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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOLUME 57, NO. 353, MARCH 1845 ***




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Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCLIII.     MARCH, 1845.     VOL. LVII.




CONTENTS.


  SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN
    ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,                                               269

  MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT,"                                 286

  PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE--STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM, &C.,              298

  STANZAS,                                                             314

  LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE                         315

  GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. PART II.,                                  331

  BRITISH HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,                       353

  NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. II--DRYDEN AND POPE,   369


  EDINBURGH:
  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
  AND 22 PALL-MALL, LONDON
  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCLIII.     MARCH, 1845.     VOL. LVII.




SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH
OPIUM-EATER.


INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822, as a separate
volume--appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object
of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs
_potentially_ to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom
this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not
perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will
probably dream of oxen: and the condition of human life, which yokes so
vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of
thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive
faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn
imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a
constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even
this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the
gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, in this year
1845, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions
amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of
vast physical agencies--steam in all its applications, light getting under
harness as a slave for man,[1] powers from heaven descending upon
education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might
seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces
of destruction--the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is
haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it
becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be
retarded, (a thing not to be expected,) or, which is happily more
probable, can be met by counter-forces of corresponding magnitude, forces
in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate
centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards
the vortex of the merely human, left to itself the natural tendency of so
chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others to
a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal
hurry, upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests, is likely to
defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the
ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word
_dissipation_, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of
thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To
reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all
observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will
unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer
his life with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. Or, if not true
in that rigour of expression, to this formula undoubtedly it is that the
wise rule of life must approximate.

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the
_social_ instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no
man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human
brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the
mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates
with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the
eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the
infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections
from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind.

But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, which is becoming
a visionary idea in England, on the other hand, it is certain that some
merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost
preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at
least, and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium, which indeed
seems to possess a _specific_ power in that direction; not merely for
exalting the colours of dream-scenery, but for deepening its shadows; and,
above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful _realities_.

The _Opium Confessions_ were written with some slight secondary purpose of
exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but
much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the
outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a reader
acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated, viz.
the revelation of dreaming, to have put this question:--

"But how came you to dream more splendidly than others?"

The answer would have been:--"Because (_præmissis præmittendis_) I took
excessive quantities of opium."

Secondly, suppose him to say, "But how came you to take opium in this
excess?"

The answer to _that_ would be, "Because some early events in my life had
left a weakness in one organ which required (or seemed to require) that
stimulant."

Then, because the opium dreams could not always have been understood
without a knowledge of these events, it became necessary to relate them.
Now, these two questions and answers exhibit the _law_ of the work, _i.e._
the principle which determined its form, but precisely in the inverse or
regressive order. The work itself opened with the narration of my early
adventures. These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium as
a resource for healing their consequences; and the opium as naturally led
to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts, what
stood last in the succession of development, stood first in the order of
my purposes.

At the close of this little work, the reader was instructed to
believe--and _truly_ instructed--that I had mastered the tyranny of opium.
The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts even more
prodigious, in the second of these cases, than in the first. But one error
I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium--so
trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances--that enormity of
exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for
making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one _sine quâ non_
for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank--twice I rose again. A
third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned, (the oversight as to
exercise,) partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble
the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize
whether I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of us is
acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural
bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission)
not at all.

During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years,
new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time, these were
neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But
when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms
were moving forward for ever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably
increasing, I endeavoured, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to
retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks, before
I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of
my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw
through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress which
hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my
retreat, and hung with funeral crape.

As applicable to this tremendous situation, (the situation of one escaping
by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the
distance, who finds suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling
round upon the same maelstrom,) I have since remembered a striking
incident in a modern novel. A lady abbess of a convent, herself suspected
of Protestant leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all effectual
power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she knows to be innocent) accused
of an offence leading to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be
immured alive if she is found guilty; and there is no chance that she will
not--for the evidence against her is strong--unless something were made
known that cannot be made known; and the judges are hostile. All follows
in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses depose; the evidence is
without effectual contradiction; the conviction is declared; the judgment
is delivered; nothing remains but to see execution done. At this crisis
the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interposition, considers with
herself that, according to the regular forms, there will be one single
night open during which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her own
separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she will use, at any
hazard to herself, for the salvation of her friend. At midnight, when all
is hushed in the convent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to
the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under her professional
habit. As this will open every door in every corridor,--already, by
anticipation, she feels the luxury of holding her emancipated friend
within her arms. Suddenly she has reached the door; she descries a dusky
object; she raises her lamp; and, ranged within the recess of the
entrance, she beholds the funeral banner of the Holy Office, and the black
robes of its inexorable officials.

I apprehend that, in a situation such as this, supposing it a real one,
the lady abbess would not start, would not show any marks externally of
consternation or horror. The case was beyond _that_. The sentiment which
attends the sudden revelation that _all is lost_! silently is gathered up
into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of
it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any
point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek
sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy
cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. The
voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back
upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and
hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor
started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was
silent for days.

It is the record of this third, or final stage of opium, as one differing
in something more than degree from the others, that I am now undertaking.
But a scruple arises as to the true interpretation of these final
symptoms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no particular purpose of
mine, and _why_ it was no particular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters.
Still, as some few persons may use the record in that way, it becomes a
matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely, that, even with the
same excesses, other opium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do
not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself.
Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he
has. For no man ever yet resembled another man so far, as not to differ
from him in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what I point to
are not peculiarities of temperament or of organization, so much as
peculiar circumstances and incidents through which my own separate
experience had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter the whole
economy of my mind. Great convulsions, from whatever cause, from
conscience, from fear, from grief, from struggles of the will, sometimes,
in passing away themselves, do not carry off the changes which they have
worked. _All_ the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have
threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, nor _could_ report. But
one which affected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is
privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's ear; because, though
relating to a man's proper self, it is a self so far removed from his
present self as to wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is
privileged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. An
adult sympathizes with himself in childhood because he _is_ the same, and
because (being the same) yet he is _not_ the same. He acknowledges the
deep, mysterious identity between himself, as adult and as infant, for the
ground of his sympathy; and yet, with this general agreement, and
necessity of agreement, he feels the differences between his two selves as
the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities, as they
arise to light in his young forerunner, which now perhaps he does not
share; he looks indulgently upon errors of the understanding, or
limitations of view which now he has long survived; and sometimes, also,
he honours in the infant that rectitude of will which, under _some_
temptations, he may since have felt it so difficult to maintain.

The particular case to which I refer in my own childhood, was one of
intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, more severe than many people at _any_
age are called upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands to my
latter opium experiences, is this:--Those vast clouds of gloomy grandeur
which overhung my dreams at all stages of opium, but which grew into the
darkest of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the human face,
which latterly towered into a curse--were they not partly derived from
this childish experience? It is certain that, from the essential solitude
in which my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from
the exaltation of this by the resistance of an intellect too prematurely
developed, it resulted that the terrific grief which I passed through,
drove a shaft for me into the worlds of death and darkness which never
again closed, and through which it might be said that I ascended and
descended at will, according to the temper of my spirits. Some of the
phenomena developed in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat the
experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and
fructifications from seeds at that time sown.

The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account of a "passage" in
childhood, to this record of a dreadful visitation from opium excess,
are--1st, That, in colouring, it harmonizes with that record, and,
therefore, is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly, That
possibly it was in part the origin of some features in that record, and so
far is related to it in logic; 3dly, That, the final assault of opium
being of a nature to challenge the attention of medical men, it is
important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can gather about the
roots of such a malady. Was it opium, or was it opium in combination with
something else, that raised these storms?

Some cynical reader will object--that for this last purpose it would have
been sufficient to state the fact, without rehearsing _in extenso_ the
particulars of that case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness
(for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have more
discernment; and he will perceive that it is not for the mere facts that
the case is reported, but because these facts move through a wilderness of
natural thoughts or feelings; some in the child who suffers; some in the
man who reports; but all so far interesting as they relate to solemn
objects. Meantime, the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a
scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself an
energetic tourist, who protests every where that he comes only to see the
lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant
indorser of a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet this man
adjures every landlord, "by the virtue of his oath," to tell him, and as
he hopes for peace in this world to tell him truly, which is the _nearest_
road to Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions--the Westmoreland
postilions always fly down hills at full stretch without locking--but
nevertheless, in the full career of their fiery race, our picturesque man
lets down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postilions, at the
risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring them to reveal whether they
are taking the _shortest_ road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon
the road; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he demands of me
(as one whom he believes to be a scholar and a man of honour) whether
there is not, in the possibility of things, a _shorter_ cut to Keswick.
Now, the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, two postilions, and
myself, is this--"Most excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply
to see their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after the most
beautiful road, rather than the shortest? Because, if abstract shortness,
if [Greek: to] brevity is your object, then the shortest of all possible
tours would seem, with submission--never to have left London." On the same
principle, I tell my critic that the whole course of this narrative
resembles, and was meant to resemble, a _caduceus_ wreathed about with
meandering ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and
surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject
of the opium answers to the dry withered pole, which shoots all the rings
of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some dexterity of its own;
whereas, in fact, the plant and its tendrils have curled round the sullen
cylinder by mere luxuriance of _theirs_. Just as in Cheapside, if you look
right and left, the streets so narrow, that lead off at right angles, seem
quarried and blasted out of some Babylonian brick kiln; bored, not raised
artificially by the builder's hand. But, if you enquire of the worthy men
who live in that neighbourhood, you will find it unanimously deposed--that
not the streets were quarried out of the bricks, but, on the contrary,
(most ridiculous as it seems,) that the bricks have supervened upon the
streets.

The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but those cursed bricks
came to imprison the streets. So, also, the ugly pole--hop pole, vine
pole, espalier, no matter what--is there only for support. Not the flowers
are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers. Upon the same analogy
view me, as one (in the words of a true and most impassioned poet[2])
"_viridantem floribus hastas_"--making verdant, and gay with the life of
flowers, murderous spears and halberts--things that express death in their
origin, (being made from dead substances that once had lived in forests,)
things that express ruin in their use. The true object in my "Opium
Confessions" is not the naked physiological theme--on the contrary, _that_
is the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert--but those wandering
musical variations upon the theme--those parasitical thoughts, feelings,
digressions, which climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid
stock; ramble away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuriance;
but at the same time, by the eternal interest attached to the _subjects_
of these digressions, no matter what were the execution, spread a glory
over incidents that for themselves would be--less than nothing.


SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. PART I.

THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.

It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity, that any indirect
traits of vanity should even _seem_ to creep into records of profound
passion; and yet, on the other hand, it is so impossible, without an
unnatural restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent oblique
gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance
as did really surround my childhood, that on all accounts I think it
better to tell him from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in what
order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary
narrative is dated. Otherwise it would happen that, merely by moving truly
and faithfully through the circumstances of this early experience, I could
hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher
rank than did really belong to my family. My father was a merchant; not in
the sense of Scotland, where it means a man who sells groceries in a
cellar, but in the English sense, a sense severely exclusive--viz. he was
a man engaged in _foreign_ commerce, and no other; therefore, in
_wholesale_ commerce, and no other--which last circumstance it is
important to mention, because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's
condescending distinction[3]--as one to be despised, certainly, but not
too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He, this imperfectly
despicable man, died at an early age, and very soon after the incidents
here recorded, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six
children, an unburthened estate producing exactly £1600 a-year. Naturally,
therefore, at the date of my narrative, if narrative it can be called, he
had an income still larger, from the addition of current commercial
profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life, but above
all with such life in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent
English family of that class--opulent, though not rich in a mercantile
estimate--the domestic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations.
Whether as to the establishment of servants, or as to the provision made
for the comfort of all its members, such a household not uncommonly
eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer classes of our
nobility, though the most splendid in Europe--a fact which, since the
period of my infancy, I have had many personal opportunities for verifying
both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly affecting the
domestic economy of merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the general
scale of outward signs by which we measure the relations of rank. The
equation, so to speak, between one order of society and another, which
usually travels in the natural line of their comparative expenditure, is
here interrupted and defeated, so that one rank would be collected from
the name of the occupation, and another rank, much higher, from the
splendour of the domestic _ménage_. I warn the reader, therefore, (or
rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer
from any casual gleam of luxury or elegance a corresponding elevation of
rank.

We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the very happiest tier
in the scaffolding of society for all good influences. The prayer of
Agar--"Give me neither poverty nor riches"--was realized for us. That
blessing had we, being neither too high nor too low; high enough we were
to see models of good manners; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest
of solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of wealth, _extra_
means of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on
the other hand, we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed
by the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring, we had no
motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful also to this hour I am,
that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan
simplicity of diet--that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously
than the servants. And if (after the model of the emperor Marcus Aurelius)
I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my
early situation, these four I would single out as chiefly worthy to be
commemorated--that I lived in the country; that I lived in solitude; that
my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, not by horrid
pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful children of a
pure, holy, and magnificent church.

       *       *       *       *       *

The earliest incidents in my life which affected me so deeply as to be
rememberable at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed
my second year, viz. a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a
favourite nurse, which is interesting for a reason to be noticed
hereafter; and secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of
pathos with the re-appearance, very early in spring, of some crocuses.
This I mention as inexplicable, for such annual resurrections of plants
and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of a higher
change, and therefore in connexion with the idea of death; but of death I
could, at that time, have had no experience whatever.

This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters--eldest of
three _then_ living, and also elder than myself--were summoned to an early
death. The first who died was Jane--about a year older than myself. She
was three and a half, I two and a half, _plus_ or _minus_ some trifle that
I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I
could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There
was another death in the house about the same time, viz. of a maternal
grandmother; but as she had in a manner come to us for the express purpose
of dying in her daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly
secluded, our nursery party knew her but little, and were certainly more
affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a favourite bird, viz. a
kingfisher who had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's
death [though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than
unintelligible] there was, however, connected an incident which made a
most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to
thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my
years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any
other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now
a whisper arose in the family, that a woman-servant, who by accident was
drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or
two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally; and as this
ill treatment happened within two days of her death--so that the occasion
of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her
sufferings--naturally there was a sense of awe diffused through the
family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possibly it was
exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the
person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes sought the
ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face--not through anger;
and as to vindictive thoughts, how could these lodge in a powerless
infant? The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a
first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife.
Though born in a large town, I had passed the whole of my childhood,
except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three
innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and
shut up for ever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or
oppression, or outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true
complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living.
Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have changed greatly; for
so _representative_ are some acts, that one single case of the class is
sufficient to throw open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in
that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused of this cruelty,
took it at all to heart, even after the event, which so immediately
succeeded, had reflected upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other
hand, I knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a mere
semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under similar circumstances,
inflicted the grief of self-reproach through the remainder of life. A boy,
interesting in his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, was
attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaint of the trachea--not
precisely croup, but like it. He was three years old, and had been ill
perhaps for four days; but at intervals had been in high spirits, and
capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming through dark clouds, had
continued even on the fourth day; and from nine to eleven o'clock at
night, he had showed more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant,
hearing of his illness, had called to see him; and her mode of talking
with him had excited all the joyousness of his nature. About midnight his
mother, fancying that his feet felt cold, was muffling them up in
flannels; and, as he seemed to resist her a little, she struck lightly on
the sole of one foot as a mode of admonishing him to be quiet. He did not
repeat his motion; and in less than a minute his mother had him in her
arms with his face looking upwards. "What is the meaning," she exclaimed,
in sudden affright, "of this strange repose settling upon his features?"
She called loudly to a servant in another room; but before the servant
could reach her, the child had drawn two inspirations--deep, yet
gentle--and had died in his mother's arms. Upon this the poor afflicted
lady made the discovery that those struggles, which she had supposed to be
expressions of resistance to herself, were the struggles of departing
life. It followed, or seemed to follow, that with these final struggles
had blended an expression, on _her_ part, of displeasure. Doubtless the
child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother could never look
back to the incident without self-reproach. And seven years after, when
her own death happened, no progress had been made in reconciling her
thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have viewed as any
offence.

So passed away from earth one out of those sisters that made up my nursery
playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called)
commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality
than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but, perhaps, she would
come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of
infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's
absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer
and winter came again--crocuses and roses; why not little Jane?

Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so
the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as
often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of
light or a gleaming _aureola_ in token of thy premature intellectual
grandeur--thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the
astonishment of science[4]--thou next, but after an interval of happy
years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; and the night which,
for me, gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life; and
perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else
I should have been. Pillar of fire, that didst go before me to guide and
to quicken--pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to
God, that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my young heart--in
what scales should I weigh thee? Was the blessing greater from thy
heavenly presence, or the blight which followed thy departure? Can a man
weigh off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness of hurricane?
Or, if he could, how is it that, when a memorable love has been followed
by a memorable bereavement, even suppose that God would replace the
sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience, and offer
to cancel the woe, but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe
should also be obliterated--vehemently would every man shrink from the
exchange! In the _Paradise Lost_, this strong instinct of man--to prefer
the heavenly, mixed and polluted with the earthly, to a level experience
offering neither one nor the other--is divinely commemorated. What worlds
of pathos are in that speech of Adam's--"If God should make another Eve,"
&c.--that is, if God should replace him in his primitive state, and should
condescend to bring again a second Eve, one that would listen to no
temptation--still that original partner of his earliest solitude--

           "Creature in whom excell'd
  Whatever can to sight or thought be form'd,
  Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet"--

even now, when she appeared in league with an eternity of woe, and
ministering to his ruin, could not be displaced for him by any better or
happier Eve. "Loss of thee!" he exclaims in this anguish of trial--

               "Loss of thee
  Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
  The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh,
  Bone of my bone thou art; and from thy state
  Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe."[5]

But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation so strong, to my
sister? Could a child, little above six years of age, place any special
value upon her intellectual forwardness? Serene and capacious as her mind
appeared to me upon after review, was _that_ a charm for stealing away the
heart of an infant? Oh, no! I think of it _now_ with interest, because it
lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my
fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was but dimly
perceived. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have
loved thee--having that capacious heart overflowing, even as mine
overflowed, with tenderness, and stung, even as mine was stung, by the
necessity of being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty--

              "Love, the holy sense,
  Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."

