The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
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Title: The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Editor: Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis W. Halsey
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THE BEST
_of the_
WORLD'S CLASSICS
RESTRICTED TO PROSE
HENRY CABOT LODGE
Editor-in-Chief
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Associate Editor
With an Introduction, Biographical and Explanatory Notes, etc.
In Ten Volumes
Vol. VI
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--IV
[Illustration: RUSKIN, DICKENS, THACKERAY, DARWIN]
Funk & Wagnalls Company
New York and London
Copyright, 1909, by
Funk & Wagnalls Company
The Best of the World's Classics
VOL. VI
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--IV
1801-1909
CONTENTS
VOL. VI--GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--IV
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN--(Born in 1801, died in 1890.)
I The Beginnings of Tractarianism.
(From the "Apologia pro Vita Sua")
II On His Submission to the Catholic Church.
(From the "Apologia")
III Of Athens as a True University.
(From Volume III of the "Historical Sketches")
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON--(Born in 1803, died in 1873.)
The Descent of Vesuvius on Pompeii.
(From "The Last Days of Pompeii")
LORD BEACONSFIELD--(Born in 1804, died in 1881.)
Jerusalem by Moonlight.
(From "Tancred")
CHARLES MERIVALE--(Born in 1808, died in 1893.)
The Personality of Augustus Cæsar.
(From the "History of the Romans Under the Empire")
ALEXANDER W. KINGLAKE--(Born in 1809, died in 1891.)
I On Mocking at the Sphinx.
(From "Eothen")
II The Beginnings of the Crimean War.
(From "The Invasion of the Crimea")
CHARLES DARWIN--(Born in 1809, died in 1882.)
I On Variations in Mammals, Birds and Fishes.
(From "The Origin of Species")
II The Genesis of a Great Book.
(From the "Autobiography," printed in Volume I of the
"Life and Letters")
JOHN BROWN--(Born in 1810, died in 1882.)
Rab and the Game Chicken.
(From "Rab and His Friends")
WILLIAM M. THACKERAY--(Born in 1811, died in 1863.)
I The Imperturbable Marlborough.
(From "The History of Henry Esmond")
II At the Ball Before the Battle of Waterloo.
(From "Vanity Fair")
III The Death of Colonel Newcome.
(From "The Newcomes")
IV London in the Time of the First George.
(From the "Four Georges")
CHARLES DICKENS--(Born in 1812, died in 1870.)
I Sidney Carton's Death.
(The conclusion of "A Tale of Two Cities")
II Bob Sawyer's Party.
(From Chapter XXXI of "The Posthumous Papers of
the Pickwick Club")
III Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness.
(From Chapters LVII and LVIII of "The Old Curiosity Shop")
IV A Happy Return of the Day.
(From Book III, Chapter IV, of "Our Mutual Friend")
CHARLOTTE BRONTE--(Born in 1816, died in 1855.)
I Of the Author of "Vanity Fair."
(Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre")
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE--(Born in 1818, died in 1894.)
I Of History as a Science.
(From "Short Studies on Great Subjects")
II The Character of Henry VIII.
(From the "History of England")
III Cæsar's Mission.
(From the concluding chapter of "Cæsar--A Sketch")
JOHN RUSKIN--(Born in 1819, died in 1900.)
I Of the History and Sovereignty of Venice.
(From Chapter I of "The Stones of Venice")
II St. Mark's at Venice.
(From Vol. II of "The Stones of Venice")
III Of Water.
(From Vol. II, Section V, of "Modern Painters")
GEORGE ELIOT--(Born in 1819, died in 1880.)
At the Hall Farm.
(From "Adam Bede")
HERBERT SPENCER--(Born in 1820, died in 1904.)
I The Origin of Professional Occupations.
(From Volume III of "The Principles of Sociology")
II Self-Dependence and Paternalism.
(From the "Essays, Moral, Political and Esthetic")
III The Ornamental and the Useful in Education.
(From "Education, Intellectual, Moral and Physical")
IV Reminiscences of His Boyhood.
(From Part I, Chapter II, of the "Autobiography")
V A Tribute to E. L. Youmans.
(From Part VII of the "Autobiography")
VI Why He Never Married.
(From Part XII of the "Autobiography")
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE--(Born in 1821, died in 1862.)
I The Isolation of Spain.
(From Vol. II, Chapter VIII, of the "History of Civilization
in England")
II George III and the Elder Pitt.
(From Vol. I, Chapter VII, of the "History of Civilization
in England")
MATTHEW ARNOLD--(Born in 1822, died in 1888.)
The Motive for Culture.
(From "Culture and Anarchy")
EDWARD A. FREEMAN--(Born in 1823, died in 1892.)
The Death of William the Conqueror.
(From "The History of the Norman Conquest")
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY--(Born in 1825, died in 1895.)
On a Piece of Chalk.
(From "Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews")
FREDERIC HARRISON--(Born in 1831.)
The Great Books of the World.
(From an address on "The Choice of Books")
JOHN RICHARD GREEN--(Born in 1837, died in 1883.)
George Washington.
(From Book IV, Chapter II, of the "History of the English
People")
JOHN MORLEY--(Born in 1838.)
Voltaire as an Author and as a Man of Action.
(From "Voltaire")
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON--(Born in 1850, died in 1894.)
I Francis Villon's Terrors.
(From "A Lodging for the Night: A Story of Francis Villon")
II The Lantern Bearers.
(From "Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays")
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--IV
1801-1909
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Born in 1801, died in 1890; son of a banker; educated at
Oxford; a Fellow of Oriel in 1822, where he was associated
with Dr. Pusey; made a voyage to the Mediterranean in
1832-33, returning from which he wrote "Lead, Kindly Light";
joined the Oxford movement in 1833, writing many of the
"tracts for the times"; formally joined the Catholic Church
in 1845; established an Oratory in 1849; published
"Lectures" in 1850, the "Apologia" in 1864, "Grammar of
Ascent" in 1870; made a cardinal in 1879.
I
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRACTARIANISM[1]
During the first years of my residence at Oriel, tho proud of my
college, I was not quite at home there. I was very much alone, and I
used often to take my daily walk by myself. I recollect once meeting
Dr. Copleston, then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned round,
and with the kind courteousness which sat so well on him, made me a
bow and said, _Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus_. At that time,
indeed (from 1823), I had the intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr.
Pusey, and could not fail to admire and revere a soul so devoted to
the cause of religion, so full of good works, so faithful in his
affections; but he left residence when I was getting to know him
well. As to Dr. Whately[2] himself, he was too much my superior to
allow of my being at my ease with him; and to no one in Oxford at this
time did I open my heart fully and familiarly. But things changed in
1826. At that time I became one of the tutors of my college, and this
gave me position; besides, I had written one or two essays which had
been well received. I began to be known. I preached my first
University sermon. Next year I was one of the public examiners for the
B. A. degree. In 1828 I became vicar of St. Mary's. It was to me like
the feeling of spring weather after winter; and, if I may so speak, I
came out of my shell. I remained out of it until 1841.
[Footnote 1: From the "Apologia pro Vita Sua."]
[Footnote 2: Richard Whately, Bampton lecturer at Oxford in 1822;
principal of St. Albans Hall in 1825; afterward Archbishop of Dublin;
best known for his "Logic" and "Christian Evidences." When Newman met
him, he was already famous for his "Historical Doubts Relative to
Napoleon Bonaparte," which had been published in 1814.]
The two persons who knew me best at that time are still alive,
beneficed clergymen, no longer my friends. They could tell better than
any one else what I was in those days. From this time my tongue was,
as it were, loosened, and I spoke spontaneously and without effort.
One of the two, a shrewd man, said of me, I have been told, "Here is a
Fellow who, when he is silent, will never begin to speak, and when he
once begins to speak will never stop." It was at this time that I
began to have influence, which steadily increased for a course of
years. I gained upon my pupils, and was in particular intimate and
affectionate with two of our Probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac
Wilberforce (afterward Archdeacon), and Richard Hurrell Froude.[3]
Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an
incipient party of which I was not conscious myself. And thus we
discern the first elements of that movement afterward called
Tractarian. The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual
with great motive powers, was out of sight. Having carried off, as a
mere boy, the highest honors of the University, he had turned from the
admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier
satisfaction in pastoral work in the country.
[Footnote 3: A brother of James Anthony Froude. Richard Hurrell
Froude's influence on the founding of the Tractarian movement was
strong. He cooperated with Newman in writing the "Lyra Apostolica."
His health had long been delicate, when in 1836 he died. His "Remains"
were published in the following year, with a preface by Newman. Three
of the "Tracts for the Times" were by Froude.]
Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble?[4] The first time that I
was in a room with him was on the occasion of my election to a
Fellowship at Oriel, when I was sent for into the Tower, to shake
hands with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour fixt in my memory
after the changes of forty-two years; forty-two this very day on which
I write! I have lately had a letter in my hands which I sent at the
time to my great friend, John William Bowden, with whom I passed
almost exclusively my undergraduate years. "I had to hasten to the
Tower," I say to him, "to receive the congratulations of all the
Fellows. I bore it till Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed
and unworthy of the honor done to me, that I seemed desirous of quite
sinking into the ground." His had been the first name which I had
heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I came up
to Oxford. When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear
earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out,
"There's Keble!" and with what awe did I look at him! Then at another
time I heard a Master of Arts of my college give an account how he had
just then had occasion to introduce himself on some business to Keble,
and how gentle, courteous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost
to put him out of countenance. Then, too, it was reported, truly or
falsely, how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of
St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he
was strangely unlike any one else. However, at the time when I was
elected Fellow of Oriel, he was not in residence, and he was shy of me
for years, in consequence of the marks which I bore upon me of the
Evangelical and Liberal schools, at least so I have ever thought.
Hurrell Froude brought us together about 1828; it is one of the
sayings preserved in his "Remains"--"Do you know the story of the
murderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well, if I was ever
asked what good thing I had ever done, I should say I had brought
Keble and Newman to understand each other."
[Footnote 4: Keble, one of the chief promoters of the Oxford movement,
will long be remembered as author of "The Christian Year," published
in 1827. For ten years he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Three of
the "Tracts for the Times" were by him. He was Newman's senior by
eight years.]
II
ON HIS SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH[5]
I had one final advance of mind to accomplish, and one final step to
take. That further advance of mind was to be able honestly to say that
I was certain of the conclusions at which I had already arrived. That
further step, imperative when, such certitude was attained, was my
submission to the Catholic Church.
[Footnote 5: From the "Apologia." Newman, for many years, had held to
the possibility of English churchmen maintaining a middle ground
between the Catholic Church and Protestantism, but in 1843 he
abandoned this hope, resigning his living, and in 1845 formally
entered the Catholic Church. He says in the "Apologia" that "from the
end of 1841, I was on my death-bed as regards my membership with the
Anglican church, tho at the time I became aware of it only by
degrees."]
This submission did not take place till two full years after the
resignation of my living in September 1843; nor could I have made it
at an earlier date, without doubt and apprehension; that is, with any
true conviction of mind or certitude.
In the interval, of which it remains to speak--viz., between the
autumns of 1843 and 1845--I was in lay communion with the Church of
England: attending its services as usual, and abstaining altogether
from intercourse with Catholics, from their places of worship, and
from those religious rites and usages, such as the Invocation of
Saints, which are characteristics of their creed. I did all this on
principle; for I never could understand how a man could be of two
religions at once.
What I have to say about myself between these two autumns I shall
almost confine to this one point--the difficulty I was in as to the
best mode of revealing the state of my mind to my friends and others,
and how I managed to reveal it.
Up to January, 1842, I had not disclosed my state of unsettlement to
more than three persons.... To two of them, intimate and familiar
companions, in the autumn of 1839; to the third--an old friend too,
whom I have also named above--I suppose when I was in great distress
of mind upon the affair of the Jerusalem Bishopric. In May, 1843, I
made it known, as has been seen, to the friend by whose advice I
wished, as far as possible, to be guided. To mention it on set purpose
to any one, unless indeed I was asking advice, I should have felt to
be a crime. If there is anything that was abhorrent to me, it was the
scattering doubts, and unsettling consciences without necessity. A
strong presentiment that my existing opinions would ultimately give
way, and that the grounds of them were unsound, was not a sufficient
warrant for disclosing the state of my mind. I had no guarantee yet,
that that presentiment would be realized. Supposing I were crossing
ice, which came right in my way, which I had good reasons for
considering sound, and which I saw numbers before me crossing in
safety, and supposing a stranger from the bank, in a voice of
authority and in an earnest tone, warned me that it was dangerous,
and then was silent--I think I should be startled, and should look
about me anxiously, but I think too that I should go on, till I had
better grounds for doubt; and such was my state, I believe, till the
end of 1842. Then again, when my dissatisfaction became greater, it
was hard at first to determine the point of time when it was too
strong to suppress with propriety. Certitude of course is a point, but
doubt is a progress: I was not near certitude yet. Certitude is a
reflex action; it is to know that one knows. Of that I believe I was
not possest, till close upon my reception into the Catholic Church.
Again, a practical, effective doubt is a point too; but who can easily
ascertain it for himself? Who can determine when it is that the scales
in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what was a greater
probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt against it?
In considering this question in its bearing upon my conduct in 1843,
my own simple answer to my great difficulty had been, Do what your
present state of opinion requires in the light of duty, and let that
doing tell; speak by acts. This I had done; my first act of the year
had been in February. After three months' deliberation I had published
my retractation of the violent charges which I had made against Rome:
I could not be wrong in doing so much as this; but I did no more at
the time: I did not retract my Anglican teaching. My second act had
been in September in the same year: after much sorrowful lingering and
hesitation, I had resigned my Living. I tried indeed, before I did so,
to keep Littlemore for myself, even tho it was still to remain an
integral part of St. Mary's.[6] I had given to it a church and a sort
of parsonage; I had made it a parish, and I loved it: I thought in
1843 that perhaps I need not forfeit my existing relations toward it.
I could indeed submit to become a curate at will of another; but I
hoped an arrangement was possible by which, while I had the curacy, I
might have been my own master in serving it. I had hoped an exception
might have been made in my favor, under the circumstances; but I did
not gain my request. Perhaps I was asking what was impracticable, and
it is well for me that it was so.
[Footnote 6: St. Mary's was the church of the University of Oxford,
Newman being its vicar. Littlemore was an outlying place attached to
St. Mary's and to which Newman withdrew on leaving Oxford in 1842.
Here, with several young men who had attached themselves to his
fortunes, he established himself in a building which came to be known
as "the Littlemore Monastery." It was here that Newman passed the
three years of meditation and anxiety which preceded his final
decision to join the Roman Church.]
These had been my two acts of the year, and I said, "I can not be
wrong in making them; let that follow which must follow in the
thoughts of the world about me, when they see what I do." And as time
went on, they fully answered my purpose. What I felt it a simple duty
to do, did create a general suspicion about me, without such
responsibility as would be involved in my initiating any direct act
for the sake of creating it. Then, when friends wrote me on the
subject, I either did not deny or I confest my state of mind,
according to the character and need of their letters. Sometimes in the
case of intimate friends, whom I should otherwise have been leaving
in ignorance of what others knew on every side of them, I invited the
question.
And here comes in another point for explanation. While I was fighting
in Oxford for the Anglican Church, then indeed I was very glad to make
converts; and tho I never broke away from that rule of my mind (as I
may call it) of which I have already spoken, of finding disciples
rather than seeking them, yet that I made advances to others in a
special way, I have no doubt; this came to an end, however, as soon as
I fell into misgivings as to the true ground to be taken in the
controversy. For then, when I gave up my place in the movement, I
ceased from any such proceedings; and my utmost endeavor was to
tranquillize such persons, especially those who belonged to the new
school, as were unsettled in their religious views, and as I judged,
hasty in their conclusions. This went on till 1843; but at that date,
as soon as I turned my face Romeward, I gave up, as far as ever was
possible, the thought of, in any respect and in any shape, acting upon
others. Then I myself was simply my own concern. How could I in any
sense direct others, who had to be guided in so momentous a matter
myself? How could I be considered in a position, even to say a word to
them, one way or the other? How could I presume to unsettle them as I
was unsettled, when I had no means of bringing them out of such
unsettlement? And if they were unsettled already, how could I point to
them a place of refuge, when I was not sure that I should choose it
for myself? My only line, my only duty, was to keep simply to my own
case. I recollected Pascal's words, "Je mourrai seul" [I will die
alone]. I deliberately put out of my thoughts all other works and
claims, and said nothing to any one, unless I was obliged.
