The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, May 1849, Vol. LXV, No. CCCCIII.

We agree with those, and they are the majority of reflective minds, who, taking a survey of our half-peopled globe, and considering the peculiar position which England occupies on it—her great maritime power, her great commercial wants, her overflowing numbers, her overflowing wealth—have concluded that colonisation is a work to which she is especially called. She is called to it by her marked aptitude and capability for the task, as well as by an enlightened view of her own interests. Without too much national partiality, without overlooking our own faults, and that canker of a too money-loving, too money-making morality, which has eaten into our character, (though perhaps not more so than it has corroded the character of other European nations, who have quite as strong a passion for gold, without the same industry in obtaining it,) we may boldly say that the best seed-plot of the human race that now exists (let the best be estimated as it may by the moralist and the divine) is to be found in this island of Great Britain. To plant the unoccupied regions of the earth, or regions merely wandered over by scattered tribes of savages, who cannot be said to possess a soil which they do not use, by off-sets from this island, is itself a good work. It is laying no ill foundation for the future nations that shall thus arise, to secure to them the same language, the same literature, the same form of religion, the same polity, or, at all events, the same political temper (the love and obedience to a constitution) that we possess; to make native to them that literature in which the great Christian epic has been written, in which philosophy has spoken most temperately, and poetry most profusely, diversely, and vigorously. Nor will England fail to reap her own reward from this enterprise. In every part of the world an Englishman will find a home. It will be as if his own native soil had been extended, as if duplicates of his own native land had risen from the ocean. A commercial intercourse of the most advantageous character will spring up; the population and the wealth of the old country will find fresh fields of employment in the new; the old country will itself grow young again, and start in the race with her own children for competitors. Neither will the present age pass by without participating in the benefit, since its overcrowded population will be relieved by the departure of many who will exchange want for plenty, and despondency for hope. Whatever opinion may be held of the remedial efficacy against future pauperism of a system of emigration, it must be allowed that this present relief arrives most opportunely, as a [510]balance to that extraordinary pressure produced by the distress in Ireland, and the influx of its famine-stricken peasantry into other parts of the kingdom.

On this subject—the measure of permanent relief which colonisation will afford to this country by carrying off its surplus population—the degree in which emigration may be calculated upon as the future antagonist of pauperism—we would speak with caution. We are so far hopeful that we see here a great resource against the national evil of an unemployed population, but it is a resource which must be rightly understood and wisely taken advantage of; it is a great resource for an intelligent people; it comes in aid of that fundamental remedy, a good sound education for the people, moral and religious, but is no substitute for that most necessary of all measures. Misunderstood, and vaguely relied on by those who know not how properly to avail themselves of it, the prospect of emigration may even prove mischievous, by rendering the thoughtless and improvident still more reckless, still more improvident.

Granted, it may be said, that emigration supplies an outlet annually for a certain excess of population, it supplies, by that very reason, an additional and constant impulse to an increase of population. The old country may overflow, but it is always kept full, and to the brim. The restraint of prudence is relaxed. "We can feed ourselves; and, as to our children, are there not the colonies?" may be said by many an improvident pair. People even of the better sort, who would shrink from the idea of their children sinking into a lower grade of society than they themselves occupied, would find in emigration a vague provision for the future family—a provision which would often disappoint them, and which they would often fail in resolution to embrace.

Let it be borne in mind that, when we speak of the duty of restraining from improvident marriage, we are not inculcating any new morality founded upon the recent science of political economy. It is a duty as old as the love of a parent to his child, and needs only for its enforcement an anticipation of this parental affection. No man who has married, and become a father, ever doubted of the existence of such a duty, or spoke slightingly of it. Ask the Scotch peasant, ask the simplest Switzer, who knows nothing of reading-clubs or mechanics' institutes—who has perhaps never quitted his native valley, and all whose knowledge is the growth of his own roof-tree—what he thinks of the morality of him who becomes the father of a family he cannot rear, or must rear like wild beasts more than men—he will give you an answer that would satisfy the strictest Malthusian. The prudence that would avoid famine, the just and righteous fear of having hungry children about our knees—this is no new wisdom in the world, though, like all our old wisdom, it continually cries in vain in our streets. Now the operation of this, in every respect, moral restraint would be materially interfered with, if the notion should prevail, that in the colonies there existed (without any distinct knowledge how it was to be secured) an inexhaustible provision for human life. Numbers would marry, trusting to this resource, yet the offspring of such marriages might never reach their destined refuge, or reach it only after much suffering, and in the degraded condition of uneducated paupers. And men who have calculated that, at all events, without seeking aid from Government or the parish, they shall be able to send their child abroad, when the child has grown up, will hesitate to part with it. They had calculated what they would do, when parents, before they became such. They had not been able to anticipate that bond of parental affection which, we may observe in passing, is by no means weakest in the humblest ranks, but, on the contrary, until we reach the very lowest, seems to increase in strength as we descend in the social scale.

The fact is, that it is not as a distant provision for their children that the youthful pair should be taught to look on emigration. If it comes at all into their calculation, they should embrace it as a provision for themselves,[511] and, through them, for their future offspring. They should carry their hopes at once to the climate which is to realise them. Marriage should be the period of emigration. At this period a man can readily leave his country, for he can leave his home. The newly married couple, as it is commonly said, and with no undue exaggeration, are all the world to each other. It is at this period that men have double the strength, for they have twice the hope, and exhilaration, and enterprise, that they have at any other epoch of their lives. That slender hoard, too, which will so soon be wasted in this country, which a few pleasures will drain, would carry them creditably into another, and lay the foundation for the utmost prosperity their birth and condition has led them to wish for. To the distant colony let them not devote their ill-fed and ill-taught children; but, going thither themselves, rear a healthy race for whom they will have no cares. If at this period of life it should become the fashion of the humbler classes to emigrate, it would be difficult to say how far our colonies might become a real, and effectual, and permanent resource against overpopulation. At all events, the mischievous influence we have been describing could never arise. We see not why England, if she learns rightly to use them, may not reap from her colonies all those advantages which the United States have been so frequently felicitated upon in their territories in the Far West. Much will depend on the current which public opinion takes. Presuming that Government discontinues entirely the old system of transportation, which must always render emigration extremely unpalatable; presuming that a steady, equitable rule is adopted in dealing with the unappropriated land, so that a moderate price, a speedy possession, and a secure title may be depended upon—we think it highly probable that colonisation will become very popular amongst us. The more that is learnt about the colonies, the more the imagination is familiarised with them by accounts of their climate, products, and the mode of life pursued in them, the less apparent, and the less fearful will their distance become, and the more frequently will men find themselves carrying their hopes and enterprises in that direction. If, therefore, an intelligent and practicable view is taken of colonisation, we may re-echo, without scruple, the words of our thoughtful poet—

How best to colonise; how far Government should undertake the regulation and control of the enterprise; how far leave it to the spirit and intelligence of private individuals, separate or banded together in groups, or companies; and especially under what terms it shall permit the occupation of the unappropriated soil—all these have become highly interesting topics of discussion.

For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "Art of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of Government are few, simple, and imperative—as simple in their character as they are indispensable. A previous survey, a moderate price, lots large and small to suit all purchasers—these are what we should require. The land-jobber, who interposes[512] between Government and the emigrant, to make a cruel profit of the latter, must be kept out, either by laying a tax (as they do in America, under the denomination of the "Wild-land Tax,") on all land not reclaimed within a certain time, or by declaring the purchase forfeited, if, within that time, the soil is not cultivated. Government also must restrain its own hands from large grants to favoured individuals, who are no better than another species of land-jobbers. This, though a merely negative duty, will probably be the last performed, and the most imperfectly. Few readers are perhaps aware of the criminal ease with which the Government has been persuaded into lavish grants of land to persons who had, and could have, no immediate prospect of making use of it; enormous grants unjust to other settlers, and ruinous to the young colony, by dispersing the emigrants, interposing between them wide tracts of barren property. We ourselves read with no little surprise the following statement, which we extract from the work before us, Mr Wakefield's Art of Colonisation:—

Two very different ideals of colonisation have often haunted the imaginations of speculative men, and coloured very diversely their views and projects on this subject. Both have their favourable aspects; neither is practicable. As is usual, the rough reality rides zig-zag between your ideals, touching at both in turns, but running parallel with neither.

With one party of reasoners, the ideal of a colony would be a miniature England, a little model of the old country, framed here, at home, and sent out (like certain ingeniously-constructed houses) to be erected forthwith upon the virgin soil. A portion of all classes would sally forth for their New Jerusalem. The church, with tower and steeple, the manor-house, the public library, the town-hall, the museum, and the hospital, would all simultaneously be reproduced. Science would have its representatives. Literature with its light luggage, thoughts and paper, would be sure to hover about the train. Nobility would import its antique honours into the new city, and, with escutcheon and coat of arms, traditionally connect it with knighthood and chivalry, Agincourt, and the Round Table. There would be physicians and divines, lawyers, and country gentlemen "who live at ease," as well as the artisan and ploughman, and all who work in wood and in iron. Dr Hind, the present Dean of Carlisle, in an elegantly written essay, incorporated in Mr Wakefield's book, proposes and advocates this mode of colonisation. After remarking on the greater success which apparently accompanied the schemes of the Greeks and Romans to found new communities, Dr Hind thus proceeds.—The italics, it may be as well to say, are his, not ours.[513]

"The main cause of this difference may be stated in few words. We send out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head; of needy persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of a single class of persons in the community, and that the most helpless, and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those which, in the mean time, we are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the parent state—colonists from all ranks." And further on, after insisting on the propriety of appointing to the colony educated and accomplished clergymen, he says—"The same may be urged in respect of men of other professions and pursuits. The desirable consummation of the plan would be, that a specimen, or sample, as it were, of all that goes to make up society in the parent country, should at once be transferred to its colony. Instead of sending out bad seedlings, and watching their uncertain growth, let us try whether a perfect tree will not bear transplanting."

We apprehend that this project of "transplanting a perfect tree" is none of the most feasible. However the Greeks managed matters, we moderns find it absolutely necessary to begin "at the beginning," and with somewhat rude beginnings. If the Greeks had the art in the colony, as in the epic poem, of rushing in medias res—of starting with and from maturity—then indeed must colonisation be reckoned, as Dr Hind seems half to suspect, amongst the artes perditæ. Anything more lamentable than a number of cultivated men—"samples" of all kinds, physicians, and divines, and lawyers, with, of course, their several ladies—set down upon the uncultivated soil, on the long green grass, we cannot imagine. It seems to us quite right and unavoidable to send out "a single class," first—good stout "limbs," without much of "the belly"—which must mean, we presume, the idle folks, or much of "the head," which must mean the thinkers. That class, or those classes which cultivate the soil, and render the place somewhat habitable, had better surely precede, and act as pioneers, before the gentry disembark from their ships. Other classes must follow as they are wanted, and find room and scope. What would the physician do with his elaborate skill and courtesy, without that congregation of idlers on whose ailments he rides and dines? What need yet of eloquent barrister, or are his fees forthcoming, when a new estate could be purchased with less money than would serve to defend the old one by his pleading? Who would attend to the man of science, and his latest experiments on magnetic currents, when every one is trying over again the very first experiment—how to live?—where corn will grow, and what the potato will yield? Even your clergy must be of a somewhat different stamp from the polished ecclesiastic, the bland potentate of our drawing-rooms. He must have something more natural—"some rough-cast and a little loam" about him, be serviceable, accessible. And the fair "sample" partners of all these classes, what is to become of them? As yet, pin-money is not. There is nothing refined and civilised; men talk of marriage as if for prayer-book purposes. Very gross ideas!

The ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if not the chief man of the state—like the queen bee leading the workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry—some one of wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the colony—seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of Northumberland, would be hard to catch—the Doctor proposes to bestow upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed; but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English[514] gentleman of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd of emigrants—too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious—would have well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the coronet, nor any possible bribe—nothing short of a certain thirst for noble enterprise can prompt them.

The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse, presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean. Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life, are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England, they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper and coarse raiment—they and their families, and some neighbours of kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free; where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal remediless distress; but a disciplined humanity, in face of a kindly nature whose bounty had not yet been too severely taxed.

A charming ideal! which here and there is faintly and transiently realised. Here and there we catch a description of this simple, exhilarating, innocuously enterprising life, either in some Canadian settlement, or in the forests of America, or even in the Bush of Australia. There is rude health in all the family; housekeeping is a sort of perpetual pic-nic, full of amusing make-shifts; there is rudeness, but not barbarism; little upholstery, but wife and child are caressed with as much amenity and gentle fondness as in carpeted and curtained drawing-rooms. If the tin can should substitute the china cup, the tea is drunk with not the less urbanity. Such scenes we have caught a glimpse of in this or that writer. But alas! that which generally characterises the young settlement, let it be young as it may—that which would so wofully disappoint our pastoral and romantic emigrant, is precisely this: that, instead of leaving care behind them, the care to get rich, to get on, as it is disgustingly called—our colonists take a double portion of this commodity with them. Comparatively few seem to emigrate simply to live then and there more happily. They take land, as they would take a shop, to get a profit and be rich. And then, as for the little community and its public or common interests, it is the universal remark that, if politics in England are acrid enough, colonial politics are bitterness itself. The war is carried on with a personal hatred, and attended by personal injuries, unknown in the old country.

One would indeed think that people, fatigued with this anxious passion which plays so large a part in English life—this desire to advance, or secure, their social position—would seize the opportunity to escape from it, and rejoice in their ability to live in some degree of freedom and tranquillity. But no. The man commerce bred cares not to enjoy life and the day. He must make a profit out of himself; he must squeeze a profit out of others; he toils only for this purpose. If he has succeeded, in the new colony, in raising about him the requisite comforts of life—if he has been even rescued from threatened famine in England, and is now living and well housed, he and his family—you find[515] him full of discontent because of the "exorbitant wages" he has to pay to the fellow emigrants who assist him in gathering in his corn—full of discontent because he cannot make the same profit of another man's labour there that he could have done in the old country—in that old country where he could not for his life have got so much land as the miserable rag upon his back would have covered. Such men carry out a heart to work, none to enjoy: they have not been cultivated for that. The first thing the colonist looks for is something to export. It was in vain that Adelaide boasted its charming climate and fruitful fields; it was on the point of being abandoned—so we hear—by many of its inhabitants, when some mines were discovered. There was then something that would sell in England, something to get rich with; so they that would have left the soil, stayed to work in the bowels of the earth. In the Bush you hear of the shepherds and small owners of sheep living, the year round, on "salt beef, tea, and damper," which last is an extemporised bread, an unleavened dough baked in such oven as the usual fire-place supplies. But fresh mutton, you exclaim, is plentiful enough; what need to diet themselves as if they were still in the hold of that vessel which brought them over? True, plentiful enough—it sells in Sydney at some three-halfpence a pound; but while the sheep lives it grows wool upon its back. For this wool it is bred. Sometimes it is boiled down bodily for its tallow, which also can be exported. Mutton-chops would be a waste; it would be a sin to think of them.

Set sail from England in whichever direction you will, East or West, over whichever ocean, the first thing you hear of, in respect to colonial society, is its proverbial "smartness"—an expression which signifies a determination to cheat you in every possible manner. The Old World, and the worst of it, is already there to welcome you. Nay, it has taken possession of the very soil before the spade of the emigrant can touch it. There lies the fresh land, fresh—so geologists say of Australia—as it came up at its last emergence from the ocean. You are first? No. The land-jobber is there before you. This foulest harpy from the stock exchange has set its foot upon the greensward, and screeches at you its cry for cent per cent!

There is yet a third and later ideal of colonisation—the ideal of the political economist. With him colonisation presents itself under the especial aspect of a great exploitation of the earth. He is desirous that capital and labour should resort to those spots where they will be most productive. Thus the greatest possible amount of production will be generated between man and his terraqueous globe; capital and labour are with him the first elements of human prosperity; and to transfer these in due proportions, and as quickly as possible, to the new land, when they may be most profitably employed, is the main object of his legislation. Hitherto, it may be observed, the political economist has limited his efforts to the undoing what he conceives has been very unskilfully done by previous legislators. In this matter of emigration he steps forward as legislator himself. It is no longer for mere liberty and laissez-faire that he contends; he assumes a new character, and out of the theory of his science produces his system of rule and regulation. He knows how a small village becomes a great city; he will apply his knowledge, and by positive laws expedite the process. Let us see with what success he performs in this new character.

Mr Wakefield's system—for it is he who has the honour of originating this politico-economical scheme—consists in putting a price upon unoccupied land, and with the proceeds of the sale raising a fund for the transmission of emigrant labourers. This is, however, but a subordinate part of his project, which we mention thus separately, because, for a purpose of our own, we wish to distinguish it from the rest. This price must, moreover, (and here is the gist of the matter,) be that "sufficient price" which will debar the labourer from becoming too soon a proprietor of land, and thus deserting the service of the capitalist.

The object of Mr Wakefield, it will be seen at once, is to procure the speedy transmission in due proportion of capital and labour. The capitalist would afford the means of transferring[516] the labourer to the scene of action; the labourer would be retained in that condition in order to invite and render profitable the wealth of the capitalist. The twofold object is good, and there is an apparent simplicity in the means devised, which, at first, is very captivating. There is nothing from which the colonial capitalist suffers so much as from the want of hired labour. He purchases land and finds no one to cultivate it; the few he can engage he cannot depend upon; the project of agricultural improvement which, if it be not completed, is utterly null and useless, is arrested in mid progress by the desertion of his workmen; or his capital is exhausted by the high wages he has paid before the necessary works can be brought to a termination. The capitalist has gone out, and left behind him that class of hired labourers without which his capital is useless. Meanwhile, in England, this very class is super-abundant; but it is not the class which spontaneously leaves the country, or can leave it. Mr Wakefield's scheme supplies the capitalist with the labour so essential to him, and relieves our parishes of their unemployed poor. But these emigrant labourers would soon extend themselves over the new country, as small proprietors,—Mr Wakefield checks this natural tendency by raising the price of land.

There is, we say, an apparent and captivating simplicity in the scheme; but we are persuaded that, the more closely it is examined, the more impracticable and perplexing it will reveal itself to be. As Mr Wakefield's system has made considerable progress in public opinion, and obtained the approval, not only of eager speculative minds, but of cool and calculating economists—as it has already exerted some influence, and may exert still more, upon our colonial legislation—and as we believe that the attempt to carry it out will give rise to nothing better than confusion and discontent, we think we shall be doing no ill service to the cause of colonisation by entering into some investigation of it.

We are compelled to make a division, or what to Mr Wakefield will appear a most unscientific fracture, of the two parts of his scheme. We acquiesce in fixing a price upon unappropriated land, and with the proceeds of the sale forming a fund for the transmission and outfit of the poor emigrant. We do not say that these proceeds must necessarily supply all the fund that it may be thought advisable to spend in this matter, or that the price is to be regulated solely according to the wants of this emigration fund. But we do not acquiesce in the proposal to fix a price for the specific purpose of retarding the period at which the labourer may himself become a proprietor. The doctrine of "a sufficient price" (as it has been called, and for brevity's sake we shall adopt the name) we entirely eschew. To the imposing of an artificial value upon the land, for this purpose, we will be no parties. Simply to transport the labourer hence, shall be the object of our price, beyond such other reasons as may be given for selling at a certain moderate sum the waste land of the colonies, instead of disposing of it by free grant. This object may be shown to be equitable; it appeals to the common justice of mankind. But as to the longer or shorter term the hired labourer remains in the condition of hired labourer, for this the capitalist must take his chance. This must be determined, as it is in the old country, and as alone it can be determined amicably, by that current of circumstances over which neither party can exercise a direct control. To such collateral advantage as may accrue to the capitalist from even the price we should impose, he is welcome; only we do not legislate for this object—we neither give it, nor take it away.

The wild unappropriated land of our colonies belongs to the crown, to the state—it is, as Mr Wakefield says, "a valuable national property." In making use of this land, one main object would be to relieve the destitute of the old country; to give them, if possible, a share of it. What more just or more rational? To give, however, the soil itself to the very poor would be idle. They cannot reach it, they cannot travel to their new estate—they have no seeds, no tools, no stock of any kind wherewith to cultivate it. The gift would be a[517] mere mockery. We will sell it, then, to those who can transport themselves thither, and who have the necessary means for its cultivation, and the purchase-money shall be paid over to the very poor. By far the best way of paying over this purchase-money, which as a mere gift of so much coin would be all but worthless, and would be spent in a week, is by providing them with a free passage to the colony where they will permanently improve their condition; obtaining high wages, and probably, after a time, becoming proprietors themselves; and assisting in turn, by the purchase-money their own savings will have enabled them to pay, to bring over other emigrants to the new field of labour, and the new land of promise.

This is an equitable arrangement, and, what is more, the equity of it is level to the common sense of all mankind. It effects also certain desirable objects, though not such as our theorist has in view. It places the land in the possession of men who will and can cultivate it, and who, by paying a certain moderate price, have shown they were in earnest in the business; and it has transmitted, at their expense, labourers to the new soil. With the question, how long these shall continue labourers, it interferes not. It is a question, we think, no wise man would meddle with. Least of all does it represent that the capitalist has obtained any claim upon the services of the labourer, by having paid for his passage out: this payment was no gift of his; it was the poor man's share of the "national property." They meet in the colony as they would have met in England, each at liberty to do the best he can for himself.

Observe how the difficulties crowd upon us, when we enter upon the other and indeed the essential part of Mr Wakefield's scheme. The emigrant is not "too soon" to become a proprietor. What does this "too soon" mean? How long is he to be retained in the condition of hired labourer? How many years? Mr Wakefield never fixes a period. He could not. It must depend much upon the rapidity of immigration into the colony. If the second batch of immigrants is slow of coming in, the first must be kept labourers the longer. If the stream of labour flow but scantily into this artificial canal, the locks must be opened the more rarely. But how is the "sufficient price" to be determined until this period be known? It is the sum the labourer can save from his wages, during this time, which must constitute the price of so much land as will support him and his family, and enable him to turn proprietor. Thus, in order to regulate the sufficient price, it will be necessary to find the average rate of wages, the average amount of savings that a labourer could make (which, again, must depend upon the price of provisions, and other necessaries of life) during an unknown period!—and, in addition to this, to determine the average produce of so many acres of land. The apparent simplicity of the scheme resolves itself into an extreme complexity. The author of it, indeed, proposes a short method by which his sufficient price may be arrived at without these calculations: what that short method is, and how fallacious it would prove, we shall have occasion to show.

But granting that, in any manner, this "sufficient price" could be determined, the measure has an unjust and arbitrary character. It is not enough that such a scheme could be defended, and shown to be equitable, because for the general good, before some committee of legislators; if it offends the popular sense of justice it can never prosper. "I know," the humble emigrant might say—"I know there must be rich and poor in the world; there always have been, and always will be. To what is inevitable one learns to submit. If I am born poor there is no help for it, except what lies in my own ability and industry. But if you set about, by artificial regulations, in a new colony, where fruitful land is in abundance, to keep me poor, because I am so now, I rebel. This is not just. Do I not see the open land before me unowned, untouched? I well enough understood that, in old England, I could not take so much of any field as the merest shed would cover—not so much as I could burrow in. Long before I was born it had been all claimed, hedged, fenced in, and a title traced[518] from ancestor to ancestor. Here, I am the ancestor!"

Tell such a man that a price is put upon the land in order that some companions whom he left starving in England may come over and partake the benefit of this unbroken soil,—he will see a plain justice here. He himself was, perhaps, brought over by the price paid by some precursor. What he received from one more prosperous, he returns to another less prosperous than himself. But tell him that a price is put upon the land, in order that he may serve a rich master the longer,—in order that he may be kept in a subordinate station, from which circumstances now permit him to escape—he will see no justice in the case. He will do everything in his power to evade your law; he will look upon your "sufficient price" as a cruel artificial barrier raised up against him; he will go and "squat" upon the land, without paying any price at all.

Indeed, the objection to his scheme, which Mr Wakefield seems to feel the strongest,—to which he gives the least confident reply, is just this—that, equitable or not, it would be impossible to carry out his law into execution; that if the price were high enough to answer his purposes, the land, in colonial dialect, would be "squatted" on,—would be taken possession of without any payment whatever. A moderate price men will cheerfully pay for the greater security of title: Englishmen will not, for a slight matter, put themselves wittingly on the wrong side of the law. But, if coupled with a high price, there is a rankling feeling of injustice: they will be very apt to satisfy themselves with actual possession, and leave the legal title to follow as it may. It is true, as Mr Wakefield urges, the richer capitalists will by no means favour the squatter; they will be desirous of enforcing a law made for their especial benefit. But they will not form the majority. Popular opinion will be against them, and in favour of the squatter. It would not be very easy to have a police force, and an effective magistracy, at the outskirts of a settlement stretching out, in some cases, into an unexplored region. Besides, it is a conspicuous part of Mr Wakefield's plan to give municipal or local governments to our colonies: these, as emanating from the British constitution, must need be more or less of a popular character; and we are persuaded that no such popular local government would uphold his "sufficient price," or tolerate the principle on which it was founded.

But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really have the effect contemplated by our theorist—that of supplying the capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of labourers it might,—but of what character? It is not a remote possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor. It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save—a class of men always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is indolence itself,—a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land—and feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition, arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the capitalist—what amount of work think you the capitalist-farmer would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he would[519] have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man had calculated upon being himself a farmer.

Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist?

The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this hopeless predicament:—1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it; and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.

That it may be desirable to tempt the capitalist abroad by securing him an abundance of hired labour, something like that which lies at his door in England, we do not dispute. But the thing is impossible. You cannot manage this by direct legislation. You cannot combine in one settlement the advantages of a new and of an old country. It is not in the wit of man to bring together these two stages of society. Our political economist is in too great a haste to be rich: he forgets the many lessons he has given to others against bootless and mischievous intermeddling with the natural course of things. Meanwhile "the attempt will confound us,"—it will throw an unpopularity over the whole subject of emigration in the minds of the working classes. Already we hear it murmured that the land is to be made a monopoly for the rich; that the man of small substance is to be discouraged; that the sole object of the moneyed class is to make profit of the labours of others; and that they are bent upon creating, artificially, in the colony, those circumstances which put the workmen in their power in the old country. We would earnestly counsel those who are interested in the subject of emigration, to consider well before they teach or practise this new "art of colonisation."

Those who have not perused Mr Wakefield's book may, perhaps, entertain a suspicion that, in thus separating the objects for which a price is to be laid on land, admitting the one and rejecting the other, we are only engaging ourselves unnecessarily in a theoretical debate. If a price is to be affixed, the result, it may seem to them, is practically the same, whatever the object may be. But the practical result would be very different; for a very different price would be exacted, according to the object in view, as well as a very different motive assigned for imposing it. The price at which a considerable fund would be raised for the purpose of emigration, would be too low to answer the purpose of restraining the labourer from soon becoming a proprietor of land. Those, however, who are familiar with Mr Wakefield's book, know well that this last purpose forms the very substance of the plan it proposes; and that hitherto no price—although it has ranged as high as 40s. per acre—has been considered sufficiently high to effect the object of the theorist.

We will continue our first quotation from p. 347. The manner in which Mr Wakefield himself exposes the difficulties of fixing the "sufficient price," and the very inadequate expedient he points out for obviating, or avoiding, these difficulties, may throw some further light upon the matter.

Admirable machinery! No steam-engine could let its steam on, or off, with more precision. The legislature or governor "could always tell whether or not labour for hire was too scarce or too plentiful," and open or close his value accordingly. "No legislature, hardly any individual could be in doubt" about the matter! Indeed! when was hired labour ever thought too cheap—in other words, too plentiful—by the capitalist? When was it ever thought too dear—in other words, too scarce—by the labourer? Could the most ingenious man devise a question on which there would be more certainly two quite opposite and conflicting opinions? And suppose the legislature to have come to a decision—say that the labour was too scarce—there would still be this other question to decide,[521] whether to lower the price, in order to tempt emigrants, might not be as good a means of rendering labour more plentiful, as to raise the price in order to render it still more difficult for labourers to become landowners? Here there is surely scope for the most honest diversity of opinion. One party might very rationally advise to entice thither the stream of emigration:—"Let it flow more copiously," they might exclaim, "though we retain the waters for a shorter time;" while the party thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of the "sufficient price" would devise fresh dikes and dams, and watch the locks more narrowly.

In his "sufficient price," Mr Wakefield has discovered the secret spring that regulates the economical relations of society. He has his hand upon it. He, or his lawgiver, will henceforward regulate the supply of labour, and the remuneration of labour, upon scientific principles. Unenviable post! We should infinitely prefer the task of the philosopher in Rasselas, who fancied himself commissioned to distribute rain and sunshine, in just proportions, to all the farmers in the neighbourhood.

It is quite curious to observe how strong a faith our projector has in his theory of a sufficient price, and how singular a bias this has exerted on his mind in some other matters of speculation. He finds that slavery, both in olden and modern times, has been all owing to "cheapness of land." Could he have fixed his sufficient price upon the arable land in Chaldea, or about the cities of Athens and Rome, neither the patriarchs, nor the Greeks, nor the Romans, would have known the institution of slavery. "Slavery is evidently," he says, "a make-shift for hiring; a proceeding to which recourse is had only where hiring is impossible, or difficult. Slave labour is, on the whole, much more costly than the labour of hired freemen; and slavery is also full of moral and political evils, from which the method of hired labour is exempt. Slavery, therefore, is not preferred to the method of hiring: the method of hiring would be preferred if there was a choice."—(P. 324.) Most logical "therefore!" The mode of hiring is preferred by those to whom experience has taught all this; but slavery, so far from being the "make-shift," is the first expedient. It is the first rude method which unscrupulous power adopts to engross the produce of the earth. The stronger make the weaker labour for them. "It happens," he continues, "wherever population is scanty in proportion to land." It happens wherever people prefer idleness to work, and have been able to coerce others to labour for them, whether land has been plentiful or not. Was it abundance of land, or the military spirit, that produced the amiable relationship between the Spartan and the Helot?—or was there any need of a "sufficient price" to limit the supply of good land in Egypt, which lay rigidly enough defined between the high and low margin of a river? Or could any governor, with his tariff of prices, have performed this duty more effectually than the Nile and the desert had done between them?

But the most amusing instance is still to follow. "It was the cheapness of land that caused Las Casas (the Clarkson or Wilberforce of his time, as respects the Red Indians of America) to invent the African slave-trade. It was the cheapness of land that brought African slaves to Antigua and Barbadoes."—(P. 328.) It was the cheapness of land! If land had been dearer, the Spaniards would have worked for themselves, and not have asked the Red Indians for their assistance! If land had been dearer in Antigua and Barbadoes, the climate would have lost its influence on European frames, and Englishmen would have laboured in their own sugar plantations!

Doubtless the difficulty of obtaining hired labour has been sometimes a reason, and sometimes an excuse, for the continuance of slavery. It is also true that the willingness of the discharged slave to work, as a hired labourer, is almost a necessary condition to the extinction of slavery. But, losing sight of all our amiable passions and propensities, to describe slavery as originating altogether in the scarcity of hired labour, (as if the slave had first had the offer made to him to work for wages, and had refused it,) and then to resolve this cause again into no other circumstance than the[522] "cheapness of land," is something like monomania.

In America, those states which have colonised so rapidly have not been the slave-holding states, nor have they needed slaves; nor has land been scarce; nor has much been done by the mere capitalist who goes to hire labour; but almost all by the man who goes there to labour himself, upon property of his own. And who, after all, we would ask, are the best of emigrants, in every new country where the land has yet to be reclaimed? Not those who seek the colony with an intention of making a fortune there, and returning to England; nor even those who go with some feeling that they shall be the Cæsars of the village; nor the easy capitalist, who expects, from the back of his ambling nag, to see his fields sprout with corn and grow populous with cattle. The best of emigrants, as pioneers of civilisation, are those who intend to settle and live on the land they shall have reduced to cultivation, who go to labour with their own hands on property they shall call their own. It is the labour of such men that has converted into corn-fields the dark forests of America. That ardent and indefatigable industry which has been so often admired in the peasant proprietor—the man who has all the hardy habits of the peasant and all the pride of proprietorship—is never more wanted, never more at home, than in the new colony. We have a sympathy with these men—we like their hearty toil, their guiltless enterprise. This is not the class of men we would disgust; yet it is precisely this class who go forth with their little store of wealth in their hand, or with hope soon to realise it, whom the "sufficient price" of Mr Wakefield would deter from entering the colony, or convert, when there, into unwilling, discontented, uncertain labourers.

The rights of every class must, of course, be determined by a reference to the welfare of the whole community. The poorer settler must have his claims decided, and limited, according to rules which embrace the interest of the empire at large. We hope we shall not be misunderstood on so plain a matter as this. We do not contemplate the settler as arriving on the new land unfettered by any allegiance he owes to the old country. He belongs to civilised England; carries with him the knowledge and the implements which her civilisation has procured him; lives under her protection, and must submit to her laws. But in limiting the rights of the settler in a land spreading open before him—where nothing has taken possession of the soil but the fertilising rain, and the broad sunshine playing idly on its surface—you must make out a clear case, a case of claims paramount to his own, a case which appeals to that sense of justice common to the multitude, which will bear examination, which readily forces itself upon an honest conviction. It must not be a mere speculative measure, a subtle theory, hard for a plain man to understand—benevolently meant, but, intricate in its operation, and precarious in its result—that should come betwixt him and the free bounty of nature. Not of such materials can you make the fence that is to coop him up in one corner of a new-found continent. Laudable it may be, this experiment to adjust with scientific accuracy the proportion of capital and labour; but a man with no peculiar passion for political economy, will hardly like to be made the subject of this experiment, or that a scientific interest should keep his feet from the wilderness, or his spade from the unowned soil. It would be an ungracious act of parliament, to say the least of it, whose preamble should run thus—"Whereas it is expedient that the labouring population emigrating from England should be 'prevented from turning too soon into landowners,' and thus cultivating the soil for themselves instead of for others, Be it enacted," &c. &c.

Although this theory of a "sufficient price" is the chief topic of Mr Wakefield's book, yet there are many other subjects of interest discussed, and many valuable suggestions thrown out in it; and if we have felt ourselves compelled to enter our protest against his main theory, we are by no means unwilling to confess our share of obligation to one who has made colonisation the subject of so much study, and who has called to it the attention of so many others. It was he who, struck with the gross error that had[523] been committed of stocking certain of our colonies with too large a proportion of the male sex, first pointed out that the period of marriage was the most appropriate period for emigration. Do not wait till want drives out the half-famished children, but let the young married couple start whilst yet healthy and vigorous, and not broken down by poverty. Some might be disposed to object that these will do well enough in England. They might, but their children might not. It is wise to take the stream of population a little higher up, where it yet runs clear; not to wait till the waters have become sluggish and polluted.

In a literary point of view, Mr Wakefield's book is an extremely entertaining one. It is difficult to believe what we are told in the preface, and hear with regret, that it was written in ill health, so elastic a spirit is observable throughout. The work assumes the form of letters passing between a statesman, who is in search of information and theory on the subject of colonisation, and a colonist who has both to give. One would naturally conclude, from the letters themselves, that both sets were written by the same author, and that the correspondence was but one of those well-understood literary artifices by which the exposition of certain truths or opinions is rendered more clear or interesting. The letters of the statesman have that constrained fictitious aspect which responses framed merely for the carrying on of the discussion are almost sure to acquire. At all events, it was hardly necessary for Mr Wakefield to describe himself in the title-page as "one of the writers;" since the part of the statesman, in the correspondence, is merely to ask questions at the proper time, to put an objection just where it ought to be answered, and give other the like promptings to the colonist.

With many readers it will add not a little to the piquancy of the work, that a considerable part is occupied in a sharp controversy with the Colonial Office and its present chief. Mr Wakefield does not spare his adversaries; he seems rather to rejoice in the wind and stir of controversy. What provocation he has received we do not know: the justice of his quarrel, therefore, we cannot pretend to decide upon; but the manner in which he conducts it, is certainly not to our taste. For instance, at p. 35 and p. 302, there is a littleness of motive, a petty jealousy of him (Mr Wakefield) attributed to Lord Grey as the grounds of his public conduct—a sort of imputation which does not increase our respect for the person who makes it. But into this controversy with the Colonial Office we have no wish to enter. So far as it is of a personal character, we can have no motive to meddle with it; and so far as the system itself is attacked, of governing our colonies through this office, as at present constituted, there appears to be no longer any controversy whatever. It seems admitted, on all hands, that our colonies have outgrown the machinery of government here provided for them.

In the extract we lately made from Mr Wakefield's book, some of our readers were perhaps startled at meeting so strange an appellation as Mr Mothercountry. It is a generic name, which our writer gives to that gentleman of the Colonial Office (though it would seem more appropriate to one of the female sex) who for the time being really governs the colony, and is thus, in fact, the representative of the mother country. The soubriquet was adopted from a pamphlet of the late Mr Charles Buller, in which he very vividly describes the sort of government to which—owing to the frequent change of ministry, and the parliamentary duties of the Secretary of State—a colony is practically consigned. We wish we had space to quote enough from this pamphlet, to show in what a graphic manner Mr Buller gradually narrows and limits the ideas which the distant colonist entertains of the ruling mother country. "That mother country," he finally says, "which has been narrowed from the British isles into the Parliament, from the Parliament into the Executive Government, from the Executive Government into the Colonial Office, is not to be sought in the apartments of the Secretary of State, or his Parliamentary under-secretary. Where are we to look for it?" He finds it eventually in some back-room in the large house in Downing Street, where some unknown gentleman, punctual,[524] industrious, irresponsible, sits at his desk with his tape and his pigeon-holes about him. This is the original of Mr Mother-country.

That which immediately suggests itself as a substitute and a remedy for the inefficient government of Downing Street, is some form of local or municipal government. As Mr Wakefield justly observes, a local government, having jurisdiction over quite local or special matters, by no means implies any relinquishment by the imperial government of its requisite control over the colony. Neither does a municipal government imply a republican or democratic government. Mr Wakefield suggests that the constitution of a colony should be framed, as nearly as possible, on the model of our own—that there should be two chambers, and one of them hereditary. The extreme distance of many, of most of our colonies, absolutely precludes the possibility of their being efficiently governed by the English Colonial Office, or by functionaries (whether well or ill appointed) who have to receive all their instructions from that office. Throughout our colonies, the French system of centralisation is adopted, and that with a very inadequate machinery. And the evil extends with our increasing settlements; for where there is a "seat of government" established in a colony, with due legislative and executive powers, every part of that colony, however extensive it may be, has to look to that central power for the administration of its affairs.

This is a long extract, but it could not be abridged, and the importance of the subject required it. Mr Wakefield has some remarks upon the necessity of supplying religious instruction and the means of public worship to our colonies, with which we cannot but cordially agree. But we rubbed our eyes, and read the following passage twice over, before we were quite sure that we had not misapprehended it: "I am in hopes of being able, when the proper time shall come for that part of my task, to persuade you that it would now be easy for England to plant sectarian colonies—that is, colonies with the strong attraction for superior emigrants, of a peculiar creed in each colony"—(P. 160.) We thought that it was one of the chief boasts, and most fortunate characteristics of our age, that men of different sects, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Independents and Baptists, had learned to live quietly together. It is a lesson that has been slowly learnt, and through much pain and tribulation. What is the meaning of this retrograde movement, this drafting us out again into separate corps? Possibly the fact of the whole settlement being of one sect of Christians may tend at first to promote harmony—although even this cannot be calculated upon; but differences of opinion are sure, in time, to creep in; and the ultimate consequence would be, that such a colony, in a future generation, would be especially afflicted with religious dissensions, and the spirit of persecution. It would have to learn again, through the old painful routine, the lesson of mutual toleration. We suspect that Mr Wakefield is so engrossed with his favourite subject of colonisation, that, if the Mormonites were to make a good settlement of it, he would forgive them all their absurdities; perhaps congratulate them on their harmony of views.

We have hitherto regarded colonisation in its general, national, and legislative aspect: the following passage takes us into the heart of the business as it affects the individuals themselves, of all classes, who really think of emigrating. It is thus Mr[526] Wakefield describes "the charms of colonisation:"—

A man is far gone, indeed, when he has given up his Times! This zeal for emigration amongst the better classes, and especially amongst educated youths, who find the avenues to wealth blocked up in their own country, is, we apprehend, peculiar to our day, and amongst the most novel aspects which the subject of colonisation assumes. How many of these latter find their imaginations travelling even to the antipodes! Where shall we colonise? is a question canvassed in many a family, sometimes half in jest, half in earnest, till it leads to the actual departure of the boldest or most restless of the circle. Books are brought down and consulted; from the ponderous folio of[527] Captain Cook's voyages—which, with its rude but most illustrative of prints, was the amusement of their childhood, when they would have thought a habitation in the moon as probable a business as one in New Zealand—to the last hot-pressed journal of a residence in Sydney; and every colony in turn is examined and discussed. Here climate is so delicious you may sleep without hazard in the open air. Sleep! yes, if the musquitoes let you. Musquitoes—oh! Another reads with delight of the noble breed of horses that now run wild in Australia, and of the bold horsemanship of those who drive in the herd of bullocks from their extensive pasturage, when it is necessary to assemble in order to number and to mark them. The name of the thing does not sound so romantic as that of a buffalo-hunt; but, armed with your tremendous whip, from the back of a horse whom you turn and wind at pleasure, to drive your not over-tractable bullocks, must task a good seat, and a steady hand, and a quick eye. A third dwells with a quieter delight on the beautiful scenery, and the pastoral life so suitable to it, which New Zealand will disclose. Valleys green as the meadows of Devonshire, hills as picturesque as those of Scotland, and the sky of Italy over all! and the aborigines friendly, peaceable. Yes, murmurs one, until they eat you. Faugh! but they are reformed in that particular. Besides, Dr Dieffenbach says, here, that "they find Europeans salt and disagreeable." Probably they had been masticating some tough old sailor, who had fed on junk all his life, and they found him salt enough. But let no one in his love of science suggest this explanation to them; let us rest under the odium of being salt and disagreeable.

These aborigines—one would certainly wish they were out of the way. Wild men! Wild—one cannot have fellowship with them. Men—one cannot shoot them. In Australia they are said to be not much wiser than baboons—one wishes they were altogether baboons, or altogether men. In New Zealand they are, upon the whole, a docile, simple people. The missionaries are schooling them as they would little children. A very simple people! They had heard of horses and of horsemanship; it was some tradition handed down from their great discoverer, Captain Cook. When lately some portly swine were landed on the island, they concluded these were the famous horses men rode upon in England. "They rode two of them to death." Probably, by that time, they suspected there was some error in the case.

Hapless aborigines! How it comes to pass we cannot stop to inquire, but certain it is they never prosper in any union with the white man. They get his gin, they get his gunpowder, and, here and there, some travesty of his religion. This is the best bargain they make where they are most fortunate. The two first gifts of the white man, at all events, add nothing to the amenity of character, and happen to be precisely the gifts they could most vividly appreciate. Our civilisation seems to have no other effect than to break up the sort of rude harmony which existed in their previous barbarism. They imitate, they do not emulate; what they see of us they do not understand. That ridiculous exhibition, so often described, which they make with our costume—a naked man with hat and feathers stuck upon his head; or, better still, converting a pair of leathers into a glistening helmet, the two legs hanging down at the back, where the flowing horse-hair is wont to fall—is a perfect emblem of what they have gained in mind and character from our civilisation.

These poor New Zealanders are losing—what think you says Dr Dieffenbach?—their digestion; getting dyspeptic. The missionaries have tamed them down; they eat more, fight less, and die faster. One of the "brethren," not the least intelligent to our mind, has introduced cricket as a substitute for their war-dances and other fooleries they had abolished.

