THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Commodore Byron McCandless 
 
 / lA
 
 HimiDAL Al OTHER Mimi 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 EDITED "WITH A^T IlSrXRODTJCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID H. WHEELEK. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 New York ano London
 
 Entared, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C
 
 ?K 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FASE 
 
 I^'TRODUCTION, 5 
 
 y-X A Siding at a Railway Station, .... 41 
 
 7 
 
 II. Thk Norway Fjords, .... .62 
 
 III. A Cagliostro of the Second Century, . . 102 
 
 tw. Social Condition of England in the SixTiiENTii 
 
 Centujry, 136 
 
 V. Coronation of Anne Boleyn, 173 
 
 VI. John Bunyan ISl 
 
 VII. Leaves from a South African Journai-, . . 187 
 
 VIII. A Day's Fishing at Cheneys, . ... 232 
 
 IX. Thomas Carlyi-e and His Wife, .... 246 
 
 X. PoLTTfCAL Economy of thk Eighteenth Century, 256 
 
 XI. Heynard the Fox, 263 
 
 957381
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 This collection of the more popular writings of Mr. 
 Fronde is made in order to enable a large nnmber of read- 
 ers to obtain at small cost a good view of the merits and 
 value of his works. His best known essays are, for the 
 most part, left out of this volume — for example, those 
 on Calvinism, Progress, Education, and Ireland. The 
 editor has also passed by in the selections those writings 
 of Mr. Froude which have been the subject of heated 
 controversy. It is hoped that the sketches of travel, 
 essays, and extracts from the gifted author's historical 
 works here collected, will be found both entertaining 
 and instructive. Believing that the reader will like to 
 have some account of Mr. Froude and his opinions, the 
 editor has prepared the following sketch. 
 
 HIS EDUCATION. 
 
 James Anthony Froude was born near Totness, 
 Devon, England, April 23, 1818. His father was an 
 old-fashioned High Church clergyman, and his brother, 
 Richard Ilurrell Froude (fifteen years older than the his- 
 torian) had already won distinction as a new-fashioned 
 High Church clergyman when James Anthony entered 
 Driel College, Oxford, at the age of eighteen. The 
 younger Froude was naturally thrown l)y his family con- 
 nections and syinpathies into the strong arms of the new 
 reformers at Oxford. His gifted brother died the same
 
 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 year, at the age of tliirty-three, having produced a mass 
 of new- reformation literature, which has since been 
 pubh'slied in four vohiines. Jolm Henry Newman, 
 now Cardinal Newman, had succeeded Richard Hurrell 
 Froude as the leader of the Oxford Movement, and young 
 James Anthony was caught up and carried along on the 
 tide of that strange reaction. Newman mastered easily 
 the younger men about him, and even " Newmanized 
 some of those who had already been Arnoldized. "* Credo 
 in Newmaniim was a profession of faith that fell from 
 many lips. The air was full of a strange sort of spiritual 
 electricity. Young Froude graduated in 184:0, two years 
 later became a fellow of Exeter College, and in 1845 was 
 ordained a deacon of the English Church. So far he had 
 been borne along by a mighty current. Newman had 
 invited him to assist in the work of writing the lives of 
 the English saints. " Flattered," as he says, by the 
 honor, he prepared in 1812 the " Life of St. Neot," 
 which was published in the series under Newman's editor- 
 ship. In 1815 John Henry Newman left the English 
 for the Catholic Church ; a counter-reaction set in. 
 Alarmed by the discovery that Newman had led them a 
 long journey from their original faith, many of the 
 younger men began to study the ground traversed with 
 so much enthusiasm ; among these was young Froude. 
 The result of his studies and reflections appears in the 
 remarkable little book having the title " The Nemesis of 
 Faith," first pritited in 1819. Having satisfied himself 
 that he could not be a j^riest of the Church of England, 
 Mr. Froude gave up his fellowship and the clerical pro- 
 fession. Under the law as it then stood, he could not 
 enter another profession, and having tried his hand at 
 literature with success, he naturally joined the great 
 
 * The reference is to Arnold of Rugby.
 
 INTRODUCTION". 7 
 
 pi'iesthood of the press. In liis controversy with Mr. 
 Edward A. Freeman, the historian of the Norman Con- 
 quest, Mr. Fronde wrote in 1879 the following account 
 of his change of vocation : 
 
 " I entered Deacon's orders in 1845. To take orders was at 
 that time a condition for the tenure of a fellowshii^. I found 
 myself unfitted for a clergyman's position, and I abandoned it. 
 J did not leave the Church. I withdrew into the position of a 
 lay member, in which I have ever since remained. I gave up my 
 Fellowship, and I gave up my profession with the loss of my ex- 
 isting means of maintenance, and with the sacrifice of my future 
 prospects. Had I been ' the false prophet ' which Mr. Freeman 
 elsewhere politely terms me — had I been as iiidiflferent to truth, 
 as forgetful of the obligations of honesty, as he tells his readers 
 that I am — is it likely that I should have left a beaten highway 
 of life on which the going forward is so easy and so assured ? Is 
 it likely that I should have selected instead to make my way 
 across country on the back of literature, where, besides the nat- 
 ural difficulfTl's, the anonymous reviewer is waiting to trip the 
 unhappy rider at every fence, or clamors at him as a fool like 
 the enchanted stones on the mountain in the ' Arabian Nights ? ' 
 Is it a reproach to leave at such hazards a profession for which 
 a man finds himself unqualified ? Would it not be an incompara- 
 bly greater reproach to have yielded to the temptation and re- 
 mained in it ? Is it not enough that the existing prejudice on 
 this subject bars a man's way to every regular employment which 
 he might have looked for otherwise ? Is it fair, is it tolerable, 
 that Mr. Freeman and the Saturday lieriewer should avail them- 
 selves of that prejudice to point to my Deacon's orders as if they 
 were an ink-blot and a mark of shame ?" 
 
 The prejudice against an honest man's change of his 
 religious opinions has died out in this country, and lost 
 8ome of its vitahty in England ; but in 1850 it still had 
 the power to deal terrible blows. No small man could 
 have made Mr. Fronde's chanije and outlived the evil 
 consequences of it. It will now be agreed by enhghtened 
 men that the one and only honest thing to do was what
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 James Anthony Fronde did when he resigned botli the 
 duties and the rewards of an Englisli clergyman. The 
 whip is reserved in our day for the back of the hypocrite 
 wlio, having changed his creed still keeps his salary. 
 We raise no question of the value of the old opinions or 
 the new. It is only necessary to say that the more 
 radical of the new opinions of Mr. Fronde are preached 
 from Christian pulpits all over the world, and have been 
 for a score of years the object of world-wide criticism and 
 the inspiration of a vast research into the authorship, his- 
 tory, and authority of different books of the Bible. At 
 Oxford, Mr. Froude was held to have apostatized, not to 
 have changed his opinions ; for Oxford did not in 1850 
 really believe in the right of private judgment ; in other 
 words, it did not admit a man's right to have any opinions 
 on questions decided by the Church. One consequence 
 of Mr. Fronde's heroic devotion to good conscience has 
 been a perpetual conflict between him and one section of 
 the clergy ; and it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the 
 fact that in this war the historian has given as many and 
 as good blows as he has received. 
 
 To no one else will the memory of John Henry 
 Newman be so much indebted in the next century as to 
 James Anthony Froude ; their opinions are as wide apart 
 as the poles, but a manly sympathy and admiration for 
 courage, independence, and loyalty to convictions glows 
 through the sentences in which the historian describes 
 the leader whom he abandoned for conscience' sake. 
 Newman's own " Apologia pro vita sua" is not worth 
 ten hues of Fronde's essay as a vindication. In our 
 youth we used to hear mnch abont hating the sin and 
 loving the sinner ; it may be doubted whether many of 
 us mastered it. An easier thing is hard for us ; we can 
 Bcarcely condemn a man's opinions and retain affection
 
 iXTRonrcTiox. 
 
 and even reverence fur the man himself. Froude abhors 
 the sort of Roman Catliohcism whicli Newman restored 
 to power in EngLand ; but he has given Newman such 
 wholesome praise that the great " pervert" will need no 
 other credentials with posterity. Why ? The tractarian 
 agitation sent two groups of men flying on opposite roads : 
 one group went to the Catholic Church, the other went 
 m^t of their pulpits into the lay ranks. Both groups left 
 
 ""all they had behind them. Their sacritices to the truth 
 of their souls were and remain their common possession ; 
 their costly renunciations of incomes and honors were 
 and remain their conmion claim to the respect and 
 admiration of mankind. The men whom posterity wih 
 suspect of treachery and vindictiveness are the men who 
 
 >^followed Newman to the door of the Catholic Church, 
 but stopped outside of it, and remained in the enjoyment 
 of their emoluments. When they strike or inspire the 
 blows rained upon Mr. Froude, men who believe in 
 manliness f,s the first quality in religious character — the 
 highest proof that one has known Jesus Christ — will sus- 
 pect that the smiters were cowardly and self-seeking in 
 the day that tried them all as by fire. The resentments 
 of the camp-followers, when they have any, fall upon the 
 soldiers who win honor at the front. If there still be in 
 the world people who do not know that a man's opinions 
 may have the most sacred claims upon his conduct, and 
 still be altogether vanity as measures of the truth, then 
 such peo])lc should be placed in some school where the 
 first principles of toleration are taught. Happily we are 
 pretty well agreed in our respect for courage, sincerity, 
 and self-abnegation ; and we are almost as unanimous in 
 holding that we can admire John Henry Newman and 
 James Anthony Froude Avithout making the smallest 
 effort to swallow the opinions of both or of either.
 
 lU _ IJS'TliODUCTION. 
 
 Mr. Fronde's life has been that of a laborious and con- 
 scientious man of letters. Such a life has few points of 
 interest except such as concern his work. And in the 
 case of Mr. Froude, everything of importance except 
 his work happened before he was thirtj-two years of age. 
 In the essay on "The Oxford Counter- Reformation," 
 our author gives us a glimjjse of his boyhood : 
 
 "Our own household," he writes, " was a fair representative 
 of the [clerical] order. My father was rector of the parish. He 
 was archdeacon, he was justice of the peace. He had a moderate 
 fortune of his own, consisting chiefly in land, and he belonged, 
 therefore, to the ' landed interest.' Most of the magistrates' 
 work of the neighborhood passed through his hands. If any- 
 thing was amiss, it was his advice that was sought after, and I 
 remember his being called upon to lay a troublesome ghost. In 
 his younger days he had been a hard rider across country. His 
 children knew him as a continually busy, useful man of the 
 world, a learned and cultivated antiquary, and an accomplished 
 artist. My brothers and I were excellently' educated, and were 
 sent to school and college. Our spiritual lessons did not go 
 beyond the Catechism. We were told that our business in life 
 was to work and to make an honorable position for ourselves. 
 About doctrine, Evangelical or Catholic, I do not think that in 
 my early boyhood I ever heard a single word, in church or out of 
 it. The institution had drifted into the condition of what I 
 should call moral health. It did not instruct us in mysteries, it 
 did not teach us to make religion a special object of our 
 thoughts ; it taught us to use religion as a light by which to see 
 our way along the road of duty. Without the sun, our eyes 
 would be of no use to us ; but if we look at the sun we are 
 simply dazzled, and can see neither it nor anything else. It is 
 precisely the same with theological speculations. If the beacon 
 lamp is shining, a man of healthy mind will not discuss the com- 
 position of the flame. Enough if it shows him how to steer and 
 keep clear of shoals and breakers. To this conception of the 
 thing we had practically arrived." 
 
 The autobiographical element in the article from which
 
 IXTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 we have just quoted brietiy will repaj' us for a momeut's 
 further study. That Mr. Froude was misled aud bewil- 
 dered at Oxford, and almost beoame a Iligli Churcli 
 clergyiua'n of tlie Church of England, or possibly a 
 Roman Catholii*. priest, under the influence of Newman, 
 he does not say in plain Avords. He does say, however, 
 "that it is " disagreeable to go back over our own past 
 4jiistakes," and that he " cannot like the sow that was 
 Svashed, return to wallow in repudiated superstition. ' ' If 
 these words have a taste of bitterness in them, we may 
 find sweeter thoughts in other parts of the essay. The 
 author repeats over and over again in new forms his 
 practical philosophy. 
 
 >. "To raise a doubt about a creed established by general accept- 
 ance is," he declares, " a direct injury to the general welfare. 
 Discussion about it is out of place, for only bad men wish to 
 question the"*"rule of life which religion commends. When the 
 Oxford movement began, England was orthodox without being 
 theological. . . People went to church on Sunday to learu to be 
 good. The clergy were generally of superior culture, manners, 
 and character, who promoted honest living by precept and exam- 
 ple. If a clergyman was poor, it was still his pride to bring up 
 his sons as gentlemen ; and economies were cheerfully submitted 
 to at home to give them a start in life — at the University, or in 
 the Army or Navy." 
 
 In the essay on " The Oxford Counter-Reformation," 
 Mr. Froude recalls one of the forces which worked upon 
 him in his young manhood. The episode will be espe- 
 cially interesting to Evangelical Americans. 
 
 " After I had taken my degree, and before I entered upon resi- 
 dence as Fellow, my confidence in my Oxford teachers underwent 
 a further trial. I spent some months in Ireland in tiie family of 
 an Evangelical clergyman. I need not mention names which have 
 no historical notability. . . There was a quiet good sense, an in-
 
 12 INTRODUCTION". 
 
 tellcctual breadth of feeling in this household, Avhich to me, who 
 had been bred up to despise Evangelicals as unreal and affected, 
 was a startling surprise. I had looked down on Dissenters espe- 
 cially as being vulgar among their other enormities ; here were 
 persons whose creed differed little from that of the Calvinistic 
 Methodists, yet they were easy, natural, and dignified. In Ire- 
 land they were part of a missionary garrison, and in their daily 
 lives they carried the colors of their faith. In Oxford, reserve 
 was considered a becoming feature in the religious character. 
 The doctrines of Christianity were mysteries, and mysteries were 
 
 not to be lightly spoken of. Christianity at was part of the 
 
 atmosphere which we breathed ; it was the great fact of our ex- 
 istence, to which everything else was subordinated. Mystery it 
 might be, but not more of a mystery than our own bodily lives 
 and the system of which we were a part. The problem was to 
 arrange all our thoughts and acquirements in harmony with the 
 Christian revelation, and to act it out consistently in all that we 
 said and did. The family devotions were long, but there was no 
 formalism, and everybody took a part in them. A chapter was 
 read and talked over, and practical lessons were drawn out of it ; 
 otherwise there were no long faces or solemn affectations ; the 
 conversations were never foolish or trivial ; serious subjects were 
 lighted up as if by an ever-present spiritual sunshine. Such was 
 the new element into which I was introduced . . . ; the same uni- 
 form tone being visible in parents, in children, in the indoor ser- 
 vants, and in the surrounding society. And this was Protestantism. 
 This was the fruit of the Reformation which we had been learn- 
 ing at Oxford to hate as rebellion and to despise as a system 
 without foundation. The foundation of it was faith in the 
 authority of Holy Scripture. . . . Here, too, the letter of the word 
 was allowed to require a living authentication. The Anglo- 
 Catholics at Oxford maintained that Christ was present in the 
 Church ; the Evangelicals said that he was present in the indi- 
 vidual believing soul, and why might they not be right ? So far as 
 Scripture went they had promises to allege for themselves more 
 definite than the Catholics. If the test was personal holiness, I 
 for my own part had never yet fallen in with any human beings 
 in whose actions and conversation the spirit of Christ was more 
 visibly present. My feelings of reverence for the Reformers 
 revived. Fact itself was speaking for them. ... I felt that I
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 had been taken in, and I resented it. Modern history resumod 
 its traditionary English aspect." 
 
 HIS WORKS. 
 
 Mr. Fronde's earliest literary work was a " I-ife of St. 
 Neot," brought out in the series of "Lives of the 
 Saints," under the editorship of J. H. Newman. At the 
 
 '^time it was written the young author was, as we should 
 say in this country, just out of college. " When I was 
 .asked to assist [in preparing the series], the proposal," 
 he says, " pleased and ilattered me. I suppose now that 
 the object was to recommend asceticism, and perhaps to 
 show that the power of working miracles had been con- 
 tinued in the Church until its unity Avas broken. But 
 
 ^no such intention was communicated to us. We were 
 free to write as we pleased, each on our own responsibil- 
 ity. For'*inyself, I went to work with the assumption 
 which I thought myself entitled to make, that men who 
 had been canonized had been probably good men, and at 
 least remarkable men. It was an opportunity for throw- 
 ing myself into mediseval literature, and studying in con- 
 temporary M'ritings what human life had really been like 
 in this island, in an age of which the visible memorials 
 remained in churches and cathedrals and monastic ruins. 
 I do not regret my undertaking, though I little guessed 
 the wilderness of perplexities into which I was throwing 
 myself. . . I could not repeat what I found written, for 
 the faith was wanting. Concerning the character of this 
 Life of a Saint, Mr. Fronde indirectly gives us his own 
 judgment, in his " A few Words on Mr. Freeman.' 
 
 ?5 
 
 " Did Mr. Freeman ever read that life ? Is there any trace of 
 fanatirism in it ? I wrote an account of St. Neot at the request of 
 a person for whom I had a profound personal admiration, ]mt he 
 would smile at the supposition that I was fanatical or cajjable of
 
 14 INTRODUCTIOSr. 
 
 fanaticism. In my reading on that occasion, and in my subse- 
 quent hagiological studies, I found myself in an atmosphere 
 where any story seemed to pass as true that was edifying. I did 
 not like my occupation and I drew out of it." 
 
 It is an interesting fact that in his essaj on " Tlie 
 Lives of the Saints," Mr. Fronde not onlj treats the 
 subject with decorum and dignity, but also gives a phi- 
 losophy of asceticism which is highly honorable to the 
 saints. 
 
 " Without speculating on the why, the Christians felt that in- 
 dulgence in animal passion did, in fact, pollute them, and so much 
 the more if it was deliberate. . . . Christianity would present the 
 body to God as a pure and holy sacrifice, as so much of the mate- 
 rial world conquered from the appetites and lusts, and from the 
 devil whose abode they were. This was the meaning of the fast- 
 ings and scourgings, the penances and night-watchings ; it was 
 this which sent St. Anthony to the tombs and set Simeon on his pil- 
 lar, to conquer the devil in the flesh, and keep themselves, if possi- 
 ble, undefiled by so much as one corrupt thought. . . . They did 
 their work, and in virtue of it we are raised to a higher stage — 
 we are lifted forward a mighty step which we can never retrace. 
 Personal purity is not the whole for which we have to care : it is 
 but one feature in the ideal character of man. The monks may 
 have thought it was all, or more nearly all than it is ; and there- 
 fore their lives may seem to us poor, mean, and emasculate. . . 
 Henceforth it is impossible for us to give our unmixed admiration 
 to any character which moral shadows overhang. Henceforth 
 we require not greatness only, but goodness ; and not that good- 
 ness only which begins and ends in conduct correctly regulated, 
 but that love of goodness, that keen, pure feeling for it which 
 resides in a conscience as sensitive and susceptible as a woman's 
 modesty." 
 
 In 1847 Mr. Froude published a volume of stories 
 nnder the title ''Shadows of the Clouds," a work of 
 which we have seen no copy. Ilis next book, " The 
 Nemesis of Faith," was published in 1819, and rendered
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 Mr. Fronde's position at Oxford so unpleasant that he 
 resigned his career in the Church. Tlie work is a sort of 
 novel with just enough of autobiograjjhj to be a thorn in 
 the flesh of the author. The story is this : Sutherland, 
 a young candidate for orders in the Anglican Church, 
 encounters doubts, and then forms opinions which are 
 liostile to Christianity as taught at Oxford. These 
 opinions he expresses in the form of letters to a friend. 
 Pressed by liis family, he surrenders his new convictions 
 and- enters the priesthood of England ; but he will preach 
 nothing but good behavior and sound character ; a plot 
 is laid for him, and he is revealed as a man compromis- 
 ing between scepticism and religion. He surrenders his 
 living and wanders to Italy. There he seduces another 
 man's wife, and is rescued on the brink of suicide from 
 remorse, and falling into the arms of the Roman creed, 
 he ends his d»ys miserably in a monastery. The autobio- 
 graphical element is in recollections of the author's child- 
 hood, more or less altered in every case, and in the 
 record of doubt and struggle through which Mr. Froude 
 doubtless himself passed. It is easy to see, too, how the 
 young author may have considered the compromise 
 which Sutherland makes and forecast its inevitable 
 failure. But he never entered upon the compromising 
 path, and all the rest of the story has no relation to his 
 own life. 
 
 At this day we may wonder how " The Xemesis of 
 Faith" could have been read upside down. As the title 
 implies, Faith avenged itself in the story for the dishonor 
 put upon it by Sutherland. The man who could not 
 believe in miracles or free will suffers a paralysis of his 
 moral nature, and creeps into the home of a friend to 
 desolate it. No more powerful vindication of Faith is 
 conceivable than a fact of this kind must be ; a romance
 
 16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Avitli sucli afact iuits heart would be assumed, ordinarily, 
 to have some value as a defence of Christianity. But 
 the young author had stated the criticism of Christianity 
 so forcibly that Churchmen could not spare a thought 
 for the moral of the story. "What is stranger still, the 
 book has been republished in this country under circum- 
 stances which indicate that the jjublisher considered it a 
 tract against the Christian religion and an apology for 
 impurity. This American use of the book leads one to 
 ask, quoting our author on another subject, " Is human- 
 ity crawling out of the cradle or tottering into the 
 grave ? Is it in nursery, in school-room, or in open man- 
 hood ?" If there was little logic in the Churchmen's 
 estimate of " The Nemesis of Faith,' ' there is an assump- 
 tion that readers are fools in the estimate of the sceptical 
 American pubhsher whom Anthony Comstock sent to a 
 New York prison for selling indecent literature. 
 
 After his retirement from Oxford, Mr. Fronde betook 
 himself zealously to the study of English history, which 
 liad been his favorite reading in earlier youth. The 
 greater part of his literary work has grown out of his re- 
 searches as a historian. Of his gi*eat book, " The History 
 of England from the fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the 
 Spanish Armada," he published the first two volumes in 
 1856, and the last of the twelve volumes in 1869. 
 
 " My motive for selecting the Tudor period," Mr. Froude wrote 
 in 1867, " was the injustice which I conceived to have been done 
 hy Lord Macaulay and others to the Fathers of the Eeformed 
 English Church, to Cranmer especially, the chief compiler of the 
 Liturgy and the author of some of the most beautiful parts of it. 
 The very point of the first six volumes of my history was to show 
 what unfair treatment Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper, and their com- 
 panions in suffering had met with from modern writers. If I ap- 
 peared as an apologist at all, it was as the apologist of Cranmer, 
 whose character I conceived to require and deserve peculiarly
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 delicate consideration. " These sentences are a part of the reply to 
 the strangely reckless accusation of Mr. Freeman, that Mr. Froude 
 always displays " a fanatical hatred toward the English Church at 
 all times and under all characters." 
 
 The most conspicuous feature of the " History of 
 England " is the better (because fuller) light in which it 
 places King Henry the Eighth. This sovereign and his 
 nurperous marriages had for two centuries been the 
 theme of general reprobation. Charles Dickens wrote 
 the- general verdict when he described Henry (in the 
 ", Child's History of England ") as " a great blot of blood 
 and grease on the history of England." Such verdicts 
 are easy, and satisfy a moral craving. We all know that 
 there is a vast amount of evil in the world, and we like 
 to get it concentrated in the career of some great scoun- 
 drel whom we can lash through the world. A man who 
 })uts a stop to this easy system of poetical justice, by 
 showing us that we are wrapping the wrong man, is not 
 ajjt to be enthusiastically welcomed. Mr. Froude found 
 a great body of public documents to which preceding 
 historians had given no attention. He studied them, and 
 obtained in them a new view of Henry the Eighth. 
 That new view colors and characterizes his History. 
 Henry, in the light of the documents, is not so bad a man 
 as we thought him ; j^erhaps Mr. Froude makes him a 
 better man than he was ; reactions are apt to react too 
 far. But as a work of research, as a new judgment pro- 
 nounced upon many characters of its period, and as a 
 model of historical style, the "History of England" 
 deserves and will keep its large place in the esteem of 
 the English-reading public. 
 
 In 1872-74 Mr. Froude published his work on " The 
 English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century." The 
 criticism of this work has been even more fierce than that
 
 18 INTRODUCTION". 
 
 which pursued the "History of England." Of both 
 works Mr. Froude's defence is the same. He has built 
 upon documents of a public or otherwise presumptively 
 authoritative nature ; but in the treatment of the Irish 
 he is at the immense disadvantage of being an English- 
 man, and stumbles into a pitfall which is called " race." 
 He has pronounced some judgments respecting the Irish 
 Celts which are certainly too sweeping, and confound 
 the innocent with the guilty. " Race" is a fiction of 
 anthropologists, in so far as it assumes that men perform 
 either good or bad actions because they belong to a partic- 
 ular tribe, or because their ancestors did. No one likes 
 to have his ancestors universally described in terms that 
 (so far as history can know) accurately describe only 
 some individuals of his country. 
 
 Our fellow-citizens of Irish race have, not without 
 some reason, a strong prejudice against Mr. Froude, but 
 they ought not to overlook the fact that he has very 
 vigorously described the misgovernment of Ireland by 
 England in the very book which has provoked their 
 wrath. The present volume contains a selection from 
 that work which gives an example of the English mis- 
 takes in Ireland, and at the same time illustrates the 
 notions of economic science which prevailed two hundred 
 years ago.* 
 
 Our author has been for forty years a popular con- 
 tributor to the English periodicals ; and it is in these less 
 ambitious essays and sketches that his writings have 
 travelled round the globe. Our busy time wants to do 
 its hard reading rapidly ; to have opinions stated in the 
 most condensed form that is consistent with rapid read- 
 ing. Mr. Froude excels in pithy, clear, and vivacious 
 statement. He is not in any doubt what he thinks ; he 
 
 * See " Seventeenth Century Political Economy."
 
 INTKODUCTIOX. 19 
 
 has no hesitation in his temper ; he writes in the swift 
 and attractive waj which the busj world tinds good. In 
 1867 he made a beginning of collecting his periodical 
 work into volumes, which he calls " Short Studies on 
 Great Subjects." In the American edition there are now 
 four of these volumes ; and in the preface to the fourth 
 the author tells us that it is the last of the series. 
 -/■jOther works of Mr. Froude remain to be noticed. 
 " Caesar, a Sketch," is an outline of the career of Julius 
 Csesar. Mr. Froude has abundance of good company in 
 his- high estimate of the character, purposes, and useful- 
 ness of the founder of the Koman Empire. Research 
 has rehabilitated the memory of Caesar with a reverent 
 affection which the " sketch" of Mr. Froude represents 
 m/English literature. The other great languages have 
 many works of the same character. Mr. Froude has also 
 outlined the'^life and character of John Bun^'^an, in a 
 volume belonging to the series of " English Men of 
 Letters." It is a proof cf breadth of judgment and 
 sympathy, that Mr. Froude likes both Caesar and Bun- 
 yan. Their manliness and force of character belong to 
 a common ground which our author loves to feel under 
 his feet. He believes in great good men ; there is this 
 difference between him and Thomas Carlyle, that the 
 latter's great men seem to most of us to be unconscion- 
 able scoundrels. 
 
 It remains to speak brieily of Mr. Froude as the biog- 
 rapher of Carlyle, a work which he still has in hand. 
 Our readers are familiar with the " Reminiscences," 
 " The Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle," and " The First 
 Forty Years" of the rugged Northern bear ; and they 
 also know that Mr. Froude raised a storm which might 
 be described as a " blizzard " when he published the 
 " Reminiscences." He probably did the best and wis«:^t
 
 20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thing in giving to the world just what Thomas Carlyle 
 had thought fit to write about himself and it in his auto- 
 biograpliical notes. The worid wants to know what 
 kind of a human creature a great author really was ; it 
 will never be satisfied until it finds out ; and such a mail 
 as Carlyle it will certainly find out to the last and least 
 of his frailties. Mr. Froude did Carlyle's memory a 
 service by emptying at once, before any time had been 
 spent in controversies, the contents of these diaries and 
 note-books into literary highways. We found out at once 
 all Carlyle's faults and frailties, and the subject has 
 already ceased to have much interest. Mr. Froude, if 
 he had been a small man, might have dribbled these 
 matters out carefully and dramatically — and amassed a 
 fortune bv economizing " the remains" of Thomas 
 Carlyle. 
 
 HIS OPINIONS. 
 
 Mr. Froude b< lon^ s to the practical school of philoso- 
 phers. He recc gniz ^s that some provisional disposition 
 lias to be made c I the questions about nature, mind, will, 
 and conscience, whicl . thinkers and dialecticians have 
 wrestled with ir all ag 3S. The practical solution is that 
 such questions a 'e bey* nd human powers. In his article 
 on Spinoza he disposi s of that acute and courageous 
 philosopher's m< I'als of pantheism with such sentences as 
 this : " We are firmly i onvinced that of these questions, 
 and of all like tl lem, pn ctical answers only lie within the 
 reach of human faculties , and that in researches into the 
 absolute we are )n the r )ad which ends nowhere." In 
 the same essay writing ; of the boldness with which 
 Spinoza makes God the author of all evil, Mr. Froude 
 says : " We bel eve for ( urselves that logic has no busi- 
 ness with such questions ; that the answer to them lies in
 
 INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 the conscience, and not in the intellect.'" One of 
 Spinoza's answers to objections is this : " When a man 
 does this or that, God does it, but God does it not as he 
 is Infinite, hut as he is expressed in that man^s nature.'''' 
 To which Mr. Froude replies, speaking for Englishmen 
 of his time : 
 
 " " It is not so— we know it, and that is enough. We are well 
 _:a^are of the phalanx of difficulties that lie about our theistic con- 
 ceptions. They are -quite enough, if religion depended on specu- 
 lative consistency and not in obedience of life, to perplex and 
 teijify us. . . We do not care to have these questions answered 
 at all. Conscience is the single tribunal to which we choose to be 
 referred, and conscience declares imperatively that what he 
 [Spinoza] says is not true." 
 
 *' ■ ^KX the end of the critique of Spinoza, Mr. Froude 
 points out the practical modifications of freedom of 
 choice. " Pi'aetically we are forced to regard each other 
 as not free, and to make allowance, every moment, for 
 influences for which we cannot hold each other responsi- 
 ble. . . Duties which are easy to one, another finds im- 
 possible. . . These and other considerations considerably 
 modify the popular view of the freedom of the human 
 will. " But Mr. Froude is too vigorous a moralist to stop 
 here. Whether or not we can do one thing and refrain 
 from another, " we have a consciousness that we ought 
 to choose l)etween them, a sense of duty, as Aristotle 
 expresses it, which we cannot shake ofl^. This fact 
 involves some measure of freedom, or it is nonsense. . . 
 Somewhere or other tlie influence of causes ceases to 
 operate," leaving men with a measure of self-determina- 
 tion, " by the amount of which, and not by their specific 
 actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. . . 
 We refuse to allow men to be considered all equally guilty 
 for the same faults : and we insist that there is some-
 
 22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 where a point oi freedom. Where that point is — where 
 other influences terminate and responsibihty begins — will 
 always be of intricate and often impossible solution. But 
 if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarian- 
 ism, and man is what he has been hitherto supposed to be 
 — an exception in the order of nature, with a power not 
 differing in degree, but differing in kind, from those of 
 other creatures." 
 
 In his " Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological 
 Difficulties," first pubhshed in 1863, Mr, Froude makes 
 a beautiful and eloquent plea for Christian character in a 
 few warm and bright sentences : 
 
 " The creed of eighteen centuries," he says, " is not about to 
 fade away like an exhalation, nor are the new lights of science so 
 exhilarating that serious persons can look with comfort to ex- 
 changing one for the other. Christianity has abler advocates 
 than its professed defenders, in those many quiet and humble men 
 and women who in the light of it and tlie strength of it live holy, 
 beautiful, and self-denying lives. The God that answers by fire is 
 the God whom mankind will acknowledge ; and so long as the 
 fruits of the Spirit continue to be visible in charity, in self-sacri- 
 fice, in those graces which raise human creatures above them- 
 selves, and invest them with that beauty of holiness which only 
 religion confers, thoughtful persons will remain convinced that 
 with them in some form or other is the secret of truth. . . When 
 a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, we need 
 trouble ourselves very little with scientific demonstrations that it 
 is false." 
 
 And yet Mr. Froude has, in the same article and in 
 others, stated with great strength the intellectual and 
 scientific difficulties of religion in our time. But he is 
 always serious and reverent in his language. In the essay 
 on " Criticism of the Gospel History," he refers to the 
 two habits of thought which may be traced throughout 
 history — " one giving us churches and the knowledge of
 
 INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 God, the otlier giving us freedom and science'''- — and 
 reminds tis that eacli regards the other as its natural 
 enemy, lie also sees that human society is perpetually 
 passing from tlie dominion of one to that of the other of 
 these mental conditions, and asks : 
 
 " Is this antagonism a law of humanity ? As mankind move 
 'upward throvigh the ascending circles of progress, is it forever 
 (^ijB be with them as with the globe which they inhabit — of which 
 one hemisphere is perpetually dark ? Have the lessons of the 
 Reformation 1>een thrown away ? Is knowledge alvrays to 
 advance under tlio ban of religion? Is faith never to cease to 
 dread investigation ? Is science chiefly to value each new discov- 
 ery as a victory gained over its rival ? Is the spiritunl world to 
 revolve eternally upon an axis of which the two poles are Mate- 
 rialism and Superstition, to l)e buried in their alternate occulta- 
 t^ons in periods of utter darkness, or lifted into an icy light where 
 there is neither life nor warmth ?" 
 
 This passage clearly displays tlie spirit in which Mr. 
 Froude doubts —his profound faith in religion as ex- 
 pi'essed in Christian teaching respecting duty, and his 
 doubt whether Christian doctrine can ever free itself 
 from the hostility of the free scientiiic spirit. Mr. Froude 
 belongs in both camps. He has a herculean grasp on 
 faith in that lovely type of human character which has 
 been bred in the English race under Christian teaching ; 
 he holds as tenaciously with those who demand satis- 
 factory reasons for accepting the Christian creed. Per- 
 luips he nuiy be fairly described as a believer who is 
 reverently fond of the fruits of faith, but much dissatis- 
 fied with all and singular the dogmatic statements of 
 Christianity. Certain truths of historical Christianity 
 were put into a brilliant focus for him in the Tractarian 
 controversy. Young Froude had to settle for himself 
 whether Protestantism had a sound intellectual basis, or
 
 24 IXTRODUCTIOK. 
 
 ratlicr, lie liad to dispose of, once for all, the Catholic 
 theory that Providence had made the Church a living 
 and visible authority that could not err. lie rejected 
 that theory in the very lire. Then it followed that all 
 men could make mistakes, that nohody on earth is ex- 
 empt from a liability to error. This pair of conclusions 
 came to him in the midst of experiences which revealed 
 their vast consequences : nothing is true because the 
 Church teaches it, or has inherited it, or has never doubted 
 it, or makes a foundation stone of it. In the Reformation, 
 Protestantism appealed to the Cfesar of Reason ; but 
 to Mr. Froude Protestantism seems to be possessed by 
 an invincible reluctance to appear before the judge to 
 whose bar it once dragged Catholicism for condemnation. 
 It is easy to detect in his religious criticism a doubt 
 whether Protestantism as a system of doctrine can endure 
 the tierce light of Reason ; but for him the alternative 
 would be neither Catholic infallibility nor materialism, but 
 the "eternal religion of man's heart and conscience," 
 •whether supported or unsupported by objective realities. 
 In his essay on " The Times of Erasmus and Luther," 
 he makes a still clearer statement of his religious views : 
 " I do not myself consider that the formulas in which 
 men express their belief are of much consequence. The 
 question is rather of the thing expressed ; and so long as 
 we find a living consciousness that above the w^orld and 
 above human life there is a righteous God, who will jndge 
 men according to their works, whether they say their 
 prayers in Latin or English, whether they call themselves 
 Protestants or call themselves Catholics, appears to me of 
 quite secondary importance." 
 
 All Mr. Fronde's theological oj)inions he w^ould prob- 
 ably regard as of very small consequence. He intimates
 
 INTRODUCTION". 25 
 
 in many places that he does not value his own religious 
 thinking very highly — not any more highly than he 
 values that of other people. But there is one order of 
 ideas and their forms of expression which he profoundly 
 reverences. He perceives that mankind have climbed to 
 their highest ideal of goodness under Christianity ; and 
 he holds this ideal as the one perfect fruit of all human 
 progress. Ask him to define the good man and he will 
 describe a character which is self-forgetful and unselfish, 
 which renounces pleasure, gain, indulgence, and all other 
 personal advantages remote or present, in order to do 
 nght. " The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. 
 Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great 
 action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower." In 
 character and conduct he finds a region of certainties bor- 
 dering a land of shadows, and he does not expect the 
 shadows to pass. However long man may live on the 
 earth, " the riddle of man's nature will never be ex- 
 plained. There will be that in him yet which physical 
 laws will fail to explain, that something, whatever it be, 
 in himself, and in the world, which science cannot fathom, 
 and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin 
 and destiny." 
 
 The practical bent of Mr. Froude's thinking is mani- 
 fest throughout the essay on " The Oxford Counter- 
 Kef ormation." This topic was for him a perpetual 
 temptation to autobiography. He suffered in the fires 
 of that controversy. But he writes of it in a temper 
 which posterity will doubtless find calm if not impartial. 
 Lookinir back, he sees the naturalistic and the Catholic 
 movements starting at the same time, near the same spot, 
 and marching off in opposite directions. While two 
 groups of men of the same general education assailed one
 
 2C) INTTllODUCTION. 
 
 tlie foundations of Protestantism, and the other those of 
 Christianity itself, Mr. Froude watches their conflicts, 
 and has no sympathy with either. 
 
 " For myself," he writes, " I ata convinced that they are roads 
 both of them which lead to the wrong place, and that it is better 
 for us to occupy ourselves with realities than fret our minds 
 about illusions. If the Church of Rome recovers power eaough 
 to be dangerous, it will be shattered upon the same rocks on 
 which it was dashed three centuries ago. . . In matters of relig- 
 ion, science can say nothing, for it knows nothing. . . So far as 
 philosophy can see, there may be nothing in the materials of 
 Christianity which is necessarily and certainly supernatural. 
 And yet Christianity exists, and has existed, and has been the 
 most powerful spiritual force which has ever been felt among 
 mankind." 
 
 The essay from which these sentences are taken was 
 originally published in 1881 in Good Woy^ds ; they doubt- 
 less express the mature convdctions of their author. 
 
 As a historical writer, Mr. Froude has always in view 
 the times for which he writes as well as those about 
 which he writes, and this reference to the uses of the 
 historical knowledge which he is imparting is openly 
 and frankly made. There is an affectation in one school 
 of historians of placing all events and opinions in the at- 
 mosphere where they flourished ; but it is an affectation 
 only, and misleads the reader who trusts its fair promises. 
 No man of this age can reproduce the atmosphere that sur- 
 rounded the life of Thomas Becket ; a modern education 
 compels us to see with modern eyes and feel with modem 
 hearts. Only the old historians can give us the old his- 
 tories. No man living in the age which Motley describes 
 in his " Rise of the Dutch Republic" could have written 
 a book producing in us the emotions and reflections which 
 Motley inspires. A historian is a man of like passions
 
 IKTRODFCTION. 27 
 
 with ourselves, and Las a personal equation to be con- 
 sidered in estimating the things which we know by the 
 aid of his telescope. Mr. Fronde's frankness, his very 
 veliemence, saves us from becoming the victims of mis- 
 leading antipathies. We know that he is a vigorous 
 Protestant when he is writing of Roman Catholicism. We 
 know that he has no special affection for the ideas which 
 are described under the term Anglicanism ; and Ave know 
 that he has" no thoroughgoing symj)atliy for the Irish 
 Cejts, and always expresses his admiration for them 
 witli strong qualifications. 
 
 We cannot think of a man as an unbeliever who 
 writes : 
 
 " Churches exist in this world to remind us of the eternal laws 
 > 
 
 wbich we are bound to obej' ;" nor can we be hasty in condemn- 
 ing him when he adds, " unfortunately, they have preferred in 
 later times the*6peculative side of things to the practical. They 
 take up into their teaching opinions and teachings which are 
 merely ephemeral ; which would naturally die out with the prog- 
 ress of knowledge ; but having received a spurious sanctity pro- 
 long their days unreasonably, and become first immeaning, and 
 then occasions of superstition. . . While the meaning is alive in 
 them [all forms of belief, or ceremony] they are uot only harm- 
 less, but pregnant and life-giving ; when their virtue departs 
 they hide God from us, and make us practically into atheists." 
 
 We suppose that Roman Catholics think of Mr. Froude 
 as a sworn enemy. But he has written of parts of their 
 Church history with most enthusiastic praise. He says : 
 
 " Never in all their history, in ancient timi-s or modern, never 
 that we know of. have mankind thrown out of themselves anything 
 so grand, so beautiful, so useful as tlie Catholic Church once 
 was. . . At the time I speak of the Churcli ruled the state with 
 the authority of a conscience ; and self-interest as a motive of 
 action was only named to be abhorred. The bishops and clergy 
 were regarded freely and simply as the immediate ministers of the
 
 28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Almighty, and they seem to liave really deserved that high esti- 
 mate of their character. It was not for the doctrines they taught 
 only, or chiefly, that they were held in honor. Brave men do not 
 fall down before their fellow-mortals for the words which they 
 speak or for the rites which they perform. Wisdom, justice, 
 self-denial, nobleness, purity, high-mindedness — these are the 
 qualities before which the free-born races of Europe have been 
 contented to bow ; and in no order of men were such qualities to 
 be found as they were found six hundred years ago in the clergy 
 of the Catholic Church." This clergy " sheltered the weak from 
 the strong, put the serf and his lord on a common level of sin- 
 fulness, and rose from among the people to the mitre and the 
 triple crown, just as nowadays the rail-splitter and the tailor 
 become Presidents of the Republic of the West."* 
 
 It is easy enough for a broad-minded man to believe 
 all that, and also to perceive that the power of the 
 priesthood over human life exposed its members to cor- 
 ruption. Mr. Froude also says : " But times change, and 
 good things as well as bad grow old and have to die. The 
 heart of the matter which the Catholic Church had 
 taught was the fear of God ; but the language of it and 
 the formulas of it were made up of human ideas and 
 notions about things which the mere increase of human 
 knowledge gradually made incredible." As faith died, 
 corruption set in. For a time men endure corruption 
 rather than encounter anarchy. As corruption advances, 
 they prepare for revolt. Tlie revolution may be long 
 delayed : 
 
 "But it is with human things as it is with the great icebergs 
 which drift southward out of the frozen seas. They swim two 
 thirds under water and one third above ; and so long as the equi- 
 librium is sustained, you would think they were as stable as the 
 
 * " Times of Erasmus and Luther ;" Lectures delivered at New 
 Castle, 1867.
 
 IXTKODUCTIOX. 20 
 
 rocks. But the sea-water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of 
 fathoms down, the tepid current washes the base of the berg •, 
 silently in those far deeps the center of gravity is changed ; and 
 then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous mass heaves 
 over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly 
 in the sunlight are buried in the ocean forever." 
 
 "^'The space allotted to this introduction is not laro^e 
 ene^gli for a full review of Mr. Fronde's opinions. We 
 Lave touched lightly upon some leading ideas that appear 
 in li.is books. One thing deserves mention. Since he got 
 upon his feet after the Oxford hurricane, he has been 
 singularly consistent with himself. Many of us spend 
 our lives without finding a solid footing. Mr. Fronde had 
 found his in his thirty-second year, and his is still standing 
 where he planted himself in 1850. His Agnosticism is 
 that of a keen-eyed man, who perceives the near and in- 
 vincible barriei's of research into the mysteries of Being. 
 Ilis faith is an unshaken confidence in the duty and 
 beauty of right living, lie believes that great human 
 enthusiasms (such as asceticism) have noble meanings. 
 He cleaves to Christianity as the purest and most purify- 
 ing faith which the world has known. 
 
 niS CONTROVERSIES. 
 
 Mr. Froiule has always been a traveller studying living 
 men with his eyes, as well as dead men with a historical 
 telescope. He has made a lecturing tour among our- 
 selves ; he has twice visited South Africa ; he studied 
 the Irish of to-day during a residence in Kerry for 
 several summers ; and one of the most delightful papers 
 in this collection is a sketch of recent travels in Norway. 
 The subject of his lectures in this country was ill-chosen. 
 We are not altogether absorbed in the Irish cpiestion, 
 and that question is no more likely to be settled by histori-
 
 80 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cal evidence, than the qnestion of miracles is likely to 
 be disposed of by testimony alone. But Mr, Fronde's 
 visit strengrthened the affection which he cherishes for 
 Americans and which Americans cherish for him. His 
 lectures among us drew him into a controversy with 
 Father Burke, in which the historian received some hard 
 blows ; but in controversy, as it is ordinarily conducted 
 among Christians, he requires no help or sympathy ; he 
 is able to take care of himself. There is, however, one 
 point in the attacks on Mr. Froude, from the sting of 
 which he is entitled to such relief as the respect of 
 candid men can give. We have found pencilled over his 
 volumes on Ireland, which iire in use at our public 
 libraries, gross charges that Mr. Froude is dishonest. 
 Some of these are below notice except as facts. When, 
 for example, one reader effervesces in a pencil note which 
 tells us that " Froude is the son of a hick'''' (we preserve 
 the spelhng), the commentary is not worth noting except 
 as a proof of feeling in the commentator. But charges 
 that " Froude is untrustworthy and dishonest" are 
 serious, and they are the more serious that Mr. Edward 
 A. Freeman, the historian, has made them with still 
 greater vehemence than the pencil-marking critics who 
 deface books in the libraries. Mr. Freeman's charges 
 include those of the scribblers ; we will first notice the 
 learned and accomplished critic's animadversions. In 
 1878 Mr. Freeman devoted ninety-eight pages in the 
 Contempora7'y Review to demolishing Mr. Froude as a 
 historian and as a man. lie fixed upon his victim the 
 guilt of one mistake, two typographical errors, and three 
 or four sins of strong language. He described Mr. 
 Froude as dishonest and careless of truth, and as in- 
 capable of stating anything as he finds it in a document 
 before him. No proofs are furnished to sustain these
 
 IKTKODUCTION". 31 
 
 grave charges. The criticism is a piece of bitter in- 
 vective. It accuses Mr. Froude of ignoring the work of 
 his brotlier Richard Hurrell Froude from base motives, 
 and " dealing stabs in the dark at a brotlier's ahnost for- 
 gotten fame." The foundation for this charge is simply 
 the omission by Mr. Froude of any reference to the fact 
 that his dead brother had written a life of Thomas 
 ,Becket. We have wondered, on this side of the water, 
 wliat Mr. Froude had done to Mr. Freeman to provoke 
 siieli an unmanly attack. Mr. Froude has, in two of his 
 ^essays, spoken in the strongest terms of his brother's 
 genius and power. He has never stabbed that brother's 
 fame, so far as we Americans can discover. The two 
 ehareres of Mr. Freeman that stick are that Mr. Froude is 
 "^capable of mistake, and that he is sometimes too vehe- 
 ment. Both accusations lie against every writer of 
 ability ; an(>- in his criticism of Mr. Froude, Mr. Free- 
 man himself has earned a degree as a master in the arts of 
 beinij mistaken and of inaccurate vehemence. So far as 
 Mr. Fronde's Irish critics are concerned, the controversy 
 is mainly respecting the value of certain bodies of testi- 
 mony. For ourselves, we have not much confidence in 
 either set of documents or witnesses. There is some- 
 thing in the air of Ireland that tolerates nothing but sub- 
 jective trutli within a hundred leagues of its green 
 shores, and makes every ohjectivefact reflect at least two 
 totally different shapes. At all events, we should have 
 to assume some such power to exist in the sweet Irish air 
 before we could bcffin to harmonize the diverse and 
 mntually Ijclligerent accounts of the facts of Irish history 
 under English rule. Bnt candid men cannot doubt that, 
 whether he be right or wrong, Mr. Froude is an honest 
 man and a faithful historian — faithful t<» tlic liglits by 
 which he is guided.
 
 3-^ INTIIODUCTION. 
 
 JIIS STYLE. 
 
 Mr. Froude is among tlie best masters, living or dead, 
 of the art of writing the English language. His sen- 
 tences are always clean, jDlain, and complete ; there is no 
 slovenliness, no obscurity, and no deficiency. The reader 
 is saved all unnecessary effort, and has no need to go back 
 and disentangle the thread of the thought in some ill- 
 adjusted qualifying clause. He illustrates Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer's principle of style by " economizing the atten- 
 tion of the reader." Flowing, perspicuous, and abun- 
 dant as Mr. Fronde's style is, it seldom attracts attention 
 to itself. Probably most of his readers peruse his works 
 without any feeling that they are those of a finished 
 master of the art of writing. But a style which had only 
 the qualities we have named would fall short of the best. 
 Smooth and clear statement is of inestimable value ; but 
 in the best literature there are higher qualities. To keep 
 the homely graces of clearness and fulness, and to add 
 to them sympathetic warmth and Imninous exaltation, so 
 that the reader is lifted and carried as though a livinsr 
 voice and presence had caj^tured him — that is the per- 
 fection of the art of writing. But we appreciate recrea- 
 tion best when we get it in moderation ; and a writer 
 who is always on the heights, as Macaulay is wont to be, 
 wearies us with a monotonous strain of exaltation. Mr. 
 Froude keeps the plain road for the most part, but makes 
 his excursions to the hills often enough to nourish an ex- 
 pectation of these journeys, but not often enougli to 
 make them wearisome. There is in his works no attempt 
 at fine writing, no sustained and brilliant periods pursuing 
 each other over a whole page. When we quote him, 
 we must quote him for his thought as well as for his 
 style. Some exceptions to this rule are found, however,
 
 INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 in his earlier books— books whicli he has dropped as the 
 unripe harvest of his boyhood. And yet " The Nemesis 
 of Faith" shows all the good qiiahties of Mr. Fronde's 
 style, though it has the faults which one expects in a 
 great man at thirty. He could not produce to-day better 
 sentences than the following, taken from that boyish 
 "book : 
 
 '"''*' The roads they have to travel are beatea in by the unscrupu- 
 lous as well as the scrupulous ; they are none of the cleanest, and 
 tbie" race is too fast to give one time to pick one's way." 
 
 '' " It is night and day (or it ought to be) with all of us, if we 
 ■want to keep in health. To be sure, now and then there will 
 come a North Pole winter with its six months' frost and darkness 
 and mock suns ; but Nature is still fair and pays them off with 
 th^r six months of day." 
 
 " The doctrinal food the Church had to offer to men of stamp 
 like that was tJ'ut like watered chaff for the giant dray-horse of 
 the coal-yard." 
 
 " At home, when we come home, we lay aside our mask and 
 drop our tools, and are no longer lawyers, sailors, soldiers, states- 
 men, clergymen, but only men." 
 
 " I question whether the home of childhood has not more to do 
 with religion than all the teachers and the teaching, and the huge 
 unfathomed folios." 
 
 " No idle, careless, thoughtless man, so long as he persists in 
 being what he is, can endure the thought of home any more than 
 he can endure the thought of God." 
 
 "The heart lies out under the breatli of Providence like the 
 prepared mirror of the photogenic draughtsman ; the figure falls 
 there ; it rests but a few moments, and then passes away, and no 
 line is seen ; but the rays have eaten in and left a form which 
 can never be effaced. By and by the acid touclics it, and there 
 lies the image, full and faithful as the hand could paint it." 
 
 "The dull, uiiiiiipasKioned voice [of conscience] was unheard 
 among the volujjtuous melodic" of her wishes."
 
 34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " His moral nature had been lowered down to it before he sin- 
 ned. . . He was surprised to find how easily .t Jay upon him." 
 
 " It swept over her lacerated heart like the white squalls over 
 the hot seas of India, with a fury too intense to raise the waves, 
 but laying them all flat in boiling calm." 
 
 " He sunk down into the barren waste, and the dry sands 
 rolled over him where he lay." 
 
 Probably no other living writer has said so many wise 
 things welh Some of these are quoted in other pages of 
 this sketch. We give below a small collection of his 
 choice sayings. Most of these extracts convey opinions 
 which will command respect if not belief, and at the 
 same time illustrate the best qualities of the author's 
 style. 
 
 " Religion, which was a plaything to the nobles, was to the 
 [Scotch] people a clear matter of life and death." 
 
 " Away at St. Andrews, John Knox, broken in body, and 
 scarcely able to stagger up the jjulpit stairs, still thundered in the 
 parish church ; and his voice, it was said, was like ten thousand 
 trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism." 
 
 " We may hope that no large body of human beings have for 
 any length of time been too dangerously afraid of enjoyment." 
 
 " Goodness, though the indispensable adjunct to knowledge, 
 is no substitute for it." 
 
 "Like the seven lamps before the throne of God, the seven 
 mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments shed 
 over mankind a never-ceasing stream of blessed influences." 
 
 " As a man can by no possibility be doing anything but a most 
 foul wrong to himself in getting drunk, society does him no 
 wrong, hut rather does him the greatest benefit, if it can possibly 
 keep him sober." 
 
 " In each of the many forms which Christianity has assumed in 
 the world, holy men have lived and died, and have had the wit- 
 ness of the Spirit that they were not far from the truth,"
 
 INTRODLXTION. 6o 
 
 *' No sane man ever raised his narrow understanding into a 
 measure of the possibilities of the universe ; nor does any person 
 with any pretensions to religion disbelieve in miracles of some 
 kind. ■ 
 
 " We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can 
 live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it pro- 
 fesses to be a faith at all, or it is nothing." 
 
 'iA general doubt is coming up like a thunderstorm against 
 the wind, and blackening the sky." 
 
 "Himself of most modest nature, he never sought greatness, but 
 greatness found him in spite of himself."* 
 
 " No one who has ever risen to any great height in this world 
 refuses to move till he knows where he is going." 
 
 " I hold that on the obscure mysteries of faith every one should 
 be allowed to believe according to his conscience, and that argu- 
 ments on such matters are either impertinent or useless." 
 
 *' To the bishops of Normandy, Henry Plantagenet handed the 
 rope to drag him to his death-bed of ashes." 
 
 " We are embarked in a current which bears us forward inde- 
 pendent of our wills, and indifferent whether we submit or re- 
 sist ; but each of us is sailing in a boat of his own, which, as he 
 is hurried on, he can guide or leave to drift." 
 
 "'Pickwick,' delightful as it is to us, will be unreadable to 
 our grandchildren. The most genial caricature ceases to inter- 
 est when the thing caricatured has ceased to be." 
 
 " We look in vain to liim [iri hie] for any in-^i^ht into the com- 
 plicated problems of huriMnity, or for any sympathy with the 
 passions which are tlie pulses of human life." 
 
 * This is said of .Jolin Henry Newman. This sentence, be- 
 ginning and ending with himseJf, and having a he and a him, the 
 four pronouns among its seventeen words lopre.senting the same 
 ])erson, is not quoted here for its beauty, but as an example of 
 Mr. Froude's mastery over awkward combinations of worda. The 
 sentence is clear and aninnlcd. "
 
 36 INTKOnUCTION. 
 
 " To speak habitually with authority does not necessarily indi- 
 cate an absence of humility, but does not encourage the growth 
 of that quality." 
 
 " If religion does not make men more human than they would 
 be without it, it makes them fatally less so." 
 
 " Facts, it was once said, were stubborn things ; but in our 
 days we have changed all that ; a fact, under the knife of a critic, 
 splits in pieces, and is dissected out of belief with incredible 
 readiness." 
 
 "There is no person so poor in his own eyes as not to gaze 
 with pleasure into a looking-glass ; and the prose age may value 
 its own image in the novel." 
 
 " If we were as familiar with the Iliad as with the Psalms, the 
 words of the old Ionian singer would leap as naturally to our lips 
 as those of the Israelite king." 
 
 "At any rate, those antique Greeks did what they said. We 
 say what they said, while in the same breath we say, too, that it 
 is impossible to do it." 
 
 " We cannot escape from our shadow, and the spirit of uncer- 
 tainity will haunt the world like an uneasy ghost until we take it 
 by the throat like men." 
 
 " Unless men may feel a cheerful conviction that they can do 
 right when they try — that they can purify themselves, can live 
 noble and worthy lives — unless this is set before them as the thing 
 which they are to do, and can succeed in doing, they will not 
 waste their energies on what they know beforehand will end in 
 failure." 
 
 " The force by which a good man tlirows a good action out of 
 himself is invisible and mystical, like that which brings out the 
 blossom and the fruit upon the tree." 
 
 " Prophets have passed for something as well as priests in mak- 
 ing God's will known, and Established Church priesthoods have 
 not been generally on particularly good terms with prophets. 
 The only occasion on which the two orders are said to have been 
 in harmony was when the prophets prophesied lies, and the 
 priests bore rule in their name."
 
 INTRODUCTION. 37 
 
 " Let us build our streets of gold, and they will hide as many 
 aching hearts as hovels of straw . . . knowledge is power and 
 wealth is power ; and harnessed, as in Plato's fable, to the chariot 
 of the soul, and guided by wisdom, they may bear it through the 
 circle of the stars ; but left to their own guidance, or reined by a 
 fool's hand, the wild horses may bring the poor fool to Phaeton's 
 ep,d, and set a world on fire." 
 
 'i,The age of the saints has passed ; they are no longer of any 
 service to us ; .we_rnust walk in their spirit, but not along their 
 road." 
 
 **..Tell a man that no good which he can do is of any value, and 
 depend upon it lie will take you at your word." 
 
 We will close this sketcli with a few longer passages 
 taken from essays not given in this collection. 
 
 I f 
 
 / 
 
 "Wherever \ve find them, they are still the same. In tlv 
 courts of .Japan or of China ; fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, 
 or prisoners among the Algerines ; founding colonies which by 
 and by were to grow into enormous transatlantic republics, or 
 exploring in crazy pinnaces the fierce latitudes of the polar seas 
 — they are the same indomitable, God-fearing men whose life was 
 one great liturgy. ' The ice was strong, but God was stronger,' 
 says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a day 
 among the icebergs, not w'aiting for God to come down and split 
 the ice for them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and 
 the rest fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death 
 glaring at them out of the rocks. Icebergs were strong, Span- 
 iards were strong, and storms, and corsairs, and rocks and reefs, 
 which no chart had then noted — they were all strong ; but God 
 was stronger, and that was all which they cared to know."* 
 
 " Beautiful is old ago — beautiful as the slow dropping mellow 
 autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, nature has 
 fulfilled her work ; she loads him with her blessings ; she fills 
 him with the fruits of a well-spent life ; and, surrounded by his 
 
 * " England's Forgotten Worthies."
 
 38 INTRODUCTION". 
 
 cliildrcn and his children's (;hildrcn, she rocks him softly away to 
 a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we 
 should not call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most 
 beautiful. There is another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trod- 
 den with bleeding feet and aching brow ; the life of which the 
 cross is the symbol ; a battle v\ hich no peace follows, this side 
 the grave ; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is 
 won ; and — strange that it should be so — this is the highest life 
 of man. Look back along the great names of history ; there is 
 none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has 
 been given to do the really highest work in this earth — whoever 
 they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, 
 philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves — one and all, their fate 
 has been the same — the same bitter cup has been given to them to 
 drink."* 
 
 " The modern man's work," Mr. Carlyle says, " is no longer to 
 splinter lances or break down walls, but to break soil, to build 
 barns and factories, and to find a high employment for himself in 
 what hitherto has been despised as degrading. How to elevate 
 labor — how to make it beautiful — how to enlist the sjnrit in it 
 (for in no other way can it be made humanly profitable), that is 
 the problem which he looks wistfully to the future to solve for us. 
 He may look to the past as well as to the future ; in the old Ionia 
 he will find all for which he wishes. The wise Ulysses built his 
 own house and carved his own bed. Princes killed and cooked 
 their own food. It was a holy work with them — their way of 
 saying grace for it ; for they offered the animal in his death to 
 the gods, and they were not butchers, but sacrificing priests. 
 Even a keeper of swine is called noble, and fights like a hero ; 
 and the young princess of Phceacia — the loveliest and gracefulcbt 
 of Homer's women — drove the clothes cart and washed linen 
 with her own beautiful hands, i^ot only was labor free — for so 
 it was among the early Romans ; or honorable, so it was among 
 the Israelites — but it was beautiful — beautiful in the artist's 
 sense, as perhaps elewhere it has never been. In later Greece — 
 in what we call the glorious period — toil had gathered about it 
 its modern crust of supposed baseness — it was left to slaves ; and 
 
 * " England's Forgotten Worthies."
 