But this brought upon me a great trouble. In the newspapers there were
continual reports about my intentions; I did not answer them:
presently strangers or friends wrote, begging to be allowed to answer
them; and if I still kept to my resolution and said nothing, then I
was thought to be mysterious, and a prejudice was excited against me.
But what was far worse, there were a number of tender, eager hearts,
of whom I knew nothing at all, who were watching me, wishing to think
as I thought, and to do as I did, if they could but find it out; who
in consequence were distrest that in so solemn a matter they could not
see what was coming, and who heard reports about me this way or that,
on a first day and on a second; and felt the weariness of waiting, and
the sickness of delayed hope, and did not understand that I was as
perplexed as they were, and being of more sensitive complexion of mind
than myself, they were made ill by the suspense. And they too, of
course, for the time thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I ask
their pardon as far as I was really unkind to them....
I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23d, 1846. On the Saturday
and Sunday before, I was in my house at Littlemore simply by myself,
as I had been for the first day or two when I had originally taken
possession of it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, Mr.
Johnson's, at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last
of me: Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr.
Lewis. Dr. Pusey too came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr.
Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when
I was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first college,
Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation so
many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my
Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be
much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms
there; and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual
residence, even unto death, in my University.
On the morning of the 23d I left the Observatory. I have never seen
Oxford since, excepting its spires as they are seen from the railway.
III
OF ATHENS AS A TRUE UNIVERSITY[7]
If we would know what a university is, considered in its most
elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most
beautiful home of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful
Athens,--Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back
to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long
thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed
hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet
what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighborhood
to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness of the
region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land,
where all the archetypes of the great and the fair were found in
substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all
diversities of intellectual power exhibited; where taste and
philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court; where
there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of
genius; where professors were rulers and princes did homage,--hither
flocked continually from the very corners of the _orbis terrarum_, the
many-tongued generation, just rising or just risen into manhood, in
order to gain wisdom.
[Footnote 7: From Volume III of the "Historical Sketches."]
Pisistratus[8] had at an early age discovered and nursed the infant
genius of his people, and Cimon,[9] after the Persian war, had given
it a home; that war had established the naval supremacy of Athens; she
had become an imperial state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the
double chain of kindred and of subjection, were importing into her
both their merchandise and their civilization. The arts and philosophy
of the Asiatic Court were easily carried across the sea, and there
was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive
them with due honor. Not content with patronizing their profession, he
built the first of those noble porticoes, of which we hear so much in
Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process of time formed the
celebrated academy. Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens
it was one of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in hand
the wild wood, pruned and drest it, and laid it out with handsome
walks and welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors of
the city's civilization, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her
prosperity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over
the merchants who assembled in the Agora, for many generations.
[Footnote 8: Pisistratus flourished from 605 B.C. until 527. He was a
friend of Solon, but usurped supreme power in 560; was twice expelled
and then restored to power. He is usually credited with a notable
systematic attempt to preserve the Works of Homer.]
[Footnote 9: Cimon died in 449 B.C. He was a son of Miltiades and
defeated the Persians on both sea and land in 466.]
Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of bounty; for all the
while their ships had been carrying forth the intellectual fame of
Athens to the Western world. Then commenced what may be called her
university existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon, both in the
government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have
entertained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated Greece;
in this he failed; but his encouragement of such men as Phidias and
Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sovereignty
over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her own
greatness, Athens would go to war; peace is the interest of a seat of
commerce and the arts; but to war she went: yet to her whether peace
or war mattered not. The political power of Athens waned and
disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell, centuries rolled away;--they did
but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. There
at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the
blue-eyed Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject to Mithridates,
gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after
revolution passed over the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, but
still she was there,--Athens, the city of the mind, as radiant, as
splendid, as delicate, as young, as ever she had been.
Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Ægean, many a
spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more
ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection
was nowhere else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos,
the Thessalian Vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, which lay to its
immediate north, was notorious for the very want of it. The heavy
atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was
associated in popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian
intellect; on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness,
and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its
genius, did that for it which earth did not;--it brought out every
bright line and tender shade of the landscape over which it was
spread, and would have illuminated the face even of a more barren and
rugged country.
A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and
thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers meeting at an
angle; three prominent mountains commanding the plain,--Parnes,
Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not
always full;--such is about the report which the agent of a London
company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate
was mild, the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble;
more pasture than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient
certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines
once, but long since worked out; figs, fair; oil, first-rate; olives
in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down was, that
that olive-tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it
excited a religious veneration, and that it took so kindly to the
light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb
up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his
employer, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet
blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a
softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks
exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell how
that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale
olive, until the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like
the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian Hills. He would say nothing of the
thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would
hear nothing of the hum of its bees, nor take much account of the rare
flavor of its honey, since Sozo and Minorca were sufficient for the
English demand.
He would look over the Ægean from the height he had ascended; he would
follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the
Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when
they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto
across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any
admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down
below; nor of those graceful, fanlike jets of silver upon the rocks,
which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver
and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft
mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the
whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a
line of soldiery, as they resounded upon the hollow shore--he would
not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to
bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor
the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden line
of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows east from Otus or Laurium
by the declining sun--our agent of a mercantile firm would not value
these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the
sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous
land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might
take his fill gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible,
unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province,
from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so different from that
of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned
at once what a real university must be, by coming to understand the
sort of country which was its suitable home.
Nor was this all that a university required and found in Athens. No
one, not even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that
famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds,
they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence
there to much account. Of course they must have the means of living,
nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an _alma
mater_ at the time, or to remain afterward a pleasant thought in their
memory. And so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port and a
mart of trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and strangers were ever
flocking to it, whose combat was to be with intellectual, not physical
difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants supplied that
they might be at leisure to set about furnishing their minds.
Now barren as was the soil of Attica, and bare the face of the
country, yet it had only too many resources for an elegant, nay,
luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, that
it was a common saying that the productions which were found singly
elsewhere were brought together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple
of existence in such a climate, came from the Islands of the Ægean;
fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, from the
Euxine; and timber too, and iron and brass, from the coasts of the
Mediterranean. The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures
himself, but encouraged them in others, and a population of
foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation, both for home
consumption and for exportation. Their cloth and other textures for
dress and furniture, and their hardware--for instance, armor--were in
great request. Labor was cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the
taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as
temples and porticoes, were in course of time applied to the mansions
of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that
art did much more.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Born in 1803, died in 1873; educated at Cambridge; member of
Parliament in 1831-41, and 1852-66; Colonial Secretary in
1858; raised to the peerage in 1866; his first work,
"Falkland," published in 1827; "Last Days of Pompeii" in
1834; besides many other novels, wrote volumes of verse,
made translations and wrote dramas, including "The Lady of
Lyons" (1838), and "Richelieu" (1839).
THE DESCENT OF VESUVIUS ON POMPEII[10]
On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat the women,
their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flower-bed; it is needless to
add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many
were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches
appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats
round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors--the
magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the
passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to
these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances
for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any
unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined
them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised
above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were
gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of
the entertainments for which the place was designed. Throughout the
whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced,
cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators.
[Footnote 10: From "The Last Days of Pompeii." The great theater at
Pompeii, built in the time of Augustus, was semi-circular in form,
with a diameter of 322 feet.]
The officers of the amphitheater were still employed in the task of
fixing the vast awning (or _velaria_) which covered the whole, and
which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it
was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad
stripes of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of
the workmen or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however,
was not arranged that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the
immense space of the circumference, the task was always one of great
difficulty and art--so much so that it could seldom be adventured in
rough or windy weather. But the present day was so remarkably still
that there seemed to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of
the artificers; and when a large gap in the back of the awning was
still visible, from the obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria
to ally itself with the rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and
general.
The ædile Pansa,[11] at whose expense the exhibition was given, looked
particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter vengeance on the
head of the chief officer of the show, who, fretting, puffing,
perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and unavailing threats.
[Footnote 11: The house of Pansa in Pompeii, as now uncovered, shows
one of the largest and most elaborate dwellings in the city. It
measures 120 by 300 feet.]
The hubbub ceased suddenly--the operators desisted--the crowd were
stilled--the gap was forgotten--for now, with a loud and warlike
flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious
procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very
slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure
to admire their stern serenity of feature--their brawny limbs and
various arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the
moment might suggest.
"Oh!" cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they leaned down
from their lofty bench, "do you see that gigantic gladiator? how
drolly he is drest!"
"Yes," said the ædile's wife with complacent importance, for she knew
all the names and qualities of each combatant: "he is a retiarius or
netter; he is armed only, you see, with a three-pronged spear like a
trident, and a net; he wears no armor, only the fillet and the tunic.
He is a mighty man, and is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set
gladiator, with the round shield and drawn sword but without body
armor; he has not his helmet on now, in order that you may see his
face--how fearless it is! By-and-by he will fight with his visor
down."...
While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show were over. To
these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden swords between the
various gladiators matched against each other. Among these the skill
of two Roman gladiators, hired for the occasion, was the most admired;
and next to them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham
contest did not last above an hour, nor did it attract any very lively
interest except among those connoisseurs of the arena to whom art was
preferable to more coarse excitement; the body of the spectators were
rejoiced when it was over, and when the sympathy rose to terror. The
combatants were now arranged in pairs, as agreed beforehand; their
weapons examined; and the grave sports of the day commenced amid the
deepest silence--broken only by the exciting and preliminary blast of
warlike music.
It was often customary to begin the sports by the most cruel of all;
and some bestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, was slain
first as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present instance the
experienced Pansa thought better that the sanguinary drama should
advance, not decrease, in interest; and accordingly the execution of
Olinthus and Glaucus was reserved for the last. It was arranged that
the two horsemen should first occupy the arena; that the foot
gladiators, paired off, should then be loosed indiscriminately on the
stage; that Glaucus and the lion should next perform their part in the
bloody spectacle; and the tiger and the Nazarene be the grand finale.
And in the spectacles of Pompeii, the reader of Roman history must
limit his imagination, nor expect to find those vast and wholesale
exhibitions of magnificent slaughter with which a Nero or a Caligula
regaled the inhabitants of the Imperial City. The Roman shows, which
absorbed the more celebrated gladiators and the chief proportion of
foreign beasts, were indeed the very reason why in the lesser towns of
the empire the sports of the amphitheater were comparatively humane
and rare; and in this as in other respects, Pompeii was the miniature,
the microcosm of Rome. Still, it was an awful and imposing spectacle,
with which modern times have, happily, nothing to compare; a vast
theater, rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from
fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no fictitious
representation--no tragedy of the stage--but the actual victory or
defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each and all who
entered the arena!
The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists (if so they
might be called), and at a given signal from Pansa the combatants
started simultaneously as in full collision, each advancing his round
buckler, each posing on high his sturdy javelin; but just when within
three paces of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted,
wheeled round, and as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist
spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skilfully
extended, received a blow which otherwise would have been fatal. And
the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.
The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of
the knights in after times), but the head was nevertheless the great
point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less
adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet
of his foe. Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his
quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him
through the breast. Berbix reeled and fell.
"Nobilior! Nobilior!" shouted the populace.
"I have lost ten sestertia," said Clodius, between his teeth.
"_Habet!_" (he has it) said Pansa deliberately.
The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy:
but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness
came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes
were set in death, It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over
the sand and sawdust of the arena.
There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and his net, matched
against Sporus with his shield and his short broad-sword; Lydon and
Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only
with a heavy Greek cestus; and two gladiators from Rome, clad in
complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and pointed
swords.
The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly
than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to
the middle of the arena than as by common consent the rest held back,
to see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer
weapons might replace the cestus ere they themselves commenced
hostilities. They stood leaning on their arms and apart from each
other, gazing on the show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to
please the populace, they were still inclined to admire because its
origin was of their ancestral Greece.
No persons could at first glance have seemed less evenly matched than
the two antagonists. Tetraides, tho no taller than Lydon, weighed
considerably more; the natural size of his muscles was increased, to
the eyes of the vulgar, by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a
notion that the contest of the cestus fared easiest with him who was
plumpest, Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary
predisposition to the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his lower
limbs thick-set, double-jointed, and slightly curved outward, in that
formation which takes so much from beauty to give so largely to
strength. But Lydon, except that he was slender even almost to
meagerness, was beautifully and delicately proportioned; and the
skilful might have perceived that with much less compass of muscle
than his foe, that which he had was more seasoned--iron and compact.
In proportion, too, as he wanted flesh, he was likely to possess
activity; and a haughty smile on his resolute face, which strongly
contrasted with the solid heaviness of his enemy's, gave assurance to
those who beheld it and united their hope to their pity; so that
despite the disparity of their seeming strength, the cry of the
multitude was nearly as loud for Lydon as for Tetraides.
Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring--whoever has
witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist,
skilfully directed, hath the power to bestow--may easily understand
how much that happy facility would be increased by a band carried by
thongs of leather round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly
strengthened about the knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a
plummet of lead. Yet this, which was meant to increase, perhaps rather
diminished, the interest of the fray; for it necessarily shortened its
duration. A very few blows, successfully and scientifically planted,
might suffice to bring the contest to a close; and the battle did not,
therefore, often allow full scope for the energy, fortitude, and
dogged perseverance that we technically style _pluck_, which not
unusually wins the day against superior science, and which heightens
to so painful a delight the interest in the battle and the sympathy
for the brave.
Tetraides struck--it was as the blow of a smith on a vise; Lydon sank
suddenly on one knee--the blow passed over his head. Not so harmless
was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and aimed his
cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides
reeled--the populace shouted....
The people had been already rendered savage by the exhibition of
blood; they thirsted for more; their superstition was aided by their
ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their victims, they
forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those dread
popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free and
half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman
provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the prætor was a reed
beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn
themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat
separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves of
the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count the
exact moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which beat down
even pride, he glanced his eye over the rolling and rushing crowd;
when, right above them, through the wide chasm which had been left in
the velaria, he beheld a strange and awful apparition; he beheld, and
his craft restored his courage!
He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features
there came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command.
"Behold!" he roared with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
the crowd: "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of
the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my
accusers!"
The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld
with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the
form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness--the breaches
fire!--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment,
now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed
terrifically forth with intolerable glare!
There was a dead, heart-sunken silence; through which there suddenly
broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the
building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow beasts. Dread
seers were they of the Burden of the Atmosphere, and wild prophets of
the wrath to come!
Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men
stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the
earth shake under their feet; the walls of the theater trembled; and
beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs; an
instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark
and rapid, like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its
bosom a shower of ashes mixt with vast fragments of burning stone!
Over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the
amphitheater itself; far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the
agitated sea, fell that awful shower!
No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for
themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing,
pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the
fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the
enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages.
Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake,
hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly
goods and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers
of ashes that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets,
rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses, or temples, or
sheds--shelter of any kind--for protection from the terrors of the
open air. But darker, and larger, and mightier, spread the cloud above
them. It was a sudden and more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of
Noon!
LORD BEACONSFIELD
Born in 1804, died in 1881; son of Isaac D'Israeli; entered
Parliament in 1837, where he opposed Peel; Chancellor of
Exchequer and leader of the House in 1852, and again in
1858; Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1866; carried the
Reform bill of 1867; Prime Minister in 1868, and again in
1874-80; made Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876; plenipotentiary
at the Congress of Berlin in 1878; published several novels,
including "Vivian Gray" (1826), "Henrietta Temple" (1837),
"Coningsby" (1844), "Sybil" (1845), "Tancred" (1847), and
"Endymion" (1880).
JERUSALEM BY MOONLIGHT[12]
The broad moon lingers on the summit of Mount Olivet, but its beam has
long left the garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of Absalom, the waters
of Kedron and the dark abyss of Jehoshaphat. Full falls its splendor,
however, on the opposite city, vivid and defined in its silver blaze.
A lofty wall, with turrets and towers, and frequent gates, undulates
with the unequal ground which it covers, as it encircles the lost
capital of Jehovah. It is a city of hills far more famous than those
of Rome: for all Europe has heard of Zion and of Calvary, while the
Arab and the Assyrian, and the tribes and nations beyond, are as
ignorant of the Capitoline and Aventine mounts as they are of the
Malvern or the Chiltern hills.