When we want the soil which such aborigines are loosely tenanting, we must, we presume, displace them. There is no help for it. But, in all other cases, we could wish the white man would leave these dark children of the earth alone. If there exists another Tahiti, such as it was when Cook discovered it, such as we read of[528] it under the old name of Otaheite, we hope that some eternal mist, drawn in a wide circle round the island, will shroud it from all future navigators. Were we some great mariner, and had discovered such an island, and had eaten of the bread-fruit of the hospitable native, and reclined under their peaceful trees, and seen their youths and maidens crowned with green boughs, sporting like fishes in their beautiful clear seas, no mermaid happier—we should know but of one way to prove our gratitude—to close our lips for ever on the discovery we had made. If there exist in some untraversed region of the ocean another such spot, and if there are still any genii, or jins, or whatever sea-fairies may be called, left behind in the world, we beseech of them to protect it from all prying circumnavigators. Let them raise bewildering mists, or scare the helmsman with imaginary breakers, or sit cross-legged upon the binnacle, and bewitch the compass—anyhow let them protect their charge. We could almost believe, from this moment, in the existence of such spirits or genii, having found so great a task for them.

We have no space to go back to other graver topics connected with colonisation which we have passed on our road. On one topic we had not, certainly, intended to be altogether silent. But it is perhaps better as it is; for the subject of transportation is so extensive, and so complicate, and so inevitably introduces the whole review of what we call secondary punishments—of our penal code, in short—that it were preferable to treat it apart. It would be very unsatisfactory merely to state a string of conclusions, without being able to throw up any defences against those objections which, in a subject so full of controversy, they would be sure to provoke.

In fine, we trust to no ideals, no theory or art of colonisation. Neither do we make any extraordinary or novel demands on Government. A great work is going on, but it will be best performed by simple means. We ask from the Government that it should survey and apportion the land, and secure its possession to the honest emigrant, and that it should delegate to the new settlement such powers of self-government as are necessary to its internal improvement. These, however, are important duties, and embrace much. The rest, with the exception of such liberality as may be thought advisable, in addition to the fund raised by the sale of waste land, for the despatch and outfit of the poor labourer or artisan—the rest must be left to the free spirit of Englishmen, whether going single or in groups and societies.

THE REACTION, OR FOREIGN CONSERVATISM.

It is the sage remark of Montesquieu, that, under a government of laws, liberty consists simply in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in freedom from any constraint to do what we ought not to will. The true conservative not only accepts this maxim, but he gives it completeness by prescribing a pure religion as the standard of what a people ought to will, and as the only sober guide of conscience. And this may be added as a corollary, that so long as a free people is substantially Christian, their conscience coinciding with absolute right, their liberty, so far as affected by popular causes, will preserve itself from fatal disorders. Such a people, possessed of liberty, will know it and be content. But where the popular conscience is morbid, they may have liberty without knowing it. They will fancy that they ought to will what they are not permitted to will, and the most wholesome restraints of wise laws will appear tyrannical. For such a people there can be no cure, till they are restored to a healthy conscience. A despotism successfully established over them, and then moderately maintained, and benevolently administered, is the only thing that can save them from self-destruction.

I was not writing at random, then, my Basil, when I said in my last letter that the first want of France is a national conscience. As a nation, the French lack the moral sense. What sign of moral life have they shown for the last fifty years? The root of bitterness in the body politic of France, is the astonishing infidelity of the people. Whatever be the causes, the fact is not to be denied: the land whose crown was once, by courtesy, most Christian, must draw on courtesy and charity too, if it be now called Christian at all. The spirit of unbelief is national. It is the spirit of French literature—of the French press—of the French academy—of the French senate; I had almost added of the French church; and if I hesitate, it is not so much because I doubt the corrupting influences of the French priesthood, as because they are no longer Gallican priests, but simply the emissaries of Ultramontanism. There is no longer a French church. The Revolution made an end of that. When Napoleon, walking at Malmaison, heard the bells of Ruel, he was overpowered with a sense of the value of such associations as they revived in his own heart, and forthwith he opened the churches which had so long been the sepulchres of a nation's faith, convinced that they served a purpose in government, if only as a cheap police. He opened the churches, but he could not restore the church of France. He could do no more than enthrone surviving Ultramontanism in her ancient seats, and that by a manœuvre, which made it a creature and a slave of his ambition. When it revolted, he talked of Gallican liberties, but only for political purposes. Nor did the Restoration do any better. The church of St Louis was defunct. Gallican immunities were indeed asserted on paper; but, in effect, the Jesuits gained the day. The Orleans usurpation carried things further; for the priesthood, severed from the state, became more Ultramontane from apparent necessity, and lost, accordingly, their feeble hold on the remaining respect of the French people. Who was not startled, when the once devout Lamartine talked of "the new Christianity" of Liberty and Equality over the ruins of the Orleans dynasty, and thus betrayed the irreligion into which he had been repelled by the Christianity of French ecclesiastics! Thus always uncongenial to the national character, Ultramontanism has coated, like quicksilver, and eaten away those golden liberties which St Louis consecrated his life to preserve, and with which have perished the life and power of Christianity in France.

The history of France is emphatically a religious history. Every student must be struck with it. To understand even the history of its court, one must get at least an outline of what is meant by Jansenism[530] and Molinism, and Ultramontanism, and the whole tissue of isms which they have created. No historian gives us an exemption from this amount of polemical information. The school of Michelet is as forward as that of de Maistre, in claiming a "religious mission" for France among the nations; and de Stael and Chateaubriand are impressed with the same idea. Her publicists, as well as her statesmen, have been always, in their own way, theologians; and, from Louis IX. to Louis XVI., the spirit of theology was, in some form or other, the spirit of every reign. Not only the Mazarins, but the Pompadours also, have made religion part of their craft; and religion became so entirely political under Louis XV., that irreligion was easily made political in its stead. In the court of France, in fact, theology has been the common trade; the trade of Condé and of Guise, of Huguenot and Papist, of Jansenist and Jesuit, of philosopher and poet, of harlots, and almost of lap-dogs. Even Robespierre must legislate upon the "consoling principle of an Etre Suprême," and Napoleon elevates himself into "the eldest son of the church." "A peculiar characteristic of this monarchy," says de Maistre, "is that it possesses a certain theocratic element, special to itself, which has given it fourteen centuries of duration." This element has given its colour to reigns and revolutions alike; and if one admit the necessity of religion to the perpetuity of a state, it deserves our attention, in the light of whatever contending parties have advanced upon the subject.

Let us begin with the revolutionists themselves. In the month of June 1844, Monsieur Quinet, "of the college of France," stood in his lecture-room, venting his little utmost against the "impassioned leaven of Reaction," which he declared to be fermenting in French society. His audience was literally the youth of nations; for, as I gather from his oratory, it embraced not only his countrymen, but, besides them, Poles, Russians, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and a sprinkling of negroes. Upon this interesting assembly, in which black spirits and white must have maintained the proportion, and something of the appearance, of their corresponding ebony and ivory in the key-board of a pianoforte, and which he had tuned to his liking by a series of preparatory exercises, he played, as a grand finale, a most brilliant experimental quick-step, which satisfied him that every chord vibrated in harmony with his own sweet voice. He was closing his instructions, and addressed his pupils, not as disciples, but as friends. His great object seems to have been to convince them of their own importance, as the illuminated school of a new gospel of which he is himself the dispenser, and through which, he promised them, they would become, with him, the regenerators of the world. Having fully indoctrinated them with his new Christianity, it was necessary to work them into fury against the old. He had already established the unity of politics and religion; he had shown, very artfully, that Christianity had identified itself with Ultramontanism, and that France must perish if it should triumph; and he had only to convince them of danger from that quarter, to influence the combustible spirits of his credulous hearers to the heat which his purpose required. This he did by bellowing Reaction, and anathematising Schlegel and de Maistre.

You were mistaken then, my Basil, in supposing this word Reaction altogether a bugbear, and in understanding it with reference only to the counter-spirit in favour of legitimacy, which has been generated by the revolution of last year. You see it was the hobgoblin of a certain class of fanatics, long before Louis Philippe had received his notice to quit. It was an "impassioned leaven" in French society five years ago, in the heated imagination, or else in the artful theory, of Quinet. What was really the case? There was, in his sober opinion, as much danger from the reaction at that time as from the Great Turk, and no more. He merely used it as an academic man-of-straw to play at foils with. He held it up to contempt as an exploded folly, and then pretended it was a living danger, only to increase his own reputation for[531] daring, and to quicken the development of antagonist principles. He little dreamed the manikin would come to life, and show fight for the Bourbons and legitimacy. He cried Wolf for his own purposes, and the actual barking of the pack must be a terrible retribution! The reaction of 1848 must have come upon the professors like doomsday. I can conceive of him, at present, only as of Friar Bacon, when he stumbled upon the discovery of gunpowder. A moment since, he stood in his laboratory compounding the genuine elixir of life, and assuring his gaping disciples of the success of his experiment; but there has been a sudden detonation, and if the professor has miraculously escaped, it is only to find chaos come again, his admiring auditors blown to atoms, and nothing remaining of his philosophical trituration, except his smutty self, and a very bad smell. I speak of him as the personification of his system. Personally, he has been a gainer by the revolution. Guizot put him out of his place, and the Republic has put him back; but the Reaction is upon him, and his theories are already resolved into their original gases. "The college of France" may soon come to a similar dissolution.

Let us look for a while at foreign conservatism through Monsieur Quinet's glasses. I have introduced you to de Maistre, and de Maistre is to him what the Pope was to Luther. Quinet is, in his own way, another reformer; in fact, he announces his system, in its relations to Protestantism, as another noon risen upon mid-day. The theological character of foreign politics is as prominent in his writings as in those of his antagonists. Thus, to illustrate the character of the French Revolution, he takes us to the Council of Trent; and to demolish French Tories, he attacks Ultramontanism. This is indeed philosophical, considering the actual history of Europe, and the affinities of its Conservative party. Action and reaction are always equal. The cold infidelity of Great Britain was met by the cool reason of Butler, and sufficiently counteracted by even the frigid apologies of Watson, and the mechanical faith of Paley. But the passionate unbelief of the Encyclopædists produced the unbalanced credulity of the reaction; and Diderot, d'Alembert, and Voltaire, have almost, by fatality, involved the noble spirits of their correctors in that wrongheaded habit of believing, which shows its vigorous weakness in the mild Ballanche and the wavering Lamennais, and develops all its weak vigour in de Maistre and de Bonald. Thus it happens that Mons. Quinet gives to his published lectures the title of Ultramontanism; for he prefers to meet his antagonists on the untenable field of their superstition, and there to win a virtual victory over their philosophical and political wisdom. His book has reached me through the translation of Mr Cocks,[2] who has kindly favoured the literature of England with several similar importations from "the College of France," and who seems to be the chosen mouthpiece of the benevolent author himself, in addressing the besotted self-sufficiency of John Bull. So far, indeed, as it discusses Ultramontanism in itself, the work may have its use. It shows, with some force and more vociferation, that it has been the death of Spain, and of every state in which it has been allowed to work; and that, moreover, it has been the persevering foe of law, of science, and of morality. This is a true bill; but of him, as of his master Michelet, it may be said with emphasis, Tout, jusqu' à la vérité, trompe dans ses écrits. It does not follow, as he would argue, that political wisdom and Christian truth fall with Ultramontanism; nor does he prove it be so, by proving that de Maistre and others have thought so. The school of the Reaction are convicted of a mistake, into which their masters in Great Britain never fell. That is all that Quinet has gained, though he crows lustily for victory, and proceeds to construct his own political religion, as if Christianity were confessedly [532]defunct. As to the style of the Professor, so far as I can judge it from a tumid and verbose translation, it is not wanting in the hectic brilliancy of rhetoric raised to fever-heat, or of French run mad. Even its argument, I doubt not, sounded logical and satisfactory, when its slender postulate of truth was set off with oratorical sophistry, enforced with professorial shrugs of the shoulders, or driven home with conclusive raps upon the auxiliary tabatière. But the inanimate logic, as it lies coffined in the version of Mr Cocks, looks very revolting. In fact, stripped of its false ornament, all its practical part is simply the revolutionism of the Chartists. Worse stuff was never declaimed to a subterranean conclave of insurgent operatives by a drunken Barabbas, with Tom Paine for his text, and a faggot of pikes for his rostrum. The results have been too immediate for even Mons. Quinet's ambition. From hearing sedition in the "College of France," his motley and party-coloured audience has broken up to enforce it behind the barricades. They turned revolutionists against reaction in posse, and reaction in esse is the very natural consequence.

"Every nation, like every individual, has received a certain mission, which it must fulfil. France exercises over Europe a real magistracy, which cannot be denied, and she was at the head of its religious system." So says de Maistre, and so far his bitter enemy is agreed. But, says de Maistre, "She has shamefully abused her mission; and since she has used her influence to contradict her vocation, and to debauch the morals of Europe, it is not surprising that she is restored to herself by terrible remedies." Here speaks the spirit of Reaction, and Quinet immediately shows fight. In his view she has but carried out her vocation. The Revolution was a glorious outbreak towards a new universal principle. In the jargon of his own sect, "it was a revolution differing from all preceding revolutions, ancient or modern, precisely in this, that it was the deliverance of a nation from the bonds and limits of her church, into the spirit of universality." The spirit of the national church, he maintains, had become Ultramontane; had lost its hold on men's minds; had made way for the ascendency of philosophy, and had tacitly yielded the sceptre of her sway over the intelligence and the conscience to Rousseau and Voltaire. Nor does the Professor admit that subsequent events have restored that sceptre. On the contrary, he appeals to his auditors in asserting that the priesthood have ceased to guide the French conscience. His audience applauds, and the enraptured Quinet catches up the response like an auctioneer. He is charmed with his young friends. He is sure the reaction will never seduce them into travelling to heaven by the old sterile roads. As for the réactionnaires, no language can convey his contempt for them. "After this nation," says he, "has been communing with the spirit of the universe upon Sinai, conversing face to face with God, they propose to her to descend from her vast conceptions, and to creep, crestfallen, into the spirit of sect." Thus he contrasts the catholicity of Pantheism with the catholicity of Romanism; and thus, with the instinct of a bulldog, does he fasten upon the weak points of foreign Conservatism, or hold it by the nose, a baited victim, in spite of its massive sinews and its generous indignation. This plan is a cunning one. He sinks the Conservative principles of the Reaction, and gives prominence only to its Ultramontanism. He shows that modern Ultramontanism is the creature of the Council of Trent, and reviews the history of Europe as connected with that Council. He proves the pernicious results of that Council in every state which has acknowledged it; shows that not preservation but ruin has been its inevitable effect upon national character; and so congratulates France for having broken loose from it in the great Revolution. He then deprecates its attempted resuscitation by Schlegel and de Maistre, and, falling back upon the "religious vocation" of France, exhorts his auditors to work it out in the spirit of his own evangel. This new gospel, it is almost needless to add, is that detestable impiety which was so singularly religious in the revolution of last February, profaning the name of the Redeemer to sanctify its brutal[533] excesses, and pretending to find in the spirit of his gospel the elements of its furious Liberty and Equality. In the true sentiment of that revolution, an ideal portrait of the Messiah is elaborately engraved for the title-page of Mr Cock's translation! So a French quack adorns his shop with a gilded bust of Hippocrates! It is a significant hint of the humble origin of a system which, it must be understood, owes its present dignity and importance entirely to the genius of Mons. Quinet.

That the Reaction is thus identified with Ultramontanism, is a fact which its leading spirits would be the very last to deny. The necessity of religion to the prosperity of France is their fundamental principle; and religion being, in their minds, inseparable from Romanism, they will not see its defects; and their blind faith, like chloroform, makes them absolutely insensible to the sharp point of the weak spear with which Quinet pierces them. And it is but fair to suppose that Quinet and his colleagues are equally honest in considering Christianity and Ultramontanism synonymous. They see that the old religion of France has become, historically, a corrupt thing, and they propose a fresh Christianity in its place. Of one thing I am sure—they do not over-estimate the political importance of the Council of Trent. Let it be fairly traced in its connexions with kingdoms, with science, with letters, and with the conscience of nations, and it will be seen that Quinet is not far from correct, in taking it as the turning-point of the history of Europe. It produced Ultramontanism, or rather changed it from an abstraction into an organised system; and Ultramontanism, in its new shape, gave birth to the Jesuits. Christendom saw a new creed proposed as the bond of unity, and a new race of apostles propagating it with intrigue and with crime, and, in some places, with fire and sword. In proportion as the states of Europe incorporated Ultramontanism with their political institutions, they withered and perished. Old Romanism was one thing, and modern Ultramontanism another. Kingdoms that flourished while they were but Romanised, have perished since they became Tridentine.

Among English writers this distinction has not been generally made. Coleridge seems to have observed it, and has incidentally employed it in treating of another subject. But foreign literature is full of it, either tacitly implied or openly avowed, in different ways. Ultramontanism is, in Europe, a political and not merely a theological word,—its meaning results from its history. Before the Tridentine epoch, the national churches of Europe were still seven candle-sticks, in which glittered the seven stars of an essential personality and individual completeness. The "Church of Rome" still meant the Roman See, and, vast as were its usurpations over the national churches, it had neither reduced them to absolute unity in theology, nor absorbed their individuality into its own. The Roman Church, as we now understand it, was created by the Council of Trent, by a consolidation of national churches, and the quiet substitution of the creed of Pius IV. for the ancient creeds, as a test of unity. This fact explains the position of the Reformed before and after that extraordinary assembly. Till its final epoch, they had never fully settled their relations to the Papal See. The history of England is full of illustrations of this fact. Old Grostete of Lincoln spurned the authority of the Pope, but continued in all his functions as an English bishop till his death, in the thirteenth century. Wycliffe, in the fourteenth, was still more remarkable for resisting the papal pretensions, yet he died in the full exercise of his pastoral office, while elevating the host at Childermas. Henry VIII. himself had the benefit of masses for his pious soul at Notre Dame; and his friend Erasmus lived on easy terms with the Reformed, and yet never broke with the Vatican. Even the English prayer-book, under Elizabeth, was sanctioned by papal authority, with the proviso of her recognition of the supremacy, and for twelve years of her reign the popish party lived in communion with the Reformed Church of England. During all this period the dogmas of popes were fearlessly controverted by Cisalpine theologians, who still owned their supremacy in a qualified sense, and who boldly[534] appealed to a future council against the decisions of the See of Rome. Ultramontanism had then, indeed, its home beyond the mountains, and when it came bellowing over its barrier, it was often met as "the Tinchel cows the game." But modern Ultramontanism is another thing. It is an organised system, swallowing up the nationalities of constituent churches, and giving them the absolute unity of an individual Roman church, in which Jesuitism is the circulating life-blood, and the Italian consistory the heart and head together. Such was the prodigy hatched during the seventeen years of Tridentine incubation. It appeared at the close of those interminable sessions, so different from all that had been anticipated, that it startled all Europe. It had quietly changed everything, and made Rome the sole church of Southern Europe. Quinet has not failed to present this fact very strongly. "That Council," says he, "had not, like its predecessors, its roots in all nations; it did not assemble about it the representatives of all Christendom. Its spirit was to give full sanction to the idea, which certain popes of the middle ages had established, of their pre-eminence over œcumenical assemblies. Thenceforward, what had been the effect of a particular genius, became the very constitution of the church. The great adroitness consisted in making the change without anywhere speaking of it. The church which was before tempered by assemblies convoked from all the earth, became an absolute monarchy. From that moment the ecclesiastical world is silent. The meeting of councils is closed, no more discussions, no more solemn deliberations; everything is regulated by bulls, letters, and ordinances. Popedom usurps all Christendom; the book of life is shut; for three centuries not one page has been added." One would think the school of the Reaction would feel the force of facts so efficiently urged, even in spite of their towering disgust at the purposes for which they are employed. In fact, their own maxims may be turned against them with great power, in this matter of Ultramontanism. De Maistre, in his argument for unwritten constitutions, speaks of the creeds of the church as furnishing no exception to his rule; for these, he argues, are not codes of belief, but they partake the nature of hymns—they have rhythmical beauty, they are chanted in solemn services, they are confessed to God upon the harp and organ. Now this is indeed true of those three ancient creeds which are still chanted in the service of the Church of England; but the creed of Pius IV., which is the distinguishing creed of the Roman church, is absolutely nothing else than a code of belief, and is the only creed in Christendom which lacks that rhythmical glory which he considers a test of truth! Even Quinet notices this liturgic impotence of the Ultramontane religion. "The Roman church," he says, "has lost in literature, together with the ideal of Christianity, the sentiment of her own poetry. What has become of the burning accents of Ambrose and Paulinus? Urban VIII. writes pagan verses to the Cavalier Berni;[3] and instead of Stabat mater or Salutaris hostia, the princes of the church compose mythological sonnets, at the very moment when Luther is thundering Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, that Te Deum of the Reformation."

No wonder France was reluctant to acknowledge a Council which had thus imposed a new creed on Christendom, and which dictated a new organisation to the ancient churches of Southern Europe. While other nations subscribed with artful evasions, she hesitated and submitted, but gave no formal assent. Rome had come over the Alps to absorb her, and she was loth to yield her birthright. She stood long in what Schlegel calls "a disguised half-schism," struggling against dissolution, the last lump to melt away in the Tridentine element. But where now is the church which St Louis left to France, strong in her anti-papal bulwarks? Where now are those bulwarks, the labour of his life, and the chief glory of a name which even Rome has canonised? As for Spain, Ultramontanism [535]was riveted upon her by the Inquisition, and she is twice dead. One sees no more the churches of Western Christendom, fortified by Pragmatic Sanctions, and treated with as younger sisters, even by domineering Rome! They have disappeared; and the only light that lingers in their places is the sad sepulchral flame that owes its existence to decay.

Such is Ultramontanism. Follow its history, in connexion with political events in France, and you cannot fail to charge it with all the responsibility of French infidelity, and, consequently, of the present lamentable condition of the nation. Thrice has the spirit of France been in deadly collision with it—in the fire, in the wind, and in the earthquake. Its first antagonists were the Huguenots, and over them it triumphed by the persecutions of Louis XIV., following up the policy of Catherine de Medicis. It was next confronted by Jansenism under Louis XV., and that it overcame by intrigue and by ridicule. Under Louis XVI. it was obliged to meet the atheism of the Encyclopædists, which it had itself produced, and which terribly visited upon its head its own infernal inventions. To overwhelm the Port-Royalists, it had resorted to low caricatures and epigrams, and to philosophical satires upon their piety. Voltaire took from these the hint of his first warfare against Christianity. This was first a joke and a song, and then Ca Ira and A la lanterne; first the popguns of wit, then the open battery of Ecrasez l'infâme, and then the exploding mine of revolution. It merely reversed the stratagems of Ultramontanism, which began in massacre, and finished its triumphs with a jest; and both together have stamped the nation with its indelible character of half tiger and half monkey. The origin of such an issue of infamy cannot be concealed. France owes it all to her conduct in the crisis of the Reformation. Had the Gallic Church, under Henry of Navarre, fully copied the example of England, or had she even carried out her own instincts, repudiating the Council of Trent, and falling back upon the Pragmatic Sanction for a full defence of her independence, how different would have been her history, and that of the monarchy to which she would have proved a lasting support! Let the difference between Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze, between Sully and Richelieu, illustrate the reply. Or it may be imagined, by comparing the campaigns of Cevennes with the peaceful mission of Fenelon to the Huguenots of Saintonge. Where now both church and state appear the mere materials of ambition to such as Mazarin and Dubois, or where even the purer genius of such as Bossuet and Massillon is exhibited in humiliating and disgraceful associations, the places of history might have been adorned by such bright spirits as were immured at Port-Royal, or such virtue as sketched the ideal kingdom of Télémaque, and rendered illustrious a life of uncomplaining sorrow in the pastoral chair of Cambray. Where the court can boast one Bourdaloue, there would have been, beside him, not a few like Pascal; and in the rural parishes there would have been many such as Arnauld and Nicole, training in simple piety and loyal worth the successive generations of a contented people. As for the palace, it would never have been haunted by the dark spirit of Jesuitism, which has so often hid itself in the robes of royalty, and reigned in the sovereign's name; and the people would have known it only as a fearful thing beyond the Pyrenees, whose ear was always in the confessional, and whose hand was ever upon the secret wires of the terrible Inquisition. The capital would have been a citadel of law, and the kingdom still a Christian state. Its history might have lacked a "Grand Monarque," and certainly a Napoleon; but then there would have been no dragonnades, and possibly no Dubarrydom; no Encyclopædie, and no Ca Ira! The bell of St Germain l'Auxerrois would have retained its bloody memory as the tocsin of St Bartholomew's massacre, but it would never have sounded its second peal of infamy as the signal for storming the Tuileries, and for opening those successive vials of avenging woe, in which France is expiating her follies and her crimes.

Bossuet, in his funeral oration upon Queen Henrietta, unhappily for his own cause, has challenged a comparison between the histories of France[536] and England, which, if he were living in our days, he would hardly renew with pleasure. The Anglican Reformation was rashly charged by him with all the responsibility of the Great Rebellion; but facts have proved that revolutions are by no means confined to anti-papal countries, while history may be safely appealed to by Englishmen, in deciding as to the kind of religion which has best encountered the excesses of rebellion, and most effectually cured the disease. The Anglican Church survived the Great Rebellion, with fidelity to itself: the Gallic Church perished in the Revolution. Before the vainglorious taunt of Bossuet had passed from the memory of living men, all those causes were at work in France, which bred the whirlwind of infidelity, and which insured a revolution, not of fanaticism, but of atheism. The real power of the two churches, in moulding the character of a people, and retaining the loyalty of its noblest intellect, became, then, singularly apparent. In France, it was superstition to believe in God. In France, philosophers were afraid to own a great First Cause. In France, noblemen were ashamed to confess a conscience. In France, bishops and cardinals were foremost in apostasy, and claimed their sacerdotal rank only to become the high-priests of atheistic orgies. It is needless to cite, in comparison, the conduct of parallel classes during the Great Rebellion in England; while, at the very moment in which these things were transacting, the brightest genius in her Imperial Parliament could proclaim himself not only a believer, but a crusader for Christianity. It was a noble answer to the ghost of poor Bossuet, when such a man as Burke, addressing a gentleman of France, declared the adhesion of England to her Reformed religion to be not the result of indifference but of zeal; when he proudly contrasted the intelligent faith of his countrymen with the fanatical impiety of the French; and when, with a dignity to which sarcasm has seldom attained, he reminded a nation of atheists, that there was a people, every whit its peer, which still exulted in the Christian name, and among whom religion, so far from being relegated to provinces, and the firesides of peasants, still sat in the first rank of the legislature, and "reared its mitred front" in the very face of the throne. The withering rebuke of such a boast must be measured by the standard of the time when it was given. In Paris, the mitre had just been made the ornament of an ass, which bore in mockery, upon its back, the vessels of the holy sacrament, and dragged a Bible at its tail.

Thus the colossal genius of Burke stood before the world, in that war of elements, trampling the irreligion of France beneath his feet, like the Archangel thrusting Satan to his bottomless abyss. The spectacle was not lost. It was that beautiful and sublime exhibition of moral grandeur that quickened the noblest minds in Europe to imitative virtue, and produced the school of the Reaction. It was rather the spirit of British faith, and law, and loyalty, personified in him. The same spirit had been felt in France before: it had moulded the genius of Montesquieu, abstractly; but Burke was its mighty concrete, and he wrote himself like a photograph upon kindred intellect throughout the world. Before his day, the character of English liberty had been laboriously studied and mechanically learned; but he, as its living representative and embodiment, made himself the procreant author of an intellectual family. I fear you will regard this as a theory of my own, but I would not have ventured to say this on my mere surmise. One whose religion identifies him with Ultramontanism has made the acknowledgment before me. I refer to the English editor and translator of Schlegel's Philosophy of History. According to him, Schlegel at Vienna, and Goerres at Munich, were "the supreme oracles of that illustrious school of liberal conservatives, which numbered, besides those eminent Germans, a Baron von Haller in Switzerland, a Viscount de Bonald in France, a Count Henri de Merode in Belgium, and a Count de Maistre in Piedmont."[4] From the writings of these great men, in a greater or less degree, he augurs the future political regeneration of Europe; and yet, strongly [537]warped as he is away from England, and towards Rome, as the source of all moral and national good, he does not conceal the fact that this splendid school of the Reaction was "founded by our great Burke." My hopes from the writings of these men are not so sanguine: but, so far as they are true to their original, they have been already of great service. They may hereafter be made still more powerful for good; and if, at the same time, the rising school of Conservatism, which begins to make itself felt in America, shall impart its wholesome influences to an off-shoot of England, so vast already, and of such grand importance to the future, then, and not till then, will be duly estimated the real greatness of those splendid services which Burke was created to perform, not for his country only, but for the human race.

Perhaps it could hardly have been otherwise; but it must always be deplored that the Conservatism of England was reproduced on the Continent in connexion with the Christianity of Ultramontanism. The conservatism of de Stael and of Chateaubriand, though repudiated by the réactionnaires, is indeed worthy of honourable mention, as their characters will ever be of all admiration; yet it must be owned to be deficient in force, and by no means executive. It was the Conservatism of impulse—the Conservatism of genius, but not the Conservatism of profound philosophy and energetic benevolence. The spirit that breathes in the Génie du Christianisme is always beautiful, and often devout, yet it has been justly censured, as recommending less the truth than the beauty of the religion of Jesus Christ; and though it doubtless did something to reproduce the religious sentiment, it seems to have effected nothing in behalf of religious principle. Its author would have fulfilled a nobler mission had he taught his countrymen, in sober prose, their radical defects in morality, and their absolute lack of a conscience. The Conservatives of the Reaction have at least attempted greater things. They have bluntly told the French nation that they must reform; they have set themselves to produce again the believing spirit: their mistake has been, that they have confounded faith with superstition, and taken the cause of the Jesuits into the cause of their country and their God. Nothing could have been more fatal. It arms against them such characters as Michelet,[5] with his Priests, Women, and Families, and makes even Quinet formidable with his lectures on "the Jesuits and Ultramontanism." Yet it must be urged in their behalf, that they have been pardonably foolish, for they drew their error with their mother's milk; and when even faith was ridiculed as credulity, it was an extravagance almost virtuous to rush into superstition. Such is the dilemma of a good man in Continental Europe: his choice lies between the extremes of corrupt faith and philosophic unbelief. This was the misfortune of poor Frederick Schlegel; and, disgusted with the hollow rationalism of Germany, he became a Papist, in order to profess himself a Christian. The mistake was magnanimously made. We cannot but admire the man who eats the book of Roman infallibility, in his hunger for the bread of everlasting life. Even Chateaubriand must claim our sympathies on this ground. Our feelings are with such errorists—our convictions of truth remain unaltered; and we cannot but lament the fatality which has thus attended European Conservatism like its shadow, and exposed it to successful assaults from its foes. I have shown how they use their opportunity. And no wonder, when this substitution of Ultramontanism for Christianity has involved de Maistre in an elaborate defence of the Inquisition—debased the Conservatism of de Bonald to slavish absolutism;[6] and when true to its deadening [538]influence upon the conscience, it implicated von Haller in the infamous perjury which, though committed under the sanction of a Romish bishop, led to his ignominious expulsion from the sovereign council at Berne. Chateaubriand has not escaped an infection from the same atmosphere. It taints his writings. In such a work as the Génie du Christianisme, denounced as it is by the Ultramontanists generally, there is much that is not wholesome. The eloquent champion of faith wields the glaive as stoutly for fables as for eternal verities. The poet makes beauty drag decay in her train, and ties a dead corpse to the wings of immortality. Truth itself, in his apology, though brought out in grand relief, is sculptured on a sepulchre full of dead men's bones; and, unhappily, while we draw near to examine the perfection of his ideal, we find ourselves repelled by a lurking scent of putrefaction.

The career of de Maistre is, in epitome, that of his school. Disgusted with Jacobinism, and naturally delighting in paradox, it seemed to afford him relief to avow himself a papist, in an age of atheism. He was not only the author of the reactionary movement, but his character was itself the product of Reaction. Driven with his king to Sardinia, in 1792, by the invasion of Piedmont, his philosophical contempt for the revolutionists was exhibited in his Considerations sur la France, from which, in a former letter, I have made so long a quotation. In this work—in some respects his best—his Ultramontanism is far from extravagant: and not only his religious principles as they were then, but also the effect which everything English was then producing on his mind, is clearly seen in a comment upon the English Church, which, as it passed his review, and was printed again in 1817 with no retractation, must be regarded as somewhat extraordinary. "If ever Christians reunite," says he, "as all things make it their interest to do, it would seem that the movement must take rise in the Church of England. Calvinism was French work, and consequently an exaggerated production. We are pushed too far away by the sectarians of so unsubstantial a religion, and there is no mean by which they may comprehend us: but the Church of England, which touches us with one hand, touches with the other a class whom we cannot reach; and although, in a certain point of view, she may thus appear the butt of two parties, (as being herself rebellious, though preaching authority,) yet in other respects she is most precious, and may be considered as one of those chemical intermèdes, which are capable of producing a union between elements dissociable in themselves." He seldom shows such moderation; for the Greek and Anglican churches he specially hates. In 1804 he was sent ambassador to St Petersburg; and there he resided till 1817, fulfilling his diplomatic duties with that zeal for his master, and that devotion to conservative interests, which are the spirit of his writings. There he published, in 1814, the pithy Essai sur le principe générateur des Constitutions, in which he reduced to an abstract form the doctrines of his former treatise on France. His style is peculiarly relishable, sometimes even sportive; but its main maxims are laid down with a dictatorial dignity and sternness, which associate the tractate, in the minds of many, with the writings of Montesquieu. This essay, so little known in England, has found an able translator and editor in America, who commends it to his countrymen as an antidote to those interpretations which are put upon our constitutional law by the political disciples of Rousseau. I commend the simple fact to your consideration, as a sign of the more earnest tone of thinking, on such matters, which is beginning to be felt among us. The fault of the essay is its practical part, or those applications into which his growing Ultramontanism diverted his sound theories. His principles are often capable of being turned upon himself, as I have noticed in the matter of creeds. His genius also found a congenial amusement in translating Plutarch's Delays of Divine Justice, which he accompanied with learned notes, illustrating the influence of Christianity upon a heathen mind. On his return from St Petersburg in 1817, appeared his[539] violent Ultramontane work, Du Pape, in which he most ingeniously, but very sophistically, uses in support of the papacy an elaborate argument, drawn from the good which an overruling Providence has accomplished, by the very usurpations and tyrannies of the Roman See. As if this were not enough, however, he closes his life and labours with another work, the Soirées de St Petersbourg, in which, with bewitching eloquence, he expends all his powers of varied learning, and pointed sarcasm, and splendid sophistry, upon questions which have but the one point of turning everything to the account of his grand theory of church and state. Thus, from first to last, he identifies his political and moral philosophy with religious dogmas essentially ruinous to liberty, and which, during three centuries, have wasted every kingdom in which they have gained ascendency. To the direct purpose of uprooting the little that remained of Gallicanism, he devoted a treatise, which accompanies his work Du Pape, and of which the first book is entitled, De l'Esprit d'opposition nourri en France contre le Saint-Siège. Its points may be stated in a simple sentence from the works of his coadjutor, Frederick Schlegel, who, in a few words, gives the theory which has been the great mistake of the Reaction. "The disguised half-schism of the Gallican church," says he,—"not less fatal in its historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks—has contributed very materially towards the decline of religion in France, down to the period of the Restoration."[7] He illustrates it by the disputes of Louis XIV. with the court of Rome, but forgets to say anything of his extermination of the Huguenots. In one sense, however, he is right. It was precisely the half-schism to which the mischief is attributable. This half-way work it was that enabled Louis XIV. to assert the Gallican theory against a semi-Protestant pope, for the very purpose of fostering genuine Ultramontanism and favouring the Jesuits; while under another pontiff he could repudiate Gallicanism, and force the clergy to retract what he had forced them to adopt! The schism of England was doubtless "an open schism," in the opinion of Schlegel, and if so, it should have been followed, on his theory, by worse effects; but Schlegel lives too long after the days of Bossuet to bring her example into view. The natural appeal would have been to that example, as its history is cotemporary; but he adroitly diverts attention from so instructive a parallel, and cunningly drags in "the open schism of the Greeks!" Thus, against a bristling front of facts, he drives his theory that France has not been Romish enough, and lends all his energies to render her less Gallican and more Tridentine. Were he now alive, he might see reason to amend his doctrine in the condition of Rome itself! But the condition of France is quite as conclusive. Since the Restoration, the French Church has been growing more and more Ultramontane, and the people are worse and worse. Gallicanism is extinct, but results are all against the Reactionary theory. France has no more a la Vendée; there will be no more Chouans; the present Church is incapable of reviving such things. It makes the infidels. I know there is less show of rampant atheism just now than formerly; but if there is less of paroxysm, there is less of life. France dies of a chronic atheism. The Abbé Bonnetat, writing in 1845 on The Religious and Moral Wants of the French Population, expresses nothing but contempt for the alleged improvement in religious feeling. According to him, almost a tenth of the male population, in any given district, not only do not believe in God, but glory in their unbelief. Half of all the rest make no secret of their infidelity as to the immortality of the soul; and their wives are equally sceptical, to the curse of their children's children! "The residue believe," says the Abbé, "only in the sense of not denying. They affirm nothing, but, as compared with the others, they lack the science of misbelief." To go on with his melancholy picture, the divine and salutary [540]institution of the Lord's day no longer effects its purpose. In towns, the working classes and tradespeople scarcely ever enter the churches. In the rural districts, a tenth of the people never go to church at all; and of the rest, one half may hear a mass on the five great festivals, while the other half, though more frequent in attendance, are very irregular. One Sunday they perform the duty perfunctorily; the next they work in the fields; the next they stay at home, amuse themselves, and forget religion as part of "dull care." The young folk, in many places, receive their first and last communion at twelve or fourteen, and that is the end of their conformity. A worse feature yet in the domestic manners, resulting from this state of religion, is the fact that girls and boys are brought up very much in the same way, and are thrown promiscuously together, spending their evenings where they choose. Parents have ceased to ask their children—Why were you not at church? Were you at vespers? Were you at mass? and in fact are the first to corrupt their offspring, by their brutal irreligion, and coarse language, and shameless behaviour.[8]

Such is the moral picture of France. The Abbé has brightened his mass of shadow with here and there a reflection of light, but there is no mistaking his work for a Claude Lorraine. France is in a moral eclipse, and her portrait presents, of necessity, the chiaro 'scuro of a Rembrandt. One needs no more than these confessions of a French ecclesiastic to account for her false and fickle notions of liberty, and for her interminable émeutes and revolutions. Yet if Quinet has not wholly invented his assertions, the Conservatism of France is pledged to prescribe as remedies the same old poison from which the disease results. It would take the Christianity of the nation, at its last gasp, and dose it anew with Ultramontanism. They have adopted the sound principle, that Christianity moulds a people to enlightened notions of liberty, but they seem not to know that it does this by acting directly upon the conscience; and hence their political system is spoiled by their fatal substitution, for pure Christianity, of that spurious religion whose great defect is precisely this, that it does not undertake to cleanse and cure the conscience, but only to subject it, mechanically, to irrational authority. Montesquieu, in asserting the importance of Christianity, without question failed to detect this essential defect in Popery, but he instinctively taught his countrymen, by memorable example, to eschew Ultramontanism. In the closing scene of a life which, with all its blemishes, was a great life, and, in comparison with his times, a good one, he accepted with reverence the ministrations of his parish priest, but repulsed from his deathbed, with aversion and disgust, the officious and intrusive Jesuits.[9] De Maistre is more devout than Montesquieu, but he is less jealous of liberty, and his ideas of "what a people ought to will" are limited, if not illiberal. His more moderate ally, Ballanche, has not unjustly characterised him as "not, like Providence, merciful, but, like destiny, inexorable." It is impossible that a Conservatism, of which such is the sovereign genius, should achieve anything for the restoration of such a country as France. I have, indeed, predicted the restoration of the Bourbons, according to de Maistre's principles, by the sheer tenacity of life which belongs to a hereditary claim, and by which it outlasts all other pretensions. But I cannot think that either he or his disciples have done much to bring it about; and still less do I imagine that their system, as a system, can give permanence to the monarchy or prosperity to the state. On the contrary, let Mons. Berryer, or the Comte de Montalembert, attempt the settlement of the kingdom on the theory of the réactionnaires, and they will speedily bring it to that full stop which Heaven at last adjudges to princes as well as to people, "who show themselves untutored by [541]calamity, and rebels to experience." They will, at best, prolong the era of revolutions to some indefinite epoch of futurity, and consign the nation to a fever, which will return periodically, like a tertian, and wear it out by shakings.

It will be well, then, if the imperial farce that must precede "the legitimate drama" shall prove somewhat protracted. The Legitimists, meantime, may become convinced of the blunder of the Reaction, and resolve upon a wiser and more sound conservatism. De Maistre hazards some predictions in his works, on which he stakes the soundness of his theories, and for which he challenges derision and contempt to his doctrines, if they fail. The position of Pio Nono, from the very outset of his career, has stultified those theories already; and if he remains permanently where he now is, it will be to good-breeding alone that de Maistre will owe his preservation from the contempt he has invoked, by staking his reputation on the conservative character of that very court of Rome, from which the democratic wildfire, that has inflamed all Europe, has proceeded! In any conceivable settlement of the Roman States, the Pontiff will hardly be to Europe what he has been during the former years of this century; and if he is to sink to a mere patriarchal primate, the grand dream of ultramontanism is dissipated.[10] It is to be hoped, then, that the restoration may be deferred till the Legitimists have been effectually taught the grand fallacy of ultramontane conservatism; and that Henry V. will ascend the throne, cured of the hereditary plague of his immediate ancestors, and willing to revert, for his example, to his great name-sake, Henri Quatre. He will need another Sully to restore France to a sound mind. His cause demands a minister who will not trust it to the tide of impulse on which it will come in, but who will labour with prudence and with foresight, to gain an anchorage before the ebb. Give but a minister to the restoration capable of that kind of patient and practical forecast, which sent Peter to the dock-yards; and let him begin with the parochial schools, to mould a new race of Frenchmen under the influences of true religion; and let him have the seventeen years which Louis Philippe wasted on steam-ships and bastions, and Montpensier marriages; and then, if it be "men that constitute a state," there is yet a future of hope for France. And forgive me for adding, Basil, that if England shall reverse this policy, and make the national schools the sources of disaffection to the national religion—then may she expect to see her Oxford and Cambridge degraded to such seats of sedition as "the College of France," and their ingenuous youth converted from gownsmen into blousemen, under such savans as Quinet. Remember, too, in connexion with what I have written, that Ireland is the most ultramontane of all nations under heaven, and you will be able to estimate the value of government measures for its relief! May God open the eyes of all who seek the prosperity of the British empire to the primary importance of a wholesome national religion, retaining its hold on the national heart, and moulding the national conscience to the grand political wisdom of the proverb—"My son, fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." Yours,

MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR."

The readers of Blackwood can hardly have forgotten a charming French tale, of which an abridged translation appeared, under the title of "An Unpublished French Novel," in the number of the Magazine for December 1847. In the brief notice prefixed to it, we mentioned the existence of a companion story by the same authoress, which had obtained wider circulation than its fellow, through arbitrary transfer to the pages of a French periodical; and which, on that account, although of more convenient length than the Histoire Hollandaise, we abstained from reproducing. Having thus drawn attention to one of the most pleasing tales we in any language are acquainted with, we fully expected speedily to meet with it in an English version. Not having done so, our vivid recollection of the great merits of "Le Médecin du Village" now induces us to revoke our first decision—the more readily that we have repeatedly been solicited to give the English public an opportunity of appreciating a tale unprocurable in the form in which it was originally printed, and which few persons in this country are likely to have read in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The exquisite delineation of the erring, but meekly penitent Annunciata, and of the long-suffering and enthusiastically pious Christine, may well inspire a wish to become acquainted with other productions of the same delicate and graceful pen. The simple story of the Village Doctor will not disappoint expectation. We ourselves, deeply sensible of the fascinations of the Countess d'Arbouville's style, consider it her happiest effort; and although we once hinted a doubt of the probability of its crowning incident, we forget to play the critic when under the influence of her touching pathos and delightful diction. In our present capacity of translators we feel but too strongly the impossibility of rendering the artless elegance of her style, which flows on, smooth, fresh, and sparkling, like a summer streamlet over golden sands. And, with all her apparent simplicity, Madame d'Arbouville is a cunning artist, playing with skilful hand upon the chords of the heart, which vibrate at her lightest touch. The effects she produces are the more striking because seemingly unsought. But her merits will be better exhibited by this second specimen of her writings than by any praise we could lavish; and we therefore proceed, without further preamble, to the narrative of Eva Meredith's sorrows, as given by her humble friend,

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.

