y/
 
 CHARLES DICKENS'S WORKS. 
 
 CROWN EDITION. Price 5s. each Volume. 
 
 l.-THE PICKWICK PAPERS. With 43 Illustrations by 
 
 Seymour and Phiz. 
 2. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 3. UOMBEY AND SON. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 4. DAVID COPPEEFIELD. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 
 5. SKETCHES BY " BOZ." With 40 Illustrations by Geo. 
 
 Cruikshank. 
 6. MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 
 7. THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. With 75 Illustrations by 
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 8. BARNABY RUDGE : A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. With 
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 9, OLIVER TWIST and TALE OF TWO CITIES. With 
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 10. BLEAK HOUSE. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 
 11 LITTLE DORRIT. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz. 
 
 12. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. With 40 Illustrations by 
 
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 13. AMERICAN NOTES; PICTURES FROM ITALY; and 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. With 16 Illustrations 
 
 by Marcus Stone. 
 
 14. CHRISTMAS BOOKS and HARD TIMES. With Illus- 
 trations by Landseer, Maclise, Sianfield, Leech, Doyle, 
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 15. CHRISTMAS STORIES AND OTHER STORIES, in- 
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 Uniform with above in size and binding. 
 
 THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. By John Forster. 
 
 With Portraits and Illustrations. Added at the request of numerous 
 Subscribers. 
 THE DICKENS DICTIONARY : a Key to the Characters and 
 Principal Incidents in the Tales of Charles Dickens. 
 
 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ; 
 NO THOROUGHFARE; THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH 
 PRISONERS. By Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. With 
 Illustrations.
 
 AMERICAN NOTES, 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY, 
 
 AND 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
 
 XUKHUNTt.
 
 AMERICAN NOTES 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY 
 
 AND 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, ld.
 
 SRLE 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 Emigrants Frontispiece 
 
 The Solitary Prisoner 87 
 
 Black and White . . . . . . . . . .108 
 
 The Little "Wife 139 
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Italian Peasants ....... Frontispiece 
 
 Civil and Military ......... 207 
 
 The Chiffonier .... ...... 276 
 
 In the Catacombs ..... .... 304 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage .... Frontispiece 
 
 The Finding of the Body of Rufus ...... 395 
 
 Arthur and Hubert 430 
 
 The Intercession of Queen Pjiilipfa for the Citizens of Calais . -17:2 
 
 Joan of Arc Tending her Flock ....... l'J7 
 
 Queen Margaret and the Robber ....... 511 
 
 Lady Jane Grey Watching the Body of her Husband being Carried 
 
 past her Window after Execution ...... 558 
 
 Cuaig.es I. Taking Leave of his Children . . . . . (JIG
 
 AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 >
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether 
 the influences end tendencies which I distrusted in America, had, at 
 that time, any existence but in my imagination. They can examine 
 for themselves whether there has been anything in tho public career 
 of that country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that those 
 influences and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact, they 
 will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-doing, in any 
 direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had 
 reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such indications, they 
 will consider me altogether mistaken but not wilfully. 
 
 Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, othcrwiso than in favour 
 of tho United States. I have many friends in America, I feel a 
 grateful interest in the country, I hopo and believe it will successfully 
 work out a problem of the highest importance to tho whole human 
 race. To represent me as viewing Amkiuca with ill-nature, coldness, 
 or animosity, is merely to do a very 'Polish thing : which is always a 
 very easy one.
 
 AMERICAN NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GOING AWAY. 
 
 I shall never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths comical 
 astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third of January 
 eigkteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and put my 
 head into, a " state-room " on board the Britannia steam-packet, 
 twelve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax and 
 Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's mails. 
 
 That this state-room had been specially engaged for " Charles 
 Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," was rendered sufficiently clear evon to 
 my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the fact, 
 which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress, 
 spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf. But that 
 this was the state-room concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, 
 and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences for at least four 
 months preceding : that this could by any possibility be that small 
 snug chamber of the imagination, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, 
 with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always foretold 
 would contain at least one little sofa, and which his lady, with a 
 modest yet most magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from 
 the first opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus 
 in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no 
 more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffo 
 could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot) : that this utterly 
 impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, 
 had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and 
 pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a masterly 
 hand, in the highly varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the 
 agent's counting-houso in the city of London : that this room of state, 
 in short, could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of 
 the captain's, invented and put in practice for the better relish and 
 enjoyment of the real state-room presently to be disclosed : theso 
 were truths which I really could not, for the moment, bring my mind 
 at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of 
 horsehair slab, or perch, of which there were two within ; and looked,
 
 6 American Notes. 
 
 without any expression of countenance whatever, at some friends who 
 had come on board with us, and who were crushing their faces into 
 all manner of shapes by endeavouring to squeeze them through the 
 small doorway. 
 
 We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming below, 
 which, but that we were the most sanguine people living, might have 
 prepared us for the worst. The imaginative artist to whom I have 
 already made allusion, has depicted in the same great work, a chamber 
 of almost interminable perspective, furnished, as Mr. Robins would 
 say, in a style of more than Eastern splendour, and filled (but not 
 inconveniently so) with groups of ladies and gentlemen, in the very 
 highest state of enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into the 
 bowels of the ship, we had passed from the deck into a long narrow 
 apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the sides ; 
 having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which three or four 
 chilly stewards were warming their hands ; while on either side, 
 extending down its whole dreary length, was a long, long table, over 
 each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and stuck full of drinking- 
 glasses and cruet-stands, hinted dismally at rolling seas and heavy 
 weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal presentment of this 
 chamber which has since gratified me so much, but I observed that 
 one of our friends who had made the arrangements for our voyage, 
 turned pale on entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote 
 his forehead involuntarily, and said below his breath, " Impossible ! 
 it cannot be ! " or words to that effect. He recovered himself how- 
 ever by a great effort, and after a preparatory cough or two, cried, 
 with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking at the same 
 time round the walls, " Ha ! the breakfast-room, steward eh ? " Wo 
 all foresaw what the answer must be : we knew the agony he suffered. 
 He had often spoken of the saloon ; had taken in and lived upon the 
 pictorial idea ; had usually given us to understand, at home, that to 
 form a just conception of it, ii would be necessary to multiply the 
 size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and then 
 fall short of the reality. When the man in reply avowed the truth ; 
 the blunt, remorseless, naked truth ; " This is the saloon, sir " he 
 actually reeled beneath the blow. 
 
 In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between their 
 else daily communication the formidable barrier of many thousand 
 miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious to cast 
 no other oloud, not even the passing shadow of a moment's disappoint- 
 ment or discomfiture, upon the short interval of happy companionship 
 that yet remained to them in persons so situated, the natural transi- 
 tion from these first surprises was obviously into peals of hearty 
 laughter, and I can report that I, for one, being still seated upon the 
 slab or perch before-mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang 
 again. Thus, in less than two minutes after coming upon it for the 
 first time, wo all by common consent agreed that this state-room was
 
 A Pleasant Stewardess. 7 
 
 the pleasantest and most facetious and capital contrivance possible ; 
 and that to have had it one inch larger, would have been quite a 
 disagreeable and deplorable state of things. And with this ; and 
 with showing how, by very nearly closing the door, and twining in 
 and out like serpents, and by counting the little washing slab as 
 standing-room, we could manage to insinuate four people into it, all 
 at one time ; and entreating each other to observe how very airy it 
 was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which could 
 be kept open all day (weather permitting), and how there was quite 
 a large bull's-eye just over the looking-glass which would render 
 shaving a perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship didn't 
 roll too much) ; we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion that 
 it was rather spacious than otherwise : though I do verily believe 
 that, deducting the two berths, one above the other, than which 
 nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made except coffins, it was 
 no bigger than one of those hackney cabriolets which have the door 
 behind, and shoot their fares out, like sacks of coals, upon the 
 pavement. 
 
 Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all parties, 
 concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in the ladies' 
 cabin just to try the effect. It was rather dark, certainly ; but 
 somebody said, " of course it would be light, at sea," a proposition to 
 which we all assented ; echoing " of course, of course ; " though it 
 would be exceedingly difficult to say why we thought so. I remember, 
 too, when we had discovered and exhausted another topic of con- 
 solation in the circumstance of this ladies' cabin adjoining our state- 
 room, and the consequently immense feasibility of sitting there at all 
 times and seasons, and had fallen into a momentary silence, leaning 
 our faces on our hands and looking at the fire, one of our party said, 
 with the solemn air of a man who had made a discovery, " What a 
 relish mulled claret will have down hero ! " which appeared to strike 
 us all most forcibly ; as though there were something spicy and 
 high-flavoured in cabins, which essentially improved that composition, 
 and rendered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere else. 
 
 There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing clean 
 sheets and tablecloths from the very entrails of the sofas, and from 
 unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made one's head 
 ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a 
 distracting circumstanco to follow Jier proceedings, and to find that 
 every nook and corner and individual piece of furniture was some- 
 thing else besides what it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and 
 deception and place of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was 
 its least useful one. 
 
 God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of 
 January voyages ! God bless her for her clear recollection of tho 
 companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill, and everybody 
 dancing from morning to night, and it was "a run" of twelve days,
 
 8 American Notes. 
 
 and a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and jollity ! All happi- 
 ness he with her for her bright face and her pleasant Scotch tongue, 
 which had sounds of old Home in it for my fellow traveller ; and for 
 her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or I 
 shouldn't he half so fond of her) ; and for the ten thousand small 
 fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing them 
 elaborately together, and patching them up into shape and form and 
 case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show that 
 all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close 
 at hand to their little children left upon the other ; and that what 
 seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, to those who were in 
 the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and whistled at ! Light be 
 her heart, and gay her merry eyes, for years ! 
 
 The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by this time it had 
 expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay- 
 window to view the sea from. So we went upon deck again in high 
 spirits ; and there, everything was in such a state of bustle and active 
 preparation, that the blood quickened its pace, and whirled through 
 one's veins on that clear frosty morning with involuntary mirthfulness. 
 For every gallant ship was riding slowly up and down, and every 
 little boat was splashing noisily in the water ; and knots of people 
 stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of " dread delight " on the 
 far-famed fast American steamer ; and one party of men were " taking 
 in the milk," or, in other words, getting the cow on board ; and 
 another were filling the icehouses to the very throat with fresh 
 provisions ; with butchers'-meat and gardenstufi', pale sucking-pigs, 
 calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry out of all 
 proportion ; and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum 
 yarns ; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold ; and 
 the purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a state of 
 exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' 
 luggage ; and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or 
 uppermost in the mind of anybody, but preparations for this mighty 
 voyage. This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply- 
 curling water, the thin white crust of morning ice upon the decks 
 which crackled with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the lightest 
 tread, was irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we turned 
 and saw from the vessel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous 
 colours, and fluttering by their side the beautiful American banner 
 with its stars and stripes, the long three thousand miles and more, 
 and, longer still, the six whole months of absence, so dwindled and 
 faded, that the ship had gone out and come home again, and it was 
 broad spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool. 
 
 I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance, whether 
 Turtle, and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and all 
 the slight et cetera usually included in an unlimited order for a good 
 dinner especially when it is left to the liberal construction of my
 
 On Board the Tender. 9 
 
 faultless friend, Mr. lladley, of the Adelplri Hotel are peculiarly 
 calculated to sutler a sea-change ; or whether a plain mutton-chop, 
 and a glass or two of sherry, would be less likely of conversion into 
 foreign and disconcerting material. My own opinion is, that whether 
 one is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a sea- 
 voyage, is a matter of little consequence ; and that, to use a common 
 phrase, " it comes to very much the same thing in the end." Be this 
 as it may, I know that the dinner of that day was undeniably perfect ; 
 that it comprehended all these items, and a great many more ; and 
 that we all did ample justice to it. And I know too, that, bating a 
 certain tacit avoidance of any allusion to to-morrow ; such as may be 
 supposed to prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a sensitive 
 prisoner who is to be hanged next morning ; we got on very well, and, 
 all things considered, were merry enough. 
 
 When the morning the morning came, and we met at breakfast, 
 it was curious to see how eager we all were to prevent a moment's 
 pause in the conversation, and how astoundingly gay everybody was : 
 the forced spirits of each member of the little party having as much 
 likeness to his natural mirth, as hot-house peas at five guineas the 
 quart, resemble in flavour the growth of the dews, and air, and rain of 
 Heaven. But as one o'clock, the hour for going aboard, drew near, 
 Ihis volubility dwindled away by little and little, despite the most 
 persevering eftbrts to the contrary, until at last, the matter being now 
 quite desperate, we threw oft' all disguise ; openly speculated upon 
 where we should be this time to-morrow, this time next day, and so 
 forth ; and entrusted a vast number of messages to those who intended 
 returning to town that night, which were to be delivered at home and 
 elsewhere without fail, within the very shortest possible space of time 
 after the arrival of the railway train at Eiiston Square. And commis- 
 sions and remembrances do so crowd upon one at such a time, that we 
 were still busied with this employment when we found ourselves 
 fused, as it were, into a dense conglomeration of passengers and 
 passengers' friends and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on 
 the deck of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting oft' to the 
 packet, which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and was 
 now lying at her moorings in tho river. 
 
 And there she is ! all eyes are turned to where she lies, dimly dis- 
 cernible through the gathering fog of the early winter afternoon ; every 
 finger is pointed in the same direction ; and murmurs of interest and 
 admiration as " How beautiful she looks ! " " How trim she is ! " 
 are heard on every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on 
 one side and bis hands in his pockets, who has dispensed so much 
 consolation by inquiring with a yawn of another gentleman whether 
 he is "going across" as if it were a ferry even he condescends to 
 look that way, and nod his heart, as who should say, "No mistake; 
 alxmt thdt : " and not even the sage Lord Burleigh in his nod, included 
 half so much as this lazy gentleman of might who has made tho
 
 IO American Notes. 
 
 passage (as everybody on board has found out already ; it's impossible 
 to say now) thirteen times without a single accident ! There is 
 another passenger very much wrapped-up, who has been frowned 
 down by the rest, and morally trampled upon and crushed, for pre- 
 suming to inquire with a timid interest how long it is since the poor 
 President went down. Ho is standing close to the lazy gentleman, 
 and says with a faint smile that he believes She is a very strong 
 Ship ; to which the lazy gentleman, looking first in his questioner's 
 eye and then very hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly and 
 ominously, that She need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman instantly 
 falls very low in the popular estimation, and the passengers, with 
 looks of defiance, whisper to each other that he is an ass, and an 
 impostor, and clearly don't know anything at all about it. 
 
 But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red funnel 
 is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious intentions. Packing- 
 cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, are already passed from 
 hand to hand, and hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The 
 officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway handing the passengers 
 up the side, and hurrying the men. In five minutes' time, the little 
 steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by 
 its late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be 
 met with by the dozen in every nook and corner : swarming down 
 below with their own baggage, and stumbling over other people's ; 
 disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating a 
 most horrible confusion by having to turn out again ; madly bent upon 
 opening locked doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds of out- 
 of-the-way places where there is no thoroughfare ; sending wild 
 stewards, with elfin hair, to and fro upon the breezy decks on un- 
 intelligible errands, impossible of execution : and in short, creating 
 the most extraordinary and bewildering tumult. In the midst of all 
 this, the lazy gentleman, who seems to have no luggage of any kind 
 not so much as a friend, even lounges up and down the hurricane 
 deck, coolly puffing a cigar ; and, as this unconcerned demeanour 
 again exalts him in the opinion of those who have leisure to observe 
 his proceedings, every time he looks up at the masts, or down at the 
 decks, or over the side, they look there too, as wondering whether he 
 sees anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he should, he 
 will have the goodness to mention it. 
 
 What have we here ? The captain's boat ! and yonder the captain 
 himself. Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought 
 to be ! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fellow ; with a ruddy 
 face, which is a letter of invitation to shake him by both hands at 
 once : and with a clear, blue honest eye, that it does one good to see 
 one's sparkling image in. " Ring the bell ! " " Ding, ding, ding ! " 
 the very bell is in a hurry. " Now for the shore who's for the 
 shore ? " " These gentlemen, I am sorry to say." They are away, 
 and never said, Good b'ye. Ah ! now they wave it from the little
 
 Afloat. 1 1 
 
 boat. " Good b'ye ! Good b'ye ! " Three cheers from them ; three 
 more from us ; three more from them : and they are gone. 
 
 To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hundred times ! This 
 waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If wo could have 
 gone off in the midst of that last burst, we should have started 
 triumphantly : but to lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, 
 neither staying at home nor going abroad, is letting one gradually 
 down into the very depths of dulness and low spirits. A speck in the 
 mist, at last ! That's something. It is tho boat we wait for ! That's 
 more to the purpose. The captain appears on the paddle-box with his 
 speaking trumpet ; the officers take their stations ; all hands are on 
 the alert ; the flagging hopes of the passengers revive ; the cooks pause 
 in their savoury work, and look out with faces full of interest. The 
 boat comes alongside ; the bags are dragged in anyhow, and flung down 
 for the moment anywhere. Three cheers more : and as the first one 
 riugs upon our ears, the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just 
 received the breath of life ; the two great wheels turn fiercely round 
 for the first time ; and the noble ship, with wind and tide astern, 
 breaks proudly through the lashed and foaming water. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE PASSAGE OUT. 
 
 We all dined together that day ; and a rather formidable party we 
 were : no fewer than eighty-six strong. The vessel being pretty deep 
 in the water, with all her coals on board and so many passengers, and 
 the weather being calm and quiet, there was but little motion ; so that 
 before the dinner was half over, even those passengers who were most 
 distrustful of themselves plucked up amazingly ; and those who in 
 the morning had returned to the universal question, " Are you a good 
 sailor? " a very decided negativo, now either parried the inquiry with 
 the evasive reply, " Oh ! I suppose I'm no worso than anybody else ; " 
 or, reckless of all moral obligations, answered boldly " Yes : " and 
 with somo irritation too, as though they would add, " I should like to 
 know what you see in me, sir, particularly, to justify suspicion ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, I could 
 not but observe that very few remained long over their wine ; and that 
 everybody had an unusual love of the open air ; and that the favourito 
 and most coveted seats were invariably those nearest to the door. The 
 tea-table, too, was by no means as well attended as the dinner-table ; 
 and there was less whist-playing than might have been expected. 
 Still, with the exception of one lady, who had retired with some pre- 
 cipitation at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted to the finest
 
 12 American Notes. 
 
 cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very green capers, 
 there were no invalids as yet ; and walking, and smoking, and drinking 
 of brandy-and-water (but always in the open air), went on with un- 
 abated spirit, until eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when " turning in " 
 no sailor of seven hours' experience talks of going to bed became 
 the order of the night. The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the 
 decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the whole human freight was 
 stowed away below, excepting a very few stragglers, like myself, who 
 were probably, like me, afraid to go there. 
 
 To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very striking time on 
 shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long worn off, it 
 never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for me. The 
 gloom through which the great black mass holds its direct and certain 
 course ; the rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly seen ; the broad, 
 white, glistening track, that follows in the vessel's wake ; the men on 
 the look-out forward, who would be scarcely visible against the dark 
 sky, but for their blotting out some score of glistening stars ; the 
 helmsman at the wheel, with the illuminated card before him, shining, 
 a speck of light amidst the darkness, like something sentient and of 
 Divine intelligence ; the melancholy sighing of the wind through 
 block, and rope, and chain ; the gleaming forth of light from every 
 crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though the 
 ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst through any outlet, 
 wild with its resistless power of death and ruin. At first, too, and 
 even when the hour, and all the objects it exalts, have come to be 
 familiar, it is difficult, alone and tl ughtful, to hold them to their 
 TKop r shapes and forms. They change with the wandering fancy; 
 i ssume the semblance of things left far away ; put on the well- 
 remembered aspect of favourite places dearly loved ; and even people 
 them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms ; figures so like their 
 usual occupants, that they have startled me by their reality, which far 
 exceeded, as it seemed to me, all power of mine to conjure up the 
 absent ; have, many and many a time, at such an hour, grown suddenly 
 out of objects with whose real look, and use, and purpose, I was as 
 well acquainted as with my own two hands. 
 
 My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold, however, on 
 this particular occasion, I crept below at midnight. It was not exactly 
 comfortable below. It was decidedly close ; and it was impossible to 
 be unconscious of the presence of that extraordinary compound of 
 strange smells, which is to be found nowhere but on board ship, and 
 which is such a subtle perfume that it seems to enter at every pore of 
 the skin, and whisper of the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of 
 them my own) lay already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and one 
 lady's maid (my lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor, execrating 
 her destiny, and pounding her curl-papers among the stray boxes. 
 Everything sloped the wrong way: which in itself was an aggravation 
 scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open, a moment before, in
 
 A Heavy Sea and a Head-wind. 13 
 
 tho bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I turned to shut it, it was 
 on tho summit of a lofty eminence. Now every plank and timber 
 creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker-work ; and now crackled, 
 like an enormous fire of the driest possible twigs. There was nothing 
 for it but bed ; so I went to bed. 
 
 It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a tolerably 
 fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't 
 know what) a good deal ; and reeled on deck a little ; drank cold 
 brandy-and-water with an unspeakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit 
 pcrseveringly : not ill, but going to be. 
 
 It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by a 
 dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether there's 
 auy danger. I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The water-jug is 
 pluugiug and leaping like a lively dolphin ; all the smaller articles 
 aro afloat, except my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high 
 and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring 
 into the air, and behold the looking-glass, which is nailod to the wall, 
 sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely 
 disappears, and a now one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to 
 comprehend that the state-room is standing on its head. 
 
 Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compatible 
 with this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before one can say 
 " Thank Heaven ! " she wrongs again. Before one can cry she is 
 wrong, she seems to have started forward, and to be a creaturo 
 actually running of its own accord, with broken knees and failing 
 legs, through every variety of hole and pitfall, and stumbling con- 
 stantly. Before one can so much as wonder, she takes a high leap 
 into the air. Before she has well done that, she takes a deep divo 
 into the water. Before she has gained the surface, she throws a 
 summerset. The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. 
 And so she goes on staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, 
 jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking : and going through 
 all these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes altogether : 
 until one feels disposed to roar for mercy. 
 
 A steward passes. "Steward!" "Sir?" " What is the matter ? 
 what do you call this ? " " Rather a heavy sea on, sir, and a head- 
 wind." 
 
 A head- wind ! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, with 
 fifteen thousand Samsons in ono bent upon driving her back, and 
 hitting her exactly between tho eyes whenever she attempts to advanco 
 an inch. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of 
 her huge body swollen and bursting under this maltreatmont, sworn 
 to go on or die. Imagino the wind howling, tho sea roaring, the rain 
 beating : all in furious array against her. Picturo the sky both dark 
 and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with tho waves, making 
 another ocean in tho air. Add to all this, tho clattering on deck and 
 down below ; the tread of hurried feet ; the loud hoarso shouts of
 
 14 American Notes. 
 
 seamen ; the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers ; with, 
 every now and then, the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, 
 with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault ; 
 and there is the head-wind of that January morning. 
 
 I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the 
 ship : such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down 
 of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens 
 of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating 
 sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy passengers 
 who were too ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them : for 
 although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't 
 think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration 
 of which term, 1 lay down again, excessively sea-sick. 
 
 Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the 
 term : I wish I had been : but in a form which I have never seen or 
 heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay 
 there, all the clay long, quite coolly and contentedly ; with no sense of 
 weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or take the air ; 
 with no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that 
 I think I can remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind 
 of lazy joy of fiendish delight, if anything -;o lethargic can bo 
 dignified with the title in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to 
 me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an 
 example, I should say that I was exactly in the condition of the elder 
 Mr. Willet, after the incursion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell. 
 Nothing would have surprised me. If, in the momentary illumination 
 of any ray of intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of 
 thoughts of Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had 
 come into that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and, 
 apologising for being damp through walking in the sea, had handed 
 me a letter directed to myself, in familiar characters, I am certain I 
 should not have felt one atom of astonishment : I should have been 
 perfectly satisfied, If Neptune himself had walked in, with a toasted 
 shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the event as one of 
 the very commonest everyday occurrences. 
 
 Once once I found myself on deck. I don't know how I got 
 there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was ; and com- 
 pletely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of boots such 
 as no weak man in his senses could ever have got into. I found 
 myself standing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon me, 
 holding on to something. I don't know what. I think it was the 
 boatswain : or it may have been the pump : or possibly the cow. I 
 can't say how long I had been there ; whether a day or a minute. I 
 recollect trying to think about something (about anything in the 
 wholo wide world, I was not particular) without the smallest effect. 
 I could not even make out which was the sea, and which the sky, for 
 the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about in all directions.
 
 Sea-sick. 15 
 
 Even in that incapable state, however, I recognised the lazy gentleman 
 standing before me : nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue, with an 
 oilskin hat. But I was too imbecile, although I knew it to be be, to 
 separate him from his dress ; and tried to call him, I remember, Pilot. 
 After another interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, 
 and recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and 
 fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking- 
 glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful 
 influence of his face, that I tried to smile : yes, even then I tried to 
 smile. I saw by bis gesture that he addressed me ; but it was a long 
 time before I could make out that he remonstrated against my stand- 
 ing up to my knees in water as I was ; of course I don't know wby. 
 I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only point to my boots 
 or wherever I supposed my boots to be and say in a plaintive voice, 
 " Cork soles : " at the same time endeavouring, I am told, to sit down 
 in the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and for the time a 
 maniac, he humanely conducted me below. 
 
 There I remained until I got better: suffering, whenever I was 
 recommended to eat anything, an amount of anguish only second to 
 that which is said to bo endured by the apparently drowned, in tho 
 process of restoration to life. One gentleman on board had a letter of 
 introduction to me from a mutual friend in London. He sent it below 
 with his card, on the morning of the head-wind ; and I was long 
 troubled with the idea that he might be up, and well, and a hundred 
 times a day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined 
 him one of those cast-iron images I will not call them men who 
 ask, with red faces, and lusty voices, what sea-sickness means, and 
 whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be. This was very 
 torturing indeed ; and I don't think I ever felt such perfect gratifica- 
 tion and gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard from the ship's 
 doctor that he had been obliged to put a large mustard poultice on 
 this very gentleman's stomach. I date my recovery from the receipt 
 of that intelligence. 
 
 It was materially assisted though, I have no doubt, by a heavy gale 
 of wind, which came slowly up at sunset, when we were about ton 
 days out, and raged with gradually increasing fury until morning, 
 saving that it lulled for an hour a little bofore midnight. There was 
 something in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in the after 
 gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful and tremendous, thai 
 its bursting into full violenco was almost a relief. 
 
 The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shsill 
 never forget. " Will it ever be worse than this? " was a question I 
 had often heard asked, when everything was sliding and bumping 
 about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the 
 possibility of anything afloat being more disturbed, without toppling 
 over and going down. But what tho agitation of a steam-vessel is, on 
 a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most
 
 1 6 American Notes. 
 
 vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her 
 side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, spring- 
 ing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes 
 her with the noise of a hundred groat guns, and hurls her hack that 
 she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then, with 
 a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded 
 into madness, to be beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and 
 leaped on by the angry sea that thunder, lightning, bail, and rain, 
 and w r ind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery that every 
 plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in 
 tho great ocean its howling voice is nothing. To say that all is 
 grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. 
 Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream 
 can call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and passion. 
 
 And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a 
 situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as strong a 
 sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help laughing 
 than I can at any other comical incident, happening under circum- 
 stances the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight wc 
 shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst open 
 the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' 
 cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch 
 lady who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captain 
 by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to have a 
 steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast, and to 
 the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. 
 They and the handmaid before-mentioned, being in such ecstasies of 
 fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought 
 myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial ; and nothing better 
 occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured 
 a tumbler-full without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit 
 without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a 
 long sofa a fixture extending entirely across the cabin- where they 
 clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned. 
 When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to 
 administer it with many consolatory expressions to the nearest sufferer, 
 what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other 
 end ! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once 
 more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship 
 giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again ! I suppose I 
 dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, 
 without reaching them once ; and by the time I did catch them, the 
 brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a teaspoon- 
 ful. To complete the group, it is necessary to recognise in this 
 disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale from sea-sickness, who 
 had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, last, at Liverpool : and 
 whose only article of dress (linen not included) were a pair of dread-
 
 Ship rolling rather. 17 
 
 bought trousers ; a blue jacket, formerly admired upon the Thames at 
 Richmond ; no stockings ; and one slipper. 
 
 Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morning ; 
 which made bed a practical joke, and getting up, by any process short 
 of falling out, an impossibility ; I say nothing. But anything like the 
 utter dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I literally 
 " tumbled up " on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky were all 
 of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no extent of 
 prospect even over the dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran 
 high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed 
 from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been imposing 
 and stupendous, no doubt ; but seen from the wet and rolling decks, 
 it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last 
 night the life-boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a 
 walnut-shell ; and there it hung dangling in the air : a mere faggot 
 of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn 
 sheer away. The wheels were exposed and bare : and they whirled 
 and dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney, white 
 with crusted salt ; topmasts struck ; stormsails set ; rigging all 
 knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping : a gloomier picture it would be 
 hard to look upon. 
 
 I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' cabin, 
 where, besides ourselves, there wero only four other passengers. 
 First, the little Scotch lady before mentioned, on her way to join her 
 husband at New York, who had settled there three years before. 
 Secondly and thirdly, an honest young Yorkshireman, connected with 
 some American house ; domiciled in that same city, and carrying 
 thither his beautiful young wife to whom he had been married but a 
 fortnight, and who was the fairest specimen of a comely English 
 country girl I have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly, and lastly, another 
 couple : newly married too, if one might judge from the endearments 
 they frequently interchanged : of whom I know no more than that 
 they were rather a mysterious, run-away kind of couple ; that the lady 
 had great personal attractions also ; and that the gentleman carried 
 more guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, wore a shooting-coat, and 
 had two great dogs on board. On further consideration, I remembor 
 that he tried hot roast pig and bottled ale as a cure for sea-sickness; 
 and that he took these remedies (usually in bed) day after day, with 
 astonishing perseverance. I may add, for the information of the 
 curious, that they decidedly failed. 
 
 The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprecedented] y 
 bad, we usually straggled into this cabin, more or less faint and 
 miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay down on the sofas to 
 recover ; during which interval, the captain would look in to com- 
 municate the state of the wind, the moral certainty of its changing 
 to-morrow (the weather is always going to improve to-morrow, at sea), 
 the vessel's rate of sailing, and so forth. Observations there were
 
 1 8 American Notef. 
 
 none to tell us of, for there was no sun to take them by. But a 
 description of one day will serve for all the rest. Here it is. 
 
 The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if the place 
 be light enough ; and if not, we doze and talk alternately. At one, a 
 bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of 
 baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples ; and plates of pig's face, 
 cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot collops. 
 We fall to upon these dainties ; eat as much as we can (we have great 
 appetites now) ; and are as long as possible about it. If the fire will 
 burn (it will sometimes) we are pretty cheerful. If it won't, we all 
 remark to each other that it's very cold, rub our hands, cover ourselves 
 with coats and cloaks, and lie down again to doze, talk, and read (pro- 
 vided as aforesaid), until dinner-time. At five, another bell rings, 
 and the stewardess reappears with another dish of potatoes boiled 
 this time and store of hot meat of various kinds : not forgetting the 
 roast pig, to be taken medicinally. We sit down at table again (rather 
 more cheerfully than before) ; prolong the meal with a rather mouldy 
 dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges ; and drink our wine and brandy- 
 and-water. The bottles and glasses are still upon the table, and the 
 oranges and so forth are rolling about according to their fancy and 
 the ship's way, when the doctor comes down, by special nightly 
 invitation, to join our evening rubher : immediately on whose arrival 
 we make a party at whist, and as it is a rough night and the cards 
 will not lie on the cloth, we put the tricks in our pockets as we take 
 them. At whist we remain with exemplary gravity (deducting a 
 short time for tea and toast) until eleven o'clock, or thereabouts; 
 when the captain comes down again, in a sou'-wester hat tied under 
 his chin, and a pilot-coat : making the ground wet where he stands. 
 By this time the card-playing i3 over, and the bottles and glasses are 
 again upon the table ; and after an hour's pleasant conversation about 
 the ship, the passengers, and things in general, the captain (who 
 never goes to bed, and is never out of humour) turns up his coat 
 collar for the deck again ; shakes hands all round ; and goes laughing 
 out into the weather as merrily as to a birthday party. 
 
 As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. This 
 passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un 
 in the saloon yesterday ; and that passenger drinks his bottle of 
 champagne every day, and how he does it (being only a clerk), nobody 
 knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that there never was 
 such times meaning weather and four good hands are ill, and have 
 given in, dead beat. Several berths are full of water, and all the 
 cabins are leaky. The ship's cook, secretly swigging damaged 
 whiskey, has been found drunk ; and has been played upon by the 
 fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have fallen down- 
 stairs at various dinner-times, and go about with plasters in various 
 places. The baker is ill, and so is the pastry-cook. A new man, 
 horribly indisposed, has been required to fill the place of the latter
 
 Aground. jq 
 
 officer ; and lias been propped and jammed up with empty casks in a 
 little Louse upon deck, and commanded to roll out pie-crust, which 
 ho protests (being highly bilious) it is death to him to look at. 
 News ! A dozen inurders on shore would lack the interest of these 
 slight incidents at sea. 
 
 Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were 
 running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth night, 
 with little wind and a bright moon indeed, we had made the Light 
 at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge when suddenly the 
 ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on deck took 
 place of course ; the sides were crowded in an instant ; and for a few 
 minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover 
 of disorder would desire to see. The passengers, and guns, and water- 
 casks, and other heavy matters, being all huddled together aft, how- 
 ever, to lighten her in the head, she was soon got off; and after some 
 driving on towards an uncomfortable line of objects (whose vicinity 
 had been announced very early in the disaster by a loud cry of 
 " Breakers a-hcad ! ") and much backing of paddles and heaving of 
 the lead into a constantly decreasing depth of water, wo dropped 
 anchor in a strange outlandish-looking nook which nobody on board 
 could recognise, although there was land all about us, and so close 
 that we could plainly see the waving branches of the trees. 
 
 It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the dean 
 stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unexpected 
 stoppage of the- engine which had been clanking and blasting in our 
 ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the look of blank astonish- 
 ment expressed in every face : beginning with the officers, tracing it 
 through all the passengers, and descending to the very stokers and 
 furnacemen, who emerged from below, one by one, and clustered 
 together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the engine-room, 
 comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up a few rockets and 
 firing signal guns in the hope of being hailed from the land, or at 
 least of seeing a light but without any other sight or sound present- 
 ing itself it was determined to send a boat on shore. It was amusing 
 to observe how very kind some of the passengers were, in volunteering 
 to go ashore in this same boat : for the general good, of course : not 
 by any means because they thought the ship in an unsafe position, or 
 contemplated the possibility of her heeling over in case the tide were 
 running out. Nor was it less amusing to remark how desperately 
 unpopular the poor pilot became in one short minute. He had had 
 his passage out from Liverpool, and during the wholo voyage had 
 been quite a notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker 
 of jokes. Yet here were the very men who had laughed the loudest 
 at his jests, now flourishing their fists in his face, loading him with 
 imprecations, and defying him to his teeth as a villain! 
 
 The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue lights on 
 board ; and in less than an hour returned : the officer in command
 
 20 American Notes. 
 
 bringing with him a tolerably tall young tree, which he had plucked 
 up by the roots, to satisfy certain distrustful passengers whose minds 
 misgave them that they were to be imposed upon and shipwrecked, 
 and who would on no other terms believe that he had been ashore, or 
 had done anything but fraudulently row a little way into the mist, 
 specially to deceive them and compass their deaths. Our captain had 
 foreseen from the first that we must be in a place called the Eastern 
 passage ; and so we were. It was about the last place in the world in 
 which we had any business or reason to be, but a sudden fog, and 
 some error on the pilot's part, were the cause. We were surrounded 
 by banks, and rocks, and shoals of all kinds, but had happily drifted, 
 it seemed, upon the only safe speck that was to be found thereabouts. 
 Eased by this report, and by the assurance that the tide was past the 
 ebb, we turned in at three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise above 
 hurried me on deck. When I had left it over-night, it was dark, 
 foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now, we 
 were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven miles 
 an hour : our colours flying gaily ; our crew rigged out in their 
 smartest clothes ; our officers in uniform again ; the sun shining as on 
 a brilliant April day in England ; the land stretched out on either 
 side, streaked with light patches of snow ; white wooden houses ; 
 people at their doors ; telegraphs working ; flags hoisted ; wharfs 
 appearing ; ships ; quays crowded with people ; distant noises ; 
 shouts ; men and boys running down steep places towards the pier ; 
 all more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can 
 paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces ; got 
 alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting and straining of 
 cables ; darted, a score of us along the gangway, almost as soon as it 
 was thrust out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship and 
 leaped upon the firm glad earth again ! 
 
 I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it 
 had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I cai*ried away with me a 
 most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have 
 preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came 
 home, without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and 
 once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day. 
 
 It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and 
 General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the 
 commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England were so 
 closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it was 
 like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope. 
 The governor, as her Majesty's representative, delivered what may be 
 called the Speech from the Throne. He said what he had to say 
 manfully and well. The military band outside the building struck 
 up " God save the Queen " with great vigour before his Excellency 
 had quite finished ; the people shouted ; the in's rubbed their hands ;
 
 Arrival at Boston. 2r 
 
 the out's shook their heads ; tho Government party said there never 
 was such a good speech ; the Opposition declared there never was such 
 a had one ; the Speaker and members of tho House of Assembly with- 
 drew from the bar to say a great deal among themselves and do a 
 little ; and, in short, everything went on, and promised to go on, just 
 as it does at home upon the like occasions. 
 
 The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being com- 
 manded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several streets 
 of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to the water- 
 side, and are intersected by cross streets running parallel with the 
 river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly 
 supplied ; and provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being 
 unusually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was no 
 sleighing : but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and by- 
 places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decora- 
 tions, might have " gone on " without alteration as triumphal cars in 
 a melo-drama at Astley's. The day was uncommonly fine ; the air 
 bracing and healthful ; the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriving, 
 and industrious. 
 
 We lay there seven hours, to deliver and exchange the mails. At 
 length, having collected all our bags and all our passengers (including 
 two or three choice spirits, who, having indulged too freely in oysters 
 and champagne, were found lying insensible on their backs in un- 
 frequented streets), the engines were again put in motion, and we 
 stood off for Boston. 
 
 Encountering squally weather again in the Bay of Fundy, we 
 tumbled and rolled about as usual all that night and all next day. On 
 the next afternoon, that is to say, on Saturday, the twenty-second of 
 January, an American pilot-boat came alongside, and soon afterwards 
 the Britannia steam-packet, from Liverpool, eighteen days out, was 
 telegraphed at Boston. 
 
 Tho indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes, as the 
 first patches of American soil peeped like molehills from the green 
 sea, and followed them, as they swelled, by slow and almost imper- 
 ceptible degrees, into a continuous line of coast, can hardly be exag- 
 gerated. A sharp keen wind blow dead against us ; a hard frost 
 prevailed on shore ; and the cold was most severe. Yet the air was 
 so intensely clear, and dry, and bright, that tho temperature was not 
 only endurable, but delicious. 
 
 How I remained on deck, staring about me, until we came alongside 
 the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes as Argus, I should 
 Lave had them all wide open, and all employed on new objects aro 
 topics which I will not prolong this chapter to discuss. Neither will 
 I more than hint at my foreigner-like mistake, in supposing that a 
 party of most active persons, who scrambled on board at the peril of 
 their lives as we approached the wharf, were newsmen, answering to 
 that industrious class at home ; whereas, despite the leathern wallets
 
 22 American Notes. 
 
 of news slung about the necks of some, and the broad sheets in the 
 hands of all, they were Editors, who boarded ships in person (as one 
 gentleman in a worsted comforter informed me), " because they liked 
 the excitement of it." Suffice it in this place to say, that one of theso 
 invaders, with a ready courtesy for which I thank him here most 
 gratefully, went on before to order rooms at the hotel ; and that when 
 I followed, as I soon did, I found myself rolling through the long 
 passages with an involuntary imitation of the gait of Mr. T. P. Cooke, 
 in a new nautical melo-drama. 
 
 " Dinner, if you please," said I to the waiter. 
 
 " When ? " said the waiter. 
 
 " As quick as possible," said I. 
 
 " Eight away ? " said the waiter. 
 
 After a moment's hesitation, I answered " No," at hazard. 
 
 " Not right away ? " cried the waiter, with an amount of surprise 
 that made me start. 
 
 I looked at him doubtfully, and returned, " No ; I would rather 
 have it in this private room. I like it very much." 
 
 At this, I really thought the waiter must have gone out of his 
 mind : as I believe he would have done, but for the- interposition of 
 another man, who whispered in his ear, t: Directly." 
 
 " Well ! and that's a fact ! " said the waiter, looking helplessly at 
 me : " Eight away." 
 
 I saw now that " Eight away " and " Directly " were one and the 
 same thing. So I reversed my previous answer, and sat down to 
 dinner in ten minutes afterwards ; and a capital dinner it was. 
 
 The hotel (a very excellent one) is called the Tremont House. It 
 has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and passages than I can 
 remember, or the reader would believe. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
 In all the public establishments of America, the utmost courtsey 
 prevails. Most of our Departments are susceptible of considerable 
 improvement in this respect, but the Custom-house above all others 
 would do well to take example from the United States and render 
 itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile 
 rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently contemptible ; but there 
 is a surly boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all 
 persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that 
 keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling about its gates.
 
 A Bright Place. 23 
 
 When I lauded iD America, I could not help being strongly im- 
 pressed with tho contrast their Custom-house presented, and the 
 attention, politeness, and good humour with which its officers dis- 
 charged their duty. 
 
 As we did not land at Boston, in consequence of some detention at 
 tho wharf, until after dark, I received my first impressions of the city 
 in walking down to the Custom-house on tho morning after our 
 arrival, which was Sunday. I am afraid to say, by the way, how 
 many offers of pews and seats in church for that morning were mado 
 to us, by formal note of invitation, before we had half finished our 
 first dinner in America, but if I may bo allowed to make a moderate 
 guess, without going into nicer calculation, I should say that at least 
 as many sittings were proffered us, as would have accommodated a 
 score or two of grown-up families. The number of creeds and forms 
 of religion to which the pleasure of our company was requested, was 
 in very fair proportion. 
 
 Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, to go to 
 church that day, we were compelled to decline these kindnesses, ono 
 and all ; and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight of hearing 
 Dr. Channing, who happened to preach that morning for the first time 
 in a very long interval. I mention the name of this distinguished 
 and accomplished man (with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure 
 of becoming personally acquainted), that I may have the gratification 
 of recording my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his high 
 abilities and character ; and for the bold philanthropy with which he 
 has ever opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul disgrace 
 Slavery. 
 
 To return to Boston. When I got into the streets upon this 
 Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and 
 gay ; the signboards were painted in such gaudy colours ; the gilded 
 letters were so very golden ; the bricks were so very red, tho stono 
 was so very white, the blinds and area railings were so very green, 
 the knobs and plates upon the street doors so marvellously bright and 
 twinkling; and all so slight and unsubstantial in appearance that 
 every thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a panto- 
 mime. It rarely happens in the business streets that a tradesman, if 
 I may venture to call anybody a tradesman, where everybody is a 
 merchant, resides above his store ; so that many occupations are often 
 carried on in one house, and the whole front is covered with boards and 
 inscriptions. As I walked along, I kept glancing up at these boards, 
 confidently expecting to see a few of them change into something ; and 
 I never turned a cornor suddenly without looking out for the clown and 
 pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, wero hiding in a doorway or behind 
 some pillar closo at hand. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I dis- 
 covered immediately that they lodged (they are always looking after 
 lodgings in a pantomime) at a very small clockmaker's ono story high, 
 near the hotel; which, in addition to various symbols and devices,
 
 24 American Notes. 
 
 almost covering the whole front, bad a great dial hanging out to be 
 jumped through, of course. 
 
 The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial-looking tban 
 the city. The white wooden houses (so white that it makes one wink 
 to look at them), with their green jalousie blinds, are so sprinkled 
 and dropped about in all directions, without seeming to have any root 
 at all in the ground ; and the small churches and chapels are so prim, 
 and bright, and highly varnished ; that I almost believed the whole 
 affair could be taken up piecemeal like a child's toy, and crammed 
 into a little box. 
 
 The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to 
 impress all strangers very favourably. The private dwelling-houses 
 are, for the most part, large and elegant ; the shops extremely good ; 
 and the public buildings handsome. The State House is built upon 
 the summit of a hill, which rises gradually at first, and afterwards by 
 a steep ascent, almost from the water's edge. In front is a green 
 enclosure, called the Common. The site is beautiful : and from 
 the top there is a charming panoramic view of the whole town and 
 neighbourhood. In addition to a variety of commodious offices, it 
 contains two handsome chambers ; in one the House of Representatives 
 of the State hold their meetings : in the other, the Senate. Such pro- 
 ceedings as I saw here, were conducted with perfect gravity and 
 decorum ; and were certainly calculated to inspire attention and 
 respect. 
 
 There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement and 
 superiority of Boston, is referable to the quiet influence of the 
 University of Cambridge, which is within three or four miles of the 
 city. The resident professors at that university are gentlemen of 
 learning and varied attainments ; and are, without one exception that 
 I can call to mind, men who would shed a grace upon, and do honour 
 to, any society in the civilised world. Many of the resident gentry 
 in Boston and its neighbourhood, and I think I am not mistaken in 
 adding, a large majority of those who are attached to the liberal pro- 
 fessions there, have been educated at this same school. Whatever 
 the defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no pre- 
 judices ; rear no bigots ; dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions ; 
 never interpose between the people and their improvement ; exclude 
 no man because of his religious opinions ; above all, in their whole 
 course of study and instruction, recognise a world, and a broad one 
 too, lying beyond the college walls. 
 
 It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe the almost 
 imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrought by this institution 
 among the small community of Boston ; and to note at every turn the 
 humanising tastes and desires it has engendered ; the affectionate 
 friendships to which it lias given rise ; the amount of vanity and 
 prejudice it has dispelled. The golden calf they worship at Boston 
 is a pigmy compared with the giant effigies set up in other parts of
 
 Noble Public Institutions. 25 
 
 that vast counting-house which lies heyond the Atlantic ; and tho 
 almighty dollar sinks into something comparatively insignificant, 
 amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods. 
 
 Above all, I sincerely believe that the public institutions and 
 charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect, as the 
 most considerato wisdom, benevolence, and humanity, can make them. 
 I never in my life was more affected by the contemplation of happiness, 
 under circumstances of privation and bereavement, than in my visits 
 to these establishments. 
 
 It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in America, 
 that they are either supported by the State or assisted by the Stato ; 
 or (in the event of their not needing its helping hand) that they 
 act in concert with it, and are emphatically the people's. I cannot 
 but think, with a view to the principle and its tendency to elevato or 
 depress the character of the industrious classes, that a Public Charity 
 is immeasurably better than a Private Foundation, no matter how 
 munificently the latter may be endowed. In our own country, whero 
 it has not, until within these later days, been a very popular fashion 
 with governments to display any extraordinary regard for the great 
 mass of the people or to recognise their existence as improveablo 
 creatures, private charities, unexampled in the history of the earth, 
 have arisen, to do an incalculable amount of good among the destituto 
 and afflicted. But the government of tho country, having neither 
 act nor part in them, is not in the receipt of any portion of the 
 gratitude they inspire ; and, offering very little shelter or relief 
 beyond that which is to be found in the workhouso and the jail, has 
 come, not unnaturally, to be looked upon by the poor rather as a stern 
 master, quick to correct and punish, than a kind protector, merciful 
 and vigilant in their hour of need. 
 
 The maxim that out of evil cometh good, is strongly illustrated by 
 these establishments at home ; as the records of the Prerogative Offico 
 in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. Some immensely rich 
 old gentleman or lady, surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a 
 low average, a will a-week. The old gentleman or lady, never very 
 remarkable in the best of times for good temper, is full of aches and 
 pains from head to foot ; full of fancies and caprices ; full of spleen, 
 distrust, suspicion, and dislike. To cancel old wills, and invent new 
 ones, is at last tho sole business of such a testator's existence ; and 
 relations and friends (some of whom have been bred up distinctly to 
 inherit a largo share of tho property, and have been, from their cradles, 
 specially disqualified from devoting themselves to any useful pursuit, 
 on that account) are so often and so unexpectedly and summarily cut 
 off, and re-instated, and cut off again, that the whole family, down to 
 the remotest cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it 
 becomes plain that tho old lady or gentleman has not long to live ; 
 and the plainer this becomes, the more clearly the old lady or gentle- 
 man p Tceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against their poor old
 
 26 American Notes. 
 
 dying relative ; wherefore the old lady or gentleman makes another 
 last will positively the last this time conceals tho samo in a china 
 tea-pot, and expires next day. Then it turns oat, that the wholo of 
 the real and personal estate is divided between half-a-dozen charities ; 
 and that the dead and gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a 
 great deal of good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil passion 
 and misery. 
 
 The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, 
 at Boston, is superintended by a body of trustees who make an annual 
 report to the corporation. The indigent blind of that state are 
 admitted gratuitously. Those from the adjoining state of Connecticut, 
 or from the states of Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire, are admitted 
 by a warrant from the state to which they respectively belong ; or, 
 failing that, must find security among their friends, for the payment 
 of about twenty pounds English for their first year's board and in- 
 struction, and ten for the second. " After the first year," say the 
 trustees, " an account current will be opened with each pupil ; he w r ill 
 be charged with the actual cost of his board, which will not exceed 
 two dollars per week ; " a trifle more than eight shillings English ; 
 " and he will be credited with the amount paid for him by the state, 
 or by his friends ; also with his earnings over and above the cost of 
 the stock which he uses ; so that all his earnings over one dollar per 
 week will be his own. By the third year it will be known whether 
 his earnings will more than pay the actual cost of his board ; if they 
 should, he will have it at his option to remain and receive his earnings, 
 or not. Those who prove unable to earn their own livelihood will 
 not bo retained ; as it is not desirable to convert the establishment 
 into an almshouse, or to retain any but working bees in the hive. 
 Those who by physical or mental imbecility are disqualified from 
 work, are thereby disqualified from being members of an industrious 
 community ; and they can be better provided for in establishments 
 fitted for the infirm." 
 
 I went to see this place one very fine winter morning : an Italian sky 
 above, and the air so clear and bright on every side, that even my 
 eyes, which are none of the best, could follow the minute lines and 
 scraps of tracery in distant buildings. Like most other public insti- 
 tutions in America, of the same class, it stands a mile or two without 
 tho town, in a cheerful healthy spot ; and is an airy, spacious, hand- 
 some edifice. It is built upon a height, commanding the harbour. 
 When I paused for a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and 
 free the whole scene was what sparkling bubbles glanced upon tho 
 waves, and welled up every moment to the surface, as though the 
 world below, like that above, were radiant with the bright day, and 
 gushing over in its fulness of light : when I gazed from sail to sail 
 away upon a ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the only cloud 
 upon the still, deep, distant blue and, turning, saw a blind boy with 
 his sightless face addressed that way, as though he too had some
 
 The Blind. 27 
 
 sense within bim of the glorious distance : I felt a kind of sorrow that 
 tho place should be so very light, and a strange wish that for his sake 
 it were darker. It was but momentary, of course, and a mere fancy, 
 but I felt it keenly for all that. 
 
 The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, except a 
 few who were already dismissed, and were at play. Here, as in many 
 institutions, no uniform is worn ; and I was very glad of it, for two 
 reasons. Firstly, because I am sure that nothing but senseless custom 
 and want of thought would reconcile us to the liveries and badges we 
 are so fond of at home. Secondly, because the absence of these things 
 presents each child to the visitor in his or her own proper character, 
 with its individuality unimpaired ; not lost in a dull, ugly, monotonous 
 repetition of the same unmeaning garb : which is really an important 
 consideration. The wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride in 
 personal appearance even among the blind, or the whimsical absurdity 
 of considering charity and leather breeches inseparable companions, 
 as we do, requires no comment. 
 
 Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded every corner of tho 
 building. The various classes, who were gathered round their teachers, 
 answered the questions put to them with readiness and intelligence, 
 and in a spirit of cheerful contest for precedence which pleased me 
 very much. Those who were at play, were gleesome and noisy as 
 other children. More spiritual and affectionate friendships appeared 
 to exist among them, tban would be found among other young persons 
 suffering under no deprivation ; but this I expected and was prepared 
 to find. It is a part of the great scheme of Heaven's merciful con- 
 sideration for the afflicted. 
 
 In a portion of the building, set apart for that purpose, are work- 
 shops for blind persons whose education is finished, and who have 
 acquired a trade, but who cannot pursue it in an ordinary manufactory 
 because of their deprivation. Several people were at work hero ; 
 making brushes, mattresses, and so forth ; and tho cheerfulness, 
 industry, and good order discernible in every other part of the building, 
 extended to this department also. 
 
 On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, without any guido 
 or leader, to a spacious music-hall, whero they took their seats in an 
 orchestra erected for that purpose, and listened with manifest delight 
 to a voluntary on the organ, played by one of themselves. At its 
 conclusion, the performer, a boy of nineteen or twenty, gave place to 
 a girl ; and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn, and after- 
 wards a sort of chorus. It was very sad to look upon and hear them, 
 hsippy though their condition unquestionably was ; and I saw that ono 
 blind girl, who (being for the time deprived of the use of her limbs, 
 by illness) sat close beside me with her face towards them, wept 
 silently the while she listened. 
 
 It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and sec how free they 
 are from all concealment of what is passing in their thoughts ;
 
 28 American Notes. 
 
 observing which, a man with eyes may blush to contemplate the mask 
 he wears. Allowing for one shade of anxious expression which is 
 never absent from their countenances, and the like of which we may 
 readily detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, 
 every idea, as it rises within them, is expressed with the lightning's 
 speed and nature's truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-room 
 at court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes upon 
 them as blind men and women are, what secrets would come out, and 
 what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so much 
 pity, would appear to be ! 
 
 The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room, before 
 a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb ; destitute of smell ; and nearly so of 
 taste : before a fair young creature with every human faculty, and 
 hope, and power of goodness and affection, inclosed within her delicate 
 frame, and but one outward sense the sense of touch. There she 
 was, before me ; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to 
 any ray of light, or particle of sound ; with her poor white hand 
 peeping through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for 
 help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened. 
 
 Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her face was 
 radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own 
 hands, was bound about a head, whose intellectual capacity and 
 development w r ere beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and 
 its broad open brow ; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of 
 neatness and simplicity ; the work she had knitted, lay beside her ; 
 her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon. From the 
 mournful ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this 
 gentle, tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being. 
 
 Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon bound 
 round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near upon the ground. 
 I took it up, and saw that she had made a green fillet such as she 
 wore herself, and fastened it about its mimic eyes. 
 
 She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school-desks and 
 forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this pursuit, she 
 engaged in an animated communication with a teacher who sat beside 
 her. This was a favourite mistress with the poor pupil. If she could 
 see the face of her fair instructress, eho would not love her less, I am 
 sure. 
 
 I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, from an 
 account, written by that one man who has made her what she is. It 
 is a very beautiful and touching narrative ; and I wish I could present 
 it entire. 
 
 Her name is Laura Bridgman. ; ' She was born in Hanover, New 
 Hampshire, on the twenty-first day of December, 1829. She is 
 described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with 
 bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she 
 was a year and a half old / that her parents hardly hoped to rear her,
 
 Laura Bridgmail. 29 
 
 She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost 
 beyond her power of endurance : and lifo was held by the feeblest 
 tenure : but when a year and a half old, she seemed to rally ; the 
 dangerous symptoms subsided ; and at twenty months old, she was 
 perfectly well. 
 
 " Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly 
 developed themselves ; and during the four months of health which 
 she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance for a fond mother's 
 account) to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence. 
 
 " But suddenly she sickened again ; her diseaso raged with great 
 violence during five weeks, when her eyes and cars were inflamed, 
 suppurated, and their contents were discharged. But though sight 
 and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child's sufferings were not 
 ended. The fever raged during seven weeks ; for five months 6he 
 was kept in bed in a darkened room ; it was a year before she could 
 walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It 
 was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely 
 destroyed ; and, consequently, that her taste was much blunted. 
 
 " It was not until four years of age that the poor child's bodily 
 health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon her ap- 
 prenticeship of life and the world. 
 
 " But what a situation was hers ! The darkness and the silence 
 of the tomb were around her : no mother's smile called forth her 
 answering smile, no father's voice taught her to imitate his sounds : 
 they, brothers and sisters, were but forms of matter which resisted her 
 touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the house, save in 
 warmth, and in the power of locomotion ; and not even in these 
 respects from the dog and the cat. 
 
 ' : But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her 
 could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated ; and though most of its 
 avenues of communication with the world were cut off, it began to 
 manifest itself through the others. As soon as she could walk, she 
 began to explore the room, and then the house ; she became familiar 
 with the form, density, weight, and heat, of every article she could lay 
 her hands upon. She followed her mother, and felt her hands and 
 arms, as she was occupied about the house ; and her disposition to 
 imitate, led her to repeat everything herself. She even learned to 
 sew a little, and to km't." 
 
 The reader will (scarcely need to be told, however, that the oppor- 
 tunities of communicating with her, were very, very limited ; and 
 that the moral effects of her wretched state soon began to appear. 
 Thoso who cannot be enlightened by reason, can only be controlled 
 by force ; and this, coupled with her great privations, must soon have 
 red 'iced her to a worse condition than that of the beasts that perish, 
 br.j for timely and unhoped-for aid. 
 
 " At tin's time, 1 was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and 
 immediately hastened to Hanover to see her. I found her with a
 
 30 American Notes. 
 
 well-formed figure ; a strongly-marked, nervous-sanguine tempera- 
 ment ; a large and beautifully-shaped head ; and the whole system in 
 healthy action. The parents were easily induced to consent to her 
 coming to Boston, and on the 4th of October, 1837, they brought her 
 to the Institution. 
 
 " For a while, she was much bewildered ; and after waiting about 
 two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new locality, and 
 somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt was made to give her 
 knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which she could interchange thoughts 
 with others. 
 
 " There was one of two ways to be adopted : either to go on to 
 build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural language 
 which she had already commenced herself, or to teach he? the purely 
 arbitrary language in common use : that is, to give her a sign for every 
 individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of letters by combination 
 of which she might express her idea of the existence, and the mode 
 and condition of existence, of any thing. The former would have 
 been easy, but very ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but, 
 if accomplished, very effectual. I determined therefore to try the 
 latter. 
 
 " The first experiments were made by taking articles in common 
 use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys, &c, and pasting upon them 
 labels with their names printed in raised letters. These she felt very 
 carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked lines 
 spoon, differed as much from the crooked lines key, as the spoon 
 differed from the key in form. 
 
 " Then small detached labels, with the same words printed upon 
 them, were put into her hands ; and she soon observed that they were 
 similar to the ones pasted on the articles. She showed her perception 
 of this similarity by laying the label key upon the key, and the label 
 spoon upon the spoon. She was encouraged here by the natural sign 
 of approbation, patting on the head. 
 
 " The same process was then repeated with all the articles which 
 she could handle ; and she very easily learned to place the proper 
 labels upon them. It was evident, however, that the only intellectual 
 exercise was that of imitation and memory. She recollected that the 
 label book was placed upon a book, and she repeated the process first 
 from imitation, next from memory, with only the motive of love of 
 approbation, but apparently without the intellectual perception of any 
 relation between the things. 
 
 " After a while, instead of labels, the individual letters were given 
 to her on detached bits of paper : they were arranged side by side so 
 as to spell book, key, &c. ; then they were mixed up in a heap 
 and a sign was made for her to arrange them herself so as to express 
 the words book, key, &c. ; and she did so. 
 
 " Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the success about 
 as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. The
 
 Laura Bridgmaris Education. %l 
 
 poor child had sat in mute amazement, and patiently imitated every- 
 thing her teacher did ; but now the truth began to flash npon her : 
 her intellect began to work : she perceived that here was a way by 
 which she could herself make up a sign of anything that was in her 
 own mind, and show it to another mind ; and at once her countenance 
 lighted up with a human expression : it was no longer a dog, or 
 parrot : it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of 
 nnion with other spirits ! I could almost fix upon the moment when 
 this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her 
 countenance ; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome ; and that 
 henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain and 
 straightforward, efforts were to be nsed. 
 
 " The result thus far, is quickly related, and easily conceived ; but 
 not so was the process ; for many weeks of apparently unprofitable 
 labour were passed before it was effected. 
 
 " When it was said above, that a sign was made, it was intended to 
 say, that the action was performed by her teacher, she feeling his 
 hands, and then imitating the motion. 
 
 "The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with the 
 different letters of the alphabet cast upon their ends ; also a board, in 
 which were square holes, into which holes she could set the types ; so 
 that the letters on their ends could alone be felt above the surface. 
 
 " Then, on any article being handed to her, for instance, a pencil, 
 or a watch, she would select the component letters, and arrange them 
 on her board, and read them with apparent pleasuro. 
 
 " She was exercised for several weeks in this way, until her 
 vocabulary became extensive ; and then the important step was taken 
 of teaching her how to represent the different letters by the position 
 of her fingers, instead of the cumbrous apparatus of the board and 
 types. She accomplished this speedily and easily, for her intellect 
 had begun to work in aid of her teacher, and her progress was 
 rapid. 
 
 li This was the period, about three months after she had commenced, 
 that the first report of her case was made, in which it was stated that 
 ' she has just learned the manual alphabet, as used by the deaf mutes, 
 and it is a subject of delight and wonder to see how rapidly, correctly, 
 and eagerly, she goes on with her labours. Her teacher gives her a 
 new object, for instance, a pencil, first lets her examine it, and get an 
 idea of its use, then teaches her how to spell it by making the signs 
 for the letters with her own fingers : the child grasps her hand, and 
 feels her fingers, as the different letters are formed ; she turns her 
 head a little on one side like a person listening closely ; her lips are 
 apart ; she seems scarcely to breathe ; and her countenance, at first 
 anxious, gradually changes to a smile, as she comprehends the lesson. 
 She then holds up her tiny fingers, and spells the word in the manual 
 alphabet ; next, she takes her types and arranges her letters ; and last, 
 to make sure that she is right, she takes the whole of the types
 
 32 American Notts. 
 
 composing the word, and places them upon or in contact with the 
 pencil, or whatever the object may he.' 
 
 " The whole of the succeeding year was passed in gratifying her 
 eager inquiries for the names of every object which she could possibly 
 handle ; in exercising her in the use of the manual alphabet ; in 
 extending in every possible way her knowledge of the physical rela- 
 tions of things ; and in proper care of her health. 
 
 " At the end of the year a report of her case was made, from which 
 the following is an extract. 
 
 " ' It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt, that she 
 cannot see a ray of light, cannot hear the least sound, and never exer- 
 cises her sense of smell, if she have any. Thus her mind dwells in 
 darkness and stillness, as profound as that of a closed tomb at mid- 
 night. Of beautiful sights, and sweet sounds, and pleasant odours, 
 she has no conception ; nevertheless, she seems as happy and playful 
 as a bird or a lamb ; and the employment of her intellectual faculties, 
 or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure, which is 
 plainly marked in her expressive features. She never seems to repine, 
 but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. She is fond of fun 
 and frolic, and when playing with the rest of the children, her shrill 
 langh sounds loudest of the group. 
 
 " ' When left alone, she seems very happy if she have her knitting 
 or sewing, and will busy herself for hours ; if she have no occupation, 
 she evidently amuses herself by imaginary dialogues, or by recalling 
 past impressions ; she counts with her fingers, or spells out names of 
 things which she has recently learned, in the manual alphabet of the 
 deaf mutes. In this lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, 
 and argue ; if she spell a word wrong with the fingers of her right 
 hand, she instantly strikes it with her left, as her teacher does, in sign 
 of disapprobation ; if right, then she pats herself upon the head, and 
 looks pleased. She sometimes purposely spells a word wrong with 
 the left hand, looks roguish for a moment and laughs, and then with 
 the right hand strikes the left, as if to correct it. 
 
 " ' During the year she has attained great dexterity in the use of 
 the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes ; and she spells out the words 
 and sentences which she knows, so fast and so deftly, that only those 
 accustomed to this language can follow with the eye the rapid motions 
 of her fingers. 
 
 " ' But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she writes her 
 thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease and accuracy with 
 which she reads the words thus written by another ; grasping their 
 hands in hers, and following every movement of their fingers, as letter 
 after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. It is in this way that 
 she converses with her blind playmates, and nothing can more forcibly 
 show the power of mind in forcing matter to its purpose than a 
 meeting between them, For if great talent and skill are necessary 
 for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and feelings by the move-
 
 An Interesting Scene. 33 
 
 ments of the body, and the expression of the countenance, how much 
 greater the difficulty when darkness shrouds them both, and the one 
 can hear no sound. 
 
 " ' When Laura is walking through a passage-way, with her hands 
 6pread before her, she knows instantly every one she meets, and passes 
 them with a sign of recognition : but if it be a girl of her own age, 
 and especially if it be one of her favourites, there is instantly a bright 
 smile of recognition, a twining of arms, a grasping of hands, and a 
 swift telegraphing upon the tiny fingers ; whose rapid evolutions 
 convey the thoughts and feelings from the outposts of one mind to 
 those of the other. There arc questions and answers, exchanges of 
 joy or sorrow, there are hissings and partings, just as between little 
 children with all their senses.' 
 
 " During this year, and six months after she had left home, her 
 mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting was an 
 iuterestiug one. 
 
 " The mother stood some time, gazing with overflowing eyes upon 
 her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her presence, was 
 playing about the room. Presently Laura ran against her, and at 
 once began feeling her hands, examining her dress, and trying to find 
 out if she knew her ; but not succeeding in this, she turned away as 
 from a stranger, and the poor woman could not conceal the pang she 
 felt, at finding that her beloved child did not know her. 
 
 " She then gave Laura a string of beads which she used to wear at 
 home, which were recognised by the child at once, who, with much 
 joy, put them around her neck, and sought me eagerly to say she 
 understood the string was from her home. 
 
 " The mother now sought to caress her, but poor Laura repelled 
 her, preferring to be with her acquaintances. 
 
 " Another article from home was now given her, and she began to 
 look much interested ; she examined the stranger much closer, and 
 gave me to understand that she knew she came from Hanover ; she 
 even endured her caresses, but would leave her with indifference at 
 the slightest signal. The distress of the mother was now painful to 
 behold ; for, although she had feared that she should not be recognised, 
 the painful reality of being treated with cold indifference by a darling 
 child, was too much for woman's nature to bear. 
 
 " Aftor a while, on tho mother taking hold of her again, a vague 
 idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind, that this could not be a 
 stranger; she therefore felt her hands very eagerly, while her counte- 
 nance assumed an expression of intense interest ; she became very 
 pale ; and then suddenly red ; hope seemed struggling with doubt and 
 anxiety, and never were contending emotions moro strongly painted 
 upon the human face : at this moment of painful uncertainty, tho 
 mother drew her close to her side, and kissed her fondly, when at 
 once the truth flashed u{)on the child, and all mistrust and anxiety 
 disappeared from her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy sho
 
 04 
 
 America)!. Notes. 
 
 eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded herself to her 
 fond embraces. 
 
 " After this, the beads were all unheeded ; tbe playthings which 
 were offered to her were utterly disregarded ; her playmates, for 
 whom but a moment before she gladly left the stranger, now vainly 
 strove to pull her from her mother; and though she yielded her 
 usual instantaneous obedience to my signal to follow me, it was 
 evidently with painful reluctance. She clung close to me, as if 
 bowildered and fearful ; and when, after a moment, I took her to 
 her mother, she sprang to her arms, and clung to her with eager 
 
 " The subsequent parting between thorn, showed alike the affection, 
 the intelligence, and the resolution of the child. 
 
 " Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging close to her 
 all the way, until they arrived at the threshold, where she paused, and 
 felt around, to ascertain who was near her. Perceiving the matron, of 
 whom she is very fond, she grasped her with one hand, holding on 
 convulsively to her mother with the other ; and thus she stood for a 
 moment : then she dropped her mother's hand ; put her handkerchief 
 to her eyes ; and turning round, clung sobbing to the matron ; whilo 
 her mother departed, with emotions as deep as those of her child. 
 ****** 
 
 " It has been remarked in former reports, that she can distinguish 
 different degrees of intellect in others, and that she soon regarded, 
 almost with contempt, a newcomer, when, after a few days, she dis- 
 covered her weakness of mind. This unamiable part of her character 
 has been more strongly developed during the past year. 
 
 ' : She chooses for her friends and companions, those children who 
 are intelligent, and can talk best with her ; and she evidently dislikes 
 to be with those who are deficient in intellect, unless, indeed, she can 
 make them serve her purposes, which she is evidently inclined to do. 
 She takes advantage of them, and makes them wait upon her, in a 
 manner that she knows she could not exact of others ; and in various 
 ways shows her Saxon blood. 
 
 " She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed by the 
 teachers, and those whom she respects ; but this must not be carried 
 too far, or she becomes jealous. She wants to have her share, which, 
 if not the lion's, is the greater part ; and if she does not get it, she 
 says, ' My mother will love me.' 
 
 " Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads her to actions 
 which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, and which can give 
 her no other pleasure than the gratification of an internal faculty. 
 She has been known to sit for half an hour, holding a book before her 
 sightless eyes, and moving her lips, as she has observed seeing people 
 do when reading. 
 
 " She one day pretended that her doll was sick ; and went through 
 all the motions of tending it, and giving it mediciue ; she then put it
 
 Laura Bridgmatts Charade?. 35 
 
 carefully, to bed, and placed a bottle of bot water to its feet, laughing 
 all tbe time most heartily. When I came borne, sho insisted upon 
 my going to see it, and feel its pulse ; and when 1 told her to put a 
 blister on its back, she seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and almost 
 screamed with delight. 
 
 " Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong ; and when 
 she is sitting at work, or at her studies, by the side of one of her little 
 friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug 
 and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to 
 behold. 
 
 " When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses herself, and 
 seems quite contented ; and so strong seems to be the natural tendency 
 of thought to put on the garb of language, tbat sbe often soliloquizes 
 in the finger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is only when 
 alone, tbat she is quiet : for if she becomes sensible of the presence of 
 any one near her, sbe is restless until she can sit close beside them, 
 hold their hand, and converse with them by signs. 
 
 " In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an insatiable 
 thirst for knowledge, and a quick perception of the relations of things. 
 In her moral character, it is beautiful to heboid her continual gladness, 
 her keen enjoyment of existence, her expansive love, her unhesitating 
 confidence, her sympathy with suffering, her conscientiousness, truth- 
 fulness, and hopefalne6S." 
 
 Such are a few fragments from the simple but most interesting and 
 instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The name of her great 
 benefactor and friend, who writes it, is Doctor Howe. There are not 
 many persons, I hope and believe, who, after reading these passages, 
 can ever hear that name with indifference. 
 
 A further account has been published by Dr. Howe, since ihe report 
 from which I have just quoted. It describes her rapid mental growth 
 and improvement during twelve months more, and brings her little 
 history down to the end of last year. It is very remarkable, that as 
 we dream in words, and carry on imaginary conversations, in which 
 we speak both for ourselves and for the shadows who appear to us in 
 those visions of the night, so she, having no words, uses her finger 
 alphabet in her sleep. And it has boen ascertained that when her 
 slumber is broken, and is much disturbed by dreams, sho expresses 
 her thoughts in an irregular and confused manner on her fingers : 
 just as we should murmur and mutter them indistinctly, in the like 
 circumstances. 
 
 I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it written in a 
 fair legible squaro hand, and expressed in terms which were quite 
 intelligible without any explanation. On my saying that I should 
 like to see her write again, tho teacher who sat beside her, bade her, 
 in their language, sign her name upon a slip of paper, twice or thrice. 
 In doing so, I observed that sho kept her left hand always touching, 
 and following up, her right, in which, of course, she held the pen.
 
 36 American Notes. 
 
 No line was indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote straigbt and 
 freely. 
 
 She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the presence of 
 visitors ; but, having her hand placed in that of the gentleman who 
 accompanied me, she immediately expressed his name upon her 
 teacher's palm. Indeed her sense of touch is now so exquisite, that 
 having been acquainted with a person once, she can recognise him or 
 her after almost any interval. This gentleman had been in her 
 company, I believe, but very seldom, and certainly had not seen her 
 for many months. My hand she rejected at once, as she does that of 
 any man who is a stranger to her. But she retained my wife's with 
 evident pleasure, kissed her, and examined her dress with a girl's 
 curiosity and interest. 
 
 She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent playfulness 
 in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight on recognising 
 a favourite playfellow and companion herself a blind girl who 
 silently, and with an equal enjoyment of the coming surprise, took 
 a seat beside her, was beautiful to witness. It elicited from her at 
 first, as other slight circumstances did twice or thrice during my visit, 
 an uncouth noise which was rather painful to hear. But on her 
 teacher touching her lips, she immediately desisted, and embraced her 
 laughingly and affectionately. 
 
 I had previously been into another chamber, where a number of 
 blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and engaged in various 
 sports. They all clamoiired, as we entered, to the assistant-master, 
 who accompanied us, " Look at me, Mr. Hart ! Please, Mr. Hart, look 
 at me ! " evincing, I thought, even in this, an anxiety peculiar to their 
 condition, that their little feats of agility should be seen. Among 
 them Avas a small laughing fellow, who stood aloof, entertaining him- 
 self with a gymnastic exercise for bringing the arms and chest into 
 play ; which ho enjoyed mightily ; especially when, in thrusting out 
 his right arm, he brought it into contact with another boy. Like 
 Laura Bridgman, this young child was deaf, and dumb, and blind. 
 
 Dr. Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so very 
 striking, and so intimately connected with Laura herself, that I cannot 
 refrain from a short extract. I may premise that the poor boy's name 
 is Oliver Caswell ; that he is thirteen years of age ; and that he was 
 in full possession of all his faculties, until three years and four months 
 old. He was then attacked by scarlet fever ; in four weeks became 
 deaf ; in a few weeks more, blind ; in six months, dumb. He showed 
 his anxious sense of this last deprivation, by often feeling the lips of 
 other persons when they were talking, and then putting his hand 
 upon his own, as if to assure himself that he had them in the right 
 position. 
 
 " His thirst for knowledge," says Dr. Howe, " proclaimed itself as 
 soon as he entered the house, by his eager examination of every thing 
 ho could feel or smell in his new location. For instance, treading
 
 Dr. H oive's Account of Another Patient. 37 
 
 upon the register of a furnace, he instantly stooped down, and began 
 to feel it, and soon discovered the way in which the upper plate 
 moved upon the lower one ; but this was not enough for him, so lying 
 down upon his face, he applied his tongue first to one, then to the 
 other, and seemed to discover that they were of different kinds of 
 metal. 
 
 " His signs were expressive : and the strictly natural language, 
 laughing, crying, sighing, kissing, embracing, &c, was perfect. 
 
 " Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his faculty of 
 imitation) he had contrived, were comprehensible ; such as the waving 
 motion of his hand for the motion of a boat, the circular one for a 
 wheel, &c. 
 
 " The first object was to break up the use of these signs and to 
 substitute for them the use of purely arbitrary ones. 
 
 " Profiting by the experience I had gained in the other cases, I 
 omitted several steps of the process before employed, and commenced 
 at once with the finger language. Taking therefore, several articles 
 having short names, such as key, cup, mug, &c, and with Laura for 
 an auxiliary, I sat down, and taking his hand, placed it upon one of 
 them, and then with my own, made the letters hey. He felt my 
 hands eagerly with both of his, and on my repeating the process, he 
 evidently tried to imitate the motions of my fingers. In a few 
 minutes he contrived to feel the motions of my fingers with one hand, 
 and holding out the other he tried to imitate them, laughing most 
 heartily when he succeeded. Laura was by, interested even to 
 agitation ; and tho two presented a singular sight : her face was 
 flushed and anxious, and her fingers twining in among ours so closely 
 as to follow every motion, but so lightly as not to embarrass them ; 
 while Oliver stood attentive, his head a little aside, his face turned 
 up, his left hand grasping mine, and his right held out : at every 
 motion of my fingers his countenance betokened keen attention ; there 
 was an expression of anxiety as ho tried to imitate the motions ; then 
 a smile came stealing out as ho thought he could do so, and spread 
 into a joyous laugh tho moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his 
 head, and Laura clap him heartily upon the back, aud jump up and 
 down in her joy. 
 
 " He learned more than a half-dozen letters in half an hour, and 
 seemed delighted with his success, at least in gaining approbation. 
 His attention then began to flag, and I commenced playing with him. 
 It was evident that in all this he had merely been imitating tho 
 motions of my fingers, and placing his hand upon the key, cup, &c, 
 as part of the process, without any perception of tho relation between 
 the sign and the object. 
 
 " When he was tired with play I took him back to the table," and ho 
 was quite ready to begin again his process of imitation. He soon 
 learned to mako the letters for hey, j>e, pin ; and by having tho 
 object repeatedly placed in his hand, he at last perceived the 1 elation
 
 38 American Notes. 
 
 I wished to establish between them. This was evident, because, 
 when I made the letters p i n, or p e n, or u p, he would select the 
 article. 
 
 " The perception of this relation was not accompanied by that 
 radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of joj, which marked the 
 delightful moment when Laura first perceived it. I then placed all 
 the articles on the table, and going away a little distance with the 
 children, placed Oliver's fingers in the positions to spell key, on which 
 Laura went out and brought the article : the little fellow seemed 
 much amused by this, and looked very attentive and smiling. I then 
 caused him to make the letters bread, and in an instant Laura went 
 and brought him a piece : he smellcd at it ; put it to his lips ; cocked 
 up his head with a most knowing look ; seemed to reflect a moment ; 
 and then laughed outright, as much as to say, ' Aha ! I understand 
 now how something may be made out of this.' 
 
 " It was now clear that he had the capacity and inclination to learn, 
 that he was a proper subject for instruction, and needed only per- 
 severing attention. I therefore put him in the hands of an intelligent 
 teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid progress." 
 
 Well may this gentleman call that a delightful moment, in which 
 some distant promise of her present state first gleamed upon the 
 darkened mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout his life, the 
 recollection of that moment will be to him a source of pure, unfading 
 happiness ; nor will it shine less brightly on the evening of his days 
 of Noble Usefulness. 
 
 The affection which exists between these two the master and 
 the pupil is as far removed from all ordinary care and regard, as 
 the circumstances in which it has had its growth, are apart from the 
 common occurrences of life. He is occupied now, in devising means 
 of imparting to her, higher knowledge ; and of conveying to her some 
 adequate idea of the Great Creator of that universe in which, dark 
 and silent and scentless though it be to her, she has such deep delight 
 and glad enjoymont. 
 
 Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not ; ye who 
 are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure your faces 
 that ye may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy cheerfulness, and 
 mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, and blind ! Self-elected 
 saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may 
 teach you lessons you will do well to follow. Let that poor hand of 
 hers lie gently on your hearts ; for there may be something in its 
 healing touch akin to that of the Great Master whose precepts you 
 misconstrue, whose lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sympathy 
 with all the world, not one among you in his daily practice knows as 
 much as many of the worst among those fallen sinners, to whom you 
 are liberal in nothing but the preachment of perdition ! 
 
 As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the 
 attendants came running in to greet its father. For the moment, a
 
 The Lady of the House. 39 
 
 child with eyes, among the sightless crowd, impressed me almost as 
 painfully as the blind boy in the porch had done, two hours ago. 
 Ah ! how much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing and rich 
 though it had been before, was the scene without, contrasting with the 
 darkness of so many youthful lives within ! 
 
 At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted 
 for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clustered together. 
 One of these, is the State Hospital for the insane ; admirably conducted 
 on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness, which 
 twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and which 
 have been acted upon with so much success in our own pauper Asylum 
 at Hanwell. " Evince a desire to show some confidence, and reposo 
 some trust, even in mad people," said the resident physician, as wo 
 walked along the gallories, his patients flocking round us unrestrained. 
 Of those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing 
 its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say that I 
 hope I may never be summoned as a Juryman on a Commission of 
 Lunacy whereof they are the subjects ; for I should certainly find them 
 out of their senses, on such evidence alone. 
 
 Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or hall, 
 with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on either hand. 
 Here they work, read, play at skittles, and other games ; and when 
 the weather does not admit of their taking exercise out of doors, pass 
 the day together. In one of these rooms, seated, calmly, and quite as 
 a matter of course, among a throng of madwomen, black and white, 
 were the physician's wife and another lady, with a couple of children. 
 These ladies were graceful and handsome ; and it was not difficult to 
 perceive at a glance that even their presence there, had a highly 
 beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about them. 
 
 Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a great assumption 
 of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an elderly female, in as many 
 scraps of finery as Madge Wildfire herself. Her head in particular 
 was so strewn with scraps of gauze and cotton and bits of paper, and 
 had so many queer odds and ends stuck all about it, that it looked liko 
 a bird's-nest. She was radiant with imaginary jewels ; wore a rich 
 pair of undoubted gold spectacles ; and gracefully dropped upon her 
 lap, as we approached, a very old greasy newspaper, in which I daro 
 say she had been reading an account of her own presentation at somo 
 Foreign Court. 
 
 I have been thus particular in describing her, because she will servo 
 to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring and retaining the 
 confidence of his patients. 
 
 " This," ho said aloud, taking me by the hand, and advancing to 
 the fantastic figure with great politeness not raising her suspicions 
 by the slightest look or whisper, or any kind of aside, to me : " This 
 lady is the hostess of this mausion, sir It belongs to her. Nobody
 
 40 American Notes. 
 
 else has anything whatever to do with it. It is a large establishment, 
 as you see, and requires a great number of attendants. She lives, you 
 observe, in the very first style. She is kind enough to receive my 
 visits, and to permit my wife and family to reside here ; for which it 
 is hardly necessary to say, we are much indebted to her. She is 
 exceedingly courteous, you perceive," on this hint she bowed con- 
 descendingly, " and will permit me to have the pleasure of introducing 
 you : a gentleman from England, Ma'am : newly arrived from England, 
 after a very tempestuous passage : Mr. Dickens, the lady of tho 
 house ! " 
 
 We exchanged the most dignified salutations with profound gravity 
 and respect, and so went on. The rest of the madwomen seemed to 
 understand the joke perfectly (not only in this case, but in all the others, 
 except their own), and be highly amused by it. The nature of their 
 several kinds of insanity was made known to me in the same way, and 
 we left each of them in high good humour. Not only is a thorough 
 confidence established, by those means, between the physician and 
 patient, in respect of the nature aud extent of their hallucinations, 
 but it is easy to understand that opportunities are afforded for seizing 
 any moment of reason, to startle them by placing their own delusion 
 before them in its most incongruous and ridiculous light. 
 
 Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day with a 
 knife and fork ; and in the midst of them sits the gentleman, whoso 
 manner of dealing with his charges, I have just described. At every 
 meal, moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them 
 from cutting the throats of the rest ; but the effect of that influence is 
 reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found, even as a means of 
 restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure, a hundred times 
 more efficacious than all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and hand-cuffs, 
 that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since tho 
 creation of the world. 
 
 In the labour department, every patient is as freely trusted witli 
 tho tools of his trade as if he were a sane man. In the garden, and 
 on the farm, they work with spades, rakes, and hoes. For amusement, 
 they walk, run, fish, paint, read, and ride out to take the air in 
 carriages provided for the purpose. They have among themselves a 
 sewing society to make clothes for the poor, which holds meetings, 
 passes resolutions, never comes to fisty-cuffs or bowie-knives as sano 
 assemblies have been known to do elsewhere ; and conducts all its 
 proceedings with the greatest decorum. The irritability, which would 
 otherwise be expended on their own flesh, clothes, and furniture, is 
 dissipated in these pursuits. They are cheerful, tranquil, and healthy. 
 
 Once a week they have a ball, in which the Doctor and his family, 
 with all the nurses and attendants, take an active part. Dances and 
 marches are performed alternately, to the enlivening strains of a 
 piano ; and now and then some gentleman or lady (whose proficiency 
 has Leen previously ascertained) obliges the company with a song;
 
 Excellent House of Industry. 41 
 
 nor does i. ever degenerate, at a tender crisis, into a screech or howl ; 
 wherein, I must confess, I should have thought the danger lay. At 
 an early hour they all meet together for these festive purposes ; at 
 eight o'clock refreshments are served ; and at nine they separate. 
 
 Immense politeness and good breeding are observed throughout. 
 They all take their tone from the Doctor ; and he moves a very 
 Chesterfield among the company. Like other assemblies, these enter- 
 tainments afford a fruitful topic of conversation among the ladies for 
 some days ; and the gentlemen are so anxious to shine on these 
 occasions, that they have been sometimes found " practising their 
 steps " in private, to cut a more distinguished figure in the dance. 
 
 It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is the inculcation 
 and encouragement, even among such unhappy persons, of a decent 
 self-respect. Something of the same spirit pervades all the Institutions 
 at South Boston. 
 
 There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it, which is 
 devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless paupers, these 
 words are painted on the walls : " Worthy of Notice. Self-Govern- 
 mi nt, Quietude, and Peace, are Blessings." It is not assumed and 
 taken for granted that being there tbey must be evil-disposed and 
 wicked people, before whose vicious eyes it is necessary to flourish 
 threats and harsh restraints. They are met at the very threshold 
 with this mild appeal. All within-doors is very plain and simple, as 
 it ought to be, but arranged with a view to peace and comfort. It 
 costs no more than any other plan of arrangement, but it speaks an 
 amount of consideration for those who arc reduced to seek a shelter 
 there, which puts them at once upon their gratitude and good 
 behaviour. Instead of being parcelled out in great, long, rambling 
 wards, where a certain amount of weazen life may mope, and pine, 
 and shiver, all day long, the building is divided into separate rooms, 
 each with its share of light and air. In these, the better kind of 
 paupers live. They have a motive for exertion and becoming pride, 
 in the desire to make these little chambers comfortable and decent. 
 
 I do not remember oue but it was clean and neat, and had its plant 
 or two upon the window-sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or 
 small display of coloured prints upon the whitewashed Mall, or, 
 perhaps, its wooden cloek behind the door. 
 
 The orphans and young children are in an adjoining building ; 
 separate from this, but a part of the same Institution. Some arc 
 such little creatures, that the stairs are of Lilliputian measurement, 
 fitted to their tiny strides. The same consideration for their years 
 and weakness is expressed in their very seats, which aro perfect 
 curiosities, and look like articles of furniture for a pauper doll's- 
 houso. I can imagine the glee of our Poor Law Commissioners at 
 tlio notion of these seats having arms and backs ; but small spines 
 being of older date than their occupation of the Board-room at Somerset 
 House, I thought even this provision very merciful and kind.
 
 42 American Notes. 
 
 Here again, I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on the wall, 
 which were scraps of plain morality, easily remembered and under- 
 stood : such as " Love one another " " God remembers the smallest 
 creature in his creation : " and straightforward advice of that nature. 
 The books and tasks of these smallest of scholars, were adapted, in 
 the same judicious manner, to their childish powers. When we had 
 examined these lessons, four morsels of girls (of whom one was blind) 
 sang a little song, about the merry month of May, which I thought 
 (being extremely dismal) would have suited an English November 
 better. That done, we went to see their sleeping-rooms on the floor 
 above, in which the arrangements were no less excellent and gentle 
 than those we had seen below. And after observing that the teachers 
 were of a class and character well suited to the spirit of the place, I 
 took leave of the infants with a lighter heart than ever I have taken 
 leave of pauper infants yet. 
 
 Connected with the House of Industry, there is also an Hospital, 
 which was in the best order, and had, I am glad to say, many beds 
 unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which is common to all 
 American interiors : the presenco of the eternal, accursed, suffocating, 
 red-hot demon of a stove, whose breath would blight the purest air 
 under Heaven. 
 
 There are two establishments for boys in this same neighbourhood. 
 One is called the Boylston school, and is an asylum for neglected and 
 indigent boys who have committed no crime, but who in the ordinary 
 course of things would very soon be purged of that distinction if they 
 were not taken from the hungry streets and sent here. The other is 
 a House of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders. They are both under 
 tho same roof, but the two classes of boys never come in contact. 
 
 The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very much tho 
 advantago of the others in point of personal appearance. They were 
 in their school-room when I came upon them, and answered correctly, 
 without book, such questions as where was England ; how far was it ; 
 what was its population ; its capital city ; its form of government ; and 
 so forth. They sang a song too, about a farmer sowing his seed : with 
 corresponding action at such parts as "'tis thus he sows," "he turns 
 him round," " he claps his hands ; " which gave it greater interest for 
 them, and accustomed them to act together, in an orderly manner. 
 They appeared exceedingly well taught, and not better taught than 
 fed ; for a more chubby-looking, full-waistcoated set of boys, I never 
 saw. 
 
 The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by a great deal, 
 and in this establishment there were many boys of colour. I saw them 
 first at their work (basket-making, and the manufacture of palm-leaf 
 hats), afterwaids m their school, where they sang a chorus in praise 
 of Liberty : an odd, and, one would think, rather aggravating, theme 
 for prisoners. These boys are divided into four classes, each denoted 
 by a numeral, worn on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a
 
 House of Correction. 43 
 
 newcomer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class, and left, by good 
 behaviour, to work his way up into the first. The design and object 
 of this Institution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by firm but kind 
 and judicious treatment ; to make his prison a place of purification and 
 improvement, not of demoralisation and corruption ; to impress upon 
 him that there is but one path, and that one sober industry, which can 
 ever lead him to happiness ; to teach him how it may be trodden, if 
 his footsteps have never yet been led that way ; and to lure him back 
 to it if they have strayed : in a word, to snatch him from destruction, 
 and restore him to society a penitent and useful member. The im- 
 portance of such an establishment, in every point of view, and with 
 reference to every consideration of humanity and social j)olicy, requires 
 no comment. 
 
 One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the Houso of 
 Correction for the State, in which silence is strictly maintained, but 
 where the prisoners have the comfort and mental relief of seeing each 
 other, and of working together. This is the improved system of 
 Prison Discipline which we have imported into England, and which 
 has been in successful operation among us for some years past. 
 
 America, as a new and not over-populated country, has in all her 
 prisons, the one great advantage, of being enabled to find useful and 
 profitable work for the inmates ; whereas, with us, the prejudice against 
 prison labour is naturally very strong, and almost insurmountable, 
 when honest men who have not offended against the laws are fre- 
 quently doomed to seek employment in vain. Even in the United 
 States, the principle of bringing convict labour and free labour into a 
 competition which must obviously bo to the disadvantage of the latter, 
 has already found many opponents, whose number is not likely to 
 diminish with access of years. 
 
 For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem at the 
 first glance to be better conducted than those of America. The tread- 
 mill is conducted with little or no noise ; five hundred men may pick 
 oakum in the same room, without a sound ; and both kinds of labour 
 admit of such keen and vigilant superintendence, as will render even 
 a word of personal communication amongst the prisoners almost 
 impossible. On the other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, tho 
 carpenter's hammer, or tho stonemason's saw, greatly favour thoso 
 opportunities of intercourse hurried and brief no doubt, but oppor- 
 tunities still which these several kinds of work, by rendering it 
 necessary for men to bo employed very near to each other, and often 
 side by side, without any barrier or partition between them, in their 
 very nature present. A visitor, too, requires to reason and reflect a 
 little, before the sight of a number of men engaged in ordinary labour, 
 such as he is accustomed to out of doors, will impress him half as 
 strongly as the contemplation of tho same persons in the rame placo 
 and garb would, if they wero occupied in some task, marked and 
 degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In an
 
 44 American Notes. 
 
 American state prison or house of correction, I found it difficult at 
 first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail : a place of igno- 
 minious punishment and endurance. And to this hour I very much 
 question whether the humane boast that it is not like one, has its root 
 in the true wisdom or philosophy of the matter. 
 
 I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject, for it is one in 
 which I take a strong and deep interest. I incline as little to the 
 sickly feeling which makes every canting lie or maudlin speech of a 
 notorious criminal a subject of newspaper report and general sympathy, 
 as I do to those good old customs of the good old times which made 
 England, even so recently as in the reign of the Third King George, 
 in respect of her criminal code and her prison regulations, one of the 
 most bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the earth. If I 
 thought it would do any good to the rising generation, I would cheer- 
 fully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel 
 highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their 
 exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, that might be 
 deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is as well con- 
 vinced that those gentry were as utterly worthless and debauched 
 villains, as it is that the laws and jails hardened them in their evil 
 courses, or that their wonderful escapes were effected by the prison- 
 turnkeys who, in those admirable days, had always been felons them- 
 selves, and were, to the last, their bosom friends and pot-companions. 
 At the same time I know, as all men do or should, that the subject of 
 Prison Discipline is one of the highest importance to any community ; 
 and that in her sweeping reform and bright example to other countries 
 on this head, America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence, and 
 exalted policy. In contrasting her system with that which we have 
 modelled upon it, I merely seek to show that with all its drawbacks, 
 ours has some advantages of its own. 
 
 The House of Correction which has led to these remarks, is not 
 walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded round about with tall 
 rough stakes, something after the manner of an enclosure for keeping 
 elephants in, as we see it represented in Eastern prints and pictures. 
 The prisoners wear a parti-coloured dress ; and those who are 
 sentenced to hard labour, work at nail-making, or stone-cutting. 
 When I was there, the latter class of labourers were employed upon 
 tho stone for a new custom-house in course of erection at Boston. 
 Thoy appeared to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though there 
 were very few among them (if any) who had not acquired the art 
 within tho prison gates. 
 
 The women, all in one large room, were employed in making light 
 clothing, for New Orleans, and the Southern States. They did their 
 work in silence like the men ; and like them were overlooked by tho 
 person contracting for their labour, or by some agent of his appoint- 
 ment. In addition to this, they are every moment liable to be visited 
 by the prison officers appointed for that purpose.
 
 Prison Discipline. 45 
 
 The arrangements for cooking, -washing of clothes, and so forth, are 
 much upon the plan of those I have seen at home. Their mode of 
 bestowing the prisoners at night (which is of general adoption) differs 
 from ours, and is both simple and effective. In the centre of a lofty 
 area, lighted by windows in the four walls, are five tiers of cells, one 
 above the other ; each tier having before it a light iron gallery, 
 attainable by stairs of the same construction and material : excepting 
 the lower one, which is on the ground. Behind these, back to hack 
 wilh them and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows of 
 cells, accessible by similar means : so that supposing the prisoners 
 locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground, with his 
 back to the wall, has half their number under his eye at once ; the 
 remaining half being equally under the observation of another officer 
 on the opposite side ; and all in one great apartment. Unless this 
 watch be corrupted or sleeping on his post, it is impossible for a man 
 to escape ; for even in the event of his forcing the iron door of his 
 cell without noise (which is exceedingly improbable), the moment he 
 appears outside, and steps into that one of the galleries on which it 
 is situated, he must be plainly and fully visible to the officer below. 
 Each of these cells holds a small truckle bed, in which one prisoner 
 sleeps ; never more. It is small, of course ; and the door being not 
 solid, but grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner within is 
 at all times exposed to the observation and inspection of any guard 
 who may pass along that tier at any hour or minute of the night. 
 Every day, the prisoners receive their dinner, singly, through a trap 
 in the kitchen wall ; and each man carries his to his sleeping cell to 
 cat it, where he is locked up, alone, for that purpose, one hour. The 
 whole of this arrangement struck me as being admirable : and I hope 
 that the next new prison we erect in England may be built on this 
 plan. 
 
 I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or fire-arms, 
 or even cudgels, are kept ; nor is it probable that, so long as its 
 present excellent management continues, any weapon, offensive or 
 defensive, will ever be required within its bounds. 
 
 Such are the Institutions at South Boston ! In all of them, the 
 unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefully instructed 
 in their duties both to God and man ; are surrounded by all reasonable 
 means of comfort and happiness that their condition will admit of; 
 are appealed to, as members of the great human family, however 
 afflicted, indigent, or fallen ; arc ruled by the strong Heart, and not 
 by the strong (though immeasurably weaker) Hand. 1 have described 
 them at some length ; firstly, because their worth demanded it ; and 
 secondly, because I mean to take them for a model, and to content 
 myself with saying of others we may come to, whose design and 
 purpose are the same, that in this or that respect they practically fail, 
 or differ. 
 
 I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its execution, but in its
 
 46 American Notes. 
 
 just intention, honest, I could hope to convey to my readers one- 
 hundredth part of the gratification, the sights I have described, 
 
 afforded me. 
 
 To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of Westminster 
 Hall, an American Court of Law is as odd a sight as, I suppose, an 
 English Court of Law would be to an American. Except in the 
 Supreme Court at Washington (where the judges wear a plain black 
 robe), there is no such thing as a wig or gown connected with the 
 administration of justice. The gentlemen of the bar being barristers 
 and attorneys too (for there is no division of those functions as in 
 England) are no more removed from their clients than attorneys in 
 our Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors are, from theirs. The 
 jury are quite at home, and make themselves as comfortable as cir- 
 cumstances will permit. The witness is so little elevated above, or 
 put aloof from, the crowd in the court, that a stranger entering during 
 a pause in the proceedings would find it difficult to pick him out from 
 the rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal trial, his eyes, in nine 
 cases out of ten, would wander to the dock in search of the prisoner, 
 in vain ; for that gentleman would most likely be lounging among 
 the most distinguished ornaments of the legal profession, whispering 
 suggestions in his counsel's ear, or making a toothpick out of an old 
 quill with his penknife. 
 
 I could not but notice these differences, when I visited the courts 
 at Boston. I was much surprised at first, too, to observe that the 
 counsel who interrogated the witness under examination at the time, 
 did so sitting. But seeing that he was also occupied in writing down 
 the answers, and remembering that he was alone and had no "junior," 
 I quickly consoled myself with the reflection that law was not quite 
 bo expensive an article here, as at home ; and that the absence of 
 sundry formalities which we regard as indispensable, had doubtless 
 a very favourable influence upon the bill of costs. 
 
 In every Court, ample and commodious provision is made for the 
 accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all through America. 
 In every Public Institution, the right of the people to attend, and to 
 have an interest in the proceedings, is most fully and distinctly 
 recognised. There are no grim door-keepers to dole out their tardy 
 civility by the sixpenny-worth ; nor is there, I sincerely believe, any 
 insolence of office of any kind. Nothing national is exhibited for money ; 
 and no public officer is a showman. We have begun of late years to 
 imitate this good example. I hope we shall continue to do so ; and 
 that in the fulness of time, even deans and chapters may be converted. 
 
 In the civil court an action was trying, for damages sustained in 
 some accident upon a railway. The witness had been examined, and 
 counsel was addressing the jury. The learned gentleman (like a few 
 of his English brethren) was desperately long-winded, and had a 
 remarkable capacity of saying the same thing over and over again.
 
 Courts of Law. 47 
 
 His great thonie was " Warren the engine driver," whom ho pressed 
 into the service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for 
 about a quarter of an hour ; and, coming out of court at the expiration 
 of that time, without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits 
 of the case, felt as if I were at home again. 
 
 In the prisoner's cell, waiting to be examined by the magistrate on 
 a charge of tbeft, was a boy. This lad, instead of being committed to 
 a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston, and 
 there taught a trade ; and in the course of time he would be bound 
 apprentice to some respectable master. Thus, his detection in this 
 offence, instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable 
 death, would lead, tbere was a reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed 
 from vice, and becoming a worthy member of society. 
 
 I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal solemnities, 
 many of which impress me as being exceedingly ludicrous. Strange as it 
 may seem too, there is undoubtedly a degree of protection in the wig 
 and gown a dismissal of individual responsibility in dressing for the 
 part which encourages that insolent bearing and language, and that 
 gross perversion of the office of a pleader for The Truth, so frequent 
 in our courts of law. Still, I cannot help doubting whether America, 
 in her desire to shake off the absurdities and abuses of the old system, 
 may not have gone too far into the opposite extreme ; and whether it 
 is not desirable, especially in the small community of a city like this, 
 where each man knows the other, to surround the administration of 
 justice with some artificial barriers against the " Hail fellow, well 
 met " deportment of everyday life. All the aid it can have in the 
 very high character and ability of the Bench, not only here but else- 
 where, it has, and well deserves to havo ; but it may need something 
 more : not to impress the thoughtful and the well-informed, but the 
 ignorant and heedless ; a class which includes some prisoners and 
 many witnesses. These institutions were established, no doubt, upon 
 the principle that those who had so large a share in making the 
 laws, would certainly respect them. But experience has proved this 
 hope to be fallacious ; for no men know better than the Judges of 
 America, that on tho occasion of any great pojmlar excitement the law 
 is powerless, and cannot, for the time, assert its own supremacy. 
 
 The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, courtesy, 
 and good breeding. Tho ladies are unquestionably very beautiful 
 in face : but there I am compelled to stop. Their education is much 
 as witli us ; neither better nor worse. I had heard some very 
 marvellous stones in this respect ; but not believing them, was not 
 disappointed. Blue ladies there are, in Boston ; but like philosophers 
 of that colour and sex in most other latitudes, they rather desiro 
 to be thought superior than to be so. Evangelical ladies thcro are, 
 likewise, whoso attachment to tho forms of religion, and horror of 
 theatrical entertainments, are most exemplary. Ladies who have a 
 passion for attending lectures are to bo found among all classes and
 
 48 American Notes. 
 
 all conditions. In the kind of provincial life which prevails in cities 
 such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of 
 the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the Unitarian ministry) 
 would appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational 
 amusements. The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the 
 only means of excitement excepted ; and to the church, the chapel, 
 and the lecture-room, the ladies report in crowds. 
 
 Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink, and as an escape 
 from the dull monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who 
 pepper the highest will he the surest to please. They who strew the 
 Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most 
 ruthlessly tread down tho flowers and leaves that grow by the way- 
 side, will be voted the most righteous ; and they who enlarge with 
 the greatest pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven, will 
 be considered by all true believers certain of going there : though it 
 would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is 
 arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard to the 
 other means of excitement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit of 
 being always now. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of 
 another, that none are remembered ; and the course of this month 
 may be safely repeated next, with its charm of novelty unbroken, and 
 its interest unabated. 
 
 The fruits of the earth have their growth in corruption. Out of 
 the rottenness of these things, there has sprung up in Boston a sect of 
 philosophers known as Transcendcntalists. On inquiring what this 
 appellation might be supposed to signify, I was given to understand 
 that whatever was unintelligible would be certainly transcendental. 
 Not deriving much comfort from this elucidation, I pursued the 
 inquiry still further, and found that the Transcendcntalists are 
 followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or I should rather say, of a 
 follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has 
 written a volume of Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy 
 and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so), there ( is much more 
 that is true and manly, honest and bold. Transcendentalism has its 
 cccasional vagaries (what school has not ?), but it has good healthful 
 qualities in spite of them ; not least among the number a hearty 
 disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect her in all the million 
 varieties of her everlasting wardrobe. And therefore if I were a 
 Bostonian, I think I would be a Transcendentalism 
 
 The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who addresses 
 himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a mariner himself. I 
 found his chapel down among the shipping, in one of the narrow, old, 
 water-side streets, with a gay blue flag waving freely from its roof. 
 In the gallery opposite to the pulpit were a little choir of male and 
 female singers, a violoncello, and a violin. The preacher already sat 
 in the pulpit, which was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind 
 him with painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical appear-
 
 The Seamen s Preacher. 49 
 
 ance. He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured man, of about six or 
 eight and fifty ; with deep lines graven as it were into his face, dark 
 hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet tho general character of his counte- 
 nance was pleasant and agreeable. The service commenced with 
 a hymn, to which succeeded an extemporary prayer. It had tho fault 
 of frequent repetition, incidental to all such prayers ; but it was plain 
 and comprehensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general 
 sympathy and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of 
 this form of address to tho Deity as it might be. That done he 
 opened his discourse, taking for his text a passage from the Song of 
 Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commencement of the servico 
 by some unknown member of the congregation : " Who is this coming 
 up from the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved ! " 
 
 He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into all 
 manner of shapes ; but at vays ingeniously, and with a rude eloquence, 
 well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers. Indeed if I bo not 
 mistaken, he studied their sympathies and understandings much moro 
 than the display of his own powers. His imagery was all drawn from 
 the sea, and from the incidents of a seaman's life ; and was often 
 remarkably good. He spoke to them of " that glorious man, Lord 
 Nelson," and of Collin gwood ; and drew nothing in, as tho saying is, 
 by the head and shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his purpose, 
 naturally, and with a sharp mind to its effect. Sometimes, Avhcn 
 much excited with his subject, he had an odd way compounded of 
 John Bunyan, and Balfour of Burley of taking his great quarto 
 Bible under his arm and pacing up and down the pulpit with it ; 
 looking steadily down, meantime, into the midst of the congregation. 
 Thus, when he applied his text to the first assemblage of his hearers, 
 and pictured the wonder of the church at their presumption informing 
 a congregation among themselves, ho stopped short with his Biblo 
 under his arm in tho manner I have described, and pursued his dis- 
 course after this manner : 
 
 " Who are these who are they who are these fellows? where do 
 they come from ? Where are they going to ? Come from ! What's 
 the answer? " leaning out of the pulpit, and pointing downward with 
 his right hand : " From below ! " starting back again, and looking at 
 the sailors before him : " From below, my brethren. From under the 
 hatches of sin, battened down above you by the evil one. That's 
 where you came from ! " a walk up and down the pulpit : " and 
 where are you going" stopping abruptly: "where aro you going? 
 Aloft!" very softly, and pointing upward: "Aloft!" louder: 
 "aloft!" louder still: "That's where you are going with a fair 
 wind, all taut and trim, steering direct for Heaven in its glory, 
 where there are no storms or foul weather, and where tho wicked 
 cease from troubling, and the weary aro at rest." Another walk : 
 " That's where you're going to, my friends. That's it. That's tho 
 place. That's tho port. That's the haven. It's a blessed harbour
 
 50 American Notes. 
 
 still water there, in all changes of the winds and tides ; no driving 
 ashore upon the rocks, or slipping your cables and running out to 
 sea, there : Peace Peace Peace all peace ! " Another walk, and 
 patting the Bible under his left arm : " What ! These fellows are 
 coming from the wilderness, aro they? Yes. From the dreary, 
 blighted wilderness of Iniquity, whoso only crop is Death. But do 
 they lean upon anything do they lean upon nothing, these poor sea- 
 men ? " Three raps upon the Bible : " Oh yes. Yes. They lean 
 upon the arm of their Beloved " three more raps : " upon the arm 
 of their Beloved " three more, and a walk : " Pilot, guiding-star, and 
 compass, all in one, to all hands here it is " three more : " Here it 
 is. They can do their seaman's duty manfully, and be easy in their 
 minds in the utmost peril and danger, with this " two more : " They 
 can come, even these poor fellows can come, from the wilderness 
 leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up up up ! " raising 
 his hand higher, and higher, at every repetition of the word, so that 
 he stood with it at last stretched above his head, regarding them in a 
 strange, rapt manner, and pressing the book triumphantly to his 
 breast, until he gradually subsided into some other portion of his 
 discourse. i 
 
 I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preacher's eccen- 
 tricities than his merits, though taken in connection with his look and 
 manner, and the character of his audience, even this was striking. It 
 is possible, however, that my favourable impression of him may have 
 been greatly influenced and strengthened, firstly, by his impressing 
 upon his hearers that the true observance of religion was not incon- 
 sistent with a cheerful deportment and an exact discharge of the 
 duties of their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of 
 them ; and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any 
 monopoly in Paradise and its mercies. I never heard these two 
 points so wisely touched (if indeed I have ever heard them touched at 
 all), by any preacher of that kind before. 
 
 Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making myself 
 acquainted with these things, in settling the course I should take in 
 my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its society, I am not 
 aware that I have any occasion to prolong this chapter. Such of its 
 social customs as I have not mentioned, however, may be told in a 
 very few words. 
 
 The usual dinner-hour is two o'clock. A dinner party takes place 
 at five ; and at an evening party, they seldom sup later than eleven ; 
 so that it goes hard but one gets home, even from a rout, by midnight. 
 I never could find out any difference between a party at Boston and a 
 party in London, saving that at the former place all assemblies arc 
 held at more rational hours ; that the conversation may possibly be a 
 little louder and more cheerful ; and a guest is usually expected to 
 ascend to the very top of the house to take his cloak off; that he is 
 certain to see, at every dinner, an unusual amount of poultry on the
 
 Social Customs. 51 
 
 table ; and at every supper, at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed 
 oysters, in any one of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be 
 smothored easily. 
 
 There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and construction, but 
 sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who resort to them, sit, 
 as of right, in the front rows of the boxes. 
 
 The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand 
 and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening : dropping in and out as 
 the humour takes them. There too the stranger is initiated into the 
 mysteries of Gin-sling, Cock-tail, Sangaree, Mint Julep, Sherry- 
 cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks. The house is full of 
 boarders, both married and single, many of whom sleep upon the 
 premises, and contract by the week for their board and lodging : the 
 charge for which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A 
 public table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and for 
 dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together to these 
 meals will vary in number from one to two hundred : sometimes more. 
 The advent of each of these epochs in the day is proclaimed by an 
 awful gong, which shakes the veAwindow-frames as it reverberates 
 through the house, and horribly disturbs nervous foreigners. There 
 is an ordinary for ladies, and an ordinary for gentlemen. 
 
 In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly considera- 
 tion, have been laid for dinner without a huge glass dish of cranberries 
 in the middle of the table ; and breakfast would have been no break- 
 fast unless the principal dish were a deformed beef-steak with a 
 great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot butter, and sprinkled 
 with the very blackest of all possible pepper. Our bedroom was 
 spacious and airy, but (like every bedroom on this side of the Atlantic) 
 very bare of furniture, having no curtains to the French bedstead or 
 to the window. It had one unusual luxury, however, in the shape of 
 a wardrobe of painted wood, something smaller than an English 
 watch-box ; or if this comparison should be insufficient to convey a 
 just idea of its dimensions, they may be estimated from the fact of my 
 having lived for fourteen days and nights in the firm belief that it 
 was a shower-bath. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM. 
 
 Before leaving Boston, I devoted ono day to an excursion to Lowell. 
 I assign a separate chapter to this visit ; not because I am about to 
 describe it at any great length, but because I romember it as a thing 
 by itself, and am desirous that my readers should do the same.
 
 52 
 
 American Notes. 
 
 I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this occasion, 
 for the first time. As these works are pretty much alike all through 
 the States, their general characteristics are easily described. 
 
 There are no first and second class carriages as with us : but there 
 is a gentlemen's car and a ladies' car : the main distinction between 
 which is that in the first, everybody smokes ; and in the second, 
 nobody does. As a black man never travels with a white one, there is 
 also a negro car ; which is a great blundering clumsy chest, such as 
 Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom of Brobdingnag. There is 
 a great deal of jolting, a great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not 
 much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek, and a bell. 
 
 The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger : holding thirty, 
 forty, fifty people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to end, 
 are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There is a long 
 row of them on each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up the 
 middle, and a door at both ends. In the centre of the carriage there 
 is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal ; which is for 
 the most part red-hot. It is insufferably close ; and you see the hot 
 air fluttering between yourself and any other object you may happen 
 to look at, like the ghost of smoke. 
 
 In the ladies' car, there are a great many gentlemen who havo 
 ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies who have 
 nobody with them : for any lady may travel alone, from one end of 
 the United States to the other, and be certain of the most courteous 
 and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or check-taker, 
 or guard, or whatever he may be, wears no uniform. He walks up 
 and down the car, and in and out of it, as his fancy dictates ; leans 
 against the door with his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if 
 you chance to be a stranger ; or enters into conversation with the 
 passengers about him. A great many newspapers are pulled out, and 
 a few of them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else 
 who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that 
 railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say "No," 
 he says " Yes ? " (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ. 
 You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says 
 "Yes?" (still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses that you 
 don't travel faster in England ; and on your replying that you do, says 
 " Yes ? " again (still interrogatively), and it is quite evident, don't 
 believe it. After a long pause he remarks, partly to you, and partly 
 to the knob on the top of his stick, that " Yankees are reckoned to be 
 considerable of a go-ahead people too ; " upon which you say " Yes," 
 and then he says " Yes " again (affirmatively this time) ; and upon 
 your looking out of window, tells you that behind that hill, and some 
 three miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart 
 lo-ca-tion, where he expects you havo con-eluded to stop. Your 
 answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in reference 
 to your intended route (always pronounced rout) ; and wherever you
 
 Railway T rave Hi tig. 53 
 
 are going, yon invariably learn that you can't get there without 
 immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are some- 
 where else. 
 
 If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's seat, the gentleman 
 who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he immediately 
 vacates it with great politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are 
 banks, so is cotton. Quiet people avoid the question of the Presidency, 
 for there will be a new election in three years and a half, and party 
 feeling runs very high : the great constitutional feature of this institu- 
 tion being, that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the 
 acrimony of the next one begins ; which is an unspeakable comfort to 
 all strong politicians and true lovers of their country : that is to say, 
 to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a quarter. 
 
 Except when a branch road joins the main one, there is seldom 
 more than one track of rails ; so that the road is very narrow, and the 
 view, where there is a deep cutting, by no means extensive. When 
 there is not, the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile 
 after mile of stunted trees : some hewn down by the axe, some blown 
 down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their neighbours, 
 many mere logs half hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to 
 spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute frag- 
 ments such as these ; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of 
 vegetable rottenness ; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, 
 and stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, 
 and neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an open 
 country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as many an 
 English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name ; now catch 
 hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their 
 cool piazzas, its prim New England church and school-house ; when 
 whir-r-r-r ! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark 
 screen : the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, tho stagnant water 
 all so like the last that you seem to have been transported back again 
 by magic. 
 
 The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impos- 
 sibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out, is only to 
 bo equalled by the apparently desperate hopelessness of there being 
 anybody to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there 
 is no gnte, no policeman, no signal : nothing but a rough wooden arch, 
 on which is painted " When the bell rings, look out for the Loco- 
 motive." On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again 
 emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy 
 ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light 
 for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes 
 in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, 
 neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There with mechanics 
 working at their trades, and people leaning from their doors and 
 windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking,
 
 54 American Notes. 
 
 and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and 
 unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the very rails 
 there on, on, on tears the mad dragon of an engine with its train 
 of cars ; scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from 
 its wood fire ; screeching, hissing, yelling, panting ; until at last the 
 thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to drink, the people 
 cluster round, and you have time to breathe again. 
 
 I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman intimately con- 
 nected with the management of the factories there ; and gladly putting 
 myself under his guidance, drove off at once to that quarter of the 
 town in which the works, the object of my visit, were situated. 
 Although only just of age for if my recollection serve me, it has been 
 a manufacturing town barely one-and-twenty years Lowell is a large, 
 populous, thriving place. Those indications of its youth which first 
 attract the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of character which, to 
 a visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very 
 dirty winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me, 
 except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might 
 have been deposited there, on the subsiding of the waters after the 
 Deluge. In one place, there was a new wooden church, which, having 
 no steeple, and being yet unpainted, looked like an enormous packing- 
 case without any direction upon it. In another there was a large 
 hotel, whose walls and colonnades were so crisp, and thin, and light, 
 that it had exactly the appearance of being built with cards. I was 
 careful not to draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw 
 a workman come out upon the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp 
 of his foot he should crush the structure beneath him, and bring it 
 rattling down. The very river that moves the machinery in the mills 
 (for they are all worked by water power), seems to acquire a new 
 character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted 
 w r ood among which it takes its course ; and to be as light-headed, 
 thoughtless, and brisk a young river, in its murmurings and tumblings, 
 as one would desire to see. One would swear that every " Bakery," 
 " Grocery," and " Bookbindery," and other kind of store, took its 
 shutters down for the first time, and started in business yesterday. 
 The golden pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon the sun-blind 
 frames outside the Druggists', appear to have been just turned out of 
 the United States' Mint ; and when I saw a baby of some week or ten 
 days old in a woman's arms at a street corner, I found myself uncon- 
 sciously wondering where it came from : never supposing for an 
 instant that it could have been born in such a young town as that. 
 
 There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what 
 we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in 
 America a Corporation. I went over several of these ; such as a 
 woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton factory : examined them 
 in every part ; and saw them in their ordinary working aspect, with 
 no ju'eparation of any kind, or departure from their ordinary overy-
 
 At Lowell. 55 
 
 day proceedings. I may add that I am well acquainted with our 
 manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in 
 Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner. 
 
 I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner hour was 
 over, and the girls were returning to their work ; indeed the stairs of 
 the mill were thronged with them as I ascended. They were all 
 well dressed, hut not to my thinking above their condition ; for I like 
 to see the humbler class of society careful of their dress and appear- 
 ance, and even, if they please, decorated with such little trinkets as 
 come within the compass of their means. Supposing it confined 
 within reasonable limits, I would always encourage this kind of pride, 
 as a worthy element of self-respect, in any person I employed ; and 
 should no more be deterred from doing so, because some wretched 
 female referred her fall to a love of dress, than I would allow my 
 construction of the real intent and meaning of the Sabbath to be 
 influenced by any warning to the well-disposed, founded on his back- 
 slidings on that particular day, which might emanate from the rather 
 doubtful authority of a murderer in Newgate. 
 
 These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed : and that phrase 
 necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had serviceable 
 bonnets, good warm cloaks, and shawls ; and were not above clogs 
 and pattens. Moreover, there were places in the mill in which they 
 could deposit these things without injury ; and there were conveniences 
 for washing. They wero healthy in appearance, many of them 
 remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women : 
 not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those mills 
 (but I did not, though I looked for something of this kind with a 
 sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, aft'ected, and ridiculous young 
 creature that my imagination could suggest, I should have thought of 
 the careless, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I have seen 
 that), and should have been still well pleased to look upon her. 
 
 The rooms in which they worked, were as well ordered as them- 
 selves. In the windows of some, there were green plants, which were 
 trained to shade the glass ; in all, there was as much fresh air, 
 cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the occupation would 
 possibly admit of. Out of so largo a number of females, many of 
 whom were only then just verging upon womanhood, it may be 
 reasonably supposed that some wero delicate and fragile in appear- 
 ance : no doubt there were. But I solemnly declare, that from all tho 
 crowd I saw in the different factories that day, I cannot recall or 
 separate one young face that gave me a painful impression ; not one 
 young girl whom, assuming it to be matter of necessity that she 
 should gain her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would havo 
 removed from those works if 1 had had the power. 
 
 They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The owners 
 of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter upon 
 the possession of these houses, whose characters havo not undergone
 
 56 American Notes. 
 
 the most searching and thorough inquiry. Any complaint that is 
 made against them, by the boarders, or by any one else, is fully 
 investigated ; and if good ground of complaint be shown to exist 
 against them, they are removed, and their occupation is handed over 
 to some more deserving person. There are a few children employed 
 in these factories, but not many. The laws of the State forbid their 
 working more than nine months in the year, and require that they be 
 educated during the other three. For this purpose there are schools 
 in Lowell ; and there are churches and chapels of various persuasions, 
 in which the young women may observe that form of worship in 
 which they have been educated. 
 
 At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and 
 pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, or 
 boarding-house for the sick : it is the best houso those parts, and 
 was built by an eminent merchant for his own residence. Like that 
 institution at Boston, which I have before described, it is not parcelled 
 out into wards, but is divided into convenient chambers, each of 
 which has all the comforts of a very comfortable home. The principal 
 medical attendant resides under the same roof; and were the patients 
 members of his own family, they could not be better cared for, or 
 attended with greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly 
 charge in this establishment for each female patient is three dollars, 
 or twelve shillings English ; but no girl employed by any of the 
 corporations is ever excluded for want of the means of payment. 
 That they do not very often want the means, may be gathered from 
 the fact, that in July, 1841, no fewer than nine hundred and seventy- 
 eight of these girls were depositors in the Lowell Savings Bank : the 
 amount of whose joint savings was estimated at one hundred thousand 
 dollars, or twenty thousand English pounds. 
 
 I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large class 
 of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. 
 
 Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding- 
 houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to cir- 
 culating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a 
 periodical called The Lowell Offering, " A repository of original 
 articles, written exclusively by females actively employed in the 
 mills," which is duly printed, published, and sold ; and whereof I 
 brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I 
 have read from beginning to end. 
 
 The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, 
 with one voice, " How very preposterous ! " On my deferentially 
 inquiring why, they will answer, " These things are above their 
 station." In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what their 
 station is. 
 
 It is their station to work. And they do work. They labour in 
 these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is unquestion- 
 ably work, and pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is above their
 
 Wholesome Factory System. 57 
 
 station to indulgo in such amusements, on any terms. Are we quite 
 sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of the " station " 
 of working people, from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation 
 of that class as they are, and not as they might he ? I think that if 
 we examine our own feelings, we shall find that the pianos, and the 
 circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, startle us by their 
 novelty, and not by their bearing upon any abstract question of right 
 or wrong. 
 
 For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of to-day 
 cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, 
 any one of these pursuits is not most humanising and laudable. I 
 know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in 
 it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance for its 
 associate. I know no station which has a right to monopolise the 
 means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational entertainment ; 
 or which has ever continued to be a station very long, after seeking to 
 do so. 
 
 Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production, I will 
 only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles 
 having been written by these girls after the arduous labours of the 
 day, that it will compare advantageously with a great many English 
 Annuals. It is pleasant to find that many of its Tales are of the 
 Mills and of those who work in them ; that they inculcate habits of 
 self-denial and contentment, and teach good doctrines of enlarged 
 benevolence. A strong feeling for the beauties of nature, as displayed 
 in the solitudes the writers have left at home, breathes through its 
 pages like wholesome village air ; and though a circulating library is 
 a favourable school for the study of such topics, it has very scant 
 allusion to fine clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some 
 persons might object to the papers being signed occasionally with 
 rather fine names, but this is an American fashion. One of the 
 provinces of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly 
 names into pretty ones, as the children improve upon the tastes of 
 their parents. These changes costing little or nothing, scores of 
 Mary Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas every session. 
 
 It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson or 
 General Harrison to this town (I forget which, but it is not to the 
 purpose), he walked through three miles and a half of these young 
 ladies all dressed out with parasols and silk stockings. But as I am 
 not aware that any worse consequence ensued, than a sudden looking- 
 up of all the parasols and silk stockings in the market ; and perhaps 
 the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englandcr who bought them 
 all up at any price, in expectation of a demand that never came ; I set 
 no great store by the circumstance. 
 
 In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of the 
 gratification it yielded to mo, and cannot fail to afford any foreigner 
 to whom the condition of such people at home is a subject of interest
 
 5^ American Notes. 
 
 and anxious speculation, I have carefully abstained from drawing a 
 comparison between these factories and those of our own land. Many 
 of the circumstances whose strong influence has been at work for years 
 in our manufacturing towns have not arisen here ; and there is no 
 manufacturing population in Lowell, so to speak : for these girls 
 (often the daughters of small farmers) come from other States, remain 
 a few years in the mills, and then go home for good. 
 
 The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between the 
 Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow. I abstain from 
 it, because I deem it just to do so. But I only the more earnestly 
 adjure all those whose eyes may rest on these pages, to pause and 
 reflect upon the difference between this town and those great haunts 
 of desperate misery : to call to mind, if they can in the midst of party 
 strife and squabble, the efforts that must be made to purge them of 
 their suffering and danger : and last, and foremost, to remember how 
 the precious Time is rushing by. 
 
 I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same kind of 
 car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at 
 great length to my companion (not to me, of course) the true principles 
 on which books of travel in America should be written by English- 
 men, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all the way out at window 
 from the corners of my eyes, I found abundance of entertainment ror 
 the rest of the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire, which had 
 been invisible in the morning but were now brought out in full relief 
 by the darkness: for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright 
 sparks, which showered about us like a storm of fiery snow. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN. 
 TO NEW YORK. 
 
 Leaving Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the fifth of February, 
 we proceeded by another railroad to Worcester : a pretty New 
 England town, where we had arranged to remain under the hospitable 
 roof of the Governor of the State, until Monday morning. 
 
 These towns and cities of New England (many of which would be 
 villages in Old England), are as favourable specimens of rural 
 America, as their people arc of rural Americans. The well-trimmed 
 lawns and green meadows of home are not there ; and the grass, 
 compared with our ornamental plots and pastures, is rank, and rough, 
 and wild : but delicate slopes of land, gently-swelling hills, wooded 
 valleys, and slender streams, abound. Every little colony of houses 
 has its church and school-house peeping from among the white roofs
 
 Newness of Everything. 59 
 
 and shady trees; every house is the whitest of the white; every 
 Venetian blind the greenest of the green ; every fine day's sky the 
 bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so 
 hardened the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that their furrowed 
 tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the usual aspect of 
 newness on every object, of course. All the buildings looked as if 
 they had been built and painted that morning, and could be taken 
 down on Monday with very little trouble. In the keen evening air, 
 every sharp outline looked a hundred times sharper than ever. The 
 clean cardboard colonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese 
 bridge on a tea-cup, and appeared equally well calculated for use. 
 The razor-like edges of the detached cottages seemed to cut the very 
 wind as it whistled against them, and to send it smarting on its way 
 with a shriller cry than before. Those slightly-built wooden dwellings 
 behind which the sun was setting with a brilliant lustre, could be so 
 looked through and through, that the idea of any inhabitant being 
 able to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any secrets from 
 the public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. Even where a 
 blazing fire shone through the uncurtained window of some distant 
 house, it had the air of being newly lighted, and of lacking warmth ; 
 and instead of awakening thoughts of a snug chamber, bright with 
 faces that first saw the light round that same hearth, and ruddy with 
 warm hangings, it came upon one suggestive of the smell of new 
 mortar and damp walls. 
 
 So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when the sun 
 was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and 
 sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at 
 hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant 
 Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It 
 would have been the better for an old church ; better still for some 
 old graves ; but as it was, a wholesome repose and tranquillity per- 
 vaded the scene, which after the restless ocean and the hurried city, 
 had a doubly grateful influence on the spirits. 
 
 Wo went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield. From 
 that place to Hartford, whither we were bound, is a distance of only 
 five-and-twenty miles, but at that time of the year the roads were so 
 bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten or twelve 
 hours. Fortunately, however, the winter having been unusually mild, 
 the Connecticut River was " open," or, in other words, not frozen. 
 The captain of a small steam-boat was going to make his first trip for 
 the season that day (the second February trip, I believe, within the 
 memory of man), and only waited for us to go on board. Accordingly, 
 we went on board, with us little delay as might be. He was as good 
 as his word, and started directly. 
 
 It certainly was not called a small steam-boat without reason. I 
 omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have been of 
 about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might
 
 6 d American Notes. 
 
 have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with 
 common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These 
 windows had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across 
 the lower panes ; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian 
 public-house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water 
 accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this 
 chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get on 
 anywhere, in America, without a rocking-chair. 
 
 I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel was, or how 
 many feet narrow : to apply the words length and width to such 
 measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But I may state that 
 Ave all kept the middle of the deck, lest the boat should unexpectedly 
 tip over ; and that the machinery, by some surprising process of con- 
 densation, worked between it and the keel : the whole forming a warm 
 sandwich, about three feet thick. 
 
 It rained all day as I once thought it never did rain anywhere, but 
 in the Highlands of Scotland. The river was full of floating blocks 
 of ice, which were constantly crunching and cracking under us ; and 
 the depth of water, in the course we took to avoid the larger masses, 
 carried down the middle of the river by the current, did not exceed a 
 few inches. Nevertheless, we moved onward, dexterously ; and being 
 well wrapped up, bade defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey. 
 The Connecticut Eiver is a fine stream ; and the banks in summer- 
 time are, I have no doubt, beautiful : at all events, I was told so by 
 a young lady in the cabin ; and she should be a judge of beauty, if 
 the possession of a quality include the appreciation of it, for a more 
 beautiful creature I never looked upon. 
 
 After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including a 
 stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun considerably 
 bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hartford, and straightway 
 repaired to an extremely comfortable hotel : except, as usual, in the 
 article of bedrooms, which, in almost every place we visited, were 
 very conducive to early rising. 
 
 We tarried here, four days. The town is beautifully situated in a 
 basin of green hills; the soil is rich, well-wooded, and carefully 
 improved. It is the seat of the local legislature of Connecticut, which 
 sage body enacted, in bygone times, the renowned code of " Blue 
 Laws," in virtue whereof, among other enlightened provisions, any 
 citizen who could be proved to have kissed his wife on Sunday, was 
 punishable, I believe, with the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan 
 spirit exists in these parts to the present hour ; but its influence has 
 not tended, that I know, to make the people less hard in their bargains, 
 or more equal in their dealings. As I never heard of its working that 
 effect anywhere else, I infer that it never will, here. Indeed, I am 
 accustomed, with reference to great professions and severe faces, to 
 judge of the goods of the other world pretty much as I judge of the 
 goods of this ; and whenever I see a dealer in such commodities with
 
 An Antediluvian, 61 
 
 too great a display of them in his window, I douht the quality of the 
 article within. 
 
 In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of King 
 Charles was hidden. It is now inclosed in a gentleman's garden. In 
 the State House is the charter itself. I found the courts of law here, 
 just the same as at Boston ; the public institutions almost as good. 
 The Insane Asylum is admirably conducted, and so is the Institution 
 for the Deaf and Dumb. 
 
 I very much questioned within myself, as I walked through the 
 Insane Asylum, whether I should have known the attendants from the 
 patients, but for the few words which passed between the former, and 
 the Doctor, in reference to the persons under their charge. Of course 
 I limit this remark merely to their looks ; for the conversation of the 
 mad people was mad enough. 
 
 There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good- 
 humoured appearance, who came sidling xip to me from the end of a 
 long passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible condescension, pro- 
 pounded this unaccountable inquiry : 
 
 " Does Pontefract still flourish, sir, upon the soil of England ? " 
 
 ' ; lie does, ma'am," I rejoined. 
 
 " When you last saw him, sir, he was " 
 
 " Well, ma'am," said I, " extremely well. He begged me to present 
 his compliments. I never saw him looking better." 
 
 At this, the old lady was very much delighted. After glancing at 
 mo for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I was serious in my 
 respectful air, she sidled back some paces ; sidled forward again ; 
 made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately retreated a step or two) ; 
 and 6aid : 
 
 "Jam an antediluvian, sir." 
 
 I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as much 
 from the first. Therefore I said so. 
 
 " It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an ante- 
 diluvian," said the old lady. 
 
 " I should think it was, ma'am," I rejoined. 
 
 The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked and sidled 
 down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and ambled grace- 
 fully into her own bed-chamber. 
 
 In another part of the building, there was a male patient in bed ; 
 very much flushed and heated. 
 
 " Well," said he, starting up, and pulling off his night-cap : " It's 
 all settled at last. I have arranged it with Queen Victoria." 
 
 " Arranged what ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 " Why, that business," passing his hand wearily across his forehead, 
 "about the siege of New York." 
 
 " Oh ! " said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he looked at 
 me for an answer. 
 
 " Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by the
 
 62 American Notes. 
 
 British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No harm at all. 
 Those that want to be safe, must hoist flags. That's all they'll have 
 to do. They must hoist flags." 
 
 Even while he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to have some 
 faint idea that his talk was incoherent. Directly ho had said these 
 words, he lay down again ; gave a kind of a groan ; and covered his 
 hot head with the blankets. 
 
 There was another : a young man, whose madness was love and 
 music. After playing on the accordion a march he had composed, he 
 was very anxious that I should walk into his chamber, which I imme- 
 diately did. 
 
 By way of being very knowing, and humouring him to the top of his 
 bent, I went to the window, which commanded a beautiful prospect, 
 and remarked, with an address upon which I greatly plumed myself: 
 
 " What a delicious country you have about these lodgings of yours." 
 
 " Poh ! " said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the notes of his 
 instrument : " Well enough for such an Institution as this!" 
 
 I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life. 
 
 " I come here just for a whim," he said coolly. " That's all." 
 
 " Oh ! That's all ! " said I. 
 
 " Yes. That's all. The Doctor's a smart man. He quite enters 
 into it. It's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You needn't men- 
 tion it, but I think I shall go out next Tuesday ! " 
 
 I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly con- 
 fidential ; and rejoined the Doctor. As we were passing through a 
 gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet and composed 
 manners, came up, and proffering a slip of paper and a pen, begged 
 that I would oblige her with an autograph. I complied, and we 
 parted. 
 
 " I think I remember having had a few interviews like that, with 
 ladies out of doors. I hope she is not mad ? " 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " On what subject ? Autographs ? " 
 
 " No. She hears voices in the air." 
 
 " Well ! " thought I, " it would be well if we could shut up a few 
 false prophets of these later times, who have professed to do the 
 same ; and I should like to try the experiment on a Mormonist or two 
 to begin with." 
 
 In this place, there is the best Jail for untried offenders in the 
 world. There is also a very well-ordered State prison, arranged upon 
 the same plan as that at Boston, except that here, there is always a 
 sentry on the wall with a loaded gun. It contained at that time about 
 two hundred prisoners. A spot was shown me in the sleeping ward, 
 where a watchman was murdered some years since in the dead of 
 night, in a desperate attempt to escape, made by a prisoner who had 
 broken from his cell. A woman, too, was pointed out to me, who, for 
 the murder of her husband, had been a close prisoner for sixteen years.
 
 Political Friends. 63 
 
 " Do you think," I asked of my conductor, " that after so very long 
 an imprisonment, sho Las any thought or hope of ever regaining her 
 liberty ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes," he answered. " To be sure she has." 
 
 " She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know : " which, by the bye, is a national answer. 
 " Her friends mistrust her." 
 
 " What have they to do with it ? " I naturally inquired. 
 
 " Well, they won't petition." 
 
 " But if they did, they couldn't get her out. I suppose ? " 
 
 " Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second, but tiring 
 and wearying for a few years might do it." 
 
 " Does that ever do it ? " 
 
 " Why yes, that'll do it sometimes. Political friends '11 do it some- 
 times. It's pretty often done, one way or another." 
 
 I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection of 
 Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there, whom 
 I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little 
 regret on the evening of Friday the 11th, and travelled that night by 
 railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, the guard and I were formally 
 introduced to each other (as Wo usually were on such occasions), and 
 exchanged a variety of small-talk. We reached New Haven at about 
 eight o'clock, after a journey of tnrec hours, and put up for the night 
 at the best inn. 
 
 New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many 
 of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted with rows 
 of grand old elm-trees ; and the same natural ornaments surround 
 Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and reputation. 
 The various departments of this Institution are erected in a kind of 
 park or common in the middle of tbe town, where they are dimly 
 visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an 
 old cathedral yard in England ; and when their branches are in full 
 leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter time, these 
 groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and 
 houses of a thriving city, havo a very quaint appearance ; seeming to 
 bring about a kind of compromise between town and country ; as if 
 each had met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it ; which is 
 at once novel and pleasant. 
 
 After a night's rest, wo roso early, and in good time went down to 
 the wharf, and on board tho packet New York for New York. This 
 was tho first American steamboat of any size that I had seen ; and 
 certainly to an English eye it was infinitely less like a steamboat than 
 a huge floating bath. 1 could hardly persuade myself, indeed, but 
 that the bathing establishment off Westminster Bridge, which I left a 
 baby, had suddenly grown to an enormous size ; run away from home ; 
 and sot up in foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America, too, which 
 our vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed the more probable.
 
 64 American Notes. 
 
 The great difference in appearance between these packets and ours, 
 is, that there is so much of them out of the water : the main-deck 
 being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks and goods, like any- 
 second or third floor in a stack of warehouses ; and the promenade or 
 hurricane-deck being a-top of that again. A part of the machinery- 
 is always above this deck ; where the connecting-rod, in a strong and 
 lofty frame, is seen working away like an iron top-sawyer. There is 
 seldom any mast or tackle : nothing aloft but two tall black chimneys. 
 The man at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of 
 the boat (the wheel being connected with the rudder by iron chains, 
 working the whole length of the deck) ; and the passengers, unless, 
 the weather be very fine indeed, usually congregate below. Directly 
 you have left the wharf, all the life, and stir, and bustle of a packet 
 cease. You wonder for a long time how she goes on, for there seems 
 to be nobody in charge of her ; and when another of these dull 
 machines comes splashing by, you feel quite indignant with it, as a 
 sullen, cumbrous, ungraceful, unshiplike leviathan : quite forgetting 
 that the vessel you are on board of, is its very counterpart. 
 
 There is always a clerk's office on the lower deck, where you pay 
 your fare ; a ladies' cabin ; baggage and stowago rooms ; engineer's 
 room ; and in short a great variety of j)erplexities which render the 
 discovery of the gentlemen's cabin, a matter of some difficulty. It 
 often occupies the whole length of the boat (as it did in this case), 
 and has threo or four tiers of berths on each side. When I first 
 descended into the cabin of the New York, it looked, in my un- 
 accustomed eyes, about as long as the Burlington Arcade. 
 
 The Sound, which has to be crossed on this passage, is not always 
 a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has been the scene of some 
 unfortunate accidents. It was a wet morning, and very misty, and we 
 soon lost sight of land. The day was calm, however, and brightened 
 towards noon. After exhausting (with good help from a friend) the 
 larder, and the stock of bottled beer, I lay down to sleep : being very 
 much tired with the fatigues of yesterday. But I woke from my nap 
 in time to hurry up, and see Hell Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying 
 Pan, and other notorious localities, attractive to all readers of famous 
 Diedrich Knickerbocker's History. We were now in a narrow 
 channel, with sloping banks on either side, besprinkled with pleasant 
 villas, and made refreshing to the sight by turf and trees. Soon wo 
 shot in quick succession, past a lighthouse ; a madhouse (how the 
 lunatics flung up their caps and roared in sympathy with the headlong 
 engine and the driving tide !) ; a jail ; and other buildings : and so 
 emerged into a noble bay, whose waters sparkled in the now cloudless 
 sunshine like Nature's eyes turned up to Heaven. 
 
 Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right, confused heaps 
 of buildings, with here and there a spire or steeple, looking down 
 upon the herd below ; and here and there, again, a cloud of lazy 
 smoke ; and in the foreground a forest of ships' masts, cheery with
 
 The American Metropolis. 65 
 
 flapping sails and waving flags. Crossing from among tliem to tho 
 opposite shore, were steam ferry-boats laden with people, coaches, 
 horses, waggons, baskets, boxes : crossed and recrossed by other ferry- 
 boats : all travelling to and fro : and never idle. Stately among these 
 restless Insects, were two or three large ships, moving with slow 
 majestic pace, as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their puny 
 journeys, and making for the broad sea. Beyond, were shining 
 heights, and islands in the glancing river, and a distance scarcely 
 less blue and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. The city's hum 
 and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, the barking 
 of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tingled in the listening ear. All of 
 which life and stir, coming across the stirring water, caught new life 
 and animation from its free companionship ; and, sympathising with 
 its buoyant spirits, glistened as it seemed in sport upon its surface, 
 and hemmed the vessel round, and plashed the water high about her 
 sides, and, floating her gallantly into tho dock, flew off again to 
 welcome other comers, and speed before them to the busy port. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean a city as 
 Boston, but many of its streets havo the same characteristics ; except 
 that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-boards are 
 not quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden, the bricks 
 not quite so red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds and area 
 railings not quite so green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors 
 not quite so bright and twinkling. There are many by-streets, almost 
 as neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty ones, as by-streets in 
 London ; and there is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, 
 which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed 
 against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. Giles's. 
 
 The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, is 
 Broadway ; a wide and bustling street, which, from the Battery 
 Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, may bo four 
 miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper floor of the Carlton House 
 Hotel (situated in the best part of this main artery of New York), and 
 when we are tired of looking down upon the life below, sally forth 
 arm-in-arm, and minglo with the stream ? 
 
 Warm weather ! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open 
 window, as though its rays were concentrated through a burning- 
 glass ; but the day is in its zenith, and tho season an unusual one. 
 Was there ever such a sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement 
 
 F
 
 66 American Notes. 
 
 stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again ; the 
 red bricks of the honses might be yet in the dry, hot kilns ; and the 
 roofs of those omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on 
 them, they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. 
 No stint of omnibuses here ! Half-a-dozen have gone by within as 
 many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too ; gigs, 
 phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private carriages rather of a 
 clumsy make, and not very different from the public vehicles, but 
 built for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen 
 and white ; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur 
 caps ; in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped 
 jean and linen ; and there, in that one instance (look while it passes, 
 or it will be too late), in suits of livery. Some southern republican 
 that, who puts his blacks in uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp 
 and power. Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-clipped pair 
 of grays has stopped standing at their heads now is a Yorkshire 
 groom, who has not been very long in these parts, and looks sorrow- 
 fully round for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse 
 the city half a year without meeting. Heaven save the ladies, how 
 they dress ! We have seen more colours in these ten minutes, than 
 we should have seen elsewhere, in as many clays. What various 
 parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins ! what pinking of thin stock- 
 ings, and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk 
 tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings ! The 
 young gentlemen are fond, you see, of turning down their shirt-collars 
 and cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin ; but they 
 cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to say the 
 truth, humanity of quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and counter, 
 pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are behind yc : those 
 two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a 
 crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name, 
 while the other looks about for it on all the doors and windows. 
 
 Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they wero masked, by 
 their long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their drab trousers, 
 which they wear like men well used to working dresses, who are easy 
 in no others. It would be hard to keep your model republics going, 
 without the countrymen and countrywomen of those two labourers. 
 For who else would dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic 
 work, and make canals and roads, and execute great lines of Internal 
 Improvement ! Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled too, to find out 
 what they seek. Let us go down, and help them, for the love of home, 
 and that spirit of liberty which admits of honest service to honest 
 men, and honest work for honest bread, no matter what it be. 
 
 That's well! We have got at the right address at last, though it 
 is written in strange characters truly, and might have been scrawled 
 with the blunt handle of the spade the writer better knows the use of, 
 than a pen. Their way lies yonder, but what business takes them
 
 Streets in Warm Weather. 67 
 
 there '? They carry savings : to hoard up ? No. They are brothers, 
 those men. One crossed the sea alone, and working very hard for one 
 half-year, and living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other 
 out. That done, they worked together side by side, contentedly 
 sharing hard labour and hard living for another term, and then their 
 sisters came, and then another brother, and lastly, their old mother. 
 And what now '? Why, the poor old crone is restless in a strange 
 land, and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among her peoplo in the 
 old graveyard at home : and so they go to pay her passage back : and 
 God help her and them, and every simple heart, and all who turn to 
 the Jerusalem of their younger days, and have an altar-fire upon the 
 cold hearth of their fathers. 
 
 This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in tho sun, is Wall 
 Street : the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of New York. Many 
 a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and many a no less rapid 
 ruin. Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging about 
 here now, have locked up money in their strong-boxes, like the man 
 in the Arabian Nights, and opening them again, have found but 
 withered leaves. Below, here by the water-side, where the bowsprits 
 of ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust themselves into 
 the windows, lie the noble American vessels which have made their 
 Packet Service the finest in the world. They have brought hither 
 the foreigners who abound in all the streets : not, perhaps, that there 
 are more here, than in other commercial cities ; but elsewhere, they 
 have particular haunts, and you must find them out ; here, they pervado 
 the town. 
 
 Wo must cross Broadway again ; gaining some refreshment from 
 the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which are being 
 carried into shops and bar-rooms ; and tho pine-apples and water- 
 melons profusely displayed for sale. Fino streets of spacious houses 
 hero, you see ! Wall Street has furnished and dismantled many of 
 them very often and here a deep green leafy square. Be sure that 
 is a hospitable house with inmates to be affectionately remembered 
 always, where they have the open door and pretty show of plants 
 within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peeping out of 
 window at the little dog below. You wonder what may be the use of 
 this tall flagstaff in tho by-street, with something liko Liberty's head- 
 dress on its top : so do I. But there is a passion for tall flagstaff's 
 hereabout, and you may see its twin brother in fivo minutes, if you 
 have a mind. 
 
 Again across Broadway, and so passing from the many-coloured 
 crowd and glittering shops into another long main street, the 
 Bowery. A railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along, 
 drawing a score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with ease. 
 The stores are poorer hero ; tho passengers less gay. Clothes ready- 
 made, and meat ready-cooked, are to bo bought in these parts ; and 
 the lively whirl of carriages is exchanged for tho deep rumble of carts
 
 68 American Notes. 
 
 and waggons. These signs which are so plentiful, in shape like river 
 buoys, or small balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and dangling there, 
 announce, as you may see by looking up, " Oysters in every Style." 
 They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull candles glimmer- 
 ing inside, illuminate these dainty words, and make the mouths of 
 idlers water, as they read and linger. 
 
 "What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an 
 enchanter's palace in a melodrama ! a famous prison, called The 
 Tombs. Shall we go in ? 
 
 So. A long narrow lofty building, stove-heated as usual, with four 
 galleries, one above the other, going round it, and communicating by 
 stairs. Between the two sides of each gallery, and in its centre, a 
 bridge, for the greater convenience of crossing. On each of these 
 bvidges sits a man : dozing or reading, or talking to an idle companion. 
 On each tier, are two opposite rows of small iron doors. They look 
 like furnace-doors, but are cold and black, as though the fires within 
 had all gone out. Some two or three are open, and women, with 
 drooping heads bent down, are talking to the inmates. The whole 
 is lighted by a skylight, but it is fast closed ; and from the roof there 
 dangle, limp and drooping, two useless windsails. 
 
 A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking 
 fellow, and, in his way, civil and obliging. 
 
 " Are those black doors the cells ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Are they all full ? " 
 
 " Well, they's pretty nigh full, and that's a fact, and no two ways 
 about it." 
 
 " Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely ? " 
 
 " Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em. That's the truth." 
 
 " When do the prisoners take exercise ? " 
 
 " Well, they do without it pretty much." 
 
 " Do they never walk in the yard ? " 
 
 " Considerable seldom." 
 
 " Sometimes, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without it." 
 
 " But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth. I know this is 
 only a prison for criminals who are charged with grave offences, while 
 they are awaiting their trial, or under remand, but the law here, 
 affords criminals many means of delay. What with motions for new 
 trials, and in arrest of judgment, and what not, a prisoner might be 
 here for twelve months, I take it, might he not? " 
 
 " Well, I guess he might." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that in all that time he would never come out 
 at that little iron door, for exercise ? " 
 
 " He might walk some, perhaps not much." 
 
 " Will you open ono of the doors r ' 
 
 " All, if you like."
 
 The Tombs. 6g 
 
 The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the doors turns slowly on 
 its hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell, into which the light 
 enters through a high chink in the wall. There is a rude means of 
 washing, a table, and a bedstead. Upon the latter, sits a man of sixty ; 
 reading. He looks up for a moment; gives an impatient dogged 
 shake ; and fixes his eyes upon his book again. As we withdrew our 
 heads, the door closes on him, and is fastened as before. This man 
 has murdered his wife, and will probably be hanged. 
 
 " How long has he been here ? " 
 
 " A month." 
 
 " When will he be tried ? 
 
 " Next term." 
 
 " When is that ? " 
 
 "Next month." 
 
 "In England, if a man be under sentence of death, even he has air 
 and exercise at certain periods of the day." 
 
 " Possible ? " 
 
 With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says this, aud 
 how loungingly he leads on to the women's side : making, as he goes, 
 a kind of iron castauet of the key and the stair-rail ! 
 
 Each cell door on this sido has a square aperture in it. Some of 
 the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps ; others 
 shrink away in shame. For what offence can that lonely child, of ten 
 or twelve years old, be shut up hero ? Oh ! that boy ? He is the 
 son of the prisoner we saw just now ; is a witness against his father ; 
 and is detained here for safe keeping, until the trial ; that's all. 
 
 But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long days and 
 nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a young witness, is it 
 not ? What says our conductor ? 
 
 " Well, it an't a very rowdy life, and that's a fact ! " 
 
 Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us leisurely away. I 
 have a question to ask him as we go. 
 
 " Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs ? " 
 
 " Well, it's the cant name." 
 
 " I know it is. Why ? " 
 
 " Some suicides happened here, when it was first built. I expect it 
 come about from that." 
 
 " I saw just now, that that man's clothes wero scattered about the 
 floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the prisoners to be orderly, and 
 put such things away? " 
 
 " Where should they put 'em ? " 
 
 " Not on the ground surely. W T hat do you say to hanging them 
 up ?" 
 
 lie stops and looks round to emphasise his answer : 
 
 " Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooka they would hang 
 themselves, so they'ro taken out of every cell, and there's only the 
 marks left where they used to be 1 "
 
 7o 
 
 American Notes. 
 
 The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been the scene of 
 terrible performances. Into this narrow, grave-like place, men are 
 brought out to die. The wretched creature stands beneath the gibbet 
 on the ground ; the rope about his neck ; and when the sign is given, 
 a weight at its other end comes running down, and swings him up 
 into the air a corpse. 
 
 The law requires that there be present at this dismal spectacle, the 
 judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty-five. From the 
 community it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, the thing remains 
 a frightful mystery. Between the criminal and them, the prison-wall 
 is interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the curtain to his bed of 
 death, his winding-sheet, and grave. From him it shuts out life, and 
 all the motives to unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its 
 mere sight and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain. There are 
 no bold eyes to make him bold ; no ruffians to uphold a ruffian's 
 name before. All beyond the pitiless stone wall, is unknown space. 
 
 Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets. 
 
 Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same ladies in bright 
 colours, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly ; yonder the very 
 same light blue parasol which passed and repassed the hotel-window 
 twenty times while we were sitting there. We are going to cross 
 here. Take care of the pigs. Two portly sows aro trotting up 
 behind this carriage, and a select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen 
 hogs have just now turned the corner. 
 
 Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by himself. He has 
 only one ear ; having parted with tho other to vagrant-dogs in the 
 course of his city rambles. But he gets on very well without it ; and 
 leads a roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life, somewhat answor- 
 ing to that of our club-men at home. He leaves his lodgings every 
 mtrning at a certain hour, throws himself upon tho town, gets through 
 his day in some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly 
 appears at the door of his own house again at night, like the mysterious 
 master of Gil Bias. He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent kind 
 of j)ig, having a very large acquaintance among other pigs of the 
 same character, whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, as 
 ho seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities, but goes 
 grunting down the kennel, turning up the news and small-talk of the 
 city in tho shape of cabbage-stalks and offal, and bearing no tails but 
 his own : which is a very short one, for his old enemies, the dogs, 
 have been at that too, and have left him hardly enough to swear by. 
 He is in every respect a republican pig, going wherever he pleases, 
 and mingling with the best society, on an equal, if not superior 
 footing, for every one makes way when he appears, and the haughtiest 
 give him the wall, if he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, and 
 seldom moved, unless by the dogs before mentioned. Sometimes, 
 indeed, you may see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, 
 whose carcase garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he grunts out " Such
 
 Pigs. 7i 
 
 is life : all flesh is pork ! " buries his nose in the mire again, and 
 waddles down the gutter : comforting himself with the reflection that 
 there is one snout tho less to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any 
 rate. 
 
 They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are ; 
 having, for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old 
 horsehair trunks: spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They 
 have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them 
 could be persuaded to sit for his profile, nobody would recognise it for 
 a pig's likeness. They are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or 
 caught, but are thrown upon their own resources in early life, and 
 become preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows 
 where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At this 
 hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them roaming towards 
 bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally, some youth 
 among them who has over-eaten himself, or has been worried by dogs, 
 trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son : but this is a rare 
 case : perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable com- 
 posure, being their foremost attributes. 
 
 The streets and shops are lighted now ; and as the eye travels down 
 the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of 
 Oxford Street, or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad stone 
 cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the Bowling 
 Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley ; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance 
 and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding 
 Nine-Pins. At other downward flights of steps, are other lamps, 
 marking the whereabouts of oyster-cellars pleasant retreats, say I : 
 not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh 
 as large as cheese-plates (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek 
 Professors!), but because of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or 
 fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not 
 gregarious ; but subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature of 
 what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do 
 sit apart in curtained boxes, and consort by twos, not by two hundreds. 
 
 But how quiet the streets are ! Are there no itinerant bands ; no 
 wind or stringed instruments ? No, not one. By day, are there no 
 Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, Conjurers, Orchestrinas, 
 or even Barrel-organs ? No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One 
 barrel-organ and a dancing-monkey sportive by nature, but fast 
 fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, of tho Utilitarian school. Beyond 
 that, nothing lively ; no, not so much as a white mouse in a twirling 
 cage. 
 
 Are there no amusements ? Yes. There is a lecture-room across 
 the way, from which that glare of light proceeds, and there may bo 
 evening service for the ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the young 
 gentlemen, there is tho counting-house, the store, the bar-room : the 
 latter, as you may see through these windows, pretty full. Hark ! to
 
 72 American Notes. 
 
 the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool 
 gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are 
 poured from glass to glass! No amusements? What are these 
 suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose hats and legs 
 we see in every possible variety of twist, doing, but rmusing them- 
 selves? What are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious 
 urchins are bawling down the street, and which are kept filed within, 
 what are they but amusements? Not vapid waterish am' semen ts, but 
 good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard names; 
 pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in 
 Spain ; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and 
 gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw ; imputing to every 
 man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives ; scaring away 
 from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear 
 conscience and good deeds ; and setting on, with yell and whistle and 
 the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey. 
 No amusements ! 
 
 Let us go on again ; and passing this wilderness of an hotel with 
 stores about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the London 
 Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points. 
 But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort these two heads of 
 the police, whoni you would know for sharp and well-trained officers 
 if you met them in the Great Desert. So true it is, that certain 
 pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with the same character. 
 These two might have been begotten, born, and bred, in Bow Street. 
 
 We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day ; but of 
 other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice, are 
 rife enough where we are going now. 
 
 This is the place : these narrow ways, diverging to the right and 
 left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are 
 led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and 
 bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts at home, and all the wide 
 world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. 
 See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched 
 and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been 
 hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever 
 wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours ? 
 and why they talk instead of grunting ? 
 
 So far, nearly every house is a low tavern ; and on the bar-room 
 walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of 
 England, and the American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold 
 the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass and coloured paper, for there is, 
 in some sort, a taste for decoration, even here. And as seamen 
 frequent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by the dozen : of 
 partings between sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William, of 
 the ballad, and his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will Watch, the Bold 
 Smuggler ; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like : on which the
 
 The Five Points. H 
 
 painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in as 
 strange companionship, as on most of the scenes that are enacted in 
 their wondering presence. 
 
 What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us ? A 
 kind of square of leprous houses, ome of which are attainable only by 
 crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight 
 of steps, that creak beneath our tread ? a miserable room, lighted by 
 one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be 
 hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man : his elbows on his 
 knees : his forehead hidden in his hands. " What ails that man ? " 
 asks the foremost officer. " Fever," he sullenly replies, without 
 looking up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain, in such a place 
 as this ! 
 
 Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on tho 
 trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, 
 where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A 
 negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice he knows 
 it well but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on 
 business, officiously bestirs himself to light a caudle. The match 
 flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusky rags upon 
 the ground ; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, 
 if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the 
 6tairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. 
 Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and 
 the floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from their 
 sleep : their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glistening 
 and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless 
 repetition of one astonished African face in some strange mirror. 
 
 Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there aro traps 
 and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves) 
 into the housetop ; where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead, 
 and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open 
 the door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. 
 Pah ! They have a charcoal fire within ; there is a smell of singeing 
 clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier ; and vapours 
 issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you 
 glance about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half- 
 awakened, as if tho judgment-hour were near at hand, and every 
 obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to 
 lie, women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodged 
 rats to move away in quest of better lodgings. 
 
 Here too are lanes and alloys, paved with mud knee-deep, under- 
 ground chambers, where they dance and game ; the walls bedecked 
 with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American eagles 
 out of number : ruined houses, open to the street, whence;, through 
 wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the 
 world of vice and misery had nothing else to show ; hideous tenements
 
 74 American Notes. 
 
 which take their name from robbery and murder : all that is loath- 
 some, drooping, and decayed is here. 
 
 Our leader has his hand upon the latch of " Almack's," and calls to 
 us from the bottom of the steps ; for the assembly-room of the Five 
 Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall we go in ? It 
 is but a moment. 
 
 Heyday ! tbe landlady of Almack's thrives ! A buxom fat mulatto 
 woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented 
 with a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much 
 behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a 
 ship's steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and round 
 his neck a gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad be is to see us ! 
 What will we please to call for ? A dance ? It shall be done 
 directly, sir : " a regular break-down." 
 
 The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tam- 
 bourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in 
 which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come 
 upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of 
 the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. He never leaves off 
 making queer faces, and is the delight of all the rest, who grin from 
 ear to ear incessantly. Among the dancers are two young mulatto 
 girls, with large, black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the fashion 
 of the hostess, who are as shy, or feign to be, as though they never 
 danced before, and so look down before the visitors, that their partners 
 can see nothing but the long fringed lashes. 
 
 But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as he 
 likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and all are so 
 long about it that the sport begins to languish, when suddenly the 
 lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and 
 goes at it tooth and nail ; there is new energy in the tambourine ; 
 new laughter in the dancers ; new smiles in the landlady ; new con- 
 fidence in the landlord ; new brightness in the very candles. Single 
 shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut ; snapping his fingers, rolling 
 his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in 
 front, sjfinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's 
 fingers on the tambourine ; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, 
 two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs all sorts of legs and 
 no legs what is this to him ? And in what walk of life, or dance of 
 life, does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about 
 him, when, having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, lie 
 finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for 
 something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim 
 Crows, in one inimitable sound ! 
 
 The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling 
 atmosphere of the houses ; and now, as we emerge into a broader 
 street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, and the stars look bright 
 again. Here are The Tombs once more. The city watch-house is a
 
 The City Watch-house. 75 
 
 part of the building. It follows naturally on the sights we have just 
 left. Let us see that, and then to bed. 
 
 What ! do you thrust your common offenders against the police 
 discipline of the town, into such holes as these ? Do men and women, 
 against whom no crime is proved, lie here all night in perfect dark- 
 ness, surrounded by the noisome vapours which encircle that flagging 
 lamp you light us with, and breathing this filthy and offensive stench ! 
 Why, such indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells, would 
 bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world ! Look at 
 them, man you, who see them every night, and keep the keys. Do 
 you see what they are ? Do you know how drains are made below tho 
 streets, and wherein these human sewers differ, except in being always 
 stagnant ? 
 
 Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young women 
 locked up in this very cell at one time, and you'd hardly realise what 
 handsome faces there were among 'em. 
 
 In God's name ! shut the door upon the wretched creature who is 
 in it now, and put its screen before a place, quite unsurpassed in all 
 the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe. 
 
 Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties? 
 Every night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. Tho 
 magistrate opens his court at five in the morning. That is the earliest 
 hour at which the first prisoner can be released ; and if an officer 
 appoar against him, ho is not taken out till nine o'clock or ten. But 
 if any one among them die in the interval, as one man did, not long 
 ago ? Then he is half-eaten by the rats in an hour's time ; as that 
 man was ; and there an end. 
 
 What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of 
 wheels, and shouting in the distance ? A fire. And what that deep 
 red light in tho opposite direction ? Another fire. And what these 
 charred and blackened walls we stand before ? A dwelling where a 
 fire lias been. It was more than hinted, in an official report, not long 
 ago, that some of these conflagrations were not wholly accidental, and 
 that speculation and enterprise found a field of exertion, even in 
 flames : but be this as it may, there was a fire last night, there are two 
 to-night, and you may lay an even wager there will bo at least one, 
 to-morrow. So, carrying that with us for our comfort, let us say, 
 Good-night, and climb up-stairs to bed. 
 
 One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different 
 public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island : I forget which. 
 Ono of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome ; and 
 is remarkable for a spacious and elegant staircase. Tho whole 
 structure is not yet finished, but it is already one of considerable size 
 and extent, and is capable of accommodating a very large number of 
 patients. 
 
 I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of
 
 76 American Notes. 
 
 this charity. The different wards might have heen cleaner and better 
 ordered ; I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed 
 me so favourably elsewhere ; and everything had a lounging, listless, 
 madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering 
 down with long dishevelled hair ; the gibbering maniac, with his 
 hideous laugh and pointed finger ; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, 
 the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails : 
 there they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror. 
 In the dining-room, a bare, dull, dreary place, with nothing for the 
 eye to rest on but the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. 
 She was bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything could 
 have strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly have been 
 the insupportable monotony of such an existence. 
 
 The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, 
 so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and 
 declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory 
 and violent were under closer restraint. I have no doubt that the 
 gentleman who presided over this establishment at the time I write 
 of, was 'ompetent to manage it, and had done all in his power to 
 promote its usefulness : but will it be believed that the miserable 
 strife of Party feeling is carried even into this sad refuge of afflicted 
 and degraded humanity ? Will it be believed that the eyes which are 
 to watch over and control the wanderings of minds on which the most 
 dreadful visitation to which our nature is exposed has fallen, must 
 wear the glasses of some wretched side in Politics? Will it be 
 believed that the governor of such a house as this, is appointed, and 
 deposed, and changed perpetually, as Parties fluctuate and vary, and 
 as their despicable weathercocks are blown this way or that ? A 
 hundred times in every week, some new most paltry exhibition of that 
 narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit, which is the Simoom of 
 America, sickening and blighting everything of wholesome life within 
 its reach, was forced upon my notice ; but I never turned my back 
 upon it with feelings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt, 
 as when I crossed the threshold of this madhouse. 
 
 At a short distance from this building is another called the Alms 
 House, that is to say, the workhouse of New York. This is a large 
 Institution also : lodging, I believe, when I was there, nearly a 
 thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, and badly lighted ; was not 
 too clean ; and impressed me, on the whole, very uncomfortably. But 
 it must be remembered that New York, as a great emporium of com- 
 merce, and as a place of general resort, not only from all parts of the 
 States, but from most parts of the world, has always a large pauper 
 population to provide for ; and labours, therefore, under peculiar 
 difficulties in this respect. Nor must it be forgotten that New York 
 is a large town, and that in all large towns a vast amount of good and 
 evil is intermixed and jumbled up together. 
 
 In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young orphans are
 
 Other Public Institutions. yy 
 
 nursed and brcil. I did not see it, but I believe it is well conducted ; 
 and I can tbe more easily credit it, from knowing bow mindful tbey 
 usually are, in America, of tbat beautiful passage in tbe Litany which 
 remembers all sick persons and young children. 
 
 I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat belonging to 
 the Island Jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, who were dressed 
 in a striped uniform of black and buff, in wbich thoy looked like faded 
 tigers. They took me, by the same conveyance, to the Jail itself. 
 
 It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on the plan 
 I have already described. I was glad to hear this, for it is unques- 
 tionably a very indifferent one. Tbe most is made, however, of 
 the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated as such a place 
 can be. 
 
 The women work in covered sbeds, erected for tbat purpose If I 
 remember right, there are no shops for the men, but be that as it 
 may, the greater part of them labour in certain stone-quarries near at 
 band. Tbe day being very wet indeed, this labour was suspended, 
 and the prisoners were in their cells. Imagine tbese cells, some two 
 or three hundred in number, and in every one a man locked up ; this 
 one at bis door for air, with bis hands thrust through tbe grate ; this 
 one in bed (in the middle of the day, remember) ; and this one flung 
 down in a heap upon the ground, with his head against the bars, like 
 a wild beast. Make tbe rain pour down, outside, in torrents. Put 
 the everlasting stove in the midst ; hot, and suffocating, and vaporous, 
 as a witch's cauldron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such as 
 would arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and 
 a thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen and there is the 
 prison, as it was that day. 
 
 The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the other band, a 
 model jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe, the largest and best 
 examples of the silont system. 
 
 In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute : an 
 Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and 
 female, black and white, without distinction ; to teacli them useful 
 trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them worthy 
 members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar to that at 
 Boston ; and it is a no less meritorious and admirable establishment. 
 A suspicion crossed my mind during my inspection of this noble 
 charity, whether the superintendent had quite sufficient knowledge of 
 the world and worldly characters ; and whether he did not commit a 
 great mistake in treating some young girls, who were to all intents 
 and purposes, by their years and their past lives, women, as though 
 they were little children ; which certainly had a ludicrous effect iu 
 my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken in theirs also. As the Institu- 
 tion, however, is always under the vigilant examination of a body 
 of gentlemen of great intelligence and experience, it cannot fail to 
 be well conducted ; and whether I am right or wrong in this slight
 
 78 American Notes. 
 
 particular, is unimportant to its deserts and character, which it would 
 be difficult to estimate too highly. 
 
 In addition to these establishments, there are in New York, ex- 
 cellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libraries ; an 
 admirable fire department (as indeed it should be, having constant 
 practice), and charities of every sort and kind. In the suburbs thero 
 is a spacious cemetery ; unfinished yet, but every clay improving. 
 The saddest tomb I saw there was " The Strangers' Grave. Dedicated 
 to the different hotels in this city." 
 
 There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park and the 
 Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and are, I grieve 
 to write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is a tiny 
 show-box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It is singularly well con- 
 ducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet humour and 
 originality, who is well remembered and esteemed by London play- 
 goers. I am happy to report of this deserving gentleman, that his 
 benches arc usually well filled, and that his theatre rings with merri- 
 ment every night. I had almost forgotten a small summer theatre, 
 called Niblo's, with gardens and open-air amusements attached ; but 
 I believe it is not exempt from the general depression under which 
 Theatrical Property, or what is humorously called by that name, 
 unfortunately labours. 
 
 The country round New York, is surpassingly and exquisitely 
 picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, is somewhat 
 of the warmest. What it would be, without the sea breezes which 
 come from its beautiful Bay in the evening time, I will net throw my- 
 self or my readers into a fever by inquiring. 
 
 The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of Boston ; 
 here and there, it may be, with a greater infusion of the mercantile 
 spirit, but generally polished and refined, and always most hospitable. 
 The houses and tables are elegant ; the hours later and more rakish ; 
 and there is, perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in reference to 
 appearances, and the display of wealth and costly living. The ladies 
 are singularly beautiful. 
 
 Beforo I left New York I made arrangements for securing a passago 
 home in the George Washington packet ship, which was advertised to 
 sail in June : that being the month in which I had determined, if 
 prevented by no accident in the course of my ramblings, to leave 
 America. 
 
 I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who 
 aro dear to me, and to jmrsuits that have insensibly grown to be 
 a part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I endured, 
 when I parted at last, on board this ship, with the friends who had 
 accompanied me from this city. I never thought the name of any 
 place, so far away and so lately known, could ever associate itself in 
 my mind with the crowd of affectionate remembrances that now cluster 
 about it. There are those in this city who would brighten, to me,
 
 On the Wing again. 79 
 
 tho darkest winter-day that ever glimmered and went ont in Lapland ; 
 and beforo whose presence even Homo grew dim, when they and I 
 exchanged that painful word which mingles with our every thought 
 and deed ; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up the 
 vista of our lives in age. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 
 
 The journey from New York to Philadelphia, is made by railroad, 
 and two ferries ; and usually occupies between five and six hours. It 
 was a fine evening when we were passengers in the train : and watch- 
 ing the bright sunset from a little window near the door by which we 
 sat, my attention was attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing 
 from the windows of the gentlemen's car immediately in front of us, 
 which I supposed for some time was occasioned by a number of 
 industrious persons inside, ripping open feather-beds, and giving the 
 feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were only 
 spitting, which was indeed the case ; though how any number of 
 passengers which it was possible for that car to contain, could have 
 maintained such a playful and incessant shower of expectoration, I 
 am still at a loss to understand : notwithstanding the experience in all 
 salivatory phenomena which I afterwards acquired. 
 
 I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest 
 young quaker, who opened the discourse by informing mo, in a grave 
 whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor 
 oil. I mention the circumstance hero, thinking it probable that this 
 is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in question was 
 ever used as a conversational aperient. 
 
 We reached the city, late that night. Looking out of my chamber- 
 window, before going to bed, I saw, on the opposito side of the way, 
 a handsome building of white marble, which had a mournful ghost- 
 liko aspect, dreary to behold. I attributed this to the sombre influence 
 of the night, and on rising in the morning looked out again, expecting 
 to see its stops and portico thronged with groups of people passing 
 in and out. The door was still tight shut, however ; the same cold 
 cheerless air prevailed ; and the building looked as if tho marble 
 statue of Don Guzman could alono have any business to transact within 
 its gloomy walls. I hastened to inquire its name and purpose, and 
 then my surprise vanished. It was the Tomb of many fortunes ; tho 
 Great Catacomb of invostment ; the memorable United States Bank. 
 
 Tho stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous consequences, had 
 cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, under the
 
 8o American Notes. 
 
 depressing effect of which it yet laboured. It certainly did seem 
 rather dull and out of spirits. 
 
 It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking 
 about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world 
 for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and 
 the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My 
 hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon 
 my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings 
 in Mark Lane over against the Market Place, and of making a large 
 fortune by speculations in corn, came over me involuntarily. 
 
 Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, which 
 is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and poured off, every- 
 where. The Waterworks, which are on a height near the city, are no 
 less ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a public 
 garden, and kept in the best and neatest order. The river is dammed 
 at this point, and forced by its own power into certain high tanks or 
 reservoirs, whence the whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is 
 supplied at a very trifling expense. 
 
 There are various public institutions. Among them a most excellent 
 Hospital a quaker establishment, but not sectarian in the great 
 benefits it confers ; a quiet, quaint old Library, named after Franklin ; 
 a handsome Exchange and Post Office ; and so forth. In connection 
 with the quaker Hospital, there is a picture by West, which is exhibited 
 for the benefit of the funds of the institution. The subject is, our 
 Saviour healing the sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a specimen 
 of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low 
 praise, depends upon the reader's taste. 
 
 In the samo room, there is a very characteristic and life-like portrait 
 by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist. 
 
 My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its 
 society, I greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics, I 
 should be disposed to say that it is more provincial than Boston or 
 New York, and that there is afloat in the fair city, an assumption of 
 taste and criticism, savouring rather of those genteel discussions upon 
 the same themes, in connection with Shakspeare and the Musical 
 Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar of Wakefield. Near the city, 
 is a most splendid unfinished marble structure for the Girard College, 
 founded by a deceased gentleman of that name and of enormous 
 wealth, which, if completed according to the original design, will be 
 perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest is 
 involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped ; 
 so that like many other great undertakings in America, even this is 
 rather going to be done one of these days, than doing now. 
 
 In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Peni- 
 tentiary -. conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. 
 The systom here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. 
 1 believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.
 
 The Eastern Penitentiary. 8 1 
 
 In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and 
 meant for reformation ; but I am persuaded that those who devised 
 this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen 
 who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are 
 doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the 
 immenso amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punish- 
 ment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers ; and in guessing 
 at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon 
 their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am 
 only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance 
 in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which 
 no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this 
 slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be 
 immeasurably worse than any tortnre of the body : and because its 
 ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of 
 touch as scars upon the flesh ; because its wounds are not upon the 
 surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear ; therefore 
 I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering 
 humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with 
 myself, whether, if I had the power of saying " Yes " or " No," I 
 would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of 
 imprisonment were short ; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no 
 rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky 
 by day, or lay me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness 
 that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay 
 suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, 
 or I consenting to it in the least degree. 
 
 I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially con- 
 nected with its management, and passed the day in going from cell to 
 cell, and talking with the inmates. Every facility was afforded me, 
 that the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed or 
 hidden from my view, and every piece of information that I sought, 
 was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of the building 
 cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who 
 are immediately concerned in the administration of the system, there 
 can be no kind of question. 
 
 Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a 
 spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive gate, wo 
 pursued the patli before us to its other termination, and passed into a 
 large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate. On either 
 sido of each, is a long, long row of low cell doors, with a certain 
 number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like those below, 
 except that they have no narrow yard attached (as those in the ground 
 tier have), and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these, 
 is supposed to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise 
 as can be had in tho dull strip attached to each of the others, in 
 an hour's time every day ; and therefore every prisoner in this
 
 82 American Notes. 
 
 upper story has two cells, adjoining and communicating with each 
 other. 
 
 Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary 
 passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasion- 
 ally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's shuttle, or 
 shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy 
 dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more 
 profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into 
 this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn ; and in this dark 
 shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living 
 world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, 
 until his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He never hears 
 of wife and children ; home or friends ; the life or death of any single 
 creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he 
 never looks upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice. He 
 is a man buried alive ; to be dug out in the slow round of years ; and 
 in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties and 
 horrible despair. 
 
 His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, even to 
 the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a number over 
 his cell-door, and in a book of which the governor of the prison has 
 one copy, and the moral instructor another : this is the index of his 
 history. Beyond these pages the prison has no record of his existence ; 
 and though he live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no 
 means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the 
 building it is situated ; what kind of men there are about him ; 
 whether in the long winter nights there are living people near, or he 
 is in some lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, 
 and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary 
 horrors. 
 
 Every cell has double doors : the outer one of sturdy oak, the 
 other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food 
 is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, under certain 
 restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided for the purpose, and 
 pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, and can, and basin, hang 
 upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on 
 in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, 
 his bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves more space for him 
 to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there ; and there he 
 labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and 
 grows old. 
 
 The first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at work. He had 
 been there six years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He 
 had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after his 
 long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly 
 dealt by. It was his second c^noe. 
 
 He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and
 
 A Picture of Wretchedness. 83 
 
 answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with 
 a strange kind of pause first, and in a low, thoughtful voice. He 
 wore a paper hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it 
 noticed and commended. He had very ingeniously manufactured a 
 sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and ends ; and his 
 vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in 
 this contrivance, he looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and 
 said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the 
 hammer and a little pioce of broken glass beside it " would play music 
 before long." He had extracted some colours from the yarn with 
 which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall. One, 
 of a female, over the door, he called " The Lady of the Lake." 
 
 He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to wile away the 
 time ; but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip 
 trembled, and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forget 
 how it came about, but some allusion was made to his having a wife. 
 He shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face 
 with his hands. 
 
 " But you are resigned now ! " said one of the gentlemen after a 
 short pause, during which he had resumed his former manner. He 
 answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness, 
 *' Oh yes, oh yes ! I am resigned to it." " And are a better man, you 
 think ? " " Well, I hope so : I'm sure I hope I may be." " And 
 time goes pretty quickly?" "Time is very long, gentlemen, within 
 these four walls ! " 
 
 He gazed about him Heaven only knows how wearily! as he 
 said these words ; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare 
 as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed 
 heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again. 
 