[Footnote 12: From "Tancred."]
The broad steep of Zion crowned with the tower of David; nearer
still, Mount Moriah, with the gorgeous temple of the God of Abraham,
but, built, alas! by the child of Hagar, and not by Sarah's chosen
one; close to its cedars and its cypresses, its lofty spires and airy
arches, the moonlight falls upon Bethesda's pool; further on, entered
by the gate of St. Stephen, the eye, tho 'tis the noon of night,
traces with ease the Street of Grief, a long winding ascent to a vast
cupolaed pile that now covers Calvary--called the Street of Grief,
because there the most illustrious of the human, as well as of the
Hebrew race, the descendant of King David, and the divine son of the
most favored of women, twice sank under that burden of suffering and
shame which is now throughout all Christendom the emblem of triumph
and of honor; passing over groups and masses of houses built of stone,
with terraced roofs, or surmounted with small domes, we reach the hill
of Salem, where Melchisedek built his mystic citadel; and still
remains the hill of Scopas, where Titus gazed upon Jerusalem on the
eve of his final assault. Titus destroyed the temple. The religion of
Judea has in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father
and to himself in their imperial capital; and the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshiped before every altar in Rome.
Jerusalem by moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its
indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour
softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline,
however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its
sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and
unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and
rising in the center of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally
offering, through their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and
richer land!
The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the
darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The
all-prevailing stillness is broken by a breeze, that seems to have
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the
tombs, and sighs among the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as
it passes, as if it were a spirit of wo. Is it the breeze that has
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea?
Or is it the haunting voices of prophets mourning over the city that
they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land
where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending
fate Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but
believe that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension,
the great departed of Israel assembled to gaze upon the battlements of
their mystic city! There might be counted heroes and sages, who need
shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other
lands; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are
still obeyed; the monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand
years, but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the
teacher, whose doctrines have modeled civilized Europe--the greatest
of legislators, the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of
reformers--what race, extinct or living, can produce three such men
as these!
The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing
breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple
sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid; all becomes as dark as
the waters of Kedron and valley of Jehoshaphat. The tower of David
merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque of
Omar; Bethesda's angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street of
sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no
longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very
line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the church of the Holy
Sepulcher is a beacon-light.
And why is the church of the Holy Sepulcher a beacon-light? Why, when
it is already past the noon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in
Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose except the howl of
the wild dog crying to the wilder wind--why is the cupola of the
sanctuary illumined, tho the hour has long since been numbered, when
pilgrims there kneel and monks pray?
An armed Turkish guard are bivouacked in the court of the church;
within the church itself, two brethren of the convent of Terra Santa
keep holy watch and ward; while, at the tomb beneath, there kneels a
solitary youth, who prostrated himself at sunset, and who will there
pass unmoved the whole of the sacred night.
Yet the pilgrim is not in communion with the Latin Church; neither is
he of the Church Armenian, or the Church Greek; Maronite Coptic, or
Abyssinian--these also are Christian churches which can not call him
child.
He comes from a distant and a northern isle to bow before the tomb of
a descendant of the kings of Israel, because he, in common with all
the people of that isle, recognizes in that sublime Hebrew incarnation
the presence of a divine Redeemer. Then why does he come alone? It is
not that he has availed himself of the inventions of modern science,
to repair first to a spot, which all his countrymen may equally desire
to visit, and thus anticipate their hurrying arrival. Before the
inventions of modern science, all his countrymen used to flock hither.
Then why do they not now? Is the Holy Land no longer hallowed? Is it
not the land of sacred and mysterious truths? The land of heavenly
messages and earthly miracles? The land of prophets and apostles? Is
it not the land upon whose mountains the Creator of the Universe
parleyed with man, and the flesh of whose anointed race He mystically
assumed, when He struck the last blow at the powers of evil? Is it to
be believed that there are no peculiar and eternal qualities in a land
thus visited, which distinguish it from all others--that Palestine is
like Normandy or Yorkshire, or even Attica or Rome?
There may be some who maintain this; there have been some, and those,
too, among the wisest and the wittiest of the northern and western
races, who, touched by a presumptuous jealousy of the long
predominance of that Oriental intellect to which they owed their
civilization, would have persuaded themselves and the world that the
traditions of Sinai and Calvary were fables. Half a century ago,
Europe made a violent and apparently successful effort to disembarrass
itself of its Asian faith. The most powerful and the most civilized of
its kingdoms, about to conquer the rest, shut up its churches,
desecrated its altars, massacred and persecuted their sacred servants,
and announced that the Hebrew creeds which Simon Peter brought from
Palestine, and which his successors revealed to Clovis, were a mockery
and a fiction. What has been the result? In every city, town, village,
and hamlet of that great kingdom, the divine image of the most
illustrious of Hebrews has been again raised amid the homage of
kneeling millions; while, in the heart of its bright and witty
capital, the nation has erected the most gorgeous of modern temples,
and consecrated its marble and golden walls to the name, and memory,
and celestial efficacy of a Hebrew woman.
CHARLES MERIVALE
Born in 1808, died in 1893; educated at Cambridge; became
rector of a parish in 1848; dean of Ely Cathedral in 1869;
published his "History of the Romans Under the Empire" in
1850-62; "A General History of Rome" in 1875, "Contrast
Between Christian and Pagan Society" in 1880.
THE PERSONALITY OF AUGUSTUS CÆSAR[13]
In stature Augustus hardly exceeded the middle height, but his person
was lightly and delicately formed, and its proportions were such as to
convey a favorable and even a striking impression. His countenance was
pale, and testified to the weakness of his health, and almost constant
bodily suffering; but the hardships of military service had imparted a
swarthy tinge to a complexion naturally fair, and his eyebrows meeting
over a sharp and aquiline nose gave a serious and stern expression to
his countenance. His hair was light, and his eyes blue and piercing;
he was well pleased if any one on approaching him looked on the ground
and affected to be unable to meet their dazzling brightness. It was
said that his dress concealed many imperfections and blemishes on his
person; but he could not disguise all the infirmities under which he
labored; the weakness of the forefinger of his right hand and a
lameness in the left hip were the results of wounds he incurred in a
battle with the Iapydæ in early life; he suffered repeated attacks of
fever of the most serious kind, especially in the course of the
campaign of Philippi and that against the Cantabrians, and again two
years afterward at Rome, when his recovery was despaired of. From that
time, altho constantly liable to be affected by cold and heat, and
obliged to nurse himself throughout with the care of a valetudinarian,
he does not appear to have had any return of illness so serious as the
preceding; and dying at the age of seventy-four, the rumor obtained
popular currency that he was prematurely cut off by poison
administered by the empress.
[Footnote 13: From the "History of the Romans Under the Empire."
Merivale's purpose in writing this book was to fill in the interval
between the unfinished history by Thomas Arnold and Gibbon.]
As the natural consequence of this bodily weakness and sickly
constitution, Octavian did not attempt to distinguish himself by
active exertions or feats of personal prowess. The splendid examples
of his uncle the dictator, and of Antonius[14] his rival, might have
early discouraged him from attempting to shine as a warrior and hero;
he had not the vivacity and animal spirits necessary to carry him
through such exploits as theirs; and, altho he did not shrink from
exposing himself to personal danger, he prudently declined to allow a
comparison to to be instituted between himself and rivals whom he
could not hope to equal. Thus necessarily thrown back upon other
resources, he trusted to caution and circumspection, first to
preserve his own life, and afterward to obtain the splendid prizes
which had hitherto been carried off by daring adventure, and the good
fortune which is so often its attendant. His contest therefore with
Antonius and Sextus Pompeius was the contest of cunning with bravery;
but from his youth upward he was accustomed to overreach, not the bold
and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his
contemporaries, such as Cicero and Cleopatra; he succeeded in the end
in deluding the senate and people of Rome in the establishment of his
tyranny; and finally deceived the expectations of the world, and
falsified the lessons of the republican history, in reigning himself
forty years in disguise, and leaving a throne to be claimed without
challenge by his successors for fourteen centuries.
[Footnote 14: Mark Antony.]
But altho emperor in name, and in fact absolute master of his people,
the manners of the Cæsar, both in public and private life, were still
those of a simple citizen. On the most solemn occasions he was
distinguished by no other dress than the robes and insignia of the
offices which he exercised; he was attended by no other guards than
those which his consular dignity rendered customary and decent. In his
court there was none of the etiquette of modern monarchies to be
recognized, and it was only by slow and gradual encroachment that it
came to prevail in that of his successors. Augustus was contented to
take up his residence in the house which had belonged to the orator
Licinius Calvus, in the neighborhood of the Forum; which he afterward
abandoned for that of Hortensius on the Palatine, of which Suetonius
observes that it was remarkable neither for size nor splendor. Its
halls were small, and lined, not with marble, after the luxurious
fashion of many patrician palaces, but with the common Alban stone,
and the pattern of the pavement was plain and simple. Nor when he
succeeded Lepidus in the pontificate would he relinquish this private
dwelling for the regia or public residence assigned that honorable
office.
Many anecdotes are recorded of the moderation with which the emperor
received the opposition, and often the rebukes, of individuals in
public as well as in private. These stories are not without their
importance, as showing how little formality there was in the tone of
addressing the master of the Roman world, and how entirely different
the ideas of the nation were, with regard to the position occupied by
the Cæsar and his family from those with which modern associations
have imbued us. We have already noticed the rude freedom with which
Tiberius was attacked, altho step-son of the emperor, and
participating in the eminent functions of the tribunitian power, by a
declaimer in the schools at Rhodes: but Augustus himself seems to have
suffered almost as much as any private citizen from the general
coarseness of behavior which characterized the Romans in their public
assemblies, and the rebukes to which he patiently submitted were
frequently such as would lay the courtier of a constitutional
sovereign in modern Europe under perpetual disgrace.
On one occasion, for instance, in the public discharge of his
functions as corrector of manners, he had brought a specific charge
against a certain knight for having squandered his patrimony. The
accused proved that he had, on the contrary, augmented it. "Well,"
answered the emperor, somewhat annoyed by his error, "but you are at
all events living in celibacy, contrary to recent enactments." The
other was able to reply that he was married, and was the father of
three legitimate children; and when the emperor signified that he had
no further charges to bring, added aloud: "Another time, Cæsar, when
you give ear to informations against honest men, take care that your
informants are honest themselves." Augustus felt the justice of the
rebuke thus publicly administered, and submitted to it in silence.
ALEXANDER W. KINGLAKE
Born in 1809, died in 1891; traveled in the East and
published "Eothen; or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the
East," in 1844; visited Algiers in 1845; went with the
British army to the Crimea in 1854, remaining until the
siege of Sebastopol; a member of Parliament in 1857-68;
published his "Invasion of the Crimea" in 1863-87.
I
ON MOCKING AT THE SPHINX[15]
And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in
the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature
is, but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshiped beast
is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see
that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some
ancient mold of beauty--some mold of beauty now forgotten--forgotten
because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the
Ægean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law
among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the
sign and the main condition of loveliness through all generations to
come. Yet still there lives on the race of those who were beautiful in
the fashion of the elder world, and Christian girls of Coptic blood
will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable
hand with the big pouting lips of the very Sphinx.
[Footnote 15: From "Eothen," which long since took its place as a
classic among books of travel.]
Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols; but mark ye
this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears
awful semblance of Deity--unchangefulness in the midst of changes--the
same seeming will and intent for ever and ever inexorable! Upon
ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings--upon Greek and
Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors--upon Napoleon dreaming of an
Eastern empire--upon battle and pestilence--upon the ceaseless misery
of the Egyptian race--upon keen-eyed travelers--Herodotus yesterday,
and Warburton to-day--upon all and more this unworldly Sphinx has
watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and
the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will
wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved
India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the
seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching
and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad
earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not
mock at the Sphinx!
II
THE BEGINNING OF THE CRIMEAN WAR[16]
Looking back upon the troubles which ended in the outbreak of war, one
sees the nations at first swaying backward and forward like a throng
so vast as to be helpless, but afterward falling slowly into warlike
array. And when one begins to search for the man or the men whose
volition was governing the crowd, the eye falls upon the towering form
of the Emperor Nicholas. He was not single-minded, and therefore his
will was unstable, but it had a huge force; and, since he was armed
with the whole authority of his empire, it seemed plain that it was
this man--and only he--who was bringing danger from the north. And at
first, too, it seemed that within his range of action there was none
who could be his equal: but in a little while the looks of men were
turned to the Bosporus, for thither his ancient adversary was slowly
bending his way.
[Footnote 16: From "The Invasion of the Crimea," one of the
masterpieces of modern historical literature, but often criticized for
its excessive bias against France as represented by Napoleon III.]
To fit him for the encounter, the Englishman was clothed with little
authority except what he could draw from the resources of his own mind
and from the strength of his own wilful nature. Yet it was presently
seen that those who were near him fell under his dominion, and did as
he bid them, and that the circle of deference to his will was always
increasing around him; and soon it appeared that, tho he moved gently,
he began to have mastery over a foe who was consuming his strength in
mere anger. When he had conquered, he stood, as it were, with folded
arms, and seemed willing to desist from strife. But also in the west
there had been seen a knot of men possest for the time of the mighty
engine of the French State, and striving so to use it as to be able to
keep their hold, and to shelter themselves from a cruel fate. The
volitions of these men were active enough, because they were toiling
for their lives. Their efforts seemed to interest and to please the
lustiest man of those days, for he watched them from over the Channel
with approving smile, and began to declare, in his good-humored,
boisterous way, that so long as they should be suffered to have the
handling of France, _so long as they would execute for him his
policy_, so long as they would take care not to deceive him, they
ought to be encouraged, they ought to be made use of, they ought to
have the shelter they wanted; and, the Frenchmen agreeing to his
conditions, he was willing to level the barrier--he called it perhaps
false pride--which divided the government of the Queen from the
venturers of the 2d of December. In this thought, at the moment, he
stood almost alone; but he abided his time. At length he saw the
spring of 1853, bringing with it grave peril to the Ottoman State.
Then, throwing aside with a laugh some papers which belonged to the
Home Office, he gave his strong shoulder to the leveling work. Under
the weight of his touch the barrier fell. Thenceforth the hindrances
that met him were but slight. As he from the first had willed it, so
moved the two great nations of the West.
CHARLES DARWIN
Born in 1809, died in 1882; grandson of Erasmus Darwin;
educated at Edinburgh and Cambridge; went around the world
on a scientific expedition in 1831-36; settled in Kent in
1842 and thenceforth devoted his life to scientific
research; published "The Origin of Species" in 1859, "The
Descent of Man" in 1871, "The Emotions of Man and Animals"
in 1872.
I
ON VARIATIONS IN MAMMALS, BIRDS AND FISHES[17]
Not only the various domestic races, but the most distinct genera and
orders within the same great class--for instance, mammals, birds,
reptiles, and fishes--are all the descendants of one common
progenitor, and we must admit that the whole vast amount of difference
between these forms has primarily arisen from simple variability. To
consider the subject under this point of view is enough to strike one
dumb with amazement. But our amazement ought to be lessened when we
reflect that beings almost infinite in number, during an almost
infinite lapse of time, have often had their whole organization
rendered in some degree plastic, and that each slight modification of
structure which was in any way beneficial under excessively complex
conditions of life has been preserved, while each which was in any
way injurious has been rigorously destroyed. And the long-continued
accumulation of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to
structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various
purposes, and as excellently coordinated as we see in the animals and
plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount
power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or
by nature to the production of species. If an architect were to rear a
noble and commodious edifice without the use of cut stone, by
selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed
stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat
stones for his roof, we should admire his skill, and regard him as the
paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, tho indispensable to the
architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which
the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and
admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified
descendants.
[Footnote 17: From "The Origin of Species."]
Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing,
unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made
clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of
building how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why
wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the
roof, etc.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were
pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had
been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each
fragment could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with
the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not
the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each
being.
The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may
be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape
of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural
laws; on the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or
cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which depends on its upheaval
and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake which
throws down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the
fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be
accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in
alluding to which I am aware I am traveling beyond my proper province.
An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which
results from the laws imposed by Him.