"What is that?" exclaimed several persons assembled in the dining-room of the château of Burcy.

The Countess of Moncar had just inherited, from a distant and slightly regretted relation, an ancient château which she had never seen, although it was at barely fifteen leagues from her habitual summer residence. One of the most elegant, and almost one of the prettiest women in Paris, Madame de Moncar was but moderately attached to the country. Quitting the capital at the end of June, to return thither early in October, she usually took with her some of the companions of her winter gaieties, and a few young men, selected amongst her most assiduous partners. Madame de Moncar was married to a man much older than herself, who did not always protect her by his presence. Without abusing the great liberty she enjoyed, she was gracefully coquettish, elegantly frivolous, pleased with trifles—with a compliment, an amiable word, an hour's triumph—loving a ball for the pleasure of adorning herself, fond of admiration, and not sorry to inspire love. When some grave old aunt ventured a sage remonstrance—"Mon Dieu!" she replied; "do let me laugh and take life gaily. It is far less dangerous than to listen in solitude to the beating of one's heart. For my part, I do not know if I even have a heart!" She spoke the truth, and really was uncertain upon that point. Desirous to remain so, she[543] thought it prudent to leave herself no time for reflection.

One fine morning in September, the countess and her guests set out for the unknown château, intending to pass the day there. A cross road, reputed practicable, was to reduce the journey to twelve leagues. The cross road proved execrable: the travellers lost their way in the forest; a carriage broke down; in short, it was not till mid-day that the party, much fatigued, and but moderately gratified by the picturesque beauties of the scenery, reached the château of Burcy, whose aspect was scarcely such as to console them for the annoyances of the journey. It was a large sombre building with dingy walls. In its front a garden, then out of cultivation, descended from terrace to terrace; for the château, built upon the slope of a wooded hill, had no level ground in its vicinity. On all sides it was hemmed in by mountains, the trees upon which sprang up amidst rocks, and had a dark and gloomy foliage that saddened the eyesight. Man's neglect added to the natural wild disorder of the scene. Madame de Moncar stood motionless and disconcerted upon the threshold of her newly-acquired mansion.

"This is very unlike a party of pleasure," said she; "I could weep at sight of this dismal abode. Nevertheless here are noble trees, lofty rocks, a roaring cataract; doubtless, there is a certain beauty in all that; but it is of too grave an order for my humour," added she with a smile. "Let us go in and view the interior."

The hungry guests, eager to see if the cook, who had been sent forward upon the previous day, as an advanced guard, had safely arrived, willingly assented. Having obtained the agreeable certainty that an abundant breakfast would soon be upon the table, they rambled through the château. The old-fashioned furniture with tattered coverings, the arm-chairs with three legs, the tottering tables, the discordant sounds of a piano, which for a good score of years had not felt a finger, afforded abundant food for jest and merriment. Gaiety returned. Instead of grumbling at the inconveniences of this uncomfortable mansion, it was agreed to laugh at everything. Moreover, for these young and idle persons, the expedition was a sort of event, an almost perilous campaign, whose originality appealed to the imagination. A faggot was lighted beneath the wide chimney of the drawing-room; but clouds of smoke were the result, and the company took refuge in the pleasure grounds. The aspect of the gardens was strange enough; the stone-benches were covered with moss, the walls of the terraces, crumbling in many places, left space between their ill-joined stones for the growth of numerous wild plants, which sprung out erect and lofty, or trailed with flexible grace towards the earth. The walks were overgrown and obliterated by grass; the parterres, reserved for garden flowers, were invaded by wild ones, which grow wherever the heavens afford a drop of water and a ray of sun; the insipid bearbine enveloped and stifled in its envious embrace the beauteous rose of Provence; the blackberry mingled its acrid fruits with the red clusters of the currant-bush; ferns, wild mint with its faint perfume, thistles with their thorny crowns, grew beside a few forgotten lilies. When the company entered the enclosure, numbers of the smaller animals, alarmed at the unaccustomed intrusion, darted into the long grass, and the startled birds flew chirping from branch to branch. Silence, for many years the undisturbed tenant of this peaceful spot, fled at the sound of human voices and of joyous laughter. The solitude was appreciated by none—none grew pensive under its influence; it was recklessly broken and profaned. The conversation ran upon the gay evenings of the past season, and was interspersed with amiable allusions, expressive looks, covert compliments, with all the thousand nothings, in short, resorted to by persons desirous to please each other, but who have not yet acquired the right to be serious.

The steward, after long search for a breakfast-bell along the dilapidated walls of the château, at last made up his mind to shout from the steps that the meal was ready—the half-smile with which he accompanied the announcement, proving that, like his[544] betters, he resigned himself for one day to a deviation from his habits of etiquette and propriety. Soon a merry party surrounded the board. The gloom of the château, its desert site and uncheery aspect, were all forgotten; the conversation was general and well sustained; the health of the lady of the castle—the fairy whose presence converted the crazy old edifice into an enchanted palace, was drunk by all present. Suddenly all eyes were turned to the windows of the dining-room.

A small carriage of green wicker-work, with great wheels as high as the body of the vehicle, passed before the windows, and stopped at the door. It was drawn by a gray horse, short and punchy, whose eyes seemed in danger from the shafts, which, from their point of junction with the carriage, sloped obliquely upwards. The hood of the little cabriolet was brought forward, concealing its contents, with the exception of two arms covered with the sleeves of a blue blouse, and of a whip which fluttered about the ears of the gray horse.

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Madame de Moncar, "I forgot to tell you I was obliged to invite the village doctor to our breakfast. The old man was formerly of some service to my uncle's family, and I have seen him once or twice. Be not alarmed at the addition to our party: he is very taciturn. After a few civil words, we may forget his presence; besides, I do not suppose he will remain very long."

At this moment the dining-room door opened, and Dr Barnaby entered. He was a little old man, feeble and insignificant-looking, of calm and gentle countenance. His gray hairs were collected into a cue, according to a bygone fashion; a dash of powder whitened his temples, and extended to his furrowed brow. He wore a black coat, and steel buckles to his breeches. Over one arm hung a riding-coat of puce-coloured taffety. In the opposite hand he carried his hat and a thick cane. His whole appearance proved that he had taken unusual pains with his toilet; but his black stockings and coat were stained with mud, as if the poor old man had fallen into a ditch. He paused at the door, astonished at the presence of so many persons. For an instant, a tinge of embarrassment appeared upon his face; but recovering himself, he silently saluted the company. The strange manner of his entrance gave the guests a violent inclination to laugh, which they repressed more or less successfully. Madame de Moncar alone, in her character of mistress of the house, and incapable of failing in politeness, perfectly preserved her gravity.

Before replying, Dr Barnaby glanced at all these young people in the midst of whom he found himself, and, simple and artless though his physiognomy was, he could not but guess the cause of their hilarity. He replied quietly:

"I have not been overturned. A poor carter fell under the wheels of his vehicle; I was passing, and I helped him up." And the doctor took possession of a chair left vacant for him at the table. Unfolding his napkin, he passed a corner through the buttonhole of his coat, and spread out the rest over his waistcoat and knees. At these preparations, smiles hovered upon the lips of many of the guests, and a whisper or two broke the silence; but this time the doctor did not raise his eyes. Perhaps he observed nothing.

"Is there much sickness in the village?" inquired Madame de Moncar, whilst they were helping the new comer.

The doctor raised his little gray eyes to the speaker's face, looked at him, hesitated, and seemed either to check or to seek a reply. Madame de Moncar kindly came to his relief.

"I know," she said, "that you are[545] here the guardian genius of all who suffer."

"Oh, you are too good," replied the old man, apparently much engrossed with the slice of pasty upon his plate. Then the gay party left Dr Barnaby to himself, and the conversation flowed in its previous channel. If any notice was taken of the peaceable old man, it was in the form of some slight sarcasm, which, mingled with other discourse, would pass, it was thought, unperceived by its object. Not that these young men and women were generally otherwise than polite and kind-hearted; but upon that day the journey, the breakfast, the merriment and slight excitement that had attended all the events of the morning, had brought on a sort of heedless gaiety and communicative mockery, which rendered them pitiless to the victim whom chance had thrown in their way. The doctor continued quietly to eat, without looking up, or uttering a word, or seeming to hear one; they voted him deaf and dumb, and he was no restraint upon the conversation.

When the guests rose from table, Dr Barnaby took a step or two backwards, and allowed each man to select the lady he wished to take into the drawing-room. One of Madame de Moncar's friends remaining without a cavalier, the village doctor timidly advanced, and offered her his hand—not his arm. His fingers scarcely touched hers as he proceeded, his body slightly bent in sign of respect, with measured steps towards the drawing-room. Fresh smiles greeted his entrance, but not a cloud appeared upon the placid countenance of the old man, who was now voted blind, as well as deaf and dumb. Quitting his companion, Dr Barnaby selected the smallest, humblest-looking chair in the room, placed it in a corner, at some distance from everybody else, put his stick between his knees, crossed his hands upon the knob, and rested his chin upon his hands. In this meditative attitude he remained silent, and from time to time his eyes closed, as if a gentle slumber, which he neither invoked nor repelled, were stealing over him.

"Madame de Moncar!" cried one of the guests, "I presume it is not your intention to inhabit this ruin in a desert?"

"Certainly I have no such project. But here are lofty trees and wild woods. M. de Moncar may very likely be tempted to pass a few weeks here in the shooting season."

"Let us make a plan!" cried the young countess. "Let us mark out the future garden of my domains."

It was decreed that this party of pleasure should be unsuccessful. At that moment a heavy cloud burst, and a close fine rain began to fall. Impossible to leave the house.

"How very vexatious!" cried Madame de Moncar. "What shall we do with ourselves? The horses require several hours' rest. It will evidently be a wet afternoon. For a week to come, the grass, which overgrows everything, will not be dry enough to walk upon; all the strings of the piano are broken; there is not a book within ten leagues. This room is wretchedly dismal. What can we do with ourselves?"

The party, lately so joyous, was gradually losing its gaiety. The blithe laugh and arch whisper were succeeded by dull silence. The guests sauntered to the windows and examined the sky, but the sky remained dark and cloud-laden. Their hopes of a walk were completely blighted. They established themselves as comfortably as they could upon the old chairs and settees, and tried to revive the conversation; but there are thoughts which, like flowers, require a little sun, and which will not flourish under a bleak sky. All these young heads appeared to droop, oppressed by the storm, like the poplars in the garden, which bowed their tops at the will of the wind. A tedious hour dragged by.

The lady of the castle, a little disheartened by the failure of her party of pleasure, leaned languidly upon a window-sill, and gazed vaguely at the prospect without.

"There," said she—"yonder, upon the hill, is a white cottage that must come down: it hides the view."

"The white cottage!" cried the doctor. For upwards of an hour Dr Barnaby had been mute and motionless[546] upon his chair. Mirth and weariness, sun and rain, had succeeded each other without eliciting a syllable from his lips. His presence was forgotten by everybody: every eye turned quickly upon him when he uttered these three words—"The white cottage!"

"Mon Dieu, madame! Pray forget that I spoke. The cottage will come down, undoubtedly, since such is your good pleasure."

"They are long since dead, madam; they died when I was young!" And the old man gazed mournfully at the white cottage, which rose amongst the trees upon the hill-side, like a daisy in a green field. There was a brief silence.

"Madam," said one of the guests in a low voice to Madame de Moncar, "there is mystery here. Observe the melancholy of our Esculapius. Some pathetic drama has been enacted in yonder house; a tale of love, perhaps. Ask the doctor to tell it us."

"Yes, yes!" was murmured on all sides, "a tale, a story! And should it prove of little interest, at any rate the narrator will divert us."

"Not so, gentlemen," replied Madame de Moncar, in the same suppressed voice. "If I ask Dr Barnaby to tell us the history of the white cottage, it is on the express condition that no one laughs." All having promised to be serious and well-behaved, Madame de Moncar approached the old man. "Doctor," said she, seating herself beside him, "that house, I plainly see, is connected with some reminiscence of former days, stored preciously in your memory. Will you tell it us? I should be grieved to cause you a regret which it is in my power to spare you; the house shall remain, if you tell me why you love it."

Dr Barnaby seemed surprised, and remained silent. The countess drew still nearer to him. "Dear doctor!" said she, "see what wretched weather; how dreary everything looks. You are the senior of us all; tell us a tale. Make us forget rain, and fog, and cold."

"There is no tale," he said. "What occurred in the cottage is very simple, and has no interest but for me, who loved the young people: strangers would not call it a tale. And I am unaccustomed to speak before many listeners. Besides, what I should tell you is sad, and you came to amuse yourselves." And again the doctor rested his chin upon his stick.

"Dear doctor," resumed the countess, "the white cottage shall stand, if you say why you love it."

The old man appeared somewhat moved; he crossed and uncrossed his legs; took out his snuff-box, returned it to his pocket without opening it; then, looking at the countess—"You will not pull it down?" he said, indicating with his thin and tremulous hand the habitation visible at the horizon.

"Well, so be it; I will do that much for them; I will save the house in which they were happy.

"Ladies," continued the old man, "I am but a poor speaker; but I believe that even the least eloquent succeed in making themselves understood when they tell what they have seen. This story, I warn you beforehand, is not gay. To dance and to sing, people send for a musician; they call in the physician when they suffer, and are near to death."

A circle was formed round Dr Barnaby, who, his hands still crossed upon his cane, quietly commenced the following narrative, to an audience prepared beforehand to smile at his discourse.

"It was a long time ago, when I was young—for I, too, have been young! Youth is a fortune that belongs to all the world—to the poor as well as to the rich—but which abides with none. I had just passed my examination; I had taken my physician's degree, and I returned to my village to exercise my wonderful talents, well convinced that, thanks to me, men would now cease to die.

My village is not far from here. From the little window of my room, I beheld yonder white house upon[547] the opposite side to that you now discern. You certainly would not find my village handsome. In my eyes, it was superb; I was born there, and I loved it. We all see with our own eyes the things we love. God suffers us to be sometimes a little blind; for He well knows that in this lower world a clear sight is not always profitable. To me, then, this neighbourhood appeared smiling and pleasant, and I lived happily. The white cottage alone, each morning when I opened my shutters, impressed me disagreeably: it was always closed, still and sad like a forsaken thing. Never had I seen its windows open and shut, or its door ajar; never had I known its inhospitable garden-gate give passage to human being. Your uncle, madam, who had no occasion for a cottage so near his château, sought to let it; but the rent was rather higher than anybody here was rich enough to give. It remained empty, therefore, whilst in the hamlet every window exhibited two or three children's faces peering through the branches of gilliflower at the first noise in the street. But one morning, on getting up, I was quite astonished to see a long ladder resting against the cottage wall; a painter was painting the window-shutters green, whilst a maid-servant polished the panes, and a gardener hoed the flower-beds.

"All the better," said I to myself; "a good roof like that, which covers no one, is so much lost."

From day to day the house improved in appearance. Pots of flowers veiled the nudity of the walls; the parterres were planted, the walks weeded and gravelled, and muslin curtains, white as snow, shone in the sun-rays. One day a post-chaise rattled through the village, and drove up to the little house. Who were the strangers? None knew, and all desired to learn. For a long time nothing transpired without of what passed within the dwelling. The rose-trees bloomed, and the fresh-laid lawn grew verdant; still nothing was known. Many were the commentaries upon the mystery. They were adventurers concealing themselves—they were a young man and his mistress—in short, everything was guessed except the truth. The truth is so simple, that one does not always think of it; once the mind is in movement, it seeks to the right and to the left, and often forgets to look straight before it. The mystery gave me little concern. No matter who is there, thought I; they are human, therefore they will not be long without suffering, and then they will send for me. I waited patiently.

At last one morning a messenger came from Mr William Meredith, to request me to call upon him. I put on my best coat, and, endeavouring to assume a gravity suitable to my profession, I traversed the village, not without some little pride at my importance. That day many envied me. The villagers stood at their doors to see me pass. "He is going to the white cottage!" they said; whilst I, avoiding all appearance of haste and vulgar curiosity, walked deliberately, nodding to my peasant neighbours. "Good-day, my friends," I said; "I will see you by-and-by; this morning I am busy." And thus I reached the hill-side.

On entering the sitting-room of the mysterious house, the scene I beheld rejoiced my eyesight. Everything was so simple and elegant. Flowers, the chief ornament of the apartment, were so tastefully arranged, that gold would not better have embellished the modest interior. White muslin was at the windows, white calico on the chairs—that was all; but there were roses and jessamine, and flowers of all kinds, as in a garden. The light was softened by the curtains, the atmosphere was fragrant; and a young girl or woman, fair and fresh as all that surrounded her, reclined upon a sofa, and welcomed me with a smile. A handsome young man, seated near her upon an ottoman, rose when the servant announced Dr Barnaby.

"Sir," said he, with a strong foreign accent, "I have heard so much of your skill that I expected to see an old man."

"I have studied diligently, sir," I replied. "I am deeply impressed with the importance and responsibility of my calling: you may confide in me."

"'Tis well," he said. "I recommend my wife to your best care. Her present state demands advice and precaution. She was born in a distant[548] land: for my sake she has quitted family and friends. I can bring but my affection to her aid, for I am without experience. I reckon upon you, sir. If possible, preserve her from all suffering."

As he spoke, the young man fixed upon his wife a look so full of love, that the large blue eyes of the beautiful foreigner glistened with tears of gratitude. She dropped the tiny cap she was embroidering, and her two hands clasped the hand of her husband. I looked at them, and I ought to have found their lot enviable, but, somehow or other, the contrary was the case. I felt sad; I could not tell why. I had often seen persons weep, of whom I said—They are happy! I saw William Meredith and his wife smile, and I could not help thinking they had much sorrow. I seated myself near my charming patient. Never have I seen anything so lovely as that sweet face, shaded by long ringlets of fair hair.

"I was born in America—at New Orleans. Oh! the sun is far brighter than here."

"But every country is beautiful when one is in one's husband's house, with him, and awaiting his child!"

Her gaze sought that of William Meredith; then, in a tongue I did not understand, she spoke a few words which sounded so soft that they must have been words of love.

After a short visit I took my leave, promising to return. I did return, and, at the end of two months, I was almost the friend of this young couple. Mr and Mrs Meredith were not selfish in their happiness; they found time to think of others. They saw that to the poor village doctor, whose sole society was that of peasants, those days were festivals upon which he passed an hour in hearing the language of cities. They encouraged me to frequent them—talked to me of their travels, and soon, with the prompt confidence characterising youth, they told me their story. It was the girl-wife who spoke:—

"Doctor," she said, "yonder, beyond the seas, I have father, sisters, family, friends, whom I long loved, until the day when I loved William. But then I shut my heart to those who repulsed my lover. William's father forbade him to wed me, because he was too noble for the daughter of an American planter. My father forbade me to love William, because he was too proud to give his daughter to a man whose family refused her a welcome. They tried to separate us; but we loved each other. Long did we weep and supplicate, and implore the pity of those to whom we owed obedience; they remained inflexible, and we loved! Doctor, did you ever love? I would you had, that you might be indulgent to us. We were secretly married, and we fled to France. Oh how beautiful the ocean appeared in those early days of our affection! The sea was hospitable to the fugitives. Wanderers upon the waves, we passed happy days in the shadow of our vessel's sails, anticipating pardon from our friends, and dreaming a bright future. Alas! we were too sanguine. They pursued us; and, upon pretext of some irregularity of form in our clandestine marriage, William's family cruelly thought to separate us. We found concealment in the midst of these mountains and forests. Under a name which is not ours we live unknown. My father has not forgiven—he has cursed me! That is the reason, doctor, why I cannot always smile, even with my dear William by my side."

How those two loved each other! Never have I seen a being more completely wrapped up in another than was Eva Meredith in her husband! Whatever her occupation, she always so placed herself, that, on raising her eyes, she had William before them. She never read but in the book he was reading. Her head against his shoulder, her eyes followed the lines on which William's eyes were fixed; she wished the same thoughts to strike them at the same moment; and, when I crossed the garden to reach their door, I smiled always to see upon the gravel the trace of Eva's little foot close to the mark of William's boot. What a difference between the deserted old house you see yonder, and[549] the pretty dwelling of my young friends! What sweet flowers covered the walls! What bright nosegays decked the tables! How many charming books were there, full of tales of love that resembled their love! How gay the birds that sang around them! How good it was to live there, and to be loved a little by those who loved each other so much! But those are right who say that happy days are not long upon this earth, and that, in respect of happiness, God gives but a little at a time.

One morning Eva Meredith appeared to suffer. I questioned her with all the interest I felt for her. She answered me abruptly.

"Do not feel my pulse, doctor," she said; "it is my heart that beats too quick. Think me childish if you will, but I am sad this morning. William is going away. He is going to the town beyond the mountain, to receive money."

She smiled, almost blushed, and then, with a look that seemed to say, Do not laugh at me, she replied, "This evening!"

Notwithstanding her imploring glance, I could not repress a smile. Just then a servant brought Mr Meredith's horse to the door. Eva rose from her seat, went out into the garden, approached the horse, and, whilst stroking his mane, bowed her head upon the animal's neck, perhaps to conceal the tear that fell from her eyes. William came out, threw himself lightly into the saddle, and gently raised his wife's head.

Mr Meredith stooped his head towards that of Eva, and imprinted a second kiss upon her beautiful golden hair; then he touched his horse's flank with the spur, and set off at a gallop. I am convinced that he, too, was a little moved. Nothing is so contagious as the weakness of those we love; tears summon tears, and it is no very laudable courage that keeps our eyes dry by the side of a weeping friend. I turned my steps homeward, and, once more in my cottage, I set myself to meditate on the happiness of loving. I asked myself if an Eva would ever cheer my poor dwelling. I did not think of examining whether I were worthy to be loved. When we behold two beings thus devoted to each other, we easily discern that it is not for good and various reasons that they love so well; they love because it is necessary, inevitable; they love on account of their own hearts, not of those of others. Well, I thought how I might seek and find a heart that had need to love, just as, in my morning walks, I might have thought to meet, by the road-side, some flower of sweet perfume. Thus did I muse, although it is perhaps a wrong feeling which makes us, at sight of others' bliss, deplore the happiness we do not ourselves possess. Is not a little envy there? and if joy could be stolen like gold, should we not then be near a larceny?

The day passed, and I had just completed my frugal supper, when I received a message from Mrs Meredith, begging me to visit her. In five minutes I was at the door of the white cottage. I found Eva, still alone, seated on a sofa, without work or book, pale and trembling. "Come, doctor, come," said she, in her soft voice; "I can remain alone no longer; see how late it is!—he should have been home two hours ago, and has not yet returned!"

I was surprised at Mr Meredith's prolonged absence; but, to comfort his wife, I replied quietly, "How can we tell the time necessary to transact his business? They may have made him wait; the notary was perhaps absent. There were papers to draw up and sign."

"Ah, doctor, I was sure you would find words of consolation! I needed to hear some one tell me that it is foolish to tremble thus! Gracious heaven, how long the day has been! Doctor, are there really persons who live alone? Do they not die immediately, as if robbed of half the atmosphere essential to life? But there is eight o'clock!" Eight o'clock was indeed striking. I could not imagine why William was not back. At all hazards I said to Mrs Meredith, "Madam, the sun is hardly set; it is[550] still daylight, and the evening is beautiful; come and visit your flowers. If we walk down the road, we shall doubtless meet your husband."

She took my arm, and we walked towards the gate of the little garden. I endeavoured to turn her attention to surrounding objects. At first she replied, as a child obeys. But I felt that her thoughts went not with her words. Her anxious gaze was fixed upon the little green gate, which had remained open since William's departure. Leaning upon the paling, she suffered me to talk on, smiling from time to time, by way of thanks; for, as the evening wore away, she lacked courage to answer me. Gray tints succeeded the red sunset, foreshadowing the arrival of night. Gloom gathered around us. The road, hitherto visible like a white line winding through the forest, disappeared in the dark shade of the lofty trees, and the village clock struck nine. Eva started. I myself felt every stroke vibrate upon my heart. I pitied the poor woman's uneasiness.

"Remember, madam," I replied, (she had not spoken, but I answered the anxiety visible in her features,) "remember that Mr Meredith must return at a walk; the roads through the forest are not in a state to admit fast riding." I said this to encourage her; but the truth is, I knew not how to explain William's absence. Knowing the distance, I also knew that I could have gone twice to the town and back since his departure. The evening dew began to penetrate our clothes, and especially Eva's thin muslin dress. Again I drew her arm through mine and led her towards the house. She followed unresistingly; her gentle nature was submissive even in affliction. She walked slowly, her head bowed, her eyes fixed on the tracks left by the gallop of her husband's horse. How melancholy it was, that evening walk, still without William! In vain we listened: there reigned around us the profound stillness of a summer night in the country. How greatly does a feeling of uneasiness increase under such circumstances. We entered the house. Eva seated herself on the sofa, her hands clasped upon her knees, her head sunk upon her bosom. There was a lamp on the chimney-piece, whose light fell full upon her face. I shall never forget its suffering expression. She was pale, very pale—her brow and cheeks exactly the same colour; her hair, relaxed by the night-damp, fell in disorder upon her shoulders. Tears filled her eyes, and the quivering of her colourless lips showed how violent was the effort by which she avoided shedding them. She was so young that her face resembled that of a child forbidden to cry.

I was greatly troubled, and knew not what to say or how to look. Suddenly I remembered (it was a doctor's thought) that Eva, engrossed by her uneasiness, had taken nothing since morning, and her situation rendered it imprudent to prolong this fast. At my first reference to the subject she raised her eyes to mine with a reproachful expression, and the motion of her eyelids caused two tears to flow down her cheeks.

"Ah, you are right!" she murmured, and she passed into the dining-room; but there the little table was laid for two, and at that moment this trifle so saddened me as to deprive me of speech and motion. My increasing uneasiness rendered me quite awkward; I had not the wit to say what I did not think. The silence was prolonged; "and yet," said I to myself, "I am here to console her; she sent for me for that purpose. There must be fifty ways of explaining this delay—let me find one." I sought, and sought—and still I remained silent, inwardly cursing the poverty of invention of a poor village doctor. Eva, her head resting on her hand, forgot to eat. Suddenly she turned to me and burst out sobbing.

"Not so, madam—indeed not so," replied I, speaking at random. "Why should I be uneasy? He has doubtless dined with the notary. The roads are safe, and no one knows that he went for money."

I had inadvertently revealed one of my secret causes of uneasiness. I knew that a band of foreign reapers had that morning passed through the[551] village, on their way to a neighbouring department.

"Oh! the thought struck you, doctor, because you thought the misfortune possible! William, my own William! why did you leave me?" cried she, weeping bitterly.

I was in despair at my blunder, and I felt my eyes fill with tears. My distress gave me an idea.

"Mrs Meredith," I said, "I cannot see you torment yourself thus, and remain by your side unable to console you. I will go and seek your husband; I will follow at random one of the paths through the forest; I will search everywhere and shout his name, and go, if necessary, to the town itself."

"Oh, thanks, thanks, kind friend!" cried Eva Meredith, "take the gardener with you and the servant; search in all directions!"

We hurried back into the drawing-room, and Eva rang quickly and repeatedly. All the inhabitants of the cottage opened at the same time the different doors of the apartment. "Follow Dr Barnaby," cried Mrs Meredith.

At that moment a horse's gallop was distinctly heard upon the gravel of the garden. Eva uttered a cry of happiness that went home to every heart. Never shall I forget the divine expression of joy that illumined her face, still inundated with tears. She and I, we flew to the house-door. The moon, passing from behind a cloud, threw her full light upon a riderless and foam-covered horse, whose bridle dragged upon the ground, and whose dusty flanks were galled by the empty stirrups. A second cry, this time of intensest horror, burst from Eva's breast; then she turned towards me, her eyes fixed, her mouth half open, her arms hanging powerless.

"Get torches, my friends!" cried I, "and follow me! Madam, we shall soon return, I hope, and your husband with us. He has received some slight hurt, a strained ancle, perhaps. Keep up your courage. We will soon be back."

"Impossible!" I cried. "We must go, fast, perhaps far, and in your state—it would be risking your life, and that of your child—"

Then did I feel how cruel was this poor woman's isolation! Had a father, a mother been there, they would have ordered her to stay, they would have retained her by force; but she was alone upon the earth, and to all my hurried entreaties she still replied in a hollow voice: "I go with you!"

We set out. The moon was again darkened by dense clouds; there was light neither in the heavens nor on the earth. The uncertain radiance of our torches barely showed us the path. A servant went in front, lowering his torch to the right and to the left, to illumine the ditches and bushes bordering the road. Behind him Mrs Meredith, the gardener, and myself followed with our eyes the stream of light. From time to time we raised our voices and called Mr Meredith. After us a stifled sob, murmured the name of William, as if a heart had reckoned on the instinct of love to hear its tears better than our shouts. We reached the forest. Rain began to fall, and the drops pattered upon the foliage with a mournful noise, as if everything around us wept. Eva's thin dress was soon soaked with the cold flood. The water streamed from her hair over her face. She bruised her feet against the stones of the road, and repeatedly stumbled and fell upon her knees; but she rose again with the energy of despair, and pushed forwards. It was agonising to behold her. I scarcely dared look at her, lest I should see her fall dead before my eyes. At last—we were moving in silence, fatigued and discouraged—Mrs Meredith pushed us suddenly aside, sprang forward and plunged into the bushes. We followed her, and, upon raising the torches—alas! she was on her knees beside the body of William, who was stretched motionless upon the ground,[552] his eyes glazed and his brow covered with blood which flowed from a wound in the left temple.

I stooped and felt the pulse of William Meredith; I placed my hand on his heart and remained silent. Eva still gazed at me; but, when my silence was prolonged, I saw her bend, waver, and then, without word or cry, fall senseless upon her husband's corpse.

"But, ladies," said Dr Barnaby, turning to his audience, "the sun shines again; you can go out now. Let us leave this sad story where it is."

Madame de Moncar approached the old physician. "Doctor," said she, "I implore you to continue; only look at us, and you will not doubt the interest with which we listen."

There were no more smiles of mockery upon the young faces that surrounded the village doctor. In some of their eyes he might even distinguish the glistening of tears. He resumed his narrative.

"Mrs Meredith was carried home, and remained for several hours senseless upon her bed. I felt it at once a duty and a cruelty to use every effort to recall her to life. I dreaded the agonising scenes that would follow this state of immobility. I remained beside the poor woman, bathing her temples with fresh water, and awaiting with anxiety the sad and yet the happy moment of returning consciousness. I was mistaken in my anticipations, for I had never witnessed great grief. Eva half opened her eyes and immediately closed them again; no tear escaped from beneath their lids. She remained cold, motionless, silent; and, but for the heart which again throbbed beneath my hand, I should have deemed her dead. Sad is it to behold a sorrow which one feels is beyond consolation! Silence, I thought, seemed like a want of pity for this unfortunate creature: on the other hand, verbal condolence was a mockery of so mighty a grief. I had found no words to calm her uneasiness; could I hope to be more eloquent in the hour of her great suffering? I took the safest course, that of profound silence. I will remain here, I thought, and minister to the physical sufferings, as is my duty; but I will be mute and passive, even as a faithful dog would lie down at her feet. My mind once made up, I felt calmer; I let her live a life which resembled death. After a few hours, however, I put a spoonful of a potion to her lips. Eva slowly averted her head. In a few moments I again offered her the drug.

"Drink, madam," I said, gently touching her lips with the spoon. They remained closed.

Eva opened her eyes, raised herself with effort upon her elbow, swallowed the medicine, and fell back upon her pillow.

Thenceforward Mrs Meredith spoke no more, but she mechanically followed all my prescriptions. Stretched upon her bed of suffering, she seemed constantly to sleep; but at whatever moment I said to her, even in my lowest whisper, "Drink this," she instantly obeyed; thus proving to me that the soul kept its weary watch in that motionless body, without a single instant of oblivion and repose.

There were none beside myself to attend to the interment of William. Nothing positive was ever known as to the cause of his death. The sum he was to bring from the town was not found upon him; perhaps he had been robbed and murdered; perhaps the money, which was in notes, had fallen from his pocket when he was thrown from his horse, and, as it was some time before any thought of seeking it, the heavy rain and trampled mud might account for its disappearance. A fruitless investigation was made and soon dropped. I endeavoured to learn from Eva Meredith if her family, or that of her husband, should not be written to. I had difficulty in obtaining an answer. At last she gave me to understand that I had merely to inform their agent, who would do whatever was needful. I[553] hoped that, at least from England, some communication would arrive, decisive of this poor creature's future lot. But no; day followed day, and none seemed to know that the widow of William Meredith lived in utter isolation, in a poor French village. To endeavour to bring back Eva to the sense of her existence, I urged her to leave her bed. Upon the morrow I found her up, dressed in black; but she was the ghost of the beautiful Eva Meredith. Her hair was parted in bands upon her pale forehead, and she sat near a window, motionless as she had lain in bed.

I passed long silent evenings with her, a book in my hand for apparent occupation. Each day, on my arrival, I addressed to her a few words of sympathy. She replied by a thankful look; then we remained silent. I waited an opportunity to open a conversation; but my awkwardness and my respect for her grief prevented my finding one, or suffered it to escape when it occurred. Little by little I grew accustomed to this mute intercourse; and, besides, what could I have said to her? My chief object was to prevent her feeling quite alone in the world; and, obscure as was the prop remaining, it still was something. I went to see her merely that my presence might say, "I am here."

It was a singular epoch in my life, and had a great influence on my future existence. Had I not shown so much regret at the threatened destruction of the white cottage, I would hurry to the conclusion of this narrative. But you have insisted upon knowing why that building is hallowed to me, and I must tell you therefore what I have thought and felt beneath its humble roof. Forgive me, ladies, if my words are grave. It is good for youth to be sometimes a little saddened; it has so much time before it to laugh and to forget.

The son of a rich peasant, I was sent to Paris to complete my studies. During four years passed in that great city, I retained the awkwardness of my manners, the simplicity of my language, but I rapidly lost the ingenuousness of my sentiments. I returned to these mountains, almost learned, but almost incredulous in all those points of faith which enable a man to pass his life contentedly beneath a thatched roof, in the society of his wife and children, without caring to look beyond the cross above the village cemetery.

Whilst contemplating the love of William and of Eva, I had reverted to my former simple peasant-nature. I began to dream of a virtuous, affectionate wife, diligent and frugal, embellishing my house by her care and order. I saw myself proud of the gentle severity of her features, revealing to all the chaste and faithful spouse. Very different were these reveries from those that haunted me at Paris after joyous evenings spent with my comrades. Suddenly, horrible calamity descended like a thunderbolt upon Eva Meredith. This time I was slower to appreciate the lesson I daily received. Eva sat constantly at the window, her sad gaze fixed upon the heavens. The attitude, common in persons of meditative mood, attracted my attention but little. Her persistence in it at last struck me. My book open upon my knees, I looked at Mrs Meredith; and well assured she would not detect my gaze, I examined her attentively. She still gazed at the sky—my eyes followed the direction of hers. "Ah," I said to myself with a half smile, "she thinks to rejoin him there!" Then I resumed my book, thinking how fortunate it was for the weakness of women that such thoughts came to the relief of their sorrows.

I have already told you that my student's life had put evil thoughts into my head. Every day, however, I saw Eva in the same attitude, and every day my reflections were recalled to the same subject. Little by little I came to think her dream a good one, and to regret I could not credit its reality. The soul, heaven, eternal life, all that the old priest had formerly taught me, glided through my imagination as I sat at eventide before the open window. "The doctrine of the old curé," I said to myself, "was more comforting than the cold realities science has revealed to me." Then I looked at Eva, who still looked to heaven, whilst the bells of the village church sounded sweetly in the distance, and the rays of the setting sun made the steeple-cross glitter against[554] the sky. I often returned to sit opposite the poor widow, persevering in her grief as in her holy hopes.

"What!" I thought, "can so much love address itself to a few particles of dust, already mingled with the mould; are all these sighs wasted on empty air? William departed in the freshness of his age, his affections yet vivid, his heart in its early bloom. She loved him but a year, one little year—and is all over for her? Above our heads is there nothing but void? Love—that sentiment so strong within us—is it but a flame placed in the obscure prison of our body, where it shines, burns, and is finally extinguished by the fall of the frail wall surrounding it? Is a little dust all that remains of our loves, and hopes, and passions—of all that moves, agitates, and exalts us?"

There was deep silence in the recesses of my soul. I had ceased to think. I was as if slumbering between what I no longer denied, and what I did not yet believe. At last, one night, when Eva joined her hands to pray, beneath the most beautiful starlit sky possible to behold, I know not how it was, but I found my hands also clasped, and my lips opened to murmur a prayer. Then, by a happy chance, and for the first time, Eva Meredith looked round, as if a secret instinct had whispered her that my soul harmonised with hers.

"Thanks," said she, holding out her hand, "keep him in your memory, and pray for him sometimes."

"Oh, madam!" I exclaimed, "may we all meet again in a better world, whether our lives have been long or short, happy or full of trial."

"The immortal soul of William looks down upon us!" she replied in a grave voice, whilst her gaze, at once sad and bright, reverted to the star-spangled heavens.

Since that evening, when performing the duties of my profession, I have often witnessed death; but never without speaking, to the sorrowing survivors, a few consoling words on a better life than this one; and those words were words of conviction.

At last, a month after these incidents, Eva Meredith gave birth to a son. When they brought her her child,—"William!" exclaimed the poor widow; and tears, soothing tears too long denied to her grief, escaped in torrents from her eyes. The child bore that much-loved name of William, and a little cradle was placed close to the mother's bed. Then Eva's gaze, long directed to heaven, returned earthwards. She looked to her child now, as she had previously looked to her God. She bent over him to seek his father's features. Providence had permitted an exact resemblance between William and the son he was fated not to see. A great change occurred around us. Eva, who had consented to live until her child's existence was detached from hers, was now, I could plainly see, willing to live on, because she felt that this little being needed the protection of her love. She passed the days and evenings seated beside his cradle; and when I went to see her, oh! then she questioned me as to what she should do for him, she explained what he had suffered, and asked what could be done to save him from pain. For her child she feared the heat of a ray of sun, the chill of the lightest breeze. Bending over him, she shielded him with her body, and warmed him with her kisses. One day, I almost thought I saw her smile at him. But she never would sing, whilst rocking his cradle, to lull him to sleep; she called one of her women, and said, "Sing to my son that he may sleep." Then she listened, letting her tears flow softly upon little William's brow. Poor child! he was handsome, gentle, easy to rear. But, as if his mother's sorrow had affected him even before his birth, the child was melancholy: he seldom cried, but he never smiled: he was quiet; and at that age quiet seems to denote suffering. I fancied that all the tears shed over the cradle froze that poor little soul. I would fain have seen William's arms twined caressingly round his mother's neck. I would have had him return the kisses lavished upon him. "But what am I thinking about?" I then said to myself; "is it reasonable to expect that a little creature, not yet a year upon the earth, should understand that it is sent hither to love and console this woman?"

It was, I assure you, a touching sight to behold this young mother, pale, feeble, and who had once renounced[555] existence, clinging again to life for the sake of a little child which could not even say "Thanks, dear mother!" What a marvel is the human heart! Of how small a thing it makes much! Give it but a grain of sand, and it elevates a mountain; at its latest throb show it but an atom to love, and again its pulses revive; it stops for good only when all is void around it, and when even the shadow of its affections has vanished from the earth!

Time rolled on, and I received a letter from an uncle, my sole surviving relative. My uncle, a member of the faculty of Montpellier, summoned me to his side, to complete in that learned town my initiation into the secrets of my art. This letter, in form an invitation, was in fact an order. I had to set out. One morning, my heart big when I thought of the isolation in which I left the widow and the orphan, I repaired to the white cottage to take leave of Eva Meredith. I know not whether an additional shade of sadness came over her features when I told her I was about to make a long absence. Since the death of William Meredith such profound melancholy dwelt upon her countenance that a smile would have been the sole perceptible variation: sadness was always there.

The poor lonely woman forgot to regret departure of her last friend; the mother lamented the loss of the physician useful to her son. I did not complain. To be useful is the sweet recompense of the devoted.

"Adieu!" she said, holding out her hand. "Wherever you go, may God bless you; and should it be His will to afflict you, may He at least afford you the sympathy of a heart compassionate as your own."

The child was in the garden in front of the house, lying upon the grass, in the sun. I took him in my arms and kissed him repeatedly; I looked at long, attentively, sadly, and a tear started to my eyes. "Oh, no, no! I must be mistaken!" I murmured, and I hurried from the white cottage.

"Good heavens, doctor!" simultaneously exclaimed all Dr Barnaby's audience, "what did you apprehend?"

"Suffer me to finish my story my own way," replied the village doctor; "everything shall be told in its turn. I relate these events in the order in which they occurred."

On my arrival at Montpellier, I was exceedingly well received by my uncle; who declared, however, that he could neither lodge nor feed me, nor lend me money, and that as a stranger, without a name, I must not hope for a patient in a town so full of celebrated physicians.

"By no means!" was his answer. "I have got you a lucrative and respectable situation. An old Englishman, rich, gouty, and restless, wishes to have a doctor to live with him, an intelligent young man who will take charge of his health under the superintendence of an older physician. I have proposed you—you have been accepted; let us go to him."

We betook ourselves immediately to the residence of Lord James Kysington, a large and handsome house, full of servants, where, after waiting some time, first in the anteroom, and then in the parlours, we were at last ushered into the presence of the noble invalid. Seated in a large arm-chair was an old man of cold and severe aspect, whose white hair contrasted oddly with his eyebrows, still of a jet black. He was tall and thin, as far as I could judge through the folds of a large cloth coat, made like a dressing-gown. His hands disappeared under his cuffs, and his feet were wrapped in the skin of a white bear. A number of medicine vials were upon a table beside him.

Lord Kysington bowed; that is to say, he looked at me, and made a scarcely perceptible movement with his head.

"He is well versed in his profession, and I doubt not that his care will be most beneficial to your lordship."

"Moreover," continued my relation, "having had a tolerably good education, he can read to your lordship, or write under your dictation."

"I shall be obliged to him," replied Lord Kysington, breaking silence at last, and then closing his eyes, either from fatigue, or as a hint that the conversation was to drop. I glanced around me. Near the window sat a lady, very elegantly dressed, who continued her embroidery without once raising her eyes, as if we were not worthy her notice. Upon the carpet at her feet a little boy amused himself with toys. The lady, although young, did not at first strike me as pretty—because she had black hair and eyes; and to be pretty, according to my notion, was to be fair, like Eva Meredith; and moreover, in my inexperience, I held beauty impossible without a certain air of goodness. It was long before I could admit the beauty of this woman, whose brow was haughty, her look disdainful, and her mouth unsmiling. Like Lord Kysington, she was tall, thin, rather pale. In character they were too much alike to suit each other well. Formal and taciturn, they lived together without affection, almost without converse. The child, too, had been taught silence; he walked on tiptoe, and at the least noise a severe look from his mother or from Lord Kysington changed him into a statue.

It was too late to return to my village; but it is never too late to regret what one has loved and lost. My heart ached when I thought of my cottage, my valley, my liberty.

What I learned concerning the cheerless family I had entered was as follows:—Lord James Kysington had come to Montpellier for his health, deteriorated by the climate of India. Second son of the Duke of Kysington, and a lord only by courtesy, he owed to talent and not to inheritance his fortune and his political position in the House of Commons. Lady Mary was the wife of his youngest brother; and Lord James, free to dispose of his fortune, had named her son his heir.

Towards me his lordship was most punctiliously polite. A bow thanked me for every service I rendered him. I read aloud for hours together, uninterrupted either by the sombre old man, whom I put to sleep, or by the young woman, who did not listen to me, or by the child, who trembled in his uncle's presence. I had never led so melancholy a life, and yet, as you know, ladies, the little white cottage had long ceased to be gay; but the silence of misfortune implies such grave reflections, that words are insufficient to express them. One feels the life of the soul under the stillness of the body. In my new abode it was the silence of a void.