 INTRODUCTION. 39 
 
 wise men, in their philosophic lecture-rooms, spoke of it as un- 
 worthy of the higher specimens of cultivated humanity."* 
 
 " There is a legend that at the death of Charles V. the accusing 
 angel appeared in heaven with a catalogue of deeds which no ad- 
 vocate could palliate — countries laid desolate, cities sacked and 
 burned, lists of hundreds of thousands of widows and children 
 brought to misery by the political ambition of a single man. The 
 evil spirit demanded the offender's soul, and it seemed as if mercy 
 itself could not refuse him the award. But at the last moment 
 the Supreme Judge interfered. The Emperor, He said, had been 
 sent -into the world at a peculiar time, for a peculiar purpose, and 
 Was not to be tried by the ordinary rules. Titian has painted the 
 S&ene : Charles kneeling before the Throne, with the conscious- 
 ness, as became him, of human infirmities, written upon his 
 countenance, yet neither afraid nor abject, relying in absolute 
 faith that the Judge of all mankind would do right. 
 ' '' Of Caesar, too, it may be said that he came into the world at 
 a' special time and for a special object. The old religions were 
 dead, from th^Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, 
 and the principles on which human society had been constructed 
 were dead also. There remained of spiritual conviction only the 
 common and human sense of justice and morality ; and out ol 
 this sense some ordered system of government had to be con- 
 structed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the 
 fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there 
 can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no pa- 
 triotism of the heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life 
 was about to dawn for mankind. Poetry and faith and devotion 
 were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping in the 
 heart of humanity. But the life which is to endure grows slowly ; 
 and as the soil must be prepared l)efore the wheat can be sown, 
 so before the Kingdom of £Ieaven could throw up its shoots there 
 was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations were 
 neither torn in pieces by violence nor were rushing after false 
 ideals and spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the Empire 
 of the C!a;sars — a kingdom where peaceful men could work, 
 think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely among prov- 
 
 * " Essay on Homer."
 
 40 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 inces ruled for the most part by Gallios, who protected life and 
 property, and forbade fanatics to tear each otlier in pieces for 
 their religious opinions. ' It is not lawful for us to put any man 
 to death,' was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman 
 governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent 
 nations, each with a local religion represented in its ruling 
 powers, Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle. If St. 
 Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have 
 been torn to pieces by the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal 
 to Caesar's judgment-seat was the shield of his mission, and alone 
 made possible his success. 
 
 " And this spirit, which confined government to its simplest 
 duties, while it left opinion unfettered, was especially present in 
 Julius Ca;sar himself." 
 
 Mr. Fronde's career as a man of letters is a new proof 
 that adverse circumstances are useful to men of strengtli. 
 If he had not been driven " to make his way across coun- 
 try on the back of literature," it is not probable that he 
 would have so marked his journey as to interest mankind 
 in the vicissitudes of his life. 
 
 David H. "W heeler. 
 *"Casar. A Sketch."
 
 I. 
 
 ^r A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION. 
 
 'I- 
 
 •''^OME years ago I was travelling by railway, no matter 
 whence or wliither. I was in a second-class carriage. 
 Wq had been long on the road, and had still some dis- 
 tance before us, when one evening our journey was 
 brought unexpectedly to an end by the train running 
 into a siding. The guards opened the doors, we were 
 told that we could proceed no further, and were re- 
 qufred to alight. The passengers were numerous, and 
 of all ranks ;ujd sorts. There were third class, second, 
 first, with saloon carriages for several great persons of 
 high distinction. We had ministers of state, judges on 
 circuit, directors, leading men of business, idle young 
 men of family who were out amusing themselves, an 
 archbishop, several ladies, and a duke and duchess with 
 their suite. Tliese favored travellers had Pullman cars 
 to themselves and occupied as much room as was allotted 
 to scores of plebeians. I had amused myself for several 
 days in observing tlie luxurious appurtenances by which 
 they were protected against discomfort — the piles of 
 cusliions and cloaks, the baskets of dainties, the novels 
 and magazines to pass away tlie time, and the profound 
 attention which they met with fr(nn the conductors and 
 Btation-masters on the line. The rest of us were a mis- 
 cellaneous crowd — commercial people, lawyers, artists, 
 men of letters, tourists moving about for pleasure or 
 because tlicy liad nothing to do ; and in the third-class
 
 42 SKETCHES FRCAI J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 carriages, artisans and laborers in search of work, women 
 looking for linsbands or for service, or beggars flying 
 from starvation in one part of the woi'ld to find it follow 
 them like their shadows, let them go where they pleased. 
 All these were huddled together, feeding hardly on such 
 poor provisions as they carried with them or could pick 
 up at the stopping-places. No more consideration was 
 shown them than if they had been so many cattle. But 
 they were merry enough : songs and soumls of laughter 
 came from their windows, and notwithstanding all their 
 conveniences, the languid-looking fine people in the 
 large compartments seemed to me to get through their 
 journey with less enjoyment after all than their poor 
 fellow-travellers. These last appeared to be of tougher 
 texture, to care less for being jolted and shaken, to be 
 better-humored and kinder to one another. They had 
 found life go hard with them wherever they had been, 
 and not being accustomed to have everything which they 
 wished for, they were less selfish and more considerate. 
 The intimation that our journey was for the present 
 'it an end came on most of us as an unpleasant surprise. 
 The grandees got out in a high state of indignation. 
 They called for their servants, but their servants did not 
 hear them, or laughed and passed on. The conductors 
 had forgotten to be obsequious. All classes on the 
 platform were suddenly on a level. A beggar-woman 
 hustled the duchess as she was standing astonished 
 because her maid had left her to carry her own bag. 
 The patricians were pushed about among the crowd with 
 no more concern than if they had been common mortals. 
 They demanded loudly to see the station-master. The 
 minister complained angrily of the delay ; an important 
 negotiation would be imperilled by his detention, and he 
 threatened the company with the displeasure of his
 
 A SIDIXG AT A RAILWAY STATION. 43 
 
 depaitnient. A consequential youth who had just lieard 
 of the death of his eJder brotlier vras flying home to 
 take his inlieritance. A great lady had secured, as she 
 liad hoped, a brilliant match for her daughter ; her 
 work over, she had been at the baths to recover from 
 the dissipation of the season ; difficulty had risen un- 
 looked for, and unless she was at hand to remove it, the 
 vn^rst consequences might be feared. A banker declared 
 that the credit of a leading commercial house might fail 
 unless he could be at home on the day fixed for his 
 jefeum : he alone could save it. A solicitor had the 
 evidence in his portmanteau which would determine the 
 succession to the lands and title of an ancient family. 
 An elderly gentleman was in despair al)out his young 
 wjfe whom he had left at home ; he had made a will by 
 which she was to lose his fortune if she married again 
 after his dftith, but the will was lying in his desk 
 unsigned. The archbishop was on his way to a synod 
 where the great question was to be discussed whether 
 gas might be used at the altar instead of candles. The 
 altar candles were blessed before they were used, and 
 the doubt was whether gas could be blessed. The 
 right reverend prelate conceived that if the gas-tubes 
 were made in the shape of candles the difficulty could be 
 got over, but he feared that without his moderating 
 influence the majority might come to a rash decision. 
 All these, persons were clamoring over their various 
 anxieties with the most naive frankness, the trutli 
 coming freely out, whatever it might be. One distin- 
 guished looking lady in deep mourning, with a sad 
 gentle face, alone was resigned and hopeful. It seemed 
 that her husband had been stopped not long before at the 
 same station. She thought it possible that she might 
 meet him again.
 
 44 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 The st.ation-iiiaster listened to the complaints with 
 composed indifference. He told the londest that they 
 need not alarm themselves. The State would survive 
 the absence of the minister. The minister, in fact, was 
 not thinking of the State at all, but of the party triumph 
 wliich he expected ; and the peerage which was to be his 
 reward, the station-master said would now be of no use 
 to him. The youth had a second brother who would 
 succeed instead of him, and tlie tenants would not be 
 inconvenienced by the change. The fine lady's daughter 
 would marry to her own liking instead of her mother's, 
 and would be all the happier for it. The commercial 
 house was already insolvent, and the longer it lasted the 
 more innocent people would be ruined by it. The boy 
 whom the lawyer intended to make into a rich baronet 
 was now working industriously at school, and would 
 grow up a useful man. If a great estate fell in to him 
 he would be idle and dissolute. The old man might 
 congratulate himself that he liad escaped so soon from 
 the scrape into which he had fallen. His wife would 
 marry an adventurer, and would suffer worse from 
 inheriting his fortune. The archbishop was commended 
 for his anxiety. His solution of the candle problem was 
 no doubt an excellent one ; but his clergy were now 
 provided with a harmless subject to quarrel over, and if 
 it was adopted they might fall out over something else 
 which miglit be seriously mischievous. 
 
 " Do you mean, then, that you are not going to send 
 us forward at all ?" the minister inquired sternly. 
 
 " You will see," the station-master answered with a 
 curious short laugh. I observed that lie looked more 
 gently at tlie lady in mourning. She had said noth- 
 ing, but he knew what was in her mind, and though 
 he held out no hope in words that her wish would be
 
 A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION". 45 
 
 gra titled, he smiled sadly, and the irony passed out of 
 his face. 
 
 The crowd, meanwhile, were standing about the 
 platform whistling tunes or amusing themselves, not ill- 
 naturedly, at the distress of their grand com])anions. 
 Something considerable M^as happening. But they had 
 so long experienced the ups and downs of things that 
 tliey were prepared for what fortune might send. They 
 
 'ihd not expected to find a Paradise where they were 
 going, and one place might be as good as another. They 
 iiad nothing belonging to them except the clothes they 
 
 'stood in and their bits of skill in their different trades. 
 ^Ylierever men were, there would be need of cobblers 
 and tailors, and smiths and carpenters. If not, they 
 
 ' might fall on their feet somehow if there was work to 
 •De done of any sort. 
 
 Presentl}i,a bell rang, a door was flung open, and we 
 were ordered into a waiting-room, where we were told 
 that our luggage was to be examined. It was a large, 
 barely furnished apartment, like the salle d^attente at 
 the ^Northern Ilailway Station at Paris. A rail ran 
 across, behind which we were all penned ; opposite to 
 us was the usual long table, on which were piled boxes, 
 bags, and portmanteaus, and behind them stood a row of 
 officials, in a plain uniform wnth gold bands round their 
 caps, and the dry peremptory manner which passengers 
 accustomed to deference so particularly dislike. At 
 their backs was a screen extending across the room, 
 reaching half way to the ceiling ; in the rear of it there 
 was apparently an office. 
 
 We each looked to see that our particular belongings 
 were safe, but we were surprised to find that we could 
 recognize none of them. Packages there were in 
 plenty, alleged to be tlic property of the passengers
 
 46 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 who had come in by the train. They were arranged in 
 the three classes — first, second, and third— but the pro- 
 portions were inverted : most of it was labelled as the 
 luggage of the travellers in fustian, who had brought 
 nothing with them but what they carried in their hands ; 
 a moderate heap stood where the second-class luggage 
 should have been, and some of superior quality, but 
 none of us could make out the shapes of our own trunks. 
 As to the grand ladies and gentlemen, the innumerable 
 articles which I had seen put as theirs into the van 
 were nowhere to be found. A few shawls and cloaks 
 lay upon the planks, and that was all. There was a 
 loud outcry, but the officials were accustomed to it, and 
 took no notice. The station-master, who was still in 
 charge of us, said briefly that the saloon luggage would 
 be sent forward in the next train. The late owners 
 would have no more use for it, and it would be delivered 
 to their friends. 
 
 The late owners ! Were we no longer actual owners, 
 then ? My individual loss was not great, and, besides, it 
 might be made up to me, for 1 saw my name on a 
 strange box on the table, and being of curious disposi- 
 tion, the singularity of the adventure made it interesting 
 to me. The consternation of the rest was indescribable. 
 The minister supposed that he had fallen among Com- 
 munists, who disbeheved in property, and was beginning 
 a speech on the elementary conditions of society, when 
 silence was called, and the third-class passengers were 
 ordered to advance, that their boxes might be opened. 
 Each man had his own carefully docketed. The lids 
 flew off, and within, instead of clothes and shoes and 
 dressing apparatus and money and jewels and such like, 
 were simply samples of the work which he had done in 
 his life. There was an account-book, also, in which was
 
 A SIDIKG AT A RAILWAY STATION. 47 
 
 entered the number of days which he had worked, the 
 number and size of the fields, etc. , which he liad drained 
 and inclosed and ploughed, the crops which he had 
 reaped, the walls which he had built, the metal which 
 he had dug out and smelted and fashioned into articles of 
 use to mankind, the leather which he had tanned, the 
 clothes which he had woven — all entered with punctual 
 exactness ; and on the opposite page, the wages which he 
 fiafl. received, . and the share which had been allotted 
 to .him of the good things which he had helped to 
 ci-eate. 
 
 Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his 
 actions — his affection for his parents, or his wife and 
 children, his self-denials, his charities, his purity, his 
 truth, his honesty, or, it might be, ugly catalogues of 
 sifis and oaths and drunkenness and brutality. But 
 inquiry into action was reserved for a second investiga- 
 tion before a higher commissioner. The first examina- 
 tion was confined to the literal work done by each man 
 for the general good — -how much he had contribnted, 
 and how much society had done for him in return ; and 
 no one, it seemed, could bo allowed to go any further 
 without a certificate of having passed this test satisfac- 
 torily. With the workmen, the balance in most in- 
 stances was found enormously in their favor. The state 
 of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was rapidly got 
 over, and they and their luggage were passed into the 
 higher court. A few were found whose boxes were 
 empty, who had done nothing useful all their lives, and 
 had subsisted !)y begging and stealing. These were 
 ordered to stand aside till the rest of us had been dis- 
 posed of. 
 
 The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of 
 them, who had nothing at all to show, were called up
 
 48 SKETCHES FEOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 together, and were asked what they had to say for 
 themselves. A Avell-dressed gentleman, who spoke for 
 tlie rest, said that the whole investigation was a mystery 
 to him. He and his friends had been born to good 
 fortunes, and had fomid themselves, on entering upon 
 life, amply provided for. They had never been told 
 that work was required of them, either work with their 
 hands or work with their heads — in fact, work of any 
 kind. It was right, of course, for the poor to work, 
 because they could n(jt honestly live otherwise. For 
 themselves, they had spent their time in amusements, 
 generally innocent. They had paid for everything which 
 they had consumed. They had stolen nothing, taken 
 nothing from any man by violence or fraud. They had 
 kept the commandments, all ten of them, from the time 
 when they were old enough to understand them. The 
 speaker, at least, declared that he had no breach of any 
 commandment on his own conscience, and he believed 
 he might say as much of his companions. They were 
 supei'ior people, who had been always looked up to and 
 well spoken of, and to call upon them to show what 
 they had done was against reason and equity. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the chief official, " we have heard 
 this many times ; yet as often as it is rej^eated we feel 
 fresh astonishment. You have been in a world where 
 work is the condition of life. Not a meal can be had by 
 any man that some one has not worked to produce. 
 Those who work deserve to eat ; those who do not work 
 deserve to starve. There are but three ways of living : 
 by working, by stealing, or by begging. Those who 
 have not hved by the first have lived by one of the 
 other two. And no matter how superior you think 
 yourselves, you will not pass here till you have some- 
 thing of your own to produce. You have had your
 
 A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION. 49 
 
 wages beforehand — ample wages, as you acknowledge 
 yourselves. What have you to show ?" 
 
 "Wages!" the speaker said. "We are not hired 
 servants ; we received no wages. What we spent was 
 our o"^Ti. All the orders we received were that we were 
 not to do wrong. We have done no wrong. I appeal 
 to the higher court. " 
 - But the appeal could not be received. To all who 
 presented themselves with empty boxes, no matter who 
 they were, or how excellent their characters appeared to 
 one another, there was the irrevocable answer, " Ko 
 admittance, till you come better furnished." All who 
 were in this condition, the duke and duchess among 
 them, were ordered to stand aside with the thieves. 
 The duchess declared that she had given the finest 
 parties in the season, and as it was universally agreed 
 that they had been the most tedious, and that no one had 
 found any pleasure there, a momentary doubt rose 
 whether thev mi"'ht not have answered some useful 
 purpose in disgusting people with such modes of enter- 
 tainment ; but no evidence of this was forthcoming : 
 the world had attended them because the world had 
 nothing else to do ; and she and her guests had been 
 alike unprofitable. Thus the large majority of the saloon 
 passengers was disposed of. The minister, the ai'ch- 
 bishop, the lawyer, the banker, and others, who, al- 
 though they had no material work credited to tiiem, 
 had yet been active and lal^orious in their dilferent 
 callings, were passed to the superior judges. Our turn 
 came next — ours of the second class — and a motley 
 gathering we were. Busy we must all have been, from 
 the multitude of articles which we found assigned to us. 
 Manufa{;turers with their w^ares, solicitors witli tliuir 
 lawsuits, doctors and clergymen with the bodies aTn!
 
 50 SKETCHES I'ROM .!. A, FKOUDE. 
 
 souls which they had saved or lost, authors with their 
 books, painters and sculptors with their pictures and 
 statues. But the hard test was applied to all that we 
 had produced — the wages which we had received on one 
 side, and the value of our exertions to mankind on the 
 other — and imposing as our performances looked when 
 laid out to be examined, we had been paid, most of us, 
 out of all proportion to what we were found to have 
 deserved. I was reminded of a large compartment in the 
 Paris Exhibition, where an active gentleman, wishing 
 to show the state of English literature, had collected 
 copies of every book, review, pamphlet, or newspaper 
 which had been published in a single year. The bulk 
 was overwhelming, but the figures were only decimal 
 points, and the worth of the whole was a fraction above 
 zero. A few of us were turned back summarily among 
 the thieves and the fine gentlemen and ladies : specula- 
 tors who had done nothing but handle money which had 
 clung to their fingers in passing through them, divines 
 who had preached a moraUty which they did not prac- 
 tise, and fluent orators who had made speeches which 
 they knew to Ijo nonsense, philosophers who had spun 
 out of moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished 
 pleaders who had defeated justice wliile they estalJished 
 points of law, writers of books upon subjects of which 
 tliey knew enough to mislead their readers, purveyors of 
 luxuries which had added nothing to human health or 
 strength, physicians and apothecaries who had pretended 
 to knowledge which they knew that they did not pos- 
 sess — these all, as the contents of their boxes bore 
 M'itness against them, w^ere thrust back into the rejected 
 herd. 
 
 There were some whose account stood better as having 
 vit \east produced somctliing of real merit, but they wcru
 
 A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATIOX. 51 
 
 cast on the point of wages ; modest excellence Lad come 
 badly off ; the plansible and niiscrnpulons had thriven 
 and grown rich. It was tragical, and evidently a snr- 
 prise to most of us, to see how mendacious we had been : 
 how we had sanded our sugar, watered our milk, scamped 
 our carpentering and mason's work, literally and meta- 
 phorically ; how in all things we had been thinking less of 
 producing good work than of the profit which we could 
 make out of it ; how we had sold ourselves to tell lies 
 and act them, because the public found lies pleasant and 
 tnith expensive and troublesome. Some of us were 
 manifest rogues, who had bought cheap and sold dear, 
 had used false measures and weights, had made cotton 
 pass for wool, and hemp for silk, and tin for silver. The 
 American pedlar happened to be in the party w^lio had 
 pUt a rind upon a grindstone and had sold it as a cheese. 
 These werq. promptly sifted out and placed with their 
 fellows ; only persons whose services were on the whole 
 greater than the pay which they had received were 
 allowed their certificates. When my own ])ox was 
 opened, I perceived that though the wages luul ])oen 
 small the work done seemed smaller still, and I was 
 surprised to find myself among those who had passed. 
 
 The whistle of a train was heard at this moment 
 coming in upon the nuiin line. It was to go on in half 
 an hour, and those who had been turned back were told 
 that they were to proceed by it to the pla(;e wliere they 
 liad been originally going. Tliey looked infinitely 
 relieved at the news ; but, before they started, a few 
 questions had to be put to them, and a few alterations 
 made which were to affect their future. They were 
 asked to explain how they ha<i come to be such worthless 
 creatures. They gave many answers, which came mainly 
 to tlie same thing. Circumstances liad been against
 
 52 BKETOHEt FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 them. It was all owing to circumstances. They had 
 been badly brought up. They had been placed in 
 situations where it had been impossible for them to do 
 better. The rich people repeated that they had never 
 been informed that any work was expected of them. 
 Their wants had all been provided for, and it was unfair 
 to expect that they should have exerted themselves of 
 their own accord when they had no motive for working. 
 If they had only been bom poor, all would have gone 
 well with them. The cheating tradesmen declared that 
 the first duty of a shopkeeper, according to all received 
 principles, was to make money and better his condition. 
 It was the buyer's business to see to the quality of the 
 articles which he purchased ; the shopkeeper was entitled 
 to sell his wares at the highest price which he could get 
 for them. So, at least, it was believed and taught by 
 the recognized authorities on the subject. The orators, 
 preachers, newspaper writers, novel-writers, etc., etc., 
 of whom there were a great many, appealed to the 
 crowds who came to listen to them, or bought and read 
 their productions. Tout le monde, it was said, was 
 wiser than the wisest single sage. They had given the 
 world what the world wished for and approved ; they 
 had worked at supplying it with all their might, and it 
 was extremely hard to blame them for guiding them- 
 selves by the world's judgment. The thieves and 
 vagabonds argued that they had been brought into 
 existence without their consent being asked : they had 
 not wished for it ; although they had not been without 
 their pleasures, they regarded existence on the whole as 
 a nuisance which they would gladly have been spared. 
 Being alive, however, they had to keep alive ; and for 
 all that they could see, they had as full a right to the 
 good things which the world contained as anybody else.
 
 A SIDIXG AT A RAILWAY STATION. 53 
 
 provided tliej could get them. They were called 
 thieves. Law and language were made by the property 
 owners, who were their natural enemies. If society had 
 given them the means of living honestly they would 
 have found it easy to be honest. Society had done 
 nothing for them — why should they do anything for 
 society ? 
 
 -; So, in their various wavs those who had been 
 "' plucked" defended themselves. They were all de- 
 lighted to hear that they were to have another chance ; 
 and I was amused to observe that though some of them 
 had pretended that they had not wished to be born, and 
 had rather not have been born, not one of them pro- 
 tested against being sent back. All they asked was that 
 they should be put in a new position, and that the adverse 
 influences should be taken off. I expected thai among 
 these adverse influences thev would have mentioned the 
 faults of their own dispositions. My own opinion had 
 been that half the misdoings of men came from con- 
 genital defects of character which they had brought witli 
 them into the world, and that constitutional courage, 
 right-mindedness, and practical ability M'ere as much 
 gifts of nature or circumstance as the accidents of 
 fortune. A change in this respect was of more con- 
 sequence than in any other. But with themselves they 
 were all apparently satisfied, and they required only an 
 improvement in their surroundings. The alterations 
 were rapidly made. The duchess was sent to begin her 
 life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to attend the 
 village school, and rise thence into a housemaid. The 
 fine gentleman was made a ploughboy. The authors 
 and preachers were to become mechanics, and bound 
 apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths. A j)hilos- 
 opher, who, having had a good fortune and unbroken
 
 54 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 health, had insisted that the world was as good as it 
 could be made, was to be born blind and paralytic, and 
 to find his way through life under the new conditions. 
 The thieves and cheats, who pretended that their mis- 
 demeanors were due to poverty, were to find them- 
 selves, when they arrived in the world again, in palaces 
 surrounded with luxury. The cup of Lethe was sent 
 round. The past became a blank. They were hurried 
 into the train ; the engine screamed and flew away with 
 them. 
 
 " They will be all here again in a few years," the 
 stationmaster said, " and it will be the same story over 
 again, I have had these very people in my hands a 
 dozen times. They have been tried in all positions, and 
 there is still nothing to show, and nothing but complaints 
 of circumstances. For my part, I would put them out 
 altoo-ether. " "How lono; is it to last?" I asked. 
 " Well," he said, " it does not depend on me. No 
 one passes here who cannot prove that he has lived to 
 some purpose. Some of the worst I have known made 
 at last into pigs and geese, to be fatted up and eaten, 
 and made of use in that M^ay. Others have become 
 asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be beaten with 
 sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a hundred 
 generations. All animated creatures tend to take the 
 shape at last which suits their character." 
 
 The train was scarcely out of sight when again the 
 bell rang. The scene changed as at a theati*e. The 
 screen was rolled back, and we who were left found 
 ourselves in the presence of four grave-looking persons, 
 like the board of examiners whom we remembered at 
 college. We were called upon one by one. The work 
 which had passed the first ordeal was again looked into, 
 and the quality of it compared with the talent or faculty
 
 A SIDIXG AT A RAILWAY .•STATION. 55 
 
 of the producer, to see how far he had done his best ; 
 •whether anywhere he had done worse than he might 
 have done and knew how to have done ; while besides, 
 in a separate collection, were the vices, the sins, the 
 selfishnesses, and ill-lraniors, with, in the other scale, 
 the acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and 
 charity, which had increased the happiness or lightened 
 the sorrows of those connected with him. These last, 
 I observed, had generally been forgotten by the owner, 
 who saw them appear with surprise, and even repudiated 
 them with protest. In the work, of course, both ma- 
 terial and moral, there was every gradation, both of 
 kind and merit. But while nothing was absolutely 
 worthless, everything, even the highest achievements of 
 the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell short of 
 absolute perfection. Each of us saw our own perform- 
 ances, from ^ur first ignorant beginnings to what we 
 regarded as our greatest triumph ; and it was easy to 
 trace how much of our faults were due to natural de- 
 ficiencies and the necessary failures of inexperience, and 
 how much to self-will or vanity or idleness. Some taint 
 of mean motives, too, some desire of reward, desire of 
 praise or honor or wealth, some foolish self-satisfaction, 
 when satisfaction ought not to have been felt, was to be 
 Been infecting everything, even the very best which was 
 presented for scrutiny. 
 
 So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, "Impressive- 
 looking person, whose own work bore inspection better 
 than that of most of us. exclaimed passionately that, so 
 far as he was concerned, the examiners might spare their 
 labor. From his earliest years he had known what he 
 ought to do, and in no instance had he ever completely 
 done it. He had struggled ; he had conquered his 
 grosser faults ; but the farther he had gone, and the
 
 56 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 better he Lad been able to do, liis knowledge liad still 
 grown faster than his power of acting upon it ; and 
 every additional day that he had lived his shortcomings 
 had become more miserably plain to him. Even if he 
 could have reached perfection at last, he could not undo 
 the past, and the faults of his youth would bear witness 
 against him and call for his condemnation. Therefore, 
 he said, he abhorred himself. He had no merit which 
 could entitle him to look for favor. He had labored on 
 to the end, but he had labored with a full knowledge 
 that the best which he could offer would be unworthy 
 of acceptance. He had been told, and he believed, that 
 a high spirit, not subject to infirmity, had done his work 
 for him, and done it perfectly, and that if he abandoned 
 all claim on his own account he might be accepted for 
 the sake of what another had done. This, he trusted, 
 was true, and it was his sole dependence. In the so- 
 called good actions with which he seemed to be credited, 
 there was nothing that was really good ; there was not 
 one which was altogether what it ought to have been. 
 
 He was evidently sincere, and what he said was un- 
 doubtedly true — true of him and true of every one. 
 Even in the vehemence of his self-abandonment a trace 
 lingered of the taint which he was confessing, for he 
 was a polemical divine ; he had spent his life and gained 
 a reputation in maintaining this particular doctrine. He 
 believed it, but he had not forgotten that he had been 
 himself its champion. 
 
 The examiner looked kindly at him ; but answered, 
 " We do not expect impossibilities ; and we do not blame 
 you when you have not accomplished what is beyond 
 your strength. Only those who are themselves perfect 
 can do anything perfectly. Human beings are born 
 ignorant and helj^less. They bring into the world with
 
 A SIDIXG AT A RAILWAY STATION. 57 
 
 them a disposition to seek what is pleasant to them- 
 selves, and what is pleasant is not always right. They 
 learn to live as they learn everything else. At lirst they 
 cannot do rightly at all. They improve under teaching 
 and practice. The best only arrive at excellence. We 
 do not find fault with the painter on account of his first 
 l)ad copies, if they were as good as could be looked for at 
 his age. Every craftsman acquires his art by degrees. 
 lie begins badly ; he cannot help it ; and it is the same 
 with life. You learn to walk by falling down. You 
 learn to live by going wrong and experiencing the con- 
 sequences of it. We do not record against a man ' the 
 sins of his youth,' if he has been honestly trying to 
 improve himself. We do not require the same self- 
 control in a child as in a man. We do not require the 
 same attainments from all. Some are well taught, some 
 are ill taught^^some are not taught at all. Some have 
 naturally good dispositions, some have naturally bad 
 dispositions. Kot one has had power ' to fulfil the law,' 
 as you call it, completely. Therefore, it is no crime in 
 lu'ra if he fails. We reckon as faults those only which 
 arised from idleness, wilfulness, selfishness, and delib- 
 erate preference of evil to good. Each is judged accord- 
 ing to what he has received." 
 
 I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop) 
 looked while the examiner was speaking. lie had him- 
 self been engaged in controversy with this gentleman on 
 the share of " good M'orks" in justifying a man, and if 
 the examiner had not taken his side in the discussion he 
 had at least demolished his adversary. The archbishop 
 had been the more disinterested in the line which he had 
 taken, as his own " works," though in several large 
 folios, weighed extremely little ; and, indeed, had it not 
 been for passages in his early life — he had starved him-
 
 58 SKETCHES FKO.M J. A. FROCDE. 
 
 self at college that lie might not be a burden upon his 
 widowed mother — I do not know but that he might have 
 been sent back into the world to serve as a parish clerk. 
 
 For myself, there were questions which I was longing 
 to ask, and I was trying to collect my courage to speak. 
 1 wanted chiefly to know what the examiner meant by 
 "natural disposition." Was it that a man might be 
 born with a natural capacity for becoming a saint, 
 another man with a capacity to become a great artist or 
 musician, and that each of us could only grow to the 
 limits of his natural powers ? And, again, were idle- 
 ness, wilfulness, selfishness, etc., etc., natural disposi- 
 tions ? — for in that case — 
 
 But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own 
 name was called. There was no occasion to ask who 1 
 was. In every instance the identity of the person, his 
 history, small or large, and all that he had said or done, 
 was placed before the court so clearly that there was no 
 need for extorting a confession. There stood the 
 catalogue inexorably impartial, the bad actions in a 
 schedule painfully large, tlie few good actions veined 
 with personal motives which spoiled the best of them. 
 In the way of woi'k there was nothing to be shown but 
 certain books and other writings, and these were spread 
 out to be tested. A fluid was poured on the pages, the 
 effect of which was to obliterate entirely every untrue 
 proposition, and to make every partially true proposition 
 grow faint in proportion to the false element which 
 entered into it. Alas ! chapter after chapter vanished 
 away, leaving the pa^^er clean, as if no compositor had 
 ever labored in setting type for it. Pale and illegible 
 became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had 
 secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, sur- 
 vived here and there at long intervals. They were those
 
 A SIDIXa AT A RAILWAY STATIOX. 50 
 
 on -whicli I had labored least, and had almost forgotten, 
 or those, as I observed in one or two instances, which 
 had been selected for special reprobation in the weekly 
 journals. Something stood to my credit, and the worst 
 charge of wilfnlly and intentionally setting down what I 
 did not believe to be true was not alleged against me. 
 Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness ; sins of infirmity — 
 culpable indeed, but not culpable in the last degree ; the 
 water in the ink, the commonplaces, the ineffectual 
 sentiments : these, to my unspeakable comfort, I per- 
 ceived were my heaviest crimes. Had I been accused 
 of absolute worthlessness, I should have pleaded guilty 
 in the state of humiliation to which I was reduced ; but 
 things were better than they might have been. I was 
 flattering myself that when it came to the wages ques- 
 tion, the balance would be in my favor : so many years 
 of labor — suck and such cheques received from my 
 publisher. Here, at least, 1 held myself safe, and I was 
 in good hope that I might scrape through. The ex- 
 aminer was good-natured in his manner. A reviewer 
 who had been listening for ray condemnation was be- 
 ginning to look disgusted, when suddenly one of the 
 walls of the court became transparent, and there ap- 
 peared an interminable vista of creatures — creatures of 
 all kinds from land and water, reaching away into the 
 extreme distance. They were those which in the course 
 of my life I had devoured, either in part or whole, to 
 sustain my unconscionable carcass. There they stood in 
 lines with solenm and reproachful faces — oxen and 
 calves, sheep and lambs, deer, hares, rabbits, turkeys, 
 ducks, chickens, pheasants, grouse, and partridges, down 
 to the larks and sparrows and blackl)irds, which I had 
 shot when a boy and made into puddings. Every one 
 of them had come up to bear witness against their
 
 GO SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 murderer ; out of sea and river liad come tlie trout and 
 salmon, the soles and turbots, the ling and cod, the 
 M'hiting and mackerel, the smelts and whitebait, the 
 o.jsters, the crabs, the lobsters, the shrimps. They 
 seemed literally to be in millions, and I had eaten them 
 all. I talked of wages. These had been my wages. 
 At this enormous cost had my existence been main- 
 tained. A stag spoke for the rest. " We all," he said, 
 " were sacrificed to keep this cormorant in being, and to 
 enable him to produce the miserable bits of printed 
 paper which are all that he has to show for himself. 
 Our lives were dear to us. In meadow and wood, in air 
 and water, we wandered harmless and innocent, enjoy- 
 ing the pleasant sunlight, the light of heaven and the 
 sparkling waves ; we were not worth much ; we have 
 no pretensions to high qualities. If the person who 
 stands here to answer for himself can afiirm that his 
 value in the universe was equivalent to the value of all 
 of us who were sacrificed to feed him, we have no more 
 to say. Let it be so pronounced. We shall look at our 
 numbers, and we shall wonder at the judgment, though 
 we shall withdraw our complaint. But for ourselves we 
 say freely that we have long watched him — him and his 
 fellows — and we have failed to see in w^hat the superior- 
 ity of the human creature lies. We know him only as 
 the most cunning, the most destructive, and, unhappily, 
 the longest lived of all carnivorous beasts. His dehght 
 is in killing. Even when his hunger is satisfied he kills 
 us for his mere amusement." 
 
 The oxen lowed approval, the sheep bleated, the birds 
 screamed, the fishes flapped their tails. I, for myself, 
 stood mute and self-condemned. What answer but one 
 was possible ? Had I been myself on the bench I could 
 not have hesitated. The fatal sentence of condemnation
 
 A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION". fil 
 
 was evidently about to be uttered, when the scene 
 became indistinct, there was a confused noise, a change 
 of condition, a sound of running feet and of many 
 voices. I awoke ; I was again in the railway carriage ; 
 the door was thrown open ; porters entered to take our 
 things. We stepped out upon the platform. We were 
 at the terminus for w^hich we had been originally 
 dt'stined. Carriages and cabs were waiting ; tall pow- 
 dered footmen" flew to the assistance of the duke and 
 duchess. The station-master was standing hat in hand, 
 ajid obsequiously bowing ; the minister's private sec- 
 retary had come to meet his right honorable chief with 
 the red despatch-box, knowing the impatience with 
 which it w^as waited for. The duke shook hands with 
 fh^ archbishop before he drove away. " Dine with us 
 to-morrow?" he said. "I have had a very singular 
 dream. Yoif shall be my Daniel and interpret it for 
 me.^' The archbishop regretted infinitely that he must 
 deny himself the honor ; his presence was required at 
 the Conference. " I, too, have dreamt," he said ; " but 
 with your Grace and me the realities of this world are 
 too serious to leave us leisure for the freaks of imagina- 
 tion."
 
 II. 
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 On June SOtli, 1881, we sailed from Southampton 
 Water in a steam yacht to spend ten weeks in the Norway 
 fjords — fjords or friths, for the word is the same. The 
 Scandinavian children of the sea carried their favorite 
 names with them. Frith is fjord ; our Cumberland 
 Scale Force would be called Scale Foss between the 
 North Cape and the Baltic. The yacht was spacious ; 
 over three hundred tons. Cabins, equipments, engines, 
 captain, steward, crew, the best of their kind. Our 
 party was small : only four in all. My friend whose 
 
 guest I was, and whom I shall call X , two ladies, 
 
 and myself. X had furnished himself with such 
 
 knowledge as was attainable in London, for the scenes 
 which we were to explore. He had studied Norse. 
 He could speak it ; he could understand and be under- 
 stood. He was a sportsman, but a sportsman only as 
 subsidiary to more rational occupations. He was going 
 to Norway to catch salmonidae : not, however, to catch 
 them only, but to study the varieties of that most com- 
 plicated order of iisli. He was going also to geologize 
 and to botanize, to examine rocks and rivers and glaciers 
 and flowers ; while all of us were meaning to acquaint 
 ourselves as far as we could with the human specimens 
 still to be found in the crater of the old volcano fi'om 
 which those shiploads of murdering " Danes" poured 
 out ten centuries ago to change the face of Europe.
 
 THE XOKWAY FJORDS. 63 
 
 And to see Norway, the real Norway, within moderate 
 compass of time is possible only with such means as a 
 steam yacht provides. There are great lines of road in 
 Norway along the practicable routes, but very few are 
 practicable ; nine tenths of the country, and the most 
 interesting parts, are so walled off by mountains, are so 
 intrenched among the fjords, as to be forever unap- 
 proajchable by land, while the water highways lead 
 ever}"where — magnificent canals, fashioned by the ele- 
 mental forces, who can say how or when ? 
 
 From the west coast there run inland with a general 
 easterly direction ten or twelve main channels of sea, 
 penetrating from fifty to a hundred miles into the very 
 heart of tlie northern peninsula. They are of vast 
 depth, and from half a mile to two miles broad. The 
 mountains rise on both sides sheer from the water's 
 edge, the loANicr ranges densely timbered with pine 
 and birch and alder ; above these belts of forest soar 
 ranges of lofty peaks, five or six thousand feet up, the 
 snow lying thick upon them in the midst of summer, 
 glaciers oozing down the gorges, like cataracts arrested in 
 their fall l)y the frost enchanter, motionless, yet with 
 the form of motion. From the snow, from the ice 
 wliei) the glaciers reacli a warmer level, melt streams 
 which swell at noon, as the sun grows hot, descend in 
 never-ending waterfalls, cascade upon cascade, througli 
 tlie ravines which they have cut for themselves in 
 millions of years. In the evening they dwindle away, 
 and at night fall silent as the frost resumes its power. 
 
 From the great central fjords l)ranches strike out right 
 and left, some mere inlets ending after a few miles, some 
 fhannels which connect one fjord with another. The 
 surface of Norway, as it is shown Hat upon a chart, is 
 lined and intersected by these water-ways as the surface
 
 64 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 of England is by railways. The scenery, though forevei 
 changing, changes like the pattern of a kaleidoscope, the 
 same materials readjusted in varying combinations ; the 
 same rivers of sea- water, the same mountain walls, the 
 same ice and snow on the summits, the same never- 
 ending pines and birches, with an emerald carpet 
 l>etween the stems where the universal whortleberry 
 hides the stones under the most brilliant green. The 
 short fjords and the large are identical in general 
 features, save that, lying at right angles to the prevailing 
 winds, the surface of these lateral waters is usually un- 
 disturbed by a single ripple ; the clouds may be racing 
 over the high ridges, but down below no breath can 
 reach. Hence the light is undispersed. The eye, 
 instead of meeting anywhere with white water, sees 
 only rocks,;woods, and cataracts reversed as in a looking- 
 glass. This extreme stillness, and the optical results of 
 it, are the cause, I suppose, of the gloom of JS^orwegian 
 landscape- j)ainting. 
 
 How these fjords were formed is, I believe, as yet 
 undetermined. Water has furrowed the surface of the 
 globe into many a singular shape ; water, we are told, 
 cut out the long gorge below Niagara ; but water, acting 
 as we now know it, scarcely scooj^ed out of the hardest 
 known rock these multitudinous fissures so uniform in 
 character between walls which pierce the higher strata 
 of the clouds, between cliffs which in some places rise, 
 as in the Geiranger, perpendicular for a thousand feet ; 
 the fjords themselves of such extraoi'dinary depth, and 
 deepest always when furthest from the sea. Where 
 they enter the Atlantic, there is bottom generally in a 
 hundred fathoms. In the Sogne, a hundred miles 
 inland, you find seven hundred fathoms. Rivers cut- 
 ting their way through rock and soil could never have
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 65 
 
 achieved such work as this. Ice is a mighty thaiimatur- 
 gist, and ice has been busy enough in Norway. The 
 fjords were once filled with ice up to a certain level ; 
 the level to which it rose can be traced on the sharp 
 angles ground off the rounded stone, and the scores of 
 the glacier plane on the polished slabs of gneiss or 
 granite. But at some hundreds of feet above the 
 pre^-ent water-line the ice action ends, and cliffs and 
 crags are scarred and angular and weather-splintered to 
 where they are lost in the eternal snow. The vast 
 moraines which occasionally block the valleys tell the 
 same story. The largest that I saw was between four and 
 five hundred feet high, and we have to account for 
 chasms which, if we add the depth of the water to the 
 height of the mountains above it, are nine thousand feet 
 frr-m the bottom to the mountain crest. 
 
 The appeara*ice of Korway is precisely what it would 
 have been if the surface had cracked when cooling into 
 a thousand fissures, longitudinal and diagonal, if these 
 fissures had at one time been filled with sea-water, at 
 another with ice, and the sides above the point to which 
 the ice could rise had been chipped and torn and 
 weather-worn by rain and frost through endless ages. 
 Whether this is, in fact, the explanation of their form, 
 philosophers will in good time assure themselves ; mean- 
 time, this is what they are outwardly like, which for 
 present purposes is all that need be required. 
 
 A country so organized can be traversed in no way so 
 conveniently as by a steam yacht, which carries the four- 
 and-twenty winds in its boiler. It is not the romance of 
 yachting ; and the steamer, beside the graceful schooner 
 with its snowy canvas, seems prosaic and mechanical. 
 The schooner does well in the open water with free air 
 and sea room ; but let no schooner venture into the
 
 66 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FKOUDE. 
 
 Norway fjords, where slant winds come not by which 
 you can make a course by a long reach, where there is 
 either a glassy calm or a wind blowing up or down. If 
 you reached the end of the Sogne yon might spend a 
 season in beating back to the sea alone, and, except in 
 some few spots where you might not be able to go, you 
 cannot so much as anchor for the depth of water. Shut 
 in among these mountains, you may drift, becalmed in 
 a sailing yacht for weeks together, while to a steamer 
 the course is as easy and sure as to a carriage on a turn- 
 pike road. Your yacht is your house, and like a wishing 
 carpet, it transports you wherever you please to go, and 
 is here and there and anywhere. You note your posi- 
 tion on the chart ; you scan it with the sense that the 
 world of Norway is all before you to go where you like ; 
 you choose your next anchoring-place ; you point it out 
 to the pilot ; you know your speed — there is no night 
 in the summer months — you dine ; you smoke your 
 evening cigar ; you go to your berth ; you find yourself 
 at breakfast in your new surroundings. 
 
 So then, on that June evening, we steamed out of the 
 Solent. Our speed in smooth water was ten knots ; our 
 distance from Udsire light, for which our course was 
 laid, was seven hundred miles. It was calm and cloud- 
 less, but unusually cold. When night brought the stars 
 we saw the comet high above us, the tail of him point- 
 ing straight away from the sun, as if the head was a 
 lens through which the sun^s rays lighted the atoms of 
 ether behind it. Sleep, which had grown fitful in the 
 London season, came back to us at once in our berths 
 unscared by the grinding of the screw. We woke fi'esh 
 and elastic when the decks were washed. The floors of 
 the cabins lifted on hinges, and below were baths into 
 which the sea-water poured till we could float in it.
 
 THE NORWAY TJORUS. 67 
 
 "When we came up and looked about us we were running 
 past the North Forehmd. With the wind aft and the 
 water smooth we sped on. I lay all the morning on a 
 sofa in the deck cabin, and smoked and read Xenophon's 
 " Memorabilia." So one daj passed, and then another. 
 On the evening of July 2d we passed through a fleet of 
 English trawlers, a few units of the ten thousand 
 feeders of the London stomach, the four million human 
 beings within the bills of mortality whom the world 
 combines to nourish. We were doino- two hundred 
 miles a day. The calm continued, aiul the ladies so far 
 had suffered nothing. There was no motion save the 
 never-resting heave of the ocean swell. Homer had 
 observed that long undulation ; Ulysses felt it when 
 coming back from Hades to Circe's island. The thing 
 is the same, though the word ocean has changd its 
 meaning. To ilomer ocean was a river which ran ]xist 
 the grove of Proserpine. It was not till the ship had 
 left the river mouth for the open sea that she lifted on 
 the wave.* 
 
 On the third afternoon the weather changed. The 
 cold of the high latitude drove us into our winter 
 clothes. The wind rose from the north-west, bringing 
 thick rain with it, and a heavy beam sea. The yacht 
 rolled twenty degrees each way. Long steamers, with- 
 out sails to steady them, always do roll, but our speed 
 was not altered. We passed lldsire light on the 3d, at 
 seven in the evening, and then groped our way slowly, 
 for, though there was no longer any night, we could see 
 little for fog and mist. At last we picked up a pilot 
 who brought us safely into the roadstead at Bergen, 
 
 * KvTap knti norafioio "klnev (i6ov 'QKcnvolo 
 N»/uf, and d' Uero avfja QaXfiaaiji evfjVKdfjoio. 
 
 Odjasvij, xii. 1, 'i.
 
 68 SKETCHES FROM J. jl. FROUDB. 
 
 where we were to begin our acquaintance with Norway. 
 It stands fifteen miles inland, with three fjords leading 
 to it, built on a long tongue of rock between two inlets, 
 and overhung with mountains. There is a great trade 
 there, chiefly in salt fish, I believe — any way the forty 
 thousand inhabitants seemed, from the stir on shore and 
 in the harbor, to have plenty to occupy them. We 
 landed and walked round. There are no handsome 
 houses, but no beggars and no signs of poverty. " You 
 have poor here," I said to a coal merchant, who came 
 on board for orders, and could speak English. " Poor ?" 
 he said ; " yes, many ; not, of course, such poor as you 
 have in England. Everyone has enough to eat." To 
 our sensations it was extremely cold — cold as an English 
 January. But cold and heat are relative terms ; and an 
 English January might seem like summer after Arctic 
 winters. The Bergen people took it to be summer, for 
 we found a public garden where a band played ; and 
 there were chairs and tables for coffee out of doors. 
 Trees and shrubs were acclimatized. Lilacs, acacias, 
 and horse-chestnuts were in flower. There were roses in 
 bud, and the gardeners were planting out geraniums. 
 We saw the fish market ; everywhere a curious place, 
 for you see there the fish that are caught, the fishermen 
 who catch them, with their boats and gear, the market- 
 women, and the citizens who come to buy. It is all fish 
 in Bergen. The teleg-rams on the wall in the Bourse 
 tell you only how fish are going in Holland and Den- 
 mark. The trade is in fish. On the rocks outside the 
 town stand huge stacks, looking like bean-stacks, but they 
 are of dried cod and ling. The streets and squares 
 smell of fish. A steamer bound for Hull lay close to 
 us in the roadstead, which to leeward might have been 
 winded for a mile. Lads stagger about the streets cased
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS, 69 
 
 between a pair of halibuts, like the Chelsea paupers 
 between two advertisement boards inviting us to vote 
 or Sir Charles Dilke at an election. Still, excepting 
 the odors, we liked Bergen well. You never hear the 
 mendicant whine there. Those northern people know 
 how to work and take care of themselves, and loafers 
 can find no living among them, 1 do not know whether 
 the}»p is so much as a beggar in the whole town. Thej 
 are quiet, simple, industrious folk, who mind their o"«ti 
 business. For politics they care nothing, not supposing 
 that on this road is any kind of salvation for them. They 
 are Lutherans, universally Lutherans. It is the national 
 religion, and they are entirely satisfied with it. Prot- 
 estant dissent is never heard of. There is a Catholic 
 church in Bergen for the foreign sailors, but 1 doubt if 
 the priests have converted a single Norwegian. They 
 are a people already moderately well-to-do in body and 
 mind, and do not need anything which the priests could 
 give them. The intellectual essentials are well looked 
 after — the schools are good, and well attended. The 
 Bergen museum is a model on a small scale of what a 
 local museum ought to be, an epitome of Norway itself 
 past and present, Perliaps there is not another in 
 Europe so excellent of its kind. In the gallery of 
 antiquities there is the Norway of the sea-kings. Runic 
 tablets and inscriptions, chain armor, swords, and clubs, 
 and battleaxes, pots of earthenware, stone knives and 
 hammers of a still earlier age. There are the traces of 
 their marauding expeditions, Greek and Italian statu- 
 ettes, rings, chains, bracelets, and drinking-cups, one or 
 two of these last especially curious, for glass was rare 
 and precious wdien they were made. The glass has been 
 broken, and pieced with silver. These obviously were 
 the spoils of some cruise in the Mediterranean, and thero
 
 70 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 is old clmrcli plate among tlieni which also tells its 
 stoiy. By the side of these are the implements of the 
 Norseman's other trade — fishing : specimens of nets, 
 lines, hooks, spears, and harpoons, for whale and walrus, 
 and crossbows, the barbed arrow having a line attached 
 to it for shooting seals. In the galleries above is a very 
 comj)lete collection of the Scandinavian mammalia — 
 wolves, bears, lynxes, foxes, whales, seals, and sea- 
 horses, every kind of fish, every bird, land or water, all 
 perfectly well classified, labelled, and looked after, 
 Superior persons are in charge of it, who can hold their 
 own with leading naturalists of France or England ; and 
 all this is maintained at modest cost by the Bergen 
 corporation. 
 
 The houses are plain but clean ; no dirt is visible 
 anywhere, and there is one sure sign of a desire to make 
 life graceful. The hardiest flowers only will grow out 
 of doors, but half the windows in the towni are filled 
 with myrtles, geraniums, or carnations. With the 
 people themselves we had little opportunity of acquaint- 
 ance ; but one evening, the second after our arrival, we 
 were on deck after dinner between ten and eleven in the 
 evening. The sunshine was still on the hills. Though 
 chilly to us, the air was warm to Bergen ; the bay was 
 covered with boats ; family groups of citizens out enjoy- 
 ing tiiemselves ; music floating on the water and songs 
 made sweet by distance ; others were anchored fishing. 
 
 X rowed me out in the yacht's punt to a point half 
 
 a mile distant. We brought up at an oar's length from 
 some young ladies with a youth in charge of them. 
 Some question asked as an excuse for conversation was 
 politely answered. One of them spoke excellent Eng- 
 lish ; she was a lively, clever girl, had been in Ireland, 
 and was quick with repartee, well bred and refined
 
 THE lirORWAY FJ0KD3. 71 
 
 Their manners were faultless, but they fished as if thej 
 had been bred to the trade. Tliey had oilskin aprons to 
 save their dresses, and they pulled up their fish and 
 handled their knives and baits like professionals. 
 
 Our first taste of i^orway, notwithstanding the perfume 
 of salt ling, was very pleasant ; but we had far to go — 
 as far as Lofoden if we could manage it — and we might 
 no*; loiter. "VVe left Bergen on the Gth with a local 
 pilot. Trondhjem or Drontheim was the next point 
 where we were to expect letters, and two courses lead to 
 it—teither by the open sea outside the shoals and islands, 
 or inland by the network of fjords, longei" but infinitely 
 the most interesting, with the further merit of water 
 perfectly smooth. We started at six in the morning and 
 fley on rapidly among tortuous channels, now sweeping 
 through a passage scarcely wider than the yacht's length, 
 now bursting •♦nto an archipelago of islets. The western 
 coast of Norway is low and level — a barren, undulating 
 country, with the sea flowing freely through the hollows. 
 Here and there are green patches of meadow with a few 
 trees, where there woiild be a bonder's or yeoman's 
 farm. Prettily painted lighthouses with their red roofs 
 marked our course for us, and a girl or two would come 
 out upon the balconies to look at us as we rushed by 
 within a gunshot. Eider-ducks flashed out of the water, 
 the father of the family as usual the first to fly, and 
 leaving wife and children to take care of themselves. 
 Fishing-boats crossed us at intervals, and now and then 
 a whale spouted : other signs of life there were none. 
 Toward midday we entered the Sogne Fjord ; we turned 
 eastward toward the great mountain ranges ; and, as in 
 the fairy tale the rock opens to tlie enchanted prince, 
 and he finds himself amid gardens and palaces, so, as we 
 ran on seemingly upon an impenetrable wall, cliff and
 
 72 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 crag fell apart, and wc entered on what might be de- 
 scribed as an infinite extension of Loch Lomond, save 
 only that the mountains were far grander, the slopes 
 more densely wooded, and that, far uj), we were looking 
 on the everlasting snow, or the gi'een glitter of the 
 glaciers. 
 
 On either side of us, as we steamed on, we crossed the 
 mouths of other fjords, lateral branches precisely like 
 the parent trunk, penetrating, as we could see upon oui 
 chart, for tens of miles. Norse history grew intelligible 
 as we looked at them. Here were the hiding-places 
 where the vikings, wickelings, hole-and-corner pirates, 
 ran in with their spoils ; and here was the explanation 
 of their roving lives. The few spots where a family 
 could sustain itself on the soil are scattered at intervals 
 of leagues. The woods are silent and desolate ; wild 
 animals of any kind we never saw ; hunting there could 
 have been none. The bears have increased since the 
 farming introduced sheep ; but a thousand years ago, 
 save a few reindeer and a few grouse and ptarmigan, 
 there was nothing which would feed either bear or man. 
 Few warm-blooded creatures, furred or feathered, can 
 endure the w^inter cold. A population cannot live by 
 fish alone, and thus the Norsemen became rovers by 
 necessity, and when summer came they formed in fleets 
 and went south to seek their sustenance. The pine 
 forests were their arsenal ; their vessels were the best 
 and fastest in the world ; the water was their only 
 road ; they were boatmen and seamen by second nature, 
 and the seacoasts within reach of a summer outing were 
 their natural prey. 
 
 We were looking for an anchoring-place where there was 
 a likelihood of fishing ; we had seen an inlet on the chart, 
 turning out of the Sogne, which looked promising. At the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 73 
 
 upper end two rivers appeared to run into it out of fresh 
 water lakes close by ; conditions likely to yield salmon. It 
 was our first experiment, A chart is flat. Imagination, 
 unenlightened by experience, had pictured tlie fjord 
 ending in level meadows, manageable streams winding 
 through them, and, beyond, perhaps, some Rydal or 
 Grasmere lying tranquil among its hills. The pilot said 
 that he knew the place, but could give us no description 
 of it. Anticipation generally makes mistakes on such 
 occasions, but never were fact and fancy more startlingly 
 at variance. Lord Salisbury advised people to study 
 geography on large maps. Flat charts are more con- 
 venient than models of a country in relief, but they are 
 treacherous misleaders. Grand as the Sogne had been, 
 the inlet where we struck into it was a-rander still. The 
 forests on the shores were denser, the slopes steeper, the 
 cliffs and peaks soaring up in more stupendous majesty. 
 "We ran on thus for eight or ten miles ; then, turning 
 round a projecting spui", we found ourselves in a land- 
 locked estuary smooth as a mirror, the mountains on 
 one side of it beautiful in evening sunlight, on the other 
 darkening the water with their green purple shadows ; 
 at the far extremity, which was still five miles from us, 
 a broad white line showed, instead of our "meadow 
 stream," where a mighty torrent was pouring in a 
 cataract over the face of a precipice into the sea. 
 
 At the foot of this fall, not three hundred yards from 
 it (no bottom was to be found at a greater distance), we 
 anchored half an hour later, and looked about us. We 
 were in the heart of a primitive Norwegian valley, 
 buried among mountains so lofty and so unbroken that 
 no road had ever entered, or could enter it. It was the 
 first of many which we saw afterward of the same type, 
 and one description will serve for all.
 
 74 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 We Avere in a circular basin at the head of a fjord. 
 In front of us was a river as large as the Clyde rushing 
 out of a chasm a thousand feet above us, and plunging 
 down in boiling foam. Above this chasm and inacces- 
 sible, was one of the lakes which we had seen on the 
 chart, and in which we had expected to catch salmon. 
 The mountains round were, as usual, covered with wood. 
 At the foot of the fall, and worked by part of it, was a 
 large saw-mill with its adjoining sheds and buildings. 
 The pines were cut as they were wanted, floated to the 
 mill and made into planks, vessels coming at intervals to 
 take them away. The Norwegians are accused of wast- 
 ing their forests with these mills. We could see no 
 signs of it. In the first place, the sides of the fjords 
 are so steep that the trees can be got at only in com- 
 paratively few places. When they can be got at, there 
 is no excessive destruction ; more pines are annually 
 swept away by avalanches than are consumed by all the 
 mills in ]S"orway ; and the quantity is so enormous that 
 the amount which men can use is no more likely to 
 exhaust it than the Loch Fyne fishermen are likely to 
 exhaust the herring shoals. 
 
 On the other side of the basin where we lay was the 
 domain of the owner of the mill. Though the fjord 
 ended, the great ravine in which it was formed stretched, 
 as we could see, a couple of miles further, but it had been 
 blocked by a moraine which stretched across it. The 
 moraines, being formed of loose soil and stones deposited 
 by ice in the glacial period, are available for cultivation 
 and are indeed excellent land. There were forty or fifty 
 acres of grass laid up for hay, a few acres of potatoes, a 
 red-roofed, sunny farmhouse with large outbuildings, carts 
 and horses moving about, poultry crowing, cattle grazing, 
 a boat-house and platform where a couple of lighters were
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 75 
 
 unloading. Here was the house of a substantial, pros- 
 perous bonder. His nearest neighbor must have been 
 twelve miles from him. He, his children, and farm- 
 servants were the sole occupants of the valley. The saw- 
 mill was theirs ; the boats were theirs ; their own hands 
 supplied everything which they wanted. They were 
 their own carpenters, smiths, masons, and glaziers ; they 
 sheared their own sheep, spun and dyed their own wool, 
 wove their own cloth, and cut and sewed their own 
 dresses. It was a true specimen of primitive Norwegian 
 life complete in itself — of j)eaceful, quiet, self-sufficient, 
 prosperous industry. 
 
 The snake that spoiled Paradise had doubtless found 
 its way into Nord Gulen (so our valley was named) as 
 in,to other places, but a softer, sweeter-looking spot we 
 had none of us ever seen. It was seven in the evening 
 when we anchored ; a skiff came off, rowed by a couple 
 of plain, stout girls with offers of eggs and milk. 
 Fishing-lines were brought out as soon as the anchor was 
 down. The surface water was fresh, and icy cold as 
 coming out of the near glaciers ; but it was salt a few 
 fathoms down, and almost immediately we had a basket 
 of dabs and whiting. 
 
 After dinner, at nine o'clock, with the sun still 
 
 shining, X and I went ashore wath our trout-rods. 
 
