Skip to main content

Full text of "The Gentleman's magazine"

See other formats


Google 


This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project 
to make the world’s books discoverable online. 

Ithas survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject 
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books 
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover. 


Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the 
publisher to a library and finally to you. 


Usage guidelines 


Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the 
public and we are merely their custodians, Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to 
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. 


We also ask that you: 


+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for 
personal, non-commercial purposes. 








+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine 
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the 
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. 


+ Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find 
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. 


+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just 
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other 
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of 
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner 
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. 


About Google Book Search 


Google's mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers 
discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web 
affhttp: //books . google.com 


























ORANT AND CO. PRINTURS, 72-78, TURMMILL STREET, H.C. 


166397 











vi Preface. 


occupied the chair it has been the custom of the president 
to say a few words at the close of each volume of these 
transactions. 

In this half-yearly gossip through the last three or four 
volumes I have dwelt ina special manner upon the literary 
fabric of the work, and upon my intentions and hopes 
for the future, because there has been a purpose that the 

+ magazine should pursue in some respects a new career, 
and win fresh honours to add to its ancient crown. That 
purpose has now, perhaps, been sufficiently explained. 
The work has spoken for itself, and has been, I am grateful 
to know, handsomely acknowledged. It is not needful, 
therefore, that I should dwell further upon these general 
purposes and intentions’ 

While I am writing I am happy to learn that Mr. Justin 
McCarthy's “Dear Lady Disdain,” finished in the con- 
cluding pages of this volume, is meeting with a generous 
reception in its separate form as a three-volume novel. 
Some curious speculation has arisen among readers and 
correspondents touching the application of the title “A 
Dog and His Shadow” to Mr. Francillon’s new story. 
These chapters in the December number will enable 
the reader to perceive something of a transfiguration 
of old Asop’s fable in the story of Abel Herrick, though 
it would be dangerous to speculate upon how far the finish 
of the new fable will correspond with that of the old. Abel 
Herrick has this advantage over most heroes of romance, 
so far as his readers are concerned, that there is no safety 
in forecasting the final result of his career, and the conse- 
quence is a more than usual amount of curiosity as to the 
probable effect of circumstances and the development of 
character upon his ultimate fortune. “A Dog and His 
Shadow” will be concluded in June; but before its com- 
pletion, and previous to its appearance at the libraries in 
three volumes, my readers’ old favourite of last year, 
“Olympia,” will be issued in a popular form in one volume. 

Prompted by strong motives, I have ventured to depart, 
in my programme for next year, from the arrangement 

which has been announced for the publication of a 

aca ” by Mr. Buchanan to run through sit 





viii Preface. 


a Snowball,” and had to print edition after edition to meet 
the demand. Profiting by the lesson, we began the cam- 
paign this year with an edition of “Streaked with Gold” 
much larger than the sum of all the editions of “Like a 
Snowball,” but it is already doubtful whether we shall not 
be called upon to reprint it while Christmas Day is yet 
afar off. I need hardly say that the authors of “Streaked 
with Gold,” as well as the writers of “Like a Snowball,” 
are constant contributors to the pages of the Gentleman's 
Magazine. 


THE EDITOR. 








x Contents. 


Dear Lady Disdain— (continued) :— + 
Chap, XXXIV.—One taken—the Otherlet . 5 6s 
” XXXV.—“ You are and do not know it”  . . . 
» XXXVI—They Stand Confesed 9. . 1 
«Content so Absolute” . . . 
” “The Astrology of the Eyes” . 
» XXXIX.—Through the Golden Gate together. 
Dream Gatherer, The, By Epwazp Sevesn . . 0. 
Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s, The, A Wessex Ballad, By THomas 
Harpy . . . + . * . . . . . . 
Great People of Yorkshire, By Horace St. Joun =. . 
‘Her Answer. ByEpwarp Seven 5 6 ee es 
Hertfordshire Valley, A. By “ Rep SPINNRR” . . . . . 
Tn the Peak Country. By“ReD SPINNER” =» ww we 
Mediseval Corporation and Companies of the City. By Joun 
ROLAND PHILLIPS . . . . . . . . 
Modern Judaism. Byan Excuse Jaw . . . 1. 
‘Modern Tactical Organisation, By W. W. KNOLLYS, Major 93rd 
‘Sutherland Highlanders. . . . . . . + . 
Modern Yarmouth. ByW.SENIOR . . se ewe 
Old China and Fayence. ByaCouecrok . . . - ee 
Out of the Chalk. By“RupSpinngx” . , 6. 
Peak of Terror, The. By H. ScuuTz Witson, of the Alpine Club 
‘Pare Hyacinth’s Brethren. By Rocex Quippaw 
Philosophy of the Falk Laws, The. By Hexsext Turme - . 
Recollections of Writers known to an Old Couple when Young. By 
CHances and Many CowDEn CLARKE: — 
Part I. . . . . . . . . 
Pa 4 atest ds ee ie 
Weds ie ENS OR Cee i By S 
» WM. . . . . . . . . . 
v. . . . . . . . . + 
Rich Hospitals and Poor Homes. By W. Torrens McCuLtacn 
Torrens, M.P. . . . . . . . . . . 
Robert Buchanan's Poetry. By the Hon. Roven Noni . 
Signor Salvini's Hamlet, ByaPauistanCutic =. 6 1 
‘Sir Percival of Wales. A Chapter from an Old Romance of the 
Twelfth Century. By WaLtex Tornpury 5 wg 









Contents, 


Subjogators of an Imperial Race, The. “By RoceR Quinpam .  . 
‘Table Talk. By Syivanus Uxsan, Gentleman . 122, 250, 381, 509, 636 
‘Touch of » Vanished Hand and the Sound of a Voice that is Still, The. 


ByD.CunistieMurray - . . + we + ee 
‘Ultramontanism in Ireland. ByanIzise CaTHouic «4 +e 
Walton's River, By“ReDSPINNER” =, 1 eet 


‘Walt Whitman, the Poet of Joy. ByARTHURCLIVE 9. «+ 
Way to Fairyland, The. By EDwaxp SrvesN . . 6 ee 








Tallis the housekeeper, as she sat over her supper and her sewing 
in her own snug little corner of the old Manor House at Winbury. 
She was a stately personage of middle age and of an ancient school, 
drawing additional dignity from a high cap, then out of date, anda 
black silk gown. Everything about and around her was in keeping 
with her air of old-fashioned service—she sat in an uncompromisingly 
upright posture, as if arm-chairs were made, not for relaxation, but 
for the practice of self-denial : her figure was tall and lean, and her 
expression, as well as her features, sharp, formal, and severe, as if 
she had diligently cultivated a natural genius for unbending gravity. 
One would as soon look for a smile from her as from that bleak 
March evening. There was only one note of disorderly discord in 
the whole room—and that was Milly. 

Tumbling about all over the floor, now under the table, now half 
between the bars of a chair old enough to have played with her great 
grandmother, now clattering with the fire-irons, now threatening to 
drag down the table-cloth and all arranged upon it with such pre- 
cision, was that sore trial to a lover of order. She was a very small 
girl indeed, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed after the ultra-English pattern, 
just old enough to find life and mischief different words for the same 
thing, and not a day older—next to a terrier puppy in being out of 
place wherever a Mrs. Tallis might happen to be. 

Nor, while Mrs. Tallis expressed her opinions freely, was Milly 
silent : but she spoke as yet too much in her own and too little in her 
mother tongue to be readily understood by any but a mother’s ears. 
Nevertheless, Mrs. Tallis, that pattern of mature severity, seemed to 
understand it as if her own babyhood had been a thing of yesterday : 
she answered every capricious demand for this or that—so long as 
it was not for knives, beer, or lighted candles—as soon as it was 
made. She translated at once the particular look into her face that 
meant “spectacles ”—and, while keeping up every appearance of 
dignity, immediately obeyed. The knife might hurt Milly, but Milly 
could only hurt the spectacles. 

No doubt if Mitly had not been more than a little spoiled she 
would have been in bed and asleep by this time, for the sun had 
shut his eyes long ago. And if she, with the magical instinct of her 
age, had not been able to translate the housekeeper’s querulous 
scoldings into a hidden meaning, she could not have enjoyed herself 
so thoroughly in the stiff old lady’s company. In short, these two 
unlikenesses were both thoroughly comfortable, each in her own way, 
though their comfort lay in mischief on one side and in blame on 
the other. It was as well they were, for the fire could not keep the 











4 The Gentleman's Magazine. 
Carter hadn't been but five minutes gone—Oh, ma’am, there it goes 


again \” 

And sure enough the bell clanged for a third time, more loudly 
than before. 

“Thieves or no thieves, I must go and investigate who's there,” 
said the housekeeper decisively. “Take Miss Milly while I go tothe 
front door.” 

Susan picked up the unfortunate Milly, who, finding herself 
neglected in the confusion, set up an unseasonable wail Mrs. 
Tallis, for once paying no attention, pulled a shawl over her head 
and went along a passage into the dark, empty entrance hall, from 
which led a broad, uncarpeted flight of stone stairs. Having carefully 
put up the chain, she opened the front door about the space of an 
inch, and asked, boldly and sharply— 

“Who's there?” 

“Be this here place Winbury, miss?” answered a man’s gruft 
voice, in an accent that did not belong to Eastingtonshire and of a 
hoarseness known in every shire where spirits are sold. 

“Of courte it’s Winbury. A gentlemanlike thing, indeed, to pull 
people's bells down to ask if this is Winbury.” 

“Hold a bit, miss—don't smash my nose betwixt post and door. 
Where's the doctor?” 

“ What doctor?” 

“The medical practitioner, ma’am—the gentleman that tinkers up 
the flesh-pots, ma'am, like I do the tin-pots—where’s he?” 

“There's no doctor.” 

“Parson, then?” 

“There's no parson.” 

“Squire, then? Maybe he lives here?” 

“There's no squire.” 

“Who be there then, if there ben’t no doctor, nor no parson, nor 
no squire?” 

“There's nobody—that’s all. If you want a medical man you 
must go on to Westcote.” 

“Thankye, ma'am. And how far may that be?” 

“Seven miles, if you go the short way.” 

“Seven mile! Don’t nobody live at Winbury, ma'am? Can't I 
see the master—or the good lady, if there ben’t no squire?” 

“There’s no lady.” 

“Well, I am blessed then! Ben’t there nothing in Winbury, 
ma'am? Ben’t there never a blessed soul to keep a poor wench from 
dying like a dog in a ditch nearer then seven mile—the short way 2 





6 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“It’s a uncommon cold night, ma’am,” said the tinker, encouraged 
by her sudden and rather impulsive thaw. “If we've got to wait 
for a cart, ma’am, I wouldn't mind setting down on a hall chair. The 
way I've puffed and blew on this here arrant of mercy, ma’am, has 
gone‘nigh to split my bellus. And running’s but dry work at best,” 
he added meditatively, as if enunciating a general proposition without 

Bat the doctrine was thrown away upon unsympathetic ears. 

“ You'll find the pump just round the comer,” said Mrs. Tallis, 
and slammed the door. 

The tinker did not goto the pump. But neither did he move towards 
the Vane Arms. Ile waited on the doorstep, audibly stamping his feet 
and thrashing himself with his arms, to keep his blood going. After a 
long five minutes the door opened again to the limit of the chain. 

“Are you still there?” asked Mrs. Tallis. 

“Here I be, ma'am,” said the tinker sulkily. “ Here be this here 
species of a travelling tradesman, wet out and dry in.” 

“Then as the constable has arrived, and as I am going to the 
lodge to wait for the conveyance, there’s no manner of occasion for 
you to hang about my door.” 

“I know that, ma’am, without telling. That be what they call 
gratitude, that be—a chap gives you a chance of helping a fellow 
creature, and you send him to the pump to drink your health for it 
Blessed if I ever ask anybody to be charitable again. Never mind, 
ma’am. A man that’s said Amen as many times as I have gets to 
act up to it somehow. _ I'll look to my reward hereafter, and put up 
with a lift in the cart this go. I've left my workshop standing, ma'am, 
and being more trustful of human nature than you, ma’am, I didn’t 
think to put up the chain.” 

“Very well,” said Mrs. Tallis shortly, as she at last left the house, 
carrying a horn stable lantern to light her down the avenue. By its 
dim light she saw a shabby, slouching fellow in thread-bare clothes, 
who, counting by the fallacious arithmetic of years, was apparently in 
the noon-tide of his days, but whose shambling gait, stooping shoul- 
ders, and cheeks wherein many a tumbler had blossomed, displayed 
little of the vigour of noon. It is true that a certain amount of 
personal unattractiveness might be pardoned on a night when even 
a Good Templar’s nose must have looked swollea and blue. But, 
from many significant signs, the state of the tinker’s nose seemed 
due less to acute cold without than to chronic warmth within. 

_ For his part he could not fail to be very differently impressed 
Dy the tall, ——‘Soure now wrapped in a long blue cloak, andthe 





8 The Gentleman's Magastne. 


to add to the dreariness of that unspeakably cold, dark, and dreary 
ride. Mrs. Tallis showed no sign of impatience but silence, though 
she must have found a new meaning in ‘the phrase “As cold as 
charity.” The tinker, however, became fidgety, and began to hum 
through his nose the tune of the Old Hundredth Psalm, beating time 
with his feet among the straw. 


it could only have been Mra Tallis’s thick and close bonnet that 
‘kept her from knowing what made the driver pull in the horse sud- 
denly. The tinker started up, held the lantern above his head, and 
looked forward. 

“ Hold bard there!” he said. “Don't mun over my truck, what- 
ever you do, Here we are, ma'am,” 

He shambled out. Mrs. Tallis took the lantern from him, and 
went straight to the roadside. Stooping down and adjusting her 
spectacles carefully, she saw a young girl lying under the hedge, just 
‘as the tinker had said, dressed in a common print gown not over 
‘new or over clean, and wearing a straw hat and thin shawl She 
could not have been more than twenty years old, and was a complete 
Stranger to Winbury. Indeed, she was obviously not a country girl 
at all, though to what class she belonged it was impossible to tell, 
except that she could not have been very high in the scale. Her 
features were good, but their expression was hard to read, and her 
eyes were closed, For the rest, she was lying as calm and quiet as 
if the driving wind were the warm air of a pleasant bed-chamber, and 
the hard wayside a bed of down. Mrs, Tallis touched her lightly— 
not even her heart stirred. 

“ Quite cold,” said Mrs, Tallis after a pause. “ We're too late by 
a full hour—poor young thing! Lift her up into the cart—gently, 
mind. What are you standing like a wooden image for?” she said 
‘to the carter with extra sharpness to make up for her lapse into pity. 
“Can't you move ?” 

“Ican move, ma'am, But it aren't what I call straightforward to 
hear a dead woman squeal. I’d send for the constable, ma'am, if I 
was you—'twas all one as if that there wauled like a child.” 

“What !" said the tinker. “Then I'm——" But, whatever he 
‘was, he was not afraid of spirits; perhaps, like another philosopher, 
he had seen, and swallowed, too many to be afraid, and he did not 
hesitate to stoop over the girl. 

Mrz Tallis alsa stooped down hurriedly and pulled aside whe 





10 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“ Please, six,” stammered the mathematical genius, in an injured 
tone, “I aren't got to dodging, I aren't, sir. It’s in seven times I be 
—tI are.” 

“ Begin again, then. Seven times one—yes,” reckoned the school- 
master to himself, as the sing-song drone began again, “Seven times 
one !—it’s the first step is hardest, I've read; but, if the world is 
ruled by numbers, as Pythagoras taught, the first step is one times 
one—the easiest step of all. Any way, well begun is half done; and 
nobody that I ever read about, in Plutarch, or the Lives of the Poets, 
or anywhere, has begun half so well as L At oneand-twenty to 
have mastered all human knowledge—to have all literature at my 
fingers’ ends—to be already a man of mark as far as Eastington, and 
maybe farther, for aught I know—and to be a poet besides, is to 
begin where others have left off I have only to put out my hand 
and lay hold of the prize. Only to escape from this wretched 
drudgery was wanting, and now, like a godsend, comes this eighty 
pounds a year—three times eight is twenty-four—two hundred and 
forty pounds in three short years. Why, in one year of freedom I 
shall have finished my Epic, my Wars of the Stars— 

Far orbed Methratton, whom no weaker gaze 
‘Than Seraphs’, eagle-cyed with love, hath seen : 
‘Razael, the lord of Wisdom, darkly known— 
‘The seven that sway the world, and they that rule 
‘The four times seven mansions of the moon ”"— 

“Ts twenty-eight, five times seven’s twenty-nine ”- 

Down came the schoolmaster’s hand upon the ear of the unlucky 
urchin who had interrupted his reverie. “Do you think because I 
haven't stopped your blunders I haven’t heard them? Go down, 
and write out seven times on your slate two hundred and forty 
times—in three short years. It’s twelve o'clock—be off with you 
all.” 

The church clock had not struck, but it was known to be slow, and 
the schoolmaster was even more eager to get rid of his scholars than 
they were to be rid of him. They caught up their caps in a moment 
and were off with a shout : he seized his pen, and jotted down on the 
fly-leaf of a primer the contribution to his epic wherewith the 
multiplication table had unconsciously inspired him. Then he 
dashed off about a dozen more lines of the same sort ; and the church 
clock struck one before he left the school-room and locked the door. 
‘Then he took the path across the fields that leads to a door at which 
a tinker once stood some twenty years ago. And while he is on his way, 
with his f “nll earth, and his mind, blind to the sunshine 








oe 












12 The Gentleman's Magaztne, 


unable to dispose of his undesirable acquisition. Accident, 
had conspired with nature to render Winbury a sort of 
outlaw, 

Nevertheless here, as elsewhere, the world spun round, though ne 
giddily. Men and women were born, married, and died effecti 
though without the sanction of the Z¥mes’ supplement. Not 
the Zastington Mercury, the vicar’s dfe noir as the organ of count 
Whiggery, condescended to advertise in the list of births, “On a 
unknown, at a place unknown, a woman unknown, of a son,” 
that matter, notice was never sent ; and, if it had been, it could 
have been paid for. A shilling, found in the dead gitl’s pocket, 
absorbed in funeral expenses, Rarely does a flourish of 
announce the entrance of a Poet into the world ; but still more rarely 
has even a poet come down from the stars with less noise than he 
who, by a Sunday inspiration of the vicar, was christened. Abela 
being at any rate a son of Adam. 

Ani inquest, at which Mrs. Tallis and the carter gave evidence, 54 
sulted only in a verdict “in accordance with the facts,” as the 
phrase is, It was held at Westcote workhouse, and the woman was 
‘buried in Westcote churchyard, No doubt, had Milly been her own 
child, the housekeeper would have sent the foundling to Westeote 
and have held, not unjustifiably, that her duty wasdone. The hearts 
of fathers and mothers seldom contain spare rooms, But Milly was 
only her brother's orphan, whom she had taken, as she had taken the 
foundling, straight from a mother’s death-bed ; and she, a childless 
widow, had felt the chambers of her heart open wide, at Milly's first 
touch, to all children for ever. It was hardly a year since Milly's 
mother had died in Eastington ; and she could not but picture to her- 
self the thought of Milly in Abel's roadside cradle. The apparent 
injustice of destiny struck her as keenly as it must all who have not 
learned to combine the broken letters that spell Providence into the 
whole word, 

“No,” she said, sharply and crossly, when her friend Mr, Pottinger 
suggested the workhouse as Abel's natural home. “If I thought 
that was my obligation, 1 oughtn't to have preserved him, A union's 
worse than a prison is, and more shame,” 

“Aye, for you or I, but they that comes of shame must be 
shamed, Third and fourth generations, the Bible gays*—— 

“The Bible don't tell us to shame them. And there's no shame 
when there's a wedding ring. Don't assert there wasn't one, for 1 
saw it as sure as I'see you. “Twould be to contradict my own eye 
sight so let the child go to the union." 


= 














4 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


romancera, who had no microscopes, studied kings and heroes. «' 
think it higher art to study ourselves. Human nature is 
‘Bature, we say, and why trouble history or the great « 
‘world for materials of study when the smallest hamlet contains 
tmagedies and comedies than we can read in a lifetime? 
theory |—human nature was written upon the brains of the | 


growth of his own nature therefrom. 

So it seemed to be decided by destiny that Abel - 
biography was to be written thus ;—He was born: he scared crows: 
he hoed turnips: he waited on horses: he married: he toiled in 
order to eat bacon, and wasted his toil on beer: he grew bent: 
theumatism, shook with ague, came upon the parish, and died. 
‘Such was the whole of life as known to the Herricks of Winbury; and, 
if man was made to live, there was enough tragedy in ft to make 
farther search very needless indeed. 

Abel began this hopeful carcer in the usual way. Mrs. Herrick, 
‘though burdened with cight growing children of her own, did her 
duty by him according to her lights ; for the charing engagement, 
though it brought her more work than pay, was worth keeping, 
‘Mrs, Tallis seemed ever bent upon proving that a kind-hearted 
skin-flint is not a contradiction in terms, She retained her interest 
in the child whom she had saved from death and Westeote, and, as 
he grew old enough to be mischievous without being quite old 
enough for a scare-crow, she allowed Mrs. Herrick to bring him up 
to the old Manor House on charing days, so that he and “Miss 
Milly” could be kept in sight by one pair of eyes at a time. 

Why the old Manor House stood in need of such perpetual 
scrubbing and dusting was known to Mrs. Tallis alone. In former 
days it had belonged to an old Eastingtonshire family of the name 
of Vane, and one of the family had once lived there—a proof of 
striking eccentricity. For the Vanes had another place in another 
part of England; and no ordinary mortal who had as much asa castle 
‘in Spain would have deliberately chosen to live at Winbury. ‘This one 
Vane of Winbury would have been called 4 humourist in the days 
of the Spectrfor when people were less of the same pattern than 
they are now; he would have been called crazy in our own. Living 
somewhere between the two eras people did not know what to call him. 
Either disappointed love, or misanthropy, or a passion for study, or 


‘morbid shyness led him to bury himself with his books out of the 





16 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


attempt to make raw youth mimic the beauty of age. It was simply 
very ugly, very large, and belonged to the period of once upon a 
time. It had a moat without water, a garden without flowers, a stable 
without horses, and a park without deer. Within, it was convenient 
enough, but terribly depressing. Its square windows looked ove 
fat fields, its relics of useless furniture were carefully sewn up in 
ghostly white canvas, its floors and walls were bare. Not even a 
painted landscape was there to teach a native of Winbury what is 
weant by a river ora hill. A little natural dust would have been a 
relief but that was not allowed. 

Uhxt, tor all its overpowering order and cleanliness, if was a splendid 

place to play in. Nothing is without a purpose ; and hide and seek 
‘was the purpose of the old Manor House at Winbury. Milly and 
Abel who were much of an age, were playmates on charing days, 
and did: their very best to give Mrs. Tallis’s duster some real 
wotk to do. ‘The good woman, being only too well pleased in 
het heart at tinding a new excuse for putting things to rights, 
gtumbleal xo much over her pleasure that Abel thought her an 
cates, Milly, however, was either bolder or sharper-eyed the 
are ahe wan scolded, the more she tried to deserve a scolding, 
and ackdom failed, 

Que charing day, however, was destined to stand out from the 
gular round of playing, falling out, making up, mischief, scolding, 
awl alice af bread and gooseberry jam. Abel, now just beginning 
tw outyrow hin first corduroys—“ whistlers” they were called in 
Wily went with Mrs. Herrick as usual to the Manor House, 
amt telt that) Mrs. Tallis was more than commonly solemn and 
vita. Hor face was doubly hard, and there was extra sharpness in her 
tus oe ale began == 

+L wae on the very point of: coming to inquire if you were indis- 
gael, Mix, Herrick,” 

Ma‘nine” 








“Nuthing bat gross indisposition can pardon unpunctuality. 
(uavtin, can't you comprehend plain words? I declare the ignor- 
inieul the poeple about here I should never find customary if I 
Ayal te be ie eenturion, 

Alia ‘Tallis was clearly put out less with Mrs. Herrick than with the 
seal at bare for Abel's foster-mother, a poor soul with a husband 
‘gal oul! chuldten, who was never in bed after five in the morning 
gaye is Funsday, knew neither the word unpunctuality nor the thing. 




















18 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


shillings and shillings for aught he knew. The finding of Milly was 
nothing to the immediate necessity of hiding the evidence of such 
a crime, 

‘That was not easy, as he knew only too well. Not a nook of the 
old Manor House was safe for an instant from Mrs. Tallis’s hand and 
eye, and bits of broken china were not things to be swallowed even 
by one whose digestion had been trained upon Winbury cheese. If 
they could be thrown away out of doors the cunning of fear suggested 
that the peculiar pattern of the fragments would draw the attention 
‘of the first passer-by and be brought up in witness against him. If 
he dropped them down the well, the bucket would be sure to draw 
them up again, If he put them in his pockets—but alas, his pockets 
were in one important respect like the pit of Hades. 

An inspiration! Since dust lay upon the top of the books in the 
lituary, it was clear that nobody ever looked behind them—there was 
que xanctuary in the house where something might be hidden and 
never be found, Pale with panic, he picked up the bits of crockery, 
crept hack on tip-to, shut the library door behind him, pulled out 
awe of the tallest folios, and pushed the murdered body—it was nothing 
eas, to him behind the row, 

Alaving thus disposed of the corpus delicti, he breathed freely. But 
Jats atl acch had lost its savour, He could not push his conscience 
Awtuunt the foliog, He was angry with Milly. She had beaten him at 
Abe game, and had been the cause of his getting into mischief like 
a Wl About andl of getting out of it like a coward. No—let her wait 
wp bor viumney, or in her band-box, or wherever she was, till she 
Was (test, tat then let her come and look for him. To pass the time 
he authay opened the volune he had taken down and that still lay 
apse thy twee 

Nay Abst stat Know how to read, In the early times of talk about 
the sv tawatitaatet Meng: altuad Winbury had received a passing tap 
tin hes tow vans “Phe vivat had been campeited by public opinion 
Laut hi, aniely agaist Nis wil, to estahtish a schoolmaster, 
Thy wily sanetntaty who appt m the Seid was a. broken-down 
lat taseat Hot Wvatyoty YAU supsad, in his own country, to 
leave gated hie MMMM Aino Ae fhe a stot chasm He—it is 
sawl taking a Quit than the vats ak, acted as if he were the 
Jatin yh Whe thy Premiyl awed BO AAD mever even 
As pontead Mauaytt We ts AMUN eaMpNEL AE Ass Ene quarter's salary 
ware aly FU Be DW Oak a Ae aoa hunselfl olking 

ay We ahah aa hat aa Re atk ae as te darter the vicar’s 
weep Phe avi, am as Nee YER We to teach 




















20 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


library. And now, you know, you had better put it back where you 
took it from.” 

“ But what's *- 

“Bless the boy,” she said, looking at the open book that he had 
lifted up for her to look at, “ why about Sin, to be sure. There— 
si, m, sin.” 

“ But what comes after Sin, please?” 

“What a young troublesome you are. Log, to be sure.” 

* And after Log, please?” 

“ M— and thar’s—dear me, I'm afraid my spectacles aren't whit 
they used to be—thar's a cross—and then Tan—Log—P—two 
strokes—a long number. ‘There—now you understand.” 

“But why’s it wrote? What do it mean?” 

“Mean? Why Sin’s wickedness: and Log’s wood: and Tan’sa 
colour in dogs.” 

“And the cross? and the lines?” 

“Oh, they're inserted to fill up, like fall stops. They always put 
those into books—for ornament, I suppose.” 

“ But what's it all for?™ 

“Oh, because—because—it's a book, you see—people must pat 
something into books, or else there wouldn’t be any, and then there'd 
be no clever men.” 

“And what's that? What's a clever man?” 

“A clever man’s a wise man—a man that knows everything, and 
makes machines, and reads books, and—there, don’t trouble any 
more, It’s not possible you should understand.” 

“Do you, m'm?” 

“Bless the boy! As if I had the time to think about cleverness. 
With a house like this on my hands, I can't idle over reading.” 

How do people get clever, m’m?” 

“ Being born so, I suppose—and some of them go to college—and 
some of them by reading all the books in the world.” 

All this was pregnant with matter for questioning : but Abel, with 
precocious aptitude for separating one grain of wheat from a bushel 
of chaff, only stared at the mysterious volume and said— 

“ Then I'll read all the books in the world. I'll be a clever man.” 

“Well—I don't mind your playing with them so long as you put 
them back again. It'll keep you quiet, and the books dusted—I've 
always been meaning to attend to them myself, only the furniture 
takes up all my time. And you'll want to be kept out of mischief 
now Milly” (this very sharply, as if to cut off the head of a sigh}— 
“mow Mill * ‘9 school.” 











22 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


sixpence a week by shouting at rooks and crows. He welcomed the 
safety of solitude, and sought no companionship when the rooks west, 
back t their nests and his day’s work was done. 

In many an out-of-the-way village a solitary farmer's or shepherd's 
ad, if he has the commonest stuff in him, may, and does, learn to be 
wise, If there had been a hillock or a rivulet within sight of the top 
of ue church tower, if a single rose had shot up in the wasted garden 
of the Manor House, it would have served as a wholesome loop-hole 
for Mbvel ier xpirit to have spread tendrils out into the world. It 
winy Iwenaidl there were still the sky and the clouds: but these are 
wa thn firet steps of Jacob’s ladder. They mast be climbed by 
alow deytees, And then the skies of Winbury were apt, in their 
hile varying ahaclen of grey, to suggest a barren extension of space 
with nutling heyond it, while the clouds generally took the form of 
jaw, unlauken mints, that only brought nothingness a little nearer to 
Me weal, 

41 wae ly way of an almost necessary compensation, or rather 
tabs abit, shut hin caged and companionless spirit had, in one fatal 
nednen, heen neized a sublime and irrevocable curiosity that 
wild not wuffer him to rest until he had searched out all the myste- 
Hew fey the threshold on which he felt himself standing. He was 
wlliwe the free run of the Manor House book-shelves because he 
waeit Iw livenee Ly indulging in the worst mischief of which a boy 
ean tee guilty that of never making a noise. Of course at first, 
when his delauch, carried on during every spare hour, was new, he 
fw ws trust tw blind chance fora guide. The very first book he 
Juygan and finished was the old mathematical treatise, of which the 
ayilety wid abbreviations had proved too much for Mrs. Tallis’s 
nyestacles, Of cours he might just as well have pored over 2 
Chinese manuseript: but the combinations of letters and the strange 
figures he tound in it were, in wome inexplicable way, subtle stimu- 
Jante to his imagination, Anything, 0 long as it is incomprehensible, 
will verve ta fuwinute virgin brains: they read unintended human 
face», hull of character, in the meaningless zig-zags of a carpet pattern, 
vague ramances in the fireplace, and wonderful new landscapes in 
the cross-threads of a blank window blind, 

And of puyuant food for such greed of the unknown the Manor 
House library, with ita couple of hundred volumes, furnished ample 
stare. ‘I'o judge from these fousila of his studies, the only Vane who 
ever lived at Winbury had measured the worth of human pursuits by 
their want of practical utility. After wading through his mathe- 

sifice! “nel attacked—because it was the largest and 














24 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


Czar, but feel and think about him as if, instead of making history, 
he had been made by it. Of course Abel was aware of the difference, 
in theory, between fact and fiction, but in his heart Una and her 
lion were as real as he who invented them, and, by an inevitable 
process of confusion, their creator as unreal as they: and all was real 
and unreal at one and the same time. To live meant to make verses, 
and he made them: to make verses, he gathered, it was necessary to” 
love a woman—so he made a woman, and loved her in the grand 
style, 

It may be that the verses he evolved with much labour were not 
quite as near Spenser’s or Milton’s as he believed. But, if not yet a 
poet, he had the spirit of one, cultivated not by nature, as the poetic 
spirit is supposed to be, but by years of close familiarity with heraldic 
nightmares and cabalistic chimeras, all painted in living colours upon 
Winbury for a background. If he was really to be a poet, for once 
a poet had not been born, but made. 

But there comes a time when the most inveterate dreamer ceases 
to be content with worshipping the ideal princess of an enchanted 
castle in the air. 

He was not discontented with his lot. He knew nothing of 
wealth and fame but as words he had read about—that is to say, as 
bubbles to be despised. Love and song, he had leamed, were the 
only things to be lived for, and he found nothing in his authors to 
suggest that these were inconsistent with the daily life of a thatcher 
arid hurdle-maker—for such his foster-father was, and such he himself 
was to be. Winbury, it was true, had few of the attributes of Arcadia, 
but that was doubtless owing to the unfortunate accident of its being 
unprovided with an available Phillis or Chloe. More than once he 
tried very hard to identify some Susan or Betty with a heroine of 
pastoral romance, but the attempt had always broken down, But 
this was not altogether a misfortune. It secured him in undis- 
turbed empire over his own dreamland, better than any possible 
reality. He wanted no sympathy. To others, he was a helping- 
hand to old Herrick the hurdle-maker, and not a very diligent or 
skilful hand: to himself, he was all that he had ever read of—a 
romance hero who led a life that was, in the spirit, actually fulfilled, 
and so beyond the power of any common-place ideas about getting 
on in the world to disturb, But his genius for dreaming made it 
only the more uncertain what was to be the end—whether Winbury 
was to become famous at last, like many another hole and corner, as 
the home of a great peasant poet, or whether all this promise 
was to prove a mere flash in the brain-pan, and to be smothered into. 





26. The Gentleman's Magazine. 


Tive asked of books—they cannot speak: 
Of brooks—they’re deaf and blind. 


I've clambered every hillside up, 
I've roamed around the land: 

‘No ocean hides thee in his cup, 
‘No mountain in his hand, 


Say, Echo, where may Cynthia be, 
And when will she appear? 

“ Always, and everywhere,” saith she, 
But never Now, nor Here. 


If Abel had ever seen the hillside or the ocean of which he wrote 
so familiarly the lines would doubtless have been better, if not newer 
fashioned. But he thought very well of them himself. Having 
dropped his poem, as he called it, through the slit in the window of 
the general shop, feeling as if all the world stood staring round to see 
him do it, his mind felt relieved of a weight, and he retuned to his 
thatching and hurdle-making for the benefit of his foster-family with 
as much content as a now professed poet could manage. He did 
not even work out any plan for watching the future numbers of the 
Mercury. The very poem seemed his own no more, now that it had 
passed from his hands into those of the carrier. 

But he was not quite so devoted to the library as heretofore. For 
one thing, he knew the books by heart: and the more he tried to 
imitate them, the less they satisfied him, He thought, more and 
more, of the immortal Eve, and less and less of those who have tried 
to sing of her. 

But one day—it was in the spring, when the swallows, the only 
travellers besides the bargees who ever visited Winbury, had arrived 
—Abel, after sunset, thought he would sup on Hippocrene instead of 
bread and cheese, and strolled up to the Manor House, now always 
opened to him, Habits and precedents easily grew up in Winbury. 
And, as he was crossing the piece of front garden where cabbages 
usurped the place of cabbage roses, an adventure befell him more 
extraordinary even than his opening that wonderful mathematical 
folio. He saw a woman’s gown that was not made of black silk. 

‘That was marvel enough for one day, but it was nothing to what 
followed, Within the gown was a woman, who was not Mrs. Tallis 
the housekeeper. 

He was seized with a shy fit, for the woman was young—as young 
as Susan, or Betty—but in most other respects startlingly different 
from any of the Winbury girls, To a lad who had wasted a great 





28 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


are—only a few yards taller. Don’t you remember Milly?” she 
asked, holding out her hand—not delicately white, but still the 
whitest Abel had ever seen. 

He ventured to touch it with his fingers, as if afraid of soiling it. 
Surprise almost made him forget to be shy—almost that he had made 
up his mind to worship her. 

“What—you’re Milly!” he exclaimed, colouring up—let us hope 
for his old intention of laying his broken tea-cup on her shoulders in 
case of need. “ Why, it’s impossible !” 

“I suppose everybody had forgotten there’s such a being. haven't, 
though—this is me, and glad to be at home again. I've had quite 
enough of school—and aunt would never let me come home even for 
the holidays, she was so afraid of my not getting all the polish 
Miss Baxter could give me. She is the dearest old lady in the world 
—Aunt, I mean, not Miss Baxter. But I’m polished now for good I 
hope—if I'm not real mahogany they've done their best to make me 
look so. And what are you doing now you're a man? You've not 
been troubled with old Crook as I have with Miss Baxter, I suppose? 
You see I haven't forgotten anybody's names—not even Jowler’s at 
the Vane Arms—or Mr. Pottinger’s Pepper—how are they all? I am 
so glad to be home again !” 

Milly did not speak volubly like a professed chatter-box, but only 
as if warm-hearted pleasure at meeting an old friend, obliged to 
show itself somehow, had set her tongue going. 

But it was all a new strain to Abel, and he found himself seized 
by a dumb fiend. Milly naturally thought nothing of the embarrass- 
ment of a village lad before a stranger. and went back to himself 
—the topic upon which everybody can speak who can speak at all. 

“You haven't told me what you've been doing?” 

“12 Oh—t’ve been making—-hurdles.” 

“You must show me how they're made.—Please don’t let me drive 
you away—I suppose we must all be well-behaved now, but if I'd 
only known you were coming I would have hid myself, just once 
more, like I used to. Won't you come in? We were just at tea— 
only I ran out to look round the old place before it got too dark to 
see. Come in.” 

Abel went in—he was now almost too shy to follow, but he was 
quite too shy to refuse. Moreover, he was in the condition that is 
retrospectively called love at first sight when love follows it. Milly 
led him into the housekeeper’s snug little parlour—he would have 
followed her over the edge of a precipice. 

“Good evening. Abel,” said his patroness. Unable to forget that 

she he- she bridged over the natural distance between 





3° The Gentleman's Magazine. 


‘The young man stared, “How much a yard?” he asked face- 
tiously, “Never heard of the party. Give him my best respects 
when you see him, and say I’m pretty well, thank you. No—no 
more tea, thank you—unless Miss Barnes will leave out the sugar 
this time: it comes sweet enough from the pot when she holds the 
handle. I told all the fellows at the office I was going off with an 
heiress—and split me, if some of 'em didn’t believe it was true,” 

“ Ah—many a true word is spoken in jest," said Mrs, Tallis oracu- 








Right youare, ‘That's just what I mean to, one of these fine days. 
An heiress for my money—Self and Co, for an hciress’s money, I 
should say, I'm sorry you're not an heiress, Miss Barnes, or I'd get 
Your aunt to turn her back for just halfa minute, and then pop would 
go the question and we'd be off to Gretna Green." 

“Thank you,” said Milly. “1 was never glad that I'm not an 
heiress till now. When I go to Gretna Green" — 

*Gracious me, Milly,” said Mrs. Tallis, the young Indies at Miss 
Baxter's don't talk. about Gretna Green, I'm sure! 

“Don't they, aunt! ‘That's nothing at all. You should only hear 
tus—when Miss Baxter's outofthe way. Why, they eall me the mouse, 
because 1 only talk eighteen to the dozen, and all the other girls 
talk nineteen.” 

Humble as were these attempts at badinage, they were brilliant for 
Fastingtonshire : and, in any case, they belonged to a language of 
which the solitary student knew not the alphabet. All the talk he 
had ever heard was sadly serious, even when—or rather especially 
when—it related to nothing more important than a mug of beer. He 
did not wish to sit by as a conversational cypher in the presence of 
Milly and Mr. Adams, so he seized his opportunity, though a little 
tardily, and struck in— 

“1 think marrying for money is detestable.” 

Even such  common-place as this was not to be looked for from 
a Winbury hurdiemaker. Mr. Adams winked, as if he had heard 
something very comical indeed, and meant to say, “Now you shall 
‘see some good fun—I'm going to draw out this young man.” 

“ Quite right, Mr. I didn’s quite catch the name?” 

“Herrick, my name is," 

“ Quite right, Mr. Herrick. I quite agree with you. You don't 
‘mean to say you found out all that for yourself? Why, the great 
What's-his-name himself couldn't have put it better, There's a deep 
eee oie log, time, and p'raps, as you 


can explain. I'm an article to Mx, Smith, of 
know, the owner of this very house and 
! 















ABOLT THE NORTH POLE. 
BY WaLTER THORKBURY. 


‘N che laier par: of the itheenth century, when the great 
@ discowery made br Coinmbus had set all the maritime world 
of Europe on the jerment. John Cabot. a Venetian pilot, sent 
om a vorage cf exploration under the aaspices of Henry VIL, 
Bgbted upon Newioundland. and was, indeed. the first European who 
had landed on any part af che American continent. Cabot's son, 
Sebastian. eventus'y discovered Paraguay and the River Plate, and 
in the reign of Edward VL helped to stat an expedition to reach 
India and Cathay by war of the north and north<ast. The com- 
mander chosen was Sir Hugh Willoaghby. a handsome and brave 
officer, who was accompanied br Richard Chancelor, a sagacious 
man, and a friend of the ixther of Sir Philip Sidney. The vessels 
were soon separated by a storm in the northern seas, and Sir Hugh 
and his crew were froren to death somewhere off Lapland. Chan- 
celor. however. found his way into the White Sea. and. landing there 
his way by sledges to Moscow, he established the first 
trade between England and Russia. 

Jn 1594 the Durch sent out a northern expedition of three small 
vessels and a yacht. under the guidance of Wiliam Barentz, a brave 
and experienced sailor, who determined to pass round to the north- 
ward of Nova Zembla The vast flocks of penguins and the great 
herds of wa'ruses astonished the ciscomfited vorager, whom the ice 
soon drove back. Another part of the expedition passed the Strait 
of Waygatz, and coasted part of Nova Zembla, believing they had 
found an easy passage to China, along the eastern shore of Asia. A 
second expedition discovered nothing. A third was entrusted to 
Barentz and John Comelius Rp. These more enterprising men 
discovered Spitzbergen. Attempting in vain to pass the north of 
Nova Zembla, Barentz was frozen in forthe winter. The vessel was 
wedged close till it was levered up upon the ice, and the crew built 
a hut on the shore, carrying on their work amid constant conflicts 
with the Polar bears. The three months’ night the Dutchmen 
passed amid ceaseless cold and hunger. The broken ice, at first 
only seventy-ive paces broad, in front of them gradually widened 
sn con paces, resembling the towers and steeples of a great Sty. 











34 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


fields receded, and the Zsadel/a passed the Alexander safely into a 
clear channel. 

Soon after this, the gale continuing, the ice began to move faster, 
and a large field of ice bearing down on them, Ross and Pany 
resolved to saw out docks for refuge, but the ice proved too thick. 
for the nine-feet saws. This failure was their salvation, for the field 
to which they were moored began, as they left it, to drift rapidly om 
a reef of grounded icebergs, and presently it broke on the bergs, 
rising more than fifty feet up the side of the white cliffs and falling 
back with crashing ruins on the very spot where the docks would 
have been, That evening the vessels were made fast to the 
land ice, and sought refuge in a bay girt with icebergs, and over 
extra allowances of preserved meat and grog the tired sailors forgot 
for a time their troubles. 

The next day some Esquimaux in dog sledges hailed them. 
‘Twenty-eight natives and fifty dogs began clamouring together. The 
visitors bartered sea unicorns’ horns and sea horse teeth for knives, 
glasses, and beads, and taking the ship for a bird asked it if it came 
from the sun or the moon. The natives, though friendly and good- 
natured, proved great thieves, and tried to carry off nearly everything 
they saw, from an anvil to the topmast. Near Cape Dudley Digges 
the cliffs appeared covered with crimson snow, which has since 
been proved to be of vegetable growth. Captain Ross now passed 
the various sounds described by Baffin, and satisfied himself too 
readily that they were all impassable. Lancaster Sound alone he 
explored for thirty miles, and then trusting to an assistant surgeon, 
from the “crow’s-nest,” who pronounced the channel stopped by a 
line of land, turned homewards. 

Parry on his return expressing a desire to explore Lancaster Sound 
was sent out with the Heda, of 375 tons, and the Griper gun brig, 
of 180 tons, with ample stores for two years. He set sail in 1819, 
and was soon immovably beset. On the second day, however, a 
heavy roll of the sea loosened the ice and drove it against the vessels 
with such violence that but for their strength they would have broken 
up. Once more free, they steered northward along the edge of the 
ice searching for open water. ‘They then made a desperate push to 
the westward between detached floes of ice, through lanes of open 
water, and sawing through one final barrier bore directly for 
Lancaster Sound, and reached longitude 83° 12’, fifteen miles 
from the mouth of the sound, which was about fifty miles broad, 
without difficulty. At a point where they believed they had passed 
the magnetic meridian the compass became useless and the fog 














38 The Gentleman's Magazine. 
River either directly through the Frozen Strait or circuitoutly by River 


one detachment going northward to the Fury or Hecla Strait, and 
a second westward to Point Turnagain. Stedges with fron runners 
and convertible into carriages were to be used. Above all every 
effort was to be made to retum to England the same autumn. The 
voyage began ominously, for near Davis's Strait they passed & 
berg not less than 3oo feet high, and near Resolution Island dense 
floes with high peaks jostled and clashed around them, But Frozen 
Strait gave one broken mountainous sea of ice, with ponderous 
masses of floes heaped up thirty feet high. On one decasion when 
moored to a dangerous and tottering iceberg, a heavy drifting 
floe struck the berg, part of which fell and all but destroyed the 
vessel. ‘The Fervor, however, behaved well, and near the Frozen 


tothe nearest pool, like so many laughing school boys, and shouting at 
the fan when any luckless fellow broke in through the thin ice. Off 
Cape Comfort Back’s ship was suddenly nipped, the ice rising im 
pointed heaps twenty feet or more in height. The men despairing 
now of reaching Repulse Bay, Back resolved to cut a dock in the 
nearest floc, but singularly enough on the very next day the whole 
body of ice near them burst into pieces and rolled to the west, tossing 
the blocks in heaps and grinding some to powder. ‘The men soon 
grew gloomy, abandoned amusement, and became desponding. ‘The 
‘vessel was pressed by the ice and daily threatened with instant 
destruction. It was sometimes lifted vertically and nearly covered with 
masses of disrupted ice nineteen or twenty feet high, shattered into 
mammoth mounds, peaks, stubborn walls, and ramparts. Some of the 
ship’s planks shone with the turpentine squeezed out of the wood, and 
the crushes of ice were attended by groaning and splitting sounds 
Joud as cannon, The vessel was heaved up by the vast force of 
the ice. One especial day a mass of ice thirty feet high came 
rearing towards her on a floe, and escape seemed hopeless. All this 
time the forepart of the vessel was buried as high as the flukes of the 
anchor in perpendicular walls of ice, After several weeks of labour 
‘Back and his men sawed the tormented vessel out of her ice prison 
after she had been thrown on her beam ends by submerged ice that 
clung to her bottom, It was time to tum: the poor vessel stumbled 
and staggered homeward, reaching Lough Swilly in a state that would, 


= 





4o The Gentleman's Magazine, 


upon the search) consisted of the Resolute and the Assistance and 
two powerful screw steamers, the Pivacer and the Jntrepid. Captains 
Austin, Ommanney, and Sherard Osborn were the leaders of the 
search. Sir John Ross undertook to bear round Wellington Channel, 
and to examine ali the headlands thence to Banks’ Land. The 
heroic Lady Franklin herself fitted out two vessels, and the Prine 
Albert, a schooner-rigged craft of ninety tons (Commander Forsyth), 
resolved to examine to the shores of Prince Regent's Inlet and the Gulf 
of Boothia. Melville Bay proved that year peculiarly impenetrable, 
and the largest vessels spent four weeks in effecting thirty miles 
northward. Blocked by icebergs which threatened to fall and crush 
the smaller ships or to close and grind them to pieces, the sailors 
stood ready with their bundles to leap on the ice and escape by 
sledge or on foot. The Prince Albert once or twice had to charge 
necks of ice, and on other occasions huge icy masses were burst 
asunder with blasting powder, the seamen with warps dragging away 
the huge disjointed blocks. The Prince Albert then examined the 
south shore of Lancaster Sound, and stood away down Prince Regent's 
Inlet, but found all passage beyond Fury Beach impassable. She 
visited Barrow’s Strait, and found Wellington Channel floored with 
solid ice. But on Cape Riley the sailors saw what repaid them for 
all the toil and danger. The Assistance and In:repid had been there 
before them, and had discovered traces of Franklin's tents: rope, 
canvas, bones, and three tombstones left“by the men of the Erebus 
and Terror during a prolonged visit in 1845 and 1846. 

On the 12th of April, 1851, six sledging parties started from 
Griffith Island; three taking the north shore, three the south of 
Parry's Strait. Lieutenant M-Clintock’s party travelled 760 miles, dis- 
covered forty miles of coast, and was absent eighty days. Itachieved 
the farthest westing ever attained in the Polar seas, setting up marks, 
depositing provisions, and making observations. Sails and kites were 
used to drag the sledges, and the men toiled heartily and merrily 
at the drag-ropes. In the exploration of Wellington Channel 
Captain Penny discovered Victoria Channel, which he explored by 
boat for 300 miles. This the discoverer believed to be the great 
inner Polar basin. 

‘The interesting discovery at Cape Riley lit up once more the old 
hope, and it was thought that Franklin had proceeded up Wellington 
Channel and enteied the sea discovered by Captain Penny ; and in 
1852 Sir Edward Beecher started with five vessels—the Assisfance, the 
‘Resolute, the North Star, and two steamers, the Pioneer and Intrepid 
—resolved to sail to Baffin’s Bay, and make Beachy Island his 





I TG oionas Magasine, 


‘While the vexation of this failure was still existing in 
Dr. Rac arrived from Repulse Bay with more news of Franklin. 
had been scen alive by Esquimaux in 1850, and the remains of 
band had been discovered in 1351, The sailors had been seen 
sealbunters near King William's Land in 1850, dragging a 
and sedges. The bodies of thiny of their party were found 
‘same season, on an island a long day's journey north-west of 
Great Fish River, Some of the bodies were in tents, others under 
Boat. One body seemed that of a chief, as a telescope was strapped 
cover the shoulders and a double-barrelled gun lay near it From the 
mutilated state of the bodies i was supposed that cannibalism had | 
‘been resorted to, ‘There was plenty of powder, and stores of shot 
and ball were found below high-water mark. Dr. Rae brought with 
him several spoons and forks, and one small silver plate, engraved 
with the words “John Franklin, K.C.B." Great disappointment 
was felt that in his zeal to explore Boothia Dr. Rac did not himself 
visit the spot where Franklin died, in search of fuller records of his 
fate. 





‘Of the second Grinnell Expedition, commanded by the chivalrous 
Dr. Kane, who sacrificed his life in the service, I have no room to 
say much, In many points it was more daring and romantic than 
any other. Kane’s generous efforts to rescue his men when in great 
peril, his daring sledge journeys, will live for ever in Arctic records, 
Soul never triumphed more nobly over body than when Kane, 
swollen with scurvy, his foot frozen, and himself almost delirious, 
Jed on his party beyond the farthest limits of Grecnland, seeking 
the mysterious channels that open into the inner Polar Sea. On 
‘one occasion he and his men lived eighty-four days in the open air, 
But for a few seals that they shot and ate raw the whole party 
must have perished. 

In 1855 a small band of hardy fellows in a bark canoe furnished 
by the Hudson's Bay Company proceeded down the Great Fish 
River to its mouth, Franklin being supposed to have perished of 
starvation somewhere near Montreal Island, Here they found 
several relics of the Arabur and Zerrer, but no bodies and no 
paper. 

And now we come to the final and more successful voyage—that of 
Captain M'Clintock in the ox in the years 1857--9. Itwas he 
who finally proved that Franklin had really discovered the North- 
‘West Passage and died on the rth of June, 1847, while working 
‘on foot across the ice near the mouth of the Great Fish River, “It 
seemed," as Mr, Ballantyne beautifully observes, “as if the Almighty 
remitted one mysterious whisper from the unseen, 





















that drove the Fix close to the rocks. In 
the Fax strove to win a way: the solid 
extended its barriers over Peel Strait, and drove: the 


third party was to trace the shores of Prince of Wales Land, and, if 
possible, between Four River Point and Cape Bird. Two months” 
provisions were to be carried by each party. 

Near the Magnetic Pole M‘Clintock met an Esquimaux with a 
naval button on his coat, which had been obtained from some white 
people who had been starved upon an island. From this man's 
‘yillage they obtained many relics of poor Franklin and his men— 
spoons, forks, a medal, and portions of the wreck, According to 
them Franklin's vessel had been crashed by ice near King William's 
Tsland, and the crew had perished near Montreal Island, in the estuary 
of the Fish River. M‘Clintock rejoined the Fox after twenty-five 
days’ absence, during which he had travelled 420 miles and com- 
pleted the discovery of t20 geographical miles of the coast line of 
Continental America, The mean temperature was 30° below zero. 

‘The brave leader then set out for another expedition to the east 
coast of King William's Land, passing on foot through a North-West 
Passage, and finding relics of Franklin on Montreal Island. At 
Point Ogle was found on the beach a skeleton lying upon its face, 
apparently an officer's servant, At Point Victory, on King William's 
‘Land, was picked up a paper dated May, 1847, describing the men as 
all well, the wintering in Beachy Island, and the ascent of Wellington 

the captain of the Erebus kad noted Yue 








SIGNOR SALVINIS HAMLET. 
BY A PARISIAN CRITIC. 


T was, doubtless, not without misgivings that even the most 

ardent admirers of Signor Salvini’s histrionic accomplish- 

ments went to witness his first performance in this country 

of Hamlet—that testing part of a complete actor. His 
interpretation of Othello was in all respects a masterly achievement, 
at least for those who cared not to remember the canons set down 
by former exponents of the part, and who elected to follow their own 
idea of the manner in which it should be performed. But although 
it was hardly possible to doubt that Signor Salvini’s attempt would be 
marked by the points in which an artist so accomplished could not 
fail to create eflect, yet it did not follow that whereas he had 
rendered the passions incarnated in the Moor, he could succeed 
in depicting feelings absolutely different. In fact most competent 
critics were inclined to disbelieve in the Italian tragedian’s compe- 
tency, not to give an acceptable rendering of the supreme drama, 
but to endow it with the symmetrical beauty of the whole performance 
of Othello. 

These fears were not wholly groundless. In the part of 
Hamlet it was enough to look at Signor Salvini to be aware that his 
appearance was against him, for in that extraordinary creation it 
is not enough to have the art: the artist must also have the 
physique of the character. The essence of the pleasure we find 
at the theatre is illusion, and if we have before us an actor whose 
looks are altogether remote from the sentiments he expresses the 
illusion, except at very rare moments, is all but destroyed. Nothing 
can be more uncongenial than an elderly lady who enacts a youthful 
character ; and in no play is the look of the part more necessary than 
in “Hamlet.” Salvini is tall, powerful, dignified ; the stamp of 
mature talent sits on every feature of his countenance ; he seems far 
beyond the hesitations and falterings of Hamlet : and as he has, like 
most Italian actors, an objection to the use, or rather abuse, of 
artificial means of changing his physiognomy, it appeared still more 
obvious that the nervous mask of the Prince of Denmark could 
scarcely sit at ease on his features. Not less specious seemed the 
allegation of incompatibility of temperament. While Othello is 

particularly well adanted to a southern nature, Hamlet's acts appeat to 





48 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


other like the links of a chain, so that, however different from the 
genera! idea of a part, his rendering of it is in keeping with the view 
he has taken and possesses the harmonious proportions of a work of 
refined art. 

‘These remarks are not uncalled for, because, in my opinion, 
Signor Salvini has approached the part of Hamlet more in the 
latter mood than with a desire to render it exactly and faith- 
fully as Shakespeare wrote it. Our tragedian has but an imperfect 
knowledge of English; and although reverence for genius has 
nothing to do with nationality, he cannot fairly be expected to 
show the superstitious respect for the exact text on the integrity 
of which every cultivated English spectator insists. He knows 
“Hamlet” only through a translation, than which none could be 
more recklessly and impertinently bad. Whether the shortcomings 
of this Italian version have had much to do with Salvini’s inter- 
pretation I do not know; but his conception of Hamlet’s indi- 
viduality appears to me in some essential points far from the 
creation of the poet. It may be that Salvini himself is aware of 
the fact, only that he thinks that, on the whole, “Hamlet” is 
written more for reading than for presentation on the stage, and that 
the tragedian should extract the dramatic essence of the creation, 
and with due respect leave aside that which can fitly be read in the 
closet, At any rate the Hamlet which he has given us is arranged 
and curtailed in a manner which leads to such an inference. It 
would cover space to point out all the excisions, changes, and 
substitution of certain sayings for weak equivalents that have been 
made in the Drury Lane version ; but the players’ scene, part of the 
churchyard scene, the conversation between Rosencrantz, Guilden- 
stern, and Hamlet which follows the comedy, and all the speeches, 
bits, and scraps of humour have disappeared. If Signor Salvini 
has acted on the theory just put forth, some of these excisions 
are not injudicious ; if he has not, then I can imagine no reason 
why he should have cut out pieces in which his consummate art 
could not but have served him to great advantage; and this is 
sufficient to indicate that, as a whole, his Hamlet cannot have the 
same perfection as his Othello. In local colour, in comprehension, 
in the slightest details, that last impersonation, to my mind 
at least, was complete. In the state in which “ Hamlet” is pre- 
sented at Drury Lane the same conviction cannot possibly be ex- 
pressed. But this I am ready to grant, that in his peculiar reading 
of the part he does some of the greatest things ever witnessed on 

the stage, art “' ++ his impersonation, though far less complicated 





50 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


the profound grief which grows upon him more and more as be 
addresses the ghost and every fond recollection of his father returns 
to him one by one produces due effect on the house. It is then 
that the unlikelihood of Signor Salvini’s powerful appearance of 
manhood begins to fade away before the superiority of his acting. 
He follows the ghost, and when he reappears on another part of the 
platform it is facing the audience, so that not a movement of his 
features can escape scrutiny. It may be remembered that Mt. 
Irving, and most of those who recently preceded him in the 
assumption of the character in which the majority has found him 
so satisfactory, keep their backs partly turned towards the house, 
thus concealing their faces and losing an opportunity of impressive 
dumbshow. An artist must, it is true, be fully confident in his 
means to make the attempt, for ridicule would attach to failure. _ 
Signor Salvini’s acting at this juncture could, I imagine, hardly be 
surpassed. His despair at actually beholding his father, and yet 
being unable to rush forth and clasp him in his arms; the way in 
which he rubs his eyes and shows as eloquently as dumb expression 
can do his doubt whether he beholds a real vision, or whether he 
is not victim of some fantastic fancy of his mind ; his stifled sobs as 
the apparition relates its tale of murder; the mixture of desolation, 
rage, and compassion with which he utters the few words he has to 
say in this scene; all this, apart from the other points of the per- 
formance, is worth seeing to realise the climax of perfection a 
dramatic artist can attain. 