One day that Lord James dozed and Lady Mary was engrossed with embroidery, little Harry climbed upon my knee, as I sat apart at the farther end of the room, and began to question me with the artless curiosity of his age. In my turn, and without reflecting on what I said, I questioned him concerning his family.

I know not what I was thinking about. In my village I had heard none but the names of peasants, hardly applicable to Lady Mary's daughter. Mrs Meredith was the only lady I had known, and the child repeating, "Guess, guess!" I replied at random,

We were speaking very low; but when the name of Eva escaped my lips, Lord James opened his eyes quickly, and raised himself in his chair, Lady Mary dropped her needle and turned sharply towards me. I was confounded at the effect I had produced; I looked alternately at Lord James and at Lady Mary, without daring to utter another word. Some minutes passed: Lord James again let his head fall back and closed his eyes, Lady Mary resumed her needle, Harry and I ceased our conversation. I reflected for some time upon this strange incident, until at last, all around me having sunk into the usual monotonous calm, I rose to leave the room. Lady Mary pushed away her embroidery frame, passed[557] before me, and made me sign to follow. When we were both in another room she shut the door, and raising her head, with the imperious air which was the most habitual expression of her features: "Dr Barnaby," said she, "be so good as never again to pronounce the name that just now escaped your lips. It is a name Lord James Kysington must not hear." She bowed slightly, and re-entered her brother-in-law's apartment.

Thoughts innumerable crowded upon my mind. This Eva, whose name was not to be spoken, could it be Eva Meredith? Was she Lord Kysington's daughter-in-law? Was I in the house of William's father? I hoped, but still I doubted; for, after all, if there was but one Eva in the world for me, in England the name was, doubtless, by no means uncommon. But the thought that I was perhaps with the family of Eva Meredith, living with the woman who robbed the widow and the orphan of their inheritance, this thought was present to me by day and by night. In my dreams I beheld the return of Eva and her son to the paternal residence, in consequence of the pardon I had implored and obtained for them. But when I raised my eyes, the cold impassible physiognomy of Lord Kysington froze all the hopes of my heart. I applied myself to the examination of that countenance as if I had never before seen it; I analysed its features and lines to find a trace of sensibility. I sought the heart I so gladly would have touched. Alas! I found it not. But I had so good a cause that I was not to be discouraged. "Pshaw!" I said to myself, "what matters the expression of the face? why heed the external envelope? May not the darkest coffer contain bright gold? Must all that is within us reveal itself at a glance? Does not every man of the world learn to separate his mind and his thoughts from the habitual expression of his countenance?"

I resolved to clear up my doubts, but how to do so was the difficulty. Impossible to question Lady Mary or Lord James; the servants were French, and had but lately come to the house. An English valet-de-chambre had just been despatched to London on a confidential mission. I directed my investigations to Lord James Kysington. The severe expression of his countenance ceased to intimidate me. I said to myself:—"When the forester meets with a tree apparently dead, he strikes his axe into the trunk to see whether sap does not still survive beneath the withered bark; in like manner will I strike at the heart, and see whether life be not somewhere hidden." And I only waited an opportunity.

To await an opportunity with impatience is to accelerate its coming. Instead of depending on circumstances we subjugate them. One night Lord James sent for me. He was in pain. After administering the necessary remedies, I remained by his bedside, to watch their effect. The room was dark; a single wax candle showed the outline of objects, without illuminating them. The pale and noble head of Lord James was thrown back upon his pillow. His eyes were shut, according to his custom when suffering, as if he concentrated his moral energies within him. He never complained, but lay stretched out in his bed, straight and motionless as a king's statue upon a marble tomb. In general he got somebody to read to him, hoping either to distract his thoughts from his pains, or to be lulled to sleep by the monotonous sound.

Upon that night he made sign to me with his meagre hand to take a book and read, but I sought one in vain; books and newspapers had all been removed to the drawing-room; the doors were locked, and unless I rang and aroused the house, a book was not to be had. Lord James made a gesture of impatience, then one of resignation, and beckoned me to resume my seat by his side. We remained for some time without speaking, almost in darkness, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock. Sleep came not. Suddenly Lord James opened his eyes.

"My lord," said I, "I greatly fear I know nothing that will interest your[558] lordship. I can speak but of myself, of the events of my life,—and the history of the great ones of the earth were necessary to fix your attention. What can a peasant have to say, who has lived contented with little, in obscurity and repose? I have scarcely quitted my village, my lord. It is a pretty mountain hamlet, where even those not born there might well be pleased to dwell. Near it is a country house, which I have known inhabited by rich people, who could have left it if they liked, but who remained, because the woods were thick, the paths bordered with flowers, the streams bright and rapid in their rocky beds. Alas! they were two in that house—and soon a poor woman was there alone, until the birth of her son. My lord, she is a countrywoman of yours, an Englishwoman, of beauty such as is seldom seen either in England or in France; good as, besides her, only the angels in heaven can be! She had just completed her eighteenth year when I left her, fatherless, motherless, and already widowed of an adored husband; she is feeble, delicate, almost ill, and yet she must live;—who would protect that little child? Oh! my lord, there are very unhappy beings in this world! To be unhappy in middle life or old age, is doubtless sad, but still you have pleasant memories of the past to remind you that you have had your day, your share, your happiness; but to weep before you are eighteen is far sadder, for nothing can bring back the dead, and the future is dim with tears. Poor creature! We see a beggar by the roadside suffering from cold and hunger, and we give him alms, and look upon him without pain, because it is in our power to relieve him; but this unhappy, broken-hearted woman, the only relief to give her would be to love her—and none are there to bestow that alms upon her!

"Ah! my lord, if you knew what a fine young man her husband was!—hardly three-and-twenty; a noble countenance, a lofty brow—like your own, intelligent and proud; dark blue eyes, rather pensive, rather sad. I knew why they were sad. He loved his father and his native land, and he was doomed to exile from both! And how good and graceful was his smile! Ah! how he would have smiled at his little child, had he lived long enough to see it. He loved it even before it was born: he took pleasure in looking at the cradle that awaited it. Poor, poor young man!—I saw him on a stormy night, in the dark forest, stretched upon the wet earth, motionless, lifeless, his garments covered with mud, his temple shattered, blood escaping in torrents from his wound. I saw—alas! I saw William—"

"You saw my son's death!" cried Lord James, raising himself like a spectre in the midst of his pillows, and fixing me with eyes so distended and piercing, that I started back alarmed. But notwithstanding the darkness, I thought I saw a tear moisten the old man's eyelids.

"My lord," I replied, "I was present at your son's death, and at the birth of his child!"

There was an instant's silence. Lord James looked steadfastly at me. At last he made a movement; his trembling hand sought mine, pressed it, then his fingers relaxed their grasp, and he fell back upon the bed.

Before I was out of the room, Lord James had relapsed into his habitual position; into silence and immobility.

I will not detail to you my numerous and respectful representations to Lord James Kysington, his indecision and secret anxiety, and how at last his paternal love, awakened by the details of the horrible catastrophe, his pride of race, revived by the hope of leaving an heir to his name, triumphed over his bitter resentment. Three months after the scene I have described, I awaited, on the threshold of the house at Montpellier, the arrival of Eva Meredith and her son, summoned to their family and to the resumption of all their rights. It was a proud and happy day for me.

Lady Mary, perfect mistress of herself, had concealed her joy when family dissensions had made her son heir to her wealthy brother. Still better did she conceal her regret and anger when Eva Meredith, or rather[559] Eva Kysington, was reconciled with her father-in-law. Not a cloud appeared upon Lady Mary's marble forehead. But beneath this external calm how many evil passions fermented!

When the carriage of Eva Meredith (I will still give her that name) entered the court-yard of the house, I was there to receive her. Eva held out her hand—"Thanks, thanks, my friend!" she murmured. She wiped the tears that trembled in her eyes, and taking her boy, now three years old, and of great beauty, by the hand, she entered her new abode. "I am afraid!" she said. She was still the weak woman, broken by affliction, pale, sad, and beautiful, incredulous of earthly hopes, but firm in heavenly faith. I walked by her side; and as she ascended the steps, her gentle countenance bedewed with tears, her slender and feeble form inclined towards the balustrade, her extended arm assisting the child, who walked still more slowly than herself, Lady Mary and her son appeared at the door. Lady Mary wore a brown velvet dress, rich bracelets encircled her arms, a slender gold chain bound her brow, which in truth was of those on which a diadem sits well. She advanced with an assured step, her head high, her glance full of pride. Such was the first meeting of the two mothers.

Eva tried to smile, and answered by a few affectionate words. How could she forbode hatred, she who only knew love? We proceeded to Lord James's room. Mrs Meredith, scarcely able to support herself, entered first, took a few steps, and knelt beside her father-in-law's arm-chair. Taking her child in her arms, she placed him on Lord James Kysington's knee.

Long did Lord James gaze upon the child. As he gradually recognised the features of the son he had lost, his eyes became moist, and their expression affectionate. There came a moment when, forgetting his age, lapse of time, and past misfortune, he dreamed himself back to the happy day when he first pressed his infant son to his heart. "William, William!" he murmured. "My daughter!" added he, extending his hand to Eva Meredith.

My eyes filled with tears. Eva had a family, a protector, a fortune. I was happy; perhaps that was why I wept.

The child remained quiet upon his grandfather's knees, and showed neither pleasure nor fear.

"Excuse him," said his mother; "he has always been alone. He is very young; the presence of many persons intimidates him. By-and-by, my lord, he will better understand your kind words."

But I looked at the child; I examined him in silence; I recalled my former gloomy apprehensions. Alas! those apprehensions now became a certainty; the terrible shock experienced by Eva Meredith during her pregnancy had had fatal consequences for her child, and a mother only, in her youth, her love, and her inexperience, could have remained so long ignorant of her misfortune.

At the same time with myself Lady Mary looked at the child. I shall never forget the expression of her countenance. She stood erect, and the piercing gaze she fixed upon little William seemed to read his very soul. As she gazed, her eyes sparkled, her mouth was half-opened as by a smile—she breathed short and thick, like one oppressed by great and sudden joy. She looked, looked—hope, doubt, expectation, replaced each other on her face. At last her hatred was clear-sighted, an internal cry of triumph burst from her heart, but was checked ere it reached her lips. She drew herself up, let fall a disdainful glance upon Eva, her vanquished enemy, and resumed her usual calm.

Lord James, fatigued by the emotions of the day, dismissed us and remained alone all the evening.

Upon the morrow, after an agitated night, when I entered Lord James's[560] room, all the family were already assembled around him, and Lady Mary had little William on her knees: it was the tiger clutching its prey.

"What a beautiful child!" she said. "See, my lord, these fair and silken locks! how brilliant they are in the sunshine! But, dear Eva, is your son always so silent? does he never exhibit the vivacity and gaiety of his age?"

"He is always sad," replied Mrs Meredith. "Alas! with me he could hardly learn to laugh."

"We will try to amuse and cheer him," said Lady Mary. "Come, my dear child, kiss your grandfather! hold out your arms, and tell him you love him."

"Do you not know how? Harry, my love, kiss your uncle, and set your cousin a good example."

Harry jumped upon Lord James's knees, threw both arms round his neck, and said, "I love you, uncle!"

"'Tis my fault," she said. "I have brought up my child badly." And, taking William upon her lap, her tears fell upon his face: he felt them not, but slumbered upon his mother's heavy heart.

"I will try," replied Eva, in her submissive tones, like those of an obedient child. "I will try; and perhaps I shall succeed, if Lady Mary will kindly tell me how she rendered her son so happy and so gay." Then the disconsolate mother looked at Harry, who was at play near his uncle's chair, and her eyes reverted to her poor sleeping child. "He suffered even before his birth," she murmured; "we have both been very unhappy! but I will try to weep no more, that William may be cheerful like other children."

Two days elapsed, two painful days, full of secret trouble and ill-concealed uneasiness. Lord James's brow was care-laden; at times his look questioned me. I averted my eyes to avoid answering. On the morning of the third day, Lady Mary came into the room with a number of play-things for the children. Harry seized a sword, and ran about the room, shouting for joy. William remained motionless, holding in his little hand the toys that were given to him, but not attempting to use them; he did not even look at them.

"Here, my lord," said Lady Mary to her brother, "give this book to your grandson; perhaps his attention will be roused by the pictures it contains." And she led William to Lord James. The child was passive; he walked, stopped, and remained like a statue where he was placed. Lord James opened the book. All eyes turned towards the group formed by the old man and his grandson. Lord James was gloomy, silent, severe; he slowly turned several pages, stopping at every picture, and looking at William, whose vacant gaze was not directed to the book. Lord James turned a few more pages; then his hand ceased to move; the book fell from his knees to the ground, and an irksome silence reigned in the apartment. Lady Mary approached me, bent forward as if to whisper in my ear, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by all—

A shriek answered her. Eva started up as if she had received a blow; and seizing her son, whom she pressed convulsively to her breast—

"Idiot!" she exclaimed, her indignant glance flashing, for the first time, with a vivid brilliance; "idiot!" she repeated, "because he has been unhappy all his life, because he has seen but tears since his eyes first opened! because he knows not how to play like your son, who has always had joy around him! Ah! madam, you insult misfortune! Come, my child!" cried Eva, all in tears. "Come, let us leave these pitiless hearts, that find none but cruel words to console our misery!"

And the unhappy mother carried off her boy to her apartment. I followed. She set William down, and knelt before the little child. "My son! my son!" she cried.

"Doctor!" cried Eva, "he loves me—you see he does! He comes when I call him; he kisses me! His caresses have sufficed for my tranquillity—for my sad happiness! My God! was it not then enough? Speak to me, my son, reassure me! Find a consoling word, a single word for your despairing mother! Till now I have asked nothing of you but to remind me of your father, and leave me silence to weep. To-day, William, you must give me words! See you not my tears—my terror? Dear child, so beautiful, so like your father, speak, speak to me!"

Alas! alas! the child remained motionless, without sign of fear or intelligence; a smile only, a smile horrible to behold, flitted across his features. Eva hid her face in both hands, and remained kneeling upon the ground. For a long time no noise was heard save the sound of her sobs. Then I prayed heaven to inspire me with consoling thoughts, such as might give a ray of hope to this poor mother. I spoke of the future, of expected cure, of change possible—even probable. But hope is no friend to falsehood. Where she does not exist her phantom cannot penetrate. A terrible blow, a mortal one, had been struck, and Eva Meredith saw all the truth.

From that day forwards, only one child was to be seen each morning in Lord James Kysington's room. Two women came thither, but only one of them seemed to live—the other was silent as the tomb. One said, "My son!" the other never spoke of her child; one carried her head high, the other bowed hers upon her breast, the better to hide her tears; one was blooming and brilliant, the other pale and a mourner. The struggle was at an end. Lady Mary triumphed. It was cruel how they let Harry play before Eva Meredith's eyes. Careless of her anguish, they brought him to repeat his lessons in his uncle's presence; they vaunted his progress. The ambitious mother calculated everything to consolidate her success; and, whilst abounding in honeyed words and feigned consolation, she tortured Eva Meredith's heart each moment in the day. Lord James, smitten in his dearest hopes, had resumed the cold impassibility which I now saw formed the foundation of his character. Strictly courteous to his daughter-in-law, he had no word of affection for her: only as the mother of his grandson, could the daughter of the American planter find a place in his heart. And he considered the child as no longer in existence. Lord James Kysington was more gloomy and taciturn than ever, regretting, perhaps, to have yielded to my importunities, and to have ruffled his old age by a painful and profitless emotion.

A year elapsed; then a sad day came, when Lord James sent for Eva Meredith, and signed to her to be seated beside his arm-chair.

"Listen to me, madam," he said, "listen with courage. I will act frankly with you, and conceal nothing. I am old and ill, and must arrange my affairs. The task is painful both for you and for me. I will not refer to my anger at my son's marriage; your misfortune disarmed me—I called you to my side, and I desired to behold and to love in your son William, the heir of my fortune, the pivot of my dreams of future ambition. Alas! madam, fate was cruel to us! My son's widow and orphan shall have all that can insure them an honourable existence; but, sole master of a fortune due to my own exertions, I adopt my nephew, and look upon him henceforward as my sole heir. I am about to return to London, whither my affairs call me. Come with me, madam—my house is yours—I shall be happy to see you there."

Eva (she afterwards told me so) felt, for the first time, her despondency replaced by courage. She had the strength that is given by a noble pride: she raised her head, and if her brow was less haughty than that of Lady Mary, on the other hand it had all the dignity of misfortune.

"Go, my lord," she answered, "go; I shall not accompany you. I will not witness the usurpation of my son's rights! You are in haste to condemn, my lord. Who can foresee the future! You are in haste to despair of the mercy of God!"

"The future," replied Lord James, "at my age, is bounded by the passing[562] day. What I would be certain to do I must do at once and without delay."

"Act as you think proper," replied Eva. "I return to the dwelling where I was happy with my husband. I return thither with your grandson, William Kysington; of that name, his sole inheritance, you cannot deprive him; and though the world should know it but by reading it on his tomb, your name, my lord, is the name of my son!"

A week later, Eva Meredith descended the stairs of the hotel, holding her son by the hand, as she had done when she entered this fatal house. Lady Mary was a little behind her, a few steps higher up: the numerous servants, sad and silent, beheld with regret the departure of the gentle creature thus driven from the paternal roof. When she quitted this abode, Eva quitted the only beings she knew upon the earth, the only persons whose pity she had a right to claim—the world was before her, an immense wilderness. It was Hagar going forth into the desert.

"This is horrible, doctor!" cried Dr Barnaby's audience. "Is it possible there are persons so utterly unhappy? What! you witnessed all this yourself?"

"I have not yet told you all," replied the village doctor; "let me get to the end."

Shortly after Eva Meredith's departure, Lord James went to London. Once more my own master, I gave up all idea of further study; I had enough learning for my village, and in haste I returned thither. Once more I sat opposite to Eva in the little white house, as I had done two years before. But how greatly had intervening events increased her misfortune! We no longer dared talk of the future, that unknown moment of which we all have so great need, and without which our present joys appear too feeble, and our misfortunes too great.

Never did I witness grief nobler in its simplicity, calmer in its intensity, than that of Eva Meredith. She forgot not to pray to the God who chastened her. For her, God was the being in whose hands are the springs of hope, when earthly hopes are extinct. Her look of faith remained fixed upon her child's brow, as if awaiting the arrival of the soul her prayers invoked. I cannot describe the courageous patience of that mother speaking to her son, who listened without understanding. I cannot tell you all the treasures of love, of thought, of ingenious narrative she displayed before that torpid intelligence, which repeated, like an echo, the last of her gentle words. She explained to him heaven, God, the angels; she endeavoured to make him pray, and joined his hands, but she could not make him raise his eyes to heaven. In all possible shapes she tried to give him the first lessons of childhood; she read to him, spoke to him, placed pictures before his eyes—had recourse to music as a substitute for words. One day, making a terrible effort, she told William the story of his father's death; she hoped, expected a tear. The child fell asleep whilst yet she spoke: tears were shed, but they fell from the eyes of Eva Meredith.

Thus did she exhaust herself by vain efforts, by a persevering struggle. That she might not cease to hope, she continued to toil; but to William's eyes pictures were merely colours; to his ears words were but noise. The child, however, grew in stature and in beauty. One who had seen him but for an instant would have taken the immobility of his countenance for placidity. But that prolonged and continued calm, that absence of all grief, of all tears, had a strange and sad effect upon us. Suffering must indeed be inherent in our nature, since William's eternal smile made every one say, "The poor idiot!" Mothers know not the happiness concealed in the tears of their child. A tear is a regret, a desire, a fear; it is life, in short, which begins to be understood. Alas! William was content with everything. All day long he seemed to sleep with his eyes open; anger, weariness, impatience, were alike unknown to him. He had but one instinct: he knew his mother—he even loved her. He took pleasure in resting on her knees, on her shoulder; he kissed her. When I kept him long away from her, he manifested a sort of anxiety. I took him back to his mother; he showed no joy, but he was again tranquil. This tenderness, this faint glimmering of William's heart,[563] was Eva's life. It gave her strength to strive, to hope, to wait. If her words were not understood, at least her kisses were! How often she took her son's head in her hands and kissed his forehead, as long and fervently as if she hoped her love would warm and vivify his frozen soul! How often did she dream a miracle whilst clasping her son in her arms, and pressing his still heart to her burning bosom! Often she lingered at night in the village church. (Eva Meredith was of a Roman Catholic family.) Kneeling upon the cold stone before the Virgin's altar, she invoked the marble statue of Mary, holding her child in her arms, "O virgin!" she said, "my boy is inanimate as that image of thy Son! Ask of God a soul for my child!"

She was charitable to all the poor children of the village, giving them bread and clothes, and saying to them, "Pray for him." She consoled afflicted mothers, in the secret hope that consolation would come at last to her. She dried the tears of others, to enjoy the belief that one day she also would cease to weep. In all the country round, she was loved, blessed, venerated. She knew it, and she offered up to Heaven, not with pride but with hope, the blessings of the unfortunate in exchange for the recovery of her son. She loved to watch William's sleep; then he was handsome and like other children. For an instant, for a second perhaps, she forgot; and whilst contemplating those regular features, those golden locks, those long lashes which threw their shadow on his rose-tinted cheek, she felt a mother's joy, almost a mother's pride. God has moments of mercy even for those he has condemned to suffer.

Thus passed the first years of William's childhood. He attained the age of eight years. Then a sad change, which could not escape my attentive observation, occurred in Eva Meredith. Either that her son's growth made his want of intelligence more striking, or that she was like a workman who has laboured all day, and sinks at eve beneath the load of toil, Eva ceased to hope; her soul seemed to abandon the task undertaken, and to recoil with weariness upon itself, asking only resignation. She laid aside the books, the engravings, the music, all the means, in short, that she had called to her aid; she grew silent and desponding; only, if that were possible, she was more affectionate than ever to her son. As she lost hope in his cure, she felt the more strongly that her child had but her in the world; and she asked a miracle of her heart—an increase of the love she bore him. She became her son's servant—his slave; her whole thoughts were concentrated in his wellbeing. If she felt cold, she sought a warmer covering for William; was she hungry, it was for William she gathered the fruits of her garden; did she suffer from fatigue, for him she selected the easiest chair and the softest cushions; she attended to her own sensations only to guess those of her son. She still displayed activity, though she no longer harboured hope.

When William was eleven years old, the last phase of Eva Meredith's existence began. Remarkably tall and strong for his age, he ceased to need that hourly care required by early childhood: he was no longer the infant sleeping on his mother's knees; he walked alone in the garden; he rode on horseback with me, and accompanied me in my distant visits; in short the bird, although wingless, left the nest. His misfortune was in no way shocking or painful to behold. He was of exceeding beauty, silent, unnaturally calm—his eyes expressing nothing but repose, his mouth ignorant of a smile: he was not awkward, or disagreeable, or importunate: it was a mind sleeping beside yours, asking no question, making no reply. The incessant maternal care which had served to occupy Mrs Meredith, and to divert her mind from dwelling on her sorrows, became unnecessary, and she resumed her seat at the window, whence she beheld the village and the church-steeple—at that same window where she had so long wept her husband. Hope and occupation successively failed her, and nothing was left her but to wait and watch, by day and by night, like the lamp that ever burns beneath cathedral vaults.

But her forces were exhausted. In the midst of this grief which had returned to its starting-point, to[564] silence and immobility, after having in vain essayed exertion, courage, hope, Eva Meredith fell into a decline. In spite of all the resources of my art, I beheld her grow weak and thin. How apply a remedy, when the sickness is of the soul?

The poor foreigner! she needed her native sun and a little happiness to warm her; but the ray of sun and the ray of joy were alike wanting. It was long before she perceived her danger, because she thought not of herself; but when at last she was unable to leave her arm-chair, she was compelled to understand. I will not describe to you all her anguish at the thought of leaving William without a guide, without friend or protector—of leaving him alone in the midst of strangers, he who needed to be cherished and led by the hand like a child. Oh, how she struggled for life! with what avidity she swallowed the potions I prepared! how many times she tried to believe in a cure, whilst all the time the disease progressed! Then she kept William more at home,—she could no longer bear to lose sight of him.

"Remain with me," she said; and William, always content near his mother, seated himself at her feet. She looked at him long, until a flood of tears prevented her distinguishing his gentle countenance; then she drew him still nearer to her, and pressed him to her heart. "Oh!" she exclaimed, in a kind of delirium, "if my soul, on leaving my body, might become the soul of my child, how happy should I be to die!" No amount of suffering could make her wholly despair of divine mercy, and when all human possibility disappeared, this loving heart had gentle dreams out of which it reconstructed hopes. But how sad it was, alas! to see the poor mother slowly perishing before the eyes of her son, of a son who understood not death, and who smiled when she embraced him.

"He will not regret me," she said: "he will not weep: he will not remember." And she remained motionless, in mute contemplation of her child. Her hand then sometimes sought mine: "You love him, dear doctor?" she murmured.

"I will never quit him," replied I, "so long as he has no better friends than myself." God in heaven, and the poor village doctor upon earth, were the two guardians to whom she confided her son.

Faith is a great thing! This woman, widowed, disinherited, dying, an idiot child at her side, was yet saved from that utter despair which brings blasphemy to the lips of death. An invisible friend was near her, on whom she seemed to rest, listening sometimes to holy words, which she alone could hear.

One morning she sent for me early. She had been unable to get up. With her wan, transparent hand she showed me a sheet of paper on which a few lines were written.

"Doctor," she said, in her gentlest tones, "I have not strength to continue; finish this letter!"

"My Lord,—I write to you for the last time. Whilst health is restored to your old age, I suffer and am about to die. I leave your grandson, William Kysington, without a protector. My Lord, this last letter is to recall him to your memory; I ask for him a place in your heart rather than a share of your fortune. Of all the things of this world, he has understood but one—his mother's love; and now she must leave him for ever! Love him, my Lord,—love is the only sentiment he can comprehend."

"Mrs William Kysington has but few days to live. What are Lord James Kysington's orders with respect to the child who bears his name?

This letter was sent to London, and we waited. Eva kept her bed. William, seated near her, held her hand in his: his mother smiled sadly upon him, whilst I, at the other side of the bed, prepared potions to assuage her pains. Again she began to talk to her son, as if no longer despairing that, after her death, some of her words might recur to his memory. She gave the child all the advice, all the instructions she would have given to an intelligent being. Then she turned to me—"Who knows, doctor," she said, "one day, perhaps, he will find my words at the bottom of his heart!"

Three more weeks elapsed. Death[565] approached, and submissive as was the Christian soul of Eva, she yet felt the anguish of separation and the solemn awe of the future. The village priest came to see her, and when he left her I met him and took his hand.

It was Eva Meredith's last day. The sun had set: the window, near which she so long had sat, was open: she could see from her bed the landscape she had loved. She held her son in her arms and kissed his face and hair, weeping sadly. "Poor child! what will become of you? Oh!" she said, with tender earnestness, "listen to me, William:—I am dying! Your father is dead also; you are alone; you must pray to the Lord. I bequeath you to Him who watches over the sparrow upon the house-top; He will shield the orphan. Dear child, look at me! listen to me! Try to understand that I die, that one day you may remember me!" And the poor mother, unable to speak longer, still found strength to embrace her child.

At that moment an unaccustomed noise reached my ears. The wheels of a carriage grated upon the gravel of the garden drive. I ran to the door. Lord James Kysington and Lady Mary entered the house.

"I got your letter," said Lord James. "I was setting out for Italy, and it was not much off my road to come myself and settle the future destiny of William Meredith: so here I am. Mrs William?——"

It was with a painful sensation that I saw this calm, cold, austere man approach Eva's chamber, followed by the haughty woman who came to witness what for her was a happy event—the death of her former rival! They entered the modest little room, so different from the sumptuous apartments of their Montpellier hotel. They drew near the bed, beneath whose white curtains Eva, pale but still beautiful, held her son upon her heart. They stood, one on the right, the other on the left of that couch of suffering, without finding a word of affection to console the poor woman who looked up at them. They barely gave utterance to a few formal and unmeaning phrases. Averting their eyes from the painful spectacle of death, and persuading themselves that Eva Meredith neither saw nor heard, they passively awaited her spirit's departure—their countenances not even feigning an expression of condolence or regret. Eva fixed her dying gaze upon them, and sudden terror seized the heart which had almost ceased to throb. She comprehended, for the first time, the secret sentiments of Lady Mary, the profound indifference and egotism of Lord James; she understood at last that they were enemies rather than protectors of her son. Despair and terror portrayed themselves on her pallid face. She made no attempt to soften those soulless beings. By a convulsive movement she drew William still closer to her heart, and, collecting her last strength—

"My child, my poor child!" she cried, "you have no support upon earth; but God above is good. My God! succour my child!"

With this cry of love, with this supreme prayer, she breathed out her life: her arms opened, her lips were motionless on William's cheek. Since she no longer embraced her son, there could be no doubt she was dead—dead before the eyes of those who to the very last had refused to comfort her affliction—dead without giving Lady Mary the uneasiness of hearing her plead the cause of her son—dead, leaving her a complete and decided victory.

There was a moment of solemn silence: none moved or spoke. Death makes an impression upon the haughtiest. Lady Mary and Lord James Kysington kneeled beside their victim's bed. In a few minutes Lord James arose. "Take the child from his mother's room," he said, "and come with me, doctor; I will explain to you my intentions respecting him."

For two hours William had been resting on the shoulder of Eva Meredith, his heart against her heart, his lips pressed to hers, receiving her kisses and her tears. I approached him, and, without expending useless[566] words, I endeavoured to raise and lead him from the room; but he resisted, and his arms clasped his mother more closely. This resistance, the first the poor child had ever offered to living creature, touched my very soul. On my renewing the attempt, however, William yielded; he made a movement and turned towards me, and I saw his beautiful countenance suffused with tears. Until that day, William had never wept. I was greatly startled and moved, and I let the child throw himself again upon his mother's corpse.

"William! dear William!" I cried, anxiously taking his hand, "why do you weep, William?"

For the second time he turned his head towards me; then, with a gentle look, full of sorrow, "My mother is dead," he replied.

I have not words to tell you what I felt. William's eyes were now intelligent: his tears were sad and significant; and his voice was broken as when the heart suffers. I uttered a cry; I almost knelt down beside Eva's bed.

"Mother! mother!" cried William, in tones that filled my heart with joy; and then, repeating the words of Eva Meredith—those words which she had so truly said he would find at the bottom of his heart—the child exclaimed aloud,

"I am dying, my son. Your father is dead; you are alone upon the earth; you must pray to the Lord!"

I pressed gently with my hand upon William's shoulder; he obeyed the impulse, knelt down, joined his trembling hands—this time it was of his own accord—and, raising to heaven a look full of life and feeling: "My God! have pity on me!" he murmured.

I took Eva's cold hand. "Oh mother! mother of many sorrows!" I exclaimed, "can you hear your child? do you behold him from above? Be happy! your son is saved!"

Dead at Lady Mary's feet, Eva made her rival tremble; for it was not I who led William from the room, it was Lord James Kysington who carried out his grandson in his arms.

I have little to add, ladies. William recovered his reason and departed with Lord James. Reinstated in his rights, he was subsequently his grandfather's sole heir. Science has recorded a few rare instances of intelligence revived by a violent moral shock. Thus does the fact I have related find a natural explanation. But the good women of the village, who had attended Eva Meredith during her illness, and had heard her fervent prayers, were convinced that, even as she had asked of Heaven, the soul of the mother had passed into the body of the child.

"She was so good," said they, "that God could refuse her nothing." This artless belief took firm root in the country. No one mourned Mrs Meredith as dead.

"She still lives," said the people of the hamlet: "speak to her son, and she will answer you."

And when Lord William Kysington, in possession of his grandfather's property, sent each year abundant alms to the village that had witnessed his birth and his mother's death, the poor folks exclaimed—"There is Mrs Meredith's kind soul thinking of us still! Ah, when she goes to heaven, it will be great pity for poor people!"

We do not strew flowers upon her tomb, but upon the steps of the altar of the Virgin, where she so often prayed to Mary to send a soul to her son. When taking thither their wreaths of wild blossoms, the villagers say to each other—"When she prayed so fervently, the good Virgin answered her softly: 'I will give thy soul to thy child!'"

The curé has suffered our peasants to retain this touching superstition; and I myself, when Lord William came to see me, when he fixed upon me his eyes, so like his mother's—when his voice, which had a well-known accent, said, as Mrs Meredith was wont to say—"Dear Doctor, I[567] thank you!" Then,—smile, ladies, if you will—I wept, and I believed, like all the village, that Eva Meredith was before me.

She, whose existence was but a long series of sorrows, has left behind her a sweet, consoling memory, which has nothing painful for those who loved her.

In thinking of her we think of the mercy of God, and those who have hope in their hearts, hope with the greater confidence.

But it is very late, ladies—your carriages have long been at the door. Pardon this long story: at my age it is difficult to be concise in speaking of the events of one's youth. Forgive the old man for having made you smile when he arrived, and weep before he departed."

These last words were spoken in the kindest and most paternal tone, whilst a half-smile glided across Dr Barnaby's lips. All his auditors now crowded round him, eager to express their thanks. But Dr Barnaby got up, made straight for his riding-coat of puce-coloured taffety, which hung across a chair back, and, whilst one of the young men helped him to put it on—"Farewell, gentlemen; farewell, ladies," said the village doctor. "My chaise is ready; it is dark, the road is bad; good-night: I must be gone."

When Dr Barnaby was installed in his cabriolet of green wicker-work, and the little gray cob, tickled by the whip, was about to set off, Madame de Moncar stepped quickly forward, and leaning towards the doctor, whilst she placed one foot on the step of his vehicle, she said, in quite a low voice—

"Doctor, I make you a present of the white cottage, and I will have it fitted up as it was when you loved Eva Meredith!"

Then she ran back into the house. The carriages and the green chaise departed in different directions.

NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND.

The subject of the Parochial School System of Scotland claims some attention at the present moment. Following up certain ominous proceedings of other parties high in authority, Lord Melgund, M. P. for Greenock, has given notice of a motion for the appointment of a select committee of the House of Commons to consider the expediency of a fundamental revision of that system. The question here involved is one of national importance; and the family and other ties by which Lord Melgund is connected with the Government, are likely, we fear, to secure for his proposed innovations on that institution which has been hitherto, perhaps, the pre-eminent glory of Scotland, a certain degree of favour.

It may be of some use to preface the few observations we have to offer on the Scottish system, and the proposed alterations of it, by a brief recapitulation of some of the more prominent methods and statistics of popular education in other countries, taken chiefly from a very carefully prepared and important Appendix to the Privy Council committee's Minutes for 1847-8. The information was obtained through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, from the Governments of the principal states of Europe and America.

The cost of public instruction is defrayed by different means in different countries—means varying, however, more in detail than in principle. In Prussia, a regular school-rate, varying from 3d. to 6d. per month, according to circumstances, is levied upon all who have children; but this is supplemented by a grant from the state budget which, for elementary schools alone, amounted in 1845 to £37,000. A similar practice prevails not only in the other countries of Central Europe, but in Pennsylvania, where it was introduced by the German emigrants, and, of late years, also in some other parts of the United States. The income of schools in the Austrian Empire is derived from a variety of sources, of which school-money constitutes little more than[568] one-third; the remainder, as far as we can understand the technical phraseology of the report, being partly derived from old endowments, partly from provincial revenues, and partly from the imperial treasury. In Holland, the governments of the towns and provinces are charged with the cost of maintaining their own schools, aided by grants from the state. On the first year that separate accounts were kept for the northern provinces, after their separation from Belgium, the sum raised in this way amounted (in a population of 2,450,000) to no less than £76,317. In Belgium, where the funds are derived from old foundations and local endowments, aided by the government, two-fifths of the scholars received, in 1840, their education gratuitously; but the provision seems to be not very complete, for in that year, out of 2510 communes, 163 were without any school.

As to management, there appears to be no country in Europe in which public instruction is not directed by a department of the government. No regular system of superintendence, however, has yet been established in the United States. In Prussia, there is a minister of public instruction, who is also at the head of church affairs, and under whom are local consistories and school inspectors, one of the latter being always the superintendent or bishop of the district. In Würtemberg, each school is inspected by the clergyman of the confession to which the schoolmaster belongs, and is subject to the control of the presbytery. In the Grand-duchy of Baden, the minister of the interior has charge of the department of education. The local school authority is commonly a parochial committee, consisting of clergy and laymen combined. The parish clergyman is the regular school inspector, but where there are different confessions, each clergyman inspects the school of his own church. Certain functionaries, called "Visitors" and "County Authorities," are also intrusted with special powers. In Lombardy, the direction is committed to a chief inspector, with a number of subordinates, and the parish clergy. (By clergy, of course, throughout these details, must usually be understood Roman Catholic priests.) In Holland, every province was in 1814 divided into educational districts, with a school inspector for each district, and provincial school commissions chosen from the leading inhabitants, to which were afterwards added provincial "juries." In Russia, public instruction is superintended by the government.

The details regarding religious instruction are not so full as we should have wished. The great difficulty as regards this appears, however, in most of the European states to be met by the establishment of separate schools for the different sects. In Würtemberg, "if, in a community of different religious confessions, the minority comprises sixty families, they may claim the establishment and support of a school of their own confession, at the expense of the whole community." The ecclesiastical authorities of the various sects are not, however, independent of, but merely associated with, the state functionaries, whose sanction is indispensable for the catechisms and school-books in use in every school. Such, at least, is said to be the case in Würtemberg; and, as far as we can judge from the not very precise statements made on this subject, the rule appears to be universal. Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek Church, and Jewish schools are, in the Austrian empire, alike established by law, according to the necessities of each province and district. But in the state of New York (and we believe a like practice prevails in other parts of the Union) the sectarian difficulty is overcome in a different way. By a recent act of the legislature, it is provided that "no school shall be entitled to a portion of the school-moneys, in which the religious sectarian doctrine or tenet of any particular Christians, or other religious sect, shall be taught, inculcated, or practised."

The only other particulars we shall notice relate to school attendance. It must be premised that, in the countries of central Europe, the attendance of every child at the elementary schools is compulsory—the only alternative being private instruction. Fines and imprisonment are employed to enforce this regulation. Free education is also provided, at the general[569] expense, for those unable to pay the school fees.

In Prussia, the proportion of those enjoying school education was to the population, in 1846, as 1 to 6.

In the Austrian empire, as 1 to 9 for boys, and as 1 to 12 for girls; but in Upper and Lower Austria, as 1 to 6 for boys, and as 1 to 7 for girls.

In Sweden, in 1843, the proportion was no more than as 1 to 165 of the population.

In Russia, the number attending schools of all kinds, including the universities, amounted, in 1846, to 195,819, which, in a population of 60,000,000, gives a proportion of less than 1 to 300 of the inhabitants.

In Pennsylvania, in 1840, 1 in 5 of the population had the advantage of instruction in common schools; in New York, on the first of January 1847, nearly 1 in 16; in Massachusetts, about 1 in 6-1/2 of the population.

It is impossible to read these details without two reflections especially being immediately suggested to the mind. One of these is the necessary connexion between the success of any system of national education and the special circumstances of each individual state to which it may be applied. To introduce the Prussian system into Scotland, with any prospect of its working here as well as it does there, one would require to change the whole character of the government, and the whole habits, nay, the very nature of the people, to make Scotchmen Prussians and Scotland Prussia.

But there is a still more important reflection forced upon us. How little mere secular education, apart from that which we hold to be an indispensable accompaniment to it—sound religious education—avails for the elevation of the people, let these statistics, read in the light of recent events, tell! The murderers of Count Latour were all well-educated persons, after that fashion which it has been proposed to introduce into this country as the national system. They had all been at schools—at schools from which religious instruction, however, was either excluded, or worse than excluded.

But, to come to National Education in Scotland. On this subject there are two questions wholly distinct from each other, which at present occupy some attention. The one relates to the long-tried and approved parochial system, the other to the plans, professedly of a supplementary character, recently introduced by a committee of the Privy Council, which constitutes a government board for the application of the parliamentary grant, now voted annually for some years, for educational purposes. In a pamphlet [11] lately published by Lord Melgund, which is of some importance now, as indicating the views with which his motion in parliament is introduced, these two questions have, we think, been unfairly confounded: with the former we have particular concern at present.

We agree, however, with Lord Melgund in condemning utterly the procedure of the Privy Council in regard to those schools which are at this moment rising up in almost every parish in Scotland, not for the purpose, even ostensibly, of supplying destitute localities with the means of education, but as parts of an ecclesiastical system, whose avowed object is to supersede in all its departments the Established Church. These schools receive much the greater part (in fact nearly two-thirds) of the whole sum voted for education in Scotland; that is to say, about two-thirds of the parliamentary grant, intended to promote general education in this part of the kingdom, is by the Privy Council diverted altogether from its proper object, and applied to purposes exclusively and avowedly sectarian.

This is an abuse which cannot be too severely reprobated. Lord Melgund, in his pamphlet, with some justice calls attention to the strictly exclusive character of the Free Church—an exclusiveness to which the Established [570]Church affords no parallel—to the fact that it is an irresponsible body, with whose affairs no man not a member has any more right to interfere, than he has with those of a railway company to which he does not belong. It is not, however, on this ground alone, or chiefly, that the Privy Council's proceedings in regard to the Free Church schools are objectionable.

Out of the sum of £5463 granted, according to the committee's minutes last issued, to Scotland in 1847, no less than £3485 was apportioned to Free Church schools. Let us inquire on what conditions, in what circumstances, so large a proportion of the fund at the disposal of the committee has been thus expended. If this sum had been appropriated bonâ fide for educational purposes, to aid in building schools in localities previously unprovided with them, perhaps no very serious exception could have been taken to the, in that case, comparatively trivial circumstance, that the persons by whom the money was to be applied happened to be dissenters from the Established Church,—dissenters whose doctrinal standards are the same as those recognised by law. In this case, it might with some reason have been said by defenders of the Privy Council, "Why should these localities remain without schools of any kind, merely because the Free Churchmen have been the only parties zealous enough to obtain for them this boon?"

But what are the facts? Even on the face of the minutes of council themselves, it appears that at least the greater part of the large grant in question has been given to aid in erecting schools where there was no pretence at all of destitution—in localities already amply supplied with the means of education, including both parochial and non-parochial schools; and has been given, therefore, not for the purpose of supplementing, but for the purpose of SUPPLANTING existing institutions; not for the advancement of education, but for the advancement of Free Churchism.

An assertion of so serious a nature as this requires proof, and proof is easily given.

In the return in the minutes of council for 1847-8, of the grants for education in Scotland, sixteen of the schools aided are marked F. C. S., (Free Church of Scotland;) and there is, in the case of most of these, a return as to the existing school accommodation of the district, an inquiry on this subject being always and very properly made—oftener, as appears, however, made than attended to. The following are some of the returns, taken almost at random:—

Brigton in Polmont.—Population of school district, 3584: existing schools—"The parish school, Establishment, (attended by 150 scholars;) Redding Muir, Establishment, (100;) Redding village, Establishment and Free Church, (80;) Redding Muir, Methodist, (40.)"[12] Grant to Free Church, £143.

Dalkeith.—Population, 6000: existing school accommodation—"The parochial or grammar school, and other schools, partially supported by the Duke of Buccleuch." No further particulars. Grant to Free Church, £248.—In the following instance, a notable attempt is made to manufacture a case of crying destitution:—

Ellon.—Population, 3000: existing schools—"The parochial school is situate about a quarter of a mile distant, at the eastern extremity of the old town; the new school will be at the western extremity of the new town!" In consideration, however, of the "one-fourth mile," coupled with the interesting topographical information that this is the exact distance between the eastern extremity of the old and the western extremity [or "west-end"] of the new town of Ellon, and, doubtless, for other grave reasons not expressed, £162 is subscribed to the funds of the Free Church.

