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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 60, NO. 374, DECEMBER, 1846 ***

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Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

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       *       *       *       *       *




BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXIV. DECEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.


  CONTENTS.

  KOHL IN DENMARK AND IN THE MARSHES,           645

  LORD METCALFE'S GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA,        662

  ANNALS AND ANTIQUITIES OF LONDON,             673

  MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES. 1711-1712,          690

  MILDRED. A TALE. PART I.,                     709

  THE LAW AND ITS PUNISHMENTS,                  721

  LEGENDS OF THE THAMES,                        729

  RECENT ROYAL MARRIAGES,                       740

  ST MAGNUS', KIRKWALL,                         753

  THE GAME LAWS,                                754


  EDINBURGH:
  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND 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 BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




  _In the Press, a Seventh Edition of_

  THE HISTORY OF EUROPE,
  FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

  BY ARCHIBALD ALISON, F. R. S.


  *** This Edition will be handsomely printed in Crown Octavo; the First
  Volume to be Published on the 24th of December, and the remaining Volumes
  Monthly.

  PRICE SIX SHILLINGS EACH.




BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXIV. DECEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.




KOHL IN DENMARK AND IN THE MARSHES.

     _Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthümer Schleswig und
     Holstein. Reisen in Dänemark und den Herzogthümer Schleswig und
     Holstein._


Mr. Kohl, the most prolific of modern German writers, the most
indefatigable of travellers, is already well known to the English
public by his "Sketches of the English," "Travels in Ireland," and
many other publications too numerous to remember. He is a gentleman
of marvellous facility in travelling over foreign ground--of
extraordinary capabilities in the manufacturing of books. Within
five years he has given to the world, hostages for fame, some
thirty or forty volumes; and explored, socially, politically,
scientifically, and æsthetically, North and South Russia, Poland,
Moravia, Hungary, Bavaria, Great Britain, France, Denmark, and we
know not how many other countries besides. It is as difficult to
stop his pen as his feet. He is always trotting, and writing whilst
he trots, and evidently without the smallest fatigue from either
occupation. He plays on earth the part assigned to the lark above it
by the poet: he,

  "Singing, still doth soar; and soaring, ever singeth."

He has already announced a scheme that has occurred to him for
a commercial map, which shall contain, in various colours, the
productions and raw materials of every country in the world, with
lines appended, marking the course they take to their several ports
of embarkation. We shrewdly suspect that this gigantic scheme has
grown out of another, more personal and profitable, and already
put in practice. We could almost swear that Mr Kohl had drawn up a
literary map on the very same principle, with dots for the countries
and districts to be visited and worked up, and lines to mark the
course for the conveyance of that very raw material, which he is
eternally digging up on the way, in the shape of disquisitions about
nothing, and moral reflections on every thing. Denmark occupies him
to-day. We will wager that he is already intent upon working out an
article or book from neighbouring Norway or adjacent Sweden.

It was remarked the other day by a writer, that one great literary
fault of the present day is a desire to be "so priggishly curt and
epigrammatic," that almost every lucubration comes from the furnace
with a coating of "small impertinence," perfectly intolerable to
the sober reader. If any writer is anxious to correct this fault,
let him take our advice gratis, and sit down at once to a course
of Kohl. So admirable a spinner of long yarns from the smallest
threads, never flourished. We have most honestly and perseveringly
waded through his eleven or twelve hundred pages of close print,
and we unhesitatingly confess that we have never before perused
so much, of which we have retained so little. Does not every man,
woman, and child, in these days of cheap fares and everlasting
steamers, know by heart all that can be said or sung about "tones
from the sea?" Are they not to be summoned, at any given moment,
under any given circumstances, by your fire at twilight, on your
pillow at midnight? Mr Kohl proses about these eternal "_tones_,"
till salt water becomes odious--about storms, till they calm you
to sleep--about calms, till they drive you to fury--about winds
and waves, till your head aches with their motion. We will not
pretend to tell you, reader, all the differences that exist between
high marsh-land and low marsh-land, broad dikes and narrow dikes,
or to describe the downs and embankments which we have seen, go
whithersoever we may, ever since we have risen from the perusal of
Mr Kohl's book. We will not, because Mr Kohl has dealt hardly by
us, have our revenge upon you. Nay, we could not, if we would. The
picture is jumbled in our critical head, as it lies confused in
the author's work, which is as disjointed a labour as ever puzzled
science seeking in chaos for a system. Backwards and forwards he
goes--now up to his head in the marshes, now lighting upon an
island, disdaining geography, giving the go-by to history, dragging
us recklessly through digressions, repudiating any thing like order,
and utterly oblivious of that beautiful scheme so dear to his heart,
by which we are to trace the natural course of every thing under the
sun but the narrative of Mr Kohl's very tedious adventures.

Mr Kohl knows very well what is the duty of a faithful delineator of
foreign countries and manners. He acknowledges in his preface, that
his work is rather a make-up of simple remarks than a comprehensive
description of the countries named in the titlepage. This confession
is not--as is often the case--a modest appreciation of great merits,
but a true estimate of small achievements. It is the simple fact.
As for the consolatory reflections of the author, that he has at
all events proved that he knows more of the lands he describes than
his countrymen who stay at home, it is of so lowly a character that
we are by no means disposed to discuss it. When he adds, however,
that he has already earned a kind reception from the world, and
trusts to be reckoned amongst the men who have been useful, we may
be permitted to hint, that neither a kind reception nor the quality
of usefulness will long be vouchsafed to the individual who leads
confiding but unfortunate readers a Will-o'-the-Wisp chase over bogs
and moors that have no end, and compels them to swallow, diluted in
bottles three, the draught which might easily have found its way
into an ordinary phial.

That there are gems in the volumes cannot be denied: that they
are not of the first water, is equally beyond a doubt. Scattered
over a prodigious surface, they have not been gained without some
difficulty. Those who are not able or disposed to turn to the
original, will be glad to learn from us something of the sturdy
Frieslanders and Ditmarschers. They who have energy and patience
enough to overcome the prolixity of the author, will at least give
us credit for some perseverance, and appreciate the difficulties of
our task.

Mr Kohl commences his work with a description of the _Islands_.
We will follow the order of the titlepage, and begin with the
"Marshes" and their brave and hardy inhabitants. The author informs
us, with pardonable exultation, that, upon asking a German of
ordinary education whether he knew who the Ditmarschers are, he
was most satisfactorily answered, "_Ja wohl!_ are they not the
famous peasants of Denmark who would not surrender to the king?"
We question whether many Englishmen, of even an extraordinary
education, would have answered at once so glibly or correctly. To
enable them to meet the question of any future Kohl with promptness
and success, we will introduce them at once to this singular race,
and give a rapid sketch of their country and political existence.

The territory inhabited by the Ditmarschers is a small district of
flat country, stretching along the Elbe and the Eyder, and is about
a hundred miles in length. Its maritime frontier was originally
defended by lofty mounds, which opposed the encroachments of the
sea; whilst inland it found protection in an almost impenetrable
barrier of thick wood, bogs, lakes, and morass. This barrier
constitutes the marshes so minutely described by our author. The
Ditmarschers are a people of Friesic origin; the name, according
to Mr Kohl, being derived from _Marsch_, _Meeresland_, sea-land,
and _Dith_, _Thit_, or _Teut_, _Deutsch_, German. In the time
of Charlemagne, or his immediate successors, the district was
included in the department of the Mouth of the Elbe, and was known
as the Countship of Stade. It was bestowed by the Emperor Henry
IV., in 1602, upon the archbishops of Bremen, to be held by them
in fief. The Ditmarschers, however, were but slippery subjects;
and, maintaining an actual independence within their embankments,
cared little who governed them, provided sufficient advantages were
offered by the prince or prelate who demanded their allegiance. In
1186, we find them claiming the protection of Bishop Valdemar of
Sleswig, the uncle and guardian of Prince Valdemar, afterwards known
as Valdemar the conqueror; for, "being grievously worried by the
oppressions of the bailiffs of their spiritual Lord," they declared
a perfect indifference as to "whether they paid tribute to Saint
Peter of Bremen, or Saint Peter of Sleswig." They passed from the
rule of Bishop Valdemar, who was subsequently excommunicated, to
that respectively of the Duke of Holstein, the Bishop of Bremen,
and Valdemar II., King of Denmark. When the last-named monarch gave
battle to his revolted subjects at Bornhöved in Holstein, in the
year 1227, the Ditmarschers suddenly united their bands with those
of the enemy, and decided the fate of the day against the king. They
then returned to the rule of the bishops of Bremen, stipulating for
many rights and privileges, which they enjoyed unmolested during
300 years; that is to say, up to the year 1559, whilst they yielded
little more than a nominal obedience to their spiritual lords, and
evinced no great alacrity in assisting them in times of need.

During their long period of practical independence and freedom,
the Ditmarschers governed themselves like stanch republicans.
Their grand assembly was the _Meende_, to which all citizens were
eligible above the age of eighteen. It met in extraordinary cases at
Meldorf, the capital: but commonly seventy or eighty _Radgewere_,
or councillors, decided upon all questions of national policy
propounded to them by the _Schlüter_, or overseers of the various
parishes into which the district was divided, who generally managed
the affairs of their own little municipality independently of their
neighbours. This simple institution underwent some modifications
about the middle of the fifteenth century, when, in consequence of
internal dissensions, eight-and-forty men were chosen as supreme
judges for life. These "_achtundveertig_" had, however, but little
real power. They met weekly; but on great emergencies they summoned
a general assembly, amounting to about 1500 persons, and consisting
of the various councillors and _schlüter_. This assembly held forth
in the market-place of the capital. The masses closely watched the
proceedings, and when it was deemed necessary, called upon one of
their own number to address the meeting on behalf of the rest.

The peace enjoyed by the Ditmarschers from without, contrasted
strongly with the tumults that were often experienced within. The
annals of these people inform us, that whole families and races
were from time to time swept away by the hand of the foe, and by
the violence of party spirit. The Ditmarschers celebrate several
days as anniversaries of victories. One, the _Hare_ day, dates as
far back as 1288, when a party of Holsteiners made an incursion
into the marshes, but were speedily opposed by the natives. For
a time the two hostile bands watched each other, neither willing
to attack, when a hare suddenly started up between them. Some of
the Ditmarschers, pursuing the frightened animal, exclaimed _Löp,
löp!_--"Run, run!" The foremost Holsteiners, seeing the enemy
approaching at full speed, were thrown into confusion; whilst those
behind them, hearing the cry of "run, run!" took to their heels,
and a general rout ensued. The day of "melting lead" is another
joyful anniversary. Gerard VII. of Holstein, endeavouring in 1390[1]
to subjugate the country of the Ditmarschen, drove the people at the
crisis of an assault to such extremities, that they were obliged to
take refuge in a church, which they obstinately defended against
the Duke's troops, until Gerard, infuriated, ordered the leaden
roof of the building to be heated. The melted lead trickled down on
the heads of the Ditmarschers, who, finding themselves reduced to
a choice of deaths, desperately fought their way out, engaged the
Holsteiners, whom they overcame, and who, ignorant of the country,
were either lost in the intricacies of the marshes or drowned in
the dikes. The forces of a count, a duke, and a king, were in turns
routed by the brave Ditmarschers, who have not yet forgotten the
glory of their ancient peasantry. In 1559, however, they ceased to
gain victories for celebration. In that year Denmark and the Duchies
united to subdue the small but very valiant nation. They marshalled
an army of twenty-five thousand picked men, whilst the Ditmarschers
could with difficulty collect seven thousand. John Rantzan commanded
the allied army. He captured Meldorf, set fire to the town, pursued
the inhabitants in all directions and destroyed the greater number
whilst they were nobly fighting for their liberties. Utterly beaten,
the Ditmarschers submitted to their conquerors. Three of the
clergy proceeded to the enemy, bearing a letter addressed to the
princes as "The Lords of Ditmarschen," and offering to surrender
their arms and ammunitions, together with all the trophies they
had ever won. A general capitulation followed: not wholly to the
disadvantage of the people, since it was stipulated that none but
a native of the country should hold immediate authority over it.
At first the land was divided amongst the sovereigns of Denmark,
Holstein, and Sleswig; but in 1773 it was finally ceded in full to
the Danish monarch, together with part of Holstein, by the Duke of
Schleswig-Holstein, (afterwards Grand-Duke of Russia,) in exchange
for Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. The Ditmarschers, at the present
hour enjoy many of their former privileges: they acknowledge no
distinctions of rank; they have their forty-eight Supreme Judges
(the ancient _schlüter_) under the name of _Vögte_ or overseers,
and may, in fact, be regarded as one of the best samples of
republicanism now existing in the world.

  [1] Mr Kohl fixes the date of the "melted lead" day at 1319,
  forgetting that Margaret, the Semiramis of the North, in whose reign
  the event occurred, did not reign in Denmark until about 1375. She
  died in 1412.

Thus much for their history. Of their far-farmed dikes and sluices,
of the marsh-lands and downs which their embankments inclosed,
much more may be said, for Mr Kohl devotes half his work to their
consideration. We will not fatigue the indulgent reader by engaging
him for a survey. The land is distinguished by the inhabitants by
the terms _grest_ and _marsch_; the former being the hilly district,
the latter the deposits from the sea:--the one is woody in parts,
having heath and sand, springs and brooks: the other is flat,
treeless, heathless, with no sand or spring, but one rich series of
meadows, intersected in every direction by canals and dikes. Far as
the eye can reach, it rests upon broad and fertile meads covered
with grazing cattle; whilst from the teeming plain stand forth
farm-houses innumerable, raised upon _wurten_, or little hillocks,
some ten or twelve feet above the level of the land, for security
against constantly recurring inundation. All external appliances
needful for the establishment are elevated upon these heights, whose
sides are, for the most part, covered with vegetable gardens, and
here and there with flowers and shrubs. The houses have but one
story; they are long, and built of brick. For protection against
the unsteady soil, they are often supported by large iron posts
projecting from the sides, and looking like huge anchors. There are
few villages or hamlets in the marshes. The inhabitants are not
gregarious, but prefer the independence of a perfectly insulated
abode. The "threshold right" is still so strictly maintained amongst
them, that no officer of police dare enter, unpermitted, the house
of a Ditmarscher, or arrest him within his own doors.

The roads in the marshes, as may be supposed, are, at times, almost
impassable; riding is therefore more frequent than driving or
walking, although many of the more active marshers accelerate their
passage across the fens by leaping-poles, which they employ with
wonderful dexterity. The women ride always behind the men, on a seat
fastened to the crupper. As the dikes lie higher than the meadows,
they prove the driest road for carriages and passengers; but they
are not always open to the traveller, lest too constant a traffic
should injure the foundations. The carriages chiefly used are a
species of land canoe. They are called _Körwagen_, and are long,
narrow, and awkward. On either side of the vehicle, chairs or seats
swing loosely. No one chair is large enough for the two who occupy
it, and who sit with their knees closely pressed against the seat
which is before them.

The process of gradually reclaiming new land from the waves is
somewhat curious. As soon as a sufficient amount of deposit has been
thrown up from the sea, outguards, or breakwaters, called _höfter_
are immediately erected. Within the breakwater there remains a pool
of still water, which by degrees fills up with a rich slime or mud
called _slick_. As soon as the slick has attained an elevation
sufficient to be above the regular level of the high waves, plants
styled "_Queller_" appear, and are soon succeeded by others termed
_Drücknieder_, from the tendency of their interlaced roots and
tendrils to keep down the soft mud. In the course of years, the soil
rises, and a meadow takes the place of the former stagnant pool.
As these new lands are extremely productive, often yielding three
hundred-fold on the first crop of rape-seed, sixty to eighty fold
on barley, and from thirty to forty on wheat, their possession is
ever a subject of great dispute. Formerly the diking and embankments
were undertaken by companies; but at present they are in the hands
of the Danish government, which makes all necessary outlay in the
beginning, and appropriates whatever surplus may remain upon the
original cost to future repairs and to the aid of the general
poor fund. Some slight idea may be formed of the enormous expense
incurred in the construction and maintenance of these dikes, when we
state that the _Dagebieller_ dike alone cost ten thousand dollars
for one recent repair. Ninety thousand dollars were one summer
spent in building embankments around reclaimed land, now valued at
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, thus showing a clear gain
of sixty thousand dollars by the undertaking. The embankments are
generally from fifteen to twenty feet high. When the nature of the
soil upon which they are raised is considered, together with the
scarcity of wood on these low lands, it will not be difficult to
understand that constant labour is needed to prevent the land from
being undermined by the sea, and that it is only by unremitting
industry, and constant attention to the condition of the breakwaters
and dikes, that the enemy can at all be kept at bay.

