APPLETONS' POPULAR LIBRARY OF THE BEST AUTHORS. ESSAYS FROM TIIE LONDON TIMES. SECOND SERIES. JUST PUBLISHED. ESSAYS FROM THE LONDON TIMES. FIRST SERIES. CONTAINING PAPERS ON LORD NELSON AND LADY HAMILTON, LOUIS P/.ILIPPE AND I1TS FAMILY, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, HOWARD, DEAN SIFT, ANCIENI' EGYPT', ETC., ETC. 1 VOL. 16Mo., 50 CENTS. ALSO, LIVES OF WELLINGTON AND PEEL, FROM THE LONDON TIMES. 1 VOL. 16MO., 50 CENTS. ESSAYS FROM THE LONDON TIMES. SECOND SERIES. NEW-YORK:.D. APPLETON & (COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY. M.1Xt(c~c(.1j111 PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. THE success of a first volume of Papers from the London Times has induced the publication of a second. The articles in the present book are all drawn from a recent period of that journal; several of them, which have obtained quite a celebrity, from the numbers of the present season. They will be found to include, among other subjects, sketches of the chief literary characters of England of the day-the Tennysons, Dickens, Carlyles, Thackerays, Kingsleys. It is proposed from time to time to continue these Collections, and a novel volume is in preparation to consist entirely of LEADERS FROM THE LONDON TIMES. NEW YORIK, OCTOBER, 1852. CONTENTS. Pnage CAPTAIN PEEL IN THE NUBIAN DESERT. 9 BIOGRAPHY.-MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. o 19 ALFRED TENNYSON.-THE POETRY OF SORROW. 38 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.. 59 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 69 THE LIFE OF STERLING BY THOMAS CAR[.LYLE 84 LORD CHANCELLOR CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS 103 DICKENS AND THACKERAY.-DAVID COPPERFIELD AND ARTHUR PENDENNIS... 117 GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE 136 OUR ANTIPODES... 177 LORD HOLLAND AND HIS FOREIGN REMINISCENCES 191 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHARTIST.. 208 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 2... 228 T'ltF BLITHEDALE. ROMANCE 247 E S S A Y S FRJ{OM THE LONDON TIMES. SECOND SERIES. CAPTAIN PEEL IN THE NUBIAN DESERT.* HERE is a little unpretending volume which, in its own modest way, abundantly proves that " the age of chivalry is " not "gone;" that the age " of sophisters, economists, and calculators has" not "succeeded;" and that "the glory of Europe is" not "extinguished for ever." The immortal spirit of Edmund Burke may find consolation in the circumstance that "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise" is still among us; and, in truth, acceptable as is the testimony which is given to the fact in the few pages before us, the narrative of Captain Peel was scarcely required to convince us that the most intense commercial activity is not inconsistent with the sublimest humanity, and that the finest heroism may co-exist with the most steady and practical obedience to the laws of economic science. * A Ride througTi the Nubian Desert. By Captain W. PEEL, R. N. London, Longmans —1852. 10 CAPTAIN PEEL IN THE NUBIAN DESERT. Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, had he been among us, might, in his calmer moments, have taken such a ride as that upon which tile young sailor ventured in his strong desire to mitigate the unhappiness of his sable fellow creatures. Hle left England on the 20th of August, 1851, on board the Pottinger, for Alexandria; and he embarked " With the object of travelling in Sotudan, hoping, by the blessing of the Almighty, to help to break the fetters of the negro, to release him from the selfish Mussulman, from the sordid European; to tell him there is a God that made us all-a Christ that came down and died for all." Soudan or Nigritia is a vast region of Central Africa with undefined limits, and unapproachable but by certain well defined perils of land and water, of climate and man, that might easily appal the bravest. They did not much distress the naval adventurer. " Resolution," he writes" Stifled all objections and carrlied me aboard. We sailed, and then, knowing it could no longer influence my course, I gave way to the deepest despair. All that affection, all that temptation could hold out, rose in their most alluring form; and so time wore on, for the first days very heavily, till Cape St. Vincent awoke me to other feelings-reminded me of the enthusiasm of my boyhood. Now all homesick, lovesick yearnings vanished, and again I trod the deck with a high hope; my heart was lifted with England's honour." The companion of the expedition was M. Churi, a Maronite of the Lebanon, 25 years of age, who had left his country whlen aX by to,e brought up at the Propa A FRIEND SECURED. 11 ganda College at Romle. After receiving the highest religious education, M. Churi, almost penniless, set out to seek his fortune, and finally settled in England, where he gave lessons in Arabic and Italian. Captain Peel became his pupil, and they travelled together in the East. After a happy tour the travellers returned to England, and M. Churi recommenced his teaching. Captain Peel had, however, set his heart upon the work to be done in Soudan, and he proposed a second and more hazardous journey to his tutor. The latter refused, but at the last moment consented. The captain wanted nothing more, for he had at his side "a firm friend, jealous of his honour, and ready to face any danger to serve him." The youthful adventurers duly reached Alexandria and Cairo, and then set out on the Nile, resolved, with the help of Heaven, to complete their humane and benevolent mission. We will hastily follow them on their course. In five days the Nile boat brings them to Kereh; on the 22nd of September they are as far as Assouan. It is the limit of Egypt and Nubia:" In approaching we passed several villages to which our boatmen belonged, and it was a pretty sight to see how all the people, young and old, turned out to welcome them." Sad villages! Formed of huts made of unburnt bricks or date leaves stuccoed with mud, about eight feet high, pulverised by the sun, " a heap of dirt and dust standing on the accumulated rubbish of centuries." Yet not wholly unhappy villager, as his fine form and serene countenance indicate, albeit he daily works for no gentle taskmaster from daily dawn till dusk, naked, exposed to the sun, often without a cover 12 CAPTAIN PEEL IN THE NUBIIAN DESERT. ing to his head or loins, standing all day in the water, digging a trench with his hands, or cutting the mud with his feet. Before proceeding on the voyage the traveller notes, for the reader's information, that "the water of the Nile is of a deep brown colour, and when drawn in a glass or basin it looks still more strongly discoloured. The earth it contains is called in Arabic'ableez,' which means'fat,' or' grease,' and is an extremely soft and oily substance. When poured over the body the water runs like oil, and when filtered through an earthen jar is deliciously light to drink." On the 27th of September Korusko is reached. Here the travellers must disembark, for the road lies across the Nubian desert, which their feet touch almost as soon as they land. On the 28th Korusko was left behind and the land journey commenced. The party consisted of the captain and Churi, an Egyptian cook, the Couwass, an Arab guide, and four Arabs. Life and vegetation were missed in the course of a few minutes, blackened hills and broken granite rocks were approached, and the march was silent, " the camels advancing in line abreast over the broad pavement of close-packed sand." The sand glared with light, the heat was intense, the hot south wind came like the breath of a furnace; not so much as a withered straw could be seen around. " We halted at 7 o'clock that night, but only to feed the camels; there was no time to make a fire; we, therefore, drank water and ate onions for our dinner. The march was then resumed. I never was more fatigued; my tongue was parched and the throat painfully swollen. We came to a halt alt 20 minutes past SHORT ALLOWANCE. 13 1 o'clock, when I stretched my poor body on the sand to sleep, and my mind wandered by the side of rippling streams in the earthly paradise of England." At 5 next morning the party were early afoot-having drunk water for their breakfast-and until 8, when a halt was cried, they marched "under the sickening heat of a morning sun without food." Faint from hunger the captain eagerly inquired for the bill of fare. Horror! It was discovered that everything had been forgotten. There was no firewood, there were no eggs, no meat, no vegetables, for even the onions were gone. Sir Robert's son turned with the fierceness of an African tornado upon his suite. The cook sneaked away, the Couwass retired, the faithful Churi alone stood still to receive the full force of the hungry man's rage. But " Churi loves his friend too well to care for his hasty words. He said he had tried his best; he thought I knew there was nothing." It was necessary to look the calamity quietly in the face. The actual amount of supplies was called over. There was a bag of rice, and some stale bread, and some tea and coffee; nothing more. Arrangements were made accordingly. In crossing the desert food was taken twice a day-boiled rice and coffee in the morning, boiled rice and tea in the evening. " The faithful Churi" was even more fiugal. He restricted himself to soaked bread and water. And thus pained by the hot south wind, and scorched by the glaring sand, the abstemious and noblehearted travellers go forward. Hear one of them in the buining and oppressive silence. He has left life bei hindl inm, but death is his companion "Take care, olr youl will stumble over its victim, 14 CAPTAIN rIEEL IN''THE NUBIAN DESERT. Leave tile road, you perish; follow the track of the caravan, and rotting carcases are its milestones. Why is the voice of the caravan so hushed, and why do you urge your camel's speed? See! Your spirit is wounded; you are musing on a secret in your own breast, and yet it is known to all. Look at that horrid object that lay in your path, his head turned back and his mouth wide open; he wanted water, death has mocked him and choked it with sand; he wanted air, the wind is laughing through his ribs; he struggled to reach his journey's end, his feet are striking in the air. It is not death that scares you; it is its insults that you cannot avenge; the curse of mortality, the disgust of nature; it is corruption stinking in the nostrils of heaven. Happy are we who have been taught the blessed hope that this corruption is the seed of incorruption, the pledge of immortality!" On Sunday, October 5, the Nubian desert is overcome. Aboo HIamed is the halting place; the bank of the Nile once more restores vegetation, and man and beast are refreshed. On Tuesday, the 7th, the travellers, who for two days had lived like water rats, creeping out of their tent to dive into the stream below, are again on the scorching march. The village of Gageh is passed. Here is the grave of Mr. Melley, an English traveller, who died of fever a few months before. The tomb " is in the desert by the wayside, laid among the Moslem graves." The pious pilgrim imust needs stop. "I went to kneel by its side, and then carefully restored what little damage the heat and the wind had done." On the 10th the small party halt a;t Kenaniet. The camels taste green food for the first RESOLVE TO PROCEED, 15 time since quitting Korusko. All signs of the desert depart.. Nubia is here a second Egypt. Early on Sunday, the 12th, Barbar is reached. 1" Barbar is the capital, and it is also the limit of Nubia, whose inhabitants are still called Barabras, from which comes the Greek word for barbarians. All above is the country of Soudan." Here the English captain parts with his Arabs, and engages a boat to sail to Khartoum. He is again upon the Nile. The higher he ascends the purer becomes the water. The colour is no longer deep brown, and the thirsty soul may drink without fear from tile river..On Thursday, October 23, the captain and the constant Churi alight at Klhartoumn. It has taken them six weeks to get there from Cairo. The young enthusiasts immediately pay their respects to the Governor-G-eneral of all these upper provinces, and express their desire to push their way to Darfoor. The Governor starts at their temerity, and assures them they will be murdered. They have heard the same thing along the whole road from Korusko, and are therefore not disturbed by the announcement. They resolve to proceed. His Excellency, to save their heads if possible, sends an express to the Sultan of Darfoor, earnestly requesting permission for an Englishman to pass through his unpleasant dominions. The captain owes much of this attention to a firman which he carries, the voluntary gift of Abbas Pasha, who threatens to visit with heavy punishment all who should refuse to do their utmost to please the son of the late Prime Minister of England. The name of Sir Robert is a shield and buckler to Sir Robert's son. Khartoum ir an Arabic word' ignifying' " the gullet 16 CAPT.AIN PEEL IN THE NUBIAN DESERT. of the throat," and is so applied because the waters of the Blue and White Nile flow at Khartoum into one stream. But "the gullet of the throat" is no resting place for the devoted men for whom the slaves are anxiously waiting in murderous Soudan. They cross the White Nile on the 28th, and mount the camels, which are in readiness to conduct them as far as Kordofan. Six days' weary journeying brings them to Labayed, the capital of Kordofan. They arrive late at night and sleep in the Government courtyard. Weep, slaves, in murderous Soudan; but rejoice, Lady Peel, happy in the possession of so true-hearted a son, and all Christian men who would not willing let die so capable a brother! Captain Peel had scarcely swallowed his supper at Labayed before he espied a water carrier. He ran up to him, stripped, and made the man pour a dozen water skins over his parched body. The effect of the ablution was to take away sleep; and as the wakeful traveller lay restless and impatient for daylight to break over Labayed, the night air struck him with its poisonous breath, and brought his errant adventures all too suddenly to a close. Rising the following morning, Captain Peel informed the Governor of Kordofan of his wish to go on at once to Darfoor. This governor was as much grieved by the intelligence as the other had been, and begged the traveller to wait at least until the messenger's return. The traveller could brook no such delay, but he split the difference with his counsellor by consenting.to travel for the present no further than the confines of Darfoor, "beyond which even the Arabs could not go," where he would await the Sultan's answer to the petition BACK TO IHAIA'rOUM. 1 7 already in his hands. Providence is more potent than Eastern governors. The selfwilled Captain who would not listen to reason very quietly submitted to a voice from which human folly and impatience appeal in vain. The very first day after his appearance in Labayed poor Churi was seized with fever anid ague, and two days afterwards his companion was violently attacked with the same complaint. On the 26th of November Capt. Peel first began to crawl, but Churi was still apparently in a dying state. To speak truth, they had not the best quarters n the world. "Labayed stands in a vast plain,'and is a straggling collection of zmud huts with thatched cone roofs. It has to be rebuilt almost every year after the rainy season. As soon as night sets in there is a furious howling of wild beasts, leopards and hymenas, all round, who are kept off by strong abattis of thorns, behind which the dogs yell them defiance. Water sometimes is very scarce, and the wells are nearly a hundred feet deep: it is extremely unwholesome." What wonder that Captain Peel, as soon as he could stand erect, should entreat the faithful Churi, had he only half a leg to stand upon, to avail himself of that half to hop out of so miserable a hole? On the 27th.of November-let it be a red day in your calendar, oh captain!-the two friends shook hands with the Governor, turned their heels upon the hyenas, and made the best of their way back to Khartoum. As for the poor Arab messenger, who had been sent on to the Sultan of Darfoor, nobody, it appears, ever heard of him again. Captain Peel thinks some "'accident" must have happened to him, or it is just possible that the 18 CAPTAIN PEEL IN THE NUBIAN DESERT. Sultan may have torn up the note and the bearer together. The return journey is a pleasanter business for reader and writer. The mind of the former ceases to be oppressed-the pen of the latter assumes a livelier and more entertaining tone.' We could have afforded more time to spend on the road, and to listen to longer descriptions of men and beasts, of customs and scenery, than any the author has cared to furnish. It is not often that we have to complain of brevity in a traveller's journal. The diary of Captain Peel is much too short. tIe has capacity for narrative, and his paintings have all the simplicity, truth, and quiet power of nature. Let him instruct the public without risking his own neck in the attempt. The world is very large, and he need not go to Darfoor for excitement or a subject. Moreover, the blacks are not so much in need of his services as the whites. All our fetters are not yet broken; and who shall say, looking around, and notiing the absence among men of true Christian charity, that our conversion is complete? Verily the European field is not exhausted. We have, however, fears for our author. Who knows but the restless spirit is on the wing again? It is certain he cannot be quiet and be happy. " It was," he says, " with a feeling of reluctance that he left the dry air and reckless life of the desert for the murky climate and wordy warfare of England;" and when he reached Cairo and received intelligence of the coup d'etat in France, he hurried on direct to England "in the hope of employment on active service." Such a Paladin is the fiery son of the calm and undcemonstrative, Sir Rolbert. A BIOGRAPHE. 1l 9 BIOGRAPHY.-MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE.* A BIOGRAPHER, as described by Mr. Macaulay, is "a literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure, to render homage, aids, reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord." But a biographer, according to modern practice, is a literary plasterer and bricklayer, working with a hod on his shoulder and a trowel in his hand, most industriously engaged in the disposal of bricks and mortar. Nothing, it will be admitted, is easier than to pile up in a waggon a whole warehouse of papers and to shoot the contents bodily into Mr. Bentley's printing-rooms; but the labour is surely that of a carter, not of a litterateur. It is not very difficult, we know, to arrange a deceased gentleman's correspondence in the order of time, but a counting-house clerk is not a biographer when he has performed the mere mechanical service. Since the immortal Bozzy slept —having achieved biographical fame that Plutarch might have envied-men's lives for the most part have been written in water, and that of the muddiest. We have gone on from bad to worse. At this moment the biographical art is extinct in England; it has gone out with pugilism and the drama. We * Memoirs of the Right Hlion. Henry Lord Langdale. By Thommas Duffus t-Tardy. london: Bentley. 18S2. 20 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. need not be ashamed of our historians, for Macaulay, Grote, Hallam, and Mahon are among us. Scott is dead, but we will not blush for the novelists while Dickens and Thackeray are here, and the author of Coningsby is Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Poetry is not lost, for Tennyson still lives. Science is upheld in the three kingdoms by the most illustrious representatives; but where are your biographers? Southey died the other day, and we knew not how many monthly volumes appeared to give account of his most interesting life, yet no one denies that the memoir of the virtuous laureate has still to be written. Wordsworth soon followed his fiiend, and a literary chronicle of his career was put forth which we are bound to pronounce discreditable to all parties concerned in the publication. The survivors of great men are, in fact, not to be trusted with the records of the dead; they attend to their own personal needs rather than to the public requirements, absurdly magnifying points respecting which the world at large is utterly careless, and jealously withholding information which, if a memoir is to be written at all, it is of the very first consequence to supply. We do not pine for every epistle-good or bad, dull or clever, fiivolous or important-that a hero has written, neither do we call for every memorandum that may be found after death in his drawers; but, when heroism is vindicated, we demand all the evidence essential to uphold the vindication. The exact measurement of a departed worthy is not a matter on which we are over-solicitous; but we do claim all the particulars-and genius knows how to give them, briefly as well as vigorously-without LITERARY DECAY. 21 which it is impossible to know wherein consists the excellence or what constitutes the worth. Dryden tells us that, "as the sunbeams, united in a burning glass to a point, have greater force than when they are darted from a plane superficies, so the virtues and actions of one man, drawn together into a single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and more lively impression than the scattered relations of many men and many actions," There is no disputing the fact, but the " single stories" with which we have been favoured of late years are themselves " scattered relations" altogether without point, without force, and without fire. A man's memory has been suffocated by the very means taken to perpetuate it. The world has asked for an embalmed heart, and it has secured a lumbering carcase. We care not to name exceptions to the rule, for they are too few to be admitted against the argument. It is lamentable to think that one of the most interesting branches of literature has been thus suffered to decay either from the insufficiency of men to do the work or from the folly and perverseness of those who have refused to place the work in proper hands. It was with a feeling of positive relief that we heard upon the death of Tom Moore that the poet had left behind him, written with his own hand, an account of his life sufficiently elaborate to save his editor all the anxious pains of composition. Great as our faith may be in the fearlessness of Lord John Russell, whether in politics or literature, on land or at sea, we should unquestionably have had to enrol him in the daily increasing list of dreary biographers. How is it possible that the gay, sparkling, exuberant spirit of Moore could find 22 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. adequate interpretation from the pen of our constitutional statesman? No doubt we should have had from Lord John an admirably lucid description of the long struggles that preceded the passing of the Relief Bill of 1829, apropos of Thomas Moore's religious opinions, just as we had from Dr. Wordsworth a whole chapter upon the long pedigree of his uncle, whose "respectability" was of much greater consequence to the Canon of Westminster than his finest poetical labour; but with such accidents the lovers of Tom Moore and his brilliant muse have no concern. We shall hear from the fullness of his own soul all that the world are eager to learn in connexion with the daily doings of their jocund poet; and great will be our disappointment if, by means of this precious legacy, biography does not win back a portion of the respect of which our modern writers of memoirs have taken such desperate pains to rob her. Mr. Thomas Duffus Hardy must go down in the old category. We have no doubt that gentleman is a most efficient public servant; but he has no better pretensions to the biographical chair than we have to the Mastership of the Rolls. He too is a carrier not an artist. Attached to the Record-office, he has carefully labelled all the letters, reports, and other documents belonging to the late Lord Langdale upon which he could lay his hands, and given an account of his treasures with all the scrupulous conscientiousness becoming his office. Light and shade, studied effect, the subordination of parts to a whole, are matters for painters, not for keepers of records, and, therefore, Mr. Hardy, with great dignity, eschews them. To Wordsworth's potter UNIMPORTANT LETTERS. 2 3 "A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." To Mr. Hardy, a letter is a letter, let it be long or short, heavy or sparkling, to the point, or foreign to the purpose. It is enough for him that Lord Langdale's correspondents have saved his epistles from the fire, that is the best argument with the Record-officer for preserving them for ever. There are letters printed in these volumes respecting which we should be much puzzled, but for this official explanation. Writing to his father, in his twentieth year, Lord Langdale, then Mr. Bickersteth, says, " I am sorry to hear that the gout still keeps lingering about you. I hope, however, that it keeps moving off by degrees, and that it will soon be quite gone. From your silence I conclude that my mother continues quite well. At what time do you think you shall set off for town l Your last was written on Mary Anne'sbirthday. Tell my little girl I do not forget her: I wish her many, many happy years. Mrs. Lawson was very unwell at the time she set out from Edinburgh. I hope she was not worse from her journey, and that she is now recovered. I have not heard a word of Dr. Garret, except what you told me in your last. I will be obliged to you to tell me how he goes on if you hear soon." It is just as easy to decide upon what grounds this interesting letter-and there.are 20 to match-is submitted to the reader's admiration as it is to discover the claims of the organboy who kills you with his discord, and then asks remuneration for his crime. When those interesting sentences were printed, what peculiar feature in Lord Lang 24 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. dale's character did his biographer wish to illustrate? As a specimen of style the record is worse than valueless. Filial affection is certainly manifested by the query touching his father's gout, but that virtue might have been taken for granted, if no better evidence were at hand to prove its existence. Friendship shines in the references to Mrs. Lawson and Dr. Garret, but if every good man's inquiry after his neighbour's health is to be handed down to posterity, twenty British Museums will soon not hold a quarter of our printed books. Lord Langdale did not distinguish himself in the House of Lords. On the contrary, he sadly disappointed expectation, and, as a politician, was a cipher; yet nearly every speech uttered by Lord Langdale in that illustrious assembly is reprinted by Mr. Hardy. Lord Langdale, when a youth, made a walking tour in Cumberland, and visited the lakes. He kept a commonplace diary of a commonplace walk, and Mr. Hardy, of course, publishes it verbatim. Lord Langdale was one of a commission appointed to inquire into the management of the British Museum. Suggestions relative to a report were drawn up by his Lordship, and every syllable is reproduced here to give bulk to the book and to complete the reader's weariness. There never was so scrupulous a keeper of records and so dull a biographer. It has been said of Montaigne that when he strikes a little out of the common road his readers are sure to be the better for his wandering. " The best quarry lies not always in the open field, and it is worth while to follow a good huntsman over a few hedges and THE QUINTESSENCE WANTED. 25 ditches to be well rewarded with sport in the end." Mr. Hardy is eternally striking out of the common road, but his digressions are even more tedious than his main discourse. Mr. Bickersteth performed a slight service for Sir Francis Burdett; the mention of the fact (loomns us to a Parliamentary history of the period, and to a memoir of the eccentric baronet. Lord Langdale was a friend of Mr. Bell, the Chancery barrister, and an admirer of the labours of Jeremy Bentham, and the reader must stop to listen to a thesis upon the utilitarian philosophy and to a legal biography illustrating the successful pursuit of fortune under difficulties of every kind. When Mr. Hardy strikes out of the common road he always leaves the scent behind him, tires us with his hedges and ditches, but gives us no sport. And yet had he been willing or able to write Lord Langdale's life plainly and simply, comprehending the subject in 150 pages instead of 900, how interesting a tale he might have told, and how greatly he would have rendered society his debtor. It is, we think, the author of the Vanity and Glory of Literature who warns us that it is only the quintessence of things written that will reach that posterity upon whose approval authors build, and for whose unwitnessed smiles they are content in life heroically to suffer. A solitary thought shall occupy men's minds when whole libraries will plead in vain for consideration. If authors are sagacious they will give posterity as little trouble as need be. Their jewels may be transmitted without the encumbranae of setting, and their needles will not be the less welcome without the accompaniment of a bottle of hay. A duodecinmo, we know, does not fetch as SECOND SERIE3 2 26 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANCGDALE. much money in the market as two volumes quarto, but it may possibly float down the river of time, while the bulkier voyagers are quietly sinking to the bottom. The life of Lord Langdale, as written by Mr. Hardy, is doomed to speedy oblivion. The life of the same man, narrated by a spirited pen like that which in a few pages told the tale of our gallant Nelson, might have proved a fine and wholesome lesson for generations to come. For what, in fact, is that life truly narrated but an admirable history of patience, perseverance, self-denial, and unflinching industry, crowned finally with the most perfect success-such a history as all men read with delight, since none can read it without faith in human capability, without hope of personal triumph. The life of Lord Langdale is the life of a man who never threw a legitimate opportunity away, and never condescended to avail himself of one that was unlawful. What he had to do at any period of his career was done with his whole heart and soul-was done well, conscientiously, and therefore to his own satisfaction, as well as to that of the lookers on. If failure should result from his labours, self-reproach could not afflict him, for he had tried his best. If he should find reward, the same exertions which had won the prize were still ready to be put forward in order to retain and prove deserving of +t. The memoirs of men who " have thrown their chances away" would constitute a painful but a memorable volume for the world's instruction. The story of a man who made the utmost of his resources is equally interesting and far more valuable. Henry Bickersteth was born at Kirkby Lonsdale, in EARLY EFFORTS. 27 Westmoreland, on the 18th of June, 1783, and was the third son of Mr. I-enry Bickersteth, a surgeon practising in that town. At the age of 14 the boy was removed from a local school, and sent to London that he might learn his father's business in the surgery of an uncle. In 1801 he proceeded to Edinburgh to complete his professional education, and there he worked with the steadiness and self-command which characterized his pursuits ever afterwards. In 1802 he returned to Kirkby Lonsdale, and took an active part in his father's practice; but he soon grew discontented with the obscurity of a country town, and he had already conceived a great dislike to the details of the medical profession. At this period he proposed to Dr. Henderson, a physician of his own age, whose friendship he had acquired in Edinburgh, an interchange of letters upon scientific topics, and he himself commenced the correspondence by forwarding an essay upon The Vital Principle. Henry Bickersteth was but 19 years old when lie devoted himself to these exercises, with the laudable object of improving his mind, and although the letters contain many crudities and unsatisfactory hypotheses, which in later years would have been digested and rejected, it is impossible not to be struck with the vigorous understanding, the amount of actual thought, and the singular power of analysis which were brought to bear upon abstruse and metaphysical points by a boy not yet out of his teens. One or two specimens of these compositions would have been sufficient to establish the intellectual acumen of the young medical student. But, as we have hinted, Mr. Hardy is no culler of 28 MEMOTRS OF LORD LANGDALE. sweets, and in his hands the youthful philosopher becomes a bore. In 1802 Henry Bickersteth persuaded his father to send him to Cambridge; and it would appear that the permission involved sacrifices at home. The lad had been offered a lion's share of the practice at Kirkby Lonsdale, but contemplation and study had made him ambitious; and, since he must needs pursue medicine, he set his heart upon taking a medical degree at the university, with a view to practising in the metropolis. As was his wont, the undergraduate took to his new work in earnest. Mathematics was the essential study of the place, and "he thought it right to make use of it." Close confinement to work at Cambridge, however, led to serious illness in the course of a few months, and the ardent scholar was compelled to retire from the field. Upon his recovery, deeming it imprudent to return immediately to the conflict, he accepted an appointment as travelling physician to Lord Oxford; and, in March, 1803, set out for Italy to join his patient, then residing at Florence. We are informed that in the course of a few weeks he mastered the Italian language, and quickly grew into a passionate admirer of Italian literature. Lord Oxford, in consequence of the declaration of war, returned to England in 1804, and with him came the young physician, by this time thoroughly disgusted with medicine, and resolved to attach himself to the practice of it no longer. Reluctant to go back to Cambridge, Bickersteth implored his father to let him enter the army, but, receiving no encouragement in this direction, he re-entered the university in PEltSEVERANCE AT THE LAW. 29 his 22d year, determined as ever to work steadily on, although considerably behind the men with whom he anust contend for academical distinction. In 1808 he took his degree; that he had laboured diligently may be inferred from the fact that he was senior wrangler of his year. His thoughts now turned to the bar, and in April, 1808, he entered himself as student of the Inner Temple. He had wrought diligently in Edinburgh when his father had intended him for the surgery at Kirkby Lonsdale; he had not lost an hour at Cambridge when he was intent upon the studies of the university; his devotion was as marked as a student of the law. His letters at this period indicate how little the prospect of future success had to do with the duty, ever present to his mind, of constant perseverance. He knows that it is incumbent on all men to work, but the sure hope of ultimate reward never bribes him to labour. " I rarely miss a day," he writes to his father, " going to Mr. Bell, who is very communicative when I catch him alone and disengaged, which is not often, for he has much more business than he can possibly get through.... Everybody says to me,'you are certain of success in the end -only persevere;' and, though I don't well understand how this is to happen, I try to believe it as much as I can, and I shall not fail to do everything in my power." In 1811 Bickersteth was called to the bar. He was 28 years of age, and every step in life had yet to be made. His means were straitened, and he depended for his subsistence upon the contributions of his friends. He still works on. " My whole time," he writes to his parents at this juncture, "will be passed either in 30 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. chambers or court, and if being always in the way and always attentive to my business will give success, I shall be successful." He offers at the same time apologies for causing his father expense on his account, and sends home the unnecessary assurance that " in clothes and living" he has been "as economical as he could, consistently with keeping up a decent appearance." A year or two elapse, and business does not flow in. But the student is more indefatigable than ever, struggles, endures privation, denies himself every recreation that can at all interfere with the severe rule he has laid down fol his selfgovernment, and waits calmly for the issue. Temptations, sablimely overcome, are not confined to the priestly cell. In every epistle homeward the steadfast man " confesses that he hardly knows how he shall be able to struggle on till he has had fair time and opportunity to establish himself;" but he still strives, and as fixedly and resolutely pursues his way, as though he saw the reward of all his pains awaiting him at the goal. In 1814, and when Henry Bickersteth had reached his 31st year, the worker was still under the dark cloud, and success had yet to be achieved. In that year the barrister writes home that " it distresses him more than he can express to ask again for assistance," and that he is content, if his father so wills it, "to give the matter up without delay and return to Cambridge, where he is sure of support and some profit." He will do anything but fall back on the profession that he abhors. "After the discipline I have undergone," he says, "lit will be a very slight mortification to me to give up my professional expectations for the smallest certainty which will enable me to live, and in time re SUNSHINE OPENS. 31 pay you the large money debt I have contracted. If, therefore, you think that I cannot, or ought not, to continue my trial here for a few years longer, I will cheerfully abandon it and return to Cambridge, where I certainly shall be no expense to you." The answer from home was a remittance of ~30, and an intimation to go on. A few months afterwards business had slowly advanced; so much so that the student was " almost content to be shut up among his books for ever." A year or two more, and the cloud is burst-the struggler is emancipated-sunshine is before him-fortune is secured. Can the life of Henry Bickersteth, if it tell no more than this, be written in vain? Great caution and singular prudence seem to have entered largely into the moral nature of Lord Langdale; and it is somewhat surprising to find him at the turning point of life, when, after years of laborious patience, the tardy harvest was growing ripe for gathering, deprived for a moment of weapons so very serviceable in all worldly warfare. In 1818 Mr. Bickersteth took an active part in Sir Francis Burdett's election, identifying himself with the extreme opinions of the then Radical baronet. The effect of his support was a sensible loss of professional business, and Mr. Bickersteth took care never to commit the fault again. The liberal agents and others who made Mr. Bickersteth's acquaintance in Sir Francis Burdett's committee-room could not understand the timidity with which that gentleman ever afterwards shrunk from contact with political agitation. Mr. Bickersteth was offered a seat in Parliament in 1819, which he refused on account of his inadequate means. In 1834 the liberal party, remembering his 32 MlEM1OIKS O0' LORD LANGDALE. antecedents, undertook to return him for Marylebone; and then he declined in a long letter, which ended without furnisthing any reason at all for the refusal. When Lord Melbourne appointed him Master of the Rolls, and conferred upon him a peerage, the dainty Lord would accept the honour, great as it was, only upon the condition that the Liberal Minister should require no political allegiance from the judge. Lord Melbourne's serious respect for such fastidiousness may readily be conceived; not so easily the indignation and disgust of Lord Melbourne's thick and thin adherents, who could hardly discern the particular advantage of making a man a judge either for his own comfort or for the benefit of the community at large. In one branch of reform Mr. Bickersteth proved himself no lukewarm labourer or timid advocate. To his exertions in favour of the reform of the Court of Chancery is the country indebted for much of the progress that has been made since his time in this direction, as it is certain that Mr. Bickersteth himself owed his reputation and elevation to the bench to the same unflinching and most serviceable zeal. In 1824 he was examined by the commission appointed to inquire into the whole subject of Chancery; and the report published by the commission, based for the most part upon his lucid evidence, rendered it incumbent upon the Government of the time to suggest a remedy for glaring abuses not yet wholly removed. In 1827 Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst recommended Mr. Bickersteth to the King for a silk gown, and the favour was received with a better grace than attended subsequent offers of promotion proceeding from Lord Chancellor Brougham. HONORS OFFERED. 33 Liberal as he was, Mr. Bickersteth had little or no sympathy with the Whig Lord Chancellor, while on more than one occasion, according to his biographer, he was ostentatious in doing honour to his Tory rival. Lord Brougham offered Mr. Bickersteth a barony of the Exchequer in 1834, but the dignity was haughtily declined. The same Chancellor, a few montlhs later, placed the Solicitor-Generalship within his reach, but the rejection was still more decided. Lord Melbourne condescended to entreat Mr. Bickersteth's acceptance of the last-named honour, but the man was immovable. His own account of his last interview with Lord Melbourne on the subject is sufficiently explicit:-" The first thing I said to him was, that I had come only to show my respect for him, and wished it to be understood at once that I had declined the office of Solicitor-General, but without any feeling of disrespect to him, or any dislike to the general policy of his Administration; that, on the contrary, I thought he ought to be supported, and that if I knew a way in which I could properly render him service, I should be glad. He expressed his regret at my determination, and rather in manner than in words, showed a wish to know my reasons. I said that I really hardly thought myself qualified for the office, and that I had a dislike to it, and probably could not have been induced to accept it under any circumstances, but that certainly the oqer had not been made to me by the proper person." We have already stated that the offer came from Lord Brougham. In 1835, being 52 years old, Mr. Bickersteth married Lady Jane Harley, the daughter of that Lord Oxford with whom he had travelled as physician, 32 years 2* 34 MEMOIRS OF LORD LANGDALE. before; and three months afterwards, Lord Melbourne, who was bent upon Chancery reform, and whose unaffected, simple, but admirably expressed and business-like letters, be it said, by the way, form not the least interesting portion of these volumes, expressed to Mr. Bickersteth his great desire to name him to the King as the successor of Sir C. Pepys at the Rolls. The offer this time, " made by the proper person," was accepted under the stipulations already spoken of. Unlike his successor, the present Master of the Rolls, for whom political excitement has charms beyond the calmer enjoyments of the bench, Mr. Bickersteth was of opinion that the Master of the Rolls should not be a member of the House of Commons, and he consented to take a seat in the Lords upon the express understanding that the judicial office should in no way be sullied by political partisanship, even in that less feverish and heated arena. " There is nothing more hateful or more mischievous," he said to Lord Melbourne, " than a political judge, influenced by party feeling," and Lordl Melbourne, agreeing in the propriety of the sentiment, consented that Mr. Bickersteth, raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Langdale, should take his seat in the House of Lords, to aid the cause of law reform, dear to the heart of both, wholly free from any political and party tie. Lord Cottenham resigned the Chancellorship in 1850, and' Lord John Russell, with the Queen's sanction, made Lord Langdale the offer of the vacant office. Lord Lanodale has left behind him six written reasons for his refusal of that last and choicest prize of the ambitious lawyer. Two certainly influenced him in his lIS CHARACTER. 35 decision. He had " no reason to think that the extensive reform which he thought necessary would meet with any support;" and, secondly, his health was visibly declining. Lord Truro will probably leave behind him as many valid reasons for clutching at the good fortune which the more abstemious Master of the Rolls suffered to pass by him. Be this as it may, Lord Langdale continued at his old post until he resigned on account of ill health, and retired upon a pension in March, 1851. The indefatigable and painstaking man had not withdrawn too soon. On the 18th of the following month he died,-not a very old man, but literally worn out by the incessant toil of years. Lord Langdale was not a genius. He was not a great lawyer; but his was an accomplished mind, and both at the bar and on the bench he had remarkable skill in lucidly stating complicated facts. His general character partook of the nature of his intellect. There was nothing brilliant or startling in his career, but much that was noble, manly, and worthy of all imitation. What he once said in the House of Lords with reference to his office, viz., "that long habit had attached even his affections to the discharge of his duties in the place in which he now was," might be said with truth of his whole life. " The discharge of his duties" was at all times a labour of love to him. It was the result of his self-government and the cause of his success. It is stated that Shakspeare and the Italian poets were the constant companions of his hours of relaxation, but imagination and sensibility did certainly not enter largely into his composition. His mind was essentially calm, cold, analytical, and judicial. 36 blMEMOIRS 01F LORD LANGDALE. In boyhood he wrote to his dearest fiiends often with the formality of a stranger, and discussed topics with a fellow-student in the tone and spirit of a pedant. Mr. Hardy dwells frequently upon "the true dignity" of his departed master. No doubt dignity was there; but it did not always fit its owner gracefillly, like a garment that yields to the natural movements of the wearer. Occasionally the folds were stiff, unbending, and looked angular to the observer's eye. The same remark applies to a Spartan virtue, which the biographer very properly extols, but which may, nevertheless, be, and certainly was, in Lord Langdale's case carried to a vicious extent. Excessive nepotism is a fault, but we have yet to learn that a studied neglect of the claims of kindred and dependents is to be held up as a virtue. A gentleman, Mr. Hardy tells us, was once pressed upon Lord Langdale for an appointment by two of the Vice-Chancellors; his qualifications were admitted, "but his chance was small," proudly adds the writer, "for he was a connexion of Lord Langdale by marriage." It is a fact, that Lord Langdale only assented to this appointment at last because no fitter person could be thought of. A more unpardonable instance was that of his Lordship's secretary, for whom, upon his own retirement, Lord Langdale refused to ask for a place, although a single word from his lips would have secured it, and notwithstanding it was well known to Lord Langdale that the secretary had some time before given up everything, in order that he might devote himself entirely to the interests of his over sensitive master. In truth, if we dare hazard the expression, Lord Langdale was too scrupulously good, and HEROISM. 37 a dash of human infirmity would have given interest to his proceedings-would have constituted, in fact, 6the river and cascade on the cultivated plain;" which, in one part of the present work, Mr. Hardy himself confesses were wanting to give force to a character too level to be thoroughly heroic. But heroism is of various kinds, and we must hesitate before we assert that it was not present in the man who fought so bravely, and suffered so meekly before he won his way to eminence,-who when eminent was remarkable for his fine sense of honour, his love of truth, his assertion of right and justice, and who laboured with every faculty he could command-and that not unsuccessfully-to reform the Court of Chancery, and to preserve to the nation its valuable and long-neglected records. 38 THE POETRY OF SORROW, ALFRED TENNYSON. -THE POETRY OF SORROW.* "BEFORE I had published, I said to myself,' You and I, Mr. Cowper, will not concern ourselves much with what the critics say of our book.'" This was a brave, but a hasty resolve, which Mr. Cowper very soon abandoned, and stood before the judge of the chief review in a most uncomfortable state of shiver. Ile was improved by the suffering. An ingenious person of the last century, the Rhymer of the Leasowes, compared criticism to a turnpike on the road to fame, where authors, after being detained for a few minutes, and relieved of some trifles of baggage, are permitted to proceed on their journey. Of late this critical turnpike has been very carelessly attended. Authors, finding it left on the jar, or wide open, have daringly carried through it any amount of luggage, contraband or plundered, without question or interruption. The public are not the only losers by this neglect. Few people, intellectually or morally, are benefited by having their own way. A true critic is a physician of the mind, and his treatment strengthens the constitution of an author. Perhaps of modern poets Mr. Tennyson has met with fewest obstacles on the high-road to reputation. The J In Alenzoriam. Fourth edition; 1851 ENGLISH ELEGIES. 39 famous horseman of Edmonton did not find his gate thrown back with a more generous abandonment of the tax. It is well that the critical result has not been equally unfortunate with the equestrian. Mr. Tennyson, retaining all his packages, grotesque and beautiful, has grown into the most resolute mannerist in England, except Mr. Carlyle. His faults of taste and language are stereotyped, and he now writes his affectations in capitals. Our present remarks upon his errors and his merits will be confined to the latest production of his pen. The book of verses bearing the title of In lMemnoriam is a tribute to the genius and virtues of a most accomplished son of Mr. Hallam, the historian. Let the acknowledgment be made at once that the writer dedicated his thoughts to a most difficult task. He has written 200 pages upon one person-in other words he has painted 120 miniatures of the same individual, with much happiness of expression, great bloom and fieshness of landscape illustration, and many touching scenes of busy and indoor life. English literature possesses no work which, in compass and unity, can be justly compared with In Memoriam. This interesting field of fancy had not, indeed, been left untilled. Two of the most eminent and dear of our poets-Spenser and Milton-have bound up their names with the poetry of sorrow. Spenser's elegies are carefully elaborated, but look more like the exercises than the fruitfulness of his pen. Certainly his theme was not always suggestive. The life of Lord Howard's daughter furnished few opportunities of poetical decoration; but the glory and exploits of Sidney 40 THE POETRY OF SORROW. might be supposed to be ample enough to tax the utmost power of the author. Neither of his offerings is worthy of the minstrel of Fa&ry Land. With the exception of some delicious rhymes, such as "To hear him speak and sweetly smile, You were in Paradise the while," which are bathed in the colours and dew of his sunniest hours, the lamentation for the hero as for the lady is only a sparkling network of conceits, woven after the pattern of Ovid or Marino. For example, he thus accounts for the death of Sidney: —Mars, being dazzled by the flash of his armour, instantly makes an iron tube and loads it with thunder. The volley is fatal; the knight falls, and a phoenix, which had built its nest in an English cedar, carries up the news to Jupiter, and makes his ascent in a brilliant explosion of fireworks. But in one charm of verse Spenser seldom disappoints his reader. He is the most musical of poets; and, even in these colder strains of his ingenious learning, the melody flows with a clear, limpid, running murmur, that refreshes and soothes the ear, like a waterbrook in a green wood. He was the most accomplished master of what Pope called the "style of sound." What a tune there is in these lines:"A gentle shepherd born in Arcady, Of gentlest race that ever shepherd bore, About the grassy banks of Hiemony, Did keep his sheep, his little stock, and store; Full carefully he kept them day and night, In fairest fields; and Astrophel he hight.' MILTON'S LYCIDAS. 