That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me which shone so steadily
in thee; and never but to thee only, never again since thy departure,
_durst_ I utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was the shiest of
children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held me back at all
stages of life, from exposing the least ray of feelings which I was not
encouraged _wholly_ to reveal.

It would be painful, and it is needless, to pursue the course of that
sickness which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my
recollection at this moment) was just as much above eight years as I above
six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of judgment, and the
tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the
fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening, or so people
fancied, that the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of
predispositions to a brain-complaint which had hitherto slumbered within
her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a labouring man,
the father of an old female servant. The sun had set when she returned in
the company of this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations after
a fervent day. From that time she sickened. Happily a child in such
circumstances feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people whose
natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is their natural
function to profess it, knowing them only as _ex-officio_ privileged to
make war upon pain and sickness--I never had a misgiving about the result.
I grieved indeed that my sister should lie in bed: I grieved still more
sometimes to hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than a
night of trouble on which the dawn would soon arise. Oh! moment of
darkness and delirium, when a nurse awakened me from that delusion, and
launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister
_must_ die. Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "cannot be
_remembered_."[6] Itself, as a remembrable thing, is swallowed up in its
own chaos. Mere anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind
I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recal the
circumstances of that time, when _my_ agony was at its height, and hers in
another sense was approaching. Enough to say--that all was soon over; and
the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her
innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon
me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation.

On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain
was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing
her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have
suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings that
take the name of "sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But
grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The
house was large; there were two staircases; and by one of these I knew
that about noon, when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her
chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon when I reached the
chamber door; it was locked; but the key was not taken away. Entering, I
closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which
ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then
turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved; and
the back was now turned. Nothing met my eyes but one large window wide
open, through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down
torrents of splendour. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the
blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible
for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of
life and the glory of life.

Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and
revolutionary for my own mind, and one which (if any earthly remembrance)
will survive for me in the hour of death,--to remind some readers, and to
inform others, that in the original _Opium Confessions_ I endeavoured to
explain the reason[7] why death, _cæteris paribus_, is more profoundly
affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so far at least as it
is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season.
The reason, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark sterilities of the
grave. The summer we see, the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory
is around us, the darkness is within us. And, the two coming into
collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. But in my case
there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of
vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting it,
often I have been struck with the important truth--that far more of our
deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of
_concrete_ objects, pass to us as _involutes_ (if I may coin that word) in
compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us
_directly_, and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst
our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many
pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with myself sate
by the firelight round the _guard_ of our nursery, no book was so much in
request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music.
One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted, would
often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her
simple powers, would endeavour to explain what we found obscure. We, the
children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful
gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by fire-light, suited our evening
state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power
and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just
man,--man and yet _not_ man, real above all things and yet shadowy above
all things, who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine, slept upon
our minds like early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to
us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences
(as it happens) express themselves in the great varieties of summer. The
cloudless sunlights of Syria--those seemed to argue everlasting summer;
the disciples plucking the ears of corn--that _must_ be summer; but, above
all, the very name of Palm Sunday, (a festival in the English church,)
troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was _that_? That was the day of
peace which masqued another peace deeper than the heart of man can
comprehend. "Palms!"--what were they? _That_ was an equivocal word: palms,
in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life: palms, as a product
of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation
does not suffice: it was not merely by the peace and by the summer, by the
deep sound of rest below all rest, and of ascending glory,--that I had
been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep
images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand
when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to
Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the
_omphalos_ (navel) of the earth? That pretension had once been made for
Jerusalem, and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. Yes; but if not of
the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the _omphalos_ of mortality.
Yet how? there on the contrary it was, as we infants understood, that
mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but for that very reason
there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it
was indeed that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but for that
reason there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the
abyss: the lesser star could not rise, before the greater would submit to
eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death not merely as
a mode of antagonism, but also through intricate relations to Scriptural
scenery and events.

Out of this digression, which was almost necessary for the purpose of
showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled
with those of summer, I return to the bedchamber of my sister. From the
gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the corpse. There lay the sweet
childish figure, there the angel face: and, as people usually fancy, it as
said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not?
The forehead indeed, the serene and noble forehead, _that_ might be the
same; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from
beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as
if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, could these be mistaken
for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly
lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it as _not_. I stood
checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and, whilst I stood, a
solemn wind began to blow--the most mournful that ear ever heard.
Mournful! that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields
of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day,
when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising
and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is
in this world the one sole _audible_ symbol of eternity. And three times
in my life I have happened to hear the same sound in the same
circumstances, viz. when standing between an open window and a dead body
on a summer day.

Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Æolian intonation, when my eye
filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps and glory of the heavens
outside, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my
sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in
the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I in spirit
rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows
seemed to pursue the throne of God; but _that_ also ran before us and fled
away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and
ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel
me; I slept--for how long I cannot say; slowly I recovered my
self-possession, and found myself standing, as before, close to my
sister's bed.

Oh[8] flight of the solitary child to the solitary God--flight from the
ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!--how rich wert thou
in truth for after years. Rapture of grief, that, being too mighty for a
child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born sleep, and
within that sleep didst conceal a dream, whose meanings in after years,
when slowly I deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me a new light; and
even by the grief of a child, as I will show you reader hereafter, were
confounded the falsehoods of philosophers.[9]

In the _Opium Confessions_ I touched a little upon the extraordinary power
connected with opium (after long use) of amplifying the dimensions of
time. Space also it amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But
time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power of opium chiefly
spends its operation. Time becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to
such immeasurable and vanishing termini, that it seems ridiculous to
compute the sense of it on waking by expressions commensurate to human
life. As in starry fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit,
or of Jupiter's, so in valuing the _virtual_ time lived during some
dreams, the measurement by generations is ridiculous--by millennia is
ridiculous: by æons, I should say, if æons were more determinate, would be
also ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in my life, the very
inverse phenomenon occurred. But why speak of it in connexion with opium?
Could a child of six years old have been under that influence? No, but
simply because it so exactly reversed the operation of opium. Instead of a
short interval expanding into a vast one, upon this occasion a long one
had contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe that a _very_ long
one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind.
When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the
stairs. I was alarmed. For I believed that, if any body should detect me,
means would be taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I
kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty thing
with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest
amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was
the parting which should have lasted for ever; thus tainted with fear was
the farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and perfect grief.

Oh, Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew![10] fable or not a fable, thou when first
starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe, thou when first flying through
the gates of Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse
behind thee, couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in
the misgivings of thy troubled brain than I when passing for ever from my
sister's room. The worm was at my heart: and, confining myself to that
stage of life, I may say--the worm that could not die. For if, when
standing upon the threshold of manhood, I had ceased to feel its perpetual
gnawings, _that_ was because a vast expansion of intellect, it was because
new hopes, new necessities, and the frenzy of youthful blood, had
translated me into a new creature. Man is doubtless _one_ by some subtle
_nexus_ that we cannot perceive, extending from the newborn infant to the
superannuated dotard: but as regards many affections and passions incident
to his nature at different stages, he is _not_ one; the unity of man in
this respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the
passion belongs. Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by
one half of their origin, animal and earthy by the other half. These will
not survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which is _altogether_
holy, like that between two children, will revisit undoubtedly by glimpses
the silence and the darkness of old age: and I repeat my belief--that,
unless bodily torment should forbid it, that final experience in my
sister's bedroom, or some other in which her innocence was concerned, will
rise again for me to illuminate the hour of death.

On the day following this which I have recorded, came a body of medical
men to examine the brain, and the particular nature of the complaint, for
in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. Such is the
sanctity of death, and especially of death alighting on an innocent child,
that even gossiping people do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently,
I knew nothing of the purpose which drew together these surgeons, nor
suspected any thing of the cruel changes which might have been wrought in
my sister's head. Long after this I saw a similar case; I surveyed the
corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy, eighteen years old, who had died
of the same complaint) one hour _after_ the surgeons had laid the skull in
ruins; but the dishonours of this scrutiny were hidden by bandages, and
had not disturbed the repose of the countenance. So it might have been
here; but, if it were _not_ so, then I was happy in being spared the
shock, from having that marble image of peace, icy and rigid as it was,
unsettled by disfiguring images. Some hours after the strangers had
withdrawn, I crept again to the room, but the door was now locked--the key
was taken away--and I was shut out for ever.

Then came the funeral. I, as a point of decorum, was carried thither. I
was put into a carriage with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They
were kind to me; but naturally they talked of things disconnected with the
occasion, and their conversation was a torment. At the church, I was told
to hold a white handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had
_he_ of masques or mockeries, whose heart died within him at every word
that was uttered? During that part of the service which passed within the
church, I made an effort to attend, but I sank back continually into my
own solitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some
fugitive strains from the sublime chapter of St Paul, which in England is
always read at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our present
illustrious Laureate. When I heard those dreadful words--for dreadful they
were to me--"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is
sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;" such was the recoil of my
feelings, that I could even have shrieked out a protesting--"Oh, no, no!"
if I had not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion. In after
years, reflecting upon this revolt of my feelings, which, being the voice
of nature in a child, must be as true as any mere _opinion_ of a child
might probably be false, I saw at once the unsoundness of a passage in
_The Excursion_. The book is not here, but the substance I remember
perfectly. Mr Wordsworth argues, that if it were not for the unsteady
faith which people fix upon the beatific condition after death of those
whom they deplore, nobody could be found so selfish, as even secretly to
wish for the restoration to earth of a beloved object. A mother, for
instance, could never dream of yearning for her child, and secretly
calling it back by her silent aspirations from the arms of God, if she
were but reconciled to the belief that really it _was_ in those arms. But
this I utterly deny. To take my own case, when I heard those dreadful
words of St Paul applied to my sister--viz. that she should be raised a
spiritual body--nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any other feeling
than that of agonizing love, caused the rebellion of my heart against
them. I knew already that she was to come again in beauty and power. I did
not now learn this for the first time. And that thought, doubtless, made
my sorrow sublimer; but also it made it deeper. For here lay the sting of
it, viz. in the fatal words--"We shall be _changed_." How was the unity of
my interest in her to be preserved, if she were to be altered, and no
longer to reflect in her sweet countenance the traces that were sculptured
on my heart? Let a magician ask any woman whether she will permit him to
improve her child, to raise it even from deformity to perfect beauty, if
that must be done at the cost of its identity, and there is no loving
mother but would reject his proposal with horror. Or, to take a case that
has actually happened, if a mother were robbed of her child at two years
old by gipsies, and the same child were restored to her at twenty, a fine
young man, but divided by a sleep as it were of death from all
remembrances that could restore the broken links of their once-tender
connexion, would she not feel her grief unhealed, and her heart defrauded?
Undoubtedly she would. All of us ask not of God for a better thing than
that we have lost; we ask for the same, even with its faults and its
frailties. It is true that the sorrowing person will also be changed
eventually, but that must be by death. And a prospect so remote as that,
and so alien from our present nature, cannot console us in an affliction
which is not remote but present--which is not spiritual but human.

Lastly came the magnificent service which the English church performs at
the side of the grave. There is exposed once again and for the last time,
the coffin. All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the
day of departure from earth--records how useless! and dropped into
darkness as if messages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes
the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart with volleying
discharges, peal after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin
is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacristan
stands ready with his shovel of earth and stones. The priest's voice is
heard once more--_earth to earth_, and the dread rattle ascends from the
lid of the coffin; _ashes to ashes_, and again the killing sound is
heard; _dust to dust_, and the farewell volley announces that the
grave--the coffin--the face are sealed up for ever and ever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Oh, grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it
is, that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds.
Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou
sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very
foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And ten years
afterwards, I used to reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing
the case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a perishing
fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast
company of critical or sneering faces, I might perhaps shrink basely from
the duty. It is true, that no such case had ever actually occurred, so
that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so
shocking. But to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime
which _might_ have been, was in my eyes the crime which _had_ been. Now,
however, all was changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's
memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a
case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own
nature, in a service of love--yes, slough it as completely, as ever
serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from
which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she
advanced boldly, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued
her beloved. Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering
faces would not have troubled me in any office of tenderness to my
sister's memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her,
if there was chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon me.
Laugh at me, as one or two people did! I valued not their laughter. And
when I was told insultingly to cease "my girlish tears", that word
"_girlish_" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo to the one
eternal thought of my heart--that a girl was the sweetest thing I, in my
short life, had known--that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with
beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from
which, in this world, I was to drink no more.

Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep feelings agree in
this, that they seek for solitude, and are nursed by solitude. Deep grief,
deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling;
and all three, love, grief, religion, are haunters of solitary places.
Love, grief, the passion of reverie, or the mystery of devotion--what were
these without solitude? All day long, when it was not impossible for me to
do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about
the house, or in the neighbouring fields. The awful stillness occasionally
of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of grey
or misty afternoons--these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the
woods or the desert air I gazed as if some comfort lay hid in _them_. I
wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. I tormented the
blue depths with obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes and
searching them for ever after one angelic face that might perhaps have
permission to reveal itself for a moment. The faculty of shaping images in
the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings
of the heart, aided by a slight defect in my eyes, grew upon me at this
time. And I recal at the present moment one instance of that sort, which
may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all,
could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday
mornings I was always taken to church: it was a church on the old and
natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, organ, all things
ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the
congregation knelt through the long Litany, as often as we came to that
passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated
on behalf of "all sick persons and young children," and that he would
"show his pity upon all prisoners and captives"--I wept in secret, and
raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the galleries, saw, on days
when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can
have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass;
through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light;
emblazonries of heavenly illumination mingling with the earthly
emblazonries of what is grandest in man. There were the apostles that had
trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to
man. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through
flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces.
There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by
meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of
sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment in the
bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass
was uncoloured, white fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the
sky; were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under
the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and shaped itself into a
vision of beds with white lawny curtains; and in the beds lay sick
children, dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and weeping
clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious reason, could not suddenly
release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to
rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers
of the air; slowly, also, his arms descended from the heavens, that he and
his young children whom in Judea, once and for ever, he had blessed,
though they _must_ pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation,
might yet meet the sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These
visions needed not that any sound should speak to me, or music mould my
feelings. The hint from the Litany, the fragment from the clouds, those
and the storied windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of the
tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes in
anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound,
fierce yet melodious, over the voices of the choir--when it rose high in
arches, as might seem, surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal
parts, and gathering by strong coercion the total storm into
unity--sometimes I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds which so
recently I had looked up to as mementos of prostrate sorrow, and even as
ministers of sorrow in its creations; yes, sometimes under the
transfigurations of music I felt[11] of grief itself as a fiery chariot
for mounting victoriously above the causes of grief.

I point so often to the feelings, the ideas, or the ceremonies of
religion, because there never yet was profound grief nor profound
philosophy which did not inosculate at many points with profound religion.
But I request the reader to understand, that of all things I was not, and
could not have been, a child trained to _talk_ of religion, least of all
to talk of it controversially or polemically. Dreadful is the picture,
which in books we sometimes find, of children discussing the doctrines of
Christianity, and even teaching their seniors the boundaries and
distinctions between doctrine and doctrine. And it has often struck me
with amazement, that the two things which God made most beautiful among
his works, viz. infancy and pure religion, should, by the folly of man,
(in yoking them together on erroneous principles,) neutralize each other's
beauty, or even form a combination positively hateful The religion
becomes nonsense, and the child becomes a hypocrite. The religion is
transfigured into cant, and the innocent child into a dissembling
liar.[12]

God, be assured, takes care for the religion of children wheresoever his
Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national church established,
to which a child sees his friends resorting; wheresoever he beholds all
whom he honours periodically prostrate before those illimitable heavens
which fill to overflowing his young adoring heart; wheresoever he sees the
sleep of death falling at intervals upon men and women whom he knows,
depth as confounding to the plummet of his mind as those heavens ascend
beyond his power to pursue--_there_ take you no thought for the religion
of a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be arrayed, or for
the ravens how they shall feed their young.

God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk in
darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal by the truths
and services of a national church, God holds "communion undisturbed" with
children. Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest
of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this
world _alone_--all leave it _alone_. Even a little child has a dread,
whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into
God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand,
nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his
trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child,
all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which
in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a
far deeper solitude through which already he has passed, and of another
solitude deeper still, through which he _has_ to pass: reflex of one
solitude--prefiguration of another.

Oh, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of his
being--in his birth, which _has_ been--in his life, which _is_--in his
death, which _shall_ be--mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and
art, and art to be;--thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving upon the
surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of
Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be
nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the
principles of all things, solitude for a child is the Agrippa's mirror of
the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude in life of millions upon
millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep
is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs, have none to pity them.
Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have
none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is
that which broods over childhood, bringing before it at intervals the
final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the
gates of death. Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convince
you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was nothing, but for
a Christian child it has become the power of God and the mystery of God.
Oh, mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to
be--thou, kindling under the torch of Christian revelations, art now
transfigured for ever, and hast passed from a blank negation into a secret
hieroglyphic from God, shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dimmest
of his truths!




MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT."[13]


An "Englishwoman in Egypt," thanks to the Mediterranean steamers and the
overland route to India, is no longer so unusual or astounding a spectacle
as it would appear to have been five-and-twenty years ago, when that
dilettante traveller, Monsieur le Comte de Forbin, made a precipitate
retreat from Thebes in consequence of the shock sustained by his nerves,
from encountering among the ruins "une femme-de-chambre Anglaise, en petit
_spencer_ couleur de rose," in the person of the Countess of Belmore's
lady's-maid; though the Quarterly Reviewers, who in those days had no
mercy for a French misstatement, even in the colour of a soubrette's
dress, triumphantly declared the offending garment to have been "a
pale-blue pelisse;" and proceeded to demolish the hapless Count
accordingly--(_Quarterly Review_, Vol. xxiii. p. 92.) Since the period of
this rencontre, the _ill-omened_ blue eyes,[14] as well as blue pelisses,
of our countrywomen, have been seen with sufficient frequency on the banks
of the Nile to render the one, it is to be hoped, no longer an object of
alarm to the natives, nor the latter to errant members of the Institute:
but a narrative of the impressions produced on a cultivated female mind by
a residence among the modern inhabitants of the land of the pyramids, was
still a desideratum. The "Notes" (published in 1840 in the _Asiatic
Journal_) of the late lamented Emma Roberts, than whom no one would have
been better qualified to fill up the void, though replete with interest
and information, are merely those of a traveller hastening through the
country on her way to India; and, except the fugitive sketches of Mrs
Dawson Damer, we cannot call to mind a single one among all the
lady-tourists, with whose tours and voyages the press has lately teemed,
who has touched on this hitherto unbroken ground. In such a dearth of
information, we may deem ourselves doubly fortunate in finding the task
undertaken by a lady possessing such peculiar advantages as must have been
enjoyed by the sister of the well-known Orientalist, to whose pen we are
indebted for perhaps the most comprehensive and accurate account ever
published of the habits and manners of any nation, and under whose
immediate superintendence, as we are informed, the work before us was
prepared.

The title of the "Englishwoman in _Cairo_," would perhaps have more
appropriately designated the character of Mrs Poole's volumes than that
which she has adopted; since her opportunities of personal observation,
after her arrival in the capital from Alexandria, were bounded by the
environs of the city, her excursions from which do not appear to have
extended further than the pyramids. A considerable portion of the first
volume is occupied by an abstract of Egyptian history from the time of the
Arab conquest, an account of the foundation of Cairo, an agricultural and
general calendar for each month of the year, and various matters connected
with the physical features, statistics, &c., of the country. These
dissertations form a sort of supplement to the work of her brother, from
whose MS. notes they are avowedly taken; being introduced (as Mrs Poole,
with much _naïveté_, confesses) "in the hope of obtaining a more
favourable reception for her letters, for the sake of the more solid
matter with which they are interspersed;" but though they certainly convey
much valuable additional information to the readers of the "Modern
Egyptians," they are scarcely "germane to the matter," as interpolations
in the work of a lady. The authoress can very well afford to rest her
claim to popularity on her own merits; and we prefer to follow her, in her
own peculiar sphere, into those mysterious recesses of an Oriental
establishment, whither no male footstep can ever penetrate. Mrs Poole is
probably the first English lady who has been admitted, not merely as a
passing visitor, but as a privileged friend, into the hareems of those of
the highest rank in the Egyptian capital. We find her threading the narrow
and crowded thoroughfares of Cairo, borne aloft on the "high ass,"[15]
(the usual mode of conveyance for morning calls;) and are introduced to
the wives and daughters of the viceroy, and even (in the hareem of Habeeb
Effendi) to ladies of the imperial house of Othman, in the ease and
_disinvoltura_ of their domestic circles, amid that atmosphere of _dolce
far niente_ and graceful etiquette, in which the hours of an Oriental
princess appear to be habitually passed. With the exception of Lady Mary
Wortley Montague's piquant sketches of the Turkish hareems and their
inmates, and the singular narrative of her personal experience of life in
an Indian zenana, by _Mrs Meer Hassan Ali_,[16] we know no female writer
who has enjoyed such opportunities for the delineation of the scenes of
domestic privacy of the East, and who has so well availed herself of them,
as the sister of _Mansoor Effendi_, in the pages before us.

The narrative opens with the landing of the authoress and her companions
at Alexandria in July 1842; but that city, with its double harbour, its
quays crowded with a motley assemblage of every nation and language in
Europe and the Levant, and the monuments of antiquity in its environs, has
been too often described to present too much opportunity for novelty of
remark. Passing over, therefore, the details given of these well-known
objects, we find the party, after a rapid passage along the Mahmoodiyeh
canal in an iron track-boat, drawn by four horses, and a vexatious delay
of two days at the junction of the canal and the river, (during which the
want of musquitto-curtains gave them an ample foretaste of the quantity
and quality of the insect plagues of Egypt,) fairly embarked on the broad
stream of the Nile. The voyage to Cairo was performed in a _kanjeh_, or
passage-boat of the kind usual on the river--a long, narrow craft, with
two masts, bearing large triangular sails; and Mrs Poole, in common with
most travellers arriving for the first time in the East, was greatly
impressed by the simple devotion with which the Reyyis (or Arab captain)
and his crew commended themselves, on setting sail, to the protection of
Providence, by reciting altogether, in a low voice, the short prayer of
the _Fathah_, or opening chapter of the Koran. "The sight of the Muslim
engaged in his devotions is, I think, most interesting; the attitudes are
particularly striking and impressive; and the solemn demeanour of the
worshipper, who, even in the busy market-place, appears wholly abstracted
from the world, is very remarkable. The practice of praying in a public
place is so general in the East, and attracts so little notice from
Muslims, that we must not regard it as the result of hypocrisy or
ostentation."

As the kanjeh lay to at night to avoid danger from sand-banks, the
travellers were three days in reaching Cairo; and found little to interest
them in the contemplation of the banks of the Nile, which at this season
are destitute of the brilliant verdure which clothes them for some time
after the inundation. On arriving at Boulak, the authoress for the first
time shrouded herself in the cumbrous folds of a Turkish riding-dress, "an
overwhelming covering of black silk, extending, in my idea, in every
direction;" and mounted on a donkey, she followed her janissary guide
through the dilapidated suburb, "and at length we fairly entered Cairo....
The first impression on entering this celebrated city is, that it has the
appearance of having been deserted for perhaps a century, and suddenly
re-peopled by persons, unable, from poverty or some other cause, to repair
it, and clear away its antiquated cobwebs.... I wrote to you that the
streets of Alexandria were narrow; they are _wide_ compared to those of
Cairo. The _meshreebeyehs_, or projecting windows, facing each other above
the ground floor, literally touch in _some_ instances, and in _many_, the
opposite windows are within reach.... After passing through several of the
streets, into which it appeared as though the dwellings had turned out
nearly all their inhabitants, we arrived at an agreeable house in the
midst of gardens, in which we are to take up our temporary residence."

The plan of these gardens, however, intersected by parallel walks, with
gutters on each side to convey water into the intermediate squares, was so
much at variance with Mrs Poole's English notions of horticulture, that
she was almost tempted to conclude, "that a garden in Egypt was not worth
cultivation--so much for national prejudice!" As it was indispensable for
the health of the children that their residence should be fixed in the
outskirts of the city, some delay was experienced in finding a permanent
abode; but at the end of a month they considered themselves fortunate in
engaging a house "infinitely beyond the usual run," in the most healthy
and cheerful quarter, for which the rent demanded by the landlady, (who
bore the picturesque name of Lalah-Zar, or _Bed of Tulips_,) was only L.12
per annum. The arrangement of the apartments was nearly as described by Mr
Lane in his account of the private houses in Cairo--(_Modern Egyptians_,
i. p. 11:) on the ground-floor a court, open to the sky, round which were
the rooms appropriated to the male inhabitants, while a gallery, running
round the first floor, conducted to the hareem, consisting of two
principal apartments, and "three small marble paved rooms, forming _en
suite_ an antechamber, a reclining chamber, and a bath. Above are four
rooms, the principal one opening to a delightful terrace, considerably
above most of the surrounding houses, and on this we enjoy our breakfast
and supper under the clearest sky in the world." But scarcely had the
establishment been removed into this new residence, when it became evident
that something was _not right_. The two maid-servants, Amineh and Zeyneb,
disappeared one after the other without giving warning--strange noises
were heard, which were at first ascribed to the wedding rejoicings of a
neighbour, but an explanation was at last elicited from the doorkeeper.
The house was haunted by an 'Efreet, (ghost or evil spirit,) in
consequence of the murder of a poor tradesman and two slave girls by the
previous owner, who had bequeathed it to Lalah-Zar, with reversion
(perhaps in hope of expiating his crimes) to a mosque. One of the victims
had perished in the bath, and like Praed's[17] Abbess of St Ursula, who

  "From evensong to matins,
  In gallery and scullery,
  And kitchen and refectory,
  Still tramp'd it in her pattens,"

the angry spirit stalked at night, apparently in heavy clogs like those
worn in the bath, knocking at the doors, and uttering unearthly sounds,
which allowed no sleep to the inmates. In vain had poor Lalah-Zar
endeavoured to appease this unwelcome intruder, which had driven tenant
after tenant from the house, by distributing bread to the poor at the
tomb of the late owner; the annoyance continued undiminished--pieces of
charcoal were left at the doors, equivalent to the imprecation, "May your
faces be blackened!" and no female servant would remain in the house, it
being universally believed that the touch of an 'Efreet renders a woman a
demoniac. The Ramadan (during which it is held that all 'Efreets are
chained up,) brought a temporary respite; and they flattered themselves
that they had succeeded in barring out the intruder; but with the
conclusion of the fast the disturbances were resumed with increased
violence. At length a new doorkeeper, worn out with want of sleep,
obtained permission to fire at the phantom, which he said he saw every
night in the gallery, alleging that 'Efreets were always destroyed by the
discharge of fire-arms. At midnight the house was startled by the report
of a pistol, which it afterwards appeared had been loaded, contrary to
orders, with a brace of bullets: the voice of the doorkeeper was heard
crying, "There he lies, the accursed;" and sounds and cries were heard,
which convinced them all that _somebody_ had been shot. "It passed me in
the gallery," said the doorkeeper, "when I thus addressed it, 'Shall we
quit this house, or will you do so?' 'You shall quit it,' he answered; and
he threw dust into my right eye: this proved it was a devil. It stopped in
that corner, and I observed it attentively. It was tall, and perfectly
white. Before it moved again I discharged the pistol, and the accursed was
struck down before me, and here are the remains." So saying, he picked up
a small burnt mass, resembling more the sole of a shoe than any thing
else, but perforated by fire in several places, and literally burnt to a
cinder. This he asserted (agreeably with a popular opinion) was always the
relic when a devil was destroyed.

The mystery remained unexplained, though we fear that most sober Franks
(in spite of the corroboration afforded to the doorkeeper's theory by the
high authority of the _Thousand and One Nights_[18]) will be tempted to
share Mrs Poole's scepticism as to the remains of a devil assuming the
shape of the calcined sole of an old shoe: but after an interval of peace,
they were eventually compelled, by a renewal of the attack, to abandon the
haunted house--and those who succeeded them fared even worse. Six families
were driven out in as many weeks--their windows broken, and their china
demolished by invisible hands, not only by night, but in broad day--"and
now," says Mrs Poole, "I have done with this subject. I have said much
upon it; but I must be held excusable, as ''tis passing strange.'"

The annoyance of this spectral warfare, which continued many months, had
not prevented Mrs Poole (in spite of the _desagrémens_ of flies, "black
thick-legged spiders," and handmaidens, "who scarcely ever wash themselves
except when they go to the bath, which is once in about ten days or a
fortnight") from becoming gradually at home in her Egyptian residence, and
tolerably familiarized with the language and manners of the country. She
had even adopted the native manner of eating; and had habituated herself
to wear the Turkish dress with such ease, as to witness unsuspected the
splendid procession of the _Mahmal_,[19] or emblem of royalty, which
precedes the march of the pilgrim caravan to Mekka--an occasion on which
the boys of Cairo enjoy a kind of saturnalia, and are privileged to
maltreat any Christian or Jew who may be detected near the route. Under
the guidance of an elderly Muslim friend of her brother, she had also
entered the principal mosques of Cairo, including that of the Hasaneyn
(the grandsons of the prophet, Hasan and Hoseyn) and the Zamé-el-Azhar,
the two most sacred edifices of Cairo. But the Azhar (splendid mosque) is
not only the _cathedral_ mosque of the Egyptian capital, but the
principal, and perhaps in the present day the only Moslem university. In
the _riwaks_, or apartments appropriated to students from different
countries, chiefly poor scholars supported by the funds of the mosque,
"after passing successively among natives of different divisions of Egypt,
we find ourselves in the company of people of Mekkeh and El-Medeeneh; then
in the midst of Syrians; in another minute among Muslims of Central
Africa; next among Magharbeh, (or natives of Northern Africa west of
Egypt;) then with European and Asiatic Turks; and quitting these, we are
introduced to Persians, and Muslims of India; we may almost fancy
ourselves transported through their respective countries. No sight in
Cairo interested me more than the interior of the Azhar; and the many and
great obstacles which present themselves when a Christian, and more
especially a Christian lady, desires to obtain admission into this
celebrated mosque, make me proud of having enjoyed the privilege of
walking leisurely through its extensive porticoes, and observing its
heterogeneous students engaged in listening to the lectures of their
professors."

A far different _locale_ from the cloisters of the Azhar, into which Mrs
Poole was, perhaps, induced to penetrate by the example of Mrs Dawson
Damer, was the _maristan_, or madhouse, perhaps the oldest public
establishment of the kind in the world, as it was attached by the Baharite
Sultan Kalaoon to the mosque which he founded in 1284. "Our ears were
assailed by the most discordant yells as soon as we entered the passage
leading to the cells," where the lunatics were chained like wild beasts,
the men in one court and the women in another. Each was confined in a
separate cell with a small grated window, and with nothing but the bare
floor to rest upon--while many, especially of the women, had not an
article of clothing--yet they appeared to be sufficiently supplied with
food, and mildly treated by their guardians; "and I think this gentleness
of manner in the keepers was not assumed for the time, for the lunatics
did not appear to fear them."--"I was ill prepared for the sight of such
misery, and was leaving the court, when I heard a voice exclaiming in a
melancholy tone of supplication, 'Stay, O my mistress; give me five paras
for tobacco before you go.' I turned, and the entreaty was repeated by a
very nice-looking old woman, who was very grateful when I assured her that
she should have what she required; and the woman who was the
superintendent gave her the trifle for me." This establishment was then,
however, on the point of being broken up, as the patients were to be
removed to another hospital, where they would be placed under the care of
the pasha's French surgeon-general, Clot Bey.

"The Turkish is the only European language," says Mr Urquhart in his
eloquent but fanciful work, the _Spirit of the East_, "which possesses, in
the word _harem_, a synonyme for home, but it implies a great deal
more.... To picture a Turkish woman, I would beg the reader, if possible,
to fancy to himself a women without vanity or affectation, perfectly
simple and natural, and preserving the manners and the type of her
childhood in the full blossom and fructification of her passions and her
charms." This is indeed the language of an enthusiast, in whose eyes all
is light which comes from the East; but the winning grace and gentle
courtesy of the Turco-Egyptian ladies of rank, as portrayed in Mrs Poole's
interesting sketches of the domestic life of the hareems which she
visited, go far to justify the character given of them by their eulogist.
For her introduction to these, the _exclusive_ circles of Cairo, as well
as for the more than friendly reception which she there met with, Mrs
Poole professes herself indebted "to the kindness of Mrs Sieder, the lady
of our excellent resident missionary, who has gained the confidence of the
most distinguished hareems," aided in no small degree, we have reason to
believe, by the general estimation in which her brother was held among his
Muslim acquaintance. In this novel species of social intercourse, Mrs
Poole showed much tact, wearing the Turkish dress, which is admirably
adapted to the climate, in her visits to ladies of the middle class, as
well as at home; "but in visiting those who are considered the noble of
the land, I resume, under my Eastern riding-costume, my English dress. In
the Turkish dress, the manner of my salutation must have been more
submissive than I should have liked; while, as an Englishwoman, I am
entertained by the most distinguished, not only as an equal, but,
generally, as a superior." Thus, at the hareem of Habeeb Effendi, the
ex-governor of Cairo, she was received at the door of the first apartment,
on dismounting from the "high ass" on which all visits of ceremony must be
paid, by the eldest daughter of the house, who herself disencumbered her
of her riding-dress--an office left to slaves in families of rank, except
in the case of a visitor of high distinction--and was then placed by her
on the divan at the right hand of her mother, the first cousin of the late
Sultan Mahmood. The second daughter appeared soon after, and Mrs Poole
proceeds to describe her dress. "She wore on her head a dark handkerchief
twisted round a _tarboosh_, (red cap,) with a very splendid sprig of
diamonds attached to the right side, and extending partly over her
forehead. It was composed of very large brilliants, disposed in the form
of three lutes in the centre, from each of which a branch extended,
forming an oval shape at least five inches in length. High on the left
side of her head, she wore a knot or slide of diamonds, through which was
drawn a bunch of ringlets, which, from their position, appeared to be
artificial; her tarboosh had the usual blue silk tassel, but divided and
hanging on either side. Her long vest and trousers were of a dark-flowered
India fabric; she wore round her waist a large and rich Cashmere shawl;
and her neck was decorated with many strings of very large pearls,
confined at intervals with gold beads. She was in one respect strangely
disfigured--her eyebrows being painted with _kohl_, and united by the
black pigment in a very broad and unbecoming manner. Many women of all
classes here assume this disguise. Some apply the _kohl_ to the eyebrows
as well as the eyes, with great delicacy; but this lady had her eyebrows
so remarkable, that her other features were deprived of their natural
expression and effect."

