← catalogue

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

by Various · English · Gutenberg #43354 · 677,145 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850

Author: Various


        
Release date: July 30, 2013 [eBook #43354]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43354

Credits: Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Library of Early Journals.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 67, NO. 416, JUNE 1850 ***

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCCXVI.        JUNE, 1850.         VOL. LXVII.




CONTENTS.


  LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS,                                       641

  THE HUNGARIAN JOSEPH,                                       658

  MY PENINSULAR MEDAL. BY AN OLD PENINSULAR. PART VII.,       661

  A MONTH AT CONSTANTINOPLE,                                  679

  MADAME SONTAG AND THE OPERA,                                688

  THE GREEN HAND--A "SHORT" YARN. PART X.,                    701

  PALACE THEATRICALS. A DAY-DREAM,                            722

  THE QUAKER'S LAMENT,                                        733

  THE GREAT PROTECTION MEETING IN LONDON,                     738

  INDEX,                                                      783


EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. _To whom all communications (post paid) must
be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.




BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.


  NO. CCCCXVI.      JUNE, 1850.      VOL. LXVII.




LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS.[1]

  [1] _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, edited by THOMAS CARLYLE. No. I. The
  Present Time. No. II. Model Prisons. No. III. Downing Street. No.
  IV. The New Downing Street. London: 1850.


It is nothing unusual, in this wayward world of ours, to find men
denouncing, with apparent sincerity, that very fault which is
most conspicuous in themselves. How often do we detect the most
quarrelsome fellow of our acquaintance, the Hotspur of his immediate
circle, uttering a grave homily against intemperance of speech, and
rebuking for some casual testiness a friend, whose general demeanour
and bearing give token of a lily-liver? What more common than to
hear the habitual drunkard railing at the sin of inebriety, and
delivering affecting testimony against the crying iniquity of the
ginshop? We have listened to discourses on the comeliness of honesty,
and the degrading tendencies of mammon-worship, from gentlemen
who, a few hours before, had given private instructions to their
brokers to rig the market, and who looked upon George Hudson as the
greatest ornament of the age. Cobden mounts the platform to propose
a motion in favour of universal peace and brotherhood, and, by way
of argument, suggests the propriety of crumpling up the empire of
the Russias, like the sheet of white paper which trembles in his
omnipotent hand. He is seconded by a Quaker.

Mr Thomas Carlyle has, of late years, devoted a good deal of
his leisure time to the denunciation of shams. The term, in his
mouth, has a most extended significance indeed--he uses it with
Catholic application. Loyalty, sovereignty, nobility, the church,
the constitution, kings, nobles, priests, the House of Commons,
ministers, Courts of Justice, laws, and lawgivers, are all alike,
in the eyes of Mr Carlyle, shams. Nor does he consider the system
as of purely modern growth. England, he thinks, has been shamming
Isaac for several hundred years. Before the Commonwealth it was
overridden by the frightful Incubus of Flunkeyism; since then, it
has been suffering under Horsehair and Redtapism, two awful monsters
that present themselves to Mr Carlyle's diseased imagination,
chained at the entrances of Westminster Hall and Downing Street.
Cromwell, perhaps, was not a sham, for in the burly regicide brewer
Mr Carlyle discerns certain grand inarticulate strivings, which
elevate him to the heroic rank. The gentlemen of the present age,
however, are all either shams or shamming. The honourable Felix
Parvulus, and the right honourable Felicissimus Zero, mounted
respectively upon "desperate Sleswick thunder-horses"--M'Crowdy the
political economist--Bobus--Flimnap, Sec. Foreign Department--the
Right Honourable Minimus, and various other allegorical personages,
intended, we presume, to typify carnal realities, are condemned as
Solemn Shams, Supreme Quacks, Phantasm Captains, the Elixir of the
Infatuated, and Able-Editor's Nobles.

It is natural to suppose that an individual who habitually deals in
such wholesale denunciation, and whose avowed wish is to regenerate
and reform society upon some entirely novel principle, must be a man
of immense practical ability. The exposer of shams and quackeries
should be, in his own person, very far indeed above suspicion of
resembling those whom he describes, or tries to describe, in language
more or less intelligible. If otherwise, he stands in imminent
danger of being treated by the rest of the world as an impertinent
and egregious impostor. Now, Mr Thomas Carlyle is anything but a
man of practical ability. Setting aside his style for the present,
let us see whether he has ever, in the course of his life, thrown
out a single hint which could be useful to his own generation, or
profitable to those who may come after. If he could originate any
such hint, he does not possess the power of embodying it in distinct
language. He has written a history of the French Revolution, a
pamphlet on Chartism, a work on Heroes and Hero-worship, and a sort
of political treatise entitled _Past and Present_. Can any living man
point to a single practical passage in any of these volumes? If not,
what is the real value of Mr Carlyle's writings? What is Mr Carlyle
himself but a Phantasm of the species which he is pleased to denounce?

We have known, ere now, in England, political writers who,
single-handed, have waged war with Ministers, and denounced the
methods of government. But they were men of strong masculine
understanding, capable of comprehending principles, and of exhibiting
them in detail. They never attempted to write upon subjects which
they did not understand: consequently, what they did write was well
worthy of perusal, more especially as their sentiments were conveyed
in clear idiomatic English. Perhaps the most remarkable man of this
class was the late William Cobbett. Shrewd and practical, a master
of figures, and an utter scorner of generalisation, he went at once
in whatever he undertook to the root of the matter, and, right or
wrong, demonstrated what he thought to be the evil, and what he
conceived to be the remedy. There was no slip-slop, burlesque, or
indistinctness about William Cobbett. Mr Carlyle, on the other hand,
can never stir one inch beyond the merest vague generality. If he
were a doctor, and you came to him with a cut finger, he would regale
you with a lecture on the heroical qualities of Avicenna, or commence
proving that Dr Abernethy was simply a Phantasm-Leech, instead of
whipping out his pocket-book, and applying a plaster to the wound.
Put him into the House of Commons, and ask him to make a speech on
the budget. No baby ever possessed a more indefinite idea of the
difference between pounds, shillings, and pence. He would go on
maundering about Teufelsdrökh, Sauerteig, and Dryasdust, Sir Jabez
Windbag, Fire-horses, Marsh-jötuns, and vulturous Choctaws, until he
was coughed down as remorselessly as ever was Sir Joshua Walmsley.
And yet this is the gentleman who has the temerity to volunteer his
services as a public instructor, and who is now issuing a series of
monthly tracts, for the purpose of shedding a new light upon the most
intricate and knotty points of the general policy of Great Britain!

Something of this kind we have already witnessed in a neighbouring
country, but never in the like degree. France has had her Flocons
and her Louis Blancs, small, pert, presumptuous animals, chalking
out schemes of social regeneration, organised labour, industrial
regiments, and the like. We do not intend to insinuate that either
of these scribes is entitled to be ranked, for parity of intellect,
with Mr Carlyle, because by doing so we might involve ourselves in
a squabble with some of his benighted admirers. But we say, with
perfect sincerity, that so far as regards political attainments
and information, clear views, and we shall even add common sense,
(distant as that attribute is from any of the parties above named,)
MM. Flocon and Blanc are at least as capable guides as Mr Carlyle
can pretend to be. Something tangible there is, however pernicious
to society, in the propositions of the former--the latter does not
favour us with propositions at all; he contents himself with abusing
men and matters in a barbarous, conceited, uncouth, and mystical
dialect.

One peculiarity there is about the _Latterday Pamphlets_, as
contradistinguished from their author's previous lucubrations, which
has amused us not a little. Mr Carlyle has hitherto been understood
to favour the cause of self-styled Liberalism. His mania, or rather
his maunderings, on the subject of the Protector gained him the
applause of many who are little less than theoretical republicans,
and who regard as a glorious deed the regicide of the unfortunate
Charles. Moreover, certain passages in his _History of the French
Revolution_ tended to strengthen this idea; he had a kindly side for
Danton, and saw evident marks of heroism in the loathsome miscreant
whom, in his usual absurd jargon, he styles "the pale sea-green
Incorruptible," Robespierre. On this ground, his works were received
with approbation by a section of the public press; and we used
to hear him lauded and commended as a writer of the profoundest
stamp, as a deep original thinker, a thorough-paced philanthropist,
the champion of genuine greatness, and the unflinching enemy of
delusions. Now, however, things are altered. Mr Carlyle has got a new
crochet into his head, and to the utter discomfiture of his former
admirers, he manifests a truculent and ultra-tyrannical spirit,
abuses the political economists, wants to have a strong coercive
government, indicates a decided leaning to the whip and the musket
as effectual modes of reasoning, and, in short, abjures democracy!
The sensation caused by this extraordinary change of sentiment has
been as great as if Joe Hume had declared himself a spendthrift. Only
think of such a document as the following, addressed to the sovereign
people!

     "_Speech of the British Prime Minister to the floods of Irish
     and other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or
     stationary, and the general assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the
     Pauper Populations of these Realms._

     "Vagrant Lackalls! foolish most of you, criminal many of you,
     miserable all; the sight of you fills me with astonishment
     and despair. What to do with you I know not; long have I been
     meditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millions
     of you, as I count; so many of you fallen sheer over into the
     abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unit
     that falls is _loading_ so much more the chain that drags
     the other over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted
     millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a-day. They
     hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, crumping themselves
     down, holding on with all their strength, but falling, falling
     one after another; and the chain is getting _heavy_, so that
     ever more fall; and who at last will stand! What to do with you?
     The question, what to do with you? especially since the potato
     died, is like to break my heart!

     "One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered,
     and now know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam
     abroad in this unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices,
     and loading ever heavier the fatal _chain_ upon those who might
     be able to stand; that this of locking you up in temporary Idle
     Workhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal,
     till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and fresh
     stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil;--that this is
     _not_ the plan; and that it never was, or could out of England
     have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

     "Vagrant Lackalls! I at last perceive, all this that has been
     sung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement,
     emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty
     over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon,
     brought upon us by a stern necessity,--but now ordered by a
     sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary
     jargon, I say; made up of sense and nonsense,--sense in small
     quantities, and nonsense in very large;--and, if taken for the
     whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than
     fatal infinite nonsense eternally _untrue_. All men, I think,
     will soon have to quit this, to consider this as a thing pretty
     well achieved; and to look out towards another thing much more
     needing achievement at the time that now is."

Flat burglary as ever was committed! O villain! thou wilt be
condemned into everlasting redemption for this--so say the political
Dogberrys to the gentleman whom they used to applaud. We are not
surprised at their wrath. It _is_ rather hard to be told at this time
of day that ballot-boxes and extension of the suffrage are included
in Mr Carlyle's catalogue of Shams, and that Messrs Thompson, Fox,
and Co., must even submit to the charge of talking unveracities and
owlism. Surely there is some mistake here. Not a whit of it. Mr
Carlyle is in grim earnest, and lays about him like a man. He has
not studied the records of the French Revolution for nothing; and he
is not able to discern in the late Continental revolts any ground
for general congratulation on the improved prospects of mankind.
Such language as the following must sound as a strange rebuke in the
ears of divers organs of the public press, who, not long ago, were
flinging up their caps in ecstasies at the fall of constitutions,
backing up Garibaldi against the Pope, Charles Albert against
Radetsky, the Sicilian insurgents against their Sovereign of Naples,
Kossuth against the Emperor, Von Gagern against Federalism, Ledru
Rollin against Civilisation, and Lamartine against Common-sense.

     "Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following
     event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are
     interests at stake, enough to arrest the attention of all men
     simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their
     voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose
     announcement, more than plentiful, that _now_ the New Era, and
     long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come.
     Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic
     barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven!
     one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in
     such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory
     and psalmody from the universal human throat; drowning for the
     moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that
     you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and
     must resignedly bear your part in the same. The front-wall of
     your wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you to no
     purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen
     prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still
     hang on by the mere beam-ends and coherency of old carpentry,
     though in a sloping direction, and depend there till certain
     poor rusty nails and wormeaten dovetailings give way:--but is it
     cheering, in such circumstances, that the whole household burst
     forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation,
     liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God that now
     they have got a house to their mind?"

Sham-kings may and do exist, thinks Mr Carlyle, but the greatest
unveracity of all is this same Democracy, which people were lately
so very willing to applaud. It must be admitted that our author is
perfectly impartial in the distribution of his strokes. He has no
love for Kings, or Metternichs, or Redtape, or any other fiction
or figure of speech whereby he typifies existing governments: he
disposes of them in a wholesale manner of Impostors and Impostures.
But no more does he regard with affection Chartist Parliament, Force
of Public Opinion, or "M'Crowdy the Seraphic Doctor with his last
evangel of Political Economy." M'Culloch is, in his eyes, as odious
as the First Lord in Waiting, whoever that functionary may be.
Clenching both his fists, he delivers a facer to the Trojan on the
right, and to the Tyrian on the left. Big with the conviction that
all Governments are wrong, as presently or lately constituted, he can
see no merit, but the reverse, in any of the schemes of progress, or
reform, or financial change, which have yet been devised. Here follow
some of his notions with regard to the most popularly prescribed
remedies:--

     "A divine message, or eternal regulation of the Universe, there
     verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair
     of man: faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will
     prosper, and have the whole universe to second it, and carry
     it, across the fluctuating contradictions, towards a victorious
     goal; not following this, mistaking this, disregarding this,
     destruction and wreck are certain for every affair. How find it?
     All the world answers me, 'Count heads'; ask Universal Suffrage
     by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell! Universal Suffrage,
     ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,--I perceive we have got
     into strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half
     century or so, either the Universe or else the heads of men
     must have altered very much. Half a century ago, and down from
     Father Adam's time till then, the Universe, wherever I could
     hear tell of it, was wont to be of somewhat abstruse nature;
     by no means carrying its secret written on its face, legible
     to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinately hiding its
     secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons,
     and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone,
     whose number was not the majority in my time!--Or perhaps the
     chief end of man being now, in these improved epochs, to make
     money and spend it, his interests in the Universe have become
     amazingly simplified of late; capable of being voted on with
     effect by almost anybody? 'To buy in the cheapest market, and
     sell in the dearest:' truly if that is the summary of his
     social duties, and the final divine message he has to follow,
     we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is
     _not_, and never was, or can be? If the Universe will not carry
     on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no
     higher aim,--being still 'a Temple and Hall of Doom! not a mere
     Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universe has
     decided to _reject_ Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and will
     abolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their
     'markets' and them, unless they think of it?--In that case, it
     were better to think of it; and the Democracies and Universal
     Suffrages, I can observe, will require to modify themselves a
     good deal!"

Now, reader, what do you think of all this? We doubt not you are
a good deal puzzled: and an admission to that effect would be no
impeachment of your intellect. Well then, let us try to extract from
these pamphlets of Mr Carlyle some tendency, if not distinct meaning,
which may at least indicate the current of his hopes and aspirations.
Putting foreign governments altogether out of the question, we
gather that Mr Carlyle considers this realm of Britain as most
scandalously misgoverned; that he looks upon Downing Street as an
absolute sewer; that he decidedly yields to Mr Hawes in reverence for
Lord John Russell; that he regards the Protectionists as humbugs;
that he laughs at ballot-boxes, despises extension of the suffrage,
and repudiates, as a rule of conduct, the maxim about the markets,
which indeed, by this time, stinks in every British nostril as yet
unplugged with calico; that he detests the modern brood of political
economists with a cordiality which does him credit; and that he is
firmly convinced that democracy is a thing forever impossible. This
is a tolerably extensive creed, though as yet entirely a negative
one--is there no one point upon which Mr Carlyle will condescend to
be positive?

Yes, one there is; not apparent perhaps to the casual reader, but
detectible by him who studies closely those pages of oracular
thought--a point very important at the present moment, for this
it is--that there is ONE MAN existing in her Majesty's dominions
who could put everything to rights, if he were only allowed to do
so. Who that man is we may possibly discover hereafter. At present
we are hardly entitled to venture beyond the boundaries of dim
conjecture. Nor is it very clear in what way the Unknown, or rather
the Undeveloped, is to set about his exalted mission. Is he to be
minister--or something more? Perhaps Mr Carlyle did not like to be
altogether explicit on such a topic as this; but we may possibly gain
a little light from indirect and suggestive passages. Take this for
example:

     "Alas, it is sad enough that anarchy is here; that we are not
     permitted to regret its being here,--for who that had, for this
     divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish that
     shams of any kind, especially that Sham Kings should continue?
     No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may
     _cease_. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this
     to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it does
     seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his
     pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems
     strange exceedingly, a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox,
     and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long
     since empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
     ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humour call shams,--all
     his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them,
     that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin
     itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the
     East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams?
     Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers
     pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated; and
     to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there,
     did not scrip continue saleable, and the banker pay in bullion,
     or paper with a metallic basis? 'The greatest sham, I have
     always thought, is he that would destroy shams.'

     "Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of
     this epoch, got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and
     down towards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in
     quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly
     set forth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creature
     called man believe generally in his heart that this was the rule
     in this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying could
     there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length
     other than hindrance and destruction for him."

We have been sorely tempted to mark with italics certain portions of
the above extract, but on second thoughts we shall leave it intact.
After applying ourselves most diligently to the text, with the view
of eliciting its meaning, we have arrived at the conclusion, that
it is either downright nonsense, or something a great deal worse.
Observe what he says. It is to be prayed for by all men that Shams
may cease--more especially Sham Kings. But certain solid Englishmen
are not prepared for this. They have been "used to decent forms long
since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humour call shams." They
thought no harm of them. "Kings reigned, what they were pleased to
call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable
members perorated," &c. And those who differ in their estimate of
these things from Mr Carlyle are "almost below the level of lowest
humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood:"--and
their belief is a "scandalous blasphemy." So then, the Monarchy
is a sham, and so are the laws, the Church, and the Constitution!
They are all lies, and in deliberate long-established lying there
can be no help or salvation for the subject! This may not be Mr
Carlyle's meaning, and we are very willing to suppose so; but he
has no title to be angry, were we to accept his words according to
their evident sense. If men, through conceit or affectation, will
write in this absurd and reckless fashion, they must be prepared
to stand the consequences. The first impression on the mind of
every one who peruses the above passage must be, that the author is
opposed to the form of government which is unalterably established
in these kingdoms. If this be so, we should like to know in what
respect such doctrines differ from the pestilential revolutionary
trash which has inundated France and Germany? What kind of overturn
does Mr Carlyle contemplate, for overturn there must be, and that
of the most extensive kind, if his views are ever destined to be
realised? Is it not, perhaps, as melancholy a spectacle as may be,
to find a man of some genius, and considerable learning, attempting
to unsettle the minds of the young and enthusiastic, upon points
distinctly identified with all that is great and glorious in our past
history; and insinuating doctrines which are all the more dangerous
on account of the oblique and uncertain language in which they are
conveyed? Fear God and honour the King, are precepts not acknowledged
by Mr Carlyle as the rudiment and foundation of his faith. He does
not recognise them as inseparably linked together. He would set up
instead some wretched phantom of his own imagination, framed out of
the materials which he fondly supposes to be the attributes of the
heroic character, and he would exalt that above all other authority,
human and divine. He is, if we do not entirely misconstrue the tenor
of these pamphlets, possessed at this moment with the notion of the
advent of another Cromwell, the sole event which, as he thinks, can
save England from being swallowed up by the evils which now beset
her. What these evils are, we shall shortly endeavour to ascertain;
in the mean time, let us keep our attention fixed on this primary
matter of authority.