 We climbed the moraine, and a narrow lake lay spread 
 out before us, perfectly still, the sides steep, in many 
 places precipitous, trees growing wherever a root could 
 strike. The lake was three miles long, and seemed to 
 end against the foot of a range of mountains five 
 thousand feet high, the peaks of which, thickly covered 
 with snow, were flushed with the crimson light of the 
 evening. The surface of the water was spotted with 
 rings where the trout were rising. One of the bonder's
 
 76 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 bojs, who had followed us, offered his boat. It was of 
 native maniifacture, and not particularly water-tight, but 
 we stowed ourselves, one in the bow and the other in 
 the stern. The boy had never seen such rods as ours ; 
 he looked incredulously at them, and still more at our 
 flies ; Ijut he rowed us to the top of the lake, where a 
 river came down out of the snow-mountain, finishing its 
 descent with a leap over a cliff. Here he told us there 
 were trout if we could catch them ; and he took us 
 deliberately into the spray of the waterfall, not under- 
 standing, till we were nearly wet through, that we had 
 any objection to it. As the evening went on the scene 
 became every minute grander and more glorious. The 
 sunset colors deepened ; a crag just over us, two thou- 
 sand feet high, 'stood out clear and sharp against the 
 sky. We stayed for two or three hours, idly throwing 
 out flies and catching a few trout no longer than our 
 hands, thereby confirming evidently our friend's impres- 
 sion of our inefficiency. At midnight we were in the 
 yacht again — midnight, and it was like a night in Eng- 
 land at the end of June five minutes after sunset. 
 
 This was our first experience of a Norway fjord, and 
 for myself I would have been content to go no further ; 
 have studied in detail the exquisite beauty which was 
 round us ; have made friends with the bonder and his 
 household, and found out what they made of their 
 existence under such conditions. There in epitome 
 would have been seeing !N^orway and the Norwegians. 
 It was no Arcadia of piping shepherds. In the summer 
 the young men are away at the mountain farms, high 
 grazing-ground underneath the snow-line. The women 
 work with their brothers and husbands, and weave and 
 make the clothes. They dress plainly, but with good 
 taste, with modest embroidery ; a handsome bag hangs
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 77 
 
 at the waist of tlie housewife. There is reading, ftoo, 
 and schohirship. A boy met tis on a pathway, and 
 spoke to us in Englisli. "We asked him when he had 
 been in England. He had never been beyond his own 
 valley ; in the long winter evenings he had taught him- 
 self with an English grammar. Ko wonder that with 
 such ready adaptabilities they made the best of emi- 
 gKants. The overflow of population which once directed 
 itself in such rude fashion on I^ormandy and England 
 now finds its way to the United States, and no incomers 
 are^ more welcome there. 
 
 But a steam yacht is for movement and change. We 
 were to start again at noon the next day. The morning 
 was hot and bright. While the engineer was getting up 
 Bteain, we rowed to the foot of the great fall. I had 
 my small trout-rod with me, and trolled a salmon tly on 
 the chance. -.There were no salmon there, but we saw 
 brown trout rising ; so 1 tried the universal favorites — a 
 March brown and a red spinner — and in a moment had 
 a fish that bent the rod double. Another followed, aad 
 another, and then I lost a large one. I passed the rod to 
 
 X , in whose hands it did better service. In an hour 
 
 we had a basket of trout that would have done credit to 
 an Englisli chalk stream. The largest was nearly three 
 pounds weight, admirably grown, and pink ; fattened, I 
 suppose, on the mussels which paved the bottom of the 
 ra])ids. We were off immediately after, still guided to a 
 a new point by the chart, but not in this instance by the 
 chart only. There was a spot which had been discovered 
 
 the year before by the Duke of , of which we had 
 
 a vague description. We had a log on board which iiad 
 been kept by the duke's mate, in which he had recorded 
 many curious experiences ; among the rest, an adventure 
 at a certain lake not very far from where wo were. Tho
 
 78 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FEOUDE. 
 
 duke had been successful there, and liis lady had been 
 very nearly successful. "We had grief yesterday, "- 
 the mate wrote, "her Grace losing a twelve-pound 
 salmon which she had caught on her little line, and just 
 as they were going to hook it, it went off, and we were 
 very sorry." The grief w^ent deep, it seemed, for the 
 next day the crew were reported as only " being as well 
 as could be expected after so melancholy an accident." 
 We determined to find the j)lace, and, if possible, avenge 
 her Grace. We crossed the Sogne and went up into the 
 Nord Fjord — of all the fjords the most beautiful ; for on 
 either side there are low terraces of land left by glacier 
 action, and more signs of culture and human habita- 
 tions. After running for fifty miles, we turned into an 
 inlet, corresponding tolerably M'ith the duke's directions, 
 and in another half hour w^e were again in a mountain 
 basin like that which we had left in the morning. The 
 cataracts were in their glory, the day having been warm 
 for a wonder. I counted seventeen all close about us 
 when we anchored, any one of which would have made 
 the fortune of a Scotch hotel, and would have been 
 celebrated by Mr. Murray in pages of passionate elo- 
 quence. But Stromen or "the Streams," as the place # 
 was called, was less solitary than Nord Gulen. There 
 was a large bonder's farm on one side of us. There was 
 a cluster of houses at the mouth of a river, half a mile 
 from it. Above the village was a lake, and at the head 
 of the lake an establishment of saw-mills. A gunshot 
 from where we lay, on a rocky knoll, was a white wooden 
 church, the Sunday meeting-place of the neighborhood ; 
 boats coming to it from twenty miles round bringing 
 families in their bright Sunday attire. Roads there 
 were none. To have made a league of road among such 
 rocks and precipices would have cost the state a year's
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS, 79 
 
 revenue. But the water was the best of approaches, 
 and boats the cheapest of carriages. We called on the 
 chief bonder to ask for leave to fish in the lake. It was 
 granted with the readiest courtesy ; but the Norsemen 
 are proud in their way, and do not like the English- 
 man's habit of treating all the world as if it belonged to 
 him. The low meadows round his house were bright 
 with flowers : two kinds of wild geranium, an exquisite 
 vanety of harebell, sea-pride, pansies, violets, and the 
 great pinguicola. Among the rocks were foxgloves in 
 full splendor, and wild I'oses just coming into flower. 
 The roses alone of the Norway flora disappointed me ; 
 the leaves are large, dark, and handsome ; the flower is 
 insignificant, and falls to pieces within an hour of its 
 opening. We were satisfied that we were on the right 
 sp6t. The church stood on a peninsula, the neck of 
 which immedi^ately adjoined our anchorage. Behind it 
 was the lake which had been the scene of the duchess's 
 misfortune. We did not repeat our midnight experi- 
 ment. We waited for a leisurely breakfast. Five of 
 the crew then canned the yacht's cutter through fifty 
 yards of buslies ; and we were on the edge of the lake 
 itself, which, like all these inland waters, was glassy, 
 still, deep, aiid overhung with precipices. The bonder 
 had suggested to us that there were bears among them, 
 which we nn'ght kill if we pleased, as they had just 
 eaten seven of his sheep. So little intention had we 
 of shooting bears that we had not brought rifle or even 
 gun with us. Our one idea was to catch the duchess's 
 tu'clve-pound salmon, or, if not that one, at least another 
 of his kindred. 
 
 In a strange lake it is well always to try first with 
 '^pinm'ng tackle, a bait trolled with a long line from the 
 stern of a boat rowed slowly. It will tell you if there
 
 80 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 are fish to be cauglit ; it will find out for you where the 
 fish most haunt, if there are any. We had a curious 
 experience of the value of this method on a later occa- 
 sion, and on one of our failures. We had found a lake 
 joined to an arm of a fjord by a hundred yards only of 
 clear running water. We felt certain of finding salmon 
 there, and if we had begun with flies we might have 
 fished all day and have caught nothing. Instead of this 
 we began to spin. In five minutes we had a run ; we 
 watched eagerly to see what we had got. It was a 
 whiting pollock. We went on. We hooked a heavy 
 fish. We assured ourselves that now we had at least a 
 trout. It turned out to be a cod. The sea fish, we 
 found, ran freely into the fresh water, and had chased 
 trout and salmon completely out. At Stromen we were 
 in better luck. We started with phantom minnows on 
 traces of strong single gut, forty yards of line, and forty 
 more in reserve on the reel. Two men rowed us up the 
 shore an oar's length from the rocks. Something soon 
 struck me. The reel flew round, the line spun out. In 
 the wake of the boat there was a white flash, as a fish 
 sprang into the air. Was it the duchess's salmon ? It 
 was very like it, anyuay ; and if we had lost him, it 
 would have been entered down as a salmon. It proved, 
 however, to be no salmon, but a sea trout, and such a sea 
 trout as we had never seen ; not a bull trout, not a peel, 
 not a Welsh sewin, or Irish white trout, but a Nor- 
 wegian, of a kind of its own, different from all of 
 them. It was the first of many which followed, of sizes 
 varying from three pounds to the twelve pounds which 
 the mate had recorded ; fine, bold, fighting fish, good 
 to look at, good to catch, and as good to eat when we 
 tried them. Finally, in the shallower water, at the 
 upper end, a fish took me, which from its movements
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 81 
 
 was something else, and proved to l)e a large char, like 
 what they take in Derwent- water, only four times the 
 weight. Looking carefully at the water we saw more 
 char swimming leisurely near the surface, taking flies. 
 We dropped our spinning tackle, and took our fly rods ; 
 and presently we were pulling in char, the blood royal 
 of the salmonidse, the elect of all the flnned children of 
 the, fresh water, as if they had been so many Thames 
 chub. 
 
 Wliat need to talk more of fish ? The mate's log had 
 guided us well. We caught enough and to spare, and 
 her Grace's wrongs were avenged sufiiciently. We 
 landed for our frugal luncheon, but we sate in a bed of 
 whortleberries, purple with ripe fruit, by a cascade 
 which ran down out of a snow-field. Horace would 
 have invited his dearest friend to share in such a ban- 
 quet. -. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. The sight of the l)oats 
 coming from all quarters to church was very pretty. 
 Fifteen hundred people at least must have collected. I 
 attended the service, but could make little of it. I 
 could follow the hymns with a book ; l)ut copies of the 
 Liturgy, though printed, are not provided for general 
 use, and are reserved to the clergy. The faces of the 
 men were extremely interesting. There Avas nothing in 
 chem to suggest the old freebooter. Tlicy were mild 
 and gentle-looking, with fair skins, fair hair, and liglit 
 eyes, gray or blue. The expression was sensible and 
 collected, but with nothing about it specially adventurous 
 or daring. The women, in fact, were more striking 
 than their husbands. There was a steady strength in 
 tlieir features wliicli implied humor underneath. Two 
 girls, I suppose sisters, reminded nie of ]\rrs. Gaskell. 
 With the Lutheran, Sunday afternoon is a holiday. A
 
 83 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 yacht in such a place was a curiosity, and a fleet of boats 
 surrounded us. Such as hked came on board and looked 
 about them. They were well-bred, and showed no 
 foolish surprise. One old dame, indeed, being taken 
 down into the ladies' cabin, did find it too much for 
 her. She dropped down and kissed the carpet. One 
 of our party wondered afterward whether there was any 
 chance of the Norwegians attaining a higher civilization. 
 I asked her to define civilization. Did industry, skill, 
 energy, sufficient food and raiment, sound practical 
 education, and piety which believes without asking ques- 
 tions, constitute civilization ; and would luxury, news- 
 papers, and mechanics' institutes mean a higher civiliza- 
 tion ? The old question must first be answered. What 
 is the real purpose of human life ? 
 
 At Stromen, too, we could not linger ; we stopped a 
 few hours at Daviken on our way north, a considerable 
 place for Norway, on the Nord Fjord. There is a 
 bishop, I believe, belonging to it, but him we did not 
 see. We called at the parsonage and found the pastor's 
 wife and children. The pastor himself came on board 
 afterward — a handsome man of sixty-seven, with a 
 broad, full forehead, large nose, and straight, grizzled 
 hair. He spoke English, and Vvould have spoken Latin 
 if we had ourselves been equal to it. He had read 
 much English literature, and was cultivated above the 
 level of our own average country clergy. His parish was 
 thirty miles long on both sides of the fjord. He had 
 several churches, to all of which he attended in turn, 
 with boats in summer, and I suppose the ice in winter 
 We did not ask his salary ; it was doubtless small, but 
 sufficient. He had a school under him, which he said 
 was well attended. The master, who had a state cer- 
 tificate, was allowed £25 a vear, on which he was able
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 83 
 
 to maintain himself. We could not afford time to see 
 more of this gentleman, however. "We were impatient 
 for Trondhjem ; the engineer wanted coals ; we wanted 
 our letters and newspapers ; and the steward wanted a 
 washerwoman. On our way up, too, we had arranged 
 to giv'e a day or two to Romsdal, Rolf the Ganger's 
 country — on an island in Romsdal Fjord the ruins can 
 still be seen of Rolf's castle. It was there that Rolf, or 
 Rollo as we call him, set out with his comrades to con- 
 quer .Normandy, and produce the chivalry who fought 
 at fiastings and organized feudal England. This was 
 not to be missed ; and as little, a visit which we had 
 pron)ised to a descendant of one of those Normans, a 
 distinguished Tory member of the House of Commons, 
 and lord of half an English county. He had bought an 
 estaie in these parts, with a salmon river, and had built 
 himself a house there. 
 
 Romsdal, independent of its antiquarian interest, is 
 geologically the most remarkable place which we saw in 
 Norway. The fjord expands into a wide estuary or 
 large inland lake, into which many valleys open and 
 several large streams discharge themselves. Romsdal 
 proper was once evidently itself a continuation of the 
 Great Fjord. The mountains on each side of it are 
 peculiarly magnificent. On the left RomsdaPs Horn 
 shoots u]) into the sky, a huge peak which no one has 
 ever climbed, and will try the mettle of the Alpine Ohib 
 when they have conquered Switzerland. On the right 
 is a precipitous wall of cliffs and crags as high and Ixild 
 as the Horn itself. The upper end of the valley which 
 divides them terminates in a narrow fissure, through 
 which a river thunders down that carries the water of 
 the great central ice-field into the valley. From thence 
 it finds its w;iy into the fjord, i-iinning through the glen
 
 84 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 itself, wliicli is seven or eiglit miles long, two miles wide, 
 and richly cultivated and wooded. From the sea the 
 appearance of the shore is most singular. It is laid out 
 in level, grassy terraces, stretching all round the bay, 
 rising in tiers one above the other, so smooth, so even, 
 so nicely scarfed, that the imagination can hardly be 
 persuaded that they are not the work of human en- 
 gineers. But under water the formation is the same. 
 At one moment you are in twenty fathoms, the next in 
 forty, the next your cable will find no bottom ; and it 
 is as certain as any conclusion on such subjects can be, 
 that long ago, long ages before Rolf, and Knut, and the 
 vikings, the main fjord was blocked with ice ; that while 
 the ice barrier was still standing, and the valleys behind 
 it were fresh-water lakes, the rivers gradually filled them 
 with a dehris of stone and soil. Each level terrace was 
 once a lake bottom. The ice broke or melted away at 
 intervals. The water was lowered suddenly forty or fifty 
 feet, and the ground lately covered was left bare as the 
 ice receded. We found our Englishman. His house is 
 under the Horn at the bend of the valley, where the 
 ancient fjord must have ended. It stands in a green, 
 open meadow, approached through alder and birch 
 woods, the first cataract where the snow-water plunges 
 through the great chasm being in sight of the windows, 
 and half a dozen inimitable salmon pools within a few 
 minutes' walk. The house itself was simple enough, 
 made of pine wood entirely, as the Norway houses 
 always are, and painted white. It contained some half 
 dozen rooms, furnished in the j^lainest English style, the 
 summer house of a sportsman who is tired of luxury, 
 and finds the absence of it an agreeable exchange. A 
 man cannot be always catching salmon, even in Norway, 
 and a smattering of science and natural history would
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 85 
 
 be a serviceable equi]")meut in a scene where there are so 
 many curious objects worth attending to. Our friend's 
 tastes, however, did not lie in that direction. His 
 shelves were full of jellow-backed novels — French, 
 En2:]ish, and German. His table was covered with tlie 
 everlasting Saturday Revieic, Pall Mall Gazette, 
 Times, and Standard. I think he suspected science 
 as^^art of modern Liberalism ; for he was a Tory of the 
 Tories, a man with w^hom the destinies had dealt kindly, 
 in whose eyes therefore all existing arrangements were 
 as they should be, and those who wished to meddle with 
 them were enemies of the human race. He was sad and 
 sorrowful. The world was not moving to his mind, and 
 he spoke as if he was ultimus Bomanorum. But if an 
 aristocrat, he was an aristocrat of the best type — princely 
 in his thought, princely in his habits, princely even in 
 his salmon fislrfng. The pools in the river being divided 
 by difficult rapids, he had a boat and a boatman for each. 
 The sport was ample but uniform. There was an ice 
 cellar under the house, where we saw half a dozen great 
 salmon lying which had been caught in the morning. 
 One salmon behaves much like another ; and after one 
 has caught four or five, and when one knows that one 
 can catch as many more as one wishes, impatient people 
 might find the occupation monotonous. Happily there 
 was a faint element of uncertainty still left. It was 
 possible to fail even in the Romsdal. We were our- 
 selves launched in boats in diiferent pools at the risk of 
 our lives to try our hands ; wc Avorked diligently for a 
 couple of hours, and I at least moved not so much as a 
 fin. It was more entertaining a great deal to listen to 
 our host as he declaimed upon the iniciuities of (nn* 
 present Radical chief. J^olitics, like religi(jn, are mat- 
 ters of faith on which reason says as little as possible.
 
 86 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FKOUDE. 
 
 One passionate belief is an antidote to another. It is 
 impossible to continue to believe enthusiastically in a 
 creed which a fellow- mortal with as much sense as one- 
 self denies and execrates, and the collision of opinion 
 produces the prudent scepticism which in most matters 
 is the least mischievous frame of mind. 
 
 Here, too, in these pleasant surroundings we would 
 gladly have loitered for a day or two ; but the steward 
 was clamorous over his dirty linen, and it was not to 
 be. Trondhjem, on which our intentions had been so 
 long fixed, was reached at last. The weather had grown 
 cold again, cold with cataracts of rain. Let no one go 
 to Norway even in the dog-days without a winter ward- 
 robe. The sea- water in our baths was at 47" ; we had 
 fires in the cabin stove, and could not warm ourselves ; we 
 shivered under four blankets in our berths. The moun- 
 tains were buried in clouds, and the landscape was 
 reduced to dull gray mist ; but the worst of weathers 
 will serve for reading letters, laying in coal, and wander- 
 ing about a town. 
 
 Trondhjem ought to have been interesting. It was 
 the capital of the old Norse kings. There reigned the 
 Olafs. It lies half way up the Norway coast in the very 
 centre of the kingdom, on a broad, land-locked bay. 
 The situation was chosen for its strength ; for a deep 
 river all but surrounds the peninsula on which the town 
 is built, and on the land side it must have been im- 
 pregnable. The country behind it is exceptionally fer- 
 tile, and is covered over with thriving farms ; but streets 
 and shops are wearisome, and even the cathedral did not 
 tempt us to pay it more than a second visit. It is a 
 stern, solid piece of building ; early Norman in type, 
 with doors, \\nndows, and arches of zigzag pattern. It 
 had fallen out of repair, and is now being restored by the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 87 
 
 state ; hundreds of workmen are busy chi'iDping and 
 hammering, and are doing their business so well that the 
 new work can hardly be distinguished from the old. 
 But Catholic Christianity never seems to have got any 
 hearty hold on Norway. St. Olaf thrust it upon the 
 people at the sword's point, but their imaginations re- 
 mained heathen till the Reformation gave them a creed 
 •sdiich they could believe. I could not find a single 
 tolnb in the cathedral. 1 inquired where the old kings 
 and chiefs were buried, and no one could tell me. I 
 found, in fact, that they had usually come to an end in 
 some sea battle, and had found their graves in their own 
 element. Olaf Tryggveson went down, the last survivor 
 in the last ship of his fleet, the rays of the sunset flash- 
 ino^ on his armor as the waves closed over him. St. 
 CTlaf died in the same way. The entire absence of 
 monumental,£tones or figures in the great metropolitan 
 church of Norway is strange, sad, and impressive. 
 
 The town being exhausted, we drove a few miles out 
 of it to see a foss, one of the grandest in the country. 
 We said " Oh !"' to it, as Wolfe Tone did to G rattan. 
 But waterfalls had become too common with us, and, in 
 fact, the excitement about them has always seemed exag- 
 gerated to me. I was staying once in a house in the 
 north of New York State when a gentleman came in 
 fresh from Niagara, and poured out his astonishment 
 over the enormous mass of water falling into the 
 cauldron below. "Why is it astonishing f ' asked a 
 Yankee who was present. " Why shouldn't the water 
 fall ? The astonishing thing would be if it didn't fall." 
 
 In short, we left the washerwoman in possession of 
 the linen, which we could return and pick up wlicn it 
 was done, and we steamed away to examine tlie great 
 Trondhjem Fjord ; fishing and making bad sketches as
 
 88 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 tlie weather would allow. Tl>e weather generally al- 
 lowed us to do very little, and drove us upon our 
 books, which we could have read as well in our rooms at 
 home. I had brought the " Elective Affinities" with 
 me. I had not read it for thirty years. Then it had 
 seemed to me the wisest of all didactic works. " Un- 
 conscious cerebration," as Dr. Carpenter calls it, when 
 I read it again, had revolutionized my principles of 
 judgment. 1 could still recognize the moral purpose. 
 There are tendencies in human nature, hke the chemical 
 properties of material substances, which will claim pos- 
 session of you, and even appear to have a moral right 
 over you. But if yon yield you will be destroyed. 
 You can command yourself, and you must. Yery true, 
 very excellent ; and set forth with Goethe's greatest 
 power of fascination ; but I found myself agreeing with 
 the rest of the world, that it was a monstrous book after 
 all. To put the taste out I tried Seneca, but I scarcely 
 improved matters. Seneca's fame as a moralist and 
 philosojiher was due, perhaps, in the first instance, to 
 his position about the court and to his enormous wealth. 
 A little merit passes for a great deal when it is framed 
 in gold — once established it would remain, from the 
 natural liking of men for virtuous cant. Those lectures 
 to Lucilius on the beauty of poverty from the greatest 
 money-lender and usurer in the empire ! Lucilius is to 
 practise voluntary hardships, is to live at intervals on 
 beggars' fare, and sleep on beggars' pallets, that he may- 
 sympathize in the sufferings of mortality and be inde- 
 pendent of outward things. If Seneca meant it, why 
 did he squeeze five millions of our money out of the 
 provinces with loans and contracts ? He was barren as 
 the Sahara to me. Not a green sj-tot could I find, not a 
 single genial honest thought, in all the four volumes
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 89 
 
 with wliicli I liad encumbered myself. His finest 
 periods rang hollow like brass sovereigns. 
 
 The rain would not stop, so we agreed to defy the rain 
 and to fish in spite of it. We had the fjord before us 
 for a week, and we landed wherever we could hear of 
 lake or river. For twelve hours together the waterspout 
 would come down upon us ; we staggered about in 
 thickest woollen, with macintoshes, and india-rubber 
 bot)ts. With flapped oilskin hats we should have been 
 weather-proof, but with one of these I was unprovided ; 
 and, in spite of collars and woollen wrappers, the water 
 would find its way down our necks till there was nothing 
 dry left about us but the feet. Clothes grow heavy 
 under such conditions ; we had to take our lightest 
 rods with us, and now and then came to grief. I was 
 fisliing alone one day in a broad, rocky stream fringed 
 with alder bushes, dragging my landing-net along with 
 me. At an open spot where there was a likely run 
 within reach I had caught a four-pound sea trout. I 
 threw again ; a larger fish rose and carried off my fly. 
 I mounted a " doctor," blue and silver, on the strongest 
 casting-line in my book, and on the second cast a salmon 
 came. The river in the middle was running like a mill- 
 sluice. 1 could not follow along the bank for the trees ; 
 my only hope was to hold on and drag the monster into 
 the slack water under the shore. My poor little rod did 
 its best, but its best was not enough ; the salmon found 
 his way into the waves, round went tlie reel, off flew the 
 hue to the last inch, and then came the inevitable 
 catastrophe. The fish sprang wildly into the aif, tlie 
 rod straightened out, the line came home, and my 
 salmon and niy briglit doctor sped away together to the, 
 sea. 
 
 We were none the worse for our wettings, l-ladi
 
 Ou' SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDK. 
 
 evening we came home dripping and draggled. A degree 
 or two more of cold would have turned the rain into 
 snow. Yet it signified nothing. We brought back our 
 basketfuls of trout, and the Norwegian trout are the 
 best in the world. We anchored one evening in a chasm 
 with the mountain walls rising in precipices on both 
 sides. The next morning as I was lying in my berth 
 I heard a conversation between the steward and the 
 captain. The captain asked the orders for the day ; the 
 steward answered (he was the wit of the ship), " Orders 
 are to stretch an awning over the fjord that his lordship 
 may fish." 
 
 But the weather so far beat us that w^e were obliged to 
 abandon Lofoden. We were now at the end of July, 
 and it was not likely to mend, so we determined to turn 
 about and spend the rest of our time in the large fjords 
 of south Norway. Trondhjem had been our furthest 
 point ; we could not coal there after all, so we had to 
 make for Christiansund on the way. I was not sorry for 
 it, for Christiansund is a curious little bustling place, 
 and worth seeing. It is the headquarters of the North 
 Sea fishing trade near the open ocean, and the harbor is 
 formed by three or four islands divided by extremely 
 narrow^ channels, with a deep, roomy basin in the middle 
 of them. One of our crew was ill and had to be taken 
 for two or three days to the hospital. The arrange- 
 ments seemed excellent, as every public department is 
 in Norway. The town was pretty. The Norwegians 
 dress plainly ; but they like bright colors for their 
 houses, and the red-tiled roofs and blue and yellow 
 painted fronts looked pleasant after our clouds of mist. 
 The climate from the proximity of the ocean is said to 
 be mild for its latitude. The snow lies up to the lower 
 windows through tlie winter, but that went for nothing.
 
 THE NORWAY F.TORT)S. 91 
 
 There were stocks and coluiubines in the gardens ; 
 there were ripe gooseberries and red currants and pink 
 thorn and laburnum in flower. The ]iarbor was full of 
 fishing-smacks, like Brixhani trawlers, only rather more 
 old-fashioned. Gay steam ferry-boats rushed about 
 from island to island ; large ships were loading ; well- 
 dressed strangers were in the streets and shops ; an 
 English yacht had come like ourselves to take in coal, 
 atfd was moored side by side with us. There are fewer 
 people in the world than we imagine, and we fall on old 
 acquaintances when we least expect them. The once 
 
 t)eautiful was on board whom I had known forty - 
 
 five years ago. She had married a distinguished en- 
 gineer, who was out for his holiday. 
 
 We stayed at Christiansund or in the neighborhood 
 till our sick man was recovered, and then followed 
 (under bettor auspices as regarded weather) ten days of 
 scenery hunting which need not be described. We 
 went to Sondal, Lserdal, IS'ordal, and I don't know^ how 
 many " dais," all famous places in their way, but with 
 a uniformity of variety w'hich becomes tedious in a story. 
 One only noticeable feature I observed about the sheds 
 and poorer houses in these out-of-the-way districts. 
 They lay turf sods over the roofs, which become thick 
 masses of vegetation ; and on a single cottage roof you 
 may see half a dozen trees growing ten or fifteen feet 
 high. For lakes and mountains, however beautiful, the 
 appetite soon becomes satiated. They please, but they 
 cease to excite ; and there is something artificial in the 
 modern enthusiasm for landscapes. Velasquez or Kubens 
 could appreciate a fine effect of scenery as well as Turner 
 or Stansfield ; but with them it w^as a framework, sub- 
 ordinate to some human interest in the centre of the 
 picture. I suppose it is I)ecausc man in these democratic
 
 92 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FJIOUDE. 
 
 days lias for a time ceased to touch tlie imagination that 
 our poets and artists are driven back upon rocks and 
 rivers and trees and skies ; but the eclipse can only be 
 temporary, and I confess, for myself, that, sublime as 
 the fjords were, the saw-mills and farmhouses and iish- 
 ing-boats, and the patient, industrious people wresting 
 a wholesome living out of that stern environment, affected 
 me very much more nearly. I cannot except even the 
 Geiranger, as tremendous a piece of natural architecture 
 as exists in the globe. Tlie fjord in the Geiranger is a 
 quarter of a mile wide and six hundred fathoms deep. 
 The walls of it are in most places not figuratively, but 
 literally, precipices, and the patch of sky above your 
 head seems to narrow as you look up. I hope I was 
 duly impressed with the wonder of this ; but even here 
 there was something which impressed me more, and that 
 was the singular haymaking which was going on. The 
 Norwegians depend for their existence on their sheep 
 and cattle. Every particle of grass available for hay is 
 secured ; and grass, peculiarly nutritious, often grows 
 on the high ridges two thousand feet up. This they 
 save as they can, and they have original ways of doing 
 it. In the Geiranger it is tied tightly in bundles and 
 flung over the cliffs to be gathered up in boats below. 
 But science, too, is making its way in this nortiiern 
 wilderness. The farmhouses, for shelter's sake, are 
 always at the bottom of valleys, and are generally near 
 the sea. At one of our anchorages, shut in as usual 
 among the mountains, we observed one evening from 
 the deck what looked like a troop of green goats skip- 
 ping and bounding down the cliffs. We discovered 
 through a binocular that they were bundles of hay. 
 The clever bonder had carried up a wire, like a tele- 
 graph wire, from his coui'tyard to a projecting point of
 
 THE XORWAT FJORDS. 93 
 
 mountain ; on tins ran iron rings as travellers wliich 
 brought the grass directly to his door. 
 
 Twice only in our wanderings we had fallen in with 
 our tourist countrymen : once at Lferdal, where a high- 
 road comes down to a pier, and is met there by a corre- 
 sponding steamer ; the second time coming down from 
 the Geiranger, when we passed a boat with two ladies 
 and a gentleman, English evidently, the gentleman 
 toucliing liis hat to the Yacht Club flag as we went by. 
 Strange and pleasant the short glimpse of English faces 
 in that wild chasm ! But we were plunged into the 
 very middle of our countrymen at the last spot to which 
 we went in search of the picturesque — a spot worth a 
 few words as by far the most reguhirly beautiful of all 
 the places which we visited. At the head of one of the 
 long inlets which runs south, I think, out of the 
 Hardanger Fjord (but our rapid movements were con- 
 fusing) stands Odde, once a holy place in Scandinavian 
 mvtholoffical history. There is another Odde in Ice- 
 land, also sacred— I suppose Odin had something to do 
 with it. The Odde Fjord is itself twenty miles long, 
 and combines the softest and grandest aspects of Nor- 
 wegian scenery. The shores are exceptionally well 
 cultivated, richer than any which we had seen. Every 
 half mile sonu3 pretty farmhouse was shining red through 
 clumps of trees, the nuniy cattle-sheds speaking for the 
 wealth of the owner. Above, through the rifts of higher 
 ranges, you catch a sight of the central ice-field glacier 
 streaming over among the broken chasms and melting 
 i to waterfalls. At Odde itself there is an extensive 
 tract of fertile soil on the slope of a vast moraine, which 
 stretches completely across the bn.ad valley. On the 
 sea at the landing-place is a large churdi ;nid two <m.ii- 
 biderable hotels, which were thronged with visitors. A
 
 94 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 bi'oad road excellently engineered leads down to it, and 
 we found a staff of English-speaking guides whose 
 services we did not require. We had seen much of 
 the ice action elsewhere, but the performances of it at 
 Odde were more wonderful even than at Romsdal. The 
 moraine is perhaps four hundred and fifty feet high ; 
 the road winds up the side of it among enormous granite 
 boulders, many of them weighing thousands of tons, 
 which the ice has tossed about like pebble stones. On 
 reaching the crest you see a lake a quarter of a mile off ; 
 but before you come to it you cross some level fields, 
 very rich to look at, and witli patches of white-heart 
 cherry-trees scattered about, the fruit, when we came 
 there at the end of August, being actually ripe and 
 extremely good. These fields were the old lake bottom ; 
 but the river has cut a dike for itself through the top 
 of the moraine, and the lake has gone down some twenty 
 feet, leaving them dry. 
 
 The weather (penitent, perhaps, -^'or having so long 
 persecuted' us) was in a better humor. Our days at 
 Odde were warm and without a cloud, and we spent 
 them chiefly by the lake, which was soft as Windermere. 
 We had come into a land of fruit ; not cherries only, 
 but wild raspberries and strawberries were offered us in 
 leaves by the girls on the road. The road itself followed 
 the lake margin, among softly rounded and wooded 
 hills, the great mountains out of sight behind them, 
 save only in one spot where, through a gorge, you 
 looked straight up to the eternal snow-field, from which 
 a vast glacier descended almost into the lake itself, the 
 ice imitating precisely the form of falling water, crush- 
 ing its way among the rocks, parting in two where it 
 met a projecting crag, and uniting again behind it, 
 seemino; even to heave and toss in ane-rv waves of foam. 
 
 O 4/
 
 THE XORWAY F.TOUDS. 05 
 
 From this glacier the lake was chiefly fed, and was 
 blue, like skimmed milk, in consequence. "We walked 
 along it for several miles. Fishing seemed hopeless in 
 water of such a texture. As we turned a corner two 
 carriages dashed by us with some young men and dogs 
 and guns — cockneys out for their holiday. '' Any 
 sport, sir V ' one of them shouted to me, seeing a I'od 
 in, my hand, in the cheerful, familiar tone which 
 assumed that sport must be the first and only object 
 which one could have in such a place. They p.-issed on 
 tojihe hotel, and the presence of so many of our conntry- 
 fiien was inclining us to cut short our own stay. Some 
 of the party, however, wished to inspect the glacier. 
 We were ourselv^es assured that there were salmon in 
 the lake, which, in spite of the color, could be caught 
 th'ere. It was the last op]-)ortunity which we should 
 have, as after Odde our next move was to be Chris- 
 tiania. So we agreed to take one more day there and 
 make the most of it. We got two native boats, and 
 started to seek adventures. Alas ! we had the loveliest 
 views ; but the blue waters of Odde, however fair to 
 look upon, proved as ill to fish in as at the first sight of 
 them we were assured they must be. Our phantoms 
 could not be seen three inches off, and tlie stories told 
 us we concluded to be fables invented for the tourists. 
 I, for my own part, had gone to the furthest cxtrcnn'ty 
 Df the lake, where it ended in a valley like Borrodale. 
 I was being rowed listlessly back, having laid aside my 
 tackle, and wishing that 1 could talk to my old boatman, 
 who looked as if all the stories of the Edda were inside 
 him, when my eye was siiddently caught by a cascade 
 ('i)mine down out of a ravine into the lake which had not 
 been bred in the glaciers, and was limpid as the Ttchen 
 itself. At the month of this it was just possible that
 
 96 SKETCHES FROM .). A. FROUDE. 
 
 there might be a char or something witii fins that couid 
 see to rise. It was my duty to do what 1 could for the 
 yacht's cuisine. I put together my little trout-rod for 
 a last attempt, and made my boatman row me over to 
 it. The clear water was not mixing with the blue, but 
 pushing its way through the milky masses, which were 
 eddying and rolling as if they were oil. In a moment 1 
 had caught a sea trout. Immediately after I caught a 
 second, and soon a basketful. They had been attracted 
 by the purer liquid, and were gathered there in a shoal. 
 They were lying with their noses up the stream at the 
 furthest point to which they could go. I got two or 
 three, and those the largest, by throwing my fly against 
 
 the rocks exactly at the fall. X came afterward 
 
 and caught more and bigger iish than I did ; and our 
 sport, which indeed we had taken as it came without 
 specially seeking for it, was brought to a good end. 
 The end of August was come, and with it the period of 
 our stay in the fjords. We had still to see Christiania, 
 and had no time to lose. But of all the bits of pure 
 natural loveliness wdiich we had fallen in with, Odde 
 and its blue lake, and glacier, and cherry orchards, and 
 Maid strawberries has left the fairest impression ; per- 
 haps, however, only because it was the last, for we were 
 going home ; and they say that when a man dies, the 
 last image which he has seen is photographed on his 
 retina. 
 
 But now away. The smoke pours through the fun- 
 nel. The steam is snorting like an impatient horse. 
 The quick rattle of the cable says that the anchor is olf 
 the ground. We were off, and had done with fjords. 
 The inner passages would serve no longer ; we had 
 to make for open sea once more to round the foot of the 
 peninsula. It is at no time the softest of voyages. The
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 97 
 
 North Sea is not the home of cahii sunsets and light- 
 breathing zepliyrs, and it gave lis a taste of its quality, 
 which, after our long sojourn in smooth water, was 
 rather startling. If the wind and sea are ever wildet 
 than we found them in those latitudes, I have no desire 
 to be present at the exhibition. We fought the storm for 
 twenty-four hours, and were then driven for refuge into 
 a roadstead at the southern extremity of Norway near 
 Mandal. Tlie neighborhood was interesting, if we had 
 known it, for at Mandal Mary Stuart's Earl of Bothwell 
 was imprisoned when he escaped from the Orkneys to 
 Denmark. The dungeon wliere he was confined is still 
 to be seen, and as the earl was an exceptional villain, 
 the Piithentic evidence of eyesight that he had spent an 
 uncomfortable time in his exile would not have been 
 unwelcome. But we discovered what we had lost when 
 it was too late- to profit by our infonnation. We amused 
 ourselves by wandering on shore and observing the 
 effect of the change of latitude on vegetation. We 
 found the holly thriving, of which in the north we had 
 not seen a trace, and the hazel bushes had ripe nuts on 
 them. There was still a high sea the next day ; but we 
 made thirty miles along the coast to Arendal, an ad- 
 vanced, thriving town of modern aspect built in a 
 sheltered harbor, with broad (iuays, fine buildings, and 
 a gay parade. It was almost dark when we entered, 
 and the brilliant lights and moving crowds and carriages 
 formed a singular contrast to the unfinished scenes of 
 unreg(nerate nature which we liad just left. The Noree 
 nature, too, hard and rugged as it may be, cannot resist 
 the effect of its occupations. Aristotle ol)servc8 that 
 busy sea towns are always democratic. Norway gen- 
 erally, though republican, is intensely conservative. 
 The bonders who elect tlic rcpn'sentativeB walk in tlie
 
 f^8 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FllOUUE. 
 
 ways of their fathers, and have the strongest objection 
 to new ideas. Arendal, 1 was tohl, sends to Parhament 
 an eloquent yonng Radical, the admired of all the news- 
 papers. There is, I believe, no likelihood that he will 
 bring about a revolution. But there is no knowing, 
 when the king is an absentee. We spent one night at 
 Arendal. In the morning the storm had left us, and 
 before sunset we were at anchor at Christiania. It was 
 Sunday. The weather was warm, the water smooth, 
 the woody islands which surround and shelter the 
 anchorage were glowing in gold and crimson, Chris- 
 tiania, a city of domes and steeples, lay before us with 
 its fleets of steamers and crowded shipphig. Hundreds 
 of tiny yachts and pleasure-boats were glancing round 
 us. There is no sour Sabbatarianism in Norway. One of 
 the islands is a kind of Cremorne. When night fell 
 the music of the city band came floating over the water ; 
 bine lights blazed and rockets flashed into the sky with 
 their flights of crimson stars. It was a scene which we 
 had not expected in these northern I'egions ; but life can 
 have its enjoyments even above the sixtieth parallel. 
 
 There is much to be seen in Christiania. There is a 
 Parliament house and a royal palace, and picture-galleries 
 and botanical gardens, and a museum of antiquities, and 
 shops where articles of native workmanship can be 
 bought l:)y Englishmen at three times their value, and 
 ancient swords and battle-axes, and drinking-horns and 
 rings and necklaces, genuine, at present, for all I know 
 to the contrary, but capable of imitation, and likely in 
 these days of progress to be speedily imitated. If the 
 holy coat of Troves has been multiplied by ten, why 
 should there not be ten swords of Olaf Tryggveson ? 
 But all these things are written of in the hand-book of 
 Mr. Murray, where the curious can read of them. One
 
 THE NORWAY F.IORDS. 09 
 
 real wonder we saw and saw again at Cliristiania, and 
 could not satisfy ourselves with seeing ; and with an 
 account of this I shall end. It was a viking's ship ; an 
 authentic vessel in which, while Norway was still 
 heathen, before St. Olaf drilled his people into Chris- 
 tianity with sword and gallows, a JS'orse chief and his 
 erew had travelled these same waters, and in which, 
 when he died, he had been laid to rest. It had been 
 covered in with clay which had preserved the timbers. 
 It had been recovered almost entire — the vessel itself, 
 the oars, the boats, the remnants of the cordage, even 
 down to the copper cauldron in which he and his men 
 had cooked their dinners ; the names, the age, the 
 character of them all buried in the soil, but the proof 
 surviving that they had been the contemporaries and 
 countrymen- of the "Danes" who drove the EngHsh 
 Alfred into the marshes of Somersetshire. 
 
 Our yacht's company were as eager to see this ex- 
 traordinary relic as ourselves. We went in a body, and 
 never tired of going. It had been found fifty miles 
 away, had been brought to Cliristiania, and had been 
 given in charge to the university. A solid weather- 
 proof shed had been built for it where we could study 
 its structure at our leisure. 
 
 The first thing which struck us all M'as the beauty of 
 the model, as little resembling the old drawings of Norse 
 or Saxon ships as the figures which do duty there as men 
 resemble human beings. White, of Cowes, could not 
 buiUl a vessel with finer lines, or offering less resistance 
 to the water. She was eighty feet long and seventeen 
 and a lialf feet beam. She may have drawn three feet, 
 scarcely more, when her whole complement was on board. 
 She was pierced for thirty-two oars, and you could see 
 the marks on the side of t^e rowlocks where the oars
 
 lUO SKETCHES FIIOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 had worn tlie timber. Slie liad a single mast, stepped 
 in the solid trunk of a tree, wliicli had been laid along 
 the keel. Her knee timbers were strong ; but her 
 planks were unexpectedly slight, scarcely more than 
 lialf an inch thick. They had been formed by careful 
 splitting ; there is no sign of the action of a saw, and 
 the ends of them had been trinnned off by the axe. 
 They had been set on and fastened with iron nails, and 
 the seams had been carefully calked. Deck she had 
 none — a level floor a couple of feet below the gunwale 
 ran from stem to stern. The shields of the crew formed a 
 bulwark, and it was easy to see where they had been fixed. 
 Evidently, therefore, she had been a war-ship ; built for 
 fighting, not carrying cargoes. But there was no shelter, 
 and could have been none ; no covered forecastles, no 
 stern cabin. She stood right open fore and aft to wind 
 and waves ; and though she would have been buoyant in 
 a seaway and in the heaviest gale would have shipped 
 little water, even Norsemen could not have been made 
 of such impenetrable stuff that they would have faced 
 the elements with no better protection in any distant 
 expedition. That those who sailed in her were to some 
 extent careful of themselves is accidentally certain. 
 Among the stores was a plank with crossbars nailed 
 upon it, meant evidently for landing on a beach. One 
 of our men, who was quick at inferences, exclaimed at 
 once : " These fellows must have worn shoes and stock- 
 ings. If they had been barelegged they would have 
 jumped overboard and would not have wanted a landing- 
 plank." 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that she was not the kind of 
 vessel of which the summer squadrons were composed 
 that came down the English Channel, but that she was 
 intended either for the fjords only, or for the narrow
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS, 101 
 
 waters between Norway and Sweden and Denmark at 
 the mouth of the Baltic. Her rig must have been pre- 
 cisely what we had been lately seeing on the Sogne or 
 Hai'danger ; a single large sail on a square yard tit for 
 running before the wind, or with the wind slightly on 
 the quarter, but useless at a closer point. The rudder 
 Jiung over the side a few feet from the stern, a heavy 
 
 ^;oar with a broad blade and a short handle, shaped so 
 exactly like the rudders of the Roman vessels on Tra- 
 
 'j^n's column that the Norsemen, it is likely, had seen 
 
 " the pattern somewhere and copied it. 
 
 Such is this strange remnant of the old days which 
 has suddenly started into life. So vivid is the impres- 
 sion which it creates that it is ahnost as if some Sweyn 
 or Harold in his proper person had come back among us 
 from the giave. If we were actually to see such a man 
 we should be less conscious perhaps of our personal su- 
 periority than we are apt to imagine. A law of com- 
 pensation follows us through our intellectual and me- 
 chanical progress. The race collectively knoM's and can 
 execute immeasurably greater things than the Norsemen. 
 Individually they may have been as i*eady and intelligent 
 as ourselves. The shipwright certainly who laid the lines 
 of the viking's galley would have something to teach as 
 well as to learn in the yard of a modern yacht-builder. 
 
 But enough now of Norway. Our time was out ; our 
 tour was over ; we seated ourselves once more on our 
 wishing carpet, and desired to be at Cowcs ; we were 
 transported thither, with the care and almost the speed 
 with which the genius of the lamp transported the 
 palace of Ahiddin ; and we felt that we had one sujie- 
 riority at least which the viking would have envied us.
 
 III. 
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND 
 CENTURY.* 
 
 In the Acts of the Apostles we meet with a class of 
 persons whose features have in our own times become 
 again familiar to us— quacks and conjurers professing to 
 be in communication with the spiritual world, and re- 
 garded with curiosity and interest by serious men high 
 in rank and authority. Sergiiis Paulus was craving for 
 any light which could be given him, and in default of 
 better teaching had listened to Elymas the Sorcerer. 
 Simon Magus, if we may credit Catholic tradition, was 
 in favor at the Imperial Court of Rome, where he 
 matched his power against St. Peter's, and was defeated 
 only because God was stronger than the devil. The 
 " curious arts" of these people were regarded both by 
 Christian and heathen as a real mastery of a super- 
 natural secret ; and in the hunger for information about 
 the great mystery with which the whole society was 
 possessed, they rose, many of them, into positions of 
 extraordinary influence and consequence. Asia Minor 
 seems to have been their chief breeding ground, where 
 Eastern magic came in contact with Greek civilization, 
 
 * We shall never be free from the danger of imposture. There 
 are many signs of a revival of miracle-mongering in the name of 
 Christianity. This essay w\\\ be found a valuable preparation for 
 the study of any evidence presented by the new school of thauma- 
 
 turgists. — Editok.
 
 A CAGLIOSTKO Ul" THE SECOXD CENTL'KY. 103 
 
 and imposture was able to disguise itself in the phrases 
 of philosophy. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana "^vas the most remarkable of these 
 adventui'ers. His life, unfortunately, has been written 
 by believers in his pretensions ; and we have no knowl- 
 
 ^.-edge of what he looked like to cool observers. The 
 Apollonius of Philostratus is a heathen saviour, who 
 claimed a commission from heaven to teach a pure and 
 reformed religion, and in attestation of his authority 
 ,went about healing the sick, raising dead men to life, 
 
 -casting out devils, and prophesying future events which 
 came afterward to pass. The interesting fact about 
 Apollonius is the extensive recognition which he ob- 
 
 ^tained, and the ease with which his pretensions found 
 aiCceptance in the existing condition of the j)opular mind. 
 Out of the legends of him little can be gathered, save 
 the barest outline of his history. He was born four 
 years before the Christian era in Tyana, a city of Cap- 
 padocia. His parents sent him to be educated at Tarsus 
 in Cilicia, a place of considerable wealth and repute, and 
 he nmst have been about beginning his studies there 
 when St. Paul as a little boy was first running about the 
 streets. The life in Tarsus being too luxurious for 
 Apollonius's aspirations, he became a water-drinker and 
 a vegetarian, and betook himself as a recluse to the 
 temple of ^Esculapius at ^gae. ^sculapius, as the 
 god of liealing, and therefore the most practically use- 
 ful, had l)ecome the most popular of the heathen divin- 
 ities. He alone of them was supposed to remain be- 
 neficently active, and even to appear at times in visible 
 form in sick-rooms and by sick-beds, Apollonius's de- 
 votion to ^Esculapius means that he studied medicine. 
 On the death of his father he divided his i)roperty 
 among the poor, and after five years of retirement ho
 
 104 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 travelled as far as India in search of knowledge. He 
 discoursed witli learned Brahmins there, and came home 
 with enlightened ideas, and with some skill in the arts 
 of the Indian jugglers. With these two possessions he 
 began his career as a teacher in the Roman Empire. 
 He preached his new religion, and he worked miracles 
 to induce people to believe in him. He was at Rome 
 in Nero's time, when Simon Magus and St. Peter are 
 said to have been there. Perhaps tradition has con- 
 fused Apollonius with Simon Magus, or Simon Magus 
 with Apollonius. In the convulsions which followed 
 Nero's murder, being then an old man, he attached 
 himself to Yespasian in Egypt. Vespasian, who was 
 not without his superstitions, and himself had been once 
 persuaded to work a miracle, is said to have looked 
 kindly on him and patronized him, and Apollonius 
 blossomed out into glory as the spiritual adviser of 
 the Yespasian d}Tiasty. The cruelties of Domitian 
 estranged him. He was accused of conspiring with 
 Nerva, and of having sacrificed a child to bribe the gods 
 in Nerva's interest. He was even charged with having 
 pretended to be a god himself. He was arraigned, con- 
 victed, and was about to suffer, when he vanished out of 
 the hands of the Roman police, to reappear at Ephesus, 
 where he soon after died. 
 
 Clearly enough, we are off the ground of history in 
 much of this. If Apollonius died at Ephesus in Nerva's 
 time, he was a hundred years old at least, and must have 
 been a contemporary and neighbor of St. John, who is 
 supposed to have been writing his Gospel in the same 
 city about that very time. 
 
 However that may be, it is certain that after his death 
 a temple was raised to Apollonius at the place of his 
 birth, and Tyana became a privileged city. Similar
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 105 
 
 honors were assigned elsewhere to liini as an evidence of 
 the facility and completeness with which he had gained 
 credit for his pretended divine commission. The truth 
 about liim is probably that he was a physician, and had 
 obtained some real knowledge of the methods of curing 
 
 'tiiseases. In India, besides philosophy and juggling, he 
 may have learned to practice what is now called animal 
 
 •'magnetism ; and finding that he had a real power on 
 the. nerv'oas system of hysterical patients, the nature of 
 wliich he did not understand, he may have himself 
 l)elieved it to be supernatural. With these arts he 
 succeeded in persuading his countrymen that he was 
 " some great one," " a great power of God ;" and both 
 in life and death, in an age when the traditionary 
 r^liffion was grown incredible, and the human race was 
 craving for«.a new revelation, ApoUonius of Tyana, 
 among many others, was looked upon through a large 
 part of the Roman Empire as an emanation of the 
 Divine nature. Such periods are the opportunities of 
 false prophets. Mankind when they grow enthusiastic 
 mistake their hopes and imaginations for evidence of 
 truth, and run like sheep after every new pretender who 
 professes to hold the key of the mystery which they are 
 80 passionately anxious to penetrate. 
 
 Our present business, however, is not with the prophet 
 of Tyana. ApoUonius left a school of esoteric disciples 
 behind him, with one of whom we are fortunately able 
 to form a closer acquaintance. ApoUonius we see through 
 a mist of illusion. Alexander of Abonotichus we are 
 able to look at with the eyes of the cleverest man who 
 was alive on this planet in the second century. With 
 the help of Lucian's portrait of Alexander we can dis- 
 cern, perhaps, the lineaments of A])ollonius himself. 
 We can see, at any rate, what these workere of miracles
 
 106 SKETCHES FROM J. A. PROUDE. 
 
 really were, as well as tlie nature of the element in 
 which the}' made their conquests, at the side of, and in 
 open rivalry with, the teachers of Christianity. 
 
 A word tirst about Lucian himself. At the Christian 
 era, and immediately after it, the Asiatic provinces of 
 the Empire were singularly productive of eminent men. 
 The same intercourse of Eastern and Western civilization 
 which produced the magicians was generating in all 
 directions an active intellectual fermentation. The 
 "disciples" were "called Christians first at Antioch." 
 It was in Asia Minor that St. Paul first established a 
 Gentile Church. There sprang up the multitude of 
 heresies out of conflict with which the Christian creeds 
 shaped themselves. And by the side of those who were 
 constructing a positive faith were found others, who 
 were watching the phenomena round them w^ith an 
 anxious but seve?*e scepticism, unable themselves to find 
 truth in the agitating speculations which were distract- 
 ing everybody that came near them, but with a clear 
 eye to distinguish knaves and impostors, and a resolution 
 as honorable as St. Paul's to fight with and expose 
 falsehood wherever they encountered it. Among these 
 the most admirable was the satirist, artist, man of letters, 
 the much-spoken-of and little-studied Lucian, the most 
 gifted and perha23s the purest-hearted thinker outside 
 the Church who w^as produced under the Roman Empire. 
 He was born at Samosata on the Euphrates about the 
 year 120. lie was intended for a sculptor, but his quick 
 discursive intellect led him into a wider held, and he 
 spent his life as a critic of the sj)iritual phenomena of his 
 age. To Christianity he paid little attention. To him 
 it appeared but as one of the many phases of behef 
 which were showing themselves among the ignorant 
 and uneducated. But it was harmless, and he did
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOXD CENTITRT. 107 
 
 not quarrel with it. He belonged to the small circle 
 of observers who looked on such things with the ejes of 
 men of science. Cool-headed, and with an honest hatred 
 of Hes, he ridicnled the impious theology of the estab- 
 lished pagan religion ; with the same instinct he attacked 
 the charlatans who came, like Apollonius, pretending to 
 a Divine commission. He was doing the Church's work 
 when he seemed most distant from it, and was strug- 
 gling against illusions peculiarly seductive to the class of 
 minds to whom the Church particularly addressed itself. 
 Thus to Lucian we are indebted for cross lights upon 
 the history of times which show us how and why at that 
 particular period Christianity was able to establish itself. 
 Jlis scientific contemporaries were more antagonistic to 
 it, Ifhan himself. The Celsus against whom Origen wrote 
 his great defence was probably Lucian's intimate friend. 
 But if Christianity M^as incredible and offensive to them, 
 men Kke Apollonius of Tyana were infinitely more 
 offensive. Christianity was at most a delusion. Apol- 
 lonius of Tyana they hated as a quack and a scoundrel. 
 Besides the treatise which Origen answered, Celsus 
 wrote a book against the magicians. Lucian sjDeaks of 
 Apollonius in a letter to Celsus as if they were both 
 agreed about the character of the pro])het of Tyana, and 
 had this book surdved we should have perhaps found a 
 second picture there of Apollonius, which would have 
 made impossible the rash parallels which have been 
 attempted in modern times. The companion picture of 
 Alexander of Abonotichus, by Lucian himself, happily 
 remains. When the world was Ijowing down before 
 this extraordinary rascal, Lucian traced out his history, 
 and risked his own life in trying to explode the im- 
 posture. Though human folly proved too strong, and 
 Alexander died like Apollonius, with the supornatural
 
 108 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 aureole ii])Out liim, Lncian, at the express desire of 
 Celsus, i^laced on record a minute account of the man, 
 hicid to the smallest detail. He describes him as a 
 servant of the devil, in the most modern sense of the 
 word — not of the prince of the power of the air, as a 
 Christian Father would have described him, with evil 
 genii at his bidding, but of the devil of lying and impost- 
 ure with whom nowadays we are so sadly familiar. He 
 commences with an apology for touching so base a 
 subject ; he undertakes it only at his friend's request. 
 'Nor can he tell the entire story. Alexander of Abo- 
 uotichus was as great in rascaldom as Alexander of 
 Macedon in war and politics. His exploits would fill 
 large volumes, and the most which Lucian could do was 
 to select a few basketfuls from the dungheap and offer 
 them as specimens. Even thus much he feels a certain 
 shame in attempting. If the wretch had received his 
 true deserts, he would have been torn in pieces by apes 
 and foxes in the arena, and the very name of him would 
 have been blotted out of memory. Biographies, how- 
 ever, had been written, and had given pleasure, of dis- 
 tinguished highwaymen ; and an account of a man who 
 had plundered, not a small district, but the whole 
 Koman Empire, might not be without its uses. 
 
 With these few words of contemptuous preface Lucian 
 tells his story ; and in a form still more abridged we 
 now offer it to our readers. 
 
 Abonotichus was a small coast town on the south shore 
 of the Black Sea, a few miles west of Sinope. At this 
 place, at the beginning of the second century, the future 
 prophet was brought into the world. His parents were 
 in a humble rank of life. The boy was of unusual 
 beauty ; and having no inclination to work and a very 
 strong inclination for pleasure, he turned his advantages
 
 A. CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CRNTURY. 109 
 
 to abominable account. B}' and by he was taken up by 
 a doctor who had been one of Apollonins's disciples. 
 The old villain had learned his master's arts. He 
 understood medicine, could cure stomachaches and head- 
 aches, set a limb, or assist at a lying-in. But besides his 
 legitimate capabilities, he had set up for a magician. He 
 dealt in spells and love-charms ; he could find treasures 
 with a divining rod, discover lost deeds and wills, pro- 
 vide, heirs for disputed inheritances, and, when well 
 paid for it, he knew how to mix a poison. In these arts 
 the young Alexander became an apt pupil, and was 
 useful as a sort oi famulus. lie learned Apollonins's 
 traditionary secrets, and at the age of twenty, when his 
 master died, he was in a condition to practise on his 
 own account. 
 
 He was now thrown on the world to shift for himself. 
 But his spirits were light, and his confidence in himself 
 M'as boundless : as long as there were fools with money 
 in their pockets, he could have a well-founded hope of 
 transferring part of it to his own. A provincial town 
 was too small a theatre of operations. He set off for 
 Byzantium, the great mart of ancient commerce, which 
 was thronged with merchants from all parts of the 
 world. Like seeks like. At Byzantium, Alexander 
 made acquaintance with a vagabond named Cocconas, 
 a fellow who gained a living hy foretelling the winners 
 at games and races, lounging in the betting rings, and 
 gambling with idle young gentlemen. By this means 
 he found entrance into what was called society. Al- 
 exander was more beautiful as a man than as a boy. 
 Cocconas introduced hitn to a rich Macedonian lady, 
 who was spending the season in the city. The lady fell 
 in love with him, and, on her return to her country seat 
 at Bella, carried Alexander and his friend along with
 
 no SKETCHES FllOir J, A. FROUDE, 
 
 her. This was very well for a time ; but the situation, 
 perhaps, had its drawbacks. Aspiring ambition is not 
 easily satisfied ; and the young heart began to sigh for a 
 larger sphere. 
 
 In the midst of pleasure he had an eye for business. 
 In Macedonia, and especially about Pella, there was at 
 this time a great number of large harmless snakes. 
 They came into the houses, where they were useful in 
 keeping down rats and mice ; they let the children play 
 with them ; they crept into beds at night, and were 
 never interfered with. From this local peculiarity the 
 story, perliajjs, originated of the miraculous birth of 
 Alexander the Great. It occurred to the two adven- 
 turers that something might be made of one of these 
 serpents. They bought a very handsome specimen, and 
 soon after they left Pella, taking it with them. 
 