The same graceful kindness which had marked the reception, was continued
throughout the interview. After the usual refreshments of sweetmeats and
coffee had been handed round by the slaves, the eldest daughter, throwing
her arm round the neck of their guest, (the Oriental equivalent for
walking arm-in-arm,) conducted her through the various apartments of the
house; and was preparing, on her departure, to re-equip her with her
riding-dress, when the younger sister remarked, "You took them off: it is
for me to put them on." The friendship thus commenced with the amiable
family of Habeeb Effendi continued uninterrupted during Mrs Poole's stay
in Egypt; and the honours with which she was received were almost
embarrassing--the chief lady, on her second visit, even resigning her own
seat, and placing herself below her. The ladies of this hareem were
particularly well informed. They had heard of the publication of Mrs
Dawson Damer's "Tour," all were very curious to know what had been said of
them, expressing much gratification on hearing the terms in which she had
described them. Of the eldest daughter,[20] in particular, Mrs Poole
speaks in language of the warmest personal regard:--"I have not met with
her equal in Eastern female society, in gentleness, sweetness, and good
sense; and, withal, she has decidedly a cultivated mind." She made a copy
in colours of the portrait of the present Sultan in Mrs Damer's book,
"which will doubtless excite great interest in every visiter; and, unless
protected by a glass, it will perhaps, in the course of a few weeks, be
kissed entirely away, like a miniature portrait of a Turkish grandee of
which I was lately told." The political relations of the Porte with
England and Russia frequently became the subject of conversation; and on
one occasion, when the concession lately exacted from the Porte, of
allowing converts to Islam to return unmolested to their original faith--a
concession of all others most galling to the Moslem pride--was brought on
the tapis, this lady remarked, "with an earnestness of manner which
interested me and my friend extremely--'It is but the fulfilment of
prophecy! When I was a little child, I was taught that in this year great
things would commence, which would require three years for their
completion!' Surely she drew a beautiful conclusion," adds Mrs Poole, "and
under circumstances of painful feelings to one strictly attached to the
laws of her religion." But the allusion appears to have been a belief long
current in the East, that a mysterious combination was involved in the
number 1260, (the year of the Hejra which has just closed,) portending
"the beginning of the end" of Islam, if not of the world; and of which
this infringement of Moslem supremacy appeared to be the first
manifestation.[21]

The advantages of the English costume were strongly evinced on Mrs Poole's
presentation, by her friend Mrs Siedler, to the haughty Nezleh Hanum, the
widowed daughter of Mohammed Ali, in her apartments at the
Kasr-ed-Dubárah, a palace in the midst of Ibrahim Pasha's plantations on
the banks of the Nile, which is the usual residence of the ladies of the
Pasha's family. Mrs Dawson Damer has drawn a sufficiently unamiable
picture of this princess, whose cruelty to her attendants she represents
as emulating that displayed in his public character by her late husband,
the Defterdar Mohammed Bey.[22] But nothing but the _patte de velours_ was
seen by the English stranger, who, though Nezleh Hanum was severely
indisposed at the time of her visit, was, by her express command, shown
into her bedroom, and received "with the sweetest smile imaginable;" while
the youngest son of the Pasha, Mohammed Ali Bey, a boy nine years old, sat
on a cushion at his sister's feet, conversing with the visitor in French;
his mother, and other ladies, sitting on Mrs Poole's left hand. The day
happened to be the fourth of the festival of the Great Beiram, when it was
customary for those ladies who had the privilege of the _entrée_, to pay
their respects to the princess. But to not one of those who presented
themselves at this levee, did Nezleh Hanum deign to address a word in
acknowledgment of their salutation, as they silently advanced, with
downcast eyes, to kiss her hand or the hem of her robe, and then as
silently withdrew, without once raising their eyes to her face. "This
etiquette, I an informed, is not only observed during her illness, but at
all times: and here I felt peculiarly the advantage of being an
Englishwoman; for she kept up with me a lively conversation, and really
treated me as an equal." On taking leave, a second cup of sherbet was
presented--"This is always intended as a distinguishing mark of honour.
Several ladies accompanied us to the door; and the treasurer followed me
with an embroidered handkerchief from her highness. Do not think me
egotistical, because I describe thus minutely my reception; I consider it
important in a description of manners, especially as the receiving and
paying visits is the everyday business of an Eastern lady."

This was not, however, the first occasion on which Mrs Poole had visited
the Kasr-ed-Dubárah, as she had some months previously been present, in
company with her invaluable chaperon, Mrs Sieder, at an entertainment
there given by the Pasha's hareem; when she had formed the acquaintance of
the mother[23] of Mohammed Ali Bey, and of another wife of the Pasha,
"both young; the one a dignified and handsome person, and the other
especially gentle and very lovely." At the time, she supposed that these
were the _only_ wives of his highness; but, on a subsequent visit to the
hareem in the citadel, she was introduced to a third, the mother of a son
named Haleem Bey--and she shrewdly conjectured that the full number of
four was not incomplete. These ladies, with the daughter of Mohammed Ali,
the widow of Toosoon, (a deceased son of the Pasha, whose son, Abbas, is
the reputed successor to the pashalik,) and Abbas Pasha's fostermother,
were the only persons at table, with the exception of the French
guests--the widow of Toosoon Pasha, in virtue of her seniority, leading
the way to the _salle-à-manger_, and taking the place of honour at "a very
large round silver tray, covered with small silver dishes filled with
various creams, jellies, &c., and most tastefully garnished with exquisite
flowers; in the centre was a forequarter of lamb, on piláv. The lamb was
succeeded by stew; the stew by vegetables; the vegetables by savoury
cream, &c.; sweet dishes, most delicately prepared, succeeded these in
rapid succession; and each was removed, and its place filled, when perhaps
only tasted. Ladies attended close to our divan with fly-whisks; behind
them about thirty formed a semicircle of gaily dressed, and in many cases
beautiful women and girls; those near the door held large silver trays, on
which the black slaves, who stood without, placed the dishes." During the
repast, Mrs Poole frequently received morsels from the hand of Toosoon
Pasha's widow--one of the highest compliments according to Eastern
manners--and, before taking leave, she received an invitation to a grand
marriage festival, which was shortly to take place in the hareem. The
nuptials were not, however, celebrated during her stay in Egypt, the main
difficulty being, as she was informed, _the choice of a bridegroom_!

Though the costume of the Pasha's ladies did not differ materially from
that already described in the hareem of Habeeb Effendi, yet, as the
Kasr-ed-Dubárah may be considered as the centre of Cairo fashion, it would
be unpardonable to omit some notice of Mrs Poole's observations (somewhat
abridged) on this all-important subject. "The Turkish ladies wear the
_yelek_ (long vest) considerably longer than their height, forming a
graceful train, which, in walking over a mat or carpet, they hold in front
over the arm. The chemise is of silk gauze, fine muslin, or a very
beautiful thin crape, with glossy stripes, which is made of raw silk in
the hareems, and is cream colour: the sleeves are not confined at the
wrist. The _shintiyan_ (trousers) are extremely full, and generally of a
different material from the _yelek_; the former being of rich brocade,
large-patterned muslin or chintz, or sometimes of plain satin or
gros-de-Naples. The _yelek_, on the contrary, is made of a material with a
delicate pattern, generally a small stripe, whether of satin, India silk,
or muslin. Ladies of distinction always wear Cashmere shawls round the
waist, generally red; and those in Kasr-ed-Dubárah had a narrow edge of
gold, with gold cords and tassels at the corners." The tarboosh and
diamond ornaments are worn as before described; "but the front hair is cut
short, and combed towards the eyebrows, which is extremely unbecoming even
to a beautiful face, except when it curls naturally. The long hair is
disposed in numerous small plaits, and looped up on each side over the
handkerchief. The hair of the younger ladies and white slaves, in the
Turkish hareems, is often worn hanging loosely on the shoulders; but no
coiffure is so pretty as that worn by the Arab ladies, whose long hair,
hanging down the back, is arranged in many small plaits, often lengthened
by silk braid, and generally adorned with hundreds of small gold
ornaments, resembling oval spangles, which harmonize better with the
Eastern costume than any other fashion."

The hareems of the grandees are generally surrounded by lofty walls, as
high or higher than the neighbouring houses; a vigilant _bowwab_ or
doorkeeper is stationed at the outer portal; and within this the eunuchs
guard the curtains, heavy with golden embroidery, which cover the doorway
leading to the interior; and woe to the intruder who should attempt to
penetrate beyond the entrance! A closed door is never permitted in the
hareem; but etiquette forbids the husband to enter when slippers laid
before the doorway denote that his wife is receiving visitors--a method
of exclusion which is said to be sometimes kept in operation for many days
together. The scale of precedence among the inmates is regulated on a very
different system from that of European society. Mr Urquhart has correctly
remarked that "the precept, 'Thou shalt leave thy father and mother, and
cleave unto thy wife,' has not been transcribed from the Gospel to the
Koran: the wife in the East is not the mistress of the household; she is
the daughter of her husband's mother," to whom the appellation of _hanum_,
or chief lady belongs of right to the end of her life: and even if the
mother be not living, the sisters of the husband take precedence of the
wife, who is regarded by them as a _younger_ sister. The first wife,
however, where there is more than one, can only lose her pre-eminence of
rank by the misfortune of being childless, in which case she gives place
to one who has become a mother; but, among the higher classes, each wife
has her separate apartments and attendants, and in some cases even
inhabits separate mansion--all, however, within the bounding walls of the
hareem.

"In the great hareems, the hanum generally has four principal attendants,
two of whom are elderly, and act simply as companions; the third is the
treasurer, and the fourth is the sub-treasurer. The next in rank are those
who hand pipes and coffee, sherbet and sweetmeats; and each of these has
her own set of subordinates. Lastly rank the cooks and house slaves, who
are mostly negresses." The position of these _white slaves_, among whom
Mrs. Poole "found the most lovely girls in the hareem, many of them fully
justifying my preconceived ideas of the celebrated Georgian and Circassian
women," may, perhaps, be best understood by a reference to the familiar
pages of the Thousand and One Nights; the hareem scenes in which are
probably drawn from those of Syria and Egypt at the period when those
tales were written. "Though torn from their parents at an early age, they
find and acknowledge fathers and mothers in those to whom they are sold;
and, excepting in two cases, cheerfulness has appeared to reign among
them"--and the authoress was a witness of the deep sympathy felt by the
slaves of the wife of a Turkish grandee, who was confined in the state
prison by order of the Pasha. The principal employment of these fair
prisoners, independent of the preparation of sherbets and other household
duties, consists in embroidery, "which is extremely beautiful, as superior
as it is unlike to any fancy-work practised in England:--taste of a very
remarkable kind is displayed in its execution, similar in many respects to
that exhibited in the most elaborate decorations of Arabian architecture."
Few, even of the ladies of rank, can read or write their own language--but
there are some exceptions--the accomplished family of Habeeb Effendi has
already been noticed; and Mrs Poole was acquainted with another instance,
in which the daughters had learned, under the tuition of a brother who had
been educated in Europe, to read and understand not only the literature of
their own country, but the poets of Italy. The surveillance exercised over
the young white slaves "can only be compared to that which is established
in the convent. A deviation from the strictest rules of modesty is
followed by severe punishment, and often by the death of the delinquent
... but if they conduct themselves well, they are frequently married by
their masters to persons of high respectability; and the ceremony of the
marriage[24] of a slave in the high hareems is conducted with extreme
magnificence. Those, however, who from their personal charms have become
the favourites of their master, and particularly those who have borne him
a child, are seldom or never thus dismissed, and cannot legally be sold:
having in this respect the advantage of the wife, who is always liable to
be divorced without cause assigned, and at a moment's notice."

In the hareems of the middle and lower classes, the same system of strict
seclusion cannot, of course, be maintained as in the case of the "hidden
jewels" (as they are called) of the grandees:--the women frequent the
public baths, and are allowed to visit their neighbours without restraint;
but shopping is generally prohibited, for reasons which may be gathered
from the Thousand and One Nights:--and goods for sale are brought to the
hareems by female brokers. The system of blindfold marriages is universal;
and except among the lowest class, it is scarcely possible that the
bridegroom and bride should get a glimpse of each other before their
espousals--and the betrothals are generally made at a ridiculously early
age. A lady gravely asked Mrs Poole whether one of her boys, thirteen
years of age, was married--and she witnessed a marriage procession in
which the almost infant bride, taking the whole affair as a good joke,
thought proper to walk backwards before the canopy fanning her friends,
instead of submitting to be fanned. The natural consequence of these early
marriages is, that "among the lower orders some husbands are sad tyrants;
they marry such little young creatures, that they are more like children
than wives, and their inexperience unjustly provokes their husbands." An
original sort of revenge was threatened in her hearing by a man irritated
by the abusive language of a little girl, whose tongue was the plague of
the neighbourhood--"When I have a little more money, I will marry you, and
punish you every day." Mrs Poole indeed expresses her conviction,
reluctantly forced upon her, that in the middle and lower classes,[25]
both wives and female slaves are often treated with the utmost brutality;
and she mentions two instances in her own neighbourhood, in which the
death of women of the latter class was caused by the cruelty of their
masters. In both these cases, however, the men were Copts--a people of
whom (in spite of the efforts of the English Missionary Society to make
them something more than nominal Christians) she was assured, by one who
knew them well, "that their moral state is far worse than that of the
Muslims, and that in the _conduct_ of the latter there is much more
Christianity than is exhibited in that of the former."[26] An anecdote,
casually introduced, enables us to judge of the education which children
receive on this point. On a visit to the wife of the keeper of the tombs
of Mohammed Ali's family, a boy just able to walk was brought in, when
"the chief lady called for a stick, that puss, who was quietly crossing
the carpet, might be beaten for his amusement. I interceded for the cat,
when she replied mysteriously, 'I like her very much--I will not hurt
her.' Accordingly she raised her arm with considerable effort, and let it
fall gently. She next desired one of her slaves to kneel, which the girl
did most gracefully, and bent her head with an air of mock submission to
receive the _kurbáj_, and the same farce was repeated. Though neither
slave nor cat was a sufferer, the effect must have been equally bad on the
mind of the child. Alas! for the slaves and cats when he is big enough to
make them feel!"

The children, however, occasionally fare no better than the slaves; and Mr
Lane was not seldom obliged, by the screams of the sufferers, to interfere
to stop the cruelty practised in his neighbourhood, when "the answer
usually returned was of the most civil kind, assuring us, with many
salutations, that _for our sakes_ the offender shall be forgiven." On one
occasion an old woman, to punish her little grandson for a trifling theft,
had employed the services of a professional _beater_, who had tied the
child's legs and arms, and was beating him with a ponderous stick, while
his grandmother cried, "again!" and only desisted on a peremptory
remonstrance from Mr Lane; yet the same woman disturbed the neighbourhood
with her lamentations every alternate Monday for the loss of her son, the
little boy's father! It is perhaps hardly fair to cite instances of
brutality like this, to which our own police-offices afford abundance of
parallels, as examples of the national manners of Egypt; and Mrs Poole
does full justice to the spirit of mutual aid which prevails among the
poor in all Moslem countries, and teaches them "to bear each other's
burdens." The women, especially those of the higher class, are admitted to
be the "most affectionate of mothers." They are so possessed, however, by
terror of the "evil eye," which they firmly believe may be cast on their
children by an admiring word or glance, that the smallest allusion to them
is hazardous. Mrs Poole was much amused by the agitation of an Arab lady,
in conversation with whom she had congratulated herself that the strength
of her eldest boy's constitution had preserved him from the ill effects of
the heat. "In an instant she vociferated, 'Bless the Prophet! bless the
Prophet!' and coloured deeply." And it was with difficulty that Mrs Poole
could calm her, or convince her that the English apprehended no danger
from the expression of their satisfaction in the welfare of those they
love.

It is not easy for even the most experienced to avoid _contretemps_ of
this kind in the East, where even the ordinary observances of life seem to
have been arranged on a system diametrically opposite to our own; and some
amusing anecdotes are given of the _gaucheries_ unconsciously committed by
raw tourists from Europe. At the house of an Egyptian grandee, an European
gentleman, on receiving the sherbet after pipes and coffee, which was
handed to him first as a stranger, "looked at it for a moment, and then at
the gaily-embroidered napkin hung over the arm of the slave who presented
it; and following the impulse given, I conclude, by his preconceptions of
Eastern habits of cleanliness, dipped his fingers in the sweet beverage,
and wiped them on the napkin!" A less pardonable breach of etiquette, as
it proceeded not from ignorance but want of good-breeding, was committed
by two Franks, who, arranged in a motley mixture of European and Oriental
costume, made their way into the Pasha's palace at Shubra, and, after
rambling from room to room without meeting any one, at length entered the
bedroom of the Pasha, who was nearly undressed! "Though taken by surprise,
his Turkish coolness did not forsake him; calling for his dragoman, he
said, 'Ask those gentlemen where they bought their tarbooshes?' 'At
Constantinople.' 'And _there_,' rejoined the Pasha, 'I suppose they
learned their manners. Tell them so.' Judging from this retort that their
presence was not agreeable, the Franks saluted the viceroy, and withdrew."