Cromwellism, then, if we may use the term, is Mr Carlyle's secret
and theory. Cromwellism, is, we know, but another phrase for
despotism; and we shall not put so harsh a construction on the
term as to suppose that it necessarily involves extinguishment of
the royal function. The example of Richelieu is sufficient to save
us from such a violent interpretation, and therefore we may fairly
assume that our author contemplates nothing more than the lodgment
of the executive power in the hands of some stern and inexorable
minister. To this the whole of his multitudinous political ravings,
when melted into intelligible speech, would seem to tend. He has
little regard for Kings, despises Lords, contemns Bishops, scouts
the House of Commons, sneers at Chartists, repudiates the political
economists, spurns the mob, and laughs at the Ten-pounders. There
is here a tolerably extensive range of scorn--we doubt whether it
could have been equalled by the reflective philosopher of the tub.
Now, lest we should be thought harsh in our judgment of Mr Carlyle,
or uncharitable in our method of construing him, let us hear what
he has to say with regard to popular representation. Let us suppose
that monarchy is cleared away as a Sham, or at all events placed
in respectable abeyance, and that there is no farther debate as to
hereditary right or even constitutional sovereignty. Also that we
have got rid of Peers and Bishops. Now, then, as to Congress:--

     "To examine this recipe of a Parliament, how fit it is for
     governing Nations, nay, how fit it may now be, in these new
     times, for governing England itself where we are used to it so
     long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinking
     men, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for
     the small still voices and eternal intimations, across the
     temporary clamours and loud blaring proclamations, are now
     solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorous fact itself; which
     will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand practical decision,
     or redecision of it from us,--with enormous penalty if we decide
     it wrong. I think we shall all have to consider this question,
     one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may
     be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or any
     conceivable kind of suffrages, _is_ the method, then certainly
     let us set about discovering the kind of suffrages, and rest no
     moment till we have got them. But it is possible a Parliament
     may not be the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at
     all, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such
     suffrages is _not_ the method settled by this latter authority,
     then it will urgently behove us to become aware of that fact,
     and to quit such method;--we may depend upon it, however
     unanimous _we_ be, every step taken in that direction will,
     by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from improvement, not
     towards it."

Was there ever so tantalising a fellow? We only know of one parallel
instance. Sancho, after a judicial hearing at Barrataria, sits down
to dinner, but every dish upon which he sets his fancy is whisked
away at the command of a gaunt personage stationed on one side of his
chair, having a wholesome rod in his hand. Fruit, meat, partridges,
stewed rabbits, veal, and olla-podrida, vanish in succession, and
for the removal of each some learned reason is assigned by the
representative of Esculapius. We give the remainder of the anecdote
in the words of Cervantes. "Sancho, hearing this, threw himself
backward in his chair, and, looking at the doctor from head to foot,
very seriously, asked him his name, and where he had studied. To
which he answered: 'My Lord Governor, my name is Doctor Pedro Rezio
de Aguero; I am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, lying between
Caraquel and Almoddobar del Campo on the right hand, and I have taken
my doctor's degree in the University of Ossuna.' 'Then hark you,'
said Sancho in a rage, 'Signor Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero, native
of Tirteafuera, lying on the right hand as we go from Caraquel to
Almoddobar del Campo, graduate in Ossuna, get out of my sight this
instant--or, by the light of heaven! I will take a cudgel, and,
beginning with your carcase, will so belabour all the physic-mongers
in the island, that not one of the tribe shall be left!--I mean of
those like yourself, who are ignorant quacks; for those who are
learned and wise I shall make much of, and honour, as so many angels.
I say again, Signor Pedro Rezio, begone! or I shall take the chair I
sat on, and comb your head with it, to some tune, and, if I am called
to an account for it, when I give up my office, I will prove that I
have done a good service, in ridding the world of a bad physician,
who is a public executioner.'"

Mr Carlyle, though he may not be aware of it, is even such a
political doctor. He despises De Lolme on the British Constitution,
and peremptorily forbids his patient to have anything to do with
that exploded system. "I should like to have," says the pupil
placed under his charge, "in the first place, a well-regulated
constituted monarchy." "'Tis a sham!" cries Signor Doctor Thomas
Carlyle--"Are solemnly constituted Impostors the proper kings of
men? Do you think the life of man is a grimacing dance of apes?
To be led always by the squeak of a paltry fiddle? Away with it!"
The wand is waved, and constitutional monarchy disappears. "Well
then," quoth the tyro, "suppose we have an established Church and a
House of Peers?" "Avaunt, ye Unveracities--ye Unwisdoms," shrieks
the infuriated graduate. "What are ye but iniquities of Horsehair?
O my brother! above all, when thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity,
Brute-mindedness,--yes, there, with or without Church-tithes and
Shovelhat, or were it with mere dungeons, and gibbets, and crosses,
attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while
thou livest and it lives! Instead of heavenly or earthly Guidance for
the souls of men, you have Black or White Surplice Controversies,
stuffed Hair-and-leather Popes;--terrestrial Law-words, Lords, and
Lawbringers organising Labour in these years, by passing Corn Laws.
Take them away!" "What say you to the House of Commons, doctor?"
"Owldom! off with it." "A Democracy?" "On this side of the Atlantic
and on that, Democracy, we apprehend, is for ever impossible." "And
why will none of these things do?" "Because," quoth the graduate
with a solemn aspect, "you perceive we have actually got into the
New Era there has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived
at last;--and it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey
we were led to expect! very much the reverse. A terrible new country
this: no neighbours in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby
monsters (philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyænas,
laughing hyænas, predatory wolves; probably _devils_, blue (or
perhaps blue-and-yellow) devils, as St Guthlac found in Croyland long
ago. A huge untrodden haggard country, the chaotic battlefield of
Frost and Fire, a country of savage glaciers, granite-mountains, of
foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs;--which we shall have our
own ados to make arable and habitable, I think!" What wonder if the
pupil, hearing this pitiable tirade, should bethink him of certain
modes of treatment prescribed by the faculty, in cases of evident
delirium, as extremely suitable to the symptoms exhibited by his
beloved preceptor?

Let us now see what sort of government Mr Carlyle would propose
for our adoption, guidance, and regeneration. Some kind of shapes
are traceable even in fog-banks, and the analogy encourages us to
persevere in our Latter-day researches.

Mr Carlyle is decidedly of opinion that it is our business to
find out the very Noblest possible man to undertake the whole
job. What he means by Noblest is explicitly stated. "It is the
Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest; it is God Almighty's Noble, not
the Court-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must
in some approximate degree be raised to the supreme place; he and
not a counterfeit--under penalties." This _Noblest_, it seems, is
to have a select series or staff of _Noblers_, to whom shall be
confided the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling
the Ignoble. The mysterious process by means of which "the Noblest"
is to be elevated--when he is discovered--is not indicated, but the
intervention of ballot-boxes is indignantly disclaimed. "The Real
Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by
Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in sad
isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil
ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself." There are limits
to human endurance, and we maintain that we have a right to call upon
Mr Carlyle either to produce this remarkable Captain, or to indicate
his whereabouts. He tells us that time is pressing--that we are
moving in the midst of goblins, and that everything is going to the
mischief for want of this Noblest of his. Well, then, we say, where
is this Captain of yours? Let us have a look at him--give us at least
a guess as to his outward marks and locality--does he live in Chelsea
or Whitehall Gardens; or has he been, since the general emigration
of the Stags, trying to govern himself in sad isolation and remote
obscurity at Boulogne? If you know anything about him, out with
it--if not, why pester the public with these sheets of intolerable
twaddle?

As to the Nobler gentry, who are to surround the Noblest, whenever
that Cromwell Redivivus shall appear, there is, in Mr Carlyle's
opinion, no such pitiable uncertainty. They may not, perhaps, be
altogether as plentiful as blackberries on an autumnal hedge, yet
nevertheless they are to be found. "Who are available to your offices
in Downing Street?" quoth he. "All the gifted souls, of every rank,
who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the
true eternal 'divine right' which will never become obsolete, to be
your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them,
or neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Heaven or
disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two
conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you
must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your
natural enemy: which shall it be?" Now, this we call speaking to the
point. We are acquainted, more or less intimately, with some couple
of dozen "noble young souls," all very clever fellows in their way,
who have not the slightest objections to take permanent quarters in
Downing Street, if anybody will make it worth their while; and we
undertake to show that the dullest of them is infinitely superior,
in point of intellect and education, to the present Secretary of
the Board of Control. But are _all_ the noble young souls, without
exception, to be provided for at the public expense? Really, in these
economical times, such a proposal sounds rather preposterous; yet
even Mr Carlyle does not insinuate that the noble young souls will
do any work without a respectable modicum of pay. On the contrary,
he seems to admit that, without pay, they are likely to be found in
the opposition. Various considerations crowd upon us. Would it have
been a correct or a creditable thing for M. Guizot to have placed in
office all the noble young souls of the _National_, simply by way of
keeping them out of mischief? The young nobility connected with that
creditable print certainly did contrive to scramble into office along
the ridges of the barricades, and a very nice business they made of
it when they came to try their hands at legislation. But perhaps Mr
Carlyle would only secure talent of the very highest description.
Well, then, what kind of talent? Are we to look out for the best
poets, and make them Secretaries of State? The best Secretaries of
State we have known in our day, were about as poor poets as could be
imagined; and we are rather apprehensive that the converse of the
proposition might likewise be found to hold good.

     "How sweet an Ovid was in Melbourne lost!"

sighed a Whig critic, commenting with rapture on some of that
nobleman's early lucubrations; and yet, after all, we have no reason
to think that the roll of British bards has been impoverished by
the accidental exclusion. Flesh and blood could not have endured a
second tragedy from Lord John Russell, and yet the present Premier,
despite of Don Carlos, is thought by some partial friends to cut a
tolerably decent figure as a politician. As to that, we shall venture
no opinion. Mr Carlyle, however, is clear for the poets. Listen to
his instance.

     "From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the
     births are by the million, there was born, almost in our own
     memory, a Robert Burns; son of one who 'had not capital for his
     poor moor-farm of twenty pounds a-year.' Robert Burns never had
     the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much as Robert Burns
     deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. For the
     man,--it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim
     vulgar element, but might have been known to men of insight who
     had any loyalty, or any royalty of their own,--was a born-king
     of men: full of valour, of intelligence and heroic nobleness;
     fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean
     mortals, gauging beer. Him no ten-pound Constituency chose, nor
     did any Reforming Premier."

Of course they did not, and why should they? If Burns was alive at
the present moment, in the full glory of his intellect and strength,
would any sensible constituency think of sending him to Parliament?
Of all the trash that Mr Carlyle has ever written--and there is a
good deal of it,--this about Robert Burns, whom he calls the "new
Norse Thor," not being selected as a statesman, is perhaps the most
insufferable. The vocation of a poet is, we presume, to sing; to
pour forth his heart in noble, animating, or touching strains; not
to discuss questions of policy, or to muddle his brains over Blue
Books, or the interminable compilations of Mr Porter. Not so thinks
Carlyle. He would have shut up Burns in Downing Street, debarred him
from the indulgence of verse, and clapped him at the head of a Board
of Poor-law Commissioners. "And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses,
and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not
in the least know or understand, the impious god-forgetting mortals,
that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the
one salvation for the world and for them and all of us." Mr Carlyle
seems to have most original notions on the subject of nature's gifts.
It would be as reasonable to say that, because a nightingale sings
more sweetly than its compeers, it ought to be taken to the house and
trained as a regular falcon.

We are very far indeed from wishing to maintain that literary men
may not be possessed of every quality which is most desirable in
a statesman. But instances of this combination are rare, and on
the whole we think that our "Heroic Intellects," and "noble young
souls," will acquit themselves most creditably by following out
the peculiar bent of their own genius. If they have any political
tendency, it will develop itself in due season; but we protest, most
strenuously, against a Parliament of men of genius, or a cabinet of
literateurs. We have seen quite enough of that in other countries.
A more laughable spectacle, if it had not also been painful, than
the Frankfort chamber, composed very much of suchlike materials, was
never given to public gaze. Old Ludwig Uhland, for all the appearance
he made, had better have stuck to his ballads. In France, Victor
Hugo, whose name is second in literature to none, cuts a most sorry
figure. Even Lamartine is sadly out of his place, though a longer
experience of the Chamber saves him from incurring that constant
ridicule which is the reward of his dramatic brother. Eugene Sue, we
observe, is another noble young soul, who is panting for political
renown. Far be it from us to anticipate his final destiny: as to his
deservings, there can be little difference of opinion.

It cannot be denied that exceptions, and very plausible ones, might
be taken to the very best ministry ever formed, on the score of
talent. Nay, even that ministry known by the distinguishing title
of "all the Talents," could hardly have borne a searching scrutiny.
But, upon the whole, we are by no means convinced that a Cabinet
of uniform brilliancy is a thing to be desired. One light would be
apt to burn emulously beside another. Moreover talent, though an
excellent and admirable quality, is not the only requisite for a
statesman. Barrington was one of the cleverest fellows of his day;
yet it might have been somewhat hazardous to trust him with the
keys of the Treasury. There have been in our own time in the House
of Commons divers noble young souls, of great and undoubted talent,
whose accession to office would by no means have increased the
confidence of the public in Ministers. And there are men _now_ in the
House of Commons who, to a certain extent, agree with Mr Carlyle,
and complain very bitterly that talent is not allowed to occupy its
proper place. At a meeting of the National Reform Association held
on 23d April last, Mr W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, is reported to
have said--"That the great object they had in view was a _social
revolution_, not gained by blood, or disturbing the constitution,
but raising _the aristocracy of intelligence_ and morality to a
place beside the cliques which had ruled the country merely by the
influence of property and wealth.... An open career to talent was
a favourite maxim of Napoleon, who, so far as he had acted on it,
gave the signal for a great change in the public mind. He hoped that
responsibility would assume the place now held by the interests and
privileges of family cliques, and that talent would thus be made true
to its duties and instincts." Here is another Heroic Intellect quite
ready to take office if he can get it, and ready, moreover, to put
the ballot-box and all manner of extended suffrage into motion, in
order that he may attain his object. We have no doubt that Mr Fox
is a very clever person, and also that he is fully imbued with the
same gratifying impression; nevertheless, we are free to confess that
we would rather see him on the outside, than in the interior of the
hen-roost of Downing Street. There may be persons within it who might
as well, on public considerations, be out; but there are also many
without, who, notwithstanding their vaunted breadth of intellect,
should be kept from getting in. Will Mr Fox venture to aver that, in
Britain, there is not an open career for talent? Now, as ever, talent
will not fail in its aim, provided its possessor is endowed with
other qualities and virtues which are requisite to command success by
securing confidence and esteem.

Let us now suppose that Mr Carlyle has succeeded in his quest after
capable men--that he has fairly bolted his Noblest, like an overgrown
badger, from the hole in which he lies presently concealed, and has
surrounded him with a staff of the Nobler, including, we presume, the
author of the Latter-day Pamphlets. Noblest and Nobler must now go to
work in serious earnest, taking some order with the flabby monsters,
laughing hyænas, predatory wolves, and blue, or blue and yellow
devils, which abound in this New Era. What is the first step to be
adopted? We find it in No. I.

We have transcribed already the commencement of the speech to be made
by the new British Minister to the assembled paupers--let us hear a
few sentences--

     "But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have to
     repeat, with sorrow but with perfect clearness, what is plainly
     undeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself admitted, that
     you are of the nature of _slaves_,--or if you prefer the word of
     _nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond servants that can
     find no master on those terms_; which seems to me a much uglier
     word. Emancipation? You have been emancipated with a vengeance!
     Foolish souls! I say the whole world cannot emancipate
     you. Fealty to ignorant unruliness, to gluttonous sluggish
     Improvidence, to the Beerpot and the Devil, who is there that
     can emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole Reform
     Bill, a whole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone."

In this style, Noblest proceeds for a page or two, haranguing the
unlucky paupers upon the principle that poverty is crime; taunting
them with previous doles of Indian meal and money, and informing them
that the Workhouses are thenceforward inexorably shut. Finally, he
announces that they are to be embodied into industrial regiments,
with proper officers; and marched off "to the Irish Bogs, to the
vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into Cannibalism, to
mis-tilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I will lead
you; to the English fox covers, furze-grown Commons, New Forests,
Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch Hillsides, and bare rushy
slopes which as yet feed only sheep." All these are to be tilled by
the slave regiments under the following penalties for recusancy.
"Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labour, disobey the
rules--I will admonish and endeavour to incite you; if in vain, I
will flog you; if still in vain, I will at last shoot you,--and make
God's Earth, and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you.
Understand it, I advise you!" O rare Thomas Carlyle!

The language in which this significant and notable plan is conveyed,
is more original than the plan itself. Other Liberals than Mr
Carlyle have propounded the doctrine that the pauper is a slave of
the state. A century and a half ago, Fletcher of Saltoun wrote a
treatise to that effect, and probably a more determined republican
than Fletcher never stepped in upper leathers. But somehow or other,
although Scotland was then less scrupulous in matters of personal
freedom than the sister kingdom, the scheme was by no means received
with acclamation. Heritable jurisdictions were all very well in
their way, but the idea of reducing the peasantry to the state of
Russian serfdom, was rather more than the free parliament of the
Scots Estates could contrive to stomach. It has been very shrewdly
remarked that there is a wide circle in politics, whereof the
connecting link lies between ultra-liberalism and absolute tyranny.
Mr Carlyle, without meaning it, gives us a fair exemplification of
this in the present pamphlets. Messrs Cobden and Bright afford us an
unmistakeable exemplification of it, in their endeavours to frustrate
the operation of the Ten Hours' Bill. M. Ledru Rollin demonstrated
it in his circulars, on the occasion of the first French republican
election. Liberty is a beautiful term, but its true signification is
unknown to the thorough-paced demagogue.