The dangers that are to be encountered, and the laborious efforts
that must be made for subsistence at home, train the Frieslander of
the marshes and islands for the perils of the deep, which we find
him encountering with a brave and dogged resolution. The islanders,
especially, are constantly engaged in the whale and other fisheries.
In the islands visited by Mr Kohl, the greater number of the men
were far away on the seas, and their wives and daughters conducting
the business of their several callings; some tending cattle, some
spinning, others manufacturing gloves. Seals abound upon the coast,
and are caught by sundry ingenious devices. A fisher disguises
himself in a seal-skin, and travels up to a troop of these sea
monsters, imitating, as far as he is able, their singular movements
and contortions. When, fairly amongst them, he lifts the gun which
has been concealed beneath his body, and shoots amongst the herd.
If discovered asleep a seal is sure to be caught, for his slumbers
are sound. Conscious of his weakness, _Phoca_ stations a patrol at
some little distance from his couch, and an alarm is given as soon
as any man appears. At certain seasons of the year vast flocks of
ducks light upon the islands, and are caught chiefly by the aid of
tame decoy-birds, who mislead the others into extensive nets spread
for the visitors. One duck-decoyer will catch twenty thousand birds
in the course of a summer; the soft down obtained from the breast of
one species is the _eider down_. The season begins in September and
lasts till Christmas. Hamburg beef is due to the localities we speak
of. One of the large meadow districts already mentioned, is said
to fatten eight thousand head of oxen yearly, who, at their death,
bequeath to the world the far-famed dainty.

The islands visited by our author are those lying in that part
of the North Sea which the Danes call _Vesterhafet_, or the
western harbour, and which extends close to the shores from the
mouth of the Elbe to Jutland. Of these the most noted are Syltoe,
Foehr, Amrum, Romoe, and Pelvorn. Around them lie many excellent
oyster-beds--royal property, and yielding an annual income of twenty
thousand dollars. The people inhabiting these islands are said to be
of Friesic origin: they certainly were colonists from Holland, and
they still exhibit many peculiarities of the ancient Friesic stock.
They are clean, neat, simple, honest, and moral. Few establishments
for the punishment of culprits are to be found either in the islands
or on the marshes. As late as the fifteenth and sixteenth century,
in cases of homicide the accused was doomed to walk over twelve
burning ploughshares. Great crimes seem unknown to-day; and the
practice of leaving house-doors unbarred and unlocked upon the wide
and desolate marshes, testifies not a little to the general honesty
of the people.

Mr Kohl talks a whole boxfull of balaam about the identity of the
islanders and the English. In the first place, he insists that
_Hengist_ and _Horsa_ were gentlemen of Friesic extraction; and
secondly, he compares them to a spirituous liquor: thirdly, he
argues on the topic like a musty German bookworm, who has travelled
no further than round his own room, and seen no more humanity than
the grubby specimen his looking-glass once a-week, at shaving
time, presents to him. What authority has Mr Kohl for this Friesic
origin of Hengist and Horsa? Is there a port along the Elbe and
the Weser, or on the coasts of Jutland and Holstein, which does
not claim the honour of having sent the brothers out? Is not the
question as difficult to decide, the fact as impossible to arrive
at, as Homer's birthplace? But supposing the hypothesis of Mr Kohl
to be true, he surely cannot be serious when he asserts, that
the handful of men who landed with the brothers in Britain, have
transmitted their Friesic characteristics through every succeeding
age, and that these are discernible now in all their pristine vigour
and integrity. Can he mean what he says? Is he not joking when he
puts forward the "rum" argument? A little of that liquor, he says,
flavours a bowl of punch. Why shouldn't a little Friesic season the
entire English nation with the masculine force of the old Teutonic
Frieslanders? Why should it? If Hengist and Horsa supplied the rum,
who, we are justified in asking, came down with the sugar and lemon?
If the beverage be milk-punch, who was the dairyman? These are
questions quite as apt as Mr Kohl's, not a whit more curious than
his illustrations. The points of identity between the Frieslander
and the Englishman are marvellous, if you can but see them. The
inhabitants of the marshes and islands are grave, reserved, and
thoughtful; so are the English; so, for that matter, are the Upper
Lusatians, if we are to believe Ernst Willkomm; so are a good many
other people. The marshers have an eye to their own interests; so
have the English. This is a feature quite peculiar to the marshers
and the English. It may be called the _right_ eye, every other
nation possessing only the left. Of course, Mr Kohl is perfectly
blind to his interests, in publishing the present work: yet he is
Friesic too! From the Frieslanders we have inherited our "English
spleen." How many years have we been attributing it to the much
maligned climate? We are starched and stiff; so are the islanders.
The marshers dress a May king and queen at a spring festival. We
know something about a May queen at the same blessed season. If
these were the only instances of kindred resemblance, our readers
might fail to be convinced, after all, of the truth of the Friesic
theory. These doubts, if any linger, shall be removed at once. One
morning a Frieslander carefully opened Mr Kohl's door, and said, "_I
am afraid_ there is a house on fire." Kohl rushed forth and found
the building in flames; which incident immediately reminded him--he
being a German and a philosopher--of the excessive caution of the
Englishman, which, under the most alarming circumstances, forbids
his saying any thing stronger than "I believe," "I am afraid," "I
dare say." Verily we "believe," we are "afraid," we "dare say,"
that Mr. Kohl is a most incorrigible twaddler. One more peculiarity
remains to be told. They keep gigs in the marshes. There are
"gentlemen" there as well as in England. Are there none elsewhere?

The customs of the Ditmarschers could not fail to be interesting.
That of the _Fenstern_ or _Windowing_ is romantic, and perilous
to boot. At dead of night, when all good people are asleep, young
gallants cross the marshes and downs for miles to visit the girls
of their acquaintance, or it may be _the_ girl of fairest form
and most attractions. Arrived at the house, they scale the walls,
enter a window, and drop into the chamber of the lady, who lies
muffled up to the chin on a bed of down, having taken care to
leave a burning lamp on the table, and fire in the stove, that
her nocturnal callers may have both light and warmth. Upon the
entrance of her visitor, she politely asks him to be seated--his
chair being placed at the distance of a few feet from the bed. They
converse, and the conversation being brought to an end, the gallant
takes his departure either by the door or window. Some opposition
has been shown of late to this custom by a few over-scrupulous
parents; but the fathers who are bold enough to put bolts on their
doors or windows, are certain of meeting with reprisals from the
gallants of the district. The _Fenstern_ is subject to certain
laws and regulations, by which those who practise it are bound to
abide. Another curious custom, and derived like the former from the
heathen, was the dance performed at the churching of women up to the
close of the last century--the woman herself wearing a green and a
red stocking, and hopping upon one leg to church. The Friesic women
are small and delicately formed: their skin, beautifully soft and
white, is protected most carefully against the rough atmosphere by a
mantle, which so completely covers the face, that both in winter and
summer little can be seen beyond the eyes of the women encountered
in the open streets. The generally sombre hue of the garments
renders this muffling the more remarkable; for it is customary for
the relatives of those who are at sea to wear mourning until the
return of the adventurers. Skirt, boddice, apron, and kerchief, all
are dark; and the cloth which so jealously screens the head and face
from the sun and storm, is of the same melancholy hue.

The churchyards testify to the fact, that a comparatively small
number of those who, year after year, proceed on their perilous
expeditions, return to die at home. The monuments almost exclusively
record the names of women--a blank being left for that of the absent
husband, father, or brother, whose remains are possibly mouldering
in another hemisphere. Every device and symbol sculptured in the
churchyard has reference to the maritime life, with which they are
all so familiar. A ship at anchor, dismasted, with broken tackle, is
a favourite image, whilst the inscription quaintly corresponds with
the sculptured metaphor. It is usual for the people to erect their
monuments during life, and to have the full inscriptions written,
leaving room only for the _date_ of the decease. In the island of
Foehr and elsewhere, the custom still prevails of hiring women to
make loud lamentations over the body, as it is carried homewards
and deposited in the earth. The churches are plain to rudeness, and
disfigured with the most barbarous wood carvings of our Saviour, of
saints, and popes. These rough buildings are, for the most part, of
great antiquity, and traditions tell of their having been brought
from England. There can be no doubt that British missionaries were
here in former days. At the time of the Reformation, the islanders
refused to change their faith; but once converted to Lutheranism,
they have remained stanch Protestants ever since, and maintain a
becoming veneration for their pastors. The clergy are natives of the
islands, and therefore well acquainted with the Friesic dialect, in
which they preach. Their pay is necessarily small, and is mostly
raised by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. As
may be supposed, the clergy have much influence over the people,
especially on the smaller islands, where the inhabitants have but
little intercourse with strangers. Temperance societies have been
established by the pastors. Brandy, tea, and coffee, came into
general use throughout the islands about a century ago, and ardent
drinking was in vogue until the interference of the clergy. The
Ditmarschers especially, who are allowed to distil without paying
excise duties, carried the vice of drunkenness to excess; but they
are much improved.

The greatest diversity of languages, or rather of dialects, exists
in the islands, arising probably from the fact of Friesic not being
a written language. The dialect of the furthest west approaches
nearer to English than any other. The people of _Amrum_ are proud
of the similarity. They retain the _th_ of the old Icelandic, and
have a number of words in which the resemblance of their ancient
form of speech to the old Anglo-Saxon English is more apparent than
in even the Danish of the present day; as, for instance, _Hu mani
mile?_ How many miles? _Bradgrum_, bridegroom; _theenk_, think, &c.
In many of the words advanced by Mr Kohl, that gentleman evidently
betrays an unconsciousness of their being synonymous with the modern
Danish; and, therefore, strikingly inimical to his favourite theory
of the especial Friesic descent of the English people and language.
Little or nothing is known of the actual geographical propagation
of the old Friesic. At present it is yielding to the Danish and the
Low German in the duchies of Sleswig and Holstein. Many names are
still common amongst the people, which seem to have descended from
the heathen epoch, and which are, in fact, more frequently heard
than the names in the "Roman Calendar," met with elsewhere. _Des_,
_Edo_, _Haje_, _Pave_, _Tete_, are the names of men; _Ehle_, _Tat_,
_Mantje_, _Ode_, _Sieg_, are those of women. None of them are known
amongst any other people. Much confusion exists with respect to the
patronymic, there being no surnames in use in many of the islands.
If a man were called _Tete_, his son _Edo_ would be _Edo Tetes_;
and then, again, _Tat_, the wife of the _Edo_, would be _Tat Edos_,
and his son _Des_, _Des Edos_; whilst _Des's_ son _Tete_ would be
_Tete Des's_, and so on in the most troublesome and perplexing
combinations.

The Frieslanders, like other northern nations, are superstitious,
and they have a multitude of traditions or sagas, some of them
very curious and interesting. We must pass over these instructive
myths--always the rarest and most striking portion of a people's
history--more cursorily than we could wish, and cite a few only of
the most peculiar. The island of _Sylt_, which is the richest in
remains of _höogen_, the celts of heathen heroes, &c., lays claim
to the largest number of Märchen. The most characteristic of all
is that of _de Mannigfuel_, the "colossal ship," (or world,) which
was so large that the commander was obliged to ride about the deck
in order to give his orders: the sailors that went aloft as boys
came down greyheaded, so long a time having elapsed whilst they
were rigging the sails. Once, when the ship was in great peril,
and the waters were running high, the sailors, disheartened by
their protracted watching and labour, threw out ballast in order to
lighten the vessel, when, lo! an island arose, and then another,
and another still, till land was formed--the earth being, according
to the sailors' notion, the secondary formation. Once--many ages
afterwards--when the _Mannigfuel_ was endeavouring to pass through
the Straits of Dover, the captain ingeniously thought to have the
side of the vessel, nearest Dover, rubbed with white soap, and
hence the whiteness of the cliffs at Dover. The achievements
recounted of _de Mannigfuel_ are endless. The following explanation
of the formation of the Straits of Dover is found in a Friesic
saga:--Once upon a time, a queen of England, the land to the west
of the North Sea, and a king of Denmark, the land to the east of
the North Sea, loved each other, and plighted troth; but, as it
happened, the king proved faithless, and left the poor queen to
wear the willow. England was then joined to the Continent by a
chain of hills called _Höneden_; and the queen, desiring to wreak
vengeance on her false wooer and his subjects, summoned her people
around her, and setting them to work for seven years in digging
away these hills, at the end of the seventh year the waves pushed
furiously through the channel that had been dug, and swept along the
coasts of Friesland and Jutland, drowning and carrying away 100,000
persons. To this very hour the Jutland shores yearly tremble before
the fatal vengeance of the slighted queen. The Frieslanders are so
wedded to this marvellous geological myth, that they insist upon
its historical foundation. In some versions 700, in others 7000, in
others again, even 700,000 men are said to have been employed in
this gigantic undertaking.

Another allegorical saga is the narrative of the share taken by the
man in the moon in the matter of the daily ebbing and flowing of
the sea. His chief, or indeed only occupation, seems to be to pour
water from a huge bucket. Being somewhat lazy, the old gentleman
soon grows weary of the employment, and then he lies down to rest.
Of course whilst he is napping, the water avails itself of the
opportunity to return to its ordinary level.

The constellation of the Great Bear, or Charles's Wain, is,
according to the Frieslanders, the chariot in which Elias and many
other great prophets ascended into heaven. There being now-a-days
no individual sufficiently pious for such a mode of transit, it has
been put aside, with other heavenly curiosities, its only office
being to carry the angels in their nocturnal excursions throughout
the year. The angel who acts as driver for the night, fixes his eye
steadily upon the centre point of the heavenly arch, (the polar
star,) in order that the two stars of the shaft of the chariot
may keep in a straight line with the celestial focus. The rising
and setting of the sun is thus explained:--A host of beautiful
nymphs receive the sun beneath the earth in the western hemisphere,
and cutting it into a thousand parts, they make of it little air
balloons, which they sportively throw at the heavenly youths,
who keep guard at the eastern horizon of the earth. The gallant
band, not to be outdone by their fair antagonists, mount a high
ladder, and when night has veiled the earth in darkness, toss back
the golden balls, which, careering rapidly through the vault of
heaven, fall in glittering showers upon the heads of the celestial
virgins of the west. The children of the sky, having thus diverted
themselves through the night, they hasten at dawn of day to collect
the scattered balls, and joining them into one huge mass, they bear
it upon their shoulders, mid singing and dancing, to the eastern
gates of heaven. The enchanting rosy light which hovers round the
rising orb is the reflection of the virgins' lovely forms, who,
beholding their charge safely launched upon its course, retire, and
leave it, as we see it, to traverse the sky alone.

The following exquisite tradition connects itself with that brief
season when, in the summer of the far north, the sun tarries night
and day above the horizon. _All-fader_ had two faithful servants,
of the race of those who enjoyed eternal youth, and when the sun
had done its first day's course, he called to him _Demmarik_, and
said, "To thy watchful care, my daughter, I confide the setting sun
that I have newly created; extinguish its light carefully, and guard
the precious flame that no evil approach it." And the next morning,
when the sun was again about to begin its course, he said to his
servant _Koite_, "My son, to thy trusty hand I remit the charge
of kindling the light of the sun I have created, and of leading
it forth on its way." Faithfully did the children discharge the
duties assigned to them. In the winter they carefully guarded the
precious light, and laid it early to rest, and awakened it to life
again only at a late hour; but, as the spring and summer advanced,
they suffered the glorious flame to linger longer in the vault of
heaven, and to rejoice the hearts of men by the brightness of its
aspect. At length the time arrived when, in our northern world, the
sun enjoys but brief rest. It must be up betimes in the morning to
awaken the flowers and fruit to life and light, and it must cast
its glowing beams across the mantle of night, and lose no time in
idle slumber. Then it was that _Demmarik_, for the first time, met
_Koite_ face to face as she stood upon the western edge of heaven,
and received from the hands of her brother-servant the orb of light.
As the fading lamp passed from one to the other, their eyes met, and
a gentle pressure of their hands sent a thrill of holy love through
their hearts. No eye was there save that of the _All-fader_, who
called his servants before him, and said, "Ye have done well; and as
recompense, I permit ye to fulfil your respective charges conjointly
as man and wife." Then, _Demmarik_ and _Koite_, looking at each
other, replied--"No, All-fader! disturb not our joy; let us remain
everlastingly in our present bridal state; wedded joy cannot equal
what we feel now as betrothed!" And the mighty _All-fader_ granted
their prayer, and from that time they have met but once in the year,
when, during four weeks, they greet each other night after night;
and then, as the lamp passes from one to the other, a pressure of
the hand and a kiss calls forth a rosy blush on the fair cheek of
_Demmarik_ which sheds its mantling glow over all the heavens,
_Koite's_ heart the while thrilling with purest joy. And should they
tarry too long, the gentle nightingales of the _All-fader_ have but
to warble _Laisk tudrück, laisk tudrück! öpik!_ "Giddy ones, giddy
ones! take heed!" to chide them forward on their duty.

With a lovelier vision, reader! we could not leave you dwelling upon
the rugged but, to the heart's core, thoroughly poetic Frieslander.
Let us leave the gentle Demmarik and devoted Koite to their chaste
and heavenly mission, and with a bound leap into Denmark, whither Mr
Kohl, in his forty-fourth volume of travels, summons us, and whither
we must follow him, although the prosaic gentleman is somewhat
of the earth, earthy, after the blessed imitations we have had,
reader--you and we--of the eternal summer's day faintly embodied in
the vision of that long bright day of the far north!

Should any adventurous youth sit down to Mr Kohl's volume on
Denmark, and, half an hour afterwards, throw the book in sheer
disgust and weariness out of the window, swearing never to look
into it again, let him be advised to ring the bell, and to request
Mary to bring it back again with the least possible delay. Having
received it from the maid of all work's horny hand, let the said
youth begin the book again, but, as he would a Hebrew Bible, at the
other end. He may take our word for it there is good stuff there,
in spite of the twaddle that encountered him erewhile at Hamburg.
Mr Kohl has been won by aldermanic dinners in the chief city of
the Hanseatic League, as Louis Philippe was touched by aldermanic
eloquence and wit in the chief city of the world, and he babbles of
mercantile operations and commercial enterprise, until the heart
grows sick with fatigue, and is only made happy by the regrets which
the author expresses--just one hour after the right time--respecting
his inability to enlarge further upon the fruitful and noble
theme of the monetary speculations of one of the richest and most
disagreeable communities of Europe.