As we profess to deal with Mrs Poole solely in her own peculiar province,
as a delineator of female manners and female society in Egypt, we shall
pass with brief notice her visit to the Pyramids, the account of which
contains much valuable information, supplied (as she avows,) from the
notes of her brother. The excursion, though at a short distance from
Cairo, is not altogether unattended with danger, especially to ladies,
from the attacks of the Bedawees; as appears from the remarks of some
young men, the sons of a Bedawee sheykh at some distance, who had ridden
over, as they admitted, in the hope of seeing the faces of the ladies of
the party, and were much disappointed at finding them veiled. They had
been much struck by the charms of a beautiful American whom they had seen
a few weeks before; and one of then exclaimed, in speaking of her--"But
the sword! the sword! if we dared to use it, we would kill that man,"
alluding to the lady's companion, whether her husband or brother, "and
take her for ourselves."--"'Tis well for pretty women travelling in the
East, that these lawless Arabs are kept under a degree of subjection by
the present government," says Mrs Poole; and the anecdote affords an
indication that, when the reins of administration are released by the
death of the present Pasha, the overland route to India may not be quite
so secure as it is at present.

But there is another, a modern wonder of Cairo, which, of late years, has
almost equally divided with the Pyramids the attention of Frank
travellers. We allude to the sheykh Abdel-Kadir el-Maughrabi, in whose
enchanted mirror of ink, poured into the palm of an unsophisticated Arab
boy, men from all parts of the earth were compelled to appear before the
tent of the Sultan, with its seven mystic flags, and submit to a
description of their persons and dress, which would have satisfied the
vigilance of the Russian police. The oracular sagacity of the _Quarterly
Review_ was unable to solve the mystery; and even Mr Lane, in his _Modern
Egyptians_, hesitates whether to doubt or to believe; but the bubble (as
we learn from Mrs Poole) has at last burst; and the two familiar spirits,
Turshoon and Turyooshoon, stand revealed in the late Osman Effendi,
interpreter to the British consulate. Since the death of this respectable
personage, who usually acted as master of the ceremonies at his
performances, the good fortune of the sheykh has totally deserted him, as
he himself inadvertently admitted to Mr Lane, when he not long since
accompanied two English travellers to witness the exhibition, which proved
an entire failure; and since that time his attempts have been even more
signally unsuccessful. Whatever may have been the means employed, there is
no longer any doubt that Osman Effendi, who sat quiet and demure in a
corner, without word or sign, was the prime agent in the deception; and
with him the reputation of the last representative of Pharaoh's magicians
has vanished for ever, like the visions in his own magic mirror.

       *       *       *       *       *

The series of Mrs Poole's letters closes abruptly in April 1844, with the
relation of one of her visits to the friendly harem of Habeeb Effendi; and
no intimation is given either of the cause of the second cessation, or
whether a second series may be hereafter expected. We hope that this may
be the case; for, independent of the interest attaching to the subject,
and the difficulty of finding another equally qualified by opportunity and
powers of observation to do it justice, the time must inevitably soon be
past when it will be possible to depict the habitudes and manners of the
Arab population in their integrity. Cairo is at present, with the single
exception perhaps of Damascus, the most purely Arab city in the East; but
the ruthless reforms of the Pasha, and the constant passage of the Franks
on this new high-road to India, will erelong divest it of its
distinguishing characteristics, and give it as hybrid an aspect as that of
the Frank intruders into the Pasha's chamber. An English hotel has already
started up; and Mrs Poole informs us, that "by a proclamation of the
Pasha, the houses are to be whitewashed within and without; those who
inhabit ruined houses are to repair or sell them; and uninhabited
dwellings are to be pulled down, for the purpose of forming squares and
gardens; _meshreebeyehs_ (projecting first-floor windows) are forbidden;
and _mastabahs_ (the seats in front of shops) are to be removed. Cairo,
therefore, will no longer be an Arab city, and will no longer possess
those peculiarities which render it so picturesque and attractive. The
deep shade in the narrow streets, increased by the projecting windows; the
picturesque tradesmen, sitting with one friend or more before his shop,
enjoying the space afforded by his mastabah--these will be no more; and
while I cannot but acknowledge the great necessity for repairing the city,
and removing the ruins which threaten the destruction of passengers, I
should have liked these features retained which are essentially
characteristic--which help, as it were, to group the people, and which
form such admirable accessories to pictures."




PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE--STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM, &c.


The growing demand for information among the agricultural classes, makes
the appearance of new books of a really trustworthy kind of greater
national value at the present time than at any former period. Besides, as
our knowledge is rapidly advancing, good books upon practical agriculture
are becoming more difficult to write. They require from their authors a
larger acquaintance with the newer branches of elementary science than
many practical men can be expected as yet to possess. These considerations
induce us to advert for the second time to the work now before us. We drew
the attention of our readers to the first volume when it made its
appearance; two other volumes completing the work having since been
published, we feel ourselves under a kind of obligation to follow the
author cursorily through the remainder of his book.

_The Book of the Farm_ might be called _The Practical Farmer's Library_,
since it contains full information upon almost every practical subject
upon which the intelligent young farmer is likely to require assistance or
advice. The scientific branch alone is not systematically discussed,
though here and there useful scientific points are treated of and
explained. But this was not to be expected in a really practical work; and
the author, upon this branch, very properly refers his readers to the
published works of Professor Johnston.[27]

The feature that struck us most in the perusal of the first volume, was
the remarkably wide range of minutely practical information which the
author possesses and embodies in his book. He describes every practical
operation as if he had not only assisted at it on some former occasion,
but as if he were actually performing it while he is describing it with
his pen. This gives a truthfulness and self-evident accuracy to his
descriptions, which are rarely to be met with in agricultural works, and
which could not be expected from one who was not really familiar with the
points of which he treats. He seems even to enjoy every labour he
describes, to enter into the spirit of every operation to be
performed--into the heart and fun of the thing as it were. He becomes an
actual participator in the fact--a _particeps criminis_.

No matter whether it is the currying or the skinning of his horse--the
shoeing or the riding--taking him to the field or to the tanner, Mr
Stephens is equally ready and willing for all. He tells you with the same
glee, how to shelter your sheep on the hill side, and how to cut their
throats after the most approved fashion; how to lay on fat on your
short-horns--what are the marks of their being ripe for the butcher--and
how you can kill them in the _most Christian_ way. He pets his sheep-dog
and praises him, tells you how kindly you should treat him, what constant
encouragement you should give to so faithful a servant, at what age he
should be hanged, and how you can make most of his skin. He instructs you
to tend your young lambs, he helps you to select a pet from the flock; he
goes with you afterwards to the barn, helps you to kill and skin it,
teaches you to score and cross it in the most approved style, cuts it up
for you like an anatomist, selects the best joint for your own cook; sits
down with you afterwards at your own table and carves it, and after he has
helped you all to your general satisfaction, he is still connoisseur
enough to keep the best bit of all for his own plate.

Besides this living spirit, which pervades all the descriptions of methods
and operations, another excellence we have remarked in these volumes is
the _kind_ of opinions given upon practical points, in reference to which
a difference of sentiment prevails among practical men. They are in
general _safe_ opinions--leaning always to the prudent side in cases of
doubtful practice. If they appear, therefore, in some cases, not to come
up to the notions of those lovers of change, who would improve agriculture
as engineers make railroads--without regard to their cost or to the
interest of the capital expended--they will appear to all sound men to be
so much the better fitted to guide the rising farmers of the present day.
These young men _must_ possess more knowledge than their fathers, if they
are to continue upon the land; but they will also soon disappear from the
land, notwithstanding their knowledge, if a balance of profit at the end
of the year be not considered an indispensable element in their system of
husbandry.

The book, as we formerly stated, is divided into four parts, embracing in
succession the proper operations to be performed in the four seasons,
commencing with those of the winter.

To the greater part of the winter operations, as described and explained
by Mr Stephens, we adverted in our former notice: there remains one topic,
however, to which, from its great national importance, we must still turn
for a little.

Among the various improvements which, in the dead season of the year, the
farmer may undertake with profit to himself and advantage to his farm, is
that of draining. Of this kind of improvement almost every farm in the
country is more or less susceptible. But how should it be done, at what
depth, and with what material? As to the depth, the young farmer who
wishes to do his work well, will neither imitate nor rely too much on the
practice of the district he comes from, or in which his own farm may
happen to be situated. If so, he will, in Ayrshire--by the advice of the
wise-acres in that county--put in his drains only twenty inches, or two
feet, in depth; in Berwickshire he will sink them to three feet; and in
Sussex he may be carried along with the rising tide to put none in
shallower than four feet. He will not trust, we say, wholly to example. He
will say to himself rather, what is the object I have in view, and what
implements have I to effect it?

In draining he has one leading, one master object, we may call it, to
attend to. He has to deepen his soil, that the roots of his crops may
descend further--may draw their food from greater depths, and from a
larger body of earth. The more completely he can effect this, the better
will his work be done.

How deep will his crops send down their roots? In favourable circumstances
his wheat and clover, and even his turnips, will descend to a depth of
three feet. His operations, then, would be in some degree perfect, if he
could so open, and drain, and doctor his land as to enable and induce the
roots of his crops to go down so far as this.

But they will never, or rarely at least, descend lower than the level of
the water in the bottom of his drains. He cannot, therefore, hope to make
his soil available for the growth of his crops to a greater depth than
that to which his drains descend. Three feet then, he will say, appears to
be a reasonable depth for a _perfect_ drain.

Again, drained land must be opened beneath by the subsoil plough, or by
the fork, if the rains, and roots, and air, are to descend, and the full
benefits are to be derived from the drains. With our existing
implements--especially with the fork--the soil may be stirred to a depth
of twenty-six inches. The top of the drain, therefore, should be at least
this depth under the surface; and this, again, brings the whole depth of a
perfect drain to within a few inches of three feet as before.

Then as to the material, it seems advisable to use either stones or tiles,
according as the one or the other is the cheaper, provided always that the
stones are properly broken, and carefully put in. The tide seems now to be
running in favour of smaller tiles than have hitherto been generally used
in Scotland, and even of pipe-tiles of a very small diameter. Our friend
Mr Smith of Deanston has taken out a patent for a pipe-tile, with
projecting fingers at the ends, which dovetail into each other, so as to
unite the tiles together, and at the same time to keep them in their
places. Should these pipes be found generally efficient, the cost of
draining will be considerably diminished, while the small space they
occupy will afford greater facilities for deepening the soil.

But the economical considerations connected with draining, are as
important as the practical methods to be adopted, both to the cultivator
of the soil and to the country at large. We shall advert only to one of
these.

In what light ought the expenditure of money in draining to be regarded by
the practical man?

He ought to consider it only as a mercantile speculation, by which he may
or may not make a profit, according to the degree of prudence with which
it is undertaken. He has the usufruct of his farm for a certain number of
years, with liberty to crop it in a certain way. By this he hopes to make
a certain sum of money. But it is capable of improvement by draining, and
he has liberty to drain if he likes. "Well," he says to himself, "I make a
certain sum by farming my land as it is; I have here fifty pounds of ready
money, could I make more profit if I were to lay this money out in
draining it?--would it be a good speculation?" He calculates the cost of
draining and the probable return of profit, and the result is apparently
that he _can_ make more profit by this use of his money than by any other
way in which he could employ it. This being the result, the prudent man
embarks in this safe speculation. He does not bury his money in his land;
he does not give it away to the land to the loss of his family; he only
lends it for a season, and for the benefit of his family. He has made his
calculations badly, and has only his own arithmetic to blame, if he does
not get all his capital back from the land, with a handsome profit in
addition, some years before his lease has expired.

Many tenants think the interest of the landlord should enter into their
calculations, and some cherish or excite in their own minds ill feelings
towards their landlords at the idea of leaving their drains in the land
when they quit, and the land itself in better condition than when they
entered upon their farms. But this feeling arises altogether from a want
of familiarity on their part with the ordinary feelings of mercantile men
and the transactions of mercantile business. The farmer's sole aim is to
promote his own interest. If that interest is to be promoted by draining,
let him do it immediately, and with all his heart; his own profit will not
be a whit the less that the landlord comes in for a little profit too when
the lease has expired. The builder who takes thirty or forty years' lease
of a bit of land in the neighbourhood of London, is not deterred from
planting houses upon it, by the reflection that at the end of his lease
the houses will become the property of his landlord. Long before that time
has expired, he hopes to have his principal and his profit both safe in
his pocket. If he does not cherish these hopes, he is either a fool or a
rogue.

On one other point connected with draining, we are anxious to quote Mr
Stephens' own words. In reply to the question, is your land drained? we
have so often received the answer--"Oh, sir, my land is dry, it does not
require draining"--that we request the serious attention of such of our
readers as are interested in the improvement of land, to the following
passage:--

     "Land, however, though it does not contain such a superabundance of
     water as to obstruct arable culture, may nevertheless, by its
     inherent wetness, prevent or retard the luxuriant growth of useful
     plants, as much as decidedly wet land. The truth is, that deficiency
     of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful
     husbandry, when it really arises from the baleful influence of
     _concealed_ stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown, not so
     much in the management of the arable culture of the land, as in
     neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop,
     namely, the concealed stagnant water. Indeed, my opinion is--and its
     conviction has been forced upon me by dint of long and extensive
     observation of the state of the agricultural soil over a large
     portion of the country--that this is the _true cause of most of the
     bad farming to be seen_, and that _not one farm_ is to be found
     throughout the kingdom that would _not be much the better for
     draining_. Entertaining this opinion, you will not be surprised at my
     urging upon you to practise draining, or at my lingering at some
     length on the subject, that I may exhibit to you the various modes of
     doing it, according to the peculiar circumstances in which your farm
     may be placed."--(Vol. i. p. 483.)

With the substance of these remarks we entirely agree. We would only not
put the point so broadly as to imply, that the want of draining was the
only cause of the bad farming we see. We have, however, been over large
tracts of Scotland, and we are quite sure that whole counties might be
made to yield the double of their present produce by an efficient
drainage, and proper subsequent management.

We pass over the very succinct and methodical description of the processes
of threshing, winnowing, &c., and can note only one point out of the great
mass of very interesting matter Mr Stephens has brought together, in
regard to the composition, qualities, and uses of the different kinds of
grain. The point to which we shall advert is the composition of oatmeal.
Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We
Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the
northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive, are strong,
healthy, and vigorous. The bread, too, is sweet to the taste. It is only
disagreeable associations, therefore--connected in our minds with the
darkness of the colour--that make us consider it disagreeable or
unwholesome. In like manner, our Irish brethren are strong, vigorous, and
merry, on their potato diet. Why should we condemn it as the lowest kind
of diet, or pity those who are content to live almost wholly upon it? It
is true that, from its being the main staff of Irish life, great distress
ensues when a failure takes place in the potato crop. But such would be
the consequence of a general failure in any kind of crop on which they
might happen chiefly to rely. The cure for such seasons of suffering,
therefore, is not to be sought so much in bringing about change of diet,
as in introducing a better system of husbandry--an improved system of
drainage especially--by which a general failure of any crop will be
rendered a more rare occurrence. The spread of railroads will soon render
it comparatively easy to transport even the bulky potato from one county
to another, and thus to prevent the recurrence of famine prices.

But in South Britain the oatmeal of the Scottish peasantry--the national
food--is looked upon with as much prejudice, and those who live upon it
with as much pity, as the black bread-eaters of Germany and Sweden, or the
potato-diggers of Ireland. But the health and strength of the Scottish
peasantry, who live entirely upon oatmeal, is proverbial. On this subject,
in speaking of the Scottish ploughmen, where the bothy system is
practised--that is, where the single men all live together in a room or
bothy provided for them, which serves them both for sleeping and
cooking---Mr Stephens has the following characteristic passage:--

     "The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way, as _brose_, as it is
     called, which is a different sort of pottage to porridge. A pot of
     water is put on the fire to boil, a task which the men take in turns;
     a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with
     which each man provides himself, and put into a wooden bowl, which
     also is the ploughman's property; and on a hollow being made in the
     meal, and sprinkled with salt, the boiling water is poured over the
     meal, and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn spoon,
     and the allowance of milk poured over it, the brose is ready to be
     eaten; and as every man makes his own brose, and knows his own
     appetite, he makes just as much brose as he can consume. The bowl is
     scraped clean with the spoon, and the spoon licked clean with the
     tongue, and the dish is then placed in the meal-chest for a similar
     purpose on the succeeding occasion. The fare is simple, and is as
     simply made; but it must be wholesome, and capable of supplying the
     loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for _I believe that no
     class of men can endure more bodily fatigue, for ten hours every day,
     than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose thrice
     a-day_."--(Vol. ii. p. 384.)

The quantity of oatmeal allowed to the ploughman--_as his sole food_--is
two pecks, or 17-1/2 lbs. in a week, exactly 2-1/2 lbs. a-day--or 3/4 lb.
for each meal--and yet it often happens that a hard-worked ploughman
cannot consume the whole of this allowance. Speaking again of oatmeal
_porridge_, Mr Stephens says, "there are few more wholesome meals than
oatmeal porridge, or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought.
Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet, verifying
the line of Burns,

  "'The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food.'"