According to the spirit of the British laws, labour can only be
enforced as the penalty of crime. Mr Carlyle would change this, and
would place the pauper upon precisely the same level as the convict.
We are not prepared to say that some important improvements might
not be made in the practical operation of the poor-laws. We have
read various pamphlets, published in this city and elsewhere, which
strenuously recommend the employment of the able-bodied poor in the
reclaiming of waste lands, and their immediate removal from the
towns. There is, however, much more philanthropy than philosophy in
these schemes. In order to discover a proper remedy, we ought in
every case to direct our primary attention to the nature and origin
of the disease; and this is precisely what our modern philanthropists
neglect to do. People do not crowd into towns of their own choice.
Give them their free will, and the means of subsistence, and one and
all of them will prefer the fresh air, and the sights and sounds
of nature, to the stifling atmosphere, the reeking filth, and the
discordant cries of the city lanes and courts. But no such free will
exists: the balance has not been kept between the country and the
towns. No encouragement has been given to the small manufactures,
which in former times were the support of villages now rapidly
falling into decay. The gigantic power of machinery, set in motion
by large capital, has nearly abolished the hand-loom. Worsted
knitting, yarn-spinning, straw-plaiting, are now rendered almost
profitless occupations. In order to live, the villagers have been
forced to migrate to the towns. We need hardly refer to the earliest
of the Free-trade measures, which, by substituting Spanish barilla
for kelp, threw whole districts of the West Highlands at once into
a state of pauperism. At this moment, a new cause is aggravating
the evil. The stagnation of agricultural employment occasioned by
the abolition of the corn duties, has given a new impetus to rural
emigration; and those who cannot afford their passage to foreign
parts naturally seek refuge in the towns. In another year--if the
experiment should be continued so long--the effects of this last
change will become more evident than they are now. The able-bodied
ploughman is the last of the agricultural class who will suffer.
Those who have already been compelled to change their homes, or to go
upon the parish-list, are the cottars, who derived their subsistence
from the employment given them by resident proprietors. So long
as encouragement to agricultural improvement existed, these poor
people never wanted work; but now the calamitous fall in the price
of produce, and the prospect of a great diminution of rents, have
compelled the landlords to discontinue their improvements, and to
reduce the expenses of their establishments to the lowest possible
limit. In this way, country labour is lessened, and town labour, by
the increasing competition of hands, is cheapened. This is the true
secret of all those startling revelations as to the misery, want,
and positive oppression of the working classes which have lately
appeared in the public journals, and which have engendered in the
minds of many a natural despair as to the destiny of a state in which
such things are suffered to exist. The remedy undoubtedly is neither
an easy nor a speedy one; still, it is by no means to be included
in the category of impossibilities. Machinery, which is the first
great cause of British pauperism, cannot indeed be checked, _but it
may very easily be taxed_. "An acre of land," says a late eminent
writer, "if cultivated, must pay a tithe of its productions to
support the religion of the state, and an equal contribution with any
other property in respect of the poor, county, and church rates; but
mechanical power may exercise its productive faculty _ad infinitum_,
with but a trifling reference or liability to either the one or the
other. The building may be rated at £200, £500, or £1000 a-year, but
it has a power within it which, as compared with landed property
rated at the same amount, will produce a hundredfold as great a
return--a principle in legislation as deteriorating in its operation
on the masses as it is unjust to individuals." That machinery, which
has changed the whole character of our population, and which, in
fact, has been the means of creating this stern reality of pauperism,
is not taxed upon the principle of its productive power. That it
should be so, seems evident upon the smallest reflection. Land is
not taxed on the principle of acreage, but on that of value, which
again depends entirely on production. Why should not the manufactory
be rated in the same manner? It is true that, by such a measure as
this, pauperism could not be removed, but it would be materially
checked, for the fair proportion of the burden would thus be thrown
on the shoulders of those who occasioned it. But nothing effectual
can be done until the nation has finally determined what policy it
is to pursue for the future, and in all time coming, with respect
to native industry. If Free Trade is to go on, pauperism must
continue like a Upas tree to spread and overshadow the land. It is
not within the range of possibility that this can be otherwise. No
church-extension, education, cheap literature, ventilation, sewerage,
public baths, or model lodging-houses, can avail to mitigate the
evil. It is town competition--made triply worse by the operation of
low tariffs--which is driving the working classes to the verge of
the pit of despair; and that town competition is increasing, and
will increase, so long as a fresh daily supply of hands is driven
from country labour. The scheme of the philanthropists to whom we
have referred, is to take the surplusage from the towns and to send
them to the country. This, in the present state of matters, is about
as feasible an undertaking as if we were to try to make a stream of
water run up-hill. Why, the misery and indigence which they seek
to relieve, is not the result of mere idleness, dissipation, or
profligacy--it arises from over-competition in one department of
industry, occasioned by the utter want of profitable employment in
another. There would be no need of industrial regiments to cultivate
the soil, if its cultivation were allowed to be remunerative. But to
set our pauper population at work upon anything which will not repay
private enterprise is mere delusion. We have said this much upon a
topic of the greatest interest, and the utmost importance, because
we are convinced that many persons, who are fully impressed with the
magnitude of the evil, have mistaken the remedy from the want of a
due consideration of the causes from whence that evil has arisen. It
is, however, a subject too large for incidental discussion, and we
shall probably return to it on a future occasion, when we can state
our views without reference to the whimsical vagaries of Mr Carlyle.

So then, the Noblest having made his speech, and wound up with
a significant hint of flogging and pistoling every one of the
unfortunate serfs who shall fail to wield the hoe with becoming
alacrity, what next? Nothing more, in so far as the interests of the
working classes are concerned; at least nothing tangible. Perhaps it
would be absurd to expect anything more. The man who can propound
a scheme to rid us of pauperism, with all its concomitant misery,
would be a greater benefactor to the commonwealth, and to the human
race, than a thousand Howards in one. Mr Carlyle is perhaps the most
strenuous advocate for work that we ever encountered. He would have
made a first-rate taskmaster under the old Egyptian economy. He is,
with great reason, indignant at the state to which our West Indian
Colonies have been reduced by means of Exeter Hall emancipation,
and he scouts emancipation itself as a gross delusion of the fiend.
It is to be regretted that his views have been so late of ripening.
Time was, when a fair and common-sense protest, advanced by a Liberal
philosopher, against the absurdity of attempting to change the hue
of the Ethiopian by a single momentary scrubbing, might have been
of some actual use: now, it is in vain to recommend a protracted
application of the tub. The Noblest, when Mr Carlyle has discovered
him and put him forward, will hardly achieve his ends by using the
following language, even supposing that he wielded the lightning, and
were able to put his threats into execution.

     "Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle, and have
     got the Devil at your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who
     are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of
     the line,--know that my benevolence for you is comparatively
     trifling! What I have of that divine feeling is due to others,
     not to you. A universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection
     Society is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where
     so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want
     of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel that
     _will_ hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for
     him? Better he reach _his_ goal and outgate by the natural
     proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained,
     poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to
     arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred
     times bigger! Benevolent men should reflect on this.--And you
     Quashee, my pumpkin,--(not a bad fellow either, this poor
     Quashee, when tolerably guided!)--idle Quashee, I say you must
     get the Devil _sent away_ from your elbow, my poor dark friend!
     In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No,
     not as the brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please
     to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to contradict your folly
     and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it will not amend. By
     the Eternal Maker! it is on that footing alone that you and I
     can live together. And if you had respectable traditions dated
     from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyond the Deluge, to the
     contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatch the face of
     the world,--behold I, for one individual, do not believe said
     respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins,
     except as things which you, till you grow wiser, will believe.
     Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have
     had of late."

The meaning of this passage is, that the black population of our
colonies ought no longer to be permitted to dwell in perfect
idleness in their provision grounds, rearing pumpkins for their own
consumption, without regard to the cultivation of the sugar-cane.
As we have already remarked, this view is somewhat of the latest;
nevertheless truth, like repentance, can never come too late to
be received. Divorced from the folly of his speech, Mr Carlyle's
sentiment is sound. Twenty millions of British money, wrung from
the hard-taxed labour of our people, were given--for what? Not only
to emancipate the Negroes, but to place them in such a position
that they could effectually control their former masters--our own
colonists and countrymen, to whom our faith was solemnly plighted
for the maintenance of their privileges and commerce. Let it be
granted that slavery was a gross sin, was it incumbent upon us to
elevate the emancipated Blacks so high, that they could control the
labour market--to give them the status of untaxed yoemen, without any
security for the slightest manifestation of their gratitude? It was
more than preposterous that those whose freedom was purchased should
be placed in a better position, and invested with more immunity from
labour and want, than the great bulk of the people who made the
sacrifice in order to secure that freedom; and the result has amply
demonstrated the gross folly of the scheme. There are thousands, nay
millions of men in Britain and Ireland, whose lot, compared with
that of the emancipated Blacks of Jamaica, is one of speechless
misery--and yet their cry to be relieved from a competition which is
crushing them down to the dust, is unheard and uncared for amidst
the din of contending politicians, and the perpetual hum of the busy
proselytes of Mammon.

Here we cannot forbear from quoting a characteristic passage from
Mr Carlyle's tracts. The idea is not original, but the handling
is worthy of Astley's humourist; and we commend it to the special
attention of all free-trading philanthropists.

     "Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us,
     this good while; and has got to such a length as might give rise
     to reflections in men of a serious turn. West Indian Blacks are
     emancipated, and it appears refuse to work. Irish Whites have
     long been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work,
     or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, is
     indispensable) permits them to work. Among speculative persons,
     a question has sometimes risen. In the progress of Emancipation,
     are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to be
     emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle?
     Horses too have 'motives;' are acted on by hunger, fear, hope,
     love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity,
     ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude
     outline of all our human spiritualities,--a rude resemblance to
     us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame.
     The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his private
     feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage;
     no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either,
     or recklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed:--I am
     sure if I could make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant
     a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that
     object!

     "Him, too, you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad result
     to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous,
     unnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing,
     the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged
     horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times.
     'Am I not a horse, and _half_-brother?' To remedy which, so far
     as remediable, fancy--the horses all 'emancipated;' restored to
     their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe;
     turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner!
     So long as grass lasts, I daresay they are very happy, or think
     themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring
     morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager
     expectation in his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this
     day, Black Dobbin; oats in full measure if thou wilt. 'Hlunh!
     No--thank!' snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty
     and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? 'Hlunh!' Gray
     Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare,--O Heaven! she
     too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke
     for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world!--For the sake, if
     not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent
     practice might now cease, and a new and a better one try to
     begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them! The
     fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable.
     To have in this habitable earth no grass to eat,--in black
     Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none;--to
     roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world; and be
     hunted home to Chaos, by the dire watch-dogs and dire hell-dogs,
     with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen
     before! These things are not sport; they are terribly true, in
     this country at this hour."

One other sham, perhaps the greatest which our age has witnessed, Mr
Carlyle accidentally denounces--we mean the late Colonial policy. If
the Whigs have an official aptitude for anything, it is the coopering
up of Constitutions. Is one colony indignant at some outrage or
insult proceeding from headquarters--is another dissatisfied with
the conduct of the Governor, and urgent for his recall--is a third
aggrieved by the commercial vacillation and fiscal measures of a
Parliament in which it has neither voice nor power--the universal
panacea is, Give them a Constitution! We hope the present Ministry
will profit by the following criticism--not volunteered by us, who
neither look upon them with affection, nor entertain any sanguine
hope of their conversion to a patriotic policy,--but penned by a
writer who, not long ago, was considered by their organs as one of
the deepest thinkers of the age.

     "Constitutions for the Colonies," says Mr Carlyle, "are now on
     the anvil; the discontented Colonies are all to be cured of
     their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will cure their
     miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's Cordial to stop their
     whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, may be
     a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in
     these Colonial questions: the singular placidity with which
     the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Crowdy and the
     British moneyed classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever
     interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might
     pretend to have in the decision. 'If you want to go from us,
     go; we by no means want you to stay: you cost us money yearly,
     which is scarce; desperate quantities of trouble too: why
     not go, if you wish it?' Such is the humour of the British
     Statesman at this time.--Men clear for rebellion, 'annexation'
     as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies;
     found newspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there
     comes duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexationism:
     increasing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that;--Majesty's
     Chief Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question;
     Majesty's Chief Governor, in fact, seldom appearing on the scene
     at all, except to receive the impact of a few rotten eggs on
     occasion, and then duck in again to his private contemplations.
     And yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governor ought to
     have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried
     to a great length in some portion of her Majesty's dominions.
     But the question, 'Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty,
     or start rebelling against her? So many as are here for
     rebelling, hold up your hands!' Here is a public discussion of
     a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a
     Governor of Canada? How the Governor of Canada, being a British
     piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere
     pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at first
     view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is
     a constitutional sight like few."

With Earl Grey at the head of the Colonial Department, backed and
assisted by that pattern of candour, Mr Hawes--with Lord Elgin in
Canada, and Lord Torrington in Ceylon--the integrity of the British
empire is certainly exposed to peril. But a more dangerous symptom
is the spirit which of late years has prevailed in the councils of
the nation, and owes its origin to the false views and perverse
unpatriotic doctrines of the political economists. They refuse to
admit into their calculations any element which may not be reduced
to the standard of money-value, and they consider that the worth of
a colony is to be measured solely by the returns of its traffic.
This is a leading dogma of Free Trade; and no doubt, were Free Trade
capable of entire realisation, if the nations of the earth had no
other ambition than to buy and sell, after the manner recommended
by Mr Cobden, and if reciprocity were a thing universal, a good
deal might be urged in its favour. If we apply the same test to
Ireland, we shall find that it is greatly for the advantage of
the people of Great Britain to pronounce in favour of Repeal, and
to allow the young patriots of the Emerald Isle to enter into any
kind of relationship which they may choose with the sympathising
republicans of France. This is Free Trade in its plain, undisguised
form; and to some such consummation as this we must come at last,
by virtue of the grand experiment, should that, like Sir Robert
Peel's temporary Income Tax, be extended to a limitless perpetuity.
At present, in so far as regards the welfare of a great portion of
the inhabitants of the country, it is difficult to perceive what
advantage they derive from the boasted character of Britons, except
the privilege of contributing to the heaviest load of taxation that
was ever laid upon the industry of a people. We acknowledge that the
Free-traders have planned their scheme with consummate adroitness
and dexterity. If their object was, as we believe it was, to sap
those principles of high morality, rectitude, honour, and patriotism,
which carried Great Britain successfully through the dangers of wild
European revolution, anarchy, and war, they could not have hit upon
a better or a surer method. Many a disheartened agriculturist has
lately asked himself, what is the nature of the ties which bind him
imperatively to Britain, when a richer soil and a fairer climate
can be found elsewhere, a home not daily harassed by the knock of
the tax-gatherer, and the London market ever ready to receive the
product of his industry? It is not good that these questions should
arise in the minds of our yeomen, for they are calculated to engender
a train of thoughts very hostile to the maintenance of that credit
which England dare not lose, without forfeiting her reputation, her
fame, her honour, and her sway. The thoughts of the colonies have
long been bent in a similar direction; and we doubt not that many
of them have been amazed to find that, so far from being checked in
their preliminary mutterings of revolt, they have the hearty good
wishes of the Manchester men in dissolving their connection with
the mother country, whenever they may choose to do so. Thus do we
stand at present in our home and colonial relations, the clank of
the constitution hammer resounding from the cooperage, and dull-eyed
Imbecility sitting lazily at the helm.

We must now take our leave of Mr Carlyle, sincerely regretting that
we cannot, with any degree of truth, congratulate him either on the
tone or the character of his late lucubrations. These pamphlets, take
them altogether, are about the silliest productions of the day; and
we could well wish, for his sake, that they had never been compiled.
Very few people, we imagine, will be disposed to wait with confidence
for the avatar of his Noblest and Noblers, such as he has depicted
them. Our faith and hopes lie in a different direction; nor have
we any wish to see a Cromwell at the head of affairs, supported by
a staff of noble young souls, poetical or otherwise, who require
to be bought over for the purpose. Towards the close of his fourth
pamphlet, our author lets drop a hint from which we gather that it
is not impossible that his Noblest may hereafter appear embodied in
the person of Sir Robert Peel. All we shall say on that score is,
that Sir Robert has already had sufficient opportunity vouchsafed him
to exhibit the extent of his qualifications. It is not likely that
the Statesman who, in the eve of life, and enjoying the undiminished
confidence of his Sovereign, finds himself in the House of Commons
without the semblance of a party to support him, can ever make
another desperate rally. It would be difficult to find in the annals
of history any instance of a leading politician who has been so
often trusted, and impossible to find one who has so often abused
that trust. Even Mr Carlyle cannot deny the Unveracities of which
Sir Robert stands convicted; and although he appears to think that
lapses from truth are of so common occurrence as to be venial, we
beg to assure him that his opinion is not the general one, nor is
it altogether creditable to the morality of the man who ventures
to express it. We are sorry to observe that, in the conclusion of
this latter tract, Mr Carlyle has condescended to borrow some hints
from that most eminent master of modern scurrility, the late Daniel
O'Connell. This is, in every respect, to be deplored. Wit is not Mr
Carlyle's forte, and this kind of wit, if wit it be, is, when served
up at second hand, both nauseous and revolting. At a calmer moment,
and on more mature reflection, we feel convinced that Mr Carlyle
will blush for the terms which he has allowed himself to apply to so
eminent a genius as Mr Disraeli; and that he will in future abstain
from testifying his gratitude for a humiliating invitation to dinner
in a shape so abject as that of casting personal and low abuse upon
the political adversaries of his entertainer.

If Mr Carlyle feels that his vocation is political--if the true
spirit of the prophet is stirring within him--he ought to endeavour
in the first place to think clearly, and, in the second, to amend his
style. At present his thoughts are anything but clear. The primary
duty of an author is to have a distinct understanding of the matter
which he proposes to enunciate, for unless he can arrive at that,
his words must necessarily be mystical and undefined. If men are
to be taught at all, let the teaching be simple, and level to the
common capacity; and let the teacher be thoroughly conversant with
the whole particulars of the lesson. We have a strong suspicion that
Cassandra must have been a prophetess reared in the same school
as Mr Carlyle. Her predictions seem to have been shrouded in such
thorough mysticism, that no one gave her credit for inspiration;
and in consequence the warnings which might have saved Troy, were
spoken to the empty winds. Here, perhaps, we ought to guard ourselves
against a similar charge of indistinctness. We by no means intend to
certify that Mr Carlyle is a prophet, or that there is any peculiar
Revelation in these Latter-day Pamphlets which can avert the fall
of Britain, should that sad catastrophe be foredoomed. We simply
wish to express our regret that Mr Carlyle, who may lay claim to
the possession of some natural genius and ability, will not allow
us the privilege of understanding the true nature of his thoughts,
and therefore exposes himself to a suspicion that the indistinctness
lies quite as much in the original conception of the ideas, as in the
language by means of which they are conveyed.

As to his style, it can be defended on no principle whatever.
Richter, who used to be his model, was in reality a first-rate
master of language and of verbal music; and although in some of
his works, he thought fit to adopt a quaint and abrupt manner of
writing, in others he exhibited not only great power, but a harmony
which is perhaps the rarest accomplishment of the rhetorical artist.
His "Meditation on a Field of Battle," for example, is as perfect
a strain of music as the best composition of Beethoven. But in Mr
Carlyle's sentences and periods, there is no touch or sound of
harmony. They are harsh, cramped, and often ungrammatical; totally
devoid of all pretension to ease, delicacy, or grace. In short,
we pass from the Latter-day Pamphlets with the sincere conviction
that the author as a politician is shallow and unsound, obscure and
fantastic in his philosophy, and very much to be reprehended for his
obstinate attempt to inculcate a bad style, and to deteriorate the
simple beauty and pure significancy of our language.




THE HUNGARIAN JOSEPH.


The following poem is intended to commemorate a very interesting
episode, which lately enlivened the deliberations of the National
Reform Association. The usual knot of Parliamentary orators having
somewhat cavalierly left the delegates to their own rhetorical
resources, on the third day of conference, and the conversation
having taken a doleful turn, owing to the paucity of subscriptions,
the Chairman, Sir Joshua Walmsley, thought fit to enliven the spirits
of the meeting by the introduction of an illustrious visitor. The
following extract from the morning papers will explain the incident,
as well as the commemorative verses:--

     "The Chairman (Sir J. Walmsley) here left the platform, and
     shortly afterwards returned, leading a short, stout, elderly,
     intelligent-looking gentleman, with a very formidable mustache
     and bushy beard of snowy whiteness, whose appearance created
     considerable excitement in the audience, and gave rise to great
     satisfaction in the minds of several delegates, who were under
     the impression that they beheld Mr Muntz, the hon. member for
     Birmingham, whose beard is so well known by report to the
     Liberal party.

     "The CHAIRMAN.--Gentlemen, you observed that I left the platform
     for a short time, and returned with a gentleman who is now near
     me. It is no other than the Joseph Hume of the Hungarians. (Loud
     cheers, followed by cries of 'Name, name.')

     "The chairman did not appear able to afford the desired
     information, and the venerable Hungarian financier wrote his
     name on a slip of paper, from which Sir Joshua Walmsley read
     aloud what sounded like 'Eugene Rioschy.' (Cheers; and voices,
     'We don't know it now,' 'I can't tell my wife;' and laughter.)