41 And these also,"Did never love so sweetly breathe In any mortal breast before? Did never muse inspire beneath A poet's brain with finer store?" His tears at least were melodious; and it was ever a true harp that hung on the willow tree. Milton, in every way, surpassed the Serious Teacher whom he loved. He wept his friends with a more winning sorrow. His Latin elegy on Deodati contains two or three exquisite touches of natural description and tenderness. But the full tide of his imaginative regret flowed into the memorial of another friend, Mr. King. Lycidas is one of the noblest efforts of an author who heard few strains of a higher mood. As a whole, the composition is beyond praise, whether we regard the beauty of the allegory, the solemn lights of the fancy, or the organ-like symphony of the verse, which, however, has in it nothing monotonous. Exquisitely does the writer say"He touched the tender stops of various quills." For at one moment the grandeur and torrent of his inspiration overbear us, and then a sweet, gleeful note calls us to the shade of trees, or the field-side, when the plough moves or the husbandman reposes. The Doric lay variegates the chant, and we step out of a cathedral into a flower garden. Only one discord in Milton's poetry of grief grates upon the ear and offends it. His anti-church invective 4'2 TTlE POETRY O]' SORROW. reads like an interpolation by Mr. W. J. Fox, or a stray n)ote for Mr. Binney's sermon. It is worth a remark that the chief spot in the elegy on Deodati has likewise a religious connexion. Having placed his friend among the blessed spirits, with a crown about his head and a palm in his hand, he desecrates the scene by a headlong Bacchanal and the tossing of the thyrsus. At a considerable distance from Lycidas, in the Poetry of Sorrotw, we might mention Dryden's tribute to Oldham as being among the most manly and dignified utterances that ever flowed from his full mouth. It will be seen that Spenser and Milton agree in giving a pastoral tone to their mourning. Their framework is bucolic. With what skill and pathos the similitude is managed in Lycidas every reader of it knows. But the interest of the style must always rise out of the handling. We admire the poem not so much because, as in despite of, its plan. The pencil of Claude turns a crook into a sceptre, and makes it kingly. We cannot but think that Johnson's objection was essentially sound, if only he had confined it to the parabolical form of the poem, without shutting his eyes to the grace of the execution. We regard it as a most happy judgment of Mr. Tennyson, that he resolved to forget Lycidas, and to place the charm of his own longer elegy in its biographical passages and domestic interiors. We hear nothing of Damon, and are thankful for the silence. The age, whether for better or worse, has left the pastoral behind it. Corydon is for ever out of the question with people who have anything to do; the close of the 18th century witnessed his burial. That rather insipid shepherd-swain, whom Pope patronized, DISPRIOPORTION OF GRIIEF. 4':3 will never lead his flock along the banks of the Thames since the South-Western crossed it at Twickenham. Not even Theocritus could have outlived a viaduct. In turning to consider these verses, we will mention on the threshold two leading defects likely, in our opinion, to largely lessen the satisfaction of a reflective and tasteful reader. One is the enormous exaggeration of the grief. We seem to hear of a person unlike ourselves in failings and virtues. The real fades into the legendary. Instead of a memorial we have a myth. Hence the subject suffers loss even from its magnitude. The hero is beyond our sympathy. We think of the difference between Ariosto's charmed knight and Sir John Moore at Corunna. It is not Mr. Arthur Hallam, but the Admirable Crichton of the romancer, who appeals to our hearts. A rather apt illustration occurs to us. A friend of ours was once spirited up to try for the medal which Cambridge offered in honour of the deceased Chancellor. Having completed his task, he showed it to an accomplished critic, who said,-" The lines are good, but I should have imagined that instead of a duke dying, the whole world had gone off in convulsions, your lamentation is so tremendous." The wailings of In Memnoriam might have drawn forth a similar exclamation. The disproportion of phrase is sometimes ludicrous, and occasionally it borders on blasphemy. Can the writer satisfy his own conscience with respect to these verses?"But, brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine (And dear as sacramental wine To dyingf lips, is all ihe said.)" 44 THE POETRY OF SORROW. For our part, we should consider no confession of regret too strong for the hardihood that indited them. Soften it as you will, the feeling of untruthfulness cannot be removed. Nature and identity are wanting. The lost friend stalks along a giant of 11 feet, or moves a spiritual being, with an Eden-halo, through life. The difficulty set before a poet is to reconcile the imaginary with the actual; the epic with the prose of common men. Affection is not to transfigure the face by illuminating it; nor is the difficulty insuperable. Johnson met and overcame it in his verses on Mr. Levett, a medical practitioner among the poor. "Levett, Sir," he said, "was not rough, he was brutal." In every attempt to panegyrise his friend this stumbling-block of temper stood sheer in the way. How does he deal with it? He just rolls it into twilight. He retains the defect, but refines it. The real vulgarity is shaded into an elegiac fitness. Mark the delicacy with which the moralist underlines the poet:"Yet still he fills affection's eye, Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; Nor, lettered arrogance, deny Thy praise to merit ~unrefined." The true expression of the character is preserved; not a feature, not a line is lost. The sick beggar in Green Arbour-court would have recognized the doctor, —and yet the repulsive manner seems to have rubbed off its squalor. This is the mastery of art, ennobling the disagreeable. We might think, if chronology would allow us, how imperative Cromwell might have been to Titian about his roughnesses and his scars, and how even the AMATORY TENDERNESS. 45 seam and the pimple would have grown heroic under the hand of the Venetian. A. second defect, which has painfully come out as often as we take up the volume, is the tone of-may,we say so? —amatory tenderness. Surely this is a strange manner of address to a man, even though he be dead: "So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old. "But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing death has made His darkness beautiful with thee." Very sweet and plaintive these verses are; but who would not give them a feminine application? Shakspeare may be considered the founder of this style in English. In classical and Oriental poetry it is unpleasantly familiar. His mysterious sonnets present the startling peculiarity of transferring every epithet of womanly endearment to a masculine friend, —his master-mistress, as he calls him by a compound epithet, harsh as it is disagreeable. We should never expect to hear a young lawyer calling a member of the same inn "his rose," except in the Middle Temple of Ispahan, with Hafiz for a laureate. Equally objectionable are the following lines in the 42d sonnet:"If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say this poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces." 46 THE POETRY OF SORROW. Is it Petrarch whispering to Laura? e really think that floating remembrances of Shalkspeare's sonnets have beguiled Mr. Tennyson. Many of these poems seem to be contrived, like Goldsmith's chest of drawers, "a double debt to pay," and might be addressed with perfect propriety, and every assurance of a favourable reception, to one of those young ladies with melting blue eyes and a passion for novels whom we found Mr. Bennet so ungallantly denouncing in a recent letter to his children. We object to a Cantab being styled a "rose" under any conditions; but do not suppose that we would shut up nature, as a storehouse of imagery and consolation, fiom him who laments a lost companion of his school, or college, or maturer days, with whom he took sweet counsel and walked as a friend. Let Cowley weep for Harvey. Most exquisitely does the poet of all joy and sorrow write-'; So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground." The harvest of memory will come up abundantly, ati the seed falls up and down life; the shadow of the familiar form glides over the landscape; the old fieldpath recalls him; and the warm homestead, the meadow stile, the windy sheepwalk, the gray church tower, the wrangling daw in the quarry,-each is dear and each has a voice, as having been seen with him and by him. But this source of interest requires to be opened with a sparingI hand. It easily and quickly is corrupted into sentilnent. We canl appreciate the medi OBSCURITY. 47 tative rapture of Burns, who saw his " Jean" in the flower under the hedge; but the taste is displeased when every expression of fondness is sighed out, and the only figure within our view is Amaryllis of the Chancery Bar. Another fault is not peculiar to In Memoriam; it runs through all Mr. Tennyson's poetry,-we allude to his obscurity. We are prepared to admit that certain kinds of writing are especially exposed to this accusation, and from causes beyond the oversight of the author. The emotions of the heart and of the fancy have their own dialect. This is always hard to be understood,-is frequently altogether unintelligible by ruder minds. The muses' court cherishes particular idioms. Johnson's regard for Collins —and he seems to have been deeply attached to him-supplied no key to thire gorgeous verse. The Fanry Queen was honestly despised by Burleigh; Milton appeared every inch an usher, with no wand but a birch, to the Caroline wits; Thomson's pictures were positive daubs to the Gothic gentleman in aprimrose suit at Strawberry-hill. There was no pretence in the dullness; eye and ear for colour and music were closed. It was the infirmity of their constitution. " We have heard an excellent discourse this morning, Dr. Johnson," said a pompous stranger to our stout friend, coming out of Lichfield Cathedral. "That may be, Sir," was the chilling reply, " but it is impossible that you should know it." The sarcasm will often be true in poetical history. Walpole reading Milton is the Lichfield story over again. There is a grace, a delicacy, a fragrance, and a light of sentiment and image which are altogether dark to the crowd. 48 THE POETRY OF SORROW. We will offer two examples. Cowper, in one of his letters, exclaims in a burst of rural tenderness-" My eyes drink the rivers as they flow!" and Blanco White furnishes a more charming illustration in a remark upon a woman carrying primroses by his window," They were primiloses-new primroses-so blooming, so fresh, and so tender, that it might be said that their perfumne was received by the eye!'" The thought of both writers is nearly the same-exquisite and full of the deepest love; but how would it appear to a reader in whom the poetical element was wanting? Like cuneiform writing or a roll from Pompeii. Again, a magnificent thought is likely to be obscure to the first glance; a mist hangs round it and shows its elevation. As in passages of emotional tenderness and taste, there is a reflective light to be thrown from the reader's experience of corresponding sensations, so in images of sublimity a large perspective requires filling up. Perhaps the poetry of the world contains no granclder description than Milton's of the advancing God"Far off His coming shone." But the picture loses its splendour unless we people the vast field of time that lies between with legions of heavenly warriors, and light the cloudy edge of distant centuries with the blaze of Cherubim and the chariots of the Eternal. In such cases the obscurity melts before the observer. We will call Mr. Tennycon himself in support of our argument:"That which we dare invoke to bless; Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; EXPANSE OF MYSTERY. 49 He, They, One, All; within, without; The Power in darkness whom we guess; "I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men may try The petty cobwebs we have spun: "If e'er, when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice —' Believe no more,' And heard an ever breakin# shore That tumbled in the Godless deep; "A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath, the heart Stood up and answer'd,'I have felt.' "No, like a child in doubt and fear: But that blind clamour made me wise; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near; "And what I seem beheld again Wha.t is, and no man understands; And out of darkness camze the hands Th9at reach thro' nature moulding men." -cxxii. To that most literal gentleman whom Elia pleasantly ridiculed, these verses would be simply so many inscriptions in an unknown tongue; but to the poetical eye their obscurity is the result of the illimitable expanse of mystery over which the poet sweeps. The very dimness helps to impress his mind with immensity. The following invocation to the departed friend would claim the benefit of the exception:R EcoIND RIES, U. 3 i50 THE POETRY OF SORROW. "Come; not in watches of the night, But when the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in taine after form, And like cnfiner light on light." Perhaps we might even include in this class the contrast in the 24th elegy between the happiness and sorrow of former and present days, where the poet inquires whether it is that the haze of grief magnifies joy",Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far; And orb into the perfect star, We saw not when we moved therein?" For there is something striking and suggestive in comparing the goneby time to some luminous body rising like a red harvest moon behind us, lighting our path homeward. Now for all such cases of obscurity a very liberal allowance is to be made. The highest beauty does not always lie upon the surface of words. In whatever degree the difficulty of Mr. Tennyson's verse is to be explained, by its depth the writer should be acquitted. But in a large number of passages the plea cannot be received. He is difficult, not from excess, but want of meaning. Take a specimnen:"Oh, if indeed that eye foresee, Or see (in Him is no before) In more of life true love no more, And Love the indifference to be; "So might I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, INTRITCATE ALLUSION. 51 That Shadowu waiting with the keys, To cloak me from my proper scorn."-xxvi. We ask seriously if that celebrated collector and critic Mr. M. Scriblerus would not have bought up this stanza at any price? Unquestionably it is worth its weight in lead for a treatise on Bathos. Lately we have heard much of keys both from the Flaminian Gate and Piccadilly, but we back this verse against Hobbs. We dare him to pick it. Mr. Moxon may hang it up in his window, with a 2001. prize attached, more safely than a Bramah. That a Shadow should hold keys at all, is a noticeable circumstance; but that it should wait with a cloak ready to be thrown over a gentlemah in difficulties, is absolutely amazing. There is an allusion, at p. 69, which soars to the same height above our comprehension:"That each who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, andfusing all The skirts of self again, should fall, Remerging in the general Soul." Of the two mysteries, the Shadow with the cloak is probably the easier. We request the reader, who may be of an analytical turn, to try the above stanza for himself. Let him resolve it into prose. We have applied every known test, without detecting the smallest trace of sense, and are confident that the "blind clerk" at the General Post-office would abandon the effort when he came to fusing the skirts of self. There is a fainter kind of obscurity which ought, so far as possible, to he cleared away. In this sort, also, Mr. Tennyson makes considerable demands upon our 62 THE POETRY OF SORROW. patience. Even a refined and educated reader is often puzzled to identify his exact allusion. This uncertainty is always injurious to poetical scenery. When Mason was writing Caractacius he was cautioned by his most accomplished fiiend to make every allusion so plain that it might immediately be understood; because, he said, we are not allowed to hilnt at things in general or particular history as in the Greek fables, which everybody is supposed to know. This stanza of Mr. Tennyson will show our meaning:"And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly wise; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of JMichael Angelo." We shall not say if we comprehend the closing line. We can keep a secret. But we put it to the last young lady for whom Hayday bound the Princess in pink morocco, to answer whether the Baer of LVlichael Angelo raises, a distinct imnage to her mind, so distinct that, in her next lesson from Gavazzi, she will be able to put the passage into good Tuscan for the Father? We may here observe that Mr. Tennyson frequently allows his amplitude of coloured and stately phrases to seduce him into line after line of grand sounding dactyls and spondees, out of which it is extremely hard to draw any message of wisdom or utterance of common sense. We string together three passages that might be mistaken for lumps of Statius or Nat Lee in their most turgid or twilight mood. Just listen how they tumble along with a heavy, splashing, and bewildering ro0l G ItAMMI CA'TICAL INACCUltACY. 53 "On thee the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarmed of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side Tofiick-er with his treble tongue."-cviii. " For every grain of sand that runs, And every span of shade that steals, And every hiss of toothed wheels, And all the courses of the suns."-cxx. "Large elements in order brought., And tracts of calm from tempest made, And world-wi de fuctnaction sw ay'd In vassal tides!hat.follow'd thought."-cx. What is the meaning of the serpent with the tongue that flickers? and how can a fluctuation be swayed into " a vassal tide?" A frequent source of mist and doubtfulness in language is a habit, either wilfiul or indifferent, of grammatical inaccuracy. Mr. Tennyson is quite autocratic in his government of words. Substantives are flung upon the world without the slightest provision for their maintenance; active and passive verbs exchange duties with astonishing ease and boldness, and particles are disbanded by a summary process unknown to Lindley Murray or Dr. Latham. Look at these instances out of many:"I brim with sorrow drowning song." —xix. "Each voice four changes on the wind."-xxviii. "Thine own shall wither in the vast." —lxxiv. "A happy lover, who has come To look on her that loves him well; 54 THE POETRY OF SOR ROW. Who lights and rings the gate way bell, And learns her gone, and far from home."-viii. Here it is evident that "lights" and "learns" are used with extreme incorrectness. The construction requires us to suppose that the lover arrives in a dark evening with a lantern, and gropes about the brick wall until he finds the bell. Just look at the circumstance as Jones might relate it to a young lady in the suburbs " I got into the Kennington omnibus yesterday, and in the hope of finding you at home I light and ring the bell, and learn you gone." Would such an epistle be understandable l If the object of his devotion be a girl of spirit she will instantly cut off six heads, and send Jones a copy of Mr. Edwards' Progressive English Exercises by the next post. Will the Germanic and cloud-compelling school permit us to recommend to their patient meditation a short saying of Hobbes, which need not be confined to Mr. Tennyson's ear?"The. order of words, when placed as they ought to be, carries a light before it, whereby a man may foresee the length of his period; as a torch in the night showeth a man the stops and unevenness of the way." We turn with very sincere pleasure to notice some of the finer and purer qualities of this book and its author. We wish Mr. Tennyson to number us with his friends. First among his gifts we should place his mastery of diction. Words many, and of the finest dyes, from Greece and Italy, are heaped in his treasury. Whatever be the wants of his muse, her wardrobe is rich in every article of dress, laid up in myrrh and ivory. A single expression often shoots a sunbeam into FELICITIES. 55 a line and kindles a page. This quality establishes his claim to the title of a true poet. It stamps every honoured name of song, and distinguishes it from the usurper's. It is like the hasty touch of Rembrandt, that struck his mind's life into canvas. The " shadowy gust" with which Thomson swept his corn-field was as much beyond the ablest versifier as the building of Pandemonium. We judge a genius by a word, as we might try a new mintage by the shape and the ring of its smallest coin. WVith these happinesses of expression the present Elegies are plentifully sprinkled. We gather several, beginning with an evening cloudscene: "That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed withfire." —v. "And on the low dark verge of life, The twziiight of eternal day."-xlix. "I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great woorld's Altar stairs That slope throsugh darkness up to God."-liv. "The chesnut pattering to the ground." —xi. "With blasts that blow the poplar white." —xx. "The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowinzg pears."-lxxxvii. "When summer's hourly-mellowing change May breathe with many roses sweet Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange." —lxxxix. 56 TilE PO)ETRY OF SORROW. "And Autumn laying here and there A fiery finger on the leaves."-xcvii. "Unwatched the garden bough shall sway The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself away."-xcix. Sometimes Mr. Tennyson is apt to exceed the poetical liberty of reviving ancient manners of speech. Old words are old gold. Dryden, in particular, understood this way of setting his jewels. Its recommendations are strong. A phrase or epithet of early times brings its age with it. A pure Chaucerism is like a fresh nosegay flung suddenly on the table; but the beauty of the word should be decided. It must have something of the past centuries more winning than their wrinkles. In Mr. Tennyson's revivals this preciousness is not seldom absent. Take two instances,"' A thousand wants Gnarr at the heels of men."-p. 157. "And burgeons every maze of quick."-p. 178. We know that both of these words are used by Spenser -the former in the sense of snarling or barking, the latter of springing forth or budding-but they have no merit whatever of their own; Spenser's pen does not consecrate them. It is not necessary to commend the almost unbroken music of Mr. Tennyson's rhythm-nobody denies his ear. You are sure of a sweet sound, though nothing be in it. We will add that he is extremely successful CHANCES OF FAME. 5 7 in the endings of the short poems into which the memorial is broken. This is a merit of much importance. When Mason sent his elegy written in a garden to Gray, he objected to the last line as being flat and prosaic, whereas that above every other, he told him, ought to sparkle, or, at least, to shine. Accordingly, Gray exhorted him to twirl the sentiment into an apophthegm, to stick a flower in it, to gild it with a costly expression, and to make it strike the fancy, the ear, or the heart. Mr. Tennyson has, however unconsciously, followed the advice. Nor among his wordexcellencies should we forget the pleasing effect of his word-repettiions-an art which poets of all countries and times have been fond of practising. Ovid's description of Apollo's chariot is a musical example, with its golden axle, its golden beam, and the outward rim of the wheels in gold; where the sound of the aureus is like a. mellow note continually returning in the strain. In conclusion, we offer only one observation by way of moral. Small as this book is, it may be abridged with profit. The kindest gift to a poet is a division of " 2." We would not exclude the greatest names from a share in the privilege. What fierce grinning distortions of Dante might be driven out of Purgatory! What succulent episodes of Spenser or Camoens be lopped off! What dry shreds of Milton be tossed into a Baptist magazine! How the noble features of Dry-. den's genius would shine out if all his trade verses had been treated like Tonson's trade guineas, and clipped: Wordsworth's Excursion would pleasantly shorten into a summer walk, and Southey's 10 volumes reappear An:~~~~~~~P 58 THE POETRY OF SORROW. with infinite vivacity in a moderate 18mo. Whatever be the expansion of ancient song, compression is indispensable to a modern versifier. The circulation of his blood is too languid for a large body, and scarcely reaches the extremities. His chances of fame in the future may be calculated by the thickness of his volume. Posterity will only preserve the choicer metal. Epic urns, with their glitter and baseness, will be broken up, while the ode and sonnet give forth their little gleams; and he will be the happy rhymer in the coming century, whose grain of gold, disengaged of its impurities, and not swollen out with alloy, has melted quite pure into a locket. Nov. 28, 1851. SPANISH LITERATURE. 59 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.* SPAIN, long the land of mystery and misconception, seems likely at last to be better understood, thanks to Anglo-Saxon diligence and intellect; while Robertson, Dunlop, and Mahon have set before us her more recent history-Southey and Lockhart her ballads, chronicles, and chivalry —Head and Stirling her fine arts-Ford and Widdrington the form and pressure of her land and people, our Transatlantic brethren have chosen for their part the age in which their continent was discovered, and the illustrious Spaniards by whom the great deed was done; to the names of Irving and Prescottdeservedly European-that of Ticknor must now be added: in the excellent work before us he has pretty well exhausted the literature of Spain, and has completed in one comprehensive whole the large subject which his pioneers, Bouterwek, Lampillas, Liailo, Sismondi, Ludwig Clarus, and others, had only treated in portions and imperfectly. The language of Spain, fit exponent of its people, is the grave and grandiloquent son of the Latin, as the elegant delicate Italian is its daughter, and well did Charles V. pronounce it to be that in which alone mortal man should pray to his Creator. The process of its By George Ticknor. Three vols. London, 1849, 60 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. formation was slow; the earliest existing specimen is the Charter of Aviles, granted in 1155, more than four centuries after the Moorish invasion. Another century elapsed ere the Poem of the Cid, the Iliad of the Achilles, the Chlampion of Spain, appeared. This, the first, is still the finest epic in the language, and breathes throughout an earnest, loyal, and religious tone, the characteristics of the genuine old Castilian. About a century after Alonso the Learned led the way to Spanish prose, which his stately, majestic style formed and fixed: to it he gave currency by a translation of the Bible, by ordering it to be used in courts of law, and by composing in it his code, which still forms the basis of his country's jurisprudence. Ballad poetry arose earlier; it was of national and Provengal origin, and in no ways referable to Oriental sources, being entirely anti-Arabic in tone and spirit. These romances, the early versified history of Spain, were written when truth hovered on the verge of fiction -theii' thoughts that breathed and words that burnt were handed down firom cradle to cradle, and have been, from the beginning to the end, the delight of the people, and the expression of their minds and hearts; owing nothing to antiquity or the foreigner, they deal exclusively with Spanish persons and things; a yearning for them has become a second nature to Spaniards, and they spring up in all spots and in all times like native flowers of the Iberian soil. Purely Provengal poetry died away when Arragon, once independent, was merged into Castile, and the language of the Court became dominant; then a dialect, admirably adapted from its "honeved sweetness" PICTURESQ1UE BALLADS. 61 for love and poetry, was cut off in the bud of its promise. In vain did John II., the Maecenas of the troubadour, and the Marquises of Villena and Santillana, themselves poets and patrons of poets, strive to preserve the " gay science:" their favoured bard, Juan de Mena, by imitating the allegories and artificialities of Italy, raised an opposition against simple national realities. The "Cancioneros" or early and rare collections of ballads, deservedly form at once the difficulty and delight of lovers of idiomatic literature. Akin to these ballads, are the old Froissart-like chronicles of Spain, which Alonso the Learned began, and his successors long continued; they were written either by men high in office, or by eye-witnesses and actors in the stirring times when the Cross waged a war of extermination against the Crescent; rich, indeed, would this virgin mine have proved had Southey possessed the creative genius of Walter Scott. These picturesque records led to those pure fictions of imagination, romances of chivalry, which furnished to advancing civilization a reading more dignified than ballads, more amusing than grave history; of these Ameadis de Gaula, written about 1400 by the Portuguese Vasco de Lobeira, is the head type, and is, like the Poema del Cid, at once the first and best of its kind; it became the book of the age; the imitations exceed 70 folios, an enormous number, considering how few volumes were then printed; their influence extended over two centuries, until Cervantes sealed their fate by his immortal Don Quixote; every page, however, of which proved the extent of their popularity, how deeply he had read them, and how full to the brim he was with the true 62 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. spirit of chivalry; thus this the best, and almost the only Spanish book which has influenced Europe, and is for all times and nations, was written, as Montesquieu epigrammatically remarked, to prove all others to be worthless. Mr. Ticknor devotes 65 pages to the life and various works of Cervantes, his wounds, captivities, and poverty. On these we cannot dwell, and they are generally known. But Don Quixote has ever appeared to us to be immeasurably superior to all other of its author's productions. Returning to the 15th century, soon a fatal change came over the spirit of Spanish literature, and at the moment when peace at home, and the discovery of a new world abroad, gave promise of greater progress. The Inquisition, framed and fortified by Cardinal Ximenes, proved the incubus under which the soul and body of the nation was dwarfed: armed originally against heretics, it passed speedily from burning men to burning books. So early as 1521, Papal briefs were issued against the press, the dangers of which Luther and the printed Bible revealed to the Vatican; men of learning-to which Protestantism appeals-were suspected, and persecution of opinion became the settled rule of Church and State, until the scared and fettered intellect of the land departed from its bold and generous nationalities, and exchanged heroism, loyalty, and religion, for immoral dramas and novels, courtly flatteries, lying legends, and superstitions. It need not be said that searching, honest history-when truth was a libel-became discountenanced. Mariana himself dared not depart from received traditions. Far more facilities were given to INFLUENCES. 63 heraldic lore, provincial annals, and topography, which pandered to family and local vanities: in these Spain is very rich-for the most part they are overcharged with twaddle about Tubal and Santiago, and exhibit greater powers of credulity than of criticism. It is equally obvious that neither forensic nor deliberative eloquence, which flourish only on the soil of freedom, could thrive in Spain under kings who were above law; nor was pulpit eloquence much encouraged by a church jealous of allowing dogmas to be discussed; the fervent and pathetic Luis de Granada may be cited as an exception; yet even he, in common with many of his most gifted brethren, was harassed by the Inquisition. Neither could satire be vigorous or independent. Trembling before the powerful sceptre, mitre, and sword, it attacked feeble women, bad medical men, and. poets; in the hands of Quevedo, who selected Juvenal rather than Horace for his model-it was coarse; the banter of Cervantes and Roxas being lighter and somewhat better. Spain abounds in collections of proverbs, which take a settled rank in her didactic literature: the Arab fondness for wise saws and instances, where long experiences are condensed into short sentences, passed readily into the countrymen of Sancho Panza. The next change for the worse arose from the increasing influence exercised by Italy, which the conquests of Charles V. and the possession of Naples brought in closer contact with Spain. Soon conceits, pedantries, and affectations supplanted singleness of purpose and simplicity; then ensued a tiresome array of didactic poetry, versified theology, eclogues, and mawkish pastorals, happily now food for bookworms 64 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. and antiquarians. In their train followed prose-pastorals, and dreams of Arcadian Utopias, the reaction of courtly and artificiali life; they were introduced by the Portuguese, George de Montemayor; with few exceptions, they lack the freshness of the field. But Spaniards, like the ancient classics, have small relish for nature or country life: man is their emphatic and engrossing theme. Well, therefore, did Don Quixote's niece, at the burning of his library, commit these pastorals to the flames, lest her uncle, recovered from the madness of knight-errantry, should, by reading them, turn shepherd. Meantime, a deeper bathos was at hand, and the last glimmerings of true feeling, in Luis de Leon, Boscan, and Garcillasso de Vega (one of the few poets, by the way, ever killed in battle), paled under the euphuistic " cultismo" of Gongora and his sect, who, wanting better bread than could be made of wheat, masked poverty of head and heart under ambitious and fantastic phraseology, forced metaphors, and playing upon words, until the puny idea was 6verlaid with verbiage; nor, the soldier bulletins in rhyme of Ercilla excepted, did the Epos fare better: its wiredrawn mannerisms savoured more of patriotism than poetry; the vivifying spirit was extinct; yet in proportion as Spain tottered to her fall, vainglorious boastings of power and glory increased, she turned fiom the humiliating present, either to ruminate on a nobler past, or speculate on a brighter future. Prose in some respects succeeded better than verse. No sooner had serious chronicles degenerated into romances of chivalry than they, in the reaction, descended from stilty fictions; knights were reduced to the ranks, THE NOVELISTS. 65 and in their stead heroes were enlisted from the veriest dregs of society: du sazblime aa ridicule il n'y q'urn pas. Then eminent men gave full reins to their fancies in baring with bitter sarcasm and mockery, subjects which neither alarmed nor offended the powers of Church and State; then Spain set the example to the world in her Picaresque, or Rogues' March tales, of which Lazarillo de Tormes, the first and foremost, was written about 1523, by Diego de Mendoza, one of her noblest soldiers, statesmen, and historians. Forty-five years afterwards, it was imitated in style and purport by Mateo Aleman, in his Guzman de.Alfarache, and also by Cervantes, Quevedo, Espinel, Guevara, Solorgano, Salas Barbadillo, and others; in their arch-Spanish pages were described tricks and shifts, the sayings and doings of unprincipled idlers and needy disbanded adventurers, thrown loose to prey on society by the cessation of wars foreign and domestic, in a word of the mendicant vermin which pride, allied to poverty, has rendered indigenous in Spain. To them we owe Gil Blas, and largely as Le Sage borrowed from Spanish originals, his book is infinitely more witty and French-polished than any of its coarser prototypes, which assuredly it will long survive. It was before these racy realities that novels of fiction failed, with the one exception of the Wars of Granada, by Gines Perez de iita. This charming work, in which a tissue of sweetest ballads is interwoven, was, in truth, the forerunner of Scott's historical romances. The drama of Spain deserves especial notice; the theatre, put down by the early Christians as pagan and profane, was in due time enlisted into the service of the Vatican, who amused and instructed a dull dark 66 HISTroRY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. age with dramatized legends and religious truths and mysteries. The first buddings of the secular stage are to be traced about 1472 in the satirical eclogues of Mingo Revulgo; they ripened under Lope de Vega, who, with his successor, Calderon de la Barca, ruled the boards from 1604 to 1681. The histriomastrix church succumbed for a time under the Royal influence of the pleasure and play-loving Philip IV. Mr. Ticknor dedicates 123 pages to Lope de Vega; Lord Holland having, however, familiarized us with the details, we will only observe, that Lope impressed on the drama a truly Spanish physiognomy by his defiance of the unities, classicalities, and foreign things of the "Erudite" party; he took the people for his patrons, and found in them earnest and steady allies; to please them was his sole study; holding up the mirror to his times, and reflecting truly a profligate court and city, he became the idol, the phoenix of his day; he trusted for success in his fabulously numerous productions, more to labyrinths of intrigues, scenic situations, and complicity of plots, than to nice delineation of character or deep searchings into the humnan heart; he lacked the mens divinior of a real poet, and was at best a prodigal improvvisatore in verse; drawing as he did a variety of man, not the species, he was the creature of a period, of a fashion, and now he is gone out. His plays pall on the theatres of Spain, and defy the book-gluttony of Germany; he has strutted his hour on the stage, while Shakspeare, nature's darling, who drew mankind, lives and will live as long as the human race. Lope, in our mind, is inferior to the brilliant melodious Calderon in the expression of the exciting passions of DECLINE. 67 revenge and jealousy; to Calderon Mr. Ticknor has given 66 pages, and a whole chapter to Quevedo. He too has passed away, and now, the Aristophanes of his day is but a name; few ever read his works, his wit is neither fine nor polished, his sarcasm is savage, his style is obscure and grotesque. Two other Spanish dramatists only need be mentioned, since greater names have made theirs European, Guillen de Castro, whose Cid was imitated by Corneille-Gabriel Tellez (Tirso de Molina), whose Don Juan formed the ground-work to Beaumarchais, Mozart, Rossini, and Byron. The literature of Spain in common with her arts, arms, glories, and almost name, perished with her Austrian dynasty, whose last sovereign, the imbecile Charles II., was fitted for a fallen state. Then the war of succession handed Castile over to France, its antipathy, antithesis, and antipodes. The Versaillese-bred Philip V. soon warred against Spanish nationalities, in order to raise on its ruins his country's one-sided civilization. Then ensued the dreary age of Grand Monarque patronage, of Royal Academies, who follow the funerals of patients whom they never can resuscitate or reproduce. Paris and Gallicism set the ton to Madrid, and poor, marrowless foreign copies superseded pithy, homebred originals. We cannot follow Mr. Ticknor in dragging from the dust of oblivion these intolerable mediocrities, whom posterity willingly would let die; we respect his inimitable patience, and now in bidding him farewell, our best thanks must be tendered for the mass of accurate information contained in his genuine work. Not one made up of borrowed erudition, or second-hand quotation, it is the labour of love, the 68 IIISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. fruit of 30 years' honest, hard reading of his wellstocked library, the finest of its kind in America; our author is full of his subject to overflowing, and from the perhaps unavoidable necessity of giving a complete series of Spanish authors and a catalogue of books he is sometimes oppressed with his learning, as David was by the heavy armour of Saul; occasionally we were jaded with dry details, and felt that a considerable portion of his volumes, and notes especially, were less suited for the reading-desk than the bookcase; but no library of any pretensions can dispense with this matterpregnant work. The style of Mr. Ticknor suits the professor; it is clear, precise, and unaffected. Without being lively or poetical, he interests in his descriptions, and is impartial and unprejudiced in his criticisms; here and there the fastidious ear of the Old Country will trace a tone of constraint, which Americans writing this high class of English can scarcely quite escape. Taken as a whole, the work is the best that has ever appeared on its subject, and certainly will insure to Mr. Ticknor a lasting and honourable reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 69 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS.* "WHAT news of Sir John Franklin? Have any traces of his whereabouts been discovered? Has any light been thrown upon the fortunes of himself and his crews2?" Such are the inquiries which the announcement of any new narrative of an Arctic Expedition will elicit from almost every Englishman, and until these questions are answered it would be a mere waste of time to expatiate on geographical or geological discoveries, or to unfold additions to the Flora and'auna Borealis. Dr. Sutherland, who appears to have literally followed Sir John Franklin's recommendation to his officers to " observe everything from a flea to a whale," has accumulated in the volumes before us many useful facts in natural history and meteorology, to which, however, due attention will scarcely be paid until anxiety about Sir John Franklin's fate is somewhat allayed. WTe hasten, then, to say, on the authority of * 1. Journal of a Vroyage in Baffin's Bay and Barrow's Straits in 1850-51, performed by Her M~ajesty's ships Lady Franklin and Sophia, under the command of Mr. William Penny, in search of the missing crews of Her Mlajesty's ships Erebus and Terror. By Peter C. Sutherland, M.D., M.R.C.S.E., surgeon tothe expedition. 2 vois. Longmans. 1852. 2. Papors and Lespatches relating to the Arctic Searching Expeditiors of 1850-51-52; together with afew brief remarks on the probable course pursued by Sir John Franklin. Collected and arranged by James Mangles, Commander, R.N. Rivingtons. 1852. 70 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. those best qualified to form an opinion upon the subject, that hope of Sir John Franklin's safety is by no means to be abandoned, for the probabilities of his existence in some Polar region not yet explored are far greater and more numerous than the probability of his total loss. We say total loss-because in any other case than that of foundering in deep waters some vestige of wreck would, ere this, have been detected by the many keen-sighted and experienced investigators engaged in the search. We will remind the impatient or ill-informed, that the total extinction of two British men-of-war, commanded by such officers as Sir John Franklin and Captain Fitzjames, and manned and equipped as the vessels of his expedition were, is an event so contradictory to all experience of the casualties of the Polar regions, as to amount to the strongest improbability. Captain George Harrison (of 30 years' experience in the command of whalers) states in a letter printed in the N3Yautical Magazine for April, that out of the whole 103 ships wrecked since the first discovery of a passage through Melville Bay, not more than 10 lives have been lost. And to those who fancy that every nook of the Polar regions has been explored for the missing voyagers we would observe, that the whole of the regions hitherto explored by the various expeditions sent out are scarcely one-third of those which remain unexplored. It may be well to add, moreover, that in the opinion of most competent judges, such as Colonel Sabine, Mr1. Augustus Peterman and others, there is a greater probability of finding Sir John Franklin's expedition in regions to which search has not yet been extended than in the more familiar locali LATEST NEWS OF THE EREBUS. 71 ties throughout which search has hitherto been made. The arguments of those who maintain the improbability of maintaining life in higher latitudes than those already explored are refuted by well-established facts, to which we will presently advert more in detail. Sir John Franklin sailed from Sheerness with the Erebus and Terror, in May, 1845, and arrived at the Whalefish Islands on the 4th of July. His last despatches were from this point, bearing date July 12, and in Captain Mangles's excellent little repertory of Arctic papers some really charming letters from Captain Fitzjames of the same date may be found, and will be perused with pleasure by all who love a sailor's lively hunmour and unruffled cheerfulness, blended with the delicate feelings and correct taste of the wellbred gentleman. The Erebus was spoken on the 22d of the same month by Captain Martin, of the whaler Enterprise, in latitude 75 deg. 10 min., longitude 66 deg. west. The latest date at which the expedition was actually seen was four days subsequently. The Prince of Wales whaler reported that on the 26th of July, 1845, she saw Franklin's vessels in latitude 74 deg. 48 min., longitude 66 (leg. 13 min. They were then moored to an iceberg awaiting an opening in the middle ice to enable them to cross over to Lancaster Sound. Between this period and the 23cl of August, 1850, five years and a month, when the first traces were discovered by Captain Ommaney, of Her Majesty's ship Assistance, at Cape Riley, no intelligence, direct or indirect, was received of the missing ships. The evidences afforded by these first traces were added to largely four days afterwards (27th of August, 1850), by 7'2 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. Captain Penny's alighting at Beechy Island upon the spot where Franklin spent his winter of 1845-6. Early in 1850 the Admiralty, after despatching an expedition under Captains Collinson and M'Clure, to Behring's Straits, placed four ships in commission under the command of Captain Horatio T. Austin, C. B., who had served in an exploring voyage under Sir Edward Parry, for the purpose of examining Barrow's Straits, under a notion that Sir John Franklin might be retracing his course eastward in boats, or even in the ships themselves, having relinquished the hope of making a northwest passage. The squadron under Captain Austin consisted of his own ship the Resolute, the Assistance, Captain E. Onlmaney, and the steam tenders Pioneer, Lieutenant Osborn commanding, and Intrepid, Lieutenant Cator commanding. It was considered desirable that to the power of the navy should be added the experience of the whaler, and accordingly, after many strivings of heart and doleful misgivings, lest etiquette should be infringed, and discipline endangered, the Lords of the Admiralty ventured to associate William Penny, an experienced whaling captain of Dundee, with their own commissioned officers. Mr. Penny, after receiving instructions from the Admiralty, proceeded to Aberdeen and Dundee, where he purchased two new clipper-built vessels, which were named respectively the Lady Franklin and Sophia, the latter in compliment to Miss Sophia Cracroft, a niece of Sir John Franklin, and most devoted companion of his noble-hearted wife. These vessels were placed under Mr. Penny's command, with separate instructions direct from the Admiralty, and both ships and men acquitted themselves during CAPTAIN PENNY. 73 their perilous enterprise in a manner not calculated to justify any contempt on the part of their naval associates. Mr. Penny had been engaged in the Arctic seas since his 12th year, and in command of a whaling ship for 16 years. Dr. Sutherland informs his readers that Mr. Penny's reputation for skill and sagacity was high among his brother whalers, and on any occasion of difficulty, " What does Penny think of it?" was a question of common occurrence. Sir Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer of the Admiralty, is referred to by Dr. Sutherland as able to bear testimony to the fact that Mr. Penny, previous to his appointment to the Arctic Expedition, had done something to extend our geographical knowledge of the regions he had occasion to traverse in pursuit of his vocation. At no small risk, and at considerable expense, Mr. Penny took the first step to establish the interests of Great Britain on the west coast of Davis's Straits, the importance of which we shall have alln opportunity of indicating when we come to speak of thle Danish settlements and their civilizing consequences on the east coast of Davis's Straits. " Captain Penny," observes Dr. Sutherland, with reference to these well-intended and judicious efforts at colonization, "failed in this and all subsequent attempts to enlist the enterprising and the wealthy in his sound but not well arranged ideas of establishing settlements on that coast; for the very reason that a predominating feature in his character came between him and the end he had in view. His detailed descriptions are sui generis. A complicated net-work of valuable facts, fearlessly expressed opinions, most sanguine expectations, faithful inductions, and mere hypotheses, is what one SECOND) SRIRSE 4 74 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. may look for at his hands. Without rhetoric, and unsophisticated, his arguments fell to the ground before men whose lives had ever been closely associated with figures. No one need wonder that the sailor who had been buffeting the waves and the whales for 30 years, and had never calculated anything more intricate than a lunar distance, should fail to persuade a number of money-making merchants into forming a company." We have dwelt at this length upon Mr. Penny's character because rumours have been widely prevalent to the effect that a misunderstanding between the whaling skipper and Captain Austin thwarted the operations and marred the efficiency of the expedition. A perusal of Dr. Sutherland's volumes will show that this was by no means the case, but we have thought it of importance so far to advert to it, as to remove from the public mind an impression that the efficiency of an expedition in which the hearts of so many thousands were embarked had been diminished by the splenetic humours of those engaged in its conduct. The Lady Franklin and Sophia, under the command of Captain Penny, left Aberdeen on the 13th of April, 1850, but did not fall in with Captain Austin's squadron until the 28th of June, off Berry Island, on the west coast of Greenland. Without following the ships step by step through their laborious progress across Baffin's Bay, down Lancaster Sound, and Barrow's Strait, we will pause at Beechy Island, which lies at the southeastern extremity of Wellington Channel, just at its entrance into Barrow's Straits. Here Mr. penny had discovered unquestionable traces of Sir John Franklin on the 27th of August, and here the ships were n!pored TRACES OF THE MISSING SHIPS. 