As southern prejudices have a tendency to make their way northward, and,
in the face of old experience at home, are leading many to undervalue the
oatmeal, on which we trust our peasantry will long rely as their staple
food, it is interesting to find that, on this point, science has at length
come to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us
many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat--that it
contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we
consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork--and, therefore, that he who lives
upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal
food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat
different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains
on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef--of that which
forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it--with three per
cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical
composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most
nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.

But Professor Johnston, in the recent edition of his Elements,[28] tells
us, that, from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural
Chemistry Association of Scotland, it turns out that oats are far richer
in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any
part of England--that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that
which forms muscle, five to eight of fat, and sixty-five of starch. The
account, therefore, between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour
stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain--

                       Wheat.      Oats.
  Muscular matter,     10 lbs.     18 lbs.
  Fat,                  3 ...       6 ...
  Starch,              50 ...      65 ...
                       ------      ------
                       63 lbs.     89 lbs.

What do you say to these numbers, Mr Cockney?--You won't pity us, Scotch
oatmeal-eaters, any more, we guess. Experience and science are both on our
side. What makes your race-horses the best in the world, may be expected
to make our peasantry the best too. We offer you, therefore, a fair bet.
You shall take ten English ploughmen, and feed them upon two pounds and
a-half of wheaten flour a-day, and we shall take as many Scotch ploughmen,
and feed them upon the same weight of oatmeal a-day--_if they can eat so
much_, for that is doubtful--and we shall back our men against yours for
any sum you like. They shall walk, run, work--or fight you, if you like
it--and they shall thrash you to your heart's content. We should like to
convince you that Scotch parritch has some real solid metal in it.

We back the oatcake and the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the
world. We defy your homemade bread, your baker's bread, your household
bread, your leaven bread, and your brown Georges--your fancy bread and
your raisin bread--your baps, rolls, scones, muffins, crumpets, and
cookies--your bricks, biscuits, bakes, and rusks--your Bath buns and your
sally luns--your tea-cakes, and saffron-cakes, and slim-cakes, and
plank-cakes, and pan-cakes, and soda-cakes, and currant-cakes, and
sponge-cakes, and seed-cakes, and girdle-cakes, and singing-hinnies--your
short-bread and your currant-buns--and if there by any other names by
which you designate your wheaten abominations, we defy and detest them
all. We swear by the oatcake and the porridge, the substantial bannock and
the brose--long may Scotland produce them, and Scotchmen live and fight
upon them!!

"The first great event in spring on a farm of mixed husbandry," says Mr
Stephens, "is the calving of the cows." He then describes the symptoms,
the preparations, and the treatment of the cow and the calf, the diseases
to which they are respectively liable, and the treatment to which they
ought to be subjected, in his usual clear, methodical, and remarkably
complete manner. We have been struck with the kind tone which pervades the
whole of this chapter, the gentle treatment he prescribes in all
cases--indicating at once a practical acquaintance with the details of
these operations, and a love also for the quiet and patient animals of
which he is treating.

We should have quoted, had the passages not been too long, his description
of the different modes adopted, apparently with equal profit, by the veal
manufacturers for the London and Glasgow markets respectively. We should
like to know the comparative profit of the French mode of feeding calves
for the Paris market, _on cream and biscuits_. In his next edition, we
hope Mr Stephens will instruct us upon this point also.

It is one of the merits of this book, and in our estimation a very high
one, that method, order, and economy of time and labour are invariably
recommended and insisted upon, in every process and at every season. But
these points are especially insisted upon in his chapter _on the
advantages of having field-work always in a forward state_. The following
extract is long, but it contains such admirable advice, that we insert it
for the sake of those who may never see the book itself, or have an
opportunity of buying it.

After describing how every favourable day should be taken in preparing the
land for wheat, beans, oats, potatoes, turnips, tares, or naked fallow, in
their respective order, he continues:--

     "And when every one of all these objects has been promoted, and there
     is found little or nothing to do till the burst of spring-work comes,
     both horses and men may enjoy a day's rest now and then, without
     incurring the risk of throwing work back; but before such recreations
     are indulged in, it should be ascertained that all the implements,
     great and small, have been repaired for work--the plough-irons all
     new laid--the harrow-tines new laid and sharpened, and fastened
     firmly into the bulls of the harrows--the harness all tight and
     strong--the sacks new patched and mended, that no seed-corn be spilt
     upon the road--the seed-corn thrashed, measured up, and sacked, and
     what is last wanted put into the granary--the horses new shod, that
     no casting or breaking of a single shoe may throw a pair of horses
     out of work for even one single hour--in short, to have every thing
     prepared to start for work when the first notice of spring shall be
     heralded in the sky.

     "But suppose the contrary of all this to happen; suppose that the
     plough-irons and harrow-tines have to be laid and sharpened, when
     perhaps to-morrow they may be wanted in the field--a stack to be
     thrashed for seed-corn or for horse's corn in the midst of the sowing
     of a field--suppose, too, that only a week's work has been lost, in
     winter, of a single pair of horses, and the consequence is, that six
     acres of land have to be ploughed when they should be sown, that is,
     a loss of a whole day of six pair of horses, or of two days of three
     pair--suppose all these inconveniences to happen in the busy season,
     and the provoking reflection occurs that the loss incurred now was
     occasioned by trifling offputs in winter. Compare the value of these
     trifles with the risk of finding you unprepared for sowing beans or
     spring-wheat. Suppose, once more, that instead of having turnips in
     store for the cattle, when the oat-seed is begun in the fields, and
     that, instead of being able to prosecute that indispensable piece of
     work without interruption, you are obliged to send away a portion of
     the draughts to bring in turnips, which _must be brought in_, and
     brought in, too, from hand to mouth, it being impossible, in the
     circumstances, to store them. In short, suppose that the season of
     incessant labour arrives and finds you unprepared to go along with
     it,--and what are the consequences? Every creature about you, man,
     woman, and beast, are then toiled beyond endurance every day, not to
     _keep up_ work, which is a lightsome task, but to _make up_ work,
     which is a toilsome task, but which you said you could easily do,
     when you were idling your time in a season you consider of little
     value; and, after all, this toil is bestowed in vain to obtain the
     end you wish, namely, to prepare your crop _in due season_. You who
     are inexperienced in the evils of procrastination may fancy this to
     be an overdrawn picture--even an impossible case; but unfortunately
     for that supposition, it is drawn from the life. I have seen every
     incident occur which I have mentioned, both as to work being in a
     forward and in a backward state."--(Vol. ii. pp. 489, 483.)

This one extract will alone illustrate the opinion we have already
expressed, in regard to the soundness and safety of the advice on
practical subjects, which our author ventures to give.

We pass over a hundred pages devoted to ploughing and sowing, and the
selection of seed. On the last of which points our inclination would lead
us to dwell--especially in reference to the steeping of seeds, a subject
which at present engages so much attention, and upon which so much
nonsense and mercantile puffing has been recently expended. But our limits
restrain us.

Whether it is that our own predilections incline us more to those parts of
his book, or that Mr Stephens writes these better--with heart and
kindliness he certainly does write[29]--we scarcely know, but we certainly
like all his chapter upon animals. _The lambing of ewes_ is the subject of
chapter fifty-four.

In all lines of life there are the skilful and the unskilful, and the
former are always the fewer in number. In reference to shepherds, Mr
Stephens says:--

     "No better proof need be adduced of the fewness of skilful shepherds,
     than the loss which every breeder of sheep sustains every year,
     especially in bad weather. I knew a shepherd who possessed unwearied
     attention, but was deficient in skill, and being over-anxious, always
     assisted the ewes in lambing before the proper time; and as he kept
     the ewes in too high condition, the consequence was, that every year
     he lost a number of both ewes and lambs; and in one season of bad
     weather the loss amounted to the large number of twenty-six ewes, and
     I forget of how many lambs, in a dock of only ten score of ewes. I
     knew another shepherd who was far from being solicitous about his
     charge, though certainly not careless of it, yet his skill was so
     undoubted, that he chiefly depended upon it, and his success was so
     eminent, that the loss of a ewe or lamb under his charge was matter
     of surprise. Of these two shepherds--the attentive and the
     skilful--it would appear that the skilful is the safer, and of course
     the more valuable, though it must be owned, that it is better to
     _prevent_ evils by skilful attention, than to _cure_ them by
     attentive skill; yet it is only by the union of both these qualities
     that a perfect shepherd can be formed."--(Vol. ii. p. 600.)

Perhaps some of our readers are acquainted with _Price on Sheep_, a book
in which the treatment of the Leicester sheep is especially described.
After commenting upon what this author says of the losses experienced in
lambing-time by the southern breeders, Mr Stephens pays the following
deserved compliment to the intelligent shepherds of Scotland:--

     "I would not have noticed these egregious blunders, said by Mr Price
     to be committed by shepherds in a low country like Romney Marsh, in
     Kent, so prominently, had not Mr Youatt adopted the sentiments of Mr
     Price in the very particulars quoted above, in his excellent treatise
     on the history and diseases of sheep. Were a shepherd of a Leicester
     flock in Scotland made aware that he was suspected of such ignorance
     of the nature of sheep, he would be quite ashamed; and so would
     shepherds even of the hill country, who cannot have so intimate a
     knowledge of every individual of their flock, usually occupying a
     wide range of mountain land, as their brethren of the profession
     tending flocks within much more limited bounds."--(Vol. ii. p. 602.)

Among the more immediate symptoms of lambing, there are two which have
struck us as very interesting. We have put them in italics in the
following quotation:--

     "The more immediate symptoms of lambing are when the ewe stretches
     herself frequently; separating herself from her companions;
     exhibiting restlessness by not remaining in one place for any length
     of time; lying down and rising up again, as if dissatisfied with the
     place; pawing the ground with a forefoot; _bleating as if in quest of
     a lamb; and appearing fond of the lambs of other ewes_."--(Vol. ii.
     p. 603.)

In regard to _pet_ lambs--such as are brought up by hand because their
mothers have died, and it has been impossible to mother then upon other
ewes--the following observation shows their innocent simplicity:--

     "When the same person feeds the lambs, and this should be the
     dairymaid, the lambs soon become attached to her, and would follow
     her every where: but to prevent their bleating, and to make them
     contented, an apron or a piece of cloth, hung on a stake or bush in
     the paddock, will keep them together."--(Vol. ii. p. 611.)

After treating of the various risks which ewes and lambs are subject to,
the final result for which a skilful shepherd should look, is thus
stated:--

     "He should not be satisfied with his exertions unless he has
     preserved one-half the number of ewes with twin-lambs, nor should he
     congratulate himself if he has lost a single ewe in lambing. I am
     aware these results cannot always be commanded; but I believe an
     attentive and skilful shepherd will not be satisfied for all his
     toil, night and day, for three weeks, if he has not attained these
     results. The ewes may have lambed twins to greater number than the
     half, and yet many pairs may have been broken to supply the
     deficiencies occasioned by the deaths of single lambs. * * * In
     regard to Cheviots, it is considered a favourable result to rear a
     lamb for each ewe; and with blackfaced ewes, eighteen lambs out of
     the score of ewes is perhaps one as favourable. Cheviots yield a few
     pairs, blackfaced very few. The former sometimes require assistance
     in lambing, the latter seldom."--(Vol. ii. pp. 614, 615.)

An entire chapter is given to the _training and working of the shepherd's
dog_. Like master like man, says the old adage--like shepherd like dog,
says Mr Stephens:--

     "The natural temper of the shepherd may be learned from the way in
     which he works his dog among sheep. When you observe an aged dog
     making a great noise, bustling about in an impatient manner, running
     fiercely at a sheep and turning him quickly, biting at his ears and
     legs, you may conclude, without hesitation, that the shepherd who
     owns him is a man of hasty temper."--(Vol. ii. p. 625.)

But a well-trained dog has the following qualifications:--

     "Dogs, when thus gently and cautiously trained, become very
     sagacious, and will visit every part of a field where sheep are most
     apt to stray, and where danger is most to be apprehended to befall
     them, such as a weak part of a fence, deep ditches, or deep furrows
     into which sheep may possibly fall and lie _awalt_ or _awkward_, that
     is, lie on the broad of their back and unable to get up, and they
     will assist to raise them up by seizing the wool at one side and
     pulling the sheep over upon its feet. Experienced dogs will not
     meddle with ewes having lambs at foot, nor with tups, being quite
     aware of their disposition to offer resistance. They also know full
     well when foxes are on the move, and give evident symptoms of
     uneasiness on their approach to the lambing ground. They also hear
     footsteps of strange persons and animals at a considerable distance
     at night, and announce their approach by unequivocal signs of
     displeasure, short of grumbling and barking, as if aware that those
     noisy signs would betray their own presence. _A shepherd's dog is so
     incorruptible that he cannot be bribed, and will not permit even a
     known friend to touch him when entrusted with any piece of duty._
     * * * It is supposed that the bitch is more acute than the dog,
     though the dog will bear the greater fatigue. Of the two, I believe,
     that the quietly disposed shepherd prefers a bitch, and is careful in
     working her as little as he can when in pup. I may mention, that the
     shepherd's dog claims exemption from taxation; and I believe that a
     well-trained one costs at least L.3."--(Vol. ii. pp. 626, 627.)

Nothing is said of the mutual attachment of the shepherd and his dog. Of
this attachment we can never help thinking--when the subject of dogs is
introduced--since we saw the look of mingled agony and consternation which
showed itself on the face of one of our shepherd boys, when a horse had
kicked and apparently killed it, and the joy with which he hugged it,
while it licked his hands and face as it recovered.

Nothing strikes an American so much on coming to England--kindred though
he be, not only in blood and language, but also in customs--nothing at
least strikes him more than the beautiful thorn hedges with which our
fields are at once divided, sheltered and adorned. And yet how much they
are mismanaged--their perfection, usefulness, and durability lessened--by
injudicious, in many cases by ignorant and barbarous, treatment! A most
useful chapter is devoted to this subject, from which we shall make one or
two extracts. First, of switching young hedges:--

     "Hedgers have a strong predilection to use the switching-bill. They
     will, without compunction, switch a young hedge at the end of the
     first year of its existence. No hedge ought to be touched with a
     knife until it has attained at least two years; because the great
     object to be attained by a new hedge is the enlargement of its roots,
     that they may search about freely for its support; and the only way
     it has of acquiring large roots is through its branches and leaves,
     which are the chief means of supporting the healthy functions of
     plants, or of even preserving them in life. Even beyond the age
     mentioned above, the pruning-knife should be very sparingly used,
     until the young hedge has acquired the height sufficient for a fence;
     and not freely then, but only to remove superfluities of growth, and
     preserve equality in the size of the plants.

            *       *       *       *       *

     Let the plant have peace to _grow_ till it has acquired a
     considerable degree of natural strength--to acquire which state it
     will take a longer or shorter time according to the circumstances in
     which it is placed--acquiring it in the shortest time in deep sandy
     loam, the most _useful_ of all soils, and taking the longest in poor
     thin clay on a tilly subsoil--let it, I say, have peace to _grow_,
     and let it be afterwards judiciously pruned, and I will give you the
     assurance of experience, that you will possess an excellent fence and
     a beautiful hedge in a much shorter time than the usual practice of
     hedgers will warrant."--(Vol. ii p. 564.)

Upon cutting down hedges the following remarks are excellent:--

     "Hedges are wofully mismanaged in the cutting in many parts of the
     country. Without further consideration than saving the expense of a
     paling to guard a new-cut-down hedge, or in ignorance of the method
     of making a dead-hedge from the refuse of the old, the stems of an
     _old_ hedge are often cut over about three and a half feet high, to
     continue as a fence. The consequence is just what might be
     anticipated from a knowledge of the habits of the thorn, namely, a
     thick growth of young twigs where the hedge was cut over, the
     ultimate effect of which is, a young hedge standing at three and a
     half feet above the ground upon bare stakes. The wise plan,
     therefore, to preserve the value of the old hedge is to cut it near
     the ground, and form a dead-hedge of the part cut off."--(Vol. ii.
     pp. 569, 570.)

We have seen hedges occasionally dying out by degrees on the road-sides,
where the banks were cut close to the roots of the thorn plants. The
following acute observation will in some cases, no doubt, account for
it:--

     "I observe that some farmers remove the hedge-bank behind a
     thorn-hedge, to make compost of; but such a practice is highly
     injurious to the hedge, even after it is grown up, by exposing its
     roots, which chiefly lie under the bank, to cold and frost. If a
     hedge is cut down whose bank has been treated in this manner, and no
     means are used to protect the roots when exposed on the removal of
     the branches, it is possible that a few nights of severe black frost
     may kill every root that lies nearest the surface. I have no doubt
     that particular plants of old hedges are killed in this manner,
     without the cause being suspected by the farmer."--(Vol. ii. p. 576.)

The planting of potatoes, as we should expect in a practical work of this
kind, is treated of in considerable detail and with much judgment. Upon
seed-potatoes, which have these last two or three years attracted so much
attention, we have the following passage:--

     "I have no doubt, in my own mind, that were seed-potatoes securely
     pitted until they were about to be planted,--not over-ripened before
     they were taken out of the ground,--the sets cut from the crispest
     tubers and from the waxy end,--the dung fermented by a turning of the
     dunghill in proper time,--led out to the field, quickly spread, the
     sets as quickly dropped on it, and the drills quickly split in the
     manner represented in fig. 411, and described in (2411,) there would
     be little heard of the failure even in the driest season,--at the
     same time, the precaution of obtaining seed frequently from an
     elevated and late district compared to where the seed is to be
     planted, should not be neglected."--(Vol. iii. pp. 672, 673.)

