
 will, without rapacity, without any evil design, only as a 
 spectator, either at a fire, shipwreck, or rapine; he said, 
 shaking his amulets, that he saw the devil in the murderer 
 or in the flame. Robinson Crusoe was on the spot in season 
 this time also; for John Luff, upon a sign from William, hav- 
 ing seized the arm of poor Margaret, she defended herself 
 with energy against the two men, and she sent forth a pierc- 
 ing shriek which was said to have been heard some miles off. 
 In the mean time, Luif carried her towards the boat, and 
 William was endeavouring to calm her, when a new per- 
 son, drawn by the clamour, issued from the thickest part of 
 the grove and ran down to the river's side. ^ This was John 
 Barry, whom his comrades had banished from .their festive 
 board by their rustic jokes, and who was proceeding through 
 
 * The ancient fisherman, whom I have here portrayed, is not a mere 
 creature of the imagination, but an eccentiic being, once resident in tlie 
 parish of Saint Clement, Tpswicli, by name Thomas Colson, but better 
 kno\vn by the appellation of Robinson Crusoe. — Sufolk Garland. 
 
Se A- SHORE Scenes. 203 
 
 the park to his father's, who was forest-guard. The cry of 
 despair reached him. He armed himself with an iron stake, 
 planted in the sand to mark the line of the tide, and hastened 
 to the spot where the ravishers had borne Margaret. Then 
 commenced the unequal battle, which raged with fury between 
 John Barry, the mate. Luff, and William Laud; the two last 
 supplied with pistols. 
 
 William knew from the first moment the brother of the 
 coast-guard, who pretended to the hand of his beloved ; Lufif 
 knew that he must choose between taking the life of his 
 enemy or the gibbet; more generous motives, but not less 
 sanguinary, gave force to the blows of Barry, who had to 
 fight against two men determined to conquer or die. Luff, 
 stunned by one blow of Barry's stave, fell senseless; Mar- 
 garet, almost as senseless, fell with him, and sliding down the 
 sloping shore, was bathed by the rolling weaves. This 
 increased the fury of William, who, seeing Luff disabled, fell 
 upon Barry, overthrew and disarmed him. In the mean 
 time, old Robinson ran to the scene of action, his long fishing- 
 hook in his hand; and Margaret, having recovered her 
 senses, availed herself of this chance to fly from her pursuers 
 and conceal herself in the grove, where her two ravishers 
 could not follow her; for they had to take heed to their own 
 safety. They made despatch in rowing to their brig, much 
 discontented with their evening's adventure, and seeing 
 clearly that there was no safety for them except in flight. 
 
 Barry was removed to his father's small house, afterwards 
 to the farm of Alneshbournc, where he became the object of 
 
204 XOTABILITIES IN FrAXCE AND ENGLAND. 
 
 Margaret's assiduous cares. After having nursed her lover, 
 she now became the nurse of his rival. His wound was deep 
 and dangerous, and Margaret viewed it as her duty to save 
 the life of him whose life was endangered by the fury of 
 Laud. In her interview with her lover she had felt all that 
 struggle between passion and duty which has been the theme 
 of so many dramas; but she let no one know the anguish she 
 experienced, only, as is the case with impassioned beings, she 
 was more silent and absorbed than usual. Her companions 
 began to ridicule her; and those lovers whose offers she had 
 rejected triumphed. Barry recovered by degrees under the 
 care of Margaret; and he alone had the generosity to defend 
 her. He had perilled his life to defend hers, and that aug- 
 mented his love. During this time there was a conspiracy 
 brewing of the Barrys and their friends against William, and 
 of the smugglers against the Barrys. The identity of Laud 
 and Hudson was noised abroad; he who was most positive 
 in attesting to this fact was Robinson, whom idiotic curiosity 
 had drawn to the affray. William was again obliged to 
 change his name, and he took that of Cook; a voyage to 
 Canada, undertaken to rob the ships of the Fur Company, he 
 thought would put his pursuers out of his track, till the 
 remembrance of this murderous scene had died away. Laud 
 then became a true corsair; the inevitable consequence of 
 crime is that it leads to more crime, and a man becomes 
 involved, and loses the power to check his own career. 
 
 Margaret soon felt the sad effects of her union with Laud. 
 Her friends and protectors who had aided her in her youth 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 205 
 
 witliclrevv; misery, hunger, and cold assailed her. No more 
 was heard from Laud, whose distant cruises increased the 
 boldness of his course, already so violent. One day John 
 Barry entered her cabin, ready to embark, and regarding 
 William as lost to her, he renewed his proposals for marriage. 
 She refused, saying she had promised her hand to another. 
 There was a price put upon the head of Laud : a proclama- 
 tion offering a hundred guineas to whoever would deliver him 
 up, alive or dead, was issued. In the mean time, the bold 
 corsair reappeared, and in an interview he found means to 
 hold with Margaret, seeing that her determination was 
 unshaken, and that she would never marry a smuggler, he 
 promised that he would engage in the marine royal service. 
 He executed his promise, obtained her favour, and distin- 
 guished himself. All then went on well. Hope was renewed 
 with honour, and a family of Ipswich, that of the Reverend 
 Richard Cobbold, taking pity on the distress of the Catch- 
 poles, welcomed the young girl kindly to their house; and 
 she deserved the esteem of her protectors. 
 
 One day young Richard Cobbold, all prepared for sport- 
 ing, had launched forth in a little boat belonging to his 
 father in pursuit of teals and wild ducks, with which these 
 shores abound. The sky suddenly became overspread with 
 clouds, the clock struck seven, the rain fell in torrents, and 
 the young man had not returned ; all which caused great dis- 
 tress in the family. For more than a quarter of a mile, at 
 the confluence of the Stour and the Orwell, alluvions of mud 
 and sand cover the marine' plants. î^othing can be more 
 
206 Notabilities in France axd England. 
 
 dangerous than this coast in time of tempest, especially for 
 small craft. The darkness of the night and the blackness of 
 the tempest were united. The neighbours lighted torches, 
 hastened to the beach, called in loud tones to the young man 
 — of whom no trace appeared. The old lunatic fisherman, 
 who had not failed upon this occasion to be at his post, 
 brought word that he had seen the young man coasting along 
 by the shore in a boat a part of that day: but he shook his 
 head like a man convinced, not only of the danger, but of the 
 loss of the boat and the young man. Many sailors stationed 
 at this port entreated to go in quest of Cobbold, and were 
 ready to peril their lives in this tremendous storm, when -the 
 winds and waves seemed one. Laud, who had just returned 
 after a happy campaign, was one of these sailors; this coast, 
 so well known to him when he was Captain Hudson, had not 
 a creek or shoal with which he was not familiar. He got 
 into a long boat, armed himself with a long fishing-rod, the 
 only implement that could aid him in feeling his way, and he 
 steered his course slowly over the deep mud which the storm 
 and the sea had softened. The keel of a boat buried in this 
 mud had marked the place where the young man had disap- 
 peared; he drew him up from the bottom, unconscious, dis- 
 figured, but still living. The joy of the mother can be 
 imagined, but not described. From this time the Cobbolds, 
 drawn by heartfelt gratitude to Laud and his betrotlied, 
 took a deep interest in their concerns. Laud had a furloudi 
 for a few days only; it was necessary for him to leave; but 
 he said he should claim Margaret for his own on his return, 
 
Sea- 3 II ORE Scenes. 20Ï 
 
 when his wages and prize-money would enable him to estab- 
 lish himself at Ipswich or Nacton. 
 
 During the eight months which followed this event, many 
 sailors, charged by William with messages to his beloved, 
 would stop at the Cobbolds; and they received a friendly 
 greeting. But this hospitality was attended with some 
 inconvenience : the report spread amongst the sailors that 
 they could easily obtain a good repast with a mug of 
 ale, provided they wore a sailor's jacket, and came in the 
 name of William Laud. Now Mrs. Cobbold was obliged to 
 set bounds to this maritime invasion, and for the future to 
 suppress these aggressions upon her pantry and cellar. 
 
 Margaret had some of the erratic traits of the border life ; 
 but she was an admirable savage; an instinct of nobleness 
 and generosity might be said to show itself in impulsive 
 sallies ; but she failed in consideration. In polished life and 
 cultivated society there are many little inconveniences that 
 must be remedied ; if people encroach, there must be some 
 resistance, tacit or implied ; innocent conventions which 
 become general rules ; slight restraints for the general accom- 
 modation, which Margaret, so situated, would have readily 
 perceived. The prolonged absence of William had had a 
 disquieting effect upon Margaret; sometimes from weariness 
 and sorrow she was absent, even a little capricious. This 
 prohibition of sailors' visits afflicted her ; and in her resent- 
 ment she doubtless, as is common when reason does not sit 
 at the helm, magnified it, and acted upon it as if more strin- 
 gent than the good Mrs. Cobbold intended it should be. 
 
208 Notabilities ixFrance and England. 
 
 The next day after this injunction which distressed her so 
 much, some one opened the door of the bleaching-yard about 
 nine in the evening, and a httle girl called out : " Margaret! 
 Br sailor wants to speak with you." Margaret, with a sharp 
 tone, answered: " Tell the man that sailors are not admitted 
 here, and that he must go away." Then a large packet, 
 wrapt up in a piece of sail-cloth, fell at her feet. The large, 
 tanned hand which, between the opening and shutting the 
 door, had angrily hurled in the packet, was quickly with- 
 drawn. This man was Laud himself, who had returned to 
 bring Margaret all the money he had gained upon the sea. 
 
 She looked at the superscription upon the packet ; she 
 could not read, but she was assailed by a secret presentiment 
 that something portended, and she rushed out seeking to find 
 the man; but he was out of reach. The night was dark. At 
 the corner of the street she saw a man who appeared to be 
 waiting for some one. She drew near, and he seized the 
 hands of Margaret without speaking a word : this man was 
 not Laud, but his old mate, John Luff, who, angry at the 
 new life his captain led, and wishing to lure him back to his 
 old habits at any price, insisted upon it that the young girl 
 should tell him the retreat of William. A scene of violence 
 ensued : Luff endeavoured to stifle the cries of the maiden as 
 she struggled to free herself from the grasp of the rufiBan. 
 At length the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses ran to 
 her relief. Then the guilty one escaped. 
 
 In the mean time, the ill reception he met with from Mar- 
 garet had shaken the good resolutions of William, who 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 209 
 
 believed himself forgotten. He retook his ancient courses, 
 and despair and remorse took possession of Margaret. The 
 report of these adventures spread throughout the countj^, 
 renowned, as we have said, for its breed of horses ; and a 
 regular band of horse-stealers, poachers, and smugglers were 
 organized all along the coast. One of the men of William's 
 new crew, named John Cook, coveting a most beautiful horse 
 of Mr. Cobbold's, devised a singular means to seize him. He 
 contrived to meet Margaret, and he read to her a pretended 
 letter from William, in which he appointed to meet her in 
 London at a fixed hour, and for a very brief interval. He 
 said that " William was upon the point of starting upon 
 another voyage. The public vehicle was too slow; and Mar- 
 garet, a good horsewoman," as we have seen, " must avail 
 herself of the bay mare of Mr. Cobbold, dressed as the 
 groom of the stable." She did not hesitate, but in this dis- 
 guise set off at a quick pace, and stopped not until she had 
 reached the Bull Inn, in Aldgate, London, where John 
 Cook hoped to seize his prey. But the police was 
 already instructed; Margaret was captured, shut up in New- 
 gate, then transferred to Bury, judged at the assizes, and, 
 according to the cruel law of the times, condemned to death 
 for domestic robbery. She scarcely made any defence, 
 and listened to her sentence with submission. Owing to 
 the influence of the Cobbold family the sentence wa« com- 
 muted for seven years' transportation ; but, as it was neces- 
 sary to wait for the next vessel, she was incarcerated three 
 months, in the Bury prison, where, loved and respected by 
 
210 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 those who had the charge of the prisoners, she was employed 
 in the laundry. 
 
 William, in despair, had again faced the danger, and 
 defied the laws with more boldness than ever : at length he 
 was arrested by the officers, and confined in the Bury prison, 
 where he found the long-lost Margaret. The service he had 
 rendered his country on board the ships of war was taken 
 into consideration in William's case, and pardon was granted 
 him. Notwithstanding the strict régime of the prison, he 
 found means to inform Margaret that the next day at noon 
 his name would be taken from the jailor's list, and could she 
 meet him behind the church she might escape. 
 
 The long and cruel struggle of the young girl against her 
 love had abated her force ; she had once offered up her life 
 for William, and it would cost her little to hazard it again. 
 She laid a plan, then, for her escape with skill and extraor- 
 dinary coolness, and executed it with boldness and hardihood. 
 The prison wall was pointed with iron spikes, and one of 
 these spikes was broken. By means of a long cord tied to 
 one of the spikes, she hoisted herself in the night to the top 
 of the wall, then she slid herself to the ground outside, her 
 hands bleeding. She met Laud as he designed, and they 
 went to the water-side. The old friends of Laud had prom- 
 ised him to save Margaret, and convey them both to Hol- 
 land ; but when they reached the place assigned, the boat 
 had been so long waiting for them as to be observed, and 
 when Laud was welcomed by his comrades, they were 
 attacked by the coast-guard. William, twice fired upon, 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 211 
 
 fell dead upon the body of Margaret, who laid senseless upon 
 the spot, and was carried back to prison, condemned to 
 deportation for life. 
 