I.

    No, no! 'tis false! it cannot be!
      When saw a mortal eye
    Two suns within the firmament,
      Two glories in the sky?
    Nay, Walmsley, nay! thy generous heart
      Hath all too wide a room:
    We'll not believe it, e'en on oath--
      There's but one Joseph Hume!


II.

    Unsay the word so rashly said;
      From hasty praise forbear!
    Why bring a foreign Pompey here
      Our Cæsar's fame to share?
    The buzzard he is lord above,
      And Hume is lord below,
    So leave him peerless on his perch,
      Our solitary Joe!


III.

    He may be known, that bearded wight,
      In lands beyond the foam;
    He may have fought the fiery fight
      'Gainst taxes raised at home.
    And hate of kings, and scorn of peers,
      May rankle in his soul:
    But surely never hath he reached
      "The tottle of the whole."


IV.

    Yes, he may tell of doughty deeds,
      Of battles lost and won,
    Of Austrian imposts bravely spurned
      By each reforming Hun.
    But dare he say that he hath borne
      The jeers of friend and foe,
    Yet still prosed on for thirty years
      Like our transcendant Joe?


V.

    Or hath he stood alone in arms
      Against the guileful Greek,
    Demanding back his purchase-coin
      With oath, and howl, and shriek?
    Deemed they to hold with vulgar bonds
      That lion in the net?
    One sweep of his tremendous paw
      Could cancel all their debt.


VI.

    How could we tell our Spartan wives
      That, in this sacred room,
    We dared, with impious throats, proclaim
      A rival to the Hume?
    Our children, in their hour of need,
      Might style us England's foes,
    If other chief we owned than one,
      The member for Montrose.


VII.

    O soft and sweet are Cobden's tones
      As blackbird's in the brake;
    And Oldham Fox and Quaker Bright
      A merry music make;
    And Thompson's voice is clear and strong,
      And Kershaw's mild and low,
    And nightingales would hush their trill
      To list M'Gregor's flow;


VIII.

    But Orpheus' self, in mute despair,
      Might drop his magic reed
    When Hume vouchsafes, in dulcet strains,
      The people's cause to plead.
    All other sounds of earth and air
      Are mute and lost the while;
    The rasping of a thousand saws,
      The screeching of the file.


IX.

    With him we'll live, with him we'll die,
      Our lord, our light, our own;
    We'll keep all foemen from his face,
      All rivals from his throne.
    Though Tory prigs, and selfish Whigs,
      His onward course assail.
    Here stand a hundred delegates,
      All joints of Joseph's tail.


X.

    Ho, there! remove that hairy Hun
      With beard as white as snow;
    We need no rank reformers here
      To cope with honest Joe.
    Not Muntz, with all his bristly pride,
      From him our hearts can wean:
    We know his ancient battle-cry--
      "Shave close, my friends, and clean!"




MY PENINSULAR MEDAL.

BY AN OLD PENINSULAR.





PART VII.--CHAPTER XVII.


Although I have not specified every place at which we halted, or
through which we passed, it may be proper to state that we arrived
in due course at St Sever, which was distant only one day's march
from the actual headquarters of the British army, Aire on the Adour.
Here Pledget interposed his professional authority, and decided that
neither Mr Chesterfield nor Jones must proceed farther. They both
remained, therefore, under surgical treatment at St Sever. Pledget
and Gingham, deeming the road now safe, pushed forward to Aire,
leaving the cart to follow with the convoy. At the same time, our
numbers experienced a still more considerable diminution. Our cavalry
escort, also, received orders to push forward, and started before
us in high spirits, with the prospect of immediate operations. The
convoy was, accordingly, left with only the infantry as a guard,
under Corporal Fraser.

Before starting for this our last day's march I saw both our wounded
men, neither of them well pleased at being left behind. As to Jones,
I was getting used to him, and could have better spared a better man.
I found him confined to his bed, in a house full of sick and wounded;
very much down in the mouth, fractious, a little feverish, and not at
all satisfied with hospital diet. "Please, sir, the doctor don't not
allow me a drop of sperrits, sir; no, nor wine nayther, sir; nothing
whatsomdever to drink, only powders, sir."

"Powders to drink, Jones? What d'ye mean, man?"

"Please, sir, what I means is powders, sir. Hope no offence, sir.
Doctor calls 'em everfizzing powders, sir."

From the Hon. Mr Chesterfield I parted with unfeigned regret. I
believe he had won the respect of the whole party. His manner
was a little stiff and aristocratical at first. But he mended on
acquaintance; and, in everything connected with duty, he was both
highly competent, and pleasant to act with. We got off in good time,
and proceeded on our march as on former days, our road carrying us
through two or three villages.

In passing one of these, I pulled up to make some trifling purchase;
and, when I came out of the shop, found our whole convoy and escort
halted. "How's this, Fraser? Why are we not getting on?"

"Orders for the whole party to halt have just arrived from
headquarters, sir."

"Indeed! Who brought them?"

"A gentleman belonging to your department, sir."

I rode forward to the head of the column; and there, sure enough,
at the entrance of the village inn, saw a uniform resembling my
own. In fact, I recognised not only the coat, but the wearer of it,
though he did not recognise me. He was a foreigner--Westphalian,
Saxon, Bohemian, High Dutch, Low Dutch, or something of that sort;
had served at Lisbon as clerk in a civil department attached to the
British army; and, in some situation of trust and responsibility,
had incurred suspicions of an awkward kind. He had in consequence
been suspended. The matter was referred to the home authorities,
and the result was his dismissal. This was what I knew of him. As
to his having subsequently obtained employment in our department,
of this I knew nothing. And it did appear rather curious that a
person "disadvantageously known," as he was, should have gained a
footing where trustiness was so indispensable. Yet there he stood in
full fig, enormous staff-hat, and all the departmental toggery. He
addressed me in French, with a tone of authority.

"Why have you come this road? You have followed the wrong route.
Your way was by the left bank of the river."

"I came by the high road, of course. The maps show no route by the
other side. All the troops take this way, and of course I followed
their example."

"Nothing of the kind. They all take the other, which is shorter by
nearly a league. Besides, you should not have come by St Sever at
all. I am sent from headquarters, to show you the right direction."

"Very good. Of course, then, you bring written orders."

"No written orders are requisite. My directions are, to turn you into
the other route. This, in fact, is not safe. You will therefore cross
at the ford, and proceed to headquarters along the other bank of the
river."

"If, as you say, the other is the usual route, of course they must
suppose at headquarters that I have taken it. Very droll they should
have sent you to turn me back from this, then."

"Such were my orders. You will proceed by the other road."

"Allow me to inquire," said I, "were your orders from our own
department, or from the Quartermaster-General's?" That was a poser;
for, if they came from our own, the question would at once arise,
Could any such authority enjoin departure from a regular route, given
in writing? If, on the other hand, it had been deemed expedient, from
circumstances grave and unforeseen, to send me fresh instructions
from the higher authority, the bearer of them would probably come
direct from the same quarter. He hesitated--looked rather at a loss.

"The directions," said he at length, "come from your own department,
of course. I was ordered to ride off, make you come by the other
road, and accompany you to the end of the march."

"I had much rather march by the present route. Rather doubt whether I
should be justified in leaving it."

"Oblige me," said he, in an altered tone, "by just stepping into the
house with me. I am charged with a communication of some importance."

Leaving Sancho in care of an attendant, I followed him into the
Auberge. "Have the goodness," said he, "to step into that apartment.
Excuse me for one moment. I must just speak to the landlord."

I entered. It was an apartment on the ground floor, with a table laid
for two--by no means a disagreeable surprise on a march. On the table
were already placed the bread, and the bottle of wine uncorked--sure
signs, in a French inn, that dinner will soon make its appearance.
"Really, he seems a very good sort of a fellow, after all. This is
just the way with the lads of our department. Suspicion be hanged! my
first impressions were unjust."

He entered; and the garçon followed with the soup. "Ah," said my new
acquaintance, "now be quick with the other things. Come, Mons. d'Y--,
this is your longest day's march; you must be hungry, no doubt. Come,
sit down; take some soup. We shall soon be better acquainted. Excuse
this little _ruse_."

"Readily," said I; "and you must excuse my quitting you this instant."

A glance from the window had effected a second revolution in my
sentiments. Looking out before I sat down, I discovered that the
convoy and escort were off! Far down the street, I perceived the last
of them disappearing along the road!--walked straight towards the
door. He was too quick for me; locked it, and placed himself with
his back to it, pocketing the key. "No, no, Mons. d'Y--," said he;
"you are my guest. You really must not depart till after dinner. It's
absurd. For you I ordered it. Would you hurry away without taking a
mouthful?"

Had I removed him by force, I must still have forced the door; and
that might have brought upon me the whole establishment, and caused
further delay. I therefore took three steps from the door to the
window, threw it open, and soon found myself on the _pavé_, which
was higher than the floor of the apartment. To my surprise, Sancho
also had disappeared! My first impression was, that he had gone on
with the convoy, and I was about to follow on foot;--thought it best,
though, to look in the stables first. There he was, sure enough. The
attendant had already taken off his saddle, and was about to remove
his bridle. "What are you about there, my friend? I requested you to
hold him at the door."

"Monsieur, the other English officer came out after you had entered,
and desired me to bring him here, take off his saddle and bridle, and
give him some _orge_."

I whipped on the saddle again in no time, mounted, and soon overtook
the escort. "Corporal Fraser, why did you go on?"

"I understood that we went on by your orders, sir."

"My orders? Nothing of the sort."

"I am very sorry if I have done wrong, sir. The gentleman who joined
just now came out from the inn, and directed us to proceed. Said you
would follow immediately. As he wears the same uniform, I supposed a
command from him was the same as one from yourself, sir. Indeed, he
said it was your order."

"He received no order from me; and he had no business to send you on
without."

"Shall I halt the party, sir?"

"No, no; keep on. It was a mistake our stopping at all."

As we passed out of the village, I began to ruminate upon what
had just occurred. First of all, there was the character of this
gentleman, well known at Lisbon, and, I supposed, at headquarters.
Then there was the improbability of his story, to say nothing of one
or two little contradictions. Then, it was clear, he had attempted to
separate me from the convoy, and to prevent my following it. Then,
too, his conduct was doubly incorrect; in taking upon himself, first,
to halt the party, secondly, to send it on. Item, in the course of
our short interview, he had, it appeared to me, told as many fibs as
could well be got into the given time. Moreover, he had attempted
to divert us from our route, which was just what Hookey did; and,
what made it very remarkable, Hookey and he both wished us to turn
aside in the same direction, namely, by the left bank of the river,
when the regular route was by the right. Something was evidently
not straight. For all that, though, the manner of this intelligent
individual was so very easy and impudent, and he seemed so bent upon
accomplishing his purpose, whatever it might be, that I felt a strong
impression we had not seen the last of him, especially as he appeared
utterly unconscious that I knew his previous history.--"Corporal
Fraser!"

"What's your pleasure, sir?"

"If that person comes up, I wish you to keep near me. Take no notice;
but be prepared, if I direct, to arrest him."

The corporal looked a little queer. "Very good, sir," said he; "upon
receiving your _orders_," (he intoned the word _orders_,) "I shall be
ready to do so."

"In case of my giving you an order to that effect, I, of course, am
responsible, not you. If I turn round, give you a look, and say,
'Fraser,' you will consider that you have got your directions."

"Very good, sir; it shall be done."

My anticipations proved correct. Mounted on what had very much the
appearance of a French post-horse, my would-be entertainer presently
came up at a laborious canter. The moment he got alongside, he began
to expostulate. Was profoundly grieved that I had declined his
hospitality. It was a long day's march, the longest from Passages to
headquarters. "A little refreshment would have recruited your forces,
Mons. d'Y--."

"I cannot separate from the convoy and escort. As you thought fit to
send them on, I had no choice but to follow."

"Well, pardon me, if I have done wrong," said he. "My intentions
were pure, at any rate. Positively, though, you must not follow this
road. The way to the ford is now close at hand. Come, let me be your
conductor."

"Were you not at Lisbon last autumn?" said I.

"Were you?" said he, in a tone of alarm.

"I was. And though you do not know me, I know you."

"Nothing to my prejudice, I feel convinced." (Still more uneasy.)

"Very well. All will be cleared up at headquarters. Of course, you
will accompany us."

"At any rate," replied he, anxious to back out, "I hope to have the
pleasure of meeting you there."

"No, no," said I; "you go with us."

By this time he was decidedly in a fidget, and began to hang behind.
Just then we came suddenly to a lane, branching off to the right.
This was probably the very direction he had wished me to take; though
whether it really led to a ford over the Adour, or to what it led,
was a different question. Before I was aware of his design, he turned
sharp in that direction; and, when I looked after him, he was already
some distance down the lane, digging his heels into the old poster's
sides. This operation had put the gay old stager into something as
much like a gallop as you can hope to get out of a French post-horse.
He was off! Ah! our cavalry had left us too soon. I looked round, and
shouted "Fraser!"

Fraser, prepared for my order, and anxious to have all ready
for executing it, had three men marching at hand, with loaded
firelocks. Three balls whistled down the lane. But it was a waste
of his Majesty's powder and shot; the fugitive escaped unhurt.
Not so, though, the lively old post-horse. His screwed tail, his
stradding hind-legs, and his action--for a moment prancing, not
progressive--gave evident indications that the luckless beast had not
got off so easily as his rider. Then, in an agony of apprehension
lest his scutcheon should receive a second totem, he plunged forward
again at his previous rate, and soon disappeared down the lane.
Pursuit was out of the question, for Sancho's best pace was an
up-and-down; even a French horse was too fast for a French pony: so
both horse and horseman got off.

My first care, on reaching headquarters, was to make inquiry
respecting this new member of our department. You will hardly need to
be informed, that there was no such person belonging to us. The only
question was, how did he get the uniform coat? It certainly was not
that of the corresponding department of the French service, which not
only rejoiced in the appropriate embellishment of a key embroidered
on the collar, but differed in other respects from ours. Some said
he must have procured the coat at Lisbon. Some said he had got it
made for the occasion. A gentleman of the Commissariat suggested that
he had picked up a coat at headquarters, cast off when some of us
had been promoted. But the worst of it was, our department couldn't
recollect when any such cheering event had taken place.

As both Hookey, and this more recent adviser, strenuously insisted
on our proceeding to headquarters by the country to the south-east
of the Adour, and as Hookey particularly inculcated the duty and
necessity of our passing through Hagetmau, which lies a few miles to
the south of St Sever, it is curious to discover, at this interval
of time, that the very neighbourhood indicated by these two talented
individuals as offering us the best route, was precisely the most
unsafe. I reached headquarters on the 17th of March. The next day
the Commander-in-Chief (_vide_ Gurwood) writes to Sir J. Hope,--"I
use the cipher, because I understand the enemy were at Hagetmau
_yesterday_." That's just where we should have been on the same
day, had I followed Hookey's advice; so that we should have walked
right into them; and that, no doubt, was what Hookey intended. But
further, by a letter from the Commander-in-Chief to the Mayor of
Hagetmau, dated 21st March, we learn that, on the 18th, there was in
that place an affair of partisans. It was, therefore, a very eligible
neighbourhood to which our two friends wished to introduce us.

When I reached headquarters at Aire with the convoy and escort, a
forward movement of the troops appeared to have already commenced.
Firing was heard at hand; and the operation was attended with rather
more noise than those in which we were engaged the day before. A
great army advancing upon the enemy, like the chariot of Jove,
cannot move without thunder. I know not how far the arrival of the
treasure which we brought up contributed to this movement. Suffice it
to say, I find our Commander-in-Chief writing to Sir J. Hope, March
18--"I waited quietly till all my means coming up were arrived, and
I am now moving upon them in earnest." Ah, Hookey! you played great
stakes, and a deep game, too. But it wouldn't do.

The hour of my arrival, though, was signalised by that event, of all
others, which men chronicle as the most important of their lives--an
interview with a great man. In my case, it was a _very_ great man.
To be sure, he didn't speak to me. But what does that signify? I
spoke to him. On arriving with the treasure at the office of our
own department, I was directed to go forthwith and report myself at
the office of the Quartermaster-General. I went, and found it in a
very humble mansion. On entering the passage, found a door to the
right, where I was desired to go in. Saw a long table by the window,
with two or three officers writing. Before the fire stood ANOTHER.
He was drenched with rain; all in a steam, like a hot potato; lost
in thought; looked awful; a middle-aged and remarkably well-built
man, with a striking--nay, more than striking--with a _particular_
expression of countenance; such a face as I had never seen before;
a very keen eye--the eagle's, that can look at the sun, would have
quailed before his; and oh, what a beak! I felt rather at a loss. No
one did me the honour to notice my _entrée_. No one took any notice;
no one vouchsafed me a look! I stood, for a moment, in silence.
As all the others were hard at work, and one was doing nothing, I
of course concluded that he was the Head of the Department; and,
with crude atrocity, addressed him--though with a queer kind of
feeling, which I myself didn't exactly understand--"Are you the
Quartermaster-General, sir?"

No reply on his part--no look, no movement of the head, no change of
countenance! He merely raised his arm, and pointed to the table. By
that act alone he indicated a consciousness of being spoken to; and
had he, the next moment, been called upon to describe the speaker,
why, I firmly believe he couldn't have done it. I then turned towards
the table. One of the writers rose from his seat in silence, walked
me out into the passage, made an inquiry or two, and walked in again.

The next day I was once more on the march, riding side by side with a
brother clerk. "There he is!" said he. I now beheld, on horseback--a
regular centaur, part of his horse--that same distinguished
individual whom, the day before, I had so unceremoniously addressed,
as he stood reeking before the fire, while great guns were banging
right and left, the troops advancing, and he at the best of all
possible points to direct and control the vast machinery that he had
set in motion.

Life at headquarters proved to be much what I had anticipated. In
attending the movements of the army, we officials had sometimes very
little work; sometimes, especially when the troops remained a few
days stationary, a great deal. While they moved from day to day,
we seldom had much to do but to follow them, and make ourselves as
comfortable as we could at the end of the day's march. The military
movements from Aire to Toulouse were curious. From Aire we went
right down to the south, as far as Tarbes and Vic Bigorre--a course
which almost brought us back again to the Spanish frontier and the
foot of the Pyrenees; then up again to the Garonne and Toulouse.
A sailor would have called it tacking. Of course, one could not
follow even an advancing and victorious army without undergoing some
hardships. On one occasion, after much previous fatigue, in passing
a wild and mountainous district, we were suddenly overtaken by a
snow-storm. While nodding on Sancho's back from sheer exhaustion,
I was caked on the left, from head to foot, with snow, which first
began to melt with the warmth of the body, then froze hard with the
keenness of the wind. The next moment the sun blazed forth, to the
right, with scorching heat. Thus roasted on one side, and frozen on
the other, I dozed and nodded on, with just sufficient consciousness
to form virtuous resolutions of knocking off the snow, but without
sufficient energy to carry them into effect. After all, though, a
civilian following the army, supplied pretty regularly with rations
for himself, pony, and servant--tolerably sure, too, of a good
billet at night, and generally provided with a few dollars, easily
convertible into francs--has no business to talk of hardships. The
real hardships of a campaign fall on the marching officers and
privates. What they endure is past conception. Gingham and I were
much together, and carried out our plan of campaigning in company
as far as circumstances would allow. At headquarters, also, I fell
in again with my old acquaintance and fellow-voyager, Mr Commissary
Capsicum, who gloried in giving good dinners. He was never better
pleased than when I accepted his invitations, but always gave me a
good blowing-up if I dined with Gingham in preference.