Before putting foot on Danish ground, Mr Kohl is careful to make
a kind of solemn protest touching Germanic patriotism, lest, we
presume, he should be suspected of taking a heretical view of the
question at issue at the present moment between the Sleswig-Holstein
provinces and the mother-country Denmark. It is not for us to
enter into any political discussions here, concerning matters of
internal government which are no more business of ours than of his
Majesty Muda Hassim, of the island of Borneo; but we must confess
our inability to understand why such a terrific storm of patriotic
ardour has so suddenly burst forth in Germany, respecting provinces
which, until recently, certainly up to the time when the late
king gave his people the unasked-for boon of a constitution, were
perfectly happy and contented under the Danish rule, to which they
had been accustomed some five or six hundred years.[2] It is only
since the assembly of the states was constituted, that the Sleswig
Holsteiners have been seized with the Germanic _furor_--a malady
not a little increased by the inflammatory harangues of needy
demagogues, and the pedantic outpourings of a handful of professors
stark-mad on the subject of German liberty. If there is one thing
more absurd than another, upon this globe of absurdity, it is the
cant of "nationality," "freedom," "fatherland," "brotherhood," &c.
&c., which is dinned into your ears from one end of Germany to the
other; but which, like all other cants, is nothing but so much
wind and froth, utterly without reason, stamina, or foundation. We
should like to ask any mustached and bearded youth of Heidelberg
or Bonn, at any one sober moment of his existence, to point out
to us any single spot where this boasted "nationality" is to be
seen and scanned. Will the red-capped, long-haired _Bursch_ tell
us when and where we may behold that "vaterland" of which he is
eternally dreaming, singing, and drinking? Why, is it not a fact
that, to a Prussian, an Austrian or a Swabian is an alien? Does
not a Saxe-Coburger, a Hessian, and any other subject of any small
duchy or principality, insist, in his intense hatred of Prussia,
that the Prussians are no Germans at all; that they have interests
of their own, opposed to those of the true German people; and that
they are as distinct as they are selfish? You cannot travel over the
various countries and districts included under the name of Germany,
without learning the thorough insulation of the component parts.
The fact is forced upon you at every step. Mr Kohl himself belongs
to none of the states mentioned. He is a native of Bremen--one of
the cities of that proud Hanseatic League which certainly has never
shown an enlarged or patriotic spirit with reference to this same
universal "vaterland." Arrogant and lordly republics care little
for abstractions. They have a keen instinct for their own material
interests, but a small appreciation of the glorious ideal. We ask,
again, where is this all pervading German patriotism?

  [2] In the year 1660, the different estates of Denmark made a
  voluntary surrender of their rights into the hands of their
  sovereign, who became by that act _absolute_: it is a fact
  unparalleled in the history of any other country. Up to the year
  1834, this unlimited power was exercised by the kings, who, it must
  be said to their honour, never abused it by seeking to oppress or
  enslave their subjects. In the year 1834, however, Frederic VI.,
  of his own free will and choice, established a representative
  government. The gift was by no means conferred in consequence of
  any discontent exhibited under the hitherto restrictive system.
  The intentions of the monarch were highly praiseworthy; their
  wisdom is not so clear, as, under the new law, the kingdom is
  divided into four parts--1. The Islands; 2. Sleswig; 3. Jutland;
  4. Holstein; each having its own provincial assembly. The number
  of representatives for the whole country amounts to 1217. Each
  representative receives four rix-dollars a-day (a rix-dollar is 2s.
  2-1/2d.) for his services, besides his travelling expenses. The
  communication between the sovereign and the assembly is through a
  royal commissioner, who is allowed to vote, but not to speak.--See
  _Wheaton's History of Scandinavia_.

We have said that Mr Kohl is a great traveller. We withdraw the
accusation. He has written forty odd volumes, but they have been
composed, every one of them, in his snug _stube_, at Bremen, or
wheresoever else he puts up, under the influence of German stoves,
German pipes, and German beer. A great traveller is a great
catholic. His mind grows more capacious, his heart more generous,
as he makes his pilgrimages along this troubled earth, and learns
the mightiness of Heaven, the mutability and smallness of things
temporal. Prejudice cannot stand up against the knowledge that pours
in upon him; bigotry cannot exist in the wide temple he explores.
The wanderer "feels himself new-born," as he learns, with his
eyes, the living history of every new people, and compares, in his
judgment, the lessons of his ripe manhood with the instruction
imparted in his confined and straitened youth. If it may be said
that to learn a new language is to acquire a new mind, what is
it to become acquainted, intimately and face to face, with a new
people, new institutions, new faiths, new habits of thought and
feeling? There never existed a great traveller who, at the end of
his wanderings, did not find himself, as if by magic, released of
all the rust of prejudice, vanity, self-conceit, and pride, which
a narrow experience engenders, and a small field of action so
fatally heaps up. We will venture to assert that there is not a
monkey now caged up in the zoological gardens, who would not--if
permitted by the honourable Society--return to his native woods
a better and a wiser beast for the one long journey he has made.
Should Mr Kohl, we ask, behave worse than an imprisoned monkey? We
pardon M. Michelet when he rants about _la belle France_, because
we know that the excited gentleman--eloquent and scholarly as he
is--is reposing eternally in Paris, under the _drapeau_, which
fans nothing but glory into his smiling and complacent visage.
When John Bull, sitting in the parlour of the "Queen's Head,"
smoking his clay and swallowing his heavy, with Bob Yokel from the
country, manfully exclaims, striking Bob heartily and jollily on the
shoulder, "D--n it, Bob, an Englishman will whop three Frenchmen
any day!" we smile, but we are not angry. We feel it is the beer,
and that, like the valiant Michelet, the good man knows no better.
Send the two on their travels, and talk to them when they come
back. Well, Mr Kohl has travelled, and has come back; and he tells
us, in the year of grace 1846, that the crown-jewel in the diadem
of France is Alsace, and that the Alsatians are the pearls amongst
her provincialists--the Alsatians, be it understood, being a German
people, and, as far as report goes, the heaviest and stupidest that
"vaterland" can claim. The only true gems in the Autocrat's crown
are, according to the enlightened Kohl, the German provinces of
Liefland, Esthonia, and Courland. All the industry and enterprise of
the Belgians come simply from their Teutonic blood; the treasures
of the Danish king must be looked for in the German provinces of
Sleswig and Holstein. This is not all. German literature and the
German tongue enjoy advantages possessed by no other literature
and language. English universities are "Stockenglisch," downright
English; the French are quite Frenchy; the Spanish are solely
Spanish; but German schools have taken root in every part of the
earth. At Dorpat, says Mr Kohl, German is taught, written, and
printed; and therefore the German spirit is diffused throughout all
the Russias. At Kiel the same process is going forward on behalf of
Scandinavia. The Slavonians, the Italians, and Greeks, are likewise
submitting, _nolens volens_, to the same irresistible influence.
The very same words may be found in M. Michelet's book of "The
People,"--only for _German_ spirit, read _French_.

Mr Kohl proceeds in the same easy style to announce the rapid giving
way of the Danish language in Denmark and the eager substitution of
his own. He asserts this in the teeth of all those Danish writers
who have started up within the last fifty years, and who have
boldly and wisely discarded the pernicious practice (originating in
the German character of the reigning family) of expressing Danish
notions in a foreign tongue. He asserts it in the teeth of Mrs
Howitt and of the German translators, whom this lady calls to her
aid, but who have very feebly represented that rich diction and
flexible style so remarkable in the Danish compositions referred
to, and so much surpassing the power of any other northern tongue.
We should do Mr Kohl injustice if we did not give his reason for
regarding the Danish language as a thing doomed. He was credibly
informed that many fathers of families were in the habit of
promising rewards to their children if they would converse in German
and not in Danish! Hear this, Lord Palmerston! and if, on hearing
it, you still allow the rising generation, at our seminaries, to ask
for _du pang_ and _du bur_, and to receive them with, it may be, a
silver medal for proficiency, the consequences be on your devoted
head!

Denmark has been comparatively but little visited by the stranger.
She offers, nevertheless, to the antiquary, the poet, and the
artist, materials of interest which cannot be exceeded in any other
district of the same extent. Every wood, lake, heath, and down, is
rich in historical legends or mythical sagas; every copse and hill,
every cave and mound, has been peopled by past superstition with
the elf and the sprite, the _ellefolk_ and _nissen_. Her history,
blending with that of her Scandinavian sisters, Norway and Sweden,
is romantic in the extreme--whether she is traced to the days of
her fabulous sea-kings, or is read of in the records of those who
have chronicled the lives of her sovereigns in the middle ages.
The country itself, although flat, is picturesque, being thickly
interspersed with lakes, skirted by, and embosomed in, luxuriant
beech woods; whilst ever and anon the traveller lights upon some
ancient ruin of church or tower, palace or hermitage, affecting, if
only by reason of the associations it awakens with an age far more
prosperous than the present. The existence of the Danish people,
as a nation, has been pronounced a miracle. It is hardly less.
Small and feeble, and surrounded by the foreigner on every side,
Denmark has never been ruled by a conqueror. Amid the rise and fall
of other states, she has maintained her independence--now powerful
and victorious, now depressed and poor, but never succumbing,
never submitting to the stranger's yoke. Her present dynasty is
the oldest reigning European family. It dates back to Christian
I.--himself descended in a direct female line from the old kings
of Scandinavia--who, as Duke of Oldenburg, was chosen king by the
states in 1448.

A good account of Denmark and the Danes is yet wanting. It may be
collected by any honest writer, moderately conversant with the
language and history of the country. We fear that Mr. Kohl will not
supply the literary void, if we are to judge from the one volume
before us. Others are, however, to follow; and as our author is
immethodical, he may haply return to make good imperfections, and to
fill up his hasty sketches. We cannot but regret that he should have
passed so rapidly through the Duchy of Holstein. Had he followed
the highways and byways of the province, instead of flitting like
a swallow--to use his own words--over the ground by means of the
newly-opened railroad through Kiel, his "Travels" would surely have
been the better for his trouble. Instead of pausing where the most
volatile would have been detained, our author satisfies himself
with simply expressing his unfeigned regret at being obliged to
pursue his journey, consoling his readers and himself with the very
paradoxical assertion that we are most struck by the places of
which we see least; since, being all of us more or less poetically
disposed, we permit the imagination to supply the deficiencies of
experience;--an argument which, we need scarcely say, if carried
to its fullest limits, brings us to the conviction, that he who
stays at home is best fitted to describe the countries the furthest
distant from his fireside. Surely, Mr Kohl, you do not speak from
knowledge of the fact!

In his present volumes, Mr Kohl refers only passingly to the subject
of education in Denmark. He remarks that the national schools far
surpassed his expectations. He might have said more. For the last
thirty or forty years, we believe, it has been rare to meet with
the commonest peasant who could not read and write; a fact proving,
at least, that Denmark is rather in advance than otherwise of her
richer neighbours in carrying out the educational measures which, of
late years, have so largely occupied the attention of the various
governments of Europe. No one in Denmark can enter the army or navy
who has not previously received his education at one or other of
the military academies of the country. The course of study is well
arranged. It embraces, besides the classics, modern languages,
drawing, and exercises both equestrian and gymnastic. The academies
themselves are under the immediate direction of the best military
and naval officers in the service. For the education of the people,
two or three schools are provided in every village, the masters
receiving a small salary, with a house and certain perquisites. In
1822 the system of Bell was introduced in the elementary public
schools, and since that period it has been generally adhered to.

Our author speaks with natural surprise of the small number of
Roman Catholics he encountered in the Danish States. The Papists
have no church or chapel throughout the kingdom; indeed, with the
exception of the private chapel of the Austrian minister, no place
of worship. We were aware that such was the fact a few years ago;
we were scarcely prepared to find that Rome, who has been so busy
in planting new shoots of her faith in every nook of the known
world, is still content to have no recognition in Denmark. Heavy
penalties are incurred by all who secede to the Romish church. In
Sweden a change to Roman Catholicism is followed by banishment.
This severity, we presume, must be ascribed to state policy rather
than to a spirit of intolerance, for Jews and Christians of every
denomination are permitted the freest exercise of their faith.
Since the year 1521, the era of the Reformation in Denmark, the
religion of the country has been Lutheran. The Danish church is
divided into five dioceses, of which the bishop of Zealand is the
metropolitan. His income is about a thousand a-year, whilst that
of the other prelates varies from four to six hundred. The funds
of the clergy are derived principally from tithes; but the parish
ministers receive part of their stipend in the form of offerings
at the three great annual festivals. Until lately, there existed
much lukewarmness on all religious questions. Within the last ten
or fifteen years, however, a new impulse has been given to the
spiritual mind by the writing and preaching of several Calvinistic
ministers, who have migrated from Switzerland and established
themselves in Copenhagen. Their object has been to stop the
recreations which, until their arrival, enlivened the Sabbath-day.
They have met with more success in the higher classes than amongst
the people, who now, as formerly, assemble on the green in front of
the village church at the close of service, and pursue their several
pastimes.

Mention is made in Mr Kohl's volume, of the churchyards and
cemetries he visited in his hasty progress. Compared with those of
his own northern Germany, the Scandinavian places of burial are
indeed very beautiful. The government has long since forbidden any
new interments to be made within the churches, and many picturesque
spots have, in consequence, been converted into cemetries. In
the immediate vicinity of Copenhagen there are several; but the
essence of Mr Kohl's plan being want of arrangement, he makes
no mention of them for the present. One of these cemetries, the
_Assistenskirkegaard_, outside the city, has an unusual number of
fine monuments, with no exhibitions of that glaring want of taste so
frequently met with elsewhere. The village churchyards are bright,
happy-looking spots, which, by their cheerful aspect, seem to rob
the homes of the dead of all their natural gloom and desolation.
Every peasant's grave is a bed of flowers, planted, watched, and
cherished by a sorrowing friend. At either end of the seven or
eight feet of mound rises a wooden cross, on which fresh wreaths
of flowers appear throughout the summer, giving place only to the
"eternals" which adorn the grave when snow mantles its surface. A
narrow walk, marked by a line of box, incloses every mound; or,
not unfrequently, a trellis-work, tastefully entwined of twigs and
boughs. The resting-places of the middle classes are surmounted
by a tablet, not, as in our churchyards, rigidly inclosed within
impassable palisades, but standing in a little garden, where the
fresh-blown flowers, the neatly trimmed beds, and generally the
garden-bench, mark that the spot is visited and tended by the
friends of those who sleep below. Hither widowed mothers lead their
children, on the anniversary of their father's death, to strew
flowers on his grave, to hang up the wreaths which they have wound;
but, above all, to collect the choicest flowers that have bloomed
around him, which must henceforth deck, until they perish, the
portrait of the departed, or some relic dear for his sake. We have
watched the rough work-worn peasant, leading by the hand his little
grandchild, laden with flowers and green twigs to freshen the grave
of a long-absent helpmate; and as we have remarked, we confess not
without emotion, feeble infancy and feeble age uniting their weak
efforts to preserve, in cleanliness and beauty, the one sacred patch
of earth--we have believed, undoubtingly, that whilst customs such
as these prevail, happiness and morality must be the people's lot;
and that very fearful must be the responsibility of those who shall
sow the first seeds of discord and dissension amongst the simple
peasantry of so fair a land!

The cathedrals of Denmark are of great antiquity. Those of Ribe, of
Viboig in Jutland, of Lard, Ringsted, and Roeskilde, in Zealand,
all date from the end of the eleventh, or the beginning of the
twelfth century; since which remote period, in fact, no churches
of any magnitude have been erected. Roeskilde is one of the oldest
cities in the kingdom. In the tenth century it was the capital.
Canute the Great may be considered as the originator and founder of
its existing cathedral, which was completed in the year 1054. It
has occasionally undergone slight repairs, but never any material
alteration. The edifice is full of monuments of the queens and
kings of the ancient race of Valdemar, as well as of those of the
present dynasty. Some of the earliest sovereigns are inclosed within
the shafts of the pillars, or in the walls themselves; a mode of
sepulture, it would appear, as honourable as it is singular, since
we find amongst the immured the great _Svend Etridsen_, and other
renowned and pious benefactors of the church. In front of the
altar is the simple sarcophagus of Margaret, the great queen of
Scandinavia, erected by her successor, Eric the Pomeranian. The
queen is represented lying at full length, with her hands devoutly
folded on her breast. At this sarcophagus our author lingers for a
moment to express sentiments which would have brought down upon him
the anathemas of the good John Knox, could that pious queen-hater
but have heard them. Mr Kohl defies you to produce, from the number
of royal ladies who have held supreme power in the world, one
instance of inadequacy and feebleness. Every where, he insists,
examples of female nobility and strength of character are found
linked with the destinies of kings who have earned for themselves no
better titles than those of the _fainéant_ and the simple. The style
of Roeskilde cathedral is pure Gothic; but in consequence of the
additions which the _interior_ has received from time to time from
kings and prelates, that portion of the edifice is more remarkable
for historical interest than for purity of style or architectural
beauty. One incident in connexion with this building must not
be omitted. When Mr Kohl quitted the cathedral, he offered his
cicerone a gratuity. The man respectfully declined accepting even
the customary fees. The reason being asked of a Danish gentleman,
the latter answered, that the man was a patriot, and proud of the
historical monuments of his country; it would be degradation to take
reward from a stranger who seemed so deeply interested in them.
One would almost suspect that this honest fellow was _a verger of
Westminster Abbey_!