Following his system of suppressing all inconsistencies with his 
idea of the part, he does not indulge in the assumed hysterical 
force with which he speaks to the ghost when he invites his com- 
panions never to reveal what they have seen. Although the Italian 
version of “ Hamlet” also does away with part of the dialogue with 
Polonius in the second act, still some points are retained to which 
the tragedian does more than full justice. His manner of con- 
temptuously turning the pages of his book between forefinger and 
thumb while, shaking his head, he answers— 





Parole, poi parole, e poi parole, 
in reply to Polonius’s query, was so suggestive as to call forth one of 
those murmurs of approbation far more flattering to the pride of an 
artist than loud and boisterous plaudits; and the same murmur 
interrupted him in several parts of the famous soliloquy which 
precedes the scene with Ophelia, particularly when, after uttering for 
the first time the words— 


Morir! . . . dormire! . .. . 










52 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


raving and yelling maniac which actors of inferior cast are 40 fond of in- 
troducing to us at this juncture, but keeps his violence within: 
in order not to leave the King under the impression that the coind: 
dence of a play that pictured his own crime was duc to another cauie 
than hazard ; and when, following a natural impulse of human naturs, 
the tragedian, instead of singing, laughing, and bandying words wif 
his friend, rushed into Horatio's arms, as if the truth was too heayy 
for one man to bear, the audience sanctioned this interpretation by 
loud and continued applause. 

From this period, whatever hesitation the actor might yet have 
betrayed completely disappears. He knows what remains for him 
to do, and he sceks only an occasisn to do it. In his progress 
towards the tragical conclusion he is, perhaps, more at cast 
than in the first portion of the drama, and he gives us some pieces 
of acting which, differing as they do from each other, seem to indicate 
inexhaustible sources of versatility and power, ‘The last three points 
especially worthy of notice in the last acts are the closet scene, bis 
struggle with Laertes over Ophelia’s grave, and the final display with 
the foils, inwhich he does not depend on the accuracy of his simu- 
lated swordsmanship for the protound effect he succeeds in producing 
In the first of these manifestations his rendering is marked by the 
peculiarity which is also attached to the dialogue with Ophelia and 
the climax of the comedy trap. Hamlet's blood does rise at first; 
the miserable death of his father, the heartlessness of his mother, 
her indecent haste to marry her husband’s own brother—all these 
exasperating recollections crowd in his brain, and make him clutch 
and poise the sword with which he has just slain Polonius as if he 
‘were going to commit a second murder. But the ghost appears, and 
the shriek and action of Signor Salvini as the apparition rises send 
a thrill of terror through the spectators, ‘The ghost's exhortation to 
spare his mother restores him to the mood of love for his parents 
which is the dominant feature of his performance. He begs, he 
entreats his mother to return to sentiments of penitence, takes her 
in his arms, almost caresses her. Again, in the churchyard he does 
not follow the common path traced by his predecessors, He says 
the words 


‘Woul't weep ? woul't fight? woul't fast ? wou!'t tear thyself? &e. 


with alternate outbursts of pathos and fierceness; but why the 
perfectly unjustifiable excision of part of this speech? There is no 
possible reason for its omission, for it in no wise contradicts the view 
which, a9 1 suppose, Signor Salyini has taken of the par. The 


i el | 





54 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


writer, in the Saturdizy Review, under the heading of “ Follies of 
Criticism,” has been good enough to include me among those thought- 
less and hare-brained judges who deserve castigation for unrighteously 
castigating others. As, however, I understand that the rainm fre 
of the Saturday Review is to express in superfine language dis 
satisfaction at most men and things, I may take its abuse asa 
delicate compliment. But the Saturday reviewer takes me to task 
for what I precisely ought not to be blamed, and I will therefore 
endeavour to make a few professional suggestions that may be of 
future use to the author of this not very leamed nor very subte 
anicle. I say “not very learned” because the Saturday reviews 
commits a blunder which would enable any well read and cultivated 
Englishman to dilate on the follies of his own criticism; and I 
Fegret for him that the task of pointing it out should devolve 
on a foreigner. He writes, among other things: “ The attack of the 
* Quarterly, so savage and tartarly,’ was a terrible thing to Keats ; but 
Keats’s poetry will live in spite of it” Now, son déWeise to the 
writer who makes this statement, the attack of the Quarterly 
‘was nothing of the kind to Keats, and it is surprising that the editor 
of a journal which plumes itself on literary infallibility should have 
overlooked an assertion the inaccuracy of which is now notorious. 
It is true that many who should have known better believed that 
Keats had been killed by the attack of the Quarterly, and Byron 
and Shelley among the number. But if there is one fact esta- 
blished by Lord Houghton in his biography of Keats, it is that the 
opinion reproduced by the Sa/urday Review was untrue, and that 
the poet was more indifferent to adverse criticism than most men 
would be. This has nothing to do with myself; but 1 am not sorry 
to remind a writer who professes not only to be a critic but to sit in 
judgment upon other critics, that he should at least have known 
such a fact as this. He says, quoting a phrase of mine to the effect 
that “‘it is sufficient to see the manner in which Salvini bears himself 
to know that you have before you an actor whom you have less the 
right to criticise than observe,” that “ this position will save a great deal 
of trouble, as possibly in future when one has seen the frame ofa picture 
it will be known that one has a right to look at it, but not to judge 
its merits.” He also finds fault with me for saying of Signor Salvini's 
Othello that “one cannot say too much of such a performance,” 
and styles what he calls my comparison between Mr. Irving and the 
Italian actor “absurd.” As a matter of fact, I never made any 
comparison between Mr. Irving and Salvini; and had the Saturday 
reviewer trusted for his statement on something more reliable than 





APROPOS OF THE PARIS SALON. 
BY “ SPECTAVI.” 


-NVESTING in pictures is a great lottery in France. The 
standard of taste is capricious, and there is no knowing 
what fancies those rich and uncultivated foreigners who come 
to Paris to see life and learn bon ton may take to pictures hardly 

deserving the space they would occupy in a lumber room. Six years 
ago Fortuny was scarcely quoted in the returns of the fine art market, 
A month back the rubbish of his studio fetched almost £16,000 
sterling at the auction mart. His sudden death gave his friends an 
opportunity to puff him beyond measure, and so the purveyors to 
Muscovite and Transatlantic galleries considered themselves safe in 
paying £300 sterling for a sketch which would fit into a lady's card 
case. A reduced copy of a Velasquez went at a higher figure. 
Those obscure shopkcepers of the Rue Saint-Martin who bought 
landscapes of Corot because he was a neighbour, and because he 
sold for what they offered him, unconsciously provided large 
fortunes for their children. 

There is nothing like the run on the Royal Academy's Exhibition 
that there is on the Salon. Fashionable and unfashionable society 
congregate here, to satisfy the eye’s lust, to gossip, and to make 
speculative ventures. The big square room at the head of the stairs, 
and the double line of oblong chambers to right and left of .it, 
forming the first floor of the Champs Elysée side of the Exhibition 
building, having become insufficient for the pictures and the public, the 
western wing has been added. And still there are days when, to prevent 
accidents from overcrowding, it is found necessary to shut the doors 
of entrance early in the afternoon. At such times painters tell 
visitors that “le Salon est complet.” On Whit Monday 31,745 
persons went through the turnstile of the Exhibition building. No 
register was kept of season-ticket holders, the number of whom may 
be set down at about 6,000. The total of the works of art entered in 
the catalogue amounts to 3,862, of which 2,827 are pictorial. Greece 
and Italy in their brightest periods of artistic efflorescence would have 
found it impossible to fill the 650 pages of the official catalogue. 

In one notable feature the Parisian Salon resembles a modern 
church, On free and paying days bonnets immensely preponderate 















58 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


oak of the library and dining.room, She has the virtue to. 
that Book of Beauty prized by her Anglo-American sister, 
Cabinet paintings intended for the home market have te 
qualities which cleverness, spirit, anecdotic wit, a fine 

the pretty and the picturesque, and technical skill can give. These 
are easily attained ina land where, if poetic and creative genius is 
varer than in Germany and the British islands, talent is scattered 
broadcast, Beauty, as they conceive it in Paris, does not incur the 
reproach of being silly and lackadaisical, It is a flower of the ine 
tellect, the perfection of all that Faust was able to command, But 
it wants the immortal spark of Divinity which the Marguerite and 
the Mignon of Ary Scheffer caught, 

‘The course of a successful French artist of the present day is. 
seldom one of progress, particularly in the higher branches of his 
profession. Often healthy at the start, though scarcely ever pre- 
found, his style becomes attenuated as his prices rise. He studies 
little, and he works incessantly for a frivolous public which does not 
often know its own mind from one day to another and may at any 
moment desert him to run after @ fresh favourite, A few artists of 
humble origin who found greater enjoyment in saving money thas 
in making rapid fortunes have been exceptions. Courbet, Millet, 
Baudry, and Corot sought after the righteousness of the genuine 
artist's Heaven. In the end the things for which the less ideal- 
minded strove were added to them along with fame that is certain 
to endure, 

Bonnat may be set down in this category who elect for truth. 
He is a naturalist, which is not to be confounded with a realist. 
‘The realist is like the greyhound in the German story, that laughed 
ata slow hound for believing in a hare that neither of them could 
sce but which was lying concealed in a thicket hard by. Baudry had. 
the good fortune to be placed above temptation at the beginning of 
his career. He secured, in his engagement to paint the ceiling of 
the New Opera House saloon, a wide field for the exercise of 
his talents before he had an opportunity to work for the export 
trade. But for this task the great and merited success of “The 
‘Pearl and the Wave” might have drawn him into the path followed 
by Cabanel and Lebfevre, 

As & lounge there is no more charming place than the Salon 
in any city that I know. The approach whets the appetite for the 
pictorial banquet It is through a vast continuity of shade and 
garden which, in the month of May, are in the soft yreen robe of 
euly susamer, yet unsullied by coal smut or dust, In the pleasute- 


a 





60 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


with battlepicces in the Versailles style and feeling were annually 
spread upon its walls. Pils and Yyoo illustrated for provincial town. 
halls and museums the military glories of the Empire, Red wat 
then the prevailing colour of the square room: the crimson tide 
of war, which the painters spared not—red pantaloons, red kept 






the very outset. A soberly-coloured picture in this scarlet charivari 
looked pitch dark. Flandrin, in painting a fulllength portrait of 
the Emperor and another of Prince Napoleon, richly meriting the 
admiration of thoughtful connoisseurs, took into account the violent 
tone of the pictures he knew would surround them. He introduced 
‘into the former the madder red pantaloons of a general of division's 
uniform, and into the other a crimson velvet faureuil, 

Since the disasters of 1870 military paintings have diminished in 
‘size, but multiplied in number. They have furthermore ceased to 
absorb much vermilion, Consequent upon the captivity of the 
regular army there are neither red kepis nor trousers in the engage- 
ments furnishing MM. Beaumetz, Berne-Bellecourt, Neuville, Decaen, 
Duvaux, Coutourier, Guignard, Jourdain, and Jacquet with their | 
subjects. Their heroes are mobiles, franc-tireurs, marines incorporated 
into the land forces, and Pontifical Zouaves, dressed in light grey, 
dark grey, sailor’s blue, and sky blue, with red sparingly used in the 
facings. The winter of the terrible year was long and hard. The 
sinister Aurora Borealis of October, visible in nearly every part of 
France, was followed by frost and snow, which only disappeared 
when the capitulation of Paris was signed. The whitened landscape 
and dark masses of troops are a picturesque novelty in battle 
picees, I hardly like applying the word novel to things harrowing 
to afecling mind, And, treated in a becoming spirit, inexpressibly 
sad are those little paintings. ‘That snow one might imagine to be 
the winding-sheet of France, and the raw but gallant irregulars chief 
mourners engaged in defending the dear remains from the rapacious 
double-headed Prussian eagle. ‘The advanced guard on the plateau 
d@Avron is poignant. The retreat of the Army of Paris from the 
Marne, in the blinding sleet, though treated with realistic accuracy, 
isalmost spectral, Antiquity has not left us any more appalling symbol 
‘of Nemesis than is revealed in Guignard’s Uhlans flying from franc- 
treurs, The horses—of tough Brandenburg mettle—rush down hill, 
aroad overhung by a coppice, One of the Ublans holds the bridle 
‘of his comrade—who has been shot and is falling from his saddle— 
mith one hand, and his own with the other, Fe ends forwaxt, 


ll k | 








~The rockets’ red 
trmm areca 3 ar” “ge Sim om The other big 
Eecke. 2 young mam, shy, nik, 












wr 
 depraiacion of Se gallows, he attaches 
a Scoxe cross mx] ther die. They 
wer: 3x for a uniformly tawny 
erates §=Rirpah, whose sackcloth bed 
Asitic rakpedt and a forced 
a shor sckck a yaitire. Her action is 








ih bimseii in a pair of scales 
held in bis own bands and J=ies Lebfevre’s “Dream of Ossian” 

belong to the advertising ‘Both mee: with the attention which 
they challenge. ~Ossian’s Dream “is a blonde nodity, dissolving 
with the mists of morning. She rises from the nenuphars of a calm 
lake, and half sits. half reciines on the cloudy emanation from the 
water. Her attitude is graceful. A lurking smile, and the pose of 
rose-tipped fingers on which a purely modelled cheek rests, betray 
the Sweet Dream's consciousness of the admiration she excites. 
Eerie folk alone are qualified to deal with the supematural, of 
which revelations are hardly ever vouchsafed to Frenchmen. Were 
the inventor of the fragrant floriline in need of a painter as well as 
a poet he could not do better than engage M. Jules Lebfevre. 
“ Ossian’s ‘flimsy’ Dream” is an example of what comes of working 
for the export trade. The pencil from which it sprung produced a 
nude figure in 1867 that would not have been out of place amid the 
splendid memorials of sixteenth century womanhood in the col- 
lection of the Pitti Palace. 

Artemus Ward advised parents never to teach their children music 
unless they had a special call from the Lord. Painters should con- 
sult their call in choosing the branch they are to follow. They do 
best what they like best. Degoffes has a mania for bricd-brac. 
Madame Louise Darru, who sends in the peasant’s bouquet, loves 








64 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


somewhere in the forest of Compitgne. The rabbits have got up 
betimes, and are enjoying an early breakfast of wild thyme and 
the freshness of early morning. In their natural state the brute 
creation are only asked to pay the tax of death, When they are 
domesticated other imposts are exacted. Otho Thoren, of Vienna, 
in his “Séparation,” feelingly pleads for a cow which a peasant is 
cutting off from maternal intercourse with staggering Bob, her call 
In Dupont’s “Un Bout de Conduite” we have the disaster which 
befell a dancing bear and a party of strolling players on a day in 
January. Their license was not quite regular, and so a couple of 
mounted gendarmes obliged them to trudge in the snow to a prison 
three leagues off from the village where they were to sup and per- 
form their antics. Bruin is a member of the wretched troupe own- 
ing him, and, unhappily for him, one of the gendarmes, recognising 
this status, holds him jointly accountable for the flaw in the license. 

Gamier’s “Execution” makes a pig the centre of a medizval 
solemnity. “In the middle ages,” says Lalanne, “ the tribunals pro- 
ceeded with rigour against those animals guilty of murder upon 
which they could lay their hands. They tried, condemned, and 
brought them to judgment absolutely as if they were human beings. 
‘And thus they did unto a sow, accused and convicted of having eaten 
achild.” The porcine convict is at the foot of a gallows, with the 
hangman in scarlet dress. A priest is in attendance, not to shrive, 
but to exorcise. The clergy of the town and the members of the 
tribunal are accommodated with seats in front of the town hall. The 
Seigneur, his family and retainers, and the townspeople in fourteenth 
century dresses and holiday humour, have come to see the sow, who 
has clearly misgivings of what is going to happen, gibbetted. She 
belonged to the monks of St. Anthony, who exerted themselves to 
prove that she only committed justifable homicide. Doctors, judges, 
and the secular clergy were divided as to whether the plea should 
be admitted. But the burghers took the bereaved parents’ com- 
plaint breast high. Moral order was for the sow. Advanced opinions 
were against her. The triumph of the popular side appears in the 
very speaking faces of some groups in the foreground, joyous in 
the consciousness of victory and at the holiday. Archzological details 
are carefully attended to by M. Garnier, who is a pupil of Jeréme, 
but of the free humour and facile brush of Krause. 

Didier’s long-horned oxen of the Campagna bring us to the 
landscape department. The Salon is strong in this branch of art. 
Dévé learned how to use his pencil in Flers’ studio and his eyes in 
the wooded hills and fair vales of fertile Normandy. He has often 









66 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


‘of mind, and ech Salon with a new success. People investin 
from vanity, fortunes in his landscapes would ‘n6t Eakik wef 
‘their money's worth if he went into another groove. C J 
painters ure doubly tempted to become narrow specialists. 
work grows easier, production is more rapid, and their 
Brown, Jones, and Blodgett, from Manchester and New 
having no doubts as to the authenticity of the pictures offered | 
pay freely. Wyld finds it profitable never to stir from V¢ 
Guillemin will pass his life on the quays of Paris; Karl D 

is condemned to be heavy-handed. Were he to cultivate a 
touch he might be taken for a Claimant, and be relegated t0| 
purgatory of poverty-stricken geniuses. Xavier de Cock is 
at home in the rich sylvan scenery of Belgium, where 
fine broad breast. Appian is well master of his hand " 
He betakes himself to the Mediterranean, and gives views 
coast taken from the sea. The Dutch and Belgians distance 
French in marine views and in people who make their living out af 
the ocean. Clays, Van Hier, and Cogen are first in this line. The 
shrimp-gatherers of the latter flying from a heavy sea, and the women 
and children of a fishing village watching on a sloppy wooden pier 
the day after a storm for their husbands* yawls in the offing, tell 
well their story. ‘Two Belgian painters, Weertz and Wauters, carry 
‘off second-class medals Brabant from time immemorial has been 
the elysium of mad people. In 1482, when the painter Vander- 
goes retired to Rouge Cloitre, he went out of his mind. A leech 
recommended sweet music and amusing spectacles as 2 remedy. 
Wanters shows the first experiment a composition of great 
simplici He places Vandergoes sitting in an‘oak stall, a prey to 
insane frengy, a8 the central figure, Near him, on the left, choral 
children, directed by a monk and accompanied by lute-players, sing 
amelody. The prior, seated to the right on a three-legged wooden 
stool,,watches the face of the crazy painter to see how the cure 
works. In the background three lay brothers pray for the un- 
fortunate painter. Here all things are used gently. We find 
nothing forced or exaggerated. We are soothed in 

this picture, ‘The tradition is that Vandergoes recovered in his 
monastic Gheel. 

Goupil's En 1795” wins the first medal. It is the falllength 
portrait of a lady dressed from head to foot in brown. She is young 
and pretty, with an amusingly old-fashioned expression of coun- 
Sep sls IT eee ee Pte In 


Tea 4795" being designed 19 force attention, 1 am 






















63 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


is, they have more character, and of a higher kind, than light-brained 
beauty, which is easily drawn and strongly tempted to run after what 
is ephemeral. You wish to know Henner’s Madame H—, and 
this wish grows stronger every time you see her. Dubufe’s strong. 
faced, brown-eyed Madame B——, who leans with her arms crossed 
and looks you full in the face, is an example of how the intellect and 
feelings can transform an originally ugly face. The portraits which 
command applause inculcate the moral that “Pretty is that pretty 
does,” if not at the start, in the long run. 

Madame Pasca is queen, by right of self-culture, of the Salon. She 
is given full-length, in a white sweeping robe. A border of sable far 
the colour of her dark heavy braids of hair, which are coiled round 
her head, garnishes the corsage, crosses the breast, runs down the 
front of the skirt, and follows the edge of the ample skirt. The 
sleeve presented is long and wide, cut open from the shoulder, 
displaying a strong but finely-formed arm and hand. The left hand 
rests upon a slender gilded chair, half hidden by the lady. What is 
so remarkable in this portrait, apart from the modelling, is the im- 
pression it gives of energy held in reserve. Madame Pasca is not 
handsome, but she has the gift of fascination, and will improve with 
time. Critics object to the uncertainty in which we are left as to the 
tissue of her white dress. Is it cashmere, silk, satin, or velvet? 
Voltaire, a very superficial judge in matters of art, and whose eye 
was made to the charming Court realisms of Boucher and 
Watteau, broke out at Raphael because nobody could say in 
what sort of stuff he dressed his Madonnas. Raphael was one who 
never exactly saw how a woman he admired was dressed. He gave 
the impression she produced on Aim, and left the scanning of her 
clothes to her rivals. The princesses whom he did not care about 
he clad in unmistakable satin and velvet. Should Bonnat’s oversight 
lead to a reaction against pictorial millinery we shall have reason 
to congratulate him on not having noticed whether Madame Pasca 
wore a llama or a satin dress. Becoming garments are not to be 
despised ; but are they becoming when they reduce the wearer to the 
subordinate status of a lay figure? Claude's ladies on horseback, 
so flexile, so well poised and well proportioned—so straight about 
the waist, as old Mazy would say—are an example to civilised belles, 
and a convincing demonstration of the needlessness of over-dress. 





7° The Gentleman's Magazine. 


can be, waits eagerly for the morrow, and hies to the Wandle. Yes; 
there lie the trout with scarcely an altered position. The big fellow 
that you are prepared to bet is of two pounds weight still keeps the 
eddy which commands the finest position—for him—in the river, the 
position towards which the stream, without any interference or coaxing 
of his, will bring food, substantial and luxurious, into his mouth 
There, too, lie the smaller fish on the alert for whatever Providence 
will send them. Putting the joints of your rod together, you fear 
that the creel will scarcely hold the trout you are certain to slay: you 
affix your winch, and, while you pass the line through the rings, 
generously distribute your finest fish—a brace to this lady, two brace 
to that gentleman, and so on. As you unwind the cast from your 
hat and fasten it neatly to the line you have the flush of victory on 
your noble brow. And you deliver your first cast. Hem! But the 
link, of course, requires preliminary moistening, and the hand a little 
Practice, before it will fall with that delicacy and precision essential to 
successful fly-fishing. Therefore you try again; once more ; again; 
seven times, aye and seventy times seven; but the adult trout 
in the eddy winks at you, if that stately wave of the tail is the way in 
which fish wink, and never turns aside at the tempter. Do your best 
by all means, but you by-and-by begin to suspect that a smaller 
creel would have answered just as well, and that the lovely Mrs. R. 
and the hospitable Mr. K. will have no need to write and thank you 
for those delicious trout. 

Ask any Wandle fisherman whether this is not a fair picture of 
his earlier experiences by that delightful Surrey stream. It, alas! 
too often by half tells the story of visits to other rivers; but it has 
a peculiar application to the Wandle, until you know the mental 
and moral character of its trout. Roughly speaking, the Wandle 
has its origin near Croydon. So much you may leam from any 
geography book that condescends to notice so juvenile a member of 
the world’s river family; perhaps the last paragraph, as a sort of 
afterthought, after the manner of severely abbreviated treatises, will 
let you into the secret that “this river was anciently called the 
Vandle” ; as I daresay it was. As to its precise origin, I should not 
like to be bound to place my foot upon the exact spot, not so much 
because a boot-full of water is a thing to be as a rule avoided, as 
because there are several springs which might claim the honour. 
From the heights from which an enemy might shell Croydon with 
terrible effect there issue many crystal springs, which forthwith, 
without shaking hands with each other, or in any way exchanging 
the time of day, proceed to hurry downwards until they approach a 








re The Gentleman's Magazine. 


divine was so thorough an angler that when the Bishop of Duin = 
asked him wien one of his most important works would be ready 
for an expectant public, he replied, “My lord, I shall work steadily 
at it when the plyjisking season is ever.” Admiral Viscount Nesoa 
lived at Merton. and was a fiy-isher in the Wandle, even after be = 
was reduced to one hand. The great hero fished in more troubled 
waters sometimes than “the blue transparent Vandalis,” as Pope 
loftily puts it. And referring to the author of “ Salmonia,” it will to 
doubt be remembered that the four gentlemen who are made to 
interpret the author's ideas upon angling opened their discourse, or 
use the correct description “ Introductory Conversation—Sympo- 
siac,” with a tine-davoured Wamdle trout on the table around which 
they sat. 

‘The Wandle country (valley we can scarcely term its course) is sur 
passingly charming. Beddington Park is open to the public with it 
Tare trees, fine church and churchyard, and the red brick building 
which, once famed 2s Beddington Hall, is now used as a Female 
Orphan Asylum. Queen Elizabeth was a visitor to the Carews 
at Beddington, where the first oranges ever grown in the county— 
the fruit having been brought hither by Sir Walter Raleigh—were to 
be seen. Poor Lady Raleigh in the later days of gloom and death 
wrote to Sir N. Throckmorton, asking that “the worthi boddi of my 
nobell hosbar Sur Walter Ralegh” might be buried in Beddington 
Church. The church, whose tower is seen peeping above the grand 
tree-tops, is a restored building, but some of the venerable trees around 
the churchyard must have weathered centuries of storm and sunshine. 
A large, perhaps the major, portion of the Wandle country is enclosed 
with park palings and high walls. It is a country that teems with 
villas and “desirable residences”; with highly cultivated grounds which 
an ordinary pedestrian would find it as difficult to enter as Parlia- 
ment (perhaps as things go he would find it much more difficult), 
while an angler would risk instantaneous cremation if he dared to 
look through the hedge. It is, of course, very natural that when a 
gentleman has spent money and time in beautifying his country resi- 
dence he should wish to keep it to himself; and equally natural that 
the owner of a well-stocked trout river should not insult his fish by 
allowing every pot-hunter to thin them out. 

‘There is to my knowledge one bit of free water on the Wandle, 
and one only, namely, the ford at Hackbridge. The space at the 
angler’s disposal is not vast, and there are inconveniences natural to 
the position ; small boys claim a share in the fisherman’s privileges, 
and lessen his chances of sport by their clumsiness, and still oftener 





74 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


water flows from the chalk strata, and receives but little addition from 
immediate rainfalls ; but drains and gutters communicating with the 
roads cannot fail to bring down a certain amount of discolouring matter, 
and at times, soon after heavy showers, the water becomes foul. Bat 
near its sources to an extraordinary extent it speedily resumes its 
normal clearness. Mr, Alfred Smee, to whose efforts in fish 
culture I shall refer presently, in his delightful book entitled “My 
Garden” says: ‘‘ The Wandle taken as a whole is the perfection of a 
river ; its water is as bright as crystal, and is purity itself. It does 
not overflow with rain, nor is it deficient in dry weather, It does 
not freeze in winter, nor does it become very hot in summer. It has 
existed through all historic times ; and as long as the chalk retains 
its porosity and is protected by a bed of clay underneath and a bed 
of blue clay on that portion of its upper surface which is most 
depressed, and as long as rain falls upon the more elevated portion, 
so long will the water continue to ooze from the earth by day and by 
night, by summer and by winter, and to run its course as the River 
Wandle, and it may thus exclaim in the words of the poet :— 


‘Men may come, and men may go, but I go on for ever.”* 


The inherent clearness of the river is doubtless one reason why 
the Wandle trout have a reputation among anglers for most un- 
christianlike obstinacy and immoral shrewdness. Another cause is 
the exceeding smallness of the flies which haunt the river; after dark 
you may venture upon moths and hackles of fair dimensions, but so 
long as daylight glints on the stream, midge-sized flies, and those 
only, must be used. To imitate these tiny insects is not so difficult 
as to employ the artificial imitation with effect after the fly-maker has 
constructed a perfect specimen. There is, I believe, a special 
kind of fly manufactured for the Wandle, and a neater article 
could not be conceived. The most commonly used varieties 
are a red spinner, a quill gnat with red hackle, a governor, 
a coachman, and a blue floating fly which you may term either 
an upright or a dun; but whichever description is used it must 
be considerably smaller than a young housefly. Having induced your 
trout to rise at one of these specks, you are confronted with the problem 
how to land a lusty fellow of over a pound in weight with tackle 
thinner than single hair and a hook which under the most favour- 
able circumstances cannot be imbedded much more than the sixteenth 
of an inch in his mouth. The Wandle trout are fond of merrily 
leaping out of the water when they feel the barb, and if the first 
flight does not release them from their enemy they try a second and 









76 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


running heavy with trout down by the garden side, may see for hia 
self, it is full of fish, Each member is bound by certain rules, and it 
is enough to make a hapless outsider’s mouth water to read that all 
fish of eleven inches and under must be returned to the water; that 
no member must take more than #iree brace per day, and that the 
limit of fishing after dusk must not extend over one hour, “Three 
brace of fish between a pound and a quarter and two pounds should, 
‘as the association very properly deems, satisfy any man blest with an 
ordinary appetite for sport. Walking over from the Bath and West 
of England Agricultural Show onan idle afternoon, I found one ofthe 
members—and a very accomplished fly-fisher he was—in despair be- 
cause he had caught his three brace in an hour and a half, and now 
sighed, like the ancient monarch, for more worlds to conquer. 

‘The fish were rising " permiscuous.” It appeared as ifthey would 
have gulped a buttercup, or a fusee, or anything that came floating 
down the stream. And then, obeying some unseen law that always 
puzzles the angler, in a moment everything was quiet. ‘There was 
fot a tise to be seen, Who or what issued that sudden command 
“Stop rising”? By what unknown system of telegraphy could the 
trout in the mill sluice fity or a hundred yards off be bronght into 
the same frame of mind, on the instant, as these other trout close 
under the bridge? This is a phenomenon the troutfisher often | 
observes, but can never explain; nor can he explain why by-and-by, 
perhaps in an hour, perhaps in six, the fish in every part of the river 
simultaneously resume their rising, The Wandle association 
artificially breeds thousands of fish by which the water is constantly 
replenished. Having had the secretary's courteous permission to 
walk through the grounds in the company of the bailiff, I was 
recently much interested in inspecting the boxes in a byewater, 
where the young fry were dining heartily off liver boiled, hardened, 
and powdered fine upon a nutmeg grater. The keeper spoke of 
his trout in terms of almost paternal affection, and apparently 
longed to take each mite out of the shoal in order to pat its 
head-and otherwise bestow upon it proofs of his undying attach» 
ment, The Wandle generally owes a good deal to this association, 
which carefully breeds and guards the fish for the benefit of the 
entire river, 

‘The most memorable treat I can remember in connection with 
the Wandle was a visit paid to Mr, Alfred Smee’s garden, “My 
Garden,” I presume, few who have read it will have forgotten, 
‘Though ostensibly concerning a small plot of ground in the hamlet 
of Wallington, in the parish of Beddington, in the county of Surrey— 


ae 





73 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


made a gallant attempt to introduce grayling, but the experament 
failed. At frst he raised young ones from ava, but to no purpose 
‘Then he conveyed twenty brace of mature fish from the Derbyshire 
streams, and put them safe and sound into the water, It wars 
costly and difficult undertaking, but though many. of the fish lived: 
on for years, and made a show of spawning at the gravel beds no 
young fish were ever seen, and by this time not a grayling is by ang 
chanee observed. ‘The Wandle is too shallow and gentle probably for 
this interesting fish, and the success of the endeavour made to 
introduce grayling into the Clyde (which was referred to in one of the 
“ Waterside Sketches” of last year) may be attributed to the suitability 
of the Scotch river for that particular kind of fish. In like maaner 
Mr, Smee failed to breed the burbolt or ee! pout, and he reared 
‘thousands of salmon trout and char in his fish house and turned them 
into the water, thus claiming the honour of placing the first salmon 
into any tributary of the Thames, After all the labour, thought, and 
outlay expended upon these difficult processes Mr. Smee finds that 
the trout and ecls—and Wandle cels are as deliciously flavoured a8 
Wandle trout—remain in sole and undisputed possession, if we may 
‘except, a8 unworthy of mention in the same breath, the pugnacious 
litle half armed stickleback which is found in great quantities in 
the river, 

‘The Darent, or Darenth, as it is often written, though it rises in 
the same hilly formation, sees the light at some distance from the 
cradle of the Wandle, Its course, which is a trifle over fourteen 
miles in length, is north-east, through a broad vale smiling with rich 
pastures, and adorned by many a noble country seat, By Wandleside 
you are never wholly free from the associations of town ; the enclosed 
grounds give a suburban character to the surroundings, and indeed a 
drive through Clapham to Mitcham and Carshalton suggests that in 
process of time those genteel places will be part and parcel of the 
metropolis. The Darent on the other hand brings you into the pure 
‘open country, and into the sunny districts where hops entwine and 
cherry-cheeked fruits ripen for distant markets, Spenser, who took 
more delight in the English rivers as a whole than any other poet 
except Drayton, says — 

The still Darent, in whose waters clean 
‘Ten thousand fishes play aad deck hi» pleasant stream, 


‘Ten thousand might almost be taken in a more literal sense than 
‘Spenser intended, for the Darent is nearly as good a trout stream as 
the Wandle. The fish are thought to be more numerous in the latter 
iver, but some critics pretend to have discovered a finer Kavour ates 


— = 4 








80 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


the guardian of this show place for trout, and right faithfully did he 
insist upon obedience to the orders painted upon the notice-board. 
On the face of it this regulation seems absurd ; but trout are worth 
so much per pound, loafers are to be found even at peaceful Faring- 
ham, and it is sad to know that during the last two years the vile 
art of fish-stupefying by poisonous compounds has been growingly 
practised. 

The May-fly does not visit the Darent any more than the Wandle, 
and the most successful anglers at Farningham use the Wandle flies, 
swearing especially by the Tom Thumb governor and quill gnat 
It is but reasonable to expect that the privilege to be obtained in 
the Lion water is not thrown away. On most days there are some 
rods at work early or late, and after the beginning of June, though 
June and July are probably the best months in the season, the most 
sensible expectations will be those which are restricted to a very 
modest limit. On those golden occasions which are so few and far 
between, and so impossible to foretell, three or four brace of fish 
may be taken, but the man who can bring away his one or two trout 
need not mourn over his ill-luck. There are several very remu- 
nerative “‘stickles” just below the antique brick bridge, but the 
angler, if he would do anything, must keep far out of sight and be as 
still as a mouse. 

There are several gentlemen who have not failed to appear 
regularly at the Lion on the eve of many successive Good Fridays, 
and the veteran tragedian Mr. Phelps was one of these, recognised 
always as an eminent actor, but also as a masterly killer of trout. 
Last Good Friday fourteen fish were taken by one angler, almost 
before any other fishermen were stirring, though I myself was 
one of half a dozen who saw the sun rise on that bright holiday. 
‘The others fared badly, but on the following Monday a London 
angler again killed seven brace of trout, as if there were some mutual 
arrangement among them as to the maximum number permitted to 
one rod in the space of one day. In the very early morning or 
late evening there is generally a heavy trout to be picked out im- 
mediately under the spreading chestnut tree, for the plump fish in 
the millstream, in spite of the keeper and the notice-board, drop 
down from under the bridge to feed on the shallows, and may be com- 
municated with if no person has passed along the brink before the 
fisherman's arrival. The first labourer crossing the bridge to his 
field-work will frighten all the fish, and before his heavy boots have 
ceased their ponderous thud you will have noticed the clear water 

ploughed in four or five different places by prowling truant: 





GREAT PEOPLE OF YORKSHIRE. 
BY HORACE ST. JOHN. 


2. WING many acknowledgments, as pilgrim and gues, 

to the triple shire, having been up and down, by 

firesides and in churchyards, in old manses and among 

sacred ruins, I have gathered the names and memories 
of the distinguished men and women born of this robust soil whose 
local has often been lost in their general reputation. 

Some one has called Yorkshire the Normandy of England, and the 
expression, fit or not, is rarely forgotten when conversation takes a tan 
in which ancestral voices may join. This isa species of pride perfectly 
intelligible upon a higher principle than that which proclaims every 
separate constituency of the kingdom to be more intelligent and 
independent than all the rest, and in the case of the big county 
amply justified; as it was in June, 1682, when Dr. George Hickes— 
himself a Worthy—at the Yorkshire feast in Bow Church, London, 
said:—“ Our county, as the anxious observe, is the epitome of 
England; whatsoever is excellent in the whole land being found in 
proportion thereto.” Further :—“God hath been pleased to make it 
the birthplace and nursery of many great men.” 

It is a little surprising at first to remember Aow many, and who they 
were. In the foreground stands a headless, but none the less con- 
‘spicuous, group of patriots and traitors—not to confound the two :— 
Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, “who died the death of a 
noble” in 1572; Christopher and Thomas Norton, rebellious gentle- 
men, executed in 1570; Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, 
impeached by Parliament and beheaded on Tower Hill in 1641— 
Strafford, of whom the only relics left at princely Harewood were, a 
hundred years ago, his initials cut on the altar-rails in the chapel; 
John Lord Lumley, indicted with Thomas Lord Darcy and others 
for high treason and sent to the scaffold in 1544; and poor Sir 
Henry Slingsby, created a baronet by Charles I., and author of “A 
Father's Best Legacy,” whom the Commonwealth called to the block 
in 1658, but whose name, unforgotten of Finsbury, united with that 
of Duncombe, is so prominent among the memorials of Knares- 
borough. Many another fame associated with the epoch of the 

Revolution belongs to Yorkshire, and some to Leeds especially. 






























84 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“last of the Knighted Constables"; or Charles Lord © 
who is reputed, though erroneously, to have laid the first 
Bolton Abbey? ‘These Clitfords bore, in other days, a dark s 
notably "Black Clifford,” nicknamed “the Butcher of d 
though in contrast with his infamy is the tender tradition of “ty 
Shepherd Lord.” The banners of Yorkshire churches or pat 
morwary chapels, long disappeared, hung over the effigies —n 


‘eyes; Sir Henry Montague, who witnessed the signature of 
VIII, to his will; Sir Charles Howard, Lord High Ad 
England, who claimed credit for defeating the Spanish 
though it has since been thought that Drake and Effi m 
something to do with it; Lord Scrope, already, in 1651, ain baron 
‘of the name, who tilted at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and 
was gaoler to the Queen of Scots at Bolton Castle; and Lord 
Baltimore, who obtained the original grant of Maryland. * 
‘The Yorkshire divines, who Caleb Stkely thought, on ae 
count of their fit faces, could never have fagged at school, 
such a group as, perhaps, no other county in the United King: 
dom could produce. Their lives would fill one of Captain 
Marryat’s “quartos without margin,” and foremost stands John 
‘Wycliffe, the Richmond Refurmer, whose monumental brass in 
Wycliffe Church has been, with many others, everlooked by Mr 
Bowell (Mr. Boutell, indced, only mentions those of Sir John deSt 
Quintin and his lady, at Harpham and at Bransberton); then 
Torestal, Bishop of Durham, twice deprived ; Tilson, the ejected of 
Elphin; Edward Hillingflect ; Richard Sterne, who read prayers — 
with Laud upon the scaffold ; Lawrence Sterne; Bowles, author of | 
the famous Catechism ; Burnet, the learned chaplain of William IfL; 
Tillotson, whose sermons are among the “Sacred Classics” 50 
choieely edited by Dr. Stebbing ; Sanderson, the blind Algebraist; 
Dr. Radelifie, who erected his own monument in the great library at 
Oxford; Joseph Priestley, whose pen very nearly approached the 
‘secret of perpetual motion; Dr. Paley, and Reginald Heber, It is 
interesting to observe this mighty kinsmanship of genius and erudi- 
tion in a single shire of England. We pass that reverend band, and 
enter the Yorkshire Walhalla of Arts and Letters. It is not very 
spacious, Here are John Gower, of the “ Contessio Amani” and 
Sir Thomas * the *Threnodia Carolina,’ conicomiiog, 





















36 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


‘bred whereof he could not foresee he, the seventeenth of the line 
{all duly blazoned on the staircase wall), beqoeathed his house: 
estate to “twelve decayed gentlemen,” each to have £2 
# separate room, and all, if in health, to dine together. 
moreover, Chief Justice Gascoigne, who committed the P 
Wales and refused to try, upon a charge of treason, Set 
bishop of York, who owed him his death in consequence, 
I have referred to sign-boards—great tests of influence. or 


was the original of a character in “ The Yorkshire Tragedy,” 
will not do, in Yorkshire, to assign to any author but Shaki 


‘and generously proud. The people point out where his b 
stood at Marton; his baptismal register in the church ; the gi 
his schoolmistress at “Canny Yatton," of his father, the day 
who learned to read at the age of seventy that he might spell out bit 
son’s adventures, and who died in ignorance of that son's death six 
weeks after it had taken place; and of his mother, at “ 
Yatton” also. [think. Scoresby, who took his ship so near the P 

was “Yaoarkshire” too; and the Scoresby Arms, at Woxley, 
comfortable hostelry enough. Yet no sign in the shire approaches: 
that of “Tom Brown,” the hero of the basket-hilted yr 
the battle of Dettingen cut his way singlehanded through the 
enemy's lines to win back the standard of his troop. ‘There he 
stands, in his old uniform, brown and grizly, abave the mantelpiece, 
boldly coloured, upon a surface resembling vellum rather thas canvas, 
with the extraordinary legend beaeath— Momo guia pudetr ext. The 
Earls Fitzwilliam are similarly popularised, especially one who was dise 
missed from the Lord-Lieutenancy by King George ILI. for “proposing 
an offensive toast” at a public dinner, ‘Then you have, swinging im 
state, Henry Jenkins, of Fountaynes, who carried “a horse-load of 
arrows for Flodden Field," and who lived to “the amazing age” of 
169. It is utterly useless to doubt it. His epitaph may be read 
at Ellerton-on-Swale, written by Dr. Thomas Chapman, Master of 
‘Magdalen College, Oxford, and I should no more think of question: — 
ing the Doctor's authority than of hinting that all the bedsteads hung: 
with blue damask, which are shown by housekcepers who move and 
stoplikemechanisms—forhalf-a-crown—inancient Ye 

were not once the sleeping-places of queens or kings ; that the mounds 
pointed ouria Wilstrop Wood are molchills, and not the graves ot 


—_— <i a 





Dear Lapy DISDAIN. 
BY JUSTIN MoCARTHY, AUTHOR OF “LINLEY ROCHFORD, 
“A FAIR SAXON,” “MY ENEMY’S DAUGHTER,” &e. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


“0, SAW YE NOT FAIR INEZ?” 








SHE Saucy Lass bore Christmas Pembroke one evening 
of early summer to the Durewoods pier. He had not 
visited Durewocds since his first stay there, and he had 
often been smitten with a sense of ingratitude towards 
his friend Miss Lyle. There were reasons why for some time back 
he had rather shrunk from coming under her eyes, and having 
perhaps to answer the kindly peremptoriness of her questions. But 
she, he thought, knew nothing of his excuse for avoiding her, and he 
feared she must think him ungrateful. The fear was confirmed when 
on writing to ask her if he might pay her a visit, he received a reply, 
which he could not but regard as a little cold and curt for her, 
telling him that he would be welcome. He started for Durewoods 
next day. 

‘The Challoners had left England. They were to reach New 
York before the heats of summer set in, and after spending a few 
days there and in Boston, to cross at once to San Francisco, where 
the months intolerable in the Atlantic States would be delightful ; 
and when autumn came they were to return to New York again, 
visiting many places on their way. Christmas had not seen Marie 
before her leaving London. Sir John had taken care to keep him 
engaged in expeditions hither and thither in the northern cities ; 
and Christmas knew it was for the best, although he chafed at it 
too. But he had made up his mind now that he would not see the 
Challoners any more. He would not see Aer married. He would 
return to Japan. It was especially to tell Miss Lyle of his deter- 
mination to leave England that he was now visiting Durewoods. 
“ Durewoods has been my Sedan,” he said to himself. 

‘The heart of the poor youth swelled cruelly with emotion as he 
began to see the pier at Durewoods, and the cottages and the trees 

oa the hill, amid which Marie's home was standing, Dutewoods 





* 90 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


there, and that he thought he could do better on his old ground in 
Japan. At last he got to the end of the story somehow. 

“Is that all?” Miss Lyle asked. 

That was all. Christmas thought it was a good deal. 

“I didn't want to say anything until you had finished. Have 
you finished ?” 

“Yes, Miss Lyle. That is all I wanted to say. As some of our 
‘American friends would say, I’m through.” 

“TI don’t understand slang,” said Miss Lyle—‘“even English 
slang. I am not fond of it” 

There was a pause. Christmas wondered if she were going to 
say nothing more on the subject of his resolve, and if the matter 
were to drop there. For awhile she had seemed to be growing 
more friendly, but again there came a marked coldness in her 
manner. Christmas did not wonder at that. He felt with renewed 
pangs of conscience that he had been but an inattentive friend for 
some time, and must not expect instant pardon. 

“Then you have made up your mind to renounce London and go 
back to Japan?” she said, at last, in a tone of some dissatisfaction. 

“TI have,” Christmas answered, glad that she had said anything. 
“I am afraid you will think me a variable personage, Miss Lyle, 
without much of a mind to make up.” 

“It ds strange,” she said, following up apparently some train of 
thought of her own. “ Your father was above all things a man of 
steady purpose. I begin to think you are not like him at all, Mr. 
Christmas, and that I have been rather mistaken in you.” 

“Well, Miss Lyle, you will do me the justice to admit that I 
never claimed to be like my father, or fit to be compared with him.” 

“Still,” she said, in an almost irritable way, “it és strange how the 
sons degenerate. I don’t understand it. Where did you learn 
these fickle ways, and that want of trust, which I can tell you I like 
still less ?” 

Miss Lyle, as Marie Challoner had said long ago, was picturesque 
in everything she did. Few people look dignified when out of 
humour, but in the gesture with which she drew her white shawl 
round her shoulders, as if wrapping herself in a garment of offended 
pride, there was something effective and dramatic. 

“Want of trust—in you, Miss Lyle?” 

“In me, yes. Do I not deserve your confidence? Did I not 
offer myself to you from the beginning frankly as your friend, and 
how could you doubt that I was so? I tell you, Chris Pembroke, 
I should almost have loved a lap-dog called by your father's name, 





92 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“I don’t know what to say,” he broke out at last. ‘“ We don't 
understand each other, Miss Lyle.” 

“Come, I really begin to think you are more foolish than dis 
trustful, Christmas. I suppose boys are shy of talking of these 
things even toelderly women. But you could have found no trustier 
friend than me—nor one less likely to care for social prejudices and 
that kind of thing. I don't believe your father’s son could make a 
very bad choice. Well, I forgive you your secresy. And so you 
have fallen in love, my poor boy, and are going to be mairied? 
So soon?” 

Christmas started with such evident and genuine surprise that Miss 
Lyle was startled in her turn. 

“Is this not true?” she asked, sharply—“ are you not going to be 
married? Are we playing at cross purposes?” 

“We are indeed,” said Christmas, with an aching heart. ‘There 
never was such playing at cross purposes! Who told you that story, 
Miss Lyle? Not Sir John Challoner, at all events.” 

“ But is all that really not true? Have you not fallen in love ; 
and are you not going to be married?” 

“A man less likely to be married, Miss Lyle, is not to be found 
anywhere between this and Japan.” 

“Oh! Have you quarrelled ?” 

“ Quarrelled with whom ?” 

“With the young lady, of course. I suppose we needn't now 
make any mystery of her name—Miss Jansen.” 

Christmas rose from his chair in amazement. In all his trouble of 
heart he was boyishly inclined to laugh. 

“Is that the story, Miss Lyle—is that the mystery—the confi- 
dence?” 

“But is it really not true? Is it all a mistake or a delusion? 
Are you more deceitful than I could have believed, or are people 
going out of their senses? Do let us come to some understand- 
ing.” 

“ Miss Lyle, there isn’t one single particle of truth or meaning or 
anything else in that story. I know Miss Jansen; but I’ never felt 
anything for her but friendship—and there is even much about her 
that I don’t like; and I am not certain now whether she is not 
rather unfriendly to me than the contrary. As for any other idea, it 
never even occurred to me until this moment; and it would be ever 
40 much less likely to occur to her. To begin with, she hates the 
whole race of men,” 

“Yea; I don’t mind that,” Miss Lyle said, quielly. “They won 





94 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


if Miss Challoner or Miss Lyle had made a guess of any kind, Sir 
John might have allowed her to remain under a delusion rather than 
give any clue to the truth. But, as he understood Miss Lyle, there 
was something more than this. 

“Did I understand you rightly, Miss Lyle? Did you say tht 
Sir John told this story—told it himself—to Miss Challoner?” 

“Certainly, Chris ; he and she both spoke of it in that way. Sir 
John said, more than once, that he was to blame for having revealed 
to his daughter what you told him in confidence.” 

Christmas leaned upon the balcony and thrust his hands deep into 
his pockets. He was perfectly bewildered. 

“ But there must be something in all this,” Dione said impatiently. 
“Tt can't be all Midsummer madness, You did, surely, tell John 
Challoner something in confidence ?” 

“I did” 

“And had it nothing to do with Miss Jansen?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Was it any sort of love-confession ?” 

With eyes doggedly downcast Christmas answered, “It was.” 

“And in heaven's name, Chris Pembroke, why did your father’s 
son select John Challoner of all men on earth as the confidant of his 
love story ?—Oh |” 

The exclamation broke from Miss Lyle because of the sudden 
expression with which Christmas had looked up when she put her 
imperious question—an expression which was a revelation, 

“You unhappy boy,” she said in a low tone and leaning towards 
him, “ was that it?” 

“ That was it. Now you know all. Now you know why I told 
him, and why I didn’t tell you.” 

“ Did you not know that she was engaged to young Vidal ?” 

“Tdid. I guessed it.” 

“Then what on earth was the good of your speaking to her father ? 
What did you hope to get by that ?” 

“ Nothing.” 

“You had better have told me a hundred times. You didn’t 
suppose that John Challoner was a person to be touched by your 
romantic attachment, and to say ‘Take her, my boy! Bless you, 
my children’ ?” 

“Miss Lyle, I imagined nothing and hoped nothing. I couldn’t 
endure the place any longer. I tried hard, and I found that I 
couldn’t do it, and he had been so kind to me that I didn’t like to 

seem ungrateful or changeable, and I couldn't invent\ies. 1 thought 





96 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


“Blame her! Her! For what?” 

“ You don’t think she meant this—or trifled with you?” 

“Oh, no, She is as true as light. She was my friend almyp; 
she isnow. It is no fault of hers, She never suspected.” 

“Tam glad. I should have thought so, but I am glad to hear you 


say so. One word more. You have not any lurking hope—sboot 
her ?” 


“Oh no ; no hope.” 

“You are right, Chris. I know Marie as well as any one ci, 
and I know that ull the world could not make her engage herself 
Mr. Vidal if she cared for anybody else. But I am glad you hare 
the courage to look that straight in the face. The only thing now 
is—what is to be done?” 

“ My mind is clear,” said Christmas; “I'll leave England and go 
back to Japan.” 

“ But why do that? why not stay firmly here and make an honow 
able career for yourself? A man has some other business in life than 
falling in love and brooding over it.” 

“I have other business, and I mean to do it, Miss Lyle, and not 


to brood. But if I remained in England I should be likely to brood 
on to the end of the chapter.” 


“There are other women too, Chris.” 

“There are no other women for me, Miss Lyle, and good advice 
is thrown away on me I am afraid. Sooner than stay here and see 
her—see her married, Miss Lyle, I would leap off the pier below and 
swim straight out to sea as far as ever I could go and sink quietly 
down when I could swim no farther. It wouldn’t be half'a bad thing 
to do—go down with the setting sun.” 

“You won't do that, I know,” Miss Lyle said.“ You'll not do that 
cowardly thing, Chris. That might do for Natty Cramp, pethaps, or 
some egotistical fool of his kind ; not for you. But we'll say no more 
of this just now. It’s a surprise, and I must think it over. You used 
to like to smoke a cigar in the evenings?” 

Christmas understood the very clear hint. She held out her hand 
to him, and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Heaven 
knows what boyish impulse made him kneel beside her chair and 
press her hand to his lips. Then she gently laid the hand upon his 
head. There passed through Dione’s mind at the time the sweet, 
strange, unspeakably tender saying of the Duchess of Orleans about 
Dunois—that he was a child stolen from her. 

She was glad when Christmas left her, for there was something 
which puzzled her in all this, and which she had not spoken of muda 





98 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


CHAPTER XX. 
“PROFESSOR NATHANIEL P, CRAMP,” 


‘Tue Genius of young Liberty had indeed not yet proved propitions 
to Natty Cramp. He landed at Hoboken, on the New Jersey shor 
of the North river at New York, one sunny and lovely morning, and 
he gazed across at the somewhat confused and unalluring river froat 
of the great city with the air of 2 conqueror. The fresh breath of 
freedom, he proudly said to himself, was already filling him with new 
manhood. But New York is in some ways a discouraging place to 
land at. There are no cabs ; and there are no street porters ; and 
to hire a “hack” carriage is expensive ; and to track out one’s way 
in the street cars and the stages is almost hopeless work for the new 
comer. Then the examination at the Custom-house was long and 
vexatious ; and yet, when Natty got through the Custom-house, he 
felt as if he were thrown adrift on the world without any one more 
to care about him. As Melisander in Thomson’s poem declares that, 
bad as were the wretches who deserted him, he never heard a sound 
more dismal than that of their parting oars, so, little as Nathaniel 
Cramp liked the brusque ways of the Custom-house officers, he felt a 
sort of regret when they had released him and his baggage, and he 
found himself absolutely turned loose upon the world and his 
own resources, 

‘This small preliminary disappointment was otinous. Natty had 
come out with a little money and a great faith in himself and his 
destiny. He had the usual notion that New York and the United 
States in general are waiting eagerly to be instructed in anything by 
Europeans, and especially by Englishmen. Having failed utterly in 
London, he thought he must be qualified to succeed in New York. 
His idea was to give lectures and write books—poems especially. 
He soon found that every second person in America delivers lectures, 
and that every village has at least three poets—two women and one 
man, He had brought a few letters of introduction from some 
members of the Church of the Future in London to congenial spirits 

in New York, and he made thereby the acquaintance of the editor of 
a Spiritualist journal, of a German confectioner and baker who had a 
small shop on Fourth Avenue (and Fourth Avenue is to Fifth Avenue 
as Knightsbridge is to Park Lane or Piccadilly), and of a lady who 
wore trousers and called herself the Rev. Theodosia Judd. The 
influence of these persons over New York, however, was limited, and 
although they endeavoured to get an audience for one of Natty’s 
Jectures at > were little hall in a cross street far wp town, the paslic 









100 The Genti 
4 certain limited number of “star” 





them could not even be tempted out of their ordinary sp 
‘such a sum as that; and some again were so heavily eng 
‘vance that Acroceraunia would not haye a chance of 
on any terms for many seasons to come. In fact, Acre 
only engaged two genuine stars for her course, one to 0 

to close it. There seemed a great deal too much local 
Singing Socicty in between, and therefore some pad 


again should have a chance of testing his rhetorical skill; 

sides twenty-five dollars, look you, are equivalent to five"pounds, 
would be a substantial gain to Nathaniel Cramp. It sojh 

too, that Nathaniel suited the conditions of the Lyceum je 
Acroceraunia very well. That season, and indced for son 
eeeall Sect pec hed had some lecturer {rom London, Eng: 
land, in their course. But when Acroceraunia had secured, and ] 
with immense difficulty, its two American stars there,was not measly — 
enough of money still in prospect or wc "Theoe Naha 








get one of the British luminaries as well. ‘Therefore Nathaniel 

‘Cramp was positively a godsend. “The celebrated English erator, 

Professor Nathaniel P. Cramp, from London, England," woukd look 
yery well on the placards and advertisements. ‘The people of 
Acroceraunia were in gencral a steady-going, home-keeping com 
munity. ‘They rose early, they worked hard, and when) the gentle 
men ofa family came home in the oe ee 
sleep on the lounge after supper, and were awakened! by, their 

in time vo go to bed at a proper hour. ‘They never dreamed of 

to Europe in the summer, and they did not take ] 





journals, For half of them, then, the name of Naity Cramp would. 
do just as well as duit of any of the more distinguished I whe | 
fog the States that fall, 











Io2 : The Gentleman's Magazine 


turned into something which bore resemblance to a street, or at 
least was like a high-road with houses at each side. But Natty saw 
a little placard on a wall as they were tuning into this street or road 
which for the moment withdrew his attention from everything else, 
and made him blush and feel shy, proud, terrified, and delighted. 
For he could see on it the words “ Lyceum Lecture Course,” “ This 
Night,” and “ Professor Nathaniel P. Cramp, of London, England.” 
Natty positively drew himself into a corner of the omnibus as if 
every eye must have been looking out for him, or as if he were Lady 
Godiva riding through Coventry and had just been seized witha 
suspicion of the craft of Peeping Tom. But pride soon came to 
Natty’s rescue again, and he felt that at last he was coming to be 
somebody, that this was the beginning of fame, and that the world 
comes to him who waits. He delivered to himself in a proud under- 
tone the closing sentences of his lecture. 

The omnibus stopped at last in front of a house of dark brick, 
with a sign swinging above, and after a good deal of clattering and 
stamping on the part of the horses, and cries of “Git up” on the 
part of the driver, it backed up to the porch and Professor Nathaniel 
P. Cramp got out. He made his way into the office of the hotel, 
a gaunt, bare room with a stove in the midst, a counter at one side, 
and a grave man behind the counter. When Nathaniel walked up 
to the counter the grave man turned round a huge ledger or register 
which lay before him, pushed it towards Nat, and handed him a pen 
without saying a word. Natty knew the ways of the New World well 
enough now to know what this meant. He inscribed himself in the 
book, Nathaniel Cramp, London, England. The grave man marked 
a number in the book opposite to Nat’s name, and handed a key 
with a corresponding number to an Irish porter who took Nat's 
portmanteau and preceded him upstairs. The porter opened the 
door of a small bare bedroom in a gusty corridor, and showed 
Natty in. 

“Guess you'll want a fire built?” said the porter. 

“T should like a fire,” Nat mildly answered. 

The attendant put down the key of the room on the table, and 
Nat observed that the key was stuck or set in a large triangular piece 
of metal like the huge and ill-shaped hilt of a dagger. 

“What do you have that thing on the keys for?” Nat asked. 

“To keep the guests from putting ’em in their pockets—don’t 
ye see?” 

“And what matter if they did put them in their pockets ?” 

“Then they forget ‘em there, don’t you see? When a guest is in & 








104 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“Yours is a very charming town, Mr. Fullager. It seems 
grow very fast.” 

“Tt is quite a place, sir—quite a place.” 

“What population, now, have you?” And the wily Nat crosa 
‘one foot over the other knee, nursed the foot with his hand, put bis 
head sideways, and waited for an answer with the air of one who 
had studied populations a good deal. 