Amongst all my reminiscences of campaigning, none are more vividly
impressed upon my mind, than the reminiscence of a campaigning
appetite, which I am persuaded is altogether extraordinary, and a
thing _per se_. Did you ever visit Cintra? Now there's the Cintra
appetite, and a very good one it is, too. This, also, has its
distinguishing feature--namely, that on the one hand, while you are
riding about (or, if a sensible person, going on foot, exploring,
climbing, scrambling) amongst rocks, and peaks, and splendid scenery,
the pleasing idea of the dinner that will be ready for you, on
returning to your hotel, blends itself, by a gentle amalgamation,
with every discovery, with every prospect; and while, on the other
hand, the said dinner is actually on the table before you, and under
discussion, the splendid scenes you have been witnessing, like
dissolving views, pass in procession before your mind. Thus your
dinners are romantic, while your rambles are appetising.

Then, again, there's the nautical appetite, which comes on you like
a giant, when you have mastered the qualms of the first few days at
sea. The nautical appetite, also, has its peculiar feature, which is
this--that the intervals of time between one meal and another appear
so awfully long. That's because you've nothing to do. But--

The campaigning appetite, I say, differing from both these, has
also its characteristic proper to itself--namely, that there never
is a moment when you are unprepared to eat; the instant you have
done, you are ready to begin again. You sit down, at headquarters,
to a breakfast where the table groans with various and abundant
provender--tea, coffee, chocolate, bread, eggs, cold meat, ham,
tongue, sausages sublimed with garlic, enormous rashers of bacon,
beefsteaks, not to name knick-knackeries innumerable, and something
short as a calker. You do ample justice--oh, haven't you made a
famous breakfast? and in half-an-hour you are ready for another! If,
having stowed away breakfast for two, you happen to pop in upon a
friend who is taking his, you join him as a matter of course. And,
my dear madam, what makes it so peculiar in my case is, I was always
such a very small eater. The only exception to this perpetuity of a
campaigning appetite, is when something extraordinary is going on in
front--a battle, or what looks just like it, a skirmish. Then, for a
while, you forget that you are hungry. The stomach is still equally
in a state of preparation to receive and digest food. But, for the
nonce, you ignore the fact; the wolf lies dormant. Oh, how savage
he wakes up, though, when the fighting is over, and you all at once
remember that you haven't dined. In short, with plenty always at
command, with no real want unsupplied, I never suffered so much from
hunger as when campaigning, and I never ate so often. Your only plan
is this: Whenever the opportunity presents itself, _take in stock_.
Breakfast, as if you had no prospect of a dinner; dine, as if you had
not breakfasted.

Generally, then, at headquarters, I fared as Gingham fared; and to
say that is to say enough. But it was not always so. His engagements,
or my duties, sometimes made a separation; and then I learned my
loss. Once, when I was so circumstanced, my servant came home with
disconsolate looks and a melancholy report: "To day, no beefy,
senhor." At that moment, I could have eaten my gloves! Went with him
myself; was politely received by a gentleman in a blue apron with a
steel dangling in front. "What, no beef to-day?"

"Oh yes, bless your heart. Plenty, sir."

"Well, here's the order. Let's have some, then. Where is it?"

"There it is, sir."

"Don't see any. Where?"

"Why, it's in that 'ere pen, sir. Only you jest look in through the
gateway. Wherry find beastesses, I calls 'em. In two hours we shall
begin to kill."

He pointed to a large stone enclosure, in which stood a captive herd
of horned cattle. An anxious bullock rested his chin upon the wall,
and, breathing a misty sigh, with melancholy countenance looked full
in mine!

At another time I had been riding on in front, and was coming home at
a rambling pace through lanes and by-paths, when suddenly the wolf
returned--I was appallingly hungry--must eat or faint. Contrived
to ride on to a lone cottage--tapped at the door. It was opened by
a very respectable quiet-looking man; old gentleman, I ought to
say, for such he was, both in aspect and manners. His garb, indeed,
was homely; but his air was superior, his address manly and simple
with a certain finish, and his carriage perfectly upright. He
courteously invited me to enter; the door led at once into a large
room, which was in fact the whole ground-floor of the cottage. A
little preliminary chat sufficed to inform him what I was, and me
what he was--namely, an old soldier, who had got his discharge, and
was living in retirement. No one came to attend on him; a regular
old campaigner, he did for himself. I soon came to the point--was in
a state of inanition--would pay with alacrity for anything eatable,
even bread. "No, no," said he, "wait a while, _mon enfant_, I shall
soon have the pleasure of setting before you a superb repast. It
will diversify my existence! Ah! I shall experience an emotion!" He
immediately unhooked from the wall an old iron frying-pan, as black
inside as out--the only cooking utensil that graced his menage;
poured in water, and set it on the fire to simmer. He then took down
from the shelf a large brown bowl, and brought out from under the
table a goodly loaf of coarse but excellent bread, part of which he
cut into the bowl, and sprinkled with a little salt. Then, walking
out into his garden, he pulled a leek, and collected two or three
kinds of herbs, all which he added to the water, with something
that resembled the fat of bacon, though not so solid. When all was
scalding hot, he doused it into the bowl upon the bread, then handed
me a pewter spoon, and begged me to use no ceremony. Hunger is indeed
the best sauce; and, homely as was the fare, I never made a heartier
meal.

Somewhat recruited in strength, I rose to take leave, having first
requested my brave old entertainer to accept payment, which he
declared impossible. However, I had now been long enough on Gallic
ground to understand the _idiom_, so laid my "legal tender" on the
table, and said farewell, with many thanks. He tottled with me to the
door; then, suddenly stopped me, and looked earnestly in my face,
as if he had something very particular to communicate. What was he
going to say? He begged to assure me I had laid him under an infinite
obligation. Again he arrested my progress, with the door in his
hand. Hoped I would honour his menage with a second visit. Admired
the brave English, and lamented that he had never had the pleasure
of meeting them professionally. "_Peut-être encore! Mais hélas! nous
sommes les f--s!_" Halted me a third time outside. "His cottage
was mine, with all that it contained." He had marched through half
Europe, and was a simple-hearted, civil, old Frenchman.

There was one circumstance, though, not a little to the advantage of
those who dined with Gingham or Capsicum; and this was, that there
arose between these two worthies an amicable rivalry on this very
affair of giving dinners. The contest, in fact, had its origin a year
before, on our voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon, when Capsicum brewed a
bowl of punch, and Gingham brewed a better. Capsicum could not brook
the idea that any man should brew punch, or give dinners, equal to
his. The style of the two entertainers was different. Capsicum's
dinners were more profuse, Gingham's more _recherchés_. Gingham, in
fact, had all the appliances of the table in greater perfection. He
had plate enough for a handsome dinner--mind, I don't mean to say a
state dinner--of eight or ten. His whole dinner-service, too, was
handsome, elegant; wines, the choicest that money could command; all
the little etceteras excellent--coffee, for instance; such coffee
as you could not get elsewhere in France, where they are too apt to
make a mess of it. I don't think much of French coffee, except such
as you get here and there at private houses. Gingham's coffee was a
pure, genial, high-flavoured decoction. Ah! you tasted the berry.
As summer came on, Gingham intended ices. And good fish, till we
arrived at Bordeaux, being next to unattainable, he had organised a
plan for procuring salmon in ice from England. Capsicum, on the other
hand, had resources which Gingham had not. He could always command
the best cut of the best commissariat beef; and this advantage told
with stunning effect when he gave a spread. He had other advantages
in foraging, and he knew how to turn them to account. In short, the
characteristic of his dinners was abundance; and, with the guests who
partook of them on actual service, this would generally secure the
preference.

Many dinners might I describe--and, oh! describe _con amore_--both
Capsicum's and Gingham's. But I select one in particular, which
was signalised by a hoax. I abstain from entering into the general
subject of hoaxes, as hoaxes were practised at headquarters. He
that would do justice to it must also treat of shaves. Let us
confine ourselves, for the present, to a particular branch of the
subject--namely, the dinner hoax. The dinner hoax was twofold.
Was it a time of scarcity, when ration beef was all that could be
got? Then the hoax was, to create a persuasion in the mind of the
unfortunate hoaxee that something else was coming. "Major, a little
more _bouillie_?" "No, I thank you. I'm keeping a corner for the
turkey." Hoaxee hears that. He also will keep a corner for the
turkey--plays with the beef. Next _entrée_ is--the cheese! Was it,
on the other hand, a season of abundance? Then the hoax, equally
unfeeling, assumed an opposite character. "Sorry, gentlemen, we're
so badly off now," says the host, with a wink seen by all at table,
hoaxee excepted; "hope you'll contrive, for once, to make a dinner on
soldier's fare." Hoaxee pitches into the beef--stows away a double
ration--is pressed and helped, pressed and helped, till he positively
declines another mouthful--then enter the roast pig. Unhappy hoaxee!
He has dined!

The object of the hoax at Capsicum's was an individual of a
particular class. You must know, the home authorities had got a
notion, that, amongst the departments attached to the Peninsular
army, abuses of all kinds were rife, and required to be looked
after. For this purpose, they occasionally sent out some intelligent
individual, whose business was to see and report. Sometimes he came
for the avowed purpose. It was to a talented character of this kind
that the greatest man amongst us--who was as good at a joke as he
was at polishing the French--gave the name of "Argus." Sometimes the
individual's object was merely suspected; partly betrayed, perhaps,
by his own homebred simplicity, which was no proof against the
penetration of old campaigners. In either case, as will easily be
understood, such a person was no favourite, and was deemed a fair
subject for a hoax.

I was walking down a lane towards Capsicum's quarters, when I was
overtaken by a gentleman on horseback, who was evidently a fresh
arrival from England. Everything about him looked new, a regular
London outfit. You'd have said he came direct from Piccadilly in a
bandbox. His manner, moreover, announced him to be somebody; he was
evidently a very great man. "Pray, sir," said he, "can you inform me
the way to Mr Capsicum's?"

"I am going that way myself, sir. I shall be happy to show you the
road, as it has one or two turnings."

"Much obleeged, sir. I am going there by invitation to dinner."

"So am I, sir."

"Understand his dinners are capital, sir," said the newly-arrived,
somewhat softening.

"Few equal to them at headquarters, sir. He is very great in that
line; takes a pleasure in it."

"Really, sir, I'm not sorry to hear it," said he, still more
mollified; "for, to tell you the truth, I'm not yet quite at home
here; no more is my servant. I've been forced to rough it; and have
sometimes come off with short commons."

Other conversation followed, and led to the mention of my own
official rank, in the humble capacity of a departmental clerk. A
great change took place when the gentleman heard this. He became
dignified, absent, and monosyllabic. When we arrived at Capsicum's,
as there was no one in attendance, I thought it devolved on me to
perform the rites of hospitality, and stepped up to take charge of
his horse. He handed me the bridle, and walked at once into the
house, without waiting to look, or say, "Much obleeged to you."

The guests, including Pledget, Gingham, the new comer, and myself,
amounted to seven. I saw at once that the recent arrival was not
very affectionately viewed by Capsicum, who betrayed his feelings by
his manner. This, amongst his particulars, was off-hand, easy, and
jocular. But towards his newly arrived guest, he was all courtesy
and high etiquette. In fact, that gentleman came out professedly
to serve, but unfortunately was regarded as a spy. His Christian
name was William; a surname was found to fit it; and, ere he left
Capsicum's premises, he was dubbed "William Tell." Delighted
with the prospect of a dinner such as he had not seen since he
disembarked at Santander, with red face and red hair, large in form,
and coarse-featured, a burly, bull-necked, bullet-headed man with
goggling eyes, his air more confident than genteel; in manners,
laboriously free and easy; ostentatiously dressed, and smiling with
agreeable anticipations, at one time he twiddled with his forefinger
an enormous bunch of seals, at another he complacently boxed his
right fist into his open left. The hands then amalgamated, and the
punch subsided in a bland and complacent rub.

The cloth was already laid--at headquarters you must manage as
you can--in the room where the company met. Mr Barnacles glanced
approvingly at the preparations. Ever see a man's eye glisten,
when you told him of some generous deed? So glistened the eye of
Barnacles, while it glanced at the plates, glasses, bottles, knives
and forks, spoons, tumblers, and saltcellars, which in goodly order
graced Capsicum's hospitable board.

We sat down; I, under a mandate growled by Capsicum, at the lower
end of the table as Vice. Proposed mischief twinkled in the corner
of Capsicum's eye. First, as a matter of course, came the soup and
_bouillie_.

"Mr Capsicum," said a brother commissary, "I know it's not genteel
to be helped twice to soup; but I'll trouble you for a little more."
This was move the first, in the game of hoax.

"Quite right, quite right," said Capsicum. "No market in these
country places. Sorry, gentlemen, there's so little variety just
now." The speakers exchanged winks. The game was now fairly opened; a
hoax had already commenced, and Barnacles was the destined victim.

"Well," said another commissary, "I can always make a good dinner off
beef."

Barnacles, it was clear, had now received the desired impression.
Beef, he fully understood, was to be the staple of our dinner; and he
accordingly stowed with beef. In fact, he did wonders; cleared plate
after plate of boiled beef. At length, having stowed till he could
stow no more, he sat back in his chair pompously and complacently. A
mild perspiration bedewed his forehead; and the damask of his cheeks
had given place to a rosy suffusion of the whole countenance. The
fingers of his two hands were interlaced over his stomach, while his
thumbs stood erect, meeting in a point.

"Mr Barnacles, I beg ten thousand pardons. Pray give me leave to send
you a little more beef."

"Much obleeged, sir; not a morsel more. Never made a better dinner in
my life."

"Sure you won't, Mr Barnacles? Just a shave from this end, with a
morsel of fat."

"Thank you, sir, kindly--I couldn't. Must beg you to excuse me. Much
obleeged. Not a morsel more."--Table cleared.

Fresh plates! more knives and forks! Now it was, in reality, that
the dinner began;--enormous sirloin, spitting with volcanic heat;
roast fowls, that would have softened the hardest heart; elegant
hind-quarter of mutton; pretty little fillet of veal; tongue, ham,
boiled turkey, &c.

Behold, a new feature in the game! Barnacles wasn't beat yet. In
the attempt to hoax Barnacles, allowance had not been made for his
gastronomic powers, and previous privations. Never mind. The more
sport.

"Mr Barnacles, a slice of the sirloin. Upper cut, or under cut?"

Barnacles, at the sight of the good things before him, contrary to
all calculation sat up with renewed vigour, and paused ere he replied.

"Why, if I do take anything more, I think it must be a small slice of
this mutton."

Barnacles helped himself. A small slice! Why, if he didn't cut away
into the hind quarter, slice after slice, till he had sunk a regular
well. Then spooned out the gravy.

"Give Mr Barnacles the currant jelly. Mr Gingham, we owe that to you."

"Plenty more at your service, sir," said Gingham; "got three or four
dozen jars. Always bring some when I visit headquarters. Got it in
Berkley Square."

Barnacles now sets to again, fresh as when he began. What powers!
what capacity! what deglutition! In fact, it was not only the stomach
of Barnacles that needed filling. And that's why you see carnivorous
cadaverous men perform such extraordinary feats with knife and fork.
Not their stomach merely, their system is hungry. So it was now
with Barnacles; and his meal was on a commensurate scale. He was
redressing the balance of his constitution--compensating previous
inanition. When a man, accustomed to full feeding, has been a few
days without it, it isn't the mere filling of his stomach that will
satisfy his appetite.

Gingham caught the eye of one of the guests--slightly raised his
glass--bowed.

"Oh yace," replied a squeaking voice; "now sall I trink you go
t'hell!"

I started. When, when, had I heard that voice before? My eye, for
the first time, took a particular view of the speaker. He was a
diminutive personage, his complexion a sodden white, with unwholesome
patches of red; forehead enormous and mis-shapen; bumps prominent and
misplaced; large spectacles, no eyes, upper part of nose wanting,
a notch where there should have been a bridge; lower limb of nose
broad and sunken, as if squashed down between two puffy cheeks, which
bagged on each side; between nose and mouth a space incredible;
in fact, a huge upper lip was the most prominent feature of the
face; for mustaches, a few detached and very coarse black bristles,
pointing opposite ways like a cat's whiskers--each particular bristle
standing alone, and individually discernible from its insertion to
its extremity; mouth, long and sinuous; lips, viciously twisted out;
chin, emaciated. Again he spoke, as Gingham drank to him: "You go t'
hell!" Where _could_ I have heard that voice? Why, wasn't it at the
ferry, among the Frenchmen that opposed our passage? No, no, that
can't be; it's impossible.--"Who's that?" I whispered Gingham.

"A man of science, sir; a Russian--Mr Wowski, an ardent botanist.
Wished to examine the flora of the South of France; brought out
letters of recommendation; joined the army, and follows its
movements. You'll like his acquaintance vastly." Then louder--"Mr
Wowski, my friend, Mr Y--; your junior, but a promising naturalist.
Hope at an early day you'll meet him to dinner at my quarters."

"Mr Barnacles, shall I have the pleasure?--some turkey, sir?"

By this time Mr Barnacles seemed again to feel that he had dined.

"The least possible shave," said Mr Barnacles. "I really have made a
most capital dinner."

I helped him to a good plateful, which he cleared off.--All removed.

Next followed a few made dishes, light articles; and one real
delicacy, which was first introduced to our acquaintance by Gingham.
This was no other than a kid, baked whole. I take the liberty, my
dear sir, of very particularly and pointedly calling your attention
to the dish in question. I have, on previous occasions, ventured to
offer gastronomic hints. But a kid thus dressed is a real delicacy,
worthy of a place on any table. N. B.--If you bake, envelop in paste.
Should you prefer roasting, cover with paper. Let the roasting be
_gentle_, but _complete_. Of course you don't stretch out the legs.
Double them up, and skewer to the sides. For sauce, chop up the
pluck. Sauce should be piquant, with lots of cayenne, subacid. Or
make a separate dish, with the pluck and heart.

Pensive regret was mingled, in the face of Barnacles, with intense
curiosity, while he viewed this novel _entrée_, as it made its
appearance in a case of dough. Capsicum asked no question; sent him
a plateful; a great part of which he was forced to send away. It was
clear Mr Barnacles was now beat to a standstill.

The dish, though, was rather rich; and what he had eaten took effect.
His countenance changed. Suddenly he became pallid, with an effort to
look _degagé_. This lasted about a minute, in which time he swallowed
two successive bumpers of madeira. The dose so far kept him right,
that Barnacles didn't leave the table: but he was evidently _hors de
combat_.

Mr B. being now brought to a standstill, the _joke_ was so far
successful. Yet was not the _hoax_ complete, unless there appeared
something on table that he liked, and yet something of which he could
not partake.

The sweets now made their appearance, and were viewed by Mr Barnacles
with indifference. But when the table was wellnigh covered, and space
remained for only a single dish--

Enter a splendid plum-pudding--yes, a regular English
plum-pudding--its summit hoary with pounded sugar, its sides
distilling brandy sauce.

The eyes of Barnacles lit up again--sparkled. He was alive in a
moment. Once more his fist went bang into his hand; once more his
hands embraced and rubbed, as in mutual congratulation. Forgetting
all his previous performances, he accepted a substantial slice of the
plum-pudding. Alas! he had kept no corner!

"You don't seem," said Capsicum, "to like your pudding, Mr Barnacles."