 In another cell, there was a Gorman, sentenced to five years' im- 
 prisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With colours 
 procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of the walls 
 and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few feet of ground, 
 behind, with exquisite neatness, and had made a little bed in the 
 centre, that looked by the bye like a grave. The taste and ingenuity 
 he had displayed in everything were most extraordinary ; and yet a 
 more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be difficult 
 to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and 
 distress of mind. My heart bled for him ; and when the tears ran 
 down his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to ask, with his 
 trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain him, whether 
 there was no hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the spec- 
 tacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any 
 kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this 
 man. 
 
 In a third cell, was a tall strong black, a burglar, working at his 
 proper trade of making screws and the like. His time was nearly
 
 84 American Notes. 
 
 out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was notorious for 
 his boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his previous con- 
 victions. He entertained us with a long account of his achievements, 
 which he narrated with such infinite relisb, that he actually seemed to 
 lick his lips as be told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old 
 ladies whom be had watched as they sat at windows in silver spec- 
 tacles (be had plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other 
 side of the street) and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon tbe 
 slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his professional 
 recollections tbe most detestable cant ; but I am very much mistaken 
 if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which he 
 declared that be blessed tbe day on which he came into that prison, 
 and that he never would commit another robbery as long as he lived. 
 
 There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep 
 rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they 
 called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He complied 
 of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the unwonted sun- 
 light of the great window, looking as wan and unearthly as if he had 
 been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit in bis breast ; 
 and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole back 
 into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I thought 
 it would have been very hard to say in what respect tbe man was the 
 nobler animal of the two. 
 
 There was an English thief, who had been there but a few days out 
 of seven years : a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with a 
 white face ; who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but for the 
 additional penalty, would have gladly stabbed me with his shoemaker's 
 knife. There was another German who had entered the jail but 
 yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked in, and 
 pleaded, in his broken English, very hard for work. There was a 
 poet, who after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty hours, 
 one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about ships (he 
 was by trade a mariner), and " the maddening wine-cup," and his 
 friends at home. There were very many of them. Some reddened at 
 the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some two or three 
 had prisoner nurses with them, for they were very sick ; and one, a 
 fat old negro whose leg had been taken off" within the jail, had for his 
 attendant a classical scholar and an accomplished surgeon, himself a 
 prisoner likewise. Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in some slight 
 work, was a pretty coloured boy. " Is there no refuge for young 
 criminals in Philadelphia, then ? " said I. " Yes, but only for white 
 children." Noble aristocracy in crime ! 
 
 There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, 
 and who in a few months' time would be free. Eleven years of solitary 
 confinement ! 
 
 " I am very glad to bear your time is nearly out." What does ho 
 say ? Nothing. Why does ho stare at his hands, and pick the flesh
 
 Various Prisoners. 85 
 
 npon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and then, 
 to those hare walls which have seen his head turn grey ? It is a way 
 he has sometimes. 
 
 Does ho never look men in the face, and does ho always pluck at 
 those hands of his, as though ho were hent on parting skin and hone ? 
 It is his humour ; nothing more. 
 
 It is his humour too, to say that he docs not look forward to going 
 ont ; that ho is not glad the time is drawing near ; that ho did look 
 forward to it once, but that was very long ago ; that ho has lost all 
 care for everything. It is his humour to bo a helpless, crushed, and 
 broken man. And, Heaven be his witness that he has his humour 
 thoroughly gratified ! 
 
 There wero three young women in adjoining cells, all convicted at 
 the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the silence 
 and solitude of their lives they had grown to be quite beautiful. 
 Their looks were very sad, and might havo moved the sternest visitor 
 to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which the contemplation of 
 the men awakens. One was a young girl ; not twenty, as I recollect ; 
 whose snow-white room was hung with the work of some former 
 prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour 
 shone down through the high chink in the wall, where one narrow 
 strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was very penitent and quiet ; 
 had come to be resigned, she said (and I believe her) ; and had a mind 
 at peace. " In a word, you are happy here ? " said ono of my com- 
 panions. She struggled she did struggle very hard to answer, Yes ; 
 but raising her eyes, and meeting that glimpse of freedom overhead, 
 sho burst into tears, and said, " She tried to be ; she uttered no com- 
 plaint ; but it was natural that she should sometimes long to go out 
 of that one cell : she could not help that," she sobbed, poor thing ! 
 
 I went from cell to cell that day ; and every face I saw, or word I 
 heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its painfulness. 
 But let me pass them by, for ono, more pleasant, glance of a prison 
 on the same plan which I afterwards saw at Pittsburg. 
 
 When I had gone over that, in tho same manner, I asked tho 
 governor if he had any person in his charge who was shortly going 
 out. He had one, he said, whose timo was up next day ; but he had 
 only been a prisoner two years. 
 
 Two years ! I looked back through two years of my own life out 
 of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, comforts, good 
 fortune and thought how wide a gap it was, and how long those two 
 years passed in solitary captivity would have been. I have tho faco 
 of this man, who was goin^ to be released next day, before me now. 
 It is almost more memorable in its happiness than tho other faces in 
 their misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to say that 
 tho system was a ^ood one ; and that tho time went " pretty quick- 
 considering ;" and that when a man once felt that he had offended tho 
 law, and must satisfy it, " he got along, somehow : " and so forth I
 
 86 American Notes, 
 
 " What did ho call yon back to say to yon, in that strange nutter ? " 
 I asked of my conductor, when ho had locked the door and joined me 
 in the passage. 
 
 " Oh ! That he was afraid the soles of his hoots were not fit for 
 walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came in ; and that 
 he would thank me very much to have them mended, ready." 
 
 Those hoots had been taken off his feet, and put away with the rest 
 of his clothes, two years before ! 
 
 I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves 
 immediately before going out ; adding that I presumed they trembled 
 very much. 
 
 " Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer " though 
 they do quiver as a complete derangement of the nervous system. 
 They can't sign their names to the book ; sometimes can't even hold 
 the pen ; look about 'em without appearing to know why, or where 
 they are ; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in 
 a minute. This is when they're in the office, where they are taken 
 with the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside 
 the gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other ; not 
 knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were 
 drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they're so 
 bad : but they clear off in course of time." 
 
 As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the faces of 
 the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and 
 feelings natural to their condition. I imagined the hood just taken 
 off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed to them in all its dismal 
 monotony. 
 
 At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision ; 
 and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies 
 there abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude 
 and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and when the 
 trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for work. 
 " Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad ! " 
 
 He has it ; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour ; but 
 every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the 
 years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an agony so 
 piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden from his view and 
 knowledge, that he starts from his seat, and striding up and down tho 
 narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted head, hears 
 spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall. 
 
 Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there, moaning. Suddenly 
 he starts up, wondering whether any other man is near ; whether 
 there is another cell like that on either side of him : and listens 
 keenly. 
 
 There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that. 
 He remembers to have heard once, when he little thought of coming 
 here himself, that the cells were so constructed that the prisoners could
 
 THE SOLITARY PKISONEK.
 
 Solitary Confinement. 87 
 
 not hear each other, though the officers could hear them. Whore is 
 the nearest man upon the right, or on the left? or is there one in 
 both directions ? Where is he sitting now with his faco to the 
 light ? or is ho walking to and fro ? How is he dressed ? lias he 
 been here long? Is he much worn away? Is he very white and 
 spectre-like ? Does he think of his neighbour too ? 
 
 Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks, ho 
 conjures up a figuro with his back towards him, and imagines it moving 
 about in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, but he is certain 
 of the dark form of a stooping man. In the cell upon the other side, 
 he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from him also. Day 
 after day, and often when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he 
 thinks of these two men until he is almost distracted. He never 
 changes them. There they are always as he first imagined them an 
 old man on the right ; a younger man upon the left whose hidden 
 features torture him to death, and have a mystery that makes him 
 tremble. 
 
 The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a 
 funeral ; and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the cell 
 have something dreadful in them : that their colour is horrible : that 
 their smooth surface chills his blood : that there is one hateful corner 
 which torments him. Every morning when he wakes, he hides his 
 head beneath tho coverlet, and shudders to see the ghastly ceiling 
 looking down upon him. The blessed light of day itself peeps in, an 
 ugly phantom face, through the unchangeable crevice which is his 
 prison window. 
 
 By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner swell 
 until they beset him at all times ; invade his rest, make his dreams 
 hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took a etrauge dislike 
 to it ; feeling as though it gave birth in his brain to something of 
 corresponding shape, which ought not to bo there, and racked his 
 head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to dream of it, and 
 of men whispering its name and pointing to it. Then he could not 
 bear to look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every 
 night the lurking-plaeo of a ghost : a shadow : a silent something, 
 horrible to see, but whether bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, 
 he cannot toll. 
 
 When ho is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard without. 
 When ho is in tho yard, he dreads to re-enter the cell. When night 
 comes, there stands the phantom in the corner. If ho have the 
 courage to stand in its place, and drive it out (he had once : being 
 desperate), it broods upon his bed. In the twilight, and always at tho 
 same hour, a voico calls to him by name; as the darkness thickens, 
 his Loom begins to live ; and even that, his comfort, is a hideous 
 figuro, watching him till daybreak. 
 
 Again, by slow degrees, theso horrible fancies depart from him one 
 by one : returning sometimes, unexpectedly, but at longer intervals,
 
 88 American Notes. 
 
 and in less alarming shapes. He has talked upon religious matters 
 with the gentleman who visits him, and has read his Bible, and has 
 written a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind of protec- 
 tion, and an assurance of Heavenly companionship. He dreams now, 
 sometimes, of his children or his wife, but is sure that they are dead, 
 or have deserted him. He is easily moved to tears ; is gentle, sub- 
 missive, and broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old agony comes 
 back: a very little thing will revive it; oven a familiar sound, or 
 the scent of summer flowers in the air; but it does not last long, 
 now : for the world without, has come to be the vision, and this 
 solitary life, the sad reality. 
 
 If his term of imprisonment be short I mean comparatively, for 
 short it cannot be the last half-year is almost worse than all ; for 
 then he thinks the prison will take fire and ho bo burnt in the ruins, 
 or that he is doomed to die within the walls, or that he will bo 
 detained on some false charge and sentenced for another term : or 
 that something, no matter what, must happen to prevent his going at 
 large. And this is natural, and impossible to be reasoned against, 
 because, after his long separation from human life, and his great 
 suffering, any event will appear to him more probable in the contem- 
 plation, than the being restored to liberty and his fellow-creatures. 
 
 If his period of confinement have been very long, the prospect of 
 release bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart may flutter for 
 a moment, when he thinks of the world outside, and what it might 
 have been to him in all those lonely years, but that is all. The cell- 
 door has been closed too long on all its hopes and cares. Better to 
 have hanged him in the beginning than bring him to this pass, and 
 send him forth to mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more. 
 
 On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, the same 
 expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of 
 that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and 
 deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been 
 secretly terrified. In every little chamber that I entered, and at 
 every grate through which I looked, I seemed to see the same 
 appalling countenance. It lives in my memory, with the fascination 
 of a remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men, 
 with one among them newly released from this solitary suffering, and 
 I would point him out. 
 
 The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanises and refines. 
 Whether tins be because of their better nature, which is elicited in 
 solitude, or because of their being gentler creatures, of greater patience 
 and longer suffering, I do not know ; but so it is. That the punish- 
 ment is nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel and as wrong in 
 their case, as in that of the men, I need scarcely add. 
 
 My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish it 
 occasions an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all imagina- 
 tion of it must fall far short of the reality it wears the mind into a
 
 Unfitness for Society engendered. 89 
 
 morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy 
 action of the world. It is ray fixed opinion that thoso who have 
 undergone this punishment, must pass into society again morally un- 
 healthy and diseased. There are many instances on record, of men 
 who have chosen, or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, 
 but I scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and vigorous 
 intellect, where its effect has not becomo apparent, in some disordered 
 train of thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous 
 phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt, and born and reared in soli- 
 tude, havo stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, and darkening 
 the face of Heaven ! 
 
 Suicides are rare among these prisoners : arc almost, indeed, un- 
 known. But no argument in favour of tho system, can reasonably bo 
 deduced from this circumstance, although it is very often urged. All 
 men who have mado diseases of the mind their study, know perfectly 
 well that such extremo depression and despair as will chango tho 
 whole character, and beat down all its powers of elasticity and self- 
 resistance, may be at work within a man, and yet stop short of self- 
 destruction. This is a common case. 
 
 That it makes tho senses dull, and by degrees impairs the bodily 
 faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to thoso who were with me in 
 this very establishment at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had 
 been thero long, were deaf. They, who were in the habit of seeing 
 these men constantly, were perfectly amazed at the idea, which they 
 regarded as groundless and fanciful. And yet the very first prisoner 
 to whom they appealed one of their own selection confirmed my 
 impression (which was unknown to him) instantly, and said, with a 
 genuine air it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it 
 happened, but lie was growing very dull of hearing. 
 
 That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the worst 
 man least, thero is no doubt. In its superior efficiency as a means 
 of reformation, compared with that other code of regulations which 
 allows the prisoners to work in company without communicating 
 together, I have not the smallest faith. All the instances of reforma- 
 tion that wero mentioned to mo, were of a kind that might havo been 
 and I have no doubt whatever, in my own mind, would have been 
 equally well brought about by the Silent System. With regard to 
 such men as the negro burglar and the English thief, even the most 
 enthusiastic have scarcely any hope of their conversion. 
 
 It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or good 
 lias ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and that even a 
 dog or any of tho more intelligent among beasts, would pine, and 
 mope, and rust away, beneath its influence, would be in itself a 
 sufficient argument against this system. But when we recollect, in 
 addition, how very cruel and severo it is, and that a solitary life is 
 always liable to peculiar and distinct objections of a most deplorablo 
 nature, which have arisen here, and call to mind, moreover, that tho
 
 90 American Notes. 
 
 choice is not between this system, and a bad or ill-considered one, but 
 between it and another which has worked well, and is, in its whole 
 design and practice, excellent ; there is surely more than sufficient 
 reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by so little 
 hopo or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute, with such a host of 
 evils. 
 
 As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with a 
 curious story arising out of the same theme, which was related to mo, 
 on the occasion of this visit, by some of the gentlemen concerned. 
 
 At one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of this prison, a 
 working man of Philadelphia presented himself before the Board, and 
 earnestly requested to be placed in solitary confinement. On being 
 asked what motive could possibly prompt him to make this strange 
 demand, he answered that he had an irresistible propensity to get 
 drunk ; that he was constantly indulging it, to his great misery and 
 ruin ; that he had no power of resistance ; that he wished to be put 
 beyond the reach of temptation ; and that he could thinL of no better 
 way than this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the prison 
 was for criminals who had been tried and sentenced by the law, and 
 could not be made available for any such fanciful purposes ; he was 
 exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, as he surely might d he 
 would ; and received other very good advice, with which he retired, 
 exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of his application. 
 
 He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest and 
 importunate, that at last they took counsel together, and said, " Ho 
 will certainly qualify himself for admission, if we reject him any 
 more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and 
 then we shall get rid of him." So they made him sign a statement 
 which would prevent his ever sustaining an action f< r false imprison- 
 ment, to the effect that his incarceration was voluntary, and of his 
 own seeking ; they requested him to take notice that the officer in 
 attendance had orders to release him at any hour of the day or night, 
 when he might knock upon his door for that purpose ; but desired 
 him to understand, that once going out, he would not be admitted any 
 more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the 
 same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one of the 
 cells. 
 
 In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to leave a glass of 
 liquor standing untasted on a table before him in this cell, in solitary 
 confinement, and working every day at his trade of shoemaking, this 
 man remained nearly two years. His health beginning to fail at the 
 expiration of that time, the surgeon recommended that he should work 
 occasionally in the garden ; and as he liked the notion very much, ho 
 went about this new occupation with great cheerfulness. 
 
 He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, when 
 the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open : showing, beyond, 
 the well-remembered dusty road and sunburnt fields. The way was
 
 A Filthy Custom. 91 
 
 as free to him as to any man living, but ho no sooner raised his head 
 and caught sight of it, all shining in the light, than, with the in- 
 voluntary instinct of a prisoner, he cast away his spado, scampered off 
 as fast as his legs would carry him, and never once looked back. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 
 
 We left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very cold morn- 
 ing, and turned our faces towards Washington. 
 
 In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent occasions, wo 
 encountered some Englishmen (small farmers, perhaps, or country 
 publicans at home) who were settled in America, and were travelling 
 on their own affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle ono 
 in the public conveyances of the States, these are often the most 
 intolerable and the most insufferable companions. United to every 
 disagreeable characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers 
 possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent 
 conceit and cool assumption of superioi'ity, quite monstrous to behold. 
 In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their 
 inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if they 
 panted to revengo themselves upon the decent old restraints of homo), 
 they surpass any native specimens that came within my range of 
 observation : and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them, 
 that I would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I could 
 have given any other country in the whole world, tho honour of 
 claiming them for its children. 
 
 As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured 
 saliva, tho time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, 
 that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and 
 expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreoablo, and 
 soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public places 
 of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of law, 
 the judge has his spittoon, tho crier his, the witness his, and the 
 prisoner his ; while tho jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so 
 many men who in the courso of naturo must desire to sjnt incessantly. 
 In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by notices 
 upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for 
 that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In public buildings, 
 visitors are implored, through tho same agency, to squirt tho essoncc 
 of their quids, or "plugs," as I have heard them called by gentlemen 
 learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into tho national spittoons, and not 
 about the bases of the marblo columns. But in some parts, this
 
 92 American Notes. 
 
 custom is inseparably mixed np with every meal and morning call, 
 and with all the transactions of social life. The stranger, who follows 
 in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, 
 luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let 
 him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous 
 tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggera- 
 tion of nastiness, which cannot be outdone. 
 
 On board this steamboat, there were two young gentlemen, with 
 shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big walking- 
 sticks ; who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance 
 of some four paces apart ; took out their tobacco-boxes ; and sat down 
 opposite each other, to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour's time, 
 these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a 
 copious shower of yellow rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of 
 magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and 
 which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was 
 dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to 
 nausea ; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly 
 saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy, himself. 
 A glow of delight came over me at this discovery ; and as I marked 
 his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left 
 cheek, quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat, and 
 chewed, and spat again, in emulation of his older friend, I could have 
 fallen on his neck and implored him to go on for hours. 
 
 We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below, 
 where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a meal in 
 England, and where there was certainly greater politeness exhibited 
 than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o'clock we 
 arrived at the railroad station, and went on by the cars. At noon we 
 turned out again, to cross a wide river in another steamboat ; landed 
 at a continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore ; and went on 
 by other cars ; in which, in the course of the next hour or so, wo 
 crossed by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called 
 respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was 
 blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most 
 delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that season of the 
 year. 
 
 These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just wide 
 enough for the passage of the trains ; which, in the event of the 
 smallest accident, would inevitably be plunged into the river. They 
 are startling contrivances, and are most agreeable when passed. 
 
 We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland, were 
 waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensation of exacting any 
 service from human creatures who are bought and sold, and being, for 
 the time, a party as it were to their condition, is not an enviable one. 
 The institution exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive and most 
 mitigated form in such a town as this ; but it is slavery ; and though
 
 Inquisitiveness. 93 
 
 I was, with respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with 
 a sense of shame and self-reproach. 
 
 After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took our 
 seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men and 
 boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, and wcro curious 
 in foreigners, came (according to custom) round the carriage in which 
 I sat ; lot down all the windows ; thrust in their heads and shoulders ; 
 hooked themselves on conveniently, by their elbows ; and fell to com- 
 paring notes on the subject of my personal appearance, with as much 
 indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much 
 uncompromising information with reference to my own nose and eyes, 
 and various impressions wrought by my mouth and chin on different 
 minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed from behind, as on 
 these occasions. Some gentlemen were only satisfied by exercising 
 their senso of touch ; and the boys (who are surprisingly precocious in 
 America) were seldom satisfied, even by that, but would return to the 
 charge over and over again. Many a budding president has walked 
 into my room with bis cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, 
 and stared at me for two whole hours : occasionally refreshing himself 
 with a tweak of his nose, or a draught from the water-jug ; or by 
 walking to the windows and inviting other boys in the street below, 
 to come up and do likewise : crying, " Here he is ! " " Come on ! " 
 " Bring all your brothers ! " with other hospitable entreaties of that 
 naturo. 
 
 Wo reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, and 
 had upon the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which is a fine 
 building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and command- 
 ing eminence. Arrived at tbe hotel, I saw no more of the place that 
 night ; being very tired, and glad to get to bed. 
 
 Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the streets for an hour 
 or two, and, coming home, throw up the window in the front and back, 
 and look out. Here is Washington, fresh in my mind and under 
 my eye. 
 
 Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or tho 
 straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving 
 all their oddities, but especially tho small shops and dwellings, 
 occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by furniture-brokers, 
 keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the whole 
 down ; build it up again in wood and plaster ; widen it a little : throw 
 in part of St. John's Wood ; put green blinds outside all tho private 
 houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window ; plough 
 up all the roads ; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place 
 where it ought not to be ; erect three handsome buildings in stone and 
 marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of everybody's way the 
 better ; call ono tho Post Office, one the Patent Office, and one the 
 Treasury ; make it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing cold in 
 the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust ; leave a
 
 94 American Notes. 
 
 brick-field without the bricks, in all central places where a street may 
 naturally be expected : and that's Washington. 
 
 The hotel in which we live, is a long row of small houses fronting 
 on the street, and opening at the back upon a common yard, in which 
 hangs a great triangle. Whenever a servant is wanted, somebody 
 beats on this triangle from one stroke up to seven, according to the 
 number of the house in which his presence is required ; and as all the 
 servants are always being wanted, and none of them ever come, this 
 enlivening engine is in full performance the whole day through. 
 Clothes are drying in the same yard ; female slaves, with cotton hand- 
 kerchiefs twisted round their heads, are running to and fro on the hotel 
 business ; black waiters cross and recross with dishes in their hands ; 
 two great dogs are playing upon a mound of loose bricks in the centre 
 of the little square ; a pig is turning up his stomach to the sun, and 
 grunting " that's comfortable ! " ; and neither the men, nor the women, 
 nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor any created creature, takes the smallest 
 notice of the triangle, which is tingling madly all the time. 
 
 I walk to the front window, and look across the road upon a long, 
 straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, nearly opposite, 
 but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of waste ground with 
 frowzy grass, which looks like a small piece of country that has taken 
 to drinking, and has quite lost itself. Standing anyhow and all 
 wrong, upon this open space, like something meteoric that has fallen 
 down from the moon, is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden 
 building, that looks like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself 
 sticking out of a steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Under 
 the window, is a small stand of coaches, whose slave-drivers are 
 sunning themselves on the steps of our door, and talking idly 
 together. The three most obtrusivo houses near at hand, are the 
 three meanest. On one a shop, which never has anything in the 
 window, and never has the door open is painted in large characters, 
 " The City Lunch." At another, which looks like a backway to 
 somewhero else, but is an independent building in itself, oysters are 
 procurable in every style. At the third, which is a very, very little 
 tailor's shop, pants are fixed to order ; or in other words, pantaloons 
 are made to measure. And that is our street in Washington. 
 
 It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it 
 might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent 
 Intentions ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the 
 top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of 
 its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin 
 in nothing, and lead nowhere ; streets, mile-long, that only want 
 houses, roads, and inhabitants ; public buildings that need but a public 
 to be complete ; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only 
 lack great thoroughfares to ornament are its leading features. One 
 might fancy the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town 
 for ever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barme-
 
 T/ie City of Magnificent Distances. 95 
 
 cide Feast : a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in ; a monu- 
 ment raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription 
 to record its departed greatness. 
 
 Snch as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for 
 the seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflicting 
 jealousies and interests of the different States ; and very probably, 
 too, as being remote from mobs : a consideration not to be slighted, 
 even in America. It has no trade or commerce of its own : having 
 little or no population beyond the President and his establisbment ; 
 the members of the legislature who reside there during the session ; 
 the Government clerks and officers employed in the various depart- 
 ments ; the keepers of the hotels and boarding-houses ; and the trades- 
 men who supply their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people 
 would live in Washington, I take it, who were not obliged to reside 
 there ; aud the tides of emigration and speculation, tbose rapid and 
 regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time towards such 
 dull and sluggish water. 
 
 The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course, the two houses 
 of Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the building, 
 a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninety-six high, 
 whose circular wall is divided into compartments, ornamented by 
 historical pictures. Four of these have for their subjects prominent 
 events in the revolutionary struggle. They were painted by Colonel 
 Trumbull, himself a member of Washington's staff at the time of their 
 occurrence ; from which circumstance they derive a peculiar interest 
 of their own. In this same hall Mr. Greenough's largo statue of 
 Washington has been lately placed. It has great merits of course, 
 but it struck me as being rather strained and violent for its subject. 
 I could wish, however, to have seen it in a better light than it can ever 
 be viewed in, where it stands. 
 
 There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the Capitol ; 
 and from a balcony in front, tho bird's-eye view, of which I have just 
 spoken, may be had, together with a beautiful prospect of the adjacent 
 country. In one of the ornamented portions of tho building, there is 
 a figure of Justice ; whereunto the Guide Book says, " the artist at 
 first contemplated giving more of nudity, but he was warned that tho 
 public sentiment in this country would not admit of it, and in his 
 caution he has gone, perhaps, into tho opposite extreme." Poor 
 Justice! she has been mado to wear much stranger garments in 
 America than those she pines in ; in the Capitol. Let us hope that 
 she has changed her dress-maker since they were fashioned, and that 
 the public sentiment of the country did not cut otit the clothes she 
 hides her lovely figure in, just now. 
 
 The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall, of 
 semicircular shape, supported by handsome pillars. One part of tho 
 gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they sit in front rows, 
 and come in, and go out, as at a play or concert. The chair is
 
 g6 American Notes. 
 
 canopied, and raised considerably above the floor of the House ; and 
 every member bas an easy chair and a writing desk to himself : which 
 is denounced by some people out of doors as a most unfortunate and 
 injudicious arrangement, tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. 
 It is an elegant chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one for all 
 purposes of hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free from this 
 objection, and is exceedingly well adapted to the uses for which it is 
 designed. The sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the day ; 
 and the parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the old country. 
 
 I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other places, 
 whether I had not been very much impressed by tbo heads of the law- 
 makers at Washington ; meaning not their chiefs and leaders, but 
 literally their individual and personal heads, whereon their hair grew, 
 and whereby the phrenological character of each legislator was 
 expressed : and I almost as often struck my questioner dumb with 
 indignant consternation by answering " No, that I didn't remember 
 being at all overcome." As I must, at whatever hazard, repeat the 
 avowal here, I will follow it up by relating my impressions on this 
 subject in as few words as possible. 
 
 In the first place it may be from some imperfect development of 
 my organ of veneration I do not remember having ever fainted 
 away, or having even been moved to tears, of joyful pride, at sight of 
 any legislative body. I have borne the House of Commons like a man, 
 and have yielded to no weakness, but slumber, in the House of Lords. 
 I have seen elections for borough and county, and have never been 
 impelled (no matter which party won) to damage my hat by throwing 
 it up into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shouting forth 
 any reference to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity of our 
 independent voters, or the unimpeachable integrity of our independent 
 members. Having withstood such strong attacks upon my fortitude, 
 it is possible that I may be of a cold and insensible temperament, 
 amounting to iciness, in such matters ; and therefore my impressions 
 of the live pillars of the Capitol at Washington must be received with 
 such grains of allowance as this free confession may seem to demand. 
 
 Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men, bound together 
 in the sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and so asserting the 
 chaste dignity of those twin goddesses, in all their discussions, as to 
 exalt at once the Eternal Principles to which their names are given, 
 and their own character and the character of their countrymen, in the 
 admiring eyes of the whole world ? 
 
 It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man, a lasting honour 
 to the land that gave him birth, who has done good service to his 
 country, as his forefathers did, and who will be remembered scores 
 upon scores of years, after the worms bred in its corruption, are but 
 so many grains of dust it was but a week, since this old man had 
 stood for days upon his trial beforo this very body, charged with 
 having dared to assert the infamy of that traffic, which has for its
 
 Faction. 97 
 
 accursed merchandise men and women, and their unborn children. 
 Yes. And publicly exhibited in the same city all the while ; gilded, 
 framed and glazed ; hung up for general admiration ; shown to 
 strangers not with shame, but pride ; its face not turned towards the 
 wall, itself not taken down and burned ; is the Unanimous Declaration 
 of the Thirteen United States of America, which solemnly declares 
 that All Men are created Equal ; and are endowed by their Creator 
 with the Inalienable Eights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of 
 Happiness ! 
 
 It was not a month, since this same body had sat calmly by, and 
 heard a man, one of themselves, with oaths which beggars in their 
 drink reject, threaten to cut another's throat from ear to ear. There 
 he sat, among them ; not crushed by the general feeling of tho 
 assembly, but as good a man as any. 
 
 There was but a week to come, and another of that body, for doing 
 his duty to those who sent him there ; for claiming in a Republic the 
 Liberty and Freedom of expressing their sentiments, and making 
 known their prayer ; would be tried, found guilty, and have strong 
 censure passed upon him by the rest. His was a grave offence indeed ; 
 for years before, he had risen up and said, " A gang of male and 
 female slaves for sale, warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each 
 other by iron fetters, are passing now along the open street beneath 
 the windows of your Temple of Equality ! Look ! " But there aro 
 many kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they 
 go variously armed. It is the Inalienable Right of some among them, 
 to take the field after their Happiness equipped with cat and cartwhip, 
 stocks, and iron collar, and to shout their view halloa ! (always in 
 praise of Liberty) to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes. 
 
 Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats ; of words and 
 blows such as coalheavers deal ujion each other, when they forget 
 their breeding ? On every side. Every session had its anecdotes of 
 that kind, and the actors were all there. 
 
 Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who, applying 
 themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and 
 vices of tho old, purified the avenues to Public Life, paved the dirty 
 ways to Place and Power, debated and made laws for the Common 
 Good, and had no party but their Country '? 
 
 I saw in them, the wheels that movo tho meanest perversion of 
 virtuous Political Machinery that tho worst tools over wrought. 
 Despicable trickery at elections ; under-handed tainperings with 
 public officers ; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous 
 newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers ; shameful 
 trucklings to mercenary knaves, whoso claim to be considered, is, that 
 every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, 
 which are the dragon's teetli of yore, in everything but sharpness ; 
 aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, 
 and artful suppressions of all its good influences : such things as 
 
 ii
 
 98 American Notes, 
 
 these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and 
 most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded 
 hall. 
 
 Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement : the true, 
 honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of 
 its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of desperate 
 adventurers which sets that way for profit and for pay. It is the game 
 of these men, and of their profligate organs, to make the strife of 
 politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in 
 worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept 
 aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish 
 views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes 
 on, and they who in other countries would, from their intelligence and 
 station, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from 
 that degradation. 
 
 That there are, among the representatives of the people in both 
 Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character and great 
 abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those politicians who 
 are known in Europe, have been already described, and I see no 
 reason to depart from the rule I have laid down for my guidance, of 
 abstaining from all mention of individuals. It will be sufficient to 
 add, that to the most favourable accounts that have been written of 
 them, I more than fully and most heartily subscribe ; and that 
 personal intercourse and free communication have bred within me, 
 not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but increased 
 admiration and respect. They are striking men to look at, hard to 
 deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied accom- 
 plishments, Indians in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong 
 and generous impulse ; and they as well represent the honour and 
 wisdom of their country at home, as the distinguished gentleman who 
 is now its Minister at the British Court sustains its highest character 
 abroad. 
 
 I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in Washing- 
 ton. On my initiatory visit to the House of Representatives, they 
 divided against a decision of the chair ; but the chair won. The 
 second time I went, the momber who was speaking, being interrupted 
 by a laugh, mimicked it, as one child would in quarrelling with 
 another, and added, " that ho would make honourable gentlemen 
 opposite, sing out a little more on the other side of their mouths 
 presently." But interruptions are rare ; the speaker being usually 
 heard in silence. There are more quarrels than with us, and more 
 threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any 
 civilised society of which wo havo record : but farm-yard imitations 
 have not as yet been imported from the Parliament of the United 
 Kingdom. The feature in oratory which appears to be the most 
 practised, and most relished, is the constant repetition of the same 
 idea or shadow of an idea in fresh words; and the inquiry out of
 
 Good and Bad Tobacco-shots. 99 
 
 doors is not, " What did he say ? " but, " How long did ho speak ? " 
 These, however, are but enlargements of a principle which prevails 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings 
 are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are hand- 
 somely carpeted ; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by 
 the universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable 
 member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the 
 pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do 
 not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly 
 recommend all strangers not to look at the floor ; and if they happen 
 to drop anything, though it be thoir purse, not to pick it up with an 
 ungloved hand on any account. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so 
 many honourable members with swelled faces ; and it is scarcely less 
 remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity 
 of tobacco they contrive to stow within tho hollow of the cheek. It is 
 strange enough too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in 
 his tilted chair with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a con- 
 venient " plug " with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, 
 shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping 
 the new one in its place. 
 
 I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewcrs of great 
 experience, are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined 
 me to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle, of which we have 
 heard so much in England. Several gentlemen called upon me who, 
 in tho course of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five 
 pace3 ; and one (but he was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed 
 sash for the open window, at three. On another occasion, when I 
 dined out, and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round 
 a fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fire-place, six 
 distinct times. I am disposed to think, however, that this was 
 occasioned by his not aiming at that object ; as there was a white 
 marble hearth before the fender, which was moro convenient, and may 
 have suited his purpose better. 
 
 The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an extraordinary examplo 
 of American enterprise and ingenuity ; for the immense number of 
 models it contains, are the accumulated inventions of only five years ; 
 the whole of the previous collection having been destroyed by fire. 
 The elegant structure in which thoy are arranged, is one of design 
 rather than execution, for there is but one side erected out of four, 
 though tho works are stopped. The Post Office is a very compact and 
 very beautiful building. In one of the departments, among a collec- 
 tion of rare and curious articles, are deposited tho presents which 
 have been made from time to time to the American ambassadors at 
 foreign courts by the various potentates to whom thoy were the 
 accredited agents of the Republic ; gifts which by the law thoy arc
 
 ioo American Notes. 
 
 not permitted to retain. I confess that I looked upon this as a very 
 painful exhibition, and one by no means flattering to the national 
 standard of honesty and honour. That can scarcely be a high state 
 of moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of repute and station, 
 likely to be corrupted, in the discharge of his duty, by the present of 
 a snuff-box, or a richly-mounted sword, or an Eastern shawl ; and 
 surely the Nation who reposes confidence in her appointed servants, 
 is likely to be better served, than she who makes them the subject of 
 such very mean and paltry suspicions. 
 
 At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College ; delight- 
 fully situated, and,. so far as I had an opportunity of seeing, well 
 managed. Many persons who are not members of the Eomish Church, 
 avail themselves, I believe, of these institutions, and of the advan- 
 tageous opportunities they afford for the education of their children. 
 The heights of this neighbourhood, above the Potomac River, are very 
 picturesque ; and are free, I should conceive, from some of the in- 
 salubrities of Washington. The air, at that elevation, was quite cool 
 and refreshing, when in the city it was burning hot. 
 
 The President's mansion is more like an English club-house, both 
 within and without, than any other kind of establishment with which 
 I can compare it. The ornamental ground above it has been laid out 
 in garden walks ; they are pretty, and agreeable to the eye ; though 
 they have that uncomfortable air of having been made yesterday, 
 which is far from favourable to the display of such beauties. 
 
 My first visit to this house was on the morning after my arrival, 
 when I was carried thither by an official gentleman, who was so kind 
 as to charge himself with my presentation to the President. 
 
 We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice rung a bell 
 which nobody answered, walked without further ceremony through the 
 rooms on the ground floor, as divers other gentlemen (mostly with 
 their hats on, and their hands in their pockets) were doing very 
 leisurely. Some of these had ladies with them, to whom they were 
 showing the premises ; others were lounging on the chairs and sofas ; 
 others, in a perfect state of exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning 
 drearily. The greater portion of this assemblage were rather asserting 
 their supremacy than doing anything else, as they had no particular 
 business there, that anybody knew of. A few were closely eyeing the 
 moveables, as if to make quite sure that the President (who was far 
 from popular) had not made away Avith any of the furniture, or sold 
 the fixtures for his private benefit. 
 
 After glancing at these loungers ; who were scattered over a pretty 
 drawing-room, opening upon a terrace which commanded a beautiful 
 prospect of the river and the adjacent country ; and who were saunter- 
 ing, too, about a larger state-room called the Eastern Drawing-room ; 
 we went up-stairs into another chamber, where wero certain visitors, 
 waiting for audiences. At sight of my conductor, a black in plain 
 clothes and yellow slippers who was gliding noiselessly about, and
 
 The White House. 101 
 
 whispering messages in the ears of the more impatient, made a sign 
 of recognition, and glided off to announce him. 
 
 Wo had previously looked into another chamber fitted all round 
 with a great bare wooden desk or counter, whereon lay files of news- 
 papers, to which sundry gentlemen were referring. But there wero 
 no such means of beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as 
 unpromising and tiresome as any waiting-room in one of our public 
 establishments, or any physician's diniDg-room during his hours of 
 consultation at home. 
 
 There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. One, a 
 tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the west ; sunburnt and swarthy ; 
 with a brown white hat on his knees, and a giant umbrella resting 
 between his legs ; who sat bolt upright in his chair, frowning steadily 
 at the carpet, and twitching the hard lines about his mouth, as if ho 
 had made up his mind " to fix " the President on what he had to say, 
 and wouldn't bate him a grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet- 
 six in height, with his hat on, and his hands under his coat-tails, who 
 leaned against the wall and kicked the floor with his heel, as though 
 he had Time's head under his shoe, and were literally " killing " him. 
 A third, an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek black hair 
 cropped close, and whiskers and beard shaved down to blue dots, who 
 sucked the head of a thick stick, and from time to time took it out of 
 his mouth, to see how it was getting on. A fourth did nothing but 
 whistle. A fifth did nothing but spit. And indeed all these gentle- 
 men were so very persevering and energetic in this latter particular, 
 and bestowed their favours so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take 
 it for granted the Presidential house-maids have high wages, or, to 
 speak more genteelly, an ample amount of " compensation : " which is 
 the American word for salary, in the case of all public servants. 
 
 Wc had not waited in this room many minutes, before tho black 
 messenger returned, and conducted us into another of smaller dimen- 
 sions, where, at a business-like table covered with papers, sat tho 
 President himself. Ho looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well 
 he might ; being at war with everybody but the expression of his 
 face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, 
 gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and 
 demeanour, he became his station singularly well. 
 
 Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the republican court, 
 admitted of a traveller, like myself, declining, without any impropriety, 
 an invitation to dinner, which did not reach me until I had concluded 
 my arrangements for leaving Washington some days before that to 
 which it referred, I only returned to this house once. It was on tho 
 occasion of one of those general assemblies which arc held on certain 
 nights, between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, and are called, 
 rather oddly, Levees. 
 
 I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty dense crowd 
 of carriages and people in the court-yard, and so far as I could inako
 
 102 American Notes. 
 
 out, there were no very clear regulations for the taking up or setting 
 down of company. There were certainly no policemen to soothe 
 startled horses, either by sawing at their bridles or flourishing 
 truncheons in their eyes ; and I am ready to make oath that no 
 inoffensive persons were knocked violently on the head, or poked 
 acutely in their backs or stomachs ; or brought to a stand-still by any 
 such gentle means, and then taken into custody for not moving on. 
 But there was no confusion or disorder. Our carriage reached the 
 porch in its turn, without any blustering, swearing, shouting, backing, 
 or other disturbance : and we dismounted with as much ease and 
 comfort as though we had been escorted by the whole Metropolitan 
 Force from A to Z inclusive. 
 
 The suite of rooms on the ground-floor, were lighted up ; and a 
 military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller drawing-room, 
 the centre of a circle of company, were the President and his daughter- 
 in-law, who acted as the lady of the mansion ; and a very interesting, 
 graceful, and accomplished lady too. One gentleman who stood 
 among this group, appeared to take upon himself the functions of a 
 master of the ceremonies. I saw no other officers or attendants, and 
 none were needed. 
 
 The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, and the 
 other chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to excess. The 
 company was not, in our sense of the term, select, for it comprehended 
 persons of very many grades and classes ; nor was there any great 
 display of costly attire : indeed, some of the costumes may have been, 
 for aught I know, grotesque enough. But the decorum and propriety 
 of behaviour which prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or dis- 
 agreeable incident ; and every man, even among the miscellaneous 
 crowd in the hall who were admitted without any orders or tickets to 
 look on, appeared to feel that ho was a part of the Institution, and 
 was responsible for its preserving a becoming character, and appearing 
 to the best advantage. 
 
 That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not without 
 some refinement of taste and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and 
 gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great abilities, 
 shed new charms and associations upon the homes of their country- 
 men, and elevate their character in other lands, was most earnestly 
 testified by their reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend, 
 who had recently been appointed Minister at the court of Spain, and 
 who was among them that night, in his new character, for the first 
 and last time before going abroad. I sincerely believe that in all the 
 madness of American politics, few public men would have been so 
 earnestly, devotedly, and affectionately caressed, as this most charm- 
 ing writer : and I have seldom respected a jmblic assembly more, 
 than I did this eager throng, when I saw them turning with one mind 
 from noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking with a generous 
 and honest impulse round the man of quiet pursuits : proud in his
 
 A Change of Route decided on. 103 
 
 promotion as reflecting back upon their country : and grateful to him 
 with their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he had poured 
 out among them. Long may he dispense such treasures with un- 
 sparing hand ; and long may they remember him as worthily ! 
 
 The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in Washing- 
 ton, was now at an end, and we were to begin to travel ; for the 
 railroad distances we had travelled yet, in journeying among these 
 older towns, are on that great continent looked upon as nothing. 
 
 I had at first intended going South to Charleston. But when I 
 came to consider the length of time which this journey would occupy, 
 and the premature heat of the season, which even at Washington had 
 been often very trying ; and weighed moreover, in my own mind, tho 
 pain of living in the constant contemplation of slavery, against the 
 more than doubtful chances of my ever seeing it, in the time I had to 
 spare, stripped of the disguises in which it would certainly be dressed, 
 and so adding any item to the host of facts already heaped together 
 on the subject ; I began to listen to old whisperings which had often 
 been present to me at homo in England, when I little thought of ever 
 being here ; and to dream again of cities growing up, like palaces in 
 fairy tales, among the wilds and forests of the west. 
 
 The advice I received in most quarters when I began to yield to 
 my desire of travelling towards that point of tho compass was, 
 according to custom, sufficiently cheerless : my companion being 
 threatened with more perils, dangers, and discomforts, than I can 
 remember or would catalogue if I could ; but of which it will bo 
 sufficient to remark that blowings-up in steamboats and breakings 
 down in coaches were among the least. But, having a western routo 
 sketched out for mo by the best and kindest authority to which I 
 could have resorted, and putting no groat faith in these discourage- 
 ments, I soon determined on my plan of action. 
 
 This was to travel south, only to Richmond in Virginia ; and then 
 to turn, and shape our course for the Far West ; whithor I beseech 
 the reader's company, in a new chapter.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A BLACK 
 DRIVER. RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A 
 GLIMPSE OF THE CITY. A CANAL BOAT. 
 
 We wore to proceed in the first instance by steamboat ; and as it is 
 usual to sleep on board, in consequence of tbe starting-hour being 
 four o'clock in the morning, we went down to where she lay, at that 
 very uncomfortable time for such expeditions when slippers are most 
 valuable, and a familiar bed, in the perspective of an hour or two, 
 looks uncommonly pleasant. 
 
 It is ten o'clock at night : say half-past ten : moonlight, warm, and 
 dull enough. The steamer (not unlike a child's Noah's ark in form, 
 with the machinery on the top of the roof) is riding lazily up and 
 down, and bumping clumsily against the wooden pier, as the ripple 
 of the river trifles with its unwieldy carcase. The wharf is some 
 distance from the city. There is nobody down here ; and one or two 
 dull lamps upon the steamer's decks are the only signs of life re- 
 maining, when our coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps 
 are heard upon the planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured by 
 nature in respect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, and. 
 marshals my wife towards the ladies' cabin, to which retreat she goes, 
 followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and great-coats. I valiantly 
 resolve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up and down the pier till 
 morning. 
 
 I begin my promenade thinking of all kinds of distant things and 
 persons, and of nothing near and pace up and down for half-an-hour. 
 Then I go on board again ; and getting into the light of one of the 
 lamps, look at my watch and think it must have stopped ; and wonder 
 what has become of the faithful secretary whom I brought along with 
 me from Boston. He is supping with our late landlord (a Field 
 Marshal, at least, no doubt) in honour of our departure, and may be 
 two hours longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller : the 
 moon goes down : next June seems farther off in the dark, and the 
 echoes of my footsteps make me nervous. It has turned cold too ; 
 and walking up and down without my companion in such lonely 
 circumstances, is but poor amusement. So I break my staunch reso- 
 lution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed. 
 
 I go on board again ; open the door of the gentlemen's cabin ; and 
 walk in. Somehow or other from its being so quiet I suppose I 
 have taken it into my head that there is nobody there. To my horror 
 and amazement it is full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, 
 and variety of slumber : in the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on 
 the tables, and particularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I
 
 Night Steamer. 105 
 
 take another step forward, and slip on the shining face of a black 
 steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. Ho jumps up, 
 grins, half in pain and half in hospitality ; whispers my own name in 
 my ear; and groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth. 
 Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, and get past 
 forty. There is no use in going further, so I begin to undress. As 
 the chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing else to put my clothes 
 on, I deposit them upon the ground : not without soiling my hands, 
 for it is in the same condition as the carpets in the Capitol, and from 
 the same cause. Having but partially undressed, I clamber on my 
 shelf, and hold the curtain open for a few minutes while I look round 
 on all my fellow travellers again. That done, I let it fall on them, 
 and on the world : turn round : and go to sleep. 
 
 I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a good 
 deal of noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody wakes at 
 the 6amo time. Some are self-possessed directly, and some are much 
 perplexed to make out where they are until they have rubbed their eyes, 
 and leaning on one elbow, looked about them. Some yawn, some 
 groan, nearly all spit, and a few get up. I am among the risers : for 
 it is easy to feel, without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere 
 of the cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go 
 down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash myself. 
 The washing and dressing apparatus for the passengers generally, 
 consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water 
 and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of looking-glass, 
 two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the head, and 
 nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and brush, except 
 myself. Everybody stares to see me using my own ; and two or threo 
 gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, but 
 don't. When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane-deck, 
 and set in for two hours of hard walking up and down. The sun is 
 rising brilliantly ; we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington 
 lies buried ; the river is wide and rapid ; and its banks are beautiful. 
 All the glory and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing 
 brighter every minute. 
 
 At eight o'clock, we breakfast in the cabin where I passed the night, 
 but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh 
 enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of 
 the meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us ; more 
 orderly, and moro polite. 
 
 Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are to 
 land ; and then comes the oddest part of the journey. Seven stage- 
 coaches are preparing to carry us on. Somo of them are ready, some 
 of them are not ready. Some of the drivers aro blacks, somo whites. 
 Thero aro four horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or 
 unharnessed, are there. The passengers are getting out of the steam- 
 boat, and into the coaches ; the luggage is being transferred in noisy
 
 106 American Notes. 
 
 wheelbarrows ; the norses are frightened, and impatient to start ; the 
 black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys ; and the 
 white ones whooping like so many drovers : for the main thing to be 
 done in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise as 
 possible. The coaches are something like the French coaches, but 
 not nearly so good. In lieu of springs, they are hung on bands of the 
 strongest leather. There is very little choice or difference between 
 them ; and they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an 
 English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained 
 with painted canvas. They are covered with mud from the roof to 
 the wheel-tiro, and have never been cleaned sinco they were first 
 built. 
 
 The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked 
 No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my coat on the box, and 
 hoist my wife and her maid into the inside. It has only one step, and 
 that being about a yard from the ground, is usually approached by a 
 chair : when there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach 
 holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we 
 in England put our legs : so that there is only one feat more difficult 
 in the performance than getting in, and that is, getting out again. 
 There is only one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I 
 am that one, I climb up ; and while they are strapping the luggage 
 on the roof, and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good 
 opportunity of looking at the driver. 
 
 He is a negro very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepper- 
 and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the 
 knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very 
 short trousers. He has two odd gloves : one of parti-coloured worsted, 
 and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle 
 and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad- 
 brimmed, black hat : faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation 
 of an English coachman ! But somebody in authority cries " Go 
 ahead ! " as I am making these observations. The mail takes the lead 
 in a four-horse waggon, and all the coaches follow in procession : 
 headed by No. 1. 
 
 By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry " All right ! " an 
 Amorican cries " Go ahead ! " which is somewhat expressive of the 
 national character of the two countries. 
 
 The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks 
 laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over 
 them ; and in the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of 
 holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, 
 and can't be found again for some time. 
 
 But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a 
 series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is 
 close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up 
 very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were
 
 The Black Driver. 107 
 
 saying to himself, " Wo havo done this often before, but note I think 
 we shall have a crash." He takes a rein in each hand ; jerks and 
 pulls at both ; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping 
 his seat, of course) liko the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery 
 coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to tho 
 coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and 
 stick there. The insides scream dismally ; tho coach stops ; tho 
 horses flounder ; all the other six coaches stop ; and their four-and- 
 twenty horses flounder likewise : but merely for company, and in 
 sympathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur. 
 
 Black Driver (to the horses). " Hi ! " 
 
 Nothing happens. Insides scream again. 
 
 Black Driver (to the horses). " Ho ! " 
 
 Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. 
 
 Gentleman inside (looking out). " Why, what on airth " 
 
 Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in 
 again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer. 
 
 Black Driver (still to the horses). " Jiddy ! Jiddy ! " 
 
 Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of tho hole, and draw it 
 up a bank ; so steep, that the black driver's legs fly up into tho air, 
 and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately 
 recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses), 
 
 " Pill ! " 
 
 No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon 
 No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and 
 so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a 
 mile behind. 
 
 Black Driver (louder than before). " Pill ! " 
 
 Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the 
 coach rolls backward. 
 
 Black Driver (louder than before). " Pe-e-c-ill ! " 
 
 Horses make a desperate struggle. 
 
 Black Driver (recovering spirits). " Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill ! " 
 
 Horses mako another effort. 
 
 Black Driver (with great vigour). " Ally Loo ! Hi. Jiddv. 
 Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo ! " 
 
 Horses almost do it. 
 
 Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head). " Lee, den. 
 Leo, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e ! " 
 
 They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a 
 fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is 
 a deep hollow, full of water. Tho coach rolls frightfully. The 
 insides scream. The mud and water fly about us. The black driver 
 dances like a madman. Suddenly we are all right by some extra- 
 ordinary means, and stop to breathe. 
 
 A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The black 
 driver recognises him by twirling his head round and round like a
 
 108 American Notes. 
 
 harlequin, rolling bis eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning 
 from ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and says : 
 
 " We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you 
 when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa : " chuckling 
 very much. " Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman 
 at home sa," grinning again. 
 
 " Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be afraid." 
 
 The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond 
 that, another bank, close before us. So he stops short : cries (to the 
 horses again) " Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. 
 Pill. Ally. Loo," but never " Lee ! " until we are reduced to the 
 very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication 
 from which appears to be all but impossible. 
 
 And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half ; 
 breaking no bones, though bruising a great many ; and in short 
 getting through the distance, " like a fiddle." 
 
 This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburgh, 
 whence there is a railway to Eichmond. The tract of country through 
 which it takes its course was once productive ; but the soil has been 
 exhausted by the system of employing a great amount of slave labour 
 in forcing crops, without strengthening the land : and it is now 
 little better than a sandy desert overgrown with trees. Dreary and 
 uninteresting as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything 
 on which one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen ; and 
 had greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground, than the 
 richest and most thriving cultivation in the same place could possibly 
 have afforded me. 
 
 In this district, as in all others where slavery sits brooding, (I havo 
 frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are its warmest 
 advocates :) there is an air of ruin and decay abroad, which is in- 
 separable from the system. The barns and outhouses are mouldering 
 away ; the sheds are patched and half roofless ; the log cabins (built 
 in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood) are squalid 
 in the last degree. There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. 
 The miserable stations by the railway side ; the great wild wood- 
 yards, whence the engine is supplied with fuel ; the negro children 
 rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs ; the 
 biped beasts of burden slinking past : gloom and dejection are upon 
 them all. 
 
 In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made this 
 journey, were a mother and her children who had just been purchased ; 
 the husband and father being left behind with their old owner. The 
 children cried the whole way, and the mother was misery's picture. 
 The champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, who 
 had bought them, rode in the same train ; and, every time we stopped, 
 got down to see that they were safe. The black in Sinbad's Travels 
 with one eye in the middle of his forehead which shone like a
 
 11LACK. AND WHITE.
 
 Visit to a Tobacco Manufactory. 109 
 
 burning coal, was nature's aristocrat compared with this white 
 gentleman. 
 
 It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening, when we drove 
 to the hotel : m front of which, and on the top of the broad flight of 
 steps leading to the door, two or three citizens were balancing them- 
 selves on rocking-chairs, and smoking cigars. We found it a very- 
 large and elegant establishment, and were as well entertained as 
 travellers need desire to be. The climate being a thirsty one, there 
 was never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of loungers in the 
 spacious bar, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors : but they 
 were a merrier people here, and had musical instruments playing to 
 them o' nights, which it was a treat to hear again. 
 
 The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the town, 
 which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging James 
 Eiver ; a sparkling stream, studde'd hero and there with bright 
 islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it was yet but the 
 middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was 
 extremely warm ; the peach-trees and magnolias were in full bloom ; 
 and the trees were green. In a low ground among the hills, is a 
 valley known as " Bloody Eun," from a terrible conflict with the 
 Indians which once occurred there. It is a good place for such a 
 struggle, and, like every other spot I saw associated with any legend 
 of that wild people now so rajudly fading from the earth, interested 
 me very much. 
 
 The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia ; and in its 
 shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding forth to 
 the hot noonday. By dint of constant repetition, however, these con- 
 stitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so many 
 parochial vestries ; and I was glad to exchange this one for a lounge in 
 a well-arranged public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a 
 visit to a tobacco manufactory, where the workmen were all slaves. 
 
 I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, pressing, 
 drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the tobacco thus dealt 
 with, was in course of manufacture for chewing ; and ono would have 
 supposed there was enough in that one storehouse to have filled even 
 the comprehensive jaws of America. In this form, the weed looks 
 like tho oilcake on which wo fatten cattle ; and even without reference 
 to its consequences, is sufficiently uninviting. 
 
 Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is hardly 
 necessary to add that they were all labouring quietly, then. After 
 two o'clock in the day, they are allowed to sing, a certain number at 
 a time. The hour striking whilo I was there, some twenty sang a 
 hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill ; pursuing their work 
 meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured 
 forth into a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner I 
 said several times that I should like to see them at their meal ; but 
 as the gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared to be
 
 no American Notes. 
 
 suddenly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the request. Of their 
 appearance I shall have something to say, presently. 
 
 On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about twelve 
 hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here again, 
 although I went down with the owner of the estate, to " the quarter," 
 as tht part of it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited 
 to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they 
 were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked 
 children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I 
 believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master, who 
 inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human 
 stock ; and I am sure, from my own observation and conviction, that 
 he is a kind-hearted, worthy man. 
 
 The planter's house was an airy rustic dwelling, that brought 
 Defoe's description of such places strongly to my recollection. The 
 day was very warm, but the blinds being all closed, and the windows 
 and doors set wide open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms, 
 which was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and heat without. 
 Before the windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the 
 hot weather whatever that may be they sling hammocks, and drink 
 and doze luxuriously. I do not know how their cool refections may 
 taste within the hammocks, but, having experience, I can report that, 
 out of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls of mint-julep and 
 sherry-cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refreshments never to 
 be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve 
 contented minds. 
 
 There are two bridges across the river : one belongs to the railroad, 
 and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the private property of 
 some old lady in the neighbourhood, who levies tolls upon the towns- 
 people. Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice painted 
 on the gate, cautioning all persons to drive slowly : under a penalty, 
 if the offender were a white man, of five dollars ; if a negro, fifteen 
 stripes. 
 
 The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by which it is 
 approached, hover above the town of Richmond. There are pretty 
 villas and cheerful houses in its streets, and Nature smiles upon the 
 country round ; but jostling its handsome residences, like slavery 
 itself going hand in hand with many lofty virtues, are deplorable 
 tenements, fences unrepaired, walls crumbling into ruinous heaps. 
 Hinting gloomily at things below the surface, these, and many other 
 tokens of the same description, force themselves upon the notice, and 
 are remembered with depressing influence, when livelier features are 
 forgotten. 
 
 To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the countenances 
 in tho streets and labouring-places, too, are shocking. All men who 
 know that there are laws against instructing slaves, of which the pains 
 and penalties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed on
 
 Baltimore. 1 1 1 
 
 those who maim and torture them, must be prepared to fiud their 
 faces very low iu the scale of intellectual expression. But the dark- 
 ness not of skin, but mind which meets the stranger's eye at every 
 turn ; the brutalizing and blotting out of all fairer characters traced 
 by Nature's hand; immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That 
 travelled creation of the great satirist's brain, who fresh from living 
 among horses, peered from a high casement down upon his own kind 
 with trembling horror, was scarcely more repelled and daunted by the 
 sight, than those who look upon some of these faces for the first time 
 must surely be. 
 
 I left the last of them behind me in the person of a wretched 
 drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, and 
 moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs betweenwhiles, 
 was washing the dark passages at four o'clock in the morning ; and 
 went upon my way with a grateful heart that I was not doomed to 
 live where slavery was, and had never had my senses blunted to its 
 wrongs and horrors in a slave-rocked cradle. 
 
 It had been my intention to proceed by James River and Chesapeake 
 Bay to Baltimore ; but one of the steamboats being absent from her 
 station through some accident, and the means of conveyance being 
 consequently rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington by the 
 way we had come (there were two constables on board the steamboat, 
 in pursuit of runaway slaves), and halting there again for one night, 
 went on to Baltimore next afternoon. 
 
 The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any expe- 
 rience in the United States, and they were not a few, is Barnum's, in 
 that city : where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, 
 for the first and probably the last time in America (this is a dis- 
 interested remark, for I never use them) ; and where he will be likely 
 to have enough water for washing himself, which is not at all a 
 common case. 
 
 This capital of the State of Maryland is a bustling busy town, with 
 a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular of water 
 commerce. That portion of the town which it most favours is nono 
 of the cleanest, it is true ; but the upper part is of a very different 
 character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings. The 
 Washington Monument, which is a handsome pillar with a statue on 
 its summit ; the Medical College ; and the Battle Monument in 
 memory of an engagement with the British at North Point ; are the 
 most conspicuous among them. 
 
 There is a very good prison in this city, and the State Penitentiary 
 is also among its institutions. In this latter establishment there were 
 two curious cases. 
 
 One, was that of a young man, who had boon tried for tho murder 
 of his father. Tho evidence was entirely circumstantial, and was very 
 conflicting and doubtful ; nor was it possible to assign any motive 
 which could have tempted him to the commission of so tremendous a
 
 112 Auierican Notes. 
 
 crime. He Had been tried twice ; and on the second occasion the jury 
 felt so much hesitation in convicting him, that they found a verdict of 
 manslaughter, or murder in the second degree ; which it could not 
 possibly be, as there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel or pro- 
 vocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of 
 murder in its broadest and worst signification. 
 
 I The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the unfortunate 
 deceased were not really murdered by this own son of his, he must 
 have been murdered by his own brother. The evidence lay, in a most 
 remarkable manner, between those two. On all the suspicious points, 
 the dead man's brother was the witness : all the explanations for the 
 prisoner (some of them extremely plausible) went, by construction and 
 inference, to inculcate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew. 
 It must have been one of them : and the jury had to decide between 
 two sets of suspicions, almost equally unnatural, unaccountable, and 
 strange. 
 
 The other case, was that of a man who once went to a certain dis- 
 tiller's and stole a copper measure containing a quantity of liquor. 
 He was pursued and taken with the property in his possession, and 
 was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On coming out of the jail, 
 at the expiration of that term, he went back to the same distiller's, 
 and stole the same copper measure containing the same quantity of 
 liquor. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that the man 
 wished to return to prison : indeed everything, but the commission of 
 the offence, made directly against that assumption. There are only 
 two ways of accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is, 
 that after undergoing so much for this copper measure he conceived 
 he had established a sort of claim and right to it. The other that, by 
 dint of long thinking about, it had become a monomania with him, 
 and had acquired a fascination which he found it impossible to resist : 
 swelling from an Earthly Copper Gallon into an Ethereal Golden Vat. 
 
 After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a rigid 
 adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and resolved to set 
 forward on our western journey without anymore delay. Accordingly, 
 having reduced the luggage within the smallest possible compass (by 
 sending back to New York, to be afterwards forwarded to us in 
 Canada, so much of it as was not absolutely wanted) ; and having 
 procured the necessary credentials to banking-houses on the way ; and 
 having moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with as 
 well-defined an idea of the country before us as if we had been going 
 to travel into the yery centre of that planet ; we left Baltimore by 
 another railway at half-past eight in the morning, and reached the 
 town of York, some sixty miles off, by the early dinner-time of the 
 Hotel which was the starting-place of the four-horse coach, wherein 
 we were to proceed to Harrisburg. 
 
 This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to 
 secure, had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was as
 
 The Harrisburg Mail. 1 1 3 
 
 muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengors were waiting 
 for us at the inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in the 
 usual self-communicative voice, looking tho while at his mouldy 
 harness as if it were to that he was addressing himself, 
 
 " I expect wo shall want the big coach." 
 
 I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big 
 coach might bo, and how many persons it might be designed to hold ; 
 for the vehicle which was too small for our purpose was something 
 larger than two English heavy night coaches, and might have been 
 the twin-brother of a French Diligence. My speculations wero 
 speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as we had dined, there came 
 rumbling up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind 
 of barge on wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped 
 at the door : l'olling heavily from side to side when its other motion 
 had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and between 
 that, and tho having been required in its dropsical old age to move at 
 any faster pace than a walk, were distressed by shortness of wind. 
 
 " If here ain't the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful bright and 
 smart to look at too," cried an elderly gentleman in some excitement, 
 " darn my mother ! " 
 
 I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether 
 a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than 
 anybody else ; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by 
 the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son's 
 vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of the 
 Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have undergone its infliction. 
 However, they booked twelve people inside ; and the luggage (includ- 
 ing such trifles as a largo rocking-chair and a good-sized dining-tablc) 
 being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off in great state. 
 
 At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger to bo 
 taken up. 
 
 " Any room, sir ? " cries the new passenger to the coachman. 
 
 " Well, there's room enough," replies tho coachman, without getting 
 down, or even looking at him. 
 
 " There an't no room at all, sir," bawls a gentleman inside. Which 
 another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting that the 
 attempt to introduce any more passengers " won't fit nohow." 
 
 The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks into 
 the coach, and then looks up at the coachman : " Now, how do yon 
 mean to fix it? " says he, after a pauso : " for I must go." 
 
 The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his whip 
 into a knot, and takes no more notico of the question : clearly signify- 
 ing that it is anybody's business but his, and that the passengers 
 would do well to fix it, among themselves. In this stato of things, 
 matters seem to be approximating to a fix of another kind, when 
 another insido passenger in a corner, who is nearly suffocated, cries 
 faintly, " I'll get out."
 
 H4 American Notes. 
 
 This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, for 
 his immoveable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by anything that 
 happens in the coach. Of all things in the world, the coach would 
 seem to be the very last upon his mind. The exchange is made, 
 however, and then the passenger who has given up his seat makes a 
 third upon the box, seating himself in what he calls the middle ; that 
 is, with half his person on my legs, and the other half on the driver's. 
 
 " Go ahead, cap'en," cries the colonel, who directs. 
 
 " Go-lang ! " cries the cap'en to his compauy, the horses, and away 
 wc go. 
 
 We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few miles, an 
 intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof among the luggage, 
 and subsequently slipping off without hurting himself, was seen in the 
 distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we had found 
 him. We also parted with more of our freight at different times, so 
 that when we came to change horses, I was again alone outside. 
 
 The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually as 
 dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby English 
 baker ; the second like a Russian peasant : for he wore a loose purple 
 camlet robe, with a fur collar, tied round his waist with a parti- 
 coloured worsted sash ; grey trousers ; light blue gloves : and a cap 
 of bearskin. It had by this time come on to rain very heavily, and 
 there was a cold damp mist besides, which penetrated to the skin. I 
 was glad to take advantage of a stoppage and get down to stretch my 
 legs, shake the water off my great-coat, and swallow the usual anti- 
 temperance recipe for keeping out the cold. 
 
 When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new parcel lying on 
 the coach roof, which I took to be a rather large fiddle in a brown 
 bag. In the course of a few miles, however, I discovered that it had 
 a glazed cap at one end and a pair of muddy shoes at the other ; and 
 further observation demonstrated it to be a small boy in a snuff- 
 coloured coat, with his arms" quite pinioned to his sides, by deep 
 forcing into his pockets. He was, I presume, a relative or friend of 
 the coachman's, as he lay a-top of the luggage with his face towards 
 the rain ; and except when a change of position brought his shoes in 
 contact with my hat, he appeared to bo asleep. At last, on some 
 occasion of our stopping, this thing slowly upreared itself to the 
 height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in piping 
 accents, with a complaisant yawn, half quenched in an obliging air of 
 friendly patronage, " Well now, stranger, I guess you find this a'most 
 like an English arternoon, hey ? " 
 
 The scenery, which had been tame enough at first, was, for the last 
 ten or twelve miles, beautiful. Our road wound through the pleasant 
 valley of the Susquehanna ; the river, dotted with innumerable green 
 islands, lay upon our right ; and on the left, a steep ascent, craggy 
 with broken rock, and dark with pine trees. The mist, wreathing 
 itself into a hundred fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the
 
 Indian Treaties. 1 1 5 
 
 water ; and the gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and 
 silence which greatly enhanced its natural interest. 
 
 We crossed this river by a wooden bridgo, roofed and covered in on 
 all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark ; per- 
 plexed, with great beams, crossing and recrossing it at every possible 
 angle ; and through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the 
 rapid river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of eyes. Wo had 
 no lamps ; and as tho horses stumbled and floundered through this 
 place, towards tho distant speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. 
 I really could not at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily on, 
 filling the bridge with hollow noises, and I held down my head to 
 save it from the rafters above, but tbat I was in a painful dream ; for 
 I have often dreamed of toiling through such places, and as often 
 argued, even at the time, " this cannot be reality." 
 
 At length, howover, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg, 
 whose feeble lights, reflected dismally from the wet ground, did not 
 shine out upon a very cheerful city. Wo were soon established in a 
 snug hotel, which though smaller and far less splendid than many wo 
 put up at, is raised above them all in my remembrance, by having for 
 its landlord the most obliging, considerate, and gentlemanly person I 
 ever had to deal with. 
 
 As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon, I 
 walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to look about me ; and 
 was duly shown a model prison on the solitary system, just erected, 
 and as yet without an inmate ; the trunk of an old tree to which 
 Harris, the first settler here (afterwards buried under it), was tied by 
 hostile Indians, with his funeral pile about him, when he was saved 
 by the timely appearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of 
 the river ; the local legislature (for there was another of those bodies 
 hero again, in full debate) ; and the other curiosities of the town. 
 
 I was very much interested in looking over a number of treaties 
 made from time to time with the poor Indians, signed by the different 
 chiefs at tho period of their ratification, and preserved in the office of 
 the Secretary to tho Commonwealth. These signatures, traced of 
 course by their own hands, are rough drawings of the creatures or 
 weapons they were called after. Thus, the Great Turtle makes a 
 crooked pen-and-ink outline of a great turtle ; the Buffalo sketches a 
 buffalo ; the War Hatchet sets a rough imago of that weapon for his 
 mark. So with the Arrow, tho Fish, tho Scalp, tho Big Canoe, and 
 all of them. 
 
 I could not but think as I looked at these feeble and tremulous 
 productions of hands which could draw the longost arrow to tho head 
 in a stout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or feather with a rifle-ball 
 of Crabbe's musings over the Parish Register, and the irregular 
 scratches mado with a pen, by men who would plough a lengthy 
 furrow straight from end to end. Nor could I help bestowing many 
 sorrowful thoughts upon the simple warriors whoso hands and hearts
 
 1 1 6 A merican Notes. 
 
 were set there, in all truth and honesty ; and who only learned in 
 course of time from white men how to break their faith, and quibble 
 out of forms and bonds. I wondered, too, how many times the 
 credulous Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had put his mark to 
 treaties which were falsely read to him ; and had signed away, he 
 knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the new 
 possessors of the land, a savago indeed. 
 
 Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some members of 
 the legislative body proposed to do us the honour of calling. He had 
 kindly yielded up to us his wife's own little parlour, and when I 
 begged that he would show them in, I saw him look with painful 
 apprehension at its pretty carpet ; though, being otherwise occupied 
 at the time, the cause of his uneasiness did not occur to me. 
 
 It certainly would have been more pleasant to all parties concerned, 
 and would not, I think, have compromised their independence in any 
 material degree, if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to 
 the prejudice in favour of spittoons, but had abandoned themselves, 
 for the moment, even to the conventional absurdity of pocket-hand- 
 kerchiefs. 
 
 It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down to the 
 Canal Boat (for that was the mode of conveyance by which wo were 
 to proceed) after dinner, the weather was as unpromising and 
 obstinately wet as one would desire to see. Nor was the sight of this 
 canal boat, in which we were to spend three or four days, by any 
 means a cheerful one ; as it involved some uneasy sjieculations con- 
 cerning the disposal of the passengers at night, and opened a wide 
 field of inquiry touching the other domestic arrangements of the 
 establishment, which was sufficiently disconcerting. 
 
 However, there it was a barge with a little house in it, viewed from 
 the outside ; and a caravan at a fair, viewed from within : the gentle- 
 men being accommodated, as the spectators usually are, in one of 
 those locomotive museums of penny wonders ; and the ladies being 
 partitioned off by a red curtain, after the manner of the dwarfs and 
 giants in the same establishments, whose private lives are passed in 
 rather close exclusiveness. 
 
 We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables, which ex- 
 tended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the rain as it 
 dripped and pattered on the boat, and plashed with a dismal merri- 
 ment in the water, until the arrival of the railway train, for whose 
 final contribution to our stock of passengers, our departure was alone 
 deferred. It brought a great many boxes, which were bumped and 
 tossed upon the roof, almost as painfully as if they had been deposited 
 on one's own head, without the intervention of a porter's knot ; and 
 several damp gentlemen, whose clothes, on their drawing round the 
 stove, began to steam again. No doubt it would have been a thought 
 more comfortable if the driving rain, which now poured down more 
 soakingly than ever^ had admitted of a window being opened, or if our
 
 The Word "Fix" 117 
 
 number had been something less than thirty ; but there was scarcely 
 time to think as much, when a train of three horses was attached to 
 the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader smacked his whip, the rudder 
 creaked and groaned complainingly, and we had begun our journey. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 
 AND ITS PASSENGERS. JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG ACROSS THE ALLE- 
 GHANY MOUNTAINS. PITTSBURG. 
 
 As it continued to rain most persevcringly, we all remained below : 
 the damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becoming mildewed 
 by the action of the fire ; and the dry gentlemen lying at full length 
 upon the seats, or slumbering uneasily with their faces on the tables, 
 or walking up and down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a 
 man of the middle height to do, without making bald places on his 
 head by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock, all the 
 small tables were put together to form one long table, and everybody 
 sat down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steaks, 
 potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black-puddings, and sausages. 
 
 " Will you try," said my opjwsite neighbour, handing me a dish of 
 potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, " will you try some of these 
 fixings? " 
 
 There are few words which perform such various duties as this 
 word " fix." It is the Caleb Quotem of the American vocabulary. 
 You call upon a gentloman in a country town, and his help informs 
 you that he is " fixing himself " just now, but will be down directly: 
 by which you are to understand that he is dressing. You inquire, on 
 board a steamboat, of a fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be 
 ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he was last 
 below, they were " fixing the tables : " in other words, laying the 
 cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you 
 not to be uneasy, for he'll " fix it presently : " and if you complain of 
 indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to Doctor So-and-so, 
 who will " fix you " in no time. 
 
 One night, 1 ordered a bottle of mulled wino at an hotel where I 
 was staying, and waited a long time for it ; at length it was put upon 
 the table with an apology from the landlord that lie feared it wasn't 
 " fixed properly." And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, over- 
 hearing a very stern gentleman demand of a waiter who presented 
 him with a plate of underdone roast-beef, " whether he called that, 
 fixing God A'mighty's vittles?" 
 
 There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was tendered
 
 1 1 8 American Notes. 
 
 to mo which has occasioned this digression, was disposed of somewhat 
 ravenously; and that the gentlemen thrust the broad-bladed knives 
 and the two-pronged forks further down their throats than I ever saw 
 the same weapons go before, except in the hands of a skilful juggler : 
 but no man sat down until the ladies were seated ; or omitted any- 
 little act of politeness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor 
 did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in 
 America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, in- 
 civility, or even inattention. 
 
 By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to have worn 
 itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over too ; and it became 
 feasible to go on deck : which was a great relief, notwithstanding its 
 being a very small deck, and being rendered still smaller by the 
 luggage, which was heaped together in the middle under a tarpaulin 
 covering ; leaving, on either side, a path so narrow, that it became a 
 science to walk to and fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. 
 It was somewhat embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck nimbly 
 every five minutes whenever the man at the helm cried " Bridge! " 
 and sometimes, when the cry was " Low Bridge," to lie down nearly 
 flat. But custom familiarises one to anything, and there were so 
 many bridges that it took a very short time to get used to this. 
 
 As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range of hills, 
 which are the outposts of the Alleghany Mountains, the scenery, 
 which had been uninteresting hitherto, became more bold and 
 striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked, after the heavy fall of 
 rain ; and the croaking of the frogs (whose noise in these parts is 
 almost incredible) sounded as though a million of fairy teams with 
 bells, were travelling through the air, and keeping pace with us. 
 The night was cloudy yet, but moonlight too : and when we crossed 
 the Susquehanna river over which there is an extraordinary wooden 
 bridge with two galleries, one above the other, so that even there, two 
 boat teams meeting, may pass without confusion it was wild and 
 grand. 
 
 I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and doubt, 
 at first, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board this beat. I 
 remained in the same vague state of mind until ten o'clock or there- 
 abouts, when going below, I found suspended on either side of the 
 cabin, three long tiers of hanging book-shelves, designed apparently 
 for volumes of the small octavo size. Looking with greater attention 
 at these contrivances (wondering to find such literary preparations in 
 such a place), I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and 
 blanket ; then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were 
 the library, and that they were to be arranged, edge-wise, on these 
 shelves, till morning. 
 
 I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them gathered 
 round the master of tho boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots with 
 all the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted in their counte-
 
 Sleeping Accommodation. 119 
 
 nances ; while others, with small pieces of cardboard in their hands, 
 were groping among the shelves in search of nnmbers corresponding 
 with those they had drawn. As soon as any gentleman found his 
 number, he took possession of it by immediately undressing himself 
 aud crawling into bed. The rapidity with which an agitated gambler 
 subsided into a snoring slumberer, was one of the most singular effects 
 I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they were already abed, 
 behind the red curtain, which was carefully drawn and pinned up the 
 centre ; though as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper, behind this 
 curtain, was perfectly audible before it, we had. still a live conscious- 
 ness of their society. 
 
 The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me a shelf 
 in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed from tho 
 great body of sleepers : to which place I retired, with many acknowledg- 
 ments to him for his attention. I found it, on after-measurement, just 
 tho width of an ordinary sheet of Bath post letter-paper ; and I was 
 at first in some uncertainty as to the best means of getting into it. 
 But the shelf being a bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon 
 the floor, rolling gently in, stopping immediately I touched tho 
 mattress, and remaining for the night with that side uppermost, what- 
 ever it might be. Luckily, I came upon my back at exactly tho right 
 moment. I was much alarmed on looking upward, to see, by tho 
 shape of his half yard of sacking (which his weight had bent into an 
 exceedingly tight bag), that there was a very heavy gentleman above 
 me, whom the slender cords seemed quite incapable of holding ; and 
 I could not help reflecting upon the grief of my wife and family in 
 the event of his coming down in the night. But as I could not have 
 got up again without a severo bodily struggle, which might have 
 alarmed the ladies ; and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had ; 
 I shut my eyes upon the danger, and remained there. 
 
 One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, with 
 reference to that class of society who travel in these boats. Either 
 they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never sleep at 
 all ; or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a remarkable 
 mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, and every night, on 
 this canal, there was a perfect storm and tempest of spitting ; and 
 once my coat, being in the very centre of the hurricane sustained by 
 five gentlemen (which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Eeid's 
 Theory of the Law of Storms), I was fain the next morning to lay it 
 on the deck, and rub it down with fair water before it was in a 
 condition to be worn again. 
 
 Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and some of 
 us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves 
 down ; while others, the morning being very cold, crowded round tho 
 rusty stove, cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the grate 
 with those voluntary contributions of which they had been so liberal 
 all night. The washing accommodations were primitive. There was
 
 120 American Notes. 
 
 a tin ladle chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who 
 thought it necessary to cleanse himself (many were superior to this 
 weakuess), fished the dirty water out of the canal, and poured it into 
 a tin basin, secured in like manner. There was also a jack-towel. 
 And, hanging up before a little looking-glass in the bar, in the 
 immediate vicinity of the bread and cheeso and biscuits, were a public 
 comb and hair-brush. 
 
 At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away and 
 the tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, coffee, 
 bread, butter, salmon,, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, 
 black-puddings, and sausages, all over again. Some were fond of 
 compounding this variety, and having it all on their plates at once. 
 As each gentleman got through his own personal amount of tea, coffee, 
 bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, 
 black-puddings, and sausages, he rose up and walked off. When 
 everybody had done with everything, the fragments were cleared 
 away : and one of the waiters appearing anew in the character of a 
 barber, shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved ; while 
 the remainder looked on, or yawned over their newspapers. Dinner 
 was breakfast again, without the tea and coffee ; and supper and break- 
 fast were identical. 
 
 There was a man on board this boat, with a light fresh-coloured 
 face, and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was the most inquisi- 
 tive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He never spoke otherwise 
 than interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry. Sitting down or 
 standing up, still or moving, walking the deck or taking his meals, 
 there he w r as, with a great note of interrogation in each eye, two in 
 his cocked ears, two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half 
 a dozen more about the corners of his mouth, and the largest one of 
 all in his hair, which w 7 as brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen 
 clump. Every button in his clothes said, " Eh '? What's that '? Did 
 you speak ? Say that again, will you ? " He was always wide awake, 
 like the enchanted bride who drove her husband frantic ; always rest- 
 less ; always thirsting for answers ; perpetually seeking and never 
 finding. There never was such a curious man. 
 
 I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well clear 
 of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, and where 
 I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it weighed, and 
 what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, and asked me what 
 that cost, and whether it was a French watch, and where I got it, and 
 how I got it, and whether I bought it or had it given me, and how it 
 went, and where the key-hole was, and when I wound it, every night 
 or every morning, and whether I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if 
 I did, what then ? Where had I been to last, and where was I going 
 next, and where was I going after that, and had I seen the President, 
 and what did he say, and what did I say, and what did he say when 
 I had said that ? Eli ? Lor now ! do tell !
 
 Odd Specimens. 121 
 
 Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions 
 after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance respect- 
 ing the name of the fur whereof the coat was made. I am unable to 
 say whether this was the reason, but that coat fascinated him after- 
 wards ; he usually kept close behind me as I walked, and moved as 
 I moved, that he might look at it the better ; and he frequently dived 
 into narrow places after me at the risk of his life, that ho might have 
 the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back, and rubbing it the 
 wrong way. 
 
 We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. This 
 was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed 
 in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I never saw before. He 
 was perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey : indeed I don't 
 remember having so much as seen him until he was brought out by 
 circumstances, as great men often are. Tho conjunction of events 
 which made him famous, happened, briefly, thus. 
 
 The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of course, 
 it stops ; the passengers being conveyed across it by land carriage, 
 and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the counterpart of the 
 first, which awaits them on the other side. There are two canal lines 
 of passage-boats ; one is called The Express, and one (a cheaper one) 
 Tho Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for 
 the Express people to come up ; both sets of passengers being con- 
 veyed across it at the same time. We were the Express company ; 
 but when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to the second 
 boat, the proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers 
 into it likewise, so that we were five-and-forty at least, and the acces- 
 sion of passengers was not at all of that kind which improved the 
 prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grumbled at this, as people 
 do in such cases ; but suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole 
 freight aboard nevertheless ; and away we went down the canal. At 
 home, I should have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I 
 held my peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the 
 people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and without addressing 
 anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as follows : 
 
 " This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This may bo 
 all very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, but it 
 won't suit my figuro no how ; and no two ways about that ; and so I 
 tell you. Now ! I'm from the brown forests of tho Mississippi, I 
 am, and when the sun shines on me, it does shine a little. It don't 
 glimmer where I livo, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I 
 am. I an't a Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. 
 We're rough men there. Itather. If Down Easters and men of 
 Boston raising like this, I'm glad of it, but I'm none of that raising 
 nor of that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, it does. 
 I'm the wrong sort of man for 'em, / am. They won't like me, thcij 
 won't. This is piling of it up, a little too mountainous, this is." At
 
 122 American Notes. 
 
 the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel, 
 and walked the other way ; checking himself abruptly when he had 
 finished another short sentence, and turning back again. 
 
 It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in 
 the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other passengers 
 looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the boat 
 was put back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could be 
 coaxed or bullied into going away, were got rid of. 
 
 When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board, made 
 bold to say to the obvious occasion of this impi'ovement in our 
 prospects, " Much obliged to you, sir ; " whereunto the brown forester 
 (waving his hand, and still walking up and down as before) replied, 
 " No you an't. You're none o' my raising. You may act for your- 
 selves, you may. I have pinted out the way. Down Easters and 
 Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. I an't a Johnny Cake, I 
 an't. I am from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am " and so 
 on, as before. He was unanimously voted one of the tables for his 
 bed at night there is a great contest for the tables in consideration 
 for his public services : and he had the warmest corner by the stove 
 throughout the rest of the journey. But I never could find out that 
 he did anything except sit there ; nor did I hear him speak again 
 until, in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting the luggage 
 ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I stumbled over him as he sat smoking 
 a cigar on the cabin steps, and heard him muttering to himself, with 
 a short laugh of defiance, " I an't a Johnny Cake, I an't. I'm from 
 the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, damme ! " I am inclined 
 to argue from this, that he had never left off saying so ; but I could 
 not make an affidavit of that part of the story, if required to do so by 
 my Queen and Country. 
 
 As we have not reached Pittsburg yet,. however, in the order of our 
 narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was perhaps the least 
 desirable meal of the day, as in addition to the many savoury odours 
 arising from the eatables already mentioned, there were whiffs of gin, 
 whiskey, brandy, and rum, from the little bar hard by, and a decided 
 seasoning of stale tobacco. Many of the gentlemen passengers were 
 far from particular in respect of their linen, which was in some cases 
 as yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled from the corners of 
 their mouths in chewing, and dried there. Nor was the atmosphere 
 quite free from zephyr whisperings of the thirty beds which had just 
 been cleared away, and of which we were further and more pressingly 
 reminded by the occasional appearance on the table-cloth of a kind of 
 Game, not mentioned in the Bill of Fare. 
 
 And yet despite these oddities and even they had, for me at least, 
 a humour of their own there was much in this mode of travelling 
 which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon with great 
 pleasure. Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the 
 morning, from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck ; scooping up the
 
 Across the Alteghanies. 123 
 
 icy water, plunging one's head into it, and drawing it ont, all fresh 
 and glowing with the cold ; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk 
 tipon the towing-path, between that time and breakfast, when every 
 vein and artery seemed to tingle with health ; the exquisite beauty of 
 the opening day, when light came gleaming off from everything ; the 
 lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the deck, looking 
 through, rather than at, the deep blue sky ; the gliding on at night, 
 so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with dark trees, and some- 
 times angry in one red burning spot high up, where unseen men lay 
 crouching round a fire ; the shining otit of the bright stars undisturbed 
 by noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than the limpid 
 rippling of the water as the boat went on : all these were pure delights. 
 
 Then there were new settlements and detached log-cabins and 
 frame-houses, full of interest for strangers from an old country : cabins 
 with simple ovens, outside, made of clay ; and lodgings for the pigs 
 nearly as good as many of the human quarters ; broken windows, 
 patched with worn-out hats, old clothes, old boards, fragments of 
 blankets and paper ; and home-made dressers standing in the open air 
 without the door, whereon was ranged the household store, not hard 
 to count, of earthen jars and pots. The eye was pained to see the 
 stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat, and 
 seldom to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of 
 rotten trunks and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome water. 
 It was quite sad and oppressive, to come upon great tracts where 
 settlers had been burning down the trees, and where their wounded 
 bodies lay about, like those of murdered creatures, while here and 
 there some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two withered 
 arms, and seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes, at 
 night, the way wound through some lonely gorge, like a mountain 
 pass in Scotland, shining and coldly glittering in the light of the 
 moon, and so closed in by high steep hills all round, that there seemed 
 to bo no egress save through the narrower path by which we had come, 
 until one rugged hill-side seemed to open, and shutting out the moon- 
 light as we passed into its gloomy throat, wrapped our new course in 
 shade and darkness. 
 
 We had left Harrishurg on Friday. On Sunday morning we arrived 
 at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. There are 
 tan inclined planes ; five ascending, and fivo descending ; the carriages 
 are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, by means 
 of stationary engines ; the comparatively level spaces between, being 
 traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the 
 case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme vergo 
 of a giddy precipice ; and looking from the carriage window, the 
 traveller gazes sheer down, without a sLone or scrap of fence between, 
 into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, 
 however ; only two carriages travelling together ; and while proper 
 precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers.
 
 124 American Notes. 
 
 It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights 
 of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light 
 and softness ; catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered 
 cabins ; children running to the doors ; dogs bursting out to bark, 
 whom we could see without hearing ; terrified pigs scampering home- 
 wards ; families sitting out in their rude gardens ; cows gazing 
 upward with a stupid indifference ; men in their shirt-sleeves looking 
 on at their unfinished houses, planning out to-morrow's work ; and 
 wo riding onward, high above them, like a whirlwind. It was 
 amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, 
 having no other moving power than the weight of the carriages them- 
 selves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing down 
 alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the 
 sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one 
 would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But it 
 stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when we reached 
 the canal : and, before we left the wharf, went panting up this hill 
 again, with the passengers who had waited our arrival for the means 
 of traversing the road by which we had come. 
 
 On the Monday evening, furnace fires and clanking hammers on the 
 banks of the canal, warned us that wo approached the termination of 
 this part of our journey. After going through another dreamy place 
 a long aqueduct across the Alleghany Eiver, which was stranger 
 than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast low wooden chamber full 
 of water -we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings 
 and crazy galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether 
 it be river, sea, canal, or ditch : and were at Pittsburg. 
 
 Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England ; at least its townspeople 
 say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, 
 factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. It 
 certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is 
 famous for its iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have already 
 referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. 
 It is very beautifully situated on the Alleghany River, over which 
 there are two bridges ; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled 
 about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. 
 We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As 
 usual it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad 
 colonnade to every story of the house. 
 
 We tarried here, three days. Our next point was Cincinnati : and 
 as this was a steamboat journey, and western steamboats usually 
 blow up one or two a week in the season, it was advisable to collect 
 opinions in reference to the comparative safety of the vessels bound 
 that way, then lying in the river. One called the Messenger was the 
 best recommended. She had been advertised to start positively, every 
 day for a fortnight or so, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain 
 seem to have any very fixed intention on the subject. But this is the
 
 On the Western Waters. 125 
 
 custom : for if the law were to bind down a free and independent 
 citizen to keep his word with the public, what would becomo of the 
 liberty of the subject ? Besides, it is in tho way of trade. And if 
 passengers be decoyed in the way of trade, and people be incon- 
 venienced in the way of trade, what man, who is a sharp tradesman 
 himself, shall say " Wo must put a stop to this " ? 
 
 Impressed by tho deep solemnity of tho public announcement, I 
 (being then ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying on board in a 
 breathless state, immediately ; but receiving pi'ivate and confidential 
 information that the boat would certainly not start until Friday, 
 April the First, we made ourselves very comfortable in the moan 
 while, and went on board at noon that day. 
 
 CHAPER XI. 
 
 FROM riTTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT. CINCINNATI. 
 
 The Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure steam-boats, 
 clustered together by a wharf-Bide, which, looked down upon from tho 
 rising ground that forms the landing-place, and backed by the lofty 
 bank on the opposite side of the river, appeared no larger than so 
 many floating models. She had some forty passengers on board, 
 exclusive of the poorer persons on the lower deck ; and in half an 
 hour, or less, proceeded on her way. 
 
 We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in it, 
 opening out of the ladies' cabin. There was, undoubtedly, something 
 satisfactory in this " location," inasmuch as it was in the stern, and 
 we had been a great many times very gravely recommended to keep 
 as far aft as possible, " because the steamboats generally blew up 
 forward." Nor was this an unnecessary caution, as the occurrence and 
 circumstances of more than one such fatality during our stay suffi- 
 ciently testified. Apart from this source of self-congratulation, it was 
 an unspeakable relief to have any place, no matter how confined, 
 where one could be alone : and as the row of little chambers of which 
 this was one, had each a second glass-door besides that in the ladies' 
 cabin, which opened on a narrow gallery outside the vessel, where the 
 other passengers seldom came, and where one could sit in peace and 
 gaze upon the shifting prospect, wo took possession of our new 
 quarters with much pleasure. 
 
 If the native packets I have already described be unlike anything 
 we arc in the habit of seeing on water, these western vessels are still 
 more foreign to all the ideas wo are accustomed to entertain of boats. 
 I hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe them. 
 
 In tho first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or
 
 126 American Notes. 
 
 other such boat-like gear ; nor have they anything in their shape at 
 all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stern, sides, or keel. 
 Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle- 
 boxes, they might be intended, for anything that appears to the 
 contrary, to perform some unknown service, high and dry, upon a 
 mountain top. There i% no visible deck, even : nothing but a long, 
 black, ugly roof, covered with burnt-out feathery sparks ; above which 
 tower two iron chimneys, and a hoarse escape valve, and a glass 
 steerage-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards tho 
 water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of the state-rooms, 
 jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small street, built 
 by the varying tastes of a dozen men : the whole is supported on 
 beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the 
 water's edge : and in the narrow space between this upper structure 
 and this barge's deck, are the furnace fires and machinery, open at 
 the sides to every wind that blows, and every storm of rain it drives 
 along its path. 
 
 Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing tho great body of 
 fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath 
 the frail pile of painted wood : the machinery, not warded off or 
 guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of 
 idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck : under 
 the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its 
 mysteries may have been of six months' standing : one feels directly 
 that tho wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, 
 but that any journey should be safely made. 
 
 Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of the 
 boat ; from which the state-rooms open, on both sides. A small 
 portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies ; and the bar 
 is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table down the centre, 
 and at either end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward, on the 
 deck. It is a little better than on board the canal boat, but not much. 
 In all modes of travelling, the American customs, with reference to 
 the means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are 
 extremely negligent and filthy ; and I strongly incline to the belief 
 that a considerable amount of illness is referable to this cause. 
 
 We are to be on board the Messenger three days : arriving at 
 Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There are three 
 meals a day. Breakfast at seven, dinner at half-past twelve, supper 
 about six. At each, there are a great many small dishes and plates 
 upon the table, with very little in them ; so that although there is 
 every appearance of a mighty " spread," there is seldom really more 
 than a joint : except for those who fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of 
 dried beef, complicated entanglements of yellow pickle ; maize, Indian 
 corn, apple-sauce, and pumpkin. 
 
 Somo people fancy all these little dainties together (and sweet 
 preserves beside), by way of relish to their roast pig. They arc
 
 No Diversity of Character. 127 
 
 generally those dyspeptic ladies and gontlemen who eat unheard-of 
 quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good for the digestion as a 
 kneaded pin-cushion), for breakfast, and for supper. Those who do 
 not observe this custom, and who help themselves several times 
 instead, usually suck their knives and forks meditatively, until they 
 have decided what to take next : then pull them out of their mouths : 
 put them in the dish ; help themselves ; and fall to work again. At 
 dinner, there is nothing to drink upon the table, but great jugs full of 
 cold water. Nobody says anything, at any meal, to anybody. All 
 the passengers arc very dismal, and seem to have tremendous secrets 
 weighing on their minds. There is no conversation, no laughter, no 
 cheerfulness, no sociality, except in spitting ; and that is done in 
 silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal is over. Every man 
 sits down, dull and languid ; swallows his fare as if breakfasts, 
 dinners, and suppers, were necessities of nature never to be coupled 
 with recreation or enjoyment ; and having bolted his food in a gloomy 
 silence, bolts himself, in the same state. But for these animal 
 observances, you might suppose the whole male portion of the 
 company to be the melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers, who 
 had fallen dead at the desk : such is their weary air of business and 
 calculation. Undertakers on duty would bo sprightly beside them ; 
 and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in comparison with these 
 meals, would be a sparkling festivity. 
 
 The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character. 
 They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things in 
 exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless round. 
 All down the long table, there is scarcely a man who is in anything 
 different from his neighbour. It is quite a relief to have, sitting 
 opposite, that little girl of fifteen with the loquacious chin : who, to 
 do her justice, acts up to it, and fully identifies nature's handwriting, 
 for of all the small chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose of 
 drowsy ladies' cabin, she is the first and foremost. The beautiful 
 girl, who sits a little beyond her farther down the table there 
 married the young man with the dark whiskers, who sits beyond her, 
 only last month. They are going to settle in the very Far West, 
 where he has lived four years, but where she has never been. They 
 were both overturned in a stage-coach the other day (a bad omen any- 
 where else, where overturns are not so common), and his head, which 
 bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up still. She was hurt 
 too, at the same time, and lay insensible for somo days ; bright as her 
 eyes are, now. 
 
 Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond 
 their place of destination, to " improve " a newly-discovered copper 
 mine. Ho carries tho village that is to be with him : a few frame 
 cottages, and an apparatus for smelting the copper. He carries its 
 people too. They are partly American and partly Irish, and herd 
 together on the lower deck ; where they amused themselves last
 
 128 American Notes. 
 
 evening till the night was pretty far advanced, by alternately firing 
 off pistols and singing hymns. 
 
 They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty minutes, 
 rise, and go away. We do so too ; and passing through our little 
 state-room, resume our seats in the quiet gallery without. 
 
 A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than 
 in others : and then there is usually a green island, covered with 
 trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally, we stop for a few 
 minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for passengers, at some small 
 town or village (I ought to say city, every place is a city here) ; but 
 the banks are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, 
 which, hereabouts, are already in leaf and very green. For miles, 
 and miles, and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of 
 human life or trace of human footstep ; nor is anything seen to move 
 about them but the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so 
 delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a 
 log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under 
 a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into 
 the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is 
 full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy butchers'-blocks. Some- 
 times the ground is only just now cleared : the felled trees lying yet 
 \ipon the soil : and the log-house only this morning begun. As we 
 pass this clearing, the settler leans tipon his axe or hammer, and 
 looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out 
 of the temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and 
 clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at us, and then 
 looks up into his master's face again, as if he were rendered uneasy 
 by any suspension of the common business, and had nothing more to 
 do with pleasurcrs. And still there is the same, eternal foreground. 
 The river has washed away its banks, and stately trees have fallen 
 down into the stream. Some have been there so long, that they are 
 mere dry gi'izzly skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and having 
 earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green heads in the river, 
 and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding 
 down, as you look at them. And some were drowned so long ago, 
 that their bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, and 
 seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag it under water. 
 
 Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes its 
 hoarse sullen way : venting, at every revolution of the paddles, a loud 
 high -pressure blast ; enough, one would think, to waken up the host 
 of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder : so old, that 
 mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck their roots into its 
 earth ; and so high, that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature 
 planted round it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings 
 of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in 
 their blessed ignorance of white existence, hundreds of years ago, 
 Bteals out of its way to ripple near this mound : and there are few
 
 Emigrants. 1 29 
 
 places whore the Ohio sparkles more brightly than iu the Big Grave 
 Creek. 
 
 All this I see as I sit in the little stern-gallery mentioned just now. 
 Evening slowly steals upon tho landscape and changes it before me, 
 when we stop to set some emigrants ashore. 
 
 Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their worldly 
 goods aro a bag, a large chest and an old chair : one, old, high-backed, 
 rush-bottomed chair : a solitary settler in itself. They aro rowed 
 ashoro in the boat, while the vessel stands a little off awaiting its 
 return, the water being shallow. They are landed at the foot of a 
 high bank, on the summit of which are a few log cabins, attainablo 
 only by a long winding path. It is growing du6k ; but the sun is very 
 red, and shines in tho water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire. 
 
 Tho men get out of the boat first ; help out the women ; take out 
 the bag, the chest, the chair ; bid the rowers " good-bye ; " and shove 
 the boat off for them. At the first plash of the oars in the water, the 
 oldest woman of the party sits down in tho old chair, close to the 
 water's edge, without speaking a word. None of tho others sit down, 
 though tho chest is largo enough for many seats. They all stand 
 where they landed, as if stricken into stone ; and look after the boat. 
 So they remain, quite still and silent : the old woman and her old 
 chair, in the centre ; the bag and chest upon the shore, without any- 
 body heeding them : all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes along- 
 side, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is put in motion, 
 and wo go hoarsely on again. There they stand yet, without the 
 motion of a hand. I can see them through my glass, when, in the 
 distance and increasing darkness, thoy are mere specks to tho eye : 
 lingering there still : tho old woman in the old chair, and all the rest 
 about her : not stirring in the least degree. And thus I slowly lose 
 them. 
 
 The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the wooded 
 bank, which makes it darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of 
 boughs for a long time, wo come upon an open space where the tall 
 trees are burning. Tho shape of every branch and twig is expressed 
 in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they 
 seem to vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends 
 of enchanted forests : saving that it is sad to see these noble works 
 wasting away so awfully, alone ; and to think how many years must 
 come and go before tho magic that created them will rear their liko 
 upon this ground again. But the time will come : and when, in their 
 changed ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck its roots, 
 the restless men of distant ages will repair to these again unpeopled 
 solitudes ; and their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber now, 
 perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read in language strange to any 
 ears in being now, but very old to them, of primeval forests where 
 the axe was never heard, and where the jungled ground was never 
 trodden by a human foot.
 
 130 American Notes. 
 
 Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts : and when 
 the morning shines again, it gilds the housetops of a lively city, before 
 whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored ; with other boats, and 
 flags, and moving wheels, and hum of men around it ; as though there 
 were not a solitary or silent rood of ground within the compass of a 
 thousand miles. 
 
 Cincinnati is a beautiful city ; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I 
 have not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and 
 pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does : with its clean 
 houses of red and white, its well-paved roads, and foot- ways of bright 
 tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. 
 The streets are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private 
 residences remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is 
 something of invention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter 
 erections, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is perfectly 
 delightful, as conveying an assurance that there are such qualities 
 still in existence. The disposition to ornament these pretty villas 
 and render them attractive, leads to the culture of trees and flowers, 
 and the laying out of well-kept gardens, the sight of which, to those 
 who walk along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. 
 I was quite charmed with the appearance of the town, and its adjoin- 
 ing subui'b of Mount Auburn : from which the city, lying in an 
 amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty, and is 
 seen to great advantage. 
 
 There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held here 
 on the day after our arrival ; and as the order of march brought the 
 procession under the windows of the hotel in which we lodged, when 
 they started in the morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it. It 
 comprised several thousand men ; the members of various " Washing- 
 ton Auxiliary Temperance Societies ; " and was marshalled by officers 
 on horseback, who cantered briskly up and down the line, with scarves 
 and ribbons of bright colours fluttering out behind them gaily. There 
 were bands of music too, and banners out of number : and it was a 
 fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether. 
 
 I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a 
 distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong with 
 their green scarves ; carrying their national Harp and their Portrait 
 of Father Mathew, high above the people's heads. They looked as 
 jolly and good-humoured as ever ; and, working (here) the hardest 
 for their living and doing any kind of sturdy labour that came in 
 their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought. 
 
 The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the street 
 famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the gushing forth 
 of the waters ; and there was a temperate man with " considerable of 
 a hatchet " (as the standard-bearer would probably have said), aiming 
 a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to sjn-ing upon 
 him from tho top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this
 
 A t School. 1 3 i 
 
 part of the snow was a lingo allegorical device, borne among the ship- 
 carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was repre- 
 sented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, whilo 
 upon the other, tho good ship Temperance sailed away with a fair 
 wind, to the heart's content of the captain, crew, and passengers. 
 
 After going round the town, the procession repaired to a certain 
 appointed place, where, as the printed programme set forth, it would 
 bo received by the children of the different free schools, "singing 
 Temperance Songs." I was prevented from getting there, in time to 
 hear these Little Warblers, or to report upon this novel kind of vocal 
 entertainment : novel, at least, to me : but I found in a largo open 
 space, each society gathered round its own banners, and listening in 
 silent attention to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the 
 little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as 
 having that degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets 
 may claim ; but the main thing was tho conduct and appearance of 
 the audience throughout the day ; and that was admirable and full of 
 promise. 
 
 Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free-schools, of which it has 
 so many that no person's child among its population can, by possibility, 
 want the means of education, which are extended, upon an average, to 
 four thousand pupils, annually. I was only present in one of these 
 establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys' depart- 
 ment, which was full 01 little urchins (varying in their ages, I should 
 say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute 
 an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra ; a proposal, 
 which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes 
 in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls' school, 
 reading was proposed ; and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I 
 expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed 
 accordingly, and some half-dozen girls relieved each other in reading 
 paragraphs from English History. But it seemed to be a dry com- 
 pilation, infinitely above their powers ; and when they had blundered 
 through three or four dreary passages concerning the Treaty of 
 Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously 
 without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. 
 It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in tho 
 Ladder of Learning for tho astonishment of a visitor; and that at 
 other times they keep upon its lower rounds ; but I should have been 
 much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in 
 simpler lessons, which they understood. 
 
 As in every other place I visited, the Judges here wero gentlemen 
 of high character and attainments. I was in ono of tho courts for a 
 few minutes, and found it like those to which I have already referred. 
 A nuisanco cause was trying ; there wero not many spectators ; and 
 tho witnesses, counsel, and jury a formed a sort of family circle, 
 sufficiently jocose and snug.
 
 132 American Notes. 
 
 The society with which I mingled, was intelligent, courteous, and 
 agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as 
 one of the most interesting in America : and with good reason : for 
 beautiful and thriving as it is now, and containing, as it does, a popu- 
 lation of fifty thousand souls, but two-and-fifty years have passed away 
 since the ground on which it stands (bought at that time for a few 
 dollars) was a wild wood, and its citizens were but a handful of 
 dwellers in scattered log huts upon the river's shore. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN STEAMBOAT J 
 AND FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN ANOTHER. ST. LOUIS. 
 
 Leaving Cincinnati at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, we embarked 
 for Louisville in the Pike steamboat, which, carrying the mails, was 
 a packet of a much better class than that in which we had come from 
 Pittsburg. As this passage does not occupy more than twelve or 
 thirteen hours, we arranged to go ashore that night : not coveting the 
 distinction of sleeping in a state-room, when it was possible to sleep 
 anywhere else. 
 
 There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to the usual 
 dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw 
 tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with whom I had the 
 pleasure of a long conversation. 
 
 He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun to learn 
 the language, ho told me, until he was a young man grown. He had 
 read many books ; and Scott's poetry appeared to have left a strong 
 impression on his mind : especially the opening of The Lady of the 
 Lake, and the great battle scone in Marmion, in which, no doubt from 
 the congeniality of tho subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he had 
 great interest and delight. Ho appeared to understand correctly all 
 he had read ; and whatever fiction had enlisted his sympathy in its 
 belief, had done so keenly and earnestly. I might almost say fiercely. 
 Ho was dressed in our ordinary every-day costume, which hung about 
 his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent grace. On my telling him 
 that I regretted not to see him in his own attire, he threw up his right 
 arm, for a moment, as though ho were brandishing some heavy weapon, 
 and answered, as he let it fall again, that his race were losing many 
 things besides their dress, and would soon be seen upon the earth no 
 more : but he wore it at home, he added proudly. 
 
 He told me that he had been away from his home, west of the 
 Mississippi, seventeen months : and was now returning. He had been 
 chiefly at Washington on some negotiations pending between his Tribe
 
 A Gentleman of Nature's Making. 1 3 3 
 
 and the Government: which were not settled yet (he said in a 
 melancholy way), and ho feared never would be : for what could a 
 few poor Indians do, against such well-skilled men of business as the 
 whites ? Ho had no love for Washington ; tired of towns and cities 
 very soon ; and longed for the Forest and the Prairie. 
 
 I asked him what he thought of Congress ? He answered, with a 
 smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian's eyes. 
 
 He would very much like, ho said, to see England before he died ; 
 and spoke with much interest about the great things to be seen there. 
 When I told him of that chamber in the British Museum wherein are 
 preserved household memorials of a race that ceased to be, thousands 
 of years ago, he was very attentive, and it was not hard to see that he 
 had a reference in his mind to the gradual fading away of his own 
 people. 
 
 This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised 
 highly: observing that his own portrait was among the collection, 
 and that all the likenesses were " elegant." Mr. Cooper, he said, had 
 painted the Red Man well ; and so would I, he knew, if I would go 
 home with him and hunt buffaloes, which he was quite anxious I 
 should do. When I told him that supposing I went, I should not be 
 very likely to damage the buffaloes much, ho took it as a great joke 
 and laughed heartily. 
 
 He was a remarkably handsome man ; some years past forty I should 
 judge ; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheek-bones, 
 a sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, dark, and piercing 
 eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws left, he said, 
 and their number was decreasing every day. A few of his brother 
 chiefs had been obliged to become civilised, and to make themselves 
 acquainted with what the whites knew, for it was their only chance of 
 existence. But they were not many ; and the rest were as they always 
 had been. He dwelt on this : and said several times that unless they 
 tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors, they must be swept 
 away before the strides of civilised society. 
 
 When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come to 
 England, as he longed to see the land so much : that I should hope to 
 see him there, one day : and that I could promise him he would bo 
 well received and kindly treated. He was evidently pleased by this 
 assurance, though he rejoined with a good-humoured smile and an 
 arch shako of his head, that the English used to be vory fond of tho 
 Red Men when they wanted their help, but had not cared much for 
 them, since. 
 
 He took his leave ; as stately and complete a gentleman of Nature's 
 making, as ever I beheld ; and moved among the people in tho boat, 
 another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed portrait of himself 
 soon afterwards; very like, though scarcely handsome enough; which 
 1 have carefully preserved in memory of our brief acquaintance. 
 
 There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day's
 
 134 American Notes. 
 
 journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at the 
 Gait House ; a splendid hotel ; and were as handsomely lodged as 
 though we had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles beyond 
 the Alleghanies. 
 
 The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain us on 
 our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another steamboat, the 
 Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb called Portland, where 
 it would be delayed some time in passing through a canal. 
 
 The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through the 
 town, which is regular and cheerful : the streets being laid out at 
 right angles, and planted with young trees. The buildings are smoky 
 and blackened, from the uso of bituminous coal, but an Englishman 
 is well used to that appearance, and indisposed to quarrel with it. 
 There did not appear to be much business stirring ; and some un- 
 finished buildings and improvements seemed to intimate that the city 
 had been overbuilt in the ardour of " going ahead," and was suffering 
 under the reaction consequent upon such feverish forcing of its 
 powers. 
 
 On our way to Portland, we passed a " Magistrate's office," which 
 amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than any police 
 establishment : for this awful Institution was nothing but a little 
 lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the street ; wherein two 
 or three figures (I presume tho magistrate and his myrmidons) were 
 basking in the sunshine, the very effigies of languor and repose. It 
 was a perfect picture of Justice retired from business for want of 
 customers ; her sword and scales sold off ; napping comfortably with 
 her legs upon the table. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive with 
 pigs of all ages ; lying about in every direction, fast asleep ; or 
 grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had always a sneaking 
 kindness for these odd animals, and found a constant source of amuse- 
 ment, when all others failed, in watching their proceedings. As we 
 were riding along this morning, I observed a little incident between 
 two youthful pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly 
 comical and grotesque at the time, though I dare say, in telling, it is 
 tame enough. 
 
 One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several straws 
 sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations in a dunghill) 
 was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his 
 brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up imme- 
 diately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was 
 pig's whole mass of blood so turned. He started back at least three 
 feet, gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard as he could go : 
 his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a dis- 
 tracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to 
 reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance ; and 
 as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees ; until at last
 
 A Kentucky Giant. 135 
 
 he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother, with the mud 
 upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same hole, 
 perfectly amazed at his proceedings ! He was no sooner assured of 
 this ; and he assured himself so carefully that one may almost say he 
 shaded his eyes with his hand to seo the better ; than he came back 
 at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of 
 his tail ; as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the 
 future, and never to play tricks with his family any more. 
 
 Wo found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow process 
 of getting through the lock, and went on board, where we shortly 
 afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person of a certain 
 Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is of the moderate 
 hoight of seven feet eight inches, in his stockings. 
 
 There never was a race of people who so completely gave the lie 
 to history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers have so cruelly 
 libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the world, constantly 
 catering for their cannibal larders, and perpetually going to market 
 in an unlawful manner, thoy are the meekest people in any man's 
 acquaintance : rather inclining to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing 
 anything for a quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness 
 their characteristics, that I confess I look upon that youth who dis- 
 tinguished himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive persons, as a 
 false-hearted brigand, who, pretending to philanthropic motives, was 
 secretly influenced only by the wealth stored up within their castles, 
 and the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this opinion from 
 finding that even the historian of those exploits, with all his partiality 
 for his hero, is fain to admit that the slaughtered monsters in question 
 were of a very innocent and simple turn ; extremely guileless and 
 ready of belief ; lending a credulous ear to the most improbable tales ; 
 suffering themselves to be easily entrapped into pits; and even (as in 
 the case of the Welsh Giant) with an excess of the hospitable polite- 
 ness of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the 
 possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight- 
 of-hand and hocus-pocus. 
 
 The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the truth of 
 tliis position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, and a 
 trustfulness in his long face, which appealed even to five-feet nine for 
 encouragement and support. He was only twenty-five years old, ho 
 said, and had grown recently, for it had been found necessary to make 
 an addition to the legs of his inexpressibles. At fifteen he was a short 
 boy, and in those days his English father and his Irish mother had 
 rather snubbed him, as being too small of stature to sustain the credit 
 of the family. He added that his health had not been good, though 
 it was better now ; but short people are not wanting who whisper that 
 he drinks too hard. 
 
 I understand he drives a hackney-coach, though how he docs it, 
 unless lie stands on the footboard behind, and lies along the roof upon
 
 136 American Notes. 
 
 his chest, with his chin in the box, it would be difficult to comprehend. 
 He brought his gun with him, as a curiosity. Christened " The 
 Little Rifle," and displayed outside a shop- window, it would make the 
 fortune of any retail business in Holborn. When he had shown him- 
 self and talked a little while, he withdrew with his pocket-instrument, 
 and went bobbing down the cabin, among men of six feet high and 
 upwards, like a lighthouse walking among lamp-posts. 
 
 Within a few minutes afterwards, we were out of the canal, and in 
 the Ohio river again. 
 
 The arrangements of the boat were like those of the Messenger, and 
 the passengers were of the same order of people. We fed at the same 
 times, on the same kind of viands, in the same dull manner, and with 
 the same observances. The company appeared to be oppressed by 
 the same tremendous concealments, and had as little capacity of en- 
 joyment or lightheartedness. I never in my life did see such listless, 
 heavy dulness as brooded over these meals : the very recollection of 
 it weighs me down, and makes me, for the moment, wretched. Read- 
 ing and writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I really dreaded the 
 coming of the hour that summoned us to table ; and was as glad to 
 escape from it again, as if it had been a penance or a punishment. 
 Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming a part of the banquet, 
 I could soak my crusts in the fountain with Le Sage's strolling player, 
 and revel in their glad enjoyment : but sitting down with so many 
 fellow-animals to ward off thirst and hunger as a business ; to empty, 
 each creature, his Yahoo's trough as quickly as he can, and then slink 
 sullenly away ; to have these social sacraments stripped of everything 
 but the mere greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings ; goes so 
 against the grain with me, that I seriously believe the recollection of 
 these funeral feasts will be a waking nightmare to me all my life. 
 
 There was some relief in this boat, too, which there had not been 
 in the other, for the captain (a blunt good-natured fellow) had his 
 handsome wife with him, who was disposed to be lively and agreeable, 
 as were a few other lady-passengers who had their seats about us at 
 the same end of the table. But nothing could have made head against 
 the depressing influence of the general body. There was a magnetism 
 of dulness in them which would have beaten down the most facetious 
 companion that the earth ever knew. A jest would have been a 
 crime, and a smile would have faded into a grinning horror. Such 
 deadly leaden people ; such systematic plodding weary insupportable 
 heaviness ; such a mass of animated indigestion in respect of all that 
 was genial, jovial, frank, social, or hearty ; never, sure, was brought 
 together elsewhere since the world began. 
 
 Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the Ohio 
 and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. The trees 
 were stunted in their growth ; the banks were low and flat ; the 
 settlements and log cabins fewer in number : their inhabitants more 
 wr.:i and wretched than any we had encountered yet. No songs of
 
 The Mississippi. 137 
 
 birds were in the air, no pleasant scents, no moving lights and 
 shadows from swift passing clonds. Hour after hour, the changeless 
 glare of the hot, unwinking sky, shone upon the same monotonous 
 objects. Hour after hour, the river rolled along, as wearily and 
 slowly as the time itself. 
 
 At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived at a spot 
 so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld, that the forlornest 
 places wo had passed, were, in comparison with it, full of interest. 
 At the junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and 
 marshy, that at certain seasons of the year it is inundated to the 
 house-tops, lies a breeding-place of fever, ague, and death ; vaunted 
 in England as a mine of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith 
 of monstrous representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal swamp, 
 on which the half-built houses rot away : cleared here and there for 
 the space of a few yards ; and teeming, then, with rank unwholesome 
 vegetation, in whose baloful shade the wretched wanderers who aro 
 tempted hither, droop, and die, and lay their bones; the hateful 
 Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its 
 southern course a slimy monster hideous to behold ; a hotbed of 
 disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise : 
 a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend 
 it : such is this dismal Cairo. 
 
 But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of 
 rivers, who (praise bo to Heaven) has no young children like him ! 
 An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid 
 mud, six miles an hour: its strong and frothy current choked and 
 obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees: now 
 twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of 
 which a sedgy lazy foam works up, to float upon the water's top ; now 
 rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like 
 matted hair ; now glancing singly by like giant leeches ; and now 
 writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like 
 wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes 
 swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their 
 inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes 
 penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime 
 on everything : nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless light- 
 ning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon. 
 
 For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly 
 against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more dangerous 
 obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are tho hiddon trunks of trees 
 that have their roots below the tide. When the nights are very dark, 
 the look-out stationed in the head of tho boat, knows by the ripple of 
 the water if any great impediment bo near at hand, and rings a bell 
 beside him, which is the signal for the engine to bo stopped : but 
 always in the night this bell has work to do, and after every ring, 
 there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter to remain in bed.
 
 138 American Notes. 
 
 The decline of day here was very gorgeous ; tinging the firmament 
 deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above 
 us. As the sun went down behind the bank, the slightest blades of 
 grass upon it seemed to become as distinctly visible as the arteries 
 in the skeleton of a leaf; and when, as it slowly sank, the red and 
 golden bars upon the water grew dimmer, and dimmer yet, as if 
 they were sinking too; and all the glowing colours of departing 
 day paled, inch by inch, before the sombre night ; the scene became a 
 thousand times more lonesome and more dreary than before, and all its 
 influences darkened with the sky. 
 
 We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon it. 
 It is considered wholesome by the natives, and is something more 
 opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the Filter-shops, but 
 nowhere else. 
 
 On the fourth night after leaving Louisville, we reached St. Louis, 
 and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident, trifling enough in 
 itself, but very pleasant to see, which had interested me during the 
 whole journey. 
 
 There was a little woman on board, with a little baby ; and both 
 little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright- 
 eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time 
 with her sick mother in New York, and left her home in St. Louis, in 
 that condition in which ladies who truly love their lords desire to be. 
 The baby was born in her mother's house ; and she had not seen her 
 husband (to whom she was now returning), for twelve months : having 
 left him a month or two after their marriage. 
 
 Well, to be sure, there never was a little woman so full of hope, 
 and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this little woman was : and 
 all day long she wondered whether " He " would be at the wharf ; 
 and whether " He " had got her letter ; and whether, if she sent the 
 baby ashore by somebody else, " He " would know it, meeting it in 
 tho street : which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his 
 life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough, to 
 the young mother. She was such an artless little creature ; and was 
 in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state ; and let out all this matter 
 clinging close about her heart, so freely ; that all the other lady 
 passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she ; and the 
 captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous sly, I 
 promise you : inquiring, every time we met at table, as in forgetful- 
 ness, whether she expected anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and 
 whether she would want to go ashore the night we reached it (but he 
 supposed she wouldn't), and cutting many other dry jokes of that 
 nature. There was one little weazen, dried-apple-faced old woman, 
 who took occasion to doubt the constancy of husbands in such cir- 
 cumstances of bereavement ; and there was another lady (with a lap 
 dog) old enough to moralize on the lightness of human affections, and 
 yet not so old that she could help nursing the baby, now and then,
 
 THE LITTLE Win.
 
 The Charming Little Woman's Hopes realised. 139 
 
 or laughing with the rest, when the little woman called it by its 
 father's name, and asked it all manner of fantastic questions concern- 
 ing him in the joy of her heart. 
 
 It was something of a blow to the littlo woman, that when we were 
 within twenty miles of our destination, it became clearly necessary to 
 put this baby to bed. But she got over it with the same good humour ; 
 tied a handkorchief round her head ; and came out into the little 
 gallery with the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became in reference 
 to the localities ! and such facetiousness as was displayed by the 
 married ladies ! and such sympathy as was shown by the single ones ! 
 and such peals of laughter as the little woman herself (who would 
 just as soon have cried) greeted every jest with ! 
 
 At last, there were the lights of St. Louis, and here was the wharf, 
 and those were the steps : and the little woman covering her face with 
 her hands, and laughing (or seeming to laugh) more than ever, ran 
 into her own cabin, and shut herself up. I have no doubt that in the 
 charming inconsistency of such excitement, she stopped her ears, lest 
 she should hear " Him " asking for her : but I did not see her do it. 
 
 Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the boat 
 was not yet made fast, but was wandering about, among the other 
 boats, to find a landing-place : and everybody looked for the husband : 
 and nobody saw him : when, in the midst of us all Heaven knows 
 how she ever got there there was the little woman clinging with 
 both arms tight round the neck of a fine, good-looking, sturdy young 
 fellow! and in a moment afterwards, there she was again, actually 
 clapping her little hands for joy, as she dragged him through the 
 small door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as he lay asleep ! 
 
 We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House : built like an 
 English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, and skylights 
 above the room-doors for the free circulation of air. There were a 
 great many boarders in it ; and as many lights sparkled and glistened 
 from the windows down into the street below, when we drove up, as 
 if it had been illuminated on some occasion of rejoicing. It is an 
 excellent house, and the proprietors havo most bountiful notions of 
 providing the creature comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our 
 own room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the tablo at once. 
 
 In the old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares are narrow 
 and crooked, and some of tho houses are very quaint and picturesque : 
 being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, 
 approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are 
 queer little barbers' shops and drinking-houscs too, in this quarter ; 
 and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such 
 as may bo seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with 
 high garret gable-windows perking into the roofs, havo a kind of 
 French shrug about them ; and being lop-sided with age, appear to 
 hold their heads askew, besides, as if they wero grimacing in astonish- 
 ment at the American Improvements.
 
 140 American Notes. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say, that these consist of wharfs and 
 warehouses, and new buildings in all directions ; and of a great many 
 vast plans which are still " progressing." Already, however, some 
 very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops, have gone 
 so far ahead as to be in a state of completion ; and the town bids fair 
 in a few years to improve considerably : though it is not likely ever 
 to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati. 
 
 The Eoman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early French 
 settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public institutions are a 
 Jesuit college ; a convent for " the Ladies of the Sacred Heart ; " and 
 a large chapel attached to the college, which was in course of 
 erection at the time of my visit, and was intended to be consecrated 
 on the second of December in the next year. The architect of this 
 building, is one of the reverend fathers of the school, and the works 
 proceed under his sole direction. The organ will be sent from 
 Belgium. 
 
 In addition to these establishments, there is a Eoman Catholic 
 cathedral, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier ; and a hospital, founded 
 by the munificence of a deceased resident, who was a member of that 
 church. It also sends missionaries from hence among the Indian 
 tribes. 
 
 The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, as in 
 most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great worth and 
 excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and bless it ; 
 for it befriends them, and aids the cause of rational education, without 
 any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal in all its actions ; of kind 
 construction ; and of wide benevolence. 
 
 There are three free-schools already erected, and in full operation 
 in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon be opened. 
 
 No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in 
 (unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have no 
 doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis, in questioning 
 the perfect salubrity of its climate, and in hinting that I think it 
 must rather dispose to fever, in the summer and autumnal seasons. 
 Just adding, that it is very hot, lies among great rivers, and has vast 
 tracts of undrained swampy land around it, I leave the reader to form 
 his own opinion. 
 
 As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back from 
 the furthest point of my wanderings ; and as some gentlemen of the 
 town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to gratify 
 me ; a day was fixed, before my departure, for an expedition to the 
 Looking-Glass Prairie, which is within thirty miles of the town. 
 Deeming it possible that my readers may not object to know what 
 kind of thing such a gipsy party may be at that distance from home, 
 and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt in 
 another chapter.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS rBAIBIE AND BACK. 
 
 I may premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced paraacr, 
 parcarer, and paroarer. The latter mode of pronunciation is perhaps 
 the most in favour. 
 
 We were fourteen in all, and all young men : indeed it is a singular 
 though very natural feature in the society of these distant settlements, 
 that it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in tho primo of 
 life, and has very few grey heads among it. Thero were no ladies : 
 the trip being a fatiguing one : and we were to start at five o'clock in 
 the morning punctually. 
 
 I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping nobody 
 waiting ; and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, threw 
 up the window and looked down into the street, expecting to see tho 
 whole party busily astir, and great preparations going on below. 
 But as everything was very quiet, and the street presented that 
 hopeless aspect with which five o'clock in the morning is familiar 
 elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to bed again, and went 
 accordingly. 
 
 I awoke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party had 
 assembled, and were gathered round, one light carriage, with a very 
 stout axletrec ; one something on wheels like an amateur carrier's 
 cart ; ono double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly construc- 
 tion ; one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken head ; and 
 one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got into the first 
 coach with three companions ; the rest bestowed themselvos in tho 
 other vehicles ; two large baskets were made fast to the lightest ; two 
 largo stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as demi-johns, 
 were consigned to tho "least rowdy" of the party for safe-keeping ; 
 and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was to 
 cross tho river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all, as tho manner 
 in these parts is. 
 
 We got over the river in duo course, and mustered again before a 
 littlo wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a morass, with 
 " merchant TAii.ou " painted in very large letters over tho door. 
 Having settled the order of proceeding, and tho road to bo taken, wo 
 started off once moro and began to make our way through an ill- 
 favoured Black Hollow, called, less expressively, tho American Bottom. 
 
 Tho previous day had been not to say hot, for the term is weak 
 and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the temperature. 
 The town had been on fire ; in a blaze. But at night it had come on 
 to rain in torrents, and all night long it had rained without cessation. 
 We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of littlo
 
 142 American Notes. 
 
 more than a couple of miles an hour, through one unhroken slough 
 of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it 
 was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the 
 coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in 
 all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who, with the pigs 
 (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwholesome-looking as though they were 
 the spontaneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to them- 
 selves. Here and there we passed a log hut : but the wretched cabins 
 were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich 
 in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On 
 either sido of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick " bush ; " 
 and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water. 
 
 As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of 
 cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for that 
 purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other resi- 
 dence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare- walled of 
 course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy 
 young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed-furniture, and a pair 
 of ragged trousers. There were a couple of young boys, too, nearly 
 naked, lying idly by the well ; and they, and he, and the traveller at 
 the inn, turned out to look at us. 
 
 The traveller was an old man with a grey gristly beard two inches 
 long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enormous eyebrows ; 
 which almost obscured his lazy, semi-drunken glance, as he stood 
 regarding us with folded arms : poising himself alternately upon his 
 toes and heels. On being addressed by one of the party, he drew 
 nearer, and said, rubbing his chin (which scraped under his horny 
 hand like fresh gravel beneath a nailed shoe), that he was from 
 Delaware, and had lately bought a farm " down there," pointing into 
 one of the marshes whero the stunted trees were thickest. He was 
 " going," he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his family, whom he had 
 left behind ; but he seemed in no great hurry to bring on these in- 
 cumbrances, for when we moved away, he loitered back into the cabin, 
 and was plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money lasted. 
 He was a great politician of course, and explained his opinions at 
 some length to one of our company ; but I only remember that ho 
 concluded with two sentiments, one of which was, Somebody for ever ; 
 and the other, Blast everybody else ! which is by no means a bad 
 abstract of the general creed in these matters. 
 
 "When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural 
 dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this kind of inflation 
 improves their going), we went forward again, through mud and mire, 
 and damp, and festering heat, and brake and bush, attended always 
 by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted 
 at a place called Belleville. 
 
 Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled together 
 in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them had singu-
 
 Doctor Crocus. 143 
 
 larly bright doors of red and yellow ; for the place had been lately 
 visited by a travelling painter, " who got along," as I was told, " by 
 eating his way." The criminal court was sitting, and was at that 
 moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing : with whom it wonld 
 most likely go hard : for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very 
 mnch exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather 
 higher valuo than human life ; and for this reason, juries generally 
 make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty, 
 whether or no. 
 
 The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, were 
 tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road ; by which is to 
 be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mud and slime. 
 
 There was an hotel in this place, which, like all hotels in America, 
 had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, 
 shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and half-kitchen, with 
 a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the 
 walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone 
 forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared, and they were by 
 this time nearly ready. He had ordered " wheat-bread and chicken 
 fixings," in preference to " corn-bread and common doings." The 
 latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The formor 
 comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such 
 other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a tolerably wido 
 poetical construction, " to fix " a chicken comfortably in the digestive 
 organs of any lady or gentleman. 
 
 On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, whereon was 
 inscribed in characters of gold, " Doctor Crocus ; " and on a sheet of 
 paper, pasted up by the sido of this plate, was a written announcement 
 that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a lecture on Phrenology 
 for the benefit of the Belleville public ; at a charge, for admission, of 
 so much a head. 
 
 Straying up-stairs, during the preparation of the chicken fixings, I 
 happened to pass the doctor's chamber ; and as the door stood wido 
 open, and the room was empty, I made bold to peep in. 
 
 It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed 
 portrait hanging up at the head of the bed ; a likeness, I take it, of 
 the Doctor, for the forehead was fully displayed, and great stress was 
 laid by the artist upon its phrenological developments. The bed 
 itself was covered with an old patch-work counteipane. Tho room 
 was destitute of carpet or of curtain. Thero was a damp fire-placo 
 without any stove, full of wood ashes ; a chair, and a very small 
 table ; and on the last-named piece of furniture was displayed, in 
 grand array, the doctor's library, consisting of some half-dozen greasy 
 old books. 
 
 Now, it certainly looked about tho last apartment on the whole 
 earth out of which any man would be likely to get anything to do 
 him good. But the door, as I have said, stood coaxingly open, and
 
 144 American Notes. 
 
 plainly said in conjunction with the chair, the portrait, the table, and 
 the books, " Walk in, gentlemen, walk in ! Don't be ill, gentlemen, 
 when you may be well in no time. Doctor Crocus is here, gentlemen, 
 the celebrated Dr. Crocus ! Doctor Crocus has come all this way to 
 cure you, gentlemen. If you haven't heard of Dr. Crocus, it's your 
 fault, gentlemen, who live a little way out of the world here : not 
 Dr. Crocus's. Walk in, gentlemen, walk in ! " 
 
 In the passago below, when I went down-stairs again, was Dr. Crocus 
 himself. A crowd had flocked in from the Court House, and a voice 
 from among them called out to the landlord, " Colonel ! introduce 
 Doctor Crocus." 
 
 " Mr. Dickens," says the colonel, " Doctor Crocus." 
 
 Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking Scotchman, 
 but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor of the 
 peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the concourse with his right arm 
 extended, and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly come, 
 and says : 
 
 " Your countryman, sir ! " 
 
 Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands ; and Doctor Crocus 
 looks as if I didn't by any means realise his expectations, which, in 
 a linen blouse, and a great straw hat, with a green ribbon, and no 
 gloves, and my face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings of 
 mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely I did not. 
 
 " Long in these parts, sir ? " says I. 
 
 " Three or four months, sir," says the Doctor. 
 
 " Do you think of soon returning to the old country ? " says I. 
 
 Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an imploring 
 look, which says so plainly " Will you ask me that again, a little 
 louder, if you please ? " that I repeat the question. 
 
 " Think of soon returning to the old country, sir ! " repeats the 
 Doctor. 
 
 " To the old country, sir," I rejoin. 
 
 Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the effect ho 
 produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice-: 
 
 " Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won't catch me at that just yet, 
 sir. I am a little too fond of freedom for that, sir. Ha, ha ! It's 
 not so easy for a man to tear himself from a free country such as this 
 is, sir. Ha, ha ! No, no ! Ha, ha ! None of that till one's obliged 
 to do it, sir. No, no ! " 
 
 As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head, 
 knowingly, and laughs again. Many of tho bystanders shake their 
 heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, and look at each 
 other as much as to say, " A pretty bright and first-rate sort of chap 
 is Crocus ! " and unless I am very much mistaken, a good many people 
 went to the lecture that night, who never thought about jmrenology, 
 or about Doctor Crocus either, in all their lives before. 
 
 From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of
 
 The Prairie. 145 
 
 waste, and constantly attended, without tbe interval of a moment, by 
 the same music ; until, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we halted 
 once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and 
 give them some corn besides : of which they stood much in need. 
 Pending this ceremony, I walked into the village, where I met a full- 
 sized dwelling-bouse coining down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a 
 score or more of oxen. 
 
 The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the 
 managers of tbe jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for the 
 night, if possible. This course decided on, and the horses being well 
 refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at 
 sunset. 
 
 It would be difficult to say why, or how though it was possibly 
 from having heard and read so much about it but tbe effect on me 
 was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay, 
 stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground ; un- 
 broken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a 
 scratch cpon the great blank ; until it met the glowing sky, wherein 
 it seemed to dip : mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its 
 distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if 
 such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it : a fow 
 birds wheeling here and there : and solitude and silence reigning 
 paramount around. But the grass was not yet high ; there were bare 
 black patches on the ground ; and the few wild flowers that the eye 
 could see, were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very 
 flatness and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it 
 down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom 
 and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English 
 downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren 
 monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies, I could never 
 abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else ; as I should do in- 
 stinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound 
 coast beyond ; but should often glanco towards the distant and fre- 
 quently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and passed. 
 It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I think (at all 
 events, as I saw it), to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the 
 looking-on again, in after life. 
 
 We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its water, 
 and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast fowls, buffalo's 
 tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, bread, cheese, and 
 butter ; biscuits, champagne, sherry ; lemons and sugar for punch ; 
 and abundance of rough ice. The meal was delicious, and the enter- 
 tainers were the soul of kindness and good humour. I havo often 
 recalled that cheerful party to my pleasant recollection since, and 
 shall not easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of 
 older date, my boon companions on the Prairie. 
 
 llcturning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which 
 
 1.
 
 l/\6 American MoteS. 
 
 we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort 
 it would have suffered hy no comparison with any English alehouse, 
 of a homely kind, in England. 
 
 Eising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk ahout the village : 
 none of the houses were strolling about to-day, but it was early for 
 them yet, perhaps : and then amused myself by lounging in a kind of 
 farm-yard behind the tavern, of which the leading features were, a 
 strange jumble of rough sheds for stables ; a rude colonnade, built as 
 a cool place of summer resort ; a deep well ; a great earthen mound 
 for keeping vegetables in, in winter time ; and a pigeon-house, whose 
 little apertures looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, very much too 
 small for the admission of the plump and swelling-breasted birds wbo 
 were strutting about it, though they tried to get in never so hard. 
 That interest exhausted, I took a survey of the inn's two parlours, 
 which were decorated with coloured prints of Washington, and 
 President Madison, and of a white-faced young lady (much speckled 
 by the flies), who held up her gold neck-chain for the admiration of 
 the spectator, and informed all admiring comers that she was " Just 
 Seventeen : " although I should have thought her older. In the best 
 room were two oil portraits of the kit-cat size, representing the land- 
 lord and his infant son ; both looking as bold as lions, and staring out 
 of the canvas with an intensity that would have been cheap at any 
 price. They were paiuted, I think, by the artist who had touched up 
 the Belleville doors with red and gold ; for I seemed to recognise his 
 style immediately. 
 
 After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that 
 which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with an 
 encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who 
 had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, stopped there 
 to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was ; for, hot though it had 
 been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. 
 Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient 
 Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound ; in memory of a 
 body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate 
 convent there, many years ago, when there were no settlers within a 
 thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate : in 
 Avhich lamentable fatality, few rational people will suppose, perhaps, 
 that society experienced any very severe deprivation. 
 
 The track of to-day had the same features as the track of yesterday. 
 There was the swamp, the bush, and the perpetual chorus of frogs, 
 the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming earth. Here 
 and there, and frequently too, we encountered a solitary broken- 
 down waggon, full of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight 
 to see one of these vehicles deep in the mire ; the axle-tree broken ; 
 the wheel lying idly by its side ; the man gone miles away, to look 
 for assistance ; the woman seated among their wandering household 
 gods with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patience ;
 
 An Affair of Honour. 1 47 
 
 the team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and breath- 
 ing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that 
 all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come direct from 
 them. 
 
 In due time we mustered once again before the merchant tailor's, 
 and having done so, crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat : passing, 
 on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, the duelling-ground of St. 
 Louis, and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat fought there, 
 which was with pistols, breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead 
 upon the ground ; and possibly some rational people may think of 
 them, as of the gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound, that they were 
 no great loss to the community. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 RETURN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACn RIDE PROM THAT CITY TO 
 COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. SO, BY LAKE ERIE, TO THE 
 FALLS OF NIAGARA. 
 
 As I had a desire to travel through the interior of the State of Ohio, 
 and to " strike the lakes," as the phrase is, at a small town called 
 Sandusky, to which that route would conduct us on our way to Niagara, 
 we had to return from St. Louis by the way we had come, and to 
 retrace our former track as far as Cincinnati. 
 
 The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being very 
 fine ; and the steamboat, which was to have started I don't know how 
 early in the morning, postponing, for tho third or fourth time, her 
 departure until tho afternoon ; we rode forward to an old French 
 village on the river, called properly Carondelet, and nicknamed Vide 
 Poche, and arranged that tho packet should call for us there. 
 
 The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three public- 
 houses ; the state of whose larders certainly seemed to justify tho 
 second designation of the village, for there was nothing to eat in any 
 of them. At length, however, by going back some half a mile or so, 
 we found a solitary house where ham and coffee were procurable; and 
 there we tarried to await the advent of the boat, which would come in 
 sight from the green before the door, a long way off. 
 
 It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our repast 
 in a quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with somo old 
 oil paintings, which in their time had probably done duty in a 
 Catholic chapel or monastery. The fare was very good, and served 
 with groat cleanliness. Tho house was kept by a characteristic old 
 couple, with whom we had a long talk, and who were perhaps a very 
 good sample of that kind of people in the West.
 
 148 American Notes. 
 
 The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so very 
 old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), who had 
 been out with the militia in the last war with England, and had seen 
 all kinds of service, except a battle ; and he had been very near 
 seeing that, he added : very near. He had all his life been restless 
 and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for change ; and was still 
 the son of his old self : for if he had nothing to keep him at home, 
 he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of 
 the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the 
 house), he would clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow 
 morning. He was one of the very many descendants of Cain proper 
 to this continent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as 
 pioneers in the great human army : who gladly go on from year to 
 year extending its outposts, and leaving home after homo behind 
 them ; and die at last, utterly regardless of their graves being left 
 thousands of miles behind, by the wandering generation who 
 succeed. 
 
 His wife was a domesticated kind-hearted old soul, who had come 
 with him, " from the queen city of the world," which, it seemed, was 
 Philadelphia ; but had no love for this Western country, and indeed 
 had little reason to bear it any ; having seen her children, one by one, 
 die here of fever, in the full prime and beauty of their youth. Her 
 heart was sore, she said, to think of them ; and to talk on this theme, 
 even to strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her old home, 
 eased it somewhat, and became a melancholy pleasure. 
 
 The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the poor old 
 lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the nearest landing- 
 place, were soon on board the Messenger again, in our old cabin, and 
 steaming down the Mississippi. 
 
 If the coming up this river, slowly making head against the stream, 
 be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with the turbid current 
 is almost worse ; for then the boat, proceeding at the rate of twelve or 
 fifteen miles an hour, has to force its passage through a labyrinth of 
 floating logs, which, in the dark, it is often impossible to see before- 
 hand or avoid. All that night, the bell was never silent for five 
 minutes at a time ; and after every ring the vessel reeled again, some- 
 times beneath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt in quick 
 succession, the lightest of which seemed more than enough to beat in 
 her frail keel, as though it had been pie-crust. Looking down upon 
 the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, as 
 these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came starting up again, 
 head first, when the boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of such 
 obstructions, drove a few among them for the moment under water. 
 Sometimes the engine stopped during a long interval, and then before 
 her and behind, and gathering close about her on all sides, were so 
 many of these ill-favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in ; 
 the centre of a floating island ; and was constrained to pause until
 
 Mississippi left behind. 149 
 
 they parted, somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and 
 opened by degrees a channel out. 
 
 In good time next morning, however, we came again in sight of the 
 detestable morass called Cairo ; and stopping there to tako in wood, 
 lay alongside a barge, whose starting timbers scarcely held together. 
 It was moored to the bank, and on its side was painted " Coffee 
 House ; " that being, I suppose, the floating paradise to which the 
 people fly for shelter when they lose their houses for a month or two 
 beneath the hideous waters of the Mississippi. But looking southward 
 from this point, we had the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable river 
 dragging its slimy length and ugly freight abruptly off towards New 
 Orleans ; and passing a yellow line which stretched across the current, 
 were again upon the clear Ohio, never, I Lust, to see the Mississippi 
 more, saving in ti'oubled dreams and nightmares. Leaving it for the 
 company of its sparkling neighbour, was like the transition from 
 pain to ease, or the awakening from a horrible vision to cheerful 
 realities. 
 
 We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and gladly availed 
 ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next day Ave went on in the Ben 
 Franklin, a beautiful mail steamboat, and reached Cincinnati shortly 
 after midnight. Being by this time nearly tired of sleeping upon 
 shelves, we had remained awake to go ashore straightway ; and groping 
 a passago across the dark decks of other boats, and among labyrinths 
 of engine-machinery and leaking casks of molasses, we reached the 
 streets, knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had stayed before, 
 and were, to our great joy, safely housed soon afterwards. 
 
 Wo rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey 
 to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage-coach travelling, 
 which, with those I have already glanced at, comprehend the main 
 characteristics of this mode of transit in America, I will take tho 
 reader as our fellow-passonger, and pledge myself to perform the 
 distanco with all possible despatch. 
 
 Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is 
 distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but thero 
 is a macadamised road (rare blessing !) the whole way, and the rate of 
 travelling upon it is six miles an hour. 
 
 Wo start at eight o'clock in tho morning, in a great mail-coach, 
 whose huge cheeks aro so very ruddy and plethoric, that it appears 
 to bo troubled with a tendency of blood to tho head. Dropsical it 
 certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful 
 to add, it is very clean and bright, being nearly new ; and rattles 
 through the streets of ( ,'incinnati gaily. 
 
 Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, and 
 luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes wo pass 
 a field where the strong bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a 
 crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes an enclosure whero tho green 
 wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of stumps ; the primitive
 
 150 American Notes. 
 
 worm-fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is ; but the farms are 
 neatly kept, and, save for these differences, one might be travelling 
 just now in Kent. 
 
 We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull and 
 silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds it to 
 the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever any one to help him ; there 
 are seldom any loungers standing round ; and never any stable- 
 company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our 
 team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent 
 mode of breaking a young horse : which is to catch him, harness him 
 against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further notice : 
 but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a 
 violent struggle ; and jog on as before again. 
 
 Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half- 
 drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their 
 pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking-chairs, or 
 lounging on the window-sill, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade : 
 they have not often anything to say though, either to us or to each 
 other, but sit there idly staring at the coach and horses. The land- 
 lord of the inn is usually among them, and seems, of all the party, to 
 be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed he is 
 with reforonce to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach 
 and passengers : whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quito 
 indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind. 
 
 The frequent change of coachmen works no change or variety in 
 the coachman's character. He is always dirty, sullen, and taciturn. 
 If he be capable of smartness of any kind, moral or physical, he has 
 a faculty of concealing it which is truly marvellous. He never speaks 
 to you as you sit beside him on the box, and if you speak to him, he 
 answers (if at all) in monosyllables. He points out nothing on the 
 road, and seldom looks at anything : being, to all appearance, 
 thoroughly weary of it and of existence generally. As to doing the 
 honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. 
 The coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels : 
 not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a long 
 stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of an election 
 song, but his face never sings along with him : it is only his voice, and 
 not often that. 
 
 He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers himself 
 with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the box passenger, 
 especially when the wind blows towards him, are not agreeable. 
 
 Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the inside 
 passengers ; or whenever any bystander addresses them, or any one 
 among them ; or they address each other ; you will hear one phrase 
 repeated over and over and over again to the most extraordinary 
 extent It is an ordinary and unpromising phrase enough, being 
 neither more nor less than " Yes, sir ; " but it is adapted to every
 
 A Serviceable Phrase. 151 
 
 variety of circumstance, and fills up every pauso in the conversation. 
 Thus : 
 
 The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where wo arc 
 to stay and dine, on this journey. The coach drives up to the door of 
 an inn. The day is warm, and there are several idlors lingering 
 about the tavern, and waiting for the public dinner. Among them, is 
 a stout gentleman in a brown hat, swinging himself to and fro in a 
 rocking-chair on the pavement. 
 
 As tho coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of the 
 window : 
 
 Straw Hat. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair.) I 
 reckon that's Judge Jefferson, an't it '? 
 
 Brown Hat. (Still swinging ; speaking very slowly ; and without 
 any emotion whatever.) Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. Warm weather, Judge. 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. There was a snap of cold, last week. 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 A pause. They look at each other, very seriously. 
 
 Stray/ Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of tho 
 corporation, Judge, by this time, now ? 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. How did the verdict go, sir ? 
 
 Bkown Hat. For the defendant, sir. 
 
 Straw Hat. (Interrogatively.) Yes, sir ? 
 
 Brown Hat. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir. 
 
 Both. (Musingly, as each gazes down tho street.) Yes, sir. 
 
 Another pause. They look at each other again, still more seriously 
 than before. 
 
 Brown Hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, I guess. 
 
 Straw Hat. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir. 
 
 Brown Hat. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir ; nigh upon two 
 hours. 
 
 Straw Hat. (liaising his eyebrows in very great surprise.) Yes, 
 sir ! 
 
 Brown Hat. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.) Yes, sir. 
 
 All the other inside Passengers. (Among themselves.) Yes, 
 sir. 
 
 Coachman. (In a very surly tone.) No it an't. 
 
 Straw Hat. (To the coachman.) Well, I don't know, sir. Wo 
 were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen mile. That's a fact. 
 
 The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter into 
 any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sympathies and 
 feelings, another passenger says, " Yes, sir ; " and the gentleman in 
 the straw hat in acknowledgment of his courtesy, says " Yes, sir," to 
 him, in return. The straw hat then inquires of tho brown hat,
 
 152 American Notes. 
 
 whether that coach in which he (the straw hat) then sits, is not a new 
 one ? To which the brown hat again makes answer, " Yes, sir." 
 
 Straw Hat. I thought so. Protty loud smell of varnish, sir ? 
 
 Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
 
 All the other inside Passengers. Yes, sir. 
 
 Brown Hat. (To the company in general.) Yes, sir. 
 
 The conversational powers of the company having been by this time 
 pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door and gets out ; and 
 all the rest alight also. We dine soon afterwards with the boarders 
 in the house, and have nothing to drink but tea and coffee. As they 
 are both very bad and the water is worse, I ask for brandy ; but it is 
 a Temperance Hotel, and spirits are not to bo had for love or money. 
 This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant 
 throats of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I never 
 discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords induced them 
 to preserve any unusually nice balance between the quality of their 
 fare, and their scale of charges : on the contrary, I rather suspected 
 them of diminishing the one and exalting the other, by way of recom- 
 pense for the loss of their profit on the sale of spirituous liquors. After 
 all, perhaps, the plainest course for persons of such tender consciences, 
 would be, a total abstinence from tavern-keeping. 
 
 Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at tho 
 door (for tho coach has been changed in the interval), and resume our 
 journey ; which continues through the same kind of country until 
 evening, when we come to the town where we are to stop for tea and 
 supper ; and having delivered the mail bags at the Post-office, ride 
 through the usual wide street, lined with the usual stores and houses 
 (the drapers always having hung up at their door, by way of sign, a 
 piece of bright red cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared. 
 There being many boarders here, we sit down, a largo party, and a 
 very melancholy one as usual. But there is a buxom hostess at the 
 head of the table, and opposite, a simple Welsh schoolmaster with his 
 wife and child ; who came here, on a speculation of greater promise 
 than performance, to teach the classics : and they are sufficient 
 subjects of interest until the meal is over, and another coach is ready. 
 In it we go on once more, lighted by a bright moon, until midnight ; 
 when we stop to change the coach again, and remain for half an hour 
 or so in a miserable room, with a blurred lithograph of Washington 
 over the smoky fire-place, and a mighty jug of cold water on the 
 table : to which refreshment the moody passengers do so apply them- 
 selves that they would seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Dr. 
 Sangrado. Among them is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like 
 a very big one ; and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically 
 and statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards ; and who 
 always speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and 
 with very grave deliberation. He came outside just now, and told me 
 how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had been spirited
 
 Travelling all Night. 153 
 
 away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts ; and how 
 this nncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if he 
 were to follow the said captain to England, " and shoot him down in 
 the street wherever he found him ; " in the feasibility of which strong 
 measure I, being for the moment rather prone to contradiction, from 
 feeling half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce: assuring 
 him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other little 
 whim of the like nature, he would find himself one morning pre- 
 maturely throttled at the Old Bailey : and that ho would do well to 
 make his will before ho went, as he would certainly want it before ho 
 had been in Britain very long. 
 
 On we go, all night, and by-and-by the day begins to break, and 
 presently the first cheerful rays of the warm sun come slanting on us 
 brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable waste of sodden grass, 
 and dull trees, and squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and grievous 
 in the last degree. A very desert in the wood, whose growth of 
 green is dank and noxious like that upon the top of standing water : 
 where poisonous fungus grows in the rare footprint on the oozy 
 ground, and sprouts like witches' coral, from the crevices in the cabin 
 wall and floor ; it is a hideous thing to lie upon the very threshold of 
 a city. But it was purchased years ago, and as the owner cannot be 
 discovered, the State has been unable to reclaim it. So there it 
 remains, in the midst of cultivation and improvement, like ground 
 accursed, and made obscene and rank by some great crime. 
 
 We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and stayed 
 there, to refresh, that day and night : having excellent apartments in 
 a very large unfinished hotel called the Neill House, which were 
 richly fitted with the polished wood of the black walnut, and opened 
 on a handsome portico and stone verandah, like rooms in some Italian 
 mansion. The town is clean and pretty, and of course is " going to 
 be " much larger. It is the seat of the State legislature of Ohio, and 
 lays claim, in consequence, to some consideration and importance. 
 
 There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we wished to 
 take, I hired " an extra," at a reasonable charge, to carry us to Tiffin ; 
 a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This 
 extra was an ordinary four-horse stage-coach, such as I have described, 
 changing horses and drivers, as the stage-coach would, but was 
 exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure our having horses at 
 the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the pro- 
 prietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole 
 way through ; and thus attendod, and bearing with us, besides, a 
 hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine ; wo started 
 off again in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next morning, very 
 much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the 
 roughest journey. 
 
 It was well for us, that wo were in this humour, for tho road we 
 went over that day, was certainly enough to have shaken tempers that
 
 154 American Notes. 
 
 were not resolutely at Set Fair, down to some inches below Stormy. 
 A t one time we were all flung together in a heap at the bottom of the 
 coach, and at another we were crushing our heads against the roof. 
 Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to 
 the other. Now, the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers ; 
 and now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with all four 
 horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking 
 coolly back at it,~as though they would say " Unharness us. It can't 
 be done." The drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the 
 ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the 
 team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs 
 and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out 
 of the window, to sec the coachman with tho ends of a pair of reins in 
 his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the 
 leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if 
 they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way 
 was over what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing 
 trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. The 
 very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from 
 log to log, was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in 
 the human body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set 
 of sensations, in any other circumstances, unless perhaps in attempting 
 to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once, 
 that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to 
 which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest 
 approach to one's experience of tho proceedings of any sort of vehicle 
 that goes on wheels. 
 
 Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and 
 though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and were fast 
 leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara and home. We 
 alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a 
 fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager, and our 
 worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of the country like grains 
 of sand on the sea-shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in 
 Canada), we went forward again, gaily. 
 
 As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, until at 
 last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to find his 
 way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there 
 was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a wheel 
 would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was 
 fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the 
 box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious 
 driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough 
 to do to walk ; as to shying, there was no room for that ; and a herd 
 of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood, with such 
 a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along, quite satisfied. 
 
 These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American travelling,
 
 Upper Sandusky. 155 
 
 The varying illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it 
 grows dark, are quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now 
 there is a Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field ; now 
 thero is a woman weeping at a tomb ; now a very common-place old 
 gentleman in a white waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each arm- 
 hole of his coat ; now a student poring on a book ; now a crouching 
 negro ; now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man ; a hunch-back 
 throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were 
 often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and 
 never took their shapes at my bidding, but soemed to force themselves 
 upon me, whether I would or no ; and strange to say, I sometimes 
 recognised in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me in 
 pictures attached to childish books, forgotten long ago. 
 
 It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, and the 
 trees were so close together that their dry branches rattled against the 
 coach on either side, and obliged us all to keep our heads within. It 
 lightened too, for three whole hours ; each fiash being very bright, and 
 blue, and long ; and as the vivid streaks came darting in among the 
 crowded branches, and the thunder rolled gloomily above the tree- 
 tops, one could scarcely help thinking there were better neighbour- 
 hoods at such a time than thick woods afforded. 
 
 At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night a few feeble 
 lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian 
 village, where we were to stay till morning, lay before us. 
 
 They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the only house of 
 entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our knocking, and 
 got sonio tea for us in a sort of kitchen or common room, tapestried 
 with old newspapers, pasted against the wall. The bed-chamber to 
 which my wife and I were shown, was a large, low, ghostly room ; 
 with a quantity of withered branches on the hearth, and two doors 
 without any fastening, opposite to each other, both opening on the 
 black night and wild country, and so contrived, that one of them 
 always blew the other open : a novelty in domestic architecture, which 
 I do not remember to have seen before, and which I was somewhat 
 disconcerted to have forced on my attention after getting into bed, as 
 I had a considerable sum in gold for our travelling expenses, in my 
 dressing-case. Some of the luggago, however, piled against the panels, 
 soon settled this difficulty, and my sleep would not have been very 
 much affected that night, I believe, though it had failed to do so. 
 
 My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof, where 
 another guest was already snoring hugely. But being bitten beyond 
 his power of endurance, he turned out again, and fled for shelter to 
 the coach, which was airing itself in front of the house. This was 
 not a very politic step, as it turned out ; for the pigs scenting him, 
 and looking upon the coach as a kind of pio witli some manner of 
 meat inside, grunted round it so hideously, that he was afraid to como 
 out again, and lay there shivering, till morning. Nor was it possible
 
 156 American Notes. 
 
 to warm him, when he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy : 
 for in Indian villages, the legislature, with a very good and wise 
 intention, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern-keepers. The precau- 
 tion, however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians never fail to 
 procure liquor of a worse kind, at a dearer price, from travelling 
 pedlars. 
 
 It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this place. 
 Among the company at breakfast was a mild old gentleman, who had 
 been for many years employed by the United States Government in 
 conducting negotiations with the Indians, and who had just concluded 
 a treaty with these people by which they bound themselves, in con- 
 sideration of a certain annual sum, to remove next year to some land 
 provided for them, west of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond 
 St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong attachment 
 to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial- 
 places of their kindred ; and of their great reluctance to leave them. 
 He had witnessed many such removals, and always with pain, though 
 he knew that they departed for their own good. The question whether 
 this tribe should go or stay, had been discussed among them a day or 
 two before, in a hut erected for the purpose, the logs of which still 
 lay upon the ground before the inn. When the speaking was done, 
 the ayes and noes were ranged on opposite sides, and every male adult 
 voted in his turn. The moment the result was known, the minority 
 (a largo one) cheerfully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of 
 opposition. 
 
 We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on shaggy 
 ponies. They were so like the meaner sort of gipsies, that if I could 
 have seen any of them in England, I should have concluded, as a 
 matter of course, that they belonged to that wandering and restless 
 people. 
 
 Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed forward again, 
 over a rather worse road than yesterday, if possible, and arrived about 
 noon at Tiffin, where we parted with the extra. At two o'clock wo 
 took the railroad ; the travelling on which was very slow, its construc- 
 tion being indifferent, and the gi'ound wet and marshy ; and arrived at 
 Sandusky in time to dine that evening. We put up at a comfortable 
 little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie, lay there that night, and had 
 no choice but to wait there next day, until a steamboat bound for 
 Buffalo appeared. The town, which was sluggish and uninteresting 
 enough, was something like the back of an English watering-place, 
 out of the season. 
 
 Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us comfort- 
 able, was a handsome middle-aged man, who had come to this town 
 from New England, in which part of the country he was " raised." 
 When I say that he constantly walked in and out of the room with 
 his hat on ; and stopped to converse in the same free-and-easy state ; 
 and lay down on our sofa, and pulled his newspaper out of his pocket,
 
 Cleveland. 1 57 
 
 and read it at bis ease ; I merely mention these traits as characteristic 
 of the country : not at all as being matter of complaint, or as having 
 been disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such 
 proceedings at home, because there they are not tho custom, and where 
 they are not, they would be impertinencies ; but in America, the only 
 desire of a good-natured fellow of this kind, is to treat his guests 
 hospitably and well ; and I had no more right, and I can truly say no 
 more disposition, to measure his conduct by our English rule and 
 standard, than I had to quarrel with him for not being of the exact 
 stature which would qualify him for admission into the Queen's 
 grenadier guards. As little inclination had I to find fault with a 
 funny old lady who was an upper domestic in this establishment, and 
 who, when she camo to wait upon us at any meal, sat herself down 
 comfortably in the most convenient chair, and producing a large pin 
 to pick her teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and stead- 
 fastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity and composure (now 
 and then pressing us to eat a little more), until it was time to clear 
 away. It was enough for us, that whatever we wished done was dono 
 with great civility and readiness, and a desire to oblige, not only here, 
 but everywhere else ; and that all our wants were, in general, zealously 
 anticipated. 
 
 We were taking an early dinner at this house, on the day after our 
 arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came in sight, and 
 presently touched at the wharf. As she proved to be on her way to 
 Buffalo, we hurried on board with all speed, and soon left Sandusky 
 far behind us. 
 
 She was a large vessol of five hundred tons, and handsomely fitted 
 up, though with high-pressure engines ; which always conveyed that 
 kind of feeling to me, which I should be likely to experience, I think, 
 if I had lodgings on the first-floor of a powder-mill. She was laden 
 with flour, some casks of which commodity were stored upon the deck. 
 The captain coming up to have a little conversation, and to introduce 
 a friend, seated himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus 
 of private life ; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, 
 began to " whittlo " it as he talked, by paring thin slices off tho 
 edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty good will, 
 that but for his being called away very soon, it must have disappeared 
 bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist and shavings. 
 
 After calling at one or two fiat places, with low dams stretching 
 out into the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, like windmills 
 without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at 
 midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all night, and until nine o'clock 
 next morning. 
 
 I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from 
 having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in tho shape of a 
 newspaper, which was very strong indeed upon tho subject of Lord 
 Ashburtou's recent arrival at Washington, to adjust the points in
 
 158 American Notes. 
 
 dispute between the United States Government and Great Britain: 
 informing its readers that as America had " whipped " England in her 
 infanoy, and whipped her again in her youth, so it was clearly neces- 
 sary that she must whip her once again in her maturity ; and pledging 
 its credit to all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in 
 the approaching negotiations, and sent the English Lord home again 
 in double quick time, -they should, within two years, sing " Yankee 
 Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the scarlet courts of 
 Westminster ! " I found it a pretty town, and had the satisfaction of 
 beholding the outside of the office of the journal from which I have 
 just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who 
 indited the paragraph in question, but I have no doubt he is a 
 prodigious man in his way, and held in high repute by a select circle. 
 
 There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I unintentionally 
 learned through the thin partition which divided our state-room from 
 the cabin in which he and his wife conversed together, I was un- 
 wittingly the occasion of very great uneasiness. I don't know why 
 or wherefore, but I appeared to run in his mind perpetually, and to 
 dissatisfy him very much. First of all I heard him say : and the 
 most ludicrous part of the business was, that he said it in my vory 
 ear, and could not have communicated more directly with me, if he 
 had leaned upon my shoulder, and whispered me : " Boz is on board 
 still, my dear." After a considerable pause, he added, complainingly, 
 " Boz keeps himself very close ; " which was true enough, for I was 
 not very well, and was lying down, with a book. I thought he had 
 done with me after this, but I was deceived ; for a long interval 
 having elapsed, during which I imagine him to have been turning 
 restlessly from side to side, and trying to go to sleep ; he broke out 
 again, with " I suppose that Boz will be writing a book by-and-by, 
 and putting all our names in it ! " at which imaginary consequence of 
 being on board a boat with Boz, he groaned, and became silent. 
 
 We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, and lay 
 there an hour. Between five and six next morning, we arrived at 
 Buffalo, where we breakfasted ; and being too near the Great Falls to 
 wait patiently anywhere else, we set off by the train, the same morning 
 at nine o'clock, to Niagara. 
 
 It was a miserable day ; chilly and raw ; a damp mist failing ; and 
 the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever 
 the train halted, I listened for the roar ; and was constantly straining 
 my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing 
 the river rolling on towards them ; every moment expecting to behold 
 the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw 
 two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the 
 depths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted : and then 
 for the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the 
 ground tremble underneath my feet. 
 
 The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and half-melted
 
 Majesty of Niagara. 1 59 
 
 ice. I hardly know how I got down, bnt I was soon at the bottom, 
 and climbing, with two English officers who were crossing and had 
 joined me, over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half-blinded 
 by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the 
 American Fall. I could see an immense torrent of water tearing 
 headlong down from some great height, but had no idea of shape, or 
 situation, or anything but vague immensity. 
 
 When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the 
 swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what 
 it was : but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend 
 the vastness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Hock, 
 and looked Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright-green water! 
 that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. 
 
 Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first 
 effect, and the enduring one instant and lasting of the tremendous 
 spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections 
 of \he Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness : nothing 
 of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an 
 Image of Beauty ; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its 
 pulses cease to beat, for ever. 
 
 Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view, 
 and lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable days we 
 passed on that Enchanted Ground ! What voices spoke from out the 
 thundering water ; what faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon 
 me from its gleaming depths ; what Heavenly promise glistened in 
 those angels' tears, the drops of many hues, that showered around, 
 and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the changing 
 rainbows made ! 
 
 I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, whither I 
 had gone at first. I never crossed the river again ; for I knew there 
 were people on the other shore, and in such a place it is natural to 
 shun strange company. To wander to and fro all day, and see the 
 cataracts from all points of view ; to stand upon the edge of the great 
 Horse Shoe Fall, marking the hurried water gathering strength as it 
 approached the verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before it shot into 
 the gulf below ; to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it 
 came streaming down ; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch 
 it through the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids 
 hurrying on to take its fearful plungo ; to linger in the shadow of the 
 solemn rocks three miles below ; watching the river as, stirred by no 
 visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, being 
 troubled yet, far down beneath the surface, by its giant leap ; to have 
 Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the 
 day's decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it ; to look upon 
 it every day, and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice : 
 this was enough. 
 
 I think in every quiet season now, still do these waters roll and
 
 l6o American Notes. 
 
 leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still are the rainbows span- 
 ning them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do 
 they shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, 
 do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a 
 great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But 
 always does the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and 
 always from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of 
 spray and mist which is never laid : which has haunted this place 
 with the same dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, 
 and that first flood before the Deluge Light came rushing on 
 Creation at the word of God. 
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 IN CANADA ; TORONTO ; KINGSTON ; MONTREAL ; QUEBEC ; ST. JOHN'S. IN 
 THE UNITED STATES AGAIN ; LEBANON ; THE SHAKER VILLAGE ; 
 WEST POINT. 
 
 I wish to abstain from instituting any comparison, or drawing any 
 parallel whatever, between the social features of the United States 
 and those of the British Possessions in Canada. For this reason, I 
 shall confine myself to a very brief account of our journeyings in the 
 latter territory. 
 
 But before I leave Niagara, I must advert to one disgusting circum- 
 stance which can hardly have escaped the observation of any decent 
 traveller who has visited the Falls. 
 
 On Table Eock, there is a cottage belonging to a Guide, where 
 little relics of the place are sold, and where visitors register their 
 names in a book kept for the purpose. On the wall of the room in 
 which a great many of these volumes are preserved, the following 
 request is posted : " Visitors will please not copy nor extract the 
 remarks and poetical effusions from the registers and albums kept 
 here." 
 
 But for this intimation, I should have let them lie upon the tables 
 on which they were strewn with careful negligence, like books in a 
 drawing-room : being quite satisfied with the stupendous silliness of 
 certain stanzas with an anti-climax at the end of each, which were 
 framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, however, after reading 
 this announcement, to sec what kind of morsels were so carefully 
 preserved, I turned a few leaves, and found them scrawled all over 
 with the vilest and the filthiest ribaldry that ever human hogs 
 delighted in. 
 
 Tt is humiliating enough to know that there are among men, brutes 
 60 obscene and worthless, that they can delight in laying their miser-
 
 General Brock's Monument. 161 
 
 able profanations npon the very steps of Nature's greatest altar. But 
 that these should be hoarded up for the delight of their fellow-swine, 
 and kept in a public place where any eyes may see theni, is a disgrace 
 to the English language in which they are written (though I hope 
 few of these entries have been made by Englishmen), and a reproach 
 to the English side, on which they are preserved. 
 
 The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara, are finely and airily 
 situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the plain above 
 the Falls, which were originally designed for hotels ; and in the 
 evening time, when the women and children were leaning over tho 
 balconies watching the men as they played at ball and other games 
 upon the grass before the door, they often presented a little picture 
 of cheerfulness and animation which made it quite a pleasure to pass 
 that way. 
 
 At any garrisoned point where the line of demarcation between 
 one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, desertion 
 from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent occurrence : and it 
 may be reasonably supposed that when the soldiers entertain the 
 wildest and maddest hopes of the fortune and independence that 
 await them on the other side, the impulse to play traitor, which such 
 a place suggests to dishonest minds, is not weakened. But it very 
 rarely happens that the men who do desert, are happy or contented 
 afterwards ; and many instances have been known in which thoy have 
 confessed their grievous disappointment, and their earnest desire to 
 return to their old service if they could but be assured of pardon, or 
 lenient treatment. Many of their comrades, notwithstanding, do the 
 like, from time to time ; and instances of loss of life in the effort to 
 cross the river with this object, are far from being uncommon. 
 Several men were drowned in the attempt to swim across, not long 
 ago ; and one, who had tho madness to trust himself upon a table as 
 a raft, was swept down to the whirlpool, where his mangled body 
 eddied round and round some days. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is very much 
 exaggerated ; and this will appear the more probable when the depth 
 of the great basin in which the water is received, is taken into account. 
 At no time during our stay there, was the wind at all high or 
 boisterous, but we never heard them, three miles off, even at the very 
 quiet time of sunset, though we often tried. 
 
 Queenston, at which place the steamboats start for Toronto (or I 
 should rather say at which placo they call, for their wharf is at 
 Lewiston, on the opposito shore), is situated in a delicious valley, 
 through which the Niagara river, in colour a very deep green, pursues 
 its course. It is approached by a road that takes its winding way 
 among the heights by which the town is sheltered ; and seen from 
 this point is extremely beautiful and picturesque. On the most con- 
 spicuous of these heights stood a monument erected by the Provincial 
 Legislature in memory of General Brock, who was slain in a battle 
 
 M
 
 162 American Notes. 
 
 with the American forces, after having won the victory. Some 
 vagabond, supposed to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is now, 
 or who lately was, in prison as a felon, blew up this monument two 
 years ago, and it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long fragment of 
 iron railing hanging dejectedly from its top, and waving to and fro 
 like a wild ivy branch or broken vine stem. It is of much higher 
 importance than it may seem, that this statue should be repaired at 
 the public cost, as it ought to have been long ago. Firstly, because 
 it is beneath the dignity of England to allow a memorial raised in 
 honour of one of her defenders, to remain in this condition, on the 
 very spot where he died. Secondly, because the sight of it in its 
 present state, and the recollection of the unpunished outrage which 
 brought it to this pass, is not very likely to soothe down border 
 feelings among English subjects here, or compose their border 
 quarrels and dislikes. 
 
 I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the passengers 
 embarking in a steamboat which preceded that whose coming we 
 awaited, and participating in the anxiety with which a sergeant's wife 
 was collecting her few goods together keeping one distracted eye 
 hard upon the porters, who were hurrying them on board, and the other 
 on a hoopless washing-tub for which, as being the most utterly worth- 
 less of all her moveables, she seemed to entertain particular affection 
 when three or four soldiers with a recruit came up and went on 
 board. 
 
 The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly built and 
 well made, but by no means sober ; indeed he had all the air of a 
 man who had been more or less drunk for some days. He carried a 
 small bundle over his shoulder, slung at the end of a walking-stick, 
 and had a short pipe in his mouth, He was as dusty and dirty as 
 recruits usually are, and his shoes betokened that he had travelled on 
 foot some distance, but he was in a very jocose state, and shook hands 
 with this soldier, and clapped that one on the back, and talked and 
 laughed continually, like a roaring idle dog as he was. 
 
 The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him : seeming 
 to say, as they stood straightening their canes in their hands, and 
 looking coolly at him over their glazed stocks, " Go on, my boy, while 
 you may ! you'll know better by-and-by : " when suddenly the novice, 
 who had been backing towards the gangway in his noisy merriment, 
 fell overboard before their eyes, and splashed heavily down into the 
 river between the vessel and the dock. 
 
 I never saw such a good thing as the change that came over these 
 soldiers in an instant. Almost before the man was down, their pro- 
 fessional manner, their stiffness and constraint, were gone, and they 
 were filled with tho most violent energy. In less time than is 
 required to tell it, they had him out again, feet first, with the tails of 
 his coat flapping over his eyes, everything about him hanging the 
 wrong way, and the water streaming off at every thread in his thread-
 
 The English Recruit. i 6 
 
 J 
 
 bare dress. But the moment they set him xipright and fontid that he 
 was none the worse, they were soldiers again, looking over their 
 glazed stocks more composedly than ever. 
 
 The half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment, as if his first 
 impulse were to express some gratitude for his preservation, but seeing 
 them with this air of total unconcern, and having his wet pipe pre- 
 sented to him with an oath by the soldier who had been by far tho 
 most anxious of the party, he stuck it in his mouth, thrust his hands 
 into his moist pockets, and withoiit even shaking the water off his 
 clothes, walked on board whistling; not to say as if nothing had 
 happened, but as if he had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect 
 success. 
 
 Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and soon 
 bore us to the mouth of the Niagara ; where the stars and stripes of 
 America flutter on one side and the Union Jack of England on the 
 other : and so narrow is the space between them that the sentinels in 
 either fort can often hear tho watchword of the other country given. 
 Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea ; and by half-past 
 six o'clock were at Toronto. 
 
 The country round this town being very flat, is bare of scenic 
 interest ; but the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, business, 
 and improvement. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas ; 
 the houses are large and good ; the shops excellent. Many of them 
 have a display of goods in their windows, such as may be seen in 
 thriving county towns in England ; and there are some which would 
 do no discredit to the metropolis itself. There is a good stone prison 
 here ; and there are, besides, a handsome church, a court-house, 
 public offices, many commodious private residences, and a government 
 observatory for noting and recording the magnetic variations. In tho 
 College of Upper Canada, which is one of the public establishments 
 of the city, a sound education in every department of polito learning 
 can be had, at a very moderato expense : the annual charge for tho 
 instruction of each pupil, not exceeding nine pounds sterling. It has 
 pretty good endowments in the way of land, and is a valuable and 
 useful institution. 
 
 The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few days 
 before, by tho Governor General. It will be a handsome, spacious 
 edifice, approached by a long avenue, which is already planted and 
 made available as a public walk. The town is well adapted for 
 wholesome exercise at all seasons, for the footways in the thorough- 
 fares which lie beyond the principal street, are planked like floors, 
 and kept in very good and clean repair. 
 
 It is a matter of deep regret that political differences should havo 
 run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and disgraceful 
 results. It is not long since guns were discharged from a window in 
 this town at the successful candidates in an election, and the coachman 
 of ono of them was actually shot in the body, though not dangerously
 
 1 64 American Notes. 
 
 wounded. But one man was killed on the same occasion ; and from 
 the very window whence he received his death, the very flag which 
 shielded his murderer (not only in the commission of his crime, but 
 from its consequences), was displayed again on the occasion of the 
 public ceremony performed by the Governor General, to which I 
 have just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is but 
 one which could be so employed : I need not say that flag was orange. 
 
 The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight 
 o'clock next morning, the traveller is at the end of his journey, which 
 is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, calling at Port Hope 
 and Coburg, the latter a cheerful thriving little town. Vast quantities 
 of flour form the chief item in the freight of these vessels. We had 
 no fewer than one thousand and eighty barrels on board, between 
 Coburg and Kingston. 
 
 The latter place, which is now the seat of government in Canada, is 
 a very poor town, rendered still poorer in the appearance of its 
 market-place by the ravages of a recent fire. Indeed, it may be said 
 of Kingston, that one half of it appears to be burnt down, and the 
 other half not to be built up. The Government House is neither 
 elegant nor commodious, yet it is almost the only house of any 
 importance in the neighbourhood. 
 
 There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, and 
 excellently regulated, in every respect. The men were employed as 
 shoemakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, and stone- 
 cutters ; and in building a new prison, which was pretty far advanced 
 towards completion. The female prisoners were occupied in needle- 
 work. Among them was a beautiful girl of twenty, who had been 
 there nearly three years. She acted as bearer of secret despatches for 
 the self-styled Patriots on Navy Island, during the Canadian Insur- 
 rection : sometimes dressing as a girl, and carrying them in her 
 stays ; sometimes attiring herself as a boy, and secreting them in the 
 lining of her hat. In the latter character she always rode as a boy 
 Avould, which was nothing to her, for she could govern any horse that 
 any man could ride, and could drive four-in-hand with the best whip 
 in those parts. Setting forth on one of her patriotic missions, she 
 appropriated to herself the first horse she could lay her hands on ; 
 and this offence had brought her where I saw her. She had quite a 
 lovely face, though, as the reader may suj>pose from this sketch of her 
 history, there was a lurking devil in her bright eye, which looked out 
 pretty sharply from between her prison bars. 
 
 There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength, which occupies a 
 bold position, and is capable, doubtless, of doing good service ; though 
 the town is much too close upon the frontier to be long held, I should 
 imagine, for its present purpose in troubled times. There is also a 
 small navy-yard, where a couple of Government steamboats were 
 building, and getting on vigorously. 
 
 We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May, at half-past
 
 The St. Lawrence. 165 
 
 nine in tho morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down the St. 
 Lawrence river. The beanty of this noble stream at almost any 
 point, bnt especially in the commencement of this journey when it 
 winds its way among the thousand Islands, can hardly be imagined. 
 Tho number and constant successions of these islands, all green and 
 richly wooded ; their fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an 
 hour together one among them will appear as the opposite bank of 
 the river, and some so small that they are mere dimples on its broad 
 bosom ; their infinito variety of shapes ; and tho numberless com- 
 binations of beautiful forms which the trees growing on them present : 
 all form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure. 
 
 In tho afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river boiled 
 and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong violence of 
 the current were tremendous. At seven o'clock we reached Dicken- 
 son's Landing, whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by 
 stage-coach : the navigation of the river being rendered so dangerous 
 and difficult in the interval, by rapids, that steamboats do not mako 
 the passage. The number and length of those portages, over which 
 the roads aro bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between 
 the towns of Montreal and Kingston, somewhat tedious. 
 
 Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a little 
 distance from tho river side, whenco the bright warning lights on the 
 dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. Tho night was 
 dark and raw, and the way droary enough. It was nearly ten o'clock 
 wliou we reached the wharf where the next steamboat lay ; and went 
 on board, and to bed. 
 