But can it reasonably be maintained that the Creator intentionally
ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain
fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder
might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the
shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake,
can it be maintained with any greater probability that He specially
ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable
variations in our domestic animals and plants; many of these
variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more
often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did he ordain that the
crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the
fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He
cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that
a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to
pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the
principle in one case--if we do not admit that the variations of the
primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound,
for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be
formed--no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that
variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws,
which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the
formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man
included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may
wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief, "that
variation has been led along certain beneficial lines of irrigation."
If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of
all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization which leads
to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant
power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for
existence, and as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival
of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the
other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything
and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a
difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.
II
THE GENESIS OF A GREAT BOOK[18]
During the voyage of the _Beagle_ I had been deeply imprest by
discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals, covered
with armor like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the
manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in
proceeding southward over the Continent; and thirdly, by the South
American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos
Archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ
slightly on each island of the group; none of the islands appearing to
be very ancient in a geological sense.
[Footnote 18: From Darwin's "Autobiography," as printed in Volume 1 of
the "Life and Letters." Published by D. Appleton & Co.]
It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could
only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become
modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that
neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the
organisms (especially in the case of plants), could account for the
innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully
adapted to their habits of life; for instance, a woodpecker or a
tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes.
I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these
could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavor to
prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified.
After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the
example of Lyell in geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in
any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and
nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My
first notebook was opened in July, 1837. I worked on true Baconian
principles; and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale
scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by
printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and
gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I set the list of books of
all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of
Journals and Transactions, I am surprized at my industry. I soon
perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making
useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied
to organisms living in a state of nature, remained for some time a
mystery to me.
In October, 1838--that is, fifteen months after I had begun my
systematic inquiry--I happened to read for amusement "Malthus on
Population"; and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of
the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under
these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved,
and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the
formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by
which to work; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice that I
determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it.
In June, 1842, I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a
very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in thirty-five pages; and
this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of two hundred
and thirty pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess.
But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it
is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg,
how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the
tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in
character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is
obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed
under genera, genera under families, families under suborders, and so
forth: and I can remember the very spot in the road, while in my
carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was
long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the
modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become
adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of
nature.
Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and
I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive
as that which was afterward followed in my "Origin of Species"; yet it
was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I got
through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were
overthrown, for early in the summer of 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was then
in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay "On the Tendency of
Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type"; and this
essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace exprest
the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to
Lyell for perusal.
The circumstances under which I consented, at the request of Lyell and
Hooker, to allow of an abstract from my MS., together with a letter to
Asa Gray dated September 5th, 1857, to be published at the same time
with Wallace's essay, are given in the "Journal of the Proceedings of
the Linnean Society," 1858, page 45. I was at first very unwilling to
consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so
unjustifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble was his
disposition. The extract from my MS. and the letter to Asa Gray had
neither been intended for publication, and were badly written. Mr.
Wallace's essay, on the other hand, was admirably exprest and quite
clear. Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little
attention, and the only published notice of them which I can remember
was by Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose verdict was that all that
was new in them was false, and what was true was old. This shows how
necessary it is that any new view should be explained at considerable
length in order to arouse public attention....
My habits are methodical, and this has been of not a little use for my
particular line of work. Lastly, I have had ample leisure from not
having to earn my own bread. Even ill health, tho it has annihilated
several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of
society and amusement.
Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have
amounted to, has been determined as far as I can judge by complex and
diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most
important have been the love of science, unbounded patience in long
reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and collecting
facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With
such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprizing that I
should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of
scientific men on some important points.
JOHN BROWN
Born in 1810, died in 1882; son of a Biblical scholar of the
same name, studied medicine at Edinburgh University and
practised medicine successfully in Edinburgh until his
death; published the first volume of the "Horæ Subsecivæ" in
1858, the second in 1861, and the third in 1882; one of
these contained his best known work, "Rab and His Friends,"
frequently printed separately since his death.
RAB AND THE GAME CHICKEN[19]
Four-and-thirty years ago Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our
arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.
[Footnote 19: From "Rab and His Friends."]
When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before
we got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't
we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all
reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight.
They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,
endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making
gain by their pluck. A boy, be he ever so fond himself of fighting,
if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have
run off with Bob and me fast enough; it is a natural, and a not wicked
interest, that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in
action.
Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye
at a glance announced a dog fight to his brain? He did not, he could
not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid
induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd
masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman,
fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her
hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a crowd annular,
compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its
heads all bent downward and inward to one common focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small,
thoroughbred, white bull-terrier is busy throttling a large shepherd's
dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at
it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his
pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a
great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the
Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up,
took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and
done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from
Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would
"drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a
chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make
him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of
the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near,
and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at
Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent,
middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the
bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all
his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring,
much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad
visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, benevolent,
middle-aged friend--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!"
observed a calm, highly-drest young buck, with an eyeglass in his eye.
"Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.
"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more
urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull
which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and
presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of
snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.
But the bull terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our
small men panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland
bull, and has the Shakespearean dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him and fastens on his throat. To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled!_ The bailies
had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength
and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made
apparatus constructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_.
His mouth was open as far as it could be; his lips curled up in
rage--a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the
darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole
frame stiff with indignation and surprize; his roar asking us all
round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of
anger and astonishment done in Aberdeen granite.
We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a
cobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous
head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise--and the bright
and fierce little fellow is dropt, limp and dead. A solemn pause;
this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little
fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by
the small of the back like a rat, and broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed
him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round
and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up and said, "John, we'll bury
him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made
up the Cowgate at rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He
turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopt at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin,
impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's
head, looking about angrily for something.
"Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew
cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than
dignity, and, watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the
cart--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.
What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always
thought, and still think, Homer or King David or Sir Walter alone were
worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and
condescended to say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie"--whereupon the stump
of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were
comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of
the whip were given to Jess; and off went the three.
Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a
tea) in the back green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the
"Iliad," and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector, of
course.
WILLIAM M. THACKERAY
Born in 1811, died in 1863; lived in India until five years
old; educated at Cambridge; began to write for newspapers in
1833; went to Paris to study art in 1834; visited the east
in 1844, and the United States in 1852 and 1854; published
"Vanity Fair" in 1846-48, "Pendennis" in 1848-50, "Henry
Esmond" in 1852, "The Newcomes" in 1853-55, "The Virginians"
in 1857-59.
I
THE IMPERTURBABLE MARLBOROUGH[20]
And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly
country, the pomps and festivities of more than one German court, the
severe struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the triumph of
victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops
entering the enemy's territory and putting all around them to fire and
sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons
and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst
of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History,
that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of
conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet
form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of
England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves in the
songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised; you pretty
maidens that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call
you, and huzza for the British Grenadiers,--do you take account that
these items go to make up the amount of triumph you admire, and form
part of the duties of the heroes you fondle?
[Footnote 20: From "The History of Henry Esmond."]
Our chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen,
worshipt almost, had this of the god-like in him: that he was
impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the
greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred
thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door
of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a
monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid, or an
enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing corpses round
about him,--he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He
performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as
Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He
took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported
him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always and
having no more remorse than Clotno when she weaves the thread, on
Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the
Prince of Savoy's officers say the prince became possest with a sort
of warlike fury, his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither,
raging; shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and harking his
bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of the hunt. Our
duke was as calm at the mouth of a cannon as at the door of a
drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was had
he had a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret
or remorse. He achieved the highest deed or daring, or deepest
calculation of thought, as he performed the very meanest action of
which a man is capable; told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a
poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal
capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were
parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but
there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain
of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius
and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their
pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured--for he used all men, great
and small, that came near him, as his instruments alike, and took
something of theirs, either some quality or some property: the blood
of a soldier, it might be, or a jeweled hat or a hundred thousand
crowns from the king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three
farthings; or when he was young, a kiss from a woman, and the gold
chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having,
as I said, this of the god-like in him, that he could see a hero
perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either.
Not that he had no tears, he could always order up this reserve at the
proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and
whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a
shoeblack, and he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty,
be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you
whenever he saw occasion--but yet those of the army who knew him best
and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he
rode along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to
a battalion reeling from the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men
and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his
face, and felt that his will made them irresistible.
After the great victory of Blenheim, the enthusiasm of the army for
the duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a
sort of rage: nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts
were among the most frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of
admiration to such a victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a
man may profess to be ever so much a philosopher, but he who fought on
that day must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it.
II
AT THE BALL BEFORE THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO[21]
There never was, since the days of Darius, such a brilliant train of
camp-followers as hung round the train of the Duke of Wellington's
army in the Low Countries, in 1815, and led it dancing and feasting,
as it were, up to the very brink of battle. A certain ball[22] which a
noble duchess gave at Brussels on the 15th of June in the above-named
year is historical. All Brussels had been in a state of excitement
about it; and I have heard from ladies who were in that town at the
period, that the talk and interest of persons of their own sex
regarding the ball was much greater even than in respect of the enemy
in their front. The struggles, intrigues, and prayers to get tickets
were such as only English ladies will employ, in order to gain
admission to the society of the great of their own nation.
[Footnote 21: From "Vanity Fair."]
[Footnote 22: Readers will recall Byron's account of this ball in
"Childe Harold."]
Jos and Mrs. O'Dowd, who were panting to be asked, strove in vain to
procure tickets; but others of our friends were more lucky. For
instance, through the interest of my Lord Bareacres, and as a set-off
for the dinner at the restaurateur's, George got a card for Captain
and Mrs. Osborne; which circumstance greatly elated him. Dobbin, who
was a friend of the general commanding the division in which their
regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a
similar invitation; which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the
deuce he should be getting into society. Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally,
were of course invited, as became the friends of a general commanding
a cavalry brigade.
On the appointed night, George, having commanded new dresses and
ornaments of all sorts for Amelia, drove to the famous ball, where his
wife did not know a single soul. After looking about for Lady
Bareacres,--who cut him, thinking the card was quite enough,--and
after placing Amelia on a bench, he left her to her own cogitations
there; thinking on his own part that he had behaved very handsomely in
getting her new clothes, and bringing her to the ball, where she was
free to amuse herself as she liked. Her thoughts were not the
pleasantest, and nobody except honest Dobbin came to disturb them.
Whilst her appearance was an utter failure (as her husband felt with a
sort of rage), Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's _début_ was, on the contrary,
very brilliant. She arrived very late. Her face was radiant; her dress
perfection. In the midst of the great persons assembled, and the
eyeglasses directed to her, Rebecca seemed to be as cool and collected
as when she used to marshal Miss Pinkerton's little girls to church.
Numbers of the men she knew already, and the dandies thronged around
her. As for the ladies, it was whispered among them that Rawdon had
run away with her from out of a convent, and that she was a relation
of the Montmorency family. She spoke French so perfectly that there
might be some truth in this report, and it was agreed that her manners
were fine, and her air _distinguished_. Fifty would-be partners
thronged round her at once, and prest to have the honor to dance with
her. But she said she was engaged, and only going to dance very
little; and made her way at once to the place where Emmy sate quite
unnoticed, and dismally unhappy.
And so, to finish the poor child at once, Mrs. Rawdon ran and greeted
affectionately her dearest Amelia, and began forthwith to patronize
her. She found fault with her friend's dress, and her hair-dresser,
and wondered how she could be so _chaussée_, and vowed that she must
send her _corsetière_ the next morning. She vowed that it was a
delightful ball; that there was everybody that every one knew, and
only a _very_ few nobodies in the whole room. It is a fact that in a
fortnight, and after three dinners in general society, this young
woman had got up the genteel jargon so well that a native could not
speak it better; and it was only from her French being so good, that
you could know that she was not a born woman of fashion.
George, who had left Emmy on the bench on entering the ballroom, very
soon found his way back when Rebecca was by her dear friend's side.
Becky was just lecturing Mrs. Osborne upon the follies which her
husband was committing. "For God's sake, stop him from gambling, my
dear," she said, "or he will ruin himself. He and Rawdon are playing
at cards every night; and you know he is very poor, and Rawdon will
win every shilling from him if he does not take care. Why don't you
prevent him, you little careless creature? Why don't you come to us of
an evening, instead of moping at home with that Captain Dobbin? I dare
say he is _très aimable_; but how can one love a man with feet of such
size? Your husband's feet are darlings--here he comes. Where have you
been, wretch? Here is Emmy crying her eyes out for you. Are you coming
to fetch me for the quadrille?" And she left her bouquet and shawl by
Amelia's side, and tript off with George to dance. Women only know
how to wound so. There is a poison on the tip of the little shafts
which sting a thousand times more than a man's blunter weapon. Our
poor Emmy, who had never hated, never sneered all her life, was
powerless in the hands of her remorseless little enemy.
George danced with Rebecca twice or thrice--how many times Amelia
scarcely knew. She sat quite unnoticed in her corner, except when
Rawdon came up with some words of clumsy conversation; and later in
the evening, when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring her
refreshments and sit beside her. He did not like to ask her why she
was so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which were filling her
eyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley had alarmed her by telling her
that George would go on playing.
"It is curious, when a man is bent upon play, by what clumsy rogues he
will allow himself to be cheated," Dobbin said; and Emmy said
"Indeed." She was thinking of something else. It was not the loss of
the money that grieved her.
At last George came back for Rebecca's shawl and flowers. She was
going away. She did not even condescend to come back and say good-by
to Amelia. The poor girl let her husband come and go without saying a
word, and her head fell on her breast. Dobbin had been called away,
and was whispering deep in conversation with the general of the
division, his friend, and had not seen this last parting. George went
away then with the bouquet; but when he gave it to the owner, there
lay a note, coiled like a snake among the flowers. Rebecca's eye
caught it at once: she had been used to deal with notes in early
life. She put out her hand and took the nosegay. He saw by her eyes as
they met, that she was aware what she would find there. Her husband
hurried her away, still too intent upon his own thoughts, seemingly,
to take note of any marks of recognition which might pass between his
friend and his wife. These were, however, but trifling. Rebecca gave
George her hand with one of her usual quick knowing glances, and made
a curtsey and walked away. George bowed over the hand; said nothing in
reply to a remark of Crawley's,--did not hear it even, his brain was
so throbbing with triumph and excitement; and allowed them to go away
without a word.
His wife saw the one part at least of the bouquet scene. It was quite
natural that George should come at Rebecca's request to get her scarf
and flowers,--it was no more than he had done twenty times before in
the course of the last few days; but now it was too much for her.
"William," she said, suddenly clinging to Dobbin, who was near her,
"you've always been very kind to me: I'm--I'm not well. Take me home."
She did not know she called him by his Christian name, as George was
accustomed to do. He went away with her quickly. Her lodgings were
hard by; and they threaded through the crowd without, where everything
seemed to be more astir than even in the ballroom within.
George had been angry twice or thrice at finding his wife up on his
return from the parties which he frequented, so she went straight to
bed now; but altho she did not sleep, and altho the din and clatter
and the galloping of horsemen was incessant, she never heard any of
these noises, having quite other disturbances to keep her awake.
Osborne meanwhile, wild with elation, went off to a play table and
began to bet frantically. He won repeatedly. "Everything succeeds with
me to-night," he said. But his luck at play--even did not cure him of
his restlessness; and he started up after a while, pocketing his
winnings, and went off to a buffet, where he drank off many bumpers of
wine.
Here, as he was rattling away to the people around him, laughing
loudly and wild with spirits, Dobbin found him. He had been to the
card tables to look there for his friend. Dobbin looked as pale and
grave as his comrade was flushed and jovial.
"Hullo, Dob! Come and drink, old Dob! The duke's wine is famous. Give
me some more, you sir;" and he held out a trembling glass for the
liquor.
"Come out, George," said Dobbin, still gravely: "don't drink."
"Drink! there's nothing like it. Drink yourself, and light up your
lantern jaws, old boy. Here's to you."
Dobbin went up and whispered something to him; at which George, giving
a start and a wild hurray, tossed off his glass, clapped it on the
table, and walked away speedily on his friend's arm. "The enemy has
passed the Sambre," William said, "and our left is already engaged.
Come away. We are to march in three hours."
Away went George, his nerves quivering with excitement at the news so
long looked for, so sudden when it came. What were love and intrigue
now? He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to
his quarters: his past life and future chances--the fate which might
be before him--the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might
be about to part. Oh, how he wished that night's work undone! and that
with a clear conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender
and guileless being by whose love he had set such little store.