These recommendations are correct, we believe, and judicious as far as
they go; other things, however, are within the powers of the skilful
farmer; but, to all, we would especially recommend a more careful
construction of their potato-pits. This subject is again treated of in
Vol. iii. p. 1121. The raising of seed-potatoes should be made more an
object of special care than has hitherto been the case; for we doubt if
the cure recently propounded as infallible on the faith of one or two
successful experiments--that of leaving the potatoes covered up during
winter in the field where they grew--will be in all cases followed by the
wished-for results. We hope, however, that many will try it.

Of horses we could have wished to say something had our space permitted;
but we can only refer to what is said of the rearing and intelligence of
the horse towards the beginning of the second volume, and to the chapter
on _breaking in young draught horses_, in p. 691 of the same volume.

We come now to the third volume, which commences the operations of
summer--a season which brings with it new cares, especially to the dairy
farmer, and where the turnip husbandry prevails. It is true that, in
summer, when all his seeds are in the ground, the farmer has a little
leisure during which he may leave his farm, but even then any excursion he
makes ought not to be for mere pleasure. A true farmer will have his eyes
about him wherever he travels, and will carefully study the merits of the
rural customs of every district he goes to. There is much truth in the
following remarks:--

     "Summer is the only season in which the farmer has liberty to leave
     home without incurring the blame of neglecting his business, and even
     then the time which he has to spare is very limited. There is only
     about a fortnight between finishing the fallow, the turnip and potato
     culture, and hay-making, and the commencement of harvest, in which
     the farmer has leisure to travel. This limitation of time is to be
     regretted, because it is proper that he should take a journey every
     year, and see how farm operations are conducted in other parts of the
     kingdom. An excursion of this nature is seldom undertaken by a
     farmer, who is generally a man capable of observation, without
     acquiring some hints which may induce the adoption of a practice that
     seems good, or the rejection of one which is bad. Such a journey
     exhibits mankind in various aspects, and elevates the mind above
     local prejudices; and as husbandry is a progressive art, a ramble of
     a week or two through different parts of the country, cannot fail to
     enlighten the mind of the most experienced farmer much beyond any
     thing he can observe by always remaining at home."--(Vol. iii. p.
     742.)

In his excellent chapter on the sowing of turnips, he quotes several
instances of the successful preparation of land in the autumn--breaking
up, harrowing, cross-ploughing, drilling, and dunging--for the turnip
crop, and he adds the following opinion:--

     "Were such modes of culture adopted in the south of England, I have
     no doubt certain and abundant crops of turnips would be raised, in
     spite of droughts and insects; and the slovenly practice of
     broad-cast culture would then give way to the more scientific mode of
     the drill system."--(Vol. iii. p. 747.)

In the following passage he notices a curious but generally received fact
regarding the effect of different quantities of bones; but we quote
chiefly on account of another observation at its close, which may be
interesting to our southern readers:--

     "I have tried to raise turnips with different quantities of
     bone-dust, varying from twelve, sixteen, twenty, and twenty-four
     bushels to the imperial acre, and have found the crop improved up to
     sixteen bushels; but any quantity beyond that, even to twenty-four
     bushels, produced no greater effect on the turnips in the same field,
     and on the same sort of soil, than sixteen bushels. Nay, more than
     this, my late agricultural preceptor, Mr George Brown, when he farmed
     Hetton Steads in Northumberland, raised as good crops of turnips as
     sixteen bushels of bone-dust, with only eight bushels of bone-dust,
     combined with an indefinite quantity of sifted dry coal-ashes; and
     yet eight bushels of bone-dust, or an indefinite quantity of
     coal-ashes applied separately, produced a very poor crop of turnips.
     It is therefore unnecessary, in so far as the crop of turnips is
     concerned, to sow more than sixteen bushels of bone-dust alone, or
     eight bushels with coal-ashes, or perhaps street-manure. Both
     coal-ashes and street-manure, when proposed to be used with
     bone-dust, should be kept dry under cover, and sifted free of large
     lumps. * * *

     "The very best mode of using bone-dust in small quantity, both for
     increasing the fertility of the soil and rearing a good crop, is to
     sow the seed along with it in drills already manured with farm-yard
     dung. The bone-dust secures a good and quick braird of the plant, and
     the dung supports it powerfully afterwards. This plan I would
     recommend to be pursued, particularly in England, on the land
     prepared for turnips in autumn; and were it practised, we need not
     despair of raising heavy crops of turnips, especially Swedes, on the
     strongest soils, and most certainly they would be obtained after
     thorough-draining."--(Vol. iii. pp. 748, 751.)

To the _drop_-drill as a means of husbanding manure, too little attention
has hitherto been paid in Scotland. We strongly recommend, therefore, to
the attention of the Scottish farmer, the following brief quotation:--

     "The saving of manure, in the first instance, by the use of the
     drop-drill, appears to be considerable, since it has been frequently
     asserted that ten or twelve bushels of bone-dust per acre, will
     produce a braird equal, if not superior, to sixteen or eighteen
     bushels put in by the continuous mode. The subject is, therefore, of
     great importance, and calls for close observation; for if the drop
     system is really so important, it cannot be too widely
     adopted."--Vol. iii. p. 806.

We regret the necessity of passing over the remainder of this chapter on
turnips. We merely extract the following mode of preventing the
destructive attack of the turnip-fly, because, though the method has been
heard of by many, it has been tried by comparatively few. Mr Stephens
recommends

     "To put the seeds for some time before they are sown amongst flour of
     sulphur, and sow the sulphur amongst them. The late Mr Airth informed
     me, that when he farmed the Mains of Dun, Forfarshire, his young
     turnip crops were often very much affected, and even destroyed, by
     these insects; but that, after he used the sulphur, he never suffered
     loss, though his neighbours did who would not use the same
     precaution, and that for as long as he possessed the farm afterwards,
     namely, fifteen years."--(Vol. iii. p. 772.)

It is also with regret that we pass over the making of butter and cheese,
the chapter upon which we commend to the attention of our dairy farmers.
The subjects of hay-making, liming and forming water meadows, we also
pass; but we stop a moment at his chapter upon flax and hemp.

The culture of flax is now very much advocated both in Great Britain and
Ireland; and we fear very erroneous notions are entertained and propagated
regarding both the profit it is likely to yield to the farmer, and the
effect it is fitted to produce upon the land. The following passage is
not entirely free from objection, but it contains a great deal of truth
and much common sense:--

     "It has been proposed of late, with a considerable degree of
     earnestness, to encourage the growth of flax in Britain. The attempt
     was made some years ago and failed; but in the present instance it is
     recommended with the view of raising flax-seed for feeding cattle in
     sufficient quantity to render us independent of foreign oil-cake, of
     which, no doubt, large quantities are annually imported, but to what
     extent I have not been able to ascertain. The _object_ of the
     suggestion is laudable, but the _end_, I fear, unattainable; for if
     good _seed_ is raised to make good oil-cake, or compounds with oil,
     the _flax_ will be coarse, and flax of inferior quality will never
     pay so well as corn: and it should never be lost sight of, in
     considering this question, that to raise flax must bring it into
     competition with white crops, and not green crops, because to raise
     it as a green crop would be to deteriorate its quality by bringing it
     into immediate contact with manure; and, on the other hand, if it is
     raised without manure as a fallow-crop, it must deteriorate the soil
     materially--no species of crop being _more_ scourging to the soil
     than flax, not even a crop of turnip-seed. There is, therefore, this
     dilemma in the matter--the quality of the flax or of the seed must be
     sacrificed. The seed separately will not pay the expense of culture.
     Seed is produced from six to twelve bushels per acre. Taking the
     highest at twelve bushels, that is, one and a half quarter, and
     taking it also for granted that it all will be fit for _sowing_, and
     worth the highest current price of 60s. per quarter, the gross return
     would only be L.4, 10s. per acre. The flax-crop varies in weight of
     rough dried fibre, according to season and soil, from three to ten
     cwt. per acre; and taking the high produce, five cwt. per acre of
     dressed flax, at the highest price of L.6 per ton, the yield will be
     L.31, from which have to be deducted the expenses of beetling,
     scutching, and heckling, and waste and loss of straw for manure, and
     the profit will not exceed L.8 per acre; but though _such_ a profit
     would certainly repay the expenses of cultivation, yet it presents
     the _most_ favourable view that can be taken, even with the sacrifice
     of the entire loss of seed--the loss, in fact, of the greatest
     inducement for renewing the culture of the plant. In Ireland the
     case, I believe, will be the same, though much of the soil of that
     country, being mossy, is more favourable to the growth of flax than
     that of England or Scotland; yet even there it will be found
     impracticable to raise good flax and good seed from the same piece of
     ground at the same time; and if the seed is not good, the oil-cake
     will be bad."--(Vol. iii. p. 1046.)

Among the arguments in favour of the extensive culture of flax, now urged
by so many, we are sorry to see a scientific one lately put forth by our
friend Dr Kane of Dublin, and which has been much vaunted and relied upon
by himself, and by those for whose benefit the opinion was propounded. The
proposal is, it will be recollected, to carry off the stalk of the flax
crop, and to convert the seed into manure. This is the same thing as
carrying off the straw of a corn crop, and eating or otherwise converting
the grain into manure upon the farm. Every one knows that carrying off the
straw will exhaust the land, as will also carrying off the stalk of the
lint. But, says Dr Kane, I have analysed the _steeped_ and _dressed_ flax,
and find that it contains very little of what the plant peculiarly draws
from the soil. This is left for the most part in the pond in which the
flax is steeped, or at the mill where the flax is dressed. Therefore, to
carry off the flax is not _necessarily_ to exhaust the soil. You have only
to collect the _shows_ of the flax mill, and pump out the water from the
steeping hole, and apply both to the land, and you restore to it all that
the crop has taken off.

Now there is a fallacy in supposing that all that is taken from the land
would in this way be restored--one which the advocates of this
non-exhausting view are of course not anxious to discover; but, supposing
the result and conclusions correct, what are they worth in practice? It is
only a little bit of fireside farming. What practical good has come out of
it? Put all the steeping water upon the land! Have any of the members of
the flax societies tried this? Then let them tell us how it is to be
done--what it cost--what was the result and the profit of the application.
They use this prescription as an argument to induce men to introduce an
exhausting culture, and they take no means to introduce _first_ a general
employment of those means by which it is said that the naturally
exhausting effect of the culture may be prevented. What our friend Dr Kane
has said and done is in perfect good faith; the form which his opinions
have assumed upon paper, has arisen solely from the want of a sufficient
knowledge of the usages and capabilities of sound and profitable practical
husbandry. If we cannot persuade our farmers to collect and apply to the
land the liquid manure of their farm-yards, when can we hope to persuade
them to empty their flax-ponds for the purpose of watering their fields?
Can we ever hope soon to persuade them to preserve and use up the
thousands of tons of _shows_ that are now yearly sent down the streams by
which our flax mills are set in motion?

We are far from saying that flax or any other crop may not be grown
without necessarily exhausting the soil--chemistry, we know, will
by-and-by put all this within our power; but we are very much of Mr
Stephens' opinion, that our English and Irish flax societies do not as yet
clearly see their way to that end, and that unintentionally they will lead
many to inflict a permanent injury upon their land, without any adequate
compensation to themselves, their landlords, or the country.

We had marked the early cutting of corn in harvest as a subject of general
importance to practical men, and that of the smearing of sheep, so
interesting especially to our northern agriculturists; and we wished to
confirm Mr Stephens' recommendations upon those points by some
observations of our own; but we are compelled to leave the chapter which
treats upon them to the private consideration of our readers.

We quote the following passage from the chapter on _fertilizing the soil
by means of manure_, as containing much good common sense:--

     "Dung is applied at the commencement of every rotation of crops with
     the fallow green-crops, and with bare fallow; and when applied at any
     other time, it is near the termination of a long rotation. A rule for
     the quantity of farm-yard dung to be applied according to the length
     of the rotation, as given by Dr Coventry, is, that five tons per acre
     are required every year to sustain the fertility of soil; and,
     therefore, land which is dunged every four years in a rotation of
     four courses, should receive with the fallow-crop twenty tons per
     acre; in a five-course shift, twenty-five tons; in a six-course
     shift, thirty tons, and so on. These quantities constitute, no doubt,
     a sufficient manuring to ordinary crops; but it appears to me to be
     reversing the order of propriety, to give land under the severest
     shift--a four-course one--the smallest modicum of manure, when it
     should receive the largest; for there is surely truth in the
     observation, that land grazed with stock becomes ameliorated in
     condition--actually increased in fertility. A six-course shift,
     therefore, having three years of grazing, should require less instead
     of more manure even at a time than a four-course one on land of
     similar quality."--(Vol. iii. pp. 1230, 1231.)

The chapter on the points of stock--cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses--would
of itself have afforded us materials for an interesting article. Breeding
and crossing of stock, both so necessary to be well understood by those
who would breed for _profit_, are also ably discussed by our author; and
it is only want of space which prevents us from quoting from this chapter.

But there are some kinds of live _cattle_ which of themselves breed too
fast even for Mr Stephens; and these he as anxiously instructs his readers
how to exterminate. Among these are rats, in regard to the destruction of
which the following passage will interest our readers:--

     "Of all the modes I ever witnessed rats being killed, none equalled
     that of a Yorkshireman, of the name of John Featherston, by means of
     steel-traps. He had twenty-one small steel-traps, which he kept clean
     and bright. He soon traced the tracks of rats along the floor to a
     corner, or on the tops of walls, leading commonly by the corners of
     apartments to the partition wall, which they surmounted between it
     and the slates; the very place which I have recommended the filling
     up, to break off such communications. After he had discovered the
     different runs of the animals, he made a number of small firm bundles
     of straw, which he placed against the bottom of a wall where the run
     was on a floor, and upon its top where the run was to the roof. He
     used seven traps at one place at a time, and a sufficient number of
     bundles of straw was used to conceal that number of traps at each
     place, employing the entire number of traps in three places, at a
     little distance from each other, and in different apartments. The
     traps were set, but not allowed to spring at first, and baited with
     oatmeal, scented with oil of rhodium, and placed in a row, with a
     little chaff over them, in the run behind the bundles of straw. The
     traps were baited for two days, the baits being replenished as soon
     as it was discovered, by inspection, that a bait disappeared. On the
     third day the traps were baited as before, but the restriction was
     removed from the spring, and then began the capture. In all the three
     days, people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the
     apartments in which the traps were placed, and dogs were entirely
     excluded. Removing the check from the spring, from one set of traps
     after another, armed with short stout stick, and furnished with a bag
     slung from his shoulder, Featherston put himself on the alert, and
     the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it, removed the
     bundle of straw, knocked the rat on the head if alive, threw it out
     of the trap, set it again, replaced the bundle again, put the rat
     into the bag, and was again on the watch from one place to another.
     In the course of the third day, from morning to the afternoon, he had
     collected 385 rats in the bag, and allowing all the traps to have
     done equal execution, each had caught more than eighteen rats in the
     course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food, and
     in three days he earned his food and L.1, 12s. 1d.--such was his
     expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by
     this capture; but they received such a thinning, as to be
     comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business,
     on the day following the capture, was to clean each trap bright
     before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater
     reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other
     circumstance--that the suspicion of the rats, I suppose, of the
     danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows
     in fields, and commits ravages on growing crops, whether of corn or
     turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland, and assisted at
     routing them with spade and terrier, but have never heard of their
     having taken to the fields in Scotland."

_Farm book-keeping_ is a subject too little attended to by our practical
men. In our own neighbourhood we know that keeping books is the
exception--keeping none is the rule. The smaller farmers know the state of
their affairs only by the money they have in their hands at certain
seasons of the year. But, as better systems of husbandry spread, this lax
method of carrying on business must be discarded. Husbandry is becoming
more and more an experimental art. New trials must now be made, year after
year, by those who would hope to live and thrive; and it is only those who
keep regular accounts of the outlay upon each trial, and the income from
it, who can know what methods and manures they ought to adopt, and what to
reject from a system of profitable husbandry.

Upon this subject Mr Stephens is entirely of our opinion, and he gives
very copious examples of the way in which books ought to be kept.

       *       *       *       *       *

Such is a hasty sketch of the contents of the book, in so far as the
farming part of it is concerned. The way in which the work is illustrated
by 608 woodcuts and 33 plates, by eminent artists, is as creditable to the
publishers as the matter of the book is to the author.

To the full and accurate descriptions of agricultural implements--to the
illustration of which many of these woodcuts and plates are devoted--we
feel ourselves wholly unable to do justice. That they are all from the pen
and pencil of Mr Slight, will, to those who know him, be a better
recommendation than any words of ours.

There is only one other test to which, in criticising the work before us,
we are entitled to put it. It contains much useful matter, but is it
likely, is it fitted, to answer the end which the author had in view? His
object, he says, was to put into the hands of young men desirous of
learning practical farming, a manual from which, _being upon a farm_, they
would be able to learn all that was necessary to fit them for the several
successive stations to which the industrious son even of a farm-labourer
may fairly hope to rise. This we think he has accomplished, and in that
graphic and living way which has all along led us into the persuasion that
Mr Stephens must himself have "played many parts," and entered into the
feeling and spirit of them all.