 Margaret had now seen death by her side. The man 
 upon whom she had founded all her hopes existed no longer, 
 but she was resigned. She departed tranquilly for Botany 
 Bay, a place of shame and exile, when she deserved con- 
 sideration and fortune. The calm succeeding her only ab- 
 sorbing passion restored her to herself. She arrived at 
 Fort Jackson the 20th of December, 1801. The captain 
 of the vessel, touched l)y the modesty and sweetness of 
 the young maiden, recommended her particularly to the 
 Governor. She worked for two days in the Government 
 ateliers^ and then, as is the custom in penal colonies, was 
 taken into service in a family. Colonel John Palmer, a very 
 rich colonist, whose wife had founded an orphan asylum, 
 desired Margaret's services, and she found her a very able 
 workwoman. Mrs. Palmer taught her to read and write, and 
 appointed her superintendent over her benevolent establish- 
 ments. When a woman I ecomes interested in one of her 
 own sex, she always desires to marry her ; Mrs. Palmer, 
 therefore, wished to make a good match for her charge, who 
 had never been beautiful in the true acceptation of the word, 
 but whose vivacity now revived in her new life, free from 
 tumult and distress. Her native grace and elegance also 
 now shone forth undiminished. Occasions sometimes brought 
 to light other qualities which had distinguished the heroine 
 of the Suffolk coast. In one of the dangerous inundations 
 
212 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 common in New Wales, she saved many children from a 
 watery grave. She herself steered the boat, and did the 
 deed all as a natural thing, a common act. But notwith- 
 standing her modesty and humility, she became a distin- 
 guished personage in Australia. 
 
 Margaret had briefly narrated the adventures of her 
 life to her mistress, and her real name, supplicating her to 
 conceal them ; and she remained in humble life, without 
 informing herself of what passed in the colony. Even the 
 asylum of which she was the inspectress, counted for one 
 of its founders, unknown to her, a man who had a large 
 concern in the adventures of her life. He was John Barry, 
 brother of Edward, the coast-guard, and rival of Laud. 
 He had become convinced that the deep love of Margaret 
 for Laud would never yield. He obtained the office of 
 inspector of the land registry in Botany Bay, and was 
 charged with the division of land among the colonists. 
 He sailed for Sydney towards the end of 1194, in the 
 Bellone, frigate for transportation to the colony, where 
 his exactitude in business, and his gentleness of character, 
 which he always retained, ensured him success, and won 
 him merited esteem in that country of marauders and land 
 of punishment, where amid wild forests the corrupt civili- 
 zation of Europe shows itself more reckless than at home. 
 
 The industrious and unobtrusive virtues of Barry were 
 already crowned with honour and fortune, when he lost 
 his younger sister, who had removed with him from England, 
 and who took charge of his household concerns. Left alone 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 213 
 
 in his home, and wearied with the details of his large admin- 
 istration, he applied to Mistress Palmer to recommend to 
 him a faithful person to whom he could entrust the ménage 
 of his family. She recommended the condemned Margaret 
 Catchpole, and Mrs. Palmer then felt it to be her duty to 
 reveal the name of her inoiégée, and the narrative of her 
 life anterior to her landing at Botany Bay. J. Barry rec- 
 ognised his own share in the adventures, and the afflictions 
 of his youth were brought to mind by the recital of the 
 events in the life of the woman he had hopelessly loved. 
 His conduct was beautiful and simple. He went to the 
 Governor, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, and 
 called upon him for the complete liberation of Margaret, 
 and demanded that her name should be erased from the 
 list of the condemned. He obtained complete satisfaction in 
 both requests. In the interview with the poor girl, which 
 was contrived by Mrs. Palmer, her free pardon, which re- 
 stored her to all her civil rights, was the first news he 
 brought, and the first word he spoke. 
 
 At the time of his wounds, when Margaret watched 
 over him at the farm of Alneshbourne, he had sworn to 
 her never to marry any other woman, and he had held to 
 his oath. Now the deportee received from John Barry 
 more than life ; she was free also to accept or refuse his 
 offer to her, to become the partner of his life, and bear the 
 name of Barry. She accepted his proposals, and became 
 Mistress Barry, of Windsor, near the green hills of Hawkes- 
 bury, one of the -richest estates in the New World. She 
 
214 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 lived fifteen years in this situation, bore him two daughters 
 and a son, and received the last sigh of John Barry, who 
 died the 9th of September, 1827, in her arms. She herself 
 expired the 10th of September, in 1841, at sixty-eight years 
 of age, bequeathing to the Reverend Richard Cobbold, 
 whose life Laud had saved, her letters and papers. The 
 Right Reverend gentleman has concocted from these a 
 mediocre romance. He has invented dialogues, thrust in 
 sighs, and lavished many useless details, setting aside the 
 real and poetical of this singular drama. Most men let 
 pass, without perceiving them, the elements of poetry which 
 abound in real hfe. The Reverend gentleman comprehended 
 not the sensibility, silent and deep, of the young girl ; 
 neither the ardour, courage, and recklessness of the young 
 man, nor the invincible power of that passion which en- 
 chained for weal or for woe the yonng lovers. As for 
 myself, I have visited the scenes, and been able to appre- 
 ciate the customs and genius of the people which serves 
 as the basis of this narrative, and I am convinced that 
 the reaUty is a thousand times more interesting than the 
 romance of the Reverend Mr. Cobbold. In his romance 
 of the young convict there are some ecstatic passages, joined 
 to the most vulgar and microscopical Flemish paintings. 
 In some pages, the Right Reverend speaks of spoons with 
 poetical respect, of forks with mystical veneration, and 
 descends with imperturbable seriousness to panegyrize skew- 
 ers, tea-pots, iron spoons, washed and wiped saucepans, and 
 gridirons, placed in their proper places. 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 215 
 
 In 1842, two men, one dressed in black, and still young, 
 the other bearing the traces of misery which would veil 
 itself from view, entered the museum in Ipswich. After- 
 wards, the youngest repaired to Kentwell-Hall, a beautiful 
 domain in the county which he wished to purchase. He was 
 the eldest son of Margaret. The other, whose countenance 
 was pale, his hair thin and white, eyes keen but sad, brow 
 furrow^ed, and complexion jaundiced, had met with as various 
 and strange adventures in the chances of life as Margaret 
 herself, whose brother he was. At the time that the connec- 
 tion of his sister with Laud was attended with the most 
 notoriety in the county, this young man had disappeared — 
 mortified, no doubt, at the obloquy that would attach to his 
 name — departed for Hindostan, where he served with the 
 English troops, and was distinguished by the Marquis Corn- 
 wallis. A rare suppleness of organs, and an extreme facility 
 in learning languages and conforming to the manners and 
 customs of the people, had caused him to be employed 
 as a spy, and he had succeeded in many difiicult enterprises. 
 One of those chances common with Europeans who visit 
 these countries, had connected him with the daughter of a 
 Nabob in marriage, who soon became excited against him by 
 some feminine jealousy, and he was forced to flee the country. 
 Under the assumed name of Collins Jaun, he crossed the pe- 
 ninsula on foot, and again came to Calcutta, finding that his 
 patron. Lord Cornwallis, had left a few days before. Then 
 he returned to England, where, meeting the son of Margaret 
 Catchpole, his sister, he obtained a small place from the 
 
216 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 Government. The brother and son of Margaret, after hav- 
 ing surveyed most of the curiosities around the museum, 
 stopped before one a long time in silence. It was a mag- 
 nificent golden pheasant, the tail of which glittered with 
 many changeable hues, and was spread over the head in the 
 form of a lyre. Below were these words: 
 
 " Manuka superba, 
 Lye A Faisan de Botany Bay. 
 Given by Margaret Catch pole, convicted in 1797, at Buiy, of stealing a 
 horse, condemned to death, but by commutation of the sentence, to seven 
 years deportation. An attempt to escape caused her to be sentenced 
 anew to deportation for life." 
 
 The son and brother of Margaret made many useless 
 attempts to redeem this strange memorial of the condemna- 
 tion and exile of their mother and sister. The directors of 
 the museum were obstinately bent upon keeping the golden 
 pheasant. The Museum of Ipswich still retains it ; but, 
 thanks to Mr. Cobbold and myself, the errors of Margaret, 
 and her afflictions, from this day, will be seen through the 
 horizon now unknown to us, called posterity, or the future. 
 
 Such as I have described is the impression left upon two 
 distant parts of the world of this remarkable person, whose 
 condition was so humble. None of our most devoted hero- 
 ines could have surpassed Margaret in sacrifices. This 
 young girl had the most pure heart and the highest sense of 
 rectitude; if she swerved from the straight line it was an 
 error of the heart; but she committed no sin. 
 
 I love to analyze the passion of love in humble life, as in 
 
Sea-shore Scenes. 21t 
 
 John Barry and Margaret — a love in contrast to birth, con- 
 dition, and all the environments ; over which reason has no 
 power ; that mysterious passion, hidden in the secrets of 
 God's creation, styled by the feeble a virtue, by devotees a 
 
 vice, but by the ancients a demoniacal and invincible force. 
 10 
 
^11 flaur oil haii t^t " Stoalloto/' 
 
 TN the chances of life, I met, in 1819, a poor creature whose 
 adventures in their simple truth would form a pathetic 
 romance. He was a true savage, or rather a half man. 
 There is nothing more poetical than his life and death. I 
 have been reproached for occupying myself so intently upon a 
 poor half-witted Irishman. But are there not some remark- 
 able revelations in these things ? some great secrets to dis- 
 cover in the scarcely perceptible line which separates reason 
 from madness, intellect from folly ? Doubtless many precious 
 subjects for observation are concealed from our view in half- 
 savage districts where the lights of social civilization have not 
 glimmered ; and our environments in our citizen-life are not 
 so very amusing or interesting as to obliterate the remem- 
 brance that there is any circle beyond the circle of Popilius, 
 the narrow girdle which binds us. 
 
 It is not without a feeling of awe that I retrace here the 
 singularly touching remembrance, which, however, may not 
 to all eyes bear the same character. We err in judging the 
 feelings of others by our own. Our own peculiar emotions 
 
An Hour on board the "Swallow." 219 
 
 will not sufi&ce us in a work of art. Poet, painter, or novel- 
 ist, your own sensations should be depicted simply, truthfully 
 — that is your first duty ; but that they be in unison with 
 other souls is also the great requisition of art. 
 
 But what I deem earnest, can it be light ? what appears 
 to me poetic, can it be a whim ? Let the reader judge. 
 
 In crossing the British Channel during the stormy month 
 of December, 182-, our vessel was driven by tempests into 
 the high seas, far from her destination. The trip, ordinarily 
 calm and rapid, was then perilous and long; instead of one 
 day — a common passage — we passed twelve days on the 
 ocean, and our vessel was much damaged, when a small ship 
 of war (EngUsh) took in our crew and passengers, drawing 
 after her the floating wreck of the little ship, her mast 
 broken, and all her rigging despoiled. 
 
 We had on board the packet-boat an Irish priest, called 
 Murphy O'Leary, an aged man of very respectable appear- 
 ance and remarkable intelligence; a poor child was with him 
 whose vacant smile attested that mind was lacking there. An 
 idiot since his birth, Shillelah was now eighteen, and had not 
 acquired a single idea: all his talent consisted in a very exact 
 imitation of the movements he noticed ; he aided the sailors 
 during a storm, and accompanied their nautical songs with a 
 sort of refrain, very strange; it was the syllable la, twice 
 repeated, like the lullaby of the nurse in getting her infant 
 charge to sleep. There were various moods expressed by 
 this monotonous refrain ; it was sometimes the wail of sorrow, 
 at others a joyful cry, and again it denoted the fearful quail 
 
220 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 of terror. In making his prayer, (for Moran, taught by 
 the curate, was devout,) in climbing the mast, in dividing 
 the rations with the sailors, or when treated with a glass of 
 grog, a pinch of snuff, when chastised for his blunders or 
 awkwardness, it was the same refrain, varied in its intona- 
 tions by the emotions felt. Poor, half-formed being! it gave 
 one pain to see him — a sort of Caliban without malice, a 
 human body without human intelligence, a living organiza- 
 tion without instinct. In the evening he would sleep at the 
 feet of the curate, and he would sleep through the storms 
 and tempests, the heaving and rolling of the billows and 
 pitching of the vessel, without fear, without hope or fore- 
 sight. 
 
 When we were in danger, Moran Shillelah conducted him- 
 self very well ; the sailors loved him. He was taken with us 
 on board the Swallow, where the crew were not less favour- 
 able. At length he fell from the top of the mast, broke his 
 head at the hatchway, and died instantly. The curate, 
 O'Leary, was very much afflicted, and the sailors wished to 
 bury him as one of their comrades. 
 