 She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. Tho 
 morning was ushered in by a violent thunderstorm, and was very wet, 
 but gradually improved and brightened up. Going on deck after 
 breakfast, I was amazed to see floating down with the stream, a most 
 gigantic raft, with somo thirty or forty wooden houses upon it, and at 
 least as many flag-masts, so that it looked like a nautical street. I 
 6aw many of these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All tho 
 timber, or " lumber," as it is called in America, which is brought 
 down tho St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. "When tho 
 raft reaches its place of destination, it is broken up ; the materials arc 
 sold ; and the boatmen return for more. 
 
 At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach for four 
 hours through a pleasant and well-cultivated country, perfectly French 
 in every respect : in the appearance of tho cottages ; tho air, language, 
 and dress of the peasantry ; the sign-boards on the shops and tavorns : 
 and the Virgin's shrines, and crosses, by tho wayside. Nearly every 
 common labourer and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, woro 
 round his waist a sash of somo bright colour : generally red : and tho 
 women, who were working in the fields and gardens, and doing all 
 kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, groat flat straw hats with most 
 capacious brims. There were Catholic Priests and Sisters of Charity
 
 1 66 American Notes, 
 
 in the village streets ; and images of the Saviour at the corners of 
 cross-roads, and in other public places. 
 
 At noon we wont on board another steamboat, and reached the 
 village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three o'clock. 
 There, we left the river, and went on by land. 
 
 Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Lawrence, 
 and is backed by some bold heights, about which there are charming 
 rides and drives. The streets are generally narrow and irregular, as 
 in most French towns of any age ; but in the more modern parts of 
 the city, they are wide and airy. They display a great variety of very 
 good shops ; and both in the town and suburbs there are many excel- 
 lent private dwellings. The granite quays aro remarkable for their 
 beauty, solidity, and extent. 
 
 There is a very large Catholic cathedral hero, recently erected ; 
 with two tall spires, of which one is yet unfinished. In the open 
 space in front of this edifice, stands a solitary, grim-looking, square 
 brick tower, which has a quaint and remarkable appearance, and 
 which the wiseacres of the place have consequently determined to 
 pull down immediately. The Government House is very superior to 
 that at Kingston, and the town is full of life and bustle. In one of 
 the suburbs is a plank road not footpath five or six miles long, 
 and a famous road it is too. All the rides in the vicinity were made 
 doubly interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so 
 rapid, that it is but a day's leap from barren winter, to the blooming 
 youth of summer. 
 
 The steamboats to Quebec, perform the journey in the night ; that 
 is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the evening, and arrive at 
 Quebec at six next morning. We made this excursion during our 
 stay in Montreal (which exceeded a fortnight), and were charmed 
 by its interest and beauty. 
 
 The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America : 
 its giddy heights ; its citadel suspended, as it were, in the air ; its 
 picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways ; and the splendid 
 views which burst upon the eye at every turn : is at once unique and 
 lasting. 
 
 It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind with other 
 places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can 
 recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there 
 arc associations clustering about it which would make a desert rich 
 in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front, Wolfe 
 and his brave companion., climbed to glory ; the Plains of Abraham, 
 where ho received his mortal wound ; the fortress so chivalrously 
 defended by Montcalm ; and his soldier's grave, dug for him while 
 yet alive, by the bursting of a shell ; are not the least among them, or 
 among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble Monument too, 
 and worthy of two great nations, which perpetuates the memory of 
 both brave generals, and on which their names are jointly written.
 
 Beautiful Quebec. 16/ 
 
 The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and 
 charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of the Old 
 Government House, and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty 
 lies. The exquisite oxpanso of country, rich in field and forest, 
 mountain-height and water, which lies stretched out before the view, 
 with miles of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like 
 veins along the landscape ; the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and 
 chimney tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand ; the beauti- 
 ful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight ; and the tiny 
 ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging 
 looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on 
 their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many 
 puppets ; all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and 
 looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest 
 and most enchanting pictures that tho eye can rest upon. 
 
 In the spring of tho year, vast numbers of emigrants who have 
 newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass between Quebec 
 and Montreal on their way to the backwoods and new settlements of 
 Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge (as I very often found it) to 
 take a morning stroll upon the quay at Montreal, and see them 
 grouped in hundreds on the public wharfs about their chests and 
 boxes, it is matter of deep interest' to be their fellow-passenger on 
 one of theso steamboats, and mingling with the concourse, see and 
 hear them unobserved. 
 
 The vessel in which wc returned from Quebec to Montreal was 
 crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds between decks 
 (those who had beds, at least), and slept so close and thick about our 
 cabin door, that the passage to and fro was quite blocked up. They 
 wero nearly all English ; from Gloucestershire the greater part ; and 
 had had a long winter-passage out ; but it was wonderful to see how 
 clean the children had been kept, how untiring in their love and self- 
 denial all tho poor parents were. 
 
 Cant as wo may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it is very 
 much harder fur the poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich ; and 
 the good that is in them, shines the brighter for it. In many a noble 
 mansion lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose 
 privato worth in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies. But 
 bring him here, upon this crowded deck. Strip from his fair young 
 wifo her silken dress and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early 
 wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much 
 privation, array her faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there bo 
 nothing but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall 
 put it to tho proof indeed. So change his station in tho world, that 
 he Khali see in those young things who climb about his kneo : not 
 records of his wealth and name : but little wrestlers with him for his 
 daily bread ; so many poachers on his scanty meal ; so many units to 
 divide his every sum of comfort, and farther to reduce its small amount'.
 
 1 68 American Notes. 
 
 In lieu of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap 
 upon him all its pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, 
 caprice, and querulous endurance : let its prattle be, not of engaging 
 infant fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and hunger : and if his fatherly 
 affection outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender ; careful 
 of his children's lives, and mindful always of their joys and sorrows ; 
 then send him back to Parliament, and Pulpit, and to Quarter Sessions, 
 and when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from 
 hand to mouth, and labour hard to do it, let him speak up, as one who 
 knows, and tell those holders forth that they, by parallel with such a 
 class, should be High Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humblo 
 siege to Heaven at last. 
 
 Which of us shall say what he would be, if such realities, with 
 small relief or change all through his days, were his ! Looking round 
 upon these people : far from home, houseless, indigent, wandering, 
 weary with travel and hard living : and seeing how patiently they 
 nursed and tended their young children : how they consulted ever 
 their wants first, then half supplied their own ; what gentle ministers 
 of hope and faith the women were ; how the men profited by their 
 example ; and how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or 
 harsh complaint broke out among them : I felt a stronger love and 
 honour of my kind come glowing on my heart, and wished to God 
 there had been many Atheists in the better part of human nature 
 there, to read this simple lesson in the book of Life. 
 
 Wo left Montreal for New York again, on the thirtieth of May ; 
 crossing to La Prairie, on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence, in 
 a steamboat ; we then took the railroad to St. John's, which is on the 
 brink of Lake Champlain. Our last greeting in Canada was from the 
 English officers in the pleasant barracks at that place (a class of 
 gentlemen who had made every hour of our visit memorablo by their 
 hospitality and friendship) ; and with " Eule Britannia " sounding in 
 our ears, soon left it far behind. 
 
 But Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost placo in 
 my remembrance. Few Englishmen are prepared to find it what it 
 is. Advancing quietty ; old differences settling down, and being fast 
 forgotton ; public feeling and private enterprise alike in a sound and 
 wholesome state ; nothing of flush or fever in its system, but health 
 and vigour throbbing in its steady pulse : it is full of hope and 
 promise. To me who had been accustomed to think of it as some- 
 thing left behind in the strides of advancing society, as something 
 neglected and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its sleep the 
 demand for labour and the rates of wages ; the busy quays of 
 Montreal ; the vessels taking in their cargoes, and discharging them ; 
 the amount of shipping in the different ports ; the commerce, roads, 
 and public works, all made to last ; the respectability and character
 
 A Floating Palace, \6j 
 
 of the public journals ; and the amount of rational comfort and happi- 
 ness which honest industry may earn : were very great surprises. 
 The steamboats on tho lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and 
 safety ; in the gentlemanly character and bearing of their captains ; 
 and in the politeness and perfect comfort of their social regulations ; 
 are unsurpassed even by the famous Scotch vessels, deservedly so 
 much esteemed at home. The inns are usually bad ; because tho 
 custom of boarding at hotels is not so general here as in the States, 
 and the British officers, who form a large portion of the society of 
 every town, live chiefly at the regimental messes: but in every other 
 respoct, the traveller in Canada will find as good provision for his 
 comfort as in any place I know. 
 
 There is one American boat the vessel which carried us on Lako 
 Champlain, from St. John's to Whitehall which I praise very highly, 
 but no more than it deserves, when I say that it is superior even to 
 that in which wo went from Queenston to Toronto, or to that in which 
 we travelled from the latter place to Kingston, or I have no doubt I 
 may add to any other in the world. This steamboat, which is called 
 tho Burlington, is a perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, 
 elegance, and order. The decks are drawing-rooms ; the cabins are 
 boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with prints, pictures, and 
 musical instruments ; every nook and corner in the vessel is a perfect 
 curiosity of graceful comfort and beautiful contrivance. Captain 
 Sherman, her commander, to whose ingenuity and excellent taste theso 
 results are solely attributable, has bravely and worthily distinguished 
 himself on more than one trying occasion : not least among them, in 
 having the moral courage to carry British troops, at a time (during 
 the Canadian rebellion) when no other conveyance was open to them. 
 Ho and his vessel are hold in universal respect, both by his own 
 countrymen and ours ; and no man ever enjoyed the popular esteem, 
 who, in his sphere of action, won and Avore it better than this 
 gentleman. 
 
 By means of this floating palace we were soon in the United States 
 again, and called that evening at Burlington ; a pretty town, whero 
 we lay an hour or so. We reached Whitehall, whero wo were to dis- 
 embark, at six next morning ; and might have done so earlier, but that 
 these steamboats lie by for some hours in the night, in consequence 
 of the lake becoming very narrow at that part of the journey, and dim- 
 cult of navigation in tho dark. Its width is so contracted at one point, 
 indeed, that they are obliged to warp round by means of a rope. 
 
 After breakfasting at Whitehall, wo took the stage-coach for Albany : 
 a largo and busy town, where wo arrived between five and six o'clock 
 that afternoon ; after a very hot day's journey, for we were now in 
 the height of summer again. At seven wo started for New York on 
 board a great North River steamboat, which was so crowded with 
 passengers that the upper deck was like the box lobby of a theatro 
 between the pieces, and the lower ono liko Tottenham Court Road
 
 170 American Notes. 
 
 on a Saturday night. But we slept soundly, notwithstanding, and 
 soon after five o'clock next morning reached New York. 
 
 Tarrying here, only that day and night, to recruit after our late 
 fatigues, we started off once more upon our last journey in America. 
 We had yet five days to spare before embarking for England, and I 
 had a great desire to see " the Shaker Village," which is peopled by 
 a religious sect from whom it takes its name. 
 
 To this end, we went up the North Eiver again, as far as the town 
 of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to Lebanon, thirty 
 miles distant : and of course another and a different Lebanon from 
 that village where I slept on the night of the Prairie trip. 
 
 The country through which the road meandered, was rich and 
 beautiful ; the weather very fine ; and for many miles the Kaatskill 
 mountains, where Eip Van Winkle and the ghastly Dutchmen played 
 at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, towered in the blue dis- 
 tance, like stately clouds. At one point, as we ascended a steep hill, 
 athwart whose base a railroad, yet constructing, took its course, we 
 came upon an Irish colony. With means at hand of building decent 
 cabins, it was wonderful to see how clumsy, rough, and wretched, its 
 hovels were. The best were poor protection from the weather ; the 
 worst let in the wind and rain through wide breaches in the roofs of 
 sodden grass, and in the walls of mud ; some had neither door nor 
 window ; some had nearly fallen down, and were imperfectly propped 
 up by stakes and poles ; all were ruinous and filthy. Hideously ugly 
 old women and very buxom young ones, pigs, dogs, men, children, 
 babies, pots, kettles, dunghills, vile refuse, rank straw, and standing 
 Avater, all wallowing together in an inseparable heap, composed the 
 furniture of every dark and dirty hut. 
 
 Between nine and ten o'clock at night, we arrived at Lebanon : 
 which is renowned for its warm baths, and for a great hotel, well 
 adapted, I have no doubt, to the gregarious taste of those seekers after 
 health or pleasure who repair here, but inexpressibly comfortless to 
 me. We were shown into an immense apartment, lighted by two dim 
 candles, called the drawing-room : from which there was a descent by 
 a flight of steps, to another vast desert, called the dining-room : our 
 bed-chambers wero among certain long rows of little white-washed 
 cells, which opened from either side of a dreary passage ; and wero 
 so like rooms in a prison that I half expected to be locked up when 
 I went to bed, and listened involuntarily for the turning of the key 
 on the outside. There need be baths somewhere in the neighbour- 
 hood, for the other washing arrangements were on as limited a scale 
 as I ever saw, even in America : indeed, these bedrooms were so very 
 bare of even such common luxuries as chairs, that I should say they 
 w T ere not provided with enough of anything, but that I bethink myself 
 of our having been most bountifully bitten all night. 
 
 The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had a good 
 breakfast. That done, we went to visit our place of destination, which
 
 Shaker Worship not to be seen. iji 
 
 was somo two miles off, and the way to which was soon indicated by 
 a finger-post, whereon was painted, " To the Shaker Village." 
 
 As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who were at work 
 upon the road ; who wore the broadest of all broad-brimmed hats ; 
 and were in all visible respects such very wooden men, that I felt 
 about as much sympathy for them, and as much interest in them, as if 
 they had been so many figure-heads of ships. Presently we came to 
 the beginning of the village, an alighting at the door of a house 
 where the Shaker manufactures are sold, and which is the head- 
 quarters of the elders, requested permission to see the Shaker worship. 
 
 Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in authority, 
 we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging 
 on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock, which 
 uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim 
 silence reluctantly, and under protest. Eanged against the wall were 
 six or eight stiff high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of 
 the general grimness, that one would much rather havo sat on the 
 floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them. 
 
 Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim old Shaker, 
 with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great round metal buttons 
 on his coat and waistcoat ; a sort of calm goblin. Being informed of 
 our desire, he produced a newspaper wherein the body of elders, 
 whereof he was a member, had advertised but a few days before, that 
 in consequence of certain unseemly interruptions which their worship 
 had received from strangers, their chapel was closed to the public for 
 the space of one year. 
 
 As nothing was to bo urged in opposition to this reasonable arrange- 
 ment, we requested leave to make some trifling purchases of Shaker 
 goods ; which was grimly conceded. We accordingly repaired to a 
 store on the same houso and on the opposite side of the passage, where 
 the stock was presided over by something alive in a russet case, which 
 the elder said was a woman ; and which I suj)pose was a woman, 
 though I should not have suspected it. 
 
 On the opposite side of the road was their place of worship : a cool, 
 clean edifice of wood, with large windows and green blinds : like a 
 spacious summer-house. As there was no getting into this place, and 
 nothing was to be done but walk up and down, and look at it and tho 
 other buildings in the village (which were chiefly of wood, painted a 
 dark red like English barns, and composed of many stories like 
 English factories), I have nothing to communicate to tho reader, 
 beyond the scanty results I gleaned tho while our purchases were 
 making. 
 
 These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form of adora- 
 tion, whicli consists of a dance, performed by tho men and women of 
 all ages, who arrange themselves for that purpose in opposite parties, 
 the men first divesting themselves of their hats and coats, which they 
 gravely hang against tho wall before they begin ; and tying a ribbon
 
 172 American Notes. 
 
 round their shirt-sleeves, as though they were going to be bled. They 
 accompany themselves with a droning, humming noise, and dance 
 until they are quite exhausted, alternately advancing and retiring in 
 a preposterous sort of trot. The effect is said to be unspeakably 
 absurd : and if I may judge from a print of this ceremony which I 
 have in my possession ; and which I am informed by those who havo 
 visited the chapel, is perfectly accurate ; it must be infinitely grotesque. 
 
 They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood to be 
 absolute, though she has the assistance of a council of elders. Sho 
 lives, it is said, in strict seclusion, in certain rooms above the chapel, 
 and is never shown to profane eyes. If she at all resemble the lady 
 who presided over the store, it is a great charity to keep her as close 
 as possible, and I cannot too strongly express my perfect concurrenco 
 in this benevolent proceeding. 
 
 All the possessions and revenues of the settlement are thrown into 
 a common stock, which is managed by the elders. As they have 
 made converts among people who were well to do in the world, and 
 are frugal and thrifty, it is understood that this fund prospers : the 
 more especially as they have made large purchases of land. Nor is 
 this at Lebanon the only Shaker settlement : there are, I think, at 
 least, three others. 
 
 They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly purchased 
 and highly esteemed. " Shaker seeds," " Shaker herbs," and " Shaker 
 distilled waters," are commonly announced for sale in the shops of 
 towns and cities. They are good breeders of cattle, and are kind and 
 merciful to the brute creation. Consequently, Shaker beasts seldom 
 fail to find a ready market. 
 
 They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model, at a great 
 public table. There is no union of the sexes, and every Shaker, male 
 and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Eumour has been busy 
 upon this theme, but here again I must refer to the lady of the store, 
 and say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, I treat all 
 such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild im- 
 probability. But that they take as proselytes, persons so young that 
 they cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much strength 
 of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from my own 
 observation of the extreme juvenility of certain youthful Shakers whom 
 I saw at work among the party on the road. 
 
 They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to be honest and 
 just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing to resist those 
 thievish tendencies which would seem, for some undiscovered reason, 
 to be almost inseparable from that branch of traffic. In all matters 
 they hold their own course quietly, live in their gloomy silent com- 
 monwealth, and show little desire to interfere with other people. 
 
 This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I confess, incline 
 towards the Shakers ; view them with much favour, or extend towards 
 them any very lenient construction. I so abhor, and from my soul
 
 Military School. 173 
 
 detest that bad spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be enter- 
 tained, which would strip life of its bealtbfnl graces, rob youth of its 
 innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and age their pleasant orna- 
 ments, and make existence but a narrow path towards the grave : that 
 odious spirit which, if it could have had full scope and sway upon the 
 earth, must have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the 
 greatest men, and left them, in their power of raising up enduring 
 images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than the 
 beasts : that, in these very broad-brimmed hats and very sombre coats 
 in stiff-necked solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter what its garb, 
 whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker village, or long nails as 
 in a Hindoo temple I recognise the worst among the enemies of 
 Heaven and Earth, who turn the water at the marriage feasts of this 
 poor world, not into wine but gall. And if there must be people 
 vowed to crush the harmless fancies and the love of innocent delights 
 and gaieties, which are a part of human nature : as much a part of it 
 as any other love or hope that is our common portion : let them, for 
 me, stand openly revealed among the ribald and licentious ; the very 
 idiots know that they are not on the Immortal road, and will despise 
 them, and avoid them readily. 
 
 Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike of the old Shakers, 
 and a hearty pity for the young ones : tempered by the strong 
 probability of their running away as they grow older and wiser, which 
 they not uncommonly do : we returned to Lebanon, and so to Hudson, 
 by the way we had come upon the previous day. There, we took tho 
 steamboat down the North River towards New York, but stopped, 
 some four hours' journey short of it, at West Point, where wo remained 
 that night, and all next day, and next night too. 
 
 In this beautiful place : the fairest among the fair and lovely 
 Highlands of the North River : shut in by deep green heights and 
 ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of Newburgh, 
 along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, 
 whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of 
 wind come down upon her from tho gullies in the hills : hemmed in, 
 besides, all round with memories of Washington, and evonts of the 
 revolutionary war : is the Military School of America. 
 
 It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any ground 
 more beautiful can hardly be. The course of education is severe, but 
 well devised, and manly. Through June, July, and August, the young 
 men encamp upon the spacious plain whereon the college stands ; 
 and all the year their military exercises are performed there, daily. 
 The term of study at this institution, which the State requires from 
 all cadets, is four years ; but, whether it be from the rigid nature of 
 the discipline, or the national impatience of restraint, or both causes 
 combined, not more than half tho number who begin their studies 
 here, ever remain to finish them. 
 
 The number of cadets being about equal to that of the members of
 
 1/4 American Notes. 
 
 Congress, one is sent here from every Congressional district : its 
 member influencing the selection. Commissions in the service are 
 distributed on the same principle. The dwellings of the various 
 Professors are beautifully situated ; and there is a most excellent 
 hotel for strangers, though it has the two drawbacks of being a total 
 abstinence house (wines and spirits being forbidden to the students), 
 and of serving the public meals at rather uncomfortable hours : to wit, 
 breakfast at seven, dinner at one, and supper at sunset. 
 
 The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very dawn 
 and greenness of summer it was then the beginning of June were 
 exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth, and returning to New 
 York, to embark for England on the succeeding day, I was glad to 
 think that among the last memorable beauties which had glided past 
 us, and softened in the bright perspective, were those whose pictures, 
 traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men's minds ; not easily 
 to grow old, or fade beneath the dust of Time : the Kaatskill Moun- 
 tains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee. 
 
 CHAPTER XYI. 
 
 THE PASSAGE HOME. 
 
 I never had so much interest before, and very likely I shall never 
 have so much interest again, in the state of the wind, as on the long 
 looked-for morning of Tuesday the Seventh of June. Some nautical 
 authority had told me a day or two previous, " anything with west 
 in it, will do ; " so when I darted out of bed at daylight, and throwing 
 up the window, was saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west 
 which had sprung up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, 
 rustling with so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the 
 spot a special regard for all airs blowing from that quarter of the 
 compass, which I shall cherish, I dare say, until my own wind has 
 breathed its last frail puff, and withdrawn itself for ever from the 
 mortal calendar. 
 
 The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this favourable 
 weather, and the ship which yesterday had been in such a crowded 
 dock that she might have retired from trade for good and all, for any 
 chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was now full sixteen miles 
 away. A gallant sight she was, when we, fast gaining on her in a 
 steamboat, saw her in the distance riding at anchor : her tall masts 
 pointing up in graceful lines against the sky, and every rope and spar 
 expressed in delicate and thread-like outline : gallant, too, when, we 
 being all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus " Cheerily 
 men, oh cheerily ! " and she followed proudly in the towing steam-
 
 Amusements on Board 1 75 
 
 boat's wake : but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-ropo 
 being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading 
 her white wings she soared away npon her free and solitary course. 
 
 In the after cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, and the 
 greater part were from Canada, whore some of us had known each 
 other. The night was rough and squally, so were the next two days, 
 but they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheerful and snug a 
 party, with an honest, manly-hearted captain at our head, as ever 
 came to the resolution of being mutually agreeable, on land or 
 water. 
 
 We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, and 
 took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of amusements, 
 and dinner was not the least among them : firstly, for its own sake ; 
 secondly, because of its extraordinary length : its duration, inclusive 
 of all the long pauses between the courses, being seldom less than 
 two hours and a half; which was a subject of never-failing entertain- 
 ment. By way of beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select 
 association was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast, 
 to whose distinguished president modesty forbids me to make any 
 furthor allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial institution, 
 was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest of the community, 
 and particularly with a black steward, who lived for three weeks 
 in a broad grin at the marvellous humour of these incorporated 
 worthies. 
 
 Then, we had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, books, 
 backgammon, and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair or foul, calm or 
 windy, wo were every one on deck, walking up and down in pairs, 
 lying in the boats, leaning over the side, or chatting in a lazy group 
 together. We had no lack of music, for one played the accordian, 
 another the violin, and another (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.) 
 the key-bugle : the combined effect of which instruments, when they 
 all played different tunes in different parts of the ship, at the same 
 time, and within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did (every- 
 body being intensely satisfied with his own performance), was 
 sublimely hideous. 
 
 When all those means of entertainment failed, a sail would heavo 
 in sight : looming, perhaps, the very spirit of a ship, in the misty 
 distance, or passing us so close that through our glasses we could see 
 the people on her decks, and easily mako out her name, and whither 
 she was bound. For hours together we could watch the dolphins and 
 porpoises as they rolled and leaped and dived around the vessel ; or 
 thoso small creatures ever on the wing, the Mother Carey's chickens, 
 which had borne us company from New York bay, and for a whole 
 fortnight fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days we had a 
 dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew amused them- 
 selves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky dolphin, who expired, in 
 all his rainbow colours, on the deck : an event of such importance in
 
 176 American Notes. 
 
 our barren calendar, that afterwards we dated from the dolphin, and 
 made the day on which he died, an era. 
 
 Besides all this, when we were five or six days out, there began to 
 be much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands an unusual 
 number had been seen by the vessels that had come into New York a 
 day or two before we left that port, and of whose dangerous neigh- 
 bourhood we were warned by the sudden coldness of the weather, and 
 the sinking of the mercury in the barometer. While these tokens 
 lasted, a double look-out was kept, and many dismal tales were 
 whispered after dark, of ships that had struck upon the ice and gone 
 down in the night ; but the wind obliging us to hold a southward 
 course, we saw none of them, and the weather soon grew bright and 
 warm again. 
 
 The observation every day at noon, and the subsequent working of 
 the vessel's course, was, as may be supposed, a feature in our lives of 
 paramount importance ; nor were there wanting (as there never are) 
 sagacious doubters of the captain's calculations, who, so soon as his 
 back was turned, would, in the absence of compasses, measure the 
 chart with bits of string, and ends of pocket-handkerchiefs, and 
 points of snuffers, and clearly prove him to be wrong by an odd 
 thousand miles or so. It was very edifying to see these unbelievers 
 shake their heads and frown, and hear them hold forth strongly upon 
 navigation : not that they knew anything about it, but that they 
 always mistrusted the captain in calm weather, or when the wind was 
 adverse. Indeed, the mercury itself is not so variable as this class of 
 passengers, whom you will see, when the ship is going nobly through 
 the water, quite pale with admiration, swearing that the captain beats 
 all captains ever known, and even hinting at subscriptions for a piece 
 of plate ; and who, next morning, when the breeze has lulled, and all 
 the sails hang useless in the idle air, shake their despondent heads 
 again, and say, with screwed-up lips, they hope that captain is a sailor 
 but they shrewdly doubt him. 
 
 It even became an occupation in the calm, to wonder when the 
 wind icould spring up in the favourable quarter, where, it was clearly 
 shown by all the rules and precedents, it ought to have sprung up 
 long ago. The first mate, who whistled for it zealously, was much 
 respected for his perseverance, and was regarded even by the un- 
 believers as a first-rate sailor. Many gloomy looks would be cast 
 upward through the cabin skylights at the flapping sails while dinner 
 was in progress ; and some, growing bold in ruefulness, predicted 
 that we should land about the middle of July. There are always on 
 board ship, a Sanguine One, and a Despondent One. The latter 
 character carried it hollow at this period of the voyage, and triumphed 
 over the Sanguine One at every meal, by inquiring where he supposed 
 the Great Western (which left New York a week after us) was now : 
 and where he supposed the ' Cunard ' steam-packet was now : and 
 what he thought of sailing-vessels, as compared with steam-ships
 
 Felloiv- Passengers. 177 
 
 vow : and so beset Lis life with pestilent attacks of that kind, that he 
 too was obliged to affect despondency, for very peace and quietude. 
 
 These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, hut there 
 was still another source of interest. We carried in the steerage 
 nearly a hundred passengers : a little world of poverty : and as we 
 came to know individuals among them by sight, from looking down 
 upon the deck whero they took the air in tho daytime, and cooked 
 their food, and very often ate it too, we became curious to know their 
 histories, and with what expectations they had gone out to America, 
 and on what errands they were going home, and what their circum- 
 stances were. The information wo got on these heads from tho 
 carpenter, who had charge of these people, was often of the strangest 
 kind. Some of them had been in America but threo days, some but 
 three months, and some had gone out in tho last voyage of that very 
 ship in which they Mere now returning home. Others had sold their 
 clothes to raise the passage-money, and had hardly rags to cover 
 them ; others had no food, and lived upon the charity of the rest : 
 and one man, it was discovered nearly at tho end of the voyage, not 
 before for ho kept his secret close, and did not court compassion 
 had had no sustenance whatever but the bones and scraps of fat lie 
 took from the plates used in tho after-cabin dinner, when they were 
 put out to be washed. 
 
 Tho whole system of shipping and conveying these unfortunate 
 persons, is one that (stands in need of thorough revision. If any class 
 deserve to be protected and assisted by the Government, it is that 
 class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare 
 means of subsistence. All that could bo done for these poor people 
 by the great compassion and humanity of the captain and officers was 
 done, but they require much more. Tho law is bound, at least upon 
 the English side, to seo that too many of them are not put on board 
 one ship : and that their accommodations are decent : not demoralising 
 and profligate. It is bound, too, in common humanity, to declare 
 that no man shall be taken on board without his stock of provisions 
 being previously inspected by some proper officer, and pronounced 
 moderately sufficient for his support upon the voyage. It is bound 
 to provide, or to require that there be provided, a medical attendant ; 
 whereas in these ships there are none, though sickness of adults, and 
 deaths of children, on the passage, are matters of the very commonest 
 occurrence. Above all it is the duty of any Government, be it 
 monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end to that system by 
 which a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the wholo 
 'tween-decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people as 
 they can lay hold of, on any terms they can get, without the smallest 
 reference to the conveniences of tho steerage, the number of berths, 
 the slightest separation of tho sexes, or anything but their own 
 immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst of the vicious system: 
 for, certain crimping agents of these houses, who have a per centage 
 
 N
 
 178 American Notes. 
 
 on all the passengers they inveigle, are constantly travelling about 
 those districts where poverty and discontent are rife, and tempting 
 the credulous into more misery, by holding out monstrous induce- 
 ments to emigration which can never be realised. 
 
 The history of every family we had on board was pretty much the 
 same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and begging, and selling 
 everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to New York, 
 expecting to find its streets paved with gold ; and had found them 
 paved with very hard and very real stones. Enterprise was dull ; 
 labourers were not wanted ; jobs of work were to be got, but the 
 payment was not. They were coming back, even poorer than they 
 went. One of them was carrying an open letter from a young English 
 artisan, who had been in New York a fortnight, to a friend near 
 Manchester, whom he strongly urged to follow him. One of the 
 officers brought it to me as a curiosity. " This is the country, Jem," 
 said the writer. " I like America. There is no despotism here ; 
 that's the great thing. Employment of all sorts is going a-begging, 
 and wages are capital. You have only to choose a trade, Jem, and 
 be it. I haven't made choice of one yet, but I shall soon. At present 
 I haven't quite made xip my mind ichetlier to be a carpenter or a 
 tailor." 
 
 There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one more, who, 
 in the calm and the light winds, was a constant theme of conversation 
 and observation among us. This was an English sailor, a smart, 
 thorough-built, English man-of-war's-man from his hat to his shoes, 
 who was serving in the American Navy, and having got leave of 
 absence was on his way home to see his friends. When he presented 
 himself to take and pay for his passage, it had been suggested to him 
 that being an able seaman he might as well work it and save the 
 money, but this piece of advice he very indignantly rejected : saying, 
 " He'd be damned but for once he'd go aboard ship, as a gentleman." 
 Accordingly, they took his money, but he no sooner came aboard, 
 than he stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the 
 crew, and tho very first time the hands were turned up, went aloft 
 like a cat, before anybody. And all through the passage there he 
 was, first at the braces, outermost on the yards, perpetually lending a 
 hand everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in his manner, and 
 a sober grin on his face, which plainly said, " I do it as a gentleman. 
 For my own pleasure, mind you ! " 
 
 At length and at last, the promised wind came up in right good 
 earnest, and away we went before it, with every stitch of canvas set, 
 slashing through the water nobly. There was a grandeur in the 
 motion of the splendid ship, as overshadowed by her mass of sails, 
 she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one with an 
 indescribable sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into a 
 foaming valley, how I loved to see the green waves, bordered deep 
 with white, come rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their
 
 The Good Wind at last. 179 
 
 pleasure, and curl about her as sho stooped again, but always own her 
 for tbeir haughty mistress still! On, on we flew, with changing 
 lights upon the water, being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies ; 
 a bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night ; tho 
 vano pointing directly homeward, alike tho truthful index to the 
 favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts ; until at sunrise, one fair 
 Monday morning the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily 
 forget tho day there lay before us, old Cape Clear, God bless it, 
 showing, in the mist of early morning, liko a cloud : the brightest and 
 most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid the face of Heaven's fallen 
 sister Home. 
 
 Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sunriso 
 a more cheorful sight, and gave to it that sort of human interest 
 which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, tho return 
 of day is inseparable from some sense of renewed hope and 
 gladness ; but the light shining on the dreary waste of water, and 
 showing it in all its vast extent of loneliness, presents a solemn 
 spectacle, which even night, veiling.it in darkness and uncertainty, 
 docs not surpass. Tho rising of the moon is more in keeping with 
 tho solitary ocean ; and has an air of melancholy grandeur, which in 
 its soft and gentle influence, seems to comfort while it saddens. I 
 recollect when I was a very young child having a fancy that tho 
 reflection of the moon in water was a path to Heaven, trodden by tho 
 spirits of good people on their way to God ; and this old feeling often 
 camo over me again, when I watched it on a tranquil night at sea. 
 
 Tho wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but it was 
 still in tho right quarter, and so, by slow degrees, we left Cape Clear 
 behind, and sailed along within sight of the coast of Ireland. And 
 how merry we all were, and how loyal to the George Washington, and 
 how full of mutual congratulations, and how venturesome in predicting 
 tho exact hour at which we should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily 
 imagined and readily understood. Also, how heartily we drank the 
 captain's health that day at dinner ; and how restless we became about 
 packing up : and how two or three of the most sanguine spirits rejected 
 the idea of going to bed at all that night as something it was not 
 wortli while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless, and slept 
 soundly ; and how to be so near our journey's end, was like a pleasant 
 dream, from which one feared to wake. 
 
 The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we went 
 onco more before it gallantly : descrying now and then an English 
 ship going homeward under shortened sail, while we with every inch 
 of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, and left her far behind. 
 Towards evoning, tho weather turned hazy, with a drizzling rain ; 
 and soon became so thick, that wo sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still 
 we swept onward like a phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced 
 up to where tho Look-out on tho mast kept watch for Holyhead. 
 
 At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same moment
 
 i8o American Notes. 
 
 there shone out from the haze and mist ahead, a gleaming light, 
 which presently was gone, and soon returned, and soon was gone 
 again. Whenever it camo back, the eyes of all on board, brightened 
 and sparkled like itself: and there we all stood, watching this revolv- 
 ing light upon the rock at Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness 
 and its friendly warning, and lauding it, in short, above all other 
 signal lights that ever were displayed, until it once more glimmered 
 faintly in the distance, far behind us. 
 
 Then, it was time to fire a gun, for a pilot ; and almost before its 
 smoko had cleared away, a little boat with a light at her mast-head 
 came bearing down upon us, through the darkness, swiftly. And 
 presently, our sails being backed, she ran alongside ; and the hoarse 
 pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats and shawls to the very bridge 
 of his wcather-ploughed-up nose, stood bodily among us on the deck. 
 And I think if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an 
 indefinite period on no security, we should have engaged to lend it to 
 him, among us, before his boat had dropped astern, or (which is the 
 same thing) before every scrap of news in the paper he brought with 
 him had become the common property of all on board. 
 
 We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty early 
 next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, prepared to 
 go ashore ; and looked upon the spires, and roofs, and smoke, of 
 Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of its Hotels, to eat and 
 drink together for the last time. And by nine we had shaken hands 
 all round, and broken up our social company for ever. 
 
 The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through it, like 
 a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so small they looked !), 
 the hedge-rows, and the trees ; the pretty cottages, the beds of flowers, 
 the old churchyards, the antique houses, and every well-known object ; 
 the exquisite delights of that one journey, crowding in the short com- 
 pass of a summer's day, the joy of many years, with the winding up 
 with Home and all that makes it dear ; no tongue can tell, or pen of 
 mine describe. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The upholders of slavery in America of the atrocities of which 
 system, I shall not write one word for which I have not had ample 
 proof and Avarrant may be divided into three great classes. 
 
 The first, are those more moderate and rational owners of human 
 cattle, who have come into the possession of them as so many coins in 
 their trading capital, but who admit the frightful nature of the Insti-
 
 Three Classes of Slave-holders. i S I 
 
 tution in the abstract, and perceive the dangers to society with which 
 it is fraught : dangers which however distant they may be, or howso- 
 ever tardy in their coming on, are as certain to fall upon its guilty 
 head, as is the Day of Judgment. 
 
 The second, consists of all those owners, breeders, users, buyers 
 and sellers of slaves, who will, until the^bloody chapter has a bloody 
 end, own, breed, use, buy, and sell them at all hazards ; who doggedly 
 deny the horrors of the system in the teeth of such a mass of evidence 
 as never was brought to bear on any other subject, and to which the 
 experience of every day contributes its immense amount ; who would 
 at this or any other moment, gladly involve America in a war, civil 
 or foreign, provided that it had for its sole end and object the assertion 
 of their right to perpetuate slavery, and to whip and work and torture 
 slaves, unquestioned by any human authority, and unassailed by any 
 human power ; who, when they speak of Freedom, mean the Freedom 
 to oppress their kind, and to be savage, merciless, and cruel ; and of 
 whom every man on his own ground, in republican America, is a more 
 exacting, and a sterner, and a less responsible despot than the Caliph 
 Haroun Alraschid in his angry robe of scarlet. 
 
 The third, and not the least numerous or influential, is composed 
 of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a superior, and cannot 
 brook an equal ; of that class whose Eepublicanism means, " I will 
 not tolerate a man above me : and of those below, none must approach 
 too near ; " whose pride, in a land where voluntary servitude is 
 shunned as a disgrace, must be ministered to by slaves ; and whose 
 inalienable rights can only have" their growth in negro wrongs. 
 
 It has been sometimes urged that, in the unavailing efforts which 
 have been made to advance the cause of Human Freedom in the 
 republic of America (strange cause for history to treat of !), sufficient 
 regard has not been had to the existence of the first class of persons ; 
 and it has been contended that they are hardly used, in being con- 
 founded with the second. This is, no doubt, the case ; noble instances 
 of pecuniary and personal sacrifice have already had their growth 
 among them ; and it is much to be regretted that the gulf between 
 them and the advocates of emancipation should have been widened 
 and deepened by any means : the rather, as there are, beyond dispute, 
 among these slave-owners, many kind masters who are tender in the 
 exercise of their unnatural' power. Still, it is to be feared that this 
 injustice is inseparable from the state of things with which humanity 
 and truth are called upon to deal. Slavery is not a whit tho more 
 endurable because some hearts are to be found which can partially 
 resist its hardening influences ; nor can the indignant tide of honest 
 wrath stand still, because in its onward course it overwhelms a few 
 who are comparatively innocent, among a host of guilty. 
 
 The ground most commonly taken by these better men among the 
 advocates of slavery, is this : " Tt is a bad system ; and for myself I 
 would willingly get rid of it, if I could ; most willingly. But it is
 
 1 82 American Notes. 
 
 not so bad, as you in England take it to be. You arc deceived by 
 the representations of tbe emancipationists. The greater part of my 
 slaves are much attached to me. You will say that I do not allow 
 them to be severely treated ; but I will put it to you whether you 
 believe that it can be a general practice to treat them inhumanly, 
 when it would impair their value, and would be obviously against the 
 interests of their masters." 
 
 Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his health 
 and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear himself, indulge 
 hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder ? No. All these are 
 roads to ruin. And why, then, do men tread them '? Because such 
 inclinations are among the vicious qualities of mankind. Blot out, 
 ye friends of slavery, from the catalogue of human passions, brutal 
 lust, cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power (of all earthly 
 temptations the most difficult to be resisted), and when ye have done 
 so, and not before, we will inquire whether it be the interest of a 
 master to lash and maim the slaves, over whose lives and limbs he 
 has an absolute control ! 
 
 But again : this class, together with that last one I have named, 
 the miserable aristocracy spawned of a false republic, lift up their 
 voices and exclaim " Public opinion is all-sufficient to prevent such 
 cruelty as you denounce." Public opinion ! Why, public opinion 
 in the slave States is slavery, is it not ? Public opinion, in the slave 
 States, has delivered the slaves over, to the gentle mercies of their 
 masters. Public opinion has made the laws, and denied the slaves 
 legislative protection. Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated 
 the branding-iron, loaded the rifle, and shielded the murderer. Public 
 opinion threatens the abolitionist with death, if he venture to the 
 South ; and drags him with a rope about his middle, in broad un- 
 blushing noon, through the first city in the East. Public opinion 
 has, within a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow fire in the city 
 of St. Louis ; and public opinion has to this day maintained upon the 
 bench that estimable Judge who charged the Jury, impanelled there 
 to try his murderers, that their most horrid deed was an act of public 
 opinion, and being so, must not be punished by the laws the public 
 sentiment had made. Public opinion hailed this doctrine with a 
 howl of wild applause, and set the prisoners free, to walk the city, 
 men of mark, and influence, and station, as they had been before. 
 
 Public opinion ! what class of men have an immense preponderance 
 over the rest of the community, in their power of representing public 
 opinion in the legislature ? the slave owners. They send from their 
 twelve States one hundred members, while the fourteen free States, 
 with a free population nearly double, return but a hundred and forty- 
 two. Before whom do the presidential candidates bow down the most 
 humbly, on whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for whose tastes 
 do they cater the most assiduously in their servile protestations ? 
 The slave owners always.
 
 Public Opinion. 1 83 
 
 Public opinion! hear the public opinion of the free South, as 
 expressed by its own members in the House of Representatives at 
 Washington. " I have a great respect for the chair," quoth North 
 Carolina, " I have a great respect for the chair as an officer of the 
 house, and a great respect for him personally ; nothing but that 
 respect prevents me from rushing to the table and tearing that petition 
 which has just been presented for the abolition of slavery in the 
 district of Columbia, to pieces." " I warn the abolitionists," says 
 South Carolina, " ignorant, infuriated barbarians as they are, that if 
 chance shall throw any of them into our hands, he may expect a 
 felon's death." " Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South 
 Carolina," cried a third ; mild Carolina's colleague ; " and if we can 
 catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding the interference of 
 all the governments on earth, including the Federal government, we 
 will hang him." 
 
 Public opinion has made this law. It has declared that in Wash- 
 ington, in that city which takes its name from the father of American 
 liberty, any justice of the peace may bind with fetters any negro 
 passing down the street and thrust him into jail : no offence on the 
 black man's part is necessary. The justice says, " I choose to think 
 this man a runaway : " and locks him up. Public opinion impowers 
 the man of law when this is done, to advertise the negro in the news- 
 papers, warning his owner to come and claim him, or he will be sold 
 to pay the jail fees. But supposing he is a free black, and has no 
 owner, it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No : 
 he is sold to recompense his jailer. This has been done again, 
 and again, and again. He has no means of proving his freedom ; has 
 no advisor, messenger, or assistance of any sort or kind ; no investi- 
 gation into his case is made, or inquiry instituted. He, a free man, 
 who may have served for years, and bought his liberty, is thrown into 
 jail on no process, for no crime, and on no pretence of crime : and is 
 sold to pay the jail fees. This seems incredible, even of America, 
 but it is the law. 
 
 Public opinion is deferred to, in such cases as the following : which 
 is headed in the newspapers : 
 
 "Interesting Laiv-Case. 
 
 li An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court, arising 
 out of tho following facts. A gentleman residing in Maryland had 
 allowed an aged pair of his slaves, substantial though not legal 
 freedom for several years. While thus living, a daughter was born 
 to them, who grew up in tho same liberty, until she married a free 
 negro, and went with him to reside in Pennsylvania. They had 
 several children, and lived unmolested until the original owner died, 
 when his heir attempted to regain them ; but the magistrate before 
 whom they wero brought, decided that lie had no jurisdiction in the
 
 184 American Notes. 
 
 case. The owner seized the woman and her children in (he night, and 
 carried them to Maryland." 
 
 " Cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," is the 
 heading of advertisements in great capitals down the long columns of 
 the crowded journals. Woodcuts of a runaway negro with manacled 
 hands, crouching beneath a bluff pursuer iu top boots, who, having 
 caught him, grasps him by the throat, agreeably diversify the pleasant 
 text. The leading article protests against " that abominable and 
 hellish doctrine of abolition, which is repugnant alike to every law of 
 God and nature." The delicate mama, who smiles her acquiescence 
 in this sprightly writing as she reads the paper in her cool piazza, 
 quiets her youngest child who clings about her skirts, by promising 
 the boy " a whip to beat the little niggers with." But the negroes, 
 little and big, are protected by public opinion. 
 
 Let us try this public opinion by another test, which is important 
 in three points of view : first, as showing how desperately timid of 
 the public opinion slave owners are, in their delicate descriptions of 
 fugitive slaves in widely circulated newspapers ; secondly, as showing 
 how perfectly contented the slaves are, and how very seldom they 
 run away ; thirdly, as exhibiting their entire freedom from scar, or 
 blemish, or any mark of cruel infliction, as their pictures are drawn, 
 not by lying abolitionists, but by their own truthful masters. 
 
 The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in the 
 public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among them 
 appeared ; and others of the same nature continue to be published 
 every day, in shoals. 
 
 " Ran away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar with one prong 
 turned down." 
 
 " Ran away, a black woman, Betsy. Had an iron bar on her right 
 leg." 
 
 " Ran away, the negro Manuel. Much marked with irons." 
 
 " Ran away, the negress Fanny. Had on an iron band about her 
 neck." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro boy about twelve years old. Had round his 
 neck a chain dog-collar with ' De Lampert ' engraved on it." 
 
 " Ran away, the negro Hown. Has a ring of iron on his left foot. 
 Also, Grise, his icife, having a ring and chain on the left leg." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro boy named James. Said boy was ironed when 
 he left me." 
 
 " Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John. He has a 
 clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh four or five pounds." 
 
 ' ; Detained at the police jail, the negro wench, Myra. Has several 
 marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet." 
 
 ' Ran away, a negro woman and two children. A few days before 
 she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face. 
 I tried to make the letter M."
 
 Runaway Negroes. 185 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man named Henry ; his left eye ont, some 
 scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and much scarred with 
 the whip." 
 
 " One hundred dollars reward, for a negro fellow, Pompey, 40 years 
 old. He is hranded on the left jaw." 
 
 " Committed to jail, a negro man. Has no toes on the left foot." 
 
 ' Kan away, a negro woman named Rachel. Has lost all her toes 
 except the large one." 
 
 " Ran away, Sam. He was shot a short time since through tlio 
 hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." 
 
 " Ran away, my negro man Dennis. Said negro has heon shot in 
 the left arm between the shoulder and elbow, which has paralysed tho 
 left hand." 
 
 ' Ran away, my negro man named Simon. Ho has been shot 
 badly, in his back and right arm." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro named Arthur. Has a considerable scar across 
 his breast and each arm, made by a knife ; loves to talk much of the 
 goodness of God." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac. He has a scar on 
 his forehead, caused by a blow ; and one on his back, made by a shot 
 from a pistol." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small scar over her 
 rye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A is branded on her cheek 
 and forehead." 
 
 " Ran away, negro Ben. Has a scar on his right hand ; his thumb 
 and forefinger being injured by being shot hist fall. A part of tho 
 bone came out. He has also one or two large scars on his back and 
 hips." 
 
 " Detained at the jail, a mulatto, named Tom. Has a scar on the right 
 cheek, and appears to have been burned with powder on the face." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man named Ned. Three of his fingers aro 
 drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut. Has a scar on the back of 
 his neck, nearly half round, done by a knife." 
 
 " Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name is Josiah. 
 His back very much scarred by the whip ; and branded on the thigh 
 and hips in three or four places, thus (J M). The rim of his right 
 ear has been bit or cut off." 
 
 ' Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward. He has a scar on 
 the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his arm, and the letter 
 E on his arm." 
 
 " Ran away, negro boy Ellie. Has a scar on one of his arms from 
 tlie bite of a dog." 
 
 " Ran away, from the plantation of James Surgette, the following 
 negroes: Randal, has one ear cropped; Boh, lias lost one eye ; 
 Kentucky Tom, lias one jaw broken." 
 
 ' Ran away, Anthony. One of his ears cut off, and his left hand 
 cut with an axe."
 
 1 86 American Notes. 
 
 " Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blake. Has a piece cut 
 out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left hand cut off to the 
 second joint." 
 
 " Ean away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a scar on one side 
 of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on her back." 
 
 " Ran away, the Mulatto wench Mary. Has a cut on the left arm, 
 a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper teeth missing." 
 
 I should say, perhaps, in explanation of this latter piece of descrip- 
 tion, that among the other blessings which public opinion secures to 
 the negroes, is the common practice of violently punching out their 
 teeth. To make them wear iron collars by day and night, and to 
 worry them with dogs, are practices almost too ordinary to deserve 
 mention. 
 
 " Ran away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears, a scar on 
 the right side of his forehead, has been shot in the hind parts of his 
 legs, and is marked on the back with the whip." 
 
 " Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro man Jim. 
 He is much marked with shot in his right thigh. The shot entered 
 on the outside, halfway between the hip and knee joints." 
 
 " Brought to jail, John. Left ear cropt." 
 
 "Taken up, a negro man. Is very much scarred about the face 
 and body, and has the left ear bit off." 
 
 " Ran away, a black girl, named Mary. Has a scar on her cheek, 
 and the end of one of her toes cut off." 
 
 " Ran away, my Mulatto woman, Judy. She has had her right arm 
 broke." 
 
 " Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand has been burnt, 
 and I think the end of his forefinger is off." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man, named Washington. Has lost a part of 
 his middle finger, and the end of his little finger." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John. The tip of his 
 nose is bit off." 
 
 " Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave, Sally. Walks as 
 though crippled in the back." 
 
 " Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a small notch in one of his ears." 
 
 " Ran away, negro boy, Jack. Has a small crop out of his left ear." 
 
 " Ran away, a negro man, named Ivory. Has a small piece cut out 
 of the top of each ear." 
 
 While upon the subject of ears, I may observe that a distinguished 
 abolitionist in New York once received a negro's ear, -which had been 
 cut off close to the head, in a general post letter. It was forwarded 
 by the free and independent gentleman who had caused it to be 
 amputated, with a polite request that he would place the specimen in 
 his " collection." 
 
 I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and broken legs, 
 and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lacerated backs, and bites of 
 dogs, and brands of red-hot irons innumerable : but as my readers
 
 Deeds of Violence. 187 
 
 will be sufficiently sickened and repelled already, I will turn to another 
 branch of the subject. 
 
 These advertisements, of which a similar collection might be made 
 for every year, and month, and week, and day ; and which arc coolly 
 read in families as things of course, and as a part of the current news 
 and small-talk ; will serve to show how very much tho slaves profit 
 by public opinion, and how tender it is in their behalf. But it may 
 be worth while to inquire how the slave owners, and tho class of 
 society to which great numbers of them belong, defer to public opinion 
 in their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other ; how they are 
 accustomed to restrain their passions ; what their bearing is among 
 themselves ; whether they are fierce or gentle ; whether their social 
 customs be brutal, sanguinary, and violent, or bear the impress of 
 civilisation and refinement. 
 
 That we may have no partial evidenco from abolitionists in this 
 inquiry, either, I will once more turn to their own newspapers, and I 
 will confine myself, this time, to a selection from paragraphs which 
 appeared from day to day, during my visit to America, and which 
 refer to occurrences happening while I was there. The italics in 
 these extracts, as in the foregoing, are my own. 
 
 These cases did not all occur, it will be seen, in territory actually 
 belonging to legalised Slave States, though most, and those the very 
 worst among them, did, as their counterparts constantly do ; but the 
 position of the scenes of action in reference to places immediately at 
 hand, where slavery is the law ; and the strong resemblance between 
 that class of outrages and the rest ; lead to the just presumption that 
 the character of the parties concerned was formed in slave districts, 
 and brutalised by slave customs. 
 
 " Horrible Tragedy. 
 
 " By a slip from Hie Southporl Telegraph, Wisconsin, wc learn that 
 the Hon. Charles C. P. Arndt, Member of the Council for Brown 
 county, was shot dead on the floor of the Council chamber, by James 
 R. Vinyard, Member from Grant county. The affair grew out of a 
 nomination for SherilT of Grant county. Mr. E. S. Baker was 
 nominated and supported by Mr. Arndt. This nomination was opposed 
 by Vinyard, Avho wanted the appointment to vest in his own brother. 
 In the courso of debate, tho deceased made some statements which 
 Vinyard pronounced false, and made use of violent and insulting 
 language, dealing largely in personalities, to which Mr. A. made no 
 reply. After the adjournment, Mr. A. stepped up to Vinyard, and 
 requested him to retract, which lie refused to do, repeating the offen- 
 sive words. Mr. Arndt then made a blow at Vinyard, who stepped 
 back a pace, drew a pistol, and shot him dead. 
 
 " Tho issue appears to have been provoked on the part of Vinyard, 
 who was determined at all hazards to defeat the appointment of Baker,
 
 1 88 American Notes. 
 
 and who, himself defeated, turned his ire and revenge upon the un- 
 fortunate Arndt." 
 
 " The Wisconsin Tragedy. 
 
 " Puhlic indignation runs high in the territory of Wisconsin, in 
 relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt, in the Legislative Hall of the 
 Territory. Meetings have been held in different counties of Wisconsin, 
 denouncing the practice of secretly bearing arms in the Legislative 
 chambers of the country. We have seen the account of the expulsion 
 of James E. Vinyard, the perpetrator of the bloody deed, and are 
 amazed to hear, that, after this expulsion by those who saw Vinyard 
 kill Mr. Arndt in the presence of his aged father, who was on a visit 
 to see his son, little dreaming that he was to witness his murder, 
 Judge Dunn has discharged Vinyard on bail. The Miners' Free Press 
 speaks in terms of merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feelings of 
 the people of Wisconsin. Vinyard was within arm's length of Mr. 
 Arndt, when he took such deadly aim at him, that he never spoke. 
 Vinyard might at pleasure, being so near, have only wounded him, but 
 he chose to kill him." 
 
 " Murder. 
 
 " By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we notice a terrible 
 outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman having had a difficulty 
 with a citizen of the place, Mr. Eoss ; a brother-in-law of the latter 
 provided himself with one of Colt's revolving pistols, met Mr. B. in 
 the street, and discharged the contents of five of the barrels at him : 
 each shot talcing effect. Mr. B., though horribly wounded, and dying, 
 returned the fire, and killed Eoss on the spot." 
 
 " Terrible Death of Robert Potter. 
 
 " From the ' Caddo Gazette,' of the 12th inst., we learn the frightful 
 
 death of Colonel Eobert Potter He was beset in his house by 
 
 an enemy, named Eose. He sprang from his couch, seized his gun, 
 and, in his night-clothes, rushed from the house. For about two 
 hundred yards his speed seemed to defy his pursuers ; but, getting 
 entangled in a thicket, he was captured. Eose told him that he 
 intended to act a generous part, and give him a chance for his life. He 
 then told Potter he might run, and he should not be interrupted till 
 he reached a certain distance. Potter started at the word of command, 
 and before a gun was fired he had reached the lake. His first impulse 
 was to jump in the water and dive for it, which he did. Eose was 
 close behind him, and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him 
 as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe ; and scarce had 
 his head readied the surface of the water when it was completely 
 riddled with the shot of their guns, and lie sunk, to rise no more ! "
 
 More Deeds of Violence. 189 
 
 " Murder in Arkansas. 
 
 " We understand that a severe rencontre came off a few days since in 
 the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose, the sub-agent of the mixed 
 band of the Senecas, Quapaw, and Shawnees, and Mr. James Gillespie, 
 of the mercantile firm of Thomas G. Allison and Co., of Maysville, 
 Benton, County Ark, in which the latter was slain with a bowie-knife. 
 Some difficulty had for some time existed between the parties. It is 
 said that Major Gillespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe 
 conflict ensued, during which two pistols were fired by Gillespie and 
 one by Loose. Locso then stabbed Gillespie with one of those never- 
 failing weapons, a bowie-knife. The death of Major G. is much 
 regretted, as ho was a liberal-minded and energetic man. Since tho 
 above was in type, we have learned that Major Allison has stated to 
 some of our citizens in town that Mr. Loose gave the first blow. We 
 forbear to give any particulars, as the matter icill be the subject of 
 judicial investigation." 
 
 "Foul Deed. 
 
 " The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river, brought us a 
 handbill, offeriug a reward of 500 dollars, for the person who 
 assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late Governor of this State, at Inde- 
 pendence, on the night of the 6th inst. Governor Baggs, it is stated 
 in a written memorandum, was not dead, but mortally wounded. 
 
 " Since the above was written, we received a note from the clerk of 
 the Thames, giving the following particulars. Gov. Baggs was shot 
 by some villain on Friday, 6th inst., in the evening, while sitting in a 
 room in his own house in Independence. His son, a boy, hearing a 
 report, ran into the room, and found the Governor sitting in his chair, 
 with his jaw fallen down, and his head leaning back ; on discovering 
 the injury done to his father, ho gave the alarm. Foot tracks wero 
 found in the garden below tho window, and a pistol picked up sup- 
 posed to have been overloaded, and thrown from the hand of the 
 scoundrel who fired it. Three buck-shots of a heavy load, took effect ; 
 one going through his mouth, one into the brain, and another probably 
 in or near the brain ; all going into the back part of tho neck and 
 head. The Governor was still alive on the morning of the 7th; but 
 no hopes for his recovery by his friends, and but slight hopes from his 
 physicians. 
 
 " A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most probably has possession 
 of him by this time. 
 
 " The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days previous from a 
 baker in Independence, and the legal authorities have the description 
 of the other." 
 
 " Iiencontre. 
 
 An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening in Chatrcs 
 Street, in which one of our most respectable citizens received a
 
 190 American Notes. 
 
 dangerous wound, from a poignard, in the abdomen. From the Bee 
 (New Orleans) of yesterday, we learn the following particulars. It 
 appears that an article was published in the French side of the paper 
 on Monday last, containing some strictures on the Artillery Battalion 
 for firing their guns on Sunday morning, in answer to those from the 
 Ontario and Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the 
 families of those persons who were out all night preserving the peace 
 of the city. Major C. Gaily, Commander of the battalion, resenting 
 this, called at the office and demanded the author's name ; that of Mr. P. 
 Arpin was given to him, who was absent at the time. Some angry words 
 then passed with one of the proprietors, and a challenge followed ; the 
 friends of both parties tried to arrange the affair, but failed to do so. 
 On Friday evening, about seven o'clock, Major Gaily met Mr. P. Arpin 
 in Chatres Street, and accosted him. ' Are you Mr. Arpin ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 " ' Then I have to tell you that you are a ' (applying an 
 
 appropriate epithet). 
 
 " ' I shall remind you of your words, sir.' 
 
 " ' But I have said I would break my cane on your shoulders.' 
 
 " ' I know it, but I have not yet received the blow.' 
 
 " At these words, Major Gaily, having a cane in his hands, struck 
 Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a poignard from his 
 pocket and stabbed Major Gaily in the abdomen. 
 
 " Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal. We under- 
 stand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appearance at the 
 Criminal Court to answer the charge." 
 
 11 Affray in Mississippi. 
 " On the 27th ult., in an affray near Carthage, Leake county, 
 Mississippi, between James Cottingham and John Wilburn, the latter 
 was shot by the former, and so horribly wounded, that there was no 
 hope of his recovery. On the 2nd instant, there was an affray at 
 Carthage between A. C. Sharkey and George Goff, in which the latter 
 was shot, and thought mortally wounded. Sharkey delivered himself 
 up to the authorities, but changed his mind and escaped ! " 
 
 " Personal Encounter. 
 
 " An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days since, between tho 
 barkeeper of an hotel, and a man named Bury. It appears that Bury 
 had become somewhat noisy, and that the barkeeper, determined to 
 preserve order, had threatened to shoot Bury, whereupon Bury drew a 
 pistol and shot the barkeeper down. He was not dead at the last 
 accounts, but slight hopes were entertained of his recovery." 
 
 " Duel. 
 " The clerk of the steamboat Tribune informs us that another duel 
 was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Bobbins, a bank officer in Vicks-
 
 Board of Honour. 191 
 
 burg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel. According 
 to the arrangement, the parties had six pistols each, which, after the 
 word ' Fire ! ' they icere to discharge as fast as they pleased. Fall fired 
 two pistols without effect. Mr. Robbins' first shot took effect in Fall's 
 thigh, who fell, and was unable to continue the combat." 
 
 " Affray in Clarke County. 
 
 "An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke county (Mo.), near 
 Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19th ult., which originated in settling the 
 partnership concerns of Messrs. M'Kane and M'Allister, who had 
 been engaged in the business of distilling, and resulted in the death 
 of the latter, who was shot down by Mr. M'Kane, because of his 
 attempting to take possession of seven barrels of whiskey, tho property 
 of M'Kane, which had been knocked off to M'Allister at a sheriff's 
 sale at one dollar per barrel. M'Kane immediately fled, and at the 
 latest dates had not been taken. 
 
 " This unfortunate affray caused considerable oxcitement in the 
 neighbourhood, as both the parties were men with large families 
 depending upon them and stood well in the community." 
 
 I will quote but one more paragraph, whicb, by reason of its 
 monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious deeds. 
 
 " Affair of Honour. 
 
 " We have just heard the particulars of a meeting which took place 
 on Six Mile Island, on Tuesday, between two young bloods of our 
 city : Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and William Hine, aged thirteen 
 years. They were attended by young gentlemen of the same age. 
 The weapons used on the occasion, were a couple of Dickson's best 
 rifles ; the distance, thirty yards. They took one fire, without any 
 damago being sustained by either party, except the ball of Thurston's 
 gun passing through the crown of Hine's hat. Through the interces- 
 sion of the Board of Honour, the challenge was withdrawn, and tho 
 difference amicably adjusted." 
 
 If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board of Honour 
 whicli amicably adjusted the difference between these two little boys, 
 who in any other part of the world would have been amicably adjusted 
 on two porters' backs and soundly flogged with birchen rods, ho will 
 be possessed, no doubt, with as strong a sense of its ludicrous cha- 
 racter, as that which sets me laughing whenever its image rises up 
 before me. 
 
 Now, I appeal to every human mind, imbued with the commonest 
 of common sense, and the commonest of common humanity ; to all 
 dispassionate, reasoning creatures, of any shado of opinion ; and ask, 
 with these revolting evidences of the stato of society which exists in 
 and about the slave districts of America before them, can they have
 
 192 American Notes. 
 
 a doubt of tho real condition of the slave, or can they for a moment 
 make a compromise between the institution or any of its flagrant 
 fearful features, and their own just consciences ? Will they say of 
 any tale of cruelty and horror, however aggravated in degree, that it 
 is improbable, when they can turn to the public prints, and, running, 
 read such signs as these, laid before them by the men who rule the 
 slaves : in their own acts and under their own hands ? 
 
 Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of slavery 
 are at once the cause and the effect of the reckless license taken by 
 these freeborn outlaws ? Do we not know that the man who has been 
 born and bred among its wrongs ; who has seen in his childhood 
 husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives ; women, 
 indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might 
 lay the heavier stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal 
 overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field 
 of toil, under the very lash itself ; who has read in youth, and seen 
 his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and 
 their disfigured persons, which could not be published elsewhere, of 
 so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts : do we not know 
 that that man, whenever bis wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal 
 savage ? Do we not know that as he is a coward in his domestic life, 
 stalking among his shrinking men and women slaves armed with his 
 heavy whip, so he will be a coward out of doors, and carrying cowards' 
 weapons hidden in his breast, will shoot men down and stab them 
 w r hen he quarrels ? And if our reason did not teach us tbis and much 
 beyond ; if we were such idiots as to close our eyes to that fine mode 
 of training which rears up such men ; should we not know that they 
 who among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative halls, and 
 in the counting-house, and on the market-place, and in all the else- 
 where peaceful pursuits of life, must be to their dependants, even 
 though they were free servants, so many merciless and unrelenting 
 tyrants? 
 
 What ! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland, 
 and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in ques- 
 tion ? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who ham-string 
 cattle : and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who notch the 
 ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh, 
 learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their 
 poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation which their slaves shall wear 
 for life and carry to the grave, breaking living limbs as did the soldiery 
 who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless 
 creatures up for targets ! Shall we whimper over legends of tho 
 tortures practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon 
 the cruelties of Christian men ! Shall we, so long as these things 
 last, exult above the scattered remnants of that race, and triumph in 
 the white enjoyment of their possessions ? Rather, for me, restore 
 the forest and the Indian village ; in lieu of stars and stripes, let soruo
 
 General Character of the People. 193 
 
 poor feather flutter in the breeze ; replace the streets and squares by 
 wigwams ; and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors 
 fill tho air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave. 
 
 On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in respect 
 of which our national character is changing fast, let the plain Truth 
 be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about the bush by hinting 
 at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are drawn by 
 Englishmen in conflict let it be said and known : " Wo owe this change 
 to Republican Slavery. Theso are the weapons of Freedom. With 
 sharp points and edges such as these, Liberty in America hews and 
 hacks her slaves ; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote them to a 
 better use, and turn them on each other." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 There are many passages in this book, where I have been at somo 
 pains to resist the temptation of troubling my readers with my own 
 deductions and conclusions : preferring that they should judge for 
 themselves, from such premises as I have laid before them. My only 
 object in the outset, was, to carry them with me faithfully whei-esoever 
 I went : and that task I have discharged. 
 
 But I may be pardoned, if on 6uch a theme as the general character 
 of tho American people, and the general character of their social 
 system, as presented to a stranger's eyes, I desire to express my own 
 opinions in a few words, before I bring these volumes to a close. 
 
 They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and affec- 
 tionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but to enhance their warmth 
 of heart and ardent enthusiasm ; and it is the possession of these 
 latter qualities in a most remarkable degree, which renders an edu- 
 cated American one of the most endearing and most generous of 
 friends. I never was so won upon, as by this class : never yielded 
 up my full confidence and esteem so readily and pleasnrably, as to 
 them ; never can make again, in half-a-year, so many friends for whom 
 I seem to entertain the regard of half a life. 
 
 These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole people. 
 That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in their growth 
 among the mass ; and that there are influences at work which endanger 
 them still more, and give but little present promise of their healthy 
 restoration ; is a truth that ought to be told. 
 
 It is an essential part of every national character to pique itself 
 mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its 
 wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish in tho
 
 194 American Notes. 
 
 popular mind of America, and the prolific parent of an innumerable 
 brood of evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet the American citizen 
 plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he is sufficiently dis- 
 passionate to perceive the ruin it works ; and will often adduce it, 
 in spite of his own reason, as an instance of the great sagacity and 
 acuteness of the people, and their superior shrewdness and inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 " You carry," says the stranger, " this jealousy and distrust into 
 every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men from your 
 legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the 
 suffrage, who, in their every act, disgrace your Institutions and your 
 people's choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so given to change, 
 that your inconstancy has passed into a proverb ; for you no sooner 
 set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and dash it 
 into fragments : and this, because directly you reward a benefactor, 
 or a public servant, you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded ; 
 and immediately apply yourselves to find out, either that you have 
 been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in his 
 deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you, from tho 
 President downwards, may date his downfall from that moment ; for 
 any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate 
 directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once 
 to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the 
 way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well 
 deserved ; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be 
 laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think 
 you, or likely to elevate the character of the governors or the governed, 
 among you ? " 
 
 The answer is invariably the same : " There's freedom of opinion 
 here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and we are not to be 
 easily overreached. That's how our people come to be suspicious." 
 
 Another prominent feature is the love of " smart " dealing : which 
 gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust : many a 
 defalcation, public and private ; and enables many a knave to hold his 
 head up with the best, who well deserves a halter ; though it has not 
 been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done 
 mere in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the 
 public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected 
 in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, 
 or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his observance 
 of tho golden rule, " Do as you would be done by," but are considered 
 with reference to their smartness. I recollect, on both occasions of 
 our passing that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking on the 
 bad effects such gross deceits must have when they exploded, in 
 generating a want of confidence abroad, and discouraging foreign 
 investment ; but I was given to understand that this was a very smart 
 scheme by which a deal of money had been made : and that its
 
 Smartness. 195 
 
 smartest feature was, that they forgot theso things abroad, in a very 
 short time, and speculated again, as freely as ever. The following 
 dialogue I have held a hundred times : " Is it not a very disgraceful 
 circumstance that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a 
 large property by the most infamous and odious means, and notwith- 
 standing all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated 
 and abetted by your Citizens ? He is a public nuisance, is he not ? " 
 ,: Yes, sir." " A convicted liar ? " " Yes, sir." " Ho has been kicked, 
 and cuffed, and caned ? " " Yes, sir." " And he is utterly dis- 
 honourable, debased, and profligate ? " " Yes, sir." " In the name 
 of wonder, then, what is his merit ? " " Well, sir, he is a smart man." 
 
 In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic usages are 
 referred to tho national lovo of trade ; though, oddly enough, it would 
 be a weighty charge against a foreigner that he regarded the Americans 
 as a trading people. The love of trade is assigned as a reason for that 
 comfortless custom, so very prevalent in country towns, of married 
 persons living in hotels, having no fireside of their own, and seldom 
 meeting from early morning until late at night, but at the hasty 
 public meals. The love of trade is a reason why the literature of 
 America is to remain for ever unprotected : " For we are a trading 
 people, and don't care for poetry : " though we do, by the way, profess 
 to be very proud of our poets : whilo healthful amusements, cheerful 
 means of recreation, and wholesome fancies, must fade before the stern 
 utilitarian joys of trade. 
 
 Theso three characteristics arc strongly presented at every turn, 
 full in the stranger's view. But, the foul growth of America has a 
 more tangled root than this ; and it strikes its fibres, deep in its 
 licentious Press. 
 
 Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South ; pupils be 
 taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands ; 
 colleges may thrive, churches may bo crammed, temperance may bo 
 diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through 
 the land with giant strides : but while the newspaper press of America 
 is in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that 
 country is hopeless. Year by year, it must and will go back ; year 
 by year, tho tone of public feeling must sink lower down ; year by 
 year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before 
 all decent men ; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers 
 of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad life of 
 their degenerate child. 
 
 Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, thcro 
 are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credit. 
 From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen connected 
 with publications of this class, I have derived both pleasure and 
 profit. But the name of theso is Few, and of the others Legion ; and 
 tho influence of the good, is powerless to counteract the moral poison 
 of the bad.
 
 196 American Notes. 
 
 Among the gentry of America ; among the well-informed and 
 moderate : in the learned professions ; at the bar and on the bench : 
 there is, as there can be, but one opinion, in reference to the vicious 
 character of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended I 
 will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a 
 disgrace that their influence is not so great as a visitor would 
 suppose. I must be pardoned for saying that "there is no warrant for 
 this plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the 
 opposite conclusion. 
 
 When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can 
 climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without 
 first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this 
 monster of depravity ; when any private excellence is safe from its 
 attacks ; when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie 
 of social decency and honour is held in tho least regard ; when any 
 man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to 
 think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to 
 a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he 
 utterly loathes and despise: in his heart ; when those who most 
 acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and 
 who most denounce it tc each other, dare to set their heels upon, and 
 crush it openly, in the sight of all men : then, I will believe that its 
 influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. 
 But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black 
 hand in every appointment in the state, from a president to a post- 
 man ; while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the 
 standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading 
 in a newspaper, or they will not read at all ; so long must its odium 
 be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works, bo 
 plainly visible in the Republic. 
 
 To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to 
 the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe ; to those who are 
 accustomed to anything else in print and paper ; it would be im- 
 possible, without an amount of extract for which I Lave neither space 
 nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in 
 America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on 
 this head, let him repair to any place in this city of London, where 
 scattered numbers of these publications are to be found ; and there, 
 let him form his own opinion.* 
 
 It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people 
 
 * Note to the Orioixae Edition - . Or let him refer to an able, and perfectly 
 truthful article, in The Fvreign Quarterly Review, published in the present month of 
 October; to which my attention has been attracted, since these sheets have been 
 passing through the press. He will find some specimens there, by no means 
 remarkable to any man who has been in America, but sufficiently striking to one 
 who has not.
 
 Sects, Emigrants from England. 1 97 
 
 as a whole, if tbey loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more. 
 It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to lightness of 
 heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful, witbout 
 being eminently and directly useful. But here, I think the general 
 remonstrance, " we are a new country," which is so often advanced as 
 an excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable, as being, of right, 
 only the slow growth of an old one, may be very reasonably urged : 
 and I yet hope to hear of there being some other national amusement 
 in the United States, besides newspaper politics. 
 
 They certainly are not a humoi'ous people, and their temperament 
 always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy character. In 
 shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron quaintness, the Yankees, 
 or people of New England, unquestionably take the lead ; as they do in 
 most other evidences of intelligence. But in travelling about, out of 
 the large cities as I have remarked in former parts of these volumes 
 I was quite oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melancholy 
 air of business : which was so general and unvarying, tbat at every 
 new town I came to, I seemed to meet the very same people whom I 
 bad left behind me, at tbe last. Such defects as are perceptible in 
 tho national manners, seem, to me, to be referable, in a great degree, 
 to this cause : which has generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse 
 usages, and rejected the graces of life as undeserving of attention. 
 There is no doubt that Washington, who was always most scrupulous 
 and exact on points of ceremony, perceived the tendency towards this 
 mistake, even in his time, and did bis utmost to correct it. 
 
 I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects that tbe pre- 
 valence of various forms of dissent in America, is in any way at- 
 tributable to the non-existence there of an established church : indeed, 
 I think the temper of the people, if it admitted of such an Institution 
 being founded amongst them, would lead them to desert it, as a matter 
 of course, merely because it teas established. But, supposing it to 
 exist, I doubt its probable efficacy in summoning the wandering sheep 
 to one great fold, simply because of the immense amount of dissent 
 which prevails at home ; and because I do not find in America any ono 
 form of religion with which we in Europe, or even in England, are 
 unacquainted. Dissenters resort thither in great numbers, as other 
 people do, simply because it is a land of resort ; and great settlements 
 of them are founded, because ground can be purchased, and towns and 
 villages reared, where there were none of the human creation before. 
 But even the Shakers emigrated from England ; our country is not 
 unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, tho apostle of Mormonism, or to his 
 benighted disciples ; I have beheld religious scenes myself in some 
 of our populous towns which can hardly be surpassed by an American 
 camp-meeting ; and I am not aware that any instance of superstitious 
 imposture on the one hand, and superstitious credulity on the other 
 has had its origin in the United States, which we cannot more than
 
 198 American Notes. 
 
 parallel by the precedents of Mrs. Southcote, Mary Tofts the rabbit- 
 breeder, or even Mr. Thorn of Canterbury : which latter case arose, 
 some time after the dark ages had passed away. 
 
 The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly lead the 
 people to assert their self-respect and their equality ; but a traveller 
 is bound to bear those Institutions in his mind, and not hastily to 
 resent the near approach of a class of strangers, who, at home, would 
 keep aloof. This characteristic, when it was tinctured with no foolish 
 pride, and stopped short of no honest service, never offended me ; and 
 I very seldom, if ever, experienced its rude or unbecoming display. 
 Once or twice it was comically developed, as in the following case ; 
 but this was an amusing incident, and not the rule, or near it. 
 
 I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none to 
 travel in, but those with the memorable cork soles, which were much 
 too hot for the fiery decks of a steamboat. I therefore sent a message 
 to an artist in boots, importing, with my compliments, that I should 
 be happy to see him, if he would do me the polite favour to call. He 
 very kindly returned for answer, that he would " look round " at six 
 o'clock that evening. 
 
 I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, at about that 
 time, when the door opened, and a gentleman in a stiff cravat, within 
 a year or two on either side of thirty, entered, in his hat and gloves ; 
 walked up to the looking-glass ; arranged his hair ; took off his gloves ; 
 slowly produced a measure from the uttermost depths of his coat 
 pocket ; and requested me, in a languid tone, to " unfix " my straps. 
 I complied, but looked with some curiosity at his hat, which was still 
 upon his head. It might have been that, or it might have been the 
 heat but he took it off. Then, he sat himself down on a chair 
 opposite to me ; rested an arm on each knee ; and, leaning forward 
 very much, took from the ground, by a great effort, the specimen of 
 metropolitan workmanship which I had just pulled off: whistling, 
 pleasantly, as he did so. He turned it over and over ; surveyed it 
 with a contempt no language can express ; and inquired if I wished 
 him to fix me a boot like that ? I courteously replied, that provided 
 the boots wore large enough, I would leave the rest to him ; that if 
 convenient and practicable, I should not object to their bearing some 
 resemblance to the model then before him ; but that I would be 
 entirely guided by, and would beg to leave the whole subject to, his 
 judgment and discretion. " You an't partickler, about this scoop in 
 the heel, I suppose then ? " says he : " we don't foller that, here." I 
 repeated my last observation. He looked at himself in the glass 
 again ; went closer to it to dash a grain or two of dust out of tbe 
 corner of his eye ; and settled his cravat. All this time, my leg and 
 foot were in the air. " Nearly ready, sir ? " I inquired. " Well, 
 pretty nigh,' : he said ; " keep steady.' 1 I kept as steady as I could, 
 both in foot and face ; and having by this time got the dust out, and
 
 Last Words. 
 
 199 
 
 found bis pencil-case, he measured mo, and made the necessary notes. 
 When he had finished, he fell into his old attitude, and taking up the 
 boot again, mused for some time. " And this," he said, at last, " is 
 an English boot, is it ? This is a London boot, eh ? " " That, sir," 
 I replied, " is a London boot." He mused over it again, after the 
 manner of Hamlet with Yorick's skull ; nodded his head, as who should 
 say, " I pity the Institutions that led to the production of this boot ! " ; 
 rose ; put up his pencil, notes, and paper glancing at himself in the 
 glass, all the time put on his hat ; drew on his gloves very slowly ; 
 and finally walked out. When he had been gone about a minute, the 
 door reopened, and his bat and his head reappeared. He looked round 
 the room, and at the boot again, which was still lying on the floor ; 
 appeared thoughtful for a minute ; and then said " Well, good arter- 
 noon." " Good afternoon, sir," said I : and that was the end of the 
 interview. 
 
 There is but one other head on which I wish to offer a remark ; 
 and that has reference to the public health. In so vast a country, 
 where there are thousands of millions of acres of land yet unsettled 
 and uncleared, and on every rood of which, vegetable decomposition is 
 annually taking place ; where there are so many great rivers, and such 
 opposite varieties of climate ; there cannot fail to be a great amount 
 of sickness at certain seasons. But I may venture to say, after con- 
 versing with many members of the medical profession in America, 
 that I am not singular in the opinion that much of the disease which 
 does prevail, might be avoided, if a few common precautions were 
 observed. Greater means of personal cleanliness, are indispensable to 
 this end ; the custom of hastily swallowing large quantities of animal 
 food, three times a-day, and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after 
 each meal, must be changed ; the gentler sex must go more wisely 
 clad, and take more healthful exercise ; and in the latter clause, the 
 males must be included also. Above all, in public institutions, and 
 throughout the whole of every town and city, the system of ventilation, 
 and drainage, and removal of impurities requires to be thoroughly 
 revised. There is no local Legislature in America which may not 
 study Mr. Chadwick's excellent Report upon the Sanitary Condition 
 of our Labouring Classes, with immense advantage. 
 
 I have now arrived at the close of this book. I have little reason 
 to believe, from certain warnings I have had since I returned to 
 England, that it will be tenderly or favourably received by the 
 American people ; and as I havo written the Truth in relation to 
 the mass of those who form their judgments and express their opinions, 
 it will be seen that I have no desire to court, by any adventitious 
 means, the popular applause. 
 
 It is enough for me, to know, that what I have set down in theso
 
 200 American Notes. 
 
 pages, cannot cost me a single friend on the other side of the Atlantic, 
 who is, in anything, deserving of the name. For the rest, I put my 
 trust, implicitly, in the spirit in which they have been conceived and 
 penned ; and I can bide my time. 
 
 I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I suffered it to 
 influence me in what I have written ; for, in either case, I should 
 have offered but a sorry acknowledgment, compared with that I bear 
 within my breast, towards those partial readers of my former books, 
 across the Water, who met me with an open hand, and not with one 
 that closed upon an iron muzzle. 
 
 TEE END.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 At a Public Dinner given to roe on Saturday the 18th of April, 18G8, 
 in the City of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press 
 of the United States of America, I made the followiug observations 
 among others : 
 
 " So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that I 
 might have boen contented with troubling you no further from my 
 present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth 
 cliargo myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatso- 
 ever and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my 
 second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the 
 national generosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded 
 I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around me on every 
 side, changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of 
 land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, 
 changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, 
 changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, 
 without whose advancement no advancement can take place anywhere. 
 Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five and 
 twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that T had 
 nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was 
 here first. And this brings me to a point on which I have, ever since 
 I lauded in the United States last November, observed a strict silence, 
 though sometimes tempted to break it. but in reference to which 1 
 will, with your good have, take you into my confidenco now. Even
 
 202 Postscript. 
 
 the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, 
 and I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances observed 
 its information to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself. 
 Indeed, I have, now and again, been more surprised by printed news 
 that I have read of myself, than by any printed news that I have 
 ever read in my present state of existence. Thus, the vigour and 
 perseverance with which I have for some months past been collecting 
 materials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America has 
 much astonished me ; seeing that all that time my declaration has 
 been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the 
 Atlantic, that no consideration on earth would induce me to write 
 one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this 
 is the confidence I seek to placo in you) is, on my return to England 
 in my own person, in my own Journal, to bear, for tho behoof of my 
 countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country 
 as I have hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have 
 been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been 
 received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, 
 hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the 
 privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here 
 and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and 
 so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall 
 cause to bo republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two 
 books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I 
 will do and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but 
 because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour." 
 
 I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay 
 upon them, and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. 
 So long as this book shall last, I hope that they will form a part of 
 it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiences and 
 impressions of America. 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 May, 1868.
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY
 
 ITALIAN PEASANTS.
 
 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 THE READERS PASSPORT. 
 
 If the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take their 
 credentials for the different places which are the subject of its 
 author's reminiscences, from the Author himself, perhaps they may- 
 visit them, in fancy, the more agreeably, and with a better under- 
 standing of what they are to expect. 
 
 Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many means 
 of studying the history of that interesting country, and tho in- 
 numerable associations entwined about it. I make but little referenco 
 to that stock of information ; not at all regarding it as a necessary 
 consequence of my having had recourse to the storehouse for my own 
 benefit, that I should reproduce its easily accessible contents before 
 the eyes of my readers. 
 
 Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave examination 
 into the government or misgovernment of any portion of the country. 
 No visitor of that beautiful land can fail to have a strong conviction 
 on the subject ; but as I chose when residing there, a Foreigner, to 
 abstain from the discussion of any such questions with any oi'der of 
 Italians, so I would rather not enter on the inquiry now. During 
 my twelve months' occupation of a house at Genoa, I never found 
 that authorities constitutionally jealous were distrustful of me ; and I 
 should be sorry to give them occasion to regret their free courtesy, 
 either to myself or any of my countrymen. 
 
 There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all Italy, but 
 could bo easily buried under a mountain of printed paper devoted to 
 dissertations on it. I do not, therefore, though an earnest admirer of 
 Painting and Sculpture, expatiato at any length on famous Pictures 
 and Statues. 
 
 This Book is a series of faint reflections more shadows in tho 
 water of places to which tho imaginations of most people arc 
 attracted in a greater or less degreo, on which mine had dwelt for 
 years, and which have some interest for all. The greater part of tho 
 descriptions were written on tho spot, and sent home, from time to 
 time, in private letters. I do not mention the circumstance as an 
 excuse for any defects they may present, for it would bo none ; but as
 
 2o6 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 a guarantee to the Reader that they were at least penned in tho 
 fulness of the subject, and with the liveliest impressions of novelty 
 and freshness. 
 
 If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the reader will 
 suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny Day, in the midst of 
 the objects of which they treat, and will like them none the worse for 
 having such influences of the country upon them. 
 
 I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Professors of tho 
 Roman Catholic faith, on account of anything contained in these 
 pages. I have done my best, in one of my former productions, to do 
 justice to them ; and I trust, in this, they will do justice to me. 
 When I mention any exhibition that impressed me as absurd or 
 disagreeable, I do not seek to connect it, or recognise it as necessarily 
 connected with, any essentials of their creed. When I treat of the 
 ceremonies of the Holy Week, I merely treat of their effect, and do 
 not challenge the good and learned Dr. Wiseman's interpretation of 
 their meaning. When I hint a dislike of nunneries for young girls 
 who abjure the world before they have ever proved or known it ; or 
 doubt the ex officio sanctity of all Priests and Friars ; I do no more 
 than many conscientious Catholics both abroad and at home. 
 
 I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, and would 
 fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the water so roughly, as to 
 mar the shadows. I could never desire to be on better terms with all 
 my friends than now, when distant mountains rise, once more, in my 
 path. For I need not hesitate to avow, that, bent on correcting a 
 brief mistake I made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations 
 between myself and my readers, and departing for a moment from my 
 old pursuits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, in Switzerland ; 
 where during another year of absence, I can at once work out the 
 themes I have now in my mind, without interruption : and while I 
 keep my English audience within speaking distance, extend my 
 knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly attractive to me.* 
 
 This book is made as accessible as possible, because it would be a 
 great pleasure to me if I could hope, through its means, to compare 
 impressions with some among the multitudes who will hereafter visit 
 the scenes described with interest and delight. 
 
 And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch my reader's 
 portrait, which I hope may be thus supposititiously traced for either 
 sex: 
 
 Complexion Fair. 
 
 Eyes Very cheerful. 
 
 Nose Not supercilious. 
 
 Mouth Smiling. 
 
 Visage Beaming. 
 
 General Expression Extremely agreeable. 
 
 * This was written in 18*16.
 
 CIVIL AST) MILITAhY.
 
 GOING THEOUGH FRANCE. 
 
 On a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and weather of 
 eighteen hundrod and forty-four, it was, my good friend, when don't 
 be alarmed ; not when two travellers might have been observed 
 slowly making their way over that picturesque and broken ground by 
 which the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually attained 
 but when an English travelling-carriage of considerable proportions, 
 fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Bclgrave Square, 
 London, was observed (by a very small French soldier ; for I saw 
 him look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice in the 
 Rue Eivoli at Paris. 
 
 I am no more bound to explain why the English family travelling 
 by this carriage, inside and out, should be starting for Italy on a 
 Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, than I am to assign a 
 reason for all the little men in France being soldiers, and all the big 
 men postilions ; which is the invariable rule. But, they had some 
 sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt ; and their reason 
 for being there at all, was, as you know, that they were going to live 
 in fair Genoa for a year ; and that the head of the family purposed, 
 in that space of time, to stroll about, wherever his restless humour 
 carried him. 
 
 And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained to 
 tho population of Paris generally, that I was that Head and Chief; 
 and not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat beside mo 
 in the person of a French Courier best of servants and most beaming 
 of men ! Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than 
 I, who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no 
 account at all. 
 
 There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris as wo 
 rattled near the dismal Morgue and ovor the Pont Neuf to reproach 
 us for our Sunday travelling. The wine-shops (every second house) 
 were driving a roaring trade ; awnings were spreading, and chairs 
 and tables arranging, outside the cafes, preparatory to the eating of 
 ices, and drinking of cool liquids, later in the day ; shoe-blacks were 
 busy on the bridges ; shops were open ; carts and waggons clattered 
 to and fro ; the narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets across the River, 
 were so many dense perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-coloured 
 night-caps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy heads of 
 hair ; nothing at that hour denoted a day of rest, unless it were the 
 appearance, here and there, of a family pleasure party, crammed into 
 a bulky old lumbering cab ; or of some contemplative holiday-maker 
 in the freest and easiest dishabille, leaning out of a low garret 
 window, watching the drying of his newly polished shoes on the little
 
 2o8 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 parapet outside (if a gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the 
 sun (if a lady), with calm anticipation. 
 
 Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement which 
 surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards Marseilles 
 are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. To Avallon. To 
 Chalons. A sketch of one day's proceedings is a sketch of all three ; 
 and here it is. 
 
 We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very long whip, 
 and drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint Petersburg 
 in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's : only he sits his own horse 
 instead of standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these 
 postilions, are sometimes a century or two old ; and are so ludicrously 
 disproportionate to the wearer's foot, that the spur, which is put 
 Avhere his own heel comes, is generally halfway up the leg of the 
 boots. The man often comes out of the stable-yard, with his whip in 
 his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both hands, one boot at 
 a time, which he plants on the ground by the side of his horse, with 
 great gravity, until everything is ready. When it is and oh 
 Heaven! the noise they make about it! he gets into the boots, 
 shoes and all, or is hoisted into them by a couple of friends ; adjusts 
 the rope harness, embossed by the labours of innumerable pigeons in 
 the stables ; makes all the horses kick and plunge ; cracks his whip 
 like a madman ; shouts " En route Hi ! " and away we go. He is 
 sure to have a contest with his horse before we have gone very far ; 
 and then he calls him a Thief, and a Brigand, and a Pig, and what 
 not ; and beats him about the head as if he were made of wood. 
 
 There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the 
 country, for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an intermin- 
 able avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary plain again. 
 Plenty of vines there are in the open fields, but of a short low kind, 
 and not trained in festoons, but about straight sticks. Beggars 
 innumerable there are, everywhere ; but an extraordinarily scanty 
 population, and fewer children than I ever encountered. I don't 
 believe we saw a hundred children between Paris and Chalons. 
 Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled : with odd little towers at 
 the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and 
 were staring down into the moat ; other strange little towers, in 
 gardens and fields, and down lanes, and in farm-yards : all alone, and 
 always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for any purpose at 
 all ; ruinous buildings of all sorts ; sometimes an hotel de ville, 
 sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a 
 chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over 
 by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed little casements ; are 
 the standard objects, repeated over and over again. Sometimes we 
 pass a village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a 
 perfect town of out-houses ; and painted over the gateway, " Stabling 
 for Sixty Horses," as indeed there might be stabling for sixty score,
 
 French Posting. 209 
 
 Were there any horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, 
 or anything stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative 
 of the wine inside : which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping 
 with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, 
 though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long, 
 strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing 
 cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of 
 one man, or even boy and he very often asleep in the foremost cart 
 come jingling past : the horses drowsily ringing the bells upon 
 their harness, and looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their 
 great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and thickness, with a 
 pair of grotesque horns growing out of the collar, very much too warm 
 for the Midsummer weather. 
 
 Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day ; with the dusty 
 outsides in blue frocks, like butchers ; and the insides in white night- 
 caps : and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and shaking, like 
 an idiot's head ; and its Young-France passengers staring out of 
 window, with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles awfully 
 shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clenched in their 
 National grasp. Also the Malle Poste, with only a couple of 
 passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of 
 sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, 
 in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no English- 
 man would believe in ; and bony women dawdle about in solitary 
 places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing 
 or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real 
 shepherdesses with their flocks to obtain an adequate idea of which 
 pursuit and its followers, in any country, it is only necessary to 
 take any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine to yourself what- 
 ever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the descriptions therein 
 contained. 
 
 You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you generally 
 do in the last stage of the day ; and the ninety-six bells upon tho 
 horses twenty-four a-piece have been ringing sleepily in your ears 
 for half an hour or so ; and it has become a very jog-trot, monotonous, 
 tiresome sort of business ; and you havo been thinking deeply about 
 the dinner you will have fit the next stage ; when, down at the end of 
 the long avenue of trees through which you are travelling, the first 
 indication of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: 
 and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven 
 pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere 
 sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins 
 to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, 
 crack, crack. Crack-crack-crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Ilelo ! 
 Hola! Vite ! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route ! 
 "Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, creek ; 
 hclo ! hola ! charite pour l'amour dc Dieu ! crick-crack-crick-crack ; 
 
 r
 
 2 1 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 crick, crick, crick ; bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack ; round the 
 corner, up the narrow street, down the paved hill on the other side ; 
 in the gutter ; bump, bump ; jolt, jog, crick, crick, crick ; crack, 
 crack, crack; into the shop-windows on the left-hand side of the 
 street, preliminary to a sweeping turn into the wooden archway on 
 the right; rumble, rumble, rumble; clatter, clatter, clatter; crick, 
 crick, crick ; and here we are in the yard of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, 
 used up, gone out, smoking, spent, exhausted ; but sometimes making 
 a false start unexpectedly, with nothing coming of it like a firework 
 to the last ! 
 
 The landlady of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the landlord 
 of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the femme de chambre of tho 
 Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here ; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with a red 
 beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, 
 is here ; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in a corner of 
 the yard by himself, with a shovel hat upon his head, and a black 
 gown on his back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the 
 other ; and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure, is open-mouthed and 
 open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door. The landlord of the 
 Hotel do l'Ecu d'Or, dotes to that extent upon the Courier, that he 
 can hardly wait for his coming down from the box, but embraces his 
 very legs and boot-heels as he descends. " My Courier ! My brave 
 Courier ! My friend ! My brother ! " The landlady loves him, tho 
 femme de chambre blesses him, the garcon worships him. The 
 Courier asks if his letter has been received ? It has, it has. Are the 
 rooms prepared ? They are, they are. The best rooms for my noble 
 Courier. The rooms of state for my gallant Courier ; the whole house 
 is at the sorvico of my best of friends ! He keeps his hand upon the 
 carriage-door, and asks some other question to enhance the expectation. 
 He carries a green leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by a belt. 
 The idlers look at it ; one touches it. It is full of five-franc pieces. 
 Murmurs of admiration are heard among the boys. The landlord falls 
 upon the Courier's neck, and folds him to his breast. He is so much 
 fatter than he was, he says ! He looks so rosy and so well ! 
 
 The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The lady of the 
 family gets out. Ah sweet lady ! Beautiful lady ! The sister of the 
 lady of the family gets out. Great Heaven, Ma'amselle is charming ! 
 First little boy gets out. Ah, what a beautiful little boy ! First little 
 girls gets out. Oh, but this is an enchanting child ! Second little 
 girl gets out. The landlady, yielding to the finest impulse of our 
 common nature, catches her up in her arms ! Second little boy gets 
 out. Oh, the sweet boy ! Oh, the tender little family ! The baby is 
 handed out. Angelic baby ! The baby has topped everything. All 
 the rapture is expended on the baby ! Then the two nurses tumble 
 out ; and the enthusiasm swelling into madness, the whole family are 
 swept up-stairs as on a cloud; while the idlers press about the 
 carriage, and look into it, and walk .round it, and touch it. For it is
 
 The Hotel de VEcu (V Or. 2 1 1 
 
 something to touch a carriage that has held so many people. It is a 
 legacy to leave one's children. 
 
 The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night, 
 which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it : through 
 a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump, across a balcony, 
 and next door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments arc large 
 and lofty ; each with two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the 
 windows, with red and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. 
 Dinner is already laid in it for three ; and the napkins are folded in 
 cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no carpets, 
 and not much furniture to speak of ; but there is abundance of looking- 
 glass, and there are large vases under glass shades, filled with artificial 
 flowers; and there are plenty of clocks. The whole party aro in 
 motion. The brave Courier, in particular, is everywhere : looking 
 after the beds, having wine poured down his throat by his dear 
 brother the landlord, and picking up green cucumbers always 
 cucumbers ; Heaven knows where he gets them with which he 
 walks about, one in each hand, like truncheons. 
 
 Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup ; there are very 
 large loaves one a-pieco ; a fish ;' four dishes afterwards ; some 
 poultry afterwards ; a dessert afterwards ; and no lack of wine. There 
 is not much in the dishes ; but they are very good, and always ready 
 instantly. When it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten 
 the two cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large decanter 
 of oil, and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and 
 proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down 
 upon the court-yard of the inn. Off we go ; and very solemn and 
 grand it is, in the dim light : so dim at last, that tho polite, old, 
 lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle in his hand, 
 to grope among the tombs with and looks among the grim columns, 
 very like a ghost who is searching for his own. 
 
 Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of 
 the inn aro supping in the open air, at a great table ; the dish, a stew 
 of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron cauldron 
 it was boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are very 
 merry ; merrier than the gentleman with the red beard, who is play- 
 ing billiards in the light room on the left of the yard, where shadows, 
 with cues in their hands, and cigars in their mouths, cross and recross 
 the window, constantly. Still the thin Cure walks up and down 
 alone, with his book and umbrella. And there ho walks, and thero 
 the billiard-balls rattlo, long after we are fast asleep. 
 
 We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming 
 yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a carriage, 
 in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk ; 
 and as we finish breakfast, the horses como jingling into the yard 
 from the Post-house. Everything taken out of the carriage is put 
 back again. The brave Courier announces that all is ready, after
 
 2 1 2 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 walking into every room, and looking all round it, to be certain that 
 nothing is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody connected 
 with the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted. The brave Courier 
 runs into the house for a parcel containing cold fowl, sliced ham, 
 bread, and biscuits, for lunch ; hands it into the coach ; and runs 
 back again. 
 
 What has he got in his hand now ? More cucumbers ? No. A 
 long strip of paper. It's the bill. 
 
 The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning : one supporting 
 the purse : another, a mighty good sort of leathern bottle, filled to the 
 throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in the house. He never 
 pays the bill till this bottle is full. Then he disputes it. 
 
 He disputes it now, violently. He is still the landlord's brother, 
 but by another father or mother. He is not so nearly related to him 
 as he was last night. The landlord scratches his head. The brave 
 Courier points to certain figures in the bill, and intimates that if they 
 remain there, the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth and for ever an 
 hotel de l'Ecu de cuivre. The landlord goes into a little counting- 
 house. The brave Courier follows, forces the bill and a pen into his 
 hand, and talks more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the pen. 
 The Courier smiles. The landlord makes an alteration. The Courier 
 cuts a joke. The landlord is affectionate, but not weakly so. He 
 bears it like a man. He shakes hands with his brave brother, but he 
 don't hug him. Still, he loves his brother; for he knows that he 
 will be returning that way, one of these fine days, with another family, 
 and ho foresees that his heart will yearn towards him again. The 
 brave Courier traverses all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, 
 inspects the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and away we go ! 
 
 It is market morning. The market is held in the little square 
 outside in front of the cathedral. It is crowded with men and women, 
 in blue, in red, in green, in white ; with canvassed stalls ; and flutter- 
 ing merchandise. The country people are grouped about, with their 
 clean baskets before them. Here, the lace-sellers ; there, the butter 
 and egg-sellers ; there, the fruit-sellers ; there, the shoe-makers. 
 The whole place looks as if it were the stage of some great theatre, 
 and the curtain had just run up, for a picturesque ballet. And there 
 is the cathedral to boot : scene-like : all grim, and swarthy, and 
 mouldering, and cold : just splashing the pavement in one place with 
 faint purple drops, as the morning sun, entering by a little window 
 on the eastern side, struggles through some stained glass panes, on 
 the western. 
 
 In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little ragged 
 kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the town ; and are 
 again upon the road.
 
 LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON. 
 
 Chalons is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on the hank 
 of tho river, and the little steamboats, gay with green and red paint, 
 that come and go npon it : which make up a pleasant and refreshing 
 scene, after the dusty roads. But, unless you would like to dwell on 
 an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular poplars on it. that 
 look in the distance like so many comhs with broken teeth : and 
 unless you would like to pass your life without the possibility of 
 going up-hill, or going up anything but stairs : you would hardly 
 approve of Chalons as a place of residence. 
 
 You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons : which 
 you may reach, if you will, in one of the before-mentioned steam- 
 boats, in eight hours. 
 
 What a city Lyons is ! Talk about people feeling, at certain 
 unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds ! Here is a 
 whole town that is tumbled, anyhow, out of tho sky ; having been 
 first caught up, like other stones that tumble down from that region, 
 out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold ! The two great 
 streets through which the two great rivers dash, and all the little 
 streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering, and swelter- 
 ing. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, 
 and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these 
 houses swarm ; and the mites inside were lolling out of the windows, 
 and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and out at 
 the doors, and comiug out to pant and gasp upon the pavement, and 
 creeping in and out among huge piles and bales of fusty, musty, 
 stifling goods; and living, or rather not dying till their time should 
 come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town, melted 
 into one, would hardly convey an impression of Lyons as it presented 
 itself to me : for all the undrained, unscavengercd qualities of a 
 foreign town, seemed grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a 
 manufacturing one ; and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles 
 out of my way to avoid encountering again. 
 
 In the cool of the evening : or rather in the faded heat of the day : 
 we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a few 
 dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no difference, in 
 point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of tho 
 streets ; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth aboard 
 ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would havo 
 nothing to say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey 
 might be ashamed of. If you would know all about the architecture 
 of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, endowments, and 
 history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's Guide-book, and may you 
 not read it there, with thanks to him, as I did!
 
 2 1 4 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious 
 clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made, 
 in connection with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the 
 church was very anxious it should be shown ; partly for the honour 
 of the establishment and the town ; and partly, perhaps, because of 
 his deriving a percentage from the additional consideration. How- 
 ever that may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little 
 doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out of them, 
 and jerked themselves back again, with that special unsteadiness of 
 purpose, and hitching in the gait, which usually attaches to figures 
 that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood 
 explaining these wonders, and pointing them out, severally, with a 
 wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary ; and close to 
 her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking 
 puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw accomplished : 
 instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging his little 
 door violently after him. Taking this to be emblematic of the victory 
 over Sin and Death, and not at all unwilling to show that I perfectly 
 understood the subject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, 
 " Aha ! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed of." 
 " Pardon, Monsieur," said the Sacristan, with a polite motion of his 
 hand towards the little door, as if introducing somebody " The 
 Angel Gabriel ! " 
 
 Soon after day-break next morning, we were steaming down the 
 Arrowy Ehone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty 
 vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or four other pas- 
 sengers for our companions : among whom, the most remarkable was 
 a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, 
 with a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if ho 
 had tied it there to remind himself of something : as Tom Noddy, in 
 the farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the first 
 indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were 
 rushing on beside them : sometimes close beside them : sometimes 
 with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and 
 small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen 
 through the light open towers of their churches, and clouds moving 
 slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them ; ruined castles 
 perched on every eminence ; and scattered houses in the clefts and 
 gullies of the hills ; made it very beautiful. The great height of 
 these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the 
 charm of elegant models ; their excessive whiteness, as contrasted 
 with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the 
 olive-tree ; and the puny size, and little slow walk of the Lilliputian 
 men and women on the bank ; made a charming picture. There were 
 ferries out of number, too ; bridges ; the famous Pont d'Esprit, with 
 I don't know how many arches ; towns where memorable wines are,
 
 In the Church at Avignon. 215 
 
 made ; Vnllence, where Napoleon studied ; and the noblo river, 
 bringing at every winding turn, new beauties into view. 
 
 There lay boforo us, that same afternoon, the broken bridgo of 
 Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun ; yet with an undor-done- 
 pie-crust, battlemented wall, that never will be brown, though it bako 
 for centuries. 
 
 The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant 
 Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and 
 very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched 
 from house to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, 
 ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, 
 virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale 
 beneath, it was very quaint and lively. All this was much set off, 
 too, by the glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, 
 of quiet sleepy court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent 
 as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian 
 Nights. Tho three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any 
 one of those doors till the street rang again, and the porter who 
 persisted in asking questions the man who had the delicious pur- 
 chases put into his basket in the morning might have opened it 
 quite naturally. 
 
 After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. 
 Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the 
 walk delightful : though the pavement- stones, and stones of the walls 
 and houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably. 
 
 We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral : where 
 Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, 
 several old women, a baby, and a very self-possessed dog, who had 
 marked out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, 
 beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which 
 constitutional walk he trotted, during the service, as methodically and 
 calmly, as any old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old chureh, 
 and the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp 
 weather ; but tho sun was shining in, splendidly, through tho red 
 curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furniture; and it 
 looked as bright and cheerful as need be. 
 
 Going apart, in this church, to see some painting which was being 
 executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was led to 
 observe more closely than I might otherwise have done, a great 
 number of votivo offerings with which the walls of the different 
 chapels were profusely hung. I will not say decorated, for they were 
 very roughly and comically got up ; most likely by poor sign-painters, 
 who eke out their living in that way. They were all little pictures: 
 each representing some sickness or calamity from which tho person 
 placing it there, had escaped, through the interposition of his or her 
 patron saint, or of the Madonna ; and I may refer to them as good 
 specimens of the class generally. They are abundant in Italy.
 
 2 1 6 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspec- 
 tive, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books ; but they were 
 oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family, 
 had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe 
 amputated an operation which a saintly personage had sailed into 
 the room, upon a couch, to superintend. In another, a lady was lying 
 in bed, tucked up very tight and prim, and staring with much com- 
 posure at a tripod, with a slop-basin on it ; the usual form of 
 washing-stand, and the only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, 
 in her chamber. One would never have supposed her to be labouring 
 under any complaint, beyond the inconvenience of being miraculously 
 wide awake, if the painter had not hit upon the idea of putting all her 
 family on their knees in one corner, with their legs sticking otit behind 
 them on the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a 
 kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, 
 a lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the 
 city walls, by a sort of piano-forto van. But the Madonna was there 
 again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse 
 (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know ; but 
 he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence or 
 compunction. On every picture " Ex voto " was painted in yellow 
 capitals in the sky. 
 
 Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, and 
 are evidently among the many compromises made between the false 
 religion and the true, when the true was in its infancy, I could wish 
 that all the other compromises were as harmless. Gratitude and 
 Devotion are Christian qualities ; and a grateful, humble, Christian 
 spirit may dictate the observance. 
 
 Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palaco of the Popes, of 
 which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack : 
 while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock 
 their own old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. 
 But we neither went there, to see state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, 
 nor a common jail, though wo dropped some money into a prisoners' 
 box outside, whilst the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron 
 bars, high up, and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of 
 the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit. 
 
 A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes, - 
 proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, 
 though it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in, came 
 out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some 
 large keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we should 
 go. How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government Officer 
 (concierge da palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't know how 
 many years ; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes ; and 
 how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators ; and how she had 
 resided in the palace from an infant, had been born there, if I
 
 The Goblin of Avignon. 217 
 
 recollect right, I needn't relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, 
 sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She was alight and 
 flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She 
 never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose. She stamped 
 her feet, clutched us by tho arms, flung herself into attitudes, 
 hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis : now 
 whispered as if the Inquisition wero there still : now shrieked as if 
 she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way 
 with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new 
 horror looking back and walking stealthily, and making horrible 
 grimaces that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a 
 sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through 
 a whole fever. 
 
 Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers, wo 
 turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admis- 
 sion, and locked again behind us : and entered a narrow court, 
 rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish ; part of it 
 choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that onco 
 communicated (or is said to have done so) with another castle on the 
 opposite bank of the river. Close to this court-yard is a dungeon 
 we stood within it, in another minute in the dismal tower des 
 cuhliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to 
 the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from the sky which 
 now looks down into it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in 
 which tho prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight 
 hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their constancy 
 might be shaken, even before they were confronted with their gloomy 
 judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still small cells, 
 shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly daik; 
 still massively doorcd and fastened, as of old. 
 
 Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a 
 vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room : onco the Chapel of the 
 Holy Office. Tho place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The 
 platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the 
 parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of 0110 
 of these Inquisition chambers ! But it was, and may be traced there 
 
 yet. 
 
 High up in the jealous wall, aro niches where tho faltering replies 
 of tho accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been 
 brought out of the very cell wo had just looked into, so awfully ; 
 along tho same stone passage. We had trodden in their very foot- 
 steps. 
 
 I am gazing round me, with tho horror that the place inspires, 
 when Goblin clutches mo by tho wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, 
 but the handlo of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, 
 to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining a 
 lugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top,
 
 218 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 to the bright day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers 
 hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that 
 all the little company are thero ; sits down upon a mound of stones ; 
 throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la 
 Question ! " 
 
 The Chamber of Torture ! And the roof was made of that shape to 
 stiflo the victim's cries ! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this 
 awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin ! Sit with your short arms crossed 
 on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and 
 then flame out again. 
 
 Minutes ! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, when, 
 with her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber, 
 describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus 
 it ran round ! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash ! An endless routine 
 of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash ! upon the sufferer's limbs. 
 See the stone trough ! says Goblin. For the water torture ! Gurgle, 
 swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour ! Suck the bloody rag, 
 deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you 
 draw ! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the 
 smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen 
 servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of 
 Him who never did a miracle but to heal ; who never struck a man 
 with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, any one affliction 
 of mankind ; and never strotched His blessed hand out, but to give 
 relief and ease ! 
 
 See ! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they made the 
 irons red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp stake, on which the 
 tortured persons hung poised : dangling with their whole weight from 
 the roof. " But ; " and Goblin whispers this ; " Monsieur has heard 
 of this tower ? Yes ? Let Monsieur look down, then ! " 
 
 A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of 
 Monsieur ; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the 
 wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the 
 top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower : very dismal, very dark, very cold. 
 The Executioner of tho Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head 
 to look down also, flung thoso who were past all further torturing, 
 down here. " But look ! does Monsieur see the black stains on the 
 wall ? " A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows 
 Monsieur and would without the aid of the directing-key where 
 they are. " What are they ? " " Blood ! " 
 
 In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here, 
 sixty persons : men and women (" and priests," says Goblin, " priests ") : 
 were murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful 
 pit, where a quantity of quicklime was tumbled down upon their 
 bodies. Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more ; 
 but whilo one stone of the strong building in which the deed was 
 done, remains upon another, there they will lie in the memories of
 
 The Vaults of the Inquisition. 219 
 
 men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is 
 now. 
 
 Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, that the cruel 
 deed should be committed in this place ! That a part of the atrocities 
 and monstrous institutions, which had been, for scores of years, at 
 work, to change men's nature, should in its last service, tempt them 
 with the ready means of gratifying their furious and beastly rage ! 
 Should enable them to show themselves, in the height of their frenzy, 
 no worse than a great, solemn, legal establishment, in the height of 
 its power ! No worse ! Much better. Tbey used the Tower of the 
 Forgotten, in the name of Liberty their liberty; an earth-born 
 creature, nursed in the black mud of the Bastile moats and dungeons, 
 and necessarily betraying many evidences of its unwholesome bring- 
 ing-up but tho Inquisition used it in the name of Heaven. 
 
 Goblin's finger is lifted : and sho steals out again, into tho Chapel 
 of tho Holy Office. Sho stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her 
 great effect is at hand. She waits for tho rest. She darts at tho 
 brave Courier, who is explaining something ; hits him a sounding rap 
 on the hat with the largest key ; and bids him be silent. She 
 assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round a 
 grave. 
 
 " Voila ! " sho darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with 
 a crash, in her goblin energy, though it is no light weight. " Voila 
 les oubliettes ! Voila les oubliettes ! Subterranean ! Frightful ! 
 Black ! Terrible ! Deadly ! Les oubliettes de l'lnquisition ! " 
 
 My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, 
 where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of tho world out- 
 side : of wives, friends, children, brothers : starved to death, and 
 made the stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I 
 felt on seeing the accursed wall below, docayed and broken through, 
 and the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a senso 
 of victory and triumph. I felt exalted with tho proud delight of 
 living in these degenerate times, to sec it. As if I were the hero of 
 some high achievement ! The light in the doleful vaults was typical 
 of the light that has streamed in, on all persecution in God's name, 
 but which is not yet at its noon ! It cannot look more lovely to a 
 blind man newly restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, 
 calmly and majestically, treading down the darkness of that Infernal 
 Well.
 
 AVIGNON TO GENOA. 
 
 Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was 
 struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her 
 arras a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously. 
 
 When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under 
 the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the build- 
 ing. Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk 
 in the thick wall in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney ; 
 its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it ; its 
 household implements and scraps of dress against the wall ; and a 
 sober-looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with 
 Goblin,) knitting at the door looked exactly like a picture by 
 
 OSTADE. 
 
 I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and 
 yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which 
 the light, down in the vaults, had given me the assurance. The 
 immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous 
 strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its 
 gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, 
 awaken awe and wonder. The recollection of its opposite old uses : 
 an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place 
 of torture, the court of the Inquisition : at one and the same time, a 
 house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood : gives to every stone 
 in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its 
 incongruities. I could think of little, however, then, or long after- 
 wards, but the sun in the dungeons. The palace coming down to bo 
 the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their 
 rough talk, and common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering 
 from its dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something 
 to rejoice at ; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its 
 chambers of cruelty that was its desolation and defeat ! If I had 
 seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not 
 that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could waste it, 
 like tho sunbeams in its secret council-chamber, and its prisons. 
 
 Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from the 
 little history I mentioned just now, a short anecdote, quite appropriate 
 to itsolf, connected with its adventures. 
 
 " An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de 
 Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously insulted some distinguished ladies 
 of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young man, and 
 horribly mutilated him. For several years the legate kept his revenge 
 within his own breast, but he was not the less resolved upon its 
 gratification at last. He even made, in the fulness of time, advances 
 towards a complete reconciliation ; and when their apparent sincerity
 
 Aix, en Route. 221 
 
 had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in this palace, certain 
 families, whole families, whom he sought to exterminate. The utmost 
 gaiety animated the ropast ; hut the measures of the legate were well 
 taken. "When the dessert was on the board, a Swiss presented him- 
 self, with the announcement that a strange ambassador solicited an 
 extraordinary audience. The legate, excusing himself, for the moment, 
 to his guests, retired, followed by his officers. Within a few minutes 
 afterwards, five hundred persons were reduced to ashes : the whole of 
 that wing of the building having been blown into the- air with a 
 terrible explosion ! " 
 
 After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with churches just 
 now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat being very great, 
 the roads outside the Avails were strewn with people fast asleep in 
 every little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half asleep and half 
 awake, who were waiting until the sun should be low enough to admit 
 of their playing bowls among the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road. 
 The harvest here, was already gathered in, and mules and horses were 
 treading out the corn in the fields. We came, at dusk, upon a wild 
 and hilly country, once famous for brigands ; and travelled slowly up a 
 steep ascent. So we went on, until eleven at night, when we halted 
 at the town of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to sleep. 
 
 The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the light 
 and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and the town 
 was very clean ; but so hot, and so intensely light, that when I walked 
 out at noon it was like coming suddenly from the darkened room into 
 crisp blue fire. The air was so very clear, that distant hills and 
 rocky points appeared within an hour's walk ; while the town imme- 
 diately at hand with a kind of blue wind between me and it 
 seemed to be white hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air from the 
 surface. 
 
 We left this town towards evening, and took the road to Marseilles. 
 A dusty road it was ; the houses shut up close ; and the vines powdered 
 white. At nearly all tho cottage doors, women were peeling and 
 slicing onions into earthen bowls for supper. So they had been doing 
 last night all the way from Avignon. We passed one or two shady 
 dark chateaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished with cool basins 
 of water : which were the more refreshing to behold, from the great 
 scarcity of such residences on the road wo had travelled. As we 
 approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered with holiday 
 people. Outside tho pnhlic-houses were parties smoking, drinking, 
 playing draughts and cards, and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, 
 everywhere. We went on, through a long, straggling, dirty suburb, 
 thronged with people ; having on our left a dreary slope of land, on 
 which the country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always staring 
 white, are jumbled and hoaped without the slightest order : backs, 
 fronts, sides, and gables towards all points of the compass ; until, at 
 last, we entered the town.
 
 222 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and foul ; 
 and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and disagreeable 
 place. But the prospect, from the fortified heights, of the benutiful 
 Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks and islands, is most delightful. 
 These heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque reasons 
 as an escape from a compound of vile smells perpetually arising from 
 a great harbour full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse of 
 innumerable ships with all sorts of cargoes : which, in hot weather, 
 is dreadful in the last degree. 
 
 There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets ; with red 
 shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of orange 
 colour ; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards, and no 
 beards ; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and Neapolitan 
 head-dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in clusters on the 
 pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of their houses, or walking 
 up and down the closest and least airy of Boulevards ; and there were 
 crowds of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up the way, 
 constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and uproar, was tho 
 common madhouse ; a low, contracted, miserable building, looking 
 straight upon the street, without the smallest screen or court-yard ; 
 where chattering mad-men and mad-women were peeping out, through 
 rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely 
 aslant into their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry 
 them, as if they were baited by a pack of dogs. 
 
 We were pretty well accommodated at the Hotel du Paradis, situated 
 in a narrow street of very high houses, with a hairdresser's shop 
 opposite, exhibiting in one of its windows two full-length waxen 
 ladies, twirling round and round : which so enchanted the hairdresser 
 himself, that he and his family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool undresses, 
 on the pavement outside, enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, 
 with lazy dignity. The family had retired to rest when we went to 
 bed, at midnight ; but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab 
 slippers) was still sitting there, with his legs stretched out before him, 
 and evidently couldn't bear to have the shutters put up. 
 
 Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of all 
 nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds : fruits, 
 wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of merchandise. 
 Taking one of a great number of lively little boats with gay-striped 
 awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great ships, under tow- 
 ropes and cables, against and among other boats, and very much too 
 near the sides of vessels that were faint with oranges, to the Marie 
 Antoinette, a handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the mouth 
 of the harbour. By-and-by, the carriage, that unwieldy " trifle from 
 the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, bumping against everything, and 
 giving occasion for a prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came 
 stupidly alongside ; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the 
 opon sea. The vessel was beautifully clean ; the meals were served
 
 First Impressions of Genoa. 223 
 
 tinder an awning on deck ; the night was calm and clear ; the quiet 
 beauty of the sea and sky unspeakable. 
 
 "We were off Nice, early nest morning, and coasted along, within a 
 few miles of the Cornice road (of which more in its place) nearly all 
 day. We could see Genoa before three ; and watching it as it gradu- 
 ally developed its splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above terrace, 
 garden above garden, palace above palace, height above height, was 
 ample occupation for us, till we ran into the stately harbour. Having 
 been duly astonished, here, by the sight of a few Cappuccini monks, 
 who were watching the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, 
 we drove off to Albaro, two miles distant, where we had engaged a 
 house. 
 
 The way lay through the main streets, but not through the Strada 
 Nuova, or the Strada Balbi, which are the famous streets of palaces. 
 I never in my life was so dismayed ! The wonderful novelty of 
 everything, the unusual smells, the unaccountable filth (though it is 
 reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), the disorderly jumbling of 
 dirty houses, one upon the roof of another ; the passages more squalid 
 and more close than any in St. Giles's or old Paris ; in and out of 
 which, not vagabonds, but well-dressed women, with white veils and 
 great fans, were passing and repassing ; the perfect absence of re- 
 semblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, or post, or pillar, 
 to anything one had ever seen before ; and the disheartening dirt, 
 discomfort, and decay ; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a dismal 
 reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered vision of saints 
 and virgins' shrines at the street corners of great numbers of friars, 
 monks, and soldiers of vast red curtains, waving in the door-ways 
 of the churches of always going up-hill, and yet seeing every other 
 street and passage going higher up of fruit-stalls, with fresh lemons 
 and oranges hanging in garlands made of vine-leaves of a guard- 
 house, and a drawbridge and some gateways and vendors of iced 
 water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the kennel and 
 this is all the consciousness I had, until I was set down in a rank, 
 dull, weedy court-yard, attached to a kind of pink jail ; and was told 
 I lived there. 
 
 I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have an 
 attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look 
 back upon the city with affection as connected with many hours of 
 happiness and quiet ! But these are my first impressions honestly 
 set down ; and how they changed, I will set down too. At present, 
 let us breathe after this long-winded journey.
 
 GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 The first impressions of such a place as Albaeo, the suburb of Genoa, 
 where I am now, as my American friends would say, " located," can 
 hardly fail, I should imagine, to be mournful and disappointing. It 
 requires a little time and use to overcome the feeling of depression 
 consequent, at first, on so much ruin and neglect. Novelty, pleasant 
 to most people, is particularly delightful, I think, to me. I am not 
 easily dispirited when I have the means of pursuing my own fancies 
 and occupations ; and I believe I have some natural aptitude for 
 accommodating myself to circumstances. But, as yet, I stroll about 
 here, in all the holes and corners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual 
 state of forlorn surprise ; and returning to my villa : the Villa 
 Bagnerello (it sounds romantic, but Signor Bagnerello is a butcher 
 hard by) ; have sufficient occupation in pondering over my new 
 experiences, and comparing them, very much to my own amusement, 
 with my expectations, until I wander out again. 
 
 The Villa Bagnerello : or the Pink Jail, a far more expressive name 
 for the mansion : is in one of the most splendid situations imaginable. 
 The noble bay of Genoa, with the deep blue Mediterranean, lies 
 stretched out near at hand ; monstrous old desolate houses and 
 palaces are dotted all about ; lofty hills, with their tops often hidden 
 in the clouds, and with strong forts perched high up on their craggy 
 sides, are close upon the left ; and in front, stretching from the walls 
 of the house, down to a ruined chapel which stands upon the bold and 
 picturesque rocks on the sea-shore, are green vineyards, where you 
 may wander all day long in partial shade, through interminable vistas 
 of grapes, trained on a rough trellis- work across the narrow paths. 
 
 This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow, that 
 when we arrived at the Custom-house, we found the people here had 
 taken the measure of the narrowest among them, and were waiting to 
 apply it to the carriage ; which ceremony was gravely performed in 
 the street, while we all stood by in breathless suspense. It was found 
 to be a very tight fit, but just a possibility, and no more as I am 
 reminded every day, by the sight of various large holes which it 
 punched in the walls on either side as it came along. -We are more 
 fortunate, I am told, than an old lady, who took a house in these parts 
 not long ago, and who stuck fast in her carriage in a lane ; and as it 
 was impossible to open one of the doors, she was obliged to submit to 
 the indignity of being hauled through one of the little front windows, 
 like a harlequin. 
 
 When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come to an 
 archway, imperfectly stopped up by a rusty old gate my gate. The 
 rusty old gate has a bell to correspond, which you ring as long as 
 you like, and which nobody answers, as it has no connection whatever
 
 First Experiences at Genoa. 225 
 
 with the house. But there is a rusty old knocker, too very loose, so 
 that it slides round when you touch it and if you learn the trick of 
 it, and knock long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier 
 comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, 
 all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens ; cross it, enter a 
 square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass 
 into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed 
 walls : not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the sola. It has 
 live windows and five doors, and is decorated with pictures which 
 would gladden the heart of one of those picture-cleaners in London 
 who hang up, as a sign, a picture divided, like death and the lady, at 
 the top of the old ballad : which always leaves you in a state of un- 
 certainty whether the ingenious professor has cleaned one half, or 
 dirtied the other. The furniture of this sola is a sort of red brocade. 
 All the chairs are immovable, and the sofa weighs several tons. 
 
 On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are 
 dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms : each with a 
 multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers other gaunt 
 chambers, and a kitchen ; and down-stairs is another kitchen, which, 
 with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning charcoal, looks 
 like an alchemical laboratory. There are also some balf-dozen small 
 sitting-rooms, where the servants in this hot July, may escape from 
 the heat of the fire, and where the bravo Courier plays all sorts of 
 musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the evening long. 
 A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim, bare house it is, 
 as ever I beheld or thought of. 
 
 There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the drawing- 
 room ; and under this terrace, and forming one side of the little 
 garden, is what used to be the stable. It is now a cow-house, and has 
 three cows in it, so that we get new milk by the bucketful. There is 
 no pasturage near, and they never go out, but are constantly lying 
 down, and surfeiting themselves with vine-leaves perfect Italian 
 cows enjoying the dolce far' niente all day long. They arc presided 
 over, and slept with, by an old man named Antonio, and his son ; two 
 burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and feet, who wear, each, a shirt, 
 a pair of trousers, and a red sash, with a relic, or somo sacred charm 
 like the bonbon off a twelfth-cake, hanging round the neck. The old 
 man is very anxious to convert mo to the Catholic faith ; and exhorts 
 me frequently. We sit upon a stone by the door, sometimes in the 
 evening, like Kobinson Crusoe and Friday reversed ; and ho generally 
 relates, towards my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint 
 Peter chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight he has in his 
 imitation of the cock. 
 
 The view, as I have said, is charming ; but in the day you must 
 keen the lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive you mad ; 
 and when the sun goes down you must shut up all lho windows, or 
 the mosquitoes would tempt you to commit suicide. So at this timo
 
 226 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 of the year, you don't see much of the prospect within doors. As for 
 the flies, you don't mind them. Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, 
 and whose name is Legion, and who populate the coach-house to that 
 extent that I daily expect to see the carriage going off bodily, drawn 
 by myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The rats are kept away, 
 quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who roam about the garden 
 for that purpose. The lizards, of course, nobody cares for ; they play 
 in the sun, and don't bite. The little scorpions are merely curious. 
 The beetles are rather late, and have not appeared yet. The frogs 
 aro company. There is a preserve of them in the grounds of the next 
 villa ; and after nightfall, one would think that scores upon scores of 
 women in pattens were going up and down a wet stone pavement 
 without a moment's cessation. That is exactly the noise they make. 
 
 The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful sea-shore, was 
 dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the Baptist. I believe 
 there is a legend that Saint John's bones were received there, with 
 various solemnities, when they were first brought to Genoa ; for 
 Genoa possesses them to this day. When there is any uncommon 
 tempest at sea, they are brought out and exhibited to the raging 
 weather, which they never fail to calm. In consequence of this con- 
 nection of Saint John with the city, great numbers of the common 
 people are christened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is pro- 
 nounced in the Genoese patois " Batcheetcha," like a sneeze. To 
 hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or 
 festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, is not a little singular 
 and amusing to a stranger. 
 
 The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose walls 
 (outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts of subjects, 
 grim and holy. But time and the sea-air have nearly obliterated 
 them ; and they look like the entrance to Yauxhall Gardens on a 
 sunny day. The court-yards of these houses are overgrown with 
 grass and weeds ; all sorts of hideous patches cover the bases of the 
 statues, as if they were afflicted with a cutaneous disorder ; the outer 
 gates are rusty ; and the iron bars outside the lower windows are all 
 tumbling down. Firewood is kept in halls where costly treasures 
 might be heaped up, mountains high ; waterfalls are dry and choked ; 
 fountains, too dull to play, and too lazy to work, have just enough 
 recollection of their identity, in their sleep, to make the neighbourhood 
 damp ; and the sirocco wind is often blowing over all these tilings for 
 days together, like a gigantic oven out for a holiday. 
 
 Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the Virgin s 
 mother, when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worn 
 green wreaths of the vine in some procession or other, bathed in them, 
 by scores. It looked very odd and pretty. Though I am bound to 
 confess (not knowing of the festa at that time), that I thought, and 
 was quite satisfied, they wore them as horses do to keep the flies off. 
 
 Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in honour of St.
 
 The National Game of Mora. 227 
 
 Nazaro. One of the Albaro young men brought two large bouquets 
 Boon after breakfast, and coming up-stairs into the great sala, pre- 
 sented them himself. This was a polite way of begging for a contri- 
 bution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's honour, so 
 we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger departed : 
 well satisfied. At six o'clock in the evening we went to the church 
 close at hand a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and 
 bright draperies, and tilled, from the altar to the main door, with 
 women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply a long white 
 veil the " mezzero ; " and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking 
 audience I ever saw. The young women are not generally pretty, 
 but they walk remarkably well, and in their personal carriage and the 
 management of their veils, display much innate grace and elegance. 
 There were some men present : not very many : and a few of these 
 were kneeling about the aisles, while everybody else tumbled over 
 them. Innumerable tapers were burning in the church ; the bits of 
 silver and tin about the saints (especially in the Virgin's necklace) 
 sparkled brilliantly ; the priests were seated about the chief altar ; 
 the organ played away, lustily, and a full band did the like ; while a 
 conductor, in a little gallery opposite to the band, hammered away on 
 tho desk before him, with a scroll ; and a tenor, without any voice, 
 sang. The band played one way, the organ played another, the singer 
 went a third, and the unfortunate conductor banged and banged, and 
 flourished his scroll on some principle of his own : apparently well 
 satisfied with the whole performance. I never did hear such a dis- 
 cordant diu. The heat was intense all the time. 
 
 Tho men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on their 
 shoulders (they never put them on), were playing bowls, and buying 
 sweetmeats, immediately outside the church. When half-a-dozen of 
 them finished a game, they came into the aisle, crossed themselves 
 with the holy water, knelt on one knee for an instant, and walked oft' 
 again to play another game at bowls. They are remarkably expert at 
 this diversion, and will play in the stony lanes and streets, and on the 
 most uneven and disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much 
 nicety as on a billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the 
 national one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, and 
 at which they will stake everything they possess. It is a destructive 
 kind of gambling, requiring no accessaries but the ten fingers, which 
 are always I intend no pun at hand. Two men play together. 
 One calls a number say the extreme one, ten. He marks what 
 portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or four, or five fingers ; 
 and his adversary has, in tho same instant, at hazard, and without 
 seeing his hand, to throw out as many fingers, as will make the exact 
 balance. Their eyes and hands become so used to this, and act with 
 such astonishing rapidity, that an uninitiated bystander would find it 
 very difficult, if not impossible, to follow the progress of the game. 
 The initiated, however, of whom there Is always an eager group
 
 228 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 looking on, devour it with the most intense avidity ; and as they are 
 always ready to champion one side or the other in case of a dispute, 
 and are frequently divided in their partisanship, it is often a very 
 noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest game in the world ; for 
 the numbers are always called in a loud sharp voice, and follow as close 
 upon each other as they can be counted. On a holiday evening, 
 standing at a window, or walking in a garden, or passing through the 
 streets, or sauntering in any quiet place about the town, you will hear 
 this game in progress in a score of wine-shops at once ; and looking 
 over any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon 
 a knot of players in full cry. It is observable that most men have a 
 propensity to throw out some particular number oftener than another ; 
 and the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed players will mutually 
 endeavour to detect this weakness, and adapt their game to it, is very 
 curious and entertaining. The effect is greatly heightened by the 
 universal suddenness and vehemence of gesture ; two men playing for 
 half a farthing with an intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake were 
 life. 
 
 Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to somo 
 member of the Brignole family, but just now hired by a school of 
 Jesuits for their summer quarters. I walked into its dismantled 
 precincts the other evening about sunset, and couldn't help pacing up 
 and down for a little time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the place : 
 which is repeated hereabouts in all directions. 
 
 I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides of a 
 weedy, grass-grown court-yard, wheroof the house formed a third 
 side, and a low terrace-walk, overlooking the garden and the neigh- 
 bouring hills, the fourth. I don't believe there was an uncracked 
 stone in the whole pavement. In the centre was a melancholy statue, 
 so piebald in its decay, that it looked exactly as if it had been covered 
 with sticking-plaster, and afterwards powdered. The stables, coach- 
 houses, offices, were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted. 
 
 Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches ; 
 windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying 
 about in clods ; fowls and cats had so taken possession of the out- 
 buildings, that I couldn't help thinking of the fairy tales, and eyeing 
 them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting to bo changed 
 back again. One old Tom in particular : a scraggy brute, with a 
 hungry green eye (a poor relation, in reality, I am inclined to think) : 
 came prowling round and round me, as if he half believed, for the 
 moment, that I might be the hero come to marry the lady, and set all 
 to rights ; but discovering his mistake, he suddenly gave a grim snarl, 
 and walked away with such a tremendous tail, that he couldn't get 
 into the little hole where he lived, but was obliged to wait outside, 
 until his indignation and his tail had gone down together. 
 
 In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this colonnade, 
 gome Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a nut ; but the Jesuits
 
 Ichabod ! 229 
 
 had given them notice to go, and they had gone, and that was shnt up 
 too. The house : a wandering, echoing, thundering harrack of a place, 
 with the lower windows harred up, as usual, was wide open at the 
 door : and I have no doubt I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and 
 gone dead, and nobody a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms on 
 an upper floor was tenanted ; and from one of these, the voice of a 
 young-lady vocalist, practising bravura lustily, came flaunting out 
 upon the silent evening. 
 
 I went down into the garden, intended to bo prim and quaint, with 
 avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in 
 stone basins ; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, 
 under grown or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of 
 slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. There was nothing 
 bright in the whole scene but a firefly one solitary firefly showing 
 against the dark bushes like the last little speck of the departed Glory 
 of the house ; and even it went flitting up and down at sudden angles, 
 and leaving a place with a jerk, and describing an irregular circle, 
 and returning to the same place with a twitch that startled one : as if 
 it were looking for the rest of the Glory, and wondering (Heaven 
 knows it might !) what had become of it. 
 
 In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows of my 
 dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into familiar 
 forms and substances ; and I already began to think that when the 
 time should come, a year hence, for closing the long holiday and 
 turning back to England, I might part from Genoa with anything but 
 a glad heart. 
 
 It is a place that " grows upon you " every day. There seems to 
 be always something to find out in it. There are the most extra- 
 ordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can loso your 
 way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle !) twenty times a day, 
 if you liko ; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and sur- 
 prising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts ; things that 
 are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, 
 break upon the view at every turn. 
 
 They who would know how beautiful the country immediately sur- 
 rounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top of Monte 
 Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls : a feat more easily per- 
 formed. No prospect can bo more diversified and lovely than tho 
 changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the two rivers, the 
 Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the heights along which the strongly 
 fortified walls are carried, liko the great wall of China in little. In 
 not the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of 
 a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertain- 
 ment from real Genoese dishes, such as Tugliarini ; Ravioli ; German 
 sausages, strong of garlic, sliced and eaten with fresh green figs ; 
 cocks' combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with mutton chops and
 
 230 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 liver ; small pieces of some unknown part of a calf, twisted into small 
 shreds, fried, and served up in a great dish like whitebait ; and other 
 curiosities of that kind. They often get wine at these suburban 
 Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portugal, which is brought over 
 by small captains in little trading-vessels. They buy it at so much 
 a bottle, without asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody 
 tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps ; of which they label 
 one Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite flavours, 
 qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are comprised under these 
 two general heads is quite extraordinary. The most limited range is 
 probably from cool Gruel up to old Marsala, and down again to applo 
 Tea. 
 
 The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare 
 can well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live 
 and walk about ; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of 
 well, or breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in 
 all sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, 
 and lack of repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like 
 the houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. 
 There are few street doors ; the entrance halls are, for the most part, 
 looked upon as public property ; and any moderately enterprising 
 scavenger might make a fine fortune by now and then clearing them 
 out. As it is impossible for coaches to peneti-ate into these streets, 
 there are sedan chairs, gilded and otherwise, for hire in divers places. 
 A great many private chairs are also kept among tho nobility and 
 gentry ; and at night these are trotted to and fro in all directions, 
 preceded by bearers of great lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon 
 a frame. The sedans and lanthorns are the legitimate successors of 
 the long strings of patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling 
 their little bells through these confined streets all day long. They 
 follow them, as regularly as the stars the sun. 
 
 When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces : the Strada Nuova and 
 the Strada Balbi ! or how the former looked one summer day, when I 
 first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely bluo of 
 summer skies : which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, 
 reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness, looking 
 down upon the heavy shade below ! A brightness not too common, 
 even in July and August, to be well esteemed : for, if the Truth must 
 out, there were not eight blue skies in as many midsummer weeks, 
 saving, sometimes, early in the morning ; when, looking out to sea, 
 the water and the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant 
 blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to make an 
 Englishman grumble in his own climate. 
 
 The endless details of these rich Palaces : tbe walls of some of 
 them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great, heavy, 
 stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier ; with hero and 
 there, one larger than the rest, towering high up a huge marble plat-
 
 Internal Economy of a Palazzo. 231 
 
 form; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows, immense 
 public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and 
 dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers : among which the eye 
 wanders again, and again, and again, as every palaco is succeeded by 
 another the terrace gardens between house and house, with green 
 arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander 
 in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street the painted 
 halls, mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in the clamp corners, and 
 still shining out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs, where 
 the walls are dry the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, 
 holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and 
 standing in niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble 
 than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a 
 more recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what 
 seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial tho 
 steep, steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces 
 for all that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways 
 the magnificent and innumerable Churches ; and the rapid passage 
 from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, 
 steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked 
 children and whole worlds of dirty people make up, altogether, such 
 a scene of wonder : so lively, and yet so dead : so noisy, and yet so 
 quiet : so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering : 60 wide awake, and 
 yet so fast asleep : that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to 
 walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phan- 
 tasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain 
 and all tbo pleasure of an extravagant reality ! 
 
 The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, all 
 at once, is characteristic. For instance, the English Banker (my 
 excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a good-sized Palazzo 
 in the Strada Nuova. In the hall (every inch of which is elaborately 
 painted, btit which is as dirty as a police-station in London), a hook- 
 nosed Saracen's Head with an immense quantity of black hair (there 
 is a man attached to it) sells walking-sticks. On the other side of 
 the doorway, a lady with a showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife 
 to the Saracen's Head, I believe) sells articles of her own knitting; 
 and sometimes flowers. A little further in, two or three blind men 
 occasionally beg. Sometimes, they arc visited by a man without logs, 
 on a little go-cart, but who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and 
 such a respectable, well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had 
 sunk into the ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up 
 a flight of cellar-steps to speak to somebody. A little further in, a 
 few men, perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day ; or they may 
 be chairmen waiting for their absent freight. If so, they have 
 brought their chairs in with them, and there they stand also. On tho 
 left of the hall is a little room: a hatter's shop. On tho first floor, is 
 the English bank. On the first floor also, is a whole house, and a
 
 232 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 good large residence too. Heaven knows what there may be above 
 that ; but when you are there, you have only just begun to go up- 
 stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking of this ; and 
 passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the hall, instead of 
 turning the other way, to get into the street again ; it bangs behind 
 you, making the dismallest and most lonesome echoes, and you stand 
 in a yard (the yard of the same house) which seems to have been un- 
 visited by human foot, for a hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its 
 repose. Not a head, thrust out of any of the grim, dark, jealous 
 windows, within sight, makes the weeds in the cracked pavement 
 faint of heart, by suggesting the possibility of there being hands to 
 grub them up. Opposite to you, is a giant figure carved in stone, 
 reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork ; and 
 out of the urn, dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, which, once 
 upon a time, poured a small torrent down the rocks. But the eye- 
 sockets of the giant are not drier than this channel is now. He seems 
 to have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, a final tilt ; and 
 after crying, like a sepulchral child, " All gone ! " to have lapsed into 
 a stony silence. 
 
 In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great 
 size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty : 
 quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable: and emit a peculiar 
 fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets. 
 Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have 
 been a lack of room in the City, for new houses are thrust in every- 
 where. Wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tene- 
 ment into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or 
 angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of 
 any sort, there you are sure to find some kind of habitation : looking 
 as if it had grown there, like a fungus. Against the Government 
 House, against the old Senate House, round about any large building, 
 little shops stick close, like parasite vermin to the great carcase. And 
 for all this, look where you may : up steps, down steps, anywhere, 
 everywhere : there are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, 
 tumbling down, leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves 
 or their friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular 
 than the rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further. 
 
 One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by 
 the landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being associated with 
 a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has stamped 
 it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the houses aro very high, and 
 are of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have (as most of the 
 house have) something hanging out of a great many windows, and 
 wafting its frowsy fragrance on the breeze. Sometimes, it is a 
 curtain ; sometimes, it is a carpet ; sometimes, it is a bed ; sometimes, 
 a whole line-full of clothes ; but there is almost always something. 
 Before the basement of these houses, is an arcade over the pavement :
 
 Priests. 233 
 
 very massive, dark, and low, like an old crypt. The stone, or plaster, 
 of which it is made, has turned quite black ; and against every one of 
 these black piles, all sorts of filth and garbage seem to accumulate 
 spontaneously. Beneath some of tho arches, the sellers of maccaroni 
 and polenta establish their stalls, which are by no means inviting. 
 The offal of a fish-market, near at hand that is to say, of a back 
 lane, where people sit upon tho ground and on various old bulk-heads 
 and sheds, and sell fish when they have any to dispose of and of a 
 vegetable market, constructed on the same principle are contributed 
 to the decoration of this quarter ; and as all the mercantile business 
 is transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided 
 flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods 
 brought in from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold and 
 taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here also ; 
 and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to search 
 you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and Ladies. For, Sanctity 
 as well as Beauty has been known to yield to the temptation of 
 smuggling, and in the same way : that is to say, by concealing the 
 smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So Sanctity 
 and Beauty may, by no means, enter. 
 
 Tho streets of Genoa would be all tho better for the importation of 
 a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. Every fourth or fifth 
 man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk ; and there is pretty sare to 
 be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every hackney 
 carriage on the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, 
 of more repulsive countenances than are to be found among these 
 gentry. If Nature's hand-writing be at all legible, greater varieties of 
 sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor, could hardly be observed among 
 any class of men in tho world. 
 
 Mr. Pepys once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in illus- 
 tration of his respect for the Priestly office, that if he could meet 
 a Priest and angel together, he would salute the Priest first. I am 
 rather of the opinion of Petrarch, who, when his pupil Boccaccio 
 wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had been visited and ad- 
 monished for his writings by a Carthusian Friar who claimed to be a 
 messenger immediately commissioned by Heaven for that purpose, 
 replied, that for his own part, he would take the liberty of testing tho 
 reality of the commission by personal observation of tho Messenger's 
 face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and discourse. I cannot but believe 
 myself, from similar observation, that many unaccredited celestial 
 messengers may be seen skulking through the streets of Genoa, or 
 droning away their lives in other Italian towns. 
 
 Perhaps the Cappuceini, though not a learned body, arc, as an 
 order, tho best friends of the people. They seem to minglo with 
 thorn more immediately, as their counsellors and comforters ; and to 
 go among them more, when they are sick ; and to pry less than somo 
 other orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of establish-
 
 234 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 ing a baleful ascendency over their weaker members ; and to be 
 influenced by a less fierce desire to make converts, and once made, to 
 let tbem go to ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse 
 dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in the markets 
 early in the morning. The Jesuits too, muster strong in the streets, 
 and go slinking noiselessly about, in pairs, like black cats. 
 
 In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate. There 
 is a street of jewellers, and there is a row of booksellers ; but even 
 down in places where nobody ever can, or ever could, penetrate in a 
 carriage, there are mighty old palaces shut in among the gloomiest 
 and closest walls, and almost shut out from the sun. Very few of tho 
 tradesmen have any idea of setting forth their goods, or disposing 
 them for show. If you, a stranger, want to buy anything, you usually 
 look round the shop till you see it ; then clutch it, if it be within 
 reach, and inquire how much. Everything is sold at the most unlikely 
 place. If you want coffee, you go to a sweetmeat sbop ; and if you 
 want meat, you will probably find it behind an old checked curtain, 
 down half-a-dozen steps, in some sequestered nook as hard to find as 
 if the commodity were poison, and Genoa's law were death to any that 
 uttered it. 
 
 Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging places. Here, 
 grave men witli sticks, sit down in the shade for hours together, 
 passing a meagre Genoa paper from hand to hand, and talking, 
 drowsily and sparingly, about the News. Two or three of these are 
 poor physicians, ready to proclaim themselves on an emergency, and 
 tear off with any messenger who may arrive. You may know them 
 by the way in which they stretch their necks to listen, when you 
 enter ; and by the sigh with which they fall back again into their dull 
 corners, on finding that you only want medicine. Few people lounge 
 in the barbers' shops ; though they are very numerous, as hardly any 
 man shaves himself. But the apothecary's has its group of loungers, 
 Avho sit back among the bottles, with their hands folded over the tops 
 of their sticks. So still and quiet, that either you don't see them 
 in the darkened shop, or mistake them as I did one ghostly man 
 in hottle-grecn, one day, with a hat like a stopper for Horse 
 Medicine. 
 
 On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting them- 
 selves, as their ancestors were of putting houses, in every available 
 inch of space in and about the town. In all the lanes and alleys, and 
 up every little ascent, and on every dwarf wall, and on every flight of 
 steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa- 
 days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly ; not in peals, or any 
 known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, 
 dingle, dingle : with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, 
 which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy 
 up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope .
 
 Festa-days. 235 
 
 attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other hoy similarly 
 employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil 
 Spirits ; but looking up into the steeples, and seeing (and hearing) 
 these young Christians thus engaged, one might very naturally mistake 
 them for the Enemy. 
 
 Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous. All the shops 
 were shut up, twice within a week, for these holidays ; and one night, 
 all the houses in the neighbourhood of a particular church were 
 illuminated, while the church itself was lighted, outside, with torches ; 
 and a grove of blazing links was erected, in an open place outside ono 
 of the city gates. This part of the ceremony is prettier and more 
 singular a little May in the country, where you can trace the illu- 
 minated cottages all the way up a steep hill-side ; and where you pass 
 festoons of tapers, wasting away in the starlight night, before somo 
 lonely little house upon the road. 
 
 On these days, they always dress the church of the saint in whose 
 honour the festa is holden, very gaily. Gold-embroidered festoons of 
 different colours, hang from the arches ; the altar furniture is set 
 forth ; and sometimes, even the lofty pillars are swathed from top to 
 bottom in tight-fitting draperies. The cathedral is dedicated to St. 
 Lorenzo. On St. Lorenzo's day, we went into it, just as the sun was 
 setting. Although theso decorations are usually in very indifferent 
 taste, the effect, just then, was very superb, indeed. For the wholo 
 building was dressed in red ; and the sinking sun, streaming in, 
 through a great red curtain in the chief doorway, made all the 
 gorgeousness its own. When the sun went down, and it gradually 
 grew quite dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the 
 principal altar, and some small dangling silver lamps, it was very 
 mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the churches towards 
 evening, is like a mild dose of opium. 
 
 With the money collected at a festa, they usually pay for the 
 dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the band, and for the 
 tapers. If there be any left (which seldom happens, I believe) the 
 souls in Purgatory get the benefit of it. They are also supposed to 
 have the henefit of the exertions of certain small boys, who shako 
 money-boxes before some mysterious little buildings like rural turn- 
 pikes, which (usually shut up close) fly open on Red-letter days, and 
 disclose an image and some flowers inside. 
 
 Just without the city gate, on the Albaro road, is a small house, 
 with an altar in it, and a stationary money-box : also for the benefit 
 of the souls in Purgatory. Still further to stimulate the charitable, 
 there is a monstrous painting on the plaster, on either side of tho 
 grated door, representing a select party of souls, frying. One of them 
 has a grey moustache, and an elaborate hoad of grey hair : as if he 
 had been taken out of :i hairdresser's window and east into the furnace. 
 Thcro he is: si most grotesque and hideously comic old soul: for 
 ever blistering in the real sun, and melting in the mimic lire, for tho
 
 236 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 gratification and improvement (and the contributions) of the poor 
 Genoese. 
 
 They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen to dance on 
 their holidays : the staple places of entertainment among the women, 
 being the churches and the public walks. They are very good- 
 tempered, obliging, and industrious. Industry has not mado them 
 clean, for their habitations are extremely filthy, and their usual 
 occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is to sit at their doors, hunting 
 in each other's heads. But their dwellings are so close and confined 
 that if those parts of the city had been beaten down by Massena in 
 the time of the terrible Blockade, it would have at least occasioned 
 one public benefit among many misfortunes. 
 
 The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so constantly 
 washing clothes, in the public tanks, and in every stream and ditch, 
 that one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all this dirt, who 
 wears them when they are clean. The custom is to lay the wet linen 
 which is being operated upon, on a smooth stone, and hammer away 
 at it, with a flat wooden mallet. This they do, as furiously as if they 
 were revenging themselves on dress in general for being connected 
 with the Fall of Mankind. 
 
 It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at theso 
 times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, tightly swathed 
 up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous quantity of wrapper, so 
 that it is unable to move a toe or finger. This custom (which wo 
 often see represented in old pictures) is universal among the common 
 people. A child is left anywhere without the possibility of crawling 
 away, or is accidentally knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or 
 is hung up to a hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at 
 an English rag-shop, without the least inconvenience, to anybody. 
 
 I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the little country 
 church of San Martino, a couple of miles from the city, while a baptism 
 took place. I saw the priest, and an attendant with a large taper, 
 and a man, and a woman, and some others ; but I had no more idea, 
 until the ceremony was all over, that it was a baptism, or that the 
 curious little stiff instrument, that was passed from one to another, in 
 the course of the ceremony, by the handle like a short poker was a 
 child, than I had that it was my own christening. I borrowed the 
 child afterwards, for a minute or two (it was lying across the font 
 then), and found it very red in the face but perfectly quiet, and not to 
 be bent on any terms. The number of cripples in the streets, soon 
 ceased to surprise me. 
 
 There are plenty of Saints' and Virgin's Shrines, of course ; 
 generally at the corners of streets. The favourite memento to the 
 Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting, representing a peasant on his 
 knees, with a spade and some other agricultural implements beside 
 him ; and the Madonna, witli the Infant Saviour in her arms, appear- 
 ing to him in a cloud. This is the legend of the Madonna della
 
 Genoese Churches. 237 
 
 Guardia : a chapel on a mountain within a few miles, which is in high 
 repute. It seems that this peasant lived all alono by himself, tilling 
 some land atop of the mountain, where, being a devout man, he daily 
 said his prayers to the Virgin in the open air ; for his hut was a very 
 poor one. Upon a certain day, the Virgin appeared to him, as in the 
 picture, and said, " Why do you pray in the open air, and without a 
 priest ? " The peasant explained because there was neither priest nor 
 church at hand a very uncommon complaint indeed in Italy. " I 
 should wish, then," said the Celestial Visitor, " to have a chapel built 
 here, in which the prayers of the Faithful may be offered up." " But 
 Santissima Madonna," said the peasant, " I am a poor man ; and 
 chapels cannot be built without money. They must be supported, too, 
 Santissima ; for to have a chapel and not support it liberally, is a 
 wickedness a deadly sin." This sentiment gave great satisfaction to 
 the visitor. " Go ! " said she. " There is such a village in the valley 
 on the left, and such another village in the valley on the right, and 
 such another village elsewhere, that will gladly contribute to the 
 building of a chapel. Go to them ! Relate what you have seen ; and 
 do not doubt that sufficient money will be forthcoming to erect my 
 chapel, or that it will, afterwards, bo handsomely maintained." All 
 of which (miraculously) turned out to be quite true. And in proof of 
 this prediction and revelation, there is the chapel of the Madonna 
 della Guardia, rich and flourishing at this day. 
 
 The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches, can hardly be 
 exaggerated. The church of the Annunciata especially : built, like 
 many of the others, at the cost of one noble family, and now in slow 
 progress of repair : from the outer door to the utmost height of the 
 high cupola, is so elaborately painted and set in gold, that it looks (as 
 Simond describes it, in his charming book on Italy) like a great 
 enamelled snuff-box. Most of the richer churches contain somo 
 beautiful pictures, or other embellishments of great price, almost 
 universally set, side by side, with sprawling effigies of maudlin monks, 
 and the veriest trasli and tinsel ever seen. 
 
 It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the popular 
 mind, and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but there is very littlo 
 tenderness for the bodies of the dead here. For the very poor, thero 
 are, immediately outside one angle of the walls, and behind a jutting 
 point of the fortification, near the sea, certain common pits one for 
 every day in the year which all remain closed up, until the turn of 
 each comes for its daily reception of dead bodies. Among the troops 
 in the town, there are usually some Swiss: more or less. When any 
 of these die, they are buried out of a fund maintained by such of their 
 countrymen as arc resident in Genoa. Their providing coffins for 
 these men is mutter of groat astonishment to the authorities. 
 
 Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent splashing down 
 of dead people in so many wells, is bad. It surrounds Death with 
 revolting associations, that insensibly becomo connected with thoso
 
 238 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 whom Death is approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the 
 natural result ; and all the softening influences of the great sorrow 
 are harshly disturbed. 
 
 There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliere or the like, expires, of 
 erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to represent his bier ; 
 covering them over with a pall of black velvet ; putting his hat and 
 sword on the top ; making a little square of seats about the whole ; 
 and sending out formal invitations to his friends and acquaintances 
 to come and sit there, and hear Mass : which is performed at the 
 principal Altar, decorated with an infinity of candles for that purpose. 
 
 When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of death, their 
 nearest relations generally walk off: retiring into the country for a little 
 change, and leaving the body to be disposed of, without any superin- 
 tendence from them. The procession is usually formed, and the coffin 
 borne, and the funeral conducted, by a body of persons called a 
 Confraternita, who, as a kind of voluntary penance, undertake to per- 
 form these offices, in regular rotation, for the dead ; but who, mingling 
 something of pride with their humility, are dressed in a loose garment 
 covering their whole person, and wear a hood concealing the face ; 
 with breathing holes and apertures for the eyes. The effect of this 
 costume is very ghastly : especially in the case of a certain Blue 
 Confraternita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are 
 very ugly customers, and who look suddenly encountered in their 
 pious ministration in the streets as if they were Ghoules or Demons, 
 bearing off the body for themselves. 
 
 Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse attendant on 
 many Italian customs, of being recognised as a means of establishing a 
 current account with Heaven, on which to draw, too easily, for future 
 bad actions, or as an expiation for past misdeeds, it must be admitted 
 to be a good one, and a practical one, and one involving unques- 
 tionably good works. A voluntary service like this, is surely better 
 than the imposed penance (not at all an infrequent one) of giving so 
 many licks to such and such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral ; 
 or than a vow to the Madonna to wear nothing but blue for a year or 
 two. This is supposed to give great delight above ; blue being (as 
 is well known) the Madonna's favourite colour. Women who have 
 devoted themselves to this act of Faith, are very commonly seen 
 walking in the streets. 
 
 There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one now rarely 
 opened. The most important the Carlo Felice : the opera-house of 
 Genoa is a very splendid, commodious, and beautiful theatre. A 
 company of comedians were acting there, when we arrived : and soon 
 after their departure, a second-rate opera company came. The great 
 season is not until the carnival time in the spring. Nothing im- 
 pressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty numerous) 
 as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who 
 resent the slightest defect, take nothing good-humouredly, 6eem to be
 
 Marionetli. 239 
 
 always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses 
 as little as the actors. But, as there is nothing else of a public nature 
 at which they are allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps 
 they are resolved to make the most of this opportunity. 
 
 There are a great number of Piedmontese officers too, who are 
 allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next to 
 nothing : gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these gentlemen 
 being insisted on, by the Governor, in all public or semi-public 
 entertainments. They are lofty critics in consequence, and infinitely 
 more exacting than if they made the unhappy manager's fortune. 
 
 The Teatro Diurno, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in the open 
 air, where the performances take place by daylight, in the cool of the 
 afternoon ; commencing at four or five o'clock, and lasting some three 
 hours. It is curious, sitting among the audience, to have a fine view 
 of the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the neighbours at 
 their windows looking on, and to hear the bells of the churches and 
 convents ringing at most complete cross-purposes with the scene. 
 Beyond this, and the novelty of seeing a play in the fresh pleasant 
 air, with the darkening evening closing in, there is nothing very 
 exciting or characteristic in the performances. The actors are in- 
 different ; and though they sometimes represent one of Goldoni's 
 comedies, the staple of the Drama is French. Anything like 
 nationality is dangerous to despotic governments, and Jesuit- 
 beleaguered kings. 
 
 The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionctti a famous company from 
 Milan is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever 
 beheld in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous. 
 They look between four and five feet high, but are really much 
 smaller ; for when a musician in the orchestra happens to put his hat 
 on the stage, it becomes alarmingly gigantic, and almost blots out an 
 actor. They usually play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man 
 in the comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter in an hotel. 
 There never was such a locomotive actor, since the world began. 
 Great pains are taken with him. He has extra joints in his legs: and 
 a practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is 
 absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated audience, 
 mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do everything 
 else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a man. His spirits 
 are prodigious. lie continually shakes his legs, and winks his eye. 
 And there is a heavy father with grey hair, who sits down on the 
 regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his daughter in the 
 regular conventional way, who is tremendous. No one would suppose 
 it possible that anything short of a real man could be so tedious. It 
 is the triumph of art. 
 
 In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with tho Bride, in the very 
 hour of her nuptials. He brings her to his cave, and tries to sootho 
 her. They sit down on a sofa (tho regular sofa ! in tho regular place,
 
 240 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 0. P. Second Entrance !) and a procession of musicians enters ; one 
 creature playing a drum, and knocking himself off his legs at every 
 blow. These failing to delight her, dancers appear. Four first ; then 
 two ; the two ; the flesh-coloured two. The way in which they dance ; 
 the height to which they spring ; the impossible and inhuman extent 
 to which they pirouette ; the revelation of their preposterous legs ; 
 the coming down with a pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the 
 music requires it ; the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's 
 turn ; and the lady's retiring up, when it is the gentleman's turn ; 
 the final passion of a pas-de-deux ; and the going off with a bound ! 
 I shall never see a real ballet, with a composed countenance 
 again. 
 
 I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called " St. 
 Helena, or the Death of Napoleon." It began by the disclosure of 
 Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at 
 St. Helena ; to whom his valet entered with this obscure announce- 
 ment : 
 
 " Sir Yew ud se on Low ? " (the ou\ as in cow). 
 
 Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals !) was a 
 perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon ; hideously ugly ; with a 
 monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lower- 
 jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature. He began his 
 system of persecution, by calling his prisoner " General Buonaparte ; " 
 to which the latter replied, with the deepest tragedy, " Sir Yew ud 
 se on Low, call me not thus. Repeat that phrase and leave me ! I 
 am Napoleon, Emperor of France ! " Sir Yew ud se on, nothing 
 daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of the British 
 Government, regulating the state he should preserve, and the furniture 
 of his rooms : and limiting his attendants to four or five persons. 
 " Four or five for me ! " said Napoleon. " Me ! One hundred 
 thousand men were lately at my sole command ; and this English 
 officer talks of four or five for me ! " Throughout the piece, Napoleon 
 (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and was, for ever, hsfving 
 small soliloquies by himself) was very bitter on " these English 
 officers," and " these English soldiers ; " to the great satisfaction of 
 the audience, who were perfectly delighted to have Low bullied ; and 
 who, whenever Low said ' : General Buonaparte " (which he always 
 did: always receiving the same correction), quite execrated him. It 
 Avould be hard to say why ; for Italians have little cause to sympathise 
 with Napoleon, Heaven knows. 
 
 There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, disguised as 
 an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape ; and being dis- 
 covered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to steal 
 his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged. In 
 two very long speeches, which Low made memorable, by winding up 
 with " Yas ! " to show that he was English which brought down 
 thunders of applause. Napoleon was so affected by this catastrophe,
 
 The Palazzo Peschiere. 241 
 
 that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out by two other 
 puppets. Judging from what followed, it would appear that he never 
 recovered the shock ; for the next act showed him, in a clean shirt, in 
 his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a lady, prematurely 
 dressed in mourning, brought two little children, who kneeled down 
 by the bed-side, while ho made a decent end ; the last word on his 
 lips being " Vatterlo." 
 
 It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots were so wonder- 
 fully beyond control, and did such marvellous things of their own 
 accord : doubling themselves up, and getting under tables, and 
 dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of all 
 human knowledge, when he was in full speech mischances which 
 were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled melancholy depicted 
 in his face. To put an end to one conference with Low, he had to go 
 to a table, and read a book : when it was the finest spectacle I ever 
 beheld, to seo his body bending over the volume, like a boot-jack, and 
 his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was pro- 
 digiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his 
 little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, repre- 
 sented by a jmppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in 
 consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the 
 couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was 
 almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times a 
 decided brute aud villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low w r as 
 especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say, 
 " The Emperor is dead ! " he pulled out his watch, and wound up the 
 piece (not the watch) by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, 
 " Ha ! ha ! Eleven minutes to six ! The General dead ! and the spy 
 hanged ! " This brought the curtain down, triumphantly. 
 
 There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier 
 residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds, 
 whither we removed as soon as our three months' tenancy of the Pink 
 Jail at Albaro had ceased and determined. 
 
 It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof from the 
 town : surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned with 
 statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, walks of orange- 
 trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and camellias. All its apart- 
 ments aro beautiful in their proportions and decorations ; but the 
 great hall, some fifty feet in height, witli three largo windows at tho 
 end, overlooking the whole town of Genoa, tho harbour, and tho 
 neighbouring sea, affords one of tho most fascinating and delightful 
 prospects in the world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than 
 the great rooms are, within, it would bo difficult to conceive ; and 
 certainly nothing more delicious than tho scene without, in sunshine 
 or in moonlight, could be imagined. It is more like an enchanted 
 place in an Eastern story than a grave and sober lodging.
 
 242 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of the 
 wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their fresh colour- 
 ing as if they had been painted yesterday ; or how one floor, or even 
 the great hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious 
 promenade ; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers above, 
 which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely know the way 
 through ; or how there is a view of a perfectly different character on 
 each of the four sides of the building ; matters little. But that 
 prospect from the hall is like a vision to me. I go back to it, in 
 fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred times a day ; and 
 stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents from the garden rising 
 up about me, in a perfect dream of happiness. 
 
 There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many churches, 
 monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny sky ; and down 
 below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary convent parapet, 
 fashioned like a gallery, with an iron across at the end, where some- 
 times early in the morning, I have seen a little group of dark-veiled 
 nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping now and then to 
 peep down upon the waking world in which they have no part. Old 
 Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good weather, but sulkiest when 
 storms are coming on, is here, upon the left. The Fort within the 
 walls (the good King built it to command the town, and beat the 
 houses of the Genoese about their ears, in case they should be discon- 
 tented) commands that height upon the right. The broad sea lies 
 beyond, in front there ; and that line of coast, beginning by the light- 
 house, and tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy distance, is tho 
 beautiful coast road that leads to Nice. The garden near at hand, 
 among the roofs and houses : all red with roses and fresh with little 
 fountains : is the Acqua Sola a public promenade, where the military 
 band plays gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese 
 nobility ride round, and round, and round, in state-clothes and coaches 
 at least, if not in absolute wisdom. Within a stone's-throw, as it 
 seems, the audience of the Day Theatre sit : their faces turned this 
 way. But as the stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge 
 of the cause, to see their faces changed so suddenly from earnestness to 
 laughter ; and odder still, to hear the rounds upon rounds of applause, 
 rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls. But, being 
 Sunday night, they act their best and most attractive play. And now, 
 the sun is going down, in such magnificent array of red, and green, 
 and golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could depict ; and to the 
 ringing of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at once, without a twilight. 
 Then, lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road ; and 
 the revolving lanthorn out at sea there, flashing, for an instant, on 
 this palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were a bright 
 moon bursting from behind a cloud ; then, merges it in deep obscurity. 
 And this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid 
 it after dark, and think it haunted.
 
 /// Quarantine. 243 
 
 My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come ; but 
 nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will occasionally sail 
 away, as I did one pleasant autumn evening, into the bright prospect, 
 and snuft' the morning air at Marseilles. 
 
 Tho corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers outside 
 his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the window, with the 
 natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to twirl, aud were 
 languishing, stock still, with their beautiful faces addressed to blind 
 corners of the establishment, where it was impossible for admirers to 
 penetrate. 
 
 The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of eighteen 
 hours, and we were going to run back again by the Cornice road from 
 Nice : not being satisfied to have seen only the outsides of tho beauti- 
 ful towns that rise in picturesque white clusters from among the olivo 
 woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the margin of the Sea. 
 
 The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o'clock, was 
 very small, and so crowded with goods that there was scarcely room 
 to move ; neither was there anything to eat on board, except bread ; 
 nor to drink, except coft'ee. But being duo at Nice at about eight or 
 60 in tho morning, this was of no consequence : so when we began to 
 wink at the bright stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their 
 winking at us, we turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool little 
 cabin, and slept soundly till morning. 
 
 The Boat being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was built, 
 it was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice Harbour, 
 whero we very little expected anything but breakfast. But wo wero 
 laden with wool. Wool must not remain in the Custom-house at 
 Marseilles more than twolvo months at a stretch, without paying duty. 
 It is the custom to make fictitious removals of unsold wool to evade 
 this law ; to take it somewhere when the twelve months are nearly 
 out ; bring it straight back again ; and warehouse it, as a new cargo, 
 for nearly twelve months longer. This wool of ours, had come 
 originally from some place in the East. It was recognised as Eastern 
 produce, the moment wo entered the harbour. Accordingly, tho gay 
 little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which had come oft' to 
 greet us, wero warned away by the authorities ; we were declared in 
 quarantine ; and a great flag was solemnly run up to the mast-head 
 on tho wharf, to make it known to all the town. 
 
 It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, unwashed, un- 
 dressod, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying blistering 
 in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on from a respectful distance, 
 all manner of whiskered men in cocked hats discussing our fate at 
 a remote guard-house, with gestures (we looked very hard at them 
 through telescopes) expressive of a week's detention at least : and 
 nothing whatever the matter all the time. But even in this crisis tho 
 brave Courier achieved a triumph. Ho telegraphed somebody (/saw 
 nobody) either naturally connected with the hotel, or put en rapport
 
 244 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 with the establishment for that occasion only. The telegraph was 
 answered, and in half an hour or less, there came a loud shout from 
 the guard-house. The captain was wanted. Everybody helped tho 
 captain into his boat. Everybody got his luggage, and said we were 
 going. The captain rowed away, and disappeared behind a littlo 
 jutting corner of the Galley-slaves' Prison : and presently came back 
 with something, very sulkily. The brave Courier met him at tbo 
 side, and received the something as its rightful owner. It was a 
 wicker basket, folded in a linen cloth ; and in it were two great bottles 
 of wine, a roast fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf 
 of bread, a dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles. When we 
 had selected our own breakfast, the brave Courier invited a chosen 
 party to partake of these refreshments, and assured them that they 
 need not be deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a 
 second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which he did no 
 one knew how and by-and-by, the captain being again summoned, 
 again sulkily returned with another something ; over which my 
 popular attendant presided as before : carving with a clasp-knife, his 
 own personal property, something smaller than a Roman sword. 
 
 The whole party on board were made merry by these unexpected 
 supplies ; but none more so than a loquacious little Frenchman, who 
 got drunk in five minutes, and a sturdy Cappuccino Friar, who had 
 taken everybody's fancy mightily, and was one of the best friars in 
 the world, I verily believe. 
 
 He had a free, open countenance ; and a rich brown, flowing beard ; 
 and was a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty. He had come 
 up to us, early in the morning, and inquired whether we were sure to 
 be at Nice by eleven ; saying that he particularly wanted to know, 
 because if we reached it by that time he would have to perform Mass, 
 and must deal with the consecrated wafer, fasting ; whereas, if there 
 were no chance of his being in time, he would immediately breakfast. 
 He made this communication, under the idea that the brave Courier 
 was the captain ; and indeed he looked much more like it than any- 
 body else on board. Being assured that we should arrive in good time, 
 he fasted, and talked, fasting, to everybody, with the most charming 
 good humour ; answering jokes at the expense of friars, with other 
 jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that friar as he was, he 
 would engage to take up the two strongest men on board, one after the 
 other, with his teeth, and carrry them along tho deck. Nobody gave 
 him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it ; for he 
 was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the Cappuccino dress, 
 which is the ugliest and most ungainly that can well be. 
 
 All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman, who 
 gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to commiserate 
 him as one who might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for 
 an unfortunate destiny. Although his patronago was such as a 
 mouse might bestow upon a lion, he had a vast opinion of its con-
 
 The Big Friar and the Little Frenchman. 245 
 
 descension ; and in the warmth of that sentiment, occasionally rose on 
 tiptoe, to slap the Friar on the hack. 
 
 "When the baskets arrived : it heing then too late for Mass : the 
 Friar went to work bravely : eating prodigiously of the cold meat 
 and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking cigars, taking 
 snuff, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation with all hands, and 
 occasionally running to the boat's side and hailing somebody on shore 
 with the intelligence that we must be got out of this quarantine some- 
 how or other, as he had to take part in a great religious procession in 
 the afternoon. After this, he would come back, laughing lustily from 
 pure good humour : while the Frenchman wrinkled his small face into 
 ten thousand creases, and said how droll it was, and what a brave boy 
 was that Friar ! At length the heat of the sun without, and the wine 
 within, made the Frenchman sleepy. So, in the noontide of his 
 patronage of his gigantic protege, he lay down among the wool, and 
 began to snore. 
 
 It was four o'clock before we wero released ; and the Frenchman, 
 dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when the Friar went 
 ashore. As soon as we were free, we all hurried away, to wash and 
 dress, that we might make a decent appearance at the procession ; and 
 I saw no more of the Frenchman until we took up our station in the 
 main street to see it pass, when he squeezed himself into a front 
 place, elaborately renovated ; threw back his little coat, to show a 
 broad-barred velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all over with stars ; then 
 adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to bewilder and transfix 
 the Friar, when he should appear. 
 
 The procession was a very long one, and included an immense 
 number of people divided into small parties ; each party chanting 
 nasally, on its own account, without reference to any other, and pro- 
 ducing a most dismal result. There wero angels, crosses, Virgins 
 carried on flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints, missals, 
 infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, dignitaries of the church in green 
 hats, walking under crimson parasols : and, here and there, a species 
 of sacred street-lamp hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously for 
 the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and corded girdles 
 were seen coming on, in a body. 
 
 I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that when 
 the Friar saw him in the broad-burred waistcoat, he would mentally 
 exclaim, " Is that my Patron ! That distinguished man ! " and would 
 he covered with confusion. Ah ! never was the Frenchman so 
 deceived. As our friend the Cappuccino advanced, with folded arms, 
 he looked straight into the visage of the little Frenchman, with a 
 bland, serene, composed abstraction, not to be described. Thero was 
 not the faintert trace of recognition or amusement on his features; 
 not the smallest consciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, or 
 cigars. " Cent lui-meme," I heard the little Frenchman say, in some 
 doubt. Oli yes, it was himself. It was not his brother or his nephew,
 
 246 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 very like him. It was he. He walked in great state : being one of 
 the Superiors of the Order : and looked his part to admiration. There 
 never was anything so perfect of its kind as the contemplative way in 
 which he allowed his placid gaze to rest on us, his late companions, 
 as if he had never seen us in his life and didn't see us then. The 
 Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat at last, but the Friar still 
 passed on, with the same imperturbable serenity ; and the broad-barred 
 waistcoat, fading into the crowd, was seen no more. 
 
 The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that shook 
 all the windows in the town. Next afternoon we started for Genoa, 
 by the famed Cornice road. 
 
 The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, with his 
 little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither in three days, 
 was a careless, good-looking fellow, whose light-heartedness and sing- 
 ing propensities knew no bounds as long as we went on smoothly. So 
 long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his whip, for all the 
 peasant girls, and odds and ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. 
 So long, he went jingling through every little village, with bells on 
 his horses and rings in his ears : a very meteor of gallantry and 
 cheerfulness. But, it was highly characteristic to see him under a 
 slight reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we 
 came to a narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped 
 up the road. His hands were twined in his hair immediately, as if a 
 combination of all the direst accidents in life had suddenly fallen on 
 his devoted head. He swore in French, prayed in Italian, and went 
 up and down, beating his feet on the ground in a very ecstasy of 
 despair. There were various carters and mule-drivers assembled 
 round the broken waggon, and at last some man of an original turn 
 of mind, proposed that a general and joint effort should be made to 
 get things to rights again, and clear the way an idea whch I verily 
 believe would never have presented itself to our friend, though we 
 had remained there until now. It was done at no great cost of labour ; 
 but at every pause in the doing, his hands were wound in his hair 
 again, as if there were no ray of hope to lighten his misery. The 
 moment he was on his box once more, and clattering briskly down- 
 hill, he returned to the Sonnambula and the peasant girls, as if it 
 Avere not in the power of misfortune to depress him. 
 
 Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on this 
 beautiful road, disappears when they are entered, for many of them 
 are very miserable. The streets are narrow, dark, and dirty ; the 
 inhabitants lean and squalid ; and the withered old women, with 
 their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the head, 
 like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, both along the 
 Kiviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim door- 
 ways with their spindles, or crooning together in by-corners, they are 
 like a population of Witches except that they certainly are not to be 
 suspected of brooms or any other instrument of cleanliness. Neither
 
 Stage-coach Company. 247 
 
 are the pig-skins, in common nse to hold wine, and hung out in the sun 
 in all directions, by any means ornamental, as they always preserve 
 the form of very bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, 
 dangling upside-down by their own tails. 
 
 These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however : nestling, 
 with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on steep hill-sides, 
 or built upon the brink of noble bays : arc charming. The vegetation 
 is, everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm-tree makes a 
 novel feature in the novel scenery. In one town, San Reino a-most 
 extraordinary place, built 1 a gloomy open arches, so that one might 
 ramble underneath the whole town there are pretty terrace gardens ; 
 in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights' hammers, and the 
 building of small vessels on the beach. In some of tho broad bays, 
 the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. In every case, each little 
 group of houses presents, in the distance, some enchanting confusion 
 of picturesque and fanciful shapes. 
 
 The road itself now high above the glittering sea, which breaks 
 against the foot cf the precipice : now turning inland to sweep the 
 shore of a bay : now crossing the stony bed of a mountain stream : 
 now low down on the beach : now winding among riven rocks of 
 many forms and colours : now chequered by a solitary ruined tower, 
 one of a chain of towers built, in old time, to protect the coast from 
 the invasions of the Barbary Corsairs presents new beauties every 
 moment. When its own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on 
 through a long line of suburb, lying on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, 
 then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its harbour, awaken 
 a new source of interest ; freshened by every huge, unwieldy, half- 
 inhabited old house in its outskirts : and coming to its climax when 
 the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its beautiful harbour, and 
 neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the view. 
 
 TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA. 
 
 I strolled away from Genoa on tho 6th of November, bound for a 
 good many places (England among them), but first for Piacenza ; for 
 which town I started in the coupe of a machine something like a 
 travelling caravan, in company with the bravo Courier, and a lady 
 with a large dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night. It 
 was very wet, and very cold ; very dark, and very dismal ; we 
 travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped 
 nowhere for refreshment. At ten o'clock next morning, we changed 
 coaches at Alessandria, whero wo were packed up in another coach 
 (the body whereof would have boon small for a fly), in company with 
 a very old priest ; a young Jesuit, his companion who carried their
 
 248 Pictttres from Italy. 
 
 breviaries and other books, and who, in tbe exertion of getting into 
 the coach, had made a gash of pink leg between his black stocking 
 and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of Hamlet in Ophelia's 
 closet, only it was visible on both legs a provincial Avvocato ; and 
 a gentleman with a red nose that had an uncommon and singular 
 sheen upon it, which I never observed in the human subject before. 
 In this way we travelled on, until four o'clock in the afternoon ; the 
 roads being still very heavy, and the coach very slow. To mend the 
 matter, the old priest was troubled with cramps in his legs, so that he 
 had to give a terrible yell every ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out 
 by the united efforts of the company ; the coach always stopping for 
 him, with great gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed the 
 main subject of conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that the 
 coupe had discharged two people, and had only one passenger inside 
 a monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which 
 no man could see the ends when he had his hat on I took advantage 
 of its better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman 
 (who was very conversational and good-humoured) travelled on, until 
 nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver reported that he 
 couldn't think of going any farther, and we accordingly made a halt 
 at a place called Stradella. 
 