When he speaks of the shepherd and his dog, and of driving stock to
market, he seems to look back with much satisfaction, almost with regret,
to the time when he himself served as a drover, and took his cattle to the
South over the cold Northumbrian moors. He delights to linger by the way,
and tells you where you will still get the best _gill_ on your road, and
how it will be safest for you to make the last glass you take into toddy,
before you go to bed. We think he must often have taken up his night's
quarters at Tommy Robson's on the Reed Water, on his travels by Watling
Street to the Stagshaw Bank Fair.

Then he changes the scene for us. He is a ploughman for the time. He tells
how he managed his horses, guided his plough, turned over his furrows,
mended his harness, and how three times a-day he fed heartily and well
upon his oatmeal brose, and was healthy and strong in limb, happy in mind,
and free from care. We question if he is heartier or happier now.

Next we find him writing like one who has been promoted to the rank of
grieve or farm-steward. He has assumed the tone and look of a man who has
responsibility upon his shoulders--who has graver duties to perform, and
from whom more is expected. He tells us how he manages his men, apportions
their hours of labour, and distributes to each his appropriate quantity
and time of work. The scene shifts, and we see him in the market selling
his corn. He wants threepence a bushel more, and he will hold out till he
gets it. His sample is good, for his land has been well managed, and his
grain well cleaned; he knows what his article is worth, as things are
going in the market, and he will be an old corn-merchant who takes him in.

Or he has stock to sell, and there he goes into the whisky shop to finish
his bargain. You heard him ask ten shillings more than he meant to take?
That was because he knew the buyer was a higgler, and would have left him
at once had he refused to come down in his price. Now they are gravely
discussing the point over the gill-stoup. They are within half-a-crown
now. Another gill will close the bargain. It is finished; the buyer is
pleased; and our grieve is five shillings richer than if the bargain had
been closed briefly and in the open air.

He is not a bad writer for a practical man who enables you, in a book upon
farming, to call up successive transactions in a manner so vivid as this.

Next, he wishes to become a farmer on his own account, and he looks about
for a farm that will suit him. On this subject he has an excellent chapter
in his third volume. He has been faithful to his master, and now he acts
honourably towards his equals:--

     "Here," he says, "let me mention at the outset, that it is considered
     amongst farmers a dishonourable act to look at a farm, until you are,
     in the first place, assured that it is in the market. To do so, until
     you certainly know that the tenant in possession is to leave it, or
     at any rate, until it is advertised in the public prints, or
     otherwise declared to be in the market, whether the possessing tenant
     wishes to take it again or not, is an unfeeling act, and regarded as
     equivalent to telling him that you wish to take the farm over his
     head. Such an act would be as unbecoming as to intrude yourself into
     a house in town, which you think would suit you, to look at its
     internal arrangement, before you are aware the possessing tenant is
     leaving it, by the usual announcement of the ticket."--(Vol. iii. p.
     1304).

But having obtained possession of a farm, he enquires, can I now make
money for myself--quickly but honourably--in a way that will be at once
creditable to myself, beneficial to my landlord, and of advantage to my
country?

Two points Mr Stephens insists upon as indispensable to the making of
money in this creditable way. The tenant must keep his land clean, and he
must farm it high. Those who make most money in each district--their
natural prudence being alike--are those who are kindest to the land. Use
me well, says the soil every where, and I will use you well in return.

In other parts of his work he rises to the station of a land-steward. He
discusses, in a clear and judicious manner, large agricultural
questions--he writes with the gravity and thoughtfulness of one whose
business it is to superintend and regulate extensive improvements, and to
look after the proceedings and modes of farming of a large body of
tenantry. This, indeed, we hope and trust will be the case with many of
those who carefully read, learn, and inwardly digest the lessons and
precepts of his book; for in whatever capacity it may be their lot to
minister to the welfare and progress of agriculture, they will find aid
and assistance and counsel from the _Book of the Farm_.

It is, indeed, in very many cases of much importance that a better
instructed race of men should be entrusted with the immediate management
of the larger estates of the country. We have met with many skilful and
intelligent members of this class, many able to understand, and advise,
and superintend the most enlightened improvements, and to conduct them to
a prosperous and economical issue. But the mass of these men in our island
is not up to the knowledge of the time; too many of them are almost
entirely ignorant of the most elementary principles of agriculture. How,
indeed, can it be otherwise, when a landholder is contented to place this
delicate management in the hands of his retired butler, or his failing
groom, or even of his solicitor or attorney, who has been bred up to a
totally different profession? If law and medicine require separate schools
and training, so do farming and the management of estates, if they are to
be farmed to a profit, or managed with economy and skill.

But the purpose of our _book_ does not end with the mere practical man. It
professes, and is fitted, to instruct the proprietor too. How much have
the landlords yet to learn? Which of them has ever, at school or college,
had an opportunity of obtaining any instruction in regard to what was to
be the occupation and support of his after life! Some do indeed, when they
settle on their estates, apply themselves, by reading and otherwise, to
make up their deficiencies, and to fit themselves for the new and useful
sphere in which they are called to move. But in broad England, how few are
the landlords who know the principles on which their land ought to be
cultivated--who feel an enlightened interest in the prosperity and real
advancement of agriculture--who understand how to set a useful, and
prudent, and enlightened example to their tenantry! If knowledge such as
that contained in the book before us require to be diffused among the
humble walks of agricultural life, it is no less necessary, we are
assured, among those who frequent its highest places.

But a spirit not only of improvement, but of eager searching after
knowledge, has sprung up among the entire agricultural body. From our own
experience we say this; for we have seen with delight the eager eyes of
listening audiences, for whole hours, fixed upon a single speaker, who was
attempting zealously and simply, to instruct them. And it is those of the
agricultural body who already know most, among whom this eagerness is
observed to be most intense. They have tasted of the value of the new
lights which recent science especially has thrown upon agricultural
practice, and they are eager for the acquisition of more.

We are proud to say, that the first decided proof of this desire for
higher knowledge has been manifested among the farmers and proprietors of
Scotland. The _Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland_ is their
work. Through this association they have professedly attached chemistry
and geology and physiology to the car of practical agriculture; and under
the guidance of these sciences, the art of culture will not long lag
behind her sister arts, for which these sciences have already done so
much. We have before us a list of the members of this patriotic
association. In this list we find the names of nearly every man in
Scotland who is at all known to agricultural fame. If there be a few whose
names we miss, the reason probably is, that they hardly yet know much of
its existence; for it has only just finished its first year of active
life. The new list of another year will contain the names of all who are
really alive to the wants and capabilities of our national agriculture.

We are sincerely desirous for the credit and advancement of Scottish
agriculture. We are, therefore, anxious that no means should be left
untried to keep up the perhaps artificially high character which the
natural intelligence and shrewdness of the Scottish nation has gained for
the practical farmers of the country. Granting, what we have ourselves
seen, that there is much good farming and well-farmed land to the north of
the Tweed, we cannot deny there is also much neglected land and much
unskilful tillage. Though much has been improved in this end of the
island, there is far more still almost in a state of nature. Hitherto the
high-roads of the country have gone through such pleasant places as lie
between the Pease bridge and Edinburgh; but the railroads now projected
will lay open the waste and neglected tracts of country to southern eyes,
and the agricultural reputation of Scotland may suffer a rude shock in
English estimation. We are not the less good patriots while we agree with
Mr Stephens, that there is a greater breadth of skilfully farmed land in
England than in Scotland, and that the germ of all, or nearly all, our
improvements, has been drawn from the South. Give England her due, and
Scotland has still much to be proud of in picking up a germ here and a
germ there, and unfolding and developing these germs under her own colder
sky, and, almost against nature, conquering for herself fruitful fields
and a high agricultural reputation.

But England and Ireland having awoke to new exertions in improving their
soil, we in the North must open our eyes too. We must, if possible, keep
the name we have acquired. If our practice is faulty, let us amend it--if
our science is defective, let us enlarge it. "Science with practice," is
the well-conceived motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of England;
such a motto, we hope, all Scottish farmers will adopt. Let them conjoin
the science of the books of Johnston with the practice of that of
Stephens, and they may still hope, as a body, to occupy the foremost rank
among the agriculturists of Europe.




STANZAS.


  With every joy we haste to meet,
    In hopefulness or pride,
  There comes, with step as sure and fleet,
    A shadow by its side;
  And ever thus that spectre chill
    With each fair bliss has sped,
  And when the gladden'd pulse should thrill,
    The stricken heart lies dead!

  The poet's brow the wreath entwines--
    What weight falls on the breast!
  Upon the sword where glory shines,
    The stains of life-blood rest.
  Lo, where the rosiest sunbeam glows,
    There lies eternal snow!
  And Fame its brightest halo throws,
    Where death lies cold below.

                                  J. D.




LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE.[30]


In a late number of this Magazine we took occasion, under a different
title, to notice the two first volumes of this highly interesting work. We
have seen how Lord Malmesbury conducted himself, in his diplomatic
capacity, at the different courts of Europe under the _ancien régime_. It
is difficult for the men of this generation--whose historic era,
traditionary or remembered, commences with the outbreak of the French
Revolution--to realize in imagination the exhausted, broken, and unhealthy
state of Europe during the middle, and towards the end, of the last
century. Balance of power there was none. The leading continental states,
when not in actual arms, looked upon each other with eyes of the most
bitter jealousy. When they did combine, it was for some unholy purpose,
such as the partition of Poland; and no sooner had they brought down their
quarry, than, like the _Lanzknechts_ of old--to use no more brutal
simile--they began to bandy words and blows for their relative proportions
of the spoil. Good faith was a thing unknown either to prince or to
minister. To trick an ally was considered almost as meritorious a deed as
to undermine or defeat an enemy. In short it would be difficult, perhaps
impossible, to point out any period when public morality was at so low and
pitiable an ebb.

In some respects the older continental states--leaving France, for the
present, out of the question--were less to blame than the newer powers,
who were then struggling forward with the keenness of fresh competitors,
and claiming a recognition of importance which had never been accorded
them before. In the first class we would rank Austria, Holland, and
Sweden; in the second, Russia and Prussia. The Muscovite, unequalled in
extent of territorial possession--exhibiting much of barbaric splendour
with but little of real civilization--sought to extend his unwieldy power
still further, and to gain a position within the heart of Europe by
extending his conquests towards the west. Prussia, circumscribed in
territory, organized herself as a military state. To this one end all
other considerations were, in the first instance, sacrificed; but when it
was attained, she withdrew the mask, and exhibited herself in her real
character--the most unscrupulous of neighbours, the most fickle and
perfidious of allies. Environed with small and defenceless states, she
never lost an opportunity of aggrandizing herself at their expense, no
matter what amount of mutual treaties had intervened. Even defeat she
could turn to her account, by purchasing peace with an enemy upon such
terms as surrendered half of a neighbouring territory to the invader, and
secured the remainder to herself. Even when her interest called upon her
to unite with other European powers against a common foe, she refused to
act upon her own resources, and, unless subsidized, remained sullen and
inactive at home. In this situation was the Continent at the outbreak of
the French Revolution.

The success of the Republican arms in France during the year 1793, of
which the capture of Toulon was the crowning point, naturally created in
the minds of the British ministry the liveliest apprehension and alarm.
England alone, of all the European states, was in a sound and healthy
condition. Her finances were unimpaired, her resources large, her credit
almost unbounded. William Pitt, the greatest minister whom this country
has ever known, was then at the helm of public affairs. The nation--though
some individuals had not escaped the taint--was opposed to the principles
of the French Republic, and disgusted with its attendant atrocities. Our
insular position, and our acknowledged supremacy of the seas, were
sufficient safeguards against a direct attack; but the immediate danger
lay with the Continent. Amidst all the strife of faction and democracy,
France was progressing towards conquest. Rumour told of
armies--undisciplined, perhaps, and ill-appointed, but officered by men of
undoubted talent, and inspired by an enthusiasm which carried all before
them--crowding towards the eastern frontier of France, and hanging there
like a thundercloud, portentous of coming devastation. What was there to
meet this tide of threatened invasion? Nothing save a heptarchy of
tottering states, weak in themselves, without concert, and without
coalition--discontent amongst the lower orders, dissatisfaction with the
things that _had been_, and an evident leaning towards the things that
_might be_--the new doctrines and the new revelation. For it is well to
remark, that whatever any state might have gained by treachery or
violence, did demoralize, but certainly did not better the social
condition of the people. The wind had set in from the west, and was
carrying across Europe, even to the boundary of the Borysthenes, sparks
and flakes of fire from the great conflagration of France. There was no
lack of fuel to maintain an extended combustion, and those whose duty it
was to quench it, were unprepared or unwilling for the task.

The result of the operations of the allied forces upon and within the
frontier of France, is well known. After some success, the sole
consequence of which was to increase the jealousy which already subsisted
between the Austrian and the Prussian, the Republican army succeeded in
driving back the enemy, and establishing themselves upon the Rhine. It was
at this moment, when the danger was at its height, and all Germany,
besides Holland and the Netherlands, was exposed to the terrors of
invasion, that Frederick William of Prussia, actuated by a policy at once
base and suicidal, announced his intention of withdrawing his troops from
the ranks of the confederacy, in total violation of the defensive treaty
of 1787. It is somewhat difficult now, notwithstanding all that has been
written on the subject, to get at the real grounds of this disgraceful
proceeding. The principal alleged cause was the exhausted state of the
Prussian treasury, which, it was said, rendered it absolutely
impracticable for the king to maintain in the field, _without subsidy_,
the contingent of troops which he had solemnly bound himself to furnish
for the general defence of the Continent. It nowhere appears that any
exertion was made to recruit the Prussian finances. By the partition of
Poland, that State had acquired the accession of a large and most valuable
territory, worth something surely by way of mortgage, or if not, at least
a ready magazine of supplies. But all this availed nothing. Prussia
professed herself ready to take whatever subsidy England, or any other
power, might furnish towards the maintenance of her troops--otherwise they
were not to reckon longer upon her co-operation and support. This
proposition was made broadly, shamelessly, and without any diplomatic
circumlocution. "Jacobi, Prussian minister, (at London,) gave in a kind of
memorial, expressive of his Prussian Majesty's intention not to grant the
succours we had asked for, and declining all general interference in the
war, _without being largely paid_." So much for defensive treaties!

At this crisis, the British ministry--fully impressed with the paramount
importance of isolating, in so far as might be, the republican contagion
within the confines of France, and preventing it from spreading
further--requested Lord Malmesbury, as the fittest and most experienced
diplomatist whose services they could command, to proceed on a special
mission to the court of Berlin, and attempt by every means in his power to
recall the king from his false and unnatural position. So great seemed the
necessity of accommodation, that England was inclined to accede, perhaps
too much, to the demands of her ally, rather than allow the war upon which
so much depended to be so meanly and pitifully abandoned. The following
extract from Lord Grenville's instructions will show the spirit which
actuated our ministry. "If the _alleged distress_ of the king of Prussia's
_treasury_ is wholly _feigned_, it will in that case be evident, that the
determination of the king of Prussia is taken rather to break his
alliance with the maritime powers, and to risk the dangers which may
result from the final establishment of the Jacobin principles in France,
than to contribute to the indemnification which Austria has in view. In
that case, all attempts at other arrangements must be useless, and nothing
will remain to be done, except to insist on the succours being
furnished; and, in case of non-compliance with that demand, to prepare the
declaration necessary to be given in for the purpose of annulling the
defensive treaty. If, on the other hand, the pecuniary difficulties which
are stated _have a real existence_, the disposition to co-operate further
in the war may still exist; and, in that case, some advantage might be
derived from the adoption of such arrangements as might enable his majesty
to contribute towards removing those difficulties, and securing the king
of Prussia's co-operation in the war, but without departing from the just
claims resulting from the existing treaty." The reciprocal feelings of
Austria and Prussia are thus significantly noticed in another part of the
same document. "With respect to Austria, I must observe to your lordship,
that the utmost jealousy prevails between the two courts of Vienna and
Berlin; that the former has certainly been deceived by the extent given to
the late acquisitions of Prussia in Poland; and that the latter is
unquestionably desirous of checking, at least by indirect means, the plans
of indemnity which the emperor is now pursuing towards France." With
Holland and Austria, Lord Malmesbury was ordered, in all his negotiations
with the Prussian court, to keep himself in intimate concert; in fact, it
seems to have been expected, that if these powers went cordially along
with England, Prussia durst not adopt a step which would have exposed her
to summary chastisement. It might have been well if such a threat had been
intimated directly; but England had not yet learned to appreciate her own
unbounded resources, and to rely with confidence upon herself. Afterwards,
as at Copenhagen and elsewhere, she adopted the true method of dealing
with a false ally, or a suspected neutral. At the beginning of the war,
she transacted with other states on the belief that they were actuated by
the same honourable feelings as herself--that they regarded treaties as
inviolable--that they were ready, for the general good, to sacrifice
something of private interest. It is needless to say how often and how
cruelly she was deceived!

Before setting out on his mission, Lord Malmesbury had a personal
interview with George III., and received from him, verbally, some private
instructions, which are most worthy of preservation. Far too little
justice has been done to the manly intellect of that king. Stubborn he may
have been, and wedded to opinions which, in this age at least, may not be
favourably regarded by the million; but this, at least, we can fearlessly
say--that every thought, every sentiment, every action of his life, bore
the impress of a high and noble mind--that he was an Englishman in the
best sense of the word, bold, and resolute, and sincere; and those who
value the free and just constitution of this country and its 

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