 Poor Moran ! I believe that many men of talent and 
 importance were less sincerely mourned than he. The cabin 
 boys who smiled when he passed, the officers who treated him 
 with brandy, the old sailors who imitated his monotonous 
 la-la, lamented him ; but, above all, the curate, the least in- 
 tolerant man that I have known. He did not oppose the 
 Protestant rites at the funeral services, under condition that 
 he should, during the ceremony, pronounce the Latin prayers 
 
An Hour on board the ''Swallow." 221 
 
 of the Roman ritual ; for Moran had been instructed, or 
 rather brought up, in the Catholic faith. Moran Shillelah, 
 the imbecile child, went to heaven under the influence and 
 protection of two different rites. 
 
 It is ordinarily in twelve hours after decease that funeral 
 ceremonies are performed in English ships; but the tempestu- 
 ous weather obliged the captain to admit of no delay. The 
 winds whistled, night came on, dark, stormy, lugubrious. 
 The watch-lights were placed from distance to distance, and 
 shone in the darkness. The mainmast, illuminated even to 
 the yard-arm, bowed under her burden — representing grief 
 as heavy, though hghted by hope. At the toUing of the 
 great bell, the crew assembled ; all heads were uncovered ; 
 the rain and wind beat against their bare brows, and the 
 rising billows laved the remains of the idiot. 
 
 Who of us has not followed a funereal train ? Who has 
 not witnessed, even at the obsequies of the venerated and 
 lamented, interested speculation calculating the profits and 
 gains to the heirs ? I have followed coffins where glorious 
 and illustrious names were emblazoned. I have witnessed 
 pompous ceremonies, theatrical, foolish, or revolting, from the 
 spirit of party, from hypocritical grief, or posthumous vanity. 
 But a burial on shipboard, in the night and in a storm, was 
 solemn indeed. Many funerals of great men take far less 
 hold upon the feelings than did that of this miserable, 
 feeble being. Imperfect, incomplete in physical form, this 
 idiot was still called man, and two religious rituals were re- 
 peated over his remains, the stormy winds chanting the 
 
222 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 requiem, and a crowd of brave mariners standing with heads 
 uncovered, not before the ruins of death, but before an idea 
 — the mystery of life, above all — of death. 
 
 The winds were tempestuous, the prayer-book of the 
 old curate was wet with the waves and rain, which fell 
 in torrents. O'Leary murmured his solemn liturgy. 
 
 As there was no English chaplain on board, the captain 
 read with a loud voice the service of the English Church. 
 The great bell was still — all the sailors pressed upon deck, 
 soaked in rain, in solemn stillness. There is for them but 
 little space between life and death — and the sublime idea of 
 approaching summons to eternity rolls in the waves under 
 the keel, and peals in the blast from the mast-head. Thus 
 the most part, notwithstanding their apparent grossness, 
 are very religious, A thousand superstitions reign in a 
 vessel ; the sea has her phantoms, her enchantments, her 
 special belief. When becalmed, the sailors whistle for a 
 breeze. As the farmer beheves in the power of music, 
 and that her charms make the bees swarm, so the officer 
 on board believes in the power of certain magical words. 
 Nothing could be more impressive than the attentive respect 
 manifested by this company of sailors assembled upon deck 
 before the dead body of the child. The captain, by the 
 light of the ship-lantern, held before him by the boatswain, 
 read in a clear voice these words of the Episcopal service: 
 " Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God, in his wise 
 providence, to take out of the world the soul of our dear 
 deceased brother," &c. I heard with difficulty the words 
 
An Hour on board the "Swallow." 223 
 
 of the burial-service, so great was the raging of the tem- 
 pest without, and the clattering within of cables and rig- 
 ging. 
 
 The captain made a sign. An old tar, who had consti- 
 tuted himself the particular friend of the child, let down 
 the corpse into the deep, which, from the weights attached 
 to it, was soon ingulfed by the waves. All was now 
 terminated. The stormy night gave place to a more tranquil 
 day, and we disembarked at Ostend. 
 
 Father Murphy O'Leary, who had never visited the 
 Continent, and who now came to receive an inheritance 
 from a deceased relative, ecclesiastic as himself, who died 
 in Paris, rue des Postes^ accepted my offered services. He 
 was a worthy and venerable priest. The day after we 
 disembarked, he related to me the story of Moran Shillelah. 
 I will repeat it, not perhaps in the same words as the curate, 
 but in the exact sense of his narration. 
 
 "The mother of Moran Shillelah," said O'Leary, ''lived, 
 some years since, in the suburbs of Dublin. She tended 
 a little stall, where she sold apples and cakes, which afforded 
 her only support. Her husband, who had been unsuccessful 
 in his business, died, leaving this infant child. Never was 
 being more low in the scale of creation who bore the name 
 of man. Moran Shillelah, as you know, thought not, 
 scarcely spoke. Nature had sketched a rude outline, and, 
 discontented with her success, threw it aside incomplete. 
 His place among human intelligences was as the sheep 
 among animals. I saw him every day seated at the feet 
 
224 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 of his poor mother, singing, or rather drawling. The 
 school-children would torment him, and he had neither 
 strength nor spirit to defend himself. His trust in his 
 mother was his only human instinct. The continual swing- 
 ing or balancing of his body, which you have noticed, and 
 the insignificant repetition of the little syllable, la-la, was 
 all his life and language. When the mischievous children 
 threw stones at him, he seemed to roll himself up as a 
 ball, and cling to his mother. Powerless to protect even 
 his little wealth that the boys stole from him, he would 
 utter his plaintive moan, his monotonous bleating. In the 
 evening, when his mother returned home, her folded stall 
 upon her head, holding Moran Shillelah by the hand, a 
 troop of children from the suburbs would follow the idiot, 
 who would hide his head under his mother's apron, and seek 
 shelter in her bosom. 
 
 "The poor woman, derided by the malicious neighbours, 
 on account of her boy, received no other appellation than 
 the mother of the idiot. A narration of the tricks and 
 snares to which our old woman was the victim, would be 
 long and useless. It is true that she was ugly, infirm, aitd 
 suffering, and her cries of rage against her persecutors 
 less resembled a human voice than the hootings of the 
 screech-owl. I had occasion to pass her almost every day. 
 At first, the sight of this child, half animal, half human, was 
 revolting, but it resulted in awakening my pity. 
 
 '' If this flat head, forehead low and oblique, the lips 
 pendant, the eyes prominent and vacant, scarcely expressing. 
 
An Hour on board the "Swallow." 225 
 
 life, was distressing to behold, God— the powerful God, 
 whose v/orks are incomprehensible — had put a heart within 
 him, and this rude and gross envelope contained a tender 
 soul, unconscious of itself. Moran was below the brute 
 in intelligence, above man in the power of loving. Moran 
 knew nothing, and could not reason, but he felt that his 
 mother was his only protector — and she was his all. She 
 was pious. From habit of hearing her pray, he would in a 
 measure imitate her gestures and tones. In the evening, and 
 when the old woman went to rest for the night upon her mat 
 in the loft, the idiot-child would kneel at the foot of his 
 mother's humble couch, and kiss her feet whilst murmuring his 
 inarticulate litany, a mental prayer without human words. 
 Certainly the idea of God had not entered his narrow brain, 
 but a species of hymn of gratitude and love exhaled from 
 his lips. This was at the same time instinctive and mechani- 
 cal. He saw God through his mother; she was the repre- 
 sentation of religion, morality, social life, poetry, his past, 
 present, and future. Every morning at five o'clock, when his 
 mother would go to take her accustomed place at the stall, 
 he would walk fearfully a little forward, reconnoitring, 
 to see if the common enemy was in ambuscade, and as 
 soon as he perceived an object of terror he started, pulled 
 violently his mother's apron, and in a voice shrill and mourn- 
 ful sang the h-la which gave the alarm. 
 
 " These poor creatures, who lived for each other, moved me 
 much; maternal love so deep and disinterested was very 
 touching. I found in this old woman a refutation of La 
 10* 
 
226 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 Rochefoucauld : for what pleasure could Moran give his 
 mother ? The idiot absorbed half of the gains of the poor 
 woman, and this aged mother had to take the whole care of 
 her unfortunate son, who could not dress or undress himself. 
 One evening she was obliged to quit her stall a few minutes, 
 and on returning found her bo}^ gone. 0, what despair! 
 She loved him for all the trouble he gave her. She at 
 length found him on the high road, flying from a troop 
 of little bandits, and singing his accustomed two syllables 
 with a force which revealed his distress. 
 
 " In my daily course, I one day missed the poor woman and 
 her child. I had given the woman some religious aid, and a 
 few shillings from time to time, and her absence surprised 
 me. I went to her dweUing. You, sir, have not seen a loft 
 in the suburbs of Dublin. A person possessed of ever so 
 little sensibility could scarcely endure such a spectacle, and 
 I will not pain you by describing it. I found the mother 
 dead upon her miserable bed — the child embracing her. 
 He balanced himself as usual, singing in measure his doleful 
 refrain, in a voice more plaintive than ever. Incapable of 
 forming entire phrases, he had, nevertheless, sometimes the air 
 of comprehending a part of what was said. In seeing me 
 enter, accompanied by some persons of the house, he looked 
 towards us with moist eyes. He raised himself, still holding 
 firmly the hand of the dead person. His intonations were 
 more thick and deep than usual, but he continued to repeat 
 his la-la, looking at us. 
 
 " He made np resistance when removed from his mother, 
 
An Hour on board the ''Swallow.'' 22t 
 
 but loosened his hold, and seated himself in a dark corner, 
 on the ground. 
 
 " ' What shall we do with him ?' asked the owner of the 
 house. The idiot took up a handful of dirt and covered his 
 head, as if he wished to say to us that the earth claimed him 
 also, and began to sing in a voice more clear, sharp, and 
 poignant: 
 
 '''La! la! la! la!' 
 
 " It would have moved you to see so much affection in the 
 poor imbecile. I had the old woman interred, and in pity I 
 took him home with me, and / have never separated myself 
 from him since, or renounced the care of the poor creature. 
 You have seen my affliction at his death. 
 
 " For a long time I found it impossible to console Moran. 
 A year passed, during which he repeated those monosyl- 
 lables, devoid of sense, with which he had been used to wake 
 his mother. In the evening he would look for her and weep. 
 The ceremonies of the Catholic worship at length drew him 
 from his grief. He imitated the gestures of the peasants 
 knelt with them, and his deportment at church was very 
 proper. He hearkened to the sacred songs, inhaled the 
 incense, lighted the candles, joined in the processions. These 
 were all his amusements. I could not deprive him of them; 
 it would have been barbarous. From seeing the service 
 •of mass, he learnt to acquit himself in those functions not 
 very difficult to fulfil. In fine, he attached himself to me, 
 his protector, as he had done to his mqther. If I was ill, 
 Moran kept at the foot of my bed ; if I was absent some 
 
228 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 days, Moran \YOuld double himself up in a corner of the 
 manse, and would eat nothing. This devotion and fidelity, 
 like a dog towards his master, attached me to the child in 
 spite of his incurable stupidity. He grew up before me, and 
 I was accustomed to see him use the feeble light that nature 
 had given in serving God through his master, and he became 
 very dear to me. 
 
 ''I was appointed to a curacy in the county of Munster. 
 Nature there is wild and picturesque. It is a paradise 
 of verdure. You see extended before you smiling land- 
 scapes — rocks covered with thick mosses and decked with 
 flowers. My mansion was by the borders of the Suir, a 
 quarter of a league from the village of Golden, in Tipperary. 
 A sort of grotto, embellished by the art of man, served 
 me for habitation. You will find many abodes of this kind 
 in Ireland; green recesses carved in a rock, half hidden by 
 moss and foliage. If the beauty of nature, the quiet and 
 peace of my solitude charmed me, I found in the barbarism 
 of my flock much cause for mortification. It was impossible 
 to discover precisely why they fought, but they fought un- 
 ceasino-ly. There were some among them who had a passion 
 for murder, without expectation of reaping any advantage 
 from the crime. The worst elements of the human species, the 
 mark of Cain was in them and upon them. They complained 
 of nothing, designated no grief, but grouped themselves under 
 different leaders, and cut each others' throats the same as they 
 drank, played, or slept, to pass away time or enliven themselves, 
 or as they raight go to see a show. These factions, which 
 
An Hour on board the 
 
 aimed at nothing and ended in nothing, did not fail in chiefs; 
 for wars without aim had their triumphs. Fêtes, parties of 
 pleasure, were scenes of combat — every where was an arena, 
 and vengeance, perpetuating itself from generation to genera- 
 tion, was kindling for the future new and imperishable 
 flames. This people, who have nothing to lose but life, 
 risk it in sport. Without country, (for Ireland is no 
 longer a country,) without hope or possessions, they seek 
 intense excitement, tumult, and danger. Their smothered 
 ardour forces itself a passage. The double exasperation 
 of political and rehgious hatred adds her sting to this 
 savage violence, and these hideous tragic scenes are fre- 
 quently mixed, according to the Irish mode, with giddiness 
 and folly, even gaiety. This is the life of the peasants. 
 