 The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard ; 
 where our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls, and fire- 
 wood, were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy ; so that you 
 didn't know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which was a fowl and 
 which was a cart. We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, 
 into a great, cold room, where there were two immensely broad beds, 
 on what looked like two immensely broad deal dining-tables ; another 
 deal table of similar dimensions in the middle of the bare floor ; four 
 windows ; and two chairs. Somebody said it was my room ; and I 
 walked up and down it, for half an hour or so, staring at the Tuscan, 
 the old priest, the young priest, and the Avvocato (Red-Nose lived in 
 the town, and had gone home), who sat upon their beds, and staved at 
 me in return. 
 
 The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the proceedings, is 
 interrupted by an announcement from the Brave (he has been cooking) 
 that supper is ready ; and to the priest's chamber (the next room and 
 the counterpart of mine) we all adjourn. The first dish is a cabbage, 
 boiled with a groat quantity of rice in a tureen full of water, and 
 flavoured with cheese. It is so hot, and we are so cold, that it 
 appears almost jolly. The second dish is some little bits of pork, 
 fried with pigs' kidneys. The third, two red fowls. The fourth, two 
 little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of garlic and truffles, and I 
 don't know what else ; and this concludes the entertainment. 
 
 Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of the 
 dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, in the 
 middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like Birnam Wood
 
 Stradella. 249 
 
 taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in a twinkling, and pro- 
 duces a jorum of hot brandy and water ; for that bottle of his keeps 
 company with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the purest eau 
 de vie. When he has accomplished this feat, he retires for the night ; 
 and I hear him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed until I fall asleep, 
 making jokes in some out-house (apparently under the pillow), where 
 he is smoking cigars with a party of confidential friends. He never 
 was in the bouse in his life before ; but he knows everybody every- 
 where, before he has been anywhere five minutes ; and is certain to 
 have attracted to himself, in the meantime, the enthusiastic devotion 
 of the whole establishment. 
 
 This is at twelve o'clock at night. At four o'clock next morning, 
 lie is up again, fresher than a new-blown rose ; making blazing fires 
 without the least authority from the landlord ; producing mugs of 
 scalding coffee when nobody else can get anything but cold water ; 
 and going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh milk, on the 
 chance of somebody with a cow getting up to supply it. While the 
 horses are " coming," I stumble out into the town too. It seems to 
 be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in and out of 
 the arches alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it is profoundly dark, 
 and raining heavily ; and I shouldn't know it to-morrow, if I were 
 taken there to try. Which Heaven forbid. 
 
 The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the driver 
 swears ; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan oaths. Some- 
 times, when it is a long, compound oath, he begins with Christianity 
 and merges into Paganism. Various messengers are despatched ; not 
 so much after the horses, as after each other ; for the first messenger 
 never comes back, and all the rest imitate him. At length the horses 
 appear, surrounded by all the messengers ; some kicking them, and 
 some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to them. Then, the old 
 priest, the young priest, the Avvocato, the Tuscan, and all of us, take 
 our places ; and sleepy voices proceeding from the doors of extra- 
 ordinary hutches in divers parts of the yard, cry out " Addio corriere 
 mio ! Buon' viaggio, corriere ! " Salutations which the courier, with 
 his face one monstrous grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting 
 and wallowing away, through the mud. 
 
 At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the inn at 
 Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door, with 
 divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides. The old priest 
 was taken with the cramp again, before he had got half-way down the 
 street ; and the young priest laid the bundle of books on a door-step, 
 while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs. Tho client of the 
 Avvocato was waiting for him at tho yard-gate, and kissed him on 
 each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am afraid he had 
 either a very bad ease, or a scantily-furnished purse. The Tuscan, 
 with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off, carrying his hat in his 
 baud that he might the better trail up the ends of his dishevelled
 
 250 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 moustache. And the brave Courier, as he and I strolled away to look 
 about us, began immediately to entertain me with the private histories 
 and family affairs of the whole party. 
 
 A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted, solitary, 
 grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts ; half filled-up trenches, 
 which afford a frouzy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about 
 them ; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning at the other 
 houses over the way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go 
 wandering about, with the double curse of laziness and poverty, 
 uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals ; the dirtiest of 
 children play with their impromptu toys (pigs and mud) in the 
 feeblest of gutters ; and the gauntest of dogs trot in and out of the 
 dullest of archways, in perpetual search of something to eat, which 
 they never seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Palace, guarded 
 by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands gravely in the 
 midst of the idle town ; and the king with the marble legs, who 
 flourished in the time of the thousand and one Nights, might live 
 contentedly inside of it, and never have the energy, in his upper half 
 of flesh and blood, to want to come out. 
 
 What a sti'ange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze it is, to 
 ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the sun ! 
 Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy, dreary, God- 
 forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief. Sitting on this hillock 
 where a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was, in the time 
 of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I have never 
 known till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in 
 very much the same condition before he retires under the wool in his 
 cage ; or a tortoise before he buries himself. I feel that I am getting 
 rusty. That any attempt to think, would be accompanied with a 
 creaking noise. That there is nothing, anywhere, to be done, or 
 needing to be done. That there is no more human progress, motion, 
 effort, or advancement, of any kind beyond this. That the whole 
 scheme stopped here centuries ago, and laid down to rest until the 
 Day of Judgment. 
 
 Never while the brave Courier lives ! Behold him jingling out of 
 Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest posting-chaise ever 
 seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were peeping 
 over a garden wall ; while the postilion, concentrated essence of all 
 the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his animated conver- 
 sation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed little Virgin, hardly less 
 shabby than himself, enshrined in a plaster Punch's show outside the 
 town. 
 
 In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis-work, 
 supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, are anything 
 but picturesque. But, here, they twine them around trees, and let 
 them trail among the hedges ; and the vineyards are full of trees, 
 regularly planted for this purpose, each with its own vine twining
 
 Parma. 251 
 
 and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the brightest gold 
 and deepest red ; and never was anything so onchantingly graceful 
 and full of beauty. Through miles of these delightful forms and 
 colours, the road winds its way. The wild festoons, the elegant 
 wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all shapes ; the fairy nets flung 
 over great trees, and making them prisoners in sport ; the tumbled 
 heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon the ground ; how rich and 
 beautiful they are ! And every now and then, a long, long line of 
 trees, will be all bound and garlanded together : as if they had taken 
 hold of one another, and were coming dancing down the field ! 
 
 Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town ; and con- 
 sequently is not so characteristic as many places of less note. Always 
 excepting the retired Piazza, where the Cathedral, Baptistery, and 
 Campanile ancient buildings, of a sombre brown, embellished with 
 innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy-looking creatures carved 
 in marble and red stone are clustered in a noble and magnificent 
 repose. Their silent presence was only invaded, when I saw them, 
 by the twittering of the many birds that were flying in and out of the 
 crevices in the stones and little nooks in the architecture, where they 
 had made their nests. They were busy, rising from the cold shade 
 of Temples made with hands, into the sunny air of Heaven. Not so 
 the worshippers within, who were listening to the same drowsy 
 chaunt, or kneeling before the same kinds of images and tapers, of 
 whispering, with their heads bowed down, in the selfsame dark con- 
 fessionals, as I had left in Genoa and everywhere else. 
 
 The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is 
 covered, havo, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and depressing 
 influence. It is miserable to see great works of art- something of the 
 Souls of Painters perishing and fading away, like human forms. 
 This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's frescoes in 
 the Cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful they may have been at ono 
 time. Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now ; but such a 
 labyrinth of arms and legs : such heaps of foreshortened limbs, 
 entangled and involved and jumbled together: no operative surgeon, 
 gone mad, could imagine in his wildest delirium. 
 
 There is a very interesting subterranean church here : the roof 
 supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to be 
 at least one beggar in ambush : to say nothing of the tombs and 
 secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places, such crowds 
 of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and women 
 with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic gostures, or idiotic 
 heads, or some other sad infirmity, came hobbling out to beg, that if 
 the mined frescoes in the cathedral above, had been suddenly animated, 
 and had retired to this lower church, they could hardly have made a 
 greater confusion, or exhibited a more confounding display of arms 
 and legs. 
 
 There is Petrarch's Monument, too ; and there is the Baptistery,
 
 252 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 with its beautiful arches and immense font ; and there is a gallery 
 containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a few were being 
 copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off their 
 heads than on. There is the Farnese Palace, too ; and in it one of 
 the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen a grand, old, 
 gloomy theatre, mouldering away. 
 
 It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape ; the lower 
 seats arranged upon the Eoman plan, but above them, great heavy 
 chambers, rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote in their 
 proiid state. Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, enhanced 
 in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention and design, none but 
 worms can be familiar with. A hundred and ten years have passed, 
 since any play was acted here. The sky shines in through the gashes 
 in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only 
 tenanted by rats ; damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and 
 make spectral maps upon the panels ; lean rags are dangling down 
 where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium ; the stage has 
 rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it would 
 sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy depth 
 beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all the 
 senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste ; any 
 stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are muffled 
 and heavy ; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have changed the 
 surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will seam and roughen 
 a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this 
 ghostly stage. 
 
 It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where 
 the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the 
 main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by the 
 bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory of the 
 day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing, feeble 
 tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions before all 
 manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning the usual 
 chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone. 
 
 Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town, this 
 same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre 
 of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door, and 
 was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest trumpet 
 that ever was blown. Immediately, came tearing round the corner, 
 an equestrian company from Paris : marshalling themselves under 
 the walls of tho church, and flouting, with their horses' heels, the 
 griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and marble, 
 decorating its exterior. First, there came a stately nobleman with a 
 great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous banner, on which 
 was inscribed, Mazeppa ! to-night ! Then, a Mexican chief, with a 
 great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like Hercules. Then, six or 
 eight Roman chariots : each with a beautiful lady in extremely short
 
 Mod en a. 253 
 
 petticoats, and unnaturally pink tights, erect within : shedding 
 beaming looks upon tho crowd, in which there was a latent expression 
 of discomposure and anxiety, for which I couldn't account, until, as 
 the open back of each chariot presented itself, I saw the immense 
 difficulty with which the pink legs maintained their perpendicular, 
 over the uneven pavement of the town : which gave me quite a new 
 idea of the ancient Romans and Britons. The procession was brought 
 to a close, by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations, 
 riding two and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of 
 Modena : among whom, however, they occasionally condescended to 
 scatter largesse in the form of a few handbills. After caracolling 
 among the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's entertain- 
 ments with blast of trumpet, it then filed off, by the other end of the 
 square, and left a new and greatly increased dulness behind. 
 
 When the procession had so entirely passed away, that the shrill 
 trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last horse was 
 hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come out of tho 
 church to stare at it, went back again. But one old lady, kneeling on 
 the pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and had been 
 immensely interested, without getting up ; and this old lady's eye, at 
 that juncture, I happened to catch : to our mutual confusion. She cut 
 our embarrassment very short, however, by crossing herself devoutly, 
 and going down, at full length, on her face, before a figure in a fancy 
 petticoat and a gilt crown ; which was so like one of the procession- 
 figures, that porhaps at this hour she may think the whole appearance 
 a celestial vision. Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her her 
 interest in the Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor. 
 
 There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, in 
 the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to see the 
 bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena took away 
 from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and about 
 which there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by Tassone, too. 
 Being quite content, however, to look at the outside of the tower, and 
 feast, in imagination, on tho bucket within ; and preferring to loiter 
 in the shade of the tall Campanile, and about the cathedral ; I have no 
 personal knowledge of this bucket, oven at the present time. 
 
 Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man (or the 
 Guide-Book) would have considered that we had half dono justice to 
 the wonders of Modena. But it is such a delight to me to leave new 
 scenes bohind, and still go on, encountering newer scenes and, more- 
 over, I have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights that aro 
 cut, and dried, and dictated that I fear I sin against similar 
 authorities in every place I visit. 
 
 Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna, I found 
 myself walking next Sunday morning, among tho stately marble tombs 
 and colonnades, in company with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted 
 by a little Cicerone of that town, who was excessively anxious for the
 
 254 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 honour of the place, and most solicitous to divert my attention from 
 tho bad monuments : whereas he was never tired of extolling the good 
 ones. Seeiug this little man (a good-humoured little man he was, 
 who seemed to have nothing in his face but shining teeth and eyes) 
 looking wistfully at a certain plot of grass, I asked him who was 
 buried there. " The poor people, Signore," he said, with a shrug and 
 a smile, and stopping to look back at me for he always went on a 
 little before, and took off his hat to introduce every new monument. 
 " Only the poor, Signore ! It's very cheerful. It's very lively. How 
 green it is, how cool ! It's like a meadow ! There are five," hold- 
 ing up all the fingers of his right hand to express tho number, which 
 an Italian peasant will always do, if it be within the compass of his 
 ten fingers, " there are five of my little children buried there, 
 Signore ; just there ; a little to the right. Well ! Thanks to God ! 
 It's very cheerful. How green it is, how cool it is ! It's quite 
 a meadow ! " 
 
 He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was sorry for 
 him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes snuff), and made a 
 little bow ; partly in deprecation of his having alluded to such a 
 subject, and partly in memory of the children and of his favourite 
 saint. It was as unaffected and as perfectly natural a little bow, as 
 ever man made. Immediately afterwards, he took his hat off altogether, 
 and begged to introduce me to the next monument ; and his eyes and 
 his teeth shone brighter than before. 
 
 THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA. 
 
 There was such a very smart official in attendance at the Cemetery 
 where the little Cicerone had buried his children, that when the little 
 Cicerone suggested to me, in a whisper, that there would be no offence 
 in presenting this officer, in return for some slight extra service, with 
 a couple of pauls (about tenpence, English money), I looked in- 
 credulously at his cocked hat, wash-leather gloves, well-made uniform, 
 and dazzling buttons, and rebuked the little Cicerone with a grave 
 shake of the head. For, in splendour of appearance, he was at least 
 equal to tho Deputy Usher of the Black Rod ; and the idea of his 
 carrying, as Jeremy Diddler would say. " such a thing as tenpence " 
 away with him, seemed monstrous. He took it in excellent part, 
 however, when I made bold to give it him, and pulled off his cocked 
 hat with a flourish that would have been a bargain at double the 
 money. 
 
 It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments to the people 
 at all events he was doing so ; and when I compared him, like 
 Gulliver in Brobdignag, " with the Institutions of my own beloved
 
 Bologna. 255 
 
 country, I could not refrain from tears of pride and exultation." Ho 
 had no pace at all ; no more than a tortoise. Ho loitered as the 
 peoplo loitered, that they might gratify their curiosity ; and positively 
 allowed them, now and then, to read the inscriptions on the tomhs. 
 He was neither shahby, nor insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant. Ho 
 spoke his own language with perfect propriety, and seemed to consider 
 himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the people, and to entertain 
 a just respect both for himself and tliem. They would no more have 
 such a man for a Verger in Westminster Abbey, than they would let 
 the people in (as they do at Bologna) to see the monuments for 
 nothing.* 
 
 Again, an ancient sombre town, under tho brilliant sky ; with heavy 
 arcades over the footways of the older streets, and lighter and more 
 cheerful archways in the newer portions of the town. Again, brown 
 piles of sacred buildings, with more birds fiyiug in and out of chinks 
 in the stones ; and more snarling monsters for the bases of tho pillars. 
 Again, rich churches, drowsy Masses, curling incense, tinkling bells, 
 priests in bright vestments: pictures, tapers, laced altar cloths, 
 crosses, images, and artificial flowers. 
 
 There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a pleasant 
 gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct and separate impression 
 in the mind, among a crowd of cities, though it were not still further 
 marked in the traveller's remembrance by tho two brick leaning 
 towers (sufficiently unsightly in themselves, it must bo acknowledged), 
 inclining cross-wise as if they were, bowing stiffly to each other a 
 most extraordinary termination to tho perspective of some of tho 
 narrow streets. The colleges, and churches too, and palaces : and 
 above all tho academy of Fine Arts, whore there are a host of interest- 
 ing pictures, especially by Guido, Do.menichino, and Ludovhjo Cakacci : 
 give it a place of its own in the memory. Even though these were 
 not, and there were nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian 
 on the pavement of the church of San Petronio, where the sunbeams 
 mark the time among the kneeling people, would give it a fanciful 
 and pleasant interest. 
 
 Bologna being very full of tourists, dotained there by an inundation 
 
 which rendered tho road to Florence impassable, I was quartered up 
 
 at the top of an hotel, in an out-of-the-way room which I never could 
 
 find : containing a bed, big enough for a boarding-school, which I 
 
 couldn't fall asleep in. Tho chief among the waiters who visited this 
 
 lonely retreat, where there was no other company but the swallows in 
 
 tho broad eaves over tho window, was a man of one idea in connection 
 
 with tho English ; and the subject of this harmless monomania, was 
 
 Lord Byron. I made tho discovery by accidentally remarking to 
 
 him, at breakfast, that tho matting with which the floor was covered, 
 
 was very comfortable at that season, when he immediately replied 
 
 * A far more liberal and just recognition of the public has arisen in Westminster 
 Abbey since this was written.
 
 256 Pictures front Italy. 
 
 that Milor Beeron had been much attached to that kind of matting. 
 Observing, at the same moment, that I took no milk, he exclaimed 
 with enthusiasm, that Milor Beeron had nev r touched it. At first, I 
 took it for granted, in my innocence, that he had been one of tho 
 Beeron servants ; but no, he said, no, he was in the habit of speaking 
 about my Lord, to English gentlemen ; that was all. He knew all 
 about him, he said. In proof of it, he connected him with every 
 possible topic, from the Monto Pulciano wine at dinner (which was 
 grown on au estate he had owned), to the big bed itself, which was 
 the very model of his. When I left the inn, he coupled with his final 
 bow in tho yard, a parting assurance that the road by which I was 
 going, had been Milor Beeron's favourite rido ; and before the horse's 
 feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, he ran briskly 
 uprstairs again, I dare say to tell some other Englishman in some 
 other solitary room that the guest who had just departed was Lord 
 Beeron's living image. 
 
 I had entered Bologna by night almost midnight and all along 
 the road thither, after our entrance into the Papal territory : which is 
 not, in any part, supremely well governed, Saint Peter's keys being 
 rather rusty now : the driver had so worried about the danger of 
 robbers in travelling after dark, and had so infected the brave Courier, 
 and the two had been so constantly stopping and getting up and down 
 to look after a portmanteau which was tied on behind, that I should 
 have felt almost obliged to any one who woidd have had the goodness 
 to take it away. Hence it was stipulated, that, whenever we left 
 Bologna, we should start so as not to arrive at Ferrara later than 
 eight at night ; and a delightful afternoon and evening journey it 
 was, albeit through a flat district which gradually became moro 
 marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers in the recent heavy 
 rains. 
 
 At sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the horses rested, I 
 arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those singular mental 
 operations of which we are all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar to 
 me, and which I see distinctly now. There was not much in it. In 
 the blood-red light, there was a mournful sheet of water, just stirred 
 by the evening wind ; upon its margin a few trees. In the foreground 
 was a group of silent peasant girls leaning over the parapet of a little 
 bridge, and looking, now up at the sky, now down into the water ; in 
 the distance, a deep bell ; the shade of approaching night on every- 
 thing. If I had been murdered there, in some former life, I could 
 not have seemed to remember the place more thoroughly, or with a 
 more emphatic chilling of the blood ; and the mere remembrance of 
 it acquired in that minute, is so strengthened by the imaginary 
 recollection, that I hardly think I could forget it. 
 
 More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara, than 
 any city of the solemn brotherhood ! The grass so groWs up in the 
 silent streets, that any one might make hay there, literally, while the
 
 Ferrara. 257 
 
 sun shines. But the sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in grim 
 Ferrara ; and the people are so few who pass and ro-pass through tho 
 places, that the flesh of its inhabitants might be grass indeed, and 
 growing in the squares. 
 
 I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, always 
 lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite : making the visitor feel as if 
 the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating with a deadly 
 energy ! I wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on 
 all sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't bo shut, and will 
 not open, and abut on pitchy darkness ! I wonder why it is not enough 
 that these distrustful genii stand agape at ono's dreams all night, but 
 there must also be round open portholes, high in tho wall, suggestive, 
 when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody 
 scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of 
 these portholes and look in ! I wonder why the faggots are so con- 
 structed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat when they are 
 lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and suffocation at all 
 other times ! I wonder, above all, why it is the great feature of 
 domestic architecture in Italian inns, that all tho fire goes up the 
 chimney, except the smoke ! 
 
 The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, portholes, smoke, 
 and faggots, are welcome to me. Give me the smiling face of the 
 attendant, man or woman ; the courteous manner ; the amiable desire 
 to please and to be pleased ; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple air 
 so many jewels set in dirt and I am theirs again to-morrow ! 
 
 Ariosto's house, Tasso's prison, a rare old Gothic cathedral, and 
 more churches of course, aro the sights of Ferrara. But the long 
 silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of 
 banners, and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the long- 
 untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all. 
 
 The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before sunrise one fine 
 morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed unreal and 
 spectral. It was no matter that the peoplo were not yet out of bed ; 
 for if they had all been up and busy, they would have made but little 
 difference in that desert of a place. It was best to see it, without a 
 single figure in the picture ; a city of tho dead, without one solitary 
 survivor. Pestilence might have ravaged streets, squares, and market- 
 places ; and sack and siege have ruined the old houses, battered down 
 their doors and windows, and made breaches in their roofs. In one 
 part, a great tower rose into the air ; the only landmark in the melan- 
 choly view. In another, a prodigious castle, with a moat about it, 
 stood aloof: a sullen city in itself. In the black dungeons of this 
 castle, Parisina and her lover wcro beheaded in the dead of night. 
 The red light, beginninf to shine when I looked hack upon it, stained 
 its walls without, as l hey have, many a time, been stained within, in 
 old days- but for any sign of life they gave, the castle and the city 
 might have been avoided by all human creatures, from the moment
 
 258 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 when the axe went down upon the last of the two lovers : and might 
 have never vibrated to another sound 
 
 Beyond the blow that to the block 
 
 Pierced through with forced and sullen shock. 
 
 Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running fiercely, 
 we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so came into tho 
 Austrian territory, and resumed our journey : through a country of 
 which, for some miles, a great part was under water. The brave 
 Courier and the soldiery had first quarelled, for half an hour or more, 
 over our eternal passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the 
 Brave, who was always stricken deaf when shabby functionaries in 
 uniform came, as they constantly did come, plunging out of wooden 
 boxes to look at it or in other words to beg and who, stone deaf to 
 my entreaties that the man might have a trifle given him, and we 
 resume our journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the functionary 
 in broken English : while the unfortunate man's face was a portrait 
 of mental agony framed in the coach window, from his perfect igno- 
 rance of what was being said to his disparagement. 
 
 There was a postilion, in the course of this day's journey, as wild 
 and savagely good-looking a vagabond as you would desire to see. 
 He was a tall, stout-made, dark-complexioned fellow, with a profusion 
 of shaggy black hair hanging all over his face, and great black whiskers 
 stretching down his throat. His dress was a torn suit of rifle green, 
 garnished here and there with red ; a steeple-crowned hat, innocent 
 of nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather stuck in the band ; and 
 a flaming red neckerchief hanging on his shoulders. He was not in 
 the saddle, but reposed, quite at his ease, on a sort of low foot-board 
 in front of the postchaise, down amongst the horses' tails convenient 
 for having his brains kicked out, at any moment. To this Brigand, 
 the brave Courier, when we were at a reasonable trot, happened to 
 suggest the practicability of going faster. He received the proposal 
 with a perfect yell of derision ; brandished his whip about his head 
 (such a whip ! it was more like a home-made bow) ; flung up his 
 heels, much higher than the horses ; and disappeared, in a paroxysm, 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood of the axletree. I fully expected to 
 see him lying in the road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the 
 steeple-crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as 
 on a sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, " Ha ha ! 
 what next! Oh the devil ! Faster too ! Shoo boo o!" (This 
 last ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being anxious to reach 
 our immediate destination that night, I ventured, by-and-by, to repeat 
 the experiment on my own account. It produced exactly the same 
 eft'ect. Round flew the whip with the same scornful flourish, up came 
 the heels, down went the steeple-crowned hat, and presently he re- 
 appeared, reposing as before and saying to himself, "Ha ha! what 
 next! Faster too. Oh the devil ! Shoo hoo 0!"
 
 AN ITALIAN DREAM. 
 
 I had been travelling, for some days : resting very little in tho night, 
 and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken succession of novelties 
 that had passed before me, came back like half-formed dreams ; and 
 a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion through my 
 mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. At intervals, some one 
 among them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, 
 and enable me to look at it, quite steadily, and behold it in full dis- 
 tinctness. After a few moments, it would dissolve, like a view in a 
 magic-lantern ; and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and 
 some faintly, and some not at all, w^ould show me another of the 
 many places I had lately seen, lingering behind it, and coming through 
 it. This was no sooner visible than, in its turn, it melted into some- 
 thing else. 
 
 At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown old rugged 
 churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious pillars with grim 
 monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them, standing by them- 
 selves in the quiet square at Padua, where there were tho staid old 
 University, and the figures, demurely gowned, grouped here and there 
 in the open spaco about it. Then, I w T as strolling in the outskirts 
 of that pleasant city, admiring the unusual neatness of the dwelling- 
 houses, gardens, and orchards, as I had seen them a few hours before. 
 In their stead arose, immediately, the two towers of Bologna ; and the 
 most obstinate of all these objects, failed to hold its ground, a minute, 
 before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustra- 
 tion to a wild romance, came back agair. in the red sunrise, lording 
 it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had that 
 incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers arc apt 
 to have, and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake of tho 
 coach in which I sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some 
 new recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new recollec- 
 tion into it ; and in this state I fell asleep. 
 
 I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the stopping of 
 the coach. It was now quite night, and we were at the water-side. 
 There lay here, a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of the 
 same mournful colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat 
 was paddled, by two men, towards a great light, lying in the distance 
 on the sea. 
 
 Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled the 
 water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying before the 
 stars. I could not but think how strange it was, to be floating away 
 at that hour : leaving the land behind, and going on, towards this 
 light upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter ; and from being 
 one light became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of
 
 2C0 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 the water, as the boat approached towards them by a dreamy kind of 
 track, marked out upon the sea by posts and piles. 
 
 We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when I 
 heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at hand. 
 Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black 
 and massive like a shore, but lying close and flat upon tho water, 
 like a raft which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers 
 said it was a burial-place. 
 
 Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there, 
 in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede 
 in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I 
 knew by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street a 
 phantom street ; the houses rising on both sides, from the water, and 
 the black boat gliding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining 
 from some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream 
 with their reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent. 
 
 So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our courso 
 through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. 
 Same of the corners where our way branched off, were so acute and 
 narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn 
 them ; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it 
 skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another 
 black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed 
 (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark 
 shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I 
 thought, to painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors that opened 
 straight upon the water. Some of these were empty ; in some, the 
 rowers lay asleep ; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a 
 gloomy archway from the interior of a palace : gaily dressed, and 
 attended by torchbearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them ; for a 
 bridge, so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall 
 down and crush us : one of the many bridges that perplexed the 
 Dream : blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating towards 
 the heart of this strange place with water all about us where never 
 water was elsewhere clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately 
 buildings growing out of it and, everywhere, the same extraordinary 
 silence. Presently, we shot across a broad and oj)en stream ; and 
 passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright 
 lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and 
 pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light to 
 the eye as garlands of hoar-frost or gossamer and where, for the 
 first time, I saw people walking arrived at a flight of steps leading 
 from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through 
 corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest ; listening to 
 the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the 
 rippling water, till I fell asleep. 
 
 The glory of the clay that broke upon me in this Dream ; its fresh-
 
 An Italian Dreanl. 261 
 
 ness, motion, buoyancy ; its sparkles of the sun in water ; its clear 
 blue sky and rustling air ; no waking words can tell. But, from my 
 window, I looked down on boats and barks ; on masts, sails, cordage, 
 flags ; on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes of these 
 vessels ; on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of 
 many kinds ; on great ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence ; 
 on islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets : and where 
 golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches, 
 springing from the sea ! Going down upon the margin of the green 
 sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I camo upon 
 a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest 
 was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness. 
 
 It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like all the rest, in 
 the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace, more majestic and 
 magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the earth, in the 
 high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries : so 
 light, they might have been the work of fairy hands : so strong that 
 centuries had battered them in vain : wound round and round this 
 palace, and enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild 
 luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance from its porch, 
 a lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its proud head, alone, 
 into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin 
 of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of red granite ; one having 
 on its top, a figure with a sword and shield ; the other, a winged lion. 
 Not far from these again, a second tower : richest of the rich in all 
 its decorations : even here, where all was rich : sustained aloft, a great 
 orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue : the Twelve Signs painted 
 on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course around them : while 
 above, two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding 
 boll. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, sur- 
 rounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted 
 sceno ; and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the 
 pavement of the unsubstantial ground. 
 
 I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among its 
 many arches : traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy 
 structure, of immense proportions ; golden with old mosaics ; redolent 
 of perfumes ; dim with tho smoke of incense ; costly in treasure of 
 precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars ; holy with 
 the bodies of deceased saints ; rainbow-hued with windows of stained 
 glass ; dark with carved woods and coloured marbles ; obscure in its 
 vast heights, and lengthened distances ; shining with silver lamps 
 und winking lights ; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable through- 
 out. I thought I entered the old palace ; pacing silent galleries and 
 council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress of the waters 
 looked sternly out. in pictures, from the walls, and where her high- 
 prowed galleys, Ktill victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of 
 old. I thought I wandered through its halls of state and triumph
 
 262 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 bare and empty now ! and musing on its pride and might, extinct : 
 for that was past ; all past : heard a voice say, " Some tokens of its 
 ancient rule, and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be 
 traced here, yet ! " 
 
 I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, com- 
 municating with a prison near the palace ; separated from it by a lofty 
 bridge crossing a narrow street ; and called, I dreamed, The Bridge 
 of Sighs. 
 
 But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall ; tho lions' 
 mouths now toothless where, in the distempered horror of my sleep, 
 I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked Council, 
 had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was dark. 
 So, when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were taken 
 for examination, and the door by which they passed out, when they 
 were condemned a door that never closed upon a man with life and 
 hope before him my heart appeared to die within me. 
 
 It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended 
 from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, 
 awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a loop- 
 hole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch 
 was placed I dreamed -to light the prisoner within, for half an 
 hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had 
 scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. 
 For their labour with a rusty nail's point, had outlived their agony 
 and them, through many generations. 
 
 One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and- 
 twenty hours ; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by, 
 another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came 
 a monk brown-robed, and hooded ghastly in the day, and free 
 bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extin- 
 guisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, 
 at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled ; and 
 struck my hand upon the guilty door low browed and stealthy 
 through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed 
 away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net. 
 
 Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it : lick- 
 ing the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime 
 within : stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if 
 the very stones and bars had mouths to stop : furnishing a smooth 
 road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the State 
 a road so ready that it went along with them, and ran before them, 
 like a cruel officer flowed the same water that filled this Dream of 
 mine, and made it seem one, even at the time. 
 
 Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, the 
 Giant's I had some imaginary recollection of an old man abdicating, 
 coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell, 
 proclaiming his successor I glided off, in one of the dark boats, until
 
 Dreaming still. 263 
 
 we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble lions. To make 
 my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and 
 sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in 
 an unknown language ; so that their purport was a mystery to all 
 men. 
 
 There was little sound of hammers in this place for building ships, 
 and little work in progress ; for the greatness of the city was no more, 
 as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very wreck found drifting on the 
 sea ; a strange flag hoisted in its honourable stations, and strangers 
 standing at its helm. A splendid barge in which its ancient chief 
 had gone forth, pompously, at certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay 
 here, I thought, no more ; but, in its place, there was a tiny model, 
 made from recollection like the city's greatness ; and it told of what 
 had been (so are the strong and weak confounded in the dust) almost 
 as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to over- 
 shadow stately ships that had no other shadow now, upon the water 
 or the earth. 
 
 An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ; but an 
 armoury. With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in 
 the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors 
 were hoarded there ; crossbows and bolts ; quivers full of arrows ; 
 spears ; . swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. 
 Plates of wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster 
 cased in metal scales ; and one spring- weapon (easy to be carried in 
 the breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for shooting 
 men with poisoned darts. 
 
 One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture : 
 horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's 
 bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand deaths. 
 Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces : made to close 
 up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers ; and fastened 
 on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could 
 reposo his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the 
 lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There was that 
 grim resemblance in them to the human shape they were such 
 moulds of sweating faces, pained and crainped that it was difficult to 
 think them empty ; and terrible distortions lingering within them, 
 seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a 
 kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and 
 trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink I stood 
 there, in my dream and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun ; 
 before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and behind 
 me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on tho 
 water. 
 
 In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed 
 of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there 
 were days and nights in it ; and when the sun was high, and when
 
 264 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, 
 I thought : plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings 
 of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the 
 streets. 
 
 Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I 
 wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths 
 of rich altars, ancient monuments ; decayed apartments where the 
 furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering away. Pictures 
 were there, replete with such enduring beauty and expression : with 
 such passion, truth and power : that they seemed so many young and 
 fresh realities among a host of spectres. I thought these, often inter- 
 mingled with the old days of the city : with its beauties, tyrants, 
 captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests : nay, with its very 
 stones, and bricks, and public places ; all of which lived again, about 
 mo, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where 
 the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my 
 boat again, and went on in my dream. 
 
 Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane 
 and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the 
 water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled 
 heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the 
 wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, 
 making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. 
 Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing 
 and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on flag- 
 stones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there were idlers 
 too ; loitering and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected at a 
 giddy height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past 
 plots of garden, theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture 
 Gothic Saracenic fanciful with all the fancies of all times and 
 countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and 
 white, and straight, and crooked ; mean and grand, crazy and strong. 
 Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at 
 last into a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I 
 saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with 
 shops and humming with the tongues of men ; a form I seemed to 
 know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck 
 a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit was 
 abroad upon the water somewhere : stealing through the city. 
 
 At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the 
 Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof, I 
 fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of 
 cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged witli people ; 
 while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee-houses 
 opening from it which were never shut, I thought, but open all 
 night long. When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on 
 the bell, I thought the life and animation of the citv were all centred
 
 The House of tJie Capulets. 265 
 
 here ; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only saw them 
 dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their 
 cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones. 
 
 But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons: 
 sucking at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the 
 town : crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful : coiled round 
 and round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent : waiting for the 
 time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for any 
 stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress. 
 
 Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at 
 Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange 
 Dream upon the water : half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its 
 name be Venice. 
 
 BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE 
 PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND. 
 
 I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me 
 out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come 
 into the old market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so 
 fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an extra- 
 ordinary and rich variety of fatastic buildings, that there could be 
 nothing better at the core of even this romantic town : scene of one 
 of the most romantic and beautiful of stories. 
 
 It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the 
 House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little 
 inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing posses- 
 sion of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of 
 splashed and bespattered geese ; and there was a grim-visaged dog, 
 viciously panting in a door-way, who would certainly have had Romeo 
 by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and 
 been at large in those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and 
 was parted off many years ago ; but there used to be one attached to 
 the house or at all events there may have been, and tho hat 
 (Cappcllo) tho ancient cognizance of tho family, may still bo seen, 
 carved in stone, over the gateway of the yard. The geese, the 
 market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were somewhat in the way of 
 the story, it must be confessed ; and it would have been pleasanter to 
 have found the house empty, and to have been able to walk through 
 the disused rooms. But the hat was unspeakably comfortable ; and 
 the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so. Besides, the 
 house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would desire to 
 sec, though of a very moderate size. 80 I was quite satisfied with it, 
 as the veritable mansion of old Capulct, and was correspondingly
 
 266 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental 
 middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging on 
 the threshold looking at the geese ; and who at least resembled the 
 Capulets in the one particular of being very great indeed in the 
 " Family " way. 
 
 From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to 
 the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet that ever 
 has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I went off, 
 with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old 
 convent, I suppose ; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a 
 bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down some walks 
 where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily growing among 
 fragments of old wall, and ivy-covered mounds ; and was shown a 
 little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed woman drying 
 her arms upon her 'kerchief, called " La tomba di Giulietta la 
 sfortundta." With the best disposition in the world to believe, I 
 could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed ; 
 so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money. 
 It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's resting- 
 place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have been to 
 Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead, and, 
 twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet 
 to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors but such as 
 come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine. 
 
 Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming 
 country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, ballus- 
 traded galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the fair 
 street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen 
 hundred years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, 
 rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, whore shouts of 
 Montagues and Capulets once resounded, 
 
 And made Verona's ancient citizens 
 
 Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments. 
 
 To wield old partizans. 
 
 With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle, 
 waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful ! 
 Pleasant Verona ! 
 
 In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra -a spirit of old time among 
 the familiar realities of the passing hour is the great Roman Amphi- 
 theatre. So well preserved, and carefully maintained, that every row 
 of seats is there, unbroken. Over certain of the arches, the old 
 Roman numerals may yet be seen ; and there are corridors, and 
 staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding Avays, 
 above ground and below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and 
 out, intent upon the bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of 
 the shadows and hollow places of tho walls, now, are smiths with their 
 forges, and a few small dealers of one kind or other ; and there are
 
 Pleasant Verona! 267 
 
 green weeds, and leaves, and grass, npon the parapet. But little else 
 is greatly changed. 
 
 When I had traversed all ahout it, with great interest, and had gone 
 up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely 
 panorama closed in hy the distant Alps, looked down into the build- 
 ing, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of 
 plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow crown ; the 
 plaits being represented by the four-and-forty rows of seats. The 
 comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on 
 paper, but it was irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless. 
 
 An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before the same 
 troop, 1 dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at 
 Modena and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the arena ; 
 where their performances had taken place, and where the marks of 
 their horses' feet were still fresh. I could not but picture to myself, 
 a handful of spectators gathered together on one or two of the old 
 stone seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello 
 funny, with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I thought how 
 strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the favourite comic 
 scene of the travelling English, where a British nobleman (Lord 
 John), with a very loose stomach ; dressed in a blue tailed coat down 
 to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat : comes abroad, 
 riding double on a rearing horse, with an English lady (Lady Betsy) 
 in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a red spencer ; and who always 
 carries a gigantic reticule, and a put-up parasol. 
 
 I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day, and 
 could have walked there until now, I think. In one place, there was 
 a very pretty modern theatre, where they had just performed the opera 
 (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In another there 
 was a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan 
 remains, presided over by an ancient man who might have been an 
 Etruscan relic himself; for he was not strong enough to open the 
 iron gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice enough to 
 be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight enough to see 
 them : he was so very old. In another place, there was a gallery of 
 pictures : so abominably bad, that it was quite delightful to see them 
 mouldering away. But anywhere : in the churches, among the 
 palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down beside the river : it was 
 always pleasant Verona, and in my remembrance always will be. 
 
 I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that night of 
 
 course, no Englishman had ever road it there, before and set out for 
 
 Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to myself (in tho coupe, of an 
 
 omnibus, and next to the conductor, who was reading the Mysteries of 
 
 Paris), 
 
 There is no world without Verona's walls 
 Hut purgatory, torture, hell itself. 
 Henee-1 anished is banished from the world, 
 Ami world's exile is death
 
 268 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty 
 miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy and 
 boldness. 
 
 Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I wonder ! Did 
 it wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing 
 streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees ! Those 
 purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain ; and the dresses 
 of tbose peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, silver pin like an 
 English " life-preserver " through their hair behind, can hardly be 
 much changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a morning, and so 
 exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger, even to an exiled 
 lover's breast ; and Mantua itself must have broken on him in the 
 prospect, with its towers, and walls, and water, pretty much as on a 
 common-place and matrimonial omnibus. Ho made the same sharj) 
 twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges ; passed 
 through the like long, covered, wooden bridge ; and leaving the 
 marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of stagnant Mantua. 
 
 If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his place 
 of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came together 
 in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been more stirring then, 
 perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a man in advance of his time, 
 and knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and forty-four. 
 He fasted much, and that assisted him in his foreknowledge. 
 
 I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room 
 arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest 
 little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery surrounding a 
 court-yard ; and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire 
 if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the town. His face 
 was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened doorway, and 
 there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit and little 
 pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held 
 it not expressed the less, because these were evidently his genteel 
 clothes, hastily slipped on that I would as soon have trodden on him 
 as dismissed him. I engaged him on the instant, and he stepped in 
 directly. 
 
 While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he stood, 
 beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing my hat 
 with his arm. If his fee had been as many napoleons as it was francs, 
 there could not have shot over the twilight of his shabbiness such ;i 
 gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now that he was hired. 
 
 i; Well ! " said I, when I was ready, " shall we go out now V " 
 
 " If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A little fresh, 
 but charming ; altogether charming. The gentleman will allow me 
 to open the door. This is the Inn Yard. The court-yard of the 
 Golden Lion ! The gentleman will please to mind his footing on the 
 stairs." 
 
 We were now in the street
 
 Mantua. 269 
 
 " This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the outside of tho 
 Golden Lion. Tho interesting window up there, on the first Piano, 
 where the pane of glass is hroken, is the window of the gentleman's 
 chamber ! " 
 
 Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if thoro 
 were much to sco in Mantua. 
 
 " Well ! Truly, no. Not much ! So, so," he said, shrugging his 
 shoulders apologetically. 
 
 " Many churches ? " 
 
 " No. Nearly all suppressed by the French." 
 
 " Monasteries or convents ? " 
 
 " No. The French again ! Nearly all suppressed by Napoleon.'' 
 
 " Much business ? " 
 
 " Very little business." 
 
 ' ; Many strangers ? " 
 
 " Ah Heaven ! " 
 
 I thought he would have fainted. 
 
 ' Then, when we havo seen tho two large churches yonder, what 
 shall we do next ? " said I. 
 
 He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his chin 
 timidly ; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had broken 
 on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my forbearance that was 
 perfectly irresistible : 
 
 " We can take a littlo turn about the town, Signore ! " (Si puo far 
 'un piccolo giro della citta). 
 
 It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the proposal, 
 so we set off together in great good-humour. In tho relief of his 
 mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much of Mantua as a 
 Cicerone could. 
 
 " One must eat," he said ; " but, bah ! it was a dull place, without 
 doubt ! " 
 
 He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea a 
 noble church and of an inclosed portion of tho pavement, about 
 which tapers were burning, and a few people kneeling, and under 
 which is said to be preserved tho Sangreal of the old Romances. 
 This church disposed of, and anothor after it (the cathedral of San 
 Pietro), we went to the Museum, which was shut up. "It was all the 
 same," lie said : " Bali ! There was not much inside ! " Then, we 
 went to see the Piazza del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no particular 
 purpose) in a single night; then, the Piazza Virgiliana; then, the 
 statue of Virgil our Poet, my little friend said, plucking up a spirit, 
 for tho moment, and putting his hat a little on one side. Thon, wo 
 went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which a picture-gallery was 
 approached. Tho moment the gate of this retreat was opened, some 
 five hundred geese came waddling round us, stretching out their 
 lucks, and clamouring in the most hideous manner, as if they wero 
 ejaculating, " Oil ! here's somehody como to sco the Pictures! Don't
 
 270 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 go up ! Don't go up ! '* While wo went up, they waited very quietly 
 about the door in a crowd, cackling to one another occasionally, in a 
 subdued tone ; but the instant we appeared again, their necks came 
 out like telescopes, and setting up a great noise, which meant, I have 
 no doubt, " What, you would go, would you ! What do you think of 
 it ! How do you like it ! " they attended us to the outer gate, and 
 cast us forth, derisively, into Mantua. 
 
 The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these, Pork 
 to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was ! I would take their 
 opinion on a question of art, in preference to the discourses of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus igno- 
 miniously escorted thither, my little friend was plainly reduced to the 
 " piccolo giro," or little circuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. 
 But my suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Te (of which I 
 had heard a great deal, as a strange wild place) imparted new life to 
 him, and away we went. 
 
 Tho secret of the length of Midas's ears, would have been more 
 extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the 
 reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough 
 to have published it to all the world. The Palazzo Te stands in a 
 swamp, among this sort of vegetation ; and is, indeed, as singular a 
 place as I ever saw. 
 
 Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Nor for its damp- 
 ness, though it is very damp. Nor for its desolate condition, though 
 it is as desolate and neglected as house can be. But chiefly for tho 
 unaccountable nightmares with which its interior has been decorated 
 (among other subjects of more delicate execution), by Giulio Romano. 
 There is a leering Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and there arc 
 dozens of Giants (Titans warring with Jove) on the walls of another 
 room, so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvelloxis how 
 any man can have imagined such creatures. In the chamber in which 
 they abound, these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, 
 and every kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as stagger- 
 ing under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in 
 the ruins ; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath ; 
 vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down 
 upon their heads ; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind 
 of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large, 
 and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of nncouthness ; the colouring is 
 harsh and disagreeable ; and the whole effect more like (I should 
 imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the spectator, than any 
 real picture set before him by the hand of an artist. This apoplectic 
 performance was shown by a sickly looking woman, whose appearance 
 was referable, I dare say, to the bad air of the marshes ; but it was 
 difficult to help feeling as if she were too much haunted by the Giants, 
 and they were frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted
 
 THE CHIFFONIER.
 
 On the Road to Milan. 271 
 
 cistern of a Palace, among the reeds and rushes, with the mists hover- 
 ing about outside, and stalking round and round it continually. 
 
 Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, some 
 suppressed church : now used for a warehouse, now for nothing at all : 
 all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of tumbling down 
 bodily. The marshy town was so intensely dull and fiat, that the dirt 
 upon it seemed not to have come there in tho ordinary coxirse, but to 
 have settled and mantled on its surface as on standing water. And 
 yet there were some business-dealings going on, and some profits 
 realising ; for there were arcades full of Jews, where those extra- 
 ordinary people were sitting outside their shops, contemplating their 
 stores of stuffs, and woollens, and bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets : 
 and looking, in all respects, as wary and business-like, as their 
 brethren in Houndsditch, London. 
 
 Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring Chris- 
 tians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to 
 start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned to 
 the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a narrow 
 passage between two bedsteads : confronted by a smoky fire, and 
 backed up by a chest of drawers. At six o'clock next morning, we 
 were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that enshrouded 
 the town ; and, before noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, and sixty 
 years of age or thereabouts) began to ask the tcay to Milan. 
 
 It lay through Bozzolo ; formerly a little republic, and now one of 
 the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns : where the landlord 
 of the miserable inn (God bless him ! it was his weekly custom) was 
 distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women and 
 children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and rain outside his 
 door, where they were gathered to receive his charity. It lay through 
 mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all 
 that day and the next : the first sleeping-place being Cremona, memo- 
 rable for its dark brick churches, and immensely high tower, tho 
 Torrazzo to say nothing of its violins, of which it certainly pro- 
 duces nono in these degenerate days ; and tho second, Lodi. Then we 
 went on, through more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy ground : and 
 through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong in the faith of their own 
 grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to be found but in their own 
 country, until we entered the paved street of Milan. 
 
 The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed Cathedral 
 might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that could bo seen 
 of it at that time. But as we halted to refresh, for a few days then, 
 and returned to Milan again next summer, I had ample opportunities 
 of seeing the glorious structuro in all its majesty and beauty. 
 
 All Christian homago to the saint who lies within it ! Thero are 
 many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo 
 has if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subjoct "my warm 
 heart." A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to tho
 
 272 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold 
 opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his 
 memory. I honour it none the less, because he was nearly slain by 
 a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar : in acknow- 
 ledgment of his endeavours to reform a false and hypocritical brother- 
 hood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo Borromeo 
 as it shielded him ! A reforming Pope would need a little shielding, 
 even now. 
 
 The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo 
 is preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, 
 as any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there, 
 flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought 
 by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in the life of 
 the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every 
 side. A windlass slowly removes the front of the altar ; and, within 
 it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, 
 the shrivelled mummy of a man : the pontifical robes with which it is 
 adorned, radiant with diamonds, emeralds, rubies : every costly and 
 magnificent gem. The shrunken heap of poor earth in the midst of 
 this great glitter, is more pitiful than if it lay upon a dunghill. 
 There is not a ray of imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of 
 jewels, but seems to mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once. 
 Every thread of silk in the rich vestments seems only a provision 
 from the worms that spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in 
 sepulchres. 
 
 In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria delle 
 Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any other in 
 the world : the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci with a door cut 
 through it by the intelligent Dominican friars, to facilitate their 
 operations at dinner time. 
 
 I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and 
 have no other means of judging of a picture than as I see it resembling 
 and refining upon naturej and presenting graceful combinations of 
 forms and colours. I am, therefore, no authority whatever, in refer- 
 ence to the " touch " of this or that master ; though I know very well 
 (as anybody may, who chooses to think about the matter) that few 
 very great masters can possibly have painted, in the compass of their 
 lives, one-half of the pictures that bear their names, and that are 
 recognised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as undoubted 
 originals. But this, by the way. Of the Last Supper, I would simply 
 observe, that in its beautiful composition and arrangement, there it 
 is, at Milan, a wonderful picture ; and that, in its original colouring, 
 or in its original expression of any single face or feature, there it is 
 not. Apart from the damage it has sustained from damp, decay, or 
 neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, 
 and that so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive de- 
 formities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon them like'
 
 Milan. 273 
 
 wens, and utterly distorting the expression* "Where the original 
 artist set that impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line 
 or touch, separated him from meaner painters and made him what he 
 was, succeeding hunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and 
 cracks, have heen quite unable to imitate his hand ; and putting in 
 some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched and 
 spoiled the work. This is so well established as an historical fact, 
 that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for having 
 observed an English gentleman before the picture, who was at great 
 pains to fall into what I may describe as mild convulsions, at certain 
 minute details of expression which are not left in it. Whereas, it 
 would be comfortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive 
 at a general understanding that it cannot fail to have been a work of 
 extraordinary merit, once : when, with so few of its original beauties 
 remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet sufficient to 
 sustain it, as a piece replete with interest and dignity. 
 
 We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a fine 
 city it is, though not so unmistakeably Italian as to possess the 
 characteristic qualities of many towns far less important in themselves. 
 The Corso, where the Milanese gentry ride up and down in carriages, 
 and rather than not do which, they would half starve themselves at 
 home, is a most noble public promenade, shaded by long avenues of 
 trees. In the splendid theatre of La Scala, there was a ballet of 
 action performed after the opera, under the title of Prometheus : in 
 the beginning of which, some hundred or two of men and women 
 represented our mortal race before the refinements of the arts and 
 sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to soften them. I never 
 saw anything more effective. Generally speaking, the pantomimic 
 action of the Italians is more remarkable for its sudden and impetuous 
 character than for its delicate expression ; but, in this case, the 
 drooping monotony : the weary, miserable, listless, moping life : the 
 6ordid passions and desires of human creatures, destitute of those 
 elevating influences to which we owe so much, and to whose pro- 
 moters we render so little : were expressed in a manner really power- 
 ful and affecting. I should havo thought it almost impossible to 
 present such an idea so strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech. 
 
 Milan soon lay behind us, at fivo o'clock in the morning ; and before 
 the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire was lost in the 
 blue sky, the Alps, stupendously confused in lofty peaks and ridges, 
 clouds and snow, were towering in our path 
 
 Still, we continued to advance toward them until nightfall ; and, 
 all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting shapes, 
 as the road displayed them in different points of view The beautiful 
 day was just declining, when we came upon the Lago Maggiorc, with 
 its lovely islands. For however fanciful and fantastic the Inula Bella 
 may be, and is, it still is beautiful. Anything springing jut of that 
 blue water, with that scenery around it, must bo 
 
 T
 
 274 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo d'Ossola, at tne 
 foot of the Pass of the Siraplon. But as the moon was shining 
 brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no time 
 for going to bed, or going anywhere but on. So, we got a little 
 carriage, after some delay, and began the ascent. 
 
 It was late in November ; and the snow lying four or five feet thick 
 in tho beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was 
 already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the 
 night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, 
 and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon 
 and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey more and 
 more sublime at every step. 
 
 Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in the 
 moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after a time 
 emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome, where the 
 moon shone bright and high. By degrees, the roar of water grew 
 louder ; and the stupendous track, after crossing the torrent by a 
 bridge, struck in between two massive perpendicular walls of rock 
 that quite shut out the moonlight, and only left a few stars shining in 
 the narrow strip of sky above. Then, even this was lost, in the thick 
 darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which the way was pierced ; 
 the terrible cataract thundering and roaring close below it, and its 
 foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about the entrance. Emerging 
 from this cave, and coming again into the moonlight, and across a 
 dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted upward, through the Gorge of 
 Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, with smooth-fronted 
 precipices, rising up on either hand, and almost meeting overhead. 
 Thus wo went, climbing on our rugged way, higher and higher all 
 night, without a moment's weariness : lost in the contemplation of the 
 black rocks, the tremendous heights and depths, the fields of smooth 
 snow lying in the clefts and hollows, and the fierce torrents thunder- 
 ing headlong down the deep abyss. 
 
 Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind 
 was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the 
 inmates of a wooden house in this solitude : round which the wind 
 was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling 
 it away : we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but 
 well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) for 
 keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, and 
 four horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing, through the snow. 
 Still upward, but now in the cold light of morning, and with the great 
 white desert on which we travelled, plain and clear. 
 
 We were well upon the summit of the mountain : and had before 
 us the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude above the 
 sea : when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at once, upon the 
 waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur of 
 the scene, was then at its height.
 
 Passing on. 275 
 
 As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded by 
 Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and knapsacks, 
 who had rested there last night : attended by a Monk or two, their 
 hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly forward with thorn, for com- 
 pany's sake. It was pleasant to give them good morning, and pretty, 
 looking back a long way after them, to see them looking back at us, 
 and hesitating presently, when one of our horses stumbled and fell, 
 whether or no they should return and help us. But he was soon up 
 again, with the assistance of a rough waggoner whose team had stuck 
 fast there too ; and when we had helped him out of his difficulty, in 
 return, we left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went softly 
 and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep precipice, among the 
 mountain pines. 
 
 Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to 
 descend ; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched 
 galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicles ; undor and over 
 foaming waterfalls; near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter 
 against sudden danger ; through caverns over whose arched roofs the 
 avalanches slide, in spring, and bury themselves in the unknown gulf 
 beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and through horrible ravines: a 
 little shifting speck in the vast desolation of ico and snow, and 
 monstrous granite rocks ; down through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, 
 and deafened by the torrent plunging madly down, among the riven 
 blocks of rock, into the level country, far below. Gradually down, by 
 zig-zag roads, lying between an upward and a downward precipice, 
 into warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay 
 before us, glittering like gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, the 
 metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-spires of a Swiss 
 town. 
 
 The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my 
 business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as 
 possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the Swiss 
 villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked like play- 
 things ; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled together ; 
 or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling winds out 
 in the winter time ; and broken bridges, which the impetuous torrents, 
 suddenly released in spring, had swept away. Or how there were 
 peasant women here, with great round fur caps ; looking, when they 
 peeped out of casements and only their heads wcro seen, liko a 
 population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of London ; or how 
 the town of Vevay, lying on the smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful 
 to see ; or how the statue of Saint Peter in the street at Fribourg, 
 grasps the largest key that ever was beheld ; or how Fribourg is 
 illustrious for its two suspension bridges, and its grand cathedral 
 organ. 
 
 Or how, between that town and Bule, the road meandered among 
 thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging thatched roofs,
 
 2j6 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 and low protruding windows, glazed with small round panes of glass 
 like crown-pieces ; or how, in every little Swiss homestead, with its 
 cart or waggon carefully stowed away heside the house, its little 
 garden, stock of poultry, and groups of red-cheeked children, there 
 was an air of comfort, very new and very pleasant after Italy ; or how 
 the dresses of the women changed again, and there were no more 
 sword-bearers to be seen ; and fair white stomachers, and great black, 
 fan-shaped, gauzy-looking caps, prevailed instead. 
 
 Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with snow, 
 and lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, was 
 delightful ; or how, below the windows of the great hotel of the Three 
 Kings at Bale, the swollen Rhine ran fast and green ; or how, at 
 Strasbourg, it was quite as fast ^ut not as green : and was said to be 
 foggy lower down : and, at that late time of the year, was a far less 
 certain means of progress, than the highway road to Paris. 
 
 Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathedral, 
 and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, made a 
 little gallery of quaint and interesting views ; or how a crowd was 
 gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical 
 clock in motion, striking twelve. How, when it struck twelve, 
 a whole army of puppets went through many ingenious evolutions ; 
 and, among them, a huge puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed 
 twelve times, loud and clear. Or how it was wonderful to see this 
 cock at great pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat ; but 
 obviously having no connection whatever with its own voice ; which 
 was deep within the clock, a long way down. 
 
 Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to the 
 coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs of Dover were 
 a pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully neat though dark, 
 and lacking colour on a winter's day, it must be conceded. 
 
 Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the Channel, 
 with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in France. Or 
 how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow, headlong, drawn in 
 the hilly parts by any number of stout horses at a canter ; or how 
 there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris, before daybreak, 
 extraordinary adventurers in heaps of rags, groping in the snowy 
 streets with little rakes, in search of odds and ends. 
 
 Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceed- 
 ing deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for 
 the next three hundred miles or so ; breaking springs on Sunday 
 nights, and putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh them- 
 selves pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy 
 company, collected about stoves, were playing cards ; the cards being 
 very like themselves extremely limp and dirty. 
 
 Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of weather ; 
 and steamers were advertised to go, which did not go ; or how the 
 good steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met such
 
 The Coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia, 277 
 
 weather that now she threatened to run into Toulon, and now into 
 Nice, but, the wind moderating, did neither, but ran on into Genoa 
 harbour instead, where tho familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear. 
 Or how there was a travelling party on board, of whom one member 
 was very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross, and 
 therefore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept under his 
 pillow ; thereby obliging his companions to come down tc him, con- 
 stantly, to ask what was the Italian for a lump of sugar a glass of 
 brandy and water what's o'clock ? and so forth : which he always 
 insisted on looking out, with his own sea-sick eyes, declining to 
 entrust the book to any man alive. 
 
 Like Grumio, I might have told you, in detail, all this and something 
 more but to as little purpose were I not deterred by the remem- 
 brance that my business is with Italy. Therefore, like Gbumio's 
 story, " it shall die in oblivion." 
 
 TO HOME BY PISA AND SIENA. 
 
 Thebe is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-road 
 between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side : sometimes far below, 
 sometimes nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by 
 broken rocks of many shapes : there is the free blue sea, with here 
 and there a picturesque felucca gliding slowly on ; on the other side 
 are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, patches of 
 dark olive woods, country churches with their light open towers, and 
 country houses gaily painted. On every bank and knoll by the way- 
 side, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant profusion ; and tho 
 gardens of the bright villages along tho road, are seen, all blushing in 
 the summer-time with clusters of the Belladonna, and are fragrant in 
 the autumn and winter with golden oranges and lemons. 
 
 Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by fisher- 
 men ; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up on tho 
 beach, making little patches of shade, where they lie asleep, or whoro 
 tho women and children sit romping and looking out to sea, whilo 
 they mend their nets upon the shore. There is one town, Camoglia, 
 with its little harbour on the sea, hundreds of feet below the road ; 
 where families of mariners live, who, time out of mind, have owned 
 coasting-vossels in that place, and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. 
 Seen from the road above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of 
 the dimpled water, shining in the sun. Descended into, by. the wind- 
 ing mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a primitive seafaring 
 town ; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place that ever was 
 scon. Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and frag- 
 ments of old masts and spars, choke up tho way ; hardy rough-weathor
 
 278 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbour or are drawn 
 out on the sunny stones to dry ; on the parapet of the rude pier, a 
 few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling 
 over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if 
 they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among the 
 fishes ; the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offer- 
 ings, in commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck. Tho 
 dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbour are approached 
 by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in darkness and in 
 difficulty of access they should be like holds of ships, or inconvenient 
 cabins under water; and everywhere, there is a smell of fish, and 
 sea-weed, and old rope. 
 
 The coast-road whence Camoglia is described so far below, is 
 famous, in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, for 
 fire-flies. Walking there on a dark night, I have seen it made one 
 sparkling firmament by these beautiful insects : so that the distant 
 stars wore pale against the flash and glitter that spangled every olive 
 wood and hill-side, and pervaded the whole ah\ 
 
 It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this road on 
 our way to Bonie, The middle of January was only just past, and it 
 was very gloomy and dark weather ; very wet besides. In crossing 
 the fine pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm 01 mist and rain, 
 that we travelled in a cloud the whole way. There might have been 
 no Mediterranean in the world, for anything hat we saw of it there, 
 except when a sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before it, for a 
 moment, showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the 
 distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain was 
 incessant ; every brooK and torrent was greatly swollen ; and such a 
 deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, I never heard 
 the like of in my life. 
 
 Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, an un- 
 bridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be safely 
 crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the afternoon 
 of next day, when it had, in some degree, subsided. Spezzia, however, 
 is a good place to tarry at ; by reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay ; 
 secondly, of its ghostly Inn ; thirdly, of the head-dress of the women, 
 who wear, on one side of their head, a small doll's straw hat, stuck 
 on to the hair ; which is certainly the oddest and most roguish head- 
 gear that ever was invented. 
 
 The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat the passage is not 
 by any means agreeable, when the current is swollen and strong wo 
 arrived at Carrara, within a few hours. In good time next morning, 
 we got some ponies, and went out to see the marble quarries. 
 
 They are four or five great glens, running up into a range of lofty 
 hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped by being abruptly 
 strangled by Nature. Tho quarries, " or caves," as they call them 
 there, are so many openings, high up in the hills, on either side of
 
 Carrara. 279 
 
 these passes, where they blast and excavate for marblo ; which may 
 turn out good or bad : may make a man's fortune very quickly, or 
 ruin him by the great expenso of working what is worth nothing. 
 Some of these caves were opened by tho ancient Romans, and remain 
 as they left them to this hour. Many others are being worked at this 
 moment ; others are to bo begun to-morrow, next week, next month ; 
 others are unbought, unthought of; and marblo enough for moro 
 ages than have passed since the placo was resorted to, lies hidden 
 everywhere : patiently awaiting its time of discovery. 
 
 As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having left 
 your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower down) 
 you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, in a low tone, 
 more silent than the previous siler.ce, a melancholy warning bugle, 
 a signal to the miners to withdraw. Then, there is a thundering, and 
 echoing from hill to hill, and perhaps a splashing up of great fragments 
 of rock into the air; and on you toil again until some other bugle 
 sounds, in a new direction, and you stop directly, lest you should come 
 within the range of the new explosion. 
 
 There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills on 
 the sides clearing away, and sending down the broken masses of 
 stone and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble that had boen 
 discovered. As these came rolling down from unseen hands into tho 
 narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep glen (just tho 
 same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sinbad tho Sailor ; and where 
 the merchants from the heights above, flung down great pieces of 
 meat for the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here, to 
 darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them ; but it was as 
 wild and fierce as if there had been hundreds. 
 
 But the road, the road down which the marblo comes, however 
 immense the blocks ! The genius of the country, and the spirit of its 
 institutions, pave that road : repair it, watch it, keep it going ! Con- 
 ceive a channel of water running over a rocky bed, beset with great 
 heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes, winding down the middle of 
 this valley ; and that being tho road because it was the road five 
 hundred years ago ! Imagine the clumsy carts of five hundred years 
 ago, being used to this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five 
 hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death fivo 
 hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, in twelve 
 months, by the suffering and agony of this cruel work ! Two pair, 
 four pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, according to its size ; 
 down it must come, this way. In their struggling from stone to stone, 
 with their enormous loads behind them, they die frequently upon tho 
 spot ; and not they alone ; for their passionate drivers, sometimes 
 tumbling down in their energy, aro crushed to death beneath tho 
 wheels. Rut it was good five hundred years ago, and it must be good 
 now : and a railroad down one of those steeps (the easiest thing in tho 
 world) would be flat blasphemy,
 
 280 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by only a pair 
 of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it), coming down, 
 I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the heavy yoke, to keep 
 it on the neck of the poor beasts and who faced backwards : not 
 before him as the very Devil of true despotism. He had a great rod 
 in his hand, with an iron point ; and when they could plough and 
 force their way through the loose bed of the torrent no longer, and 
 came to a stop, he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, 
 screwed it round and round in their nostrils, got them on a yard or 
 two, in the madness of intense pain ; repeated all these persuasions, 
 with increased intensity of purpose, when they stopped again ; got 
 them on, once more ; forced and goaded them to an abrupter point of 
 the descent ; and when their writhing and smarting, and the weight 
 behind them, bore them plunging down the precipice in a cloud of 
 scattered water, whirled his rod abovo his head, and gave a great 
 whoop and hallo, as if he had achieved something, and had no idea 
 that they might shake him off, and blindly mash his brains upon the 
 road, in the noontide of his triumph. 
 
 Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara, that afternoon for 
 it is a great workshop, full of beautifully-finished copies in marble, of 
 almost every figure, group, and bust, we know it seemed, at first, so 
 strange to me that those exquisite shapes, replete with grace, and 
 thought, and delicate repose, should grow out of all this toil, and 
 sweat, and torture ! But I soon found a parallel to it, and an 
 explanation of it, in every virtue that springs up in miserable ground, 
 and every good thing that has its birth in sorrow and distress. And, 
 looking out of the sculptor's great window, upon the marble mountains, 
 all red and glowing in the decline of day, but stern and solemn to the 
 last, I thought, my God ! how many quarries of human hearts and 
 souls, capable of far more beautiful results, are left shut up and 
 mouldering away : while pleasure-travellers through life, avert their 
 faces, as they pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that 
 conceal them ! 
 
 The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this territory in part 
 belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only sovereign 
 in Europe who had not recognised Louis-Philippe as King of the 
 French ! He was not a wag, but quite in earnest. He was also much 
 opposed to railroads ; and if certain lines in contemplation by other 
 potentates, on either side of him, had been executed, would have 
 probably enjoyed the satisfaction of having an omnibus plying to and 
 fro across his not very vast dominions, to forward travellers from one 
 terminus to another. 
 
 Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and bold. Few 
 tourists stay there ; and the people are nearly all connected, in one 
 way or another, with the working of marble. There are also villages 
 among the caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beautiful 
 little Theatre, newly built ; and it is an interesting custom there, to
 
 Pisa. 281 
 
 form the chorus of labourers in the marble quarries, who are self- 
 taught and sing by ear. I heard them in a comic opera, and in an act 
 of " Norma ; " and they acquitted themselves very well ; unlike the 
 common people of Italy generally, who (with some exceptions among 
 the Neapolitans) 6ing vilely out of tune, and have very disagreeable 
 singing voices. 
 
 From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view of 
 the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies with Leghorn, a 
 purple spot in the flat distance is enchanting. Nor is it only 
 distance that lends enchantment to the view ; for the fruitful country, 
 and rich woods of olive-trees through which the road subsequently 
 passes, render it delightful. 
 
 The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long 
 time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all awry in 
 the uncertain light ; tho shadowy original of the old pictures in 
 school-books, setting forth " The Wonders of the World." Like most 
 things connected in their first associations with school-books and 
 school-times, it was too small. I felt it keenly. It was nothing liko 
 so high above the wall as I had hoped. It was another of tho many 
 deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner of St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, London. His Tower was a fiction, but this was a 
 reality and, by comparison, a short reality. Still, it looked very 
 well, and very strange, and was quite as much out of the perpendicular 
 as Harris had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too ; the 
 big guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it ; the 
 streets with scarcely any show of people in them ; and the Arno, 
 flowing quaintly through the centre of the town ; were excellent. So, 
 I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remembering his 
 good intentions), but forgave him before dinner, and went out, full of 
 confidence, to see the Tower next morning. 
 
 I might have known better ; but, somehow, I had expected to see 
 it, casting its long shadow on a public street where people came and 
 went all day. It was a surprise to me to find it in a grave retired 
 place, apart from tho general resort, and carpeted with smooth green 
 turf. But, the group of buildings, clustered on and about this verdant 
 carpet : comprising the Tower, tho Baptistery, the Cathedral, and tho 
 Church of the Campo Santo : is perhaps tho most remarkable and 
 beautiful in the whole world ; and from being clustered there, together, 
 away from the ordinary transactions and dotails of the town, they have 
 a singularly venerable and impressive character. It is the architectural 
 essence of a rich old city, with all its common life and common habi- 
 tations pressed out, and filterod away. 
 
 Simond compares the Tower to the usual pictorial representations 
 in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is a happy simile, and 
 conveys a better idea of tho building than chapters of laboured 
 description. Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of tho 
 structure ; nothing can be more remarkable than its general appear-
 
 282 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 auce. In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy 
 staircase), the inclination is not very apparent ; but, at the summit, 
 it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of being in a ship that has 
 heeled over, through the action of an ebb-tide. The effect upon the 
 low side, so to speak looking over from the gallery, and seeing the 
 shaft recede to its base is very startling ; and I saw a nervous 
 traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as 
 if he had some idea of propping it up. The view within, from the 
 ground looking up, as through a slanted tube is also very curious. 
 It certainly inclines as much as tho most sanguine tourist could desire. 
 The natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who wcro 
 about to recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and contemplate tho 
 adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to take up their position 
 under tho leaning side ; it is so very much aslant. 
 
 The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need no 
 recapitulation from me ; though in this case, as in a hundred others, I 
 find it difficult to separate my own delight in recalling them, from 
 your weariness in having them recalled. There is a picture of St. 
 Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and there are a variety of 
 rich columns in the latter, that tempt me strongly. 
 
 It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted into 
 elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo ; where grass- 
 grown graves are dug in earth brought more than six hundred years 
 ago, from the Holy Land ; and where there are, surrounding them, 
 such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows falling through 
 their delicate tracery on tho stone pavement, as surely the dullest 
 memory could never forget. On the walls of this solemn and lovely 
 place, are ancient frescoes, very much obliterated and decayed, but 
 very curious. As usually happens in almost any collection of paint- 
 ings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are many heads, there is, in 
 one of them, a striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At ono time, 
 I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these old 
 painters, at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the man who 
 would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon art : whose 
 soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and stable their horses 
 among triumphs of architecture. But the same Corsican face is so 
 plentiful in some parts of Italy at this clay, that a more common- 
 place solution of the coincidence is unavoidable. 
 
 If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, it 
 may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right of its beggars. 
 They waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, escort him to every 
 door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, 
 at every door by which they know he must come out. The grating of 
 the portal on its hinges is the signal for a general shout, and tho 
 moment he appears, he is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags 
 and personal distortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade 
 and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is stirring, but warm air, Going
 
 Leghorn. 283 
 
 through tho streets, the fronts of the sloepy houses look like backs. 
 They aro all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with peoplo in them, 
 that the greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at day- 
 break, or during a general siesta of the population. Or it is yet moro 
 like those backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings, 
 where windows and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a 
 beggar of course) is seen walking off by itself into illimitable per- 
 spective. 
 
 Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by Smollett's grave), which 
 is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is 
 shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regulations observed 
 there, in reference to trade and merchants, are very liberal and 
 free ; and the town, of course, benefits by them. Leghorn has a bad 
 name in connection with stabbers, and with some justice it must bo 
 allowed ; for, not many years ago, there was an assassination club 
 there, the members of which bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, 
 but stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the streets at night, 
 for tho pleasuro and excitement of the recreation. I think tho 
 president of this amiable society, was a shoemaker. He was taken, 
 however, and the club was broken up. It would, probably, havo dis- 
 appeared in the natural course of events, before tho railroad between 
 Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good one, and has already begun to 
 astonish Italy with a precedent of punctuality, order, plain dealing, 
 and improvement the most dangerous and heretical astonisher of all. 
 There must have been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in 
 the Vatican, when the first Italian railroad was thrown open. 
 
 Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturino, and his 
 four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled through pleasant 
 Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day. The roadside crosses 
 in this part of Italy aro numerous and curious. There is seldom a 
 figure on the cross, though there is sometimes a face ; but they aro 
 remarkablo for being garnished with little models in wood, of every 
 possible object that can be connected with the Saviour's death. The 
 eock that crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrico, is usually 
 perched on tho tiptop ; and an ornithological phenomenon he gene- 
 rally is. Under him, is the inscription. Then, hung on to the cross- 
 beam, are the spear, tho reed with the spongo of vinegar and water at 
 the end, the coat without seam for which tho soldiers cast lots, the 
 dice-box witli which they threw for it, the hammer that drove in tho 
 nails, tho pincers that pulled them out, tho ladder which was sot 
 against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, 
 the lanthorn with which Mary went to the tomb (I suppose), and tho 
 sword with which Peter smote the servant of tho high priest, a 
 perfect toy-shop of littlo objects, repeated at every four or five miles, 
 all along tho highway. 
 
 On the evening of tho second day from Pisa, wo reached tho 
 beuutiful old city of Siena, Thero was what they culled a Carnival,
 
 284 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 in progress ; but, as its secret lay in a score or two of melancholy 
 people walking up and down the principal street in common toy-shop 
 masks, and being more melancholy, if possible, than the same sort of 
 people in England, I say no more of it. We went off, betimes next 
 morning, to see the Cathedral, which is wonderfully picturesque inside 
 and out, especially the latter also the market-place, or great Piazza, 
 which is a large square, with a great broken-nosed fountain in it: 
 some quaint Gothic houses : and a high square brick tower ; outside the 
 top of which a curious feature in such views in Italy hangs an 
 enormous bell. It is like a bit of Venice, without the water. There 
 are some curious old Palazzi in the town, which is very ancient ; and 
 without having (for me) the interest of Verona, or Genoa, it is very 
 dreamy and fantastic, and most interesting. 
 
 We went on again, as soon as we had seen these things, and going 
 over a rather bleak country (there had been nothing but vines until 
 now: mere walking-sticks at that season of the year), stopped, as 
 usual, between one and two hours in the middle of the day, to rest the 
 horses ; that being a part of every Vetturino contract. We then went 
 on again, through a region gradually becoming bleaker and wilder, 
 until it became as bare and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon 
 after dark, we halted for the night, at the osteria of La Scala : a 
 perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting round a great fire 
 in the kitchen, raised on a stone platform three or four feet high, and 
 big enough for the roasting of an ox. On the upper, and only other 
 floor of this hotel, there was a great wild rambling sala, with one very 
 little window in a by-corner, and four black doors opening into four 
 black bedrooms in various directions. To say nothing of another 
 large black door, opening into another large black sab), with the 
 staircase coming abruptly through a kind of trap-door in the floor, 
 and the rafters of the roof looming above : a suspicious little press 
 skulking in one obscure corner : and all the knives in the house lying 
 about in various directions. The fire-place was of the purest Italian 
 architecture, so that it was perfectly impossible to see it for the smoke. 
 The waitress was like a dramatic brigand's wife, and wore the same 
 style of dress upon her head. The dogs barked like mad ; the echoes 
 returned the compliments bestowed upon them ; there was not another 
 house within twelve miles ; and things had a dreary, and rather a 
 cut-throat, appearance. 
 
 They were not improved by rumours of robbers having come out, 
 strong and boldly, within a few nights ; and of their having stopped 
 the mail very near that place. They were known to have waylaid 
 some travellers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius itself, and were 
 the talk at all tho roadside inns. As they were no business of ours, 
 however (for we had very little with us to lose), we made ourselves 
 merry on the subject, and were very soon as comfortable as need be. 
 We had the usual dinner in this solitary house ; and a very good 
 dinner it is, when you are used to it. There is something with a
 
 Accommodation for Travellers. 285 
 
 Vegetable or some rice in it, which is a sort of shorthand or arbitrary 
 character for soup, and which tastes very well, when you have flavoured 
 it with plenty of grated cheese, lots of salt, and abundance of pepper. 
 There is the half fowl of which this soup has been made. There is a 
 stewed pigeon, with the gizzards and livers of himself and other birds 
 stuck all round him. There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small 
 French roll. There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little 
 withered apples, all huddled together on a small plate, and crowding 
 one upon the other, as if each were trying to save itself from the 
 chance of being eaten. Then there is coffee ; and then there is bed. 
 You don't mind brick floors ; you don't mind yawning doors, nor 
 banging windows ; you don't mind your own horses being stabled 
 under the bed : and so close, that every time a horse coughs or 
 sneezes, he wakes you. If you are good-humoured to the people 
 about you, and speak pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for 
 it you may be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and 
 always in the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of the 
 country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) without any 
 great trial of your patience anywhere. Especially, when you get such 
 wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the Monte Pulciano. 
 
 It was a bad morning when we left this place ; and we went, for 
 twelvo miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and as wild, as 
 Cornwall in England, until we camo to Eadicofani, where there is a 
 ghostly, goblin inn : once a hunting-seat, belonging to the Dukes of 
 Tuscany. It is full of such rambling corridors, and gaunt rooms, that 
 all the murderiug and phantom tales that ever were written might 
 have originated in that one house. There arc some horrible old 
 Palazzi in Genoa : one in particular, not unlike it, outside : but there 
 is a winding, creaking, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-on-stair- 
 case-falling character about this Jtadicofani Hotel, such as I never 
 saw, anywhere else. The town, such as it is, hangs on a hill-side 
 above the house, and in front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars ; 
 and as soon as they sec a carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, 
 like so many birds of prey. 
 
 "When we got on the mountain pass, which lies beyond this place, 
 the wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so terrific, that 
 we were obliged to take my other half out of the carriage, lest she 
 should be blown over, carriage and all, and to hang to it, on tho 
 windy side (as well as we could for laughing), to prevent its going, 
 Heaven knows where. For mere force of wind, this land-storm might 
 have competed with an Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable chance of 
 coming off victorious. The blast came sweeping down great gullies in 
 a range of mountains on the right : so that we looked with positive 
 awe at a great morass on tho left, and saw that there was not a bush 
 or twig to hold by. It seemed as if, once blown from our feet, we 
 must be swept out to sea, or away into space. There was snow, and 
 hail, and rain, and lightning, and thunder; and there were rolling
 
 286 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 mists, travelling with incredible velocity. It was dark, awful, and 
 solitary to the last degree ; there were mountains above mountains, 
 veiled in angry clouds ; and there was such a wrathful, rapid, violent, 
 tumultuous hurry, everywhere, as rendered the scone unspeakably 
 exciting and grand. 
 
 It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding ; and to cross even 
 the dismal dirty Papal Frontier. After passing through two little 
 towns ; in one of which, Acquapendente, there was also a " Carnival " 
 in progress : consisting of one man dressad and masked as a woman, 
 and one woman dressed and masked as a man, walking ankle-deep, 
 through the muddy streets, in a very melancholy manner : we came, 
 at dusk, within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is 
 a little town of the same name, much celebrated for malaria. With 
 the exception of tbis poor place, there is not a cottage on the banks of 
 the lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep there) ; not a boat upon its 
 waters ; not a stick or stake to break the dismal monotony of saven- 
 and-twenty watery miles. We were late in getting in, the roads 
 being very bad from heavy rains ; and, after dark, the dulness of the 
 scene was quite intolerable. 
 
 We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of desolation, next 
 night, at sunset. We had passed through Montofiaschone (famous 
 for its wine) and Viterbo (for its fountains) : and after climbing up a 
 long hill of eight or ten miles' extent, came suddenly upon the margin 
 of a solitary lake : in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood ; 
 in another, very barren, and shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where 
 this lake flows, there stood, of old, a city. It was swallowed up one 
 day ; and in its stead, this water rose. There aro ancient traditions 
 (common to many parts of the world) of the ruined city having been 
 seen below, when the water was clear ; but however that may be, from 
 this spot of earth it vanished. The ground came bubbling up above 
 it ; and the water too ; and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the 
 other world closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting back 
 again. They seem to be waiting the course of ages, for the next 
 earthquake in that place ; when they will plunge below tbe ground, 
 at its first yawning, and be seen no more. The unhappy city below, 
 is not more lost and dreary, than theso fire-charred hills and the 
 stagnant water, above. The red sun looked strangely on them, as 
 with the knowledge that they were made for caverns and darkness ; 
 and the melancholy water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept 
 quietly among the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all 
 the ancient towerr and house-tops, and the death of all the ancient 
 people born and bre i there, were yet heavy on its conscience. 
 
 A short ride from this lake brought us to Ronciglione ; a little 
 town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the night. Next morning 
 at seven o'clock, we started for Rome. 
 
 As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the Campagna 
 Romana ; an undulating flat (as you know), where few people can
 
 On the Campagna. 287 
 
 live ; and where, for miles and miles, there ib nothing to relieve the 
 terrible monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of country that could, by 
 possibility, lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the aptest and fittest 
 burial-ground for the Dead City. So sad, so quiet, so sullen; bo 
 Becret in its covering up of great masses of ruin, and hiding them ; bo 
 like the waste places into which the men possessed with devils used 
 to go and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of Jerusalem. 
 Wo had to traverse thirty miles of this Campagna ; and for two-and- 
 twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing but now and then a lonely 
 house, or a villainous-looking shepherd : with matted hair all over 
 his face, and himself wrapped to the chin in a frouzy brown mantle, 
 tending his sheep. At the end of that distance, wo stopped to refresh 
 the horses, and to get some lunch, in a common malaria-shaken, 
 despondent little public-house, whose every inch of wall and beam, 
 inside, was (according to custom) painted and decorated in a way so 
 miserable that every room looked like the wrong side of another room, 
 and, with its wretched imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little daubs 
 of lyres, seemed to have been plundered from behind the scenes of 
 some travelling circus. 
 
 When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect fever, 
 to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, after another mile or two, the 
 Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance ; it looked like I 
 am half afraid to write the word like LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, 
 under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs 
 of housos, rising up into the sky, and high above them all, one Dome. 
 I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, 
 it was so like London, at that distance, that if you could have shown 
 it me, in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing else. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 We entered the Eternal City, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, 
 on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came imme- 
 diately it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain 
 on the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were 
 only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were driving slowly 
 round and round the Piazza until they could find a promising oppor- 
 tunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good 
 time, into the thick of the festivity ; and coming among them so 
 abruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was not coming very well 
 prepared to enjoy the scene. 
 
 We had crossed tho Tibor by tho Ponte Mollo two or three miles 
 before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and hurrying on 
 between its worn-away and miry tanks, had u promising aspoct of
 
 2$8 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 desolation and ruin. The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the" 
 Carnival;, did great violence to this promise. There were no great 
 ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be seen ; they all lie on the 
 other side of the city. There seemed to be long streets of common- 
 place shops and houses, such as are to be found in any European 
 town ; there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers to and 
 fro ; a multitude of chattering strangers. It was no more my Rome : 
 the Rome of anybody's fancy, man or boy ; degraded and fallen and 
 lying asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins : than the Place de la 
 Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy 
 streets, I was prepared for, but not for this : and I confess to having 
 gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour, and with a very 
 considerably quenched enthusiasm. 
 
 Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St. Peter's. 
 It looked immense in the distance, but distinctly and decidedly small, 
 by comparison, on a near approach. The beauty of the Piazza, on 
 which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing 
 fountains so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful nothing can 
 exaggerate. The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive 
 majesty and glory : and, most of all, the looking up into the Dome : 
 is a sensation never to be forgotten. But, there were preparations: for 
 a Festa ; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some imperti- 
 nent frippery of red and yellow ; the altar, and entrance to the 
 subterranean chapel : which is before it : in the centre of the church : 
 were like a goldsmith's shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very 
 lavish pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of the beauty 
 of the building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very 
 strong emotion. I have been infinitely more affected in many English 
 cathedrals when the organ has been playing, and in many English 
 country churches when the congregation have been singing. I had a 
 much greater sense of mystery and wonder, in the Cathedral of San 
 Mark at Venice. 
 
 When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour 
 staring up into the dome : and would not have " gone over " the 
 Cathedral then, for any money), we said to the coachman, "Go to the 
 Coliseum." In a quarter of an hour or so, ho stopped at the gate, 
 and we went in. 
 
 It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say : so suggestive 
 and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a moment actually in passing 
 in they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it 
 used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, 
 and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no 
 language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter 
 desolation, strike upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened 
 sorrow ; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and over- 
 come by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections 
 and afflictions.
 
 The Coliseum. 289 
 
 To see it crumbling there, an inch a year ; its walls and arches 
 overgrown with green ; its corridors open to the day ; the long grass 
 growing in its porches ; young trees of yesterday, springing up on its 
 ragged parapets, and bearing fruit : chance produce of the seeds 
 dropped there by the birds who build their nests within its chinks 
 and crannies ; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the 
 peaceful Cross planted in the centre ; to climb into its upper halls, 
 and look down on mm, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches 
 of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; 
 the Palace of the Caesars ; the temples of the old religion, fallen down 
 and gone ; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked wonderful old 
 city, haunting tho very ground on which its people trod. It is tho 
 most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, 
 mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can tho 
 sight of the gigantic Coliseum, fall and running over with the lustiest 
 life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, 
 a ruin. God be thanked : a ruin ! 
 
 As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a mountain among 
 graves : so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of tho 
 <ild mythology and old butchery of Pome, in the nature of the fierce 
 and cruel Poman people. The Italian face changes as the visitor 
 approaches the city ; its beauty becomes devilish ; and there is scarcely 
 one countenance in a hundred, among tho common people in tho 
 streets, that would not be at home and happy in a renovated. Coliseum 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can 
 imagine in its full and awful grandeur ! "We wandered out upon tho 
 Appian Way, and then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and 
 broken walls, with here and there a desolate and uninhabited house : 
 past the Circus of Romulus, where tho course of the chariots, tho 
 stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly 
 to be seen as in old time : past the tomb of Cecilia Metella : past all 
 inclosure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence : away upon the open 
 Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but 
 Ruin. Except where tho distant Apennines bound the view upon tho 
 left, the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, 
 left in the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches ; broken 
 temples ; broken tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and desolate 
 leyond all expression; and with a history in every stone that strews 
 the ground. 
 
 On Sunday, the Tope assisted in the performance of High Mass at 
 St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on that second 
 visit, was exactly what it was at first, and what it remains after many 
 visits. It is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is an immenso 
 edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest upon ; and it tires itself 
 with wandering round and i\ uud. The very purpose of the place, is 
 
 u
 
 290 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 not expressed in anything you see there, unless you examine its details 
 and all examination of details is incompatible with the place itself. 
 It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural 
 trophy, having no other object than an architectural triumph. There 
 is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy ; which 
 is larger than life, and which is constantly having its great toe kissed 
 by good Catholics. You cannot help seeing that : it is so very 
 prominent and popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the 
 temple, as a work of art ; and it is not expressive to me at least of 
 its high purpose. 
 
 A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with boxes, shaped 
 like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their decoration 
 much more gaudy. In the centre of the kind of theatre thus railed 
 off, was a canopied dais with the Pope's chair upon it. The pavement 
 was covered with a carpet of the brightest green ; and what with this 
 green, and the intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the 
 hangings, the whole concern looked like a stupendous Bonbon. On 
 either side of the altar, was a large box for lady strangers. These 
 were filled with ladies in black dresses and black veils. The gentle- 
 men of the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather breeches, and jack- boots, 
 guarded all this reserved space, with drawn swords that were very 
 flashy in every sense ; and from the altar all down the nave, a broad 
 lane was kept clear by the Pope's Swiss guard, who wear a quaint 
 striped surcoat, and striped tight legs, and carry halberds like those 
 which are usually shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, 
 who never can get off the stage fast enough, and who may be generally 
 observed to linger in the enemy's camp after the open country, held 
 by the opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion 
 of Nature. 
 
 I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with a great 
 many other gentlemen, attired in black (no other passport is necessary), 
 and stood there at my ease, during the performance of Mass. The 
 singers were in a crib of wire-work (like a large meat-safe or bird- 
 cage) in one corner ; and sang most atrociously. All about the green 
 carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of people : talking to each 
 other : staring at the Pope through eye-glasses : defrauding ono 
 another, in moments of partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on 
 the bases of pillars : and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted 
 here and there, were little knots of friars (Francescani, or C'appuccini, 
 in their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods) making a strange 
 contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and having their 
 humility gratified to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and 
 elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy 
 sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments : having trudged in from 
 the country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as 
 their dress ; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and 
 splendour, having something in it, half miserable, and half ridiculous.
 
 High Mass at St. Peters. 291 
 
 Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, was a 
 perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, purple, violet, 
 white, and fine linen. Stragglers from these, went to and fro among 
 the crowd, conversing two and two, or giving and receiving intro- 
 ductions, and exchanging salutations ; other functionaries in hlack 
 gowns, and other functionaries in court-dresses, were similarly engaged. 
 In the midst of all these, and stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and 
 the extreme restlessness of the Youth of England, who were per- 
 petually wandering ahout, some few steady persons in hlack cassocks, 
 who had knelt down with their faces to the wall, and were poring over 
 their missals, hecame, unintentionally, a sort of humane man-traps, and 
 with their own devout legs, tripped up other people's hy the dozen. 
 
 There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor near me, 
 which a very old man in a rusty hlack gown with an open-work tippet, 
 like a summer ornament for a fireplace in tissue-paper, made himself 
 very husy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics : one a-piece. They 
 loitered about with these for some time, under their arms like walking- 
 sticks, or in their hands like truncheons. At a certain period of the 
 ceremony, however, each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it 
 across his two knees to be blessed, took it back again, and filed otf. 
 This was done in a very attenuated procession, as you may suppose, 
 and occupied a long time. Not because it takes long to bless a candle 
 through and through, but because there were so many candles to be 
 blessed. At last they were all blessed ; and then they were all 
 lighted ; and then the Pope was taken up, chair and all, and carried 
 round the church. 
 
 I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, so like the 
 popular English commemoration of the fifth of that month. A bundle 
 of matches and a lantern, would have made it perfect. Nor did the 
 Pope, himself, at all mar the resemblance, though he has a pleasant 
 and venerable face ; for, as this part of the ceremony makes him giddy 
 and sick, he shuts his eyes when it is performed : and having his eyes 
 shut and a great mitre on his head, and his head itself wagging to and 
 fro as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were going 
 to tumble otf. The two immense fans which are always borne, one on 
 either side of him, accompanied him, of course, on this occasion. As 
 they carried him along, he blessed the people with the mystic sign ; 
 and as he passed them, they kneeled down. When he had made the 
 round of the church, he was brought back again, and if I am not 
 mistaken, this performance was repeated, in the whole, three times. 
 There was, certainly, nothing solemn or effective in it ; and certainly 
 very much that was droll and tawdry. But this remark applies to 
 the whole ceremony, except the raising of the Host, when every man 
 in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, and dashed his naked 
 sword on tin ground ; which had a fine effect. 
 
 The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three weeks 
 afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball ; and then, the hangings
 
 292 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the framework 
 left, the remnants of these decorations looked like an exploded cracker. 
 
 The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, and 
 Sunday being always a dies non in carnival proceedings, we had 
 looked forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to the beginning 
 of the new week : Monday and Tuesday being the two last and best 
 days of the Carnival. 
 
 On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there began to be 
 a great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel ; a hurry- 
 ing to and fro of all the servants in it ; and, now and then, a swift 
 shooting across some doorway or balcony, of a straggling stranger in 
 a fancy dress : not yet sufficiently well used to the same, to wear it 
 with confidence, and defy public opinion. All the carriages were 
 open, and had the linings carefully covered with white cotton or 
 calico, to prevent their proper decorations from being spoiled by the 
 incessant pelting of sugar-plums ; and people were packing and 
 cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occupants, enormous 
 sacks and baskets full of these confetti, together with such heaps of 
 flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were not only 
 brimful of flowers, but literally running over : scattering, at every 
 shake and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance on the ground. 
 Not to be behindhand in these essential particulars, we caused two 
 very respectable sacks of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and 
 a large clothes-basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired 
 barouche, with all speed. And from our place of observation, in one 
 of the upper balconies of the hotel, we contemplated these arrange- 
 ments with the liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now beginning to 
 take up their company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove 
 off too, armed with little wire masks for our faces ; the sugar-plums, 
 like Falstaff's adulterated sack, having lime in their composition. 
 
 The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, and palaces, 
 and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There 
 are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every 
 house not on one story alone, but often to one room or another on 
 every story put there in general with so little order or regularity, 
 that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, 
 hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could 
 scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner. 
 
 This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival. But all 
 the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigilantly kept by 
 dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in 
 line, down another thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the 
 end remote from the Piazza del Popolo ; which is one of its termina- 
 tions. Accordingly, we fell into the string of coaches, and, for some 
 time, jogged on quietly enough ; now crawling on at a very slow 
 walk; now trotting half-a-dozcn yards ; now backing fifty ; and now
 
 Doing as Rome docs. 293 
 
 stopping altogether : as the pressure in front obliged us. Tf any 
 impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered forward, with 
 the wild idea of getting on faster, it was suddenly met, or overtaken, 
 by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all 
 remonstrances, immediately escorted it back to the very end of the 
 row, and made it a dim speck in the remotest perspective. Occa- 
 sionally, we interchanged a volley of confetti with the carriago next in 
 front, or the carriage next behind ; but as yet, this capturing of stray 
 and errant coaches by the military, was the chief amusement. 
 
 Presently, we cam into a narrow street, where, besides one line of 
 carriages going, there was another line of carriages returning. Here 
 the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to fly about, pretty smartly ; 
 and I was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman attired as a 
 Greek warrior, catch a light-whiskered brigand on the nose (he was 
 in the very act of tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor 
 window) with a precision that was much applauded by tho bystanders. 
 As this victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a 
 stout gentleman in a door- way one-half black and one-half white, as 
 if he had been peeled up the middle who had offered him his con- 
 gratulations on this achievement, ho received an orange from a house- 
 top, full on his left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited. 
 Especially, as he was standing up at the time ; and in consequence of 
 tho carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered 
 ignomiuiously, and buried himself among his flowers. 
 
 Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us to the 
 Corso; and anything so gay, so bright, and lively as tho whole scene 
 there, it would be difficult to imagine. From all the innumerable 
 balconies : from the remotest and highest, no less than from the lowest 
 and nearest : hangings of bright red, bright green, bright blue, white 
 and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant sunlight. From windows, and 
 from parapets, and tops of houses, streamers of the richest colours, and 
 draperies of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were floating out 
 upon the street. The buildings seemed to have been literally turned 
 inside out, and to have all their gaiety towards the highway. Shop- 
 fronts were taken down, and the windows filled with company, like 
 boxes at a shining theatre ; doors were carried off their hinges, and 
 long tapestried groves, hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, 
 displayed within ; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant 
 in silver, gold, and crimson ; and in every nook and corner, from tho 
 pavement to the chimney-tops, where women's eyes could glisten. 
 there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in water. 
 Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there. Littlo pre- 
 posterous scarlet jackets ; quaint old stomachers, more wicked than 
 the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses, strained and tight as ripe 
 gooseberries ; tiny Greek caj>s, all awry, and clinging to tho dark 
 hair, Heaven knows how ; every wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish, 
 madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress ; and every fancy was a
 
 294 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the 
 three old aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe into 
 Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that morning. 
 
 The carriages were now throe abreast ; in broader places four ; 
 often stationary for a long time together ; always one close mass of 
 variegated brightness ; showing, the whole street-full, through the 
 storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth themselves. In 
 some, the horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings ; in 
 others they were decked from head to tail, with flowing ribbons. 
 Some were driven by coachmen with enormous double faces : one face 
 leering at the horses : the other cocking its extraordinary eyes into 
 the carriage : 'and both rattling again, under the hail of sugar-plums. 
 Other drivers were attired as women, wearing long ringlets and no 
 bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real difficulty with the 
 horses (of which, in such a concourse, there were a great many) than 
 tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead of sitting in the carriages, 
 upon the seats, the handsome Roman women, to see and to be seen 
 the better, sit in the heads of the barouches, at this time of general 
 license, with their feet upon the cushions and oh the flowing skirts 
 and dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free, 
 good-humoured, gallant figures that they make ! There were great 
 vans, too, full of handsome girls thirty, or more together, perhaps 
 and the broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of, these 
 fairy fire-shops, splashed the air with flowers and bonbons for ten 
 minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, would begin 
 a deliberate engagement with other carriages, or with people at tho 
 lower windows ; and the spectators at some upper balcony or window, 
 joining in the fray, and attacking both parties, would empty down 
 great bags of confetti, that descended like a cloud, and in an instant 
 made them white as millers. Still, carriages on carriages, dresses on 
 dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men 
 and boys clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and 
 following in their wake, and diving in among the horses' feet to 
 pick up scattered flowers to sell again ; maskers on foot (the drollest 
 generally) in fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the 
 throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an 
 ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any particularly old lady at a 
 window ; long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with blown 
 bladders at the ends of sticks ; a waggon-full of madmen, screaming 
 and tearing to the life ; a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their 
 horse-tail standard set up in the midst ; a party of gipsy-women 
 engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors ; a mun-monkey 
 on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces, and lions' 
 tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders ; 
 carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds 
 upon crowds, without end. Not many actual characters sustained, or 
 represented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but the main
 
 The Carnival. 295 
 
 pleasure of tho sccno consisting in its perfect good temper; in its 
 bright, and infinite, and flashing variety ; and in its entire abandon- 
 ment to the mad humour of the time an abandonment so perfect, so 
 contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his 
 middle in flowers and sugar-plums, liko the wildest Roman of them 
 all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four o'clock, when ho is 
 suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole 
 business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound, and seeing 
 the dragoons begin to clear the street. 
 
 How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at five, or how 
 the horses ever go through the race, without going over the people, is 
 more than I can say. But the carriages get out into the by-streets, 
 or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and soipe people sit in temporary 
 galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands line the Corso on 
 both sides, when the horses are brought out into the Piazza to the 
 foot of that same column which, for centuries, looked down upon the 
 games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus. 
 
 At a given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, the 
 whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind : riderless, as all 
 the world knows : with shining ornaments upon their backs, and 
 twisted in their plaited manes : and with heavy little balls stuck full 
 of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling of 
 these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones; 
 the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing street ; nay, the 
 very cannon that are fired these noises are nothing to the roaring 
 of the multitude : their shouts : the clapping of their hands. But it 
 is soon over almost instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. 
 The horses have plunged into the carpets put across tho street to stop 
 them ; the goal is reached ; the prizes aro won (they are given, in 
 part, by the poor Jews, as a compromise for not running foot-races 
 themselves) ; and there is an end to that day's sport. 
 
 But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last day 
 but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height of glitter- 
 ing colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that the bare recollec- 
 tion of it makes me giddy at this moment. Tho same diversions, 
 greatly heightened and intensified in the ardour with which they aro 
 pursued, go on until the same hour. The race is repeated ; the 
 cannon are fired ; the shouting and clapping of hands are renewed ; 
 the cannon are fired again ; the race is over ; and the prizes arc won. 
 ]>ut the carriages : ankle-deep with sugar-plums within, and so 
 ltc-flowered and dusty without, as to bo hardly recognisable for the 
 same vehicles that they were, three hours ago : instead of scampering 
 off" in all directions, throng into tho Corso, where they are soon 
 wedged together in a scarcely moving mass. For the diversion of the 
 Moccolotti, the last gay madness of the Carnival, is now at hand ; and 
 sellers of little tapers like what are called Christmas candles in 
 England, aro shouting lustily on every side, " Moccoli, Moccoli !
 
 296 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 Ecco Moccoli ! " a new item in the tumult ; quite abolishing that 
 other item of "Ecco Fiori! Ecco Fior r r!" which has been 
 making itself audible over all the rest, at intervals, the whole day 
 through. 
 
 As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull, 
 heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights begins flashing, 
 here and there : in the windows, on the house-tops, in the balconies, 
 in the carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers : little by little : 
 gradually, gradually : more and more : until the whole long street is 
 one great glare and blaze of fire. Then, everybody present has but 
 one engrossing object ; that is, to extinguish other people's candles, 
 and to keep his own alight ; and everybody : man, woman, or child, 
 gentleman or lady, princeor peasant, native or foreigner : yells and 
 screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, " Senza 
 Moccolo, Senza Moccolo ! " (Without a light ! Without a light !) 
 imtil nothing is heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, 
 mingled with peals of laughter. 
 
 The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary that 
 can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody stand- 
 ing on the seats or on the box, holding up their lights at arms' length, 
 for greater safety ; some in paper shades ; some with a bunch of un- 
 defended little tapers, kindled altogether ; some with blazing torches ; 
 some with feeble little candles ; men on foot, creeping along, among 
 the wheels, watching their opportunity, to make a spring at some 
 particular light, and dash it out ; other people climbing up into 
 carriages, to get hold of them by main force ; others, chasing some 
 unlucky wanderer, round and round his own coach, to blow out the 
 light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his 
 own company, and enable them to light their extinguished tapers ; 
 others, with their hats off, at a carriage-door, humbly beseeching some 
 kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and when 
 she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no, blowing out 
 the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little hand ; other 
 people at the windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or 
 letting down long willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and 
 flapping them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his 
 triumph ; others, biding their time in corners, with immense extin- 
 guishers like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious 
 torches ; others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it ; others, 
 raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or regularly 
 storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among them, who 
 carries one feeble little wick above his head, with which he defies 
 them all ! Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! Beautiful women, 
 standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extinguished lights, 
 and clapping their hands, as they pass on. crying, " Senza Moccolo ! 
 Senza Moccolo ! " ; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, 
 struggling with assailants in the streets ; some repressing them as
 
 " Sensa Moccolo ! " 297 
 
 they climb up. some bending clown, some leaning over, some shrinking 
 back delicate arms and bosoms graceful figures glowing lights, 
 fluttering dresses, Seuza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moc-co- 
 lo-c-o-o ! when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest 
 ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, 
 and the Carnival is over in an instant put out liko a taper, with a 
 breath ! 
 
 There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and senseless 
 :is a London one, and only remarkable for the summary way in which 
 the house was cleared at eleven o'clock : which was done by a line of 
 soldiers forming along the wall, at the back of the stage, and sweeping 
 the whole company out before them, like a broad broom. The game 
 of the Moceoletti (the word, in the singular, Moccolctto, is the 
 diminutive of Moccolo, and means a little lamp or candle-snuff) is 
 supposed by some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the 
 death of the Carnival : candles being indispensable to Catholic grief. 
 But whether it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an 
 incorporation of both, or have its origin in anything else, I shall 
 always remember it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most captivating 
 sight : no less remarkable for the unbroken good-humour of all con- 
 cerned, down to the very lowest (and among those who scaled tho 
 carriages, were many of the commonest men and boys), than for its 
 innocent vivacity. For, odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport so 
 full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as free from any 
 taint of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can 
 possibly be ; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling 
 of general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one 
 thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a 
 whole year. 
 
 Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the 
 termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week : 
 when everybody had run away from the one, and few people had yet 
 begun to run back again for the other : we went conscientiously to 
 work, to see Home. And, by dint of going out early every morning, 
 and coming back late every evening, and labouring hard all day, I 
 believe we made acquaintance with every post and pillar in the city, 
 and the country round ; and, in particular, explored so many churches, 
 that I abandoned that part of the enterprise at last, before it was 
 half finished, lest I should never, of my own accord, go to church 
 again, as long as I lived. But, I managed, almost every day, at one 
 time or other, to get back to tho Coliseum, and out upon the open 
 Campagna, beyond tho Tomb of Cecilia Metella. 
 
 Wo often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of English 
 Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified longing, to 
 establish a speaking acquaintance. They were ono Mr. Davis, and a 
 small circle of friends. It was impossible not to know Mrs. Davis's
 
 298 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 name, from her being always in great request among her party, and 
 her party being everywhere. During the Holy Week, they were in 
 every part cf every scene of every ceremony. For a fortnight or 
 three weeks before it, they were in every tomb, and every church, and 
 every ruin, and every Picture Gallery ; and I hardly ever observed 
 Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment. Deep underground, high up 
 in St. Peter's, out on the Campagna, and stifling in the Jews' quarter, 
 Mrs. Davis turned up, all the same. I don't think she ever saw 
 anything, or ever looked at anything ; and she had always lost some- 
 thing out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all 
 her might and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, 
 which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of it. There 
 was a professional Cicerone always attached to the party (which had 
 been brought over from London, fifteen or twenty strong, by contract), 
 and if he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably cut him 
 short by saying, " There, God bless the man, don't worrit me ! I 
 don't understand a word you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk till 
 you was black in the face ! " Mr. Davis always had a snuff-coloured 
 great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and 
 had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which prompted him 
 to do extraordinary things, such as taking the covers off urns in 
 tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they were pickles and 
 tracing out inscriptions with the ferrule of his umbrella, and saying, 
 with intense thoughtfulness, " Here's a B you see, and there's a R, 
 and this is the way we goes on in ; is it ! " His antiquarian habits 
 occasioned his being frequently in the rear of the rest ; and one of the 
 agonies of Mrs. Davis, and the party in general, was an ever-present 
 fear that Davis would be lost. This caused them to scream for him, 
 in the strangest places, and at the most improper seasons. And when 
 he came, slowly emerging out of some sepulchre or other, like a 
 peaceful Ghoule, saying " Here I am ! " Mrs. Davis invariably replied, 
 " You'll be buried alive in a foreign country, Davis, and it's no use 
 trying to prevent you ! " 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been brought 
 from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen hundred years 
 ago, the Roman legions under Claudius, protested against being led 
 into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, urging that it lay beyond the 
 limits of the world. 
 
 Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, there 
 was one that amused me mightily. It is always to be found there ; 
 and its den is on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza di 
 Spagna, to the church of Trmita del Monte. In plainer words, these 
 steps are the great place of resort for the artists' " Models," and there 
 they are constantly waiting to be hired. The first time I went up 
 there, I could not conceive why the faces seemed familiar to me ; why 
 they appeared to have beset me. for years, in every possible variety of 
 action and costume ; and how it came to pass that they started up
 
 Artists' Models. 299 
 
 before me, in Home, in the broad day, like so many saddled and 
 bridled nightmares. I soon found that we had made acquaintance, 
 and improved it, for several years, on the walls of various Exhibition 
 Galleries. Thero is ono old gentleman, with long white hair and an 
 immenso beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone hall through the 
 catalogue of the Royal Academy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal 
 model. Ho carries a long staff; and every knot and twist in that 
 staff I have seen, faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There is 
 another man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the 
 sun (when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide 
 awake, and very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the 
 (J alee far niente model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who 
 leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks out 
 of the corners of his eyes : which are just visible beneath his broad 
 slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There is another man, 
 who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is always going 
 away, but never does. This is the haughty, or scornful model. As 
 to Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they should come very 
 cheap, for there are lumps of them, all up the steps ; and the cream of 
 the thing, is, that they are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, 
 especially made up for the purpose, and having no counterparts in 
 Koine or any other part of the habitable globe. 
 
 My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being said to 
 be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it closes), for the 
 gaieties and merry-makings before Lent ; and this again reminds me 
 of the real funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like 
 those in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable to 
 a Foreigner, by the indifference witli which the mere clay is universally 
 regarded, after life has left it. And this is not from the survivors 
 having had time to dissociate the memory of the dead from their well- 
 remembered appearance and form on earth ; for the interment follows 
 too speedily after death, for that : almost always taking place within 
 four-and-twenty hours, and, sometimes, within twelve. 
 
 At Rome, thero is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, bleak, 
 open, dreary space, that I have already described as existing in Genoa. 
 When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal : 
 uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof 
 of any wandering mule would have crushed it in ; carelessly tumbled 
 down, all on one side, on the door of ono of the pits and thero left, 
 by itself, in the wind and sunshino. " How does it come to be left 
 here ? " I asked the man who showed me tho place. " It was brought 
 here half an hour ago, Signoro," ho said. I remembered to have met 
 the procession, on its roturn : straggling away at a good round pace. 
 'When will it bo put in tho pit V " I asked him. " Whon the cart 
 comes, and it is opened to-night," ho said. " How much does it cost 
 to bo brought here in this way, instead of coming in the cart ? " I 
 asked him, " Ten scudi," ho said (about two pounds, two-and-
 
 3GO Pictures from Italy. 
 
 sixpence, English). " The other hodies, for whom nothing is paid, 
 are taken to the church of the Santa Maria della Consolazione," he 
 continued, " and brought here altogether, in the cart at night." I 
 stood, a moment, looking at the coffin, which had two initial letters 
 scrawled upon the top ; and turned away, with an expression in my 
 face, I suppose, of not much liking its exposure in that manner : for 
 he said, shrugging his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a 
 pleasant smile, " But he's dead, Signore, he's dead. Why not ? " 
 
 Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for 
 separate m .ntion. It is the church of the Ara Coeli, supposed to be 
 built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter Feretrius ; and ap- 
 proached, on one side, by a long steep flight of steps, which seem 
 incomplete without some group of bearded soothsayers on the top. It 
 is remarkable for the possession of a miraculous Bambino, or wooden 
 doll, representing the Infant Saviour ; and I first saw this miraculous 
 Bambino, in legal phrase, in manner following, that is to say : 
 
 We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking 
 down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient churches 
 built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad), when the Brave 
 came running in, with a grin upon his face that stretched it from ear 
 to ear, and implored us to follow him, without a moment's delay, as 
 they were going to show the Bambino to a select party. We accord- 
 ingly hurried off to a sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief 
 altar, but not in the church itself, where the select party, consisting 
 of two or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were 
 already assembled : and where one hollow-cheeked young monk was 
 lighting up divers candles, while another was putting on some clerical 
 robes over his coarse brown habit. The candles were on a kind of 
 altar, and "bove it were two delectable figures, such as you would see 
 at any English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, 
 as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer ; which 
 was shut. 
 
 The hollow-cheeked monk, number Ono, having finished lighting 
 the candles, went cown on his knees, in a corner, before this set-piece ; 
 and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly orna- 
 mented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, with great 
 reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with many genuflexions, 
 and muttering certain prayers, he opened it, and let down the front, 
 and took off sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside. The 
 ladies had been on their knees from the commencement ; and the 
 gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he exposed to view a little 
 wooden doll, in face very like General Tom Thumb, the American 
 Dwarf: gorgeously dressed in satin and gold lace, and actually blazing 
 with rich jewels. There was scarcely a spot upon its little breast, 
 or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with the costly offerings of 
 the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it out of the box, and carrying it
 
 The Popular Bambino. 301 
 
 round among the kncelers, set its face against the forehead of every 
 one, and tendered its clumsy foot to them to kiss a ceremony which 
 they all performed down to a dirty little ragamuffin of a hoy who had 
 walked in from the street. When this was done, he laid it in the box 
 again : aud the company, rising, drew near, and commended the jewels 
 in whispers. In good time, he replaced the coverings, shut up the 
 hox, put it hack in its place, locked up the whole concern (Holy 
 Family aud all) hehind a pair of folding-doors ; took off his priestly 
 vestments ; and received the customary " small charge," while his 
 companion, hy means of an extinguisher fastened to the ond of a long 
 stick, put out the lights, one after another. The candles heing all 
 extinguished, and the money all collected, they retired, and so did 
 the spectators. 
 
 I met this same Bamhino, in the street a short time afterwards, 
 going, in great state, to the house of some sick person. It is taken 
 to all parts of Rome for this purpose, constantly ; hut, I understand 
 that it is not always as successful as could he wished ; for, making 
 its appearance at the hedside of weak and nervous people in extremity, 
 accompanied hy a numerous escort, it not unfrequently frightens them 
 to death. It is most popular in cases of child-birth, where it has 
 done such wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting 
 through her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with all speed, to 
 solicit the immediate attendance of the Bambino. It is a very valuable 
 jiroperty, and much confided in especially by the religious body to 
 whom it belongs. 
 
 I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by somo 
 who are good Catholics, aud who are behind the scenes, from what 
 was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic, and 
 a gentleman of learning and intelligence. This Priest made my in- 
 formant promise that he would, on no account, allow the Bambino to 
 be borne into the bedroom of a sick lady, in whom they were both 
 interested. "For," said he, "if they (the monks) trouble her with 
 it, and intrude themselves into her room, it will certainly kill her." 
 My informant accordingly looked out of the window when it came ; 
 and, with many thanks, declined to open the door. He endeavoured, 
 in another case of which he had no other knowledge than such as he 
 gained as a passer-by at the moment, to prevent its being carried into 
 a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl was dying. But, he 
 strove against it unsuccessfully, and she expired while the crowd were 
 pressing round her bed. 
 
 Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, to 
 kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain schools 
 and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come in, twenty or thirty 
 strong. These boys always kneel down in single file, one behind the 
 other, with a tall grim master in a black gown, bringing up the rear: 
 like a pack of cards arranged to be tumbled down at a touch, with a 
 disproportionately large Knave of clubs at the end. When they have
 
 303 Pictures from Ilaly. 
 
 had a minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble up, and filing off 
 to the chapel of the Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in 
 the same order; so that if snybody did stumble against the master, a 
 general and sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably ensue. 
 
 The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. The same 
 monotonous, heartless, drowsy chanting, always going on ; the same 
 dark building, darker from the brightness of the street without ; the 
 same lamps dimly burning ; the self-same people kneeling here and 
 there ; turned towards you, from one altar or other, the same priest's 
 back, with the same large cross embroidered on it ; however different 
 in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this church is from that, 
 it is the same thing still. There are the same dirty beggars stopping 
 in their muttered prayers to beg ; the same miserable cripples ex- 
 hibiting their deformity at the doors ; the same blind men, rattling 
 little pots like kitchen pepper-castors : their depositories for alms ; 
 the same preposterous crowns of silver stuck upon the painted heads 
 of single saints and Virgins in crowded pictures, so that a little figure; 
 on a mountain has a head-dress bigger than the temple in the fore- 
 ground, or adjacent miles of landscape ; the same favourite shrine or 
 figure, smothered with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like : 
 the staple trade and show of all the jewellers ; the same odd mixture 
 of respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm : kneeling on the stones, 
 and spitting on them, loudly ; getting up from prayers to beg a little, 
 or to pursue some ether worldly matter : and then kneeling down 
 again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where it was 
 interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayer, 
 for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music ; and in 
 another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, arose 
 from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at another 
 dog : and whose yelps and howls resounded through the church, as 
 his master quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation 
 keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time, nevertheless. 
 
 Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions of the 
 Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a money-box, set 
 up between the worshipper, and the wooden life-size figure of the 
 lledeemer ; sometimes, it is a little chest for the maintenance of the 
 Virgin ; sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular Bambino ; some- 
 times, a bag at the end of a long stick, thrust among the people here 
 and there, and vigilantly jingled by an active Sacristan ; but there it 
 always is, and, very often, in many shapes in the same church, and 
 doing pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in the open air the 
 streets and roads for, often as you arc walking along, thinking about 
 anything rather than a tin-canister, that object pounces upon you from 
 a little house by the wayside ; and on its top is paiuted, " For the 
 Souls in Purgatory ; " an appeal which the bearer repeats a great 
 many times, as he rattles it before you, much as Punch rattles the 
 cracked bell which his sanguine disposition makes an organ of.
 
 The Dungeon of St. Peter. 303 
 
 And this reminds mc that some Roman altars of peculiar sanctity, 
 bear the inscription, ' ; Every Mass performed at this altar frees a soul 
 from Purgatory." I have never been able to find out the charge for 
 one of these services, but they should needs be expensive. There are 
 several Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of which, confers indulgences 
 for varying terms. That in the centre of the Coliseum, is worth a 
 hundred days ; and people may be seen kissing it from morning to 
 night. It is curious that some of these crosses seem to acquire an 
 arbitrary popularity : this very one among them. In another part of 
 the Coliseum there is a cross upon a marble slab, with the inscription, 
 ; Who kisses this cross shall be entitled to Two hundred and forty 
 days' indulgence." But I saw no one person kiss it, though, day after 
 day, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass 
 it. on their way to kiss the other. 
 
 To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, 
 would be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano 
 Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of 
 Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the 
 hideous paintiugs with which its walls are covered. These represent 
 the martyrdom of saints and early Christians ; and such a panorama 
 of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he 
 were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being 
 boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried 
 by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with 
 hatchets : women having their breasts torn with iron pincers, their 
 tongues cut out, their ears screwed oft", their jaws broken, their bodies 
 stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up 
 and melted in the fire : these are among the mildest subjects. So 
 insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the 
 same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, 
 when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him. 
 
 There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what is 
 said to have been and very possibly may have been the dungeon of 
 St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to 
 that saint ; and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recol- 
 lection, too. It is very small and low-roofed ; and the dread and 
 gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had 
 come up in a dark mist through the floor. Hanging on the walls, 
 among the clustered votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely in 
 keeping, and strangely at variance, with the place rusty daggers, 
 knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence and murder, 
 brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to propitiate offended 
 Heaven : as if the blood upon them would drain off in consecrated air, 
 and have no voice to cry with. It is all so silent and so close, and 
 tomb-like ; and the dungeons below are so black and stealthy, and 
 stagnant, and naked ; that this little dark spot becomes a dream within 
 a dream : and in the vision of great churches which come rolling past
 
 304 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 me like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts into no other 
 wave, and does not flow on with the rest. 
 
 It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are 
 entered from some Eoman churches, and undermine the city. Many 
 churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, in 
 the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and what 
 not ; but I do not speak of them. Beneath the church of St. Giovanni 
 and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn 
 out of the rock, and said to have another outlet underneath the 
 Coliseum tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the 
 earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed by the at- 
 tendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults branching to 
 the right and loft, like streets in a city of the dead ; and show 
 the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop, to 
 join the pools of water that lie here and there, and never saw, or 
 never will see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make these the 
 prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheatre ; some the 
 prisons of the condemned gladiators ; some, both. But the legend 
 most appalling to the fancy is, that in the upper range (for there are 
 two stories of these caves) the Early Christians destined to be eaten 
 at the Coliseum Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, roar- 
 ing down below ; until, upon the night and solitude of their captivity, 
 there burst the sudden noon and life of the vast theatre crowded to 
 the parapet, and of these, their dreaded neighbours, bounding in ! 
 
 Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of 
 San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to tho catacombs 
 of Rome quarries in the old time, but afterwards tho hiding-places 
 of the Christians. These ghastly passages have been explored for 
 twenty miles ; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in circum- 
 ference. 
 
 A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only 
 guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways 
 and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, 
 soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by whicli 
 we had come ; and I could not help thinking, " Good Heaven, if, in a 
 sudden fit of madness, he should dash the torches out, or if he should 
 bo seized with a fit, what would become of us ! " On we wandered, 
 among martyrs' graves : passing great subterranean vaulted roads, 
 diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that 
 thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a popula- 
 tion under Rome, even worse than that which lives between it and the 
 sun. Graves, graves, graves : Graves of men, of women, of their little 
 children, who ran crying to the persecutors, " We arc Christians ! 
 We are Christians ! " that they might be murdered with their parents ; 
 Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone 
 boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' 
 blood ; Graves of some who lived down here, for years together,
 
 IN Tut. > .VTA U.Mi
 
 Holy Ground. 305 
 
 ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, 
 from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour ; 
 more roomy graves, hut far more terrible, where hundreds, being 
 surprised, were hemmed in and walled up : buried before Death, and 
 killed by slow starvation. 
 
 " The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid 
 churches," said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to 
 rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us 
 on every side. " They are here ! Among the Martyrs' Graves ! " 
 He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart ; but when I 
 thought how Christian men have dealt with one another ; how, per- 
 verting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and 
 tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed 
 each other ; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this 
 Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how 
 these great and constant hearts would have been shaken how they 
 would have quailed and drooped if a fore-knowledge of the deeds 
 that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for which 
 they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on 
 the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire. 
 
 Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that 
 remain apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a fainter 
 recollection, sometimes of the relics ; of the fragments of the pillar of 
 the Temple that was rent in twain ; of the portion of the table that 
 was spread for the Last Supper ; of the well at which the woman of 
 Samaria gave water to Our Saviour ; of two columns from the house 
 of Pontius Pilate ; of the stone to which the. Sacred hands were 
 bound, when the scourging was performed ; of the gridiron of Saint 
 Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with tho frying of his fat 
 and blood ; these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as an old 
 story, or a fable might, and stop them for an instant, as they flit 
 before me. The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings of 
 all shapes and fancios, blending one with another ; of battered pillars 
 of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and forced, like giant 
 captives, to support the roofs of Christian churches ; of pictures, had, 
 and wonderful, and impious, and ridiculous ; of kneeling people, 
 curling incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a 
 swelling orgau : of Madonne, with their bi'easts stuck full of swords, 
 arranged in a half-circle liko a modern fan ; of actual skeletons of 
 dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets 
 trimmed with gold : their withered crust of skull adorned with 
 precious jewels, or with chaplets of crushed flowers ; sometimes, of 
 people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out 
 the crucifix, and preaching fiercely : the sun just streaming down 
 through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and 
 across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lust 
 among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon
 
 306 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 a flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the 
 light ; and strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and 
 hovels, of an old Italian street. 
 
 On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was 
 beheaded here. Nino or ten months before, ho had waylaid a Bavarian 
 countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Eome alone and on foot, of 
 course and performing, it is said, that act of piety for the fourth 
 time. He saw her change a piece of gold at Viterbo, where he lived ; 
 followed her ; bore her company on her journey for some forty miles 
 or more, on the treacherous pretext of protecting her ; attacked her, 
 in the fulfilment of his unrelenting purpose, on the Campagna, within 
 a very short distance of Eome, near to what is called (but what is 
 not) the Tomb of Nero ; robbed her ; and beat her to death with her 
 own pilgrim's staff. He was newly married, and gave some of her 
 apparel to his wife : saying that he had bought it at a fair. She, 
 however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing through their 
 town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to her. Her husband 
 then told her what he had done. She, in confession, told a priest ; 
 and the man was taken, within four days after the commission of the 
 murder. 
 
 There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its 
 execution, in this unaccountable country ; and he had been in prison 
 ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the other prisoners, 
 they came and told him he was to be beheaded next morning, and 
 took him away. It is very unusual to execute in Lent ; but his crime 
 being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to make an example of 
 him at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were coming towards 
 Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the 
 Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches, calling on the 
 people to pray for the criminal's soul. So, I determined to go, and 
 see him executed. 
 
 The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o'clock, Roman 
 time : or a quarter before nino in the forenoon. I had two friends 
 with me ; and as we did not know but that the crowd might bo very 
 great, we were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of execution 
 was near the church of San Giovanni decollate (a doubtful compliment 
 to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back streets without 
 any footway, of which a great part of Rome is composed a street of 
 rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody, and do not 
 seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly were never built on 
 any plan, or for any particular purpose, and have no window-sashes, 
 and are a little like deserted breweries, and might be warehouses but 
 for having nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, a white house, 
 the scaffold was built. An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking 
 thing of course : some seven feet high, perhaps : with a tall, gallows- 
 shaped frame rising above it, in which was the knife, charged with a
 
 An Execution at Rome. 307 
 
 ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly 
 in the morning sun, whenever it looked out, now and then, from 
 behind a cloud. 
 
 There were not many people lingering about ; and these were kept 
 at a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope's 
 dragoons. Two or three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms, 
 standing at easo in clusters here and there ; and the officers wero 
 walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting together, and 
 smoking cigars. 
 
 At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be 
 a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable 
 refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere in 
 Rome, and favouring no particular sort of locality. We got into a 
 kind of wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on this spot ; and 
 standing there in an old cart, and on a heap of cart-wheels piled 
 against tho wall, looked, through a large grated window, at tho 
 scaffold, and straight down the street beyond it, until, in consequence 
 of its turning off abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought to 
 a sudden termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for 
 its crowning feature. 
 
 Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing happened. 
 All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A little parliament 
 of dogs assembled in +ho open space, and chased each other, in and 
 out among the soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the lowest class, 
 in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came and went, and 
 talked together. Women and children fluttered, on the skirts of the 
 scanty crowd. One largo muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald 
 place on a man's head. A cigar-merchant, with an earthen pot of 
 charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and down, crying his wares. A 
 pastry-merchant divided his attention between the scaffold and his 
 customers. Buys tried to climb up walls, and tumbled down again. 
 Priests and monks elbowed a passago for themselves among the 
 people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of tho knife : then went away. 
 Artists, in inconceivable hats of tho middle-ages, and beards (thank 
 Heaven !) of no age at all, flashed picturesque scowls about them from 
 their stations in the throng. One gentleman (connected with the fino 
 arts, I presume) went up and down in a pair of Hessian-boots, with a 
 red beard hanging down on his breast, and his long and bright red 
 hair, plaited into two tails, ono on either side of his head, which fell 
 over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his waist, and wero 
 carefully entwined and braided ! 
 
 Eleven o'clock struck ; and still nothing happened. A rumour got 
 about, among tho crowd, that the criminal would not confess ; in 
 which case, the priests would keep him until tho Ave Maria (sunset),- 
 for it is their merciful custom never finally to turn the crucifix away 
 from a man at that pass, as one refusing to be shriven, and conse- 
 quently a sinner abandoned of the Saviour, until then. People began
 
 308 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 to drop off. The officers shrugged their shoulders and looked doubt- 
 ful. The dragoons, who came riding up below our window, every 
 now and then, to order an unlucky hackney-coach or cart away, as 
 soon as it had comfortably established itself, and was covered with 
 exulting people (but never before), became imperious, and quick- 
 tempered. The bald place hadn't a straggling hair upon it ; and the 
 corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a world of snuff. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. " Attention ! " was among 
 the foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched up to the scaffold and 
 formed round it. The dragoons galloped to their nearer stations too. 
 The guillotine became the centre of a wood of bristling bayonets and 
 shining sabres. The people closed round nearer, on the flank of the 
 soldiery. A long straggling stream of men and boys, who had 
 accompanied the procession from the prison, came pouring into the 
 open space. The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from the rest. 
 The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all thoughts of business, for 
 the moment, and abandoning themselves wholly to pleasure, got good 
 situations in the crowd. The perspective ended, now, in a troop of 
 dragoons. And tho corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at 
 a church close to him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could 
 not. 
 
 After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the 
 scaffold from this church ; and above their heads, coming on slowly 
 and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with black. 
 This was carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the front, and 
 turned towards the criminal, that he might see it to the last. It was 
 hardly in its place, when he appeared on the platform, bare-footed ; 
 his hands bound ; and with the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, 
 almost to the shoulder. A young man six-and-twenty vigorously 
 made, and well-shaped. Face pale ; small dark moustache ; and dark 
 brown hair. 
 
 He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his wife 
 brought to see him ; and they had sent an escort for her, which had 
 occasioned the delay. 
 
 He immediately kneeled down, below the knife. His neck fitting 
 into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, was shut down, by 
 another plank above ; exactly like the pillory. Immediately below 
 him was a leathern bag. And into it his head rolled instantly. 
 
 The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with it 
 round the scaffold, showing it to the people, before one quite knew 
 that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a rattling sound. 
 
 When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it was 
 set upon a pole in front a little patch of black and white, for the 
 long street to stare at, and the flies to settle on. The eyes were 
 turned upward, as if he had avoided the sight of the leathern bag, and 
 looked to the crucifix. Every tinge and hue of life had left it in that 
 instant. It was dull, cold, livid, wax. The body also.
 
 Art Treasures. 309 
 
 There was a great deal of blood. When we left the window, and 
 went close np to the scaffold, it was very dirty ; one of the two men 
 who were throwing water over it, turning to help the other lift the 
 body into a shell, picked his way as through mire. A 6trange appear- 
 ance was the apparent annihilation of the neck. The head was taken 
 off" so close, that it seemed as if the knife had narrowly escaped 
 crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear ; and the body looked as if 
 there were nothing left above the shoulder. 
 
 Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no manifestation 
 of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. My empty pockets 
 were tried, several times, in the crowd immediately below the scaffold, 
 as the corpse was being put into its coffin. It was an ugly, filthy, 
 careless, sickening spectacle ; meaning nothing but butchery beyond 
 the momentary interest, to the one wretched actor. Yes ! Such a 
 sight has one meaning and one warning. Let me not forget it. The 
 speculators in the lottery, station themselves at favourable points for 
 counting the gouts of blood that spirt out, here or there ; and buy that 
 number. It is pretty sure to have a run upon it. 
 
 The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the 
 scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. Tho 
 executioner : an outlaw ex officio (what a satire on the Punishment !) 
 who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of St. Angelo but to do 
 his work : retreated to his lair, and the show was over. 
 
 At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, tho Vatican, 
 of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous galleries, and stair- 
 cases, and suites upon suites of immense chambers, ranks highest and 
 stands foremost. Many most noble statues, and wonderful pictures, 
 are there ; nor is it heresy to say that there is a considerable amount 
 of rubbish there, too. "When any old piece of sculpture dug out of 
 the ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is old, and without 
 any reference to its intrinsic merits : and finds admirers by tho 
 hundred, because it is there, and for no other reason on earth : there 
 will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any 
 one who employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles 
 of Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of 
 taste for the mere trouble of putting them on. 
 
 I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my natural 
 perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door, in Italy or 
 elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in the East. 
 I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of face, natural to 
 certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature as the gait of 
 a lion, or the flight of an eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain 
 knowledge, such common-place facts as the ordinary proportion of 
 men's arms, and legs, and heads ; and when I meet with performances 
 that do violence; to tliese experiences and recollections, no matter 
 where they may be, I cannot honestly admire them, and think it best
 
 310 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 to say so ; in spite of high critical advice that we should sometimes 
 feign an admiration, though we have it not. 
 
 Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a Jolly young 
 Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins's 
 Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or 
 admire in the performance, however great its reputed Painter. Neither 
 am I partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and bassoons, for 
 the edification of sprawling monks apparently in liquor. Nor to those 
 Monsieur Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian ; 
 both of whom I submit should have very uncommon and rare merits, 
 as works of art, to justify their compound multiplication by Italian 
 Painters. 
 
 It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined raptures 
 in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the true apprecia- 
 tion of the really great and transcendent works. I cannot imagine, 
 for example, how the resolute champion of undeserving pictures can 
 soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's great picture of the Assump- 
 tion of the Virgin at Venice ; or how the man who is truly affected by 
 the sublimity of that exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of 
 the beauty of Tintoretto's great picture of the Assembly of the Blessed 
 in the same place, can discern in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, in 
 the Sistine chapel, any general idea, or one pervading thought, in 
 harmony with the stupendous subject. He who will contemplate 
 [Raphael's masterpiece, the Transfiguration, and will go away into 
 another chamber of that same Vatican, and contemplate another 
 design of Raphael, representing (in incredible caricature) the 
 miraculous stopping of a great fire by Leo the Fourth and who will 
 say that he admires them both, as works of extraordinary genius 
 must, as I think, be wanting in his powers of perception in one of the 
 two instances, and, probably, in the high and lofty one. 
 
 It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt whether, 
 sometimes, the rules of art, are not too strictly observed, and whether 
 it is quite well or agreeable that we should know beforehand, where 
 this figure will be turning round, and where that figure will be lying 
 down, and where there will be drapery in folds, and so forth. When 
 I observe heads inferior to the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian 
 galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I have a 
 suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity, very much in 
 the hands of monks and priests, painted monks and priests a great 
 deal too often. I frequently see, in pictures of real power, heads 
 quite below the story and the painter : and I invariably observe that 
 those heads are of the Convent stamp, and have their counterparts 
 among the Convent inmates of this hour ; so, I have settled with 
 myself that, in such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but 
 with the vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who would 
 be apostles on canvas, at all events. 
 
 The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues ; the wonderful
 
 Notes for Connoisseurs. 31 1 
 
 gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in sculpture, both in 
 the Capitol and the Vatican ; and the strength and fire of many 
 others ; are, in their different ways, beyond all reach of words. They 
 are especially impressive and delightful, after the works of Bernini 
 and his disciples, in which the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's 
 downward, abound ; and which are, I verily believe, the most detest- 
 able class of productions in the wide world. I would infinitely rather 
 (as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the Past, the 
 Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Collection, than upon the 
 best of these breezy maniacs ; whose every fold of drapery is blown 
 inside-out ; whose smallest vein, or artery, is as big as an ordinary 
 forefinger ; whoso hair is like a nest of lively snakes ; and whoso 
 attitudes put all other extravagance to shame. Insomuch that I do 
 honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such 
 intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found 
 in such profusion, as in Rome. 
 
 There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the Vatican ; 
 and the ceilings of the rooms in which they arc arranged, are painted 
 to represent a starlight sky in the Desert. It may seem an odd 
 idea, but it is very effective. The grim, half-human monsters from 
 the temples, look more grim and monstrous underneath the deep dark 
 blue ; it sheds a strange uncertain gloomy air on everything a 
 mystery adapted to the objects ; and you leave them, as you find 
 them, shrouded in a solemn night. 
 
 In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best advantage. 
 There are seldom so many in one place that the attention need 
 become distracted, or the eye confused. You see them very leisurely ; 
 and are rarely interrupted by a crowd of people. There are portraits 
 innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke ; heads by 
 Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci ; various subjects by 
 Correggio, and Murillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spag- 
 noletto many of which it would be difficult, indeed, to praise too 
 highly, or to praise enough ; such is their tenderness and graco ; 
 their noble elevation, purity, and beauty. 
 
 The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, is a 
 picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through tho transcendent 
 sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a something shining out, 
 that haunts mo. I see it now, as I sec this paper, or my pen. The 
 head is loosely draped in white ; the light hair falling down below 
 the linen folds. She has turned suddenly towards you ; and there is 
 an expression in tho eyes although they arc very tender and gentlo 
 as if the wildness of a momentary terror, or distraction, has been 
 struggled with and overcome, that instant ; and nothing but a celestial 
 hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolato earthly helplessness 
 remained. Some stories say that Guido painted it, tho night beforo 
 her execution ; somo other stories, that he painted it from memory, 
 after having seen her, on her way to the scaffold. I am willing to
 
 312 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 believe that, as yon see her on his canvas, so she turned towards him, 
 in the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his 
 mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood 
 beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci : blight- 
 ing a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by 
 grains : had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its 
 black blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and 
 growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The History is 
 written in the Painting ; written, in the dying girl's face, by Nature's 
 own hand. And oh ! how in that one touch she puts to flight (instead 
 of making kin) the puny world that claim to be related to her, in 
 right of poor conventional forgeries ! 
 
 I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey ; the statue at 
 whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure ! I imagined 
 one of greater finish : of the last refinement : full of delicate touches : 
 losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was 
 ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid majesty as this, as 
 Death came creeping over the upturned face. 
 
 The excursions in the neighbourhood of Eome are charming, and 
 would be full of interest were it only for the changing views they 
 afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of ground, in every 
 direction, is rich in associations, and in natural beauties. There is 
 Albano, with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, that 
 certainly has not improved since the days of Horace, and in these 
 times hardly justifies his panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with 
 the river Anio, diverted from its course, and plunging down, head- 
 long, some eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque Temple 
 of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag ; its minor waterfalls glancing 
 and sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern yawning darkly, 
 where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low down under 
 beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa d'Este, deserted and decaying 
 among groves of melancholy pine and cypress-trees, where it seems to 
 lie in state. Then, there is Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the 
 ruins of Tusculum, whero Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his 
 favourite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen there), and 
 where Cato was born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey 
 dull day, when a shrill March wind was blowing, and when the 
 scattered stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, 
 as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long extinguished fire. 
 
 One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, fourteen 
 miles distant ; possessed by a great desire to go there by the ancient 
 Appian Way, long since ruined and overgrown. We started at half- 
 past seven in the morning, and within an hour or so were out upon 
 the open Campagna. For twelve miles we went climbing on, over an 
 unbroken succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs 
 and temples, overthrown and prostrate ; small fragments of columns, 
 friezes, pediments ; great blocks of granite and marble ; mouldering
 
 Rome by Moonlight. 313 
 
 arches, grass-grown and decayed ; rain enough to build a spacious 
 city from ; lay strewn about us. Sometimes, loose walls, built up 
 from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our path ; some- 
 times, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our 
 progress ; sometimes, the fragments themselves, rolling from beneath 
 our feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance ; but it was always 
 ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the old road, above the ground ; 
 now traced it, underneath a grassy covering, as if that were its 
 grave ; but all the way was ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts 
 went stalking on their giant course along the plain ; and every breath 
 of wind that swept towards us, stirred early flowers and grasses, 
 springing up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin. The unseen larks 
 above us, who alone disturbed the awful silence, had their nests in 
 ruin ; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then 
 scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin. 
 Tho aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direction, where it was 
 most level, reminded me of an American prairie ; but what is the 
 solitude of a region where men have never dwelt, to that of a Desert, 
 where a mighty race have left their foot-prints in the earth from 
 which they have vanished ; where the resting-places of their Dead, 
 have fallen like their Dead ; and the broken hour-glass of Time is but 
 a heap of idle du6t ! Returning, by the road, at sunset ; and looking, 
 from the distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I 
 almost felt (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the 
 sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon a 
 ruined world. 
 
 To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is 
 a fitting close to such a day. The narrow streets, devoid of footways, 
 and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dunghill-rubbish, 
 contrast so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth, and 
 darkness, with the broad square before some haughty church : in tho 
 centre of which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt 
 in the days of the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene 
 about it ; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue over- 
 thrown, supports a Christian saint : Marcus Aurelius giving place to 
 Paul, and Trajan to St. Teter. Then, there are tho ponderous build- 
 ings reared from the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the 
 moon, like mountains : while hero and there, are broken arches and 
 rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring 
 from a wound. The little town of miscrablo houses, walled, and shut 
 in by barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up 
 nightly, when the clock strikes eight a miserable place, densely 
 populated, and reeking with bad odours, but where the people aro 
 industrious and money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your 
 way along the narrow streets, you see them all at work : upon the 
 pavement, oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops : furbishing 
 old clothes, and driving bargains.
 
 314 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon 
 once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and 
 rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow 
 little throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, 
 and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Eomans round its smoky 
 coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew ; its trays of fried fish, and 
 its flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting corner, 
 a lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and un- 
 covers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a 
 large cross ; by a torch-bearer ; and a priest : the latter chaunting as 
 he goes. It is the Dead Cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their 
 way to burial in the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will 
 be thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, and 
 sealed up for a year. 
 
 But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns : ancient 
 temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums : it is strange to see, 
 how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended into 
 some modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose a 
 wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable some use for which it 
 never was designed, and associated with which it cannot otherwise 
 than lamely assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the 
 old mythology : how many fragments of obsolete legend and observ- 
 ance : have been incorporated into the worship of Christian altars 
 here ; and how, in numberless respects, the false faith and the true 
 are fused into a monstrous union. 
 
 From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a squat 
 and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) makes an 
 opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an English traveller, it 
 serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a 
 little garden near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie the 
 bones of Keats, " whose name is writ in water," that shines brightly 
 in the landscape of a calm Italian night. 
 
 The Holy Week in Eome is supposed to offer great attractions to 
 all visitors ; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I would 
 counsel those who go to Rome for its own interest, to avoid it at that 
 time. The ceremonies, in general, are of the most tedious and weari- 
 some kind ; the heat and crowd at every one of them, painfully 
 oppressive ; the noise, hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting. We 
 abandoned the pursuit of these shows, very early in the proceedings, 
 and betook ourselves to the Kuins again. But, we plunged into the 
 crowd for a share of the best of the sights ; and what we saw, I will 
 describe to you. 
 
 At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little, for by 
 the time we reached it (though we were early) the besieging crowd 
 had filled it to the door, and overflowed into the adjoining hall, where 
 they were struggling, and squeezing, and mutually expostulating, and
 
 Exhibition of Relics. 3 1 5 
 
 making great rushes every time a lady was brought out faint, as if at 
 least fifty people could be accommodated in her vacant standing-room. 
 Hanging in the doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this 
 curtain, some twenty people nearest to it, in their anxiety to hear the 
 chaunting of the Miserere, were continually plucking at, in opposition 
 to each other, that it might not fall down and stifle the sound of the 
 voices. The consequence was, that it occasioned tho most extraordinary 
 confusion, and seemed to wind itself about the unwary, like a Serpent. 
 Now, a lady was wrapped up in it, and couldn't be unwound. Now, 
 the voice of a stifling gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be 
 let out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of which sex, 
 struggled in it as in a sack. Now, it was carried by a rusk, bodily 
 overhead into the chapel, like an awning. Now, it came out the other 
 way, and blinded one of the Pope's Swiss Guard, who had arrived, 
 that moment, to set things to rights. 
 
 Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the Pope's 
 gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the minutes as per- 
 haps his Holiness was too we had better opportunities of observing 
 this eccentric entertainment, than of hearing the Miserere. Some- 
 times, there was a swell of mournful voices that sounded very pathetic 
 and sad, and died away, into a low strain again ; but that was all we 
 heard. 
 
 At another time, there was the Exhibition of the Relics in Saint 
 Peter's, which took place at between six and soven o'clock in the 
 evening, and was striking from the cathedral being dark and gloomy, 
 and having a great many people in it. The place into which the 
 relics were brought, one by one, by a party of three priests, was a 
 high balcony near the chief altar. This was the only lighted part of 
 the church. There are always a hundred and twelve lamps burning 
 near the altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near tbe black 
 statue of St. Peter ; but these were nothing in such an immense edifice. 
 The gloom, and the general upturning of faces to the balcony, and the 
 prostration of true believers on the pavement, as shining objects, like 
 pictures or looking-glasses, were brought out and shown, had some- 
 thing effective in it, despite the very preposterous manner in which 
 they were held up for the general edification, and the great elevation 
 at which they were displayed ; which one would think rather calcu- 
 lated to diminish the comfort derivable from a full conviction of their 
 being genuine. 
 
 On the Thursday, wo went to see the Pope convey the Sacrament 
 from the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in tho Capella Paolina, another 
 chapel in tho Vatican ; a ceremony emblematical of the entombment 
 of the Saviour before His Resurrection. AVe waited in a great gallery 
 with a great crowd of people (three-fourths of them English) for an 
 hour or so, while they were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistino 
 chapel again. Both chapels opened out of the gallery ; and tho 
 general attention was concentrated on the occasional opening and
 
 316 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 shutting of the door of the one for which the Pope was ultimately 
 bound. None of these openings disclosed anything more tremendous 
 than a man on a ladder, lighting a great quantity of candles ; but at 
 each and every opening, there was a terrific rush made at this ladder 
 and this man, something like (I should think) a charge of the heavy 
 British cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never brought down, 
 however, nor the ladder ; for it performed the strangest antics in the 
 world among the crowd where it was carried by the man, when 
 the candles were all lighted ; and finally it was stuck up against the 
 gallery wall, in a very disorderly manner, just before the opening of 
 the other chapel, and the commencement of a new chaunt, announced 
 the approach of his Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of the 
 guard, who had been poking the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed 
 down the gallery : and the procession came up, between the two lines 
 they made. 
 
 There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, walking 
 two and two, and carrying the good-looking priests at least their 
 lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a good effect upon their 
 faces: for the room was darkened. Those who were not handsome, 
 or who had not long beards, carried their tapers anyhow, and 
 abandoned themselves to spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile, the 
 chaunting was very monotonous and dreary. The procession passed 
 on, slowly, into the chapel, and the drone of voices wont on, and came 
 on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walking under a white 
 satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacrament in both hands ; 
 cardinals and canons clustered round him, making a brilliant show. 
 The soldiers of the guard knelt down as he passed ; all the bystanders 
 bowed ; and so he passed on into the chapel : the white satin canopy 
 being removed from over him at the door, and a white satin parasol 
 hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it. A few more couples 
 brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also. Then, the 
 chapel door was shut ; and it was all over ; and everybody hurried off 
 headlong, as for life or death, to see something else, and say it wasn't 
 worth the trouble. 
 
 I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting those 
 of Easter Sunday and Monday, which are opeu to all classes of 
 people) was the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen men, representing 
 the twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in which this 
 pious office is performed, is one of the chapels of St. Peter's, which is 
 gaily decorated for the occasion ; the thirteen sitting, " all of a row," 
 on a very high bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, with 
 the eyes of Heaven knows how many English, French, Americans, 
 Swiss, Germans, Kussians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other foreigners, 
 nailed to their faces all the time. They are robed in white ; and on 
 thoir heads they wear a stiff white cap, like a large English porter- 
 pot, without a handle. Each carries in his hand, a nosegay, of the 
 size of a fine cauliflower ; and two of them, on this occasion, wore
 
 A Dinner to " The Tivelve " and Judas. 3 1 7 
 
 spectacles : which, remembering the characters they sustained, I 
 thought a droll appendage to the costume. There was a great eye to 
 character. St. John was represented by a good-looking young man. 
 St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a flowing brown 
 beard ; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous hypocrite (I could 
 not make out, though, whether the expression of his face was real or 
 assumed) that if he had acted the part to the death and had gone 
 away and hanged himself, he would have left nothing to be desired. 
 
 As the two largo boxes, appropriated to ladies at this sight, were 
 full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted off, along 
 with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where the Pope, in 
 person, waits on these Thirteen ; and after a prodigious struggle at 
 tho Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts with the Swiss 
 guard, the whole crowd swept into the room. It was a long gallery 
 hung with drapery of white and red, with another great box for ladies 
 (who are obliged to dress in black at these ceremonies, and to wear 
 black veils), a royal box for the King of Naples and his party ; and 
 the table itself, which, set out like a ball supper, and ornamented with 
 golden figures of the real apostles, was arranged on an elevated plat- 
 form on one side of the gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives and 
 forks wero laid out on that side of the tabic which was nearest to the 
 wall, so that they might be stared at again, without let or hindrance. 
 
 Tho body of the room was full of male strangers ; the crowd 
 immense ; the heat very great ; and the pressure sometimes frightful. 
 It was at its height, when the stream came pouring in, from tho feet- 
 washing ; and then there were such shrieks and outcries, that a party 
 of Piedmontese dragoons went to the rescue of the Swiss guard, and 
 helped them to calm the tumult. 
 
 The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles for places. 
 One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the waist, in tho ladies' 
 box, by a strong matron, and hoisted out of her place ; and there was 
 another lady (in a back row in tho same box) who improved hor 
 position by sticking a large pin into the ladies before her. 
 
 The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to sec what was 
 on tho table ; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked tho 
 whole energy of his nature in the determination to discover whether 
 there was any mustard. " By Jupiter there's vinegar ! " I heard him 
 say to his friend, after ho had stood on tiptoe an immense time, and 
 had been crushed and beaten on all sides. " And there's oil ! I saw 
 them distinctly, in cruets ! Can any gentleman, in front there, see 
 mustard on the table ? Sir, will you oblige me ! Do you see a 
 Mustard-Pot V " 
 
 Tho apostles and Judas appearing on tho platform, after much 
 expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front of the table, with Peter 
 at the top ; and a good long stare was taken at them by the company, 
 while twelve of them took a long smell at their nosegays, and Judas 
 moving his lips very obtrusively engaged in inward prayer.
 
 3 1 8 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 Then, the Pope, clad iu a scarlet robe, and wearing on his head a 
 skull-cap of white satin, appeared in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals 
 and other dignitaries, and took in his hand a little golden ewer, from 
 which he poured a little water over one of Peter's hands, while one 
 attendant held a golden basin ; a second, a fine cloth ; a third, Peter's 
 nosegay, which was taken from him during the operation. This his 
 Holiness performed, with considerable expedition, on every man in 
 the line (Judas, I observed, to be particularly overcome by his con- 
 descension) ; and then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. Grace 
 said by the Pope. Peter in the chair. 
 
 There was white wine, and red wine : and the dinner looked very 
 good. The courses appeared in portions, one for each apostle : and 
 these .being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, 
 were by him handed to the Thirteen. The manner in which Judas 
 grew more white-livered over his victuals, and languished, with his 
 head on one side, as if he had no appetite, defies all description. 
 Peter was a good, sound, old man, and went in, as the saying is, " to 
 win ; " eating everything that was given to him (he got the best : 
 being first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody. The dishes 
 appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and vegetables. The Popo 
 helped the Thirteen to wine also ; and, during the whole dinner, 
 somebody read something aloud, out of a large book the Bible, I 
 presume which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the 
 least attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to each 
 other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce ; and if 
 they thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly right. His 
 Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets through a 
 troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all over. 
 
 The Pilgrims' Suppers : where lords and ladies waited on the 
 Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when they had 
 been well washed by deputy : were very attractive. But, of all the 
 many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward observances, in 
 themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the 
 Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, but to the 
 greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good Friday. 
 
 This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said to 
 have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house, and to be the identical stairs 
 on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-seat. 
 Pilgrims ascend it, only on their knees. It is steep ; and, at the 
 summit, is a chapel, reported to be full of relics ; into which they 
 peep through some iron bars, and then come down again, by one of 
 two side staircases, which are not sacred, and may be walked on. 
 
 On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a hundred 
 people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one time ; 
 while others, who were going up, or had come down and a few who 
 had done both, and were going up again for the second time stood 
 loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in a sort of
 
 T/ie Holy Staircase. 319 
 
 watch-box, rattled a tin canister, with a slit in the top, incessantly, to 
 remind them that he took the money. The majority were conntry- 
 people, male and female. There were four or five Jesuit priests, 
 however, and somo half-dozen well-dressed women. A whole school 
 of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way up evidently enjoying 
 it very much. They were all wedged together, pretty closely ; but 
 tho rest of the company gave the boys as wide a berth as possible, in 
 consequence of their betraying some recklessness in the management 
 of their boots. 
 
 I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and so 
 unpleasant, as this sight ridiculous in the absurd incidents in- 
 separable from it ; and unpleasant in its senseless and unmeaning 
 degradation. There are two steps to begin with, and then a rather 
 broad landing. The more rigid climbers went along this landing on 
 their knees, as well as up the stairs ; and the figures they cut, in their 
 shuffling progress over the level surface, no description can paint. 
 Then, to see them watch their opportunity from the porch, and cut in 
 where there was a place next the wall ! And to see one man with an 
 umbrella (brought en purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting himself, 
 unlawfully, from stair to stair ! And to observe a demure lady of 
 fifty-five or so, looking back, every now and then, to assure herself 
 that her legs were properly disposed ! 
 
 There were such odd differences in the speed of different people, 
 too. Some got on as if they were doing a match against time ; others 
 stopped to say a prayer on every step. This man touched every stair 
 with his forehead, and kissed it ; that man scratched his head all tho 
 way. The boys got on brilliantly, and were up and down again before 
 the old lady had accomplished her half-dozen stairs. But most of tho 
 penitents came down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real 
 good substantial deed which it would take a good deal of sin to 
 counterbalance ; and the old gentleman in the watch-box was down 
 upon them with his canister whilo they were in this humour, I 
 promise you. 
 
 As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll enough, 
 there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a crucifix, resting 
 on a sort of great iron saucer : so rickety and unsteady, that whenever 
 an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than usual devo- 
 tion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with more than common readi- 
 ness (for it served in this respect as a second or siipplementary 
 canister), it gave a great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the attendant 
 lamp out : horribly frightening tho people furthor down, and throwing 
 the guilty party into unspeakable embarrassment. 
 
 On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, tho Fopo 
 bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of 
 St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue : so 
 cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright : that all tho previous bad 
 weather vanished from tho recollection in a moment. I had seen
 
 320 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 the Thursday's Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of 
 umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred 
 fountains of Eome such fountains as they are ! and on this Sunday 
 morning they were running diamonds. The miles of miserable streets 
 through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's 
 dragoons : the Eoman police on such occasions) were so full of colour, 
 that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect. The 
 common people came out in their gayest dresses ; the richer people in 
 their smartest vehicles ; Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor 
 Fishermen in their state carriages ; shabby magnificence flaunted its 
 thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the sun ; and every 
 coach in Eome was put in requisition for the Great Piazza of 
 St. Peter's. 
 
 One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least ! Yet 
 there was ample room. How many carriages were there, I don't 
 know ; yet there was room for them too, and to spare. The great 
 steps of the church were densely crowded. There were many of the 
 Contadini, from Albano (who delight in red), in that part of the 
 square, and the mingling of bright colours in the crowd was beauti- 
 ful. Below the steps the troops were ranged. In the magnificent 
 proportions of the place they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky 
 Eomans, lively peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of 
 pilgrims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all 
 nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects ; and 
 high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making rainbow 
 colours in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and tumbled 
 bountifully. 
 
 A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony ; 
 and the sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery. 
 An awning was stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man 
 from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were 
 turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen approach- 
 ing to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close 
 behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose 
 up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in 
 the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater 
 part, kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of the Castle of 
 St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the benediction was given ; 
 drums beat ; trumpets sounded ; arms clashed ; and the great mass 
 below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and scattering here and 
 there in rills, was stirred like parti-coloured sand. 
 
 What a bright noon it was, as wo rode away ! The Tiber was no 
 longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old bridges, that 
 made them fresh and hale again. The Pantheon, with its majestic 
 front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, had summer light 
 upon its battered walls. Every squalid and desolate hut in the 
 Eternal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the filth and
 
 Easter Monday. 321 
 
 misery of the plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as certain as Time has 
 laid its grip on its patrician head !) was fresh and new with some ray 
 of the sun. The very prison in the crowded street, a whirl of carriages 
 and people, had some stray senso of the day, dropping through its 
 chinks and crevices : and dismal prisoners who could not wind their 
 faces round tho barricading of the blocked-up windows, stretched out 
 their hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned than towards the 
 overflowing street : as if it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared 
 in, that way. 
 
 But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon, 
 what a sight it was to see the Great Square full onco more, and the 
 whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with innumerable 
 lanterns, tracing out tho architecture, and winking and shining all 
 round the colonnade of the piazza ! And what a sense of exultation, 
 joy, delight, it was, when the great bell struck half-past seven on 
 the instant to behold ono bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly from 
 the top of the cupola to the cxtrcmest summit of tho cross, and the 
 moment it leaped into its place, become the signal of a bursting out 
 of countless lights, as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from every 
 part of the gigantic church ; so that every cornice, capital, and 
 smallest ornament of stone, expressed itself in firo : and the black 
 solid groundwork of tho enormous dome seemed to grow transparent 
 as an eggshell ! 
 
 A train of gunpowder, an electric chain nothing could be fired, 
 more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumination ; and when 
 wo had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards 
 it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in 
 the calm night like a jewel ! Not a line of its proportions wanting ; 
 not an angle blunted ; not an atom of its radiance lost. 
 
 Tho next night Easter Monday there was a great display of 
 fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an 
 opposite house, and mado our way, to our places, in good time, through 
 a donsc mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the 
 avenues leading to it ; and so loading the bridge by which the castle 
 is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber 
 below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, 
 among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed : glaring 
 strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the 
 stone counterfeits above them. 
 
 The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon ; and thou, 
 for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant 
 sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, 
 and speed : while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, 
 or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst tho 
 Girandola was like tho blowing up into the air of tho whole massive 
 castle, without smoke or dust. 
 
 In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; 
 
 Y
 
 322 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the 
 river ; and half-a-dozen men and boys, with hits of lighted candle in 
 their hands: moving here and there, in search of anything worth 
 having, that might have been dropped in the press : had the whole 
 scene to themselves. 
 
 By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Eome, after all this 
 firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it 
 by moonlight before (I could never get through a day without going 
 back to it), but its tremendous solitude that night is past all telling. 
 The ghostly pillars in the Forum ; the Triumphal Arches of Old 
 Emperors ; those enormous masses of ruins which were once their 
 palaces; the grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of ruined 
 temples ; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet 
 in ancient Eome ; even these were dimmed, in their transcendent 
 melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody holidays, erect and grim ; 
 haunting the old scene ; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting 
 Princes, but not laid ; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, and 
 bramble ; and lamenting to the night in every gap and broken arch 
 the shadow of its awful self, immovable ! 
 
 As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our 
 way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little wooden 
 cross had been erected on the spot where the poor Pilgrim-Countess 
 was murdered. So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the begin- 
 ning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should ever rest 
 there again, and look back at Eome. 
 
 A KAPID DIORAMA. 
 
 We are bound for Naples ! And we cross the threshold of the 
 Eternal City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, 
 where the two last objects that attract the notice of a departing 
 visitor, and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriving 
 one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin good emblems of Eome. 
 Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a 
 bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky ; the great extent 
 of ruin being plainer to the eye : and the sunshine through the arches 
 of the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining through 
 them in the melancholy distance. When we have traversed it, and 
 look back from Albano, its dark undulating surface lies below us like 
 a stagnant lake, or like a broad dull Lethe flowing round the walls of 
 Eome, and separating it from all the world ! How often havo the 
 Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple 
 Avaste, so silent and unpeopled now ! How often has the train of 
 captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld
 
 Fondi. 323 
 
 its population pouring out, to bail the return of their conqueror! 
 What riot, sensuality aud murder, have run mad in the vast palaces 
 now heaps of brick and shattered marble ! What glare of fires, and 
 roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have come 
 sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is now heard but the 
 wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun ! 
 
 The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven by a shaggy 
 peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned canopy of sheep- 
 skin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into a higher country where 
 there are trees. The next day brings us on the Pontine Marshes, 
 wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, and 
 swamped with M'ater, but with a fine road made across them, shaded 
 by a long, long avenue. Here and there, we pass a solitary guard- 
 house ; here and there a hovel, deserted, and walled up. Some 
 herdsmen loiter on the banks of the stream beside the road, and 
 sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, towed by a man, comes rippling idly 
 along it. A horseman passes occasionally, carrying a long gun cross- 
 wise on the saddle before him, and attended by fierce dogs ; but there 
 is nothing else astir save the wind and the shadows, until wo come in 
 sight of Terracina. 
 
 How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows of the inn 
 so famous in robber stories! How picturesque the great crags and 
 points of rock overhanging to-morrow's narrow road, where galley- 
 slaves are working in the quarries above, and the sentinels who guard 
 them lounge on the sea-shore ! All night there is the murmur of the 
 sea beneath the stars ; and, in the morning, just at daybreak, the 
 prospect suddenly becoming expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals in 
 the far distance, across the sea there ! Naples with its islands, and 
 Vesuvius spouting fire ! Within a quarter of an hour, the whole is 
 gone as if it were a vision in the clouds, and there is nothing but 
 the sea and sky. 
 
 The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours' travelling ; and 
 the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with difficulty 
 appeased ; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan 
 town Fondi. Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is wretched 
 and beggarly. 
 
 A filthy channel of mud and refuso meanders clown the centre of 
 the miserable streets, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from the 
 abject houses. Thero is not a door, a window, or a shutter ; not a 
 roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, 
 and rotting away. The wretched history of the town, with all its 
 sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, might have been acted 
 last year. I low tho gaunt dogs that sneak about tho miserable streets, 
 come to be alive, and undevoured by the people, is one of tho enigmas 
 of the world. 
 
 A hollow-cheeked and scowling peoplo they are ! All beggars ; 
 but that's nothing. Look at them as they gather round. Some, are
 
 324 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 too indolent to come clown-stairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the 
 stairs, perhaps, to venture : so stretch out their lean hands from upper 
 windows, and howl ; others, come flocking about us, fighting and 
 jostling one another, and demanding, incessantly, charity for the love 
 of God, charity for the love of the Blessed Virgin, charity for the 
 love of all the Saints. A group of miserable children, almost naked, 
 screaming forth the same petition, discover that they can see them- 
 selves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance and 
 make grimaces, that they may have the pleasure of seeing their antics 
 repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking ono 
 of them who drowns his clamorous demand for charity, observes his 
 angry counterpart in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his 
 tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at 
 this, awakens half-a-dozen wild creatures wrapped in frouzy brown 
 cloaks, who are lying on the church-steps with pots and pans for sale. 
 These, scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. " I am hungry. 
 Give me something. Listen to me, Signore. I am hungry ! " Then, 
 a ghastly old woman, fearful of being too late, comes hobbling down 
 the street, stretching out one hand, and scratching herself all the way 
 with the other, and screaming, long before she can be heard, " Charity, 
 charity ! I'll go and pray for you directly, beautiful lady, if you'll 
 give me charity ! " Lastly, the members of a brotherhood for burying 
 the dead : hideously masked, and attired in shabby black robes, white 
 at the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy winters : escorted by 
 a dirty priest, and a congenial cross-bearer : come hurrying past. 
 Surrounded by this motley concourse, we move out of Fondi : bad 
 bright eyes glaring at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, 
 like glistening fragments of its filth and putrefaction. 
 
 A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong 
 eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo ; the old town 
 of Itri, like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpendicularly, on a 
 hill, and approached by long steep flights of steps ; beautiful Mola di 
 Gaeta, whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since the 
 days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad : which is not likely of 
 one who enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well ; another night 
 upon the road at St. Agata ; a rest next day at Capua, which is pic- 
 turesque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as the soldiers of 
 Praetorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name ; a flat 
 road among vines festooned and looped from tree to tree ; and Mount 
 Vesuvius close at hand at last ! its cone and summit whitened with 
 snow ; and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the 
 day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. 
 
 A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The body, on an 
 open bier, borne on a kind of palanqxiin, covered with a gay cloth of 
 crimson and gold. The mourners, in white gowns and masks. If 
 there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples 
 would seem ':,o be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages.
 
 In and about Naples. 325 
 
 Some of these, the common Vetturino vehicles, are drawn by tnree 
 horses abreast, decked with smart trappings and great abundance of 
 brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads 
 are light ; for the smallest of them lias at least six people inside, four 
 in front, four or five more hanging on behind, and two or three more, 
 in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie half-suffocated with 
 mud and dust. Exhibitors of Punch, buftb singers with guitars, 
 reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with 
 clowns and showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths represent- 
 ing the wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist 
 the whirl and bustle. Eagged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, arch- 
 ways, and kennels ; the gentry, gaily dressed, are dashing up and 
 down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens ; 
 and quiet letter-writers, perched behind their little desks and ink- 
 stands under the Portico of the Great Theatre of San Carlo, in the 
 public street, are waiting for clients. 
 
 Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to a 
 friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner 
 arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the 
 sentinel who guards him : who stands near, leaning against the wall 
 and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter- 
 writer, what he desires to say ; and as he can't read writing, looks 
 intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully 
 what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave becomes discursive 
 incoherent. The secretary pauses and rubs ' is chin. The galley- 
 slavo is voluble and energetic. The secretary, at length, catches the 
 idea, and with tho air of a man who knows how to word it, sets it 
 down ; stopping, now and then, to glance back at his text admiringly. 
 The galley-slave is silent. The soldier stoically cracks his nuts. Is 
 there anything more to say? inquires the letter-writer. No more. 
 Then listen, friend of mine. He reads it through. The galloy-slave 
 is quite enchanted. It is folded, and addressed, and given to him, 
 and he pays the fee. The secretary falls back indolently in his chair, 
 and takes a book. The galley-slave gathers up an empty sack. The 
 sentinel throws away a handful of nut-shells, shoulders his musket, 
 and away they go together. 
 
 Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right 
 hands, when you look at them ? Everything is done in pantomime in 
 Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is 
 quarrelling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on 
 the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs expressive of a 
 donkey's ears whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two 
 people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat 
 pocket when he is told tho price, and walks away without a word : 
 having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. 
 Two people in carriages, meeting, one touches his lips, twico or thrice, 
 holding up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal
 
 326 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 cut in the air with the palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his 
 way. He has been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past five 
 o'clock, and will certainly come. 
 
 All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, 
 with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative the only 
 negative beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five 
 fingers are a copious language. 
 
 All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and 
 maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selliug all day long, and 
 begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the 
 bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily. But, 
 lovers and hunters of the picturesque, let us not keep too studiously 
 out of view the miserable depravity, degradation, and wretchedness, 
 with which this gay Neapolitan life is inseparably associated ! It is 
 not well to find Saint Giles's so repulsive, and the Porta Capuana so 
 attractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged red scarf, do not make 
 all the difference between what is interesting and what is coarse 
 and odious ? Painting and poetising for ever, if you will, the beauties 
 of this most beautiful and lovely spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try 
 to associate a new picturesque with some faint recognition of man's 
 destiny and capabilities ; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and 
 snow of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples. 
 
 Capri once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius Ischia, 
 Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue 
 sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a-day : 
 now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in 
 the world, is spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno 
 shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of 
 Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane and away to Baias : or take the other 
 way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. 
 In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there 
 are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute's hand 
 stretched out, to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are 
 carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past the 
 town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town 
 destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years ; and 
 past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufactories ; 
 to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, 
 standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad termi- 
 nates ; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of 
 enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest 
 summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down to 
 the water's edge among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges 
 and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills 
 and by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns 
 with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors and pass delicious 
 summer villas to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his inspiration
 
 Buryiug-placcs , 327 
 
 from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the 
 heights above Castel-a-Mare, and looking down among the boughs and 
 leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun ; and clusters of 
 white houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of 
 prospect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach 
 again, at sunset : with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening 
 mountain, with its smoke and flame, upon the other: is a sublime 
 conclusion to the glory of the day. 
 
 That church by the Porta Capuana near the old fisher-market in 
 the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Massaniello 
 began is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest 
 proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing 
 else, unless it be its waxen and bejowelled Saint in a glass case, with 
 two odd hands ; or the enormous number of beggars who are con- 
 stantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The 
 cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and 
 Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains 
 the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius : -which is 
 preserved in two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously 
 liquifies three times a-year, to the great admiration of the people. 
 At the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the Saint 
 suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It is said that the officiating 
 priests turn faintly red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur. 
 
 The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient 
 catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to 
 be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal 
 Hospital, who are the official'attendants at funerals. Two of these old 
 spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death 
 as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They wero used as 
 burying-places for three hundred years ; and, in one part, is a large 
 pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great 
 mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest there is nothing but 
 dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, 
 hewn out of tho rock. At the end of some of these long passages, are 
 unexpected glimpses of tho daylight, shining down from above. It 
 looks as ghastly and as strange : among the torches, and tho dust, and 
 the dark vaults : as if it, too, were dead and buried. 
 
 The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city 
 and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and 
 sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, 
 and are unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, at 
 no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, has already many 
 graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might 
 be reasonably objected elsewhere, that some of tho tombs aro 
 meretricious and too fanciful ; but the general brightness seems to 
 justify it hero ; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a lovely 
 slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene.
 
 328 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its 
 dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and 
 impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and 
 Pompeii ! 
 
 Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look 
 up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, 
 over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, 
 away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance ; 
 and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange 
 and melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer 
 making this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at 
 every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and every- 
 day pursuits ; the chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the 
 exhausted well ; the track of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the 
 street ; the marks of drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine- 
 shop ; the amphora? in private cellars, stored away so many hundred 
 years ago, and undisturbed to this hour all rendering the solitude 
 and deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times more 
 solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the 
 earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. 
 
 After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption, 
 workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments 
 for temples and other buildings that had suffered. Here lies their 
 Avork, outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow. 
 
 In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons were 
 found huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their 
 bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes, and became stamped 
 and fixed there, after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, 
 in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the stream 
 when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it 
 hardened into stone ; and now, it turns upon the stranger the fantastic 
 look it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre two thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and 
 out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples 
 of a religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many 
 fresh traces of remote antiquity : as if the course of Time had been 
 stopped after this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, 
 months, years, and centuries, since : nothing is more impressive and 
 terrible than the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes, 
 as bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping 
 them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen 
 vessels : displacing the wine and choking them, to the brim, with 
 dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the 
 funeral urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and 
 eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible 
 hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood was of a different and a
 
 The Buried City. 329 
 
 heavier kind, it rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a delnge of water 
 turned to marble, at its height and that is what is called " the lava " 
 here. 
 
 Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which 
 we now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone 
 benches of the theatre those steps (for such they seem) at tho bottom 
 of the excavation and found the buried city of Herculancum. 
 Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by 
 great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, 
 shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd 
 places, confusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. 
 AYe cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that This came 
 rolling in, and drowned the city ; and that all that is not here, has 
 been cut away, by the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and 
 understood, the horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable. 
 Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of 
 both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as 
 fresh and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday. Hero are 
 subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the 
 like ; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly 
 and plainly told ; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working 
 at trades ; theatrical rehearsals ; poets reading their productions to 
 their friends ; inscriptions chalked upon the walls ; political squibs, 
 advertisements, rough drawings by schoolboys ; everything to people 
 and restore the ancient cities, in the fancy of their wondering visitor. 
 Furniture, too, you see, of every kind lamps, tables, couches ; vessels 
 for eating, drinking, and cooking ; workmen's tools, surgical instru- 
 ments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, 
 bunches of keys found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of 
 guards and warriors ; little household bells, yet musical with their 
 old domestic tones. 
 
 The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell tho interest of 
 Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking, from 
 either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds overgrown with 
 beautiful vines and luxuriant trees ; and remembering that house 
 upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street after 
 street, are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet cultivation, 
 waiting to be turned up to the light of day ; is something so wonderful, 
 so full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination, that one would 
 think it would bo paramount, and yield to nothing else. To nothing 
 but Vesuvius ; but the mountain is the genius of the scene. From 
 every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with an 
 absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It is 
 beyond us, as we thread the ruined streets : above us, as we stand 
 upon tho ruined walls ; we follow it through every vista of broken 
 columns, as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses; 
 and through tho garlandings and interfacings of every wauton vine.
 
 3 30 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 Turning away to Paestum yonder, to see the awful structures built, 
 the least aged of them, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, 
 and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild, malaria- 
 blighted plain we watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, 
 and watch for it again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest : 
 as the doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its 
 terrible time. 
 
 It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring-day, when we 
 return from Paestum, but very cold in the shade : insomuch, that 
 although we may lunch, pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the 
 gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for our 
 wine. But, the sun is shining brightly ; there is not a cloud or speck 
 of vapour in the whole blue sky, looking down upon the bay of 
 Naples ; and the moon will be at the full to-night. No matter that 
 the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or that we 
 have been on foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that 
 strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in such an unusual 
 season. Let us take advantage of the fine weather ; make the best of 
 our way to Resina, the little village at the foot of the mountain ; pre- 
 pare ourselves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the guide's 
 house ; ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight at the 
 top, and midnight to come down in ! 
 
 At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar in the 
 little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the recognised head-guide, with 
 the gold band round his cap ; and thirty under-guides who are all 
 scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled 
 ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the journey. Every 
 one of the thirty, quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens 
 the six ponies ; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze 
 itself into the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets 
 trodden on by the cattle. 
 
 After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice 
 for the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The head-guide, 
 who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance 
 of the party ; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go 
 forward with the litters that are to be used by-and-by; and the 
 remaining two-and-twenty beg. 
 
 We ascond, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of 
 stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and the vineyards 
 on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak bare region where 
 the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses : as if the earth 
 had been ploughed up by burning thunderbolts. And now, we halt 
 to see the sun set. The change that falls upon the dreary region 
 and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes 
 on and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, 
 who that has witnessed it, can ever forget ! 
 
 It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken
 
 Up Mount Vesuvius. 33 1 
 
 gronnd, we arrive at the foot of the cone : which is extremely steep, 
 and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we 
 dismount. The only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and 
 white, with which the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and 
 the air is piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing 
 that the moon will rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters 
 are devoted to the two ladies ; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman 
 from Naples, whose hospitality and good-nature have attached him to 
 the expedition, and determined him to assist in doing the honours of 
 the mountain. The rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen 
 men ; each of the ladies by half-a-dozen. We who walk, make the 
 best use of our staves ; and so the whole party begin to labour 
 upward over the snow, as if they were toiling to the summit of an 
 antediluvian Twelfth-cake. 
 
 We are a long time toiling up ; and tho head-guide looks oddly 
 about him when one of the company not an Italian, though an 
 habitue of tho mountain for many years : whom we will call, for our 
 present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici suggests that, as it is freezing 
 hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, 
 it will surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters 
 above, tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the 
 bearers continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention ; more 
 especially as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at 
 that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head 
 downwards. 
 
 The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flagging spirits 
 of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword, 
 " Courage, friend ! It is to eat maccaroni ! " they press on, gallantly, 
 for the summit. 
 
 From tinging the top of the snow above us, with a band of light, 
 and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have 
 been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white 
 mountain side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the 
 distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect 
 is in this lovely state, when wo come upon the platform on the 
 mountain-top tho region of Fire an exhausted crater formed of 
 great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some 
 tremendous waterfall, burnt up ; from every chink and crevice of 
 which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while, from another 
 conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this plat- 
 form at the end, great sheets of lire arc streaming forth : reddening 
 the night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with 
 red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and 
 fall down like lead. What words can paint the gloom and grandeur 
 of this scene ! 
 
 The broken gronnd ; the smoke ; the sense of suffocation from the 
 sulphur ; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the yawning
 
 332 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 ground ; the stopping, every now and then, for somehody who is 
 missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon) ; 
 the intolerable noise of the thirty ; and the hoarse roaring of the 
 mountain ; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that 
 we reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it, and across another 
 exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close 
 to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its 
 foot, and look up in silence ; faintly estimating the action that is 
 going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this 
 minute, than it was six weeks ago. 
 
 There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an irresistible 
 desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, without starting off, 
 two of us, on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head-guide, to 
 climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Mean- 
 while, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous pro- 
 ceeding, and call to us to come back ; frightening the rest of the 
 party out of their wits. 
 
 What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin 
 crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet and 
 plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there 
 be any) ; and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the 
 shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke 
 and sulphur ; wo may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken 
 men. But, we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for 
 a moment, into the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all threo 
 come rolling down ; blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and 
 giddy : and each with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places. 
 
 You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending, 
 is, by sliding down the ashes : which, forming a gradually-increasing 
 ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have 
 crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to 
 this precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige 
 of ashes to be seen ; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice. 
 
 In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands, 
 and make a chain of men ; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they 
 can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. 
 The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party : even of the 
 thirty : being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the ladies 
 are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two careful 
 persons ; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent 
 their falling forward a necessary precaution, tending to the imme- 
 diate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy 
 gentleman is abjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a 
 similar manner ; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought 
 up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble 
 all at once, and that he is safer so, than trusting to his own legs. 
 