75 to examine it as carefully as possible. The landing party was composed of all the officers of the expedition, except the chief mates, and was under the orders of Mr. Stuart, commander of the Sophia, to whose intelligence, perseverance, and zeal, Captains Austin, Penny, and Dr. Sutherland combine in bearing testimony. "Traces," observes the latter, "were found to a great extent of the missing ships: tinll canisters in hundreds, pieces of cloth, rope, wood in large fragments and in chips; iron in numerous fragments, where the anvil had stood, and the block which supported it; paper, both written and printed, with the dates 1844 and 1845; sledge marks in abundance; depressions in the gravel resembling wells which they had been digging; and the graves of three men who had died on board the missing ships in January and April, 1846. One of the shore party was despatched with this intelligence, to Mr. Penny, who immediately came on shore, accompanied by Sir John Ross, Commander Phillips, of the Felix, Sir John's vessel; Commander De Haven and Lieutenant Griffiths, of the American expedition, which had joined our ships in Barrow's Straits, and other officers. These were unequivocal proofs that the missing ships had spent their first winter in the immediate vicinity of Beechey Island. A finger-post was picked up, which we at once supposed had been made use of to direct parties to the ships during winter, if they should happen to have lost their way in a snowstorm. Captain Parry adopted the same precautions around his winter quarters at Melville Island; and it is not improbable some of the posts may be found after a lapse of 30 years. Our ideas were that the ships had win 76 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. tered in a deep bay between Beechey Island and Cape Riley, which we called Erebus and Terror Bay. Immediately adjacent to the supposed position of the ships, we found the site of a large storehouse and workshop, and smaller sites which were supposed to have been observatories and other temporary erections. Meat tins to the amount of six or seven hundred, and a great number of coal bags, one of which was marked' T-e-r-'-o-r,' were found. But there were no papers found anywhere that had been left by the missing ships." Here, then, was unquestionably a station of Sir John Franklin's party and occupied until the 3d of April, 1846, at least. In the opinion of Captain Penny and others it was occupied for a lookout up the Wellington Channel, to watch the first opening of that icy barrier which so frequently seems to block it up. Sir John Franklin's instructions, in 1845, were to proceed to the Wellington Channel, and, if possible, through it, and the marks of a hasty departure thence may be more reasonably accounted for by a sudden opening in the ice, of which the ardent spirit of Franklin would prompt him instantly to avail himself, than the wild supposition which has been broached of his retreat from an onslaught of savages-a feat quite inconsistent with the habits and disposition of the harmless and inoffensive Esquimaux. The determination to follow out the Admiralty instructions by pushing onwards was powerfully developed in all Sir John Franklin's party. Captain Fitzjames, then Commander Fitzjames, says in a letter to a friend, written fromn the Whalefish Islands, in July, 1845: — "Don't care is the order of the day; I mean, don't FURTHER PROGRESS. 77 care for difficulties or stoppages; go ahead is the wish. We hear this is a remarkably clear season, but clear, or not, we must'go ahead' as the Yankees have it; and if we don't get through, it won't be our fault." Beechey Island was examined again and again, and a party dug round a cairn erected on a bluff point with picks and shovels in search of cylinders with papers, but none were found. Had Sir John Franklin left any documents they must have been discovered, for all documents deposited by other parties in the ordinary manner of Arctic explorers were always found uninjured. Accordingly, after many boat excursions to the adjacent channels and islands, the ships were laid up in winter quarters. Captain Penny's ships and Sir Jphn Ross's little vessel the Felix, in Assistance Harbour, at the south-western extremity of the Wellington Channel, and Captain Austin's squadron in Griffith Island, a few miles further to the westward. The dreary winter passed over all without leaving sickness or discontent, and the spring of 1851 found them ready to push their researches. We cannot trace the progress of the several parties in boats and sledges, nor would a recapitulation of their persevering struggles serve any other purpose than to unfold another chapter fraught with the heroic endurance of hardships, the indomitable courage, the invariable cheerfulness under the most depressing trials, and the unconquerable perseverance through every obstacle, characteristic of British seamen. The miles travelled by the several parties were calculated by Dr. Sutherland to amount to 2,000. Mr. Penny made every effort to ascend the Wellington 7 8 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. Channel, but his success was small when compared with his vast endeavours. At one time his sledge was stopped by open water, and when, after incredible labour, a boat was brought up to the spot, its progress was presently checked by " thick-ribbed ice." The difficulties of the explorers at this stage of their proceedings were enhanced by their imperfect outfit of sledges and other appliances for locomotion on land. Their sea equipment from Her Majesty's dockyards does not elicit any praise from Dr. Sutherland, who appears always more happy to praise than blame:" The saws (for cutting the ice) had been supplied to our expedition from HIer Majesty's dockyard at Woolwich, and they were said to be on an improved plan. Perhaps they were; but however plausible the idea of the' pitmnan' (a heavy ball at the lower end) might be to the inventor, we found that they would not work at all until the form of the teeth was altered and the'pitman' was removed altogether; after which they were found to answer very well, having been reduced to answer the description of saws used by the whalers in Davis' Straits for at least thirty years." So much for Woolwich improvements. Every inlet to the westward of the Wellington Channel was examined, and the conclusion to which both Captain Austin and Mr. Penny arrived was that Sir John Franklin had not gone to the westward or southwestward. He must then, they inferred, have gone up the Wellington Channel, which might have been pervious in 1846, "a remarkably clear season," though impassable in the spring of 1851. Previous to the return of both expeditions in 1851 Captain Austin had Tl'E WELLINGTON CHANNEL. 79 a long and anxious conference with Mr. Penny as to the propriety of braving another Arctic winter and renewing their efforts in the spring of this year. Their remaining provisions were sufficient, their crews were healthy and willing. Mr. Penny, however, determined to return to England, they having done, in his own energetic language, " all that men could do." This speech has been quoted and twisted to a meaning never intended by Mr. Penny. It has been construed as a declaration on his part of the permanent impassability of the Wellington Channel and the inutility of any further search for Sir John Franklin. Mr. Penny's subsequent proceedings have amply refuted such a construction of his language to Captain Austin at Griffith Island, for immediately on his arrival in England he earnestly sought for a screw steamer, with which he offered to proceed northward as far as possible without delay, in order that he might be near the field of his proposed operations in the early spring. "Oh, for a boat!" was the generous and ardent seaman's instant exclamation when his sledge was brought up by open water in Wellington Channel; and again and again did he express to his brother officers his conviction that a screw steamer could bore its way where boats and sailing vessels would be baffled. lHe always leant to the opinion that the Wellington Channel was not permanently barred by ice, but had a communication with the Arctic Ocean; and whatever opinion he entertained he always frankly expressed. He told Lieutenant Osborn that he had seen " enormous numbers" of whales running southwards from under the ice in Wellington Channel. The conclusion to be drawn 80 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. from this fact is that the Wellington Channel, in its course of 45 miles, has alternations of ice and open water, for the breath of the whale ceases the instant the animal is under water, whether clear of ice or not. The Greenland whale can remain under water from 10 to 20 minutes, and its nmaximum velocity is stated to be six miles per hour. Now, this very distance, and no more, may be fairly assumed as the utmost extent of the fiozen surface of ice to the north-west under which the whales swam (from clear water to clear water), running south in " enormous numbers." Our leaders must not estimate the value of Captain Austin's and Mr. Penny's expedition by the brevity of our notice of its details. We think those zealous and able navigators have done much by proving where further search need not be made, and thus sparing the expenditure of life, labour, and money in a wrong direction. But some may askl, what is the use of further expeditions; for, if Sir John Franklin and his crew have escaped the perils of the deep and the icy horrors of the Arctic zone, they must ere this have been starved for want of supplies? The opinions of experienced travellers and the most learned geographers are alike against this desponding view. It is by no means a fact that the cold is more intense and the supplies of food more scanty the nearer you approach the Pole. The English navigator Willoughby, with the whole of the crews of both his vessels, amounting to 63 souls, was frozen to death while wintering on the coasts of Russian Lapland (latitude 68 deg. 15 m.) in the year 1554, while the enterprising Dutchman, Wilhelhn Barentz, 43 years later, passed a winter of more than eight months' CHANCES OF SUBSISTENCE. 81 duration on the north-eastern coast of Novaia Zemlia (latitude 76), and of his whole crew, amounting to 17, only two died. And what was the outfit of a Dutch crew in the 16th century, compared with that supplied to the Erebus and Terror in 1845? On these heads we recommend a careful perusal of several letters of Mr. Augustus Peterman, addressed to Sir Francis Beaufort, and a paper on the Distribution of Animals Available as food in the Arctic Regions, printed in Captain Mangles's little book, whose title we gave at the head of this article. We have already quoted a letter addressed by Mr. Penny to the President of the Geographical Society, in which he advocates a search for the missing expedition in the great Arctic Ocean which the Russian navigators Wrangel and Anjon saw stretching beyond the North Cape of Asia, and which has been proved to roll in unfettered freedom beyond that icy barrier which ordinarily checks Arctic navigation, and extends in all probability to the north of both the American and Asiatic continents. There is a narrative of four Russian sailors who subsisted in Spitzbergen on the product of the country for six years and three months reprinted in Captain Mangles's volume from the Annual Register, for 1774. We apprehend that many educated Englishmen have read this narrative, as we ourselves confess to having done in our boyhood, with a feeling akin to that attendant upon the perusal of the fictions of De Foe; but we believe that it is well authenticated, and has vast significance when perused with reference to Sir John Franklin and his ships' companies. If four Russian mariners, with a few ounces of tobacco, 12 musket charges of powder and shot, and a small bag of flour, as their only stores 4* 82 ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. to start with, could subsist for six years and three months in Spitzbergen, how long can the crews of two English men-of-war, commanded by officers of the Arctic experience, fertility of resource, and unconquerable courage of Sir John Franklin and Captain Fitzjames, preserve their lives? We leave others to work out this sum, and for ourselves say, Nil Desperandum. We do not write in this hopeful strain at random, or wantonly to awaken delusive hopes which we feel to be unfounded, but deliberately express convictions formed after much thought, diligent inquiry, and painstaking investigation. Neither are we alone in our hopeful mood. The unthinking multitude may have been disappointed by the termination of the Austin and Penny expedition. It returned sooner than was expected, and was not attended by the results hoped for. But neither the Government nor Sir John Franklin's anxious but wellinformed friends considered this expedition as an extinguisher of hope-a stopper upon further search. And, accordingly, since Captain Austin and Mr. Penny returned, an expedition, under the command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N., has been commissioned to proceed direct to Wellington Sound. This expedition sailed from England in April last, and consisted of Her Majesty's ships Assistance and Resolute, with the two screw steamers Pioneer and Intrepid, of 60-horse power each. Her Majesty's ship North Star will be stationed at the mouth of the Wellington Channel as a store ship. The squadron will thus be enabled, we trust, to await a favourable moment for pushing forward, which has been so often lost while vessels have been performing their outward voyage from England. Nature will often in a HOPES. 83 single hour make openings in the ice which all the saws in all Her Majesty's dockyards could not accomplish in the course of an Arctic sumlmer. Sir E. Belchel has now an opportunity of awaiting the favourable moment, and fulfilling the desire so resolutely expressed by Lady Franklin. "By that passage" (Wellington Channel), writes her ladyship to a friend, " doubt not, the ships have gone; and by that, believe me, they must be followed." August 26, 1852. 84 CARLYLE S LIFE OF STERLING. THE LIFFE OF STERLING BY THOMAS CARLYLE.* WEAK minds will be sorely distressed by the last production of the redoubtable Thomas. That angry gentleman is more indignant than ever. His wrath has got to its height. There are but two things for it. We must either scramble out of his way as fast as we can, or submit to be belaboured within an inch of our lives. Every page is a knock on the head or a thrust in the eye. Nobody escapes! Like the congregation to whom Mawworm preaches his last sermon before retiring fiom the stage, we are " all going to the devil," and, like Mawworm himself, Mr. Thomas Carlyle derives infinite " consolation" from that melancholy and startling fact. Such is the gist of the Life of Sterling. We doubt whether the life would have been written at all but for the matchless opportunity it affords for the pugilistic efforts of the author. Thomas Carlyle, it is true, puts on the gloves with the ostensible and single purpose of covering the fair fame of a friend; but his foot once in the ring, his arm once fairly raised, and he thinks of nothing but punishing the foe. And what a foe i We may doubt the prudence of the undertaking, but who shall question the valour of the man * The Life of John Sterlilng. By Thlllas Car;-vlo THE NEW BIOGRAPHY. 85 who, single-handed, takes upon himself to thrash the whole world? A memoir of John Sterling has already been written. The reading public, which did not call for that, hardly required another almost upon its heels. Mr. Carlyle himself feels the force of the remark, for he apologizes at starting for his apparent intrusion. The author of the first biography, he alleges, being a clergyman, could not allow himself that broad and comprehensive view of his subject which it behoved him to take. It was essential for him, above all things, to vindicate the Christian profession, and such first duty was altogether incompatible with that other duty of faithfully delineating the character of Sterling. Thomas Carlyle is vassal to no power but his own liberal and indulgent mind. He is free to speak of his hero as of a man, not as of "a pale, sickly shadow in torn surplice, weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call Hebrew old clothes:" and on the first page of his book he announces his laudable intention of proving what his departed friend John Sterling was not, and of further showing clearly and truly for our edification and example-for " a true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the greatest man"-all that in life he actually was. How far Mr. Carlyle has fulfilled his promise and satisfied raised expectation we shall not fail to inform the reader before we close. For the moment our business is less with the biography than with the biographer; with himn on whose account, indeed, a volume will be eagerly read which otherwise could never have attracted a moment's attention. 86 CARLYLE5S LIFE OF STERLING. The great object of the author of the Latter Day Pamphlets in this his last work seems to be-as far as we can gather it-to prove the utter impossibility of an honest man's making way in life, and the absolute rottenness of all existing things. The world, according to Mr. Carlyle, has never been so bad as it is. It is " overhung with falsities and foul cobwebs as world never was before; overloaded, overclouded, to the zenith and nadir of it, by incredible, uncredited traditions, solemnly sordid hypocrisies, and beggarly deliriums old and new;" it is an "untrue, unblessed world;" "a world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full;" as " mad a world as you could wish;" "a world of rotten straw; thrashed all into powder, filling the universe and blotting out the stars and worlds." The professions of the worldthe means whereby industrious men gain their daily bread-are just as corrupt. They are "built largely on speciosity instead of performance; so clogged, in this bad epoch, and defaced under such suspicions of fatal imposture, that they are hateful, not lovable to the young radical soul, scornful of gross profit, and intent on ideals and human nobleness." Of the three learned professions there is not one which does not " require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor;" and of all the professions that is by far the most detestable and hopeless which finds a temporal home for " those legions of' black dragoons,' of all varieties and purposes, who patrol with horse-meat and man'smeat this afflicted earth, so hugely to the detriment of it." Before we venture to call in question the justice of A MAD WORLD. 87 so sweeping and fearful a condemnation, we may be pardoned for inquiring of this shameless exposer of our enumerated wounds and sores whether he has any remedy himself for the recovery of the putrescent body politic. Mr. Carlyle is not a lunatic. He tells us loudly and often enough that the world itself is " mad;" but he is surely more sane than to make unmeaning grimaces at the contortions of disease, and to gibe at the failings of infirm humanity. The world may be hopelessly gone in wretchedness and vice, the " professions" may be lying impostures, the teachers of religion may be locusts on the land; but since the world is doing its best; since many professional men flatter themselves into the conviction that they are honestly, creditably, and usefully pursuing their callings: since ministers of every creed do visit the abodes of their fellow-creatures with the humble hope and desire of not being detrimental to human happiness on earth, it is not enough for Mr. Carlyle-and most assuredly it shall not be allowed him-to stand afar off, mouthing at the workers from the convenient sanctuary of his well-warmed study, helping no manll with his advice, irritating all men by his scoffs, and hindering practical and serviceable labour-as the world goes-by the intrusion of violent and all but unintelligible gibberish. There is throughout this book no cessation of abuse; but we have searched through it in vain, though most carefully and anxiously, for a single line of wholesome counsel. Mr. Carlyle keeps a school in which scolding goes on from morning till night, but certainly no teaching. If his boys move, they are lashed; if they sit still, they are lashed. They can do nothing right; 88 CARLYLE S LIFE OF STEIZLING. and, what is worse, they shall never have an inkling of what their cruelly-exacting pedagogue thinks right or necessary to be done. To instruct is no part of his office; instruction is the gift of Heaven-the rod the whole and sole duty of the master. At one page-and at one only-we fondly hoped that we had escaped from the noise of this indiscriminate flagellation to receive a crumb or two of comfort in the shape of rational advice that might put us at least on the road to amendment. Vain expectation! Mr. Carlyle can only tell us to do what he himself so ineffectually attempts. If we would reform ourselves, and, afterwards, our equally darkened fellow-creatures, we must forthwith enlist into a " fighting regiment," or, " failing this," undertake "' the solitary battle, such as each man for himself can wage while he has life." Battle again! Nothing but fighting suits Mr. Carlyle or lies within his scope to recommend. But, if we are to fight, let us at least know against whom and what for. This " solitary battle" Thomas Carlyle is pleased to call " an indubitable and infinitely comfortable fact for every man." So it may be when every man shall ascertain the name of his adversary and the spoils that are to be won. But these last "comfortable facts" are jealously and unpardonably withheld. If the pupil fights, he must fight like his master-in the dark, and beating the air; or more terrible than that, fight like the only men in the world for whom Mr. Carlyle's heart seems to beat with congenial sympathy-like the anarchists of Europe, who destroy everything within their reach, by way of putting everything in order. But we altogether deny the wild and incoherent yet NOT THE WORST AGE, 89 very grave accusations which Mr. Carlyle brings against society-accusations which he finds much easier to make than to justify. The age in which we live is not the very worst since the fall of man. Would Mr. Carlyle, who asserts that it is, willingly exchange it for any age that has preceded it? Would he deliberately go back? He has taken great pains to exhibit the rottenness of our present state, but does he believe in his heart that, if he had given himself half the trouble to detect some of its virtues, he would not in that detection have been rewarded for his industry? In heaven's name, let us do justice in this serious matter. It will answer no profitable purpose to stalk into the market-place, and to point the finger at every busy man that passes you, declaring him an impostor, a madman, and a fool. He knows that he is not. He is conscious of good desires, of daily service rendered to man and God, of obligations undertaken, of duties adequately performed. It is true enough that we are stumblers in the world-that we have but dim perceptions of the goal towards which we are journeyingthat the current of our daily thoughts, actions, and impulses is still brackish with the taint of our original decline-that we are in the midst of suffering that has to be alleviated, of neglect that has to be remedied, of sin that has to be purged away. But when has it ever been otherwise? The worst that can be alleged is that we are answerable for evils for which those who went before us were responsible in a still larger degree. It is not too much to assert that the spirit of humanity was never before so actively engaged in England, or more thoroughly alive to its work. Look around you, Mr. 90 CARLYLE S LIFE OF STERLING. Thomas Carlyle! Are the high-born as indifferent to the condition of the lowly as they may have been a hundred years ago? Is there no movement abroad indicating a healthy resolution, if with inadequate or not yet discovered means, to improve the physical, moral, social, and spiritual position of all who need amelioration in the land? Can you tell us of sorrow, anguish, or pain, which once detected is allowed for a single hour to linger unrelieved? Is charity in all things less abundant than it has been in times towards which your sickly fancy yearns, when men suffered in the body for freedom of thought, and when independence of soul brought with it social degradation? We are conscious enough of imperfection, but being satisfied also of the existence on every side of actual good-of the presence of productive activity-of the evidences of marvellous progress-of the increase of genuine goodwill, we ask any rational and well-governed mind whether this of all eras of the world is the one which an Englishmax is called upon to select for his unmitigated condemnation, his wholesale abuse, and his bitterest invective? But 1" the professions," one and all, are "'impostures." There is no exception. They " all require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor," to that extent, indeed, that no honest man can enter them with safety. Is this rhodomontade, or spoken in sober earnest? An impostor is one who cheats by a fictitious character. Do the physicians and surgeons who charitably visit the hospitals of this metropolis impose in this wise upon the objects of their solicitude and care? When Thomas Carlyle is weary with croaking he may find it worth his while to ask the question at CHRISTIAN MINISTERS. 91 St. George's for himself. Does the Christian minister, be he of the Church of England, or be he not, take needful food to the cottage hearth and attend the dying bed of the humblest Christian man, ministering consolation in life's extremest hour, with no object but to cheat? If Mr. Carlyle does not mean what he says, for o-ur instruction let him at least say what lie does mean. His views respecting the professions are certainly obscure to himself. In one page he tells us that this world was no world for John Sterling to be busy in, because its occupations are adapted only to those who " want to make sudden fortune., and achieve the temporary hallelujah of flunikeys;" yet, in the very next breath, he adds, that " the desultory ways" of the youth utterly unfitted him for the ordinary callings of life, which " requires slow, steacdy-p1lling diligence, inclispensable in all important pursuits and strenuous human competitions whatsoever." We need not dwell upon these contradictions, or stay to prove that a profession, be it what it may, which demands at the outset, "slow, steady-pulling diligence" in order to achieve successthat is to say, some self-denial, patience, and virtuous doing on the part of the professor, can hardly be the flagrant imposition which Mr. Carlyle so energetically tries to prove it. IBut of all professions, that of a minister of Christianity is by far the most barefacedly hypocritical and degraded. Mr. Carlyle makes no exceptions. He affects dissenters no better than churchmen. They are swindlers in gangs. In the aggregate they constitute an army of " black dragoons, of all varieties and purposes, patrolling with horse meat and man's meat this afflicted 92 CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING. earth so hugely to the detriment of it." It is not always easy, as our readers may have discovered, to have the full benefit of Mr. Carlyle's thoughts, so strangely are they garbed in that gentleman's most peculiar diction; but his great ground of complaint here indicated against the "black dragoons" would seem to be that they receive " man's meat," or a solid return for their labours. Ministers do their work and are paid for it. There is no denying the position. Most inadequately are some remunerated for work as hard as that of breaking stones, and most extravagantly are others rewarded for doing nothing at all. The anomaly is a scandal, and redistribution of pious funds is loudly called for. The world, bad as it is, will be grateful to Mr. Carlyle if he will put his shoulder to the wheel and help it to repair a crying evil. But putting a shoulder or even a finger to the wheel is just what this writer will not do. It suits him better to make mouths at a machine temporarily imbedded in the mud, and to swear that it is dropping to pieces every time it bravely struggles to get out of the rut. Is it, after all, so disgraceful a matter to swallow "; man's meat" with a heavy day's work done, though it be merely the work of carrying consolation to an afflicted soul? Does Mr. Carlyle himself refuse such meat? Railing against everybody and everything may possibly indicate a deeper sense of true religion than weekly prayers and daily parish ministrations, but the railer at all events looks as sharply as any for a substantial return for his disagreeable services. As far as we can learn, infidels do not part with their wares for nothing any more than true believers. Till they do, let Mr. Carlyle get as much of" man's meat" as a judicious ASSAULTS RELIGION. 93 public will afford him, and not grumble that other men have stomachs and appetites to attend to as well as himself. WVe must further protest against the unseemly assaults which Mr. Carlyle makes, not upon professors of religion, but upon religion itself. It is competent to this gentleman to prove Christianity the most palpable " sham" and "cobweb" that ever superstition and hypocrisy invented; but it is most unbecoming in any man to assert and reiterate so terrible a fact without attempting any proof. " What the light of your mind," he tells us in one page, "which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited; at your peril do not try believing that." And, lest the light of our own minds should fail of sufficient illumination, he further on informs us that " the old spiritual highways and recognized paths to the Eternal are now all torn up and flung in heaps, submerged in unutterable boiling mud oceans of Hypocrisy and Unbelievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead putrescent Cant; darkness and the mere shadow of death, enveloping all things fiom pole to pole; and in the raging gulf-currents offering us will-o'-the-wisps for loadstars-intimating that there are no stars, nor ever were, except certain old Jew ones which have note gone out." More to the same effect is scattered throughout the volume. There is nothing veracious that remains of religion, according to this denouncing apostle; but in what manner existing churches are " weltering" in falsehood Thomas C(arlyle has no mission to say. The fact is there; to be made the best of by the weak, the timid, the unre 94 CARLYLEIS LIFE OF STERLING. fleeting, the sceptical, and the vicious. It is enough for this man to pull down. Let others, if they will, build up. " There is no fixed highway more," he tauntingly exclaims in one place, rejoicing that it is not for him to say in which direction to seek it: "Religion," he broadly avers in another, "is not a doubt," though his one unvarying object is to makle it nothing but doubt -the most dismal, distressing, and hopelessly perplexing. One human model is for an instant set up for our veneration and regard. Coleridge is presented to us in glowing colours, sitting " on the brow of Highgate-hill, looking down on London and its smoke tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of l:fc's battle." This is a " good manll;" the only " good" man of whom especial mention is made in the volume; a pattern man offered to us for imitation in the midst " of cobwebs and wornout syrnbolisms," by Thomas Carlyle. Now, mark! we are all going wrong, and, though doing our best in the state. of life to which it has pleased God to call us, struggiing for ourselves, helping and encouraging one another, yet weltering in beggarly deliriums; but Coleridge, coolly leaving Robert Southey to take care of his children, retires to a snug retreat opened for him by his friends at Highgate-a refuge which he had not the chivalry and manly courage to decline; and he, in that very epoch of his life, assumes in Carlyle's eye the form of perfect human grandeur. Shall we follow Colderidge's ignoble example, then? Is this the solution of the whole question. We must discuss the point as men, and not as children or dreamers. If we imitate this -model man, shall we COLERIDGE. 95 then, we ask, be upon the right tack, and out of the "cobwebs," and restored from " our deliriums?" We must needs answer in the affirmative, for of no other personage do we get an inkling who, according to Thomas Carlyle, fairly encountered and overcame the " idols and popular dignitaries"-whatever they may have been —of his day. But it is only when Coleridge is sitting on Highgatehill as " a sage" that his patron will smile even upon hizm. The moment the philosopher creeps to his chamber, and there humbly falls on his knees as a Christian, he is scornfully left to his own devices. The fact is most instructive. It is sufficient to confess dependence upon Almighty God according to any established or recognized formula to be immediately sneered at, pitied, and rudely attacked by Mr. Carlyle. Poor Coleridge, in spite of all his metaphysical entanglements, took shelter in his latter days from his many bodily and mental troubles under cover of those simple truths which give peace to the tempest-tossed, hope to the despairing, resignation to the sorely-afflictedl; and, for this obvious outrage to philosophy, Carlyle deserts him. He would have had Coleridge daring to infidelity, and because "the sage" stopped short of the violence he brands him as a coward. This is the very worst feature of the whole book. Even Sterling, held up as he is as the fairest specimen of ingenuous man with.whom it was the biographer's good fortune ever to come in contact, finds nothing but pity fromn that biographer as often as he dares to look for mercy and support from his Maker. When in the midst of sorrow, and misfortune, and ill-health, the young man, in stark 96 CARLYLE'S LIVE OF STERLING. helplessness, appeals to Heaven for aid that no man gives hirnself —for light which no human soul has ever yet kindled for itself-then is he at once seeking "bottled moonshine," following "illusions till they burst," and inquiring of fate " without lamp or authentic finger-post." We doubt not the cleverness of Mr. Carlyle, we admit his acuteness, but men great, clever, and acute have lived before Carlyle, and to them the Christian religion has been no "sham," for they had no occasion for "shams"-to them benevolence based on piety has been no "cobweb" —to them duty to one's neighbour, flowing from recognized duty to God, has been no "moonshine;" and that which the illustrious of every age have been content to accept in meekness of soul as truth from the skies cannot be flung away in a moment as lies fiom the depths, because it suits the humour of Mr. Carlyle to mock every faith but his own, and to render his own wholly unintelligible even to his disciples. It is unnecessary to dwell upon more than the main features of the life of John Sterling. Neither the career of that amiable man nor his productions, present matter of public interest or justify the importance which two memoirs have given to his name. Archdeacon HIare fulfilled the duty of a fiiend in collecting Sterling's scattered literary papers after his decease, and laboured to show, that although at one period of his life John Sterling had been vexed with religious doubts, he died a Christian believer and a member of the church. Mr. Carlyle, who cannot allow that Sterling did anything so foolish, writes a volume to prove the conclusions of the Archdeacon unsound and false. Whatever the true HIS INTELLECTUAL CONSTITUTION. 97 state of the case may be, we are bound to say that Carlyle's evidence is wholly against his assertions. Hlie may have kept back documnents sufficient to establish his theory, but those he has produced are,triumphantly in favour of the Archdeacon. John Sterling must have been a man of genius, as he certainly wias of the greatest promise. His firiends remember him as a marvellous talker, and his gentle disposition endeared him to all who knew him. The writings which he published in his lifetime, and those which haNve been given to the world since, indicate rather what the author might have done with good health and a settled purpose, than the finished compositions of a writer in filll vigour of understanding, enjoying tranquillity of mind and body. Sterling possessed neither. He was delicate from his boyhood, and for many years of his life, as Mr. Carlyle beautifully describes it-for nothing, we are bound to say, can surpass the exquisite manner of the narrative portion of this book-Twholly occupied in eluding the resolute pursuit of disease and death. Repose of spirit was unknown to the man whlose " continual fault," according to his indulgent biographer, was " overhaste," and " want of the due strength." The short career of Sterling is in perfect accordance with his physical and intellectual constitution. lie is never at rest; he is always seeking a heaven on earth for body and soul, but never finds it. No soil or clinmate saves him from the gripe of his deadly pursuer; no occupation in which his fellow-men find their reward can, for any reasonable time, secure his steady and loyal devotion. His intellect is very clear, but he discerns nothing fixedly or SECOND SEn iE,8S. 5 98 CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING. usefully; his purpose at all times is of the noblest and the purest; his accomplishment at no time satisfactory. Thomas Carlyle's theory, built upon his observation of his friend's life, is very characteristic. At an early period Sterling was a thorough Radical, and took active part with the Spanish revolutionists. The chief of these revolutionists, a dear and personal friend of Sterling's, was taken in arms and shot, and the instant effect of this catastrophe, according to Carlyle, was to burn up Radicalism in Sterling's bosom, and to compel him to look elsewhere for his vocation. " Old Radicalism and mutinous audacious ethnicism having thus fallen to wreck, and a mere black world of misery and remorse now disclosing itself, whatsoever of natural piety to God and man, whatsoever of pity and reverence, of awe and devout hope was in Sterling's heart, now awoke into new activity." The effect of this awakening was to send John Sterling into the church. He took orders, became curate of Hurstmonceux, in Sussex, and, at the end of eight months-much to Mr. Carlyle's satisfaction —threw up that duty. "Concerning this attempt of Sterling," writes the biographer, "to find sanctuary in the old church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such a manner, there will at present be many opinions; and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, as a rash, false, unwise, and unpermitted step." Sterling resigned the curacy on the score of ill health; but Mr. Carlyle hints, not very darkly, at more potent reasons for defection. We have already stated that Mr. Carlyle fails to give us any valid reason for trusting to his inuendoes. In 1834 Sterling qtitt.-e RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES. 99 Hurstmonceux. In 1839, writing to his son, he tells him that if he tries to be better for all he reads, as well as wiser, he will "find books a great help towards goodness as well as knowledge; and, above all other books, the Bible, wlich tells us of the will of God, and of the love of Jesus Christ towards God and man." In 1843, addressing his mother, then on her deathbed, Sterling reminds her that it was from her he first learnt " to believe," and affectionately suggests the sources of consolation to which, when he was a child, she had piously bid him look. "If I am taken from you," he said to his six children that very same year, upon the sad night of his wife's funeral, and when he himself was tottering at the grave's brink, " God will take care of you." Later still, in 1844, three months before his death, " he read a good deal-earnest books; the Bible, most earnest of books, his chief favourite." Infidelity may have been here, but we cannot detect it. Having; sounded Radicalism and found it hollowhaving taken counsel of the church, and received stones for bread —Sterling finally discovered a resting-place for his feet, but, unhappily, when it was too late. His mission blazed before him-the true aim and end of life-the great secret hidden fiom his fellows-were all revealed to hin when he could but dimly gaze upon the revelation, sigh and depart. So saith Thomas Carlyle. "Not till after trying all manner of sublimely illuminated places, and finding that the basis of them was putridity, artificial gas, and quaking bog, did he, when his strength was all done, discover his true sacred hill, and passionately climb thither while life was fast 100 CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING. ebbing!" Reader, we see you straining your neck to get sight of this hill, and we hear your heart beating with joy at the thought of deliverance! Stay your eagerness and waste not those pulsations. Thomas Carlyle shows you no hill. He promised you, indeed, much instruction, but he leaves you with none. Whatever, wherever that hill may be, between you and it all is darkness. You must jog on in the plains as before, for any aid this book will afford you. But take courage, nevertheless. Heaven and good fortune have never deserted the workers yet! Having said so much of Mr. Carlyle, we may perhaps be permitted to make some remarks on the publication of the following remarkable correspondence, which was found amongst Mr. Edward Sterling's papers at his decease, and which Mr. Carlyle has inserted in the Life of John Sterling, the son:" (Private.) "TO THE EDITOR OF'THE TIMES.' "Whitehall, April 18, 1835. "SI,I-HIaving this day delivered into the hands of the King the seals of office, I can, without any imputation of an interested motive, or any impediment from scrupulous feelings of delicacy, express my deep sense of the powerful snpport which that Government over which I had the honour to preside received from The Times newspaper. "It I do not offer the expressions of personal gratitude, it is because I feel that such expressions would do injustice to the character of a support which was given exclusively on the highest and most independent grounds of public principle. I can say this with perfect truth, as I am addressing one whose person even is unknown to me, and who, during my tenure of power, studiously avoided every species of intercourse whlich TIHE EDITOR OF "TITHE TIMES.' 101 could throw a suspicion upon the motives by which he was actuated. I should, however, be doing injustice to my own feelings if I were to retire from office without one word of acknowledgement-without at least assuring you of the admiration with which I witnessed, during the arduous (ontest in which I was engaged, the daily exhibition of that extraordinary ability to which I was indebted for a support the more valuable because it was an impartial and discriminating support. port. "I have the honour to be, Sir, "Ever your most obedient and faithful servant, " ROBERT PEEL." "TO THE RIGHT lION. SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., &C. "SII, —It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from the letter with which you have honoured me, bearing yesterday's date, that you estimate so highly the efforts which have been made during the last five months by The'Ties newspaper to support the cause of rational and wholesome government which His Majesty had intrusted to your guidance; and that you appreciate fairly the disinterested motive, of regard to the public welfare, and to that alone, through which this journal has been prompted to pursue a policy in accordance with that of your Administration. It is, permit me to say, by such motives only that The Times, ever since I have known it, has been influenced, whether in defence of the Government of the day, or in constitutional resistance to it; and, indeed, there exist no other motives of action for a journalist, compatible either with the safety of the press, or with the political morality of the great bulk of its readers. "I have the honour to be, Sir, &c., "THE EDITOR OF'THE TN TiES."' "Of this note," says Mr. Carlyle, referring to the letter of the late Sir Robert Peel, "I do not think there was the least whisper during Edward Sterling's life 102 CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING. time." How should there have been? for though the document is one which is alike honourable to the great Statesman who penned it and to ourselves, we cannot regard its publication even at the present time in any other light than that of a breach of confidence. The silence observed with respect to it, by the estimable man to whose honourable keeping it was confided by the editor of The Times, might have warned Mr. Carlyle to respect it as the private property of this journal; and, from the reckless way in which he has made use of this private communication we cannot refrain from expressing a hope that Mr. Carlyle himself may never be placed in the same position, with regard to any public journal, as that so ably filled by Edward Sterling with regard to The Times. Should he be so situated we cannot undertake to say how soon such private communications as that to which we have called attention would become common property. CILARENDON AND H1S FRItENDS. 103 LORD CHANCELLOR CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS.* DURING the few years that intervened between the return of Charles the Second and the banishment of his great Chancellor it was the delight and constant occupation of the latter to collect under his splendid roof the portraits of the many famous men with whom he had come in contact during his agitated life, or who had taken part, at least, whether with him or against him, in the singular vicissitudes of that unhappy time. It has been hinted that the eager collector was more solicitous for the effigies than scrupulous as to the method of acquiring them. Indeed, one accusation is on record which openly charges Lord Clarendon with having received his pictures directly as bribes from the Puritans, who had themselves obtained many of the portraits by violent seizure during the civil wars, for promotion and advancement when Puritan principles were no longer in the ascendant. The accusation, it is true, rests solely upon the credibility of a man of whom Mr. Hallam asserts that " his splenetic humour makes him no good witness against any one;" but there is nothing, either in the temper of the times or in the' Lives of Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Illustrative of Portraits in his Gallery. By Lady Theresa Lewis. In three volumes. London: Murray. 1852. 104 LORsD CLAtENSDON AND HIlS FRIE:NDS. character and fate of the noble collector himself, to render the suspicion wholly unworthy of belief. Another modern historian tells us that it is chiefly to the general profligacy of thile times that Clarendon owes his high reputation; but he by no means wishes us to conclude that the Chancellor himself altogether escaped contamination. We know, even from his own utterance, that he did not, and it is certain that the bitter animosity created in the- minds of the Royal party by the preference so frequently shown to Puritan applicants for place led as much as any other cause to the downfall which released Lord Clarendon from the temptations and responsibilities of office, and enabled him to devote his extraordinary powers to the literary works that have secured his renown. Whether, however, Lord Clarendon obtained his paintings by honest payment or by dishonest patronage, two circumstances in connexion with the gallery are worthy of remembrance. The accomplished Evelyn helped Lord Clarendon to the collection, and the immortal Pepys was fired by the example to make a collection of his own equally magnificent. Poor Pepys would inevitably have ruined his family but for the sagacious counsel of Evelyn, who recommended the little man to content his ambitious soul with a collection of engravings; and Lord Clarendon would, no doubt, have vastly improved his gallery had he continued long enough in power to avail himself of all the suggestions of the same competent adviser. On the 18th of March, 1667, Evelyn sent to Lord Clarendon a list of worthies whose portraits the collector would do well to add to his tareasures. On the 30th of Novem T11REE HEROES. 