The church of St Kund, at Odense, was erected in honour of King
Kund, murdered in the year 1100 in the church of St Alben, at
Odense. The bones of the canonised were immured in the wall over
the altar. Many sovereigns have been interred here. Indeed, it is a
singular fact that the respective burial-places of every Christian
king of Denmark, from the earliest times up to the present day,
are traced without the slightest difficulty; whilst every heathen
sovereign, of whom any historical record remains, lies buried
beneath a mound within sight of Seire, the old heathen capital of
the country. St Kund's church is of Gothic architecture. Amongst the
many paintings that decorate its walls is one of a female, known as
_Dandserinden_, or "The Dancer." She is the heroine of a tradition,
met with under slightly modified forms in various parts of Denmark.
It is to the following effect:--A young lady, of noble family, went
accompanied by her mother to a ball; and being an indefatigable
dancer, she declared to her parent, who bade her take rest, that she
would not refuse to dance even though a certain gentleman himself
should ask her as a partner. The words were scarcely uttered before
a finely dressed youth made his appearance, held out his hand, and,
with a profound obeisance, said, "Fair maiden, let us not tarry."
The enthusiastic dancer accepted the proffered hand, and in an
instant was with the moving throng. The music, at that moment,
seemed inspired by some invisible power--the dancers whiled round
and round, on and on, one after the other, whilst the standing
guests looked upon all with dread horror. At length, the young
lady grew pale--blood gushed from her mouth--she fell on the floor
a corpse. But her partner, (we need not say who _he_ was,) first
with a ghastly smile, then with a ringing laugh, seized her in his
arms, and vanished with her through the floor. From that time she
has been doomed to dance through the midnight hours, until she can
find a knight bold enough to tread a measure with her. Regarding the
sequel, however, there are a number of versions.

Mr Kohl's volume adverts cursorily to the many institutions still
existing in Denmark, which owe their origin to the days of Roman
Catholicism, and have been formed upon the model of Catholic
establishments. Several _Frökenstifts_, or lay nunneries, are
still in being. They are either qualifications of some ancient
monastic foundation, or they have been endowed from time to time
by royal or private munificence. Each house has a lady superior,
who is either chosen by the king or queen, or succeeds to the
office by right of birth--some noble families having, in return
for large endowments, a perpetual advowson for a daughter of the
house. At these _Frökenstifts_, none but ladies of noble birth
can obtain fellowships. As a large number of such noble ladies
are far from wealthy, a comfortable home and a moderate salary
are no small advantages. A constant residence within the cloister
is not incumbent upon the "fellows;" but a requisition, generally
attached to each presentation, obliges them to live in their _stift_
for a certain number of weeks annually. The practice of founding
institutions for ladies of noble birth has risen naturally in a
country where _family_ is every thing, and wealth is comparatively
small: where it is esteemed less degrading to live on royal bounty
than to enter upon an occupation not derogatory to any but noble
blood. The system of _pensioning_ in Denmark is a barrier to real
national prosperity. Independence, self-respect, every consideration
is lost sight of in the monstrous notion, that it is beneath a
high-born man to earn his living by an honourable profession.
Diplomacy, the army, and navy, are the three limited careers open
to the aristocracy of Denmark; and since the country is poor, and
the nobility, in their pride, rarely or never enrich themselves by
plebeian alliances, it follows, of course, that a whole host of
younger brothers, and a countless array of married and unmarried
patricians, must fall back upon the bounty of the sovereign,
administered in one shape or another. The Church and Law are made
over to the middle classes. To such an extent is pride of birth
carried, that without a title no one can be received at Court. In
order, therefore, to admit such as are excluded by the want of
hereditary rank, honorary but the most absurd titles are created.
"_Glatsraad_," "_Conferenceraad_," Councillor of State, Councillor
of Conference, carry with them no duties or responsibilities, but
they obtain for their possessors the right of _entrée_, otherwise
unattainable. In Germany, the titles of the people, from the
under-turnpike-keeper's-assistant's lady, up to the wife of the
lord with a hundred tails, are amusing enough. They have been
sufficiently ridiculed by Kotzebue; but the distinctions of Denmark
go far beyond them. A lady, whose husband holds the rank of major
(and upwards) in the army, or of captain (and upwards) in the navy,
or is of noble birth, is styled a _Frue_; her daughter is born a
_Fröken_: but the wife of a private individual, with no blood worth
the naming in her veins, is simply _Madame_, and her daughter's
_Jomfrue_. You might as easily pull down Gibraltar as the prejudice
which maintains those petty and frivolous distinctions. It is highly
diverting to witness the painful distress of Mr Kohl at hearing
ladies of noble birth addressed as _Frue Brahe_, _Frue Rosenkrands_,
instead of by the sublime title of _Gnädige Frau_, eternally in the
mouths of his own title-loving countrymen. It is singular, however,
that whilst the Danes are so tenacious of honorary appellations,
they are without those constant quantities, the _von_ and _de_
of Germany and France. The _Sture_, the _Axe_, the _Trolle_, and
the other nobles who, for ages, lived like kings in Denmark, were
without a prefix to their names. _Greve_ and _Baron_ are words of
comparatively modern introduction.

There are about twenty high fiefs in Denmark--the title to hold one
of these lordships, which bring with them many important privileges,
being the possession of a certain amount of land, rated at the
value of the corn it will produce. The owners are exempt from all
payment of taxes, not only on their fiefs, but on their other
lands: they have the supervision of officials in the district:
are exempted from arrest or summons before an inferior court, to
which the lesser nobility are liable; and they enjoy the right of
appropriating to their own use all treasures found under the earth
in their lordships. Next to these come the baronial fiefs; then
the _stammehuser_, or houses of noble stock, all rated according
to various measures of corn as the supposed amount of the land's
produce; all other seats or estates are called _Gaarde_, Courts,
or _Godser_, estates. The country residences of the nobility are
strikingly elegant and tasteful. They are surrounded by lawns and
parks in the English fashion, and often contain large collections
of paintings and extensive libraries. Along the upper corridors
of the country residences of the nobility are ranged large wooden
chests, (termed _Kister_,) containing the household linen, kept in
the most scrupulous order. Many of these _Kister_ are extremely
ancient, and richly carved in oak. Every peasant family, too, has
its _Kiste_, which holds the chief place in the sitting-room, and
is filled with all the treasure, as well as all the linen, of
the household. Amongst other lordly structures, Mr Kohl visited
_Gysselfelt_,[3] near Nestned in Zealand. It was built in 1540
by Peter Oxe, and still stands a perfect representation of the
fortresses of the time. Its fosses yet surround it--the drawbridges
are unaltered: and, round the roof, at equal distances, are the
solid stone pipes from which boiling water or pitch has often been
poured upon the heads of the assailants below. In the vicinity
of this castle is _Bregentned_, the princely residence of the
Counts _Moltke_. The _Moltke_ are esteemed the richest family in
Denmark. Their ancestors having munificently endowed several lay
nunneries, the eldest daughter of the house is born abbess-elect
of the convent of _Gysselfelt_: the eldest son is addressed always
as "His Excellence." The splendid garden, the fine collection of
antiquities, the costly furniture and appointments that distinguish
the abode at _Bregentned_ send Mr Kohl into ecstasies. He is equally
charmed by the sight of a few cottages actually erected by the fair
hands of the noble daughters of the House of Moltke. The truth is,
Mr Kohl, republican as he is, is unequal to the sight of any thing
connected with nobility. The work of a noble hand, the poor daub
representing a royal individual, throws him immediately into a fever
of excitement, and dooms his reader to whole pages of the most
prosaic eloquence.

  [3] Whilst in this neighbourhood, Mr Kohl should have explored
  the Gunderler Wood, where stone circles and earth mounds are yet
  carefully preserved, marking the site of one of the principal places
  of sacrifice in heathen times. At _Gysselfelt_, a lay nunnery
  exists, founded as recently as the year 1799.

The condition of the peasantry of Denmark is described as much
better--as indeed it is--than that of the labourers of any other
country. If there is no superabundance of wealth in Denmark, there
is likewise no evidence of abject poverty. The terms upon which the
peasants hold their farms from the landed proprietors are by no
means heavy; and their houses, their manner of dressing, and their
merry-makings, of themselves certify that their position is easy,
and may well bear a comparison with that of their brethren of other
countries. Within the last twenty years, great improvements have
been effected in agriculture, and the best English machines are now
in common use amongst the labourers.

Upon the moral and political condition of the Danish people at
large, we will postpone all reflections, until the appearance of
Mr Kohl's remaining volumes. We take leave of volume one, with
the hope that the sequel of the work will faithfully furnish such
interesting particulars as the readers of Mr Kohl have a right to
demand, and he, if he be an intelligent traveller, has it in his
power to supply. We do not say that this first instalment is without
interest. It contains by far too much desultory digression; it has
more than a sprinkling of German prosing and egotism: but many of
its pages may be read with advantage and instruction. If the work is
ever translated, the translator, if he hope to please the English
reader, must take his pen in one hand and his shears in the other.




LORD METCALFE'S GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA.


The death of Lord Metcalfe excited one universal feeling--that his
country had lost a statesman whom she regarded with the highest
admiration, and the warmest gratitude. The _Times_, and the other
public journals, in expressing that feeling, could only give a
general and abridged memoir of this great and good man. Every part
of his public life--and that life commencing at an unusually early
period--stamps him with the reputation of a statesman endowed in
an eminent degree with all the qualities which would enable him
to discharge the most arduous and responsible duties. Every part
of it presents an example, and abounds in materials, from which
public men may derive lessons of the most practical wisdom, and
the soundest rules for their political conduct. His whole life
should be portrayed by a faithful biographer, who had an intimate
acquaintance with all the peculiar circumstances which constituted
the critical, arduous, and responsible character of the trusts
committed to him, and which called for the most active exercise of
the great qualities which he possessed. That part of it which was
passed in administering the government of Jamaica, is alone selected
for comment in the following pages. It is a part, short indeed as
to its space, but of sufficient duration to have justly entitled
him, if he had distinguished himself by no other public service, to
rank amongst the most eminent of those, who have regarded their high
intellectual and moral endowments as bestowed for the purpose of
enabling them to confer the greatest and most enduring benefits on
their country, and who have actively and successfully devoted those
qualities to that noble purpose.

No just estimate of the nature, extent, and value of that service,
and of those endowments, can be formed, without recalling the
peculiar difficulties with which Lord Metcalfe had to contend, and
which he so successfully surmounted, in administering the government
of Jamaica.

The only part of colonial society known in England, consisted of
those West Indian proprietors who were resident here. They were
highly educated--their stations were elevated--their wealth was
great, attracting attention, and sometimes offending, by its
display. It was a very prevalent supposition, that they constituted
the whole of what was valuable, or wealthy, or respectable in
West Indian colonial society; that those who were resident in the
colonies could have no claim to either of these descriptions; and
that they were the mere hired managers of the properties of the
West Indians resident in England. This notion was entertained by
the government. The hospitable invitations from the West Indians
in England, which a Governor on the eve of his departure for
his colony accepted, served to impress it strongly on his mind.
He proceeded to his government with too low an estimate of the
character, attainments, respectability, and property of those who
composed the community over whom he was to preside. The nobleman or
general officer on whom the government had been bestowed, entered on
his administration, familiar, indeed, with the Parliament of Great
Britain, and with what Mr Burke calls "her imperial character, and
her imperial rights," but little acquainted with, and still less
disposed to recognise, the rights and privileges of the Colonial
Assemblies, although those assemblies, in the estimation of the same
great authority, so exceedingly resembled a parliament in all their
forms, functions, and powers, that it was impossible they should
not imbibe some idea of a similar authority. "Things could not be
otherwise," he adds; "and English colonies must be had on those
terms, or not had at all." He could not, as Mr Burke did, "look
upon the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which
the colonies ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most
reconcilable things in the world."

The colonists, whose Legislative Assemblies had from the
earliest period of their history, in all which regarded their
internal legislation, exercised the most valuable privileges of
a representative government, would, on their part, feel that the
preservation of those privileges not only constituted their security
for the enjoyment of their civil and political rights as Englishmen,
but must confer on them importance, and procure them respect in the
estimation of the government of the parent state. Thus, on the one
hand, a governor, in his zeal to maintain the imperial rights, from
the jealousy with which he watched every proceeding of the Assembly,
and his ignorance of their constitution and privileges, not
unfrequently either invaded these privileges, or deemed an assertion
of them to be an infringement of the rights of the Imperial
Parliament. On the other hand, the Colonists, with no less jealousy,
watched every proceeding of the governor which seemed to menace any
invasion of the privileges of their Assemblies, and with no less
zeal were prepared to vindicate and maintain them. The Governor and
the Colonial Assembly regarded each other with feelings which not
only prevented him from justly appreciating the motives and conduct
of the resident colonists, but confirmed, and even increased the
unfavourable impressions he had first entertained. His official
communications enabled him to impart to and induce the government
to adopt the same impressions. The influence of these feelings, in
like manner, on Colonial Assemblies and colonists too frequently
prevented them from justly appreciating the motives of the Governor,
from making some allowance for his errors, and too readily brought
them into collision with him.

It cannot be denied that those impressions exercised on both sides
of the Atlantic an influence so strong, as to betray itself in the
communications and recommendations, and indeed in the whole policy
of the government, as well as in the legislation of the colonies.

This imperfect acquaintance with the character of the resident
colonists, and the unfavourable impression with which the
proceedings and motives of their Legislative Assemblies were
regarded, prevailed amongst the public in Great Britain.

The colonial proprietors resident in Great Britain felt little
sympathy, either with the colonial legislatures, or with those
resident in the colonies. This want of sympathy may be attributed
to a peculiarity which distinguished the planters of British from
those of other European colonies. The latter considered the colony
in which they resided as their home. The former regarded their
residence in it as temporary. They looked to the parent state as
their only home, and all their acquisitions were made with a view to
enjoyment in that home. This feeling accompanied them to England.
It was imbibed by their families and their descendants. The colony,
which had been the source of their wealth and rank, was not, as
she ought to have been, the object of their grateful affection.
They regarded with indifference her institutions, her legislature,
her resident community. From this want of sympathy, or from the
want of requisite information, they made no effort to remove the
unfavourable impressions with which the executive Government and
the Assemblies regarded each other, or to promote the establishment
of their relations in mutual conciliation and confidence.

Another cause operated very powerfully in exciting a strong
prejudice against the inhabitants of our West Indian colonies. The
feeling which was naturally entertained against the slave trade and
slave colonies was transferred to the resident colonists, and almost
exclusively to them. By a numerous and powerful party, slavery had
been contemplated in itself, and in the relations and interests
which it had created, and its abolition had been endeavoured to be
effected as if it were the crime of the colonies _exclusively_. It
was forgotten "that it was," to use the language of Lord Stowel,
"in a peculiar manner the crime of England, where it had been
instituted, fostered, and encouraged, even to an excess which some
of the colonies in vain endeavoured to restrain." Besides the acts
passed by the legislatures of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, when
those were British colonies, we find that when the Assembly of
Jamaica, in 1765, was passing an act to restrain the importation
of slaves into the colony, the governor of Jamaica informed the
Assembly of that island, that, consistently with his instructions,
he could not give his assent to a bill for that purpose, which had
then been read twice. In 1774, the Jamaica Assembly attempted to
prevent the further importation, by an increase of duties thereon,
and for this purpose passed two acts. The merchants of Bristol and
Liverpool petitioned against their allowance. The Board of Trade
made a report against them. The agent of Jamaica was heard against
that report; but, upon the recommendation of the Privy Council,
the acts were disallowed, and the disallowance was accompanied
by an instruction to the governor, dated 28th February 1775, by
which he was prohibited, "upon pain of being removed from his
government," from giving his assent to any act by which the duties
on the importation of slaves should be augmented--"on the ground,"
as the instruction states, "that such duties were to the injury and
oppression of the merchants of this kingdom and the obstruction of
its commerce."

The opposition to the abolition of the slave trade was that of
the merchants and planters resident in England, and to their
influence on the members of the colonial legislature must be
attributed whatever opposition was offered by the latter. In
the interval between the abolition of the slave trade and that
of slavery, the feelings of prejudice against them grew still
stronger. Every specific measure by which this party proposed to
ameliorate the condition of the slaves, was accompanied by some
degrading and disqualifying remarks on the conduct of the resident
inhabitants. An act of individual guilt was treated as a proof of
the general depravity of the whole community. In consequence of
the enthusiastic ardour with which the abolition of slavery was
pursued, all the proposed schemes of amelioration proceeded on the
erroneous assumption, that the progress of civilisation and of
moral and religious advancement ought to have been as rapid amongst
the slave population of the colonies, as it had been in England
and other parts of Europe. It was forgotten, that until the slave
trade was abolished, the inherent iniquity of which was aggravated
by the obstacle it afforded to the progress of civilisation, every
attempt to diffuse moral and religious instruction was impeded and
counteracted by the superstitions and vices which were constantly
imported from Africa. Thus, instead of the conciliation which
would have rendered the colonists as active and zealous, as they
must always be the _only efficient_, promoters of amelioration,
irritation was excited, and they were almost proscribed, and placed
without the pale of all the generous and candid, and just and
liberal feelings which characterise Englishmen.