 In this order, we begin the descent : sometimes on foot, sometimes
 
 The Descent. 333 
 
 shuffling on the ice : always proceeding much more quietly and slowly, 
 than on our upward way : and constantly alarmed hy the falling among 
 us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole 
 party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is impossiblo 
 for tho litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made ; and 
 its appearance behind us, overhead with some one or other of the 
 bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs 
 always in the air is very threatening and frightful. Wo have gone 
 on thus, a very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, 
 and regarding it as a great success and have all fallen several times, 
 and have all l>een stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding away 
 when Mr. Pickle of Portici, in the act of remarking on these un- 
 common circumstances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, 
 disengages himself, with quick presence of mind, from those about 
 him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the 
 whole surface of the cone ! 
 
 Sickening as it is to look, and he so powerless to help him, I see 
 him there, in the moonlight I have had such a dream often skimming 
 over the white ice, like a cannon-ball. Almost at tho same moment, 
 thcro is a cry from behind ; and a man who has carried a light basket 
 of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past, at the same frightful 
 speed, closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of 
 accidonts, the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, 
 that a pack of wolves would be music to them ! 
 
 Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici 
 when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses 
 are waiting ; but, thank God, sound in limb ! And never are we 
 likely to be more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to see 
 him now making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great 
 pain. The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, whilo 
 we are at supper, with his head tied up ; and tho man is heard of, 
 some hours afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but has broken 
 no bones ; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks 
 of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless. 
 
 After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, wo 
 again take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore's house very 
 slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to keep the 
 saddle, or endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, 
 or early in the morning, all the people of tho village are waiting about 
 the little stable-yard when wo arrive, and looking up the road by 
 which we are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour 
 of tongues, and a general sensation for which in our modesty we are- 
 somewhat at a loss to account, until, turning into the yard, we find 
 that one of a party of French gentlemen who were on tho mountain 
 at tho same time is lyin<; on some straw in tho stable, with a broken 
 limb: looking like Death, and suffering great torture; and that wo 
 were confidently supposed to have encountered some worse accident.
 
 334 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 So " well returned, and Heaven be praised ! " as the cheerful 
 Vettun'no, who has borne us company all the way from Pisa, says, 
 with all his heart ! And away with his ready horses, into sleeping 
 Naples ! 
 
 It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers and 
 beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal degrada- 
 tion ; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day and every 
 day ; singing, starving, dancing, gaming, on the sea-shore ; and leaving 
 all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever at its work. 
 
 Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the subject of the 
 national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half as badly sung 
 in England as we may hear the Foscari performed, to-night, in the 
 splendid theatre of San Carlo. But, for astonishing truth and spirit 
 in seizing and embodying the real life about it, the shabby little San 
 Carlino Theatre the rickety house one story high, with a staring 
 picture outside : down among the drums and trumpets, and the 
 tumblers, and the lady conjurer is without a rival anywhere. 
 
 There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples, at 
 which we may take a glance before we go the Lotteries. 
 
 They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly obvious, in 
 their effects and influences, here. They are drawn every Saturday. 
 They bring an immense revenue to the Government ; and diffuse a 
 taste for gambling among the poorest of the poor, which is very com- 
 fortable to the coffers of the State, and very ruinous to themselves. 
 The lowest stake is one grain ; less than a farthing. One hundred 
 numbers from one to a hundred, inclusive are put into a box. Five 
 are drawn. Those are tho prizes. I buy three numbers. If one of 
 them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some hundreds of times 
 my stake. If three, three thousand five hundred times my stake. I 
 stake (or play as they call it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy 
 what numbers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery 
 office, where I purchase the ticket ; and it is stated on the ticket itself. 
 
 Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal Lottery 
 Diviner, where every possible accident and circumstance is provided 
 for, and has a number against it. For instance, let us take two carlini 
 about sevenpence. On our way to the lottery office, we run against 
 a black man. When wo get there, we say gravely, " The Diviner." 
 It is handed over the counter, as a serious matter of business. We 
 look at black man. Such a number. " Give us that." We look at 
 running against a person in the street. " Give us that." We look at 
 the name of the street itself. " Give us that." Now, we have our 
 three numbers. 
 
 If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so many 
 people would play upon tho numbers attached to such an accident in 
 the Diviner, that the Government would soon close those numbers, 
 and decline to run the risk of losing any more upon them. This 
 often happens. Not long ago, when there was a fire in the King's
 
 Neapolitan Lotteries. 335 
 
 Palace, there was such a desperate ran on fire, and king, and palace, 
 that further stakes on the nnmbors attached to those words in the 
 Golden Book were forbidden. Every accident or event, is supposed, 
 by the ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder, or party 
 concerned, in connection with the lottery. Certain people who have 
 a taleut for dreaming fortunately, are much sought after ; and there 
 are some priests who aro constantly favoured with visions of the lucky 
 numbers. 
 
 I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing him 
 down, dead, at the corner of a street. Pursuing the horse with in- 
 credible speed, was another man, who ran so fast, that he came up, 
 immediately after the accident. He threw himself upon his knees 
 beside the unfortunate iider, and clasped his hand with an expression 
 of the wildest grief. " If you have life," he said, " speak one word to 
 me ! If you have one gasp of breath left, mention your age for 
 Heaven's sake, that I may play that number in the lottery." 
 
 It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our lottery 
 drawn. The ceremony takes place every Saturday, in the Tribunale, 
 or Court of Justice this singular, earthy-smelling room, or gallery, 
 as mouldy as an old cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the upper 
 end is a platform, with a large horse-shoe table upon it ; and a 
 President and Council sitting round all Judges of the Law. The 
 man on the little stool behind the President, is tho Capo Lazzarone, 
 a kind of tribune of tho people, appointed on their behalf to see that 
 all is fairly conducted : attended by a few personal friends. A ragged, 
 swarthy fellow he is : with long matted hair hanging down all over 
 his face : and covered, from head to foot, with most unquestionably 
 genuine dirt. All the body of the room is filled with the commonest 
 of the Neapolitan people : and between them and the platform, guard- 
 ing the 6teps leading to the latter, is a small body of soldiers. 
 
 There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary number of 
 judges ; during which, the box, in which the numbers are being 
 placed, is a sourco of the deepest interest. "When the box is full, the 
 boy who is to draw the numbers out of it becomes the prominent 
 feature of the proceedings. He is already dressed for his part, in a 
 tight brown Holland coat, with only one (the left) sleeve to it, which 
 leaves his right arm bared to the shoulder, ready for plunging down 
 into the mysterious chest. 
 
 During tho hush and whisper that pervade the room, all eyes arc 
 turned on this young minister of fortune. People begin to inquire 
 his age, with a view to the next lottery ; and tho number of his 
 brothers and sisters ; and the ago of his father and mother ; and 
 whether he has any moles or pimples upon him ; and where, and how 
 many ; when tho arrival of tho last judge but one (a little old man, 
 universally dreaded as possessing tho Evil Eye) makes a slight diver- 
 sion, and would occasion a greater one, but tiiat ho is immediately 
 deposed, as a source of interest, by the officiating priest, who advances
 
 336 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 gravely to his place, followed by a very dirty little boy, carrying his 
 sacred vestments, and a pot of Holy Water. 
 
 Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes his place at 
 the horse-shoe table. 
 
 There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the midst of it, 
 the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments, and pulls the same 
 over his shoulders. Then he says a silent prayer ; and dipping a 
 brush into the pot of Holy Water, sprinkles it over the box and over 
 the boy, and gives them a double-barrelled blessing, which the box 
 and the boy are both hoisted on the table to receive. The boy remain- 
 ing on the table, the box is now carried round the front of the plat- 
 form, by an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it lustily all the 
 time ; seeming to say, like the conjurer, " There is no deception, 
 ladies and gentlemen ; keep your eyes upon me, if you please ! " 
 
 At last, the box is set before the boy ; and the toy, first holding up 
 his naked arm and open hand, dives down into the hole (it is made 
 like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, which is rolled up, round 
 something hard, like a bonbon. This he hands to the judge next 
 him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to tho President, next to 
 whom he sits. The President unrolls it, very slowly. The Capo 
 Lazzarone leans over his shoulder. The President holds it up, un- 
 rolled, to the Capo Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it 
 eagerly, cries out, in a shrill loud voice, " Sessanta-due ! " (sixty- 
 two), expressing the two upon his fingers, as he calls it out. Alas ! 
 the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on sixty-two. His face is 
 very long, and his eyes roll wildly. 
 
 As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it is pretty well 
 received, which is not always the case. They are all drawn with the 
 same ceremony, omitting the blessing. One blessing is enough for 
 the whole multiplication- table. The only new incident in the pro- 
 ceedings, is the gradually deepening intensity of the change in the 
 Capo Lazzarone, who has, evidently, speculated to the very utmost 
 extent of his means ; and who, when he sees the last number, and 
 finds that it is not one of his, clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to 
 the ceiling before proclaiming it, as though remonstrating, in a secret 
 agony, with his patron saint, for having committed so gross a breach 
 of confidence. I hope the Capo Lazzarone may not desert him for 
 some other member of the Calendar, but he seems to threaten it. 
 
 Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They certainly are 
 not present ; the general disappointment filling one with pity for the 
 poor people. They look : when we stand aside, observing them, in 
 their passage through tho court-yard down below : as miserable as 
 the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a part of the building), who are 
 peeping down upon them, from between their bars ; or, as the frag- 
 ments of human heads which are still dangling in chains outside, in 
 memory of the good old times, when their owners were strung up 
 there, for the popular edification.
 
 The Raven at Monte Cassino. 337 
 
 Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua, and 
 then on a three days' journey along by-roads, that wo may see, on the 
 way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is perched on the steep 
 and lofty hill above the little town of San Germano, and is lost on a 
 misty morning in the clouds. 
 
 So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell, which, as we 
 go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard mysteriously 
 in the still air, while nothing is seen but the grey mist, moving 
 solemnly and slowly, like a funeral procession. Behold, at length the 
 shadowy pile of building closo before us : its grey walls and towers 
 dimly seen, though so near and so vast : and the raw vapour rolling 
 through its cloisters heavily. 
 
 There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the quadrangle, 
 near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sister ; and hopping on 
 behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a raven, croaking in 
 answer to tho bell, and uttering, at intervals, the purest Tuscan. 
 How like a Jesuit he looks ! There never was a sly and stealthy 
 fellow so at home as is tins raven, standing now at the refectory door, 
 with his head on one side, and pretending to glance another way, 
 while he is scrutinizing the visitors keenly, and listening with fixed 
 attention. What a dull-headed man the porter becomes in com- 
 parison ! 
 
 " He speaks like us ! " says the porter : " quite as plainly." Quito 
 as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be more expressive than his recep- 
 tion of the peasants who are entering the gate with baskets and 
 burdens. There is a roll in his eye, and a chuckle in his throat, 
 which should qualify him to be chosen Superior of an Order of 
 Ravens. Ho knows all about it. " It's all right," he says. " Wo 
 know what we know. Come along, good people. Glad to see 
 you ! " 
 
 How was this extraordinary structure ever built in such a situation, 
 where the labour of conveying the stone, and iron, and marble, so 
 great a height, must have been prodigious ? " Caw ! " says the raven, 
 welcoming the peasants. How, being despoiled by plunder, fire and 
 earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and been again made what wo 
 now see it, with its church so sumptuous and magnificent ? " Caw ! " 
 says the raven, welcoming the peasants. These people havo a 
 miserable appearance, and (as usual) are densely ignorant, and all 
 beg, while the monks are chauutiug in the chapel. " Caw! " says tho 
 raven, " < 'uekoo ! " 
 
 So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the convent gate, 
 and wind slowly down again through the cloud. At last emerging 
 from it, we come in sight of the village far below, and tho fiat green 
 country intersected by rivulets ; which is pleasant and fresh to seo 
 after the obscurity and haze of the convent no disrespect to tho 
 raven, or the lioly friars. 
 
 Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most shattered
 
 338 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole window among 
 all the houses, or a whole garment among all the peasants, or the 
 least appearance of anything to eat, in any of the wretched hucksters' 
 shops. The women wear a bright red bodice laced before and behind, 
 a white skirt, and the Neapolitan head-dress of square folds of linen, 
 primitively meant to carry loads on. The men and children wear 
 anything they can get. The soldiers are as dirty and rapacious as 
 the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that they are infinitely 
 more attractive and amnsing than the best hotels in Paris. Here is 
 one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone, the round, walled town on 
 the mount opposite), which is approached by a quagmire almost knee- 
 deep. There is a wild colonnade below, and a dark yard full of 
 empty stables and lofts, and a great long kitchen with a great long 
 bench and a great long form, where a party of travellers, with two 
 priests among them, are crowding round the fire while their supper is 
 cooking. Above stairs, is a rough brick gallery to sit in, with very 
 little windows with very small patches of knotty glass in them, and 
 all the doors that open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and 
 a bare board on tressels for a table, at which thirty people might dine 
 easily, and a fire-place large enough in itself for a breakfast-parlour, 
 where, as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest 
 and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney- 
 sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring country lamp on the 
 table ; and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black hair con- 
 tinually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, who stands on tiptoe to arrange 
 the hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into the water-jug. 
 The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the liveliest kind. There is 
 not a solitary scrap of looking-glass in the house, and the washing 
 apparatus is identical with the cooking utensils. But the yellow 
 dwarf sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine, holding a quart 
 at least ; and produces, among half-a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds 
 of a roasted kid, smoking hot. She is as good-humoured, too, as 
 dirty, which is saying a great deal. So here's long life to her, in the 
 flask of wine, and prosperity to the establishment. 
 
 Eome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are now 
 repairing to their own homes again each with his scallop shell and 
 staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God we come, by a fair 
 country, to the Falls of Terni, where the whole Yelino river dashes, 
 headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray and rainbows. 
 Perugia, strongly fortified by art and nature, on a lofty eminence, 
 rising abruptly from the plain where purple mountains mingle with 
 the distant sky, is glowing, on its market day, with radiant colours. 
 They set off its sombre but rich Gothic buildings admirably. The 
 pavement of its market-place is strewn with country goods. All 
 along the steep hill leading from the town, under the town wall, there 
 is a noisy fair of calves, lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. Fowls, 
 geese, and turkeys, flutter vigorously among their very hoofs ; and
 
 Florence. 339 
 
 buyers, sellers, and spectators, clustering everywhere, block np the 
 road as we come shouting down upon them. 
 
 Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses. The driver 
 stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and casting up his eyes to Heaven, 
 he delivers this apostrophe, " Oh Jove Omnipotent ! here is a horse 
 has lost his shoe ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and the 
 utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but an Italian 
 Vetturino) with which it is announced, it is not long in being repaired 
 by a mortal Farrier, by whose assistance we reach Castiglione the 
 same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of course, performing in 
 its fine cathedral, where the sun shines in among the clustered pillars, 
 through rich stained-glass windows : half revealing, half concealing 
 the kneeling figures on the pavement, and striking out paths of 
 spotted light in the long aisles. 
 
 But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair 
 clear morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on Florence ! See 
 where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the wind- 
 ing Arno, and shut in by swelling hills ; its domes, and towers, and 
 palaces, rising from the rich country in a glittering heap, and shining 
 in the sun like gold ! 
 
 Magnificently stern and sombre aro the streets of beautiful Florence ; 
 and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of shadow, on 
 the ground and in the river, that there is another and a different city 
 of rich forms and fancies, always lying at our feet. Prodigious 
 palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful windows 
 heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge masses of 
 rough stone, frown, in their old stilky state, on every street. In the 
 midst of the city in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with 
 beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune rises the Palazzo 
 Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and the Great 
 Tower that watches over the whole town. In its court-yard worthy 
 of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom is a massive stair- 
 case that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of horses might 
 be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in 
 its stately decorations, and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, 
 in pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of 
 the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an adjacent 
 court-yard of the building a foul and dismal place, where some men 
 are shut up close, in small cells like ovens ; and where others look 
 through bars and beg ; where some are playing draughts, and some 
 are talking to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; 
 and somo arc buying wine and fruit of women-vendors ; and all aro 
 squalid, dirty, and vile to look at. " They arc merry enough, Signore," 
 says the Jailer. " They aro all blood-stained here," ho adds, in- 
 dicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building. Before 
 the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, quarrelling over a
 
 340 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs ber dead, in the market- 
 place full of bright flowers ; and is brought in prisoner, to swell the 
 number. 
 
 Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio 
 that bridge which is covered with the shops of Jewellers and Gold- 
 smiths is a most enchanting feature in the scene. The space of one 
 house, in the centre, being left open, the view beyond, is shown as in 
 a frame ; and that precious glimpse of sky, and water, and rich build- 
 ings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the 
 bridge, is exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses 
 the river. It was built to connect the two Great Palaces by a secret 
 passage ; and it takes its jealous course among the streets and houses, 
 with true despotism : going where it lists, and spurning every obstacle 
 away, before it. 
 
 The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the streets, 
 in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia della 
 Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of men. If an 
 accident take place, their office is, to raise the sufferer, and bear him 
 tenderly to the Hospital. If a fire break out, it is one of their 
 functions to repair to the spot, and render their assistance and pro- 
 tection. It is, also, among their commonest offices, to attend and 
 console the sick ; and they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, 
 in any house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty for 
 the time, are all called together, on a moment's notice, by the tolling 
 of the great bell of the Tower ; and it is said that the Grand Duke 
 has been seen, at this sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly 
 withdraw to attend the summons. 
 
 In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market is 
 held, and stores of old iron and other small merchandise are set out 
 on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped together, the 
 Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower 
 the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its wrought bronze doors. 
 And here, a small untrodden square in the pavement, is " the Stone 
 of Dante," where (so runs the story) he was used to bring his stool, 
 and sit in contemplation. I wonder was he ever, in his bitter exile, 
 withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets of Florence tho 
 ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old musing-place, and 
 its association with gentle thoughts of little Beatrice ! 
 
 The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of Florence ; 
 the church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies buried, and 
 where every stone in the cloisters is eloquent on great men's deaths ; 
 innumerable churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork 
 externally, but solemn and serene within ; arrest our lingering steps, 
 in strolling through the city. 
 
 In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum of 
 Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations in 
 wax ; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals ;
 
 Reflections. 34 1 
 
 and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the human frame, 
 up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation, exquisitely pre- 
 sented, as in recent death. Few admonitions of our frail mortality 
 can be more solemn and more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, 
 as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon 
 their beds, in their last sleep. 
 
 Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the convent 
 at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, old villas and 
 retreats ; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in a landscape of 
 surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light ; are spread before us. 
 Returning from so much brightness, how solemn and how grand the 
 streets again, with their great, dark, mournful palaces, and many 
 legends : not of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but 
 of the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences. 
 
 What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst these 
 rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open to all comers, in their 
 beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors are immortal, side 
 by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, 
 Poets, Historians, Philosophers those illustrious men of history, 
 beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show so poor 
 and small, and are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable part of 
 noble minds survives, placid and equal, when strongholds of assault 
 and defence are overthrown ; when the tyranny of the many, or the 
 few, or both, is but a tale ; when Pride and Power are so much 
 cloistered dust. The fire within the stern streets, and among the 
 massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still 
 burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the 
 household fires of generations have decayed ; as thousands upon 
 thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have 
 faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the nameless 
 Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter's hand, yet 
 lives on, in enduring grace and youth. 
 
 Let us look back on Florenco while we may, and when its shining 
 Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany, with 
 a bright remembrance of it ; for Italy will be the fairer for the 
 recollection. The summer time being come : and Genoa, and Milan, 
 and the Lake of Como lying far behind us : and we resting at Faido, 
 a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and mountains, the everlasting 
 snows and roaring cataracts, of the Great Saint Gothard : hearing tho 
 Italian tongue for the last time on this journey: let us part from 
 Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admira- 
 tion of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to over- 
 flowing, and in our tenderness towards a people, naturally well- 
 disposed, and patient, and sweet-tempered. Years of neglect, 
 oppression, and misrule, have been at work, to change their nature 
 and reduce their spirit ; miserable jealousies, fomented by petty 
 Princes to whom union was destruction, and division strength, have
 
 34 2 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 been a canker at their root of nationality, and have barbarized their 
 language ; but the good that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a 
 noble people may be, one day, raised from these ashes. Let us enter- 
 tain that hope ! And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully, 
 because, in every fragment of her fallen Temples, and every stone of 
 her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson 
 that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that the world is, in 
 all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing, and more hopeful, 
 as it rolls ! 
 
 THE EX Do
 
 A CHILD'S 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
 
 TABLE OF THE KEIGNS. 
 
 Beginning with King Alfred the Great. 
 
 THE SAXONS. 
 
 The Reign of Alfred the Great . . . began in 871 . ended in 901 . and lasted 30 years. 
 
 The Ueign of Edward the Elder . . began in 901 . ended in 925 . and lasted 24 years. 
 
 The Reign of Athelstan began in 925 . ended in 941 . and lasted 16 years. 
 
 The Reigns of the Six Boy-Kings . . began in 941 . ended in 1016 . and lasted 75 years. 
 
 THE DANES, AND THE RESTORED SAXONS. 
 
 The Reign of Canute began in 1016 . ended in 1035 . and lasted 19 years. 
 
 The Reign of Harold Harefoot . . . began in 1035 . ended in 1040 . and lasted 5 years. 
 
 The Reign of Hardicanute .... began in 1040 . ended in 1042 . and lasted 2 years. 
 
 The Reign of Edward the Confessor . began in 1012 . ended in 1066 . and lasted 24 ycais. 
 
 The Reign of Harold the Second, and the Norman Conquest, were also 
 within the year 1066. 
 
 THE NORMANS. 
 
 T "he I ^q,tor illianlthCF,1 ' S, ' ClU1Cd }^anin.066 . ended in 10*7 
 
 T c e .l.^'Rufu S W .' 1U "V b . e * C : jm, ;j began in 10>7 . ended in 1100 
 
 '''Fin^hoiar 110 "^ !*! ^ *!**. } h ^ in 110 ended in 1135 
 
 The Reigns of Matilda and Stephen . began in 1135 . ended in 1154 
 
 and lasted 21 years. 
 
 and lasted 13 years. 
 
 and lasted 35 years, 
 and lasted 19 years. 
 
 TH E PLANT A G ENETS, 
 
 The Reign of Henry the Second . . began in 1154 
 The Reign of Richard the First, allied j , , 
 
 th" I.ion-Heart j 
 
 The Reign of John, called Lackland . began in 1199 
 The Reign of Henry the Third . . . began in 1216 
 The Reign of Edward the First, called j , , ,,,., 
 
 Ixjngshanks j 
 
 The Reign of Edward the Second . . l>egan in 1307 
 The Reign of Edward the Third . . began in 1327 
 The Ueign of Richard the Second . began in 1377 
 
 ended in 119 
 
 ended in 1199 
 
 ended in 1210 
 ended in 1272 
 
 ended in 1307 
 
 ended ill 1327 
 ended in i:i77 
 emlel ill 1399 
 
 and lasted 35 years. 
 
 and lasted 10 years. 
 
 and lasted 17 years, 
 and lasted 50 years. 
 
 and lasted 35 years. 
 
 and lasted 20 years, 
 and lasted 50 years. 
 and lasted 22 years.
 
 346 
 
 Table of the Reigns. 
 
 THE PLANTAGENETS -{Continued.) 
 
 The Reign of Henry the Fourth, called 1 ha , 
 
 Bolingbroke ) Degau m 
 
 The Reign of Henry the Fifth . 
 The Peign of Henry the Sixth . 
 The Reign of Edward the Fourth 
 
 The Reign of Edward the Fifth . . began in 1483 
 
 The Reign of Richard the Third , . began in 1483 
 
 began in 1413 
 began in 1422 
 began in 1461 
 
 ended in 1413 
 
 ended in 1422 
 ended in 1461 
 ended in 1483 
 
 ended in 14S3 
 
 ended in 1485 
 
 and lasted 14 years. 
 
 and lasted 9 years. 
 
 and lasted 39 years. 
 
 and lasted 22 years. 
 ( and lasted a few 
 l weeks. 
 
 and lasted 2 years. 
 
 THE TUDORS. 
 
 The Reign of Henry the Seventh . . began in 1485 . ended in 1509 . and lasted 24 years. 
 
 The Reign of Henry the Eighth . . began in 1509 . ended in 154V . and lasted 38 years. 
 
 The Reign of Edward the Sixth . . began in 1547 , ended in 1553 . and lasted 6 years. 
 
 The Reign of Mary began in 1553 , ended in 1558 . and lasted 5 years. 
 
 The Reign of Elizabeth began in 1553 . ended in 1603 . and lasted 45 years. 
 
 THE STUARTS. 
 
 The Reign of James the First 
 The Reign of Charles the First 
 
 began in 1603 
 began in 1625 
 
 ended in 1625 
 ended in 1649 
 
 and lasted 22 years, 
 and lasted 24 years. 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 The Council of State and Government ) 
 by Parliament J 
 
 The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell . 
 
 The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell 
 
 The Council of State, and Government ' 
 by Parliament 
 
 began in 1649 . 
 
 began in 1653 . 
 began in 1658 . 
 
 resumed in 1659 
 
 ended in 1653 . and lasted 4 years. 
 
 ended in 1658 . and lasted 5 years, 
 ended in 1659 . and lasted V months. 
 
 ended in 1660 . ( and las * ed thirteen 
 I months. 
 
 THE STUARTS RESTORED. 
 
 The Reign of Charles the Second 
 The Reign of James the Second 
 
 began in 1660 
 began in 1635 
 
 ended in 1685 
 ended in 1683 
 
 and lasted 25 years, 
 and lasted 3 years. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION. 1G88. (Comprised in the concluding chapter.) 
 
 The Reign of 'William III. and Mary II. began in 1689 
 
 The Reign of William III. . . 
 
 The Reign of Anne .... 
 
 The Reign of George the First . 
 
 The Reign of George the Second 
 
 The Reign of George the Third 
 
 The Reign of George the Fourth 
 
 The Reign of William the Fourth 
 
 The Reign of Victoria . . . 
 
 began in 1702 
 began in 1714 
 began in 1727 
 began in 1760 
 began in 1820 
 began in 1830 
 began in 1837. 
 
 ended in 
 
 1695 
 
 . and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1702 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1714 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1727 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1760 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1S20 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1830 
 
 and 
 
 ended in 
 
 1837 
 
 and 
 
 lasted 6 years, 
 lasted 13 years, 
 lasted 12 years, 
 lasted 13 years, 
 lasted 33 years, 
 lasted 60 years, 
 lasted 10 years. 
 lasted 7 years.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, AND TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 l'AGE 
 
 ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. From 50 years before Christ, to the year of 
 our Lord 450 351 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. From the year 450, to the 
 
 year 871 . 353 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON ALFRED, AND EDWARD THE ELDER. 
 
 From the year 871, to the year 901 362 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. From the year 925, to 
 
 the year 1016 306 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANS. From the year 1016, to the year 1035 . 374> 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HAROI D HAREFt OT, HAUDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE 
 
 CONI'ESSOR. From the year 1035, to the year 1066 376 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS. 
 
 All In the same year, 106G 383 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR. From 
 
 the year 1U0C, to th" year 1U87 38C
 
 348 Chronological Table, and Table of Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS. From the year 1087, 
 to the year 1100 . 390 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR. From the year 
 
 1100, to the year 1135 396 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. From the year 1135, to the year 1154 . 403 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Parts First and Second. 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND. From the year 1154, to the year 1189 . 406 
 
 " ' ' CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ENGLAND .UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART. From the 
 
 year 1189, to the year 1199 420 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND. From the year 1199, to the year 1216 427 
 
 . , . . CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD. From the year 1216, to the year 1272 . 437 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER'EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS. From the year 
 
 1272, to the year 1307 446 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND. From the year 1307, to the year 1327 . 459 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER'EDWARD THE THIRD. From the year 1327, to the year 1377 . 466 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND. From the year 1377, to the year 1399 . 476 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE. From the 
 
 year 1399, to the year 1413 434
 
 Chronological Table, and Table of Contents. 349; 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Parts First and Second. 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH. From the year 1413, to the year 1422 . . 488 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Parts First, Second (The Story of Joan of Arc), and Third. 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH. From the year 1422, to the year 1461 . . 486 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. From the year 1461, to the year 1433 . CIO 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH. For a few weeks in the year 1483 . . 616 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD. From the year 1483, to the year 14 SS , 620 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH. From the year 1485, to the year 1509 . 623 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND 
 
 BURLY KING HARRY. From the year 1509, to the year 1533 532 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND 
 
 BURLY KING HARRY. From the year 1533, to the year 1547 5U 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH. From the year 1547, to the year 1553 . 549 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 ENGLAND UNDER .MARY. Ffom the year 1553, to the year 1558 ..... 655 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Parts First, Second, and Third. 
 KNGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. From the year 156s to the year 1C03 . 5C4
 
 350 Chronological Table, and Table of Contents, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Parts First and Second. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST. From the year 1003, to the year 1625 . . 583 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Parts First, Second, Third, and Fourth. 
 ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST. From the year 1025, to the year 1649 . C9G 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Parts First and Second. 
 ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. From the year 1649, to the year 1660 . . C18 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Parts First and Second. 
 
 ENGLAND UXDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH. 
 
 From the year 1660, to the year 1685 C30 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. From the year 1635, to the year 1688 . . 010 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. From the year 1688, to the year 1837 657
 
 ALFRED IN THE NEATHERD'S COTTAGE.
 
 A CHILD'S 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. 
 
 If you look at a Map of the World, you -will see, in the left-hand 
 upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two Islands lying in the sea. 
 They are England and Scotland, and Ireland. England and Scotland 
 form the greater part of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. 
 The little neighbouring islands, which are so small upon the Map as 
 to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland, broken off, I dare 
 say, in the course of a great length of time, by the power of the 
 restless water. 
 
 In the old days, a long, long while ago, before Our Saviour was 
 born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, these Islands were in the 
 same place, and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it roars 
 now. Bnt the sea was not alive, then, with great ships and brave 
 sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very lonely. 
 The Islands lay solitary, in the great expanse of water. The foaming 
 waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their 
 forests ; but the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon 
 the Islands, and the savage Islanders knew nothing of the rest of the 
 world, and the rest of the world knew nothing of them. 
 
 It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people, 
 famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to theso Islands, and 
 found that they produced tin and lead ; both very useful things, as 
 you know, and both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast. 
 The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are, still, close to tho 
 sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it is 
 hollowed out underneath tho ocean ; and the miners say, that in 
 stormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, they 
 can hear the noise of tho waves thundering abovo their heads. So, 
 the Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands, would come, without 
 much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were. 
 
 The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these metals, and
 
 352 A Child's History of England. 
 
 gave the Islanders some other useful things in exchange. The 
 Islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only 
 dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as 
 other savages do, with coloured earths and the juices of plants. But 
 the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France and 
 Belgium, and saying to the people there, " We have been to those 
 white cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather, and 
 from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and 
 lead," tempted some of the French and Belgians to come over also. 
 These people settled themselves on the south coast of England, which 
 is now called Kent ; and, although they were a rough people too, they 
 taught the savage Britons some useful arts, and improved that part of 
 the Islands. It is probable that other people came over from Spain 
 to Ireland, and settled there. 
 
 Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with the Islanders, 
 and the savage Britons grew into a wild bold people ; almost savage, 
 still, especially in the interior of the country away from the sea where 
 the foreign settlers seldom went ; but hardy, brave, and strong. 
 
 The whole country was covered with forests, and swamps. The 
 greater part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads, no 
 bridges, no streets, no houses that you would think deserving of the 
 name. A town was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, 
 hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall, made 
 of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people 
 planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and 
 cattle. They made no coins, but used metal rings for money. They 
 were clever in basket-work, as savage people often are ; and they 
 could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad earthenware. 
 But in building fortresses they were much more clever. 
 
 They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of animals, 
 but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They made swords, 
 of copper mixed with tin ; but, these swords were of an awkward shape, 
 and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light 
 shields, short pointed daggers, and spears which they jerked back 
 after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather 
 fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an 
 enemy's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as 
 thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were 
 constantly fighting with one another, as savage people usually do; 
 and they always fought with these weapons. 
 
 They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was the 
 picture of a white horse. They could break them in and manage 
 them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had an 
 abundance, though they were rather small) were so well taught in 
 those days, that they can scarcely be said to have improved since ; 
 though the men are so much wiser. They understood, and obeyed, 
 every word of command ; and would stand still by themselves, in all
 
 England under the Romans. 353 
 
 the diu and noise of battle, while their masters went to fight on foot. 
 The Britons could not have succeeded in their most remarkable art, 
 without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I 
 mean, is the construction and management of war-chariots or cars, for 
 which they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best 
 sort of these chariots, not quite breast high in front, and open at the 
 back, contained one man to drive, and two or three others to fight all 
 standing up. The horses who drew them were so well trained, that 
 tbey would tear, at full gallop, over the most stony ways, and even 
 through the woods ; dashing down their masters' enemies beneath 
 their hoofs, and cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or 
 scythes, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond 
 the car on each side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at 
 full speed, the horses would stop, at the driver's command. The men 
 within would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords like 
 hail, loap on the horses, on tho pole, spring back into the chariots 
 anyhow ; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore away again. 
 
 The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the Religion 
 of the Druids. It seems to havo been brought over, in very early 
 times indeed, from tho opposite country of France, anciently called 
 Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of tho 
 Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods and 
 Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, 
 the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' 
 wands, and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the 
 ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a golden case. But it is 
 certain that the Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human 
 victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and, on particular 
 occasions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker cages, of a 
 number of men and animals together. The Druid Priests had some 
 kind of veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe the same plant 
 that we hang up in houses at Christmas Time now when its white 
 berries grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark woods, which 
 thoy called Sacred Groves ; and there they instructed, in their 
 mysterious arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who 
 sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years. 
 
 These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to tho sky, 
 fragments of somo of which aro yet remaining. Stonehenge, on 
 Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. 
 Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near 
 Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We know, from examination of 
 the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could 
 not have been raised without tho aid of some ingenious machines, 
 which aro common now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did 
 not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I should not 
 wonder if tho Druids, and their pupils who stayed with them twenty 
 years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, keut the people out 
 
 2 A
 
 354 ^ Child's History of England. 
 
 of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended that 
 they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand iu the fortresses 
 too; at all events, as they were very powerful, and very much 
 believed, in, and as they made and executed the laws, and paid no 
 taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade. And, as they per- 
 suaded the people the more Druids there were, the better off the 
 people would be, I don't wonder that there were a good many of them. 
 But it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids, now, who go on 
 in that way, and pretend to carry Enchanters' Wands and Serpents' 
 Eggs and of course there is nothing of the kind, anywhere. 
 
 Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-fivo 
 years before the birth of Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their 
 great General, Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the known 
 world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul ; and hearing, in 
 Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with the white cliffs, and 
 about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it some of whom had 
 been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war against him he 
 resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next. 
 
 So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of ours, with 
 eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the 
 French coast between Calais and Boulogne, " because thence was the 
 shortest passage into Britain ; " just for the same reason as our steam- 
 boats now take the same track, every day. He expected to conquer 
 Britain easily : but it was not such easy work as he supposed for the 
 bold Britons fought most bravely ; and, what with not having his 
 horse-soldiers with him (for they had been driven back by a storm), 
 and what with having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a high 
 tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk of being totally 
 defeated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat 
 them twice ; though not so soundly but that he was very glad to 
 accept their proposals of peace, and go away. 
 
 But, in the spring of the next year, he came back ; this time, with 
 eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribes 
 chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the Romans in their 
 Latin language called Cassivellauxus, but whose British name is 
 supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he was, and 
 well he and his soldiers fought the Boman army ! So well, that 
 whenever in that war the Boman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, 
 and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in 
 their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there was a battle 
 fought near Canterbury, in Kent ; there was a battle fought near 
 Chertsey, in Surrey ; there was a battle fought near a marshy little 
 town in a wood, the capital of that part of Britain which belonged to 
 Cassivellauxus, and which was probably near what is now Saint 
 Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave Cassivellauxus had the 
 worst of it, on the whole ; though he and his men always fought like 
 Hons. As the other British chiefs were jealous of him, and were
 
 England under the Romans. 35$ 
 
 always quarrelling with him, and with one another, he gave up, and 
 proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant peace easily, 
 and to go away again with all his remaining ships and men. He had 
 expected to find pearls in Britain, and ho may have found a few for 
 anything I know ; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters, and I 
 am sure he found tough Britons of whom, I dare say, he made the 
 samo complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French General did, 
 eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such 
 unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. 
 They never did know, I believe, and never will. 
 
 Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time, there was 
 peace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns and mode of 
 life : became more civilised, travelled, and learnt a great deal from 
 the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Boman Emperor, Claudius, 
 sent Aulcs Plautius, a skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue 
 the Island, and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They did little ; 
 and Ostorius Scapula, another general, came. Some of the British 
 Chiefs of Tribes submitted. Others resolved to fight to the death. 
 Of these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who 
 gave battle to the Romans, with his army, among the mountains of 
 North Wales. " This day," said he to his soldiers, " decides the fate 
 of Britain ! Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from this 
 hour. Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the great Caesar 
 himself across the sea ! " On hearing these words, his men, with a 
 great shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman swords 
 and armour were too much for the weaker British weapons in close 
 conflict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the 
 brave Caractacus were taken prisoners ; his brothers delivered them- 
 selves up ; he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by 
 his false and base step-mother ; and they carried him, and all his 
 family, in triumph to Rome. 
 
 But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great 
 in chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of distress, so 
 touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to sec him, that 
 he and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether 
 his great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever 
 returned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up from 
 acorns, and withered away, when they were hundreds of years old 
 and other oaks have sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged 
 since the rest of the history of the brave Caractacus was forgotten. 
 
 Still, the Britons icouhl not yield. They rose again and again, and 
 died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on every possible 
 occasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and stormed the 
 Island of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to bo 
 sacred, and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their 
 own fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorious 
 troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicka, a British queen, the
 
 356 A Child's History of England. 
 
 widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the 
 plundering of her property by the Komans who were settled in Eng- 
 land, she was scourged, by order of Catus a Roman officer ; and her 
 two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her 
 husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the 
 Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove Catus 
 into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions waste ; they forced the 
 Romans out of London, then a poor little town, but a trading place ; 
 they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand 
 Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened his army, and ad- 
 vanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, and 
 desperately attacked his, on the field where it was strongly posted. 
 Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea, in a war- 
 chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured 
 daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them 
 for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The 
 Britons fought to the last ; but they were vanquished with great 
 slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison. 
 
 Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetonius 
 left the country, they fell upon his troops, and retook the Island of 
 Anglesey. Aghicola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards, and 
 retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, 
 especially that part of it which is now called Scotland ; but, its 
 people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They 
 foug t the bloodiest battles with him ; they killed their very wives 
 and chndren, to prevent his making prisoners of them ; they fell, fight- 
 ing, in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet sup- 
 posed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadkian 
 came, thirty years afterwards, and still they resisted him. Severus 
 came, nearly a hundred years afterwards, and they worried his great 
 army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands, in the 
 bogs and swamps. Caiiacalla, the son and successor of Seveuus, did 
 the most to conquer them, for a time ; but not by force of arms. He 
 knew how little that would do. lie yielded up a quantity of land to 
 the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as the 
 Romans possessed. There was peace, after this, for seventy years. 
 
 Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce, seafaring 
 people from the countries to the North of the Rhine, the great river 
 of Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the 
 German wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast 
 of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by 
 Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed 
 by the Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first 
 began to fight upon the sea. But, after this time, they renewed their 
 ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was then the name 
 for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a northern people, began to 
 make frequent plundering incursions into the South of Britain. All
 
 England under the Romans. 357 
 
 these attacks were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred years, 
 and through a long succession of Roman Emperors and chiefs ; during 
 all which length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over 
 and over again. At last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when 
 the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and when 
 Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans ahandoned all 
 hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at last, as at 
 first, the Brit ns rose against them, in their old brave manner; for, a 
 very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, 
 and declared themselves an independent people. 
 
 Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first invasion 
 of the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. In the 
 course of that time, although they had been the cause of torriblo 
 fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition 
 of the Britons. They had made great military roads ; they had built 
 forts ; they had taught them how to dress, and arm themselves, much 
 better than they had ever known how to do before ; they had refined 
 the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of 
 earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to 
 beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots ; 
 Hadrian had strengthened it ; Severus, finding it much in want of 
 repair, had built it afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman 
 time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian Religion was 
 first brought into Britain, and its people first taught the great lesson 
 that, to be good in the sight of Goo, they must love their neighbours 
 as themselves, and do unto others as they would be done by. Tho 
 Druids declared that it was very wicked to believe in any such tiling, 
 and cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily. But, 
 when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings 
 of the Druids, and none the worse for tho curses of the Druids, but, 
 that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at 
 all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that 
 it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, 
 the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids 
 took to other trades. 
 
 Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It 
 is but little that is known of those five hundred years ; but sonic 
 remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers are digging 
 up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they light 
 on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of 
 plate from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of 
 pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earth that is 
 broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's 
 spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water ; roads that 
 the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old battle- 
 fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have been found, 
 mingled together in decay, us they fell in the thick pressure of tho
 
 358 A Child's History of England. 
 
 fight. Traces of Koman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds 
 that aro the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost 
 all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, 
 the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches, a 
 strong ruin ; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in 
 the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet stands : a 
 monument of the earlier time when the Roman name was unknown in 
 Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magio wands, could not 
 have written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 
 
 The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the Britons 
 began to wish they had never left it. For, the Roman soldiers being 
 gone, and the Britons being much reduced in numbers by their long 
 wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and 
 unguarded wall of Sevebus, in swarms. They plundered the richest 
 towns, and killed the people ; and came back so often for more booty 
 and more slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons lived a life of 
 terror. As if the Picts and Scots were not bad enough on land, the 
 Saxons attacked the islanders by sea ; and, as if something more were 
 still wanting to make them miserable, they quarrelled bitterly among 
 themselves as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they ought 
 to say them. The priests, being very angry with one another on 
 these questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner ; and 
 (uncommonly like the old Druids) cursed all the people whom they 
 could not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons were very badly off, 
 you may believe. 
 
 They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a letter to 
 Rome entreating help which they called the Groans of the Britons ; 
 and in which they said, " The barbarians chase us into the sea, the 
 sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard 
 choice left us of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the waves." 
 But, the Romans could not help them, even if they were so inclined ; 
 for they had enough to do to defend themselves against their own 
 enemies, who were then very fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, 
 unable to bear their hard condition any longer, resolved to make 
 peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to come into their 
 country, and help them to keep out the Picts and Scots. 
 
 It was a British Prince named Vortigeen who took this resolution, 
 and who made a treaty of friendship with Hengist and Horsa, two 
 Saxon chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon language
 
 England under the Early Saxons. 359 
 
 signify Horse ; for the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough 
 state, were fond of giving men the names of animals, as Horse, Wolf, 
 Bear, Hound. The Indians of North America, a very inferior 
 people to the Saxons, though do the same to this day. 
 
 Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and Scots ; and Vortigern, 
 being grateful to them for that service, made no opposition to their 
 settling themselves in that part of England which is called the Isle 
 of Thanet, or to their inviting over more of thoir countrymen to join 
 them. But Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena ; and 
 when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine, and 
 gave it to Vortigern, saying in a sweet voice, " Dear King, thy 
 health ! " the King fell in love with her. My opinion is, that the 
 cunning Hengist meant him to do so, in order that the Saxons might 
 have greater influence with him ; and that the fair Rowena came to 
 that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose. 
 
 At any rate, they were married ; and, long afterwards, whenever 
 the King was angry with the Saxons, or jealous of their encroach- 
 ments, Rowena would put her beautiful arms round his neck, and 
 softly say, " Dear King, they are my people ! Be favourable to them, 
 as you loved that Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of wino 
 at tho feast ! " And, really, I don't see how the King could help 
 himself. 
 
 Ah ! We must all die ! In the course of years, Vortigern died 
 ho was dethroned, and put in prison, first, I am afraid ; and Rowena 
 died ; and generations of Saxons and Britons died ; and events that 
 happened during a long, long time, would have been quite forgotten 
 but for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who used to go about 
 from feast to feast, with their white beards, recounting the deeds of 
 their forefathers. Among the histories of which they sang and talked, 
 there was a famous one, concerning the bravery and virtues of King 
 Arthur, supposed to have been a British Prince in those old times. 
 But, whether such a person roally lived, or whether there were several 
 persons whoso histories came to be confused together under that one 
 name, or whether all about him was invention, no one knows. 
 
 I will tell you, shortly, what is most interesting in the early Saxon 
 times, as they are described in these songs and stories of the Bards. . 
 
 In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh bodies of Saxons, 
 under various chiefs, camo pouring into Britain. One body, conquer- 
 ing the Britons in the East, and settling there, called their kingdom 
 Essex ; another body settled in the West, and called their kingdom 
 Wessex ; the Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in 
 one place ; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in 
 another ; and gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in England, 
 which were called the Saxon Heptarchy. Tho poor Britons, falling 
 back before these crowds of fighting men whom they had innocently 
 invited over as friends, retired into Wales and the adjacent country ; 
 into Devonshire, and into Cornwall. Those parts of England long
 
 360 A Child's History of England. 
 
 remained unconquercd. And in Cornwall now where the sea-coast 
 is very gloomy, steep, and rugged where, in the dark winter-time, 
 ships have often been wrecked close to the land, and every soul on 
 board has perished where the winds and waves howl drearily, and 
 split the solid rocks into arches and caverns there are very ancient 
 ruins, which the people call the ruins of King Arthur's Castle. 
 
 Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms, because the 
 Christian religion was preached to the Saxons there (who domineered 
 over the Britons too much, to care for what they said about their 
 religion, or anything else) by Augustine, a monk from Rome. King 
 Ethelbert, of Kent, was soon converted ; and the moment he said ho 
 was a Christian, his courtiers all said they were Christians ; after which, 
 ten thousand of his subjects said they were Christians too. Augustine 
 built a little church, close to this King's palace, on the ground now 
 occupied by the beautiful cathedral of Canterbury. Sebert, tho 
 King's nephew, built on a muddy marshy place near London, whero 
 there had been a temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to Saint Peter, 
 which is now Westminster Abbey. And, in London itself, on the 
 foundation of a temple to Diana, he built another little church, which 
 has risen np, since that old time, to be Saint Paul's. 
 
 After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of Northumbria, who 
 was such a good king that it was said a woman or child might openly 
 carry a purse of gold, in his reign, without fear, allowed his child to 
 be baptised, and held a great council to consider whether he and his 
 people should all bo Christians or not. It was decided that they should 
 be. Coin, the chief priest of the old religion, made a great speech on 
 the occasion. In this discourse, he told the people that he had found 
 out the old gods to be impostors. " I am quite satisfied of it," he 
 said. " Look at me ! I have been serving them all my life, and they 
 have done nothing for me ; whereas, if they had been really powerful, 
 they could not have decently done loss, in return for all I have done 
 for them, than make my fortune. As they have never made my 
 fortune, I am quite convinced they are impostors ! " When this 
 singular priest had finished speaking, he hastily armed himself with 
 sword and lance, mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in 
 sight of all the people to the temple, and flung his lance against it as 
 an insult. From that time, the Christian religion spread itself among 
 the Saxons, and became their faith. 
 
 The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived about a 
 hundred and fifty years afterwards, and claimed to have a better right 
 to the throne of Wessex than Beortric, another Saxon prince who was 
 at the head of that kingdom, and who married Edburga, the daughter 
 of Offa, king of another of the seven kingdoms. This Queen Edburga 
 was a handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they offended 
 her. One day, she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belong- 
 ing to the court ; but her husband drank of it too, by mistake, and died. 
 Upon this, the people revolted, in great crowds ; and running to tho
 
 England under the Early Saxons. 36 1 
 
 palace, and thundering at the gates, cried, " Down with the wicked 
 queen, who poisons men ! " They drove her out of the country, and 
 abolished the title sho had disgraced. When years had passed away, 
 some travellers came home from Italy, and said that in tho town of 
 Pavia they had seen a ragged beggar-woman, who had once been 
 handsome, but was then shrivelled, bent, and yellow, wandering about 
 the streets, crying for bread ; and that this beggar-woman was tho 
 poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, Edburga ; and so she died, 
 without a shelter for her wretched head. 
 
 Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in consequence 
 of his having claimed tho crown of Wessex (for he thought his rival 
 might take him prisoner and put him to death), sought refuge at tho 
 court of Charlemagne, King of France. On the death of Beortric, 
 so unhappily poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain ; 
 succeeded to the throno of Wessex ; conquered some of tho other 
 monarchs of the seven kingdoms ; added their territories to his own ; 
 and, for the first time, called the country over which he ruled, 
 England. 
 
 And now, new enemies arose, who, for a long time, troubled 
 England sorely. These were the Northmen, the people of Denmark 
 and Norway, whom the English called the Danes. They were a 
 warlike people, quite at home upon tho sea ; not Christians ; very 
 daring and cruel. They came over in ships, and plundered and 
 burned wheresoever they landed. Once, they beat Egbert in battle. 
 Once, Egbert beat them. But, they cared no more for being beaten 
 than tho English themselves. In the four following short reigns, of 
 Ethelwulf, and his sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred, 
 they came back, over and over again, burning and plundering, and 
 laying England waste. In tho last-mentioned reign, they seized 
 Edmund, King of East England, and bound him to a tree. Then, 
 they proposed to him that ho should change his religion ; but he, 
 being a good Christian, steadily refused. Upon that, they beat him, 
 made cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he was, shot arrows 
 at him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is impossible to say whoso 
 head they might have struck off next, but for the death of King 
 Etiiklred from a wound he had received in fighting against them, 
 and the succession to his throne of the best and wisest king that ever 
 lived in England.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. 
 
 Alfred the Great was a young man, three-and-twenty years of age, 
 when lie became king. Twice in his childhood, he had been taken to 
 Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the habit of going on journeys 
 which they supposed to be religious ; and, once, he had stayed for 
 some time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for, then, 
 that at twelve years old he had not been taught to read ; although, of 
 the sons of King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the favourite. 
 But he had as most men who grow up to be great and good are 
 generally found to have had an excellent mother ; and, one day, 
 this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, as she was sitting 
 among her sons, to read a book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing 
 was not known until long and long after that period, and the book, 
 which was written, was what is called " illuminated," with beautiful 
 bright letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, 
 their mother said, " I will give it to that one of you four princes who 
 first learns to read." Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, 
 applied himself to learn with great diligence, and soon won the book. 
 He was proud of it, all his life. 
 
 This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine battles 
 with the Danes. He made some treaties with them too, by which the 
 false Danes swore they would quit the country. They pretended to 
 consider that they had taken a very solemn oath, in swearing this 
 upon the holy bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried 
 with them when they died ; but they cared little for it, for they 
 thought nothing of breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it suited 
 their purpose, and coming back again to fight, plunder, and burn, as 
 usual. One fatal winter, in the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, 
 they spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of Englaud ; 
 and so dispersed and routed the King's soldiers that the King was 
 left alone, and was obliged to disguise himself as a common peasant, 
 and to take refuge in the cottage of one of his cowherds who did not 
 know his face. 
 
 Here, King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far and near, was 
 left alone one day, by the cowherd's wife, to watch some cakes which 
 she jnxt to bake upon the hearth. But, being at work upon his bow 
 and arrows, with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a 
 brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy 
 subjects whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble mind 
 forgot the cakes, and they were burnt. " What ! " said the cowherd's 
 wife, who scolded him well when she came back, and little thought
 
 Alfred the Gnat. 363 
 
 she was scolding the King, "you will bo ready enough to eat them 
 by-and-by, and yet you cannot wa-tch tbeui, idle dog? " 
 
 At length, the Devonshire men made head against a new host of 
 Danes who landed on their coast ; killed their chief, and captured 
 their flag ; on which was represented the likeness of a Raven a very 
 fit bird for a thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their 
 standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be 
 enchanted woven by the tbree daughters of one father in a single 
 afternoon and they had a story among themselves that when they 
 were victorious in battle, the Eaven stretched his wings and seemed 
 to fly ; and that when they wero defeated, he would droop. He had 
 good reason to droop, now, if he could have dono anything half so 
 sensible ; for, King Alfred joined the Devonshire men ; made a 
 camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog in 
 Somersetshire ; and prepared for a great attempt for vengeance on 
 the Danes, and the deliverance of his oppressed people. 
 
 But, first, as it was important to know how numerous thoso pestilent 
 Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good 
 musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or minstrel, and went, 
 with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very 
 tent of Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they 
 caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, ho was 
 watchful of their tents, their arms, their discipline, everything that he 
 desired to know. And right soon did this great king entertain them 
 to a different tune ; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him 
 at an appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and 
 tears, as the monarch whom many of them had given up for lost or 
 dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, 
 defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for four- 
 teen days to prevont their escape. But, being as merciful as he was 
 good and brave, he then, instead of killing them, proposed peace : on 
 condition that they should altogether depart from that Western part of 
 England, and scttlo in the East ; and that Guthrum should become a 
 Christian, in remembrance of the Divine religion which now taught 
 his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgivo the enemy who had so 
 often injured him. This, Guthrum did. At his baptism, King 
 Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an honourable chief 
 who well deserved that clemency ; for, ever afterwards he was loyal 
 and faithful to the king. Tho Danes under him were faithful too. 
 They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest men. 
 They ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English 
 lives. And I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time, 
 with Saxon children in the sunny fields ; and that Danish young men 
 fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them ; and that English 
 travellers, benighted at tho doors of Danish cottages, often went in 
 for shelter until morning; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red 
 fire, friends, talking of Kino Alfred the Great.
 
 364 A Child's History of England. 
 
 All the Danes were not like these under Guthbum ; for, after some 
 years, more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning 
 way among them a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, who had 
 the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. 
 For three years, there was a war with these Danes ; and there was a 
 famine in the country, too, and a plague, both upon human creatures 
 and beasts. But King Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, 
 built large ships nevertheless, with which to pursue the pirates on the 
 sea ; and he encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, to fight 
 valiantly against them on the shore. At last, he drove them all 
 away ; and then there was repose in England. 
 
 As great and good in peace, as he was great and good in war, King 
 Alfbed never rested from his labours to improve his people. He 
 loved to talk with clever men, and with travellers from foreign 
 countries, and to write down what they told him, for his people to 
 read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now 
 another of his labours was, to translate Latin books into the English- 
 Saxon tongue, that his people might be interested, and improved by 
 their contents. He made just laws, that they might live more happily 
 and freely ; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might 
 be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and punished 
 robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to say that under the 
 great King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels might have 
 hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He 
 founded schools ; he patiently heard causes himself in his Court of 
 Justice ; the great desires of his heart were, to do right to all his 
 subjects, and to leave England better, wiser, happier in all ways, than 
 he found it. His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. 
 Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each portion 
 devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time 
 exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of the 
 same sizo, were notched across at regular distances, and were always 
 kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day 
 into notches, almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon 
 the clock. But when the candles were first invented, it was found 
 that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the place through the 
 doors and windows, and through the chinks in the walls, caused them 
 to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, the King had them 
 put into cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were the 
 first lanthorns ever made in England. 
 
 All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, 
 which caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. 
 He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like a brave good 
 man, until he was fifty-three years old : and then, having reigned thirty 
 years, he died. He died in the year nine hundred and one ; but, long 
 ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitude with which his 
 subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour. "
 
 Alfred the Great. 365 
 
 In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, surnamed The 
 Elder, who was chosen in council to succeed, a nephew of Kino 
 Alfred troubled the country by trying to obtain the throne. The 
 Danes in the East of England took part with this usurper (perhaps 
 because they had honoured his uncle so much, and honoured him for 
 his unclo's sake), and there was hard fighting ; but, the King, with 
 the assistance of his sister, gained the day, and reigned in peace for 
 four and twenty years. He gradually extended his power over the 
 whole of England, and so the Seven Kingdoms were united into one. 
 
 "When England thus became ono kingdom, ruled over by one Saxon 
 king, the Saxons had been settled in the country more than four 
 hundred and fifty years. Great changes had taken place in its 
 customs during that time. The Saxons were still greedy eaters and 
 great drinkers, and their feasts were often of a noisy and drunken 
 kind ; but many new comforts and even elegances had become known, 
 and were fast increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms, where, in 
 these modern days, we paste up paper, are known to have been some- 
 times made of silk, ornamented with birds and flowers in needlework. 
 Tables and chairs were curiously carved in different woods ; were 
 sometimes decorated with gold or silver ; sometimes even made of 
 those precious metals. Knives and spoons were used at table ; golden 
 ornaments were worn with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and 
 embroideries ; dishes wero made of gold and silver, brass and bone. 
 There were varieties of drinking-horns, bedsteads, musical instruments. 
 A harp was passed round, at a feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest 
 to guest ; and each one usually sang or played when his turn came. 
 The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, and among them was 
 a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, and was long remem- 
 bered. The Saxons themselves were a handsome people. The men 
 were proud of their long fair hair, parted on the forehead ; their 
 amplo beards, their fresh complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty 
 of the Saxon women filled all England with a new delight and grace. 
 
 I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to say this now, 
 because under the Great Alfred, all the best points of the English- 
 Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him first shown. It 
 has been the greatest character among the nations of the earth. 
 Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, 
 or otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, 
 they have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, 
 never to bo turned aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. 
 In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over ; in the 
 desert, in the forest, on the sea ; scorched by a burning sun, or frozen 
 by ice that never melts ; tho Saxon blood remains unchanged. 
 "Wheresoever that race goes, there, law, and industry, and safety for 
 life and property, and all the great results of steady perseverance, are 
 certain to arise. 
 
 I pause to think with admiration, of tho noble king who, in his
 
 366 A Child's History of England. 
 
 single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues. Whom misfortune 
 could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance 
 nothing could shake. Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in 
 success. Who loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge. Who, 
 in his care to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the 
 beautiful old Saxon language, than I can imagine. Without whom, 
 the English tongue in which I tell this story might have wanted half 
 its meaning. As it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our 
 best English laws, so, let you and I pray that it may animate our 
 English hearts, at least to this to resolve, when we see any of 
 our fellow-creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while 
 life is in us, to have them taught ; and to tell those rulers whose duty 
 it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they have profited 
 very little by all the years that have rolled away since the year nine 
 hundred and one, and that they are far behind the bright example of 
 King Alfred the Great. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 
 
 Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He 
 reigned only fifteen years ; but he remembered the glory of his grand- 
 father, the great Alfred, and governed England well. He reduced 
 the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute 
 in money, and in cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds. 
 He was victorious over the Cornish men, who were not yet quiet under 
 the Saxon government. He restored such of the old laws as were good, 
 and had fallen into disuse ; made some wise new laws, and took care 
 of the poor and weak. A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf 
 a Danish prince, Constantine King of the Scots, and the people of 
 North Wales, he broke and defeated in one great battle, long famous 
 for the vast numbers slain in it. After that, he had a quiet reign ; 
 the lords and ladies about him had leisure to become polite and agree- 
 able ; and foreign princes were glad (as they have sometimes been 
 since) to come to England on visits to the English court. 
 
 When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother Edmund, 
 who was only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy- 
 kings, as you will presently know. 
 
 They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste for 
 improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and 
 had a short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One 
 night, when he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and 
 drunk deep, he saw, among the company, a noted robber named Leof, 
 who had been banished from England. Made very angry by the
 
 Athelstan and the Boy-Kings. 367 
 
 boldness of this man, the King turned to bis cup-bearer, and said, 
 " There is a robber sitting at the table yonder, wbo, for bis crimes, is 
 an outlaw in tbe land a hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, 
 at any time. Command that robber to depart ! " "I will not depart ! " 
 said Leof. " No ? " cried the King. " No, by the Lord ! " said Leof. 
 Upon that the King rose from his seat, and, making passionately at 
 the robber, and seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw him 
 down. But the robber had a dagger underneath his cloak, and, in 
 the scuffle, stabbed the King to death. * That done, he set his back 
 against the wall, and fought so desperately, that although he was soon 
 cut to pieces by the King's armed men, and the wall and pavement 
 were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he had killed and 
 wounded many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the 
 kings of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half 
 drunk, with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in 
 presence of the company who ate and drank with him. 
 
 Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and sickly in 
 body, but of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, 
 the Danes, and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, 
 and beat them for the time. And, in nine years, Edred died, and 
 passed away. 
 
 Then came tbe boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age ; but the real 
 king, who had the real power, was a monk named Dunbtan a clever 
 priest, a little mad, and not a little proud and cruel. 
 
 Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body 
 of King Edmund the Magnificent was carried, to be buried. While 
 yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever), 
 and walked about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair ; 
 and, because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and 
 break his neck, it was reported that he had been shown over the 
 building by an angel. He had also made a harp that was said to 
 play of itself which it very likely did, as JEolian Harps, which are 
 played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For theso 
 wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who were 
 jealous of his favour with the lato King Athelstan, as a magician ; 
 and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a 
 marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of 
 trouble yet. 
 
 The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. They 
 wero learned in many things. Having to make their own convents 
 and monasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them 
 by the Crown, it was necessary that they should bo good farmers and 
 good gardeners, or tlieir lands would havo been too poor to support 
 tliem. For the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for 
 the comfort of the refectories where they ate and drank, it was 
 necessary that there should bo good carpenters, good smiths, good 
 painters, among them. For their greater safety in sickness and
 
 368 A Child's History of England. 
 
 accident, living alone by themselves in solitary places, it was necessary 
 that they shonld study the virtues of plants and herbs, and should 
 know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set 
 broken limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves, and one another, 
 a great variety of useful arts ; and became skilful in agriculture, 
 medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when they wanted the aid 
 of any little piece of machinery, which would be simple enough now, 
 but was marvellous then, to impose a trick upon the poor peasants, 
 they knew very well how to make it ; and did make it many a time 
 and often, I have no doubt. 
 
 Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most 
 sagacious of these monks. Ho was an ingenious smith, and worked 
 at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of 
 his lying at full length when he went to sleep as if that did any 
 good to anybody ! and he used to tell the most extraordinary lies 
 about demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to persecute him. 
 For instance, he related that, one day when he was at work, the devil 
 looked in at the little window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life 
 of idle pleasure ; whereupon, having his pincers in the tire, red hot, 
 lie seized the devil by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his 
 bollowings were heard for miles and miles. Some people are inclined 
 to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan's madness (for his head 
 never quite recovered the fever), but I think not. I observe that it 
 induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and that it 
 made him very powerful. Which was exactly what lie always wanted. 
 
 On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it 
 was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by 
 birth), that the King quietly left the coronation feast, while all the 
 company were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan 
 to seek him. Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful 
 young wife Elgiva, and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous 
 lady, not only grossly abused them, but dragged the young King back 
 into the feasting-hall by force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this 
 because the young King's fair wife was his own cousin, and the monks 
 objected to people marrying their own cousins ; but I believe he did 
 it, because he was an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, 
 having loved a young lady himself before he became a sour monk, 
 hated all love now, and everything belonging to it. 
 
 The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan 
 had been Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan 
 with having taken some of the last king's money. The Glastonbury 
 Abbot fled to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who 
 were sent to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you 
 read what follows), and his abbey was given to priests who were 
 married ; whom he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. But 
 he quickly conspired with his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the 
 King's young brother, Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; and, not
 
 A til els tan and the Six Boy- Kings. 369 
 
 content with this revengo, ho caused the beautiful queen Elgiva, 
 though a lovely girl of only seventeen or oighteen, to be stolen from 
 one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron, 
 and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and 
 befriended her ; and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to tho 
 boy-king, and make the young lovers happy ! " and they cured her of 
 her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as before. But the 
 villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused her to bo waylaid 
 at Gloucester as she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and 
 to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be barbarously maimed 
 and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair (his people called 
 him so, because ho was so young and handsome) heard of her dreadful 
 fate, he died of a broken heart ; and so the pitiful story of the poor 
 young wife and husband ends ! Ah ! Better to be two cottagers in 
 these better times, than king and queen of England in those bad days, 
 though never so fair ! 
 
 Then came the boy-king, Edgar, called the Peaceful, fifteen years 
 old. Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priests out 
 of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks 
 like himself, of tho rigid order called the Benedictines. He made 
 himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory ; and exer- 
 cised such power over the neighbouring British princes, and so col- 
 lected them about the King, that once, when tho King held his court 
 at Chester, and went on the river Dee to visit the monastery of St. 
 John, the eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to 
 delight in relating in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and 
 steered by the King of England. As Edgar was very obedient to 
 Dunstan and the monks, they took groat pains to represent him as tho 
 best of kings. But he was really profligate, debauched, and vicious. 
 He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the convent at Wilton ; 
 and Dunstan, pretending to be very much shocked, condemned him 
 not to wear his crown upon his head for seven years no great punish- 
 ment, I dare say, as it can hardly have been a moro comfortable orna- 
 ment to wear, than a stewpan without a handle. His marriage with 
 his second wife, Elfrida, is one of tho worst events of his reign. 
 Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched his favourite courtier, 
 Athelwold, to her father's castlo in Devonshire, to seo if she were 
 really as charming as fame reported. Now, she was so exceedingly 
 beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and married 
 her ; but he told the King that she was only rich not handsome. 
 Tho King, suspecting tho truth when they came home, resolved to pay 
 tho newly-married couplo a visit; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to 
 prepare for his immodiato coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed 
 to his young wife what ho had said and done, and implored her to 
 disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might 
 l>e safe from the King's anger. She promised that she would ; but 
 she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than 
 
 2 i)
 
 370 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and 
 adorned herself with her richest jewels ; and when the King came, 
 presently, he discovered the cheat. So, he caused his false friend, 
 Athelwold, to be murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this 
 bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards, he died ; and was buried, 
 as if he had been all that the monks said ho was, in the abbey of 
 Glastonbury, which he or Dunstan for him had much enriched. 
 
 England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which, 
 driven out of the open country, hid themselves in the mountains of 
 Wales when they were not attacking travellers and animals, that the 
 tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition 
 of their producing, every year, three hundred wolves' heads. And 
 the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, 
 that in four years there was not a wolf left. 
 
 Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, from the 
 manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelked, for whom 
 she claimed the throne ; but Dunstan did not choose to favour him, 
 and ho made Edward king. The boy was hunting, one day, down in 
 Dorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and 
 Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from his 
 attendants and galloped to the castle gate, where he arrived at 
 twilight, and blew his hunting-horn. " You are welcome, dear King," 
 said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest smiles. " Pray you dis- 
 mount and enter." " Not so, dear madam," said the King. " My 
 company will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. 
 Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the 
 saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the 
 good speed I have made in riding here." Elfrida, going in to bring 
 the wine, whispered an armed servant, one of her attendants, who stole 
 out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the King's 
 horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying, " Health ! " to 
 the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent 
 brother whose hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, 
 this armed man made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He 
 dropped the cup and spurred his horse away ; but, soon fainting with 
 loss of blood, drooped from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one 
 of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on ; trailing 
 his rider's curls upon the ground ; dragging his smooth young face 
 through ruts, and stones, and briars, and fallen leaves, and mud ; 
 until the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the King's blood, 
 caught his bridle, and released the disfigured body. 
 
 Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethelred, whom 
 Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother riding 
 away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she 
 snatched from one of the attendants. The people so disliked this 
 boy, on account of his cruel mother and the murder she had done to 
 promote him, that Dunstan would not have had him for king, but
 
 Atkehtan and the Six Boy-Kings. $ji 
 
 would have made Edgitha, the daughter of the dead Kiug Edgar, 
 and of the lady whom he stole out of the convent at Wilton, Queen 
 of England, if she would have consented. But she knew the stories 
 of the youthful kings too well, and would not bo persuaded from the 
 convent where she lived in peace ; so, Dunstan put Ethelred on the 
 throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him the nickname 
 of The Unready knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. 
 
 At first, Elfrida possessed groat influence over the young King, 
 but, as he grew older and came of age, her influence declined. The 
 infamous woman, not having it in her power to do any more evil, 
 then retired from court, and, according to the fashion of tho time, 
 built churches and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church, 
 with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would have been any sign 
 of true repentance for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered 
 form was trailed at his horse's heels ! As if she could have buried 
 her wickedness beneath the senseless stones of the whole world, piled 
 up one upon another, for the monks to live in ! 
 
 About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. Ho 
 was growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two 
 circumstances that happened in connexion with him, in this reign of 
 Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, ho was present at a meeting of 
 the Church, when the question was discussed whether priests should 
 have permission to marry; and, as he sat with his head hung down, 
 apparently thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix 
 in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was 
 some juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice disguised. 
 But he played off a worse juggle than that, soon afterwards ; for, 
 another meeting being held on the samo subject, and ho and his 
 supporters being seated on one side of a great room, and their 
 opponents on the other, he rose and said, " To Christ Himself, as 
 Judge, do I commit this cause ! " Immediately on these words being 
 spoken, the floor whore the opposito party sat gave way, and some 
 were killed and many woundod. You may be pretty sure that it had 
 been weakened under Dunstan's direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's 
 signal. His part of the floor did not go down. No, no. He was too 
 good a workman for that. 
 
 When he died, the monks settled that ho was a Saint, and called 
 him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have- 
 settled that lie was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called 
 him one. 
 
 Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of 
 this holy saint ; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and 
 his reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led 
 by Sweyn, a sou of the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with 
 his father and had been banished from home, again came into 
 England, and, year after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. 
 To coax these sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them money ;
 
 372 A Child's History of England. 
 
 but, the more money he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. 
 At first, he gave them ten thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, 
 sixteen thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, four and twenty 
 thousand pounds : to pay which large sums, the unfortunate English 
 people wore heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back and 
 wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some 
 powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So, in 
 the year one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the 
 sister of Eichard Duke of Normandy ; a lady who was called the 
 Flower of Normandy. 
 
 And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which 
 was never done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth 
 of November, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King 
 over the whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, 
 and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours. Young and 
 old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was killed. 
 No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done 
 the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swagger- 
 ing in the houses of tho English and insulting their wives and 
 daughters, had become unbearable ; but no doubt there were also 
 among them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married English 
 women and become like English men. They were all slain, even to 
 Gunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married to an English 
 lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder of her Imsband and her 
 child, and then was killed herself. 
 
 When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he 
 swore that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and a 
 mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England ; and in 
 all his army there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldier 
 was a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, 
 and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre 
 of that dread thirteenth of November, when his countrymen and 
 countrywomen, and tho little children whom they loved, were killed 
 with fire and sword. And so, the sea-kings came to England in 
 many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own commander. 
 Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened 
 England from the prows of those ships, as they came onward through 
 the water ; and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon 
 their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the King of the 
 sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent ; and the 
 King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might 
 all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into England's 
 heart. 
 
 And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the great 
 fleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking 
 their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into 
 rivers, in token of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance
 
 Athelstan and the Boy-Kings. 373 
 
 of the black November night when the Danes were murdered, where- 
 soever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread 
 for them great feasts ; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had 
 drunk a curse to England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, 
 and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long 
 years they carried on this war : burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, 
 mills, granaries ; killing the labourers in the fields ; preventing the 
 seed from being sown in the ground ; causing famine and starvation ; 
 leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found 
 rich towns. To crown this misery, English officers and men deserted, 
 and even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, 
 seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against their own 
 country, and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of nearly the whole 
 English navy. 
 
 There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was 
 true to his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a 
 brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended 
 that city against its Danish besiegers ; and when a traitor in the town 
 threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, " I will 
 not buy my life with money that must be extorted from the suffer- 
 ing people. Do with me what you please ! " Again and again, ho 
 steadily refused to purchase his release with gold wrung from tho 
 poor. 
 
 At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a 
 drunken merry-making, had him brought into the fcasting-hall. 
 
 " Now, bishop," they said, " we want gold ! " 
 
 He looked round on the crowd of angry faces ; from the shaggy 
 beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where 
 men were mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads of 
 others : and he knew that his time was come. 
 
 " I have no gold," said he. 
 
 " Get it, bishop ! " they all thundered. 
 
 " That, I have often told you I will not," said he. 
 
 They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood un- 
 moved. Then, one man struck him ; then, another ; then a cursing 
 soldier picked up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments 
 had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his 
 face, from which the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran to 
 the same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised 
 and battered him ; until one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, 
 as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings 
 of the good man) struck him dead with his battle-axe. 
 
 If Ethelred had had the heart to emulato the courage of this noble 
 archbishop, he might have done something yet. But lie paid tho 
 Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little by 
 the cowardly act, and Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all 
 England. So broken was the attachment of the English people, by
 
 374 A Child 's History of England. 
 
 this time, to their incapable King and their forlorn country which 
 could not protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a 
 deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as long as the King was 
 within its walls ; but, when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the 
 Dane. Then, all was over ; and the King took refuge abroad with 
 the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter to the King's 
 wife, once the Flower of that country, and to her children. 
 
 Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not 
 quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn 
 died suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been pro- 
 claimed King of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say 
 that they would have him for their King again, " if he would only 
 govern them better than he had governed them before." The Unready, 
 instead of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make 
 promises for him. At last, he followed, and the English declared 
 him King. The Danes declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. 
 Thus, direful war began again, and lasted for three years, when the 
 Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did, in all Lis 
 reign of eight and thirty years. 
 
 Was Canute to be King now '? Not over the Saxons, they said ; they 
 must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was sur- 
 named Ironside, because of his strength and stature. Edmund and 
 Canute thereupon fell to, and fought five battles O unhappy England, 
 what a fightiug-ground it was and then Ironside, who was a big 
 man, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two should 
 fight it out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he 
 would probably have said yes, but, being the little man, he decidedly 
 said no. However, he declared that he was willing to divide the 
 kingdom to take all that lay north of Watling Street, as the old 
 Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give 
 Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much 
 bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole King of 
 England ; for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some 
 think that he was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one 
 knows. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. 
 
 Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless King at first. 
 After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the 
 sincerity with which he swore to be just and good to them in return 
 for their acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of them,
 
 Canute. 375 
 
 as well as many relations of the late King. " He who brings me the 
 head of one of my enemies," he used to say, " shall be dearer to me 
 than a brother." And ho was so severe in hunting down his enemies, 
 that he mnst have got together a pretty large family of -these dear 
 brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, 
 two children, sons of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in 
 England, he sent them over to the King of Sweden, with a request 
 that the King would be so good as " dispose of them." If the King 
 of Sweden had been like many, many other men of that day, he would 
 have had their innocent throats cut ; but he was a kind man, and 
 brought them up tenderly. 
 
 Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy were the 
 two children of the late king Edwaud and Alfred by name ; and 
 their uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown for them. But 
 the Duke showed so little inclination to do so now, that he proposed 
 to Canute to marry his 6ister, the widow of The Unready ; who, being 
 but a showy flower, and caring for nothing so much as becoming a 
 queen again, left her children and was wedded to him. 
 
 Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the English in 
 his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute 
 had a prosperous reign, and made many improvements. He was a 
 poet and a musician. He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood 
 he had shed at first ; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim's dress, by way 
 of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his 
 journey ; but he took it from the English before he started. On the 
 whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when he had no 
 opposition to contend with, and was as great a King as England had 
 known for some time. 
 
 The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day 
 disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his 
 chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the tide as 
 it came up not to wet the edge of his rohe, for tho land was his ; how 
 the tide came up, of coiirse, without regarding him ; and how he then 
 turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the might 
 of any earthly king, to the might of the Creator, who could say unto 
 the sea, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farthor ! " Wo may learn 
 from this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king ; 
 and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a likiug 
 for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that 
 the King was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to 
 offer it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was 
 vain of tli is speech (anything but a wonderful speech it seems to me, 
 if a good child had made it), they would not have been at such great 
 pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sca-shoro together; 
 the King's chair sinking in the sand ; tho King in a mighty good 
 humour with his own wisdom ; and the courtiers pretending to bo 
 quite stunned by it !
 
 376 A Child's History of England. 
 
 It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go " thus far, and no 
 farther." The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the 
 earth, and went to Canute in the year one thousand and thirty-five, 
 and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it, stood his Norman 
 wife. Perhaps, as the King looked his last upon her, he, who had so 
 often thought distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more 
 of the two exiled Princes in their uncle's court, and of the little 
 favour they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising 
 cloud in Normandy that slowly moved towards England. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE 
 
 CONFESSOR. 
 
 Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and Hardicanute ; 
 but his Queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother 
 of only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided 
 between the three, and had wished Harold to have England ; but the 
 Saxon people in the South of England, headed by a nobleman with 
 great possessions, called the powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to 
 have been originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to 
 have, instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes 
 who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would 
 be more bloodshed to sottle this dispute, that mauy people left their 
 homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps. Happily, however, 
 it was agreed to refer the whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, 
 which decided that Harold should have all the country north of the 
 Thames, with London for his capital city, and that Hardicanute 
 should have all the south. The quarrel was so arranged ; and, as 
 Hardicanute was in Denmark troubling himself very little about any- 
 thing but eating and getting drunk, his mother and Earl Godwin 
 governed the south for him. 
 
 They had hardly begun to do so. and the trembling people who had 
 hidden themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the 
 elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from Normandy with a few 
 followers, to claim the English Crown. His mother Emma, however, 
 who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting him, 
 as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her influence that he 
 was very soon glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not 
 so fortunate. Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time 
 afterwards to him and his brother, in his mother's name (but whether 
 really with or without his mother's knowledge is now uncertain), lie 
 allowed himself to be tempted over to England, with a good force of
 
 Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and Edward tJie Confessor, tfj 
 
 soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and being met and 
 welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far as the town 
 of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in the evening to rest, 
 having still the Earl in their company ; who had ordered lodgings 
 and good cheer for them. But, in the dead of the night, when they 
 were oft* their guard, being divided into small parties sleeping soundly 
 after a long march and a plentiful supper in different houses, they 
 were set upon by the King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next 
 morning they were drawn out in a line, to the number of six hundred 
 men, and were barbarously tortured and killed ; with the exception 
 of every tonth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched 
 Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse and sent away 
 into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his head, and 
 where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure that the Earl 
 had wilfully entrapped him, but I suspect it strongly. 
 
 Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful 
 whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (tho greater part of the priests 
 were Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown 
 him. Crowned or uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without 
 it, he was King for four years : after which short reign he died, and 
 was buried ; having never done much in life but go a-hunting. He 
 was such a fast runner at this, his favourite sport, that the people 
 called him Harold Harefoot. 
 
 Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his 
 mother (who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince 
 Alfred), for the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding 
 themselves without a King, and dreading new disputes, made common 
 cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. He con- 
 sented, and soon troubled them enough ; for he brought over numbers 
 of Danes, and taxed the people so insupportably to enrich those 
 greedy favourites that there were many insurrections, especially one 
 at Worcester, where the citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors; in 
 revenge for which he burned their city. He was a brutal King, 
 whose first public act was to order the dead body of poor Harold 
 Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end 
 was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with a goblet 
 of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in honour 
 of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane named Towed the 
 Proud. And he never spoke again. 
 
 Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Confessor, suc- 
 ceeded ; and his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had 
 favoured him so little, to retire into the country; where she died 
 some ten years afterwards. Ho was tho exiled prince whose brother 
 Alfred had been so foully killed. He had been invited over from 
 Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his short reign of two 
 years, and had been handsomely treated at court. His cause was now 
 favoured by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King.
 
 378 A Child's History of England. 
 
 This Earl had been suspected by the people, ever since Prince 
 Alfred's cruel death ; he had even been tried in the last reign for the 
 Prince's murder, but had been pronounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it 
 was supposed, because of a present he had made to the swinish King, 
 of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty 
 splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new King 
 with his power, if the new King would help him against the popular 
 distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the Confessor 
 got the Throne. The Earl got more power and more land, and his 
 daughter Editha was made queen ; for it was a part of their compact 
 that the King should take her for his wife. 
 
 But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be 
 beloved good, beautiful, sensible, and kind the King from the first 
 neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this 
 cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power 
 to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he 
 preferred the Normans to the English. He made a Norman Arch- 
 bishop, and Norman Bishops ; his great officers and favourites were 
 all Normans ; he introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman 
 language ; in imitation of the state custom of Normandy, he attached 
 a great seal to his state documents, instead of merely marking them, 
 as the Saxon Kings had done, with the sign of the cross just as poor 
 people who have never been taught to write, now make the same mark 
 for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six 
 proud sons represented to the people as disfavour shown towards the 
 English ; and thus they daily increased their own power, and daily 
 diminished the power of the King. 
 
 They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had 
 reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had married 
 the King's sister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the 
 court some time, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, 
 to return home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that 
 peaceful town in armour, they took possession of the best houses, and 
 noisily demanded to be lodged and entertained without payment. One 
 of the bold men of Dover, who would not endure to have these 
 domineering strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets 
 up and down his house, eating his meat and drinking his strong 
 liquor, stood in his doorway and refused admission to the first armed 
 man who came there. The armed man drew, and wounded him. The 
 man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligence of what lie 
 had done, spreading through the streets to where the Count Eustace 
 and his men were standing by their horses, bridle in hand, they pas- 
 sionately mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it, forced their 
 way in (the doors and windows being closed when they came up), and 
 killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered 
 through the streets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and 
 children. This did not last long, yon may believe. The men of
 
 Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and Edward the Confessor. 379 
 
 Dover set upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, 
 wounded many more, and, blockading the road to the port so that 
 they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way they 
 had come. Heroupon, Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride 
 to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and 
 Norman lords. " Justice ! " cries the Count, " upon the men of Dover, 
 who have set upon and slain my people ! " The King sends imme- 
 diately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near ; 
 reminds him that Dover is under his government ; and orders him to 
 repair to Dover and do military execution on the inhabitants. " It 
 does not become you," says the proud Earl in reply, " to condemn 
 without a hearing those whom you have sworn to protect. I will not 
 do it." 
 
 The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment 
 and loss of his titles and property, to appear before the court to answer 
 this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son 
 Harold, and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting 
 men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count 
 Eustace and his followers surrendered to the justice of the country. 
 The King, in his turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong 
 force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and 
 his sons began to fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family and 
 abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders ; Harold escaped to Ireland ; 
 and the power of the great family was for that time gone in England. 
 But, the people did not forget them. 
 
 Then, Edward tho Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean 
 spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons iipon 
 the helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who 
 saw her (her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized 
 rapaciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only 
 one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of 
 his no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart was abbess or 
 jailer. 
 
 Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the 
 King favoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over William, 
 Duke of Normandy, the son of that Duke who had received him and 
 his murdered brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's 
 daughter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as 
 lie saw her washing clothes in a brook. William, who was a great 
 warrior, with a passion for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the 
 invitation ; and the Normans in England, finding themselves more 
 numerous than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in 
 still greater honour at court than before, became more and more 
 haughty towards the people, and were more and more disliked by them. 
 
 The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how tho 
 people felt; for, with part of the treasure ho had carried away with 
 him, he kept spies and agenfs in his pay all over England. Accord-
 
 380 A Child 's History of England. 
 
 ingly, he tnought the time was come for fitting out a great expedition 
 against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the Isle of 
 Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant and 
 brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up 
 the Thames to Southwark ; great numbers of tho people declaring for 
 them, and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, 
 against the Norman favourites ! 
 
 The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have 
 been whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the 
 people rallied so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old 
 Earl was so steady in demanding without bloodshed the restoration of 
 himself and his family to their rights, that at last tho court took the 
 alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman 
 Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought their way 
 out of London, and escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. 
 The other Norman favourites dispersed in all directions. The old 
 Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who had committed crimes against 
 the law) were restored to their possessions and dignities. Editha, the 
 virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King, was triumphantly 
 roleased from her prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair 
 of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to 
 support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her. 
 
 The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. Ho 
 fell down in a fit at the King's table, and died upon the third day 
 afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place 
 in the attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By 
 his valour he subdued the King's enemies in many bloody fights. He 
 Avas vigorous against rebels in Scotland this was the time when 
 Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, 
 hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy ; and he killed 
 the restless Welsh King Griffith, and brought his head to England. 
 
 What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French 
 coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; nor does it at all matter. 
 That his ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was 
 taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all ship- 
 wrecked strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. 
 So, a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold's 
 disaster happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hos- 
 pitable and Christian lord as he ought to have done, and expected to 
 make a very good thing of it. 
 
 But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy, 
 complaining of this treatment ; and the Duke no sooner heard of it 
 than he ordered Harold to bo escorted to the ancient town of Bouen, 
 where he then was, and where he received him as an honoured guest. 
 Now, some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by 
 this time old and had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke 
 William of Normandy his successor, and had informed the Duke of his
 
 Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and Edward the Confessor. 381 
 
 having done so. There is no doubt that he was anxious about his 
 successor ; because he had even invited over, from abroad, Edward 
 the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who had come to England with his 
 wife and three children, but whom the King had strangely refused to 
 see when he did come, and who had died in London suddenly (princes 
 were terribly liable to sudden death in those days), and had been 
 buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King might possibly have made 
 such a will ; or, having always been fond of the Normans, he might 
 have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English crown, by 
 something that he said to him when he was staying at the English 
 court. But, certainly William did now aspire to it ; and knowing that 
 Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a great assembly 
 of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele in marriage, in- 
 formed him that he meant on King Edward's death to claim tho 
 English crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then and 
 there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the Duke's power, took 
 this oath upon the Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example of 
 tho superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead of being 
 placed upon a table, was placed upon a tub ; which, when Harold had 
 sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men's bones 
 bones, as the monks pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make 
 Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and binding. As if the 
 great name of the Creator of Heaven and earth could be made more 
 solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of 
 Dunstan ! 
 
 Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, the dreary 
 old Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind 
 like a very weak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely 
 in the hands of the monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily 
 when he was dead. They had gone so far, already, as to persuade 
 him that he could work miracles ; and had brought people afflicted 
 with a bad disorder of the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. 
 This was called " touching for tho King's Evil," which afterwards 
 became a royal custom. You know, however, Who really touched the 
 sick, and healed them ; and you know His sacred name is not among 
 the dusty line of human kings.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE 
 
 NORMANS. 
 
 Harold was crowned King of England on the very day of the 
 maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. 
 When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at 
 Rouen, he dropped his bow. returned to his palace, called his nobles 
 to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him 
 to keep his oath and resign the Crown. Harold would do no such 
 thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke William 
 for the invasion of England. Duke William promised freely to 
 distribute English wealth and English lands among them. The Pope 
 sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair 
 which he warranted to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. He 
 blessed the enterprise ; and cursed Harold ; and requested that the 
 Normans would pay " Peter's Pence " or a tax to himself of a penny 
 a year on every house a little more regularly in future, if they could 
 make it convenient. 
 
 King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of 
 Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother, and this Nor- 
 wegian King, joining their forces against England, with Duke 
 William's help, won a fight in which the English were commanded 
 by two nobles ; and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting 
 for the Normans on the coast at Hastings, with his army, marched to 
 Stamford Bridge upon the river Derwent to give them instant battle. 
 
 He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by their 
 shining spears. Riding round this circle at a distance, to survey it, 
 he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright 
 helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him. 
 
 " Who is that man who has fallen ? " Harold asked of one of his 
 captains. 
 
 " The King of Norway," he replied. 
 
 " He is a tall and stately king," said Harold, " but his end is near." 
 
 He added, in a little while, " Go yonder to my brother, and tell 
 him, if he will withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl of Northumber- 
 land, and rich and powerful in England." 
 
 The captain rode away and gave the message. 
 
 " What will he give to my friend the King of Norway ? " asked the 
 brother. 
 
 " Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain. 
 
 ' : No more ? " returned the brother, with a smile. 
 
 " The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little more," 
 replied the captain.
 
 Harold the Second. 383 
 
 " Ride back ! " said the brother, " and tell King Harold to make 
 ready for the fight ! " 
 
 He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against 
 that force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief 
 of note in all their host, except the Norwegian King's son, Olave, to 
 whom he gave honourable dismissal, were left dead upon tho field. 
 The victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at 
 the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at tho doors ; 
 and messengers all covered with mire from riding far and fast 
 through broken ground came hurrying in, to report that tho Normans 
 had landed in England. 
 
 The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary 
 winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their 
 own shore, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with 
 Norman bodies. But they had once more made sail, led by the Duke's 
 own galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure 
 of a golden boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner 
 of the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured sails, the gilded 
 vanes, the many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in 
 the sun and sunny water ; by night, a light had sparkled like a star 
 at her mast-head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their 
 leader lying in the old Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring 
 in all directions, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, 
 fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong 
 on English ground. 
 
 Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, 
 his army was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman 
 strength. William took them, caused them to be led through his 
 whole camp, and then dismissed. " The Normans," said these spies 
 to Harold, " are not bearded on the upper lip as we English arc, but 
 are shorn. They aro priests." " My men," replied Harold, with a 
 laugh, " will find those priests good soldiers ! " 
 
 ' ; Tho Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of Norman 
 soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King Harold's army 
 advanced, " rush on us through their pillaged country with the fury 
 of madmen." 
 
 " Let them come and come soon ! " said Duke William. 
 
 Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were soon 
 abandoned. In the middle of the month of October, in the year one 
 thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and the English came front to 
 front. All night the armies lay encamped beforo each other, in a part 
 of the country then called Senlac, now called (in remembranco of 
 them) Battle. With the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in tho 
 faint light, were the English on a hill ; a wood behind them ; in their 
 midst, the Royal banner, representing a fighting warrior, woven in 
 gold thread, adorned with precious stones ; beneatli the banner, as 
 it rustled in the wind, stood King Harold on foot, with two of his
 
 384 A Child's His toty of England. 
 
 remaining brothers by his side ; around them, still and silent as the 
 dead, clustered the whole English army every soldier covered by 
 his shield, and bearing in his hand his dreaded English battle-axe. 
 
 On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, horsemen, 
 was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, " God help 
 us ! " burst from the Norman lines. The English answered with their 
 own battle-cry, " God's Rood ! Holy Eood ! " The Normans then 
 came sweeping down the hill to attack the English. 
 
 There was one tall Norman Knight who rode before the Norman 
 army on a prancing horse, throwing up his heavy sword and catching 
 it, and singing of the bravery of his countrymen. An English Knight, 
 who rode out from the English force to meet him, fell by this Knight's 
 hand. Another English Knight rodo out, and he fell too. But then 
 a third rode out, and killed the Norman. This was in the first be- 
 ginning of the fight. It soon raged everywhere. 
 
 The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, cared no more 
 for the showers of Norman arrows than if they had been showers of 
 Norman rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against them, with 
 their battle-axes they cut men and horses down. The Normans gave 
 way. The English pressed forward. A cry went forth among the 
 Norman troops that Duke William was killed. Duke William took 
 off his helmet, in order that his face might be distinctly seen, and 
 rode along the line before his men. This gave them courage. As 
 they turned again to face the English, some of their Norman horse 
 divided the pursuing body of the English from the rest, and thus all 
 that foremost portion of the English army fell, fighting bravely. The. 
 main body still remaining firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and 
 with their battle-axes cutting down the crowds of horsemen when 
 they rodo up, like forests of young trees, Duke William pretended to 
 retreat. The eager English followed. The Norman army closed 
 again, and fell upon them with great slaughter. 
 
 " Still," said Duke William, " there are thousands of the English, 
 firm as rocks around their King. Shoot upward, Norman archers, 
 that your arrows may fall down upon their faces ! " 
 
 The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still raged. Through 
 all the wild October day, the clash and din resounded in the air. In 
 the red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps upon heaps of dead 
 men lay strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all over the ground. King 
 Harold, wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind. His 
 brothers were already killed. Twenty Norman Knights, whose 
 battered armour had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all day 
 long, and now looked silvery in the moonlight, dashed forward to 
 seize the Eoyal banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still 
 faithfully collected round their blinded King. The King received a 
 mortal wound, and dropped. The English broke and fled. The 
 Normans rallied, and the day was lost. 
 
 what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when lights were
 
 William the Conqueror. 385 
 
 shining in the tent of the victorious Duke William, which was pitched 
 near the spot whore Harold fell and he and his knights wero 
 carousing, within and soldiers with torches, going slowly to and fro, 
 without, sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of dead and 
 the Warrior, worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay low, 
 all torn and soiled with blood and the threo Norman Lions kept 
 watch over the field ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR. 
 
 Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William the Norman 
 afterwards founded an abbey, which, under the name of Battle Abbey, 
 was a rich and splendid place through many a troubled year, though 
 now it is a grey ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had 
 to do, was to conquer the English thoroughly ; and that, as you know 
 by this time, was hard work for any man. 
 
 He ravaged several counties ; he burned and plundered many 
 towns ; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles of pleasant country ; 
 he destroyed innumerable lives. At length Stigand, Archbishop of 
 ( anterbury, with other representatives of the clergy and the people, 
 went to his camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, tbo insignificant 
 son of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by others, but nothing 
 came of it. He fled to Scotland afterwards, where bis sister, who was 
 young and beautiful, married the Scottish King. Edgar himself was 
 not important enough for anybody to care much about him. 
 
 On Christmas B*ay, William was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 
 under the title of William the First ; but he is best known as 
 William the Conqueror. It was a strange coronation. One of the 
 bishops who performed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, 
 if they would have Duke William for their king ? They answered 
 Yes. Another of the bishops put the same question to tbe Saxons, in 
 English. They too answered Yes, with a loud shout. The noise 
 being heard by a guard of Norman horse-soldiers outside, was mis- 
 taken for resistance on the part of the English. The guard instantly 
 set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a tumult ensued ; in the 
 midst of which tbe King, being left alone in tbe Abbey, with a few 
 priests (and they all being in a terriblo fright together), was hurriedly 
 crowned. When tbe crown was placed upon bis head, ho sworo to 
 govern the English as well as tbe best of tlieir own monarchs. I daro 
 say you tliink, as I do, that if we except tbo Croat Alfred, ho might 
 pretty easily liavo done tliat. 
 
 Numbers of tbe English nobles had been killed in the last disastrous 
 
 2 o
 
 386 A Child's History of England. 
 
 battle. Their estates, and the estates of all the nobles who had 
 fought against him there, King William seized upon, and gave to his 
 own Norman knights and nobles. Many great English families of 
 the present time acquired their English lands in this way, and are 
 very proud of it. 
 
 But what is got by force must be maintained by force. These 
 nobles were obliged to build castles all over England, to defend their 
 new property ; and, do what he would, the King could neither soothe 
 nor quell the nation as he wished. He gradually introduced the 
 Norman language and the Norman customs ; yet, for a long time the 
 great body of the English remained sullen and revengeful. On his 
 going over to Normandy, to visit his subjects there, the oppressions 
 of his half-brother Odo, whom he left in charge of his English 
 kingdom, drove the people mad. The men of Kent even invited over, 
 to take possession of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace of 
 Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover man was slain at his 
 own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and com- 
 manded by a chief named Edric the Wild, drove the Normans out 
 of their country. Some of those who had been dispossessed of their 
 lands, banded together in the North of England ; some, in Scotland ; 
 some, in the thick woods and marshes ; and whensoever they could 
 fall upon the Normans, or upon the English who had submitted to 
 the Normans, they fought, despoiled, and murdered, like the desperate 
 outlaws that they were. Conspiracies were set on foot for a general 
 massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre of the Danes. In 
 short, the English were in a murderous mood all through the 
 kingdom. 
 
 King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, camo back, and 
 tried to pacify the London people by soft words. He then set forth 
 to repress the country people by stern deeds. Among the towns 
 which he besieged, and where he killed and maimed the inhabitants 
 without any distinction, sparing none, young or old, armed or un- 
 armed, were Oxford, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, 
 York. In all these places, and in many others, fire and sword worked 
 their utmost horrors, and made the land dreadful to behold. The 
 streams and rivers were discoloured with blood ; the sky was blackened 
 with smoke ; the fields were wastes of ashes ; the waysides were 
 heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal results of conquest and 
 ambition ! Although William was a harsh and angry man, I do not 
 suppose that he deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, when 
 he invaded England. But what he had got by the strong hand, he 
 could only keep by the strong hand, and in so doing he made England 
 a great grave. 
 
 Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin, came over 
 from Ireland, with some ships, against the Normans, but were 
 defeated. This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in the woods so 
 harassed York, that the Governor sent to the King for help. The
 
 William the Conqueror. 387 
 
 King despatched a general and a large force to occupy the town of 
 Durham. The Bishop of that place met the general outside the 
 town, and warned him not to enter, as he would be in danger there. 
 The general cared nothing for the warning, and went in with all his 
 men. That night, on every hill within sight of Durham, signal fires 
 wero seen to blaze. When the morning dawned, the English, who 
 had assembled in great strength, forced the gates, rushed into tho 
 town, and slow the Normans every one. The English afterwards 
 besought the Danes to come and help them. The Danes came, with 
 two hundred and forty ships. Tho outlawed nobles joined them ; they 
 captured York, and drove the Normans out cf that city. Then, 
 William bribed the Danes to go away ; and took such vengeance on 
 the English, that all the former fire and sword, smoke and ashes, 
 death and ruin, were nothing compared with it. In melancholy 
 songs, and doleful stories, it was still sung and told by cottage fires 
 on winter evonings, a hundred years afterwards, how, in those dread- 
 ful days of the Normans, there was not, from the River Humber to 
 the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one cultivated field 
 how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where the human creatures 
 and the beasts lay dead together. 
 
 The outlaws had, at this timo, what they called a Camp of Refuge, 
 in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected by those 
 marshy grounds which were difficult of approach, they lay among tho 
 reeds and rushes, and were hidden by the mists that rose up from the 
 watery earth. Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea in 
 Flanders, an Englishman named Hereward, whose father had died 
 in his absence, and whose property had been given to a Norman. 
 When he heard of this wrong that had been done him (from such of 
 the exiled English as chanced to wander into that country), he longed 
 for revenge ; and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge, became 
 their commander. He was so good a soldier, that the Normans 
 supposed him to be aided by enchantment. William, even after he 
 had made a road threo miles in length across the Cambridgeshire 
 marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it 
 necessary to engage an old lady, who pretended to bo a sorceress, to 
 come and do a little enchantment in tho royal cause. For this 
 purpose she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower ; but 
 Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning 
 her, tower and all. The monks of tho convent of Ely near at hand, 
 however, who were fond of good living, and who found it very 
 uncomfortable to have the country blockaded and their supplies of 
 meat and drink cut off, showed tho King a secret way of surprising 
 tho camp. So Hereward was soon defeated. Whether ho afterwards 
 died quietly, or whether ho was killed after killing sixteen of tho 
 men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relato that he did), I 
 cannot say. His dffeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge ; and, 
 very soon afterwards, the King, victorious both in Scotland and in
 
 388 A Child's History of England. 
 
 England, quelled the last rebellious English noble. He then sur- 
 rounded himself with Norman lords, enriched by the property of 
 English nobles : had a great survey made of all the land in England, 
 which was entered as the property of its new owners, on a roll called 
 Doomsday Book ; obliged the people to put out their tires and candles 
 at a certain hour every night, on the ringing of a bell which was 
 called The Curfew ; introduced the Norman dresses and manners ; 
 made the Normans masters everywhere, and the English, servants ; 
 turned out the English bishops, and put Normans in their places; 
 and showed himself to be the Conqueror indeed. 
 
 But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They 
 were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English ; 
 and the more lie gave, the more they wanted. His priests were as 
 greedy as his soldiers. We know of only one Norman who plainly 
 told his master, the King, that he had come with him to England to 
 do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property taken by force 
 from other men had no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. 
 We should not forget his name, for it is good to remember and to 
 honour honest men. 
 
 Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was troubled by 
 quarrels among his sons. He had three living. Robert, called 
 Curthose, because of his short legs ; William, called Rufus or the 
 Bed, from the colour of his hair : and Henry, fond of learning, and 
 called, in the Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-Scholar. When 
 Robert grew up, he asked of his father the government of Normandy, 
 which he had nominally possessed, as a child, under his mother, 
 Matilda. The King refusing to grant it, Robert became jealous and 
 discontented ; and happening one day, while in this temper, to be 
 ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on him from a balcony as 
 he was walking before the door, he drew his sword, rushed up-stairs, 
 and was only prevented by the King himself from putting them to 
 death. That same night, he hotly departed w r ith some followers from 
 his father's court, and endeavoured to take the Castle of Rouen by 
 surprise. Failing in this, he shut himself up in another Castle in 
 Normandy, which the King besieged, and where Robert one day 
 unhorsed and nearly killed him without knowing who he was. His 
 submission when he discovered his father, and the intercession of the 
 queen and others, reconciled them ; but not soundly ; for Robert soon 
 strayed abroad, and went from court to court with his complaints. 
 He was a gay, careless, thoughtless fellow, spending all ho got on 
 musicians and dancers ; but his mother loved him, and often, against 
 the King's command, supplied him with money through a messenger 
 named Samson. At length the incensed King swore he would tear 
 out Samson's eyes ; and Samson, thinking that his only hope of safety 
 was in becoming a monk, became one, went on such errands no more, 
 and kept his eyes in his head. 
 
 All thic time, from the turbulent day of his strange coronation, the
 
 William the Conqueror. 389 
 
 Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty and 
 bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All his reign, ho 
 struggled still, with the same object ever before him. He was a 
 stern bold mau, and he succeeded in it. 
 
 He loved money, and was particular in his eatiug, but he had only 
 leisure to indulge one other passion, and that was his love of hunting. 
 He carried it to such a height that he ordered whole villages and 
 towns to be swept away to make forests for the deer. Not satisfied 
 with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense district, to 
 form another in Hampshire, called the New Forest. The many 
 thousands of miserable peasants who saw their little houses pulled 
 down, and themselves and children turned into the open country 
 without a shelter, detested him for his merciless addition to their 
 many sufferings ; and when, in the twenty-first year of his reign 
 (which proved to be the last), he went over to Rouen, England was as 
 full of hatred against him, as if every leaf on every tree in all his 
 Royal Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the New Forest, 
 his son Richard (for he had four sons) had been gored to deatli by a 
 Stag ; and the people said that this so cruelly-made Forest would yet 
 be fatal to others of the Conqueror's race. 
 
 He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France about some 
 territory. While he stayed at Rouen, negotiating with that King, he 
 kept his bed and took medicines : being advised by his physicians to 
 do so, on account of having grown to an unwieldy size. Word being 
 brought to him that the King of France made light of this, and joked 
 about it, he swore in a great rage that he should rue his jests. He 
 assembled his army, marched into the disputed territory, burnt 
 his old way ! the vinos, the crops, and fruit, and set the town of 
 Mantes on fire. But, in an evil hour ; for, as he rode over the hot 
 ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon some burning embers, started, 
 threw him forward against the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a 
 mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery near Rouen, 
 and then made his will, giving England to William, Normandy to 
 Robert, and five thousand pounds to Henry. And now, his violent 
 deeds lay heavy on his mind. He ordered money to be given to 
 many English churches and monasteries, and which was much better 
 repentance released his prisoners of state, some of whom had been 
 confined in his dungeons twenty years. 
 
 It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when the 
 King was awakened from slumber by the sound of a church bell. 
 " What bell is that ? " he faintly asked. They told him it was the 
 bell of the chapel of Saint Mary. " I commend my soul," said ho, 
 ' ; to Mary ! " and died. 
 
 Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider how he lay 
 in deatli ! The moment he was dead, his physicians, priests, and 
 nobles, not knowing what contest for the throne might now take place, 
 or what might happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself and
 
 390 A Child's History of England. 
 
 his own property ; the mercenary servants of the court began to rob 
 and plunder ; the body of the King, in the indecent strifo, was rolled 
 from the bed, and lay alone, for hours, upon the ground. O Conqueror, 
 of whom so many great names are proud now, of whom so many great 
 names thought nothing then, it were better to have conquered one 
 true heart, than England ! 
 
 By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and candles ; 
 and a good knight, named Heeluin, undertook (which no one else 
 would do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it 
 might be buried in St. Stephen's church there, which the Conqueror 
 had founded. But fire, of which he had made such bad use in his life, 
 seemed to follow him of itself in death. A great conflagration broke 
 out in the town when the body was placed in the church ; and those 
 present running out to extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone. 
 
 It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let down, in 
 its Royal robes, into a tomb near the high altar, in presence of a 
 great concourse of people, when a loud voice in the crowd cried out, 
 " This ground is mine ! Upon it, stood my father's house. This 
 King despoiled me of both ground and house to build this church. 
 In the great name of God, I here forbid his body to be covered with 
 the earth that is my right ! " The priests and bishops present, know- 
 ing the speaker's right, and knowing that the King had often denied 
 him justice, paid him down sixty shillings for the grave. Even then, 
 the corpse was not at rest. The tomb was too small, and they tried 
 to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the people hurried 
 out into the air, and, for the third time, it was left alone. 
 
 Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they were not at their 
 father's burial ? Robert was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and 
 gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was carrying his five 
 thousand pounds safely away in a convenient chest he had got made. 
 William the Red was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the 
 Royal treasure and the crown. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED EUFUS. 
 
 William the Red, in breathless haste, secured the three great forts 
 of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot speed for 
 Winchester, where the Royal treasure was kept. The treasurer 
 delivering him the keys, ho found that it amounted to sixty thousand 
 pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this wealth, 
 he soon persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to croAvn him, and 
 became William the Second, King of England.
 
 William tJie Second. 39 1 
 
 Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered into prison 
 again the unhappy state captives whom his father had set free, and 
 directed a goldsmith to ornament his father's tomb profusely with 
 gold and silver. It would have been moro dutiful in him to have 
 attended the sick Conqueror when he was dying ; but England, itself, 
 like this Red King, who onco governed it, has sometimes made ex- 
 ]>ensive tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily when they were 
 alive. 
 
 The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite content to 
 be only Duke of that country ; and the King's other brother, Fine- 
 Scholar, being quiet enough with his five thousand pounds in a chest ; 
 the King nattered himself, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy 
 reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in those days. The 
 turbulent Bishop Odo (who had blessed the Norman army at the Battle 
 of Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the credit of the victory to 
 himself) soon began, in concert with some powerful Norman nobles, 
 to trouble the Red King. 
 
 The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, who had 
 lands in England and lands in Normandy, wished to hold both under 
 one Sovereign; and greatly preferred a thoughtless good-natured 
 person, such as Robert was, to Rufus ; who, though far from being an 
 amiable man in any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon. 
 They declared in Robert's favour, and retired to their castles (thoso 
 castles were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour. The 
 Red King, seeing the Normans thus falling from him, revenged 
 himself upon them by appealing to the English ; to whom he made a 
 variety of promises, which he never meant to perform in particular, 
 promises to soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and who, in return, 
 so aided him with their valour, that Odo was besieged in the ( 'astle 
 of Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and to depart from England 
 for ever : whereupon the other rebellious Norman nobles were soon 
 reduced and scattered. 
 
 Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where the people 
 suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke Robert. The King's 
 object was to seize upon the Duke's dominions. This, the Duke, of 
 course, prepared to resist ; and miserable war between the two brothers 
 seemed inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both sides, who had 
 seen so much of war, interfered to prevent it. A treaty was made. 
 Each of the two brothers agreed to give up something of his claims, 
 and that the longer-liver of the two should inherit all the dominions 
 of tho other. When they had come to this loving understanding, 
 they embraced and joined their forces against Fine-Scholar ; who hud 
 bought some territory of Robert with a part of his iivu thousand 
 pounds, and was considered a dangerous individual in consequence. 
 
 St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is another St. Michael's 
 Mount, in Cornwall, wonderfully like it), was then, as it is now. a 
 strong place perched upon the top of a high rock, around which,
 
 392 A Child's History of England. 
 
 when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving no road to the mainland. 
 In this place, Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and 
 here he was closely besieged by his two brothers. At one time, when 
 he was reduced to great distress for want of water, the generous 
 Robert not only permitted his men to get water, but sent Fine- 
 Scholar wine from his own table ; and, on being remonstrated with 
 by the Eed King, said, " What ! shall we let our own brother die of 
 thirst ? Where shall we get another, when he is gone ? " At another 
 time, the Eed King riding alone on the shore of the bay, looking up 
 at the Castle, was taken by two of Fine-Scholar's men, one of whom 
 was about to kill him, when he cried out, " Hold, knave ! I am the 
 King of England ! " The story says that the soldier raised him from 
 the ground respectfully and humbly, and that the King took him into 
 his service. The story may or may not be true ; but at any rate it is 
 true that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his united brothers, 
 and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered about as 
 poor and forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes known to be. 
 
 The Scotch became unquiet in the Eed King's time, and were twice 
 defeated the second time, with the loss of their King, Malcolm, and 
 his son. The Welsh became unquiet too. Against them, Eufus was 
 less successful ; for they fought among their native mountains, and 
 did great execution on the King's troops. Eobert of Normandy 
 became unquiet too ; and, complaining that his brother the King did 
 not faithfully perforin his part of their agreement, took up arms, and 
 obtained assistance from the King of France, whom Eufus, in the end, 
 bought off with vast sums of money. England became unquiet too. 
 Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of Northumberland, headed a great 
 conspiracy to depose the King, and to place upon the throne, Stephen, 
 the Conqueror's near relative. The plot was discovered ; all the 
 chief conspirators were seized ; some were fined, some were put in 
 prison, some were put to death. The Earl of Northumberland himself 
 was shut up in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, where he died, an 
 old man, thirty long years afterwards. The Priests in England were 
 more unquiet than any other class or power ; for the Eed King 
 treated them with such small ceremony that he refused to appoint 
 new bishops or archbishops when the old ones died, but kept all the 
 wealth belonging to those offices in his own hands. In return for 
 this, the Priests wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him 
 well. I am inclined to think, myself, that there was little to choose 
 between the Priests and the Eed King ; that both sides were greedy 
 and designing ; and that they were fairly matched. 
 
 The Eed King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and mean. He 
 had a worthy minister in his favourite, Ralph, nicknamed for almost 
 every famous person had a nickname in those rough days Flambard, 
 or the Firebrand. Once, the King being ill, became penitent, and 
 made Ansei.m, a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. But he no sooner got well again than he repented of his
 
 William the Second. 393 
 
 repentance, and persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself some of 
 the wealth belonging to the archbishopric. This led to violent 
 disputes, which were aggravated by there being in Rome at that time 
 two rival Popes ; each of whom declared he was the only real original 
 infallible Pope, who couldn't make a mistake. At last, Anselm, 
 knowing the Red King's character, and not feeling himself safe in 
 England, asked leave to return abroad. The Red King gladly gave 
 it ; for he knew that as soon as Anselm was gone, he could begin to 
 storo up all the Canterbury money again, for his own use. 
 
 By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the English people 
 in every possible way, the Red King became very rich. When he 
 wanted money for any purpose, he raised it by some means or other, 
 and cared nothing for the injustice he did, or the misery he caused. 
 Having the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole duchy of 
 Normandy for five years, he taxed the English people more than ever, 
 and made the very convents sell their plate and valuables to supply 
 him with the means to make the purchase. But he was as quick and 
 eager in putting down revolt as he was in raising money ; for, a part 
 of the Norman people objecting very naturally, I think to being 
 sold in this way, he headed an army against them with all the speed 
 and energy of his father. He was so impatient, that he embarked for 
 Normandy in a great gale of wind. And when the sailors told him it 
 was dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather, he replied, " Hoist 
 sail and away ! Did you ever hear of a king who was drowned ? " 
 
 You will wonder how it was that even the careless Robert came to 
 sell his dominions. It happened thus. It had long been the custom 
 for many English people to make journeys to Jerusalem, which were 
 called pilgrimages, in order that they might pray beside the tomb of 
 Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the Turks, and the Turks 
 hating Christianity, these Christian travellers were often insulted and 
 ill used. The Pilgrims bore it patiently for some time, but at length 
 a remarkable man, of great earnestness and eloquence, called Peter 
 the Hermit, began to preach in various places against the Turks, 
 and to declare that it was the duty of good Christians to drive away 
 those unbelievers from the tomb of Our Saviour, and to take posses- 
 sion of it, and protect it. An excitement such as the world had never 
 known before was created. Thousands and thousands of men of all 
 ranks and conditions departed for Jerusalem to make war against the 
 Turks. The war is called in history tho first Crusade ; and every 
 Crusader wore a cross marked on his right shoulder. 
 
 All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians. Among them were 
 vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, and adventurous spirits 
 of the time. Some became Crusaders for the love of change; some, 
 in the hope of plunder ; some, because they had nothing to do at 
 home ; somo, because they did what the priests told them ; some, 
 because they liked to see foreign countries; some, because they were 
 fond of knocking men about, and would as soon knock a Turk about
 
 394 A Child's History of England. 
 
 as a Christian. Robert of Normandy may have been influenced by all 
 these motives ; and by a kind desire, besides, to save the Christian 
 Pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He wanted to raise a number 
 of armed men, and to go to the Crusade. He could not do so without 
 money. He had no money ; and he sold his dominions to his brother, 
 the Red King, for five years. With the large sum he thus obtained, 
 he fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went away to Jerusalem in 
 martial state. The Red King, who made money out of everything, 
 stayed at home, busily squeezing more money out of Normans and 
 English. 
 
 After three years of great hardship and suffering from shipwreck 
 at sea ; from travel in strange lands ; from hunger, thirst, and fever, 
 upon the burning sands of the desert ; and from the fury of the Turks 
 the valiant Crusaders got possession of Our Saviour's tomb. The 
 Turks were still resisting and fighting bravely, but this success 
 increased the general desire in Europe to join the Crusade. Another 
 great French Duke was proposing to sell his dominions for a term to 
 the rich Red King, when the Red King's reign came to a sudden and 
 violent end. 
 
 You have not forgotten the New Forest which the Conqueror made, 
 and which the miserable people whose homes he had laid waste, so 
 hated. The cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the torture and death 
 they brought upon the peasantry, increased this hatred. The poor 
 persecuted country people believed that the New Forest was enchanted. 
 They said that in thunder-storms, and on dark nights, demons appeared, 
 moving beneath the branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a 
 terrible spectre had foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King 
 should be punished there. And now, in the pleasant season of May, 
 when the Red King had reigned almost thirteen years ; and a second 
 Prince of the Conqueror's blood another Richard, the son of Duke 
 Robert was killed by an arrow in this dreaded Forest ; the people 
 said that the second time was not the last, and that there was another 
 death to come. 
 
 It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts for the wicked 
 deeds that had been done to make it ; and no man save the King and 
 his Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray there. But, in reality, it 
 was like any other forest. In the spring, the green leaves broke out 
 of the buds ; in the summer, flourished heartily, and made deep 
 shades ; in the winter, shrivelled and blew down, and lay in brown 
 heaps on the moss. Some trees were stately, and grew high and 
 strong ; some had fallen of themselves ; some were felled by the 
 forester's axe ; some were hollow, and the rabbits burrowed at their 
 roots ; some few were struck by lightning, and stood white and bare. 
 There were hill-sides covered with rich fern, on which the morning 
 dew so beautifully sparkled ; there were brooks, where the deer went 
 down to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying from the 
 arrows of the huntsmen ; there were sunny glades, and solemn places
 
 
 ^^tj/jt 
 
 THX FINDING OF THK BODY OT RTJFUB.
 
 William the Second. 395 
 
 where but little light came through the rustling leaves. The songs of 
 the birds in the New Forest were pleasanter to hear than the shouts 
 of fighting men outside ; and even when tho Red King and his Court 
 came hunting through its solitudes, cursing loud and riding hard, 
 with a jingling of stirrups and bridles and knives and daggers, they 
 did much less harm there than among the English or Normans, and 
 the stags died (as they lived) far easier than the people. 
 
 Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled to his brother, 
 Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to hunt in the New Forest. 
 Fine-Scholar was of the party. They were a merry party, and had 
 lain all night at Malwood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where 
 they had made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and had 
 drunk a deal of wine. The party dispersed in various directions, as 
 the custom of hunters then was. The King took with him only Sir 
 Walteb Tyrrel, who was a famous sportsman, and to whom he had 
 given, before they mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows. 
 
 Tho last time the King was ever seen alive, he was riding with Sir 
 Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were hunting together. 
 
 It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner, passing through 
 the forest with his cart, came upon the solitary body of a dead man, 
 shot with an arrow in the breast, and still bleeding. He got it into 
 his cart. It was the body of the King. Shaken and tumbled, with 
 its red beard all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it was 
 driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner next day to Winchester 
 Cathedral, where it was received and buried. 
 
 Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and claimed tho 
 protection of the King of France, swore in Franco that the Red King 
 was suddenly shot dead by an arrow from an unseen hand, while they 
 were hunting together ; that he was fearful of being suspected as the 
 King's murderer ; and that he instantly set spurs to his horse, and 
 fled to the sea-shore. Others declared that the King and Sir Walter 
 Tyrrel were hunting in company, a little before sunset, standing in 
 bushes opposite one another, when a stag came between them. That 
 the King drew his bow and took aim, but the string broke. That tho 
 King then cried, " Shoot, Walter, in the Devil's name ! " That Sir 
 Walter shot. That the arrow glanced against a tree, was turned aside 
 from the stag, and struck the King from his horse, dead. 
 
 Ry whoso hand the Red King really fell, and whether that hand 
 despatched the arrow to his breast by accident or by design, is only 
 known to Gon. Some think his brother may have caused him to bo 
 killed ; but the Red King had made so many enemies, both among 
 priests and people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less 
 unnatural murderer. Men know no more than that lie was found 
 dead in the New Forest, which the suffering people had regarded as a 
 doomed ground for his race.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR. 
 
 Fine-Scholar, on hearing of the Red King's death, hurried to Win- 
 chester with as much speed as Rufus himself had made, to seize the 
 Royal treasure. But the keeper of the treasure, who had been one of 
 the hunting-party in the Forest, made haste to Winchester too, aud, 
 arriving there at about the same time, refused to yield it up. Upon 
 this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to kill the treasurer ; 
 who might have paid for his fidelity with his life, but that he knew 
 longer resistance to be useless when he found the Prince supported 
 by a company of powerful barons, who declared they were determined 
 to make him King. The .treasurer, therefore, gave up the money aud 
 jewels of the Crown : and on the third day after the death of the Red 
 King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before the high altar in 
 Westminster Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he would 
 resign the Church property which his brother had seized ; that he 
 would do no wrong to the nobles ; and that he would restore to the 
 people the laws of Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements 
 of William the Conqueror. So began the reign of King Henry the 
 First. 
 
 The people were attached to their new King, both because ho had 
 known distresses, and because he was an Englishman by birth and not 
 a Norman. To strengthen this last hold upon them, the King wished 
 to marry an English lady ; and could think of no other wife tban 
 Maud the Good, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Although 
 this good Princess did not love the King, she was so affected by the 
 representations the nobles made to her of the great charity it would 
 be in her to unite the Norman and Saxon races, and prevent hatred 
 and bloodshed between them for the future, that she consented to 
 become his wife. After some disputing among the priests, who said 
 that as she had been in a convent in her youth, aud had worn the veil 
 of a nun, she could not lawfully be married against which the 
 Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she had lived in her youth, 
 had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of black stuff over her, but for 
 no other reason than because the nun's veil was the only dress the 
 conquering Normans respected in girl or woman, and not because she 
 had taken the vows of a nun, which she never had she was declared 
 free to marry, and was made King Henry's Queen. A good Queen 
 she was ; beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband than 
 the King. 
 
 For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though firm and 
 clever. He cared very little for his word, and took any means to 
 gain his ends. All this is shown in his treatment of his brother
 
 Henry the First. 397 
 
 Robert Robert, who bad suffered him to be refreshed with water, 
 and who had sent him the wino from his own table, when he was 
 shut up, with the crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the 
 castle on the top of St. Michael's Mount, where his Red brother would 
 have let him die. 
 
 Beforo tbe King began to deal with Robert, he removed and dis- 
 graced all tho favourites of the late King ; who wero for the most 
 part base characters, much detested by the people. Flambard, or 
 Firebrand, whom the late King bad made Bishop of Durham, of all 
 things in tho world, Henry imprisoned in the Tower ; but Firebrand 
 was a great joker and a jolly companion, and made himself so popular 
 with his guards that they pretended to know nothing about a long 
 rope that was sent into his prison at the bottom of a deep flagon of 
 wine. The guards took the wine, and Firebrand took the rope ; with 
 which, when they were fast asleep, he let himself down from a window 
 in the night, and so got cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy. 
 
 Now Robort, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the throne, 
 was still absent in the Holy Land. Henry pretended that Robert 
 bad been made Sovereign of that country ; and he had been away so 
 long, that the ignorant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry 
 had been some time King of England, Robert came home to Normandy ; 
 having leisurely returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in which 
 beautiful country he had enjoyed himself very much, and had married 
 a lady as beautiful as itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand 
 waiting to urge him to assert his claim to the English crown, and 
 declare war against King Henry. Tins, after great loss of time in 
 feasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman 
 friends, he at last did. 
 
 The English in general were on King Henry's side, though many 
 of the Normans were on Robert's. But the English sailors deserted 
 the King, and took a great part of the English fleet over to Normandy ; 
 so that Robert came to invade this [country in no foreign vessels, but 
 in English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had 
 invited back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, was 
 steadfast in the King's cause ; and it was so well supported that tho 
 two armios, instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert, who 
 trusted anybody and everybody, readily trusted his brother, the King ; 
 and agreed to go home and receive a pension from England, on con- 
 dition that all his followers were fully pardoned. This the Kfng 
 very faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner gone than ho 
 began to punish them. 
 
 Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned 
 by the King to answer to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to ono 
 of his strong castles, shut himself up therein, called around him his 
 tenants and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated and 
 banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his word, that when 
 he first heard of this nobleman having risen against his brother, ho
 
 398 A Child's History of England. 
 
 laid waste the Earl of Shrewsbury's estates in Normandy, to show the 
 King that he would favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on 
 better information, afterwards, that the Earl's only crime was having 
 been his friend, he came over to England, in his old thoughtless warm- 
 hearted way, to intercede with the King, and remind him of the solemn 
 promise to pardon all his followers. 
 
 This confidence might have put the false King to the blush, but it 
 did not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded his brother 
 with spies and traps, that Eobert, who was quite in his power, had 
 nothing for it but to renounce his pension and escape while he could. 
 Getting home to Normandy, and understanding the King better now, 
 he naturally allied himself with his old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, 
 who had still thirty castles in that country. This was exactly what 
 Henry wanted. He immediately declared that Robert had broken 
 the treaty, and next year invaded Normandy. 
 
 He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their own 
 request, from his brother's misrule. There is reason to fear that his 
 misrule was bad enough ; for his beautiful wife had died, leaving him 
 with an infant son, and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and 
 ill-regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a day for 
 want of clothes to put on his attendants having stolen all his dresses. 
 But he headed his army like a brave prince and a gallant soldier, 
 though he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, 
 with four hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless 
 Edgar Atheling, who loved Robert well. Edgar was not important 
 enough to be severe with. The King afterwards gave him a small 
 pension, which he lived upon and died upon, in peace, among the 
 quiet woods and fields of England. 
 
 And Robert poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, with 
 so many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made a better 
 and a happier man what was the end of him ? If the King had had 
 the magnanimity to say with a kind air, " Brother, tell me, beforo 
 these noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithful follower 
 and friend, and never raise your hand against mo or my forces more ! " 
 lie might have trusted Robert to the death. But the King was not a 
 magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for life 
 in one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, 
 he was allowed to ride out, guarded ; but he one day broke away from 
 his guard and galloped off. He had the evil fortune to ride into a 
 swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the 
 King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was done by 
 putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes. 
 
 And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought of all 
 his past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he had 
 squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he had 
 thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine 
 autumn mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting parties
 
 Henry the First. 399 
 
 in the free Forest, where he had been the foremost and tho gayest. 
 Sometimes, in the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for tho 
 many nights that had stolen past nim at the gaming-table ; sometimes, 
 would seem to hear, upon tho melancholy wind, the old songs of tho 
 minstrels ; sometimes, would dream, in his blindness, of the light and 
 glitter of the Norman Court. Many and many a time, he groped back, 
 in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where he had fought so well ; or, at tho 
 head of his brave companions, bowed his feathered helmet to the 
 shouts of welcome greeting him in Italy, and seemed again to walk 
 among the sunny vineyards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with his 
 lovely wife. And then, thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless 
 boy, he would stretch out his solitary arms and weep. 
 
 At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel and dis- 
 figuring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his jailer's sight, but 
 on which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn old man of eighty. 
 He had once been Eobert of Normandy. Pity him ! 
 
 At the time when Eobert of Normandy was taken prisoner by his 
 brother, Eobert's little son was only five years old. This child was 
 taken, too, and carried before the King, sobbing and crying ; for, 
 young as he was, he knew he had good reason to be afraid of his 
 Eoyal uncle. The King was not much accustomed to pity those who 
 were in his power, but his cold heart seemed for the moment to 
 soften towards the boy. He was observed to make a great effort, as 
 if to prevent himself from being cruel, and ordered tho child to be 
 taken away ; whereupon a certain Baron, who had married a daughter 
 of Duke Eobert's (by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took charge of him, 
 tenderly. The King's gentleness did not last long. Before two years 
 were over, he sent messengers to this lord's Castle to seize the child 
 and bring him away. The Baron was not there at the time, but his 
 servants were faithful, and carried the boy oft' in his sleep and hid 
 him. When tho Baron came home, and was told what the King had 
 done, he took tho child abroad, and, leading him by the hand, went 
 from King to King and from Court to Court, relating how the child 
 had a claim to tho throne of England, and how his uncle the King, 
 knowing that he had that claim, would have murdered him, perhaps, 
 but for his escape. 
 
 The youth and innocence of the pretty little William Fitz-Eobkkt 
 (for that was his name) made him many friends at that time. When 
 he became a young man, tho King of France, uniting with tho French 
 Counts of Anjou and Flanders, supported his cause against tho King 
 of England, and took many of the King's towns and castles in 
 Normandy. But, King Henry, artful and cunning always, bribed 
 Rorao of William's friends with money, some with promises, some with 
 power. He bought off" tho Count of Anjou, by promising to marry 
 his eldest son, also named William, to tho Count's daughter ; and 
 indeed the whole trust of this King's lift; was in such bargains, and 
 lie believed (as many another King has done since, and as one King
 
 400 A Child's History of England. 
 
 did in France a very little time ago) that every man's truth and 
 lionour can be bought at some price. For all this, he was so afraid of 
 William Fitz-Eobert and his friends, that, for a long time, he believed 
 his life to be in danger ; and never lay down to sleep, even in his 
 palace surrounded by his guards, without having a sword and buckler 
 at his bedside. 
 
 To strengthen his power, the King with great ceremony betrothed 
 his eldest daughter Matilda, then a child only eight years old, to be 
 the wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To raise her 
 marriage-portion, he taxed the English people in a most oppressive 
 manner ; then treated them to a great procession, to restore their good 
 humour : and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the German 
 ambassadors, to be educated in the country of her future husband. 
 
 And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. It was a 
 sad thought for that gentle lady, that the only hope with which 
 she had married a man whom she had never loved the hope of 
 reconciling the Norman and English races had failed. At the very 
 time of her death, Normandy and all France was in arms against 
 England ; for, so soon as his last danger was over, King Henry had 
 been false to all the French powers ho had promised, bribed, and 
 bought, and they had naturally united against him. After some 
 fighting, however, in which few suffered but the unhappy common 
 people (who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter), he began to 
 promise, bribe, and buy again ; and by those means, and by the help 
 of the Pope, who exerted himself to save more bloodshed, and by 
 solemnly declaring, over and over again, that he really was in earnest 
 this time, and would keep his word, the King made peace. 
 
 One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the King went 
 over to Normandy with his son Prince William and a great retinue, 
 to have the Prince acknowledged as his successor by the Norman 
 Nobles, and to contract the promised marriage (this was one of the 
 many promises the King had broken) between him and the daughter 
 of the Count of Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done, 
 with great show and rejoicing ; and on the twenty-fifth of November, 
 in the year one thousand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue 
 prepared to embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home. 
 
 On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, Fitz- 
 Stephen, a sea-captain, and said : 
 
 " My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon the sea. 
 He steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in which 
 your father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant me the 
 same office. I have a fair vessel in the harbour here, called The 
 White Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, Sire, to 
 let your servant have the honour of steering you in The White Ship 
 to England ! " 
 
 " I am sorry, friend," replied the King, " that my vessel is already 
 chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail with the son of the man who
 
 Henry the First. 40 1 
 
 served my father. But the Prince and all his company shall go along 
 with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of 
 renown." 
 
 An hour or two afterwards, the King set 6ail in the vessel he had 
 chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with a 
 fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in the morn- 
 ing. While it was yet night, the people in some of those ships heard 
 a faint wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was. 
 
 Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young man of eighteen, 
 who bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he came 
 to the throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. He went 
 aboard The White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful Nobles 
 like himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the highest 
 rank. All this gay company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, 
 made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship. 
 
 " Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," said the Prince, " to the 
 fifty sailors of renown ! My father the King has sailed out of the 
 harbour. What time is there to make merry here, and yet reach 
 England with the rest ? " 
 
 " Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, " before morning, my fifty and The 
 White Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in attendance on your 
 father the King, if we sail at midnight ! " 
 
 Then, the Prince commanded to make merry ; and the sailors drank 
 out the three casks of wine ; and the Prince and all the noble company 
 danced in the moonlight on the deck of The White Ship. 
 
 When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was 
 not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the oars 
 all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay young nobles 
 and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright colours 
 to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The Prince 
 encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The 
 White Ship. 
 
 Crash ! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was 
 tho cry the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly on 
 the water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock was filling 
 going down ! 
 
 Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles. 
 ' : Push off," ho whispered ; " and row to the land. It is not far, 
 and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die." 
 
 But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince 
 heard tho voice of his sister Makie, the Countess of Perche, calling 
 for help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. Ho 
 cried in an agony, " Row back at any risk ! I cannot bear to leavo 
 her ! " 
 
 They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his 
 sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in 
 the same instant The White Ship went down. 
 
 2 n
 
 402 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of the 
 ship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. One 
 asked the other who he was? He said, "I am a nobleman, Godrey 
 by name, the son of Gilbert de l'Aigle. And you ? " said he. " I 
 am Behold, a poor butcher of Eouen," was the answer. Then, they 
 said together, " Lord be merciful to us both ! " and tried to encourage 
 one another, as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on that un- 
 fortunate November night. 
 
 By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom they 
 knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. 
 " Where is the Prince ? " said he. " Gone ! Gone ! " the two cried 
 together. " Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's 
 niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, 
 noble or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water ! " 
 Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried, " Woe ! woe, to me ! " and 
 sunk to the bottom. 
 
 The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the 
 young noble said faintly, " I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, 
 and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend ! God preserve you ! " 
 So, he dropped and sunk ; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor 
 Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen 
 saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat 
 the sole relater of the dismal tale. 
 
 For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King. 
 At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping 
 bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was 
 lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, 
 and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile. 
 
 But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought 
 again, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after 
 all his pains (" The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now ! " 
 said the English people), he took a second wife Adelais or Alice, a 
 duke's daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no more children, 
 however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise 
 as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a 
 widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, 
 surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of 
 flowering broom (called Genet in French) in his cap for a feather. 
 As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King, in 
 particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons took 
 the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her), 
 twice over, without in the least intending to keep it. The King was 
 now relieved from any remaining fears of William Fitz-Kobert, by his 
 death in the Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six years 
 old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as Matilda gave birth to three 
 sons, he thought the succession to the throne secure. 
 
 He spont most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by
 
 Matilda and Stephen. 403 
 
 family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he Lad 
 reigned upwards of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old, he 
 died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was 
 far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had often 
 been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to 
 Reading Abbey to be buried. 
 
 You may perhaps hear tho cunning and promise-breaking of King 
 Henry the First, called " policy " by some people, and " diplomacy " 
 by others. Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it 
 was true ; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good. 
 
 His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning. I 
 should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been 
 strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he 
 once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the 
 poet's eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him 
 in his verses ; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his 
 own brains against his prison wall. King Henry the First was 
 avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived 
 whose word was less to be relied upon. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 
 
 The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and schemes he had 
 laboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a 
 hollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mistrusted or 
 suspected, started up to claim the throne. 
 
 Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter, married 
 to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, tho 
 late King had been liberal ; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, 
 and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. 
 This did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, 
 a servant of the late King, to swear that the King had named him for 
 his heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence tho Archbishop of 
 Canterbury crowned him. Tho new King, so suddenly made, lost 
 not a moment in seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign 
 soldiors with somo of it to protect his throne. 
 
 If the dead King had even done as the false witness Raid, he would 
 have had small right to will away tho English people, like so many 
 sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed 
 all his territory to Matilda ; who, supported by Robert, Earl of 
 Gloucester, soon began to dispute tho crown. Some of tho powerful 
 barons and priests took her sido ; some took Stephen's ; all fortified
 
 404 A Child's History of England. 
 
 their castles ; and again the miserable English people were involved 
 in war, from which they could never derive advantage whosoever was 
 victorious, and in which all parties plundered, tortured, starved, and 
 ruined them. 
 
 . Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First and 
 during those five years there had been two terrible invasions by the 
 .people of Scotland under their King, David, who was at last defeated 
 with all his army when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and 
 a large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. A battle 
 was fought between her troops and King Stephen's at Lincoln ; in 
 which the King himself was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting 
 until his battle-axe and sword were broken, and was carried into strict 
 confinement at Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself to the 
 Priests, and the Priests crowned her Qmen of England. 
 
 She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London had a 
 great affection for Stephen ; many of the Barons considered it degrading 
 to be ruled by a woman ; and the Queen's temper was so haughty 
 that she made innumerable enemies. The people of London revolted ; 
 and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at Winchester, 
 where they took her brother Eobert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier 
 and chief general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who 
 thus regained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. Once, 
 she was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter weather 
 when the snow lay thick upon the ground, that her only chance of 
 escape was to dress herself all in white, and, accompanied by no more 
 than three faithful Knights dressed in like manner that their figures 
 might not be seen from Stephen's camp as they passed over the snow, 
 to steal away on foot, cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, 
 and at last gallop away on horseback. All this she did, but to no 
 great purpose then ; for her brother dying while the struggle was yet 
 [going on, she at last withdrew to Normandy. 
 
 In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause appeared in 
 England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, young Plantagenet, 
 who, at only eighteen years of age, was very powerful : not only on 
 account of his mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also 
 from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the French 
 King, a bad woman, who had great possessions in Franco. Louis, 
 the French King, not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, 
 King Stephen's son, to invade Normandy : but Henry drove their 
 united forces out of that country, and then returned here, to assist his 
 partisans, whom the King was then besieging at Wallingford upon 
 the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only by the river, the two 
 armies lay encamped opposite to one another on the eve, as it seemed 
 to all men, of another desperate fight, when the Earl of Aruxdel 
 took heart and said " that it was not reasonable to prolong the un- 
 speakable miseries of two kingdoms to minister to the ambition of 
 two princes."
 
 Matilda and Stephen. 405 
 
 Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when it was 
 once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down, each to his 
 own bank of the river, and held a conversation across it, in which 
 they arranged a truce ; very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, 
 who swaggered away with some followers, and laid violent hands on 
 the Abbey of St. Edmund's-Bury, where he presently died mad. The 
 truce led to a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed 
 that Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaring 
 Henry his successor ; that William, another son of the King's, should 
 inherit his father's rightful possessions ; and that all the Crown lands 
 which Stephen had given away should be recalled, and all the Castles 
 he had permitted to be built demolished. Thus terminated the bitter 
 war, which had now lasted fifteen years, and had again laid England 
 waste. In the next year Stephen died, after a troubled reign of 
 nineteen years. 
 
 Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived, a 
 humane and moderate man, with many excellent qualities ; and 
 although nothing worse is known of him than his usurpation of tho 
 Crown, which he probably excused to himself by the consideration 
 that King Henry the First was an usurper too which was no excuse 
 at all ; the people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen 
 years, than at any former period even of their suffering history. In 
 the division of the nobility between the two rival claimants of tho 
 Crown, and in the growth of what is called the Feudal System (which 
 made the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons), 
 every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel king of 
 all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated whatever 
 cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties committed upon 
 earth than in wretched England in those nineteen years. 
 
 The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. They 
 say that the castles were filled with devils rather than with men ; 
 that tho peasants, men and women, were put into dungeons for their 
 gold and silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by 
 the thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights to their 
 heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to 
 death in narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in 
 countless fiendish ways. In England thero was no corn, no meat, no 
 cheese, no butter, there were no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of 
 burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all that the traveller, fearful of 
 tho robbers who prowled abroad at all hours, would see in a long 
 day's journey ; and from sunrise until night, he would not como upon 
 a home. 
 
 The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, but 
 many of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet and 
 armour like tho barons, and drew lots with other fighting men for 
 their share of booty. Tho Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King 
 Stephen's resisting his ambition, laid England under an Interdict at
 
 4o6 A Child 's History of England. 
 
 one period of this reign ; which means that he allowed no servico to 
 be performed in the churches, no couples to be married, no bells to be 
 rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man having the power to 
 refuse these things, no matter whether he were called a Pope or a 
 Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of afflicting numbers of 
 innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the miseries of 
 King Stephen's time, the Pope threw in this contribution to the public 
 store not very like the widow's contribution, as I think, when Our 
 Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, " and she threw 
 in two mites, which make a farthing." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 england under henry the second. 
 
 Part the First. 
 
 Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one years old, quietly 
 succeeded to the throne of England, according to his agreement made 
 with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen's death, 
 he and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city ; into which 
 they rode on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst much 
 shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strewing of flowers. 
 The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The King had 
 great possessions, and (what with his own rights, and what with those 
 of his wife) was lord of one-third part of France. He was a young 
 man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and immediately applied him- 
 self to remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy 
 reign. Ho revoked all the grants of land that had been hastily made, 
 on either side, during the late struggles ; he obliged numbers of dis- 
 orderly soldiers to depart from England ; he reclaimed all the castles 
 belonging to the Crown; and he forced the wicked nobles to pull 
 down their own castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in which 
 such dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the people. The King's 
 brother, Geoffrey, rose against him in France, while he was so well 
 employed, and rendered it necessary for him to repair to that country ; 
 where, after he had subdued and made a friendly arrangement with 
 his brother (who did not live long), his ambition to increase his 
 possessions involved him in a war with the French King, Louis, with 
 whom he had been on such friendly terms just before, that to the 
 French King's infant daughter, then a baby in the cradle, lie had 
 promised one of his little sons in marriage, who was a child of five 
 yoars old. However, the war came to nothing at last, and the Pope 
 made the two Kings friends again.
 
 Henry the Second. 407 
 
 Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had gone on very 
 ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among them murderers, 
 thieves, and vagabonds; and tho worst of the matter was, that the 
 good priests would not give up the bad priests to justice, when they 
 committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and defending them. 
 The King, well knowing that tbere could be no peace or rest in 
 England while such things lasted, resolvod to reduce the power of the 
 clergy ; and, when he had reigned seven years, found (as he con- 
 sidered) a good opportunity for doing so, in the death of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. " I will have for the new Archbishop," thought 
 the King, " a friend in whom I can trust, who will help me to humble 
 these rebellious priests, and to have them dealt with, when they do 
 wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt with." So, he resolvod 
 to make his favourite, the new Archbishop ; and this favourite was so 
 extraordinary a man, and his story is so curious, that I must tell you 
 all about him. 
 
 Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert a 
 Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner 
 by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a 
 slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant ; and 
 who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing 
 to marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant 
 returned her love, until he found an opportunity to escape, when he 
 did not trouble himself about tho Saracen lady, but escaped with his 
 servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner along with him, and 
 arrived in England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more 
 loving than the merchant, left her father's house in disguise to follow 
 him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the sea-shore. Tho 
 merchant had taught her only two English words (for I suppose ho 
 must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made lovo in that 
 language), of which London was one, and his own namo, Gilbert, tho 
 other. Sho went among the ships, saying, " London ! London ! " over 
 and over again, until the sailors understood that she wanted to find an 
 English vessel that wonld carry her there ; so they showed her such 
 a ship, and she paid for her passage with some of her jewels, and 
 sailed away. Well ! The merchant was sitting in his couuting-houso 
 in London one day, when he heard a great noise in tho street ; and 
 presently Richard came running in from the warehouse, with his eyes 
 wide open and his breath almost gone, saying, " Master, master, hero 
 is the Saracen lady ! " The merchant thought Richard was mad ; but 
 Richard said, "No, master! As I live, the Saracen lady is going up 
 and down the city, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!" Then, he took tho 
 merchant by tho sleeve;, and pointed out at window ; and thcro they 
 saw her among tho gables and water-spouts of tho dark dirty street, in 
 her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering crowd, and 
 passing slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When the merchant 
 saw her, and thought of the tenderness she laid shown him in his
 
 408 A Child's History of England. 
 
 captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and ho ran down 
 into the street ; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry fainted 
 in his arms. They were married without loss of time, and Richard 
 (who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole day of the 
 wedding ; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. 
 
 This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, Thomas a 
 Becket. He it was who became the Favourite of King Henry the 
 Second. 
 
 He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of making him 
 Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well educated, brave ; had fought 
 in several battles in France ; had defeated a French knight in single 
 combat, and brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He 
 lived in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince Henry, 
 he was served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches were 
 immense. The King once sent him as his ambassador to France ; and 
 the French people, beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in 
 the streets, " How splendid must the King of England be, when this 
 is only the Chancellor ! " They had good reason to wonder at the 
 magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when he entered a French 
 town, his procession was headed by two hundred and fifty singing 
 boys ; then, came his hounds in couples ; then, eight waggons, each 
 drawn by five horses driven by five drivers : two of the waggons filled 
 with strong ale to be given away to the people ; four, with his gold 
 and silver plate and stately clothes ; two, with the dresses of his 
 numerous servants. Then, came twelve horses, each with a monkey 
 on his back ; then, a train of people bearing shields and leading fine 
 war-horses splendidly equipped ; then, falconers with hawks upon 
 their wrists ; then, a host of knights, and gentlemen and priests ; 
 then, the Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the sun, 
 and all the people capering and shouting with delight. 
 
 The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that it only made 
 himself the more magnificent to have so magnificent a favourite ; but 
 he sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon his splendour too. 
 Once, when they were riding together through the streets of London 
 in hard winter weather, they saw a shivering oia man in rags. " Look 
 at the poor object ! " said the King. " Would it not be a charitable 
 act to give that aged man a comfortable warm cloak ? " " Undoubtedly 
 it would," said Thomas a Becket, " and you do well, Sir, to think of 
 such Christian duties." " Come ! " cried the King, " then give him 
 your cloak ! " It was made of rich crimson trimmed with ermine. 
 The King tried to pull it off, the Chancellor tried to keep it on, both 
 were near rolling from their saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor 
 submitted, and the King gavo the cloak to the old beggar : much to 
 the beggar's astonishment, and much to the merriment of all the 
 courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers are not only eager to laugh 
 when the King laughs, but they really do enjoy a laugh against a 
 Favourite.
 
 Henry the Second. 409 
 
 " I will make," thought King Henry tho Second, " this Chancellor 
 of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He will then 
 be the head of the Church, and, being devoted to me, will help me to 
 correct tho Church. He has always upheld my power against tho 
 power of tho clergy, and once publicly told some bishops (I remem- 
 ber), that men of the Church were equally bound to me with men of 
 the sword. Thomas a Becket is the man, of all other men in England, 
 to help mo in my great design." So the King, regardless of all 
 objection, either that he was a fighting man, or a lavish man, or a 
 courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man for 
 the office, made bim Archbishop accordingly. 
 
 Now, Thomas a Becket was proud and loved to be famous. He was 
 already famous for the pomp of his life, for his riches, his gold and 
 silver plate, his waggons, horses, and attendants. He could do no 
 more in that way than he had done ; and being tired of that kind of 
 fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to have his name celebrated 
 for sometbing else. Nothing, he knew, would render him so famous 
 in the world, as the setting of his utmost power and ability against 
 the utmost power and ability of the King. He resolved with the 
 whole strength of his mind to do it. 
 
 He may have had some secret grudge against tho King besides. 
 The King may have offended his proud humour at some time or other, 
 for anything I know. I think it likely, because it is a common thing 
 for Kings, Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of their 
 favourites rather severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak 
 must have been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man. 
 Thomas a Becket knew better than any one in England what tho 
 King expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet 
 been in a position to disappoint the King. He could take up that 
 proud stand now, as head of the Church ; and he determined that it 
 should be written in history, either that he subdued the King, or that 
 the King subdued him. 
 
 So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner of his 
 life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank 
 bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and 
 vermin (for it was then thought very religious to be very dirty), 
 flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, 
 washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as 
 miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred 
 monkeys on horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in procession 
 with eight thousand waggons instead of eight, lie could not have half 
 astonished the people so much as by this great change. It soon caused 
 him to be more talked about as an Archbishop than he had been as a 
 Chancellor. 
 
 The King was very angry ; and was made still more so, when tho 
 new Archbishop, claiming various estates from the nobles as being 
 rightfully Church property, required the King himself, for the same
 
 410 A Child's History of England. 
 
 reason, to give up Kochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not 
 satisfied with this, he declared that no power but himself should 
 appoint a priest to any Church in the part of England over which he 
 was Archbishop ; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made such 
 an appointment, as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas a 
 Becket excommunicated him. 
 
 Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of at the 
 close of the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It consisted 
 in declaring the person who was excommunicated, an outcast from the 
 Church and from all religious offices ; and in cursing him all over, 
 from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was stand- 
 ing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, 
 jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. 
 This unchristian nonsense would of course have made no sort of 
 difference to the person cursed who could say his prayers at home if 
 he were shut out of church, and whom none but God could judge but 
 for the fears and superstitions of the people, who avoided excom- 
 municated persons, and made their lives unhappy. So, the King said 
 to the Now Archbishop, " Take off this Excommunication from this 
 gentleman of Kent." To which the Archbishop replied, " I shall do 
 no such thing." 
 
 The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed a 
 most dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole nation. 
 The King demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in 
 the same court and in the same way as any other murderer. The 
 Archbishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop's prison. The King, 
 holding a solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that in 
 future all priests found guilty before their Bishops of crimes against 
 the law of the land should bo considered priests no longer, and should 
 be delivered over to the law of the land for punishment. The Arch- 
 bishop again refused. The King required to know whether the clergy 
 would obey the ancient customs of the country ? Every priest there, 
 but one, said, after Thomas a Becket, " Saving my order." This 
 really meant that they would only obey those customs when they did 
 not interfere with their own claims ; and the King went out of the 
 Hall in great wrath. 
 
 Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they were going 
 too far. Though Thomas a Becket was otherwise as unmoved as 
 Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the sake of their 
 fears, to go to the King at Woodstock, and promise to observe the 
 ancient customs of the country, without saying anything about his 
 order. The King received this submission favourably, and summoned 
 a great council of the clergy to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by 
 Salisbury. But when the council met, the Archbishop again insisted 
 on the words " saving my order ; " and he still insisted, though lords 
 entreated him, and priests wept before him and knelt to him, and an 
 adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the
 
 Henry the Second. 411 
 
 King, to threaten him. At length ho gave way, for that time, and the 
 ancient customs (which included what the King had demanded in 
 vain) were stated in writing, and were signed and sealed by tho chief 
 of the clergy, and were called the Constitutions of Clarendon. 
 
 The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop tried to sec tho 
 King. The King would not see him. The Archbishop tried to escape 
 from England. The sailors on the coast would launch no boat to tako 
 him away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in opposition to 
 tho King, and began openly to set the ancient customs at defiance. 
 
 The King summoned him before a great council at Northampton, 
 where ho accused him of high treason, and made a claim against him, 
 which was not a just one, for an enormous sum of money. Thomas a 
 Becket was alone against tho whole assembly, and the very Bishops 
 advised him to resign his office and abandon his contest with the 
 King. His great anxiety and agitation stretched him on a sick-bed 
 for two days, but he was still undaunted. He went to the adjourned 
 council, carrying a great cross in his right hand, and sat down holding 
 it erect before him. The King angrily retired into an inner room. 
 The whole assembly angrily retired and left him there. But there ho 
 sat. The Bishops came out again in a body, and renounced him as a 
 traitor. He only said, " I hear ! " and sat there still. They retired 
 again into the inner room, and his trial proceeded without him. By- 
 and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the barons, came out to read 
 his sentence. He refused to hear it, denied the power of the court, 
 and said he would refer his cause to tho Pope. As he walked out of 
 the hall, with the cross in his hand, some of those present picked up 
 rushes rushes were strewn upon the floors in those days by way of 
 carpet and threw them at him. He proudly turned his head, and 
 said that wero he not Archbishop, he would chastise those cowards 
 with the sword he had known how to use in bygone days. Ho then 
 mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded by tho 
 common people, to whom he throw open his house that night and gavo 
 a supper, supping with them himself. That samo night he secretly 
 departed from the town ; and so, travelling by night and hiding by 
 day, and calling himself " Brother Dearman," got away, not without 
 difficulty, to Flanders. 
 
 The struggle still went on. Tho angry King took possession of tho 
 revenues of the archbishopric, and banished all the relations and 
 servants of Thomas a Becket, to the number of four hundred. Tho 
 Pope and the French King both protected him, and an abbey was 
 assigned for his residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas a 
 Becket, on a great festival day, formally proceeded to a great church 
 crowded with people, and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed 
 and excommunicated all who had supported the Constitutions of 
 Clarendon : mentioning many English noblemen by name, and not 
 distantly hinting at the King of England himself. 
 
 When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the King ia
 
 412 A Child's History of England. 
 
 his chamber, his passion was so furious that he tore his clothes, and 
 rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and rushes. But he was 
 soon up and doing. He ordered all the ports and coasts of England 
 to be narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be brought 
 into the kingdom ; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope's 
 palace at Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas a Becket, for his part, was not 
 idle at Rome, but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own 
 behalf. Thus the contest stood, until there was peace between Franco 
 and England (which had been for some time at war), and until the 
 two children of the two Kings were married in celebration of it. 
 Then, the French King brought about a meeting between Henry and 
 his old favourite, so long his enemy. 
 
 Even then, though Thomas a Becket knelt before the King, he was 
 obstinate and immovable as to those words about his order. King 
 Louis of France was weak enough in his veneration for Thomas a 
 Becket and such men, but this was a little too much for him. He 
 said that a Becket " wanted to be greater than the saints and better 
 than St. Peter," and rode away from him with the King of England. 
 His poor French Majesty asked a Becket's pardon for so doing, how- 
 ever, soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful figure. 
 
 At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There was 
 another meeting on French ground between King Henry and Thomas 
 a Beckot, and it was agreed that Thomas a Becket should be Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, according to the customs of former Arch- 
 bishops, and that the King should put him in possession of the 
 revonues of that post. And now, indeed, you might suppose the 
 struggle at an end, and Thomas a Becket at rest. No, not even yet. 
 For Thomas a Becket hearing, by some means, that King Henry, 
 when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed under an interdict, 
 had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only 
 persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had 
 performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who had 
 assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England, in spite 
 of all the King's precautions along the coast, who delivered the letters 
 of excommunication into the Bishops' own hands. Thomas a Becket 
 then came over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. 
 He was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an 
 ireful knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had threatened that he should 
 not live to eat a loaf of bread in England ; but he came. 
 
 The common people received him well, and marched about with 
 him in a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could 
 get. He tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, 
 but was prevented. He hoped for some little support among the 
 nobles and priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants 
 who attended him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canter- 
 bury, and on Christmas Day, preached in the Cathedral there, and
 
 Henry the Second. 413 
 
 told the people in his sermon that he had come to die among them, and 
 that it was likely he would be murdered. He had no fear, however 
 or, if he had any, he had much more obstinacy for he, then and 
 there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf do Broc 
 the ireful knight was one. 
 
 As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting 
 and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was 
 very natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to complain to 
 tin King. It was equally natural in the King, who had hoped that 
 thi .; troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a mighty 
 rage when he heard of these new affronts ; and, on the Archbishop of 
 York telling him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas a 
 Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his court, " Have I no ono 
 here who will deliver me from this man ? " There were four knights 
 present, who, hearing the King's words, looked at one another, and 
 went out. 
 
 The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, William 
 Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito ; three of whom had 
 been in the train of Thomas a Becket in tho old days of his splendour. 
 They rode away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the 
 third day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far 
 from Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. 
 They quietly collected some followers here, in case they should need 
 any ; and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four 
 knights and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, at 
 two o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, but sat 
 down on the floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop. 
 
 Thomas a Becket said, at length, " What do you want ? " 
 
 " We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, " the excommunication 
 taken from the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to 
 the King." 
 
 Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy 
 was ahove the power of the King. That it was not for such men as 
 they were, to threaten him. That if lie were threatened by all tho 
 swords in England, he would never yield. 
 
 " Then we will do more than threaten ! " said the knights. And 
 they went out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew 
 their shining swords, and camo back. 
 
 His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great 
 gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their 
 battle-axes ; hut, being shown a window by which they could enter, 
 they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they wero 
 battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had implored 
 him to take refuge in the Cathedral ; in which, as a sanctuary or 
 sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to do no violent 
 deed. He told them, again and again, that ho would not stir. Hear- 
 ing the dibtant voices of the monks singing the evening service.
 
 414 A Child's History of England. 
 
 however, lie said it was now Lis duty to attend, and therefore, and 
 for no other reason, he wonld go. 
 
 There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by 
 some beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into 
 the Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried before 
 him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would have 
 fastened the door, but he said No ! it was the house of God and not a 
 fortress. 
 
 As he spoke, the shadow of Eeginald Fitzurse appeared in the 
 Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on 
 the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice, " Follow 
 me, loyal servants of the King ! " The rattle of the armour of the 
 other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in. 
 
 It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars of 
 the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt below 
 and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas a Becket might even 
 at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he would not. He 
 told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though they all 
 dispersed and left him there with no other follower than Edward 
 Gryme, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he had 
 been in his life. 
 
 The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible 
 noise with their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the church. 
 " Where is the traitor ? " they cried out. He made no answer. But 
 when they cried, " Where is the Archbishop ? " he said proudly, " I 
 am here ! " and came out of the shade and stood before them. 
 
 The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King 
 and themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must 
 either fly or go with them. He said he would do neither ; and he 
 threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his 
 sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, 
 he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce humour, that Reginald 
 Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name, said, " Then die ! " and 
 struck at his head. But the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, 
 and there received the main force of the blow, so that it only made 
 his master bleed. Another voice from among the knights again called 
 to Thomas a Becket to fly; but, with his blood running down his 
 face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent, he commended himself 
 to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed him close to the 
 altar of St. Bonnet ; and his body fell upon the pavement, which was 
 dirtied with his blood and brains. 
 
 It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so 
 showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church, where 
 a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of darkness ; 
 and to think of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking 
 over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remembering what 
 they had left inside.
 
 tienry the Second. 415 
 
 Part the Second. 
 
 When* tho King heard how Thomas a, Bcckct had lost his life in 
 Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of tho four Knights, he 
 was filled with dismay. Some have supposed that when the King 
 spoko those hasty words, " Have I no one here who will deliver me 
 from this man ? " ho wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. But 
 few things aro more unlikely ; for, besides that the King was not 
 naturally cruel (though very passionate), he was wise, and must have 
 known full well what any stupid man in his dominions must havo 
 known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the 
 whole Church against him. 
 
 He sent respectful messengers to the Popo, to represent his innocenco 
 (except in having uttered the hasty words) ; and he swore solemnly 
 and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to make his 
 peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and 
 never again dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope excom- 
 municated them ; and they lived miserably for some time, shunned 
 by all their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as 
 a penance, and there died and were buried. 
 
 It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an 
 opportunity arose very soon after the murder of a Becket, for the 
 King to declare his power in Ireland which was an acceptable under- 
 taking to the Pope, as tho Irish, who had been converted to Christianity 
 by ono Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago, before any Pope 
 existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at all to do with them, 
 or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay him Peter's 
 Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I have elsewhero 
 mentioned. The King's opportunity arose in this way. 
 
 The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can well 
 imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting 
 one another's throats, slicing one another's noses, burning one another's 
 houses, carrying away one another's wives, and committing all sorts 
 of violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms Desmond, 
 Thomond, Connaught, Ulster, and Leinsteu each governed by a 
 separate King, of whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, 
 one of these Kings, named Dermoxd Mac Murrough (a wild kind of 
 name, spelt in more than ono wild kind of way), had carried off the 
 wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island in a bog. Tho 
 friend resenting this (though it was quite tho custom of the country), 
 complained to the chief King, and, with the chief King's help, drovo 
 Derrnond Mac Murrough out of his dominions. Dermond came over 
 to England for revenge; and offered to hold his realm as a vassal of 
 King Henry, if King Henry would help him to regain it. The King 
 consented to these terms ; but only assisted him, then, with what 
 were called Letters Patent, authorising any English subjects who 
 wero so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his cause.
 
 41 6 A Child's History of England. 
 
 There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Eichard de Clare, called 
 Strongbow ; of no very good character ; needy and desperate, and 
 ready for anything that offered him a chance of improving his 
 fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of 
 the same good-for-nothing sort, called Eobert Fitz-Stephen, and 
 Maurice Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with a small band of 
 followers, took up Dermond's cause ; and it was agreed that if it 
 proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's daughter Eva, 
 and be declared his heir. 
 
 The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in 
 all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them against 
 immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they 
 cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac Murrough ; 
 who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming 
 to one which was the head of a man whom he had much disliked, 
 grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his 
 teeth. You may judge from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish 
 King in those times was. The captives, all through this war, were 
 horribly treated ; the victorious party making nothing of breaking 
 their limbs, and casting them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. 
 It was in the midst of the miseries and cruelties attendant on tho 
 taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the streets, and the 
 filthy gutters ran with blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An 
 odious marriage-company those mounds of corpses must have made, I 
 think, and one quite worthy of the young lady's father. 
 
 He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various 
 successes achieved ; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now 
 came King Henry's opportunity. To restrain the growing power of 
 Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Boyal 
 Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the 
 enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in 
 Dublin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, 
 and so came home again with a great addition to his reputation as Lord 
 of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favour of the Pope. And 
 now, their reconciliation was completed more easily and mildly by 
 the Pope, than the King might have expected, I think. 
 
 At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and 
 his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which gradually 
 made the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great spirit, 
 wore away his health, and broke his heart. 
 
 He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen his secret crowning 
 of whom had given such offence to Thomas a Becket ; Eichard, aged 
 sixteen ; Geoffrey, fifteen ; and John, his favourite, a young boy 
 whom the courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inheritance, 
 but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All 
 these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and 
 unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the
 
 Henry the Second. 417 
 
 French King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the un- 
 dutiful history. 
 
 First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the French 
 King's daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the 
 Kiug, conseuted, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he 
 demanded to have a part of his father's dominions, during his father's 
 life. This being refused, he made off from his father in the night, 
 with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French 
 King's Court. Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and 
 Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them escaping in 
 man's clothes but she was seized by King Henry's men, and 
 immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. 
 Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom the 
 King's protection of his people from their avarice and oppression had 
 given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day he 
 heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against 
 him ; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his own ambassadors 
 at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England ; 
 of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father, 
 without the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But, with 
 his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of theso 
 disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon all Royal 
 fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs ; he hired, 
 out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, 
 who stirred his own blood against him ; and he carried on the war with 
 such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for peace. 
 
 The conference was held beneath an old wide-speading green elm- 
 tree, upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war recom- 
 menced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by leading an 
 army against his father ; but his father beat him and his army back ; 
 and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which they 
 fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King received news of an 
 invasion of England by tho Scots, and promptly come home through 
 a great storm to repress it. And whether he really began to fear 
 that he suffered these troubles because a Becket had been murdered ; 
 or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope, who had now 
 declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own people, of 
 whom many believed that even a Becket's senseless tomb could work 
 miracles, I don't know : but the King no sooner landed in England 
 than he went straight to Canterbury ; and when he came within sight 
 of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, took off his 
 shoes, and walked witli hare and bleeding feet to a Becket's grave. 
 There, he lay down on the ground, lamenting, in the presence of many 
 people; and by-aud-by he went into the Chapter House, and, remov- 
 ing his clothes from his hack and shoulders, submitted himself to bo 
 beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) 
 by eighty Priests, one after another. It chanced that on the very day 
 
 2 c
 
 41 8 A Child's History of England. 
 
 when the King made this curious exhibition of himself, a complete 
 victory was obtained over the Scots ; which very much delighted the 
 Priests, who said that it was won because of his great example of 
 repentance. For the Priests in general had found out, since a 
 Becket's death, that they admired him of all things though they had 
 hated him very cordially when he was alive. 
 
 The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base conspiracy 
 of the King's undutiful sons and their foreign friends, took the 
 opportunity of the King being thus employed at home, to lay siege to 
 Bouen, the capital of Normandy. But the King, who was extra- 
 ordinarily quick and active in all his movements, was at Eouen, too, 
 before it was supposed possible that he could have left England ; and 
 there he so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, that the conspirators 
 proposed peace, and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. 
 Bichard resisted for six weeks ; but, being beaten out of castle after 
 castle, he at last submitted too, and his father forgave him. 
 
 To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford them breath- 
 ing-time for new faithlessness. They were so false, disloyal, and 
 dishonourable, that they were no more to be trusted than common 
 thieves. In the very next year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was 
 again forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Bichard rebelled against 
 his elder brother ; and Prince Geoffrey infamously said that the 
 brothers could never agree well together, unless they were united 
 against their father. In the very next year after their reconciliation 
 by the King, Prince Henry again rebelled against his father ; and 
 again submitted, swearing to be true ; and was again forgiven ; and 
 again rebelled with Geoffrey. 
 
 But the end of this perfidious Prince was come. He fell sick at a 
 French town ; and his conscience terribly reproaching him with his 
 baseness, he sent messengers to the King his father, imploring him to 
 come and see him, and to forgive him for the last time on his bed of 
 death. The generous King, who had a royal and forgiving mind 
 towards his children always, would have gone ; but this Prince had 
 been so unnatural, that the noblemen about the King suspected 
 treachery, and represented to him that he could not safely trust his 
 life with such a traitor, though his own eldest son. Therefore the 
 King sent him a ring from off his finger as a token of forgiveness ; 
 and when the Prince had kissed it, with much grief and many tears, 
 and had confessed to those around him how bad, and wicked, and 
 undutiful a son he had been ; he said to the attendant Priests : " O, tie 
 a rope about my body, and draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon 
 a bed of ashes, that I may die with prayers to God in a repentant 
 manner ! " And so he died, at twenty-seven years old. 
 
 Threo years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey, being unhorsed at a 
 tournament, had his brains trampled out by a crowd of horses passing 
 over him. So, there only remained Prince Bichard, and Prince John 
 who had grown to be a young man now, and had solemnly sworn to
 
 Henry the Second. 4*0 
 
 be faithful to bis father. Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by 
 his friend the French King, Philip the Second (son of Louis, who 
 was dead) ; and soon submitted and was again forgiven, swearing on 
 the New Testament never to rebel again ; and in another year or so, 
 rebelled again ; and, in the presence of his father, knelt down on his 
 knee before the King of France ; and did the French King homage ; 
 and declared that with his aid he would possess himself, by force, of 
 all his father's French dominions. 
 
 And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of Our Saviour! 
 And yet this Richard wore the Cross, which the Kings of France and 
 England had both taken, in the previous year, at a brotherly meeting 
 underneath the old wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain, when they 
 had sworn (like him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, for the 
 love and honour of the Truth ! 
 
 Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, and almost 
 ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King who had so lung stood 
 firm, began to fail. But the Pope, to his honour, supported him ; and 
 obliged the French King and Richard, though successful in fight, to 
 treat for peace. Richard wanted to be crowned King of England, 
 and pretended that he wanted to be married (which he really did not) 
 to the French King's sister, his promised wife, whom King Henry 
 detained in England. King Henry wanted, on the other hand, that 
 the French King's sister should be married to his favourite son, 
 John : the only one of his sons (he said) who had never rebelled 
 against him. At last King Henry, deserted by his nobles one by one, 
 distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted, consented to establish peace. 
 
 One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him, even yet. When they 
 brought him the proposed treaty of peace, in writing, as he lay very 
 ill in bed, they brought him also the list of the deserters from their 
 allegiance, whom he was required to pardon. The first name upon 
 this list was John, his favourite son, in whom he had trusted to the last. 
 
 " O John ! child of my heart ! " exclaimed the King, in a great 
 agony of mind. " John, whom I have loved the best ! O John, for 
 whom I have contended through these many troubles ! Have you 
 betrayed me too ! " And thon he lay down with a heavy groan, and 
 said, " Now let tho world go as it will. I care for nothing more ! " 
 
 After a time, he told his attendants to take him to the French town 
 of Chinon a town he had been fond of, during many years. But ho 
 was fond of no place now ; it was too true that he could care for 
 nothing more upon this earth. He wildly cursed the hour when he 
 was born, and cursed the children whom ho left behind him ; and 
 expired. 
 
 As, one hundred years before, the servile followers of the Court had 
 abandoned the Conqueror in tho hour of his death, so they now 
 abandoned his descendant. Tho very body was stripped, in the 
 plunder of the Royal chamber ; and it was not easy to find tho means 
 of carrying it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud.
 
 420 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Eichard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to have the 
 heart of a Lion. It would have been far better, I think, to have had 
 the heai't of a Man. His heart, whatever it was, had cause to beat 
 remorsefully within his breast, when he came as he did into the 
 solomn abbey, and looked on his dead father's uncovered face. His 
 heart, whatever it was, had been a black and perjured heart in all its 
 dealings with the deceased King, and more deficient in a single touch 
 of tenderness than any wild beast's in the forest. 
 
 There is a pretty story told of this Eeign, called the story of Fair 
 Rosamond. It relates how the King doted on Fair Rosamond, who was 
 the loveliest girl in all the world ; and how he had a beautiful Bower 
 built for her in a Park at Woodstock ; and how it was erected in a 
 labyrinth, and could only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad 
 Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the 
 secret of the clue, and one day appeared before her, with a dagger 
 and a cup of poison, and left her to the choice between those deaths. 
 How Fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and offering 
 many useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took the poison, and fell 
 dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds 
 sang gaily all around her. 
 
 Now, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare say) the 
 loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was certainly very fond 
 of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous. But 
 I am afraid I say afraid, because I like the story so much that 
 there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no 
 poison. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, 
 and died there, peaceably ; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery 
 over her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of 
 the youth and beauty that had enchanted the King when he too was 
 young, and when his life lay fair before him. 
 
 It was dark and ended now ; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet 
 lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year 
 of his age never to be completed after governing England well, for 
 nearly thirty-five years. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART. 
 
 In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine, 
 Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry 
 the Second, whoso paternal heart he had done so mucli to break. He 
 had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood ; but, the moment 
 he became a king against whom others might rebel, he found out that
 
 Richard tJie First. 421 
 
 rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, 
 he punished all the leading people who had befriended him against 
 his fathor. He could scarcely have done anything that would havo 
 been a better instance of his real nature, or a better warning to 
 fawners and parasites not to trust in lion-hearted princes. 
 
 He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, and locked 
 him up in a dungeon from which he was not set free until ho had 
 relinquished, not only all the Crown treasure, but all his own money 
 too. So, Richard certainly got the Lion's share of the wealth of this 
 wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion's heart or not. 
 
 He was crowned King of England, with great pomp, at Westminster : 
 walking to the Cathedral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops 
 of four lances, each carried by a great lord. On the day of his 
 coronation, a dreadful murdering of the Jews took place, which seems 
 to have given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling 
 themselves Christians. The King had issued a proclamation for- 
 bidding the Jews (who were genorally hated, though they were the 
 most useful merchants in England) to appear at the ceremony ; but 
 as they had assembled in London from all parts, bringing presents to 
 show their respect for the new Sovereign, some of them ventured 
 down to Westminster Hall with their gifts ; which were very readily 
 accepted. It is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in the crowd, 
 pretending to be a very delicate Christian, set up a howl at this, and 
 struck a Jew who was trying to get in at the Hall door with his 
 present. A riot arose. The Jews who had got into the Hall, wcro 
 driven forth ; and some of the rabble cried out that the new King had 
 commanded the unbelieving race to be put to death. Thereupon the 
 crowd rushed through the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering all 
 the Jews they met ; and when they could find no more out of doors 
 (on account of their having fled to their houses, and fastened them- 
 selves in), they ran madly about, breaking open all the houses where 
 the Jews lived, rushing in and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes 
 even flinging old people and children out of window into blazing fires 
 they had lighted up below. This great cruelty lasted four-and- 
 twenty hours, and only three men were punished for it. Even they 
 forfeited their lives not for murdering and robbing the Jews, but for 
 burning the houses of some Christians. 
 
 King Richard, who was a strong restless burly man, with ono idea 
 always in his head, and that the very troublesome idea of breaking 
 the heads of other men, was mightily impatient to go on a Crusade to 
 the Holy Land, with a great army. As great armies could not be 
 raised to #0, even to the Holy Land, without a great deal of money, 
 he sold the Crown domains, and even the high offices of State ; reck- 
 lessly appointing noblemen to rule over his English subjects, n< t 
 because they were fit to govern, but because they could pay high for 
 the privilege. In this way, and by selling pardons at a dear rate, and 
 by varieties of avarice aud oppression, he scraped together a largo
 
 422 A Child's History of England. 
 
 treasure. He then appointed two Bishops to take care of his kingdom 
 in his absence, and gave great powers and possessions to his brother 
 John, to secure his friendship. John would rather have been made 
 Regent of England ; but he was a sly man, and friendly to the ex- 
 pedition ; saying to himself, no doubt, " The more fighting, the more 
 chance of my brother being killed ; and when he is killed, then I 
 become King John ! " 
 
 Before the newly levied army departed from England, the recruits 
 and the general populace distinguished themselves by astonishing 
 cruelties on the unfortunate Jews : whom, in many large towns, they 
 murdered by hundreds in the most horrible manner. 
 
 At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the Castle, in the 
 absence of its Governor, after the wives and children of many of them 
 had been slain before their eyes. Presently came the Governor, and 
 demanded admission. " How can we give it thee, Governor ! " said 
 the Jews upon the walls, " when, if we open the gate by so much as 
 the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will press in and 
 kill us?" 
 
 Upon this, the unjust Governor became angry, and told the people 
 that he approved of their killing those Jews ; and a mischievous 
 maniac of a friar, dressed all in white, put himself at the head of the 
 assault, and they assaulted the Castle for three days. 
 
 Then said Jocen, the head-Jew (who was a Rabbi or Priest), to the 
 rest, " Brethren, there is no hope for us with the Christians who are 
 hammering at the gates and walls, and who must soon break in. As 
 we and our wives and children must die, either by Christian hands, 
 or by our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire what 
 jewels and other treasure we have here, then fire the castle, and then 
 perish ! " 
 
 A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part complied. 
 They made a blazing heap of all their valuables, and, when those 
 were consumed, set the castle in flames. While the flames roared and 
 crackled around them, and shooting up into the sky, turned it blood- 
 red, Jocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed himself. 
 All the others who had wives or children, did the like dreadful deed. 
 When the populace broke in, they found (except the trembling few, 
 cowering in corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps of greasy 
 cinders, with here and there something like part of the blackened 
 trunk of a burnt tree, but -which had lately been a human creature, 
 formed by the beneficent hand of the Creator as they were. 
 
 After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went on, in no 
 very good manner, with the Holy Crusade. It was undertaken jointly 
 by the King of England and his old friend Philip of France. They 
 commenced the business by reviewing their forces, to the number of 
 one hundred thousand men. Afterwards, they severally embarked 
 their troops for Messina, in Sicily, which was appointed as the next 
 place of meeting,
 
 Richard tJic First. 423 
 
 King Richard's sister Lad married the King of tins place, but be 
 was dead : and his undo Tancred had usurped the crown, cast the 
 Royal Widow into prison, and possessed himself of her estates. 
 Richard fiercoly demanded his sister's release, the restoration of her 
 lands, and (according to the Royal custom of the Island) that sho 
 should have a golden chair, a golden table, four-and-twenty silver 
 cups, and four-and-twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to 
 be successfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands ; and then 
 the French King grew jealous, and complained that the English King 
 wanted to be absolute in the Island of Messina and everywhere else. 
 Richard, however, cared little or nothing for this complaint ; and in 
 consideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised 
 his pretty little nephow Arthur, then a child of two years old, in 
 marriage to Tancred's daughter. We shall hear again of pretty little 
 Arthur by-aud-by. 
 
 This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains being knocked 
 out (which must have rather disappointed him), King Richard took 
 his sister away, and also a fair lady named Berengaria, with whom 
 ho had fallen in love in Franco, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor 
 (so long in prison, you remember, but released by Richard on his 
 coming to the Throne), had brought out there to be his wifo ; and 
 sailed with them for Cyprus. 
 
 He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the Island of 
 Cyprus, for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the English 
 troops w r ho were shipwrecked on the shore ; and easily conquering 
 this poor monarch, he seized his only daughter, to be a companion to 
 the lady Berengaria, and put the King himself into silver fetters. 
 He then sailed away again with his mother, sister, wife, and tho 
 captive princess ; and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which 
 the French King with his fleet was besieging from tho sea. But tho 
 French King was in no triumphant condition, for his army had been 
 thinned by the swords of tho Saracens, and wasted by the plague ; 
 and Saladin, the brave Sultan of the Turks, at the head of a numerous 
 army, was at that time gallantly defending tho place from the hills 
 that rise above it. 
 
 Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few 
 points except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling, in a most unholy 
 manner ; in debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether 
 they were friends or foes ; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into 
 quiet places. The French King was jealous of the English King, and 
 the English King was jealous of the French King, and the disorderly 
 and violent soldiers of tho two nations were jealous of ono another ; 
 consequently, the two Kings could not at first agree, even upon a 
 joint assault on Acre ; but when they did make up their quarrel for 
 that purpose, the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up to 
 the Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liherty all their 
 Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of gold.
 
 424 A Child's History of England. 
 
 All this was to be clone within forty days ; but, not being done, King 
 Eichard ordered some three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought 
 out in the front of his camp, and there, in full view of their own 
 countrymen, to be butchered. 
 