“Well, sir,” Mr. Fullager said, after some grave deliberation, 
“we have forty-five hundred persons in this city.” 

“Forty-seven hundred,” Mr. Plummer said. 

“T guess not, sir—not quite so many.” 

“Not if you take in the houses on the other side of Coload 
‘Twentyman’s lot, Mr. Fullager?” 

“Ah, well; yes—perhaps if you do that we should figure up to 
forty-seven hundred.” 

“That is a remarkable population,” Mr. Cramp said, patronis- 
ingly, “for so young a town.” Nat hardly knew one population 
from another. 

“We are only twenty years old, sir.” 

“Twenty years only! Wonderful” Nat observed, with an air of 
dreamy enthusiasm, 

Then there was another pause. The two visitors were perfectly 
composed. They gazed at the stove, and did not feel that they 
were called upon to say anything. They had come to pay their 
respects to the foreign lecturer as a matter of courtesy and polite 
ness, and when they considered that they had remained long enough 
they would rise and go away. There are plenty of talkative Ame- 
ricans no doubt, but the calm self-possession of silence is nowhere 
so manifest as among the men of some of the States. 

But Nathaniel was much discomposed, and racked his brain for a 
topic. 

“What kind of audiences do you have here, Mr. Fullager?” he 
asked, in another rush of inspiration. 

“Well, sir (after some deliberation), I should say a remarkably 
intelligent audience. You would say so, Mr. Plummer?” 

“ Decidedly so,” said Mr. Plummer, with a start, for he had been 
thinking of nothing in particular at the time. “ Decidedly so, Mr. 
Fullager, Several gentlemen have told me that our audience is far 
more intelligent than that of Pancorusky City.” 

“Oh, yes. I should certainly have expected that,” said Nat, 
with the air of one who was rather surprised to hear the com- 

parison made, and who would not on any terms have consented to 





106 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


nearly choked over his biscuit with blended nervousness and sf 
conceit. 

Opposite to him at the same narrow table Nat saw a handsme 
man with soft blue eyes, a bald head, and a full fair beard and 
moustache, who was evidently regarding the distinguished lecturer 
with interest. When Nat looked towards him the blue-eyed mn 
said— 

“I think, sir, I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Cramp?” 

Nat started and awkwardly admitted the fact. 

“T have heard you lecture already—in the Avenir Hall, isu’ it 
called? n London,” 

“Oh, indeed,” Nat replicd, with an effort to be calm and dignified, 
which was combated by three emotions rushing upon him at once: 
a pang of home-sickness at the sound of the word “ London,” a dis 
tressing consciousness that the stranger must have heard him makea 
sad mess of it, anda sickening dread that the stranger must have also 
learned that he was once a hairdresser. 

“Twas on a visit to Europe for some years,” the new acquaintance 
said, “and I spent a considerable time in London, and I went into- 
Avenir Hall one Sunday and heard you lecture.” 

“J didn’t do very well that day,” said Nat. 

“You were evidently not used to public speaking, and you were 
nervous, but I shouldn't think the worse of your chances for that. 
Ifa man has anything in him he is sure to he nervous.” 

Nat was glad to hear that anyhow, although there was an easy 
patronising way about his friend which, as a distinguished lecturer, 
he hardly relished. 

“You live here, I presume?” Nathaniel said, anxious to turn the 
conversation from his oratorical deficiencies. 

“Tn Acroceraunia? No; I live farther westward,” and he men- 
tioned the name of a town which Nat had heard of, and where there 
was a large and well known State college; “I hope to have the 
pleasure of secing you there.” And presently the blue-eyed man, having 
finished his supper, rose from the table, bowed to Nat, and left the 
room. 

If Nat had been a little less deeply engrossed in the thought of his 
lecture he might have been struck with the strange and picturesque 
sights which met his eyes as he proceeded with his friends Mr. 
Fullager and Mr. Plummer to the hall where he was to confront his 
audience. The earth was white all around with the crackling and 
glittering snow. The “red-litten windows” of the hall seemed to 
have an unearthly colour as they shone between the white of the 
















‘echo of his own words alarmed him, He lashed the wealn 
excesses of the effete aristocracies of Europe, and the calm) 
betrayed no fervour of Republican enthusiasm, He narrated 
he held to be a very good story, and on ne rit pas, as the 
reporters used to say sometimes when an orator’s joke failed to 
fire, He paused for a moment in one or two places for the e3 
applause, but it did not come, and he had to hurry on again abashe 
‘He became cowed and demoralised. He forgot his task, and h 
his face in his manuscript and read, conscious that he was reading & 
great deal too fast, and yet thirsting to get done with the now 
Jess effort, ‘The essay was awfully long. Several persons 
got up and glided out of the hall, the me fall of their indiarubber 
covered fect having in Nat's ears a spectral sound. ‘There was 
pretty girl with beaming eyes whom Nat had noticed as she leaped 
from a sleigh at the door when he was entering the hall before the | 
Dattle. He saw her too when he began his lecture, and the beaming 
eyes were tumed upon him, Alas! the beaming eyes were now 
covered with their heavy lids, and the pretty girl was asleep. Toadd 
to his confusion and distress, Nathaniel saw that his friend of the — 
supper was among the audience, and was broad awake, 

At last the final word of the discourse was pronounced, and the 
released audience began to melt away as rapidly as possible. Nat 
sat upon the platform with downcast eyes, utterly miserable. 

“Our audiences, sir,” Mr. Fullager explained with grave politeness, 
“are accustomed to lectures of about three-quarters of an hour in 
Jength, You have occupied an hour and a-balf, They are carly 
people here, and they make their arrangements accordingly. You 
will therefore not attribute the premature departure of some of our 
citizens to any want of respect for you. 1 have no doubt they all 
enjoyed the lecture very much.” 

“Te was remarkably instructive,” said Mr, Plummer, 

Instructive! Nat had intended it for a burst of brilliant and 
impassioned eloquence, blended with scathing sarcasm, 

As they came out Nat heard « young lady say— 

“Tr didn’t interest me at all; just not one bit.” 

“English orators don't amount to anything, I guess," was another 
‘commentary which Nat caught in passing, For kim the shy seemed 






~ = 





110 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


scene described in the last chapter, and Nathaniel is settled in New 
Padua under the friendly protection of Professor Clinton. 

New Padua is a university town. But Jet not any one be deceied 
by the name into fancying that New Padua is anything like Oxted, 
or Bonn, or even for that matter like Cambridge in Massachusets, 
where the University of Harvard is situated. New Padus is te 
seat of what people in England would call a great popular colle 
rather than a university ; a college founded by the State of which it 
is the educational centre, with special reference to the needs of the 
somewhat rough and vigorous Western youth who are likdy 
to pour in there. The city of New Padua belongs to a Suit 
which not very long ago used to be described as Westem, 
Dut which the rapid upspringing of communities lying far nema 
to the setting sun has converted into a middle State nov. 
‘The town is very small and very quiet; remarkably intelligent 
and pleasant. The society, and indeed almost the population, is 
composed of the professors and officials of the college, with ther 
wives and daughters; the judges and magistrates; the railway 
authorities ; the Federal officials ; the students ; and the editors of the 
newspapers. It is a sort of professional population all throughout. 
‘The professors of the university are mostly men of mark and high 
culture. One or two are Germans, one or two Italians; one 
French, Of the American professors, two at least bear names dis 
tinguished even in Europe, and one of these is our friend Mr 
Clinton, who is Professor of Astronomy and is in charge of the 
Observatory. Like almost all Americans, Professor Clinton is 
something of a politician, He contributes occasional articles to the 
North American Review, and writes not a little on European affairs 
in one of the New Padua journals. 

It was this latter connection which enabled him to be of service 
to Nathaniel. When the young man had been a few days in his 
house, and he saw that there was really a certain amount of literary 
capacity about him with a great deal of energy, Clinton obtained for 
him an engagement on one of the New Padua papers, told the 
editor he would find a useful man in Nat provided he worked 
him hard enough to work all the nonsense out of him and get pretty 
q down to the good stuff at the bottom. ‘Thus Professor 
Clinton started Nathaniel fairly in a new career, liking the lad with a 
sort of good-humoured and balf-contemptuous feeling, and continuing 
always kind to him. Professor Clinton’s house was always open to 
Nat. Many a night when Clinton's wife and sister-in-law (he had no 
children) had gone to bed, he would start out with Nat for a long 
















112 ‘The Gentleman's Magazine. 


one of pain. Ske was on the same American Continent with him: 
and he had not got over his insane passion for her one single bit. 
Was it possible that they might meet?—and if they did, would she 
speak to him as to an equal? He could feel, he could hear, a heavy, 
distinct throbbing in his head. He looked to the coming weeks now 
with heart-sickening longing and craven terror. 

From that moment he studied the Californian papers with eager 
curiosity, and was rewarded now and then by a paragraph further 
reporting the doings of Sir John Challoner—and once by a linga 
thrilling line, of “personal” news which concisely set forth that 
“ Miss Challoner, the great English heiress, is said to be the most 
beautiful Englishwoman who has lately visited the West.” Nat 
seized the sub-editorial scissors, cut this paragraph out, and kept it for 
himself. 

‘Nat made “ copy,” however, and rather successful “copy,” of the 
distinguished visitors. He wrote a long account of Sir John Challoner; 
his wealth, his dignity, his splendid country seat at Durewoods (which 
Nat described very fully), his town house (which Nat had not seen), 
and his beautiful and brilliant daughter. Even Professor Clinton 
was taken in and assumed that Nat must have been among the in- 
timate friends of the Challoners in London. Another occurrence 
greatly raised Nathaniel’s credit as an authority on European affairs 
This was “The Cameron Affair,” which seemed to New Paduan 
eyes likely to embroil Europe. It was the case of the gallant Captain 
Cameron, who, having in some way fallen into dispute with his Carlist 
chiefs, had flung up his commission, and was returning home in disgust 
when he happened unluckily to fall into the hands of the other side, 
and was in a fair way to be shot as a spy. Would England claim him 
asa Civis Romanus? Would she look tamely, aye, basely, on and 
submit to the murder of her gallant though mistaken son? This 
was the question which Nathaniel put in tones of varying indignation 
day after day in the pages of the New Paduan journal. Natty wrote 
columns about Captain Cameron, and was rather sorry when the news 
came one day that the gallant Legitimist had been aliowed to return 
quietly home. 

It was a great thing for Nat, however, and he made the very most 
of it, speaking, when the news of the captive's release came, as if it 
must have been the articles in the New Paduan journal which, flashed 
across the cable wires to Madrid, had effected the release of the hero. 

“was glad to say a word for poor Cameron,” Nat would observe 
loftily to all listeners in tun. “He pressed me very hard to take 

service with him under Don Carlos. He was kind enough to think. 





114 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“T have news for you,” said Professor Clinton, his large blue eyes 
smiling benignly. “Your friends the Challoners are coming to New 
Padua.” 

Had Professor Clinton announced to him that his crimes were dis- 
covered, and that the English detectives were in New Padua to 
arrest him, and had he committed any crimes to merit arrest, poot 
Nathaniel could not have looked more confused. He had now and 
then contemplated this as a possibility. New Padua lay not far out 
of the track of the great Western highway, and it was a place that 
strangers liked to visit. Nat had had secret visions at night of 
Marie Challoner coming to New Padua, and of his meeting her 
there—he no longer a London barber, no longer the mere son of 
Durewoods housekeeper, but the son of his own works, and a rising 
citizen of the rising university town—a man who might hold himself _ 
as good as the best. But when the event seemed close at hand his 
nerves were shaken. Would Sir John Challoner speak to him? 
Would he tell people who Nat was? Would Marie call him 
“Natty,” and bring him, coram publico, news of his mother and 
treat him as a kindly, proud English girl treats the son of her old 
servant? And the unfortunate lad felt, amid all these ignoble con- 
siderations, that he loved her more wildly than ever. The one manly, 
unegotistic, refined emotion of his whole nature was just his absurd 
passion for her. 

He stammered out some awkward word or two expressive of 
delight. 

“Yes, they are coming to stay for a few days with our president” 
(the president of the university), “and they arc going to see all our 
sights. Professor Benjamin is to tell Sir John Challoner all about 
the mining resources of our State, and show him everything. You 
didn’t know of this before ?” 

“No,” said Nat, simply ; “how could I have known? I didn't 
see anything in the papers.” 

“T thought they might have written to you, perhaps.” 

“No, they haven't written—yet.” 

“But they know you are here, I suppose?” 

“Well ; I don't quite know,” Nat answered slowly. “You see I 
left England rather suddenly, and my people didn’t half like my 
coming out here. I was always a Republican. I resigned my rank 
in the Volunteers because I couldn’t bear arms in the service of a 
monarchy, you know,” the young Republican added proudly. 

“But why shouldn’t you bear arms in the service of your own 

Government and your own country ?” 




















18 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


of snowy and glossy shirt front was unexceptionable. 
studs of pink coral had a sort of poetic or romantic aspect, ani 
flower in the buttonhole spoke of emotion, Natty felt alex 
used to feel when he was new to the uniform of the West 
Volunteers, and the parades in Hyde Park and on 
‘mon, under the eyes of royalty. 

It was a pity that he could not call a hansom cab, leap 
and rattle up to the hall of the reception. But there as 
som cabs in New Padua, nor as yet even street cars, and people: 
had not vehicles of their own went afoot into society. In wit 
they put on “rubbers,” but it was not winter as yet, and the 
was fing and the roads were dry. So Natty issued forth in 
‘boots and with a heart quick beating. Would she know him; 
she recognise him; would she be friendly 2 beste 
him and let every one know of poor Nat’s humble beginnings? 

‘The gravel of the walks within the university enclosure was echoing 
‘everywhere to wheels and hoofs at ee 
‘the grounds, The reception was to take place in the library, 
was blazing with lights: its windows were squares of flame 
the night. Many guests were going in, and the sounds from witha 
indicated a crowd already. All the graduates had had invitations, 
‘and such of their female relatives as happened to be resident ia 
‘New Padua, and so there was a goodly gathering. Nat had me 
mained purposely late, As he set his foot upon the steps of the 
outer door a terrible thought pierced him. Suppose he had come too 
Inte; and that she had already withdrawn? Or suppose she was 
‘unwell of fatigued, and could not make her appearance xt alle 

With a freshly perturbed heart he entered the library, groeted as 
he entered with a friendly shake of the hand by the president and 
his wife, both of whom shook hands as a matter of course with every 
‘one, and neither of whom at the moment remembered who Nat was, 
‘Nat was not sorry for that. He glided past into the crowd. He 
actually passed Sir John Challoner, passed him quite closely, 
brushed against him, and was not recognised or even seen. Sir 
Jobn was engaged in animated conversation with two or three pro- 
fessors and a judge, Nat breathed more freely. 

Had he had time for such emotions he might have wondered at 
the transformed appearance of the library ; at the lights, the flowers, 
the green wreaths and festoons of leaves—above all, the company. 
Could these be the quiet and uspretentious dames and demoiselles of 
‘New Padua, these ladies of the floating silks, the jewels, the bracelets, 


i = == 





120 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


nearer ; he is within the recess ; he is close to the table ; the Benjamins 
already see him, and smile on him, and interchange significant 
glances with each other. Nat’s forehead is hot, and his tongue is 
dry, and falters; but there is no escape now, and he desperately 
says “Miss Challoner!” and Lady Disdain looks up and tums the 
deep light of her eyes on him. 

‘A moment of doubt and wonder, and then “ Natty !” comes from 
between the surprised and parted lips, and Dear Lady Disdain, all 
astonished but kindly, holds out her friendly hand to the palpi 
tating youth. 

“You didn’t expect to see me here,” the tremulous, delighted 
Nathaniel said. 

“No, we have been so long away from home, and your mother 
did not know when I saw her last. But I am glad to see you, 
Natty—Mr. Cramp, I mean.” Lady Disdain corrected herself with 
a gleam of brightness coming into her smile. 

‘Then she bade Nat to tell her all about his adventures, and said 
her father would be glad to see him, and in a moment was con 
versing quietly with him like an old friend. But in the inter 
vening moment the Benjamins had seen enough. For nothing 
could be more clear to them than the fact that the first sight of 
Nat had filled Miss Challoner with emotion. Confused and pal- 
pitating as Nathaniel was, she was far more obviously and deeply 
moved. The colour rushed at first into her cheeks, and her voice 
failed her, and then her eyes drooped and her lips trembled, and 
Mrs. Benjamin declared afterwards that she saw the tears come into 
the dear young lady’s eyes, and that she thought she was then and 
there going to faint. Marie did not faint, however, but recovered 
her composure very soon. Yet was kindly Mrs. Benjamin not 
wholly mistaken. For the unexpected sight of poor Nat had been 
to Marie like the arising of a ghost from some far dim grave. It 
was not Nathaniel Cramp she saw, but the place, the past, the 
memories of which Nat's was a chance and incidental figure, yet 
charged with all the full force of irresistible association. She saw 
Durewoods and her home and her girlhood; she saw again her 
dreams and longings ; she saw youth and emotion and the hope of 
love, and Dione Lyle, and Dione Lyle's warnings, and the hollow 
in the woods—and Christmas Pembroke !—and at the same mo- 
ment there came on her drawn by an inseparable link of contrast the 
shadow of the life that was awaiting her in London, the marriage, 
with no love in it on her side, the barren ambition, the dull self- 
















TABLE TALK. 


BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENTLEMAN. 





‘fux. “ Knight of Innishowen” is at issue with English usage o 
the pronunciation of “Monaco,” He complains that our 
who in large numbers visit the historic Genoese rock in the, 
‘season, shorten the 2 and put the whole accent on the first 
so that the first two syllables are not distingyishable to the ear 


Jewels ; and J am sorry I cannot find space for the whole of it, f 
do not propose to dispute the point with him that the fashionable 
usage is.without proper warrant, but in fairness to my 
and countrywomen who learned their geography in this island before 
they began to travel, I must remind him of the fact, which he dost 
not mention, that the English geographies and encyclopacdias agree 
in placing the accent on the first syllable, which, in accordance with 
the habit of English speech, settles the length of the second syilable. 
Insular authority, however, is of no account on this subject, and I 
-ean easily imagine that, as the “Knight” states, the Prince of 
Monaco and his accomplished secretary the Marchese di Prato, 
whor my correspondent remembers in brilliant Parisian society twenty 
years ago, would have been shocked at the British pronunciation of the 
name of the classic rock, which travellers then pronounced, Italian 
fashion, with @ “'Two well-known passages in Virgil and Lucan,” 
says my correspondent, “attest the fact that the second syllable was 
in their days the & diphthong, and in cach case it forms the penulti- 
mate syllable of hexameter verse. Anchises, pointing out to AEneas 
-and the Sybil in the Elysian Fields the shades of Cassar and Pompey 
congorting as agreeably as if the great civil war had not taken place 
between them, recalls to mind the son and fatherinlaw marching at 
the head of their respective armies to fight each other, the former 
from the cast, and the latter from the western heights that bounded 
his Province of Gall from Italy— 

Agewribus racer Alpinis atque arce Mono 

Deacendess— ‘Vine. AS, vi. 830, 

‘From Alpine heights and from Moncechus Fane, 

‘The father frst descends into the plain. 














leas The Gentleman's Magazine. 





gutel Frenea schciar and Sis most faithfal and long-suffering wie 
was removed wn Pure !a Chaise nearly seven hundred years after the 
burial of Heloise, who survived her husband more than twely 
years, What of the earth in which the monument stood ought 
have been carried fem Paraclet to Paris after seven hundred 
years? If M. le Duc has any feeling tw bestow on the memory of 
‘Abelard and Heloise he may surely take his inspiration from the 
tokca which he may see in that beautifial cemetery of the sarviva, 
through more than seven centuries. of a national sentiment in co- 
nection with the memory of the tragic love of this hero and heroine. 
Ir matters little now whether the actual dust lies beneath. Withont 
entering into an inquiry which neither Hamlet's gravedigger nor the 
utmost effort of modern science could satisfy, the sentimental visitor 
to the tomb ef Abeiard and Heloise may moralise with the French 
poet Colardeau. who said. perhaps in mere echo of Pope's letter of 
Helvise— 






—Is simirent trop. ils fureat malheureax ; 
Geémissons sur leur tombe et 'simons pas comme eux. 


ToccHrvc upon the recent philological controversy between the 
Rev. W. W. Skeat and other students of the anatomy of language 
in Votes and Queries, on our noun suffix ster as an index of gender, 
a Dutch scholar asks attention to the fict that in Holland all names 
implying avocation or qualification and ending in ster are feminine, 
while those ending in er, with one seeming exception, are masculine. 
And this exception is a philological curiosity. It is the word dake, 
which in Dutch means a monthly nurse. Here is my correspondent’s 
anatomy of baker :—“The primary signification of the Anglo-Saxon 
word from which we get the English verb # bake, was the wider meaning 
of to heat and to warm, and this meaning still lurks behind the English 
verb in its reflective form é bask, which is intensified in the Dutch word 
bakeren, meaning to wrap up nice and warm. So we arrive at the low 
German baker, the monthly nurse, the word and its original meaning 
being in perfect keeping with the old Batavian notion of the science 
of health : that it consisted in keeping the patient warm. In strict- 
ness the nurse ought to have been called a bakerster, but the seeming 
contradiction of an apparently masculine and a feminine suffix 
coming together would not be acceptable to Dutch ears, and it was 
thus, no doubt, that the sfer fell out of use. If the change had been 
made by grammarians, and not by common usage, the word would no 
doubt have been dakster, the equivalent of the English proper name 
Baster, which in its origin belongs to this philological faxaily?” 








126 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


time to time, influenced, I think, more by the charm and allurements 
of the gems which are quoted than by the fact of the correspondence 
which the lines are quoted to prove. When lovers of literature draw 
round the table to talk and to quote fine bits from their favourite 
authors, but little excuse is needed for the repetition of sentences and 
stanzas which are music and something more to every one of the 
listeners ; and so I hardly care how small is the excuse for quoting 
these two exquisite scraps, the first from Keats's “ Ode to the Nightin 
gale,” and the second from Longfellow’s “ Flowers,” placed before 
me by Mr. Benjamin Corke, of Bristol, for the purpose of calling 
attention to the echo of the one in the other :— 
The voice I heard this passing night was heard 
In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth when sick for home 


She stood in tears amid the alien corn. 
. 8 © © 8 @ 


Everywhere about us are they glowing, 
‘Some, like stars, to tell us Spring is born: 

Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, 
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn. 


‘Thoughtful readers, seeing Keats and Longfellow thus brought side 
by side in singular similarity of mood, will probably be led to reflect 
rather upon the difference between the men, thus so distinctly demon- 
strated, than upon the technical coincidence of illustration ; and un- 
measured admirers of Keats, of whom I confess myself one, will 
dwell upon the exquisite music and the beautiful metaphysical sad- 
ness of the allusion to the ancient maiden in the “Ode;” while Long- 
fellow’s special champions will insist upon the perfection of the 
picture of Ruth as a dew-laden corn-flower in the harvest-field. 


A Frencut scholar and critic who, like M. Taine, takes a pride in 
being as well acquainted with English as with French classics writes to 
me on the controversy which has for so many weeks been carried on in 
the columns of the Atheneum with respect to the publication of an 
English edition of the works of Rabelais. How shall I venture to say a 
word on this delicate subject to-day, even ina magazine which in its 
early youth was contemporaneous with Jonathan Swift ? I confess Iam 
always puzzled by the modern aspects of questions touching the coarse- 
ness to be found in the writings of the great masters of litcrature in 
past periods, and I sometimes think that we are just now in a transi- 
tion state about such matters. The current fecling with regard to pro- 
priety in literature is, I believe, very genuine. 1 do not join with those 





128 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


on the subject. I am, however, doing all the talking while my French 

correspondent is waiting to speak ; and where the question relates a 

Rabelais, a literary fellow-countryman of the great author whose 

“Gargantua” and “ Pantagruel” are the progenitors of “ Gulliver 

Travels” has a right to be heard. I will not, however, repeat my 

friend’s indignant words with respect to Mr. Collette’s discovery that 

Rabelais will conduce to the perdition of public morals and his 

attempt to close before the giant French satirist of the sixteenth 

century the gates of the English language, but will content myself 
with quoting him on the character and tendency of the great man’s 
works. “All except Mr. Collette,” he says, “know that Rabebis 
did not write for the sake of depravation, and that he coated his satire 
in a coarse and often repulsive garb because it could never have 
passed muster had he expressed it in plain and downright words. 
Rabelais’ sayings have become proverbial, and no_ serious critic ever 
thought of taking his reckless flow of words au serieux. If his works 
are to be burked in England by a society that seems to think it has 
right to interpose in questions far above its ken there is no reason 
why a third at least of your old English literature should not be 
burked in the same manner, and it is in the name of common sense 
that such attempts as that which has been ventilated in the Atheaum 
should be laughed away.” 


Ose of my correspondents calls my attention to the fact that a 
writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, treating of the conduct of the South 
‘Wales miners in fighting to the bitter end a losing battle on the ques- 
tion of wages, speaks of this line of action on the part of the men as a 
mistake so monstrous, and folly so egregious, that the mere state- 
ment of the story in categorical terms ought to be enough to bring 
conviction home to the minds of all workmen and to prevent for 
ever after the recurrence of such strife. My friend takes no side in 
the question at issue between workmen and masters : he is content 
to express his wonder that any writer should expect from working 
men a continence from strife for reasons which it is notorious do not 
deter other men, of whatever class or order, from challenging and 
accepting challenges and fighting losing battles to the bitter end. 
“Do not producers and merchants,” he asks, “strive and suffer in a 
similar fashion? Do not people go to law sometimes even when 
neither of the litigants can hope to make anything by the process ? 
Do not nations go to war, and expend vast treasures of wealth and 
blood, and end by leaving the matter where it was at first? It is, of 
course, a fair matter for speculation whether workmen would not be 
better off, even in the matter of wages, without strikes; but after all 
a workman is a human being, and is it not a little unreasonable to go 
on describing this feature of strikes as if it were a sort of diablerie 
inherent in workmen? To my mind the whole business is only 
another proof that the British workman is a man and a brother.” I 
rather like my friend’s genially philosophic view of the subject, and 
commend it to the consideration of the author of “ Thoughts about 
British Workmen, Past and Present.” 





130 The Gentleman's Magazine. 







strong arm, and his snub-face would smile no more. Milly wail 
hand the laurel wreath to the victor, and he would dash it baci 
her face. He dreamed and breathed impotent revenge ; he would ar 
given twenty years of his life for leave to slap the clerk’s smirk fut 
or pull his impertinent nose before all Eastingtonshire and Winbuy. 

He was in this amiable mood when a more substantial shadow 
fell between the door of the shed where he was pretending to wath 
and the sun, who shone on regardless of even a poet's frown. 

“Good morning, Abel,” said Milly, softly and cheerfully, for te 
shadow was hers. 

“Good morning, Miss Barnes,” said Abel, crossly, and withat 
looking up. If she was to be Miss Barnes, let her be. 

“ Aunt sent me to see if you had been taken ill, and if you wer 
better. No, she didn't—I came to see, without being told. Are 
you?” 

“T'm quite well, thank you.” 

“And that wasn't exactly it, either. I came to beg your pardon 
Mr. Adams behaved like what he is—a very foolish young man who 
thinks himself a very clever one—but I’m afraid you thought it was 
all our fault because we were civil to him, He came on busines: 
about the house, and aunt took the chance of getting me driven 
over. You oughtn’t to be so touchy, Abel. Why did you mm 
away because you were laughed at by a man like him? A rel 
man ought tu be able to hold his own.” 

Milly, if not the phoenix that Abel had been going to paint her, 
had not only a sweet but an honest voice, and her blame felt as 
bracing as sunshine. Abel would have been more sullen than a 
bear had he been able to find a cross thought for her after her first 
word. He was touched by her frankness and brave outspokenness, 
as men mostly are by qualities they would like to be their own, 
especially if such qualities are not their own. 

This, by the way, is not intended to explain why frankness and 
brave outspokenness are popular in fiction. 

“I did not run away,” said the scholar-knight, thus put on his mettle. 
“["——he longed to torture himself by learning what had been 
said of the poem behind his back, and did not know how to fish for 
it. Of course the opinion of Mr. Adams, being a hostile and 
malicious critic, was nothing—that is to say, the favourite food of 
a selftorturer. 

“It was very like a fight, though, all the same,” said Milly with a 
smile, in which it was impossible even for him to read the contempt 
he feared, “ But Mr. Adams is an aggravating young man, \ own, \o 











134 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


slightest question over head and ears in love with her—in itsela 
virtue of virtues to the now full-fledged young lady from Mis 
Baxter's, eager for all the experiences of young ladyhood and ready 
to welcome the first that came. Save that he was neither a peerdl 
the realm nor a captain of dragoons, Abel Herrick had all the 
personal qualities that go to make up a school-gitl’s hero, 

It was now she who coloured, ever so little, when after these many 
days he came to her side as she sat at the window of the empy 
drawing-room in which he had once hunted for her and found him- 
self—the Abel Herrick that he had become through looking for 
achild in a tea-cup, But he was not thinking of these things: his 
rather heavy brow was far too gloomy to be thinking of anything bat 
the present, and that in no pleasant way. 

“Milly,” he began without preface, “I have just been talking to 
your aunt. She has been advising me.” 

“What about? Fancy aunt advising you ” 

“She means it well, I suppose. But it can’t be done, all the 
same.” 

“What is it? Do you want me to advise you too?” 

“ Yes—that is—but I know what your advice will be. You know 
old Crook has drunk himself at last into Westcote Union? So what 
do you think your aunt proposes? that I should ask for the place— 
that I should be the schoolmaster.” 

“That would be splendid! And of course asking would be 
having with you.” 

“I don’t know about that, The people who put in old Crook are 
not very likely to know good from bad, I should say. And people 
don’t like to have their betters under them. But it doesn’t matter. 
I shan’t ask them,” 

“What !—wouldn’t it be a great step for you?” 

“That's just it, Milly. Heaven knows I want to climb high, and 
so I won't take a stepdown. I must be what 1 am. I am a scholar 
and a poet : I don’t want to be known as the village schoolmaster.” 

Milly looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand, Abel. Your having 
to work with your hands doesn’t keep you from being what you are 
—why should having to work with your head? Being a school- 
master’s almost like being a clergyman: and anyhow people—I 
don’t mean me—would think more of you”—— 

“Not they. For a working man like me to be what I am shows 
genius—but the higher I go by paltry little steps the less I should be 

thought of. Nobody thinks anything of a schoolmaster for being a 
scholar. I should sell my birthright of fame for twenty pounds a 





136 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


something tells me that it is more than a may-be—how else should I 

be so different from all other men? Even when I was a child the 
other children treated me as if they were no companions for me. 
But what then? If I were a king’s son I should scom to wara 
crown not made with my own hands. But even as a peasant | 
scorn anything short of a crown. All or nothing—that is my motts, 
Milly! I will not cheat the world by wasting the time due tomy 
epic in teaching babies how to spell—for twenty pounds a year. I 
must become great—I have told you what has made me what I am 
—and then, I may tell you what has made me what I shail be.” 

Milly did not even smile at this heroic tirade. Nor did she trace 
in his balanced sentences the effect of book-language assimilated by 
a long course of self-conscious soliloquies. To her, it was sponte 
neous eloquence worthy of the crack preacher of Eastington. And, 
since his whole heart was in his words, it was eloquence in a way. 
Abel had gone the right way to win a woman’s ear; he had blown 
his own trumpet with all the force of his lungs, and had given her 
to understand that he was blowing it for her. 

What would her school-fellows have thought to hear her courted 
after this fashion! How they would have envied her—with what jealous 
gossip they would have flattered her—Mr. Adams himself would cease 
to hold the apple of discord. It was like a scene in a novel—but 
common-sense stepped in, and she sighed. She was her aunt's 
niece, after all; and something whispered in her ear that a man who 
scoms a bird in the hand generally wants a great deal of waiting for, 
however great his genius for catching birds in the bush may be. 

Abel read her eyes in his own way ; and the dreamer felt more like 
a real man of flesh and blood than he had ever felt before. He was 
drawn towards her by the sigh that, meaning little, seemed for that 
very reason to signify a thousand things. He felt, truly and in his 
heart, that while he had become what he was for his own sake he 
must show the world what he had become for hers. If hope could 
only be changed into certainty, felt the dreamer after the ifloving 
manner of his kind, there was nothing he had not the strength todo. 
+ It must be all or nothing—and it shall be all!” he thought to him- 
self ; and he said, as simply as if it were the natural and spontaneous 
expression of the thought— 

“Will you be my wife, when I am a great man?” 

How is it possible to contrast strongly enough what we do with 
what we think we do? Abel Herrick believed that he had laid one 
of the elect souls of the Universe before the feet of its Queen— 
while, in sober truth, a young man had made a young git her Gxt 





138 The Gentleman's Magazine. 






“Why should she know till I can claim you?” 

“Because she must. I wouldn't do anything without her. Aud 
only to speak to her—it would be so easy, if you only were"— 

‘ot a burdle-maker. I know.” 

“You know what she thinks about such things "— 

“Milly! You mean to say your promise depends on her, whe 
knows as much about love and ambition as—surely if we lre 
one another nothing ought to come between us two.” 

“She has loved me ever since I was born, Abel, and I’ve lored 
her.” 

“ And I've loved you ever since the world began. If she allow, 
then will you promise me?” 

“Indeed you must ask her before you ask me.” 

“ And that you say is not for a hurdle-maker to dare.” 

‘They seemed stopped by a stiffer fence than Abel had ever made. 
Bat at last, said Milly, shyly—for how could she fancy herself cleverer 
than a man of genius ?— 

“ Abel—perhaps she meant more than she said when she talked 
about your getting made schoolmaster.” 

She blushed deeply. The woman was dcing what the man should 
have done—suggesting the means by which the difficulties of winning 
her might be overcome. : 

But there was much in what she said. No doubt Mrs. Tallis ought 
to have seen, even with her dim spectacles, which way things were 
going. And, if so, what more natural sign of her approval could she 
give than doing her best to put her future nephew-in law in a position 
to ask for her niece without obliging her dignity to say No? 

“Ab—the schoolmastership!—It goes against me—I despise 
making my place ask for you. But if that is the only way to gain 
your promise—I'll show you I think more of your love than you do 
of my fame”— 

“ Abel !” 

“And I shall be refused, you will see. Never mind—I will go 
to the vicar this very day. I will sacrifice everything for you.” 

“If you only knew how I want you to be everything you can wish 
for! I do want you to get the schoolmastership—and if it’s beneath 
you, you'll soon be above it, never fear.” 

“Mind, Milly—you know why I am going to ask—that it’s for 
you”—— 

“I shall remember,” she said. And so—hardly knowing how— 
Abel and Milly, without any needless formal promise, found them- 
selves engaged. 























144 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“ Now look here. seriously, Tom—I don't mind your chafing ma 
in fan—but that stale sneering really does hurt me. You know 
I think of work and self-culture. I can't be Senior Wrangler, bt tt 
thing is to work just as if 1 could be. If I could be, I should 
waste a single hour: and so I oughtn’t to waste one now.” 

“I'm very sorry if I vexed you, Bee—I know what a clererad 
hard-working girl you are—and I wasn’t chaffing or sneering, on ay 
honour. But it's ridiculous, your slaving without why or wherelor, 
as you do. You've got all your life before you—till you're mantel 
—and you grind harder than any honour man would in his lst 
year.” 








“That's it, Tom. Men work for the reward, and so they do jut 
what they’re obliged to, and no more. Women work for work's stkt, 
and so they do all they can.” 

“That's all humbug, Bee. I’m going to be a reading man, though 
I don't expect any reward—I only want to do us all credit, and please 
the governor, and all that; but still I mean to do my best, and the 
way to do one’s best isn't to slave. I’ve got legs and arms—and # 
have you, if it's proper to say so to a young woman—and theyre 
meant to be used, and I mean to use ‘em. I've done a good day's 
grind, and now” 

“ You mean you've been smoking a cigar over your books for just 
one hour : for I happen to know when you finished breakfast, and the 
cigar is not to be denied. One hour out of twenty-four—and you 
going in for an examination to-morrow !” 

“The day after tomorrow, Bee. And it is a good day’s work, too. 
I own to the cigar, and you don't know how it helpsa man. I read 
as hard as ever L could, and shut off the steam”— 

“The smoke, you mean?” 

“The steam, the moment I felt my head wouldn't take in any more. 
If I'd read twenty hours it would have come to the same thing—only 
I should have been fagged instead of fresh for the next day. What 
do you say to that, Miss Beatrice Deane?” 

“And I,” she said proudly, “have been at work, except just at 
breakfast—earlier and shorter than yours, Tom—ever since seven, 
without stopping till now. I shall go on till lunch, and then Signor 
Fasolla comes: that’s only play. ‘Ihen Herr Von Brillen comes for 
my German lesson, and then I shall finish up my morning’s work, if 
there's any over, or amuse myself with Italian till the dressing bell 
rings. And then, when we go up to bed, \ always read mye to 

sleep. That's what I call a day's work—and if it wasn’t that Unde 
George wants me in the drawing-room of an evening” —— 





ak 











148 The Gentleman's Magazine. 








Bee. I'll examine him critically,” said Tom, who naturally 
prejudiced against a young man whom he had never seen and 
had been mentioned respectfully by a girl. “And who was atten 
to you?” 

“ Oh—everybody, of course, Bee beats me in flirtation, a | 
way.” 

“ Everybody's nobody. I say, Annie—Bee will never get beyeal 
flirtation if she goes on in this way.” 

“She says she doesn’t want to.” 

“ And you believe her, of course?” 

“Of course I believe her. Why should she want to? Do yw 
think a girl wants to be married as soon as she’s born? That's wht 
men think I suppose : they're all so worth marrying—in their om 
opinions.” 

“Annie, Annie! You've learned that parrot-speech from Bee. I 
see her hand in that as sure as I see yours on the bridle. I can tel 
you that men know more about girls than girls know about them- 
selves,” said the man of the world. 

“They needn’t know much about gitls, to know more about them 
than girls do,” said Annie laughing. “ Come—I'm getting hungry— 
let’s have a good quick canter home. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Clear the course! Ring the bell! Look, they start from the stand 
In a line like the edge of the foam on the sand: 

On they race, on they rush, till the thin line has grown 

Like the offing—the Favourite’s in front and alone ! 


Hurrah for the winner! hurrah for the black 
‘Who besrs not a boy, but men’s gold, on his back ; 
But, though twenty lengths foremost, yet hold him not in— 
He may yet have to race neck and neck ere he win. 


THERE was no mystery about the Deane family. Everything that 
can be said of them is straightforward and above-board. They had 
not so much as the little finger joint of a skeleton in any of their 
well-stocked cupboards. Mr. Deane, Annie’s and Beatrice's Uncle 
George, was a middle-aged country gentleman, of commercial ex- 
traction, who could afford to live up to ample means, and had 
married for love into one of the oldest families in the north of 
England. He had not gained a sixpence by his lovematch, and 
could afford the luxury. He was known as an idle, but yet a busy 
man—a great and active patron of all advanced social movements, © 


150 The Gentleman's Magazine. 








season affair—a sort of pour prendre congé—for the Deanes did oa 
intend to visit London that spring. 

“ Good-bye, Tom,” said his mother, a mild little woman who 
have been a beauty in her day. ‘I shall send for you the very fnt 
‘moment we can.” 

“Good-bye, Tom,” said Beatrice. “They don’t let people sme 
over examination papers, I've heard. If they did, you'd be firs, Iu 
sure.” 

“Good-bye, Bee. Ten to one in white gloves—no, in ble 
stockings—I win a donkey-race. Done.” 

Tom was just saying “Shoreditch!” in his manliest tone to the 
cabman, when he felt himself struck on the shoulder by an oi 
slipper. 

“ Good-bye, Tom—good luck to"you !” said Annie, from the hall 
door. He shook his fist at her, lighted a cigar, and was gone. 

On the platform he met a Horchester man bound on the same 
errand—no other than that Hammond whom he had casually mer 
tioned to Beatrice as the type of a hard student. Now Hammond, 
unlike Tom, was a poor and anxious man ; success on this occasion 
meant everything to him ; and yet the coming examination was not 
once mentioned by either, apparently not thought of, during the 
journey. Horchester prided itself upon serene indifference to all 
things outside the playing-field. ‘The journey “up,” as Cambridge 
men, in defiance of Bradshaw, choose to style the journey down, was 
uneventful ; for adventures are to the adventurous, as Sidonia has it, 
and these young men of the time were far too cool-handed and cool- 
headed to be classed among those whom adventures befall. 


Everybody, at first or second-hand, knows Cambridge as it is for 
a sunny week or two in the month of May. And, as it is for that 
week, so it is supposed to be, in spirit, for the other fifty-one. It is, 
then, a University of Unreason; the only oasis in all our toiling 
England where, save her sister Oxford, life is a constant holiday, 
the “land in which it seemeth always afternoon.” What is the picture 
commonly conjured up by term-time? A holiday multiplied by 
a holiday—the world’s pantomime. The experienced writers who 
have painted the social aspects of their Alma Mater have made 
college life a fearful and wonderful mixture of a vast practical joke 
and a colossal wine party: the inexperienced as a blending of 
earthly paradise with Pandemonium. Alas for romance—ne woo 
would describe college life as it is must write with a dry pen. No- 
body would read his small-beer chronicles, and so they Wil temas 


oe The Gentleman's Magazine, 








acquaintances, ignoring all outsiders : the half-castes drew togeha 
by a law of elective affinity: the pariahs ate and drank in soltay 
and distrustful silence : the no-castes alone defied etiquette, wereim 
pervious to stares and short answers, and though inclined to tml 
‘Doasting on the subject of their own experiences, would have mit 
feeding time an amusing halfhour, instead of a gloomy neces, 
had they not been held at bay. It may be assumed that each, it 
dependently of his caste, had a character of his own, but dina 
time is short, and the characters of very young Englishmen are loog 
in opening and shy of display. Tom was not particularly fond o 
Hammond, but these were the only Horchester men who had come 
up, and so dined /#e-d-téte in the midst of the profane herd. When 
dinner was over—some minutes after the Dean had left the high 
table, for the guests had not yet learned the art of bolting their food 
in a short twenty minutes—Tom and Hammond, by way of change, 
adjourned from one another's society to the society of one another, 
and went to Tom's rooms for a cigar. 

Tom, though distant to strangers when distance was required by 
the traditions of his order, was far from being so by nature, and to all 
who had no pretensions to social equality with him he was the 
essence of geniality. He had made friends with the Gyp in no time, 
had learned from him all about everybody and everything in ten 
minutes, and obtained—the Gyp knew how—the means of spending 
a comfortable evening. 

“I hope you'll be one of us, sit,” said the Gyp, politely but 
patronisingly, as became one of the oldest members of the college 
and one who had looked after the Dean himself when both were 
young. “You're the best gentleman of the lot, as I can see. There's 
a very odd one has got the rooms above you, sir—the oddest gentle- 
man I ever see.” 

“Oh, you're safe to have me—I’m going to be a St. Kit’s man any 
way. And who's the odd man upstairs?” 

“T don't know his name, sir—he seems a lonesome sort of a gen- 
tleman—he hasn’t even a pockmanteau to keep him company. I 
fancy he’s made a bit of a mistake in coming to this college—St. 
Anthony’s is more his style. You should see his boots, sir! He 
wouldn't go into hall, and what do you think he did?” 

“What? Ate his boots?” 

“Ha, ha, ha! You're a pleasant sort of gentleman, sir, you are. 
You'll get on capital in St. Christopher's. He offered me sixpence 
to get him some bread and cheese and to give him the change. I 
don’t expect lie’s got too many sixpences, 1 don't—hell never do for 

1% sir, ae 





154 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


“Do you mind introducing yourself? The Gyp didn't know yor 
name.” 

“Tam Abel Herrick,” said the visitor, ina hard, rather provindd, 
but singularly clear and precise tone. 

“Sit down, Mr. Herrick, and help yourself. Do you smoke? 1 
think you'll find the cigars in that case pretty fair. What doyw 
think of St. Kit’s? Things look jolly enougn, so far?” 

“Where do you come up from?” asked Hammond, with double 
politeness, as a preface to getting a rise out of him. “We are from 
Horchester.” 

“Tam from near Eastington,” said Abel, feeling that the tom 
sounded morc imposing than the village. 

“I suppose that’s within a walk?” said Hammond, looking 
Abel's boots, which were muddy as well as thick-soled. 

“Yes,” said Abel. “It’s not more than two days’ journey.” 

Tom rather liked his guest’s quiet manner, combined as it was 
with a full chest and broad shoulders. A peasant is never vulga, 
and there is a verse, once known to schoolboys, about the 
influence of study upon natural hardness and ferocity. But Abel 
was not thinking of the question: he was mentally taking the 
measure of the first two of his competitors that he had yet seen. 
He could not dare to own even to himself how completely at sea he 
was, now that he had walked from Winbury into the world. He 
had never been out of sight of Winbury church, and now he found 
himself thrown at once into a vision of a city of palaces—for such 
Cambridge was to him. But he had come to conquer, and these 


were two of the youthful giants of learning whom he was to over- 
throw. 






“The examination is to-morrow,” he said, sipping his wine—the 
first he had ever tasted, but doing as he saw the others do. 

“Hang the exam,” said Hammond. “Sufficient unto the day— 
don’t let’s think of to-morrow till to-morrow comes.” 

Abel stared. 

“By all means hang the exam,” said Tom, “I’ve half a mind 
to cut the whole thing and go somewhere. What do you say, 
Hammond?” 

“I'm afraid I must go in—worse luck. Or there’s nothing would 
give me greater pleasure than to let Mr. Herrick walk over, I assure 
you. Iwonder what he'd buy us out for? Which is your line— 
classics or mathematics ?” 

“Both,” said Abel. Everything.” 

“The deuce it is!” said Hammond, too much interested in the 





«ne Uentleman's Magazine. 


you in the female line. I should have said your name wa 
Deane.” 

“ By Jove! How do you know that?” asked Tom. “Yair 
right, though—my mother was a Miss Eliot—of Northumberland, s 
you say—awfully great people. When my grandfather died he dat 
like his branch to die out, so he left me all he had on condition Td 
take the name and arms. So that's my name in full—Thomas Geoge 
Markham Deane-Eliot: three Christian names and two sumame— 
rather too much for on 

“ Lucky fellow!” said Hammond. -“ Then you're independent d 
your father?” 

“Well, to tell you the truth, to write myself Eliot is more honow 
than tin, But the mater liked it, and so did the governor, for hes 
proud old boy, and the Deanes of Longworth are nobodies to what 
the Eliots of Foxmoor used to be, once upona time. The Deane 
used only to buy and sell cattle, but the Eliots used to steal ‘em 
But how do you know about me?” 

“T was only looking at your tobacco-box,” said Abel. 

Hammond examined the case. “ You must have good eyes, Mt. 
Herrick. I don’t see it there.” 

“ What ?” asked Tom, ‘Can you tell all that from a crest?” 

They did not even know heraldry, then. The question was 
beginning to be, What did they know? With Hammond, What did 
this fellow not know? It was not likely that he had come to Cam 
bridge to try for an exhibition on the strength of heraldry ; and if 
he knew out-of-the-way things he might be presumed to be strong in 
common things. 

“Are you a good hand at verses ?” asked Hammond, carelessly, 

“I don't like to boast,” said the poet. “I hope I am not a bad 
one. But—if you will allow me, Mr. Eliot—I will go to my own 
room.” 

‘As there was plainly no fun to be got out of a man who was 
neither a wit himself nor the cause of wit in others, the young men 
did not press him to stay. 

“Look out, old fellow,” said Tom to Hammond when he had 
gone. “That's a rum ’un to look at, but I expect you'll find him a 
good ’un to go.” 

“Let him go,” said Hammond, with carelessness less well assumed 
than before. “I dare say he wants to win more than I. If 1 come 
in a bad third, it’s the most I look for. Good night, Eliot.” 

““What—are you off too?” 

“ Yes—I want to write a letter.” 





158 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


having given notice to the boys not to attend school today, ail 
waited till I could write to you for certain, because you do not litete 
be troubled with business or personal interviews. I trust you vil 
find no difficulty in obtaining a successor. I heard of my schoar 
ship through the Cambridge intelligence of the Eastington Meraay; 
so I should think if you advertised the vacancy there it might atime 
notice in the same way. Ido not think there is anybody in Wir 
bury who is qualified to succeed me. 
“ T have the honour to be, 
“Reverend sir, 
“Yours with respect, 
“ ABEL HERRICK, late Schoolmaste” 


Having finished his correspondence he went to bed. Buthis om 
thoughts, fed for the first time with wine, and held from turning into 
dreams by the never-ending chimes, kept him broad awake until the 
sun rose upon the eventful day. 


(To be continued.) 





The Gentleman's Magazine, 


The sergeant snatched his musket up 
‘And threw it to “ Present”; 

‘The bandsman drew his bayonet out 
With little good intent. 

Butt-end, all ready for the blow, 
‘The third man’s firelock swung ; 

The fifer would have drawn his sword, 
But to the sheath it clung. 


‘The Highlandman laughed loud and long, 
‘Then kicked the benches over, 
Danced three steps of a Highland reel, 
And cried, “I’m Rob the Rover !” 
The brawny sergeant flung at him 
‘A stool that cleared the table ; 
It hit the bandsman on the shins— 
And then began the Babel. 


But suddenly the Highlander, 
With a smile frank and jolly, 

Cried out, “Good folks, one moment, please, 
T've lost my favourite collie. 

One whistle ere the fun begins, 
And then we'll to it hearty ; 

I would not for a thousand crowns 
Break up a pleasant party.” 


“Ugh ! shmite de fool !” the sergeant cried ; 
The others, with more pity, 

Said, “Let the clod bring in his hoond— 
We'll sell it in next city.” 

‘As Rob he whistled shrill and clear, 
Loud laughed the sneering bandsman ; 

Till through the shattered door there rushed 
At least two dozen clansmen. 


When Rob, with white rose in his hat, 
Cried out, “God save King Charles !” 

‘You should have seen the sour grimace 
Distort those coward carles. 

“God save the Stuarts and the right, 
And down with the Pretender, 

And that’s your little German laird, 
Frofn Scotland God defend her ‘” 























contrasted strongly with a pair of small dark eyes, worn 
poring over Greek and black-letter characters ; Se 
advanced age there was a sweet look of Kindliness, sleapte 
serenity, and almost childlike guilelessness that charac’ 
marked his face at all periods of his life. 

Before leaving Enfield I used often to walk up to town 
father's house of an afternoon in good time to go to 
and walk back after the play was over, in order to. be res 
morning duties when [ had become usher in the school. Dark 
solitary enough were the “Green Lanes," as they were called, Y 
between Holloway and Enficld—through picturesque Hornsey, mital 
Wood Green, and hedge-rowed Winchmore Hill—when traversed im 
the small hours past midnight. Yet I knew every foot of the way, 
and generally pursued that track as the nearest for the pedestrian: 
I seldom met a soul ; but once a fellow who had been lying under a 
hedge by the way-side started up and began following me more 
nearly than I cared to have him, so L put on my cricketing speed 
and ran forward with a swiftness that few at that time could oat 
strip, and which soon left my would-be comnightranger far behind. 
Well worth the fatigue of a twelve-mile walk there and another back 
was tome then the glorious delight of secing Mrs. Siddons as Lady 
Macbeth or Queen Constance (though at a period when she had 
Jost her pristine shapeliness of person, for she had become so bulky 
a8 to need assistance to rise from the ground in the scene where she 
throws herself there as her throne, bidding “ kings come bow to it"); 
of secing Miss O'Neil as Juliet, Belyidere, Monimia, and such tender 
heroines, which she played and looked ee 
Kemble as Coriolanus or Brutus, which he impersonated with trie 
stateliness and dignity both of perton and manner. 


ia 

















tion into the working of all the Irish schools 

and at an early period arrived at two conclusions: 

them, acting on their then rules, could “provide 

‘education as should be cordially adopted and gene 

the other, that no system “ could obtain a general and c 

in Ireland which should not, in addition to 

of a literary character, afford the opportunity of religious 

to persons of all persuasions.” A. circumstance 

the Commissioners in the course of their inspection, <a 
(carried on as objects of private speculation) in which the 

for the instruction they received, and in which there ap 
perfect harmony among children of all persuasions.” 

they “found the same master teaching the Church of 
Catechism t one child, the Roman Catholic to another, at 
Presbyterian to # third.” Although they did not “approve ¢ 
same master teaching different and conflicting religious d 
still, they observe, “the state of these schools led us tothe 

that it was at least possible that both religious and general instn 
might be communicated in establishments in which children | 
persuasions should be taught together, 

harmoniously adopted. 

Desirous of authoritatively ascertaining how far Roman C: 
principles would admit of acquiescence in their views, the Co 
sioners thought it right to have a conference with the four 
bishops of that Church, Dr. Murray, Dr, Curtis, Dr. Kelly, and 
Laffan, the minutes of which are fully set forth in the report, ‘The Ce 
missioners expressed their desire for a system that “would 
children of all religious denominations in the same schools,” 
when it became necessary “to separate them for the purposes 
religious instruction," intimating that only thus they “could 
establish among them those reciprocal charities upon which the 
peace and harmony of society must depend.” ‘The Commissioners 
then inquired “whether there would be any objection to common 
literary instruction being reccived by Ronin Catholics as well from. 
a Protestant as from a Roman Catholic master, and whether religious — 
instruction could be given to Roman Catholics by a Roman Catholic } 
layman approved of by the proper Roman Catholic pastor" Dr 
Murray (the interview being in the first instance with him alone) ex 
pressed his concurrence in these suggestions for uniting Protestant: 
and Roman Catholic children in literary and separating them © 
for religious instruction, and stated that there could be mo 
‘objection to the course proposed by the Commissioners, 


‘S 














year. 
Tn the very year of their opening Dr, Murray 
eta iy sil feoneuloe De ea eee 


The mode of Cardinal Cullen's appointment b 
the cause of that section of the Church 
had aspired to unite the ideas of Roman C 


muted to the archbishop and bishops of the province, 
there was some very special ground for not doing x0, 


were then forwarded to Rome, and the Pope chose 

the bishopric ; it being here also understood that 
‘clecagtisteen aprebertersy t= A=, e 
appointed by his holiness, That this usage was co 

right may be learned from an answer Lieto 














An the rescript of 1847 the Irish bi 
all the existing Catholic Colleges more 
chairs, “ particularly in the 


the “purpurei panni” of the Irish Episcopate are 
suggestion, on whatever individual he may indicate as 


his nominees is, 1 believe, undeniable. Bat an 
hierarchy like that which the last generation knew will: 
bea thing wholly of the past. For “men of the: 








aand that the true cause of the comparative paucity: 
been the want of demand among Roman Catho) 


education as they supply, ut the cost at which it 


academic 
Nor is the fact that they are “at people's own 
ieee acer el ac 














190 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


or cardinals, of bishops or of priests: nay, the failings or crines a 
princes or of statesmen must be hidden, provided their policy ba' 
been connected with the promotion of Catholic interests. 

The system might answer its purpose in an age when bag, 
ignorance might be secured through life to the faithfully brought 
son of the Church. In this day no knowledge, whether of goola 
evil, can be shut out from the mind of one who moves throw 
society, any more than the sunlight can be shut from his eyes. Te 
suppressio veri will be found out assuredly, and will suggest to many 
that those resorting to it might not have stopped short at mere ca 
cealment of historic facts. The doubt is probably the first step int 
scepticism the final issue of which no one could determine, bet 
which would never have been entered on if it were only boreia 
mind that the surest way to preserve the truth is to disclose it freely. 

As an Irish Catholic I do not shrink from the expression of my 
deep conviction that to Ultramontanise Ireland would be to deprin 
her of her last chance of social or political regeneration. 














ean tat ie caer kespes 
that clear and subile intellect by means of 
poetic grandeur to his greatest parts. 
degree this rare and distinctive gift, 


eye, living before you, a Shakespearian hero moving — 
his ideal human life, How wonderful the variety of 
the change of passion which can be conceived and cx 
great actor! 
‘The player's creative power of expressing a noble 
of realising an heroic man, is perhaps hi: y 
It isa rare gift which enables an artist to embody, and oe 


nature. 
In connection specially with Macready’s acting 1 
points which are illustrations of the gifts " 

player to render the higher parts of Shakespeare. 
power of expressing the attitude of such a character as 


‘been able to represent a wholly “amazed, b 
“Gn the sublime of preoccupation,” as he indicate: 
moment of mecting the weird sisters the awful 





voice had opened the chambers of the human heart, 
trumpet had awakened the sleeping and the dead. To 
‘Mrs. Siddons was an event in every one’s life.” 


speaks of the name of Siddons as “a name that even & 
in me something of a reverential feeling.” He saya: “ 








198 The Gentleman's Magazine, 








thrill and swell of soul of a great actor, in a great part, on a ges] 
night. The house, full of living humanity, swayed and stirred byte 
magic of the artist's power, melts with the pathos, or rises with the 
heroic inspiration of the part. Scene follows scene ; passion tia 
upon passion ; inspiration glows with the heat of living ecstasy, as te 
actor, forgetting himself in his art, becomes sublimed to the lofty ide. 
The mass of humanity which surrounds him supplies present gry 
and after fame. The sympathetic communication between acer 
and audience becomes electrical. The reverberation of 

thunders is a divine intoxication ; the pressure of full-hearted sileam 
is a dim, delicious echo of his inner feeling of mastery and of mage, 
His emotion vibrates upon theirs. The enthusiasm which respondsso 
subtly, so intuitively, to the actor’s efforts, is a leaping flame running 
swiftly through, and vividly lighting up, the hearts and minds of 
thousands of subjugated and excited spectators. Life knows no joy 
that can surpass the glory of those brief exalted hours. The ead 
arrives ; the part is played ; the piece concludes ; and then comes the 
full draught of the sense of great victory, as the actor, then outside 
his personation, and resolved into his individuality, receives the full 
acclaim of applause which expresses the admiration, the gratitude of 
‘masses of men thrilling with a consentience of deeply-moved emotion. 
For the time the actor has been lifted above himself, has lived 
and breathed in an ideal world, has animated with action the poet's 
creation. He has been ina state of feeling upraised to the glow and 
glory of poetry ; the realism of his art has been but the footstool for 
noblest imaginings. ‘Truly there are shortcomings in the stability of 
the actor’s fame in years to come ; but the great justice of art awards 
a magnificent compensation in the triumph of such an hour. 








to find groups of natives looking over the 
‘below, looking at nothing particular, but hugely 
less by the occupation, 


notice of the frequent visitor, 

able to a Christian land and a 

‘Dangees are sottishly ignorant, and treat their women! 
were savages, Being continually on the water, and 
the move, in our midst but ever passing, on shore and. 


have no responsibilities ; neither docs any teacher 
responsibility towards them, True it is that there are 
the rule ; some of the barges are well-regulated cottages, 
aft cabin is clean, painted with some idea of artistic ad 
the abode of a family literally born and bred within 
recesses. But these are rare exceptions indeed. To 
inn there is a lower region where the barge men and b 
call for refreshments when passing through the lock hard | 
who would prefer not to see the face of womankind 
every kind of bruise or to hear horrible blasphemies. ro 
woman's tongue had better give that lower region a very. 
Ask the landlord of the inn how many drunken p 
rescued from a watery grave close to his stable 
coroner what a tale of dead is yielded every 

And if you would lear further of the morality, and 
habits of the barge people start straightway to the 





waters, for the luvers of an innocent amusement.” 
‘The record of the actual sport obtained by this q 

tantalising to readers in 1875. Coming upon the fish 

formken cad and minnow for the dainty drake or 


minnow fisher; but the glory of the Colne as a trou 

since departed. 