105 bter in the same year-the great earl himself was crawling to France unperceived by the men who were plotting his overthrow. Lady Theresa Lewis, tile sister of the present Earl of Clarendon-the owner of at least a portion of the great collection —has undertaken the task of giving life to the canvas that adorns her brothler's walls. The three voluimes before us contain the memoirs of three men who were partalkers with the great earl of the anxieties and varied fortunes of the civil wars, whose deeds formed the subject of his own vigorous and minute pen, and whose portraits were among the memorials he had gathered for his consolation when he vainly deemed his hour of conflict to have ended. There is a singular appropriateness in the selection made. Lord Hertford, Lord Capell, and Lord Falkland are representatives of an heroic class. In treating of the civil wars which tore this kingdom asunder, and defiled the soil with native blood, it has been too much the custom to divide the combatants into two contending parties-the one allied to Royalty and despotism, the other sworn to maintain the just or unjust claims of the people against the divine rights of the Monarch and the priest. In modern times, especially, we have taken our cue from the novelist, and pictured Cavaliers and Roundheads in the forms bequeathed to us by the cunning and everwelcome pen of genius. Generation upon generation has preferred the volumes of Shakspeare to the drier and less fascinating chronicle of the historian; and our children will as certainly have recourse to the free painting of Scott when they desire to judge of the characters and events round which the magician has left 5 * 106 LORD CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS. his imperishable halo. It is perilous, however, to rely solely upon such seductive teaching. It is very certain that, between the two classes which represent to us the opposing parties in the civil war, there rose up a third division, much more enlightened than either, though far less calculated to stamp its features on the agitated time, or to settle the lamentable conflict whose issue was to be found only in one of two extremes. The period of the war was one of great constitutional change. It formed a mighty epoch in the history of our people. Up to that time the country had been governed, professedly, by King and Council, actually, by the Monarch alone. The people were now about to govern themselves. Charles I., with antiquated notions of prerogative, suddenly found himself face to face with a nation inoculated with the most advanced ideas of popular freedom. King and Parliament were both to blame in the struggle that ensued for pre-eminence; for both demanded as their inalienable right infinitely more than'either had the slightest title to assume. The middle party that sprang up, intent only upon doing justice by both combatants, and spurning the unauthorized pretensions of either, were the true constitutional. ists of the time, and might have steered the State vessel, without accident or mutiny, through the terrible sea in which it laboured for so many years, hiad the King been honest, or the multitude fiee fiom the influence of ambitious counsel and malignant passion. ]Failing in their patriotic and noble endeavour, they became thile victims rather than the heroes of the hour, and their humble efforts are still suffered to look pale at the side of the fiery but ferocious achievements of a Rupert, or LORD FALKLANDb 107 the successful usurpation of a Cromwell. We may surely search long and industriously through the histories of the world before we come to a counterpart of that character which has rendered the name of Falkland imlmortal on the soil that gave him birth. Poet, philosopher, statesman, patriot, soldier-he seems to have combined in his own person all the noble qualities which distinguished every one of the contending parties of his day. He fell fighting at the age of thirtyfour, but long before that miserable moment he had endeared himself to his country by the highest virtues that elevate humanity. He followed his King with a steadiness and fidelity that knew no flaw, but he followed as much to counsel and instruct as to battle for and protect. In the House of Commons, he had never ceased to upbraid Episcopal aggressions and Regal usurpations; and when forced at last to defend the monarch against the ambitious spirits that struggled, as he thought, to build their own eminence upon the ruins of the throne, and cared not by what means the personal object was acquired, he still reminded his master that his soul could neither be the slave of priestcraft nor the minister to an overweening and ridiculous sense of prerogative. From the outbreak of the civil war until he fell sword in hand Falkland's heart was bent upon peace, and upon restoring the King to the confidence of his Parliament. Had he thought less of peace, he would have cared more for his own precious life, since it was always the manly fear of being suspected of wishing for a suspension of hostilities on his own account that led him to the very thick of danger. We have ever been of opinion that Mr. Macaulay does scant 108 LORD CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS. justice to the fame of this great man, when he prlnounces him "infinitely too fastidious for public life." There was no squeamishness or false delicacy in his composition. HIe continued firm to the cause of civil and religious liberty while his voice might be heard in Parliament, and it was solely with the object of advancing that cause-the one that lay nearest his heartthat he placed himself at the side of a King unworthy of such companionship. No one will doubt for a moment that had Clharles I. listened to the counsels of this wise Minister, he would not only have saved his own head, but would have stopped the general effusion of blood, and spared the nation the lasting disgrace and shame that attended the tumultuous reaction of the Restoration. Three courses were open to Lord Falkland when he followed the King to York. He might have continued in the House of Commons and abetted the gigantic aspirations of Cromwell; he might have joined the standard of Charles I. with the questionable devotion and in the furious temper of a Rupert; he might, lastly, have resolved upon the self-ldenying course of mediations-upon healing the wounds and softening the asperities of either party-upon using every exertion of his mind and body with the King and Parliament for stopping the scandal which could bring honour to no party concerned in sustaining it. Upon the last named course Falkland deliberately and nobly decided, and if his success did not correspond either with his expectations or deserts, the duplicity of the monarch whom he served was alone to blame for the miscarriage, and painfully did that monarch pay for his doubledealing. Clarendon asserts that "if there were no FALKLAND'& SUSCEPTIBILITY. 109 other brand upon this odious civil war than the single loss of such a man, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity." Whitelock is fain to confess that wherever the name of Falkland was heard or known there was honest lamentation for his violent and early death. In truth, the gentleness, nobility, and delicacy of Falkland's mind constitute a study for the poet, the historian, and the artist. It is certain beyond the possibility of doubt that Falkland, in every step that he took, aimed at nothing but the tranquillity and welfare of his native land, and the strict performance of his duty. His sympathies were all with the Parliamenthis spirit was created for liberty-his aspirations were for the advancement of his kind and for the freedom and instruction of the human soul. There was no personal attachment between the Monarch and himself. Yet he followed the King meekly when fidelity carried with it neither satisfaction nor reward, and strove for peace with the passionate enthusiasm of a child heartbroken by the quarrels of a discordant household. The consequences of a protracted civil war took a monstrous and appalling shape in his mind, and the vision haunted him night and day like a ghost. But his very eagerness to put an end to the conflict shocked his susceptible spirit, and rendered him suspicious even of his own unspotted and unimpeachable motives. Hence it was, though he continually implored the King to be reconciled to his Parliament, and at times remonstrated with such bluntness against the proceedings of Charles that the Monarch'cared little to confer with him in private," that he was ever among the foremost in the 110 LORD CLARENDON AND HISI FRIENDS. fight, and always madly eager to prove how little personal considerations were involved in his absorbing passion for national unity and repose. At the battle of Edge Hill Clarendon states that "Falkliland forgot that he was Secretary of State, and desired to be where there would be probably most to do." And yet so chary was he of sacrificing any life but his own to the melancholy cause in which all were engaged, that it is added, "any man might think he came into the field chiefly out of curiosity to see the face of danger, and charity to prevent the shedding of blood." Shortly before the battle of Newbury, where he fell, he received a strong intreaty from Clarendon, for the sake of the King and his own friends, "not to engage his person to those dangers which were not incumbent to him;" but his only reply was a melancholy answer, which was scarcely given before he took his place, as usual, where the fight was hottest, and fell, sword in hand, a veritable martyr. Hie had not ecached his prime when he died, but,, writes his inconsolable friend, "he had so much despatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocency. Whosoever leads such a life need be the less anxious upon how short warning it is taken fiom him." Lord Capell was of sterner metal and more direct of purpose. In 1640 Mr. Capell was chosen one of the representatives for TIertfordshire, and was " the first member that stood up at this time to represent the grievances of his country." A week after the opening of Parliament he was member of a committee appointed to draw up the Remonstrance on the State of the.King LORD CAPELLo 111 domn, and so long as he continued in the House of Commons he took as active a part as any in defending liberty and law against the unwarrantable and stiicidal pretensions of the Court. When raised to the Peerage he was introduced to the House of Lords by a nobleman identified with the popular party, and he still co-operated with those who had taken their stand against the aggressions of the King. A time came, however, when Lord Capell believed that the positions of King and Parliament were reversed; thcat offence came firom below and not from above; and as resolutely as he had argued for public lights he defended the King's prerogatives, illegally assailed. Is loyalty was as unimpeachable as his vindication of the law had been unequivocal. He followed the sad fortunes of the King with unflinching zeal; he gave of his substance with an open hand; he advised, lihe laboured, and he endured, but he was visited with no pangs of pity and remorse such as afflicted the gentler soul of Falkland, for his self-devotion was as chivalrous and cheerful as his previous efforts in the cause of Parliament had been sincere and stedfast. Capell's defence of Colchester is among the marvels of that extraordinary time; the horrors of the siege among the most painful of its many shocking incidents. Capell's surrender, as all men know, was followed by his trial and speedy execution; and a braver death was never suffered. One solitary request he made before be ascended the scaffold. He prayed his chaplain, if " there were nothing of vanity or of vain ostentation in it," that he would give order that his heart should be taken out of his body and kept in a silver box until the son of the murdered King 112 LORD CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS. should come home, "as he doubted not he would," and then that it might be presented to him "with his humble desire that when the King, his father, was interred it might be buried at his feet, in testimony of the zeal he had for his service, and the affection he had for his person while he lived." When Charles II. returned from his travels the faithful heart was duly presented to him; but the Stuarts had little respect for faithful hearts, whether throbbing or silent, and the loyal bequest was given back to Lord Capell's representatives. In 1703 it turned up in the charter-room of Hadham-hall, and the Earl of Essex of that time desired that it might be deposited in the family vault at Little Hadham. Lest some one more eager than Charles II. might be disposed to steal the heart for the sake of the silver casket, an iron box was substituted, and the piece of silver sold for the benefit of the poor. The iron box is still in the vault. It is said that a learned doctor of physic, being present at the opening of Lord Capell's body, after his execution, " delivered it at a public lecture that the Lord Capell's was the least heart he had ever beheld." The learned doctor had not seen the heart of the King for whom the brave Capell suffered, and he died before the martyr's son. Lord Hertford owed to the House of Stuart still less than Falkland and Capell; but his fidelity and devotion were as perfect as those of either. His grandfather had married Lady Catharine Grey, the cousin of Queen Elizabeth, without that Sovereign's consent, and for his temerity suffered years of imprisonment, from which he was released only after the miserable death of his forcibly divorced wife. The grandson, not alarmed by the LORD HERTFORD. 113 example, contracted a secret marriage with Arabella Stuart, the cousin of James the First, and the persecution of the half savage King far surpassed in its coldblooded cruelty the previous malignant oppression of the virgin Queen. The unhappy tale of Arabella Stuart need not be repeated here. It is sufficient for our purpose to state that, so long as the incarcerated victim lived, Lord Hertford was a banished man, and after her death continued under the marked displeasure of King James and King Charles, from both of whom, according to Lord Clarendon, " he received many and continued disobligations," every possible care being taken " to discountenance and lessen his interest." It is not to be wondered that, when in the 50th year of his age, Lord Hlertford quitted his retirement to take part in public affairs, he should side at once with the men who had combined to restrain the tyranny of the Crown; but it is worthy of note that his high soul shrank from revenging personal affronts, and from the first resolved to abet no attempt against the King's established and prescriptive rights. When he was appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales, it was a joy to the whole kingdom, but he fulfilled his office as one scorning to avail himself of popular favour in order to carry out the nation's wishes in opposition to a father's natural claims. He protected Strafford, whom he was known not to love, and he remonstrated fearlessly with his master, for whom at any time he would cheerfully have laid down his life. Lord Hertford followed the King to York, and in his 54th year raised cavalry for the Royal service. He was soon appointed LieutenantGeneral of all the western parts of the kingdoml; but 114 LORD CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS. too quickly was superseded in his command by Prince Maurice, the King's nephew, and one of the two great curses that afflicted the cause of King Charles from the first hour of his rupture with the British Parliament. To say that King Charles was unworthy of the heroic devotion of his brave adherents, is to repeat a truism; but to know that the mad endeavour was made to coerce the people of England, burning under a sense of injury and wrong, into obedience and duty by the swords of foreign Princes, whose greed of slaughter was equalled only by their indifference to the cause for which they took up arms, is to be conscious of a fault than which none greater is to be met with in the universal history of kings. Englishmen, commanding for their sovereign, might still have fought mercifully enough, to prove to the people their paramount desire for peace. The foreign hirelings knew no higher duty than to burn and slay; and Charles in his wisdom preferred the slayers to the pacificators, and insisted upon self-destruction the wider the door opened for honourable escape. Lord Hertford, recalled from his command in order to make room for the King's nephew, retired from military service, but still kept near the person of the King to render such other service as his means afforded. The time was rapidly advancing when fidelity could do nothing and duty must be dumb. The Parliament was at the mercy of the army —the army at the bidding of one man. The mock trial and the dreadful expiation over, Lord Hertford proffered to the dead the respect which had been forbidden during the last hours of the living. A more affecting or instructive scene than that BURIAL OF CHARLES I. 115 in which Lord I-Iertford performed his final act of loyal service is not to be found. After the execution of Charles leave was given to Lord Hlertford and three others to attend the funeral of their master; but they were not permitted to accompany the corpse out of town-for it must be privately conveyed to WVindsorand church prayers at the grave were strictly forbidden. In silence and in secresy the body was deposited in its tomb. No words were uttered, no unmeaning and hollow Court ceremonial was performed, and nothing but the tears of the few true-hearted mourners consecrated the earth which was thrown over the coffin and the black pall that constituted the sole funeral decoration. Singular that the King, who suffered so much in life, and quitted it more ignominiously than any other British monarch, should have been privileged so far beyond his fellows as to receive the unbought homage of true affection at his tomb-to have his grave moistened with real human sorrow, and gently covered over by the hand of actual human love! After the death of Charles, and during the exile of his son, Lord Hertford contributed liberally to the necessities of the latter, and steadily resisted every attempt made by Cromwell to wean him from his allegiance. When Charles the Second landed at Dover the old lord hastened to meet him at Canterbury, and he who had been persecuted by James, and ungenerously treated by the first Charles, was among the first to pay homage to their descendant, whose disgraceful reign, happily for him, he did not live to witness. Before his death, Lord Hertford was created Duke of Somerset-a title of which his family had been unfairly 116 LORD CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS. deprived in the time of Edward VI.; but he did not long enjoy it. On the 24th of October, 1660, in his 73d year, the Duke breathed his last, and transmitted his dignities and his fortune to a child-his grandSOll. The histories of the three great men whose characters we have briefly given-members of "that band of enlightened reformers who earliest expressed their sentiments on the overgrown power of the Crown, and were among the last to uphold its dignity and just prerogative"-are told with simplicity and truthfulness by Lady Theresa Lewis, who states the case between the Parliament and the Crown both fairly and intelligently. Lives more instructive cannot be perused; for deep interest they are not to be surpassed, inasmuch as they contain matter that will never cease to have freshness and flavour for the English reader and for all who would learn how constitutional liberty has been won in England, and how a practical people work their certain way to the full enjoyment of their rights. It is to be hoped that tile success of the present adventure will be sufficient to induce the authoress to pay another visit to Grove-park, and to remove from a few more of the pictures the dust which time has left upon them. DICKEN S AND THACKERAY. 11)l DICKENS AND THACIKERAY- DAVID COPPERFIELD AND ARTHUR PENDENNIS. WHAT the epic was to the old world-a continuous narration of stirring events, with linked sweetness long dlawn out-that is the romance to the modern world. With the change of matter there has been a change of form; it is no longer the story of " physical force" that absorbs and delights mankind, it is the battle of life,not the encounter of flesh and blood, but the clash of principles and the conflict of passions. The decease of the three volume fiction has often been foretold, but has never come to pass, because it exists as the supply of a want, and a very complex want. All men want amusement; but, more than this, mankind, however civilized, require some stimulus of the simpler emotions; overlaid as these may be by habit, perverted by selfishness or dilapidated by overwear, they are still the chief source of pleasure. That, therefore, must be-welcome which awakes them. The novel has, for the unimaginative, incidents,-for tile student of human nature, character,- for the critical ear, vigour or beauty of language,for the theorist, an ample store of cobwebs. It offers love and children to the spinster, red coats and glory to the legal or the literary drudge; and, if it does harm by exhausting the sympathies of some, it does good by exalting and keeping them fresh in sluggish and mecha 118 COPPERFIELD AND PENDENNIS. nical natures. The romance, we say, occupies the place of the epic; it is more various, because the forms of society are more manifold, and men's knowledge and their requirements alike more diverse. It is not long since two of our best-known epopceists, or, to use the more common term, of our novel-writers, have concluded each a work published by instalments, and sent them forth in their perfect form from the presses of Bradbury and Evans. Little matter to us whether it was the lust of scribbling, the desire of fame, or the appetite for what university statutes still term " solids" which prompted them to utterance. WVe need not, with Mr. Wickfield, decipher the motives which induced Mr. Dickens and IMr. Thackeray to compile respectively the lives of David Copperfield and Arthur Pendennis; enough for us that each of them has produced something neither devoid of interest nor unworthy of his fame. There is one virtue in the autobiographical form in which Mr. Dickens has cast his tale, namely, that it imparts in this case an additional reality; there cannot but be some idea when an author is speaking under an author's mask, and in the first person, that he is retailing', if not circumstances of his own career, at least fancies and feelings which have been present to him in that capacity. We should not, however, expect this reality to extend itself over all the abundance of personages who throng the stage in Mr. Dickens's narrative; if at all so, rather to those who stand in most immediate connexion with the central figure, and form, as it were, a part of him. In other words, we might expect that there should be a division manifest in the CHARACTERS. 119 story, and that one portion should be assimilated to former works of the writer, another portion bear a different impress; nor will such expectation be belied. It is not unreasonably with a view to the final result that the life of David Colpesfield is made somewhat eventful at the outset, more eventful, indeed, than the summary heading of the earlier chapters, " I am born; I observe; I have a change," would lead us to believe. David's mamma is a widow, widowed before the boy is born. She is also, in the opinion of strong-minded Betsy Trotwood, a wax-doll, whom David senior was a fool to marry. The waxen widow, a weak, amiable creature, marries again one Murdstone, black-whiskered and shallow-eyed, who, by the aid of a sister, likewise black-haired, bullies the poor lady to death. The child in this case is, happily, not so fragile a creature as was Paul Dombey, and we have less of mystical precociousness revealed. Natural enough is the detail of that one particular cock, whose voice and gesture had in them something terrible; of that one particular closet, redolent of jam and ghosts; of the dial which was conjectured to feel glad when the morning sun shone out again, and of the nurse with the forefinger like a nutmeg-grater, whose buttons would fly off with a bang under any casual excitement, starting reflections in the child's mind just as the buttons of Munchausen's dogskin jacket used to spring a covey of birds. There are ladies, we do not doubt, who would -willingly bear testimony to these occasional misunclerstaldinngs between dresses and emotions. With the advent of Murdstone a cloud comes over the child's existence. His education commences under 120 COPPERFIELD AND PENDENNIS. one Creakle, at an establishment after the Dotheboys type, where he acquires an affection for James Steerforth, a hero with curls and pocket-money, and Tommy Traddles, a youth with rebellious hair, inexhaustible good nature, and a passion for designing skeleton faces. Ere this, however, he has been introduced by Peggotty, the nurse, to her Yarmouth friends, and dwelt, while by the sea-shore, with Mr. Peggotty, fisherman, Hain, his orphan nephew, Emily, his orphan niece, and lachrymose Mrs. Gummidge, his housekeeper. The mother dead, Murdlstone consigns the child to his partner, Quinion; and bottle-washing at a warehouse by the river at Blackfiriars. Here he has a taste of life in the streets, and puts up under the roof of Wilkins Micawber, Esq., a general waiter upon Providence, with a weakness for drawing upon the future by means of 46 acceptances," and more than a viceroy's zest for writing diplomatic and confidential letters. Mr. Micawber, with his wife and family, are a part of portion No. 2, as above described. They live better on nothing than most people do on a little; they fluctuate between tears and smiles; they pass from despair to hot punch, and from the immediate prospect of starvation to a sanguine gaiety. Alnaschar is a joke to them; in a forlorn tenement, beyond the City-road, they calculate the expense of putting out a bow-window from. their house in Piccadilly. As to exterior, Mr. Micawber is stout and bold, he wears shabby clothes, an enormous shirtcollar, and an eyeglass, dangling "for ornament, not use." A daring design upon the Custom-house, and visions of assistance from Mrs. M.'s family, carry them to Plymouth; on their departure, David determines to MISS TROTWOOD'S'AMILY. 121 seek his sole relative, the Betsy Trotwood, whom he unconsciously alienated at his birth, Robbed at the outset by an ingenious costermonger, he accomplishes the journey to Dover on foot, subsisting on the produce of his jacket and waistcoat, and arrives at the cottage in rags. Miss Trotwood lives on an eminence in the suburbs, overlooking the sea. With her on the first floor is Mr. Richard Batley, a harmnless, gentlemanly mononmaniac, whom she has rescued from the less pleasant seclusion his friends designed for him. The boy is housed, and aftelr an interview witih Murdstone and sister, the nephew becomes the exclusive property of his aunt, who is eccentric and determined, but kind. She sends David to school at Canterbury, to one Dr. Strong, pedagogue and lexicographer, an old, abstracted, kindly sort of man, with a very young and pretty wife; but he is to lodge with Mr. Wickfield, Miss Trotwood's solicitor, in an old house, low broewed and wainscoated, fit shrine for a daughter Agnes, "a quiet, good, calm spirit," the heroine of the tale. By way of contrast there is Heep, articled clerk, articled out of charity, whom to describe description fails; he is a sinister, crouching, fawning imp of humility; viperous in soul and body; longfingered and splay-footed and redeyed, with damp exudations of the cuticle, a froglike hand; altogether "a moist unwholesome body;" him, too, we are inclined to put in the category of the hypernaturals. Schooldays over, Miss Trotwood will have David to see a little of the world before he decides on a profession. In London he falls in with the hero of the curly hair, and, after beingo introduced at Highgate to th.at Oxonian's mother, and her. fLamiliar, Miss rIc()s1cr),; irrTE5. 6 122 COPPERFIELD AND PENDENNIS. Dartle, and feeling inextinguishably young in the presence of Littimer', most respectable of servants, is accompanied by Steerforth to Yarmouth. Miss Dartle is powerfully drawn. "She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. I concluded in my own mind that she was 30, and wished to be married. She was a little dilapidatedlike a house-with having been so long to let: her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes." The scar was the work of Steerforth when a child. It is the index of Miss Dartle's susceptibilities, and owns some allegiance to the hand that caused it. From this point commences the tragic portion of the tale. Little Em'ly, Mr. Peggotty's niece, a beautiful girl, with only too much refinement and intelligence, is now the promised wife of her cousin, Ham. Steerforth, who makes himself universally agreeable, takes to the sea as his native element, wins the affection of the boatmen, and ends by purchasing "a clipper," which he leaves Littimer behind him to superintend. Ham's peace of mind is evidently threatened. The world of London,.Highgate, and Yarmouth thus scrutinized, Doctors' Commons is suggested, and accepted as the immediate sphere of David's labours. The aunt finds a thousand pounds for Messrs. Spenlow and Jorklins, and places her boy in lodgings with Mrs. Crupp, Buckinglamr-street, Adelphi. The portrait of Mr. Spenlow's accurate exterior, and of the monkish place with its heterogeneous monopolies, is only equalled by the strange tenacity of the unseen Mr. Jorkins, a figure who may be suppoel 1to a illnstritc f lent influences of a good many PItOGRESS OF THE STORY. 123 "sleeping partners," male and female. At this point Agnes appears as his good angel, and, warning him against Steerforth as his bad angel, is but imperfectly credited. Uriah Heep, whose humility has exalted him to a partnership with Wickfield, has a design upon the affections of Agnes, who moves, however, too serenely above him, lavishing her tenderness on her father alone. Meanwhile, another angel appears to David in Dora Spenlow, the accurate Spenlow's only child. She has acquired in Paris some graces, but has neither intellect nor education. There is a sentimental confidante, Julia Mills, a spaniel Jip, and a duenna, who by the law of recurring uniformities, which Mr. Dickens faithfully observes, turns out to be no other than Miss Murdstone. The innocent intrigue, abetted by the poetic Julia, is brought to light by that blaclkhaired inquisitress, anrid Mr. Spenlow " pooh poohs" the thing, but behaves quite as a member of a genteel corporation should behave, Miss Trotwood's inexplicable loss of property being, of course, an element in the consideration. Troubles are thickening, for Steerforth has succeeded too well in detaching little Em'ly from the ruder, but more faithful suitor, and carried her off to the continent. Mr. Peggotty makes it the business of his life to find, rescue, and forgive her. Ham, who is also a gentleman in feeling, though heartbroken, is calm ald magnanimous. Than these two Mr. Dickens has conceived nothing more exalted or more touching. David's love, less noble, but more fortunate, prospers again after the sudden decease of Mr. Spenlow, who leaves the scene in a fit of apoplexy, the result, it would seem, of comfortable living and uncomfortable neck 124 COPPERV'rELD AND PENDENNISo cloths. )ora falls into the hands of two spinster aunts, who enjoy the engagement very much, and make a pet of it until the heroic iDavid has attained a sufficiency by reporting and other various labour; the melodrama then explodes in a matrimonial scene; there is some baby housekeeping, during which the intense silliness of the child-wife is only half redeemed by some touches of pathos, and in a year or two Dora does exactly that she had best do-retires upon a narrow property near the church and an annuity of regrets. Henceforth Agnes occupies the scene which Dora has quitted,-her firmness, faith, and purity coming out in contrast to the debility, mental and bodily, of Mr. Wickfield, now hopelessly entangled in the meshes of Heep, and to the villanous subtlety and cunning of that humble young man. By the by, Mr. Micawber, whose die has been cast, whose flower has been cankered, and whose longevity has been extremely problematical a number of times, is now law writer to Heep. Versatile creature as he is, though, and charged full with shifts and contrivances, he has all the dignity of a more successful man, and by a patient process of counter-machination exposes the rascality of his master. Heep is compelled to compromise matters and bolt. Mr. Wickfield resigns business, Agnes keeping school in the old house, and Miss Trotwood is restored to comfort and the old cottage at Dover. Mr. Peggotty's wanderings in search of the lost one have been rewarded at last. He sails with Emily for the antipodes: but ere they sail Copperfield goes down to Yarmnouth to carry the last messages for I1am. When he arrives a hurricane rages; a Spanish CARICATURE. 125 vessel is wrecked close in shore, and her crew swept overboard, until one alone remains. Ham, in a second desperate endcleavour to reach the vessel, is buffeted to death by the waves, and when the ship goes to pieces it is the lifeless body of Steerforth that lies among the ruins of the home lie had made desolate. Doubly depressed, Copperfield goes abroad for some years, returning more famous, for he has been writing among the mountains. HIe accomplishes the destiny long foreshadowed by marrying Agnes"A perfect woman, nobly planned, To walrn, and comfort, and command, And yet a spirit still and bright, With something of angelic light." The story thus represents to us two lives subject to vicissitudes, and moving parallel with one another in patient self-reliance until they unite in one. The antecedent marriage of David and Dora is an episode thrown in' to demonstrate the simplicity and truth which may coexist with weakness before they overcome it. Nor is there anything unnatural in the idea of a foolish passion or a foolish match, though there is in. the impersonation of it. Dora Spenlow is a caricatureone of those caricatures into which Mr. Dickens allows himself to be seduced by his habit of working up figures in detail. and his desire to make every stroke tell; a decent amount of folly and childishness might have been united to a great deal of tenderness, without so far violating probability as to malce the reader inmpatient for the drop-scene. Skill enough, however, is shown in the half unconscious reference to Agnes of all 126 COPPERFIELD AND PENDEN N1S. higher feelings and interests, and in the gradual awakening to a sense of error —" the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart," unaccompanied as it is by any cessation of affection for Dora; and so also in the obtuseness so long displayed as to Agnes' real feeling, a trait obviously masculine. We have something of a similar outline in the second tale, the course of which, however, is sooner told, for Mr. Thackerav does not fill his canvass with such a variety of portraits and incidents. Near a small country town in the West of England there are two detached llouses, one large, the other small. Clavering Park is vacant, f:,r Sir Francis, of that ilk, is abroad. In the other, Fairoaks, lives a retired( medical practitioner, John Pendennis, Esq., late of the city of Bath. Hle has a wife —Helen, gentle, sweet, but a little uninteresting, and a son, Arthur. The wife cherishes also a little girl, Laura, daughter of her cousin, the Rev. T. Bell, deceased. John Pendclennis has a brother, a Major, who has retired from the service on half-pay, and a large stock of fashionable friends, who becomes guardian to Arthur on his father's decease. The boy, though only 16 at the time of that event, is allowed to leave school, for the mother is fond and weak-Smirke, the curate, making him an apology for a tutor. Being a youth of parts and already a poet, his heart is set on fire by the star of a dramatic company,-the Fotheringay, a large dark-eyed ignorant woman, with a genial but drunken sire, Captain Costigan, once of Costiganstown. The intercourse has commenced under the auspices of Harry Foker, son of Foker's Entire, an old schoolfellow, a short, stout, empty, good-natured, and overdressedcl 'EtSONAGES O' PENDENNIS. 127 in other words, a " fastish" young man. The Major is startled by a letter from Helen announcing the not improbable marriage of her son: his promptitude and tact avert this calamity, and the youth goes to an uuiversity which Mr. Thackeray has denominated Oxbriclge. Here he becomes popular, runs in debt, and is plucked; but finally accomplishes a degree, and, subsiding into the country, finds a remedy for ennui in a new flirtation. Clavering Park is occupied at last, for the present baronet has married a Begum. The Begum has a daughter by her first husband, Blanche, (or by baptism Betsy) Amory, a blonde, who had begun to gush into sentiment at a very early age. After wearing out this passion, in order to please the widow, he proposes to Laura, who has strength of mind enough to refuse him. He next gets to town, enters at the bar, is pushed in society by the Major, and takes to the literary line by the aid of Warrington, a sort of Hercules in mind and body, and uncommonly well drawn. Fanny Bolton, daughter of the porter at Shepherd's-inn, diverts his attention, but he conquers himself, and has a bad fever; after which there is a tour on the continent. During this tour Helen, who has misunderstood the Bolton affair, dies of heart disease in the transport of renewed confidence. Laura goes to live with Lady Rockminster, a rigorous old woman of the world, with as much kindness as character, and Arthur, by the machinations of the Major, becomes engaged to Miss Amory, who is to bring him a fortune and a seat in Parliament. Neither cares much for the other, and the lady, attracted by the superior wealth of Foker, breaks with Pendennis. The conclusion is a marriage with Laura, and the attain 128 COPPER'FIELD AND PENDENNIS. ment of the borough by the legitimate course of things. It will be seen from this outline that the incidents of Mr. Thackeray's story are not of an exciting kind. It is intended to represent simply the way of the world, and it does so. Its merits consist in the truth of that representation. The interest given to Mr. Dickens's work by its biographical form was here impossible, for the centre figure is not meant to be a hero at all, and Laura only a heroine in the sense in which all good young women are such. Carrying out the proposition which he announced in FVanity Fair, Mr. Thackeray has once more depicted the average features of the people one meets, neither ascending to any great heights nor descending to any extraordinary depths. The whole story is consistent with this intention. We have drawing-rooms before us, never cottages; fashion rather than nature; in other words, that second nature which custom creates. We have a style which harmonizes with the topics, and a philosophy which, whether intended to do so or not, never rises above the obvious and the commonplace. Perhaps no greater distinction can be drawn between the two works than this, that the one confines itself to the artificial phase of society, the other to the real. Allowing this, the wider scope of Mr. Dickens's novel is at once explained. There is room for more range of character-for more diversity of adventure-for a more thoughtful and suggestive tone. Mr. Thackeray tells us in his preface that he could willingly have treated us to squalor and crime —St. Giles's and a gallows: scene, but that he mistrusted his powers. The resolve was judicious, for what he has done he has PEOPLE WITHO'I'O WITS. 129 done well, catching not a little of the force and spirit with which his favourite models, Smollett, Fielding, and Steine, illustrated the realities of a century ago. Pendennis is not exactly a Tom Jones, but he is conceived from the same point of view. The only question is whether Mr. Thackeray has done wisely in applying the doctrine of limits to character so unvaryingly, and we are inclined to believe that, while he has observed keenly enough the peculiarities of the world which he depicts, he has not gauged universal humanity so skilfully as Mr. Dickens. In -David Copperfield there are more contrasts of character, more varieties of intellect, a more diverse scenery, and more picturesqueness of detail. It is the whole world rather than a bit of it which you see before you. There is first the childhood, vividly painted, happy, and unsuspicious, with its ideas and feelings not at all overdone; in Pendennis, on the contrary, you have rather the fact that he was once a child than childhood described. There are secondly,and it is. an artifice of which Mr. Dickens is somewhat too fond,-some people without wits in his tale. With Mr. Batley we find no fault, for lie is a pendant to Miss Trotwood, who could ill be spared; but Dora is an infliction. The effect, however, of these portraits is to throw the intellect of others into relief, and also to give a colouring such as the harmless enjoyments and simple affection of crazed people alone can give. There is no satire in the description of their extravagances; on the contrary, there is something at once joyous and tender, something mysterious and impressive, in the history of a lunatic, which makes the Swiss and the Oriental revere him, and which made Wordsworth put 6* 130 COPPEItFIELD AND PENDIENNIS. him into verse. As he goes lower in the scale of intellect and manners, so also Mr. Dickens rises higher than Mr. Thackeray —his hero is greater than Pendennis, and his heroine than Laura, while " my Aunt" might alike, on the score of eccentricities and kindliness, take the shine out of Lady Rockminster. The Yarmouth group, again, is no exaggeration, and, while introducing another of Mr. Dickens's merits, the power of description gives at once the effect of a general contrast runninog through the tale, and absorbs as much interest as the central figures by the force and dignity of the delineation; the depth of feeling revealed in Mr. Peggotty and in Ham, the energetic patience of one, the passive endurance of the other, not less than Mrs. Gummidge's sudden conversion from querulousness to activity and self-forgetfulness, are the evidence at once of knowledge and of imagination. Nor is the mute Mr. Barkis's expressive gesture, or the leg-rubbing and strong vernacular of the boatman, less true to the life. What we cannot allow to Mr. Dickens is the invariable fidelity which accompanies Mr. Thackeray's characters. There are cases where his facts are not so true as his ideas. It might be quite true, for instance, that Miss Dartle would hate Steerforth's victim with all the rancour of jealousy; but it is very unlikely that she should seek her out in order to reproach her with her shamre, and gloat over her misery with the fiendish violence ascribed to her. The thing is altogether overstrained. We have already said that I)ora is not a fact, and we must extend the censure to a fiequent want of truth in language, not that the dialect of Mr. Peggotty is less racy than the brogue of Captain Costigan, but that in any passage of OVER POETICAL TENDENCIES. 131 sentiment Mr. Dickens lets the sentiment run away with him. Who ever heard of one young man saying gravely to another, "You are always equally loved and cherished in my heart," or of a bride who has just entered the travelling carriage coming out with so Tennysonian a decasyllabic as"It grows out of the night when Dora died?" -a fault this, which grows out of the over-poetical tendencies of the author, tendencies discoverable enough in all his works, and evidenced as much, perhaps, in the characters of Barnaby Rudge and Paul Dombey as in any discursiveness of mere expression. It is Mr. Thackeray's merit that his prose is downright prose; he does not seem, indeed, to have the faculty of committing such mistakes as these; but compare the fidelity of the greeting between Pendennis and Warrington, and the remarks thereon, with th.e conversation of David aud Steerforth, or compare the rage of Miss Dartle with anything said or accomplished by Becky, in Vanity Fair, and you will not hesitate to say which way the balance inclines. It may be said, however, that Mr. Thackeray was preserved in some degree from such faults by casting all his characters within a narrow sphere, and that sphere one in which language is easily caught, and all of one pattern. Yet we are inclined to take such exception against the profusion of "egads" and " begads," with which that most gentlemanly old man the Major interlards his discourse, even if not against their Irish first cousin "bedad," which emphasizes the rich brogue of " the pIore old man who was 132 COPPERFIELD AND PENDIE.EUNS, dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude." As in language so in exterior and manners, Mr. Thackeray's people are less marked. He does not wish to individualize. Mr. Dickens has a perfect passion for being particular, as if the portrait might be wanted in the Hn.Te and Cry. We must suppose either that people in the best society have not their little tricks-tricks of the body, that isor else tlat Mr. Dickens has an unnatural faculty of detecting thein. All the accessory characters in his books gesticulate. They have a hundred little ways of identifying themselves. Like the gentleman in Lavengro who must for the life of him touch something, they are always popping out with some peculiarity, which might make us think that Mr. Dickens, with the doctor quoted the other day by Lord Campbell, believed in universal monomania. Uriah Hleep, for instance, is first introduced to us as trying to put a spell upon the pony-his sinuous contortions and shadowless eyes are for ever before us as illustrative of his wily wickedness. Mrs. Steerforth is to be the quintessence of pride, Miss Trotwood of firmness and eccentric good nature, the Murdstones of firmness and ill nature. Mrs. Steerforth, therefore, is tall and rigid, Miss Trotwood rigid and tall. So is Mr. Murdstone, so is Miss Murdstone, so was Mr. Dombey. Mr. Spenlow's sisters are to be like a pair of canaries, neat, dalpper, twittering sort of females; accordingly they have a curious appetite for lumps of sugar and seedcake. Again Mr. Dickens is as deep in nasology as the learned Slawkenbergius; his people are perpetually wagging their noses, or flattening them against windows, or rubbing them, or evincing scene restlessness or other in connexion with them. He is A'VEIlAGE OF LIsFE 133 not much less scientific in eyes, and ought by this time to have a regular classification of them. The effect of all this is that you trace something genuine in Mr. Thackeray's figures more easily than you do in Mr. Dickens's. You have not such a series of peculiarities to separate before you can regard the nature by itself Fokers, Pendennises, Helens, and Lauras abound everywhere. You can't go out without meeting them, nor do they, the first especially, deny the portraiture; if there is any desire to deny it, that arises, not from Mr. Thackeray's allowing them too little goodness, but from his not allowing them enough wits. The ladies, however, ought to be propitiated by something of additional beauty and force assigned to them in Pendennis. Compare the tone of the two books, and one will be found, as a whole, light-hearted and hopeful, the other dolorous and depressing. Both books are comic in much of their expression, for both writers are humourists, but the humour of one is more gloomy than that of the other, as if from a shadow fallen upon a life. While in David Copperfield the tragedy is consummated in a single chapter, in Pendennis it is spread over the whole surface of the story. In the former case a man is slain; in the latter case human aspirations and complacencies are demolished. Rising from the perusal of Mr. Dickens's work, you forget that there is evil in the world, and remember only the good. The distinction drawn between the bad and good is a broad one. Rising from Mr. Thackeray's, you are doubtful of yourself and of humanity at large, for nobody is very bad or very good, and everybody seems pretty well contented. The morale might almost be summed up into the American's 134 COPPEtRFEI.f) ANI)'ENDENNXIS, creed, " There's nothing new, there's nothing true, and it don't signify." One might almost fancy that Mr. Thackeray had reduced his own theory of life to that average which he strikes from the practice of all around him. We are brought into a mess and left there, woman's love and purity being the only light upon our path. Mr. Dickens touches a higher key; his villains, Heep and Littimer, stand out as villains; his women —and we may take My Aunt and Agnes as equally faithful pictures,-hold an eminence which women may andl do reach in this world, and which mere purity and love do not suffice to attain. We do not wish, however, to be hard on Mr. Thackec ray's selection of his scene. As forms of sensual existence, varied only by circumstance and taste, his characters are as true as the velvet of Mr. Hunt's Mariana, so lately a topic of discussion, or the topers of Teniers-only do not let the picture be taken as expressing the whole truth of the matter; there is a large suppression. We must grant, by way of counterpoise, that Mr. Dickens fiequently sins in excess. He contemplates human nature in its strength, and on its unsophisticated side;-Mr. Thackeray in -its weakness and. on its most artificial basis. The consequence is, that the former verges on the sentimental, the latter on the cynical, one being the reaction of the other; only while the first is no unmanly weapon in Mr. Dickens's hand, the last is a sufficiently temperate one in the hand of Mr. Thackeray. As to actual influence, we should, for the reasons aforesaid, assign the higher place to Mr. Dickens, partly because the expressed morality comes forth as something definite, the fruit of THE PREFERENCE'TO COPPERFIELD. 130 personal experience, yet conveyed through a personage of the tale, partly because the highest lessons inculcated, such as those of faith in Mr. Peggotty and resignation in Ham, are some of the highest that can be inculcated, and partly, also, because the world which Mr. Thackeray experiments on, is a world of salamanders, fireproof, inclined to disbelieve that the lesson they can criticise may possibly increase their condemnation. Each rejoices to be what he is. Foker and Major Pendennis rejoice in their portraits, save that the latter don't think he is so " doosedly"' made tip, after all. You may as well write at them as preach at them; and did not the Major go to church? Perfect as Pendennis is, then, in execution, we are bound, when weighing it with Copperfield, to adjudge the chief merit where the most universal interest is conciliated and the most exalted teaching hidden beneath the tale, The epic is greater than the satire. 136 nHSTORY OF GREECE. GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. MR. GROTE'S history has yet arrived only at the close of the fourth century, B.c., and the fall of the Thirty Tyrants. Two of the six compartments in which he proposes, to use his own quaint phrase, " to exhaust the fiee life of collective Hellas," still remain to be accomplished. But the history of Greece is written. Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus, and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective trust of Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleo-'nenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with. melancholy interest, of noble natures out of harmony with the present, and spending their energies in the vain attempt to turn back the stream of time, and call again into existence the feelings and the institutions of an irrevocable past. The monarchy of Philip is yet due to fate. Macedon is still to Greece what Russia, before Peter the Great, was to Europe-a half-unknown and barbarous land, full of latent energy and power, and waiting for the rise of a master mind to discern its embryo greatness, and turn its peasants into the unconquerable phalanx. Alexander must arise to carry forth with his victorious arms the seeds of Greek civilization GREATNESS OE THE WOnrK. 