 For a while they lounged about together, carrying on 
 Cocconas's old trade, and expanding it into fortune-tell- 
 ing. Fools, they observed, were always craving to know 
 the future, and would listen to any one who pretended to 
 see into it. In this way they made much money, and 
 they found the art so easy that their views went higher. 
 They proposed to set up an oracular shrine of their own, 
 which would take the place of Delphi and Delos. The 
 jjythonesses on the old-established tripods were growing 
 silent. Apollo, it seemed, was tired of attending them, 
 and incpiirers were often sent away unsatisfied. There 
 was clearly a want in the world, and Alexander and his 
 friend thought they saw their way toward supplying it 
 
 The loss of oracles w^as not the whole of the misfor- 
 tune. The world was beginning to feel that it had even 
 lost God. The Greek mythology had grown incredible. 
 The Epicureans were saying that there was no such 
 thing as Providence, and never had been. The majority
 
 A CAGLIOSTIIO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. Ill 
 
 of people were still of a different opinion ; but tliey 
 were uneasy, and were feeling very generally indeed 
 that if gods there were, they ought to make their exist- 
 ence better known. Here was an opportunity, not only 
 of making a fortune, but of vindicating the great prin- 
 ciples of religion and becoming benefactors of humanity. 
 -They decided to try. Sleight of hand and cunning 
 mivht succeed when philosophy liad failed. Was it 
 said, there were no gods ? They would produce a god, a 
 rdal visible god, that men could feel and handle, that 
 would itself speak and give out oracles, and so silence 
 forever the wicked unbelievers. So far they saw their 
 way. The next question was, the place where the god 
 was to appear. Cocconas was for Chalcedon, on the 
 Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. It was a busy town, 
 almost as fulLof merchants as Byzantium, the population 
 all engaged with speculation, and money in any quantity 
 to be made there. This was good as far as it went. But 
 Chalcedon was too nnu'h in the light. The pagan gods, 
 as the shrewder Alexander knew, were not fond of com- 
 mercial cities. Christianity might thrive there ; but 
 caves, mountains, and woods, remote islands, retired 
 provincial villages, suited better with Apollo and 
 yEsculapius. Traders' wits were sharpened with busi- 
 ness, and they might be unpleasantly curious. The 
 simple inhabitants of the interior, Phrygians and Bithy- 
 nians, Galatians and Cappadocians, would be an easier 
 prey where a reputation had first to be created — and 
 success depended upon a favorable beginning. At his 
 own Abonotichus, he told Cocconas that a man had only 
 to appear with a fife and drum before him, and clashing 
 a pair of cymbals, and the whole population would be 
 on their knees before hiiii. 
 
 The better judgment of Alexander curried the day.
 
 112 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 Abonoticlms itself was decided on as the tlieatre of 
 operations. Cocconas, liowever, was allowed to intro- 
 duce Chalcedon into the first act of the drama. yEscula- 
 piiis, the best believed in of the surviving divinities, 
 was the god who was to be incarnated. Joe Smith must 
 have read Lucian's story, and have taken a liint from it. 
 In the temple of Apollo at Chalcedon the bold adven- 
 turers buried some brass plates, bearing an inscription 
 that Apollo and .^Esculapius were about to visit Pontus, 
 and that yEsculapius would apjDcar at Abonotichus in a 
 bodily form. The plates were conveniently discovered, 
 and became the talk of the bazaars. Merchants going 
 and coming spread the story. Asia Minor was excited, 
 as well it might be. At the favored Abonotichus the 
 delighted people resolved to build a temple to receive 
 the god at his coming, and they set to work at once, 
 clearing the ground for the foundations. 
 
 The train being thus well laid, Alexander had no 
 further need of a companion. Cocconas was a vulgar 
 type of rogue, unfit for the decorous hypocrisies which 
 were now to be acted. He was left behind on some 
 pretext at Chalcedon, where he died, it was said from a 
 snake-bite, and so drops out of sight. The supreme 
 performer returned, with tlie field to himself, to his 
 native town. Lucian describes him as he then ap- 
 peared : tall, majestic, extremely handsome, hair long 
 and flowing, complexion fair, a moderate beard, partly 
 his own and partly false, but the imitation excellent, 
 eyes large and lustrous, and a voice sweet and limpid. 
 As to his character, says Lucian, " God grant that I 
 may never meet with such another. His cunning was 
 wonderful, his dexterity matchless. His eagerness for 
 knowledge, his capacity for learning, and power of 
 memory were equally extraordinary."
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CEXTURY. 113 
 
 The simple citizens of Abonoticlius, on the watch 
 ah-eadj for the coming of a god among them, had no 
 chance against so capable a villain. They had not seen 
 him since the wonderful days of his boyhood, when he 
 had been known as the famulus of an old wizard. He 
 jiow presented himself among them, his locks wildly 
 streaming, in a purple tunic, with a white cloak thrown 
 p'^er it. In his hand he bore a falchion like that with 
 which Perseus had slain the Gorgon. He chanted a 
 doggerel of Alexandrian metaphysics, with monads and 
 triads, pentads and decads, playing in anagrams upon his 
 own name. He had learned from an oracle, he said, that 
 Perseus was his mother's ancestor, and that a wonderful 
 destiny had been foretold for him. He rolled his 
 beautiful soft eyes. With the help of soapwort he 
 foamed at the mouth as if possessed. The poor people 
 had known his mother, and had no conception of her 
 illustrious lineage. But there was no disputing with an 
 oracle. What an oracle said must be true. He was 
 received with an ovation, all the town bowing down 
 before him, and he then prepared for his next step. 
 
 The snake throughout the East was the symbol of 
 knowledge and immortality. The serpent with his tail 
 in his mouth represented the circle of eternity. The 
 serpent in annually shedding its skin was supposed to 
 renew its life forever. A sect even of Gnostic Chris- 
 tians were serpent-worshippers. From the time of the 
 brazen serpent in tlie wilderness, it was the s])ecial 
 emblem of the art of healing ; and if the divine phy- 
 sician ever appeared on earth in visible shape, a snake'a 
 was the form which he might be expected to assume. 
 
 The snake which had been bouglit at Pella was now 
 to be applied to its purpose. The monster, for it was of 
 enormous size, had accompanied Alexander througii his
 
 114 SKETCHKS FKOM .1. A. FROUDE. 
 
 subsequent adventures. Tt Iiad become so tame that it 
 would coil about bis body, and remain in any position 
 wliicli he desired. He had made a human face out of 
 linen for it, which he had painted with extreme in- 
 t^enuity. The mouth would open and shut by an ar- 
 rangement of horse-hair. The black forked tongue shot 
 in and out, and the creature liad grown accustomed to its 
 mask and wore it without objection. 
 
 A full-grown divinity being thus ready at hand, tlie 
 intending prophet next furnished himself with the egg 
 of a goose, opened it, cleared out the contents, and placed 
 inside a small embryo snake just born. This done he 
 filled the cracks and smoothed them over with wax and 
 white lead. ^Esculapius's temple was meanwhile mak- 
 ing progress. The foundations had been dug, and there 
 were pits and holes, which a recent rain had filled with 
 water. In one of these muddy pools Alexander con- 
 cealed his egg, as he had done the plates at Chalcedon, 
 and the next morning he rushed into the market-place 
 in a state of frenzy, almost naked, a girdle of gold tissue 
 about his waist, hair streaming, eyes flashing, mouth 
 foann'ng, and the Perseus falchion wheeling about his 
 head. The crowd collected, at the sight of him, frantic 
 as hiinself. He sprang upon some mound or bench. 
 "Blessed,"' he cj-ied, "be this town of x\bonotichus, 
 and blessed be they that dwell in it ! This day the 
 prophecy is fulfilled, and God is coming to take his place 
 among us." 
 
 The entire population was out, old and young, men 
 and women, quivering with hope and emotion. Alex- 
 ander made an oration in an unknown tongue ; some 
 said it was Hebrew, some Phaniician, all agreed that it 
 was inspired. The only words articulately heard were 
 the names of Apollo and ^Esculapius. When he had
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 115 
 
 done lie set up the familiar Psalin of the Son of God, 
 and moved, with the crowd singing in chorus behind 
 him, to the site of the temple. He stepped into the 
 water, offered a prayer to ^Esculapius, and then, asking 
 for a bowl, he scooped his egg out of the mud. 
 
 " ^sculapius is here," he said, holding it for a 
 moment in the hollow of his hand. And then, with 
 "<&very eye fixed on him in the intensity of expectation, 
 he broke it. The tiny creature twisted about his fingers. 
 " It moves, it moves I' ' the people cried in ecstasy. 
 Kot a question M-as asked. To doubt would have 
 been impious. They shouted. They blessed the gods. 
 They blessed themselves for the glory which they had 
 witnessed. Health, wealth, all pleasant things which 
 010 god could give, they saw raining on the happy 
 Abonotichus. Alexander swept back to his house, bear- 
 ing the divinity in his bosom, the awe-struck people 
 following. For a few days there was a pause, while the 
 tale of what had happened spread along the shores of 
 the Black Sea. Then on foot, on mules, in carts, in 
 boats, multitudes flocked in from all directions to the 
 birthplace of J^sculapius. The roads were choked with 
 them ; the town overflowed with them. " They had 
 the forms of men," as Lucian says, " but they were as 
 sheep in all besides, heads and hearts empty ahke." 
 Alexander was ready for their reception. He had 
 erected a booth or tabernacle, with a door at each end 
 and a railed passage leading from one door to the other. 
 Behind the rail, on a couch, in a subdued light, the 
 prophet sat, visible to every one, the snake from Pella 
 wreathed about his neck, the coils glittering amid the 
 folds of his dress, the tail ])laying on the ground. The 
 head was concealed ; l)ut occasionally the proi)het raised 
 his arm, and then iippcand thr awful face, the mouth
 
 116 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 inoviiiiT, the tongue darting in and out. There it was, 
 the veritable traditionary serpent with the human coun- 
 tenance which appears in the mediaeval pictures of the 
 Temptation and the Fall. 
 
 The prophet told the spectators that into this mys- 
 terious being the embryo that was found in the egg had 
 developed in a few days. The place was dark ; the 
 crowd which was pressing to be admitted was enormous. 
 The stream of worshippers passed quickly from door to 
 door. They could but look and give place to others. 
 But a single glance was enough for minds disposed to 
 believe. The rapidity of the creature's growth, so far 
 from exciting suspicion, was only a fresh evidence of its 
 miraculous nature. The first exhibition was so successful 
 that others followed. The first visitors had been chiefly 
 the poor ; but as the fame of the appearance spread, 
 the higher classes caught the infection. Men of fortune 
 came with rich ofEerings ; and so confident was Alexander 
 in their folly that those who gave most liberally were 
 allowed to touch the scales and to look steadily at the 
 moving mouth. So well the trick was done that Lucian 
 says, "Epicurus himself would have been taken in." 
 " Kothing could save a man but a mind with the firm- 
 ness of adamant, and fortified by a scientific conviction 
 that the thing which he supposed himself to see was a 
 physical impossibility." 
 
 Tlie wonder was still imperfect. The divinity was 
 there, but as yet he had not spoken. The excitement, 
 however, grew and spread. All Asia Minor was caught 
 with it. The old stories were true then. There were 
 gods, after all, and the wicked philosophers were wrong. 
 Heavy hearts were lifted up again. From lip to lip the 
 blessed message flew ; over Galatia, over Bithynia, away 
 across the Bosphorus, into Thrace and Macedonia. A
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 117 
 
 god, a real one, had been born at Aljonoticlius, with a 
 serpent's body and the face of a man. Pictures were 
 taken of liim. Images were made in brass or silver and 
 circulated in thousands. At length it was announced 
 that the lips had given an articulate sound. 
 
 " I am Glycon, the sweet one," the creature had said, 
 " the third in descent from Zeus, and the light of the 
 world." 
 
 The temple M-as now linished. Proper accommoda- 
 tion had been provided for ^Esculapius and his prophet 
 priest ; and a public announcement was made that the 
 god, for a fit consideration, would answer anv (piestions 
 which might be put to him. There was a doubt at first 
 ''about the tariif. Amphilochus, who had migrated from 
 Thebes to a shrine in Cilicia, and had been prophesying 
 there for ten centuries, charged two obols, or three pence, 
 for each oracle ; but money had fallen in value, and 
 answers directly from a god were in themselves of higher 
 worth, .^sculapius, or Alexander for him, demanded 
 eight obols, or a shilling. Days and hours were fixed 
 when incpiirers could be received. They were expected 
 to send in their names beforehand, and to write their 
 questions on a paper or parchment, which they might 
 seal up in any way that they pleased. Alexander re- 
 ceived the packets from their hands, and after a day, or 
 sometiines two days, restored them with the answers to 
 the questions attached. 
 
 People came, of course, in tliousands. The seals 
 being apparently unbroken, the mere fact that an answer 
 was given of some kind predisposed tliem to be satisfied 
 with it. Either a heated knife-blade had been passed 
 under the wax, or a cast of the impression was taken in 
 collyrium and a new seal was manufactured. Tho 
 obvious explaiuition occurred to nu one. Peo])le in
 
 nS SKETCHES FROM J. A. FBOUDE. 
 
 search of the miraculous never like to be disappointed. 
 Either they themselves betray their secrets, or they ask 
 questions so foolish that it cannot be known whether the 
 answer is true or false. Most of the inquirers came to 
 consult .Esculapius al)Out their health, and Alexander 
 knew medicine enough to be able generally to read in 
 their faces what was the matter with them. Thus they 
 were easily satisfied, and went away as convinced as 
 when they arrived. Tlie names being given in before- 
 hand, private information was easily obtained from 
 slaves or companions. Shrewd guesses were miracles, 
 when they were correct, and one success outweighed a 
 hundred failures. In cases of difficulty the oracular 
 method was always in reserve, with the ambiguities of 
 magniloquent nonsense. The real strength of Alex- 
 ander was in his professional skill, which usually was in 
 itself all-sufficient. He had a special quack remedy of 
 his own, which he prescribed as a panacea, a harmless 
 plaster made out of goat's fat. To aspiring politicians, 
 young lovers, or heirs expectant, he replied that the 
 fates were undecided, and that the event depended on 
 the Avill of ^Esculapius and the intercessions of his 
 prophet. 
 
 Xever was audacity greater or more splendidly re- 
 warded. The gold ingots sent to Delphi were as noth- 
 ing compared to the treasures which streamed into 
 Abonotichus. Each question was sej^arately paid for, 
 and ten or fifteen were not enough for the curiosity of 
 single visitors. The work soon outgrew the strength of 
 a single man. The prophet had an army of disciples, 
 who were munificently paid. They were employed, some 
 as servants, some as spies, oracle manufacturers, secre- 
 taries, keepers of seals, or interpreters of the various 
 Asiatic dialects. Each applicant received his answer in
 
 A CAGLI03TKO OF THE SECOXI) CEXTL'RY. 110 
 
 liis own tongue, to his Qverwlicliuiiig admiration. Suc- 
 cess brought fresh ambitions with it. Emissaries were 
 dispersed through the Empire spreading the fame of the 
 new prophet ; instigating fools to consult the oracV, 
 and lettinij Alexander know who thev were and what 
 they wanted. If a slave had rmi away, if a will could 
 not be found, if a treasure had been secreted, if a rob- 
 bery was nndiscovered, Alexander became the universal 
 resource. The air M'as full of miracles. The sick were 
 healed. The dead were raised to life, or were reported 
 and were believed to have been raised, which came to 
 the same thing. To believe was a duty, to doubt w^as 
 a sin. A god had come on earth to save a world which 
 was perishing in scepticism. Simple hearts were bound- 
 ing with gratitude ; and no devotion could be too 
 extreme, and no expression of it in the form of offer- 
 ings too extravagant, ^sculapius might have built a 
 throne of gold for himself out of the pious contributions 
 of the faithful. Being a god he was personally dis- 
 interested ; "gold and silver," he said through the 
 oracle, " were nothing to him ; he commanded only 
 that his servant the prophet should receive the honors 
 due to him." 
 
 High favor such as had fallen upon Alexander could 
 not be enjoyed without some drawbacks. The world 
 believed, but an envious minority remained incredulous, 
 and whispered that the prophet was a charlatan. The 
 men of science persisted that miracles were against 
 nature, and that a professing worker of miiadi's was 
 necessarily a rogue. The Christians, to whom Luciaii 
 does full justice in the matter, regarded Alexander as u 
 missionary of the devil, and abhorred both him and his 
 works. Coml^inations were formed to expose him, traps 
 were cleverly laid for him, into which all his adroit-
 
 !20 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FUOUDE. 
 
 ness could not save him from occasionally falling. But 
 lie had contrived to entangle his personal credit in the 
 great spiritual questions which were agitating mankind, 
 and to enlist in his interest the pious side of paganism. 
 The schools of philosophy were divided about him. The 
 respectable sects, Platonists, Stoics, and Pythagoreans, 
 who believed in a spiritual system underlying the sensible, 
 saw in the manifestation at Abonotichus a revelation in 
 harmony with the theories. If they did not wholly 
 believe, they looked at it as a phenomenon useful to an 
 age which was denying the supernatural. 
 
 Alexander, quick to catch at the prevailing influences, 
 flattered the philosophers in turn. Pythagoras was 
 made a saint in his calendar. He spoke of Pythagoras 
 as the greatest of the ancient sages. He claimed to 
 represent him ; at length he let it be known privately 
 that he was Pythagoras. He gilt his thigh, and the 
 yellow lustre was allowed to be seen. The wise man of 
 Samos was again present unrecognized, hke Apollo 
 among the herdsmen of Admetus. 
 
 The philosophers of the second century, if Lucian can 
 be believed, were not a lofty set of beings. They pro- 
 fessed sublime doctrines, but the doctrines had little 
 effect on their lives, and the different schools hated one 
 another with genuine sectarian intensity. The Pythago- 
 reans were little better than their rivals, but their teach- 
 ing was more respectable. They insisted that men had 
 souls as well as bodies. They believed in immortality 
 and future retribution, and they had the sympathies 
 with them of the decent part of society. Alexander's 
 instinct led him to them as the best of friends he could 
 have ; antl they in turn were ready to play into his 
 hands in their own interests. By their mystical theories 
 they were the natural victims of illusion. Opinions
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SF.COND CENTCRY. 121 
 
 adopted out of suiierstition or emotion cannot be en- 
 countered by reason. They are like epidemic diseases 
 which seize and subdue the mental constitution. They 
 yield only "vvhen they have spent their force, and are 
 superseded by other beliefs of an analogous kind. Tht 
 spiritual world is ruled by homoeopathy, and one disorder 
 is T*nly cured b}'^ a second and a similar one. 
 
 Thus supported, therefore, Pythagoras Alexander 
 rejilied to attempts at exposure by open defiance. 
 Pontus, he said, was full of blaspheming atheists and 
 Christians ; ^sculapius was displeased that, after he 
 had condescended to come among his people, such 
 wretches should be any longer tolerated ; and he de- 
 ma/uded that they should be stoned out of the province. 
 A pious inquirer was set to ask after the soul of 
 Epicurus, ^sculapius answered that Epicurus was in 
 hell, lying in filth and in chains of lead. The Py- 
 thagoreans clapped their hands. Hell, they had always 
 said, was the proper place for him ; and in hell he was ; 
 the oracle had declared it. 
 
 It is very interesting to find two classes of men gen- 
 erally supposed to be so antagonistic as the men of 
 science and the Christians, standing alone together 
 against the world as the opponents of a lying scoundrel. 
 The explanation of their union was that each of them 
 had hold of a side of real truth, while the respectable 
 world was given over to shadows. The Epicureans 
 understood the laws of nature and the principles of 
 evidence. The Christians lia<l a new ideal of human life 
 and duty in them, which was to regenerate the whole 
 race of mankind. It was tlnis lit and i-ight that they 
 should work too;ether ajrainst a wretch who understood 
 nothing but human folly and tlu; art of playing upon it, 
 and against the gulls and idiots who were ready to
 
 122 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE, 
 
 swallow any absurdity which surprised or flattered 
 them. 
 
 The Epicureans were Alexander's most dangerous 
 enemies ; for they had friends in the higher circles of 
 society. Araestris, between Abonotichus and the Bos- 
 pliorus, was the seat of the provincial administration. 
 Lepidus, the Eoman propraetor, was a man of sense and 
 culture. The town took its intellectual tone from him, 
 and was unfavorable to the prophet's pretensions. 
 Ingenious tricks had been played upon him from that 
 quarter w^ith too much success ; and he had been driven 
 to announce that for the future no inquiries sent from 
 Amestris would be entertained. Some mockeries had 
 followed. Alexander could not afford to let the public 
 enthusiasm cool, and mistakes for the future must be 
 avoided, ^sculapius had hitherto communicated with 
 his worshippers in writing. When he uttered sounds, it 
 was in private to the prophet. To silence doubt, the 
 serpent was now to be heard directly speaking. A tube 
 was fitted, through which articulate noises could be 
 made to issue from the snake's mouth with the help of 
 a confederate behind the curtain. Select visitors only 
 were admitted to this especially sacred performance, and 
 a high price had to be paid for it. But the experiment 
 was tried with jjerfect success ; and the method was 
 found to have its conveniences. The word-of-mouth 
 oracles were taken down and were given afterward to 
 the world ; but if mistakes had been made, they could 
 be altered before publication. An accident of the kind 
 happened shortly after, which might have been dis- 
 astrous if the original practice had been followed, but 
 which Alexander was able to turn into a brilliant success. 
 
 Severian, a Roman general, had been sent by the 
 Emperor Yerus to invade Armenia. He called at
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 12:5 
 
 Abonoticlius on his way, to learn if lie was likely to 
 succeed, and ^Esculapius encouraged him with his own 
 lips in bad Homeric verse. He had told Severian that 
 he would subdue the Armenians, and return in glory to 
 Kome with the bay wreath on his temples and wearing 
 the golden circle of Apollo. Severian, whether he 
 believed ^sculapius or not, went his way, lost his army, 
 an<^ was himself killed. The oracle was immediatel}' 
 reversed. The line which appeared in the published 
 record was : *' Go not against the Armenians, where 
 death and disaster await thee." Thus out of "the 
 nettle danger" Alexander "had plucked the flower 
 safety." The death of Severian was explained by his 
 neglect or defiance of the warning. In another way, 
 too, he showed his prudence. He made friends at the 
 rival shrines."- Monopolies, he knew, were odious and 
 dangerous. If J^sculapius spoke through him, Apollo 
 spoke now and then elsewhere. He would sometimes 
 tell a patient that he had no message for him, and that 
 he must go for advice to Claros or to the cave of the 
 Branchidae. 
 
 Thus he continued to baffle his detractors, and to rise 
 from glory to glory. His fame reached the Imperial 
 Court, and to consult Alexander became the fashion in 
 high Roman society. Ladies of rank, men of business, 
 intriguing generals or senators, took into their counsels 
 the prophet of Abonoticlius. Some who had perilous 
 political schemes on hand were rash enough to commit 
 their secrets to paper, and to send them, under the 
 protection of their seals, for the opinion of ^Esculaiuus. 
 The prophet, when he discovered matter of this kind, 
 kept the packets by him without returning them. lie 
 thus held the writers in his power, and made them feel 
 that their lives were in his hands.
 
 I'^-i SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 And tlici'o wore otliers in lii^'li position, men of 
 thought wlio were waiting for some kind of revelation, 
 that sought him out from purer motives. Rutilian, a 
 senator, in favor with the Emperor, a man of al)ility, 
 who had passed his h'fe in the jjublic service, and still 
 held an important office, adopted Alexander for his 
 spiritual father. Rutilian was a Pythagorean of most de- 
 vout temperament, assiduous in prayers to the Invisible 
 Being or Beings of whose existence he w^as assured. 
 \Yhen he heard that ^Esculapius had come into the 
 world, he had already a predisposition to believe, and 
 was prevented only by public duties from flying to learn 
 if the news was true. lie could not o-o to Pontus 
 himself, but he sent friends on whom lie could rely, and 
 whose temperament resembled his own. The majestic 
 appearance of the j^rojDlict, the inspired eyes, the rich, 
 sweet voice, awed them into immediate conviction. 
 They were shown wonders ; but they had believed 
 before they had been seen, and they returned to Rome 
 to exaggerate what they had witnessed. Rutilian, 
 receiving their report into his own eager imagination, 
 brought it out of the crucible again transfigured yet 
 more gloriously. lie was a man of know^n piety and 
 veracity, incapable of conscious falsehoods, true and just 
 in all his dealings. Astonished Pome could not yet 
 wholly surrender itself. Officers of the imperial house- 
 hold hastened over to see with their own eyes. It had 
 not occurred to them that they might see things wdiich 
 they could not explain, yet that what they saw might be 
 no more than a trick. Men witliout scientific training 
 who trust their own judgment in such matters are the 
 natural prey of charlatans. These gentlemen came to 
 Abonotichus. They were received with the highest 
 honors. Alexander displayed his miracles to them,
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SKCOND CKXTURY. I'^S 
 
 made them handsome presents, and sent them home 
 open-mouthed to glorify ^Escuhipius and his prophet in 
 the fullest confidence that they were speaking nothing 
 but the truth. Rutilian was triumphant. He was now 
 either relieved from office, or he obtained leave of 
 absence, and at last was al)le to throw himself in person 
 at the apostle's feet. He was sixty years old at the time 
 wll^n the acquaintance began. His wife was dead, and 
 he had one only son. The first question which he asked 
 Alexander was about his boy's education. Alexander 
 told him that his teachers were to be Pythagoras and 
 Homer. The child died, and went to his tutors in 
 Hades ; and the prophet at the first step had given a 
 convincing proof of his inspiration. Lucian, in his con- 
 ten>pt of folly, half pardons Alexander when such a 
 man as Rutilian was so eager to be his dupe. The new 
 disciple, being'a Pythagorean, believed in pre- existence. 
 He asked through what personalities he had himself 
 passed already. Alexander told him that he had been 
 no less a person than Achilles. After Achilles he had 
 been Menander, and when his present life was over he 
 was to become immortal, and live thenceforward as a 
 sunbeam. Rutilian believed it all. Xo absurdity was 
 too monstrous for him ; while he on his part was infinitely 
 useful to Alexander. Few sceptics were hardy enough 
 thenceforward to question the character of the friend of 
 the Emperor's favorite. 
 
 Anion"- his female adorers or connections, of whom 
 Alexander had as many as Brigham Young, there was a 
 girl whom he called his daughter, on the mother's side of 
 exalted parentage. Selene, or the Moon, had seen Alex- 
 ander sleeping like Endymion, had be(!<>me enamored of 
 liiiii, and had descended to his embraces. Tlie young 
 ladr he declared to be the offspring of this celestial union.
 
 I"2^ SKETCIIKS FliOM .T. A. FK'OLDE. 
 
 KiitiHan, l)eing a widower, was infonued that Selene 
 and ^Esculapius liad selected him to be her husband. 
 He was delighted. He believed the marriage to be an 
 adoption into heaven. Like Menelaus, he would never 
 die, being the son-in-law of a god, and the nuptials were 
 celebrated with august solemnity. 
 
 Abonotichus after this became a holy city, a Mecca, 
 a place of pilgrimage. The prophet was a power in the 
 Empire, and began to surround himself with pomp and 
 display. Among other ceremonies he instituted a public 
 service in the temple in imitation of the mysteries of 
 Eleusis. That he was able to present such scenes with 
 impunity is a most curious illustration of the mental 
 condition of the time. 
 
 The service commenced with a procession of acolytes, 
 carrjang torches, the prophet at their head, like the 
 priests of Ceres, giving notice to the profane to keep 
 aloof, and inviting the believers in ^Esculapius to ap- 
 proach and take part in the holy mystery. The profane 
 whom he specially meant were the Christians and the 
 atheists. The prophet spoke ; the congregation an- 
 swered. The prophet said, '' Away with the Chris- 
 tians !" The people replied, " Away wath the atheists !" 
 Those who presented themselves for comumnion were 
 examined first l)y Alexander to ascertain their fitness. 
 If found unorthodox, they were excluded from the 
 temple. The ceremonial then commenced. It con- 
 sisted of a series of tableaux. The first day was given 
 to representations of the lying-in of Latona, the birth of 
 Apollo, the marriage of Apollo and Coronis, with the 
 issue of it in the generation of ^^sculapius. On the 
 second day there was the incarnation of " the sweet 
 one,'' with the Chalcedon plates, the goose egg, and the 
 snake. Alexander himself was the hero of the third.
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SEOOXD CENTURY. 12? 
 
 A new revelation, it seems, liad informed him of mys- 
 terious circumstances attending his own coming into the 
 world. His mother had been visited bj Podalirius, 
 ^.sculapius's mythical son. The temple was then brill- 
 iantly illuminated. The prophet, after some prelimi- 
 nary gesticulations, laid himself down, as Endymion, to 
 sleep upon a couch. Selene, the Moon, personated by 
 thii'beautiful wife of an officer of the imperial court, who 
 was the prophet's mistress, descended upon him from 
 the roof and covered him with kisees, the husband 
 looking on, delighted with the honor which had fallen 
 upon him. In the final scene, Alexander reappeared in 
 liis priestly dress. A hymn was sung to the snake, the 
 congr'.gation accompanying or responding. The choir 
 then formed into a circle and went through a mystic 
 dance, the prophet standing in the centre. 
 
 The miraculous birth of Alexander, after being thus 
 announced, was made into an article of faith, which the 
 disciples were bound to receive. A difficulty arose 
 which hfid not been foreseen. If he was the son of a 
 irod, how could he be Pvtluiijoras ? and how came he bv 
 tlie golden tliigli ? He was equal to the occasion ; he 
 was not Pytliagoras, lie said, and yet ho was. He had 
 the same soul with Pvthaijoras ; for that soul was the 
 Spirit of God, which waned and was renewed like the 
 moon. The Spirit descended fi-om heaven at special 
 times and on spcctial persons, and again ascended when 
 its purpose wa.s attained. The gold thigh was perliaps 
 ('X])lained as its a('comj>anying symbol. 
 
 IIavin<r identiiicil himself with the Pvtha<jjoreans, he 
 announced with anthority the general truth of their 
 <loctrines. He insisted on an elevated morality, ami 
 <lirected his disciples to abstain from sensual vices. The 
 rules, however, hail no ap])licati()n to himself, and
 
 128 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 behind the veil he created a Cyprian paradise. His 
 reputation being so well established, the privilege of 
 admission to the temple rites was eagerly sought after. 
 
 The oracle, meanwhile, was active as ever, and now 
 and then by its niistakes produced frightful injustice. 
 A Paphlagonian gentleman had sent his son to be edu- 
 cated at Alexandria. The boy had joined an expedition 
 up the Nile, where he fell in with some merchants on 
 their way to the Ked Sea and India. Curiosity led 
 him to accompany them ; and his household in the city, 
 who had charge of him, after waiting for a while and 
 finding that he did not come back, concluded that he 
 had been drowned in the river, and returned to Paphla- 
 gonia with the news that the boy was dead. The father 
 consulted the seer of Abonotichus. Alexander informed 
 him that his son had been made away with by the 
 servants. The Roman governor was appealed to. The 
 word of Alexander, supported as he was by Rutilian, was 
 conclusive, and the unfortunate wretches were thrown to 
 the wild beasts. Soon after, the boy appeared, none 
 the worse for his journey ; and an indignant friend of 
 the family went to Abonotichus to expose the impostor 
 before his M'orshippers. Unfortunately, a superstition 
 once established is proof against commonplace evidence. 
 Alexander only answered by telling the congregation to 
 stone the blasphemer, who was rescued when nearly 
 dead by the interposition of a casual traveller. 
 
 Another adventure into which he fell might have 
 been more dangerous. The war of Marcus Aurelius with 
 the Marcomanni was the occasion of the celebrated story 
 in Christian mythology of the Thundering Legion. It 
 is difficult, and even impossible, to reconcile the account 
 of the war in the Christian legend with Lucian's descrip- 
 tion of it ; but Luciau was alive at the time, and when
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. I'-IO 
 
 he says that the Emperor was disastrously defeated, he 
 is unlikely to have been mistaken. Lucian says that 
 Marcus Aurelius, before he began the campaign, applied 
 to Alexander. Alexander told him that if he devoted 
 two lions to the gods and threw them into the Danube, 
 there would be a glorious victory and a happy peace. 
 T]\^ lions swam the riv^er, landed on the opposite bank, 
 and were immediately killed. The Emperor lost a 
 battle and many thousand men. Aquileia itself nearly 
 escaped being taken. 
 
 This catastrophe tried the faith even of Rutilian. 
 Alexander, however, told him that the gods had fore- 
 told a victory, but had not allowed hiin to know on 
 which side the victory would be. Rutilian resisted 
 temptation and continued to believe. 
 
 Affairs, however, had become serious, when such a 
 man was allowed to play with the interests of the 
 Empire. Intelligent Romans went to Abonotichus to 
 make inquiries, and were so troublesome that ^sculapius 
 had to interfere. When a stranger arrived, the god 
 decided whether he was to be admitted to reside in the 
 town. A suspicious visitor was ordered to depart under 
 penalties. At last, as a public warning against the 
 dangerous spirit of scepticism, Alexander burned a copy 
 of the writings of Epicurus in the market square, and 
 threw the ashes into the sea. Lepidus of Amestris, tlie 
 Roman governor, made another effort. The prophet 
 was on his guard against laymen ; but a priest, it was 
 thought, miglit lie more fortunate. A priest was sent, 
 but unluckily the priest was a fool and gave Alexander 
 a new triumpli. lie was granted an interview with 
 "the sweet one," and conversation followed which 
 Lucian saw hung up in a temple at Tium, written in 
 letters of gold :
 
 loO SKETCHES FROM J. A. rilOUUE. 
 
 Priest. Tell me, Lord Glycon, who art thou ? 
 
 Glycon. I am the young ^sculapius, the second and not the 
 first. This is a mystery, which may not be revealed. 
 
 Priest. How long wilt thou remain with us ? 
 
 Glycon. My time is a thousand years and three. Then I go to 
 tho East to the barbarians. They also must hear my word. 
 
 Priest. What will become of me after this life ? 
 
 Olycon. First thou wilt be a camel, and then a prophet like 
 Alexander. 
 
 The dialogue ended with a curse on Lepidus for his 
 inquisiti\^eness and unbelief. 
 
 Other means failing, the adventure was next under- 
 taken by Lucian himself. Lucian was a friend of 
 Rutilian. He had many times remonstrated with 
 him. He had endeavored to prevent his marriage. 
 He had protested against the countenance which Ru- 
 tilian was lending to a lying rogue. Rutilian pitied 
 Lucian' s hardness of heart, and perhaps advised him 
 to go to Abonotichus and examine for himself. Lucian, 
 at any rate, went. Rutilian's friendship secured him 
 respectful treatment, Alexander received him with 
 extreme courtesy, and he admits that the prophet's 
 manners and appearance surprised and struck him. But 
 Lucian was fortified with a conviction that all pretenders 
 to supernatural powers were enthusiasts or imjDOstors, 
 that miracles had never been and could not be. He 
 tried ^Esculapius with unusual questions. He asked him 
 first if the prophet wore false hair. He sealed his envel- 
 ope so skilfully that it could not be opened, and he re- 
 ceived an answer in an " unknown tongue." He dis- 
 covei-ed next that the prophet had been sounding his 
 valet as to Lucian's object in coming to him. The valet 
 was faithful, and Lucian bnde him tell Alexander that 
 he Avas suffering from a pain in his side. He then
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. I'M 
 
 MTote, himself, on two slips of paper, " What was the 
 birthplace of Homer ? inclosed them in two packets, 
 and sealed them as before. The valet informed the 
 prophet that one referred to the pain, and that the other 
 was to ask whether his master should return to Italy bv 
 land or sea. The replies were, first, an advice to try 
 AJexander's plaster ; secondly, an intimation that a 
 voyage wonld prove dangerous. These experiments 
 would have been enough for Lucian, but his object was 
 rather to convince his friend than himself, and he tried 
 again. 
 
 This time he wrote, " When will the villainies of 
 Alexander be exposed ?" At the back of the envelope 
 he made a note that it contained eight questions, all of 
 wllich he paid for. The prophet was completely 
 caught ; he returned eight answers, the whole of them 
 unintelligible ; and with demonstration, as he thought, 
 in his hands, Lucian went to his friend. 
 
 He found his labor thrown away. Belief in the 
 marvellous does not rise from evidence and will not 
 yield to it. There is the easy answer, that infidels are 
 answered according to the impiety of their hearts, that 
 the gods will not and perhaps cannot work miracles in 
 the presence of sceptics. Nothing came of this first 
 visit except that Lucian lost tlic regard of his friend 
 whom Alexander warned against him. But he had 
 become interested in the matter ; li(3 determined to 
 probe the mystery to the bottom. He went to the 
 governor and offered, if Ik; could have security for his 
 life, to furnisb liim witli proofs of the imposition wliicli 
 would justify the interference of the police. 
 
 The governor gave him a guard of soldiers, an<l tlins 
 attended lie went to Abonoticlnis a second time. Tlu^ 
 prophet was lif)lding his lovcp. l.iiciMii presented him-
 
 132 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 self, neglecting to make an obeisance, to the general 
 scandal. The prophet took no notice, but gave him his 
 hand to kiss, and Lucian bit it to the bone. Tlie be- 
 lievers shrieked, and Lncian would have been strangled 
 but for his guard. Alexander, however, to liis surprise 
 and real admiration, bore the pain manfully. He told 
 his friends that he and his god had tamed ruder spirits 
 than Lucian's ; he bade them all retire, and leave him 
 and his visitor together. 
 
 When they were alone, he asked Lucian quietly why 
 a person whose acquaintance he had valued, was de- 
 termined to be his enemy. Calmness is always agree- 
 able. Lurian never doubted for a moment Alexander's 
 real character, but the prophet interested him in spite of 
 himself. That he might study him at leisure, he ac- 
 cepted his overtures, and even entered into some kind 
 of intimacy with him. He stayed for some days at 
 Abonotichus. The worshippers were astonished to find 
 an open blasphemer admitted to confidential intercourse 
 with their chief ; and Alexander undoubtedly succeeded, 
 if not in disarming his guest's suspicions, yet in soften- 
 ing the vehemence of his dislike. He was so clever, so 
 well informed, apparently so frank and open, that, as 
 Lucian said, he would have taken in Epicurus himself. 
 The search for evidence against him was dropped, the 
 governor's guard was sent home, and Lucian after a 
 prolonged visit accepted an offer from Alexander to 
 send him by water to the Bosphorus. The prophet 
 placed at his disposition one of his finest vessels, saw 
 him on board, loaded him with presents, and so dis- 
 missed him. 
 
 Keener- witted man than Lucian was not alive on earth ; 
 yet his wit had not saved him from being to some extent 
 deceived, and he had a near escape of paying with his
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 133 
 
 life for his credulity. He hud not been long at sea 
 when he observed the pilot and crew consulting to- 
 gether. The crew were insisting n'pon something to 
 which the pilot would not consent. The pilot at length 
 came to him and said that " Alexander's orders were 
 that Lncian was to be thrown overboard ; he had a wife 
 and children, he had lived respectably for sixty years, 
 arid did not wish in his old age to stain his conscience 
 witli a murder. He could not go on to the Bosphorus, 
 but he would put his passenger on sliore. ' ' 
 
 Lucian was landed in Bithynia. He was a person of 
 considerable public influence. He had powerful friends 
 in the province and at Rome. He was looked on favor- 
 a,bly by Marcus Aurelius himself. He laid his story 
 before the governor, not Lepidus, but another ; and 
 Lucian, if any one, might be assured that what he said 
 would receive attention. But in an era of belief, reason 
 and fact are powerless ; the governor told him that if 
 he could convict Alexander on the clearest evidence it 
 would be impossible to punish him. Prophet he was in 
 the opinion of the whole country, and prophet he M^ould 
 remain. Lucian was as little successful as his predeces- 
 sors, and his interference had gained him nothing except 
 materials for the singular account which he has left 
 behind. Hutilian was abandoned to fate and to the 
 daughter of the Moon, and the glories of the prophet of 
 Abonotichus were established above the reach of cal- 
 umny. The emperor bestowed distinctions on him. 
 The name of his town was changed. Coins were struck, 
 and now are extant, with " the sweet one's" face on one 
 side and Alexander's on the other. He lived to be an 
 old man, and died with his fame undimmed and tlio 
 belief in him unabated. What became of the snake, 
 history omits to tell.
 
 l'-)-^ SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 The superstition did nut break in pieces at onee. The 
 oracle continued to propliecy after Alexander s death, 
 and there was a competition among the disciples as to 
 which of them was to succeed liim. The favorite can- 
 didate was an old physician, who, Lucian says, ought 
 not to have been found in such company. The dispute 
 was referred at last to Rutilian, M'ho decided that no 
 successor was needed. Alexander was not dead, but was 
 translated merely into a better world, from which he 
 still watched over his faithful followers. 
 
 So ends this singular story, valuable for the light 
 which it throws on a critical epoch in human history, 
 and especially on the disposition of the people among 
 whom Paul and Barnabas were taken for gods, and 
 among whom Paul founded his seven churches. Chris- 
 tianity exactly met what they were searching for in an 
 ennobling and purifying form, and saved those who 
 accepted it from being the victims of sham prophets like 
 Alexander. To persons so circumstanced, men of in- 
 tellect like Lucian addressed themselves in vain. The 
 science of Epicurus was merely negative. He nn'ght 
 insist that miracles were an illusion, and that the laws of 
 nature were never broken ; but to the human heart 
 craving for light from heaven, and refusing to be 
 satisfied without it, Epicurus had not a word to say, 
 not a M'-ord of what lay behind the veil, not a w^ord 
 which would serve for a guidance in the paths of 
 ordinary duty. Intellect and experience may make it 
 probable to thoughtful persons that morality and happi- 
 aess go together ; but when all is said, clever men arc 
 found of a different opinion ; and if the human race had 
 waited to recognize the sanctions of moral obligation till 
 science had made out on what they rested to its own 
 satisfaction, the first steps out of barbarism would never
 
 A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 135 
 
 have been taken. Knowledge is a plant which grows 
 but slowly. Those who gather knowledge must live 
 before they can learn. How to live, therefore, how to 
 distinguish good from evil, press first for an immediate 
 answer. And tlie answer was given by conscience whole 
 feons before reflecting intellect had constructed its the. 
 ories of expediency and the greatest happiness of tlie 
 gi'eatest number. 
 -X)ut of conscience g-rows relio-ion ; but rcljo-ion when 
 St." Paul came was dead, and the educated multitudes in 
 'the Empire were sitting by the body of it, unable to 
 believe that it was gone, and still passionately hoping 
 that the silent gods would again speak to tliem ont 
 of heaven. So intense was the longing, tliat reason 
 had abdicated its proper function ; any plausible pre- 
 tender could collect disciples in millions ; and to an 
 audience thus prepared to receive it, Christianity was 
 originally offered. Independent of philosophy, the 
 better sort of men hate evil and impurity ; their in- 
 stincts were recognized and justified in the new creed, 
 and the}"^ welcomed it as a reviving principle of moral 
 life. It did not save them from illusions which men of 
 science would have escaped. Holiness of life is no 
 protection against freaks of imagination ; God is so near 
 to the believer that he sees His action everywhere, and 
 the hagiology of the early Church is as full of legend as 
 the pagan mythology. The apocryphal gospels breathe 
 a spirit to the full as credulous as the story of the in- 
 carnation of Glycon at Abonotichus ; with this essential 
 and enormous difference, however, that the credulity of 
 the Christians was dominated hy conscience, and they 
 detected a jyolhited hn))OHtor roith as sure an instinct as 
 the most eidtivated Epicurean.''' 
 
 * Tlie italic:! are not Mr. Froude's. — Editor.
 
 IV. 
 
 SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY.* 
 
 In periods like the present, when knowledge is everj 
 day extending, and the habits and thoughts of mankind 
 are perpetually changing under the influence of new dis- 
 coveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back 
 into a time in which for centuries the European world 
 grew upon a single type, in which the forms of the 
 father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and the 
 late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the 
 footprints of his distant ancestors. So absolutely has 
 change become the law of our present condition, that it 
 is identified with energy and moral health ; to cease to 
 change is to lose place in the great race ; and to pass 
 away from off the earth with the same convictions which 
 we found when we entered it, is to have missed the best 
 object for which we now seem to exist. 
 
 It has been, however, with the race of men as it has 
 been with the planet which they inhabit. As we look 
 back over history, we see times of change and progress 
 alternating with other times when hfe and thought have 
 settled into permanent forms ; when mankind, as if by 
 common consent, have ceased to seek for increase of 
 knowledge, and, contented with what they possess, have 
 endeavored to make use of it for purposes of moral 
 
 * From " History of England."
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 137 
 
 <eultivation. Such was the condition of the Greeks 
 through many ages before the Persian war ; such was 
 that of the Eonians till the world revenged itself upon 
 its conquerors by the introduction among them of the 
 habits of the conquered ; and such again became the 
 'condition of Europe when the Northerii aations grafted 
 ike religion and the laws of the "Western empire on their 
 ' own hardy natures, and shaped out that wonderful 
 spiritual and political organization which remained mi- 
 ekaken for a thousand years. 
 
 The aspirant after sanctity in the fifteenth century of 
 the Christian era found a model which he could imitate 
 in detail in the saint of the fifth. The gentleman at the 
 "court of Edward IV. or Charles of Burgundy could 
 imagine no nobler type of heroism than he found in the 
 stories of King Arthur's knights. The forms of life had 
 become more elaborate, the surface of it more polished ; 
 but the life itself remained essentially the same ; it was 
 the development of the same conception of human ex- 
 cellence ; just as the last orders of Gothic architecture 
 were the development of the first, from which the idea 
 had worked its way till the force of it was exhausted. 
 
 A condition of things differing alike both outwardly 
 and inwardly from that into which a happier fortune has 
 introduced ourselves, is necessarily obscure to us. In 
 the alteration of our own character, we have lost the key 
 which would interpret the characters of our fathers, and 
 the great men even of our own English history before 
 the Reformation seem to us almost like the fossil skele- 
 tons of another order of beings. Some broad conclu- 
 sions as to what they were are at least possible to us, 
 liowever ; and we are able to determine, with toler- 
 able certainty, the social condition of the people of this 
 country, such as it was before the movements of the
 
 138 SKETCIIKS FIIOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 sixteenth century, and during the process of those 
 movements. 
 
 The extent of the population can only be rudely con- 
 jectured. A rough census was taken at the time of the 
 Armada, when it was found to be something under five 
 millions ; bat anterior to this I can find no authority on 
 Avhich I can rely with any sort of confidence. It is my 
 impression, however, from a number of reasons — each in 
 itself insignificant, but which taken together leave little 
 doubt upon my mind —that it had attained that number 
 by a growth so slow as to be scarcely perceptible, and 
 had nearly approached to it many generations before. 
 Simon Fish, in " The Supphcation of Beggars," says 
 that the number of households in England in 1531 was 
 520,000. His calculation is of the most random kind ; 
 for he rates the number of parishes at 52,000, with ten 
 households on an average in each parish. A mistake so 
 preposterous respecting the number of parishes shows 
 the great ignorance of educated men upon the subject. 
 The ten households in each parish may, probably (in 
 some parts of the counti-y), have been a correct computa- 
 tion ; but this tells us little with respect to the aggre- 
 gate numbers, for the households were very large— the 
 farmers and the gentlemen also, usually having all the 
 persons whom they employed residing under their own 
 roof. X jit her from this, therefore, nor from any other 
 positive statement which I have seen, can I gather any 
 conclusion that may be depended upon. But when we 
 remember the exceeding slowness with which the popula- 
 tion multiplied in a time in which we can accurately 
 measure it— that is to say, from 1588 to the opening of 
 the last century— under circumstances in every way more 
 favorable to an increase, I think we may assume that the 
 increase was not so great between 1500 and 1588, and
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 139 
 
 that, previous to 1500, it did not more tlian keep pace 
 with the waste from civil and foreign war. The causes, 
 indeed, were wholly wanting which lead to a rapid 
 growth of numbers. Numbers now increase with the 
 increase of employment and with the facilities which are 
 provided by the modern S3'stem of labor for the estab- 
 lishment of independent households. At present, any 
 able-bodied unskilled laborer earns, as soon as he has 
 arrived at man's estate, as large an amount of wages as 
 
 ^lie will earn at any subsequent time ; and having no 
 connection with his employer beyond the receiving the 
 due amount of weekly money from him, and thinking 
 himself as well able to marry as he is likely to be, he 
 
 ' ^kes a wife, and is usually the father of a family before 
 he is thirty. Before the Reformation, not only were 
 early marrtages determinately discouraged, but the 
 opportunity for them did not exist, A laborer living 
 in a cottage by himself w^as a rare exception to the 
 rule ; and the work of the field was performed gener- 
 ally, as it now is in the large farms in America and 
 Australia, by servants who lived in the families of the 
 squire or the farmer, and who, while in that position, 
 commonly remained single, and married only when by 
 prudence they saved a sufficient sum to enable them to 
 enter some other position. 
 
 Checked by circumstances of this kind, population 
 would necessarily remain almost stationary, and a ten- 
 dency to an increase was not of itself regarded by the 
 statesmen of the day as any matter for congratulation or 
 as any evidence of national prosperity. Not an increase 
 of population, which would facilitate production and beat 
 down wages by competition, but the increase of the 
 commonwealth, the sound and healthy maintenance ol 
 the population already existing, were the chief objects
 
 140 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE, 
 
 M'liich the government proposed to itself ; and altliough 
 Ilenry VIII. carefully nursed his manufactures, there is 
 sufficient proof in the grounds alleged for the measures 
 to which he resorted, that there was little redundancy 
 of occupation. 
 
 In a statute, for instance, for the encouragement of 
 the linen manufactures, it is said, that — '' The King's 
 Highness, calling to Lis most blessed remembrance the 
 great number of idle people daily increasing throughout 
 this his Realm, supposeth that one great cause thereof is 
 by the continued bringing into the same the great 
 number of wares and merchandize made, and brought 
 out from, the parts beyond the sea into this his Realm, 
 ready wrought by manual occupation ; amongst the which 
 wares one kind of merchandize in great quantity, which 
 is linen cloth of divers sorts made in divers countries 
 beyond the sea, is daily conveyed into this Realm ; which 
 great quantity of linen cloth so brought is consumed 
 and spent within the same ; by reason whereof not only 
 the said strange countries where the said linen cloth is 
 made, by the policy and industry of making and vending 
 the same are greatly enriched ; and a marvellous great 
 number of their people, men, women, and children, are 
 set on work and occupation, and kept from idleness, to 
 the great furtherance and advancement of their common- 
 wealth ; but also contrary wise the inhabitants and sub- 
 jects of this Realm, for lack of like policy and industry, 
 are compelled to buy all or most part of the linen cloth 
 consumed in the same, amounting to inestimable sums 
 of money. And also the people of this Realm, as well 
 men as women, which should and might be set on work, 
 by exercise of like policy and craft of spinning, weaving, 
 and making of cloth, lies now in idleness and otiosity, to 
 the high displeasure of Almighty God, great diminution
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 141 
 
 of the King's people, and extreme ruin, decay, and 
 impoverishment of this Reahn. Therefore, for reforma- 
 tion of these things, the King's most Roval Majesty 
 intending, like a most virtuons Prince, to provide 
 remedy in the premises ; nothing so much coveting as 
 ''the increase of the Commonwealth of this his Realm, 
 .tdth also the virtuous exercise of his most loving sub- 
 jects and people, and to avoid that most abominable sin 
 of -idleness out of the Realm, hath, by the advice and 
 consent of his Lords and Commons in Parliament assem- 
 bled, ordained and enacted that every person occupying 
 land for tillage, shall for every sixty acres which he hath 
 under the plough, sow one quarter of an acre in flax or 
 'hpnp. " 
 ■ This Act was designed immediately to keep the wives 
 and children"- of the poor in work in their own houses ; 
 but it leaves no doubt that manufactures in England had 
 not of themselves that tendency to self-development 
 which would encourage an enlarging population. The 
 woollen manufactures similarly appear, from the many 
 statutes upon them, to have been vigorous at a fixed 
 level, but to have shown no tendency to rise beyond that 
 level. With a fixed market and a fixed demand, pro- 
 duction continued uniform. 
 
 A few years subsequent, indeed, to the passing of the 
 Act which I have quoted, a very curious complaint is 
 entered in the statute book, from the surface of which 
 we should gather, that, so far from increasing, manufact- 
 ures had alarmingly declined. The fact nientioned may 
 bear aiK^ther meaning, and a meaning far more favorable 
 to the state of the country ; although, if such a phe- 
 nomenon were to occur at the present time, it could 
 admit of but one interpretation. In the 18th and 19th 
 of the 32d of Henry VIII., all the important towns ia
 
 143 SKETCHES FROM .T. A. FKOUDB. 
 
 England, from the Tweed to the Land's End, are stated, 
 one by one, to have fallen into serious decay. Usually 
 when we meet with language of this kind, we suppose it 
 to mean nothing more than an awakening to the con- 
 sciousness of evils which had long existed, and which 
 had escaped notice only because no one was ahve to 
 them. In the present instance, however, the language 
 was too strong and too detailed to allow of this explana- 
 tion ; and the great body of the English towns un- 
 doubtedly were dechning in wealth and in the number 
 of their inhabitants. " Divers and many beautiful 
 houses of habitation," these statutes say, " built in 
 tyme past within their walls and liberties, now are fallen 
 down and decayed, and at this day remain unre-edified, 
 and do lie as desolate and vacant grounds, many of them 
 nigh adjoining to the High-streets, replenished with 
 much uncleanness and tilth, with pits, sellars, and vaults 
 lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and danger 
 of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing 
 by the same ; and some houses be very weak and feeble, 
 ready to fall down, and therefore dangerous to pass by, 
 to the great decay and hinderance of the said boroughs 
 and towns." 
 
 At present, the decay of a town implies the decay of 
 the trade of the town ; and the decay of all towns 
 simultaneously would imply a general collapse of the 
 trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, 
 before the Eeformation, existed for other purposes than 
 as the centre points of industry : they existed for the 
 protection of property and life : and although it is not 
 unlikely that the agitation of the Reformation itself did 
 to some degree interrupt the occupation of the people, 
 yet I believe that the true account of the phenomenon 
 which then so nmcli disturbed the parhament is, that
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 143 
 
 one of tlieir purposes was no longer required ; the towns 
 flagged for a time because the country had become 
 secure. The woollen manufacture in Worcestershire was 
 spreading into the open country, and, doubtless, in other 
 counties as well ; and the " beautiful houses" which had 
 'fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of 
 ^insecurity, had been occupied by wealthy merchants and 
 tradesmen, who were now enabled, by a strong and 
 settled government, to dispense with the shelter of 
 ^oeked gates and fortified walls, and remove their resi- 
 dences to more convenient situations. It was, in fact, 
 the first symptom of the impending social revolution. 
 Two years before the passing of this Act, the magniti- 
 'C9nt Heagrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by 
 Sir Thomas Kitson, "mercer of London," and Sir 
 "Thomas Kiffeon was but one of many of the rising 
 merchants who were now able to root themselves on the 
 land by the side of the Norman nobility, first to rival, 
 and then slowly to displace them. 
 
 This mighty change, however, was long in silent 
 progress before it began to tell on the institutions of the 
 country. When city burghers bought estates, the law 
 insisted jealously on their accepting with tiiem all the 
 feudal obligations. Attempts to use the land as "a 
 commodity" were, as we shall presently see, angrily re- 
 pressed ; while again, in the majority of instances, such 
 persons endeavored, as they do at present, to cover the 
 recent origin of their families by adopting the manners 
 of the nobles, instead of transferring the habits of the 
 towns to the parks and chases of the English counties. 
 The old English organization inaintained its full activity ; 
 and the duties of property continued to be for another 
 century more considered than its rights. 
 
 Turning, then, to the tenure of land — for if we would
 
 144 SKETCHES PROM J. A. FR0UDj5. 
 
 understand tlie condition of the people, it is to this point 
 that our first attention must be directed — we find that 
 through the many complicated varieties of it there was 
 one broad principle which bore equally upon every class, 
 that the land of England must provide for the defence 
 of England. The feudal system, though practically 
 modified, was still the organizing principle of the 
 nation, and the owner of land was bound to military 
 service for his country whenever occasion required. 
 Further, the land was to be so administered, that the 
 accustomed number of families supported by it should 
 not be diminished, and that the state should suffer no 
 injury from the carelessness or selfishness of the owners. 
 Land never was private property in that personal sense 
 of property in which we speak of a thing as our own, 
 with which we may do as we please ; and in the ad- 
 ministration of estates, as indeed in the administration 
 of all property whatsoever, duty to the state was at all 
 times supposed to override private interest or inclina- 
 tion. Even tradesmen, who took advantage of the 
 fluctuations of the market, were rebuked by parhament 
 for " their greedy and covetous minds," " as more re- 
 garding their own singular lucre and profit than the 
 commonweal of the Realm ;' ' and although in an altered 
 world, neither industry nor enterprise will thrive except 
 under the stimulus of self-interest, we may admire the 
 confidence which in another age expected every man to 
 prefer the advantage of the community to his own. All 
 land was held upon a strictly military principle. It was 
 the representative of authority, and the holder or the 
 owner took rank in the army of the state according to 
 the nature of his connection with it. It was first broadly 
 divided among the great nobility holding immediately 
 under the crown, who, above and beyond the ownership
 
 SIXTEENTH CEXTL'KY ENGUSHMEX. 1-45 
 
 of their private estates, were the Lords of the Fee 
 throughout their presidency, and possessed in right of it 
 the services of knio-hts and e^entlemen who held their 
 manors under them, and who followed their standard in 
 war. Under the lords of manors, again, small freeholds 
 and copyholds were held of various extent, often forty 
 shi|ling and twenty shilling value, tenanted l)y peasant 
 occupiers, who thus, on their own land, lived as free 
 Epgtishmen, maintaining by their own free labor them- 
 selves and their families. There was thus a descending 
 scale of owners, each of whom possessed his separate 
 right, which the law guarded and none might violate ; 
 yet no one of whom, again, was independent of an 
 autiiority higher than himself ; and the entire body of 
 the English free possessors of the soil was interpenetrated 
 by a coherent organization which converted them into a 
 perpetually subsisting army of soldiers. The extent of 
 land which was held by the petty freeholders Avas very 
 large, and the possession of it was jealously treasured ; 
 the private estates of the nobles and gentlemen were 
 either cultivated by their own servants, or let out, as at 
 ])resent, to free tenants ; or (in earlier times) were 
 occupied by villains, a class who, without being bond- 
 men, were expected to furnish further services than 
 those of the field, services which were limited by the 
 law, and recognized by an outward ceremony, a solotim 
 oath and promise from the villain to his li»r<l. ^'illanage, 
 in the reign (A Henry VIII., Iiud practically ceased. 
 The name of it last appears upon the statute book in the 
 early years of the reign of Richard II.. wlicii tlie dis- 
 ])utes between villains and their liege lords on their 
 relative rii^hts had furnished matter foi- cumbrous law- 
 suits, and by general consent the relation liad merged of 
 itselt' into a more liberal form. Thus serfdom had
 
 146 SKETCHES FIIOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 merged or was rapidly merging into free servitude ; but 
 it did not so merge that laboring men, if they pleased, 
 were allowed to live in idleness. Every man was regi- 
 mented somew'here ; and although the peasantry, when 
 at full age, were allowed, under restrictions, their own 
 choice of masters, yet the restrictions both on masters 
 and servants were so severe as to prevent either from 
 taking advantage of the necessities of the other, or from 
 terminating through caprice or levity, or for any insuffi- 
 cient reason, a connection presumed to be permanent. 
 
 Through all these arrangements a single aim is visible, 
 that every man in England should have his definite place 
 and definite duty assigned to him, and that no human 
 being should be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an 
 unaccountable existence. The discipline of an army was 
 transferred to the details of social life, and it issued in a 
 chivalrous perception of the meaning of the word duty, 
 and in the old characteristic spirit of English loyalty. 
 
 From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser 
 advantage was also derived, of a kind which at the 
 present time will be effectively appreciated. It is a 
 common uiatter of dispute whether landed estates should 
 be large or small ; whether it is better that the land 
 should be divided among small proprietors, cultivating 
 their OAvn ground, or that it should follow its present 
 tendency, and be shared by a limited and constantly 
 diminishing number of wealthy landlords. The advocates 
 for a peasant proprietary tell us truly, that a landed 
 monopoly is dangerous ; that the possession of a spot of 
 ground, though it be but a few acres, is the best security 
 for loj^alty, giving the state a pledge for its owner, and 
 creating in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and 
 manly spirit. The advocates for the large estate tell us 
 that the masses are too ill-educated to be trusted with
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ESOLISHMEN. 147 
 
 independence ; that without authority over thern, these 
 small ^proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvi- 
 dent ; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and 
 dangerous spirit ; and finally, that the resources of the 
 land cannot properly be brought out by men without 
 capital to cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The 
 ativocates of both can support their arguments with an 
 appeal to experience ; and the verdict of fact has not as 
 yet been pronounced emphatically. 
 