‘Not so many years ago the Rickmansworth fishery 
Dest in the country. It was carefully preserved by a 
gentlemen, who paid a high price for the sport, 


— 








number of printing presses were at work, Here 

@ smooth stream along a shoot, ran over several 
refining ag it travelled, until it spread out and 
impalpable sheet over a tightly strained wire bed. 

it becomes, and at the last weir the sheet goes bet 
rollers of felt, to all intents finished paper, though 
‘cylinders remain for drying and we 


‘The paper mill trout, it was evident even to % 
kept ‘Te was but a short 





sold for £280, and is now worth £500. A 
the South Keasingtoa Museum gave £450 
the Préaax 











212 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


mannfactured, which belonged to the late Mrs. Martineau, realised 
at Christie's £294. This is the chef @ewcre of a potter of whoa 
Mr. Gladstone said at Burslem in October, 1863 : “ If the day sll 
ever come when England shall be as eminent in taste as she is now 
in economy of production. my belief is that the result will probably 
be due to no other single man in so great a degree as to Wolg 
wood.” 

Turning to porcelain or china, at the outset two interesting que 
tions present themselves—viz. when did the Chinese discover the 
art? and when was it introduced into Europe? Little was knom 
about the former until M. Stanislas Jullien published his “ Histoirede 
la Porcelaine Chinoise” in 1856. In that volume he dates the fabric- 
tion of porcelain there to B.c. 185, or under the Han dynasty. The 
great manufactory of King-te-chin was established in the sixth centur, 
and early in the eleventh was distinguished by Imperial patronage. 
Unfortunately during the recent rebellion the works were destroyed. 
‘A considerable part of the porcelain made at King-te-chin and other 
large manufactories was sent to Canton and Nankin to be decorated. 
From a very early period fine examples of porcelain have ben 
much prized by the Chinese themselves, and the high prices of 
European sales have been exceeded in China by enthusiastic 
collecting mandarins, Good crackle pieces are much valued. The 
marks producing that variety are not really cracked in any glaze, but 
are painted on the paste and then glazed over. 

Pieces of porcelain found their way to Europe as early as the four 
teenth century. Mr. Chaffers quotes the following from the inventory of 
effects of the Queen of Charles le Bel (d. 1370):—“ Item, un pot 
eau de pierre de porcdaine.” In 1518 the Portuguese settled at 
Macao, and from that date notices of china in old inventories and 
in literature are not unfrequent. Among the presents to Queen 
Elizabeth in 1587 was “one cup of ‘grene parsselyne, the foote, 
shanke, and cover silver gilte, chased like droppes.” In the time 
of Charles I. the East India ships brought a good deal of it to 
England.* 

It was natural that Europeans should be inquisitive respecting 
the composition of the beautiful specimens of porcelain they 
admired, but the Chinese refused to gratify their curiosity. I 























* In the reign of the previous monarch the first ship after the incorporation 
of the East India Company was launched in the presence of the King, and all 
the tables at the banquet were covered with ‘‘china ware.” (Macgregor's “Com- 
mercial Statistics,” iv., 304). Among the effects of Charles I, were many 
“Portingall cuppes,” so called from those who imported them from the East. 











THE TOUCH OF A _ VANISHED 
HAND AND THE SOUND OF A 
VOICE THAT IS STILL. 
BY D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 





OW are mine eyes entangled deep in thine, 
KS — I swoon far down their subtly-threaded maze : 
How much more potent than strong wine thy gu, 
And how much sweeter thy faint sighs than wine. 
Love! I am thine in truth as thou art mine ; 
And it were sweet, ah, more than mortal sweet 
‘To lie and die, here, at thy worshipped feet, 
in by some godlike anguish fiery-fine! * 
‘Sweet is it now to fade and faint and yearn, 
‘eet is it now to yield up soul and will, 
Beneath the touch of thy soft hands that thrill, 
Reneath the thrill of thy soft lips that burn ; 
And sweeter still were death, if death might rise 
‘To dwell in that fir heaven within thy heavenly eyes! 
. . 








If this were all,—-that eves and lips and hands 
Should thus so dearly, bountifully meet, 
‘Though thou wert sweeter than aught known of sweet 
T would arise, and break Love's tawdry bands ! 
But Lam as a wayfarer, who stands 
c. which he knows 
esoe'er he goes, 









‘To hear some 


Shall navel 







a whoso hears 
and grief and tears. 





Sierra Nevada, in California, She had watcher 
steeped in its sun-streaked mist as it heaved 


sandhills of San Francisco, and from the b 
where the visitors crowd to watch the 


When her journey turned back eastwards again, she se 
parting from some dear familiar scene of 
Sir John Challoner could not understand th 
manner. She was alternately Jistless and 
seemed as if nothing could interest her, She 
their “ palace-car," and for hours together 
Again she would sometimes suddenly engage | 

















party. His consideration in New Padua b 
‘His natural hesitancy and alarm when he h 
loners were coming there were now misinterpreted in 


‘out the very heart of the British aristocracy. — 
his daughter Lady Challoner or Lady Marie C 


‘would prove to be an old and intimate friend of his | 
To do Sir John Challoner justice, he had a kind of idea that 
serve Nat in New Padus, where he assumed that the lad 


‘been on terms of friendship with great British financiers. 
probably help Nat, and it could not, Sir John thought, | 
any way. 

Maric, on the other hand, was moved solely by si 
and good fecling towards the young man who used t 
humble playfellow of hers when she was a little girl, 
structed as to differences of rank and social aa 


One day when the stay of the Challoners was neat 
there was an excursion to some mineral treasure or 
giving evidence of its existence near New P 
‘Professor Benjamin was particularly proud. 





Jealous « 
“T should not have thought that, 
are anxious to get all manner of help 
_ “Ina manner, certainly, ‘But there o 


Rate ees ha ene aia At was 
say. Now my way is clear,” the 


tually accepting the post of United States Minister 
James. 


His confident manner quite imposed upon 
imposed upon himself, and she felt a throb of gener: 

“Tam delighted to hear of all this" she said; “1, 
mother, Natty, and I can see her joy already, She 
anything so good. I suppose you did not like to tell h 
a eto ‘became quite certain, lest there might be any 
ment 

“You have divined my motive, Mits Challoner,” 
emi. “One must not announce a victory 
won f12" 

“Still, Natty, I think T would have told her something of 
news. 1 would have prepared her a little ; it would 7 
up. She suffered a great deal, 1 know.” 

“Men must work, and women must weep,"said Nat, wil 

“Bat she is not young, and suppose anything had | 
‘she had died not knowing of your success. Could 
forgiven yourself 2”. 

‘Nat modestly confessed that he could not, but 
was only very lately that his prospects had begun 
a roseate glow. 


a) 








a man may make his way to ar 
‘Here, Miss Challoner, I may dare to. 
arm '—— 

Marie quickly withdrew her arm. 


here—unider this bright heaven,” Nat 
you—ob, Miss Challoner, yes—that I love you!™ 


could not have expected this, or believed it of yo 
friendly with you. Is this my return?” 


of his early days, and he became conscious of the 
and it added new agony to his sufferings) ; ‘I lo 
‘a boy’ 
‘Why will you speak in so foolish a way,” she 
‘and so prevent me from ever being friendly 
Your mother was a dear old friend of mine, and I am 
—for her sake." 
“Ah, but there it is," he broke out, wildly ; er h 


“A man ought to be a man anywhere, and not a 
dain said, likely to lose her temper now. ¢ 
“Isa man a fool because be loves a woman 








‘more, Nat, and | 
‘Don't tell any one," he 


head’ an if he would. shut out the xense of li 
his humiliation. She glanced at him and then al 
thelr friends might soon be expected to appear. 


promise to do my best to forget it, if you will.” 

‘Dear Lady Disdain was growing so impatient and 
prospect of their friends coming up that she felt ini 
her grovelling admirer with & thrust of her parasol. 

Nat got slowly up, looking wild, haggard, and scared. 

“What am I to do?" he stammered. 

“Here,” and a flash of inspiration enlightened her, “ 
little tuft of—mallow is it?—no matter what it is, down 
at the water's edge—no, no, not that way—dowa the | 
beneath us, Climb down 
could do it myself” she added, with an emotion of it 


and branches to cling to. Dial Matie’a: peant gate a 
were now found puffing and excited there would be 


“Thank Heaven!” Lady Disdain nelly 
‘thought came into her mind that that was the: 


— 








price ldap 

“She never said that!” Cink esd eet 
“She never knew of it, She never would have | 
two or three cold words, She would have said: 
friendly, or she would have written a few lines o 
she would! Unless he told her what I, like a 
iS ae thes hy sia ae e 

parting word, whee ein Saran 

ede Lrcevriait 4 u tt 
‘Christmas sat himself? reoitly down to thik thi 
it were some baffling problem. “There is decs 
somehow,” he sare “and it must be found out,” 
Jumped out of his chair. 

“Til not go!” he exclaimed. ‘I'l nor stir from E 
have seen her and spoken to her, ‘There's some 
at work in all this. Why did he tell hera lie? Why: 
her I was leaving England? Why does he want to 
the way before she cores back?” 

‘Then there came a depressing reaction, and he 
what was the excuse for the wild sort of hope that wo 
ing within bim—the hope that Sir Jobn C rr | 


islgbe Si Jobe Gkae: aw “playsng ol Wipe 
of treachery. 


—_ = 














inp srppoesife mgood natch, dor hoe acter eS 
plenty of money, and the young fellow has family a1 
‘that. But I don't know ; I shouldn't like it if I 
think. Should you?” 

“1 don't know much about Aim.” 


‘all that sort of thing? Leta man be in business—if he 
‘it; allright. Bat if you are a gentleman, continue to | 
It's all right, however, T dare say. They know | 






“ Good-looking !—yes, like a fiddler or a dat 
—a sort of cross between a stockbroker’s clerk an 
painter, And that's the son of an carl, the scion: 






Der Lady Disdain. 243 


sowadays! And that’s to be my dear little Lady Disdain’s 
{ Well, it's no affair of mine. I say, Pembroke, why the 
didn't you make Jove to her yourself? You're a deuced deal 
like a gentleman and an carl's son than he is. Tell you what, 
might have hada chance. ‘Think of Jock o’ Hazeldcan.” 
Pembroke made no answer to this suggestion, and Captain Came- 
took bis leave after a while, promising to look in again very 
and talk with his young friend on the possibility of there being 
goed opening in Japan for the brains and sword of the experienced 
|Seidier of a lost cause. 
“Everything fails us in life,” Pembeoke thought, “but self- 
[ comceitt If all else fails with me, 2 shall try to persuade myself 
H that the world was unable to appreciate me. I believe a man is 
| capable of dying consoled alone in a garret if he bas selfconceit to 
comfort bim. That is really humanity's last friend !" 
| But Pembroke was now far from being all unhappy, even though 
the thought that Sir John Challoner had been treacherous was 
Bitter, and seemed to shake the realities of things. A new hope 
) was exciting his brain and Gling his heart. ‘There was something yet 
to be done before he wholly succumbed and disappeared. If Sir 
| Jobo Challoner had been treacherous to him, he was released from 
fll fealty. His heart echoed again and again the words of Captain 
Cameron, and he did vot believe that Ronald Vidal was worthy 
of Maric, or that she could have loved him. A thousand little 
memories crowded back upon him, conspicuous among them the 
memory of her pale, weary expression when he saw her last, that 
day in Mrs. Seagraves’ house, and of the touch of her hand when 
she said “ Good-bye!" 
“She doesn’t care for him,” he said aloud in his excitement. “I 
am not an idiot—any more. She does not care for him; I know 
‘that much at least!” 
He felt a strange lightness all through him; the exalted sensation 
‘of 4 man who finds that there is one last chance, yet one blow to be, 
firuck, one decision to be given; and that, let it fall out as it will, 
all the old chapters of life are closed for him, Let it end this way, 
Jet it cnd thas, a new life begins, If only the time would 
queckly over! It is the interval that is hard to bear. 
| (Christmas went down to the City treading upon 







































formal leave of his business connection with the house of Challon, 













pe The Gentleman's Magazine. 


project like that may work well. I may be able to give yume 
information, or put you in the way of doing something” (Hew! 
really quite concerned about the small means which their frank &' 
closures showed them to have. He considered himself poor, bt 
ke was a young Croesus compared with Sybil Jansen). “I shlle 
a good deal in that line when I go back to Japan.” 

“ But are you going back really?” Mrs. Jansen asked. 

“Uh, yes; I intend to go back very soon.” 

“You are tired of us already ?” 

“No, indeed ; but I don’t seem to find my right place here; sal 
I feel somehow as if I were driven back. It’s just that, Mrs, Jansen 
T cant stay.” 

The little servant came in at that moment and bronght som 
message to Mrs. Jansen, who thereupon excused herself, said she 
would return immediately, and left the room. 

Sybil had risen, and was standing near the hearth. Chrismas 
was seated at the table, with the papers which he had been looking 
through lying before him. He rose and went towards the hearth 
also, where the fire was burning brightly, and Sybil was busying, or 
seeming to busy, herself in preparing tea. His heart was touched 
with regret for the kind and simple friends whom he was so soon to 
lose for ever; the modest and quiet little household of mother and 
daughter, who were so poor, so good, so friendly to him, and whom 
he was not to see any more. 

“Yes, Iam sorry to leave England,” he said. 

“Why should you be sorry?” Sybil asked, without looking up. 
“T wish I were a man and could leave England.” 

“Where do you wish to go?” 

“ Anywhere. I don’t care—anywhere out of this—away, far away.” 

“Well, I suppose we are restless beings, most of us. But I feel 
sorry, too,” 

“T don't see what you have to be sorry for. You lose nothing.” 

“T lose some very dear friends,” the young man said, softly. 

“Qh, friends are nothing. You will soon forget your friends.” 

“1 shall not forget you” 

Sybil’s cheek glowed and her hand trembled. 

“Nor your mother.” 

Sybil shrugged her shoulders. 

“You will not think much about us. It is not we, Mr. Pem- 
vroke. who are driving you out of England.” 

“No, indeed! Who ever thought of such a thing? Why should 
mu drive me out of England?” 



































256 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


in”; but he is sanguine of the future, and thinks that “ signs are nt 

wanting of a tendency to a renaissance of poetical acting.” In ts 
respect he does not despair of Miss Ellen Terry, but he does ut 

insist that youthful genius should begin by kneeling at the oi 

shrines. “Young actors and actresses,” he says, “ must work bad 
wards in order to regain the grander and larger olden style” ‘hs 
Clara Douglas, Miss Helen Faucit,” says Mr. Wilson, “was mi 
stronger than Miss Ellen Terry, but not more delicate in her pe 
sentation of the character ; she played Clara with a deeper emoi 
and a higher ideal standpoint, and presented a woman of lofie 
temperament and nature, but she did not realise a more gentle and 
loving tenderness.” Here let me give a short quotation bodily fron 
Mr. Wilson's letter : 

‘Miss Terry can trust to her own impulse; she can abandon herself to the fl 
force of feminine feeling, and can yet be sure that she cannot violate tht 
temperance which gives smoothness to the strongest expression of the deepat 
passion, In her acting: eyes, voice, features, form, gestures, all work togebt 
harmoniously to a totality of expression; and this singular gift is a note of be 
true-born actress. Sometimes, like a song-bird in the strength of its ecstiq, 
she seems to quiver tremulously in the force of feeling; and she can wholly lie 
herself in the passion or the position of the moment, 





‘Then my correspondent proceeds to point out that “ Money” is 
not quite the play now that it was when it was first produced 
in 1840. ‘There is a slight tinge of time on its rhetoric and 
its sentiment. When it was first acted, it was played earnestly, 
in the true tone of comedy, but the change which has since the 
come over things theatrical leads our present companies to a 
highly charged farcical presentation of the piece.” I confess 1 
cannot go full lengths with Mr. Wilson in regretting this change, 
since it indicates a perception in the public mind of that 
tendency to artificiality in rhetoric and sentiment which is, I think, 
a blot upon the otherwise fine quality of Lord Lytton’s plays. But 
I agree with my friend that Miss Ellen Terry has achieved a distinct 
triumph as Clara Douglas, and am sorry that the length of this note 
prevents me from quoting his criticism at greater length. 














floor.” “It was easy enough fora vil 
“T only did thre n 
have a walk over, Herrick!" 
“1 expect I stall)” said Abel. 








‘He was on his way to his friend's rooms: 
Christopher's, and was passing between the: 
Des cps res eck y 8 er Bs 








seo sn AC ReaD 
is my right ; 1 have worked 
read, ‘The loss of it leaves me a 
shows me that not merit but favour r 
every one which hath shall be given, and 
even that he hath shall be taken away. A 
down at the tyranny of an examiner !—it 
Pid iat thewting rubbish! “Who ever 


ey You have, of Somes, 


thing"—— 

“You are rich, and I am poor.” 

“And it's just-the poor men thatwin. (Wi 
father ‘was a scomimnon working carpenter, 


then there 
‘been—what I have done "—— 





























“Tam as strong as a horse, I assure you!” said Beatrice, 
And then it ix my right to be whatever xn make 

Your right? My dear, it is only sham people talk of ther 
and never get them; real people don’t talk of their duties, ay 
them. Ifyou think of your duties you'll get your rights fst 
and if that's never you won't care. There—I’m dressed 
only hope you're half as ready for dinner as Tam. Come ig!” 

“Oh Bee! Oh Mrs, Burnett!” exclaimed Annie, almost} 
into the room, “Tom's come back—the dog-cart is coming sp’ 
avenue, I wonder if he’s brought anybody with him?” 

“Bring? Who should he bring?” asked Beatrice. “Some 
or longstop, I suppose. I don’t think weneed be very much ist 
in wondering who is to be the next specimen of Horchester: 
been sadly put out by finding Mrs, Bumett’s views of life so lind 
accord with her own, and disappointed in not finding sympathy: Brey 
pet belief of hers had been wounded by that curious smile that seemed 
to point the kindest words with an unintentional sting. And then-¥ 
ithad not been Mrs. Burnett—it sounded like the theory of the enemy 
to suggest that a woman’s delicate brain is as dependent for its vigoer 
upon animal health as a man’s, Men have brain with muscle, women 
brain without musclo—therefore women are free from the impedi- 
ments that hinder men, ‘That was how she argued ; and Mes, Barnett 
herself was a living proof of the soundness of her logic, however 
much she might clevate her digestion at the expense of her brain. 

“For we, read 1," said the old lady. “I still like boys, in spite 
of my own, Is Dick in the drawing-toom yet, Annie? Bat I nest 
not ask—the wonderful talent the lad has for being last is real bom 
genius. He was the last born, and the last left me," she said, with 
just the whisper of a tear in her voice, “the last in his class, the last 
to see a joke, the last "—— 

‘The last, I think we heard, to leave a certain unpronouncesble 
station," said Annie, “when the Sepoys had to be held off for a 
minute more. Isn't it true?” 

“Thank you, my dear, I'm not saying the lad’s not brave, for 
he’s a Stewart on my side = but I never could quite believe the story 
of his being first in the charge afterwards all the same. Ah, Annie 
if the longstop comes, let down poor Dick easily.” 

Annie looked slyly at Beatrice: but that young lady's mind was 
soaring above stich sublunary concerns, “And after all—if she is 
right—I, too, don't know what indigestion means !” she was thinking 
















proudly. 
The two girls followed Mrs, Burnett into te drawingeconn, were 


& ___——!/) 





274 The Gentleman's Magasine, 


“Yon've been to see Uncle Markham!” said Annie, “No— 
you've been—it's something about an F and a C?” 

“Wrong for you! Go on—I'll say who's right when you're dl 
done.” 

“A bit of news, ch?” said his father, “Let me see—you've ut 
—you've not given up smoking, I suppose? That would be to 
sensible to be true.” 

“George!” said Mrs. Deane, “as if he'd tell it in that my" 
‘A sudden surrender of the pipe only suggested one idea to her, ad 
it was uncomfortably connected with the visitor, who, just because 
he did not look like one of Tom’s friends, might turn out tobe 
Tom’s future brother-in-law. Her boy had been quite long enough 
away for mischief, and there was no knowing into what hands be 
might have fallen. “You've lost all your luggage again !” 

“You've made five thousand off your leg-bail, or whatever yoo 
call it,” said Beatrice with affected disdain. “Let me be the first 
to congratulate you.” 

“ Wrong—every one of you. I’ve not been to see Uncle Markham. 
T’'ve not lost my luggage. I've not made five thousand off whaterer 
I call it. The governor's nearest, for I have given up smoking ever 
since I left the train; but as I shall most likely take to it again 
before bed-time, I can’t own I’ve lost, even to him. I ama minor 
scholar elect of St. Kit's—what do you say to that, Bee? Wasn't 
there some bet of blue stockings? I'll let you off for a pair of 
slippers, if you know how to make them.” 

“Then let me be the second to congratulate you,” said Mrs. 
Burnett from the fireplace. Tom bowed, not to her reputation, 
of which he knew nothing, but to her snow-white hair, and was not 
afraid of her smile. 

“Who would have thought it!” said Mr. Deane, proudly. “If it 
had been Bee, now !—Mrs. Burnett, Dr. Archer, let me present to 
you my son Tom. Ah, Mrs. Burnett ! this sort of thing makes us 
fathers and mothers feel like an old hen whose ducklings are taking 
to the water.” 

“Oh, Tom * whispered Beatrice, whose ill-temper had cleared off 
ina moment. “If I wasn't so glad, I should envy you! But it's 
as good as being examined myself, and coming out before the 
first ; if cleverness has won, what would not work have done !” 

“‘No—cleverness didn’t win; nor work either,” said Tom. 
“They're both standing in the doorway. It was just old Horchester 
pulled me through, and nothing more. I wasa bad third as it was, 

and ought to have becn a fourth, if all had their due?” 
















278 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


yours—he was a gentleman. There’s no harm, as he’s a strange 
all of us, if I say I'm not in love with Tom's friend.” 

“ Why?” asked Beatrice. “Should you not have said—if Id 
said so"—— 

“It was prejudice? And so it is prejudice, my dear. Perape 
he will be my Dr. Fell. But mark my words: that man is a dreamer 
—and he'll: just be stepping out of his dream. And when tha 
happens, my dears, I would as soon meet a mad Malay.” 

“ Mrs. Burnett! What can you mean?” 

“A man—or a woman, Bee—that dreams all his life through from 
end to end isno better and no worse than one that's broad awake: be 
lives in another world and dies there. But just think what happens 
when he finds all the false lies he’s lived in dead set against what's 
trie: or any way against what's thought to be truc. He'll keepa 
private conscience of his own, in which all that’s wrong for others may 
be right for him. Ye may be sure he’s been master over his own 
castles in the air, and won’t come down to hard earth without 
wanting to be master there as well. Just as he’s followed his fancies 
he'll now follow his desires, and think it’s all one.” 

“What a terrible picture you draw of Tom’s friend! Annie is 
looking quite frightened. But has not every great and good man 
that ever lived been a dreamer? Has not every poet”—— 

“ Aye, my dear: and died in the dream—except the poets, who 
have been mostly pretty wide awake, I believe. But you see, when 
aman wakes from a beautiful dream, as it’s sure to be, he can’t help 
hating truth and daylight, and all the ways of them. If he dreams 
of goodness, he thinks it a lie, because it was a dream—and 60 it is, 
fur the goodness that’s but dreamed of is not goodness at all. Of 
course Tom’s friend is just nothing to me, but I wish for the lad’s 
own sake he admired Corbacchione” 

“ Why—what has that to do with it? I’m glad for his sake he 
hasn't, for he would have sadly wasted his admiration.” 

“Because, if he’d admired Corbacchione, he would have shown 
that he’s content with very little, and have proved, just to demonstra- 
tion, that he’s not likely to quarrel with the world about anything. 
But ah, lasses, if I’m not in love with Tom’s friend, I'm over head 
and ears with Tom! What—not one of ye with the shadow of a 
rose? For shame! You ought to be as jealous—but hush! Here 
they come.” 











282 The Gentlman's Magazine, 







‘Detween her words, between her ideas, or between her ideas and be: 
words, keener insight will know how to account for them in the ca! 
ofa girl who, as Mrs. Burnett had said, was the victim of sucha 
formidable conjunction of nineteens. She sought for self-knowlsig: 
according to the number of her centuries, and failed according to the 
number of her years. 

She took her books, then, and plodded over them conscientiously 
in spite of the manifold temptations to let her thoughts wander over 
‘Mrs. Burnett's unwelcome theories till her thoughts began to wanda 
of their own accord. She went to bed at last. But she wokes 
usual with the sun, for she had lost the art of sleeping soundy 
even on a sharp winter’s morning, threw a dressing-gown over he 
shoulders, and set herself to improve the first hours of the day by 
picking up a few early worms of learning. But even so, she was 
dressed long before the late and irregular breakfast hour at Long- 
worth, and tried to make up for want of sleep by a turn or two in 
the frosty air. ‘What nonsense to think I'm not as strong 3 
‘Mrs. Burnett !” she thought, in the strength of her energy. “I'l 
show her that I can eat breakfast as well as she.” 

Meanwhile, if she had slept but little, Abel had not been able to 
close his 

Had Milly's lover been introduced to the scene of an imaginary 
combat d ewfrance wherein he, a knight of one of his romances, had 
licen set to do battle against overwhelming odds in point of numbers, 
strength, and completeness of armour : had the lady of his heart been 
there to see: if despite her influence and his own courage, he had 
seen himself go down before tougher lances and heavier horsemen: 
it he had then been asked by the showman of the magic mirror what 
he should do, he would have answered—as indeed he had often 
answered such questions: should lose neither courage nor 
honour, I see myself fighting on till I am past lifting a finger: I 
sce myself carried before the princess—namely, Milly Barnes—who 
crowns me victor because I deserved to win, and whose heart holds 
me higher because I failed: she brings me back to health again, or 
clse I die in her arms. If one of my victors, more generous than 
the rest, has lent me his hand to help me to my feet again, I 

‘embrace him as my friend for ever even if we have to fight again : 
I do my duty as a stout knight and true lover.” And now, 
instead of taking place in a dream, all this had happened in reality, 
word for word. And the dreamer, brought face to face with facts 
that gave him as wide a field for showing his knightly virtues as his 
soul desired, had not recognised that the college examination at 























exactly explain, bu: you know what I mean. Not exactly what ow 
world cx!l ag: 















He's Tom's tutor, is he? What could have put t 
down a tutor? Has his scholarship gt 
a spark of ‘ambition into him?-t 
most use of the tutor,” she thousit 
waste of time, after all.” 

wants to cram for something, poor 
I want you to do me a favour, if you will.” 

what it is, please.” 

hard to explain—but I wish yow wouldst 
but nothing. I don’t mind what other 
people thi ow, but you see—I really Aaze been thinking 
ever since that talk we had at the Campbells’, if you haven't for- 
gotten ~ 

“T have. though. every word. I never can remember what people 
say at evening parties—except that the room is hot, and then I 
always forget at which party I heard it” 

A look of disappointment came into the soldier’s eyes. “I dare 
say you've got better things to think of, but I haven’t, you see. 
Don’t you remember saying you wondered how a man could go 
drifting on through life without seeing an end to it, and not putting 
his back into something, if it was only, breaking stones on the road? 
You said more than that, but that was what it came to” — 

“I said it? Why, everybody has said it. You must have heard it 
hundreds and thousands of times. Do you mean to say Mrs. 
Burnett left you to hear it from me?” 

“I dare say you're right, but everybody isn’t you.” 

“ And in that I’m sure you're right. Aren’t you getting hungry? 
I think we had better go in and’see if it isn’t breakfast-time.” 

“Wait one minute, Miss Deane, please ! It's just all the difference 
who it is that says a thing. I want to see an end to it and to put 
my back into something. But you see life with us is such a con- 
foundedly easy-going thing” — 

“True!” sighed Beatrice. 

“That what's a man to’do?” 


















288 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


out of kindness, while he looked at her sadly and silently, Ther 
was no doubt a great deal he might have said, but his tongue was, 
slow. 

‘They came side by side, still in silence, up the steps of the temas, | 
and Abel thought it advisable to shift the position that had given hin 
a bird's eye view of this private scene. At first he thooght d 
returning to the house : but Beatrice caught sight of him and, gal 
enough of the relief of an interruption to her #fed-tée, nodded a 
good morning. 

“ We are all early risers it seems,” she said with forced lightness, x 
Dick Burnett went back to the house dismally : for it was clear tht 
the poor fellow was more deeply wounded than he could tell himsdt 
even, and Beatrice could not see his disappointment, however absun 
it might be, without a pang. 

Abel felt painfully shy at finding himself for the first time aloe 
with a young lady : for of course such a title did not apply to Mill 
Barnes. He had not the consolation of knowing that she stood in 
far greater awe of him and his prestige, and she had just been told, oa 
military authority, that he was not exactly a gentleman—a word he 
used in a sense different from hers. 

‘This is a very beautiful place, Miss — Deane,” he said, adding 
the surname just in time. 

“We think so. I suppose this country is new to you? It is vey 
different from what you have at Cambridge, I suppose.” 

“Very.” 

“T hear you are going to ‘coach’ Tom—is not that the proper 
word? I hope you will have a pleasant visit, but I suppose you will 
be glad to hear we are not usually very lively. I am so glad Mrs. 
Burnett is staying here just now.” 

“So am I,” said Abel, without knowing why. 

“Of course you know her books by heart, such a great mathema- 
tician as you are! [hope, Mr. Herrick, you are not one of those 
people who think that learning is unfit for girls?” 

It was with such questions as these, dragged in by the head and 
shoulders by way of conversational challenge, that Beatrice had fallen 
out of masculine favour, except with those who were wise enough to 
tolerate any sort of enthusiasm and with those who, like Dick Burnett, 
were stupid enough to hold everything she said or did to be right 
and wise. 

“I?” asked Abel, to whom the question was new, in a tone of 
surprise that sounded like wonder at his being suspected of holding 
such an idea, 











He spoke with impolitic impatience. § 
with @ touch of impudence in his tone. 


coin in his pocket, and that was the gold piece he 


ing. 

“Thank you, sir!" said the tinker in anticipation. 
word!” he whispered hoarsely through the hollow 
ee kare but to drop the sovereign, as if 
sixpence, over the parapet. The tinker stared for 2 mom 
pocketed the coin, "A regular chip of the old block you be, 
good luck to you and the young lady, that’s what I say," 
‘he earned his tip by taking himself off down the drive, 

“What docs he mean? Is he tipsy?” asked Beatrice, bev 
and scared, 

“*T expect so," said Abel, more pale than she. “I th 
better to spend a few coppers than to run the riak of | 


and thoughtfulness for herself all the more, 


“Where's Dick, Mrs. Deane?” asked Mrs. B 
fast table. “In bed, of couse: He seldom 
arovrow, and not often then. They call him *S 


—_ s 














tion of a leg oran arm, performed within a gi 
‘the sufferers, many of them peasants and 0) 
A careful analysis of this curious mass of i 
spite of the drawbacks incidental to poverty and 
room one in nine oly ofthe cases proved fatal. He a 


five persons operated upon in similar cases died. 
on the publication of this startling comparison, ar 
controversy that ensued. For Sir James 

nor silenced by medical rhetoric. It 

partial cars to hear that he had not attacked | 














i 
Rich Hospitals and Poor Homes. 295 


umerous they perished ; that in proportion as they were 
‘recovered; and that persons submitted to amputation in 
est, closest, and worst ventilated homes fared better than 


‘Lawson Tait, his favourite pupil, writes in: April last (rom 

a m: “Subsequent experience points in the same direction, 

‘Simpson's tables, all the material of whi in my possession, 

0 authority, and they show that the linger the 

itals the greater the mortality. Investigations of my own give 

‘same result, and lead me to believe that the next great medical 

rma ought to be the disestablishment of all large hospitals.” Dr. 

od, for many years resident surgeon of Glasgow Infirmary, 

gh differing in some points of detail from Sir James Simpson, 

d at a medical conference at Leeds “he agreed in thinking that 

fisture hospitals ought to be small, numerous, and local, for as 

‘they became old they became unhealthy.” Dr. Evory Kennedy, in 

| & luminous exposition of the incidents of ordinary disease and the 

"comparative methods of treatment, gave a3 the “result of careful 

investigation in Dublin and other towns that zymotic or fever cases 

onstitute one-fourth of the whole that have to be dealt with 

‘Seriously ; and that of these nine out of ten are preventable, or easly 
‘curable if taken ip time," 

_ Bat how can aid be given in time without an adequate orpinisation 

for visiting and tending the sick in their own dwellings or in places 

‘So accessible as not to involve the rending of family or neighbourly 





and sisterly care, half the ills that flesh is heir to might be cut short 

in their immaturity; but then what would become of the art and 

‘myntery of founding and filling great institutions, and of the ever- 
wested interests involved in them ? 

Dr, Rendle, of St. George's, Southwark, has always advocated, as 
‘the best mode of treating typhus and smallpox, that in every parish 
from time to time a couple of wellsewered houses, not of the valu- 
able class, but cut off from contact by a moderate space on every| 
“side, should be kept for the afflicted who have no friends to ours 
them, or who have no separate rooms to be tended in where th 
| live, Mrz Jaber Hogg, surgeon to the Ophthalmic Hospital, says| 
| There can be no doubt about the weatinent of the poor in 
| “Heat their homes being in every way far better for their chances 
| wecovery: ‘This was fairly tried at the time of the cholera. In 


a Gitted up near the church, 
Dr, Buchanan believes it was them 


classes in their humble homes. sraalsgead 
were alike in vain. The mania for more | 





forthe friends of public health for the fi 
the friends of the poor. Th. anv hes (Bee. 


uestions rolled up in one, and, cor 


Jook at each phase of the controversy sey y 
be necessary, somebody will, say, to segregate | 


anay be neither indispensable nor cheap to 

oldbed carey eat see 
awed not a papeilaa sis Hens eee 
it may not be after all the best way of preve! 














THE Way TO FAIRYLAND. 
BY EDWARD SEVERN. 


RNGNO/ORHAT'S the way to Fairyland? 
‘Melts it through the meadow? 
Leads it where on silver sand 
Lies a golden shadow? 
Where the Spring, ‘neath Maia's hand, 
Shoots to Summer’s stature? 
‘What is youth, but Fairyland— 
Fairyland, but Nature ! 





Lies thy lot by lake or land, 
‘Steerest thou by stream or strand, 
‘Strife and storm shall be at hand 
On the way to Fairyland. 


Is it dewed with morning's kiss, 
Dimmed with sunlight setting? 

Runs it through remembered bliss, 
Lurks it in Forgetting ? 

Mid the mountains’ heaving mass 
‘Must I dive to find it, 

Where the gnomes beneath the grass 
Gather gold and grind it? 


Be thy burden blest or banned, 
Gain'st thou gold from sea or sand, 
Woe and want will warders stand 
On the way to Fairyland. 


I have worn both want and woe, 
Yet they lead not thither: 

Must I grope no more, but go 
Flying up through Ether? 


























gi2 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


selves the usual flagellation, and all then retire to rest, the hour bang 
somewhere about 10 p.m. 

Silence and humility are constantly inculcated during the day, bh 
orally and by means of huge placards round the walls, whereoa ae 
inscribed “Silence,” “ Humility,” in large letters. 

One remarkable fact which strikes the postulant upon his admit- 
tance into the convent, is the slavish ceremony with which te 
Superior is treated by his subjects. “Every monk who enters the 
presence of the prior falls upon his knees and kisses the grouda | 
his Superior’s feet. He then humbly asks for a blessing and pe- 
mission to speak. If a monk encounter his Superior in his passage 
through the convent, he must fall on his knees till the holy man has 
passed. If the Superior come into a room where a monk is engaged, 
the latter must prostrate himself and beg his spiritual father’s bext- 

diction, though it were fifty times a day. 

Another fact eminently worthy of notice is the stern distinction 
which is drawn between the choir brothers and the lay-brethren. 
Although the monk calls his lay companion “ Brother,” he by 20 
means treats him fratemally ; the former is the aristocrat, the latte 
‘the helot. To the lay-brother falls all the dirty work of the convest. 
He is not generally allowed, except on great festivals, to participate in 
the Divine Office in the choir, but must stick to his drudgery. He is 
not allowed, without special permission, to sit in presence of his 
clerical brother. At recreation times, when all are chatting in the 
common room, the lay-brother sits modestly against the wall, with 
his hands folded demurely under his scapular, hearing all and saying 
nothing. At the frequent spiritual conferences which are a pecu- 
iarity of monastic life, the choir brother answers seated any question 
that may be put to him by his Superior, while the poor lay-brother 
must first “flop” before he may open his mouth in reply. If 
humility and poverty are ducts of Divine Grace, surely the soul of a 
man who voluntarily embraces the life of a lay-brother is far more 
richly endowed than that of the superior monk, who is so reverenced 
by the world of the faithful. 

To the young monk of vigorous intellect even this, one of the 
most stern of the contemplative Orders, offers a career in which he 
may obtain a world-wide reputation, and acquire as much glory as 
though he had a seat in the Senate and directed the affairs of the 
nation, Should he, during his noviciate, display any symptoms of 
talent which may hereafter redound to the profit and reputation of 
the Order, he is petted and caressed by his superiors ina remarkable 
degree. His health is most assiduously cared for, At Ws dignen 





314 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


cally his own, and it is therefore a mere question of words 
Indeed, there is as much difference between monastic poverty andi 
pinching, grinding poverty of the labouring poor, or the 
pangs of genteel indigence, as there is between the ailment ol te 
valetudinarian and the agonies of a fever-stricken wretch in the wal 
of a London hospital. It is merely playing at being poo Te 
monk is well housed and well clad, and undisturbed by the thasmd 
anxious cares of active life. He is not harassed by sordid ala 
lations of the value of a shilling, nor alarmed by the rise im the pie 
of his daily Lread. If he suffer at times the pangs of hunger theyae 
voluntary pangs, for he knows that the convent larder is well stocks, 
and that punctually at such an hour he may feed to repletionif be 
be so minded ; and in addition to this, he is supported by the beief 
that he is gaining merit by his endurance and earning his tilet 
eternal life. What though his rule forbid him to taste of fish 
meat? He has abundance of fresh eggs and good milk, bread and 
butter and delicate fish, strong ale and generous wine ; and if, ater 
all, his health should fail, in comes the doctor, and at his poweril 
word a dispensation is granted, and a juicy beefsteak or a tender 
pullet is soon smoking on his platter. Is this poverty? I can conceive 
this state of life telling with some severity upon one who has been 
reared in luxury and opulence, but for persons of the class from 
which the male religious Orders recruit themselves, itis a very com- 
fortable existence, whose occasional inconveniences are amply 
compensated by its periods of easy luxury and the odour of sanctity 
which attaches to every individual who wears a cowl. 

With regard to the second vow of Perpetual Chastity, I believe it 
to be honestly and fairly observed. The great majority of those who 
embrace the religious life are actuated by a sincere conviction that 
they are called thereto by God, and they have been educated in a 
fear and horror of gross sin, In matters of this kind a man cannot 
juggle with his conscience. ‘Though he may persuade himself, in 
defiance of his rule, that a beefsteak is necessary to enable him tu 
execute the functions assigned him by his superiors, he has a suffi 
cient horror of breaking the law of God to prevent him trifling for a 
moment with a breach of his second vow. 

‘The third vow of Entire Obedience is much more important in its 
effect upon the character of the monk than either of the others. In 
the observance of this vow he becomes a mere automaton moved 
by the will of his superiors, and requires a formal permission 
before he may perform some of the most ordinary actions of a 
man’s daily life. A monk may not shave, not cat bis Wuis, nor 









vw 





Pore Hyacinthe's Brethren. 315 
nails, neither may he wash himeelf, after his regular morn 


tion, without going upon his knees and demanding per 


Of his immediate superior. He may not pen a thought 


Ja scrap of paper, nor take up. book, nor speak to a brother 
going through the sane humiliating process, Of course, 
before remarked, in the case of one who is making his mark 

the world all this is greatly mitigated, but even he has had (o 

it, and it induces a habit of timid obedience, from which none 
strong mind may break away. The due observance of this 

j together with the strict account which he ix bound to gi 
for of every phase of his mind, keeps the monk in ol 

discipline—a faithfal and ever ready soldier of the Church. 



























324 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


distinguishing characteristics from hitherto published pocket-bods 
Iwas among those to whom he applied ; and it was with no sail 
elation that I found myself for the first time in print under the wig 
of Leigh Hunt. The work appeared in red morocco case {or for 
consecutive years, 1819, '20, ’21, and 22, in the second of wtih 
he put No. I. of “Walks round London,” where I described oy 
favourite haunts to the south-west of Enfield, and contributed a small 
verse-piece entitled “On Visiting a Beautiful Little Dell near Ma 
gate,” both signed with my initials. Under various signatures of Greet 
characters and Roman capitals, Shelley, Keats, Procter (“Bany 
Cornwall”), Charles Ollier, and others, together with Leigh Ham 
himself, contributed short poems and brief prose pieces to the 
“ Literary Pocket-Book” ; so that I ventured forth into the world ol 
letters in most “ worshipful society.” 

Leigh Hunt afterwards paid me a visit at Ramsgate, when the 
ship in which he and his family were sailing for Italy put into the 
harbour from stress of weather ; and it was on this occasion that my 
mother—who had long witnessed my own and my father’s enthe 
siasm for Leigh Hunt, but had never much shared it, not having 
seen him—now at once understood the fascination he exercised 
over those who came into personal communion with him. “He isa 
gentleman, a perfect gentleman, Charles! He is irresistible!* 
was her first exclamation to me, when he had left us. 

Another visitor made his appearance at Ramsgate, giving me vivid 
but short-lived delight. Vincent Novello, whose health had received 
a severe shock in losing a favourite boy, Sydney, was advised to ty 
what a complete change would do towards restoration, and he came 
down with the intention of staying a few days; but, finding that 
some old friends of my father and mother were on a visit to us, 
his habitual shyness of strangers took possession of him, and he 
returned to town having scarcely more than shaken hands with me. 

Not long after that, anguish kindred to his assailed me. In the 
December of 1820 I lost my revered and beloved father ; and in the 
February of 1821 my friend and schoolfellow John Keats died. 

It was in the summer of this last-named year that I first beheld 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was on the East Cliff at Ramsgate. 
He was contemplating the sea under its most attractive aspect : in a 
dazzling sun, with sailing clouds that drew their purple shadows over 
its bright green floor, and a merry breeze of sufficient prevalence to 
emboss cach wave with a silvery foam. He might possibly have 
composed upon the occasion one of the most philosophical, and at 

the same time most enchanting, of his fugitive reflections, which be 













| 


Recollestions of Writers. 325 


“Youth and Age” ; for in it he speaks of “airy cliffs 
ing sands,” and— 
‘OV thows trim skill unknown of yore, 
On winding lakes and rivers wile, 
‘That eek no aid of sail or oar, 
‘That fear 00 spite of wind or tide. 










had no companion, I desired to pay my respects to one of the 
‘extraordinary—and, indeed, in his department of genius, the 
extmordinary man of his age. And being passessed of a 
for securing his consideration, { introduced myself as a 
and admircr of Charles Lamb, ‘This pass-word was suificient, 
T found hin imeneditely talking to me in the bland and frank 
of 4 standing acquaintance. A poor girl had that moming 
herself from the piershead in a pang of despair, from having 
Betrayed by 2 villain. He alluded to the event, and went on 
enounce the morality of the age that will hound from the: com- 

y the reputed weaker subject, and continue to receive him who 
wronged her. He agreed with me that that question mever will 

‘be adjusted but by the women themselves. Justice will continge in 
beyance so long as they visit with severity the errors of their own 
Sex and tolerate those of ours. He then diverged to the great 
mysteries of life snd death, and branched away to the sublimer 
question—the immortality of the soul, Here he spread the sail-broad 
‘yans of his wonderful imagination, and soared away with an eagle 
flight, and with an eagleeye too, compassing the effulgence of his 
Breat argument, ever and anon stooping within my own sparrow 
range, and then glancing away again, and careering through the 
trackless fields of etherial metaphysics. And thus he continued for 
‘an hour and a half, never pausing for an instant except to catch his 
breath (which, in the heat of his teeming mind, he did like a schoo} 
bay repeating by rote his task), and gave utterance to some of the 
Brandest thoughts F ever heard from the mouth of man, His ideas, 
embodied in words of purest eloquence, flew about my ears like 
drifts of snow. fe was like a cataract filling and rushing over my 
Pennyphial caprcity. 1 could only gasp and bow my head fn 
acknowledgment. He required from me nothing more than the 
simple recognition of his discourse ; and so he went on like a steam» 


exigibe—t keeping the machine oiled with my looks of pleasure, while 
he siipplied the fuel : and that, upan the same theme too, would have 
Tasted {ill now. Wit would I have given for a shorthand report of, 
“Mist speech! And such was the habit of this wonderful man, 
Wike the old peripssetic philosophers, he walked abost, yrod 











































326 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


‘scattering wisdom, and leaving it to the winds of chance tomk 
the seeds into a genial soil. 
My first suspicion of his being at Ramsgate had arisen from 
mother observing that she had heard an elderly gentleman in te 
public library, who looked like a Dissenting minister, talking 2: te 
never heard man talk. Like his own “ Ancient Mariner,” when be 
had once fixed your eye he held you spell-bound, and you we 
constrained to listen to his tale; you must have been more poweid 
than he to have broken the charm; and I know no man worthy ® 
do that. He did indeed answer to my conception of a mad 
genius, for his mind flowed on “like to the Pontick sea,” that “née 
feels retiring ebb.” It was always ready for action ; like the hare,it 
slept with its eyes open. He would at any given moment range fm 
the subtlest and most abstruse question in metaphysics to the ard 
tectural beauty in contrivance of a flower of the field; and te 
gorgeousness of his imagery would increase and dilate and flash fath 
such coruscations of similes and startling theories that one was ina 
perpetual aurora borealis of fancy. As Hazlitt once said of hin, 
“He would talk on for ever, and you wished him to talk on for eve. 
His thoughts never seemed to come with labour or effort, but as if 
borne on the gusts of Genius, and as if the wings of his imagination 
lifted him off his feet.” This is as truly as poetically described. He 
would not only illustrate a theory or an argument with a sustained 
and superb figure, but in pursuing the current of his thought he 
would bubble up with a sparkle of fancy so fleet and brilliant that 
the attention, though startled and arrested, was not broken. He 
would throw these into the stream of his argument, as waifs and 
strays. Notwithstanding his wealth of language and prodigious 
power in amplification, no one, I think (unless it were Shakespeare 
or Bacon), possessed with himself equal power of condensation. 
He would frequently comprise the elements of a noble theorem in 
two or three words; and, like the genuine offspring of a poet's 
Drain, it always came forth in a golden halo. I remember once, in 
discoursing upon the architecture of the Middle Ages, he reduced 
the Gothic structure into a magnificent abstraction—and in two 
words. ‘A Gothic cathedral,” he said, “is like a petrified 
religion.” 

In his prose, as well as in his poetry, Coleridge's comparisons are 
almost uniformly short and unostentatious ; and not on that account 
the less forcible: they are scriptural in character ; indeed it would be 

difficult to find one more apt to the purpose than that which We kas 
used; and yet it always appears to be unpremeditated, Here is 










CURIOSITIES OF THE GEOGRA. 
PHICAL EXHIBITION AT PARIS. 
BY SPECTAVI. 











So, to see the Geographical Exhibition whereit 
is, is not the least striking of its many curious features. It occupies 
the Pavillon Flora, which, built for the Prince Imperial’s habi 
tation, was being decorated when the war with Prussia broke out; 
and it fills all the waterside galleries of the Louvre, between the 
‘Tuileries and the hall where the collection of old French masters is 
deposited. The Geographical Congress holds its sittings in the 
Salle des Etats, sacred half a dozen years ago to the great bodies of 
the State. It was there that an Emperor supposed to be all-porer 
ful opened his Parliaments with imposing pomp and ceremony, ia 
the presence of all the superior functionaries of the divers branches 
of his administration, Every brilliant as well as every solid element 
of French civilisation was represented at these mectings, at which 
the sex excluded by the Salic law from reigning appeared triumphant 
in native and borrowed charms, and came armed capui-pie for con- 
quest. Mars, who took a leading part in the ceremonial, was superb. 
and Venus was irresistible. ‘The allegory painted on the ceiling was 
brought down into the life of the nation in the splendid pageant below. 
‘The Emperor now sleeps in a country church in Kent, to which he 
passed from the gilded prison of Wilhelmshoe. His wife, who, with 
the bevy of fair ladies painted by Winterhalter, and the princesses 
of the Bonaparte family, was a central object in the Salle des 
Etats, lives in a quiet English manor, into which the tempests of war 
and revolution tossed her. ‘The boy before whom courtiers bowed 
low as he advanced at the head of a military household to his place 
beside the throne, serves as a sub-licutenant in an artillery regiment 
of Queen Victoria. There is no more trace of the Senate and Corps 
Législatif than if they never existed. One of the marshals who 
stood near the throne at the last opening of the \inpedial Pasiament 
was condemned to death for his unso\dierly surrender of the waiden 
fortress of Metz, and now drags on an obscure existence in 2 fordg 




















The Geographical Exhibition at Paris. 329 


‘is the septennial Sovereign of Republican France, 
lk capacity he some days ago inspected the Cartographic 
yof the War Office in the Salle des Etats. Learned geo- 
‘assemble on the platform where the Imperial throne 
50 firmly planted. The grec curtain, with the Carlovingian 
} that formed a background to the French Cvsar, and to the 
‘the warriors, and the chamberlains grouped around him, is 
to the Garde Meuble, a sort of pantechnicon for official 
ries and palatial furniture. 
‘of the swarm of gilded insects there are now three maps 
France, The central one is a cartographic giant, being fourteen 
by ning, and composed of 2#o sheets. This map, which is in 
Diack and white, is a very much revised and corrected edition 
‘One used in the list war by the gémi¢, and which was found, 
it was taken as a guide, to be misleading, ‘The new 
is said to rival in precision thase found in the knapsacks of 
war prisoners, which materially assisted the French military 
ip their revisionary Inbour. ‘The two flanking charts repre- 
ent the routes and water-courses of France, and are also contributed 
the Minister of War. Strictly speaking, they do not come under 
| ‘the heading of curiosities, 

the Salle des Etals for a starting-point in the search alter 
“yhe curious things of the Exhibition, not far from the platform I 
‘fied the section of the “Topographical Commission of Gaul.” Of 
“Gaul, the vigorous and gay mother of the French nation, we knew 
scarcely anything twenty years ago beyond what Julius Cresar and 
‘sath Other Latin authors told us. Our knowledge is much in: 
‘creased through this learned body, who have disinterred a rich col- 

ection of Gallic remains, and notably of inscriptions. 

"The most ancient document in the Exhibition is the stone tabulet of 
Clandias Cesar, discovered in digging the foundations of a house at 
| Lyons, giving the speech in which that Emperor demanded of the 
| Roman Senate the admission of some Gallic chiefs among them. 
“Roman patricians fetched their cooks and hairdressers from Gaul, 
“The culinary utensils, the combs, and the rude portraits carved on 
[weapons and stone slabs, show from which side of the house the 
meh derive their culinary genius and skill in capillary adorn 


h’s profound saying, “The child is father of the man,” 
this group of curiosities, The Gaul loved war, the 
inements af the table, and liked to shut bis eyes 1 
froths, His sympathy with the g<iadsome Wik and 


Tf 


330 The Gentleman's Magazine, 


gentle lamb induced him to mask their flesh (which 

Frank did not recoil from eating in its crude state) in ngwa 

‘The bronze stewpan was invented by him at a very cay 

stage of his progress from the savage to the barbarou om 

dition. The Gallic race in its very infancy renounced anthnop 
phagy. Its veneration for the dead, as shown in the cofims sd 
the treasures placed in them, indicates a delicacy of sestimat 
rarely found among savages. MM. Littré and Henri Martin ae 
assiduous visitors of this interesting section of the Exhibition, = 
which they find evidence to corroborate some ethnological thea 
they advance in their works, The former is inimical to the Fam, 
“against whose pernicious influence” he deems the Revolution tohare 
been a just revolt. A human skull mounted as a drinking cup, which 
is displayed elsewhere, shows how profoundly different from each other 
were the affinities of the two races. This utensil is Gothic, of the 
Pagan era, when warriors. believed their souls went to the Walhalla 
M. flenri Martin is a philo-Druid and rejoices to find unconsiows 
witnesses to the public and private virtues which grew up under 
the shelter of the dolmen. “The Topographical Commission of 
Gaul” opens a vista on the Gallo-Roman civilisation which was 
splendidly brilliont up to the fifth century. A high tide of 
barbarism then came to submerge what classic Paganism and the 
Druids had constructed. While the flood lasted feeble tapes 
glimmered in the monasteries. But art and science led in these 
places of refuge an unnatural existence, like plants cooped up in 
cellar, or, as an ancient geographer represented, the beasts which 
were confined in Noah’s Ark. An old bachelor impress is stamped 
on the works of the monks, who caressed some very quaint geogra- 
phical vagaries. ‘The desert into which the mystical woman of the 
Revelations fled was a favourite subject of conventual topogra- 
phers, some of whom placed it in Libya, others in Upper Egypt, 
others at the foot of Mount Sinah, and an Alsatian monk in Scythia. 
‘They also laboriously drew maps of the lands on which the Seven 
Vials will be poured, and plans of the New Jerusalem. Marginal 
illustrations helped to explain the idea uppermost in the mind of 
the topographer, whose charts were rich in images drawn in 
the Byzantine style. 

And here Jet me notice the predominance of Byzantium in 
pictorial art during the dark ages. The Catholic Church took much 
more from the Greek of the Lower Empire than she is aware of. ‘The 
section of the “Dépét de la Guerre” or War Department has a 
superb collection of ancient maps and geographical iwstramenta, a 


























The Gegraphical Exhibition at Paris, 333 


of Orleans, and the reign of Louis XV., the French showed 

ing aptitudes which have since to all appearance died out. 
fies explored and surveyed the St. Lawrence, the great 

‘and the valley of the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico. 
Gtablished stations, marked the sites of towns, and headed 
jof Norman and Breton colonists. About the time the battle of 
was fought, France was the foremost transatlantic Power, 
between the thirteen Eastern States of British origin and 
West, Simultaneously, the French East India Company 
with the English for the empire of the Moguls. Their 
hopes of success found a topographical expression in maps of 
and emporiums, the only one of which that ever became a reality 
Lorient. Mahé de la Bourdonnais' maps of the Coromandel 
which he drew in the Bastilic with coffee grounds and lamp- 
on pocket handkerchiefs steeped in brandy, are the obverse of 
‘That gallant officer in these maps demonstrated to the 

‘the difficulties he had to contend with, and the reasons of his 




















quitting the Salle des Etats to enter the Galerie des Fastes, 
Daliroom of the Louvre, the visitor is arrested in his passage 
the unique collection of Malay art formed by M. F, Van den- 
in the Indian Archipelago. A series of strange, wonderful, 
find Gantastic divini ties hard to describe—terms of comparison being 
jwanting—arrests his attention. If they came from Mars, or Mercury, 
hey could not be more foreign to all his previous notions, On 
fietlng them one instinctively doubts the unity of the human race, 
(Religion is the synthesis of the lar, politics, art, and philosophy of a 
pation. ‘The brain of Malay legists, sages, artists, and politicians 
Ipust be constructed on a radically different plan from that of the 
[Buropean. Those astonishing images present a lively ethnological 
interest. They are the last vestiges of the Haddhist warship in the 
Indian Archipelago. 
| Abthe beginning of the fifteenth century the priests of Buddha 
Hed from before the Arab invaders of Java to the Isle of Bali, which 
became the sanctuary of their rel » ‘This istand was conquered 
by the Dutch in 1345, and the town of Beliling was sacked, A rich 
[Batavinn, M. F, Van-den-Breck, a direct descendant of Peter Van- 
Wen-Brock, who defended from 1619 to 1628 Batavia againet the 
Sultan of Bantam, was allowed in the loot to carry off all the gods 
found in the temples and the palaces. Fe subsequently devoted 
‘years to searching for ethnographic remains in Java, in 
Malacex Peninsula. Above the saves of Ue 































id. E have no doubt the legend of * the 
| in the seventeenth century Amster- 


‘might be easily filled about the Russian 
to patronise which the Grand 














of the Lea fishermen, who are as keen 
‘being most sensibly conserved by a 




















348 The Gentleman's Magasine. 


‘Thorne tells an amusing story of Charles Lamb's tombstone, pe. 
facing it with the remark that Lamb himself would have enjoyed it 
Lamb was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, in a spot which, oat 
fortnight before his death, he had pointed out to his sister as tht 
which he would desire as his place of burial. Dr. Carey wrote te 
following epitaph on the stone : 


‘Farewell, dear friend! That smile, that harmless mirth, 
No more shall gladden our domestic hearth ; 

‘That rising tear, with pain forbid to flow, 

Better than words, no more assuage our woe ; 

‘That hand outstretched from small but well-earned store 
Yield succonr to the destitute no more. 

Yet art thou not all lost ; through many an age 

‘With sterling sense and humoar shall thy page 

‘Win many an English bosom, pleased to see 

‘That old and happier vein revived in thee. 

This for our earth : and if with friends we share 

Our joys in heaven, we hope to meet thee there. 





‘Thorne, in his tour of the Lea, was copying this inscription, whea 
couple of working men walked across the churchyard and read th 
lines with grave deliberation. “A very fair bit of poetry that,” sid 
‘one of them, “Yes,” the other answered, “I'm blest if it imit 
good a bit as any in the churchyard—rather too long though.” 