137 over the eastern world. Aristotle must arise to gather up to one boundless mind the vast results of Greek philosophy, and found an empire vaster and more enduring than that of his great pupil in the subjugated intellect of man. But the history of Greece is finished. Athens and Sparta, the two great antagonistic types of Greek society, politics, and education, have attained their full development, passed their allotted hour of trial, and touched upon their doom. The shades of night are gathering on the brig ht day of Hellas. The momentous work of that wonderful people is accolmplished; the interest of the great intellectual and moral contest has centred in one man; the last scene of the Phcedo has been enacted, anrd Socrates has died. The history of Greece is written, and the character of the historian is decided. Mr. Grote has aclieved a noble work-a work which, unless the glory of classical literature is a dream, will well repay, in usefulness and in renown,.the devotion of a scholar's life. IHis book will be called great while Grecian story retains its interest. Even making allowance for the wonderful labours of the Germans, and the extraordinary addition which their learned toils have m:tade to our knowledclge of the subject, we should say that the work before us bhaA almost disentombed many portions of Greek life. WVe cannot sufficiently extol the wonderful knowledge of all the feelings, habits, associations, and institutions of an extinct people, which every page exhibits, and the familiar mastery with which a mind steeped in Grecian lore analyses, combines, criticises, and unfolds the Inmass of heterogeneous and often conjectural materitls on 138 lISTORY" OE' GREECE. which it has to work. Not only have we been enabled to read Greek history with new eyes and a new understanding, but light has been poured upon its literature; and, to apply to Mr. Grote the compliment which he pays to others, " the poets, historians, orators, and philosopbers of Greece, have been all rendered both more intelligible and more instructive to the student, and the general picture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a degree of fidelity which, considering our imperfect materials, it is curious to contemplate." Two volumes more at least must be yet to come, but Mr. Grote's pedestal is sure; and nothing can diminish the satisfaction which lie lmust now feel at his decided and proclaimed success, but the consciousness that the moment is approaching when he must part with the companio.n of many a sweet, though toilsome hour, and experience the mingled feelings which Gibbon has so well portrayed, il writing " the last page of the last chapter" of the history of Greece. It is pity that such hiogh intrinsic merits should be marred, both as regards the pleasure and the instruction of the reader, by a fatal deficiency of style. It is pity, but it is true. Mr. Grote seems to have lived in the works of the Greek writers till he has almost forgotten the forms and cadence of his mother tongue. It is not only that he so frequently has resort to an uncouth Greek compound when he might easily express the same idea in two or three English words, if not in one; there is a perpetual clumsiness in his construction of common sentences and his use of common words. Clarendon himself is not harder or more tortuous. Even in purely narrative parts, which ought to flow PECULIARITIES OUF EXI'tESSION. 13]9 most easily, the understanding of the Leader can seldomn keep pace with his eye. Cyclopean epithets are piled together almost at randofih, on any substantive which will have the complaisance to receive them. Th e choice of expression and metaphor is sometimes such as almost to rival the achievements of Castlereagh in his happiest hour. WVe have people existing, "not as individual names on paper, but simply as an imposturous nominal aggregate,"-Thucydides " reserving his flowers to strew on the grave of Nicias," the Athenians " sailing out" to action, having "left their sails at Teiclliassa," and their "sailing back to Teichiassa for their sails,"-Athens, "the mnistress and successor of the Ionian Confederacy,"-inestimalble stepping-stones towards a goal, and oligarchical conspirators against popular liberty "tying clown the patient while the process of emasculation was being consummated." We are sorry to say that these instances are taken fiom the last two volumes, so that Mr. Grote does not improve as lie advances. In the first volume, when relating the legends of early Greece, we are glad that he does not imitate the forced simplicity with which Dr. Arold tells the legends of early Rome; but it is too flat to describe Atalanta as "6beautiful and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a huntress, and unacceptable to Aphrodite." The redeeming point, and a great redeeming point it is, is the total absence of anything like affectation. All the peculiarities are genuine, and everything that is genuine in composition, though it cannot be admired, may be borne. But for this we should be compelled to class one of the best of English books among the very worst ] 40 IIISTORY OF GREECE. of English writings. Mr. Grote must remember that no man who wrvites fior posterity can afford to neglect the art of composition. The tliminler bark, though less richly laden, will float further down the stream of time, and when so many authors of real ability and learning are competing for every niche in the temple of fame, the coveted place will assuredly be won by style. It is this deficiency of art which can alone prevent Mr. Grote's history from completely superseding both the works already existing of the same magnitude. Neither the spirit of Mitford nor the solid sense of Thirlwall could long preserve them fiom eclipse. The light of the former indeed has long grown dim. He is always blundering, and his blunders are always on the Tory side. Arnold's good word has kept him a few years longer on our bookshelves. Dr. Thirlwall has higher qualities, but, not to mention that he has damnaged himself by writing against Mitford instead of ignoring him, he is terribly dry, and Mr. Grote leaves him far behind in appreciation of all that belongs to Greece, in loving industry, ill warmth of sympathy, and, well-read scholars as they both are, in deep knowledge of his subject. The cheaper and more compendious histories of course are not affected. The light and credulous Goldsmith is still left to contend with the more correct but duller Keightley for the patronage of ingenuous youth. Perhaps both yield to the meritorious little work published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. But a place, and an honourable place, is still left for any one who can tell the story of Greece in a succinct and lively form, availing himself of the light which Mr. Grote has shed GROTE'S TRI.EATMENTX' OF IS SUBJECT, 141 upon the subject, cultivating candour and riglht synpathies, cutting short the ante-historical period, bringing strongly out the great states and the great men, limiting himself to two moderate volumes, and addressing himself especially to the unlearned and the young. In the very outset of his work, Mr. Grote departs firom the line marked out and almost consecrated by his predecessors. He reserves the geographical sketch for the beginning of the history in the proper sense of the term, and opens with the mythology. In his treatment of this portion of his subject, Mr. Grote exhibits a double novelty. 1. He treats the cosmogony, theology, and mythology of the Greeks as so many fictitious periods of their histolry, portions, as he phrases it, of the divine foretime. This proceeding appears to us to involve a certain confusion of ideas. The gods of the Greek are his canonised heroes, belong to his present, and in connexion with these, we think that Mr. Grote might advaltageously h-ave given us some account of the religion of the Greeks in the propel sense, as it affected their lives, tlleir feelings, and their morals. Fromrn these are clearly to be distinguished the shadowy beings whom his bards, the rude philosophers of his early day, invented to satisfy his want of a cosmogony, who formed no objects of his worship, and belonged not, pr)l'ctically speaking, either to his present or to his past. His past was occupied by the heroes; and the mode in which these were connected and commingled with the gods forms a peculiarity in Greek mythology of which M1. Grote, we venture to think, has hardly given us the true account. 142 HISTIORY OF GREECE,. II. Mr. Grote gives a merely positive account of the Greek theology and mythology, professing not to offel any philosophical or historical solution, inmd repeatedly discouraging such an attempt in otbers. We rathez bow than acquiesce. To us it still appears that the Greek theology is capable, to a very great extent, of being explained on physical principles. It was, indeed, far removed fiom gross adoration of the elements, or of striking natural objects. There was in Greece no mystic Nile, no mighty Ganges, and the sun-God of that delicious land did not tyrannize over the bodies and minds of its inhabitants like the burning luminary which scorches the vast plains of Asia. Tile physical basis, too, was clothed upon, and almost hidden by the exuberant fancy of a nation of poets. But we believe that there was a physical basis, and we cannot help thinking it may be discoverable still. So with the mythology, properly: so called. We abandon, with Mr. Grote, any attempt to elicit real names or events from the legends of heroic Greece; but we do not abandon the hope of carrying the analysis further than Mr. Grote seems to think possible, and tracing the origin of some to monuments, some to places, some to words, some to pure imagination, and detecting under others some facts relating to the history of races, or of customs, or even a certain element of historic truth. Having so far expressed our dissent firom Mr. Grote, we gladly express our admiration of the masterly synopsis and history of Greek mythology which'his learning, diligence, and sagacity have produced. The method of arrangement which he has adopted in grouping the various myths in the form of local genealogies attached TIHE I ISTORIAN AS A PHI-LOSOPHER. 143 to the chief states of Greece is worthy of the name of a discovery, and will materially lighten the labour of all future students in this department. Most interesting, too, is his historic and philosophic account of the progress and treatment of the myths in the age of civilised and scientific Greece. From this we take a passage which will exhibit Mr. Grote as a philosopher, his chief character in the earlier portion of his work. We protest, by the way, against the assumption of an "inevitable law of intellectual progress," as absurd in itself, and connected with much that is worse than absurd. There is a tendency in early philosophy to loose generalisation. There is a tendency in mature philosophy to accurate observation. But this swill not warrant us in dividing philosophy into distinct eias, and supposing that in one era people were necessarily " metaphysical," and that in another era they were necessarily "4 positive." Much less will it warrant us in confounding religion with Fetishism, and imagining that a belief in a Creator and a Providence is merely the earliest and most imperfect stage of physical science. We may observe, in passing, that the "human mind" is a metaphysical abstraction which philosophers of the positive school, on their own principles, have no business to employ. "In the scheme of ideas common to Homer and to the Hesiodic theogony (as has been already stated), we find nature distributed into a variety of personal agencies, administered according to the free will of different beings more or less analogous to man, each of these beings having his own character, attributes, and powers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his own espe 144 HISTORY OF GREECE. cial sympathies or antipathies with human individuals, each being determined to act or forbear, to grant favour or inflict injury in his own department of phenomena, according as men, or perhaps other beings analogous to himself, might conciliate or offend hims. The gods, properly so called (those who bore a propel' name, and received some public or family worship), were the most commanding and capital members amidst this vast network of agents, visible and invisible, spread over the universe. The whole view of nature was purely religious and subjective, the spontaneous suggestion of the early mind. It proceeded from the instinctive tendencies of the feelings and imaginations to transport to the world without the familiar type of free will and conscions personal action above all, it took deep hold of the emotions, from the widely-extended sympathy wvhich it so perpetually called forth between man and nature. I" The first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intellect from this all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of interpreting nature distinct froln the spontaneous inspiration of untaught minds, is to ble found in Thales, Xenophanes, and Pythagoras, in the sixth century before the Christian era. It is in them that we first find the idea of person tacitly set aside or limited, and an impersonal nature conceived as the object of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Tethys, parents of many gods, and of the Oceanic nymphs, together with the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material substance water, or, as we ought rather to say, the fluid: and Thales set himself to prove that water was the primitive element out of THALES, XENOPHANES, AND PYTHAGORAS. 145 which all the diffe.rent natural substances had been formed. He, as well as Xenoplanes and Pythagoras, started the problem of physical philosophy, with its objective character and invariable laws, to be discoverable by a proper and methodical application of the human intellect. The Greek word TPrs, denoting nature, and its derivatives, physic and physiology, unknown in that large sense to Homer or Hesiod, as well as the word Ko'Isog/, to denote the mundane system, first appears with these philosophers. The elemental analysis of Thales —the one unchangeable cosmic substance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as sug-.gested by Xenophanes, and the geometrical and arithMetical combinations of Pythagoras-all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers; but they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in nature-either independent of willing or designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispensable subject-matter, and as a limiting condition. Xenophanes disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pronounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong in affirmations respecting them; while Pythagoras represents, in part, the scientific tendencies of his age; in part, also, the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became diffused throughout Greece in the sixth centurv before the Christian era. This was another point whichl placed him in antipathy with the!a1coNn srFle4 7 146 HISTORY OF GREE(CE. simple, unconscious, and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legends. "If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phenomena of nature to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substituting metaphysical eidola in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories, we must remember that nothing else could be expected from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevitable law of intellectual progress. At present we have to compare them only with that state of the Greek mind which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed among superior men, but the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them, and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all, or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the gods to whom they were constantly praying for special succour and blessings." We presume to think that the above passage might have been more terse and clear, and that the nail might have been driven more fully home. But the right nail EFFECT OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY ON GREEKS. 147 is struck. ~Ve have here suggested the true solution of that conflict wbich must have arisen in the mind of every thoulghtful Greek, between science and religion, and the progress of which forms so instructive a portion of the history of Greek philosophy. The moral part of the difficulty, of course, is manifest. Tihe gross conceptions and foul imaginings which sullied the religion of his fathers, could not fail to provoke the ridicule of every wise, and the disgust of every moral Greek. If he was religious, as Socrates was, he rejected the legend, and preserved the god; if he was irreligious, like the Epicureans, he rejected both legend and god together. It is important to mark, even in paganism, the different courses taken by different minds under precisely the same difficulty. And we should be glad to see how M. Comte, or any of his school, would account for the strong faith and religious sentiment which, in the bosom of Socrates, evidently survived all real belief in the objects of Athenian worship, except on the supposition of a religious sense, which, on those sound principles of observation for which they so vigorously and so well contend, must give a decisive overthrow to what they call positive philosophy. The cause of that opposition which subsisted in the ancient world between natural science and religion has, we believe, been less clearly appreciated, and Christians have even been betrayed by their confused notions on this point into espousing the cause of gross polytheists, like Aristophanes, against the great natural philosophers of Greece. The fact is simply this: —Polytheism supposes a number of independent divinities acting through 148 JIISTORY OF GREECEo the universe independently of each other, and acting by arbitrary will. Physical science, the moment she lifts her eyes to Heaven, discovers that there is a single power acting through every department of the universe, not arbitrarily, but by all-pervading laws. The Greek who had seen this could be a polytheist no more, but he might still be a religious man, and some of the Greek philosophers were; though, in the opinion of their more debased countrymen, they would all have deserved the helnlock. The antagonism was not between science and religion, but between science and a false religion. Between science and true religion no antagonism exists. Nature, rightly read, repels belief in many gods, but she witnesses to one. There is, therefore, no natural tendency in physical science to make men atheists, though there is a necessary tendency to make them monotheists. The scepticism of modern men of science like Laplace, must be accounted for by their own mental peculiarities, by the irreligious spirit of their time, or by the exclusively intellectual character of their pursuits. Something may even be due to the traditions of ancient scepticism, and we are disposed to think that these same traditions may not have been wholly without influence on those who show so much reluctance to admit physical science as an element of general education, who, with strange inconsistency, accept the whole circle of pagan literature, with all its falsehoods and impurities, into their schools and colleges, and would fain keep at a distance Newton and Kepler and Herschel, and the book which can contain no falsehood and no impurity-the book of the Creation. The besetting sin of historians and historical ph'lo 'THE BESETTING SIN OF HISTORANS. 49S. 49 sophers in tile present day is fialse analogy; andl into this sin Mr. Grote falls when he draws what lie supposes to be an exact parallel between the Grecian myths and the saintly and chivalrous legends of Christendom. The imagination was at work in both cases. That is the only point of similarity. The saint and the knight errant, who in his noblest form was the saint in armour, were, as Mr. Grote himself observes, emnbodiments of a certain type of character. They were dis.tinctly moral and spiritual conceptions, and objects of imitation to those by whom they were conceived. But the Grecian myths embody no type of character; they are not moral or spiritual conceptions; nor do we find their heroes anywhere proposed as objects of general imitation. The nearest approach, perhaps, is the Hercules of Prodicus, and this is an exception which proves the rule, for it differs completely from the Hercules of the poets. Again, the supernatural element in the Greek demi-god, or hero, bears not the smallest resemblance to, the supernatural element in the Christian saint. The one is a gross confusion of the divine and human; the other is the human rising to the divine. The political partiality of Mitford's history is manifest and notorious. Dr. Thirlwall wrote against Mitford and overthre w him, but, in so doing, caught something of his spirit; and, if we are indignant when the cruel death of Harmodius by the hands of the tyrant is mistranslated into rough treatment by the hands of the people, we are also indignant when the massacre of Melos, instead of being branded with moral reprobation, or even accounted for with philosophic sense, is palliated by a comparison with the misdeeds of Russia. 150 HISTORY OF GREECE. Mr. Grote, too, carried by his third volume into the politics of Greece, glows with the zeal of a contemporary democrat, and his honest vehemence, while it never omits and never distorts a fact, sometimes produces error and sometimes provokes a smile. Yet the subject of Grecian politics is one which oulght not to inflame, much less to embitter a philosophic mind. Between the Hellenic republics and modern Europe there lies a gulph not of time alone, but of circumstances, principles, institutions, feelings. To unite us in sympathy with the Greek philosopher, there is all but our Christianity and his politics: to unite us in sympathy with the Greek politician there is little more than civilised humanity. Where in Grecian annals shall the monarchist of these days look for his monarchy, or the aristocrat for his nobility, or the republican for his republic? The monarchies of Greece were of two kinds. The Homeric monarch was the first among his peers, the small rude noble of a small Hellenic town. The simplicity of his rural and patriarchal life charms us in Homer. His celestial or uncertain parentage illustrates, but his warlike prowess preserves his power, and decides the great question of his government-whether he is to plunder or be plundered, to oppress or be oppressed. In war, becoming a general, he becomes a king; and, though Achilles salutes his chief with the epithets of drunkard, shameless dog, and coward, Ulysses inculcates subordination in lines which have become the common-place of monarchists and have furnished M. le Maistre with a motto for the ingenious work in which he demonstrates the convenience of an AN0CIEN AND MODERN POLITICS. 151 infallible Pope. The other species of Grecian monarchy is that of the usurpers, whom their countrymen called and we miscall the tyrants. Democrats, carried into power on the ruins of a defeated aristocracy by the abused confidence of the people, they lawlessly enjoyed the dominion which they had seized against the law, and fell by hands as lawless as their own. The beneficent and tasteful rule of Peisistratus and his sons, though it was sullied by at least one murder, may engage our fancy; but the caresses which Mitford bestows on those usurpers in the indulgence of his monarchical principles might as justly be lavished on a Rienzi or a Cromwell. To the constitutional monarchy of modern Europe, Greece obviously affords no parallel. As little does it afford a parallel to Christian absolutism, and the image of a Saint Louis was as foreign to the Grecian mind as the image of a Frederick William or of a Victoria. If we view Greek aristocracy in the mirror of Sparta, we shall at once become sensible of the chasm which separates the small brotherhood of Dorian conquerors, encamped in the midst of out-numbering Laconians and suspected Helots, from the social and military aristocracy of France or the political and landed aristocracy of England. Nor can the Spartan virtues or the Spartan vices excite any other than a philosophic interest. The characteristic virtues of the citizens of Lycurgus were summed iln those simple lines which told that the slain of Thermopylae had died in obedience to their country's laws. Their characteristic vices were the offspring of a military Utopia; and tyrannical discipline, black broth,;ron money, and the compulsory equality of the publio 152 311' OitY OF GaIEECE. mess, produced their just results in Leonidas, Cleomenes, Pausanias, and Lysander. The democracy of Athens may be regarded by the modern democrat with an impartial eye; not because the altar of Athenian liberty is overthrown and its ashes poured out, but because it burnt with alien fires. Mr. Grote has candidly remarked that Athens was "' not a democracy only, but an imperial democracy." She was free as the Grand Turk is free. But within the walls sacred to liberty, and before the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the domiciled alien, respectable and opulent, sighed in vain for the privileges which were rigidly confined to pure Athenian originr; and the slightest taint in the blood royal was a mark for the taunts of the satirist, for the informations of the sycophant, and for the vengeance of the insulted law. The female sex suffered the seclusion and displayed the vices of the Oriental harem. The void thus caused in Athenian society gave rise to the assemblies of Aspasia and redeems her doubtful fameo But there was something still more fatal to all true sentiments of liberty, and still more destructive of all claims to be honoured in her name. And the glories of Marathon and Salamis are marred when we reflect that the same victory which saved from the yoke the Athenian fieeman riveted the fetters of the Athenian slave. There are other points of difference which separate, not any particular Greek polity, but, Greek politics as a whole, from the interests and passions of the present time. Greek politics were the politics of cities, not of nations. Helnce the narrow symmetry of all the SOCIALISM OF THE GREEK REPUBLICS. 153 Grecian constitutions, the rapidity of development, the rashness of experiment, the liability to change. Representative assemblies, local self-government, the balance of great national parties embodying great national interests, the slow growth of opinion, the deliberate retention of order and progress, are things in some degree attributable to the general advancement of the political science and of the human mind, but they are also in some degree peculiar to a great nation. A still more momentous discrepancy is produced by the separation between politics and religion, the Church and State, the spiritual and temporal power, which has resulted from the publication of Christianity, and which, before the publication of Christianity, could have no parallel, though faintly foreshadowed by the societies or groups which formed more or less definitively round the great philosophers, and took from the lips of their masters the rule of moral life. Fioro the two phenomena above indicated, there resulted a third, which, if we did not fear to fall into the prevalent error of using modern names for ancient things, we should call the Socialism of the Greek republics. The famous funeral oration of Pericles represents Athens as a model of social freedom and of social tolerance. This encomium must be taken as true only in a comparative, not, as Dr. Arnold and others took it, as true in a positive sense. The most liberal of the Greek polities involved an interference with individual liberties, with education, manners, the use of private property, and the government of a private family, which, in the present day, would seem intolerable to any one but the Emlperor of Russia or 7*., 154 hIISTORY OF GCREECE. Louis Blanc. The more tyrannical the State was, in this respect, the more perfect, even in the eyes of the author of the Neicomachean Ethics, would the constitution have appeared. And we need hardly dilate upon the Socialistic follies and Socialistic impurities of that famous Utopian system which exhibits the characteristic tendencies of Greek politics enthralling the great mind and sullying the divine morality of Plato. On these grounds, we desire a more calm and discriminating, we cannot desire a more honest, view of Greek, and especially of Athenian politics, than that which is given in the volumes of Mr. Grote. Not till we have attained to such a view will our criticisms be just or our sympathies rightly placed; and when attained, it will not abate our interest, our enthusiastic interest, in the great acts or institutions of the Athenian people, still less in their great men. The institutions of Athens which have been most warmly controverted, are, perhaps, the Ostracism and the Dikasteries or courts of justice. Of the ostracism Mr. Grote gives a fair, if not a new, account. It was intended to eliminate, without recourse to civil arms, whosoever was dangerous to the constitution; it served an " inestimable tutelary purpose." It was guarded by all possible precaution against abuse; it imposed no penalty but exile. True: but it betrayed weakness, it served faction, it wrought and preached injustice. The apologetic parallel which Mr. Grote proceeds to draw between this institution and the practice of modern monarchical governments who exclude from their territories pretenders to the throne, we must entirely traverse and deny. A pretender to the throne is a THE INSTITUTION OF OSTRACISM. 155 declared enemy to the existing government. Of the three examples cited by Mr. Grote, the Duke of Bourdeaux is the heir of a prince who was expelled by arms, and lays open claim to his inheritance; Napoleon had invaded France; Charles Edward had raised and headed a rebellion. In each instance, the moral sense of the people, even of the Pretender party, would be on the side of a government manifestly protecting its own existence. There was no privilegium, no injustice. Now, the ostracism was undergone, in all, by ten Athenian citizens. IHipparchus was a relative of the Peisistratids, and his expulsion is colourable, if it was not just. Of Alcibiades, Megacles, and Callias, we know only that the two first were scions of a popular and patriotic house, and that the last bears the name of that bold citizen who alone dared to bid for the confiscated property of Peisistratus. Thucydides, son of Melesias, was a party leader; but we have no reason to believe that his party was otherwise than constitutional, or that he personally aimed at tyranny. The ostracism of Hyperbolus was acknowledged to be an abuse, and had the " shell" hit Nicias or Alcibiades, at one of whom it was cast, the abuse would have been the same. Damon was a poet, a musician, and a philosopher. Three names remain. They are those of Theristocles, Cimon, and Aristeides! Let us never speak of the ostracism but as an almost unmixed evil. If we do, we shall be in peril of obscuring the truth of ancient history and tampering with the sense of universal justice. On the subject of the Dikasteries Mr. Grote is interesting and instructive as usual; but, as usual, when 156 HISTORY OF GREECE. speaking of a political institution, he carries his English notions and feelings into Greece. "Taking tile general working of the dikasteries, we shall find that they are nothing but jury trial applied on a scale broad, systematic, unaided, and uncontrolled, beyond all other historical experience —and that they therefore exhibit, in exaggerated proportions, both the excellencies and the defects characteristic of the jury system, as compared with decision by trained and professional judges. All the encomiums which it is customary to pronounce upon jury trial will be found predicable of the Athenian dikasteries in a still greater degree; all the reproaches which can be addressed on good ground to the dikasteries will apply to. modern juries also, though in a less degree. Nor is the parallel less just, though the dikasteries, as the most democratical feature of democracy itself, have been usually criticised with marked disfavour —every censure, or sneer, or joke, against them which can be found in ancient authors, comic as well as serious, being accepted as true almost to the letter; while juries are so popular an institution, that their merits have been over-stated (in England at least), and their defects kept out of sight. The theory of the Athenian dikastery, and the theory of jury trial as it has prevailed in England since the Revolution of 1688, are one and the same; recourse to a certain number of private citizens, taken by chance or without possibility of knowing beforehand who they will be, sworn to hear fairly and impartially plaintiff and defendant, accuser and accused, and to find a true verdict according to their consciences, upon a distinct issue before them. But in Athens this theory THE DIKASI'RIES. 157 was worked out to its natural consequences, while English practice in this respect, as in so many others, is at variance with English theory; the jury, though an ancient and a constant portion of the judicial system, has never been more than a portion kept in subordination, trammels, and pupilage, by a powerful Crown, and by judges presiding over an artificial system of law. In the English state trials, down to a period not long before the Revolution of.1688, any jurors who found a verdict contrary to the dictation of the judge were liable to fine, and at an earlier period (if a second jury, on being summoned, found an opposite verdict) even to the terrible punishment of attaint. And though, for the last century and a half, the verdict of the jury has been free as to matters of fact, new trials having taken the place of the old attaint, yet the ascendancy of the presiding judge over their minds, and his influence over the procedure, as the authority in matters of law, has always been such as to overrule the natural play of their feelings and judgment as men and citizens -sometimes to the detriment, much oftener to the benefit (always excepting political trials), of substantial justice. But in Athens the dikasts judged of the law as well as of the fact. The laws were not numerous, and were couched in few, for the most part familiar, words. To determine how the facts stood, and whether, if the facts were undisputed, the law invoked was properly applicable to them, were parts of the integral question submitted to them, and comprehended in their verdict. Moreover, each dikastery construed the law for itself, without being bound to follow the decisions of those wllich had preceded it, except in so far as such 158 HISTORY Or GREECEr analogy might really influence the convictions of the members. They were free, self-judging persons, unassisted by the schooling, but at the same time untrammelled by the awe-striking ascendancy of a professional judge-obeying the spontaneous inspirations of their own consciences, and recognising no authority except the laws of the city, with which they were familiar." Again we must deny the parallel. Dikasteries, like juries, were judicial institutions. In dikasteries, as in juries, unprofessional persons were employed; and there the likeness ends. The dikastery consisted, according to the importance of the case, of from 500 to 2000 men; never less than 200-a number too great for personal responsibility, and, as Mr. Grote holds, for intimidation or corruption. The jury consists of twelve men, a number not too great for personal responsibility, nor, as Mr. Grote proceeds to prove, for intimidation and corruption. For the verdict of the dikastery a majority only was required; for that of the jury, unanimity. The verdict of the dikast was given secretly; that of the juror is given openly. The juror is limited to a certain issue, and that an issue of fact, not of law; the dikast was not limited to a certain issue, and took cognisance equally of fact and law. The juror has little to do with matters of aggravation or extenuation; the dikast, if we may judge from the speeches which were addressed to them, had little to do with anything else. The juror is presided over by a judge; the dikast was not. The juror does not pronounce sentence; the dikast did. The verdict of the juror is liable to be reversed by a new trial in civil cases, and to be annulled by the pardon of the crown in TRIAL BY JURY. 159 criminal cases; the verdict of the dikast was without appeal. In short, the juror is a juror, and the dikast was a dikast; and the two things no more resemble each other than the chaplet of the Archon resembled the Lord Chancellor's wig. "Trial by jury," proceeds Mr. Grote, "as practised in England since 1688, has been politically most valuable, as a security against the encroachments of an anti-popular Executive; partly for this reason, partly for others not necessary to state here, it has had greater credit as an instrument of judicature generally, and has been supposed to produce much more of what is good in English administration of justice than really belongs to it. Amidst the unqualified encomiums so frequently bestowed upon the honesty, the unprejudiced rectitude of appreciation, the practical instinct for detecting falsehood and resisting sophistry, in twelve citizens taken by hazard and put into a jury box-comparatively little account is taken either of the aids, or of the restrictions, or of the corrections in the shape of new trials, under which they act, or of the artificial forensic medium into which they are plunged for the time of their service. So that the theory of the case presumes them to be more of spontaneous agents and more analogous to the Athenian dikasts than the practice confirms." What is the "theory" of jury trial or any other institution but the rule of its uniform practice? Mr. Grote, when he speaks of the benefits of juries, may not take into account the restrictions and corrections under which they act; but we apprehend that other people do. Mr. Grote may forget that a strict distinction is made between law and fact, and that the jury are rigidly 160 HISTORY OF GREECE. confined to fact; but we apprehend that other people do not forget it. We, for our part, have a very lively and intense conviction that if the functions of the judge and of the crown, to say nothing of the legislature, were transferred to juries, and exercised by them without restriction and without appeal, trial by jury would become an almost unmingled curse. A "security against the encroachments of an anti-popular Executive" it might still remain; but justice, which seems the main object, would be as well administered by a Spanish Alcalde or a Turkish Cadi. The truth of what we have said is in fact implicitly admitted by Mr. Grote in a long and able passage on the operation and effects of the dikasteries, which brings him to the conclusion that-" as an organ for judicial purposes the Athenian dikasteries were thus a simple and plenary manifestation of jury trial, swith its inherent excellencies and defects both brought out in exaoggerated relief." And we think that in the course of the same passage he virtually admits the general truth of those charges against the dikasts which Aristophanes of course exaggerates and caricatures. But the profligate rhetoric of the Attic orators, their perpetual appeals, not to feeling only, but to interest and fear, are the strongest evidence against the impartiality and capacity of the courts to which they were addressed. And if the hearers, as Mr. Grote tells us, were distinguished by a remarkable "'penetration in detecting sophistry," the speakers, including Demosthenes, must have been distinguished by a remarkable want of penetration in detecting the true mode of influencing their hearers. Did the dikasteries work justice ol injustice? That INFLUENCE OF THE DIKASTERIES. 161 is the essential question: and upon it depends another question which Mr. Grote treats as independent-the question, namely, of their general influence, moral and intellectual. From a court of justice which does not do justice none but bad moral influences can result, either to the parties, the judge, or the body of the people; and Mr. Grote only puts the evil in the most glaring light when he tells us that "as the verdicts of the dikasts, even when wrong, depended on causes of misjudgment common to them with the general body of the citizens, so they never appeared to pronounce unjustly, nor lost the confidence of their fellow citizens generally." The " taste for sitting in judgment" is essentially different from a taste for justice, and essentially dangerous, if not essentially evil. The taste for forensic oratory is a very good thing in its way! but it is liable to become morbid: and it is sure to become morbid if, as at Athens, the practice of the courts is bad, and there are no rules of evidence. We should hardly have thought that any other intellectual or literary effect could have been attributed to the dikasteries; but Mr. Grote reminds us that their institution coincided with the perfection of tragedy. It did so; and fiom that point tragedy began to decline, and the sublimity of AEschylus and the pathos of Sophocles were changed for the forensic wrangling and sophistical quibblings of Euripides. On the points which we have noticed Mr. Grote is writing less as a historian than as a political or historical philosopher-a character in which we think he is less excellent than in that which more properly belongs to him, and on which his fame will rest. 162 HISTORY OF GREECE. It is difficult to criticise severely any action or measure which was essential to the greatness of Athens; for her greatness was essential to the intellectual energy of her sons, and the fruits of that intellectual energy, all rhetorical commonplace apart, have largely contributed to the enjoyment, to the refinement, to the freedomn, and to the well-being of mankind. Nor do we think that Mr. Grote is wrong in describing the tyrannic empire which Athens ultimately exercised over her allies as rather the growth of circumstances than the result of a deliberate plan. Still, an unscrupulous ambition was at the bottom of it; and, if circumstances were not actually created, they were greedily grasped and turned to account as they arose. Moreover, the transfer of the common fund of the confederacy from Delos to Athens, even if it was recommended by the Samians, and if their recommendation was spontaneous, can hardly be regarded otherwise than as an act of deliberate usurpation. But what we think Mr. Grote fails to appreciate is the bearing of this foreign despotism of Athens upon the character of her internal liberty. "' The exercise of empire abroad," is his naive remark, "became a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory; she was a capital, or imperial city ('a despot city' was the expression used by her enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens), with many dependencies attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which not merely Pericles and the other leading statesmen. but even the humblest Athenian citizen, THE TYRANNIC EMPIRE OF ATHENS. 163 conceived the dignity of Athens; and the sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus to active patriotism." Personal pride, the exercise of dominion over others, will naturally stimulate; it will also stimulate patriotism in the narrow and literal sense of the word. But the exercise of dominion over equals and compatriots is utterly fatal to anything like a deep and religious sentiment of liberty, and, combined with the institution of slavery, it almost annihilates our interest, moral and political, in the cause of Athenian freedom. It must be observed, of course, that the subjects of Athens were not conquered foreigners, but men of the same Ionian race, and theoretically free. Mr. Grote, therefore, is again guilty of a false parallel when he appeals to the remarks of counsel in a case between an English governor and a conquered Minorcan as a plain and naive statement of the doctrine " that a dependency is to be governed, not for its own interest, but for that of the dominant state." People are not conquered for their own interest, nor, when conquered, are they usually governed for their own interest; and, therefore, there is no fatal incongruity between the encouragement of patriotism in England and the repression of patriotism in Minorca. But there certainly was a fatal incongruity between the encouragement of patriotism at Athens and the repression of patriotism at Mytelene. A juster analogy would, we fear, be found in our treatment of Ireland during the last century, and perhaps in our conduct towards our American colonies. But we mrust once more protest against the correctness of Mr. Grote's parallels when he compares our conduct towards the sub 164 HISTORY OF GREECEo jugated nations of India with that of Athens towards her confederates, even supposing that full reliance could be placed upon the eloquent invectives of Mr. Burke. We have not been united to the Indians by compact, nor are we bound by mutual obligations. Rightly or wrongly, we have conquered them, and, in exercise of the rights of conquest we govern them, and they expect to be governed, not for their interest, but for ours, however superior our government may be to that which was exercised over them by their native rulers. Whether one nation is justified in conquering another, and holding it in subjection, is of course a distinct question, and when this question is raised with reference to our conquests in India, we may remark that these conquests have been made principally, if not entirely, in defensive war, from the first extension of our dominion, which resulted from the attack of Surejah Dowlah on Calcutta, to the conquest of the Punjab, which resulted from the invasion of our territory by the Siklhs. With the growth of the Athenian empire we naturally connect the administration of Pericles. On the character of this illustrious man generally, we subscribe to the opinion of Mr. Grote. His greatness is unquestioned; his honesty cannot, we think, be reasonably questioned. The charge of having governed by a system of corruption through the distribution of the public money in fees to the citizens is fully, though indirectly, refuted by the emphatic eulogy or Thucydides. It is to be observed, however, on the other hand, that though the noblest and best of demagogues, he was still a demagogue not exempt from the necessities of the class; and that if he was able to restrain his countrymen from the I'PERCLES. 165 wild career of distant conquest into which they launched after his death, it was only by identifying himself thoroughly with their selfish and unscrupulous system of aggrandisement in the Agrean. To prepare the way for his personal dictatorship, he overthrew the last conservative institution of Athens. He left nothing but himself above or beside that " fierce democracy" which he could wield, but to which his feebler successors were compelled to pander. And it may well be doubted whether the ruin which followed his decease was not a condemnation of his general policy, while it was an attestation of his personal probity and genius. Had he never lived, the development of Athens would have been slower and healthier, and in all probability her life would have been prolonged; but the life thus prolonged would have been less intense, and less firuitful in works of intellect; and posterity owes too much to the Periclean era to scrutinise too narrowly the acts of Pericles. We have now to notice a very interesting portion of Mr. Grote's work, that in which he endeavours to rehabilitate the hitherto undefamrned name of Cleon, and, in so doing, to impeach the hitherto unquestioned veracity of Thucydides. Certainly an historian cannot do a greater service in his calling than by setting us right on a question of moral sympathy. iMr. Grote's theory is that Cleon banished Thucydides after his miscarriage at Amphipolis, and that hence Thucydides hates and slanders Cleon. The statement that Cleon was the author of the historian's banishment is drawn from the life of Thucydides by Marcellinus, a pseudo-biography of the lowest class. The argument runs rather in a circle. " It is probable that Marcellinus 166 HISTORY OF GREECE. is right in saying that Cleon banished Thucydides, because Thucydides speaks ill of Cleon, and it is probable that the reason why Thucydides speaks ill of Cleon is that Cleon banished him, as we learn from Marcellinus." Now the first thing that we hear of Cleon is not from Thucydides, but fiom Plutarch. Pericles refuses to let the Athenians march out against the Peloponnesians, who are ravaging Attica before their eyes. Great discontent breaks out, which is fomented by the political enemies of Pericles, and particularly by Cleon, whose talent for invective, as Mr. Grote observes, "was thus first exercised under the auspices of the high aristocratical party as well as of an excited public." Now, it is clear that the aristocratical party was justified in attacking its old and declared antagonist. But what shall we say of this proceeding on the part of Cleon? Mr. Grote, in reviewing his character, says nothing. The second occasion on which we hear of Cleon is in the debate on the fate of the Myteleneans. He proposes and carries a decree to put to death the whole adult population of Mytelene, amounting, by Mr. Grote's estimate, to about 6000 persons, and including the commons, who, in the beginning of the revolt, and throughout the siege, had been unarmed and powerless, and who, the moment they got arms into their hands, opened the gates to the Athenians. The night brings repentance. The question is brought forward again on the following day. Diodotus pleads for mercy and prevails. Cleon pleads for butchery, and is damned by the same vote which redeems the humanity of the people. Now, these are matters of fact, and Mr. Grote does not pretend to cast a suspicion on the narrative of Thucydides. CLEON AND THUCYDIDE.S. 167 He only carps at the historian for naming the author of the decrees against the Myteleneans and Scioneans, and omitting to name the author of the equally infamous decree against the Melians-a variation which we can hardly suppose to have proceeded from partiality, if, as there is reason to believe, the great promoters of the decree against the Melians was Alcibiades, the rival and enemy of Nicias. Again, Cleon comes forward to repel the overtures made by the Lacedclmonians for peace after their defeat in the Roads of Pylos. The manceuvre which he employed to discredit the good faith of the Lacedaemonian ambassadors on this occasion is admitted by Mr. Grote to have been a " grave abuse of publicity;" the impracticable demand of the status quo before the war, which he induced the Athenians to make, is admitted by Mr. Grote to have been impolitic. And now comes the capture of the Spartans in Sphacteria. Thucydides tells us that the blockade of Sphacteria lingered, that the Athenians grew anxious and impatient, that Cleon in a boastful hour upbraided the generals of the republic with their incapacity, and said that if he were in their place he would soon take Sphacteria; that Nicias, then general, offered to give him the command, and allow him to make good his boast; that Cleon shrank back; that Nicias and the Athenians held him to his word; that he then, finding that he had no escape, promised to bring the garrison of Sphacteria to Athens alive, or kill them in the island, within twenty days, and that by a strange freak of fortune his " mad promise" was fulfilled. Mr. Grote is scandalized at Thucydides for calling it a "mad pro.. 168 HISTORY OF GREECE. Inise," and we are surprised at Mr. Grote. The enterprise unquestionably was feasible, for it was achieved, thanks to the ability of Demosthenes, and to the accident, unknown to Cleon when he spoke, which had cleared the island of part of the wood, and rendered an attack more practicable. But it was mad of Cleon to undertake it; and it was mad in a man wholly destitute of military knowledge and capacity, as he proved himself to be at Amphipolis, to undertake what had so long baffled the most gallant and skilful officer of Athens. Cleon himself thought so, unless Thucydides has told a downright falsehood, for he at first endeavoured to back out, and only put a bold face upon the matter when he saw that there was no retreat. It should be remarked, too, that he began by slandering the veracity of Demosthenes, who, through his envoys, had stated the need of reinforcements, and ended by taking the reinforcements which Demosthenes had required. The inconsistency which Mr. Grote -fancies to exist between the account of this affair given by Thucydides and that given by Aristophanes, altogether escapes our understanding. Thucydides says that Cleon's promise was insane; Aristophanes, that the glory of its fulfilment belonged not to him, but to Demosthenes. The two statements are perfectly compatible, and even confirmatory of each other. As to the levity which the Athenians are represented by Thucydides as having shown on this occasion, it appears to us by no means incredible, or out of keeping with their general character. We should almost expect the same thing from an assembly of Frenchmen. They knew, moreover, that their best general was on the spot, and must have the CAPTURE OF SPARTANS IN SPHACTERIA. 