 , The problem will be resolved in the future history of 
 this country. It was also nobly arid skilfully resolved 
 in the past. The knights and nobles retained the au- 
 thority and power which was attached to the lordships of 
 th^ fees. They retained extensive estates in their own 
 litmds or in the occupation of their immediate tenants ; 
 but the large*proportion of the lands was granted out by 
 them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of their 
 own incomes in the wages and nuiintenance of their vast 
 retinues, left but a small nuirgin for indulgence in 
 luxuries. The necessities of their position obliged them 
 to regai'd their property rather as a revenue to be ad- 
 ministered in trust, tlian as a " fortune"' to be expended 
 in indulgence. Before the Reformation, while the 
 differences of social degree were enormous, the differ- 
 ences in habits of life were comparatively slight, and the 
 ])ractice of men in these things was curiously the reverse 
 of onr own. Dress, which now scarcely suffices to dis- 
 tinguish the master from his servant, was tlicii the 
 symbol of rank, presci'ibed by statute to the various 
 orders (jf society as strictly as the regimental unifoi'in to 
 officers and privates ; diet also was prescril>ed, and with 
 equal strictness ; but the diet of the nobleman was 
 ordered down to a level which was then within the reach 
 of the poorest laborer. In 1 •';;*.»>, tlie following law wai
 
 148 SKKTCIIKS FROM J. A. FKOUDE. 
 
 enacted by tlie Parliament of Edward III. : "Where- 
 as, heretofore through the excessive and over-many sorts 
 of costly meats which the people of this Realm have 
 used more thaii elsewhere, many mischiefs have hap- 
 pened to the people of this Realm— for the great men 
 by these excesses have been sore grieved ; and the lesser 
 people, who only endeavor to iinitate the great ones in 
 such sort of meats, are much impoverished, whereby 
 they are not able to aid themselves, nor their liege lord, 
 in time of need, as they ought ; and many other evils 
 have happened, as well to their souls as their bodies — 
 our Lord the King, desiring the common profit as well 
 of the great men as of the common people of his Realm, 
 and considering the evils, grievances, and mischiefs 
 aforesaid, by the common assent of the prelates, earls, 
 barons, and other nobles of his said Realm, and of the 
 commons of the same Realm, hath ordained and estab- 
 lished that no man, of what estate or condition soever 
 lie be, shall canse himself to be served, in his house or 
 elsewhere, at dinner, meal, or supper, or at any other 
 time, with more than two courses, and each mess of two 
 sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with 
 the connnon sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other 
 sorts of victuals. And if any man choose to have sauce 
 for his mess, he may, jn-ovided it be not made at great 
 cost ; and if fish or flesli be to be mixed therein, it shall 
 be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, 
 and shall stand instead of a mess, except only on the 
 principal feasts of the year, on which days every man 
 may be served with three courses at the utmost, after 
 the manner aforesaid." 
 
 Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies 
 which we have outgrown, and we smile at the unwisdom 
 whicli could expect to regulate private habits and man-
 
 SIXTEEXTIT CRXTl-llY l^XOLTSHMKX. 149 
 
 ners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of luor.il 
 authority wlien they cannot be actually enforced, and 
 may have been regarded, even at the time at which they 
 were issued, rather as an authoritative declaration of 
 ^^wliat wise and good men considered to be right, than as 
 laws to which obedience could be compelled. This act, 
 
 ^f.^ any ratCj witnesses to what was then thought to be 
 right by " the great persons" of the English realm ; and 
 when great persons will .sul)mit theni'^elves of their free 
 
 ^Avill to regulations which restrict their private indul- 
 gence, they are in little danger of disloyalty from those 
 whom fortune has placed below them. 
 
 Such is one aspect of these old arrangements ; it is 
 lymecessary to say that with these, as with all other 
 institutions created and worked by hunum beings, the 
 pictnre admits of being i-eversed. ^Yhen by the accident 
 of birth men are placed in a position of authority, no 
 care in tlieir training will prevent it from falling often 
 to singularly unfit persons. The command of a per- 
 manent military force was a temptation to ambition, to 
 avarice, or hatred, to the indulgence of priv^ate pi(pies 
 and jealousies, to political discontent on private and 
 personal grounds. A combination of three or four of 
 the leading nobles was sufficient, whi'ii an incapable 
 prince sate on the throne, to effect a revolution ; and 
 the rival claims of the houses uf York and Lancaster to 
 the crown, took the form of a war unequalled in liistory 
 for its fierce and determined maliu-nancv, tlio whole 
 nation tearing itself in pieces in a (piarrel in which no 
 principle was at stake, and no national object was to be 
 gained. A more terrible misfortune never befell either 
 this or any other country, and it was mad(; possible 
 only in virtue of that loyalty with which the people 
 followed the standard, through good and evil, of their
 
 ir)0 SKETCHES FROlVf ,T. A. FROUIJE. 
 
 feudal superiors. It is still a question, however, whether 
 the good or the evil of the system predominated ; and 
 the answer to sucli question is the more difficult because 
 we have no criterion by which, in these matters, degrees 
 of good and evil admit of being measured. Arising out 
 of the character of the nation, it reflected this character 
 in all its peculiarities ; and there is something truly 
 noble in the coherence of society upon principles of 
 fidelity. Fidelity of man to man is among the rarest 
 excellences of humanity, and we can tolerate large evils 
 which arise out of such a cause. Under the feudal 
 system men were held together by oaths, free acknowl- 
 edgments, and reciprocal obligations, entered into by all 
 ranks, high and low, binding servants to their masters, 
 as well as nobles to their kings ; and in the frequent 
 forms of the language in which the oaths were sworn we 
 cannot choose but see that we have lost something in 
 exchanging these ties for the harslier connecting links of 
 mutual self-interest. 
 
 " When a freeman shall do fealty to his lord," the 
 statute says, " he shall hold his right hand upon the book, 
 and shall say thus : — Hear you, my lord, that I shall 
 be to you both faithful and true, and shall owe my faith 
 to you for the land that I hold, and lawfully shall do 
 such customs and services as my duty is to you, at the 
 times assigned, so help me God and all his saints." 
 
 " The villain," also, " when he shall do fealty to his 
 lord, shall hold his right hand over the book, and shall 
 say :— Hear you, my lord, that I from tins day forth unto 
 you shall be true and faithful, and shall owe you fealty 
 for the land which I hold of you in villanage ; and that 
 no evil or damage will I see concerning you, but I will 
 defend and warn you to my power. So help me God 
 and all his saints. ' '
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 151 
 
 Again, in the distribution of tlie produce of liind, 
 men dealt fairly and justly with each other ; and in the 
 material condition of the bulk of the people there is a 
 fair evidence that the system worked efficiently and 
 well. It worked well for the support of a sturdy, high 
 ''hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit, and fur- 
 .^ished with thews and sinews which, under the stimulus 
 
 "^'Of- those "licrcat shins of beef," their common diet, were 
 tli€ wonder of the age. " What comyn folke in all this 
 ''vE.orld," says a state paper in 1515, " may compare with 
 the comyns of England in riches, freedom, lil)erty, wel- 
 fare, and all prosperity ? What comyn folke is so mighty, 
 60 strong in the felde, as the comyns of England V The 
 
 ' relative numbers of the French and English armies 
 which fought at Cressy and Agincourt may have been 
 exaggerated^ Imt no allowance for exaggeration will 
 affect the greatness of those exploits ; and in stories of 
 authentic actions under Henry VIII. , where the accu- 
 racy of the account is undeniable, no disparity of force 
 made Englishmen shriidv from enemies wherever they 
 could meet them. A2;ain and aiii-ain a few thousand 
 of them carried dismay into the heart of France, Four 
 luindred adventurers, vagabond apprentices, from Lon- 
 don, who formed a volunteer corps in the Calais gar- 
 rison, were for years the terror of Normandy. In the 
 very frolic of conscious power they fought and phm- 
 dered, without pny, without reward, except what they 
 could win for tlieniselves ; and when they fell at last 
 they fell only when surrounded by six times their 
 number, and were cut to pieces in careless desperation. 
 Invariably, ])y fri(;nd and enemy alike, the English are 
 described as the fiercest people in all Europe (the Eng- 
 lish wild beasts, Benvenuto Cellini calls them) ; and this 
 great physical power they owed to the profuse abundance
 
 152 vSKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 ill wliicli they lived, and to tlie soldier's training in 
 wliicli every man of them was bred from childhood. 
 
 The state of the working classes can, however, be 
 more certainly determined by a comparison of their 
 wages with the prices of food. Both were regnlated, so 
 far as regulation was possible, by act of parliament, and 
 we have therefore data of the clearest kind by which to 
 judge. The majority of agricultural laborers lived, as I 
 have said, in tlie houses of their employers ; this, how- 
 ever, was not the case with all, and if we can satisfy 
 ourselves as to the rate at which those among the poor 
 were able to live who had cottages of their own, we may 
 be assured that the rest did not live worse at their 
 masters' tables. 
 
 Wheat, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged 
 in the middle of the fourteenth century tenpence the 
 bushel ; barley averaging at the same time three shillings 
 the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive ; 
 a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging 
 from eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shilhngs ; the 
 average, however, being six and eightpence. When the 
 price was above this sum, the merchants might import 
 to bring it down ; when it was below this price, the 
 farmers were allowed to export to the foreign markets. 
 The same scale, with a scarcely appreciable tendency to 
 rise, continued to hold until the disturbance in the value 
 of the currency. In the twelve years from 1551 to 
 1562, although once before harvest wheat rose to the 
 extraordinary price of forty-five shillings a quarter, it 
 fell immediately after to five shillings and four. Six 
 and eightpence continued to be considered in parliament 
 as the average ; and on tlie whole it seems to have been 
 maintained for that time with little variation. 
 
 Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound, mutton was
 
 K'^ 
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 15 
 
 tliree farthings. They were fixed at these prices by the 
 3d of the 24 of lien. VIII. But the act was unpopular 
 both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had 
 been to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement 
 the rates had been generally lower. Stow says : "It 
 \yas this year enacted that butchers should sell their beef 
 .aod mutton by weight — beef for a halfpenny the pound. 
 and mutton for three farthings ; which being devised 
 fcrr;the great connnodity of the realm (as it was thought), 
 hath proved far otherwise : for at that time fat oxen 
 were sold for six and twenty shillings and eightpence the 
 piece ; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the 
 piece ; fat calves at a like price ; and fat lambs for 
 twelvepence. The butchers of London sold penny 
 pieces of beef for the relief of the poor — every piece 
 two pound Ttnd a half, sometimes three pound for a 
 penny ; and thirteen and sometimes fourteen of these 
 })ieces for twelvepence ; nnitton eightpence the quarter, 
 and an hundred weight of beef for four siiillings and 
 eightpence." The act was repealed in consequence of 
 the complaints against it, butsthe prices never fell again 
 to what they had been, although beef sold in the gross 
 could still be had fo)* a halfpenny a pound in 1570. 
 Other articles of food were in the same proportion. The 
 best pig or goose in a country market could be bought 
 for fourpence ; a good capon for threepence or four- 
 j)eiice ; a chicken for a pemiy ; a hen for twopence. 
 
 Strong beer, such as we now buy for eightcenpence 
 a gallon, was then a penny a gallon ; and table-beer less 
 than a halfpenny. French and German wines were 
 eightpence a gallon ; Spanish and Portuguese wines a 
 shilling. This was tlie highest pi'icc at which tlu- best 
 wines might be sold ; and if there was any fault in 
 quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the
 
 154 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 amount. Kent, another important consideration, cannot 
 be fixed so accurately, for parliament did not interfere 
 with it. Here, however, we are not without very toler- 
 able information. " My father," says Latimer, " was a 
 yeoman, and had no lands of his own ; only he had a 
 farm of three or four pounds hy the year at the utter- 
 most, and hereupon he tilled so nmch as kept half a 
 dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my 
 mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find 
 the king a harness with himself and his horse. I re- 
 member that I buckled on his harness when he went to 
 Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had 
 not been able to have preached before the King's 
 Majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds, 
 or twenty nobles, each, having brought them up in 
 godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his 
 poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor ; and 
 all this he did of the said farm." If "three or four 
 pounds at the uttermost" was the rent of a farm yield- 
 ing such results, the rent of laborers' cottages is not 
 likely to have been considerable. 
 
 Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calculations of the 
 present nature ; yet after making the utmost allowance 
 for errors, we may conclude from such a table of prices 
 that a penny, in terms of the laborer's necessities, must 
 have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry YIII. to 
 the present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which 
 1 write, the laborer could buy as much bread, beef, 
 beer, and wine — he could do as much toward finding 
 lodging for himself and his family — as the laborer of the 
 nineteenth century can for a shilling. I do not see that 
 this admits of question. Turning, then, to the table of 
 wages, it will be easy to ascertain his position. By the 
 3d of the 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted that master
 
 SIXTEEXTII CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. 155 
 
 carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tjlers, plumbers, glaziers, 
 joiners, and other emplo3'ers of such skilled workmen, 
 should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat or 
 drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, 
 tivepence a day for the other half ; or fiveijence -half- 
 penny for the yearly average. The common laborers 
 w$re to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for 
 the remaining half, threepence. In the harvest months 
 they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn 
 oohsiderably more ; so that, in fact (and this was the 
 rate at M'hieh their wages were usually estimated), the 
 day laborer, if in full employment, received on an 
 average fourpence a day for the whole year. Allowing 
 a deduction of one day in a fortnight for a saint's day or 
 a holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and regularly, 
 if well conducted, an equivalent of something near to 
 twenty sliillings a week, the wages at preseht paid in 
 English colonies ; and this is far from being a full 
 account of his advantages. Except in rare instances, the 
 agricultural laborer held land in connection with his 
 house, while in most parishes, if not in all, there were 
 large ranges of connnon and uninclosed forest land which 
 furnished his fuel to hiiu gratis, where pigs might I'ange, 
 and ducks and geese ; where, if he could afford a cow, 
 he was in no danger of being unable to feed it ; and so 
 important was this privilege considered, that when the 
 commons began to be largely inclosed, parliament in- 
 sisted that the working-man should iu)t be without some 
 piece of ground on which he could employ his own and 
 his family's industry. By the 7th of the 31st of Eliza- 
 beth, it was ordered that no cottage should be built for 
 residence without four acres of land at lowest being 
 attached to it for the sole use of the occupants of such 
 cottage.
 
 ITiO SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative 
 prosperity of labor was the result of the condition of the 
 market in which it was sold, that the demand for labor 
 was large and the supply limited, and that the state of 
 England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that 
 of Australia or Canada at the present time. And so 
 long as we confine our view to the question of wages 
 alone, it is undoubted that legislation was in favor of the 
 employer. The Wages Act of Henry YIII. was un- 
 popular with the laborers, and was held to deprive them 
 of an opportunity of making better terms for themselves. 
 But we shall fall into extreme error if we translate into 
 the language of modern political economy the social 
 features of a state of things which in r.o way corre- 
 sponded to our own. There was this essential difference, 
 that labor was not looked upon as a market commodity ; 
 the goverinnent (whether wisely or not, I do not pre- 
 sume to determine) attempting to portion out the rights 
 of the various classes of society by the rule, not of 
 economy, but of equity. Statesmen did not care for the 
 accumulation of capital ; they desired to see the physical 
 well-being of all classes of the commonwealth main- 
 tained at the highest degree which the producing power 
 of the country admitted ; and [)opulation and production 
 remaining stationary, they were able to do it. This was 
 their object, and they were supported in it by a pow- 
 erful and efficient majority of the nation. On the 
 one side parliamcTit interfered to protect enq^loyers 
 against their laborers ; but it was equally determined 
 that employers should not be allowed to abuse their 
 opportunities ; and this directly appears from the 4th of 
 the 5tli of Elizabeth, by which, on the most trifling 
 appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was 
 declared that the laboring man could no longer live on
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTIRY i:N(i LISHMEN". 157 
 
 the wages assigned to liim by the act of Henrj ; and a 
 sHding scale was instituted by which, for the future, 
 wages should be adjusted to the price of food. 
 
 The same conclusion may be gathered also, indirectly, 
 from other acts, interfering imperiously with the rights 
 of property Mhere a disposition showed itself to execcise 
 tlrem selfishly. The city merchants, as I have said, M-ere 
 becoming landowners ; and some of them attempted to 
 apply the rules of trade to the management of landed 
 estates. While wages were ruled so high, it answered 
 better as a speculation to convert arable land into past- 
 ure ; but the law innnediately stepped in to prevent a 
 proceeding which it regarded as petty treason to the 
 eoinm on wealth. Self-protection is the first law of life ; 
 aild the country relying for its defence on an able-bodied 
 population, erenly distributed, ready at any moment to 
 be called into action, either against foreign invasion or 
 civil disturbance, it could not permit the owners of land 
 to pursue for their own benefit a course of action which 
 threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not often that 
 we are able to test the M'isdom of legislation by specific 
 results so clearly as in the present instance. The first 
 attempts of tljc kind which I have described were made 
 in the Isle of Wight, early in the reign of Henry Yll. 
 Lying so directly exposed to attacks from France, the 
 Isle of Wight was a ])lace which it was peculiarly im- 
 portant to keep in a state of defence, and the following 
 act was therefore tlie consecpience : 
 
 " Forasmuch as it is to the surety of the Realm of 
 England that tlic U]g of Wight, in the county of South- 
 ampton, l)e well inhabited witli English people, for the 
 defence as well of our antient enemies of the Realm of 
 France as of otlur ]>;irties ; the wliicli Isle is late de- 
 caved of iK'oplr 1)V reason that manv towns an<1 \'iUages
 
 158 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 have been let down, and the fields dyked and made 
 pasture for beasts and cattle, and also many dwelling- 
 places, farms, and farmholds have of late time been used 
 to be taken into one man's hold and hands, that of 
 old time were wont to be in many several persons' 
 holds and hands, and many several households kept 
 in them ; and thereby much people multiplied, and the 
 same Isle thereby well inhabited, which now, by the 
 occasion aforesaid, is desolate and not inhabited, but 
 occupied with beasts and cattle, so that if hasty remedy 
 be not provided, that Isle cannot long be kept and 
 defended, but open and ready to the hands of the king's 
 enemies, which God forbid. For remedy hereof, it is 
 ordained and enacted that no manner of person, of what 
 estate, degree, or condition soever, shall take any several 
 farms more than one, whereof the yearly value shall not 
 exceed the sum of ten marks ; and if any several leases 
 afore this time have been made to any person or persons 
 of divers and sundry' farmholds, whereof the yearly value 
 shall exceed that sum, then the said person or persons 
 shall choose one farmhold at his pleasure, and the 
 remnant of his leases shall be utterly void.'' 
 
 An act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by 
 its consequences. The farms were rebuilt, the lands 
 reploughed, the island repeopled ; and in 1546, when a 
 French army of sixty thousand men attempted to effect 
 a landing at St. Helen's, tliey were defeated and driven 
 off by the militia of the island and a few levies trans- 
 p<u'ted from Hampshire and the adojining counties. 
 
 The money-making spirit, however, lay too deep to 
 be checked so readily. The trading classes were grow- 
 iiio; rich under the strono; rule of the Tudors. Increasins^ 
 numbers of them were buying or renting land ; and the 
 bymptoms complained of broke out in the following
 
 SIXTEENTH CEXTIKY EXdLISHMEN". 15'.) 
 
 reign in nianj parts of England. They eonld not choose 
 hut break out indeed ; for thej were the outward 
 marks of a vital change which was undermining the 
 feudal constitution, and would bj and by revolution- 
 ize and destroy it. Such symptoms it was impossible 
 to extinguish ; but the government wrestled long and 
 powerfully to hold down the new sj^irit ; and they 
 fought agains't it successfully, till the old order of things 
 iiajd finished its work, and the time was come for it to 
 
 ^depart. By the 1st of the 7th of Henry Vlll., the laws 
 of feudal tenure were put in force against the landed 
 traders. Wherever lands were converted from tillage to 
 pasture, the lords of the fee had authority to seize half 
 
 "" gi all profits until the farm-buildings were reconstructed. 
 If the immediate lord did not do his duty, the lord next 
 above him Was to do it ; and the evil still increasing, the 
 act, twenty years later, was extended further, and the 
 king had power to seize. Nor was this all. Sheep- 
 farming had become an integral branch of business ; and 
 falling into the hands of men who understood each 
 other, it had been made a monopoly, affecting seriously 
 the prices of wool and mutton. Stronger measures were 
 therefore now taken, and the class to which the offenders 
 belonged was especially pointed out by parliament. 
 
 " Whereas," says the 13th of the 25th of Ilem-y 
 VIII., " divers and sundry persons of the king's sub- 
 jects of this Healm, to whom God of his goodness hath 
 disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable sub- 
 stance, now of late, within few years, have daily studied, 
 practised, and invented ways and means how they might 
 r.ccumulatc and gather ttigether into few hands, as well 
 great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in 
 especial, sheep, putting sudi lands as they can get to 
 pasture and m.it to tillage; ; wlicivby they have not only
 
 li'iO SKETCH KS FliOM J. A. JUOIDE. 
 
 pulled down clmrches and towns and enlianced the old 
 rates of the rents of the possessions of this Realm, or else 
 brought it to such excess! v^e fines that no poor man is 
 able to meddle with it, but also liave raised and enhanced 
 the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, 
 geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such other commodities, 
 almost double above the prices which hath been accus- 
 tomed, by reason whereof a marvellous multitude of the 
 poor people of this realm be not able to provide meat, 
 drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, 
 and children, but be so discouraged with misery and 
 poverty, that they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other 
 inconv^eniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold ; 
 and it is thought by the king's humble and loving sub- 
 jects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth 
 those greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and 
 keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the 
 lands of this Realm from the occupying of the poor 
 husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in 
 tillage, is the great profit that cometh of sheep which be 
 now come into a few persons' hands, in respect of the 
 whole number of the king's subjects ; it is hereby 
 enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not 
 their own inheritance more than 2000 sheep ; that no 
 ]->erson shall occupy more than two farms ; and that the 
 10th of the 4th of Henry YII., and those other acts 
 obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be 
 re-enacted and enforced." 
 
 By these measures the money-making spirit was for a 
 time driven back, and the country resumed its natural 
 course. I am not concerned to defend the economic 
 wisdom of such proceedings ; but they prove, I think, 
 ('(.nclusively, that the laboring classes owed their ad- 
 \ aiitagcs not to the condition of the labor market, but to
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. ICI 
 
 the care of the state ; and that when the state relaxed 
 its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the 
 laborers being left to the market chances, sank instantly 
 in the unequal struggle with capital. 
 
 The government, however, remained strong enough 
 to hold its ground (except during the discreditable inter- 
 liK^le of the reign of Edward VI.) for the first three 
 ijuarters of the- century ; and until that time the working 
 classes of this country remained in a condition more than 
 pr^perous. They enjoyed an abundance far beyond 
 what in general falls to the lot of that order in long- 
 settled countries ; incomparably beyond what the same 
 class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or 
 France. The laws secured them ; and that the laws 
 were put in force we have the direct evidence of siicces- 
 sive acts of fcke legislature justifying the general policy 
 by its success ; and we have also the indirect evidence 
 of the contented loyalty of the great body of the people 
 at a time when, if they had been discontented, they 
 held in their own hands the means of asserting what the 
 law acknowledged to be their right. The government 
 had no power to compel submission to injustice, as was 
 proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a " benevo- 
 lence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a 
 determination against which the crown commissioners 
 were unable to contend, and the scheme ended with an 
 acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a 
 good grace from an impossible position. If the peas- 
 antry had been suffering under any real grievances, we 
 should not have failed to have heard of them wlien the 
 religious rebcillions furnished so fair an opi^ortunity to 
 press those grievances forward. Complaint was loud 
 enough wlien complaint was just, under flic Somei-sct 
 protectorate.
 
 163 SKETCHES FROM J. A FROUDE. 
 
 The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, 
 for they varied probably as much as they vary now. 
 Under Henry IV. the average income of an earl was 
 estimated at £2000 a year. Under Henry YIII. the 
 great Duke of Buckingham, the wealthiest English 
 peer, had £6000. And the income of the x\rchbisliop 
 of Canterbury was rated at the same amount. But the 
 estabhshments of such men were enormous, their ordina- 
 ry retinues in time of peace consisting of many hundred 
 persons ; and in war, when the duties of a nobleman 
 called him to the held, although in theory his followers 
 were paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament 
 were on so small a scale that the theory was seldom 
 converted into fact, and a large share of the expenses 
 was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of 
 Korfolk, in the Scotch war of 1523, declared (not com- 
 plaining of it, but merely as a reason why he should 
 receive support) that he had spent all his private means 
 upon the army ; and in the sequel of this history we 
 shall find repeated instances of knights and gentlemen 
 voluntarily ruining themselves in the service of their 
 country. The people, not universally, but generally, were 
 animated by a true spirit of sacrifice ; by a true convic- 
 tion that they were bound to think first of England, and 
 only next of themselves ; and unless we can bring our- 
 selves to understand this, we shall never understand 
 wliat England was under the reigns of the Plantagenets 
 and Tudors. The expenses of the court under Henry 
 YII. were a little over £11,000 a year, out of which 
 were defrayed the whole cost of the king's establish- 
 ment, the expenses of entertaining foreign ambassadors, 
 the wages and maintenance of the yeomen of the guard, 
 the retinues of servants, and all necessary outlay not 
 incurred for public business. Under Henry VIII., of
 
 SIXTEEXTH CENTURY EXGLISHMEN", 163 
 
 whose extravagance we have heard so much, and whose 
 court was the most magnificent in the world, these 
 expenses were £19,894 16s. Sd., a small sum when com- 
 pared with the present cost of the royal establishment, 
 even if we adopt the relative estimate of twelve to one, 
 and suppose it equal to £240,000 a year of our money. 
 But indeed it was not equal to £240,000 ; for, although 
 the proportion held in articles of common consumption, 
 articles of luxury were very dear indeed. 
 ''•iPassing down from the king and his nobles, to the 
 body of the people, we find that the income qualifying a 
 country gentleman to be justice of the peace was £20 a 
 year, and if he did his duty, his office was no sinecure. 
 "We remember Justice Shallow and his clerk Davy, with 
 his novel theory of magisterial law ; and Shallow's broad 
 features have- so English a cast about them that we may 
 believe there were many such, and that the duty was not 
 always very excellently done. But the Justice Shallows 
 were not allowed to repose upon their dignity. The 
 justice of the peace was required not only to take 
 cognizance of open offences, but to keep surveillance 
 over all persons within his distrist, and over himself in 
 his own turn there was a surveillance no less sharp, and 
 penalties for neglect prompt and peremptory. Four 
 times a year he was to make proclamation of his duty, 
 and exhort all persons to complain against him who had 
 occasion. 
 
 Twenty pounds a year, and heavy duties to do for it, 
 represented the condition uf the squire of the parish. 
 By the 2d of the 2d of Henry Y., " the wages" of a 
 parish priest were limited to £5 Gs. 8r/. , except in cases 
 where there was special license from the bishop, when 
 they might be raised as high as £0. Priests were 
 probably soiuething bettei' oft' under Henry VIII., but
 
 IG-i SKETCHES FllOM J. A. FKUUBE. 
 
 the statute remained in force, and marks an approach at 
 least to their ordinary salary. The priest had enough, 
 being unmarried, to supply him in comfort M'ith the 
 necessaries of life. The squire had enough to provide 
 moderate abundance for himself and his family. Neither 
 priest nor sqnire was able to establish any steep difference 
 in outward advantages between himself and the commons 
 among whom he lived. 
 
 The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. 
 There are two expressions corresponding one to the 
 other, which we frequently meet with in old writings, 
 and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether 
 the condition of things was or was not what it ought to 
 be. We read of "merry England" — when England 
 was not merry, things were not going w^ell with it. We 
 hear of "the glory of hospitality," England's pre- 
 eminent boast — by the rules of Avhich all tables, from 
 the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table 
 in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the 
 dinner-hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or 
 question asked : to every man according to his degree, who 
 chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging ; 
 bread, beef, and beer for his dinner ; for his lodging, 
 perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the 
 hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but freely 
 offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much 
 as his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was 
 little fear of an abuse of such license, for suspicious 
 characters had no leave to wander at pleasure ; and for 
 any man found at large, and unable to give a sufficient 
 account of himself, there were the ever-read}^ parish 
 stocks or town jail. The " glory of hospitality" lasted 
 far down into Elizabetirs time ; and then, as Camden 
 says, " came in great bravery of building, to the mar-
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTUUY ENGLISHMEN. 165 
 
 velJous beautifying of tlie realm, but to the dec-ay"' of 
 M'hat he vahied more. 
 
 In such frank style the people lived, hatin*^ three 
 things with all their hearts : idleness, want, and 
 
 .. cowardice ; and for the rest, carrying their hearts high, 
 ■ and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter 
 
 ;v*jand summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, 
 after which the - laborers went to work, and the gentle- 
 
 /«ien to l)usiness, of which they had no little. In the 
 
 ^ Country every unknown face was challenged and ex- 
 amined — if the account given was insutficient, he was 
 brought before the justice ; if the village sliopkeeper 
 
 • sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made " unhonest'' 
 /shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be 
 looked to by the justice ; there w^as no fear lest time 
 should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined ; 
 after diimer he w^ent hunting, or to his farm, or to M'hat 
 he pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored 
 with a lu'oad, rosy, English health. 
 
 Of the education of nol)lemen and gentlemen we have 
 contradictory accounts, as might be expected. The 
 universities were well filled, by the sons of yeomen 
 chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges 
 was little, and wealth}- men took a pride in helping 
 forward any l)oys of promise. It seem? clear also, as 
 the Refornuition drew nearer, while the clere^v were 
 sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better 
 became perce|)tible in a portion at least of the laity. The 
 more old-fashioned of the higher ranks were slow in 
 moving ; for as late as the reign of Edward VI. there 
 were peers of parliament unable to read ; but on the 
 whole, the invention of printing, and the general ferinent 
 which was commencing all over the world, had produced 
 marked effects in all classes. Henry VI 11. himself
 
 166 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 spoke four Iniii^nages, and was well read in tlieology and 
 history ; and the high aceomphshaients of More and Sir 
 T. Elhott, of Wyatt and Cromwell, were but the ex- 
 treme expression of a temper wliich was rapidly spread- 
 ing, and which gave occasion, among other things, to 
 the following reflection in Erasmus: "Oh, strange 
 vicissitudes of human things," exclaims he. " Here- 
 tofore the heart of learning was among such as professed 
 religion. Now, while they for the most part give them- 
 selves up, veyitri luxui pecunoceque, the love of learning 
 is gone from them to secular princes, the court, and the 
 nobility. May we not justly be ashamed of ourselves ? 
 The feasts of priests and divines are drowned in wine, 
 are filled with scurrilous jests, sound with intemperate 
 noise and tumult, flow with spiteful slanders and def- 
 amation of others ; while at princes' tables modest 
 disputations are held concerning things which make for 
 learning and piety." 
 
 A letter to Thomas Cromwell from his son's tutor 
 will not be without interest on this subject ; Cromwell 
 was likely to have been unusually careful in his chil- 
 dren's training, and we need not suppose that all boys 
 were brought up as prudently. Sir Peter Carew, for 
 instance, being a boy at about the same time, and giving 
 trouble at the High School at Exeter, was led home to 
 his father's house at Ottery, coupled between two fox- 
 hounds. Yet the education of Gregory Cromwell is 
 probably not far above what many young men of the 
 middle and higher ranks were beginning to receive. 
 Henry Dowes was the tutor's name, beyond which fact 
 1 know nothing of him. His letter is as follows : 
 
 " After that it pleased your mastership to give me in 
 charge, not only to give diligent attendance upon Master 
 Gregory, but also to instruct him with good letters,
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. KiT 
 
 honest manners, pastyme of instruments, and sucli other 
 qualities as sliould be for him meet and convenient, 
 plcaseth it you to understand that for the accomplish- 
 ment thereof I liave endeavoured myself by all ways 
 possible to excogitate how I might most profit him. In 
 ..which behalf, through his diligence, the success is such 
 . ras I trust shall be to your good contentation and pleasure, 
 'and to his no small profit. But for cause the summer 
 ,;svas spent in the service of the wild gods [and] it is so 
 ^ much to be regarded after what fashion youth is 
 brought up, in which time that that is learned for the 
 7Tiost part will not be wholly forgotten in the older 
 years, I think it my duty to ascertain your mastership 
 *' ^low he spendetli his time. And first after he hath 
 ' heard mass he taketh a lecture of a dialogue of Erasmus' 
 ' Colloquies,' called Pietas PueriUs, wherein is de- 
 scribed a very picture of one that should be virtuously 
 brought up ; and for cause it is so necessary for him, I 
 do not only cause him to read it over, but also to prac- 
 tise the precepts of the same. After this he exerciseth 
 his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon 
 Fabyan's ' Chronicle' as long. The residue of the day 
 he doth spend upon the lute and virginals. When he 
 rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way some 
 history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause 
 him to rehearse again in a tale. For his recreation he 
 useth to hawk and himt and shoot in his long bow, which 
 frameth and succeedeth so well with him that he seemeth 
 to be thereunto given by nature." 
 
 I have spoken of the organization of the country 
 population, I have now to speak of that of the towns, of 
 the trading classes and manufacturing classes, the regula- 
 tions respecting which arc no less remarkable and no less 
 illustrative of the national character. Jf the tcndeucj;
 
 108 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FUOUDE. 
 
 of trade to assume at last a form of mere self-interest be 
 irresistible, if political economy represent the laws to 
 wliicli in the end it is forced to submit itself, the nation 
 spared no efforts, either of art or policy, to defer to the 
 last mom&nt the unwelcome conclusion. 
 
 The names and shadows linger about London of 
 certain ancient societies, the members of which may still 
 occasionally be seen in quaint gilt barges pursuing their 
 own difficult way among the swarming steamers ; when 
 on certain days, the traditions concerning w^hich are fast 
 dying out of memory, the Fishmongers' Company, the 
 Goldsmiths' Company, the Mercers' Company, make 
 procession down the riv^er for civic f eastings at Green- 
 wich or Blackwall. The stately tokens of ancient honor 
 still belong to them, and the remnants of ancient wealth 
 and patronage and power. Their charters may be read 
 by curious antiquaries, and the bills of fare of their 
 ancient entertainments. But for what purpose they 
 were called into being, what there was in these associa- 
 tions of common trades to surround with gilded insignia, 
 and how they came to be possessed of broad lands and 
 church preferments, few people now care to think or to 
 inquire. Trade and traders have no dignity any more 
 in the eyes of any one, except what money lends to 
 them ; and these outward symbols scarcely rouse even a 
 passing feeling of curiosity. And yet these companies 
 were once something more than names. They are all 
 which now remain of a vast organization which once 
 penetidted the entire trading life of England — an organ- 
 ization set on foot to realize that most necessary, if 
 most difficult, condition of commercial excellence under 
 which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and 
 all wares offered for sale, of whatever kind, should 
 honestly be what they pretend to be. I spoke of the
 
 vSIXTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISHMEN. lt)9 
 
 military principle which directed the distribution ami 
 the arranjj-ements of land. The aiialoo;v will best ex- 
 plain a state of things in which every occupation was 
 treated as the division of an army ; regiments being 
 quartered in every town, each with its own self-elected 
 officers, whose duty was to exercise authority over all 
 *|)ersons professing the business to which they belonged ; 
 who were to see that no person undertook to supply 
 articles which he had not been educated to manufacture ; 
 ,who were to determine the prices at which such articles 
 ought justly to be sold ; above all, who were to take care 
 that the common people really bought at shops and stalls 
 wliat they supposed themselves to be buying ; that cloth 
 put up for sale was true cloth, of true texture and full 
 weight ; that leather was sound and well tanned ; wine 
 pure, measures honest ; flour unmixed with devil's dust 
 — who were generally to look to it that in all contracts 
 between man and man for the supply of man's neces- 
 sities, what we call honesty of dealing should be truly 
 and faithfully observed. An organization for this pur- 
 pose did once really exist in England, really trying to do 
 the work which it was intended to do, as half the pages of 
 our early statutes witness. In London, as the metropolis, 
 a central council sate for every branch of trade, and this 
 council was in communication with the Chancellor and 
 the Crown. It was composed of the highest and most 
 respectaljle members of the profession, and its office was 
 to determine prices, fix wages, arrange the rules of 
 apprenticeship, and discuss all details connected with the 
 business on which legislation might be rec^uired. Fur- 
 ther, this council received the reports of the searchers — 
 high officers taken from their own body, whose business 
 was to inspect, in company with the lord mayor or some 
 other city dignitary, the shops of the respective traders ;
 
 170 SKETCHES FKOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 to receive complaints, and to examine into them. In each 
 provincial town local councils sate in connection with the 
 municipal authorities, who fulfilled in these places the 
 same duties ; and their reports being forwarded to the 
 central body, and considered by them, representations 
 on all necessary matters were then made to the privy 
 council ; and by the privy council, if requisite, were 
 submitted to parliament. If these representations were 
 judged to require legislative interference, the statutes 
 which were passed in consequence were returned through 
 the Chancellor to the mayors of the various towns and 
 cities, by whom they were proclaimed as law. No 
 person was allowed to open a trade or to commence a 
 manufacture, either in London or the provinces, unless 
 he had first served his apprenticeship ; unless he could 
 prove to the satisfaction of the authorities that he was 
 competent in his craft ; and unless he submitted as a 
 matter of course to their supervision. The legislature 
 had undertaken not to let that indispensable task go 
 wholly unattempted, of distributing the various func- 
 tions of society by the rule of capacity ; of compelling 
 every man to do his duty in an honest following of his 
 proper calling, securing to him that he in his turn should 
 not be injured by his neighbor's misdoings. 
 
 The state further promising for itself that all able- 
 bodied men should be found in work, and not allowing 
 any man to work at a l)usiness for which he was unfit, 
 insisted as its natural light that children should not be 
 allowed to grow up in idleness, to be returned at mature 
 age upon its hands. Every child, so far as possible, was 
 to be trained up in some business or calling, idleness 
 " being the mother of all sin," and the essential duty of 
 every man being to provide honestly for himself and his 
 family. The educative theory, for such it was, was
 
 SIXTEEXTir CEXTLRV ENGLISHMEN. 171 
 
 simple but effective : it was based on the single principle 
 that, next to the knowledge of a man's duty to God, 
 and as a means toward doing that duty, the lirst condi- 
 tion of a worthy life was the ability to maintain it in 
 independence. Yarieties of inapplicable knowledge 
 might be good, but they were not essential ; such 
 .Ivjiowledge might be left to the leisure of after-years, 
 or it might be dispensed with without vital injury. 
 A-bility to labor could not be dispensed with, and this, 
 therefore, the state felt it to be its own duty to see 
 provided ; so reaching, I cannot but think, the heart of 
 the whole matter. The children of those who could 
 afford the small entrance fees were appi*enticed to trades, 
 t]4e rest were apprenticed to agriculture ; and if children 
 were found growing up idle, and their fathers or their 
 friends failed to prove that they were able to secure 
 them an ultimate maintenance, the mayors in towns and 
 the magistrates in the country had authority to take 
 possession of such children, and aj^prentice them as they 
 saw fit, that when they grew up "they might not be 
 driven" by want or incapacity " to dishonest courses," 
 
 In the brief review of the system under which England 
 was governed, we have seen a state of things in which 
 the principles of political economy were, consciously or 
 unconsciously, contradicted ; where an attempt, more or 
 less successful, w^as made to bring the production and 
 distribution of wealth under the moral rule of right and 
 wrong ; and where those laws of supply and demand, 
 which we are now taught to regard as immutable ordi- 
 nances of nature, were absorbed or superseded by a 
 higher code. It is necessary for me to repeat that I am 
 not holding up the sixteenth century as a model which 
 the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has 
 become too large, employment has become too com-
 
 17-2 SKETCHF.S FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 plicated and fluctuating, to admit of external control ; 
 Avliile, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest 
 as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and when 
 it ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with 
 us, these so-called ordinances of nature in time of war 
 consent to be suspended, and duty to his country be- 
 comes with every good citizen a higher motive of action 
 than the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's 
 market, so it is not uncheering to look back upon a time 
 when the nation was in a normal condition of militancy 
 against social injustice — when the government was 
 enabled by happy circumstances to pursue into detail a 
 single and serious aim at the well-being — ^well-being in 
 its widest sense — of all members of the commonwealth. 
 The world, indeed, was not made particularly pleasant. 
 Of liberty, in the modern sense of the word, of the 
 supposed right of every man "to do what he wdll with 
 his own" or with himself, there was no idea. To the 
 question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will 
 with my own ? there was the brief answer, No man may 
 do what is wrong, either with that which is his own 
 or with that which is another's. Workmen were not 
 allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labor 
 market to exact extravagant wages. Capitalists were not 
 allowed to drive the laborers from their holdings, and 
 destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of 
 interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity 
 was something more than the theoretic principle, and 
 employers and employed were alike amenable to a law 
 which both were compelled to obey. The workingman 
 of modern times has bought the extension of his liberty 
 at the price of his material comfort. The higher classes 
 have gained in luxury what they have lost in power. It 
 is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty 
 .is with the facts.
 
 .:'^RE CORONATION OF ANNE BOLEYN.* 
 
 Queen Anne was at Greenwich, but according to 
 (Mistom, the few precedino; days were to be spent at the 
 Tower ; and on the 19th of May she was conducted 
 thither in state by tr.e lord mayor and the city com- 
 panies, with one of tliose splendid exhibitions npon the 
 water which in the days when the silver Thames de- 
 served its name, and the sun could shine down upon it 
 out of the Que summer sky, were spectacles scarcely 
 rivalled in gorgeoiisness by the world-famous wedding of 
 the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats ; the 
 banks and tlie ships in the pool swarmed with people ; 
 and Hfty great barges formed the procession, all blazing 
 with gold and banners. The queen herself was in her 
 own barge, close to that of the lord mayor ; and, in 
 keeping with the fantastic genius of the time, she was 
 preceded up the water b j a " foyst or wafter full of ord- 
 nance, in M'hich was a great dragon continually moving 
 and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood 
 terrible monsters and wild men, casting fire and making 
 hideous noise.'' So, with trumpets blo^^^ng, cannon 
 pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the 
 ships, in a bhize of fireworks and splendor, Anne l>olcyn 
 was borne along to the great archway of the Tower, 
 where the king was wvaiting on the stairs to receive her. 
 
 *■ From •• History of iMiglaiul."
 
 n4 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, 
 the welcome news to have arrived at length from 
 Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life dawning 
 in treacherous beauty after the long night of expecta- 
 tion. No bridal ceremo)iial had been possible ; the 
 marriage had been huddled over hke a stolen love-match, 
 and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation and 
 disappointment. These past mortifications were to be 
 atoned for by a coronation pageant which the art and 
 the w-ealth of the richest city in Europe should be poured 
 out in the most lavish profusion to adorn. • 
 
 On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of 
 the London citizens were stirring early in all houses. 
 From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets were fresh 
 strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed oif along 
 the whole distance, and occupied on one side by the 
 guilds, their workmen, and apprentices, on the other by 
 the city constables and officials in their gaudy uniforms, 
 " with their staves in hand for to cause the people to 
 keep good room and order," Cornhill and Graceclmrch 
 Street had dressed their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in 
 arras and tapestry, and the rich carpet-work from Persia 
 and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals, was 
 draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, 
 and velvet. The sheriffs were pacing uj) and down on 
 their great Flemish horses, hung with liveries, and all 
 the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to 
 see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns 
 opened, the grim gates rolled back, and under the arch- 
 w^ay in the bright May sunshine, the long column began 
 slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their repre- 
 sentatives to grace the scene with their presence — Yenice 
 and France. It was, perhaps, to make the most of this 
 isolated countenance, that the French ambassador's train
 
 THE COROXATIO:S' OF ANNE BOLETN. 175 
 
 formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French 
 knights came riding foremost in siircoats of blue velvet 
 ■with sleeves of yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, 
 with white crosses powdered on their hangings. After 
 them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and 
 two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of 
 violet, with hoods purfled with miniver like doctors." 
 Ne^t, perhaps at a little interval, the abbots passed on, 
 mitred in their robes ; the barons followed in crimson 
 velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and mar- 
 quises, the dresses of each order increasing in elaborate 
 gorgeousness. All these rode on in pairs. Then came 
 alone Audeley, lord chancellor, and behind him the 
 Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York ; the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of 
 Bayonne and «f Paris, not now with bugle and hunting- 
 frock, but solemn with stole and crosier. Next, the 
 lord mayor, with the city mace in hand, and Garter in 
 his coat of arms ; and then Lord William Howard — 
 Belted "Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of 
 England. The officers of the queen's household suc- 
 ceeded the marshal in scarlet and gold, and the van of 
 the procession was closed by the Duke of Suffolk, as 
 high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy 
 matter to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splen- 
 dor which in such a pageant must have drawn along the 
 London streets — those streets which now we know so 
 black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with 
 masses of color, gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet 
 there it was, and there the sun could shine upon it, and 
 tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out 
 of the crowded lattices. 
 
 Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it 
 passed unhcedod. Those eyes were watching all for
 
 17G SKETCHES FROM J. A. FKOUOE. 
 
 another object, wliicli now drew near. In an open 
 space beliind the constable tliere was seen approaching 
 "a w^hite chariot," dawn by two palfreys in white 
 damask which swept the ground, a golden canopy borne 
 above it making music with silver bells : and in the 
 chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful 
 occasion of all this glittering homage ; fortune's play- 
 thing of the hour, the Queen of England — queen at last — 
 borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory, breath- 
 ing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had 
 risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honor, her self- 
 respect, to win ; and she had won it. 
 
 There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair 
 hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and her temples 
 circled with a light coronet of gold and diamonds — most 
 beautiful — loveliest — most favored perhaps, as she 
 seeihed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas ! 
 " within the hollow round " of that coronet — 
 
 " Kept death his court, unci there the antick sate 
 Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp. 
 Allowing her a little breath, a little scene 
 To monarchize, he feared, and kill with looks, 
 Infusing her with self and vain conceit, 
 As if the flesh winch walled about her life 
 Were brass impregnable ; and humored thus. 
 Bored through her castle walls ; and farewell, Queen." 
 
 Fatal gift of greatness ! so dangerous ever ! so more 
 than dangerous in those tremendous times when the 
 fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of 
 thought ; and nations are in the throes of revolution — 
 when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting in 
 the social earthquake ; and as the opposing forces wrestle 
 to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above the 
 crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the
 
 THE CORONATION OF ANNE BOLEYN. 177 
 
 victims of its alternating fortunes. And what if into an 
 unsteady heart and brain, intoxicated with splendor, the 
 outward chaos should find its way, converting the poor 
 silly soul into an image of the same confusion — if con- 
 science should be deposed from her high place, and the 
 Pandora box be broken loose of passions and sensualities 
 and follies ; and at length there be nothing left of all 
 which man orwoiuan ought to value, save hope of God's 
 forgiveness ? 
 
 Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a 
 summer morning. Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the 
 Tower of London — not radiant then with beauty on a 
 gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, 
 on a sad tragic errand, from which she will never more 
 return, passing away out of an earth where she may stay 
 no longer, into a presence where, nevertheless, we know 
 that all is well — for all of us — and therefore for her. 
 
 But let us not cloud her short-lived sunshine with the 
 shadow of the future. She went on in her loveliness, 
 the peeresses following in their carriages, with the royal 
 guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she was met 
 by the children of the city schools ; and at the corner of 
 Gracechurch Street a masterpiece had been prepared of 
 the pseudo- classic art, then so fashionable, by the mer- 
 chants of the Styllyard. A Mount Parnassus had been 
 constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into 
 a basin with four jets of Rhenisli wine. On the top of 
 the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and 
 on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or 
 harps, and singing each of them some " posy" or 
 epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, 
 after it had been sung, written in letters of gold. 
 
 From Gracechurch Street the procession passed to 
 Leadenhall, where there was a spectacle in l)etter taste.
 
 178 SKETCHES FROM J, A. FROUDE. 
 
 of the old English Catholic kind, quaint perhaps and 
 forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. 
 There was again a "little mountain," which was hung 
 with red and white roses ; a gold ring was placed on 
 the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white 
 falcon was made to " descend as out of the sky," " and 
 then incontinent came down an angel with great melody, 
 and set a close crown of gold upon the falcon's head ; 
 and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her 
 issue beneath her ; and Mary Cleophas with her four 
 children, of the which children one made a goodly 
 oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St. Anne, 
 trusting that like fruit should come of her." 
 
 With such " pretty conceits," at that time the honest 
 tokens of an English welcome, the new queen was 
 received by the citizens of London. These scenes must 
 be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some 
 fresh fancy met her at every turn. To preserve the 
 festivities from flagging, every fountain and conduit 
 within the walls ran all day with wine ; the bells of 
 every steeple were ringing ; children lay in wait with 
 songs, and ladies with posies, in which all the resources 
 of fantastic extravagance were exhausted ; and thus in 
 an unbroken triumph — and to outward appearance re- 
 ceived with the warmest affection — she passed under 
 Temple Bar, down the Strand by Charing Cross, to 
 Westminster Hall. The king was not with her through- 
 out the day ; nor did he intend to be with her in any 
 part of the ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, 
 the undisputed sovereign of the hour. 
 
 Saturday being passed in showing herself to the 
 people, she retired for the night to " the king's manor 
 house at Westminster," where she slept. On the fol- 
 lowing morning, between ei^ht and nine o'clock, she
 
 THE COKOXATIOX OF AXXE BOLEYN". 179 
 
 returned to the haU, where the lord mayor, the city 
 council, and the peers were again assembled, and took 
 her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs under 
 the cloth of state ; while the bishops, the abbots, and 
 the monks of the abbey formed in the area. A railed way 
 had been laid with carpets across Palace Yard and the 
 iSanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all was ready, 
 preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the 
 Knights of the Garter in the dress of the order, she 
 swept out under her canopy, the bishops and the monks 
 " solemnly singing. " The train was borne by the old 
 Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops of London 
 and Winchester on either side " bearing up the lappets 
 of her robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the crown 
 on its cushiop immediately before her. She was dressed 
 in purple velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping 
 loose, as she usually wore it, under a wreath of diamonds. 
 
 On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation 
 chair, where she sat while the train fell into their places, 
 and the preliminaries of the ceremonial were despatched. 
 Then she was conducted up to the high altar, and 
 anointed Queen of England, and she received from the 
 hands of Cranmer, fresh come in haste from Dunstable, 
 with the last words of his sentence upon Catherine 
 scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden sceptre, and St. 
 Edward's crown. 
 
 Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful 
 recollection, pierce at that moment the incense of glory 
 which she was inhaling ? Did any vision flit across her 
 of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where 
 she was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into 
 the darkening twilight of a life cut short by sorrow ? 
 Who can tell ? At such a time, that figui'c would have 
 weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind
 
 180 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 would liave been taught by the thought of it, that, 
 although life be fleeting as a dream, it is long enough to 
 experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. But Anne 
 Boleyn was not noble and was not wise — too probably 
 she felt nothing but the delicious, all-absorbing, all- 
 intoxicating present ; and if that plain, suffering face 
 presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear that 
 it was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. 
 Two years later she was able to exult over Catherine's 
 death ; she is not likely to have thought of her with 
 gentler feelings in the lirst glow and flush of triumph.
 
 VI. 
 
 ^?. JOHN BUN Y AN.* 
 
 ^^ He was happy in his family. His blind child, for 
 whom he had been so touchingly anxious, had died while 
 he was in prison. His other children lived atid did 
 well ; and his brave companion, who had spoken so 
 stoutly for him to the judges, continued at his side. 
 His health, it was said, had suffered from his confine- 
 ment ; bu^the only serious illness which we hear of was 
 an attack of " sweating sickness," which came upon 
 him in 1687, and from which he never thoroughly re- 
 covered He was then fifty-nine, and in the next year 
 he died. 
 
 His end was characteristic. It was brought on by ex- 
 posure when he was engaged in an act of charity. A 
 quarrel had broken out in a family at Reading with 
 which Bunyan had some acquaintance. A father had 
 taken offence at his son, and threatened to disinherit 
 him. Bunyan undertook a journey on horseback from 
 Bedford to Reading in the hope of reconciling them. 
 Pie succeeded, but at the cost of his life. Returning by 
 London, he was overtaken on the road by a storm of 
 rain, and was wetted through before he could find 
 shelter. The chill, falling on a constitution already 
 weakened by illness, brought on fever. lie was able to 
 
 * Part of the last cliaptcr of " Julm Bunyan," in the series of 
 " Englisli Men of Letters."
 
 183 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROTTDE. 
 
 reach the liouse of Mr. Strudwick, one of his London 
 friends ; but lie never left his bed afterward. In ten 
 days he was dead. The exact date is uncertain. It was 
 toward the end of August, 1688, between two and three 
 months before the landing of King William. He was 
 buried in Mr. Strudwick's vault, in the Dissenters' 
 burying-ground at Bunhill Fields. His last words were, 
 " Take me, for I come to Thee." 
 
 So ended, at the age of sixty, a man who, if his im- 
 portance may be measured by the influence which he 
 has exerted over succeeding generations, must be 
 counted among the most extraordinary persons whom 
 England has j^roduced. It has been the fashion to dwell 
 on the disadvantages of his education, and to regret the 
 carelessness of nature which brought into existence a man 
 of genius in a tinker's hut at Elstow. Xature is less 
 partial than she appears, and all situations in life have 
 their compensations along with them. 
 
 Circumstances, I should say, qualified Bunyan per- 
 fectly Avell for the work which he had to do. If he had 
 gone to school, as he said, with Aristotle and Plato ; if 
 he had been broken in at a university and been turned 
 into a bishop ; if he had been in any one of the learned 
 professions, he might easily have lost, or might have 
 never known, the secret of his powers. He was born to 
 he the Poet-apostle of the English middle classes, im- 
 perfectly educated like himself ; and, being one of 
 themselves, he had the key of their thoughts and feel- 
 ings in hi s own heart. Like nine out of ten of his 
 countrymen, lie came into the world with no fortune 
 but his industry. He had to work with his hands for 
 his bread, and to advance by the side of his neighbors 
 along the road of common business. His knowledge 
 was scanty, though of rare quality. He knew his Bible
 
 JOHX BUXYAN. 183 
 
 probably by heart. He had studied history in Foxe'.s 
 ' ' Martyrs, ' ' but nowhere else that we can trace. The rest 
 of his mental furniture was gathered at first hand from his 
 conscience, his life, and his occupations. Thus, every 
 idea which he received falling into a soil naturally fertile, 
 sprouted up fresh, vigorous, and original. He confessed 
 ";to have felt (as a man of his powers could hardly have 
 failed to feel) continued doubts about the Bible and the 
 •reality of the Divine government. It has been well said 
 'that w^hen we look into the world to find the image of 
 God, it is as if we were to stand before a looking-glass, 
 expecting to see ourselves reflected there, and to see 
 nothing. Education scarcely improves our perception 
 /in this respect ; and wider information, wider acquaint- 
 ance with the thoughts of other men in other ages and 
 countries, might as easily have increased his difficulties 
 as have assisted him in overcoming them. He was not 
 a man who could have contented himself with compro- 
 mises and half-convictions. No force could have sub- 
 dued him into a decent Anglican divine — a " Mr. Two 
 Tongues, parson of the parish." He was passionate and 
 thorough -going. The authority of conscience presented 
 itself to him only in the shape of religious obligation. 
 Religion once shaken into a " perhaps," would have had 
 no existence to him ; and it is easy to conceive a uni- 
 versity-bred Bunyan, an intellectual meteor, flaring 
 uselessly across the sky and disappearing in smoke and 
 nothingness. 
 
 Powerful temperaments are necessarily intense. 
 Bunyan, Ixirn a tinker, had heard right and wrong 
 preached to him in the name of the Christian creed. He 
 concluded after a struggle that Christianity was true, 
 and on that conviction he built himself up into what he 
 was. It might have been the same, perhaps, with Burns
 
 184 - SKETCHES FKOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 had lie been born a century before. Given Christianity 
 as an unquestionably true account of the situation and 
 future prospects of man, the feature of it most appalling 
 to the imagination is that hell-fire— a torment exceeding 
 the most horrible which fancy can conceive, and extend- 
 ing into eternity— awaits the enormous majority of the 
 human race. The dreadful probability seized hold on 
 the young Bunyan's mind. lie shuddered at it when 
 awake. In the visions of the night it came before him 
 in the tremendous details of the dreadful reality. It 
 became the governing thought in his nature. 
 
 Such a belief, if it does not drive a man to madness, 
 will at least cure him of trifling. It will clear his mind 
 of false sentiment, take the nonsense out of him, and 
 enable him to resist vulgar temptation as nothing else 
 will. The danger is that the mind may not bear the 
 strain, that the belief itself may crack and leave noth- 
 ing. Bunyan was hardly tried, but in him the belief 
 did not crack. It spread over his character. It filled 
 him first with terror ; then with a loathing of sin, which 
 entailed so awful a penalty ; then, as his personal fears 
 were allayed by the recognition of Christ, it turned to 
 tenderness and pity. 
 
 There was no fanaticism in Bunyan, nothing harsh or 
 savage. His natural humor perhaps saved him. His 
 few recorded sayings all refer to the one central ques- 
 tion ; but healthy seriousness often best expresses itself 
 in playful quaintness. He was once going somewhere 
 disguised as a wagoner. He was overtaken by a con- 
 stable, who had a warrant to arrest him. The constable 
 asked him if he knew that devil of a fellow Bunyan. 
 " Know him !" Bunyan said. " You might call him a 
 devil if you knew him as well as I once did." 
 
 A Cambridge student was trying to show him what a
 
 JOHN BL'NYAX. 185 
 
 divine thing reason was — '" reason, the chief glory ut 
 man, which distingnishes him from a beast," etc., etc. 
 Bunyan growled out, " Sin distinguishes man from 
 beast. Is sin divine ?" 
 
 He was extremely tolerant in his terms of Church 
 
 «, membership. He offended the stricter part of his con- 
 'gregation by refusing even to make infant baptism a 
 -Condition of exclusion. The only persons with whom 
 ,Jie declined to communicate were those whose lives were 
 openly immoral. His chief objection to the Church of 
 England was the admission of the ungodly to the Sacra- 
 ments. He hated party titles and quarrels upon trifles. 
 He desired himself to be called a Christian or a Believer, 
 
 • or '* any name which was approved by the Holy Ghost." 
 Divisions^ he said, were to churches like wars to 
 countries. Those wdio talked most about religion cared 
 least for it ; and controversies about doubtful things, 
 and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things 
 which were practicable and indisputable. 
 
 " In countenance," wrote a friend, " he appeared to 
 be of a stern and rough temper, but in his conversation 
 mild and affable ; not given to locpiacity or to much dis- 
 course in company unless some urgent occasion required 
 it ; observing never to boast of himself or his parts, but 
 rather to seem low in his own eyes, and submit himself 
 to the judgment of others ; abhorring lying and swear- 
 ing ; being just, in all that lay in his power, to his 
 word ; not seeming to revenge injuries ; loving to rec- 
 oncile differences and make friendships with all. He 
 had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent discerning of 
 persons, being of good judgment and (piiek wit." " He 
 was tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent, 
 somewhat of a ruddy face, with s})arkling eyes, wearing 
 his hair on his upper 11]) ; his luiir reddish, but in his
 
 180 SKETCUKS FRO.\f J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 iater days time liad sprinkled it with gray ; his nose 
 well set, but not declining or bending ; his mouth moder- 
 ate large, his forehead something high, and his habit 
 always plain and modest." 
 
 He was himself indifferent to advancement, and he 
 did not seek it for his family. A London merchant 
 offered to take his son into his house. " God," he said, 
 " did not send me to advance my family, but to preach 
 the Gospel." He had no vanity — an exemption ex- 
 tremely rare in those wdio are personally much before 
 the public. The personal popularity was in fact the part 
 of his situation which he least liked. When he was to 
 preach in London, " if there was but one day's notice 
 the meeting-house was crowded to overflowing." 
 Twelve hundred people would be found collected before 
 seven o'clock on a dark winter's morning to hear a lect- 
 ure from him. Li Zoar Street, Southwark, his church 
 was sometimes so crowded that he had to be lifted to 
 the pulpit stairs over the congregation's heads. It 
 pleased him, but he was on the watch against the pleas- 
 ure of being himself admired. A friend complimented 
 him once, after service, on " the sweet sermon" which 
 he had delivered. " You need not remind me of that," 
 he said. " The devil told me of it before 1 was out of 
 the pulpit."
 