These are average examples of all the cases. Everybody, indeed, knows what the practice of the Free Secession has been in choosing sites, alike for their churches and for their [571]schools. Their endeavour has been to plant both as near as possible to the parish church and the parish school,—a most natural, and, for their purposes, wise arrangement; but an arrangement, one would imagine, which ought not to have been countenanced by the Privy Council. That body might have been expected to reply to such an application as that from Polmont parish—"The funds at our disposal are intended to supply deficiencies in the means of education. We cannot recognise your case as one of destitution. As a public body, administering public money, it is not permitted to us to agree with you in setting aside the parochial schools, and the other schools in the district as of no account, merely because they are not under your sectarian control. You are applying for our aid, not to supplement, but to supersede existing educational institutions; and this is an object to which we could not contribute without a gross misappropriation of the national funds." In having, instead of returning this answer to the promoters of the proposed new school in Polmont, sent them £143, the Privy Council's committee have, be it noticed, established a precedent which is not likely to be left unimproved: indeed the Free Church are said to have about 500 similar applications ready.[13]

The practical evils of such a course are obvious. "Suppose," (say the parish schoolmasters, in their memorial to Lord John Russell,)—"suppose the people of the parishes where these schools shall be established wished to be divided betwixt the parochial schools and those of the Free Church, instead of resorting exclusively to the former, are they likely to be better educated in consequence of the change? Is it not rather to be feared that, instead of one efficient, two comparatively inefficient schools will in consequence be established in a great number of parishes?... At all events, the loss resulting from the injury done to the old and tried system is certain; the advantages of the new system are problematical; and the sacrifice of the former to the latter, therefore, seems to us to be inexpedient and unwise."[14]

That "old and tried system" is, however, exposed to other perils. Lord Melgund not only finds fault with the above and other abuses of the Privy Council's scheme of education, but with the original parochial system; and not only suggests that that recent scheme should be re-organised, but that the whole system of national education in Scotland should undergo a thorough revisal. Let us come at once to that reform which it appears to be the chief aim of his pamphlet to recommend, and of his motion to effect; which is of a very sweeping and fundamental character, and which, in a word, consists in the severance of the subsisting connexion between the parochial schools and the Established Church.

It is not necessary at present to go back to the origin of the ecclesiastical [572]institutions Of Scotland. The question is, not what the law is, but what the law ought to be; and we shall here assume that, whatever may be the vested interests of the Church in the parish schools, it is competent for parliament to consider the propriety, in existing circumstances, of introducing a new national system of education, irrespective altogether of historical considerations. By thus arguing the question on its merits, to the exclusion of historical associations, we deprive ourselves of many pleas against a change which appear relevant and cogent to friends of the Church whose judgment is entitled to the highest respect. But we take the ground which, if the matter be discussed at all, will doubtless be taken by most of those who engage in the controversy, and on which, doubtless, the result will be made ultimately to depend.

The parish-school system of Scotland may be described in a few words. In every parish, at the present day, there is (except in the case of some of the large towns) at least one school,[15] which, with the teacher's house, has been erected, and is kept up by the heritors, or landed proprietors, of each parish; by whom also a salary is provided for the schoolmaster, which, exclusive of house and garden, at present varies, according to circumstances, from £25 the minimum, to £34 the maximum allowance. This certainly most inadequate remuneration is supplemented partly by school fees—which, however, are fixed at a low rate, and always dispensed with in cases of necessity—partly by the schoolmaster being allowed to hold, in conjunction with his school, the offices of heritors' and session clerk, which yield, on an average, to each about £14 more, (Remarks, p. 15;) and partly, though in comparatively few parishes, by local foundations. In 1834, the number of parochial schools was 1,047; and the emoluments of the teachers amounted for the whole (excluding the augmentations from the Dick Bequest) to £55,339: of this sum £29,642 being salaries, £20,717 school fees, and £4,979 other emoluments.[16]

With regard to management: the election of the teacher is vested in the heritors (the sole rate-payers) and minister of the parish. Before admission to his office, however, the schoolmaster-elect must pass a strict examination before the presbytery of the bounds, as to his qualifications to teach the elementary branches of education, and such of the higher branches as either the heritors on the one hand, or the presbytery [17] on the other hand, may think necessary in every case; and must profess his adherence to the Established Church by signing the Confession of Faith and formula. The parish minister acts as the regular school-inspector: and every presbytery is bound to hold an annual examination of all the schools within its jurisdiction, usually conducted in the presence of the leading inhabitants, and to make returns to the supreme ecclesiastical court of the attendance, the branches taught, the progress of the scholars, and the efficiency of the teachers. It must be here added that, although thus placed under the superintendence of the national church, and although based on the principles of the national faith, the parish schools are acknowledged to be free from anything which, in Scotland at least, could be called a sectarian character. Lord Melgund frankly admits that "the teachers and presbyteries appear to have dealt liberally by all classes of Dissenters in religious matters, and certainly cannot be reproached with having given offence by dogmatical teaching, or by attempts to proselytise"—(Remarks, p. 24;) and adduces some proofs in support of this view, with which we [573]shall content ourselves, though they might easily be multiplied. About twelve years ago, a series of queries was sent to all the parish schools, containing, among many others, the following,—"Do children attend the school without reference to the religious persuasion of their parents?" and, as quoted by Lord Melgund, out of 924 answers, 915 were in the affirmative.—(Remarks, p. 27.) "It is but justice to the present teachers," said the Rev. Dr Taylor of the Secession Church to the House of Lords' Committee, in 1848, (Remarks, p. 34,) "to say that, as far as my knowledge goes, they do not generally attempt to proselytise or interfere with the religious opinions of the children." Mr John Gibson, the Government inspector, states, that not only the children of orthodox Dissenters, but even Roman Catholic children, find these schools non-sectarian. "Roman Catholic children (he says) have been wont to attend the schools of the Church of Scotland in the Highlands and Islands. This they seem to have done in consequence of the manner in which these schools have been conducted in reference to the Roman Catholic population."—(Remarks, p. 32.) With respect, indeed, to the great body of dissenters from the Established Church, there can be no difficulty. The Catechism taught in the parish schools, and, with the exception of the Bible, the only textbook insisted upon by the church, is a religious standard acknowledged by them all, and is taught almost as generally in the non-parochial as in the parochial schools.

Our answer to Lord Melgund's principal reason for a fundamental revisal of this the present parochial school system of Scotland is, that that reason is founded on a great delusion. The reason may be thus stated, that while the parish schools, however useful as far as they go, are confessedly inadequate to the increased population, their present constitution stands in the way of the introduction into Scotland of a general system of national education.—(See Remarks, p. 35 and passim.)

It may be here noticed, in passing, that rather more than enough is perhaps sometimes said as to the inadequacy of the provision for education made in the parish schools. The population has certainly enormously increased since 1696; but so has the wealth of the country, and so also, along with the power, has the desire increased, of compensating, by voluntary efforts, for the growing disproportion between the legal provision and the actual wants of the people in regard to education. In a great measure, the parish schools continue to serve efficiently some of the main purposes contemplated in their institution. In a great measure, they still afford a legal provision for education, as far as legal provision is absolutely necessary.[18]

That a strictly national system of education is on many accounts desirable, no one will doubt, any more than that the connexion between the parish schools and the National Church is, in the present state of opinion in the country, an insuperable obstacle to any such material extension of the present machinery, as would constitute a strictly national educational system. But whether the necessity or propriety [574]of an alteration of the present system be an inference from these premises is a different question. Our answer to Lord Melgund here is, that to remove the parish schools from the superintendence of the Church would not have the smallest effect in facilitating arrangements for the purpose which Lord Melgund and others profess—doubtless, sincerely—to have so much at heart, and that, upon the whole, a national system of education for Scotland, of a more general description than the one already in operation, is, at least in present circumstances, wholly impracticable on any conditions or terms, after any fashion, or mode, or plan whatsoever. It is right that this should be distinctly understood. If Lord Melgund believes that the only or even the principal difficulty in the way of his utopian scheme of a strictly national system for this country, which shall unite all sects and parties, is the connexion between the parish school and the parish church, he must be extremely ignorant of the state of public opinion in Scotland, where, in fact, any such scheme is, on every account, notoriously out of the question.

Whether, with all its defects, the present system is not better than no system at all, is therefore a question deserving the serious consideration even of those who are most inimical to it. We would venture here to suggest, that if the existing system is to be interfered with, that interference should not at least be attempted until a strictly national substitute for it has been actually agreed upon. But it is vain to talk thus. The education system of 1696, already established, to which the people have long been habituated, and whose value they have had the best means of appreciating, is the only approximation to a national system which would now be tolerated for a moment, and, if it were set aside, could not be replaced by any other.

In the first place, the Church herself would not consent to any scheme which deprived her of her present securities for the "godly upbringing" of the children of her own communion. Abolish in the parish schools the tests and rights of supervision which she now possesses, and she must seek, in schools raised by voluntary contribution, the means of carrying out her principles on the subject of education.

It is equally well known, that neither would the dissenters agree among themselves as to a national system of education. Of these members of the community, a large proportion would object to any system which excluded the Bible and the Shorter Catechism from the schools; and another large proportion—all who are voluntaries—would be equally bound, on their own principles, to oppose any plan which did NOT exclude the Bible and the Shorter Catechism—the latter class holding that the state cannot, without sin, interfere in any way in the religious instruction of the people, as strongly as the former class holds such interference to be the duty of the state. But this is not all. Thus, for instance, the Free seceders have shown, in the most unequivocal manner, that their objection is not only to the parish schools, as at present organised, but to all schools not under their own special superintendence.

What the views of the present rate-payers would be remains to be seen. The endowment of the parish schools cannot be called national. It comes exclusively out of the pockets of the landed gentry and other heritors of the country, who, as far as we are aware, have never as a class expressed any dissatisfaction with its present application, or any wish to interfere at all with the general ecclesiastical system with which it is connected. How far their concurrence to a radical alteration in the appropriation of funds, for which they originally consented to assess themselves on specified conditions, could be secured, we do not know; but we have strong suspicions that not the least of the difficulties would arise from this quarter, which is not usually taken into account. In short, let the question be put to the test. Propose a substitute for the enactment of 1696. Draw up a bill in which the details of a workable national system of education are intelligibly set forth, and let that system be what it will, liberal or illiberal, exclusive or catholic—a system in which all sects are endowed, as in many of the German states, or from which all religious instruction is[575] excluded, as in America—let it be the wisest, most comprehensive, most flexible scheme ever devised—and see the result: see whether the true difficulty in setting in motion a more extended and more strictly national system of education than at present exists, lies in the connexion between the parish schools and the Established Church, which an act of parliament might remedy any day, or in causes which no strong-handed measure of the legislature can reach—in the irremediable differences of opinion on the subject of education, and on the subject of religion, and on the subject of national endowments, prevalent at this day in Scotland, to a degree, and with complications, perhaps, nowhere else to be found in the world.

We consider it unnecessary to say anything as to the only other reason alleged by Lord Melgund for an interference with the present management of the parish schools—namely, the practical injustice suffered by dissenters from the Established Church, by the exclusive character of that management. We almost hope we misinterpret his lordship's statement, in attributing to him an objection which is nowhere announced in explicit terms, but which seems to us to be not the less obviously suggested. The objection, however, is a common one. Thus, as quoted by Lord Melgund himself, the Rev. Dr Taylor stated before the Lords' Committee, that the "Dissenters desired the reform of the parish schools less on account of the education of the children, than to open a field of employment for persons who wish to be schoolmasters, and are members of congregations not belonging to the Established Church;" and that "Dissenters consider it a grievance, or badge of inferiority, and an act of injustice, that they should be excluded from holding office in schools which are national institutions."

We think it needless to enter upon this topic, for if the reason here alleged be valid as against the parish schools, it is also valid as against the parish churches—against, in a word, the whole system of the national religious Establishment; and we trust that the time is not yet come when the propriety of overthrowing that institution, and—for all must stand or fall together—those of the sister kingdoms, admits of serious discussion. It is worthy of notice, however, in passing, not only that such is at bottom the true state of the question, but that, with almost the whole of the advocates of a change, it is acknowledged to be so; and that that change, like the similar proposed innovations in the universities, and like the Lord Advocate's Marriage and Registration Bills, is mainly desired, when desired at all, as an important step towards the gradual accomplishment of an ulterior object, which it is not yet expedient to seek by open and straightforward means.

Before concluding this protest against the sweeping measures proposed by Lord Melgund and the party which he represents, it is right to take some notice of another question. Is the school system of Scotland incapable of any alteration whatever for the better? Granting that its fundamental principles ought to remain intact, may it not, and should it not, be rendered more efficient in the details of its administration, by the aid of the legislature?

One matter of detail which has been often pointed out as calling for legislative interference, is the difficulty, under the present law, of relieving parishes from the burden of incompetent schoolmasters, and particularly of schoolmasters who have become unfit for their duties by age or infirmity. Unhappily there are no retiring allowances provided in the parochial school system of Scotland. The consequence is, that it depends upon the mere liberality of the heritors—who however, to their honour, are seldom found wanting in such cases—whether a man who has outlived his usefulness shall continue to exercise his functions. For this evil it is very desirable that the obvious remedy should be furnished; and we think that there are no insurmountable practical difficulties to arrangements on the subject being carried into effect. It might also be proper to give greater facilities to presbyteries in dismissing teachers for wilful neglect of duty—a contingency which it is right to mention is both of very rare occurrence, and is best provided against by care in the selection, on[576] the part of the heritors, and in the rigorous exercise by presbyteries of their large powers of examination and rejection, when the appointments are originally made.

With regard to the existing salaries, their inadequacy has been already insisted upon. Nor, for many reasons, can we accept the recently propounded—if it can be said to be propounded, for its terms are not a little ambiguous—plan of the Privy Council's Committee for their augmentation as any remedy whatever. That plan—not to speak of more serious objections to it—includes certain conditions which are so framed, as practically to exclude from participation in the grant all parishes except the wealthiest and most liberal, which, of course, least need it. It is enough to mention here, that one of the conditions on which this grant, in every case, depends, is the voluntary concurrence of the heritors themselves in the payment of a considerable proportion of any addition to the present salary. We, of course, wish, that eventually some truly practicable means may be adopted to secure for the parish schoolmasters, throughout the country, allowances more in proportion than their present pittances to the importance—which can hardly be overrated—of their duties, and, we may add, to their merits.

These matters of detail admit, we repeat, of improvement. It is desirable that something should be done in the case of both. Better, however, a hundredfold, that things should remain altogether as they are, than that the principles lying at the foundation of the system should be shaken. It is to be hoped that the Church will be true to herself in regard to the question of pecuniary aid either from government, or by government legislation; refusing for its sake to compromise in the least degree her sacred rights—or let us rather call them her sacred duties—of superintendence; Better to be poor than not pure.

One word more. Alarming as is the proposal of the member for Greenock, we have to state, with great regret, that it does no more than confirm apprehensions for the safety of a system hitherto found to work well, which have been awakened by actual proceedings already adopted. It is impossible that any one can have watched the gradual development of the plan, in regard particularly, though not exclusively, to Scotland, of that anomalous board, the Privy Council's Committee on Education, without being persuaded that they are, we do not say intended, but, at least, most nicely adapted to the eventual attainment of the very same object which Lord Melgund would accomplish per saltum. The every-day increasing claims of the Board to a right of interference with the internal management of all schools, its assumption of apparently unlimited legislative powers, and its continual indications of special hostility to the parochial school system, constitute an ominous combination of unfavourable circumstances. Even in the act of ostensibly aiding, it is secretly undermining that system. It is not only weakening its efficiency by the encouragement of rival schools—rival in the strictest sense of the term—but, by its grants to the parish schools themselves, on the conditions now exacted, it is purchasing the power, and preparing the way, for an eventual absorption of these schools in a comprehensive system to be under its own exclusive control, and to be regulated by principles at direct variance with those under the influence of which, in the schools of Scotland, have been for nearly two centuries brought up a people—we may say it with some pride—not behind any other in intelligence, or in moral and religious worth.

ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS.[19]

It were a worthy and novel undertaking for a man of science, enterprise, and letters, to explore and describe in succession the most celebrated of the earth's mountains. And we know of no person better fitted for such a task, and likely to accomplish it with more honour to himself and advantage to the world, than the persevering traveller and able writer, the title of whose latest work heads this page. Has he allotted himself that task? We cannot say; but what he has already done looks like its commencement, and he has time before him to follow the path upon which he has so successfully and creditably entered. In Dr Moritz Wagner we have an instance of a strong natural bent forcing its way in defiance of obstacles. Compelled by the pressure of peculiar circumstances to abandon his academical studies at Augsburg before they were completed, and to devote himself to commercial pursuits, he entered a merchant's house at Marseilles. Business took him to Algiers, and his visit to that country, then in the early years of French occupation, roused beyond the possibility of restraint the ardent thirst for travel and knowledge which had always been one of his characteristics. Abandoning trade, he returned to Germany and devoted himself to the study of natural history, and especially to that of zoology, which he had cultivated in his youth. In 1836, being then in his twenty-ninth year, he started from Paris for Algeria, where he travelled for two years, sharing, in the capacity of member of a scientific commission, in the second and successful expedition to Constantina. It is a peculiarity, and we esteem it laudable, of many German travellers of the more reflective and scientific class, that they do not rush into type before the dust of the journey is shaken from their feet, but take time to digest and elaborate the history of their researches. Thus it was not until three years after his return to Europe, that Dr Wagner sent forth from his studious retirement at Augsburg an account of his African experiences, in a book which still keeps the place it at once took as the best upon that subject in the German language.[20] The work had not long been issued to the public, when its author again girded himself for the road. This time his footsteps were turned eastwards; Asia was his goal: he passed three busy and active years in Turkey and Russia, Circassia and Armenia. The strictly scientific results of this long period of observant travel and diligent research are reserved for a great work, now upon the anvil. To the general reader Dr Wagner addressed, a few months ago, two volumes of remarkable spirit and interest, which we recently noticed; and he now comes forward with a third, in its way equally able and attractive. The apparent analogy between the subjects of the two books, as treating of contiguous countries and nations, but slightly cloaks their real contrast. The two mountain ranges, whose world-renowned names figure on their title-pages, are, although geographically adjacent to each other, as far apart as the antipodes in their history and associations, and in the character of their inhabitants. Of the one the traditions are biblical, of the other pagan and mythological. Upon a crag of Caucasus Prometheus howls, and Medea culls poison at its base; upon Ararat's summit the ark reposes, and Noah, stepping forth upon the soaked and steaming earth, founds the village of Arguri, and plants the first vine in its valley. In modern days the contrast is not less striking. Amongst the Caucasian cliffs the rattle of musketry, the howl of warlike [578]fanatics, the glitter of Mahomedan mail, the charging hoofs of chivalrous squadrons, the wave of rich robes and the gleam of costly weapons purchased with the flesh and blood of Circassia's comely daughters. "Curse upon the Muscovite! Freedom or death!" is here the cry. Upon Ararat's skirts how different the scene and sounds! Cloisters and churches, monks and bishops, precious relics and sainted sites, the monotonous chant of priests and the prayer-bell's musical clang, the holy well of Jacob and the vestiges of Noah's floating caravan.[21] Dr Wagner esteems his journey to Armenia one of the most interesting episodes of his three years' Asiatic wanderings. In the preface to its record, he pays a handsome and well-deserved tribute to the enterprise of English travellers—to the names of Ker Porter, Wilbraham, Fraser, Hamilton, Ainsworth, and many others—who have contributed more, he says, to our geographical knowledge of Asia, than the learned travellers of all the other nations of Europe. He himself, he modestly and truly intimates, has added in the present volume to the store of information.

On Ararat, as in many other places, tradition and science disagree. Diluvial traces are sought there in vain. On the other hand, evidences of volcanic devastation on every side abound; and a wish to investigate this, and to ascertain the details of the subterranean commotion that had destroyed Arguri three years previously, was one of the principal motives of Dr Wagner's visit to Armenia. Towards the middle of May he started from Tefflis, the most important town of the Russian trans-Caucasian provinces, accompanied by Abowian, a well-educated Armenian and accomplished linguist, and attended by Ivan, the doctor's Cossack, a sharp fellow, and a faithful servant after his kind, but, like all his countrymen, an inveterate thief. Their vehicle was a Russian telega, or posting carriage, springless, and a perfect bone-setter on the indifferent roads of Armenia. They travelled in company with that well-known original and indefatigable traveller, General Baron Von Hallberg,[22] of whose appearance, and of the sensation it excited in the streets of Erivan, Dr Wagner gives an amusing account:—

At Pipis, the chief town of a circle, and residence of its captain, Dr Wagner was struck by the appearance of a handsome modern building; and soon he learned, to his astonishment, that it was a district-school erected by the former governor, General Von Rosen. A school in this wild district, scantily peopled with rude Tartars and Armenians, seemed as much out of place as a circulating library in an Ojibbeway village. He proceeded forthwith to visit the seminary, whose folding-doors stood invitingly open. The spacious halls were unfurnished and untenanted; over the mouldy walls spiders spread their webs with impunity; the air was damp, the windows were broken, and a great lizard scuttled out of sight upon the traveller's intrusion. There were neither benches nor desks, teachers nor pupils. Nor had there ever been any of these, said a Cossack lieutenant, whose horses were feeding in the court-yard. The school-house was a mere impromptu in honour of the Russian emperor. In many countries, when the sovereign travels, his progress is celebrated by triumphal arches, garlands, and illuminations. In Russia it is different. Nicholas is known to prefer use to ornament, and when he visits the remote provinces of his vast dominions, his lieutenants and governors strain their ingenuity to make him credit the advance of civilisation and the prosperity of his subjects. The property-men are set to work, and edifices spring up, more solid, but, at present, scarcely more useful than the pasteboard mansions on a theatrical stage. On his approach to Tefflis, the school was run up in all haste, and plans and schemes were shown for the education of Tartar and Armenian. Languages and every branch of knowledge were[580] to be taught, and money was to be given to the people to induce them to send their children to the hall of learning. "The project was splendid," said the Cossack officer to Dr Wagner, "but there the matter rested. No sooner had the Emperor seen the school-house, and expressed his satisfaction, than the hands of masons and carpenters seemed suddenly crippled. Not another ruble reached Pipis for the prosecution of the philanthropical work, the architect took himself off, and we took possession of the empty house. The court-yard is convenient for our horses, and in the hot summer days my Cossacks find pleasant lying in the large cool halls." Not all the acuteness, foresight, and far-sightedness, and many kingly qualities, which combine to render Nicholas the most remarkable of existing monarchs, can protect from such impositions as this the sovereign of so extensive a country as Russia. In vain may the czar, indefatigable upon the road, visit the remotest corners of his dominions; unless he do so incognito, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, he will still be cheated. The governing part of the population, the civil and military officials, conspire to deceive him; and the governed dare not reveal the truth, for their masters have abundant means at their disposal to punish an indiscretion. "Life is delightful in this country," said Mr Ivanoff, a Russian district overseer in Armenia, as he reclined upon his divan, wrapped in a silken caftan, sipping coffee and smoking a cigar; "how absurd of people in Russia to look upon Caucasus as a murder-hole, and to pity those who have to cross it, as if they were going straight to purgatory! I reckon one vegetates here very endurably, and he who complains is either an ass, a rascal, or a liar. You see, my house is tolerably comfortable, my table not bad: I have four-and-twenty saddle-horses in my stable, superb beasts, fit for a prince's stud, and to crown all, I am loved and honoured by the twenty thousand human beings over whom I rule as the sardar's representative." Ivanoff's frank avowal of his satisfaction contrasted with the hypocritical complaints of many of his colleagues, who, whilst filling their pockets and consuming the fat of the land, affect to consider residence in trans-Caucasus the most cruel of inflictions. "Truly," says Dr Wagner, "nothing was wanting to the comfort of life in Mr Ivanoff's dwelling: convenient furniture, a capital kitchen, wine from France, cigars from the Havannah, horses of the best breeds of Arabia, Persia, and Turkistan—all these things have their value, and yet, to procure them, Mr Ivanoff had a salary of only six hundred paper rubles, (about six-and-twenty pounds sterling!) He had a tolerably pretty wife, on whom he doated, and to whom he brought all manner of presents whenever he returned from the Erivan bazaar, which he visited generally once a-week. Trinkets and silken stuffs and rich carpets—whatever, in short, the little woman fancied—she at once got, and if not to be had at Erivan, it was written for to Tefflis.... When Ivanoff rode forth in his official capacity, it was with a following of twenty horsemen, all belonging to his household, and with a banner waving before him. What a life! comfort, riches, oriental pomp, and despotic power! Who would not be chief of a Russian district in Armenia?" All this upon ten shillings a-week! It was more astounding even than the school-house at Pipis. Abowian, as yet inexperienced in Russian ways, regarded the riddle as unsolvable. Ivanoff confessed he had nothing beside his salary. How then did he maintain this princely existence? He assured the travellers he was beloved by his people, and the Armenian peasants confirmed the assurance. Extortion and violent plunder could not therefore be the means employed. It was not till some days later, and in another district, that Dr Wagner elucidated the mystery. He saw a long procession of Armenian and Tartar peasants proceeding to the house of Ivanoff's official brother. They were gift-laden; one led a horse, another a sheep, a third dragged a stately goat by the horns, and forced the bearded mountaineer to kneel before the Russian's corpulent wife, who received the animals, the eggs, milk, cakes, and other offerings, as well in coin as in kind, quite as matter of course. Nay, she even looked sour and sulky, as though the[581] tribute were scanty; and Dr Wagner, who was an unobserved witness of the scene, heard her say to the leader of the deputation, (probably the mayor of some Armenian village:) "Think yourselves lucky to get off so cheaply, for if it were known that the tschuma is amongst you!..." The shrewd doctor caught at this menacing phrase, as a possible key to what had so greatly puzzled him. The meaning of the Russian word tschuma, which, upon the man to whom it was addressed, seemed to have the effect of a thunderbolt, being unknown to him, he inquired it of his companion. Tschuma means the PLAGUE. This frightful disease the governor of the trans-Caucasian provinces, stimulated by stringent orders from St Petersburg, makes it his constant effort to extirpate at any price from the territory under his rule. Let a district-overseer report a village infected, and forthwith it is placed in the most rigid quarantine by means of a circle of Cossack pickets; for months the unlucky inhabitants are deprived of communication with the surrounding country; their agriculture is suspended, their crops rot in the ground, and they lack the necessaries of life. All their clothes, bedding, blankets, everything capable of conveying infection, are burned without reserve, and the compensation allowed does not repay a tithe of the loss. Hence the terrible power of the district overseer: a word suffices; he will declare the village infected! The first death from fever, or any other endemic, furnishes him with a pretext. At the least threat of this nature, the peasants, apprehending ruin, hasten to sacrifice part of their substance, and to avert the evil by gifts to the great man, who is maintained in opulence and luxury by these illegitimate imposts. Here was the secret of Ivanoff's five-and-twenty horses and other little comforts. Nevertheless he was liked in the country, for he did not over-drive the willing brute he lived upon, neither did he hoard like his colleagues, but spent his money freely and generously. And the poor peasants brought him their contributions unasked and almost gladly, eager to keep him in good humour, and fearful of changing him for a severer task-master. Suppose Czar Nicholas on a visit to his Armenian provinces, and how can it be expected that the poor ignorant wretches who offer up their sheep and chickens as ransom from the plague-spot, will dare carry to his august feet a complaint against their tyrants? They may have heard of his justice, and feel confidence in it—for it is well known that the emperor is prompt and terrible in his chastisement of oppressive and unjust officials, when he can detect them—and yet they will hesitate to risk greater evils by trying to get rid of those that already afflict them. The esprit-de-corps of Russian employés is notorious, and a disgraced governor or overseer may generally reckon pretty confidently on his successor for vengeance upon those who denounced him. The corruption, according to Dr Wagner, extends to the very highest; and men of rank and birth, princes and general officers, are no more exempt from it than the understrapper with a few hundred rubles per annum. "One crow does not pick out another's eyes," says the German proverb. But in spite of his officers' cunning and caution, the emperor can hardly visit his distant provinces without detecting abuses and getting rid of illusions. One of these was dispelled when he, for the first time, beheld, upon his journey to Russian Armenia in 1837, the much-vaunted fortifications of Erivan's citadel. Count Paskewitch's pompous bulletins had led him to expect something very different from the feeble walls, composed of volcanic stones, loosely cemented with mud and straw, upon whose conqueror a proud title had been bestowed. The result of all the emperor's observations at that time had great influence—so says Dr Wagner—upon his subsequent policy. His love of peace, and his moderation with respect to Asiatic conquest, were confirmed by the impression he then received. Of this the doctor was assured by many well-informed and trustworthy persons in the trans-Caucasus. "This country needs much improvement," said Nicholas to a high official who accompanied him through the monotonous, thinly-peopled, and scantily-tilled wildernesses, and through the indigent towns and villages of Armenia. His desire for conquest was cooled, and his wish to consolidate[582] and improve what he already possessed was strengthened tenfold. Everywhere upon the south-eastern frontier of Russia Dr Wagner traced evidence of this latter feeling. But he also beheld forts on a scale and of a construction hinting offensive as well as defensive projects on the part of their builder. One of them was in process of erection at Erivan, to replace the crazy edifice already referred to. In 1843, the progress of the works was slow, for another expensive citadel was building on the Turkish frontier, and it was desirable to limit the annual outlay for this item. And a hostile demonstration against Russia, from Persians beyond the river Araxes, was the last thing to be apprehended.

The appearance of the forts in question gives a show of reason to Dr Wagner's prognostications. Gumri—or Alexandropol, as the Russians have re-baptised the contiguous town—is built on a rocky eminence, whose crags serve it in some measure for walls. It contains barracks, case-mates, storehouses, and hospitals, all as strong as they are spacious, and which could be defended as detached citadels, supposing an enemy to have mastered the walls and rocky out-works. It is adapted for an army of sixty thousand men, and is so roomy, that in case of a sudden inroad of the Pasha of Kars—who, if war broke out, could probably bring an army to the river Arpatschai before the Russians could assemble one at Tefflis, and march to the frontier—not only the whole population of Alexandropol, (in 1843 about 6000 souls,) but the entire peasantry of the surrounding country would find shelter within its walls. Its natural and artificial strength is so great, that a small garrison might laugh at the attacks of Turks and Persians.

Such speculations as these, proceeding from a man who has travelled, with slow step and observant eye, every inch of the ground to which he refers, and to whom a clear head, reflective habits, and much communion with the people of the country, have given peculiar facilities for the formation of a sound judgment, are of high interest and value. Dr Wagner is no dogmatist, but a close and candid reasoner, abounding in facts to support what he advances, and having at his fingers' ends all that has been written not only in his own country, but in England and elsewhere, on the subject of Russia and her emperor, of her policy and her eastern neighbours. And it is to the credit of his impartiality that his writings afford no clue to his own political[583] predilections. He stigmatises abuses wherever he meets them, and from whatever cause proceeding; but whilst showing due sympathy with the gallant Circassians and long-suffering Armenians, he wholly eschews the insane propagandism so rife in the writings of many of his countrymen. He is evidently not of opinion that autocrat and oppressor are always synonymous, and that absolutism is essentially the worst tyranny.

A preferable site having been found for the new fort of Erivan, the old one was still standing at the period of Dr Wagner's visit. He gives an amusing account of its interior, and especially of the apartments of the ex-sardar, Hussein Khan, whose walls were painted in fresco, an art still quite in its infancy amongst the Persians. The pictures, as might be expected, were rather grotesque than graceful in their execution.

There was considerable license in the subjects of some of the other pictures, one of which was intended to turn the Armenian Christians into ridicule, by representing their priests and bishops in profane society and riotous revel. Amongst the portraits, one of the last sardar of Erivan represented him with a gloomy and forbidding countenance—an expression which, if true to life, was by no means in conformity with his character.

The sardar's harem has less decoration than the state apartments. Formerly its walls were covered with frescos, mosaic work, and porcelain ornaments of many colours; but since the Russians took possession all these have disappeared, leaving the walls bare and white. During the czar's short stay at Erivan, he inhabited one of these rooms, and wrote, with his own hand, in firm, well-formed characters, his name upon the wall. The signature is now framed and glazed. In many houses where the emperor passed a night, when upon his travels, he left a similar memento of his presence, sometimes adding a few friendly words for his host.

From Erivan Dr Wagner started for the far-famed Armenian convent of Eshmiadzini; his journey enlivened, or at least saved from complete monotony, by the eccentricities of his Cossack attendant. Ivan, warmed by a glass of wodha, and no way affected by the jolting, which to his[584] master was martyrdom, basked in the morning sun, and chanted a ditty of the Don, from time to time turning round his mustached physiognomy, and looking at the doctor as for applause. An active, cunning fellow, with a marvellous facility for making himself understood, even by people of whose language he knew not a syllable, Dr Wagner was, upon the whole, well contented with him, although utterly unable to break him of stealing. He never left his night's quarters without booty of some kind, although his master always warned the host to keep a sharp eye upon his fingers. But when anything was to be pilfered, the Don-Cossack's sleight of hand threw into the shade that of the renowned Houdin himself. Even from the wretched Jesides, who have scarcely anything to call their own, he carried off a pot of buttermilk rather than depart empty-handed.

The doctor pardoned his servant's peculations more easily than his blunders—one of which, that occurred upon the road to Erivan, was certainly provoking enough to so eager a naturalist. On the lonely banks of a canal, apparently the work of nature rather than of man, (although local traditions maintain the contrary,) one of the outlets of the alpine lake of Chenk-sha, or Blue Water, Dr Wagner encountered some Armenian anglers, who had secured a rich store of extremely curious fish. He purchased a dozen specimens, and on arriving at the next posting station, he bade his Cossack put them in a leathern bottle of spirits of wine, whilst he himself, armed with the geological hammer, availed himself of the short halt to explore some adjacent rocks. On his return, he found Ivan hard at work executing his orders, in obedience to which this Fair-service from the Don had duly immersed the icthyological curiosities in alcohol, but had previously cut them in pieces, "in order that on arriving at Erivan, they might taste more strongly of the pickle."

Eshmiadzini is about fifteen miles from Erivan, across the plain of the Araxes, a monotonous stony flat, offering little worthy of note. Dr Wagner had expected, in the church and residence of the chief of the Armenian Christians, a stately and imposing edifice, something after the fashion of Strassburg cathedral; and he wondered greatly not to behold its turrets or spire rising in the distance long before he came within sound of its bells. In this, as in various other instances during his travels, by indulging his imagination, he stored up for himself a disappointment. A clumsy stunted dome, a mud-walled convent, ugly environs, a miserable village, black pigs wallowing in a pool of mud—such was the scene that met his disgusted vision. The people were worthy of the place, but from them he had not expected much. He had seen enough of the Armenian priesthood at Tefflis, in Constantinople, and elsewhere, to appreciate them at their just value. Some dirty, stupid-looking monks lounged about the convent entrance, gossiping and vermin-hunting. The travellers were conducted into a large room, where the archbishops held their conclaves. Five of these dignitaries were seated at a long table, dressed in blue robes with loose sleeves, and with cowls over their heads. The one in a red velvet arm-chair, at the head of the table, represented the absent patriarch. He was a handsome man, with an imposing beard, of which he was very vain. Laying his hand upon his heart, with an assumption of great dignity, he addressed a few words of flattering welcome to Dr Wagner, of whose coming he had been forewarned by[585] the Russian general Neidhardt. "We have long expected you," he said. "The whole of our clergy rejoice to welcome within their walls a man of your merit and reputation." The compliment, although laconic, was not ill turned, but it was thoroughly insincere. An eruption of Ararat, or a troop of Kurdish robbers at their gates, were scarcely a more unwelcome sight to the reverend inmates of Eshmiadzini than is the arrival of a literary traveller. They well know that little good can be written about them, and that even Parrot, habitually so lenient in his judgments, gave but an unflattering sketch of the Armenian priesthood. European learning is an evil odour in their nostrils, and naturalists, especially, they look upon as freethinkers and unbelievers, condemned beyond redemption to an eternal penalty. Moreover, the holy fraternity are accustomed to measure the importance of their visitors by the Russian standard of military rank and decorations, and Dr Wagner's plain coat excited not their respect. With wondering eyes they examined the unassuming stranger, and asked each other in whispers how the governor-general could possibly have taken the trouble to announce the advent of an individual without epaulets or embroidered uniform, without tschin or orders. "When I at last left the room, to visit the church and other buildings, Archbishop Barsech (the patriarch's substitute) accompanied me, and seemed disposed to act as my cicerone, but suddenly bethinking himself, he deemed it perhaps beneath his dignity, for he hastily retired. I was escorted by an archimandrite, and Abowian by a young Russian official. Barsech's absence was doubly agreeable to me, as permitting me to examine at leisure all parts of the convent, and to ask many questions which the patriarch's reverend vicar might have deemed scarcely becoming."

The attention of the various English travellers who have written about Armenia has been chiefly directed to its southern portion, to the regions adjacent to the great alpine lakes of Urmia and Van. The northern parts of Upper Armenia, north of Mount Ararat, and adjacent to Caucasus, have received the notice of several French and German writers. But most of these took travellers' license to embellish the places they wrote about; or else the change for the worse since their visits, now of rather ancient date, has been most grievous. In the second half of the seventeenth century, three Frenchmen, Tavernier, Chardin, and Tournefort, gave glowing accounts of the prosperity and opulence of Eshmiadzini. At the time of Tavernier's visit, (1655,) large caravans of traders and merchandise were frequently upon the road, bringing wealth to the country and numerous pilgrims to the church, many of these being opulent Armenian merchants, whose generous offerings enriched the shrine. Tavernier was astonished at the treasures of Eshmiadzini, which apparently had then not suffered from the spoliating attacks of Turks and Persians. The church was fitted up with the utmost luxury, and the conventual life was not without its pleasures and diversions, relieving the wearisome monotony that now characterises it. In honour of Monsieur Tavernier and of his travelling companions, the Christian merchants of the caravan, the patriarch gave a grand bull-fight, in which eight bulls were exhibited and two killed. Tournefort wrote in raptures of the fertility and excellent cultivation of the environs of the convent, dividing his praise between the rich adornments of the church and the blooming parterres of the garden, and winding up by declaring Eshmiadzini a picture of paradise. Dr Wagner, who, before visiting a country, makes a point of reading all that has been written of it, had perused these glowing descriptions, and was duly disappointed in consequence.

The church of Eshmiadzini is rich in monkish legends and precious relics. It contains an altar, through which is a passage into subterranean excavations, and which stands on the exact spot where the Saviour is said to have appeared to St Gregory, armed with a club, and to have hurled the heathen gods and evil spirits into the chasm. To this day, when, as often happens, the wind whistles through the vaults, the bigoted and ignorant monks believe they hear the howling of the tortured demons. Eshmiadzini's relics are renowned far and wide amongst the scattered Armenian congregations of the East.

The first stone of the church of Eshmiadzini was laid by St Gregory in the year 302, since which date it has frequently been partially restored, and more than once entirely rebuilt, and now exhibits a very motley architecture. The convent library would doubtless afford an Armenian scholar much curious information concerning its history. This library long lay in dusty heaps in a dark hole, probably to protect it from the Vandalic outrage of Persian, Kurd, and Turkish plunderers. When Erivan was annexed to Russia, and law restored to the land, a room was cleared for it, and a good many volumes were ranged upon shelves; but a large number, Dr Wagner informs us, still are heaped in frightful disorder upon the floor. At the time of his visit, the confusion in this celebrated library was as great as if French marauders had had the run of it.

Well might the vicegerent of the[587] Armenian pope—which the Catholicos in fact is, although his title is improperly rendered by foreigners as patriarch—and his brother archbishops, feel misgivings at sight of the quiet-looking German, who replied to their welcome by a gravely ironical compliment on their many virtues and distinguished reputation; and who now, having got them upon paper, draws, quarters, and dissects them with a merciless scalpel. Whatever their previous experience of note-taking travellers, it was insufficient to guard them from imprudence, and they allowed Dr Wagner to witness an examination of the pupils in their clerical seminary. Here proof was quickly elicited of the almost incredible ignorance of scholars and teachers. The oldest lad in the school, which included young men eighteen and twenty years old, was unable to decline the Russian noun matj, (mother,) although, for years past, an archimandrite had officiated as professor of that language. The professor came to the assistance of his embarrassed pupil, (whom Abowian questioned,) and managed to prove beyond possibility of doubt, that he himself did not know the Russian declensions.

The absurd hours kept in the convent doubtless contribute to the unhealthy appearance of these nursling priests. Nothing can be more ridiculous and ill-judged, or more indicative of barbarous stupidity and bigotry, than the system adopted at Eshmiadzini. At one in the morning church-service begins, attended by every one but the patriarch. The archbishops and bishops read prayers and portions of Scripture; the archimandrites, deacons, and seminarists sing. This service lasts from three to four hours, and as every one stands during its whole duration, it is productive of no slight fatigue. On returning to their cells and dormitories, those priests who have private resources take refreshment before retiring to sleep; but the younger portion of the congregation, who have greatest need of such sustenance, are generally penniless, and must wait till ten in the forenoon before obtaining a scanty meal of soup or milk, followed by rice or fish. During the long fasts even the fish is suppressed. To break a fast in Armenia is a most heinous sin, far exceeding theft in enormity. In the day-time, school; in the afternoon and evening, more chanting and praying; then to bed, to be again roused at midnight—such is the joyless wearisome life of the inmates of Eshmiadzini. No study of science or history, no cultivation of the fine arts, varies the monotony of their tedious existence. Instrumental music is unknown amongst them. Whatever contributes to the cheerfulness or elegance of seclusion is rigidly banished and prohibited. "Nowhere," says Dr Wagner, "does an educated European find life so tiresome as amongst Armenian monks, in comparison with whom even Italy's monachism appears genial and agreeable."

The election of the patriarch occurred in April 1843, and Dr Wagner, in Tefflis at the time, had fully intended witnessing the ceremony; but a sudden outbreak of the plague, in the province of Erivan, delayed his visit to Eshmiadzini, as he had no wish to risk a forty days' quarantine before he should be allowed to re-enter Georgia. He gives some account of the ceremony at second-hand, which is less interesting, however, than his narrative of preceding circumstances. The choice of the Gregorian congregations fell upon Narses, archbishop of Kischenew, a prelate noted for piety, intelligence, and patriotism, and so popular, both with priests and[588] laymen, by reason of his mild and amiable character, that he would have been elected ten years previously, on the death of old Jephrem (Ephraim)—the venerable patriarch of whom Parrot and Dubois make mention—but for a serious dispute with Count Paskewitch.

The election here referred to was one of particular significance and importance. There has been no lack of schism in the Armenian church. Ambitious priests and false patriarchs have at various periods started up and found adherents. For several centuries, one of these sham patriarchates had its seat on an island in the lake of Van, and maintained itself independent of the Eshmiadzini synod. These Armenian anti-popes never, however, obtained a very widely-spread influence, and latterly that which they did enjoy sensibly dwindled. "The mother-church of Ararat gradually resumed its undivided authority and privileges, and, in 1843, Eshmiadzini witnessed, what for many years it had not seen, the presence within its walls of deputies from almost all the Gregorian congregations of the East, united at the historical centre of their country for the choice of a spiritual shepherd."

With his usual shrewdness Dr Wagner analyses Russian policy in Armenia, and for a moment dwells admiringly on its depth, foresight, and activity. We have already heard him express his conviction that under the emperor's present moderation, lurk vast designs of future conquest, which he will bequeath as a legacy to his descendants, should time and circumstances prevent their execution by himself. This is the doctor's fixed idea, and he certainly makes out a good case in its support. He has shown us the extensive forts that are to serve as depots and places of muster for the Russian armies, which, according to his theory and belief, will sooner or later assail Turkey and Persia. He now turns to the consideration of the support the Russians may expect beyond their own frontier. He extols the wisdom of the emperor's conduct towards his Armenian subjects, and points out the ulterior advantages to be derived from it by Russia. We shall conclude our article by an extract from this curious chapter of a very interesting book.