 " Moran Shillelah and I lived in the midst of this savage 
 population. I was loved ; Moran was perhaps the most 
 venerated. He never spoke. His immobility associated 
 itself with all the ideas and images of our religion. JS'o 
 human passions agitated him. He was as a saint in stone, 
 descended from his Gothic pilaster. As in the sanctuary 
 of my church he had nothing to fear, his natural timidity 
 and sense of feebleness had passed away. When he passed, 
 invested in the habit of an infant chorister of the choir, 
 which pleased him to wear, he was saluted respectfully. He 
 responded by the sign of the cross. You, sir, can scarcely 
 imagine the influence of Moran Shillelah. His silence, his 
 measured chant, his presence in the church, his slow step, his 
 eye fixed on nothing, his separation from all men; he ap- 
 
230 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 peared to these ignorant superstitious people an envoy from 
 God, a superhuman being. 
 
 "I had been about six months established in my curacy; 
 the reputation for sanctity of the young man had vSpread 
 more than twenty miles around. One morning I missed him. 
 He had quitted the house at break of day, and my search for 
 him was useless. Three weeks passed away without any 
 tidings. You shall hear what strange occurrence restored us 
 to each other. 
 
 " The county of Tipperary was a prey to two bitter parties, 
 the caravais and the shanavests, or, if you wish that I should 
 translate these two Irish words, the Cravats and Old Coats. 
 On both sides heroes had been hung, and immediately 
 received apotheosis from the populace. You may ask why 
 they were enemies. I know not; they seemed to hate by 
 instinct. The days of fair were those in which the martial 
 fury displayed itself specially; then my authority as parson 
 was null. The civil and military authorities were powerless 
 against their habits. It was the third of August, 1816, 
 a day of fair. The heavens were resplendent in all their 
 glory, and the beautiful valley of the Suir was charming 
 beyond description. I left my grotto, afflicted, I acknowtr 
 edge to you, by the absence of the child. I climbed to the 
 summit of a hill, crowned with a fortress, the interior steps 
 of which had withstood time. There I seated myself. My 
 eyes followed the serpentine windings of the river, so translu- 
 cent, deep, and sq tmnquil, which set in motion in her course 
 so many mills, and without overflowing her limits, enriched 
 
Ax Hour on board the ''Swallow.'' 231 
 
 the verdant vale through which nature had appohited her 
 course. See, said I to myself, the true symbol of genius 
 and virtue; energy without violence, profoundness in calm, 
 and riches without excess. Engaged with such thoughts, 
 I cast my eyes over the village of Golden, that the Suir 
 crossed before she was lost in her wanderings through 
 fields of wheat and hops. IS'ear the village a crowd had 
 assembled. The silence astonished me. Some remained 
 seated by the fosses on the route, others formed groups 
 dispersed over the field of marsh. Presently a clattering 
 of arms and trampling of horses met my ear, I turned, 
 and perceived on the left, at the foot of the hill, a detach- 
 ment of cavalry, accompanied by magistrates, riding, and 
 a battalion of infantry. It was evident that tumult was 
 expected, and that the civil functionaries had been warned. 
 I hastened down, my heart filled with fearful forebodings. 
 The fair was over. They hurried to conclude the buying 
 and selling of cattle. No person thought of overcharging 
 or defrauding. They folded their tents, and the peasants 
 returned to their homes with their cows and sheep, and 
 seemed impatient to leave the field free to the two parties. 
 Then the trumpet sounded — the troops defiled. I found 
 myself in the midst of the crowd. It appeared to me 
 that the military called out to suppress the commotion, not 
 having encountered any, beat their retreat much too soon. 
 There were many gigantic half-naked men, with heavy clubs. 
 Short swords and daggers were half concealed in the brown 
 jackets of the peasants. Every where lowered looks of 
 
232 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 hatred and fury. I saw an old caravat embrace bis child 
 with tears in his eyes, and I heard curses and maledictions. 
 Scarcely were the government soldiers a quarter of a mile 
 off, when a great shout issued from the multitude. To this 
 cry succeeded a fearful pause. The ranks formed. The two 
 inimical troops, each at least 1500 men strong, who for a 
 long time, to obey the injunctions of their curate, had 
 deprived themselves of the pleasure of cutting each others' 
 throats, now advanced to the valley. They brandished 
 clubs, swords, poignards, knives, &c. A Httle child, drag- 
 ging a sack along the ground, screamed at the top of his 
 voice, * Twenty pounds sterling for the head of the old 
 caravat r In less than a minute the inimical troop issued 
 from the neighbouring thickets, and the child, who served as 
 a herald for the troop of caravafs, fell, struck by a stone. 
 
 "Ât this spectacle my blood ran cold. I flew towards 
 the infuriated men, who I hoped would retain some religious 
 ideas. The stones fell in showers around me. I was struck 
 on the shoulder by an enormous one, which overthrew me ; I 
 fell between the enemies' troops. They knew me not, and 
 my layman's dress inspired no respect in these madmen, who, 
 for the most part, came from the neighbouring villages, and 
 had never seen me. I was upon the point of being trampled 
 under foot and crushed. Stunned a moment by the force of 
 my fall, I re-opened my eyes. 
 
 "The two armies were kneeling. There issued from the 
 bosom of the ma,ss, not a groan or a cry, but a deep sob. It 
 was wonderful that this remorse should overcome such a 
 
An Hour on board the "Swallow." 233 
 
 multitude. I felt a protecting hand extended over me, and 
 near me an unknown being, habited in a white stole, kneel- 
 ing, with a crucifix in his hand, murmuring prayers. It was 
 the idiot, Moran Shillelah, whom I had not seen since three 
 weeks. He had made, with other devotees, a pilgrimage to 
 Saint Patrick. He returned barefoot, the pilgrim's staff 
 tied to the end of a cane, the rosary suspended from his 
 breast. An enormous cross, which he took from my sacristy, 
 was on the top of his walking-stick. * 
 
 " Seeing me in the midst of the turmoil ready to perish, he 
 came up to me fearlessly, extending his crucifix over me. 
 No one doubted but Moran Shillelah was a celestial me- 
 diator. All was hushed, and the troops fixed upon the 
 idiot looks of emotion and wonder. There were more than 
 three thousand men in this valley, and not the slightest 
 sound was heard. Moran was there, who protected me. 
 The leader of the caravats kissed the hem of his garment; 
 the chief of the shanavests was dead. The child, after 
 having repeated his indistinct prayer, resumed in a tone 
 of joyous astonishment his refrain, la-la! I was carried 
 home, and the two armies dispersed. When I set off for 
 France, Moran followed me." 
 
 Dear Moran ! the affection of your indigent mother, your 
 religious and simple life, your death in the midst of the 
 ocean, your funeral obsequies upon the deck of the ship, 
 and your sepulchre in the waves, have rendered you poetical 
 justice to the extreme. Poor mysterious being, seemingly 
 half formed by his God, and separated from his kind ! 
 
C^attgl]t^ itpii Ifrairl] ^crietg 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RETURN TO FRANCE. 
 
 TN again returning to my native France, after my long 
 -^ exile, I experienced a variety of contradictory emotions. 
 At first sight of France, I was affected as by the power 
 of magic. Paris seemed touched with the splendours of 
 a new creation, but a repulsive power thrilled through me, 
 for the decline of France was imminent. I loved her skies, 
 her men, her fields, her cities so gay, her conversations so 
 charming, held in that language replete with those exquisite 
 niceties and shades, that subtlety and epigrammatic point 
 which makes it so beautiful an instrument for expressing 
 the genius of the people. But I detested her want of 
 principle, her family divisions, and innumerable affectations. 
 Morals and laws at variance, words without action, action 
 without reason, all proclaimed the decay of vital force 
 and manliness. 
 
 I found that old and decrepit theories were taken for new 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 235 
 
 doctrines, foolisli fancies for sense. I foresaw tlie decadence 
 of France. As I liad lost my family, and bad no ties 
 to bind me to society, I fell into deep melancholy— like 
 a bird under the pneumatic machine, the air failed me. 
 
 But to dwell upon this painful remembrance would be 
 to indulge in personal biography and in sentimental egotism; 
 thereby I should fail in my resolution. My suffering may be 
 summed up in these few words, to adore as a mother the 
 country you must pronounce guilty. 
 
 To pass rapidly over these wretched and solitary years, 
 I must only say that those whom I met with after my 
 return detested me, and that was natural, for my sadness 
 was a criticism, my silence an insult. My melancholy, 
 when perceived, would scarcely gain love. When society 
 is in her last agonies, she would not that you should say, 
 You expire. 
 
 Chance, which in England cast me among the Coleridges, 
 Hazlitts, and Southeys, threw me, on my return to France, 
 amidst the Jouys, the Berangers, the Benjamin Constants, the 
 Étiennes, and all those destroyers of the old system renewed, 
 I had elsewhere seen ardent spirits create ; here their activity 
 was occupied in destruction. There vv'as too much reason for 
 this. What they destroyed was worth nothing. They lived 
 in the hope to elevate over these ruins a magnanimous and 
 splendid social system, a heaven upon earth for deified man. 
 But that the arm vigorous to overthrow could not construct, 
 I soon perceived. 
 
 The deep grief that the state of society and its ebullitions 
 
236 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 caused in me, between the years 1825 and 1835, could not 
 be described or analyzed, except by means of personal 
 details, seducing to diseased vanity — details which I have 
 no difficulty in declining to impart. The gossip of egotism 
 appears to me at the same time a personal weakness and 
 a social evil. It is a fever which enfeebles the subject 
 and infects the neighbourhood. 
 
 My life had been so grievously struck, and I was so 
 blasted by the stroke, that I had no motive power except 
 curiosity and the desire to comprehend those around me. 
 In fact, I understood them, though they did not themselves. 
 They were so much occupied with vanity, intrigue, and 
 ambition that they mistrusted not themselves. Not one 
 of the celebrated personages of this strange and factitious 
 era was withdrawn from my circle of observation, and I 
 saw some of them familiarly. In this circle there were 
 men of very opposite opinions. My youth continued to 
 protect me, and retain me in the sphere of a listener. 
 How many times the ingenious author of the Vestal, one 
 of the brilliant wrecks of the old Directory, wearied with 
 my extreme indifference for an era when youth should hope 
 all things, cried out to me, in a charming tone of sportive 
 and kindly rebuke: 
 
 "My dear young man, you will never have a future P^ 
 
 "Future!" When I heard him speak thus could I restrain 
 
 a smile ? The future, such as it proved in 1830 — the future 
 
 of hallucination, animated this cohort of liberals, or at least 
 
 the most honest of them. It was the hope of a civilization 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 23Î 
 
 whose near approach was a point of faith, which would 
 be free, happy, industrial, rich, powerful; a little sensual 
 for some, a little erudite for others— for all an apotheosis 
 of humanity, an abstraction of Ood. 
 
 I heard every day a panegyric of this splendid civilization, 
 which was to burst upon us like an aurora boreahs, raying 
 upon a rejuvenated world. These phantasms, announcing 
 a future so ill prepared for, deluded me not. I only saw 
 in them a prolongation of the dreams of Jean Jacques and 
 Helvetius. The multiplied echoes of the former of these 
 vague dreamers, which had already destroyed two thrones, 
 had resounded a hundred times in my attentive and incredu- 
 lous ears, when two fearful catastrophes, the revolution of 
 July and the cholera threw its dark pall over the city. 
 
 How strange that our contemporaries have forgotten such 
 warnings! They have even neglected to give a faithful 
 picture of the scenes witnessed. The lightness and frivoUty 
 of the French is general, and causes the superficialness of 
 their works, and also the perpetual fluctuations of opinions 
 and principles, which keep them ever in an unsettled and 
 harassed state. Alas ! it is a nation more talented than 
 energetic, more brilliant than profound. 
 
 The true character of the movement of July has not been 
 designated. It was simply one of the inevitable cataracts in 
 the wake of the great revolutionary torrent which swept us 
 along. The popular masses were under hallucination and 
 illusion. The leaders were not so much intriguers, or ambi- 
 tious conspirators, as sceptics. They doubted of every thing, 
 
238 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 except the grandeur of man. They expected that without 
 an absolute monarch, without priestly power, without a 
 preponderating aristocracy, they should, by promoting the 
 material interests of the nation and the pleasures of the 
 people, arrange all for the best. There was their error. 
 
 After all, this new religion of material interests was only 
 the definitive corollary of ideas which began to prevail in 
 1750. Neither the Spartan fanaticism of It 93, nor the 
 voluptuous Athenianism of 1191, nor the conquering ardour 
 of 1805 had succeeded. It remained to try the reign of 
 interest, the construction of a society without enthusiasm, 
 and without faith, doctrine, or love ; at the same time 
 censorial and sensual, and armed with material resources. 
 
Thoughts upox French Society. 239 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CHOLERA AND INSURRECTION. 
 