 VII. 
 
 ^'- ■ LEAVES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN 
 V- JOURInTAL.* 
 
 In the summer of 1874 I paid a visit to South Africa. 
 Having leisure on my hands, I wished to use it to stud} 
 the working of an English colony. I had been interested 
 in the exertions of Miss Rye to carry the waifs and 
 strays of our swarming population of children to 
 countries where their chances in after life would be more 
 favorable than here, and 1 desired to ascertain how far 
 the colonial authorities would be willing to assist in 
 carrying out a systematic emigration of such children on 
 a larger scale. My attention had been drawn especially 
 to South Africa, through what is known as the Langa- 
 balele disturbance in Natal, in which two large native 
 tribes had been destroyed. The head of one of them, 
 Langabalele himself, had been tried and condemned by 
 Kafir law, the Governor presiding in the capacity of 
 supreme chief. The proceeding appeared to have been 
 arbitrary and violent, and 1 desired to know the truth 
 about it. I resolved at the same time to extend my tour 
 to the neigliboi'ing republics. Between these republics 
 and the Imperial Government a quarrel had arisen in 
 consequence of the British occupation of the lately dis- 
 covered Diamond Fields, which had previously formed 
 
 * The political remarks of Mr. Froude have been omitted in 
 this collection.— Editok.
 
 18S SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 part of tlie territoiy of tlie Orange Free State. The 
 dispute bad interested me from tlie contradictory state- 
 ments wliicli I had read about it. I wished to learn the 
 liistory of the transaction from disinterested parties 
 upon the spot, and to learn especially how far the annex- 
 ation had been approved by colonial opinion. 
 
 The following pages contain extracts from the journal 
 which 1 carried with me. A few light sketches of the 
 society and the scenery of a country in which England 
 is beginning to be interested, may serve as a relief to 
 the serious subjects with which this volume is chiefly 
 ocupied. 1 leave them almost as they were first written. 
 ^Vhat merit they possess— if they possess any merit at all 
 — will be due to the freshness of impressions which were 
 noted down as they were formed. 
 
 1874, August 23. — Left Dartmouth in the ^Valmer 
 Castle. Full complement of passengers. Africanders 
 all, or most of them, with whom I shall in time make 
 acquaintance. Before 1 left the harbor 1 was intro- 
 duced to a Natal judge, who was on his way home. 
 The judge had been out of the colony when Langabalele 
 was tried, but answered readily any questions which I 
 asked. He said that in his opinion there had been no 
 intention of rebellion. It v/as a mere police case, and 
 ought to have been treated so ; still, naturally enough, 
 lie endeavored to excuse the authorities. A youth at 
 dinner, reflecting, 1 suppose, colonial opinion, insisted 
 that but for the timely vigor, etc. , which had been dis- 
 played, all Africa would have been on fire. 
 
 August 25. — Weather fine. Sea smooth. Air grow- 
 ing rapidly hot. The passengers with whom I fall into 
 conversation speak of the Kafirs not unkindly. They 
 describe them as having splendid natural qualities, but 
 as being ruined by the mistaken treatment which Eng-
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN" NOTES. 18'.t 
 
 land insists upon. If the Dutch and the English of the 
 colony were allowed to deal with them in their own 
 way, they conceive that the native character might be 
 really improved ; as it is they look to rum and brandy 
 
 '-as the probable solution of the problem. If rum and 
 brandy, why not strychnine at once ? 
 
 '^'^^ August -20.— ExqulsitG weather. The sea calm as 
 Torbay in stillest summer. The water \^olet color. 
 jQne thinks of Homer's 
 
 loeiSea ttovtov. 
 
 Last night we had a remarkable sunset. The disk, as it 
 touched the horizon, was deep crimson. As the last 
 e6ge of the rim disappeared there came a flash, lasting 
 for a secondly of dazzling green — the creation I suppose 
 of my own eyes. The trades now beginning. The judge 
 and I talk and smoke, and gradually the condition of the 
 colony comes out. Colored men do not serve on juries 
 in Natal, and the result is what might be expected. He 
 once himself tried a white man who had murdered a 
 Kafir, and was caught red-handed. The jury brought a 
 verdict of not guilty, and the audience in the court 
 cheered. The judge said he could hardly speak for 
 shame. 1 do not yet make out the Boers, who are 
 described as lazy, indifferent to progress or money-mak- 
 ing, thinking little of politics, and only resenting Eng- 
 lish interference with them ; yet most people to whom 
 1 talk seem to agree that in the Orange Free State the 
 natives are better managed than in any other part of 
 Africa. Such a business as that of Langabalele could 
 not possibly have happened there. 
 
 August 31. — Yesterday was Sunday ; the sky over- 
 cast and the air close. The Captain read prayers in the 
 cabin in the morning. In the evening the cparter-deck
 
 190 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FKUUDE. 
 
 was cleared for chapel. Lamps were liung- under the 
 awning and a Wesleyan "conducted a service." 
 Several hymns were sung, " Oh Paradise ! oh Para- 
 dise !" and " Rock of Ages," among them. The choir 
 was composed of young ladies, whose week-day perform- 
 ances 1 had thought vulgar and underbred. It was strange 
 to observe liow completely the vulgarity disappeared 
 under the constraint of forms with which they were 
 unable to take liberties. The sermon reminded me of 
 the motion of a squirrel in a cage : the repetition of a 
 single idea with scarcely a variation of words, without 
 natural beginning and without natural end, and capable, 
 if necessary, of going on forever. 
 
 Se2)tember 2. — Reached St. Vincent at noon yester- 
 day. The approach to the harbor lies between the islands 
 of St. Vincent and San Antonio. San Antonio is a 
 mountain ridge, 7000 feet high and thirty miles long, 
 the sloping sides split into chasms, in which, so far as I 
 could see, not so much as a blade of grass was growing. 
 St. Vincent, on the left, is naked rock, sharp, jagged, 
 and precipitous, the highest point of it under 3000 feet. 
 The harbor is land-locked. Talk of the sunny south, the 
 land of cypress and myrtle and orange grove ! At St. 
 Vincent grows nothing but a dusky scrub, in a hollow 
 into which the wind has blown the sand. The rest of 
 the island is sterile, stern, and savage. No kindly rain 
 or frost here jjulverizcs the stone into soil. The peaks 
 istand out sharp, like the teeth of some primeval dragon, 
 huge molars and incisors, with here and there a gap 
 where a tusk has decayed with age. There are no 
 springs, no streams. Throughout the year scarcely a 
 shower falls there, and thei'efore not a green blade of 
 grass can show itself. The town is a coaling station, 
 juuch frequented by passing steamers. The inhabitants
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 191 
 
 are chiefly blacks or half-castes, whose business is to prej 
 on visitors. Naked nigger boys swim round the ship 
 div'ing for sixpences. Black sirens, handsome and im- 
 modest, tempt the passengers into the dancing sahjons, 
 which are opened when a steamer comes in. What a 
 notion must these wretched creatures have of the outer 
 wdrld, from the glimpses which they are tlius able to 
 get. of its passing occupants. I went over the jail, 
 which is attached to the Governor's house, and the nig- 
 ger turnkey showed me with a grin a special ward re- 
 served for the English. The talk of the colonists on 
 board ranges between wool, ostrich feathers, and ten per 
 eent on freightage. Colonial politics they regard as 
 avowedly nothing but a scramble for the plunder of 
 office. They^bet every day on the number of the miles 
 which the ship will have run at noon in the j)ast twenty - 
 four hours, and are as eager about it as Yankees. 
 
 Septernljer 4. — To-day we are exactly under the sun. 
 Fresh stars come into sight every night, and Sirius 
 shines grandly like a planet. I have been feeding 
 hitherto on Greek Plays : this morning 1 took Homer 
 instead, and tlie change is from a hothouse to the open 
 air. Tlie Greek dramatists, even ^Eschylus himself, are 
 burdened with a painful consciousness of the problem of 
 human life, with perplexed theories of Fate and Provi- 
 dence. Homer is fresh, free, and salt as the ocean. 
 Ulysses and Agamemnon are once more living and 
 breathing men Puligion is simple and unconscious, and 
 the gods, rough and questionable as they nuiy be, are 
 without the malignity of later centuries. Achilles, 
 when he sacrilices the Trojan youths at the tomb of 
 I'atroclus, is rather censured for his cruelty than praised 
 for his devotion. The notion of human sacrifice as a 
 means of propitiating the anger of the gods must have
 
 192 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE< 
 
 been imported from Phoenicia, perhaps with the Phoeni- 
 cian alphabet, progress, and the march of intellect ! 
 
 Septe7tiher C. — We are now in the south-east trade, 
 the sun to the north of us, and the heat less oppressive. 
 I hear much of the Capo Dutch. The English colonists 
 seem not to like them, and see their characters askew. 
 The judge says a Boer's religion is like tlie Kafir Obeah. 
 He is afraid of doing wrong, because he expects to be 
 damned for it. Perhaps, substantially, this is the most 
 valuable part of all religions — so long as it is really 
 believed. 
 
 Sejjtemher 7. — Sunday, a day of weariness : rest 
 when there has been no toil to rest from— rest only 
 from amusement, and therefore not rest at all. Captain 
 W. read the morning service. The divines (we have 
 two on board) were both sick, and unequal to an even- 
 ing function. Another ten days ought to bring us to 
 the Cape. The stars are changed. The pole-star is 
 undel* the horizon. Already a new heaven ; in a few 
 days tliere will be a new earth. The sea is no longer 
 violet, but brilliantly transparent bluish green. It is 
 spring this side of the line. At the Cape I shall find 
 the almonds coming into flower. 
 
 Septeniber 18. — The south-east trade dead in our teeth. 
 The air grows colder and colder, for a week past we have 
 gone back to our pea-jackets. The sea increases daily, 
 and the rolling becomes more violent. This morning 
 three distinct sets of waves, one set from the south-east, 
 in the line of our course, another from the south, 
 another from the south-west. They did not neutralize 
 each other, but continued to propagate tliemselves, each 
 in their own direction, ])roducing shapes entirely new to 
 me. The cabins are in confusion : books tumbling off 
 the shelvef, portmanteaus slipping on the floor, boots
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 193 
 
 and shoes dancing in wild disorder. Every day I grow 
 more convinced that colonial and all other political ques- 
 tions resolve themselves into one : What object do the 
 ruling powers set before themselves ? Is it to produce a 
 noble race of men, or is it to produce what they call 
 wealth ? If they aim chiefly at the second they will not 
 haive the first. Every wise man, whether Solomon or 
 Plato, Horace or Shakespeare, has but one answer on 
 this' subject : where your treasure is, there will your 
 heart be. Let wealth be the sublime end of our exist- 
 ence, and no new English nations will be born in the 
 Cape or in Australia. England itself will be a huge 
 grazing farm, managed on economical principles, and 
 the people, however rich they may appear, will be 
 steadily going^ down to what used to be called the Devil. 
 
 Septemher 19. — Four weeks out. Still rolling, with a 
 fierce sea and a head wind. I have given up serious 
 books, and have taken instead to "Little Dorrit. " 
 Dickens' wine has an excellent flavor, but it is watered 
 for present consumption, and I doubt if it will keep. 
 Captain "W. tells me that with S.E. winds in this lati- 
 tude, a high barometer indicates that the wind will rise, 
 and that if the mercury reaches 30*2 (it has been stand- 
 ing for the last fortnight at 30-1), I shall see a heavier 
 gale than I have yet experienced in my life. 
 
 September 21. — Running into Table Bay. The moun- 
 tain magnificent, 4000 feet high, and hanging over the 
 town, with cliffs so sheer that a revolver would send a 
 l)ii]lct from the edge of the precipice into the principal 
 street. 
 
 September 25. — At sea again. The three days, which 
 was all that I could at present afford to Cape Town, 
 have been extremely interesting, and have already 
 opened my eyes to much wliicli I did not anticipate.
 
 iy4 SKETCITRS FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 Tlie town itself, which was built by the Dutch, is a 
 curious old-fashioned place, with a modern skin imper- 
 fectly stretched over it. You see threat old mansions in 
 bad repair, with stiff gardens overrun with weeds, and 
 old gateways tlanked by couching lions. The Dutch, 
 among their many merits, introduced pine and oak here. 
 The pine forests now cover the sides of the mountain. 
 The oak grows rapidly to an enormous size, being in leaf 
 for nine months in the year. Everywhere you see the 
 marks of the stiff, stubborn, Calvinistic Holland. The 
 hotel in which I stayed was once the house of eome 
 wealthy citizen. The floors up-stairs are of stone. The 
 walls are panelled, the ceilings carved. The sash win- 
 dows are huge, heavy, and close-fitting. The dinner- 
 room is so stiff of aspect that the pert modern waiter 
 seems subdued by the atmosphere of it into old-fashioned 
 politeness. Cape Town has twice had its day of splen- 
 dor. Once under the Dutch government, and again 
 when it was the sanatorium of Bombay and Bengal and 
 the East Indian magnates used to come there to recruit 
 their livers. Now, even now, it was a pleasant thing to 
 see the English flag flying over a spot which, whatever 
 might be its fortunes, was still the most im^iortant naval 
 station in the world. 
 
 Among other persons I called on Mr. Saul Solomon, 
 whom 1 had often heard of as the advocate of the Exeter 
 Hall policy toward the natives. Nature has been unkind 
 to Mr. Solomon. He is scarcely taller than Tom 
 Thumb. It is the more honorable to him that, with 
 such disadvantages, he has made himself one of the 
 most useful, as well as one of the most important per- 
 sons in the Cape colony. The Colonial Parliament and 
 Ministry having approved of the operations in Natal 
 against Langabalole and his tribe, having indeed taken
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 195 
 
 charge of Laiigabalele as a state prisoner, I thought I 
 should learn from Mr. Solomon what was really to be 
 said in defence of the Natal government. Mr. Solomon 
 spoke, on the contrary, in terms of the strongest repro- 
 bation of what had been done ; but he was shy of 
 promising any help in the Cape Parliament should the 
 Jitiperial Government desire Langabalele to be released. 
 He seemed satisfied to think that the Imperial Govern- 
 ment was in a mess, and must get out of it as well as it 
 eould. He was cold also about emigration. White and 
 black laborers, he said, never worked well together, and 
 he seemed generally afraid that if the white race became 
 more numerous, the natives might be handled less 
 scrupulously. 
 
 The day following I accompanied the still more emi- 
 nent Mr. to his country house near Constantia. 
 
 The road lay through groves of oak. The house itself 
 is a hundred and fifty years old, and is well built, with 
 large airy rooms, strong, warm, and enduring. Tlie 
 solidity of everything here contrasts strangely witli the 
 showy flimsiness of the mansions run up by contract in 
 more modern settlements. Mr. is an extremely in- 
 teresting person. He drove me through the Constantia 
 country, among pine and oak forests, opening into ex- 
 quisite vineyards, about the slopes of the great moun- 
 tain. Leaving the forests, we then struck across the 
 natural plains, clothed with silver trees and sugar bushes, 
 and carpeted with wild heather and wild geraniums, the 
 sea in the distance soft and beautiful as the Mediterra- 
 nean. Tlie peninsula of Table Mountain, cut off from 
 the rest of Africa, would certainly make one of the most 
 precious possessions in the world. It could be made im- 
 prognable at a moderate expense. It is alwut the size 
 of Madeira, and of infinite fertility. It contains tlio
 
 106 SKETCHES FROir J. A. FROUDF. 
 
 only harbor available for ships of war either on the east 
 or west coast for many thousand miles. Whoever 
 holds this peninsula commands the ocean commerce 
 round the Cape. The peninsula commands South 
 Africa, for it commands its harbors. "Were England 
 wise in her generation, a line of forts from Table Bay to 
 False Bay would be the northern limit of her Imperial 
 responsibilities. 
 
 Septetnber 27. — We arrived yesterday at Port Eliza- 
 beth, on Algoa Bay, after a rapid run of thirty-nine 
 hours, distance 500 miles from Cape Town. Port Eliza- 
 beth is a handsome modern town, the chief port of the 
 eastern provinces, lying on an open hill-side as Brighton 
 does. There is no harbor, but the roadstead is sheltered 
 on the dangerous quarter, and is crowded with vessels of 
 all sizes. The loading and discharging is by lighters, 
 and managed as expeditiously as if the ship was in dock. 
 The beach is flat ; the available extent of it has been 
 much reduced by an attempted basin, inclosed by wooden 
 piers, which was no sooner made than it filled in with 
 sand. The bales and boxes are landed through the surf 
 on the backs of natives ; splendid fellows, with the 
 shape of an Antinous, stark naked, and shining from the 
 water as if they were oiled. The black skin, which is of 
 the texture of hippopotamus hide, seems to answer the 
 purposes of modesty. These fellows earn six shillings a 
 day ; they live on one, save the rest, and when they 
 have enough, they go inland, buy cattle, and two or 
 three wives to work for them, and do nothing the rest of 
 their lives. They all have the franchise. I asked one 
 of the members for the town how they managed at elec- 
 tion times. " Oh," he said, " we send a few barrels of 
 brandy into the native location." 
 
 The Florence^ Sevtemher 30, 7 a.m. — Running
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 197 
 
 along the African coast. Yesterday, we called at East 
 London, and lay all day there with a fearful roll dis- 
 charging cargo. East London lies at the mouth of the 
 Buffalo lliver, at the most exposed point of the conti- 
 nent. The shore is strewed with the wrecks of miser- 
 able vessels which have gone to pieces there. By and 
 by I am told that it is to be the finest port in the colony, 
 and so sanguine is the Colonial Government that exten- 
 BiYe railway works are already in progress in connection 
 with it. Inside the river is like the Dart, and is about 
 the same size, with a fair depth of water for a couple of 
 miles. The banks are high and wooded with Mimosa, 
 prickly pear, the giant Euphorbia Candelabra, and other 
 trees which 1 did not know. The mouth, unfortu- 
 nately, is at present closed -sv^th a sandbar, over which, 
 by watching our opportunity, the day being exceptionally 
 fine for East London, we contrive to pass in a life-boat. 
 The engineers' are hard at work narrowing the entrance, 
 which they conclude that the scour of the tide will then 
 keep open. But the rise and fall even at the springs is 
 only six feet, a small force for so large an enterprise, 
 and the Lidian Ocean is a formidable enemy. Mr. 
 Leicester, the chief engineer, is certain of success. I 
 should have felt more sanguine if he had been himself 
 less enthusiastic. 
 
 We are now off Kreli's country — indejoendent Kafir- 
 land — a strip two hundred miles long, which divides 
 Katal from the Colony. "We pass within half a mile of 
 the shore to avoid the current which sets outside steadily 
 to the west. From the sea it seems as if Kreli was king 
 of Paradise itself. A series of exquisite English [>arks 
 succeed one after the other ; undulating grassy lawns, 
 interspersed with woods and divided every four or five 
 miles by rivers, the course of which we trace by the pro-
 
 198 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 jecting crags and tlie ricli verdure of tlie ravines. Each 
 of these streams is unhappily blocked by sand as East 
 London is. The surf roars at their mouths with mo- 
 notonous thunder, never resting, never perhaps to rest 
 wliile the globe continues to revolve. The people of 
 the nation to come, who w^ill bj and by fill this beautiful 
 country, will never sail in either ship or boat on the 
 water which they will see so near them. The steamers 
 will go by their windows almost within hailing distance, 
 but the passengers must be carried on for a hundred 
 miles before they can set foot on shore. The skilfullest 
 crew that ever launched a life-boat would be dashed in 
 pieces in a moment in those tremendous rollers. 
 
 We had excellent fresh fish for breakfast this rhom- 
 ing. Gigantic mackerel, twenty to thirty pounds 
 weight, follow the steamer. The passengers are fishing 
 for them with halyard rope for lines, and flies construct- 
 ed of strips of scarlet cloth fastened on sharp hooks. 
 The mackerel rise in the wake like salmon. We are 
 going ten knots. Four out of five break off from the 
 speed, a fifth catches tight hold, and three or four of the 
 men are required to haul him in. We had nine of these 
 monsters on the deck in half an hour this morning. So 
 far as my experience goes, they are the only fish worth 
 eating that the Indian Ocean produces. 
 
 On shore there are few signs of life and less of culti- 
 vation. A few herds of Kafir cattle, a few kraals 
 (native villages) at long intervals, here and there a black 
 figure slowly moving along the sands, seem the solitary 
 human occupants of a land as fair as Homer's Island of 
 the Blest. 
 
 We have a distinguished journalist on board. I scan- 
 dalized him by saying that I thought that in a hundred 
 years newspapers would be abolished by general consent
 
 SOUTH AFRICA J^ XOTES. 109 
 
 as a nuisance. A gazette of authentic news would be 
 published by authority, and that would be all. 
 
 I was told a characteristic story of a Dutch farmer to- 
 day. His estate adjoined the Diamond Fields. Had he 
 
 - remained where he was, he could have made a large 
 fortune. Milk, butter, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fniit, 
 
 p-'j-an up to_ fabulous prices. The market was his own to 
 demand w-hat he pleased. But he was disgusted at the 
 
 ^•"intrusion upon his solitude. The diggers worried him 
 
 ' trom morning to night demanding to buy, while he re- 
 quired his farm produce for his own family. He sold 
 his land, in liis impatience, for a tenth of what he might 
 have got had lie cared to wait and bargain, mounted liis 
 /wife and children into his wagon, and moved off into the 
 wilderness. AVhich was the wisest man ? the Dutcli 
 farmer or the Yankee Englishman who was laughing at 
 him ? The only book that the Dutchman had ever read 
 was the Bible, and he knew no better. The whole talk 
 among these people is of diamond fields, and gold fields, 
 and diamonds and gold never made the material of a 
 nation, and never will. 
 
 Durban, October 2. — The harbor at Durban, named 
 after Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the most popular governor 
 who ever ruled at the Cape, is the spot where Vasco da 
 Gama landed on Christmas Day, in 1498. The country 
 of which Durban is the port, acquired in this way the 
 name of Natal. After an interval of 400 miles nature 
 lias relaxed in her monotony, and has created of herself 
 a channel of the same kind as that which Mr. Leicester 
 is attempting to make at East London. A high wooded 
 ridge or bluff, curved and narrow, juts out from the 
 coast-line, stretches parallel to it for two miles toward the 
 east, and then bends round and terminates, forming a 
 natural ]>rcakwater. A long point runs out to meet it,
 
 200 SKETCHES FROM ,1. A. FROUDE. 
 
 and thus inside is formed a, land-loeked basin ten or 
 twelve miles in circumference, the sea entering through 
 a single narrow passage, and the scour from so large a 
 body of water being thus considerable. Even here there 
 is a bar which the engineers in their attempts at im- 
 provement have made rather worse, but in moderate 
 weather vessels of 1000 tons can enter without much 
 difficulty. The scene as we run m is singularly beauti- 
 ful. The sky is cloudless. The sun, just risen, is 
 faintly veiled by a soft Italian haze. The ships in the 
 bay are dressed out in flags, wliite puffs of smoke break 
 from a battery as the guns are fired in honor of the ar- 
 rival of the steamer. We bring up in a deep channel 
 close under the bluff, in the shade of tropical trees, 
 among which the monkeys skip to and fro, and from 
 which occasionally a too-curious python makes his way 
 along the cable by which ships are moored to the shore. 
 "We land at the custom-house, among a group of Natal- 
 ians, who have hurried down to meet their friends. I 
 am struck, as at Port Elizabeth, with tlie florid fleshy 
 look of the settlers. The climate of the Cape suits well 
 the lymphatic Teuton. The Dutch, w^ho have been 
 there for two centuries, have expanded into the dimen- 
 sions of Patagonians. I walked with one of the latter 
 along the sands to the town. We had to cross a stream, 
 and a Kafir undertook to carry us over. He staggered 
 under the Dutchman, and had nearly fallen with him. 
 With me he trotted away as if I had been a child. But 
 I had as nearly dropped from him from another cause. 
 It was my first experience of the smell in such close 
 proximity. 
 
 October 3. — The South African colonists are proud of 
 their country, and are pleased to show it. I should have 
 liked a day to look about me at leisure, but I was in the
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN" NOTES. 201 
 
 suite of a great person, to "vvliom it was necessary to 
 show the sugar plantations with the least possible delay, 
 and I have this moment returned from a thirty miles 
 drive over roads as rough as Browning^s poetry, having 
 -been jolted into idiocy, and having three times fainted 
 ^or very near it), from the combined odor of negroes and 
 molasses. _ But the country is pretty enough, undulating 
 in rounded hills, the soil red and rich, the sugar planta- 
 tions most extensive, and considering the difficulty of 
 •the labor question, most creditable to ISTatal energy. 
 The forest, when uncleared, is rich with a variety of 
 trees, all new to me, and the varieties of wild creepers 
 ■which I admired at East London. The planters' houses 
 ,«ire prettily surrounded with orange and lemon trees. 
 
 The climate of Katal is exquisite. The days are brill- 
 iant and not overpoweringly hot. The nights are cool 
 and fragrant with orange blossoms. The stars shine 
 with a steady lustre. The fire-flies gleam. The moth- 
 hawk hunts his fluttering prey. The Indian Ocean 
 moans on the shore, and will moan on till the dav which 
 Tintoret has painted, when the ships shall drift deserted 
 on the waves, and the human inhabitants of the earth 
 shall have passed away from it forever. 
 
 Octoher 8. — The people are most kind, I have been 
 staying for a day or two with a clever planter who has 
 an estate and a sugar-mill outside the town. His house — 
 a very handsome one — is finely situated on a brow over- 
 looking the harbor ; it is itself of wood, and was brought 
 out complete from Paris. My host talks much and 
 rather bitterly on the Nigger question. If the Kafir 
 would work, he could treble his profits. As matters are 
 he depends mainly on coolies. If liberality and personal 
 kindness would bring the Kafir into his service he would 
 not find the difficulty which ho does. There could not
 
 202 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 l)u a better master. It is an intricate problem. Here in 
 Natal are nearly 400,000 natives, who have come in 
 imder shelter of the British Government, to escape the 
 tyranny of their own chiefs. They are allowed as much 
 land as they want for their locations. They are polyg- 
 amists, and treat their women as slaves, while they 
 themselves idle, or do worse. Of whites in the colony 
 there are but 18,000 all told. It is too natural that the 
 whites should feel uneasy. 
 
 There are large pythons in the woods here. My host 
 told me (perhaps he was playing with my credulity) that 
 one moonlight night he was cantering down his avenue, 
 meaning to sleep at his place of business in the town, 
 when he saw, as he thought, a tree left lying on the 
 road. lie got off to remove it, when the tree became 
 alive and attacked him. He was in evening dress, and 
 had no weapon of any kind. The engagement lasted for 
 twenty minutes, when, getting tired of it, he made a 
 slip-knot in his silk pocket-handkerchief, passed it over 
 the python's neck, and then drawing it tight, he jumped 
 on to his horse, and dragged the monster behind him 
 into Durban. There, as it seemed dead, he thrust it 
 into a warehouse for the night. When he went to look 
 at it in the morning, it had recovered from its adven- 
 ture, but not wishing to renew the battle, dashed past 
 him into the street and rolled away into the forest. I 
 tell the tale as X. Y told it to me. 
 
 Last night we had a native musical exhibition on the 
 lawn. Forty or fifty Kafirs were brought in for my 
 amusement. A large fire was made of pressed sugar- 
 cane ; and then in the distance we heard a long low 
 monotonous cry, growing louder as it approached, with 
 a bugle breaking in absurdly at intervals. The ladies of 
 our party arranged themselves in chairs in the veranda.
 
 <-•/,» 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 203 
 
 Presently a naked figure, with featliers in his hair, ran 
 in on all-fours like a baboon, capered round the fire 
 dangling an assegai and disappeared. More howling 
 followed, and the procession came out from behind the 
 bushes, chanting something which was like the baying of 
 hounds at the moon, and stamping violently in time. 
 The creatures ranged themselves round the tire and 
 squattered on their haunches. Two or three had shirts, 
 /■ the rest had a thin short wisp of goat's hair round their 
 ' "loins, and that was all. In the uncertain light, in which 
 they looked horribly apelike, they continued their song, 
 or whatever it was. " Ho ha yah, ho ha yah," growing 
 gradually louder and more guttural into '^ ITogh ha, 
 /hunghha," till their chests began to heave and work, 
 and fifty human beings were grunting like so many mad 
 pigs inspired suddenly with an ambition to become nmsi- 
 cians. They sweated, they steamed, they swung their 
 clubs over their heads, pausing at intervals to gaze in 
 each other's faces with rolling eyes and shining teeth, as 
 if in rapt admiration of each other's loveliness. Notmtli- 
 standing their exertions, they were not exhausted. They 
 continued, eternally repeating the same movements and 
 the same words. I asked what the words meant. It was 
 no more than what a wolf intends by his howl. " I like 
 killing. 1 Kke killing bull I like killing buck." The 
 sole variation being a grunt of praise to the chief of the 
 tribe. " Ilrunch, hrunch, brunch !" and at the end a 
 prolonged " Ilaugh !" in honor of me as an English 
 stranger. 
 
 Such is the free Kafir of Natal, as he lives at his own 
 sweet will under the shelter of the British dominion. 
 Under his chief in the forest he is at least a man. Trained 
 and disciplined under European authority, he might be- 
 come as fine a specimen of manhood as an English or
 
 204 SKETCHES FKOM J. A. FROUDE, 
 
 Irish j)oliceman. Left at liberty to do as he pleases, this 
 is what he becomes. Do we think the black races so 
 superior to Europeans that they can improve without 
 training ? Our grandfathers treated them as cattle ; we 
 treat them as if it were a sin to lay them under the same 
 restraint as our own children. Our cruelty and our ten- 
 derness are alike fatal to them ; the second, perhaps, is 
 the most fatal of the two. 
 
 Maritzburg^ October 17. — Arrived here a week ago, 
 after a picturesque drive of fifty miles on the mail-cart. 
 After leaving the coast and the sugar plantations, signs 
 of cultivation disappear almost wholly. There are a few 
 farms scattered along the roadside, but with little sign 
 of work upon them. The energy of the colony has gone 
 into the transport department. The enormous wealth 
 suddenly developed at the Diamond Fields has revolu- 
 tionized South Africa. Horses, men, and cattle are out 
 upon the roads wagon-driving between the Fields and the 
 ports. The poor Kafirs must have many merits. The 
 farmers go away, leaving their houses and their families 
 and property undefended. No outrage is e\-er heard of. 
 The wag(Mis are sent many hundred miles through a 
 country almost uninhabited. They are loaded with a 
 thousand articles which the natives much covet, and 
 highway robbery is unknown. Yet the whites are afraid 
 of them. No wonder, considering the disproportion of 
 numbers. If they could be induced to work they would 
 be manageable ; but the settlers legitimately dread the 
 effects of deliberate idleness supported by polygamy and 
 female slavery, on the native character. 
 
 At Maritzburg I am occupied in preparing for my 
 journey into the Free States. My equipage will be a 
 strong African cart, six mules, a tent, a gun and a rifle, 
 a black driver, and a joung Dutchman, son of a member
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 205 
 
 of the Natal Council, who goes with me to interpret and 
 be otherwise useful. Maritzburg being the seat of 
 Government, I find an unexpectedly cultivated and 
 agreeable society there, and my friend the judge, who 
 has accompanied me from Dartmouth, is the most charm- 
 ing of hosts. 
 
 .-';i The country round is at present a mere desert. How 
 beautiful it will one day be, when it is irrigated and 
 planted, a single specimen of what the soil can produce 
 
 ' will suffice to show. 
 
 Six years ago the judge, who understands gardening, 
 purchased forty-five acres of perfectly open moor. The 
 
 ^ spot which he selected was well situated, and sheltered 
 tty a mountain, down which falls a stream of water. He 
 fenced his ground in, and round the borders he sow^ed 
 the seeds of a variety of coniferse and the Australian 
 eucalyptus. In this short interval the seeds have shot up 
 into trees forty or fifty feet high. Passing through 
 them you find yourself among groves of oranges, and 
 lemons, and citrons, and limes, figs, peaches, apricots, 
 and almonds. On a favorable slope are a few acres of 
 coffee-trees loaded with fruit. You leave the coffee and 
 you are among flowering trees and shrubs. In a hollow 
 is a sheet of water, fringed with roses, azaleas, and gera- 
 niums. There is so much shade that you never feel the 
 heat oppressive. If you require refreshment, you can 
 stroll among the strawberry beds, or if you prefer it, 
 among pineapples and melons. Whatever of rare or 
 beautiful, either of the Old World or the New, European, 
 African, or American, will flourish in this climate and 
 soil, the judge has here cultivated, and so admirable are 
 both that each plant contends with its neighbor which 
 shall spring the soonest to the highest perfection. 
 
 We had our luncheon in a dripping cave, festooned
 
 20G SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 with ferns, at tlie edge of a waterfall. A fairer haunt 
 was never seen for legendary spirit, and I had poured a 
 silent libation to the nymph of the grotto before I re- 
 membered that I was in a land where there was neither 
 nymph nor fairy, faun nor saint. These airy beings do 
 not thrive in English colonies under constitutional 
 governments. 
 
 Bushman'' s River, October 24. — The road through 
 Katal is a gradual ascent from the sea level to the high 
 plateau of the interior. From the summit of the 
 Drachenberg range, the fall on the eastern side is marked 
 by all the characters of mountain scenery ; sharp preci- 
 pices, abrupt ravines, and rivers leaping down in a suc- 
 cession of cascades. When I pass the crest, I am told 
 that I shall find myself on a boundless plain, sloping 
 westward imperceptil^ly for a thousand miles to the 
 Atlantic. The roadside is fringed with the skeletons of 
 the wretched mules and oxen, which, overdriven and 
 brutally treated, have dropped out of the wagon teams 
 and have fallen down and died. In a few hours their 
 bones are cleaned b}^ the vultures. We are now 5000 
 feet above the sea. The Draclienberg is right in front 
 of us, looking like the Pyrenees from Dax, the colors 
 only softer and more Italian. The farms appear more 
 and more neglected. I have not seen one laborer work- 
 ing in the fields since I left Maritzburg. Horse, man, 
 and ox are on the roads. It is all right, economically, I 
 suppose. More money is to be made in this way. And 
 the remains of the miserable cattle which have been 
 flogged to death ? Well, they must have died some 
 time. 
 
 The camping places are strewed with broken tins and 
 fragments of Hennessy's brandy bottles. The Kafir 
 costume varies with the climate. Down at Durban it
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 207 
 
 was a liat and shoes, or more often neither. Up here 
 
 the air is colder, and a cast-off soldier's jacket is in 
 
 fashion, lower garments being dispensed with everj^- 
 
 where. In the park at Maritzburg I saw a dandy Katir 
 
 -srroom holdino- the horses of a curricle. He had a short 
 
 smartly cut groom's coat, a hat with cockade, and noth- 
 
 ^fOg else. Ilis lower limbs shone so brightly that they 
 
 appeared to be polislied with blacking. The hotels on 
 
 ^'e road are tolerable, bnt the manners of the colonists 
 
 office I left Maritzburg do not improve. In the English 
 
 colonies — in South Africa at any rate — there are a set of 
 
 people who answer to the mean whites of the Southern 
 
 States of America. A large part of our emigrants are 
 
 jHore or less vagabonds, whom their friends have got rid 
 
 •of. When they see out here any one who looks like a 
 
 gentleman tliey make it their business to teach him at 
 
 once that he is not in England by a rudeness which they 
 
 mistake for independence. They suppose this country to 
 
 be virtually a republic, and they consider courtesy to bo 
 
 a bad tradition of the Old World. 
 
 Tugeld River, Octoher 25. — A lovely evening, with a 
 full moon, and a soft east wind blowing. I have been 
 pitting in the veranda of the hotel, reluctant to go in. 
 The landscape, the great forms of which are always 
 beautiful, can here be best enjo^^ed at night, when the 
 dead oxen are no longer visible, or the nakedness to 
 which the country is doomed by the laziness of man. 
 The land here, as elsewhere, is boundlessly fertile. A 
 large river runs throufj^h it with abundant f;ill. Irrimi- 
 tion is perfectly easy, yet nothing is done. At this hotel 
 we drink the dirty drain water. I asked the landlord if 
 he had no well. Within twenty feet of the surface 
 there was obviously pure water in abundance. '* A 
 well !" he said, indignantly ; " and who is to dig it {
 
 208 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 The Government won't make tlie Kafirs work, and if 
 they want wells, thej must make them themselves." 
 
 Hotel under the Drachenherg, frontier of the Free 
 State, Oetoher 27. — Here at least in the mountains, 
 where the hill-sides and valleys are watered by nature, 1 
 lioped that I should at last taste fresh milk. But I 
 could get only the eternal tinned milk from Switzerland, 
 and they are out of vegetables, for an expected cargo of 
 potatoes has not arrived from Limei'ick. My landlord 
 at the Draclienberg, however, is not of the idle sort. 
 He is a Boer, the first that I have seen, large-boned, 
 healthy, and good-humored. He is a cattle and horse 
 breeder, and being on the border, has a farm on the 
 edge of it, where, undei the Free State laws, the Kafir 
 servants can be better depended on. 
 
 I leave Natal vnt\\ unhopeful feelings. The settlers 
 themselves are not to blame. In the presence of a vast 
 and increasing native population, encouraged in idleness 
 by the indulgence of those detestable systems of polyg- 
 amy and female slavery, it is impossible to expect white 
 men to exert themselves for the genuine improvement 
 of the colony. But the fact remains, that a country 
 which seems to have been made by nature to be covered 
 with thriving homesteads and a happy and prosperous 
 people, is given over to l^arrenness and desolation. Be- 
 fore there can be a change, some authority must be in- 
 troduced there which will control both blacks and whites, 
 and bring the relations between them into a more natural 
 condition. The sole remedy thought of here is more 
 freedom, and what they call a " 'sponsible ministry." 
 They look to America, and they fancy the colonies have 
 only to be free to grow as the United States have 
 grown. America was colonized hefore the aloe had blos- 
 somed. The grain of the old oak is in New England.
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 209 
 
 The English in South Africa are pnlpy endogens. 
 They may make a nation some day, bnt they liave a 
 long journey to travel first. 
 
 One would like to knoAv the reflections which the aloe 
 makes upon itself when it throws up its flowering stem. 
 Did ever plant make such unexampled progress ? and 
 progress so sure, too ; for is not the flower the promise of 
 the seed of future aloes, the heart of the aloe's life ? 
 Qfie splendid leap and bound, and a dull prickly shrub 
 Itas shot into a tree, which is fringed with pendant bells. 
 Each infant aloe colony at its side, blossoms too in tiny 
 mimicry, saying to its parent, " Am not 1 as good as 
 you? or possibly better?" How little either of them 
 kiK)w the price which must be paid for their burst of 
 vanity ! America was not established in this way. The 
 price is death. 
 
 Tlarrismith^ Orange Free State, Oatoher 'i^. — Crossed 
 into the Free State yesterday. The top of the pass is 
 1800 feet above the hotel. Our cart was dragged up by 
 oxen. The mules walked. The road on the Natal side 
 winds up against the face of the mountain. We arrive 
 at the top, and find, as I was led to expect, a plain level 
 and boundless as the sea. ITarrismith, the first place we 
 come to, is named after Sir Harry Smith, of Aliwal and 
 Kafir war notoriety, and is a growing, well-conditioned 
 town. The change of government is already apparent in 
 the absence of loafing natives. The Free State laws 
 against vagrancy are strict. Every man found wander- 
 ing about may ])c called on to show how he is gaining 
 his subsistence, and if he can give no satisfactory account 
 of himself, he is set to woik on the roads. 
 
 Leokof {Lion-head^, Saturday, Octoher 31. — I was in 
 
 luck at Harrismitli. T fell :iv with Sir M. B , an 
 
 English baronet, ex-caj)taiii of dragoons, who after some
 
 210 SKETniRR FROM J. A. FROITDE. 
 
 years of service in India, was obliged by bad health to 
 leave the army, and not wishing to idle away the remain- 
 der of his life in England, determined to settle as a 
 farmer in South Africa. He entered into partnership 
 
 with another Englishman, Mr. , an extreme Radical, 
 
 but as Sir M. said, with apparent surprise at the 
 
 possibility of such a thing, " a gentleman to the heels of 
 h/j boots." They bought two tracts of land, one in the 
 Transvaal, one in the Free State, and five years ago Sir 
 
 M. was set down on the estate which was to be his 
 
 future home, sixty miles east of Harrismith. It con- 
 sisted of 19,000 acres of grassy wilderness, without so 
 much as a shed or Kafir hut upon it, with a round kopf 
 or hill, flat at top, with steep sides, rising out of the 
 middle of it, which a few years since was a noted lion 
 preserve. The plains were still covered with infinite 
 herds of antelopes. His nearest neighbor was a Boer, 
 twelve miles distant. He was unmarried and alone. 
 
 Up to this time Sir M. had lived in the luxury of 
 
 a smart cavalry regiment, and had never had less than 
 three or four servants to anticipate every want. In 
 South Africa at starting he had nothing to depend on 
 but himself. He built his house with his own hands, 
 with only a native or two to help him. He made fences 
 and sheds and farm-buildings. He gathered cattle, 
 sheep, and horses about him. He drove his own plough, 
 he sheared his own lambs, he was his own mason, house 
 carpenter, cook, and housemaid. Gradually he gathered 
 servants and laborers about him, as a man who will work, 
 himself is sure to do. The hardest part of the business 
 is over. His farming prospers, and he is steadily and 
 surely making a fortune. 
 
 I met Sir M. at dinner at Harrismith. He was 
 
 to return to Leokof the next day, and he invited me to
 
 SOUTH AFRICAK NOTES. 211 
 
 go with him. It lay on my own road to Pretoria, so it 
 was settled that my cart and mules should follow at 
 
 leisure. Sir M. took charge of me in his dog-cart, 
 
 and we started with four half -broken horses, which he 
 -drove splendidly. We slept on the road at a winkel^ or 
 
 ;i9adside store, where Sir M. had an enthusiastic 
 
 "^"welcome. In the morning we started early, and were 
 
 here to breakfast. Sir M. is a tall handsome man 
 
 about forty, with a hooked nose, a gray soldier's eye, a 
 'well-cut chin ; and in face, figure, and mind a thorough- 
 bred aristocrat. By courtesy, uprightness, and natural 
 superiority he coirmiands the respect of the Boers. lie 
 accepts his situation, not cheerfully, but without com- 
 plaint, sustained by tlie consciousness of success, and too 
 proud to quarrel wdth a lot which he has made for him- 
 self. Nature is hard up here 6000 feet above the sea. 
 No more orange groves and rose gardens ; but the tree- 
 less, shelterless plain, with the fierce sun by day and 
 frosts at night, and thunder-storms beyond the worst 1 
 
 have ever witnessed in Europe. Sir M. is showing 
 
 what an Englishman can still be. It is a rehef to me 
 after what I saw in Natal, and I admire the character 
 that has fought through so rude a trial. At meals he 
 has but one table, and he sits himself at the head of it, 
 witli his white servants on each side of him, well man- 
 nered and respectful. So it was in England for many 
 centuries, while the feudal loyalty, which democracy has 
 not yet wholly worn away, made its way into the blood 
 of our race. So old Cato dined with his serfs in the 
 farm kitchen, probably on just such fare as we had before 
 us to-day : soup, mutton, bread, and a glass or two of 
 wine of the country. 
 
 Novemher 4. — On the road to the Vaal River — First 
 experience of camping out. I am alone in my tent with
 
 212 SKETCHKS FHOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 a glaring snn raising tlie temperature inside to 90 de- 
 grees. The mules have strayed, being insufficiently 
 hobbled. I sent Charley, my black driver, in search of 
 them in the early morning. He returned with his face 
 as near white as nature permitted, declaring that the 
 devil had jumped out of the ground at his feet with four 
 young ones. I suppose it was an ant-bear. Any way 
 the n ules are lost. He has gone back to our last 
 halting-place to look^ for them. My other youtli has 
 started with a rifle to shoot buck, which are round us in 
 tens of thousands, and liere am I by the side of a pond 
 which is trampled by the antelopes into mud soup, the 
 only stuff in the shape of water which we have to depend 
 on for our coffee, and, alas ! for our washing. To add 
 to the pleasure of the situation the season of the thunder- 
 storms has set in. The lightning was playing round us 
 all yesterday afternoon, and we shall now have a stonn 
 daily. Whole teams of oxen are often killed. To a 
 white man, they say, there is no danger while he has a 
 black at his side, the latter being the better conductor. 
 When one is struck another must be immediately substi- 
 tuted. 
 
 The Boers are shooting on the hills round me. They 
 ride up to the herds and fire into the middle of them, a 
 cart follows to carry the game, and the vultures wheel in 
 hundreds overhead on the watch for the wounded. 
 These antelopes consume the grass, and must be exter- 
 minated before sheep and cattle can be reared. 
 
 Ileidelherg^ November 7. — A young Boer brought in 
 the mules, whicli he found fifteen miles off, making 
 tlieir way back to Xatal. We were soon on the I'oad 
 again, and yesterday evening crossed the Yaal River. 
 We are now in the Transvaal Republic, the Alastia of 
 South Africa, where every runaway from justice, every
 
 SOUTH AFRICAX NOTES. 213 
 
 broken-down speculator, every reckless adventurer linds 
 an asylum ; while the gold just discovered is tempting 
 stray Californians and Australians to try their fortune 
 tliere as well. 
 
 ^- Pretoria^ November 12. — At the farthest point of my 
 iourney. Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal and the 
 
 ;^«^at of govfirnment of its famous President, lies in a basin 
 snrrounded by rocky hills, at the rise of the Limpopo 
 itiver. Springs of abundant and beautifully clear water 
 
 'break out in the adjoining valleys. The Dutch, who 
 have a genius for irrigation, have carried open conduits 
 alone: the streets. The trees in the moistened soil 
 
 ^flourish with the greatest luxuriance. We have descend- 
 ed 2000 feet from Harrismith ; and although the place 
 is not yet a^uarter of a century old, you seem as you 
 come down into the hollow of Pretoria, to be entering a 
 forest of eucalyptus and oleander. 
 
 Potscheff Strom, November 20. — On the road once 
 more. On my way to this place from Pretoria I spent a 
 night at the house of a representative Transvaal Boer, 
 01)erholster by name. Camping out has grown disagree- 
 able. The forenoons are clear and hot. About two 
 o'clock ilecks of cloud begin to show. By sunset the 
 horizon is black all round, distant lightning flashing in 
 every direction. The air becomes deathly still, and by 
 this time your tent must be pitched, and a trench dug 
 round it ; your cart must be secured, and your belong- 
 ings lashed as tight as ropes can bind them. Suddenly, 
 with a loud roar, comes a hurricane, sending dust, sand, 
 gravel, whisking past, as if the bags of ^olus had burst. 
 This lasts five minutes or so. Again a pause, and then 
 the artillery of heaven opens out upon you, a crash as if 
 from a thousand cannon, east, west, north, south, over- 
 head and everywhere. The forked lightning blazes Mnth-
 
 214 SKETCHES FROM .T. A. FROt'DE. 
 
 out interval, red, white, blue, green The rain happily 
 pours in cataracts along with it, or the trees and animals 
 exposed would fare worse than they do. This sort of 
 thing continues six or seven hours, and is repeated 
 almost every day while the wet season lasts, so that a 
 tent, notwithstanding the suj^erior cleanliness of it, no 
 longer forms the most comfortable of night lodgings. 
 
 My old Boer host on this occasion is a patriarch of 
 sixty. His farm is large, well planted, and well culti- 
 vated, and inside his house and outside there is an ap- 
 pearance of rude abundance. On his hall table stands a 
 huge clamped Bible of 1750, with a register of the 
 family for 120 years. His sons and daughters are 
 married, and live with their wives and husbands in cot- 
 tages on the estate at no great distance. With each new 
 family another hundred acres have been fenced in and 
 brought under the plough. Children and grandchildren 
 dropped in for the evening meal at the common table, 
 young giants, handsome, grave, and ponderous, and 
 bright-eyed girls dashing through the doors out of the 
 storm, and flinging off their dripping hoods. Our sup- 
 per consisted of cold venison, eggs, bread, and Indian 
 corn, with — here at any rate — fresh milk. The old man 
 said a long grace before and after. I glanced at the 
 youths. There was not a sign of weariness about them. 
 Their manners were perfectly simple and reverent. 
 
 My bed was rough, but clean, and I was not disturbed 
 by intruders. In the morning I was awoke by a psalm, 
 with which the day's work always begins on a Boer's 
 farm. The breakfast was like the supper overnight. 
 The old lady and two young ones, who alone appeared 
 of the party of the evening before, looked as stiff and 
 prim as if they had walked out of one of Van Eyck's 
 pictures.
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 215 
 
 The Diamond Fields, Noveiriber 28. — The storms put 
 an end to mj gy P^J \\i^. I sold mv cart, mules, and 
 guns at Potscheffstrom, sent my two lads home by a 
 wagon to Natal, and took to the mail-cart. The roads 
 are mere tracks, littered with stones the size of thirty- 
 two-pound cannon-balls. The mail travels night and 
 dijy, with ten mules or horses, and plunges on with 
 supreme disregard either of rock or hole. The cart is 
 roofed and curtained with leather, the brass buttons by 
 which the curtains are fastened being so conveniently 
 arranged that at each jolt you are likely to have your 
 temple cut or your cheek laid open. The distance from 
 Potscheffstrom to this place is from four to five hundred 
 miles. I had several fellow-passengers, all characteristic 
 of the spot for which I was Iwund. One was a Jew 
 diamond dealer, another a storekeeper, another a digger, 
 another a land shark or speculator. A fifth amused and 
 instructed me. " When I first came to this country, 
 sir," he said, " 1 tried industry ; but it didn't pay, and 1 
 took to scheming and did better." His schemmg con- 
 sisted in going to England when the Diamond diggings 
 were opened, buying a gambling and drinking saloon 
 with all necessary fittings, securing the services of half a 
 dozen young ladies from the Ilaymarket to attend, and 
 carrying it all out and setting it going. With this con- 
 trivance he made thirty or forty thousand pounds in one 
 year, but he lost it the next in gambling. " Alas !" he 
 said, all that 1 touch turns to gold. Any fool can make 
 a fortune here, but it requires a wise man to keep it." 
 
 On the evening of the third day after leaving Pot- 
 scheffstrom, we came down to the Vaal River, intending 
 to cross in a ferry-boat an hour before sunset. The 
 thunder-clouds unf(>rtunately had gathered up that after- 
 noon blacker than I had yet seen them. Between four
 
 210 SKETCHES FROM J. A. EROUDE. 
 
 and five o'clock the storm l)egan, and between the dark- 
 ness and the blinding effects of the lightning, in tlie in- 
 terv^als of the flashes we could scarcely see ten yards 
 from us. Even in Sonth Africa I never saw such a dis- 
 play of celestial fireworks. The lightning was rose color, 
 deepening at times to crimson. Each flash appeared like 
 a cross, a vertical line seeming to strike the earth, a 
 second line crossing it horizontally. The air was a blaze 
 of tire. The rain fell in such a deluge that the plain in 
 a few minutes was like a lake. Of course we could not 
 move. The horses stood shivering up to their fetlocks in 
 water. At one time there was no interval between the 
 flash and the report, so that w^e were in the very centre 
 of the storm. The sense of utter helplessness prevented 
 me from being nervous ; I sat still and looked at it in 
 mere amazement. In two hours it was over. The sky 
 cleared almost suddenly, and, with the dripping land- 
 scape shining in the light of a summer sunset, we 
 splashed on to the river, here about as broad as the 
 Thames at Westminster. "We crossed M'ith some 
 trouble, the ferry-boat being half full of water. Night 
 being now on us in earnest, we had to wait at the ferry- 
 man's hut till the moon rose. He had caught some 
 barbel (so he called them) in the river with night lines. 
 One of these monsters, as big as a moderate-sized pig, 
 with an enormous head and long horns, the conductor 
 l)0ught, to take on and sell at the Diamond Fields. 
 The diggers are open-handed, and the price of anything 
 at Kimberley (as my speculating friend told me) is 
 whatever the owner likes to ask. 1 objected to this ad- 
 dition to our compan_y in the wagon, so it was lashed to 
 the pole underneath, the tail flapping on the sands. At 
 10.30 we started (having lost time to make up) with ten 
 half-broken horses. I asked how the road was, and got
 
 r.. 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 217 
 
 a shrug for an answer. In a few minutes we were 
 bounding at full speed over a track littered with cannon- 
 balls, and our bodies flying like shuttlecocks between our 
 seats and the roof. I for one felt as if I should go to 
 ,-pieces. At intervals the conductor looked in, coolly say- 
 'ing, " Well, gentlemen, how do you feel yourselves ?" 
 P-',i He knew by experience, I suppose, that we should be 
 none the worse for it, and people do not go to South 
 ^iricsL to be comfortable. Enough that at ten this morn- 
 'iffg we arrived at the spot which has caused so much 
 heart-burning in South African society, and disturbed 
 the market for jewels all over the world. 
 
 The town of Kimberley, so called because Lord Kim- 
 berley was the Colonial Minibter who is responsible for 
 the annexation of this precious possession, is like a 
 squalid Wimbledon Camp set down in an arid desert. 
 The houses are of iron, wood, and canvas, every particle 
 of which has been brought out from Enirland, and has 
 been carried up on wagons from the sea. The streets are 
 axle deep in what is either mud or dust according to the 
 Eeaeon. The inhabitants, who are of all nations and colors, 
 muster at the present time between twenty and thirty 
 thousand, and may be described as the Bohemians of the 
 four continents. By Bohemian I do not mean to be un- 
 complimentary. I mean merely a class of persons who 
 prefer adventure and speculation to settled industry, and 
 who do not work well in the harness of ordinary life. 
 Here are diggers from America and Australia, German 
 speculators, Fenian head-centres, traders, saloon-keepers, 
 professional gamblers, l)arristers (I heard one of these say 
 it was a lawyer's Eldorado), ex-officers of the army and 
 navy, younger sons of good fann'ly, who have not taken 
 to a profespion or have Ixjen obliged to leave it. A mar- 
 vellous motley assemblage, among whom money flo.\s
 
 218 SKETCHKS FRONT J. A. FROUDK, 
 
 like water from the amazing productiveness of the mine ; 
 and in the midst of tlieni a hundred or so keen eyed 
 Jewish merchants, who have gatliered like eagles over 
 their prey, and a few thousand natives who have come to 
 work for wages, to steal diamonds, and to lay their earn- 
 ings out in rifles and powder. 
 
 There are three pits out of which the diamonds are 
 taken. One of them, two miles off, is comparatively un- 
 productive ; one better, hut still negligently worked ; the 
 third is the famous Koppe, about which the town has 
 formed itself. Tliis Koppe was once a rounded hillock, 
 swelling out of the plain and covered with mimosa trees, 
 under the shade of which passing wagons stopjjed to rest. 
 Eyes negligently looking round one day saw something 
 shining in the grass ; a tuft was pulled up, and more 
 sparks were seen about the roots. Digging began, and 
 it was discovered that through the level shale which 
 forms the ordinary surface an oval hole had been cut, as 
 if by some elliptical boring tool, working with singular 
 evenness. The lengtli of the opening is about 1200 
 feet, the breadth, 900, the sides perpendicular ; the 
 depth unknown, for they are afraid to bore. A discovery 
 that the bottom is near would destroy the value of the 
 property. A discovery that there is no bottom would 
 convulse the diamond market. At j)resent they have cut 
 down about 120 feet. 
 
 Four or five thousand blacks are picking into the blue 
 crumbling substance, neither clay nor stone, in which 
 the diamonds are imbedded. The area is divided into 
 claims, or quadrilateral sections, thirty feet by twenty, 
 "which are held as freeholds, and again are subdivided 
 into half and quarter claims. Each owner works by 
 himself or with his own servants. lie has his own wnre 
 rrn^Q, and his own basket, by which he sends his stuff to
 
 SOUTIT AFRICAN NOTES. 219 
 
 the surface to be washed. The rim of tlie pit is fringed 
 with windlasses. The descending wire-ropes stretch 
 from them thick as gossamers on an autnmn meadow. 
 The system is as demorahzing as it is ruinous. The 
 owner cannot be ubiquitous : if he is with his washing- 
 cradle, his servants in the pit steal his most valuable 
 stdnes and secrete them. Forty per cent of the dia- 
 monds discovered are supposed to be lost in this way. 
 The sides fall in from the strain of so much weight on the 
 brink. A company working the mine systematically 
 with a couple of steam-engines could produce the same 
 results with a tenth of the labor, and so obviously is the 
 interest of the claim-owners in making the change, that 
 if <left to themselves they would form into a company to- 
 morrow. The Government, however, forbids it ; for 
 the natural reason that the vagabond population would 
 disappear, the army of gand)lers, keepers of saloons and 
 drink-shops ; a single magistrate would then suffice for 
 peace and order, and the Governor and his staff and the 
 £100,000 a year which is now raised and spent out of the 
 produce of the pit would disappear together. 
 
 The Governor himself, Mr. Southey, is one of the 
 most remarkable men in South Africa. He won his 
 spurs in the Kafir war of 1834. He was with Sir Harry 
 Smith when Hintza, the Kafir chief, was killed, and he 
 80 much recommended himself that lie rose fast in the 
 public service. He was for many years Colonial 
 Secretary, and held that office when, in opposition to his 
 protests, responsible government was thrust upon the 
 colony. He could not believe that it would work suc- 
 cessfully. His desire was and is to see South Africa 
 British up to the Zambesi T?iver, the lative chiefs taken 
 everywhere under the l>ritish flag, and the whole country 
 governed by the Crown. When the Diamond Fields
 
 2'-?0 SKETCHES FI10:\[ J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 were annexed as a Crown colon)', lie accepted the p^overn- 
 orsliip, witli a hope that, nortli of tlie Orange River, he 
 inight carry ont liis own policy, check the encroachments 
 of tlie Transvaal Republic, and extend the empire inter- 
 nally. 
 
 It has been the one mistake of Mr. Southey's life. 
 Being without a force of any kind, he could only control 
 the republics by the lielp of the native chiefs, and the 
 coercion of the republics in any way became impossible 
 from the moment that the control of the Cape Colony 
 was passed over to its own people. Otherwise I have 
 rarely met a man whom I have more admired. Mr. 
 Southey is over seventy. lie drove me one day seventy 
 miles in a cart with as wild a team as 1 ever sat behind, 
 and he went to a party in the evening. I said to myself 
 as I looked at him, " If some one came in and told yon 
 that you were to be taken out and shot in five minutes, 
 you would finish what you were about with perfect de- 
 liberation, and not a muscle of your face would alter." 
 
 Bloemfonteine^ December 6. — After a week at the 
 Diamond Fields, I started again in the mail-cart for this 
 place. The distance is but ninety miles. The roads, I 
 was told, were good, and that we should do it in a single 
 day. Alas ! between the Diamond Fields and Bloera- 
 fonteine lies the Modder or Mud River, fitly so named, 
 especially if it be in flood, as it was when we came up to 
 it. Dense volumes of turbid filth were rollinsi: alonff at 
 the level of the banks, and the passage seemed impos- 
 sible. We spent the night at a shanty. In the morning 
 the water did not seem to have fallen. '' It was stark," 
 the driver said, but he had seen it worse, and we must 
 go any way. He took us three miles higher up, to a 
 place where he said the river was broader and not so 
 deep. Passing through the fi'inge of bush we had the
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN JfOTES. 231 
 
 Modder again before iis, jierhaps 200 yards wide. The 
 bank on which we stood was twenty-five feet above the 
 river, with a steep track cut through it, down which the 
 carts could go. The horses were taken out, as they 
 .cannot be trusted to draw steadily in deep water, and 
 they are once plunged in and struggled across half swini- 
 ^jipng. A dozen heavy oxen then appeared on the op- 
 posite side, led l)y Kafirs, who were to come over and 
 ^Ifo charge of us. The stream was violent. The 
 Jvufirs were up to their necks, and sometimes slipped and 
 rolled under. The oxen and they reached us undrowned, 
 however, and were " inspanned " to our cart. We put 
 our boxes on the seats, and ourselves climbed to the top 
 of them, and commended ourselves to Providence. The 
 slide down the bank was the first and worst danger, for 
 the pole was" crazy, and bent and twisted as the weight 
 fell upon it. It held, however, and in we went, and with 
 the driver swearino;, the Kafirs veiling:, and the water 
 pouring through the cart within an inch of the seats, wc 
 scrambled across somehow, and found brandy and hot 
 coffee ready, prepared for us in case wc had met with a 
 misadventure. 
 