This state of public feeling operated most injuriously in retarding
and preventing many measures of amelioration which would have been
made in the slave codes of the several colonies.

Jamaica experienced, in a greater degree than any other colony, the
effects of those unfavourable impressions with which the motives
and proceedings of her legislature were regarded, and of those
feelings of distrust and suspicion which influenced the relations
of the executive government and the Assembly. Her Assembly was more
sensitive, more zealous, more tenacious than any other colony in
vindicating the privileges of her legislature, whenever an attempt
was made to violate them. The people of Jamaica, when that colony
first formed part of the British empire, did not become subjects
of England by conquest--they were by birth Englishmen, who, by
the invitation and encouragement of their sovereign, retained
possession of a country which its former inhabitants had abandoned.
They carried with them to Jamaica all the rights and privileges
of British-born subjects. The proclamation of Charles II. is not
a grant, but a declaration, confirmation, and guarantee of those
rights and privileges. The constitution of Jamaica is based on those
rights and privileges. It is, to use the emphatic language of Mr
Burke, in speaking of our North American colonies, "a constitution
which, with the exception of the commercial restraints, has every
characteristic of a free government. She has the express image of
the British constitution. She has the substance. She has the right
of taxing herself through her representatives in her Assembly. She
has, in effect, the sole internal government of the colony."

The history of the colony records many attempts of the governor and
of the government to deprive her of that constitution, by violating
the privileges of her Assembly; but it records also the success
with which those attempts were resisted, and the full recognition
of those privileges by the ample reparation which was made for
their violation. That very success rendered the people of Jamaica
still more jealous of those privileges, and more determined in the
uncompromising firmness with which they maintained them. But it did
not render the governors or the home government less jealous or
less distrustful of the motives and proceedings of the Assembly.
As the whole expense of her civil, military, and ecclesiastical
establishment was defrayed by the colony, with the exception of the
salaries of the bishop, archdeacon, and certain stipendiary curates;
and as that expense, amounting to nearly £400,000, was annually
raised by the Assembly, it might have been supposed that the power
of stopping the supplies would have had its effect in creating more
confidence and conciliation, but it may be doubted whether it did
not produce a contrary effect.

The feelings entertained by the government towards the colonies,
were invoked by the intemperate advocates for the immediate
abolition of slavery, as the justification of their unfounded
representations of the tyranny and oppression with which the
planters treated their slaves. Happily, that great act of atonement
to humanity, the abolition of slavery, has been accomplished; but
the faithful historian of our colonies, great as his detestation
of slavery may and ought to be, will yet give a very different
representation of the relation which subsisted between master and
slave. He will represent the negroes on an estate to have considered
themselves, and to have been considered by the proprietor, as
part of his family; that this self-constituted relationship was
accompanied by all the kindly feelings which dependence on the one
hand, and protection on the other, could create; and that such was
the confidence with which both classes regarded each other, that,
with fearless security, the white man and his family retired to
their beds, leaving the doors and windows of their houses unclosed.
These kindly feelings, and that confidence, were at length impaired
by the increasing attempts to render the employers the objects
of hatred. At the latter end of 1831, a rebellion of the most
appalling nature broke out amongst the slave population. A district
of country, not less than forty miles in extent, was laid waste.
Buildings and other property, to the amount of more than a million
in value, exclusive of the crops, were destroyed.

In 1833, the act for the abolition of slavery was passed; and
it cannot be denied, that the feelings of distrust and jealousy
with which government had so long regarded the Assembly and their
constituents, accompanied its introduction, progress, and details.
They accompanied also the legislative measures adopted by the
Assembly for carrying into effect its provisions, and especially
those for establishing and regulating the apprenticeship. The
manner in which the relative rights and duties of master and
apprentices were discharged, was watched and examined with the same
unfavourable feelings as if there had existed a design to make
the apprenticeship a cover for the revival of slavery--an object
which, even had there been persons wicked enough to have desired it,
could never have been accomplished. There were persons in Jamaica
exercising a powerful influence over the minds of the apprentices,
who proclaimed to them their belief, that it was the design of their
masters to reduce them to slavery, and who appealed to the suspicion
and jealousy of the government as justifying and confirming that
belief. Such was the influence of those feelings, that two attempts
were made in Parliament to abolish the apprenticeship. They were
unsuccessful; but enough had been said and done to fill the minds
of the apprentices with the greatest distrust and suspicion of
their masters. In June 1838, the Assembly was especially convened
for the purpose of abolishing it. The governor, as the organ of
her Majesty's government, distinctly told the Assembly that it was
impossible to continue the apprenticeship. "I pronounce it," he
says, "physically impossible to maintain the apprenticeship, with
any hope of successful agriculture." The state to which the colony
had been reduced, is told in the answer of the Assembly to this
address: "Jamaica does, indeed, require repose; and we anxiously
hope, that should we determine to remove an unnatural servitude,
we shall be left in the exercise of our constitutional privileges,
without interference." The colony was thus compelled to abolish
the apprenticeship, although it had formed part of the plan of
emancipation--not only that it might contribute to the compensation
awarded for the abolition of slavery, but that it might become that
intermediate state which might prepare the apprentices for absolute
and unrestricted freedom, and afford the aid of experience in such
legislation as was adapted to their altered condition. It was again
and again described by the Secretary of State for the colonies, in
moving his resolutions, "to be necessary not only for the security
of the master, but for the welfare of the slave." The apprenticeship
was thus abruptly terminated two years before the expiration of the
period fixed by the act of the Imperial Parliament for its duration,
before any new system of legislation had been adopted, and when the
emancipated population had been taught to regard the planters with
far less kindly feelings than those which they entertained in their
state of slavery.

The difficulties and dangers with which the colony was now
threatened were such as would have appalled any prudent man, and
would render it no less his interest than his duty to assist the
Assembly in surmounting them. It was, however, the misfortune of
Jamaica that her governor, from infirmity of body and of temper,
far from endeavouring to surmount or lessen, so greatly increased
these difficulties and dangers, that it appeared scarcely possible
to extricate the colony from them. His conduct in the session of
November 1838 was so gross a violation of the rights and privileges
of the Assembly, as to leave that body no other alternative but that
of passing a resolution, by which they refused to proceed to any
other business, except that of providing the supplies to maintain
the faith of the island towards the public creditor, until they had
obtained reparation for this violation.

This course had obtained the sanction, not only of long usage and
practice, but of the government of the parent state. The history
of Jamaica abounds in numerous instances where governors, who had
by their conduct given occasion for its adoption, had been either
recalled, or ordered by the Executive Government to make such
communication to the Assembly as had the character of being an
atonement for the violation of their privileges, and an express
recognition of them. Upon this resolution being passed, the governor
prorogued the Assembly. On being re-assembled, they adhered to their
former resolution. The governor dissolved the Assembly. A general
election took place, when the same members who had composed the
large majority concurring on that resolution, were re-elected, and
even an addition made to their majority. The Assembly, as might be
expected, on being convened, adhered to their former resolution. It
was then prorogued until the 10th of July 1839. The government, upon
the urgent recommendation of the governor, and influenced by his
misrepresentations, proposed to Parliament a measure for suspending
the functions of the Legislative Assembly. Unjustifiable and
reprehensible as this measure was, yet it is only an act of justice
to the government of that day to remember that it originated, not
only in the recommendation of the governor, supported also by that
of the two preceding governors of Jamaica, but was sanctioned, and
indeed urged on it, by several influential Jamaica proprietors and
merchants, resident in London. Indeed, until the bill had been some
time in the House of Commons, it was doubtful whether it would be
opposed by Sir Robert Peel and his adherents. The determination of
several members who usually supported the government, to oppose a
measure destructive of the representative part of the constitution
of this great colony, enabled him and his party to defeat the
bill on the second reading. The government being thus left in a
minority, resigned; but the attempt of Sir Robert Peel to form a
ministry having failed, the former government was restored, and they
introduced another bill, equally objectionable in its principles,
and equally destructive of the representative branch of the
Jamaica constitution. An amendment was proposed on the part of Sir
Robert Peel, by the party then considered Conservative; but as the
amendment would leave the bill still inconsistent with the rights of
this popular branch of the constitution, they were deprived of the
support of those who had before united with them in their opposition
to the first bill, and they were therefore left in a minority.
The bill passed the House of Commons. The amendment, which had
been rejected, was adopted by the House of Lords, and the bill was
passed. The powerful speeches of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham, and
those of the other noble lords by whom the amendment was supported,
afford abundant evidence that they disapproved of the principles of
the bill, and were unanswered and unanswerable arguments for its
rejection.

Lord John Russell, and other members of the government, might well
believe, and express their prediction, that such a bill would not
satisfy the Assembly, but that they would still refuse to resume
their legislation; and that in the next session the House must adopt
the original measure.

It was in the power of the ministry, without resorting to any
measure of undue interference which could have furnished their
opponents with any ground of censure, by passively leaving the
administration of the government of the colony to its ordinary
course, and adopting the ordinary means of selecting a governor,
to have fulfilled their own prediction. They might thus have
saved themselves from the taunt with which Sir Robert Peel, in
the debate on the 16th January 1840, attributed the satisfactory
manner in which the Assembly of Jamaica had resumed their
legislative proceedings, to "the opinion of the ministers having
been overruled." But the conduct of Lord John Russell, who had then
accepted the seals of secretary for the colonies, was influenced
by higher motives. He immediately applied himself to secure, by
confidence, the cordial co-operation of the Assembly of Jamaica,
in that legislation which should promote the best interests of all
classes of the community. For the accomplishment of this object,
he anxiously sought for a governor who united the discretion,
the judgment, the temper and firmness, which would promote that
confidence, and obtain that co-operation, and, at the same time,
maintain the dignity of the executive, and the supremacy of
Parliament.

From no consideration of personal or political connexion, but purely
from the conviction that Lord Metcalfe was eminently distinguished
by these qualities, Lord John Russell offered to him the Government
of Jamaica. He had just returned from the East Indies, where he
had displayed the greatest ability, and met with almost unexampled
success. He had scarcely tasted the sweets of the repose which
he had promised himself. His acceptance of the Government was a
sacrifice of that repose to his high sense of duty, and to the noble
desire of rendering a great public service to his country.

But to little purpose would such a character have been selected,
and to little purpose would he have possessed those eminent
qualities, if he had been sent to Jamaica with instructions which
would have controled their exercise. A more wise, just, and liberal
policy was adopted by the government. Lord Metcalfe was left with
the full, free, unfettered power of accomplishing, in his own
manner, and according to his own discretion, the great object of
his administration. Of the spirit of his instructions, and of the
discretion and powers confided to him, he gives his own description
in his answer to an address which, on his return to England, was
presented him by the Jamaica proprietors resident in London, "I was
charged by her Majesty's government with a mission of peace and
reconciliation."

It is scarcely possible to conceive a public trust so full of
difficulties, and requiring the possession and exercise of so
many high and rare qualities for its successful discharge, as
the Government of Jamaica at the time it was undertaken by Lord
Metcalfe. Some account has been given of the difficulties which
attended the government of every West Indian colony, and of those
which were peculiar to that of Jamaica. It should be added, that the
office of Governor, independently of the difficulties occasioned by
any particular event, is itself of so peculiar a character as to
require no inconsiderable share of temper and address as well as
judgment. He is the representative of his Sovereign, invested with
many of the executive powers of sovereignty. He must constantly
by his conduct maintain the dignity of his Sovereign. He cannot,
consistently with either the usages of his office or the habits of
society, detach himself from the community over which he presides
as the representative of his Sovereign. It is necessary for him to
guard against a possibility of his frequent and familiar intercourse
with individuals, impairing their respect for him and his authority,
and, at the same time, not deprive himself of the friendly
disposition and confidence on their part which that intercourse may
enable him to obtain. Especially must he prevent any knowledge of
the motives and views of individuals with which this intercourse
may supply him, from exercising too great, or, indeed, any apparent
influence on his public conduct. It will be seen how well qualified
Lord Metcalfe was to surmount, and how successfully he did surmount,
all these difficulties.

It has been stated, that the bill, even with the amendment it
received in the House of Lords, was so inconsistent with the
constitutional rights of Jamaica, that it was apprehended there
would be great reluctance on the part of the Assembly to resume
the exercise of its legislative functions. Considerations, which
did honour to the character of that body, induced the members to
overcome that reluctance, even before they had practical experience
of the judicious and conciliatory conduct of Lord Metcalfe, and of
the spirit in which he intended to administer his government. There
was a party of noblemen and gentlemen, possessing considerable
property in Jamaica, and of great influence in England, at the head
of whom was that excellent man, the late Earl of Harewood, who had
given their most cordial support, in and out of Parliament, to the
agent of the colony in his opposition to the measure for suspending
the legislative functions of the Assembly. They had thus acquired
strong claims on the grateful attention of the legislature of
Jamaica. In an earnest and affectionate appeal to the Assembly,
they urged that body to resume its legislation. The Assembly and
its constituents, with the generosity which has ever distinguished
them, and with a grateful sense of the powerful support they had
received from this party, felt the full force of their appeal.
Lord Metcalfe, by his judicious conduct in relation to the bill,
by the conciliatory spirit which his whole conduct on his arrival
in Jamaica, and first meeting the Assembly, evinced, and by his
success in impressing the members with the belief that her Majesty's
government was influenced by the same spirit, inspired them with
such confidence in the principles on which his government would be
administered, that they did not insist on their objections to the
bill, but resolved on resuming their legislation. They did resume
it. "They gave him," to use his own language, "their hearty support
and active co-operation in adopting and carrying into effect the
views of her Majesty's government, and in passing laws adapted to
the change which had taken place in the social relations of the
inhabitants of Jamaica."

Before we state the principles on which he so successfully conducted
the government of Jamaica, and endeavour to represent the value
of those services which, by its administration, he rendered to
his country, we would select some of those qualities essential to
constitute a great statesman, with which he was most richly endowed.
He was entrusted with public duties of great responsibility at a
very early period of life. Impressed with a deep sense of that
responsibility, he felt that the faculties of his mind ought to
be not only dedicated to the discharge of those duties, but that
he ought to bestow on them that cultivation and improvement which
could enable his country to derive the greatest benefit from them.
He acquired the power of taking an enlarged and comprehensive view
of all the bearings of every question which engaged his attention,
and he exercised that power with great promptitude. He distinguished
and separated with great facility and with great accuracy what was
material from what was not in forming his judgment. He kept his
mind always so well regulated, and its powers so entirely under
his control--he preserved his temper so calm and unruffled--he
resisted so successfully the approach of prejudice, that he was
enabled to penetrate into the recesses of human conduct and motives,
and to acquire the most intimate knowledge and the most practical
experience of mankind.

The acquisition of that experience is calculated to impress the
statesman with an unfavourable opinion of his species, and to
excite too general a feeling of distrust. This impression, unless
its progress and effects are controlled, may exercise so great an
influence as effectually to disable the judgment, frustrate the
best intentions, and oppose so many obstacles as to render the
noble character of a great and good statesman wholly unattainable.
It is the part of wisdom no less than of benevolence, so far
to control it, that it shall have no other effect than that of
inducing caution, prudence, and circumspection. He will regard it
as reminding him that those for whom he thinks and acts, are beings
with the infirmities of our fallen nature; as teaching him to appeal
to, and avail himself of the better feelings and motives of our
nature; and, whenever it is practicable, to render those even of an
opposite character the means of effecting good, and if that be not
practicable, to correct and control them so as to deprive them of
their baneful effects.

Lord Metcalfe followed the dictates of his natural benevolence, no
less than those of his excellent judgment, in applying to those
purposes, and in this manner, his great knowledge and experience
of mankind. Burke, who has been most truly called "the greatest
philosopher in practice whom the world ever saw," has said, "that
in the world we live in, distrust is but too necessary; some of
old called it the very sinews of discretion. But what signify
common-places, that always run parallel and equal? Distrust is
good, or it is bad, according to our position and our purpose."
Again, "there is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and
without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions,
than they would be by the perfidy of others." No man knew better or
made a more wise and judicious and successful application of these
maxims of wisdom and benevolence than Lord Metcalfe. The grateful
attachment of the community in which he lived abundantly proved that
distrust, when it was required by his judgment, never impaired the
kindness of his own disposition, or alienated from him the esteem
and affection of others.

The rock on which too often a governor has made shipwreck of his
administration has been the selection of individuals or families on
whom he bestowed his exclusive confidence. The jealousy and envy
which this preference excited in others did not constitute the
only or even the greatest part of the evil. The selected few were
desirous of making themselves of importance, and inducing him to
value their support as essential to the success of his government.
With this view they attributed to others unfriendly feelings
towards the governor which they never entertained, and endeavoured
to persuade him that they themselves were the only persons on whom
he could rely. Their professions betrayed him into the great error
of too soon and too freely making them acquainted with the views
and designs of his government. Lord Metcalfe was too wise and too
just to have any favourites; towards all, he acted with a frankness,
sincerity, and kindness which made all equally his friends. Lord
Metcalfe united with singular equanimity of temper, an extraordinary
degree of self-possession. He never was betrayed into an intimation
of his opinions or intentions, if prudence required that they should
not be known. The time when, and the extent to which such intimation
should be given, were always the result of his previous deliberate
judgment. But this reserve was accompanied with so much kindness
and gentleness of manner, that it silenced any disappointment or
mortification in not attaining that insight into his views which was
sought. A short intercourse with Lord Metcalfe could not fail to
satisfy the mind that any attempt to elicit from him opinions which
he did not desire to impart, would be wholly fruitless.