 T HAYE, not seen in any book my night of the 28th 
 of July. It was terrific ! The oppressive weight of 
 the atmosphere, the pale blue of the heavens, the fearful 
 silence, followed by great clamour, of revolted Paris — those 
 intervals of noise and repose; now a roar of cannon, then a 
 pause, then an irregular volley of shot from the citizens, and 
 again silence — the heat-lightning illumining the horizon, ac- 
 companied by thunder from the Swiss guards — cries in the 
 distance from those who were wounded by rifles fired at 
 intervals by the wearied but still furious mob. At length 
 the sun arose upon deserted quays, shattered columns, 
 women upon the borders of the Seine searching for the 
 dead bodies of their friends, and the Swiss guards seizing 
 the first citizen passengers who passed, to avenge themselves 
 for the night before. We have all witnessed this, but no 
 person has reported it. Our children will only find here 
 a record of that night — a night so tragical that St. Bar- 
 tholomew, another drama played in the night upon the 
 same shore, scarcely equalled it. 
 
 The terrible scenes of the cholera, in 1832, came to 
 teach our philosophers that God was still very imperfect. 
 Poor Paris 1 She was the capital of splendour and pleasure, 
 
240 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 not of resignation under the scourge, or of prudence in the 
 lower orders, of all the most exposed to the malady. The 
 aspect of this gay city was now appalling. The cholera 
 absorbed it wholly; politics, the theatre, was nothing. The 
 cholera was the end of all thought, the centre of all action. 
 And how hideous wben from the depths of Gehenna, 
 smoking, fuming, the putrid mass issues and infects the 
 whole horizon! The season is magnificent ;• the earth blooms, 
 the heavens smile — it is the birth of Spring. In the mean 
 time, the hissing serpent with his forked tongue issues from his 
 covert. He is heard. All is agitation. The higher classes 
 tremble; the urchins and blackguards in the streets begin to 
 mock ; the crowd of artisans and labourers, little used to 
 prudence, revolt against the restraints imposed upon them. 
 The intensity of the scourge increases. Our narrow alleys, 
 the accumulated filth of our sewers, the story above story in 
 the sickly and dirty parts of the city, serving for lairs for 
 fifteen, twenty, or even thirty families; the interstices in our 
 pavements forming so many little basins for the putrid mass 
 of mud to exhale and diffuse itself in the sunbeams — all this 
 multiplies the focuses of corruption and disseminates the pest. 
 Also the mephitic noxious vapours in the dark corridors of 
 our theatres, the stench that ascends from our restaurateurs 
 — all the organizations of our splendid capital are deadly 
 conductors. 
 
 But the moral malady of our nation calls for pity more 
 than the physical. What caused me to shudder, was not 
 so much commerce paralyzed, our theatres closed or empty, 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 241 
 
 coffins carried in the arms for want of other carriage, women 
 in mourning, the city forsaken by thirty thousand strangers 
 in eight days, the Chamber broken up, work at a stand; 
 but it was the s'ght of the ignorant and brutalized mob, 
 mad with despair, hunger, and sedition, stopping the hearse 
 with blasphemy, inaccessible to persuasion, defying the sani- 
 tary police, and incapable of abstinence. Who has seen 
 these orgies of blood and death can never forget them. 
 Alms and sacrifices were met with ingratitude and cal- 
 umny. 
 
 But not to find fault without cause, is it not true that 
 Cairo, Aleppo, Jessora, those cities of the plague^ have not 
 surpassed us in ingratitude and infatuation; that inhuman 
 crimes are perpetrated ; that the most absurd incredulity 
 is united with foolish credulity; that the most senseless and 
 ridiculous prescriptions for the cure, or preventions against 
 the malady, are hearkened to even by the most learned 
 men, whilst the ignorant and the indigent give themselves 
 up to chimeras to which they sacrifice living victims ? How 
 often had we heard it repeated that civilization had pene- 
 trated to the lowest classes ! The croakers had been so 
 completely refuted, and convicted of calumny against our 
 species ! We had heard vauntings of the light that was 
 diffused around, and the sovereign wisdom of the people, 
 and a throne was demolished to prove the truth of these 
 assertions. And here were the mighty powerless, the poor 
 and weak ferocious, learning and wisdom confused, and the 
 middle classes given up to prejudice and superstition. Of 
 11 
 
242 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 what avail, then, your boasted progress, your philosophy, 
 and conquests ? 
 
 Here is a people eminently civilized, a nation at the 
 head of nations, armed with five or six hundred journals, 
 saturated with light, and effervescing with reason. The 
 distant lowering cloud, the murky horizon, did not appall 
 her ; the streets in her cities so well paved, the internal 
 administration so perfect, the industrial arts so flourishing, 
 deadly cholera could find no access in society so organized. 
 In the mean time the cloud descended. 
 
 Afterwards, interests set themselves in array against belief 
 in the cholera. Political parties place the pest upon their 
 anvil, and determine to extract something that will be useful 
 to them. But the slime of the great city is stirred, and 
 crime is exhaled. It is discovered, a little too late, that, 
 in this civihzation, tortured by ten revolutions in forty years, 
 the sovereignty, after all, which constitutes the foundation 
 and base is egotism.* 
 
 But what astonishes me is, that France should impute 
 to her rulers the wrongs or the vices of her own doctrines 
 which brought these chiefs to power. 
 
 * Here follows much upon the immorality of France, developed and 
 brought to light by cholei-a. 
 
Thobghts upon French Society, 
 
 243 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRENCH CHAEACTEHISTICS 
 
 -T^RANCE, from the first germ of being, was not endowed 
 -C with the calculating spirit-the Uûent for affairs, I name 
 it Her genius was for glory. The Celts of the ancient 
 world were famed as brilliant adventurers. The sword, 
 wielded by them, glittered throughout the East and West, 
 and they were known as the most valiant of warnors. 
 Such is the Gallic character. The Gallo-Roman, scarcely 
 modified by twenty centuries' affiliation, under Bonaparte, 
 pointed her sabre at the base of the pyramids. This son 
 of the army of Brennus shook the capitol, but it trembled 
 only for a moment. In spite of affiliations of diverse Gauls 
 from the North and South, who are grouped by conquest 
 around the central country, does not Erance remain the 
 same' Pre-eminently social, living with others and for 
 others, more alive to honour than fortune, to vanity than 
 power These are their ineffaceable elements. We became 
 Romans as the Russians became French. What we bor- 
 rowed above all, from our masters, was not their disciphne, 
 but their elegance, their obedience, their oratory, and then: 
 poetry Christianity afterwards diffused among us her 
 Let charities ; the charm of social life was augmented. 
 In fine, the German irruptiou inspired France with a taste 
 
244 Notabilities in France and England 
 
 for military prowess; but still she had a warlike garrulity, 
 if I may so style it, easy and gay, which was evinced by the 
 narrations of our first chroniclers and fablers. In the mean 
 time, there was no place found for the spirit of affairs. 
 
 Chivalry, elsewhere serious, was with us a charming and 
 delightful parade. At the epoch of the Crusades, our 
 seigneurs put their châteaus in pledge, and joined in the 
 Holy Wars. In the sixteenth century, Francis I., who 
 spent all in beautiful costumes, had not money to pay his 
 ransom. Under Henry TV., the counts sold their property, 
 and wore their estates upon their shoulders, as said Fœneste. 
 Under Louis XIII. we borrowed the grave courtesy of the 
 Spaniard, his gallantry, his romantic dramas and dramatic 
 romances. The same passion, augmented in the reign of 
 Louis XIY., a remarkable epoch in France. Then all the 
 ancient elements of the French character shone with intense 
 lustre. Sociability became general, talent was honoured, 
 the clergy civilized the people, and obtained for recompense 
 that pontificate* of which Bossuet was first crowned. The 
 fine arts satisfied the national vanity, and even our defects 
 appeared a generous efflorescence, which consoled a people 
 easy to console. 
 
 As to good financial administration, the progress of in- 
 dustry, the development of the business talent in France, 
 I sought it in vain in her history. Some partial eiforts 
 and heroic starts, little supported, seemed to betray that 
 
 ♦ Obtained supremacy or glory. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 245 
 
 our nation had no aptitude for modest endeavour, and con- 
 tentment with moderate success. 
 
 The financial history of France is composed of a series 
 of mad speculations. In vain Colbert and Louis XIY. 
 pretended to foster industry. France, in servitude, possessed 
 not the first condition. Industry, daughter of independence, 
 was doomed to attempt her achievements in trammels. 
 Colbert put commerce under regulations and protecting 
 stratagems, when the invasion of France and political events 
 extinguished her manufactures in their cradle. During the 
 regency, many futile attempts were made to create industry. 
 Societies were formed; galleons were expedited to the Indies. 
 Government was the godfather and victim to the jugglery 
 which duped itself in duping others. 
 
 During all this time, England, her credit established, 
 founded free corporations, under the enlightened reign of 
 William the Third. Later, in France, the combination of 
 riches and labour could do nothing. Yoltaire, Diderot, 
 and all the learned men, thought only of destroying the 
 rotten social organizailon. From 1Î89 to 1Ï93 their pre- 
 visions were justified, and their efforts responded to. Soon 
 followed the fourteen years of the republic — the maximum 
 and the guillotine. Nothing of all this could create a 
 healthy industry, but the spoliations turned to the profit 
 of energetic men. Napoleon reigned, and he believed to 
 sustain industry by the war which destroyed it. In de- 
 priving France of exterior resources, she was forced to 
 resort to artificial means to supply her needs. But England, 
 
246 Notabilities i.v France and England. 
 
 in her struggle, maintained her resources. The problem that 
 the great men of France, Berthollet, Lavoisier, &c., could 
 not solve in France, Watt, Arkwright, and Davy, the more 
 practical men in England, solved.* During fifteen years' 
 obstinate struggle between the two masters of the world, 
 Bonaparte and Pitt, English industry fulfilled surprisingly 
 the difficult part assigned her. The English army was 
 supplied in all her campaigns ; and when, at the return 
 of peace, Europe in consternation saw her losses and deso- 
 lation, industrial England discovered new springs of industry, 
 which repaid her for her disasters. By her, sixteen billions 
 were paid during the conflict — through her, all the defensive 
 armies in Europe received their supply of rations, wages, 
 arms, and munition. 
 
 English industry has for her atelier the globe, for her 
 mart the five parts of the world. French industry, on 
 the contrary — a slave, uselessly active — is propped up on all 
 sides, defended in all parts by lines of custom-houses. Our 
 warlike genius does not comprehend the business talent — it 
 is developed in science ; especially, the subtile science of 
 chemistry. How shall those conceive great enterprises, 
 establish markets at a distance, associate in bold specula- 
 tions, who are accustomed to the easy system of licenses ; 
 that is to say, permission to import or export prohibited 
 merchandise ? A license creates the fortune of a commercial 
 house. It is a grant for monopoly. 
 
 * The inventions of these extraordinary men brought so much wealth 
 into England that her commerce paid for her wars. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 247 
 
 The Restoration, with some exceptions, continued this 
 system of protection, premium, and encouragement, which 
 agreed well with the old custom of dependencies to which 
 the youth of France were so miserably educated. 
 
 Such are the facts that may be gathered, without much 
 difficulty, upon the surface of our history. It is impossible 
 not to recognise that the antecedents of France are opposed 
 to the development of this new social phasis, called the 
 industrial. Industry cannot result in riches of an individual 
 or a people, excepting under certain moral conditions. Is 
 France possessed of them ? 
 
 She possesses exactly the contrary elements. France was 
 in a chaotic state — a fusion of all ranks — no social basis, no 
 principle, no convictions, but in a morbid state of exhaustion 
 and weariness. There was no centre in society, no point to 
 lean upon. Each man was his own centre, as he might and 
 could be. Scarcely had one obtained an individuality, by 
 riches, by credit, or fame, to be able to form a group of 
 individualities impregnated with his principles, than, the 
 apprenticeship served, these satellites would detach them- 
 selves, and form centres in their turn. They called that 
 independence, but it was dissolution. There is such Hberty, 
 when the elements of the body are scattered in the tomb. 
 From 1825 to 1840, there were every where little centres, 
 without force, sufficient attraction, or radiation. 
 
 There had not been, since Napoleon, one centre, political, 
 intellectual, moral, which had the least solidity — a theory 
 that was complete, a light which was not vacillating. 
 
248 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 THE DECAY OF LITERATURE. 
 
 T ITERATURE, in the acceptation of the word in the 
 ■^ eighteenth century — was it not a miserable affair ? 
 A man would profess all that he knew» not, and judge all 
 that he took not the pains to understand! There is an 
 age in which a man who would pass for a splendid genius, is 
 precisely the man without a genius. I recall to mind, 
 ap7'opos to this remark, a certain M. de Guibert, about 
 whom all the salons in 1*175 raved. Yoltaire himself 
 wrote to him very humbly, Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse 
 persecuted him with her love, the king sent him a snuff- 
 box of gold. His advent in Paris was an event, his absence 
 left a void. This was an infatuation without example. 
 People called him our Guibert, our hero, our great man. 
 The women were, according to custom, the mad priestesses 
 in this reigning fanaticism. Upon faith of the folly of the 
 eulogiums passed upon M. de Guibert by his deluded ad- 
 mirers, to each of their epithets I should join an opposing 
 one. I would read his titles profound emptiness, cold enthu- 
 siam, absurd philosophy ! 
 