332 The Gentleman's Magazine. 




















zt was cwing to bis consciousness that his giel ir 
was swiicwed up in mere selfish regrets and pag. 
‘Chascse iseif into a more fitting mood of sorowby 

bad done for him and suffered. And 
eg before this the grave had closed ovr 
ere. Eow she had nursed his childhood, ani 


aps when he used to hurry to Durewoois 
sed to do all she could to make him hapy, 
¢ sweets and preserves for him ; and how he used 

Ser Eis confidante. and telling her every sm 
¢ rleasure; and how, then, he began to think 
ssdersand him. and was not up to his mak 
peced she was always of his uniform and of 


e ke should never see her any more ! Thos 
=p 19 the boiling point of emotion, and 

=e steam of tears, and, disregarding all 

csclation, he flung himself down upon his 

é cried like a child. 

In truth, he thought all the 


ental and pathetic song-writing of the country 

mame is the special Open Sesame of the feelings 

ngs of the war were most often laments for or by absent 

mothers. Professor Clinton looked on sympathetically, and resolved 
to tell kis wife and Minnie what a good heart young Cramp had, and 
how he ws not by any means the merely egotistic and feather- 
headed young fellow he. the professor, had sometimes suspected. 
‘The women are generally right in these things,” Clinton mentally 
acknowledged, remembering how his wife and Minnie had always 
stood up for young Cramp. 

‘The tears did poor Natty great good. They relieved his feelings 
and his conscience both. How could he any longer accuse himself 
of being ungrateful to his mother, or failing in profundity of sorrow 
for her, when he had felt his own hot tears run down his cheeks 
at the thought of her? The tears came again and again, until at Last 

he rose, relieved, and told Clinton he was going to be a man once 
more. 








| 


Dear Lady Disdain. 353 


‘A man’s never more of a man,” the professor said, ‘than when 
lamenting for his mother. But it’s as well to rouse yourself, 
if you can, and think of what you have todo. Come, we'll 
the open air. Put wp all these things for the moment, and 

peal te. me why you are going to Europe, and when, and all 
it! 















allowed himself to be persuaded to dress and to shut up the 
i of his trunks for the moment, and the profestor and he walked 
together. They made a little circuit to avoid the town and the 
9 of the universit \d, to use the language of the place, 
“struck” the river a little higher up, They walked on by the 
‘of the stream in silence for a while, Evening was coming on 
‘was growing a little chilly. The skics were very clear, and the 
‘sinking on the one horizon, was beginning to be reflected in 
jm, violet, and purple on the verge of the other. When 
} ‘was yet new to the place and fresh from the more misty 
‘and Jess luminous skies of England, the Clintons used. to “chaff” 
‘Bim mildly because he often mistook the glowing mirage of the 
‘sanset that showed itself in the east for the genuine pageant that was 
thirning like a superb sacrifice in the west. 
Clinton put his hand gently upon his companion’s arm, and they 
SMopped fora moment. Clinton looked along the path of the river, 
sunlit between its quict hills. 
“And are you really going back to Europe?” he asked gently, 
turning Nathaniel to look upon the peaceful and lonely beauty of the 
‘scene, 2s if im remonstrance against the thought of his deserting all 
that so soon for the noise and smoke of London. 

“1 must go back,” said Nathaniel in a tone of melancholy dignity. 

“My poor mother has—has left me some money in fact, and there 
‘are things to look after. I must go back at once.’ 
Bur only en congé, Lhope? You will come back to us? 
‘an oosily arrange things with the paper so as to have your place| 
Kept open for you. They'll do that for me, I know ; and if you like 
TW azrange it all.” 

“TI really don’t know—I haven't thought of it—taken so 
Genly you sce—and all that. I can’t tell, Professor Clinton, wl 
may happen to me. I don't sec what I want here or anywh 
jin life at all.” 

You think so now, and that’s natural enough. But you'll s 









we Te Teurdomas’s Maguzine. 


ae pec Sow, on em ae. [ zseere you tty 
wel ee ce At wie. om Mime came be gave 2 cavioms lok 
mow mS ce ses x Nur, ie zom seer so much, and wouldle 
evo ese aio suid |) ar seem mm hve taken bl 
aee swe gr. Sr wel” 

Tamh tu ar Se crise a us cnc ine wife had lately beg 
we mess tor = “Esme: sme Sos “ee was growing up amt 
af rede Sr se il sat Sur vue Engiishwean who sometims 
wmkei oo soccer mi yuensily. Cimem hiceself even when ke 










ail Se mre Secmmse he had so served 
Timm sssumef cae mocking ever would « 
3 qasscm ir Wiss Chaloner; and he thought 


smut sme 7 Nr 


te Mimme wou wouc uwars £ site were aLowed the chance loo 





xf such 1 parcuemsiip as the latter ever being 
7 a yuik exreccmema! glance at Nat whe 









Crazp—in New York when I was 
Leader net so long ago. I might have 


she axentions—which I never expected, 
if I remained in London I should be a 
I bad made one or two hits, you know— 
stumbled on an odd asteroid or two—watching and calculating 
here of nights in the observatory yonder, and they made much 
more of me and my doings than I deserved. But I came back 
here” 

“1 think I'd have stayed,” said Nat. 

“If I had been a younger man perhaps: and yet I dont 
know. I should always miss those quiet bluffs and the 
sound of that river; and I Vke our pleasant parti wp 








358 The Gentleman's Magazine. 







like mine, you are mistaken! But a sacred duty calls me tom, 
the ocean, and perhaps a Fate! You may chance to hear someting 
of me. I don’t know. But think well of me, if you can. Tak 
the best of me you can.” 

Despite all the grandiose inflation of Nat's language (a style to wiih 
Clinton had indeed grown somewhat accustomed of late) there wa 
certain earnestness, a sort of desperation, in his manner, wid 
impressed the professor and made him think of it long after. Thy 
walked home presently, and almost in silence. It had grown qit 
dark by the time they reached New Padua. Nat hurriedly declined 
an invitation to step in and see Clinton's “folks,” and went to he 
Franklin House alone. 

The next evening, when Clinton and his wife and sisterinue 
were sitting down to their modest supper (the final meal of the diy 
was called supper there, and took place at least three hours earlier 
than an ordinary London dinner), a letter was brought to him fron 
the Franklin House, accompanied by a parcel, 

“This is from Cramp,” he said to his wife, and both glanced 
ominously at Minnie. 

The letter told in a few confused lines, written evidently under 
the influence of some excitement, that the writer would, “ before 
this reaches you,” have left New Padua. It thanked Clinton for all 
his kindness, and declared that he was Nathaniel Cramp’s best and 
only friend. It conveyed the writer’s kind and grateful regards to 
Mrs. Clinton and to Minnie, and finally begged that Clinton would 
accept the copy of the Girondists, by Lamartine (Bohn’s translation), 
sent herewith, that Mrs. Clinton would accept the photographic 
album, and Minnie the copy of Miss Jean Ingelow’s poems, also seat 
in memory of their devoted friend Nathaniel Cramp. 

‘There were soft tears in the eyes of both the kindly young women. 
It was like Nat Cramp's luck, or, as he would have preferred to call 
it, his Destiny. A sweet and pretty girl might have loved him and 
looked up to him always, and he never knew it, 

“Poor fellow !” Clinton said, “he has taken his mother's death 
greatly to heart.” 

After his supper Professor Clinton went to the Franklin House to 
find out something about Nathaniel. He could only learn, in 
addition to what he knew already, that Nathaniel had gone east- 
ward on “the cars,” and had had his baggage “checked” for New 
York. He had not said anything about the probable time of his 
return, The people at the Franklin House assumed that he was 
only going to be absent for a few days. 














Dear Lady Disdain. 363 


Should he go and risk being disappointed? Perhaps it 

mistake; and she is not coming? The sun will soon 

sink, but long before he sinks that steamer will have 

at into the broad Sound. Ah!—and see there is fair Inez 

when the sun goes down ! 

that moment a carriage drove up to the ferry-gate, and Sir 
got out, calm, portly, and dignified. Then a tall 


and hackmen and negroes! How beautiful she looked 

‘hat and feather, and with that all unconscious expression of 
fin her eyes and on her lips which poor Nat but. too well knew 
to give place at a word to the bright, fresh look of kindly 

She took the arm of the grey-haired man, and they 

of board. ‘The skirt of Maric’s dress almost touched Nat as 
‘Passed him in the crowd, for he had not a moment's time to 
from the spot where he had been standing and hide himself. 

fhe had not been secnmshe would never have expected to 
fe ihim there. Nat paid his fare and wenton board ; and stationed 
Sscl{ for the present behind a huge pile of baggage, where he could 
tily see without much chance of being seen by those whom he was 


fatching. 
|The steamer soon left the ill-paved, dusty, noisy wharves, and struck 
‘straight for the sunset. Then she turned her side to the sun and 
‘swifily along among small islands and large, by shores which 
by low and soft under young trees from amid which every now and 
hen a spire looked up, past great ocean steamers and vessels lying at 
fchor, and tiny tug-boats puffing with supernatural impatience and 
tomy, Nat saw from his retreat that Marie Challoner was walking up 
hd down the deck leaning oa the arm of her stately grey-haired host. 
fometines they passed quite near him—close to him, even—and he 
Quld hear them speak. Once he heard the grey-haired gentleman 
( Miss Challoner if she had ever read Cooper's “ Water Witch,” 
fd when she answered that she had read it long ago, and used to be 
fay fond of it, he stopped in their promenade and pointed to one of 
he idtamds and told her that there was the spot where the Hater 
Vitek was eapposed.to be lying when the story opened. Nat looked 
(us fropa his ie ae vice ies be mgs sen the nan ene the wile 
rt for one moment he almost forget Ws love, ‘is 
| Seelgioad the memories that came back 








Dear Lady Disdain, aie 


why she's so pale—that’s why she's unhappy !” he repeated 
“She's got to marry somebody clse, and she’s in love 
fellow from Japan |” 
‘Seamer now drew near to a long, low, softlyoutlined shore 
with young trees almost to the edge of the water, and spark- 
pere and there with the lights in homestends and little villages. 
‘by the shore the steamer held her way, and Nat could hear 
the woods the shrill double-throb of the Katy-did, which 
to him to have a doleful and boding sound, congenial with 
hour and his own condition. The shore was indented 
little bays and creeks, and sometimes the steamer ran into 
‘of these and landed some passengers, Each time Nat shivered 
‘excitement, he knew not why, believing that they had come to 
¢end of their voyage. What he proposed to do when they did 
to an end of it he had not yet asked himself. 
“Atlength the steamer splashed into a bay ot inlet, running ap- 
ly rather far inland. The moon had now risen in stronger 
and Nat could see that they were narrowed in by shores on both 
‘so that for a time there was nothing but trees and water and 
5 the white gleam of the moon above, and the yellow glow from 
saloon windows below. 

Marie Challoner and her companion stood close to him now. 
| We are near the end of our voyage,” her companion said. 

1 doo't know whether I ought to be glad or sorry,” she answered. 
(@ It hasbeen such a delicious little voyage among those islands, but 
this place is most beautiful of all. I love this place.” 

* Tam so glad you like it,” her companion said, smiling at her 
\enthusiasen —" for this is my home,” 

“Is it wrong of me," Nat heard outspoken Lady Disdain answer, 
if Tsay that] love it already because it is so like my home?” 

And now a pier was seen, a rude, somewhat rickety wooden 
‘pier, with twinkling lights, and sound of bustling men and stamping 
(Borses. Sir John Challoner came out from the saloon, and Nat drew 
‘back again to escape observation. The boat panted, puffed, stopped, 
‘backed, went on again, and finally settled at the pier, and planks were 
‘Fun out. Two negro servants leaped on board and bustled up to 
(Miss Challoner’s companion, and took some orders from him, Then 

-and she and Sir John went ashore. Nat followed them with a 
|little crowd of other passengers. He saw them get into a carriage 
han fisshing lights and drive away. 

‘Natty’s first impulse was to run after the carriage. He thought of 
i omer before he had ventured on this niaicalous proceeding, 


























37e Tie Gentleman's Magazine, 





APTER XXVIIL 
SAME Boar, 


time of the last chapter Christms 
streaming night of rain and wid 
cz of Life lately. He had severd 
saintances, and passed a moods, 
He had not for some time era 
hz knew he might have been oa 
Iy abstained from writing to 
id Ey to prevail on him to lave 
d return, and he had not the 








































himself for the present. 
cer bad he grown in his 
Joha Challoner. 
I club, of which hewas 
m2'l steamer next expected 
again through the hal he 
OF all men he, Christms, 
to be enemies, Christmas 
they were; and yet they 


friendly than usual, for 
how do?” and gracefil nod 

way of ackno 
and had evidently something 








s looked as ifhe did not quite 
you didn't expect them 
1e shorter than he intended. 


to Durewoods— only passed through town. 
‘ow or next day. Miss Challoner won't 





fiercely. 





372 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


and then while they were together just to tell her in plain, simple 
words that he was not in love with any other girl, that he had never 
dreamed of marrying any other girl—and even if he should be carried 
a little further and should say he had loved and did still only love 
her—what harm would that do to her? What kindly-hearted woman 
would think the worse of him for that? He would leave her ina 
moment, and she would be troubled with him no more. Why 
should she be angry with him for his tribute of a hopeless lore 
that asked not even a word of kindness in return ? 

Christmas hurried to his lodgings, and packed up a few things and 
wrote a few letters and put his affairs, such as they were, as mucha 
possible in order. For he was determined that his leaving London— 
when he had seen her for the last time—should be rapid as a flight. 
He would go to Durewoods to-morrow by the earliest train, he would 
endeavour to see her at once, and that interview over he would 
hasten to Miss Lyle’s, say a few words of good-bye, then back 
to London, and fly thence across the Continent to take passage for 
the East in the first steamer that would receive him on board. Dione 
Lyle knew nothing of his rush to Durewoods or its purpose. When 
it was over she might guess it if she would, but there would be little 
time for guessing anything then. 

He smoked many cigars and walked up and down his room and 
thought a great deal and burst out every now and then into wild 
fragments of song and felt very much as a man might do on the eve 
of a battle ora duel. He did not go to sleep until very late, and 
he had to be up early. He anticipated his hour of rising several 
times, fearing he had overslept himself, and sprang out of bed and 
turned his gas full on and looked at his watch only to find that 
there were hours yet between him and the time for starting. 

At last he got up and found that it was six o'clock. His train was 
to leave at half-past seven. The station was but a few minutes’ walk 
from his chambers. He tried to look out of his windows, but there 
was a driving rain plashing against the panes, and a fierce wind was 
shaking the trees and rattling the window-frames, and there was out- 
side a denser than midnight darkness. It suited his mood of mind, 
this furious winter weather, this wind and this fog ; he was grimly glad 
it was not summer or even a bright winter’s day. He wondered to 
himself how the hollow among the trees at Durewoods—where he 
and she had stood alone that first day—would look on such a day as 
this. He determined that after he had seen ‘er for the last time he 
would go and stand there—and so bear with him into his exile a 
memory of the place not gladdened by summer and sok blue skies 


374 : The Gentleman's Magazine. 


passengers in Christmas’s carriage, but he spoke to nobody. Could 
it be that through this wind, rain, and darkness it was possible 
arrive at Durewoods, and its memories of the sun and the bright 
water and Marie Challoner? Could it be that Marie Challoner her 
self was now there? Could anything in life ever be bright 
again? 

The livid spectral morning at last crept over the fields. ‘The rain grad- 
ually abated, and towards noon a dismal glint of ghostly sunlight broke 
through the clouds. Then this again was lost in masses of heaped- 
up cloud which the wind drove together. The rain and wind seemed 
to be contending which should put down the other. At present the 
wind appeared in a fair way to succeed, although every now and then 
a reinforcing gush of rain occupied the landscape to show that the 
contest was not yet over. 

‘The train reached the junction where Christmas had to leave the 
main track and take the little branch line which led to the sea. Only 
one other passenger besides himself got out here. Christmas did not 
look at the other, but the other looked at him curiously, wonder- 
ingly, and then came up to him, and Christmas, to his amazement, 
recognised the face and figure of Nathaniel Cramp. 

“Why, Cramp! What on earth brings you here? I thought you 
were four or five thousand miles away.” 

“T have come back, Mr. Pembroke—as you see. But I thought 
you had left England before this.” 
¢ your places, gentlemen,” cried the railway guard. “Train 

for Baymouth !” the little port from which they were to cross to 

Durewoods. 

“Are you going to Durewoods?” Christmas asked as they took 
their places, with a faint hope that Cramp was perhaps not going 
there, and very reluctant to be troubled with his or any other society 
just then. 

“Yes, I'm going to Durewoods,” Nathaniel answered, grimly. 
“Are you?” And he chafed at the notion of Christmas going there. 

“T am going there—yes. But what on earth has brought you 
back from the States, Cramp? I thought you were getting on 
famously there.” 

“So I was. My way was open there. But a sacred call has 
Drought me back; and I am going to Durewoods to perform a 
sacred duty.” 

Christmas looked up surprised. be 

“Iam going to see my mother’s grave, and to wise a monumer 
o her.” 








376 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


station. Christmas leaped out and made for the pier, not waitag 
to see whether Nat followed him. Pembroke’s mind misgave hs 
and he tormented himself by conjuring up obstacles and dificls 
to prevent him from getting on. The first sight of the pier om! 
firmed his forebodings. No Saucy Lass or other steamer was thet 
But that was nothing, he thought. She was delayed in her trip fm 
Durewoods by the wind and weather. She would be here present. 
‘The delay was vexatious, however. 

But Nathaniel, who had not hastened so wildly from the stim, 
had time to get some news there, which he brought to Chrismas 
now with the morose satisfaction of one who is rather pleased by 
anything that crosses the mood of any one else. The Seu las 
had received a severe injury to her machinery that morning owing 
the weather. She had been rescued from utter destruction by 
chance steamer of much larger size, which had towed her intot 
little port near, and there she was helpless for the present. Thee 
would be no steamer to Durewoods that day, and possibly not eva 
the next day. 

Christmas assailed the railway-guard and station-master, who wer, 
however, utterly indifferent, and who blandly explained that ther 
company and their line had no more to do with the steamer tric 
than he, Christmas, had. Were there no people about who ba 
anything to do with the steamer? No, the officials thought not; 
they had probably gone round to the port where she was now laid 
up. Moreover, the station-master calmly expressed a doubt whether 
“anything much” would come of their being near at hand, secing 
that they certainly had no other steamer ready. Further, he it- 
formed Christmas that the Saucy Zass often did not move from the 
pier for days in winter, when the weather was bad, “like now"; 
there were so few people who wanted to cross to Durewoods in sucha 
season. 

“But if people want to go, and have to go—what then? ” 

Then he supposed the Saucy Lass could take them. But she 
couldn't take any one to-day, anyhow. 

“Surely you don’t mean to say there is no way of getting to Durt- 
woods to-day ?” 

‘There was the road ; but that went all round the bay—a matter of 
thirty miles and more. 

“Come, that can be accomplished. Is there any sort of carriage 
or conveyance to be had in this confounded place?” 

The answer was decisive. ‘There was none whatever. ; 
“Great heavens, what a place ; what 2 country 5 What 3 PEOT 



















382 The Gentleman's Magazine, 











said, but I would suggest to the trumpeters to beware of laying 
much stress upon the wonders that have been achieved, 

ing that in all history the greatest snare of the Present has been 
worship of the Past. Possibly one reason why we have done 
little during the last twenty or thirty years has been the temput 
to boast and crow over our achievements. Railway traveling 
begun and developed between 1825 and 1850, the electric te 
system, the extensive substitution of steam power for manual 
—all these are things the honour of which mainly belongs to 
time before the half century was turned. Self-congratalation 
those achievements was natural fiveand-twenty years ago, 
pethaps it is pardonable now ; but self-congratulation in such 
may degenerate into a sort of superstition of the kind that ares 
progress. It may be as well now to remind ourselves that the wud 
is still all before us, and that the past is dead. 


I wave been made the medium of an amusing little friendly 
passage of arms between two of my contributors personally m 
known to each other. The author of “Al Lyn Sahib” asks of Mt 
Francillon, What constitutes “ virgin brains”? The question aise 
upon a passage in the third chapter of “A Dog and his Shadow,"ia 
which the author, describing the curious studies of the little untamgt 
and unguided Abel Herrick running free of the Manor House boot 
shelves, observes :— 

Anything, so long as it is incomprehensible, will serve to fascinate vii 

brains: they read unintended human faces, full of character, in the meanings 
zigzags of a carpet pattern, vague romances in the fireplace, and wonderfal 3 
landseapes in the cross-threads of a blank window-blind. 
Frank Percival's contention would seem to be that these meal 
phenomena are not confined to “virgin brains.” “ Mine,” he ss, 
“have been spun into cobwebs, dulled by opiates (in sickness), tw 
tured to solve impossible problems, rarely allowed a wholesome rest: 
and yet it must be a bare tract indeed that does not furnish them 
with material for ‘unintended human faces’; and not only are thet 
fall of character, but their owners live and influence my life. On 
the old marble of my fireplace dwell Imogen, Barnes Newcome, and 
D'lsracli. ‘Three green leaves in a bedroom are the abode of an 
Italian bandit, Mrs. Caudle, and a Chinese female asleep, according 
as I elect to look for them. To the frayed bell-rope cling Pio Nono 
and a brace of cardinals; while, as you say, the cross-threads of a 
blank window-blind will suffice to portray whole groups of figures 
‘Then what are ‘ virgin brains,’ and why this perpetual phantasmagoria 
of images? Is it a foretaste of that future abode where authors are 
bound to provide their creations with souls?” Mr. Francillon ia 
reply says: “As prose is often wanted to explain verse, perhaps 
verse may be able to explain prose,” and so he transmits to Mt 
Percival, through me, the following commentary upon my friend's 
letter :— 









not alone the Virgin Mini 
Sees pictures where the dull ar 
"And hears the spheric quite: 


Od, 








The Gentleman's Magazine. 





le spirit who has gone with the inert 
sd passed the frontier of Eternity. The 
had. every reader of his must feel, a grad 
swings Bank, and his way was say 


















¢ discussion of the season touching the 
played by Signor Salvini and his com- 


Lane. Mz, Mapiesoa, he says, did not favour the public wih 
2 Taiza version nor of the English adaptatioa 
panied opposite page. The latter, he imagines, 
kof an Eagshman who possessed some little nor 
¢ think it incumbent upon him to adbere 
to the I:alian on the opposite page or to the text 
yn of the poet. In the matter of stage 
yn words were sometimes given on the English page without 
Page, and in very many instances there 
eTetan stage directions ne which did not ‘appear on the English 
while ia some cases part was translated and part omitted. In 
for exampie, “Isola di Cipro—Porto di Maré” is 
y Island of Cyprus.” Occasionally the scenes begas 
ed in different places in the two versions. Cassio’s exclam- 
rascal!” began a new scene on the English 
evious scene on the Italian side. These dis 
ies did not, however, arise from any respect for the original, 
ip one or two cases it happened that when the English 
version difiered from the Italian it agreed with some edition of 
shakespeare. One example is enough to clear the compiler from any 
imputation of an undue regard for the integrity of the author's wok 
2, scene i, the Second Officer enters with the exclamation, 
lads” (or, in some editions, “News, lords”). This was 
jently well rendered in the Italian by “Ol, n 
and it comes back into Englis 
piler showed little regard for Shakespeare's reputation as a poet when 
he printed Iago’s conversation with Roderigo (Act 1, Scene ix.) as 
verse instead of prose, making the Bard of Avon the author of very 
Dlank verse indeed.’ But the most extraordinary blunder, which 
‘ought to rank among the Curiosities of Literature, is at the opening 
ot the play, described thus: Vemice.—A street: on one side the Palax 
of Brabantia, with Verona on the other. So that Venice and Veroat 
are on opposite sides of the same street ! The rising of the curtain 
explained the mystery; the English translator had mistaken Veron, 
bay window, for Verona, the city ! 






















































aunts, I should like to know? It usedn’t 
‘Come—let me sce it instantly.” 
Milly, in spite of her agitation, could no 


to bear upon a large round blot in 
paper. 


‘From tho dreamland by the sex 
‘Rise a mist "twist him and thee! 



























‘solitary mote in the 
and-by she beginto 
not everything in he 
it be love or hate, at 
day—there must hae 









“er of the attainment of 
2 was necessifly 
good reason, cot 


fact that Milly 
ing implicitly © 
conclusio®- 









ought none of 
his health and cor 
Perhaps she unconsciously judge 
her own ; she, at any rate, was ni: 
visits of Mr, Adams to th 
one moment swerve. 
Nevertheless the days began to. dr: . 
dream at night, and her appetite b y to fail her—not the 
Mrs, Tallis noticed it, for she TOW as eateid Lo Tide the Serene 
as she had before been careful to cover We presence of = 
Since her aunt had given up a prejudice to Wess Yer NES 









gle thought #* 












































ee Tite renscman's Magazine. 


fe lenest Tadesmam to that of the bags, 
vel as if she ever told her adventure afterwamh 
ward: bu: the fog, the water the 
che depression of ber own spt 
cmazoc. ~(Good evening,” she sii, s 
i er actempt to pass on. 

weat I call gratitude ° exclaimed 
ne. ~I go for to protect a youg 
don't say so much as thankye. 








wus are scarce I'm not above shillings, ut 
grat Saubie myself to behave like a gentlemm 





=p ax dowa the path, but nobody wslo 
fog left visible. She felt inber 
to find the smallest sum 


wouldn't turn out a bad sat 
here? Here's a do! No, 
this here. And this here's 
to try and do a poor man.” 
I didn't mean "—— 
the law,” he said, shaking his head 
“©There's some that wouldn't let you off so easy. No 
I won't give you back the bad ‘un, or you'll be trying to do 
other poor tradesman that don't join sharpness to honesty. 
w That'd you say if somebody gave you a thousand pound note, and 
ent to put things right by begging your pardon? I'll bore a hole 
in the rim for a keepsake, and you'll Iet me help myself this time— 
I want to do what's fair.” 

He advanced as if to lay hands on her: she shrank back into the 
hedge, that she might take out her watch and porse and gre hes 
up to him without fecling the touch of Wis hands, Awave sist 

was blown between them by the rising Wind, and he Sse G 














418 The Gentleman's Magazine. 





erts on Whidd: 





initial letters in a more modem had 
in his mind, speak eloquently of tina 
alin English history. Nearly eighty ye 
sidabie but luckless expedition from Fran] 
Hoche and piloted by Wolfe Tone, anchored i 
rested mission of delivering Ireland fom 
As far as cannon goes the invaders found ancka-' 
oF as no one had ever dreamed of the integiyd 
inged at this remote estuary, the approah 

ned. as happened to earlier and noe 
cers, a great storm suddenly sprang up as the fet 
and so beat about the French ships that ah 
{were more immediately concemed to get out d 
y were gone the English Government, inamama 
far in these later days, vigorously set to wak 






























xo bari y Bay. Forts were thrown up on various beat 
lands up he long stretch of water, whilst Whiddy and 
several of its sister islands were seized upon as points evidently de 





ed at the Creation for the erection of batteries wherefrom hostile 

ships mizit be biown out of the water. Whiddy, offering a supe 
ficial area exceeded only by that of Bear Island at the mouth of the 
bay, was rezulariy garrisoned, and to this day one may read over the 
entrance to the low casemated rooms in the barracks the inscription: 
“ro M. 1 N.C. Q.,” which signified that here might be lodged ten 
men and one non-commissioned officer of the army of His Gracious 
‘Majesty George III. 

Men and non-commissioned officers have long ago marched oat 
into another world, and grass is growing among the stones of te 
courtyard in which they drilled and waited for the French who neve 
came. The fort is now garrisoned by the mother of a large family, 
the father whereof is chiefly occupied in feebly warning off the fying 
and ragged squadron that is perpetually “taking” the for. Ian 
well imagine that—say thirty years ago—when life was yet new 0 
him, Patsey must have dashed at the boys and girls of the day with 
real earnestness of purpose and high hope of success. But years of 
daily and hourly defeat have broken his spirit and dimmed his eyt, 
and it is in a transparently perfunctory manner that he now chivies 
the invaders from the north or east end of the fort, conscious that 
they will immediately afterwards tum up again at the south or wet 
and audaciously shake their ragged locks at iva, 

As far as Bantry is concerned this poor meancaaly for Wht 
rusty grate in which the shot was to be male redhat eiore We 

















422 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


The gifted writer of “ Black’s Guide to Ireland” crushes Banty 
ina single sentence. “ As a town,” he writes, “ this place deseres 
little notice.” My recollections of the neighbourhood ar # 
pleasant that I wish it were possible to dispute this dictum Bat 
unhappily it is not. Bantry is one of the towns which suffered mos 
sorely at the time of the famine, and it has never recovered the blot 
then received. Its public buildings consist chiefly of a Court Howe 
—where one evening we had an amateur concert, the piano bei 
dexterously attached to the magistrate’s seat and the audience 
impartially disposed over the remaining area, excepting the dod, 
which, in addition to unpleasant associations necessarily lingerig 
around it, was too jealously enclosed to make it a convenient seat 
police barrack, a bank unexpectedly situated round the comer na 
‘ge water-wheel, a Roman Catholic Chapel, a Dissenting Chapd, 
‘opalian Church. This last carries away the palm d 
y. with its miniature square tower and bright ga 
wind the grey walls. The design is of no particu 
ture, but the effect is quaintly pretty, and moreore 
ts a site which the proudest cathedral might eam, 
¢ it the long vista of bay, and behind a girdle of greet 
preached inside perhaps lack the originality 
of the church itself, and are not quite 
t the singing is rattled through in a curiously 
ts to the unaccustomed ear the explanation 
we building, and that we had better alll: 
= son as this hymn or chant is over. But he 
preacher and the choir is good, and Banty is 
he rest, the town is-approached from the cosh 
Hanked on one side by a row of tumbledom 
of business streets, displaying many more 
ation would appear able to support. The 
ne market town for a large tract of the 
J once a week wakens up to a state of com 

mervial live of quite an exhilarating character. From an eatly 
hour on Sarurday mornings the country-people throng in to buy ot to 
sell, mostly riding in couples on horseback, the man in front andthe 
woman behind, Some come by boat from far off fishing villages 
hack o” Whiddy, and many walk long distances, the women em 
veloped in the heavy black cloak which they never dispense with from 
January to December, holding that 1 keeps of the edd in winks 
and forms an impregnable defence against the hears Sh sarmmex 
Bantry lays no claim to admiration on We score ot Pawnee 












































nthe urban po; 
fact is that Bantry is 










































AUTUMN. 
BY THE HON. RODEN NOEL, 


AULHOR OF “LIVINGSTONE IN AFRICA,” “THE RED FLAG AND 
OTHER POEMS," Be, 


I,—ALonE, 


EAVES from lofty elms on high 
In pale air swim shadowy ; 
Fall, 
Till, level with a weathered wall, 
Glow their autumn colours all ; 
Faintly rustle, touching earth ; 
Where, in mimicry of mirth, 
With a crisper rustle dance, 
When the viewless winds advance, 
Driven leaves, decayed and brown, 
Eddying as they are blown, 
Dear illusions perish so, 
Summer nurselings, ere the snow ; 
Loosen from a fading youth, 
Leave us barren to the truth, 
Nay, they blossom forth again ! 
Spring from winter, joy from pain, 
Again ! 


How yon leaflet floats, returning 

To the tree where leaves are burning ! 
_ Oris it a small dark bird 

Nestling in the boughs unheard ? 
Lo! a latticed height of planes, 
Green athwart blue skyey lanes, 
Laving continents of cloud, 
Violet vapour thunder-browed : 
Yellowing foliage is fair, 
Gold-green as an evening air, 
Thronged upon a deep dove-grey ; 
Higher up the halls of day, 
Light-uncoloured boughs consume, 
Wind-waved in a fery tomb, 
In a gash of brazen fire, 
Early sunset’s ruddy pyte- 

















4 practical Englishaen 
‘0. chimerical an wiéer 
LUished for propagating 
= converts, but thee, 
fy retummed to the 
des are without excejtioa 
: golden promises to 
s tke a pvor Polish Isnaci 
*: Ianguaze ana 
insist upon his cor 
of the souistes 
Gzem it desirave 
Tesorel 9 
rt that never—atd 
sles manafactured a ral 









































evand if they feel inspired by 
ty. let thems set out te rec 
\d no exampes 
ians who contrivmte 
aim the conv 
y become sensiit 
of money to which they lend themselves. 

The writer-—who has no hesitation in stating that he is a member 
of the house of Isrecl—has had not the slightest thought of casting 
ridicule on the Jewish community, Too long have m 
gained currency, and he has thought it his duty to give the general 
public an idea of the state, spiritual and social, in which the Jews of 
the present day exist. Whether he has succeeded or not he le 
to his discriminating readers to decide tor Memselves. “Yau abe 

Jews are a great and thriving nation canmot pe dened, woe War WET 
occupancy of their present position wil remain wadyant @ WALT 




















aken notions 


























































































































ow all that her father ssid. “We know that 
51S nn legge gabe 


‘imploringly. 
re is mare than that, Oh, can’t you guess? 
tT dou't care for him; itis that 1 do care for some- 


d gentleman now, who had society and its proprieties 
his mind to school and mould him. But it would 






































(ubetolentaee 
At any rate he was trespassing. 


fptiitegions bar Pm ecpecing har tack ey haar 
¢ said, with a smile, “1 did want to see Mrs, Tallis, and. 
same time." After the first recognition was over, she 
it, that there was a slight shade of difference 

ds her—it was not less courteous than yesterday, 

4 little more condescending, “The fact is, Miss 
‘been hearing such a lot from my old uncle about the 
Thave been seized with a desire to explore it—I 


‘Milly could not know. It might be common with 
d the narrow bounds of Winbury and Eastington. 
she said, “my aunt isn’t at home—she would have 











530 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


with his own. King Mithridates, who knew all human speech, ws 
but at the beginning of a single alphabet in comparison with himwho 
knew by heart all the languages, not of his fellow-men, but of his 
fellow-creatures—of those wise brutes whose wisdom has never bea 
obscured by leaning. Thus he grew to be so wise that we bir 
never added one feather-weight to his wisdom. 

‘One day, this philosopher of philosophers was limping by the sie 
of a little stream. Over the stream was a bridge: on the bridge nn 
a dog : between the jaws of the dog was a piece of beef, Below the 
bridge ran a second dog, who was at the same time both another and 
the same : and to the eyes of the first dog the piece of beef carried 
by the second dog was larger and better than his own. 

Commentators are agreed concerning what happened. Had it 
been possible for the dog to have dropped the shadow and have 
snapped at the substance, and had he done so, he would have bees 
counted wise. Longworth was real: Fairyland but a dream, and 
Milly but the queen of a dream. And so, had Abel written to:her 
from the Longworth Library, where Beatrice Deane Fworked for 
‘hours at his side, he would have proved himself a blockhead for 
whom morals are added to fables in vain. 


CHAPTER IL. 


‘Where is the worth of a word unspoken— 
‘Where is the thrill of a silent tune ? 
Where are rubies till rocks are broken, 
‘The sculptured life till the marble’s hewn ? 
yy ye that never an ear or eye lent 
Force to find where such things may be, 
But say ye never that souls are silent— 
Heyes unseen are the'eyes that see. 





‘There, where no ray'from the ruby glistens, 
‘There, where no thought from the stone is born, 
‘There, where the master in rapture listens 
To the silent thunder of harp and horn— 
‘There is the love that our loves betoken, 
‘There is the life that our birth-bells toll : 
‘There is the worth of a heart that’s broken— 
For a heart must break ere it grows a soul, 





Mr. Deane, of Longworth, may fairly be set down as a country: 
gentleman of a transition period, belonging to the old school by 
instinct, but to the new by inclination, As beaonghng, arigmally 0 


536 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“Very well. I—I don’t like Mr. Herrick, Bee.” 

“Mr. Herrick? What has Mr. Herrick to do with Tom?” 

“I don’t know. But—you wanted to change the subject, thats 
all I don't like Uncle George to like him so much—and what's be 
but a peasant, forjall that he’s a lawyer now? It comes to thesame 
thing, and sauce for the goose—and somehow, Bee, I wish you liked 
him less, as well as Uncle George.” 

“1? What do I care for Mr. Herrick or anybody? Don’t tease 
me just now, Annie—I felt so_tired, and I so wanted to rest, and 
now you're spoiling it all. It’s hard I—But it doesn’t come to the 
same thing, Annie,” she went on quickly and eagerly. “Unde 
George may very well care about birth in his son's wife without 
being bound to want it in a tutor or a lawyer. And Mr. He- 
tick isn’t a lawyer—he's a barrister,” she added, with unintentional 
irony. “Do let us talk about something else, please !—What a 
heavenly day it is, to be sure !” 

“Tt was you went on talking ubout it—not me.” 

“T’ve been thinking” 

“That's as much news as the weather,” said Annie, witha 
reviving smile. 

“Don’t stare at what I'm going to say. I've been thinking— 
that I ought to go away from home.” 

“Bee!” 

“Yes—I really wanted to talk—that’s partly what I wanted to 
bring you out for. It'll be hard to tell Uncle George—he won't 
be able to understand it a bit—but it must be done. Longworth 
is no place for me.” 

“Bee—what can you mean?” 

“I mean it—I wish I knew how to make somebody, anybody 
understand. What do we live for but to do something? And 
what is there to do here?” 

“You ask that?—Why you are always doing "—— 

“Indeed I'm not. Learning to do isn’t doing. I wish there 
was going to be a great war, or a great revolution "—— 

The very words did not belong to Annie’s language. She ' 
thought they belonged to the newspapers and were invented to 
amuse her uncle and his friends after dinner. She could only 
repeat in wonder, “Bee—what can you mean?” 

“T mean that without such things no woman has a chance of 
doing anything at all. The prisons are all reformed, I believe, 
and if they were not there are no prisoners at Longworth, and 
not even any poor who are not well locked after. What do you 











bit myself on 
; weak—that’s humbug. She didn't know I cared 
a Me eae gees 


it?" asked Annie, who had never seen anything that 
|a. real quarrel in her life before. 


Herrick !—Abel_ Herrick !"" she exclaimed in 


‘Tom. “{f Herrick had meant anybody to know of 
, he would have told my fther, who's been his best 
has any reason for keeping it so close a secret, it’s 

of all people, to tell. Of course it’s different my telling 


"sid Annie, And so perhaps it was, according to 
for, though at last a man, he was still a Horchester boy 

‘of him, and a secret was therefore still a thing to be kept 
all superior powers, but to be as sacredly shared with 
He need not, and did not, add, “Of course you 

nothing of that to my father,” for that belonged to the 
‘Freemasonry in which his cousins were no less adepts 


what did you tell Uncle George?" asked Annie. 
‘that, T told him I'd still marry her if she'd have me— 
ot angry, I'm afraid, and said he hadn't mortgaged half 
‘to build a house for—well, I needn't go on with that: 
‘Tever did marry—Milly—he'd be obliged to do some- 
‘A guessed what that meant "—— 
Te Is. dreadful! But he couldn't mean—I hope you 
‘anything to make things worse "—— 
‘I kept my temper. I only said that would be the 
could possibly make me take my own way, if I can 
he chance of it. He had made it a point of honour, you 


‘could you be so foolish! You said the very worst 
» Bee—why where's Bee?" 











5 


‘Rome in England. We conceived the greatest affection 
cher on account of the winning gentleness of his manner 
¢ devotion which seemed to inspire him, as well as for his 


d laws; but gradually we learned to speak of the Pope as the 
and to believe it to be an unfailing sign of a lax Catholic to 
o abate by the minatest tittle the pretensions of the successor 


this time we fell into the habit of adding the word 
to the Apostles Creed, saying > “I believe in the Holy 


} pay ‘it spurious claim to Catholicity, 


Tn those days there was « siogular uniformity in the internal ap- 
of the various Catholic churches and chapels ; the 
being in the two or three private monastic institutions 


‘which were beginning to be established in obscure parts of the 


‘suburbs of London, Mass every morning at seven, eight, and nine 
opal neared et emer 
‘ +" and in addition, on Sundays, and holidays of obli- 


ce with sermon, But by-and-by Ce ai 
ni converts,—comparatively 








— 
Tie Gentieman's Maa 










x 




















fans were ably seconded f 
aia by another zealous band ol 
the venerable and well-loved od 
se Catholic body in England; and vet 
the labours of the Passionists in te 
.¢ Redemptorists in the southern pars 
these bodies succeeded in so comple 
stricts as their fellow-workers = 
Oratorians had been but very fet 
en their hymns were whistled ani 
a in the neighbouring streets; asd 
Covent Garden in the early momia; 
chorus of some Oratory hyma. 
Oratory on Sunday evenings <3 
me round. More than once I hx 
















puzvied the 
in the case cited above, 
Immaculate ! Immaculate “ 
irom Ignorance, Yardy from boyich mkichie! 
oh. Mack, you the 7 “The irc quent reyeisior 
Ora pro nobis” was a great exercise {or Woe ingens 











a phrase 
s 
a 


dan stagieeney 








but in 


i¢ 80 used to the spectacle that 4 nun 


jeans 


a 


2 


ire 
i 


2 
7 
: 
3 
3 
a6 











Pi Stns fae pri a 549 


upon 
“the ‘public streets Women in strange and outlandish 
“seen in the thoroughfares between the Oratory and a 
surrounded by crowds of grinning boys ; but in 
‘the public became so used to the spectacle that a nun 


5 and we have at last reached 
white wings and collar of the Sister 


so met the Methodists and 
ey followed the practice of the 
wedding sacred words to secular tunes, and the local 


me,” and “St. Patrick's Day in 
evenings, immediately in front of a 


and drew many a lad to accompany his play- 
church who otherwise would never have entered the 








The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's. 553 


‘The bride sought her chimmer so calm and so pale 
‘That a Northern had thought her resigned ; 

‘Bat, to eyes that had seen her in seasons of weal, 

Like the white cloud of smoke, the red battle-field’s veil, 
‘That look told of havoc behind. 


‘The bridegroom yet loitered a beaker to drain, 
‘Then reeled to the linhay for more ; 

Flames sprout and rush upwards wi’ might and wi’ main, 
And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar, 


Young Sim in the distance, aroused by the light, 
‘Through brimbles and underwood tears, 

‘Till he comes to the orchet, where slap in his sight, 

Beneath a bowed eodlin-trce, trimbling wi fright, 

In an old coat she'd found on a scarecrow bedight, 
His gentle young Barbara appears. 


Her form in these cold mildewed tatters he views, 
Played about by the frolicsome breeze ; 
Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes, 
All bare and besprinkled wi’ Fall's chilly dews, 
While her great frightened eyes through her ringlets so loose 
‘Shone like stars through a tangle of trees. 


She eyed him; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn, 
Her tears, penned by terror before, 

Wi' a rushing of sobs in & torrent were strawn, 

‘Till her power to pour ‘em seemed wasted and gone 
‘From the heft of misfortune she bore. 


“CO Sim, my own Sim I must call 'ee—I will! 
All the world hey turned round on me so } 

‘Can you help her who loved 'ee, though acting so ill? 

Caa you pity her misery—feel for her still? 

When, worse than her body so quivering and chill, 
As her heart in its winter of woe! 


le = 


| 


The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's. 53 


Then the uncle cried, “Lord, pray have mercy on me!" 
And in sorrow began to repent 
But before ‘twas complete, and till sure she was free, 
Barbie drew up her loft-ladder, tight tummed her key— 
» Sim handing in breakfast, and dinner, and tea— 
‘Till the crabbed man gied his consent. 





‘There was skimmity-riding with rout, shout, and flare, 
In Weatherbury, Stokeham, and Windleton, ere 
They had proof of old Sweatiey's decay 
The Melistock and Yalbury folk stood in a stare 
(The tranter owned houses and garden-ground there), 
But little did Sim or his Barbara care, 
For he took her to church the next day. 









‘Mind the pathetic simplicity of language in one of the most beautiful 
‘of these poems, “ Liz," is one of its chief merits, and on the whole 
Sore of the poem is fully as excellent as the substance: if 
‘it were more remarkable, the poem of course would not be a quarter 
#0 good. Ought Scott to have made Halbert Glendinning or Mary 
Avenel use the same language as Sir Piercie Shafton ? 
_ Some finical, fastidious gentleman objected to the word 
““eostermonger” in “Liz.” It made him stop his cars and give a 
‘little scream ; but it was appropriate where it stood, and I am sorry 
"Mr. Buchanan has altered it. He has “Joe Purvis” instead, and I 
am sure the gentleman will object to that equally. It should have 
‘been “ Reginald Mauleverer,” so as not to offend cars polite. Speak- 
‘ing of his indiarubber ball, the little boy said to his governess; “If 
‘you prick it it will go squash !” © shocking, my dear!" said the prim 
Tndy ; “you should have said, ‘If you puncture it, it will collapse.” 
Bot Mr. Buchanan won't, we trust, make gravediggers call spades 
or housemaids call coalscuttles Pandoras (though per 
‘haps they will soon in real life), for all his governesses may say to him. 
A poet may leave fine language of that kind to advertising tradesmen. 
‘The “Last of the Hangmen,” however, seems to me too merely 
‘coarse and grotesque—not sufficiently spiritualised. He might do in 
@ Dutch picture; bat he is hardly elaborately realised enough for a 
poetic study even of the Dutch order, 
Tt has been urged again that these poems are too sentimental so 
‘that what seems to be desiderated is this—that costermongers and 





somebody was right when he said that Mr. Buchanan makes 

his townspeople and peasants talk a little too much about external 
‘nature—but there is generally something in their circumstances that 
affords o clue to that Liz, in a very fine passage, expresses her 
‘horror of the country, which she had once visited. How would the 
eritics set about presenting such people poetically at all—except 
‘by the sid of arvificial cuphuism? What Mr. Buchanan docs is 
am men and women at moments and in moods when 
circumstance of their lives brings out the fmer and more uaa 

= p them. Over them he sheds the mild light of sorrento Soe 








“E55 ‘ements sound, that Mr Buchanan excels 






ser ts arth rp 
nt to fill up the portrait of him quite characteristically. We 
have the same feeling as regards the portraiture of Bismarck, and the 
‘Third Napoleon ; though one is rather more satisfied with the latter, 
ho indeed seems to have been a, brooding, irresolute, somewhat 


‘ie the: imiution of Goethe's supernatural Faust machinery. 

‘Out of Shelley, one can scarcely read choruses and semi-choruses 

ad diditum in modern poety, and not rebel. The whole thing in: 

‘Shelley is sublimated ; it passes in an sethercal region of unearthly 
‘loveliness. 


and seraphic 
‘There: is, perhaps, a danger lest “the mystic” should not accept 
Bitiae lo rastegyea3 iatencsions and too arbitrarily sclecting from 


the preacher or morse, sliding, into turgid and nebslous generale 
ties—far removed from the living order of Shakespeare's creations— 
‘or at least into monotonous mannerism. af treatment; and this, even 
though be may not bevready to swallow whole merely conventional 
viows of virtue. There is always, moreover, @ danger A a wan 

posing 190 much as mystic or prophet, and contemplating, uns, 


oot 


ee = 





| Robert Buchanan's Poetry. 567 
A Dare him children, and 1 closed his eyes: 
forth with tin” 





«The man fs saved : Tet the man enter in !”” 


_ Still one feels inclined to congratulate Mr. Buchanan on his having 
“St Abe "and “White 





of voatline ; -also the sacy, nervous, direct AngloSaxon. strength of 
- its language, for which weumust go otherwise at the present day 
“to ‘Tennyson's " Queea Mary," and Sir H. ‘Taylor's dramas; or 
back’to. Byron, Wordsworth, Pope, and: Chaucer—notable, too, its 
absence of affectation, artifice, and general excess. There is no 
qpoverty of matter, or extravagance of manner. All this used to 
be thought essential in the time .of Aristotle, and even since, It 
“msed tobe thought classical, Butacademies have changed their 
| «minds. Ofcourse one may tay too much. stress on selfrestrained 


| vested fe, and in external natne. Fete we have mindi  a 
[this withowe Josing breadth and decision of touch, ot Seyin ews 


tee 









Robert Buchanan's Poctry. s7t 


ned in two writers. According to the bias of individual judg- 
gents, there must always be variation in the verdicts. And we 
; ea ee ew ay he an tester 





peste caper or enalvic verse is not poetry— 


pee etc ahaa “Ranolf and Amohia,” 

But in Popealways, in Dryden sometimes, we have wit play- 
‘through all, like a spiritual flame ; in other similar poems we have 
All original poets flush the lives or objects they behold 
emotional light from the depths of their own souls; but this 
ight is a revealing, not a misleading one, whether it shine specially 
upon sensuous and zesthetic, or spon ‘moral anit intellectual aspects ; 
others partaking of the sme human sympathies are enabled thereby 
fo see asthe poet sees: this is the true transfiguring light of art. 
‘Some, however, not gifted with the requisite ‘human elements, how 
clever and cultivated soever, can‘only mockand decry. But general 
as well as concrete truthihas !been aad may ‘pet be poetically pre- 





‘Some poets again are more in harmony with their own age’s most 
advanced standpoint:than others—and a)man may be cither super 
ficially, or more profoundly and less apparently sin harmony with it. 
‘While low clouds are moving one way, high elouds may be moving 
| another; but the motion of low clouds may be the most evident to 
careless glances of the many; and because I believe Mr. Buchanan 
[2 eeepc in imaginative rhythmical form to 


(bekors hie to be one.of our foremost living poets, and Aesimned 0 
: or indirectly) one, of our mastinfuents\. 


ne 





THE DREAM-GATHERER. 
BY EDWARD SEVERN. 






EPL? OME, buy my dreams! From the meador 
They were gathered at mom by me 
Between the sun and the shadow, 
Between the wind and the sea. 


From the path that the sleeper goeth, 
From the sun beyond the sun, 

From the field that no man knoweth, 
They were gathered one by one— 


From the light of a starless sorrow, 
From the fruit of a leafless spray, 

Fom the sheen of a long To-morrow 
‘That never will be To-day. 


Alas for the ears that hear not, 
For the eyes that take no heed : 

Alas for the tongues that fear not 
To call a flower a weed ! 


Buy Dreams, for hall and bower ! 
A Dream is a soul unchained : 

A Dream is a passion-flower 
That never is passion-stained. 


Buy Dreams, for bower and dwelling ! 
‘A Dream is the heart of spring— 
A tale too deep for telling, 
And a song too sweet to sing. 


Alas for the hearts that hear not, 
For the souls that are bind indeed — 
‘Alas for the thoughts that fear nok 
To call a Dream a weed 





Se lesbo cack 6 cn ecxvecon ie Seane 

new order of things the company, and not the battalion, 

| be regarded as the tactical unit. We, therefore, in planning: 
ation ought to: commence with the company. Looking at it~ 
ce to administrative considerations, it is plain that a 
should contain as many men as can be) conveniently, 


9 action, A body of 100 men acting together can produce far 
‘effect than ten bodies of ten men each employed at different 
‘times and:not acting in concert.. The limit of size is reached when 
becomes so numerous that one man cannot directly cause’ 


‘the orderassumed. A mere word of command, even though in the: 
given from the rear of the centre cannot when the company, 
isin line and. ene cies bes inank mee 
For battalion manceuvres, therefore, taking. into consideration the 
roar of battle, a company of say 250. of all ranks is the largest 
that cam be properly handled: But that which may be regarded 
asx the normal formation for attack, and also in a less degree for’ 
the defence, is much less compact than the battalion, which may. 
be called the preparatory order. When the company is within. 
close range it is opened out enormously both in breadth and! 
LL. JS San galepreaameohades ommees 
captain—a fact which may be regretted, but cannot be ignored, He: 
umay give the impulse, but he is obliged to employ sexera wedinasns, 
—his-subsiterns-and sergeants—to communicare his oes to Soe 


— = 





for the fewer the links the greater the unity of 
‘These conditions of efficiency can be secured 
strength of a company, If the strength of the 

ir footing were raised to 253 of all ranks, the number 
necessary , would be about a2, At 
f contact with the enemy it is desirable that the line 


= A eeepc ‘The captain 
then send forward one section of say twenty-five files strong, 
tern. This section would extend to about five paces 
to man, which, allowing cach man a space of twenty-one 
Jin, would give a little over 230 yards for the entire 


‘three paces between files, the intervals increasing as the 
As s00n as the leading section had got over 200 












Tt is the higher ranks naturally whiel are 


pioneers, ) 

224 privates—total 255 of all ranks, the band not being 
A comparison between the percentage of captains and 
d officers to men in the two establishments will 
‘great would be the economy of my scheme. It will be 
‘each section would be complete in itself, that it would 
cer to command it, a drummer, and an active proportion of 
d officers. ‘The section would in faet be a small 
nearly as strong as a company on the present home 
ne ‘The captain would have a command of an ime 
corresponding with his tactical duties and his position in 
and might be expected to {tel that pride in his work 








Modern Tactical Organisation. 583 
‘There is another consideration, namely, that a brigadier 





nal d should extend less over breadth than depth. Tam 
‘therefore, to recommend, as the most convenient ongani- 
infantry brigade should consist of four or, at the most, 
With four battalions a brigadier could occupy a section 
with two battalions in the fighting or first line, retaining 
in the second line as a support, and to ward off flank 


‘of one brigade to assist another at the proper time, and 
immediately engaged can always tell what his requirements 

ian one further to the rearand not able to realise the neces+ 

of the case. But even when the most cordial co-operation 


Besides, the former would be more of a match fora foreign 
le than would be the latter, 
P best organisation of a division is a matter which it is not easy 
“to decide on. In most foreign armies the division consists of two 
of infantry, with a due proportion of artillery, cavalry, and 
In France there are two brigades of infantry, a battalion * 
Sexictaaeraxe & pled, a proportion of artery and engineers, and, I 
Imagine, a small force of cavalry; but there seems to be nothing 
positively settled with regard to the latter point. 
__A Prussian division consists of two brigades, one cavalry regiment, 
‘and four batteries of six guns each. In Russia there are no infantry 
brigades, and a division consists of four regiments of infantry, a 
‘brigade of artillery with forty gms and cight mitraillcuses, and a 
‘regiment of Cossacks, In Austria the division consists of two bri- 
gades of two regiments of three battalions each, two battalions of 
‘Tiles, three squadrons of cavalry, three batteries of eight guns each, 
and accompany of engineers. Our divisional organisation generally 
Ele apie ete omelet 








reached us that another party was going to sleep at the 
and knowing that any addition of numbers to our 
would 


Iyvetéte was to have Melchior, and I was to take Christian. 
masters were to be supplemented by local talent as second 
~All this was arranged, and the two parties prepared to start 
‘The Kastenstein rock cave is five or six hours distant 


Beicietlaelorald glacier: descended wpott the glacier itself by the 
below the Beregg hut; crossed the glacier, and passed the 
nhorn, Here we had to recross the glacier through the seraca, 


proved troublesome ; the way was hard to hit; and we spent a good 
hour among them, ‘The light was failing as we toiled up the steep 
‘rough way that leads to the cave. At last we reached it, and surveyed 
& great pile of massive rocks, under one of which is the dark, low, 
in shaped hollow, in which we were to sleep, ‘The place 
might be the cavernous home of a wild beast or of a small ogre. A 
rode cooking place is improvised just outside the burrow, and our 
guides were soon busy with mountain cookery. ‘Then came the 

‘the song and jest, and then the vesper pipe. Hillyer and 
‘myself, joyous with the hopes of the morrow, reclined among guides 













The Peak of Terror. 589 


“The way lies downwards over great blocks of stone, 
‘upon coarse grass. It is rough walking. You 


the carly morning, and the foothold consequently slight, this 
up ascent is decidedly laborious. No prospect of the 

‘The view is cut off above you by rocks, which seem to 

cross the top of our snow gully. 1 am on the rope next to 
who does not cut any steps or notches. ‘The hard snow 
‘steep that you have to put the foot down sideways, and it 
great muscular exertion to maintain your foothold. Still up 
‘Where ways are steep you rise rapidly, and, as we attain to 

cks so long seen above us we find that many a peak, hereto~ 
hidden by the Eiger and Finster-sarhorn range, soars up and. 
into our ken, Deep below us is the Strahleck pass, and we 
n the broad white snow a little black creeping line which means 
‘We count five men, and know that Peter Anderegg, an 

end of mine, is their leading guide. Suddenly the line stops, 

d they evidently sce us. They are probably shouting, though we 

ot hear them, and two of them wave hats, We respond ; and 
and Kauffmann emit terrific Jodels. Then they tum and 
: and we turn and go upward. Two ships on the ocean 
Dishes iet and greeted. 
_ We cross our rocks to the right, and then sit down to another break- 
fast. As we begin the meal the sun darts out and changes the whole 
2 and character of the scene, It is a brilliant, deep-coloured 
“stinging sun—that sun, indeed, which comes between days of bad 
Weather, Before us lies a huge sloping snow basin, which comprises 
| mighty bergschrund, together with crevasses and abysses. The 
sun shines dazzlingly upon the smooth and sparkling snow, “That 
‘mow won'tbe hard when we come down!” says Christian, with an 
‘ominous shake of the head, as we finish breakfast and again prepare 
‘to start, 

‘We thread our way successfully through crevasse and abyss, and 
pags round the great hollow of the terrible bergschrund. By this 
time the sun has become very hot, and the snow is getting already 
very soft. There is a great depth of loose, fresh snow too; and I 
ee aes nie dismay of the descent. ‘he sky above is cloud- 









The Peak of Terror. 5oL 


balls with a sort of morbid interest; when, suddenly, 
Dicer wan, directed (il! ipen. ous rock, ‘One of these 
stones hit me on the side of the head and stunned me. 
, I must have been struck by the flat side of the stone, 


killed shortly before on the Wetterhorn by a stone de- 

in a similar manner, which struck him with its sharp edge. 

recovered consciousness I found that the rope which attached 

o Lauener had been severed within three inches of my waist os 
as the shears of Atropos would cut the thread of a life. 

was an annoying though a dramatic incident. [had thought 

ridge was out of the way of a Schreckhorn cannonade, but 

that our selection of rocks was placed advantageously 

45 an artillery target, and that I had been chosen by Fate 

bullseye. I remained about an hour unconscious. During: 


walking fast in order to get out of the way of the hill 

Once on the Sattel we were beyond that danger, and went 

more slowly. The final summit to our left was distinctly visible and 

very near. We had done with ascent and with the perpen- 

Te only remained to traverse with care the finalartte, ‘This 

eee eee pepe 

great depths below on cither hand, and with patches of snow be- 

the blocks of rock, These upper rocks glowed with hear 

om the near and fervid sun. My accident had lost a good deal of 

and it was noon as we neared the last arte. ‘The rounded 

oe ee 

and you get the view as well from the top of the Sattel as you do 

from the peak itself, so that the topmost knob offers no surprise in 
the way of prospect, 

You pass the exact spot at which Mr. Elliott's sad and fatal 
happened, and find that the terrible slip occurred at a place 
es as a ee 

‘was aching and throbbing painfully, and now and then 


dizziness came over me. “= 





(get 





suggest humanity. The view descent-wards 
is appalling, and in this light it presented itself to 


tain which you have to descend looks terribly long and 
stones are still falling from the top; sometimes in twos 


il in the cannonade. Owing to these stones we cannot 

re we came up, We have to cut steps across pure ice, 
rthe Sattel, in order to attain to another ridge of rocks 
down nearer to the Little Schreckhorn. Christian says 
hew ridge will be much more difficult than the old one. As 
downwards, the rocks, about five fect below you, bulge out, 
that you see nothing until you crane over and cateh a 
of the bergschrund level far, far below. ‘The mountain is 
| intoltwo parts by the plain of the great bergschrund. The 
etphatic in their injunctions to take care. Kauffmann 
a, and Christian was the last on the rope. Our new ridge 
‘worse than the former one, and our progress was slow. 
one only could move while the others held ; seldom 


Tatefaftemoon sun was shining as we stood on the top 
long%snow gullies in the steep couloirs. In these the 
ld not hold at all, It slipped with us at every step, and 
of the first man on the rope were useless to his 
narrow gully was far too steep, and the snow wns 
for glissading, We got on slowly, and with Inbour and 












The Peak of Terror, 595 


“Walking one day, under dull leaden clouds which 
ry main, from the Col Ferrex to Courmayeur, I was 





‘Te seemed to my fancy as if the last day 

+ as if the destruction of the world had commenced by 

d waste this one melancholy spot which had already 
ye and life and hope in the pathos of final destruction. 