 The French King had no part in this crime ; for he was by that 
 time travelling homeward with the greater part of his men ; being 
 offended by the overbearing conduct of the English King ; being 
 anxious to look after his own dominions ; and being ill, besides, from 
 the unwholesome air of that hot and sandy country. King Eichard 
 carried on the war without him ; and remained in the East, meeting 
 with a variety of adventures, nearly a year and a half. Every night 
 when his army was on the march, and came to a halt, the heralds 
 cried out three times, to remind all the soldiers of the cause in which 
 they were engaged, " Save the Holy Sepulchre ! " and then all the 
 soldiers knelt and said " Amen ! " Marching or encamping, the army 
 had continually to strive with the hot air of the glaring desert, or 
 with the Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the brave Saladin, 
 or with both together. Sickness and death, battle and wounds, were 
 always among them ; but through every difficulty King Eichard 
 fought like a giant, and worked like a common labourer. Long and 
 long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with 
 twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty head, was a 
 legend among the Saracens ; and when all the Saracen and Christian 
 hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse started at 
 any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, " What dost thou 
 fear, Fool ? Dost thou think King Eichard is behind it ? " 
 
 No one admired this King's renown for bravery more than Saladin 
 himself, who was a generous and gallant enemy. When Eichard lay 
 ill of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits from Damascus, and snow 
 from the mountain-tops. Courtly messages and compliments were 
 frequently exchanged between them and then King Eichard would 
 mount his horse and kill as many Saracens as he could ; and Saladin 
 would mount his, and kill as many Christians as he could. In this 
 way King Eichard fought to his heart's content at Arsoof and at 
 Jaffa ; and finding himself with nothing exciting to do at Ascalon, 
 except to rebuild, for his own defence, some fortifications there which 
 the Saracens had destroyed, he kicked his ally the Duke of Austria, 
 for being too proud to work at them. 
 
 The army at last came within sight of the Holy City of Jerusalem ; 
 but, being then a mere nest of jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting, 
 soon retired, and agreed with the Saracens upon a truce for three 
 years, three months, three days, and three hours. Then, the English 
 Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge, 
 visited Our Saviour's tomb ; and then King Eichard embarked with 
 a small force at Acre to return home. 
 
 But lie was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was fain to pass 
 through Germany, under an assumed name. Now, there were many
 
 Richard tJic First. 425 
 
 people iu Germany who had served in the Holy Land under that 
 proud Duke of Austria who had heen kicked ; and some of them, 
 easily recognising a man so remarkable as King Richard, carried 
 their intelligence to the kicked Duke, who straightway took him 
 prisoner at a little inn near Vienna. 
 
 The Duke's master the Emperor of Germany, and the King of 
 France, were equally delighted to have so troublesome a monarch in 
 safe keeping. Friendships which are founded on a partnership in 
 doing wrong, are never true : and the King of Franco was now quite 
 as heartily King Richard's foe, as he had ever been his friend in his 
 unnatural conduct to his father. He monstrously pretended that 
 King Richard had designed to poison him in the East ; he charged 
 him with having murdered, there, a man whom he had in truth 
 befriended ; he bribed the Emperor of Germany to keep him closo 
 prisoner ; and, finally, through the plotting of these two princes, 
 Richard was brought before the German legislature, charged with tho 
 foregoing crimes, and many others. But he defended himself 60 well, 
 that many of the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence and 
 earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated, during the rest 
 of his captivity, in a manner more becoming his dignity than he had 
 been, and that he should be set free on the payment of a heavy 
 ransom. This ransom tho English people willingly raised. When 
 Queen Eleanor took it over to Germany, it was at first evaded and 
 refused. But she appealed to the honour of all the princes of tho 
 German Empire in behalf of her son, and apjiealed so well that it was 
 accepted, and the King released. Thereupon, the King of Franco 
 wrote to Prince John " Take care of thyself. The devil is un- 
 chained ! " 
 
 Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for he had been a 
 traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly joined the French 
 King ; had vowed to the English nobles and people that his brother 
 was dead ; and had vainly tried to seize tho crown. He was' now in 
 France, at a place called Evreux. Being the meanest and basest of 
 men, he contrived a mean and base expedient for making himself 
 acceptable to his brother. He invited the French officers of tho 
 garrison in that town to dinner, murdered them all, and then took tho 
 fortress. With this recommendation to the good will of a lion-hearted 
 monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on his knees beforo him, 
 and obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor. " I forgive him," 
 said tho King, " and I hopo I may forget the injury he has done mo, 
 as easily as I know lie will forget my pardon." 
 
 While King Richard was in Sicily, there been trouble in his 
 dominions at home : one of the bishops whom he bad left in charge 
 thereof, arresting the other ; and making, in his pride and ambition, 
 as great a show as if be were King himself. But the King hearing of 
 it at Messina, and appointing a new Regency, this Longciiami' (for 
 that was bis name) had tied to Franco in a woman's dress, and had.
 
 426 A Child's History of England. 
 
 there been encouraged and supported by the French King. With all 
 these causes of offence against Philip in his mind, King Richard had 
 no sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects with great 
 display and splendour, and had no sooner been crowned afresh at 
 Winchester, than he resolved to show the French King that the Devil 
 was unchained indeed, and mado war against him with great fury. 
 
 There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out of the 
 discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far 
 more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion 
 in William Fitz-Osbert, called Long beard. He became the leader 
 of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men ; he was seized by 
 surprise ; he stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him ; and 
 retreated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he maintained four 
 days, until he was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he 
 came out. He was not killed, though ; for he was dragged, half dead, 
 at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was 
 long a favourite remedy for silencing the people's advocates ; but as 
 wo go on with this history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to 
 make an end of, for all that. 
 
 The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was still in 
 progress when a certain Lord named Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, 
 chanced to find in his ground a treasure of ancient coins. As the 
 King's vassal, he sent the King half of it ; but the King claimed the 
 whole. The lord refused to yield the whole. The King besieged 
 the lord in his castle, swore that he would take the castle by storm, 
 and hang every man of its defenders on the battlements. 
 
 There was a strange old song in that part of the country, to the 
 effect that in Limoges an arrow would be made by which King 
 Richard would die. It may be that Bertrand de Gourdon, a young 
 man who was one of the defenders of the castle, had often sung it or 
 heard it sung of a winter night, and remembered it when he saw, from 
 his post upon the ramparts, the King attended only by his chief officer 
 riding below the walls surveying the place. He drew an arrow to 
 the head, took steady aim, said between his teeth, " Now I pray God 
 speed thee well, arrow ! " discharged it, and struck the King in the 
 left shoulder. 
 
 Although the wound was not at first considered dangerous, it was 
 severe enough to cause the King to retire to his tent, and direct the 
 assanlt to be made without him. The castle was taken ; and every 
 man of its defenders was hanged, as the King had sworn all should 
 be, except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until the royal 
 pleasure respecting him should be known. 
 
 By that time unskilful treatment had made the wound mortal, and 
 the King knew that he was dying. He directed Bertrand to be 
 brought into his tent. The young man was brought there, heavily 
 chained, King Richard looked at him steadily. He looked, as 
 steadily, at the King.
 
 John. 427 
 
 " Knave ! " said King Richard. " What have I done to thee that 
 thou shouldest take my life ? " 
 
 " What hast thou done to me ? " replied the young man. " With 
 thine own hands thou hast killed my father and my two brothers. 
 Myself thou wouldest have hanged. Let me die now, by any torture 
 that thou wilt. My comfort is, that no torture can save Thee. Thou 
 too must die ; and, through me, the world is quit of thee ! " 
 
 Again the King looked at tho yotmg man steadily. Again the 
 young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps some remembrance of 
 his generous enemy Saladin, who was not a Christian, came into tho 
 mind of the dying King. 
 
 " Youth ! " he said, " I forgive thee. Go unhurt ! " 
 
 Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding in his com- 
 pany when he received the wound, King Richard said : 
 
 " Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him 
 depart." 
 
 He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his 
 weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein ho had so often rested, and he 
 died. His age was forty-two; he had reigned ten years. His last 
 command was not obeyed ; for the chief officer flayed Bertrand do 
 Gourdon alive, and hanged him. 
 
 There is an old tune yet known a sorrowful air will sometimes 
 outlive many generations of strong men, and even last longer than 
 battle-axes with twenty pounds of steel in the head by which this 
 King is said to have been discovered in his captivity. Blondel, a 
 favourite Minstrel of King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully 
 seeking his Royal master, went singing it outside the gloomy walls of 
 many foreign fortressos and prisons ; until at last he heard it echoed 
 from within a dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, 
 " Richard, O my King ! " You may bolieve it, if you like ; it 
 would be easy to believe worse things. Richard was himself a 
 Minstrel and a Poet. If ho had not been a Princo too, he might havo 
 been a better man perhaps, and might have gone out of tho world with 
 less bloodshed and waste of lifo to answer for. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND. 
 
 At two-and-tliirty years of age, John becamo King of England. I lis 
 pretty little nephew Akttiuk had the best claim to tho throne ; but 
 John seized tho treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and 
 got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his 
 brother Richard's death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly
 
 428 A Child's History of England. 
 
 have been put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable 
 villain, if England had been searched from end to end to find bim 
 out. 
 
 The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John 
 to his new dignity, and declared in favour of Arthur. You must not 
 suppose that he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy ; 
 it merely suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. 
 So John and the French King went to war about Arthur. 
 
 He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old. He 
 was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at 
 the tournament ; and, besides the misfortune of never having known 
 a father's guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to 
 have a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to her 
 third husband. She took Arthur, upon John's accession, to the 
 French King, who pretended to be very much his friend, and who 
 made him a Knight, and promised him his daughter in marriage ; but, 
 who cared so little about him in reality, that finding it his interest to 
 make peace with King John for a time, he did so without the least 
 consideration for the poor little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all 
 his interests. 
 
 Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly ; and in the 
 course of that time his mother died. But, the French King then 
 finding it his interest to quarrel with King John again, again made 
 Arthur his pretence, and invited the orphan boy to court. " You know 
 your rights, Prince," said the French King, " and you would like to 
 be a King. Is it not so ? " " Truly," said Prince Arthur, " I should 
 greatly like to be a King ! " t; Then," said Philip, " you shall have 
 two hundred gentlemen who are Knights of mine, and with them you 
 shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which your 
 uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken possession. I myself, 
 meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy." Poor 
 Arthur was so flattered and so grateful that ho signed a treaty with 
 the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, 
 and that the French King should keep for himself whatever he could 
 take from King John. 
 
 Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so 
 perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a 
 lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent 
 and flushed with hope ; and, when the people of Brittany (which was 
 his inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five thousand 
 foot soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of 
 Brittany had boen fond of him from his birth, and had requested that 
 he might be called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly-famous 
 English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book, whom they 
 believed to have been the brave friend and companion of an old King 
 of their own. They had tales among them about a prophet called 
 Merlin (of the same old time), who had foretold that their own King
 
 John. 420 
 
 should be restored to them after hundreds of years ; and they believed 
 that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur ; that the time would 
 come when he would rulo them with a crown of Brittany upon his 
 head ; and when neither King of France nor King of England would 
 have any power over them. When Arthur found himself riding in a 
 glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned horse, at the head of 
 his train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe this too, and to 
 consider old Merlin a very superior prophet. 
 
 He did not know how could he, being so innocent aud inex- 
 perienced? that his little army was a mere nothing against the 
 power of the King of England. The French King knew it ; but tho 
 poor boy's fate was little to him, so that the King of England was 
 worried and distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into 
 Normandy, and Prince Arthur went his way towards Mircbeau, a 
 French town near Poictiers, both very well pleased. 
 
 Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his 
 grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appearance in this 
 history (and who had always been his mother's enemy), was living 
 there, and because his Knights said, " Prince, if you can take her 
 prisoner, you will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms ! " 
 Put she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time 
 eighty but she was as full of stratagem as she was full of years 
 and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur's approach, 
 she shut herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to 
 defend it like men. Prince Arthur with his little army besieged 
 the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came up 
 to the rescue, with his army. So here was a strange family-party! 
 Tho boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle besieging 
 him ! 
 
 This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night King 
 John, by treachery, got his men into tho town, surprised Prince 
 Arthur's force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the Prince 
 himself in his bed. The Knights were put in heavy irons, and driven 
 away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons where they 
 were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them were starved 
 to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise. 
 
 One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking 
 it strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and looking 
 out of tho small window in the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and 
 the birds, the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King 
 standing in the shadow of the archway, looking very grim. 
 
 " Arthur," said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone 
 floor than on his nephew, " will you not trust to the gentleness, the 
 friendship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle ? " 
 
 4i I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, " when he does 
 me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then 
 come to me and ask the question."
 
 430 A Child's History of England. 
 
 The King looked at him and went out. " Keep that boy close 
 prisoner," said he to the warden of the castle. 
 
 Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles 
 how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, " Put out his eyes 
 and keep him in prison, as Robert of Normandy was kept." Others 
 said, "Have him stabbed." Others, "Have him hanged." Others, 
 " Have him poisoned." 
 
 King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done afterwards, 
 it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes 
 burnt out that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes 
 were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to 
 blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically en- 
 treated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert 
 de Bourg (or Burgh), the warden of the castle, who had a love for 
 him, and was an honourable tender man, that Hubert could not bear 
 it. To his eternal honour he prevented the torture from being per- 
 formed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away. 
 
 The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing 
 suggestion next, and, with his shuffling manner and his cruel face, 
 proposed it to one William de Bray. " I am a gentleman and not an 
 executioner," said William de Bray, and left the presence with disdain. 
 
 But it was not difficult for a King to hire a murderer in those days. 
 King John found one for his money, and sent him down to the castle 
 of Falaise. " On what errand dost thou come ? " said Hubert to this 
 fellow. " To despatch young Arthur," he returned. " Go back to 
 him who sent thee," answered Hubert, " and say that I will do it ! " 
 
 King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but 
 that he courageously sent this reply to save the Prince or gain time, 
 despatched messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle of 
 Rouen. 
 
 Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert of whom he had 
 never stood in greater need than then carried away by night, and 
 lodged in his new prison : where, through his grated window, he 
 could hear the deep waters of the river Seine, rippling against the 
 stone wall below. 
 
 One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of rescue by 
 those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely suffering and dying 
 in his cause, he was roused, and bidden by his jailer to come down the 
 staircase to tho foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and 
 obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and 
 the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod 
 upon his torch and put it out. Then, Arthur, in the darkness, was 
 hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat. And in that boat, he found his 
 uncle and one other man. 
 
 He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to 
 his entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk his body in the river with 
 heavy stones. When the spring-morning broke, the tower-door was
 
 
 
 AUTIIUK AM) HIBEKT.
 
 John. 431 
 
 closed, the boat was gone, tlie river sparkled on its way, aud never 
 more was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes. 
 
 The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England, 
 awakened a hatred of the King (already odious for his many vices, 
 and for his having stolen away and married a noble lady while his 
 own wife was living) that nover slept again through his whole 
 reign. In Brittany, the indignation was intense. Arthur's own sister 
 Eleanor was in the power of John and shut up in a convent at 
 Bristol, but his half-sister Alice was in Brittany. Tho people chose 
 her, and the murdered prince's father-in-law, the last husband of 
 Constance, to represent them ; and carried their fiery complaints to 
 King Philip. King Philip summoned King John (as the holder of 
 territory in France) to come before him and defend himself. King 
 John refusing to appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, 
 and guilty ; and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the 
 greater part of his French territory, King Philip deprived him of one- 
 third of his dominions. And, through all the fighting that took place, 
 King John was always found, either to be eating and drinking, like a 
 gluttonous fool, when the danger was at a distance, or to be running 
 away, like a beaten cur, when it was near. 
 
 You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions at this 
 rate, and when his own nobles cared so little for him or his cause that 
 they plainly refused to follow his banner out of England, he had 
 enemies enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he 
 did in this way. 
 
 Tho Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that 
 place wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the appointment 
 of his successor, met together at midnight, secretly elected a certain 
 Reginald, and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope's approval. Tho 
 senior monks and the King soon finding this out, and being very angry 
 about it, the junior monks gave way, and all the monks together 
 elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was the King's favourite. The 
 Pope, hearing tho whole story, declared that neither election would 
 do for him, and that he elected Stephen Langton. The monks sub- 
 mitting to the Pope, the King turned them all out bodily, and banished 
 them as traitors. The Pope sent three bishops to the King, to threaten 
 him with an Interdict. The King told the bishops that if any Inter- 
 diet were laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and cut 
 off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them 
 over to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their master. 
 The bishops, nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled. 
 
 After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step ; 
 which was Excommunication. King John was declared excommuni- 
 cated, with all tho usual ceremonies. The King was so incensed at 
 this, and was made so desperate by the disaffection of his Barons and 
 the hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately sent ambas- 
 sadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to renounce his religion aud
 
 432 A Child's History of England. 
 
 hold bis kingdom of them if they would help him. It is related that 
 the ambassadors were admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir 
 through long lines of Moorish guards, and that they found the Emir 
 with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a large book, from which 
 he never once looked up. That they gave him a letter from the King 
 containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That presently 
 the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, by his faith in his 
 religion, to say what kind of man the King of England truly was? 
 That the ambassador, thus pressed, replied that the King of England 
 was a false tyrant, against whom his own subjects would soon rise. 
 And that this was quite enough for the Emir. 
 
 Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, King John 
 spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing 
 and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite in his way), and 
 invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until 
 such time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of money, 
 the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one 
 tooth violently wrenched out of his head beginning with the double 
 teeth. For seven days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and 
 lost the daily tooth ; but, on the eighth, he paid the money. With the 
 treasure raised in such ways, the King made an expedition into Ireland, 
 where some English nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few 
 places from which he did not run away ; because no resistance was 
 shown. He made another expedition into Wales whence he did run 
 away in the end : but not before he had got from the Welsh people, 
 as hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best families ; every one 
 of whom he caused to be slain in the following year. 
 
 To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last 
 sentence ; Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved 
 all his subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and 
 others to the King of France to tell him that, if he would invade 
 England, he should be forgiven all his sins at least, should be 
 forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do. 
 
 As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade 
 England, he collected a great army at Kouen, and a fleet of seventeen 
 hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however 
 bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suiter invasion 
 (juietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in 
 such great numbers to enrol themselves as defenders of their native; 
 land, that there were not provisions for them, and the King could 
 only select and retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, 
 who had his own reasons for objecting to cither King John or King 
 Philip being too powerful, interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose 
 name was Pandolf, with the easy task of frightening King John. He 
 sent him to the English Camp, from France, to terrify him witli exag- 
 gerations of King Philip's power, and his own weakness in the dis- 
 content of the English Barons and people. Pandolf discharged his
 
 John. 433 
 
 commission so well, that King John, in a wretched panic, consented 
 to acknowledge Stephen Langton ; to resign his kingdom " to God, 
 Saint Peter, and Saint Paul " which meant the Pope ; :md to hold it, 
 ever afterwards, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an nnual sum of 
 money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in tho 
 church of the Knights Templars at Dover : where he laid at the 
 legate's feot a part of the tribute, which tho legate haughtily trampled 
 upon. But they do say, that this was merely a genteel flourish, and 
 that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it. 
 
 There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of Peter, who had 
 greatly increased King John's terrors by predicting that he would bo 
 uuknighted (which the King supposed to signify that he would die) 
 before the Feast of the Ascension should be past. That was the day 
 after this humiliation. When the next morning came, and the King, 
 who had been trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, ho 
 ordered the prophet and his son too to be dragged through tho 
 streets at the tails of horses, and then han.ged, for having frightened 
 him. 
 
 As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip's great 
 astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed King 
 Philip that he found he could not give him leave to invade England. 
 The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave ; but he gained 
 nothing and lost much ; for, the English, commanded by the Earl of 
 Salisbury, went over, in five hundred ships, to the French coast, before 
 tho French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated tho 
 whole. 
 
 The Pope then took off his three sentences, ono after another, and 
 empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the 
 favour of the Church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, 
 who hated Langton with all his might and main and with reason too, 
 for he was a great and a good man, with whom such a King could 
 have no sympathy -pretended to cry and to be very grateful. There 
 was a little difficulty about settling how much the King should pay 
 as a recompense to the clergy for the losses ho had caused them ; but, 
 the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the 
 inferior clergy got little or nothing which has also happened since 
 King John's time, 1 believe. 
 
 When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph 
 became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than he 
 had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip, gave 
 him an opportunity of landing an army in France ; with which he 
 even took a town ! Put, on the French King's gaining a groat victory, 
 he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years. 
 
 And now tho time approached when ho was to be still further 
 humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel anything, what a wretched 
 creature he was. Of all men in the world. Stephen Langton seemed 
 raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly 
 
 '2 v
 
 434 -^ Child's History of England. 
 
 burnt and destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their 
 Lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton 
 fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When he swore to restore 
 the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry the First, 
 Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him through all 
 his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint Edmund' s- 
 Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions, Stephen 
 Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter 
 of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, one 
 by one, on the High Altar, that they would have it, or would wage 
 Avar against him to the death. When the King hid himself in London 
 from the Barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, they told 
 him roundly they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton 
 became a surety that he would keep his word. When he took tho 
 Cross to invest himself with some interest, and belong to something 
 that was received with favour, Stephen Langton was still immovable. 
 When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen 
 Langton in behalf of his new favourite, Stephen Langton was deaf, 
 even to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare 
 of England and the crimes of the English King. 
 
 At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, 
 in proud array, and, marching near to Oxford where the King was, 
 delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others, a list of 
 grievances. " And these," they said, " he must redress, or we will do 
 it for ourselves ! " When Stephen Langton told the King as much, 
 and read tho list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did 
 him no moro good than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons 
 with lies. They called themselves and their followers, " The army 
 of God and the Holy Church." Marching through the country, with 
 tho people thronging to them everywhere (except at Northampton, 
 where they failed ia an attack upon the castle), they at last 
 triumphantly set up their banner in London itself, whither the whole 
 land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights 
 alone, of all the knights in England, remained with the King ; who, 
 reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the Barons 
 to say that he approved of everything, and would meet them to sign 
 their charter when they would. " Then," said the Barons, " let tho 
 day be the fifteenth of June, and the place, Bunny-Mead." 
 
 On Monday, tho fifteenth of June, one thousand two hundred and 
 fourteen, the King came from Windsor Castle, and the Barons camo 
 from the town of Staines, and they met on Bunny-Mead, which is still 
 a pleasant meadow by tho Thames, where rushes grow in the clear 
 water of the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and 
 trees. On the side of the Barons, came the General of their army, 
 Robert Fitz-Walteu, and a great concourse of the nobility of 
 England. With the King, came, in all, some four-aud-twenty persons 
 of any note, most of whom despised him, and were merely his advisers
 
 John. 435 
 
 in form. On that great day, and in that great company, the King 
 signed Magna Charta the great charter of England by which ho 
 pledged himself to maintain the Church in its rights ; to relieve tho 
 Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the Crown of which 
 the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, 
 the people ; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and 
 boroughs ; to protect foreign merchants who came to England ; to 
 imprison no man without a fair trial ; and to sell, delay, or deny 
 justice to none. As tho Barons knew his falsehood well, they further 
 required, as their securities, that he should send out of his kingdom 
 all his foreign troops ; that for two months they should hold possession 
 of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the Tower ; and that 
 five-and-twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should be a 
 lawful committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to mako 
 war upon him if he broke it. 
 
 All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter with a 
 smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would have done so, as 
 he departed from the splendid assembly. When he got home to 
 Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And 
 he broke the charter immediately afterwards. 
 
 lie sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to tho Pope for help, 
 and plotted to take London by surprise, whilo the Barons should bo 
 holding a great tournament at Stamford, which they had agreed to 
 hold there as a celebration of the charter. The Barons, however, 
 found him out and put it off. Then, when the Barons desired to soo 
 him and tax him with his treachery, he made numbers of appointments 
 with them, and kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was 
 constantly 6neaking and skulking about. At last ho appeared at 
 Dover, to join his foreign soldiers, of whom numbers came into his 
 pay ; and with them he besieged and took Bochester Castle, which 
 was occupied by knights and soldiers of the Barons. He would havo 
 hanged them every one ; but the leader of the foreign soldiers, fearful 
 of what the English people might afterwards do to him, interfered to 
 save the knights ; therefore the King was fain to satisfy his vengeance 
 with the death of all the common men. Then, he sent the Earl of 
 Salisbury, with one portion of his army, to ravage the eastern part of 
 his own dominions, whilo he carried fire and slaughter into tho 
 northern part ; torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting overy 
 possible cruelty upon tho people ; and, every morning, setting a 
 worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his own monster- 
 hands, to the house where he had slept hist night. Nor was this nil ; 
 for tho Pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid tho 
 kingdom under an Interdict again, because tho people took part with 
 the Barons. It did not much matter, for the people had grown so 
 used to it now, that they had begun to think nothing about it. It 
 occurred to them perhaps to Stephen Langton too that they could 
 keep their churches open, and ring their bells, without the Pope's
 
 436 A Child's History of England. 
 
 permission as well as with it. So, they tried the experiment and 
 found that it succeeded perfectly. 
 
 It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness of 
 cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a forsworn outlaw 
 of a King, the Barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, 
 to offer him the English crown. Caring as little for the Pope's 
 excommunication of him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his 
 father may have cared for the Pope's forgiveness of his sins, he landed 
 at Sandwich (King John immediately running away from Dover, 
 where he happened to be), and went on to London. The Scottish 
 King, with whom many of the Northern English Lords had taken 
 refuge ; numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the Barons, and 
 numbers of the people went over to him every day ; King John, the 
 while, continually running away in all directions. The career of 
 Louis was checked, however, by the suspicions of the Barons, founded 
 on the dying declaration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom 
 was conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors, and to give 
 their estates to some of his own Nobles. Rather than suffer this, 
 some of the Barons hesitated : others even went over to King John. 
 
 It seemed to be the turning-point of King John's fortunes, for, in 
 his savage and murderous course, ho had now taken some towns and 
 met with some successes. But, happily for England and humanity, 
 his death was near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the 
 Wash, not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly 
 drowned his army. He and his boldiers escaped ; but, looking back 
 from the shore when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep 
 down in a torrent, overturn tho waggons, horses, and men, that carried 
 his treasure, and engulf them in a raging whirlpool from which 
 nothing could be delivered. 
 
 Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fingers, he went on to 
 Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set before him quantities of 
 pears, and peaches, and new cider some say poison too, but there is 
 very little reason to suppose so of which he ate and drank in an 
 immoderate and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever, 
 and haunted with horrible fears. Next day, they put him in a horse- 
 litter, and carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another 
 night of pain and horror. Next day, they carried him, with greater 
 difficulty than on the day before, to the castle of Newark upon Trent ; 
 and there, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-ninth year of his 
 age, and the seventeenth of his vile reign, was an end of this miser- 
 able brute.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER. 
 
 If any of the English Bavons remembered the murdered Arthur's 
 sister, Eleanor the fair maid of Brittany, shut up in her convent at 
 Bristol, none among thorn spoke of her now, or maintained her right 
 to the Crown. The dead Usurper's eldest boy, Henry by name, was 
 taken by the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city 
 of Gloucester, and there crowned in great haste when he was only ten 
 years old. As the Crown itself had been lost with the King's treasure, 
 in the raging water, and as there was no time to mako another, they 
 put a circle of plain gold upon his head instead. " We have been the 
 enemies of this child's father," said Lord Pembroke, a good and true 
 gentleman, to the few Lords who were jiresent, " and he merited our 
 ill-will ; but the child himself is innocent, and his youth demands our 
 friendship and protection." Those Lords felt tenderly towards the 
 little boy, remembering their own young children ; and they bowed 
 their heads, and said, " Long live King Henry the Third ! " 
 
 Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta, and 
 made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the King 
 was too young to reign alone. The next thing to be done, was to get 
 rid of Prince Louis of France, and to win over those English Barons 
 who were still ranged under his banner. He was strong in many 
 parts of England, and in London itself; and he held, among other 
 places, a certain Castle called the Castle of Mount Sorcl, in Leicester- 
 shire. To this fortress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, 
 Lord Pembroke laid siege. Louis despatched an army of six hundred 
 knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, 
 who was not strong enough for such a force, retired with all his men. 
 The army of the French Prince, which had marched there with fire 
 and plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and came, in a 
 boastful swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town submitted ; but 
 the Castle in the town, held by a bravo widow lady, named Ntchola 
 de Camvili.e (whose property it was), made such a sturdy resistance, 
 that the French Count in command of the army of the French Prince 
 found it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he was thus engaged, 
 word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred 
 knights, two hundred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force 
 both of horse and foot, was marching towards him. " What care I ? " 
 said the French Count. " The Englishman is not so mad as to attack 
 me and my great army in a walled town ! " But the Englishman did 
 it for all that, and did it not so madly but so wisely, that lie decoyed 
 the great army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and by ways of Lincoln, 
 where its horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong body ; and thero
 
 438 A Child's History of England. 
 
 he made such havoc with them, that the whole force surrendered 
 themselves prisoners, except the Count ; who said that he would never 
 yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The 
 end of this victory, which the English called, for a joke, the Fair of 
 Lincoln, was the usual one in those times the common men were 
 slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen paid ransom 
 and went home. 
 
 The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, dutifully equipped 
 a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over from France to her hus- 
 band's aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good and some bad, 
 gallantly met them near the mouth of the Thames, and took or sunk 
 sixty-five in one fight. This great loss put an end to the French 
 Prince's hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue of which the 
 English Barons who had remained attached to his cause returned to 
 their allegiance, and it was engaged on both sides that the Prince and 
 all his troops should retire peacefully to France. It was time to go ; 
 for war had made him so poor that he was obliged to borrow money 
 from the citizens of London to pay his expenses home. 
 
 Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing the country 
 justly, and to healing the quarrels and disturbances that had arisen 
 among men in the days of the bad King John. He caused Magna 
 Charta to be still more improved, and so amended the Forest Laws 
 that a Peasant was no longer put to death for killing a stag in a Royal 
 Forest, but was only imprisoned. It would have been well for Eng- 
 land if it could have had so good a Protector many years longer, but 
 that was not to be. Within three years after the young King's 
 Coronation, Lord Pembroke died ; and you may see his tomb, at this 
 day, in the old Temple Church in London. 
 
 The Protectorship was now divided. Peter de Roches, whom 
 King John had made Bishop of Winchester, was entrusted with the 
 care of the person of the young sovereign ; and the exercise of the 
 Royal authority was confided to Earl Hubert de BurCxH. These 
 two personages had from the first no liking for each other, and soon 
 became enemies. When the young King was declared of age, Peter 
 de Roches, finding that Hubert increased in power and favour, retired 
 discontentedly, and went abroad. For nearly ten years afterwards 
 Hubert had full sway alone. 
 
 But ten years is a long time to hold the favour of a King. This 
 King, too, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance to his father, 
 in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The best that can be 
 said of him is that he was not cruel. De Roches coming home again, 
 after ten years, and being a novelty, the King began to favour him 
 and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting money besides, and having 
 made Hubert rich, he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made 
 to believe, or pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated 
 some of the Royal treasure ; and ordered him to furnish an account 
 of all he had done in his administration. Besides which, the foolish
 
 Henry the Third. 439 
 
 charge was brought against Hubert that he had made himself the 
 King's favourite by magic. Hubert very well knowing that he could 
 never defend himself against such nonsense, and that his old enemy 
 must be determined on his ruiu, instead of answering the charges fled 
 to Merton Abbey. Then the King, in a violent passion, sent for the 
 Mayor of London, and said to the Mayor, "Take twenty thousand 
 citizens, and drag me Hubert de Burgh out of that abbey, and bring 
 him here." The Mayor posted off to do it, but the Archbishop of 
 Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert's) warning the King that an 
 abbey was a sacred place, and that if he committed any violence there, 
 he must answer for it to the Church, the King changed his mind and 
 called the Mayor back, and declared that Hubert should have four 
 months to prepare his defence, and should be safe and free during that 
 time. 
 
 Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, though I think ho was 
 old enough to have known better, came out of Merton Abbey upon 
 these conditions, and journeyed away to see his wife : a Scottish 
 Princess who was then at St. Edmund's-Bury. 
 
 Almost as soon as he had departed from the Sanctuary, his enemies 
 persuaded the weak King to send out one Sir Godfrey de Crancumr, 
 who commanded three hundred vagabonds called the Black Band, 
 with orders to seize him. They came up with him at a little town in 
 Essex, called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leajjed out of 
 bed, got out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, and 
 laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey aud the Black Band, 
 caring neither for church, altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the 
 church door, with their drawn swords flashing round his head, and 
 sent for a Smith to rivet a set of chains upon him. When the Smith 
 (I wish I knew his name !) was brought, all dark and swarthy with 
 the smoke of his forge, and panting with the speed ho had made ; and 
 the Black Band, falling aside to show him tho Prisoner, cried with a 
 loud uproar, " Make the fetters heavy ! make them strong ! " the Smith 
 dropped upon his knee but not to the Black Band and said, " This 
 is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, who fought at Dover Castle and 
 destroyed the French fleet, and has done his country much good 
 service. You may kill me, if you like, but I will never make a chain 
 for Earl Hubert de Burgh ! " 
 
 The Black Band never blushed, or they might have blushed at 
 this. They knocked the Smith about from one to another, and 
 swore at him, and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as lie was, 
 and carried him off to the Tower of London. Tho Bishops, however, 
 were so indignant at the violation of the Sanctuary of the Church, 
 that the frightened King soon ordered the Black Band to take him 
 back again ; at the same time commanding tho Sheriff of Essex to 
 prevent his escaping out of Brentwood Church. Well ! the Sheriff 
 dug a deep trench all round the church, and erected a high fence, and 
 watched the church night and day ; the Black Band and their < 'aptain
 
 440 A Child's History of England. 
 
 watched it too, like three hundred and one black wolves. For thirty- 
 nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained within. At length, upon the 
 fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much for him, and he gave 
 himself up to the Black Band, who carried him off, for the second 
 time, to the Tower. "When his trial came on, he refused to plead ; 
 but at last it was arranged that he should give up all the royal lands 
 which had been bestowed upon him, and should be kept at the Castle 
 of Devizes, in what was called " free prison," in charge of four 
 knights appointed by four lords. There, he remained almost a year, 
 until, learning that a follower of his old enemy the Bishop was made 
 Keeper of the Castle, and fearing that he might be killed by treachery, 
 he climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped from the top of the 
 high Castle wall into the moat, and coming safely to the ground, took 
 refuge in another church. From this place he was delivered by a 
 party of horse despatched to his help by some nobles, who were by 
 this time in revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. He 
 was finally pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived privately, 
 and never more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high place 
 in the King's favour. And thus end more happily than the stories 
 of many favourites of Kings the adventures of Earl Hubert de 
 Burgh. 
 
 The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to rebellion 
 by the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding 
 that the King secretly hated the Great Charter, which had been forced 
 from his father, did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in 
 the preference he showed to foreigners over the English. Of this, 
 and of his even publicly declaring that the Barons of England were 
 inferior to those of France, the English Lords complained with such 
 bitterness, that the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, 
 became frightened for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all 
 his foreign associates. On his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a 
 French lady, the daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly 
 favoured the foreigners again ; and so many of his wife's relations 
 came over, and made such an immense family-party at court, and got 
 so many good things, and pocketed so much money, and were so high 
 with the English whose money they pocketed, that the bolder English 
 Barons murmured openly about a clause there was in the Great 
 Charter, which provided for the banishment of unreasonable favourites. 
 But, the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and said, " W 7 bat are 
 your English laws to us ? " 
 
 King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded by Prince 
 Louis, who had also died after a short reign of three years, and had 
 been succeeded by his son of the same name so moderate and just a 
 man that he was not the least in the world like a King, as Kings 
 went. Isabella, King Henry's mother, wished very much (for a 
 certain spite she had) that England should make war against this 
 King ; and, as King Henry was a mere puppet in anybody's hands who
 
 Henry the Third. 441 
 
 knew how to manage bis feebleness, she easily carried her point with 
 hiin. But, the Parliament were determined to give him no money for 
 such a war. So, to defy the Parliament, he packed up thirty large 
 casks of silver I don't know how he got so much ; I dare say he 
 screwed it out of the miserable Jews and put them aboard ship, and 
 went away himself to carry war into France : accompanied by his 
 mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and 
 clever. But he only got well beaten, and came home. 
 
 The good-humour of the Parliament was not restored by thip. 
 They reproached the King with wasting the public money to make 
 greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so determined 
 not to let him have more of it to waste if they could help it, that ho 
 was at his wit's end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he 
 could from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people used 
 to say the King was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took the 
 Cross, thinking to got some money by that means ; but, as it was very 
 well known that he never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In 
 all this contention, the Londoners were particularly keen against the 
 King, and the King hated them warmly in return. Hating or loving, 
 however, made no difference ; he continued in the same condition for 
 nine or ten years, when at last the Barons said that if he would 
 solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the Parliament would vote 
 him a large sum. 
 
 As he readily consented, there was a great meoting held in West- 
 minster Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all the clergy, dressed 
 in their robes and holding every one of them a burning candle in his 
 hand, stood up (the Barons being also there) while the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury read the sentence of excommunication against any man, 
 and all men, who should henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great 
 Charter of the Kingdom. When he had done, they all put out their 
 burning candles with a curse upon the soiri of any one, and every one, 
 who should merit that sentence. The King concluded with an oath 
 to keep the Charter, " As I am a man, as 1 am a Christian, as I am 
 a Knight, as I am a King ! " 
 
 It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them ; and tho King 
 did both, as his father had done before him. He took to his old 
 courses again when he was supplied with money, and soon cured of 
 their weakness tho few who had ever really trusted him. When his 
 money was gone, and lie was once more borrowing and begging every- 
 where with a meanness worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty 
 with the Popo respecting the Crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he 
 had a right to give away, and which he offered to King Henry for his 
 second son, Prince Edmund. But, if you or I give away what we 
 have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely that the 
 person to whom wo give it, will have some trouble in taking it. It 
 was exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian 
 Crown before it could be put upon young Edmund's head. It could
 
 442 A Child's History of England. 
 
 not be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the clergy to 
 raise money. The clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as 
 usual; they had been disputing with him for some time about his 
 unjust preference of Italian Priests in England ; and they had begun 
 to doubt whether the King's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for 
 preaching in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the 
 Pope's favour, in seven hundred places at once. " The Pope and the 
 King together," said the Bishop of London, " may take the mitre off 
 my head ; but, if they do, they will find that I shall put on a soldier's 
 helmet. I pay nothing." The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as 
 the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums 
 as the more timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise were 
 squandered away, without doing any good to the King, or bringing 
 the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer to Prince Edmund's head. The 
 end of the business was, that the Pope gave the Crown to the brother 
 of the King of France (who conquered it for himself), and sent the 
 King of England in, a bill of one hundred thousand pounds for the 
 expenses of not having won it. 
 
 The King was now so much distressed that we might almost pity 
 him, if it were possible to pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. Hie 
 clever brother, Eichard, had bought the title of King of the Eomans 
 from the German people, and was no longer near him, to help him 
 with advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance 
 with the Barons. The Barons were headed by Simon de Montfort, 
 Earl of Leicester, married to King Henry's sister, and, though a 
 foreigner himself, the most popular man in England against the 
 foreign favourites. When the King next met his Parliament, the 
 Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from head to foot, 
 and cased in armour. When the Parliament again assembled, in a 
 month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head, and the King 
 was obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee of 
 Government : consisting of twenty-four members : twelve chosen by 
 the Barons, and twelve chosen by himself. 
 
 But, at a good time for him, his brother Eichard came back. 
 Eichard's first act (the Barons would not admit him into England on 
 other terms) was to swear to be faithful to the Committee of Govern- 
 ment which he immediately began to oppose with all his might. 
 Then, the Barons began to quarrel among themselves ; especially the 
 proud Earl of Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad 
 in disgust. Then, the people began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, 
 because they did not do enough for them. The King's chances 
 seemed so good again at length, that he took heart enough or caught 
 it from his brother to tell the Committee of Government that he 
 abolished them as to his oath, never mind that, the Pope said ! and 
 to seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut himself up in the 
 Tower of London. Here ho was joined by his eldest son, Prince 
 Edward ; and, from the Tower, he made public a letter of the Pope's
 
 Henry the Third. 443 
 
 to tbo world in general, informing all men that he bad been an 
 excellent and just King for five-and-forty years. 
 
 As everybody knew be bad been notbing of tbe sort, nobody cared 
 much for tbis document. It so cbanced tbat tbo proud Earl of 
 Gloucester dying, was succeeded by bis son ; and tbat bis son, instead 
 of being tbe enemy of tbe Earl of Leicester, was (for tbo time) bis 
 friend. It fell out, therefore, tbat these two Earls joined their forces, 
 took several of tbe Royal Castles in the country, and advanced as 
 hard as they could on London. The London people, always opposed 
 to the King, declared for them with great joy. The Kiug himself 
 remained shut up, not at all gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward 
 made the best of his way to Windsor Castle. His mother, the Queen, 
 attempted to follow him by water ; but, the people seeing her bargo 
 rowing up the river, and hating her with all their hearts, ran to 
 London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and mud, and pelted 
 the barge as it camo through, crying furiously, " Drown the Witch ! 
 Drown her ! " They were so near doing it, that the Mayor took tbo 
 old lady under his protection, and shut her up in St. Paul's until the 
 danger was past. 
 
 It would require a great deal of writing on my part, and a great 
 deal of reading on yours, to follow the King through his disputes 
 with the Barons, and to follow the Barons through their disputes 
 with one another so I will make short work of it for both of us, and 
 only relato the chief events that arose out of theso quarrels. The 
 good King of France was asked to decide between them. He gave it 
 as his opinion that the King must maintain the Great Charter, and 
 that the Barons must give up the Committee of Government, and all 
 the rest that had been done by the Parliament at Oxford : which the 
 Koyalists, or King's party, scornfully called the Mad Parliament. 
 The Barons declared that these were not fair terms, and they would 
 not accept them. Then they caused the great bell of St. Paul's to be 
 tolled, for the purpose of rousing up tlio London people, who armed 
 themselves at the dismal sound and formed quite an army in the 
 streets. I am sorry to say, however, that instead of falling upon the 
 King's party with whom their quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable 
 Jews, and killed at least five hundred of them. They protended that 
 some of these Jews were on the King's side, and that they kept 
 hidden in their houses, for the destruction of the people, a certain 
 terrible composition called Greek Fire, which could not be put out 
 with water, but only burnt tbe fiercer for it. What they really did 
 keep in their bouses was money ; and this their cruel enemies wanted, 
 and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers and murderers. 
 
 The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these Londoners 
 and other forces, and followed the King to Lewes in Sussex, where he 
 lay encamped with his army. Before giving the Kind's forces battle 
 there, the Karl addressed his soldiers, and said that King Henry tlio 
 Third had broken so many oaths, that lie had become the enemy of
 
 444 ^ Child's History of England. 
 
 God, and therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as 
 if they were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but against a 
 Turk. White-crossed accordingly, they rushed into the fight. They 
 would have lost the day the King having on his side all the 
 foreigners in England : and, from Scotland, John Comyn, John 
 Baliol, and Robert Bruce, with all their men but for the impatience 
 of Prince Edward, who, in his hot desire to have vengeance on the 
 people of London, threw the whole of his father's army into confusion. 
 He was taken Prisoner ; so was the King ; so was the King's brother 
 the King of the Romans ; and five thousand Englishmen were left 
 dead upon the bloody grass. 
 
 For this success, the Pope excommunicated the Earl of Leicester : 
 which neither the Earl nor the people cared at all about. The 
 people loved him and supported him, and he became the real King ; 
 having all the power of the government in his own hands, though he 
 was outwardly respectful to King Henry the Third, whom he took 
 with him wherever he went, like a poor old limp court-card. He 
 summoned a Parliament (in the year one thousand two hundred and 
 sixty-five) which was the first Parliament in England that the people 
 had any real share in electing ; and he grew more and more in favour 
 with the people every day, and they stood by him in whatever he did. 
 
 Many of the other Barons, and particularly the Earl of Gloucester, 
 who had become by this time as proud as his father, grew jealous of 
 this powerful and popular Earl, who was proud too, and began to 
 conspire against him. Since the battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had 
 been kept as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise treated like a 
 Prince, had never been allowed to go out without attendants appointed 
 by the Earl of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring Lords 
 found means to propose to him, in secret, that they should assist him 
 to escape, and should make him their leader; to which he very 
 heartily consented. 
 
 So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his attendants after 
 dinner (being then at Hereford), " I should like to ride on horseback, 
 this fine afternoon, a little way into the country." As they, too, 
 thought it would be very pleasant to have a canter in the sunshine, 
 they all rode out of the town together in a gay little troop. When 
 they came to a fine level piece of turf, the Prince fell to comparing 
 their horses one with another, and offering bets that one was faster 
 than another ; and the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping 
 matches until their horses were quite tired. The Prince rode no 
 matches himself, but looked on from his saddle, and staked his money. 
 Thus they passed the whole merry afternoon. Now, the sun was 
 setting, and they were all going slowly up a hill, the Prince's horse 
 was very fresh and all the other horses very weary, when a strange 
 ritler mounted on a grey steed appeared at the top of the hill, and 
 waved his hat. " What does the fellow mean ? " said the attendants 
 one to another. The Prince answered on the instant by setting spurs
 
 Henry the Third. 445 
 
 to bis horso, dashiug away at bis utmost speed, joining tbo man, 
 riding into tbo midst of a little crowd of borsemen wbo were tben 
 seen waiting under some trees, and wbo closed around bim ; and so 
 be departed in a cloud of dust, leaving tbe road empty of all but tbo 
 baffled attendants, wbo sat looking at one anotber, wbile tbeir borses 
 drooped tbeir ears and panted. 
 
 Tbe Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. Tbe Earl of 
 Leicester, witb a part of tbe army and tbo stupid old King, was at 
 Hereford. One of tbo Earl of Leicester's sons, Simon do Montfort, 
 with anotber part of tbe army, was in Sussex. To prevent tbese two 
 parts from uniting was tbe Prince's first object. He attacked Simon 
 do Montfort by night, defeated bim, seized his banners and treasure, 
 and forced bim into Kenilworth Castlo in Warwickshire, which 
 belonged to bis family. 
 
 His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the meanwhile, not knowing 
 what had happened, marched out of Hereford, with bis part of the 
 army and the King, to meet him. He came, on a bright morning in 
 August, to Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant river Avon. 
 Looking rather anxiously across the prospect towards Kenilworth, he 
 saw his own banners advancing ; and his face brightened with joy. 
 But, it clouded darkly when ho presently perceived that tbo banners 
 were captured, and in the enemy's hands ; and be said, " It is 
 over. The Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies aro Prince 
 Edward's ! " 
 
 He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless. When his horso was 
 killed under him, ho fought on foot. It was a fierce battle, and tho 
 dead lay in heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up in a suit of 
 armour on a big war-horse, which didn't mind him at all, and which 
 carried him into all sorts of places where he didn't want to go, got into 
 everybody's way, and very nearly got knocked on the head by one of 
 his son's men. But he managed to pipe out, " I am Harry of Win- 
 chester ! " and the Prince, who heard him, seized his bridle, and took 
 liiin out of peril. The Earl of Leicester still fought bravely, until 
 his best son Henry was billed, and tbe bodies of his best friends 
 clioked bis path ; and then ho fell, still fighting, sword in hand. 
 They mangled his body, and sent it as a present to a noble lady but 
 a very unpleasant lady, I should think who was tho wife of his worst 
 enemy. They could not mangle his memory in the minds of tbo 
 faithful people, though. Many years afterwards, they loved him more 
 than ever, and regarded him as a Saint, and always spoko of bim as 
 "Sir Simon the Righteous." 
 
 And even though ho was dead, the causo for which he had fought 
 still lived, and was strong, and forced itself upon the King in tho 
 very hour of victory. Henry found himself obliged to respect tho 
 Great Charter, however much ho hated it, and to make laws similar 
 to the laws of tho Great Earl of Leicester, and to bo moderate and 
 forgiving towards the people at last -even towards tbe people of
 
 446 A Child 's History of England. 
 
 London, who had so long opposed him. There were more risings 
 before all this was done, bnt they were set at rest by these means, 
 and Prince Edward did his best in all things to restore peace. One 
 Sir Adam de Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight in arms ; but, 
 the Prince vanquished him in single combat, in a wood, and nobly 
 gave him his life, and became his friend, instead of slaying him. Sir 
 Adam was not ungrateful. He ever afterwards remained devoted to 
 his generous conqueror. 
 
 When the troubles of the Kingdom were thus calmed, Prince 
 Edward and his cousin Henry took the Cross, and went away to the 
 Holy Land, with many English Lords and Knights. Four years 
 afterwards the King of the Komans died, and, next year (one thousand 
 two hundred and seventy-two), his brother the weak King of England 
 died. He was sixty-eight years old then, and had reigned fifty-six 
 years. He was as much of a King in death, as he had ever been in 
 life. He was the mere pale shadow of a King at all times. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS. 
 
 It was now the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and 
 seventy-two ; and Prince Edward, the heir to the throne, being away 
 in the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father's death. The Barons, 
 however, proclaimed him King, immediately after the Royal funeral ; 
 and the people very willingly consented, since most men knew too 
 well by this time what the horrors of a contest for the crown were. 
 So King Edward the First, called, in a not very complimentary 
 manner, Longshanks, because of the slenderness of his legs, was 
 peacefully accepted by the English Nation. 
 
 His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin they were ; 
 for they had to support him through many difficulties on the fiery 
 sands of Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, 
 and seemed to melt away. But his prowess made light of it, and lie 
 said, " I will go on, if I go on with no other follower than my 
 groom ! " 
 
 A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. He 
 stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on earth, I am sorry 
 to relate, he made a frightful slaughter of innocent people ; and then 
 he went to Acre, where he got a truce of ten years from the Sultan. 
 He had very nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a 
 Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the pretence 
 that he had some idea of turning Christian and wanted to know all 
 obout that religion, sent a trusty messenger to Edward very often
 
 Edward the First. 447 
 
 with a dagger in his sleeve. At last, one Friday in Whitsun woek, 
 when it was very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath tho 
 blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdono biscuit, and Edward was 
 lying on a couch, dressed for coolness in only a looso robe, tho 
 messenger, with his chocolate-coloured face and his bright dark eyes 
 and white teeth, came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down 
 liko a tamo tiger. But, the momont Edward stretched out his hand 
 to tako tho letter, tho tiger mado a spring at his heart. Ho was 
 quick, but Edward was quick too. Ho seized tho traitor by his 
 chocolate throat, threw him to the ground, and slew him with tho 
 very dagger ho had drawn. The weapon had struck Edward in the 
 arm, and although the wound itself was slight, it threatened to bo 
 mortal, for the blade of tho dagger had been smeared with poison. 
 Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often to be found in 
 those times, and to some wholesome herbs, and above all, to his 
 faithful wife, Eleanok, who devotedly nursed him, and is said by 
 some to have sucked tho poison from the wound with her own red 
 lips (which I am very willing to believe), Edward soon recovered and 
 was sound again. 
 
 As the King his father had sent entreaties to him to return 
 home, he now began the journey. He had got as far as Italy, when 
 he met messengers who brought him intelligence of tho King's 
 death. Hearing that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to 
 return to his own dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went 
 in state through various Italian Towns, where ho was welcomed with 
 acclamations as a mighty champion of the Cross from the Holy Land, 
 and where he received presents of purplo mantles and prancing 
 horses, and went along in great triumph. Tho shouting people littlo 
 knew that he was tho last English monarch who would ever embark 
 in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest which the 
 Christians had made in the Holy Land at the cost of so much blood, 
 would be won back by the Turks. But all this came to pass. 
 
 There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France, 
 called Chalons. When the King was coming towards this place on 
 his way to England, a wily French Lord, called the Count of Chalons, 
 sent him a polito challenge to come with his knights and hold a fair 
 tournament with the Count and his knights, and make a day of it 
 with sword and lance. It was represented to tho King that tho 
 Count of Chalons was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday 
 fight for mere show and in good humour, he secretly meant a real 
 battle, in which the English should be defeated by superior force. 
 
 The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on 
 the appointed day with a thousand followers. When the Count camo 
 with two thousand and attacked the English in earnest, the English 
 rushed at them with such valour that the Count's men and tho 
 < 'ount's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over the field. The 
 Count himself seized the King round the neck, but the King tumbled
 
 448 A ChilcCs History of England. 
 
 him out of his saddle in return for the compliment, and, jumping 
 from his own horse, and standing over him, beat away at his iron 
 armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when the 
 Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King would 
 not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a 
 common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight, that 
 it was afterwards called the little Battle of Chalons. 
 
 The English were very well disposed to be proud of their King 
 after these adventures ; so, when he landed at Dover in the year one 
 thousand two hundred and seventy-four (being then thirty-six years 
 old), and went on to Westminster where he and his good Queen were 
 crowned with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place. For 
 the coronation-feast there were provided, among other eatables, four 
 hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, 
 eighteen wild boars, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty 
 thousand fowls. The fountains and conduits in the street flowed with 
 red and white wine instead of water ; the rich citizens hnng silks 
 and cloths of the brightest colours out of their windows to increase 
 the beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by whole 
 handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was such 
 eating and drinking, such music and capering, such a ringing of bells 
 and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and singing, and revelling, as 
 the narrow overhanging streets of old London City had not witnessed 
 for many a long day. All the people were merry except the poor 
 Jews, who, trembling within their houses, and scarcely daring to 
 peep out, began to foresee that they would have to find the money for 
 this joviality sooner or later. 
 
 To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, I am sorry 
 to add that in this reign they were most unmercifully pillaged. They 
 were hanged in great numbers, on accusations of having clipped the 
 King's coin which all kinds of people had done. They were heavily 
 taxed ; they were disgracefully badged ; they were, on one day, thirteen 
 years after the coronation, taken up with their wives and children 
 and thrown into beastly prisons, until they purchased their release by 
 paying to the King twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of 
 property belonging to them was seized by the King, except so little 
 as would defray the charge of their taking themselves away into 
 foreign countries. Many years elapsed before the hope of gain 
 induced any of their race to return to England, where they had been 
 treated so heartlessly and had suffered so much. 
 
 If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to Christians as 
 he was to Jews, he would have been bad indeed. But he was, in 
 general, a wise and great monarch, under whom the country much 
 improved. He had no love for the Great Charter few Kings had, 
 through many many years but he had high qualities. The first bold 
 object which he conceived when he camo home, was, to unite under 
 one Sovereign England, Scotland, and "Wales ; the two last of which
 
 Edward the First. 449 
 
 countries had each a littlo king of its own, abont whom tho people 
 were always quarrelling and fighting, and making a prodigious dis- 
 turbance a great deal moro than he was worth. In the course of 
 King Edward's reign he was engaged, besides, in a war with France. 
 To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate their histories and 
 tako them thus. Wales, first. France, second. Scotland, third. 
 
 Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on the side of 
 tae Barons in the reign of the stupid old King, but had afterwards 
 sworn allegiance to him. When King Edward came to the throne, 
 Llowellyn was required to swear allegiance to him also ; which ho 
 refused to do. The King, being crowned and In his own dominions, 
 three times more required Llewellyn to come and do homage ; and 
 three times more Llewellyn said ho would rather not. He was going 
 to be married to Eleanor de Moxtfort, a young lady of the family 
 mentioned in the last reign ; and it chanced that this young lady, 
 coming from France with her youngest brother, Emeric, was taken 
 by an English ship, and was ordered by the English King to bo 
 detained. Upon this, the quarrel came to a head. Tho King 
 went, with his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing 
 Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the bleak mountain 
 region of Snowdon in which no provisions could reach him, ho 
 was soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty of peace, and 
 into paying the expenses of the war. The King, however, forgave 
 him some of the hardest conditions of the treaty, and consented 
 to his marriage. And he now thought he had reduced Wales to 
 obedience. 
 
 But, the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, quiet, 
 pleasant people, who liked to receivo strangers in their cottages among 
 the mountains, and to set before them with free hospitality whatever 
 they had to eat and drink, and to play to them on their harps, and 
 sing their native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit when 
 their blood was up. Englishmen, after this affair, began to bo in- 
 solent in Wales, and to assume the air of masters ; and the Welsh 
 pride could not bear it. Moreover, they believed in that unlucky old 
 Merlin, somo of whoso unlucky old prophecies somebody always 
 seemed doomed to remember when there was a chanco of its doing 
 harm ; and just at this time some blind old gentleman with a harp 
 and a long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had become 
 of an unknown age and tedious, burst out with a declaration that 
 Merlin had predicted that when English money had become round, a 
 Prince of Wales would be crowned in London. Now, King Edward 
 had recently forbidden the English penny to be cut into halves and 
 quarters for halfpence and farthings, and had actually introduced a 
 round coin ; therefore, tho Welsh people said this was the time 
 Merlin meant, and rose accordingly. 
 
 King Edward had bought over Prince L)avii>, Llewellyn's brother,
 
 450 A Child's History of England. 
 
 by heaping favours upon him ; but he was the first to revolt, being 
 perhaps troubled in his conscience. One stormy night, he surprised 
 the Castle of Hawarden, in possession of which an English nobleman 
 had been left ; killed the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman 
 a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose like one 
 man. King Edward, with his army, marching from Worcester to the 
 Menai Strait, crossed it near to where the wonderful tubular iron 
 bridge now, in days so different, makes a passage for railway trains 
 by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to march abreast. He 
 subdued the Island of Anglesea, and sent his men forward to observe 
 the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh created a panic 
 among them, and they fell back to the bridge. The tide had in the 
 meantime risen and separated the boats ; the Welsh pursuing them, 
 they were driven into the sea, and there they sunk, in their heavy 
 iron armour, by thousands. After this victory Llewellyn, helped by 
 the severe winter- weather of Wales, gained another battle ; but the 
 King ordering a portion of his English army to advance through 
 South Wales, and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely 
 turning to meet this new enemy, he was surprised and killed 
 very meanly, for he was unarmed and defenceless. His head was 
 struck off and sent to London, where it was fixed upon the Tower, 
 encircled with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of willow, some 
 say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in ridicule of the 
 prediction. 
 
 David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly 
 sought after by the King, and hunted by his own countrymen. Ono 
 of them finally betrayed him with his wife and children. He was 
 sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered ; and from that time 
 this became the established punishment of Traitors in England a 
 punishment wholly without excuse, as being revolting, vile, and cruel, 
 after its object is dead ; and which has no sense in it, as its only real 
 degradation (and that nothing can blot out) is to the country that 
 permits on any consideration such abominable barbarity. 
 
 Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving birth to a young 
 prince in the Castle of Carnarvon, the King showed him to the Welsh 
 people as their countryman, and called him Prince of Wales ; a title 
 that has ever since been borne by the heir-apparent to the English 
 Throne which that little Prince soon became, by the death of his 
 elder brother. The King did better things for the Welsh than that, 
 by improving their laws and encouraging their trade. Disturbances 
 still took place, chiefly occasioned by the avarice and pride of the 
 English Lords, on whom Welsh lands and castles had been bestowed ; 
 but they were subdued, and the country never rose again. There is 
 a legend that to prevent tho people from being incited to rebellion 
 by the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them all put to 
 death. Some of them may have fallen among other men who held 
 out against the King ; but this general slaughter is, I think, a fancy
 
 Edward the First. 45 1 
 
 of tho harpers themselves, who, I dare say, made a song about it many 
 years afterwards, and sang it by the Welsh firesides until it came to 
 be believed. 
 
 The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose in this way. 
 The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, and the other an English 
 ship, happened to go to the same place in their boats to fill their 
 casks with fresh water. Being rough angry fellows, they began to 
 quarrel, and then to fight the English with their fists : the Normans 
 with their knives and, in the fight, a Norman was killed. The 
 Norman crew, instead of revenging themselves upon those English 
 sailors with whom they had quarrelled (who were too strong for them, 
 I suspect), took to their ship again in a great rage, attacked the first 
 English ship they met, laid hold of an unoffending merchant who 
 happened to be on board, and brutally hanged him in the rigging of 
 their own vessel with a dog at his feet. This so enraged the English 
 sailors that there was no restraining them ; and whenever, and 
 wherever, English sailors met Norman sailors, they fell upon each 
 other tooth and nail. The Irish and Dutch sailors took part with 
 the English ; the French and Genoese sailors helped the Normans ; 
 and thus the greater part of the mariners sailing over the sea 
 became, in their way, as violent and raging as the sea itself when 
 it is disturbed. 
 
 King Edward's fame had been so high abroad that he had been 
 chosen to decide a difference between France and another foreign 
 power, and had lived upon the Continent three years. At first neither 
 he nor the French King Philip (the good Louis had been dead some 
 time) interfered in these quarrels ; but when a fleet of eighty English 
 ships engaged and utterly defeated a Norman fleet of two hundred, in 
 a pitched battle fought round a 6hip at anchor, in which no quarter 
 was given, the matter became too serious to be passed over. King 
 Edward, as Duke of Guienne, was summoned to present himself before 
 the King of France, at Paris, and answer for the damage done by his 
 sailor subjects. At first, he sent the Bishop of London as his repre- 
 sentative, and then his brother Edmund, who was married to tho 
 French Queen's mother. I am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and 
 allowed himself to be talked over by his charming relations, the 
 French court ladies ; at all events, he was induced to give up his 
 brother's dukedom for forty days as a mere form, tho French King 
 said, to satisfy his honour and he was so very much astonished, when 
 the time was out, to find that the French King had no idea of giving 
 it up again, that I should not wonder if it hastened his death : which 
 soon took place. 
 
 King Edward was a King to win his foreign dukedom back again, 
 if it could be won by energy and valour. He raised a large army, 
 renounced his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and crossed the sea to 
 carry war into France. Before any important battle was fought, how-
 
 452 A Child's History of England. 
 
 ever, a truce was agreed upon for two years ; and in the course of 
 that time, the Pope effected a reconciliation. King Edward, who was 
 now a widower, having lost his affectionate and good wife, Eleanor, 
 married the French King's sister, Margaret ; and the Prince of 
 Wales was contracted to the French King's daughter Isabella. 
 
 Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out of this hanging 
 of the innocent merchant, and the bloodshed and strife it caused, there 
 came to be established one of the greatest powers that the English 
 people now possess. The preparations for the war being very ex- 
 pensive, and King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very 
 arbitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the Barons began firmly 
 to oppose him. Two of them, in particular, Humphrey Bohun, Earl 
 of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against 
 him, that they maintained he had no right to command them to head 
 his forces in Guienne, and flatly refused to go there. " By Heaven, 
 Sir Earl," said the King to the Earl of Hereford, in a great passion, 
 " you shall either go or be hanged ! " " By Heaven, Sir King," 
 replied the Earl, " I will neither go nor yet will I be hanged ! " and 
 both he and the other Earl sturdily left the court, attended by many 
 Lords. The King tried every means of raising money. He taxed the 
 clergy, in spite of all the Pope said to the contrary ; and when they 
 refused to pay, reduced them to submission, by saying Very well, 
 then they had no claim upon the government for protection, and any 
 man might plunder them who would which a good many men were 
 very ready to do, and very readily did, and which the clergy found too 
 losing a game to be played at long. He seized all the wool and 
 leather in the hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it some 
 fine day ; and he set a tax upon the exportation of wool, which was so 
 unpopular among the traders that it was called " The evil toll." But 
 all would not do. The Barons, led by those two great Earls, declared 
 any taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament, unlawful ; and 
 the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the King should confirm 
 afresh the two Great Charters, and should solemnly declare in writing, 
 that there was no power in the country to raise money from the 
 people, evermore, but the power of Parliament representing all ranks 
 of the people. The King was very unwilling to diminish his own 
 power by allowing this great privilege in the Parliament ; but there 
 was no help for it, and he at last complied. We shall come to another 
 King by-and-by, who might have saved his head from rolling off, if 
 he had profited by this example. 
 
 The people gained other benefits in Parliament from the good sense 
 and wisdom of this King. Many of the laws were much improved ; 
 provision was made for the greater safety of travellers, and the appre- 
 hension of thieves and murderers ; the priests were prevented from 
 holding too much land, and so becoming too powerful ; and Justices 
 of the Peace were first appointed (though not at first under that name) 
 in various parts of the country.
 
 Edward the First. 453 
 
 And now we come to Scotland, which was the great and lasting 
 trouble of the reign of King Edward the First. 
 
 About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation, Alexander tho 
 Third, the King of Scotland, died of a fall from his horse. He had 
 been married to Margaret, King Edward's sister. All their children 
 being dead, the Scottish crown became the right of a young Princess 
 only eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who 
 had married a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Edward 
 proposed, that tho Maiden of Norway, as this Princess was called, 
 should be engaged to be married to his eldest son ; but, unfortunately, 
 as she was coming over to England she fell sick, and landing on 0110 
 of tho Orkney Islands, died there. A groat commotion immediately 
 began in Scotland, where as many as thirteen noisy claimants to the 
 vacant throne started up and made a general confusion. 
 
 King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity and justice, it 
 seems to have been agreed to refer the dispute to him. He accepted 
 the trust, and went, with an army, to the Border-land where England 
 and Scotland joined. There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen 
 to meet him at the Castle of Norham, on the English side of the river 
 Tweed ; and to that Castle they came. But, before he would take 
 any step in the business, he required those Scottish gentlemen, ono 
 and all, to do homage to him as their superior Lord ; and when they 
 hesitated, he said, " By holy Edward, whose crown I wear, I will 
 have my rights, or I will die in maintaining them ! " The Scottish 
 gentlemen, who had not expected this, were disconcerted, and asked 
 for three weeks to think about it. 
 
 At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took place, on a 
 green plaiu on the Scottish side of the river. Of all the competitors 
 for the Scottish throne, there were only two who had any real claim, 
 in right of their near kindred to the Royal family. These were 
 John' Baliol and Robert Bruce : and the right was, I have no 
 doubt, on the side of John Baliol. At this particular meeting John 
 Baliol was not present, but Robert Bruce was ; and on Robert Bruce 
 being formally asked whether he acknowledged the King of England 
 for his superior lord, lie answered, plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. 
 Next day, John Baliol appeared, and said the same. This point 
 settled, some arrangements were made for inquiring into their titles. 
 
 The inquiry occupied a pretty long time more than a year. 
 "While it was going on, King Edward took tho opportunity of 
 making a journey through Scotland, and calling upon the Scottish 
 people of all degrees to acknowledge themselves his vassals, or 
 be imprisoned until they did. In the meanwhile, Commissioners 
 were appointed to conduct the inquiry, a Parliament wns held at 
 Berwick about it, the two claimants were heard at full length, and 
 there was a vast amount of talking. At last, in the great hall of tho 
 Castle of Berwick, the King gave judgment in favour of John Baliol: 
 who, consenting to receive his crown by the King of England's favour
 
 454 A Child's History of England. 
 
 and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an old stone chair which 
 had been used for ages in the abbey there, at the coronations of 
 Scottish Kings. Then, King Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, 
 used since the late King's death, to be broken in four pieces, and 
 placed in the English Treasury ; and considered that he now had 
 Scotland (according to the common saying) under his thumb. 
 
 Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. King Edward, 
 determined that the Scottish King should not forget he was his vassal, 
 summoned him repeatedly to come and defend himself and his Judges 
 before the English Parliament when appeals from the decisions of 
 Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length, John Baliol, 
 who had no great heart of his own, had so much heart put into him 
 by the brave spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a national 
 insult, that he refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King 
 further required him to help him in his war abroad (which was then 
 in progress), and to give up, as security for his good behaviour in 
 future, the three strong Scottish Castles of Jedburgh, Eoxburgh, and 
 Berwick. Nothing of this being done ; on the contrary, the Scottish 
 people concealing their King among their mountains in the Highlands 
 and showing a determination to resist ; Edward marched to Berwick 
 with an army of thirty thousand foot, and four thousand horse ; took 
 the Castle, and slew its whole garrison, and the inhabitants of the 
 town as well men, women, and children. Lord Warrenne, Earl 
 of Surrey, then went on to the Castle of Dunbar, before which a battle 
 was fought, and the whole Scottish army defeated with great slaughter. 
 The victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian 
 of Scotland ; the principal offices in that kingdom were given to 
 Englishmen ; the more powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come 
 and live in England ; the Scottish crown and sceptre were brought 
 away ; and even the old stone chair was carried off and placed in 
 Westminster Abbey, where you may see it now. Baliol had the 
 Tower of London lent him for a residence, with permission to range 
 about within a circle of twenty miles. Three years afterwards he was 
 allowed to go to Normandy, where he had estates, and where he 
 passed the remaining six years of his life : far more happily, I dare 
 say, than he had lived for a long while in angry Scotland. 
 
 Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a gentleman of small 
 fortune, named William Wallace, the second son of a Scottish 
 knight. He was a man of great size and great strength; he was very 
 brave and daring ; when he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he 
 could rouse them in a wonderful manner by the power of his burning 
 words ; he loved Scotland dearly, and he hated. England with his 
 utmost might. The domineering conduct of the English who now 
 held the places of trust in Scotland made them as intolerable to the 
 proud Scottish people as they had been, under similar circumstances, 
 to the Welsh ; and no man in all Scotland regarded them with so 
 much smothered rage as William Wallace. One day, an Englishman
 
 Edward the First. 455 
 
 in office, little knowing what he was, affronted him. Wallace 
 instantly struck him dead, and taking refuge among the rocks and 
 hills, and there joining with his countryman, Sin William Douglas, 
 who was also in arms against King Edward, became the most resolute 
 and undaunted champion of a people struggling for their independence 
 that ever lived upon the earth. 
 
 The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled before him, and, thus 
 encouraged, the Scottish people revolted everywhere, and fell upon 
 the English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by the King's 
 commands, raised all the power of the Border-counties, and two 
 English armies poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the face of 
 those armies, stood by Wallace, who, with a force of forty thousand 
 men, awaited the invaders at a place on the river Forth, within two 
 miles of Stirling. Across the river there was only one poor wooden 
 bridge, called the bridge of Kildean so narrow, that but two men 
 could cross it abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace 
 posted the greater part of his men among some rising grounds, and 
 waited calmly. When the English army came up on the opposite 
 bank of the river, messengers were sent forward to offer terms. 
 Wallace sent them back with a defiance, in the name of the freedom 
 of Scotland. Some of the officers of the Earl of Surrey in command 
 of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge, advised him to be 
 discreet and not hasty. He, however, urged to immediate battle by 
 some other officers, and particularly by Cressingham, King Edward's 
 treasurer, and a rash man, gave the word of command to advance. 
 One thousand English crossed the bridge, two abreast ; the Scottish 
 troops were as motionless as stone images. Two thousand English 
 crossed ; three thousand, four thousand, five. Not a feather, all this 
 time, had been seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. Now, they 
 all fluttered. " Forward, one party, to the foot of the Bridge ! " cried 
 Wallace, " and let no more English cross ! The rest, down with mo 
 on the five thousand who have come over, and cut them all to pieces ! " 
 It was done, in the sight of the whole remainder of the English army, 
 who could give no help. Cressingham himself was killed, and the 
 Scotch made whips for their horses of his skin. 
 
 King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the successes on 
 the Scottish side which followed, and which enabled bold Wallace to 
 win the whole country back again, and even to ravage the English 
 borders. But, after a few winter months, the King returned, and 
 took the field with more than his usual energy. One night, when a 
 kick freni his horso as they both lay on the ground together broke 
 two of his ribs, and a cry arose that he was killed, ho leaped into his 
 haddlo, regardless of the pain he suffered, and rode through the camp. 
 Day then appearing, he gave the word (still, of course, in that bruised 
 and aching state) Forward! and led his army on to near Falkirk, 
 when; the Scottish forces were seen drawn up on some stony ground, 
 behind a morass. Here, he defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen
 
 456 A Child's History of England. 
 
 thousand of his men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace drew 
 back to Stirling ; but, being pursued, set fire to the town that it 
 might give no help to the English, and escaped. The inhabitants of 
 Perth afterwards set fire to their houses for the same reason, and the 
 King, unable to find provisions, was forced to withdraw his army. 
 
 Another Kobert Bruce, the grandson of him who had disputed the 
 Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in arms against the King (that 
 elder Bruce being dead), and also John Comyn, Baliol's nephew. 
 These two young men might agree in opposing Edward, but could 
 agree in nothing else, as they were rivals for the throne of Scotland. 
 Probably it was because they knew this, and knew what troubles 
 must arise even if they could hope to get the better of the great 
 English King, that the principal Scottish people applied to the Pope 
 for his interference. The Pope, on the principle of losing nothing 
 for want of trying to get it, very coolly claimed that Scotland belonged 
 to him ; but this was a little too much, and the Parliament in a 
 friendly manner told him so. 
 
 In the spring time of the year one thousand three hundred and 
 three, the King sent Sir John Segrave, whom ho made Governor of 
 Scotland, with twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels. Sir John 
 was not as careful as he should have been, but encamped at Kosslyn, 
 near Edinburgh, with his army divided into three parts. The 
 Scottish forces saw their advantage ; fell on each part separately ; 
 defeated each ; and killed all the prisoners. Then, came the King 
 himself once more, as soon as a great army could be raised ; he passed 
 through the whole north of Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came 
 in his way ; and he took up his winter quarters at Dunfermline. 
 The Scottish cause now looked so hopeless, that Comyn and the other 
 nobles made submission and received their pardons. Wallace alone 
 stood out. He was invited to surrender, though on no distinct pledge 
 that his life should be spared ; but he still defied the ireful King, 
 and lived among the steep crags of the Highland glens, where the 
 eagles made their nests, and where the mountain torrents roared, and 
 the white snow was deep, and the bitter winds blew round his un- 
 sheltered head, as he lay through many a pitch-dark night wrapped 
 up in his plaid. Nothing could break his spirit ; nothing could lower 
 his courage ; nothing could induce him to forget or to forgive his 
 country's wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, which had long 
 held out, was besieged by the King with every kind of military 
 engine then in use ; even when the lead upon cathedral roofs was 
 taken down to help to make them ; even when the King, though an 
 old man, commanded in the siege as if he were a youth, being so 
 resolved to conquer ; even when the brave garrison (then found with 
 amazement to be not two hundred people, including several ladies) 
 were starved and beaten out and were made to submit on their knees, 
 and with every form of disgrace that could aggravate their sufferings ; 
 even then, when there was not a ray of hope in Scotland, William
 
 Edward the First. 457 
 
 Wallace was as proud and firm as if be had beheld the powerful and 
 relentless Edward lying dead at his feet. 
 
 Who betrayed William Wallace in the end, is not quite certain. 
 That he was betrayed probably by an attendant is too true. He 
 was taken to the Castle of Dumbarton, under Sih John Menteith, 
 and thence to London, whero the great fame of his bravery and 
 resolution attracted immense concourses of people to behold him. He 
 was tried in Westminster Hall, with a crown of laurel on his head 
 it is supposed because he was reported to have said that he ought to 
 wear, or that he would wear, a crown there and was found guilty as 
 a robber, a murderer, and a traitor. What they called a robber (he 
 said to those who tried him) he was, because he had taken spoil from 
 the King's men. What they called a murderer, ho was, because he 
 had slain an insolent Englishman. What they called a traitor, he 
 was not, for he had never sworn allegiance to the King, and had ever 
 scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of horses to West 
 Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, torn open before he 
 was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head was set upon a pole on 
 London Bridge, his right arm was sent to Newcastle, his left arm to 
 Berwick, his legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had 
 had his body cut into inches, and had sent every separate inch into a 
 separate town, he could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as 
 his fame. Wallace will bo remembered in songs and stories, while 
 there are songs and stories in tho English tongue, and Scotland will 
 hold him dear while her lakes and mountains last. 
 
 Released from this dreaded enemy, the King made a fairer plan of 
 Government for Scotland, divided the offices of honour among Scottish 
 gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past offences, and thought, 
 in his old age, that his work was done. 
 
 But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, and made 
 an appointment to meet at Dumfries, in tho church ot the Minorites. 
 There is a story that Comyn was false to Bruce, and had informed 
 against him to the King - T that- Bruce was warned of his danger and 
 tho necessity of flight, by receiving, one night as he sat at suj)per, 
 from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve pennies and a pair of 
 spurs ; that as he was riding angrily to keep his appointment (through 
 a snow-storm, with his horse's shoes reversed that he might not bo 
 tracked), he met an evil-lookiug serving man, a messenger of Comyn, 
 whom he killed, and concealed in whose dress he found letters that 
 proved Comyn's treachery. However this may be, they were likely 
 enough to quarrel in any case, being hot-headed rivals ; and, whatever 
 they quarrelled about, they certainly did quarrel in the church where 
 they met, and Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed < 'omyn, who fell 
 upon the pavement. When Bruce came out, pale and disturbed, tho 
 friends who were waiting for him asked what was the matter? "I 
 think I have killed < "omyn," said he. " You only think so ? " returned 
 one of them ; ' I will make sure ! " and going into the church, and
 
 45 8 A Child's History of England. 
 
 finding him alive, stabbed bim again and again. Knowing that the 
 King would never forgive this new deed of violence, the party then 
 declared Bruce King of Scotland : got him crowned at Scone without 
 the chair ; and set up the rebellious standard once again. 
 
 When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer anger than he 
 had ever shown yet. He caused the Prince of Wales and two hundred 
 and seventy of the young nobility to be knighted the trees in the 
 Temple Gardens were cut down to make room for their tents, and 
 they watched their armour all night, according to the old usage : 
 some in the Temple Church : some in Westminster Abbey and at 
 the public Feast which then took place, he swore, by Heaven, and by 
 two swans covered with gold network which his minstrels placed upon 
 the table, that he would avenge the death of Comyn, and would punish 
 the false Bruce. And before all the company, he charged the Prince 
 his son, in case that he should die before accomplishing his vow, not 
 to bury him until it was fulfilled. Next morning the Prince and the 
 rest of the young Knights rode away to the Border-country to join the 
 English army ; and the King, now weak and sick, followed in a horse- 
 litter. 
 
 Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing many dangers and much 
 misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay concealed through the winter. 
 That winter, Edward passed in hunting down and executing Brace's 
 relations and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, and showing 
 no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the following spring, Bruce 
 reappeared and gained some victories. In these frays, both sides were 
 grievously cruel. For instance Bruce's two brothers, being taken 
 captives desperately wounded, were ordered by the King to instant 
 execution. Bruce's friend Sir John Douglas, taking his own Castle 
 of Douglas out of the hands of an English Lord, roasted the dead 
 bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a great fire made of every 
 movable within it ; which dreadful cookery his men called the Douglas 
 Larder. Bruce, still successful, however, drove the Earl of Pembroke 
 and the Earl of Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr and laid siege to it. 
 
 The King, who had been laid up all the winter, but had directed 
 the army from his sick-bed, now advanced to Carlisle, and there, 
 causing the litter in which he had travelled to be placed in the 
 Cathedral as an offering to Heaven, mounted his horse once more, and 
 for the last time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned 
 thirty-five years. He was so ill, that in four days he could go no 
 more than six miles ; still, even at that pace, he went on and reso- 
 lutely kept his face towards the Border. At length, he lay down at 
 the village of Burgh-upon-Sands ; and there, telling those around him 
 to impress upon the Prince that he was to remember his father's vow, 
 and was never to rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, ho 
 yielded up his last breath.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND. 
 
 King Edward the Second, the first Prince of Wales, was twenty-three 
 years old when his father died. There was a certain favonrite of his, 
 a young man from Gascony, named Piers Gaveston, of whom his 
 father had so much disapproved that he had ordered him out of 
 England, and had made his son swear hy the side of his sick-bed, 
 never to bring him back. But, the Prince no sooner found himself 
 King, than he broke his oath, as so many other Princes and Kings 
 did (they were far too ready to take oaths), and sent for his dear friend 
 immediately. 
 
 Now, this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but was a reckless, 
 insolent, audacious fellow. He was detested by the proud English 
 Lords: not only because he had such power over the King, and made 
 the Court such a dissipated place, but, also, because he could ride 
 letter than they at tournaments, and was used, in his impudence, to 
 cut very bad jokes on them ; calling one, the old hog ; another, tho 
 stage-player ; another, the Jew ; another, the black dog of Ardenne. 
 This was as poor wit as need be, but it made those Lords very wrath ; 
 and the surly Earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, swore that 
 the time should come when Piers Gaveston should feel the black 
 dog's teeth. 
 
 It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be coming. The 
 King made him Earl of Cornwall, and gave him vast riches ; and, 
 when the King went over to France to marry the French Princess, 
 Isabella, daughter of Philip le Bel : who was said to be the most 
 beautiful woman in the world : ho made Gaveston, Regent of the 
 Kingdom. His splendid marriage-ceremony in tho Church of Our 
 Lady at Boulogne, where there were four Kings and three Queens 
 present (quite a pack of ( 'ourt Cards, for I dare say the Knaves were 
 not wanting), being over, he seemed to caro little or nothing for his 
 beautiful wife ; but was wild with impatience to meet Gaveston again. 
 
 When he landed at home, ho paid no attention to anybody else, but 
 ran into the favourite's arms before a great concourse of people, and 
 hugged him, and kissed him, and called him his brother. At the 
 coronation which soon followed, Gaveston was the richest and brightest 
 of all tho glittering company there, and had tho honour of carrying 
 the crown. This made the proud Lords fiercer than ever ; tho people, 
 tco, despised the favourite, and would never call him Earl of ( ormvall, 
 however much he complained to the King and asked him to punish 
 them for not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain Piers 
 Gaveston. 
 
 The Barons were so unceremonious with the King in giving him to
 
 460 A Child 's History of England. 
 
 understand that they would not bear this favourite, that the King 
 was obliged to send him out of the country. The favourite himself 
 was made to take an oath (more oaths !) that he would never come 
 back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until 
 they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this 
 was not enough for the besotted King, who brought him home again 
 in a year's time, and not only disgusted the Court and the people by 
 his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who never liked 
 him afterwards. 
 
 He had now the old Royal want of money and the Barons had 
 the new power of positively refusing to let him raise any. He sum- 
 moned a Parliament at York ; the Barons refused to make one, while 
 the favourite was near him. He summoned another Parliament at 
 Westminster, and sent Gaveston away. Then, the Barons came, 
 completely armed, and appointed a committee of themselves to correct 
 abuses in the state and in the King's household. He got some money 
 on these conditions, and directly set off with Gaveston to the Border- 
 country, where they spent it in idling away the time, and feasting, 
 while Bruce made ready to drive the English out of Scotland. For, 
 though the old King had even made this poor weak son of his swear 
 (as some say) that he would not bury his bones, but would have them 
 boiled clean in a caldron, and carried before the English army until 
 Scotland was entirely subdued, the second Edward was so unlike the 
 first that Bruce gained strength and power every day. 
 
 The committee of Nobles, after some months of deliberation, ordained 
 that the King should henceforth call a Parliament together, once 
 every year, and even twice if necessary, instead of summoning it only 
 when he chose. Further, that Gaveston should once more be banished, 
 and, this time, on pain of death if he ever came back. The King's 
 tears were of no avail ; he was obliged to send his favourite to 
 Flanders. As soon as he had done so, however, he dissolved the 
 Parliament, with the low cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the 
 North of England, thinking to get an army about him to oppose the 
 Nobles. And once again he brought Gaveston home, and heaped 
 upon him all the riches and titles of which the Barons had deprived 
 him. 
 
 The Lords saw, now, that there was nothing for it but to put the 
 favourite to death. They could have done so, legally, according to 
 the terms of his banishment : but they did so, I am sorry to say, in 
 a shabby manner. Led by the Earl of Lancaster, the King's cousin, 
 they first of all attacked the King and Gaveston at Newcastle. They 
 had time to escape by sea, and the mean King, having his precious 
 Gaveston with him, was quite content to leave his lovely wife behind. 
 When they were comparatively safe, they separated ; the King went 
 to York to collect a force of soldiers ; and the favourite shut himself 
 up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Castle overlooking the sea. 
 This was what the Barons wanted. They knew that the Castle could
 
 Edward the Second. 461 
 
 not hold out ; they attacked it, and made Gaveston surrender. Ho 
 delivered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke that Lord whom ho 
 had called the Jew on the Earl's pledging his faith and knightly 
 word, that no harm should happen to him and no violence bo dono 
 him. 
 
 Now, it was agreed with Gaveston that he should he taken to tho 
 Castle of Wallingford, and there kept in honourable custody. They 
 travelled as far as Dedington, near Banbury, where, in the Castlo of 
 that place, they stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of 
 Pembroke left his prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or 
 really left him thinking no harm, and only going (as ho pretended) 
 to visit his wife, the Countess, who was in the neighbourhood, is no 
 great matter now ; in any case, ho was bound as an honourablo 
 gentleman to protect his prisoner, and he did not do it. In tho 
 morning, while the favourite was yet in bed, he was required to dress 
 himself and come down into the court-yard. He did so without any 
 mistrust, but started and turned pale when ho found it full of strango 
 armed men. " I think you know me ? " said their leader, also armed 
 from head to foot. " I am the black dog of Ardcnne ! " 
 
 The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel the black 
 dog's teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and carried him, in 
 mock state and with military music, to the black dog's kennel 
 Warwick Castle where a hasty council, composed of some great 
 noblemen, considered what should be done with him. Some were for 
 sparing him, but one loud voice it was the black dog's bark, I dare 
 say sounded through the Castle Hall, Tittering these words : " You 
 have the fox in your power. Let him go now, and you must hunt 
 him again." 
 
 They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at the feet of tho 
 Earl of Lancaster the old hog but the old hog was as savage as 
 the dog. He was taken out upon the pleasant road, leading from 
 Warwick to Coventry, where the beautiful river Avon, by which, long 
 afterwards, William Siiakesveakk was born and now lies buried, 
 sparkled in the bright landscape of the beautiful May-day ; and 
 there they struck oil" his wretched head, and stained the dust with 
 his blood. 
 
 When the King heard of this black deed, in his grief and rage lie 
 denounced relentless war against his Barons, and both sides were in 
 arms for half a year. But, it then became necessary for them to join 
 their forces against Bruce, who had used the time well while they 
 were divided, and had now a great power in Scotland. 
 
 Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging Stirling 
 Castle, and that tin; Governor had been obliged to pledge himself to 
 surrender it, unless he should be relieved before a certain day. 
 Hereupon, the King ordered the nobles and their fighting-men to 
 meet him at Berwick; but, the nobles cared so little for the King, 
 and so neglected the summons, and lost time, that only on the day
 
 462 A Child's History of England. 
 
 before that appointed for the surrender, did the King find himself at 
 Stirling, and even then with a smaller force than he had expected. 
 However, he had, altogether, a hundred thousand men, and Bruce 
 had not more than forty thousand ; but, Bruce's army was strongly 
 posted in three square columns, on the ground lying between the 
 Burn or Brook of Bannock and the walls of Stirling Castle. 
 
 On the very evening, when the King came up, Bruce did a brave 
 act that encouraged his men. He was seen by a certain Henry de 
 Bohun, an English Knight, riding about before his army on a little 
 horse, with a light battle-axe in his hand, and a crown of gold on his 
 head. This English Knight, who was mounted on a strong war-horse, 
 cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as he thought) to overthrow 
 Bruce by crushing him with his mere weight, set spurs to his great 
 charger, rode on him, and made a thrust at him with his heavy spear. 
 Bruce parried the thrust, and with one blow of his battle-axe split 
 his skull. 
 
 The Scottish men did not forget this, next day when the battle 
 raged. Kandolph, Bruce's valiant Nephew, rode, with the small 
 body of men he commanded, into such a host of the English, all shining 
 in polished armour in the sunlight, that they seemed to be swallowed 
 up and lost, as if they had plunged into the sea. But, they fought so 
 well, and did such dreadful execution, that the English staggered. 
 Then came Bruce himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. 
 While they were thus hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon 
 the hills what they supposed to be a new Scottish army, but what 
 were really only the camp followers, in number fifteen thousand : 
 whom Bruce had taught to show themselves at that place and time. 
 The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the English horse, made a last 
 rush to change the fortune of the day ; but Bruce (like Jack the 
 Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the ground, and covered 
 over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as they gave way beneath the 
 weight of the horses, riders and horses rolled by hundreds. The 
 English were completely routed ; all their treasure, stores, and 
 engines, were taken by the Scottish men ; so many waggons and 
 other wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related that they would 
 have reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, one hundred and 
 eighty miles. The fortunes of Scotland were, for the time, completely 
 changed ; and never was a battle won, more famous upon Scottish 
 ground, than this great battle of Bannockbuen. 
 
 Plague and famine succeeded in England ; and still the powerless 
 King and his disdainful Lords were always in contention. Some of 
 the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce, to accept 
 the rule of that country. He sent his brother Edward to them, who 
 was crowned King of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to help 
 his brother in his Irish wars, but his brother was defeated in the end 
 and killed. Eobert Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased his 
 Strength there.
 
 Edward the Second. 463 
 
 As the King's ruiu had begun in a favourite, so it seemed likely to 
 end in one. He was too poor a creature to rely at all upon himself; 
 and his new favourite was ono Hugh le Despenser, the son of a 
 gentleman of ancient family. Hugh was handsome and brave, but he 
 was the favourite of a weak King, whom no man cared a rush for, 
 and that was a dangerous placo to hold. The Nobles leagued against 
 him, because the King liked him ; and they lay in wait, both for his 
 ruin and his father's. Now, the King had married him to the 
 daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester, and had given both him and 
 his father great possessions in Wales. In their endeavours to extend 
 these, they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh gentleman, named 
 John de Mowbray, and to divers other angry Welsh gentlemen, who 
 resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized their estates. Tho 
 Earl of Lancaster had first placed the favourite (who was a poor 
 relation of his own) at Court, and he considered his own dignity 
 offended by the preference he received and the honours he acquired ; 
 so he, and the Barons who were his friends, joined the Welshmen, 
 marched on London, and sent a message to the King demanding to 
 have the favourito and his father banished. At first, the King unac- 
 countably took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a 
 bold reply ; but when they quartered themselves around Holborn and 
 Clerkenwell, and went down, armed, to the Parliament at Westminster, 
 he gave way, and complied with their demands. 
 
 His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It arose out 
 of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful Queen happening to bo 
 travelling, came one night to one of the royal castles, and demanded 
 to be lodged and entertained there until morning. The governor of 
 this castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, and in his 
 absence, his wife refused admission to the Queen ; a scuffle took placo 
 among the common men on either side, and some of the royal 
 attendants were killed. The people, who cared nothing for the King, 
 were very angry that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely 
 treated in her own dominions ; and the King, taking advantage of 
 this feeling, besieged the castle, took it, and then called the two 
 Despensers home. Upon this, the confederate lords and the Welsh- 
 men went over to Bruce. The King encountered them at Borough- 
 bridge, gained the victory, and took a number of distinguished 
 prisoners ; among them, the Earl of Lancaster, now an old man, upon 
 whose destruction he was resolved. The Earl was taken to his own 
 castle of Pontefract, and there tried and found guilty by an unfair 
 court appointed for the purpose ; he was not even allowed to speak 
 in his own defence. He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved 
 pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight-aud- 
 twenty knights wero hanged, drawn, and quartered. When tho King 
 had despatched this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long 
 truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into greater favour than 
 ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester.
 
 464 A Child's History of England. 
 
 One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at Borough- 
 bridge, made his escape, however, and turned the tide against the 
 King. This was Eoger Mortimer, always resolutely opposed to 
 him, who was sentenced to death, and placed for safe custody in the 
 Tower of London. He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into 
 which he had put a sleeping potion ; and, when they were insensible, 
 broke out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, 
 let himself down from the roof of the building with a rope-ladder, 
 passed the sentries, got down to the river, and made away in a boat 
 to where servants and horses were waiting for him. He finally escaped 
 to France, where Charles le Bel, the brother of the beautiful Queen, 
 was King. Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England, on 
 pretence of his not having come to do him homage at his coronation. 
 It was proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange 
 the dispute ; she went, and wrote home to the King, that as he was 
 sick and could not come to France himself, perhaps it would be better 
 to send over the young Prince, their son, who was only twelve years 
 old, who could do homage to her brother in his stead, and in whoso 
 company she would immediately return. The King sent him : but, 
 both he and the Queen remained at the French Court, and Eoger 
 Mortimer became the Queen's lover. 
 
 When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen to come home, 
 she did not reply that she despised him too much to live with him 
 any more (which was the truth), but said she was afraid of the two 
 Despensers. In short, her design was to overthrow the favourites' 
 power, and the King's power, such as it was, and invade England. 
 Having obtained a French force of two thousand men, and being 
 joined by all the English exiles then in France, she landed, within a 
 year, at Orewell, in Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the 
 Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the King's two brothers ; by other power- 
 ful noblemen ; and lastly, by the first English general who was 
 despatched to check her : who went over to her with all his men. 
 The people of London, receiving these tidings, would do nothing for 
 the King, but broke open the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and 
 threw up their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful Queen. 
 
 The King, with his two favourites, fled to Bristol, where he left 
 old Despenser in charge of the town and castle, while he went on 
 with the son to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed to the King, 
 and it being impossible to hold the town with enemies everywhere 
 within the walls, Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and was 
 instantly brought to trial for having traitorously influenced what was 
 called " the King's mind " though I doubt if the King ever had any. 
 He was a venerable old man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his 
 age gained no respect or mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he 
 was yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the dogs. His son 
 was soon taken, tried at Hereford before the same judge on a long 
 series of foolish charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows
 
 Edward the Second. 465 
 
 fifty feet high, with a chaplet of nettles round his head. His poor 
 old father and he were innocent enough of any worse crimes than the 
 crime of having been friends of a King, on whom, as a mere man, 
 they would never have deigned to cast a favourable look. It is a bad 
 crime, I know, and leads to worse ; but many lords and gentlemen 
 I even think some ladies, too, if I recollect right had committed it 
 in England, who have neither been given to the dogs, nor hanged up 
 fifty feet high. 
 
 The wretched King was running here and there, all this time, and 
 never getting anywhere in particular, until he gavo himself up, and 
 was taken oft' to Kenilworth Castle. When he was safely lodged 
 there, the Queen went to London and met the Parliament. And the 
 Bishop of Hereford, who was the most skilful of her friends, said, 
 "What was to be done now ? Hero was an imbecile, idolent, miserable 
 King upon the throne ; wouldn't it be better to take him off, and put 
 his son there instead ? I don't know whether the Queen really pitied 
 him at this pass, but she began to cry ; so, the Bishop said, Well, my 
 Lords and Gentlemen, what do you think, upon the whole, of sending 
 down to Kenilworth, and seeing if His Majesty (God bless him, and 
 forbid we should depose him !) won't resign ? 
 
 My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good notion, so a deputation 
 of them went down to Kenilworth ; and there the King came into the 
 great hall of the Castle, commonly dressed in a poor black gown ; 
 and when he saw a certain bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble- 
 headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself. Somebody 
 lifted him up, and then Sir William Trussel, the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons, almost frightened him to death by making him 
 a tremendous speech to the effect that he was no longer a King, and 
 that everybody renounced allegiance to him. After which, Sir Thomas 
 Blount, the Steward of the Household, nearly finished him, by coming 
 forward and breaking his white wand which was a ceremony only 
 performed at a King's death. Being asked in this pressing manner 
 what he thought of resigning, the King said he thought it was the 
 best thing he could do. So, he did it, and they proclaimed his son 
 next day. 
 
 I wish I could close his history by saying that ho lived a harmless 
 life in the Castle and the Castle gardens at Kenilworth, many years 
 that he had a favourite, ;-jid plenty to eat and drink and, having 
 that, wanted nothing. But he was shamefully humiliated. He was 
 outraged, and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches given him 
 to shave with, and wept and said he would have clean warm water, 
 and was altogether very miserable. He was moved from this castle 
 to that castle, and from that castle to the other castle, because this 
 lord or that lord, or the other lord, was too kind to him : until at 
 last he came to Berkeley Castle, near the Kiver Severn, where (the 
 Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent) he fell into the hands of 
 two black ruffians, called Thomas Gouknay and William Oolk.
 
 466 A Child's History of England. 
 
 One night it? was the night of September the twenty-first, one 
 thousand three hundred and twenty-seven dreadful screams were 
 heard, by the startled people in the neighbouring town, ringing 
 through the thick walls of the Castle, and the dark deep night ; and 
 they said, as they were thus horribly awakened from their sleep, 
 " May Heaven be merciful to the King ; for those cries forbode that 
 no good is being done to him in his dismal prison ! " Next morning 
 he was dead not bruised, or stabbed, or marked upon the body, but 
 much distorted in the face ; and it was whispered afterwards, that 
 those two villains, Gournay and Ogle, had burnt up his inside with a 
 red-hot iron. 
 
 If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre tower of its 
 beautiful Cathedral, with its four rich pinnacles, rising lightly in the 
 air; you may remember that the wretched Edward the Second was 
 buried in the old abbey of that ancient city, at forty- three years old, 
 after being for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable King. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD. 
 
 Roger Mortimer, the Queen's lover (who escaped to France in the 
 last chajiter), was far from profiting by the examples he had had of 
 the fate of favourites. Having, through the Queen's influence, come 
 into possession of the estates of the two Despensers, he became 
 extremely proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of 
 England. The young King, who was crowned at fourteen years of 
 age with all the usual solemnities, resolved not to bear this, and soon 
 pursued Mortimer to his ruin. 
 
 The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer first, because 
 he was a Royal favourite ; secondly, because he was supposed to 
 have helped to make a peace with Scotland which now took place, 
 and in virtue of which the young King's sister Joan, only seven years 
 old, was promised in marriage to David, the son and heir of Robert 
 Bruce, who was only five years old. The nobles hated Mortimer 
 because of his pride, riches, and power. They went so far as to take 
 up arms against him ; but were obliged to submit. The Earl of 
 Kent, one of those who did so, but who afterwards went over to 
 Mortimer and the Queen, was made an example of in the following 
 cruel manner : 
 
 He seems to have been anything but a wise old earl ; and he was 
 persuaded by the agents of the favourite and the Queen, that poor 
 King Edward the Second was not really dead ; and thus was betrayed 
 into writing letters favouring his rightful claim to the throne. This
 
 Edward the Third. 467 
 
 was made out to be high treason, and lie was tried, found guilty, and 
 sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old lord outsido the 
 town of Winchester, and there kept him waiting some three or four 
 hours until they could find somebody to cut off his head. At last, a 
 convict said he would do it, if the government would pardon him in 
 return ; and they gave him the pardon ; and at one blow he put the 
 Earl of Kent out of his last suspense. 
 
 While the Queen was in France, she had found a lovely and 
 good young lady, named Philippa, who she thought would make an 
 excellent wife for her son. The young King married this lady, soon 
 after he came to the throne ; and her first child, Edward, Prince of 
 Wales, afterwards became celebrated, as we shall presently see, under 
 the famous title of Edward the Black Prince. 
 
 The young King, thinking the time ripe for the downfall of 
 Mortimer, took counsel with Lord Montacute how he should proceed. 
 A Parliament was going to be held at Nottingham, and that lord 
 recommended that the favourite should be seized by night in Notting- 
 ham Castle, where he was sure to be. Now, this, like many other 
 things, was more easily said than done ; because, to guard against 
 treachery, the great gates of the Castle were locked every night, and 
 the great keys were carried up-stairs to the Queen, who laid them 
 under her own pillow. But the Castle had a governor, and the 
 governor being Lord Montacute's friend, confided to him how he 
 knew of a secret passage under-ground, hidden from observation by 
 the weeds and brambles with which it was overgrown ; and how, 
 through that passage, the conspirators might enter in the dead of tho 
 night, and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accordingly, upon a 
 certain dark night, at midnight, they made their way through this 
 dismal place : startling the rats, and frightening the owls and bats : 
 and came safely to tho bottom of the main tower of the Castle, whero 
 the King met tbem, and took them up a profoundly-dark staircase in 
 a deep silence. They soon heard tho voice of Mortimer in council 
 with some friends ; and bursting into the room with a sudden noise, 
 took him prisoner. The Queen cried out from her bed-chamber, 
 'Oh, my sweet son, my dear son, spare my gentlo Mortimer!" 
 Tnoy carried him oil", however ; and, before tho next Parliament, 
 accused him of having made differences between the young King and 
 his mother, and of having brought about tho deatli of the Earl of 
 Kent, and even of the late King ; for, as you know by tin's time, 
 when they wanted to get rid of a man in those old days, they wero 
 not very particular of what they accused him. Mortimer was found 
 guilty of all this, and was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. Tho 
 King shut his mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed 
 the rest of her life ; and now he became King in earnest. 
 
 The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The English 
 lords who had lands in Scotland, finding that their rights were not 
 respected under the late peace made war on their own account;
 
 468 A Child's History of England. 
 
 choosing for their general, Edward, the son of John Baliol, who made 
 such a vigorous fight, that in less than two months he won the whole 
 Scottish Kingdom. He was joined, when thus triumphant, hy the 
 King and Parliament ; and he and the King in person besieged the 
 Scottish forces in Berwick. The whole Scottish army coming to 
 the assistance of their countrymen, such a furious battle ensued, that 
 thirty thousand men are said to have been killed in it. Baliol was 
 then crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to the King of Eng- 
 land ; but little came of his successes after all, for the Scottish men 
 rose against him, within no very long time, and David Bruce came 
 back within ten years and took his kingdom. 
 
 France was a far richer country than Scotland, and the King had 
 a much greater mind to conquer it. So, he let Scotland alone, and 
 pretended that he had a claim to the French throne in right of his 
 mother. He had, in reality, no claim at all ; but that mattered little 
 in those times. He brought over to his cause many little princes and 
 sovereigns, and even courted the alliance of the people of Flanders 
 a busy, working community, who had very small respect for kings, 
 and whose head man was a brewer. With such forces as he raised 
 by these means, Edward invaded France ; but he did little by that, 
 except run into debt in carrying on the war to the extent of three 
 hundred thousand pounds. The next year he did better ; gaining a 
 great sea-fight in the harbour of Sluys. This success, however, was 
 very short-lived, for the Flemings took fright at the siege of Saint 
 Omer and ran away, leaving their weapons and baggage behind them. 
 Philip, the French King, coming up with his army, and Edward being 
 very anxious to decide the war, proposed to settle the difference by 
 single combat with him, or by a fight of one hundred knights on each 
 side. The French King said, he thanked him ; but being very well 
 as he was, he would rather not. So, after some skirmishing and 
 talking, a short peace was made. 
 
 It was soon broken by King Edward's favouring the cause of John, 
 Earl of Montford ; a French noblemen, who asserted a claim of his 
 own against the French King, and offered to do homage to England 
 for the Crown of France, if he could obtain it through England's help. 
 This French lord, himself, was soon defeated by the French King's 
 son, and shut up in a tower in Paris ; but his wife, a courageous and 
 beautiful woman, who is said to have had the courage of a man, ' ud 
 the heart of a lion, assembled the people of Brittany, where she then 
 was ; and, showing them her infant son, made many pathetic entreaties 
 to them not to desert her and their young Lord. They took fire at 
 this appeal, and rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennebon. 
 Here she was not only besieged without by the French under Charles 
 de Blois, but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop, who was 
 always representing to the people what horrors they must undergo if 
 they were faithful first from famine, and afterwards from fire and 
 sword. But this noble lady, whose heart never failed her, encouraged
 
 Edward the Third. 469 
 
 Lor soldiers by her own example ; went from post to post like a great 
 general ; even mounted on horseback fully armed, and, issuing from 
 the castle by a by-path, fell upon the French camp, set fire to tho 
 tents, and threw the whole forco into disorder. This done, she got 
 safely back to Hennebon again, and was received with loud shouts of 
 joy by the defenders of tho castle, who had given her up for lost. As 
 they wero now very short of provisions, however, and as they could 
 not dino off enthusiasm, and as the old bishop was always saying, 
 " I told you what it would come to ! " they began to lose heart, and 
 to talk of yielding the castle up. Tho brave Countess retiring to an 
 upper room and looking with great grief out to sea, where she expected 
 relief from England, saw, at this very time, the English ships in tho 
 distance, and was relieved and rescued ! Sir Walter Manning, tho 
 English commander, so admired her courage, that, being come into 
 the castle with the English knights, and having made a feast there, 
 he assaulted the French by way of dessert, and beat them off 
 triumphantly. Then he and the knights came back to tho castlo 
 with great joy ; and the Countess who had watched them from 
 a high tower, thanked them with all her heart, and kissed them 
 every one. 
 
 This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-fight with 
 the French off Guernsey, when she was on her way to England to 
 ask for more troops. Her great spirit roused another lady, tho wife 
 of another French lord (whom the French King very barbarously 
 murdered), to distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast 
 coming, however, when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be tho great 
 star of this French and English war. 
 
 It was in the month of July, in the year one thousand thrco 
 hundred and forty-six, when the King embarked at Southampton for 
 France, with an army of about thirty thousand men in all, attended 
 by the Prince of Wales and by several of the chief nobles. Ho landed 
 at La Hoguc in Norruandy ; and, burning and destroying as lie went, 
 according to custom, advanced up the left bank of the River Seine, 
 and fired the small towns even close to Paris ; but, being watched 
 from the right bank of the river by the French King and all Ids 
 army, it came to this at last, that Edward found himself, on Saturday 
 the twenty-sixth of August, one thousand three hundred and forty-six, 
 on a rising ground behind the little French village of Crccy, face to 
 face with the French King's force. And, although the French King 
 had an enormous army in number more than eight times his ho 
 there resolved to beat him or be beaten. 
 
 The young Prince, assisted by tho Earl of Oxford and tho Earl of 
 Warwick, led tho first division of the English army ; two other great 
 Earls led the second ; and the King, the third. Whon the morning 
 dawned, the King received the sacrament, and heard prayers, and 
 then, mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, rode from 
 company to company, and rank to rank, cheering and encouraging
 
 470 A Child's History of England. 
 
 both officers and men. Then the whole army breakfasted, each man 
 sitting on the ground whore he had stood ; and then they remained 
 quietly on the ground with their weapons ready. 
 
 Up came the French King with all his great force. It was dark 
 and angry weather ; there was an eclipse of the sun ; there was a 
 thunder-storm, accompanied with tremendous rain ; tho frightened 
 birds flew screaming above the soldiers' heads. A certain captain in 
 the French army advised tho French King, who was by no means 
 cheerful, not to begin the battle until the morrow. The King, taking 
 this advice, gave the word to halt. But, those behind not under- 
 standing it, or desiring to be foremost with tho rest, came pressing 
 on. The roads for a great distance were covered with this immense 
 army, and with tho common people from the villages, who were 
 flourishing their rude weapons, and making a great noise. Owing to 
 these circumstances, the French army advanced in the greatest con- 
 fusion ; every French lord doing what he liked with his own men, 
 and putting out the men of every other French lord. 
 
 Now, their King relied strongly upon a great body of cross-bowmen 
 from Genoa ; and these he ordered to the front to begin the battle, on 
 finding that ho could not stop it. They shouted once, they shouted 
 twice, they shouted three times, to alarm tho English archers ; but, 
 the English would have heard them shout throe thousand times and 
 would have never moved. At last the cross-bowmen went forward a 
 little, and began to discharge their bolts ; upon which, the English 
 let fly such a hail of arrows, that the Genoese speedily made off for 
 their cross-bows, besides being heavy to carry, required to be wound 
 up with a handle, and consequently took time to reload ; the English, 
 on the other hand, could discharge thoir arrows almost as fast as the 
 arrows could fly. 
 
 When the French King saw the Genoese turning, he cried out to 
 his men to kill those scoundrels, who were doing harm instead .of 
 service. This increased the confusion. Meanwhile the English 
 archers, continuing to shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers 
 of the French soldiers and knights ; whom certain sly Cornish-men 
 and Welshmen, from the English army, creeping along the ground, 
 despatched with great knives. 
 
 The Prince and his division were at this time so hard-pressed, that 
 the Earl of Warwick sent a message to the King, who was overlooking 
 the battle from a windmill, beseeching him to send more aid. 
 
 '' Is my son killed ? " said the King. 
 
 "No, sire, please God," returned the messenger. 
 
 (: Is he wounded ?" said the King. 
 
 <; No, sire." 
 
 " Is he thrown to the ground ? " said the King. 
 
 " No, sire, not so ; but, he is very hard-pressed." 
 
 " Then," said the King, " go back to those who sent you, and tell 
 them I shall send no aid ; because I set my heart upon my son proving
 
 Edivard the Third. 471 
 
 himself this day a bravo knight, and becauso I am resolved, please 
 God, that the honour of a great victory shall be his ! " 
 
 Theso bold words, being reported to tho Prince and his division, so 
 raised their spirits, that they fought better than ever. The King of 
 France charged gallantly with his men many times ; but it was of no 
 use. Night closing in, his horse was killed under him by an English 
 arrow, and the knights and nobles who had clustered thick about him 
 early in the day, were now completely scattered. At last, some of 
 his few remaining followers led him off the field by force, sinco ho 
 would not retire of himself, and they journeyed away to Amiens. 
 The victorious English, lighting their watch-fires, made merry on tho 
 field, and the King, riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his 
 arms, kissed him, and told him that he had acted nobly, and proved 
 himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was yet night, 
 King Edward was hardly aware of the great victory he had gained ; 
 but, next day, it was discovered that eleven princes, twelve hundred 
 knights, and thirty thousand common men lay dead upon the French 
 side. Among these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind man ; 
 who, having been told that his son was wounded in the battle, and 
 that no force could stand against the Black Prince, called to him two 
 knights, put himself on horseback between them, fastened the three 
 bridles together, and dashed in among the English, where he was 
 presently slain. He bore as his crest three white ostrich feathers, 
 with tho motto Ich dien, signifying in English " I serve." This 
 crest and motto were taken by the Prince of Wales in remembrance 
 of that famous day, and have been borne by the Prince of Wales over 
 since. 
 
 Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege to Calais. 
 This siege ever afterwards memorable lasted nearly a year. In 
 order to starve the inhabitants out, King Edward built so many 
 wooden houses for the lodgings of his troops, that it is said their 
 quarters looked like a second Calais suddenly sprung up around tho 
 first. Early in the siege, the governor of the town drove out what 
 he called the useless mouths, to the number of seventeen hundred 
 persons, men and women, young and old. King Edward allowed 
 them to pass through his lines, and even fed them, and dismissed 
 them with money ; but, later in the siege, ho was not so merciful 
 five hundred more, who were afterwards driven out, dying of starva- 
 tion and misery. The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that 
 they sent a letter to King Philip, telling him that they had eaten all 
 the horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that could be found 
 in the place ; and, that if he did not relieve them, they must either 
 surrender to the English, or eat one another. Philip made one effort 
 to give them relief; but they wero so hemmed in by the English 
 power, that he could not succeed, and was fain to leave the place. 
 Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered to King 
 Edward, " Tell your general," said ho to tho humble messengers
 
 472 A Child's History of England. 
 
 who came out of the town, " that I require to have sent here, six of 
 the most distinguished citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts, with 
 ropes about their necks ; and let those six men bring with them the 
 keys of the castle and the town." 
 
 When the Governor of Calais related this to the people in the 
 Market-place, there was great weeping and distress ; in the midst of 
 which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace de Saint Pierre, rose up 
 and said, that if the six men required were not sacrificed, the whole 
 population would be ; therefore, he offered himself as the first. 
 Encouraged by this bright example, five other worthy citizens rose 
 up one after another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The 
 Governor, who was too badly wounded to be able to walk, mounted a 
 poor old horse that had not been eaten, and conducted these good 
 men to the gate, while all the people cried and mourned. 
 
 Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered the heads of the 
 whole six to be struck off. However, the good Queen fell upon her 
 knees, and besought the King to give them up to her. The King 
 replied, " I wish you had been somewhere else ; but I cannot refuse 
 you." So she had them properly dressed, made a feast for them, and 
 sent them back with a handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the 
 whole camp. I hope the people of Calais loved the daughter to whom 
 she gave birth soon afterwards, for her gentle mother's sake. 
 
 Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, into Europe, hurrying 
 from the heart of China ; and killed the wretched people especially 
 the poor in such enormous numbers, that one-half of the inhabitants 
 of England are related to have died of it. It killed the cattle, in 
 great numbers, too ; and so few working mtn remained alive, that 
 there were not enough left to till the ground. 
 
 After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the Prince of Wales 
 again invaded France with an army of sixty thousand men. He went 
 through the south of the country, burning and plundering whereso- 
 ever he went ; while his father, who had still the Scottish war upon 
 his hands, did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and worried in 
 his retreat from that country by the Scottish men, who repaid his 
 cruelties with interest. 
 
 The French King, Philip, was now dead, and was succeeded by his 
 son John. The Black Prince, called by that name from the colour of 
 the armour he wore to set off his fair complexion, continuing to burn 
 and destroy in France, roused John into determined opposition ; and so 
 cruel had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so severely had 
 the French peasants suffered, that he could not find one who, for 
 love, or money, or the fear of death, would tell him what the French 
 King was doing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he camo 
 upon the French King's forces, all of a sudden, near the town of 
 Poitiers, and found that the whole neighbouring country was occupied 
 by a vast French army. " God help us ! " said the Black Prince, 
 " we must make the best of it,"
 
 THE INTEUCEBION OF UUEEN I'HII.UI'A I OK THE < TTIZH>f S OK CALA!.
 
 Edward tlie Third. 473 
 
 So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of September, the Princo 
 whose army was now reduced to ten thousand men in all prepared 
 to give battle to the French King, who had sixty thousand horso 
 alone. While he was so engaged, there came riding from the French 
 camp, a Cardinal, who had persuaded John to let him offer terms, and 
 try to savo the shedding of Christian blood. "Save my honour," 
 said the Prince to this good priest, " and save the honour of my army, 
 and I will make any reasonable terms." He offered to give up all 
 the towns, castles, and prisoners, he had taken, and to swear to mako 
 no war in France for seven years ; but, as John would hear of nothing 
 but his surrender, with a hundred of his chief knights, the treaty 
 was broken off, and the Prince said quietly " God defend the right ; 
 we shall fight to-morrow." 
 
 Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break of day, the two armies 
 prepared for battle. The English were posted in a strong place, 
 which could only be approached by one narrow lane, skirted by 
 hedges on both sides. The French attacked them by this lane ; but 
 were so galled and slain by English arrows from behind the hedges, 
 that they were forced to retreat. Then went six hundred English 
 bowmen round about, and, coming upon the rear of the French army, 
 rained arrows on them thick and fast. The French knights, thrown 
 into confusion, quitted their banners and dispersed in all directions. 
 Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, " Eide forward, noble Princo, 
 and the day is yours. The King of France is so valiant a gentleman, 
 that I know he will never fly, and may be taken prisoner." Said tho 
 Prince to this, " Advance, English banners, in the name of God and 
 St. George ! " and on they pressed until they came up with the 
 French King, fighting fiercely with his battle-axe, and, when all his 
 nobles had forsaken him, attended faithfully to the last by his 
 youngest son, Philip, only sixteen years of age. Father and son 
 fought well, and the King had already two wounds in his face, and 
 had been beaten down, when he at last delivered himself to a 
 banished French knight, and gave him his right-hand glove in token 
 that he had done so. 
 
 The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and he invited 
 his royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and waited upon him at table, 
 and, when they afterwards rode into London in a gorgeous procession, 
 mounted the French King on a fine cream-coloured horse, and rodo 
 at his side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but I think 
 it was, perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has been made more 
 meritorious than it deserved to be ; especially as I am inclined to 
 think that the greatest kindness to the King of France would have 
 been not to have shown him to the people at all. However, it must 
 be said, for these acts of politeness, that, in course of time, they did 
 much to soften the horrors of war and the passions of conquerors. It 
 was a long, long time before tho common soldiers began to have tho 
 benefit of such courtly deeds ; but they did at last ; and thus it is
 
 474 A Child? s History of England. 
 
 possible that a poor soldier who asked for quarter at the battle of 
 Waterloo, or any other such great fight, may have owed his life 
 indirectly to Edward the Black Prince. 
 
 At this time there stood in the Strand, in London, a palace called 
 the Savoy, which was given up to the captive King of France and his 
 son for their residence. As the King of Scotland had now been King 
 Edward's captive for eleven years too, his success was, at this time, 
 tolerably complete. The Scottish business was settled by the prisoner 
 being released under the title of Sir David, King of Scotland, and by 
 his engaging to pay a largo ransom. The state of France encouraged 
 England to propose harder terms to that country, where the people 
 rose against the unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles ; 
 where the nobles rose in turn against the people ; whore the most 
 frightful outrages were committed on all sides ; and where tho 
 insurrection of the peasants, called the insurrection of the Jacquerie, 
 from Jacques, a common Christian name among the country people 
 of France, awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely yet passed 
 away. A treaty called the Great Peace, was at last signed, under 
 which King Edward agreed to give up the greater part of his con- 
 quests, and King John to pay, within six years, a ransom of three 
 million crowns of gold. He was so beset by his own nobles and 
 courtiers for having yielded to these conditions though they could 
 help him to no better that he came back of his own will to his old 
 palace-prison of Savoy, and there died. 
 
 There was a Sovereign of Castile at that time, called Pedro the 
 Cruel, who deserved the name remarkably well : having committed, 
 among other cruelties, a variety of murders. This amiable monarch 
 being driven from his throne for his crimes, went to the province of 
 Bordeaux, where the Black Prince now married to his cousin Joan, 
 a pretty widow was residing, and besought his help. The Prince, 
 who took to him much more kindly than a prince of such fame ought 
 to have taken to such a ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, 
 and agreeing to help him, sent secret orders to some troublesome 
 disbanded soldiers of his and his father's, who called themselves tho 
 Free Companions, and who had been a pest to the French people, for 
 some time, to aid this Pedro. The Prince, himself, going into Spain 
 to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on his throne again where 
 he no sooner found himself, than, of course, he behaved like tho 
 villain he was, broke his word without the least shame, and abandoned 
 all the promises he had made to the Black Prince. 
 
 Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to pay soldiers 
 to support this murderous King ; and finding himself, when he came 
 back disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, but deeply in 
 debt, he began to tax his French subjects to pay his creditors. They 
 appealed to the French King, Charles ; war again broke out ; and 
 the French town of Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, 
 went over to the French King. Upon this he ravaged the province
 
 Edward the Third. 475 
 
 of which it was the capital ; burnt, and plundered, and killed in tho 
 old sickening way ; and refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, 
 and children taken in the offending town, though he was so ill and 
 so much in need of pity himself from Heaven, that ho was carried in 
 a litter. He lived to come home and mako himself popular with tho 
 people and Parliament, and he died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth 
 of June, one thousand three hundred and seventy-six, at forty-six 
 years old. 
 
 Tho whole nation mourned for him as one of the most renowned 
 and beloved princes it had ever had : and he was buried with great 
 lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to tho tomb of Edward 
 tho Confessor, his monument, with his figure, carved in stone, and 
 represented in tho old black armour, lying on its back, may be seen 
 at this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of 
 gauntlets hanging from a beam above it, which most people liko to 
 believe were once worn by the Black Prince. 
 
 King Edward did not outlive his renowned son, long. He was old, 
 and one Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, had contrived to make him 
 so fond of her in his old age, that he could refuse her nothing, and 
 made himself ridiculous. She little deserved his love, or what 
 I dare say she valued a great deal more the jewels of the late 
 Queen, which he gave her among other rich presents. She took tho 
 very ring from his finger on the morning of the day when he died, 
 ancl left him to be pillaged by his faithless servants. Only one good 
 priest was true to him, and attended him to the last. 
 
 Besides being famous for the great victories I have related, the 
 reign of King Edward the Third was rendered memorable in better 
 ways, by the growth of architecture and the erection of "Windsor 
 Castle. In better ways still, by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally 
 a poor parish priest : who devoted himself to exposing, with wonderful 
 power and success, the ambition and corruption of the Pope, and of 
 the whole church of which he was the head. 
 
 Some of those Flemings were induced to come to England in this 
 reign too, and to settle in Norfolk, where they made better woollen 
 cloths than the English had ever had before. The Order of the 
 Garter (a very fine thing in its way, but hardly so important as good 
 clothes for the nation) also dates from this period. Tho King is said 
 to havo picked up a lady's garter at a ball, and to have said, lhmi 
 noil qui mal y pense in English, " Evil bo to him who evil thinks of 
 it." The courtiers were usually glad to imitate what the King said 
 or did, and hence from a slight incident the Order of the Carter was 
 instituted, and became a great dignity. So the story goes.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND. 
 
 Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years of age, succeeded 
 to tlie Crown under the title of King Richard the Second. The wholo 
 English nation were ready to admire him for the sake of his bravo 
 father. As to the lords and ladies about the Court, they declared 
 him to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best even of princes 
 whom the lords and ladies about the Court, generally declare to be 
 the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of mankind. To natter 
 a poor boy in this base manner was not a very likely way to develop 
 whatever good was in him ; and it brought him to anything but a 
 good or happy end. 
 
 The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's uncle commonly called 
 John of Gaunt, from having been born at Ghent, which the common 
 people so pronounced was supposed to have some thoughts of the 
 throne himself; but, as he was not popular, and the memory of the 
 Black Prince was, he submitted to his nephew. 
 
 The war with Franco being still unsettled, the Government of 
 England wanted money to provide for the expenses that might ariso 
 out of it ; accordingly a certain tax, called the Poll-tax, which had 
 originated in the last reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. 
 This was a tax on every person in the kingdom, male and female, 
 above the age of fourteen, of three groats (or three fourpenny pieces) 
 a year ; clergymen were charged more, and only beggars were exempt. 
 
 I have no need to repeat that the common people of England bad 
 long been suffering under great oppression. They were still the 
 mere slaves of the lords of the land on which they lived, and were on 
 most occasions harshly and unjustly treated. But, they had begun 
 by this time to tbink very seriously of not bearing quite so much ; 
 and, probably, were emboldened by that French insurrection I men- 
 tioned in the last chapter. 
 
 The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax, and being severely 
 handled by the government officers, killed some of them. At this 
 very time one of the tax-collectors, going his rounds from house to 
 house, at Dartford in Kent came to the cottage of one Wat, a tiler by 
 trade, and claimed the tax upon his daughter. Her mother, who was 
 at home, declared that she was under the age of fourteen ; upon that, 
 the collector (as other collectors had already done in different parts 
 of England) behaved in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat 
 Tyler's daughter. The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. 
 Wat the Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to the spot, and did 
 what any honest fatber under snek provocation might havo done' 
 struck the collector dead at a blow,
 
 Richard the Second. 477 
 
 Instantly the peoplo of that town uproso as one man. They made 
 Wat Tyler their leader ; they joined with the people of Essex, who 
 were in arms under a priest called Jack Straw ; they took ont of 
 prison another priest named John Ball ; and gathering in numbers 
 as they went along, advanced, in a great confused army of poor men, 
 to Blackheath. It is said that they wanted to abolish all property, 
 and to declare all men equal. I do not think this very likely ; because 
 they stopped the travellers on the roads and made them swear to be 
 true to King Richard and the people. Nor were they at all disposed 
 to injure those who had done them no harm, merely because they 
 were of high station ; for, the King's mother, who had to pass through 
 their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young son, lying for 
 safety in the Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty-faced 
 rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of royalty, and so got away 
 in perfect safety. Next day the whole mass marched on to London 
 Bridge. 
 
 There was a drawbridge in the middle, which William Walworth 
 the Mayor caused to be raised to prevent their coming into the city ; 
 but they soon terrified the citizens into lowering it again, and spread 
 themselves, with great uproar, over the streets. They broke open 
 the prisons ; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace ; they destroyed 
 the Duke of Lancaster's Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to 
 be the most beautiful and splendid in England ; they set fire to the 
 books and documents in the Temple ; and made a great riot. Many 
 of these outrages were committed in drunkenness ; since those citizens, 
 who had well-filled cellars, were only too glad to throw them open 
 to save the rest of their property ; but even the drunken rioters were 
 very careful to steal nothing. They were so angry with one man, 
 who was seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, and put it in 
 his breast, that they drowned him in the river, cup and all. 
 
 The young King had been taken out to treat with them before they 
 committed these excesses ; but, he and the people about him were so 
 frightened by the riotous shouts, that they got back to the Towor in 
 the best way they could. This made the insurgents bolder ; so they 
 went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who did not, at 
 a moment's notice, declare for King Richard and the people ; and 
 killing as many of the unpopular persons whom they supposed to 
 be their enemies as they could by any means lay hold of. In this 
 manner they passed one very violent day, and then proclamation was 
 made that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant their 
 requests. 
 
 The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and 
 the King met them there, and to the King the rioters peaceably pro- 
 posed four conditions. First, that neither they, nor their children, 
 nor any coining after them, should be made slaves any more. Secondly, 
 that the rent of land should be fixed at a certain price in money, 
 instead of being paid in service. Thirdly, that they should have
 
 47 8 A Child's History of England. 
 
 liberty to buy and sell in all markets and public places, like other 
 free men. Fourthly, that they should be pardoned for past offences. 
 Heaven knows, there was nothing very unreasonable in these pro- 
 posals ! The young King deceitfully pretended to think so, and kept 
 thirty clerks up, all night, writing out a charter accordingly. 
 
 Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He wanted the 
 entire abolition of the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end with the 
 rest, but, while that meeting was being held, broke into the Tower of 
 London and slew the archbishop and the treasurer, for whose heads 
 the people had cried out loudly the day before. He and his men 
 even thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess of Wales while 
 the Princess was in it, to make certain that none of their enemies 
 were concealed there. 
 
 So, Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode about the city. 
 Next morning, the King with a small train of some sixty gentlemen 
 among whom was Walworth the Mayor rode into Smithfield, 
 and saw Wat and his people at a little distance. Says Wat to his 
 men, " There is the King. I will go speak with him, and tell him 
 what we want." 
 
 Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. " King," says 
 Wat, " dost thou see all my men there ? " 
 
 " Ah," says the King. " Why ? " 
 
 " Because," says Wat, " they are all at my command, and have sworn 
 to do whatever I bid them." 
 
 Some declared afterwards tbat as Wat said this, he laid his hand 
 on the King's bridle. Others declared that he was seen to play with 
 his own dagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke to the King like 
 a rough, angry man as he was, and did nothing more. At any rate he 
 was expecting no attack, and preparing for no resistance, when 
 Wal worth the Mayor did the not very valiant deed of drawing a short 
 sword and stabbing him in the throat. He dropped from his horse, 
 and one of the King's people speedily finished him. So fell Wat 
 Tyler. Pawners and flatterers made a mighty triumph of it, and set 
 up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to this day. But Wat 
 was a hard-working man, who had suffered much, and had been foully 
 outraged ; and it is probable that he was a man of a much higher 
 nature and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites who exulted 
 then, or have exulted since, over his defeat. 
 
 Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows to avenge 
 his fall. If the young King had not had presence of mind at that 
 dangerous moment, both he and the Mayor to boot, might have 
 followed Tyler pretty fast. But the King riding up to the crowd, 
 cried out that Tyler was a traitor, and that he would be their leader. 
 They were so taken by surprise, that they set up a great shouting, 
 and followed the boy until he was met at Islington by a large body 
 of soldiers. 
 
 The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon as the
 
 Richard the Second. 479 
 
 King found himself safo, lie unsaid all he had said, and undid all 
 he had done ; somo fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried (mostly 
 in Essex) with great rigour, and executed with great cruelty. Many 
 of them were hanged on gibhets, and left there ae a terror to the 
 country people ; and, because their miserable friends took some of 
 the bodies down to bury, the King ordered the rest to bo chained up 
 which was the beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in 
 chains. The King's falsehood in this business makes such a pitiful 
 figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond comparison 
 the truer and more respectable man of the two. 
 
 Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia, 
 an excellent princoss, who was called " the good Queen Anne." She 
 deserved a better husband ; for the King had been fawned and 
 flattered into a treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man. 
 
 There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not enough !), 
 and their quarrels involved Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scot- 
 laud was still troublesome too ; and at home there was much jealousy 
 and distrust, and plotting and counter-plotting, because the King 
 feared the ambition of his relations, and particularly of his uncle, the 
 Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had his party against the King, and 
 the King had his party against the du\o. Nor were these home 
 troubles lessened when the duke went to Castile to urge his claim to 
 the crown of that kingdom ; for then the Duke of Gloucester, another 
 of Richard's uncles, opposed him, and influenced the Parliament to 
 demand the dismissal of the King's favourito ministers. The King 
 said in reply, that he would not for such men dismiss the meanest 
 servant in his kitchen. But, it had begun to signify little what a 
 King said when a Parliament was determined ; so Richard was at 
 last obliged to give way, and to agree to another Government of the 
 kingdom, under a commission of fourteen nobles, for a year. His 
 uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this commission, and, in fact, 
 appointed everybody composing it. 
 
 Having done all this, the King declared as soon as ho saw an 
 opportunity that he had never meant to do it, and that it was all 
 illegal ; and he got the judges secretly to sign a declaration to that 
 effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was carried to the Duke 
 of Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand 
 men, met the King on his entering into London to enforce his 
 authority; the King was helpless against him; his favourites and 
 ministers were impeached and wore mercilessly executed. Among 
 them were two men whom the people regarded with very different 
 feelings ; one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for 
 having made what was called " the bloody circuit " to try the rioters ; 
 the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honourable knight, who had been the 
 dear friend of the Black Prince, and the governor and guardian of 
 the King. For this gentleman's life the good Queen even begged of 
 Gloucester on her knees ; but Gloucester (with or without reason)
 
 480 A Child's History of England. 
 
 feared and hated him, and replied, that if she valued her husband's 
 crown, she had better beg no more. All this was done under what 
 was called by some the wonderful and by others, with better reason, 
 the merciless Parliament. 
 
 But Gloucester's pow t was not to last for ever. He held it for 
 only a year longer ; in which year the famous battle of Otterbourne, 
 sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. When the year 
 was out, the King, turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of a 
 great council said, " Unc T e, how old am I ? " " Your highness," 
 returned the Duke, " is in your twenty-second year." " Am I so 
 much ? " said the King, " then I will manage my own affairs ! I am 
 much obliged to you, my good lords, for your past services, but I 
 need them no more." He followed this up, by appointing a new 
 Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that he 
 had resumed the Government. He held it for eight years without 
 opposition. Through all that time, he kept his determination to 
 revenge himself some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his own 
 breast. 
 
 At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring to take a 
 second wife, proposed to his council that he should marry Isabella, of 
 France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth : who, the French courtiers 
 said (as the English courtiers had said of Eichard), was a marvel of 
 beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon of seven years old. The 
 council were divided about this marriage, but it took place. It 
 secured peace between England and France for a quarter of a century ; 
 but it was strongly opposed to the prejudices of the English people. 
 The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take the occasion of 
 making himself popular, declaimed against it loudly, and this at 
 length decided the King to execute the vengeance he had been nursing 
 so long. 
 
 He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's house, 
 Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came 
 out into th' court-yard to receive his royal visitor. While the King 
 conversed in a friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was 
 quietly seized, hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the 
 castle there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were 
 taken in the same treacherous manner, and confined to their castles. 
 A few days after, at Nottingham, they were impeached of high 
 treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned and beheaded, and the 
 Earl of Warwick w r as banished. Then, a writ was sent by a messenger 
 to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of 
 Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an answer 
 that he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had died 
 in prison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his property was con- 
 fiscated to the King, a real or pretended confession he had made 
 in prison to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas was pro- 
 duced against him, and there was an end of the matter. How the
 
 Richard the Second. 481 
 
 unfortunate dnke died, very few cared to know. Whether he really 
 died naturally; whether he killed himself; whether, by the King's 
 order, he was strangled, or smothered between two beds (as a serving- 
 man of the Governor's named Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot 
 be discovered. There is not much doubt that he was killed, somehow 
 or other, by his nephew's orders. Among the most activo nobles in 
 these proceedings were the King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom 
 the King had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old 
 family quarrels, and some others : who had in the family-plotting 
 times done just such acts themselves as they now condemned in the 
 duke. They seem to have been a corrupt set of men ; but such men 
 were easily found about the court in such days. 
 
 The people murmured at all this, and were -still very sore about 
 the French marriage. The nobles saw how little the King cared for 
 law, and how crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid of 
 themselves. The King's life was a life of continued feasting and 
 excess ; his retinue, down to the meanest servants, were dressed in 
 the most costly manner, and caroused at his tables, it is related, to 
 the number of ten thousand persons every day. Ho himself, sur- 
 rounded by a body of ten thousand archers, and enriched by a duty 
 on wool which the Commons had granted him for life, saw no danger 
 of ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute, and was as fierce 
 and haughty as a King could be. 
 
 He had two of his old enemies left, iu the persons of the Dukes of 
 Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no more than the others, he 
 tampered with the Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare 
 before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some 
 treasonable talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford ; and that 
 he had told him, among other things, that he could not believe the 
 King's oath which nobody could, I should think. For this treachery 
 he obtained a pardon, and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to 
 appear and defend himself. As he denied the charge and said his 
 accuser was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according to the 
 manner of those times, were held in custody, and the truth was ordered 
 to be decided by wager of battle at Coventry. This wager of battle 
 meant that whosoever won the combat was to be considered in tho 
 right ; which nonsense meant in effect, that no strong man could ever 
 be wrong. A great holiday was made ; a great crowd assembled, 
 with much parade and show ; and the two combatants were about to 
 rush at each other with their lances, when the King, sitting in a 
 pavilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon he carried in his hand, 
 and forbade the battle. The Duke of Hereford was to be banished 
 for ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life. 
 So said the King. The Duke of Hereford wont to France, and went 
 no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage to tho Holy 
 Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a broken heart. 
 
 Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his career. Tho 
 
 2!
 
 482 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died 
 soon after the departure of his son ; and, the King, although he had 
 solemnly granted to that son leave to inherit his father's property, 
 if it should come to him during his banishment, immediately seized 
 it all, like a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, that they 
 disgraced themselves by declai'ing this theft to be just and lawful. 
 His avarice knew no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at 
 once, on a frivolous pretence, merely to raise money by way of fines 
 for misconduct. In short, he did as many dishonest things as he 
 could ; and cared so little for the discontent of his subjects though 
 even the spaniel favourites began to whisper to him that there was 
 such a thing as discontent afloat that he took that time, of all 
 others, for leaving England and making an expedition against the 
 Irish. 
 
 He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of York Eegent in his 
 absence, when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, came over from France 
 to claim the rights of which he had been so monstrously deprived. 
 He was immediately joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland 
 and "Westmoreland ; and his uncle, the Regent, finding the King's 
 cause unpopular, and the disinclination of the army to act against 
 Henry, very strong, withdrew with the royal forces towards Bristol. 
 Henry, at the head of an army, came from Yorkshire (where he had 
 landed) to London and followed him. They joined their forces- 
 how they brought that about, is not distinctly understood and pro- 
 ceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen had taken the young 
 Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently put those three 
 noblemen to death. The Eegent then remained there, and Henry 
 went on to Chester. 
 
 All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented the King from 
 receiving intelligence of what had occurred. At length it was 
 conveyed to him in Ireland, and he sent over the Earl of Salisbury, 
 who, landing at Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and waited for the 
 King a whole fortnight ; at the end of that time the Welshmen, who 
 were perhaps not very warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled 
 down and went home. When the King did land on the coast at last, 
 he came with a pretty good power, but his men cared nothing for 
 him, and quickly deserted. Supposing the Welshmen to be still at 
 Conway, he disguised himself as a priest, and made for that place in 
 company with his two brothers and some few of their adherents. 
 But, there were no Welshmen left only Salisbury and a hundred 
 soldiers. In this distress, the King's two brothers, Exeter and 
 Surrey, offered to go to Henry to learn what his intentions were. 
 Surrey, who was true to Richard, was put into prison. Exeter, who 
 was false, took the royal badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and 
 assumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After this, it was pretty 
 plain to the King what Henry's intentions were, without sending any 
 more messengers to ask.
 
 Richard the Second. 483 
 
 The fallen King, thus deserted hemmed in on all sides, and 
 pressed with hunger rode here and rode there, and went to this 
 castle, and went to that castle, endeavouring to ohtain some provisions, 
 but could find none. He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and 
 there surrendered himself to the Earl of Northumberland, who camo 
 from Henry, in reality to take him prisoner, but in appearance to 
 offer terms ; and whose men were hidden not far off. By this earl he 
 was conducted to the castle of Flint, where his cousin Henry met him, 
 and dropped on his knee as if he were still respectful to his sovereign. 
 
 " Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the King, " you are very welcome " 
 (very welcome, no doubt ; but he would have been more so, in chains 
 or without a head). 
 
 " My lord," replied Henry, " I am come a little before my time ; 
 but, with your good pleasure, I will show you the reason. Your 
 people complain with some bitterness, that you have ruled them 
 rigorously for two-and-twenty years. Now, if it please God, I will 
 help you to govern them better in future." 
 
 "Fair cousin," replied the abject King, "since it pleaseth you, it 
 pleaseth me mightily." 
 
 After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was stuck on a 
 wretched horse, and carried prisoner to Chester, where he was made 
 to issue a proclamation, calling a Parliament. From Chester he was 
 taken on towards London. At Lichfield he tried to escape by getting 
 out of a window and letting himself down into a garden ; it was all 
 in vain, however, and he was carried on and shut up in tho Tower, 
 where no one pitied him, and where tho whole people, whose patience 
 he had quite tired out, reproached him without mercy. Before he 
 got there, it is related, that his very dog left him and departed from 
 his side to lick the hand of Henry. 
 
 The day before the Parliament met, a deputation went to this 
 wretched King, and told him that ho had promised the Earl of 
 Northumberland at Conway Castle to resign the crown. He said he 
 was quite ready to do it, and signed a paper in which he renounced 
 his authority and absolved his people from their allegiance to him. 
 He had so little spirit left that he gave his royal ring to his trium- 
 phant cousin Henry with his own hand, and said, that if lie could 
 have had leave to appoint a successor, that same Henry was the man 
 of all others whom he would have named. Next day, the Parliament 
 assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the side of tho 
 throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of gold. The 
 paper just signed by the King was read to the multitude amid shouts 
 of joy, which were echoed through all the streets; when some of the 
 noise had died away, the King was formally deposed. Then Henry 
 arose, and, making the sign of tho cross on his forehead and breast, 
 challenged tho realm of England as his right ; the archbishops of 
 Canterbury and York seated him on the throne. 
 
 The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout
 
 44 A Child's History of England. 
 
 all the streets. No one remembered, now, that Eichard the Second 
 had ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of princes ; 
 and he now made living (to my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle 
 in the Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, 
 among the hoofs of the royal horses in Smithfield. 
 
 The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and Eoyal 
 Family, could make no chains in which the King could hang the 
 people's recollection of him ; so the Poll-tox was never collected. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE. 
 
 During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against the pride 
 and cunning of the Pope and all his men, had made a great noise in 
 England. Whether the new King wished to be in favour with the 
 priests, or whether he hoped, by pretending to be very religious, to 
 cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not an usurper, I don't 
 know. Both suppositions are likely enough. It is certain that he 
 began his reign by making a strong show against the followers of 
 Wickliffe, who were called Lollards, or heretics although his father, 
 John of Gaunt, had been of that way of thinking, as he himself had 
 been more than suspected of being. It is no less certain that he first 
 established in England the detestable and atrocious custom, brought 
 from abroad, of burning those people as a punishment for their 
 opinions. It was the importation into England of one of the practices 
 of what was called the Holy Inquisition : which was the most unholy 
 and the most infamous tribunal that ever disgraced mankind, and 
 made men more like demons than followers of Our Saviour. 
 
 No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this King. Edward 
 Mortimer, the young Earl of March who was only eight or nine 
 years old, and who was descended from the Duke of Clarence, the 
 elder brother of Henry's father was, by succession, the real heir to 
 the throne. However, the King got his son declared Prince of Wales ; 
 and, obtaining possession of the young Earl of March and his little 
 brother, kept them in confinement (but not severely) in Windsor 
 Castle. He then required the Parliament to decide what was to be 
 done with the deposed King, who was quiet enough, and who only 
 said that he hoped his cousin Henry would bo " a good lord " to him. 
 The Parliament replied that they would recommend his being kept 
 in some secret place where the people could not resort, and where his 
 friends could not be admitted to see him. Henry accordingly passed 
 this sentence upon him, and it now began to be pretty clear to the 
 nation that Richard the Second would not live very long.
 
 Henry the Fourth 485 
 
 It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled one, and the 
 Lords quarrelled so violently among themselves as to which of them 
 had been loyal and which disloyal, and which consistent and which 
 inconsistent, that forty gauntlets arc said to have been thrown upon 
 the floor at one time as challenges to as many battles : the truth being 
 that they were all false and base together, and had been, at one timo 
 with the old King, and at another timo with the new one, and seldom 
 true for any length of time to any one. They soon began to plot 
 again. A conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a tournament 
 at Oxford, and then to take him by surprise and kill him. This 
 murderous enterprise, which was agreed upon at secret meetings in 
 the houso of the Abbot of Westminster, was betrayed by the Earl of 
 Rutland one of the conspirators. The King, instead of going to the 
 tournament or staying at Windsor (where the conspirators suddenly 
 went, on finding themselves discovered, with the hope of seizing him), 
 retired to London, proclaimed them all traitors, and advanced upon 
 them with a great force. They retired into the west of England, 
 proclaiming Richard King ; but, the people rose against them, and 
 they were all slain. Their treason hastened the death of the deposed 
 monarch. Whether he was killed by hired assassins, or whether ho 
 was starved to death, or whether he refused food on hearing of his 
 brothers being killed (who were in that plot), is very doubtful. He 
 met his death somehow ; and his body was publicly shown at St. 
 Paul's Cathedral with only tho lower part of the face uncovered. I 
 can scarcely doubt that he was killed by the King's orders. 
 
 Tho French wife of the miserable Richard was now only ton years 
 old ; and, when her father, Charles of France, heard of her misfortunes 
 and of her lonely condition in England, he went mad : as he had 
 several times done before, during the last five or six years. Tho 
 French Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl's 
 cause, without caring much about it, but on the chance of getting 
 something out of England. The people of Bordeaux, who had a sort 
 of superstitious attachment to the memory of Richard, because he was 
 born there, swore by the Lord that he had been the best man in all 
 his kingdom which was going rather far and promised to do great 
 tilings against tho English. Nevertheless, when they came to consider 
 that they, and the whole people of France, were ruined by their own 
 nobles, and that the English rule was much the better of the two, 
 they cooled down again ; and the two dukes, although they were very 
 great men, could do nothing without them. Then, began negotiations 
 between France and England for the sending home to Paris of the 
 poor little Queen with all her jewels and her fortune of two hundred 
 thousand francs in gold. The King was quite willing to restore tho 
 young lady, and even the jewels ; but he said he really could not part 
 with the money. So, at last she was safely deposited at Paris without 
 her fortune, and then the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to tho 
 French King) began to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was
 
 486 A Child's History of England. 
 
 brother to the French King) about the whole matter ; and thoso two 
 dukes made France even more wretched than ever. 
 
 As the idea of conquering Scotland was still popular at home, the 
 King marched to the river Tyne and demanded homage of the King 
 of that country. This being refused, he advanced to Edinburgh, but 
 did little there ; for, his army being in want of provisions, and the 
 Scotch being very careful to hold him in check without giving battle, 
 he was obliged to retire. It is to his immortal honour that in this 
 sally he burnt no villages and slaughtered no people, but was par- 
 ticularly careful that his army should be merciful and harmless. It 
 was a great example in those ruthless times. 
 
 A war among the border people of England and Scotland went on 
 for twelve months, and then the Earl of Northumberland, the noble- 
 man who had helped Henry to the crown, began to rebel against him 
 probably because nothing that Henry could do for him would 
 satisfy his extravagant expectations. There was a certain Welsh 
 gentleman, named Owen Glendower, who had been a student in ono 
 of the Inns of Court, and had afterwards been in the service of the 
 late King, whose Welsh property was taken from him by a powerful 
 lord related to the present King, who was his neighbour. Appealing 
 for redress, and getting none, ho took up arms, was made an outlaw, 
 and declared himself sovereign of Wales. He pretended to be a 
 magician ; and not only were the Welsh people stupid enough to 
 believe him, but, even Henry believed him too ; for, making three 
 expeditions into Wales, and being three times driven back by the 
 wildness of the country, the bad weather, and the skill of Glendower, 
 he thought he was defeated by the Welshman's magic arts. However, 
 he took Lord Grey and Sir Edward Mortimer, prisoners, and allowed 
 the relatives of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not extend such 
 favour to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Now, Henry Percy, called Hotspur, 
 son of the Earl of Northumberland, who was married to Mortimer's 
 sister, is supposed to have taken offence at this ; and, therefore, in 
 conjunction with his father and some others, to have joined Owen 
 Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is by no means clear that 
 this was the real cause of the conspiracy ; but perhaps it was mado 
 the pretext. It was formed, and was very powerful ; including Scroop, 
 Archbishop of York, and the Earl of Douglas, a powerful and bravo 
 Scottish nobleman. The King was prompt and active, and the two 
 armies met at Shrewsbury. 
 
 There were about fourteen thousand men in each. The old Earl 
 of Northumberland being sick, the rebel forces were led by his son. 
 The King wore plain armour to deceive the enemy ; and four noble- 
 men, with the same object, wore the royal arms. The rebel charge 
 was so furious, that every one of those gentlemen was killed, the 
 royal standard was beaten down, and the young Prince of Wales was 
 severely wounded in the face. But he was one of the bravest and 
 best soldiers that ever lived, and he fought so well, and the King's
 
 Henry the Fourth. 487 
 
 troops were so encouraged by his bold example, that they rallied 
 immediately, and cut. the enemy's forces all to pieces. Hotspur was 
 killed by an arrow in the brain, and the rout was so complete that 
 the whole rebellion was struck down by this one blow. The Earl of 
 Northumberland surrendered himself soon after hearing of the death 
 of his son, and received a pardon for all his offences. 
 
 Thero were some lingerings of rebellion yet : Owen Glendower 
 being retired to Wales, and a preposterous story being spread among 
 the ignorant people that King Richard was still alive. How they 
 could have believed such nonsense it is difficult to imagine ; but they 
 certainly did suppose that the Court fool of the late King, who was 
 something like him, was he, himself ; so that it seemed as if, after 
 giving so much trouble to the country in his life, he was still to 
 troublo it after his death. This was not the worst. The young Earl 
 of March and his brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being 
 retaken, and being found to have been spirited away by one Lady 
 Spencer, she accused her own brother, that Earl of Rutland who was 
 in the former conspiracy and was now Duke of York, of being in the 
 plot. For this he was ruined in fortune, though not put to death ; 
 and then another plot arose among the old Earl of Northumberland, 
 some other lords, and that same Scroop, Archbishop of York, who 
 was with the rebels before. These conspirators caused a writing to 
 be posted on the church doors, accusing the King of a variety of 
 crimes ; but, the King being eager and vigilant to oppose them, they 
 were all taken, and the Archbishop was executed. This was the first 
 time that a great churchman had been slain by the law in England ; 
 but the King was resolved that it should be done, and done it was. 
 
 The next most remarkable event of this time was the seizure, by 
 Henry, of the heir to the Scottish throne James, a boy of nine years 
 old. He had been put aboard-ship by his father, the Scottish King 
 Robert, to save him from the designs of his uncle, when, on his way 
 to France, he was accidentally taken by some English cruisers. He 
 remained a prisoner in England for nineteen years, and became in his 
 prison a student and a famous poet. 
 
 With the exception of occasional troubles with the Welsh and with 
 the French, the rest of King Henry's reign was quiet enough. But, 
 the King was far from happy, and probably was troubled in his con- 
 science by knowing that lie had usurped the crown, and had occasioned 
 the death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of Wales, though 
 brave and generous, is said to have been wild and dissipated, and even 
 to have drawn his sword on Gascoignk, the Chief Justice of the King's 
 Bench, because he was firm in dealing impartially with one of his 
 dissolute companions. Upon this the Chief Justice is said to have 
 ordered him immediately to prison ; the Prince of Wales is said to 
 have submitted with a good grace ; and the King is said to havo 
 exclaimed, " Happy is the monarch who has so just a judge, and a son 
 so willing to obey the laws." This is all very doubtful, and so is
 
 488 A Child's History of England. 
 
 another story (of which Shakespeare has made beautiful use), that the 
 Prince once took the crown out of his father's chamber as he was 
 sleeping, and tried it on his own head. 
 
 The King's health sank more and more, and he became subject to 
 violent eruptions on the face and to bad epileptic fits, and his spirits 
 sank every day. At last, as he was praying before the shrine of St. 
 Edward at Westminster Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and 
 was carried into the Abbot's chamber, where he presently died. It 
 had been foretold that he would die at Jerusalem, which certainly is 
 not, and never was, Westminster. But, as the Abbot's room had long 
 been called the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the same 
 thing, and were quite satisfied with the prediction. 
 
 The King died on the 20th of March, 1413, in the forty-seventh 
 year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. He was buried in 
 Canterbury Cathedral. He had been twice married, and had, by his 
 first wife, a family of four sons and two daughters. Considering his 
 duplicity before he came to the throne, his unjust seizure f it, and 
 above all, his making that monstrous law for the burning of what the 
 priests called heretics, he was a reasonably good king, as kings went. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 england under henry the fifth. 
 
 First Part. 
 
 The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest man. 
 He set the young Earl of March free ; he restored their estates and 
 their honours to the Percy family, who had lost them by their rebellion 
 against his father ; he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard 
 to be honourably buried among the Kings of England ; and he dis- 
 missed all his wild companions, with assurances that they should not 
 want, if they would resolve to be steady, faithful, and true. 
 
 It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions ; and 
 those of the Lollards were spreading every day. The Lollards were 
 represented by the priests probably falsely for the most part to 
 entertain treasonable designs against the new King ; and Henry, 
 suffering himself to be worked upon by these representations, sacri- 
 ficed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them, after 
 trying in vain to convert him by arguments. He was declared guilty, 
 as the head of the sect, and sentenced to the flames ; but he escaped 
 from the Tower before the day of execution (postponed for fifty days 
 by the King himself), and summoned the Lollards to meet him near 
 London on a certain day. So the priests told the King, at least. I
 
 Henry the Fifth. 489 
 
 doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond such as was got up 
 by their agents. On the day appointed, instead of five-and-twenty 
 thousand men, under the command of Sir John Oldcastlo, in the 
 meadows of St. Giles, the King found only eighty men, and no Sir 
 John at all. There was, in another place, an addle-headed brewer, 
 who had gold trappings to his horses, and a pair of gilt spurs in his 
 breast expecting to bo made a knight next day by Sir John, and so 
 to gain the right to wear them but there was no Sir John, nor did 
 anybody give information respecting him, though the King offered 
 great rewards for such intelligence. Thirty of theso unfortunate 
 Lollards were hanged and drawn immediately, and were then burnt, 
 gallows and all ; and the various prisons in and around London wero 
 crammed full of others. Some of these unfortunate men made various 
 confessions of treasonable designs ; but, such confessions were easily 
 got, under torture and the fear of fire, and are very little to be trusted. 
 To finish the sad story of Sir John Oldcastlc at once, I may mention 
 that he escaped into Wales, and remained there 6afely, for four years. 
 AVI) en discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would havo 
 been taken alive so great was the old soldier's bravery if a miserablo 
 old woman had not come behind him and broken his legs with a stool. 
 He was carried to London in a horse-litter, was fastened by an iron 
 chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to death. 
 
 To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words, I 
 should tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy, 
 commonly called " John without fear," had had a grand reconciliation 
 of their quarrel in the last reign, and had appeared to be qnito in a 
 heavenly state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, in 
 the public streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a 
 party of twenty men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy according to 
 his own deliberate confession. The widow of King Richard had been 
 married in France to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. Tlio 
 poor mad King was quite powerless to help her, and tho Duke of 
 Burgundy became the real master of France. Isabella dying, her 
 husband (Duke of Orleans since the death of his father) married the 
 daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who, buing a much abler man 
 than his young son-in-law, headed his party; thence called after him 
 Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in this terrible condition, that it 
 had in it the party of the King's son, the Dauphin Louis ; the party 
 of the Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of the Dauphin's ill- 
 used wife ; and the party of the Armagnacs ; all hating each other ; 
 all fighting together ; all composed of the most depraved nobles that 
 the earth has ever known ; and all tearing unhappy France to pieces. 
 
 The late King had watched these dissensions from England, sensible 
 (like the French people) that no enemy of France could injure her 
 more than her own nobility. The present King now advanced a claim 
 to the French throne. His demand being, of course, refused, ho 
 reduced his proposal to a certain large amount of French territory,
 
 490 A Child's History of England. 
 
 and to demanding the French princess, Catherine, in marriage, with 
 a fortune of two millions of golden crowns. He was offered less 
 territory and fewer crowns, and no princess ; but he called his ambas- 
 sadors home and prepared for war. Then, he proposed to take the 
 princess with one million of crowns. The French Court replied that 
 he should have the princess with two hundred thousand crowns less ; 
 he said this would not do (he had never seen the princess in his life), 
 and assembled his army at Southampton. Tnere was a short plot at 
 home just at that time, for deposing him, and making the Earl of 
 March king ; but the conspirators were all speedily condemned and 
 executed, and the King embarked for France. 
 
 It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be followed ; 
 but, it is encouraging to know that a good example is never thrown 
 away. The King's first act on disembarking at the mouth of the river 
 Seine, three miles from Harfleur, was to imitate his father, and to 
 proclaim his solemn orders that the lives and property of the peaceful 
 inhabitants should be respected on pain of death. It is agreed by 
 French writers, to his lasting renown, that even while his soldiers 
 were suffering the greatest distress from want of food, these commands 
 were rigidly obeyed. 
 
 With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he besieged the town 
 of Harfleur both by sea and land for five weeks ; at the end of which 
 time the town surrendered, and the inhabitants were allowed to depart 
 with only fivepence each, and a part of their clothes. All the rest cf 
 their possessions was divided amongst the English army. But, that 
 army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, from disease and priva- 
 tion, that it was already reduced one half. Still, the King was deter- 
 mined not to retire until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore, 
 against the advice of all his counsellors, he moved on with his little 
 force towards Calais. When he came up to the river Somme he was 
 unable to cross, in consequence of the fort being fortified ; and, as the 
 English moved up the left bank of the river looking for a crossing, 
 the French, who had broken all the bridges, moved up the right bank, 
 watching them, and waiting to attack them when they should try to 
 pass it. At last the English found a crossing and got safely over. 
 The French held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the 
 English battle, and sent heralds to King Henry to know by which 
 road he was going. " By the road that will tako me straight to 
 Calais ! " said the King, and sent them away with a present of a 
 hundred crowns. 
 
 The English moved on, until they beheld the French, and then tho 
 King gave orders to form in line of battle. The French not coming 
 on, the army broke up after remaining in battle array till night, and 
 got good rest and refreshment at a neighbouring village. The French 
 were now lying in another village, through which they knew the 
 English must pass. They were resolved that the English should 
 begirt the battle. The English had no means of retreat, if their King
 
 Henry the Fifth. 491 
 
 had any such intention ; and so tho two armies passed the night, close 
 together. 
 
 To understand theso armies well, you must bear in mind that the 
 immense French army had, amongst its notable persons, almost tho 
 whole of that wicked nobility, whose debauchery had made France a 
 desert ; and so besotted wero they by pride, and by contempt for tho 
 common people, that they had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed they 
 had any at all) in their whole enormous number : which, compared 
 with tho English army, was at least as six to one. For these proud 
 fools had said that the bow was not a fit weapon for knightly hands, 
 and that France must bo defended by gentlemen only. We shall see, 
 presently, what hand the gentlemen made of it. 
 
 Now, on the English side, among the little force, there was a good 
 proportion of men who were not gentlemen by any means, but who 
 Wero good stout archers for all that. Among them, in the morning 
 having slept little at night, while the French were carousing and 
 making sure of victory the King rode, on a grey horse ; wearing on 
 his head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of gold, 
 sparkling with precious stones ; and bearing over his armour, em- 
 broidered together, the arms of England and the arms of France. 
 The archers looked at the shining helmet and the crown of gold and 
 the sparkling jewels, and admired them all ; but, what they admired 
 most was the King's cheerful face, and his bright blue eye, as he told 
 them that, for himself, lie had made up his mind to conquer there or 
 to die there, and that England should never have a ransom to pay for 
 him. There was one brave knight who chanced to say that he wished 
 some of the many gallant gentlemen and good soldiers, who were then 
 idle at home in England, were there to increase their numbers. But 
 the King told him that, for his part, ho did not wish for one moro 
 man. " The fewer we have," said he, " the greater will be the honour 
 we shall win ! " His men, being uow all in good heart, were refreshed 
 with bread and wine, and heard prayers, and' waited quietly for the 
 French. The King waited for the French, because they were drawn 
 up thirty deep (the little English forco was only three deep), on very 
 difficult and heavy ground ; and he knew that when they moved, there 
 must be confusion among them. 
 
 As they did not move, he sent off two parties : one to lie concealed 
 in a wood on the left of the French ; tho other, to set fire to some 
 houses behind the French after tho battle should be begun. This 
 was scarcely done, when three of the proud French gentlemen, who 
 were to defend their country without any help from the base peasants, 
 came riding out, culling upon the English to surrender. The King 
 warned those gentlemen himself to retire with all speed if they cared 
 for their lives, and ordered the English banners to advance. Upon 
 that, Sir Thomas Erpingham, a great English general, who commanded 
 the archers, threw his truncheon into the air, joyfully ; and all tho 
 English men, kneeling down upon the ground and biting it as if they
 
 492 A Child's History of England. 
 
 took possession of the country, rose up with a great shout and fell 
 upon the French. 
 
 Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with iron ; 
 and his orders were, to thrust this stake into the ground, to discharge 
 his arrow, and then to fall back, when the French horsemen came on. 
 As the haughty French gentlemen, who were to break the English 
 archers and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came 
 riding up, they were received with such a blinding storm of arrows, 
 that they broke and turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, 
 and the confusion was terrific. Those who rallied and charged 
 the archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and 
 were so bewildered that the English archers who wore no armour, 
 and even took off their leathern coats to bo more active cut them to 
 pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the 
 stakes, and those were instantly despatched. All this time the denso 
 French army, being in armour, were sinking knee-deep into tbe mire ; 
 while the light English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active 
 as if they were fighting on a marble floor. 
 
 But now, the second division of the French coming to the relief of 
 the first, closed up in a firm mass ; the English, headed by the King, 
 attacked them ; and the deadliest part of the battle began. Tho 
 King's brother, the Duke of Clarence, was struck down, and numbers 
 of the French surrounded him ; but, King Henry, standing over the 
 body, fought like a lion until they were beaten off. 
 
 Presently, came up a band of eigbteen French knights, bearing tho 
 banner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to kill or take the 
 English King. One of them struck him such a blow with a battle- 
 axe that he reeled and fell upon his knees ; but, his faithful men, 
 immediately closing round him, killed every one of those eighteen 
 knights, and so that French lord never kept bis oath. 
 
 The French Duke of Alen^on, seeing this, made a desperate charge, 
 and cut his way close up to the Royal Standard of England. Ho 
 beat down the Duke of York, who was standing near it ; and, when 
 the King came to his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. 
 But, he never struck another blow in this world ; for, even as he was 
 in the act of saying who he was, and that he surrendered to the King ; 
 and even as the King stretched out his hand to give him a safe and 
 honourable acceptance of the offer ; he fell dead, pierced by innumer- 
 able wounds. 
 
 The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The third division 
 of the French army, which had never struck a blow yet, and which 
 was, in itself, more than double the whole English power, broke and 
 fled. At this time of the fight, tho English, who as yet had made no 
 prisoners, began to take them in immense numbers, and were still 
 occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not surrender, 
 when a great noise arose in the rear of the French their flying 
 banners were seen to stop and King Henry, supposing a great rein-
 
 Henry the Fifth. 493 
 
 forcement to have arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners should 
 be put to death. As soon, however, as it was found that the noise 
 was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the terrible 
 massacre was stopped. 
 
 Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and asked him 
 to whom the victory belonged. 
 
 The herald replied, " To the King of England." 
 
 " We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said the King. " It 
 is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. What is the name of 
 that castle yonder ? " 
 
 The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt." 
 
 Said the King, " From henceforth this battle shall be known to 
 posterity, by the name of the battle of Azincourt." 
 
 Our English historians have made it Agincourt ; but, under that 
 name, it will ever be famous in English annals. 
 
 The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three Dukes were 
 killed, two more were taken prisoners, seven Counts were killed, 
 three more were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights and 
 gentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss amounted to 
 sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and the 
 Earl of Suffolk. 
 
 War is a dreadful thing ; and it is appalling to know how the 
 English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners mortally 
 wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground ; how the dead 
 upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen and 
 countrywomen, and afterwards buried in great pits ; how the dead 
 upon the English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their 
 bodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in such things, 
 and in many more much too horrible to relate, that the real desolation 
 and wickedness of war consist. Nothing can make war otherwise 
 than horrible. But the dark side of it was little thought of and soon 
 forgotten ; and it cast no shade of trouble on the English people, 
 except on those who had lost friends or relations in the fight. They 
 welcomed their King home with shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into 
 the water to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out in 
 crowds to welcome him in every town through which he passed, and 
 hung rich carpets and tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the 
 streets with flowers, and made the fountains run with wine, as the 
 great field of Agincourt had ran with blood. 
 
 Second Taut. 
 
 That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their country to 
 destruction, and who were every day and every year regarded with 
 deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French people, 
 learnt nothing, even from tho defeat of Agincourt. So far from 
 uniting against the common enemy, they became, among themselves,
 
 494 ^ Child's History of England. 
 
 more violent, more bloody, and more false if that were possible 
 than they had been before. The Count of Armagnac persnaded the 
 French king to plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, 
 and to make her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitter 
 enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge. 
 He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regent of 
 France, and made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at 
 that time possessed of Paris ; but, one of the gates of the city being 
 secretly opened on a certain night to a party of the duke's men, they 
 got into Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom 
 they could lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards, with the aid 
 of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the prisons open, and 
 killed them all. The former Dauphin was now dead, and the King's 
 third son bore the title. Him, in the height of this murderous scene, 
 a French knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in a sheet, and bore 
 away to Poitiers. So, when the revengeful Isabella and the Duke of 
 Burgundy entered Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their 
 enemies, the Dauphin was proclaimed at Poitiers as the real Eegent. 
 
 King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Aginconrt, but 
 had repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover Harfleur ; had 
 gradually conquered a great part of Normandy ; and, at this crisis of 
 affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year. 
 This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke of Burgundy 
 proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should be held between the 
 French and the English kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the 
 appointed day, King Henry appeared there, with his two brothers, 
 Clarence and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate 
 French King, being more mad than usual that day, could not come ; 
 but the Queen came, and with her the Princess Catherine : who w r as a 
 very lovely creature, and who made a real impression on King Henry, 
 now that he saw her for the first time. This was the most important 
 circumstance that arose out of the meeting. 
 
 As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that time to be 
 true to his word of honour in anything, Henry discovered that the 
 Duke of Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret treaty with the 
 Dauphin ; and he therefore abandoned the negotiation. 
 
 The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of whom with the 
 best reason distrusted the other as a noble ruffian surrounded by a 
 party of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss how to proceed after this ; 
 but, at length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over the river Yonne, 
 where it was arranged that there should be two strong gates put up, 
 with an empty space between them ; and that the Duke of Burgundy 
 should come into that space by one gate, with ten men only ; and that 
 tho Dauphin should come into that space by the other gate, also with 
 ten men, and no more. 
 
 So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When the Duke 
 of Burgundy was on his knee before him in the act of speaking, one
 
 Henry the Fifth. 495 
 
 of the Dauphin's nohle ruffians cut the said duke down with a small 
 axe, and others speedily finished him. 
 
 It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this hase murder 
 was not done with his consent ; it was too had, even for France, and 
 caused a general horror. The Duke's heir hastened to make a treaty 
 with King Henry, and the French Queen engaged that her husband 
 should consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on condi- 
 tion of receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, and being made 
 Regent of France during the rest of the King's lifetime, and succeed- 
 ing to the French crown at his death. He was soon married to the 
 beautiful Princess, and took her proudly home to England, where she 
 was crowned with great honour and glory. 
 
 This peace was called the Perpetual Peace ; we shall soon see 
 how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction to the French people, 
 although they were so poor and miserable, that, at the time of the 
 celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with 
 starvation, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There was some 
 resistance on the part of the Dauphin in some few parts of France, 
 but King Henry beat it all down. 
 
 And now, with his great possessions in France secured, and his 
 beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him greater 
 happiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the fulness of his 
 triumph and the height of his power, Death came upon him, and his 
 day was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he could 
 not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke serenely to those 
 who wept around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he left to the 
 loving care of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and his other faithful 
 nobles. He gave them his advice that England should establish a 
 friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer him the regency 
 of France ; that it should not set free the royal princes who had been 
 taken at Agincourt ; and that, whatever quarrel might arise with 
 France, England should never make peace without holding Normandy. 
 Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests to chant 
 the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty-first 
 of August, one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the 
 thirty-fourth year of his ago and the tenth of his reign, King Henry 
 the Fifth passed away. 
 
 Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a pro- 
 cession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his Queen 
 was : from whom the sad intelligence of his death was concealed 
 until ho had l>een dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of 
 crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden 
 ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried it to 
 Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. 
 The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household 
 followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes of feathers, 
 crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light as day ; and
 
 49^ A Child's History of England. 
 
 the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was a 
 fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And so, by way of 
 London Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted as it 
 passed along, they brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there 
 buried it with great respect. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXII. 
 
 England under henry the sixth. 
 
 Part the First. 
 
 It had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son Kino 
 Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine months old, was under age, 
 the Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Eegent. The English 
 Parliament, however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with 
 the Duke of Bedford at its head : to be represented, in his absence 
 only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would seem to 
 have been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed himself to be 
 ambitious and troublesome, and, in the gratification of his own personal 
 schemes, gave dangerous offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which was 
 with difficulty adjusted. 
 
 As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed by 
 the poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the French 
 King dying within two months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his 
 claim to the French throne, and was actually crowned under the 
 title of Charles the Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match 
 for him, entered into a friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy 
 and Brittany, and gave them his two sisters in marriage. War with 
 France was immediately renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to 
 an untimely end. 
 
 In the first campaign," the English, aided by this alliance, were 
 speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent the French five 
 thousand men, and might send more, or attack the North of England 
 while England was busy with France, it was considered that it would 
 be a good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had been so 
 long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand pounds for 
 his board and lodging during nineteen years, and engaging to forbid 
 his subjects from serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant 
 to know, not only that the amiable captive at last regained his freedom 
 upon these terms, but, that he married a noble English lady, with 
 whom he had been long in love, and became an excellent King. I 
 am afraid we have met with some Kings in this history, and shall 
 meet with some more, who would have been very much the better, and
 
 JOAN OF ARC T1NDINO HER FLOCK.
 
 Henry the Sixth. 497 
 
 would have left the world much happier, if they had been imprisoned 
 nineteen years too. 
 
 In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable victory 
 at Verne uil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for 
 their resorting to the odd expedient of tying their baggage-horses 
 together by the heads and tails, and jumbling them up with the 
 baggage, so as to convert them into a sort of live fortification which 
 was found useful to the troops, but which I should think was not 
 agreeable to the horses. For three years afterwards very little was 
 done, owing to both sides being too poor for war, which is a very 
 expensive entertainment ; but, a council was then held in Paris, in 
 which it was decided to lay siege to the town of Orleans, which was a 
 place of great importance to the Dauphin's cause. An English army 
 often thousand men was despatched on this service, under the command 
 of tho Earl of Salisbury, a general of fame. He being unfortunately 
 killed early in the siege, tho Earl of Suffolk took his place ; under 
 whom (reinforced by Sir John Falstaff, who brought up four 
 hundred waggons laden with salt herrings and other provisions for 
 the troops, and, beating off the French Avho tried to intercept him, 
 came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which was afterwards called in 
 jest the Battle of the Herrings), the town of Orleans was so completely 
 hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to yield it up to their country- 
 man the Duke of Burgundy. The English general, however, replied 
 that his English men had won it, so far, by their blood and valour, 
 and that his' English men must have it. There seemed to be no hope 
 for the town, or for the Dauphin, who was so dismayed that he even 
 thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain when a peasant girl rose 
 up and changed the whole state of affairs. 
 
 The story of this peasant girl I havo now to tell. 
 
 Part the Second. 
 
 the story of joan of arc. 
 
 In a remote village among some wild hills in the province of Lorraine, 
 there lived a countryman whoso name was Jacques d'Arc. He had 
 a daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time in her twentieth year. 
 She had been a solitary girl from her childhood ; she had often tended 
 nhcep and cattle for whole days where no human figuro was seen or 
 human voice heard ; and sho had often knelt, for hours togethor, in 
 the gloomy empty little village chapel, looking up at tho altar and at 
 the dim lamp burning before it, until sho fancied that she saw shadowy 
 figures standing there, and even that sho heard them speak to her. 
 The people in that part of France were very ignorant and superstitious, 
 and they had many ghostly tales to tell about what they had dreamed, 
 and what they saw among the lonely hills when the clouds and tho 
 mists were resting on them. So, they easily believed that .loan saw 
 
 '1 K
 
 498 A Child's History of England. 
 
 strange sights, and they whispered among themselves that angels and 
 spirits talked to her. 
 
 At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been surprised 
 by a great unearthly light, and had afterwards heard a solemn voice, 
 which said it was Saint Michael's voice, telling her that she was to 
 go and help the Dauphin. Soon after this (she said), Saint Catherine 
 and Saint Margaret had appeared to her with sparkling crowns upon 
 their heads, and had encouraged her to be virtuous and resolute. 
 These visions had returned sometimes ; but the Voices very often ; 
 and the voices always said, " Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to 
 go and help the Dauphin ! " She almost always heard them while tho 
 chapel bells were ringing. 
 
 There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and heard these 
 things. It is very well known that such delusions are a disease which 
 is not by any means uncommon. It is probable enough that there 
 were figures of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint 
 Margaret, in the little chapel (where they would be very likely to 
 have shining crowns upon their heads), and that they first gave Joan 
 the idea of those three personages. She had long been a moping, 
 fanciful girl, and, though she was a very good girl, I dare say she 
 was a little vain, and wishful for notoriety. 
 
 Her father, something wiser than his neighbours, said, " I tell thee, 
 Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have a kind husband to take 
 care of thee, girl, and work to employ th rr'nd ! " But Joan told him 
 in reply, that she had taken a vow never +o have a husband, and that 
 she must go as Heaven directed her, to help the Dauphin. 
 
 It happened, unfortunately for her father's persuasions, and most 
 unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin's 
 enemies found their way into the village while Joan's disorder was at 
 this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The 
 cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan's heart and made her worse. 
 She said that the voices and the figures were now continually with 
 her ; that they told her she was the girl who, according to an old 
 prophecy, was to deliver France ; and she must go and help the 
 Dauphin, and must remain with him until he should be crowned at 
 Kheims : and that she must travel a long way to a certain lord named 
 Baudricourt, who could and would, bring her into the Dauphin's 
 presence. 
 
 As her father still said, " I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy," she set 
 off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor village 
 wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality of her 
 visions. They travelled a long way and went on and on, over a rough 
 country, full of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and of all kinds of 
 robbers and marauders, until they came to where this lord was. 
 
 When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl 
 named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village wheel- 
 wright and cart-maker, who wished to see him because she was com-
 
 Henry the Sixth. 499 
 
 manded to help the Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out 
 a-laughing, and bade them send the girl away. But, he soon heard 
 so much about her lingering in the town, and praying in the churches, 
 and seeing visions, and doing harm to no one, that he sent for her, and 
 questioned her. As she said the same things after she had been well 
 sprinkled with holy water as she had said beforo the sprinkling, 
 Baudricourt began to think there might be something in it. At all 
 events, he thought it worth while to send her on to the town of 
 Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought her a horse, and a 
 sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As the Voices had 
 told Joan that she was to wear a man's dress, now, she put one on, 
 and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her heels, and 
 mounted her horse and rode away with her two squires. As to her 
 uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder until 
 she was out of sight as well he might and then went home again. 
 The best place, too. 
 
 Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon, 
 where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the Dauphin's presence. 
 Picking him out immediately from all his court, she told him that 
 she came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct 
 him to his coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he pretended 
 so afterwards, to make the greater impression upon his soldiers) a 
 number of his secrets known only to himself, and, furthermore, sho 
 said there was an old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine 
 at Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint 
 Catherine had ordered her to wear. 
 
 Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, but when 
 the cathedral came to be examined which was immediately done 
 there, sure enough, the sword was found ! The Dauphin then required 
 a number of grave priests and bishops to give him their opinion 
 whether the girl derived her power from good spirits or from evil 
 spirits, which they held prodigiously long debates about, in the course 
 of which several learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At 
 last, when ono gruff old gentleman had said to Joan, " What languago 
 do your Voices speak ? " and when Joan had replied to the gruff old 
 gentleman, " A pleasanter language than yours," they agreed that it 
 was all correct, and that Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. 
 This wondorful circumstanco put new heart into the Dauphin's 
 soldiers when they heard of it, and dispirited the English army, who 
 took Joan for a witch. 
 
 So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, until sho 
 came to Orleans. But she rode now, as never peasant girl had ridden 
 yet. She rode upon a white war-horse, in a suit of glittering armour ; 
 with tho old, old sword from the cathedral, newly burnished, in her 
 belt; with a white flag carried before her, upon which were a picturo 
 of God, and tho words Jesus Maria. In this splendid state, at tho 
 head of a great body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for
 
 500 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the starving inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before that 
 beleaguered city. 
 
 When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out " The 
 Maid is come ! The Maid of the Prophecy is come to deliver us ! " 
 And this, and the sight of the Maid fighting at the head of their men, 
 made the French so bold, and made the English so fearful, that the 
 English line of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions were 
 got into the town, and Orleans Avas saved. 
 
 Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans, remained within 
 the walls for a few days, and caused letters to be thrown over, order- 
 ing Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the town 
 according to the will of Heaven. As the English general very 
 positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about the will 
 of Heaven (which did not mend the matter with his soldiers, for they 
 stupidly said if she were not inspired she was a witch, and it was of 
 no use to fight against a witch), she mounted her white war-horso 
 again, and ordered her white banner to advance. 
 
 The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers upon the 
 bridge ; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them. The fight was 
 fourteen hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with her own 
 hands, and mounted a tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow 
 in the neck, and fell into the trench. She was carried away and the 
 arrow was taken out, during which operation she screamed and cried 
 with tho pain, as any other girl might have done ; but presently she 
 said that the Voices were speaking to her and soothing her to rest. 
 After a while, she got up, and was again foremost in the fight. When 
 the English who had seen her fall and supposed her dead, saw this, 
 they were troubled with the strangest fears, and some of them cried 
 out that they beheld Saint Michael on a white horse (probably Joan 
 herself) fighting for the French. They lost the bridge, and lost the 
 towers, and next day set their chain of forts on fire, and left the place. 
 