 The saloons of the eighteenth century would have award- 
 ed, with a unanimous voice, a pension of forty thousand 
 pounds to M. de Guibert, the pretender, and to the Abbé 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 249 
 
 Prévost, a man of genius, who lived unknown, nothing ; to 
 Gilbert, a genius hated by philosophers, a mere pittance; 
 and to Jean Jacques, embroiled with dictators of the saloons, 
 scarcely a crust of bread! 
 
 At the present day the mania for universal knowledge 
 destroys verdure and originality of mind. It induces a spirit 
 (to use an expressive word which the Germans have adopted) 
 discursive and light. A thousand reflectors, a thousand 
 shades, as of the kaleidescope, confuse and dazzle the eye, but 
 the great and living light is absent. It is beUeved a proof 
 of weakness to be absorbed by one idea, and to plod on 
 manacled by that. Thus our men will be at the same 
 time journahsts, speculators, soldiers, poets, deputies, histo- 
 rians, men of the saloon. The attenuated faculties disperse 
 themselves over all these objects to satisfy vanity, and from 
 the thirst for glory. 
 
 Would we inquire into the cause of this unhappy deca- 
 dence in literature, we must look into the past. The con- 
 stitution of ancient Europe, founded upon Christianity and 
 war, formerly established two great classes of powers. 
 The illiterate bore arms, and were ignorant heroes; the 
 lettered were, for the most part, in the ranks of the Church. 
 The first undertook to conquer the earth, and the second to 
 govern it. Their struggle constituted the dramatic interest 
 of the Middle Age. As the ages glided by, they bore proof 
 that knowledge is power; and the son of the merchant 
 or shopkeeper, of the vassal, of the serf, availed themselves 
 with avidity of that power which would invest them with 
 11* 
 
250 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 honours — ^perhaps of an abbotship, a cardinal's hat, or — who 
 knows ? — the popedom. From the followers of lighter lit- 
 erature — poets, romancers, dramatists, those w^ho amused 
 society — rays were reflected upon the mass, and honour 
 granted to learning. The more the third estate increased 
 in Europe, the more was learning honoured and considered 
 a credit to it. 
 
 Unhappily, there was not in France, as in England, in the 
 bosom of the aristocracy, a renovating power, constantly 
 refreshing and winnowing talent and learning, and which 
 retained it always fresh and vigorous, as in its pristine state. 
 The failure of position for talent, the absence of allowable 
 and just competition, was a cause the most effective and 
 imperious of the political convulsion of 1Î89. Talent and 
 the third estate obtained a place hy burglary, as M. St. 
 Aulaire said with much truth and spirit. 
 
 From that time the lettered ruled, and among them 
 the boldest and most supple, that is to say, the sophists. 
 Learning was no longer driven to seek shelter in garrets, nor 
 did government proceed from palaces; cock-lofts ruled, and 
 books were concocted in boudoirs. Many of the evils of the 
 French Revolution proceeded from the mad reign of a litera- 
 ture ill understood, and classical learning ill digested. 
 
 Now the storehouse is arranged, and I see good writers 
 and rulers, but not a governing class or a lettered class. 
 These labels belonged to former times. At the present 
 day, all are citizens — all may govern or print. Since the 
 destruction of castes, education is open to all; books are 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 251 
 
 circulated from the shop to the palace. The result is, 
 that genius is shorn of her glory, pretension usurps the 
 throne. There is no true standard of taste ; regiments 
 of light troops are formed. In a time when all would 
 write and all would rule, and each man supremely worships 
 himself, pretensions spring up as fungi in seasons of rain, 
 but all these little thrones crumble to dust in the setting 
 sun. 
 
 Every statesman is a learned man, and every learned 
 man carries the ministerial portfolio in his pocket. How 
 can the man of letters escape from political life ? It is a 
 thing impossible. If he flees to the solitudes of abstract 
 philosophy — if he swear fealty to romance as his courtly 
 dame, politics pursues him. Story or romance find no 
 retreat, nor criticism an asylum. If in his story or essay 
 any whimsical character is painted who belongs to a party, 
 the writer is immediately classed. As all parties have 
 absurd members, if he amuses himself indiscriminately, all 
 parties are offended. 
 
 One of the most comical features of the age in which we 
 live is, the great respect of the feeble and foolish for their 
 fellows. 
 
252 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 REMARKS UPON THE PRESS. 
 
 nriHE press, in general, represents the mediocrity of intel- 
 ligence. We are assured that truth, in order to be 
 accepted, needs but to be published, which is a capital 
 error. All the great writers, without exception, have been 
 apart from their age — before or above it. They have 
 frequently struggled at disadvantage. Contemporaries have 
 fought them, and cast upon them as much obloquy as 
 possible. Bacon, Montesquieu, Montaigne, and Locke, gave 
 laws for the future, but were not considered as prophets 
 or teachers in their own age. The light of reason is always 
 odious. It is true that superiority prevails at last, but it is 
 too late. 
 
 The press should be the gigantic mover of intellectual 
 civilization. A noble and manly press creates a people 
 noble and manly. It is the organ of public thought, and 
 the condition of its existence. The activity of the press 
 resembles echo, with her thousand resonances and spreads, 
 while it augments the intensity of moving thought. 
 
 But if the press is free, men whom she would indoctrinate 
 must have the power to discern. The more she extends her 
 action, the more she demands from the reader a capacity for 
 judgment, and an upright and vigorous understanding. It is 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 253 
 
 a law in human affairs that each liberty demands a counter- 
 poise of virtue — to each right is attached a duty. I doubt 
 much if the French press has acquired that degree of influ- 
 ence to which she pretends. It is too frequently vain, venal, 
 or factious. 
 
 How different the number of readers in France and 
 England ! All English reviewers count their subscribers 
 by thousands ; the French by hundreds. In France the 
 writers — fugitive and versatile, as are the readers, unstable 
 as the country itself — rarely group themselves around a 
 centre. Their intellectual existence is a nomadic one. They 
 are always ready to change their banner, and even the 
 reader is won over by a new title. There is no consistency 
 on the one side or the other. 
 
 All respectable English families have their establishment 
 of journals and reviews. A mutual confidence subsists 
 between the writer and reader, and the union is sincere. 
 All the men of the nation, writers and readers, group 
 themselves. Thus the exercise of thought becomes con- 
 centrated — it is a national power. Thanks to this stability, 
 to this solidity, to this grouping of faithful readers and 
 faithful writers, the English reviews possess in England 
 and America, and eTen in the East, a consideration which 
 belongs neither to our reviews or our other literature. An 
 article from the Quarterly resounds throughout Europe. 
 If the genius of France is more liberal and brilliant, and 
 of a wider range, the circle of readers and focus of action is 
 not in ratio. Our talent has no central point — it is inco- 
 
254 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 herent, ambitious, without end or aim. Our readers send 
 to the libraries in quest of the popular novels, which come to 
 them dirty from much handling, and in their margins you 
 find the pencilled aesthetic remarks of the notables of the 
 day. In the saloons and houses in the country they have 
 few books, journals, or engravings; contrary to London and 
 the villas in England, where these are displayed on marble 
 tables and ebony stands. The recreations offered you at the 
 châteaux are the piano, walks, boat excursions, games ; all of 
 them amusements for the physical: for the spirit, it may take 
 care of itself. 
 
 Such are our ideas and our literary morals, the worst 
 nourishment suffices us. We even fear the aristocracy of 
 mind. Without doubt, the aristocracy of birth, physical 
 power, and riches, are depraved despotisms; but, certainly, 
 there can be a good aristocracy. It consists in the aspira- 
 tion after the best it is possible to attain, and the perfecting 
 of the well-being and glory of the State. If we had no 
 members enrolled in this aristocracy, where would be the 
 arts ? where the colossal enterprises ? how attain the great 
 and powerful, without their wealth and standing ? a spring 
 from which one can draw without exhausting the source. 
 
 We speak not now of North America, still new, and 
 commanded by the aristocracy of nature. In such a country 
 man is still small, in the face of illimitable domains, and 
 unrecognised and unknown powers. Its definitive consti- 
 tution or form of government will date from its total sub- 
 jugation of the soil. She has not framed her social edifice. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 255 
 
 France has destroyed hers. All comparison between the 
 two countries is then idle and futile. If the Americans 
 continue the excellent education of which the English have 
 furnished to them the elements, we can believe they may 
 surpass their fathers. All power of action of the civilized 
 world seems destined to be transported to them in one or 
 two centuries. 
 
 As Europe has been decomposed, America has formed 
 
 herself. 
 
256 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 
 
 rpHE confusion of society affects our literature. Talent 
 -^ is wasted or prostituted; the pretended great men sur- 
 round themselves by a crowd of little men, who exalt 
 them as sublime. The great name of author has become 
 common and trivial, as the pavements of the streets. An 
 excitation of the nerves is regarded as the sole end of 
 literature. I sought for the inspiration of feeling, and 
 found all factitious. I asked the historian for reflection 
 and good faith, and I encountered the spirit of party. 
 I would search for one original idea in grave prose, or one 
 true sentiment in poetry. I wish for more nature and 
 conscience in novels, and less attitudinizing — more sincerity 
 in professions of faith in serious works, less bravado and 
 showing up of vices in works of imagination. The need 
 of the critic is forcibly felt to lay the evil spirits that issue 
 forth tomes of popular productions, which instead of popu- 
 larizing science, popularize ignorance. Compilation is more 
 esteemed than creation, and literature is cut out with the 
 scissors. This is an immense damage to real learning and 
 thought. 
 
 Is it necessary to cite all the authors who have con^ 
 curred in this depravation ? The list would be too long. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 25t 
 
 Many of our writers have descended to the level of the 
 bagnio, and their narrations have become matter for the 
 Court of Assizes. The first of all beings, the man of 
 genius or talent, is thus depraved by catering for the 
 public, and in his turn increases the evil he should allay. 
 Here is an enormous power dissipated. By opening the 
 ranks to all mediocrities, as to all baseness, you dishonour 
 the most beautiful crown of humanity. 
 
 How can we have a literature, said I, in 1830, when 
 the critic exists no longer ? He is, to be sure, sometimes 
 abusive and unjust, but he drives fools from the ranks, and 
 banishes the grossest immoralities. 
 
 Madame de Staël said that Bonaparte, in becoming Con- 
 sul, was appalled by the cohort of solicitors who flooded his 
 ante-chamber. He then saw that despotism was easy to 
 attain, and that France was his own. He availed himself 
 of her servility : " My son wishes employment ; he supplicates 
 for such a place." But this office is not liberty ; it is not 
 activity, it is not labour, as far as mind is concerned. The 
 spirit was deadened. In the barracks, many men of genius 
 vegetated, the pen lying idle. 
 
 In the mean time, the most detestable obeisance that man 
 can render to absolute power is to sell his soul — to become 
 absolutely dependent. In civil business, the work executed 
 by twenty persons, could easily have been performed by two. 
 Keep silence, and eat your meat : at this demand thirty or 
 forty thousand pens were agitated in France, and what was 
 the result ? protocols, formulas of correspondence, and reg- 
 
258 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 isters. Petrify before a table, draw a million of crowns from 
 the coffers of the state, and return a mass of tautologies of 
 paper. "We have now only citizens, and would to God that 
 this word was not only adopted in our language, but truly 
 responded to in French education! Of what advantage the 
 sovereignty of a people who are mean, superficial and effem- 
 inate ? The true acceptation of citizen-rights is, the right 
 to improvement, the facilities for progress — not for anarchy 
 and confusion. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 259 
 
 CHAPTER yil. 
 
 THE TRADE OF LITERATURE. 
 
 rpHROUGHOUT Europe we see a great fear of originality, 
 depth, elevation, intensity; tliese qualities are defects in 
 the view of those who do not comprehend grandeur. From 
 thence proceeds diffuseness, carelessness, mixture of the turgid 
 and commonplace, crude notions, inventions not reduced to 
 principles, facts not verified, talents wasted or misapplied, 
 nothing completed. To the apprehension of pedantry is 
 mixed the love of gain; circulating libraries and reading- 
 rooms become the rage; the writers are allotted certain 
 dimensions; the choice little volume is under ban; there are 
 no more emanations pure and holy, as the Vicar of Wake/ield, 
 Manon Lesca.nt, Adolphe. There must be three volumes of a 
 work, form and binding dictated by the taste of the public. 
 In books of travels, three volumes with engravings; novels, 
 three volumes cut up into numerous chapters. The necessity 
 for engravings is another result of the material industry 
 which has invaded the domain of talent and literature. All 
 readers have not genius; some lack imagination, others re- 
 flection, but all have senses. Then illustrate the idea by 
 sensible representations; bring all before the eyes; this was 
 the inevitable consequence of the material system. If you 
 consult the catalogues, you will fiûd the same flood of Utho- 
 
260 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 graphies and wood-engravings has spread over the United 
 States, England, Germany, and France. 
 