He thought over his brief married life. In those few weeks he had
frightfully dissipated his little capital. How wild and reckless he
had been! Should any mischance befall him, what was then left for her?
How unworthy he was of her! Why had he married her? He was not fit for
marriage! Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been always so
generous to him? Hope, remorse, ambition, tenderness, and selfish
regret filled his heart. He sate down and wrote to his father,
remembering what he had said once before, when he was engaged to fight
a duel. Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed this farewell
letter. He sealed it, and kissed the superscription. He thought how he
had deserted that generous father, and of the thousand kindnesses
which the stern old man had done him.
He had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered; she lay quiet,
and her eyes seemed closed, and he was glad that she was asleep. On
arriving at his quarters from the ball, he had found his regimental
servant already making preparations for his departure: the man had
understood his signal to be still, and these arrangements were very
quickly and silently made. Should he go in and wake Amelia, he
thought, or leave a note for her brother to break the news of
departure to her? He went in to look at her once again.
She had been awake when he first entered her room, but had kept her
eyes closed, so that even her wakefulness should not seem to reproach
him. But when he had returned,--so soon after herself, too,--this
timid little heart had felt more at ease; and turning towards him as
he stept softly out of the room, she had fallen into a light sleep.
George came in and looked at her again, entering still more softly. By
the pale night-lamp he could see her sweet, pale face: the purple
eyelids were fringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and white,
lay outside the coverlet. Good God! how pure she was; how gentle, how
tender, and how friendless! and he, how selfish, brutal, and black
with crime! Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's
foot and looked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he, to
pray for one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to the
bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep;
and he bent over the pillow noiselessly toward the gentle pale face.
Two fair arms closed tenderly around his neck as he stooped down. "I
am awake, George," the poor child said, with a sob fit to break the
little heart that nestled so closely by his own. She was awake, poor
soul--and to what? At that moment a bugle from the Place of Arms began
sounding clearly, and was taken up through the town; and 'midst the
drums of the infantry, and the shrill pipes of the Scotch, the whole
city awoke....
All our friends took their share and fought like men in the great
field. All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away, the
lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling
the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard at
Brussels were plowing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the
resolute survivors closing in. Toward evening the attack of the
French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. They
had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a
final onset. It came at last: the columns of the Imperial Guard
marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the
English from the height which they had maintained all day; and spite
of all, unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death
from the English line, the dark column prest on and up the hill. It
seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to waver and
falter. Then it stopt, still facing the shot. Then at last the English
troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to
dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.
No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away.
Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his
heart.
III
THE DEATH OF COLONEL NEWCOME[23]
Clive, and the boy sometimes with him, used to go daily to Grey
Friars, where the colonel still lay ill. After some days the fever
which had attacked him left him; but left him so weak and enfeebled
that he could only go from his bed to the chair by his fireside. The
season was exceedingly bitter; the chamber which he inhabited was warm
and spacious: it was considered unadvisable to move him until he had
attained greater strength and still warmer weather. The medical men of
the House hoped he might rally in spring. My friend Dr. Goodenough
came to him; he hoped too, but not with a hopeful face. A chamber,
luckily vacant, hard by the colonel's, was assigned to his friends,
where we sat when we were too many for him. Besides his customary
attendants, he had two dear and watchful nurses, who were almost
always with him--Ethel, and Madame de Florac, who had passed many a
faithful year by an old man's bedside; who would have come, as to a
work of religion, to any sick couch--much more to this one, where he
lay for whose life she would once gladly have given her own.
[Footnote 23: From "The Newcomes."]
But our colonel, we all were obliged to acknowledge, was no more our
friend of old days. He knew us again, and was good to every one round
him, as his wont was; especially when Boy came his old eyes lighted
up with simple happiness, and with eager trembling hands he would seek
under his bed-clothes, or the pockets of his dressing-gown for toys or
cakes, which he had caused to be purchased for his grandson. There was
a little laughing, red-cheeked, white-headed gown-boy of the school,
to whom the old man had taken a great fancy. One of the symptoms of
his returning consciousness and recovery, as we hoped, was his calling
for this child, who pleased our friend by his archness and merry ways;
and who, to the old gentleman's unfailing delight, used to call him
"Codd Colonel." "Tell little F---- that Codd Colonel wants to see
him"; and the little gown-boy was brought to him: and the colonel
would listen to him for hours, and hear all about his lessons and his
play; and prattle, almost as childishly, about Dr. Raine and his own
early school-days. The boys of the school, it must be said, had heard
the noble old gentleman's touching history, and had all got to know
and love him. They came every day to hear news of him; sent him in
books and papers to amuse him; and some benevolent young souls--God's
blessing on all honest boys, say I--painted theatrical characters and
sent them in to Codd Colonel's grandson. The little fellow was made
free of gown-boys, and once came thence to his grandfather in a little
gown, which delighted the old man hugely. Boy said he would like to be
a little gown-boy; and I make no doubt, when he is old enough, his
father will get him that post, and put him under the tuition of my
friend Dr. Senior.
So weeks passed away, during which our dear old friend still remained
with us. His mind was gone at intervals, but would rally feebly: and
with his consciousness returned his love, his simplicity, his
sweetness. He would talk French with Madame de Florac; at which time
his memory appeared to awaken with surprizing vividness, his cheek
flushed, and he was a youth again--a youth all love and hope--a
stricken old man, with a beard as white as snow covering the noble
careworn face. At such times he called her by her Christian name of
Léonore; he addrest courtly old words of regard and kindness to the
aged lady; anon he wandered in his talk, and spoke to her as if they
were still young. Now, as in those early days, his heart was pure; no
anger remained in it; no guile tainted it: only peace and good-will
dwelt in it.
Rosey's death had seemed to shock him for a while when the unconscious
little boy spoke of it. Before that circumstance, Clive had even
forborne to wear mourning, lest the news should agitate his father.
The colonel remained silent and was very much disturbed all that day,
but he never appeared to comprehend the fact quite; and once or twice
afterward asked why she did not come to see him? She was prevented, he
supposed--she was prevented, he said, with a look of terror; he never
once otherwise alluded to that unlucky tyrant of his household who had
made his last years so unhappy.
The circumstance of Clive's legacy he never understood; but more than
once spoke of Barnes to Ethel, and sent his compliments to him, and
said he should like to shake him by the hand. Barnes Newcome never
once offered to touch that honored hand, tho his sister bore her
uncle's message to him. They came often from Bryanstone Square; Mrs.
Hobson even offered to sit with the colonel, and read to him, and
brought him books for his improvement. But her presence disturbed him;
he cared not for her books: the two nurses whom he loved faithfully
watched him; and my wife and I were admitted to him sometimes, both of
whom he honored with regard and recognition. As for F. B., in order to
be near his colonel, did not that good fellow take up his lodgings in
Cistercian Lane, at the Red Cow? He is one whose errors, let us hope,
shall be pardoned, _quia multum amavit_. I am sure he felt ten times
more joy at hearing of Clive's legacy than if thousands had been
bequeathed to himself. May good health and good fortune speed him!
The days went on; and our hopes, raised sometimes, began to flicker
and fall. One evening the colonel left his chair for his bed in pretty
good spirits; but passed a disturbed night, and the next morning was
too weak to rise. Then he remained in his bed, and his friends visited
him there. One afternoon he asked for his little gown-boy, and the
child was brought to him, and sat by the bed with a very awe-stricken
face; and then gathered courage, and tried to amuse him by telling him
how it was a half-holiday, and they were having a cricket match with
the St. Peter's boys in the green, and Grey Friars was in and winning.
The colonel quite understood about it: he would like to see the game;
he had played many a game on that green when he was a boy. He grew
excited: Clive dismissed his father's little friend, and put a
sovereign into his hand; and away he ran to say that Codd Colonel had
come into a fortune, and to buy tarts, and to see the match out. _I_,
_curre_, little white-haired gown-boy! Heaven speed you, little
friend.
After the child had gone, Thomas Newcome began to wander more and
more. He talked louder; he gave the word of command, spoke Hindustanee
as if to his men. Then he spoke words in French rapidly, seizing a
hand that was near him, and crying, "Toujours, toujours!" But it was
Ethel's hand which he took. Ethel and Clive and the nurse were in the
room with him; the nurse came to us, who were sitting in the adjoining
apartment; Madame de Florac was there with my wife and Bayham.
At the look in the woman's countenance Madame de Florac started up.
"He is very bad; he wanders a great deal," the nurse whispered. The
French lady fell instantly on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer.
Some time afterward Ethel came in with a scared face to our pale
group. "He is calling for you again, dear lady," she said, going up to
Madame de Florac, who was still kneeling; "and just now he said he
wanted Pendennis to take care of his boy. He will not know you." She
hid her tears as she spoke.
She went into the room where Clive was at the bed's foot: the old man
within it talked on rapidly for a while; then again he would sigh and
be still; once more I heard him say hurriedly, "Take care of him when
I'm in India"; and then with a heartrending voice he called out,
"Léonore, Léonore!" She was kneeling by his side now. The patient
voice sank into faint murmurs; only a moan now and then announced that
he was not asleep.
At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas
Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And just as the last
bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted
up his head a little, and quickly said, "Adsum!" and fell back. It was
the word we used at school when names were called; and lo, he, whose
heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and
stood in the presence of The Master.
IV
LONDON IN THE TIME OF THE FIRST GEORGE[24]
We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would behold its
aspect may see it in Hogarth's lively perspective of Cheapside or read
of it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that
age. Our dear old Spectator looks smiling upon the streets, with their
innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humor. "Our
streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to
mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other creatures more
extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." A few of these
quaint old figures still remain in London town. You may still see
there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the "Belle Sauvage" to
whom the Spectator so pleasantly alludes in that paper; and who was,
probably, no other than the sweet American Pocahontas,[25] who rescued
from death the daring Captain Smith. There is the "Lion's Head," down
whose jaws the Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great
banker's in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder
of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy.
[Footnote 24: From the "Four Georges."]
[Footnote 25: Pocahontas, after her marriage with John Rolfe in 1616,
went to England. She spent some time in London, but in March of the
following year died at Gravesend. Her exact burial place is unknown.]
People this street, so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen,
with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock,
his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to
chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with
itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years
ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are
silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping
their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwigs appearing over
the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa,[26] beckoning and smiling from the
upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the
door--gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings,
and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in
their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front
in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as
bluff Harry left them, with their ruff and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the
King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is
going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his
guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only
uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the
guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the king
in coaches. It must be rather slow work.
[Footnote 26: Saccharissa is the name under which Lady Dorothy Sidney
is known through some of the poems of Waller, who wrote her praises
under that name. She was of the family of Penshurst, to which belonged
Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney.]
Our _Spectator_ and _Tatler_ are full of delightful glimpses of the
town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may
go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet show, the auction, even the
cockpit; we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de
Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden--it will be called
Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you
not like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr.
Addison?--not the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George the
First's Secretary of State, but to the delightful painter of
contemporary manners; the man who, when in good humor himself, was the
pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into
Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has
just been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have
any money to pay his share of the reckoning). I should not care to
follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's office in Whitehall. There we
get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the
coffee-house, and the theater, and the Mall. Delightful Spectator!
kind friend of leisure hours! happy companion! true Christian
gentleman! How much greater, better, you are than the king Mr.
Secretary kneels to!
You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like;
and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pöllnitz, will
conduct us to it. "A man of sense," says he, "or a fine gentleman, is
never at a loss for company in London, and this is the way the latter
passes his time. He rises late, puts on a frock and, leaving his sword
at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The park is
commonly the place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men
of quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the
park has a certain beauty and simplicity which can not be described.
The grand walk is called the Mall; is full of people at every hour of
the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their Majesties
often walk with the royal family, who are attended only by a
half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons to walk at the
same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear in rich
dresses, for the English, who twenty years ago did not wear gold lace
but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the
French.
"I speak of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents himself
with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen.
Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so
ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, the man
of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes
home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or
chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would see. "For 'tis a
rule with the English to go once a day at least to houses of this
sort, where they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often
look at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well
they are so mute; for were they all as talkative as people of other
nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would be no
hearing what one man said where there are so many. The chocolate-house
in St. James's Street, where I go every morning to pass away time, is
always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it."
Delightful as London city was, King George I liked to be out of it as
much as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his
Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, one hundred years
afterward, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's, and
sighed out, "_Was für Plunder!_" The German women plundered; the
German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants
plundered; even Mustapha and Mohammed, the German negroes, had a share
of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He
was not a lofty monarch, certainly; he was not a patron of the fine
arts; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, he was not
extravagant. Tho a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in
England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as possible, and to
live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in Hanover. When
taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he
thrust his livid head out of the coach window, and gasped out
"Osnaburg, Osnaburg!"
CHARLES DICKENS
Born in 1812, died in 1870; became a reporter in 1835;
visited America in 1842 and again in 1867-68; published
"Sketches by Boz" in 1836, "Pickwick Papers" in 1836-37,
"Oliver Twist" in 1838, "Martin Chuzzelwit" in 1843, "David
Copperfield" in 1849, "Tale of Two Cities" in 1859; many
years after his death appeared his "Letters" in several
volumes.
I
SIDNEY CARTON'S DEATH[27]
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the
peacefulest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked
sublime and prophetic.
[Footnote 27: The conclusion of "A Tale of Two Cities."]
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same ax--a woman--had
asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed
to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given
any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been
these:
"I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, the Vengeance, the Juryman, the
Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the
destruction of the old, perishing by his retributive instrument,
before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city
and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles
to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long, long
years to come, I see the evil of this time and, of the previous time
of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for
itself and wearing out.
"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,
prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see
her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,
aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his
healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their
friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing
tranquilly to his reward.
"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of
their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping
for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband,
their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I
know that each was not more honored and held sacred in the other's
soul than I was in the souls of both.
"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man
winning his way up in that path of life which was once mine. I see him
winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the
light of his. I see blots I threw upon it faded away, I see him,
foremost of just judges and honored men, bringing a boy of my name,
with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair
to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear
him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
"It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is
a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
II
BOB SAWYER'S PARTY[28]
When the last "natural" had been declared, and the profit and loss
account of fish and sixpences adjusted, to the satisfaction of all
parties, Mr. Bob Sawyer rang for supper, and the visitors squeezed
themselves into corners while it was getting ready.
[Footnote 28: From Chapter XXXI of "The Posthumous Papers of the
Pickwick Club."]
It was not so easily got ready as some people may imagine. First of
all, it was necessary to awaken the girl, who had fallen asleep with
her face on the kitchen table; this took a little time, and, even when
she did answer the bell, another quarter of an hour was consumed in
fruitless endeavors to impart to her a faint and distant glimmering of
reason. The man to whom the order for the oysters had been sent, had
not been told to open them; it is a very difficult thing to open an
oyster with a limp knife or a two-pronged fork, and very little was
done in this way. Very little of the beef was done either; and the ham
(which was also from the German sausage-shop round the corner) was in
a similar predicament. However, there was plenty of porter in a tin
can; and the cheese went a great way, for it was very strong. So upon
the whole, perhaps, the supper was quite as good as such matters
usually are.
After supper another jug of punch was put upon the table, together
with a paper of cigars, and a couple of bottles of spirits. Then there
was an awful pause; and this awful pause was occasioned by a very
common occurrence in this sort of places, but a very embarrassing one
notwithstanding.
The fact is that the girl was washing the glasses. The establishment
boasted four; we do not record the circumstance as at all derogatory
to Mrs. Raddle, for there never was a lodging-house yet that was not
short of glasses.
The landlady's glasses were little thin blown-glass tumblers, and
those which had been borrowed from the public house were great,
dropsical, bloated articles, each supported on a huge gouty leg. This
would have been in itself sufficient to have possest the company with
the real state of affairs; but the young woman of all work had
prevented the possibility of any misconception arising in the mind of
any gentlemen on the subject, by forcibly dragging every man's glass
away, long before he had finished his beer, and audibly stating,
despite the winks and interruptions of Mr. Bob Sawyer, that it was to
be conveyed down-stairs, and washed forthwith.