169 real command. When Mr. Grote talks about the ". overwhelming cheers heaped upon Cleon by his joyful partisans, who had helped to invest him with the duties of general, in confidence that he would discharge them well," he leaves his evidence, and even his good sense, behind him. As to the conduct of Nicias, it was perfectly justifiable, on Mr. Grote's own theory, which is in effect that Nicias was the representative of the government, and Cleon of the opposition. For it is the manifest duty of an opposition, and the only guarantee which it can give of its good faith, to be ready to take the place of those whose policy it attacks. There was no reason why Nicias should himself proceed to Sphacteria. He was general, it is true; but he was one of ten generals, and was no doubt then discharging that part of the duties of an Athenian Strategus, which, in modern states, are discharged by a Minister of War. After the battle of Deliurm, Cleon is, on the side of Athens, the main obstacle to peace. Thucydides charges Cleon with acting from personal and corrupt motives; and though Mr. Grote is very indignant, we see no reason to believe that Thucydclides is wrong. It may be true that the leaders of the aristocratic party were more distinguished in the field, and that the leaders of the dlemocratic party were more distinguished in the Assembly; but it by no means follows that demagogues like Cleon might not have a corrupt interest in perpetuating the war. They governed the Assembly by its passions and by its suspicions, and the war kept those passions and suspicions at fever heat. The war enabled a master of crininative eloquence to keep up a sort of reign of terror, both within and without the walls, over the SECOND SERTIlES. 8 1)70 HISTORY OF GREECE. wealthier class and over the allies. The decrees which Cleon obtained against Mytelene and Scione show how immensely the war must have added to the power and opportunities of a man in his position. Moreover, the ravages of the war were ruinous to the agricultural interest, and the agricultural interest is everywhere conservative. Nor would Mr. Grote convict Thucydides of falsehood in ascribing corrupt motives to Cleon, even if he could show, as he believes he can show, that it was for the real interest of Athens to continue the war. In this, however, we do not think he succeeds, even if we regard the question in an exclusively military point of view, much less if we take a broad moral and political view, and consider the effects of this half civil contest as described in the chapter of Thucydides on the Corcyrean sedition. The last appearance of Cleon is at Amphipolis. Elated, as we cannot doubt that he was, by his success at Sphacteria, he ventures to take the sole command of an army against Brasidas, exposes his incompetence by a helpless inactivity, loses the confidence of his troops, endeavours to regain it by a rash advance, then orders a precipitate retreat, with an enemy on his unguarded flanks, takes flight, and falls ingloriously. Mr. Grote cannot deny the glaring incapacity which he exhibited in his command, nor, consequently, the presumlption which he showed in undertaking it. But he throws in a suspicion of political antipathy prevailing among the soldiers, which seems to us quite unsupported. So far as comedy can confirm history, the comic character given of Cleon by Aristophanes confirms the historical character given of him by Thucydides, Anll EIISTORICAL CHARACTER OF CLEON. 171 though we readily concede that a literal fidelity is not to be expected fiorm a caricatnre, yet a general fidelity is to be expected from it, and, in fact, is necessary to its success. If Aristophanes had represented Pericles as he represents (~leon, his satire would have failed. The portrait must be recognised, or nobody will laugh. On the whole, then, we do not think that our estimate of Cleon's character is materially altered by Mr. Grote's defence. Nor can we thank him for representing such a man as one of the ordinary and natural champions of liberty. But we can thank him for throwing new light on the political position of the Athenian demagogues, as "opposition speakers" and checks upon the conduct of the official servants of the republic, who, in spite of the democratic nature of the constitution, seem to have been generally taken rather from among the wealthy and influential men of the aristocratic party. Nor can we altogether condemn certain vehement outbreaks of political feeling, which add to the warmth and reality, and, amidst the general looseness of style, produce no great sense of incongruity. If Thucydides was led by his political or personal feelings to deal hard measure to Cleon, the vindicator of Cleon has, we think, dealt rather hard measure to Thucydclides. Mr. Grote pronounces, with some bitterness of exultation, that the great historian was justly banished for his misconduct at Amphipolis. But in his long diatribe on this subject, he fails to show either that Thucydides was absent from his post, or that he left Amphipolis insufficiently guarded. The contrary, indeed, of the latter proposition, is implied in the 1 72 HISTORY OF GREECEo admission that if the bridge over the Strymon had been adequately watched and guarded, a task for which Eucles and his garrison may well have been sufficient, Amphipolis would have been safe. And as to the former point, it appears to us that the joint commission of Thucydides and Eucles, though perhaps nominally directed to the Athenian colonies and dependencies on the Thracian mainland, may very well have included the duty of maintaining tile Athenian interest in the neighbouring imi)portaint, and probably disaffected, island of Thasos. What was the immediate object which drew Thucydides thither, whether he or Eucles was first in command, whether he acted spontaneously or under orders, and how he had been absent, we cannot tell; and without a knowledge of these circumstances we cannot confidently join in the condemnation of Thucydides for being absent from a place where there is no special reason to believe that he ought to have been present, and where there is reason to believe that the presence of hlis colleague was sufficient; more especially as it appeals that he acted with all possible alacrity and vigour on receiving intelligence of the danger of Amphipolis. The exasperation of Cleon, and the war party generally, at such a blow as the loss of Amphipolis, is quite enough to account for the condemnation and punishment of Thucydides, particularly as he was, in all probability, an adherent of Nicias, and an influential member of the conservative and peace party. And the touching magnanimity with which the historian records the circumstance of his banishment, together with the ample justice which he does to the cllaracter of Brasidas, whose enterprise ws the cause of his misfortune, THE CHARACTER OF NICIAS. 173 will always go far to prove that it did not poison the candour of his heart, or dim the clearness of his eye, Another point on which Mr. Grote reverses, or endeavours to reverse our old ideas, is what is commonly called the Melian controversy. This he ingeniously supposes to have been introduced by Thucydides for a dramatic purpose, to exhibit the pride of Athenian dominion at its most overweening pitch, immediately before its destined fall. The "capture of Melos," he conceives, ushers in the expedition against Syracuse with the same tragic effect as the proud language of Xerxes to his courtiers, and the magnificent muster at Doriscus, usher in the humiliations of Thermopylke and Salamis. We do not deny that this tragic effect is, as a matter of fact, produced, and we are obliged to Mr. Grote's taste for pointing it out, but it still seems to us more probable that the object of Thucydides was to exhibit the full action of the Athenian spirit of those demolishing influences which he has delineated in the chapter on. Corcyra. That he had the sophists in his eye we are not prepared to affirm, nor are we prepared with Mr. Grote to deny it. Of course the arguments of the Athenian envoys, being a barefaced enunciation of the principles that might is right, are not intended as a specimen of sophistical art, but they may still be intended as a specimen of the principles which sophistical art was employed to countenance and cover. Mr. Grote speaks with extreme bitterness, and even violence, of the character of Nicias, and is very angry with Thucydides for bestowing a passing sigh on the fate of a good and religious man, who was probably his political if not his personal friend. Yet it will 174 HISTORY OF GREECE. hardly be denied that goodness and piety deserve a sigh, more especially in an age of such spirits as those among whom the lot of Thucydides was cast. The superstition of Nicias was most gross; it was a weakness and a vice, and has no claim whatever on our sympathies: but it seems to have been, as Thucydides intimates, the diseased side of a religious nature; and the same man who sacrificed his army by refusing to march because there was an eclipse of the moon, would -probably, in a cruel and faithless generation, have ~hown mercy and kept his oath. His abilities were no doubt overrated by his countrymen, but we think they are underrated by Mr. Grote. He had approved himself a good officer: his expedition to Cythera, if the conception as well as the execution was his own, reflects on him the highest credit. His conduct during the later part of the siege of Syracuse seems, so far as we can judge, to have been very weak. But we cannot tell how far his faculties were paralysed by disease. His most glaring error was that into which he was led by his superstition. But it is plain that he was wholly incompetent to the sole command of so great and difficult an enterprise. As a statesman he was at least consistent. His character must have been of great advantage to Athens in her Pealings with other states. There is no ground for supposing that his desire for peace ever rendered him untrue to his duty as a patriot and a soldier; and the conduct of the aristocratic party towards its opponents, so long as he was at its head, appears to have been moderate and constitutional. The command, in which he so fatally miscarried, was forced upon him, and the expedition was undertaken against FREEDOM OF ATHENS. 1T5 his advice, and at the instance of his political opponent. It is impossible to speak of him with admiration, and we think it would be wrong to speak of him with contempt or hatred. There are few who, if asked in which of the states of antiquity they would choose their own lot to have been cast, would not name Athens. Nowhere was there so much good, because nowhere was there so much freedom. But that fireedom was constantly threatened from two quarters-from the detestable gangs of oligarchical conspirators which remained after the extinction of the old and constitutional aristocratical party, and from the tyranny of the sovereign people. Philosophy and moral progress were equally threatened by the persecuting bigotry of the fanatical oligarch and of the fanatical democrat, and the two conspired to destroy Socrates. It seems strange that people cannot detest one of these forms of evil without embracing the other; that they cannot denounce Critias without defending Cleon. It would be impossible for us, within our limits, adequately to analyse or criticise the two long and brilliant dissertations on the sophists and Socrates which conclude Mr. Grote's eighth volume. We canTonly say that whether his conception of the sophists, as the general educators of Greece, not chargeable with any peculiarly immoral doctrines, and of Socrates, as a sort of dialectic missionary, who differed from the sophists rather in the purpose and method of his teaching, than in his ethics, as has been hitherto supposed, be correct or incorrect, the learning and acuteness displayed in this, as in all other parts of his work, are truly admira 176 IIIS'tORY OF GREECE. ble. And we tale our leave of him for the present with the cordial acknowledgment that in spite of great defects of style, and, as we conceive, occasional errors of judgment, he is beyond all question the historian of Greece, unrivalled, so far as we kliow, in the erudition and genius with which he has revived the picture of a distant past, and brought home every part and feature of its history to our intellects and our hearts. AUSTRALIA. 17 V OUR ANTIPODES.* BoOK-WRITING is really a much easier afiair than most authors imagine. If a man, when he takes pen in hand, will only not worry himself with the notion that the grand objects before him are to tickle the public, to put money into his purse, and to secure imperishable renown, the chances are ten to one in his favour, if he has anything to say at all, that he will deliver his story, whatever it may be, with credit to himself and satisfaction to his readers. Southey was right when he told his brother, who was a sailor and knew nothing of authorship, that if he would but use his eyes on his travels, and in his own natural language describe on paper the things that -le saw, he could not fail to produce a work that would entertain the most educated leader, and charm the least instructed. We are all -children and men-eager for knowledge, but few of us care for what is technically called "fine-writing." A striking style, tllat conveys valuable facts forcibly and pleasantly home to the mind, is, we admit, the sharp stamnp with which genius is alpt to impress its communications upon the public memory, but elaborate penmanship that is meant to grace and cover ignorance * Our Antipodes; or Residence and Rambles in the A ustralian Colonies, with a Glimpse of the Gold Fields. By Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Charles Mundy. In 3 volumes. Bentley: 185i.,tq s 178 OUR ANTIPODES. is the mere dry shell of a nut that has no kernel. Let authors, then, speak out boldly. and without fear of consequences, if they feel commissioned to their work. If they assume the quill under false pretences, affecting to write for the world's edification while they are deliberately sitting down to gratify their own inordinate and inexplicable vanity, why, then, they are not authors, but rogues or maniacs, and must be dealt with accordingly. We are very far from saying that Lieutenant-Colonel Mundy is, in the literary sense, either a rogue or maniac, or that his voluminous work fails to yield the pabulum which the public are always craving to swallow. On the contrary, a more honest attempt at conmmunicating' knowledge was never made than that now under consideration, and facts more interesting than those gathered by the Colonel during his five years':esidence at the Antipodes it would not be easy to find. Nevertheless, we are bound to state that there is no reason whatever why we should be compelled to wade through 1,200 pages for knowledge that might be contained in less than 600; and we must, for his own sake, warn the gallant traveller against the evident impropriety of a man's thinking about himself all the time he professes to be writing about the blacks. Oui Antipodes in three volumes, is just a volume and a half too long; and the author, with the professional pen in his ear, as he appears stamped on the gilt cover of his book, is, we could swear, not half so agreeable a storyteller as friend Mundly sitting in his morning-gown and slippers, thinking of nothing more serious than the amusement of his visitor, and rescued for a moment COL, MIUNDY'S PUNS. 179 from the enervating and fatal idea that a writer must do duty before the public as if he were a soldier dressed for parade. One offence against society at large we are convinced Colonel Mundy, however courageous he may be in the field, would never have dared to commit in the closet, could he have looked a living witness in the face as often as he deliberately perpetrated the crime. It was assuredly a merciless and unpitying spirit that prompted the Colonel to gall his readers on every possible occasion with a running fire of puns, the more annoying because unexpected and unprovoked. In one place, finding his reader wholly off his guard, he ventures to acquaint him that English peers and members of the House of Commons " would hardly neglect their duties in their respective'places' for a day at Epsom, a fete at Chiswick, or for a white-betise (?) at Greenwich or Blackwall, if they knew how closely their truantries are watched by their colonial constituents." In another, while referring to the early marriages of military officers in the colonies, he exclaims " LDeus pascit corvos," and immediately adds, "But who will feed half a dozen raven-ous brats is a question that only occurs when too late." A female factory in Van Diemen's Land is so sadly tenanted that, according to this desperate punster, it ought, in justice, to be henceforth called " a male-factory;" and, as if torture enough had not been inflicted on the harmless monosyllable, a few pages later we are informed that during a voyage from Port Philip to Sydney the ladies concealed themselves in their cabins while " the men rushed headlong upon deck, where, as they call it at the Post-office, a general 180 OUR ANTIPODESo male-delivery took place-of all the previously laid-in provisions." There is no limit to the facetice. Once, at a settlement, a long-legged cow dashed through the bushes, and made right at the Colonel, to whom it immediately occurred that "Guy, Earl of Warwick, would have reduced her to a state of beef hood, carried her home ready spitted on his spear, turned her into a done cow before a good fire, and eaten her whole for his supper." The New Zealander, we are told, prefers "macadamizing on commissariat pay, and even psalm-singing with the missionaries, to warfare-the hardest of allfare." The jockey at the antipodean horse-race is familiarly styled " the screw-propeller." Respecting steam communication with Australia, it is jocosely intimated that " among the authorities at home there has been a good deal of vapouring on the subject, but no steam." Tallow factories in New South WVales, it is respectfully suggested, should be called "ol-factories," from the stench that proceeds from them; Australian prospects are described as gummed iup in all directions, from the prevalence of the gum-tree; and few things are pronounced more painful than the system of impressing their A B C upon cattle whose shoulders are invariably marked in the Australian bush with the initials of their owners. We might collect an antipodean Joe Miller from the volumes before us, but we forbear; asking in return from Colonel Mundy only that for the future he shall eschew the humblest paths of the professional scribe, and fearlessly venture upon the highest and the safest. We give him credit for some scholarship; we can see that he has read much, and enjoyed what he has read; OPP ORTUNIT''iES. 181 he is an adept at quoting and a dabster at joking; but if we are to take his arm again for a trip to the other end of the world we must stipulate to discourse-gravely or pleasantly as he will, or as suits the humour of the moment-upon the men and things we meet upon the road, leaving all literary garniture for the time upon the shelves behind us. Colonel Mundy set out for Australia in Marclh, 1846, having been appointed Deputy-Adjutant-General in the Australian colonies. He was absent from his native country for more than five years, and during that period, residing mainly at Sydney, he visited, under the most favourable circumstances for observation, the interior of New South Wales as well as the adjacent colonies of New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, and Victoria. A bold and adventurous explorer, he dived into the recesses of the bush, and familiarized himself with life in its primitive and genuine forms. Continuing at the antipodes long enough to be present at the outbreak of the gold fever, he had the opportunity of noting life in a form anything but unsophisticate. Five years constitute a long term for an observant eye in a strange land, even when nothing more is brought away than the eye and memory can carry; but Colonel Mundy had something more to rely upon than such instruments. During the whole period he had carefully kept a diary of his "Residence and Rambles," and upon the notes thus daily treasured up is founded the work whose title is given at length below. The first and last thought that occurs to the mind in the perusal of such'volumes as the present —the prevailing thought that accompanies the reader throughout 18 2 OUR ANTIPODES. — is one that is already sufficiently familiar to the public. Colonel Mulndy has resided for five years in a portion of Her Majesty's dominions where herds of oxen and flocks of sheep are crying to be eaten, and he returns to another part of the same Sovereign's empire where starving throats are wide open clamouring for meat to eat, yet no ingenuity can contrive a scheme for bringing meat and mouth together. There, at the antipodes, beneath as fine a climate as ever cheered the heart of man and kept his body sound, are countless acres of soil craving cultivation, and promising support and independence to the cultivator: here are thousands degraded by idleness, pauperism, and disease, the offspring of both, burdens to themselves, useless to their fellow-creatures-pining for labour which would at once redeem from degradation, yet no State Minister, no princely merchant, no gigantic speculator, has hit upon a means of joining the full earth and the empty hand together, that from the union of both social happiness might abound and human civilization be incalculably enhanced. There is hardly an instance in which it can be shown that the honest, industrious, sober, and wellconducted labourer has failed to make for himself a good position in the new country, and a thousand examples might be adduced of transported felons repenting of their misdeeds, and, removed fiom the old incitements to crime, who have worked their way to credit and prosperity by the exercise of their industry and the improvement of such poor means as they possessed at their second starting into life. A few weeks since there appeared in these very columns a strange,announcement of a convicted woman who had made CHANGE OF FORTUNE. 1[83 her fortune by the discovery of the gold mines at Victoria, and who, it was said, had written to her former mistress in London, inviting her to emigrate, and promising her the patronage and custom of her former servant girl; but stranger tales than these came under the cognizance of Colonel Mundy with reference to individuals who have made the rapid stride from branded ignominy to acknowledged respectability before gold burst from the earth to enlich men in an hour, and when self-denial, probity, and faithful service were essential conditions of social recovery and worldly advantage. One such case is too remarkable to be lost. A man crossed Colonel Mundy's path in Australia, who had not Qonly been transported for a heinous offence, but who, while undergoing his punishment, had proved the most desperate and unmanageable of the chain-gang to which he belonged. The severest punishment and the most degrading indignities had been inflicted Upon him, in vain! He had been dealt with, worked and beaten, like a brute beast —but in vain! He had been whipped at the cart's tail through the streets of Sydney; and, finally, as utterly irreclaimable, had been sent to Norfolk Island-the lasit hellish home of the wretched, unredeemed, and unredeemable convict! Lo, a miracle! The one true human chord which is said to dwell in the soul of the most corrupted and debased, have we but skill to detect and strike it, was reaclled,-who shall say how?-in the moral pandemonium. The stony heart softened, and the man reformed. Good conduct, good fortune, and good address, sent him rapidly forward. He made money, he saved it; in time he became a wealthy capitalist. There occurred a panic 184 OUR ANTIPODES. in the colony-the richest dropped into poverty in a night,-and, amongst the rest, our reformed criminal fell. His liabilities may have reached 100,0001. Many of his fellow-sufferers sought refuge in the Insolvent Court. HIe set to work again. In time the work prospered, for he was enabled to pay his creditors 20s. in the pound; and, having done so, he commenced anew on his own account. The wondrous tale is only half told. The same energy, honourable behaviour, and great good fortune as before, characterized the second conflict. The man grew rich again. When Colonel Mundy first encountered him he was the landlord of many of the aristocracy of Sydney, who pronounced him liberal and correct in his dealings. He was also extensively employed by the Government and large companies, and cited by them " as a punctual, respectable, and upright man of business." In his old age he could scarcely write his name, but his children were receiying in England the highest education which the mother country could furnish. When Colonel Mundy had an extensive monetary transaction to complete in the colony he deliberately employed this person " from among several of the same profession possessing the highest qualifications of claracter and capacity," and lie had no reason to repent of his choice. When, finally, only the other day, this " deformed-transformed" quitted the world, in which he had read to mankind so singular a lesson, we are told that the cortege that attended his funeral consisted of nearly a hundred carriages, "perhaps the most numerous procession ever seen in Sydney on similar occasions," and that he bequeathed to his family a property large and unencumbered. A HINT FOR EMIGRATION. 185 Now, we by no means recomlulend any honest labourer to commit crime at home in order that he may become a wealthy criminal abroad. Were we rash enough to do so, the labourer who should still more rashly follow our advice would but too quickly behold himself the unpitied victim of a frightfully misplaced confidence. Neither will we undertake that every wellbehaved and untainted man who seeks his fortune at the antipodes shall die a capitalist, leaving 20,0001. a-year to his children and rejoice in a cortege of 100 carriages all following his respected corpse. Such "L luck" is the hard-earned reward of the highly-gifted and the skilful, the indomitable and persevering few. But we tell every living man who finds it difficult to keep body and soul together at home, who looks at his children only to grow anxious, heartsick, and desperate at the spectacle, who has to implore from his fellowcreatures, almost on his knees as a boon, the employment of limbs which were intended for the noblest uses, to be sought as a blessing, not to be rejected as a curse-that if he is prepared for self-denial, without which no moral or social victory is won or is worth the gaining-if lihe be strong of body and mind, ready for work and able to do it, loving independence better than slavery, and a serene mind more than "drink," —he may fearlessly set sail for the bright antipodes whensoever he listeth, and-humanly speaking-rely within a few months upon setting foot on a shore where plenty shall abound at his bidding, and where every child that calls him father shall prove wealth to him in the field, and joy in the homestead. But we warn the idle, the drunken, and the improvident off! If a man 180 OUR ANTIPODES. cannot live unless under the excitement of intoxicating liquors, let him drink his fill in the old country, and die the death which no brute, however base, ever yet voluntarily suffered. Australia, Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, are no homes for the drunkard. Sottish habits, that prosper nowhere, will hardly meet with countenance and encouragement on the virgin soil whose very front proclaims that she can be wooed and won only by the painstaking, the sober, and the brave. Colonel Mundy is but another witness added to the many who have assured us that the vice of drunkenness has done more to retard the prosperity of the emigrant than any other cause. We do not require to be reminded what it has accomplished in the way of destruction among the heathen, whom we have approached with the Bible in one hand and the rum-bottle in the other. WVe are certainly a great professing people and an undoubted Christian country. But it is, nevertheless, undeniable that in some parts of pious England vice is more rampant on the Sunday than on any other day of the week, because the lower orders have hitherto not been taught a better use of their leisure than the bottle affords, and that abroad, whether it be a question of American, Indian, or of Australian blacks, civilization has been outraged, and not simply human life, but human races have been extinguished, by the temptations to debauchery which the spirit-drinking Christian has deliberately brought to the wild but dignified home of the once abstinent savage. It is with unaffected satisfaction that we gather from Colonel Mundy and other travellers that, as far as the intelligent aborigines of New Zealand are concerned, it NEW ZEALANDERS. 187 is not drink which is likely to shorten the career of the Maori race-doomed, as it seems, at no great distance of time, to pay the penalty of utter annihilation, which has ever resulted from the mixture of the civilized man with the savage. " Fire-wauter" is the name given to spirits by the Red Indian, who drinks greedily, and is consulmed. " Stink-waler" is the more appropriate designation of the New Zealander, who recoils from the draught. A most interesting account is given in these volumes of certain native festivities which took place at Wellington during the Colonel's stay there, and of which he was himself an eyewitness. Not the least remarkable feature of the proceedings was the general sobriety of the natives under great temptation. " Many a reeling and reeking wretch," he writes, "among the white civilizers of the savage I saw; and two of them, I grieved to hear, claimed good descent; but I noticed only one native who had fallen a victim to the rum-booths-and, alack! it was a woman. She was instantly surrounded by a crowd of aborigines, male and female; her child was taken forcibly from her, a blanket was thrown over her head, and she was hurried firom the racecourse." Nor were other proofs wanting of the superiority in this respect of the New Zealander over the European. During the whole of Colonel Mundy's stay at Auckland he fell in with only two drunken natives, and that was in a Sunday walk with the Governor. Both delin-. quents were very far gone, but it says much for their sense of shame that the instant they espied Te ICawZ(na, — the Maori pronunciation of "the Governor "-they took to their heels across a swamp, the tipsier of the 188 OUR ANTIPODES. two falling head over heels, and breaking his bottle of " stink-water" to pieces. When the Colonel waltked through the streets on the week-day no drunken New Zealander could be detected. When he watched the natives on the day they received their week's pay, he saw the Maori workmen spending their wages in objects of utility, but not a farthing in drink. The New Zealander, in fact, understands both how to spend money and how to make it. His connexion with the English has informed him of the fact, of which he was before quite ignorant, that the Maori is a born trader. The love of traffic and the desire of gain recently evinced by the natives will certainly do more to reconcile them to British rule than any amount of official government, or of petty but destructive warfare. The "spirit of the till," writes the Colonel, "is rapidly infusing itself into the native character and dealings," and men whose fathers formerly pursued white men for the sole object of eating and enjoying what they gravely called " long pig," are mainly solicitous now to meet the two-legged porkers in question in the capacity of rival hueksterers and dealers. The Hon. Arthur Petre, in his travels througbh New Zealand, encountered a New Zealander who would have found himself no stranger in Manchester or Sheffield. He charged the hon. gentleman 11. for ferrying him across a river; and he replied to remonstrance with an indisputable argument-" I go to Arekana (Auckland)," said he; "I see blankets and tomahawks in the shops; do the shopmen give them to me without purchase. I see the dealings of the Pakehas among themselves; are there any gifts? No; all is buying and selling." THE GOLD DISCOVERY. 189 Colonel Mundy, who, as we have said, was in Australia when the gold discovery was made, who witnessed the very first flash of the storm, who noted the various and wondrous effects of the gold news as it reached the ears of the pastoral and trading people, who himnself went " off to the diggings" and beheld with his own eyes an individual who had struck from the rock a lump that realized upwards of 4,0001., as well as other less fortunate individuals, who went empty to the diggings and came empty away, and to whom the pathetic inquiry of " Have you sold your cradle?" was affectionately addressed again and again, on their melancholy homeward journey,-Colonel Mundy, we say, corroborates all the accounts that have appeared in this journal of the exhaustless yield, and the extraordinary changes which the discovery is daily working in the minds and habits of the population. But, abundant as the supply of the precious imetal has proved within the last few months, he regards the accumulations as the mere droppings from hills and mountains which have yet to be tapped for the bulk of their produce. The Australian gold-seeker, according' to this authority, is yet on the threshold of lis trade, gathering crumbs and mere wastings washed down by the thunderstorms of ages. In a very short time machinery and science will enable him to pierce the crust of the auriferous sierras, and then gold will be raised like iron or copper, with an inexhaustible yield, so long as the demand remains. But the cry is still for men! And who doubts but that the mother-country will now, with maternal eagerness, respond to the summons? What happens when poor relations, whom we have deliberately neglected 190 OURl ANTIPODES. and disowned all our lives, suddenly and unexpectedly tumble into wealth? How beautifully interest unfolds in favour of our charming cousins i How sensible we become of the sacred ties of blood and nature i Don't we ask them to dinner? Don't we introduce them to our best acquaintance? Don't we condescend to lie down and bask in the sunshine of their good fortune, and magnanimously permit them to extend to us the favours which we invariably refused to them? " A scientific gentleman, long resident in the colony, has boldly declared that the gold-field of Australia extends over an area of 14,000 square miles." When we add that California is quite as mrney miles behind South Australia in the conditions of climate, comfort, accessibility, steady government, and social order, need we fear that England will any longer deny to her " dear, dear relative," at the antipodes, the labour for which she has been screaming in vain these many years, and the steam communication for want of which she has been hindered at every step of her vigorous career? When Australia hald only sheep at 2d. a-pound to offer the emigrant, the meat was hung out in vain. The fleece has proved to be golden; the sheep are not mere mutton, but the living originals of the fictitious animals that dangle occasionally over our hosiers' shlops. Australia may, therefore, cease to scream. Nature has already responded to her cries. She shall have her harbours filled with British steamers,-that she shall, and more hands to help her in her search for gold than she ever dreamt of asking in her most agonizing times of need. TB52. LORD HOLLAND AND -IIS REMINISCENCES. 191 LORD HOLLAND AND HIS FOREIGN REMINISCENCES. WE obtained the exact measure of Lord Holland when Mr. Macaulay, in his short essay upon this nobleman's Opinions, published in the _Edinburgh Review, in 1841, preferred the description of Holland-house and its gossipping circle, to any elaborate analysis of Lord Holland's intellectual achievements. To appreciate the master of Holland-house, it was necessary, we were informed, to enter " that venerable chamber in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room," and to listen with rapt and enchanted ear, now to a discussion upon the last debate, now to comments upon the last new comedy; here to the quiet criticisms of Wilkie, there to the animated and brilliant descriptions of Talleyrand, and finally, and above all, to " that constant flow of conversation-that wit which never gave a wound, that exquisite mimicry which ennobled instead of degrading," that manly, chivalrous, and perfect bearing, all so characteristic of the "frank and benignant" host himself. Lord Holland, in fact, was the axis upon which tbe small privileged world of intellect revolved, not the bright centre from which its greatness radiated. The posthumous work of Lord Holland elicits, possibly from the 192 LORD HOLLAND. same eloquent pen, the same equivocal panegyric. Today, as ten years ago, the friends of the noble author seek refuge from irksome criticism in " that gallery, in which the luxuries of modern refinement were united with the picturesque architecture of past times," and strive to forget the literary offences of a writer in calling to mind the unmatched resources and splendid hospitality of a departed ally. The public have not this great advantage. They have not cherished recollections to console them for present disappointment; nor can they make good the deficiencies of a book by pensively dwelling upon social enjoyments in which they were never invited to participate. The Foreign Reminiscences of Lord Holland are to them the recorded and published views of a nobleman of mark; and Holland-house can no more interfere to disturb their judgment in the matter, than Pope's villa at Twickenham, or Dr. Johnson's happy sanctuary on Streatham-common. We regret to say, in the name of the public, that the good service which Hollandhouse cannot extend to the volume before us, the volume fails to perform for itself. Had these Reminiscences been offered as the sweepings of the humblest corner of that far-famed gallerya corner into which the attaches of second-rate ministers at second-rate courts may have crept, quite out of the atmosphere of wit and brilliant repartee, to enjoy their own peculiar drivel-we should have taken no pains to disturb or sift the worthless heap. The posthumous writings of Lord Holland, however, are not to be so superciliously neglected. The nephew of Charles James Fox had rare opportunities for inquiring into th.e LITERARY QtALIFICATITONS. 193 condition of foreign countries, and for formingln just estimates of tleir leadic!il, men. Hle was not without scholarship; lie had travelled Ilmuch, and was reputed a shrewd observer. His knowledge of the continental languages was far above the average, and his name was at all times a passport into society the most exclusive, and to the confidence of men the most renowned. The reputation of Lord Holland during his lifetime we believe to have been -far beyond his merits. It continnes sufficiently famous to give weight to his opinions, and authority to his statements. What his opinions and statements are with reference to some of the great doings of the last half century, the reader shall presently see. 4 Recent events on the continent," we are told by the editor, have induced him at this time to give his father's book to the world. What those grave events have in common with the idle and mischievous tales now published, we are at a loss to conjecture. WAe should certainly have been amongst the first to welcome from the departed lord's pena great political truths, enlightened philosophical reflections, abiding and universal principles, elicited by intelligence froml one stormy era of the century, to guide the faltering and to sustain the wavering through the dismal perils of another. But not the feeblest attempt is made to warn, to counsel, or inform. The Reminiscences might have been published ten years ago, or have been kept locked up at Holland-house ten years longer, for alny fitness whicll they possess to our own practical and vigorous days. They demand but one condition, and that, unfortunately, may be found in any country, under any circumstances, at any time-to SEroXNI) sEaiss n19 194 LORD HOLLAND. wit, a prurient fancy, eager to feast upon scandal, and an idle curiosity, willing to be gratified at any cost to its victims. The editor's labour has been easy. "He has scrupulously abstained," he says, "from making the slightest verbal alteration in the text or notes. The omission of four insignificant sentences is all that he has deemed necessary for the immediate publication" of Lord Holland's volume. We gather the editor's definition of'insignificant" by turning to the pages in which his handiwork is apparent, when we immediately learn that what is avowedly nothing to Henry Edward Lord Holland, may be absolutely torture to other persons. The omissions invariably occur after a woman's virtue has been blasted by an unmanly inuendo, and where it is wholly unnecessary to describe in detail the unfeeling calumny sufficiently indicated by one line of letterpress and a whole page of equally emphatic asterisks. At page 19, Marie Antoinette, the unhappy wife of Louis XVI., is, for the first time, deliberately charged with gross infidelity to her husband; and the accusation being made by the late Lord Holland, two rows of stars are suggestively added by the present. At page 64, the wife of the late Duke of York is described as the illegitimate daughter of the Queen of Prussia, her father having been one Muller, a musician. Much, no doubt, might have been added on this interesting point, for the revelation is honoured by nearly two pages of satars —a distinction reserved for a member of our own royal family. To do Lo.d Holland justice, he indicates the amnount of reliance we mrnay safely place on hlis fies, 1)7 Carldidlly LORD HOLLAND:S AUTIHORITIES. 105 confessing, as often as he can, that he has no reason to believe in them himself. One of his favourite informants is "m ny excellent friend Dumont," by his own admission "a very inobservant," and by Lord Holland's experience of him,; a very credulous man." Another is Talleyrand, whose veracity, according to Lord Holland, is unimpeachable, although " he may as mzuch, or more than other diplomatists, sutt2press what is true," and "occasionally implzy" wohat is false. With the communications of such trustworthy authorities the volume is full; and this is not all I Consistent in damaging every story that he tells, there is scarcely one fact revealed in the text which is not disputed or doubted by the author in a note. At page 14 Louis XVI. is accused without mercy, of entertaining the idea of inviting foreign invasion of his dominions at the very moment he was proclaiming to France his sincere acceptance of the Constitution. The accusation is groundless, as the worst enemies of the King are fiee to confess. If Lord Holland really believed it to be just, why does he add in a note that he has no private knowledge of the subject whatever, and that the testimony of Lafayette, and others equally well informed, is wholly at variance with his view of the case? At page 26 we have in the text an anecdote of Philip Egalit6, upon the authority of one Admiral Payne-" my dear Payne," as he is affectionately styled by the Duke of Orleans. Lord Holland has an interest in the character of Egalite, and of all sworn enemies of authority and order, but " my dear Payne " is given up remorselessly in a note which acknowledges his reputation as a story-teller to be anything but creditable to his character for truth. Godoy, 196 LOR, D HOLLAND~ Prince of Peace, committed bigamy, Lord Holland says, though Lor-d Holland 6' will not vouch for the truth of the tale." Charles IV. of Spain is regaled with an -account of his wife's infidelities, which he innocently circulates about his court; we need not circulate it further, since Lord Holland relates it at length only to describe it as " too dramatic for implicit credit." With such candid evidence of Lord Holland's trustworthiness before us, it is hardly necessary to refute his opinions, or to dwell upon the small value of his reminiscences. He made his first short journey abroad in 1791, when he was a liere boy, and he reached Paris shortly after the death of Mirabeau, and about the time when Louis XVI. accepted the constitution. The impressions derived from what lie saw and heard are the very reverse of those which the unbiased of every party have received from history and personal observation. Marie Antoinette, as we have intimated, is branded wvithlinfamy as an adulteress, althoug'h not the slightest ground exists for the cruel accusation. "I-er amours," writes this thoughtless nobleman, "were not, numerous, scandalous, or degrading, but they wuere alzours." What does he mean? What is understood at Hollandhouse by an "amour" which is neither scandalous nor degrading? He tells us that a mnan, not her husband, "was in the Queen's boudoir, or bed-chamber, with Her Majesty, on the famous night of the 6th of October," and that "he escaped observation with considerable difficulty in disguise." Is there nothing scandalous and degrading here? He adds, that " Madame Campan acknowledged to persons who have acknowledged it to me, that she was privy to the intercourse between the SLANDER OF MARIE ANTOINETTE. 197 Queen and the Duc cle Coigny." Could. that Queen, being also a wife and a mother, have intercourse with the Duke, and not degrade herself utterly and irretrievably? lWe repudiate the subtle distinctions made in favour of the royal lady, whom Lord Holland damns indeed with the faintest praise he has it in his power to bestow. MIarie Antoinette was virtuous or vile; there is no halfway-house between purity and dishonour to which the character of woman can fly for refuge. There is all the difference imaginable between the late Princess Charlotte of England and Madame du Barry, but none whatever between Madame du Barry and a minor offender. It would have been well if the editor of these Reminiscences had added another to his four erasures, and wholly obliterated the defamation which it is out of his power to make good. The virtue of the unfortunate consort of a most unhappy monarch is without a flaw. Enmity, hatred, and every evil passion have done their worst to palliate murder and to blacken innocence, but the ineradicable spot cannot be fixed to the fair fame of this true woman. Faultless she was not. We are under no obligation to vindicate her imprudent, wilful, and fatal interference with public questions in which she had no concern; we say nothing of her ignorance of the high matters of State into which her uninformed zeal conducted her, to the bitter cost of herself, and of those she loved dearest on earth; but of her purity, her uprightness, her beneficence, her cdevotion, her sweet, playful, happy disposition, in the midst of those home endearments, which were to her the true occupation and charm of life, there cannot exist a, doubt. Misfortune fell upon her house to strengthen 198 LORD HIOLLAND. her love, and to confirm her piety. Persecution, imprisonment, calamity that has never been surpassed, and a dreadful end, which, in its bitterness, has seldom been equalled, found and left her a mneek, but perfect heroine. One historian has told us that as " an affectionate daughter and a faithful wife, she preserved in the two most corrupted courts of Europe tle simplicity aund affections of domestic life." It is sufficient to add, tlhat she ascended the scaffold enjoining her children to a scrupulous discharge of duty, to forgive her murderels, to forget her wrongs; and that her last words on earth were directed to the beloved husband who had preceded her, whose spirit she was eager to rejoin, yet whose bed, if we are to believe my Lord Holland, she had oftener than once defiled. Lord Holland's distinguishing and most amiable trait, we have been informed, was sympathy with the oppressed -generosity towards the fallen. "In his pity for misfortune he forgot altogether the offences of the unfortunate." We search in vain throughout the present volume for this peculiar feature of the writer's mind. Lord Holland, as well as his wife, had, it is true, inordinate sympathy for the misfortunes of Napoleon Bonaparte, but not one sigh escapes his Lordship for the troubles of any other prince. Hle could see Europe itself brought under the yoke of oppression, and whole nations weeping from the extent of their misfortunes, and actually rejoice in the terrific misery. Nay, he could chuckle over the throes and trials of his native land, and grasp in friendship the iron hand that wrought her agony. Nothing, indeed, exceeds his indignation at the just punishment of Napoleon, even whilst he inhu SYMPATHY ]'OR FOREIGIN OPPRESSORS. 199 manly regrets the " tenderness, perhacps improvident, and certainly almost unprecedented, shown to the exiled Bourbon family~" Lord Holland "always felt," writes his panegyrist, "that he who defends oppression shares the crime." This remark is as true as the rest. A more gigantic oppressor never harassed mankind than the very man whom Lord Holland mourns as a martyr and worships as a god. Louis XVI., whatever his culpability, was surely unfortunate. Marie Antoinette, not without sin, suffered far beyond her faults. The one he proclaims an adulteress on hearsay, the other he libels so grossly as to compel the reluctant remonstrance of his own friends against the baseless calumny. Lord John Russell is the late Lord Holland's literary executor. We can hardly believe that the Premier has given his imprimiCatur on the present occasion.* The indecent anecdotes are bad enough; the asterisks are still worse; these, with the old jokes of Talleyrand and the less excusable after-dinner stories and backstairs scandal, can never have passed from Lord John's eye to the press, and thence to the Row. But, if they have, surely discretion must have provided against the publication of a sentiment that at page 31 teaches how free government is difficult, if not wholly incompatible, with lineal descent. Is this, we take the liberty to ask, the doctrine which Lord John Russell would have instilled into'the mind of the eldest son of his royal mistress? It is the doctrine of his old colleague put forward in so many words, and without disguise. At what period of lineal succession is the liberty of the subject in danger. *'b Lord John Russell has, since the first publication of this article, denied that he saw Lord Holland's book till it appeared in print. 200 IORD HOLLANDo It is desirable that we should be accurately informed, that we may be at least prepared for our inevitable change. Since the accession of the house of Brunswick to the throne of these realms the succession has been tolerably direct and uninterrupted. Free government has not entirely ceased with the reign of the great-greatgreat granddaughter of George I. Is Lord Holland's' executor the man to assert that its extinction is at hand? Our author was a close observer of men and manners in 1791, and he could find little truth in men except in Talleyrand, and nothing in manners that pleased him, -unless they were those of Philip Egalit6. Lord Holland believes that no man has lived in his time whose character "has been more calumniated, or will be more misrepresented to posterity," than the father of the late Count de Neuilly. He believes other matters affecting this profligate and unscrupulous prince equally singular and unaccountable. He half believes that his unpopularity at the court of Louis XVI. was occasioned by his neglect of the amorous advances of Marie Antoinette (!), and he is quite satisfied that the Duke of Orleans, seeing that he could not have saved the King's life by voting against his death, and that he might have accelerated his own destruction by voting the other way, had as much excuse as any man of his day for the monstrous and inhuman act which, to the remotest posterity, will excite the horror of the just, and which actually made the hellish crew of the National Assembly shudder with disgust as they recorded it. We dare not pollute our columns by describing the ordinary life of the most infamous prince of his time. Such description curiosity may find in chronicles whose veracity cannot unfortu INCONSISTENCIES. 