"Oh yes! Oh yes!" said Barnacles, with emotion. "Indeed I do, sir.
It's what I never, never expected to see again till my return--till
my return to the British metropolis. But"----It ended in a
watering-pot scene--a regular boo-hoo. He put his handkerchief to his
face. It was too much for his feelings. Plum-pudding before him as
good as could be got in London, and he not able to eat a mouthful!
The poor man cried.

He made up after dinner, though, by copious potations. After coffee,
sat down to a rubber. One of the party proposed guinea points. But
Capsicum saw how matters stood with Barnacles, and wouldn't stand
it. "No, no, gentlemen," said he; "no stakes; no stakes." In the
course of the evening Mr Barnacles disappeared. Alarmed by his
prolonged absence, Capsicum sent a servant, who came back with the
report that he was not very well. He returned--took a stiff glass
of whisky-punch--again disappeared. I, by Capsicum's request, went
this time in search. Found him at length in the stable. He was trying
to saddle his horse;--couldn't. He wanted to steal away. I reported
to Capsicum, who at once decided. "Mr Barnacles must not go home
to-night. We must find him a shake-down on the premises." In one way
only could this arrangement be effected. Mr Wowski consented to turn
out, and accompanied me to my billet.

Amidst the din of war and the monotony of headquarters society, I
was really glad to meet with a naturalist and man of science, and
cultivated the acquaintance of Mr Wowski accordingly. When, however,
I came to try him, he appeared to know about as much of botany
as I did myself. Neither, I remarked, in search of specimens, did
he visit the most out-of-the-way and likely places. He generally
sought those points, in preference, where the troops were moving in
masses; and apparently looked much more sharply after the movements
of the army than after bulbs. Once, when we had halted at a village,
which stood in a wide-spread plain, he invited me to ascend the
turret of the church. We reached the summit just in time to behold
a comical spectacle. From the church top we looked down vertically
on the _Place_, or open area of the village, which was full, at the
moment, of soldiers--British, Portuguese, and Spanish; muleteers,
camp-followers--men, women, children--a motley multitude. Just at
that moment a fellow rushed into the midst, shouting at the top of
his voice, and bearing something aloft in his two hands. It was a
bullock's bladder. The multitude gathered round him, eager for a
promiscuous game of football, which he soon commenced by a kick that
sent the bladder sky-high. Football, probably, you have seen played,
or have played at. But did you ever see it played by four or five
hundred persons at once, of four or five different nations, and you
looking right down upon them from the top of a church? Each was eager
to get a kick at the bladder; but a far greater number than succeeded
got kicks on their shins. It was a stormy sea of heads. The shout
came up to us. No one was more conspicuous in the throng than my
Spanish Capataz, whose activity was equal to his bulk. Being stumpy
as well as stout, he cut a droll figure viewed from above, as, with
sprawling arms and legs, he flung himself forward with a flying leap,
and a kick that, if it missed the bladder, was seldom expended on
the air. At length the bladder was driven down a street; the rush
followed it, shouting; the market-place again became quiet; and I
turned to address Mr Wowski, who, like myself, I supposed, had been
engaged in surveying the tumultuous scene beneath. Not he. Ensconced
behind the parapet, where no one could see him from below, he was
quietly looking in advance with a pocket-telescope, as if surveying
the movements of the troops. On my approach he started, slapped
together the joints of his glass, and hastily restored it to his
pocket, where, till that moment, I never knew he carried one.

Mr Wowski, highly recommended by letters, received a good deal of
attention. To Gingham he brought a letter from Warsaw. For my own
part, I saw reason to doubt whether he was really what he professed
himself. Two or three things about him struck me as strange; and,
when he spoke, never could I forget the voice at the river.[2]

  [2] Having described in this Chapter a dish introduced to our
  acquaintance by Gingham, I must here, though with an apology for
  discussing a matter of such importance in a note, beg leave to
  mention another dish, which I also partook of at Gingham's table
  while residing at Bordeaux in the subsequent Autumn, a period not
  included in the present narrative. I believe the dish is French; a
  boiled turbot, cold, with jelly sauce. I mention it with a degree of
  hesitation, because it is not exactly a dish for our climate, nor
  would it harmonise with the general character of an English
  "spread." The turbot, when boiled, should be kept in the coolest
  place you have got, till brought to table. So should the jelly. It
  is a dish for a _bonâ fide_ warm climate, and should come to table
  _bonâ fide_ cold.

  The same _entrée_ was part of a most splendid dinner given in one of
  the seaports of southern Europe, by some French to some British
  naval officers. This was at a more recent period,--my informant, the
  Rev. W. G. Tucker, Chaplain of the Royal Navy, who was one of the
  guests on the occasion, and whose approval may be safely deemed
  definitive, in all matters of taste. In the discharge of his
  professional duties, my Rev. friend is equally distinguished; and
  should the authorities think fit to appoint a nautical Bishop--that
  _prime desideratum_ in the service--he is their man.--G. Y.




CHAPTER XVIII.

Mr Wowski, during his short sojourn at headquarters, was one day
placed in an awkward position. In the south of France, we often met
with large fierce dogs, which in country places we sometimes found
ugly customers; though, in reality, not one in ten of them possessed
the pluck of an English pug. Early one morning, I had to ride a
little distance on duty. It was a cross country road, and Gingham
favoured me with his company. While ambling along, we overtook Mr
Wowski, who had started for one of his peregrinations on foot; and
slackened our pace, to secure the pleasure of his society. Presently
we came to a hamlet of some ten or a dozen houses, in passing which
we were savagely attacked by a gang of formidable-looking dogs. Had
Gingham and I been by ourselves, we should soon have been rid of the
annoyance, by the mere act of passing on. But the real danger was
our pedestrian companion's, whom the whole barking angry pack seemed
determined to assail. One shaggy, powerful ruffian led the van; he
might have sat to Schneider. His mouth, yawning like a sepulchre,
reuttered a deep, sonorous yow--yow; his fangs stood out, ready for
action; his eyes flashed fire; while, in size somewhere between a
wolf and a jackass, he rushed right up to the unfortunate Wowski,
whose only defence was a walking-stick. Wowski cut one, two--one,
two--with just sufficient energy to keep off the foe, who contrived
to maintain his nose in position, just an inch beyond the range of
the sapling. He was backed up by the rest of the curs, who, barking
and snarling, formed a semicircle, that threatened to hem in the
hapless Wowski. Gingham and I could do nothing. I had only a switch;
Gingham hadn't even that. Still the chief assailant, his back
bristling like a wild boar's, and his tail swollen and ruffled like
an angry cat's, pressed the attack; it was yow--yow on one side, and
cut--cut on the other. He jumped, he circled, he ramped, he flew up
in the air, spun round, and flew up again;--every moment I expected
to see him fly at Wowski's throat. I noticed a woman looking out from
the door of one of the cottages--called to her, and made signs--on
which she thought fit to disappear. Wowski was now becoming pale and
exhausted. "Shorten your stick," said I. He did so. The foe came
nearer. "Now give him the full length." Wowski took the hint, and the
big beast of a cur caught a crack on his muzzle--a regular smasher;
instantly turned tail, and cut away with dismal yowlings. The whole
pack, like so many humans, turned against him, and pursued; the great
powerful brute was half-a-dozen times knocked over and worried, ere
he found refuge in an outhouse. The woman now reappeared, armed with
a broomstick; and followed into the shed, where a fresh succession
of howls and yells announced a needful though tardy process of
castigation. Wowski walked along with us, flourishing his stick;
only wished it had been a lion! There may be really courageous dogs
among the big-limbed monsters of this part of France; but, from my
own observation, I should say the most part are a pluckless race.
Indeed, an officer of the Guards, who had got out dogs from England,
complained to me that they lost their courage on a foreign soil.

Gingham himself, a few days after, had a much more serious adventure.

We were on the march together, after a wet and stormy night. The
morning was unsettled, but soon became sultry. Then followed a shower
of hail. Gingham began to philosophise; thought he could explain the
phenomenon of hail better than any one else. "It has been remarked,"
said I, "that hail is never formed, except where there are two strata
of clouds, one over the other."

"True," said Gingham; "and some meteorologists have imagined that the
hail is generated by the alternate action of the two strata, which
action they suppose to be electrical."

"Curious, if true."

"Yes," said Gingham; "but I question the theory altogether. According
to the best views of the subject which I have been able to form,
the hail is produced simply by a current of very cold air, passing
rapidly through hot air charged with vapour. Were the current less
rapid, or less cold, the effect would be merely condensation, and we
should have rain; but, being both cold and rapid in a high degree,
the effect is congelation, and we have hail. The noise which so often
accompanies hail-storms is the rush of this current of cold air.
Currents of air, I admit, in the higher regions of the atmosphere,
are usually mute. But, in this instance, the rush is rendered vocal
by the hailstones. As to the two strata of clouds, they merely mark
the superior and inferior limit of the intrusive current; and they
are due to the action of the cold, there more modified, on the
vapour. And as to electricity--"

Gingham's lecture was here interrupted by our reaching a river. The
bridge having been destroyed by the enemy, we could cross only by
fording; and just as we reached the ford, we saw some persons passing
on mules and horses. Half way over appeared a small island, which was
in fact only a bank of shingle, thrown up by some previous flood. We
perceived, by those who preceded us, that the depth was sufficient to
wet our boots, if we rode, as they did; and therefore it was resolved
to pass in the cart. The river, though not at the moment swollen,
was dark and rapid. It rushed sullenly on, with small whirlpools,
but without a ripple; and murmurs were heard at intervals, hoarse
and deep, which came not from its surface, but boomed up from the
gloomiest and most profound recesses of its vexed channel and hollow
banks. By the side, waiting for a passage, we found some slightly
wounded soldiers, a party of four. These Gingham mounted at once into
the cart; and I, calculating that with Joaquim the driver, Mr Wowski,
and Gingham himself, there were now quite passengers enough by that
conveyance, turned Sancho's head, and followed Coosey--who led the
way across the stream, mounted on one horse, and leading another,
while the cart brought up the rear. The cart, it appears, on reaching
the island, stuck fast. Its wheels cut into the loose gravel; and
there was no remedy, except for the passengers to alight. The wheels
were then lifted by main force; and, time having been given for
the whole party to remount, Joaquim drove on, and the remainder
of the passage was effected. All those who had started from the
opposite bank then got out, with one exception. Where was Gingham? My
attention was first attracted by an angry shout from Coosey:

"You Joe King, you precious willain, vhy, if you han't a-been and
left your master a-standin on the highland!"

To a geologist like Gingham, the loose stones of the bank of
gravel, shoved up by the force of the water from the depths of the
stream, presented an attraction which banished every other thought
from his mind. He had commenced picking up specimens the moment he
alighted from the cart; and was so intent upon this pursuit, that he
suffered the party to proceed without him. How they came to leave
him behind can only be explained by supposing that each, as soon as
he remounted, was occupied by the portion of the passage--it was
ticklish work--that remained to be effected, and therefore began
looking out ahead.

The moment Coosey spoke, I looked toward the island, and there,
sure enough, was Gingham, still intent on stone-picking, and, to
all appearance, utterly unconscious that the cart had left. The
river, meanwhile, had risen considerably. Its course was more turbid
and violent, its murmur louder and more continuous, and the island
already smaller. We shouted to Gingham--there was need to shout.
He looked up, and at once became aware of his position, which
was evidently far from eligible. He appeared perfectly cool, but
hesitated.

Suddenly, the water came down, in a sort of bank. It was less than a
foot high; but the rise left Gingham with much less ground to stand
upon, in the midst of the boiling flood. Large trunks of trees,
plunging and careering, were now brought rapidly down the current;
while the rush of the waters was like the roar of receding billows on
a storm-vexed strand. Coosey was about to dash into the flood, which
swept by the bank, boiling like a mill-stream. Had I not stopped
him, the plucky little Londoner would soon have been carried away,
prone and struggling on the angry torrent. He then sprang into the
cart; but Gingham made signs to prohibit the attempt, or both cart
and Coosey would probably have been lost. In our agony we tore off
the cords from the boxes, tied them together, and fastened the end
to a large stone, which Coosey attempted to pitch towards Gingham.
It fell near him; but out of his reach, in deep water. While we were
cautiously hauling it in, down came another freshet. The island was
now in great part submerged; and Gingham stood on a mere strip of
shingle, with the flood roaring down on each side. The stone was
pitched again; and this time went truer than before, but was at once
carried off into the deep water below. I again began to haul the
line home. It had caught, and wouldn't come in. What could be done?
Gingham, I really feared, was a lost man!

Down came another bank of water. Gingham had now scarcely
standing-room. The water rushed rapidly by him, and I began to fear
he might not long have a footing. At this critical moment, the trunk
of a tree, with most of its branches broken off, but here and there
a small bough still remaining, came right down towards Gingham,
shearing, surging on the tumultuous waters, hung for a moment on the
shallow, and then began moving on again with the current. Gingham
stooped forward to seize it--he did well, it was his only hope--but
lost his feet. He threw himself astride the timber, like Waterton
on the crocodile's back, and was borne off from the island, still
retaining his hold, though turned over and over by the violence of
the current. I saw no hope. What could prevent his being carried
away? Yet there was still a possibility of escape, though unforeseen.
The trunk, carried a few yards down, was caught by an eddy, and swung
round into the slack water below, where the current was broken by
the bank on which Gingham had just been standing. There the huge
log began slowly moving round in a circle, first ascending in a
direction opposite to the stream, then descending again. On reaching
the lowest point of the circle, the trunk, with Gingham upon it, was
again caught by an eddy, and twirled round like a spindle; then, with
solemn movement, began gradually to ascend again, describing the same
circle as before. This second time, though, in going down, it reached
a lower point ere it was again caught and twirled, by which law, it
was clear, the third time it would go with the current. Manfully did
Gingham still hold on, though so often under water; and now, for
the third time, he and his log began slowly to move in an ascending
orbit. A third time he reached the highest point; and a third time,
to all appearance the last, he began--I often dream of it--to go down
with the stream! We had given up all hope. Joaquim stood wringing his
hands; Coosey was like a man distracted; even the crippled soldiers
would gladly have given their aid, had any devisable expedient
presented itself. There was no visible alternative; this time he
must be carried away!--What's that? Something stirred at my feet! I
looked down. There was again a little movement. The rope twitched,
as if beginning to run out! My foot was on it, in an instant. The
next, I and Coosey held it fast. The tree, in moving round and round,
had fished hold, and disengaged it from the catch. "Pull away, pull
away!" shouted the soldiers.--"Now run him up to the bank."--"Now's
your time."--"Make haste!"

"Steady, Coosey, steady," said I. "Take time, or we shall loosen the
hitch, perhaps break the rope."

We did not pull. We merely held on. The log and Gingham swung to the
bank.

He was silent, almost exhausted. It was well there were hands to
drag him ashore; for he was too far spent to land himself. Awhile
he sat motionless on the bank. With eyes uplifted, and lips moving
inaudibly, he was apparently returning fervent and heartfelt thanks
to heaven, for his all but miraculous deliverance. Coosey, meanwhile,
had rushed for some brandy, which he administered with great apparent
benefit.

"Hadn't we better take you to the nearest cottage?" said I. "Here's
one at hand."

"No, no," replied Gingham, gasping. "Get me into the cart."

We lifted him in. Coosey then let down the tarpaulin, and assisted
his master in a thorough change of garments from head to foot.
Presently, with solemn look, and an air of authority, Coosey got down
from the cart.

"It's master's vishes," said he, "to be left, jist for a few minits,
alone by his-self."

Gingham ere long made his appearance, shifted and dry; and, though
still looking shakey and exhausted, remounted his horse. When I
once saw him fairly across the saddle, and just as we were about to
proceed, I turned with vindictive, with savage exultation, to take
a parting view of the angry torrent. The island had disappeared.
Where Gingham had stood there was now a small race of swift-following
rollers, which subsided, below the ledge, in tumultuous undulations
and foaming eddies, around a dark, deep fissure in the flood, which
gaped like a grave. Ha! Is it so? The hungry waters yawn for their
rescued prey, and brawl forth their disappointment in a lengthened
moan! We continued our march.

"And as to electricity," said Gingham, resuming where he broke off,
"it may, when hail is generated, be disengaged by the process, I
admit. But that it is in any way the medium of producing the hail,
I strenuously deny. Hail is sufficiently accounted for by the
supposition of a current of cold air passing rapidly through warm
air charged with vapour; and the same theory will solve all the
phenomena."

To which theory I, not being so deep in the subject as Gingham, urged
no objections. I remarked, however, that Mr Wowski, professedly a man
of science, manifested not the least interest in the question; did
not appear to have even an idea on the subject, let alone an opinion.
In the late critical scene at the ford, though, he was eminently
conspicuous; and, as far as skipping about, shrieking, and getting in
the way, his assistance was invaluable.

We lost the little botanist sooner than we expected. A mail--joyful
event!--arrived from England; and I was sent to the "Post Office" for
our departmental letters. This was not part of my regular duty; but
on the occasion in question I received express directions, and went
accordingly. Found the post office, a cottage with a front garden.
I could but admire the diligent and active exertions to meet the
general anxiety of the army, by sorting and delivering the contents
of the mail with the least possible delay. The whole lot, say three
or four bushels, had been shot out in the middle of the room on the
earthen floor. Newspapers, love letters, officers' letters, soldiers'
letters, there they lay, and there they were left to lie. In the
apartment were two persons, perhaps I ought to say personages. One
sat on each side of the hearth; each had torn open a newspaper; and
both were conning the news from England. I never saw two people more
comfortable in my life. When I entered, neither of them raised his
eyes, or took the least notice. They read on. I waited. Still they
read. I so far presumed as to announce my mission--had come for
the departmental letters. Paused for a reply--stood expectant. At
length one of the illustrious two favoured me with an utterance, in
a tone somewhat querulous though, and without looking off from his
reading--"Three o'clock."

"What, gentlemen!" thought I, "only four hours hence? Why, at this
rate, hadn't you better say three o'clock to-morrow?"

So thinking, (not saying,) I walked off. Just as I was going,
the one who had not spoken rose. He followed me out, and came on
walking by my side down the path toward the garden gate. I really
was green enough to fancy he was doing the polite--_seeing_ me to
the entrance; felt quite overwhelmed. Any approach, at headquarters
to "the sweet courtesies of life"--it was something new! I began to
deprecate--hoped he wouldn't. "Pray, sir, don't come a step farther.
I can mount without assistance--can open the gate for myself."
Without vouchsafing a reply, he began questioning.

"Know Mr Wowski?"

"Have known him for the last few days."

"What is he?"

"He professes himself a botanist, a man of science."

"What does he want at headquarters?"

"He states his object to be botanical research."

"_States_, you say; _professes_. Isn't he really a botanist?"

This was an awkward question, for I was beginning to have my doubts.
I remained silent.

"You must answer."

"For the last two or three days I have felt it a question, I confess."

"Why?"

"He collects specimens, but doesn't preserve or arrange them. At
dinner time he brings home a bundle of common herbs or grasses,
which, next morning, he throws away. Then goes out again, and brings
home another bundle like it. Don't think he knows much about botany."

"What's your opinion of him?"

"Have hardly known him long enough to form one. He seems decidedly,
though, to have a military taste; takes great interest in the
movements of the troops."

"Fond of going up steeples?"

"When we enter a place, I believe he makes that his first object; at
least, whenever there is a steeple to the church."

"Ever see him making signals?"

"Never noticed anything of the kind."

"Know anything more about him?"

"He brought letters of introduction"--

"Oh, yes; I know all about that. Ever met him before you joined?"

"Can't say. First time we met at headquarters, thought I had heard
his voice."

"Where?"

"On our way up with treasure, we were opposed by the peasantry in
passing the ferry at--"

"Yes, yes; I know. See him with them?"