 The Germans are behind us in these fabrications for the 
 book trade. The novels in periodicals flourish only in France. 
 As to the Germans, they trade in translations; they trans- 
 late every thing: English novels of the lowest order, French 
 vaudevilles of all grades; — novels, tales, every thing passes 
 there. 
 
 True art in writing has evaporated in Europe and elsewhere ; 
 that plastic power which moulds the idea and concentrates 
 it according to the law of supreme beauty. Precocious 
 romances, crude translations, false historical documents, old 
 stories varnished, valueless familiar correspondences, popular 
 books cut and carved into manuals, concur in deteriorating real 
 science and learning. You see sentences long drawn out, the 
 idea is of no value. Light has quitted the summits from 
 whence she rayed on us, and descended to the valleys, where 
 she is diffused and lost in uncertain twilight. 
 
 Even the critic is powerless; it is the public who mark the 
 value of the critic. When the public esteem knowledge less 
 than show, forsake the thought for phrase; when the great 
 condition imposed by the trade is cheap and gossiping books 
 filled with curious matter, then the cheap and gossiping is 
 furnished. 
 
 Does not all this warn us of the decline of Europe ? above 
 all, of the meridional part ? In vain does Europe encourage 
 a hope to the contrary; we cannot ward off the fatal truth. 
 This decadence operates diversely according to the strength of 
 
Thotghts upo^r French Society. 261 
 
 the races. The meridional march the first. As they awoke 
 the earliest to light and life, they will be the first to sink into 
 the shades of night. The northern will soon follow, although 
 the vigour and sap of the tree has not departed. 
 
 France hopes in vain through her railroads and colleges to 
 resuscitate the vacillating flame. England herself has lost 
 much of her Saxon energy and her puritanical ardour ; in the 
 mean time, it is in England that this deterioration is the least 
 felt; occupied in maintaining a manly struggle against the 
 world, the winds, the floods, enemies within and without, she 
 entered not the domain of sophistry, that adored idol who 
 infallibly devours her worshippers; with a great respect for 
 talent, she has but little literature in the masses; ornaments 
 and hyperboles, theories and the flowers of rhetoric, she has 
 but little esteem for all that: at the moment in which we 
 wTite, the farmer of Devonshire and the mariner from North- 
 amptonshire have no desire for a child to become journalist, 
 novelist, or barrister. England has stood firm thus far, from 
 her belief in God and maintenance of the truth. France, on 
 the contrary, lives in falsity, or rather dies by it. The com- 
 bination of industrial trades with literature is the most 
 adulterous alliance that can be formed; it kills genius; and, 
 on the other hand, the endeavour to make industry romantic, 
 destroys industry. The reciprocal effects of the commercial 
 spirit upon literature, and the so-called literary upon com- 
 merce, is deplorable; and they equally concur in public ruin, 
 and the falsity to truth and to themselves in our #riters. 
 
262 Notabilities in* France and England 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 talk with a socialist. 
 
 T MET in Paris, on the morning of the 28th of June, near 
 the Northern Raih-oad, one of my most estimable friends, 
 at the same time the most peculiar; at least he would have 
 passed for such at any other era. You could meet with a 
 spirit more refined, or disposition more generous. Many 
 slight occasions had brought to light interesting traits of 
 character which won my love, and when I heard him develop, 
 with that eloquence arising from conviction, his mystical and 
 legislative theories, it seemed to me that Philo, or some 
 old Alexandrian dreamer, had risen from the dead. In fine, 
 he was a scholar, and an honest, intelligent man. His mis- 
 fortune was in being a god. It was a sincere love of his 
 species, without a thought reverting to self or any vanity, 
 and he analyzed his own divinity, adored it peaceably, and 
 communicated it to his friends. In general I distrusted these 
 gods, and shunned them; but he, so good and true, so dif- 
 ferent from others, I loved, respected, and pitied him. 
 
 We had frequently discussed his fundamental principle, 
 the great anti-Christian source of the errors of the age, the 
 essential and indestructible goodness of the nature of man. 
 I had frequently said to him that of all fanaticisms the most, 
 terrible was that which, taking the " immaculate conception 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 263 
 
 of humanity for its point of departure, made her holy à priori, 
 justified her follies, sanctified her evil tendencies, and deified 
 her crimes." He replied that '' humanity was to me a closed 
 volume, that I was wrong in studying her in the enervated 
 opulent classes, or the corrupt middle classes; that the light 
 of intelligence had at length reached the masses, had restored 
 to them the original grandeur and imprescriptible, or rather 
 the sovereign, divinity of our nature; in fine, that the new 
 baptism of the human race was to proceed from the work- 
 men, baptism of light and fire, equity, peace, and all-embracing 
 love; an admirable spectacle, which was already indicated by 
 many infallible signs." When I next met this excellent man, 
 who has not a vice nor a just idea, in the midst of the silence 
 and consternation of Paris, he was sad, and we held together 
 a conversation which can never be forgotten. 
 
 Every one knows what Paris was in the mornings which 
 followed the deadly battles in the social war. You read 
 stupour or rancour on every face; the very atmosphere was 
 vitiated; notwithstanding the ardent glow of the sun, an 
 exhalation seemed to ascend from the depths significant of 
 secret hatred ; and even the light of day seemed obscured by 
 the terrific scenes around ; all soundness was gone ; moral 
 night reigned. Where there was no glitter of bayonets, one 
 or two passengers spoke a few words briefly and rapidly in 
 passing, very different from the trivial loquacity of our streets 
 generally. The philosopher and I were proceeding to the 
 extremity of the faubourg Saint-Germain, where he dwelt, 
 but , we took the long way ; not that we were guided by 
 
264 Notabilities ix France and England. 
 
 curiosity, but in such momentous seasons the friends of truth 
 feel a stern interest in searching to the depths, and endeav- 
 ouring to reach the source of the evils. All along the side 
 of the canal Saint-Martin the streets around were deserted, 
 and the quays were pierced with innumerable bullets, and in- 
 dustry commonly so rife was paralyzed. 
 
 Great silence, certain sign of the extreme of passion in the 
 people as in an individual, which was not broken even as we 
 approached the faubourg. We asked information concerning 
 our path of a shopkeeper standing at the door of his half- 
 closed shop, the shutters of which were shattered, and he 
 could scarcely give us an answer from his intense emotion, 
 which choked and smothered his utterance, and overcame the 
 national politeness. I speak not of the houses overthrown, 
 of the smoking rafters, of the marks of projectiles upon the 
 walls, of entire streets unpaved, or, sight more appalling, of 
 the wounded who were carried along upon handbarrows. To 
 see all the windows closed, and the gloomy visages of all the 
 people, to hear some words scarcely exchanged in those 
 quarters of the city where there was generally the ever- 
 varying sounds of active industry, one may be convinced that 
 the material disasters were not to be compared to the moral, 
 and that souls counted more ruins than houses. In passing 
 through the street Saint-Jacques, and the sq^uare of the Pan- 
 theon, all that part of Paris where the struggle was most 
 bloody, and ending at the Seine, whose bridges, usually so 
 covered and lively, wore now the stillness of death, and the 
 few people passing stopped not. No more clubs in the open 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 265 
 
 air at tlie Bridge of Arts, where the city from east to west 
 was spread out before you, and you had the most appalling 
 sense of the condition of Paris in seeing her closed houses, 
 deserted and unpaved streets. We had proceeded on our 
 long and mournful walk in almost unbroken silence, when our 
 view embraced at once double Paris, to the left the manu- 
 facturers and labourers of the east, and the Paris to the 
 west, that of the hotels, the palaces of the ministers; then 
 our former conversations recurred to our minds. We entered 
 the two camps in the midst of the city; the word fraternity 
 was inscribed in large black letters upon a board which sur- 
 mounted one of the gates of the Institute. Fraternity ! 
 
 "What a libel," said I; '' i\iQ fraternity io butcher one 
 another !" 
 
 He replied not, and hung down his head ; after a moment's 
 silence : 
 
 " See, then," said he, sadly, " the poor armed against the 
 rich ; the famished against the glutted ; despair against 
 optimism. What are the means to appease this war ? Do 
 they exist ? What think you ?" 
 
 " Certainly," said I ; " the material and economical fail 
 not. That part of Paris which we have been through to- 
 gether, is mixed up with infectious cabins, miserable sheds, 
 stagnant waters, paltry wrecks of houses, unhealthy work- 
 shops, interspersed with large spaces of untilled land. We 
 have seen some houses of seven stories divided by streets two 
 feet and a half wide, and within winding and dark staircases, 
 without daylight or air. The labours of the Parisian édiles 
 12 
 
266 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 cannot be equally divided between the east and west. The 
 quarter Saint-Jacques, the quarter Saint-Marceau, the quar- 
 ter Popincourt, are still the stables of Augeas. Sweep them, 
 cleanse them. Among the material means for ameliorating 
 the condition of the industrial population, the purifying of 
 these filthy streets, and the erection of convenient and large 
 houses for labouring families, are most important; the example 
 of London and Glasgow is before you.* The profit of labour 
 would be doubled, his true freedom would ennoble him, and 
 ensure respect. He will receive no alms, and seeing labour 
 honoured, will feel self-respect ; thus he escapes the meanness 
 of ingratitude and envy, or the guilt and obloquy of murder. 
 He will not quit the part of Abel for that of Cain. He will 
 be neither Cain nor Abel, but something better, a religious 
 and free man. He would not abandon a good situation un- 
 less impelled by real genius for the arts, letters, or science. 
 
 " To the operations proposed, which have already produced 
 such good results in Denmark and Scotland, I would propose 
 other subsidiary means, which elevate in a moral point of 
 view, as well as a physical sense, the condition of the labour- 
 ing man — ^baths within a few steps, or even within the house, 
 and that the obligation to return home before midnight, and 
 avoid all sorts of scandal, might be strictly enforced. I 
 would not go farther; neither should I think it expedient to 
 open popular libraries, dispensaries, or private hospitals. It 
 
 * Then follow suggestions for suitable buildings with financial consider- 
 ations — ^no doubt most of them familiar to the public. 
 
Thoughts upox French Society. 26*1 
 
 is well not to protect man too much; it abases him to be 
 treated as a minor; if he feels himself free and beloved, he 
 will be energetic, cheerful, and humane." 
 
 " I have hearkened with much interest, my friend," replied 
 Arnaud, '' and certainly, in the remedies you have proposed, 
 there is much that is practicable and useful ; but it is all super- 
 ficial. When you have done all this, which I believe very 
 feasible, you will not have reached the source of evils; the 
 need of equality, and the desire for pleasures, will not be 
 the less felt; no, the workman will not content himself with 
 physical well-being that he is expected to enjoy. Is he not 
 your brother ? Where is registered your right of the eldest ? 
 Why should you guide the engine of state, and he the chariot 
 or the plane ? The harmonies of Beethoven, are they not for 
 him as for you ? Endowed with the same feeling, why not 
 the same desire ? By what right do you instal him, like the 
 Yicar of Wakefield, peaceably, m-ediocre, happy, in the corner 
 of his chimney, and reserve to yourself the luxuries and epi- 
 curism of mind and body ? This is a contrast and a juxtapo- 
 sition which can by no means subsist." 
 
 " I love to hear you, contrary to the habits of materialists, 
 attack the source of evil. You are right in saying that fiscal 
 laws and economical arrangements suffice not. It is essential 
 to change the ideas and transform the doctrines. Here is a 
 terrible problem. To-day the evidences of the invincible 
 brutality of these people well up before us as the floods which 
 roll from a distant and empoisoned source. For sixty years 
 we have been wrong-headed, even to the amount of self-de- 
 
268 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 struction. In the midst of the chaos and misery that we have 
 seen all along, and wish to remove, our philosophers and ora- 
 tors have preached to the people the most dissolute epicurean- 
 ism. Theatres, novels, and journals have dwelt incessantly 
 upon the ineffable beauties the poor paan could enjoy had he 
 riches. This is contending forequality in orgies, the sovereignty 
 of epicureanism. This is not the destination of man. He must 
 recognise elsewhere his nobility. He is born for struggle, and 
 by it he obtains strength and noble resigaation. This is his 
 honour." 
 
 " You preach debasement.^ 
 
 " I preach ennoblement by humility ; you, degradation 
 through pride.'^ 
 
 " Your doctrine makes slaves.^ 
 
 " It forms men who rect)gnise their limits and their rights. 
 In what will the sovereignty af all, interpreted in the sense 
 of each one, end ? In carnage, Mark you well, it is not to 
 the people that I impute this folly, but to yon, men of the 
 pen. The people are the victims of the rhetoricians." 
 
 "I pass over these declamations," repHed Arnaud, mth 
 perfect placidity: " I know that you are sincere, and that 
 your severity of doctrines prevents you from being indulgent 
 to men. According to you — and this is the Christian theory 
 — man is depraved. God has created him so. Thus God is 
 the executioner of humanity. This is accommodating doc- 
 trine; by this all oppressions are justified." 
 