 But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the town of 
 Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid of Orleans besieged 
 him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the white banner scaled 
 the wall, she was struck upon the head with a stone, and was again 
 tumbled down into the ditch ; but, she only cried all the more, as she 
 lay there, " On, on, my countrymen ! And fear nothing, for tho Lord 
 hath delivered them into our hands ! " After this new success of the 
 Maid's, several other fortresses and places which had previously held 
 out against the Dauphin were delivered up without a battle ; and at 
 Patay she defeated the remainder of the English army, and set up her 
 victorious white banner on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen 
 lay dead. 
 
 She now urgod the Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when 
 there was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as the first part of her 
 mission was accomplished ; and to complete the whole by being crowned 
 there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims
 
 Henry the Sixth. 50 1 
 
 was a long way off, and the English and the Duke of Burgundy were 
 still strong in the country through which the road lay. However, 
 they set forth, with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans 
 rode on and on, upon her white war-horse, and in her shining armour. 
 "Whenever they came to a town which yielded readily, the soldiers 
 helieved in her ; but, whenever they came to a town which gave them 
 any trouble, they began to murmur that she was an impostor. The 
 latter was particularly the case at Troyes, which finally yielded, 
 however, through tho persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the place. 
 Friar Richard was in the old doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until 
 he had sprinkled her well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled 
 tho threshold of the gate by which she came into tho city. Findiug 
 that it mado no change in her or the gate, he said, as tho other grave 
 old gentlemen had said, that it was all right, and became her great ally. 
 
 So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans, and 
 the Dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes believing and sometimes 
 unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the great cathedral of 
 Rheims, tho Danphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in a 
 great assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who with her white 
 banner stood beside the King in that hour of his triumph, kneoled 
 down upon the pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, that what 
 she had been inspired to do, was done, and that the only recompense 
 she asked for, was, that she should now have leave to go back to her 
 distant home, and her sturdily incredulous father, and her first simple 
 escort the village wheelwright and cart-maker. But the King said 
 " No ! " and made her and her family as noble as a King could, and 
 settled upon her the income of a Count. 
 
 Ah ! happy had it been fur the Maid of Orleans, if she had resumed 
 her rustic dress that day, and had gone home to the little chapel and 
 the wild hills, and had forgotten all these things, and had been a 
 good man's wife, and had heard no stranger voices than the voices of 
 little children ! 
 
 It was not to be, and she continued helping the King (she did a 
 world for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), and trying to improve 
 the lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a religious, an unselfish, 
 and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt. Still, many times sho 
 prayed the King to let her go home ; and once she even took off her 
 bright armour and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it 
 more. But, the King always won her back again while she was of 
 any use to him and so she went on and on and on, to her doom. 
 
 When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very aide man, began to bo 
 active for England, and, by bringing the war back into Franco and 
 by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to distress and disturb 
 Charles very much, Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans 
 what the Voices said about it? But, the Voices had become (very 
 like ordinary voices in perplexed times) contradictory and confused, 
 so that now they said one thing, and now said another, and the Maid
 
 502 A Child's History of England. 
 
 lost credit every day. Charles marched on Paris, which was opposed 
 to him, and attacked the suburb of Saint Honore. In this fight, being 
 again struck down into the ditch, she was abandoned by the whole 
 army. She lay unaided among a heap of dead, and crawled out how 
 she could. Then, some of her believers went over to an opposition 
 Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle, who said she was inspired to tell 
 where there were treasures of buried money though she never did 
 and then Joan accidentally broke the old, old sword, and others said 
 that her power was broken with it. Finally, at the siege of Compiegne, 
 held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did valiant service, she 
 was basely left alone in a retreat, though facing about and fighting to 
 the last ; and an archer pulled her off her horse. 
 
 the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that were sung, 
 about the capture of this one poor country-girl ! the way in which 
 she was demanded to be tried for sorcery and heresy, and anything 
 else you like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by this great 
 man, and by that great man, until it is wearisome to think of! She 
 was bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, 
 and was shut up in her narrow prison : plain Joan of Arc again, and 
 Maid of Orleans no more. 
 
 1 should never have done if I were to tell you how they had Joan 
 out to examine her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and 
 worry her into saying anything and everything ; and how all sorts of 
 scholars and doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her. 
 Sixteen times she was brought out and shut up again, and worried, 
 and entrapped, and argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary 
 business. On the last occasion of this kind she was brought into a 
 burial-place at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake 
 and faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, 
 and an awful sermon ready. It is very affecting to know that even at 
 that pass the poor girl honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had 
 so used her for his purposes and so abandoned her ; and, that while 
 she had been regardless of reproaches heaped upon herself, she spoke 
 out coiirageously for him. 
 
 It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her life, 
 she signed a declaration prepared for her signed it with a cross, for 
 she couldn't write that all her visions and Voices had come from 
 the Devil. Upon her recanting the past, and protesting that she 
 would never wear a man's dress in future, she was condemned to 
 imprisonment for life, "on the bread of sorrow and the water of 
 affliction." 
 
 But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions 
 and the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that they should 
 do so, for that kind of disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, 
 and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she con- 
 sidered herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man's dress, 
 which had been left to entrap her in her prison, and which she put
 
 Henry the Sixth. 503 
 
 on, in her solitude ; perhaps, in remembrance of her past glories, per- 
 haps, because the imaginary Voices told her. For this relapse into 
 the sorcery and heresy and anything else you like, she was sentenced 
 to be burnt to death. And, in the market-place of Rouen, in the 
 hideous dress which the monks had invented for such spectacles ; with 
 priests and bishops sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had 
 the Christian grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous scene ; 
 this shrieking girl last seen amidst tho smoke and fire, holding a 
 crucifix between her hands ; last heard, calling upon Christ was 
 burnt to ashes. They threw her ashes into the river Seine ; but they 
 will rise against her murderers on the last day. 
 
 From the moment of her capture, neither the French King nor one 
 single man in all his court raised a finger to save her. It is no 
 defence of them that they may have never really believed in her, or 
 that they may have won her victories by their skill and bravery. 
 The more they pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused 
 her to believe in herself ; and she had ever been true to them, ever 
 brave, ever nobly devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who were 
 in all things false to themselves, false to one another, false to their 
 country, false to Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of 
 ingratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl. 
 
 In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and grass grow 
 high on the cathedral towers, and the venerable Norman streets aro 
 still warm in the blessed sunlight though the monkish fires that once 
 gleamed horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a statue 
 of Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the square to which 
 sho has given its present name. I know some statues of modern 
 times even in the World's metropolis, I think which commemorate 
 less constancy, less earnestness, smaller claims upon the world's 
 attention, and much greater impostors. 
 
 Part the Third. 
 
 Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind ; and the English 
 cause gained no advantage from the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For 
 a long time, the Avar went heavily on. Tho Duke of Bedford died ; 
 tho alliance with the Duke of Burgundy was broken ; and Lord 
 Talbot became a great general on the English side in France. But, 
 two of the consequences of wars are, Famine because the people 
 cannot peacefully cultivate the ground and Pestilence, which conies 
 of want, misery, and suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both 
 countries, and lasted for two wretched years. Then, the war went on 
 again, and came by slow degrees to bo so badly conducted by tho 
 English government, that, within twenty years from the execution of 
 the Maid of Orleans, of all tho great French conquests, the town of 
 Calais alone remained in English hands. 
 
 While theso victories and defeats were taking place in the course
 
 504 A Child's History of England. 
 
 of time, many strange things happened at home. The young King, 
 as he grew up, proved to be very unlike his great father, and showed 
 himself a miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him he 
 had a great aversion to shedding blood : which was something but, 
 he was a weak, silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to 
 the great lordly battledores about the Court. 
 
 Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King, and 
 the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most powerful. The Duke 
 of Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensically accused of practising 
 witchcraft to cause the King's death and lead to her husband's coming 
 to the throne, he being the next heir. She was charged with having, 
 by the help of a ridiculous old woman named Margery (who was called 
 a witch), made a little waxen doll in the King's likeness, and put it 
 before a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed, 
 in such cases, that the death of the person whom the doll was made to 
 represent, was sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant 
 as the rest of them, and really did make such a doll with such an 
 intention, I don't know ; but, you and I know very well that sho 
 might have made a thousand dolls, if she had been stupid enough, 
 and might have melted them all, without hurting the King or anybody 
 else. However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so 
 was one of the duke's chaplains, who was charged with having assisted 
 them. Both he and Margery were put to death, and the duchess, 
 after being taken on foot and bearing a lighted candle, three times 
 round the City, as a penance, was imprisoned for life. The duke, 
 himself, took all this pretty quietly, and made as little stir about the 
 matter as if he were rather glad to be rid of the duchess. 
 
 But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble long. The 
 royal shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the battledores were very 
 anxious to get him married. The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to 
 marry a daughter of the Count of Armagnac ; but, the Cardinal and 
 the Earl of Suffolk were all for Margaket, the daughter of the King 
 of Sicily, who they knew was a resolute ambitious woman and would 
 govern the King as she chose. To make friends with this lady, the 
 Earl of Suffolk, who went over to arrange the match, consented to 
 accept her for the King's wife without any fortune, and even to give 
 up the two most valuable possessions England then had in France. 
 So, the marriage was arranged, on terms very advantageous to the 
 lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to England, and she was married 
 at Westminster. On what pretence this queen and her party charged 
 the Duke of Gloucester with high treason within a couple of years, it 
 is impossible to make out, the matter is so confused ; but, they pre- 
 tended that the King's life was in danger, and they took the duke 
 prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found dead in bed (they 
 said), and his body was shown to the people, and Lord Suffolk came in 
 for the best part of his estates. You know by this time how strangely 
 liable state prisoners were to sudden death.
 
 Henry the Sixth. 505 
 
 If Cardinal Beaufort' Lad any hand in this matter, it did bim no 
 good, for he died within six weeks ; thinking it very hard and curious 
 at eighty years old ! that he could not live to be Pope. 
 
 This was the time when England had completed her loss of all her 
 great French conquests. The people charged the loss principally 
 upon the Earl of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made those easy terms 
 about tbe Royal Marriage, and who, they believed, had even been 
 bought by France. So ho was impeached as a traitor, on a great 
 number of cbarges, but chiefly on accusations of having aided tbe 
 French King, and of designing to make his own son King of England. 
 The Commons and tbe people being violent against him, the King 
 was made (by his friends) to interpose to save him, by banishing him 
 for five years, and proroguing the Parliament. Tbe duke had much 
 ado to escape from a London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in 
 wait for him in St. Giles's fields ; but, he got down to his own estates 
 in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Channel, 
 he sent into Calais to know if he might land there ; but, they kept his 
 boat and men in the harbour, until an English ship, carrying a 
 hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas of the Tower, came 
 alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on board. " Welcome, 
 traitor, as men say," was the captain's grim and not very respectful 
 salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for eight-and-forty 
 hours, and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the ship. As 
 this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it a block, a rusty sword, 
 and an executioner in a black mask. The duke was handed down into 
 it, and there his head was cut oif with six strokes of the rusty sword. 
 Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover beach, where the body was 
 cast out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom, high in 
 authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared. No one 
 was ever punished for it. 
 
 There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the name 
 of Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation 
 of Wat Tyler, though he was a very different and inferior sort of man, 
 addressed the Kentish men iipon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad 
 government of England, among so many battledores and such a poor 
 shuttlecock ; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty 
 thousand. Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by 
 Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called " The Complaint 
 of the Commons of Kent," and " The Bequests of tho Captain of the 
 Great Assembly in Kent." They then retired to Sovenoaks. The 
 royal army coming up with them here, they beat it and hilled their 
 general. Then, Jack drcsued himself in the dead general's armour, 
 and led his men to London. 
 
 Jack passed into the City from South wail;, over the bridge, and 
 entered it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his men not to 
 plunder. Having made a show of his forces there, while the citizens 
 looked on quietly, he went back into Soiithwark in good order, and
 
 506 A Child's History of England. 
 
 passed the night. Next day, he came back again, having got hold in 
 the meantime of Lord Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the 
 Lord Mayor and judges : " Will you be so good as to make a tribunal 
 in Guildhall, and try me this nobleman ? " The court being hastily 
 made, he was found guilty, and Jack and his men cut his head off on 
 Cornhill. They also cut off the head of his son-in-law and then 
 went back in good order to South wark again. 
 
 But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an unpopular 
 lord, they could not bear to have their houses pillaged. And it did 
 so happen that Jack, after dinner perhaps he had drunk a little too 
 much began to plunder the house where he lodged ; upon which, of 
 course, his men began to imitate him. Wherefore, the Londoners 
 took counsel with Lord Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in the 
 Tower ; and defended London Bridge, and kept Jack and his people 
 out. This advantage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to 
 divide Jack's army in the old way, by making a great many promises 
 on behalf of the state, that were never intended to be performed. 
 This did divide them ; some of Jack's men saying that they ought to 
 take the conditions which were offered, and others saying that they 
 ought not, for they were only a snare ; some going home at once ; 
 others staying where they were ; and all doubting and quarrelling 
 among themselves. 
 
 Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting a pardon, 
 and who indeed did both, saw at last that there was nothing to expect 
 from his men, and that it was very likely some of them would deliver 
 him up and get a reward of a thousand marks, which was offered for 
 his apprehension. So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all the 
 way from South wark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Bochester, . 
 he mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex. But, there 
 galloped after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, who came 
 up with him, had a hard fight with him, and killed him. Jack's head 
 was set aloft on London Bridge, with the face looking towards Black- 
 heath, where he had raised his flag ; and Alexander Iden got the 
 thousand marks. 
 
 It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who had been 
 removed from a high post abroad through the Queen's influence, and 
 sent out of the way, to govern Ireland, was at the bottom of this 
 rising of Jack and his men, because he wanted to trouble the govern- 
 ment. He claimed (though not yet publicly) to have a better right 
 to the throne than Henry of Lancaster, as one of the family of the 
 Earl of March, whom Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching 
 this claim, which, being through female relationship, was not accord- 
 ing to the usual descent, it is enough to say that Henry the Fourth 
 was the free choice of the people and Parliament, and that his family 
 had now reigned undisputed for sixty years. The memory of Henry 
 the Fifth was so famous, and the English people loved it so much, 
 that the Duke of York's claim would, perhaps, never have been
 
 Henry the Sixth. 507 
 
 thought of (it would havo been bo hopeless) but for the unfortunate 
 circumstance of the present King's being by this time quite an idiot, 
 and the country very ill governed. These two circumstances gave 
 the Duke of York a power he could not otherwise have had. 
 
 Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not, he came 
 over from Ireland while Jack's head was on London Bridge ; being 
 secretly advised that the Queen was setting up his enemy, the Duke of 
 Somerset, against him. He went to Westminster, at the head of four 
 thousand men, and on his knees before the King, represented to him 
 the bad state of the country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament 
 to consider it. This the King promised. When the Parliament was 
 summoned, the Duke of York accused the Duke of Somerset, and the 
 Duke of Somerset accused the Duke of York ; and, both in and out of 
 Parliament, the followers of each party were full of violence and 
 hatred towards the other. At length the Duke of York put himself 
 at the head of a large force of his tenants, and, in arms, demanded tho 
 reformation of the Government. Being shut out of London, he 
 encamped at Dartford, and the royal army encamped at Blackheath. 
 According as either side triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, 
 or the Duke of Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for tho 
 moment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of allegiance, and 
 going in peace to one of his own castles. 
 
 Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, who was very 
 ill recoived by the people, and not believed to be the son of the King. 
 It shows the Duke of York to have been a moderate man, unwilling 
 to involve England in new troubles, that he did not take advantage of 
 the general discontent at this time, but really acted for the public 
 good. He was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being 
 now so much worse that he could" not be carried about and shown to 
 the people with any decency, the luke was made Lord Protector of 
 the kingdom, until the Kin s^oui 1 recover, or the Prince should 
 come of age. At the same time the Duke of Somerset was committed 
 to the Tower. So, now tho Duke of Somerset was down, and the 
 Duke of York was up. By the end of the year, however, the King 
 recovered his memory and some spark of sense ; upon which the 
 Queen used her power which recovered with him to get the Pro- 
 tector disgraced, and her favourite released. So now the Duke of 
 York was down, and the Duke of Somorset was up. 
 
 These ducal ups and downs gradually separated tho whole nation 
 into the two parties of York and Lancaster, and led to those terrible 
 civil wars long known as the Wars of the Bed and White Boses, 
 because the red rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster, and 
 the white rose was the badge of the House of York. 
 
 The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noblemen of the 
 White Bose party, and leading a small army, met tho King with 
 another small army at St. Alban's, and demanded that the Duke of 
 Somerset should be given up. The poor King, being made to say in
 
 508 A Child's History of England. 
 
 answer that lie would sooner die, was instantly attacked. The Duke 
 of Somerset was killed, and the King himself was wounded in the 
 neck, and took refuge in the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, 
 the Duke of York went to him, led him with great submission to the 
 Abbey, and said he was very sorry for what had happened. Having 
 now the King in his possession, he got a Parliament summoned and 
 himself once more made Protector, but, only for a few months ; for, 
 on the King getting a little better again, the Queen and her party got 
 him into their possession, and disgraced the Duke once more. So, 
 now the Duke of York was down again. 
 
 Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of these constant 
 changes, tried even then to prevent the Red and the White Rose Wars. 
 They brought about a great council in London between the two 
 parties. The White Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses 
 in Whitefriars ; and some good priests communicated between them, 
 and made the proceedings known at evening to the King and the 
 judges. They ended in a peaceful agreement that there should be no 
 more quarrelling ; and there was a great royal procession to St. 
 Paul's, in which the Queen walked arm-in-arm with her old enemy, 
 the Duke of York, to show the people how comfortable they all were. 
 This state of peace lasted half a year, when a dispute between the 
 Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke's powerful friends) and some of the 
 King's servants at Court, led to an attack upon that Earl who was a 
 White Rose and to a sudden breaking out of all old animosities. 
 So, here were greater ups and downs than ever* 
 
 There were even greater ups and downs than these, soon after. 
 After various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ireland, and his son 
 the Earl of March to Calais, with their friends the Earls of Salisbury 
 and Warwick ; and a Parliament wa"s held declaring them all traitors. 
 Little the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came back, 
 landed in Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 other powerful noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the King's forces 
 at Northampton, signally defeated them, and took the King himself 
 prisoner, who was found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, 
 I dare say, to have taken the Queen and Prince too, but they escaped 
 into Wales and thence into Scotland. 
 
 The King was carried by the victorious force straight to London, and 
 made to call a new Parliament, which immediately declared that the 
 Duke of York and those other noblemen were not traitors, but ex- 
 cellent subjects. Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at the 
 head of five hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westminster, 
 and enters the House of Lords. There, he laid his hand upon the 
 cloth of gold which covered the empty throne, as if he had half a 
 mind to sit down in it but he did not. On the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury asking him if he would visit the King, who was in his 
 palace close by, he replied, " I know no one in this country, my lord, 
 who ought not to visit me." None of the lords present, spoke a single
 
 Henry the Sixth. 509 
 
 word ; so, the duke went out as bo bad come in, established bimself 
 royally in tbo King's palace, and, six days afterwards, sent in to tbo 
 Lords a formal statement of bis claim to tbo tbronc. Tbo lords 
 went to tbe King on tbis momentous subject, and after a great 
 deal of discussion, in wbicb the judges and tbe otber law officers 
 were afraid to givo an opinion on eitber side, tbo question was 
 compromised. It was agreed that tbe present King should retain 
 tbe crown for bis life, and tbat it sbould tben pass to tbe Duke of 
 York and bis heirs. 
 
 But, the resoluto Queen, determined on asserting her son's right, 
 would hear of no such thing. She came from Scotland to the north 
 of England, where several powerful lords armed in her cause. Tho 
 Duke of York, for bis part, set off with some five thousand men, a 
 little time before Christmas Day, ono thousand four hundred ami 
 sixty, to give her battle. He lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, 
 and tho Red Hoses defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, and 
 fight them then and there. His generals said, he had best wait until 
 bis gallant son, the Earl of March, camo up with his power ; but, ho 
 was determined to accept the challenge. He did so, in an evil hour. 
 Ho was hotly pressed on all sides, two thousand of his men lay dead 
 on Wakefield Green, and be himself was taken prisoner. They set 
 him down in mock state on an ant-hill, and twisted grass about his 
 head, and pretended to pay court to him on their knees, saying, " O 
 King, without a kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope your 
 gracious Majesty is very well and happy ! " They did worse than this ; 
 they cut his head off, and handed it on a pole to tbe Queen, who 
 laughed with delight when she saw it (you recollect their walking so 
 religiously and comfortably to St. Paul's !), and had it fixed, with a 
 paper crown upon its head, on the walls of York. The Earl of 
 Salisbury lost his head, too ; and the Duke of York's second son, a 
 handsome boy who was flying with his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, 
 was stabbed in the heart by a murderous lord Lord ( 'lifibrd by namo 
 whose father bad been killed by tho White Poses in the fight at St. 
 Alban's. There was awful sacrifice of life in this battle, for no 
 quarter was given, and the Queen was wild for revenge. When men 
 unnaturally fight against their own countrymen, they are always 
 observed to bo more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they 
 are against any other enemy. 
 
 But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the Duke of York 
 not the first. Tho eldest son, Edward Earl of March, was at 
 Gloucester; and, vowing vengeance for the death of his father, his 
 brother, and their faithful friends, he began to march against tho 
 Queen. He had to turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish 
 first, who worried his advance. These he defeated in a great fight at 
 Mortimer's i 'ross, near Hereford, where be beheaded a number of tho 
 Pod Poses taken in battle, in retaliation for the beheading of tho AVliito 
 Poses at Wakefield. The Queen bad the next turn of beheading.
 
 510 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Having moved towards London, and falling in, between St. Alban's 
 and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Norfolk, 
 White Boses both, who were there with an army to oppose her, and 
 had got the King with them ; she defeated them with great loss, and 
 struck off the heaas of two prisoners of note, who were in the King's 
 tent with him, end to whom the King had promised his protection. 
 Her triumph, however, was very short. She had no treasure, and her 
 army subsisted by plunder. This caused them to bo hated aud 
 dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London people, who 
 were wealthy. As soon as the Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of 
 March, united with the Earl of Warwick, was advancing towards tho 
 city, they refused to send the Queen supplies, and made a great 
 rejoicing. 
 
 The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and Edward and 
 Warwick came on, greeted with loud acclamations on every side. 
 Tho courage, beauty, and virtues of young Edward could not be 
 sufficiently praised by the whole people. He rode into London like 
 a conqueror, and met with an enthusiastic welcome. A few days 
 afterwards, Lord Falconbridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled 
 the citizens in St. John's Field, Clerkenwell, and asked them if they 
 would have Henry of Lancaster for their King ? To this they all 
 roared, " No, no, no ! " and " King Edward ! King Edward ! " Then, 
 said those noblemen, would they love and serve young Edward? To 
 this they all cried, " Yes, yes ! " and threw up their caps and clapped 
 their hands, and cheered tremendously. 
 
 Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and not pro- 
 tecting those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lancaster had forfeited 
 the crown ; and Edward of York was proclaimed King. He made a 
 great speech to the applauding people at Westminster, and sat down 
 as sovereign of England on that throne, on the golden covering of 
 which his father worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe which . 
 cut the thread of so many lives in England, through so many years- 
 had laid his hand. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. 
 
 King Edward the Fourth was not quite twenty-one years of ago 
 when he took that unquiet seat upon the throne of England. The 
 Lancaster party, the Bed Roses, were then assembling in great 
 numbers near York, and it was necessary to give them battle instantly. 
 But, the stout Earl of Warwick leading for the young King, and tho 
 young King himself closely following him, and the English people
 
 QUKKN MARGARET AND THE ROBBERS.
 
 Edward the Fourth. 511 
 
 crowding round the Royal standard, the White and the Red Roses 
 met, on a wild March day when the snow was falling heavily, at 
 Towton ; and there such a furious hattle raged between them, that 
 the total loss amounted to forty thousand men all Englishmen, 
 fighting, upon English ground, against one another. The young 
 King gained the day, took down the heads of his father and brother 
 from the walls of York, and put up the heads of some of the most 
 famous noblemen eugaged in tho battle on the other side. Then, he 
 went to London and was crowned with great splendour. 
 
 A new Parliament met. No fewer than one hundred and fifty ef 
 the principal noblemen and gentlemen on the Lancaster side were 
 declared traitors, and the King who had very little humanity, though 
 he was handsome in person and agreeable in manners resolved to 
 do all he could, to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch. 
 
 Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young son. She 
 obtained help from Scotland and from Normandy, and took several 
 important English castles. But, Warwick soon retook them ; the 
 Queen took all her treasure on board ship in a great storm ; and both 
 she and her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in the winter 
 weather, as they were riding through a forest, they were attacked 
 and plundered by a party of robbers ; and, when they had escaped 
 from these men and were passing alone and on foot through a thick 
 dark part of the wood, they came, all at once, upon another robber. 
 So the Queen, with a stout heart, took the little Prince by the hand, 
 and going straight up to that robber, said to him, " My friend, this 
 is the young son of your lawful King! I confide him to your care." 
 The robber was surprised, but took the boy in his arms, and faithfully 
 restored him and his mother to their friends. In the end, the Queen's 
 soldiers being beaten and dispersed, she went abroad again, and kept 
 quiet for the present. 
 
 Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was concealed by a 
 Welsh knight, who kept him close in his castle. But, next year, the 
 Lancaster party recovering their spirits, raised a large body of men, 
 and called him out of his retirement, to put him at their head. They 
 were joined by some powerful noblemen who had sworn fidelity to the 
 new King, but who were ready, as usual, to break their oaths, whenever 
 they thought there was anything to bo got by it. One of the worst 
 things in the history of the war of the Red and White Roses, is tho 
 ease with which these noblemen, who should have set an example of 
 honour to tho people, left either side as they took slight offence, or 
 were disappointed in their greedy expectations, and joined tho other. 
 Well ! Warwick's brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the falso 
 noblemen, being taken, were beheaded without a moment's loss of 
 timr:. The deposed Kin^ had a narrow escape ; three of his servants 
 were taken, and one of them bore his cap of estate, which was set 
 with pearls and embroidered with two golden crowns. However, tho 
 head to which the cap belonged, got safely into Lancashire, and lay
 
 512 A Child's History of England. 
 
 pretty quietly there (the people in the secret being very true) for 
 more than a year. At length, an old monk gave such intelligence as 
 led to Henry's being taken while he was sitting at dinner in a placo 
 called Waddington Hall. He was immediately sent to London, and 
 met at Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by whose directions he was 
 put upon a horse, with his legs tied under it, and paraded threo 
 times round the pillory. Then, he was carried off to the Tower, 
 where they treated him well enough. 
 
 The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King abandoned 
 himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial life. But, thorns were 
 springing up under his bed of roses, as he soon found out. For, 
 having been privately married to Elizabeth Woodville, a young 
 widow lady, very beautiful and very captivating ; and at last resolving 
 to make his secret known, and to declare her his Queen ; he gavo 
 some offence to the Earl of Warwick, who was usually called the 
 King-Maker, because of his power and influence, and because of his 
 having lent such great help to placing Edward on the throne. This 
 offence was not lessened by the jealousy with which the Nevil family 
 (the Earl of Warwick's) regarded the promotion of the Woodville 
 family. For, the young Queen was so bent on providing for her 
 relations, that she made her father an earl and a great officer of state ; 
 married her five sisters to young noblemen of the highest rank ; and 
 provided for her younger brother, a young man of twenty, by marrying 
 him to an immensely rich old duchess of eighty. The Earl of 
 Warwick took all this pretty graciously for a man of his proud 
 temper, until the question arose to whom the King's sister, Margaret, 
 should be married. The Earl of Warwick said, " To one of the 
 French King's sons," and was allowed to go over to the French King 
 to make friendly proposals for that purpose, and to hold all manner 
 of friendly interviews with him. But, while he was so engaged, the 
 Woodville party married the young lady to the Duke of Burgundy ! 
 Upon this he came back in great rage and scorn, and shut himself up 
 discontented, in his Castle of Middleham. 
 
 A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was patched up 
 between the Earl of Warwick and the King, and lasted until the Earl 
 married his daughter, against the King's wishes, to the Duke of 
 Clarence. While the marriage was being celebrated at Calais, the 
 people in the north of England, where the influence of the Nevil 
 family was strongest, broke out into rebellion ; their complaint was, 
 that England was oppressed and plundered by the Woodville family, 
 whom they demanded to have removed from power. As they were 
 joined by great numbers of people, and as they openly declared that 
 they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the King did not know 
 what to do. At last, as he wrote to the carl beseeching his aid, he 
 and his new son-in-law came over to England, and began to arrange 
 the business by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in the 
 safe keeping of the Archbishop of York ; so England was not only
 
 Edward the Fourth. 513 
 
 in the strange position of having two kings at once, but they were 
 both prisoners at the same time. 
 
 Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true to the King, 
 that he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians, took their leader 
 prisoner, and brought him to the King, who ordered him to be imme- 
 diately executed. He presently allowed the King to return to 
 London, and there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friendship 
 were exchanged between them, and between the Nevils and the Wood- 
 villes ; the King's eldest daughter was promised in marriage to the 
 heir of the Nevil family ; and more friendly oaths were sworn, and 
 more friendly promises made, than this book would hold. 
 
 They lasted about three months. At the end of that time, the 
 Archbishop of York made a feast for the King, the Earl of Warwick, 
 and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire. 
 The King was washing his bauds before supper, when some ono 
 whispered him that a body of a hundred men were lying in ambush 
 outside the house. Whether this were true or untrue, the King took 
 fright, mounted his horse, and rode through the dark night to Windsor 
 Castle. Another reconciliation was patched up between him and the 
 King-Maker, but it was a short one, and it was the last. A new 
 rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to repress 
 it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the Earl of Warwick 
 and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had secretly assisted it, 
 and who had been prepared publicly to join it on the following day. 
 In these dangerous circumstances they both took ship and sailed 
 away to the French court. 
 
 And here a meeting took place between* the Earl of Warwick and 
 his old enemy, the Dowager Queen Margaret, through whom his 
 father had had his head struck off, and to whom he had been a bitter 
 foe. But, now, when he said that he had done with the ungrateful and 
 perfidious Edward of York, and that henceforth he devoted himself to 
 the restoration of the House of Lancaster, cither in the person of her 
 husband or of her little son, she embraced him as if ho had ever 
 been her dearest friend. She did more than that ; she married her 
 son to his second daughter, the Lady Anne. However agreeable 
 this marriage was to the new friends, it was very disagreeable to the 
 Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his father-in-law, the King- 
 Maker, would never make him King, now. So, being but a weak- 
 minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth or sense, ho 
 readily listened to an artful court lady sent over for the purpose, and 
 promised to turn traitor once more, and go over to his brother, King 
 Edward, when a fitting opportunity should come. 
 
 The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon redeemed his 
 promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret, by invading England and 
 landing at Plymouth, where lie instantly proclaimed King Henry, 
 and summoned all Englishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty, 
 to join his banner. Then, with his army increasing as he marched 
 
 I L
 
 514 A Child's History of England. 
 
 along, he went northward, and came so near King Edward, who was 
 in that part of the country, that Edward had to ride hard for it to the 
 coast of Norfolk, and thence to get away in such ships as he could 
 find, to Holland. Thereupon, the triumphant King-Maker and his 
 false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to London, took the old 
 King out of the Tower, and walked him in a great procession to 
 Saint Paul's Cathedral with the crown upon his head. This did not 
 improve the temper of the Duke of Clarence, who saw himself farther 
 off from being King than ever; but he kept his secret, and said 
 nothing. The Nevil family were restored to all their honours and 
 glories, and the Woodvilles and the rest were disgraced. The King- 
 Maker, less sanguinary than the King, shed no blood except that of 
 the Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to the people as to have 
 gained the title of the Butcher. Him they caught hidden in a tree, 
 and him they tried and executed. No other death stained the King- 
 Maker's triumph. 
 
 To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again, next year, 
 landing at Eavenspur, coming on to York, causing all his men to cry 
 " Long live King Henry ! " and swearing on the altar, without a 
 blush, that he came to lay no claim to the crown. Now was the time 
 for the Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men to assume the White 
 Eose, and declare for his brother. The Marquis of Montague, though 
 the Earl of Warwick's brother, also declining to fight against King 
 Edward, he went on successfully to London, where the Archbishop 
 of York let him into the City, and where the people made great 
 demonstrations in his favour. For this they had four reasons. 
 Firstly, there were great numbers of the King's adherents hiding in 
 the City and ready to break out ; secondly, the King owed them a 
 great deal of money, which they could never hope to get if he were 
 unsuccessful ; thirdly, there was a young prince to inherit the crown ; 
 and fourthly, the King was gay and handsome, and more popular than 
 a better man might have been with the City ladies. After a stay of 
 only two days with these worthy supporters, the King marched out 
 to Barnet Common, to give the Earl of Warwick battle. And now 
 it was to be seen, for the last time, whether the King or the King- 
 Maker was to carry the day. 
 
 While the battle was yet pending, the faint-hearted Duke of 
 Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret messages to his father- 
 in-law, offering his services in mediation with the King. But, the 
 Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejected them, and replied that Clarence 
 was false and perjured, and that he would settle the quarrel by the 
 sword. The battle began at four o'clock in the morning and lasted 
 until ten, and during the greater part of the time it was fought in 
 a thick mist absurdly supposed to be raised by a magician. The 
 loss of life was very great, for the hatred was strong on both sides. 
 The Kinpr-Maker was defeated, and the King triumphed. Both the 
 Earl of Warwick and Lis brother were slain, and their bodies lay in 
 St. Paul's, for some days, as a spectacle to the people.
 
 Edivard tlie Fourth. 515 
 
 Margaret's spirit was not broken even by this great blow. Within 
 five days sho was in arms again, and raised her standard in Bath, 
 whence she set off with her army, to try and join Lord Pembroke, 
 who had a force in Wales. But, the King, coming np with her out- 
 side the town of Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the Duke op 
 Gloucester, who was a brave soldier, to attack her men, she sustained 
 an entire defeat, and was taken prisoner, together with her son, now 
 only eighteen years of age. The conduct of the King to this poor 
 youth was worthy of his cruel character. Ho ordered him to be led 
 into his tent. " And what," said he, " brought you to England ? " 
 " I came to England," replied the prisoner, with a spirit which a man 
 of spirit might have admired in a captive, " to recover my father's 
 kingdom, which descended to him as his right, and from him descends 
 to me, as mine." Tho King, drawing off his iron gauntlet, struck 
 him with it in the face ; and the Duke of Clarence and some other 
 lords, who were there, drew their noble swords, and killed him. 
 
 His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years ; after her 
 ransom by the King of France, she survived for six years more. 
 Within three weeks of this murder, Henry died one of those con- 
 venient sudden deaths which were so common in the Tower ; in 
 plainer words, he was murdered by the King's order. 
 
 Having no particular excitement on his hands after this great 
 defeat of the Lancaster party, and being perhaps desirous to get rid 
 of some of his fat (for he was now getting too corpulent to be hand- 
 some), the King thought of making Avar on France. As he wanted 
 moro money for this purpose than the Parliament could give him, 
 though they were usually ready enough for war, ho invented a new 
 way of raising it, by sending for the principal citizens of London, 
 and telling them, with a grave face, that he was very much in want 
 of cash, and would take it very kind in them if they would lend him 
 some. It being impossible for them safely to refuse, they complied, 
 and the moneys thus forced from them were called no doubt to the 
 great amusement of the King and the Court as if they were free 
 gifts, " Benevolences." What with grants from Parliament, and 
 what with Benevolences, the King raised an army and passed over 
 to Calais. As nobody wanted war, however, the French King made 
 proposals of peace, which were accepted, and a truce was concluded 
 for seven long years. The proceedings between the Kings of France; 
 and England on this occasion, were very friendly, very splendid, and 
 very distrustful. They finished with a meeting between the two 
 Kings, on a temporary bridge over the river Homme, where they 
 embraced through two holes in a strong wooden grating like a lion's 
 cage, and made several bows and fino speeches to one another. 
 
 It was time, now, that tho Duke of Clarence should be punished 
 for his treacheries; and Fate had his punishment in store. He was, 
 
 probably, not trusted by the King for who could trust him who 
 
 knew him! and he had certainly a powerful opponent in his brother
 
 5 16 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Kicliard, Duke of Gloucester, who, being avaricious and ambitious, 
 wanted to marry that widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick's 
 who had been espoused to the deceased young Prince, at Calais. 
 Clarence, who wanted all the family wealth for himself, secreted this 
 lady, whom Richard found disguised as a servant in the City of 
 London, and whom he mrrried ; arbitrators appointed by the King, 
 then divided the property between the brothers. This led to ill-will 
 and mistrust between them. Clarence's wife dying, and he wishing 
 to make another marriage, which was obnoxious to the King, his ruin 
 was hurried by that means, too. At first, the Court struck at his 
 retainers and dependents, and accused some of them of magic and 
 witchcraft, and similar nonsense. Successful against this small game, 
 it then mounted to the Duke himself, who was impeached by his 
 brother the King, in person, on a variety of such charges. He was 
 found guilty, and sentenced to be publicly executed. He never was 
 publicly executed, but he met his death somehow, in the Tower, and, 
 no doubt, through some agency of the King or his brother Gloucester, 
 or both. It was supposed at the time that he was told to choose the 
 manner of his death, and that he chose to be drowned in a butt of 
 Malmsey wine. I hope the story may be true, for it would have been 
 a becoming death for such a miserable creature. 
 
 The King survived him some five years. He died in the forty- 
 second year of his life, and the twenty-third of his reign. He had a 
 very good capacity and some good points, but he was selfish, careless, 
 sensual, and cruel. He was a favourite with the jieople for his showy 
 manners ; and the people were a good example to him in the constancy 
 of their attachment. He was penitent on his death-bed for his 
 " benevolences," and other extortions, and ordered restitution to bo 
 made to the people who had suffered from them. Ho also called 
 about his bed the enriched members of the Woodville family, and the 
 proud lords whose honours were of older date, and endeavoured to 
 reconcile them for the sake of the peaceful succession of his son and 
 the tranquillity of England. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH. 
 
 The lato King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, called Edward after 
 him, was only thirteen years of age at his father's death. He was at 
 Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of Rivers. The prince's 
 brother, the Duke of York, only eleven years of age, was in London 
 with his mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most dreaded noble- 
 man in England at that time was their uncle Richard. Duke of
 
 Edward the Fifth. 517 
 
 Gloucester, and everybody wondered how the two poor hoys would 
 fare with such an uncle for a friend or a foe. 
 
 The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy about this, was 
 anxious that instructions should be sent to Lord Rivers to raise an 
 army to escort the young King safely to London. But, Lord Hastings, 
 who was of the Court party opposed to the Woodvilles, and who 
 disliked the thought of giving them that power, argued against 
 the proposal, and obliged the Queen to be satisfied with an escort 
 of two thousand horse. The Duke of Gloucester did nothing, at 
 first, to justify suspicion. He came from Scotland (where he was 
 commanding an army) to York, and was there the first to swear 
 allegiance to his nephew. He then wrote a condoling letter to 
 the Queen-Mother, and set off to be present at the coronation in 
 London. 
 
 Now, the young King, journeying towards London too, with Lord 
 Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony Stratford, as his uncle came to 
 Northampton, about ten miles distant ; and when those two lords 
 heard that the Duke of Gloucester was so near, they proposed to the 
 young King that they should go back and greet him in his name. 
 The boy being very willing that they should do so, they rode off and 
 were received with great friendliness, and asked by the Duke of 
 Gloucester to stay and dine with him. In the evening, while they 
 were merry together, up came the Duke of Buckingham with three 
 hundred horsemen ; and next morning the two lords and the two 
 dukes, and the three hundred horsemen, rode away together to rejoin 
 the King. Just as they were entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of 
 Gloucester, checking his horse, turned suddenly on the two lords, 
 charged them with alienating from him the affections of his sweet 
 nephew, and caused them to be arrested by the three hundred horse- 
 men and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of Buckingham went 
 straight to the King (whom they had now in their power), to whom 
 they mado a show of kneeling down, and offering great love and 
 submission ; and then they ordered his attendants to disperse, and 
 took him, alono with them, to Northampton. 
 
 A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, and lodged 
 him in the Bishop's Palace. But, he did not remain there long ; for, 
 the Duke of Buckingham with a tender face made a speech expressing 
 how anxious he was for the Royal boy's safety, and how much safer 
 he would be in the Tower until his coronation, than he could be any- 
 where else. So, to the Tower he was taken, very carefully, and the 
 Duke of ( Jloucester was named Protector of the State. 
 
 Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very smooth 
 countenance and although he was a clever man, fair of speech, and 
 not ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoulders being something 
 higher than the other and although he had come into the City riding 
 bare-headed at the King's side, and looking very fond of him ho had 
 made the King's mother more uneasy yet ; and when the Royal boy
 
 5 1 3 .A Chilcts History of England. 
 
 was taken to the Tower, she became so alarmed that she took 
 sanctuary in Westminster with her five daughters. 
 
 Nor did she do this without reason, for, the Duke of Gloucester, 
 finding that the lords who were opposed to the Woodville family were 
 faithfal to the young King nevertheless, quickly resolved to strike a 
 blow for himself. Accordingly, while those lords met in council at 
 the Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in separate 
 council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street. 
 Being at last quite prepared, he one day appeared unexpectedly at the 
 council in the Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and merry. 
 He was particularly gay with the Bishop of Ely : praising the straw- 
 berries that grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to 
 have some gathered that he might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, 
 quite proud of the honour, sent one of his men to fetch some ; and the 
 Duke, still very jocular and gay, went out ; and the council all said 
 what a very agreeable duke he was ! In a little time, however, he 
 came back quite altered not at all jocular frowning and fierce 
 and suddenly said, 
 
 " What do those persons deserve who have compassed my destruc- 
 tion ; I being the King's lawful, as well as natural, protector ? " 
 
 To this strange question, Lord Hastings replied, that they deserved 
 death, whosoever they were. 
 
 " Then," said the Duke, " I tell you that they are that sorceress my 
 brother's wife ; " meaning the Queen : ' ; and that other sorceress, Jane 
 Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my body, and caused my 
 arm to shrink as I now show you." 
 
 He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his arm, which was 
 shrunken, it is true, but which had been so, as they all very well 
 kuew, from the hour of his birth. 
 
 Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, as she had 
 formerly been of the late King, that lord knew that he himself was 
 attacked. So, he said, in some confusion, " Certainly, my Lord, if 
 they have done this, they be worthy of punishment." 
 
 "If?" said the Duke of Gloucester; "do you talk to me of ifs ? 
 I tell you that they have so done, and I will make it good upon thy 
 body, thou traitor ! " 
 
 With that, he struck the table a great blow with his fist. This 
 was a signal to some of his people outside to cry " Treason ! " They 
 immediately did so, and there was a rush into the chamber of so 
 many armed men that it was filled in a moment. 
 
 " First," said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, " I arrest 
 thee, traitor ! And let him," he added to the armed men who took 
 him, " have a priest at once, for by St. Paul I will not dine until I 
 have seen his head off! " 
 
 Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower chapel, and 
 there beheaded on a log of wood that happened to be lying on the 
 ground. Then, the Duke dined with a good appetite, and after
 
 Edward the Fifth. 519 
 
 dinner summoning the principal citizens to attend him, told them 
 that Lord Hastings and the rest had designed to murder both himself 
 and the Duke of Buckingham, who stood by his side, if he had not 
 providentially discovered their design. He requested them to be so 
 obliging as to inform their fellow-citizens of the truth of what he 
 said, and issued a proclamation (prepared and neatly copied out 
 beforehand) to the same effect. 
 
 On the same day that the Duke did these things in the Tower, Sir 
 Richard Ratcliffe, ihe boldest and most undaunted of his men, went 
 down to Pontefract ; arrested Lord Rivers, Lord Gray, and two other 
 gentlemen ; and publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any 
 trial, for having intended the Duke's death. Three days afterwards 
 the Duke, not to lose time, went down the river to Westminster in 
 his barge, attended by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and 
 demanded that the Queen should deliver her second son, the Duke of 
 York, into his safe keeping. The Queen, being obliged to comply, 
 resigned the child after she had wept over him ; and Richard of 
 Gloucester placed him with his brother in the Tower. Then, he 
 seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been the lover of the late 
 King, confiscated her property, and got her sentenced to do public 
 penance in the streets by walking in a scanty dress, with bare feet, 
 and carrying a lighted candle, to St. Paul's Cathedral, through the 
 most crowded part of the City. 
 
 Having now all things ready for his own advancement, he caused a 
 friar to preach a sermon at the cross which stood in front of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the profligate manners of the late 
 King, and upon the late shame of Jane Shore, and hinted that the 
 princes were not his children. " Whereas, good people," said the 
 friar, whose name was Shaw, " my Lord the Protector, the noble 
 Duke of Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest 
 virtues, is the perfect image and express likeness of his father." 
 There had been a little plot between the Duke and the friar, that the 
 Duke should appear in the crowd at this moment, when it was 
 expected that the people would cry " Long live King Richard ! " 
 But, either through the friar saying the words too soon, or through 
 the Duke's coming too late, the Duke and the words did not come 
 together, and the people only laughed, and the friar sneaked off 
 ashamed. 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such business than 
 the friar, so he went to the Guildhall the next day, and addressed the 
 eitizens in the Lord Protector's behalf. A few dirty men, who had 
 been hired and stationed there for the purpose, crying when he had 
 done, "God save King Richard !" he made them a great bow, and 
 thanked them with all his heart. Next day, to make an end of it, he 
 went with the mayor and some lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, 
 by the river, where Richard then was, and read an address, humbly 
 entreating him to accept the Crown of England. Richard, who
 
 520 A Child's History of England. 
 
 looked down upon them out of a window and pretended to be in great 
 uneasiness and alarm, assured them there was nothing he desired less, 
 and that his deep affection for his nephews forbade him to think of 
 it. To this the Duke of Buckingham replied, with pretended warmth, 
 that the free people of England would never submit to his nepbew's 
 rule, and that if Richard, who was the lawful heir, refused the Crown, 
 why then they must find some one else to wear it. The Duke of 
 Gloucester returned, that since he used that strong language, it 
 became his painful duty to think no more of himself, and to accept 
 the Crown. 
 
 Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed ; and the Duke of 
 Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham passed a pleasant evening, 
 talking over the play they had just acted with so much success, and 
 every word of which they had prepared together. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER KICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 King Eichard the Third was up betimes in the morning, and went 
 to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he 
 sat himself down between two great noblemen, and told the people 
 that he began the new reign in that place, because the first duty of a 
 sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to maintain 
 justice. He then mounted his horse and rode back to the City, where 
 he was received by the clergy and the crowd as if he really had a 
 right to the throne, and really were a just man. The clergy and the 
 crowd must have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, I 
 think, for being such poor-spirited knaves. 
 
 The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a great deal 
 of show and noise, which the people liked very much ; and then the 
 King set forth on a royal progress through his dominions. He was 
 crowned a second time at York, in order that the people might have 
 show and noise enough ; and wherever he went was received with 
 shouts of rejoicing from a good many people of strong lungs, who 
 were paid to strain their throats in crying, " God save King Richard ! " 
 The plan was so successful that I am told it has been imitated since, 
 by other usurpers, in other progresses through other dominions. 
 
 While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a week at 
 Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instructions home for one of 
 the wickedest murders that ever was done the murder of the two 
 young princes, his nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of 
 London. 
 
 Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the Tower.
 
 Richard the Third. 52 1 
 
 To him, by the hands of a messenger named John Green, did King 
 Richard send a letter, ordering him by some means to put the two 
 young princes to death. But Sir Robert I hope because he had 
 children of his own, and loved them sent John Green back again, 
 riding and spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer that ho 
 could not do so horrible a piece of work. The King, having frown- 
 ingly considered a little, called to him Sir James Tyrrel, his master 
 of the horse, and to him gave authority to take command of tho 
 Tower, whenever he would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the 
 keys of the Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing 
 what was wanted, looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and 
 chose Johx Dighton, one of his own grooms, and Miles Forest, who 
 was a murderer by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he 
 went, upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his authority from 
 the King, took the command for four-and-twenty hours, and obtained 
 possession of the keys. And when the black night came, he went 
 creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up tho dark stone 
 winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he came to 
 the door of the room where the two young princes, having said their 
 prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each other's arms. And while he 
 watched and listened at the door, he sent in those evil demons, John 
 Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the two princes with the 
 bed and pillows, and carried their bodies down the stairs, and buried 
 them under a great heap of stones at the staircase foot. And when 
 the day came, he gave up the command of the Tower, and restored 
 the keys, and hurried away without once looking behind him ; and 
 Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the princes' 
 room, and found the princes gone for ever. 
 
 You know, through all this history, how true it is that traitors aro 
 never true, and you will not be surprised to learn that the Duke of 
 Buckingham soon turned against King Richard, and joined a great 
 conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to place the crown 
 upon its rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep the 
 murder secret ; but when he heard through his spies that this con- 
 spiracy existed, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in secret 
 to the healths of the two young princes in the Tower, he made it 
 known that they were dead. The conspirators, though thwarted for a 
 moment, soon resolved to set up for the crown against the murderous 
 Richard, Henry Earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine: that 
 widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor. And as Henry 
 was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that he should marry 
 the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late King, now tho 
 heiress of the house of York, and thus by uniting the rival families 
 put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and White Roses. All being 
 settled, a time was appointed for Henry to conic over from Brittany, 
 and for a ^'reat rising against Richard to take place in several parts 
 of England at the same hour. On a certain day. therefore, in October,
 
 522 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the revolt took place ; but unsuccessfully. Bichard was prepared, 
 Henry was driven back at sea by a storm, his followers in England 
 were dispersed, and the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and at once 
 beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury. 
 
 The time of his success was a good time, Bichard thought, for 
 summoning a Parliament and getting some money. So, a Parliament 
 was called, and it nattered and fawned upon him as much as he could 
 possibly desire, and declared him to be the rightful King of England, 
 and his only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the next heir to 
 the throne. 
 
 Bichard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it would, 
 the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as the heiress of 
 the house of York ; and having accurate information besides, of its 
 being designed by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of Bich- 
 mond, he felt ihat it would much strengthen him and weaken them, 
 to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his son. With this 
 view he went to the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late King's 
 widow and her daughter still were, and besought them to come to 
 Court : where (he swore by anything and everything) they should be 
 safely and honourably entertained. They came, accordingly, but had 
 scarcely been at Court a month when his son died suddenly or was 
 poisoned and his plan was crushed to pieces. 
 
 In this extremity, King Bichard, always active, thought, " I must 
 make another plan." And lie made the plan of marrying the Princess 
 Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece. There was one 
 difficulty in the way : his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But, he 
 knew (remembering his nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and he 
 made love to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly 
 confident that the Queen would die in February. The Princess was 
 not a very scrupulous young lady, for, instead of rejecting the 
 murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred, she openly declared 
 she loved him clearly ; and, when February came and the Queen did 
 not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she was too long 
 about it. However, King Bichard was not so far out in his pre- 
 diction, but that she died in March he took good care of that and 
 then this precious pair hoped to be married. But they were dis- 
 appointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so unpopular in the 
 country, that the King's chief counsellors, Batcliffe and Catesby, 
 would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King was even 
 obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of such a 
 thing. 
 
 He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of his 
 subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's side ; he dared 
 not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should be denounced 
 there ; and for want of money, he was obliged to get Benevolences 
 from the citizens, which exasperated them all against him. It was 
 said too, that, being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed frightful
 
 Henry the Seventh. 523 
 
 dreams, and started up in the night-time, wild with terror and 
 remorse. Active to the last, through all this, he issued vigorous 
 proclamations against Henry of Richmond and all his followers, when 
 he heard that they were coming against him with a Fleet from 
 France ; and took the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar the 
 animal represented on his shield. 
 
 Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford 
 Haven, and came on against King Richard, then encamped at Leicester 
 with an army twice as great, through North Wales. On Bosworth 
 Field tho two armies met ; and Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, 
 and seeing them crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned 
 him, turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his 
 son (whom he had tried hard to retain) among them. But, he was as 
 brave as he was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight. 
 He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in all directions, 
 when he observed the Earl of Northumberland one of his few great 
 allies to stand inactive, and the main body of his troops to hesitate. 
 At the same moment, his desperate glance caught Henry of Richmond 
 among a little group of his knights. Riding hard at him, and 
 crying " Treason ! " he killed his standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed 
 another gentleman, and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to 
 cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell, and 
 before Richard could raise his arm again, he was borne down in a 
 press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley picked up the 
 crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained witli blood, and put it 
 upon Richmond's head, amid loud and rejoicing cries of " Long live 
 King Henry ! " 
 
 That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at 
 Leicester ; across whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a 
 naked body brought there for burial. It was the body of the last of 
 the Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper and murderer, 
 slain at the battlo of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his 
 age, after a reign of two years. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH. 
 
 King Henry the Seventh did not turn out to be as fine a fellow 
 as tho nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their deliver- 
 ance from Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and 
 calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He possessed 
 considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to have been that 
 he was not cruel when there was nothing to be got by it.
 
 524 A Child's History of England. 
 
 The neAV King had promised the nobles who had espoused his 
 cause that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The first thing 
 he did, was, to direct her to be removed from the castle of Sheriff 
 Hutton in Yorkshire, where Eichard had placed her, and restored to 
 the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick, 
 Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had 
 been kept a prisoner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her. This 
 boy, who was now fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for 
 safety. Then he came to London in great state, and gratified the 
 people with a fine procession ; on which kind of show he often very 
 much relied for keeping them in good humour. The sports and 
 feasts which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the 
 Sweating Sickness ; of which great numbers of people died. Lord 
 Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most from it : 
 whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves, or 
 because they were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances in 
 the City (as they have been since), I don't know. 
 
 The King's coronation was postponed on account of the general ill- 
 health, and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as if he were not 
 very anxious that it should take place : and, even after that, deferred 
 the Queen's coronation so long that he gave offence to the York party. 
 However, he set these things right in the end, by hanging some men 
 and seizing on the rich possessions of others ; by granting more 
 popular pardons to the followers of the late King than could, at first, 
 be got from him ; and, by employing about his Court, some not very 
 scrupulous persons who had been employed in the previous reign. 
 
 As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious im- 
 postures which have become famous in history, we will make those 
 two stories its principal feature. 
 
 There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for 
 a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker. 
 Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and partly to carry out the 
 designs of a secret party formed against the King, this priest declared 
 that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl of Warwick ; 
 who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked up in the 
 Tower of London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland ; 
 and, at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people : who 
 seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly irrational. The 
 Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared that he believed 
 the boy to be what the priest represented ; and the boy, who had been 
 well tutored by the priest, told them such things of his childhood, 
 and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal Family, that they 
 were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and drinking his health, 
 and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty demonstrations, to express 
 their belief in him. Nor was this feeling confined to Ireland alone, 
 for the Earl of Lincoln whom the late usurper had named as his 
 successor went over to the young Pretender ; and, after holding a
 
 Henry t/ie Seventh. 525 
 
 secret correspondence with the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy the 
 sister of Edward the Fourth, who detested the present King and all 
 his race sailed to Dublin with two thousand German soldiers of her 
 providing. In this promising stato of the boy's fortunes, he was 
 crowned there, with a crown taken off the head of a statue of tho 
 Virgin Mary ; and was then, according to the Irish custom of thoso 
 days, carried home on the shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a 
 great deal more strength than sense. Father Simons, you may bo 
 sure, was mighty busy at tho coronation. 
 
 Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest, 
 aud the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to 
 iuvado England. The King, who had good intelligence of their 
 movements, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers 
 resorted to him every day ; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but 
 very few. With his small force he tried to make for tho town of 
 Newark ; but the King's army getting between him and that place, 
 he had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoko. It soon ended in tho 
 complete destruction of the Pretender's forces, ono half of whom wero 
 killed ; among them, the Earl himself. The priest and the baker's 
 boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the trick, was 
 shut up in prison, where he afterwards died suddenly perhaps. Tho 
 boy was taken into the King's kitchen and made a turnspit. He was 
 afterwards raised to the station of one of the King's falconers ; and so 
 ended this strange imposition. 
 
 Thero seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen always a 
 restless and busy woman had had some share in tutoring the baker's 
 son. The King was very angry with her, whether or no. He seized 
 upon her property, and shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey. 
 
 Ono might suppose that the end of this story would have put tho 
 Irish people on their guard ; but they were quite ready to receive a 
 second impostor, as they had received the first, and that same trouble- 
 some Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity. All of 
 a sudden there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from Portugal, 
 a young man of excellent abilities, of very handsome appearance and 
 most winning manners, who declared himself to be Bichard, Duke of 
 York, the second son of King Edward the Fourth. "0," said some, 
 even of those ready Irish believers, ' ; but surely that young Princo 
 was murdered by his uncle in the Tower ! " " It is supposed so," 
 said the engaging young man ; " and my brother was killed in that 
 gloomy prison ; but I escaped it don't matter how, at present and 
 have been wandering about tho world for seven long years." This 
 explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of tho Irish people, 
 they began again to shout and to hurrah, and to drink his health, and 
 to make the noisy and thirsty demonstration.', all over again. And 
 the big chieftain in Dublin began to look out for another coronation, 
 and another young King to be carried home on his back. 
 
 Now. King Henry beiug then on bad terms with France, the French
 
 526 A Child's History of England. 
 
 King, Charles the Eighth, saw that, by pretending to believe in the 
 handsome young man, he could trouble his enemy sorely. So, he 
 invited him over to the French Court, and appointed him a body- 
 guard, and treated him in all respects as if he really were the Duke 
 of York. Peace, however, being soon concluded between the two 
 Kings, the pretended Duke was turned adrift, and wandered for pro- 
 tection to the Duchess of Burgundy. She, after feigning to inquire 
 into the reality of his claims, declared him to bo the very picture of 
 her dear departed brother ; gave him a body-guard at her Court, of 
 thirty halberdiers ; and called him by the sounding name of the 
 White Rose of England. 
 
 The leading members of the White Eose party in England sent 
 over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to ascertain whether the 
 White Rose's claims were good : the King also sent over his agents to 
 inquire into the Rose's history. The White Roses declared the young 
 man to be really the Duke of York ; the King declared him to be Perkin 
 Warbeck, the son of a merchant of the city of Tournay, who had 
 acquired his knowledge of England, its language and manners, from 
 the English merchants who traded in Flanders ; it was also stated by 
 the Royal agents that he had been in the service of Lady Brompton, 
 the wife of an exiled English nobleman, and that the Duchess of 
 Burgundy had caused him to be trained and taught, expressly for this 
 deception. The King then required the Archduke Philip who was 
 the sovereign of Burgundy to banish this new Pretender, or to 
 deliver him up ; but, as the Archduke replied that he could not 
 control the Duchess in her own land, the King, in revenge, took the 
 market of English cloth away from Antwerp, and prevented all com- 
 mercial intercourse between the two countries. 
 
 He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford to 
 betray his employers ; and he denouncing several famous English 
 noblemen as being secretly the friends of Perkin Warbeck, the King 
 had three of the foremost executed at once. Whether he pardoned 
 the remainder because they were poor, I do not know ; but it is only 
 too probable that he refused to pardon one famous nobleman against 
 whom the same Clifford soon afterwards informed separately, because 
 he was rich. This was no other than Sir William Stanley, who had 
 saved the King's life at the battle of Bosworth Field. It is very 
 doubtful whether his treason amounted to much more than his having 
 said, that if he were sure the young man was the Duke of York, he 
 would not take arms against him. Whatever he had done he admitted, 
 like an honourable spirit ; and he lost his head for it, and the covetous 
 King gained all his wealth. 
 
 Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years : but, as the Flemings 
 began to complain heavily of the loss of their trade by the stoppage 
 of the Antwerp market on his account, and as it was not unlikely 
 that they might even go so far as to take his life, or give him tip, 
 he found it necessary to do something. Accordingly he made a
 
 Henry the Seventh. 527 
 
 desperate sally, and landed, with only a few hundred men, on the 
 coast of Deal. But he was soon glad to get back to the place from 
 whence he came ; for the country people rose against his followers, 
 killed a great many, and took a hundred and fifty prisoners: who 
 were all driven to London, tied together with ropes, like a team of 
 cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some part or other of the 
 sea-shore ; in order, that if any more men should come over with 
 Perkin Warbeck, they might sec the bodies as a warning before they 
 landed. 
 
 Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce with the 
 Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that country; and, by 
 completely gaining over the Irish to his side, deprived him of that 
 asylum too. He wandered away to Scotland, and told his story at 
 that Court. King James the Fourth of Scotland, who was no friend 
 to King Henry, and had no reason to be (for King Henry had bribed 
 his Scotch lords to betray him more than once ; but had never 
 succeeded in his plots), gave him a great reception, called him his 
 cousin, and gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a 
 beautiful and charming creature related to the royal house of Stuart. 
 
 Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender, tho 
 King still undermined, and bought, and bribed, and kept his doings 
 and Perkin Warbeck's story in the dark, when he might, one would 
 imagine, have rendered the matter clear to all England. But, for all 
 this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's Court, he could 
 not procure the Pretender to be delivered up to him. James, though 
 not very particular in many respects, would not betray him ; and the 
 ever- busy Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and 
 good soldiers, and with money besides, that he had soon a little army 
 of fifteen hundred men of various nations. With these, and aided by 
 the Scottish King in person, he crossed the border into England, and 
 made a proclamation to the people 4 in which he called tho King 
 ' Henry Tudor ; " ottered large rewards to any who should take or 
 distress him; and announced himself as King Richard the Fourth 
 come to receive the homage of his faithful subjects. His faithful 
 subjects, however, cared nothing for him, and hated his faithful 
 troops : who, being of different nations, quarrelled also among 
 themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they began to 
 plunder the country ; upon which the White Pose said, that he would 
 rather lose his rights, than gain them through the miseries of tho 
 English people. The Scottish King made a jest of his scruples ; 
 but they and their whole forco went back again without lighting a 
 battle. 
 
 The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising took 
 place among the people of Cornwall, who considered themselves too 
 heavily taxed to meet the charges of the expected war. Stimulated 
 by Flammock, a lawyer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by 
 Lord Audley and some other country gentlemen, they marched on
 
 528 A Child's History of England. 
 
 all the way to Deptford Bridge, where they fought a hattle with the 
 King's army. They were defeated though the Cornish men fought 
 with great bravery and the lord was beheaded, and the lawyer and 
 the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and quartered. The rest were 
 pardoned. The King, who believed every man to be as avaricious as 
 himself, and thought that money could settle anything, allowed them 
 to make bargains for their liberty with the soldiers who had taken 
 them. 
 
 Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and never to 
 find rest anywhere a sad fate : almost a sufficient punishment for an 
 imposture, which he seems in time to have half believed himself 
 lost his Scottish refuge through a truce being made between the two 
 Kings ; and found himself, once more, without a country before him 
 in which he could lay his head. But James (always honourable and 
 true to him, alike when he melted down his plate, and even the great 
 gold chain he bad been used to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause ; 
 and now, when that cause was lost and hopeless) did not conclude 
 the treaty, until he had safely departed out of the Scottish dominions. 
 He, and his beautiful wife, who was faithful to him under all 
 reverses, and left her state and home to follow his poor fortunes, were 
 put aboard ship with everything necessary for their comfort and 
 protection, and sailed for Ireland. 
 
 But, the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit Earls of 
 Warwick and Dukes of York, for one while ; and would give the 
 White Hose no aid. So, the White Rose encircled by thorns 
 indeed resolved to go with his beautiful wife to Cornwall as a 
 forlorn resource, and see what might be made of the Cornish men, 
 who had risen so valiantly a little while before, and who had fought 
 so bravely at Deptford Bridge. 
 
 To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin Warbeck 
 and his wife ; and the lovely lady he shut up for safety in the Castle of 
 St. Michael's Mount, and then marched into Devonshire at the head of 
 three thousand Cornish men. These were increased to six thousand 
 by the time of his arrival in Exeter ; but, there the people made 
 a stout resistance, and he went on to Taunton, whero he came in 
 sight of the King's army. The stout Cornish men, although they 
 were few in number, and badly armed, were so bold, that they never 
 thought of retreating ; but bravely looked forward to a battle on the 
 morrow. Unhappily for them, the man who was possessed of so 
 many engaging qualities, and who attracted so many people to his 
 side when he had nothing else with which to tempt them, was not as 
 brave as they. In the night, when the two armies lay opposite to 
 each other, he mounted a swift horse and fled. When morning 
 dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, discovering that they had 
 no leader, surrendered to the King's power. Some of them wero 
 hanged, and the rest were pardoned and went miserably home. 
 
 Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanctuary of
 
 Henry the Seventh. 529 
 
 B'iaillieu in the New Forest, where it was soon known that he had 
 taken refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to Saint Michael's Mount, 
 to seize his wife. She was soon taken and brought as a captive 
 before the King. But she was so beautiful, and so good, and so 
 devoted to the man in whom she believed, that the King regarded her 
 with compassion, treated her with great respect, and placed her at 
 Court, near the Queen's person. And many years after Perkin 
 Warbeck was no more, and when his strange story had become like 
 a nursery tale, she was called the White Rose, by the people, in 
 remembrance of her beauty. 
 
 The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the King's 
 men ; and the King, pursuing his usual dark artful ways, sent pre- 
 tended friends to Perkin Warbeck to persuade him to come out and 
 surrender himself. This he soon did ; the King having taken a good 
 look at the man of whom he had heard so much from behind a 
 screen directed him to be well mounted, and to ride behind him at 
 a little distance, guarded, but not bound in any way. So they 
 entered London with the King's favourite show a procession; and 
 some of the people hooted as the Pretender rode slowly through the 
 streets to the Tower ; but the greater part were quiet, and very 
 curious to see him. From the Tower, he was taken to the Palace at 
 Westminster, and there lodged like a gentleman, though closely 
 watched. He was examined every now and then as to his imposture ; 
 but the King was so secret in all he did, that even then he gave it a 
 consequence, which it cannot be supposed to have in itself deserved. 
 
 At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in another 
 sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From this he was again per- 
 suaded to deliver himself up ; and, being conveyed to London, ho 
 stood in the stocks for a whole day, outside Westminster Hall, and 
 there read a paper purporting to be his full confession, and relating 
 his history as the King's agents had originally described it. He was 
 then shut up in the Tower again, in the company of the Earl of 
 Warwick, who had now been there for fourteen years : ever since his 
 removal out of Yorkshire, except when the King had had him at 
 ( 'ourt, and had shown him to the people, to prove the imposture of 
 the Baker's boy. It is but too probable, when we consider the crafty 
 character of Henry the Seventh, that these two were brought together 
 for a cruel purpose. A plot was soon discovered between them and 
 the keepers, to murder the Governor, get possession of the keys, and 
 proclaim Perkin Warbeck as King Richard the Fourth. That there 
 was some such plot, is likely ; that they were tempted into it, is at 
 least as likely ; that the unfortunate Earl of Warwick last male of 
 the Plantagenet line was too unused to the world, and too ignorant 
 and simple to know much about it, whatever it was, is perfectly 
 certain ; and that it was the King's interest to get rid of him, is no 
 less so. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was 
 hanged at Tyburn. 
 
 2 n
 
 53^ A Child's History of England. 
 
 Suck was the end of the pretended Duke of York, whose shadowy 
 history was made more shadowy and ever will be by the mystery 
 and craft of the King. If he had turned his great natural advantages 
 to a more honest account, he might have lived a happy and respected 
 life, even in those days. But he died upon a gallows at Tyburn, 
 leaving the Scottish lady, who had loved him so well, kindly pro- 
 tected at the Queen's Court. After some time she forgot her old 
 loves and troubles, as many people do with Time's merciful assistance, 
 and married a Welsh gentleman. Her second husband, Sir Matthew 
 Ceadoc, more honest and more happy than her first, lies beside her 
 in a tomb in the old church of Swansea. 
 
 The ill-blood between France and England in this reign, arose out 
 of the continued plotting of the Duchess of Burgundy, and disputes 
 respecting the affairs of Brittany. The King feigned to be very 
 patriotic, indignant, and warlike ; but he always contrived so as never 
 to make war in reality, and always to make money. His taxation of 
 the people, on pretence of war with France, involved, at one time, a 
 very dangerous insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and a 
 common man called John a, Chambre. But it was subdued by the 
 royal forces, under the command of the Earl of Surrey. The knighted 
 John escaped to the Duchess of Burgundy, who was ever ready to 
 reoeive any one who gave the King trouble ; and the plain John was 
 hanged at York, in the midst of a number of his men, but on a much 
 higher gibbet, as being a greater traitor. Hung high or hung low, 
 however, hanging is much the same to the person hung. 
 
 Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had given birth to a 
 son, who was called Prince Arthur, in remembrance of the old 
 British prince of romance and story ; and who, when all these events 
 had happened, being then in his fifteenth year, was married to 
 Catherine, the daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great re- 
 joicings and bright prospects ; but in a very few months he sickened 
 and died. As soon as the King had recovered from his grief, he 
 thought it a pity that the fortune of the Spanish Princess, amounting 
 to two hundred thousand crowns, should go out of the family ; and 
 therefore arranged that the young widow should marry his second 
 son Henry, then twelve years of age, when he too should be fifteen. 
 There .were objections to this marriage on the part of the clergy ; 
 but, as the infallible Pope was gained over, and, as he must be right, 
 that settled the business for the time. The King's eldest daughter 
 was provided for, and a long course of disturbance was considered to 
 be set at rest, by her being married to the Scottish King. 
 
 And now the Queen died. When the King had got over that 
 grief too, his mind once more reverted to his darling money for con- 
 solation, and he thought of marrying the Dowager Duchess of Naples, 
 who was immensely rich : but, as it turned out not to be practicable 
 to gain the money, however practicable it might have been to gain 
 the lady, he gave up the idea- He was not so fond of her but that he
 
 Henry the Seventh. 531 
 
 soon proposed to marry the Dowager Duchess of Savoy ; and, soon 
 afterwards, the widow of the King of Castile, who was raving mad. 
 But he made a money-hargain instead, and married neither. 
 
 The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discontented people to 
 whom she had given refuge, had sheltered Edmund de la Pole 
 (younger brother of that Earl of Lincoln who was killed at Stoke), 
 now Earl of Suffolk. The King had prevailed upon him to return to 
 the marriage of Prince Arthur ; but, he soon afterwards went away 
 again ; and then the King, suspecting a conspiracy, resorted to his 
 favourite plan of sending him some treacherous friends, and buying 
 of those scoundrels the secrets they disclosed or invented. Some 
 arrests and executions took place in consequence. In the end, the 
 King, on a promise of not taking his life, obtained possession of the 
 person of Edmund de la Pole, and shut him up in the Tower. 
 
 This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer he would 
 have made many more among the people, by the grinding exaction to 
 which he constantly exposed them, and by the tyrannical acts of his 
 two prime favourites in all money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley 
 and Richard Empson. But Death the enemy who is not to be 
 bought off or deceived, and on whom no money, and no treachery, has 
 any effect presented himself at this juncture, and ended tho King's 
 reign. lie died of the gout, on the twenty-second of April, one 
 thousand five hundred and nine, and in the fifty-third year of his age, 
 after reigning twenty-four years ; he was buried in the beautiful 
 Chapel of Westminster Abbey, which he had himself founded, and 
 which still bears his name. 
 
 It was in this reign that tho groat Christopher Columbus, on 
 behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called The New World. 
 Great wonder, interest, and hope of wealth being awakened in 
 England thereby, the King and tho merchants of London and Bristol 
 fitted out an English expedition for further discoveries in tho New 
 World, and entrusted it to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, the son of 
 a Venetian pilot there. He was very successful in his voyage, and 
 gained high reputation, both for himself and England.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 england under henry the eighth, called bluff king hal and 
 burly king harry. 
 
 Part the First. 
 
 We now come to King Henry the Eighth, whom it has been too much 
 the fashion to call " Bluff King Hal," and " Burly King Harry," and 
 other fine names ; but whom I shall take the liberty to call, plainly, 
 one of the most detestable villains that ever drew breath. You will 
 be able to judge, long before we come to the end of his life, whether 
 he deserves the character. 
 
 He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the throne. 
 People said he was handsome then ; but I don't believe it. He was 
 a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced, double-chinned, swinish- 
 looking fellow in later life (as we know from the likenesses of him, 
 painted by the famous Hans Holbein), and it is not easy to believe 
 that so bad a character can ever have been veiled under a prepos- 
 sessing appearance. 
 
 He was anxious to make himself popular ; and the people, who 
 had long disliked the late King, were very willing to believe that he 
 deserved to be so. He was extremely fond of show and display, and 
 so were they. Therefore there was great rejoicing when he married 
 the Princess Catherine, and when they were both crowned. And the 
 King fought at tournaments and always came off victorious for the 
 courtiers took care of that and there was a general outcry that he 
 was a wonderful man. Empson, Dudley, and their supporters were 
 accused of a variety of crimes they had never committed, instead of 
 the offences of which they really had been guilty ; and they were 
 pilloried, and set upon horses with their faces to the tails, and 
 knocked about and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the people, and 
 the enrichment of the King. 
 
 The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into trouble, had 
 mixed himself up in a war on the continent of Europe, occasioned by 
 the reigning Princes of little quarrelling states in Italy having at 
 various times married into other Royal families, and so led to their 
 claiming a share in those petty Governments. The King, who dis- 
 covered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the King 
 of France, to say that he must not make war upon that holy personage, 
 because he was the father of all Christians. As the French King did 
 not mind this relationship in the least, and also refused to admit 
 a claim King Henry made to certain lands in France, war was 
 declared between the two countries. Not to perplex this story with 
 an account of the tricks and designs of all the sovereigns who were
 
 Henry the Eighth. 533 
 
 engaged in it, it is enough to say that England made a blundering 
 alliance with Spain, and got stupidly taken in by that country; 
 which made its own terms with France when it could, and left 
 England in the lurch. Sir Edward Howard, a bold admiral, son 
 of the Earl of Surrey, distinguished himself by his bravery against 
 tho French in this business ; but, unfortunately, he was more bravo 
 than wise, for, skimming into the French harbour of Brest with only 
 a few rowboats, he attempted (in revenge for the defeat and death of 
 Sir Thomas Knyvett, another bold English admiral) to take some 
 strong French ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. Tho 
 upshot was, that he was left on board of one of them (in consequence 
 of its shooting away from his own boat), with not more than about 
 a dozen men, and was thrown into the sea and drowned : though not 
 until he had taken from his breast his gold chain and gold whistle, 
 which were the signs of his office, and had cast them into the sea to 
 prevent their being made a boast of by the enemy. After this defeat 
 which was a great one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man of valour 
 and fame the King took it into his head to invade France in person ; 
 first executing that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father had 
 left in the Tower, and appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of 
 his kingdom in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was 
 joined by Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, who protended to bo his 
 soldier, and who took pay in his service : with a good deal of nonsense 
 of that sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The 
 King might be successful enough in sham fights ; but his idea of 
 real battles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours 
 that were ignominiously blown down by the wind, and in making 
 a vast display of gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fortune, however, 
 favoured him better than he deserved ; for, after much waste of time 
 in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other such 
 masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place called Guinegate : 
 where they took such an unaccountable panic, and fled with such swift- 
 ness, that it was ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of 
 Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that 
 he had had enough of real fighting, came home again. 
 
 The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by marriage, 
 had taken part against him in this war. The Earl of Surrey, as tho 
 English general, advanced to meet him when he came out of his own 
 dominions and crossed the river Tweed. The two armies came up 
 with one another when the Scottish King had also crossed the river 
 Till, and was encamped upon the last of the ( 'heviot Hills, called the 
 Hill of Flodden. Along the plain below it, tho English, when the 
 hour of battle came, advanced. The Scottish army, which hud been 
 drawn up in five great bodies, then came steadily down in perfect 
 silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to meet the English army, 
 which came on in one long line ; and they attacked it with a body of 
 spearmen, under Loud Home, At first they had the best of it ; but
 
 534 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the English recovered themselves so bravely, and fought with such 
 valour, that, when the Scottish King had almost made his way up to 
 the Royal standard, he was slain, and the whole Scottish power routed. 
 Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field ; and 
 among them, numbers of the nobility and gentry. For a long time 
 afterwards, the Scottish peasantry used to believe that their King had 
 not been really killed in this battle, because no Englishman had 
 found an iron belt he wore about his body as a penance for having 
 been an unnatural and undutiful son. But, whatever became of his 
 belt, the English had his sword and dagger, and the ring from his 
 finger, and his body too, covered with wounds. There is no doubt of 
 it ; for it was seen and recognised by English gentlemen who had 
 known the Scottish King well. 
 
 When King Henry was making ready to renew the war in France, 
 the French King was contemplating peace. His queen dying at this 
 time, he proposed, though he was upwards of fifty years old, to marry 
 King Henry's sister, the Princess Mary, who, besides being only 
 sixteen, was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the inclinations 
 of young Princesses were not much considered in such matters, the 
 marriage was concluded, and the poor girl was escorted to France, 
 where she was immediately left as the French King's bride, with 
 only one of all her English attendants. That one was a pretty young 
 girl named Anne Boleyn, niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had been 
 made Duke of Norfolk, after the victory of Flodden Field. Anne 
 Boleyn's is a name to be remembered, as you will presently find. 
 
 And now the French King, who was very proud of his young wife, 
 was preparing for many years of happiness, and she was looking 
 forward, I dare say, to many years of misery, when he died within 
 three months, and left her a young widow. The new French monarch, 
 Francis the Fikst, seeing how important it was to his interests that 
 she should take for her second husband no one but an Englishman, 
 advised her first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry sent 
 him over to France to fetch her home, to marry her. The Princess 
 being herself so fond of that Duke, as to tell him that he must either 
 do so then, or for ever lose her, they were wedded ; and Henry after- 
 wards forgave them. In making interest with the King, the Duke of 
 Suffolk had addressed his most powerful favourite and adviser, Thomas 
 Wolsey a name very famous in history for its rise and downfall. 
 
 Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich, in Suffolk, 
 and received so excellent an education that he became a tutor to the 
 family of the Marquis of Dorset, who afterwards got him appointed 
 one of the late King's chajdains. On the accession of Henry the 
 Eighth, he was promoted and taken into great favour. He was now 
 Archbishop of York ; the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides ; 
 and whoever wanted influence in England or favour with the King 
 whether he were a foreign monarch or an English nobleman was 
 obliged to make a friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey.
 
 Henry the Eighth. 535 
 
 He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and sing and drink ; 
 and tboso were the roads to so much, or rather so little, of a heart as 
 King Henry had. Ho was wonderfully fond of pomp and glitter, and 
 so was the King. He knew a good deal of the Church learning of 
 that time ; much of which consisted in finding artful excuses and 
 pretences for almost any wrong thing, and in arguing that black was 
 white, or any other colour. This kind of learning pleased the King 
 too. For many such reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation 
 with the King ; and, being a man of far greater ability, knew as well 
 how to manage him, as a clever keeper may know how to manage a 
 wolf or a tiger, or any other cruel and uncertain beast, that may turn 
 upon him and tear him any day. Never had there been seen in 
 England such state as my Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was 
 enormous ; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of the Crown. His 
 palaces were as splendid as the King's, and his retinue was eight 
 hundred strong. He held his Court, dressed out from top to toe in 
 flaming scarlet ; and his very shoes were golden, set with precious 
 stones. His followers rode on blood horses ; while he, with a wonder- 
 ful affectation of humility in the midst of his great splendour, ambled 
 on a mule with a red velvet saddle and bridle and golden stirrups. 
 
 Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand meeting was 
 arranged to take place between the French and English Kings in 
 France ; but on ground belonging to England. A prodigious show 
 of friendship and rejoicing was to be made on the occasion ; and 
 heralds were sent to proclaim with brazen trumpets through nil the 
 principal cities of Europe, that, on a certain day, the Kings of France 
 and England, as companions and brothers in arms, each attended by 
 eighteen followers, would hold a tournament against all knights who 
 might choose to come. 
 
 Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one being dead), 
 wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance between these sovereigns, 
 and came over to England before the King could repair to the jdace 
 of meeting ; and, besides making an agreeable impression upon him, 
 secured Wolsey's interest by promising that his influence should 
 make him Pope when the next vacancy occurred. On the day when 
 the Emperor left England, the King and all the Court went over to 
 Calais, and thence to the place of meeting, between Ardrcs and 
 Guisnes, commonly called the; Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all 
 manner of expense and prodigality was lavished on the decorations of 
 the show ; many of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly 
 dressed that it was said they carried their whole estates upon their 
 shoulders. 
 
 There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains running 
 wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all comers, silk tents, 
 gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things without end ; and, in 
 the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone and out-glittered all the 
 noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made betweeu
 
 536 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the two Kings with as much solemnity as if they had intended to 
 keep it, the lists nine hundred feet long, and three hundred and 
 twenty broad were opened for the tournament ; the Queens of 
 France and England looking on with great array of lords and ladies. 
 Then, for ten days, the two sovereigns fought five combats every day, 
 and always beat their polite adversaries ; though they do write that 
 the King of England, being thrown in a wrestle one day by the King 
 of France, lost his kingly temper with his brother in arms, and 
 wanted to make a quarrel of it. Then, there is a great story belong- 
 ing to this Field of the Cloth of Gold, showing how the English 
 were distrustful of the French, and the French of the English, until 
 Francis rode alone one morning to Henry's tent ; and, going in 
 before he was out of bed, told him in joke that he was his prisoner ; 
 and how Henry jumped out of bed and embraced Francis ; and how 
 Francis helped Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for him ; and 
 how Henry gave Francis a splendid jewelled collar, and how Francis 
 gave Henry, in return, a costly bracelet. All this and a great deal 
 more was so written about, and sung about, and talked about at that 
 time (and, indeed, since that time too), that the world has had good 
 cause to be sick of it, for ever. 
 
 Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a speedy 
 renewal of the war between England and France, in which the two 
 Royal companions and brothers in arms longed very earnestly to 
 damage one another. But. before it broke out again, the Duke of 
 Buckingham was shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evidence 
 of a discharged servant really for nothing, except the folly of 
 having believed in a friar of the name of Hopkins, who had pretended 
 to be a prophet, and who had mumbled and jumbled out some non- 
 sense about the Duke's son being destined to be very great in the 
 land. It was believed that the unfortunate Duke had given offence 
 to the great Cardinal by expressing his mind freely about the expense 
 and absurdity of the whole business of the Field of the Cloth of 
 Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded, as I have said, for nothing. 
 And the people who saw it done were very angry, and cried out that 
 it was the work of " the butcher's son ! " 
 
 The new war was a short one, though the Earl of Surrey invaded 
 France again, and did some injury to that country. It ended in 
 another treaty of peace between the two kingdoms, and in the 
 discovery that the Emperor of Germany was not such a good friend 
 to England in reality, as he pretended to be. Neither did he keep 
 his promise to Wolsey to make him Pope, though the King urged 
 him. Two Popes died in pretty quick succession ; but the foreign 
 priests were too much for the Cardinal, and kept him out of the post. 
 So the Cardinal and King together found out that the Emperor of 
 Germany was not a man to keep faith with ; broke off a projected 
 marriage between the King's daughter Mahy, Princess of Wales, and 
 that sovereign ; and began to consider whether it might not be well
 
 Henry the Eighth. 537 
 
 to marry the young ltuly, either to Francis himself, or to his eldest 
 son. 
 
 There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great leader of 
 the mighty change in England which is called The Reformation, and 
 which set the people free from their slavery to the priests. This 
 was a learned Doctor, named Martin Luthek, who knew all about 
 them, for he had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The 
 preaching and writing of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking 
 on this subject ; and Luther, finding one day to his great surprise, 
 that there really was a book called the New Testament which the 
 priests did not allow to be read, and which contained truths that they 
 suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the whole body, from 
 the Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet only beginning 
 his vast work of awakening the nation, that an impudent fellow 
 named Tetzel, a friar of very bad character, came into his neigh- 
 bourhood selling what were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to raise 
 money for beautifying the great Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome. 
 Whoever bought an Indulgence of the Pope was supposed to buy 
 himself off from the punishment of Heaven for his offences. Luther 
 told the people that these Indulgences were worthless bits of paper, 
 before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew of impostors 
 in selling them. 
 
 The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at this pre- 
 sumption ; and the King (with the help of Sir Thomas More, a wiso 
 man, whom he afterwards repaid by striking off his head) even wrote 
 a book about it, with which the Pope was so well pleased that he 
 gave the King the title of Defender of the Faith. The King and 
 the Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people not to read 
 Luther's books, on pain of excommunication. But they did read 
 them for all that ; and the rumour of what was in them spread far 
 and wide. 
 
 When this great change was thus going on, the King began to show 
 himself in his truest and worst colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty 
 little girl who had gone abroad to France with his sister, was by this 
 time grown up to be very beautiful, and was ono of the ladies in 
 attendance on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no 
 longer young or tiandsome, and it is likely that she was not particu- 
 larly good-tempered ; having been always rather melancholy, and 
 having been made more so by the deaths of four of her children when 
 they were very young. So, the King fell in love with the fair Anne 
 Boleyn, and said to himself, " How can I be best rid of my own 
 troublesome wile whom I am tired of, and marry Anne ? " 
 
 You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of Henry's 
 brother. What does the King do, after thinking it over, but calls 
 his favourite priests about him, and says, O ! his mind is in such a 
 dreadful state, and he is so frightfully uneasy, because ho is afraid it 
 Was not lawful for him to marry the Queen ! Not one of thoso priests
 
 538 A Child's History of England. 
 
 had the courage to hint that it was rather curious he had never 
 thought of that before, and that his mind seemed to have been in a 
 tolerably jolly condition during a great many years, in which he 
 certainly had not fretted himself thin ; but, they all said, Ah ! that 
 was very true, and it was a serious business ; and perhaps the best 
 way to make it right, would be for his Majesty to be divorced ! The 
 King replied, Yes, he thought that would be the best way, certainly ; 
 so they all went to work. 
 
 If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took place in 
 the endeavour to get this divorce, you would think the History of 
 England the most tiresome book in the world. So I shall say no more, 
 than that after a vast deal of negotiation and evasion, the Pope issued 
 a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campkggio (whom he 
 sent over from Italy for the purpose), to try the whole case in 
 England. It is supposed and I think with reason that Wolsey 
 was the Queen's enemy, because she had reproved him for his proud 
 and gorgeous manner of life. But, he did not at first know that the 
 King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn ; and when he did know it, he 
 even went down on bis knees, in the endeavour to dissuade him. 
 
 The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the Black 
 Friars, near to where the bridge of that name in London now stands ; 
 and the King and Queen, that they might be near it, took up their 
 lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing now 
 remains but a bad prison. On the opening of the court, when the 
 King and Queen were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady, 
 with a dignity and firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy 
 to be always admired, went and kneeled at the King's feet, and said 
 that she had come, a stranger, to his dominions ; that she had been a 
 good and true wife to him for twenty 3 7 ears ; and that she could 
 acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to try whether she should 
 be considered his wife after all that time, or should be put away. 
 With that, she got up and left the court, and would never afterwards 
 come back to it. 
 
 The King pretended to be very much overcome, and said, ! my 
 lords and gentlemen, what a good woman she was to be sure, and how 
 delighted he would be to live with her unto death, but for that 
 terrible 1 uneasiness in his mind which was quite wearing him away ! 
 So, the case went on, and there was nothing but talk for two months. 
 Then Cardinal Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted 
 nothing so much as delay, adjourned it for two more months ; and 
 before that time was elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it indefi- 
 nitely, by requiring the King and Queen to come to Rome and have 
 it tried there. But by good luck for the King, word was brought 
 to him by some of his people, that they had happened to meet at 
 supper, Thomas Cranmer, a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who had 
 proposed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case to all the 
 learned doctors and bishops, here and there and everywhere, and
 
 Henry the Eighth. 539 
 
 getting their opinions that the King's marriage was unlawful. The 
 King, who was now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this 
 stich a good idea, that he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and said to 
 Lord Rochfort, Anne Boleyn's father, " Take this learned Doctor 
 down to your country-house, and there let him have a good room for 
 a study, and no end of books out of which to prove that I may marry 
 your daughter." Lord Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made the learned 
 Doctor as comfortable as ho could ; and the learned Doctor went to 
 work to prove his case. All this time, the King and Anne Boleyn 
 were writing letters to one another almost daily, full of impatience to 
 have the case settled ; and Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I 
 think) very worthy of the fate which afterwards befel her. 
 
 It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that ho had left Cranmer to render 
 this help. It was worse for him that he had tried to dissuade the 
 King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant as he, to such a 
 master as Henry, would probably have fallen in any case ; but, 
 between the hatred of the party of the Queen that was, and tho 
 hatred of the party of the Queen that was to be, he fell suddenly and 
 heavily. Going down one day to tho Court of Chancery, where ho 
 now presided, lie was waited upon by tho Dukes of Norfolk and 
 Suffolk, who told him that they brought an order to him to resign 
 that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher, in 
 Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King ; and next 
 day came back with a letter from him, on reading which, the Cardinal 
 submitted. An inventory was made out of all the riches in his 
 palace at York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up 
 the river, in his barge, to Putney. An abject man he was, in spite of 
 his pride ; for being overtaken, riding out of that place towards 
 Esher, by one of tho King's chamberlains who brought him a kind 
 message and a ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and 
 kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in his prosperous 
 days he Lad always kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a far 
 better figure than lie ; for, when the Cardinal said to the chamberlain 
 that he had nothing to send to his lord the King as a present, but that 
 jester who was a most excellent one, it took six strong yeomen to 
 remove the faithful fool from his master. 
 
 The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, and wrote 
 the most abject letters to his vile sovereign ; who humbled him one 
 day and encouraged him the next, according to his humour, until he 
 was at last ordered to go and reside in his diocese of York. He said 
 he was too poor ; but I don't know how he made that out, for he took 
 a hundred and sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads of 
 furnitnro, food, and wine. He remained in that part of the country 
 for the best part of a year, and showed himself so improved by his 
 misfortunes, and was so mild and so conciliating, that he won all 
 hearts. Arid indeed, even in his proud days, he had done some 
 magnificent tilings for learning and education. At last, he was
 
 54-0 A Child's History of England. 
 
 arrested for high treason ; and, coming slowly on his journey towards 
 London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey after 
 dark, and very ill, he said when the monks came out at the gate 
 with lighted torches to receive him that he had come to lay his 
 bones among them. He had indeed ; for he was taken to a bed, from 
 which he never rose again. His last words were, "Had I but served 
 God as diligently as I have served the King, He would not have 
 given me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit, this is my just reward 
 for my pains and diligence, not regarding my service to God, but 
 only my duty to my prince." The news of his death was quickly 
 carried to the King, who was amusing himself with archery in the 
 garden of the magnificent Palace at Hampton Court, which that very 
 Wolsey had presented to him. The greatest emotion his royal mind 
 displayed at the loss of a servant so faithful and so ruined, was a 
 particular desire to lay hold of fifteen hundred pounds which the 
 Cardinal was reported to have hidden somewhere. 
 
 The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doctors and 
 bishops and others, being at last collected, and being generally in the 
 King's favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an entreaty that he 
 would now grant it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, 
 was half distracted between his fear of his authority being set aside 
 in England if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of offend- 
 ing the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine's nephew. 
 In this state of mind he still evaded and did nothing. Then, Thomas 
 Cromwell, who had been one of Wolsey's faithful attendants, and had 
 remained so even in his decline, advised the King to take the matter 
 into his own hands, and make himself the head of the whole Church. 
 This, the King by various artful means, began to do ; but he recom- 
 pensed the clergy by allowing them to burn as many people as they 
 pleased, for holdin b Luther's opinions. You must understand that 
 Sir Thomas More, the wise man who had helped the King with his 
 book, had been made Cnancellor in Wolsey's place. But, as he was 
 truly attached to the Church as it was even in its abuses, he, in this 
 state of things, resigned. 
 
 Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, and to 
 marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King made Cranmcr 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen Catherine to leave 
 the Court. She obeyed ; but replied that wherever she went, she was 
 Queen of England still, and would remain so, to the last. The King 
 then married Anne Boleyn privately ; and the new Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, within half a year, declared his marriage with Queen 
 Catherine void, and crowned Anne Boleyn Queen. 
 
 She might have known that no good could ever come from such 
 wrong, and that the corpulent brute who had been so faithless and so 
 cruel to his first wife, could be more faithless and more cruel to his 
 second. She might have known that, even when he was in love with 
 her, he had been a mean and selfish coward, running away like a
 
 Henry the Eighth. 54 1 
 
 frightened cur, from her society and her house, when a dangerous 
 sickness broke out in it, and when she might easily have taken it and 
 died, as several of the household did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at 
 all this knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear price. Her bad 
 marriage with a worse man came to its natural end. Its natural end 
 was not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death for her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 england under henry the eighth. 
 
 Part the Second. 
 
 The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind when ho 
 heard of the King's marriage, and fumed exceedingly. Many of the 
 English monks and friars, seeing that their order was in danger, did 
 the same ; some even declaimed against the King in church before 
 his face, and were not to be stopped until he himself roared out 
 " Silence ! " The King, not much the worse for this, took it pretty 
 quietly ; and was very glad when his Queen gave birth to a daughter, 
 who was christened Elizabeth, and declared Princess of Wales as 
 her sister Mary had already been. 
 
 One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that Henry 
 the Eighth was always trimming between the reformed religion and 
 the unreformed one ; so that the more he quarrelled with the Pope, 
 the more of his own subjects he roasted alive for not holding the 
 Pope's opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John Frith, 
 and a poor simple tailor named Andrew Hewet who loved him very 
 much, and said that whatever John Frith believed lie believed, were 
 burnt in Smithfield to show what a capital Christian the King was. 
 
 But, these were speedily followed by two much greater victims, 
 Sir Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of Kochester. The 
 latter, who was a good and amiable old man, had committed no 
 greater offence than believing in Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid 
 of Kent another of those ridiculous women who pretended to bo 
 inspired, and to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though they 
 indeed uttered nothing but evil nonsense. For this offence as it 
 was pretended, but really for denying the King to be the supremo 
 Head of the Church he got into trouble, and was put in prison; 
 but, even then, he might have been suffered to die naturally (short 
 work having been made of executing the Kentish Maid and her 
 principal followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, resolved 
 to make him n cardinal. Upon that the King made a ferocious joke 
 to the effect that the I'm]"; might send Fisher a red hat- which is the
 
 542 A Child's History of England. 
 
 way they make a cardinal but lie should have no head on which to 
 wear it ; and he was tried with all unfairness and injustice, and 
 sentenced to death. He died like a noble and virtuous old man, and 
 left a worthy name behind him. The King supposed, I dare say, 
 that Sir Thomas More would be frightened by this example ; but, as 
 he was not to be easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the 
 Pope, had made up his mind that the King was not the rightful Head 
 of the Church, he positively refused to say that he was. For this 
 crime he too was tried and sentenced, after having been in prison 
 a whole year. When he was doomed to death, and came away from 
 his trial with the edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him 
 as was always done in those times when a state prisoner came to that 
 hopeless pass he bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his 
 son, who pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled 
 down to receive it. But, when he got to the Tower Wharf on his 
 way back to his prison, and his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, 
 a very good woman, rushed through, the guards again and again, to 
 kiss him and to weep upon his neck, he was overcome at last. He 
 soon recovered, and never more showed any feeling but cheerfulness 
 and courage. When he was going up the steps of the scaffold to his 
 death, he said jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower, observing 
 that they were weak and shook beneath his tread, " I pray you, 
 master Lieutenant, see me safe up ; and, for my coming down, I can 
 shift for myself." Also he said to the executioner, after he had laid 
 his head upon the block, " Let me put my beard out of the way ; for 
 that, at least, has never committed any treason." Then his head was 
 struck off at a blow. These two executions were worthy of King 
 Henry the Eighth. Sir Thomas More was one of the most virtuous 
 men in his dominions, and the Bishop was one of his oldest and 
 truest friends. But to be a friend of that fellow was almost as 
 dangerous as to be his wife. 
 
 When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the Pope raged 
 against the murderer more than ever Pope raged since the world 
 began, and prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects to take arms 
 against him ana dethrone him. The King took all possible pre- 
 cautions to keep that document out of his dominions, and set to work 
 in return to suppress a great number of the English monasteries and 
 abbeys. 
 
 This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners, of whom 
 Cromwell (whom the King had taken into great favour) was the head ; 
 and was carried on through some few years to its entire completion. 
 There is no doubt that many of these religious establishments were 
 religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed with lazy, 
 indolent, and sensual monks. There is no doubt that they imposed 
 upon the people in every possible way ; that they had images moved 
 by wires, which they pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven ; 
 that they had among them a whole tun measure full of teeth, all
 
 Henry the Eighth. 543 
 
 purporting to have come out of the head of one saint, who must 
 indeed have been a very extraordinary person with that enormous 
 allowance of grinders ; that they had bits of coal which they said had 
 fried Saint Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged 
 to other famous saints ; penknives, and boots, and girdles, which they 
 said belonged to others ; and that all these bits of rubbish were 
 called Relics, and adored by the ignorant people. But, on the other 
 hand, there is no doubt either, that the King's officers and men 
 punished the good monks with the bad ; did great injustice ; 
 demolished many beautiful things and many valuable libraries ; 
 destroyed numbers of paintings, stained glass windows, fine pave- 
 ments, and carvings ; and that the whole court were ravenously 
 greedy and rapacious for the division of this great spoil among them. 
 The King seems to have grown almost mad in the ardour of this 
 pursuit ; for he declared Thomas a Becket a traitor, though he had 
 ljeen dead so many years, and had his body dug up out of his grave. 
 He must have been as miraculous as the monks pretended, if they 
 had told the truth, for he was found with one head on his shoulders, 
 and they had shown another as his undoubted and genuine head ever 
 since his death ; it had brought them vast sums of money, too. The 
 gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great chests, and eight men 
 tottered as they carried them away. How rich the monasteries were 
 you may infer from the fact that, when they were all suppressed, one 
 hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year in those days an 
 immense sum came to the Crown. 
 
 These things were not done without causing great discontent among 
 the people. The monks had been - good landlords and hospitable 
 entertainers of all travellers, and had been accustomed to give away 
 a great deal of corn, and fruit, and meat, and other things. In those 
 days it was difficult to change goods into money, in consequence of 
 the roads being very few and very bad, and the carts and waggons of 
 the worst description ; and they must either have given away some 
 of the good things they possessed in enormous quantities, or have 
 suffered them to spoil and moulder. So, many of the people missed 
 what it was more agreeable to get idly than to work for ; and the 
 monks who were driven out of their homes and wandered about 
 encouraged their discontent ; and there were, consequently, great 
 risings in Lincolnshire ami Yorkshire. These were put down by 
 terrific executions, from which the monks themselves did not escape, 
 and the King went on grunting and growling in his own fat way, like 
 a Royal pig. 
 
 1 have told all tin's story of the religions houses at one time, to 
 make it plainer, and to get back to the King's domestic affairs. 
 
 The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time dead ; and the 
 King was by this time as tired of his second Queen as he had been of 
 his iirst. As lie had fallen in love with Anne when she was in the 
 service of Catherine, so he now fell in love with another lady in the
 
 544 -d Child's History of England. 
 
 service of Anne. See how wicked deeds are punished, and how 
 bitterly and self-reproachfully the Queen must now have thought of 
 her own rise to the throne ! The new fancy was a Lady Jane 
 Seymour ; and the King no sooner set his mind on her, than he 
 resolved to have Anne Boleyn's head. So, he brought a number of 
 charges against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes which she had 
 never committed, and implicating in them her own brother and 
 certain gentlemen in her service : among whom one Norris, and 
 Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remembered. As the lords and 
 councillors were as afraid of the King and as subservient to him as 
 the meanest peasant in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn 
 guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused with her, guilty 
 too. Those gentlemen died like men, with the exception of Smeaton, 
 who had been tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called 
 confessions, and who had expected to be pardoned ; but who, I am 
 very glad to say, was not. There was then only the Queen to dis- 
 pose of. She had been surrounded in the Tower by women spies ; 
 had been monstrously persecuted and foully slandered ; and had 
 received no justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions ; and, 
 after having in vain tried to soften the King by writing an affecting 
 letter to him which still exists, " from her doleful prison in the 
 Tower," she resigned herself to death. She said to those about her, 
 very cheerfully, that she had heard say the executioner was a good 
 one, and that she had a little neck (she laughed and clasped it with 
 her hands as she said that), and would soon be out of her pain. And 
 she was soon out of her pain, poor creature, on the Green inside the 
 Tower, and her body was flung into an old box and put away in the 
 ground under the chapel. 
 
 There is a story that the King sat in his palace listening very 
 anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was to announce this 
 new murder ; and that, when he heard it come booming on the air, 
 he rose up in great spirits and ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. 
 He was bad enough to do it ; but whether he did it or not, it is 
 certain that he married Jane Seymour the very next day. 
 
 I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just long 
 enough to give birth to a son who was christened Edwaed, and then 
 to die of a fever : for, I cannot but think that any woman who 
 married such a ruffian, and knew what innocent blood was on his 
 hands, deserved the axe that would assuredly have fallen on the neck 
 of Jane Seymour, if she had lived much longer. 
 
 Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the Church 
 property for purposes of religion and education ; but, the great 
 families had been so hungry to get hold of it, that very little could 
 be rescued for such objects. Even Miles Coverdale, who did the 
 people the inestimable service of translating the Bible into English 
 (which the unreformed religion never permitted to be done), was left 
 in poverty while the great families clutched the Church lands and
 
 Henry the Eighth. 545 
 
 money. The people had been told that when the Crown came into 
 possession of these funds, it would not he necessary to tax them ; hut 
 they were taxed afresh directly afterwards. It was fortunate for 
 them, indeed, that so many nohles were so greedy for this wealth ; 
 since, if it had remained with the Crown, there might have been no 
 end to tyranny for hundreds of years. One of the most active writers 
 on the Church's side against the King was a member of his own 
 family a sort of distant cousin, Reginald Pole by name who 
 attacked him in the most violent manner (though he received a 
 pension from him all the time), and fought for the Church with his 
 pen, day and night. As he was beyond the King's reach being in 
 Italy the King politely invited him over to discuss the subject; 
 but he, knowing better than to come, and wisely staying where he 
 was, the King's rage fell upon his brother Lord Montague, the 
 Marquis of Exeter, and some other gentlemen : who were tried for 
 high treason in corresponding with him and aiding him which they 
 probably did and were all executed. The Pope made Reginald 
 Pole a Cardinal ; but, so much against his will, that it is thought he 
 even aspired in his own mind to the vacant throne of England, and 
 had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being made a high 
 priest, however, put an end to all that. His mother, the venerable 
 Countess of Salisbury who was, unfortunately for herself, within 
 the tyrant's reach was the last of his relatives on whom his wrath 
 fell. When she was told to lay her grey head upon the block, she 
 answered the executioner, " No ! My head never committed treason, 
 and if you want it, you shall seize it." So, she ran round and round 
 the scaffold witli the executioner striking at her, and her grey hair 
 bedabbled with blood ; and even when they held her down upon the 
 block she moved her head about to the last, resolved to be no party 
 to her own barbarous murder. All this the peojile bore, as they had 
 borne everything else. 
 
 Indeed they bore much more ; for the slow fires of Smithfield were 
 continually burning, and people were constantly being roasted to 
 death still to show what a good Christian the King was. He defied 
 the Pope and his Bull, which was now issued, and had come into 
 England ; but ho burned innumerable peojde whose only offence was 
 that they differed from the Pope's religious opinions. There was a 
 wretched man named Lambert, among others, who was tried for this 
 before the King, and with whom six bishops argued one after another. 
 When he was quite exhausted (as well lie might be, after six bishops), 
 he threw himself on the King's mercy ; but the King blustered out 
 that he had no mercy for heretics. So, he too fed the fire. 
 
 All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The national 
 spirit seems to have been banished from the kingdom at this time. 
 The very people who wore executed for treason, the very wives and 
 friends of the "bluff" King, spoke of him on the scaffold as u good 
 prince, and a gentle prince just as serfs in similar circumstances 
 
 l 2 N
 
 546 A Child's History of England. 
 
 have been known to do, under the Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or 
 under the fierce old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and 
 freezing water on them alternately, until they died. The Parliament 
 were as bad as the rest, and gave the King whatever he wanted ; 
 among other vile accommodations, they gave him new powers of 
 murdering, at his will and pleasure, any one whom he might choose 
 to call a traitor. But the worst measure they passed was an Act of 
 Six Articles, commonly called at the time " the whip with six 
 strings ; " which punished offences against the Pope's opinions, with- 
 out mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the monkish religion. 
 Cranmer would have modified it, if he could ; but, being overborne 
 by the Romish party, had not the power. As one of the articles 
 declared that priests should not marry, and as he was married him- 
 self, he sent his wife and children into Germany, and began to 
 tremble at his danger ; none the less because he was, and had long 
 been, the King's friend. This whip of six strings was made under 
 the King's own eye. It should never be forgotten of him how cruelly 
 he supported the worst of the Popish doctrines when there was 
 nothing to be got by opposing them. 
 
 This amiable monarch now thought of taking another wife. He 
 proposed to the French King to have some of the ladies of the French 
 Court exhibited before him, that lie might make his Royal choice ; 
 but the French King answered that he would rather not have his 
 ladies trotted out to be shown like horses at a fair. He proposed to 
 the Dowager Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might have 
 thought of such a match if she had had two heads ; but, that only 
 owning one, she must beg to keep it safe. At last Cromwell repre- 
 sented that there was a Protestant Princess in Germany those who 
 held the reformed religion were called Protestants, because their 
 leaders had Protested against the abuses and impositions of the 
 unreformed Church named Awe of Cleves, who was beautiful, 
 and would answer the purpose admirably. The King said was she a 
 large woman, because he must have a fat wife ? " O yes," said 
 Cromwell ; " she was very large, just the thing." On hearing this 
 the King sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her 
 portrait. Hans made her to be so good-looking that the King was 
 satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had 
 jmid Hans to touch up the picture ; or whether Hans, like one or two 
 other painters, flattered a princess in the ordinary way of business, I 
 cannot say : all I know is, that when Anne came over and the King 
 went to Rochester to meet her, and first saw her without her seeing 
 him, he swore she was " a great Flanders mare," and said he would 
 never marry her. Being obliged to do it now matters had gone so 
 far, he would not give her the presents he had prepared, and would 
 never notice her. He never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. 
 His downfall dates from that time. 
 
 It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the unreformed
 
 Henry the Eighth. 547 
 
 religion, putting in the King's way, at a state dinner, a niece of tho 
 Dnke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, a young lady of fascinating 
 manners, though small in stature and not particularly beautiful. 
 Falling in love with her on the spot, the King soon divorced Anne 
 of Cleves after making her the subject of much brutal talk, on 
 pretence that she had been previously betrothed to some one else 
 which would never do for one of his dignity and married Catherine. 
 It is probable that on his wedding day, of all days in the year, he 
 sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaftbld, and had his head struck 
 off. He further celebrated the occasion by burning at one time, and 
 causing to be drawn to the fire on the same hurdles, some Protestant 
 prisoners for denying the Tope's doctrines, and some Roman Catholic 
 prisoners for denying his own supremacy. Still the people bore it, 
 and not a gentleman in England raised his hand. 
 
 But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Catherine Howard, 
 before her marriage, had been really guilty of such crimes as the 
 King had falsely attributed to his second wife Anne Boleyn ; so, 
 again the dreadful axe made the King a widower, and this Queen 
 passed away as so many in that reign had passed away before her. 
 As an appropriate pursuit under the circumstances, Henry then 
 applied himself to superintending the composition of a religious book 
 called " A necessary doctrine for any Christian Man." He must 
 have been a little confused in his mind, I think, at about this period ; 
 for he was so false to himself as to be true to some one : that some 
 one being Cranmer, whom the Duke of Norfolk and others of his 
 enemies tried to ruin ; but to whom the King was steadfast, and to 
 whom he one night gave his ring, charging him when he should find 
 himself, next day, accused of treason, to show it to the council board. 
 This Cranmer did to the confusion of his enemies. I suppose the 
 King thought he might want him a little longer. 
 
 lie married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found in 
 England another woman who would become his wife, and she was 
 ( 'athebine Pabr, widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards the 
 reformed religion ; and it is some comfort to know, that she tormented 
 the King considerably by arguing a variety of doctrinal points with 
 him on all occasions. She had very nearly done this to her own 
 destruction. After one of these conversations the King in a very 
 black mood actually instructed Gardiner, one of his Bishops who 
 favoured the Popish opinions, to draw a bill of accusation against 
 her, which would have inevitably brought her to the scaffold where 
 her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends picked up the 
 paper of instructions which had been dropped in the palace, and gave 
 her timely notice. She fell ill with terror; but managed the King 
 so well when he came to entrap her into further statements by 
 saving that she had only spoken on such points to divert his mind 
 and to get sonic information from his extraordinary wisdom that lie 
 gave her a kiss and called her his sweetheart. And. when tho
 
 548 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Chancellor came next day actually to take her to the Tower, the King 
 sent him about his business, and honoured him with the epithets of a 
 beast, a knave, and a fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, 
 and so narrow was her escape ! 
 
 There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short clumsy 
 war with France for favouring Scotland ; but, the events at home 
 were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain on the country, 
 that I need say no more of what happened abroad. 
 
 A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a lady, 
 Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Protestant opinions, 
 and whose husband being a fierce Catholic, turned her out of his 
 house. She came to London, and was considered as offending against 
 the six articles, and was taken to the Tower, and put upon the rack 
 probably because it was hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate 
 some obnoxious persons ; if falsely, so much the better. She was 
 tortured without uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower 
 would suffer his men to torture her no more ; and then two priests 
 who were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned the 
 wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending and twisting and 
 breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the fire in a chair. 
 She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and 
 a tailor ; and so the world went on. 
 
 Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke of Norfolk, 
 and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him some offence, but he 
 resolved to pull them down, to follow all the rest who were gone. 
 The son was tried first of course for nothing and defended himself 
 bravely ; but of course he was found guilty, and of course he was 
 executed. Then his father was laid hold of, and left for death too. 
 
 But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King, and 
 the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was now a swollen, 
 hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so odious to every 
 sense, that it was dreadful to approach him. When he was found to 
 be dying, Crammer was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and 
 came with all speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in that 
 hour he perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the 
 thirty-eighth of Lis reign. 
 
 Henry the Eighth has been favoured by some Protestant writers, 
 because the Reformation was achieved in his time. But the mighty 
 merit of it lies with other men and not with him ; and it can be 
 rendered none the worse by this monster's crimes, and none the better 
 by any defence of them. The plain truth is, that he was a most 
 intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood 
 and grease upon the History of England.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER EDWAKD THE SIXTH. 
 
 Henry the Eighth bad made a will, appointing a council of sixteen 
 to govern the kingdom for bis son while be was under age (he was 
 now only ten years old), and another council of twelve to help them. 
 The most powerful of the first council was the Eari. of Hertford, 
 the young King's uncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew 
 with great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. It was 
 considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young King 
 that be was sorry for bis father's death ; but, as common subjects 
 have that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it. < 
 
 There was a curious part of the late King's will, requiring bis 
 executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some of the 
 court wondering what these might be, the Earl of Hertford and the 
 other noblemen interested, said that they were promises to advance 
 and enrich them. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke of 
 Somerset, and made his brother Edward Seymour a baron ; and 
 there were various similar promotions, all very agreeable to the 
 parties concerned, and very dutiful, no doubt, to the late King's 
 memory. To be more dutiful still, they made themselves rich out 
 of the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The new Duke 
 of Somerset caused himself to be declared Protectoh of the kingdom, 
 and was, indeed, the King. 
 
 As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the principles 
 of the Protestant religion, everybody knew that they would be 
 maintained. But Cranmer, to whom they were chiefly entrusted, 
 advanced them steadily and temperately. Many superstitious and 
 ridiculous practices were stopped ; but practices which were harmless 
 were not interfered with. 
 
 The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to have the 
 young King engaged in marriage to the young Queen of Scotland, in 
 order to prevent that princess from making an alliance with any 
 foreign power; but, as a large party in Scotland were unfavourable 
 to this plan, lie invaded that country. His excuse for doing so 
 was, that the Border men that is, the Scoteli who lived in that part 
 of the country where England and Scotland joined troubled the 
 English very much. But there were two sides to this question ; for 
 the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and, through many 
 long years, there were perpetual border quarrels which gave rise to 
 numbers of old tales and songs. However, the Protector invaded 
 Scotland; and Aruan, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as 
 large as his, advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks 
 of the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh ; and there, after
 
 550 A Child's History of England. 
 
 a little skirmish, the Protector made such moderate proposals, in 
 offering to retire if the Scotch would only engage not to marry their 
 princess to any foreign prince, that the Regent thought the English 
 were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake ; for the 
 English soldiers on land, and the English sailors on the water, so set 
 upon the Scotch that they broke and fled, and more than ten thousand 
 of them were killed. It was a dreadful battle, for the fugitives were 
 slain without mercy. The ground for four miles, all the way to 
 Edinburgh, was strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and 
 heads. Some hid themselves in streams and were drowned ; some 
 threw away their armour and were killed running, almost naked ; 
 but in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or three 
 hundred men. They were much better clothed than the Scotch ; at 
 the poverty of whose appearance and country they were exceedingly 
 astonished. 
 
 A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it repealed 
 the whip with sis strings, and did one or two other good things ; 
 though it unhappily retained the punishment of burning for those 
 people who did not make believe to believe, in all religious matters, 
 what the Government had declared that they must and should believe. 
 It also made a foolish law (meant to put down beggars), that any 
 man who lived idly and loitered about for three days together, 
 should be burned with a hot iron, made a slave, and wear an iron 
 fetter. But this savage absurdity soon came to an end, and went the 
 way of a great many other foolish laws. 
 
 The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parliament before 
 all the nobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many other noble- 
 men, who only wanted to be as proud if they could get a chance, 
 became his enemies of course ; and it is supposed that he came back 
 suddenly from Scotland because he had received news that his 
 brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming dangerous to him. This lord 
 was now High Admiral of England ; a very handsome man, and 
 a great favourite with the Court ladies even with the young 
 Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him a little more than young 
 princesses in these times do with any one. He had married 
 Catherine Parr, the late King's widow, who was now dead ; and, to 
 strengthen his power, he secretly sujiplied the young King with 
 money. He may even have engaged with some of his brother's 
 enemies in a plot to carry the boy off. On these and other accusa- 
 tions, at any rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, and 
 found guilty ; his own brother's name being unnatural aud sad to 
 tell the first signed to the warrant for his execution. He was 
 executed on Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. One of his last 
 proceedings in this world was to write two letters, one to the Princess 
 Elizabeth, and one to the Princess Mary, which a servant of his took 
 charge of, and concealed in his shoe. These letters are supposed to 
 have urged them against his brother, and to revenge his death,
 
 Edward the Sixth. 5 5 1 
 
 What they truly contained is not known ; but there is no doubt that 
 lie had, at one time, obtained a great influence over the Princess 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 All this while, the Protestant religion was making progress. The 
 images which the people had gradually come to worship, were removed 
 from the churches ; the peoplo were informed that they need not 
 confess themselves to priests unless they chose ; a common prayer- 
 book was drawn up in the English language, which all could under- 
 stand ; and many other improvements were made ; still moderately. 
 For Craumer was a very moderate man, and even restrained the 
 Protestant clergy from violently abusing the unreformed religion 
 as they very often did, and which was not a good example. But the 
 people were at this time in great distress. The rapacious nobility 
 who had come into possession of the Church lands, were very bad 
 landlords. They enclosed great quantities of ground for the feeding 
 of sheep, which was then more profitable than the growing of crops ; 
 and this increased the general distress. So the people, who still 
 understood little of what was going on about them, and still readily 
 believed what the homeless monks told them many of whom had 
 been their good friends in their better days took it into their heads 
 that all this was owing to the reformed religion, and therefore rose in 
 many parts of the country. 
 
 The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Norfolk. In 
 Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand men united 
 within a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But Loiu> 
 Russell, coming to the assistance of the citizens who defended that 
 town, defeated the rebels ; and, not only hanged the Mayor of one 
 place, but hanged the vicar of another from his own church steeple. 
 What with hanging and killing by the sword, four thousand of the 
 rebels are supposed to have fallen in that one county. In Norfolk 
 (whero the rising was more against the enclosure of open lands than 
 against the reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named 
 Robekt Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first 
 instance, excited against the tanner by one John Flowkkdew, a gentle- 
 man who owed him a grudge : but the tanner was more than a match 
 for tho gentleman, since he soon got the people on his side, and 
 established himself near Norwich with quite an army. There was 
 a large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, which 
 Ket named the Tree of Reformation ; and under its green boughs, 
 lie and his men sat, in tho midsummer weather, holding courts of 
 justice, and debating affairs of state. They were even impartial 
 enough to allow some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into 
 this Tree of Reformation, and point out their errors to them, in long 
 discourses, while they lay listening (not always without some grum- 
 bling and growling) in the shade below. At last, one sunny July day, 
 a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his 
 men traitors, unless from that moment they dispersed and went homo:
 
 552 A Child's History of England. 
 
 in which case they were to receive a pardon. But, Ket and his men 
 made light of the herald and became stronger than ever, until the 
 Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient force, and cut 
 them all to pieces. A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as 
 traitors, and their limbs were sent, into various country places to be 
 a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged upon nine green 
 branches of the Oak of Keformation ; and so, for the time, that tree 
 may be said to have withered away. 
 
 The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion for the real 
 distresses of the common people, and a sincere desire to help them. 
 But he was too proud and too high in degree to hold even their 
 favour steadily ; and many of the nobles always envied and hated 
 him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at 
 this time building a great Palace in the Strand : to get the stone for 
 which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down 
 bishops' houses : thus making himself still more disliked. At length, 
 his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick Dudley by name, and 
 the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with Enipson, 
 in the reign of Henry the Seventh joined with seven other members 
 of the Council against him, formed a separate Council ; and, becoming 
 stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine 
 articles of accusation. After being sentenced by the Council to the 
 forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was liberated and pardoned, 
 on making a very humble submission. He was even taken back into 
 the Council again, after having suffered this fall, and married his 
 daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick's eldest son. But such 
 a reconciliation was little likely to last, and did not outlive a year. 
 Warwick, having got himself made Duke of Northumberland, and 
 having advanced the more important of his friends, then finished the 
 history by causing the Duko of Somerset and his friend Lord Gkey, 
 and others, to be arrested for treason, in having conspired to seize 
 and dethrone the King. They were also accused of having intended 
 to seize the new Duke of Northumberland, with his friends Lord 
 Northampton and Lord Pembroke ; to murder them if they found 
 need ; and to raise the City to revolt. All this the fallen Protector 
 positively denied ; except that he confessed to having spoken of the 
 murder of those three noblemen, but having never designed it. He 
 was acquitted of the charge of treason, and found guilty of the other 
 charges ; so when the people who remembered his having been their 
 friend, now that he was disgraced and in danger, saw him come out 
 from his trial with the axe turned from him they thought he was 
 altogether acquitted, and set up a loud shout of joy. 
 
 But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on Tower 
 Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and proclamations were issued 
 bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten. They filled the 
 streets, however, and crowded the place of execution as soon as it 
 was light ; and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful
 
 Edward the Sixth. 553 
 
 Protector ascend the scaffold to lay bis Lead upon the dreadful block. 
 While he was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage, 
 and telling them, in particular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to 
 have assisted in reforming tho national religion, a member of tho 
 Council was seen riding up on horseback. They again thought that 
 the Duke was saved by his bringing a reprieve, and again shouted 
 for joy. But the Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and 
 laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow. 
 
 Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their handker- 
 chiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection. He had, indeed, 
 been capable of many good acts, and one of them was discovered 
 after he was no more. The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, 
 had been informed against to the Council, when the Duke was in 
 power, as having answered a treacherous letter proposing a rebellion 
 against the reformed religion. As the answer could not be found, he 
 could not be declared guilty ; but it was now discovered, hidden by 
 the Duke himself among some private papers, in his regard for that 
 good man. The Bishop lost his office, and was deprived of his 
 possessions. 
 
 It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay in prison 
 under sentence of death, the young King was being vastly entertained 
 by plays, and dances, and sham fights : but there is no doubt of it, 
 for he kept a journal himself. It is pleasanter to know that not a 
 single Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that 
 religion ; though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a 
 woman named Joan Bocheb, for professing some opinions that even 
 she could only explain in unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutch- 
 man, named Von Paius, who practised as a surgeon in London. 
 Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant 
 for the woman's execution : shedding tears before he did so, and 
 telling Cranmer, who urged him to do it (though Cranmer really 
 would have spared the woman at first, but for her own determined 
 obstinacy), that the guilt was not his, but that of the man who so 
 strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too soon, whether the 
 time ever came when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this 
 with sorrow and remorse. 
 
 Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards 
 Bishop of London) were the most powerful of the clergy of this 
 reign. Others were imprisoned and deprived of their property for 
 still adhering to the unreformed religion ; the most important among 
 whom were Gakdinek Bishop of Winchester, Heath Bishop of 
 Worcester, Day Bishop of Chichester, and BoxxEit that Bishop of 
 London who was superseded by Ridley. The Princess Mary, who 
 inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated the reformed 
 religion as connected with her mother's wrongs and sorrows she 
 knew nothing else about it, always refusing to read a single book in 
 which it was truly described- held by the unreformed religion too,
 
 554 A Child's History of England. 
 
 and was the only person in the kingdom for whom the old Mass was 
 allowed to be performed ; nor would the young King have made that 
 exception even in her favour, but for the strong persuasions of 
 Cranmer and Eidley. He always viewed it witb borror ; and when 
 he fell into a sickly condition, after having been very ill, first of tbe 
 measles and then of the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind 
 to think that if be died, and she, the next heir to tbe tbrone, suc- 
 ceeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set up again. 
 
 This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not slow to 
 encourage : for, if the Princess Mary came to the throne, he, who had 
 taken part witb tbe Protestants, was sure to be disgraced. Now, the 
 Duchess of Suffolk was descended from King Henry the Seventh ; 
 and, if she resigned what little or no right she had, in favour of her 
 daughter Lady Jane Grey, that would be the succession to promote 
 the Duke's greatness ; because Lord Guilford Dudley, one of his 
 sons, was, at this very time, newly married to her. So, he worked 
 upon the King's fears, and persuaded him to set aside both the 
 Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to 
 appoint his successor. Accordingly the young King handed to the 
 Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over by himself, 
 appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring 
 them to have his will made out according to law. They were much 
 against it at first, and told the King so ; but the Duke of Northumber- 
 land being so violent about it that the lawyers even expected him 
 to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped to his shirt, he would 
 fight any man in such a quarrel they yielded. Cranmer, also, at 
 first hesitated ; pleading that he had sworn to maintain the succession 
 of the Crown to the Princess Mary ; but, he was a weak man in his 
 resolutions, and afterwards signed the document with the rest of the 
 council. 
 
 It was completed none too soon ; for Edward was now sinking in a 
 rapid decline ; and, by way of making him better, they handed, him 
 over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be able to cure it. He 
 speedily got worse. On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand 
 five hundred and fifty-three, he died, very peaceably and piously, 
 praying God, with his last breath, to protect the reformed religion. 
 
 This King died in the sixteentli year of his ago, and in the seventh 
 of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the character of one so 
 young might afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious, 
 quarrelling nobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very good 
 abilities, and had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition 
 which in the son of such a father is rather surprising.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDElt MAKY. 
 
 The Dnkc of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the young 
 King's death a secret, in order that he might get the two Princesses 
 into his power. But, the Princess Mary, being informed of that 
 event as she was on her way to London to sec her sick brother, 
 turned her horse's head, and rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of 
 Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent her warning of what 
 had happened. 
 
 As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and 
 the Council sent for tbe Lord Mayor of London and some of the 
 aldermen, and made a merit of telling it to them. Then, they made 
 it known to the people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that 
 she was to be Queen. 
 
 She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned, 
 and clever. When the lords who came to her, fell on their knees 
 before her, and told her what tidings they brought, she was so 
 astonished that she fainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow 
 for the young King's death, and said that she knew she was unfit to 
 govern the kingdom ; but that if she must be Queen, she prayed God 
 to direct her. She was then at Sion House, near Brentford ; and the 
 lords took her down the river in state to the Tower, that she might 
 remain there (as the custom was) until she was crowned. But the 
 people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane, considering that the 
 right to be Queen was Mary's, and greatly disliking the Duke of 
 Northumberland. They were not put into a better humour by the 
 Duke's causing a vintner's servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up 
 for expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, and to have his 
 ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some powerful men among 
 the nobility declared on Mary's side. They raised troops to support 
 her cause, had her proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered around 
 her at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of 
 Norfolk. For, she was not considered so safe as yet, but that it was 
 best to keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might 
 be sent abroad, if necessary. 
 
 The Council would have despatched Lady Jane's lather, the Duke 
 of Suffolk, as the general of the army against this force ; but, as 
 Lady Jane implored that her father might remain with her, and as 
 he was known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke of 
 Northumberland that ho must take the command himself. He was 
 not very ready to do so, as he mistrusted the Council much ; but 
 there was no help for it, and ho set forth with a lieuvy heart, 
 observing to a lord who rode beside him through Slioreditch at the
 
 556 A Child's History of England. 
 
 head of the troops, that, although the people pressed in great numbers 
 to look at them, they were terribly silent. 
 
 And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. While 
 he was waiting at Cambridge for further help from the Council, the 
 Council took it into their heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane's 
 cause, and to take up the Princess Mary's. This was chiefly owing 
 to the before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented to the 
 Lord Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview with those sagacious 
 persons, that,' as for himself, he did not perceive the Eeformed 
 religion to be in much danger -which Lord Pembroke backed by 
 flourishing his sword as another kind of persuasion. The Lord 
 Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could be no doubt 
 that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimed 
 at the Cross by St. Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to the 
 people, and they got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires 
 little thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon be 
 blazing in Queen Mary's name. 
 
 After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned the 
 Crown with great willingness, saying that she had only accepted it in 
 obedience to her father and mother; and went gladly back to her 
 pleasant house by the river, and her books. Mary then came on 
 towards London ; and at Wanstead in Essex, was joined by her half- 
 sister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets of 
 London to the Tower, and there the new Queen met some eminent 
 prisoners then confined in it, kissed them, and gave them their 
 liberty. Among these was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who 
 had been imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the unreformed 
 religion. Him she soon made chancellor. 
 
 The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, 
 together with his son and five others, was quickly brought before the 
 Council. He, not unnaturally, asked that Council, in his defence, 
 whether it was treason to obey orders that had been issued under the 
 great seal ; and, if it were, whether they, who had obeyed them too, 
 ought to be his judges ? But they made light of these points ; and, 
 being resolved to have him out of the way, soon sentenced him to 
 death. He had risen into power upon the death of another man, and 
 made but a poor show (as might be expected) when he himself lay 
 low. He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if it were only in a 
 mouse's hole ; and, when he ascended the scaffold to be beheaded on 
 Tower Hill, addressed the people in a miserable way, saying that lie 
 had been incited by others, and exhorting them to return to the 
 unreformed religion, which he told them was his faith. There seems 
 reason to suppose that he expected a pardon even then, in return for 
 this confession ; but it matters little whether he did or not. His 
 head was struck off. 
 
 Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years of ago, 
 short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy. But she
 
 Mary. 
 
 ss; 
 
 had a great liking for show and for bright colours, and all the ladies 
 of her Court were magnificently dressed. She had a great liking too 
 for old customs, without much sense in them ; and she was oiled in 
 the oldest way, and blessed in the oldest way, and done all manner 
 of things to in the oldest way, at her coronation. I hope they did 
 her good. 
 
 She soon began to show her desire to put down the Reformed 
 religion, and put up the unreformed one : though it was dangerous 
 work as yet, the people being something wiser than they used to be. 
 They even cast a shower of stones and among them a dagger at 
 one of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion in 
 a public sermon. But the Queen and her priests went steadily on. 
 Ridley, the powerful bishop of the last reign, was seized and sent to 
 the Tower. Latimer, also celebrated . mong the Clergy of the last 
 reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, f id Cranmcr speedily followed. 
 Latimer was an aged man ; and, as his guards took him through 
 Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, " This is a place that hath 
 long groaned for me." For he knew well, what kind of bonfires 
 would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him. 
 The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, who were 
 there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation from their 
 friends ; many, who had time left them for escape, fled from the 
 kingdom ; and the dullest of the people began, now, to sec what was 
 coming. 
 
 It came on fast. A Parliament was got together ; not without 
 strong suspicion of unfairness ; and they annulled the divorce, 
 formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen's mother and 
 King Henry the Eighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of 
 religion that had been made in the last King Edward's reign. They 
 began their proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old 
 mass said before them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who 
 would not kneel down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady 
 .lane Grey for aspiring to the Crown ; her husband, for being her 
 husband ; and Cranmer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. 
 They then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a hushand for 
 herself, as 60011 as might be. 
 
 Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband had given 
 rise to a great deal of discussion, and to several contending parties. 
 Some said Cardinal Pole was the man but the Queen was of opinion 
 that he was not the man, he being too old and too much of a student. 
 Others said that the gallant young Courtenay, whom the Queen had 
 made Earl of Devonshire, was the man and the Queen thought so 
 too, for a while ; but she changed her mind. At last it appeared 
 that Philip, Pkinck of Spain, was certainly the man though certainly 
 not the people's man ; for they detested the idea of such a marriage 
 from the beginning to the end, and murmured that the Spaniard 
 would establish in England, by the aid of foreign soldiers, the worst
 
 558 A Child's History of England. 
 
 abuses of the Popish religion, and even the terrible Inquisition 
 itself. 
 
 These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying young 
 Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, with 
 popular tumults all over the kingdom, against the Queen. This was 
 discovered in time by Gardiner ; but in Kent, the old bold county, 
 the people rose in their old bold way. Sih Thomas Wyat, a man of 
 great daring, was their leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone, 
 marched on to Rochester, established himself in the old castle there, 
 and prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came 
 against him with a party of the Queen's guards, and a body of five 
 hundred London men. The London men, however, were all for 
 Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under the castle 
 walls, for Wyat : the Duke retreated ; and Wyat came on to Dept- 
 ford, at the head of fifteen thousand men. 
 
 But these, iu their turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark, 
 there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed by finding the 
 London citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower ready to oppose 
 his crossing the river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon- 
 Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be in that 
 place, and so to work his way round to Ludgate, one of the old gates 
 of the City. He found the bridge broken down, but mended it, came 
 across, and bravely fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. 
 Finding the gate closed against him, he fought his way back again, 
 sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being overpowered, he 
 surrendered himself, and three or four hundred of his men were 
 taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness 
 (and perhaps of torture) was afterwards made to accuse the Princess 
 Elizabeth as his accomplice to some very small extent. But his 
 manhood soon returned to him, and he refused to save his life by 
 making any more false confessions. He was quartered and distributed 
 in the usual brutal w r ay, and from fifty to a hundred of his followers 
 were hanged. The rest were led out, with halters round their necks, 
 to be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying out, " God save 
 Queen Mary ! " 
 
 In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be 
 a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any 
 jdace of safety, and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre in hand, and 
 made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the 
 day after Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel 
 reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey. 
 
 They tried .to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed 
 religion ; but she steadily refused. On the morning when she was 
 to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and headless body of 
 her husband brought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill 
 where he had laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see 
 him before his execution, lest she should be overpowered and not
 
 JANE OREY SKEIN'; FROM THE WINDOW THE BODY OF HER HUSBAND*
 
 Mary. 559 
 
 make a good end, so, she even now showed a constancy and calmness 
 that will never be forgotten. She came up to the scaffold with a 
 firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady 
 voice. They were not numerous ; for she was too young, too innocent 
 and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her 
 husband had just been ; so, the place of her execution was within the 
 Tower itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in taking 
 what was Queen Mary's right ; but that she bad done so with no 
 bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian. She begged the 
 executioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, " Will you 
 take my head off before I lay me down ? " He answered, " No, 
 Madam," and then she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. 
 Being blinded, and unable to see the block on which she was to lay 
 her young head, she was seen to feel about for it with her hands, and 
 was heard to say, confused, "O what shall I do! Where is it?" 
 Then they guided her to the right place, and the executioner struck 
 off her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds the 
 executioner did in England, through many many years, and how his 
 axe descended on the hateful block through the necks of some of the 
 bravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so cruel 
 and so vile a blow as this. 
 
 The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied. 
 Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this was 
 pursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent to her 
 retired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring 
 her up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when she was 
 sick in bed. But, their leaders followed her lady into her bed- 
 chamber, whence she was brought out betimes next morning, and put 
 into a litter to be conveyed to London. She was so weak and ill, 
 that she was five days on the road ; still, she was so resolved to bo 
 seen by tho people that she had the curtains of the litter opened ; and 
 so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets. She wrote to 
 her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, and asking why she 
 was made a prisoner ; but she got no answer, and was ordered to the 
 Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to which she 
 objected, but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed her offered to 
 cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put it away from 
 her, proudly and scornfully, and jiassed into the Tower, and sat down 
 in a court-yard on a stone.* They besought her to come in out of the 
 wet; but she answered that it was better sitting there, than in a 
 worse place. At length she went to her apartment, where she was 
 kept a prisoner, though not so close a prisoner as at "Woodstock, 
 whither she was afterwards removed, and where she is said to havo 
 one day envied a milkmaid whom she heard singing in the sunshine 
 as she went through the green fields. Gardiner, than whom there 
 were not many worse men among the fierce and sullen priests, cared 
 little to keep secret his stern desire for her death: being used to say
 
 560 A Child's History of England. 
 
 that it was of little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the 
 branches of the tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were 
 left. He failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, 
 at length, released ; and Hatfield House was assigned to her as a 
 residence, under the care of one Sir Thomas Pope. 
 
 It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of 
 this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man, 
 being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy ; but he and 
 the Spanish lords who came over with him, assuredly did dis- 
 countenance the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It may 
 have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood and 
 honour. The Queen had been expecting her husband with great 
 impatience, and at length he came, to her great joy, though he never 
 cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner, at Winchester, 
 and there was more holiday-making among the people ; but they had 
 their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which even the Parlia- 
 ment shared. Though the members of that Parliament were far from 
 honest, and were strongly suspected to have been bought with 
 Spanish money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to set 
 aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor. 
 
 Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the darker 
 one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a great 
 pace in the revival of the unreformed religion. A new Parliament 
 was packed, in which there were no Protestants. Preparations were 
 made to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope's messenger, 
 bringing his holy declaration that all the nobility who had acquired 
 Church property, should keep it which was done to enlist their 
 selfish interest on the Pope's side. Then a great scene was enacted, 
 which was the triumph of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole arrived 
 in great splendour and dignity, and was received with great pomp. 
 The Parliament joined in a petition expressive of their sorrow at tho 
 change in the national religion, and praying him to receive the 
 country again into the Popish Church. With the Queen sitting on 
 her throne, and the King on one side of her, and the Cardinal on the 
 other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner read the petition aloud. 
 The Cardinal then made a great speech, and was so obliging as to say 
 that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that the kingdom was 
 solemnly made Roman Catholic again. 
 
 Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires. 
 The Queen having declared to the Council, in writing, that she would 
 wish none of her subjects to be burnt without some of the Council 
 being present, and that she would particularly wish there to be good 
 sermons at all burnings, the Cuuncil knew pretty well what was to 
 be done next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as 
 a preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a High 
 Court at Saint Mary Overy. on the Southwark side of London Bridge, 
 for the trial of heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant clergymen,
 
 Mary. 561 
 
 Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Rogehs, a Prebendary of St. 
 Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooper was tried first for being 
 married, though a priest, and for not believing in the mass. Ho 
 admitted both of these accusations, and said that the mass was a wicked 
 imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who said the same. Next 
 morning the two were brought up to be sentenced ; and then Rogers 
 said that his poor wife, being a German woman and a stranger in tho 
 land, he hoped might be allowed to come to speak to him beforo ho 
 died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was not his 
 wife. " Yea, but she is, my lord," said Rogers, " and she hath been 
 my wife these eighteen years." His request was still refused, and 
 they were both sent to Newgate ; all those who stood in the streets to 
 sell things, being ordered to put out their lights that the people 
 might not see them. But, the people stood at their doors with 
 candles in their hands, and prayed for them as they went by. Soon 
 afterwards, Rogers was taken out of jail to bo burnt in Smithfield ; 
 and, in the crowd as he went along, ho saw his poor wife and his ten 
 children, of whom the youngest was a little baby. And so he was 
 burnt to death. 
 
 The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, was 
 brought out to take his last journey, and was made to wear a hood 
 over his face that he might not be known by the people. But, they 
 did know him for all that, down in his own part of the country ; and, 
 when he came near Gloucester, they lined the road, making prayers 
 and lamentations. His guards took him to a lodging, where he slept 
 soundly all night. At nine o'clock next morning, ho was brought 
 forth leaning on a staff; for he had taken cold in prison, and was 
 infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chain which was to bind him to 
 it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in a pleasant open place before 
 the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sundays, he had been accustomed to 
 preach and to pray, when he was bishop of Gloucester. This tree, 
 which had no leaves then, it being February, was filled with people ; 
 and the priests of Gloucester College were looking complacently on 
 from a window, and there was a great concourse of spectators in every 
 spot from which a glimpse of the dreadful sight could be beheld. 
 When the old man kneeled down on the small platform at tho foot of 
 the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest people were observed to bo 
 so attentive to his prayers that they were ordered to stand farther 
 buck ; for it did not suit the Romish ( 'hurch to have those Protestant 
 words heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and 
 was stripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of his 
 guards had such compassion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he 
 tied some packets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped Tip 
 wood and straw and reeds, and set them all alight. _ But, unhappily, 
 the wood was green and damp, and there was a wind blowing that 
 blew what flame there was, away. Thus, through three-quarters of 
 an hour, the good old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as 
 
 2 o
 
 562 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the fire rose and sank ; and all that time they saw him, as he burned, 
 moving his lips in prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even 
 after the other was burnt away and had fallen oft*. 
 
 Cranmer, Eidley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute 
 with a commission of priests and doctors about the mass. They 
 were shamefully treated ; and it is recorded that the Oxford scholars 
 hissed and howled and groaned, and misconducted themselves in an 
 anything but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back to 
 jail, and afterwards tried in St. Mary's Church. They were all 
 found guilty. On the sixteenth of the month of October, Eidley 
 and Latimer were brought out, to make another of the dreadful 
 bonfires. 
 
 The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was 
 in the City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to tbe dreadful 
 spot, they kissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. And 
 then a learned doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there, 
 and preached a sermon from the text, " Though I give my body to be 
 burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." When you 
 think of the charity of burning men alive, you may imagine that this 
 learned doctor had a rather brazen face. Eidley would have answered 
 his sermon when it came to an end, but was not allowed. When 
 Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had dressed himself under 
 his other clothes, in a new shroud ; and, as he stood in it before all 
 the people, it wp~ noted of him, and long remembered, that, whereas 
 he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes before, he now 
 stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge that he was dying for 
 a just and great cause. Eidley's brother-in-law was there with bags 
 of gunpowder ; and when they were both chained up, he tied them 
 round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. 
 " Be of good comfort, Master Eidley," said Latimer, at that awful 
 moment, " and play the man ! We shall this day light such a candle, 
 by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." And 
 then he was seen to make motions with his hands as if he were wash- 
 ing them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with them, and 
 was heard to cry, " Father of Heaven, receive my soul ! " He died 
 quickly, but the fire, after having burned the legs of Eidley, sunk. 
 There he lingered, chained to the iron post, and crying, " ! I 
 cannot burn ! O ! for Christ's sake let the fire come unto me ! " 
 And still, when his brother-in-law had heaped on more wood, he 
 was heard through the blinding smoke, still dismally crying, " O ! I 
 cannot burn, I cannot burn ! " At last, the gunpowder caught fire, 
 and ended his miseries. 
 
 Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendous 
 account before God, for the cruelties he had assisted in committing. 
 
 Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought out 
 again in February, for more examining and trying, by Bonner, 
 Bishop of London : another man of blood, who had succeeded to
 
 Mary. 563 
 
 Gardiner's work, even in Lis lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. 
 Cranmer was now degraded as a priest, and left for death ; but, if 
 the Queen hated any one ou earth, she hated him, and it was resolved 
 that he should be ruined and disgraced to the utmost. Thero is no 
 doubt that the Queen and her husband personally urged on these 
 deeds, because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active 
 in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be 
 a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people, 
 and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and 
 friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various 
 attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his 
 prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six 
 recantations. But when, after all, he was taken out to be burnt, ho 
 was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end. 
 
 After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day 
 (who had been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in prison), 
 required him to make a public confession of his faith before tho 
 people. This, Cole did, expecting that lie would declare himself a 
 Roman Catholic. " I will make a profession of my faith," said 
 Cranmer, "and with a good will too." 
 
 Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of his 
 robe a written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he kneeled and 
 said the Lord's Prayer, all the people joining ; and then he arose 
 again and told them that he believed in the Bible, and that in what 
 lie had lately written, he had written what was not the truth, and 
 that, because his right hand had signed those papers, ho would burn 
 his right hand first when he came to the fire. As for the I-Nrne, ho 
 did refuse him and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon 
 the pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that heretic's 
 mouth and take him away. 
 
 So they took him away, chained him to the stake, where lie hastily 
 took off his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And he stood 
 before the people with a bald head and a white and flowing beard. Ho 
 was so firm now, when the worst was come, that he again declared 
 against his recantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, 
 that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution, 
 called out to the men to make haste ! When the fire was lighted, 
 Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and 
 crying out, "This hand hath offended!" held it among the flames, 
 until it blazed and burned away. His heart was found entire among 
 his ashes, and he left at last a memorable name in English history. 
 Cardinal Pole eelehrated the day by saying his first mass, and next 
 day he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's place. 
 
 The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in his own 
 dominions, and generally made a coarse; jest of her to his more 
 familiar courtiers, was at war with France, and came over to seek tho 
 assistance of England. England was very unwilling to engage in a
 
 564 A Child's History of England, 
 
 French war for his sake ; but it happened that the King of France, 
 at this very time, aided a descent upon the English coast. Hence, 
 war was declared, greatly to Philip's satisfaction ; and the Queen 
 raised a sum of money with which to carry it on, by every un- 
 justifiable means in her power. It met with no profitable return, for 
 the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the English sustained 
 a complete defeat. The losses they met with in France greatly 
 mortified the national pride, and the Queen never recovered the blow. 
 There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and I am 
 glad to write that the Queen took it, and the hour of her death came. 
 " When I am dead and my body is opened," she said to those around 
 her, " ye shall find Calais written on my heart." I should have 
 thought, if anything were written on it, they would have found the 
 words Jane Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Kidley, Latimer, Cranmer, 
 
 AND THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE BURNT ALIVE WITHIN FOUR YEARS OF MY 
 WICKED REIGN, INCLUDING SIXTY WOMEN AND FORTY LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 
 But it is enough that their deaths were written in Heaven. 
 
 The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred 
 and fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years and a half, and in 
 the forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole died of the same 
 fever next day. 
 
 As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous, and as 
 Bloody Queen Mary, she will ever be justly remembered with horror 
 and detestation in Great Britain. Her memory has been held in 
 such abhorrence that some writers have arisen in later years to take 
 her part, and to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable 
 and cheerful sovereign ! " By their fruits ye shall know them," said 
 Our Saviour. The stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, 
 and you will judge this Queen by nothing else. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 
 
 There was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the 
 Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the 
 new Queen of England. Weary of the barbarities of Mary's reign, 
 the people looked with hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. 
 The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream ; and Heaven, so 
 long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men and women 
 to death, appeared to brighten once more. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode 
 through the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster 
 Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly marked, but
 
 Elizabeth. 565 
 
 on the whole, commanding and dignified ; her hair was red, and her 
 nose something too long and sharp for a woman's. She was not the 
 beautiful creature her courtiers made out ; but she was well enough, 
 and no doubt looked all the better for coming after the dark and 
 gloomy Mary. She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and 
 rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning 
 and deceitful, and inherited much of her father's violent temper. I 
 mention this now, because she has been so over-praised by one party, 
 and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly possible to under- 
 stand the greater part of her reign without first understanding what 
 kind of woman she really was. 
 
 She began her reign with the great advantage of having a very 
 wise and careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, whom she afterwards 
 made Lord Burleigh. Altogether, the people had greater reason 
 for rejoicing than they usually had, when there were processions in 
 the streets ; and they were happy with some reason. All kinds of 
 shows and images were set up ; Gog and Magog were hoisted to 
 the top of Temple Bar ; and (which was more to the purpose) tho 
 Corporation dutifully presented the young Queen with the sum of a 
 thousand marks in gold so heavy a present, that she was obliged to 
 take it into her carriage with both hands. The coronation was a 
 great success ; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers presented 
 a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was the custom to 
 release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have the good- 
 ness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
 and also the Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut 
 up in a strange language so that the people could not get at them. 
 
 To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to inquire 
 of themselves whether they desired to be released or not ; and, as 
 a means of finding out, a great public discussion a sort of religious 
 tournament was appointed to take place between certain champions 
 of the two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that 
 it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, that for people to 
 benefit by what they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should 
 understand something about it. Accordingly, a ( 'hurch Service in 
 plain English was settled, and other laws and regulations were made, 
 completely establishing the great work of the Reformation. Tho 
 Romish bishops and champions were not harshly dealt with, all 
 tilings considered ; and the Queen's Ministers were botli prudent and 
 merciful. 
 
 The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate canst! of 
 the greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it, was 
 Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Wo will try to understand, in as 
 few words as possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she 
 came to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth. 
 
 She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary of 
 Guise. She had been married, when a mere child, to the Dauphin,
 
 566 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the son and heir of the King of France. The Pope, who pretended 
 that no one could rightfully wear the crown of England without his 
 gracious permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had not 
 asked for the said gracious permission. And as Mary Queen of 
 Scots would have inherited the English crown in right of her birth, 
 supposing the English Parliament not to have altered the succession, 
 the Pope himself, and most of the discontented who were followers of 
 his, maintained that Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and 
 Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely connected 
 with France, and France being jealous of England, there was far 
 greater danger in this than there would have been if she had had no 
 alliance with that great power. And when her young husband, on 
 the death of his father, became Francis the Second, King of France, 
 the matter grew very serious. For, the young couple styled them- 
 selves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was disposed to 
 help them by doing all the mischief he could. 
 
 Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern and 
 powerful preacher, named John Knox, and other such men, had been 
 making fierce progress in Scotland. It was still a half savage 
 country, where there was a great deal of murdering and rioting con- 
 tinually going on ; and the Reformers, instead of reforming those 
 evils as they should have done, went to work in the ferocious old 
 Scottish spirit, laying churches and chapels waste, pulling down 
 pictures and altars, and knocking about the Grey Friars, and the 
 Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the friars of all sorts of 
 colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh spirit of the 
 Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather a sullen and 
 frowning people in religious matters) put up the blood of the 
 Romish French court, and caused France to send troops over to 
 Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all sorts of colours 
 on their legs again ; of conquering that country first, and England 
 afterwards ; and so crushing the Reformation all to pieces. The 
 Scottish Reformers, who had formed a great league which they 
 called The Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to Eliza- 
 beth that, if the reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it 
 would be likely to get the worst of it in England too ; and thus, 
 Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the rights of Kings and 
 Queens to do anything they liked, sent an army to Scotland to 
 support the Reformers, who were in arms against their sovereign. 
 All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh, under 
 which the French consented to depart from the kingdom. By a 
 separate treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged to renounce 
 their assumed title of King and Queen of England. But this treaty 
 they never fulfilled. 
 
 It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that the 
 young French King died, leaving Mary a young widow. She was 
 then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over
 
 Elizabeth. 567 
 
 them ; and as she was not now happy where she was, she, after a 
 little time, complied. 
 
 Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots 
 embarked at Calais for her own rough quarrelling country. As she 
 came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she 
 said, " O ! good God ! what an omen this is for such a voyage ! " 
 She was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it 
 and weeping, until it was quite dark. "When she went to bed, she 
 directed to be called at daybreak, if the French coast were still 
 visible, that she might behold it for the last time. As it proved to 
 be a clear morning, this was done, and she again wept for the country 
 she was leaving, and said many times, " Farewell, France ! Fare- 
 well, France ! I shall never see thee again ! " All this was long 
 remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair young 
 princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually came, together 
 with her other distresses, to surround her with greater sympathy 
 than she deserved. 
 
 When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the palace 
 of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth strangers 
 and wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences 
 in the court of France. The very people who were disposed to love 
 her, made her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage, with 
 a serenade of discordant music a fearful concert of bagpipes, I 
 suppose and brought her and her train home to her palace on 
 miserable little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved. 
 Among the people who were not disposed to love her, she found the 
 powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon her 
 amusements, however innocent, and denounced music and dancing as 
 works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her, violently 
 and angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All these 
 reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion, and 
 caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently and dangerously both 
 for herself and for England too, to give a solemn pled go to tho heads 
 of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to the English 
 crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading her un- 
 happy history, you must always remember this ; and also that during 
 her whole life she was constantly put forward against the Queen, in 
 some form or other, by the Romish party. 
 
 That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is 
 pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and had an 
 extraordinary dislike to peoplo being married. She treated Lady 
 Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful 
 severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that 
 she died and her husband was ruined ; so, when a second marriage 
 for Mary began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her 
 more. Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they 
 started up from Spain. Austria, Sweden, and Kngland. Her English
 
 568 A Child's History of England. 
 
 lover at this time, and one whom she much favoured too, was Lord 
 Bobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester himself secretly married to Amy 
 Bobsart, the daughter of an English gentleman, whom he was 
 strongly suspected of causing to be murdered, down at his country 
 seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he might be free to marry the 
 Queen. Upon this story, the great writer, Sir Walter Scott, has 
 founded one of his best romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to 
 lead her handsome favourite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, she 
 knew how to stop him for her own pride ; and his love, and all the 
 other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen always declared in 
 good set speeches, that she would never be married at all, but woidd 
 live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleasant and meritorious 
 declaration I suppose : but it has been puffed and trumpeted so much, 
 that I am rather tired of it myself. 
 
 Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English court had 
 reasons for being jealous of them all, and even proposed as a matter 
 of policy that she should marry that very Earl of Leicester who had 
 aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son 
 of the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Family 
 of Scotland, went over with Elizabeth's consent to try his fortune at 
 Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton ; and could dance and play the 
 guitar ; but I know of nothing else he could do, unless it were to get 
 very drunk, and eat gluttonously, and make a contemptible spectacle 
 of himself in many mean and vain ways. However, he gained Mary's 
 heart, not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally himself with 
 one of her secretaries, David Bizzio, who had great influence with 
 her. He soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say much 
 for her, but what followed will presently say less. 
 
 Mary's brother, the Earl of Murray, and head of the Protestant 
 party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly on religious 
 grounds, and partly perhaps from personal dislike of the very con- 
 temptible bridegroom. When it had taken place, through Mary's 
 gaining over to it the more powerful of the lords about her, she 
 banished Murray for his pains ; and, when he and some other nobles 
 rose in arms to support the reformed religion, she herself, within a 
 month of her wedding day, rode against them in armour with loaded 
 pistols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, they presented them- 
 selves before Elizabeth who called them traitors in public, and 
 assisted them in private, according to her crafty nature. 
 
 Mary had been married but a little while, when she began to hate 
 her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Bizzio, with 
 whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now believed 
 to be her lover. He hated Bizzio to that extent, that he made a com- 
 pact with Lord Buthven and three other lords to get rid of him by 
 murder. This wicked agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon 
 the first of March, fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of 
 Saturday the ninth, the conspirators were brought by Darnley \\\> a
 
 Elizabeth. 569 
 
 private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of rooms where they 
 knew that Mary was sitting at supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, 
 and this doomed man. When they went into the room, Daruley took 
 the Queen round the waist, and Lord Rutkven, who had risen from a 
 bed of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning 
 on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for shelter and protection. 
 " Let him come out of the room," said Ruthven. " He shall not leave 
 the room," replied the Queen ; " I read his danger in your face, and 
 it is my will that he remain here." Then they set upon him, struggled 
 with him, overturned the table, dragged him out, and killed him with 
 fifty-six stabs. When the Queen heard that he was dead, she said, 
 " No more tears. I will think now of revenge ! " 
 
 Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and prevailed 
 on the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with her to 
 Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously and falsely 
 denying that he had any knowledge of the late bloody business ; and 
 there they were joined by the Earl Bothwell and some other nobles. 
 With their help, they raised eight thousand men, returned to Edin- 
 burgh, and drove the assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards 
 gave birth to a son still thinking of revenge. 
 
 That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband after his 
 late cowardice and treachery than she had had before, was natural 
 enough. There is little doubt that she now began to love Bothwell 
 instead, and to plan with him means of getting rid of Darnley. 
 Bothwell had such power over her that he induced her even to pardon 
 the assassins of Rizzio. The arrangements for the christening of the 
 young Prince were entrusted to him, and ho was one of the most 
 important peoplo at the ceremony, where the child was named 
 James : Elizabeth being his godmother, though not present on tho 
 occasion. A week afterwards, Darnley, who had left Mary and gone 
 to his father's house at (ilasgow, being taken ill with the small-pox, 
 she sent her own physician to attend him. But there is reason to 
 apprehend that this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she 
 knew what was doing, when Bothwell within another month proposed 
 to one of the late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley, 
 "for that it was the Queen's mind that lie should be taken away." It 
 is certain that on that very day she wrote to her ambassador in 
 France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately to (ilasgow, 
 feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very much. 
 If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart's 
 content; for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and 
 to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city called 
 the Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One Sunday 
 night, she remained with him until ten o'clock, and then left him, to 
 go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in celebration 
 of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At two o'clock in 
 the morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk 
 of Field was blown to atoms.
 
 570 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at some 
 distance. How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by gun- 
 powder, and how this crime came to be so clumsily and strangely 
 committed, it is impossible to discover. The deceitful character of 
 Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost 
 every part of their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear 
 that Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband's murder, and 
 that this was the revenge she had threatened. The Scotch people 
 universally believed it. Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh 
 in the dead of the night, for justice on the murderess. Placards 
 were posted by unknown hands in the public places denouncing 
 Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his accomplice ; and, 
 when ho afterwards married her (though himself already married), 
 previously making a show of taking her prisoner by force, the 
 indignation of the people knew no bounds. The women particularly 
 are described as having been quite frantic against the Queen, and to 
 have hooted and cried after her in the streets with terrific vehemence. 
 
 Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had 
 lived together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the 
 successes of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them for 
 the protection of the young Prince : whom Bothwell had vainly 
 endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have 
 murdered, if the Eakl of Mab, in whose hands the boy was, had not- 
 been firmly and honourably faithful to his trust. Before this angry 
 power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine 
 miserable years afterwards. Mary being found by the associated 
 lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven 
 Castle ; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake, could only be 
 approached by boat. Here, one Lord Lindsay, who was so much of 
 a brute that the nobles would have done better if they had chosen a 
 mere gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her abdication, 
 and appoint Murray, Kegent of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her 
 in a sorrowing and humbled state. 
 
 She had better have remained in the castle of Locheven, dull 
 prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against it, and the 
 moving shadows of the water on the room-w r alls ; but she could not 
 rest there, and more than once tried to escape. The first time she 
 had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washerwoman, 
 but, putting xip her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from lifting 
 her veil, the men suspected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed 
 her back again. A short time afterwards, her fascinating manners 
 enlisted in her cause a boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, 
 who, while the family were at supper, stole the keys of the great gate, 
 went softly out with the Queen, locked the gate on the outside, and 
 rowed her away across the lake, sinking the keys as they went along. 
 On the opposite shore she was met by another Douglas, and some 
 few lords : and, so accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton,
 
 Elizabeth. 57 1 
 
 where they raised three thousand men. Here, she issued a proclama- 
 tion declaring that the abdication she had signed in her prison was 
 illegal, and requiring tho Regent to yield to his lawful Queen. 
 Being a steady soldier, and in no way discomposed although he was 
 without an army, Murray pretended to treat with her, until he had 
 collected a force about half equal to her own, and then he gave her 
 battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She 
 had another weary ride on horseback of sixty long Scotch miles, and 
 took shelter at Duudrennan Abbey, whence she fled for safety to 
 Elizabeth's dominions. 
 
 Mary Queen of Scots came to England to her own ruin, the 
 trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and death of many in tho 
 year one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How she left it and 
 the world, nineteen years afterwards, we have now to see. 
 
 Second Part. 
 
 When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without money and 
 oven without any other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to 
 Elizabeth, representing herself as an innocent and injured piece of 
 Royalty, and entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects 
 to take her back again and obey her. But, as her character was 
 already known in England to be a very different one from what she 
 made it out to be, she was told in answer that she must first clear 
 herself. Made uneasy by this condition, Mary, rather than stay in 
 England, would have gone to Spain, or to France, or would even 
 have gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing either would have 
 been likely to trouble England afresh, it was decided that she should 
 be detained here. She first came to Carlisle, and, after that, was 
 moved about from castle to castle, as was considered necessary ; hut 
 England she never left again. 
 
 After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clearing her- 
 self, Mary, advised by Loan Hermes, her best friend in England, 
 agreed to answer the charges against her, if the Scottish noblemen 
 who made them would attend to maintain them before such English 
 noblemen as Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, 
 such an assembly, under the name of a conference, met, first at York, 
 and afterwards at Hampton Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, 
 Darnley's father, openly charged Mary with the murder of his son ; 
 and whatever Mary's friends may now say or write in her behalf, 
 there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray produced against 
 her a casket containing certain guilty letters and verses which he 
 stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she withdrew from 
 the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed that she was then 
 considered guilty by those- who had tho best opportunities of judging 
 of the truth, and that the feeling which afterwards arose in her behalf 
 was a verv ttenerous but not a verv reasonable one.
 
 572 A Child's History of England. 
 
 However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honourable but rather weak 
 nobleman, partly because Mary was captivating, partly because he was 
 ambitious, partly because he was over-persuaded by artful plotters 
 against Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would like to 
 marry the Queen of Scots though he was a little frightened, too, by 
 the letters in the casket. This idea being secretly encouraged by 
 some of the noblemen of Elizabeth's court, and even by the favourite 
 Earl of Leicester (because it was objected to by other favourites who 
 were his rivals), Mary expressed her approval of it, and the King of 
 France and the King of Spain are supposed to have done the same. 
 It was not so quietly planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth's 
 ears, who warned the Duke " to be careful what sort of pillow he was 
 going to lay his head upon." He made a humble reply at the time ; 
 but turned sulky soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, 
 was sent to the Tower. 
 
 Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to England she began to 
 be the centre of plots and miseries. 
 
 A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these, and it 
 was only checked by many executions and much bloodshed. It was 
 followed by a great conspiracy of the Pope and some of the Catholic 
 sovereigns of Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, 
 and restore the unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to 
 doubt that Mary knew and approved of this ; and the Pope himself 
 was so hot in the matter that he issued a bull, in which he openly 
 called Elizabeth the " pretended Queen " of England, excommunicated 
 her, and excommunicated all her subjects who should continue to 
 obey her. A copy of this miserable paper got into London, and was 
 found one morning publicly posted on the Bishop of London's gate. 
 A great hue and cry being raised, another copy was found in the 
 chamber of a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being put upon 
 the rack, that he had received it from one John Felton, a rich 
 gentleman who lived across the Thames, near Southwark. This John 
 Felton, being put upon the rack too, confessed that he had posted the 
 placard on the Bishop's gate. For this offence he was, within four 
 days, taken to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered. 
 As to the Pope's bull, the people by the reformation having thrown 
 off the Pope, did not care much, you may suppose, for the Pope's 
 throwing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and not half 
 so powerful as a street ballad. 
 
 On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the poor 
 Duke of Norfolk was released. It would have been well for him if 
 he had kept away from the Tower evermore, and from the snares 
 that had taken him there. But, even while he was in that dismal 
 place he corresponded with Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he 
 began to plot again. Being discovered in correspondence with the 
 Pope, with a view to a rising in England which should force Elizabeth 
 to consent to his marriage with Mary and to repeal the laws against
 
 Elizabeth. 573 
 
 the Catholics, he was re-committed to the Tower and brought to trial. 
 He was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of the Lords who 
 tried him, and was sentenced to the block. 
 
 It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time, and 
 between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was a humano 
 woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the blood 
 of people of great name who were popular in the country. Twico 
 she commanded and countermanded the execution of this Duke, and 
 it did not take place until five months after his trial. The scaffold 
 was erected on Tower Hill, and there he died like a brave man. Ho 
 refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying that lie was not at all afraid 
 of death ; and he admitted the justice of his sentence, and was much 
 regretted by the people. 
 
 Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time from dis- 
 proving her guilt, she was very careful never to do anything that 
 would admit it. All such proposals as were made to her by Eliza- 
 beth for her release, required that admission in some form or other, 
 and therefore came to nothing. Moreover, both women being artful 
 and treacherous, and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely 
 that they could ever make an agreement. So, the Parliament, 
 aggravated by what the Pope had done, made new and strong laws 
 against the spreading of the Catholic religion in England, and 
 declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen and her suc- 
 cessors were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would have 
 done more than this, but for Elizabeth's moderation. 
 
 Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great sects of 
 religious people or people who called themselves so in England ; 
 that is to say, thoso who belonged to the Reformed Church, those 
 who belonged to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called 
 the Puritans, because they said that they wanted to have everything 
 very pure and plain in all the Church service. Thcso last were for 
 the most part an uncomfortable people, who thought it highly 
 meritorious to dress in a hideous manner, talk through their noses, 
 and oppose all harmless enjoyments. But they were powerful too, 
 and very much in earnest, and they were one and all the determined 
 enemies of the Queen of Scots. The Protestant feeling in England 
 was further strengthened by the tremendous cruelties to which 
 Protestants were exposed in France and in the Netherlands. Scores 
 of thousands of them were put to death in those countries with every 
 cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the autumn of the year 
 one thousand five hundred a7id seventy-two. one of the greatest 
 barbarities ever committed in the world took place at Paris. 
 
 It is called in history, The Massache of Saint Bartholomew, 
 becauso it took place on Saint Bartholomew's Eve. The day fell on 
 Saturday the twenty-third of August. On that day all the great 
 leaders of the Protestants (who wen; thero called HrcrENOTs) wero 
 assembled together, for the purpose, as was represented to them, of
 
 574 d Child's History of England. 
 
 doing honour to the marriage of their chief, the young King of 
 Navarre, with tho sister of Charles the Ninth : a miserable young 
 King who then occupied the French throne. This dull creature was 
 made to believe by his mother and other fierce Catholics about him 
 that the Huguenots meant to take his life ; and he was persuaded to 
 give secret orders that, on the tolling of a great bell, they should bo 
 fallen upon by an overpowering force of armed men, and slaughtered 
 wherever they could be found. When the appointed hour was close 
 at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken 
 into a balcony by his mother to see tho atrocious work begun. The 
 moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. During all that 
 night and the two next days, they broke into the houses, fired tho 
 houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men, women, and children, 
 and flung their bodies into the streets. They were shot at in the 
 streets as they passed along, and their blood ran down the gutters. 
 Upwards of ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone ; in 
 all France four or five times that number. To return thanks to 
 Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train actually 
 went in public procession at Eome, and as if this were not shame 
 enough for them, they had a medal struck to commemorate the event. 
 But, however comfortable the wholesale murders wero to these high 
 authorities, they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-King. I 
 am happy to state that he never knew a moment's peace afterwards ; 
 that he was continually crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered 
 with blood and wounds falling dead before him ; and that he died 
 within a year, shrieking and yelling and raving to that degree, that 
 if all the Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they 
 would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest consolation. 
 
 When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in England, it made 
 a powerful impression indeed upon the people. If they began to run 
 a little wild against tho Catholics at about this time, this fearful 
 reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody Queen Mary, 
 must be remembered in their excuse. The Court was not quite so 
 honest as the people but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received 
 the French ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in deep 
 mourning, and keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless, a proposal 
 of marriage which he had made to Elizabeth only two days before tho 
 eve of Saint Bartholomew, on behalf of the Duke of Alencon, the 
 French King's brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on ; while on 
 the other hand, in her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied 
 the Huguenots with money and weapons. 
 
 I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine speeches, of 
 which I have confessed myself to bo rather tired, about living and 
 dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was " going " to be married pretty 
 often. Besides always having some English favourite or other whom 
 she by turns encouraged and swore at and knocked about for the 
 maiden Queen was very free with her fists she held this French
 
 Elizabeth. 575 
 
 Duke off and on through several years. When he at last eaiue over 
 to England, tho marriage articles Mere actually drawn up, aud it was 
 settled that the wedding should take place in six weeks. Tho Queen 
 was then so bent npon it, that she prosecuted a poor Puritan named 
 Stubbs, and a poor bookseller named Page, for writing and publish- 
 ing a pamphlet against it. Their right hands were chopped off for 
 this crime ; and poor Stubbs more loyal than I should have been 
 myself under the circumstances immediately pulled off his hat with 
 his left hand, and cried, " God save the Queen ! " Stubbs was cruelly 
 treated ; for the marriage never took placo after all, though the Queen 
 pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from her own finger. He 
 went away, no better than he came, when the courtship had lasted 
 somo ten years altogether ; and he died a couple of years afterwards, 
 mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to havo been really fond of him. 
 It is not much to her credit, for ho was a bad enongh member of a 
 bad family. 
 
 To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of priests, who 
 were very busy in England, and who were much dreaded. These 
 were tho Jesuits (who Mere everywhere in all sorts of disguises), 
 aud tho Seminary Priests. Tho people had a great horror of tho 
 first, becanse they were known to havo taught that murder was lawful 
 if it were done with an object of which they approved ; aud they had 
 a great horror of the second, because they came to teach the old 
 religion, and to be the successors of " Queen Mary's priests," as thoso 
 yet lingering in England were called, when they should die out. Tho 
 severest laws were made against them, and were most unmercifully 
 executed. Those who sheltered them in their houses often suffered 
 heavily for what was an act of humanity ; and the rack, that cruel 
 torture which tore men's limbs asunder, was constantly kept going. 
 What these unhappy men confessed, or what was ever confessed by 
 any one under that agony, must always be received with great doubt, 
 as it is certain that people have frequently owned to the most absurd 
 and impossible crimes to escape such dreadful suffering. Put 1 
 cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers, that there were many 
 plots, both among the Jesuits, and with France, and with Scotland, 
 and with Spain, for tho destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing 
 of Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old religion. 
 
 If the English peoplo were too ready to believe; in plots, there were, 
 as I have said, good reasons for it. When the massacre of Saint 
 Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recollection, a great Protestant 
 Dutch hero, the Prince of Orange, was shot by an assassin, who con- 
 fessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose in a college 
 of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered to make 
 Elizabeth their sovereign, but she declined the honour, and sent them 
 a small army instead, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, 
 who, although a capital Court favourite, was not much of a general. 
 He did so little in Holland, that his campaign there would probably
 
 576 A Child's History of England. 
 
 have been forgotten, but for its occasioning tbe death of one of the 
 best writers, the best knights, and the best gentlemen, of that or any 
 age. This was Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket 
 ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his 
 own killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, 
 and was very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, 
 for which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he was so 
 good and gentle even then, that seeing a poor badly wounded common 
 soldier lying on the ground, looking at the water with longing eyes, 
 he said, " Thy necessity is greater than mine," and gave it up to him. 
 This touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well known as 
 any incident in history is as famous far and wide as the blood- 
 stained Tower of London, with its axe, and block, and murders out of 
 number. So delightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad are 
 mankind to remember it. 
 
 At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day. I 
 suppose the people never did live under such continual terrors as 
 those by which they were possessed now, of Catholic risings, and 
 burnings, and poisonings, and I don't know what. Still, we must 
 always remember that they lived near and close to awful realities of 
 that kind, and that with their experience it was not difficult to believe 
 in any enormity. The government had the same fear, and did not 
 take the best means of discovering the truth for, besides torturing 
 the suspected, it employed paid spies, who will always lie for their 
 own profit. It even made some of the conspiracies it brought to light, 
 by sending false letters to disaffected people, inviting them to join in 
 pretended plots, which they too readily did. 
 
 But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it ended the 
 career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary priest named Ballard, 
 and a Spanisli soldier named Savage, set on and encouraged by certain 
 French priests, imparted a design to one Antony Babington a 
 gentleman of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a 
 secret agent of Mary's for murdering the Queen. Babington then 
 confided the scheme to some other Catholic gentlemen who were his 
 friends, and they joined in it heartily. They were vain weak-headed 
 young men, ridiculously confident, and preposterously proud of their 
 plan ; for they got a gimcrack painting made, of the six choice spirits 
 who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an attitude for the 
 centre figure. Two of their number, however, one of whom was a 
 priest, kept Elizabeth's wisest minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, 
 acquainted with the whole project from the first. The conspirators 
 were completely deceived to the final point, when Babington gave 
 Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from his finger, and some 
 money from his purse, wherewith to buy himself new clothes in which 
 to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then full evidence against 
 the whole band, and two letters of Mary's besides, resolved to seize 
 them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole out of the city, one
 
 Elisabeth. 577 
 
 by one, and hid themselves in St. John's Wood, and other places 
 which really were hiding places then ; but they were all taken, and 
 all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman was sent from 
 Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in tho 
 discovery. Her friends have complained that she was kept in very 
 hard and severo custody. It does not appear very likely, for she was 
 going out a-hunting that very morning. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by ono in Franco who 
 had good information of what was secretly doing, that in holding 
 Mary alive, she held " the wolf who would devour her." The Bishop 
 of London had, more lately, given the Queen's favourite minister tho 
 advico in writing, " forthwith to cut off the Scottisli Queen's head." 
 The question now was, what to do with her? The Earl of Leicester 
 wrote a little note home from Holland, recommending that she should 
 be quietly poisoned ; that noble favourite having accustomed his 
 mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature His black advice, 
 however, was disregarded, and she was brought to trial at Fothcringay 
 Castle in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal of forty, composed of 
 both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber at Westminster, tho 
 trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself with great ability, but 
 could only deny the confessions that had been made by Babington and 
 others ; could only call her own letters, produced against her by her 
 own secretaries, forgeries : and, in short, could only deny everything. 
 She was found guilty, and declared to have incurred the penalty of 
 death. The Parliament met, approved the sentence, and prayed tho 
 Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied that she requested 
 them to consider whether no means could be found of saving Mary's 
 life without endangering her own. The Parliament rejoined, No ; 
 and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted bonfires, in 
 token of their joy that all theso plots and troubles were to be ended 
 by the death of the Queen of Scots. 
 
 She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a letter to tho 
 Queen of England, making three entreaties ; first, that she might bo 
 buried in France ; secondly, that she might not be executed in secret, 
 but beforo her servants and some others; thirdly, that after her death, 
 her servants should not be molested, but should be suffered to go 
 home with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter, and 
 Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then came a 
 special ambassador from France, and another from Scotland, to inter- 
 cede for Mary's life ; and then the nation began to clamour, more and 
 more, for her death. 
 
 What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can never 
 be known now ; but I strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing 
 more than Mary's death, and that was to keep free of the blame of it. 
 On the first of February, one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, 
 Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the execution, tho 
 Queen sent to tho secretary Davison to bring it to her, that sho 
 
 2 p
 
 578 A Child's History of England. 
 
 might sign it : which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it 
 was sealed, she angrily asked him why such haste was necessary? 
 Next day but one, she joked about it, and swore a little. Again, next 
 day but one, she seemed to complain that it was not yet done, but 
 still she would not be plain with those about her. So, on the seventh, 
 the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northampton- 
 shire, came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of 
 Scots to prepare for death. 
 
 When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal 
 supper, drank to her servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept 
 for some hours, and then arose and passed the remainder of the night 
 saying prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in her best 
 clothes ; and, at eight o'clock when the sheriff came for her to her 
 chapel, took leave of her servants who were there assembled praying 
 with her, and went down-stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a 
 crucifix in the other. Two of her women and four of her men were 
 allowed to be present in the hall ; where a low scaffold, only two feet 
 from the ground, was erected and covered with black ; and where the 
 executioner from the Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in black 
 velvet. The hall was full of people. While the sentence was being 
 read she sat upon a stool ; and, when it was finished, she again denied 
 her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl of Kent and the Dean 
 of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary 
 speeches to her ; to which she replied that she died in the Catholic 
 religion, and they need not trouble themselves about that matter. 
 When her head and neck were uncovered by the executioners, she said 
 that she had not been used to be undressed by such hands, or before 
 so much company. Finally, one of her women fastened a cloth over 
 her face, and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated more 
 than once in Latin, " Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my spirit ! " 
 Some say her head was struck off in two blows, some say in three. 
 However that be, when it was held up, streaming with blood, the real 
 hair beneath the false hair she had long worn was seen to be as grey 
 as that of a woman of seventy, though she was at that time only in 
 her forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone. 
 
 But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cowered under 
 her dress, frightened, when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay 
 down beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows were 
 over. 
 
 Third Part. 
 
 On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had 
 been executed on the Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief 
 and rage, drove her favourites from her with violent indignation, and 
 sent Davison to the Tower ; from which place he was only released 
 in the end by paying an immense fine which completely ruined him.
 
 Elizabeth. 579 
 
 Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but 
 most basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no 
 other fault than obeying her commands. 
 
 James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, mado a show likewiso of 
 being very angry on the occasion ; but he was a pensioner of England 
 to the amount of five thousand pounds a year, and ho had known very 
 little of his mother, and ho possibly regarded her as the murderer of 
 his father, and ho soon took it quietly. 
 
 Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater things 
 than ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic religion and punish 
 Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing that ho and the Princo of 
 Parma were making great preparations for this purpose, in order to 
 be beforehand with them sent out Admihal Dhakk (a famous navi- 
 gator, who had sailed about the world, and had already brought groat 
 plunder from Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred 
 vessels full of stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put 
 off the invasion for a year ; but it was none the less formidable for 
 that, amounting to one hundred and thirty ships, nineteen thousand 
 soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thousand slaves, and between two 
 and three thousand great guns. England was not idlo in making 
 ready to resist this great force. All the men between sixteen years 
 old and sixty, were trained and drilled ; tho national fleet of ships (in 
 number only thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public contributions 
 and by private ships, fitted out by noblemen ; the city of London, of 
 its own accord, furnished double the number of ships and men that it 
 was required to provide ; and, if ever the national spirit was up in 
 England, it was up all through the country to resist tho Spaniards. 
 Some of tho Queen's advisers wore for seizing the principal English 
 Catholics, and putting them to death ; but the Queen who, to her 
 honour, used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her 
 subjects, which a parent would not believo of her own childron 
 rejected the advice, and only confined a few of thoso who wero tho 
 most suspected, in tho feus in Lincolnshire. Tho great body of 
 Catholics deserved this confidence ; for they behaved most loyally, 
 nobly, and bravely. 
 