: something cnnobling. Every time that I attain to 
a patella BA A orci 

p elevation above the level of the carth, I recognise 

e ly Ge play OF elag “uplified to rank with the crests and 
‘of such lofty pecrs—I say pecrs, boastful though the 

4 may sound—because one is, if the work be done in the right 
for the time at least etherealised, sublimed to the sky-piercing, 
cating loftiness of these majestic mountains, Such a climb 

jin the mind a temporary grandeur, like that caused by 

a noble poem or seeing a great actor; and mountain, 


human history—so many experiences shrink up into 
a SS eee 








h melodies to which his friend Moore had put words, 

d rare were the gems she wore,"—and, as I listened to the 
ibered so well and had not heard for so long, the silent 

It from my eyes in large drops of mingled pain and pleasure, 
$ the man in all the world to best interpret such an ebullition 
had he observed it I was thankful to perceive that he 
ca of the agitation I had been in, when he finished his 
‘began his usual delightlul strain of conversation. Leigh 

eration was simply perfection, If he were in argument 
warm it might be—he would wait fairly and patiently to 
other side.” Unlike most eager conversers, he never 
Even to the youngest among his colloguists he always 
attention, and listened with an air of genuine respect to 

r they might have to adduce in support of their view of 
Me was peculiarly encouraging to young aspirants, 
fledgling authors or callow casuists ; and treated them with 
‘of condescension, or affable accommodation of his intellect 
rs, or amiable tolerance for their comparative incapacity, but, 
placed them at once on a handsome footing of equality 
complete level with himself, When, as was frequently the 
hhe found himself left master of the field of talk by his 
hearers, only too glad to have him recount in his own 

ous way one of his “good stories” or utter some of his 
things,” be would go on in a strain of sparkle, brilliancy, 
mess like a sun-lit stream in a spring meadow. Melodious 
alluring in accent, cloquent in choice of words, Leigh Hunt’s 
‘a5 delicious to listen to as rarest music. Spirited and fine 
‘mode of narrating a droll ancedoie in written diction un- 
‘is, his mode of telling it was still more spirited, and still 
fine, Impressive and solemn as is his way of writing down a 












Recollections of Writers. 599 
2 resolved that I would quietly try whether certain 


5 o Mr. Hone, under an assumed signature. ‘The initials’ 
were “M, H."—meaning thereby “Mary Howard ;” 


‘TL always called “ my old woman” when she didme 
il service rendered by Molitre’s old maid-servant to her 


‘im the light of egoism, but rather to regard as friendly chit-chat 
pleasant times agreeable in the recalling to both chatter 


H nde nite no (M.C.C.) to spend a few dys with them in 

r ‘suburban spot, then green with tall trees and 
and near-adjoining meadows, Pleasant were the walks taken 
Spam stbssn mich «host and ecveesiner ax Teigh Huse Some- 


iol ae Se Treat t hilamannc er Coviionee 
| expatiate upon with Leigh Hunt, a8 we went on ea 


— 








Recollections of Writers. 603, 


ther time x longer excursion was proposed, when Miss Lamb de 
d accompanying us, but said she would meet us on our return, 
walk was farther than she thought she could manage. It was to 
thaw: through charming lanes, and country by-roads, and we 
Bb Raelogiss baer dhtasoe old plant ook-cree ace, ‘This we could: 
Ot find ; it had perhaps fallen, after centuries of sturdy growth; but 
walk was delight(ul, Lamb being our conductor and confabulator. 
‘was on this occasion that~—sitting on a felled tree by the wayside 
a hedge in deference to the temporary fatigue felt by the least 
le walker of the three—he told us the story of the dog® that he 
| sired? owt and got rid of by that means. The rising ground of the 
the way-side seat, Charles Lamb's voice, our own responsive 
ghter—all seem present to us as we write. Mary Lamb was as 
das her word—when was she otherwise? and came to join un 
B our way back and be with us on our reaching home, there tor 
‘us comfortable in old-fashioned eaay-chairs for “a good reat” 
ore dinner. ‘The evenings were spent in cosy talk: Lamb often: 
taking his pipe, as he sat by the fireside, and pufiing quietly between 
‘the intervals of discussing some choice book, or telling some racy 
‘story, or uttering some fine thoughtful remark. On the first evening 
‘of our visit he had asked us if we could play whist, as he liked a 
mubber; but on our confessing to very small skill at the game, he 
said :—"Oh, then, you'e right not to play T hate playing with bad 

"However, on one of the last nights of our stay he said :— 
“Let's see what you're like, as whistplayers” ; and after a hand of 
‘two, finding us not to be so unproficient as: he had been led to be- 
lieve, said :—"If I had only known you were as good as this, we 
‘would have had whist every evening,” 

His style of playful bluntness when speaking to his intimates was 
strangely pleasant—nay, welcome : it gave you the impression of his 
Hiking you well enough to be rough and unceremonious with you; it 
showed you that he felt at home with you. It accorded with what 
‘you knew to be ut the root of an ironical assertion he made—that he 
always gave away gifts, parted with presents, and soi keepsakes. Tt 
underlay in sentiment the drollery and reversed truth of his saying 
tous: “I always call my sister Maria when we are alone together, 
Mary when we are with our friends, and Molt before the servants,” 

‘He was at this time expecting a visit from the Hoods, and talked 
‘over with us the grand preparations he and his sister meant to make 
in the way of due entertainment: one of the dishes he 
being no other than “bubble and squeak.’ We had a ‘sng, tox 


* See p. 627 of Gentleman's Magazine, fox December, 1. 5 


=. 




























DEAR Lapy DISDAIN. 


JUSTIN McCARTHY, AUTHOR OF “LINLEY ROCHFORD,” 
“A FAIR SAXON,” “MY ENEMY’S DAUGHTER,” &. 


CHAPTER XXXIL 
WHAT THE SEA GAVE UP. 


AVRARIE was alone for a few moments when her father 
H  leftherroom and went to make arrangements for their 
dismal Journey. Something in his manner distressed 
her. In all her personal pain and grief she had a 
Bra ercaconsiess that he did not seem to her very sory, His 
change in manner since the terrible news came made her heart 
sink. She suspected that since Christmas Pembroke was now 
removed from the way he would try all the more to persuade her 
| to marry Mr, Vidal, and she should have fresh arguments and new 
In a day or two perhaps Vidal would be in Durewoods, 
and nothing in life seemed to her now half so hard to bear as the 
thought of her engagement with him. She pressed her hands to her 
forehead. A resolve came. 

“T'll break it off myself!’ she determined. “I have a right! 
‘My life is my own—and I will doit! It is no shame now, since Ae is 
dead. I may love him now to my heart's content—and I could not 
even think of him while I remained still bound to Mr, Vidal,” 

“ Marie,” her father said, quietly entering the room, “ get ready, 
dear, if you will come, We shall start in half an hour exactly. 1 
have a letter or two to write first, which must go to the post.” 

“*T, too, have a letter to write," Marie thought. 

“Tn half an hour I’ll come,” Sir John said, 

“I shall be quite ready, dear,” Marie replied with a composure 
which puzzled him, 

‘The moment he had gone she went to her desk and began to 
write, ‘The purpose that she had in writing kept her nerves calm and 
steady. Her composure was surprising to herself now. Even 
while she wrote she found herself coldly looking the situation full in 
‘the face, and resolving that this was the best thing and the right 
thing to do. Her whole soul was now set on being free of her 


‘engagement with Ronald Vidal—free to think always over Christmas 





Dear Lady Disdain, 607 


d to believe that~—if it is any relief to you to condemn and 
‘me. I don't know what the usage of the world may be, but 
‘up my mind that there should be truth between you and 









“I donot ask you to forgive me. Tought to have asked your for- 
188 when 1 promised—not now when I release you from your 
and set you free. 
“Mane Crattonrr.” 


_ “When that leaves Durewoods,” said Maric, “1 am free" She 
“made up the letter, addressed it, went downstairs herself and placed 
the old-fashioned post-bag, and having met nobody on the way 
‘exine quietly back to her room, ‘There was a strange feeling of 
- exaltation—almost of exultation—about her, All high emotions are 
“in the same key ; and with resolve there always comes some thrill of 
‘the exultant mood. When Juliet’s lover knows all and has surveyed 
‘nt mind the worst and made up his resolve, there is something like 
exulting pride in the declaration that now after all he will visit Juliet, 
and that very night. Our heroine thought with a kindred pride that 
‘now she was free to look on the face of the man she loved. At that 
‘moment came back to her the quiet, warning words of Dione Lyle 
‘the day before. 

“Miss Lyle was right I suppose,” she thought, “f may think of 
him so now at least, since he is dead. Even the poor girl whom he 
loved would not blame me now, if he could know.” 

Her father came and quietly handed herto the carriage, maintaining 
a dignified case while in the presence of the servants, but relapsing 
‘into ostentatious sympathy when they were alone together and on 
their way. It was little more than midday, but the skies were covered 
‘and the scene was dim with mist, They had a tong drive, and they 
did not talk much. The momentary elevation of spirit which Marie 
had felt when she made her resolve had passed away, and she had 
now only a sense of utter loneliness. She looked into the future and 
shuddered at its blankness : and she looked back on the past and 
wondered why she ever was happy. 

“For all the sympathy Sit John Challoner now expressed, his 
daughter could not bring herself to turn towards him in confidence 
and love. It was not merely that she could not bring herself to this; 
‘but it did not scem in the nature of things that she should make 
‘the attempt, or that there could be any confidence between them 

any more, Some vague idea that she had not been fairly dealt 
with floated across her mind, It had not much shape; but there it 


lnc T) 











he could once have her safely back in the 
e might faint then, or cry, or do anything she liked. 
ot himself think now of the sight they were to see, It was 


something covered with a great rug or blanket. Marie 
The time has come, she thought to herself, now. 
conceit passed through her. “I know now that I could 
t i execution—it wouldn't be half so bad as this |" 

_ “This is the body," Mr. Sands said with superiluous explanation, 
‘The body covered with its rug seemed to lord it over the place Mke 
visible King Death himself, Mr. Sands spoke in a low tone as one 





Cy 
H 
& 
a 
z 


“Shall 1?” Mr, Sands asked, putting his hand upon the rug and 
making a motion as if to remove it, 

“If you please,” Sir John answered. 

‘Marie found hemelf murmuring some pryer—to whom, for what, 
she scarcely knew. 

‘Mr. Sands tumed down the rug. A pale, waxy face was seen. 
At did not look awfal ; it did not look human ; it did not sccm as if 


‘Marie stooped oyer it for a second holding her breath. Sir John 
Ps down too, puzzled, amazed ; and then Maric tore her arm from 

Sanita se SO Sint UY ie BS RAT a 
“Oh, it's met de! Ob, thank God {” 


= | 











Vand her father, who did not speak much, brought her to the 
where he said she could rest more comfortably, and she 
there feeling like a prisoner reprieved before his death 
has ‘been wholly carried out and who has not quite 
‘fnimself so far as to understand his joy. 


* The young lady is better, T hope?” Mr, Sands asked, putting his 
a3 ede elcorcscsly manor ceepie|Shw/reo) Tae 


“Sale well now, thank you, Mr, Sands," Marie answered, 
to speak to anybody. “I never fainted before. But I was so 
to find that it wag not the friend we thought.” 

Grief we all know is easier to keep in its place than joy. But it is 
expecially hard to keep from talking of one’s Joy. Dear Lady Dis- 
‘dain found it a severe trial not to pour out to her father all the sense 
of gladness which had so completely overmastered her, Something 
told her, however, only too surely that he would not share her emo- 
tions, and ft was therefore a sort of relief to her even to express them 
| thus faintly to respectable Mr. Sands. 

| =From what Mr. Sands has been telling me, however, I fear we 
| ‘enust not look on things as quite so certain,” her father said, 
| chillingly. “Two yonng men, you say, took a boat at Baymouth, 
Mr, Sands?” 

“Two young men, Sir John, Such is the information we have 
received—two young men take a boat at Baymouth; no one goes 
with them. Z#é body is supposed to be one of them.” 

“Tam sure he is not drowned,” Marie said, ina low tone, “I 
‘know he is safe.” 

“Well, well, we needn't try to argue that point," Sir John said. 
* OF course we all hope he is safe.” 

“Odd, this one having the letter to the young lady in his pos- 
session,” Mr. Sands remarked. 

“No, not particularly odd,” Sir John was quick to observe, for he 
did not chooge to have it supposed that any odd things could 
‘happen where his daughter was concemed. “I dare say this poor 
fellow was a messenger. Mr. Pembroke’s servant very probably. 
Tia real Marie? Was that he?” 


ore ye fae” | 
-, 














at her and flung her away ? 

heart leaped with a nameless, indefinable terror as she heard 
‘the door, and then saw it open and her father come in. 
dl wa BE Ge ae eter oe NT 
jiece. Dear Lady Disdain had never before known 
ie ad ‘never had anything to be afraid of; and the common 
fer death, storms, wrecks, axid such like would have fousid her 
d brilliant, But she was for the moment cowed by this 
arious man, who she supposed might beat her and kill her if) 
TE she was capable or conscious of any distinct wish or 
¢ at the time it was that he would kill her in some quick way, 

| not strike anc beat her first, 
if John was now as pale as she, and he trembled more than she 


 Marie—Marie,” he said, “1 have come to beg your pardon, 
T—I want you to forgive me. I do not know what came 
‘me—but I didn't mean what I said. I used to be very pas- 
‘once, but not this long time—only it came out then in x 
‘mom Won't you forgive me, my dear?" 

"He mistook Marie's hesitation. She was too much bewildered 
and alarmed to collect her senses and reply, for this presentation of 

her father was as strange and dreadful as the other, 

“ My dear, my dear, do you refuse to forgive me? Good God, are 

you afraid of me? I'll go on my knees to you.” 

“Ob, my dear,” the poor bewildered, heart-torn gitl cried, throwing 
her arms round his neck, “don’t speak in that way; it is like 
madness! I forgive you, dear. I forgive you, a thousand times, 1 
‘know you didn't mean it—it was nothing. Do not think about it 

| any more, "am not afraid of you, dear—oh no, not a bit. Why 
should I be afraid?” 

| She now petted and soothed him almost as one might « child, 

seemed, indeed, a sort of child to her. At first she feared in her 

emme he was really going mad, but at last she came to 

understand things better, Tt was only the farious outburst of = 

















Dear Lady Disdain. 627 
a pessoas ween che apne ae thewng 


t ‘him by or through his child, but who could not quite 
fs ers nine of sis martyrdom. ‘Marie felt already like a 


her claim to her father’s Jove and shelter. Could a 
itl endure this long? Would life on such conditions 


having? 
she felt was that she had not merely lost her father, but that 
changed her futher, given her 2 new and sadly different 
ne whom she hardly knew how to speak to, whom she 
‘at with uneasiness and dread, who seemed to shrink from her 
her eyen when he was most civil and kind in words, 
pg of the'fairy story is always the strange, unfamiliar, 
whom the perplexed parent cannot warm to—here the 
the parent. Seldom surely was a gitl’s heart more 
rly tried. For the new vein of love which had been breathed 
aisite ag was the sensation it brought, only seemed to have 
opened that her heart might bleed‘to death. Her love was to 
n endurance, a miserable secret, not a blessing, She 
‘out that she could love and that she did love, only Just in 
to find out that she could not have a lover, If Christmas 
‘Pembroke was not dead—if that hope and belief brought a rush of 
joy, what a cold reaction followed it! His name was nothing to her 
‘bait a name to make her blush. By the strangest combination of 
unhappy chances, love seemed to have brought to her nothing but 

_ the neevt of renunciation, of repression, and of concealment. 
‘Vet in one way her heart and her spirit never changed. She was 
still glad that she had broken suddenly and decisively from her 
ement with Ronald Vidal. She felt her check burn with shame as 
the | ‘of him. She could have thanked Heaven now thathe had 
ov r It-was well to have any Vittle sense af reich emig- 
‘as well as the foreground of nex Mhongpio. 


em top hr pa a | 








fiz The Gentleman's Magazine, 
mir i ite screr: tot we have talked of all that, and it cant he 


whet mow.” 
cab went rear. m2 Marie was left for awhile to herself. Se 
very minextie and was oppressed with the conviction tht 
che Te? eecraces cos imow that she was fallen from power and wa 
wwas = some semse a relief to her when Janet, Die 
¢ mit rresecced herself with a message from her mistes 
Mis: Lyie wocid Eke most particularly to see Miss Chal 
ism ¢ Miss Coacore wockd not mind venturing out, as the dy 
ces Ge, Nis: Cocmer would not have minded venturing ott in 
<x. Gxy for a Kindly look and a loving word from 
FF :ce in! se crocised 2o go to Miss Lyle at once. But ste 
= tas; Sears for she felt convinced that Miss Lyles 
mesg: Sox Sire senething w do with Christmas Pembroke 
S17 Eaow iz Swe minutes that he is safe, or that heis 
Jos 7 Mun: si.¢ <> bersel; and come what might she must, for he 
swe stk: ind ie woman's dignity, not show what she felt too much 
Miss Lxie might have sent only to ask something abost 
vagce romours perhaps. And Marie must be 





































ai the worst might have occured 
sFeaty tocched always by Dione’s affection for 





somes and her own—they must not be told, even to 
sone Lyle. To no human heart could she reveal 
seth that her futher and she were divided for ever— 
ske had known him, was lost to her. Nor would 
2 broken with Ronald until Ronald himself bad 


zrthened with to meet the one only friend in the 
m she would gladly open all her heart! And Dione 
eyes and would see any sudden evidence of peculiar 
emozica, and would ask the reason, and if she did ask, what could 
‘Marie answer? There was nothing for Marie, she thought as she 
went along, but to school herself into the most absolute self-control, 
and let no surprise betray her into emotion or into inconsiderate 
words. Of all tasks that could be imposed on her, any task of con- 
cealment, the accomplishing of even the Tost Yous (aud, was the 
hardest strain to put on Dear Lady Disdsin, whose words, Glew 
her thoughts as the sound follows the fash. 

















Dear Lady Disdain. 033 
Lyle, why are you angry with me, and what have I done? 
understand a word, Surely you don't think I knew—ch, no, 


y seeraed against. ‘her, though she was not conscious of 
injured any one except Ronald Vidal. She had come to 
Lyle for sympathy, and found that there too she was looked 















ces. What good could come of that? He knew you were 
d to be married,” 

plucked up a little spirit now. “I don't see what that has 
‘todo with it, Miss Lyle, I suppose people are not to be cut off 
‘from every word of kindness and friendship in this world because 
‘they are engaged to be married. We—we—liked each other always 
he and I. We were friends, At least I liked him—of course I did 
—and I think he liked me. Why should he not wish to say good-bye 
Jo me when he was going away? It was very very kind of him— 
and I don’t think I deserved it.” 

“ How would Mr. Vidal have liked it, do you think?” 

“T shouldn't have thought it necessary to ask Mr. Vidal's consent 
even if 1 had known,” Lady Disdain said, colouring. “1 didn’t 
know. But he would never have thought of objecting—why should 
he object? 1 am sure sie would not have objected unless she is a 
greater fool than I hope she is, for his sake,” she added, with one 
womanlike and irrepressible touch of bitterness towards “the other,” 

“Who is she?" x 
“That young lady—Miss Jansen, of course.” 

“What has she to do with this, dear?" 

“The girl to whom Mr. Pembroke is engaged?" : 
Dione had almost forgotten that old story, and in her present 
she could not even pretend to believe in it. For the 
ir erat le apa Marie was indulging in some 

Tittle coquettish affectation. 
ey You don't believe that story, dear. You 

you don’t, You know very well that the poor lad cares no 
pemedac zl tent do wis coeur 


| = 






634 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


Marie opened wondering eyes. 

“But he did care for her—he said so,” Marie faltered, ame | 
breathless. 

“Not he, dear ; he never told any such untruth.” 

“ But, Miss Lyle, whom then did he care for?” 

Dione looked into her open, wondering eyes. 

“Either you are a better actress than I thought, dear, or you are 
more innocent than some of us were at the age of ten. Did you 
never know with whom Christmas Pembroke really was in love?” 

“ Never—except Miss Jansen. Every one said Miss Jansen” — 

“ And you don’t know still—you don’t guess even now?” 

“Oh, Ican’'t guess. I'll not try to guess,” Marie said, growing very 
red; “and it couldn't be, Miss Lyle,” she added rather incur 
sistently. 

“It could be, dear—it was—and it is; and I can tell you I wish 
it had never been, for his sake. Indeed, I thought you must have 
known it” 

“Oh” 

‘The exclamation was partly a protest: but it was also a ay of 

wonder and delight. 
“And that was why I was a little sharp, my dear,” Dione went on. 
“I thought you knew it, and were pleased with it—I mean I beganto 
think this when I got his message to-day, and found that he had been 
trying to see you. I never thought it before, and I don’t think it 
now. Yes, Marie, he was in love with you all the time.” 

“It can't be,” said Marie, “I don’t think it can be” 

“He told me so, Marie.” 

Another irrepressible note of delight was heard. 

~ Yes, I extorted it from him. Poor fellow! Well, I am glad to 
tell you all this now, Marie, because it is better you should know. 1 
wish I had told you before.” 

“So do I,” Marie said in a low voice. 

“Yes, you might have known better how to act. Now you know, 
and your course is clear, Marie.” 

“Is it? I wish it were.” 

“Of course you must not see this poor lover of yours any more.” 

Marie started. 

“ You wouldn't surely think of seeing him again after that? What 
would be the use of it? Why should you torment him for no 
purpose? I think it would be very wrong of you, Marie; and I 
know you too well to believe you bee Ao anyling, wrong, 

Promise me, Marie, that you will not see Hia”” : 3 

Marie was silent. Hoersoul was too touch sbrorbed in werner 























Table Talk. 639 


as collected! and arranged by Maimonides, of which the first 
o the belief in the existence of God, the second five to 





rom the time of Moses to ‘the present day: it has been the 

" yin the Unity of the Godhead, immortality of the 

, the divinity of the Jaw, and the inspiration of the prophets. 

i¢ judicious reader, however, will not find it difficult to reconcile 

ew of the stability of the Jewish faith with the “English Jew’s" 

as to the changes that Judaism has undergone. I can 

- synupathise with the critics who defend the old Jewish prayers 

the charge of intolerance. Literally speaking there is, no 

bt, a good deal of intolerance in all sectarian prayere—more 

lly those which have come down from olden times; but if 

matter is put comparatively, and if we make allowance for the 

verlastingly disgraceful persecutions under which the sons of Abra- 

ary sitions it will be easily granted by all reasonable Chris- 

tigns that the tone of Jewish faith and observances has been 

throughout the ages exceptionally and nobly tolerant. A writer in 

the Queen, referring to that part of the article relating to conversion, 

observes that the present Prime Minister is a Jewish convert to 

Christianity. On this point I have a letter from the “English 

Jew,” who say ‘The Premier's father had a quarrel with the 

Portuguese synagogue about money matters, and thereupon [saac 

D'Isracli left the synagogue, and his son somchow became a church- 

goer; but it is a fact that Benjamin Disraeli has never been baptised 
asa Christian.” 







From the descendants of the great Admiral Tromp in Holland, 
through my Dutch correspondent, come further items as to the pro» 
priety or impropriety of the English practice of speaking of the 
famous sea warriors of that fiumily as Van Tromps. According 
to these notes from the country between which and ourselves there 
existed « good deal of hostility, off and on, in the days of the 
‘Tromps, I learn that the father of the first admini) was killed in a 
fight with an “ English pirate," while according to British author 
ities he lost his life in an engagement off the coast of Guinea with 
an “English cruiser.” This patriotic discrepancy, however, between 
the two stories, docs not go to the point of the name. Itscems clear 
‘enough from these authoritative memoranda that neither the first 


— wu 
















A Dog and his Shadow. 643 


Jet's see what the lad has in him. Give him all the rope 

i —."" She left her sentence unfinished, but it was taken 

¢ ‘approval. In short, Abel at Longworth had at first 
ty much of a fly in amber, and, on that principle, treated asa 
curiosity. But, when all the various motives that actuated 
push him were combined into a whole, the result was 

of generous aid and friendship that Abel would find 





ed to taking orders when the choice was put to him, 
bring himself to face St. Kit’s again, while thé portrait 
Keeper who had singled him out from the herd still 
engraved upon bis memory. 
‘Wars of the Stars" were unfinished still. ‘They lay at the 
of his old trunk, and had scarcely advanced beyond “ the 
seven mansions of the moon.” Abel showed his gratitude 
best way—by hard work and plenty of it. He had not 
his own career; but he accepted it, as he had accepted all 
that had come to him since he was born, Fortune was 
gil of favours ; it seemed only to those who tried to take them 
ce that she refused them. He thought he could understand 
houses like Longworth came to be built by stupid people : 


_ Possibly, therefore, he had a right to be more grateful to Fortune 
herself than to her blind agents the Deanes, and all the more 
seause one who has trained himself to be a mystic ean never train 

to became wholly otherwise, Even yet it is impossible to 

| answer the question, What will he become? It is only certain that 
he is doing his best to grasp at the substance and to throw away the 
dream, and is therefore a preternaturally wise dog. 1 emve his 


pardon—min. 

Beatrice had not seen him for a considerable time: and when he 
‘eame over to dinner the next day with Mr. Deane she found that 
he also had shared in the general change. The slave of fortune had 
set the laws of physiognomy at defiance by looking like a man of 

inherent energy and iron will, even as he had sct other 

eee ee tet being bom © tsp betas taal eR 

maker, and looking so much like a gentleman that nobody would 

‘ever dream of speculating whether he was one or no, He was 

still grave and silent by habit, and unable to talk to men and 
7 ete 


— Pa 










A Dog and his Shadow. 645 
wait Uncle George?” she asked. “If it was murder, 


ety 
een vias doyou ula of girls’ logic, eh? Fancy 
ve try murder at sessions, and not wanting rascals to be 


jealing a pair of boots, and a very bad pair wo, He stole 

certainly as if I'd seen him. And what do you think 

's eloquence got the jury to find?” 
asked Annie, 







® They found manslaughter.” 
Ob, uncle!" exclaimed Beatrice triumphantly. “ And you talk 
logic | I don't think I’m very stupid to ask what that means." 
I can't say you are, I suppose they'd heard of murder 
‘manslaughter, and thought it the regular form for saying 
ght he ought to be punished in proportion to their doubts, 
muddle of that sort.” 
{ had you to punish him for manslaughter?” asked Annie. 
bless me—there’s woman's law again! We sent them 
and then they found * Not guilty: and we recommend him to 
fey. Ah, Herrick, you muddled them gloriously.” 
“I did my best, sir,” said Abel. “I agree with you the verdict 
have been guilty and no mercy.” 
And yet you defended him !” said Beatrice obstinately. “ Would 
| you have spoken against him if you'd thought him innocent? To 
my girls’ logic that means the same thing. And is that the work of 
| men's most ambitious profession—to defend small thieves? At 
any rate, If I were a barrister, I would not go below a high 
” 


“Tt was my duty,” said her master, in the tone of authority that 
she had entitled him to use towards her from the beginning, and 
ee noel ty their relation of teacher and Pepi 

frowned a as he spoke : she was opposing him for ‘he’ 

eeaeiar stiles cnn 


—— a 















A Dog and his Shadow, 649 
T should have insisted on his making you his confidant— 


right. I don't know who the girl is, and 1 won't know, 
that she is not a fit and proper person to be the wife of 
I did think—I did think,” he said quickly and loudly, 


Twas proud of him: and let me tell you, though you 
‘think much of such things, a young man doesn’t ride, and 
ot, and row, and bat like my Tom by being a fool He isn't _ 
“nine young men out of ten—he’s no milksop, but he never 
pleased me, nor his poor mother, since he was born, Girls are: 


s ‘You astonish met? suid Abel: and he was astonished indeed. 
Tt would astonish a statue—if it only knew Tom from head to 
‘T've known him ever since he was born! But I don't want 
T've told you all the circumstances, and I want to know 
what you'd do if you were me.” 
IRE nob ee case for en oplalons ac Really I don’t know"—— 
“Nonsense. You do know. Anybody would know, It's a ques- 
tion of right and wrong—everybody knows the difference between 
‘ight and wrong, The Vanes, and the Deanes who came after them, 
have always looked forward to a baronetcy at least—we ought to 
‘have had it long ago, and should if we'd been as ready to lick the 
mud off voters’ boots as some I could name, You don't suppose I 
built Longworth, and damaged my estate, for myself to die in, FE 
‘built it for my great-great-grandchildren to live in. The Vanes of 
‘Longworth, I needn't tell you, were one of the best families in all 
‘England, and the Eliots another, and the Deanes represent them. 
And I'm not going to cross the stock by any deed of mine.” 
Abel's face turned deep red, Well had it been for him that he 
had bribed the tinker, though the vague purpose dimly gathering 
about him is probably far more defined in our eyes than in his own. 
‘He had never forgotten the sting of that morning when Beatrice had. 
been told that he was no gentleman, and her uncle's angry contempt 
for peasant blood recalled it bitterly. It gave practical point to his re- 
verie, It became doubly needful therefore that he should now speak: 
asa gentleman would be expected to speak : and what better guide 
re eas tn way tn Which Wy Aa 


Ime 4 








= 
650 


The Cenllemay', Magazin 


“OF course, si 












TE Base blood must not mire. ee 
nd Eliots, and Deanes, That is clear, Ip jg ina” 
son should think of such g thing, I shop’ J 
thority.” 
i be There can be no doubt af 
cle: le thed freely, 
through the test 38 well as if hy be: 
Selves, 
“You are telling me exactly what hal 
a disappointe -,, To 
mess haye i yy 
: along, + must $4) 
, I am = all ise 
and ma’ JUst as wel proO! 


ov 
-On't say you won', $2" 
*# 80 back from ny gett 





finger, 
7 








A Dog and his Shadow. 655 
to suspect Milly of disloyalty, but to be con- 










he gencrous ring of his own speech startled him. Surely he was 
ing like a gentleman now: Beatrice herself must have owned it 
she been by to hear. It certainly startled ‘Tom. Abel was 
‘the most generous of rivals or the coldest of lovers. To love 
y coldly being of course impossible, it followed that Abel was 
‘most gencrous rival under the sun. His whole face opened into 
as he held out his hand. 
“Toknew you were a good fellow!” he said, in triumphant ad- 
on. “Then I know what to do, We start fair now, Dhave 
‘horse, and you shall have the dog-cart and groom, as you're not 
nuch in the saddle. We are in good time to catch the first up-train; 
and then you must beat me if you can.” 
“Catch the up-train? What on earth do you mean ?” 
Bee wad trom, vyaratig with ooo licsen nt tateg 
| able to reduce the whole question to a trial of speed and energy. 
“I know what you're going to say—I shall not tell my father, 
must be able to come back and say to him either that I give her up 
freely, ar else that I give up Longworth to Bee and Annie with all 
the pleasure in the world. There would only be another row, and 
igs much best to do first and talk after. There—I’m off to the 
sable, and if you're aftaid I shall steal a start, you had better 
“come too,” 

“ You mean you are going to tell her what I have told you?” 

“Ofcourse Ido. If she’s free, she's free: but you ought to have 
‘a fair chance of keeping your first place in the ficld, 1 might have 
gone off without telling you, just as you were not bound to tell me 
she is free. But we're quits now, and the deuce take the hind~ 
most." 

"No," said Abel, “Whoever she likes best will come soon 
enough, whether he comes first or second, Go if you like—I only 
want her to choose freely, and shall not interfere,” 

“And that's the man who fainted in the street)when he lost a 


a S 










A Dog and his Shadow, 657 
how she bad first appeared to him in the garden : ep Bae 





ly still, But he had no doubt that his choice was right and 


sigh at the loss of what lay in his hand, but he was bound to 
the highest ideal he could find, and, if Longworth happened 
ne with it, that was Fate’s look out, for which he was in no way 

ible. “Beatrice is not the less Beatrice for being rich,” he 
d himself; and there he cannot be said to have judged 





from a waking or sleeping dream, he was roused by a 
confusion of bells ringing, of hurrying feet, and of shouts and 
ms, a5 if the house were falling about his ears. The i 
m was at the end of a long passage that Joined it to the bulk of 
‘building, and was carefully removed from the approach of noise, 50 
t for a moment he fancied he was in the midst of waking from a 
¢. Then, for one moment more, he connected the con- 
with Tom’s departure. But that could in no way account for 
he heard. He ron out into the hall and was almost smothered 
ssmoke—he escaped to the terrace, where he was met with cries 
_ of what he had no need to be told—that Longworth was on fire. 
‘Tt must have been discovered late, for the whole park was already 
filled with the glare, and showers of sparks were rushing up to the 
sky. ‘The houschold was gathered together on the terrace, looking 
‘on helplessly. Indecd there was nothing clse to be done, for the 
‘nearest town was many miles away. Abel caught sight of Mr. Deane, 
and Annie rin up to him, crying to him breathlessly— 
“ Bee—Tom—where are they ?” 
“Good God! Are they not here? I forget though—Tom is 
‘safe—but “— 
Annie could only stretch her arm towards the house,“ Save her!” 
she cried out. “In the turret room over the laurels” — 
A Jadder might do it, miss,” said an under-gardener, who, having: 
‘but few wits to mind, took care of them easily, 
“A ladder !” caught up a dozen voices in chorus, while dozen 
pairs of feet started off a dozen different ways. 
“ But there ben’t one nearer than the village,” said the under- 


gardener. 
Annie clasped and wrung her hands. * Blankets!” suggested 
‘Vou. XV, N.S, 1875. “Tai 


Ee 


























A Dog and his Shadow, 659 


se loss she remembered to have heard, ‘Then another gave way, 
nd was likewise buried. ‘Then a third, and then a fourth, till only 

remained. These pressed on till one fell ill—it was like the 
climax of a tragedy. She hurriedly taraed to the title-page 
the name of the survivor, for she knew instinctively that the 
would dic—but there was none. And then she read how 
man, whose life was the nfost important of them all, bore 
like a hero, only anxious to bring home before he died 
of discovery that he alone could explain, But how was 
onward? Surely the nameless sixth man, who told the 
must haye been the greater hero of the two. He never said 
it was clear that he must have had the strength to have saved: 
a dozen times by pressing on and giving up the desperate 
his friend, He could not conceal that it was necessary to 
all night, and to carry and tend the dying man all day, and to 
he whole work of a whole expedition with one brain und one 
of hands, What if this sixth man also should give way! She 
‘on breathlessly, heedless of how the time flew, absorbed in the 
nes of these madmen or martyrs, till a sense of actual heat began 
come upon her, as if her body had been carried to the tropics as 
asher mind, At first she wok no notice of this, for the night 





household was no doubt in bed and asleep long ago. But no matter 
|\Bow fate or how exrly one may be, there is always sure to bo some 
‘ody who fs earlier or later, Whether two in the morning is to be 
Tate or early ig a matter of opinion, but at any rate the 
| moonlight across the turf showed her that somebody was up and 
about as well as she, and that the somebody was a man, ‘The 
ae wan Nis Sy sot i es Bao wibo 
window, the hour, and the warm alr made up a theatrical combina 

tion that absurdly suggested a scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet," and 
~ = E R eee 








A Dog and his Shadow, 66¢ 


think of Annie and ‘Tom, and her Uncle George, and pray 
SePiReSsatet hac whine aus ah Ee hak ao 
‘ich moments the most unselfish must be driven by over- 
ering elemental rage to think first of self, and Beatrice had culti- 
self Gr too largely to be the most unselfish person in the 
_ Not that unselfishness would have been of the smallest use, 
that she could not ald herself, far less others, and there is 


h oF eaping fora ber open window upon the gravel walk 

Tt was just possible that by some marvellous accident she 

t fall more than thirty feet without breaking a limb. But it was 
certain death, or worse than death, and not even the advan- 
flames behind her could bring her to consciously try the cast of 
through the air. Ifshe must kill hersplf to escape from death, 
‘were better ways of suicide. It would have been better to be 

‘daa buming ship, with the bosom of the sea as a refuge. 

“And was she, the darling of the house, to be left to perish in her 
ison without a thought of aid? Her uncle and the servants might 
‘de grappling with the fire; Annie, she felt with horror, might be 

‘equal peril — but where was Tom? Where was he on whose 
‘strength she had been learning to rely? Would Milly have been 
Teft in such a strait with these two young men both in the same 
house with her? 

Neither came—neither made any sign of coming. Every now and 
then she fancied she heard steps or voices approaching the corer 
‘of the house where she was waiting for death, but they as regu- 
arly died away again, She did not recognise the helpful sound of 
even one voice she knew. It wasas if she had not only been for- 
gotten by all to whom she was dear, but as if affection itself had 
perished in the flames, All this had been the work of moments, 
Tong as it has taken to tell. She herself would have said that she 
fainted away at the first sight of the flames. 

And then happened what had all the semblance of a miracle. It 
would have been nothing out of the common in the Lives of the 
Saints, but in the case of an English young lady, who was not only 
‘no saint, but thought herself something of an exprif fort, and did not 
believe in tuning so much as a hat without the help of flesh and 
ae ‘was much more than strange. ‘Though she turned faint, she 

entirely lose consciousness. In this half trance-like condition 
hs hereeii into the air, and vwalted through it, 
‘with no fear of falling, till she sank gently down upon the | 








d anybody might be anywhere. Beatrice and Annie 

ior sheinigte in the gardener’s cottage, while Abel 

and forwards with Mr, Deane in front of the now 

pile till it rose in the grey morning light too black and {00 
to look spon, 

talking till past sunrise, Annie fell asleep ; but Beatrice did 

eyes. ‘To ber, the disasters of the night hud not been 


ridden to think of Milly's lover in the most natural way, 
thought of him in every way but one, and could not find it 
to toll herself outright that it was not for her sake he had 
‘none else had dared. It had been only because she was a 
‘no doubt, and not because she was Beatrice Deane; but the 
that it might have been otherwise was too sweet to throw away. 
sort of girl could this Milly be, who had been chosen out of all 
d by an ambitious man who yet had it in him to risk life, 


[Abel Herrick, like many another great man before him, was throwing 
“himself away. 

“Everything that happens,” she thought, “comes to the same 
“thing—I must escape while there is time. I am actually come to 
the pass of thinking about love and lovers, like the silliest of them 
all. Twill not be turned aside, even by fire. Tam of no use here 
‘A will sce Mrs, Burnett, as I intended, in spite of everything ; and 
‘not another day shall pass before I have made up my mind what my 
life is to be. Only it shall be worthy of a human being, and there- 
fore it shall not be at home." 

She rose and left the cottage while it was still carly, taking care 
‘not to wake Annie, for fear of having to discuss a purpose that was 
fally formed but which no amount of explanation would ever make 
her sister understand. She avoided the house also, for she knew 
‘that Abel was still upon the terrace, and she was shy of the first 
‘meeting with one who had come to represent theJife from which she 
was really trying to fly. She must thank him, of course; but before 
others, and when her head was cool and her heart clear, 

‘Mrs, Burnett lived in an old farm-housc, or rather farmer's eot- 
tage, about a mile from Longworth. She might bave hada much 
better dwelling, but she preferred this apparently for the reason that 


Ss 



















A Dog and kis Shadow, 665 
ch good in coming sooner, as there was nothing to be done, I 
pose you came to sce my mother? I’m sorry for that, as she has 
‘over to see ifshe can be any help to you, I wonder you didn’t 
‘by the way.” 

trice felt more than vexed—if she had only thought of her 
first and herself afterwards she would not have had her walk 
nothing, beyond an interview with the Captain, 

"Well, U'm very glad you did not disturb yourself," she said, "It 
” Re ae Te eae nce eee 


Biss to ereeet a “When a building blazes like 

hat, and everybody is safe, the only thing ix to let it burn out, and 
"the quicker the better. It was ax much as I could do to keep that 
nother of mine from rushing out without a shawl to catch her death 
Feold." 
Beatrice shuddered as she thought of the death from which she 
_ herself had been saved by a miracle. To that, however, she could 
‘not cven allude: something kept her from speaking to Captain 
‘Burnett of Abel, “Quite right of you," she said. “I should never 
have forgiven myself if our fire had given you or your mother cold. 
But I am really glad to see you,” she said more kindly, thinking that 
Sleepy Dick was but Sleepy Dick after all, and was to be allowed 
the privilege of following out his own nature. “You are the very 
Jast [ expected to see. If I had been asked where you were I should 
have doubted between Canada and Australia, but I should never 
have guessed Longworth.” She thought it as well to show him at 
the outset of their renewed acquaintance that his movements were 
no concern of hers. A man who could sleep through a conflagration 
no more than a mile off might still be sleepy cnough to have some 
Fingering remnant left of his dream of folly. 

Lee split the difference, you see. Here I am, and very glad, I 
can tell you, to be at home again, I suppose you're not inclined to 
wait formy mother? She won't be long, I fancy, when she misses 
you, and I'll go if you like and tell her you're here.” 

“Please don’t trouble yourself I shall meet her, T dare say— 
and I have more to say to her than I have time for, I'm afraid, to- 
day. I'll say good bye, now—I ought to be at home." And so, 
having brought this exciting and interesting conversation to an end, 
she held out her hand. 

‘The Captain, as if to avoid touching it, looked straight before him 
aad kept his hands in his pockets as he walked ‘by ‘nex site alateq, 
the Jane. It looked almost like — 


‘i 



























The Philosophy of the Falk Laws. 675 


don the bad: so do the elements, They knew the sorrows of 
and wept when he wept; they knew his joys, and joined 

the festive circle; they laughed and sang and danced; 
ouched the lyre under the willow trec, and wrote immortal 
on the banks of flowing rivers. The worship of such deities 








iferent the picture presented hy the Christian Chouretst 


phich it appeared. But it had from the start a character of iov 
Te was + Church as well as a religion, It was content at the 

to assert simply its independence of, or rather its distinction 

the State, and to lay down for the guidance of its subjects the 

unction “Render unto Ca:sar the things which are Cassars"— 
that may of course be made to justify all the different 

»which the Church has assumed toward society. Take for 

ce St. Thornas Aquinas, who was surely not without logical 

0 ‘Mr. Hallam found but three men in. England whe had 

Epes is. canocised philosopher, and. 7 shall surely. not claim the 
tile and honours of the fourth. But in an extract from St. Thomas, 
whieh has just fullen under my eye, there is given as his definition 
of Divine law that it is “concise, clear, and infallible” ; yet when 
‘this same philosopher enters on the subject of Church and State he 
ds obliged to write a preliminary treatise to determine what is 
‘Cresar’s and what God's. The same fallacy runs through the entire 
scholastic philosophy, indeed through the whole philosophical 
Witerature of the Church. It assumes that there is somewhere a 
consistent Christian theory of the relations between Church and 
‘State, and it pays the secular reason the compliment of discussion ; 
‘but in the solution of the grave problem the New ‘Testament, in 
spite of its authority, is of no more use than the Oracle of Delphi to 
‘the leader of a Greek army. ‘The rule in question was accorded a 
place among the tenets of the Church, like so many other obscure 
‘utterances, because, first, the mystical is always very effective in 
‘seasons of religious fervour ; second, it avoided an immediate mpture 
Ce Neebilimlbede alight dire iat g iain 


 _— 














The Philosophy of the Falk Laws. 677 


“The natural result of this policy followed the Napoleonic ware. 
jeric Williaa 111. was nearly frightened out of his senses by the 
social convulsions through which he had passed, and like 
y weak minds unexpectedly delivered from great danger, he 
into a morbid and preposterous pictisen. ‘That which had 
with his ancestors a matter of selfish policy became with him a 
‘of faith ; if they bad made the Church the domestic he made 
the bride of the nation. While the public service was going to 
“pieces from general demoralisation, the King was trifling with his 
P and his liturgies, and his schemes of universal salva~ 
‘Stein tried in vain to give a more Protestant direction to the 
‘royal mania, It was part of his Majesty's belief that Prussia needed 
‘not sectarian spirit, but an exalted Catholic orthodoxy, and this he 
‘determined to fuse into the life, and the character, and the institu- 
‘ions of Prussia. Unfortunately the times were ripe for such an 
enterprise, and the poor King succeeded but too well. The two 
Establishments, which had been in some anxiety about the conse- 
‘quences for religion, and even for a few years afterwards had wembled 
Test the cry for political reform should prove louder than the exhor- 
tations of the Church, accepted this solution of the problem with 
satisfaction, and continued to share their common patrimony in a 
manner, 

Nothing indeed but the most suicidal jealousy could have disturbed 
their good relations, The two sects had lived so long together 
fn Prussia that each had won its own line of supporters, and an 
extensive conversion from one to the other was scarcely to be 
‘expected ; so that they had proselytising zeal but in a feeble degree, 
‘They were sagacious enough to see that secularism, their chief foe, 
‘wasa common foe, and to combine against it, No trifling interests 
were indeed in question. During three hundred years the ecclesias- 
tical power had been tightening its grasp, and within that time it had 
succeeded in converting the State into a disguised theocracy. From 
his cradle to his coffin the subject was nursed by the ministers of 
religion, They baptised him at the font, they watched over him ar 
school, they married him, and they said the funeral rites over his 
grave. The only option was between systems of clerical service 
which might be equally odious. And if the power of the Church, by 
which term is to be understood the ecclesiastical element and not 
any particular sect,—if the power of the Church with the people had 
been nourished by three centuries of empire, its pride and dignity 
‘were supported by the closest alliance with the secular nobility. The 
‘spirit of privilege among the nobles, and the spititof privilege among, 


ma 4 


678 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


the clergy, acted really as an homogeneous force. For want of a 

better name it may be called the sacerdotal force, a name which ina 

‘broad sense is here applied to that mixed sentiment of pride, 
reverence, and authority by which the inheritance of great powerand 
great gifts welds together sympathetic classes in society. A similar 
‘union—or rather fusion—can be found nowhere else on the continent 
of Europe. It is as unlike the fitful coquetry of Church and aristo- 
cracy in France, as the power of the rural prediger is unlike that of 
the curé, A Duke of Guise and a Marie Alacoque would be equally 
impossible in Prussia. Not vanity nor superstition is the cementing 
principle, but the grave traditional feeling of a common superiority. 
Indeed the traces of the compact have now disappeared, and nothing 
remains but the sacerdotal spirit itself, acting with the method and 
directness of a single force, yet spreading through all the arteries of 
society. It is an element which the reason can hardly separate from 
the life of Prussia. 

A minute analysis of this spirit reveals much that is admirable 
Within the limits of its natural action it is profoundly loyal, and has 
served efficiently in every great movement of Prussia. It is one 
source of that grave national virtue which, for being a good dal 
exaggerated, is not the less positive and real. It inspires that 
sombre, patient, unconquerable sense of duty which nerves the 
Prussian soldier. It spreads a chaste and devout piety through the 
State, and has its home with an aristocracy free from scandal. 
Ruling like an intellectual despot over the thought of the country, 
it values the fact more than the exercise of power, and is jealous 
rather than cruel. But it is a provincial spirit, narrow, sclésb, 
illiberal. It has neither the large speculative benevolence of pure 
philosophy, nor the warmth of a generous superstition. Teaching the 
principle of authority, it frowns on the expansive power of reason. 
It employs the formulas of religion to aid the sway of privilege, and 
thus surrounds absolutism with a halo of holiness. To the assaults 
of the sceptic it opposes a firm and complacent dogmatism. It in- 
spires awe by the splendour of its arrogance. In political life it 
makes the State an informal theocracy. In social life it establishes 
grades and teaches obedience. In ecclesiastical life it provides 2 
stately faith, without the enthusiasm which warms the heart, or the 
simplicity which satisfies the understanding. It is devout without 
humility, proud without grandeur, and loyal without patriotism. 

‘The fears of the Clericals and the hopes of the Liberals were alike 
deceived when Frederic William IV. ascended the throne. The new 

king was endowed with a high wpright character and a poeke wit, 












The Philasophy of the Falk Laws. 679 


e had been trained in a school which locked resolutely away 
‘the present He was enraptured by the romance of medixyval 
He read of tilts and tournaments, and polished up the misty 
of his fathers; he learned the rude poetry of the Minne- 
and fancied an age in which a king might sing ballads under 
dows of his lady love, He looked on the dull routine of 
on as Mr. Ruskin looks on railways, or as a pre-Raphaclite 


0 Gein praduced, did) credit to. abe, muladsole sill aria 
or. All parties were surprised: but the Clericals, perhaps, in the 
micasure, They learned that a written Charter was mot neces- 

an instrument of Satan, but that it might, if properly drafted, 

the efficient bulwark of a safe social system, That this ene 

was properly drafted must appear from its own provisions, It made 
| no attempt to throw off the yoke of ecclesiastical despotism, but left 
“all the old privileges of the Church in full sway, and with the addi- 
tional authority given them by positive written guarantees. Above 
all, the substantial union between the two great sects was confirmed 
“rather than shaken by this ordinance. Although they were theologi- 
“cally as far apart as Martin Luther and Pope Leo X., there continued. 
tobe between them a tolerably firm alliance against free thought, 
‘secularism, and the revolution ; and both refrained from imperilling 
ide common cause by rashness and izopatience. ‘There was strategic 
without dogmatic unity, 
Te is impossible to reconcile the position here accorded to the 
‘Church with the traditional idea in Prussian policy. ‘The “civil 
slavery," of which M. Janet speaks, was indeed fully realised, so far a8 
the subject himself was concerned, by the course of discipline, social, 
smilitary, political, educational, religious, to which he was legally sub- 
jected ; but the element of political liberty could not be ascribed to 
‘a State that surrendered a share of its sovereignty, a portion of its 
domestic authority, unreservedly to an organisation within itself, What 
‘if the organisation were a member of a splendid hierarchy which had 
disputed with the mightiest princes of the world ? Whatif it were the 


ee eee Si rich tae ee ee 
e3 of a German Reformation, and commanded the services of 
nds of earnest and faithful patriots? It might be the Church 
of Rome, or the Church of Luther, or the Church of Moses and the 


680 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


acting under an illogical arrangement asa bar to the orderly develop. 

ment of the country. The subject was taught a double allegiance. 
‘The State was master of one larger class of his movements oaly, 
through the jealous, haughty, and capricious medium of a spiritual 
patriciate. Instead of making religion a humble ward of the 
nation, as they had hoped, and moulding it wholly into the service of 
the State, the Kings of Prussia found that they had only called into 
being a powerful institution which could dictate its own terms of 
loyalty. 

The evil being assumed, we pass to the second stage of the dis 
cussion: How shall the relations between Church and State as above 
described be modified in a manner to restore to the State its lot 
privileges, without trespassing on the just liberties of the Church? 
How shall a better adjustment between the one and the other be 
effected? 

It has been often observed that there are but three systems ac- 
cording to which the relations of Church and State can be settled. 
‘The Church must be the State, and society consequently a theocracy; 
or there must be a partition of functions more or less explicit and 
formal between the two; or the Church must be treated like any 
other organisation within the State, and be subjected to a supervision 
as severe as justice requires and as impartial as the interests of 
the State permit. These are the systems respectively of the 
Orient, of modern Europe, and of the United States. ‘The first 
system has probably no defender in Christendom. Even the 
Syllabus was directed rather against moral and scientific errors, and 
hardly contemplated the assumption by the Church of all the 
functions of civil government. Pure theocracy may therefore be 
dismissed without farther concern, The second system, which is 
or was that of Prussia and most European countries, recognises 
religion as a distinct social charge, and concedes it a certain 
degree of support from the State, 

In the third of these three systems, that ot the United States, 
the State ignores the Church except when she comes in contac 
with general laws. To religion as such the Federal Constitution 
gives only the negative attention of two paragraphs, one of which 
simply declares that no religious test shall be exacted of public 
servants, and the other guarantees freedom of religious worship; 
while both together form the basis of a system which differs only in 
form, but not in principle, from that of the ancient republics. Both 
systems recognise the utility of religion to society, both treat it as 
deriving its social or corporate High's from the Sake. “Wary dif 






Constitution asserts by implication the power of the 
over the Church. A power which may be voluntarily surren- 
"dered may also be retained, and a right which is conditionally waived 
by a constitutional enactment may be recovered by the same means. 
‘It was so with slavery, Why not with religion? The guarantces of 
slavery in the Constitution were as clear and absolute as those of 
‘religious worship ; and if a Thirteenth Amendment may revoke the 
former, another amendment, under a reasonable necessity, may cer- 
|) ‘tainly revoke the latter. 
| Am seeking an escape, therefore, from a system which had become 
| Gmtolerable, Prince Bismarck was contined to two other systems, of 
‘which the one implies the complete surrender of the State to the 
interests of religion, and the other maintains the principle of the 
absolute supremacy of the civil power. It could not be diffieult for 
the Minister of a modern State to make the choice. The political 
institutions and with them the civilisation of Buddha and Zoroaster 
could not be reproduced in the nineteenth century and in educated 
Prussia; the forms of Paganism were equally extinct, It only re- 
amined, therefore, to adopt the principle of the classical system, and 
to apply it with such modifications as the times and the circumstances 
made necessary. That these pointed toward the American system 
Prince Bismarck was not one of the last to recognise, 

Objection will, of course, be raised to the method of solution 
adopted by Prince Bismarck, but this is sufficiently explained by the 
wide difference in the conditions of the problem in the two countries, 
In America the separation of Church and State means the indepen- 
ence of the former ; in Prussia it means the disenthralment of the 
latter. The American Constitution lends to the Church certain 
social privileges which the State has no desire to control. The Falk 
Jaws in Prussia recover for the State certain civil and political func 
tons that the Church has usurped. The American legislators had to 
deal with sects, or, if the term be preferred, with religions, which 
had {not the will or the power to make seditious citizens out of 
faithful believers, and which were felt to be least dangerous when 
most free. The Prussian reforms aim at the restoration of that har- 
mony between the two powers which the arrogance and selfishness 
‘of the priesthood have hitherto thwarted, and which is most complete 
when'the Church is most rigorously kept in her own field of action. 


bee | 





The Philosophy of the Falk Laws. 683 
In the first place the Church has theological reasoms 





pce of eteroal social ‘forms, wand to pretend thet she ‘has 
red rights as a Church over which society has no control is to 
ty of one of the essential clements of its being. In 






n given, what reasoning can be given, to justify this monstrous 
n? ‘The right of conscience is of course quite another thing; 
that be meant it is perhaps not quite useless to try to show 


terests of society cannot be a violation of the rights of conscience. 
‘The error lies in supposing that a congregation of believers, or a 
“Church, can be inspired by a collective conscience. The meta- 
physicians tell us, at least those who admit any such thing at all, that 
conscience is the faculty of moral judgments, the adtéma radio of all 
men, except, perhaps, kings. As such it is and must be purely 
‘personal with every human being. It is a passive, and not an active 
‘organ. It interprets, but does not create; it judges, but does not 
‘execute. Now from the genesis of history to the present time the 
‘most determined enemies of conscience have been the great 
‘ecclesiastical orders ; and of all these there is not one whose tenets 
‘and pretensions are so irreconcilable with the free exercise of that. 
faealty as the Roman Catholic Church, ‘This is natural and eon- 
sistent, ‘The Church does not invite men toreason, she invites them 
‘to obey; she is the oracle, not of conscience, but of authority. She 
acts on the sound maxim—though in times of adversity it suits her to 
forget it—that the human conscience is not a constructive faculty ; 
that it has organised, and from the nature of things can organise, 
absolutely nothing, But there is a cementing principle, higher than 
‘mere blind obedience, which is commonly but wrongly called eon- 
science. It may be an acquired sense of duty, it may be a common 
‘feeling of loyalty, or it may be only esprit de aps. Or if the term 
conscience be insisted on it must be called the educative or acquired 
conscience, in distinction from the natural reason, which is mot ac- 
quired, and cannot be educated. This quality is, of 


ed 


















The Philosophy of the Falk Laws, 685 


yé can it create nothing good; and if all the world accepted 
mule and was agreed on what is bad and what good, the process: 
orical analysis would be very much simplified. Prince Bis- 
himself would find much of his work condemned by an in- 
ble public virtue. He is a statesman on whose chamcter and 
‘many true Liberals look with abhorrence, and the perpetua- 
his method would at least be a serious blow to civilisation. 
the present conflict the broader interests of free thought, political 
orm and progress have too often been sacrificed to what may be 
called the dynamic necessities of the State, There is really, however, 
@ question of Prince Bismarck’s value to society, but of the relative 
‘of his sway and that of the Roman Catholic Church. In other 
Is, in the most sinister view of the case, is he not, by smiting the 
;, overthrowing a power noxious to society, and thus doing 
“necessanly the work of Liberalism? 

For my own part, I rejoice that the cause of the State is just now 
a the hands of this masculine politician. His name isa guaranty of 
- thorough work, and when he will have abolished the régime of cowls 
and tonsures some more Liberal successor may abolish that of swords 
and spurs and cavalry boots. 





SiR PERCIVAL OF WALES. 