Another evil, no less injurious to the government than to the
colony, was the hasty and imperfect estimate which governors formed
of the motives and conduct of colonial legislatures. It had then
been too frequent to represent those bodies as influenced by a
hostile feeling, where no such feeling existed, and to exaggerate
their difficulties in administering their government. Lord
Metcalfe's administration was characterised by the candour with
which he appreciated, the fidelity with which in his communications
to her Majesty's government he represented, and the uncompromising
honesty and firmness with which he vindicated the motives and
acts of the Jamaica legislature, and repelled the prejudices, the
misrepresentations, and calumnies by which it had been assailed.
He brought to his administration, and never failed to evince, a
constitutional respect for the institutions of the colony, and the
strictest impartiality in maintaining the just rights of all classes
of the community. Her Majesty's government continued to him that
unlimited confidence he so well deserved, and left him to carry
out his wise and beneficent principles of government. To cheer
him in his noble undertaking, to bestow on the Assembly the most
gratifying reward for their conduct, and to give them the highest
assurance of the confidence of the government, the royal speech
on the prorogation of Parliament contained her Majesty's gracious
approbation of the disposition and proceedings of the legislature.

So sound were the principles on which he administered the
government--so firm and lasting was the confidence reposed in him
by the assembly, that during his administration there was not the
slightest interruption of the most perfect harmony between him and
the different branches of the legislature. He had the satisfaction
of witnessing a most beneficent change in the manner, the care,
and spirit in which the acts of the colonial legislature were
examined, objections to them treated, and amendments required, by
the government. The acts were not, as before, at once disallowed;
but the proposed amendments were made the subjects of recommendation
by communications to the legislature from the governor. The Assembly
felt this change, and met it in a corresponding spirit, which
readily disposed them to adopt the recommendations of the government.

Having fully and effectually accomplished the noble and Christian
purpose with which he undertook the arduous duties of the
government, he resigned it in June 1842. The state in which he left
Jamaica, contrasted with that in which he found the colony on the
commencement of his administration, was his rich reward. He came
to Jamaica at a time when her legislation was suspended, mutual
feelings of distrust and jealousy disturbing not only the relation
between the governor and the legislature, but all the social
relations in the colony; when laws were required for the altered
state of society, and when the tranquillity and existence of the
colony were placed in the greatest jeopardy. When he resigned the
government, there had been effected a perfect reconciliation of the
colony and the mother country; order and harmony, and good feeling
amongst all classes had been restored; legislation had been resumed,
laws had been passed adapted to the change which had taken place in
the social relations of the inhabitants; and the cordial and active
co-operation of the legislature had been afforded, notwithstanding
the financial difficulties of the colony, in extending at a great
cost the means of religious and moral instruction, and in making
the most valuable improvements in the judicial system. He quitted
the shores of Jamaica beloved, respected, and revered, with a
gratitude and real attachment which few public men ever experienced.
The inhabitants of Jamaica raised to him a monument which might
mark their grateful homage to his memory. But there is engraven
on the hearts of the public of Jamaica another memorial, in the
affectionate gratitude and esteem with which they will feel the
enduring blessings of his government, and recall his Christian
charity, ever largely exercised in alleviating individual distress;
his kindness and condescension in private life; and his munificent
support of all their religious and charitable institutions, and of
every undertaking which could promote the prosperity and happiness
of the colony.

On Lord Metcalfe's arrival in England, a numerous meeting of the
Jamaica proprietors and merchants was held, and an address presented
to him, in which they offered him the tribute of their warmest
and sincerest gratitude for the benefits which he had conferred
on the colony "by the eminent talents, the wise, and just, and
liberal principles which made his administration of the government
a blessing to the colony, and had secured him the affection of all
classes of the inhabitants, as well as the high approbation of his
sovereign."

His answer to that address was a beautiful illustration of
the unaffected modesty, of the kindness and benevolence of
his disposition, and of the principles which influenced his
administration. "Charged by her Majesty's government with a mission
of peace and reconciliation, I was received in Jamaica with open
arms. The duties which I had to perform were obvious; my first
proceedings were naturally watched with anxiety; but as they
indicated good-will and a fair spirit, I obtained hearty support and
co-operation. My task in acting along with the spirit which animated
the colony was easy. Internal differences were adjusted--either by
being left to the natural progress of affairs, during which the
respective parties were enabled to apprehend their real interests;
or by mild endeavours to promote harmony, and discourage dissension.
The loyalty, the good sense, and good feeling of the colony did
every thing."

The beneficial effects of his administration did not cease on his
resignation. The principles on which he had conducted it, were
such, that an adherence to them could not fail to secure similar
effects in every succeeding government. It was his great object
to cultivate such mutual confidence and good feeling between her
Majesty's government and the legislature, and all classes of the
colony, as would influence and be apparent in the views and measures
of the government, and as would secure the cordial co-operation
of the legislature in adopting them. In promoting that object, he
was ever anxious to supply the government with those means, which
his local information and experience could alone furnish, of fully
understanding and justly appreciating the views and measures of
the Assembly. He was sensibly alive to whatever might impair the
confidence of the government in that body. It was his desire to
convey the most faithful representations himself, and to correct
any misrepresentations conveyed by others. In a word, it was his
constant object to keep the government fully and faithfully informed
of all which would enable it to render justice to the colony.
Until Lord Metcalfe's administration, her Majesty's government
never understood, and never rightly appreciated, the motives and
conduct of the legislature of Jamaica, and never did they know
the confidence which might be bestowed on that legislature, and
the all-powerful influence which, by means of that confidence,
could be exercised on its legislation. The foundation for the
most successful, because the most beneficial, government was thus
permanently laid by Lord Metcalfe.

Lord Elgin succeeded Lord Metcalfe as the governor of Jamaica. He
had the wisdom to follow the example of his predecessor, and adopt
his principles of government, and pursue the path which he had
opened. His administration was uninterrupted by any misunderstanding
between the executive government and the Assembly. It merited and
received the approbation of his sovereign, and the gratitude of the
colony.

More than six years have elapsed since Lord Metcalfe entered on
the government of Jamaica. During that space of time, in the
former history of the colony, there were frequent dissolutions or
prorogations caused by some dispute between the government and the
Assembly, or between the different branches of the legislature.
Since the appointment of Lord Metcalfe, no misunderstanding has
arisen, but perfect harmony has prevailed amongst them. The
principles of Lord Metcalfe, which established the relations between
the government of the parent state and the various branches of the
legislature of Jamaica, and between all classes of society there,
in perfect confidence and good feeling, and entirely excluded
distrust and suspicion, were so strongly recommended by the enduring
success of his administration, that it is not possible to anticipate
that they will ever be forgotten or abandoned. There can be no
difficulties which may not be surmounted, and confidence can never
be supplanted by distrust: there can be no governor of Jamaica whose
administration will not have merited and received the approbation
of his sovereign, and the gratitude of the colony, so long as he
religiously follows the example, and adheres to the principles
of Lord Metcalfe. By such an adherence to these principles,
Jamaica will retain, not the remembrance alone of the wisdom, the
justice, the benevolence of his administration, and the blessings
it conferred, but she will enjoy, in every succeeding generation,
the same administration, for although directed by another hand,
it will be characterised by the sane wisdom, the same justice and
beneficence, and confer on her the same blessings.

But as the beneficent effects of his government are not limited in
their duration to the time, so neither are they confined to the
colony, in which it was administered. The same experience of its
success, and the same considerations no less of interest than of
duty, recommend and secure the adoption of its principles in the
administration of the government of every other colony, as well as
of Jamaica. Such was the impression with which the other British
colonies regarded his administration in Jamaica. They considered
that the same principles on which the government of Jamaica had
been administered, would be adopted in the administration of their
governments. Shortly after Lord Metcalfe's return from Jamaica, a
numerous and influential body, interested in the other colonies,
presented him with an address, expressing "the sentiments of
gratitude and admiration with which they appreciated the ability,
the impartiality, and the success of his administration of the
government of Jamaica. They gratefully acknowledged his undeviating
adherence to those just and liberal principles by which alone
the relations between the parent state and the colonies can be
maintained with the feelings essential to their mutual honour
and welfare; and they expressed their conviction, that, as his
administration must be the unerring guide for that of every other
colony, so its benefits will extend to the whole colonial empire
of Great Britain." Thus, by his administration of the government
of one colony, during only the short space of two years, he laid
the foundation for that permanent union of this and all the other
colonies with the parent state, which would secure the welfare and
happiness of the millions by whom they are inhabited, and add to the
strength, the power, and splendour of the British empire.

Such is a faint record of only two years of the distinguished
public life of this great and good man. How few statesmen have ever
furnished materials for such a record? What greater good can be
desired for our country, than that the example of Lord Metcalfe,
and his administration of Jamaica, may ever be "the guide-post and
land-mark" in her councils for the government of all her colonies,
and may ever exercise a predominant influence in the relations
between them and the parent state?




ANNALS AND ANTIQUITIES OF LONDON.

     _An Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London; with Anecdotes
     of their more celebrated Residents._ By J. T. SMITH, late Keeper
     of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Author of
     _Nollekins and his Times_, &c.


What is London? Walk into Lombard Street, and ask the Merchant;
he will tell you at once--the Docks and the Custom-House, Lloyd's
and the Bank, the Exchange, Royal or Stock. Drive your cab to
the Carlton, and learn that it is Pall-mall and the Clubs, St
James's and the Parks, Almack's and the Opera. Carry your question
and your fee together to legal chambers, and be told that it is
Westminster and Chancery Lane, Lincoln's Inn and the Temple. All
that remains of mankind, that is not to be numbered in these several
categories, will tell you it is a huge agglomeration of houses and
shops, churches and theatres, markets and monuments, gas-pipes and
paving-stones. Believe none--Yes, believe them all! We make our
London, as we make our World, out of what attracts and interests
ourselves. Few are they who behold in this vast metropolis a
many-paged volume, abounding in instruction, offering to historian
and philosopher, poet and antiquary, a luxuriant harvest and
never-failing theme. We consider London, with reference to what
it is and may become, not to what it has been. The present and
the future occupy us to the exclusion of the past. We perambulate
the great arteries of the Monster City, from Tyburn to Cornhill,
from Whitechapel to the Wellington statue, and our minds receive
no impression, save what is directly conveyed through our eyes; we
pass, unheeding, a thousand places and objects rich in memories of
bygone days, of strange and stirring events--great men long since
deceased, and customs now long obsolete. We care not to dive into
the narrow lanes and filthy alleys, where, in former centuries, sons
of Genius and the Muses dwelt and starved; we seek not the dingy
old taverns where the wit of our ancestors sparkled; upon the spot
where a hero fell or a martyr perished, we pause not to gaze and
to recall the memories of departed virtue and greatness. We are a
matter-of-fact generation, too busy in money-getting to speculate
upon the past. So crowded has the world become, that there is scarce
standing-room; and even the lingering ghosts of olden times are
elbowed and jostled aside. It is the triumph of the tangible and
positive over the shadowy and poetical.

Things which men will not seek, they often thankfully accept when
brought to them in an attractive form and without trouble. Upon this
calculation has the book before us been written. It is an attempt
to convey, in amusing narrative, the history, ancient, mediæval,
and modern, of the streets and houses of London. For such a work,
which necessarily partakes largely of the nature of a compilation,
it is obvious that industry is more essential than talent--extensive
reading than a brilliant pen. Both of industry and reading Mr Smith
makes a respectable display, and therefore we shall not cavil at
any minor deficiencies. His subject would have been better treated
in a lighter and more detached form; and, in this respect, he
might have taken a hint from an existing French work of a similar
nature, relating to Paris. But his materials are too sterling and
interesting to be spoiled by any slight mistake in the handling. He
has accumulated a large mass of information, quotation, and extract;
and although few persons may read his book continuously from
beginning to end, very many, we are sure, will dip with pleasure and
interest into its pages.

West and East would have been no inappropriate title for Mr Smith's
twin volumes. In the first, he keeps on the Court side of Temple
Bar; the second he devotes to the City. As may be supposed, the
former is the more sprightly and piquant chronicle; but the latter
does not yield to it in striking records and interesting historical
facts. Let us accompany the antiquarian on his first ramble, from
Hyde Park Corner to Charing Cross, starting from Apsley House, of
which, although scarcely included in the design of his work, as
announced on the title-page, he gives, as of various other modern
buildings, a concise account.

How few individuals of the human tide that daily flows and ebbs
along Piccadilly are aware, that within a century that aristocratic
quarter was a most disreputable outlet from London. The ground now
covered with ranges of palaces, the snug and select district of
May Fair, dear to opulent dowagers and luxurious _célibataires_,
was occupied, but a short hundred years since, by a few detached
dwellings in extensive gardens, and by a far larger number of low
taverns. Some of these, as the White Horse and Half Moon, have
given their names to the streets to which their bowling-greens and
skittle-alleys tardily gave way. The Sunday excursions of the lower
orders were then more circumscribed than at present; and these
Piccadilly publics were much resorted to on the Sabbath, in the
manner of a country excursion; for Piccadilly was then the country.
"Among the advertisements of sales by auction in the original
edition of the _Spectator_, in folio, published in 1711, the mansion
of Streater, jun., is advertised as _his country house_, being near
Bolton Row, in Piccadilly; his town residence was in Gerrard Street,
Soho." The taverns nearest to Hyde Park were chiefly patronised by
the soldiers, particularly, we are informed, on review days, when
they sat in rows upon wooden benches, placed in the street for their
accommodation, combing, soaping, and powdering each other's hair.
The bad character of the neighbourhood, and perhaps, also, the
nuisance of May Fair, which lasted for fifteen days, and was not
abolished till 1708, prevented the ground from increasing in value;
and accordingly we find that Mr Shepherd, after whom Shepherd's
Market was named, offered for sale, as late as the year 1750,
his freehold mansion in Curzon Street, and its adjacent gardens,
for five hundred pounds. At that price it was subsequently sold.
Houses there were, however, in the then despised neighbourhood
of Piccadilly, of high value; but it arose from their intrinsic
magnificence, which counterbalanced the disadvantages of situation.
Evelyn mentions having visited Lord John Berkeley at his stately
new house, which was said to have cost thirty thousand pounds, and
had a cedar staircase. He greatly commends the gardens, and says
that he advised the planting of certain holly-hedges on the terrace.
Stratton Street was built on the Berkeley estate, and so named in
compliment to the Stratton line of that family. At what is now
the south end of Albemarle Street, stood Clarendon House, built,
as Bishop Burnet tells us, on a piece of ground granted to Lord
Clarendon by Charles II. The Earl wished to have a plain ordinary
house, but those he employed preferred erecting a palace, whose
total cost amounted to fifty thousand pounds.

"During the war," says the Bishop, "and in the plague year, he had
about three hundred men at work, which he thought would have been an
acceptable thing, when so many men were kept at work, and so much
money, as was duly paid, circulated about. But it had a contrary
effect: it raised a great outcry against him." The sale of Dunkirk
to the French for four hundred thousand pounds, had taken place only
three years before, and was still fresh in men's minds. The odium of
this transaction fell chiefly on Lord Clarendon, who was accused of
pocketing a share of its profits; and the people gave the name of
Dunkirk House to his new mansion. Others called it Holland House,
thereby insinuating that it was built with bribes received from the
Dutch, with whom this country then waged a disastrous war. In spite
of popular outcry, however, the house was completed in 1667, the
year of Clarendon's disgrace and banishment. Fifteen years later,
after his death, his heir sold the place to the Duke of Albemarle
for twenty-five thousand pounds, just half what it cost; and the
Duke parted with it for ten thousand more. Finally, it was pulled
down to make room for Albemarle and Stafford Streets; of which
latter, as appears from old plans of London, the centre of Clarendon
House occupied the entire site.

Piccadilly was formerly the headquarters of the makers of leaden
figures. The first yard for this worthless description of statues
was founded by John Van Nost, one of the numerous train of Dutchmen
who followed William III. to England. His establishment soon had
imitators and rivals; and, in 1740, there were four of these
figure-yards in Piccadilly, all driving a flourishing trade in
their leaden lumber. The statues were as large as life, and often
painted. "They consisted of Punch, Harlequin, Columbine, and other
pantomimical characters; mowers whetting their scythes, haymakers
resting on their rakes, gamekeepers in the act of shooting, and
_Roman_ soldiers with _firelocks_; but, above all, that of a
kneeling African with a sundial upon his head, found the most
extensive sale." Copies from the antique were also there, and had
many admirers; but the unsuitableness of the heavy and pliable
material was soon discovered, and, after a brief existence, the
figure-yards died a natural death.