201 nately be questioned. It is sufficient to say here, that no account of profligacy, blasphemy, and selfishness has reached us that can stand comparison with this man's well-authenticated history. Yet Lord Holland, in his maturity, regrets that in his youth he was not honored by Philip Egalite's familiar acquaintance! Fox, the uncle of Lord Holland, began life as the supporter of arbitrary government, but died the ardent friend of civil and religious liberty. His less illustrious nephew combined, after a fashion, the youth and manhood of Fox in his vivacious character. When he would be most chivalrous in the defence of popular rights, he is most resolute in the vindication of downright tyranny. In one place he vehemently asserts that " there is no mitigation of the excesses of despotism;" that "'violence alone can remove them;" and in another he upbraids the English government in no measured terms for chaining incorrigible despotism to a rock at St. Helena. "The best and rarest qualities of a sovelreign,l' he writes, "are inconsistent with absolute rule;" yet Bonaparte, he tells us, ruled absolutely under the influence of the best and rarest qualities ever owned by emlperor or king. W~hen Counts Montholon and Bertrand went to Holland-house, with the legacy bequeathed by Bonaparte to Lady Holland, they shocked the noble owner by presenting themselves in state. " Strange and mortifying reflection to human pride!" he finely exclaims, " that those who have devoted themselves to a man of great intellect, should imagine that they honour his memory by aping the absurd forms of other sovereigns and pretenders!"' Yet they did but ape the absurd forms of the man of intellect himself, 202 LOR.D IIOLLAND. who condescended, in his time, to splendid mimicry of sovereigns such as pretenders only are weak enough to aim at. Hereditary rank finds no respect from Lord Holland, yet he takes pains to prove the nobility of Napoleon. Inconsistency is endless. Half the volume of Reminiscences is taken up with a panegyric of Lord Holland's idol, yet almost at the last page comes the mortifying confession that the matchless and unapproachable man "hacd very/ little recgard for truth." Hle is the very soul of chivalry, yet (page 279) he never scruples to open letters addressed to other persons. Absolutism is the curse of mankind, yet nothing is clearer, fiom Lord Holland's relation, than that Bonaparte's reign was one of perfect absolutism, and that the principles of freedom were all but extinguished under his fierce, uncontrolled, and absolute rule. So awkward, in truth, is the last mentioned circumstance, that our author is fain to explain it away by an argument as original as it is happy. According to Lord Holland, Napoleon assumed the imperial diadem lest, haply, a spirit of democracy and anarchy might be fomented throughout the country i As to almbition, Bonaparte knew not the passion. "Like our Elizabeth, his prliniples, and his temper too, were at variance with his position." " In honour of truth, and not of Napoleon," Lord Holland makes kinown the ithllerto unsuspected fact, that Bonaparte " consented to el)danger some of his personal security" rather than not accept the crown, which he abhorred, but which hle could only reject at the peril of the whole nation. The continence of Scipio pales at the side of the abstinence of Bonaparte; selfsacrifice was never perfect until now. Let the partisans NAPOLEON A MODEL OF INJURED INNOCENCEo 203 of authority, of pomp, and perhaps of superstition in government (exclaims the innocent Lord Holland) have the full weight of the sanction of this great man's opinion in favour of the monarchical principle! Republican though he was, he saw and appreciated the necessity of regal government after the storm and whirlwind of civil war, and, regardless of consequences, in the teeth of his predilections, he lost sight of every consideration but the happiness and welfare of France, and consented to become her sacrifice and-emperor! One word as to the remarkable pertinacity with which Lord Holland insists-in the faite of history patent to the world —upon holding up Napoleon as a model of injured innocence, and his own country in arms against him as meriting only universal execration. Lady Holland invited to her roof, upon the downfall of the emperor, his staunchest friends. She sought to mitigate the severe punishment of the exile by intercession of the government, and by forwarding from time to time, to the object of her sympathy, the means of comfort not to be obtained upon his lone and barren rock. The tenderness of the woman was creditable to her heart, and in conformity with the prevailing sentiments at Holland-house. Who shall deny the mightiness of Napoleon, or quarrel with the spirit that strove to assuage his latest sufferings l Pity for misfortune is worthy of all praise, but regard for the interests of truth is not wholly without value. In the pages before us truth is altogether sacrificed, that Napoleon may be extolled. Believe Lord Holland, and the bloodshed, the misery, the incalculable sacrifices of the long European contest are wholly to be attributed to the 204 LORD HOLLAND. determination of England to have war in spite of every effort of Bonaparte to secure peace. Nothing is more certain than that the ambition of Napoleon was insatiable, and that no hindrance, no considerations of humanity or justice, were ever suffered to stand between him and the exigencies of state policy; yet nothing' is clearer to Lord Holland than that every act of his life, " especially during his consulship, sprang from a laudable desire of healing the wounds of the Revolution, and from a sincere, patriotic, and well-digested design of blending all classes and parties in France, and uniting them in support of a common government and in defence of the country." Entertaining this view, it is not surprising that Lord Holland should be impatient at the last efforts made by England to secure in his cage the man whose inordinate appetite no acquisition could satisfy; but it is marvellous to see an intelligent, liberty-loving historian, torturing every fact that comes in his way in order to adapt it to a fixed idea, trebly armed.against evidence of every kind. " The instances of Bonaparte's love of vengeance," writes this unscrupulous advocate, " are very few; they are generally of an insolent, rather than a sanguinary character, more discreditable to his head than his heart, and a proof of his want of manners, taste, and possibly feeling, but not of a dye to affect his humanity." Charity, readinag this passage, might presume that the writer had never heard, amongst other instances of Napoleon's love of vengeance, of the coldblooded murder of the Due d'Enghien. Charity would make a great mistake. Lord Holland refers to the butchery and calls it a " melancholy occasion, on which DEATH OF THE DUC D ENGHIEN NO MURDER. 205 Napoleon certainly exhibited great obduracy." Fromr what choice vocabulary of crime did his lordship take the word? We need not repeat the incidents of a transaction which would tarnish for ever the glory of a hero surrounded by the splendour of a hundred Napon leons. The youngest of our readers have wept over the fate of an innocent prince, torn in the dead of night from his bed and slaughtered like a dog in a ditch, and their bosoms have no doubt heaved in admiration of the great Chateaubriand, who refused, in the presence of the murderer, and at the peril of his life, to serve the power that could so misuse authority, and sully the very name of man. Obduracy is a holiday term that well becomes the vituperator of lawful kings and the sworn friend of freedom. He did not find it in the catalogue of royal misdemeanours. The querulous complaints against Bonaparte's stern imprisonment at St. Helena are unworthy a patriot and a man of common sense. Lord Holland speaks like a child when he says that the British government would have allowed an English offiCCer leave of absence had he been afflicted with an incurable disease; and therefore they were mere persecutors in chaining Napoleon to his rock. What reasoning is here? No doubt the English officer would have had his leave of absence. Equally certain is it that an ordinary felon would commandl a similar privilege. But Bonaparte was no common criminal. Lord Holland confesses that he had no regard for truth. We know he could not be trusted, as we are equally certain that his restless and ungovernable spirit could not trust itself. In the case of Bonaparte, the British government were forced to be 206 LORD HOLLAND. cruel only that they might be kind. With the remotest chance of escape, Napoleon would have availed himself of that chance, and summoned Europe once more from peaceful occupation, to anarchy, bloodshed, and war. The very writer who here protests against his imprisonment would have been amongst the first to hail the escape, and to rejoice in the consequent clifficulties of his native country. Report is false to the memory of Lord Holland, if he would not have done more, and helped towards the release which, once effected, must have given a blow to civilization, which a century of subsequent peace could hardly have repaired. At Elba there had been confidence reposed and comparative freedom enjoyed, and what availed either? The magic of Napoleon's name, the ceaseless cravings of his own unquiet soul, rendered greater freedom impossible than that which was finally vouchsafed. The keeper of the untamed tiger was responsible to the whole world for the safe custody of his prize, and would have earned the loud curses of millions had he once more let him loose to ravage the hearths of man. Lord Holland never tires of contrasting the magnanimity of Bonaparte in his exile with the wanton cruelty of his jailors. One point of difference, however, he does not so much as allude to. It is worthy of observation that, at the very time intelligence reached England of Napoleon's decease, the government were considering a plan for the removal of the ex-emperor to a more salubrious soil, and this humane purpose was probably under discussion at the very period Bonaparte himself was engaged in drawing up his last will, in which, amongst other bequests, he left a legacy of LORD HOLLAND'S ORTHOGRAPHY. 207 10,000f to a miscreant who not long before had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. Within the narrow limits which are prescribed to us, justice cannot be done to the farrago of idle gossip and misstatement which Henry Edward Lord Holland has not thought it unbecoming the son of his father to publish. At the outset of the volume we learn that the author knows little of Portugal, was never in Russia, and has no acquaintance with Austria. The countries he professes thoroughly to comprehend are Spain and France. A sample of his communications respecting France we have given. His revelations of Spain consist for the most part of ancient anecdotes bearing upon the amours of Godoy, Prince of Peace. The orthography of the writer is of the standard of 1800, and corresponds sufficiently with the tone of his book. Neither will be satisfactory to the matter-offact people of 1851, who do not affect retrograde movemnents, either in the spelling or in the moral tone of their literary and political instructors. Of customs, manners, and solid information, nothing appears throughout the volume. The burden is of kings and queens, and of them little more than their degrading amours. That Lord Holland should have condescended to such labour is somewhat astonishing, for he makes a boast of despising the inhabitants of palaces and the possessors of thrones, and his birth-to say nothing of good breeding-should have protected him from indecent gossip-the proud prerogative of flunkeyismn! Juuaary ~7, 1851, 208 ALTON LOCKE. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHARTIST.* A CHARTIST novel! And why not? We have novels to illustrate the magnificence of the well-born. Why should fiction not vindicate the pre-eminence of the lowly? Nobility finds its panegyrist in three volumes octavo. Democracy is more than modest in preferring its claims to consideration in two. Mr. Samuel Warren exhibits his model aristocrat practising on velvet every virtue under Heaven. Who can begrudge a humbler pen the happiness of delineating Adam before his fall in the shape of a pattern tailor on his board? Romance is now your only teacher. Tractarianism condescends to accept her aid; Exeter-hall is not above it. Statesmen with eloquence enough to thrill a Legislature are grateful for her pleasant offices, and theories as crude and bitter as apples in June are swallowed with relish, made palatable and sweet by her magic touch. Why were pills first wrapped in tin-foil, but that mortals love to be improved and instructed, whilst taking pains only to be gratified and amused? But let there be fair dealing! We will not allow the Chartist or any other man to portray the evil passions,of humanity, to lay bare the ineradicable selfishness of an impure condition, and then most illogically to charge * Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography. In two volunme Chapman and Hall. London. 1850: ONSLAUGHT UPON SOCIETY, 209 political institutions with the vices that would be in full play to-morrow were all such institutions extinguished -that are, in truth, in visible and melancholy operation throughout the world at this moment under all forms of Government and inll all stag'es of civilization. Because the whole family of man have lost sight of the cornmandment and example of God, we cannot permit a blind and general onslaught to be made upon legislative enactments which seek, as far as they are able, to regulate the imperfect mass and to reconcile conflicting interests and desires. If Chartisnl complain that the minority have wrested power from the majority, and are using their ill-gotten gain to oppress, and not to help, the whole community, let proofs of the allegation be given. If liberty to the meanest be denied, let instances be noted; if the path of advancement be impeded, show us the clogs that stand in the way. If " society" have the ability to elevate the physical, moral, and spiritual character of the needy, who cannot help themselves, and fail to. exercise its blessed strength, expose the high neglect of duty, and without loss of time correct it. But beware of confounding the shortcomings of a nation's governors with the faults and crimes of the governed! Chartists demand the education of the people; they do not stand alone in the request. All classes join in the righteous clamour, and the universal demland constitutes the healthiest indication of the timde. B3ut whose fault is it that education is not at work throughout the kingdom l Who is to blame that the poor are given over, in the midst of luxury and wealth, to brutal ignorance and crime? Do not raise your finger and point to this or tahat Administration. The poor would 210 ALTON LOCKE. long since have ascertained their duties towards God and m an, have been won from darkness to light, had charity, and not bigotry, possessed the public mindhad people been more intent upon the deliverance of the unenlightened than upon chaining all down to their own peculiar prejudices and acquired views. Let the Chartist, we say, be reasonable in his statement, and we are ready to listen to it. Let him dclistinctly prove the miscarriages of society and of the laws -and both have much to answer for-and he shall have our aid to set things right. We will read his pamphlet, his speech, his sermon, or his novel, and take to heart every syllable that bears upon his case. With this laudable wish, we sat down to the perusal of the volumes before us; we rise from that perusal indignant and disappointed. Alton Locke is the composition of any one but a Chartist. The favourite author of the writer, whoever he be, is Thomas Carlyle, and his production is precisely what Thoimas Carlyle would call a "wilnd-bag " and " a sham." We are free to confess that great power, strong feeling, and masculine language are visible throughout the work, but in allowing so much we have stated all that can be admitted in the way of commendation. Allto, Locke is not the labour of a working man with a smattering of learning, but of a scholar with an inkling of Chartism. Not another word need be said to prove its utter worthlessness as a handbook for our guidance. The unreality of the tale is fearful. It displays Chartismn contemplated by an enthusiast from some country nook, not the flesh and blood business with which the 10th of April brought ius into bodily acquaintance. Had all Chartists as few MR. LOCIKE'S GRIEVANCES. 211 troubles as Alton Locke, notwithstanding his querulous conceit and never-failing impertinence, they would positively be the chosen of the earth, the most enviable of happy men. W~e have taken especial pains to discover the grievances which Mr. Locke can lay at the door of " society," against which he rails from the beginning to the end of his book, and, with the exception of the complaint which he prefers very properly against an unnatural employer for compelling him to work too long in an unhealthy atmosphere, we can find him in no relation of life in which he does not figure under happier auspices than attend the career of the majority of our acquaintance. Alton Locke entertains an opinion not peculiar to himself, that it is much more agreeable to be born with a silver fork in your hand than with no such implement at all. We agree with the ingenuous tailor. So will every malln who has to work for his daily bread, and to improve his position by the vigilance of his spirit and the energy of his limbs. But which of. us dreams of upbraiding universal nature because inequality is her abiding law? Society can no more level distinctions than it can smooth the surface of the globe. We may whine through our threescore years and ten, or grumble through them, or bawl or fret; but the fact remains. We may do more. lWe may on the 10th of April, 1851, become a nation of Chartists, not of special constables, and in our vocation destroy the Monarchy, uproot the Church, annihilate the Peerage; but having done all, the race will still be to the swift, the place of power for the strong. Alton Locke is filled with amazement that men will consent, to become butlers-" not for love but money." Why should 212 ALTON LOCKE. he be? Mr. Locke is both tailor and poet. Does he imagine that Stultz's coats are so many pledges of affection, and that Alfred Tennyson has no annual settlement with his publisher? Mr. Locke insists upon the right of every labouring man to the intellectual culture and the refined society enjoyed by any other citizen. We are all to be aristocrats and scholars, for "the superior passionate artisan nature" is growing daily more impatient of restraint. Working women are to be bedizened in my lady's fine dresses: for " how many lovely and lovable faces there are among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the beholder?" Such are a few of the recommendations propounded to practical Englishmen by this would-be Chartist on behalf of his so-called fellow workmen. We had thought and hoped that honest Chartism seeks to reconcile opposing classes. Alton Locke will settle all our differences by thoroughly coi-founding them. We beg the reader's serious attention to the following brief account of Mr. Locke's history. The poetical tailor is introduced to us as a type of his class. WVe look at him, and behold the working man of the present era. W~e have therefore only to note his career from his cradle to the grave in order to make ourselves acquainted with the hardships, the persecutions, the oppressions to which labour is subject in unrighteous England. The two volumes constitute an incessant invective against the institutions and well-to-do people of the country; and of course the treatment received by Mr. Locke during his progress through life will justify the powerful ALTON S EDUCATION. 213 abuse. If it should do the very contrary, and if in his attempt to blacken his picture Mr, Locke should condescend to delineate incidents and scenes that have no higher authority than may be found in his own excited brain, Chartism may possibly suspect that its prolfit has been small from the poet-tailor's exercise of his needle and pen. We are sincerely of that way of thinking. Alton Locke describes his position in life at starting: -"My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate; and when he died my mother came down, and lived penuriously enoughI knew not how, till I grew older, down in that same suburban street." Mrs. Locke was a Baptist, a fierce Calvinist and a dismal destroyer of children's happiness for God's great honour. As a boy, the only books which Alton was permitted to read were The Pilrzim's ]Progress and the Bible. His sole companions and friends were two ministers, who "often drank tea with his mother" and preached high doctrine. He was, however, not without relations. le had an unclehis father's brother —who by dclint of hard work had made a fortune, and was "' the owner of a first-rate grocery establishment in the city and a pleasant villa near Ilerne-hill." Alton Locke is rather hard upon thle grocer. No opportunity is lost of sneering at his success and satirizing him for his laudable prudence and industry. That a Chartist of all men in the world slhould snarl at a man of the people for elevating himself in the social scale, and rail at society for enabling the son of an artisan to take his place at the university 214 ALTON LocKE. with the noblest in the land, is not the least singular of the puzzles presented in the history of our uncomfortable and very disagreeable hero. Mr. Locke, grocer, having allowed his brother's widow 251. per annum since his brother's death, proposes at a proper time to make a tailor of her son —" a pale, consumptive, ricketty, weakly boy" as the lad cheerfully describes himself to have been. Had Alton been our nephew, we should possibly have hit upon a better trade for him -at all events, whilst workshops are close ovens and sanitary warnings unheeded-but the grocer did his best and deserved thanks. Had he, however, apprenticed his nephew to Rundell and Bridge, and secured him a share in the business, we fear he would have received more kicks than gratitude from his misshapen nephew. That aspiring youth, before descending to tailoring, had already taken his own measure and found it immense. "A weakly frame," he remarks, " is generally compensated by a proportionably increased activity of brain." It is not his fault that Providence will arrange matters in this fashion; but, "my dear society," the modest youth goes on, "it is you that suffer for the mistake after all more than we. If you do tether your cleverest artisans on tailors' shop-boards and cobblers' benches, and they-as sedentary folk will-faill a thinking and come to strange conclusions thereby, they really ought to be much more thankful to you than you are to them." Locke p2icier could hardly be expected to understand psychological or physiological arrangements, so to the shop went Alton, in spite of his genius and of the danger thereby accruing to "my dear society." The workshop was a fetid hole filled with unhappy ACQUAINTANCE WITH A BOOKSELLER. 215 discontented occupants. The workmen were not geniuses, but, it would appear, confirmed blackguards. Their degraded condition Alton Locke attributes to the polluted atmosphere of the rooml in which they passed so large a portion of their lives; for in respect of employment they were well paid and fiee firom she crushing effects of the sweating system introduced into the establishment at a later period. If the filth of the garret be indeed so hurtful to morals, how much need, whether we be writers or readers, of helping on the godlike cause of cleanliness with all our might; how much wiser to give soap, liglht, and air to the poor than to irritate spirits sufficiently depressed by dirt with dreams of political equality never to be realized and certainly not enjoyed until the pores be opened and the pulses of the heart throb in healthy imotion. Disgusted with what he saw and alarmed by what he heard, Alton Locke pined for knowledge and instruction. Forbidden to read by his imother, his only resource was a bookseller's shop, " piled and fringed outside and in with books of every age, size, and colour," at which he contrived to stop on his homeward road and to take in learning piecemeal. Acquaintance is macie with the bookseller; the bookseller lends the student books, and "in the little lean-to garret at the back of the house, some ten feet long by six feet wide," without fireplace or means of ventilation, in which Alton Locke slept, the youth would spend half his night dclevouring tlhe food rendered so precious by the difficulty of obtaining it. So he grew and became wise in the kinowledge of good and evil. He adored the books which inspired him with "fierce present rage, with wounded vanity, O ] B A.ALTON TOCKE. with litter grudgings against those more favoured than himself;" in a word, with the vindictive passions of the demagogue and the towering conceit of the infidel. A. theological discussion with his mother renders the boy homeless. Dismissed by his parent, Alton Locke takes refuge with the bookseller, who offers him a bed, the use of a sitting room, and the run of his capacious library. The grievances of the hero are literally at an end. So far from society being chargeable with neglecting his interests in any way whatever, that much abused aggregate cannot be sufficiently praised and admired for all the efforts made to put him comfortably upon his legs and in the way of a decent livelihood. The rest of our tale is a continued series of generous endeavomIs on the part of the world and of obstinate ill-conditioned resistance on the side of the hero. The bookseller searches out Alton's uncle, and arranges an interview between the cousins. Nothing can be more manly and commendable than the behaviour of the grocer's son; he at once proposes a walk with his relative, and accompanies him to Dulwich College that he may see the pictures there —the crooked and unthankful Chartist growling all the way. The scene at the college would be ludicrous enough if painted by a disciple of the Rosa Matilda school of fiction. In the pages of Alton Locke it reveals at once the untruthfulness of the entire manufactured history. The tailor is smitten with Guido's St. Sebastian. In the height of his ravishment he looks round to answer a voice that hlas addressed him: it is that of a young lady who is pleased to remark his admiration. "Two beauties are before him —one dark, the speaker; one fair, somewhiat A Y3EAUTIFEUL CHARMER. 217 younger, her companiono" A tall stately clergyman is with them. They all fall into conversation; the old gentleman questions Locke " as to his name, his mother, his business, his studies,"' but Alton has eyes and ears only for the fair beauty. The Dean, his niece, and his daughter (Alton's charmer) depart, and the tailor, with his face burning scarlet, is riveted to the spot. Hlis heart is no longer his own. It is wedded to the Venus of whom he had but a glimpse, and considering that the heart had belonged to a Chartist, to a lover of equality and a man of the people, the reader will allow that it did not make a very indiscriminate selection. Alton Locke availed himself of a confidant not very likely to betray his secret. This was a picture in the National Gallery resembling his mistress, and before it he used to spend all his spare hours, " feeling the happier for staring and staring, and whispering to the dead canvas the extravagances of his idolatry." We are wrong. A few of the spare hours were lost in Htydepark, into which the youth ever and anon rushed to search for his mistress in the midst of the gay riders, and to pour out his venom upon the more fortunate aristocratic gentlemen " who might sit face to face with ladies," and enjoy the feast forbidden to meaner men. They might see his Juliet, though he was denied the gratification; and what right had they to look upon her, "who could not adore, appreciate that beauty as he did?" At least they had not suffered for her as he lhad done; they had not stood in " rain and frost, fatigue, and blank despnir —watching-watchingmonth after month; and he was n cakinq coats for them! The very garment he was stitching at might in a day's SECOND SERIES. 10 218 A.LTfO LOCRE. time be in her presence-touchiing hetl dress; and its wearer bowing and smiling' and whispering; he hlad not bought that bliss by watching in the rain. It made him mad to think of it." Now, we really must appeal to the good sense of this author, for we presume he is not as mad as his hero, and ask him what he thinks would happen if we were all to conduct ourselves in this fashion, to fall in love with the first bishop's daughter we met, to dive into all the parks, one after the other, in search of our flame, and to curse every man we encountered on the road who might chance to have a better coat on his back than our means enabled us to buy? What is good for the goose is good for the gander. What a tailor may do with impunity a lawyer's clerk may attempt without fear. Fancy the foreman and journeymen builders now setting up like magic the enormous structure in Hyde-park, dropping their tools every half-hour in the day, and capering wildly into Rotten-row to "feast their eyes" upon the ladies, to maiie faces at the gentlemen, and to vow eternal vengeance against society for not providing a beauty and a fortune for every humble genius in the country? Is it likely that the building would be up in time for the Exhibition? Can business go on if it is not attended to? Can we live without business? Is there any country under the moon where bread and cheese are obtained by the multitude without untiring labour? If so, let us know its latitude, that we may emigrate forthwith, and so relieve ourselves of the curse inflicted upon man when he fell. It was during his love dream that the tailor grew into a poet. He fancied himself the Corsair, an inti INSPIRED TAILORS. 219 mate of Leonidas, and a familiar of " the Maccabee who stabbed the Sultan's elephant, and saw him crushed beneath its falling bulk." It is perhaps not fair to be too critical in the case of a confessed lunatic, and we shall therefore not inquire into the propriety of Alton Locke's anathemas against society, at this period, for not selecting all the geniuses from all the workshops and sending them in batches to the University-for " not comparing foreheads" at a workman's meeting, and for suffering the artisan to undergo day after day "the soulless routine of mechanical labour." Heaven knows few are spared that same " soulless routine," from the Prime Minister to the poorest intellectual spider that spins his brains for bread, and that society just now has much more serious work to do than to hunt after poets on shopboards. Inspired tailors, says Mr. Locke, unless they are caught and carefully provided for,'must either dream or agitate." They had much better keep their eyes open and their spirits quiet -at all events if the relations between their masters and themselves are to be improved; and from all accounts, they need mending. Alton's master dying, his son took to business in the " show trade." The effect of this movement was a strike in the workshop. Amongst those who refused to submit to the "sweating" system was our hero. Government is of course soundly rated for not compelling master tailors to do their duty by their men-that is to say, for not insuring regular employment, short houls, and high wages. Alas, poor Government! Let it attempt the Herculean feat! No time fitter for the rare experiment than the era which has seen the 220 ALTON LOCKE, State deliberately withdrawing from all interference between labour and capital, and leaving the field of industry clear of all protective laws. Alton Locke thrown out of employment is offered a situation with the bookseller, with the certainty of succeeding to the stock and business. No bad offer for a beggared tailor; but the bilious gentleman refuses it, and persists in gnashing his teeth at society. He resolves to walk to Cambridge, where his cousin is studying (we had been told before that he was an Oxford undergraduate —but let that pass), and to obtain his aid in the publication of certain verses to which the tailor had given birth. On the road to Cambridge a characteristic incident occurs. Alton Locke reaches a wood which is entered from the road by a gate. Through the gate comes a gentleman, the owner of the property, with an air of superiority which, "please God!" he shall not have;" for ever." Curiosity conquering pride, as the writer has it, Locke begs permission to stray into the copse, and receives it. He is astonished that it should be necessary to ask leave to inspect "the fresh, clean face of God's earth." It never occurs to this unbiassed reasoner that the rich man's castle is as sacred as the poor man's hut. Pray, are Chartist gardens open to every passer-by Is there no such thing as intrusion on the poor man's privacy? Will your leveller never keep his line and plummet straight? He arrives at the University. His cousin receives him well, and promises to advance his interests. The return is unceasing abuse of the educated classes, and an imperative demand why the working classes are not AT CAMBRIDGE. 221 to have University bringing up as well as their betters. To show his earnestness, the cousin introduces Locke to a young nobleman, who at once gives the man employment, although the latter steadily refuses to say "my Lord" to an individual who is clearly " no lord of his." Walking one day in the College gardens, Locke meets that nobleman with a lady on his arm. She is the dark beauty of the Dulwich Gallery. The Dean is staying at Cambridge with his niece and daughter, Lord Lynedale is about to be married to the dark lady, and he requests the poet-tailor to call upon the Dean the following day with his poems. Not so badly treated after all, Master Alton Locke! The poet takes his verses to the hotel, and sees his " Lilian" once again, "the child of sixteen, blossomed into the woman of twenty." The Dean is all kindness; he is about to return to his residence within a few miles of Cambridge, and he invites his humble visitor to spend a few days there with his cousin. All this, no doubt, is deserving of great reprobation, and shows utter heartlessness and the contempt of the higher classes for obscure merit, and deserves to be written in print for the exacerbation of all working people; but, for the life of us, we cannot but respect the old Dean for his urbanity, and heartily wish that all men were like him. The visit was paid. The dark lady proved dogmatic, and disagreeable; the fair one grew fairer, and Mr Alton Locke now entertained serious intentions of calling Mr. Dean "father." The latter had applied to his publisher with a view of bringing into the world the productions of Mr. Locke's muse, and the matter was arranged upon condition that the poet would con 222 ALTON LOCKE. sent to expunge certain political passages which jarred with the main current of the verse. Locke consented to the proposition, and took leave of the Deanery more intoxicated with his consuming passion than ever. Reaching London, the poet attached himself to a Republican journal, but soon gave offence to its conductor by refusing to write in the spirit of the paper. The very day that he received his dismissal, he passed a church door towards which many carriages were tending. Ile stopped and saw a bride and bridegroom descend; they were the dark lady and Lord Lynedale. Lilian was there too, her eye caught that of thle poet, who in gratitude for one smile of recognition, and to prove his sympathy with the people, rushed wildly from the church door and did not stop till he reached Regent-circus, where "he shook hands earnestly with the crossing sweeper and gave him his last twopence." There is no limit to the good fortune of this incorrigible growler. The good Dean invites the poet, whose verses have appeared and been favourably received, to meet the chief literary celebrities of the day at his house in town. Amongst the company is the renowned - Ambassador. The great man expresses a desire to know the youth. He approaches him with intense benignity, and hopes his influential friends will consent to part with him, that he, the Ambassador, may have the happiness of sending him to the German university. Why, this journeyman tailor, this ninth part of a man, this stunted sickly piece of irritable humanity, has the luck of 20 aristocrats as times go; yet he must, forsooth, write two whole volumes of spleen and rancour to prove the hardship of his lot and the oppression of IMPRISONMENT. 223 the great. Where, we ask, is the hardship-where the oppression? Suddenly a libel appears against him in the democratic journal which he has quitted, and Alton Locke loses his popularity amongst the fraternity of Chartists. In his attempts to recover their good opinion, the excited man commits himself in an agricultural riot, is seized as a ringleader, and tried for his life. The evidence of a witness saves him fiom the gallows, but he is sentenced to imprisonment for the term of three years. During the whole of his imprisonment, Alton Locke is allowed to devote his time to study, and to such other occupations as he himself selects; and when he quits the gaol, at the period of the last French Revolution, he has so far profited by his reading and reflection as to determine to head the memorable Chartist movement of the 10th of April. The ridiculous upshot of that terrible business is surpassed by the absurdity of Mr. Locke's conduct immediately afterwards. Alton's cousin, it would appear, was a special constable on the day in question, and after the ignoble dispersion of the violent mob, Alton walking much disgusted and mortified, stumbled upon his belted relative in the neighbourhood of Cavendish-square, "the very part where Lilian lived." The Chartist followed the special until the latter actually "stopped at the Dean's house, knocked, and entered without parley." The Chartist knocked also, was admitted, and requested to "sit down in the hall." A moment afterwards and he heard the maids below giggling about "the young couple" upstairs. Another minute and he heard voices in an adjoining room. He rises, opens the drawing-room door noiselessly, and creeps in 224 ALTON LOCKE, like a cat. Horror! his cousin is there; so is Lilian. " Their arms were round each other, her head lay upon his breast.... their lips met and clung together.... " Alton rushed from the room. It was time. Faint, giddy, and blind, he clung to the staircase. His cousin followed him. Alton struck out with his right, which] the special parried cleverly with his left, and sent the Chartist reeling, drawing first blood. "4 Sneering footmen" then removed the intruder from the hall to the street, which no sooner had he reached than "he strode and staggered on, through street after street, running blindly against passengers, dashing under horses' heads, heedless of warnings and execrations, till he found himself, he knew not how, on Waterloo-bridge." About to make the fatal plunge, his attention was drawn to a drunken tailor-a fellow workman —who was already on the parapet and in the act of leaping too. Alton dragged down the brother criminal, who started as fast as his legs would carry him for "the wilderness of Bermondsey," Locke dashing after him. The pestilent abode of the drunkard was reached. Beneath the flooring a melancholy rushlight revealed a filthy sewer. Upon the floor, covered by a coat, were three dead bodies, wife and children. What need to dwell upon this picture; That night the rescued tailor tried a second and more successful leap into a foul and poisonous ditch behind his wretched home, and the next morning Alton Locke woke with his brain on fire, and his body in possession of a raging fever. Now comes our moral! By degrees the fever relaxes its fierce hold, and the liberated man recovers. But who is at his side? The dark lady-the dogmatic and dis RECEIVES INSTRUCTION. 225 agreeable beauty —Lord Lynedale's wife-the Earl of Ellerton's widow! Yes, much has happened. Lynedale has succeeded to his father's title- has died a violent death, and left his widow very poor, but chastened and corrected. As strong medicines carry off the impurities of the body, so the fever has removed all the former violence and vindictiveness of the Chartist. He is fit for instruction and ready to receive it; and he does receive it with a vengeance from the highly gifted and well informed Lady Ellerton, who assures him that Christ was "' a great Reformer and true Conservative"" a true demagogue and a perfect artist"-was tempted "like every genius! to use His creative powers for selfish ends"-had borne "the sorrows of genius" —had " fought with bigotry and stupidity"- had wept over Jerusalem "in the bitterness of disappointed patriotism,"-that Camille Desmoulins revealed "an Almighty truth," when he spoke of the "bon sans-culotte Jesus," and that property qualification may be opposed, universal suffrage and annual Parliaments claimed rightfully and successfully, if Chartism will but undertake its crusade in the name of Him who of all "heroes, poets, and philosophers," is the only " real demagogue, the speaker to man simply as man, the friend of publicans and sinners, the stern foe of.the Scribe and the Pharisee." The effect of this singular revelation is as miraculous as the revelation itself. The Chartist is redeemed; "he hid his face in the coverlet, and burst out into a long, low, and yet most happy weeping." A brother Chartist is at his side with his face buried in his hands. Suddenly this one jumps up with brimming eyes, and cries out, 10"* 226 ALTON LOCKE~ "I see it, I see it all now. Oh, my God! my God! what infidels we have been." But the moral is not ended yet. Poetical justice requires the punishment of the tailor's cousin, who had cozened the tailor out of his bride. After his conversion, Alton Locke inquires of Lady Ellerton how the young gentleman finds himself. She shakes her head. " He is no more!" " Dead?" " Yes, of typhus fever; and not only he, but his servant who brushed his clothes, and the shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home." Ah, the new coat! The reader remembers the coat with which the three corpses were covered in Bermondsey. Perfect and most professional contrivance! The tailor's rival falls a victim to the "sweating system." The emporium of fashion" is Nemesis disguised in a paletot, and the united cause of betrayed affection and high prices is fully avenged. And this is Chartism! And this is the book of a man of the people, addressed to those who are answerable for the workman's wrongs and bound to repair them! This is the life-history of a tailor-the charge of democracy against aristocracy-the plea of labour against capital! Reader, do not believe it! Be more faithful to your brother labourer, and refuse to accept these perverted utterances for the plain unvarnished story which we shall be the first to welcome at the hands of honest industry. There is much to be done for poverty and labour. The world has already roused itself to a consciousness of the momentous fact. Society strengthens every hour the hands of Government, and THE CLAIMS OF LABOR, 227 every hour shall find us more clearly ascertaining duty, more anxious to fulfil it. The bodily health of the masses-their moral and intellectual culture —their spiritual well-being-their social and political rights have more interest to-day for every class in the State than any other subject. The necessity of solving the difficulties of the many-sided question of the claims of labour is on all sides acknowledged to be paramount. The fate of England for the future no doubt largely depends upon her wisdom and intelligence to-day. We have no fear of her ultimate happiness and triumph. There is no danger to be dreaded from the generous activity of the well disposed. Even such wild and wanton teaching as that with which we have been dealing can operate but as a feather against the wholesome living tide that pours steadily and surely on towards the abiding shores of blessed civilization. 228 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.* TWENTY THOUSAND copies of this book, according to its title-page, are circulating among the American people, but three times as many thousands more have probably issued from the American press since the title-page was written. According to the Boston Traveller, the authoress has already received from her publishers the sum of " $10,300 as her copyright premium on three months' sales of the work-we believe the largest sum of money ever received by any author, either American or European, from the sales of a single work in so short a period of time." Uncle Tom's Cabin is at every railway book-stall in England, and in every third traveller's hand. The book is a decided hit. It takes its place with " Pickwick," with Louis Napoleon, with the mendicant who suddenly discovers himself heir to ~20,000 a-year, and, in fact, with every man whose good fortune it has been to fall asleep Nobody, and to awake in the morning an institution in the land. It is impossible not to feel respect for Uncle Tom's Cabin. The object of the work is revealed in the pictorial frontispiece. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is an abolitionist, and her book is a vehement and unrestrained argument in favour of her creed. She does not preach a sermon, for men are accustomed to nap and nod Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Twdntieth Thousand. Boston; Jewett & Co, 1852. UNSCRUPULOUS FIGHTINGo 229 under the pulpit; she does not indite a philosophical discourse, for philosophy is exacting, is solicitous for truth, and scorns exaggeration. Nor does the lady condescend to survey her intricate subject in the capacity of a judge, for the judicial seat is fixed high above human passion, and she is in no temper to mount it. With the instinct of her sex, the clever authoress takes the shortest road to her purpose, and strikes at the convictions of her readers by assailing their hearts. She cannot hold the scales of justice with a steady hand, but she has learnt to perfection the craft of the advocate. Euclid, she well knows, is no child for effecting social revolutions, but an impassioned song may set a world in conflagration. Who shall deny to a true woman the use of her true weapons? We are content to warn the unsuspecting reader of their actual presence. Perhaps there is, after all, but one method of carrying on a crusade, and that unscrupulous fighting is the rightful warfare of the crusader. Mrs. Stowe having made up her mind that slavery is an abomination in the sight of God and man, thinks of nothing but the annihilation of the pernicious system. From the first page of her narrative to the last this idea is paramount in her mind, and colours all her drawing. That she will secure proselytes we take for granted; for it is in the nature of enthusiasm to inoculate with passionate zeal the strong-hearted as well as the feeble-minded. That she will convince the world of the purity of her own motives and of the hatefulness of the sin she denounces is equally clear; but that she will help, in the slightest degree, towards the removal of the gigantic evil that afflicts her soul is a point upon which we may 230 UNCLE TOM' S CABlIN~ express the greatest doubt; nay, is a matter upon which, unfortunately, we have very little doubt at all, inasmuch as we are certain that the very readiest way to rivet the fetters of slavery in these critical times is to direct against all slaveholders in America the opprobrium and indignation which such works as Uncle Tom's Cabins are sure to excite. It is scarcely necessary to give in this place and in detail the plot of Mrs. Stowe's striking production; for striking and meritorious it undoubtedly is. The lady has great skill in the delineation of character; her hand is vigorous and firm, her mastery over human feeling is unquestionable, and her humourous efforts are unimpeachable. We know of no book in which the negro character finds such successful interpretation, and appears so life-like and so fresh. The scenes in which the negroes are represented at their domestic labours or conversing with each other reveal a familiar acquaintance with negro life, and a capacity for displaying it that canniot be mistaken. The slang of "Ethiopian Serenaders" for once gives place to thoughts and language racy of the soil, and we need not say how refreshing it is to be separated for a season from the conventional Sambo of the modern stage. But even as an artist Mrs. Stowe is not faultless. She exhibits but ordinary ability in the construction of her story. Her narrative is rather a succession of detached scenes than a compact, well-jointed whole; and many of the scenes are tedious from their similarity and repetition. The reader is interested in the fate of two heroes, but their streams of adventure never blend, The scene closes upon Uncle Tom to open upon George Harris, and it A PARAGON 0F VIRTUE. 231 closes upon George Harris to open upon Uncle Toma style of proceeding well understood at the Adelphi Theatre, where the facetice of Wright must duly relieve the diablerie of 0. Smith-but certainly not yet recognized in the classic realms of art. Uncle Tom is the slave of Mr. Shelby, the proprietor of a certain estate in Kentucky, which has fallen into disorder in consequence of the speculative habits of its owner, who, at the opening of the tale, is forced to part not only with Uncle Tom, but with a young quadroon woman named Eliza, the servant of Mrs. Shelby, and the wife of George Harris, a slave upon a neighbouring estate. Uncle Tom is carried off Mr. Shelby's estate by the new purchaser, one Mr. Haly; but Eliza, dreading separation from her husband and her subsequent fate, takes flight with her child, and is ultimately joined to her mate on the free-soil of Canada. The two volumes of which the book is made up are occupied, as we have hinted, with the adventures of Uncle Tom and George Harris, until the former dies a Christian martyr, and the latter becomes a model liberator in the black Republic of Liberia. Uncle Tom is a paragon of virtue. He is more than mortal in his powers of endurance, in his devotion, in his self-denial, in his Christian profession and practice, acnd in his abhorrence of spirituous liquors. When Mr. Haly in his turn sold Tom to a new master, the goodnatured owner informed his new acquisition that he would make him " coachy" on condition that he would not get drunk more than once a week, unless in cases of emergency, whereupon " Tom looked surprised and rather hurt, and saidl, I never drink, Mas'r,' " This 232 UNCLE TroM's CABIN. may be taken as a keynote to the tune Tom is eternally playing for our edification and moral improvement. He always " looks surprised and rather hurt" on such occasions. He is described as a fine, powerful negro, walking through the world with a Bible in his hands, and virtuous indignation on his lips, both ready to be called into requisition on the slightest provocation, in season and out of season, at work or at play, by your leave or without it, in sorrow or in joy, for the benefit of his superiors, or for the castigation of his equals. A prominent fault of this production is indicated in these facts. In her very eagerness to accomplish her amiable intention, Mrs. Stowe ludicrously stumbles and falls very far short of her object. She should surely have contented herself with proving the infamy of the slave system, and not been tempted to establish the superiority of the African nature over that of the Anglo-Saxon and of every other known race. We have read some novels in our time, and occupied not a few precious hours in the proceedings of their heroines and heroes; but we can scarcely remember ever to have encountered either gentle knight or gentler dame to whom we could not easily have brought home the imputation of human firailty. The mark of the first fall has been there, though the hues might be of the faintest. Now, if Adam, before his decline, had been a black, as some ethnologists still insist, he could not possibly have been more thoroughly without flaw than Uncle Tom. In him the said mark is eradicated once and for ever. He represents in his person the only well authenticated instance we know, in modern times, of that laudable principle, in virtue of which a man presents his left cheek to be MODEL BENEVOLENCE. 