 Without further misfortuue avc arrived at Bloemfon- 
 teine, a pretty town 4500 feet above the sea, clustered 
 round the foot of the old British fort on which the 
 Free State flag is now flying. It is now the Dutch cap- 
 ital, the stronghold of Dutch politics and Dutch religion, 
 tlie central object of the pride and hope of Dutch na- 
 tionalitv. 
 
 For some reason unknown to me, Bloemfonteine has 
 been selected also as a special scene of missionary exer- 
 tion by the extreme High Church party in England. 
 There is a bishop here whose vestments would look gor- 
 geous on a rrreck archimandrite, there is an Anglo-Cath
 
 222 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 olic nnnnorv, in the neighborhood there is a college of 
 Anglo-Catlioh'e iiioTiks, and attached to the nunnery an 
 excellent girls' school, of which the Dutch themselves 
 apeak in terms of high admiration. 
 
 The day after my arrival was Sunday. I went to the 
 cathedral, when the bishop preached. Being in a re- 
 public, he had caught something of its spirit. He told us 
 that we lived in days of democracy, when the principle 
 of loyalty had no longer any earthly object to which it 
 could attach itself. But every natural principle must 
 have some object, and loyalty would therefore instinc- 
 tively turn to Christ, and to the Bishop. I thought the 
 anticipation rather sanguine. But the Bishop is an ac- 
 complished and even superior person. I dined with him 
 afterward, and heard much that interested me on the 
 state of the country. He tells me that the price of every- 
 thing is five times what it was before the diamond dis- 
 covery. Living is three times as expensive as in Eng- 
 land. The country is flooded with money ; but with 
 butter at seven shillings a pound, and milk a shilling a 
 pint — the present prices in Bloemfonteine market — no 
 one is much the better for it. The English trade and 
 speculate, but do not care to cultivate the soil. The 
 Dutch grow what they require for their own households, 
 but l)eing indifferent abont money they will not go out of 
 their way to raise supplies for others ; and yet we are 
 told that the Diamond Fields have saved the country. 
 Politically, socially, and economically they appear to me 
 to have been a mere nuisance. 
 
 Friday^ Decemher 13. — We started yesterday in a cart 
 Avith four horses for Trabancho. It is thirty-five miles 
 off, the mountain beinfj- clearly visible from Bloem- 
 fonteine. 
 
 The drive was of the usual kind. It is hot summer,
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN N"OTES. 223 
 
 the rain has stopped for a while, and the mud in the 
 roads is baked as liard as brick. We had again to cross 
 the Modder River. The leaders bolted as we were 
 going down into it, and we were swinging for a moment 
 ^.- over the edge of a precipice. As we scrambled up the 
 other side the wheelers jibbed ; we were saved from 
 
 ;^;**ii-olling back into the water only by the depth of the clay 
 
 in which the wheels were buried. These adventures pass 
 
 •for nothing in South Africa. The Bishop's archdeacon 
 
 ' "was upset in a river a week ago, and lost his cope and 
 chasuble. 
 
 At four o'clock we reached our destination, and drove 
 to the Wesleyan Missionary Station, a long straggling 
 ^louse with a chapel and school-room attached. Across 
 a ravine stands the new Anglican monastery. Between 
 the station"*and the monks there is little or no communica- 
 tion. It was a lovely summer evening, and the mission- 
 ary and his family being out, we strolled up to call on 
 the King. In the South African towns generally the 
 natives are relegated to the suburbs. At Trabancho the 
 King and his court have the post of honor. The white 
 traders and clergy are in the back premises. The city is 
 composed of about 1500 beehive huts, thatched with 
 reeds, each surrounded with a stone wall. Swarms of 
 cliildren were playing in the sunshine, necklaces of beads 
 being their chief or only covering, and the little 
 stomachs blown out till they shone, with mealies or 
 buckwheat porridge. A flagstaff denoted the royal 
 residence. We made for it, and presently the eldest of 
 the princes came out, a middle-aged thick-set miin, 
 dressed in a Methodist parson's cast-off suit of clothes, 
 followed by other chiefs in skins. We shook hands, and 
 immediately after the old King himself came up, hand- 
 somely dressed in leopard-skins, and walking slowly with
 
 23-t SKETCHES ntOM J. A. I'UOUDE. 
 
 a knob-stick. Chairs were placed for the King and tlie 
 visitors. The Prime Minister .nnd tlie court jester sat 
 on the ground on each side of his Majesty, and a circle 
 of thirty or forty of the princij)al people squatted round, 
 some of the youngsters wearing military caps. All were 
 covered more or less, and had at least a blanket. 
 
 The King asked after the Queen, w^hom he professed 
 to hold in high respect, and then made some minute in- 
 quiries into the Diamond Field business. Having satis- 
 lied his curiosity, I asked him if he had heard of the 
 Langabalele affair. He looked surprised, affected igno- 
 rance, and appealed to his minister. The minister 
 seemed to know no more than he. I discovered after- 
 ward that they had been watching the whole business 
 with the intensest interest. At that moment a party 
 from Langabalele's tribe were in Trabancho, and were 
 probably in the suite listening to the conversation. 
 
 Two of the princes are Christians, and are anxious for 
 their father's conversion. But he sticks to his heathen- 
 ism. " My sons," he said, " want me to be baptized. 
 I say to them. Christians here," pointing to the Wes- 
 leyan Station, " and Christians there," pointing to the 
 Anglican monks. " Christians there won't speak to 
 Christians here. When one of tliem has converted the 
 other, it will be time to come to me." 
 
 Trabancho is maintained by the Free State, partly to 
 show the world how good a Dutch state can be to the 
 natives, and partly as a nursery for laborers ; but it was 
 not a pretty sight to me. Food of course has to be sup- 
 plied for so many people, and a certain quantity of 
 ground is cultivated ; but the w^ork here as elsewhere is 
 almost wholly done by the women. The men are not 
 allowed to fight, and fighting being the only labor they 
 understand, they are hopelessly idle.
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 225 
 
 When we returned to the station the missionary had 
 come in. He entertained ns to the hest of his abihty. 
 He gave us a supper, wliich, if phiin, was abundant. 
 Hunger was the best of sauces, and his conversation was 
 
 ---instructive if not amusing. To lodge us was tlie chief 
 difficulty. There was one spare bed, and there was a 
 
 •^}fibfa in the sitting-room. The Chief Justice and the 
 Secretary of State took the bed and gave the sofa to me. 
 
 /My mind misgave me. I remembered my experience 
 
 ^with a sofa at the Yaal River. There were neither 
 matches nor candles, so I prudently did not extinguish 
 the lamp when I lay down. Five minutes were all that 
 
 . I could bear. I bounded back into my clothes, turned 
 tip the lamp again, and settled into a chair. What was 
 I to do ? £)n the table lay a history of Methodism in 
 seven volumes, a commentary on St. Paul in five vol- 
 umes. Happily on a distant shelf, concealed modestly 
 behind a curtain, I discovered a pile of novels, and read 
 myself to sleep with " Modern Accomplishments." 
 
 I have now learned as much as I am likely to learn, 
 and may make my way back to Port Elizabeth. I am 
 tired of knocking about. I have still 500 miles of Cape 
 roads before me. Tlie rivers in the colony are reported 
 to be in flood, and the bridges to be broken. Mr. 
 
 H , an exceptionally agreeable English gentleman, 
 
 Avlio is here, undertakes to drive me in his cart to Faure- 
 smith, seventy-two miles of the way. There I shall fall 
 in with " Cobb's coach" from Kimberley to Algoa Bay. 
 1 have tried to point out to people here how absurd it is 
 for them to talk of South African independence. In 
 the towns tiiey import everything which they consume. 
 They import their flonr ; they import Australian incat ; 
 they import milk, butter, tinned vegetables ; they ini- 
 ]K>rt their furnitun;, their clnrlics, and even tind)er to
 
 2ii6 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 floor and roof their houses. They manufacture nothing 
 except wagons and harness. They are dependent on 
 Europe for their commonest necessaries of life. Tliey 
 produce, to buy tliese things, wool, diamonds, gold, cop- 
 per, and ostrich feathers. But they cannot live on 
 these. Three frigates could close their harbors, and 
 they would be at once upon their knees. 
 
 We saw a curious sight on the way : a locust swarm, 
 a great brown cloud sweeping through the air, pursued 
 by an army of locust-birds, large flycatchers, like swal- 
 lows, but twice the size. These birds sweep up and 
 down the swarm clipping off the wings of the locusts, 
 which then fall like rain to the ground, when the birds 
 alight and devour them at leisure. There are all the 
 plagues of Egypt in this country except one. The flies 
 blacken your breakfast table. The frogs have given me 
 many a sleepless night. Lice there are none, but change 
 the translation slightly, and you are provided to your 
 skin's discontent. The locusts desolate the fields and 
 gardens. The hail is so violent that in Katal and the 
 Transvaal it will pierce holes through roofs of corrugated 
 iron. Under a thunder-cloud there is the darkness of 
 midnight. Red-water and horse-sickness are an equiva- 
 lent for murrain, and if the rivers are not turned to 
 blood, they come down after rain with the consistency 
 of red soup. 
 
 Colesberg, Decemher 19. — -Again in the Cape Colony. 
 Cobb's coach hanging fire, and there being some doubt 
 whether any coach would run again till the floods had 
 gone down, I found a friend to drive me to the Orange 
 River. At the passage I was told that I should find a 
 ferry and a carriage which would take me on to Coles- 
 berg. The Orange River, though it has still 800 miles 
 to run, is even here an impressive stream — 600 feet
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 227 
 
 across, deep and rapid. The ferryman, a Dutchman, 
 and tlierefore never in a hurry, was slowly transporting 
 vast droves of oxen to the colonial border. Would he 
 send me over ? He would. He would not. He did 
 
 'not know. "Why could I not go by tlie mail-cart ? It 
 was then noon. He promised me an answer at three. 
 
 ■^rsat down with a cigar and a drawing-book. Three 
 hours passed. I again applied, and again found myself 
 treated with phlegmatic indifference. The alternative 
 
 'before me was to sleep supperless on the sands. I said 
 nothing, lighted another cigar, reseated myself, and 
 sketched on. He approved of my composure, relented, 
 
 'and told me I should go. There M^as really not the 
 
 : elightest difficulty. There was a carriage with a pair of 
 horses on the other side, which was ready in a few 
 minutes, and in two hours I was again in a British colo- 
 nial town. The best hotel is full. 1 have to take up 
 witli a place kept by a drunken lout from High Wick- 
 ham, wliose wife, however, has sense and cleanliness. 
 The l)ad specimens of colonists copy the Kafirs, and 
 leave their wives to work while they drink and sleep. 
 This poor woman slaves to keep things straight, but with 
 imperfect success. The diamonds, she says, have turned 
 everybody's head. There is more money, but living is 
 ruinously expensive, and no one is the better for it. 
 
 I passed a farm on my way here which was a model 
 in its way. Tlie owner was an Englishman, and when 
 an Englishman will work at agriculture, he shows the 
 Dntchman how to do it. 
 
 Colesberg itself lies in a rocky valley, more than 4000 
 feet above the sea, and is geologically the strangest place 
 I ever saw. A huge flat-topped mountain rises over it, 
 formed of alternate layers of stratified rock and iron- 
 stone, the horizontal beds norfectly even, as if they had
 
 228 SKETCKES PROM J. A. FKOUDE. 
 
 never been disturbedj yet beds of igneous rock, many 
 hundred feet thick, lying on tlie top of them. 
 
 New Bedford, December 2i. — We are descending 
 from the liighlands at last, and are again among the jessa- 
 mines and the orange-trees. Five days ago I left Coles- 
 berg with a cart and pair of horses to make my way 
 down the colon V, and I have travelled at the rate of about 
 fifty miles a day. The first evening after sunset I passed 
 a handsome house belonging to a Dutchman. lie was 
 sitting in the twilight outside his door with his wife, a 
 middle-ao-ed laclv, but still handsome, and with beautiful 
 eyes. 1 stopped to give the horses some water. We 
 fell into conversation. I asked for fresh milk. They 
 sent a boy to the stable with a tumbler to milk the cow 
 for me. The}" invited me to stay there for the night, 
 with a courtesy and repose of manner which no English 
 lord and lady could have outdone. The Dutch having 
 been long settled in the country have a dignity about 
 them which contrasts favorably with Anglo-colonial 
 smartness. I regretted to leave them, but it was moon- 
 light, and we pushed on. The roads, which are bad 
 enough by day, are horrible at night. They are mere 
 wheeltracks, the ruts a foot or two deep, and the baked 
 clay through whicli tliey are cut now as hard as stone. 
 The road commissioners are the country farmers. I said 
 to some one that I met on the way, that 1 supposed the 
 Dutch rarely left their homes, and so did not care. I 
 was told that if I could choose a road that led to a church 
 I should always find it good. The farmers will go with 
 their families fifty miles to a church, and never miss a 
 church festival. The ministers are better paid than 
 average state officials, and the Dutch meeting-houses are 
 the handsomest ])nildino-s in South Africa. I saw, in 
 passing through Cradock, a church which would have
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN NOTES. 220 
 
 been called fine anywhere in Europe. The Dutch farm- 
 ers of the neighborhood had built it entirelv. The news 
 about the floods is too true. Although it is summer 
 there has been a heavy fall of snow on the mountains. 
 It has melted suddenly. Violent rain falling at the same 
 . time has burst simultaneously a number of ill-made 
 
 , '"Reservoirs, and the Great Fish River has risen to forty 
 ' feet above its natural level. The banks are wooded. 
 /The torrent rushing over them tears out the trees by the 
 
 ^ >oots, and the river rolls along, carrying with it enormous 
 masses of floating timber. No imaginable bridge can 
 stand such a strain, and it is a serious problem how the 
 railways are by and by to be carried over these rivers. 
 
 ' yA druggist at Cradock, whose son is at a Scotch univer- 
 ' sity, kindly took charge of me as an ex-Lord Rector. 
 He placed*" me in the hands of an experienced young 
 Dutchman who knew the points where the Fish River 
 could be crossed, and, after less serious difficulties than 
 befell me at the Modder, I am now within 120 miles of 
 Port Elizabeth. New Bedford is one of the prettiest 
 towns which T have seen, nestled among densely wooded 
 mountains, and luxurious with the wild variety of sub- 
 tropical vegetation. Half a mile distant, among orange 
 groves, and approached through vast oak avenues, lie 
 the remains of the ruined house of Sir Andrew Stocken- 
 strom, who was so honorably distinguished in the last 
 generation by his endeavors to protect and raise the 
 native tribes on the borders. The house was burned in 
 one of the Kaflr wars, and has not been restored. The 
 trees which were planted round it would be splendid 
 even in an English park. All else is desolate. AVild 
 jessamines creep among the broken casements. A dis- 
 mounted cannon of the last century, with a Dutch in- 
 scription, lies half-buried under leaves, and as a practi-
 
 230 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 cal coimnent on tlic owiior's cliivalrou.s efforts to elevate 
 tlie Kafir race by mere benevolence, the town to-daj is 
 full of black creatures of both sexes and all ages, who 
 have come in to drink, and are lying about in the sun 
 idle and raasterless. 
 
 Tunhridge, Decemher 26. — Only thirty miles left. 
 Saw the sea to-day from the final ridge over which we 
 crossed, and, after my long battering journey, I cried 
 out like the vanguard of the ten thousand when they 
 looked down on Trebizond. For the last two days we 
 have been descending through picturesque ravines, 
 studded with the African aloe. The open hills blaze 
 with mesembryanthemums. The ivy-leaf geranium runs 
 like a creeper up the stems of the trees on the river- 
 sides, and pours its flowers in cascades over the branches. 
 The banks of the streams are fringed with the fronds of 
 giant ferns. This afternoon we took our last leap, 1200 
 feet, down into the plain, through winding glens, once 
 the scenes of our most desperate battles with the Kafirs, 
 now warm and glowing in the soft light of a summer 
 sunset, fragrant with the million blossoms of the wild 
 Cape jessamine, and with no more formidable animals 
 concealed among the thickets than armies of gray 
 baboons, which were playing on the grassy lawns that 
 opened in the intervals of the forest. One \ery large 
 fellow, with white whiskers and sharp twinkling eyes, 
 stood half hidden in a bush to watch us as we passed. 
 My negro driver, silent and solemn hitherto, burst into 
 shouts of delight at the sight of his relation. 1 begged 
 him to be silent, that I might get a nearer view, but he 
 understood the matter better than I did. He addressed 
 Jock, as he called him, in terms of affectionate greeting. 
 Jock chattered, slipped round the bush, and waved his 
 paw. I had just seen worse manners at the last hotel
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN KOTES. 231 
 
 which I had passed, where the innkeeper boasted to me 
 that, when the late Governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, 
 called thei'e he had made Sir Philip know that he, in his 
 own house, was as good a governor as the other. A free 
 Africander was not going to humble himself before the 
 .best Excellency that could be sent from England. 
 ,."1 Tunbridge^ Sunday Evening, December 27. — The last 
 'day of rhy singular journey. I have travelled 1500 
 Biiles on the roughest roads that I have ever been jolted 
 ^ o-ver, amid thunder-storms and hard living and nights 
 without sleep. Had I been thirty, it would have been 
 the most delightful of adventures. When one is near 
 sixty, adventures cease to be exhilarating. When I was 
 Reaving Maritzburg, plunging into the heart of an un- 
 known wilderness, I thought of Faust descending to 
 " the MotlTcrs" and Mephistopheles's 
 
 " Ich bin neugierig wenn er wiederkommt." 
 
 I am a stone lighter than when I was last at Port Ehza- 
 beth. In a Potclieffstrom newspaper I saw myself de- 
 scribed as " a lean gray old gentleman," but I am strong 
 and well, and none the worse for what I have gone 
 through.
 
 YIII. 
 A DAY'S FISHING AT CHENEYS.* 
 
 The village stands on a chalk-liill rising from the little 
 River dies, four miles from Ricknianswoi-tli, on tlie road 
 to Amersliam. The estate belongs to the Duke of Bed- 
 ford, and is pervaded by an aspect of serene good man- 
 ners, as if it was always Sunday. Ko vulgar noises dis- 
 turb the general quiet. Cricket may be played there, 
 and b.owls and such games as propriety allows ; but the 
 oldest inhabitant can never have heard an oath spoken 
 aloud, or seen a drunken man. Dirt and poverty are 
 equally unknown. The houses, large and small, are solid 
 and substantial, built of red brick, with high chimneys 
 and pointed gables, and well trimmed gardens before the 
 doors. A Gothic fountain stands in the middle of the 
 village green, under a cluster of tall elms, where pict- 
 uresque, neatly dressed girls go for the purest water. 
 Beyond the green a road runs, on one side of which 
 stands the church and the parsonage, on the other the 
 remains of the once spacious manor house, which was 
 built by the first Earl of Bedford, on the site of an old 
 castle of the Plantagenet kings. One wing of the manor 
 house only survives, but so well constructed, and of 
 material so admirable, that it looks as if it had been com- 
 
 * Tliis sketch contains the descriptive part of the Author's 
 Eesay on " Cheneys and the House of Russell."
 
 A day's fishing at CHENLiYS. 233 
 
 pleted yesterday. In a Held under the window is an oak 
 which tradition says was planted by Queen Bess. More 
 probably it is as old as the Conquest. The entire spot, 
 church, mansion, cottages, and people, form a piece of 
 ancient England artificially preserved from the intrusion 
 ctf 'modern ways. No land is let on building lease in 
 Gifeneys to be disfigured by contractors' villas. No flar- 
 ing shops, which such villas bring behind them, make 
 th6 street hideous. A single miscellaneous store supplies 
 the" simple wants of the few inhabitants — the bars of 
 soap, the bunches of dip candles, the tobacco in ounce 
 packets, the tea, cofliee, and sugar, the balls of twine, 
 the strips of calico. Even the bull's-eyes and ginger- 
 bread for the children are not unpermitted, if they are 
 honestly made and warranted not to be poisonous. So 
 light is the business that the tidy woman who presides at 
 the counter combines with it the duties of the post- office, 
 which again are of the simplest kind. All is old-fash- 
 ioned, grave, and respectable. No signs are to be found 
 of competition, of the march of intellect, of emancipa- 
 tion, of the divine right of each man and woman to do 
 what is good in their own eyes — of the blessed liberty 
 which the House of Russell has been so busy in setting 
 forward. The inhabitants f)f Cheneys live under au- 
 thority. The voice of the Russells has been the voice 
 of the emancipator — the hand has been the hand of the 
 ruling noljle. 
 
 The Manor House contains nothing of mucli interest. 
 In itself, though a fragment, it is a fine specimen of the 
 mason work of the Tudor times, and if not pulled down 
 will be standing strong as ever when the new London 
 squares are turned to dust heaps. With its high-pitch- 
 ed roofs and its clusters of curiously twisted chimneys it 
 has served as a model for the architecture of the village.
 
 ^3-± SKETCHES FKOM J. A. FllOUDE, 
 
 the smallest cottages looking as if tliey bad grown from 
 seeds which had been dropped by the central mansion. 
 
 All this is pretty enough, but the attraction of the 
 place t© a stranger is the church and what it contains. 
 I had visited it before more than once, but I wished to 
 inspect the monuments more closely. I ran dowm from 
 London, one evening in June, to the village inn, and in 
 the morning, soon after sunrise, when 1 was in less dan- 
 ger of having the officious assistance thrust upon me of 
 clerk or sexton, I sauntered over to see if 1 could enter. 
 The keys were kept at an adjoining cottage. The busy 
 matron was already up and at her work. When I told 
 her that I had special permission, she unlocked the 
 church door and left me to myself. Within, as without, 
 all was order. No churchwardens, it was plain enough, 
 had ever been allowed to work their will at Cheneys. 
 Nay, the unchallenged loyalty of the Bedford family to 
 constitutional liberty must have saved the church from 
 the visits of the Cominissi oners of the Long Parliament. 
 On the walls are old Catholic brasses, one representing a 
 parish priest of the place with the date of 1512, and a 
 scroll praying for mercy on his soul. Strange to think 
 that this man had said mass in the very place where I 
 was standing, and that the memory of him had been pre- 
 served by the Russells, till the wheel had come round 
 again and a Catholic hierarchy had been again established 
 in England, with its Cardinals and Archbishops and 
 Bishops. Will mass be ever said in Cheneys again ? — 
 not the sham mass of the Ritualists, but the real thing ? 
 Who that looks on England now can say that it will not ? 
 And four miles off is Amersham, where John Knox used 
 to preach, and Queen Mary's inquisitors gathered their 
 batches of heretics for Smithfield. On the pavement 
 against the wall lies the stone figure of an old knight..
 
 A day's FISHINTt at CHE]SrEYS. 235 
 
 finislied only from the waist upward. The knight is in 
 liis armor, his wife rests at liis side ; the hands of both 
 of them reverently folded. Opening from the church 
 on the north side, but private, and not used for service, 
 is the Russell Chapel. Below is the vault where the 
 remains lie of most of the family who have borne the 
 naja^e for three centuries and a half. 
 
 ' '"' * " * • •5t -X- * * 
 
 It -is worth while to spend a day at Cheneys, if only 
 for Ltiie breakfast — breakfast on fresh pink trout from 
 the dies, fresh eggs, fresh yellow butter, cream unde- 
 tiled by chalk, and home-made bread untouched with 
 alum. The Russells have been the apostles of progress, 
 T)nt there is no progress in their own dominion. The 
 ducal warranty is on everything which is consumed 
 licre. - 
 
 The sun was shining an hour ago. It is now raining ; 
 it rained all yesterday ; the clouds are coming up from 
 the south and the wind is soft as oil. The day is still 
 before us, and it is a day made for trout fishing. The 
 chapel is not the only attraction at Cheneys. Xo river 
 in England holds finer trout, nor trout more willing to 
 be caught. Why fish will rise in one stream and not in 
 another is a problem which we must wait to understand, 
 as Bret Ilarte says, in " another and a better world." 
 The Ches at any rate is one of the favored waters. 
 Great, too, is the Duke of Bedford — great in the mill- 
 ions he has spent on his tenants' cottages — great in the 
 remission of his rents in the years when the seasons are 
 unpropitious — great in the administration of his enor. 
 mou8 property ; but greater than all in the management 
 of his fishing, for if he gives you leave to fish there, you 
 liave the stream for the day to yourself. You are in no 
 danger of seeing your favorite pool already flogged by
 
 2'iG SKETCHES FROM .T. A. FROUDE. 
 
 another sportsman, or of finding rows of iignres before jou 
 fringing tlie river bank, waving their long wands in the 
 air, each followed by his boj with basket and generally 
 useless landing net. " Competition" and " the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number" are not heard of in 
 this antique domain. A day's fishing at Cheneys means 
 a day by the best water in England in the fisherman's 
 paradise of solitude. 
 
 Such a day's privilege had been extended to me if I 
 cared to avail myself of it, when I was coming down to 
 see the chapel, and thougli my sporting days were over, 
 and gun and rod had long lain undisturbed in their boxes, 
 yet neither the art of fly-fishing, nor the enjoyment of 
 it when once acquired and tasted, will leave us except 
 with life. The hand does not forget its cunning, and op- 
 portunity begets the inclination to use it. I had brought 
 my fishing case along with me. Shall I stay at the inn 
 over the day and try what can be done ? The rain and 
 the prospect of another such breakfast decide it between 
 them. The water-keeper is at the window — best of 
 keepers — for he will accept a sandwich perhaps for lunch- 
 eon, a pull from your flask, and a cigar out of your 
 case, but other fee on no condition. The rain, he tells 
 me, has raised the water, and the large fish are on the 
 move, the May-fly has been down for two days. They 
 were feeding on it last evening. If the sky clears they 
 will take well in the afternoon ; but the fly will not 
 show till the rain stops. 
 
 Tlie Cheneys flshing is divided in the middle by a 
 mill. Below the mill the trout are in greatest numbers, 
 but comparatively small ; above them is a long, still deep 
 pool where the huge monsters lie, and in common 
 weather never stir till twilight. The keeper and I re- 
 member a summer evening some years ago, when at
 
 A day's FISHIXG at CHENEYS. 237 
 
 iiiglitfall, after a burning day, the glittering surface of 
 the water was dimpled with rings, and a fly thrown into 
 the middle of these circles was answered more than once 
 by a rush and scream of the reel ; and a struggle which 
 ihe darkness made more exciting. You may as well fish 
 on the high road as in the mill-pool when the sun is 
 above the horizon, and even at night you will rarely suc- 
 ceed there ; but at the beginning of the May-fly season 
 tkfese large fish sometimes run up to the rapid stream at 
 tlie pool head to feed. This the keeper decides shall be 
 tried if the fly conies down. For the morning he will 
 leave me to myself. 
 
 Does the reader care to hear of a day's fishing in a 
 cliklk stream fifteen miles from London ? As music to the 
 deaf, as poetry to the political economist, as a mountain 
 landscape to the London cockney, so is chalk stream 
 trout fishing to those M'hu never felt their fingers tingle 
 as the line whistles through the rings. For them I write 
 uo further ; let them leave the page uncut and turn on 
 to the next article. 
 
 Breakfast over, I start for the lower water. I have 
 my boy with me, home for the holidays. lie carries the 
 lauding net, and we splash through the rain to the mill. 
 The river runs for a quarter of a mile down under hang- 
 ing bushes. As with other accomplishments when once 
 learned, eye and hand do the work in fly-fishing without 
 reference to the mind for orders. The eye tells the hand 
 how distant the bushes are, how near the casting line ap- 
 proaches them. If a gust of wind twists it into a heap, 
 or sweeps it toward a dangerous bough, the wrist does 
 something on the inslant which sends the fly straight and 
 unhanned into the water. Practice gives our different 
 organs functions like the instinct of animals, who do 
 wliat their liabits require, yet know not what they do.
 
 238 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 The small fish take freely — some go back into the 
 water, the few in good condition into the basket, which, 
 after a field or two, becomes perceptibly heavier. The 
 governor, a small humble bee, used to be a good fly at 
 Cheneys, and so did the black alder. Neither of them 
 is of any use to-day. The season has been cold and late. 
 The March brown answers best, with the never-failing 
 red-spinner. After running rapidly through two or 
 three meadows, the river opens into a broad smooth shal- 
 low, where the trout are larger, and the water being ex- 
 tremely clear, are specially diflicult to catch. In such a 
 place as this, it is useless to throw your fly at random 
 upon the stream. You must watch for a fish which is 
 rising, and you must fish for him till you either catch 
 him or disturb him. It is not enough to go below him 
 and throw upward, for though he lies with his head up- 
 stream, his projecting eye looks back over his shoulders. 
 You must hide behind a bunch of rushes. You must 
 crawl along the grass with one arm only raised. If the 
 sun is shining and the shadow of your rod glances over 
 the gravel, you may get up and walk away. No fish 
 within sight will stir then to the daintiest cast. 
 
 I see a fish close to the bank on the opposite side, lazi- 
 ly lifting his head as a fly floats past him. It is a long 
 throw, but the wind is fair and he is worth an effort- - 
 once, twice, three times I fail to reach him. The fourth 
 I land the fly on the far bank, and draw it gently off 
 upon his very nose. lie swirls in the M-ater like a salm- 
 on as he sweeps round to seize it. There is a splash — a 
 sharp jerk, telling unmistakably that something has 
 given way. A large fish may break you honestly in 
 weeds or round a rock or stump, and only fate is to 
 blame, but to let yourself be broken on the first strike is 
 unpardonable. What can have happened ? Alas, the
 
 A day's FISHINTt at CHENEYS. 239 
 
 red-spiimer has snapped in two at the turn — a new fly 
 
 bought last week at 's, whose boast it has been that 
 
 no fly of his was ever known to break or bend. 
 
 One grumbles on these occasions, for it is always the 
 best fish which one loses ; and as imagination is free, one 
 may call him what weight one pleases. The damage is 
 spoji repaired. The basket fills fast as trout follows 
 trout. It still rains, and I begin to think that 1 have 
 ha,d enough of it. I have promised to be at the mill at 
 mid'-day, and then we shall see. 
 
 Evidently the sky means mischief. Black thunder- 
 clouds pile up to windward, and heavy drops continue 
 falling. But there is a break in the south as I ^valk 
 baok by the bank — a gleam of sunshine spans the valley 
 with a rainbow, and an actual May-fly or two sails by, 
 which I see greedily swallowed. The keeper is waiting ; 
 he looks scornfully into my basket. Fish — did I call 
 these herrings fish ? I must try the upper water at all 
 events. The large trout were feeding, but the fly was 
 not yet properly on — we can have our luncheon first. 
 
 How pleasant is luncheon on mountain-side or river's 
 bank, wlien you fling yourself down on fern or heather 
 after your morning's work, and no daintiest entree had 
 ever such flavor as your sandwiches, and no champagne 
 was ever so exquisite as the fresh stream water just tem- 
 pered from your whiskey flask. Then follows the smoke, 
 when the keeper fills his pipe at your bag, and old ad- 
 ventures are talked over, and the conversation wanders 
 on through anecdotes and experiences, till, as you listen 
 to the shrewd sense and kindly feeling of your compnn- 
 ion, you become aware that the steep difference which 
 you had imagined to be created by education and habits 
 of life had no existence save in your own conceit. Fort- 
 une is less unjust than she seems, and true hearts and
 
 240 SKETCHES FROM J. A, FROUDE. 
 
 clear-judging liealtlij minds are bred as easily in the cot- 
 tage as the palace. 
 
 But time runs on, and I must hasten to the end of my 
 storj. The short respite from the wet is over. Down 
 falls the rain again — rain not to be measured by inches, 
 but by feet ; rain such as lias rarely been seen in Eng- 
 land before this " sestas mirabilis" of 1879. It looks 
 liopeless, but the distance by the road to the top of the 
 water is not great. We complain if we are caught in a 
 shower ; we splash along in a deluge, in boots and water- 
 l^roof, as composedly as if we wei-e seals or otters. The 
 river is rising, and, as seldom happens with a chalk 
 stream, it is growing discolored. Every lane is running 
 with a brown stream, which finds its way at last into the 
 main channel. The highest point is soon reached. The 
 first hundred yards are shallow, and to keep the cattle 
 from straying a high iron railing runs along the bank. 
 Well I knew that iron railing. You must stand on the 
 lower bar to fish over it. If you hook a trout you must 
 play him from that uneasy perch in a rapid current 
 among weeds and stones, and your attendant must use 
 his landing-net through the bars. Generally it is the 
 liveliest spot in the river, but nothing can be done there 
 to-day. There is a ford immediately above, into which 
 the thick road-water is pouring, and the fish cannot see 
 the fly. Shall we give it up ? Not yet. Farther down 
 the mud settles a little, and by this time even the road 
 has been washed clean, and less dirt comes off it. The 
 flood stirs the trout into life and hunger, and their eyes, 
 accustomed to the transparency of the chalk water, do 
 not see you so quickly. 
 
 Below the shallow there is a pool made by a small 
 weir, over which the flood is now rushing ; on one side 
 there is an open hatchway, with the stream pouring
 
 A day's fishing at CHENEYS. 241 
 
 through. The banks are bushy, and over the deepest 
 part of the pool the stem of a hirge ash projects into the 
 river. Yesterday, when the water was lower, the 
 keeper saw a four-pounder lying under that stem. 
 Between the weir and tlie trees it is an awkward spot, 
 1)ut difficulty is the charm of fly-fishing. The dangerous 
 drop fly must be taken off ; a drop fly is only fit for 
 open waterj where there is neither weed nor stump. 
 Tlie March browni is sent skimming at the tail of the 
 c^ing-line, to be dropped, if possible, just above the 
 ash, and to be carried under it by the stream. It has 
 been caught in a root, so it seems ; or it is foul some- 
 where. Surely no fish ever gave so dead a pull. No ; 
 it is no root. The line shoots under the bank. There is 
 a broad flash of white just below the surface, a moment's 
 struggle, th(r-rod springs straight, and the line comes 
 back unbroken. The March brown is still floating at 
 the end of it. It was a big fish, perhaps the keeper's 
 very big one ; he must have been lightly hooked, and 
 have rubbed the fly out of his mouth. 
 
 But let us look closer. The red-spinner had played 
 false in the mornino; ; niav not something like it have 
 befallen the March brown ? Something like it, indeed. 
 The hook has straightened out as if, instead of steel, it 
 had been made of copper. A pretty business ! I try 
 another, and another, with the same result. The heavy 
 trout take them, and one bends and the next breaks. 
 
 Oh ! Well for Charles Kingsley that he was 
 
 gone l>efore he heard <»f a treason which would have 
 broken his trust in man. You, in whose praise I have 
 heard him so often ehxpicnt I You who never dealt in 
 shoddy goods. You wlio were faithful if all else were 
 faithless, and redeemed the credit of English tradesmen ! 
 You had not tlien l)een in tliu school of progress an<l
 
 242 SKETCHES FROM J, A. FROUDE. 
 
 leai-ned that it was the buyer's business to distinguish 
 good from bad. You never fiirnislied your customers 
 with cheap and nasty wares, fair looking to the eye and 
 worthless to the touch and trial. In those days you 
 dealt with gentlemen, and you felt and traded like a 
 gentleman yourself. And now you, too, have gone the 
 way of your fellows. You are making a fortune, as you 
 call it, out of the reputation which you won honorably 
 in better days. You have given yourself over to compe- 
 tition and semblance. You have entered for the race 
 among the sharpers and will win by knavery and tricks 
 like the rest. I will not name you for the sake of the 
 old times, when C. K. and I could send you a descrip- 
 tion of a fly from the farthest corner of Ireland, and by 
 return of post would come a packet tied on hooks which 
 Kendal and Limerick might equal, but could not excel. 
 You may live on undenounced for me ; but read C. K.'s 
 l)ooks over again ; repent of your sins, go back to honest 
 ways, and renounce the new gospel, in which whosoever 
 believes shall not be saved. 
 
 But what is to be done ? Spite of the rain the river is 
 now covered with drowned May-flies, and the trout are 
 taking them all round. I liave new May -flies from the 
 same quarter in my book, but it will be mere vexation 
 to try them. Luckily for me there are a few old ones 
 surviving from other days. The gut is brown with age 
 — but I must venture it. If this breaks 1 will go home, 
 lock away my rod, and write an essay on the effects of 
 the substitution of Political Economy for the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 On, then, goes one of these old flies. It looks well. 
 It bears a mild strain, and, like Don Quixote with his 
 helmet, I will not put it to a severe trial. Out it shoots 
 over the jjooI, so natural-looking that I cannot distin-
 
 A day's FISHIXG at CHENEYS. 243 
 
 guisli it from a real fly which floats at its side. I can- 
 not, nor can tliat large trout in the smooth water above 
 the fall. He takes it, springs into the air, and then darts 
 at the weir to throw himself over. If he goes down he 
 is lost. Hold on. He has the stream to help him, and 
 not an inch of line can be sjjared. The rod bends 
 double, but. the old gnt is true. Down the fall he is 
 not to go. He turns up tlie pool, he makes a dart for 
 th'6 hatchway — but if you can stand a trout's first rush 
 you need not fear him in fair water afterward. A few 
 more ejfforts and he is in the net and on the bank, not 
 the keepers four-pounder, but a handsome fish which I 
 know that he will approve. 
 
 ,<He had walked down the bank pensively while I was 
 in the difficulty with my flies, meditating, perhaps, on 
 idle gentlemen, and reflecting that if the tradesmen 
 were knaves the gentlemen were correspondingly fools. 
 He called to me to come to him just as I had lauded my 
 trout. He was standing by the side of the rapid stream 
 at the head of tlie mill pool. It was as he had foretold ; 
 the great fish had come up, and were rolling like salmon 
 on the top of the water, gulping down the May- flies. 
 Even when they are thus carelessly ravenous, the clear- 
 ness of the river creates a certain difficulty in catching 
 them in ordinary times, but to-day the flood made cau- 
 tion supci-fluous. They were splashing on the surface 
 close to our feet, rolling about in a negligent gluttony 
 wliich seemed to take from them every thought of danger, 
 for a distance of at least three hundrotl yards. 
 
 There was no longer any ;ilarm for the tackle and it 
 was but to throw the fly upon the river, near or far, for 
 a trout instantly to seize it. There was no shy rising 
 where suspicion balks the appetite. The fish were swal- 
 lowing with a deliberate seriousness every fly which
 
 244 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 drifted witliin their reach, snapping their jaws upon it 
 with a gulp of satisfaction. The only difficulty was in 
 playing them when hooked with a delicate chalk-stream 
 casting-line. For an hour and a half it lasted, such an 
 hour and a half of trout fishing as 1 had never seen and 
 shall never see again. The ease of success at last became 
 wearisome. Two large baskets were filled to the brim. 
 Accident had thrown in my way a singular opportunity 
 which it would have been wrong to abuse, so I decided 
 to stop. We emptied out our spoils upon the grass, and 
 the old keeper said that long as he had known the river 
 he had never but once seen so many fish of so large size 
 taken in the Ches in a single day by a single rod. 
 
 How can a reasonable creature find pleasure in having 
 performed such an exploit ? If trout were wanted for 
 human food, a net would have answered the purpose 
 with less trouble to the man and less annoyance to the 
 fish. Throughout creation man is the only animal — 
 man, and the dogs and cats which have learned from him 
 — who kills, for the sake of killing, what he does not 
 want, and calls it sport. All other animals seize their 
 prey only when hungry, and are satisfied when their 
 hunger is appeased. 
 
 Such, it can only be answered, is man's disposition. 
 He is a curiously formed creature, and the appetite for 
 sport does not seem to disappear with civilization. The 
 savage in his natural state hunts, as the animals hunt, to 
 support his life ; the sense of sport is strongest in the 
 elaborately educated and civilized. It may be that the 
 taste will die out before " Progress." Our descendants 
 perhaps, a few generations hence, may look back upon a 
 pheasant battue as we look back on bear-baiting and 
 bull-fighting, and our mild offspring, instructed in the 
 theory of development, may see a proof in their father's
 
 A day's fishing at CHENEYS. 245 
 
 habits that they come of a race who were once crueller 
 than tigers, and will congratulate themselves on the 
 change. So they will think, if they judge us as we judge 
 our forefathers of the days of the Plantagenets and 
 Tudors, and both we and they may be perhaps mistaken. 
 -Half the lives of men in mediaeval Europe was spent in 
 
 '"'fighting. ' Yet from mediaeval Europe came the knightly 
 graces of courtesy and chivalry. The modern soldier, 
 whose trade is war, yet hates and dreads war more than 
 .civilians dread it. The sportsman's knowledge of the 
 habits of animals gives him a kindly feeling toward 
 them notwithstanding, and sporting tends rather to their 
 
 - preservation than their destruction. The human race 
 may become at last vegetarians and water-drinkers. 
 Astraea may come back, and man may cease to take the 
 life of bird, or beast, or fish. But the lion will not lie 
 down with the lamb, for lambs and lions will no longer 
 be ; the eagle will not feed beside the dove, for doves 
 will not be allowed to consume grain which might have 
 served as human food, and will be extinct as the dodo. 
 It may be all right and fit and proper : a world of harm- 
 less vegetarians may be the appropriate outcome of the 
 development of humanity. But we who have been born 
 in a ruder age do not aspire to rise beyond the level of 
 our own times. We have toiled, we have suffei'ed, we 
 have enjoyed, as the nature which we have received has 
 prompted us. We blame our fathers' habits ; our chil- 
 dren may blame oiirs in turn ; yet we may be sitting in 
 judgment, both of us, on matters of which we know 
 nothing.
 
 IX. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WIFE.* 
 
 THEIR ENGAGEMENT. 
 
 When Irving first settled in London he had opened 
 the secrets of his heart to a certain lady with whom he was 
 very intimately acquainted. He had told her of his love 
 for his old pupil, and she had drawn from him that the 
 love had been returned. She had seen Irving sacrifice 
 himself to duty, and she had heard that his resolution 
 had been sustained by the person to whom the surrender 
 of their mutual hopes had been as bitter as to himself. 
 The lady was romantic, and had become profoundly in- 
 terested. Flowing over with sympathy, she had herself 
 commenced a correspondence with Haddington. To 
 Carlyle she wrote occasionally, because she really ad- 
 mired him. To Miss Welsh she introduced herself as 
 one who was eager for her confidence, who was prepared 
 to love her for the many excellences which she knew lier 
 to possess, and to administer balm to the wounds of her 
 heart. 
 
 Miss Welsh did not respond very cordially to this 
 effusive invitation. It was not her habit to seek for sym- 
 
 * From " Thomas Carlyle : the first forty years of his Life." 
 The first extract here given explains certain incidents which led 
 to the engagement of Carlyle and Miss Welsh and which have 
 been the subject of much printed gossip. The second extract 
 reveals in a few words the sources of the un happiness for which 
 Mrs. Carlyle has been so widely and deservedly pitied. — Editor.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WIFE. 247 
 
 pathy from strangers ; but she replied in a letter wliicli 
 her new friend found extremely beautiful, and which 
 stirred her interest still deeper. The lady imagined that 
 her young correspondent was still pining in secret for her 
 
 -''lost lover, and she was tempted to approach closer to the 
 gjabject which had aroused her sympathies. She thought 
 
 ^it would -be. well slightly to disparage Irving. She 
 
 painted him as a person whose inconstancy did not 
 
 ^deserve a prolonged and hopeless affection. She too had 
 
 'sought to find in him the dearest of friends ; but he had 
 other interests and other ambitions, and any woman who 
 concentrated her heart upon him would be disappointed 
 
 ^ in the return which she might meet with. 
 
 ■ -^ The lady's motive was admirable. She thought that 
 she could assist in reconciling Miss "Welsh to her disap- 
 pointment. In perfect innocence she wrote confiden- 
 tially to Carlyle on the same subject. She regarded him 
 simply as the intimate friend both of Miss Welsh and 
 Irving. She assumed that he was acquainted with their 
 secret history. She spoke of the affection which had 
 existed between them as still unextinguished on either 
 side. For the sake of both of them she wished that 
 something might be done to put an end to idle regrets 
 and vain imaginings. Nothing, she thought, could con- 
 tribute more to disenchant Miss "Welsh than a visit to 
 herself in London, where she could see Irving as he wa£ 
 in his present surroundings.* 
 
 * No part of this language is the lady's own. The substance of 
 her letters was repeated in tlie correspondence which followed 
 between Carlyle and Miss Weisii. I have alluded to the subject 
 only because Mrs. Carlyle said afterward that but for the uncon- 
 scious action of a comparative stranger, her engagement witli 
 Carlyle would probably never liave been carried out. — Note by 
 TEE Author.
 
 248 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 Miss Welsh had for two years never mentioned Irving 
 to Carlyle except bitterly and conteinptnonsly ; so bit- 
 terly indeed that lie had often been obliged to remon- 
 strate. Had he been less single-minded, a tone so 
 marked and acid might have roused his suspicions. But 
 that Irving and she had been more than friends, if he 
 had ever heard a hint of it, had passed out of his mind. 
 Even the lady's letter failed to startle him. He men- 
 tioned merely, when he next wrote to Miss Welsh, that the 
 writer labored under some strange delusion about her 
 secret history, and had told him in a letter full of elo- 
 quence that her heart was with Irving in London. 
 
 Miss Welsh felt that she must at least satisfy her 
 ecstatic acquaintance that she was not pining for another 
 woman's husband. She was even more explicit. She 
 had made up her mind to marry Carlyle. She told her 
 intrusive correspondent so in jslain \vords, desiring her 
 only to keep her secret. The lady was thunder-struck. 
 In ordinary life she was high-flown, and by those who 
 did not know her might have been thought affected and 
 unreal ; but on occasions really serious she could feel 
 and write like a wise woman. She knew that Miss 
 Welsh could not love Carlyle. The motive could only 
 be a generous hope of making life dearer, and want of 
 health more endurable, to an honest and excellent man, 
 while she might be seeking blindly to All a void which 
 was aching in her own heart. She required Miss Welsh, 
 she most solemnly adjured her, to examine herself, and 
 not allow one who had known much disappointment and 
 many sorrows to discover by a comparison of his own 
 feelings with hers that she had come to him with half a 
 heart, and had mistaken compassion and the self-satisfac- 
 tion of a generous act for a sentiment which could alone 
 sustain her in a struggle through life. Supposing acei-
 
 TITONfAS (JAKLYLE AXD HIS WIFE. 249 
 
 dent should set Irving free, supposing; his love to have 
 been indestructible, and to have been surrendered only 
 in obedience to duty, and supposing him, not knowhig of 
 this new engagement, to come back and claim the heart 
 from which an adverse fate had separated him, what in 
 s^ch a case would her feeling be ? If she could honestly 
 
 o^y that she would still prefer Carlyle, then let her marry 
 him, and the sooner the better. If, on the other hand, 
 glie was obliged to confess to herself that she could still 
 Und hajipiness where she had hoped to find it, Irving 
 might still be lost to her ; but in such a condition of 
 mind she had no right to marry any one else. "With 
 characteristic integrity Miss Welsh, on receiving this 
 
 , letter, instantly inclosed it to Carlyle. She had been 
 under no obligation, at least until their marriage had 
 been definitely determined on, to inform him of the ex- 
 tent of her attachment to Irvang. But sincere as she 
 was to a fault in the ordinary occasions of life, she had 
 in this matter not only kept back the truth, but had pur- 
 posely misled Carlyle as to the nature of her feelings. 
 She felt that she must make a full confession. She had 
 deceived him — wilfully deceived him. She had even 
 told him that she had never cared for Irving. " It was 
 false," she said. She had loved him — once passionately 
 loved him. For this she might be forgiven. " If she 
 had shown weakness in loving a man whom she knew to 
 be engaged to another, she had made amends in persuad- 
 ing him to marry the other, and save his honor from re- 
 proach." But she had disguised her real feelings, and 
 for this she had no excuse. She who had felt herself 
 Carlyle's superior in their late controversy, and had been 
 aljle to rebuke him for selfishness, felt herself degraded 
 and humbled in his eyes. If he chose to cast her off, she 
 said that she could not say he was unjust ; but her pride
 
 250 SKETCHES FROM J. A. EROUDE. 
 
 was broken ; and very naturally, very toiicliingly, she 
 added that he had never been so dear to her as at that 
 moment when she was in danger of losing his affection 
 and, what was still more precious to her, his respect. 
 
 If Carlyle had been made of common stuff, so unex- 
 pected a revelation might have tried his vanity. The 
 actual effect was to awaken in him a sense of his own 
 unworthiness. He perceived that Miss Welsh was prob- 
 ably accepting him only out of the motives which Mrs. 
 Montagu suggested. His infirmities, mental and bodily, 
 might make him an unfit companion for her, or indeed 
 for any woman. It would be l)etter for her once for all 
 to give him up. He knew, he said, that he could never 
 make her happy. They might suffer at parting, but 
 they would have obeyed their reason, and tinie would 
 deaden the j^ain, No affection was unalterable or eter- 
 nal. Men themselves, with all their passions, sunk to 
 dust and were consumed. He must imitate her sincerity. 
 He said (and he spoke with perfect truth) that there was 
 a strange, dark humor in him over which he had no con- 
 trol. If she thought they were " blue devils, weak quer- 
 ulous wailings of a mind distempered," she would only 
 show that she did not understand him. In a country 
 town she had seen nothing of life, and had grasped at 
 the shadows that passed by her. First, the rude, smoky 
 fire of Edward Irving seemed to her a star from heaven ; 
 next, the quivering ignis fatu us of the soul that dwelt 
 in himself. The world had a thousand noble hearts that 
 she did not dream of. What was he, and what was his 
 father's house, that she should sacrifice herself for him ? 
 
 It was not in nature — it was not at least in Miss 
 Welsh's nature — that at such a time and under such cir- 
 cumstances she should recoTisider her resohition. She 
 was staying with her grandfather at Templand when
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WIFE. 351 
 
 tliese letters were intercliauged. She (Icterniined to use 
 the opportunity to pav the Carlyles her jjroinise J visit, see 
 liim in his own home and his own circle, and there face 
 to face explain all the past and form some scheme for 
 the immediate future. Like the lady in London, she felt 
 that if the marriao^e was to be, or rather since the mar- 
 fflige was to be, the sooner it was over now the better 
 for every one. 
 /•• 
 
 "i, THEIR MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 Thus the six years' imprisonment on the Dumfries- 
 shire moors came to an end. To Carlyle himself they 
 had been years of inestimable value. If we compare the 
 esfeay on Jean Paul, which he wrote at Comely Bank, 
 with the "Diamond Necklace," his last work at 
 Craigenputtock, we see the leap from promise to fulfil- 
 ment, from the hnmature energy of youth to the full in- 
 tellectual strength of completed manhood. The solitude 
 had compelled him to digest his thoughts. In " Sartor" 
 he liad relieved his soul of its perilous secretions by 
 throwing out of himself his personal suffei'ings and phys- 
 ical and spiritual experience. lie had read omnivo- 
 ously far and wide. Ills memory was a magazine of 
 facts gathered over the whole surface of European liter- 
 ature and history. The multiplied allusions in every 
 page of his later essays, so easy, so unlabored, reveal the 
 wealth which he had accumulated, and the fulness of 
 his command over his possessions. His religious faith 
 had gained solidity. His conlidence in the soundness of 
 his own convictions was no longer clouded with the 
 shadow of a doubt. The " History of the French Rev- 
 olution,''' the most powerful of all his works, and the 
 only one which has the character of a work of art, was 
 the production of the mind which he brought with him
 
 252 SKETCHES FKOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 froTii Craigenputtock, iiiidistiii-bed bj tlie contradictions 
 and excitements of London society and London triumphs. 
 lie had been tried in the furnace. Poverty, mortifica- 
 tion, and disappointment had done their work upon him, 
 and he had risen above them elevated, purilied, and 
 strengthened. Even tlie arrogance and self-assertion 
 wliicli Lord Jeffrey supposed to have been developed in 
 him by living away from conflict with other minds, had 
 been rather tamed than encouraged by his lonely medi- 
 tations. It was rather collision with those who differed 
 with him which fostered his imperiousness ; for Carlyle 
 rarely met with an antagonist whom he could not over- 
 Ijear with the torrent of his metaphors, while to himsell 
 his notebooks show that he read many a lecture on 
 humility. 
 
 He had laid in, too, on the moors, a stock of robust 
 health. Lamentations over indigestion and want of 
 sleep are almost totally absent from the letters written 
 from Craigenputtock. The simple, natural life, the 
 wholesome air, the daily rides or drives, the pure food — 
 milk, cream, eggs, oatmeal, the best of their kind — had 
 restored completely the functions of a stomach never, 
 perhaps, so far wrong as he had imagined. Carlyle had 
 ceased to complain on this head, and in a person so ex- 
 tremely vocal when anything was amiss with him, silence 
 is the best evidence that there was nothing to complain 
 of. On the moors, as at Mainhill, at Edinburgh, or in 
 London afterward, he was always impatient, moody, ir- 
 ritable, violent. These humors were in his nature, and 
 could no more be separated from them than his body 
 could leap off its shadow. But, intolerable as he had 
 found Craigenputtock in the later years of his residence 
 there, he looked back to it afterward as the happiest and 
 ^vholesomest home that he had ever known. He could
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WIFE. 253 
 
 do fully twice as much work there, he said, as he could 
 ever do afterward in London ; and many a time, when 
 sick of fame and clatter and interruption, he longed to 
 return to it. 
 
 . To Mrs. Carlyle Craigenputtock had been a less salu- 
 tary home. She might have borne the climate, and even 
 bfnetited by it, if the other conditions had been less un- 
 genial. But her - life there, to begin with, had been 
 a-life of menial drudgery, unsolaced (for she could have 
 jerrdured and even enjoyed mere hardship) by more than 
 an occasional word of encouragement or sympathy or 
 compassion from her husband. To him it seemed per- 
 fectly natural that what his mother did at Scotsbrig his 
 wife should do for him. Every household duty fell 
 upon her, either directly, or in supplying the short- 
 comings of a Scotch maid-of-all-work. She had to cook, 
 to sew, to scour, to clean ; to galloj) down alone to 
 Dumfries if anything was wanted ; to keep the Louse, 
 and even on occasions to milk the cows. Miss Jews- 
 bury has preserved many anecdotes of the Craigen- 
 puttock life, showing how hard a time her friend had of 
 it there. Carlyle, though disposed at first to dismiss 
 these memories as legends, yet admitted, on reflection, 
 that for all there was a certain foundation. The errors, 
 if any, can be no more than the slight alterations of form 
 which stories naturally receive in repetition. A lady 
 brought up in luxury has been educated into physical 
 unfitness for so sharp a discipline. Mrs. Carlyle's bodily 
 health never recovered from the strain of those six years. 
 Tiie trial to her mind and to her nervous system was istill 
 more severe. Nature had given her, along with a 
 powerful understanding, a disposition singularly bright 
 and buoyant. The Irving disappointmont had been a 
 blow to her ; but M'ounds wliidi do not kill are cured.
 
 2")\ SKETCnUS FROM ,T. A. FROUDE. 
 
 Thej leave a scar, but the pain ceases. It was long 
 over ; and if Carlyle liad been a real companion to her, 
 she would have been as happy with him as wives usually 
 are. But he was not a companion at all. When he was 
 busy she rarely so much as saw him, save, as he himself 
 pathetically tells, when she would steal into his dressing- 
 room in the morning when he was shaving, to secure 
 that little of his society. The loneliness of Craigenput- 
 tock was dreadful to her. Iler hard work, perhaps, had 
 so i'di' something of a blessing in it, that it was a relief 
 from the intolerable pressure. For months together, 
 especially after Alick Carlyle had gone, they never saw 
 the face of guest or passing stranger. So still the moors 
 were that she could hear the sheep nibbling the grass a 
 quarter of a mile off. For the many weeks when the 
 snow was on the ground she could not stir beyond the 
 garden, or even beyond her door. She had no great 
 thoughts, as Carlyle had, to occupy her with the ad- 
 ministration of the universe. He had deranged the faith 
 in which she had been brought up, but he had not inoc- 
 ulated her with his own ; and a dull gloom, sinking at 
 last almost to apathy, fell upon her spirits. She fought 
 against it, like a l)rave woman as she was. Carlyle's 
 own views of the prospects of men in this world were 
 not brilliant. In his " Miscellanies" is a small poem, 
 written at Craigenputtock, called " Cui Bono ?" giving 
 a most unpromising sketch of human destiny : 
 
 " Cui Bono? 
 
 " What is Hope ? a smiling raiabow 
 Children follow through the wet ; 
 'Tis not here, still yonder, yonder ! 
 Never urchin found it yet.
 
 THOMAS CAKLYLE AND HIS WIFE. 255 
 
 " What is Life ? a thawing iceboard 
 Oq a sea with sunny shore. 
 Gay we sail — it melts beneath us ! 
 We are sunk, and seen no more. 
 
 " What is Man ? a foolish baby ; 
 ---" Vainly strives and fights and frets ; 
 
 '"'* Demanding all— deserving nothing ! 
 
 f/^ One small grave is what he gets." 
 
 In one of Mrs. Carlyle's note-books 1 liiid an '' An- 
 sjrer" to tliis, dated 1830 : 
 
 ' ' Nay, this is Hope : a gentle dove. 
 That nestles in the gentle breast, 
 ^ ......; Bringing glad tidings from above 
 
 '/ Of joys to come and heavenly rest. 
 
 '* Arfd this is Life : ethereal tire 
 
 Striving aloft tlirough smothering clay ; 
 Mounting, flaming, higher, higher ! 
 Till lost in immortality. 
 
 '• And Man — oh ! hate not nor despise 
 The fairest, lordliest work of God ! 
 Think not He made the good and wise 
 Only to sleep beneath the sod !" 
 
 Carlylo liimself recognized occasionally that she was 
 not happy, rntcntionally unkind it was not in his nat- 
 ure to be. After his motlier, lie loved his wife better 
 than any one in the world. He was only occupied, un- 
 perceiving, negligent, and, when he did see that any- 
 thing was wrong with her, he was at once the tenderest 
 of husbands.
 
 X. 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY.* 
 
 The reconquest of Ireland had cost the English tax- 
 payer nine millions sterling. The lands, out of which 
 he had hoped, in part at least, to be repaid, had been 
 made away with by a corrupt commission under specious 
 pretenses of rewards for invisible service, or, if rescued 
 from their hands by the intervention of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, rescued only to be restored to disloyal noblemen, 
 who would use these recovered opportunities to cause 
 fresh trouble. The last vote, the deliberate refusal of 
 both Lords and Commons to allow a test of allegiance 
 there, which would have sifted the treacherous from the 
 faithful, destroyed the last hope of dependence on the 
 wretched, uncertain, discontented, wavering island ; 
 and the murmurs of the English clothiers, who had 
 watched her extending woollen manufactures with 
 cowardly jealousy, found willing and eager listeners. 
 This Ireland, with her harbors and rivers, her unnum- 
 bered sheep flocks, fattened on her limestone pastures, 
 producing the finest fleeces in the world ; this nest of pop- 
 ery and sedition, this bottomless morass of expense and 
 confusion, was to hft up its head and prosper, tempt 
 away their capital and their workmen, rob England of the 
 secret of her wealth, her monopoly in the world's markets 
 
 * From " The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century."
 