On the etymology of the word Piccadilly, Mr Smith expends much
erudite research, without, as it appears to us, arriving at a
very definite or satisfactory conclusion. A pickadill is defined
by Blount, in his _Glossography_, as "the round hem of a garment,
or other thing; also a kinde of stiff collar, made in fashion of
a band." Hence Mr Smith infers, that the famous ordinary near St
James's, which first bore the name of Piccadilly, may have received
it because at that time it was the outmost or skirt-house of the
suburb. The derivation is ingenious, but rather far-fetched. Another
notion is, that a certain Higgin, a tailor, who built the house,
had acquired his money by the manufacture of pickadills, then in
great vogue. The orthography of the name has varied considerably.
Evelyn mentions in his memoirs, that, as one of the commissioners
for reforming the buildings and streets of London, he ordered the
paving of the road from St James's North, "which was a quagmire,"
and likewise of the Haymarket about "Pigudello." In the same year,
however, 1662, it is found inscribed in tradesmen's tokens as
Pickadilla; and this appears to be the most ancient mode of spelling
it. In _Gerard's Herbal_, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
(1596,) the author, talking of the "small wild buglosse," says
that this little flower "growes upon the drie ditch bankes about
Pickadilla."

Where Bennet and Arlington Streets now stand, was formerly the
celebrated mulberry gardens, referred to by Malone as a favourite
haunt of Dryden, who loved to eat tarts there with his mistress,
Anne Reeve. To the polite ears of the nineteenth century, the
very name of a public garden is a sound of horror; and to see
the cream of _the ton_ taking their evening lounge at Cremorne,
or the "Royal Property," and battening upon mulberry tarts and
sweetened wine, would excite as much astonishment as if we read in
the _Moniteur_ that the Duchess of Orleans had led a _galop_ at
Musard's masquerade. In the easy-going days of the second Charles,
things were very different, and a fashionable company was wont to
collect at the Mulberry Garden, to sit in its pleasant arbours,
and feast upon cheesecakes and syllabubs. The ladies frequently
went in masks, which was a great mode at that time, and one often
adopted by the court dames to escape detection in the intrigues
and mad pranks they so liberally permitted themselves. "In _The
Humorous Lovers_, a comedy written by the Duke of Newcastle,[4] and
published in 1677, the third scene of Act I. is in the Mulberry
Garden. Baldman observes to Courtly, ''Tis a delicate plump wench;
now, a blessing on the hearts of them that were the contrivers of
this garden; this wilderness is the prettiest convenient place to
woo a widow, Courtly.'" One can hardly fancy a wilderness in the
heart of St James's, except of houses; but the one mentioned in the
above passage had ceased to exist at the time the play appeared, at
least as a place of public resort. Five years previously, the King
had granted to Henry Earl of Arlington, "that whole piece or parcel
of ground called the Mulberry Gardens, together with eight houses,
with their appurtenances thereon," at a rent of twenty shillings per
annum. Goring House, in which Mr Secretary Bennet, afterwards Earl
of Arlington, resided, was probably one of these eight houses. Two
years subsequently to the grant, it was burnt down, and the earl
removed to Arlington House, which stood on the site of Buckingham
Palace. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, bought the former, pulled it
down in 1703, and erected a new mansion, which was sold to the crown
by his son, and allotted, in 1775, as a residence for the Queen,
instead of Somerset House.

  [4] It was by the Duchess of Newcastle, according to Pepys, that
  this play was written. In his Diary he says, under date of the
  11th April 1667:--"To Whitehall, thinking there to have seen the
  Duchess of Newcastle coming this night to court to make a visit to
  the Queen. The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she
  does is romantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in an
  antique dress, as they say; and was the other day at her own play,
  _The Humorous Lovers_, the most ridiculous thing that ever was
  wrote, but yet she and her lord mightily pleased with it; and she
  at the end made her respects to the players from her box, and did
  give them thanks." This was the eccentric dame who kept a maid of
  honour sitting up all night, to write down any bright idea or happy
  inspiration by which she might be visited.

We are glad to learn from Mr Smith, that there is a plan on foot
for the removal of the confined, dirty, and unwholesome district
between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, now one of the
vilest parts of the metropolis, the favourite abode of thieves,
beggars, pawnbrokers, and gin-sellers. The streets adjacent to the
palace have at no time been of the most spacious or respectable
description, although Pimlico is vastly improved from what it was
in the days of Ben Jonson, who uses the name to express all that
was lowest and most disreputable. In his play of _The Alchymist_,
he says, "Gallants, men and women, and of all sorts, tag-rag and
bob-tail, have been seen to flock here in threaves, these ten
weeks, as to a second Hoxton or Pimlico." And again, "besides
other gallants, oysterwomen, sailors' wives, tobacco-men--another
Pimlico." _Apropos_ of the gin-palaces which have replaced the
old-fashioned public-houses that abounded some twenty years ago
in Westminster, Mr Smith makes a digression on the subject of
drunkenness, and quotes some curious particulars from an old
treatise, called _The London and Country Brewer_. "Our drunkenness,
as a national vice," says the writer, "takes its date from the
restoration of Charles the Second, or a few years later." It may
be questioned whether drunkenness was not pretty well established
as an English vice long before the period here referred to. We
have the authority of various writers, however, for its having
greatly increased about the time of the Stuarts' restoration. "A
spirit of extravagant joy," says Burnet, in his _History of his
own Times_, "spread over the nation. All ended in entertainments
and drunkenness, which overrun the three kingdoms to such a
degree, that it very much corrupted all their morals. Under the
colour of drinking the King's health, there were great disorders,
and much riot every where." This was no unnatural reaction after
the stern austerity of the Protectorate. "As to the materials,
(of drunkenness,") continues _The Brewer_, "beer and ale were
considerable articles; they went a great way in the work at first,
but were far from being sufficient; and then strong waters came into
play. The occasion was this: In the Dutch wars it had been observed
that the captains of the Hollanders' men-of-war, when they were
about to engage with our ships, usually set a hogshead of brandy
abroach afore the mast, and bid the men drink _sustick_, that they
might fight _lustick_; and our poor seamen felt the force of the
brandy to their cost. We were not long behind them; but suddenly
after the war we began to abound in strong-water shops." Even
the chandlers and the barber-surgeons kept stores of spirituous
compounds, for the most part of exceeding bad quality, but sweetened
and spiced, and temptingly displayed in rows of glass bottles, under
Latin names of imposing sound. Aniseed-water was the favourite
dram; until the French, finding out the newly-acquired taste of
their old enemies, deluged the English markets with brandy, which
was recommended by the physicians, and soon acquired universal
popularity. It was sold about the streets in small measures, at a
halfpenny and a penny each; and the consumption was prodigious,
until a war broke out with France, when the supply of course
stopped, and the poor were compelled to return to their _aqua vitæ_
and _aqua mirabilis_, or, better than either, to the ale-glass.
When speaking of the royal cockpit at Whitehall, Mr Smith tells
us of "Admiral M'Bride, a brave sailor of the old school, who
constantly kept game-cocks on board his ship, and on the morning of
an action, endeavoured, and that successfully, to animate his men by
the spectacle of a cock-fight between decks." This, if not a very
humane expedient, according to modern notions, was at any rate an
improvement upon Dutch courage, with which British seamen of the
present day would scorn to fortify themselves.

St James's Park, originally a swamp, was first inclosed by Harry
the Eighth, but little was done towards its improvement and
embellishment until after the Restoration. It was within its
precincts, that in July 1626 Lord Conway assembled the numerous
and troublesome French retinue of Queen Henrietta Maria, and
communicated to them the king's pleasure that they should
immediately quit the country. The legion of hungry foreigners,
including several priests and a boy bishop, scarcely of age, had
hoped long to fatten upon English soil, and they received their
dismissal with furious outcry and loud remonstrance. Their royal
mistress also was greatly incensed, and broke several panes of glass
with her fists, in no very queenly style. But Charles for once was
resolute; the Frenchmen had, to use his own expressions, so dallied
with his patience, and so highly affronted him, that he could no
longer endure it. They found, however, all sorts of pretexts to
delay their departure, claiming wages and perquisites which were
not due, and alleging that they had debts in London, and could not
go away till these were discharged. L'Estrange, in his Life of
Charles I., and D'Israeli in his _Commentaries_, gives many curious
particulars of the proceedings of this troop of bloodsuckers.
Under pretence of perquisites, they pillaged the queen's wardrobe
and jewel-case, not leaving her even a change of linen. The king
accorded them a reasonable delay for their preparations, but
at last he lost all patience, as will be seen by the following
characteristic letter to the Duke of Buckingham, dated from Oaking,
the 7th of August 1626:

     "STEENIE,--I have received your letter by Dic Greame, (Sir
     Richard Graham.) This is my answer: I command you to send all
     the French away to-morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair
     means, (but stike not long in disputing,) otherways force them
     away, dryving them away lyke so manie wilde beastes, until ye
     have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Let me heare
     no answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest your
     faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R."

Thereupon the debts of the obnoxious French were paid, their claims,
both just and unjust, satisfied, presents given to some of them,
and they set out for Dover, nearly forty coaches full. "As Madame
St George, whose vivacity is always described as extremely French,
was stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the
satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English
courtier, who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, ran
the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the boat. The
man died on the spot, but no further notice appears to have been
taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the English courtier."

The Stuarts were commonly plagued with the foreign attendants
of their wives. When Charles the Second's spouse, Catherine of
Braganza, arrived in England, she was escorted by a train of
Portuguese ladies, who highly disgusted the king and his court,
less, however, by their Papistry and greediness, than by their
surpassing ugliness and obstinate adherence to the fashions of
their country. "Six frights," says Anthony Hamilton in his memoirs
of Count Grammont, "who called themselves maids of honour, and a
duenna, another monster, who took the title of governess to these
extraordinary beauties. Among the men were Francisco de Melo, and
one Tauravedez, who called himself Don Pedro Francisco Correo
de Silva, extremely handsome, but a greater fool than all the
Portuguese put together; he was more vain of his names than his
person; but the Duke of Buckingham, a still greater fool than he,
though more addicted to raillery, gave him the name of Peter of
the Wood. He was so enraged at this, that, after many fruitless
complaints and ineffectual menaces, poor Pedro de Silva was
obliged to leave England; while the happy duke kept possession of
a Portuguese nymph more hideous than the queen's maids of honour,
whom he had taken from him, as well as two of his names. Besides
these, there were six chaplains, four bakers, a Jew perfumer, and a
certain officer, probably without an office, who called himself her
highness's barber." Evelyn also tells us, that "the queen arrived
with a train of Portuguese ladies in their monstrous fardingals
or guard-infantas, their complexions olivader, and sufficiently
unagreeable;" and Lord Clarendon talks of "a numerous family of men
and women, that were sent from Portugal"--the women "old and ugly
and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and
a liberal education; and they desired, and indeed had conspired so
far to possess the queen herself, that she should neither learn the
English language, nor use their habit, nor depart from the manners
and fashions of her own country in any particulars." Although the
Infanta herself was by no means ill-looking, her charms did not
come up to those of the flattered portrait which her mother, the
old Queen of Portugal, had sent to Charles; and it is possible that
the selection of plain women for her retinue had been intentional,
that their ugliness might serve as a foil to her moderate amount of
beauty. After a short time, however, the majority of these uncomely
Lusitanians were sent back to their native country.

To return to Mr Smith and St James's Park. After his Restoration,
Charles the Second, who, as worthy Thomas Blount says in his
Boscobel, had been hunted to and fro like a "partridge upon the
mountains," became very _casanier_, decidedly stay-at-home, in
his habits, and cared little to absent himself from London and
its vicinity. He had had buffeting and wandering enough in his
youth, and, on ascending the throne of his unfortunate father,
he thought of little besides making himself comfortable in his
capital, careless of expense, which, even in his greatest need, he
seems never to have calculated. He planted the avenues of the park,
made a canal and an aviary for rare birds, which gave the name to
Bird-Cage Walk. Amongst other freaks, and to provide for a witty
Frenchman who amused him, he erected Duck Island into a government.
Charles de St Denis, seigneur of St Evremond, who had been banished
from France for a satire on Cardinal Mazarine, was the first and,
it is believed, the last governor. He drew the salary attached
to the appointment, which was certainly a more lucrative than
honourable one for a man of his talents and reputation. According
to Evelyn, Charles stored the park with "numerous flocks of fowle.
There were also deer of several countries--white, spotted like
leopards; antelopes, as elk, red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea
grates, Arabian sheep," &c. In the Mall, also made by him, Charles
played at ball and took his daily walk. "Here," says Colley Cibber,
"Charles was often seen amid crowds of spectators, feeding his
ducks and playing with his dogs, affable even with the meanest of
his subjects." Mr Smith regrets the diminished affability and less
accessible mood of sovereigns of the nineteenth century, although he
admits that the populace of France and England are at the present
day too rude for it to be advisable that kings and queens should
walk amongst them with the easy familiarity of the second Charles.
Of that there can be very little doubt. Even Charles, whose dislike
of ceremony and restraint, and love of gossip and new faces, were
cause, at least as much as any desire for popularity, that he thus
mingled with the mob, occasionally experienced the disagreeables
of his undignified manner of life. Aubrey the credulous, Mr Smith
tells us, relates in his Miscellanies the following anecdote of
an incident that occurred in the Park. "Avise Evans had a fungous
nose, and said that it was revealed to him that the king's hand
would cure him: and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St
James's Park, he kissed the king's hand, and rubbed his nose with
it, which disturbed the king, but cured him." It was whilst walking
on the Mall that the pretended Popish plot of Oates and Bedloe was
announced to Charles. "On the 12th of August 1678," says Hume,
"one Kirby, a chemist, accosted the king as he was walking in the
Park. 'Sir,' said he, 'keep within the company; your enemies have
a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk.'
Being asked the reason of these strange speeches, he said that two
men, called Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot the king, and
Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison him." Charles,
unlike his grandfather, the timid James, was little apprehensive
of assassination, and, when sauntering in the Park, preferred the
society of two or three intimates to the attendance of a retinue.
On one occasion, however, as a biographer has recorded, an impudent
barber startled him from his usual happy _insouciance_. Accustomed
to chat familiarly with his good-humoured master, the chin-scraper
ventured to observe, whilst operating upon that of the king, that
he considered no officer of the court had a more important trust
than himself. "Why so, friend?" inquired the king. "Why," replied
the barber, "I could cut your majesty's throat whenever I chose."
Charles started up in consternation, swore that the very thought
was treason, and the indiscreet man of razors was deprived of his
delicate charge.

In the _Daily Post_ for October 31st, 1728, is an order of the Board
of Green Cloth for clearing St James's Park of the shoe-cleaners
and other vagrants, and sending them to the House of Correction.
This reminds us of what has often excited our surprise, the absence
from the streets of London of an humble but very useful class of
professionals, who abound in many continental towns, in all French
ones of any size. Abundant ingenuity is displayed in London in the
discovery and invention of strange and out-of-the-way employments.
Men convert themselves into "animated sandwiches" by back and
breastplates of board, encase themselves in gigantic bottles to
set forth the merits of some famed specific or potent elixir, or
walk about with advertisements printed on their coats, peripatetic
fly-sheets, extolling the comfort and economy of halfpenny steamers,
and of omnibuses at a penny a mile. Some sweep crossings, others
hold horses; but none of the vast number of needy _industrials_
who strain their wits to devise new means of obtaining their daily
ration and nightly shelter, have as yet taken pattern by the French
_décrotteur_ and German _stiefel-wichser_, and provided themselves
for stock in trade with a three-legged stool, a brace of brushes,
and a bottle of blacking. No one has been at Paris without finding
the great convenience of the _ateliers de décrottage_ which abound
in the passages and in the more frequented of the streets, where,
for three or four _sous_, the lounger who has had boots and
trousers bemired by rapid cab or lumbering _diligence_, is brushed
and polished with unparalleled rapidity and dexterity. But a very
moderate capital is required for the establishment of these temples
of cleanliness, and we recommend the subject to the consideration of
decayed railway "stags."

"Duke Street Chapel, with a flight of steps leading to the Park,
formed originally a wing of the mansion of the notorious Judge
Jeffries. The house was built by him, and James the Second, as a
mark of especial favour, allowed him to make an entry to the Park by
the steps alluded to. The son of Jeffries inhabited it for a short
time." It was this son and successor of the infamous Jeffries, who,
with a party of rakes and debauchees, mohocks as they were at that
time called, insulted the remains of the poet Dryden, and the grief
of his widow. They happened to pass through Gerrard Street, Soho,
when Dryden's remains were about to be conveyed from his house, No.
43, in that street, to Westminster Abbey. Although it was in the
daytime, Jeffries was drunk; he swore that Dryden should not be
buried in so shabby a manner, (eighteen mourning coaches waited to
form the procession,) and that he would see due honour done to his
remains. After frightening Lady Elizabeth, who was ill in bed, into
a fainting fit, these aristocratic ruffians stopped the funeral,
and sent the body to an undertaker in Cheapside. The bishop waited
several hours in Westminster Abbey, and at last went away. When
Jeffries became sober, he had forgotten all about the matter, and
refused to have any thing to do with the interment. The corpse lay
unburied for three weeks. At last the benevolent Dr Garth had it
taken to the College of Physicians, got up a subscription for the
expenses of the funeral, and followed the body to Westminster Abbey.
The poet's son challenged Jeffries, but Jeffries showed the white
feather, and, to avoid personal chastisement, kept carefully out
of the way for three years, when Charles Dryden was drowned near
Windsor.