It is a very ill wind that blows nobody any good. The prim man in the
cloth boots, who had been unsuccessfully attempting to make a joke
during the whole time the round game lasted, saw his opportunity, and
availed himself of it. The instant the glasses disappeared he
commenced a long story about a great public character, whose name he
had forgotten, making a particular happy reply to another eminent and
illustrious individual whom he had never been able to identify. He
enlarged at some length and with great minuteness upon divers
collateral circumstances, distantly connected with the anecdote in
hand, but for the life of him he couldn't recollect at that precise
moment what the anecdote was, altho he had been in the habit of
telling the story with great applause for the last ten years.
"Dear me," said the prim man in the cloth boots, "it is a very
extraordinary circumstance."
"I am sorry you have forgotten it," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, glancing
eagerly at the door, as he thought he heard the noise of glasses
jingling--"very sorry."
"So am I," responded the prim man, "because I know it would have
afforded so much amusement. Never mind; I dare say I shall manage to
recollect it, in the course of half an hour or so."
The prim man arrived at this point just as the glasses came back, when
Mr. Bob Sawyer, who had been absorbed in attention during the whole
time, said he should very much like to hear the end of it, for, so far
as it went, it was, without exception, the very best story he had ever
heard.
The sight of the tumblers restored Bob Sawyer to a degree of
equanimity which he had not possest since his interview with his
landlady. His face brightened up and he began to feel quite convivial.
"Now, Betsy," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, with great suavity, and
dispersing, at the same time, the tumultuous little mob of glasses
that the girl had collected in the center of the table; "now, Betsy,
the warm water: be brisk, there's a good girl."
"You can't have no warm water," replied Betsy.
"No warm water!" exclaimed Mr. Bob Sawyer.
"No," said the girl, with a shake of the head which exprest a more
decided negative than the most copious language could have conveyed.
"Missis Raddle said you warn't to have none."
The surprize depicted on the countenances of his guests imparted new
courage to the host.
"Bring up the warm water instantly--instantly!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer,
with desperate sternness.
"No; I can't," replied the girl; "Missis Raddle raked out the kitchen
fire afore she went to bed, and locked up the kittle."
"Oh, never mind; never mind. Pray, don't disturb yourself about such a
trifle," said Mr. Pickwick, observing the conflict of Bob Sawyer's
passions, as depicted in his countenance, "cold water will do very
well."
"Oh, admirably," said Mr. Benjamin Allen.
"My landlady is subject to some slight attacks of mental derangement,"
remarked Bob Sawyer with a ghastly smile; "I fear I must give her
warning."
"No, don't," said Ben Allen.
"I fear I must," said Bob with heroic firmness. "I'll pay her what I
owe her, and give her warning to-morrow morning." Poor fellow! how
devoutly he wished he could!
Mr. Bob Sawyer's heart-sickening attempts to rally under this last
blow communicated a dispiriting influence to the company, the greater
part of whom, with the view of raising their spirits, attached
themselves with extra cordiality to the cold brandy and water, the
first perceptible effects of which were displayed in a renewal of
hostilities between the scorbutic youth and the gentleman in the
sanguine shirt. The belligerents vented their feelings of mutual
contempt, for some time, in a variety of frownings and snortings,
until at last the scorbutic youth felt it necessary to come to a more
explicit understanding on the matter; when the following clear
understanding took place.
"Sawyer," said the scorbutic youth.
"Well, Noddy," replied Mr. Bob Sawyer.
"I should be very sorry, Sawyer," said Mr. Noddy, "to create any
unpleasantness at any friend's table, and much less at yours,
Sawyer--very; but I must take this opportunity of informing Mr. Gunter
that he is no gentleman."
"And I should be very sorry, Sawyer, to create any disturbance in the
street in which you reside," said Mr. Gunter, "but I'm afraid I shall
be under the necessity of alarming the neighbors by throwing the
person who has just spoken, out o' window."
"What do you mean by that, Sir?" inquired Mr. Noddy.
"What I say, Sir," replied Mr. Gunter.
"I should like to see you do it, Sir," said Mr. Noddy.
"You shall feel me do it in half a minute, Sir," replied Mr. Gunter.
"I request that you'll favor me with your card, Sir," said Mr. Noddy.
"I'll do nothing of the kind, Sir," replied Mr. Gunter.
"Why not, Sir?" inquired Mr. Noddy.
"Because you'll stick it up over your chimney-piece, and delude your
visitors into the false belief that a gentleman had been to see you,
Sir," replied Mr. Gunter.
"Sir, a friend of mine shall wait on you in the morning," said Mr.
Noddy.
"Sir, I'm very much obliged to you for the caution, and I'll leave
particular directions with the servants to lock up the spoons,"
replied Mr. Gunter.
At this point the remainder of the guests interposed, and remonstrated
with both parties on the impropriety of their conduct, on which Mr.
Noddy begged to state that his father was quite as respectable as Mr.
Gunter's father; to which Mr. Gunter replied that his father was to
the full as respectable as Mr. Noddy's father, and that his father's
son was as good a man as Mr. Noddy, any day in the week. As this
announcement seemed the prelude to a recommencement of the dispute,
there was another interference on the part of the company; and a vast
quantity of talking and clamoring ensued, in the course of which Mr.
Noddy gradually allowed his feelings to overpower him, and profest
that he had ever entertained a devoted personal attachment toward Mr.
Gunter. To this Mr. Gunter replied that, upon the whole, he rather
preferred Mr. Noddy to his own brother; on hearing which admission,
Mr. Noddy magnanimously rose from his seat, and proferred his hand to
Mr. Gunter. Mr. Gunter grasped it with affecting fervor; and everybody
said that the whole dispute had been conducted in a manner which was
highly honorable to both parties concerned.
"Now," said Jack Hopkins, "just to set us going again, Bob, I don't
mind singing a song." And Hopkins, incited thereto by tumultuous
applause, plunged himself at once into "The King, God Bless Him,"
which he sang as loud as he could, to a novel air, compounded to the
"Bay of Biscay," and "A Frog He Would." The chorus was the essence of
the song, and, as each gentleman sang it to the tune he knew best, the
effect was very striking indeed.
It was at the end of the chorus to the first verse, that Mr. Pickwick
held up his hand in a listening attitude, and said, as soon as silence
was restored:
"Hush! I beg your pardon. I thought I heard somebody calling from
up-stairs."
A profound silence immediately ensued; and Mr. Bob Sawyer was observed
to turn pale.
"I think I hear it now," said Mr. Pickwick. "Have the goodness to open
the door."
The door was no sooner opened than all doubt on the subject was
removed.
"Mr. Sawyer--Mr. Sawyer," screamed a voice from the two-pair landing.
"It's my landlady," said Bob Sawyer, looking around him with great
dismay. "Yes, Mrs. Raddle."
"What do you mean by this, Mr. Sawyer?" replied the voice, with great
shrillness and rapidity of utterance. "Ain't it enough to be swindled
out of one's rent, and money lent out of pocket besides, and abused
and insulted by your friends that dares to call themselves men,
without having the house turned out of window, and noise enough made
to bring the fire-engines here, at two o'clock in the morning? Turn
them wretches away."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," said the voice of Mr. Raddle,
which appeared to proceed from beneath some distant bed-clothes.
"Ashamed of themselves!" said Mrs. Raddle. "Why don't you go down and
knock 'em every one down-stairs? You would if you was a man."
"I should if I was a dozen men, my dear," replied Mr. Raddle,
pacifically, "but they've rather the advantage of me in numbers, my
dear."
"Ugh, you coward!" replied Mrs. Raddle, with supreme contempt. "Do you
mean to turn them wretches out, or not, Mr. Sawyer?"
"They're going, Mrs. Raddle, they're going," said the miserable Bob.
"I am afraid you'd better go," said Mr. Bob Sawyer to his friends. "I
thought you were making too much noise."
"It's a very unfortunate thing," said the prim man. "Just as we were
getting so comfortable too!" The fact was the prim man was just
beginning to have a dawning recollection of the story he had
forgotten.
"It's hardly to be borne," said the prim man, looking round. "Hardly
to be borne, is it?"
"Not to be endured," replied Jack Hopkins; "let's have the other
verse, Bob. Come, here goes."
"No, no, Jack, don't," interposed Bob Sawyer; "it's a capital song,
but I am afraid we had better not have the other verse. They are very
violent people, the people of the house."
"Shall I step up-stairs, and pitch into the landlord?" inquired
Hopkins, "or keep on ringing the bell, or go and groan on the
staircase? You may command me, Bob."
"I am very much indebted to you for your friendship and good nature,
Hopkins," said the wretched Mr. Bob Sawyer, "but I think the best plan
to avoid any further dispute is for us to break up at once."
"Now, Mr. Sawyer," screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Raddle, "are them
brutes going?"
"They're only looking for their hats, Mrs. Raddle," said Bob; "they
are going directly."
"Going!" said Mrs. Raddle, thrusting her nightcap over the banisters
just as Mr. Pickwick, followed by Mr. Tupman, emerged from the
sitting-room. "Going! What did they ever come for?"
"My dear ma'am," remonstrated Mr. Pickwick, looking up.
"Get along with you, you old wretch!" replied Mrs. Raddle, hastily
withdrawing the nightcap. "Old enough to be his grandfather, you
villain! You're worse than any of 'em."
Mr. Pickwick found it in vain to protest his innocence, so hurried
down-stairs into the street, whither he was closely followed by Mr.
Tupman, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass. Mr. Ben Allen, who was dismally
deprest with spirits and agitation, accompanied them as far as London
Bridge, and in the course of the walk confided to Mr. Winkle, as an
especially sensible person to entrust the secret to, that he was
resolved to cut the throat of any gentleman except Mr. Bob Sawyer who
should aspire to the affections of his sister Arabella. Having exprest
his determination to perform this painful duty of a brother with
proper firmness, he burst into tears, knocked his hat over his eyes,
and making the best of his way back, knocked double knocks at the door
of the Borough Market, and took short naps on the steps alternately,
until daybreak, under the firm impression that he lived there, and had
forgotten the key.
The visitors having all departed, in compliance with the rather
pressing request of Mrs. Raddle, the luckless Mr. Bob Sawyer was left
alone to meditate on the probable events of the morrow, and the
pleasures of the evening.
III
DICK SWIVELLER AND THE MARCHIONESS[29]
As these games were very silently conducted, notwithstanding the
magnitude of the interests involved, Mr. Swiveller began to think that
on those evenings when Mr. and Miss Brass were out (and they often
went out now) he heard a kind of snorting or hard-breathing sound in
the direction of the door, which it occurred to him, after some
reflection, must proceed from the small servant, who always had a
cold from damp living. Looking intently that way one night, he plainly
distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the keyhole; and
having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole softly
to the door, and pounced upon her before she was aware of his
approach.
[Footnote 29: From Chapters LVII and LVIII of "The Old Curiosity
Shop."]
"Oh! I didn't mean any harm indeed. Upon my word I didn't," cried the
small servant, struggling like a much larger one. "It's so very dull,
down-stairs. Please don't you tell upon me; please don't."
"Tell upon you!" said Dick. "Do you mean to say you were looking
through the keyhole for company?"
"Yes, upon my word I was," replied the small servant.
"How long have you been cooling your eye there?" said Dick.
"Oh, ever since you first began to play them cards, and long before."
Vague recollections of several fantastic exercises with which he had
refreshed himself after the fatigues of business, and to all of which,
no doubt, the small servant was a party, rather disconcerted Mr.
Swiveller; but he was not very sensitive on such points, and recovered
himself speedily.
"Well--come in," he said, after a little consideration. "Here--sit
down, and I'll teach you how to play."
"Oh! I durstn't do it," rejoined the small servant; "Miss Sally 'ud
kill me, if she know'd I came up here."
"Have you got a fire down-stairs?" said Dick.
"A very little one," replied the small servant.
"Miss Sally couldn't kill me if she know'd I went down there, so I'll
come," said Richard, putting the cards into his pocket. "Why, how thin
you are! What do you mean by it?"
"It ain't my fault."
"Could you eat any bread and meat?" said Dick, taking down his hat.
"Yes? Ah! I thought so. Did you ever taste beer?"
"I had a sip of it once," said the small servant.
"Here's a state of things!" cried Mr. Swiveller, raising his eyes to
the ceiling. "She never tasted it--it can't be tasted in a sip! Why,
how, old are you?"
"I don't know."
Mr. Swiveller opened his eyes very wide, and appeared thoughtful for a
moment; then, bidding the child mind the door until he came back,
vanished straightway.
Presently he returned, followed by the boy from the public house, who
bore in one hand a plate of bread and beef, and in the other a great
pot, filled with some very fragrant compound, which sent forth a
grateful steam, and was indeed choice purl, made after a particular
recipe which Mr. Swiveller had imparted to the landlord at a period
when he was deep in his books and desirous to conciliate his
friendship. Relieving the boy of his burden at the door, and charging
his little companion to fasten it to prevent surprize, Mr. Swiveller
followed her into the kitchen.
"There!" said Richard, putting the plate before her. "First of all,
clear that off, and then you'll see what's next."
The small servant needed no second bidding, and the plate was soon
empty.
"Next," said Dick, handing the purl, "take a pull at that; but
moderate your transports, for you're not used to it. Well, is it
good?"
"Oh! isn't it?" said the small servant.
Mr. Swiveller appeared gratified beyond all expression by this reply,
and took a long draft himself, steadfastly regarding his companion
while he did so. These preliminaries disposed of, he applied himself
to teaching her the game, which she soon learned tolerably well, being
both sharp-witted and cunning.
"Now," said Mr. Swiveller, putting two sixpences into a saucer and
trimming the wretched candle, when the cards had been cut and dealt,
"those are the stakes. If you win you get 'em all. If I win, I get
'em. To make it seem more real and pleasant, I shall call you the
Marchioness, do you hear?"
The small servant nodded.
"Then, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "fire away!"
The Marchioness, holding her cards very tight in both hands,
considered which to play, and Mr. Swiveller, assuming the gay and
fashionable air which such society required, took another pull at the
tankard, and waited for her lead.
Mr. Swiveller and his partner played several rubbers with varying
success, until the loss of three sixpences, the gradual sinking of the
purl, and the striking of ten o'clock, combined to render that
gentleman mindful of the flight of time, and the expediency of
withdrawing before Mr. Sampson and Miss Sally Brass returned.
"With which object in view, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller gravely,
"I shall ask your ladyship's permission to put the board in my pocket,
and to retire from the presence when I have finished this tankard;
merely observing, Marchioness, that since life like a river is
flowing, I care not how fast it rolls on, ma'am, on, while such purl
on the bank still is growing, and such eyes light the waves as they
run. Marchioness, your health. You will excuse my wearing my hat, but
the palace is damp, and the marble floor is--if I may be allowed the
expression--sloppy."
As a precaution against this latter inconvenience, Mr. Swiveller had
been sitting for some time with his feet on the hob, in which attitude
he now gave utterance of these apologetic observations, and slowly
sipped the last choice drops of nectar.
"The Baron Sampsono Brasso and his fair sister are (you tell me) at
the play?" said Mr. Swiveller, leaning his left arm heavily upon the
table, and raising his voice and his right leg after the manner of a
theatrical bandit.
The Marchioness nodded.
"Ha!" said Mr. Swiveller, with a portentous frown. "'Tis well.
Marchioness!--but no matter. Some wine there. Ho!" He illustrated
these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with
great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily,
and smacking his lips fiercely.
The small servant, who was not so well acquainted with theatrical
conventionalities as Mr. Swiveller (having indeed never seen a play,
or heard one spoken of, except by chance through chinks of doors and
in other forbidden places), was rather alarmed by demonstrations so
novel in their nature, and showed her concern so plainly in her looks
that Mr. Swiveller felt it necessary to discharge his brigand manner
for one more suitable to private life, as he asked:
"Do they often go where glory waits 'em, and leave you here?"
"Oh, yes; I believe you they do," returned the small servant. "Miss
Sally's such a one-er for that, she is."
"Such a what?" said Dick.
"Such a one-er," returned the Marchioness.
After a moment's reflection, Mr. Swiveller determined to forego his
responsible duty of setting her right, and to suffer her to talk on;
as it was evident that her tongue was loosened by the purl, and her
opportunities for conversation were not so frequent as to render a
momentary check of little consequence.
"They sometimes go to see Mr. Quilp," said the small servant with a
shrewd look, "they go to a many places, bless you."
"Is Mr. Brass a wunner?" said Dick.
"Not half what Miss Sally is, he isn't," replied the small servant,
shaking her head. "Bless you, he'd never do anything without her."