 So, with all England firing up like 0110 strong angry man, and with 
 both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the soldiers under arms, 
 and with the sailors in their ships, the country waited for the coining 
 of the proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invincible Aumada. 
 The Queen herself, riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl 
 of Essex and the Earl of Leicester holding her bridle rein, made a 
 brave speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravescnd, which 
 was received with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came 
 tho Spanish Armada into tho English Channel, sailing along in tho 
 form of a half moon, of such great size that it was seven miles broad. 
 Put the English were quickly upon it, and woe then to all tho 
 Spanish ships that dropped a little out of tho half moon, for tho
 
 580 A Child's History of England. 
 
 English took them instantly ! And it soon appeared that the great 
 Armada was anything but invincible, for on a summer night, bold 
 Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into the midst of it. In 
 terrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and so 
 became dispersed ; the English pursued them at a great advantage ; 
 a storm came on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks and shoals ; 
 and the swift end of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty great 
 ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, sailed home 
 again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed all 
 round Scotland and Ireland ; some of the ships getting cast away on 
 the latter coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages, 
 plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So ended this great 
 attempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it will be a 
 long time before any other invincible fleet coming to England with 
 the same object, will fare much better than the Spanish Armada. 
 
 Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English 
 bravery, he was so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain his old 
 designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his daughter 
 on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Baleigh, 
 Sir Thomas Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, put to 
 sea from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once more, obtained a 
 complete victory over the shipping assembled there, and got possession 
 of the town. In obedience to the Queen's express instructions, they 
 behaved with great humanity ; and the principal loss of the Spaniards 
 was a vast sum of money which they had to pay for ransom. This 
 was one of many gallant achievements on the sea, effected in this 
 reign. Sir Walter Baleigh himself, after marrying a maid of honour 
 and giving offence to the Maiden Queen thereby, had already sailed 
 to South America in search of gold. 
 
 The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas 
 Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The principal 
 favourite was the Earl of Essex, a spirited and handsome man, a 
 favourite with the people too as well as with the Queen, and possessed 
 of many admirable qualities. It was much debated at Court whether 
 there should be peace with Spain or no, and he was very urgent for 
 war. He also tried hard to have his own way in the appointment of 
 a deputy to govern in Ireland. One day, while this question was in 
 dispute, he hastily took offence, and turned his back upon the Queen ; 
 as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the Queen gave him a 
 tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the devil. He went 
 home instead, and did not reappear at Court for half a year or so, 
 when he and the Queen were reconciled, though never (as some 
 suppose) thoroughly. 
 
 From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen 
 seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still perpetually 
 quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he went over to 
 Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir
 
 Elizabeth. 581 
 
 Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous 
 a rival far offi Not being by any means successful there, and knowing 
 that his enemies would take advantage of that circumstanco to injure 
 him with the Queen, he came home again, though against her orders. 
 The Queen being taken by surprise when ho appeared before her, 
 gave him her hand to kiss, and he was overjoyed though it was not 
 a very lovely hand by this time but in the courso of the same day 
 sho ordered him to confine himself to his room, and two or three days 
 afterwards had him taken into custody. With the same sort of 
 caprice and as capricious an old woman she now was, as ever wore a 
 crown or a head cither she sent him broth from her own table on 
 his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about him. 
 
 Ho was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books, 
 and he did so for a time ; not the least happy time, I daro say, of his 
 life. But it happened unfortunately for him, that he held a monopoly 
 in sweet wines : which means that nobody coidd sell them without 
 purchasing his permission. This right, which was only for a term, 
 expiring, he applied to have it renewed. The Queen refused, with 
 the rather strong observation but she did make strong observations 
 that an unruly beast must be stinted in his food. Upon this, tho 
 angry Earl, who had been already deprived of many offices, thought 
 himself in danger of complete ruin, and turned against the Queen, 
 whom he called a vain old woman who had grown as crooked in her 
 mind as she had in her figure. These uncomplimentary expressions 
 the ladies of the Court immediately snapped up and carried to tho 
 Queen, whom they did not put in a better temper, you may believe. 
 The same Court ladies, when they had beautiful dark hair of their 
 own, used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen. So they were 
 not very high-spirited ladies, however high in rank. 
 
 The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who 
 used to meet at Loan Southampton's house, was to obtain possession 
 of the Queen, and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and 
 change her favourites. On Saturday the seventh of February, ono 
 thousand six hundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned 
 the Earl to come before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it 
 was then settled among Ids friends, that as the next day would bo 
 Sunday, when many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, lie should make one bold effort to induce them 
 to rise and follow him to the Palace. 
 
 So, on the Sunday morning, ho and a small body of adherents 
 started out of his house Essex House by the Strand, with steps to 
 the river having first shut up in it, as prisoners, some members of 
 the council who came to examine him- and hurried into the City with 
 the Earl at their head, crying out " For the Queen ! For tho Queen ! 
 A plot is laid for my life!" No one heeded them, however, and 
 when they came to St. Paul's there were no citizens there. In the 
 meantime the prisoners at Essex House had been released by one of
 
 582 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the Earl's own friends ; he had been promptly proclaimed a traitor in 
 the City itself ; and the streets were barricaded with carts and guarded 
 by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house by water, with difficulty, 
 and after an attempt to defend his house against the troops and 
 cannon by which it was soon surrounded, gave himself up that night. 
 He was brought to trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty ; on the 
 twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, where he died, at thirty- 
 four years old, both courageously and penitently. His step-father 
 suffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter Ealeigh, stood near the 
 scaffold all the time but not so near it as we shall see him stand, 
 before we finish his history. 
 
 In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary 
 Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded, and 
 again commanded, the execution. It is probable that the death of 
 her young and gallant favourite in the prime of his good qualities, 
 was never off her mind afterwards, but she held out, the same vain 
 obstinate and capricious woman, for another year. Then she danced 
 before her Court on a state occasion and cut, I should think, a 
 mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in an immense ruff, stomacher and 
 wig, at seventy years old. For another year still, she held out, but, 
 without any more dancing, and as a moody sorrowful broken creature. 
 At last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six hundred and three, 
 having been ill of a very bad cold, and made worse by the death of 
 the Countess of Nottingham who was her intimate friend, she fell 
 into a stupor and was supposed to be dead. She recovered her con- 
 sciousness, however, and then nothing would induce her to go to bed ; 
 for she said that she knew that if she did, she should never get up 
 again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on the floor, without 
 any food, until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at last, partly by 
 persuasions and partly by main force. When they asked her who 
 should succeed her, she replied that her seat had been the seat of 
 Kings, and that she would have for her successor, " No rascal's son, 
 but a King's." Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, 
 and took the liberty of asking whom she meant ; to which she replied, 
 " Whom should I mean, but our cousin of Scotland ! " This was on 
 the twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day, 
 after she was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind? 
 She struggled up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the 
 form of a crown, as the only reply she could make. At three o'clock 
 next morning, she very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her 
 reign. 
 
 That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever memorable 
 by the distinguished men who flourished in it. Apart from the great 
 voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom it produced, the names of 
 Bacon, Spensek, and Shakespeake, will always be remembered with 
 prido and veneration by the civilised world, and will always impart 
 (though with no great reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre
 
 James the First. 583 
 
 to the name of Elizabeth hevsolf. It -was a great reign for discovery, 
 for commerce, and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It 
 was a great reign for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation 
 which made England free. The Queen was very popular, and in her 
 progresses, or journeys about her dominions, was everywhere received 
 with the liveliest joy. I think the truth is, that she was not half s*> 
 good as sho has been made out, and not half so bad as she has been 
 made out. She had her fine qualities, but she was coarse, capricious, 
 and treacherous, and had all the faults of an excessively vain young 
 woman long after she was an old one. On the whole, sho had a great 
 deal too much of her father in her, to please me. 
 
 Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of 
 these five-and-forty years in the general manner of living ; but cock- 
 fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, wore still tho national amuse- 
 ments ; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and 
 cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen herself, on 
 many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord 
 Chancellor. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST. 
 
 " Our cousin of Scotland " was ugly, awkward, and shufning both in 
 mind and person. His tongue was much too largo for his mouth, his 
 legs wero much too weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared 
 and rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, 
 drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearor, and the most con- 
 ceited man on earth. His figure what is commonly called rickety 
 from his birth presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in 
 thick padded clothes, as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which 
 ho lived in continual fear), of a grass-green colour from head to foot, 
 with a hunting-horn dangling at his side instead of a sword, and his 
 hat and feather sticking over ono eye, or hanging on the back of his 
 head, as he happened to toss it on. He used to loll on the necks of 
 his favourite courtiers, and slobl>er their faces, and hiss and pinch 
 their cheeks; and the greatest favourite he ever had, used to sign 
 himself in his letters to his royal master, His Majesty's "dog and 
 slave," and used to address his majesty as "his Sowship." His 
 majesty was the worst rider ever seen, and thought himself the best. 
 Ho was one of the most impertinent talkers (in tho broadest Scotch) 
 ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argu- 
 ment. He wrote some of the most wearisome treatises ever road 
 among others, a book upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout
 
 584 A Child's History of England. 
 
 believer and thought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, 
 and wrote, and said, that a king had a right to make and unmake 
 what laws he pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on 
 earth. This is the plain true character of the personage whom the 
 greatest men about the court praised and nattered to that degree, that 
 I doubt if there be anything much more shameful in the annals of 
 human nature. 
 
 He came to the English throne with great ease. The miseries of a 
 disputed succession had been felt so long, and so dreadfully, that he 
 was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth's death, and was 
 accepted by the nation, even without being asked to give any pledge 
 that he would govern well, or that he would redress crying grievances. 
 He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London ; and, by way 
 of exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket on the journey 
 without any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay hold of. Ho 
 made two hundred knights before he got to his palace in London, and 
 seven hundred before he had been in it three months. He also 
 shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords and there 
 was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you may 
 believe. 
 
 His Sowship's prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do better than 
 call his majesty what his favourite called him), was the enemy of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter's political friend, Lord 
 Cobhaji ; and his Sowship's first trouble was a plot originated by these 
 two, and entered into by some others, with the old object of seizing 
 the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he should change 
 his ministers. Thero were Catholic priests in the plot, and there 
 were Puritan noblemen too ; for, although the Catholics and Purilans 
 were strongly opposed to each other, they united at this time against 
 his Sowship, because they knew that he had a design against both, 
 after pretending to be friendly to each ; this design being to have 
 only one high and convenient form of the Protestant religion, which 
 everybody should be bound to belong to, whether they liked it or not. 
 This plot was mixed up with another, which may or may not have had 
 somo reference to placing on the throne, at some time, the Lady 
 Arabella Stuart ; whose misfortune it was, to be the daughter of the 
 younger brother of his Sowship's father, but who was quite innocent 
 of any part in the scheme. Sir Walter Ealeigh was accused on the 
 confession of Lord Cobham a miserable creature, who said one thing 
 at one time, and another thing at another time, and could be relied 
 upon in nothing. The trial of Sir Walter Ealeigh lasted from eight 
 in the morning until nearly midnight ; he defended himself with such 
 eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations, and against the 
 insults of Coke, the Attorney-General who, according to the custom 
 of the time, foully abused him that those who went there detesting 
 the prisoner, came away admiring him, and declaring that anything 
 so wonderful and so captivating was never heard. He was found
 
 James the First. 585 
 
 guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, 
 and he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less 
 fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity ; and Lord Cohham 
 and two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought 
 it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning 
 these three at the very block ; but, blundering, and bungling, as usual, 
 ho had very nearly overreached himself. For, the messenger on 
 horseback who brought the pardon, came so late, that he was pushed 
 to the outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out 
 what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much by 
 being spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a beggar, 
 utterly despised, and miserably poor, for thirteen years, and then 
 died in an old outhouse belonging to one of his former servants. 
 
 This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the 
 Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on then- 
 presenting a petition to him, and had it all his own way not so very 
 wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not hear anybody 
 else and filled the Bishops with admiration. It was comfortably 
 settled that there was to be only one form of religion, and that all 
 men were to think exactly alike. But, although this was arranged 
 two centuries and a half ago, and although the arrangement was 
 supported by much fining and imprisonment, I do not find that it is 
 quite successful, even yet. 
 
 His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of himself as a 
 king, had a very low opinion of Parliament as a power that audaciously 
 wanted to control him. When he called his first Parliament after ho 
 had been king a year, he accordingly thought he would take pretty 
 high ground witli them, and told them that he commanded them " as 
 an absolute king." The Parliament thought those strong Avords, and 
 saw the necessity of upholding their authority. His Sowship had 
 three children : Prince Henry, Prineo Charles, and tho Princess 
 Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of these, and we shall 
 too soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdom concerning Parlia- 
 ments from his father's obstinacy. 
 
 Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of the Catholic 
 religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened the Bevero laws 
 against it. And this so angered Robert Catkshv, a restless Catholic 
 gentleman of an old family, that lie formed one of the most desperate 
 and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man ; no less a 
 scheme than the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should ho 
 assembled at tho next opening of Parliament, to blow them up. ( no 
 and all, with a great mine of gunpowder. The first person to whom 
 he confided this horrible idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire 
 gentleman who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretly 
 employed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, 
 and when he had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the
 
 586 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Spanish Ambassador there whether there was any hope of Catholics 
 being relieved through the intercession of the King of Spain with his 
 Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall dark daring man, whom he had 
 known when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was 
 Guido or Guy Fawkes. Eesolved to join the plot, he proposed it 
 to this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, and 
 they two came back to England together. Here, they admitted two 
 other conspirators : Thomas Percy, related to the Earl of Northumber- 
 land, and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met together 
 in a solitary house in the open fields which were then near Clement's 
 Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London ; and when they had 
 all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told the rest what his plan 
 was. They then went up-stairs into a garret, and received the 
 Sacrament from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to have 
 known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must have 
 had his suspicions that there was something desperate afoot. 
 
 Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties 
 to perform about the Court, then kept at Whitehall, there would be 
 nothing suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, having looked 
 well about him, and having found a house to let, the back of which 
 joined the Parliament House, he hired it of a person named Ferris, 
 for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession of 
 this house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side of the 
 Thames, which they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and 
 other combustible matters. These were to be removed at night (and 
 afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to the house at Westminster ; 
 and, that there might be some trusty person to keep watch over the 
 Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator, by name Eobert 
 Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman. 
 
 All these arrangements had been made some months, and it was a 
 dark wintry December night, when the conspirators, who had been in 
 the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met in the house at 
 Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of 
 eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with great 
 ardour. But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the work very 
 severe, they took into their plot Christopher Wright, a younger 
 brother of John Wright, that they might have a new pair of hands to 
 help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh man, and they 
 dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel all the 
 time. And if any man's heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes 
 said, " Gentlemen, we have abundance of powder and shot here, and 
 there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered." The 
 same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always prowling 
 about, soon picked up the intelligence that the King had prorogued 
 the Parliament again, from the seventh of February, the day first 
 fixed upon, until the third of October. When the conspirators knew 
 this, they agreed to separate until after the Christmas holidays, and
 
 James the First. 587 
 
 to take no notice of each other in the meanwhile, and never to write 
 letters to one another on any acconnt. So, the house in Westminster 
 was shut up again, and I suppose the neighbours thought that those 
 strange looking men who lived there so gloomily, and went out so 
 seldom, wero gone away to have a merry Christmas somewhere. 
 
 It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five, when 
 Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster house. 
 He had now admitted three more ; John Grant, a Warwickshire 
 gentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful houso near 
 Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deep 
 moat ; Kobert Winter, eldest brother of Thomas ; and Catesby's 
 own servant, Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had somo 
 suspicion of what his master was about. These three had all suffered 
 more or less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, 
 they all began to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and 
 by day. 
 
 They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with such a 
 fearful secret on their minds, and so many murders beforo them. 
 They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes, they thought they 
 heard a great bell tolling, deep down in the earth under the Parliament 
 House ; sometimes, they thought they heard low voices muttering 
 about the Gunpowder Plot ; once in the morning, they really did hear 
 a great rumbling noise over their heads, as they dug and sweated in 
 their mine. Every man stopped and looked aghast at his neighbour, 
 wondering what had happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes, who 
 had been out to look, came in and told them that it was only a doaler 
 in coals who had occupied a cellar under the Parliament House, 
 removing his stock in trade to some other place. Upon this, the con- 
 spirators, who with all their digging and digging had not yet dug 
 through the tremendously thick wall, changed their plan ; hired that 
 cellar, which was directly under the House of Lords ; put six-and- 
 thirty barrels of gunpowder in it, and covered them over with fagots 
 and coals. Then they all dispersed again till September, when the 
 following new conspirators were admitted ; Sir Edward Baynham, of 
 Gloucestershire ; Sir Everard Digby, of Kutlandshire ; Ambrose 
 PiOokwood, of Suffolk ; Francis Tuesham, of Northamptonshire. Most 
 of these were rich, and were to assist the plot, some with money and 
 some with horses on which the conspirators were to ride through the 
 country and rouse the Catholics after the Parliament should be blown 
 into air. 
 
 Parliament being again prorogued from the third of October to tho 
 fifth of November, and the conspirators being uneasy lest their design 
 should have been found out, Thomas Winter said he would go up into 
 the Houso of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and see how matters 
 looked. Nothing could be better. The unconscious Commissioners 
 were walking about and talking to one another, just over the six-and- 
 thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came buck and told the rest so. and
 
 588 A Child's History of England. 
 
 they went on with their preparations. They hired a ship, and kept 
 it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes was to sail for Flanders 
 after firing with a slow match the train that was to explode the powder. 
 A number of Catholic gentlemen not in the secret, were invited, on 
 pretence of a hunting party, to meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch 
 on the fatal day, that they might be ready to act together. And now 
 all was ready. 
 
 But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been all 
 along at the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show itself. As the 
 fifth of November drew near, most of the conspirators, remembering 
 that they had friends and relations who would be in the House of 
 Lords that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn them 
 to keep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby's declaring 
 that in such a cause he would blow up his own son. Lord Mount- 
 eagle, Trcsham's brother-in-law, was certain to be in the house ; and 
 when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon the rest to devise 
 any means of sparing their friends, he wrote a mysterious letter to 
 this lord and left it at his lodging in the dusk, urging him to keep 
 away from the opening of Parliament, " since God and man hal con- 
 curred to punish the wickedness of the times." It contained the 
 words " that the Parliament should receive a terrible blow, and yet 
 should not see who hurt them." And it added, " the danger is past, 
 as soon as you havo burnt the letter." 
 
 The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a direct 
 miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant. The truth 
 is, that they were not long (as few men would be) in finding out for 
 themselves ; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone, until the 
 very day before the opening of Parliament. That the conspirators 
 had their fears, is certain ; for, Tresham himself said before them all, 
 that they were every one dead men ; and, although even he did not 
 take flight, there is reason to suppose that he had warned other persons 
 besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were all firm ; and Fawkes, 
 who was a man of iron, went down every day and night to keep watch 
 in the cellar as usual. He was there about two in the afternoon of 
 the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Mounteagle threw 
 open the door and looked in. " Who are you, friend ? " said they. 
 " Why," said Fawkes, " I am Mr. Percy's servant, and am looking 
 after his store of fuel here." " Your master has laid in a pretty good 
 store," they returned, and shut the door, and went away. Fawkes, 
 upon this, posted off to the other conspirators to tell them all was 
 quiet, and went back and shut himself up in the dark black cellar 
 again, where he heard the bell go twelve o'clock and usher in the fifth 
 of November. About two hours afterwards, he slowly opened tho 
 door, and came out to look about him, in his old prowling way. Ho 
 was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers under Snt 
 Thomas Kxevett. He had a watch upon him, some touchwood, some 
 tincier, some slow matches ; and there was a dark lantern with a
 
 James the First. 589 
 
 candle in it, lighted, behind the door. He had his boots and spurs 
 on to ride to the ship, I suppose and it was well for the soldiers 
 that they took him so suddenly. If thoy had left him but a moment's 
 time to light a match, he certainly would have tossed it in among tho 
 powder, and blown up himself and them. 
 
 They took him to the King's bed-chamber first of all, and there tho 
 King (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping a good way off), 
 asked him how he could have the heart to intend to destroy so many 
 innocent people ? " Because," said Guy Fawkes, " desperate diseases 
 need desperate remedies." To a little Scotch favourite, with a face 
 liko a terrier, who asked him (with no particular wisdom) why he 
 had collected so much gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant 
 to blow Scotchmen back to Scotland, aud it would take a deal of 
 powder to do that. Next day he was carried to the Tower, but would 
 make no confession. Even after being horribly tortured, he confessed 
 nothing that the Government did not already know ; though ho must 
 have been in a fearful state as his signature, still preserved, in 
 contrast with his natural handwriting before he was put upon tho 
 dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a very different man, 
 soon said the Jesuits had had to do with the plot, and probably, under 
 the torture, would as readily have said anything. Tresham, taken 
 and put in the Tower too, made confessions and unmade them, and 
 died of an illness that was heavy upon him. Bookwood, who had 
 stationed relays of his own horses all the way to Dunchurch, did not 
 mount to escape until the middle of the day, when the news of tho 
 plot was all over London. On the road, he came u]) with the two 
 Wrights, Catesby, and Percy ; and they all galloped together into 
 Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they found tho 
 proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that there had been 
 a plot, and that it had been discovered, the party disappeared in the 
 course of tho night, and left them alono with Sir Everard Digby. 
 Away they all rode again, through "Warwickshire and Worcestershire, 
 to a house called Holbcach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They 
 tried to raise the Catholics on their way, but were indignantly driven 
 off by them. All this time they were hotly pursued by tho sheriff 
 of Worcester, and a fast increasing concourse of riders. At last, 
 resolving to defend themselves at Holbcach, they shut themselves up 
 in the house, and put some wet powder before tho firo to dry. But 
 it blew up, and Catesby was singed and blackened, and almost killed, 
 and some of the others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they 
 must die, they resolved to dio there, and witli only their swords in 
 their hands appeared at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and 
 his assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had 
 been hit in the right arm which dropped powerless by his side, 
 " Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together ! " which thoy did, 
 being slio through the body by two bullets from oik; gun. Johu 
 Wright, and ( "hristopher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Book-
 
 590 A Child's History of England. 
 
 wood and Digby were taken : the former with a broken arm and a 
 wound in his body too. 
 
 It was the fifteenth of January, before tho trial of Guy Fawkes, 
 and such of the other conspirators as were left alive, came on. They 
 were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and quartered : some, in St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate Hill ; some, before the 
 Parliament House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet, to whom 
 the dreadful design was said to have been communicated, was taken 
 and tried ; and two of his servants, as well as a poor priest who was 
 taken with him, were tortured without mercy. He himself was not 
 tortured, but was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers and traitors, 
 and so was made unfairly to convict himself out of his own 
 mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done all he could to 
 prevent the deed, and that he could not make public what had been 
 told him in confession though I am afraid he knew of the plot in 
 other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a manful 
 defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him ; some rich 
 and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the project, 
 were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber ; the Catholics, 
 in general, who had recoiled with horror from tho idea of the infernal 
 contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe laws than before ; 
 and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 Second Part. 
 
 His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown tho House 
 of Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it 
 knew no bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed 
 for money ho was obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no 
 money without it ; and when it asked him first to abolish some of 
 the monopolies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance to 
 the people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rago 
 and got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to tho 
 Union of England with Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At 
 another time it wanted him to put down a most infamous Church 
 abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with it 
 about that. At another time it entreated him not to be quite so fond 
 of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praise too 
 awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for tho poor 
 Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their own way, 
 and not according to the archbishops and bishops ; and they quarrelled 
 about that. In short, what with hating the House of Commons, and 
 pretending not to hate it ; and what with now sending some of its 
 members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower, and now 
 telling the rest that they must not presume to make speeches about 
 the public affairs which could not possibly concern them ; and what 
 with cajoling, and bullying, and frightening, and being frightened ;
 
 J antes the First. 591 
 
 tho House of Commons was tho plague of his Sowship's existence. 
 It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights, and insisting 
 that tho Parliament should make the laws, and not the King hy his 
 own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do) ; and his Sow- 
 ship was so often distressed for money, in consequence, that he sold 
 every sort of title and public office as if they were merchandise, and 
 even invented a new dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could 
 buy for a thousand pounds. 
 
 These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and his 
 drinking, and his lying in bed for he was a great sluggard occupied 
 his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he chiefly passed in 
 hugging and slobbering his favourites. Tho first of these was Sir 
 Philip Herbert, who had no knowledge whatover, except of dogs, 
 and horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made Earl of Mont- 
 gomery. The next, and a much more famous one, was Eobert Carr, or 
 Ker (for it is not certain which was his right name), who came from 
 the Border country, and whom he soon made Viscount Bochester, 
 and afterwards, Earl of Somerset. The way in which his Sowship 
 doted on this handsome young man, is even more odious to think of, 
 than the way in which the really great men of England condescended 
 to bow down before him. The favourite's great friend was a certain 
 Sir Thomas Overbury, who wrote his love-letters for him, and assisted 
 him in the duties of his many high places, which his own ignoranco 
 prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas having 
 just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked marriage 
 with tho beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorce from 
 her husband for tho purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got Sir 
 Thomas put into tho Tower, and there poisoned him. Then the 
 favourite and this bad woman wore publicly married by the King's 
 pet bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if ho had been tho 
 best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the earth. 
 
 But, after a longer sunshino than might have been expected of 
 seven years or so, that is to say another handsome young man started 
 up and eclipsed the Earl of Somerset. This was George Yilliers, 
 tho youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman : ' who came to Court 
 with all tho Paris fashions on him, and could danco as well as tho 
 l)cst mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced himself into 
 the good graces of his Sowship, and danced the other favourite out 
 of favour. Then, it was all at onco discovered that tho Earl and 
 Countess of Somerset had not deserved all those great promotions and 
 mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried for the murder of 
 Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But, the King was so 
 afraid of his late favourite's publicly telling sonic disgraceful things 
 he knew of him which he darkly threatened to do that he was even 
 examined with two men standing, one on either side of him, each with 
 a cloak in his hand, ready to throw it over his head and stop his 
 mouth if lie should break out with what he had it in his power to tell.
 
 592 A Child's History of England. 
 
 So, a very lamo affair was purposely made of the trial, and his punish- 
 ment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in retirement, 
 while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement 
 too. They hated one another by this time, and lived to revile and 
 torment each other some years. 
 
 While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was 
 making such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year 
 to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deaths took 
 place in England. The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, 
 Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, 
 being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had no wish 
 to live ; and no Minister need have had, with his experience of the 
 meanness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. The second was 
 that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily, 
 by privately marrying William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, 
 who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and who, his 
 Sowship thought, might consequently increase and strengthen any 
 claim she might one day set up to the throne. She was separated 
 from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and thrust into a boat 
 to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress to get away 
 in a French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily missed her 
 husband, who had escaped too, and was soon taken. She went raving 
 mad in the miserable Tower, and died there after four years. Tho 
 last, and the most important of these three deaths, was that of Prince 
 Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of his age. He 
 was a promising young prince, and greatly liked ; a quiet well- 
 conducted youth, of whom two very good things are known : first, 
 that his father was jealous of him ; secondly, that he was the friend 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those years in the 
 Tower, and often said that no man but his father would keep such a 
 bird in such a cage. On the occasion of the preparations for the 
 marriage of his sister the Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince 
 (and an unhappy marriage it turned out), he came from Richmond, 
 where he had been .very ill, to greet his new brother-in-law, at tho 
 palace at Whitehall. There he played a great game at tennis, in his 
 shirt, though it was very cold weather, and was seized with an alarm- 
 ing illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this 
 young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, 
 the beginning of a History of the World : a wonderful instance how 
 little his Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however 
 long he might imprison his body. 
 
 And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but 
 who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may 
 bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an imprisonment 
 in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to resume those old 
 sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in search of gold, 
 His Sowship, divided between his wish to be on good terms with the
 
 James the First. 593 
 
 Spaniards through whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had long 
 had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his 
 avaricious eagerness to get hold of the gold, did not know what to do. 
 But, in the end, he set Sir Walter free, taking securities for his 
 return ; and Sir Walter fitted out an expedition at his own cost, and, 
 on the twenty-eighth of March, one thousand six hundred and seven- 
 teen, sailed away in command of one of its ships, which he ominously 
 called the Destiny. The expedition failed ; the common men, not 
 finding the gold they had expected, mutinied ; a quarrel hroke out 
 between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated him for old suc- 
 cesses of his against them ; and he took and burnt a little town called 
 Saint Thomas. For this he was denounced to his Sowship by the 
 Spanish Ambassador as a pirate ; and returning almost broken-hearted, 
 with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his company of friends dis- 
 persed, and his brave son (who had been one of them) killed, he was 
 taken through the treachery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near rela- 
 tion, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral and was once again immured 
 in his prison-home of so many years. 
 
 His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold, 
 Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and 
 evasions as the judges and law officers and every other authority in 
 Church and State habitually practised under such a King. After 
 a great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was declared 
 that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. 
 So, on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and 
 eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass 
 his last night on earth, and thero he took leave of his good and 
 faithful lady who was worthy to have lived in better days. At eight 
 o'clock next morning, after a cheerful breakfast, nnd a pipe, and a cup 
 of good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, 
 where the scaffold was set up, and where so many people of high 
 degree were assembled to see him die, that it was a matter of somo 
 difficulty to get him through the crowd. He behaved most nobly, 
 but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex, 
 whose head lie had seen roll off; and he solemnly said that he had 
 had no hand in bringing him to the block, and that he had shed tears 
 for him when lie died. As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff 
 said, would he come down to a fire for a little space, and warm him- 
 self? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it 
 were done at once, for he was ill of fever and ague, and in another 
 quarter of an hour his shaking fit would come upon him if he Mere 
 still alive, and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for 
 fear. With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian 
 prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of 
 the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp 
 medicine, but would cure the worst disease. When he Mas bent 
 down ready for death, he said to the executioner, finding that ho 
 
 2n
 
 594 <A Child? s History of England. 
 
 hesitated, " What dost thou fear ? Strike, man ! " So, the ale came 
 down and struck his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. 
 
 The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made 
 Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master of 
 the Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral and the Chief Com- 
 mander of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the Spanish 
 Armada, was displaced to make room for him. He had the whole 
 kingdom at his disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and honours 
 of the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all over with 
 diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and his earrings 
 to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous swaggering com- 
 pound of knave and fool, with nothing but his beauty and his dancing 
 to recommend him. This is the gentleman who called himself his 
 Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty Your Sowship. His 
 Sowship called him Steenie ; it is supposed, because that was a nick- 
 name for Stephen, and because St. Stephen was generally represented 
 in pictures as a handsome saint. 
 
 His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimming 
 between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and his 
 desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means of getting 
 a rich princess for his son's wife : a part of whose fortune he might 
 cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles or as his Sowship 
 called him, Baby Charles being now Prince of Wales, the old 
 project of a marriage with the Spanish King's daughter had been 
 revived for him ; and as she could not marry a Protestant without 
 leave from the Pope, his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote 
 to his Infallibility, asking for it. The negotiation for this Spanish 
 marriage takes up a larger space in great books, than you can 
 imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that when it had been held off by 
 the Spanish Court for a long time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off 
 in disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the 
 Spanish Princess ; that Baby Charles pretended to be desperately in 
 love with her, and jumped off walls to look at her, and made a con- 
 siderable fool of himself in a good many ways ; that she was called 
 Princess of Wales, and that the whole Spanish Court believed Baby 
 Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told them 
 he was ; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and 
 were received with as much rapture as if they had been a blessing to 
 it ; that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with Henrietta 
 Maria, the French King's sister, whom he had seen in Paris ; that 
 he thought it a wonderfully fine and princely thing to have deceived 
 the Spaniards, all through ; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, 
 as soon as he was safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards 
 were great fools to have believed him. 
 
 Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complained 
 that the people whom they had deluded were dishonest. They 
 made such misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in
 
 James the First. 595 
 
 this business of the Spanisli match, that the English nation became 
 eager for a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed 
 at the idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted 
 money for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain 
 were publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in 
 London probably with the help of the fallen favourite, the Earl of 
 Somerset being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship, slipped 
 a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in his own 
 house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. 
 The first effect of this letter was that his Sowship began to cry and 
 whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenic, and went down 
 to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end of it was 
 that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he was quite 
 satisfied. 
 
 He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power 
 to settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage ; and he 
 now, with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all Roman 
 Catholics in England should exercise their religion freely, and should 
 never be required to take any oath contrary thereto. In return for 
 this, and for other concessions much less to bo defended, Henrietta 
 Maria was to become the Prince's wife, and was to bring him a 
 fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns. 
 
 His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the 
 money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him ; and, after 
 a fortnight's illness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, one 
 thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He had reigned 
 twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing 
 more abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished on 
 this King, and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of 
 lying produced in his court. It is much to be doubted whether one 
 man of honour, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his place near 
 James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise philosopher, as tho 
 First Judge in tho Kingdom in this reign, became a public spectacle 
 of dishonesty and corruption ; and in his base flattery of his Sowship, 
 and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave, disgraced himself 
 even more. But, a creature like Ms Sowship set upon a throne is like 
 the Plague, and everybody receives infection from him.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST. 
 
 Baby Charles became King Charles the First, in the twenty-fifth 
 year of his age. Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his 
 private character, and grave and dignified in his bearing ; but, like 
 his father, he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the rights of a 
 king, and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have 
 been relied upon, his history might have had a different end. 
 
 His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, 
 to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen ; upon which 
 occasion Buckingham with his usual audacity made love to the 
 young Queen of Austria, and was very indignant indeed with Cardinal 
 Richelieu, the French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The 
 English people were very well disposed to like their new Queen, and 
 to receive her with great favour when she came among them as a 
 stranger. But, she held the Protestant religion in great dislike, and 
 brought over a crowd of unpleasant priests, who made her do some 
 very ridiculous things, and forced themselves upon the public notice 
 in many disagreeable ways. Hence, the people soon came to dislike 
 her, and. she soon came to dislike them ; and she did so much all 
 through this reign in setting the King (who was dotingly fond of her) 
 against his subjects, that it would have been better for him if the had 
 never been born. 
 
 Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First of his 
 own determination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to 
 account by anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides deliberately 
 set himself to put his Parliament down and to put himself ujl You 
 are also to understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough 
 in itself to have ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but 
 always took a crooked one. 
 
 He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of 
 Commons nor the people were quite clear as to the justice of that war, 
 now that they began to think a little more about the story of the 
 Spanish match. But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by 
 illegal means to meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure 
 at Cadiz, in the very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz 
 had been made in the hope of plunder, but as it was not successful, it 
 was necessary to get a grant of money from the Parliament ; and when 
 they met, in no very complying humour, the King told them, " to 
 make haste to let him have it, or it would be the worse for them- 
 selves." Not put in a more complying humour by this, they im- 
 peached the King's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, as the cause 
 (which he undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances and
 
 Charles the First 597 
 
 wrongs. The King, to save hirn, dissolved the Parliament without 
 getting the money he wanted ; and when the Lords implored him to 
 consider and grant a little delay, ho replied, " No, not one minute." 
 He then began to raise money for himself by the following means 
 among others. ; 
 
 He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which had 
 not been granted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by 
 no other power ; he called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to 
 pay all the cost for three months of, a fleet of armed ships ; and ho 
 required the people to unite in lending him large sums of money, tho 
 repayment of which was very doubtful. If the poor people refused, 
 they were pressed as soldiers or sailors : if the gentry refused, they 
 were sent to prison. Five gentlemen, named Sir Thomas Darnel, 
 John Corbet, Walter Earl, John Heveningham, and Everakd 
 Hampden, for refusing were taken up by a warrant of the King's 
 privy council, and were sent to prison without any cause but the 
 King's pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. Then the ques- 
 tion came to be solemnly tried, whether this was not a violation of 
 Magna Charta, and an encroachment by the King on the highest 
 rights of the English people. His lawyers contended No, because to 
 encroach upon the rights of the English people would be to do wrong, 
 and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating judges decided 
 in favour of this wicked nonsense ; and here was a fatal division 
 between the King and the people. 
 
 For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament. The 
 people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were, chose for 
 it those who were best known for their determined opposition to tho 
 King ; but still the King, quite blinded by his determination to 
 carry everything before him, addressed them when they met, in a 
 contemptuous manner, and just told them in so many words that ho 
 had only called them together because he wanted money. Tho 
 Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough to know that they 
 would lower his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid before 
 him one of the great documents of history, which is called tho 
 Petition of Right, requiring that the free men of England should no 
 longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should no longer 
 be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so ; further, that the free 
 men of England should no longer bo seizod by the King's special 
 mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their rights and liberties and 
 the laws of their country. At first tho King returned an answer to 
 this petition, in which ho tried to shirk it altogether ; but, the IIouso 
 of Commons then showing their determination to go on with the 
 impeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned an answer, 
 giving his consent to all that was required of him. lie not only 
 afterwards departed from his word and honour on these points, over 
 and over again, but, at this very time, he did tho moan and dis- 
 sembling act of publishing his first answer and not his second-*-
 
 598 A Child's History of England. 
 
 merely that the people might suppose that the Parliament had not 
 got the better of him. 
 
 That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had 
 by this time involved the country in war with France, as well as with 
 Spain. For such miserable causes and such miserable creatures are 
 wars sometimes made ! But he was destined to do little more mischief 
 in this world. One morning, as he was going out of his house to his 
 carriage, he turned to speak to a certain Colonel Fryer who was with 
 him ; and he was violently stabbed with a knife, which the murderer 
 left sticking in his heart. This happened in his hall. He had had 
 angry words up-stairs, just before, with some French gentlemen, who 
 were immediately suspected by his servants, and had a close escape 
 from being set upon and killed. In the midst of the noise, the real 
 murderer, who had gone to the kitchen and might easily have got 
 away, drew his sword and cried out, " I am the man ! " His name 
 was John Felton, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army. He 
 said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but had killed him 
 as a curse to the country. He had aimed his blow well, for Bucking- 
 ham had only had time to cry out, " Villain ! " and then he drew out 
 the knife, fell against a table, and died. 
 
 The council made a mighty business of examining John Felton 
 about this murder, though it was a plain case enough, one would 
 think. He had come seventy miles to do it, he told them, and he did 
 it for the reason he had declared ; if they put him upon the rack, as 
 that noble Marquis op Dorset whom he saw before him, had the 
 goodness to threaten, he gave that marquis warning, that he would 
 accuse Mm as his accomplice ! The King was unpleasantly anxious 
 to have him racked, nevertheless ; but as the judges now found out 
 that torture was contrary to the law of England it is a pity that they 
 did not make the discovery a little sooner John Felton was simply 
 executed for the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedly was, 
 and not one in the least to be defended : though he had freed England 
 from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base court favourites 
 to whom it has ever yielded. 
 
 A very different man now arose. This was Sir Thomas Went- 
 worth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long 
 time, and who had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who 
 had gone over to the people's side on receiving offence from Bucking- 
 ham. The King, much wanting such a man for, besides being 
 naturally favourable to the King's cause, he had great abilities made 
 him first a Baron, and then a Viscount, and gave him high employ- 
 ment, and won him most completely. 
 
 A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was not to be 
 won. On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and 
 twenty-nine, Sir John Eliot, a great man who had been active in the 
 Petition of Bight, brought forward other strong resolutions against 
 the King's chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them
 
 Charles the First. 599 
 
 to the voto. To this the Speaker answered, "ho was commanded 
 otherwise by the King," and got up to leave the chair which, accord- 
 ing to the rules of the House of Commons, would have obliged it to 
 adjourn without doing anything more when two members, named 
 Mr. Holus and Mr. Valentine, held him down. A scene of great 
 confusion arose among the members ; and whilo many swords wero 
 drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of all 
 that was going on, told the captain of his guard to go down to the 
 House and force the doors. The resolutions were by that time, how- 
 ever, voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two 
 members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly summoned 
 before the council. As they claimed i x to be their privilege not to 
 answer out of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they were 
 committed to the Tower. The King then went down and dissolved 
 the Parliament, in a speech wherein he made mention of these gentle- 
 men as " Vipers " which did not do him much good that ever I have 
 heard of. 
 
 As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they wero sorry for 
 what they had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never 
 overlooked their offence. When they demanded to be brought up 
 before the Court of King's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness 
 of having them moved about from prison to prison, so that the writs 
 issued for that purpose should not legally find them. At last they 
 came before the court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be 
 imprisoned during the King's pleasure. When Sir John Eliot's 
 health had quite given way, and he so longed for change of air and 
 scene as to petition for his release, the King sent back the answer 
 (worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition was not humble 
 enough. When ho sent another petition by his young son, in which 
 ho pathetically offered to go back to prison when his health was 
 restored, if he might be released for its recovery, the King still dis- 
 regarded it. When he died in the Tower, and his children petitioned 
 to bo allowed to take his body down to Cornwall, thero to lay it 
 among the ashes of his forefathers, the King returned for answer, 
 " Let Sir John Eliot's body bo buried in tho church of that parish 
 where ho died." All this was like a very little King indeed, I think. 
 
 And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design of 
 setting himself up and putting the people down, tho King called no 
 Parliament ; but ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes 
 were written in his praise (as a good many have boen) it would still 
 remain a fact, impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King 
 Charles tho First reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, 
 seized npon his subjects' goods and money at his pleasure, and 
 punished according to his unbridled will all who ventured to oppose 
 him. It is a fashion with some people to think that this King's 
 career was cut short ; but I must say myself that I think ho ran a 
 pretty long one.
 
 6oo A Child's History of England. 
 
 William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's right- 
 hand man in the religious part of the putting down of the people's 
 liberty. Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learning but small 
 sense for the two things sometimes go together in very different 
 quantities though a Protestant, held opinions so near those of the 
 Catholics, that the Pope wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he 
 would have accepted that favour. He looked upon vows, robes, lighted 
 candles, images, and so forth, as amazingly important in religious 
 ceremonies ; and he brought in an immensity of bowing and candle- 
 snuffing. He also regarded archbishops and bishops as a sort of 
 miraculous persons, and was inveterate in the last degree against any 
 who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven, 
 and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman 
 named Leighton, was pilloried, whipped, branded in the cheek, and 
 had one of his ears cut off and one of his nostrils slit, for calling 
 bishops trumpery and the inventions of men. He originated on a 
 Sunday morning the prosecution of William Prynne, a barrister who 
 was of similar opinions, and who was fined a thousand pounds ; who 
 was pilloried ; who had his ears cut off on two occasions one ear at 
 a time and who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved of the 
 punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physician ; who was also fined a 
 thousand pounds ; and who afterwards had his ears cut off, and was 
 imprisoned for life. These were gentle methods of persuasion, some 
 will tell you : I think, they were rather calculated to be alarming to 
 the people. 
 
 In the money part of the putting down of the people's liberties, the 
 King was equally gentle, as some will tell you : as I think, equally 
 alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage and poundage, and 
 increased them as he thought fit. He granted monopolies to com- 
 panies of merchants on their paying him for them, notwithstanding 
 the great complaints that had, for years and years, been made on the 
 subject of monopolies. He fined the people for disobeying proclama- 
 tions issued by his Sowship in direct violation of law. He revived 
 the detested Forest laws, and took private property to himself as his 
 forest right. Above all, he determined to have what was called Ship 
 Money ; that is to say, money for the support of the fleet not only 
 from the seaports, but from all the counties of England : having found 
 out that, in some ancient time or other, all the counties paid it. 
 The grievance of this ship money being somewhat too strong, John 
 Chambers, a citizen of London, refused to pay his part of it. For 
 this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and for that 
 John Chambers brought a suit against the Lord Mayor. Lord Say, 
 also, behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he would not pay. 
 But, the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship money was John 
 Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the 
 " vipers " in the House of Commons when there was such a thing, 
 and who had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot, This case
 
 Charles the First. 60 1 
 
 was tried before the twelve judges in the Court of Exchequer, and 
 again the King's lawyers said it was impossible that ship money could 
 be wrong, because the King could do no wrong, however hard he tried 
 and he really did try very hard during these twelve years. Seven 
 of the judges said that was quito true, and Mr. Hampden was bound 
 to pay : five of the judges said that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden 
 was not bound to pay. So, the King triumphed (as he thought), by 
 making Hampden the most popular man in England ; where matters 
 were getting to that height now, that many honest Englishmen could 
 not endure their country, and sailed away across the seas to found a 
 colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampden 
 himself and his relation Oliver Cromwell were going with a company 
 of such voyagers, and were actually on board ship, when they were 
 stopped by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to carry out suoh 
 passengers without the royal license. But ! it would have been 
 well for the King if he had let them go ! 
 
 This was the state of England. If Laud had been a madman just 
 broke loose, he could not have done more mischief than he did in 
 Scotland. In his endeavours (in which he was seconded by the King, 
 then in person in that part of his dominions) to force his own ideas of 
 bishops, and his own religious forms and ceremonies, upon the Scotch, 
 he roused that nation to a perfect frenzy. They formed a solemn 
 league, which they called The Covenant, for the preservation of their 
 own religious forms ; they rose in arms throughout the whole country ; 
 they summoned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day 
 by beat of drum ; they sang psalms, in which they compared their 
 enemies to all the evil spirits that ever were heard of; and they 
 solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At first tho King 
 tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament which did not 
 answer at all. Then he tried the Earl of Strafford, formerly Sir 
 Thomas Wentworth ; who, as Lord Wentworth, had been governing 
 Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high hand there, though 
 to the benefit and prosperity of that country. 
 
 Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people by 
 force of arms. Other lords who were taken into council, recommended 
 that a Parliament should at last be called ; to which the King un- 
 willingly consented. So, on the thirteenth of April, ono thousand six 
 hundred and forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at 
 Westminster. It is called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very 
 little while. While tho members were all looking at ono another, 
 doubtful who would daro to speak, Mr. Pym aroso and set forth all 
 that tho King had dono unlawfully during the past twelve years, and 
 what was the position to which England was reduced. This great 
 example set, other mombers took courage and spoke tho truth freely, 
 though with great patienco and moderation. Tho King, a littlo 
 frightened, sent to say that if they would grant him a certain sum on 
 certain terms, uo more ship money should be raised. They debated
 
 602 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the matter for two days ; and then, as they would not give him all he 
 asked without promise or inquiry, he dissolved them. 
 
 But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament now ; and 
 he hegan to make that discovery too, though rather late in the day. 
 Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September, being then at York 
 with an army collected against the Scottish people, but his own men 
 sullen and discontented like the rest of the nation, the King told the 
 great council of the Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, 
 that he would summon another Parliament to assemble on the third 
 of November. The soldiers of the Covenant had now forced their 
 way into England and had taken possession of the northern counties, 
 where the coals are got. As it would never do to be without coals, 
 and as the King's troops could make no head against the Covenanters 
 so full of gloomy zeal, a truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland 
 was taken into consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid 
 the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and keep quiet. 
 
 We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have next to 
 see what memorable things were done by the Long one. 
 
 Second Part. 
 
 The Long Parliament assembled on the third of November, one thou- 
 sand six hundred and forty-one. That day week the Earl of Strafford 
 arrived from York, very sensible that the spirited and determined 
 men who formed that Parliament were no friends towards him, who 
 had not only deserted the cause of the people, but who had on all 
 occasions opposed himself to their liberties. The King told him, for 
 his comfort, that the Parliament " should not hurt one hair of his 
 head." But, on the very next day Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, 
 and with great solemnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. 
 He was immediately taken into custody and fell from his proud height. 
 It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought to trial 
 in Westminster Hall ; where, although he was very ill and suffered 
 great pain, he defended himself with such ability and majesty, that it 
 was doubtful whether he would not get the best of it. But on the 
 thirteenth day of the trial, Pym produced in the House of Commons 
 a copy of some notes of a council, found by young Sir Harry Vane 
 in a red velvet cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who 
 sat at the council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly 
 told the King that he was free from all rules and obligations of 
 government, and might do with his people whatever he liked ; and in 
 which he had added "You have an army in Ireland that you may 
 employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience." It was not clear 
 whether by the words " this kingdom," he had really meant England 
 or Scotland ; but the Parliament contended that he meant England, 
 and this was treason. At the same sitting of the House of Commons 
 it was resolved to bring in a bill of attainder declaring the treason to
 
 Charles the First. 603 
 
 have been committed : in preference to proceeding with the trial by 
 impeachment, which wonld have required the treason to be proved. 
 
 So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the House 
 of Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to the House of 
 Lords. While it was still uncertain whether the House of Lords 
 would pass it and the King consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House 
 of Commons that the King and Queen had both been plotting with 
 the officers of the army to bring up the soldiers and control the 
 Parliament, and also to introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower 
 of London to effect the Earl's escape. Tho plotting with the army 
 was revealed by one George Goetng, tho son of a lord of that name : 
 a bad fellow who was one of the original plotters, and turned traitor. 
 The King had actually given his warrant for the admission of the two 
 hundred men into the Tower, and they would have got in too, but for 
 the refusal of the governor a sturdy Scotchman of the name of Balfodr 
 to admit them. These matters being made public, great numbers 
 of people began to riot outside the Houses of Parliament, and to cry 
 out for the execution of the Earl of Strafford, as one of the King's 
 chief instruments against them. The bill passed the House of Lords 
 while the people were in this state of agitation, and was laid before 
 the King for his assent, together with another bill declaring that the 
 Parliament then assembled should not be dissolved or adjourned 
 without their own consent. The King not unwilling to save a faith- 
 ful servant, though he had no great attachment for him was in some 
 doubt what to do ; but he gave his consent to both bills, although he 
 in his heart believed that the bill against the Earl of Stafford was 
 unlawful and unjust. The Earl had written to him, telling him that 
 he was willing to die for his sake. But he had not expected that his 
 royal master would take him at his word quite so readily ; for, when 
 ho heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, and said, " Put 
 not your trust in Princes ! " 
 
 The King, who never could be straightforward and plain, through 
 ono single day or through one singlo sheet of paper, wrote a lettor to 
 tho Lords, and sent it by the young Prince of Wales, entreating them 
 to prevail with tho Commons that " that unfortunate man should fulfil 
 tho natural course of his life in a close imprisonment." In a postscript 
 to the very samo letter, ho added, " If he must die, it wero charity to 
 reprieve him till Saturday." If there had been any doubt of his fate, 
 this weakness and meanness would havo settled it. The very next 
 day, which was the twelfth of May, ho was brought out to bo beheaded 
 on Tower Hill. 
 
 Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having people's ears 
 cropped off and their noses slit, was now confined in tho Tower too ; 
 and when the Earl went by his window to his death, ho was there, at 
 his request, to give him his blessing. They had been great friends in 
 the King's cause, and the Earl had written to him in the days of their 
 power that he thought it would bo an admirable thing to havo Mr.
 
 604 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Hampden publicly whipped for refusing to pay the ship iuoney. 
 However, those high and mighty doings were over now, and the Earl 
 went his way to death with dignity and heroism. The governor 
 wished him to get into a coach at the Tower gate, for fear the people 
 should tear him to pieces ; but he said it was all one to him whether 
 he died by the axe or by the people's hands. So, he walked, with a 
 firm tread and a stately look, and sometimes pulled off his hat to them 
 as he passed along. They were profoundly quiet. He made a speech 
 on the scaffold from some notes he had prepared (the paper was found 
 lying there after his head was struck off), and one blow of the axe 
 killed him, in the forty-ninth year of his age. 
 
 This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied by other 
 famous measures, all originating (as even this did) in the King's 
 having so grossly and so long abused his power. The name of 
 Delinquents was applied to all sheriffs and other officers who had 
 been concerned in raising the ship money, or any other money, from 
 the people, in an unlawful manner ; the Hampden judgment was 
 reversed ; the judges who had decided against Hampden were called 
 upon to give large securities that they would take such consequences 
 as Parliament might impose upon them ; and one was arrested as he 
 sat in High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud was impeached ; 
 the unfortunate victims whose ears had been cropped and whose noses 
 had been slit, were brought out of prison in triumph ; and a bill was 
 passed declaring that a Parliament should be called every third year, 
 and that if the King and the King's officers did not call it, the people 
 should assemble of themselves and summon it, as of their own right 
 and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings took place over all 
 these things, and the country was wildly excited. That the Parlia- 
 ment took advantage of this excitement and stirred them up by every 
 means, there is no doubt ; but you are always to remember those 
 twelve long years, during which the King had tried so hard whether 
 he really could do any wrong or not. 
 
 All this time there was a great religious outcry against the right of 
 the Bishops to sit in Parliament ; to which the Scottish people par- 
 ticularly objected. The English were divided on this subject, and, 
 partly on this account and partly because they had had foolish expec- 
 tations that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all the 
 taxes, numbers of them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the 
 King. 
 
 I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other period of his 
 life, the King could have been trusted by any man not out of his 
 senses, he might have saved himself and kept his throne. But, on the 
 English army being disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as 
 he had done before, and established the fact beyond all doubt by 
 putting his signature of approval to a petition against the Parlia- 
 mentary leaders, which was drawn up by certain officers. When the 
 Scottish army was disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days^
 
 Charles the First. 605 
 
 which was going very fast at that time to plot again, and so 
 darkly too, that it is difficult to decide what his whole ohject was. 
 Some suppose that he" wanted to gain over the Scottish Parliament, as 
 he did in fact gain over, hy presents and favours, many Scottish lords 
 and men of power. Some think that he went to get proofs against tho 
 Parliamentary leaders in England of their having treasonably invited 
 the Scottish people to come and help them. With whatever ohject he 
 went to Scotland, he did little good hy going. At the instigation of 
 tho Earl of Montrose, a desperate man who was then in prison for 
 plotting, he tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped. A 
 committee of the Parliament at home, who had followed to watch him, 
 writing an account of this Inoident, as it was called, to the Parliament, 
 the Parliament made a fresh stir ahout it ; were, or feigned to he, 
 much alarmed for themselves ; and wrote to tho Earl of Essex, the 
 commander-in-chief, for a guard to protect them. 
 
 It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland besides, 
 but it is very probable that he did, and that the Queen did, and that he 
 had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people over to his side by 
 favouring a rise among them. Whether or no, they did rise in a most 
 brutal and savage rebellion ; in which, encouraged by their priests, 
 they committed such atrocities upon numbers of the English, of both 
 sexes and of all ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being 
 related on oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or 
 two hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak, is 
 uncertain ; but, that it was as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak r s 
 ever was known among any savage people, is certain. 
 
 The King came home from Scotland, determined to make a great 
 struggle for his lost power. He believed that, through his presents 
 and favours, Scotland would take no part against him ; and the Lord 
 Mayor of London received him with such a magnificent dinner that 
 he thought ho must have become popular again in England. It would 
 take a good many Lord Mayors, however, to make a people, and tho 
 King soon found himself mistaken. 
 
 Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposition in the 
 Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth byPym and Hampden and 
 the rest, called "The Remonstrance," which set forth all the illegal 
 acts that the King had ever done, but politely laid the blamo of them 
 on his bad advisers. Even when it was passed and presented to him, 
 tho King still thought himself strong enough to discharge Balfour 
 from his command in the Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad 
 character ; to whom the Commons instantly objected, and whom he 
 was obliged to abandon. At this time, the old outcry about tho 
 Bishops became louder than ever, and the old Archbishop of York 
 was so near being murdered as he went down to the House of Lords 
 l>eing laid hold of by the mob and violently knocked about, in return 
 for very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping out " No 
 Bishops!" that he sent for all the Bishops who were in town, and
 
 606 A Child's History of England. 
 
 proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as they could no longer 
 without danger to their lives attend their duty in Parliament, they 
 protested against the lawfulness of everything done in their absence. 
 This they asked the King to send to the House of Lords, which ho 
 did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole party of 
 Bishops and sent them off to the Tower. 
 
 Taking no warning from this; but encouraged by there being a 
 moderate party in the Parliament who objected to these strong 
 measures, the King, on the third of January, one thousand six hundred 
 and forty-two, took the rashest step that ever was taken by mortal man. 
 
 Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the Attorney-General 
 to the House of Lords, to accuse of treason certain members of Parlia- 
 ment who as popular leaders were the most obnoxious to him ; Loud 
 Kimbolton, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they 
 used to call him King Pym, he possessed such power and looked so 
 big), John Hampden, and William Strode. The houses of those 
 members he caused to be entered, and their papers to be sealed up. 
 At the same time, he sent a messenger to the House of Commons 
 demanding to have the five gentlemen who were members of that 
 House immediately produced. To this the House replied that they 
 should appear as soon as there was any legal charge against them, 
 and immediately adjourned. 
 
 Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to let the Lord 
 Mayor know that their privileges are invaded by the King, and that 
 there is no safety for anybody or anything. Then, when the five 
 members are gone out of the way, down comes the King himself, with 
 all his guard and from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, 
 of whom the greater part were armed. These he leaves in the hall ; 
 and then, with his nephew at his side, goes into the House, takes off 
 his hat, and walks up to the Speaker's chair. The Speaker leaves it, 
 the King stands in front of it, looks about him steadily for a little 
 while, and says he has come for those five members. No one speaks, 
 and then he calls John Pym by name. No one speaks, and then he 
 calls Denzil Hollis by name. No one speaks, and then he asks the 
 Speaker of the House where those five members are ? The Speaker, 
 answering on his knee, nobly replies that he is the servant of that 
 House, and that he has neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, any- 
 thing but what the House commands him. Upon this, the King, 
 beaten from that time evermore, replies that he will seek them him- 
 self, for they have committed treason ; and goes out, with his hat in 
 his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the members. 
 
 No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors when all 
 this was known. The five members had gone for safety to a house in 
 Coleman Street, in the City, where they were guarded all night ; and 
 indeed the whole city watched in arms like an army. At ten o'clock 
 in the morning, the King already frightened at what he had done, 
 came to the Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a
 
 Charles the First. 607 
 
 Bpeecli to the people, Loping they would not shelter those whom he 
 accused of treason. Next day, he issued a proclamation for the appre- 
 hension of the five members ; but the Parliament minded it so little 
 that thoy made great arrangements for having them brought down to 
 Westminster in great state, fivo days afterwards. The King was so 
 alarmed now at his own imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he 
 left his palace at Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and 
 children to Hampton Court. 
 
 It was the eleventh of May, when the five members were carried in 
 state and triumph to Westminster. They wero taken by water. The 
 river could not be seen for the boats on it ; and the five members were 
 hemmed in by barges full of men end great guns, ready to protect 
 them, at any cost. Along the Strand a large body of the train-bauds 
 of London, under their commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to 
 assist the little fleet. Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the 
 streets, roaring incessantly about the Bishops and the Papists, and 
 crying out contemptuously as they passed Whitehall, " What has 
 become of the King ? " With this great noise outside the House of 
 Commons, and with great silence within, Mr. Pym rose and informed 
 the House of the great kindness with which they had been received in 
 the City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs in and thanked 
 them, and requested the train-bands, under their commander Skippon, 
 to guard the House of Commons every day. Then, came four thousand 
 men on horseback out of Buckinghamshire, offering their services as 
 a guard too, and bearing a petition to the King, complaining of the 
 injury that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who was their county man 
 and much beloved and honoured. 
 
 When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentlemen and 
 soldiers who had been with him followed him out of town as far as 
 Kingston-upon-Thames ; next day, Lord Digby came to them from tho 
 King at Hampton Court, in his coach and six, to inform them that 
 the King accepted their protection. This, the Parliament said, was 
 making war against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. The 
 Parliament then immediately applied themselves to getting hold of 
 the military power of tho country, well knowing that the King was 
 already trying hard to use it against them, and that ho had secretly 
 sent the Earl of Newcastle to Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of 
 arms and gunpowder that was there. In thoso times, every county 
 had its own magazines of arms and powder, for its own train-bands 
 or militia ; so, the Parliament brought in a bill claiming the right 
 (which up to this time had belonged to tho King) of appointing the 
 Lord Lieutenants of counties, who commanded these train-hands ; also, 
 of having all the forts, castles, and garrisons in the kingdom, put into 
 the hands of such governors as they, tho Parliament, could confide in. 
 It also passed a law depriving tho Bishops of their votes. The King 
 gave his assent to that bill, but would not abandon tho right of 
 appointing the Lord Lieutenants, though he said ho was willing to
 
 608 A Child's History of England. 
 
 appoint such as might be suggested to him by the Parliament. When 
 the Earl of Pembroke asked him whether he would not give way on 
 that question for a time, he said, " By God ! not for one hour ! " and 
 upon tbis he and the Parliament went to war. 
 
 His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of Orange. On 
 pretence of taking her to the country of her future husband, the 
 Queen was already got safely away to Holland, there to pawn the 
 Crown jewels for money to raise an army on the King's side. The 
 Lord Admiral being sick, the House of Commons now named the Earl 
 of Warwick to hold his place for a year. The King named another 
 gentleman ; the House of Commons took its own way, and the Earl of 
 Warwick became Lord Admiral without the King's consent. The 
 Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have that magazine removed 
 to London ; the King went down to Hull to take it himself. The 
 citizens would not admit him into the town, and the governor would 
 not admit him into the castle. The Parliament resolved that whatever 
 the two Houses passed, and the King would not consent to, should be 
 called an Ordinance, and should be as much a law as if he did consent 
 to it. The King protested against this, and gave notice that these 
 ordinances were not to be obeyed. The King, attended by the majority 
 of the House of Peers, and by many members of the House of Commons, 
 established himself at York. The Chancellor went to him with the 
 Great Se&l, and the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen 
 sent over a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the King issued 
 letters to borrow money at high interest. The Parliament raised twenty 
 regiments of foot and seventy-five troops of horse ; and the people 
 willingly aided them with their money, plate, jewellery, and trinkets 
 the married women even with their wedding-rings. Every member 
 of Parliament who could raise a troop or a regiment in his own part 
 of the country, dressed it according to his taste and in his own colours, 
 and commanded it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell 
 raised a troop of horse thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well 
 armed who were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever were seen. 
 
 In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament passed the 
 bounds of previous law and custom, yielded to and favoured riotous 
 assemblages of the people, and acted tyrannically in imprisoning some 
 who differed from the popular leaders. But again, you are always to 
 remember that the twelve years during which the King had had his 
 own wilful way, had gone before ; and that nothing could make the 
 times what they might, could, would, or should have been, if those 
 twelve years had never rolled away. 
 
 Third Part. 
 
 I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great civil war between 
 King Charles the First and the Long Parliament, which lasted nearly 
 four years, and a full account of which would fill many large books.
 
 Charles the First. 609 
 
 It was a sad thing that Englishmen should once move he fighting 
 against Englishmen on English ground ; but, it is somo consolation 
 to kuow that on both sides there was great humanity, forbearance, and 
 honour. The soldiers of the Parliament were far more remarkable 
 for these good qualities than the soldiers of the King (many of whom 
 fought for more pay without much caring for the cause) ; but those of 
 the nobility and gentry who were on the King's side were so brave, 
 and so faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but command our 
 highest admiration. Among them were great numbers of Catholics, 
 who took the royal side because the Queon was so strongly of their 
 persuasion. 
 
 The King might have distinguished some of these gallant spirits, 
 if ho had beon as generous a spirit himself, by giving them the com- 
 mand of his army. Instead of that, however, true to his old high 
 notions of royalty, he entrusted it to his two nephews, Prince Rupeet 
 and Prince Maurice, who were of royal blood and came over from 
 abroad to help him. It might have been better for him if they had 
 stayed away ; since Prince Rupert was an impetuous hot-headed 
 fellow, whose only idea was to dash into battle at all times and 
 seasons, and lay about him. 
 
 The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the Earl of 
 Essex, a gentleman of honour and an excellent soldier. A little 
 while before the war broke out, there had been some riotiug at West- 
 minster between certain officious law students and noisy soldiers, and 
 the shopkeepers and their apprentices, and the general people in the 
 streets. At that time the King's friends called the crowd, Roundheads, 
 because the apprentices wore short hair ; the crowd, in return, called 
 their opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a blustering set, 
 who pretended to be very military. These two words now began to 
 be used to distinguish the two sides in the civil war. The Royalists 
 also called the Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, while tho 
 Parliamentary men called them Malignants, and spoke of themselves 
 as tho Godly, the Honest, and so forth. 
 
 The war broke out at Portsmouth, whero that double traitor Goring 
 had again gone over to the King and was besieged by the Parlia- 
 mentary troops. Upon this, the King proclaimed the Earl of Essex 
 and the offices serving under him, traitors, and called upon his loyal 
 subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of 
 August. But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers, 
 and it was a windy gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown 
 down, and the whole affair was very melancholy. Tho chief engage- 
 ments after this, took place in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury, 
 at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where Mr. Hampden 
 was so sorely wounded while fighting at tho head of his men, that he 
 died within a week), at Newbury (in which battle Loud Falkland, 
 one' of the best noblemen on tho King's side, was killed), at Leicester, 
 at Naseby, at Winchester, at Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle,
 
 610 A Child's History of England. 
 
 and in many other parts of England and Scotland. Those battles 
 were attended with various successes. At one time, the King was 
 victorious ; at another time, the Parliament. But almost all the great 
 and busy towns were against the King ; and when it was considered 
 necessary to fortify London, all ranks of people, from labouring men 
 and women, up to lords and ladies, worked hard together with heartiness 
 and good will. The most distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary 
 side were Hampden, Sib Thomas Fairfax, and, above all, Oliver 
 Cromwell, and his son-in-law Ireton. 
 
 During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was very 
 expensive and irksome, and to whom it was made the more distressing 
 by almost every family being divided some of its members attaching 
 themselves to one side and some to the other were over and over 
 again most anxious for peace. So were some of the best men in each 
 cause. Accordingly, treaties of peace were discussed between com- 
 missioners from the Parliament and the King ; at York, at Oxford 
 (where the King held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. 
 But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all his 
 difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He was courageous, 
 cool, self-possessed, and clever ; but, the old taint of his character 
 was always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be 
 trusted. Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, 
 supposes that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make 
 peace without her consent, and that this must often be taken as his 
 excuse. He never kept his word from night to morning. He signed 
 a cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum 
 of money, and invited the Irish regiments over, to help him against 
 the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was seized and 
 was found to contain a correspondence with the Queen, in which he 
 expressly told her that he had deceived the Parliament a mongrel 
 Parliament, he called it now, as an improvement on his old term of 
 vipers in pretending to recognise it and to treat with it ; and from 
 which it further appeared that he had long been in secret treaty with 
 the Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten thousand men. Dis- 
 appointed in this, he sent a most devoted friend of his, the Earl of 
 Glamorgan, to Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic 
 powers, to send him an Irish army of ten thousand men ; in return for 
 which he was to bestow great favours on the Catholic religion. And, 
 when this treaty was discovered in the carriage of a fighting Irish 
 Archbishop who was killed in one of the many skirmishes of those 
 days, he basely denied and deserted his attached friend, the Earl, on 
 his being charged with high treason ; and even worse than this 
 had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave him with his own 
 kingly hand, expressly that he might thus save himself. 
 
 At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand six 
 hundred and forty-six, the King found himself in the city of Oxford, so 
 surrounded by the Parliamentary army who were closing in upon him
 
 Charles the First 6 1 1 
 
 on all sides that he felt that if ho would escape ho nmst delay no 
 longer. So, that night, having altered the cut of his hair and heard, 
 he was dressed up as a servant and put upon a horse with a cloak 
 strapped bohind him, and rode out of the town behind one of his own 
 faithful followers, with a clergyman of that country who knew the 
 road well, for a guide. He rode towards London as far as Harrow, 
 and then altered his plans and resolved, it would seem, to go to tho 
 Scottish camp. Tho Scottish men had been invited over to help tho 
 Parliamentary army, and had a large force then in England. Tho 
 King was so desperately intriguing in everything he did, that it is 
 doubtful what he exactly meant by this step. He took it, anyhow, 
 and delivered himself up to the Eabl of Leven, the Scottish general- 
 in-chief, who treated him as an honourable prisoner. Negotiations 
 between the Parliament on the one hand and the Scottish authorities on 
 the other, as to what should be done with him, lasted until the follow- 
 ing February. Then, when the King had refused to the Parliament 
 the concession of that old militia point for twenty years, and had 
 refused to Scotland the recognition of its Solemn League and Covenant, 
 Scotland got a handsome sum for its army and its help, and the King 
 into the bargain. He was taken, by certain Parliamentary commis- 
 sioners appointed to receive him, to one of his own houses, called 
 Holmby House, near Althorpe, in Northamptonshire. 
 
 While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym died, and was 
 buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey not with greater 
 honour than ho deserved, for tho liberties of Englishmen owe a mighty 
 debt to Pym and Hampden. The war was but newly over when tho 
 Earl of Essex died, of an illness brought on by his having overheated 
 himself in a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in 
 Westminster Abbey, with great state. I wish it wero not necessary 
 to add that Archbishop Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was 
 not yet done. His trial lasted in all nearly a year, and, it being 
 doubtful even then whothcr the charges brought against him amounted 
 to treason, the odious old contrivance of the worst kings was resorted 
 to, and a bill of attainder was brought in against him. Ho was a 
 violently prejudiced and mischievous person ; had had strong ear- 
 cropping and nose-splitting propensities, as you know ; and had dono 
 a world of harm. But he died peaceably, and liko a brave old man. 
 
 Foukth Paut. 
 
 When the Parliament had got the King into their hands, they became 
 very anxious to get rid of their army, in which Oliver Cromwell had 
 begun to acquire great power ; not only because of his courage and 
 high abilities, but because he professed to be very sincere in the 
 Scottish sort of Puritan religion that was then exceedingly popular 
 among the soldiers. They were as much opposod to the Bishops as 
 to the Pope himself; and the very privates, drummers, and trumpeters,
 
 612 A Child 's History of England 
 
 had such an inconvenient habit of starting up and preaching long- 
 winded discourses, that I would not have belonged to that army on 
 any account. 
 
 So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army might 
 begin to preach and fight against them now it had nothing else to do, 
 proposed to disband the greater part of it, to send another part to 
 Serve in Ireland against the rebels, and to keep only a small force in 
 England. But, the army would not consent to be broken up, except 
 upon its own conditions; and, when the Parliament showed an 
 intention of compelling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected manner. 
 A certain cornet, of the name of Joice, arrived at Holmby House one 
 night, attended by four hundred horsemen, went into the King's room 
 with his hat in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the King 
 that he had come to take him away. The King was willing enough to 
 go, and only stipulated that he should be publicly required to do so 
 next morning. Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the top of 
 the steps of the house, and asked Cornet Joice before his men and the 
 guard set there by the Parliament, what authority he had for taking 
 him away ? To this Cornet Joice replied, " The authority of the 
 army." " Have you a written commission ? " said the King. Joice, 
 pointing to his four hundred men on horseback, replied, " That is my 
 commission." " Well," said the King, smiling, as if he were pleased, 
 " I never before read such a commission ; but it is written in fair and 
 legible characters. This is a company of as handsome proper gentle- 
 men as I have seen a long while." He was asked where he would 
 like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket he and 
 Cornet Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode ; the King remark- 
 ing, in the same smiling way, that he could ride as far at a spell as 
 Cornet Joice, or any man there. 
 
 The King quite believed, I think, that the army were his friends. 
 He said as much to Fairfax when that general, Oliver Cromwell, and 
 Ireton, went to persuade him to return to the custody of the Parlia- 
 ment. He preferred to remain as he was, and resolved to remain as 
 he was. And when the army moved nearer and nearer London to 
 frighten the Parliament into yielding to their demands, they took the 
 King with them. It was a deplorable thing that England should be 
 at the mercy of a great body of soldiers with arms in their hands ; 
 but the King certainly favoured them at this important time of his 
 life, as compared with the more lawful power that tried to control 
 him. It must be added, however, that they treated him, as yet, more 
 respectfully and kindly than the Parliament had done. They allowed 
 him to be attended by his own servants, to be splendidly entertained 
 at various houses, and to see his children at Cavesham House, near 
 Beading for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had been rather 
 hard with him, and had only allowed him to ride out and play at 
 bowls. 
 
 It is much to be believed that if the King could have been trusted,
 
 Charles the First. 613 
 
 even at this time, ho might have heen saved. Eveu Oliver Cromwell 
 expressly said that he did believe that no man could enjoy his 
 possessions in peace, unless the King had his rights. He was not 
 unfriendly towards the King ; he had been present when he received 
 his children, and had been much affected by the pitiable naturo of tho 
 scene ; he saw the King often ; he frequently walked and talked with 
 him in tho long gallories and pleasant gardens of tho Palace at 
 Hampton Court, whither he was now removed ; and in all this risked 
 something of his influence with the army. But, the King was in 
 secret hopes of help from the Scottish people ; and the moment ho 
 was encouraged to join them he began to be cool to his new friends, 
 the army, and to tell the officers that thoy could not possibly do 
 without him. At the very time, too, when he was promising to mako 
 Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if they would help him up to his old 
 height, he was writing to the Queen that he meant to hang them. 
 They both afterwards declared that they had been privately informed 
 that such a letter would be found, on a certain evening, sewed up in 
 a saddle which would be taken to the Blue Boar in Holborn to bo 
 sent to Dover; and that they went there, disguised as common 
 soldiers, and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with tho 
 saddle, which they ripped up with their knives, and therein found 
 the letter. I see little reason to doubt tho story. It is certain that 
 Oliver Cromwell told one of the King's most faithful followers that 
 the King could not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable 
 if anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that, ho 
 kept a promise he had mado to the King by letting him know that 
 there was a plot with a certain portion of tho army to seize him. I 
 believe that, in fact, he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, 
 and so to bo got rid of without more trouble or danger. That Oliver 
 himself had work enough with the army is pretty plain ; for some of 
 the troops were so mutinous against him, and against those who acted 
 with him at this time, that he found it necessary to havo one man 
 shot at the head of his regiment to overawo the rest. 
 
 The King, when he received Oliver's warning, made his escape 
 from Huinpton Court ; after some indecision and uncertainty, ho 
 went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Islo of Wright. At first, ho was 
 pretty free there ; but, even there, he carried on a pretended treaty 
 with the Parliament, while he was roally treating with commissioners 
 from Scotland to send an army into England to take his part. When 
 he broke off this treaty with the Parliament (having settled with 
 Scotland) and was treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not 
 changed too soon, for ho had plotted to escape that very night to a 
 ship sent by the Queen, which was lying off the island. 
 
 Ho was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scotland, 
 The agreement lie had made with the Scottish Commissioners was not 
 favourable enough to the religion of that country to please tho 
 Scottish clergy ; and they preached against it. The consequence
 
 614 A- Child's History of England. 
 
 was, that the army raised in Scotland and sent over, was too small 
 to do much ; and that, although it was helped by a rising of the 
 Royalists in England and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could 
 make no head against the Parliamentary army under such men as 
 Cromwell and Fairfax. The King's eldest son, the Prince of "Wales, 
 came over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part of the English 
 fleet having gone over to him) to help his father ; but nothing camo 
 of his voyage, and he was fain to return. The most remarkable event 
 of this second civil war was the cruel execution by the Parliamentary 
 General, of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, two grand 
 Royalist generals, who had bravely defended Colchester under every 
 disadvantage of famine and distress for nearly three months. When 
 Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed his body, and 
 said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, " Come nearer, and make 
 sure of me." " I warrant you, Sir George," said one of the soldiers, 
 " we shall hit you." " Ay ? " he returned with a smile, " but I have 
 been nearer to you, my friends, many a time, and you have missed me." 
 
 The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the army who 
 demanded to have seven members whom they disliked given up to 
 them had voted that they would have nothing more to do with the 
 King. On the conclusion, however, of this second civil war (which 
 did not last more than six months), they appointed commissioners to 
 treat with him. The King, then so far released again as to be allowed 
 to livo in a private house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed 
 his own part of the negotiation with a sense that was admired by all 
 who saw him, and gave up, in the end, all that was asked of him 
 even yielding (which he had steadily refused, so far) to the temporary 
 abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of their church land to the 
 Crown. Still, with his old fatal vice upon him, when his best friends 
 joined the commissioners in beseeching him to yield all those points 
 as the only means of saving himself from the army, he was plotting 
 to escape from the~ island ; he was holding correspondence with his 
 friends and the Catholics in Ireland, though declaring that he was 
 not ; and he was writing, with his own hand, that in what ho yielded 
 he meant nothing but to get time to escape. 
 
 Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy the 
 Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, not afraid of 
 them now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted that the King's concessions 
 were sufficient ground for settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon 
 that, Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went clown to the House of 
 Commons with a regiment of horse soldiers and a regiment of foot ; 
 and Colonel Pride, standing in the lobby with a list of the members 
 who were obnoxious to the army in his hand, had them pointed out to 
 him as they came through, and took them all into custody. This 
 proceeding was afterwards called by the people, for a joke, Pride's 
 Purge. Cromwell was in the North, at the head of his men, at the 
 time, but when he came home, approved of what had been done,
 
 CI nxr Us the First. 615 
 
 "What with imprisoning somo members and causing others to stay 
 away, the army had now reduced the Houso of Commons to some fifty 
 or so. These soon voted that it was treason in a king to make war 
 against his parliament and his peoplo, and sent an ordinance up to 
 tho Houso of Lords for tho King's being tried as a traitor. The 
 House of Lords, then sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. There- 
 upon, tho Commons made an ordinanco of their own, that thoy wero 
 the supreme government of tho country, and would bring the King to 
 trial. 
 
 Tho King had been taken for security to a place called Hurst 
 Castle : a lonely house on a rock in the sea, connected with the coast 
 of Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at low water. Thence, 
 he was ordered to bo removed to Windsor ; thence, after being but 
 rudely used there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at 
 table, he was brought up to St. James's Palaco in London, and told 
 that his trial was appointed for next day. 
 
 On Saturday, tho twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred 
 and forty-nine, this memorable trial began. The Houso of Commons 
 had settled that one hundred and thirty-five persons should form tho 
 Court, and theso wero taken from tho Houso itself, from among tho 
 officers of the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. John 
 Bradshaw, serjeant-at-law, was appointed president. The place was 
 Westminster Hall. At tho upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat tho 
 president, with his hat (lined with plates of iron for his protection) 
 on his head. Tho rest of tho Court sat on side benches, also wearing 
 their hats'. The King's seat was covered with velvet, like that of tho 
 president, and was opposite to it. He was brought from St. James's 
 to Whitehall, and from Whitehall he came by water to his trial. 
 
 When he came in, he looked round very steadily on the Court, and 
 on the great number of spectators, and then sat down : presently ho 
 got Tip and looked round again. On tho indictment " against Charles 
 Stuart, for high treason," being read, lie smiled several times, and ho 
 denied the authority of tho Court, saying that thero could bo no 
 parliament without a House of Lords, and that he saw no Houso of 
 Lords there. Also, that tho King ought to bo there, and that he saw 
 no King in the King's right place. Bradshaw replied, that the ( 'curt 
 was satisfied with its authority, and that its authority was God's 
 authority and the kingdom's. Ho then adjourned the Court to tho 
 following Monday. On that day, tho trial was resumed, and went on 
 all the week. When the Saturday came, as tho King passed forward 
 to his place in the Hall, some soldiers and others cried for " justico ! " 
 and execution on him. That day, too, Bradshaw, like an an^ry Sultan, 
 wore a red robe, instead of the black robo ho had worn before. Tho 
 King was sentenced to death that day. As he went out, one solitary 
 soldier said, " God bless you, Sir! " For this, his officer struck him. 
 The Kin<j said ho thought the punishment exceeded the offence. Tho 
 silver head of his walking-stick had fallen oil' while he leaned upon
 
 616 A Child's History of England. 
 
 it, at one time of the trial. The accident seemed to disturb him, as 
 if he thought it ominous of the falling of his own head; and he 
 admitted as much, now it was all over. 
 
 Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of Commons, 
 saying that as the time of his execution might be nigh, he wished he 
 might be allowed to see his darling children. It was granted. On 
 the Monday he was taken back to St. James's ; and his two children 
 then in England, the Princess Elizabeth thirteen years old, and the 
 Duke of Gloucester nine years old, were brought to take leave of 
 him, from Sion House, near Brentford. It was a sad and touching 
 scene, when he kissed and fondled those poor children, and made a 
 little present of two diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them 
 tender messages to their mother (who little deserved them, for sho 
 had a lover of her own whom she married soon afterwards), and told 
 them that he died " for the laws and liberties of the land." I am 
 bound to say that I don't think he did, but I dare say he believed so. 
 
 There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to intercede for 
 the unhappy King, whom you and I both wish the Parliament had 
 spared ; but they got no answer. The Scottish Commissioners inter- 
 ceded too ; so did the Prince of Wales, by a letter in which he offered 
 as the next heir to the throne, to accept any conditions from the 
 Parliament ; so did the Queen, by letter likewise. Notwithstanding 
 all, tho warrant for the execution was this day signed. There is a 
 story that as Oliver Cromwell went to the table with the pen in his 
 hand to put his signature to it, he drew his pen across the face of one 
 of the commissioners, who was standing near, and marked it with ink. 
 That commissioner had not signed his own name yet, and the story 
 adds that when he came to do it he marked Cromwell's face with ink 
 in the same way. 
 
 The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that it was his 
 last night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth of January, two hours 
 before day, and dressed himself carefully. He put on two shirts lest 
 he should tremble with the cold, and had his hair very carefully 
 combed. The warrant had been directed to three officers of tho 
 army, Colonel Hacker, Colonel Hunks, and Colonel Phayer. At 
 ten o'clock, the first of these came to the door and said it was time 
 to go to Whitehall. The King, who had always been a quick walker, 
 walked at his usual speed through the Park, and called out to tho 
 guard, with his accustomed voice of command, " March on apace ! " 
 When he came to Whitehall, he was taken to his own bedroom, where 
 a breakfast was set forth. As he had taken the Sacrament, he would 
 eat nothing more ; but, at about the time when the church bells struck 
 twelve at noon (for he had to wait, through the scaffold not being 
 ready), he took the advice of the good Bishop Juxon who was with 
 him, and ate a little bread and drank a glass of claret. Soon after ho 
 had taken this refreshment, Colonel Hacker came to the chamber 
 with the warrant in his hand, and called for Charles Stuart,
 
 (IIAKI.l-. 1 IAKIM, I.I.AVE 1)1 III., ( II I I.I i la N".
 
 Charles the First. 6\J 
 
 And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, which ho 
 had often seen light and gay and merry and crowded, in very different 
 times, the fallen King passed along, until he came to the centre 
 window of the Banqueting House, through which he emerged upon 
 the scaffold, which was hung with black. Ho looked at the two 
 executioners, who were dressed in black and masked ; he looked at 
 the troops of soldiers on horseback and on foot, and all looked up at 
 him in silence ; he looked at the vast array of spectators, filling up 
 the view beyond, and turning all their faces upon him ; he looked at 
 his old Palace of St. James's ; and ho looked at tho block. He 
 seemed a little troubled to find that it was so low, and asked, "if 
 there were no place higher ? " Then, to those upon the scaffold, ho 
 said " that it was the Parliament who had begun the war, and not 
 he ; but he hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill instruments had 
 gone between them. In one respect," he said, " ho suffered justly ; 
 and that was becauso he had permitted an unjust sentence to bo 
 executed on another." In this he referred to the Earl of Strafford. 
 
 He was not at all afraid to die ; but he was anxious to die easily. 
 When some one touched the axe while ho was speaking, he broke off 
 and called out, " Take heed of the axe ! tako heed of the axe ! " Ho 
 also said to Colonel Hacker, " Tako care that they do not put me to 
 pain." He told the executioner, " I shall say but very short prayers, 
 and then thrust out my hands "- as the sign to strike. 
 
 He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the bishop had 
 carried, and said, " I have a good cause and a gracious God on my 
 side." The bishop told him that ho had but one stage more to travel 
 in this weary world, and that, though it was a turbulent and trouble- 
 some stage, it was a short one, and would carry him a great way all 
 the way from earth to Heaven. Tho King's last word, as ho gavo his 
 cloak and tho George the decoration from his breast to tho bishop, 
 was, " Remember ! " He then kneeled down, laid his head on tho 
 block, spread out his hands, and was instantly killed. One universal 
 groan broke from the crowd ; and the soldiers, who had sat on their 
 horses and stood in their ranks immovable as statues, were of a sudden 
 all in motion, clearing the streets. 
 
 Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same time of 
 his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles the First. 
 With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with him that he died 
 " tho martyr of tho people ; " for the people had been martyrs to him, 
 and to his ideas of a King's rights, long before. Indeed, I am afraid 
 that he was but a bad judge of martyrs ; for he had called that 
 infamous Duke of Buckingham "the Martyr of his Sovereign."
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 Before sunset on the memorable day on which King Charles the 
 First was executed, the House of Commons passed an act declaring 
 it treason in any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales or anybody 
 else King of England. Soon afterwards, it declared that the House 
 of Lords was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished ; and 
 directed that the late King's statue should be taken down from the 
 Royal Exchange in the City and other public places. Having laid 
 hold of some famous Royalists who had escaped from prison, and 
 having beheaded the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Holland, and Lord 
 Capel, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very courageously), they 
 then appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It con- 
 sisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw was 
 made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted members 
 who had opposed the King's death, and made up its numbers to about 
 a hundred and fifty. 
 
 But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men to deal 
 with, and a very hard task it was to manage them. Before the King's 
 execution, the army had appointed some of its officers to remonstrate 
 between them and the Parliament ; and now the common soldiers 
 began to take that office upon themselves. The regiments under 
 orders for Ireland mutinied ; one troop of horse in the city of London 
 seized their own flag, and refused to obey orders. For this, the 
 ringleader was shot : which did not mend the matter, for, both his 
 comrades and the people made a public funeral for him, and accom- 
 panied the body to the grave with sound of trumpets and with a 
 gloomy procession of persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped 
 in blood. Oliver was the only man to deal with such difficulties as 
 these, and he soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into tho 
 town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the mutineers were sheltered, 
 taking four hundred of them prisoners, and shooting a number of 
 them by sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon found, as all 
 men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled with. And there 
 was an end of the mutiny. 
 
 The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet ; so, on hearing 
 of the King's execution, it proclaimed the Prince of Wales King 
 Charles the Second, on condition of his respecting the Solemn League 
 and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that time, and so was Montrose, 
 from whose help he had hopes enough to keep him holding on and off 
 with commissioners from Scotland, just as his father might have done. 
 These hopes were soon at an end ; for, Montrose, having raised a few 
 hundred exiles in Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, found
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 619 
 
 that the people there, instead of joining him, deserted the country at 
 his approach. Ho was soon taken prisoner and carried to Edinburgh. 
 There he was received with every possiblo insult, and carried to 
 prison in a cart, his officers going two and two before him. Ho was 
 sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet 
 high, to have his head set on a spike in Edinburgh, and his limbs 
 distributed in other places, according to the old barbarous manner. 
 He said he had always acted under tho Royal orders, and only wished 
 he had limbs enough to be distributed through Christendom, that it 
 might be the more widely known how loyal he had been. Ho went 
 to the scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at 
 thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out of his body 
 when Charles abandoned his memory, and denied that ho had ever 
 given him orders to riso in his behalf. the family failing was 
 strong in that Charles then ! 
 
 Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command tho 
 army in Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the sanguinary 
 rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, particularly in the siege of 
 Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where he found at least 
 a the usand of the inhabitants shut up together in the great church : 
 every one of whom was killed by his soldiers, *.sually known as 
 Oliver's Ironsides. There were numbers of friars and priests among 
 them, and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his despatch that these were 
 " knocked on the head " like the rest. 
 
 But, Charles having got over to Scotland where tho men of the 
 Solemn League and Covenant led him a prodigiously dull life and 
 made him vory weary with long sermons and grim Sundays, tho 
 Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver home to knock tho Scottish 
 men on the head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his son-in- 
 law, Ireton, as general in Iroland in his stead / he died there after- 
 wards), and he imitated tho example of his father-in-law with such 
 good will that he brought tho country to subjection, and laid it at tho 
 feet of the Parliament. In tho end, they passed an act for tho 
 settlement of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common people, 
 but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier sort as had been 
 concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing of Protestants, or who 
 refused to lay down their arms. Great numbers of Irish were got 
 out of tho country to serve under Catholic powers abroad, and a 
 quantity of land was declared to have been forfeited by past offences, 
 and was given to people who had lent money to the Parliament early 
 in tho war. These were sweeping measures; but, if Oliver Cromwell 
 bad had his own way fully, and had stayed in Ireland, ho would havo 
 done more yet. 
 
 However, as I have said, tho Parliament wanted Oliver for Scot- 
 land ; so, homo Oliver came, and was made Commander of all tho 
 Forces of the Commonwealth of England, and in throe days away ho 
 went with sixteen thousand soldiers to light the Scottish men. Now,
 
 620 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the Scottish men, being then as you will generally find them now 
 mighty cautious, reflected that the troops they had, were not used to 
 war like the Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight. 
 Therefore they said, " If we lie quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh 
 here, and if all the farmers come into the town and desert the 
 country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron hunger and bo 
 forced to go away." This was, no doubt, the wisest plan ; but as tho 
 Scottish clergy icould interfere with what they knew nothing about, 
 and would perpetually preach long sermons exhorting the soldiers to 
 come out and fight, the soldiers got it in their heads that they 
 absolutely must come out and fight. Accordingly, in an evil hour 
 for themselves, they came out of their safe position. Oliver fell upon 
 them instantly, and killed three thousand, and took ten thousand 
 prisoners. 
 
 To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their favour, 
 Charles had signed a declaration they laid before him, reproaching 
 the memory of his father and mother, and representing himself as a 
 most religious Prince, to whom the Solemn League and Covenant 
 was as dear as life. He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon after- 
 wards galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome Highland 
 friends, who were always flourishing dirks and broadswords. Ho 
 was overtaken and induced to return ; but this attempt, which was 
 called " The Start," did him just so much service, that they did 
 not preach quite such long sermons at him afterwards as they had 
 done before. 
 
 On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and fifty-one, tho 
 Scottish people crowned him at Scone. Ho immediately took the 
 chief command of an army of twenty thousand men, and marched to 
 Stirling. His hopes were heightened, I dare say, by the redoubtablo 
 Oliver being ill of an ague ; but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no 
 time, and went to work with such energy that he got behind the 
 Royalist army and cut it off from all communication with Scotland. 
 There was nothing for it then, but to go on to England ; so it went 
 on as far as Worcester, where the mayor and some of the gentry pro- 
 claimed King Charles the Second straightway. His proclamation, 
 however, was of little use to him, for very few Royalists appeared ; 
 and, on the very same day, two people were publicly beheaded on 
 Tower Hill for espousing his cause. Up came Oliver to Worcester 
 too, at double quick speed, and he and his Ironsides so laid about 
 them in the great battle which was fought there, that they completely 
 beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the Royalist army ; though the 
 Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took five hours to do. 
 
 The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did him good 
 service long afterwards, for it induced many of the generous English 
 people to take a romantic Interest in him, and to think much better 
 of him than he ever deserved. He fled in the night, with not more 
 than sixty followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in Staffordshire,
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 621 
 
 'There, for his greater safety, the whole Bixty left him. lie cropped 
 his hair, stained his face and Lauds brown as if they were sunburnt, 
 put on the clothes of a labouring countryman, and went out in the 
 morning with his axe in his band, accompanied by four wood-cutters 
 who were brothers, and another man who was their brother-in-law. 
 These good fellows made a bed for him under a tree, as the weather 
 was very bad ; and the wife of one of them brought him food to eat ; 
 and the old mother of the four brothers came and fell down on her 
 knees before him in the wood, and thanked God that her sons wore 
 engaged in saving his life. At night, he came out of the forest and 
 went on to another house which was near the river Severn, with tho 
 intention of passing into Wales ; but the place swarmed with soldiers, 
 and the bridges were guarded, and all the boats were made fast. So, 
 after lying in a hayloft covered over with hay, for some time, he came 
 out of his place, attended by Colonel Careless, a Catholic gentleman 
 who had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all next day, up 
 in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It was lucky for the King 
 that it was September-time, and that the leaves had not begun to fall, 
 since he and the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could catch glimpses 
 of the soldiers riding about below, and could hear the crash in the 
 wood as they went about beating the boughs. 
 
 After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all blistered ; 
 and, having been concealed all one day in a house which was searched 
 by the troopers while he was there, went with Lord Wilmot, another 
 of his good friends, to a place called Bentley, where one Miss Lane, 
 a Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to he allowed to ride through 
 the guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a 
 servant, he rode in the saddle before this young lady to the house of 
 Sik John Winter, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain 
 country gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir 
 John Winter's butler had been servant in Richmond Palace, and knew 
 Charles the moment he set eyes upon him ; but, the butler was faith- 
 ful and kept the secret. As no ship could be found to carry him 
 abroad, it was planned that he should go- still travelling with Miss 
 Lane as her servant to another house, at Trent near Slierborne in 
 Dorsetshire ; and then Miss Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelleh, 
 who had gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home. I 
 hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin, for I am suro sho 
 must have been a brave kind girl. If I had been that cousin, 1 should 
 certainly have loved Miss Lane. 
 
 When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe at Trent, 
 a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which engaged to take two 
 gentlemen to France. In the evening of the same day, the Kin^' 
 now riding as servant before another young lady set off for a public- 
 house at a place called Charmouth, where; the captain of the vessel 
 was to tako him on board. But, tho captain's wife, being afraid of 
 her husband getting into trouble, locked him up and would not let
 
 622 A Child's History of England. 
 
 him sail. Then they went away to Bridport ; and, coming to the inn 
 thore, found the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the look-out 
 for Charles, and who talked about him while they drank. He had 
 such presence of mind, that he led the horses of his party through the 
 yard as any other servant might have done, and said, " Come out of 
 the way, you soldiers ; let us have room to pass here ! " As he went 
 along, he met a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed his eyes and said to 
 him, "Why, I was formerly servant to Mr. Potter at Exeter, and 
 surely I have sometimes seen you there, young man ? " He certainly 
 had, for Charles had lodged there. His ready answer was, " Ah, I 
 did live with him once ; but I have no time to talk now. Well have 
 a pot of beer together when I come back." 
 
 From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay there 
 concealed several days. Then he escaped to Heale, near Salisbury ; 
 where, in the house of a widow lady, he was hidden five days, until 
 the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to 
 convey a " gentleman " to France. On the night of the fifteenth of 
 October, accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, the King rode 
 to Brighton, then a little fishing village, to give the captain of the 
 ship a supper before going on board ; but, so many people knew him, 
 that this captain knew him too, and not only he, but the landlord and 
 landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord came behind his 
 chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to be a lord and to 
 see his wife a lady; at which Charles laughed. They had had a 
 good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, at 
 which the King was a first-rate hand ; so, the captain assured him 
 that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed that the 
 captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should address 
 the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running away 
 from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join him in per- 
 suading the captain to put him ashore in France. As the King acted 
 his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings to 
 drink, they begged the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman 
 asked. He pretended to yield to their entreaties, and the King got 
 safe to Normandy. 
 
 Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of 
 forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parliament would have 
 gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting with any foreign enemy 
 went, but for getting into trouble with the Dutch, who in the spring 
 of the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet into 
 the Downs under their Admiral Van Tkomp, to call upon the bold 
 English Admiral Blake (who was there with half as many ships as 
 the Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a raging broadside instead, 
 and beat off Van Tromp ; who, in the autumn, came back again with 
 seventy ships, and challenged the bold Blake who still was only half 
 as strong to fight him. Blake fought him all day; but, finding that 
 the Dutch were too many for him, got quietly off at night. What
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 62$ 
 
 does Van Tronip upon this, but goes cruising aud boasting about tho 
 Channel, between the North Foreland and the Islo of "Wight, with a 
 great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he could and 
 would sweep the English off tho sea ! Within three months, Blake 
 lowered his tone though, and his broom too ; for, he and two other 
 bold commanders, Dean and Monk, fought him three whole days, 
 took twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to pieces, and 
 settled his business. 
 
 Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began to complain 
 to tho Parliament that they were not governing the nation properly, 
 and to hint that they thought they could do it better themselves. 
 Oliver, who had now made up his mind to be the head of the state, or 
 nothing at all, supported them in this, and called a meeting of officers 
 and his own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to 
 consider the best way of getting rid of tho Parliament. It had now 
 lasted just as many years as the King's unbridled power had lasted, 
 before it came into existence. The end of the deliberation was, that 
 Oliver went down to the House in his usual plain black dress, with 
 his usual grey worsted stockings, but with an unusual party of soldiers 
 behind him. These last he left in the lobby, and then went in and 
 sat down. Presently ho got up, made the Parliament a speech, told 
 them that the Lord had done with them, stamped his foot and said, 
 ,J You are no Parliament. Bring them in ! Bring them in ! " At 
 this signal the door flew open, and the soldiers appeared. " This is 
 not honest," said Sir Harry Vane, one of the members. " Sir Harry 
 Vane ! " cried Cromwell ; " 0, Sir Harry Vane ! The Lord deliver 
 me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Then he pointed out members one by 
 one, and said this man was a drunkard, aud that man a dissipated 
 fellow, and that man a liar, and so on. Then he caused the Speaker 
 to be walked out of his chair, told the guard to clear the House, called 
 the mace upon the table which is a sign that the House is sitting 
 " a fool's bauble," and said, " here, carry it away ! " Being obeyed in 
 all theso orders, he quietly locked the door, put the key in his pocket, 
 walked back to Whitehall again, and told his friends, who were still 
 assembled there, what he had done. 
 
 They formed a new Council of State after this extraordinary pro- 
 ceeding, and got a new Parliament together in their own way : which 
 Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon, and which he said was the 
 beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this Parliament thero 
 sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken the singular name of 
 Praise God Barcboncs, and from whom it was called, for a joke, Barc- 
 bones's Parliament, though its general name was the Little Parliament. 
 As it soon appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first 
 place, it turned out to be not at all like tho beginning of heaven upon 
 earth, and Oliver said it really was not to be borne with. So ho 
 cleared off that Parliament in much the same way as he had disposed 
 of tho other; and then the council of officers decided that he must be
 
 624 -A Child's History of England. 
 
 made the supreme authority of the kingdom, undor the title of the 
 Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. 
 
 So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six hundred and 
 fifty-three, a great procession was formed at Oliver's door, and he 
 came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of boots, and got into 
 his coach and went down to Westminster, attended by the judges, and 
 the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other great and wonderful 
 personages of the country. There, in the Court of Chancery, he 
 publicly accepted the office of Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, 
 and the City sword Avas handed to him, and the seal was handed to 
 him, and all the other things were handed to him which are usually 
 handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions. When Oliver had 
 handed them all back, he was quite made and completely finished off 
 as Lord Protector ; and several of the Ironsides preached about it at 
 great length, all the evening. 
 
 Second Part. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell whom the people long called Old Noll in 
 accepting the office of Protector, had bound himself by a certain 
 paper which was handed to him, called " the Instrument," to summon 
 a Parliament, consisting of between four and five hundred members, 
 in the election of which neither the Eoyalists nor the Catholics were 
 to have any share. He had also pledged himself that this Parliament 
 should not be dissolved without its own consent until it had sat five 
 months. 
 
 When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to them of three 
 hours long, very wisely advising them what to do for the credit and 
 happiness of the country. To keep down the more violent members, 
 he required them to sign a recognition of what they were forbidden 
 by " the Instrument " to do ; which was, chiefly, to take the power 
 from one single person at the head of the state or to command tho 
 army. Then he dismissed them to go to work. With his usual 
 vigour and resolution he went to work himself with some frantic 
 preachers who were rather over-doing their sermons in calling him 
 a villain and a tyrant by shutting up their chapels, and sending a 
 few of them off to prison. 
 
 There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else, a man so 
 able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled 
 with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the Eoyalists (but 
 not until they had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the 
 times required. He caused England to be so respected abroad, that I 
 wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings 
 and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver 
 Cromwell's book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean 
 Sea, to make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for 
 injuries he had done to British subjects, and spoliation he had com-
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 625 
 
 mitted on English merchants. He furtbor despatched him and his 
 fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English ship and 
 every English man delivered up to him that had been taken by 
 pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously done ; and it began to 
 be thoroughly well known, all over the world, that England was 
 governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow the English name 
 to be insulted or slighted anywhere. 
 
 These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to sea 
 against the Dutch ; and the two powers, each with one hundred ships 
 upon its side, met in the English Channel off the North Foreland, 
 where the fight lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this fight ; 
 but Monk, who commanded in the same ship with him, threw his 
 cloak over his body, that the sailors might not know of his death, and 
 be disheartened. Nor were they. The English broadsides so ex- 
 ceedingly astonished the Dutch that they sheered off at last, though 
 the redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for 
 deserting their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets engaged again, 
 oft' the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van Tromp was shot 
 through the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and peace was made. 
 
 Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and 
 bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not only claimed a right to 
 all the gold and silver that could be found in South America, and 
 treated the ships of all other countries who visited those regions, as 
 pirates, but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons of 
 the Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English 
 ships must be free to go wherever they would, and that English 
 merchants must not be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for 
 the pleasure of all the priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish 
 ambassador replied that tho gold and silver country, and the Holy 
 Inquisition, were his King's two eyes, neither of which he could 
 submit to have put out. Very well, said Oliver, then he was afraid ho 
 (Oliver) must damage those two eyes directly. 
 
 So, another fleet was despatched under two commanders, Penn and 
 Vk.vablks, for Hispaniola ; whero, however, the Spaniards got the 
 better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet came home again, after 
 taking Jamaica on the way. Oliver, indignant with the two com- 
 manders who had not dono what bold Admiral Blake would have 
 done, clapped them both into prison, declared war against Spain, and 
 made a treaty with France, in virtue of which it was to shelter the 
 King and his brother the Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent a 
 fleet abroad under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the King of 
 Portugal to his senses -just to keep its hand in and then engaged 
 a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two more, laden with 
 silver to the value of two millions of pounds: which dazzling prizo 
 was brought from Portsmouth to London in waggons, with the 
 populace of all the towns and villages through which the waggons 
 passed, shouting with ull their might. After this victory, hold 
 
 1 a
 
 626 A Child's History of England. 
 
 Admiral Blake sailed away to the port of Santa Cruz to cut off the 
 Spanish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. There, he found them, 
 ten in number, with seven others to take care of them, and a big 
 castle, and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at him with 
 great guns. Blake cared no more for great guns than for pop-guns 
 no more for their hot iron balls than for snow- balls. He dashed into 
 the harbour, captured and burnt every one of the ships, and came 
 sailing out again triumphantly, with the victorious English flag flying 
 at his mast-head. This was the last triumph of this great commander, 
 who had sailed and fought until he was quite worn out. He died, as 
 his successful ship was coming into Plymouth Harbour amidst the 
 joyful acclamations of the people, and was buried in state in West- 
 minster Abbey. Not to lie there, long. 
 
 Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vaudois, or Pro- 
 testant people of the valleys of Lucerne, were insolently treated by 
 the Catholic powers, and were even put to death for their religion, in 
 an audacious and bloody manner. Instantly, he informed those 
 powers that this was a thing which Protestant England would not 
 allow ; and he speedily carried his point, through the might of his 
 great name, and established their right to worship God in peace after 
 their own harmless manner. 
 
 Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fighting with the 
 French against the Spaniards, that, after they had assaulted the town 
 of Dunkirk together, the French King in person gave it up to the 
 English, that it might be a token to them of their might and valour. 
 
 There were plots enough against Oliver among the frantic religionists 
 (who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men), and among the dis- 
 appointed Republicans. He had a difficult game to play, for the 
 Royalists were always ready to side with either party against him. The 
 " King over the water," too, as Charles was called, had no scruples 
 about plotting with any one against his life ; although there is reason to 
 suppose that he would willingly have married one of his daughters, if 
 Oliver would have had such a son-in-law. There was a certain Colonei, 
 Saxby of the army, once a great supporter of Oliver's but now turned 
 against him, who was a grievous trouble to him through all this part 
 of his career ; and who came and went between the discontented in 
 England and Spain, and Charles who put himself in alliance with Spain 
 on being thrown off by France. This man died in prison at last ; but 
 not until there had been very serious plots between the Boyalists and 
 Bepublicans, and an actual rising of them in England, when they 
 burst into the city of Salisbury on a Sunday night, seized the judges 
 who were going to hold the assizes there next day, and would have 
 hanged them but for the merciful objections of the more temperate of 
 their number. Oliver was so vigorous and shrewd that he soon put 
 this revolt down, as he did most other conspiracies ; and it was well 
 for ono of its chief managers that same Lord Wilmot who had 
 assisted in Charles's flight, and was now Eakl of Rochester that he
 
 Oliver Cromwell, 627 
 
 made his escape. Oliver seemed to Lave eyes and ears everywhere, 
 and secured such sources of information as his enemies little dreamed 
 of. There was a chosen body of six persons, called tho Sealed Knot, 
 who were in the closest and most secret confidence of Charles. One 
 of the foremost of these very men, a Sir Richard Willis, reported to 
 Oliver everything that passed among them, and had two hundred a 
 year for it. 
 
 Miles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another conspirator 
 against the Protector. He and a man named Cecil, bribed one of his 
 Life Guards to let them have good notice when he was going out 
 intending to shoot him from a window. But, owing either to his 
 caution or his good fortune, they could never get an aim at him. 
 Disappointed in this design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall, 
 with a basketful of combustibles, which were to explode by means of 
 a slow match in six hours ; then, in the noise and confusion of the 
 fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But, tho Lifo Guardsman himself 
 disclosed this !plot ; and they were seized, and Miles died (or killed 
 himself in prison) a little while before he was ordered for execution. 
 A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few more to bo 
 hanged, and many more, including those who rose in arms against 
 him, to bo sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he were rigid, ho 
 was impartial too, in asserting the laws of England. When a 
 Portuguese nobleman, the brother of tho Portuguese ambassador, 
 killed a London citizen in mistake for another man with whom he had 
 had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of English- 
 men and foreigners, and had him executed in spito of tho entreaties of 
 all the ambassadors in London. 
 
 One of Oliver's own friends, the Duke of Oldenburgh, in sending 
 him a present of six fine coach-horses, was very near doing more to 
 please tho Royalists than all the plotters put together. One day, 
 Oliver went with his coach, drawn by these six horses, into Hydo 
 Park, to dino with his secretary and some of his other gentlemen 
 under the trees there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into his 
 head to put his friends inside and to drive them home : a postillion 
 riding one of the foremost horses, as the custom was. On account of 
 Oliver's being too free with tho whip, the six fine horses went off at a 
 gallop, the postillion got thrown, and Oliver fell upon the coach-polo 
 and narrowly escaped being shot by his own pistol, which got 
 entangled with his clothes in the harness, and went off. Ho was 
 draped some distance by the foot, until his foot came out of the shoo, 
 and then ho came safely to the ground under tho broad body of tho 
 coach, and was very lfttle tho worse. The gentlemen insido were only 
 bruised, and tho discontented people of all parties were much dis- 
 appointed. 
 
 The rest of the history of (lie Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell is a 
 history of his Parliaments. His first one not pleasing him at all. he 
 waited until the five months were out, and then dissolved it. The
 
 628 A ChilcPs History of England. 
 
 next was better suited to his views ; and from that he desired to get 
 if he could with safety to himself the title of King. He had had 
 this in his mind some time : whether because he thought that the 
 English people, being more used to the title, were more likely to obey 
 it ; or whether because he really wished to be a king himself, and to 
 leave the succession to that title in his family, is far from clear. He 
 was already as high, in England and in all the world, as he would 
 ever be, and I doubt if he cared for the mere name. However, a 
 paper, called the " Humble Petition and Advice," was presented to 
 him by the House of Commons, praying him to take a high title and 
 to appoint his successor. That he would have taken the title of King 
 there is no doubt, but for the strong opposition of the army. This 
 induced him to forbear, and to assent only to the other points of the 
 petition. Upon which occasion there was another grand show in 
 Westminster Hall, when the Speaker of the House of Commons 
 formally invested him with a purple robe lined with ermine, and 
 presented him with a splendidly bound Bible, and put a golden 
 sceptre in his hand. The next time the Parliament met, he called a 
 House of Lords of sixty members, as the petition gave him power to 
 do ; but as that Parliament did not please him either, and would not 
 proceed to the business of the country, he jumped into a coach one 
 morning, took six Guards with him, and sent them to the right-about. 
 I wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to avoid long speeches, 
 and do more work. 
 
 It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred and fifty- 
 eight, when Oliver Cromwell's favourite daughter, Elizabeth Clay- 
 fole (who had lately lost her youngest son), lay very ill, and his mind 
 was greatly troubled, because he loved her dearly. Another of his 
 daughters was married to Lord Falconberg, another to the grandson 
 of the Earl of Warwick, and he had made his son Eichard one of the 
 Members of the Upper House. He was very kind and loving to them 
 all, being a good father and a good husband ; but he loved this 
 daughter the best of the family, and went down to Hampton Court to 
 see her, and could hardly be induced to stir from her sick room until 
 she died. Although his religion had been of a gloomy kind, his dis- 
 position had been always cheerful. He had been fond of music in his 
 home, and had kept open table once a week for all officers of the army 
 not below the rank of captain, and had always preserved in his house 
 a quiet sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius and learning, 
 and loved to have them about him. Miltox was one of his great 
 friends. He was good humoured too, with the nobility, whoso dresses 
 and manners were very different from his ; and to show them what 
 good information he had, he would sometimes jokingly tell them when 
 they were his guests, where they had last drunk the health of the 
 " King over the water," and would recommend them to be more 
 private (if they could) another time. But he had lived in busy times, 
 had borne the weight of heavy State affairs, and had often gone in fear
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 629 
 
 of his life. He was ill of the gout and ague ; and when the death of 
 his beloved child came upon him in addition, he sank, never to raise 
 his head again. He told his physicians on the twenty-fourth of 
 August that the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in that 
 illness, and that he would certainly get better. This was only his 
 sick fancy, for on the third of September, which was the anniversary 
 of the great battle of Worcester, and the day of the year which he 
 called his fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth year of his age. He 
 had been delirious, and had lain insensible some hours, but he had 
 been overheard to murmur a very good prayer the day before. Tho 
 wholo country lamented his death. If you want to know the real 
 worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his country, you 
 can hardly do better than compare England under him, with England 
 under Charles the Second. 
 
 He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and after there 
 had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a lying in state more 
 splendid than sensible as all such vanities after death are, I think 
 Richard became Lord Protector. He was an amiable country gentle- 
 man, but had none of his father's great genius, and was quite unfit for 
 such a post in such a storm of parties. Richard's Protectorate, which 
 only lasted a year and a half, is a history of quarrels between tho 
 officers of the army and tho Parliament, and between the officers 
 among themselves ; and of a growing discontent among the people, 
 who had far too many long sermons and far too few amusements, and 
 wanted a change. At last, General Monk got the army well into his 
 own hands, and then in pursuance of a secret plan he seems to have 
 entertained from the time of Oliver's death, declared for the King's 
 cause. He did not do this openly ; but, in his place in the House of 
 Commons, as one of the members for Devonshire, strongly advocated 
 the proposals of one Sin John Greenville, who came to the House 
 with a letter from Charles, dated from Breda, and with whom he had 
 previously been in secret communication. There had been plots and 
 counterplots, and a recall of the last members of the Long Parliament, 
 and an end of tho Long Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that 
 were made too soon ; and most men being tired out, and there being 
 no one to head the country now great Oliver was dead, it was readily 
 agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better 
 members said what was most true that in the letter from Breda, ho 
 gave no real promise to govern well, and that it would be best to 
 make him pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be bound 
 to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, it would 
 be all right when he came, and he could not come too soon. 
 
 So, everybody found ont all in a moment that tin; country must bo 
 prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to condescend to reign 
 over it ; and there was a prodigious filing off of guns, lighting of 
 bonfires, ringing of bells, and throwing up of caps. Tho people drunk 
 the King's health by thousands in the open streets, and everybody
 
 630 A Child's History of England. 
 
 rejoiced. Down came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the 
 Eoyal Arms instead, and out came the public money. Fifty thousand 
 pounds for the King, ten thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of 
 York, five thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of Gloucester. 
 Prayers for these gracious Stuarts were put up in all the churches ; 
 commissioners were sent to Holland (which suddenly found out that 
 Charles was a great man, and that it loved him) to invite the King 
 home ; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover, to kneel down 
 before him as he landed. He kissed and embraced Monk, made him 
 ride in the coach with himself and his brothers, came on to London 
 amid wonderful shoutings, and passed through the army at Blackheath 
 on the twenty-ninth of May (his birthday), in the year one thousand 
 six hundred and sixty. Greeted by splendid dinners under tents, by 
 flags and tapestry streaming from all the houses, by delighted crowds 
 in all the streets, by troops of noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, 
 by City companies, train-bands, drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord 
 Mayor, and the majestic Aldermen, the King went on to Whitehall. 
 On entering it, he commemorated his Restoration with the joke that 
 it really would seem to have been his own fault that he had not come 
 long ago, since everybody told him that he had always wished for him 
 with all his heart. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH. 
 
 There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles 
 the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy ill- 
 looking face and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court at 
 Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the 
 kingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, 
 indulging in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of 
 profligate excess. It has been a fashion to call Charles the Second 
 " The Merry Monarch." Let me try to give you a general idea of 
 some of the merry things that were done, in the merry days when this 
 merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry England. 
 
 The first merry proceeding was of course to declare that he was 
 one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone, 
 like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The next merry 
 and pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest 
 manner, to give him ono million two hundred thousand pounds a year, 
 and to settle upon him for life that old disputed tonnage and poundage 
 which had been so bravely fought for. Then, General Monk, being 
 made Earl of Albemarle, and a few other Royalists similarly re-
 
 diaries the Second. 631 
 
 warded, the law went to work to see what was to be done to those 
 persons (they were called Kegicides) who had been concerned in 
 making a martyr of the late King. Ten of these were merrily 
 executed ; that is to say, six of the judges, one of the council, Colonel 
 Hacker and another officer who had commanded the Guards, and 
 Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached against tho martyr with 
 all his heart. These executions were so extremely merry, that every 
 horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned was revived 
 with appalling cruelty. The hearts of tho sufferers were torn out of 
 their living bodies ; their bowels were burned before their faces ; the 
 executioner cut jokes to the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands 
 together, that were reeking with the blood of the last ; and the heads 
 of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living to the place of 
 suffering. Still, even so merry a monarch could not forco one of theso 
 dying men to say that he was sorry for what he had done. Nay, the 
 most memorable thing said among them was, that if the thing were to 
 do again they would do it. 
 
 Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against Strafford, 
 and was one of the most staunch of the Eepublicans, was also tried, 
 found guilty, and ordered for execution. When he came upon tho 
 scaffold on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence with great 
 power, his notes of what he had meant to say to tho people were torn 
 away from him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound 
 lustily and drown his voice ; for, the people had been so much im- 
 pressed by what the Regicides had calmly said with their last breath, 
 that it was the custom now, to have the drums and trumpets always 
 under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more than this : 
 " It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying man ; " 
 and bravely died. 
 
 These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even 
 merrier. On the anniversary of the late King's death, the bodies of 
 Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradsliaw, were torn out of their graves 
 in Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows 
 all day long, and then beheaded. Imagino the head of Oliver 
 Cromwell set upon a pole to bo stared at by a brutal crowd, not one 
 of whom would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for 
 half a moment ! Think, after you have read this reigu, what England 
 was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave, and what 
 it was under this merry monarch who sold it, liko a merry Judas, 
 over and over again. 
 
 Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife .and daughter wcro not to be 
 spared either, though they had been most excellent women. The base 
 clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in tho 
 Abbey, and to the eternal disgrace of England they were thrown 
 into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of I'ym and of the 
 brave and bold old Admiral Blake. 
 
 Tho clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get
 
 632 A Child's History of England. 
 
 the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in this reign, 
 and to have but one prayer-book and one service for all kinds of 
 people, no matter what their private opinions were. This was pretty 
 well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the Romish 
 Church because people had a right to their own opinions in religious 
 matters. However, they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer- 
 book was agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop 
 Laud were not forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing any 
 dissenter from holding any office under any corporation. So, the 
 regular clergy in their triumph were soon as merry as the King. The 
 army being by this time disbanded, and the King crowned, everything 
 was to go on easily for evermore. 
 
 I must say a word here about the King's family. He had not been 
 long upon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and 
 his sister the Princess of Orange, died within a few months of each 
 other, of small-pox. His remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, 
 married the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis the Fourteenth, 
 King of France. His brother James, Duke of York, was made High 
 Admiral, and by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy sullen 
 bilious sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women 
 in the country. He married, under very discreditable circumstances, 
 Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon, then the King's prin- 
 cipal Minister not at all a delicate minister either, but doing much 
 of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became important now 
 that the King himself should be married ; and divers foreign Monarchs, 
 not very particular about the character of their son-in-law, proposed 
 their daughters to him. The King of Portugal offered his daughter, 
 Catherine of Braganza, and fifty thousand pounds : in addition to 
 which, the French King, who was favourable to that match, offered a 
 loan of another fifty thousand. The King of Spain, on the other hand, 
 offered any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes of gain. 
 But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine came over in 
 state to her merry marriage. 
 
 The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men and 
 shameless women ; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and out- 
 raged her in every possible way, until she consented to receive those 
 worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself 
 by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady 
 Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the 
 most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great 
 influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry 
 lady named Moll Da vies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her 
 rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange girl and then an actress, 
 who really had good in her, and of whom one of the worst things I 
 know is, that actually she does seem to have been fond of the King. 
 The first Duke of St. Albans was this orange girl's child. In like 
 manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created
 
 Charles the Second. 633 
 
 Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke of Richmond. Upon the 
 whole it is not so bad a thing to bo a commoner. 
 
 The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry 
 ladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords and 
 gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred thousand pounds, 
 and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a merry 
 bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of 
 livrcs. When I think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised 
 England in the eyes of foreign powers, and when I think of the 
 manner in which he gained for England this very Dunkirk, I am 
 much inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch had been mado 
 to follow his father for this action, he would have received his just 
 deserts. 
 
 Though he was like his father in none of that father's greater 
 qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When he sent 
 that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he did expressly promise 
 that all sincere religious opinions should be respected. Yet he was 
 no sooner firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst 
 Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under this law, every minister who 
 should not give his solemn assent to the Prayer-Book by a certain 
 day, was declared to be a minister no longer, and to be deprived of 
 his church. The consequence of this was that some two thousand 
 honest men were taken from their congregations, and reduced to dire 
 poverty and distress. It was followed by another outrageous law, 
 called the Conventicle Act, by which any person abovo the age of 
 sixteen who was present at any religious service not according to tho 
 Prayer-Book, was to be imprisoned threo months for the first offence, 
 six for tho second, and to be transported for tho third. This Act 
 alone filled the prisons, which were then most dreadful dungeons, to 
 overflowing. 
 
 The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better. A base 
 Parliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament, in conse- 
 quence of its principal members being Gcldom sober, had been got 
 together to make laws against the Covenanters, and to force all men 
 to be of one mind in religious matters. The Makqi-is of Argyle, 
 relying on the King's honour, had given himself up to him ; but, ho 
 was wealthy, and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was tried for 
 treason, on the evidence of somo private letters in which ho had ex- 
 pressed opinions as well ho might more favourable to the govern- 
 ment of tlto late Lord Protector than of the present merry and 
 religious King. He was executed, as were two men of mark among 
 tho Covenanters ; and Sharp, a traitor who had onco been the friend 
 of the Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop of St. 
 Andrew's, to teach tho Scotch how to like bishops. 
 
 Things being in this merry state at homo, tho Merry Monarch 
 undertook a war with the Dutch ; principally because they interfered 
 with an African company, established with the two objects of buying
 
 634 A Child's History of England. 
 
 gold-dust and slaves, of which the Duke of York was a leading 
 member. After some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to 
 the coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, and 
 four fire-ships. This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than 
 one hundred and thirteen ships. In the great battle between the two 
 forces, the Dutch lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven thou- 
 sand men. But, the English on shore were in no mood of exultation 
 when they heard the news. 
 
 For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in London. 
 During the winter of one thousand six hundred and sixty-four it had 
 been whispered about, that some few people had died here and there 
 of the disease called the Plague, in some of the unwholesome suburbs 
 around London. News was not published at that time as it is now, 
 and some people believed these rumours, and some disbelieved them, 
 and they were soon forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thou- 
 sand six hundred and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the town 
 that the disease had burst out with great violence in St. Giles's, and 
 that the people were dying in great numbers. This soon turned out 
 to be awfully true. The roads out of London were choked up by 
 people endeavouring to escape from the infected city, and large sums 
 were paid for any kind of conveyance. The disease soon spread so 
 fast, that it was necessary to shut up the houses in which sick people 
 were, and to cut them off from communication with the living. Every 
 one of these houses was marked on the outside of the door with a red 
 cross, and the words, Lord, have mercy upon us ! The streets were 
 all deserted, grass grew in the public ways, and there was a dreadful 
 silence in the air. When night came on, dismal rumblings used to 
 be heard, and these were the wheels of the death-carts, attended by 
 men with veiled faces and holding cloths to their mouths, who rang 
 doleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn voice, " Bring out your 
 dead ! " The corpses put into these carts were buried by torchlight 
 in great pits ; no service being performed over them ; all men being 
 afraid to stay for a moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. In 
 the general fear, children ran away from their parents, and parents 
 from their children. Some who were taken ill, died alone, and with- 
 out any help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses who 
 robbed them of all their money, and stole the very beds on which they 
 lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran through the 
 streets, and in their pain and frenzy flung themselves into the river. 
 
 These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked and 
 dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing roaring 
 songs, and were stricken as they drank, and went out and died. The 
 fearful and superstitious persuaded themselves that they saw super- 
 natural sights burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and darts. 
 Others pretended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts walked round 
 and round the dismal pits. One madman, naked, and carrying a 
 brazier full of burning coals upon his head, stalked through the
 
 Charles the Second. 635 
 
 streets, crying out that he was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce 
 the vengeance of the Lord on wicked London. Another always went 
 to and fro, exclaiming, " Yet forty days, and London shall be de- 
 stroyed ! " A third awoke the echoes in the dismal streets, by night 
 and by day, and made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling out 
 incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, " 0, the great and dreadful God ! " 
 
 Through the months of July and August and September, the Great 
 Plague raged more and more. Great fires were lighted in the streets, 
 in the hope of stopping the infection ; but there was a plague of rain 
 too, and it beat the fires out. At last, the winds which usually arise 
 at that time of the year which is called the equinox, when day and 
 night are of equal length all over the world, began to blow, and 
 to purify the wretched town. The deaths began to decrease, the red 
 crosses slowly to^disappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, 
 pale frightened faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague had 
 been in every part of England, but in close and unwholesome London 
 it had killed one hundred thousand people. 
 
 All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and as 
 worthless as ever. All this time, the debauched lords and gentlemon 
 and the shameless ladies danced and gamed and drank, and loved and 
 hated one another, according to their merry ways. So little humanity 
 did the government learn from the late affliction, that one of the first 
 things the Parliament did when it met at Oxford (being as yet afraid 
 to come to London), was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, 
 expressly directed against those poor ministers who, in the time of 
 the Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the unhappy people. 
 This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in any school, or to 
 come within five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed them to 
 starvation and death. 
 
 The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France was 
 now in alliance with the Dutch, though his navy was chiefly employed 
 in looking on while the English and Dutch fought. The Dutch 
 gained one victory ; and the English gained another and a greater ; 
 and Prince Pupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the 
 Channel one windy night, looking for the French Admiral, with the 
 intention of giving him something more to do than he had had yet, 
 when the gale increased to a storm, and blew him into Saint Helen's. 
 That night was the third of September, one thousand six hundred and 
 sixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London. 
 
 It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on the spot on 
 which the Monument now stands as a remembrance of those raging 
 flames. It spread and spread, and burned and burned, for three days. 
 The nights wero lighter than the days; in the day-time there was 
 an immense cloud of smoke, and in the night-time there was a 
 great tower of fire mounting up into tlie sky, which lighted the 
 whole country landscape for ten miles round. Showers of hot ashes 
 rose into the air and foil on distant places ; flying sparks carried the
 
 636 A Child's History of England. 
 
 conflagration to great distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots 
 at a time ; church steeples fell down with tremendous crashes ; 
 houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and the thousand. 
 The summer had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were very 
 narrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothing 
 could stop the tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to burn ; 
 nor did it stop until the whole way from the Tower to Temple Bar 
 was a desert, composed of the ashes of thirteen thousand houses and 
 eighty-nine churches. 
 
 This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned great loss 
 and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who 
 were obliged to lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in 
 hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were 
 rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as they tried 
 to save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to the City 
 afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved built 
 more regularly, more widely, more cleanly and carefully, and there- 
 fore much more healthily. It might be far more healthy than it is, 
 but there are some people in it still even now, at this time, nearly 
 two hundred years later so selfish, so pig-headed, and so ignorant, 
 that I doubt if even another Great Fire would warm them up to do 
 their duty. 
 
 The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London in 
 flames ; one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even 
 accused himself of having with his own hand fired the first house. 
 There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. 
 An inscription on the Monument long attributed it to the Catholics ; 
 but it is removed now, and was always a malicious and stupid un- 
 truth. 
 
 Second Pakt. 
 
 That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, in the merry 
 times when his people were suffering under pestilence and fire, he 
 drank and gambled and flung away among his favourites the money 
 which the Parliament had voted for the war. The consequence of 
 this was that the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving 
 of want, and dying in the streets ; while the Dutch, under their 
 admirals De Witt and De Euyteh, came into the River Thames, and 
 up the River Med way as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships, 
 silenced the weak batteries, and did what they would to the English 
 coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships that could 
 have prevented them had neither powder nor shot on board ; in this 
 merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as the King did 
 with the public money ; and when it was entrusted to them to spend 
 in national defences or preparations, they put it into their own 
 pockets with the merriest grace in the world.
 
 Charles the Second. 6$? 
 
 Lord Clarendon had, by this time, ran as long a course as is usually 
 allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings. He was im- 
 peached by his political opponents, but unsuccessfully. The King 
 then commanded him to withdraw from England and retire to France, 
 which he did, after defending himself in writing. He was no great 
 loss at home, and died abroad some seven years afterwards. 
 
 There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal Ministry, 
 because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the Earl of Arlington, 
 the Duke of Buckingham (a great rascal, and the King's most power- 
 ful favourite), Lord Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. l 
 As the French were making conquests in Flanders, the first Cabal 
 proceeding was to make a treaty with tho Dutch, for uniting with 
 Spain to oppose the French. It was no sooner made than tho Merry 
 Monarch, who always wanted to get money without being accountable 
 to a Parliament for his expenditure, apologised to the King of Franco 
 for having had anything to do with it, and concluded a secret treaty 
 with him, making himself his infamous pensioner to the amount of 
 two millions of livres down, and three millions more a year ; and 
 engaging to desert that very Spain, to make war against those very 
 Dutch, and to declaro himself a Catholic when a convenient time 
 should arrive. This religious king had lately been crying to his 
 Catholic brother on the subject of his strong desire to be a Catholic ; 
 and now he merrily concluded this treasonable conspiracy against tho 
 country he governed, by undertaking to become one as soon as ho 
 safely could. For all of which, though he had had ten merry heads 
 instead of one, he richly deserved to lose them by the headsman's axe. 
 
 As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if these 
 things had been known, they were kept very quiet, and war was 
 declared by France and England against tho Dutch. But, a very 
 uncommon man, afterwards most important to English history and to 
 tho religion and liberty of this land, arose among them, and for many 
 long years defeated tho whole projects of France. This was William 
 of Nassau, Prince of Orange, son of the last Prince of Orange of the 
 same name, who married the daughter of ( 'harles the First of England. 
 He was a young man at this time, only just of age ; but he was brave, 
 cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had been so detested that, upon 
 his death, the Dutch had abolished the authority to which this son 
 would have otherwise succeeded (Stadtholdcr it was called), and 
 placed tho chief power in the hands of John de Witt, who educated 
 this young prince. Now, the Prince becanio very popular, and John 
 de Witt's brother Cornelius was sentenced to banishment on a false 
 accusation of conspiring to kill him. John went to the prison where 
 he was, to take him away to exile, in his coach ; and a great mob who 
 collected on the occasion, then and there cruelly murdered both tho 
 brothers. This left the government in the hands of the Prince, who 
 was really the choice of the nation; and from this time he exercised 
 it with the greatest vigour, against the whole power of Franco, under
 
 6^8 A Child's History of England. 
 
 its famous generals Conde and Turenne, and in support of the 
 Protestant religion. It was full seven years before this war ended in 
 a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and its details would occupy a 
 very considerable space. It is enough to say that William of Orange 
 established a famous character with the whole world ; and that tho 
 Merry Monarch, adding to and improving on his former baseness, 
 bound himself to do everything the King of France liked, and 
 nothing the King of France did not like, for a pension of one hundred 
 thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled. Besides this, 
 tbc King of France, by means of his corrupt ambassador who wrote 
 accounts of his proceedings in England, which are not always to be 
 believed, I think bought our English members of Parliament, as he 
 wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a considerable portion of 
 this merry reign, the King of France was the real King of this 
 country. 
 
 But there was a better time to come, and it was to come (though his 
 royal uncle little thought so) through that very "William, Prince of 
 Orange. He came over to England, saw Mary, the elder daughter of 
 tho Duke of York, and married her. We shall see by-and-by what 
 came of that marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten. 
 
 This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a Catholic. 
 She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, were the only survivors of 
 eight children. Anne afterwards married George, Prince of Den- 
 mark, brother to the King of that country. 
 
 Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of supposing 
 that he was even good humoured (except when he had everything his 
 own way), or that he was high spirited and honourable, I will mention 
 here what was done to a member of the House of Commons, Sir John 
 Coventry. He made a remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, 
 which gave the King offence. The King agreed with his illegitimate 
 son, who had been born abroad, and whom he had made Duke of 
 Monmouth, to take the following merry vengeance. To waylay him 
 at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to slit his nose with a penknife. 
 Like master, like man. The King's favourite, the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham, was strongly suspected of setting on an assassin to murder the 
 Duke of Ormond as he was returning home from a dinner ; and that 
 Duke's spirited son, Lord Ossory, was so persuaded of his guilt, that 
 he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside the King, " My lord, 
 I know very well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt upon 
 my father. But I give you warning, if he ever come to a violent end, 
 his blood shall bo upon you, and wherever I meet you I will pistol 
 you ! I will do so, though I find you standing behind the King's 
 chair ; and I tell you this in his Majesty's presence, that you may be 
 quite sure of my doing what I threaten." Those were merry times 
 indeed. 
 
 There was a fellow named Blood, who was seized for making, with 
 two companions, an audacious attempt to steal the crown, the globe,
 
 Charles the Second. 639 
 
 and sceptre, from the place -where the jewels were kept in tho Tower. 
 This robber, who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared that 
 he was the man who had endeavoured to kill the Duko of Ormond, 
 and that he had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by tho 
 majesty of his appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as 
 ho was bathing at Battersea. Tho King being but an ill-looking 
 fellow, I don't believe a word of this. Whether he was flattered, or 
 whether he knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on to murder 
 the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that he pardoned this 
 thief, gavo him an estate of five hundred a year in Ireland (which had 
 had the honour of giving him birth), and presented him at Court to 
 the debauched lords and the shameless ladies, who made a great deal 
 of him as I have no doubt they would have mado of the Devil him- 
 self, if the King had introduced him. 
 
 Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted money, and 
 consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In these, the great 
 object of tho Protestants was to thwart the Catholic Duke of York, 
 who married a second time ; his new wife being a young lady only 
 fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the Duke of Modena. In this 
 they were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to their own 
 disadvantage : since, to exclude Catholics from power, they were even 
 willing to exclude themselves. The King's object was to pretend to 
 be a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic ; to swear to tho 
 bishops that he was devoutly attached to the English Church, while 
 ho knew he had bargained it away to the King of France ; and by 
 cheating and deceiving them, and all who were attached to royalty, to 
 become despotic and be powerful enough to confess what a rascal ho 
 was. Meantime, the King of France, knowing his merry pensioner 
 well, intrigued with the King's opponents in Parliament, as well as 
 with the King and his friends. 
 
 Tho fears that the country had of the Catholic religion being 
 restored, if the Duke of York should come to tho throne, and the low 
 cunning of the King in pretending to share their alarms, led to somo 
 very terriblo results. A certain Dk. Tonge, a dull clergyman in the 
 City, fell into the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a most infamous 
 character, who pretended to have acquired among the Jesuits abroad 
 a knowledge of a great plot for the murder of tho King, and the re- 
 establishment of the Catholic religion. Titus Oatos, being produced 
 by this unlucky Dr. Tonge and solemnly examined before the council, 
 contradicted himself in a thousand ways, told the most ridiculous and 
 improbable stories, and implicated Coleman, the Secretary of tho 
 Duchess of York. Now, although what ho charged against Coleman 
 was not true, and although you and I know very well that tho real 
 dangerous ( 'atholic plot was that one with tho King of Franco of 
 which the Merry Monarch was himself the head, thero happened to 
 be found among Coleman's papers, somo leltors, in which ho did 
 praise the days of Bloody Queen Mary, and abuse the Protestant
 
 640 A Child's History of England. 
 
 religion. This was great good fortune for Titus, as it seemed to 
 confirm him ; but better still was in store. Sib Edmundbury Godfeey, 
 the magistrate who had first examined him, being unexpectedly found 
 dead near Primrose Hill, was confidently believed to have been killed 
 by the Catholics. I think there is no doubt that he had been 
 melancholy mad, and that he killed himself ; but he had a great 
 Protestant funeral, and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and 
 received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. 
 
 As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this success, up started 
 another villain, named William Bedloe, who, attracted by a reward 
 of five hundred pounds offered for the apprehension of the murderers 
 of Godfrey, came forward and charged two Jesuits and some other 
 persons with having committed it at the Queen's desire. Oates, going 
 into partnership with this new informer, had the audacity to accuse 
 the poor Queen herself of high treason. Then appeared a third 
 informer, as bad as either of the two, and accused a Catholic banker 
 named Stayley of having said that the King was the greatest rogue 
 iu the world (which would not have been far from the truth), and that 
 he would kill him with his own hand. This banker, being at once 
 tried and executed, Coleman and two others were tried and executed. 
 Then, a miserable wretch named Prance, a Catholic silversmith, 
 being accused by Bedloe, was tortured into confessing that he had 
 taken part in Godfrey's murder, and into accusing three other men 
 of having committed it. Then, five Jesuits were accused by Oates, 
 Bedloe, and Prance together, and were all found guilty, and executed 
 on the same kind of contradictory and absurd evidence. The Queen's 
 physician and three monks were next put on their trial ; but Oates 
 and Bedloe had for the time gone far enough, and these four were 
 acquitted. The public mind, however, was so full of a Catholic plot, 
 and so strong against the Duke of York, that James consented to obey 
 a written order from his brother, and to go with his family to Brussels, 
 provided that his rights should never be sacrificed in his absence to 
 the Duke of Monmouth. The House of Commons, not satisfied with 
 this as the King hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from ever 
 succeeding to the throne. In return, the King dissolved the Parlia- 
 ment. He had deserted his old favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, 
 who was now in the opposition. 
 
 To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in this merry 
 reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because the people would not 
 have bishops, and were resolved to stand by their solemn League and 
 Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted upon them as make the blood 
 run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through the country to punish 
 the peasants for deserting the churches ; sons were hanged up at their 
 fathers' doors for refusing to disclose where their fathers were con- 
 cealed ; wives were tortured to death for not betraying their husbands ; 
 people were taken out of their fields and gardens, and shot on the 
 public roads without trial ; lighted matches were tied to the fingers of
 
 Charles the Second. 641 
 
 prisoners, and a most horrible torment called the Boot was invented, 
 and constantly applied, which ground and mashed the victims' legs 
 with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners. All 
 the prisons were full ; all the gibbets wero heavy with bodies ; murder 
 and plunder devastated the whole country. In 6pito of all, the 
 Covenanters were by no means to be dragged into the churches, and 
 persisted in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of 
 ferocious Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains of their 
 own country, had no greater effect than the English dragoons under 
 Grahame of Claverhouse, the most cruel and rapacious of all their 
 enemies, whoso name will evor be cursed through the length and 
 breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted 
 all these outrages. But he fell at last ; for, when tho injuries of the 
 Scottish people were at their height, ho was seen, in his coach-and- 
 six coming across a moor, by a body of men, headed by one John 
 Balfour, who wero waiting for another of their oppressors. Upon 
 this they cried out that Heaven had delivered him into their hands, 
 and killed him with many wounds. If ever a man deserved such a 
 death, I think Archbishop Sharp did. 
 
 It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch strongly 
 suspected of having goaded the Scottish people on, that ho might 
 have an excuse for a greater army than the Parliament were willing 
 to give him sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth, as com- 
 mander-in-chief, with instructions to attack the Scottish rebels, or 
 Whigs as they were called, whenever he came up with them. March- 
 ing with ten thousand men from Edinburgh, he found them, in 
 number four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the 
 Clyde. They were soon dispersed ; and Monmouth showed a more 
 humane character towards them, than he had shown towards that 
 Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with a 
 penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their hitter foe, and sent 
 Claverhouse to finish them. 
 
 As the Duke of York became more and moro unpopular, the Duke 
 of Monmouth became more and more popular. It would have been 
 decent in the latter not to have voted in favour of the renewed bill for 
 the exclusion of James from the throne ; but he did so, much to the 
 King's amusement, who used to sit in the House of Lords by the fire, 
 hearing the debates, which ho said wero as good as a play. The 
 House of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and it was 
 carried up to the House of Lords by Loun Russell, one of the best 
 of the leaders on tho Protestant side. It was rejected there, chiefly 
 because the bishops helped the King to <?et rid of it ; and the fear of 
 1 'atholic plots revived again. There had been another got up, by a 
 fellow out of Newgate, named Dant.erfield, which is more famous 
 than it deserves to 1x5, under the name, of the Meal-Ti'R Plot. This 
 jail-bird having been got out of Newgato by a Mrs. Ci:i.i.ii:k. a 
 Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic himself, and pretended that he 
 
 '2 T
 
 642 A Child's History of England. 
 
 knew of a plot among the Presbyterians against the King's life. This 
 was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated the Presbyterians, 
 who returned the compliment. He gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, 
 and sent him to the King his brother. But Dangerfield, breaking 
 down altogether in his charge, and being sent back to Newgate, almost 
 astonished the Duke out of his five senses by suddenly swearing that 
 the Catholic nurse had put that false design into his head, and that 
 what he really knew about, was, a Catholic plot against the King ; 
 the evidence of which would be found in some papers, concealed in 
 a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's house. There they were, of course for 
 he had put them there himself and so the tub gave the name to the 
 plot. But, the nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to 
 nothing. 
 
 Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was 
 strong against the succession of the Duke of York. The House of 
 Commons, aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may well suppose, 
 by suspicions of the King's conspiracy with the King of France, made 
 a desperate point of the exclusion still, and were bitter against the 
 Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to say, 
 that they impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman 
 seventy years old, of a design to kill the King. The witnesses were 
 that atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same feather. He was 
 found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it was false, and was 
 beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were opposed to him when he 
 first appeared upon the scaffold ; but, when he had addressed them 
 and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly he was sent 
 there, their better nature was aroused, and they said, "We believe 
 you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord ! " 
 
 The House of Commons refused to let the King have any money 
 until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill ; but, as he could get it 
 and did get it from his master the King of France, he could afford to 
 hold them very cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, to which 
 he went down with a great show of being armed and protected as if 
 he were in danger of his life, and to which the opposition members 
 also went armed and protected, alleging that they were in fear of the 
 Papists, who were numerous among the King's guards. However, 
 they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest upon it 
 that they would have carried it again, if the King had not popped his 
 crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled himself into it along 
 with them, hurried down to the chamber where the House of Lords 
 met, and dissolved the Parliament. After which he scampered home, 
 and the members of Parliament scamjiered home too, as fast as their 
 legs could carry them. 
 
 The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the law 
 which excluded Catholics from public trust, no right whatever to 
 public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly employed as the 
 King's representative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullen and
 
 Charles the Second. 643 
 
 cruel nature to bis heart's content by directing the dreadful cruelties 
 against the Covenanters. There were two ministers named Cargill 
 and Cameron who had escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, 
 and who returned to Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave 
 and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of Cameronians. 
 As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that tho King was a for- 
 sworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy followers after he 
 was slain in battle. Tho Duke of York, who was particularly fond of 
 the Boot and derived great pleasure from having it applied, offered 
 their lives to some of these people, if they would cry on the scaffold 
 " God save the King ! " But their relations, friends, and countrymen, 
 had been so barbarously tortured and murdered in this merry reign, 
 that they preferred to die, and did die. Tho Duke then obtained his 
 merry brother's permission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which 
 first, with most shameless deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the 
 Protestant religion against Popery, and then declared that nothing 
 must or should prevent the succession of the Popish Duke. After 
 this double-faced beginning, it established an oath which no human 
 being could understand, but which everybody was to take, as a proof 
 that his religion was the lawful religion. The Earl of Argyle, taking 
 it with the explanation that he did not consider it to prevent him 
 from favouring any alteration cither in the Church or State which 
 was not inconsistent with the Protestant religion or with his loyalty, 
 was tried for high treason before a Scottish jury of which the Marquis 
 of Montrose was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped the 
 scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a page, in 
 the train of his daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay. It was absolutely 
 proposed, by certain members of the Scottish Council, that this lady 
 should be whipped through the streets of Edinburgh. But this was 
 too much even for tho Duke, who had the manliness then (he had very 
 little at most times) to remark that Englishmen were not accustomed 
 to treat ladies in that manner. In those merry times nothing couhl 
 equal the brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct of 
 similar degraded beings in Eugland. 
 
 After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke returned to 
 England, and soon resumed his place at the Council, and his office of 
 High Admiral all this by his brother's favour, and in open defiance 
 of the law. It would have been no loss to the country, if he had been 
 drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his family, struck 
 on a sand-bank, and was lost with two hundred souls on board. But 
 Ik; escaped in a boat with some friends; and the sailors were so brave 
 and unselfish, that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave three 
 cheers, while they themselves were going down for ever. 
 
 The- Merry Monarch, having got rid of ids Parliament, went to 
 work to make himself despotic, with all speed. Having had tho 
 villainy to order the execution of Oliver Plcnket, Bishop ov Armagh, 
 falsely accused of a plot to establish Popery in that country by means
 
 644 A Child's History of England. 
 
 of a French army the very thing this royal traitor was himself 
 trying to do at home and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, 
 and failed he turned his hand to controlling the corporations all 
 over the country ; because, if he could only do that, he could get what 
 juries he chose, to bring in perjured verdicts, and could get what 
 members he chose, returned to Parliament. These merry times pro- 
 duced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, a drunken 
 ruffian of the name of Jeffreys ; a red-faced swollen bloated horrible 
 creature, with a bullying roaring voice, and a more savage nature 
 perhaps than was ever lodged in any human breast. This monster 
 was the Merry Monarch's especial favourite, and he testified his 
 admiration of him by giving him a ring from his own finger, which 
 the people used to call Judge Jeffrey s's Blood-stone. Him the King 
 employed to go about and bully the corporations, beginning with 
 London ; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, " to give them a 
 lick with the rough side of his tongue." And he did it so thoroughly, 
 that they soon became the basest and most sycophantic bodies in the 
 icingdom except the University of Oxford, which, in that respect, was 
 quite pre-eminent and unapproachable. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King's failure against 
 him), Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Howard, 
 Lord Jersey, Algernon Sidney, John Hampden (grandson of the 
 great Hampden), and some others, used to hold a council together 
 after the dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what it might be 
 necessary to do, if the King carried his Popish plot to the utmost 
 height. Lord Shaftesbury having been much the most violent of this 
 party, brought two violent men into their secrets Rumsey, who had 
 been a soldier in the Republican army ; and West, a lawyer. These 
 two knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called Rumbold, who had 
 married a maltster's widow, and so had come into possession of a 
 solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near Hoddesdon, in Hertford- 
 shire. Rumbold eaid to them what a capital place this house of his 
 would be from which to shoot at the King, who often passed there 
 going to and fro from Newmarket. They liked the idea, and enter- 
 tained it. But, one of their body gave information ; and they, together 
 with Shepherd a wine merchant, Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, 
 Lord Essex, Lord Howard, and Hampden, were all arrested. 
 
 Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, being 
 innocent of any wrong ; Lord Essex might have easily escaped, but 
 scorned to do so, lest his flight should prejudice Lord Russell. But 
 it weighed upon his mind that he had brought into their council, 
 Lord Howard who now turned a miserable traitor against a great 
 dislike Lord Russell had always had of him. He could not bear the 
 reflection, and destroyed himself before Lord Russell was brought to 
 trial at the Old Bailey. 
 
 He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having always been 
 manful in the Protestant cause against the two false brothers, the one
 
 Charles the Second. 645 
 
 on the throne, and the other standing next tp it. He had a wife, one 
 of the noblest and best of women, who acted as his secretary on his 
 trial, who comforted him in his prison, who supped with him on the 
 night before he died, and whose love and virtuo and devotion have 
 made her name imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty, and 
 was sentenced to be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not many yardB 
 from his own house. When he had parted from his children on the 
 evening before his death, his wife still stayed with him until ten 
 o'clock at night ; and when their final separation in this world was 
 over, and he had kissed her many times, he still sat for a long while 
 in his prison, talking of her goodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at 
 that time, he calmly said, " Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great 
 show, which is a dull thing on a rainy day." At midnight he went 
 to bed, and slept till four ; even when his servant called him, he fell 
 asleep again while his clothes were being made ready. He rode to 
 the scaffold in his own carriage, attended by two famous clergymen, 
 Tillotson and Burnet, and sang a psalm to himself very softly, as 
 he went along. He was as quiet and as steady as if he had been 
 going out for an ordinary ride. After saying that he was surprised 
 to see so great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the block, as if 
 upon the pillow of his bed, and had it struck off at the second blow. 
 His noble wife was busy for him even then ; for that true-hearted 
 lady printed and widely circulated his last words, of which he had 
 given her a copy. They made the blood of all the honest men in 
 England boil. 
 
 The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the very same day 
 by pretending to believe that the accusation against Lord Russell was 
 true, and by calling the King, in a written paper, the Breath of their 
 Nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parliament 
 afterwards caused to be burned by the common hangman ; which I 
 am sorry for, as I wish it had been framed and glazed and hung up 
 in some public place, as a monument of baseness for the scorn of 
 mankind. 
 
 Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys presided, 
 like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling with rage. " 1 
 pray God, Mr. Sidney," said this Chief Justice of a merry reign, after 
 passing sentence, " to work in you a temper fit to go to the other 
 world, for I see you are not fit for this." " My lord," said the 
 prisoner, composedly holding out his arm, " feel my pulse, and see 
 if I be disordered. I thank Heaven I never was in better temper 
 than I am now." Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, on 
 the seventh of December, one thousand six hundred and eighty-three. 
 He died a hero, and died, in his own words." Fiu' that good old cause 
 in which he had been engaged from his youth, and for which (Jod 
 had so often and so wonderfully declared himself." 
 
 The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the Duke oi 
 York, very jealous, by going about the country in a royal sort of way,
 
 646 A Child's History of England. 
 
 playing at the people's games, becoming godfather to their children, 
 and even touching for the King's evil, or stroking the faces of the 
 sick to cure them though, for the matter of that, I should say he 
 did them about as much good as any crowned king could have done. 
 His father had got him to write a letter, confessing his having had 
 a part in the conspiracy, for which Lord Russell had been beheaded ; 
 but he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he had written it, he was 
 ashamed of it and got it back again. For this, he was banished to 
 the Netherlands ; but he soon returned and had an interview with 
 his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem that he was coming 
 into the Merry Monarch's favour again, and that the Duke of York 
 was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to the merry galleries at 
 Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords and gentlemen, and 
 the shameless ladies, very considerably. 
 
 On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hundred and 
 eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of the King of Franco 
 fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was hope- 
 less, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made a difficulty 
 about taking the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the 
 Duke of York got all who were present away from the bed, and asked 
 his brother, in a whisper, if he should send for a Catholic priest ? 
 The King replied, " For God's sake, brother, do ! " The Duke 
 smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a 
 priest named Huddleston, who had saved the King's life after the 
 battle of Worcester : telling him that this worthy man in the wig 
 had once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul. 
 
 The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died before 
 noon on the next day, which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last 
 things he said were of a human sort, and your remembrance will give 
 him the full benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say she was 
 too unwell to attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, "Alas ! poor 
 woman, she beg my pardon ! I beg hers with all my heart. Take 
 back that answer to her." And he also said, in reference to Nell 
 G-wyn, " Do not let poor Nelly starve." 
 
 He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of 
 his reign. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYI. 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 King James the Second was a man so very disagreeable, that even 
 the best of historians has favoured his brother Charles, as becoming, 
 by comparison, quite a pleasant character. The one object of his 
 short reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England ; and
 
 James the Second. 647 
 
 this he doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that his 
 career very soon came to a close. 
 
 The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that ho would 
 make it his endeavour to preserve the Government, both in Church 
 and State, as it was by law established ; and that he would always 
 take care to defend and support the Church. Great public acclama- 
 tions were raised over this fair speech, and a great deal was said, 
 from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a King which was 
 never broken, by credulous people who little supposed tbat ho had 
 formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous 
 Jesuit, called Father Petre, was one of tho chief members. With 
 teal's of joy in his eyes, ho received, as the beginning of his pension 
 from the King of France, five hundred thousand livres ; yet, with a 
 mixture of meanness and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible 
 character, he was always jealous of making somo show of being inde- 
 pendent of the King of France, while he pocketed his money. As 
 notwithstanding his publishing two papers in favour of Popery (and 
 not likely to do it much service, I should think) written by the 
 King, his brother, and found in his strong-box ; and his open display 
 of himself attending mass the Parliament was very obsequious, and 
 granted him a large sum of money, he began his reign with a belief 
 that he could do what he pleased, and with a determination to do it. 
 
 Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of Titus 
 Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the coronation, 
 and besides being very heavily fined, was sentenced to stand twico 
 in the pillory, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and 
 from Xewgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand in the 
 pillory five times a year as long as ho lived. This fearful sentence 
 was actually inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand after his 
 first flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, 
 and flogged as he was drawn along. He was so strong a villain that 
 lie did not die under the torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned 
 and rewarded, though not to bo ever believed in any more. Danger- 
 field, the only other one of that crew left alive, was not so fortunate, 
 lie was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to Tyburn, and, 
 :is if that were not punishment enough, a ferocious barrister of Gray's 
 [tin gavo him a poke in the eye with his cano, which caused his 
 death ; for which the ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and 
 executed. 
 
 As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth went 
 from [Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of Scottish 
 exiles held there, to concert measures for a rising in England. It 
 was agreed that Argyle should offect a landing in Scotland, and 
 Monmouth in England : and that two Englishmen should bo sent 
 with Argyle to be in his confidence, and two Scotchmen with tho 
 1 Mike of Monmouth. 
 
 Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But. two of his
 
 648 A Child's History of England. 
 
 men being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the Government 
 became aware of his intention, and was able to act against him with 
 such vigour as to prevent his raising more than two or three thousand 
 Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross, by trusty messengers, 
 from clan to clan and from glen to glen, as the custom then was 
 when those wild people were to be excited by their chiefs. As he 
 was moving towards Glasgow with his small force, he was betrayed 
 by some of his followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied 
 behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle. James 
 ordered him to be executed, on his old shamefully unjust sentence, 
 within three days ; and he appears to have been anxious that his legs 
 should have been pounded with his old favourite the boot. However, 
 the boot was not applied ; he was simply beheaded, and his head was 
 set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One of those Englishmen who 
 had been assigned to him was that old soldier Rumbold, the master 
 of the Rye House. He was sorely wounded, and within a week after 
 Argyle had suffered with great courage, was brought up for trial, lest 
 he should die and disappoint the King. He, too, was executed, after 
 defending himself with great spirit, and saying that he did not 
 believe that God had made the greater part of mankind to carry 
 saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths, and to be ridden 
 by a few, booted and spurred for the purpose in which I thoroughly 
 agree with Rumbold. 
 
 The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained and partly 
 through idling his time away, was five or six weeks behind his friend 
 when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset : having at his right hand an 
 unlucky nobleman called Lord Grey of Werk, who of himself would 
 have ruined a far more promising expedition. He immediately set 
 up his standard in the market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, 
 and a Popish usurper, and I know not what else ; charging him, not 
 only with what he had done, which was bad enough, but with what 
 neither he nor anybody else had done, such as setting fire to London, 
 and poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousand men by 
 these means, he marched on to Taunton, where there were many 
 Protestant dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics. 
 Here, both the rich and poor turned out to receive him, ladies waved 
 a welcome to him from all the windows as he passed along the streets, 
 flowers were strewn in his way, and every compliment and honour 
 that could be devised was showered upon him. Among the rest, 
 twenty young ladies came forward, in their best clothes, and in their 
 brightest beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented with their own 
 fair hands, together with other presents. 
 
 Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King, and went 
 on to Bridgewater. But, here the Government troops, under the 
 Earl of Feveesham. were close at hand ; and he was so dispirited at 
 finding that he made but few powerful friends after all, that it was 
 a question whether he should disband his army and endeavour to
 
 James the Second. 649 
 
 escape. It was resolved, at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, 
 to make a night attack on the King's army, as it lay encamped on the 
 edge of a morass called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded 
 by the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave man. He gave up 
 the battle almost at the first obstacle which was a deep drain ; and 
 although the poor countrymen, who had turned out for Monmouth, 
 fought bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and such poor weapons 
 as they had, they were soon dispersed by the trained soldiers, and fled 
 in all directions. "When the Duke of Monmouth himself fled, was 
 not known in the confusion ; but the unlucky Lord Grey was taken 
 early next day, and then another of tho party was taken, who con- 
 fessed that he had parted from the Duke only four hours before. 
 Strict search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant, hidden 
 in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocket which 
 he had gathered in the fields to eat. The only other articles he had 
 upon him were a few papers and little books : ono of the latter being 
 a strange jumble, in his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, and 
 prayers. He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable letter to 
 the King, beseeching and entreating to be allowed to see him. When 
 he was taken to London, and conveyed bound into the King's presence, 
 he crawled to him on his knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. 
 As James never forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not 
 likely to soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he 
 told the suppliant to prepare for death. 
 
 On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five, 
 this unfortunate favourite of the people was brought out to die on 
 Tower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houses 
 were covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter of the 
 Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked much of a lady 
 whom he loved far better the Lady Harriet Went worth who was 
 one of the last persons he remembered in this life. Before laying down 
 his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and told the 
 executioner that he feared it was not sharp enough, and that the axo 
 was not heavy enough. On the executioner replying that it was of 
 the proper kind, the Duke said, " I pray you have a care, and do not 
 use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell." The exe- 
 cutioner, made nervous by this, and trembling, struck once and 
 merely gashed him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth 
 raised his head and looked the man reproachfully in the face. Then 
 lie struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the axe, and 
 cried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish that work. 
 The sheriffs, however, threatening him with what should bo done to 
 himself if he did not, he took it up again and struck a fourth time 
 and a iifth time. Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, 
 Duke of Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. 
 He was a showy graceful man, with many popular qualities, and had 
 found much favour in the open hearts of the English.
 
 650 A Child's History of England. 
 
 The atrocities, committed by the Government, which followed this 
 Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest and most lamentable page in 
 English history. The poor peasants, having been dispersed with 
 great loss, and their leaders having been taken, one would think that 
 the implacable King might have been satisfied. But no ; he let loose 
 upon them, among other intolerable monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who 
 had served against the Moors, and whose soldiers called by the 
 people Kirk's lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the 
 emblem of Christianity were worthy of their leader. The atrocities 
 committed by these demons in human shape are far too horrible to 
 be related here. It is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly 
 murdering and robbing them, and ruining them by making them buy 
 their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it was one of Kirk's 
 favourite amusements, as he and his officers sat drinking after dinner, 
 and toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners hanged outside 
 the windows for the company's diversion ; and that when their feet 
 quivered in the convulsions of death, he used to swear that they 
 should have music to their dancing, and would order the drums to 
 beat and the trumpets to play. The detestable King informed him, 
 as an acknowledgment of these services, that he was " very well 
 satisfied with his proceedings." But the King's great delight was in 
 the proceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the west, 
 with four other judges, to try persons accused of having had any 
 share in the rebellion. The King pleasantly called this " Jeffreys's 
 campaign." The people down in that part of the country remember 
 it to this day as The Bloody Assize. 
 
 It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, Mrs. Alicia 
 Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who had 
 been murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), was charged with 
 having given shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. 
 Three times the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied 
 and frightened them into that false verdict. When he had extorted 
 it from them, he said, " Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she 
 had been my own mother, I would have found her guilty ; " as I 
 dare say he would. He sentenced her to be burned alive, that very 
 afternoon. The clergy of the cathedral and some others interfered in 
 her favour, and she was beheaded within a week. As a high mark of 
 his approbation, the King made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor ; and he 
 then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. L 
 is astonishing, when we read of the enormous injustice and barbarity 
 of this beast, to know that no one struck him dead on the judgment- 
 seat. It was enough for any man or woman to be accused by an 
 enemy, before Jeffreys, to be found guilty of high treason. One man 
 who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken out of court upon the 
 instant, and hanged ; and this so terrified the prisoners in general 
 that they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At Dorchester alone, in the 
 course of a few days, Jeffreys hanged eighty people ; besides whipping.
 
 James the Second, 65 1 
 
 transporting, imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He 
 executed, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred. 
 
 These executions took place, among tho neighbours and friends of 
 the sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their bodies were 
 mangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and tar, and hung up by 
 the roadsides, in the streets, over the very churches. The sight and 
 smell of heads and limbs, tho hissing and bubbling of the infernal 
 caldrons, and the tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful beyond 
 all description. One rustic, who was forced to steep the remains in 
 the black pot, was ever afterwards called " Tom Boilman." The 
 hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of 
 that name went hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of 
 Jeffreys. You will hear much of the horrors of the great French 
 Revolution. Many and terrible they were, there is no doubt ; but I 
 know of nothing worse, done by the maddened people of France in 
 that awful time, than was done by the highest judge in England, with 
 the express approval of tho King of England, in The Bloody Assize. 
 
 Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for himself 
 as of misery for others, and he sold pardons wholesale to till his 
 pockets. The King ordered, at one time, a thousand prisoners to be 
 given to certain of his favourites, in order that they might bargain 
 with them for their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had 
 presented the Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honour at 
 court; and those precious ladies made very hard bargains with them 
 indeed. When The Bloody Assize was at its most dismal height, tho 
 King was diverting himself with horse-races in the very place whero 
 Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys had done his worst, 
 and came home again, he was particularly complimented in the Koyal 
 Gazette ; and when the King heard that through drunkenness and 
 raging he was very ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such another 
 man could not easily be found in England. Besides all this, a former 
 sheriff of London, named Cornish, was hanged within sight of his own 
 house, after an abominably conducted trial, for having had a share in 
 the Bye House Plot, on evidence given by Bumsey, which that villain 
 was obliged to confess was directly opposed to the evidence he had 
 given on the trial of Lord Russell. And on the very same day, a 
 worthy widow, named Elizabeth GaI'nt, was burned alive at Tyburn, 
 for having sheltered a wretch who himself gave evidence against her. 
 She settled tho fuel about herself with her own hands, so that tho 
 Haines should reach her quickly; and nobly said, with her last breath, 
 that she had obeyed the sacred command of God, to give refngo to tho 
 outcast, and not to betray the wanderer. 
 
 After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating, 
 exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into slavery, of his un- 
 happy subjects, tho King not unnaturally thought that lie could do 
 whatever be would. So. be went to work to change the religion of 
 the country with all possible speed : and what be did was this.
 
 652 A Child's History of England. 
 
 He first of all tried to get rid of what was called tlie Test Act 
 which prevented the Catholics from holding public employments by 
 his own power of dispensing with the penalties. He tried it in one 
 case, and, eleven of the twelve judges deciding in his favour, he 
 exercised it in three others, being those of three dignitaries of 
 University College, Oxford, who had become Papists, and whom he 
 kept in their places and sanctioned. He revived the hated Eccle- 
 siastical Commission, to get rid of Compton, Bishop of London, who 
 manfully opposed him. He solicited the Pope to favour England with 
 an ambassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible man then) rather 
 unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the eyes of the 
 people on all possible occasions. He favoured the establishment of 
 convents in several parts of London. He was delighted to have the 
 streets, and even the court itself, filled with Monks and Friars in the 
 habits of their orders. He constantly endeavoured to make Catholics 
 of the Protestants about him. He held private interviews, which he 
 called " closetings," with those Members of Parliament who held 
 offices, to persuade them to consent to the design he had in view. 
 When they did not consent, they were removed, or resigned of them- 
 selves, and their places were given to Catholics. He displaced 
 Protestant officers from the army, by every means in his power, and 
 got Catholics into their places too. He tried the same thing with the 
 corporations, and also (though not so successfully) with the Lord 
 Lieutenants of counties. To terrify the people into the endurance of 
 all these measures, he kept an army of fifteen thousand men encamped 
 on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly performed in the 
 General's tent, and where priests went among the soldiers endeavour- 
 ing to persuade them to become Catholics. For circulating a paper 
 among those men advising them to be true to their religion, a 
 Protestant clergyman, named Johnson, the chaplain of the late Lord 
 Russell, was actually sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, 
 and was actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed 
 his own brother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant, 
 and made a Privy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. 
 He handed Ireland over to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, a 
 worthless, dissolute knave, who played the same game there for his 
 master, and who played the deeper game for himself of one day 
 putting it under the protection of the French King. In going to 
 these extremities, every man of sense and judgment among the 
 Catholics, from the Poj)e to a porter, knew that the King was a mere 
 bigoted fool, who would undo himself and the cause he sought to 
 advance ; but he was deaf to all reason, and, happily for England 
 ever afterwards, went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way. 
 
 A sjnrit began to arise in the country, which the besotted blunderer 
 little expected. He first found it out in the University of Cambridge. 
 Having made a Catholic, a dean, at Oxford, without any opposition, 
 he tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge : which attempt
 
 James the Second 653 
 
 the University resisted, and defeated him. He then went back to his 
 favourite Oxford. On the death of the President of Magdalen College, 
 he commanded that there should be elected to succeed him, one Mr. 
 Anthony Farmer, whose only recommendation was, that he was of 
 the King's religion. The University plucked up courage at last, and 
 refused. The King substituted another man, and it still refused, 
 resolving to stand by its own election of a Mr. Hough. The dull 
 tyrant, upon this, punished Mr. Hough, and five-aud-twenty more, by 
 causing them to bo expelled and declared incapable of holding any 
 church preferment; then he proceeded to what he supposed to be his 
 highest step, but to what was, in fact, his last plunge head-foremost in 
 his tumble off his throne. 
 
 He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious tests 
 or penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics more easily ; but the 
 Protestant dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had gallantly joined 
 the regular church in opposing it tooth and nail. The King and 
 Father Petre now resolved to have this read, on a certain Sunday, 
 in all the churches, and to order it to be circulated for that purpose 
 by the bishops. Tho latter took counsel with the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who was in disgrace ; and they resolved that the declara- 
 tion should not be read, and that they would petition tho King against 
 it. The Archbishop himself wrote out the petition, and six bishops 
 went into the King's bedchamber the same night to present it, to his 
 infinite astonishment. Next day was the Sunday fixed for the reading, 
 and it was only read by two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. 
 The King resolved against all advice to prosecute the bishops in the 
 Court of King's Bench, and within three weeks they were summoned 
 before tho Privy Council, and committed to the Tower. As the six 
 bishops were taken to that dismal place, by water, tho people who 
 wero assembled in immense numbers fell upon their knees, and wept 
 for them, and prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, tho 
 officers and soldiers on guard besought them for their blessing. While 
 they were confined there, the soldiers every day drank to their release 
 with loud shouts. When they were brought up to the Court of King's 
 Pencil for their trial, which the Attorney-General said was for the 
 high offence of censuring the Government, and giving their opinion 
 about affairs of state, they were attended by similar multitudes, and 
 surrounded by a throng of noblemen and gentlemen. When tho 
 jury went out at seven o'clock at night to consider of their verdict, 
 everybody (except the King) knew that they would rather starve than 
 yield to the King's brewer, who was one of them, and wanted a verdict 
 for his customer. When they came into court next morning, after 
 residing the brewer all night, and gave a verdict of not guilty, such 
 a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had never heard before; 
 and it was passed on among the people away to Temple Bar, and 
 away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the oast, but passod 
 to the west too, until it reached the camp at llouusluw, where the
 
 654 -A Child's History of England. 
 
 fifteen ihousand soldiers took it up and echoed it. And still, when 
 the dull King, who was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty 
 roar, asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was " nothing 
 but the acquittal of the bishops," he said, in his dogged way, " Call 
 you that nothing ? It is so much the worse for them." 
 
 Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a 
 son, which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred. 
 But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King's 
 friend, inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor 
 (for both the King's daughters were Protestants) determined the 
 Earls of Shrewsbury, Danby, and Devonshire, Lord Lumley, the 
 Bishop of London, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to invite 
 the Prince of Orange over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his 
 danger at last, made, in his fright, many great concessions, besides 
 raising an army of forty thousand men ; but the Prince of Orange 
 was not a man for James the Second to cope with. His preparations 
 were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind was resolved. 
 
 For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, a 
 great wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet. Even 
 when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, 
 and was obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the first of 
 November, one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant 
 east wind, as it was long called, began to blow ; and on the third, the 
 people of Dover and the people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles 
 long sailing gallantly by, between the two places. On Monday, the 
 fifth, it anchored at Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a 
 splendid retinue of officers and men, marched into Exeter. But the 
 people in that western part of the country had suffered so much in 
 The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. Few people joined 
 him ; and he began to think of returning, and publishing the invita- 
 tion he had received from those lords, as his justification for having 
 come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him ; the 
 Royal army began to falter ; an engagement was signed, by which all 
 who set their hand to it declared that they would support one another 
 in defence of the laws and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the 
 Protestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From that time, 
 the cause received no check ; the greatest towns in England began, 
 one after another, to declare for the Prince ; and he knew that it was 
 all safe with him when the University of Oxford offered to melt down 
 its plate, if he wanted any money. 
 
 By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way, touch- 
 ing people for the King's evil in one place, reviewing his troops in 
 another, and bleeding from the nose in a third. The young Prince 
 was sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to France, 
 and there was a general and swift dispersal of all the priests and 
 friars. One after another, the King's most important officers and 
 friends deserted him and went over to the Prince. In the night, his
 
 James the Second. 655 
 
 daughter Anne fled from Whitehall Palace ; and the Bishop of 
 London, who had once been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn 
 sword in his hand, and pistols at his saddle. " God help me," cried 
 the miserable King : " my very children have forsaken me ! " In his 
 wildness, after debating with such lords as were in Loudon, whether 
 he should or should not call a Parliament, and after naming three of 
 them to negotiate with the Prince, he resolved to fly to France. He 
 had the little Prince of Wales brought back from Portsmouth ; and 
 the child and the Queen crossed the river to Lambeth in an open 
 boat, on a miserable wet night, and got safely away. This was on 
 the night of the ninth of December. 
 
 At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, who had, 
 in the meantime, received a letter from the Prince of Orange, stating 
 his objects, got out of bed, told Lord Northumberland who lay in 
 his room not to open the door until the usual hour in the morning, 
 and went down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the 
 priest in the wig and gown had come up to his brother) and crossed 
 the river in a small boat : sinking the great seal of England by the 
 way. Horses having been provided, he rode, accompanied by Sir 
 Edward Hales, to Feversham, where he embarked in a Custom 
 House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more ballast, ran into 
 the Isle of Shoppy to get it, where the fishermen and smugglers 
 crowded aboxit the boat, and informed the King of their suspicions 
 that he was a " hatchet-faced Jesuit." As they took his money and 
 would not let him go, he told them who he was, and that the Prince 
 of Orange wanted to take his life ; and he began to scream for a boat 
 and then to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride 
 which lie culled a fragment of Our Saviour's cross. He put himself 
 into tho hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his detention 
 was made known to tho Prince of Orange at Windsor who, only 
 wanting to get rid of him, and not caring where he went, so that he 
 went away, was very much disconcerted that they did not let him go. 
 However, there was nothing for it but to have him brought back, 
 with sonic state in the way of Life Guards, to Whitehall. And as 
 soon as he got there, in his infatuation, he heard mass, and set a 
 Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner. 
 
 The public had been thrown into the strangest state of confusion 
 by his ilight. and had taken it into their heads that the Irish part of 
 the army wen; going to murder the Protestants. Therefore, they set 
 the bells a ringing, and lighted watch-tires, and burned Catholic 
 Chapels, and looked about in all directions for Father Petre and the 
 Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was running away in tho dress 
 of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but a man, who had onco 
 been a frightened witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen 
 drunken fare looking through a window down at Wapping, which ho 
 well remembered. Tho lace was in a sailor's dress, but he knew it to 
 be the face of that accursed Judge, and he seized him. The people,
 
 656 A Child's History of England. 
 
 to their lasting honour, did not tear him to pieces. After knocking 
 him about a little, they took him, in the basest agonies of terror, to 
 the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his own shrieking petition, to the 
 Tower for safety. There, he died. 
 
 Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bonfires 
 and made rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad to have the 
 King back again. But, his stay was very short, for the English 
 guards were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched 
 up to it, and he was told by one of his late ministers that the Prince 
 would enter London next day, and he had better go to Ham. Ho 
 said, Ham was a cold damp place, and he would rather go to Eochester. 
 He thought himself very cunning in this, as he meant to escape from 
 Eochester to France. The Prince of Orange and his friends knew 
 that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So, he went to 
 Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certain lords, and watched 
 by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who were far 
 more forgiving than he had ever been, when they saw him in his 
 humiliation. On the night of the twenty-third of December, not even 
 then understanding that everybody wanted to get rid of him, he went 
 out, absurdly, through his Eochester garden, down to the Medway, 
 and got away to France, where he rejoined the Queen. 
 
 There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and the 
 authorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after the 
 King's departure, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and soon 
 afterwards, all those who had served in any of the Parliaments of 
 King Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by these authorities 
 that the throne was vacant by the conduct of King James the Second ; 
 that it was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant 
 kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince ; that the Prince and 
 Princess of Orange should be King and Queen during their lives and 
 the life of the survivor of them ; and that their children should 
 succeed them, if they had any. That if they had none, the Princess 
 Anne and her children should succeed ; that if she had none, the 
 heirs of the Prince of Orange should succeed. 
 
 On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and eighty- 
 nine, the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in Whitehall, bound 
 themselves to these conditions. The Protestant religion was estab- 
 lished in England, and England's great and glorious Eevolution was 
 complete.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 I have now arrived at the close of my little history. The events 
 which succeeded the famous Revolution of one thousand six hundred 
 and eighty-eight, would neither be easily related nor easily understood 
 in such a book as this. 
 
 "William and Mary reigned together, live years. After tho death of 
 his good wife, William occupied the throne, alone, for seven years 
 longer. During his reign, on tho sixtoenth of September, one thousand 
 seven hundred and ono, tho poor weak creature who had ouco been 
 James the Second of England, died in France. In the meantime he 
 had done his utmost (which was not much) to cause William to bo 
 assassinated, and to regain his lost dominions. James's son was 
 declared, by the French King, the rightful King of England ; and was 
 called in Franco The Chevalier Saint George, and in England The 
 Pretender. Some infatuated people in England, and particularly in 
 Scotland, took up the Pretender's cause from time to time as if tho 
 country had not had Stuarts enough ! and many lives were sacrificed, 
 and much misery was occasioned. King William died on Sunday, tho 
 seventh of March, one thousand seven hundred and two, of tho con- 
 sequences of an accident occasioned by his horse stumbling with him. 
 Ho was always a bravo patriotic Prince, and a man of remarkable 
 abilities. His manner was cold, and he made but few friends ; but lie 
 had truly loved his queen. When he was dead, a lock of her hair, in 
 a ring, was found tied with a black ribbon round his left arm. 
 
 Ho was sueeeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular Queen, who 
 reigned twelve years. In her reign, in tho month of May, one 
 thousand seven hundred and seven, the Union between England and 
 Scotland was effected, and the two countries were incorporated under 
 tho name of Great Britain. Then, from tho year one thousand seven 
 hundred and fourteen to the year one thousand eight hundred and 
 thirty, reigned the four Georoes. 
 
 It was in the reign of (leorge tho Second, one thousand seven 
 hundred and forty-five, that tho Pretender did his .hist mischief, and 
 made his last appearance. Being an old man by that time, ho and tho 
 Jacobites as his friends were called put forward his son, Ciiaiu.es 
 Edward, known as tho Young Chevalier. Tho Highlanders of Scot- 
 land, an extremely troublesome and wrong-head* d race on the subject. 
 of the Stuarts, espoused his cause, and ho joined them, and there was 
 a Scottish rebellion to make him king, in which many gallant and 
 devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It was a hard matter for Charles 
 Edward to escape abroad again, witli a high juice on his head ; hut 
 the Scottish people wee extraordinarily faithful to him, and, after 
 undergoing many romantic adventures, not unlike those of Charles 
 the Second, he escaped to France. A number of charming stories and
 
 658 A Child's History of England. 
 
 delightful songs arose out of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the 
 Jacobite times. Otherwise I think the Stuarts were a public nuisance 
 altogether. 
 
 It was in the reign of George the Third that England lost North 
 America, by persisting in taxing her without ber own consent. That 
 immense country, made independent under Washington, and left to 
 itself, became the United States ; one of the greatest nations of the 
 earth, In these times in which I write, it is honourably remarkable 
 for protecting its subjects, wherever they may travel, with a dignity 
 and a determination which is a model for England. Between you and 
 me, England has rather lost ground in this respect since the days of 
 Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 The Union of Great Britain with Ireland which had been getting 
 on very ill by itself took place in the reign of George the Third, on 
 the second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight. 
 
 William the Fourth succeeded George the Fourth, in the year one 
 thousand eight hundred and thirty, and reigned seven years. Queen 
 Victoria, his niece, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the fourth 
 son of George the Third, came to the throne on the twentieth of June, 
 one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. She was married to 
 Prince Albert of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of February, one thousand 
 eight hundred and forty. She is very good, and much beloved. So 
 I end, like the crier, with 
 
 God Save the Queen! 
 
 toe END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.