"No; I heard a voice, though, which I afterwards thought was very
like his."

"Then you didn't see him with them next day, I suppose, when they
wounded the officer of your escort?"

"I saw nothing of him then; wasn't near enough to distinguish
individuals."

"Oh, I suppose you don't use spectacles. Very well. Say nothing about
this."

My questioner then returned to the cottage. He didn't say good
morning; and, till I missed him from my side, I wasn't aware of his
departure. Then, looking round, I saw him quietly opening the door
and going in. Mr Wowski didn't come back to dinner, and we saw him
no more. Whether he was arrested, or merely advised to botanise
elsewhere, I never knew.

Following the movements of the army from place to place, we
approached at length the banks of the Garonne, and the neighbourhood
of Toulouse. We now halted for some days at the village of Seysses,
where, better off than many of my fellow-campaigners, I enjoyed the
luxury of a most enviable bed. On the earthen floor of my apartment
was arranged a small stack of faggots. This was the bedstead. On
the faggots was spread a lot of worn-out sacking, old clothes, and
equally ancient blankets, which, with a very clean pair of sheets,
constituted my bed. The first night, I was settling off for a snooze,
when a commotion, like a small earthquake, disturbed my _prima
quies_. Something was stirring, immediately under me! What can it be?
Why, I can feel it! It's in the bed! What's that again? A mixture
of squeaking and scrambling! Oh, rats. They had burrowed through
the floor, had established themselves in the faggots, had eaten
into the bedding, and there held their midnight revels. There they
lived and bred, squeaked and grunted, wriggled and fought, scurried
and cuddled, close under the sheet, undulating the whole surface
of the bed. Presuming that they would let me alone if I let them
alone, I again composed myself to sleep; and, so well was the truce
kept on both sides, I had them every night for my bed-fellows. If
the tumblification became intolerable, I had only to move, and in a
moment all was hushed. When I was still, they stirred; but when I
stirred, they were still.

Our last halting place, before we fought the battle of Toulouse,
was Grenade, a small town, or large village, a few leagues below
the scene of combat, on the left bank of the Garonne. Come, I'll
just give you a short account of my entertainment in one more
billet, and then we'll rush into the thick of the fight. Approaching
Grenade, with the mingled multitude that follow an army, I was met
by a French gentleman, who immediately addressed me, and entered
into conversation like an old acquaintance. That's the best of the
French. In five minutes we were intimate. He was a tall, hearty
fellow, in age about five-and-twenty, with rosy cheeks, curly hair,
broad shoulders, and prodigious development of the _poitrine_.
Begged to know who and what I was--my age, name, rank, and family.
Were my parents living? Had I brothers? A sister? Was I married or
unmarried? Had I any intentions? Ever felt the tender passion? What
was my pay _par mois_? Vilinton or Bonaparte, which did I consider
the greater general? Ever fought a duel? Were the English merry or
_tristes_? How did I like the French? But the French ladies? Which
excelled in female beauty, France or England? Been in many battles?
Was I Torrie or Ouigge? Would I accept of a billet in his _ménage_?
By this time my inquisitive friend had turned, and we were walking
on together towards Grenade. On our arrival there, he knocked at the
door of a great stack of a house in the market-place. In five minutes
Sancho was nuzzling a feed of oats in the stable, I was stropping
and lathering in an elegant bedroom, and my servant was making love
to Cookey in the kitchen. The fact is, when the news arrived that
the English were walking in, my new friend had walked out, to secure
an inmate to his mind, and I was the fortunate individual. The
Parisians ridicule provincials, and so do the Cockneys. But let me
tell both Cockneys and Parisians, they have nothing to boast above
the rural gentry whom they respectively despise, in good breeding, in
refinement, in cultivation, in bonhomie, in gentility, in anything
that constitutes a dignified, simple, and likeable character. Happy
family! Here, in one house, living together, and happy together,
kind, hospitable, loving, and beloved, resided an aged father, a
venerable mother, a charming daughter, three strapping sons--one
married, with his lively little titbit of a wife, the pet of the
household--two single, of whom my friend was the senior. There they
dwelt together, in domestic harmony and peace. Yet there too, in that
tranquil domicile, sorrow had found an entrance. A son was missing.
It was the old story; you couldn't travel through France in those
days, without hearing it a hundred times repeated. He had entered
the army--entered Spain--and no one knew what had become of him. The
family supper--what a meeting of friends, what a cheerful reunion!
Each treated the other with marked attention and kindness, as though
they were then first met after a long separation. The lady of the
house, "madame," advanced in years, but sharp, quick, cheerful,
and conversable, demanded from me a reply to the oft-repeated
interrogatory, which were fairer, the English fair or the French. I
tried to evade it. "No, no," said every voice at table; "Madame has
asked. Monsieur must reply."--"Most willingly would I obey," said I,
bowing till my nose touched the tablecloth; "but in your presence,
madame, how can I decide without prepossession?" (_prévention?_)
This compliment addressed to a dame of sixty-five, with gray hairs,
and nothing of beauty but its vestiges, you will of course say was
absurd, extravagant, and perfectly out of place. In England, I
grant, it would be. But there, in France, where a compliment paid
is a benefit conferred, and where civility, like a gift amongst
ourselves, is always accepted as a token of goodwill, it was viewed
with favour, and received with gratitude. The company, tickled, but
delighted, raised a shout of applause; and madame herself, smirking
and twinkling, made her acknowledgments with courtly elegance, as
though I had conferred an obligation; while her lovely daughter,
exclaiming, "Ah, maman!" flung her arms about her neck, with eyes
full of tenderness and delight. In short, I was one of the family.
In a week I quitted them with regret. The old gentleman made me a
parting present of cigars; a small token of gratitude, he was kind
enough to say, for the pleasure of my company; and that after I had
been hospitably lodged, handsomely entertained, and fèted from first
to last as if every day had been a jubilee.

Those cigars! Oh, those cigars! I never smoked the like of those
cigars! They beat General Thouvenot's out of the field. They were
at least three years old--nearer two pounds of them than one. You
may have smoked a good cigar. You may have smoked an old cigar. But
these united the two qualities; they were both old and good. The
military son had brought them with him from Spain, and left them
on his return to the army. The gift of them to me, then, implied a
melancholy sentiment; _he_ could not want them. This was expressed
by the father, in making the present. It was touching--it was
perfectly French. They had one fault, only one; a fault from which no
old cigars are free. They were gone too soon; they burned out like
tinder. But oh! while they were burning, how shall I describe the
sensation! Sensation? It was more than that; it was mental elevation;
a vision, a trance, a transfer to the regions of hope, imagination,
and enchantment. Every-day nature became prismatic. Matter-of-fact
sparkled with variegated lamps. Pledget might have smoked, and
fancied himself a poet. Each cigar a tranquillising stimulant, a
volatile anodyne, excited, and while it excited soothed, every
faculty of the soul; fancy, sentiment, recollection, anticipation,
and stern resolve. But ah, my cigar is out! A few puffs have
sufficed! Too soon, too soon, it begins to burn my nose! Its last,
its dying odours are hurried away by the envious breeze; and the
visions which they inspired are gone like a beautiful dream!




A MONTH AT CONSTANTINOPLE.[3]

  [3] _A Month at Constantinople._ By ALBERT SMITH. London: 1850.


Books of travel in the region which modern tourists particularly
designate as "the East," and which may be considered to comprise
Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, do not, as a class, very forcibly challenge
our sympathy and criticism. The best horse may be ridden to death;
and no country, however rich in associations and peculiar in its
characteristics, however remarkable in configuration and interesting
by its traditions, can yield continual fresh pastures to literary
travellers, when they descend upon it like a swarm of locusts instead
of dropping in at reasonable intervals. Time must be allowed for
change and reproduction, or repetition and exhaustion will be the
inevitable result. The East, moreover, as a theme for book-wrights,
has not only been overdone, but, in many instances, very badly done.
People have gone thither with the preconceived idea of publishing,
on the strain for the marvellous, the romantic, and the picturesque;
and, disdaining the common-sense course of setting down what they
saw and giving their real and natural impressions, they have gilt
and embellished, like a coach-painter at a sheriff's carriage, till
they forced upon us the conviction that they cared more for glitter
than for truth. Some, piquing themselves on diplomatic acumen,
have filled their volumes with politics, and settled all manner of
Eastern questions much to their own satisfaction, and greatly to
the weariness of their readers; and these form perhaps the most
intolerable of the many classes into which Oriental travellers
are subdivisible, but which we shall not here further enumerate,
preferring to turn to the examination of the latest Eastern tour
that has issued from the English press and found its way to our
critical sanctum.

Mr Albert Smith's name, well known within sound of Bow-bells, is
far from unfamiliar to a large circle of dwellers without that
populous circumference. We cannot affirm that we have read all his
numerous works, but with some of them we are acquainted, and we
are disposed to think him one of the most amiable and praiseworthy
of the school of popular humorists to which he belongs. His jokes
are invariably good-humoured and inoffensive--without being on
that account deficient in point. He does not wrap radicalism up in
fun, as cunning grandmothers envelop sickly drugs with marmalade;
nor has his flow of gaiety a sour and mischievous under-current.
Neither does he belong to the gang of facetious philanthropists
whose sympathies are so exclusively granted to the indigent and
miserable, that they have nothing left but gall and bitterness for
those of their fellow-creatures who wear a decent coat, and have
the price of a dinner in its pocket. A gentleman of most versatile
ability, he is by turns dramatist, journalist, essayist, naturalist,
novelist, correspondent of a London paper, critic of the ballet,
a writer of songs and a manufacturer of burlesque. Such a host of
occupations naturally entails the necessity of a little relaxation;
and accordingly, in the summer of last year, Mr Smith laid down
his pen, shook the sawdust from his buskins, and started for the
Mediterranean. As far as Malta we have not ascertained how it fared
with him, but of his subsequent proceedings he has informed us in a
volume which we had little idea of reviewing when first we learned
its expected appearance, but whose perusal has convinced us that it
deserves such brief notice as the crowded state of our pages in these
busy days will permit us to bestow upon it. We have already implied
our opinion that it takes a skilful hand to write an amusing book
on so hackneyed a text as a visit to Constantinople. Mr Smith has
surmounted the difficulty in an easy and natural manner; and, whilst
telling things just as they appeared to him, without affectation
or adornment, he has contrived to give an agreeable freshness and
originality to a subject which we really deemed threadbare and
exhausted.

It was on board the _Scamandre_, French Mediterranean mail-steamer,
that Mr Albert Smith left Malta on an August evening of the year
1849, bound for Constantinople. The weather was fine and the sea
smooth as a lake, and there could be no reasonable apprehension of
shipwreck even for the crazy French vessel, whose last voyage, save
on rivers or along coast, this was intended to be. But although
somewhat rickety, of very moderate speed, and not particularly clean
externally, the interior accommodations of the Scamandre were by
no means bad. And the cabin passengers presented an amusing medley
of nations and characters. There were French milliners, striving
to pass themselves off as governesses, an elderly French actress
from the St James's theatre, a brace of Marseilles bagmen, an
enterprising Englishman bent upon smuggling muskets into Hungary, a
young Irish officer who had thrown up his commission in the British
service to campaign with Bem and Kossuth, and who must have arrived
at his destination just as the war reached its end. There was also
Mr Sophocles, an intelligent Greek professor from an American
university, on his way home after twenty years' absence, and sundry
persons unnamed, making about twenty in all, and Mr Smith himself,
who, we venture to say, was not the least active and efficient in
beguiling the tedium of a week's voyage in a slow steamboat, and
who gives us an extremely amusing account of his fellow-passengers
and their proceedings. Travelling quite as a citizen of the world,
without pretension or care for luxuries, now footing it across the
Alps with knapsack on shoulder, then a deck passenger from Genoa to
Naples, availing himself of the smooth when it offered, but taking
the rough readily when it came, sleeping sometimes on boards for
want of a bed, with the knapsack aforesaid for a pillow--Mr Smith
seems to have carried through the whole of his ramble those best of
travelling companions, imperturbable good humour, and a determination
to be pleased with everything and everybody. It is accordingly with
all possible indulgence that he views the little foibles of his
fellow-passengers per Scamandre, and there is not an atom of acid in
the dry humour with which he parades them for the entertainment of
his readers. Indeed, before the week's voyage is over, we begin to
feel quite intimate with the motley company--to view with indulgence
Mademoiselle Virginie's barefaced flirtations with the French
commissary, and to sympathise with the good-tempered American, who,
having had the misfortune to engage his berth in the first-class
cabin--a sort of extra-magnificent place, whose chief distinction
from the second class consists, as on German railways, in a heavy
additional charge--preferred now and then dining with the less
aristocratic inmates of the second cabin, "to know what was going
on." There is no place like shipboard for betraying people's habits
and peculiarities: everybody is more or less in deshabille; and such
a group as that on the Scamandre is a mine to a shrewd observer. Mr
Smith kept his eyes and ears wide open, as is his wont, and little
escaped him. We select the following specimen of his strictures on
foreign habits.

     "I should be very sorry to class foreigners, generally, as a
     dirty set of people when left to themselves; but I fear there
     is too much reason to suppose that (in how many cases out of
     ten I will refrain from saying) a disrelish for a good honest
     plunging wash is one of their chief attributes. It requires but
     very little experience, in even their best hotels, to come to
     this conclusion. I do not mean in those houses where an influx
     of English has imposed the necessity of providing large jugs,
     baths, and basins; but in the equally leading establishments
     patronised chiefly by themselves. In these, one still perceives
     the little pie-dish and milk-jug, the scanty doily-looking
     towel, and the absence of a soap dish; whilst it would be
     perfectly futile to ask for anything further. So, on board
     the Scamandre, this opinion was not weakened. They dipped a
     corner of a little towel, not in the basin, but in the stream
     that trickled from the cistern as slowly as vinegar from any
     oyster-shop cruet, and dabbed their face about with it. Then
     they messed about a little with their hands; and then, having
     given a long time to brushing their hair, they had a cigarette
     instead of a tooth brush, and their toilet was complete. This
     description does not only apply to the Scamandre passengers, but
     to the majority of their race, whom I afterwards encountered
     about the Mediterranean."

We have a vivid recollection of the consternation of an amiable
and numerous French family, in whose house a friend of ours once
was domiciled, on finding that he each morning required, for his
personal use, more fresh water than sufficed for their entire daily
consumption, internal and external. Doubtless the worthy people
indulged, every eight days or so, in a warm bath; but they had no
notion of such a thing as diurnal ablutions above the waist or
below the chin, and they shrugged and grinned monstrously at the
eccentricity of the Englishman who commenced the day by a general
sluice, whereas they rarely thought of washing even their fingers
till they dressed for their ante-prandial promenade. And when our
friend was laid up, some time later, with a smart twinge of gout,
provoked by too liberal use of a very different liquid from water,
the entire family, from the elderly father down to the youngest of
the precocious juveniles, gave it as their unqualified opinion,
that the ailment proceeded from their inmate's rash and obstinate
indulgence in the ungenial and, in their opinion, extremely
superfluous element.

"Athens in six hours," Mr Smith observes, is rather quick work;
but he nevertheless found he could see in that time nearly as much
of it as he wished. The Scamandre allowed but a day, and certainly
he made good use of the brief halt. At Athens, as in Switzerland
and on the Rhine, he found the ubiquitous _Murray's Handbook_ the
great authority and certificate of the native competitors for
custom. A skirmish with clubs and boat-hooks--the former brought
evidently in anticipation of the contest--took place amongst the
fancy-ball-looking boatmen, in white petticoats and scarlet leggings,
who crowded in light skiffs round the foot of the steamer's ladder.
In the intervals of the fight a dialogue was carried on in English,
more or less broken.

     "'I say, sir! here, sir! Hotel d'Orient is the best. Here's the
     card, sir--old palace--Murray says ver good,' cried one of the
     costumes.

     "'Hi!' screamed another; 'don't go with him, master--too dear!
     Come with me?'

     "The parties were immediately engaged in single combat.

     "'Hotel d'Angleterre à Athènes, tenu par Elias Polichronopulos
     et Yani Adamopulos,' shouted another, all in a breath. I copy
     the names from the card he gave me, for they were such as no one
     could remember.

     "'Yes, sir; good hotel,' said his companion. 'Look in Murray,
     sir--page 24--there, sir; here, sir; look, sir!'

     "'Who believes Murray?' asked a fellow in plain clothes, with a
     strong Irish accent.

     "'You would, if he put your house in the Handbook,' replied
     another."

By considerable display of mental and physical energy, a few of the
passengers at last got into a boat and gained the quay of the Piræus.
_Grog's-shop_ was written on the shutter of a petty coffee-house,
and a smart-looking Albanian stepped up, and proffered his services
in excellent English. He had lived in London, he said: was a subject
of Queen Victoria, and had the honour of being set down in Murray,
page 25. With such recommendations, who could refuse the guidance
of Demetri Pomorn? Not Mr Smith and his party, evidently, for they
immediately engaged him for the day, hired a shabby vehicle from
an adjacent cab-stand, and started on their hot and dusty road to
Athens, thence about five miles distant. There they killed the lions,
ate quince ices, bought Latakia tobacco, dined at the Hotel d'Orient
_à l'Anglaise_, with Harvey sauce and pale ale, off English plates
and dishes, and pulled on board again at night, to the tune of _Jim
Crow_, played by an Anglified violin in one of the "grog's-shops"
aforesaid. At five in the morning sleep was at an end, thanks to
the clanking, stamping, and bawling upon the steamer's deck, and Mr
Smith left the cabin, to reconnoitre and breathe fresh air. Some
deck passengers had come on board at Athens; amongst others, a poor
Albanian family, bound to Smyrna to pack figs. They were miserable,
broken-spirited looking people, but picturesque in spite of their
poverty; a melon or two and some coarse bread composed their entire
stores for the voyage. This, however, was of no great duration, for
at daybreak the next morning the passengers per Scamandre were told
they were off Smyrna.

     "It was very pleasant to hear this--to be told that the land I
     saw close to us was Asia, and that the distant slender spires
     that rose from the thickly clustered houses were minarets--that
     I should have twelve hours to go on shore, and see real camels,
     fig-trees, scheiks, and veiled women! And yet I could scarcely
     persuade myself that such was the case--that the distant
     Smyrna--of which I had only heard, in the Levant mail, as a
     remote place, burnt down once a-year, where figs came from--was
     actually within a good stone's throw of the steamer."

The travellers' expectations were more than realised. "I do not
believe," says Mr Smith, "that throughout the future journey any
impressions were conveyed more vivid than those we experienced
during our first half hour in the bazaars of the sunny, bustling,
beauty-teeming Smyrna." The appearance of a party of foreigners, and
of the well-known face of the _valet-de-place_, caused a stir amongst
the dealers, one of whom accosted Mr Smith in good English.

     "'How d'ye do, sir; very well? that's right. Look here, sir;
     beautiful musk purse; very fine smell. Ten piastres.'

     "A piastre is worth twopence and a fraction.

     "'How did you learn to speak English so well?' I asked.

     "'All English gentlemen come to me, sir,' he said, 'and I learn
     it from the ships, and from the Americans. Shake hands, sir;
     that's right. Buy the purse, sir?

     "'How much is it?' asked one of our party.

     "'Six piastres,' replied the brother of the merchant, who also
     spoke English, but had not heard the first price.

     "'And you asked me ten!' I said to the other.

     "'So I did, sir,' he replied with a laugh; 'then, if I get the
     other four, that's my profit--eh? But what's four piastres to
     an English gentleman?--nothing. It's too little for him to know
     about. Come--buy the purse. What will you give?'