233 smitten after his first has been slapped. The more you "larrup" Uncle Tom the more he blesses you; the greater the bodily agony the more intense becomes his spiritual delight. The more he ought to complain, the more he doesn't; the less he has cause for taking a pleasant view of life and human dealings, the less he finds reason to repine; and his particular sentiments are all to match. Tom has reason to believe that Mr. Shelby will not wish him " good by" before he starts off for the south with Mr. Haly. "That ar hurt me more than sellin, it did." Tom's wife is heart-broken at his departure, and naturally reproaches Mr. Shelby for turning him into money. Tom, always superior to human nature, tenderly rebukes her. " I'll tell ye, Chloe, it goes agin me to hear one word agin Mas'r. Wasn't he put into my arms a baby! It's natur I should think a heap of him." Tom " had every facility and temptation to dishonesty," but his " simplicity of nature was impregnable," and he was never known to make a mistake in his life, although " trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a bill without looking at it, and pocketed the change without counting it." What have we been doing all these years, during which at a great cost of time, labour, and money, we have despatched missionary after missionary to the heathen, but neglected needful labours at home in order to effect works of supererogation abroad? Before we export another white enthusiast from Exeter-hall, let us import a dozen or two blacks to teach Exeter-hall its most obvious Christian duties. If Mrs. Stowe's portraiture is correct, and if Uncle Tom is a type of a class, we deliberately assert 234 VUNCLE TOM S CABIN. that we have nothing more to communicate to the negro, but everything to learn from his profession and practice. No wonder that Tom works miracles by his example. Such sudden conversions fiom brutality to humnility, from glaring infidelity to the most childlike belief, as are presented to our admiration in these volumes, have never been wrought on earth since the days of the Apostles. One of the best sketches in the book is that of a little black imp, by name Topsy, who loves lying for the sake of lying, who is more mischllievous than a monkey, and in all respects as ignorant; yet she has hardly had time to remove from her soul the rubbish accumulated there from her birth, and to prepare her mind for the reception of the most practical truths, before-without any sufficient reason-" a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, penetrates the darkness of her heathen soul," and enables her in due time to accept the responsible appointment of missionary to a station in Africa. Uncle Tom not only converts by his arguments Mr. St. Clare, his niaster in New-Orleans, who is a gentleman, a scholar, a philosopher, and as shrewd a hand in a discussion as you are ever likely to encounter, but positively redeems in a moment from utter savageness and the lowest degradation wretches in whom the sense of feeling is extinct, and from whom we have been taught, until Tom took them in hand, to recoil in horror. It is no respect for religion that we feel when Tom, beaten almost to death by his owner, is visited by a poor woman, who offers him water to relieve his mortal pains, but who is quietly informed by the sufferer that a chapter from the Bible is better than drink. Well-fed and comfortably-housed hypocrisy is CHANGES OF CHARACTER. 235 apt to deliver itself of such utterances, but certainly not true piety in its hours of anguish and physical extremity. A quadroon slave called Cassy is introduced to the reader under the most painful circumstances. Her career has been one of compelled vice until her spirit has finally acquired a wild and positively fiendish charactel. You read the authoress's vivid descriptions, you note the creature's conduct, and you are convinced that it will take years to restore human tenderness to that bruised soul, to say nothing of belief in Heaven and its solemn and mysterious promises. But you err! In an instant, and most miraculously, " the long winter of despair, the ice of years gives way, and the dark despairing woman weeps and prays." She, too, " yields at once, aud with her whole soul, to every good influence, and becomes a devout and tender Christian." This monstrous instance is outdone by another. Sambo and Quimbo are two black rascals, who have been trained " in savageness and brutality as systematically as bull-dogs, and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty, have brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities." When we first behold them we are told to mark "their coarse, dark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling enviously on each other; their barbarous, -guttural, half-brute intonation; their dilapidated garments fluttering in the wind," and to remember the apt illustration before us " of the fact that brutal men are lower even than animals." So long as these worthies are on the scene, their actions correspond exactly with their appearance, and with the account given of their canine bringing up; they go on from bad to worse, and at the worst, when their restitu 236 UTNCLE TOM'S CABIN. tion to humanity seems utterly and for ever hopeless, then it is that Tom "pours forth a few energetic sentences of that wondrous One, —his life, his death, his everlasting presence and power to save,"-that "they weep-both the two savage men,"-that Tom cries to Heaven to give him two more souls, and that the prayer is immediately and satisfactorily answered by their happy and most astounding conversion. Surely there is something more real and substantial in Mrs. Stowe's volumes to account for their extraordinary popularity than such absolute and audacious trash. It would be blasphemy to believe in such revelations, and common sense and a feeling of what is due to our better nature will assuredly prevent all but the veriest fanatics from accepting as truth such exaggerated and unholy fables. An error almost as fatal as the one adverted to is committed by our authoress in the pains she takes to paint her negroes, mulattoes, and quadroons in the very whitest white, while she is equally careful to disfigure her whites with the very blackest black. The worst negroes are ultimately taken to heaven, but few of the fair colored are warranted, living or dying, without blemish. The case of Slavery is submitted in this work, it is true, to the reader's enlightened attention, but before his judgment can calmly set itself to work, his sympathies are thoroughly secured by a lady who takes good care not to let them loose again. The very first scene of the book introduces us to an offensive dealer in slaves and to a slave proprietor without feeling, and both are bargaining for the disposal of slaves who, in personal appearance and in moral attainments, are not to TEIE DOMESTIC MELODRAMA. 237 be surpassed on either side of the Atlantic. What becomes of the judgment under such an ordeal, if the intellect be weak and the heart be strong? We are not ignorant of the mode in which great morals are enforced at our minor theatres, and of the means there taken to impress the imagination and to instruct the intellect by help of the domestic melodrama. A villain on the Surrey side of the water is a villain indeed, and a persecuted heroine is persecuted beyond endurance in any other place. It is very easy to educe startling lessons firom a dramatic work, as it is easy enough for an artist to delineate fear by painting a man with staring eyes, open mouth, and hair on end. Truth, however, demands more delicate dealing, and art that would interpret truth must watch the harmonies of Nature, which charms not by great "effects," but by her blended symmetry and grace, by her logical and unforced developments. Did we know nothing of the subject treated by Mrs. Stowe, we confess that we should hesitate before accepting much of her coin as sterling metal. Her quadroon girl is all too like the applauded slave of the Victoria.'The rich, full dark eye, with its long lashes-the ripples of silky black hair, the delicately-formed hand and trim foot and ankle, the dress of the neatest possible fit, which set off to advantage her finely-moulded shape, the peculiar air of refinement, the softness of voice and manner," are insisted upon with a pertinacity which we look for in vain when we come face to face with the less-fortunately endowed specimens of the Anglo-Saxon race. Her husband, George, a mulatto, being rather blacker than herself,is p tinted, according to rule, in still brighter 238 UNCLE TOM S CABINt. colours. He is "possessed of a handsome person and pleasing inanners," is 6" a general favourite in the factory" where he works, "his adroitness and ingenuity cause him to be considered the first hand in the place," and he has "invented a machine for the cleaning of hemp, which displays quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney's cotton-gin." During his flight to Canada, George disguises himself. Being informed of the circumstance, we are introduced to an hotel in Kentucky. " It was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveller alighted at the door. He was very tall, with a dark Spanish complexion, fine expressive black eyes, and close curling hailr, also of a glossy blackness. His wellformed aquiline nose, straight thin lips, and the admirable contour of his finely-formed limbs, impressed the whole company instantly with the idea of something uncommon." Who can the distinguished stranger be but M. Lemaitre or Mr. Wallack, representing for our approval and delight George Harris, the runaway mulatto? If we have any doubt, it is removed at once when we are told that the said George being addressed by a stranger at the hotel, " stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a prince," just as we have seen Lemaitre do it as Le Docteur Noir. An indifferent advocate may make one of two mistakes. He may understate his client's case, or he may overstate it. Able as she is, Mrs. Stowe has committed the latter fault, and will suffer in the minds of the judicious fiom the female error. With so good a cause, it is a pity that her honest zeal should have outrun discretion. The gravest fault of the book has, however, to be INFLUENCE ON SLAVERY. 239 mentioned. Its object is to abolish slavery. Its effect will be to render slavery more difficult than ev'er of abolishment. Its very popularity constitutes its greatest difficulty. It will keep ill-blood at boiling point, and irritate instead of pacifying those whose proceedings Mrs. Stowe is anxious to influence on behalf of humanity.'Uncle Tom's Cabin" was not required to convince the haters of slavery of the abomination of the " institution;" of all books, it is the least calculated to weigh with those whose prejudices in favour of slavery have yet to be overcome, and whose interests are involved in the perpetuation of the system. If slavery is to cease in America, and if the people of the'United States, who fought and bled for their liberty and nobly won it, are to remove the disgrace that attaches to them for forging chains for others which they will not tolerate on their own limbs, the work of enfianchisement must be a movement, not forced upon slave-owners, but voluntarily undertaken, accepted, and carried out by the whole community. There is no federal law which can compel the Slave States to resign the " property " which they hold. The States of the South are as free to maintain slavery as are the States of the North to rid themselves of the scandal. Let the attempt be made imperiously and violently to dictate to the South, and from that hour the Union is at an end. We are aware that to the mind of the " philanthropist " the alternative brings no alarm; but to the rational thinker, to the statesman, and to all men interested in the world's progress, the disruption of the bond that holds the American States together is fraught with. calamity, with which the 240 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. present evil of slavery —a system destined sooner or later to fall to pieces under the weight of public opinion and its own infamy —bears no sensible comparison. The writer of " Uncle Tonm's Cabin " and similar welldisposed authors, have yet to learn that to excite the passions Of their readers in favour of their philanthropic schemes, is the very worst mode of getting rid of a difficulty, which, whoever may be to blame for its existence, is part and parcel of the whole social organization of a large proportion of the States, and cannot be forcibly removed without instant anarchy, and all its accompanying mischief. Would Mrs. Stowe have liberty proclaimed throughout the States at the present moment? For her own sake, and for the sake of her countrymen, we hope not. We do not believe that the blacks in America are prepared for sudden emancipation; and if they are, we are certain that the whites are wholly incapable of appreciatiag the blessing. Sir Charles Lyell, in his " Second Visit to the United States of North America," very properly remarks that the fanaticism of Abolitionists' constitutes one difficulty in the way of emancipation, the prejudices of Perpetuatists another, but that the jealousy of an unscrupulous Democracy is a flar more terrible obstacle than either. In the same spirit, the writer of a remarkable article in the North American Review last year observed, that " the whites need to go through a trainining for freedom scarcely less than the blacks, the master being as much fettered to the one end of the chain as the slave to the other." All impartial witnesses speak to the same effect. Mr. Featherstonhaulgh, no lover of slavery, who passed years in the WORTIIH OF FREEDOM. 241 United States, declares that slavery is a positive blessing to every negro who would receive nothing but liberty from his owner. For, in truth, what is liberty worth to the possessor if it be accompanied with social degradation of the worst description 8 The manumitted slaves of Jamaica, are, in the sight of the law, in the estimation of their fellows, and in the eye of God, equals with those whose actual "property " they were the other day. Importance no longer attaches to complexion in that Island. The white and colored people intermarry, coloured people hold responsible offices, and are received as guests at the Governor's table. An American who visited Jamaica in 1850 states that" At the Surrey Assizes, where Sir Joshua Rowe presided, two coloured lawyers were sitting at the Barristers' table, and of the jury all but three were coloured. Seven-tenths of the whole police force of the Island, amounting to about 800 men, were estimated to be coloured. In the Legislative Assembly, composed of fiom 48 to 50 members, ten or a dozen were colour, d; and the Public Printers of the Legislature, who were also Editors of the leading Government paper, were both coloured men." Compare this salutary state of things with the certain doom of the negro suddenly emancipated by his American master! The democratic horror of black blood in the United States knows no bounds. Sir Charles Lyell has a pathetic account of a young girl he met on board a steamer in America, who was rudely summoned from the dinner table because-though free as himself-she had presumed-having one streak of negro blood in her otherwise unsullied veins-to sit at the same board with a SECOND s8lERlS. 11 242 UNCLE TOMeS CABIN. party of pure whites. Ile had previously been shocked by remarking that no coloured man, slave or freeman, how far soever removed from the negro stock, however respectable his appearance, however cultivated his mind, was allowed to take his meals while the very meanest white on board had yet to satisfy his hunger. What avail the pathetic appeals, the painful incidents, the passionate denunciations with which " Uncle Tom's Cabin " abounds, in the teeth of such facts as these? Let it be borne in mind that this instinctive and openly proclaimed physical disgust and abhorrence of the neg'ro race is not peculiar to the South, but is even more strongly evident in the North; that it is no offensive characteristic of the slave owner, but is a vice equally rampant in the self-satisfied and complacent soul of the agitating abolitionist. Blaclks are not stocks or stones; we know them to be capable of high civilization, and to be susceptible of the noblest emotions. Improved public opinion all over the world is doing much for them, and education and religion are doing still more. They are not unconscious of their social inferiority in republican America, for they are hourly made to feel it. Imagine them liberated to-morrow in those portions of the United States where they outnumber the whites, and where they would only have to raise their liberated hands in order to strike clown the traditional enemies of their race, their once tyrannical owners, their always contemptuous social superiors. Htate begets hate, and a war of races secures the rapid deterioration and decline of all the combatants. We may well shrink before rashly inviting so bloody and disastrous a conflict. AMELIORATTON S 243 And be it stated to the credit of the slaveowners of the South, that they are fully alive to the danger of the portentous struggle, and have of late years shown no indisposition to help in their own emancipation as well as in that of the slave, provided they may only escape the dire catastrophe we speak of. It is certain that a large class of slaveowners in thle South are most desirous to relieve their soil of the stain and inconvenience of Slavery, if the tremlendous step can be taken with safety to all parties concerned in the act of liberation. The efforts made in the South to improve the condition of the slave, show at least that humanity is not dead in the bosoms of the proprietors. Mrs. Stowe has certainly not done justice to this branch of the subject. Horrors in connection with Slaveryitself a horror-unqueistionably exist; but all accounts -save her own, and thlose of writers actuated by her extreme views —concur in describing the general condition of the Southern slave as one of comparative happiness and comfort, such as many a free man in the United King'dom might regard with envy. One authority on this point is too important to be overlookedo In the year 1842, a Scotch weaver, nam ed William Thomson, travelled through the Southern States. He supported himself on his way by manual labour; he mixed with the humblest classes, black and white, and on his return home he published an account of his journeyings. He had quitted Scotland a sworn hater of slave proprietors, but he confessed that experience had modified his views on this subject to a considerable degree. He had witnessed slavery in most of the slaveholding States; hle had lived for weeks among negroes in 244 TUNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Cotton plantations, and he asserted that he had never bet held one-fifth of the real suffering that he had seen among the laboring poor in England. Nay, more, he declared: " That the members of the same family of negroes are not so much scattered as are those of workin'gmen in Scotland, whose necessities compel them to separate at an age when the American slave is running about gathering health and strength." Ten years have not increased the hardships of the Southern slave. During that period colonization has come to his relief-education has, legally or illegally, found its way to his cabin, and Christianity has added spiritual consolations to his allowed, admitted physical enjoyments. It has been justly said that to those men of the South who have done their best for tle negro under the institution of slavery must we look for any great effort in favour of emancipation, and they who are best acquainted with the progress of events in those parts declare that at this moment'"there are powerful and irresistible influences at work in a large part of the slave States tending towards the abolition of slavery within these boundaries." We can well believe it. The world is working its way towards liberty, and the tlacks will not be left behind in the onward march. Since the adoption of the American Constitution, seven States have voluntarily abolished slavery. When that Constitution was proclaimed there was scarcely a free black in the country. According to the last census, the free blacks amount to 418,173, and of these 233,691 are blacks of the South, liberated by their owners, and not by the force of law. We cannot shut our eyes to these facts. THE RESULT OF GROWTH. 245 Neither can we deny that, desirable as negro emancipation may be in the United States, abolition must be the result of growth, not of revolution, must be patiently wrought out by means of the American Constitution, and not in bitter spite of it. America cannot for any time resist the enlightened spirit of our age, and it is manifestly her interest to adapt her institutions to its temper. That she will eventually do so if she be not a divided household-if the South be not goaded to illiberality by the North-if public writers deal with the matter in the spirit of conciliation, justice, charity, and truth, we will not permit ourselves to doubt. That she is alive to the necessities of the age is manifest from the circumstance that, for the last four years, she has been busy in preparing the way for emancipation by a method that has not failed in older countries to remove national troubles almost as intolerable as that of Slavery itself. We have learnt to believe that the Old World is to be saved and renewed by means of emigration. Who shall say that the New World-in visible danger from the presence of a dark inheritance bequeathed to it by Europe-shall not be rescued by the same providential means? The negro colony of Liberia, established by the United States, extends along the Western coast of Africa, a distance of more than 500 miles. The civilized black population amounts to 8,000 souls. The heathen population is over 200,000. The soil of the colony is fertile, its exports are daily increasing, it has already entered into diplomatic relations with Great Briitain and France. A Government is established, which might have been fiamed by the whitest skins; 2,000 comnmunicants are in connection with its churches; 246 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. 1,500 children attend its Sabbath schools. Education has become-would that it were so here —a national obligation; and the work of instruction and conversion is carried on by educated negroes among their brethren, who cannot fail to appreciate the service and to accept the blessing. The refuge afforded by Liberia for the gradual reception of the manumitted and civilized slaves of the United States, we hold to be the most promising element in the question, upon the tranquil settlement of which the happiness and political existence of the United States depend. It will enable America to save herself, and to achieve a work far nobler than that of winning her own political independence. The civilization of Africa hangs largely upon her wisdom. A quarter of the world may be Christianized by the act which enables America to perform the first of Christian duties. Wei have said that the process of liberation is going on, and that we are convinced the South, in its own interests, will not be laggard in the labour. Liberia and similar spots on the earth's surface proffer aid to the South, which cannot be rejected with safety. That the aid may be accepted with alacrity and good heart, let us have no more Uncle Tom's Cabins engendering ill-will, keeping up bad blood, and rendering well-disposed, humane, but critically-placed men their own enemies and the stumbling-blocks to civilization and to the spread of glad tidings from Heaven. I852. AMERICAN LITERATURIqE. 247 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCES* WE must look out.. America is going ahead, and threatens to outstrip us in a direction altogether unexpected. It has taken the energetic people of the United States not quite eighty years to convince the world of their unapproachable slkill in the art of material development. Another half century may enable them to prove their superiority over contemporary nations, in labours purely intellectual. We have long depended for our cottons on America; we are now beginnitlg to import our novels. Longfellow and others prove that good samples of poems may be introduced with effect into the English miarket. The facts are all very serious. We cannot hope to check the supply by imposing a very heavy duty on the American commodity. But what an argument is here for Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton when he next meets his IIertfordshire farmers, and informs them that he, as well as his constituents, is forced to an unequal contest with the foreigner —that one and all are likely to be crushed under arrangements that bring food for the mind and food for the body across the seas, untaxed to the British consumer! We look back and marvel at the instinctive wisdom with. which America has provided for the intellectual " " The Blithedale Rlomanwce," by Nathaniel HI-Iawthorne, author of "' The Scarlet Letter," " The House of Seven Gables," &c, 248 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCfE. exigencies of her people, during her seventy odd years of independent rule, and shaped her instruction according to the circumstances of her unparalleled position. An intelligent American of the name of Bristed camle among us the other day-entered the University of Cambridge-took a scholarship at Trinity-and subsequently his degree. For five years he was familiar with University life, and at the close of that period he returned to his native country, in order to point out to his fellow-countrymen their great mistake and folly in pursuing an educational course in all respects opposed to that of the ancient seat of learning from which he had just emerged-Bachelor of Arts! Mr. Bristed, as we conceive, took but a narrow view of this great question. It is quite true that, up to the present moment, the higher classes in the United States have contented themselves with such an education as that which Mr, Cobden actually holds to be sufficient for the rising youth of England-viz., the education of the newspaper and the platform; it is equally undeniable that the exactness compelled by the intellectual discipline of our own universities has been wholly wanting in the academies of America, which have reg'arded as the severest studies the more recreative readiiing of the English student; but it is not to be admitted for an instant that America has failed to afford to all classes the very highest amount of mental cultivation possible, regard being had to the age of the country, to the nature of its institutions, and to the essential character, pursuits, and objects of its people. An infant nation is not to be dealt with as you would deal with a country on its legs, grown-up, self-conscious, self-contemplating. Boys MR. IBRISTED. 249 who have to make their own way in the world are taught to read and write, to deal practically with life, and then they are apprenticed. If they have been well instructed and are virtuous, they do well, and eagerly place within reach of their offspring the scholastic advantages denied to their own youth. America is such a boy. It has had during the last seventy years to labour for its existence as no nation ever before laboured, and it has achieved in consequence of its struggles an amount of substantial success which no anticipations could have calculated. It was essential to the well-being of the United States that the masses should not be left, as they are frequently left in more advanced countries, a prey to ignorance and all the vices of which blind ignorance is the parent; and accordingly the masses of America have been well taken care of in the elementary school. It was of vital consequence that the better classes, to whom was given the development of the resources of the nation-material, political, and moral-and to whom, moreover, was intrusted the guidance of a republic that had yet to learn the rudiments of self-government, should be able to write fluently and to talk glibly and forcibly upon every subject of public interest and political bearing, and accordingly the middle classes of America have become great stump orators, and the readiest of public writers. Wealth, power, aristocracy, and the usual results of triumphant industry, are already won. The next steps in the rapid march will not be wanting. We shall have-doubt it not, Mr. Bristed-Americans as interested in Greek particles as Porson himself, mathematicians as acute as Peacock, discoverers as I 1*4., 250 TIlE BLITtIEDALE3 ROMANCE. patient and profound as Adams. The highest order of intellectual cultivation-the acquirement of erudition for its own sake-demands leisure and opportunity such as the possession of wealth and the subsidence of a feverish pursuit of gold, and nothing else, are calculated to afford. The passionate chase after the almighty dollar is interesting enough while it lasts; but when the sport is over and the game is caught, nobler diversions must be found. Oxford and Cambridge will do well to keep the fact in mind. The people who have been incessantly occupied since they fought for and gallantly won their political freedom, in extorting wealth from the soil, in accumulating riches, in clearing dense forests, and planting flourishing cities on their site, in narrowing their continent by gigantic contrivances, and in extending their social and commercial relations by superhuman activity, have still found time to give utterance to the importunate spirit of song in verse, which the land of Milton, of Spenser, and of Shakspeare has known how to appreciate, and to seize the pen of the novelist with a grasp which the lovers of Fielding, Goldsmith, and Scott will be the last to despise. The sons of those who sing so pleasantly now in the grove will assuredly discuss philosophy and science hereafter in the portico. The most striking impression left upon the mind after the perusal of the more recent importations of fiction from America, is that of youthful freshness. There is no mistaking the flavour of the fiuit. It is crisp, pungent, and ripe to a charm. With all its faults of exaggeration, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is a masterpiece of composition, Trhe patihos is of the siimplest ]iaESINESS ANi) ORItGINALITYo 251 and profoundest, the humour is exquisite, and the sway of the narrative is that of an eager, unworn, and fearfully earnest pen. The very idioms recommend themselves by their naturalness and truth. When the American speaker says'"he cannot sleep nights," or "he has travelled some in his time," or uses similar uncouth talk, the ear is gratified rather than offended by the unwonted, but still appropriate phrase. The vigorous freshness of which we speak is still more strikingly characteristic of the novel at present under consideration, and of the other works of fiction produced by the genius of the same author. It is, in this case, a feature so remarkable as to throw every other in the shade, and it is certainly one to which, without offence, we may take leave to call the notice of our British novelists. Three or four distinguished names at once occur to our mind when we ask who are the representatives of "6 fiction" at present among us? That they do so occur is proof sufficient of their pre-eminence: but, if to one and all we might proffer a syllable of advice, it would certainly be that they should seriously note the qualities in virtue of which American writers are now taking the novel-reading world by storm, and securing, even on this side of the Atlantic, without preliminary puff or advertisement of any kind, purchasers of their wares that may be reckoned by thousands, and readers that positively defy computation altogether. The plot of the " Blithedale Romance" may be told in half a dozen lines. In truth, the romance has no plot at all; and it is evident, from a few words of preface that precede the slender narrative, that the writer would have been well content had he been able to 252 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCEo relieve himself entirely of the encumbrance of a story, and to place naked and unadorned before the reader's eye the images of strength and beauty that had possession of his own poetic mind. Mr. Hawthorne's difficulty seems to have been to find in the vast human workshop of America a frame sufficiently picturesque for the reception of his richly coloured pictures. He had highly-wrought visions to communicate, but they must be incorporated in forms of flesh and blood; and it is not easy to throw the halo of romance around flesh and blood engaged in the acquisition of dollars, and in all the material interests of a newly-formed State. Distance-whether of time or space-is one great element of the romantic. As no man is a hero to his valet de chambre, so the doings of our next door neighbour have little to excite the fancy or to strike the imagination. We may elevate into the regions of romance the proceedings of Englishmen five hundred years ago, or the transactions of contemporaries living five hundred miles off; but romance shrinks from association with the men and things against which we are hourly jostling. Such being the case, it was not an easy matter for Mr. Hawthorne to build up a romance, the foundations of which were to have root in his native soil. America has no past, and the present, as already intimated, is too familiar and real for the artist's object. The writer surmounted the apparently insuperable object by a clever device. He wanted " an available footing between fiction and reality," and he found it in Socialism, a phenomenon which, although an absolute creation of the times in which we live, is sufficiently antagonistic to the recognized, ordinary, and practical PERSONAG.So 253 forms of life, to present in itself one at least of the main conditions demanded by the romancer before he can proceed satisfactorily to his labours. Blithedale is a farm in Massachusetts, to which a society of social reformers have retired, with the amiable intention of convincing mankind of the rottenness of the old paths, and of making them thoroughly acquainted with the admirable qualities of the new. As far as we learn, the culture of the soil and the cultivation of the affections constitute the grand process of human regeneration. Equality is the basis of the community, and mutual assistance the tie which binds all the members together. With the bulk of the dwellers at Blithedale the reader has no concern, his interest being concentrated not so much upon the proceedings as upon the development of the characters of four out of the whole number. These are the author himself, described as Coverdale, a poet and enquirer; Ilollingsworth, a stern and exceedingly selfish philanthropist; Zenobia, a fine specimen of passionate womanhood, with lofty intellectual endowments, but little moral restraint; and Priscilla, an exquisitely drawn picture of feminine beauty, tremulous dependence, and devoted love. These four personages constitute the dramatis personzce of the Blithedale Romance, a story actually without incident of any kind, yet so powerfully told withal as to absorb the reader from first to last, and to impress him with the highest opinion of the writer's genius and capabilities. Coverdale is rather an observer than an actor in the Blithedale community. Discontented with the selfishness and worn-out methods of action of people out of 254 TTHE BLITHIEDALE IROMANCE. doors, he gives himself up to the agricultural pursuits of the new society with a vehemence and desperation that would lead you to suppose human perfection had to be wrought, like corn or any other produce, from the bowels of the earth. But, his bodily labour over, his chief delight is in the investigation of the moral natures of his comnpanions, and the dissection of their souls. Nothing can be finer than the recorded results of such delicate inquiry. His analyses are those of a poet, embodying, by the way, a vein of common sense, and revealing an appreciation of the humourous, which are as essential to the formation of the poetic character as the highest and noblest of its elements. IHollingsworth is an intellectual blacksmith, rough hewn from a rock, about thirty years of age, with a great shaggy head, heavy brow, dark complexion, and abundant beard, with no more grace, polish, or courtesy than a well-bred bear, yet in his gentler moods evincing "a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, and gesture which few men could resist, and no woman." Hollingsworth has taken to the social establishment a pet philanthropic theory which has enslaved his mind, and for the sake of which he is prepared to sacrifice himself and everybody else. He has an idea of reforming criminals through an appeal to their higher instincts, and with this view he is solicitous to establish and endow a college for the reception and instruction of the most hardened convicts. Hollingsworth has no sympathy with virtue. If he cannot get hold of the depraved, society shall gain nothing from him. The lesson taught in this character is, that the most intense philanthropy, by the easiest of transitions, degenerates into the most unmitigated selfishness; and ZtNOBIAo 255a it is conveyed with consummate skill. One of the inmates already referred to-Zenobia-is a handsome woman, with a large inheritance. She worships Hollingsworth, who submits to the idolatry in expectation of the lady's dowry, with which he hopes at length to set his mad theory afloat. The lady loses her money, and the philanthropist resigns his mistress. Hollingsworth is picture No. 1, painted by our poet Coverdale; and a more vivid and impressive countenance seldom stares out of canvas to excite the spectator's emotion, and to make him wonder at the rare insights into the human soul vouchsafecld by Providence to the gifted lirner. Zenobia herself is portrait No. 2. Her beauty is deficient in softness and delicacy, but she is remarkably beautiful, nevertheless, and has such an overflow of bloom, health, and vigour, "that a manl might well have fallen in love with her for their sake only." She is stately and imperious; indolent in her quiet moods, but wheni in earnest, alive to her finger tips. Her acquirements are many. She has earned a vast reputation as an authoress, in America, and is well known for the passionate and powerful appeals made to the sterner sex on behalf of the rights of woman. All men bow to her save Hollingsworth, the gloomy blacksmith, to whom she bends. In his presence the unconquerable is subdued. During the first week of her residence on the Blithedale estate, a timid girl called Priscilla is introduced to the society, and made over to her especial care. The girl never throws off the timidity, but she blooms into loveliness, and her nature also clings involuntarily around the rugged man. Priscilla, as it appears, is 256 THE nLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. Zenobia's half-sister, and the more rightful inheritress of the proud woman's worldly fortune. Her shy nature softens the stony heart of Hollingsworth, impenetrable to the more dominant spirit of Zenobia. The revelation is made, and Zenobia commits self-destruction. The vision of Priscilla —the third of Coverdale's portraits-is painted in fairy tints such as serve to afford a gleam of evanescent beauty, too transparent and thin to take its hold in the dull earth. A passage or two from Coverdale's own lips will convey a notion of the feminine sprite:"When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any other girl in the community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster (the farm manager), in a very gruff voice threaten to rivet three horse-shoes around Priscilla's neck and chain her to a post, because she, with some other young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon afterwards I saw old Silas with his brawny arms round Priscilla's waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the oxen to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps in her first efforts to milk a cow; she let her poultry into the garden; she generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; she broke crockery; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; and except with her needle, and those little wooden instruments for purse making, was as unserviceable a member of society as any young lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her; PRISCILLA. 257 yet everybody was kind' to Priscilla-everybody loved her, and laughed at her to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look after her own interests, or fight her battle with the world. Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to a greater accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily. Priscilla's gaiety, moreover, was of a nature that showed me how delicate an instrument she was, and what fragile heartstrings were her nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch, it would require but a stronger one to burst them all asunder. Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason with her, and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember doing so one summer's evening, when we, tired labourers, sat looking on, like Goldsmith's old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young people were at their sports." It is scarcely necessary to state, that the attempts made to reform society at large, by individuals so intensely occupied in their own deeply personal concerns, led to no better results than have been yielded by the well laid plans of more crafty adventurers. At the end of the first summer Coverdale quits the establishment 258 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. in disgust, having been mortally offended by Hollingsworth, who spurns him for his refusal to take part in the great scheme of criminal reform. Not long after his departure, Zenobia throws herself into the water, having witnessed Hollingsworth's preference for Priscilla; and after her death Hollingsworth and Priscilla retire to a small secluded cottage, in which they live separated from the world, the strong man leaning for support upon the mild nature of his partner-the gentle and fragile girl affording in the depths of her feminine heart, shelter, guardianship, and protection. No grand edifice is built for the reformation of criminals; no single criminal finds reformation at the Philanthropist's hands. For the rest of his life he busies himself with a single murderer, the destroyer of Zenobia! We convey no adequate account of this striking work by the slender description of it above given; a work manifestly proceeding from a writer who has drunk freely and fully at the well of English literature, and imbibed the best qualities of the invigorating waters. The Blithedale Romance is the intellectual exercise of a true poet, of one who is eager to read whatever nature has to teach, and who has the faculty of uttering in words the spiritual instruction derived firom his royal mistress. A few evidences of the faculty will speak for themselves. We may open the book at random. Coverdale has left the society and returned to his hotel in Boston. He looks out of the window and sees the backs of houses opposite. His poetic eye discerns more than mere bricks and mortar:"Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and TRUE POETRY. 259 crannies where Nature, like a stray partridge, hides her head among the long established haunts of men! It is likewise to be remarked, as a general rule, that there is far more of the picturesque, more truth to native and characteristic tendencies, a vastly greater suggestiveness, in the back view of a residence, whether in town or country, than in its front. The latter is always artificial; it is meant for the world's eye, and is, therefore, a veil and a concealment. Realities keep in the rear, and put forward an advance guard of humbug and show. The posterior aspect of any old farm house behind which a railway has unexpectedly opened, is so different from that looking upon the immemorial highway, that the spectator gets new ideas of rural life and individuality in the puff or two of steam breath which shoots him past the premises. In a city, the distinction between what is offered to the public and what is kept for the family is certainly not less striking." Coverdale thus notices the growth of Priscilla:-'" After she had been a month or two at Blithedale her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to their airy impulses that their tiptoes barely touch the ground. Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more untamable aud regardless of rule and limit, with an evershifting variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, 260. THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCEo yet with an harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. Young men and boys, on the other hand, play according to recognized law, old traditionary games, permitting no caprices of fancy, but with scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts. For young or old, in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute." Coverdale finds for himself a hermitage on the Blithedale estate:"Long since, in a part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out for myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high upward into the air, among the midmost branches of a white pine tree. A wild grape vine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and twisted itself up into the tree, and after wreathing the entanglement of its tendrils almost around every bough, had caught hold of three or four neighbouring trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft around the stein of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or King Charles! A hollow chamber of rare seclusion had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loops INSPIRATION. 261 holes through the verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortune to spend a honeymoon, I should have thought seriously of inviting my bride up thither, where our next neighbours would have been two orioles in another part of the clump. It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhythm to the breezy symphony that so often stirred among the vine leaves. *- * The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by the hot sun, stole up to my nostrils as if I had been an idol in its niche. Many trees mingled their fragrance into a thousand-fold odour. Possibly there was a sensual influence in the broad light of noon that lay beneath me. It may have been the cause, in part, that I suddenly found myself possessed by a mood of disbelief in moral beauty or heroism, and a conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit the world. Our especial scheme of reform, which, from my observatory, I could take in with the bodily eye, looked so ridiculous that it was impossible not to laugh aloud." Quotations of originality, beauty, and power are endless. The book is overflowing with energy and thought, and if the pitch of the style is a little too stately perhaps for the story, which is certainly of the shadowiest, the loftiness and dignity of the measure bespeak the master, and constitute the natural language of his undoubted inspiration. THE END. A DVE rS- ET. CE EIN S. APPLETONESI POPULAR LIBRARY. ESSAYS FRO i THE LONDON TIMES. Price Fifty Cents. Containing the following Papers: LORD NELSON AND LADY IHAMILTON. RAILIWAY NOVELS. LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY. DRAMA OF THE FRENCHII REVOLUTION. H]IOWARD THE PHILANTHROPIST. ROBERT SOUTHEY. THE AMOURS OF DEAN SWIFT. REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY BY COTTLE. JOHN KEATS. SPORTING IN AFRICA. FRANCIS CHANTREY. ANCIENT EGYPT. Brilliant original Essays, frequently displaying the neat humor of a Sydney Smith, the glowing narrative sweep of a Macaulay. These Essays exhibit a variety of treatment, and are models of their class. The sketch of the French Revolution of 1848, and the pager on the Amours of Dean Swift, are masterpieces in their different ways; the one as a forcibly painted picturesque panorama of startling events, the other as a subtle investigation of character. The story of Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton is an example of pathos, where the interest grows out of a clear, firmly presented statement. The paper on Egypt is an admirable resunm of the results of Antiquarian study in a style at once learned and popular. ADVERTISEMENTS. APPLETONS' POPULAR LIBRARY. RECOLLECTIONS OF A JOURNEY THROUGH TARTARY, THIBET, AND CHINA, DURING THE YEARS 1844, 1845, AND 1846. BRY M. TIUC, MISSIONARY PRIEST OF THE CONGREGATION OF ST. LAZARUS. A CONDENSED TRANSLATION BY MRS. PERCY SINNEoT. Tqo Ie,0umes, 16mo., Fawcy Cloth. Price Fifty Cents each. This narrative, related with great interest and simplicity-adding to ous original stores of information with the piquancy of an Arabian Tale-is the story of a long journey and circuit of Chinese Tartary to the capital of Tl.ibet, with a forced return to the Chinese Territory, performed by a Roman Catholic Missionarly, and his assistant M. Gabet, delegated, upon the break ing up of the Pekin Mission, to the exploration of what is rather hypotheti caily called the Apostolical Vicariat of Mongolia. On their route every where is novelty, danger and excitement-fresh scenery, fresh adiventure, with religions rites and manners and customs, now for the first time so folly described, snd which, it may be remarked, at times appeal nct merely to our love of intelligence, but to our love of the marvellous. The Englis7b Review speaks of " M. IIe's gaphic pages" and remarks, "the labours of Messre. Iuc and Gabet have extended very considerably the existing amount of knowledge of those remote regions of inner Asia." Blackwodcl's Ifagazine, summing up the results of those and other researches in an article "Tibet and the Lamas," says of these missionaries-'; they have given us a most readable and interesting personal narrative of a life of continued hardships, and of frequent suffering and danger in remote r(gions, the routes through which were partly never before recorded in do. tail, and partly never before trodden by any European." The London Daily 2Yeses pronounces M. IIuc " a most agreeable narrao toi. We give our readers a specimen of this really charming book, though it is one which most of our readers wfill be sure to plulrclse and treasure up 0ar themselves. We coulld fill colullns with iamusing extracts, but it is best to send our readers to the bookl itself.