 EIGHTEENTH CEXTUUV POLITICAL ECOKOMY. ^57 
 
 of the broadclotli, frieze, and flannel trade. Had tliese 
 purblind connnercial politicians known what belonged to 
 their peace thej would have welcomed the development 
 of Irish industry as a better guarantee against future 
 trouble than a hundred acts of Parliament. No spirit 
 could have more effectually killed the genius of popery 
 arj^ Jacobitism, or could have more surely provided that 
 Ireland should nev-er again be a burden on the English 
 ex<!Tiequer, than the growth of trade and manufacture 
 there. The practical intelligence, the fixed and orderly 
 habits, the class of persons who would have been attract- 
 ed over to make their homes where land was cheap, and 
 waited only for labor and capital to be as rich and fair as 
 tli^rir own English counties, these things would have 
 formed the links of an invisible chain, which could never 
 have been broken, to bind the t^vo islands into one. 
 Traders' eyes unhapj^ily can never look beyond the next 
 year's balance-sheet. They saw their artisans emigrat- 
 ing. They saw, or thought they saw, the produce of 
 the Irish looms competing with theirs in the home 
 market, in the colonies, and on the Continent. They 
 imagined their business stolen from them, their towns 
 depopulated, the value of their lands decreased, their 
 country itself plunged at last into ruin, all for the sake 
 of that miserable spot which had been a thorn in Eng- 
 land's side for centuries. 
 
 No language could sufficiently express the emotions of 
 the exasperated English capitalist. The Parliament was 
 called upon " to make the Irish remember that they were 
 concpiered." They sliould not l)o allowed to build or 
 keep at sea a single ship. They should not manufacture 
 a thing except their linen, and their commerce should 
 be so tied and bound, that they should interfere with 
 England nowhere. To block them from the water
 
 258 SKETCHES FKUM J. A, FROUDE. 
 
 altogether, even their fishery, " must be with men and 
 boats from Enghxnd. ' ' Their Legislature, of which they 
 made so ill ;i use, must be ended, and they must be gov- 
 erned by the Parliament of England. So argued Eng- 
 hsh "common-sense." In vain an Irish apologist re- 
 plied, that to imagine Ireland's competition could in- 
 jure England was a dream. The Irish "seldom sailed 
 farther than a potato garden," and traded but in cows. 
 They " knew as little of trade and navigation as the 
 American Indian.'' They had not five seamen of their 
 nation, and not one ship of their own at Dublin. Such 
 little trade as they had was carried on by English mer- 
 chants and on English account. Good sense and truth 
 could find no hearing amid the general clamor. It was 
 not enough that the Navigation x\ct had destroyed the 
 Irish shipping interest. The export of Irish fleeces to 
 any country but England had been already prohibited ; 
 but the restrictions on the sale of the raw material was a 
 temptation to the Irish to work it up at home, and as 
 long as they might export their blankets and their 
 friezes, England's trade was in danger from their com- 
 petition. The English manufacturers considered it poli- 
 tic and fair to say to them, " You shall not weave yonr 
 wool at home at all ; you shall not sell your woollen cloth 
 either here or abroad ; we will put you under such disad- 
 vantages that it shall not be worth your while to supply 
 your own necessities ; you shall buy our clothes and 
 frieze to clothe your own backs ; you shall sell your 
 fleeces only to us ; and, as it is our interest to have it on 
 easy terms, you shall take the prices which we are 
 pleased to off er. " In this spirit the English cloth man- 
 ufacturers addressed themselves to their own Parlia- 
 ment ; and Parliament, blinded by ill-humor and preju- 
 dice, indorsed their petition, and carried it to the King
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY POLITICAL ECONOMY. 259 
 
 in language in wliicli tlie baseness of the motive was dis- 
 guised faintly under pretence of national interest. 
 
 The Peers represented "that the growing manufact- 
 ure of cloth in Ireland, hy cheapness of the necessaries 
 of life, and goodness of materials, invited Englishmen 
 with their families and servants to settle there. The 
 Eihg^s loyal subjects in England apprehended the 
 further groM-th of it would prejudice the manufactures 
 in 'England. The trade of England would decline, the 
 value of land decrease, and the number of the people 
 diminish. They besought his majesty to intimate to his 
 Irish subjects that the growth of the woollen manufact- 
 Tires there had been and would be always looked upon 
 wi^i jealousy in England, and, if not timely remedied, 
 might occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit and 
 suppress the same." 
 
 The Commons said that the " wealth and power of 
 England depended on her preserving a monopoly of the 
 woollen manufactures. They looked with jealousy on 
 the increase of it elsewhere, and must use their utmost 
 endeavors to prevent it from extending. The Irish were 
 dependent on, and protected by England in the enjoy- 
 ment of all they had, and the English Parliament would 
 be obliged to interfere imless the King found means to 
 make Ireland understand its position." 
 
 Both houses insisted that the Irish woollen trade should 
 cease. The Irish linen manufacture, since there were 
 for the present no rival English interests with which it 
 competed, they were willing to leave untouched, and 
 even to encourage. Though no pledge was given, there 
 was an implied compact that the sacrifice of one branch 
 of industry should be compensated by the protection of 
 the other. 
 
 The King replied hiidly that the wish of Parliament
 
 260 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 should be carried out, and Ireland was invited to apply 
 the knife to her own throat. Two letters from William 
 to the Lords Justices survive in Dublin Castle, embody- 
 ing the words of the two addresses, and recommending 
 to the attention of the Legislature there the worst and 
 most fatal of all the mistaken legislative experiments to 
 which a dependent country was ever subjected by the 
 folly of its superiors. 
 
 The Irish Houses, in dread of abolition if they re- 
 fused, relying on the j)romise of encouragement to tlieir 
 linen trade, and otherwise unable to help themselves, 
 acquiesced. They laid an export duty of four shillings 
 in the pound on all broadcloths carried out of Ireland, 
 and half as much on kerseys, flannels, and friezes, 
 amounting in itself to a complete prohibition ; while, to 
 make assurance more sure, the English Parliament passed 
 an act prohibiting the export out of Ireland of either 
 wool or woollen manufactures to any country but Eng- 
 land, to any port in England except six on St. George's 
 Channel, and only from the six towns of Dublin, Water- 
 ford, Youghal, Kingsdale, Cork, and Waterford. 
 
 The belief that, with a coast-line like that of Ireland, 
 and with a population which they were punishing for 
 disloyalty, such restrictions could really be enforced, 
 was one of those illusions which only the intellect of an 
 English merchant could have entertained. The result of 
 this restriction was to convert the Irish, beyond their 
 other troublesome peculiarities, into a nation of smug- 
 glers. 
 
 How far England adhered to the linen compact will 
 be told in its place. For the present, Mr. Hely Hutch- 
 ingson's summary of the story will suffice : 
 
 " It is true you promised, in return for the restraint, 
 to encourage our linen manufacture. But how have
 
 EIQHTEEJfTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY. 261 
 
 you done it ? By giving large bounties for the making 
 coarse linen in the Highlands of Scotland — bounties on 
 the exportation of English linen — opening the linen 
 manufacture to all persons without serving apprentice- 
 ships, and imposing a tax of thirty per cent on all for- 
 eign linens, which has been construed to extend to Irish 
 prftited, stained, dyed, striped, or chequered." 
 
 " Will you," Hut chingson asked, with j)rophetic in- 
 dignation, " will you liav^e an increased population em- 
 ployed at home, where they will contribute to the wealth 
 and strength of the state ; or shall they emigrate to 
 America, where it is possible they may assist in dismem- 
 bering the British empire ?"
 
 XL 
 
 KEYNAKD THE FOX. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, in liis Essay on Machiavelli, pro- 
 pounds a singular theory. Declining the various solu- 
 tions which have been offered to explain how a man sup- 
 posed to be so great could have lent his genius to the 
 doctrine of " the Prince," he has advanced a hypothesis 
 of his own, which may or may not be true, as an inter- 
 pretation of Macliiavelli's character, but which, as an 
 exposition of a universal ethical theory, is as question- 
 able as what it is brought forward to explain. We will 
 not show Lord Macaulay the disrespect of supposing that 
 he has attempted an elaborate piece of irony. It is pos- 
 sible that he may have been exercising his genius with a 
 paradox, but the subject is not of the sort in which we 
 can patiently permit such exercises. It is hard work 
 with all of us to keep ourselves straight, even when we 
 see the road with all plainness as it hes out before us ; 
 and clever men must be good enough to find something 
 else to amuse themselves with, instead of dusting our 
 eyes with sophistry. 
 
 According to this conception of human nature, the 
 basenesses and the excellences of mankind are no more 
 than accidents of. circumstance, the results of national 
 feeling and national capabilities ; and cunning and 
 treachery, and lying, and such other " natural defences 
 of the weak against the strong," are in themselves 
 neither good nor bad, except as thinking makes them so.
 
 REYXARl) THE FOX. 263 
 
 They are the virtues of a weak people, and they will 
 be as much admired, and are as justly admirable ; j;hey 
 are to the full as compatible with the highest graces and 
 most lofty features of the heart and intellect, as any of 
 those opposite so-called heroisms which we are generally 
 SQ unthinking as to allow to monopolize the name. 
 Onnning is the only resource of the feeble ; and why 
 may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sym- 
 pathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the 
 strong ? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's 
 meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the Eng- 
 lish understanding, he takes an illustration which shall 
 be familiar to all of us in the characters of lago and 
 O^iello. To our northern thought, the free and noble 
 nature of the Moor is wrecked through a single in- 
 firmity, by a fiend in the human form. To one of 
 Machiavelli's Italians, lago's keen-edged intellect would 
 have appeared as admirable as Othello's daring appears 
 to us, and Othello himself little better than a fool and a 
 savage. It is but a change of scene, of climate, of the 
 animal qualities of the frame, and evil has become good, 
 and good has become evil. Kow, our displeasure with 
 Lord Macaulay is, not that he has advanced a novel and 
 mischievous theory : it was elaborated long ago in the 
 finely -tempered dialectics of the Schools of Rhetoric at 
 Athens ; and so long as such a phenomenon as a culti- 
 vated rogue remains possible among mankind, it will 
 reappear in all languages and under any number of 
 philosophical disguises. Seldom or never, however, has 
 it appeared with so little attempt at disguise. It has 
 been left for questionable poets and novelists to idealize 
 the rascal genus ; philosophers have escaped into the 
 ambiguities of general propositions, and we do not re- 
 member elsewhere to have met with a serious ethical
 
 264 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 thinker deliberately laying two whole organic char- 
 acters, with their vices and virtues in full life and 
 bloom, side by side, asking himself which is best, and 
 answering gravely that it is a matter of taste. 
 
 Lord Macaulay has been bolder than his predecessors ; 
 he has shrunk from no conclusion, and has looked 
 directly into the very heart of the matter ; he has 
 struck, as we believe, the very lowest stone of our ethical 
 convictions, and declared that the foundation quakes 
 under it. 
 
 For, ultimately, how do we know that right is right, 
 and wi'ong is wrong ? People in general accept it on 
 authority ; but authority itself must repose on some 
 ulterior basis ; and what is that ? Are we to say that in 
 morals there is a system of primary axioms, out of which 
 we develop our conclusions, and apply them, as they 
 are needed, to life ? It does not appear so. The 
 analogy of morals is rather with art than with geometry. 
 The grace of Heaven gives us good men, and gives us 
 beautiful creations ; and, we perceiving by the instincts 
 within ourselves that celestial presence in the objects 
 on which we gaze, find out for ourselves the laws which 
 make them what they are, not by comparing them with 
 any antecedent theory, but by careful analysis of our own 
 impressions, by asking ourselves what it is which we 
 admire in them, and by calling that good, and calling 
 that beautiful. 
 
 So, then, if admiration be the first fact — if the sense 
 of it be the ultimate ground on which the after temple 
 of morality, as a system, upraises itself — if we can be 
 challenged here on our own ground, and fail to make it 
 good, what we call the life of the soul becomes a dream 
 of a feeble enthusiast, and we moralists a mark for the 
 sceptic's finger to point at with scorn.
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 2G5 
 
 Bold and ablj-iirged arguments against our own con- 
 victions, if they do not confuse us, will usually send us 
 back over our ground to re-examine the strength of our 
 positions ; and if we are honest with ourselves, we shall 
 very often find points of some uncertainty left unguarded, 
 of which the show of the strength of our enemy will 
 «obhge us to see better to the defence. It was not with- 
 out some shame, and much uneasiness, that, while we 
 w€re ourselves engaged in this process, full of indigna- 
 tion with Lord Macaulay, we heard a clear voice ringing 
 in our ear. " Who art thou that judgest another ?" and 
 warning us of the presence in our own heart of a sym- 
 pathy which we could not '' deny," with the sadly ques- 
 tionable hero of the German epic, " Reynard the Fox." 
 With our vulpine friend, we were on the edge of the 
 very same-tibyss, if, indeed, we were not rolling in the 
 depth of it. By what sophistry could we justify our- 
 selves, if not by the very same which we had just been 
 so eagerly condemning ? And our conscience whispered 
 to us that we had been swift to detect a fault in another, 
 because it was the very fault to which, in our own heart 
 of hearts, we had a latent leaning. 
 
 Was it so indeed, then ? Was Reineke no better than 
 lago ? Was the sole difference between them, that the 
 vates sacer who had sung the exploits of Reineke loved 
 the wicked rascal, and entangled us in loving him ? It 
 was a question to be asked. And yet we had faith 
 enougli in the straightforwardness of our own sympatliies 
 to feel sure that it must admit of some sort of answer. 
 And, indeed, we rapidly found an answer satisfactory 
 enough to give us time to breathe, in remembering that 
 Reineke, with all his roguery, has no malice in him. It 
 is not in his nature to liate ; he could not do it if he 
 tried. The characteristic of lago is that deep motiveless
 
 266 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 malignity which rejoices in evil as its proper element — 
 Avhicli loves evil as good men love virtue. In calcula- 
 tions on the character of the Moor, lago despises 
 Othello's unsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while 
 he hates him as a man because his nature is the per- 
 petual, opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. 
 l^ow, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even 
 Scharfenebbe, the crowd's wife, when she came to peck 
 his eyes out, if he had not been hungry ; and that 
 yaorpdg dvdyKT], that craving of the stomach, makes a 
 difference quite infinite. It is true that, like lago, 
 Keineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect : the 
 sense of his power and the scientific employment of his 
 time are a real delight to him ; but then, as we said, he 
 does not love evil for its own sake ; he is only somewhat 
 indifferent to it. If the other animals venture to take 
 liberties with him, he will repay them in their own coin, 
 and get his quiet laugh at them at the same time ; but 
 the object generally for W'hich he lives is the natural one 
 of getting his bread for himself and his family ; and, as 
 the great moralist says, " It is better to be bad for some- 
 thing than for nothing.' ' Badness generally is undesira- 
 ble ; but badness in its essence, which may be called 
 heroic badness, is gratuitous. 
 
 But this first thought served merely to give us a mo- 
 mentary relief from our alarm, and we determined we 
 would sift the matter to the bottom, and no more expose 
 ourselves to be taken at such disadvantage. We went 
 again to the poem, with our eyes open, and our moral 
 sense as keenly awake as a genuine wish to understand 
 our feelings could make it. We determined that we 
 would really know what we did feel and what we did 
 not. We would not be lightly scared away from our 
 friend, but neither would we any more allow our judg-
 
 REYXARD THE FOX. 267 
 
 merit to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his ; 
 he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as 
 far as it lay with us to discern justice and to render it. 
 
 And really on this deliberate perusal it did seem little 
 less than impossible that we could find any conceivable 
 attribute illustrated in Reineke's proceedings which we 
 -pould dare to enter in our catalogue of virtues, and 
 hot blush to read it there. What sin is there in the 
 J)ecalogue in which he has not steeped himself to the 
 lips ? To the lips, shall we say ? nay, over head and ears 
 • — rolling and rollicking in sin. Murder, and theft, and 
 adultery ; sacrilege, perjury, lying — his very life is made 
 of them. On he goes to the end, heaping crime on 
 ' crime, and lie on lie, and at last when it seems that jus- 
 ■ tice, which has been so long vainly halting after him, 
 has him really in her iron grasp, there is a solemn appeal 
 to Heaven, a challenge, a battle ordeal, in which, by 
 means we may not venture even to whisper, the villain 
 prospers, and comes out glorious, victorious, amid the 
 applause of a gazing world. To cro\vn it all, the poet 
 tells us that under the disguise of the animal name and 
 form the world of man is represented, and the true course 
 of it ; and the idea of the book is, that we who read it 
 may learn therein to discern between good and evil, and 
 choose the first and avoid the last. It seemed beyond 
 the power of sophistry to whitewash Reinekc, and the 
 interest which still continued to cling to him seemed too 
 nearly to resemble the unwisdom of the multitude, with 
 whom success is the one virtue, and failure the only 
 crime. 
 
 It appeared, too, that although the animal disguises 
 were too transparent to endure a moment's reflection, 
 yet that they were so gracefully worn that such mo- 
 ment's reflection was not to be come at without an effort.
 
 268 SKETCHES FEOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 Our imagination following the costume, did impercepti- 
 bly betray our judgment ; we admired the human in- 
 tellect, the ever-ready prompt sagacity and presence of 
 mind. We delighted in the satire on the foolishnesses 
 and greedinesses of our own fellow-creatures ; but in our 
 regard for the hero we forgot his humanity wherever it 
 was his interest that w^e should forget it, and while we 
 admired him as a man we judged him only as a fox. 
 We doubt whether it would have been possible, if he had 
 been descril:)ed as an open acknowledged biped in coat 
 and trousers, to have retained our regard for him. 
 Something or other in us, either real rightmindedness, 
 or humbug, or hypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix 
 more censure wath our liking than most of us do in the 
 case as it stands. It may be that the dress of the fox 
 throws us off our guard, and lets out a secret or two 
 which we commonly conceal even from ourselves, 
 AVhen we have to pass an opinion upon bad people, who 
 at the same time are clever and attractive, we say rather 
 what we think that we ought to feel than what we feel 
 in reality ; while with Reineke, being but an animal, we 
 forget to make ourselves up, and for once our genuine 
 tastes show themselves freely. Some degree of truth 
 there undoubtedly is in this. But making all allowance 
 for it — making all and over allowance for the trick which 
 is passed upon our senses, there still remained a feeling 
 unresolved. The poem was not solely the apotheosis of 
 a rascal in w^hom we were betrayed into taking an interest ; 
 and it was not a satire merely on the world, and on the 
 men whom the world delight to honor. There was still 
 something which really deserved to be liked in Reineke, 
 and what it was we had as yet failed to discover. 
 
 " Two are better than one," and we resolved in our 
 difficulty to try what our friends might have to say
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 2G9 
 
 about it. The appearance of the Wiirtemberg animals 
 at the Exliibition came fortunately apropos to our assist- 
 ance : a few years ago it was rare to find a person who 
 had read the Fox Epic ; and still more, of course, to find 
 one whose judgment would be worth taking about it. 
 But now the charming figures of Reineke himself, and 
 
 ";the Lion King, and Isegrim, and Bruin, and Bellyn, and 
 Hintze, and Grimbart, had set all the world asking who 
 
 /:aiid what they were, and the story began to get itself 
 
 . inown. The old editions, which had long slept unbound 
 
 in reams upon the shelv^es, began to descend and clothe 
 
 themselves in green and crimson. Mr. Dickens sent a 
 
 summary of it round the households of England. Every- 
 
 ^body began to talk of Reineke ; and now, at any rate, we 
 said to ourselves, we shall see whether we are alone in 
 our likin^^^whether others share in this strange sym- 
 pathy, or whether it be some unique and monstrous 
 moral obliquity in ourselves. 
 
 We set to work, therefore, with all earnestness, feeling 
 our way first with fear and delicacy, as conscious of our 
 own delinquency, to gather judgments which should be 
 wiser than our own, and correct ourselves, if it jjroved 
 that we required correction, with whatever severity 
 might be necessary. The result of this labor of ours was 
 not a little surprising. AVe found that women invariably, 
 with that clear moral instinct of theirs, at once utterly 
 reprobated and detested our poor Reynard ; detested the 
 hero and detested the bard who sang of him with so 
 much sympathy ; while men we found almost invariably 
 feeling just as we felt ourselves, only with this difference, 
 that we saw no trace of uneasiness in them about the 
 matter. It was no little comfort to us, moreover, to find 
 that the exceptions were rather among the half -men, the 
 M'ould-be extremely good, but whose goodness was of
 
 270 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 that dead and passive kind which spoke to but a small 
 elevation of thought or activity ; while just in propor- 
 tion as a man was strong, and real, and energetic, was his 
 ability to see good in Reineke. It was really most 
 strange : one near friend of ours — a man who, as far as 
 we knew (and we knew him well), had never done a 
 wrong thing — when we ventured to hint something about 
 roguery, replied, " You see, he was such a clever rogue, 
 that he had a riglit." Another, whom we pressed more 
 closely with that treacherous cannibal feast at Malepartus, 
 on the body of poor Lampe, said off-hand and with much 
 impatience of such questioning, " Such fellows were 
 made to be eaten." What could we do ? It had come 
 to this ; as in the exuberance of our pleasure with 
 some dear child, no ordinary epithet will sometimes 
 reach to express the vehemence of our affection, and 
 borrowing language out of the opposites, we call him 
 little rogue or little villain, so here, reversing the terras 
 of the analogy, we bestow the fulness of our regard on 
 Reineke because of that transcendently successful 
 roguery. 
 
 When we asked our friends how they came to feel as 
 they did, they had httle to say. They were not persons 
 who could be suspected of any latent disposition toward 
 evil-doing ; and yet though it appeared as if they were 
 falHng under the description of those unhappy ones who, 
 if they did not such things themselves, yet " had pleas- 
 ure in those who did them," they did not care to justify 
 themselves. Tlie fact was so : dpx^] to oti : it was a 
 fact — what could we want more ? Some few attempted 
 feebly to maintain that the book was a satire. But this 
 only moved the difficulty a single step ; for the fact of 
 the sympathy remained unimpaired, and if it was a 
 satire we were ourselves the objects of it. Others urged
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 271 
 
 what we said above, that the story was only of poor 
 animals that, according to Descartes, not only had no 
 souls, but scarcely had even life in any original and 
 sufficient sense, and therefore we need not trouble our- 
 selves. But one of two alternatives it seemed we were 
 bound to choose, either of which was fatal to the pro- 
 ■TDOsed escape. Either there was a man hiding under the 
 fox's skin ; or else, if real foxes have such brains as 
 Reineke was furnished withal, no honest doubt could be 
 entertained that some sort of conscience was not forgotten 
 in the compounding of him, and he must be held 
 answerable according to his knowledge. 
 
 What would Mr. Carlyle say of it, we thought, with 
 ^lis might and right ? ' ' The just thing in the long run 
 is the strong thing. " But Reineke had along runout 
 and came hi winner. Does he only " seem to succeed "? 
 "Who does succeed, then, if he no more than seems ? 
 The vulpine intellect knows where the geese live, it is 
 elsewhere said ; but among Reineke's victims we do not 
 remember one goose, in the literal sense of goose ; and 
 as to geese metaphorical, the whole visible world lies 
 down complacently at his feet. Nor does Mr. Carlyle's 
 expressed language on this very poem serve any better 
 to help us — nay, it seems as if he feels uneasy in the 
 neighborhood of so strong a rascal, so briefly he dis- 
 misses him. " Worldly prudence is the only virtue 
 which is certain of its reward. " Nay, but there is more 
 in it than that : no worldly prudence would command 
 the voices which have been given in to us for ReiTieke. 
 
 Three only possibilities lay now before us : either we 
 should, on searching, hnd something solid in the Fox's 
 doings to justify success ; or else the just thing was not 
 always the strong thing ; or it might be, that such very 
 semblance of success was itself the most miserable
 
 272 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDB. 
 
 failure ; that the wicked man who was struck down and 
 foiled, and foiled again, till he unlearned his wickedness, 
 or till he was disabled from any more attempting it, was 
 blessed in his disappointment ; that to triumph in 
 wickedness, and to continue in it and to prosper to the 
 end, was the last, worse penalty inflicted by the Divine 
 vengeance. "Iv' dOdvarog xi ddiKog u)v — to go on with in- 
 justice through this world and through all eternity, un- 
 cleansed by any purgatorial fire, untaught by any un- 
 toward consequence to open his eyes and to see in its true 
 accursed form the miserable demon to which he has sold 
 himself — this, of all catastrophes which could befall an 
 evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savoring of 
 hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could 
 reason out for himself — under which third hypothesis 
 many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. 
 Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted by us with 
 thankfulness. 
 
 It appeared, therefore, at any rate, to have come to 
 this — that if we wanted a solution for our sphinx 
 enigma, no (Edipus was likely to rise and find it for us ; 
 and that if we wanted help, we must take it for ourselves. 
 This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard 
 for the unworthy animal, we shared our sin with the 
 largest number of our own sex. Comforted with the 
 sense of good-fellowship, we went boldly to work upon 
 our conscionsness ; and the imperfect analysis which we 
 .succeeded in accomj)lishing, we here lay before you, 
 whoever you may be, who have felt, as we have felt, a 
 regard which was a moral disturbance to you, and which 
 you will be pleased if we enable you to justify — 
 
 Si quid novisti rectius istis, 
 Candidus imperti ; si non, his utere niecum.
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 273 
 
 Following the clew which was thrust into our hand by 
 the marked difiference of the feelings of men upon the 
 subject from those of women, we were at once satisfied 
 that Reineke's goodness, if he had any, must lay rather 
 in the active than the passive department of life. The 
 negative obedience to prohibitory precepts, under which 
 :sC^men are bound as well as men, as was already too 
 clear, we were obliged to surrender as hopeless. But it 
 seemed as if, with respect to men, whose business is to 
 (JOy and to labor, and to accomplish, this negative test 
 was a seriously imperfect one ; and it was quite as possi- 
 ble that a man who unhappily had broken many pro- 
 hibitions might yet exhibit positive excellences, as that 
 h^ might walk through life picking his way with the 
 utmost assiduity, risking nothing and doing nothing, 
 not committiTlg a single sin, but keeping his talent care- 
 fully wrapped up in a napkin, and get sent, in the end, to 
 outer darkness for his pains, as an unprofitable servant. 
 And this appeared the more important to us, as it was 
 very little dwelt upon by religious or moral teachers : at 
 the end of six thousand years, the popular notion of 
 virtue, as far as it could get itself expressed, liad not 
 risen beyond the mere abstinence from certain specific 
 bad actions. 
 
 The king of the beasts forgives Reineke on account of 
 the substantial services which at various times he has 
 rendered. His counsel was always the wisest, his hand 
 the promptest in cases of difficulty ; and all that 
 dexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite 
 culture had not been learned without an effort, or with- 
 out conquering many undesirable tendencies in himself. 
 Men are not born with any art in its perfection, and 
 Reineke had made liimself valuable by his own sagacity 
 and exertion. Now, on the human stage, a man who
 
 274 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 has made himself valuable is certain to be valued. How- 
 ever we may pretend to estimate men according to the 
 wrong things which they have done, or abstained from 
 doing, we in fact follow the example of Nobel, the king 
 of the beasts ; we give them their places among us ac- 
 cording to the serviceableness and capability which they 
 display. We might mention not a few eminent public 
 servants, whom the world delights to honor — ministers, 
 statesmen, lawyers, men of science, artists, poets, 
 soldiers — who, if they were tried by the negative test, 
 would show but a poor figure ; yet their value is too 
 real to be dispensed with ; and we tolerate unquestion- 
 able wrong to secure tlie services of eminent ability. 
 The world really does this, and it always has really done 
 it from the beginning of the human history ; and it is 
 only indolence or cowardice which has left our ethical 
 teaching halting so far behind the universal and necessary 
 practice. Even questionable prima donnas, in virtue of 
 their sweet voices, have their praises hymned in drawing- 
 room and newspaper, and applause rolls over them, and 
 gold and bouquets shower on them from lips and hands 
 which, except for those said voices, would treat them to 
 a ruder reward. In real fact, we take our places in this 
 world, not according to what we are not, but according 
 to what we are. His Holiness Pope Clement, when 
 his audience-room rang with furious outcries for justice 
 on Benvenuto Cellini, who, as far as half-a-dozen mur- 
 ders could form a title, was as fair a candidate for the 
 gallows as ever swung from that unlucky wood, replied, 
 " All this is very well, gentlemen ; these murders are 
 bad things, we know that. But where am I to get 
 another Benvenuto if yon hang this one for me ?" 
 
 Or, to take an acknowledged hero, one of the old 
 Greek sort, the theme of the song of the greatest of
 
 BEYNARD THE POX. 275 
 
 human poets, whom it is less easy to refuse to admire 
 than even our friend Reineke. Take Ulysses. It can- 
 not be said that he kept his hands from taking what was 
 not his, or his tongue from speaking what was not true ; 
 and if Frau Ermelyn had to complain (as indeed there 
 was too much reason for her complaining) of certain in- 
 Irrmities in her good husband Reineke, Penelope, too, 
 might have urged a thing or two, if she had known as 
 much about the matter as we know, which the modern 
 moralist would find It hard to excuse. 
 
 After all is said, the capable man is the man to be 
 admired. The man who tries and fails, what is the use 
 of him ? We are in this world to do something — not to 
 fa^l in doing it. Of your bunglers — helpless, inefficient 
 persons, " unfit alike for good or ill," who try one thing, 
 and fail because they are not strong enough, and 
 another, because they have not energy enough, and a 
 third, because they have no talent — inconsistent, un- 
 stable, and therefore never to excel, what shall we say of 
 them ? what use is there in them ? what hope is there of 
 them ? what can wu wish for them ? ro firj-rror' elvai ttclvt' 
 dpiarov. It were better for them they had never been 
 born. To be able to do what a man tries to do, that is 
 the first requisite ; and given that, we may hope all 
 things for him. '' Hell is paved with good intentions," 
 the proverb says ; and the enormous jjroportion of bad 
 successes in this life lie between the desire and the execu- 
 tion. Give us a man who is able to do what he settles 
 that he desires to do, and we have the one thing indis- 
 pensal)le. If he can succeed doing ill, much more he 
 can succeed doing well. Sliow him better, and, at any 
 rate, there is a chance that he will do better. 
 
 We are not concerned here with Renvenuto or witli 
 Ulysses further than to show, through the position which
 
 270 SKETCHES FROxM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 we all consent to give them, that there is much un- 
 reality in our conmion moral talk, against which we must 
 be on our guard. And if we fling off an old friend, and 
 take to affecting a hatred of him which we do not feel, 
 we have scarcely gained by the exchange, even though 
 originally our friendship may have been misplaced. 
 
 Capability no one will deny to Reineke. That is the 
 very differentia of him. An " animal capable" would 
 be his sufficient definition. Here is another very 
 genuinely valuable feature about him — his wonderful 
 singleness of character. Lying, treacherous, cunning 
 scoundrel as he is, there is a wholesome absence of 
 humbug about him. Cheating all the world, he never 
 cheats himself ; and while he is a hypocrite, he is 
 always a conscious hypocrite — a form of character, 
 however paradoxical it may seem, a great deal more 
 accessible to good influences than the other of the un- 
 conscious sort. Ask Reineke for tlie principles of his 
 life, and if it suited his purpose to tell you, he could do 
 so with the greatest exactness. There would be no dis- 
 crepancy between the profession and the practice. He 
 is most truly single-minded, and therefore stable in his 
 ways, and therefore, as the world goes, and in the world's 
 sense, successful. Whether really successful is a ques- 
 tion we do not care here to enter on ; but only to say 
 this — that of all unsuccessful men in every sense, either 
 divine, or human, or devilish, there is none equal to 
 Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways — the fellow with one 
 eye on heaven and one on earth — who sincerely preaches 
 one thing, and sincerely does another ; and from the 
 intensity of his unreality is unal)le either to see or feel 
 the contradiction. Serving God with his lips, and with 
 the half of his mind which is not bound up in the world, 
 and serving the devil with his actions, and with the other
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 277 
 
 half, he is substantially trying to cheat both God and the 
 devil, and is, in fact, only cheating himself and his 
 neighbors. This, of all characters upon the earth, ap- 
 pears to us to be the one of whom there is no hope at all 
 ... — a character becoming, in these days, alarmingly abnn- 
 'dant ; and the abundance of which makes us iind even 
 . iii a Reineke an inexpressible relief. 
 
 But what we most thoroughly value in him is his 
 capacity. He can do what he sets to work to do. That 
 l)Iind instinct with which the world shouts and claps its 
 hand for the successful man, is one of those latent im- 
 pulses ill us which are truer than we know ; it is the 
 imiversal confessional to which Nature leads us, and, in 
 h6r intolerance of disguise and hypocrisy, compels us to 
 be our own accusers. Whoever can succeed in a o;iven 
 condition of society, can succeed only in virtue of ful- 
 filling the terms which society exacts of him ; and if he 
 can fulfil them triumphantly, of course it rewards him 
 and praises him. He is what the rest of the world would 
 be, if their powers were equal to their desires. lie has 
 accomplished what they all are vaguely, and with imper- 
 fect consistency, struggling to accomplish ; and the 
 character of the conqueror — the means and aj^pliances 
 by which he has climbed up that great pinnacle on which 
 he stands victorious, the observed of all observers, is no 
 more than a very exact indicator of the amount of real 
 virtue in the age, out of which he stands prominent. 
 
 We are forced to acknowledge that it was not a very 
 virtuous age in which Reineke made himself a great man ; 
 but that was the fault of the age as much as tlie fault of 
 him. His nature is to succeed wherever he is. If the 
 age had required something else of him, then he would 
 have been something else. Whatever it had said to 
 him, " D(t, and Twill niiike v<>n mvhero," that Reineke
 
 278 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 would have done. No appetite makes a slave of him — 
 no faculty refuses obedience to his will. His entire 
 natm-e is under perfect organic control to the one su- 
 preme authority. And the one object for which he 
 lives, and for which, let his lot have been cast in what- 
 ever century it might, he would always have lived, is to 
 rise, to thrive, to prosper, and become great. 
 
 The world as he found it said to him — Prey upon us ; 
 we are your oyster, let your wit open us. If you will 
 only do it cleverly — if you will take care that we shall 
 not close upon your fingers in the process, you may 
 devour us at your pleasure, and we shall feel ourselves 
 highly honored. Can w^e wonder at a fox of Reineke's 
 abilities taking such a world at its word ? 
 
 And let it not be supposed that society in this earth 
 of ours is ever so viciously put together, is ever so totally 
 without organic life, that a rogue, unredeemed by any 
 merit, can prosper in it. There is no strength in rotten- 
 ness ; and when it comes to that, society dies and falls in 
 j)ieces. Success, as it is called, even worldly success, is 
 impossible, without some exercise of what is called moral 
 virtue, without some portion of it, infinitesimally small, 
 perhaps, but still some. Courage, for instance, steady 
 self-confidence, self-trust, self-reliance — that only basis 
 and foundation-stone on which a strong character can 
 rear itself — do we not see this in Reineke ? While he 
 lives, he lives for himself ; but if he comes to dying, he 
 can die like his l)etters ; and his wit is not of that 
 effervescent sort which will fly away at the sight of 
 death and leave him panic-stricken. It is true there 
 is a meaning to that word courage, which was perhaps 
 not to be found in the dictionary in which Reineke 
 studied. " I hope I am afraid of nothing, Trim," said 
 my Uncle Toby, " except doing a wrong thing." With
 
 REYKARD THE FOX. 279 
 
 Reineke there was no " except." His digestive powers 
 shrank from no action, good or bad, which would serve 
 his turn. Yet it required no shght measure of courage 
 to treat his fellow-creatures with the steady disrespect 
 with whicli Reineke treats them. To walk alono; 
 among them, regardless of any interest but his own ; out 
 .•"fof mere wantonness to liook them up like so many cock- 
 ' chafers, and spin tliem for his pleasure ; not like 
 ,-J)o"iitian, with an imperial army to hold them down 
 ^ during the operation, but with no other assistance but 
 . his own little body and large %vit ; it was something to 
 venture upon. And a world which would submit to be 
 so treated, what could he do but despise ? 
 ^ To tlie animals utterly below ourselves, external to 
 our own species, we hold ourselves bound by no law. 
 We say to"*them, "wos non volns, without any uneasy mis- 
 givings. We rob the bees of their honey, the cattle of 
 their lives, tlie horse and the ass of their liberty. We 
 kill the wild animals that they may not interfere with 
 our pleasures ; and acknowledge ourselves bound to 
 them by no terms except what are dictated by our own 
 convenience. And why should Reineke have acknowl- 
 edged an obligation any more than we, to creatures so 
 utterly below himself ? He was so clever, as our friend 
 said, that he liad a right. That he could treat them so, 
 Mr. Carlyle would say, proves that he had a right. 
 
 But it is a mistake to say he is without a conscience. 
 No bold creature is ever totallv without one. Even 
 lago shows some sort of conscience. Respecting nothing 
 else in heaven or earth, he respects and even reverences 
 his own intellect. After one of those sweet interviews 
 with Roderigo, his, wliat we must call conscience, takes 
 him to account for his company ; and he pleads to it in 
 his own justification —
 
 280 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 For I mine own gained knowledge should 'profane 
 Were I to waste myself with such a snipe 
 But for my sport and profit. 
 
 ReineTce, if we take the mass of liis misdeeds, preyed 
 chiefly, like our own Eobin Hood, on rogues who were 
 greater rogues than himself. If Bruin chose to steal 
 Rusteviel's honey, if Hintze trespassed in the priest's 
 granary, they were but taken in their own evil-doings. 
 And what is Isegrim, the worst of Reineke's victims, 
 but a great heavy, stupid, lawless brute ? — fair type, we 
 will suppose, of not a few Front-de-Boeufs and other so- 
 called nobles of the poet's era, whose will to do mis- 
 chief was happily limited by their obtuseness. We re- 
 member that French baron — Gilbert de Retz, we believe, 
 was his name — who, like Isegrim, had studied at the 
 universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinner 
 pastime for many years, as it proved at last, was to cut 
 children's throats for the pleasure of watching them 
 die. We may well feel gratitude that a Reineke was 
 provided to be the scourge of such monsters as these ; 
 and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in 
 seeing the intellect in that little weak body triumph over 
 them and trample them down. This, indeed, this victory 
 of intellect over brute force, is one great secret of our 
 pleasure in the poem, and goes far, in the Carlyle 
 direction, to satisfy us that, at any rate, it is not given to 
 mere base physical strength to win in the battle of life, 
 even in times when physical strength is apparently the 
 only recognized power. 
 
 We are insensibly falling from our self-assumed judicial 
 office into that of advocacy ; and sliding into what may 
 be plausibly urged, rather than standing fast on what we 
 can surely affirm. Y(!t there are cases when it is fitting 
 for the judge to become the advocate of an undefended
 
 REYNARD THE FOX. 381 
 
 prisoner ; and advocacy is only plausible when a few 
 words of truth are mixed with what we say, like the few 
 drops of wine which color and faintly flavor the large 
 draught of water. Such few grains or drops, whatever 
 they may be, we must leave to the kindness of Reynard's 
 friends to distil for him, while we continue a little 
 -longer in the same strain. 
 
 After all, it may be said, what is it in man's nature 
 which is really admirable ? It is idle for us to waste our 
 ^ labor in passing Reineke through the moral crucible un- 
 less we shall recognize the results M'hen we obtain them ; 
 and in these moral sciences our analytical tests can only 
 be obtained by a study of our own internal experience. 
 If we desire to know what we admire in Reineke, we 
 must look for what we admire in ourselves. And what 
 is that ? Is- it what on Sundays, and on set occasions, 
 and when we are mounted on our moral stilts, we are 
 pleased to call goodness, probity, obedience, humility ? 
 Is it ? Is it really ? Is it not rather the face and form 
 which nature made — the strength which is ours, we 
 know not how — our talents, our rank, our possessions ? 
 It appears to us that we most value in ourselves and most 
 admire in our neighbor, not acquisitions, but gifts. A 
 man does not praise himself for being good. If he 
 praise himself he is not good. The lirst condition of 
 goodness is forgetfulness of self ; and where self has 
 entered, under however plausible a form, the health is 
 but skin-deep, and underneath there is corruption. And 
 so through everything ; wc value, we are vain of, proud 
 of, or whatever you please to call it, not what M'e have 
 done for ourselves, but what has been done for us — what 
 has been given to us by the up})er powers. "We look up 
 to high-born men, to wealthy men, to fortunate men, to 
 clever men. Is it not so ? AVhom do we choose for the
 
 282 SKETCHEvS FKOM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 coinitj member, the magistrate, the officer, the 
 minister ? Tlie good man we leave to the humble en- 
 joyment of his goodness, and we look out for the able, 
 or the wealthy. And again of the wealthy, as if on 
 every side to witness to the same universal law, the man 
 who with no labor of his own has inherited a fortune, 
 ranks higher in the world's esteem than his father who 
 made it. We take rank by descent. Such of us as have 
 the longest pedigree, and are therefore the farthest re- 
 moved from the first who made the fortune and founded 
 the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the foun- 
 tain the fouler the stream ; and that first ancestor, who has 
 soiled his fingers by labor, is no better than a parvenu. 
 
 And as it is with what we value, so it is with what we 
 blame. It is an old story, that there is no one who 
 would not in his heart prefer being a knave to being a 
 fool ; and when we fail in a piece of attempted roguery, 
 as Coleridge has wisely observed, though reasoning un- 
 wisely from it, we lay the blame, not on our own moral 
 nature, for which we are responsible, but on our intel- 
 lectual, for which we are not responsible. We do not 
 say what knaves, we say what fools, we have been ; per- 
 plexing Coleridge, who regards it as a phenomenon of 
 some deep moral disorder ; whereas it is but one more 
 evidence of the universal fact that gifts are the true and 
 proper object of appreciation ; and as we admire men for 
 possessing gifts, so we blame them for their absence. 
 The noble man is the gifted man ; the ignoble is the 
 ungifted ; and therefore we have only to state a simple 
 law in siinple language to have a full solution of the 
 enigma of Eeineke. He has gifts enough ; of that, at 
 least, there can be no doubt ; and if he lacks the gift to 
 use them in the way which we call good, at least he uses 
 them successfully. His victims are less gifted than he,
 
 REYKARD THE FOX. 283 
 
 and therefore less noble ; and therefore he has a right to 
 use them as lie pleases. 
 
 And, after all, what are these victims ? Among the 
 heaviest charges which were urged against him was the 
 killing and eating of that wretched Scharfenebbe — 
 
 . .-;Sharpbeak — the crow's wife. It is well that there are 
 
 ' two sides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, 
 
 v.was not to l)e allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sun- 
 
 ^ tshine but what an unclean carrion bird must come down 
 and take a peck at him. We can feel no sympathy with 
 the outcries of the crow husband over the fate of the 
 unfortunate Sliarpbeak. Wofully, he says, he flew over 
 
 ' the place where, a few moments before, in tJie glory of 
 glossy plumage, a loving wife sat croaking out her pas- 
 sion for him, and found nothing — nothing but a little 
 blood and a few torn feathers — all else clean gone and 
 utterly abolished. AVell, and if it was so, it was a blank 
 prospect for him, but the earth was well rid of her ; and 
 for herself, it was a higher fate to be assimilated into 
 the body of Reineke than to remain in a miserable indi- 
 viduality to be a layer of carrion crow's eggs. 
 
 And then for Bellyn, and for Bruin, and for Ilintze, 
 and the rest, who would needs be meddling with what 
 was no concern of theirs — what is there in them to chal- 
 lenge either regret or pity ? They made love to their 
 occupation. 
 
 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature falls 
 Between the pass and fell incensed points 
 Of micfhty opposites : 
 They lie not near our conscience. 
 
 Ah ! if they were all. But there is one misdeed, one 
 which outweighs all others whatsoever — a crime which it 
 is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he
 
 ii84 SKETCHES FROM J. A. FROUDE. 
 
 pleased ; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sat heavy, 
 for Jiim, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his 
 life we are certain that he wished it undone — the death 
 and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was 
 a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampe had told tales of 
 him ; he had complained that Reineke, under pretence 
 of teaching him his Catechism, had seized him and tried 
 to murder him ; and though he provoked his fate by 
 thrusting himself, after such a warning, into the jaws of 
 Malepartus, Reineke betrays an uneasiness about it in 
 confession ; and, unlike himself, feels it necessary to 
 make some sort of an excuse. 
 
 Grimbart, the badger, Reineke's father confessor, 
 had been obliged to speak severely of the seriousness of 
 the offence. " You see," Reineke answers : 
 
 To help oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business : 
 one cannot 
 
 Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the clois- 
 ter. 
 
 When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers. 
 
 Lampe sorely provoked me ; he frisked about this way and that 
 way, 
 
 Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and so jolly. 
 
 Really I could not resist it. I entirely forgot how I loved him. 
 
 And then he was so stupid. 
 
 But even this acknowledgment does not satisfy 
 Reineke. His mind is evidently softened, and it was 
 on that occasion that he poured out his pathetic lamenta- 
 tion over the sad condition of the world — so fluent, so 
 musical, so touching, that Grimbart listened with wide 
 eyes, unable, till it had run to tlie length of a sermon, to 
 collect himself. It is true that at last his office as 
 ghostly father obliged him to put in a slight de- 
 murrer :
 
 REYN"ARD THE FOX. 2S?} 
 
 Uncle, the badger replied, why, these are the sins of your neigh- 
 bors ; 
 
 Yours, I should think, were sufficient, and rather more now to the 
 purpose. 
 
 ..- But he sighs to think what a bishop Reineke would 
 have made. 
 
 '> And now, for the present, farewell to Reineke Fuchs, 
 and to the song in which his glory is enshrined, the 
 Welt-Bibel — Bible of this world — as Goethe called it, 
 -the most exquisite moral satire, as we will call it, which 
 has ever been composed. It is not addressed to a passing- 
 mode of folly or of profligacy, but it touches the peren- 
 nial nature of mankind, laying bare our own sympathies, 
 aAd tastes, and weaknesses, with as keen and true an 
 edge as when the living world of the old Swabian poet 
 winced under its earliest utterance. 
 
 Humorous in the liigh pure sense, every laugh which 
 it gives may liave its echo in a sigh, or may ghde into 
 it as excitement subsides into thought ; and yet, for 
 those who do not care to find matter there either for 
 thought or sadness, may remain innocently as a laugh. 
 
 Too strong for railing, too kindly and loving for the 
 bitterness of irony, the poem is, as the world itself, a 
 book where each man will find what his nature enables 
 him to see, which gives us back each our own image, 
 and teaches us each the lesson which each of us desires 
 to learn.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Abonotichu*. 112 ; becomes a lioly 
 city, 136. 
 
 iEscuLAPius reappears, 115 ; as oracle 
 and deity, 117 ; speaks through the 
 serpent. 122. 
 
 Africa, South, A trip to, 183. 
 
 Alexandei! of Aboiiotichus, 107 ; stud- 
 ies medicine and magic, 109 ; meets 
 Cocconas, 109 ; re-olves on relij^ious 
 fraud, 110; dismisses bis companion, 
 119 ; reappears in his native place, 
 113; work.s miracles, 11.5 ; isdiflferent- 
 ly regarded, 119 ; consulted by Roman 
 society, 12:^ ; establishes a temple, 
 126 ; invents his miraculous birth, 
 127 . commits dangerous mistakes, 
 128 : is finally triumphant, 133. 
 
 Animajl creation. The, sacrificed for 
 man, 59. 
 
 " Answek," a poem, 255. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana, 103 : at the 
 Roman court, 104 ; as a healer and a 
 magician, lii5. 
 
 Apprenticeship iu trades in Old Eng- 
 land, 170. 
 
 Arbndal, a modern town, 97. 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus, 128. 
 
 Asia Minor, the home of magicians, 
 102. 
 
 Asceticism, Froude's philosophy of, 14. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bergen, 67 ; its flsh-trade, 6S ; univer- 
 sal thrift, 68 ; model museum, 69 ; 
 people, 70. 
 
 Bishop, A Xorvv'egian, 82. 
 
 Bloemfonteine, 220. 
 
 BoLEYN, Anne, at the Tower, 17:j ; iu 
 the procession, 176 ; at Westminster 
 Hall, 178 ; crowned by Cranmer, 179. 
 
 BuNYAN, John, his end, 181 ; last words, 
 182 ; his temperament, 183 ; his toler- 
 ance, 185 ; his preaching, 186. 
 
 Burke, Father. 30. 
 
 Business principles, common but false, 
 52. 
 
 " C.E8AR, a sketch," 19. 
 Cagliostro, a, of the second century, 
 103. 
 
 Cape Town, 193 ; its surroundings, 
 194. 
 
 Capitat. and labor, 156 ; their gaina 
 and losses, 172. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, Reminiscences of, 
 19: and his wife. 246 ; reveals himself 
 to Miss Welsh, 250 ; his life on Dum- 
 friesshire moors, 251 ; temper, 252 ; 
 views of men's prospects, 254 ; treat- 
 ment of his wife, 2.55. 
 
 Change, a universal law, 136. 
 
 Cheneys, 232 ; the old church at, 2;i4. 
 
 Ches, The, 235 ; a day's fishing in, 237. 
 
 Christian character, A plea for, 22. 
 
 Christian Church, The, 27 ; against 
 fraud, 121. 
 
 Christiania, its attractions, 98. 
 
 Christiansund, 90 ; its strange cot- 
 tages, 91. 
 
 Churches, Dutch, in South Africa, 228. 
 
 Circumstances. Adverse, useful to 
 strong men, 40; blamed for failure, 
 51 ; the causes of virtue and vii e. 262. 
 
 Civilization, what is it ? 82 ; primitive, 
 228. 
 
 Clement, Pope, on Cellini's murderB, 
 274. 
 
 CoccoNAS, the fortune-t' Her, 109. 
 
 Conservatism in Norway, 97. 
 
 Criticism, Unworthy, 30 ; Irish, 31. 
 
 " Cui Bono ?" a poem, 254. 
 
 D. 
 
 Daviken, 82. 
 
 Diamond Fields, 215; their discovery, 
 
 218 : method of working them, 218; 
 
 not a benefl', 222. 
 Drontheim, how to reach it, 71 ; the 
 
 home of the Norse kings, 86 ; its ca 
 
 thedral, 87. 
 Durban in Natal, 199. 
 Dutch hospitality, 228. 
 
 E. 
 
 East London, 197. 
 
 Ed L'c AT ION of clergy and laity iu O'.d 
 
 England, 165. 
 "Elective Affinities," opinion of, 88. 
 Electivb franchise, how controlled, 
 
 196. 
 Engineering work in South .\fnra. 
 
 19T.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 387 
 
 EngLwAND In the sixteenth century, 
 136 ; population of, 138 ; manufact- 
 ures in, 140 ; land - tenure of, 144 ; 
 sumptuary laws in, 148 ; condition of 
 laborers iu, 152 ; wages of, 155 ; so- 
 cial habits of, 144 ; education in, 165. 
 
 Epicurus and his sect, lii ; aflEord no 
 moral light, 134. 
 
 Essays of the author left out, 5. 
 
 F. 
 
 'Feudal system, Eegulations of the, 150. 
 
 'Fishing, at Nord Gulen, 76; at the 
 
 Grea' Fall, 7" ; at StrOmen, 80 : iu 
 
 the Romsdal Fjord, 85 ; Trondlijem 
 
 1-. Tjord, 89; at Oddi-, 96; at Cheneys, 
 
 232. 
 
 Fjords same as friths. 63 ; their scen- 
 ery, 64 ; how formed, 64 ; their depth, 
 65 ; difticulty of navigaiing, 66. 
 
 Flok.*, Tho, of Norway, 79. 
 
 Fording an African river, 221. 
 
 Frkedoji of the will, 21. 
 
 Freeman, Edward A., 7 ; his charges 
 against the author, 30. 
 
 Fboude, James Autlumy, birthplace 
 ' and parentage, 5; enters college, 5 ; 
 graduates and becomes a fellow, 6 ; 
 ordained a deacon, 6 ; eivt-s up fel- 
 lowship and orders, 6; adopts a liter- 
 ary career, 7 ; controversy with Mr. 
 Edward A. Freeman, 7; his es-ay on 
 John Henry Kewnian, 8 ; the author's 
 boyhood, 10 ; experience with Evan- 
 gelical Chiisiiaus, 12; his literary 
 workf, Vi ; stndies English history, 
 16; pul>li.-his twelve volumes, 16; 
 treatmeni of the Irish, IS; publishes 
 essays, 1!); edits Carlvle's biography, 
 19; his pliilDsophical opinion-, 20; 
 religious faith, 2.'J; theological opin- 
 ions, 24 ; as an historical writer, 26 ; 
 his agnosticism, 29; his tiavels. 29 ; 
 his conlroversies, 30; his style, 32. 
 
 Froude, Richard Hurrell, 6; the au- 
 thor's alleged injustice to, 31. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gpiranger Fjord, its sublime scenery, 
 
 92. 
 Glacial action, 65 ; at Odde, 94. 
 Gltcon, Incarnation of, 115. 
 Government, I'arenlal, 105. 
 
 n. 
 
 Hay-making in ^Torivay, 92. 
 
 Uenky VIII. in a new light, 17 ; nurses 
 
 niaunfacturcs, 140. 
 IlKin-CiiuBcn missions in South Africa, 
 
 221. 
 Honesty enforced in Old England, 168. 
 Hospitality, Social, in Old En^'l.ind, 
 
 KM. 
 
 Human nature, how developed, .56; 
 
 how influenced, 263. 
 Hotchingson, Hely, his prophetic 
 
 question, 260. 
 
 I. 
 
 Incomes of the old English nobility, 
 162 ; of country gentlemen, 163. 
 
 Ireland, The English in, 17; cost of 
 reconquest, 256 ; restrictions upon 
 her manufactures and commerce, 257. 
 
 Irish attacks upon the author, 31. 
 
 Irving, Edward, 246. 
 
 Judgment scene, A, 58. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kafirs, The, 201 ; treatment of their 
 women, 2o2 ; their musical perform- 
 ances, 202 ; their injudicious treat- 
 ment by the English, 202 ; their hou- 
 ee^ty, 204 ; their clothing, 206. 
 
 KlJIBERLT, 217. 
 
 Land, Tenure of, 143. 
 Leokof, 209. 
 
 LiPE-PlCTURE, 45. 
 
 Lightning conductor. A, 212. 
 
 LuciAN, lOG ; his Bketchof Alexander 
 of Abonotichus, 107; his opinion of 
 ancient philosopher.^, 12o ; attempt.^ 
 to expose Alexander, 130; is finally 
 imposed upon, 132; lands at Bithynia, 
 133 ; fails to move the governor, 13-3. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay's alleged injustice, 16; his 
 singular theory, 202. 
 
 Macuiaveli.i, 262. 
 
 M\NDAL, its historic associations, 97. 
 
 MANurACTURKs in Old England nursed 
 by statute, 140 ; spreading over the 
 country, 143; in South Africa, want- 
 ing, 226. 
 
 Mahitzhurg, 204 
 
 Mii.iTAitY i)rincip!e in land tenure, 144. 
 
 Money, value of, 155. 
 
 MoKALiTV, essential to success, 278. 
 
 Mormon fraud, Type of, 112. 
 
 N. 
 
 Natal, 109; its climate, 201; i)opula- 
 tion, 201 ; caiihcs ol niisgoverninent, 
 203; rcmcdv i- r ii'iprovement. 2i 8. 
 
 " Ne.>ik.sis of Failh The," II ; its plot 
 15 ; ilB twolo.'d reception 16. 
 
 New Bedford. 228.
 
 288 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Newman, John Henry, fi ; liighiftorian, 
 8. 
 
 NoRD Fjord, 78 
 
 NoRU Giilen, a primitive Norwegian 
 valley, 73. 
 
 NousE history made intelligible, 72. 
 
 Norsemen, The, their knowledge and 
 our own, 101. 
 
 North Sea, The, stormy, 97. 
 
 Norway Fjords, The, 6:J-t01. 
 
 Norway, A trip to, 62 ; routes of travel, 
 63 ; from the Solent to Udsire, 66 ; 
 on the ocean, 67 ; at Bergen. 68 ; 
 its religion, 69 ; Giilen, 73 ; primitive 
 life in, 7.5 ; its etnrdy population, 76 ; 
 to the Nord Fjord, 78 ; at the Stro- 
 men, 80 ; to Daviken, 82 ; in the Roms- 
 dal Fjord, 83 ; to Trondhjem, 86 : ex- 
 ploring the fjord, 87 ; to Christian- 
 sund, 90 ; at the Geiranger Fjord. 92 ; 
 at the Odde Fjord. 93 : to Christiania, 
 96; home to Cowes, 101. 
 
 O. 
 
 Odde Fjord, 92 ; its wild and grand as- 
 
 pect!=, 04. 
 Othello the Moor, 263. 
 " Oxford Counter-reformation, The," 
 
 10 ; expresses the author's bent of 
 
 thinking, 2.5. 
 Oxford Movement, The, 6 ; its two 
 
 groups, 9. 
 
 Political economy in the eighteenth 
 
 century, 256. 
 Population, Increase of, 139. 
 Port Elizabeth, 196. 
 potscheffstrom, 213. 
 Pretoria, 213. 
 Produce of the land in Old England, 
 
 1.51. 
 Production called for, 50. 
 l^ROTESTANTisM, its basis, 23. 
 Provisions, Prices of, in Old England, 
 
 152. 
 Pythagoreans, The, 120. 
 
 E 
 
 Railway station. \ Kidini; at a, 41. 
 
 Rbinekb Fuchs, its meaning, 267. 
 
 Religion the outgrowth of conscience, 
 135 ; of Homer and the Greek dra- 
 matists, 191 ; of the Boers, 192. 
 
 Reynard the fox, 262. 
 
 RoLLo's ancestral home, 83. 
 
 Romanism, its dangers, 26; eulogy of, 
 27. 
 
 R')Msdal Fjord, 83 ; its geological in- 
 terest, 84. 
 
 Rum and brandy, as civilizers, 189. 
 
 ItuTu.iAN consults the oracle, 124 ; 
 inairies the daughter of Selene, 125. 
 
 S. 
 
 Schoolmaster's salary, A Norwegian, 
 82. 
 
 Science and religion. 22. 
 
 Sectarianism exemplified and re- 
 buked, 224. 
 
 Seneca as a man and philosopher, 88. 
 
 Serpent, The. as a Fymbol, 113. 
 
 Severian consults the oracle, 122. 
 
 Sheep-farming in Old England re- 
 stricted, 159. 
 
 Snake story. A, 202. 
 
 iOGNE Fjord, 64 ; its depth, 66 ; grand 
 scenery, 72. 
 
 South EY, Governor, 219 ; his mistakem 
 policy, 220. 
 
 Spinoza, 20. 
 
 Sport, Sense of, 241. 
 
 St. Neot, Life of, 13. 
 
 St. Olaf, 87. 
 
 St. Vincent, 190. 
 
 StrOmen. At the, 78. 
 
 Style, The author's, a masterpiece of 
 writing, 32 ; specimen extracts, 33-40. 
 
 Sumptuary laws, 148. 
 
 Sunday in Norway, 81 ; no Sabbatari- 
 anism, 98. 
 
 T. 
 
 Thunder-Storm, a South African, 216. 
 " Times of Erasmus and Lnther," 24. 
 Tory, Au English, in Nonvay, 84. 
 TouRLSTS encountered, 93. 
 Town organizations in Old England, 
 
 167. 
 Trabancho, 223 ; the king and his 
 
 court, 224. 
 Trade associations in Old England, 
 
 168. 
 Trade-winds, 192. 
 Trondh.jem (see Drontheim). 
 TUNBRIDGB, 230. 
 
 Vikikg's ship. A, 99. 
 Villanagb in Old England, 145. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wages in Old England received by all. 
 49. 
 
 Wealth not the aim of a nation, 193. 
 
 Welsh, Miss Jane, 246 ; resolves to 
 marry Carlyle. 248 ; makes a full con- 
 fession, 249 ; visits the Carlyles, 251; 
 her married life, 251 ; experience at 
 Crai^enputtock, 2.53; her views of 
 life, 2,55. 
 
 Wesleyan mission station, 223. 
 
 Work the condition of life, 48. 
 
 Working classes in Old England, Con- 
 dition of the, 151 ; their wages, 156.
 
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