The treaty of cession concluded, the Shah did all in his power to discourage the emigration of Armenian Christians into Russian Armenia, and his example was followed by the Porte; but the labour of both was in vain. Permission for such emigration was stipulated by the treaty, and the only real check upon it was mistrust of Russia, whose intolerant reputation made many Armenian priests suspect an intention of proselytising. But Russia, cruel and unsparing to her Roman Catholics, whose spiritual chief is out of the reach of her direct influence, showed herself tolerant and considerate towards the Armenian church, in which she discerned, according to Dr Wagner, a most useful instrument for her projects of future aggrandisement: and, on occasion of the election of 1843, the Russian government particularly insisted that the new patriarch should be named by the voices of all the Armenian congregations in the entire East. Flattered by this invitation to direct co-operation, the Armenian priesthood of Constantinople, who, last of all, still recused the authority of the Eshmiadzini synod, suffered themselves to be won over, and sent their delegates to the convocation. For Russia it was another triumph, for Turkey a fresh vexation.

LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE.[23]

Under the circumstances of the strange anomaly presented by the actual condition of France, which never better deserved its title of a republic without republicans, it may fairly become a matter of speculation, in how much a return to monarchical institutions possesses a degree of probability in the future, and, more especially, how far the principles of legitimacy stand a chance of assuming, hereafter, a supremacy in France. We say "a matter of speculation," in as much as the uncertain must ever remain the presiding genius of the chances of a revolutionary epoch: and, in such times, it would be more than presumption to attempt to prophesy upon a nation's destinies. But still there are signs of the times in France, which are of sufficient importance to be chronicled; curious facts, that cannot but attract attention; and revelations that possess a deep interest—all bearing upon the possible restoration of the exiled prince of the elder branch of the Bourbons; and, as far as regards this eventuality—and who can any more say it shall not be than they can say it shall?—the chances appear not so unequal in the balance held by the hand of fate—they may be considered worthy of notice and comment.

It would be scarcely correct, however, to speak of such a possible eventuality as the realisation of the prospects of a Legitimate party. As a party, properly so called, in the language of political and revolutionary struggle, the legitimists of France can scarcely be said to exist, even although a stanch but small nucleus, professing decidedly legitimist principles, may be found among a certain body of men, chiefly belonging to the old families of France, in private life. During the reign of the Orleans branch, the legitimists gradually dwindled into comparative obscurity—almost every family which professed to entertain legitimist opinions having attached itself, openly or in an underhand manner, to the existing order of things, by means of some one of its members: and even in the present day they have pursued the same line of policy—a policy which wears now, however, a more respectable garb, inasmuch as it is professedly based upon the seemingly patriotic and disinterested maxim, "Français avant tout," which, in declaring the revolution that caused the fall of Louis Philippe the work of the "finger of God," and in accepting a government founded upon a nation's universal suffrage, as preferable to that of a "usurping king," they have adopted as the device of chivalry, to influence every action of their lives in such a juncture. In fact, with this appearance of more straightforward patriotism, they bide their time in faith and patience, and, with a feeling almost allied to superstition, repudiate every idea of political intrigue, much more of any conspiracy against the existing order of things.

But, if this passive position of the old legitimists does not permit them to assume the attitude of a decided party, or even of bearing properly such a designation, it must not be supposed that the cause of legitimacy is dead, or even dormant, in France. Far from it. The present state of legitimacy in France, however, must be studied less among the avowed legitimists, who have long given themselves the name, than in the dispersed and floating elements pervading the mass of the nation. The preference of the great majority of the country for monarchical institutions, or, at all events, its strong anti-revolutionary feeling, and aversion to the republican rule, after the sad experience of much misery and misfortune—and from its despair of the realisation of that "hope deferred," in the restoration of confidence and prosperity, which "maketh [591]the heart sick"—are facts which cannot be denied by any man of unprejudiced feelings and sincere convictions. By degrees, then, feelings have been latterly assuming a form favourable to the cause of legitimacy: and that such sentiments now notoriously exist in the hearts of a great proportion of the country at large can scarcely be disputed. They are based, it is true, in no ways, among the mass, upon any political opinions or philosophical principles—they spring up from a desire of having a "something" at the head of the state which may be the type of stability, and thus the representative of confidence, peace, and restored prosperity: and this "something" is best embodied, in the minds of men, in the person of a young prince, who represents the apparently most stable form of monarchical government—that founded on legitimacy. They arise from no personal attachment to the elder branch of the Bourbons, or to the Duke of Bordeaux individually, but solely from a desire to return to monarchical government, and from the growing conviction that, among the many pretenders to the supreme power in France, were a monarchy to be established, the sole one who presents a firmer hope of stability—who represents a principle, and who thus best offers to be pilot to the terra firma of a "promised land" to those who are still tossing hither and thither upon the waves of revolution, with storms eternally menacing a still more complete shipwreck on the horizon—is he who bases his pretensions upon the long-scouted theory of legitimacy. To this form of hoped-for stability, then, men now begin to attach themselves more and more, in their aspirations for the future; and thus legitimist expectations, predilections, sympathies—call them what you will—grow, increase, spread like a banian tree, which still ever plants its dropping branches, and takes root farther and farther still; and they thus implant themselves more and more, on all sides, on the soil of the revolution. We speak here of a great proportion of men of all classes in France. At the same time, it is very clear that a conviction is daily gaining more ground, that, in the possible or probable revolutionary chances, spite of the popularity of the President in the capital, the prestige more or less attached to his name, and the party supposed to be connected with his interests, the balance chiefly lies between the republic as it is and Henry V. Even the ultra-republicans and Socialists appear to feel this so strongly, that, in a pamphlet entitled "La République ou Henri V.—quelques mots à Bonaparte," a certain Monsieur Pertus, a violent Socialist and adherent of the so-called democratic and social republic, has given, in powerful language, the reasons of the party why the destinies of France may be supposed to lie between these two alternatives only, and why Louis Napoleon, should he put forward his pretensions to an ultimate permanency of power, would probably meet with an utter defeat from the nation at large. The immediate interests of the younger Bourbon branch are entirely set out of sight in the political combinations upon which men speculate in France: adherents they have none: they exist not in men's minds, much less in their hearts: they are never spoken of.

It is evident, then, to every observing eye, that the cause of legitimacy is daily gaining ground in France; although it must be admitted that, with all this, attachment to the person of the exiled prince of the elder branch of the Bourbons, to the family, or even to legitimist principles in theory, has as yet had little to do. But that even this personal attachment has been growing gradually and steadily in men's minds, as a natural consequence, may also be seen. To this latter feeling two men have contributed by their writings—the one a friend, the other an avowed enemy to the ancient dynasty—and perhaps the latter far the most powerfully. The strange circumstances, which have produced results that may have a powerful influence on the future destinies of the country, are worthy of record. A singular fate has been attached to the two small books here alluded to, more especially in the case of that written by a stanch republican, naturally hostile to monarchies and princes; and, on that account, although it is posterior in date of publication,[592] it may be as well first to direct our attention to this latter.

In sight of the struggle, which is continually going on in newspapers, pamphlets, printed notices, and every other form of publication, between the Socialists and Red-Republicans on the one hand, and the "friends of order" on the other—a struggle carried on by the former not only with the utmost violence and virulence, but with every most desperate weapon of calumny, falsehood, distorted fact, and perverted reasoning—in sight of the propagandising efforts, made by these same men, to demoralise and debauch the army from its allegiance to the country by every underhand corrupting poison—it is quite "refreshing" to the spirit, to use a hackneyed phrase, to greet a few words of conviction in favour of those considered the enemies of the republic, penned, in spite of previous prepossessions and firm opinions, by an honest-hearted republican. To men of real and genuine convictions all honour is due, more especially in the confusion of party intrigue and reckless personal ambition of these revolutionary times, even although they be our adversaries: respect may be shown them, even if they appear to us mistaken. Unhappily, such men seem in France to be but few. But if we find them firm and honest in the expression of their convictions, even when in open opposition to their preconceived notions, and to the direct tendency of their political opinions, a tribute of especial admiration may be given them. And such a tribute may be frankly and willingly bestowed upon M. Charles Didier, for his little book entitled Une visite au Duc de Bordeaux,—a book which has lately excited considerable sensation in France, not so much as a curious historical document, giving a simple but charming account of the life, manners, appearance, and attitude in exile of such prominent historical figures as the Duke of Bordeaux, and that patient and pious victim of revolutions, the Duchess d'Angoulême; but, in the eyes of the legitimists, as a striking refutation of various calumnies attached to the person, as well as the education and opinions of the young prince, and the highest eulogium of their monarch—in the eyes of all, as a "feeler," (in spite of the intentions of the author,) in the obscure chances of the future.

Had not the character of Monsieur Charles Didier stood so high, and had not his almost rough honesty, and perhaps naiveté of nature, been so generally acknowledged by rightly-thinking men, doubts might have been entertained, on the one hand, whether he was really acting in good faith in his character as a republican; had not his talent, discernment, and good sense been sufficiently appreciated in public as well as private life—in his literary and lately political career, as well as among his acquaintances—suspicions might have been excited, on the other, that he had been led into delusions by artful manœuvre. But neither of these suppositions are admissible. Due credit must be given to his good faith in the one respect, and to his enlightenment of mind and clear-sightedness in the other. Such an explanation becomes necessary for a full appreciation of the contents of this remarkable little book. To a French reader it would be needless, for M. Didier is well known.

As has already been said, the sensation produced by this work has been great: and there can be little doubt that the effect which the publication will produce must necessarily have a very considerable influence upon a great portion of the nation, in the present state of France.

Under such circumstances, and with such probable results, which could not but be partly apparent to the author himself, the production of such a book by a well-known, stanch, and honest republican, such as M. Charles Didier, requires some explanation. It was well known among the party that M. Didier had been sent upon a quasi-diplomatic mission to Germany, in the first days of the French revolution; it was afterwards rumoured that, upon some occasion, he had paid a visit to the members of the exiled family of France in their retreat in Austria—and, upon these data, M. Didier became the object of various calumnies and misrepresentations. His enemies declared that he had been sent expressly as a spy upon the ex-royal family. But it was more especially his soi-disant friends and allies, the[593] republicans de la veille, who attached a host of unfounded misrepresentations to the objects and results of his journey. While some attacked him as a traitor, who had betrayed his trust, and deserted his cause, by caballing with the exiled family, others published accounts in their journals, as if emanating from his mouth, which affixed not only the greatest ridicule and scorn to the person and manners of the Duke of Bordeaux, but the hatred and contempt of all "true patriots" to his supposed opinions. It was to refute these calumnies, then, and to deny these perversions of truth, that M. Didier at last found himself reluctantly compelled to publish a simple account of his "Visite au Duc de Bordeaux." He complains, with much naiveté, in a species of preface, that he has been forced to this step, which he himself looks upon as an indiscretion, by his own party, since, although the whole affair appears in his eyes little more than "much ado about nothing," by such means alone, in declaring the whole truth, he can establish simple facts. The very same sentiment, he says—that, probably, of delicacy—which enjoined his silence at first, now, combined with a love of truth, enjoins his giving publicity to an account in which he affirms that all is truth, simple truth, and no more nor less than the truth. It was as a republican that he presented himself, he goes on to say, and as a republican that he was received. In support of his words, although refuting all pretensions to discuss politics, he gives his republican "profession de foi." "I have been thus driven," he continues, "to paint, from nature, an interior of an exiled family, which struck me by its politeness and dignity. Such was the task before me; and I have accomplished it conscientiously, without any regard for persons, and without any sacrifice of opinion. The prestige of rank has exercised no influence on me. I have been simply true." And what has been the result? The supposed friends of M. Didier, the arch-republicans, have forced him, an ardent republican himself—a republican de l'avant-veille, as he calls himself, but genuine and sincere—to forward the cause of legitimacy, to publishing an eulogium, of the most striking description, of the young prince who represents legitimacy in France. Dreamers might almost see the hand of Providence in this result of factious calumny.

It is needless, here, to follow M. Didier into the details of the mission given him by Lamartine, when minister of foreign affairs, of which he explains neither the cause nor the purposes, although he dwells at some length upon the cause of his journey through Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and a part of Germany, and more especially upon the dates of his progress, probably with the intention of refuting the calumny which asserted that he was officially sent as a spy upon the ex-royal family of the elder branch. It may be remarked, however, en passant, that he speaks not over-well of the Austrian revolutionists, with whom he mixed, and that he readily acknowledges the veritable anti-revolutionary spirit of the army and the masses. On the conclusion of his mission, and his return to France by the north of Italy, he heard by chance, on his passage to Trieste, for the first time, he declares, that not far from his road lay the chateau of Frohsdorf, and that this same chateau of Frohsdorf was inhabited by the exiled family of France. It was only many months afterwards, however, when he returned to Germany, for his own pleasure and information, and as "simple voyageur," that having received, by chance, a letter from a friend in Paris for the Duc de Lévis, one of the faithful adherents attached to the little court of the exiled Bourbons, he determined to profit by it, in order to visit Frohsdorf on his way once more from Vienna to the north of Italy. Before commencing the recital of this passage of his journey, M. Didier again deprecates any purpose but that of interest and curiosity, and enters into very minute details, to prove that he made no mystery or concealment of his intention.

It would lead to too great diffuseness also to enter into M. Didier's description (however prettily written) of his journey through Baden, (near Vienna,) Wiener Neustadt; of the deserted and abandoned railroad from thence to Oldenburg in Hungary, on[594] which "the station-houses were closed, the signals motionless, and the grass grew between the rails"—all communication having been cut off on account of the war. The description, however, of the habitation of the exiled family of French princes offers a more lively interest in an historical point of view. We shall quote M. Didier:—

After some conversation, which naturally turned upon the position of France, in which M. Didier was surprised to find the Duc de Levis "si bien au fait des choses et des hommes,"—the Duke quitted him to ask when it would please the Duc de Bordeaux to receive the stranger, and returned shortly to say that it would immediately. The following is curious in the mouth of the republican:—

The most remarkable part of the book, in a political point of view—that, in fact, which has produced in France the sensation already alluded to among all parties—now follows. We must quote M. Didier verbally:—

"There was a sincerity in the words of the young prince," pursues M. Didier, "which brought conviction to the heart."

Although frank and open in speaking of his personal opinions, the Duke of Bordeaux seems to have been very reserved when speaking of men, and he evidently appears to have made M. Didier talk more than he talked himself. Upon this expression of opinions M. Didier makes the following remarks:—

"The Duke of Bordeaux is far from entertaining the principles of Charles X., and, to cite one example, the grandson repudiates all those forms—that etiquette, and that extreme respect paid to the royal person—which played so great a part in the House of Bourbon, and on which the grandfather laid so much stress. He disregards all these pompous inanities, and goes so far in this respect that he is determined, should he ever mount[596] upon the throne of France, to have no court." And further, "The Duke of Bordeaux directs his attention to all the questions of the day; he studies them all thoroughly; he is acquainted with all the theories respecting labour. During his stay in England, he carefully visited its chief manufactories." And again—"Two questions principally occupy his mind—the administrative organisation of France, by the commune, and the social problem of the working classes. On this latter point he appeared to be imbued with social errors, and labouring under illusions. He attributes religious sentiments to the working classes of Paris, which they are far from entertaining, at least in the sense he attached to the words, and is not fully aware of the extent of their repugnance for the drapeau blanc." It must not be forgotten, that M. Didier does not take into account the progress of reactionary ideas in the few last months. M. Didier states, that he told the Prince this bitter truth, and was listened to with calmness and placidity. "He would have made, I am convinced," continues the republican visitor, in a sort of resumé, "an excellent constitutional monarch. The very disposition of his mind, with his natural qualities, seem all adapted to such a government; and his education has been directed with such ideas. Party-spirit represents him as an absolutist; and such he appears to the crowd in the distance of his exile. The truth is, that there is not perhaps in Europe a more sincere constitutionalist than he—I should call him also a religious liberal, without his devotion degenerating, as has been said, into bigotry." He then proceeds with a statement of his conviction in the moderate liberal ideas of the young prince, "which his forefathers might have condemned as those of a political heretic." "Many intrigues," continues the honest republican, "have been set on foot in his name, but I would wager boldly that he is mixed up in none, that he is ignorant of all, would disavow all. As much as his mother (the Duchess of Berri) was fond of adventure, is he averse to anything of the kind. He would not have a drop of blood shed for him. I do not blame him, in this appreciation of his character—quite the contrary; I only mean to say that this merit is not great, perhaps, inasmuch as it is in him a matter of temperament." "He possesses," pursues M. Didier, "good sense, candour, an excessive kindliness of heart, and an uncontrollable, I may say, uncontested natural generosity. He is an honest man, in the full force of the expression." What greater eulogium could the republican pass on his political adversary? The only words of blame which he let fall may be comprised in the following remark. "He seems to want a directing spirit; and perhaps wants resolution. His is a cultivated rather than an inventive mind: he probably conceives more than he creates, and receives more than he gives."

In justice to Monsieur Didier, who might appear to arrogate to himself a degree of discernment which went beyond all probable limits, we must not omit to note his own remarks, when, in another passage, he speaks of his own impressions. "It would be a ridiculous presumption, or very idle to imagine, that I could have captivated the confidence of the prince, or penetrated his secret character. I am far from putting forward so ridiculous a pretension. What was I to him? A stranger; at most a curious visitor. He evidently only said to me just what he wished to say, went only as far as he intended to go, and made me speak more than he spoke himself. I should have wished that it had been the contrary; but I was, of course, not the master of the conversation." And again he says, "God alone reads the heart! To him alone belongs the secret of men's consciences. But still I think I can take upon myself to affirm, that all the words of the prince were sincere."

On the person of the young prince M. Didier has the following—and although there may be, in truth, something of the Lord Burleigh shake of the head in the extreme complication of discernment contained in the first phrase, yet the impression evidently made upon the mind of the republican, by the appearance of the exiled heir of the throne of France, bears none the less the stamp of truthfulness:—"His physiognomy reveals an extreme[597] uprightness of heart and mind, and a lively sentiment of duty and justice, united to a love of all that is good. In person he is of middle stature, and inclined to be stout; but he is far from having that obesity with which he is generally supposed, and I myself believed him, to be afflicted. The fall he had from his horse at Kirchberg, some years ago, has left traces of the accident. He walks heavily, and, when once seated, has difficulty in rising; but they say that he looks well on horseback. He has silky fair hair, and although rather full, and marked with the Bourbon type, his face is agreeable, frank, open, sympathetic, with an air of youth and health—the air, in fact, of his 28 years. He wears a collier de barbe and a slight mustache. His eyes are of a limpid blue, lively and soft at the same time; he listens well, and inquires constantly: he looks at you so straight and fixedly in the face, that I should consider it impossible for any one to look him in the face and lie. As to himself, one look suffices to assure you of his veracity."

The following remarks about the habits of the young prince are not without their historical interest, and complete the eulogium forced from the mouth of the republican. "His life is far from being an idle one; before and after breakfast he reads several letters, several newspapers, and reports, often of a very voluminous description, relative to the different questions which are the order of the day in France; then he gives a few hours of the afternoon to exercise. He scrupulously observes his religious duties, attending divine service two or three times a-week in the chapel of the chateau, and every Sunday at the parish church. He writes with considerable grace, and his letters are remarkable for their correctness and elegance."

Perhaps the most striking, and certainly the most touching, part of the book of M. Charles Didier, is that in which he speaks of the Duchess d'Angoulême. It belongs not exactly to the subject of legitimacy or its prospects in France; but the interest attached to it is so full of pathos, and, in an historical point of view, so considerable, that we cannot refrain from quoting a few words of the author's account of his interview with this remarkable princess.

M. Didier seems to have hesitated about being introduced to the aged duchess. He was naturally scrupulous as to the effect which might be produced upon the mind of this victim of revolutions, by the presentation of one of those republicans, to the very name of whom, the disastrous calamities of her early life must have inspired her with an unconquerable horror. But he was led on by the Duc de Levis, "not without a degree of uneasiness," and his reception by the austere princess, in her plain dark attire, and in her severely simple room, was as amiable as could be expected from one naturally stern, reserved, and cold almost to harshness in manner. M. Didier appears to have been inexpressibly touched by her appearance, as well as by her kindly reception of him. It is thus that he speaks of the poor "orpheline du Temple:"—"All party hatred must be extinguished in the presence of the reverses of fortune she has undergone. I had before me the woman who has suffered what woman never suffered here below, can never suffer again. What matter that she be princess? She is no less the daughter and the sister, thrice proscribed! She belongs no less to a human family. This is certainly the most striking historical figure in Europe. She produced the most profound impression upon me, and I could not conceal the emotion that thrilled through me. My heart was divided betwixt respect and pity. I seemed to see before me one of those victims of fatality, immortalised by antique art. Only Christian resignation has impressed upon the daughter of Louis XVI. a more touching stamp, and raised her on this Christian elevation far above the types of antiquity." What a homage is this, complete as it is pathetic, from the mouth of the descendant of the enemies of her race! The duchess seems to have questioned M. Didier much about that country which he would have imagined she must have abhorred, but which, he tells us, she cherishes with love resembling that of a spaniel to the master whose hand has beaten him. He speaks more than once of her extreme devotion, and indeed of that of the whole[598] group of exiles, to their fatherland. Another trait, which calls for respect and admiration in the aged princess, lies in the moderation and tolerance which M. Didier records of her. "She spoke of France with tact and reserve, made inquiries as to the religious sentiments of the people of Paris, and mentioned, with feelings of admiration, the death of the Archbishop of Paris on the barricades of June. His was the only name of which she proffered mention." And when the conversation was made to turn upon the Orleans branch, now exiled in its turn, she was silent about Louis Philippe, but spoke in kind and affectionate terms of his family, and of the Duchess of Orleans; and when M. Didier addressed her with the words, "It is impossible, Madame, but that you must have seen, in the fall of Louis Philippe, the finger of God," she replied in words characteristic of that type of Christian resignation, "It is in all!" "The answer," pursues the narrator, "was given with the utmost simplicity, and without my being able to discover in it the least leaven of bitterness." "It may be boldly asserted that there was no gall in this heart, which has offered, as holocaust to God, all its griefs and all its passions. Religion is now the principal occupation, the only consolation, of a life tried by unparalleled adversity." When still further M. Didier—indiscreetly, it appears to us—pressed the point by saying, "But you must own, Madame, that in spite of your Christian magnanimity, the day you heard the news was not one of the most unhappy of your life." "She held her peace, but with an air which seemed to say, 'You ask too much.'"

After giving his testimony as to the extreme politeness of the Duchess d'Angoulême, and recording instances of her boundless charity, "immense," he says, "for her present revenue," M. Didier has the following touching description of the apartments of the aged princess. "The Duchess of Angoulême, lives in the midst of the souvenirs of her youth—and yet what souvenirs! Far from flying from them, she seems to cherish them; as if she found a strange funereal pleasure in filling each day the cup of bitterness, in order each day to drain it to the dregs. In her bedroom, which is of an austerity almost cloistral, she has around her only objects which must recall to her the tragic scenes of her childhood,—the portraits of her father, her mother, and her mother's friend, the Princess of Lamballe; near her bed, which is without curtains, a prie-dieu filled with relics sacred to her, such as the black waistcoat which her father wore in going to the scaffold, and the lace kerchief which her mother was forced to mend with her own hands before appearing at the Revolutionary Tribunal. She alone has the key of these sad memorials; and once a-year, on the 21st of January, she takes them out from the shrine which encloses them, and lays them before her, as if in order to live more nearly with the beloved dead who wore them. On that day she sheds her tears in the most complete retirement: she sanctifies the bloody anniversary by solitude and prayer."

On this subject there is yet more touching matter, which would lead us, however, too far. For the same reason we cannot follow the details into which M. Didier enters respecting the Duke of Lévis, the young Duke of Blacas, M. de Montbel, and other adherents of the exiled family: they must be passed over, as not of immediate interest. The following words, however, are sufficiently remarkable in the mouth of the republican:—"I found them all not only polite and well-informed, but most reasonable upon political topics. They are no democrats, assuredly, but they are men of sense, who have advanced with the progress of the age, and are fully aware of the new needs and new interests of Europe in general, and of France in particular. They are no conspirators; that I will answer for."

M. Didier is pressed to stop the night; but, hurried in his journey, only remains to dinner; and it is in the drawing-room, before dinner, that he is presented to the young Duchess of Bordeaux. This figure in the group of royal exiles, although of less importance as regards the prosperity of legitimacy in France, and of the attachment which the family may hereafter command, is worth recording[599] also, as an interesting historical portrait.

It is to be regretted, perhaps, that we have not space for the anecdotes of the moderation and good sense of the Duke of Bordeaux, which M. Didier records, as collected from the mouths of his adherents, and which must necessarily complete, upon the minds of the great portion of the French nation, the impression made by the rest of the book. But we must now hurry on.

The dinner of the exiled princely family is described by the republican visitor as simple, although served with a certain state. He sits by the side of the Duchess of Angoulême, whose every word is one of "politeness, courtesy, or forbearance." "The Duchess of Bordeaux," he says, "continually fixed her eyes upon me, as with a look of wonder. In truth, the position was a strange one—a French republican sitting at the table of a prescribed French prince, and eating out of plate engraved with the royal arms of France!" The evening passes, in this little court, almost as in a private family in some French chateau. Billiards, tapestry-work, conversation, occupy the various personages. The republican again converses with the prince, who listens to contradiction with the utmost good-humour. When he departs, the whole family express, in their last words, their longing for that country which he is about to revisit so soon, but from which they are exiled.

We have dwelt upon the book of M. Didier at considerable length, not only on account of its historical interest, but on account of the strange circumstances which induced its publication, its startling result, the sensation it has created, and the ultimate effect it may produce in France in paving the way for legitimacy, by attaching interest and admiration to the person of its representative—perhaps, also, because it does honour to the sincerity of the author, and to the more honest republican party to which he belongs. But we have thus excluded ourselves from the possibility of giving more than a brief notice of the other book alluded to above, that of the Vicomte d'Arlincourt, although, in truth, it merits, in all respects, a far more extended observation, as a frank and straightforward expression of the sentiments of the legitimists. We must confine ourselves, then, principally to the circumstances which, independently of its merits, have given the little book so great a notoriety in France, and carried it on to the almost unexampled honours of a forty-eighth edition. They are curious enough in themselves, and bear some analogy to those which have determined the publication and the success of the book of M. Didier, inasmuch as it was the ardency of republicanism which forced upon the public notice a book, likely to forward the cause of legitimacy in France. The little work of M. d'Arlincourt is written, however, avowedly upon legitimist principles, and for the purpose of awakening the attention of the nation to the cause of[600] the man whom the author looks upon as the ultimate saviour of the troubled country. This legitimist book, under the title of "Dieu le veut," written after the bloody days of June, might, in spite of the vigour of its language, and the justice and good sense of most of its reasonings and remarks, never have emerged so prominently from the inundation of political pamphlets which floods republican France, had it not pleased the government, pushed on by the clamours of a more violent party, to seize the work, and bring the author to trial. The affair made a considerable sensation in August last; the court of justice was crowded: the interest excited was great. The passages more particularly incriminated were, that which likened the republic to the plague; that which said the sovereignty of the people, when not a bloody truth, was a ridiculous mystification; and that which contained the words, "the Republic will have proved to be the necessary transition from a revolutionary tempest to a social regeneration. In the general movement of men's minds is written the happy advent of the chosen of Providence. He draws nearer! he will come!" After the defence of his own counsel, M. d'Arlincourt himself rose and supported, in a striking speech, the honesty of his intentions and his designs as a bon citoyen, without bating one iota of his legitimist principles. The result was a unanimous verdict of "not guilty" from the jury. A burst of applause, which no authority could check, resounded through the court. It was from the common classes, also, that came the approbation: workmen shouted in the court, "Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut!" to the rhythm of the famous "des lampions!" and, on the morrow, delegates of the dames de la Halle, and of the artisans of Paris came, with bouquets, to felicitate the author on his acquittal. We will not lay an unnecessary weight upon this movement of a portion of the lower classes, which may arise from the sentiments of a small minority, although perhaps more considerable than seems to be generally supposed. The result, however, of the trial has been to spread the book through the country in its almost interminable editions, and thus to spread more and more abroad those legitimist feelings, which, we confidently assert are daily more and more gaining ground throughout France, and which may one day, in case of another revolution, that may be brought upon the country by the excesses of the ultra party, bear their fruits. At all events the destiny of these two books, in furthering the cause of legitimacy, in the one case contrary to the opinions of the author, in the other by the very means intended to check and even crush it, is singular enough.

Whatever may be written upon the dark pages of a nation's future, it is very evident that "Legitimacy in France" has made considerable ground among the masses. It cannot, certainly, be said to have been from the influence of convictions, or, in the general herd, from any reliance upon theories of legitimacy, properly speaking. It has arisen from disgust and distrust of other governments; from the sad experience of the miseries occasioned to the country by the present revolution; from despair in the stability of a republican rule, with insurrection always growling beneath the surface; from hope in a greater stability and confidence under a legitimate monarchy. Legitimacy, then, can but grow and flourish in France in the chances of revolutions; and if it triumphs, it will be by the excesses of its enemies, and the restless subversive attempts of the ultra-republican party. But again: who can say confidently that it will triumph? Still more: who shall dare, in the present state of France, to say that it shall not?

THE COLLEGE.—A SKETCH IN VERSE.

Oft has some fair inquirer bid me say,
What tasks, what sports beguile the gownsman's day;
What cares are ours—by what light arts we try
To teach our sober-footed hours to fly.
List, then, ye belles, who, nursed in golden ease,
No arts need study, but the arts to please;
Who need no science, while with skill ye know
To wield the weapons which your charms bestow—
With grace to thread the dance's mazy throng—
To strike the tuneful chords, and swell the song—
To rouse man's sterner spirit to his toil,
And cheer its harshness with a grateful smile.
Thus my weak muse a bolder flight shall raise,
Lured by the glorious hope of Beauty's praise.

Soon as the clouds divide, and dawning day
Tints the quadrangle with its earliest ray,
The porter, wearied with his watchings late,
Half opes his eyelids and the wicket gate;
And many a yawning gyp comes slipshod in,
To wake his master ere the bells begin.

Round yon gray walls, enchained by slumber's spell,
Each son of learning snores within his cell.
For though long vigils the pale student keep,
E'en learning's self, we know, must sometimes sleep—
So morn shall see him, with a brightened face,
Fresh as a giant, to resume his race.
But hark! the chimes of yonder chapel-tower
Sound the arrival of the unwelcome hour.
Now drowsy Lentulus his head half rears,
To mumble curses on the Dean he fears.
What though his gyp exhort him, ere too late,
To seek the chapel and avert his fate?
Who, when secure his downy sheets between,
Recks of the threatenings of an angry Dean!
Slow rolling round he bids his mentor go
And bear his warnings to the shades below.
Soon shall he, summoned to the well-known room,[24]
Repent his recklessness and learn his doom,
Within the walls a dull constraint to know,
And many a midnight jollity forego.
Far happier he, to whom the harsh-tongued bell
Sounds, as it should, his murdered slumber's knell.
Cold he contemns, and, shuffling on his clothes,
Boldly stalks forth, nor heeds his redd'ning nose.
Straight o'er the grass-plot cuts his dewy line
In mad defiance of the College fine;
Breathless with hurry gains the closing grate,
And thanks his stars he was not just too late.
His name prick'd off upon the marker's roll,
No twinge of conscience racks his easy soul,
While tutor's wines and Dean's soft smiles repay
His prompt submission to the College sway.
[602]

The service o'er, by Cam's dull bank of sedge
He strides, while hunger gains a keener edge;
(Though fasting walks I cannot loathe too much,
Since such my custom, my advice be such.)
For him, who straight returns, what horrors wait!
How chill and comfortless his chamber's state.
The crackling fuel only serves too well
To show the cold it vainly strives to quell;
While the grim bedmaker provokes the dust,
And soot-born atoms, which his tomes encrust:
Awhile suspended high in air they soar,
Then, sinking, seek the shelves on which they slept before.
Down bolt his commons and his scalding tea,
Then off to lectures in pedantic glee.
He notes each artifice and master-stroke—
Each musty parallel and mustier joke;
Snaps up the driblets to his share consigned,
And as he cram'd his body crams his mind;
Then seeks at home digestion for his lore,
And slams in Folly's face the twice-barred door.

This hour, perchance, sees Lentulus descend
To seek the chamber of some jovial friend—
Yawn o'er the topics of the passing day,
Or damn the losses of his last night's play;
While well he augurs from the clattering plates,
The glad intelligence that breakfast waits.

From Memory's store the sportive muse may glean
The charms that gild awhile the careless scene—
The song, the anecdote, the bet, the joke,
The steaming viands, and the circling smoke—
The racy cider-cup, or brisk champagne,
Long prompt the merriment and rouse the strain;
Till Pleasure, sated of the loaded board,
Seeks what amusement fresher scenes afford.
Some prove their skill in fence—some love to box—
Some thirst for vengeance on the dastard fox;
Each by his fav'rite sport's enchanting power,
Cheats of its tediousness the flying hour.

Now the dull court a short siesta takes,
For scarce a footstep her still echo wakes,
Save where the prowling duns their victim scout,
And seize the spendthrift wretch that dares steal out.

Come, let us wander to the river's bank,
And learn what charm collects yon breathless rank;
The hope or horror pictured in each face
Marks the excitement of the coming race.
Hark! o'er the waters booms the sound of strife;
Now the hush'd voices leap at once to life;
Now to their toil the striving oarsmen bend;
Now their gay hues the flaunting banners blend;
Now leap the wavedrops from the flashing oar;
Now the woods echo to the madd'ning roar;
Now hot th' enthusiastic crowd pursue,
And scream hoarse praises on the unflinching crew;
Now in one last wild chance each arm is strained;
One panting struggle more—the goal is gained.
[603] A scene like this, what stream can boast beside?
Scarce rival Isis on her fairer tide.[25]
But think not thus could live the rower's power,
Save long privation steeled him for the hour.
The couch relinquished at the voice of morn,
The toilsome exercise, the cup forsworn,
The frugal dinner, and scarce-tasted wine—
Are these no sacrifice at glory's shrine?
Thus with new trophies shall his walls be graced—
Each limb new strengthened, and each nerve new braced.

Some idlers to the pavements keep their feet,
And strut and ogle all the passing street.
And if 'tis Sunday's noon, on King's Parade,[26]
See the smug tradesman too and leering maid;
See the trim shop-boy cast his envious eye
On Topling's waistcoat and on Sprightly's tie,
Bravely resolved to hoard his labour's fruit,
And ape their fancies in his next new suit.

But now the sounding clocks in haste recall
Each hungry straggler to his College hall;
For Alma Mater well her nursling rears,
Nor cheats his gullet, while she fills his ears.
Heavens! what a clatter rends the steam-fraught air—
How waiters jostle, and how Freshmen stare!
One thought here strikes me—and the thought is sad—
The carving for the most part is but bad.
See the torn turkey and the mangled goose!
See the hack'd sirloin and the spattered juice!
Ah! can the College well her charge fulfil,
Who thus neglects the petit-maître's skill?
The tutor proves each pupil on the books—
Why not give equal license to the cooks?
As the grave lecturer, with scrupulous care,
Tries how his class picks up its learned fare—
From Wisdom's banquet makes the dullard fast—
Denied admittance till his trial's past—
So the slow Freshman on a crust should starve,
Till practice taught him nobler food to carve:
Then Granta's sons a useful fame should know,
And shame with skill each dinner-table beau.

High on the daïs, and more richly stored,
Well has old custom placed the Fellow's board:
Thus shall the student feel his fire increased
By brave ambition for the well-graced feast—
Mark the sleek merriment of rev'rend Dons,
And learn how science well rewards her sons.
But spare, my muse, to pierce the sacred gloom
That veils the mysteries of the Fellows' room;
Nor hint how Dons, their untasked hours to pass,
Like Cato, warm their virtues with the glass.[27]

[604] Once more, at sound of chapel chime, repairs
The surpliced scholar to his vesper prayers;
For discipline this tribute at his hands,
First and last duty of the day, demands.
Then each, as diligence or mirth invite,
Careful improves or thriftless wastes the night.

Stand in the midst, and with observant eye
Each chamber's tenant at his task descry.
Here the harsh mandate of the Dean enthrals
Some prayerless pris'ner to the College walls,
Who in the novel's pages seeks to find
A brief oblivion for his angry mind.
Haply the smoke-wreathed meerschaum shall supply
An evenness of soul which they deny.
Charm! that alike can soothing pleasure bring
To sage or savage, mendicant or king;
Sov'reign to blunt the pangs of torturing pain,
Or clear the mazes of the student's brain!
Swift at thy word, amidst the soul's misrule,
Content resumes her sway, and rage grows cool.

Here pores the student, till his aching sight
No more can brook the glimmering taper's light;
Then Slumber's links their nerveless captive bind,
While Fancy's magic mocks his fevered mind;
Then a dim train of years unborn sweeps by
In glorious vision on his raptured eye:
See Fortune's stateliest sons in homage bow,
And fling vain lustre o'er his toilworn brow!
Away, ye drivellers! dare ye speak to him
Of cheek grown bloodless, or of eye grown dim?
Who heeds the sunken cheek, or wasted frame,
While Hope shouts "Onward! to undying fame."

Glance further, if thine eye can pierce the mist
Raised round the votaries of Loo and Whist;
Scarce such kind Venus round her offspring flung
To bear him viewless through the Punic throng;[28]
Scarce such floats round old Skiddaw's crown of snow,
And veils its grimness from the plains below.
Here, too, gay Lentulus conspicuous sits,
Chief light and oracle of circling wits.
Who with such careless grace the trick can take,
Or fling with such untrembling hand his stake?
But though with well-feigned case his glass he sips,
And puffs the balmy cloud from smiling lips,
Care broods within—his soul alone regards
His ebbing pocket and the varying cards;
While one resolve his saddened spirit fills—
The diminution of his next term's bills.

Lamp after lamp expires as night grows late,
And feet less frequent rattle at the gate.
The wearied student now rakes out his fire—
The host grows dull, and yawning guests retire—
Till, all its labours and its follies o'er,
The silent College sinks to sleep once more.

Thus roll the hours, thus roll the weeks away,
Till terms expiring bring the long-feared day,
[605] When rake and student equal terror know—
That lest he's plucked, this lest he pass too low.
Though different epochs mark their wide careers,
And serve for reck'ning points through fleeting years—
To this a tripos or a Senate's grace,
To that a fox-hunt, ball, or steeple-chase,—
When three short years of toil or sloth are past,
This common bugbear scares them all at last.

The doors flung wide, the boards and benches set,
The nervous candidates for fame are met.
See yon poor wretch, just shivering from his bed,
Gnaw at his nails and scratch his empty head;
With lengthened visage o'er each question pore,
And ransack all his memory for its store.
This Euclid argued, or this Newton taught—
Thus Butler reasoned, or thus Paley thought;
With many a weapon of the learned strife,
Prized for an hour, then flung aside for life.
Ah! what avails him now his vaunted art,
To stride the steed, or guide the tandem-cart?
His loved ecarté, or his gainful whist?
What snobs he pommelled, or what maidens kissed?
His ball-room elegance, his modish air,
And easy impudence, that charmed the fair?
Ah! what avails him that to Fashion's fame
Admiring boudoirs echoed forth his name?
All would he yield, if all could buy one look,
Though but a moment's, o'er the once-scorned book.
—Enough, enough, once let the scene suffice;
Bid me not, Fancy, brave its horrors twice.
The wrangler's glory in his well-earned fame,
The prizeman's triumph, and the pluck'd man's shame,
With all fair Learning's well-bestowed rewards,
Are they not fitting themes for nobler bards?
Poor Lentulus, twice plucked, some happy day
Just shuffles through, and dubs himself B. A.;
Thanks heaven, flings by his cap and gown, and shuns
A place made odious by remorseless duns.
Not so the wrangler,—him the Fellows' room
Shall boast its ornament for years to come;
Till some snug rectory to his lot may fall,
Or e'en (his fondest wish) a prebend's stall:
Then burst triumphant on th' admiring town
The full-fledged honours of his Doctor's gown.

Yes, Granta, thus thy sacred shades among
Join grave and thoughtless in one motley throng.
Forgive my muse, if aught her trifling air
Seems to throw scorn upon thy kindly care.
Long may thy sons, with heaven-directed hand,
Spread wide the glories of a grateful land—
Uphold their country's and their sovereign's cause—
Adorn her church, or wield her rev'rend laws;
By virtue's might her senate's counsel sway,
And scare red Faction powerless from his prey.

And ye, who, thriftless of your life's best days,
Have sought but Pleasure in fair Learning's ways,
Though nice reformers of the sophists' school
Mock the old maxims of Collegiate rule,
Deem them not worthless, because oft abused,
Nor sneer at blessings, which yourselves refused.—U. T.

JACK MOONLIGHT.

Some time ago, on the way from Glasgow to Liverpool, amongst the confusion and bustle in the railway terminus at Greenock, I was interested by seeing what struck me more by contrast with the rest of the scene, but, from old associations, would have drawn my attention at any time. Passengers, porters, and trucks were meeting from both directions; ladies and gentlemen anxious about their bandboxes and portmanteaus; one engine puffing off its steam, and another screaming as it departed. Through the midst of all, a group of six seamen, from a third-class carriage, were lugging along their bags and hammocks, dingy and odorous with genuine tar in all its modifications. Five of the party, of different heights, ages, and sizes, were as dark-brown mahogany-colour, in face, throat, and hands, as some long sea-voyage had made them, evidently through latitudes where the wind blows the sun, if the sun doesn't burn the wind. One was a fine, stout, middle-aged man, with immense whiskers and a cap of Manilla grass, a large blue jacket, with a gorgeous India handkerchief stuffed in its capacious outside pocket, and brown trousers, with boots, whom I at once set down for the boatswain of some good East-Indiaman. The sixth was a woolly-pated negro lad, about nineteen or twenty, dressed in sailor's clothes with the rest, but with his characteristically shapeless feet cramped up in a pair of Wellingtons, in which he stumped along, while his companions had the usual easy roll of their calling. The fellow was black as a coal, thick-lipped and flat-nosed; but if, like most negroes, he had only kept grinning, it would not have seemed so ridiculous as the gravity of his whole air. Some young ladies standing near, with parasols spread to save their fair complexions from the sun, said to each other, "Oh, do look at the foreign sailors!" I knew, however, without requiring to hear a single word from them, that they were nothing else but the regular true-blue English tars; such, indeed, as you seldom find belonging to even the sister kingdoms. A Scotchman or an Irishman may make a good sailor, and, for the theory of the thing, why, they are probably "six and half-a-dozen;" but, somehow, there appears to be in the English sea-dog a peculiar capacity of developing the appropriate ideal character—that frank, bluff, hearty abandon, and mixture of practical skill with worldly simplicity, which mark the oceanic man. All dogs can swim, but only water-dogs have the foot webbed and the hair shaggy. The Englishman is the only one you can thoroughly salt, and make all his bread biscuit, so that he can both be a boy at fifty, and yet chew all the hardships of experience without getting conscious of his wisdom.