"Oh! He wouldn't, wouldn't he?" said Dick.
"Miss Sally keeps him in such order," said the small servant; "he
always asks her advice, he does; and he catches it sometimes. Bless
you, you wouldn't believe how much he catches it."
"I suppose," said Dick, "that they consult together a good deal, and
about a great many people--about me, for instance, sometimes, eh?"
The Marchioness nodded amazingly.
"Complimentary?" said Mr. Swiveller.
The Marchioness changed the motion of her head, which had not yet left
off nodding, and suddenly began to shake it from side to side with
vehemence which threatened to dislocate her neck.
"Humph!" Dick muttered. "Would it be any breach of confidence,
Marchioness, to relate what they say of the humble individual who has
now the honor to--?"
"Miss Sally says you're a funny chap," replied his friend.
"Well, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, "that's not uncomplimentary.
Merriment, Marchioness, is not a bad or degrading quality. Old King
Cole was him a merry old soul, if we may put any faith in the pages of
history."
"But she says," pursued his companion, "that you an't to be trusted."
"Why, really, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, thoughtfully, "several
ladies and gentlemen--not exactly professional persons, but
tradespeople, ma'am, tradespeople--have made the same remark. The
obscure citizen who keeps the hotel over the way, inclined strongly to
that opinion to-night when I ordered him to prepare the banquet. It's
a popular prejudice, Marchioness; and yet I am sure I don't know why,
for I have been trusted in my time to a considerable amount, and I can
safely say that I never forsook my trust until it deserted me--never.
Mr. Brass is of the same opinion, I suppose?"
His friend nodded again, with a cunning look which seemed to hint that
Mr. Brass held stronger opinions on the subject than his sister; and
seeming to recollect herself, added imploringly, "But don't you ever
tell upon me, or I shall be beat to death."
"Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, rising, "the word of a gentleman is
as good as his bond--sometimes better; as in the present case, where
his bond might prove but a doubtful sort of security. I am your
friend, and I hope we shall play many more rubbers together in this
same saloon. But, Marchioness," added Richard, stopping in his way to
the door, and wheeling slowly round upon the small servant, who was
following with the candle; "it occurs to me that you must be in the
constant habit of airing your eye at keyholes, to know all this."
"I only wanted," replied the trembling Marchioness, "to know where the
key of the safe was hid; that was all; and I wouldn't have taken much
if I had found it--only enough to squench my hunger."
"You didn't find it then?" said Dick. "But of course you didn't, or
you'd be plumper. Good night, Marchioness. Fare thee well, and if
forever, then forever fare thee well--and put up the chain,
Marchioness, in case of accidents."
IV
A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY[30]
Mr. and Mrs. Wilfer had seen a full quarter of a hundred more
anniversaries of their wedding-day than Mr. and Mrs. Lammle had seen
of theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion in the bosom of
their family. Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything
particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by
that circumstance on account of having looked forward to the return of
the auspicious day with sanguine anticipations of enjoyment. It was
kept morally, rather as a Fast than a Feast, enabling Mrs. Wilfer to
hold a somber darkling state, which exhibited that impressive woman in
her choicest colors.
[Footnote 30: From Book III, Chapter IV, of "Our Mutual Friend."]
The noble lady's condition on these delightful occasions was one
compounded of heroic endurance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid
indications of the better marriages she might have made, shone athwart
the awful gloom of her composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as
a little monster unaccountably favored by Heaven, who had possest
himself of a blessing, for which many of his superiors had sued and
contended in vain. So firmly had this his position toward his treasure
become established, that when the anniversary arrived, it always found
him in an apologetic state. It is not impossible that his modest
penitence may have even gone the length of sometimes severely
reproving him for that he ever took the liberty of making so exalted a
character his wife.
As for the children of the union, their experience of these festivals
had been sufficiently uncomfortable to lead them annually to wish,
when out of their tenderest years, either that Ma had married somebody
else instead of much-teased Pa, or that Pa had married somebody else
instead of Ma.
When there came to be but two sisters left at home, the daring mind of
Bella on the next of these occasions scaled the height of wondering
with droll vexation, "what on earth Pa ever could have seen in Ma, to
induce him to make such a little fool of himself as to ask her to have
him."
The revolving year now bringing the day round in its orderly sequence,
Bella arrived in the Boffin chariot to assist at the celebration. It
was the family custom when the day recurred to sacrifice a pair of
fowls on the altar of Hymen; and Bella had sent a note beforehand, to
intimate that she would bring the votive offering with her. So, Bella
and the fowls, by the united energies of two horses, two men, four
wheels, and a plum-pudding carriage dog with as uncomfortable a collar
on as if he had been George the Fourth, were deposited at the door of
the parental dwelling. They were there received by Mrs. Wilfer in
person, whose dignity on this, as on most special occasions, was
heightened by a mysterious toothache.
"I shall not require the carriage at night," said Bella. "I shall walk
back."
The male domestic of Mrs. Boffin touched his hat, and in the act of
departure had an awful glare bestowed upon him by Mrs. Wilfer,
intended to carry deep into his audacious soul the assurance that,
whatever his private suspicions might be, male domestics in livery
were no rarity there.
"Well, dear Ma," said Bella, "and how do you do?"
"I am as well, Bella," replied Mrs. Wilfer, "as can be expected."
"Dear me, Ma," said Bella, "you talk as if one was just born!"
"That's exactly what Ma has been doing," interposed Lavvy, over the
maternal shoulder, "ever since we got up this morning. It's all very
well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating it is impossible
to conceive."
Mrs. Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by any
words, attended both her daughters to the kitchen, where the sacrifice
was to be prepared.
"Mr. Rokesmith," said she, resignedly, "has been so polite as to place
his sitting-room at our disposal to-day. You will therefore, Bella, be
entertained in the humble abode of your parents, so far in accordance
with your present style of living, that there will be a drawing-room
for your reception as well as a dining-room. Your papa invited Mr.
Rokesmith to partake of our lowly fare. In excusing himself on account
of a particular engagement, he offered the use of his apartment."
Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own room
at Mr. Boffin's, but she approved of his staying away. "We should only
have put one another out of countenance," she thought, "and we do
that quite often enough as it is."
Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room to run up to it with
the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its contents.
It was tastefully tho economically furnished, and very neatly
arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English, French, and
Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing-table there were sheets
upon sheets of memoranda and calculations in figures, evidently
referring to the Boffin property. On that table also, carefully backed
with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the
placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from afar to be
her husband. She shrank from this ghostly surprize, and felt quite
frightened as she rolled and tied it up again. Peeping about here and
there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a pretty woman,
elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy chair. "Oh,
indeed, Sir!" said Bella, after stopping to ruminate before it. "Oh,
indeed, Sir! I fancy I can guess whom you think that's like. But I'll
tell you what it's much more like--your impudence!" Having said which
she decamped: not solely because she was offended, but because there
was nothing else to look at.
"Now, Ma," said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of
a blush, "you and Lavvy think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I
intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be cook to-day."
"Hold!" rejoined her majestic mother. "I can not permit it. Cook in
that dress!"
"As for my dress, Ma," returned Bella, merrily searching in a
dresser-drawer, "I mean to apron it and towel it all over the front;
and as to permission, I mean to do without."
"You cook?" said Mrs. Wilfer. "You who never cooked when you were at
home?"
"Yes, Ma," returned Bella; "that is precisely the state of the case."
She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins
contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it
had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over this bib her dimples
looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so. "Now,
Ma," said Bella, pushing back her hair from her temples with both
hands, "what's first?"
"First," returned Mrs. Wilfer solemnly, "if you persist in what I can
not but regard as conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage in
which you arrived--"
("Which I do, Ma.")
"First, then, you put the fowls down to the fire."
"To--be--sure!" cried Bella; "and flour them, and twirl them around,
and there they go!" sending them spinning at a great rate. "What's
next, Ma?"
"Next," said Mrs. Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of
abdication under protest from the culinary throne, "I would recommend
examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the
potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will
further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanor."
"As of course I do, Ma."
Persisting, Bella gave her attention to one thing and forgot the
other, and gave her attention to the other and forgot the third, and
remembering the third was distracted by the fourth, and made amends
whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fowls an extra spin,
which made their chance of ever getting cooked exceedingly doubtful.
But it was pleasant cookery too. Meanwhile Miss Lavinia, oscillating
between the kitchen and the opposite room, prepared the dining-table
in the latter chamber. This office she (always doing her household
spiriting with unwillingness) performed in a startling series of
whisks and bumps; laying the table-cloth as if she were raising the
wind, putting down the glasses and salt-cellars as if she were
knocking at the door, and clashing the knives and forks in a
skirmishing manner suggestive of hand-to-hand conflict.
"Look at Ma," whispered Lavinia to Bella when this was done, and they
stood over the roasting fowls. "If one was the most dutiful child in
existence (of course, on the whole, one hopes one is), isn't she
enough to make one want to poke her with something wooden, sitting
there bolt upright in the corner?"
"Only suppose," returned Bella, "that poor Pa was to sit bolt upright
in another corner."
"My dear, he couldn't do it," said Lavvy. "Pa would loll directly. But
indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could
keep so bolt upright as Ma, or put such an amount of aggravation into
one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't you well, Ma?"
"Doubtless I am very well," returned Mrs. Wilfer, turning her eyes
upon her youngest born, with scornful fortitude. "What should be the
matter with me?"
"You don't seem very brisk, Ma," retorted Lavvy the bold.
"Brisk?" repeated her parent. "Brisk? Whence the low expression,
Lavinia? If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my
lot, let that suffice for my family."
"Well, Ma," returned Lavvy, "since you will force it out of me, I must
respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under the
greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your
wedding-day, and that it's very disinterested in you, and an immense
blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is impossible to be too
boastful even of that boon."
"You incarnation of sauciness," said Mrs. Wilfer, "do you speak like
that to me? On this day of all days in the year? Pray do you know what
would have become of you, if I had not bestowed my hand upon R. W.,
your father, on this day?"
"No, Ma," replied Lavvy, "I really do not; and, with the greatest
respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you
do either."
Whether or no the sharp vigor of this sally on a weak point of Mrs.
Wilfer's entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time, is
rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the person of
Mr. George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the family,
whose affections were now understood to be in course of transference
from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept--possibly in remembrance
of his bad taste in having overlooked her in the first instance--under
a course of stinging discipline.
"I congratulate you, Mrs. Wilfer," said Mr. George Sampson, who had
meditated this neat address while coming along, "on the day." Mrs.
Wilfer thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again became an
unresisting prey to that inscrutable toothache.
"I am surprized," said Mr. Sampson feebly, "that Miss Bella
condescends to cook."
Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman with a
crushing supposition that at all events it was no business of his.
This disposed of Mr. Sampson in a melancholy retirement of spirit,
until the cherub arrived, whose amazement at the lovely woman's
occupation was great.
However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it,
and then sat down, bibless and apronless, to partake of it as an
illustrious guest: Mrs. Wilfer first responding to her husband's
cheerful "For what we are about to receive--" with a sepulchral Amen,
calculated to cast a damp upon the stoutest appetite.
"But what," said Bella, as she watched the carving of the fowls,
"makes them pink inside, I wonder, Pa! Is it the breed?"
"No; I don't think it's the breed, my dear," returned Pa. "I rather
think it is because they are not done."
"They ought to be," said Bella.
"Yes, I'm aware they ought to be, my dear," rejoined her father, "but
they--ain't."
So, the gridiron was put in requisition, and the good-tempered cherub,
who was often as uncherubically employed in his own family as if he
had been in the employment of some of the Old Masters, undertook to
grill the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him (a
branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much
addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as
his prototype; with the difference, say, that he performed with a
blacking-brush on the family's boots, instead of performing on
enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and that he conducted
himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of
foreshortening himself in the air with the vaguest intentions.
Bella helped him with his supplemental cookery, and made him very
happy, but put him in mortal terror too by asking him when they sat
down at table again, how he supposed they cooked fowls at the
Greenwich dinner, and whether he believed they really were such
pleasant dinners as people said? His secret winks and nods of
remonstrance, in reply, made the mischievous Bella laugh until she
choked, and then Lavinia was obliged to slap her on the back, and then
she laughed the more.
But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table; to
whom her father, in the innocence of his good fellowship, at intervals
appealed with: "My dear, I am afraid you are not enjoying yourself?"
"Why so, R. W.?" she would sonorously reply.
"Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts."
"Not at all," would be the rejoinder, in exactly the same tone.
"Would you take a merry-thought, my dear?"
"Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R. W."
"Well, but my dear, do you like it?"
"I like it as well as I like anything, R. W." The stately woman would
then, with a meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general
good, pursue her dinner as if she were feeding somebody else on high
public grounds.
Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding
unprecedented splendor on the occasion. Mrs. Wilfer did the honors of
the first glass by proclaiming: "R. W., I drink to you."
"Thank you, my dear. And I to you."
"Pa and Ma!" said Bella.
"Permit me," Mrs. Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove. "No. I
think not. I drank to your Pa. If, however, you insist on including
me, I can in gratitude offer no objection."
"Why, Lor, Ma," interposed Lavvy the bold, "isn't it the day that made
you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience."
"By whatever other circumstances the day may be marked, it is not the
day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me.
I beg--nay, command!--that you will not pounce. R. W., it is
appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to
obey."
"It is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both our
healths!" Drinking the toast with tremendous stiffness.
"I really am a little afraid, my dear," hinted the cherub meekly,
"that you are not enjoying yourself?"
"On the contrary," returned Mrs. Wilfer, "quite so. Why should I not?"
"I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might--"
"My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who
should know it if I smiled?"
And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson
by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was
so very much appalled by its expression as to cast in his thoughts
concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself.
"The mind naturally falls," said Mrs. Wilfer, "shall I say into a
reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this."
Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly),
"For goodness' sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and
get it over."
"The mind," pursued Mrs. Wilfer in an oratorical manner, "naturally
reverts to Papa and Mama--I here allude to my parents--at a period
before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I
was. Papa and Mama were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a
finer woman than my mother; never than my father."
The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, "Whatever grandpapa was, he
wasn't a female."
"Your grandpapa," retorted Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful look, and in an
awful tone, "was what I describe him to have been, and would have
struck any of his grandchildren to the earth who presumed to question
it. It was one of Mama's cherished hopes that I should become united
to a tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so,
it was equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia."
These remarks being offered to Mr. George Sampson, who had not the
courage to come out for single combat, but lurked with his chest under
the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs. Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of
increasing sternness and impressiveness, until she should force that
skulker to give himself up. "Mama would appear to have had an
indefinable foreboding of what afterward happened, for she would
frequently urge upon me, 'Not a little man. Promise me, my child, not
a little man. Never, never, never marry a little man!' Papa also would
remark to me (he possest extraordinary humor), 'That a family of
whales must not ally themselves with sprats.'
"His company was eagerly sought, as may be supposed, by the wits of
the day, and our house was their continual resort. I have known as
many as three copper-plate engravers exchanging the most exquisite
sallies and retorts there, at one time." (Here Mr. Sampson delivered
himself captive, and said, with an uneasy movement on his chair, that
three was a large number, and it must have been highly entertaining).
"Among the most prominent members of that distinguished circle, was a
gentleman measuring six feet four in height. He was not an engraver."
(Here Mr. Sampson said, with no reason whatever, of course not.) "This
gentleman was so obliging as to honor me with attentions which I
could not fail to understand." (Here Mr. Sampson murmured that when it
came to that, you could always tell.) "I immediately announced to both
parents that those attentions were misplaced, and that I could not
favor his suit. They inquired was he too tall? I replied it was not
the stature, but the intellect was too lofty. At our house, I said,
the tone was too brilliant, the pressure was too high, to be
maintained by me, a mere woman, in every-day domestic life. I well
remember Mama's clasping her hands, and exclaiming, 'This will end in
a little man!'" (Here Mr. Sampson glanced at his host and shook his
head with despondency.) "She afterward went so far as to predict that
it would end in a little man whose mind would be below the average,
but that was in what I may denominate a paroxysm of maternal
disappointment. Within a month," said Mrs. Wilfer, deepening her
voice, as if she were relating a terrible ghost story, "within a
month, I first saw R. W., my husband. Within a year I married him. It
is natural for the mind to recall these dark coincidences on the
present day."