 " I have not said one word of that, and I do not believe 
 one word of it." 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 269 
 
 " However that may be, (and we will return to the funda- 
 mental point,) upon the side of material remedies, you have 
 specified some good for Paris alone. What would you 
 recommend for moral and intellectual cures ? Could you 
 pretend to relief aside of democracy ? I foresee you can 
 do nothing without her." 
 
 "It is not democracy which has empoisoned the mind, 
 but false principles have empoisoned democracy. Accepted 
 as progress, she ought to elevate, not debase. It is hon- 
 ourable to abjure personal ambition in this chaotic and 
 distracted season, when vanity would take the helm, and 
 create as many masters and chimeras as there are individuals 
 in the State. In strong nations you do not find insurgents 
 against the teachings of experience. The Americans have 
 hearkened religiously to Frankhn, Jefferson, "Washington — 
 in these latter times, to Emerson and Channing." 
 
 "But how revive the morals and intellect ?" 
 
 "Alas! nothing is more arduous. In the mean time, 
 there is one path — education."* 
 
 "You give yourself much pains to reform man and his 
 opinions," replied Arnaud, with supreme scorn, "as if the 
 world was in leading-strings- —as if, like a poor diseased 
 creature, it must suffer many things of many doctors. The 
 social war seems to you a local malady, and you call to 
 your aid all material and moral resources as a panacea. 
 
 * Here follow plans for French schools and universities, and the studies 
 to be pui'sued by different pupils. 
 
2T0 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 The social war is quite another thing than a calamity or 
 a delirium ; it is a symptom of life and progress — a sig- 
 nificant sign of the European crisis — an explosion little 
 normal in appearance, and terrible as is always the explosion 
 of great forces compressed. 
 
 " Humanity is divine. The sombre thoughts which be- 
 sieged Cromwell and Pascal have for ever vanished. There 
 is no original sin — an effete theory, calumny against God 
 and man, and justification of all despotisms. Take notice 
 that it is from the bosom of Calvinism, that most wearisome 
 and violent misanthropic theory, that Rousseau and Frank- 
 lin, Locke and Washington, have proclaimed the eternal 
 liberty and natural grandeur of man. What can your 
 attempts at reform effect against a movement so grand 
 and vast ? It is as belonging to an immense series of 
 facts, material and moral, that the recent revolt is import- 
 ant. It is in that point of view sublime." 
 
 As he pronounced these last words, we arrived opposite 
 the bridge of the Tuileries, where defiled a column of 
 wretched men, taken prisoners during the insurrection. 
 There were there some children of twelve years old, with 
 defying mutinous air, lips black with powder; some workmen 
 in frocks, young and old, dejected or fierce ; some students 
 in helmets — a sad and strange mixture of all professions, 
 physiognomies, and costumes. The heart sinks in such a 
 view, and public sentiment, so just and so delicate, indulges 
 not in a remark, a cry, or even a gesture, by the side of these 
 wrecks of civil war. I observed them a long time in silence. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 271 
 
 "Philosopher and optimist," said I to my interlocutor, 
 when the sad column had defiled, "while you reason with 
 subhme sub til ty upon the perfections of humanity, and 
 upon the splendid future she is to enjoy, see the unhappy 
 wretches who scarcely think of the explanation you give 
 of their acts. Your doctrine moves them unconsciously. 
 
 "They reason thus: 'Since I am God, all is mine; as I 
 am good, all that I do is good; if I am free, my actions are 
 free.' And they follow out this reasoning. Nothing is more 
 logical than humanity. It is false that the convicts are the 
 majority in the insurrection that has overflowed Paris with 
 blood. It is false that foreign gold has aided the soldiers. 
 Yenality or plunder has nothing to do with it. Your 
 doctrine of the divinity of humanity has heaved up the 
 pavements of our streets, and plunged our army into misery. 
 
 "Along with the frivolous, and those who are roused by 
 clubs and the loud hurrah, alas I you see enthusiasts and 
 fanatics, the sincere and the unhappy, workmen who are 
 famishing, and who have left their children without bread, 
 hoping for the power and riches you have promised them I 
 Add to these, men of the National Ateliers, idle for want 
 of work, and the sincere Utopian, lacerated from the evils 
 of society, and attributing them, not to the essence of 
 humanity, but to her riches. 
 
 " All is incomplete in this world — even the diameter of 
 the earth has no exact measurement, and the imperfection 
 of all things is our strength and discipline. 
 
 "In 1111, the celebrated Borda essayed to rectify, by a 
 
2Ï2 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 special and perfect instrument, the errors of observations and 
 nautical instruments. He found, after all, that his invention 
 aggravated the errors. The instrument which he invented 
 estabhshed the circle in ten parts, and the circle was not 
 divisible into ten equal sections." 
 
 "And it follows from thence that we should wallow in 
 ignorance, sluggishly resign ourselves, accept the imperfect 
 and incomplete — submit, like the brute, to fate." 
 
 " I conclude exactly the contrary. That which we French 
 fail in, after so many essays, is in the worship of supreme 
 perfection, and the feeling of our own imperfection." 
 
 We had now reached the Chamber of Representatives, 
 guarded by pickets of the cavalry, artillery, cannons — all 
 to protect her liberty. The philosopher, who had long 
 listened to my concluding harangue, as if he deeply deplored 
 my errors, pressed my hand at parting, saying: 
 
 "Farewell, you have an honest heart." It was as if he 
 had said, "Poor blind man! He is, however, estimable." 
 This pity of the philosopher made me smile. Arguments, 
 facts, terrors, evidence, all concurred to shatter the theory 
 which was his religion, apotheosis, and worship of humanity. 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 2Ï3 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TN 1820, at Paris, an old academician, whom methinks 
 -*■ I see still, for lie was as peculiar in person as intelligent 
 in mind, predicted the result of the industrial spirit, (for 
 which, by the by, the nation was becoming renowned.) 
 He pointed out the good and evil attendant upon it. He 
 passed for a man rather simple, and people paid more 
 attention to his torn hat, (you all can recall it,) to his 
 economy, his secret benefactions, to his ironical and caustic 
 humour, and his brown coat, (eternal coat,) than to his 
 profound and extraordinary previsions. This man was 
 Lemontay, of the French Academy — a prophet in many 
 things, I assure you, and who has reaped the reward 
 of prophets. He had more ideas than words. Here is a 
 sample of his ideas: 
 
 " The tendency to consider men as machines, to augment 
 capital, is a formidable sign of the age. Prom it pro- 
 ceeds the grasping mercantile spirit, which invades the 
 rights of fellow-being, and destroys faith in man. A man 
 is valued according to his possessions. In such barbarous 
 codes, virtues will be tariffed; the imposts will go to increase 
 the mercantile capital ; civil war will ensue. Literature 
 could scarcely stand in face of this livery. The fine arts 
 would be pursued through vanity, not from taste. Sciences 
 12* 
 
274 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 would be accredited, not for the grandeur of discoveries, or 
 the sublimity of their results, but for their immediate appli- 
 cation to some trade. Commerce would be the arbiter 
 of honours. Politics, instead of rendering commerce hon- 
 ourable, would transmute all glory into commercial. At 
 length you will see a nation where all science is concentrated 
 in twenty heads, all capital in twenty mercantile houses, and 
 in the masses you will see only misery, vice, and servitude, a 
 leaven from which arises conflagration and carnage. Since 
 finance has become a science, public and private economy 
 will think much more of gain than the lives of men. 
 Machines to save labour will be sought, but not to save 
 the lives of the workmen. Have a care of introducing 
 such hard and arid theories, which substitute the spirit 
 of self-interest for that of fraternity, and consecrate selfish 
 materialism, which is worse than necessity, the spring of 
 action in the savage." 
 
 Paradoxes, cry all; petrified observations! He is behind 
 the age ! The wise old man, who thus uttered himself 
 between 1810 and 1820, was not deceived. He leaned 
 upon the past and the future, like all great spirits — the 
 two points of his observation and compass. He judged 
 not by the present, good philosopher as he was, knowing 
 that the fugitive present never reforms itself. He was 
 then to be seen, seeming as a book-worm, moving along 
 the quays, with his old hat and rough old riding-habit ; 
 passing along Pont-Royal, and not by Pont-des-Arts, which 
 was too dear; and he predicted, fifty years in advance, 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 2T5 
 
 the Socialists' insurrection in 1848. "You degrade man," 
 said he, " in transforming him to the working-machine, and 
 he will make you feel it. You reduce him to the state 
 of the polypus, where no head is to be seen, and it lives 
 only by arms. Force, independence, capacity, you destroy — 
 all which ennobles life — life itself. Wages will be accounted 
 as alms, to keep the machine at work. Do you believe, then, 
 that things can continue thus ? Not so. Human nature 
 will avenge itself. The population, brutalized by you, will 
 be more exposed than any other to riots and commotions: 
 for to him who has no ideas, every one presented is a 
 novelty, and quickly works; as to one who is not in the 
 habit of using strong liquors, a little is prompt to act 
 upon his system. It is in the bosom of the peaceful flock 
 that the vertigo makes the most fearful ravages. A mul- 
 titude of ignorant fools rush on to blood and carnage, 
 under the vilest of chiefs, with the blindness and impetu- 
 osity proceeding from new impressions." 
 
 Last words truly admirable, and which sums up all which 
 has recently passed in England and France — the combats 
 of the Socialists, their complaints, their threats their hopes, 
 and their justifications. 
 
 We have now seen both sides of the same historical 
 phasis, the victory and the carnage; the éclat of triumph, 
 and the night after the triumph ; a bloody night, the streets 
 crowded with sad funerals, succeeding the victorious entrée 
 of the thousands of pounds sterling that the ingenious barber, 
 Richard Arkwright, and the engineer Watt trailed after them. 
 
2t6 Notabilities in France and England. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Chasles, in his conclusion, speaks of tlie three reformers 
 springing from the abuses of society, — Robert Owen, Saint 
 Simon, and Charles Fourier, as proposing the best distribu- 
 tion of labour and wealth. He says they did not absolutely 
 deny God and the soul, but they subordinated thought to 
 matter; but he is far from scorning them. Their appearance 
 typified the decadence, which 'was evident, of the old world. 
 They removed some ruins, and expected to reconstruct. Of 
 the three theories, he calls Owen's the most democratic; 
 that of Saint Simon the grandest; and Fourier's the most 
 poetic. But, he says, that industry the most developed, the 
 most material well-being cannot correct the imperfections of 
 the moral nature ; Christianity and Christian virtues must lie 
 at the foundation, — love, devotion, kindness, generosity. 
 These systems promise him happiness only in this life; all 
 addressed to the earthly being; and in essaying to recon- 
 struct society, precipitate its downfall. 
 
 But Chasles, though he considers the decadence of old 
 countries as imminent, expects Russia and America to 
 flourish. Russia, advancing and improving from her ductile 
 spirit, and schooled by the French; America, heir of the 
 Anglo-Saxon genius; and behind Russia and America will 
 arise other nations, and for many and many ages they will 
 advance, if need be, in civilization. He despairs not of the 
 
Thoughts upon French Society. 277 
 
 human race and the future ; and whilst kings turn bankers, 
 literature is in its delirium or dotage, a thousand new acids 
 are discovered, the telegraph despatching its messages by 
 lightning, and a machine devised for killing sixty thousand 
 men in a second, still the European world is dead or dying. 
 In the mean time, the philosopher, from his solitary observa- 
 tory, sailing over the dark and turbulent waves of the past 
 and future, sounds the knell of nations, and in announcing 
 the changes that are hastening on, utters his lugubrious cry: 
 America is in the ascendant; Europe is no more.* 
 
 * A late number of the Edinburgh Review, speaking of the improve- 
 ments in France, under Bonaparte, in roads, canals, <fec., — also the greater 
 security and improvement of the landed estates in the provinces, which 
 render his very name dear to the peasantry as their substantial benefactor, 
 alludes to another cause which reconciles the French people to the present 
 tyrant, and even keeps the name in good odoui-, that is the dread of anarchy 
 and socialism ; and they condemn English incredulity in disbeheving the 
 existence of this fear. 
 
 " Because we in the country are happily exempt from this worst of 
 terrors, — because we have not seen om- streets deluged with blood, nor 
 our citizens decimated from behind barricades ; nor listened to the daily 
 and hourly appeals of a depraved press to the spirit of license and murder 
 — we quietly pronounce the whole a delusion and a bugbear, alternately 
 got up by parliamentary majorities and successful usurpers for their 
 own private purposes. Those who have witnessed the intermittent but 
 inexhaustible civil war of Lyons, the bloody victory of Cavaignac, the 
 sittings of the Luxembourg, the return by a majority of Parisian votes of 
 men pledged to the reconstruction of society, judge a little differently : and 
 our English views, if more dispassionate, are certainly founded on a 
 much less familiar knowledge of the facts. Sound or not, however, it is 
 sufficient for us that the sentiment is most deeply rooted, and that it adds 
 peculiar strength, not only to absolute government, but especially to gov- 
 ernment sanctioned by Bonapartist recollections." 
 
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