So I reflected, at any rate, half joke, half earnest, while hastening to the Liverpool steamer, which lay broadside to the quay, and, betwixt letting off steam and getting it up, was blowing like a mighty whale come up to breathe. The passengers were streaming up the plank, across by her paddle-boxes, as it were so many Jonahs going into its belly; amongst whom I was glad to see my nautical friends taking a shorter cut to the steerage, and establishing themselves with a sort of half-at-home expression in their sunburnt weatherly faces. In a little while the "City of Glasgow" was swimming out of the firth, with short quick blows of her huge fins, that grew into longer and longer strokes as they revolved in the swells of the sea; the jib was set out over her sharp nose to steady her, and the column of smoke from her funnel, blown out by the wind, was left, in her speed, upon the larboard quarter, to compare its dark-brown shadow with the white furrow behind. At the beginning of the long summer evening the round moon rose, white and beautiful, opposite the blue peaks of Arran, shining with sunset. By that time the steamer's crowded and lumbered decks had got somewhat settled into order; the splash of the paddles, and the clank of the engine, leaping up and down at the window of its house, kept up a kind of quiet, by contrast, in spite of the different[607] noises going on around. Amongst such, a nuisance apparently inseparable from and peculiar to steamboats, is a blind fiddler, whose everlasting infernal scrape, squeaking away on the foredeck, one cannot help blending with the thump and shudder of those emetic machines on a large scale, and considering it not the least element in producing the disagreeable phenomena so well known on board of them. One of these said floating musicians, who thus wander probably in imitation of Arion, and in revenge for his fate, was now performing to the groups near the paddle-boxes. Beyond them, however, by the steamer's patent iron windlass, there was a quiet space at the bow, where, in a short time, I perceived the figures of the sailors relieved against the brisk sea-view above the insignificant bowsprit. I went forward out of the privileged regions to smoke a cigar, and found the two elder ones sitting over the windlass in conversation with another seafaring passenger, evidently less thoroughbred, however. The rest were walking backwards and forwards to a side, with the quick rolling walk, limited in extent, so characteristic of the genus nauta—the negro turning his head now and then to grin as he heard the music, but otherwise above mixing in the rabble of already disconsolate-looking people behind. He was plainly considered by his shipmates, and considered himself, on a footing of perfect equality: his skin was no odium to the men of the sea, whose lot he had no doubt shared, whatever it might have been in the cabin. Their bedding was already spread under shelter of the half top-gallant forecastle at the heel of the bowsprit, amongst spars and coils of rope. Although sailors are understood to go half-fare in steamers, they no doubt preferred the accommodation thus chosen. It was amusing to notice how the regular, long-sea, wind-and-canvass men seemed to look down upon the hermaphrodites of the "funnel-boat," and were evidently regarded by them as superior beings; nor did they hold much communication together.

While standing near, I made a remark or two to the eldest of the seamen, whom I had marked down for the leader of the little nautical band; and it was not difficult to break ice with the frank tar. He was more intelligent and polished than is usual even with the superior class of his vocation, having seen more countries of the globe, and their peculiarities, than would set up a dozen writers of travels. They had all sailed together in the same vessels for several voyages: had been last to Calcutta, Singapore, and Canton, in a large Liverpool Indiaman, to which they were returning after a trip, during the interval, on some affair of the boatswain's at Glasgow; and, curiously enough, they had made a cruise up Loch Lomond, none of them having seen a fresh-water lake of any size before. In the mean time, while the negro passed up and down with his companions before me, I had been remarking that his naked breast, seen through the half-open check shirt, was tattooed over with a singular device, in conspicuous red and blue colours: indeed, without something or other of the sort he could scarcely have been a sailor, for the barbarians of the sea and those of the American forest have a good deal in common. This peculiar ornament of the sable young mariner I at length observed upon to the boatswain. "Jack Moonlight!" said the seaman, turning round, "come here, my son: show the gentleman your papers, will ye?" The black grinned, looked flattered, as I thought, and, opening his shirt, revealed to me the whole of his insignia. In the middle was what appeared meant for a broken ring-bolt; above that a crown; below an anchor; on one side the broad arrow of the dock-yard, and on the other the figures of 1838. "My sartif'cates, sar, is dat!" said the negro, showing his white teeth. "That's his figure-head, sir," said one of the younger sailors, "but he's got a different mark abaft, ye know, Mr Wilson!" "Never mind, Dick," said the boatswain; "the one scores out the other, my lad." The black looked grave again, and they resumed their walk. "What's his name, did you say?" I inquired,—"Moonlight?" "Yes, sir; Jack Moonlight it is." Ut lucus a non lucendo, thought I: rather a preternatural moonlight—a sort of dark-lantern![608] "Why, who christened him that?" I said. "Well, sir," replied the boatswain, "the whole ship's company, I think: the second mate threw a ship's-bucket of gulf-stream water over his head, too, for a blessing; and the black cook, being skilled that way, gave him the marks. Jack is his christen name, sir—Moonlight is what we call his on-christen one." "There's a entire yarn about it, sir," remarked the other sailor. "I wish you would tell it me!" said I to the boatswain, seating myself on the windlass, while his two companions looked to him with an expression of the same desire. "Why, sir," said the bluff foremast officer, hitching up his trousers, and looking first at one boot and then at the other, "I'm not the best hand myself at laying up the strands of a matter; but however, as I was first whistle in the concern, why, you shall have the rights of it. You see, sir," continued he, "we were lying at that time inside the Havannah, opposight the Mole—the Mary Jane of Bristol, Captain Drew, a ship o' seven hundred tons. 'Twas in the year '38, I think, Tom?" "Ay, ay, Mr Wilson," replied the other sailor, "'tis logged correct enough on Jack Moonlight's breast." "She was round from Jamaica for some little matter to fill up," continued the boatswain, "so we didn't leave the cable long betwixt wind and water; but, two nights before the Mary Jane sailed, a large Portugee schooner came in, and brought up within thirty fathoms of our starboard quarter, slam on to us, so as we looked into her cabin windows, but nothing else. She'd got the American flag flying, and a Yankee mate that answered sometimes, 'twas said, for the skipper; but by the looks of her, and a large barracoon being a'most right in a line with her bowsprit, we hadn't no doubt what she was after. The first night, by the lights and the noise, we considered they landed a pretty few score of blacks, fresh from the Guinea coast and a stew in the middle passage. And all the time there was the Spanish guard-boats, and the court sitting every few days to look after such tricks, and saying they kept a watch the devil himself couldn't shirk. There was a British cruiser off the Floridas, too, but we reckoned she'd been blown up the Gulf by a hurricane the morning before. Next night was bright moonlight, so they were all quiet till two bells of the third watch; then they began to ship off their bales again, as they call 'em—the moon being on the set, and the schooner in a shadow from the ware-houses. 'Twas all of a sort o' smothered bustle aboard of her, for the sailmaker and I was keeping our hour of the anchor-watch. I was only rated able seaman at that time in the Mary Jane. Well, the shadow of the schooner came almost as far as the currents about our rudder, and I was looking over the quarter, when I thought I saw a trail shining in it, as if something was swimming towards us. 'Sailmaker,' says I, 'is that the shark, d'ye think, that they say is fed alongside of one o' them slavers here for a sentry?' 'Where?' said the sailmaker, and 'Look,' says I. Just that moment what did I see but the woolly black head of a nigger come out into the stroak of white water, 'twixt our counter and the schooner's shadow, swimming as quiet as possible to get round into ours! 'Keep quiet, mate,' I said; 'don't frighten the poor fellow! He's contrived to slink off, I'll bet you, in the row!' Next we heard him scrambling up into the mizen chains, then his head peeps over the bulwarks, but neither of us turned about, so he crept along to the forecastle, where the scuttle was off, and the men all fast in their hammocks. Down he dives in a moment. The sailmaker and I slipped along to see what he'd do. Right under the fok'sle ladder was the trap of the cook's coal-hole, with a ring-bolt in it for lifting; and just when we looked over, there was the nigger, as naked as ye please, a heaving of it up to stow himself away, without asking where. As soon as he was gone, and the trap closed, 'Why,' said the sailmaker, 'he's but a boy.' 'He's a smart chap, though, sure enough, sailmaker!' says I. 'But what pauls me, is how quick he picked out the fittest berth in the ship. Why, old Dido won't know but what it's his wife Nancy's son, all blacked over with the coals!' 'Well, bo',' says the sailmaker, laughing, 'we mustn't let the[609] black doctor get down amongst his gear, on no account, till the ship's clear away to sea!' Doctor, you know, sir—that's what we call the cook at sea. 'Never fear, mate,' says I, 'I'll manage old Dido myself, else he'd blow the whole concern amongst them confounded planters in the cabin.' This Dido, you must understand, sir, was the black cook of the Mary Jane: his name, by rights, was Di'dorus Thomson; but he'd been cook's mate of the Dido frigate for two or three years before, and always called himself Dido—though I've heard 'twas a woman's name instead of a man's. He was a Yankee nigger, as black as his own coals, and had married a Bristol woman. She had one son, but he was as white as herself; so 'twas a joke in the ship against old Dido, how he'd contrived to wash his youngster so clean, and take all the dirt on himself. We run the rig on him about his horns, too, and the white skin under his paint, till the poor fellow was afraid to look in a glass for fear of seeing the devil.

"Next morning, before we began to get up anchor, the cook turns out of his hammock at six o'clock to light the galley fire, and down he comes again to the forecastle to get coals out of his hold. 'Twas just alongside of my hammock, so I looked over, and says I, 'Hullo, doctor! hold on a minute till I give ye a bit of advice.' 'Mine yar own bus'ness, Jack Wilson,' says the cross-grained old beggar, as he was. 'Dido,' says I, 'who d'ye think I see goin' down your trap last night?' 'Golly!' says he, 'don't know; who was dat, Jack—eh?' and he lets go of the trap-lid. 'Why, Dido,' I told him, ''twas the devil himself!' 'O Lard!' says the nigger, giving a jump, 'what dat gen'leman want dere? Steal coal for bad place! O Lard!—Hish!' says he, whispering into my hammock, 'tell me, Jack Wilson, he black or white—eh?' 'Oh, black!' I said; 'as black as the slaver astarn.' 'O Lard! O Lard! black man's own dibble!' says old Dido; 'what's I to do for cap'en's breakfast, Jack!' 'Why, see if you haven't a few chips o' wood, doctor,' says I, 'till we get out o' this infernal port. Don't they know how to lay the old un among your folks in the States, Dido?' I said, for I'd seen the thing tried. 'Golly! yis!' says the nigger; 'leave some bake yam on stone, with little rum in de pumpkin—'at's how to do!' 'Very good!' says I; 'well, whatever you've got handy, Dido, lower it down to him, and I daresay he'll clear out by to-morrow.' 'Why, what the dibble, Jack!' says he again, scratching his woolly head, 'feed him in 'e ship, won't he stay—eh?' 'Oh, for that matter, Dido,' says I, 'just you send down a sample of the ship's biscuit, with a fid of hard junk, and d—me if he stay long!' A good laugh I had, too, in my hammock, to see the cook follow my advice: he daren't open his hatch more than enough to shove down a line with some grub at the end of it, as much as would have provisioned half a dozen; so I knew there was a stopper clapped on the spot for that day.

"When we began to get up anchor, a boat belonging to the schooner pulled round us, and they seemed to want to look through and through us, for them slavers has a nat'ral avarsion to an English ship. They gave a squint or two at old black Dido, and he swore at 'em in exchange for it like a trooper: 'tis hard to say, for a good slack jaw, and all the dirty abuse afloat, whether a Yankee nigger, or a Billingsgate fishwoman, or a Plymouth Point lady, is the worst to stand. I do believe, if we'd been an hour later of sailing, they'd have had a search-warrant aboard of us, with a couple of Spanish guardos, and either pretended they'd lost a fair-bought slave, or got us perhaps condemned for the very thing they were themselves. However, off we went, and by the first dog-watch we'd dropped the land to sou'-west, with stunsails on the larboard side, and the breeze on our quarter.

"Next morning again the black cook gives me a shake in my hammock, and says he, 'Mus' have some coal now, Jack; he gone now, surely—eh, lad?' 'Go to the devil, you black fool,' says I, 'can't ye let a fellow sleep out his watch without doing your work for you?' 'O Golly,' says the cook in a rage, 'I sarve you out for dis, you damn tarry black-guard! Don't b'lieb no dibble ever dere! I water you tea dis blessed[610] mornin' for dis!' 'Look out for squalls, then, doctor,' says I; and he lifts the trap, and began to go down the ladder, shaking his black fist at me. 'Good b'ye, Dido!' says I, 'make my respects to the old un!' 'O you darty willain!' he sings out from the hole; and then I heard him knocking about amongst his lumber, till all of a sudden he gave a roar. Up springs the young nigger from under hatches, up the ladder and through the trap, then up the fok'sle steps again, and out on deck, and I heard him running aft to the quarter-deck, where the mate was singing out to set another stunsail. Down fell the trap-lid over the coal-hole, and old Dido was caught like a mouse. If it hadn't been for our breakfast, I daresay we'd have left him there for a spell; but when the doctor got out he was as cowed as you please. 'Jack Wilson,' says he to me, 'you say quite right—him black dibble dere sure 'naff, Jack! see him go up in flash 'o fire out of de coal, den all as dark as —— Hullo, 'mates,' says he, 'you laugh, eh? Bery funny though, too—ho-ho-ho!' so he turned to grinning at it till the tears ran out of the big whites of his eyes. 'What does the parson say, doctor?' asks an old salt out of his hammock—'stick close to the devil, and he'll flee from ye!' 'Ho-ho-ho!' roars old Dido; 'bery good—ho-ho-ho!' says he; 'old dibble not so bery frightenful after all, now I see he right black!' 'I say, though, old boy,' puts in the foremastman again, 'I doesn't like to hear ye laugh at the devil that way—ye don't know what may turn up—'tis good seamanship, as I reckon, never to make an enemy of a port on a lee-shore, cook!' 'Ay, ay, old ship,' said another; 'but who looks for seaman's ways from a cook?—ye can't expect it!' 'I tar'ble 'fraid of white dibble, though, lads,' said old Dido, giving an impudent grin. 'Well, if so be,' says the old salt, 'take my word for it, ye'd better keep a look-out for him—that's all. White or black, all colours has their good words to keep, an' bad ones brings their bad luck, mate!'

"Well, sir, as for the young run-away, 'twas all of a kick-up on the quarterdeck about him; he couldn't speak a word of English, but he hung on the mate's feet like one for bare life. Just then the captain came on deck with two lady passengers, to take a look of the morning; the poor fellow was spar-naked, and the ladies made a dive below again. The captain saw the slave-brand on his shoulder, and he twigged the whole matter at once; so he told the mate to get him a pair of trousers, and a shirt, and put him to help the cook. Dido laughed louder than ever when he found out the devil wasn't so black as he was painted; and he was for indopting the youngster, by way of a sort o' jury son. However, the whole of the fok'sle took a fancy to him, considering him a kind of right to all hands. He was christened Jack, as I said before, and instead of hanging on, cook's mate, he was put up to something more seaman-like. By the time the Mary Jane got home, black Jack could set a stunsail, or furl a royal. We got Dido to give him a regular-built sartificate on his breast, of his being free to blue water, footing paid, and under the British union-jack, which 'twas the same as you saw just now, sir."

"Well," said I, "but you haven't explained why he was called by such a curious appellation as Moonlight, though?"

"Hold on a bit, sir," said the boatswain, "that's not the whole affair from end to end, yet. The next voyage I sailed again in the Mary Jane to Jamaica, for I always had a way of sticking to the same ship, when I could. I remember Dido, the cook, had a quarrel with his wife, Nancy; and one of the first nights we were at sea, he told black Jack, before all the fok'sle, how he meant to leave him all his savings, which everybody knew was no small thing, for Dido never spent any of his wages, and many a good cask of slush the old nigger had pocketed the worth of. We made a fine run of it that time down the Trades, till we got into the latitude of the Bahamas, and there the ship stuck like a log, with blue water round her, as hot as blazes, and as smooth as glass, or a bowl of oil. Once or twice we had a black squall that sent her on a bit, or another that drove her back, with a heavy swell, and now and then a light air, which[611] we made the most of—setting stunsails, and hauling 'em down again in a plash of rain. But, altogether, we thought we'd never get out of them horse latitudes at all, having run over much to west'ard, till we saw the line of the Gulf Stream treading away on the sea line to nor'west, as plain as on a chart. There was a confounded devil of a shark alongside, that stuck by us all through, one of the largest I ever clapped eyes on. Every night we saw him cruising away astarn, as green as glass, down through the blue water; and in the morning, there he was under the counter, with his back fin above, and two little pilot-fish swimming off and on round about. He wouldn't take the bait either; and every man forud said there was some one to lose his mess before long; however, the cook made a dead set to hook the infernal old monster, and at last he did contrive to get him fast, with a piece of pork large enough for supper to the larboard watch. All hands tailed on to the line, and with much ado we got his snout over the taffrail, till one could look down his throat, and his tail was like to smash in the starn windows; when of a sudden, snap goes the rope where it spliced to the chain, down went the shark into the water with a tremendous splash, and got clear off, hook, chain, bait an' all. We saw no more of him, though; and by sunset we had a bit of a light breeze, that began to take us off pleasantly.

"We had had full moon nearly the night before, and this night, I remember, 'twas the very pearl of moonlight—the water all of a ripple sparkling in it, almost as blue as by day; the sky full o' white light; and the moon as large as the capstan-head, but brighter than silver. You might ha' said you saw the very rays of it come down to the bellies of the sails, and sticking on the same plank in the deck for an hour at a time, as the ship surged ahead. Old Dido, the cook, had a fashion of coming upon deck of a moonlight night, in warm latitudes, to sleep on top o' the spars; he would lie with his black face full under it, like a lizard basking in the sun. Many a time the men advised him against it, at any rate to cover his face; for, if it wouldn't spoil, they said, he might wake up blind, or with his mouth pulled down to his shoulder, and out of his mind to boot. It wasn't the first time neither, sir, I've known a fellow moonstruck in the tropics, for 'tis another guess matter altogether from your hazy bit o' white paper yonder: why, if you hang a fish in it for an hour or two, 'twill stink like a lucifer match, and be poison to eat. Well, sir, that night, sure enough, up comes Dido with a rug to lie upon, and turns in upon the spars under the bulwarks, and in five minutes he was fast asleep, snoring with his face to the moon. So the watch, being tricky inclined ways on account of the breeze, took into their heads to give him a fright. One got hold of a paint-pot out of the half-deck, and lent him a wipe of white paint with the brush all over his face; Dido only gave a grunt, and was as fast as ever. The next thing was to grease his wool, and plaster it up in shape of a couple o' horns. Then they drew a bucket of water, and set it on the deck alongside, for him to see himself. When our watch came on deck, at eight bells, the moon was as bright as ever in the west, and the cook stretched out like Happy Tom on the spars, with his face slued round to meet it. In a little the breeze began to fall, and the light canvass to flap aloft, till she was all of a shiver, and the topsails sticking in to the masts, and shaking out again, with a clap that made the boom-irons rattle. At last she wouldn't answer her wheel, and the mate had the courses hauled up in the trails; 'twas a dead calm once more, and the blue water only swelled in the moonlight, like one sheet of rear-admiral's flags a-washing in a silver steep,—that's the likest thing I can fancy. When the ship lay still, up gets the black doctor, half asleep, and I daresay he had been laying in a cargo of Jamaica rum overnight: the bucket was just under his nose as he looked down to see where he was, and the moon shining into it. I heard him roar out, 'O de dibble!' and out he sprang to larboard, over the bulwarks, into the water. 'Man overboard, ahoy!' I sang out, and the whole watch came running from aft and forud to look over. 'Oh Christ!' says one[612] o' the men, pointing with his finger—'Look.' Dido's head was just rising alongside; but just under the ship's counter what did we see but the black back-fin of the shark, coming slowly round, as them creatures do when they're not quite sure of anything that gives 'em the start. 'The shark! the shark!' said every one; 'he's gone, by ----' 'Down with the quarter-boat, men!' sings out the mate, and he ran to one of the falls to let it go. The young nigger, Jack, was amongst the rest of us; in a moment he off with his hat and shoes, took the cook's big carving-knife out of the galley at his back, and was overboard in a moment. He was the best swimmer I ever chanced to see, and the most fearless: the moonlight showed everything as plain as day, and he watched his time to jump right in where the shark's back-fin could be seen coming quicker along, with a wake shining down in the water at both fins and tail. Old Dido was striking out like a good un, and hailing for a rope, but he knew nothing at all of the shark. As for young Jack, he said afterwards he felt his feet come full slap on the fish's back, and then he laid out to swim under him and give him the length of his knife close by the jaw, when he'd turn up to bite—for 'twas what the youngsters along the Guinea coast were trained to do every day on the edge of the surf. However, curious enough, there wasn't another sign of this confounded old sea-tiger felt or seen again; no doubt he got a fright and went straight off under the keel; at any rate the boat was alongside of the cook and Jack next minute, and picked 'em both up safe. Jack swore he heard the chain at the shark's snout rattle, as he was slueing round his head within half a fathom of old Dido, and just as he pounced upon the bloody devil's back-bone; the next moment it was clear water below his feet, and he saw the white bells rise from a lump of green going down under the ship's bends, as large as the gig, with its belly glancing like silver. If so, I daresay the cook's legs would have stuck on his own hook before they were swallowed; but, anyhow, the old nigger was ready to believe in the devil as long as he lived. The whole matter gave poor Dido a shake he never got the better of; at the end of the voyage he vowed he'd live ashore the rest of his days, to be clear of all sorts o' devilry. Whether it didn't agree with him or not, I can't say, but he knocked off the hooks in a short time altogether, and left young Jack the most of his arnings, on the bargain of hailing by his name ever after. 'Twas a joke the men both in the Mary Jane and the old Rajah got up, when the story was told, to call the cook Dido Moonlight, because, after all, 'twas the death of him: and when Jack shipped with the rest of us here aboard of the Rajah, having seen Dido to the ground, why, all hands christened him over again Jack Moonlight; though to look at him now, I daresay, sir, you wouldn't well fancy how such things as black Jack's face and moonlight was logged together, unless the world went by contrairies!"

MOONLIGHT MEMORIES.

BY B. SIMMONS.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.

We have been so much accustomed to regard the Austrian empire as one German nation, that we sometimes forget of how many separate kingdoms and principalities it consists, and of how many different and disunited races its population is composed. It may not, therefore, be unnecessary to recall attention to the fact that the Austrian dominions of the last three hundred years—the Austrian empire of our times—consists of three kingdoms and many minor principalities, inhabited by five distinct races, whose native tongues are unintelligible to each other, and who have no common language in which they can communicate; who are divided by religious differences; who preserve their distinctive characteristics, customs, and feelings; whose sentiments are mutually unfriendly, and who are, to this day, unmixed in blood. The Germans, the Italians, the Majjars or Hungarians, the Sclaves, and the Wallacks, are distinct and alien races—without community of origin, of language, of religion, or of sentiments. Except the memory of triumphs and disasters common to them all, their allegiance to one sovereign is now, as it was three centuries ago, the only bond that unites them. Yet, in all the vicissitudes of fortune—some of them disastrous—which this empire has survived, these nations and races have held together. The inference is inevitable—whatever may have been its defects, that form of government could not have been altogether unfit for its purposes, which so many different kingdoms and races united to support and maintain.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these various states were under one form of government. There were almost as many forms of government as there were principalities; but they were all monarchical, and one sovereign happened to become the monarch of the whole. The house of Hapsburg, in which the imperial crown of Germany, the regal crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, and Lombardy, and the ducal crowns of Austria, Styria, the Tyrol, and nearly a dozen other principalities, became hereditary, acquired their possessions, not by conquest, but by election, succession, or other legitimate titles [30] recognised by the people. The descendants of Rodolph thus became the sovereigns of many separate states, each of which retained, as a matter of right, its own constitution. The sovereign, his chief advisers, and the principal officers of state at his court, were usually Germans by birth, or by education and predilection; but the constitution of each state—the internal administration, and those parts of the machinery of government with which the people came more immediately into contact—were their own. In some we find the monarchy elective, as in Hungary, Bohemia, and Styria; in all we find diets of representatives or delegates, chosen by certain classes of the people, without whose concurrence taxes could not be imposed, troops levied, or legislative measures enacted; and we find municipal institutions founded on a broad basis of representation. In none of them was the form of government originally despotic.

To the unquestionable titles by which they acquired their crowns—titles by which the pride of nation or of race was not wounded—and to the more or less perfect preservation, in [615]each state, of its national institutions and privileges—to the enjoyment by each people of their laws, their language, customs, and prejudices—the princes of the house of Hapsburg owed the allegiance of subjects who had little else in common. There, as elsewhere in continental Europe, the sovereign long continued to encroach upon the rights of his subjects, and at length usurped an authority not recognised by the laws of his different possessions, or consistent with the conditions on which he had received their crowns. These usurpations were frequently resisted, and not unfrequently by force of arms. Belgium asserted her independence, and was permanently separated from Austria. But, in such contests, the sovereign of many separate states had obvious advantages. His subjects, divided by differences of race, language, religion, and sentiment, were incapable of combining against him; and however solicitous each people might be to preserve their own liberties and privileges, they were not prepared to resist encroachments on those of a neighbouring people, for whom they had no friendly feeling. The Austrians and Italians were ready to assert the emperor's authority in Hungary or Bohemia, the Hungarians and Bohemians to put down resistance in Lombardy. Even in the same kingdom the races were not united. In Hungary, the Sclave was sometimes ready to aid the emperor against the Majjar, the German against the Sclave. The disunion which was a source of weakness to the empire was a source of strength to the emperor.

Partly by compulsory changes, effected according to constitutional forms, partly by undisguised usurpations, in which these forms were disregarded, the emperors were thus enabled to extend the prerogative of the crown, to abridge the liberties of their subjects in each of their possessions, and, in some of them, to subvert the national institutions.

In the Hereditary States of Austria, the power of the emperor has long been absolute. The strength of Bohemia was broken, and her spirit subdued, by the confiscations and proscriptions that followed upon the defeat of the Protestants, near Prague, in the religious wars of Frederick II.; and for many years her diet has been subservient. Lombardy, the prize of contending armies—German, Spanish, and French—passing from hand to hand, has been regarded as a conquered country; and, with the forms of a popular representation, has been governed as an Austrian province. Hungary alone has preserved her independence and her constitution. But these usurpations were not always injurious to the great body of the people; on the contrary, they were often beneficial. In most of these states, a great part of the population was subject to a dominant class, or nobles, who alone had a share in the government, or possessed constitutional rights, and who exercised an arbitrary jurisdiction over the peasants. The crown, jealous of the power of the aristocracy, afforded the peasants some protection against the oppressions of their immediate superiors. A large body of the people in each state, therefore, saw with satisfaction, or without resentment, the increasing power of the crown, the abridgment of rights and privileges which armed their masters with the power to oppress them, and the subversion of a constitution from which they derived no advantage. If the usurpations of the crown threatened to alienate the nobles, they promised to conciliate the humbler classes.

On the other hand, every noble was a soldier. The wars in which the emperor was engaged, while they forced him occasionally to cultivate the good-will of the aristocracy, on which he was chiefly dependent for his military resources, fostered military habits of submission, and feelings of feudal allegiance to the sovereign. Military service was the road to distinction—military glory the ruling passion. The crown was the fountain of honour, to which all who sought it repaired. A splendid court had its usual attractions; and the nobles of the different races and nations, rivals for the favour of the prince, sought to outdo each other in proofs of devotion to his person and service. Thus it was, that, notwithstanding the usurpations of the emperor, and the resistance they excited, his foreign enemies generally found all classes of his subjects[616] united to defend the dignity of his crown, and the integrity of his dominions.

Still there was nothing to bind together the various parts of this curious fabric, except the accident of allegiance to one sovereign. This was but a precarious bond of union; and the imperial government has, therefore, been unremitting in its efforts to amalgamate the different parts into one whole. The Germans were but a small minority of the emperor's subjects, but the imperial government, the growth of their soil, reflected their mind; and it does not appear to have entered the Austrian mind to conceive that a more intimate union could be accomplished in any other way than by extending the institutions of the Hereditary States to all parts of the empire, and thus ultimately converting the Italians, the Majjars, and the Sclaves, into Austrian Germans.

This policy has been eminently unsuccessful in Hungary, where it has frequently been resisted by force of arms; but its failure is not to be attributed solely to the freedom of the institutions of that country, or to the love of independence, and the feelings of nationality which have been conspicuous in her history. The imperial government, while it resisted the usurpations of the see of Rome in secular matters, asserted its spiritual supremacy with unscrupulous zeal. Every one is acquainted with the history of the Reformation in Bohemia—its early manifestations, its progress, its unsuccessful contests, and its suppression by military force, by confiscations and proscriptions, extending to half the property and the proprietors in that kingdom; but perhaps it is not so generally known, or remembered, that the Majjars early embraced the Reformed doctrines of the school of Calvin, which, even now, when more than half their numbers have become Roman Catholics, is known in Hungary as "the Majjar faith." The history of religious persecution, everywhere a chronicle of misery and crime, has few pages so revolting as that which tells of the persecutions of the Protestants of Hungary, under her Roman Catholic kings of the house of Austria. It was in the name of persecuted Protestantism that resistance to Austrian autocracy was organised; it was not less in defence of their religion than of their liberties that the nation took up arms. Yet there was a time when the Majjars, at least as tenacious of their nationality as any other people in the empire, might perhaps have been Germanised—had certainly made considerable advances towards a more intimate union with Austria. Maria Theresa, assailed without provocation by Prussia—in violation of justice and of the faith of treaties, by France, Bavaria, Saxony, Sardinia, and Spain, and aided only by England and the United Provinces—was in imminent danger of losing the greater part of her dominions. Guided by the instinct of a woman's heart, and yielding to its impulse, she set at naught the remonstrances of her Austrian counsellors, and relied on the loyalty of the Hungarians. Proceeding to Presburg, she appeared at the meeting of the diet, told the assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all Hungary to arms. The tide of invasion was rolled back beyond the Alps and the Rhine, and the empire was saved.

The nobles of Hungary had fallen by thousands; many families had been ruined; all had been impoverished by a war of seven years, which they had prosecuted at their private charge; but their queen had not forgotten how much she owed them. She treated them with a kindness[617] more gratifying than the highest distinction; acquired their confidence by confiding in them; taught them to speak the language of her court; made their residence in her capital agreeable to them; promoted alliances between the noble families of Hungary and Austria; obtained from their devotion concessions which her predecessors had failed to extort by force; and prepared the way for a more intimate union between two nations which had hitherto regarded each other with aversion.

M. A. de Gerando has discovered, in the portrait-galleries of the Hungarian magnates, amusing traces of some of the means by which the clever empress-queen extended Austrian influence and authority into Hungary.

The son and successor of Maria Theresa, Joseph II., attempted, in his summary way, by arbitrary edicts promising liberty and equality, to subvert the constitution of every country he governed, and to extend to them all one uniform despotic system, founded on that of Austria. To him Hungary is indebted for the first gleam of religious toleration; but his hasty and despotic attempts to suppress national distinctions, national institutions and languages, provoked a fierce and armed resistance in Hungary, and in other portions of his dominions, and more than revived all the old aversion to Austria. His more prudent successor made concessions to the spirit of independence, and the love of national institutions, which Joseph had so deeply wounded. Leopold regained the Hungarians; but Belgium, already alienated in spirit, never again gave her heart to the emperor; and he never lost sight of the uniformity of system that Maria Theresa had done so much to promote, and which Joseph, in his haste to accomplish it, had for the moment made unattainable. From the days of Ferdinand I. until now, the attempt to assimilate the forms and system of government, in every part of their possessions, to the more arbitrary Austrian model, has been steadily pursued throughout the reigns of all the princes of the house of Hapsburg. These persevering efforts to extend the power of the crown by subverting national institutions, and thus to obliterate so many separate nationalities, have aroused for their defence a spirit that promises to perpetuate them.

Feelings of community of race and language, which had slumbered for many generations, have been revived with singular intensity. Italy for the Italians—Germany for the Germans—a new Sclavonic empire for the western Sclaves—the union of all the Sclave nations under the empire of the Czar—are cries which have had power to shake thrones, and may hereafter dismember empires.

The separation between the different members of the Austrian empire, which the havoc of war could not effect in three centuries, a few years of peace and prosperity have threatened to accomplish. The energies that were so long concentrated on war, have now, for more than thirty years, been directed to the development of intellectual and material resources. The[618] ambition that sought its gratification in the field, now seeks to acquire influence in the administration, and power to sway the opinions of men. The love of national independence, that repelled foreign aggression, has become a longing for personal liberty, that refuses to submit to arbitrary power. The road to distinction no longer leads to the court, but to the popular assembly; for the rewards conferred by the voice of the people have become more precious than any honours the sovereign can bestow. The duty of allegiance to the crown has become a question of reciprocal obligations, and has ceased to rest upon divine right. The only bond that held the Austrian empire together has thus been loosened, and the parts are in danger of falling asunder.

Lombardy, which was united to the German empire nine hundred years ago, renounced its allegiance, and refused to be Austrian. Bohemia, a part of the old German empire, inhabited chiefly by a Sclavonic race, has been dreaming of Pansclavism. Carried away by poetical rhapsodies, poured forth in profusion by a Lutheran preacher at Pesth, and calculated, if not designed, to promote foreign influence and ascendency, she has awoke from her dreams to find herself engaged in a sanguinary conflict, which was terminated by the bombardment and submission of her capital. Vienna, after having twice forced her emperor to fly from his capital, has been taken by storm, and is held in subjection by a garrison, whose stragglers are nightly thinned by assassins. Hungary, (to which we propose chiefly to direct our attention,) whose blood has been shed like water in defence of the house of Hapsburg—whose chivalry has more than once saved the empire—whom Napoleon, at the head of a victorious army in Vienna, was unable to scare, or to seduce from her allegiance to her fugitive king—whose population is more sincerely attached to monarchy than perhaps any other people in Europe, except ourselves, is in arms against the emperor of Austria. All the fierce tribes by which the Majjars are encircled have been let loose upon them, and, in the name of the emperor, the atrocities of Gallicia, which chilled Europe with horror, have been renewed in Pannonia. The army of the Emperor of Austria has invaded the territories of the King of Hungary, occupies the capital, ravages the towns and villages, expels and denounces the constituted authorities of the kingdom, abrogates the laws, and boasts of its victories over his faithful subjects, as if they had been anarchists who sought to overturn his throne.

The people of this country have long entertained towards Austria feelings of kindness and respect. We may smile at her proverbial slowness; we may marvel at the desperate efforts she has made to stand still, while every one else was pressing forward; the curiously graduated system of education, by which she metes out to each class the modicum of knowledge which all must accept, and none may exceed—her protective custom-houses, which destroy her commerce—her quarantines against political contagion, which they cannot exclude—her system of passports, with all its complications and vexations, and the tedious formalities of her tardy functionaries,—may sometimes be subjects of ridicule. But, though the young may have looked with scorn, the more thoughtful amongst us have looked with complacency on the social repose and general comfort—on the absence of continual jostling and struggling in all the roads of life—produced by a system, unsuited to our national tastes and tempers, no doubt, but which, till a few months ago, appeared to be in perfect harmony with the character of the Austrian German. We respect her courage, her constancy in adversity. We admire the sturdy obstinacy with which she has so often stood up to fight another round, and has finally triumphed after she appeared to be beaten. We call to mind the services she rendered to Christian civilisation in times past. We remember that her interests have generally concurred with our own—have rarely been opposed to them. We cannot forget the long and arduous struggles, in which England and Austria have stood side by side, in defence of the liberties of nations, or the glorious achievements by which those liberties were preserved. It is because we would retain unimpaired[619] the feelings which these recollections inspire, because we consider the power and the character of Austria essential to the welfare of Europe, that we look with alarm on the course she has pursued towards Hungary.

The time has not yet come when the whole course of the events connected with this unnatural contest can be accurately known. The silence maintained and imposed by Austria may have withheld, or suppressed, explanations that would justify or palliate much of what wears a worse than doubtful aspect. But the authentic, information now accessible to the public cannot fail to cause deep anxiety to all who care for the reputation of the imperial government—to all who desire to see monarchy come pure out of the furnace in which it is now being tried. The desire to enforce its hereditary policy of a uniform patriarchal system would not justify, in the eyes of Englishmen, an alliance with anarchy to put down constitutional monarchy in Hungary, or an attempt to cover, with the blood and dust of civil war, the departure of the imperial government from solemn engagements entered into by the emperor.

The nature of the relations by which Hungary is connected with Austria—the origin and progress of their present quarrel, and the objects for which the Hungarians are contending—appear to have been very generally misunderstood, not in this country only, but in a great part of Europe. Men whom we might expect to find better informed, seem to imagine that Hungary is an Austrian province in rebellion against the emperor, and that the origin and tendency of the movement was republican. The reverse of all this is true. Hungary is not, and never was, a province of Austria; but has been and is, both de jure and de facto, an independent kingdom. The Emperor of Austria is also King of Hungary, but, as Emperor of Austria, has neither sovereign right nor jurisdiction in Hungary. The Hungarians assert, and apparently with truth, that they took up arms to repel unprovoked aggression, and to defend their constitutional monarchy as by law established; that their objects are therefore purely conservative, and their principles monarchical; and that it is false and calumnious to accuse them of having contemplated or desired to found a republic—a form of government foreign to their sentiments, and incompatible with their social condition.

The kingdom of Hungary (Hungarey) founded by the Majjars in the tenth century, had for several generations been distinguished amongst the nations of Europe, when another pagan tribe from the same stock—issuing like them from the Mongolian plains, and turning the Black Sea by the south, as they had done by the north—crossed the Bosphorus, overturned the throne of the Cæsars, and established on its ruins an Asiatic empire, which became the terror of Christendom. The Majjars, converted to Christianity, encountered on the banks of the Danube this cognate race, converted to Islamism, and became the first bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turks. The deserts of Central Asia, which had sent forth the warlike tribe that threatened Eastern Europe with subjugation, had also furnished the prowess that was destined to arrest their progress. The court of Hungary had long been the resort of men of learning and science; the chivalry of Europe had flocked to her camps, where military ardour was never disappointed of a combat, or religious zeal of an opportunity to slaughter infidels. In 1526, Ludovic, King of Hungary and Bohemia, with the flower of the Hungarian chivalry, fell fighting with the Turks at the disastrous battle of Mohacs—the Flodden field of Hungary. The monarchy was then elective, but when the late king left heirs of his body the election was but a matter of form. When the monarch died without leaving an heir of his body, the nation freely exercised its right of election, and on more than one such occasion had chosen their king from amongst the members of princely houses in other parts of Europe. In this manner Charles Robert, of the Neapolitan branch of the house of Anjou and Ladislas, King of Bohemia, son of Casimir King of Poland, and father of Ludovic who fell at Mohacs, had been placed upon the throne. Ludovic died without issue, and he was the last male of his line—it therefore became necessary to choose a[620] king from some other house. Ferdinand, brother of the Emperor Charles V., had married his cousin Anne, daughter of Ladislas, and sister of Ludovic the late King of Hungary and Bohemia. His personal character, his connexion with the royal family of Hungary, and the support he might expect from the emperor in the war against the Turks, prevailed over the national antipathy to Austria, and he was elected to the vacant throne, though not without a contest. He was crowned according to the ancient customs of Hungary, and at his coronation took the oath which had been administered on similar occasions to his predecessors. He thereby bound himself to govern according to the laws, and to maintain and defend the constitution and the territory of Hungary. He was likewise elected King of Bohemia, after subscribing a document, by which he renounced every other claim to the crown than that which he derived from his election. The emperor surrendered to him the crown of Austria, and these three crowns were thus, for the first time, united in a prince of the house of Hapsburg. These states were altogether independent one of another, had their separate laws, institutions, and customs, and had no other bond of connexion than the accidental union of the crowns in one person—a union which might at any time, on the demise of the crown, have been dissolved. It resembled, in this respect, the union of the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover in the persons of our own sovereigns, that it left the kingdoms both de jure and de facto independent of each other. In 1558, Ferdinand was elected Emperor of Germany; but as emperor he could claim no jurisdiction in Hungary, which was not then, and never was, included in the German empire. The monarchy of Hungary continued to be elective, and the nation continued to give a preference to the heirs of the late monarch. The princes of the house of Hapsburg, who succeeded to the throne of Austria, were thus successively elected to that of Hungary; were separately crowned in that kingdom, according to its ancient customs; and at their coronation took the same oath that Ferdinand had taken.

In 1687 the states of Hungary decreed that the throne, which had hitherto been filled by election, should thenceforward be hereditary in the male heirs of the house of Hapsburg; and in 1723, the diet, by agreeing to the Pragmatic sanction of Charles III. of Hungary, (the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany,) extended the right of succession to the female descendants of that prince. These two measures were intended, and calculated, to perpetuate the union of the two crowns in the same person. The order of succession to the crown of Hungary was thus definitively settled by statute, and could not legally be departed from, unless with the concurrence both of the diet and of the sovereign. So long, therefore, as the crown of Austria was transmitted in the same order of succession as that in which the crown of Hungary had been settled, the union would be preserved; but any deviation in Austria from the order fixed by law in Hungary would lead to a separation of the crowns, unless the Hungarian diet could be induced to consent to a new settlement. Thus we have seen the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover united for four generations, and separated in the fifth, because one was settled on heirs male or female, the other on heirs male only.

An attempt has been made, with reference to recent events, to found on the Pragmatic Sanction pretensions that might derogate from the absolute independence of Hungary; but the articles of the Hungarian diet [31] of 1790 appear to be fatal to any such pretensions. By Article 10 of that year it is declared, that "Hungary is a country free and independent in her entire system of legislation and of government; that she is not subject to any other people, or any other state, but that she shall have her own separate existence, and her own constitution, and shall consequently [621]be governed by kings crowned according to her national laws and customs." By Article 12 of the same diet it was declared, that the power to enact, to interpret, and to abrogate the laws, was vested conjointly in the king, legitimately crowned, and the diet; and that no attempt should ever be made to govern by edicts or arbitrary acts. By Article 13 it was decreed, that the diet should be called together once every three years at the least. By Article 19 it was declared, that imposts could not be levied at the king's pleasure, but must be freely voted by the two tables (houses) from one diet to another. All these acts received the formal assent of Leopold II., and thus became statutes of the kingdom.

The successors of Leopold—Francis II., and Ferdinand, who has recently abdicated—received the crown of Hungary on the conditions implied in the coronation oath, which was administered to them in the usual manner, and by which they bound themselves to respect and maintain the constitution as by law established, and to govern according to the statutes. The question whether the late emperor should be addressed Ferdinand I. or Ferdinand V. was a subject of debate in the diet while Mr Paget was at Presburg, and he gives the following account of the proceedings:—

It must not be supposed that these articles of 1790 conferred upon the diet any new powers, or implied any new concessions on the part of the king. They were declaratory acts, framed for the purpose of exacting from Leopold II. securities against a renewal of the arbitrary proceedings to which Joseph had resorted; and they merely reasserted what the Hungarian constitution had provided long before the election of Ferdinand I.—what had for several generations been the law of the land.

The Hungarians were not satisfied with having obtained from Leopold a formal renunciation of Joseph's illegal pretensions. They felt, and the cabinet admitted, that the ancient institutions of Hungary—which had with difficulty been preserved, and which for some generations had been deteriorating rather than improving under the influence of the Austrian government—were no longer suited to the altered circumstances of the country, to the growing intelligence and advancing civilisation of its inhabitants. But they desired to effect all necessary ameliorations cautiously and deliberately. They were neither enamoured of the republican doctrines of France, nor disposed to engage in destructive reforms for the purpose of framing a new constitution. They desired to improve, not to destroy, that which they possessed. They would probably have preferred to effect the necessary ameliorations in each department successively; but they feared the direction that might be given by the influence of the crown, to any gradual modification of the existing institutions that might be attempted. By the constitution of Hungary, the diet is precluded from discussing any measures that have not been brought before it in the royal propositions, or king's speech—unless cases of particular grievances which may be brought before the diet by individual members. To engage in a course of successive reforms would have exposed the diet to the danger of being arrested[622] in its progress, as soon as it had passed such measures as were acceptable to the cabinet. They therefore named a commission, including the most enlightened and the ablest men in the country, to report on the whole legislation of Hungary in all its branches. This great national commission was formed of seven committees, or sub-commissions, each of which undertook to report on one department. The committees were—1st, That on the Urbarial code, or the condition of the peasants, and their relations to the proprietors: 2d, On the army, and all that related to it: 3d, On public policy, including the powers and jurisdiction of the diet, and of its different component parts: 4th, On matters ecclesiastical and literary, including education: 5th, On commerce: 6th, On the civil and criminal codes: and 7th, On contributions, including the whole system of taxation, and everything connected with the public revenue. The reports of this national commission, which are known as the "Operata systematica commissionis regnicolaris," recommended comprehensive ameliorations of the laws, and were creditable to the intelligence, science, statesmanship, and good sense of the commissions. The reports upon the commercial and the criminal codes, more especially, attracted the attention and the admiration of some of the ablest men in Germany.