A CHAPTER FROM AN OLD ROMANCE OF THE 
TWELFTH CENTURY. 


BY WALTER THORNBURY. 





NE of the most popular romances of the Middle Ages 
was “Sir Percival of Wales,” a poem of 20,174 lines, 
written by Chrestien de Troyes at the end of the twelfth 
century. My paraphrase is founded on an early English 
condensation. It will show that a work like this did not delight sever 
centuries of people without being full of high feeling and touches 
of nature, while the curious metre gives it a simplicity which becomes * 
the subject. 

The old romance begins with the death of Percival’s father by the 
hands of the Red Knight, a robber and an enemy. The mother has 
sworn in consequence to retire to a forest and relinquish the 
world :— 

And now that Percival the Knight 
Is slain in that fell fight, 
His lady vowed that night 
(Hold if she may) 
‘That her young son should bide 
‘Nowhere where jousters ride 
Or deeds of arms be tried 

By night or day. 


But where creeps the burn 

‘Through the high arching fern, 

Watched by the silent hern, 
And the leaves play : 

Far from the soldier's tent, 

Tilting and tournament, 

Out ’mong the briar and bent, 
They would away. 


So the widow leaves bower and hall and goes into the wild wood, 
with only a maiden to wait upon her, and a small flock of goats, on 
whose milk she could subsist ; and of all her lord’s gear she takes 
only a little Scottish spear for her son when he could go hunting. 
Soon the strong, sturdy boy begins to Say small Winds with it, and 


ll 

Sir Percival of Wales. 687 
Bhen harts and hinds—"“he was a good knave"—till at last “no 
Heast that walked on foot” could escape his dart — 


‘Then it befell one day 
‘His mother to him did sag 


“* Sweet mother," thon said be, 
“Who muy this great God be 
‘That ye now bid me 
Koel to and praise 
‘Then said his mother fair; 
© It is the God of Earth and Air, 
“Who made this world so rare 
Allin six days.” 
“By great God," sal he then, 
“An! I can meet that map, 
‘With all the power I ean 
‘So shall I pray."* 


| © One day in the holt the boy meets three of Arthur's knights— 
| Ewayn, Gawayn the courteous, and Sir Kay “the bold baratoun” a 
| man of pride and malice. They were dressed in rich robes, while he 
only wore a tunic and hood of goatskin. ‘The lad always expecting 
to mect the God of whom his mother spoke, and sccing these three 
great knights, thinks one of them must be the God he sought, 
and so goes up with his usual frank fearlessness and addresses them. 
I try to preserve some of the quaintiess of the original :-— 
He said: * Which of you all three 
May the great God be 
‘That my mother told me 
‘This great world wrought 1” 








‘Then sald hat true knight's child, 

‘Who had lived én: the woods wild, 

‘Lo Gawayn the meek and mild, 
‘And soft of answer, 

+Y shall slay you all three 











690 The Gentleman's Magasine, 


Then said Percival the free, 
“If thou King Arthur be, 
Look thou a knight make me 
At once if it be so.” 
Though he was rudely dight, 
He swore by Godde’s might, 
“And if he make me not kni 
Till slay him with a blow. 









ht, 


The courtiers old and young were astonished to see the King bear 
these rough words, and still more so to see tears come gliding from 
his eyes. Then Arthur, looking at the daring young rider as he sat 
there boldly on his horse, said :-— 
“Ant thon wert well dight, 
e ‘Thou wert like to a knight 
That I loved with all my might 
‘While he was alive.” 
‘And he goes on to describe the death of his brother-in-law, Sir 
Percival, by the hands of that foul rascal the Red Knight. So crafty 
was this thief, however, he added, that he had never been able to seize 
him ; but he hoped that some day Sir Percival’s son might return and 
avenge his father. The fierce lad, not knowing his father's fate or 
name, grew angry at last at this long story and the delay of the 
knighthood, and the poet, carefully preserving the lines of the character, 
makes him here break out :— 
“Now out on this jangling, 
Of this keep I none.” 
He says :— 
“T care not to stand 
‘With thy janglings so long, 
‘Make me knight with thy hand, 
If it shall be done.” 
‘The King, struck with the boy’s resemblance to Achefleur, his sister, 
then promises to dub him knight, and begs him courteously to alight 
and eat with him at noon, for, as the poet says :— 


The child had dwelt in the woud, 

He knew neither evil nor good, 

The King himself understood 
He was a wild man. 


So Percival leaps from the mare and ties her up among all the 
lords and ladies with the withy halter. But before he had time to 
touch meat or wine, who should come riding into the hall but that 
most objectionable person the Red Knight We bestrode a red 








Sir Percival of Wales. 693 


ut even of a good thing there may be enough, and it would take 
2s to tell how Percival slays the Soldan who has imprisoned the . 
lady on whose finger he slipped the ring, and how he takes down 
pride of even Arthur’s bravest knights. The part of the poem 
re he resumes his goatskins and returns to the wild wood to 
g back his mother is very tearful and touching. 

he poet ends his romance in the usual religious way :— 


Since then he went into the Holy Land, 
‘Won many townes fall strong, 
And there was slain, I understand, 
‘And this way ended he. 
Now Jesus Christ, great Heaven's king, 
As he is Lord of everything, 
Grant us all his blessing, 
Amen for charity. 








oe 


Modern Yarmouth, 695 


the lodging-houses; the beach, so lively and crowded during the dog 

days, is mostly left to local children and native dogs. Yarmouth, in 

short, is itsell again, and wholly given up to the harvest which the 

Dounteous ocean invites it to come and win in the teeth of howling 

gales and foaming seas. Nobody, I presume, who is not a gross 

-pastisan would venture to say that Yarmouth is the kind of town a 
photographer in search of the beautiful would make the subject of 
views for an art album or patent stereoscope, 

Mistress Peggotty, who for her part was proud to call herself a 

Yarmouth bloater, told little Copperfield that Yarmouth was, upon 
"the whole, the finest place in the universe. Copperfield had not till 

then held that opinion, you may remember. Quoth he: “ It looked 

| rather spongy and soppy I thought as I carried my eye over the 
great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help 
wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book 
‘said, how any part of it came to be so flat Bur I reflected that 
Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles, which would account 
forit Aswe drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent 
Prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to 
‘Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that 
if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and if the 
town and the tide had not been quite so mixed up like toast and 
water, it would have been nicer.” 

Approaching the town from inland, from the far-reaching flats over 
which the North Sea is once supposed to have fieely ebbed and 
flowed, you must agree with the faithfulness of Master Copperficld’s 
portraiture, but, scen from the water, Yarmouth has a certain quaint 
picturesqueness of its own, very pleasing to the eye that rests upon 
it when the windmills on the low sandhills are revolving, when the 
autumn-sun smites the housetops with his ruddy hand, when the 
picrheads are crowded with amateur codling-catchers and spectators 
who gather there at the rate of twelve human beings for every fish 
hauled up, and when the heavy black boats on the beach are 
busily performing their duties a5 mediums between the fishing 
‘vessels and the carts waiting to bear away their produce. It is worth 
incurring the disappointment of an unsuccessful two hours’ fishing in 
an open boat thus to see Yarmouth at its best, as you will see it, 
rocking furlong or so from shore, while your long line of a dozen or 
twenty hooks reposes on the bottom in wait for cod, whiting, 
eel, or gurnard, 

Better, however, will it be for the student of modern Yarmouth to 
‘stroll with observant cye and car into the quarters where the staple 


. 

















Modern Yarmouth, 697 


¢ extent their ocewpation gone, naturally complain of the change, 
is no consolation to them to know that it is for the public 


ore the fishing vessel has fairly brought up alongside the 
wharf she is boarded by a number of men who are not, 
their eager gestures and impetuous language would signify, 
to murder the crew and scuttle the ship: they are 
as" on the look out for an engagement, and the large 
carry are not Welsh coracles, but “wills,” into 
eh the fish in the hold will be counted—cach swill, for the 
‘of sale, to contain 500 fish. ‘The wharf is covered with 
‘and a bell iy being rung to call the buyers together. ‘The 
1 sometimes, as when the fishermen have been too suce 
‘cessful, may have a difficulty in obtaining an auditory; but that is a 
case. He is 2 man of few words, and those few he wastes not. 
The late George Robbins would have mourned over his matterof 
| ct descriptions. 
“What diye say," he asks; “shall we begin with £5 a last?” 
‘A last means 13,200 fish, and by the rules of the trade herrings 
| are sold by the last. But there is no response until a comfortable 
looking gentleman offers fifty shillings, Him the auctioneer evidently 
knows, forhe familiarly and chidingly remonstrates with his meanness, 
Atthis juncture there is an uproar in the rear, a fight between a sailor 
and a teller in the shed, and the auctioneer is left absolutely alone 
until the dispute is settled by the ignominious thrashing and retreat 
of the landlubber, Eventually the bidding begins at three pounds, 
and proceeds at advances of five shillings, until, amidst some 
Tnughter, the comfortable-looking buyer who had offered fifty shillings 
‘buys the last for five guineas, Prices vary according to the supply of 
fish, and vary therefore immensely, Not long ago forty-five shillings 
per last was the highest price that could be fetched ; at another time 
herrings had been so scarce that the auctioneer dared not sell more 
than a hundred fish at a time, and then at cight shillings per 
hundred, or £40 a last. The briskest sale-time is when the earliest 
Vessels come into the river: at such crises everybody works “double 
tides” to catch the trains and get the fresh fish into the markets 
while they are saleable, ‘The auctioneer, it may be added, is a man 
‘of some consequence. He provides the swills, and is responsible 
for the money produced by sales; in return he gets a good com- 
mission, and they do say about Yarmouth that the auctioneers 
make as mich out of the herrings as any. 


Tila | 








Modern Yarmouth. 699 
wholesome food and shelter would be provided for them at a rea- 





to me, they prefer a change of scene during their dinner 
‘But it must not be supposed that this is a fair type of all the 
n who are employed in the herring trade; they are only the “resi- 
“ When in fall work in the curing sheds a skilful and indus- 
woman can carn a pound a week, and many are as respectable 
“im reality as in appearance. On the Denes yesterday there were 
bree or four girls repairing nets; they wore fashionable chignons, 
‘silk dresses, smart hats, and no doubt represented the aris- 
of the Yarmouth workwomen, What a pity it is that these 
yackers, and curers do not wear some such neat costumes 
‘those in fashion amongst the French fishwomen | 
By turing into the yard to the left we may watch the process of 
“herring pickling, ‘The fish brought here, it should be explained, 
‘are the herrings which have been salted at sea ; that, at least, is the 
technical expression. In reality the fish are simply sprinkled with 
‘salt as they are thrown into the hold. By this process the fishermen 
are enabled to remain afloat for days together, and this a run of il 
ick renders a disagreeable necessity. ‘The fortunate ones are those 
who, sailing out of harbour to-day, are able to return to-morrow 
‘morning with a cargo of fresh herrings, which are despatched as such 
with all speed, ‘The fish which the women occupying our shed are 
manipulating are first washed by men, then passed on to the female 
hands, who pack them into barrels with Lisbon salt between the 
Jayers, and finally nailed in by a cooper who is ready with the catk- 
head. Fish thus treated are shipped to various parts of the United 
Kingdom, especially to Scotland, and to the Continent, and are in- 
tended for almost immediate consumption, Some of these lasses, I 
have said, are dreadfully rough ; it is an expression I cannot recall, nor 
dare I say that their converse, their jests, or their songs are in any 
Sort of fashion womanly; but they are thoroughly good-tempered 
‘and overflowing with animal spirits, and there is room for hope that 
‘they are not so bad as they seem, 
‘The classic bloater is, or is supposed to be, a fresh fish faintly 
cured. Itis a popular error to suppose that it is a distinct species, 
@ kind of upper class fish, born, bred, and educated in exclusive 
shoals, It is only a herring of the best quality, and it may be 
‘Selected from the mass. Now nothing is more foreign to a generous 
‘man's nature than to play the Iconoclast with a household god, and 
‘it would i! become me to shake the British matron’s 









te 





| Modern Yarmouth. jot 


Carefully cleansed and delicately and artistically smoked. Mr, Buck- 
in his recent Report on our East Coast Fisheries, estimates 
& thousand lasts of herrings per year are now required for kip- 


_ Yarmouth, however, docs not live by herrings alone. ‘Trawling is 
B equally important branch of the local trade. When the bloom is 
“gone from the herring sexson, the boats refit, and under the generic 
“mame of smacks spend the winter in trawling, a much more 
hha occupation than drifting, and altogether different in its 
“nature, ‘The drift net entangles the shoal swimming near the sur- 
face ; the trawl sweeps the bottom. ‘The one captures herrings, with 
‘@ very occasional mackerel or cod in the meshes; the other brings 
tip the more remunerative sole, haddock, plaice, turbot, brill, and 
4 Tris stated in Mr. Buckland’s interesting lite Blue Book 
‘that the North Sea trawling ground covers, according to Yarmouth 
‘calculation, 50,000, and according to Grimsby calculation 130,000 
square miles—that is to say, it extends from the North Foreland 
to Duncansby Head in the Pentland Firth, and from the coast 
‘of England to that of Norway. While forty years ago there were 
‘but two Yarmouth vessels engaged in trawling, now some goo 
‘boats sail from the Yare. In this matter Yarmouth and Gorleston 
Ahave prospered at the expense of Barking, whose flect of smacks were 
| transferred to the more convenient harbours of Norfolk. The trawlers 
composing the North Sca fleet are good sea boats, well found, and 
manned by excellent scamen, who dare much and do much that is 
never known to the world, ‘The smacks remain at sea from six 
‘weeks to two months at a time, and as the voyages fall in the depth 
of the winter the close of every season brings a sad tale of missing 
boats and men. There was one memarable gale in November, 1863, 
which in one night destroyed seven Hull trawlers with all hands, and 
disabled twenty other boats. 

‘The trawling fleets are sometimes composed of vessels from various 
ports, but there are a few wealthy merchants who own entire fleets of 
from sixty to eighty smacks, An admiral of the feet is appointed 
by popular election, and from his vessel signals are made directing 
the movements of the fleet, At night the orders are given by “flare- 
ups"—flashes of light visible like meteors for miles over the watery 
waste. According to the number of flare-ups the fleet goes about, or 
fies to, or takes in fishing gear. 

Passing along the beach just now I noticed a handsomely-built 
and smarily-rigged cutter speeding towards shore, light and swift as a 
sea bird, Simultancously you might have observed unusual commotion 






















Modern Yarmouth. 723 


& hundred tons of small fish. From the North Foreland far 

‘the North Sea there are numerous fishing hanks well defined on 

ye smacksman’s charts, and productive of the finest soles, which 

found there (the water being deep) in the coldest weather in 

numbers. The Dutch trawlers are great sinners against 
law. Itis the old story— 

Tn matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch 
Ts giving too little and taking too much. 
‘The Dutch smacks being of smaller draught than ours, the fishing is 
conducted too near the shore whenever it nay be done with impunity, 
‘The Germans by the effective argument of an ever-present gunboat 
take care of their coast fisheries by allowing no trawling inside nine 
fathoms of water, At any rate the spawning grounds ought to be 
protected, and Mr, Frank Buckland will have done excellent service 
by the forcible manner in which he has called the attention of the 
Government to evils that English, Germans, and Dutch alike are 
pecuniarily interested in remedying. 

‘The smacksman toils hard for his living, amidst perils of which 
we who are snugly housed ashore little wot. ‘The operation most 
dreaded by him is the conveyance of the packages of fish from his 
smack to the carrier cutter, The transfer is effected in the smack’s 
Tittle boat, and frequently in most dangerous seas. Many a man 
and boy has perished in the performance of this hazardous duty. 

Avamble through Yarmouth—fish market, Denes, curing houses, 
‘rows, streets, market-place—will always be appropriately terminated 
‘by a final stroll along the Marine parades, piers, and jetty, After a 
Jong spell of north or south winds there are not far from a thousand 
sail lying in the safe anchorage of the roadstead. It is computed 
that 50,000 vessels annually pass and repass within sight of shore, 
and a seascape so animated is always worth studying, Yonder 
dark, heavily-laden brig, voyaging southward, is a collier carrying 
coals from Newcastle to London, Close behind her follows a round- 
nosed barque listing to starboard more heavily than the wind justi« 
fies ; she is a Baltic timber ship whose cargo has shifted, as such cargoes 
will, during yesterday’s gale. The screw trading steamers leave be- 
hind them long lines of foam below and long lines of black smoke 
above, A mist steals gradually overall, and each object dissolves into a 
shadow and is no more seen. The inshore fishermen, the amateur 
anglers, wend their homeward way with their strings of codling and 
whiting, and Yarmouth ashore settles down to the quiet leisure of 
‘evening at the precise moment when Yarmouth aflont 
to # night's hard, and let us hope remunerative, work. 





Wait Whitman, the Poet of Foy. 705, 


not because he deemed the world a place unfit for hap- 
‘With what honest and wholesome satisfaction he pourtrays 
life, not as a source of high and grandiose thoughts and 


is ‘because it was delightful to live in the country! How genuine 
and human is the way in which he speaks of common household 
ires,—the making and pouring out the fragrant lymph, the 

rival of the newspaper and letters, and all those common sources 

‘satisfaction which a man can always enjoy without the fear that he 

doing anything foolish ! After Cowper came a solitary and doleful 


‘the universe, but not particularly polite or agreeable; Coleridge: 
logician, metaphysician, bard, but so wretched that he had to con 
narcotics; Keats : bent, indeed, on perceiving beauty, but only 
idealist, and with a view to poetic purposes—a “slovenly, slack« 
youth.” ‘These be our gods, ‘They were undoubted! ymen 
Relgestistarcl (06 a high and resaarkabic\natare, bal we have all 
‘our faults, and that of these men was melancholy, a tendency to soli- 
tude, whose evil effects even men of genius are not suflered to escape 
any more than common people. They did not go freely with 
“powerful uneducated persons,” to use the strange language of the 
man whose name stands at the head of this paper. Except Shelley 
and Byron, they were all rather unfit for general society, and if nor 
with the stars and engaged in looking down upon the 
world, preferred the company of persons like themselves—persons 
suffering more or less from depression, and not likely to laugh at 
‘them and their follies. 

‘A taste for melancholy once acquired remains long. Dark, 
sombre, or ghastly personages rise to take the place of those who 
ave retired, and the literature of gloom docs not scem likely to die 
out from among us yet, Poetry, like all art, should be the flower 
and blossom of things, At present it seems a mildew and rot, attack- 
‘ing the vigour, if not the existence, of the plant of which it ought to 
be the crowning excellence. 

In atch an epoch and in such a country the appearance of literature 
which expresses happiness and communicates happiness ought surely 
to be a welcome event, at least to all those who see the fatal defect 


Whitman is a poet, and one of high order. Tn the first 
Vou. XV,, NS. 1875. 








wr 
Walt Whitnsan, the Poet of Foy. 7°7 


| malllions’ of yeats—have been undergone, Now at last the guest has 
arrived, and that guest of the Universe is the reader. 

t Or again, he will ask us if we think that the music exists in the catgut, 
and the hollow of the flute, or in the’ keys of the piano. And his 
Pierce 05 in yourcit the manic {x ‘You are the real source 
Beech harweny. ‘These things external to you onlyserve to awake it 

_in’your own soul, where itslumbered, Why do you think those creeds 

and religions of such enormous importance? They grew out of you 

as the leaves out of atree: Vou shook them from you as the tree 

"_-shulkes away ler dead leaves. It is you that are so great, not the 

" eligions, for out of you they have all proceeded, Are you enamoured 

of mighty architecture, or of the splendid appearances of nature— 

‘the vast sea, the noble rivers, the waterfalls, the forests ?—alll these 

are but manifestations of your own soul, Something external to you 

affects: the eye and the soul, and this is the result. It is your own 
body and mind which have given birth to these glorious appearatices, 

‘tis you that are the wonder, not they, 

But even exultation is not enough to satisfy the boundlest ambition 
of this man. There is in him a suggestion of something enormous, 
something bursting the limits of mundane existence and pouring 
around on all sides, invading the supernatural world, in which, anlike: 
most literary men, he seems fully to believe. The supernatural world. 
isnot to him a vague faraway sphere with which we haveno practical 
connection. Itisuround him and its inhabitants are around him; they 
are only a sphere beyond. Man passes into that world carrying with 
him all that he has acquired in the body and in the soul in this world. 
‘To express this he employs a remarkable metaphor, 

“Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the 
meaning, the main concern, any more than # man's substance and 

 dife or a woman's substance and life return in the body and im the 
soul indifferently before death and after death.” 

"Thus death is more the beginning than the end. What it con- 
clades is glorious, but what it begins is divine, Whitman is a mystic. 
‘He pours a glamour over the world. From the supernatural sphere, 
s0 natural to'him, strange light is shed that transfigures the universe 
before his eyes and before ours, 

‘The sympathy of Whitman is boundless—not man alone or 
animals alone, but brute inanimate nature is absorbed and assimilated: 
in his extraordinary personality, Often we think one of the elements. 
‘of nature has found a voice and thunders great syllables: im our 
errs He speaks like something more (han viaw—somethieng, wee 


—_— i" 








708 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


comprehend. He is not over-anxious to be understood. No mm 
comprehends what the twittering of the redstart precisely means, or 
can express clearly in definite language the significance of the rising 
sun. He too is elemental and a part of nature—not merely a clever 
man writing poems. 

It is said of Hugo that his praises of Paris are not meant to be 
true of the actual city ; that it is the ideal Paris he lauds so roundly 
—Paris as he would have her, and as her sons ought to make her. 
Doubtless there is a great deal of that spirit also in Whitman's praises 
of America. His poems will hold up a beautiful ideal to which the 
people shall aspire. 

‘The splendid promise of those huge States has excited in him 
admiration and wonder of the deepest and sincerest character. The 
practical acknowledgment of equality in all the relations of life, the 
enormous territories over which the Flag of the Union floats, the 
terrible war so bravely fought and the excision for ever of the canker 
of slavery from American soil, the perpetual influx of immigrants from 
all parts of the world, the energy, vigour, and intelligence of all 
native Americans, the combination of central and local government, 
the enormous and rapid advance of material civilisation, the noble 
cities that start up in desolate regions within the compass of a few 
years, the numerous ports and maritime cities and the vast mercantile 
marine necessary to support the rapidly increasing commerce of the 
country, the mighty rivers that traverse the land, and the vast unin- 
habited territories of the interior and the West, which the ploughshare 
and the woodman’s axe are rapidly invading—all this has wondrously 
stirred and fired the imagination of Whitman. 

Whitman lays strong emphasis on physical happiness and those 
forms of spiritual pleasure which are more closely allied with the 
physical. This has been to many a stumbling-block and rock of 
offence. Scholastic and monkish views have evidently not yet 
disappeared. In real life the importance of physique and of 
Physical health and the irresistible attractions of mere beauty are 
always recognised. They must be recognised. They make their 
mark as irresistibly as gravitation or any of the known laws of 
nature. Yet in our higher literature all this has been neglected for 
sentiment and the cultivation of pure and delicate emotions, A 
Teturn to nature has been imperatively called for; and Whitman, not 

a moment too soon, has appeared singing the body electric. 

The intellectualism which has marked the centary—the cultivation 

of sentiment and the emotions—threatened to exfedie and emasciaie 
the educated classes. The strong voice of Whitman, dhowing wgit 


rr 
Walt Whitman, the Poet of oy. 709 


and again, in metaphors and images, in startling vivid memorable 
| language, the supreme need of swect blood and pure flesh, the de- 
| Hight of vigour and activity and of mere existence where there is 
| health, the pleasures of mere society even without clever canversa~ 

tion, of bathing, swimming, riding, and the inhaling of pure air, has #0 
| arrested the mind of the world that a relapse to scholasticism is no 
| longer possible. 

‘And yet Whitman, though he cries out for “muscle and pluck,” 
‘untainted flesh and clear eyes, is very far from being a mere lover of 
‘coarse material pleasures, He is a poet, and that says enough, His 
‘eye sees beauty, his ear hears music. All things grow lovely under 
his hand ; deformity, ugliness, and all things miserable and vile dise 
appear. His touch tmnsmutes them. Ihave said he is elemental, 
and more than onec the wonder he expresses at the sight of Nature 
transforming things loathsome into beauty by her own sweet alchemy 
excites the thought that this poet desires to exert the same in- 
fluence. ‘The vast charity of the earth has struck him as it has struck 
‘One Other, and the sight of the rain falling on the fields of the 
anjust man as well as on those of the just. He, too, will be com- 
passionate and impartial as Nature, making no mean and invidious 
distinctions, as the sun pours down his light on poor and rich, educated 
and uneducated alike. His sympathy embraces all, but especially 
those that work with their hands and spend their lives in the 
‘open sir. He wanders along the docks and stops to watch the ship 
‘carpenters at work, seeing each tool employed and learning the 
nature of each operation, and so wherever he goes his sympathy is 
attracted principally by persons who Isbour at manual tasks. In 
‘our own country, where Democratic ideas have never leavened the 
whole population, in which Republicanism and the sentiment of 
equality are more a conscious effort than well understood and 
universally recognised principles, the labouring classes cannot be 
‘expected to produce as many interesting specimens of humanity 
as the American masses can supply. Whitman talks frequently of 
‘their fine bearing, their bold and kindly manners, the look they have 
as of men who had never stood in the presence of a superior, the 
fluency of their conversation, the picturesque looseness of their car- 
triage, the freshness and energy of their countenances, I think that, 
making all allowances for poetic licence, there is and must be a great 
deal of truth in this, Could any Englishman describe the labouring: 
classes of England in such terms? In the carriage of the English 
working man there may be stolidity and qlods, Yuh ceaaisis, wo 
| picturesque looseness, certainly none of that hd, cates, SIE 


he cal 


| 





literatures, and the languagemakers on other shores in 
he commands them to retire for a space, and Jet him 
| America speak out now with original energy, with a vigour 
yout of the present, incarnating the actual moment 
Beets bby, inspired with the time-spirit and the genius of the 
» Every simile, thought, word which does not seem to him to 
the genius of the hour, which does not incarnate himself 
and America, he rejects, and words which all others rejcet find their 
_ Place in his poems, as acts and persons ignored by others appear 
_ there too. ‘hey represent Nature and the realities and actualities of 
our mundane existence, and he has vowed to allow Nature to speak 
+ outnow with * original energy,” and to trust for guidance to her and 
tothe artistic sense, which, as 4 poet, he myst possess. And so in his 
“poems we have learning indeed, but strangely transfigured—not the 
Teaming represented by the stuffed birds and animals and preserved. 
‘Tizards of the museum—no dry and withered accumulation of facts, 
but knowledge instinct with the freshness and beauty of real life. 
‘There seems in Whitman to be this detraction from his genius, 
that he works after ideals and models in a conscious manner. His 
‘notions on the subject are singularly profound and just, but one is 
prejudiced slightly against poetry which may be the result of effort, 
and the striving after a preconceived ideal. Whitman sees that in 
everyday life one must be natural in order to. please, that there is an 
‘indescribable charm and freshness about persons who are natural. 
And so with industry prepense he labours to be so and to appear so, 
‘The master-artist is he who unites simplicity to genius, “ You shall 
‘not contemplate the flight of the grey gull over the harbour, nor the 
-metilesome action of the blood-horse, nor the tall leaning of the 
sunflower upon his stalk, nor the appearance of the sun journeying 
through the heavens, nor the appearance of the moon afterwards, 
with any greater satisfaction rban you sball behold him.” This is 
‘true; but alas! the more one is resolved to sleep the more does 








Walt Whitman, the Poet of Foy. 73 


tons, as it is now between the sexes. In the dialogues of Plato we 

‘Ste the extraordinary nature of the friendships formed by the young 
"men of his time. ‘The passionate absorbing nature of the relation, 
the craving for beauty in connection with it, and the approaching 

degenercy and threatened degradation of the Athenian character 
| thereby, which Plato vainly sought to stem both by his own exhor- 
| tations and by holding up the powerfal exaraple of Socrates, 

‘There cannot be a doubt but that with highly developed races 
friendship is a passion, and like all passions more physical than intcl- 
Tectual in its sources and modes of expression. 

Twill sing the song of companionship, Twill show what finally must eompact 
these (the States), 

‘Tbelicve these are to found their own ideal of manly Jove indicating it im mey 

| Twill therefore Jet flame from me the burning fires that were thrmatening to 
‘consume me, 

will lft what has too long kept down those smouldering firos. 

Twill give them complete abandonment. T will write the evangel-poem of 
comradés and of love, For who butIshould understand love with all its sorrow 


and joy? 
And who but I should be the poet of comrades ? 


‘This is strong language and doubtless genuine. Pride and love, T 
have said, Whitman considers the two hemispheres of the brain of 
humanity, and by love be means not alone benevolence and wide 
sympathy and the passion that embraces sexual relation, but that 
‘other passion which has existed before, and whose latent strength 
the American poet here indicates as a burning and repressed flame. 
Elsewhere he speaks of the sick, sick dread of unreturned friendship, 
‘of the comrades kiss, the arm round the neck—but he speaks 
to sticks and stones ; the emotion does not exist in us, and the lan- 
‘guage of his evangel-poems appears simply disgusting. 

Too much lias been said both by me and others on Whitwnan's 
admiration of physical beauty, of his love of muscle and pluck, of 
his hymns in honour of common things, common pleasures, and 
Jabouring men. Toattain a just conception of the scope and objects 
of Whitman itis necessary to read all his works, for he more than other 
poets contradicts himself and baffles those who would pluck out the 
heart of his mystery at the first introduction. The “Democratic Vistas” 
should be read by every person who desires to understand this 
poet. ‘There he will find none of the muscle and pluck doetrine, 

i pondering over and statement of the 








Walt Whitman, ihe Post of Foy. m5 
asi esas ssNe iad anad messes ‘is of an 
incomprehensible but not confused. He has no hard state 


‘no frantic twaddle, He glances at what another would strike 
and violently: he plays and coruscates around his theme, 


' of things, move away like mists before the rising sun. He 
piste 100%e cl padnces, Shown ane Lior laee that of 


h Rea manera Ranh abana One recalls the 
the steamship lrctic going down—the thought. of the last 


Dericetewss, while the moon, like a mother's face in 
Jheayen grown brighter, looked down—the picture of the hospital and 
‘its fearful sights, and the flame that burned in the heart of the 
Ampassive operator, the deep sympathy with suffering and degrada- 
tion at all times. If Whitman finds ita good thing to be alive it is 
snot because he refuses to see the evil side of life, but because he 
would sce the whole. “ Omucs, omnes, let others ignore what they 
may.” 

% ‘Beautiful and perfect as the world appears, Whitman yet never regards 

‘itinthe light of a house, Life and the world arealways awonderand a 

"mystery to bir. ‘Vague influences, benign but awful, hover over and: 
around him. ‘The sound of the sea at night, the pale shimmer of the 
moonshine, the tossing of white arms out among the waves, and the 
wash upon the shore exercise a weird influence upon his mind as on 
that of common men ; a subduing, softening influence forbid a tone 
too familiar concerning the Universe and concerning man, Though 
Whitman professes to despise the slow, welancadhy Wwe wien oe 
says pervades English literature, yet, too, ike ak Woe Morbern WAS, 














HEMEDL&VALCORPORATION AND 
COMPANIES OF THE CITY. 
__ BY JOHN ROWLAND PHILLIPS, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 


HE Corporation of the City of London is the most anti- 

quated in the kingdom. ‘Through half a century of 

Reform it has remained almost untouched by innovation. 

‘ts great wealth and influence have been too much for the 

oclasts. War has-often cnough been declared, and fierce battle 
pees ated, but the Corporation has come out each time more 


he City covers a little aver 700 acres, Its limits have for several 
‘centuries remained undisturbed. ‘The last addition was made in the 
‘of Henry VIL, when the borough of Southwark was placed 
its control, ‘There was a time when the area comprised only 
‘the City within the walls, What are now the wards, of Fare 
 fingdon-Without and Bishopsgate-Without got. themselves incorpo- 
rated with the City proper, not apparently by charter, but by a natural 
‘expansion of jurisdiction to meet the exigent requirements of a popu- 
ation in every way closely associated with the Cit 
‘The Corporation derives its powers either by prescription or by 
charters. Many of these charters, though they were all confirmed 
by an Act of Parliament of William IIL, are obsolete; others are 
couched in such quaint words and such peculiar phraseology that 
it is very doubtful what are the rights which the Corporation derives 
under them. Some of the privileges have been Jost through want of 
user, while a few have been abandoned. The most valuable were 
those granted by the houses of Plantagenct and ‘Tudor, During 
those dynasties the City became a great centre of commerce, and. 
enjoyed vast wealth and influence. ‘That was the golden age of 
charters. Those Sovereigns being often hard pressed for money, 
found the City purse very convenient, and in return for cash they 
freely gave charters which created valuable privileges. One curious 
roll of King John without the slightest equivocation gives the 
condition upon which a charter would be granted ‘oy sting Yee 
ro itzelf that the charter “shall be delivered to \eiiry Eee 





= 


The Corporation'and Companies of the City. 719 


‘the livery again is limited within narrow bounds. They 
to the aldermen, and it is not every alderman who is 


‘permitted to elect any person qualified to be weommon 
whether actually a member or not, there would’ be, as the 
ss of 1854 say; “an opportunity afforded’ of electing: 


both inconvenient and unequal. After we have taken out the wards of 
| Farringdon and Bishopsgate scarcely 500 acres’ remain to be divitled 


whose boundaries are involved 


line of streets, nor do they possess any natural borders. In area, in 
population, in value of property, ap agate sentient a 


‘return made in 1865 the total number of electors in all the wards” 
‘was barely 7,000, out of which Bishopsgate had 677 and Farringdon 
over 3,400. In 1867 the electorate was enlarged, and 
‘now all persons who are on the’ Parliamentary register in the wards 
in respect of occupation have votes in the ward elections of alder- 
men and councillors. 

‘The aldermen are clected for life. Individually cach alderman is 
the head of the ward-mote. Collectively in the Court of Aldermen 
they are possessed of many important functions, They have the 
wominal selection of Lord Mayor; they try all questions relating to 

‘elections ; they have unlimited power over the City finds; they con 
trol the prisons, and they alone form the magistracy of the City; they’ 
have also considerable patronage in the way of appointments, 
cipally of a jndicin! character, such as that of Uie Recorder and Sone 
connected with the magistracy. ‘The powet ot a 


















The Corporation and Companies of the City. 72% 


the City resident within the several wards. The reform of this 
"antiquated constituency was intended by the Bill which Sir George 
“Cornewal! Lewis introduced into Parliament in 1358. But the City 
‘itself did not attempt to extend the franchise until 1367, when it 
that unless it soon effected a reform the Legislature would 
+ Mr. Ayrton’s committee having gone into the matter in 
preceding year. In 1867, therefore, the City passed a Bill 
Parliament. That Act now govems the ward cléctorate, 
‘and the manicipal franchise is conferred on all those whose names 
“appear on the Parliamentary Register, andjall who occupy houses or 
offices in the City rated upon an annual rental of ten pounds, The 
‘constituencies of these wards are still very small. At the election of 
an alderman a few weeks ago some 2go only voted, and the suc-- 
“cessful candidate was clected by the suffmges of 161 voters. And 
2s most aldermen in rotation attain to the mayoralty, it becomes 
manifest that the Lord Mayor of London may be elected by a mere 
‘clique or handful, Moreover, at City elections bribery is no offence, 
sand as the prize is great it is enough for me to hint that the tisk of 
‘corruption is considerable. 

~The actual municipal government of the City is carried on by the 
Court of Common Council, presided over by the Lord Mayor. It is 
‘composed of the twenty-six aldermen and the 206 common council- 
‘men, The work is chiefly done by committees, who in some cases have 
the power to dispose finally of the masters entrusted to them, From 
£200 to £400 Is allowed for each committee, and the money is 
devoted, itis said, to entertainments and tavern expenses. Formerly 
“line money" was allowed. The Royal Commission of 1854 
recommended that the practice of making pecuniary allowance 
to the members of committees for their attendance ought to be dis« 
continued, This has been done; but the allowance for tyern 
expenses is at the disposal of the committees themselves, who may 
spend it in dinners or divide it among the members as they please. 

‘The City Corporation is, as every one knows, exceedingly wealthy. 
‘Tt possesses yaluable estates producing close upon £100,000 
fm rents and fines on renewal of leases. This is the freehold 
‘estate of the Corporation, and to distinguish it from some other 
trust property vested in the Corporation it is called “the City 
Estate,” The estate also comprises all profits arising by way of rents, 
tolls, &c., from the several markets under the control of the Corpora- 
tion. These amounted last year to the sum of £85,935 178 7d. 
The estate is swelled by several other items, indwding Gk weaRE, 


weights and measures, broker? rents, ene 
Vou. XV. N.S. 1875, a s 





i 


The Corporation and Companies of the City. 723 


i) 

| asalary of £1,800, In addition to his salary, the Remembrancer is 
‘credited with £2,886 by way of charges or expenses out of the City 
Estate, pure and simple, exclusive of some £1,400 for some matters 
‘relating to the Holborn Valley improvements, &c. In round figures, 
‘out ofan income of about three-quarters of 2 million the Corporation 
spends in salaries and establishments about £170,000. Meanwhile 
the Corporation is in debt for municipal purposes in a sum now 
considerably exceeding five millions of money. 

‘The Corporation of London enjoys certain privileges in trade. 
Some of these affect the right of following employments, others are 
Used merely as w source of revenue. “Those that relate to trading are 
exercised by the City cither in its corporate capacity or else through 
the medium of the trading companies or guilds, At one period the 
Jaw was very strict in maintaining monopolies. In London strangers 
were excluded from trading either wholesale or retail except under 
‘certain restrictions, Gp orb tetas t done 
with by the provisions of the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, which 
‘extinguished monopolies and rendered trade absolutely free. But 
to London the Act did not extend, and the City is the only place in 
England where this municipal interference with trade remains. ‘The 

fions, however, have been limited. The privilege formerly ap- 
Pilicd ax well to wholesale as to retail, but for ages the custom has been 
relaxed with regard to the wholesale trade. Even now, however, no per- 
son may carry on any retail trade within the City or its liberties unless 
heis a freeman. There are three ways of obtaining freedom—by bi 
‘servitude, orredemption. For along time while freedom was obtained 
by purchase it was the practice to restrict the privilege to the company: 
belonging to the applicant's trade; but by an Act of the Common 
Council of March, 1836, it was allowed to conferthe freedom of the City 
gn persons not free of any company, and since that date the common 
practice has been for the Chamberlain to admit without reference to 
the companies, Freedom by redemption is never denied, but it 
‘entails some expenditure, and to enforce it on poor traders has aften 
Veen a great hardship. Some years ago the City insisted very 
strongly on the obyervance of this privilege, and many were compelled. 
to take up their freedom. Some even had their goods distrained 
upon. Since then the law has fallen very much out of use, and last 
year the only revenue derived from this source was £6 as. 6d, on 
eeticceesiet ee 


Stony 
spermine wide! ttc ge 
patter aa of Edward TW1., whikca 








_—— 


The Corporation and Companies of the City. 725 


of the entire frechold of the City. It is indeed asserted that the 
total annual income of “The ‘Twelve Great Livery Companies” 
alone reaches nearly halfa million. But it is impossible to give any- 
‘thing more than a surmise, secing that the matter is a profound secret 
—known only to the Court of Assistants, and kept even from the know- 
ledge of the general body of liverymen. They were also enriched by 
‘bequests and legacies, and have an immense amount of property 
vested in them upon trust for charitable purposes. The Royal Com- 
wilson of 1835 was authorised to inquire into the condition of these 
‘companies : but never were Commissioners treated a3 these were. 
‘Many of the companies took no notice of their communications, 
others refused to give any information, and only two or three 
vouchsafed a civil answer. The Commissioners, therefore, found it 
‘impossible to get at the truth, The Charity Commissioners were 
‘more succeasful, ‘They at any rate obtained a list of the charities in 
‘the control of the companies; but they discovered an extraordinary 
‘state of things. Many charities had fallen into abeyance ; many 
‘trusts had been broken and the revenues of the companies thereby 
‘increased. ‘The principal of these companies at the present time are 
glutted with money which they scarcely know what to do with. 
‘They feast and feast, and build gorgeous halls ; but it is difficult to 
say that they do much more. [t is true that some of them feast 
under powers conferred upon them in their charters. It is true, too, 
that in dealing out their charities they are narrowly watched by the 
Charity Commissioners ; but from quite recent litigation it is clear 
‘that these companies are not above pocketing as their own private 
property money which was entrusted to them for the relief of the 
poor and the infirm, But charity exhausts very little of their 
revenues. What is done with the surplus the members of the respec- 
tive courts alone know. 

Why should not a commission be appointed to inquire into the 
condition of the great City companies, with the fullest powers of 
investigation? ‘The companies themselves would probably grow 
frantic in opposition, and talk of confiscation, and use other hard 
words, but it is really high time that this vast wealth should be 
devoted to some useful purpose ; in fact, that it should be restored 
‘to its original use—to the technical education of the young men 
of the metropolis. And is it mot equally high time that the 
Government of the City of London should submit to reform in 
accordance with the spirit and the demands of the age? 









Recollections of Writers, 727 
“the latest period of his life; and he had a smile of singular sweet« 
and beauty. 


| We had the inexpressible joy and comfort of remaining in the 
home where one of us had lived all her days—in the house of her 
and mother. Writing the “Fine Arts” for the Adas news- 
and the “Theatricals” for the Zxaminer newspaper, gave us 
opportunity of largely enjoying two pleasures peculiarly to our 
“taste. Our love of pictorial art found frequent delight from attend- 
ing every exhibition of paintings, every private view of new 
J new large picture, new process of colouring, new of 
' the old masters in woollen cloth, enamel, or mosaic, that 
‘London season successively produced, while our fondness for 
“going to the play” was satisfied by having to attend every first 
c and every fresh revival that occurred at the theatres 
‘This latter gratification was heightened by seeing frequently in the 
‘boxes the bald head of Godwin, with his arms folded across his 
chest, his eyes fixed on the stage, his short thickset person im- 
“moveable, save when some absurdity in the piece or some mala- 
roitness of an actor caused it to jerk abruptly forward, shaken by 
‘his single-snapped laugh ; and also by sceing there Horace Smith's 
remarkable profile, the very counterpart of that of Socrates ax known 
‘to us from traditionally authentic sources. With these two men we 
‘now and then had the pleasure of interchanging a word, as we met 
im the crowd when caving the playhouse; but there was a third 
‘whom we frequently encountered on these occasions, who often sat 
swith us during the performance, and compared notes with us on its 
merits during its course and at its close. ‘This was William Hazlitt, 
then writing the “'Theatricals" for the 7wer newspaper, His come 
\ip was most genial, his critical faculty we all know; it may 
therefore be readily imagined the gladness with which we two saw 
him approach the seats where we were and take one beside us of his 
own accord. His dramatic as well as his tit Judgment was 
‘most sound, and that he became a man of letters is matter of con- 
gratulation to the reading world; nevertheless, had William Hazlitt 
been constant to his first intellectual passion—that of painting, and 
0 his first ambition—that of becoming a pictorial artist, there is 
‘every reason to believe that he would have become quite as eminent 
as any Academician of the eighteenth century. The compositions 
that still exist are sufficient evidence of his promise, The very first 
portrait that he took was a mere head of his old nurse: and so re- 
markable are the indications in it of eqly excellence (in etyle aod 


manner that ber of the profession inoxixed ok os 
whom Hazlitt tent it for bis ratification, o> 


a 


728 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


get that Rembrandt?” The'upper part of the face was in strong 
shadow, from an over-pending black silk bonnet edged with black 
lace, that threw the forehead and eyes into darkened effect ; while 
this, as well as the wrinkled cheeks, the lines about the mouth, and 
the touches of actual and reflected light, were all given with a truth 
and vigour that might well recall the hand of the renowned Flemish 
master. It was our good fortune also to see a magnificent copy that 
Hazlitt made of Titian’s portrait of Ippolito dei Medici, when we 
called upon him at his lodgings one evening. The painting—mere 
stretched canvas without frame—was standing on an old/ashioned 
couch in one corner of the room leaning against the wall, and we 
remained opposite to it for some time, while Hazlitt stood by hold- 
ing the candle high up so as to throw the light well on to the 
picture, descanting enthusiastically on the merits of the original 
‘The beam from the candle falling on his own finely intellectual 
head, with its iron-grey hair, its square potential forehead, its massive 
mouth and chin, and eyes full of eamest fire, formed a glorious 
picture in itself, and remains a luminous vision for ever upon our 
memory. Hazlitt was naturally impetuous, and feeling that he could 
not attain the supreme height in art to which his imagination soared 
as the point at which he aimed, and which could alone suffice to 
realise his ideal of excellence therein, he took up the pen and became 
an author, with what perfect. success every one knows. His facility 
in composition was extreme. We have secn him continue writing 
(when we went to see him while he was pressed for time to finish an 
article) with wonderful ease and rapidity of pen, going on as if 
writing a mere ordinary letter. His usual manuscript was clear and 
unblotted, indicating great readiness and sureness in writing, as 
though requiring no erasures or interlining. He was fond of using 
large pages of rough paper with ruled lines, such as those of a 
bought-up blank account-book—as they were. We are so fortunate 
as to have in our possession Hazlitt's autograph title-page to bis 
“Life of Napoleon Buonapatte,” and the proof-sheets of the preface 
he originally wrote to that work, with his own correcting marks on 
the margin. The title-page is written in fine, bold, legible hand- 
writing, while the proof corrections evince the care and final polish 
he bestowed on what he wrote. The preface was suppressed, in 
deference to advice, when the work was first published ; but it is 
strange to see what was then thought “too strong and outspoken,” 
and what would now be thought simply staid and forcible sincerity 
of opinion, most fit to be expressed. 
Hazlitt was a good walker, and once, While he was Wing at 
Winter"-~- Yut on Salisbury Plain, he accepted an intation Koma 





Recollections of Writers. 729 


| brotherindaw and sister of ours, Mr. and Mrs, Towels, to pay them 
‘@ visit of some days at Standerwick, and went thither on foot. 

‘When Hazlitt was in the vein, he talked super-excellently ; and we 
‘ean remember one forenoon finding him sitting over his late break- 
‘fast—it was at the time he had forsworn anything stronger than tea, 

“of which he used to take inordinate quantities—and, as he kept 
‘pouring out and drinking cup after cup, he discoursed at large upon 
Richardson's “Clarissa” and " Grandison,” a theme that had been 
‘Suggested to him by one of us having expressed her predilection for 
‘novels written in letter-form, and for Richardson’s in particular. It 
happened that we had once heard Charles Lamb expatiate upon this 
‘very sabject ; and it was with reduplicated interest that we listened 
to Haclit’s opinion, comparing and collating it with that of Lamb. 
Both men, we remember, dwelt with interest upon the character of 
John Belford, Lovelace’s trusted friend, and upon his loyalty to him, 
with his loyal behaviour to Clarissa, 

‘At one period of the time when we met Hazlitt so frequently at 
the theatres Miss Mordaunt (afterwards Mrs. Nisbett) was making 
her appearance at the Haymarket in the first bloom and freshness 
‘of her youth and beauty. Hazlitt was “fathoms deep” in love with 
her, making us the recipients of his transports about her; while we, 
‘almost equal fanatics with himself, “poured in the open ulcer of 
his heart her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,” and “lay 
in every gash that love had given him the knife that made it” He 
-was apt to have these over-head-and-ears enamourments for some 
celebrated beauty of the then stage: most young men of any 
imagination and enthusiasm of nature have them. We remember 
Vincent Novello ecstasising over the entapturing laugh of Mrs. 
Jordan in a style that brought against him the banter of his hearers ; 
‘and on another occasion he, Leigh Hunt, and C. C. C. comparing 
notes and finding that they had all been respectively enslaved by 
‘Miss M. A, Tree when she played Viola in “ Twelfth Night”; and, 
on still another, Leigh Hunt and C. C. C. confessing to their having 
‘been cruelly and wofully in Jove with a certain Miss (her very name 
is now forgotten {}—a columbine, said to be as good in private life as 
she was pretty and gracefal in her public capacity,—and who, in 
their “salad days,” had turned their heads to desperation, 

William Hazlitt was « man of firmly consistent opinion : he main- 
tained his integrity of Liberal faith throughout, never swerving for an 
instant to even so mach as a compromise with the dominant party 
which might have made him a richer man, 

In an old diary of ours for the year 1830, under the date 
418th September, there is this sad and simmyle manwsciry 


ie 






730 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


«William Hazlitt (one of the first critics of the day) died. A few 
days ago when Charles went to see him during his illness, after 
Charles had been talking to him for some time in a soothing unde 
tone, he said :—‘ My sweet friend, go into the next room and sit 
there for a time, as quiet as is your nature, for I cannot bear talking 
at present.’” Under that straightforward, hard-hitting, direct-telling 
manner of his, both in writing and speaking, Hazlitt had a depth of 
gentleness—even tenderness—of feeling on certain subjects ; manly 
friendship, womanly sympathy, touched him to the core; and any 
token of either would bring a sudden expression into his eyes vey 
beautiful as well as very heart-stirring to look upon. We have seen 
this expression more than once, and can recall its appealing cham, 
its wonderful irradiation of the strong features and squarely.cut, 
rugged under portion of the face. 

In the same diary above alluded to there is another entry, under 
the date Friday, sth March :—“ Spent a wonderful hour in the com 
pany of the poet Coleridge.” It arose from a gentleman—a Mr. 
Edmund Reade, whose acquaintance we had made, and who begged 
we would take a message from him to Coleridge concerning a poem 
lately written by Mr. Reade, entitled “Cain,”—asking us to under- 
take this commission for him, as he had some hesitation in presenting 
himself to the author of “The Wanderings of Cain.” More than 
glad were we of this occasion for a visit to Highgate ; where at Mr. 
Gilman's house we found Coleridge, bland, amiable, affably inclined 
to renew the intercourse of some years previous on the cliff at 
Ramsgate. As he came into the room, large-presenced, ample 
countenanced, grand-foreheaded, he seemed to the younger visitor 2 
living and moving impersonation of some antique godlike being, 
shedding a light around him of poetic effulgence and omniper- 
cipience. He bent kindly eyes upon her, when she was introduced 
to him as Vincent Novello’s eldest daughter and the wife of her 
introducer, and spoke a few words of courteous welcome : then, the 
musician’s name catching his ear and engaging his attention, he 
immediately launched forth into a noble eulogy of music, speaking 
of his special admiration for Beethoven as the most poetical of all 
musical composers ; and from that, went on into a superb disserta- 
tion upon an idea he had conceived that the Creation of the Universe 
must have been achieved during a grand prevailing harmony of 
spheral music. His elevated tone, as he rolled forth his gorgeous 
sentences, his lofty look, his sustained flow of language, his sublime 

utterance gave the effect of some magnificent organ-peal to our 
entranced ears, It was only when he came to a pause in his subject 
—or rather, to the close of what he had to say wyon What ee 





Recollections of Writers. 73 


to ordinary matters, learned the motive of our visit and the 
with which we were charged, and answered some inquiries 

Me ests by the pentieat bik uirsady quctetl ls thaws Recah 
respecting is immunity from headache, 

_A few other entries in the said old diary,—which probably came 
exceptionally preserved for the sake of the one on 

the one on Huzlitt,—are also of some interest>—" r5th 
. In the evening we saw Poticr, the celebrated French 
in the * Chiffonnier,’ and ‘ Le Cuisinier de Buffon’; a fow 
afterwards the English Opera House was burnt to the ground, 
God be prised for our escape!” “4th March. One of the most 
delightful evenings I ever enjoyed,—John Cremer was with us.” 
*asth March. Saw Miss Fanny Kemble play Portia, in the ‘Mer 
chant of Venice,’ for her first benefit.” “21st April, Went to the 
Diorama and saw the beautiful view of Mount St. Gothard, In the 
evening saw the admirable Potier in ‘Le Juif' and ‘Antoine’" 
| “arst June. Heard the composer Hummel play his own Septet in 
D Minor, a Rondo, Mozart’s duet for two pianofortes, and he ex: 
temporised for about twenty minutes. ‘The performance was for his 
farewell concert, His hand reminds me of Papa more than of John 
Cramer.” “arst September. Witnessed Miss Paton’s first re- 
appearance in London after het elopement. She played Rosina in 
“The Barber of Seville.’ Mr. Leigh Hunt was with us." “ 1st Octo- 
ber. Saw a little bit of Dowton's Cantwell on the opening of Drury 
Lane; the house was so full we could not geta seat.” “18th 
October, Saw Macready in ‘Virginius’ at Drury Lane” " axst 
October, Siw Macready's ‘ Hamlet" 

‘The references to two great musical names in the above entries 
recall some noteworthy meetings at the Novellos’ house, John 
Cramer was an esteemed friend of Vincent Novello, who highly 
admired his fine talent and liked his social qualities, Cramer was a 

courteous man: polizhed in manner as a frequenter of 
Courts, as much an adept in subtly clegant flattery as a veteran 
courtier; handsome in face and person as a Court favourite, distin- 
guished in bearing as a Court ruler, he was a very mirror of court- 
Hiness. Yet he could be more than downright and frankspoken 
upon particular occasion: for once, when Rossini and Rossini’s 
music were in the ascendant among fashionable coteries, and Cramer 
thought him overweening in consequence, when he met him for the 
first time in socicty, after something pt Rosine fal eens 
and he looked at Cramer aa if in expectation of 
_ went to the pianoforte and gave a few burs from Mozart's “ 


Figaro” (the passage in the finale to the and Act, Ge 












732 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


the words, “Deh Signor, nol contrastate”); then tumed round 
and said in French to Rossini:—‘That’s what J call music, am 
maestro.” 

‘As a specimen of his more usually courtly manner, witty, as wel 
as elegant, may be cited the exquisitely turned compliment he paid 
to Thalberg; who, saying with some degree of pique, yet with 
evident wish to win Cramer's approval :—“ I understand, Mr. Cramer, 
you deny that I have the good left hand on the pianoforte which is 
attributed to me; let me play you something that I hope will com 
vince you;” played a piece that showed wonderful mastery in 
manipulation on the bass part of the instrument. Cramer listened 
implicitly throughout ; then said :—“ I am still of the same opinion, 
Monsieur Thalberg; I think you have no left hand—I think you bare 
S100 right hands.” 

John Cramer’s own pianoforte playing was supremely good ; quite 
worthy the author of the charming volume of Exercises—muost of 
them delightful pieces of composition—known as “J.B. Cramer's 
Studio.” His “/egato” playing was singularly fine : for, having a 
very strong third finger (generally the weak point of pianists), no 
perceptible difference could be traced when that finger touched the 
note in a smoothly equable run or cadence. We have heard him 
mention the large size of his hand as a stumbling-block rather than 
as an aid in giving him command over the keys; and probably it was 
to his consciousness of this, as a defect to be overcome, that may be 
attributed his excessive delicacy and finish of touch. 

Hummel’s hand was of more moderate size, and he held it in the 
close, compact, firmly-curved, yet easily-stretched_ mode which forms 
a contrast to the ungainly angular style in which many pianists splay 
their hands over the instrument. His mere way of putting his hands 
on the key-board when he gave a preparatory prelude ere beginning 
to play at once proclaimed the master—the musician, as compared 
with the mere pianoforte-player. It was the composer, not the per- 
former, that you immediately recognised in the few preluding chords 
he struck—or rather rolled forth. His improvising was a marvel of 
facile musical thought ; so symmetrical, so correct, so mature in 
construction was it that, as a musical friend—himself a musician of 
no common excellence, Charles Stokes—observed to us :—‘ You 
might count the time to every bar he played while improvising.” 

Hummel came to see us while he was in London, bringing his 
two young sons with him ; and we remember one of them making us 
laugh by the childish abruptness with which he set down the 
scalding cup of tea he had raised to Wis Vis, exclaiming in dismay 

ACT heiss \” 





Recollections of Writers. 733 


‘The able organ-player Thomas Adams, and Thomas Attwood, who 
had been a favourite pupil of Mozart, by whom he was pettingty 
¢: “Tommassino,” were also friends of Vincent Novello; and 
brought letters of introduction to him when he visited England, 
first time Liszt came to dinner he chanced to arrive late: the 
had been taken away, and roast lamb was on table with its 
“usual English accompaniment of mintsauce. This latter, a strange 
condiment to the foreigner, so pleased Lisat’s taste that he insisted 
“on eating it with the brought-back mackerel, as well as with every 
‘succeeding dish that came to table—gooseberry-tart and all !—he 
good-naturedly joining in the hilarity elicited by his universal 
‘adaptation and adoption of mint-sauce, 

Later on we had the frequent delight of seeing and hearing 
Felix Mendelssohn among us. Youthful in years, face, and figure, 
he looked almost a boy when he first became known to Vincent 
Novello, and was almost boyish in his unatfected case, good spirits, 
‘and readiness to be delighted with everything done for him and ‘said 
to him, Hewas made much of by his weleomer, who so appreciated 
his genius in composition and so warmly extolled his execution, 
both on the organ and on the pianoforte, that once when Mr. Novello 
was praising him to an English musical professor of some note, 
the professor said :—“If you don’t take care, Novello, you'll spoil 
that young man.” “ He's too good, too genuine to be spoiled,” 
was the reply. 

We had the privilege of being with our father when he took young 
Mendelssohn to play on the St. Paul's organ; where his farts (as 
Vincent Novello punningly called them) were positively astounding 
onthe pedals of that instrument. Mendelssohn's organ pedal-playing 
‘was a real wonder, —so masterful, so potent, so extraordinarily agile, 
‘The last piece we ever heard him play in England was Bach's fagwe 
‘on his own name, on the Hanover Square organ at one of the con- 
certs given there. We had the good fortune to hear him play some 
‘of his own pianoforte compositions at one of the Dusseldorf Festi- 
vals; where he conducted his fine psalm "As the hart pants.” On 
that oceasion, calling upon him one morning when there was a 
private rehearsal going on, we had the singular privilege of hearing 
him siuy a few notes,—just to give the vocalist who was to sing the 
part at performance an idea of how he himself wished the passage 
sung, —which he did with his small voice but musicianlike expression. 
‘On that same occasion, too, we enjoyed the pleasure of half an hour's 
quiet talk with him, a he leaned on the back of a chair near us and 


asked about the Loadon Philharmonic Society, &¢,, like our- 
Selves, arrived at an exceptionally early time Yeloxe 

















DEAR Lapy DISDAIN. 


BY JUSTIN MeCARTHY, AUTHOR OF “LINLEY ROCHFORD,” 
“A FAIR SAXON,” “MY ENEMY’S DAUGHTER,” &o, 





CHAPTER XXXVI. 
THEY STAND CONFESSED. 