Mr. Sampson, at length released from the custody of Mrs. Wilfer's eye,
now drew a long breath, and made the original and striking remark,
that there was no accounting for these sort of presentiments. R. W.
scratched his head and looked apologetically all round the table until
he came to his wife, when observing her as it were shrouded in a more
somber veil than before, he once more hinted, "My dear, I am really
afraid you are not altogether enjoying yourself?" To which she once
more replied, "On the contrary, R. W. Quite so."
The wretched Mr. Sampson's position at this agreeable entertainment
was truly pitiable. For, not only was he exposed defenseless to the
harangues of Mrs. Wilfer, but he received the utmost contumely at the
hands of Lavinia, who, partly to show Bella that she (Lavinia) could
do what she liked with him, and partly to pay him off for still
obviously admiring Bella's beauty, led him the life of a dog.
Illuminated on the one hand by the stately graces of Mrs. Wilfer's
oratory, and shadowed on the other by the cheeks and frowns of the
young lady to whom he had devoted himself in his destitution, the
sufferings of this young gentleman were distressing to witness. If his
mind for the moment reeled under them, it may be urged, in extenuation
of its weakness, that it was constitutionally a knock-knee'd mind, and
never very strong upon its legs.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Born in 1816, died in 1855; her father a curate with whom
most of her life was spent; married Rev. A. Nicholls, who
survived her fifty years; published "Jane Eyre" in 1847,
"Shirley" in 1849, "The Professor" in 1855, and "Poems" in
1846.
OF THE AUTHOR OF "VANITY FAIR"[31]
To that class in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears
detect in each protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an
insult to piety, that regent of God on earth, I would suggest to such
doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain
simple truths.
[Footnote 31: Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre." "Vanity
Fair" and "Jane Eyre" were published contemporaneously--"Vanity Fair"
(serially) in 1846-48, and "Jane Eyre" in 1847.]
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.
To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from
the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the crown
of thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed; they are
as distinct as vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they
should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth;
narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few,
should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.
There is--I repeat it--a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad
action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between
them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been
accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show
pass for sterling worth--to let whitewashed walls vouch for clean
shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose--to raze
the gilding, and show base metal under it--to penetrate the sepulcher,
and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning
him, but evil: probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah
better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopt
his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle
delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of
society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned kings of
Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as
prophet-like and as vital--a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the
satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I can not tell; but
I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek-fire of his
sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation,
were to take his warnings in time--they or their seed might yet escape
a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.
Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, reader,
because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique
than his contemporaries have yet recognized; because I regard him as
the first social regenerator of the day--as the very master of that
working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of
things.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Born in 1818, died in 1894; educated at Oxford; Fellow of
Exeter in 1842; associated with John Henry Newman in the
high church movement; owing to change in his religious
views, took up literature as a profession; came to the
United States in 1872, where he lectured; visited Africa and
Australia afterward; made Professor of Modern History at
Oxford in 1892 as successor to Freeman; published his
"History of England" in 1856-70, "Short Studies on Great
Subjects" in 1867-77, "Cæsar" in 1879, "Reminiscences of
Carlyle" in 1881 and "Life of Carlyle" in 1882 and following
year.
I
OF HISTORY AS A SCIENCE[32]
"What is History," said Napoleon, "but a fiction agreed upon?" "My
friend," said Faust to the student, who was growing enthusiastic about
the spirit of past ages,--"my friend, the times which are gone are a
book with seven seals; and what you call the spirit of past ages is
but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those
ages are reflected."
[Footnote 32: From the first chapter in Volume I of the "Short Studies
on Great Subjects," the same being a lecture delivered at the Royal
Institution in London, November 5, 1864.]
One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with
distinctness; that the world is built somehow on moral foundations;
that, in the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run it is
ill with the wicked. But this is no science; it is no more than the
old doctrine taught long-ago by the Hebrew prophets. The theories of
M. Comte and his disciples advance us, after all, not a step beyond
the trodden and familiar ground. If men are not entirely animals, they
are at least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to
the conditions of animals. So far as those parts of man's doings are
concerned, which neither have, nor need have, anything moral about
them, so far the laws of him are calculable. There are laws for his
digestion, and laws of the means by which his digestive organs are
supplied with matter. But pass beyond them, and where are we? In a
world where it would be as easy to calculate men's actions by laws
like those of positive philosophy as to measure the orbit of Neptune
with a foot rule, or weigh Sirius in a grocer's scale.
And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first
principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be
plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from
self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be
unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom that every man, in
whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will
promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it
is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the
foundations of political economy, expressly eliminates every other
motive. He does not say that men never act on other motives; still
less, that they never ought to act on other motives. He asserts merely
that, as far as the arts of production are concerned and of buying and
selling, the action of self-interest may be counted upon as uniform.
What Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. Buckle[33] would extend
over the whole circle of human activity.
[Footnote 33: In his "History of Civilization in England."]
Now, that which especially distinguishes a high, order of man from a low
order of man--that which constitutes human goodness, human greatness,
human nobleness--is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which
men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is
self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal
indulgence, personal advantages remote or present, because some other
line of conduct is more right.
We are sometimes told that this is but another way of expressing the
same thing; that, when a man prefers doing what is right, it is only
because to do right gives him a higher satisfaction. It appears to me,
on the contrary, to be a difference in the very heart and nature of
things. The martyr goes to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, not
with a view to any future reward to themselves, but because it is a
glory to fling away their lives for truth and freedom. And so through
all phases of existence, to the smallest details of common life, the
beautiful character is the unselfish character. Those whom we most
love and admire are those to whom the thought of self seems never to
occur; who do simply and with no ulterior aim--with no thought whether
it will be pleasant to themselves or unpleasant--that which is good
and right and generous.
Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened? I do not think so.
The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of
self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom
from a soiled flower. Surely it is a paradox to speak of the
self-interest of a martyr who dies for a cause, the triumph of which
he will never enjoy; and the greatest of that great company in all
ages would have done what they did, had their personal prospects'
closed with the grave. Nay, there have been those so zealous for some
glorious principle as to wish themselves blotted out of the book of
Heaven if the cause of Heaven could succeed.
And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the higher
relations of human life, the higher modes of human obligation. Kant,
the philosopher, used to say that there were two things which
overwhelmed him with awe as he thought of them. One was the star-sown
deep of space, without limit and without end; the other was right and
wrong. Right, the sacrifice of self to good; wrong, the sacrifice of
good to self,--not graduated objects of desire, to which we are
determined by the degrees of our knowledge, but wide asunder as pole
and pole, as light and darkness; one, the object of infinite love; the
other, the object of infinite detestation and scorn. It is in this
marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the
less true for that),--it is in this power to do wrong--wrong or right,
as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose--that the impossibility
stands of forming scientific calculations of what men will do before
the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the
fact. If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their
motives; if they were consistently noble, they would express in their
conduct the laws of the highest perfection. But so long as two natures
are mixt together, and the strange creature which results from the
combinations is now under one influence and now under another, so long
you will make nothing of him except from the old-fashioned moral--or,
if you please, imaginative--point of view.
Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us when they
touch moral government. So long as labor is a chattel to be bought and
sold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the condition of
supply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, an employer considers
that he stands in human relations to his workmen; if he believes
rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for them; that in return
for their labor he is bound to see that their children are decently
taught, and they and their families decently fed and clothed and
lodged; that he ought to care for them in sickness and in old
age,--then political economy will no longer direct him, and the
relations between himself and his dependents will have to be arranged
on quite other principles.
So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long supply
and demand will settle every difficulty; but the introduction of a new
factor spoils the equation.
And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives and noble
emotions; in the struggle, ever failing yet ever renewed, to carry
truth and justice into the administration of human society; in the
establishment of states and in the overthrow of tyrannies; in the
rise and fall of creeds; in the world of ideas; in the character and
deeds of the great actors in the drama of life, where good and evil
fight out their everlasting battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now
and more often in the heart, both of them, of each living man,--that
the true human interest of history resides. The progress of
industries, the growth of material and mechanical civilization, are
interesting; but they are not the most interesting. They have their
reward in the increase of material comforts; but, unless we are
mistaken about our nature, they do not highly concern us after all.
Once more; not only is there in men this baffling duality of
principle, but there is something else in us which still more defies
scientific analysis.
Mr. Buckle would deliver himself from the eccentricities of this and
that individual by a doctrine of averages. Tho he can not tell whether
A, B, or C will cut his throat, he may assure himself that one man in
every fifty thousand, or thereabout (I forget the exact proportion),
will cut his throat, and with this he consoles himself. No doubt it is
a comforting discovery. Unfortunately, the average of one generation
need not be the average of the next. We may be converted by the
Japanese, for all that we know, and the Japanese methods of taking
leave of life may become fashionable among us. Nay, did not Novalis
suggest that the whole race of men would at last become so disgusted
with their impotence, that they would extinguish themselves by a
simultaneous act of suicide, and make room for a better order of
things? Anyhow, the fountain out of which the race is flowing
perpetually changes; no two generations are alike. Whether there is a
change in the organization itself we can not tell; but this is
certain,--that, as the planet varies with the atmosphere which
surrounds it, so each new generation varies from the last, because it
inhales as its atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowledge of
the whole past of the world. These things form the spiritual air which
we breathe as we grow; and, in the infinite multiplicity of elements
of which that air is now composed, it is forever matter of conjecture
what the minds will be like which expand under its influence.
From the England of Fielding and Richardson to the England of Miss
Austen, from the England of Miss Austen to the England of railways and
free trade, how vast the change! Yet perhaps Sir Charles Grandison
would not seem so strange to us now as one of ourselves will seem to
our great-grandchildren. The world moves faster and faster; and the
difference will probably be considerably greater.
The temper of each new generation is a continual surprize. The Fates
delight to contradict our most confident expectations. Gibbon believed
that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full
life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a
few years ago we believed the world had grown too civilized for war,
and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a
new era. Battles bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale of
every day; and the arts which have made greatest progress are the
arts of destruction. What next? We may strain our eyes into the future
which lies beyond this waning century; but never was conjecture more
at fault. It is blank darkness, which even the imagination fails to
people.
What, then, is the use of history, and what are its lessons? If it can
tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste our
time over so barren a study?
First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of
right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall,
but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every
false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust
or vanity, the price has to be paid at last, not always by the chief
offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and
live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at
last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways.
That is one lesson of history. Another is, that we should draw no
horoscope; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not
come to pass. Revolutions, reformations,--those vast movements into
which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they
were the dawn of the millennium,--have not borne the fruit which they
looked for. Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions
leave the world changed,--perhaps improved, but not improved as the
actors in them hoped it would be. Luther would have gone to work with
less heart could he have foreseen the Thirty Years' War, and in the
distance the theology of Tübingen. Washington might have hesitated to
draw the sword against England, could he have seen the country which
he made as we see it now.[34]
[Footnote 34: This is a reference to the condition of this country
during the Civil War.]
The most reasonable anticipations fail us, antecedents the most
opposite mislead us, because the conditions of human problems never
repeat themselves. Some new feature alters everything--some element
which we detect only in its after-operation.
Bishop Butler says somewhere that the best book which could be written
would be a book consisting only of premises, from which the readers
should draw conclusions for themselves. The highest poetry is the very
thing which Butler requires, and the highest history ought to be. We
should no more ask for a theory of this or that period of history,
than we should ask for a theory of "Macbeth" or "Hamlet." Philosophies
of history, sciences of history,--all these there will continue to be;
the fashions of them will change, as our habits of thought will
change; each new philosopher will find his chief employment in showing
that before him no one understood anything; but the drama of history
is imperishable, and the lessons of it will be like what we learn from
Homer or Shakespeare,--lessons for which we have no words.
The address of history is less to the understanding than to the higher
emotions. We learn in it to sympathize with what is great and good; we
learn to hate what is base. In the anomalies of fortune we feel the
mystery of our mortal existence; and in the companionship of the
illustrious natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we
escape from the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life,
and our minds are tuned in a higher and nobler key.
For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched in
connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and
none can tell what will be after us. What opinions, what convictions,
the infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it
live out together to the middle of another century, only a very bold
man would undertake to conjecture. "The time will come," said
Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materializing tendencies of modern
thought,--"the time will come when the belief in God will be as the
tales with which old women frighten children; when the world will be a
machine, the ether a gas, and God will be a force." Mankind, if they
last long enough on the earth, may develop strange things out of
themselves; and the growth of what is called the Positive Philosophy
is a curious commentary on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end
be seventy years hence, or seven hundred,--be the close of the mortal
history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy
beginnings seem now to lie behind us,--this only we may foretell with
confidence,--that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved.
There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to
explain,--that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world,
which science can not fathom, and which suggests the unknown
possibilities of his origin and his destiny.
II
THE CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII[35]
Protestants and Catholics united to condemn a government under which
both had suffered; and a point on which enemies were agreed was
assumed to be proved. When I commenced the examination of the records,
I brought with me the inherited impression, from which I had neither
any thought nor any expectation that I should be disabused. I found
that it melted between my hands, and with it disappeared that other
fact, so difficult to credit, yet as it had appeared so impossible to
deny, that English Parliaments, English judges, English clergy,
statesmen whose beneficent legislation survives among the most valued
of our institutions, prelates who were the founders and martyrs of the
English Church, were the cowardly accomplices of abominable
atrocities, and had disgraced themselves with a sycophancy which the
Roman senate imperfectly approached when it fawned on Nero.
[Footnote 35: From the "History of England."]
Henry had many faults. They have been exhibited in the progress of the
narrative: I need not return to them. But his position was one of
unexampled difficulty; and by the work which he accomplished, and the
conditions, internal and external, under which his task was allotted
to him, he, like every other man, ought to be judged. He was
inconsistent: he can bear the reproach of it. He ended by accepting
and approving what he had commenced with persecuting; yet it was with
the honest inconsistency which distinguishes the conduct of most men
of practical ability in times of change, and even by virtue of which
they obtain their success. If at the commencement of the movement he
had regarded the eucharist as a "remembrance," he must either have
concealed his convictions or he would have forfeited his throne; if he
had been a stationary bigot, the Reformation might have waited for a
century, and would have been conquered only by an internecine war.
But as the nation moved the King moved, leading it, but not outrunning
it; checking those who went too fast, dragging forward those who
lagged behind. The conservatives, all that was sound and good among
them, trusted him because, he so long continued to share their
conservatism; when he threw it aside he was not reproached with breach
of confidence, because his own advance had accompanied theirs.
Protestants have exclaimed, against the Six Articles bill; Romanists
against the Act of Supremacy. Philosophers complain that the
prejudices of the people were needlessly violated, that opinions
should have been allowed to be free, and the reform of religion have
been left to be accomplished by reason. Yet, however cruel was the Six
Articles bill, the governing classes even among the laity were
unanimous in its favor. The King was not converted by a sudden
miracle; he believed the traditions in which he had been trained; his
eyes, like the eyes of others, opened but slowly; and unquestionably,
had he conquered for himself in their fulness the modern principles
of toleration, he could not have governed by them a nation which was
itself intolerant. Perhaps, of all living Englishmen who shared
Henry's faith, there was not one so little desirous as himself of
enforcing it by violence. His personal exertions were ever to mitigate
the action of the law, while its letter was sustained; and England at
its worst was a harbor of refuge to the Protestants, compared to the
Netherlands, to France, to Spain, or even to Scotland.
That the Romanists should have regarded him as a tyrant is natural;
and were it true that English subjects owed fealty to the Pope, their
feeling was just. But however desirable it may be to leave religious
opinions unfettered, it is certain that if England was legitimately
free, she could tolerate no difference of opinion on a question of
allegiance, so long as Europe was conspiring to bring her back into
slavery. So long as the English Romanists refused to admit without
mental reservation that, if foreign enemies invaded this country in
the Pope's name, their place must be at the side of their own
sovereign, "religion" might palliate the moral guilt of their treason,
but it could not exempt them from its punishment.
But these matters have been discust in the details of this history,
where alone they can be understood.
Beyond and besides the Reformation, the constitution of these islands
now rests in large measure on foundations laid in this reign. Henry
brought Ireland within the reach of English civilization. He absorbed
Wales and the Palatinates into the general English system. He it was
who raised the House of Commons from the narrow duty of voting
supplies, and of passing without discussion the measures of the Privy
Council, and converted them into the first power in the State under
the Crown. When he asce
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