From this time forward, each succeeding diet endeavoured to get the recommendations of the commission introduced into the royal propositions. The cabinet never refused—often promised to comply with this demand, but always deferred the discussion. Probably it was not averse to some of the measures proposed, or at least not unwilling to adopt them in part. The projected reform of the Urbarial code would have tended to increase the revenue, and to facilitate its collection; but it would at the same time have imposed upon the nobles new burdens, and required of them considerable sacrifices—and, before submitting to these, they were desirous to secure a more efficient control over the national expenditure, and ameliorations of the Austrian commercial system, which, by heavy duties, had depreciated the value of the agricultural produce that furnished their incomes. The diet, therefore, desired to get the operata systematica considered as a whole; the cabinet, and the party in Hungary which supported it, sought to restrict the diet to the discussion of such changes only as were calculated to benefit Austria.

When Francis II., who had for some years been Palatine of Hungary, ascended the thrones of that kingdom and of Austria in 1792, there was no question as to the independence of Hungary, which had been so fully recognised by his father. The usual oath was administered to him at his coronation, which was conducted in the usual manner; and in his reply to the address of the Hungarian diet, on his accession, he showed no disposition to invade the constitutional rights of the Hungarians. "I affirm," he said, "with sincerity, that I will not allow myself to be surpassed in the affection we owe to each other. Tell your citizens that, faithful to my character, I shall be the guardian of the constitution: my will shall be no other than that of the law, and my efforts shall have no other guides than honour, good faith, and unalterable confidence in the magnanimous Hungarian nation." To these sentiments the diet responded by voting all the supplies, and the troops, demanded of them by the king.

In 1796, the diet was again called together, to be informed that, "attacked by the impious and iniquitous French nation, the king felt the necessity of consulting his faithful states of Hungary, remembering that, under Maria Theresa, Hungary had saved the monarchy." The diet voted a contingent of 50,000 men, and undertook to provision the Austrian army, amounting to 340,000 soldiers. It urged the government to propose the consideration of the operata systematica; but the cabinet replied that it must consult and reflect; and, in the mean time, the diet was dissolved after only nineteen sittings. These proceedings produced a general feeling of discontent in Hungary, which threatened to become embarrassing; but the success of the French armies aroused the military spirit and loyalty of the Hungarians, and the appointment, at the same time, of the amicable[623] and enlightened Archduke Joseph to the dignity of Palatine of Hungary, in which he retained for fifty years the respect and affection of all parties, tended to preserve their attachment, though it did not silence their complaints.

But the peace of Amiens proved to be a hollow truce, and this flattering communication became the prelude to renewed demands for men and money. To hasten the votes on the supplies, the diet was informed that it would be dissolved in two months. In the debate which ensued, one of the members uttered the sentiments of the nation, when he said—"It is plain that the king calls us together only when he wants soldiers and supplies. He knows that, after all, we have too much honour to allow the majesty of the King of Hungary to be insulted by his enemies." The impost was increased, and the contingent raised to 64,000 men; but the consideration of the measures recommended by the great national commission, though promised, was deferred by the king. The diet of 1805 resembled that of 1802—the same promises ending in similar disappointment.

The diet of 1807 was more remarkable. To the usual demands was added the royal proposition, that the "insurrection," or levée en masse, should be organised, and ready to march at the first signal. The patience of the nation was exhausted. The diet represented to the king, in firm but respectful addresses, the disorder in the finances produced by the amount of paper-money issued in disregard of their remonstrances, and called upon the government to repair the evil. They said that, during many years, the country had done enough to prove its fidelity to the sovereign, whose royal promises had not been fulfilled; and that henceforth the Hungarians could not expend their lives and fortunes in the defence of his hereditary states, unless he seriously took in hand the interests of their native country. They demanded the revision of the commercial system, and liberty freely to export the produce of the country, and freely to import the productions of other countries. They complained of a new depreciation of the currency, demanded a reduction of the duty on salt, (the produce of their own mines,) which had recently been augmented, and denounced "the injustice of paralysing the industry of a people, while requiring of them great sacrifices."

The justice of these representations was admitted, but no satisfactory answer was returned; and the murmurs at Presburg became loud enough to cause alarm at Vienna. The advance of Napoleon to the frontiers of Hungary turned the current of the national feeling. It was now the sacred soil of Hungary that was threatened with desecration, and the diet not only voted all the subsidies and 20,000 recruits, but the whole body of the nobles or freemen spontaneously offered one-sixth of their incomes, and a levée en masse was decreed for three years. Napoleon's attempts to detach the Hungarians from the cause of their king were unavailing, and their devotion to his person was never more conspicuous than when he had lost the power to reward it.

In 1811 the royal propositions, in addition to the usual demands, requested the diet to vote an extraordinary supply of twelve millions of florins, and to guarantee Austrian paper money to the amount of one hundred millions, (about ten millions sterling.) The diet called for the[624] account of the previous expenditure, and were told that the details of the budget were secrets of state. This answer excited the greatest indignation, and they refused to vote any extraordinary supply till the accounts were produced. They complained that the finances of Hungary were administered by Austrians—foreigners, who were excluded by law from a voice in their affairs—and that the cabinet of the emperor had illegally mixed up the finances of Hungary with those of the hereditary states of Austria. Some members of the diet even threatened to impeach the ministers. In their addresses to the throne, the financial administration of the imperial government was roughly handled; and the cabinet, perceiving that the debates at Presburg had inconveniently directed attention, even in the Hereditary States, to financial questions, hastily withdrew their propositions.

The peace of 1815 restored to Europe the repose she had long desired, and to Hungary many of her sons who had long been absent. In the midst of war, her diet had never ceased to attend to the internal administration of the country, to the improvement of her resources, and the advancement of her population in material prosperity and intelligence. All the comprehensive measures prepared with this view had been postponed or neglected by the king, acting by the advice of his Austrian cabinet, and supported by a powerful party of the magnates of Hungary. But though her hopes had been disappointed, Hungary had never failed, in any moment of difficulty or danger, to apply her whole power and resources to the defence of the empire. She never sought, in the embarrassments, the defeat, and misfortunes of Austria, an opportunity to extort from her king the justice he had denied to her prayers. She never for a moment swerved from devoted allegiance to her constitutional monarch. "After all, she had too much honour to allow the majesty of the King of Hungary to be insulted by his enemies." She forgave the frequent delays and refusals, by which the most salutary measures had been frustrated or rejected, because she knew that the thoughts and the energies of her sovereign and his Austrian cabinet had been directed to the defence of the empire, and the preservation of its independence. But now that these were no longer threatened, that the good cause for which she had fought with so much gallantry and devotion had triumphed, she had a right to expect a grateful return for her services—or at least that the promises, on the faith of which she had lavished her blood and her treasure in defence of her king and of his Austrian dominions, would be fulfilled. But the republican outbreak in France had led to long years of war and desolation; the triumph of monarchy and order over anarchy had at length been achieved, and men had not only abjured the doctrines from which so much evil had sprung, but monarchs had learned to look with distrust on every form of government that permitted the expression of public opinion, or acknowledged the right of the people to be heard. Even the mixed government of England, to which order owed its triumph, was regarded as a danger and a snare to other countries. The Holy Alliance was formed, and the Austrian cabinet, which for more than twenty years had flattered the hopes of Hungary when it wanted her assistance, now boldly resolved to govern that kingdom without the aid of its diet. In vain did the county assemblies call for the convocation of the national parliament, which the king was bound, by the laws he had sworn to observe, to summon every three years. Their addresses were not even honoured with an answer. In 1822, an attempt was made to levy imposts and troops by royal edicts. The comitats (county assemblies) refused to enforce them. In 1823, bodies of troops were sent—first to overawe, and then to coerce them. The county officers concealed their archives and official seals, and dispersed. Royal commissioners were appointed to perform their functions, and were almost everywhere resisted. The whole administration of the country, civil and judicial, was in confusion; and, after an unseemly and damaging contest, the cabinet found it necessary, in 1825, to give way, and to summon the diet, after an interval of twelve years.[625] One personal anecdote will convey a more correct impression of the feelings with which the Hungarians, who were most attached to the emperor-king, viewed these proceedings, than any detail we could give. John Nemet, Director Causarum Regalium of Hungary, at a personal interview with the king, denounced the proceedings of the cabinet. "Do you know," said the irritated monarch, "that I am emperor and king; that you may lose your head?" "I know," replied Nemet, "that my life is in your majesty's hands; but the liberty of my country, and the honour of my sovereign, are dearer to me than my life."

When the diet met in 1825, the king, in his reply to the address, admitted that "things had happened which ought not to have occurred, and which should not occur again." The diet did not conceal its resentment. The comitat of Zala, through its representatives, demanded the names of the traitors who had misled the king; and the representatives of all the other counties supported the proposition. One of the royal commissioners came in tears to apologise to the diet; another, who attempted to justify himself on the ground of obedience to the king, was told that a faithful subject honoured his sovereign when he reminded him of his duty. The articles of 1790 were declared to have been openly violated, and the diet complained that the public security had been outraged by arrests and prosecutions, founded on anonymous denunciations. The address to the king, in which they set forth their grievances, concluded with the following petition:—

In his answer, Francis blamed the diet for their proceedings, but wisely conceded their demands. By article 3d of 1825, he engaged to observe the fundamental laws of the kingdom. By article 4th, never to levy subsidies without the concurrence of the diet; by article 5th, to convoke the diet every three years.

The attempt of Francis II. to subvert the constitution of Hungary terminated, as the similar attempt of Joseph II. had terminated thirty-five years before—in renewed acknowledgments of the independence of Hungary, and the constitutional rights of the Hungarians.

After three centuries of contention, the cabinet of Vienna now appeared to have abandoned the hope it had so long entertained, of imposing upon Hungary the patriarchal system of Austria. Relinquishing the attempt to enforce illegal edicts, it relied upon means more in accordance with the practice of constitutional governments. It could command a majority at the table of Magnates, and it endeavoured, by influencing the elections, to strengthen its party in the Deputies. But in this kind of warfare the cabinet of an absolute monarch were far less skilful than the popular leaders of a representative assembly. The attempts to influence the elections by corrupt means were generally unsuccessful, and, when exposed, exhibited the government in a light odious to a people tenacious of their liberties and distrustful of Austria.

There had long been two parties in the diet, of which one, from supporting the views of the court, was considered Austrian; the other, from its avowed desire to develop the popular institutions and separate nationality of Hungary, was considered Hungarian, and took the designation of the patriotic party. There was thus a government party and an opposition, which, in 1827, was systematically organised. But as Hungary had not a separate ministry, responsible to the diet, that could be removed from office by its votes, there was little ground for the usual imputation of a struggle for place. The patriotic party could expect no favour from the court; their opposition was, therefore, so far disinterested, and was, in fact, founded upon the instructions of the counties they represented.[626]

It must appear extraordinary that the majority of an assembly composed of nobles, of which nine-tenths of the members were elected by hereditary nobles or freeholders, should advocate opinions so liberal as to alarm even the Austrian government. A great majority of the electors, it is true, though rejoicing in the designation of nobles, were men who tilled the soil with their own hands; but they are truly described by Mr Paget as "generally a proud, unruly set of fellows, with higher notions of privilege and power than of right and justice; but brave, patriotic, and hospitable in the highest degree." After describing the national character of the Majjars, he adds,—

To suppose that these men had republican tendencies would, of course, be absurd; and as the patriotic party in the diet represented their opinions, we may be well assured that they were not such as, to any party in this country, would appear dangerous from excess of liberality.

To the government of Austria, however, nothing caused greater uneasiness than attempts to consolidate and improve the popular institutions of Hungary, or to foster feelings of separate nationality, which it had been the constant aim of its policy to obliterate. Determined to maintain, at all hazards, her own patriarchal system, Austria saw Hungary already separated from the Hereditary States by the form of her institutions and by national feelings, and dreaded the wider separation which the onward march of the one, and the stationary policy of the other, must produce. In superficial extent, Hungary is nearly half the empire—in population, more than one-third. The separation of the crowns would reduce Austria to the rank of a second-rate power; and Hungary separated from Austria, and surrounded by despotic governments jealous of her constitutional freedom, could not be safe. Not only an Austrian, but a patriotic Hungarian, might therefore resist, as perilous to his country, any course of legislation that appeared to lead towards such a result. If Hungary continued to advance in material prosperity and intelligence, and succeeded in giving to her constitution a basis so broad as to insure a just distribution of the public burdens, and to unite all classes of her population in its support, she must ultimately separate from Austria, or Austria must abandon her stationary policy, and advance in the same direction. It was impossible that two contiguous countries, of extent and resources so nearly equal, governed on principles so different, and daily increasing the distance between them, should long continue to have their separate administrations conducted by one cabinet, or could long be held together by their allegiance to the same sovereign. To give permanence to their connexion, it was necessary that Austria should advance, or that Hungary should stand still. But the condition and circumstances of more than one-half of her population made it indispensable to her safety—to her internal tranquillity, her material prosperity, and social order—that Hungary should go forward. The nobles, holding their lands by tenure of military service, bore no part of the public burdens during peace. The peasants, though they were no longer serfs, and had acquired an acknowledged and valuable interest in the lands they held from the proprietors, for which they were indebted to Maria Theresa, were yet subject to all manner of arbitrary oppressions. They had been promised ameliorations of their condition as early as 1790, but these promises had not yet been fulfilled. In the mean time, the peasants had been left to endure their grievances, and did not endure them without murmuring. The more intelligent and enlightened nobles felt the danger, and sought to remedy the evil, and hitherto without success. But it is unjust to attribute to Austrian influence all the opposition encountered by those who sought to ameliorate the condition of the peasants. Men who had hitherto been exempted from all public imposts, and who considered it humiliating to[627] be taxed, resisted the equalisation of the burdens; men who had been taught to consider the peasant as a creature of an inferior race, shrank from giving him civil rights equal to their own. Nevertheless, in 1835, measures were passed which greatly improved the position of the oppressed classes. We cannot stop to trace the course of legislation, or to point out the wisdom and disinterested humanity that distinguished the leaders in this movement. Amongst them stands conspicuous the name of Szechenyi, to whom his country owes an everlasting debt of gratitude. Alas! that a mind like his, whose leading characteristic was practical good sense, that rejected every visionary project, should now be wandering amidst its own morbid creations in an unreal world. Several of the wealthier nobles put beyond all question the sincerity of the opinions they had maintained, by voluntarily inscribing their names in the list of persons subject to be taxed; and thus shared the public burdens with their peasants.

Writing after the acts of 1835 had been passed, Mr Paget thus describes the feelings of the peasants,—

The elective franchise was still withheld from a man born a peasant, whatever might be his stake in the country. He was not equal with the noble before the law; and, what was perhaps still more grievous to him, he continued to bear the whole burden of taxation, local and national. The noble contributed nothing. Besides the labour and produce he gave to his proprietor as rent for his land, the peasant paid tithes to the church, and a head-tax and property-tax to the government. He paid the whole charges for the administration of justice, which he could rarely obtain; for the municipal government, in the election of which he had no vote; for the maintenance of public buildings, from many of which he was excluded; and by much the greater part of the expenses of the army, in which he was forced to serve, without a hope of promotion. He alone made and repaired the roads and bridges, and he alone paid tolls on passing them. On him alone were soldiers quartered, and he had to furnish them, not only with lodgings in the midst of his family, but with fuel, cooking, stable-room, and fodder, at about one halfpenny a-day, often not paid, and to sell his hay to the government, for the use of the troops, at a fixed price, not equal to one-fourth of its value in the market. At the same time, a noble who tilled the ground like the peasant—who was perhaps not more intelligent, not more industrious—had a hereditary privilege of exemption from all these burdens, and enjoyed a share in the government of the country.

The revolt of the Ruthene peasants of Gallicia in 1846, who had massacred whole families of the Polish nobles, and the belief that the Austrian government had encouraged the revolt, had been slow to put it down, and had rewarded its leaders, produced agitation amongst the peasants in Hungary, and the greatest anxiety in the minds of the nobles. They felt that the fate of Gallicia might be their own, if the peasants should at any time lose hope and patience, or if the Austrian government should be brought to adopt, in Hungary, the policy attributed to it in Gallicia. In short, it was plain that, so long as the grievances of the peasants remained unredressed, there could be no security for Hungary. But these grievances could not be redressed without imposing new burdens on the nobles, and, at the same time, restricting their privileges. If they were to tax themselves, they required an efficient control over the public expenditure, and a relaxation of the Austrian commercial system, which prevented the development of the country's resources.

The diet had been summoned for November 1847; and in June of that year, the patriotic party put forth an exposition of its views preparatory to the elections, which, in Hungary, are renewed for every triennial meeting of the diet. In that document, a translation of which is now before us, they declare, that "our grievances, so[628] often set forth, after a long course of years, during which we have demanded, urged, and endured, have to this day remained unredressed." After enumerating some of these grievances, they proceed to state their demands—

They go on to declare that they will endeavour to promote all that tends to the material and intellectual development of the country, and especially public instruction: That, in carrying out these views, they will never forget the relations which, in terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, exist between Hungary and the Hereditary States of Austria: That they hold firmly to article 10, of 1790, by which the royal word, sanctified by an oath, guarantees the independence of Hungary: That they do not desire to place the interests of the country in contradiction with the unity or security of the monarchy, but they regard as contrary to the laws, and to justice, that the interests of Hungary should be made subordinate to those of any other country: That they are ready, in justice and sincerity, to accommodate all questions on which the interests of Hungary and Austria may be opposed, but they will never consent to let the interests and constitution of Hungary be sacrificed to unity of the system of government, "which certain persons are fond of citing as the leading maxim, instead of the unity of the monarchy."

"That unity in the system of government," they assert, "was the point from which the cabinet set out when, during the last quarter of the past century, it attacked our nationality and our civil liberty, promising us material benefits in place of constitutional advantages. It was to this unity in the system of government that the constitution of the Hereditary States of Austria was sacrificed, and it was on the basis of absolute power that the unity of the government was developed."

They declare that they consider it their first and most sacred duty to preserve their constitution, and to strengthen it more and more by giving it a larger and more secure basis; and they conclude by expressing their persuasion "that, if the Hereditary States had still enjoyed their ancient liberties, or if, in accordance with the demands of the age, they were again to take their place amongst constitutional nations, our interests and theirs, which now are often divided, sometimes even opposed, would be more easily reconciled. The different parts of the empire would be bound together by greater unity of interests, and by greater mutual confidence, and thus the monarchy, growing in material and intellectual power, would encounter in greater security the storms to which times and circumstances may expose it."

The diet which met in November 1847, had scarcely completed the ordinary forms and routine business with which the session commences, when all Europe was thrown into a revolutionary ferment, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. The revolution of February in Paris, was followed by that of March at Vienna, by the expulsion of the Austrians from Milan, and by Sclavonic insurrections in Prague and Cracow. Constitutional Hungary alone remained tranquil. Surrounded by revolutions, incited by daily reports of republican triumphs, Hungary preserved her composure, her allegiance, and her internal peace. At a moment when republican doctrines found favour with a powerful party in every other portion of the emperor's dominions, the diet of Hungary, with the full concurrence of the Archduke Palatine, peacefully and unanimously passed those acts which the national party had prepared and announced some months before the storms had arisen that shook the thrones of Europe. At Paris, Berlin, Naples, Rome, Vienna, and in almost every minor capital of[629] Germany and Italy, it became a question whether monarchy was to be preserved, or whether social order was to be overthrown. In Hungary no such questions ever arose or could arise. True to their conservative principles, and firm in their allegiance to their king, the nobles of Hungary sought by constitutional means, in the midst of general anarchy, the same ameliorations of their constitution which, in the midst of general tranquillity, they had already demanded. But the emperor had, in the mean time, conceded constitutional government, and a responsible ministry, to the revolutionary party in the Hereditary States, and the change which had thus been effected required a modification of the relations between Hungary and the imperial government. By the laws of Hungary, no foreigner could hold office in her administration; and, by the same laws, every Austrian was a foreigner. These laws had been respected; Austrians had not been appointed to offices in the Hungarian administration. No act of the government of Hungary, no communication from the king to the diet, had ever been countersigned by an Austrian minister. A ministry responsible to the parliament of Austria, and not responsible to the parliament of Hungary, could not administer the government of the latter country; and the same ministry could not be responsible to both parliaments. If Hungary was not to be incorporated with Austria, it was necessary that she should have a separate ministry, responsible only to her own diet. An act providing such a ministry was passed unanimously, in both houses of the diet, with the full concurrence of the Archduke Palatine.

To complete the administration of the kingdom, and to preserve and maintain the due influence of the crown in the constitution, it was demanded, on the part of the crown, that the powers of the Palatine or viceroy should be extended; and having found a precedent—a preliminary almost as necessary in the diet of Hungary as in the parliament of Great Britain and Ireland—an act was passed without opposition, giving the Palatine, in the absence of the king, full powers to act in the name and on behalf of the sovereign.

By unanimous votes of both houses, the diet not only established perfect equality of civil rights and public burdens amongst all classes, denominations, and races in Hungary and its provinces, and perfect toleration for every form of religious worship, but, with a generosity perhaps unparalleled in the history of nations, and which must extort the admiration even of those who may question the wisdom of the measure, the nobles of Hungary abolished their own right to exact either labour or produce in return for the lands held by urbarial tenure, and thus transferred to the peasants the absolute ownership, free and for ever, of nearly half the cultivated land in the kingdom, reserving to the original proprietors of the soil such compensation as the government might award from the public funds of Hungary. More than five hundred thousand peasant families were thus invested with the absolute ownership of from thirty to sixty acres of land each, or about twenty millions of acres amongst them. The elective franchise was extended to every man possessed of capital or property of the value of thirty pounds, or an annual income of ten pounds—to every man who has received a diploma from a university, and to every artisan who employs an apprentice. With the concurrence of both countries, Hungary and Transylvania were united, and their diets, hitherto separate, were incorporated. The number of representatives which Croatia was to send to the diet was increased from three to eighteen, while the internal institutions of that province remained unchanged; and Hungary undertook to compensate the proprietors for the lands surrendered to the peasants, to an extent greatly exceeding the proportion of that burden which would fall on the public funds of the province. The complaints of the Croats, that the Majjars desired to impose their own language upon the Sclavonic population, were considered, and every reasonable ground of complaint removed. Corresponding advantages were extended to the other Sclavonic tribes, and the fundamental laws of the kingdom, except in so far as they were modified by these acts, remained unchanged.

The whole of the acts passed in[630] March 1848 received the royal assent, which, on the 11th of April, the emperor personally confirmed at Presburg in the midst of the diet. These acts then became statutes of the kingdom, in accordance with which the new responsible Hungarian ministry was formed, and commenced the performance of its duties with the full concurrence of the emperor-king and the aid of the Archduke Palatine. The changes that had been effected were received with gratitude by the peasants, and with entire satisfaction, not only by the population of Hungary Proper, but also by that of all the Sclavonic provinces. From Croatia, more especially, the expression of satisfaction was loud, and apparently sincere.

A party at the Austrian court, opposed to all concessions, and desirous still to revert to the patriarchal system that had been overturned, saw in the established constitutional freedom of Hungary the greatest impediment to the success of their plans. Seeking everywhere the means of producing a reaction, it found in Croatia a party which had been endeavouring to get up a Sclavonic movement in favour of what they called Illyrian nationality, and which was therefore opposed to Majjar ascendency in Hungary. The peculiar organisation of the military frontier, which extends from the Adriatic to the frontiers of Russia, and which is in fact a military colony in Hungary, under the immediate influence and authority of Austria, and composed almost exclusively of a Sclavonic population, afforded facilities for exciting disturbances in Hungary. But it was necessary to provide leaders for the Sclavonic revolt against the Hungarians. Baron Joseph Jellachich, colonel of a Croat regiment in the army of Italy, was selected by the agitators for reaction as a man fitted by his position, his character, and military talents, as well as by his ambition, to perform this duty in Croatia. He was named Ban of that province, without consulting the Hungarian ministry, whose countersignature was necessary to legalise the nomination. This was the first breach of faith committed by the imperial government; but the Hungarian ministry, desirous to avoid causes of difference, acquiesced in the appointment, and invited the Ban to put himself in communication with them. His first act was to interdict the Croat magistrates from holding any communication with the government of Hungary, of which Croatia is a province, declaring that the Croat revolt was encouraged by the king. On the representation of the Hungarian ministry, the king, in an autograph letter, dated 29th May, reprobated the proceedings of the Ban, and summoned him to Innspruck. On the 10th of June, by a royal ordinance, he was suspended from all his functions, civil and military; but Jellachich retained his position, and declared that he was acting in accordance with the real wishes and instructions of his sovereign, while these public ordinances were extorted by compulsion. At the same time, and by similar means, a revolt of the Serbes on the Lower Danube was organised by Stephen Suplikacs, another colonel of a frontier regiment, aided by the Greek patriarch. Several counties, some of which were principally inhabited by Hungarians, Wallacks, and[631] Germans, were declared to have been formed into a Serbe Vayoodat or government, which was to be in alliance with Croatia. The Serbes, joined by bands from Turkish Servia, attacked the neighbouring Hungarian villages, slaughtered the inhabitants, and plundered the country. But this did not prevent Jellachich, who had been denounced and charged with high treason, or the Greek patriarch Rajaesis, the accomplice of Suplikacs, from being received by the emperor and his brother, the Archduke Francis Charles, at Innspruck. In a letter, dated the 4th of June, addressed to the frontier regiments stationed in Italy, Jellachich declared that the imperial family of Austria encouraged the insurrections against the Hungarians. Meanwhile the Serbes were carrying on a war of extermination, massacring the inhabitants, burning towns and villages, even when they encountered no resistance; and a force was collected on the frontiers of Croatia with the manifest intention of invading Hungary.

The revolt continued to be pushed forward in the name of the emperor-king, and the diet was about to be opened. The Hungarian ministers, therefore, entreated his majesty to open the diet in person, in order by his presence to prove the falsehood of the enemies of Hungary; but the invitation had no effect.

The new national assembly of Hungary, returned for the first time by the suffrage of all classes of the nation, was opened at Pesth, when it was found that, with scarcely an exception, all the members of the diet, formerly elected by the nobles, had been again returned—so calmly had the people exercised their newly-acquired privileges. On the 2d of July the Archduke Palatine, who had been unanimously chosen by the diet on the presentation of the king, alluded in his opening speech to a revolt in Croatia, and to the proceedings of armed bands in the counties of the Lower Danube. His Imperial Highness made the following statement:—

The diet, rejoiced by these assurances, immediately sent a deputation to entreat the king to repair to Pesth, as the only means of disabusing the minds of the Croats and Serbes, who were made to believe that his public acts were the result of coercion. The prayer of the deputation was refused. The Servian insurrection continued to gain ground; the Austrian troops stationed in Hungary, for the defence of the country,[632] refused to obey the government, and at length a communication to the Hungarian ministry, dated the 29th of June, three days prior to the speech of the Archduke Palatine, announced the intention of the Austrian ministry to put an end to the neutrality it had hitherto observed, and to support Croatia openly. All the Hungarians were then convinced that their constitution, and the independence of the country, must be defended by force of arms. But the ministry and the diet would not depart from the constitutional and legal course. A levy of 200,000 men was decreed, as well as an issue of bank-notes to cover the deficits; and the acts were presented for the royal assent by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice: but a long time elapsed before any reply could be obtained. In the mean time the situation of the country every day became worse, and another deputation was sent to the king, headed by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, to obtain the royal assent to the laws already presented; the recall of the Hungarian troops of the line, quartered everywhere except in Hungary; and orders to the foreign troops stationed in that country to discharge their duty faithfully. Finally the king was again entreated to come into his kingdom, to restore to her peace and order. The deputation received an evasive reply. But at the same time, and while the two ministers were at Vienna, the king, without acquainting them, despatched, on the 31st of August, a letter to the Palatine, directing him to send several members of the Hungarian ministry to Vienna, for the purpose of concerting measures with the Austrian ministry, to consolidate and insure the unity of the government and of the monarchy, and to open negotiations with the Croats for the reconciliation of their differences. But the king declared it to be an indispensable condition that the Ban Jellachich—who in the end of May had been denounced as a traitor—should take a part in the conferences; that all preparations for war should cease on both sides; and that the districts of the military frontier, which have always formed part of Hungary, should be provisionally subject to the Austrian ministry. In this same document a communication was made to the Hungarian ministry, of a note of the Austrian government, on the relations to be established between Austria and Hungary. It was stated "that the provisions of the law of 1848, by which the Archduke Palatine had been appointed depository of the royal authority, and chief of the executive power in the absence of the king—and by which a responsible ministry had been conceded to Hungary, detaching from the central government of Vienna the administration of war, finance, and commerce—were contrary to the Pragmatic Sanction, opposed to the legal relations between Austria and Hungary, and detrimental alike to the interests of Hungary and Austria. These concessions were declared illegal and of none effect, under the pretext that they had not been consented to by the responsible Austrian ministry; and although they had been sanctioned by the royal word on the 11th of April, and again formally recognised in the speech from the throne on the 2d July, it was announced that these laws were to be considerably modified, in order that a central power might be established at Vienna."

Never, we venture to say, was a discreditable breach of public faith palliated on pretexts more futile. Hungary is as independent of the Hereditary States as the Hereditary States are of Hungary; and, in matters relating to Hungary, the ministers of Austria, responsible or irresponsible, have no more right to interfere between the King and his Hungarian ministers, or Hungarian diet, than these have to interfere between the Emperor of Austria and his Austrian ministers, in matters relating to the Hereditary States. The pretension to submit the decisions of the Hungarian diet, sanctioned by the King, to the approval or disapproval of the Austrian ministers, is too absurd to have been resorted to in good faith. The truth appears to be, that the successes of the gallant veteran Radetzki, and of the Austrian army in Italy, which has so well sustained its ancient reputation,[633] had emboldened the Austrian government to retrace the steps that had been taken by the emperor. Trusting to the movements hitherto successful in Croatia and the Danubian provinces of Hungary,—to the absence of the Hungarian army, and of all efficient preparation for defence on the part of the Hungarian government, and elated with military success in Italy,—the Austrian ministers resumed their intention to subvert the constitution of Hungary, and to fuse the various parts of the emperor's dominions into one whole. Their avidity to accomplish this object prevented their perceiving the stain they were affixing to the character of the empire, and the honour of the emperor; or the injury they were thereby inflicting on the cause of monarchy all over the world. "Honour and good faith, if driven from every other asylum, ought to find a refuge in the breasts of princes." And the ministers who sully the honour of their confiding prince, do more to injure monarchy, and therefore to endanger the peace and security of society, than the rabble who shout for Socialism.

The Austrian ministry did not halt in their course. They made the emperor-king recall, on the 4th September, the decree which suspended Jellachich from all his dignities, as a person accused of high treason. This was done on the pretext that the accusations against the Ban were false, and that he had exhibited undeviating fidelity to the house of Austria. He was reinstated in all his offices at a moment when he was encamped with his army on the frontiers of Hungary, preparing to invade that kingdom. In consequence of this proceeding, the Hungarian ministry, which had been appointed in March, gave in their resignation. The Palatine, by virtue of his full powers, called upon Count Louis Bathianyi to form a new ministry. All hope of a peaceful adjustment seemed to be at an end; but, as a last resource, a deputation of the Hungarian deputies was sent to propose to the representatives of Austria, that the two countries should mutually guarantee to each other their constitutions and their independence. The deputation was not received.

Count Louis Bathianyi undertook the direction of affairs, upon the condition that Jellachich, whose troops had already invaded Hungary, should be ordered to retire beyond the boundary. The king replied, that this condition could not be accepted before the other ministers were known.

But Jellachich had passed the Drave with an army of Croats and Austrian regiments. His course was marked by plunder and devastation; and so little was Hungary prepared for resistance, that he advanced to the lake of Balaton without firing a shot. The Archduke Palatine took the command of the Hungarian forces, hastily collected to oppose the Ban; but, after an ineffectual attempt at reconciliation, he set off for Vienna, whence he sent the Hungarians his resignation.

The die was now cast, and the diet appealed to the nation. The people rose en masse. The Hungarian regiments of the line declared for their country. Count Lemberg had been appointed by the king to the command of all the troops stationed in Hungary; but the diet could no longer leave the country at the mercy of the sovereign who had identified himself with the proceedings of its enemies, and they declared the appointment illegal, on the ground that it was not countersigned, as the laws required, by one of the ministers. They called upon the authorities, the citizens, the army, and Count Lemberg himself, to obey this decree under pain of high treason. Regardless of this proceeding, Count Lemberg hastened to Pesth, and arrived at a moment when the people were flocking from all parts of the country to oppose the army of Jellachich. A cry was raised that the gates of Buda were about to be closed by order of the count, who was at this time recognised by the populace as he passed the bridge towards Buda, and brutally murdered. It was the act of an infuriated mob, for which it is not difficult to account, but which nothing can justify. The diet immediately ordered the murderers to be brought to trial, but they had absconded. This was the only act of popular violence committed in the capital of Hungary.

On the 29th of September, Jellachich was defeated in a battle fought within twelve miles of Pesth. The Ban fled, abandoning to their fate the[634] detached corps of his army; and the Croat rearguard, ten thousand strong, surrendered, with Generals Roth and Philipovits, who commanded it.

In detailing the events subsequent to the 11th of April 1848, we have followed the Hungarian manifesto, published in Paris by Count Ladeslas Teleki, whose character is a sufficient security for the fidelity of his statements; and the English translation of that document by Mr Brown, which is understood to have been executed under the Count's own eye. But we have not relied upon the Count alone, nor even upon the official documents he has printed. We have availed ourselves of other sources of information equally authentic. One of the documents, which had previously been transmitted to us from another quarter, and which, we perceive, has also been printed by the Count, is so remarkable, both because of the persons from whom it emanates, and the statements it contains, that, although somewhat lengthy, we think it right to give it entire.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy of Hungary, it must be kept in mind, have at all times been in close connexion with the Roman Catholic court of Austria, and have almost uniformly supported its views. The Archbishop of Gran, Primate of Hungary, possesses greater wealth and higher privileges than perhaps any magnate in Hungary.

In this unhappy quarrel Hungary has never demanded more than was voluntarily conceded to her by the Emperor-King on the 11th of April 1848. All she has required has been that faith should be kept with her; that the laws passed by her diet, and sanctioned by her king, should be observed. On the other hand, she is required by Austria to renounce the concessions then made to her by her sovereign—to relinquish the independence she has enjoyed for nine centuries, and to exchange the constitution she has cherished, fought for, loved, and defended, during seven hundred years, for the experimental constitution which is to be tried in Austria, and which has already been rejected by several of the provinces. This contest is but another form of the old quarrel—an attempt on the part of Austria to enforce, at any price, uniformity of system; and a determination on the part of Hungary, at any cost, to resist it.

We hope next month to resume the consideration of this subject, to which, in the midst of so many stirring and important events in countries nearer home and better known, it appears to us that too little attention has been directed. We believe that a speedy adjustment of the differences between Austria and Hungary, on terms which shall cordially reunite them, is of the utmost importance to the peace of Europe—and that the complications arising out of those differences will increase the difficulty of arriving at such a solution, the longer it is delayed. We believe that Austria, distracted by a multiplicity of counsels, has committed a great error, which is dangerous to the stability of her position as a first-rate power; and we should consider her descent from that position a calamity to Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A View of the Art of Colonisation, with present reference to the British Empire; in Letters between a Statesman and a Colonist. Edited by (one of the writers) Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

[2] Ultramontanism; or the Roman Church and Modern Society. By E. Quinet, of the College of France. Translated from the French. Third edition, with the author's approbation, by C. Cocks, B.L. London: John Chapman. 1845.

[3] He surely means Bernini, and is a ninny for not saying so. But Mr Cocks' translation says Berni—p. 144.

[4] Literary Life of Frederick von Schlegel. By James Burton Robertson, Esq.

[5] See Blackwood for August 1845.

[6] Mr Robertson says of de Bonald, "As long as this great writer deals in general propositions, he seldom errs; but when he comes to apply his principles to practice, then the political prejudices in which he was bred lead him sometimes into exaggerations and errors." For "political prejudices" substitute Ultramontanism, and Mr Robertson has characterised the whole school of the Reaction.

[7] Philosophy of History.

[8] De l'Etat et des besoins Religieux et Moraux des Populations en France: par M. l'Abbé J. Bonnetat. Paris. 1845.

[9] See Blackwood, October 1845.

[10] "Le Souverain Pontife est la base nécessaire, unique, et exclusive du Christianisme.... Si les évènements contrarient ce que j'avance, j'appelle sur ma mémoire le mépris et les risées de la postérité."—Du Pape, chap. v. p. 268.

[11] Remarks on the Government Scheme of National Education in Scotland, 1848.

[12] We observe, however, that by the Parliamentary Returns of 1834, the school accommodation was even then considerably greater than is here stated. The greatest number attending the parish school was 246, and non-parochial schools 443; which, to the population there given of 3210, was nearly a proportion of 1 in 5 of the inhabitants—a larger proportion than in Prussia!

[13] They have taken care to sound the committee on the subject, and have received an answer encouraging enough. The following extract is from their report of a deputation to the Lord President:—"2. In regard to applications for annual grants under the minutes, it was asked—What evidence will ordinarily be required to satisfy the Committee of the Privy Council that any particular school is needed in the district in which it stands, and that it ought to be recognised as entitled to its fair share of the grant equally with others similarly situated? Supposing, in any given school, all the other conditions, as to pecuniary resources, the qualifications of teachers, &c., satisfactorily complied with, will it be held enough to have the report of the Government inspector or inspectors that a sufficient number of children (say 50 or 60 in the country, and 90 or 100 in towns) either are actually in attendance upon the school, or engaged to attend, without the question being raised as to the contiguity of other schools of a different denomination, or the amount of vacant accommodation in such schools? In reply, it was stated that the Committee of Privy Council could not limit their discretion in judging of the comparative urgency of applications; their lordships were disposed to receive representations, and to inquire as to the sufficiency of the existing school accommodation; and they would also consider any other ground which might be urged for the erection of a new school where a school or schools had been previously established."—Minutes for 1847-8, vol. l, p. lxiv.

[14] Schoolmasters' Memorial, p. 3.

[15] In many parishes side schools are built and endowed, in addition to the parish school, from the same funds: the salary in these cases being fixed by the Act at about £17.

[16] Parliamentary Inquiry, 1837, Appendix.

[17] That the presbytery has the power of insisting upon qualifications supplementary to those prescribed by the heritors, was decided, we think about a dozen years ago, in the case of Sprouston.

[18] The Church herself, to a considerable extent, supplements deficiencies in the legal school provision by means of her "Education Scheme," whose object and efficiency may be partly gathered from the two first sentences of the last report of the managing committee:—

"The schools under the charge of your committee (as has often been stated) are intended to form auxiliaries to the parish schools, not to compete or interfere with these admirable institutions; and, accordingly, are never planted except where, owing to local peculiarities, it is impossible that all the youth of the district requiring instruction can be gathered into one place. While much needed, your schools continue to be most useful; and, indeed, by the divine blessing, they appear to have been rendered eminently beneficial.

"The number of schools under the care of your committee may be reported of thus:—Those situated in the Highlands and Islands, 125; those in the Lowlands, 64; and those planted at the expense of the Church of Scotland's Ladies' Gaelic School Society, and placed under your committee's charge, 20; in all, 209."

[19] Reise nach dem Ararat und dem Hochland Armenien, von Dr Moritz Wagner. Mit einem Anhange: Beiträge zur Naturgeshichte des Hochlandes Armenien. Stuttgart und Tübinger, 1848.

[20] Reise in der Regentschaft Algier in den Jahren 1836-8. 3 volumes. Leipzig, 1841.

[21] The Armenian Christians abound in traditions respecting Noah and his ark. We have already mentioned the one relating to Arguri, which he is said to have founded, and which should therefore have been the oldest village in the world, up to its destruction in 1840 by an earthquake and volcanic eruption, of which Dr Wagner gives an interesting account. The simple and credulous Christians of Armenia believe that fragments of the ark are still to be found upon Ararat.

[22] This eccentric old soldier and author, who calls himself the Hermit of Gauting, from the name of an estate he possesses, is not more remarkable for the oddity of his dress and appearance, than for the peculiarities and affected roughness of his literary style, and for the overstrained originality of many of his views. In his own country he is cited as a contrast to Prince Puckler Muskau, the dilettante and silver-fork tourist par excellence, whose affectation, by no means less remarkable than that of the baron, is quite of the opposite description. Von Hallberg's works are numerous, and of various merit. One of his most recent publications is a "Journey through England," (Stuttgard, 1841.) The chief motive of his travels is apparently a love of locomotion and novelty. When travelling with Dr Wagner, he took little interest in his companion's geological and botanical investigations, and directed his attention to men rather than to things. After passing the town of Pipis, three days' journey from Tefflis, the country and climate assumed a very German aspect, strongly reminding the travellers of the vicinity of the Hartz Mountains. "It is folly," exclaimed old Baron Hallberg, almost angrily, "perfect folly, to travel a couple of thousand miles to visit a country as like Germany as one egg is to another." "I really pitied the old man, who had daily to support the rude jolting of the Russian telega, besides suffering greatly from the assaults of vermin, and who found so little matter where with to fill his journal."—Reise nach dem Ararat, &c., p. 15.

[23] Une Visite â Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux. Par Charles Didier. Paris: 1849. Dieu le Veut. Par Vicomte d'Arlincourt. Paris: 1848-9.

[24] Videlicet—the Dean's apartment; a visit to which frequently concludes by the visitor's finding himself "gated," i. e., obliged to be within the college walls by 10 o'clock at night; by this he is prevented from partaking in suppers, or other nocturnal festivities, in any other college or in lodgings.

[25] Be not indignant, ye broader waves of Thames and Isis! In the number of contending barks, and the excitement of the spectators of the strife, Cam may, with all due modesty, boast herself unequalled. To the swiftness of her champion galleys ye have yourselves often borne witness.

[26] The most fashionable promenade for the "spectantes" and "spectandi" of Cambridge.

[27]

"Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus."—Horace, Odes.

[28] Virgil, Æneid, i. 415.

[29] It was the fanciful opinion of Hume that the purer Divinities of pagan worship, and the system of the Homeric Olympus, were so lastingly beautiful, that somewhere or other they must, to this hour, continue to exist.

[30] Chiefly by marriage with princesses who were heirs to these kingdoms and principalities. It was thus that Hungary, Bohemia, and the Tyrol were acquired. Hence the lines—

"Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube:
Nam quæ Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus."

You, Austria, wed as others wage their wars;
And crowns to Venus owe, as they to Mars.

It was by marriage that the Saxon emperor, Otho the Great, acquired Lombardy for the German empire.

[31] The acts passed by the diet are numbered by articles, as those of our parliament are by chapters. Each of these articles, when it has received the royal assent, becomes a statute of the kingdom, in the same manner as with us, and of course equally binds the sovereign and his subjects.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOLUME 65, NO. 403, MAY, 1849 ***

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Colonisation—Mr Wakefield's Theory,	509
The Reaction, or Foreign Conservatism,	529
Madame D'Arbouville's "Village Doctor,"	542
National Education in Scotland,	567
Ararat and the Armenian Highlands,	577
Legitimacy in France,	590
The College. A Sketch in Verse,	601
Jack Moonlight,	606
Moonlight Memories. By B. Simmons,	613
Austria and Hungary,	614

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

COLONISATION—MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY.[1]

THE REACTION, OR FOREIGN CONSERVATISM.

MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR."

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.

NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND.

ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS.[19]

LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE.[23]

THE COLLEGE.—A SKETCH IN VERSE.

JACK MOONLIGHT.

MOONLIGHT MEMORIES.

BY B. SIMMONS.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.

FOOTNOTES:

Transcriber's Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

COLONISATION—MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY.[1]

THE REACTION, OR FOREIGN CONSERVATISM.

MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR."

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.

NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND.

ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS.[19]

LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE.[23]

THE COLLEGE.—A SKETCH IN VERSE.

JACK MOONLIGHT.

MOONLIGHT MEMORIES.

BY B. SIMMONS.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.

FOOTNOTES:

Transcriber's Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.