     "'Five piastres,' I answered.

     "'It is yours,' he added directly, with a hearty laugh, throwing
     it to me.

     "'What a merry fellow you are!' I observed.

     "'Yes, sir; I laugh always; very good to laugh. English
     gentlemen like to laugh, I know; laugh very well. Look at his
     turban--laugh at that.'

     "He directed our attention to an old Turk, who was going by with
     a most ludicrous and towering head-dress. It was diverting to
     find him making fun of his compatriot."

The mode of dealing, which in Christian Europe is stigmatised as
Jewish--the system, namely, of asking thrice the value and twice what
the seller means to take--is received, and by no means discreditable,
in Turkish bazaars. The only way to purchase in such places, without
being imposed upon, is at once to offer half the price demanded. This
is met with a refusal; you walk away, the merchant calls you back,
and you then offer him twenty per cent less than before. This plan
Mr Smith, having picked up experience at Smyrna, put in practice at
Constantinople, and generally found to answer.

Fig-packing, camels, and the slave-market are the three things which
at Smyrna first attract the curiosity of the traveller from the
West. Of the first-named, Mr Smith gives us a picturesque account.
In the shade of a long alley of acacia and fig trees the packers
were seated--Greeks by nation, and the women very handsome. "They
first brought the figs from the warehouses, on the floor of which I
saw hundreds of bushels, brought in on camels from the country. They
were then pulled into shape, this task being confided to females;
and after that sent on to the men who packed them. They gathered
six or seven, one after the other, in their hand, and then wedged
them into the drum, putting a few superior ones on the top, as we
have seen done with strawberries." We have already mentioned that
our sharp-sighted and lively traveller is somewhat of a naturalist,
and here he favours us with the result of his observations upon the
camel. That uncouth, but useful hunchback has been belauded and
vaunted in prose and verse to such an exaggerated extent that we are
quite tired of hearing of his virtues, and feel much indebted to the
author of _A Month at Constantinople_ for exhibiting his failings
after the following fashion:--

     "Your camel is a great obtainer of pity, under false pretence.
     He can be as self-willed and vicious as you please; and his
     bite is particularly severe: when once his powerful teeth have
     fastened, it is with the greatest difficulty that he is made
     to relinquish his hold. The pitiful noise too, which he makes,
     as small natural historians remark, upon being overladen,
     is all sham. It proceeds from sheer idleness, rather than a
     sense of oppression. With many camels, if you make pretence
     to put a small object on their back--a tile or a stone, for
     instance--whilst they are kneeling down, they begin mechanically
     to bellow, and blink their eyes, and assume such a dismal
     appearance of suffering and anguish, that it is perfectly
     painful for susceptible natures to regard them. And yet, when
     their load is well distributed and packed, they can move along
     under seven hundredweight."

But we must get on to Constantinople. Often as the magnificent
spectacle has been described that bursts upon the view as you round
Seraglio Point and glide into the Golden Horn, it yet would seem
affected or eccentric of a traveller who writes about Constantinople
were he to neglect recording the impression made upon him by that
singularly lovely panorama. Mr Albert Smith's description is to
the purpose, and we like it the better for the complete absence of
that magniloquence in which so many tourists have indulged when
discoursing upon the beauties of Stamboul. Probably no city in the
world presents so great a contrast as Constantinople, when seen from
a short distance and when examined in detail. Floating on the blue
waters of the Bosphorus, the wondering stranger gazes upon a fairy
spectacle of domes, and minarets, and cypress groves, of graceful
palaces and stately mosques, gilded wherries and gaily-attired
crowds. A few minutes elapse: the grave custom-house officials in
their handsome barge have received the sixpenny bribe which exempts
his luggage from examination; he lands at the Tophanné Stairs, and
enters the steep lane that leads up to Pera, and in an instant the
illusion is dissipated:--

     "I felt," says Mr Smith, who readily avails himself, and in
     this instance very happily, of a theatrical comparison, "that
     I had been taken behind the scenes of a great 'effect.' The
     Constantinople of Vauxhall Gardens, a few years ago, did not
     differ more, when viewed in front from the gallery and behind
     from the dirty little alleys bordering the river. The miserable,
     narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare did not present one redeeming
     feature--even of picturesque dreariness. The roadway was paved
     with all sorts of ragged stones, jammed down together without
     any regard to level surface; and encumbered with dead rats,
     melon-rinds, dogs, rags, brickbats, and rubbish, that had fallen
     through the mules' baskets, as they toiled along it. The houses
     were of wood--old and rotten; and bearing traces of having been
     once painted red. There was, evidently, never any attempt made
     to clean them, or their windows or doorways. Here and there,
     where a building had been burnt, or had tumbled down, all the
     ruins remained as they had fallen. Even the better class of
     houses had an uncared-for, mouldy, plague-imbued, decaying
     look about them; with grimy lattices instead of windows, on
     the upper stories, and dilapidated shutters and doors on the
     ground-floors."

It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed,
to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts,
a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden
under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look
too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic
economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at
least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not
investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment
unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture
painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity
impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a
cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before
him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by
the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages
relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in
Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten
by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of
hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine
race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with
slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and
bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the
eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets
of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person,
would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople."
With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the
other--the usual weapons of defence--he prosecuted his wanderings
most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the
filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these
pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar,
a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling
a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a
delightful _réveil-matin_.

     "To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a
     market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted
     against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they
     could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first
     astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images.
     The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at
     Tophanné--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole
     eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople
     appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other,
     without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking,
     growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and
     continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard
     at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and
     woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same
     tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like
     tranquillity was restored."

The traces of these nocturnal combats are plainly discernible the
next morning. There is not a whole skin in the entire canine legion;
some have lost eyes, others ears, some a collop of the little flesh
that remains on their unfortunate bones, and all bear the scars of
desperate conflicts. They keep an active look-out for dead horses
and camels, and are even said to devour their defunct comrades;
but there is no authenticated account of their making a meal of a
human being, although a story is current in Galata of their having
one night torn down a tipsy English sailor, and left nothing but
his bones to tell the tale in the morning. Drunkards, however, must
expect to go to the dogs. Mr Smith kept sober, and carried a lantern.
Solely to these two precautions, perhaps, are we to-day indebted for
the pleasure of reading his book, instead of mourning his interment
in the ravenous stomachs of Mahomedan mongrels.

It can hardly have escaped the observation of any one who has
travelled at all, that the presence of even a very few English
settlers in a town or district, speedily entails the establishment
of "the English shop." The keeper of this is not necessarily an
Englishman; he may be of any nation--Pole, Jew, Frenchman, German;
the essential is, that he should have a smattering of English and a
trader's knowledge of the heterogeneous articles which, in foreign
estimation, are indispensable to the existence of Englishmen.
Foremost amongst these are beer and pickles, mustard and cayenne,
Warren's blacking and Windsor soap, the pills of Professor
Holloway, the kalydor of the world-renowned Rowland. Thanks to the
extraordinary power of puffing, we dare to say that the paletot of
Sheriff Nicoll by this time finds its nook in "the English shop."
The growth of these philanthropical depots for the consolation of
exiled Britons is often miraculously mushroom-like. Land an English
regiment to occupy a menaced point on some distant foreign shore, and
within the week "the shop" appears, though it be but a booth with a
hamper of porter and a dozen pickle pots for sole stock in trade. In
Constantinople, where English abound, either as residents or birds
of passage, Stampa is a celebrity. The admirable establishment of
Galignani is not more famed for books and newspapers--and especially
for that far-famed _Messenger_, which reaches to the uttermost
ends of the earth--than is the shop of Stampa as a rendezvous and
receptacle for men and things English. There you may buy everything,
from a Stilton to a cake of soap, from a solar lamp to a steel pen;
and there obtain all manner of information, from the address of a
Galata[4] merchant to the sailing hour of a steamer. Nay, should you
be weary of kebobs and craving for a beefsteak, Stampa will provide
it you. He did so at least for Mr Smith; but perhaps that gentleman
was a favoured customer, as he seems indeed to have found means of
rendering himself at more than one place during his ramble.

  [4] The names of the various districts of Constantinople, sometimes
  rather indiscriminately used in travellers' narratives, are apt
  to puzzle those readers unfamiliar with the divisions of the
  city. The following note puts its distribution clearly before
  them:--"_Stamboul_ may be termed Constantinople proper, inhabited by
  the Turks, and containing the Seraglio, chief mosques, great public
  offices, bazaars, and places of Government and general business.
  It is the most ancient and most important part, _par excellence_.
  _Galata_ is the Wapping of the city: here we find dirty shops for
  ships' stores; merchants' counting-houses, and tipsy sailors.
  _Tophanné_ is so called from the large gun-factory close at hand.
  Both these suburbs are situated at the base of a very steep hill; the
  upper part of which is _Pera_, the district allotted to the Franks,
  or foreigners, and containing the palaces of the ambassadors, the
  hotels, the European shops, and the most motley population under the
  sun. _Scutari_ is to Stamboul as Birkenhead to Liverpool, and is in
  Asia. It is important in its way, as being the starting-place of all
  the caravans going inland. There are some other districts of less
  interest to the average tourist."--_A Month at Constantinople_, p. 46.

At Constantinople, as at Smyrna, Mr Smith visited the slave
market. There is a volume in the word, and we all know the sort of
phantasmagoria it summons up for the benefit of English ladies and
gentlemen, as they sit at home at ease, dandling their fancies by
the chimney corner. Exeter Hall and the picture shops have made
slave-markets of their own, compared to which the reality is a tame
and spiritless affair. We are all familiar, at a proper distance,
with that group of young ladies, more or less nude, and of every
tint--from the pale Georgian to the sable Ethiop--huddled together
in great alarm and the most graceful attitudes, whilst a shawled
and jewelled Turk scans their perfections with licentious eye, and
counts gold into the palm of a truculent dealer in human flesh.
None of us but have been painfully affected by representations,
both printed and pictorial, of whips and manacles, fettered hands
and striped shoulders, kneeling negroes and barbarous taskmasters,
whereby tender-hearted gentlemen are moved to unbutton their pockets,
and philanthropical ladies of excitable nerve, overlooking the
misery that is often close to their doors, are set sewing flannels
for remote blacks. We have all seen this sort of thing, and have
been interested and touched accordingly. But Mr Smith, in the most
unfeeling manner, robs us of our illusions, so far, at least, as
Smyrna or Constantinople are concerned. In the slave-market at
the latter place--where blacks only are exposed, the Circassian
and Georgian beauties being secluded in the dealers' houses--he
arrived at the conclusion that the creatures he saw wrapped in their
blankets and crouching in corners, and in whom sense and feeling were
evidently at the very lowest ebb, had much better chance of such
happiness as they were capable of enjoying, if sold as slaves than if
left to their own savage resources.

     "I should be very sorry," he says, "to run against any proper
     feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any
     person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown
     these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the
     property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he
     would come to the conclusion it was all they were fit for....
     The truth is, that the 'virtuous indignation' side of the
     question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine
     writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition
     should not always be implicitly relied upon. I knew a man who
     was said, by certain reviews and literary _cliques_, to be
     'a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed,'
     because he wrote touching things about them; but who would
     abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass
     his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was
     sufficiently full to take up the 'man-and-brother' line of
     literary business, and suggest that a tipsy Chartist was as good
     as quiet gentleman."

Mr Albert Smith is evidently a hard-hearted person, and we begin to
repent of noticing his book. In the same pitiless matter-of-fact
manner he continues to tilt at the several articles of our Eastern
creed, pressing into his service as a witness Demetri the Second,
(not him of Athens, but a Constantinople cicerone,) a terrible fellow
for rubbing the romantic lacquer off Turkish manners and customs.
After the slaves, the sack and scimitar are disposed of. "Not many
executions now," quoth Demetri,--"only English subjects. Here's where
they cut the heads off; just here, where these two streets meet, and
the body is left here a day or two, and sometimes the dogs get at
it." This was rather startling intelligence, until explained. The
"English subjects" proved to be emigrants from Malta and the Ionian
islands--the greatest scamps in Pera--which is saying no little, for
Pera abounds with scamps. At that time, however, there had not been
an execution for a whole year past.

     "All English gentlemen," continued Demetri, "think they cut off
     heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on
     plates at the Seraglio gate. And they think people are always
     being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who
     is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which comes from the
     wall of the Seraglio Point, as the place they slide them down.
     It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of
     other things."

Nothing like travel to dispel prejudice and romance. People are too
apt to adopt Byron's notions of the East. To those who would have
their eyes opened we recommend the Mediterranean steamers, or, if
these would take them too far, they may stay at home and read Mr
Smith.

     "Travel," such is his advice to the seeker after truth, "with
     a determination to be only affected by things as they strike
     you. Swiss girls, St Bernard dogs, Portici fishermen, the Rhine,
     Nile travelling, and other objects of popular rhapsodies,
     fearfully deteriorate upon practical acquaintance. Few tourists
     have the courage to say that they have been 'bored,' or at
     least disappointed by some conventional lion. They find that
     Guide-books, Diaries, Notes, Journals, &c. &c., all copy one
     from the other in their enthusiasm about the same things; and
     they shrink from the charge of vulgarity, or lack of mind, did
     they dare to differ. Artists and writers _will_ study effect
     rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some
     modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions
     of ninety-nine people out of a hundred--allowing all these to
     possess average education, perception, and intellect--when
     painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted
     lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual,
     is to the faithful photograph."

Mr Smith's concluding chapter, including his lazaretto experiences
and departure for Egypt, is very amusing, and he shows up the
abuses of the quarantine system, his own annoyances when in sickly
durance, and the eccentricities of his Mahometan and Christian
fellow-travellers, with spirit and humour. We have good will, but no
space, to accompany him further in his peregrinations. An appendix,
including estimates of expenses, and various remarks suggested by
his recent travelling experience, will be found useful by persons
contemplating a similar trip. The general texture of his book is
certainly of the slightest; but, as already implied, it pretends not
to solidity or to the discussion of grave topics. It is just such
a volume as might be composed by the amalgamation of a series of
epistles from a lively and fluent letter-writer to friends at home,
during a few weeks' ramble and abode in Turkey. If it occasionally
reminds us of Cockaigne, its author, we are sure, is too patriotic
to be ashamed of his native village, and we have no mind to quarrel
with him for the almost exclusively metropolitan character of his
tropes and similes, for his frequent reminiscences of London streets
and Surrey hills, or for his preference of the sunset seen from "The
Cricketers" at Chertsey Bridge, to the same sight from "The little
Burial-ground" at Pera. A good result--probably the one he aimed
at--of the selection, as points of comparison, of localities more
particularly familiar to Londoners, is that he thereby conveys, to
those who will doubtless form a very large proportion of his readers,
a clear idea of the places he visited and would describe. And his
little volume affords evidence of good temper and feeling sufficient
to cover a multitude of Cockneyisms.

When reviewing, about two years ago, a volume of rambles[5] in
a very different region, we stated our opinion as to the style
of illustration appropriate to books of this kind, in which cuts
or engravings are most acceptable when they explain scenes and
objects that written description, even at great length, would less
accurately and clearly place before the reader. Mr Smith is evidently
of the same way of thinking. "I have given," he says, "only those
illustrations which appeared to be the most characteristic rather
than the most imposing." In so doing he has shown judgment, and used
to the best advantage the pencils and colour-box, which formed part
of the heterogeneous contents of his well-stuffed knapsack. The
reader will be more obliged to him for the appropriate and useful
little sketches that thickly stud his pages, than for any drawings
of greater pretensions, whose introduction the size and price of the
volume would have permitted.

  [5] Ballantyne's _Hudson's Bay_.




MADAME SONTAG AND THE OPERA.


It is now between three and four years since the town was startled
by intelligence that the Opera House was divided against itself, and
that melody and grace were about to take flight from the bottom of
the Hay-market to the top of the Garden. In our quality of determined
foes to unnecessary changes and theoretical reforms, we received the
intelligence regretfully, and so, we have reason to believe, did
that very considerable section of the London and provincial public
into whose annual calculations of refined enjoyments the Italian
Opera largely enters. Without going into the merits of the dispute,
which up to this hour we have never heard clearly elucidated, we
plainly discerned one thing--namely, that there was discord in the
operatic camp; that harmony had abandoned its favourite abode; that
managers, musicians, singers, and dancers, were drawing different
ways: in short, that the Opera, taking the lead in a fashion that
soon afterwards became disagreeably prevalent throughout Europe, was
in a state of revolution. With whom the fault lay we knew not, and
little cared: all that concerned us was the unpleasant fact that the
pleasures of the music-loving multitude, _quorum pars sumus_, were
seriously endangered. It is pretty notorious that, with very rare
exceptions, professional votaries of the Muses are capricious, and
difficult to deal with. Painters are accused of unpunctuality and
improvidence; composers are often idle dogs, fretting _impresarios_
into fevers, as Rossini did Barbaja, and fulfilling their engagements
only at the last minute of the eleventh hour, with the _polenta_
smoking on the table;[6] even authors we have heard declared, upon
no mean authority, to be queer cattle to guide; but, of all classes
whose occupation derives from art and poetry, none, assuredly,
are harder to manage and to please than actors and musicians. From
those early days of Opera, when a Lully shivered Cremonas upon the
heads of a refractory orchestra, to the recent ones when a Lumley
in vain essayed to appease the petulance of a prima donna, and calm
the choler of a conductor, the tribulations of managers have been
countless as the pebbles on the shore. To judge, indeed, from their
own account, few of the penalties so picturesquely set forth in Fox's
martyr-book, but would be preferable to ten years' management of a
large lyric theatre. Consult the comedians, and we are presented with
the reverse of the medal. A manager, we shall be told, is a covetous
and Heliogabalian tyrant, fattening upon the toil and talents of
the artist; a sort of vampire in a black coat, sucking the blood of
genius, faring sumptuously on the proceeds of a tenor, squeezing
the cost of his stud out of a soprano, and making large annual
investments on the strength of an underpaid barytone. These things
may be true, but we shall more readily credit them when we less
frequently see managers in the _Gazette_, and when we hear of singers
putting down their carriages, retrenching their suburban villas, and
contenting themselves with salaries less enormous than those they now
unblushingly exact. Upon such matters, however, it is not our purpose
to expatiate. Theatrical quarrels rarely excite much general interest
in this country, except inasmuch as they may exercise an unfavourable
influence on the pleasures of the public--which has not been the
case, we are happy to say, in the most recent and important instance
of disagreement between the lessee of the first London theatre and
certain members of his company.

  [6] Rossini's desperate idleness and habits of procrastination
  are proverbial. On more than one occasion personal restraint was
  resorted to, to compel the fulfilment of his engagements. Thus,
  at Milan, sentinels were placed at his door, and no exit allowed
  him, until he had completed an opera of which the two first acts
  were already in rehearsal. Barbaja, the celebrated _impresario_,
  kept him for some time prisoner in his palace on the Naples Toledo,
  refusing him liberty until he should have composed the long-promised
  opera of Otello. Remonstrances were disregarded by the inflexible
  manager, so Rossini set to work, and, with his usual facility, soon
  sent down a portion of the score, headed _Introduzione_. This was
  transmitted to the copyist; but the same evening Rossini applied
  for it again, on pretext of alteration. Next morning another MS.
  reached Barbaja, inscribed _Caratina_. It followed its predecessor
  to the copyist, and, in like manner, was re-demanded for correction.
  Barbaja gleefully rubbed his hands at finding that these revisions
  did not delay Rossini, who sent 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/43354