HRISTMAS PEMBROKE had accomplished his resolve 

so far as the getting vo Durewoods was concerned. The 

day was bright, clear, and cold, when the Saucy Lass, 

now in good condition again, brought him safely to the 
Tittle pier. The village looked melancholy in the wintry sunlight, 
and a keen pang shot through the poor youth's heart as he thought 
‘of the bright soft summer evening when first he landed there ; when 
the whole place came up for him, rising beautiful and poetic like 
some Delos-island over the grey monotonous waters of his life. He 
could see the whole scene once more as he saw it then—and the 
pony-carriage at the pier, and the dark eyes of Marie Challoner 
looking kindly at him. 

‘He had been wild with impatience to get to Durewoods, and now 
he walked slowly up the pier, and tumed to the left instead of the 
ight when he reached the road. He lounged along “ melancholy, 
slow” in the strict sense of “The Traveller,” and feeling unfriended 
to, although he knew that he had friends, He stopped and looked 
at the cottage in which poor Mrs, Cramp used to live, and he thought. 
of the night when Nat and he, dripping from the sea, found shelter 
there. He knew now of Nat Cramp's fate: the captain of the Samy 
Lass had told him all about it, and how Nat had been buried near 
his mother ; and Christmas had communicated to the captain in 
return his part of the story, which was news to Durewoods, As 
Christmas looked at the house he felt almost as if he were guilty of 
Cramps death, because of the piece of curious misfortune which 
caused them to meet at the station that unlucky day. He wondered 
what disappointment or disaster it was which had: given such wild- 
‘ness to Cramp’s manner, and was sure it belonged tolove. .As Tear 
Delieves all miseries and madness to come of ungrateful daughters, 
so Pembroke naturally set down such human trials to the pangs of 
disprized Jove. ‘Then he turned quickly back, wishing be bad wk 


736 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


come that way or passed Nat's house, and thinking that if omens, 
good or bad, could matter to him any more it would have been of 
evil omen to look on the place. 

Now that he was in Durewoods he began to wonder why he bad 
come there so precipitately ; why he had come there at all ; why be 
had taken such great trouble to save himself from the. sea with the 
hope of getting to Durewoods and seeing Marie Challoner. When 
he did see her—if she would see him—what was to come of that? 
What did it matter whether she knew the whole truth about Miss 
Jansen or did not know it? He felt at moments almost imclined to 
go back again to London. All the vague doubts and hopes and 
perplexing conjectures needing explanation, which had seemed to 
him when he was in London like a summons from Providence or 
fate bidding him to hasten to Durewoods, began now to wear a look 
‘of blank absurdity. Probably he would have taken flight and gone 
back to London but that he knew full well the moment he got back 
there the dreams and longings would all set in again, and he should 
have to follow whither they bade him to go. Being here now he 
would go through with it; he would see her for the last time. 

He turned again and passed the pier, and held to the right, and 
mounted the little hill. Winter now brooded over that scene, and 
winter over all his hopes ! The very ground was bare of leaves now. 
‘They had lain there in heaps in the little hollow on cither side of the 
road for months until the rains rotted them into the earth or the keen 
winds scattered them far away. So, our young hero thought, had all 
his hopes—the hopes with which he entered London—been dealt 
with ; so scattered and trodden into the earth of prosaic common- 
place. He was in a sadly egotistical mood just now, after the 
fashion of the disappointed, and he could not help fancying that the 
wintry aspect of the place was purposely in keeping with his own 
desolate condition. Egotism alone, perhaps, could have soothed and 
consoled him now. 

Yet the day was bright and cheery for a winter day in England. 
‘There was a light frost, and all trace of rain and mist was gone ; and 
as Christmas tumed to look back upon the sea, one great tract of it 
glittered with a smile of sunlight, and it might have been summer for 
the moment, and not winter, if one looked but on the heavens and 

the waves. Why not accept the smile as ominous when one is so 
ready to think of the grey clouds and the naked trees and the chill 
earth as symbolic? Christmas plucked up heart at the sight of the 
water and the gladdening sunlight. “ Come? he said to Virsa 
shall live all this down | T'\i get this \ost meeting over, and Yen TE 





738 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


womanlike she began to think of him with great compassion, and to 
blame herself for ever having listened to his proposal and to feel 
ashamed of herself, and ashamed even of being so glad to be free. 
She was in the midst of all this selfreproach, and her eyes were 
dimmed with tears, when the card bearing the name of Christmas 
Pembroke was put into her hand. Quickly she dropped the tee- 
gram and blushed, and started, and became half wild with excite- 
‘ment, and it must be owned forgot all about poor Ronald. Whe 
she sent her message to Christmas by the maid she ran and plunged 
her face into water to wash away the traces of the tears, and she 
Jooked at herself in the glass and wondered what she should seem like 
in Ais eyes, and remembered the day when in his blunt boyish fashion 
he told her she was handsome. Strange, at that time she was only 
amused by his brusque frankness, and now as she remembered it and 
looked at herself in the glass she saw that the mere thought of it 
made her blush. ‘‘I wonder will he think me handsome now?” she 
thought—and then she hastened with her preparations to meet 
him, for the absurd idea came into her head, “Suppose I keep 
him too long—and he has to go away—and goes to Japan without 
seeing me?” 

Christmas waiting nervously below heard the rustle of a dress at 
last and a light quick tread, and then had a confused impression of 
dark eyes and a sweet, fresh voice and a tall, shapely figure, and a 
hand with a kindly pressure; and Marie Challoner was with him. 
The whole place for the moment swam before his eyes, and he looked 
so pale and half distraught that Marie feared he must have suffered 
serious harm by his long wrestle with the winds and the waves. 

“Tt is so kind of you to come to see me all this way,” she said. 
“But, of course, you would come to see Miss Lyle.” 

“T have not seen her yet. I—I came to see you first.” 

“But you look very pale. We were all so glad to hear that you 
were not drowned ; we never thought of asking whether you were hurt.” 

“Oh, no, Twas only alittle shaken—not hurt at all—nothing to 
speak of.” 

“ How glad you ought to be—and in such a sea so long! Hours 
upon hours, was it not ?” 

“It seemed a terribly long time tome. I thought it would 
never have come to an end. But I don’t think it could have 
been very long in reality.” 

There was a moment's pause. 

“You had a wonderful escape,” said Mane. “Noo cogs ioe 

very thanktus.” 


Dear Lady Disdain, 739 


“Yes,” he answered, “I didn’t want to be drowned just then.” 
_ “Ehope it did you no harm—being in the cold sea all that long 
” . 


“No: I don’t think it did. 1 felt very stiff and stupid for a day 
's0, and not like myself: but it didn’t do me any harm.” 

“ How strong you are!” 

“Oh yes, nothing does me any harm—nothing of that kind. Poor 
p—you've heard of course 2” 

“Wes, Lhave heard.” She did not say that she had fainted at the 
‘aight of Cramp’s dead body, or why. “What a terrible thing! He 
"was 40 young, and 1 used to think once that he would come to 











“Tt wasn’t any fault of mine,” Christinas hastened to-explain, “I 

_ didn’t want bim to come in the boat; I begged of him not to come. 

| But he would have been perfectly safe if he had only kept quiet. 
‘don’t know what came over him, whether he was frightened out of 
his wits or not, but he scemed like a madman, Why, he would have 
‘been alive and well now, if he wouldn't keep jumping up and 
‘going on like @ lunatic. There wasn't the slightest danger, I do 
Delieve he was mad, and I hope he was: for I feel half guilty 
somehow of his death, although Heaven knows it was no fault of 
‘mine, and [ would have saved him if I could—at the risk of my 
‘own life-—not mich to risk, certainly.” 

“4 think you risked your life far too much as it was, Why 
did you get into a boat on such a day?” 

“Well, there was no other way of getting to Durewoods,” 

“But why not wait until the next day: or until the weather was 
fine or the steamer was ready; or go round by the road? Why 
risk your life for nothing?” 

“Yes, there was no need of so much impatience, indeed,” poor 
‘Christmas said disconsolately. “I might as well have waited ; but 
anyhow, Miss Challoner, 1 should like youto know that it was only 
my own life I wanted to risk—if there was risk—and not poor 


“1 know very well that you did not think of yourself, ‘hat is 
why [ blame you so much, Mr. Pembroke,” 

She felt it a delightful thing to be talking to him. Me was 
“very much embarassed. She saw the end of all this, and he did 
not, So she trembled a little, but was very happy; and he stam- 
amered and was awkward and misemble. Now that he was with 
her be began to think there was not a great Geal oi qoryone ‘Nin 
coming, and to wish he had stayed away. a | 
















Dear Lady Disdain, 740 


| couldn't leave,” he said, “I couldn't leave, you know, without 
good-bye," 
no! Iam sure you would not be so unfriendly as to do 


Suppose, she thought, he only did come to say good-bye, and 

‘nothing else, and goes away then—what am I to do? 

“And besides,” he went on in a hesitating way, “it wasn't only 
” 


‘She drew along breath of relief She was happy again, since it 

‘was not only that, 

_ There was something else I wanted to say to you—and I eculdn't 

you for ever without saying it—something I wanted to explain, 

‘May I go on?" 

_ “Oh, yes, Mr. Pembroke, if you wish! What was it you wanted 
a?! 


“You won't be angry with me, Miss Challoner, if it seems odd? 
“You will be alittle generous with me, and believe I havea good 
motive, won't you? and you won't be offended ?” 

“Why, Mr. Pembroke, this is a terrible preface! Why should I 
be offended? How could I possibly suppose that you meant to 
offend me?” 

“Thank you—then I'll go on, I wanted to explain—Miss 
‘Challoner, you beard, I know you did, something about me and a 
‘young lady, whom I needn't name, about my being in love with her, 
and our being engaged. Didn't you?” 

“Yes, I heard something of the kis 

“ Did you believe it?” 

“T suppose so, Why not? Was it not Bete She spoke with 
her best possible imitation of friendly carelessn¢ 

Tt was not true ; there wis hot Ghd bigia reel ROO 

‘How absurd of people to spread such reports! I cannot think 
how such things get about. But after all, Me. Pembroke, I don’t see 
that you need complain very much, It is much more unpleasant for 
Aer to be talked about, She is a very pretty girl, I think, And was: 
there nothing in all that, really?” 

“Nothing at all. She never cared anything about me, and I don’t 
eare three straws about her.” 

“Come, now, what a very rude way to speak of a young lady! 
thought you had more chivalry, Mr. Pembroke.” 

“Well, I only meant you to understand that there never was the 
faintest idea of anything Tike love between us. Lwant you, above 


all things, Miss Challoner, to believe that q 


742 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


“Of course I believe it, since you tell me—but would it not have 
been a great deal happier for you if the story had been tue?” 

“It couldn't be true, Miss Challoner, and I came here to tell sou 
why it could not be true. I know it was told to you, and I do not 
know why. Not for anything on earth would I leave England untt 
J had told you that that was not true, and showed you why it coud 
not be true.” 

“And why could it—not—be true ?” 

Now, thought Christmas, I cannot stop: now all must be said. 

“ Because I loved you, Miss Challoner, and because I do love you, 
and shall love you all my life! Because I am all wild with love of 
you! No—don't draw away from me, or be angry. That's all I 
have to say. It is all over now—and I'll leave you this moment.” 

“But why do you tell me this?” Marie asked, all palpitating with 
fear and joy. 

“Heaven knows—I don’t know! Because I couldn’t help telling 
you. I couldn't live if I hadn't told you. After all, what harm has 
it done you 

« But if it were true—if you really felt all that for me”—she began, 
not unwilling, perhaps, to tempt him into saying it over again, that she 
might hear it again. 

“If it is true? Shall I tell you a thousand times over, Miss 
Challoner, that I love you? I will say it a thousand times over rather 
than go without knowing that you believe me. I love you—I ”—— 

“Oh, hush !” said Marie, almost borne down by his vehemence, and 
a little afraid of such emotion, which was so very unlike Ronald Vidal's 
way, “I do believe you, if you say so. But why do you tell this to 
me? It must make me unhappy to think that I am the cause of your 
being unhappy.” 

“T should be ten thousand times more unhappy if I had not told 

you. Besides it isn’t any fault of yours. You can’t help my falling 
in love with you. I insist upon my right,” Christmas said, with an 
attempt at a smile, “to love you if I like, and as much as I like, and 
aslong, and you can’t prevent that. It’s afreecountry! Well, that’s 
all. I should be perfectly wretched if you thought I loved or cared a 
rush for anybody else but you; and so in listening to me, Miss 
Challoner, and hearing me out, you have done all you could do to 
make my life endurable.” 

“ That is not much,” said Marie. “ You know I would do a great 

deal to make you happy if { could” 

“Oh, yes Christmas hastened to say, with someting tte eine 

and manly cheerfulness, “1 know AL hat. 1 know Gat you next 






Dear Lady Disdain. 743 


‘anything but the kindest ffiendship to me. Why, I should call 
um my dearest friend on earth, if I could only think of you in that 
» And how good of you to listen to all this! I felt terrified, 
t you have made it so easy. I felt that I must tell you this, but I 
us af it was wrong to do and would offend you, and that you 
‘be angry, and then I should hate myself and wish I had never 

told you. Now you know: and you are not offended ?"—— 

Oh, no ; only sorry ”"—— 

“Sorry? for what? For shining like a light across a poor fellow’s 
‘way, and giving him always something to remember, and an ideal; 
and so much that I can't put into words? Why, I shall have the 
memory of your kindness and your friendship always! I would 
father haye seen you and loved you, and know that you knew I 
Toved you, and that you forgave me, than be a king—and I haven't 
Jost you after all," he added with a melancholy smile, “for T 
never had any hope of winning you. So I am all the gainer, you 
see!” 
™ You deserve a better fortune, Mr. Pembroke.” 

“Don't think about that. You have done all you could to 
make me happy—and now I've said all T wanted to say—except 
” 



















“ Good-bye," she said very faintly: “if we must say it”; and 
wondering what she was to do next. 
We nmust say it! Good-bye. I need not iy how T wish you 
happiness. You and yours—and af yours.” 

“ Yes,—thank you : and before you go—as you are going—should 
you like ?”. 
“Should I like, Miss Challoner?” 
“Should you like"—and an insane impulse carried her away,— 
* perhaps to kiss me?” 
‘The blood rushed into Christmas’s face and into hers: and they 
both trembled, and stood trembling. There was a moment's silence, 
and then he threw one hand into the air with the gesture of a man 
who flings away some last chance, 
“No!” he said, “TE shouldn't! Ishould go wild if T had to 
Jeave you then—and your kisses are not yours to give away |" 
“Tee not true,” Lady Disdain replied with indignant emphasia. 
“You don’t know what you say. They are mine to give away or 
T should never have offered them, You may be sure I acyer mid 
such words before,” 

She was as angry with him and with Wiis rejection of wer elles aa 
| he could have known the whole troth, She was angry WAN 


— 









744 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


for having made the offer. She felt almost inclined now to le 
him go. 

«J don’t understand,” he began. 

Of course you don’t understand; men don’t ever understand any- 
thing,” and Lady Disdain found herself in her emotion parroting the 
commonplace sayings of angry women without thinking of it “Do 
you suppose, Mr. Pembroke, that because I offered to kiss youl 
must be in love with you?” 

“Oh no, no,” he exclaimed quite earnestly, and with fervent 
disclaimer—“ how could I suppose anything of the kind? I assure 
you, Miss Challoner, such an idea never entered my mind— 
never !” 

“Then why did you speak in such a way?” 

“ But I didn't—indeed, I didn’t’ I knew you only meant good 
nature and friendship, and pity and all that : but I couldn't stand 
it, Miss Challoner, all the same.” 

“ Well,” and she drew a long breath, “ it’s no matter, I meant 
it well. And you are really going to Japan?” 

“Yes. 1am going.” 

“I wish you could take me with you.” 

“You wouldn't care to be there. You are much happier here.” 
He thought she was only jesting about her love for travel and seeing 
the world. 

“T shall not be happy here.” 

But you have everything to make you happy—and when you 
are—married—you can travel again, and” 

“Tam not going to be married. No,—you need not look 
surprised. It is quite true—I am not going to be married. I have 
broken all that off—this long time—yesterday—I don't know when. 
But I am free.” 

“ Why did you do this?” the wondering youth asked. 

“Why? Because I had made a mistake in life. Am I the first 
girl who didn’t know her own mind? Because people persuaded 
me, and I didn’t know myself—not in the least. Now I do—and 
Tam free. But this is only personal talk—about myself, and I must 
not detain you. Good-bye, Mr. Pembroke.” 

Our hero was for the moment all puzzled. 

“You changed your mind?” 

“Yes: No, though—I don’t think I did. I only found out my 
mind—found what I ought to have known long ago.” 

Was any faint idea breaking in now on whe wis of Cosstmade 
mind? 


Dear Lady Disdain. 7 aI 


What ought you to have known long ago? Is it wrong to ask 
>” 







“Tf ought to have known that I cared for—for somebody 


(Christmas was standing with his hat in his hand. He tossed the 
‘on to the table near, and moved towards her half in hope, 
Taalf in fear, hardly knowing what he did or felt. 

“Yes,” she mid, “I um very sorry: it was very wrong, and 
thoughtless of me to Aim. but I didn't know—and they told me 
you were in love with Aer—and—will you kiss me now? and I'll 
0 with you to Japan or anywhere if you like!" 

Then Christmas Pembroke for the first time kissed a young 
woman's lips. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


“CONTENT SO ANSOLUTE” 


‘Wintcet of these two young lovers was the more happy and the 
more in love? A question that probably the wit of man could not 
settle until at least the old and general question had first been 
| settled —is man or woman susceptible of the higher happiness and 

capable of the stronger love? The wise person told of in classic 
story, whom the gods permitted to be changed for a time into a 
woman and then resume the form and the life of a man, is said to 
have reported as the result of his experience that the woman is more 
loving and the man more happy. If this be a true report, then let us 
say that Maric Challoner loved the more and Christmas was the more 
happy. ‘The latter part at Ieast would bear some sceming of truth, 
for im her fresh delight of love and happiness Marie felt some 
painful thought about her father arising in her mind, while Pembroke’s 
breast was all filled with his joy, and he could spare no thought for 
‘obstacles—cared nothing about them, whether they were to arise or 
not. But, indeed, all one could say of these two is that he and she 
‘were just as much in love and just as happy as aman and « woman 
ever could be. Curious to note that their love had been of such 
strangely different growth. ‘hat of the man had lit up almost the 
first moment he and she met, and kept burning always. Her love 
had been of slow growth, long unrecognised, unsuspected, only 
gradually making its presence felt, until at last it broke and glowed 
into fall flame, 
Perhaps, if any romantic person could have \adleed ints than 
#0 see a living chapter of love or romance, he or Dae wigyh wae) 








746 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


a little disappointed and might have wondered that there was not 
somewhat more of passionate demonstrativeness. But, indeed, the two 
lovers were a good deal embarrassed and even shy. The sudden- 
ness of the new relation which they held to each other made them 
wonderfully timid. 

“T wish we were up in the wood—in that dear delightful litle 
hollow,” said Christmas. 

“T don't think I could wish anything to be but just what it is.” 
Marie answered quickly ; for the little hollow in the wood had to him 
only a memory of her, but she remembered that she had been there 
with Ronald Vidal too, and therefore held it less sacred. 

“T can hardly believe in all this too happy,” he said. “The 
change is too sudden for me to realise it yet. And I am afraid, 
Marie—would you believe it?” 

“Afraid? Of what?” 

“That Iam not half good enough for you, and can’t make you 
happy enough, and give you the position you ought to have. You 
have been always used to such a home—fall of luxury and all that” 

“Yes. I have always been used to it, and so I don’t care about 
it, What good has it ever done for me? I have always had money 
enough—or rather I have never had any money at all, but every- 
thing has been bought for me that I wanted, and much that I never did 
want—and now it would please me much more to buy things for my- 
self. I know that I shall develop a perfect genius for domestic 
economy, and I shall be as delighted with it as a child with a new 
‘toy, so don't be afraid of shat.” 

«But I haven't much money.” 

“Oh, but you will get more, or we shall find what you have quite 
enough for us—and I don’t care. It will not affect me. I am not 
talking like the romantic young women in the novels, Chris.” 

It sent a delicious thrill through him to hear her call him “ Chris.” 

She saw the expression of delight that passed over his face. 

“T think I shall always call you Chris. I used to like to hear Miss 
Lyle call you Chris, But I wanted to tell you that I am not like a 
girl in a romance. I do know the value of money, and luxury, and 
all that—to me ; and I know that it is just nothing, and that as long 
as you care for me I shall never care what kind of furniture is in the 
room, or what sort of carpet we are treading on. I know now that 
I never was happy, or could be—until I found out that I could love 
some one—and that you were the some one”” 

“ Marie, suppose 1 had not come here to Durenonds, attra gone 
away—what should we have done?” 





vr 
} Dear Lady Disdain. 747 


“Ob you couldn't have gone away—it’s imposible. Heaven 
‘would never have allowed that. But don't call me only Marie—like 
‘everybody else.” 

“What shall call you then?” For he still was shy and almost 
afraid to call his own his own. 

“I don't know—something tender and loving—something which 
‘will let me feel that you do really love me beyond all the world. Am 
1 too outspoken and bold, Chris? Tcan't help it. You have saved 
‘me from such a miserable life, and I want to be assured again and 
again that you love me and that I may love you." 

And so all thoughts and plans for the future were put away for the 
moment and their talk for awhile was given to mere assurances of 
love, It was the youth of the world for them again, ‘They grew in 
courage both of them, and Christmas found that he could devise 
marvelously sweet and tender names for her. 

‘Ves, it was for the hour a renewal of the world’s youth and golden’ 
days so far as these two were concerned. ‘They sometimes walked’ 
up and down the room, he with his arm around her waist and his tall, 
somewhat boyish figure bending’ a little down towards her, and his 
heart filled with a wonderful longing to be able to go out and fight 
lions or do something else for her to show how much he loved her. 
‘They seemed to have forgotten that they were not in Arcadia, but 
in the library of a Londom financier’s country house, and that there 
‘were such things in the world.as Iadies-maids and butlers, and pre- 
parations for luncheons and dinners, and possible moming calls. 
‘The latter events, however, were only possibilities in Durewoods, so 
fie as Sir John Challoner’s house was concerned when Sir John him- 
self was absent. He brought his visitors with him from town. 

So our lovers walked slowly up and down and talked and some= 
times laughed in that old library as if it were their own safe retreat, 
wholly sheltered from the intrusion of the outer world. It was the 
striking of the clock on the chimney-piece which first brought them 
back to the details of common life. 

“Can it be so late?” Murie asked, "Two o'clock |" - 

“T suppose I ought to go away?" 

“T suppose so. I wonder if I ought to ask you to stay for 
Tancheon at three?” 

“T don't know, I haven't the least idea,” the unsophisticated) 
youth answered. “Bur if I go away now you must Jet me come 
again very soon—or let me see you somewhere,” 

“I used to go to see you at Mivs Lyles long ago wilhsaek uneq 


hesitation,” Mae: said, smiling at the thowght. a —~_ 





m8 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


ould oot do car now. I womder wixt Miss Lyle will say when she 
hems ail <tis. She will gur all the blame on me, I know.” 

“The question is.” Corisomes said, “what are we to do next? I 
smgpose we shail have some difficulty with your father. I ought to 
go > London amd ceil Sim of this at once.” 

“Hee will be here. perhaps this very evening.” Marie said, turing 
alte gale at the thought. “If be will not consent, Chris?” 

+I dont care about his consent, so long as I have his daughters 
You wort bresk your word, I know.” 

“Ob, no—ITl not bresk my word—nor change. We must only 
wait” 

“TT not wait,” sid Christmas “IM cany you off by force if 
needs be—and then no one can blame ya." 

“I dont care about the blame It is not that I don’t even 
care aboct his anger. I mean it would not alarm me or put me 
from my purpose ; bet I should be so sorry to give him any more pain, 
and I should like him to Eke yw. He was always so good to me 
and so fond of me, and I used to be so fond of him, and of course 
this is a disappointment to him If we are to be—married—you 
and L, Chris ’>—— 

“ If we are to be married ” 

© Well, uz we are to be married, I should like our married life to 
begin in kindness with him, and if it might be. with his good will. 
We are both young, and you seem so very young. everybody says— 
and we cocid wait I should be happy, no matter how long we 
waited, while I knew that you always thought of me, and loved me. 
You will promise me this—not to have any quarrel with my father 
if we can—if we can avoid it by waiting a litle. You will promise 
me this?” 

She threw her arm over the young man’s shoulder—it was the 
first approach to a caress she had yet made—and looked pleadingly 
into his eyes. 

“ My dearest dear, Ill promise you anything,” he said. “Til do 
anything you like that will make you happy.” 

With a blushing cheek and growing courage she kissed him. 

“And then you know,” she pleaded, “he has some right to com- 
plain of me. Yes, and of you too, Chris! Why did you say that 
you were in love with that poor girl? Did you say that ?” 

“Oh, I never said it! I never said a word of the kind. How 
could I have said that?” 

Well, but he came to believe it somehow, and he thought you 
said so. How could that have been?” 





Dear Lady Disaain, 749 


‘Christmas had thought of this many times, even during their first 
flush of surprise and happiness. Was he to let Marie Challoner 
know that her father had been guilty of such a cruel fraud? 

“TI don’t know," he said, hastily, “He must have misunderstood 
somehow, 1 was awfully confused of course, and I suppose I didn’t 
‘know what I was saying. I thought he would understand me,~or 
that he partly guessed already. It was a very different love-story I 
meant to tell him.” 

“ About me?” 

“About you, love; and only you! See what a piece ot work I 
must have made of it !” 

“And what confusion it brought on everybody, If I had known 
then". 

“ But you didn't care about me then?” 

“Oh yes I did. I know now that I did. I felt towards you 
even then as I never felt to any one else. I ought to have known, 
Oh yes, Chris. I was beginning to be in love with you then! 
But of course I closed my heart against you when I heard that. Do 
you remember the day in Mrs, Seagraves’ house 2” 

“DoT remember it? Didn't 1 walk the streets half that night 
and think of killing myself?” 

“[ was very much in love with you that day, only I wouldn't 
allow myself to think of it, And that was the day when poor 
Ronald Vidal asked if he might come and see me." 

“I saw him,” Christmas said, “and I hated him then, and I 
should have liked to kill him. Now I suppose he would like to 
kill me! Well, I don’t wonder at that.” 

“Te was the next day you told my father.” 

“Tt was,” said Christmas hurriedly, wishing that her memory of 
that fact at least were a little less clear, “It was all my fault, that 
terrible misunderstanding, Well, my dearest dear, this time when I 
go to Sir John Challoner with my love-story I'll make my meaning 
clear.” 

“What will you say?” 

“Sir John, I am in love with your daughter, Marie Challoner—in 
love with Marie Challoner, your daughter—as I do believe no 
mortal man was ever in love with a girl before! I am in love with 
a girl whose name is Marie Challoner, and who is your daughter { 
‘That will be clear enough?” 

“Yes, I think that will be clear enough; but you may add 

ing.” 





“What can I add to strengthen that?” 





748 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


could not do that now. I wonder what Miss Lyle will - 
hears all this. She will put all the blame on me, IF. 
“The question is,” Christmas said, “what are 
suppose we shall have some difficulty with yor: 
go to London and tell him of this at once.” 
“Fe will be here, perhaps this very ever: 
a little pale at the thought. “If he will r. 
“T don't care about his consent, so 
You won't break your word, I know.” 
“Oh, no—L'll not break my wor 
wait.” 
“Tl not wait,” said Christma 
needs be—and then no one can. 
“T don’t care about the b 
care about his anger. I me’ 
from my purpose ; but I sho: 
and I should like him to I" 
and so fond of me, and I 
this is a disappointmen'. § 
and I, Chris"— #4 
“Tf we are to be m* 












cathy ages 
sone Lyle. 





«IIL. 


¢ THE EYES.” 





wn strolled into his sister's house in 
sen her afternoon reception was goitg 
«Well, sine we att + go there, for his opinions ,on most sib- 
begin in kindness w { _ °4 Teligious—concurred with those of vay 
Weare both young. | “6d themselves in that drawing room. Besides 
and we could we, 3Y visitors there who had no opinions whatever 
waited, while Ik. 20 these Captain Cameron regarded as worse than 
You wil promis 20% of wrong and strong creeds. ‘There were some 
ifee cant if w #81 be found there who hardly knew what sort of 
ine this?” slinistry was in power anywhere, and would not have 
‘She threw J12 KNOW. Some of these persons, indeed, made a point 
Vert that it was a matter of absolute indifference to 
into his ey eoitical principles were up and what were down so long 
«My age pictures to paint and music to listen to; and one had 
dying fypnced to the appalled Cameron himself that he didn’t care 
bie poets prestige was gone or not, and that if half a dozen 
cag Bgsmies were to occupy London in succession it would not 
plain, Zptne slightest concem so long as they didn't interfere with 
you Gallery and Wagner's music. 
x. Agprticular Sunday, however, Cameron had heard a piece of 
ois a interested and puzzled him, and about which he thought 
Hi A Probably learn the truth from his sister, With all his dissemt 
a gee ovinions and the good-humoured chaff in which he occa 
wn “aptain Cameron thought Ws Sster avery deve 







first ap 





758 


n sphere a. queen of 
‘mesoe ee her as some oven of het 
fe asrunied, dharefore, Hat; nothing 20 


Srl? Does she, though? How very sae 
now}. Fam sure I should love 








75° The Gentleman's Magazine, 


“Only this: ‘and Marie Challoner, your daughter, is in love 
with me.’” 

“Yes, I will tell him that too, although I can still hardly believe 
in it myself! Shall we go together and throw ourselves at Sir 
John’s knees?” 

“J fear he would only laugh or say something satirical. I have 
an idea, Chris—let us go together to Miss Lyle and tell her all, and 
ask for her advice.” 

“Come,” said Christmas, “we will go. You are not afraid to be 
seen with me?” 

“1 am not afraid of anything, except of being without you,” ssid 
Lady Disdain. 

The two lovers went boldly out together, and presently appeared 
hand-in-hand before the wonder-stricken eyes of Dione Lyle. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
“THE ASTROLOGY OF THE EYES.” 


One Sunday Captain Cameron strolled into his sister's house in 
Portland Place at the hour when her afternoon reception was going 
‘on. He did not very often go there, for his opinions on most sub- 
jects—social, political, and religious—concurred with those of very 
few who usually presented themselves in that drawing-room. Besides, 
there were a good many visitors there who had no opinions whatever 
‘on such subjects, and these Captain Cameron regarded as worse than 
persons with any sort of wrong and strong creeds, There were some 
artists and poets to be found there who hardly knew what sort of 
Sovereign or Ministry was in power anywhere, and would not have 
cared a rush to know. Some of these persons, indeed, made a point 
of frankly declaring that it was a matter of absolute indifference to 
them what political principles were up and what were down so long 
as there were pictures to paint and music to listen to; and one had 
‘even announced to the appalled Cameron himself that he didn’t care 
whether England’s prestige was gone or not, and that if half a dozen 
invading armies were to occupy London in succession it would not 
give him the slightest concern so long as they didn’t interfere with 
the Dudley Gallery and Wagner’s music. 

‘This particular Sunday, however, Cameron had heard a piece of 
news which interested and puzzled him, and about which he thought 
he could probably learn the truth from his sister. With all his dissent 
from her opinions and the good-humouted chaff in which he occa- 

¥ indulged, Captain Cameron aoaghi Ws Geter awery devs 


_ 
Dear Lady Disdain. 75" 


and delightful person, and in her strangely-chosen sphere a queen of 
society, and he did not by any means see her as some even of her 
friends were pleased to do, He assumed, therefore, thar nothing so 
strange as the news he had just heard could be true if Mas, Seagraves 
did not know of it, and he therefore boldly plunged into. the midst 
of her society. 

A young lady whose hair was wreathed in huge coils and compli- 
cations of twirls on the top of her head was singing some of Elsa's 
plaints from “Lohengrin” when Cameron catered, Jn that odd 
place the company usually listened when anybody sang or played. 
‘Cameron therefore stayed for a while at the door and looked for his 
sister. 

‘He saw her standing near a table and resting one hand upon a 
‘huge blue china jar, while the forefinger of the other hand touched 
her chin; and her head leaned gracefully to one side in the attitude 
of a pensive listener, She was dressed in 2 dun-coloured silk, which 
clung 30 closely to her that it seemed a puzzle how she ever could 
have stepped into jt, or could now contrive to step in it, Standing 
sncar her was a pale, pretty, and slender girl, dressed in quiet colours. 
‘The moment the music was over Mrs. Seagraves broke info raptures, 
which Cameron, making his way towards her, came just in time to 
hear. 


“So glad I am, Robert, that you heard that enchanting music.” 

“Music, eh? Leonfess | like something with a tune to it.” 

“Ob, barbarian! Is he not barbarous, Miss Jansen—my 
brother?" 

“Mes, Malaprop says men are all barbarians,” Captain Cameron 
observed. 


“Does she really? Does she, though? How very delightal | I 
should love her, 1 know! I am sure I should love Mrs.—who, 
Robert?” 

‘Robert did not stop to explain. He did not expect that clever 
ladies of to-day would have read Sheridan, 

“What's all this cock-and-bull story 1 hear, Tsabel—about my 
charming little Lady Disdain and young Vidal?" 

“So delightful, and so strange!" Mrs. Seagraves said, forgetting 
‘Mrs. Malaprop in her new enthusiasm. “At least not strange—no, 
not by any means strange, but just what one ought to have expected, 
Tsappose, One should always look out dor the strange in these 
matters. Bat it is delightful! As least it is delightful to us who 
Alike it, and who love all the people—that is, of course, the principal 
people. Of course it can't be delightful to Mr, Vidal—oh, no. IT 


is . 


752 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


should say it must be quite the reverse to him. And for that reason 
Iam so very, very sorry. I was very glad at first, but now I am 
very, very sorry.” : 

“ But what is it, Isabel? I should like to know whether I am to 
be glad or sorry—or totally indifferent.” 

“Robert! Indifferent—totally indifferent—to anything that con- 
cerns the happiness of my dear, sweet girl, Marie Challoner! Ob, 
for shame! But I know you didn’t mean it, and I couldn't think so 
badly even of a man. But men are very bad—oh, so very, very bad! 
Not deliberately bad, perhaps—no, I don’t say that ; but thoughtless, 
perhaps. Should we not say thoughtless? I hope you don't admire 
thoughtless men, Sybil dear? I think you girls generally do admire 
thoughtless men—and spoil them. I used to love thoughtless men 
once—I thought it made them like heroes. Now I don’t like them 
at all.” 

“ About Miss Challoner, Isabel? That’s more to the point now.” 

“ About Miss Challoner? Oh yes! Well, you know, she’s not 
going to marry Mr. Vidal after all 1” 

“Indeed? Well, I'm deucedly glad to hear it,” the Legitimis 
said, “if it’s true.” 

“But Robert dear—our dear Mr. Vidal ?” 

“Well, he may be your dear Mr. Vidal if you like, Isabel, but he 
isn’t my dear Mr. Vidal. I never thought much of him. I like a 
gentleman to be a gentleman, and I’m glad to find Lady Disdain of 
my opinion at last.” 

“Oh, I think he is so charming,” Mrs. Seagraves said, “so very, 
very charming. Not charming, perhaps—not exactly charming.” 

“No, indeed—not by any manner of means charming, I should 
say.” 

“Well, perhaps not ; but so clever, so very clever, and so hand- 
some! At least, I used to think him handsome once, but now I 

don't know that he is so handsome as I thought him, He used to 
remind me of a troubadour, and I do so delight in troubadours. 
Sybil, my dearest child, you delight in troubadours, don’t you? Oh 
yes—a girl with your eloquence and your eyes must delight in 
troubadours.” 

“T never saw any troubadours,” Miss Sybil curtly answered. 

“Never saw any troubadours? How very, very strange! No, 
though—I don’t mean that it is strange, of course—it couldn't be 
strange, for there are no troubadours now any more, and you couldn't 
have seen any, Still the imagination does so much, especially with 
postic natures; and 1 should have thought That you were {ust the 





vr 


Dear Lady Disdain. 753 


girl to have loved troubadowrs. And I am so sorry, my dear Sybil, 
to hear that you really don't lave troubadours. Robert, shouldn't 
‘you have thought Miss Jansen would love troubadours?” 

‘The Legitimist bowed rather stiffly to the little Sybil. 

“But E had quite forgotten,” Mrs. Seagraves said, “that you 
don't know my dear friend Miss Jansen. How very strange! Dear 
Robert, how fortunate you are! Not fortunate in not knowing Miss 
Jansen—of course not that—what nonsense! Tut fortunate in 
having the opportunity now of being presented to her. My dear 
‘Sybil, will you permit me to present my brother, Robert—Captain 
‘Cameron? You ought to know each other, you two.” 

Captain Cameron was dignified, but notcordial. He had heard of 
‘Miss Jansen as a young woman who made speeches, and he cone 
sidered that young women who made speeches were coarse, mascue 
Tine, and rather indelicate creatures, utterly unladylike at the best. 
He had an impression that they were Atheistical as to their views on 
the subject of religion, and that they aspired to the wearing of 
trousers. When he heard Miss Jansen’s name mentioned he looked 
in instinctive alarm downwards, and was relieved to see skirts and 
not pantaloons. “ I look down towards her feet—but that's a fable,” 
murmured the soldier, one of his few memories of Shakespeare 
occurring to him with a whimsical appropriateness. 

“Now, Robert, I shall leave you to talk to Miss Jansen, You 
‘two are just made for each other—of course I mean for intellectual 
converse, for high argument.” 

“T never presume to argue with 2 lady,” Captain Cameron re- 
marked, with grim and stony courtesy. 

* Arguments with gentlemen are usually thrown away, T'fear,” Miss 
Jansen said icily. “They do not consider us worth listening to, of 
answering.” j 

“Oh, but my brother is not of that sort, I can asyure you: he is 
far too chivalrous. Who is it—what great person—whe says that 
friendship rests on similarity of tastes—is it? and differences of 
opinions? There are you two just pictured, I am eure your inclina- 
tions are both just the same—to do good. Oh, yes! to do good and 
40 clevate humanity : and your opinions are so very different. Sybil, - 
my dear, I leave to you the charge of converting my brother! I 
never could accomplish it, my dear; but it is reserved for you. Oh, 
yes! I know itis.” 

“But, Isabel, just a moment.” She was switling away. “You 
‘haven't finished telling me about Marie Challoner. Why won't she 
ammarry Vidal ” 


Vor. XV., N.S. 1875, 7 
i = i 








ro 


Dear Lady Disdain. 755 


“That's why Tsay they must have been stupid. T always knew 
that he was in love with her, and when I saw her I knew that she 
was in Jove with him.” 

“By Jove!—excuse mie) Miss Jansen—I never dreamed of {t," 
eee Tsabel, How on earth did you 
know 

WE knew Te ty het eyée the ttomnt He cdma Tato the oom, 
Sybif'said contemptuously. “I didn’t want any moré instruction. It 
amuses me to watch the little weaknesses of my fellow creatures, and 
‘Twas greatly amused that day when I found her out.” 

“We must watch your eyes, my sweet Sybil,” Mrs. 
exclaimed, “one of these days, ahd We shall read some pretty 
there, for all your marble coldness and your contempt of our 
human weaknesses. But not too soon; oh, no! not too soon, We 
can't spare you just yet s'we want you and the world wants you for 

fharriage.” 





nobler work than 
“You all seem to like marriage pretty well, ba said C 
“And you don't, Captain Cameron, your sister tells ne) 
Oe teres ie ae ae a 
happy ago! Womeri are only 
when some lordly man patronises them el a 
“Tam so delighted to hear you scold him, my dear Sybil. 
he deserves ft, and I have often told himso. I am quite ashamed of 
himt—not ashamed really, you know, betause Robert, for a man, is 
nt [iad at all—but ashamed that he hash’t been married. You must 
look in his eyes and tell me what you see there.” 
“Y shall have to weat blue Roath peices 281K 
not So ilk-pleased with the conversation after all, and thinking Sy 
not so very di 
“ And so you found ¢ by look’ 
‘Mis. Seagraves went on pial "go ae 


oc iat bad, uk 

ol Nd Anka 

astrology of the eyes.  thint 

eh Ak Eo 

4 Well that isn’t half a bad phrase,” said 

odie 2G Ah Why, 
I 





Dear Lady Disdain, 787 


too quietly withdrew from the room, and from the house, and 
walked homeward, She felt a certain pride in herself such as the 
Spartan lad might have felt before the teeth of the fox prevailed and 
he fell and revealed his secret. Sybil had succeeded completely 
in hiding the wound in her bleeding breast. She had freed herself 
from the slightest suspicion of having been hurt. She could not 
perhaps have held out inuch longer, but so far she had succeeded, 
and she had a right to be prond. She tripped along the crowded 
Sunday streets quite lightly, and many an eye glanced as she passed 
after that neat figure and that pretty ankle, Her heart seemed 
bursting within her, and she walked so quickly because the streets 
seemed to rock under her and she longed to be safely home. When 
she got home she spoke to her servant with unusual sofiness and 
sweetness, and to her mother she was careful 10 show the gentlest 
temper, and not on any account to make a short answer. As the 
bleeding away of a wound sometimes changes fierce battle-natures 
for the time to a feminine gentleness so Sybil's heavy heart seemed 
to have reduced to mildness and docility the impatience and ocea- 
sional sharpness of an eager, feverish temper. Mrs. Jansen had had 
a headache in the morning, and Sybil asked so kindly and so much 
about it, and offered such suggestions of remedy and relief, that one 
might have thought her mother’s headache was all the girl had to 
trouble her in life. She helped to arrange their modest lithe 
Sunday dinner, and she tried to seem as if she was helping to 
eat it. 

After dinner she remained a good long time in her own room. 
Mrs, Jansen did not go to her. She knew her daughter's ways and 
weaknesses, She knew that when Sybil remained alone it was 
Detter not to disturb her, and of course all Sybil's brave little play- 
acting had never deceived her mother for a moment, Her quiet 
watchful eyes had followed every motion of her girl, and she knew 
that something had happened, But she knew better than to ask 
any questions. She would let the girl alone, and in good time 

Sybil would tell her all. 

‘That night Sybil had to speak ata litle meeting in some one of 
the secluded, almost subterranean, buildings where on the Sunday 
evenings in London minds of an advanced order lay themselves 
out to instruct the race. Mrs, Jansen was sitting by the firelight 
without a lamp when Sybil came quietly in, 

“ Would you like me to light the lamp, mamma?" 

“YF you will, dear.” 

“Well, in a moment, just." 








a 


Dear Lady Disdain, 759 


say too that she hag another sweetener of life—not only an ideal love 
| Dut an ideal grievance? The wrongs of woman will wake her 
lies more than ever, and into their cause she will throw all 
passionate energies of her fervid little soul: and be happy even 
in her wrath against the injustice of the world. For her sake at least 
Jet us hope that the suffrage may not soon be granted to women, 
that some little of man's tyranny may continue yet awhile to oppress 
his weaker companion, so that poor Sybil may have a cause to 
occupy her energies and to keep her attention distracted from her 
own lonely state. Meanwhile it is known that Sybil has refused 
many apparently eligible young men who haye supplicated her : 
and it is generally believed that her sense of the injustices done to 
her sex by the oppressor is so keen that she has registered a vow 
neyer to mary while the least remnant of thoxe grievances still 
remains. If she is to die anold maid, then it is at least understood 
that this fate is of her own deliberate choice. So she can cherish 
her ideal love in secret, and keep the fire burning at its altar where 
the breath of change can never blow it out, nor the smoke of 
human weakness of passion obscure its brightacss, 


CHAPTER XXXEX. 
THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE TOGETHER. 


Wuen Sir John Challoner retumed to Durewoods he was not 
surprised to find a letter awaiting him from{Christmas Pembroke 
containing an carnest request to be allowed a few minutes’ conversa- 
tion with him. Sir John could hardly now be surprised at anything, 
and he knew what was to come, and had no idea of struggling any 
fonger. His castle of cards had all tumbled down, and he knew 
that it was hopeless to try to build up another of the same kind. 
Perhaps a little compassion, or at least a little pity, may be spared 
for him. His ambition and his schemes had not heen meaner than 
those of the avcrage middle-class man straining with all a life's 
fervour to reach the higher class ; and he had been so very near to 


is cruel indeed when the falschood remains, having 
complish the success. 


ES acuminate 





= 





Dear Lady Disdain. 76 


Tmust have made a md bungle the last time when I told you my 
story, and led you into a misunderstanding which was near setting 
“tas alll astray.” 

Sir John looked up quickly, and then their eyes met, and no 
doubt the two men quite understood each other. Sir John drew a 
Jong breath and felt relieved. 

“1 told Marie,” Pembroke said—Sir John almost started at 
the “Marie”—what a bungle I must have made of it the last 
time, and how I was resolved to be clear this time," 

“Well, Pembroke, you certainly have been clear this time, and 1 
thank you for that." (Probably the two again understood each 
other.) “Now what do you expect me to say to all this? To 
give my consent? I presume Marie and you have given each other 
away without asking me?” 

“We do love each other very, very much, and I have not sch 
bad prospects; and even now, Sir John, she wouldn't be quite poor: 
T have some means, and she does not care to be rich. We shouldn't 
be paupers, you know. I am much better off—you have often told 
‘me yourself—than lots of the younger sons of your aristocracy—and 
T mean to make my way, and to rise.” 

“T needn't have any hesitation in saying that this is a disappoint- 
tment to me,” Sir John said. “You know all that, I had different 
views for my daughter. I haven’t a word to say against you personally, 
Pembroke, but you know—I told you from the beginning—that am- 
‘bition and the world count for something with me, 1 am disappointed 
—I don't deny it.” 

“Still, when Marie has not the same kind of ambition her feelings 
ought to count for something.” 

“T think they have heen allowed to count for a great deal in this 
instance,” Sir John said, with a smile of melancholy irony, “I think 
her feelings have it all their own way, Pembroke, I am not a man 
to talk eloquently about ungrateful children and that sort of thing, 
‘ut I was very fond of my daughter, Pembroke, and devoted to her — 
and—well, you may haye a daughter some day, and devote yourself 
to her, and find after all that—well, find that you will understand 
better what J mean,” 

“ But Marie is devoted to you —no better and more loving daughter 
ever lived,” the young man protested warmly. 

“Yes, yes, of course, we know all that. Still, Pembroke, 1 ama 
little cut up, you perceive. One can't help it; that’s the way fathers 
are made. Well, let us pass over all that and come to the more 

‘Practicalquestion. Ts there anything for me to settle?” 





r- 
Dear Lady Disdain. 765 


at the mouth of the Mersey, and was leaving the long, lowly’ 
Lancashire shore on the gne side and the sand-hills and 1 


= rocks and soft brond beach of New Brighton on the other. 





“The vessel was throbbing through the great waters out to sea, and 
“the sca accmed only more tremulous than the sky—not less quiet. 
Maric and Christmas Pembroke had come from the saloon and 
"paced from the stern quite up to the bow of the steamer, to be free 
of other passengers for the moment, and to look out over the water 
through which they were cleaving their way. They were silent for a 
while with the very fullness of their content. 
‘“'This £ an evening to begin a voyage," Christmas said at last in 
# low tone, 
“'See—the sun and moon together in the sky I" Marie said. “T 
wonder is that a good omen at the beginning of a voyage? I hope 
it is.” 





Everything must be a good omen to me," said Christmas, “ You 
aire all the good omens in yourself.” 

“ Lwonder is Miss Lyle in her baleony now, looking at that lovely 
sky, and does she think of us? How selfish we are in our happi- 
ness! I should like to know that Miss Lyle was thinking of us now, 
and her to know, Chris, that we were thinking of her.” 

“She will believe that of us, Lam sure, and she is so kindhearted 
‘and sympathetic I think she wouldn't grudge us a little forgetfulness 
of everything but ourselves just for the moment. I know she would 
not blame me, for J only feel still as if I had carried you off some- 
how, and as if somebody or other might still come up to claim 
you. Tcan't realise it all yet, When we are far out at sea then T 
shall begin to believe that [ have you safe! Then we shall walk the 
deck of nights, and talk of her and of the people and the places we 
have left behind.” 

“Tp it not happy that we parted from my father on such good 
terms, and thot he is satisfied? Is he not very kind, Chris?” 

She saicl this a little eagerly, for she wanted to be reassured about 
her father, and to have his broken image put together again a8 much 
‘as possibile, now that she had had her own way and was so happy. 
Christmas did not fail to reassure her, Then, as was natural, they 
tell to talking of themselves again, and their happiness, and their 
prospects. 

“I can hardly believe that we are going all across America, you 
and I together,” Marie said, “ If you knew what a sick, sad heart I 
had when I made that journey before! It seems wonderful to me 
now, but I did not know then why I was so wretched.” 








766 The Gentleman's Magasine, 


“Ours seems a wonderful story to me—so wonderful that I still 
ask myself Can it be true? The other day I was plunged in the very 
depths of despair, and now I am in a dream of happiness.” 

“And we are going off together for a great holiday in a wonderful 
new world, you and I alone, and we are to travel together, and live 
together, and come back together.” 

“And we shall stand, you and I together,” said Christmas, “on 
the shore at Saucelito and look on San Francisco Bay, and think of 
Durewoods there.” 

“Yes,” Marie added, ‘and we shall pass, you and I together, as 
we are now, through the Golden Gate !” 


THE END. 





TABLE TALK. 
BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENTLEMAN. 


= 


As amateur philologist submits for these pagts the following. 
curious bit of investigation and speculation:—“A passing revival of the 
question whether Swilt, Pope, or Byrom was the author of the famous 
picce of unmusical sarcasm ending— 

‘Strange all this difference should be 
‘Twist Tweedledum and Tweedle<lee, 


suggests, in rather 2 roundabout way, another question ean | wo 
the philology of slang, In the first place, why has that King of in- 
struments the violin, of which the sounds are meant to be echoed in 
the above couplet, always been taken popularly to typify the ridi- 
| eiilous aspect of music, while the less royal instriiments of the of 
chestra are never named but with honour? Lute, harp, and thumper 
have a poetical aroma; but nobody would dream of putting a 
Fiddle into the hands of Orpheus ot Apollo, except a8 a stroke of 
‘Durlesque humour. It is not because the word has a ridiculous 
sound fer se, for the phenomenon is by no means confined to Eng- 
Jand, and extends to lands where Fiddle is represented by more 
euphonious word:, Tze wandering harper is traditionally picturesque, 
the wandering fiddicr traditionally comic: and yet it may be doubted 
whether either artist ever had the advantage on the score of respects 
bility. Any how, the fact remains: and now for my piece of etymology. 
Tt is tolerably well known that a gréat many of the commonest slang 
words we have are pure Romani, or Gipsy: stich as ‘/7%/,’ literally a 
Brother; Rum Chap? Rom Chabo, a Gipsy Ind ; * Sharh? 
properly Chav, a boy, young j and so on, At toa 
Pape nthe nec of th Ltt Sit of Roby RADE L 
quoted by Dr. A. F. Pott in his work “The Gipsies in 

IEG heater an tae Be 
‘Theit dialect they call Roomus; and when they mean to 

whether or nu he be of their tibe, they oy Cte re my 


‘ahd ‘the Boh? That ix to say, Can 
Broo earns? tire HO ecb Nar eee 







768 The Gentleman's Magazine. 


been supposed to be of Eastern origin, and its introduction as a piece 
of slang—I think, at least—ascribed to Morier, the author of ‘ Haji 
Baba,’ &c. But we certainly have here our slang word for trash and 
nonsense used by our masters in slang, the English Gipsies, for 
another word for trash and nonsense—namely, Fiddle. We my 
have given them the latter word in its contemptuous sense, as toa 
race of vagrant musicians: they may have translated it into their 
own tongue and have given it back again in its new and stronger 
form. If this view is thought to be an example of the Gipsy for 
a Violin, it at any rate points to a curious philological coincidence. 
I make no apologyffor writing on the ungentlemanly topic of slang 
to the Gentleman's Magazine, as 1 believe the natural history of arget 
to be essential to the exhaustive study of language, which is other- 
wise what the botany of garden flowers would be without the botany 
of weeds.” 


‘AN Irish correspondent asks me why Mr. Boucicault, whose pet- 
formance of Irish characters has now nothing in the same line to 
rival it on our stage, occasionally goes a little wrong in his 
“brogue” and drops into the conventional pronunciation with which 
Saxon authors and actors endow the Celt. For instance, he asks, 
why does Mr. Boucicault say “kape” for “keep” and “praste” 
for “priest”? This, it seems, is nut in the genius of the Irish 
Drogue, but is invariably the English misconception of it. The 
letters which the IrishJpeasant cannot manage are the “ea,” as in 
“meat,” or “sea,” or “tea,” and not the “ee” or the “ie.” He 
says “mate” and “tay” and “say,” but he does not say “praste” 
or “kape.” Where the letter “e” is doubled his tendency is 
rather to prolong it inordinately. Some English comic writers make 
their Irishmen talk of *‘Saint Pater.” But no one ever heard an 
Irish peasant speak of the blessed Saint of the Keys in such a way. 
He would call him “Saint Peether.” My correspondent avers that 
this is the infallible touchstone by which to know genuine from 
conventional or Cockney-manufactured brogue. Mr. Boucicault is 
himself an Irishman, but my correspondent assumes that he has 
been so long out of Ireland that he has to trust to memory for his 
brogue, and therefore orcasionally—and very rarely—is taken in by 
the sham article of the: British drama. There is a story told as true 
in a Scottish towno—Dunfermline, if I remember rightly—about 
some local disturbance a few years ago of which the Irish labourers 
were supposed to be the cause, and of a popular resolve therefore 
to expel all the Irish. One dificalty was how to distinguish these 





Table Talk. 769 


with certainty, A sure means was found. Every suspected person 
was asked to pronounce the word “peas,” and of course all the 
countrymen of the Shaughraun called it “pays.” Now if in reliance 
‘on the traditions of the British stage the inquisitors had propounded 
the word “keep” or “priest” their inhospitable intentions would 
ave been frustrated. My correspondent adds that no writer not 
Trish has done Irish brogue so well as ‘Thackeray, and that the only 
weakness in Thackeray's Irish men and women is that the pecu- 
Marities of one province are sometimes mixed up with those of 
another. Captain Costigan, for example, is sometimes Munster and 
sometimes Leinster. 


‘Te same correspondent is reminded by the wake in “The 
Shaughraun” of a story which he declares to be true, and which 
he says has never before been printed. In a city of Munster an old 
woman died, and the neighbours desired to give her a grand wake, 
‘The floors of the house were very shaky, and the people were 
warned by the priest and other authorities that they must not haye 
heir ceremonies in the upper room where the dead body lay, ‘The 
friends paid no attention to the warning. It would probably have 
‘been contrary to precedent to remove the corpse before the time for 
‘its final remova). So the neighbours gathered in the upper room and 
Tnmented and were very merry until the floor gave way and they 
all came down into the.room below. It proved that the wake was 
‘only the beginning of tragedy. Five or six of the “boys and girls” 
were killed. A doctor was sent for, who only arrived in time to 
certify the deaths, But the dead bodies were laid out with some 
order and decency in an undamaged room, and the doctor went to 
one after another, followed by a sympathetic crowd. “Who is this 
poor fellow?" he asked. “ Ah then rest his sowl,” went a chorag of 
yoices—" good son and good brother he was,"—and then his name 
was mournfully recited, and other praises added. “ And this poor 
girl?" “The Lord have mercy on her, for a better girl never drew 
the breath of life,” and then her name was given amid fresh praises 
and groaning choruses of assent, ‘Thus the doctor went his melan- 
holy way, and surveyed corpse after corpse. In every case thus far 
he has heard nothing but lament and panegyric, His iname mierias 
is nearly over when his eye lights on something like a bundle of old 
elothes thrust carelessly into a comer. “What is that thing there?” 
the doctor asks. “Oh then bad luck to der,” is the answer, accom- 
panied by a general sound of anger and disgust,—" sure 
ould corpse that was the cause of it all \" 

Vols XV., N.S. 1875. 








Table Talk, 770 


‘Mr, Scuorz Witson, having, as he believes, discovered in Miss 
Ellen Terry an actress capable of restoring to the stage the fine ald. 
tone of high comedy, follows up the letter from which 1 made quota- 
tions three or four months ago with some remarks on that lady's 
Jatest characterisation, which, in the interest of that restoration of 
fine high comedy which I should be as glad as he to welcome, I 
have pleasure in printing. “Itis, as it seems to me,” he says, “a 
matter for regret that Miss Ellen Terry, alter her memorable success 
in Portia, should not have appeared in other parts equally suitable to 
her talents. The interest of a true artist is also the interest of the 
audience. If Kean, after his stupendous success in Shylock, had 
‘been brought out in the part of a walking gentleman, he would have 
failed to sustain the public interest, Miss Terry, as Mabel Vane, has 
shown how much 2 genuine actress can do with a little part, and it 
has been pleasant to notice how strong a hold this lady retains of 
public favour. The part contains—for an actress who cam detect 
Tatent possibilities—the suggestions of an innate purity which con~ 
trasts with the stage tone of the day and with the other characters in 
the play, The guileless simplicity, the trac womanly worth and 
delicacy, the wifely tenderness and devotion, are at once touching 
and true, and area reproach to a good deal of the modern spirit in 
the art of the actress.” 


‘Tue second “Jim Crow," we read, has died in Australin—the actor, 
that is, who succeeded Rice, the first Jim Crow. How many readers 
under thirty-five have any idea of who that hero of stage and song, 
the once universal Jim Crow, really was?) In front of a shop in 
Broadway, New Vork, is or was a wooden figure of a comic nigger 
which boasted itself to be the original effigy of Jim Crow. Once 
Jim Crow overran the world. All humanity—civilised, at Jeast— 
combined to “jump Jim Crow.” The redoubtable Feargus O'Connor 
‘once crushed an opponent at an election meeting with a word, The 
ualucky person was named “Crow.” “ As I have not the pleasure,” 
said Feargus, "to know the honourable gentleman's first name, per- 
haps he will allow me to address him as ‘Jim!" As a hero of 
song Jim Crow was, I think, succeeded by a mysterious personage 
called “Jim along Josey”—at least such was the combination of 
words which used to din the cars of the afflicted world. Where do 
they vanith to, these passing favourites of popular song? Is there 
‘a shadowy world where Jim along Josey rejoins Jim Crow? Where 
is Mr, William Barlow—Billy Barlow more commonly called—whose 


varied adventures delighted London youth for years? ra 


4|