Mr Smith is most indulgent to the blunders and blockheadism of our
modern architects and monument-makers, far too much so, indeed,
when he speaks approvingly of Trafalgar Square and its handsome
fountains, and without positive disapprobation of the vile
collection of clumsy buildings and ill-executed ornament defacing
that site. There has been a deal of ink spilt upon this subject, and
we have no intention of adding to the quantity, especially as there
is no chance that any flow of fluid, however unlimited, shall blot
out the square and its absurdities. But we defy any Englishman, with
the smallest pretensions to taste, to pass Charing Cross without
feelings of shame and disgust at the mismanagement and ignorance
there manifest. Such an accumulation of clumsiness was surely never
before witnessed. The wretched National Gallery with its absurd
dome, crushed beneath the tall and symmetrical proportions of St
Martin's portico, overtopped even by the private dwelling-houses
in its vicinity; the dirty, ill-devised, and worse-executed
fountains, with their would-be-gracefully curved basins, the steps
and parapets, which give the whole place the appearance of an
exaggerated child's toy. Well may foreigners shrug their shoulders,
and smile at the public buildings of the great capital of Britain.
A fatality attends all our efforts in that way. In regard to
architecture and ornament, we pay more and are worse served than
any body else. So habituated are we to failure in this respect,
that when a public building is completed, scaffolding removed, and
a fair view obtained, we wonder and exult if it is found free from
glaring defects, and in no way particularly obnoxious to censure. As
to its proving a thing to be proud of, to be gazed at and admired,
and to be spoken of out of England, or even in England, after the
fuss and ceremony of its inauguration is over, we never dream of
such a thing. The negative merit of having avoided the ridiculous
and the grotesque, is subject for satisfaction, almost for pride.
Assuredly we love not to exalt other countries at the expense of our
own, to draw invidious comparisons between things English and things
foreign. But the difference between public buildings of modern
erection in London and in Paris is so immense, that it can escape no
one. Take, for instance, the Paris _Bourse_ and the London Exchange.
The former, it has been objected, is out of character; a Greek
temple is no fitting rendezvous for the sons of commerce; a less
classic fane were more appropriate for the discussion of exchanges,
for sales of cotton and muscovado. The objection, according to us,
is flimsy and absurd, and must have originated with some Vandalic
and prejudiced booby, with whom consistency was a monomania.
Nevertheless we will, for argument's sake, admit its validity. Is
that a reason that the traders and capitalists of London should meet
in a building which, for heaviness and exaggerated solidity, rivals
a South American Inquisition? Do the Barings and the Rothschilds
anticipate an attack upon their strong boxes, and intend to stand a
siege within the massive walls of the Royal Exchange? Assuredly the
narrow doorways may easily be defended; for a time, at least, the
ponderous walls will mock the cannonade. The curse of heaviness is
upon our architects. There is total want of grace, and lightness,
and airiness in all their works. Behold our new Senate House! Do
its florid beauties and overdone decorations, unsparingly as they
have been lavished, and convenient as they will doubtless be found
as receptacles for bird's nests, contrast favourably with the
elegant and dignified simplicity of the Chamber of Deputies? The
two, it will be said, cannot be assimilated: the vast difference
of size precludes a comparison. We reply, that the buildings are
for the same purpose; but were they not, proportion at least should
be observed. The Parliament House is far too low for its length.
Want of elevation is the common fault, both in the ideas and in the
productions of our architects.

Are we more successful in statues than in buildings? Mr Smith has
some sensible remarks on this score. Speaking of the equestrian
statue of George III. in Cockspur Street, he says, that "critics
object to the cocked hat and tie-wig in the royal figure; but,
some ages hence, these abused parts will be the most valuable in
the whole statue. It may very reasonably be asked, why an English
gentleman should be represented in the dress of a Roman tribune?
Let the man appear, even in a statue, in his habit as he lived; and
whatever _we_ may say, posterity will be grateful to us. We should
like to know exactly the ordinary walking-dress of Cæsar or Brutus,
and how they wore their hair; and we should not complain if they
had cocked hats or periwigs, if we knew them to be exact copies of
nature." It is certain that modern physiognomy rarely harmonises
with ancient costume. What is to be said of the aspect of the "first
gentleman of Europe," wrapped in his horsecloth, and astride on his
bare-backed steed, in the aforesaid Square of Trafalgar? Assuredly
nothing in commendation. There are portraits of Napoleon in classic
drapery, and, even with his classically correct countenance, he
looks a very ordinary, under-sized Roman. But, in his grey _capote_
and small cocked hat, the characteristic is preserved, and we at
once think of, and wonder at, the hero of Austerlitz and Marengo.

Leicester Square, as Mr Smith justly observes, has more the
appearance of the _Grande Place_ of some continental city than of
a London square. The headquarters and chief rendezvous of aliens,
especially of Frenchmen, it bears numerous and unmistakeable marks
of its foreign occupancy. French hotels and restaurants replace
taverns and chop-houses. French names are seen above shops;
promises of French, German, and Spanish conversation, are read in
the windows; and grimy-visaged, hirsute individuals, in plaited
pantaloons and garments of eccentric cut, saunter, cigar in mouth,
over the shabby pavement. It is curious to remark the different
tone and station taken by English in Paris and French in London.
In the former capital, nothing is too good for the intruding
islanders. In the best and most expensive season, they throng
thither, and strut about like lords of the soil, perfectly at home,
and careless of the opinions of the people amongst whom they have
condescended to come. The best houses are for their use; the most
expensive shops are favoured with their custom; and if occasionally
tormented by a troublesome consciousness of paying dearly for
their importance, they easily console themselves by a malediction
on the French _voleurs_, who thus take advantage of their long
purses and open hands. How different is it with the Frenchman in
London! He comes over, for the most part, at the dullest time of
the year, in the autumn, when the town is foggy, and dreary, and
empty; when the Parks are deserted, shutters shut, the theatres
dull, and exhibitions closed. He has certain vague apprehensions of
the tremendous expense entailed by a visit to the English capital.
To avoid this, he makes a toil of a pleasure; wearies himself with
economical calculations; and creeps into some inferior hotel or dull
lodging-house, tempted by low prices and foreign announcements.
We find French deputies abiding in Cranbourn Street, and counts
contenting themselves with a garret at Pagliano's. Thence they
perambulate westwards; and ignorant, or not choosing to remember,
that London is out of town, and that they have selected the very
worst possible season to visit it, they greatly marvel at the
paucity of equipages, at the abundance of omnibuses and hack-cabs,
and the scarcity of sunbeams; and return home to inform their
friends that London is a _ville monstre_, with spacious streets,
small houses, few amusements; very great, but very gloomy; and
where the nearest approach to sunshine resembles the twinkling of a
rushlight through a plate of blue earthenware.

"The foreign appearance of Leicester Square is not of recent growth.
It seems to have been the favourite resort of strangers and exiles
ever since the place was built. Maitland, who wrote more than a
hundred years ago, describing the parish of St Anne's, in which
it is situate, says--'The fields in these parts being but lately
converted into buildings, I have not discovered any thing of great
antiquity in this parish. Many parts of it so greatly abound with
French, that it is an easy matter for a stranger to imagine himself
in France.'"

Sydney Alley is named after the Earls of Leicester, who had their
town-house on the north side of the square, where Leicester Place
has since been opened. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of
James I., occupied, for some years, this residence of the Sydneys.
She also inhabited a house in Drury Place, where Craven Street
now stands, which was built for her by Lord Craven. It was called
Bohemia House for many years afterwards, and at last became a
tavern, at the sign of the Queen of Bohemia. "The Earl of Craven
was thought to have been privately married to the queen, a woman of
great sweetness of temper and amiability of manners--a universal
favourite both in this country and Bohemia, where her gentleness
acquired her the title of 'The Queen of Hearts.' By right of their
descent from her, the House of Hanover ascended the throne of this
kingdom." Lord Craven was the eldest son of Sir William Craven,
lord-mayor of London in 1611. He fought under Gustavus Adolphus with
great distinction, and returned to England at the Restoration, when
Charles II. made him viscount and earl. He commanded a regiment of
the guards until within three or four years of his death, which
occurred in 1697, at the advanced age of eighty-five. "He was an
excellent soldier," says the advertisement of his decease in No.
301 of the _Postman_, "and served in the wars under Palsgrave of
the Rhine, and also under the great Gustavus Adolphus, where he
performed sundry warlike exploits to admiration; and, in a word, he
was then in great renowne."

However indifferently Leicester Square may at present be inhabited,
and notwithstanding its long-standing reputation as a foreign
colony, it has been the chosen abode of many distinguished men.
Hogarth and Reynolds lived and died there. Hogarth's house is now
part of the Sablonière Hotel. Sir Joshua's was on the opposite side
of the square; and both of them, especially the latter, were much
resorted to by the wits and wise men of the day. Johnson, Boswell,
and, at times, Goldsmith, were constant visitors to Reynolds. John
Hunter, the anatomist, lived next-door to Hogarth's house; and in
1725, Lords North and Grey, and Arthur Onslow, the Speaker, also
inhabited this square. Leicester House, where the Queen of Bohemia
lived, is called by Pennant the "pouting-place of princes." George
II. retired thither when he quarrelled with his father; and his son
Frederick, the father of George III., did the same thing for the
same reason. Whilst Prince Frederick and the Princess of Wales lived
there, they received the wedding visit of the Hon. John Spencer,
ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, and of his bride, Miss Poyntz.
Contrary to established etiquette, the bridal party went to visit
the Prince before paying their respects to the King. They came in
two carriages and a sedan chair; the latter, which was lined with
white satin, contained the bride, and was preceded by a black page,
and followed by three footmen in splendid liveries. The diamonds
presented to Mr Spencer, on occasion of his marriage, by Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, were worth one hundred thousand pounds. The
bridegroom's shoe-buckles alone cost thirty thousand pounds. An old
gentleman, born more than a century ago, from whom Mr Smith obtained
some of these particulars, informed him, that about that time the
neighbourhood was so thinly built, that when the heads of two men,
executed for participation in the Scotch rebellion, were placed on
Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields with a telescope, to
give the boys a sight of them for a penny a-piece.

A house in Leicester Fields was the scene of some of the
eccentricities of that semi-civilised hero, Peter the Great of
Russia. It belonged to the Earl of Aylesbury, and was inhabited,
during the Czar's visit to this country, by the Marquis of
Carmarthen, who gave a grand ball there, on the 2d April 1698, in
honour of the imperial stranger. The Marquis was Peter's particular
chum and boon companion, and the Czar preferred his society to
all the gaieties and visitors that beset him during his residence
in England. Peter was very shy of strangers, and when William the
Third gave him a magnificent entertainment at St James's, he would
not mix with the company, but begged to be put into a cupboard,
whence he could see without being seen. He drank tremendously, and
made Lord Carmathen do the same. Hot brandy, seasoned with pepper,
was his favourite drink. Something strong he certainly required
to digest his diet of train-oil and raw meats. On one occasion,
when staying in Leicester Fields with the Marquis, he is said to
have drunk a pint of brandy and a bottle of sherry before dinner,
and eight bottles of sack after it, and then to have gone to the
play, seemingly no whit the worse. He lodged in York Buildings, in
a house overlooking the river, supposed by some to be that at the
left-hand corner of Buckingham Street. A house in Norfolk Street
also had the honour of sheltering him. "On Monday night," says No.
411 of the _Postman_ "the Czar of Muscovy arrived from Holland, and
went directly to the house prepared for him in Norfolk Street." His
principal amusement was being rowed on the Thames between London
and Deptford; and at last, in order to live quietly and avoid the
hosts of visitors who poured in upon him, he took Admiral Benbow's
house at the latter place. It stood on the ground now occupied by
the Victualling Office, and was the property of the well-known John
Evelyn.

"Horne Tooke," says Mr Smith, "in his _Diversions of Purley_,
derives the word Charing from the Saxon _Charan_, to turn; and the
situation of the original village, on the bend or turning of the
Thames, gives probability to this etymology." Every body knows that
Charing, now so central a point, was once a little hamlet on the
rural high-road between London and Westminster, and that the "Cross"
was added to it by Edward the First, who, when escorting his wife's
remains from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey, erected one at each
place where the beloved corpse rested. The first cross, which was
of wood, and probably of rude enough manufacture, gave way to one
of stone, designed by Cavalini. About the middle of the seventeenth
century, that period of puritanical intolerance, this was removed by
order of the Commons' House, an order which the royalists took care
to ridicule by song and lampoon. According to Lilly the astrologer
and quack, the workmen were three months pulling it down, and some
of the stones were used for the pavement before Whitehall. Others
were made into knife-handles, and Lilly saw some of them which were
polished and looked like marble. Those were days in which kingly
memorials found as little favour as popish emblems; and after the
death of Charles the First, the statue that now stands at Charing
Cross, and which had been cast by Le Sueur in 1633 for the Earl of
Arundel, was sold and ordered to be broken up. It was bought by one
Rivet, a brazier, who, instead of breaking, buried it. This did not
prevent the ingenious mechanic from making a large and immediate
profit by the effigy of the martyred monarch; for he melted down
old brass into knife and fork-handles, and sold them as proceeding
from the King's statue. Roundheads and cavaliers all flocked to buy;
the former desiring a trophy of their triumph, the latter eager to
possess a memento of their lamented sovereign. In 1678, £70,000
was voted by Parliament for the obsequies of Charles I., and for a
monument to his memory, and with a portion of this sum, how large a
one is not known, the statue was repurchased.

The historian of the streets and houses of a great and ancient
city, has, in many ways, a most difficult task to perform. Not only
must he read much, observe closely, and diligently inquire, display
ingenuity in deduction and judgment in selection, but he must be
steadfast to resist temptation. For, assuredly, to the lover of
antiquarian and historical lore, the temptation is immense, whilst
culling materials from quaint old diaries, black-letter pamphlets,
and venerable newspapers, to expatiate and extract at a length
wholly inconsistent with the necessary limits of his work. Some
writers are at pains to dilate their matter--his chief care must
be to compress. What would fairly fill a sheet must be packed into
a page--the pith and substance of a volume must be squeezed into a
chapter. The diligent compiler should not be slightly considered by
the creative and aspiring genius. Like the bee, he forms his small,
rich store, from the fragrance of a thousand flowers--adopting the
sweet, rejecting the nauseous and insipid. Nor must he dwell too
long on any pet and particular blossom, lest what would please
in due proportion should cloy by too large an admixture. To vary
the metaphor, the writer of such a work as this _Antiquarian
Ramble_, should be a sort of literary Soyer, mixing his materials
so skilfully that the flavour of each is preserved, whilst not one
unduly predominates. He must not prance off on a hobby, whether
architectural, historical, social, or romantic, but relieve his
cattle and his readers by jumping lightly and frequently from one
saddle to another.

How many books might be written upon the themes briefly glanced at
in Mr Smith's book! Let us take, for instance, the places of public
executions in London. Charing Cross was for centuries one of them,
and its pillory was the most illustrious amongst the many that
formerly graced the capital--illustrious by reason of the remarkable
evil-doers who underwent ignominy in its wooden and unfriendly
embrace. The notorious Titus Oates, and Parsons, the chief contriver
of the Cock-Lane Ghost, were exposed in it. To the rough treatment
which, in former days, sometimes succeeded exposure in the pillory,
the following paragraph, from the _Daily Advertiser_ of the 11th
June 1731, abundantly testifies:--"Yesterday Japhet Crook, _alias_
Sir Peter Stranger, stood on the pillory for the space of one hour;
after which he was seated in an elbow-chair, and the common hangman
cut both his ears off with an incision knife, and showed them to
the spectators, afterwards delivered them to Mr Watson, a sheriff's
officer; then slit both his nostrils with a pair of scissors, and
sear'd them with a hot iron, pursuant to his sentence. He had a
surgeon to attend him to the pillory, who immediately applied things
necessary to prevent the effusion of blood. He underwent it all with
undaunted courage; afterwards went to the Ship tavern at Charing
Cross, where he stayed some time; then was carried to the King's
Bench Prison, to be confined there for life. During the time he
was on the pillory he laughed, and denied the fact to the last."
Petty punishments these, although barbarous enough, inflicted for
paltry crimes upon mean malefactors. Criminals of a far higher grade
had, previously to that, paid the penalty of their offences at the
Cross of Charing. Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, was there hung,
as were Scrope, Jones, Harrison, and others of the king-killers.
Long had been their impunity; but vengeance at last overtook them.
To the end they showed the stern fanatical resolution of Oliver's
iron followers. "Where is your GOOD OLD CAUSE?" cried a scoffer
to Harrison, as he was led to the scaffold. "Here!" he replied,
clapping hand on breast; "I go to seal it with my blood." At the
foot of the ladder, which he approached with undaunted mien, his
limbs were observed to tremble, and some amongst the mob made a
mockery of this weakness. "I judge," said Harrison, "that some do
think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands and
knees. _I_ tell you NO! but it is by reason of much blood that I
have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body,
which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves." And he spoke
further, and told the populace how he gloried in that he had done,
and how, had he ten thousand lives, he would cheerfully lay them
down in the same cause. "After he was hanged, a horrible scene took
place. In conformity to the barbarous sentence then, and for many
years afterwards, executed upon persons convicted of treason, he
was cut down alive and stripped, his belly was cut open, his bowels
taken out and burned before his eyes. Harrison, in the madness of
his agony, rose up wildly, it is said, and gave the executioner
a box on the ear, and then fell down insensible. It was the last
effort of matter over mind, and for the time it conquered." The
other regicides died with the same firmness and contempt of death.
"Their grave and graceful demeanour," says the account in the state
trials, "accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great
admiration and compassion in the spectators." So much so, and so
strong was the sympathy excited, that the government gave orders
that no more of them should be executed in the heart of London.
Accordingly the remainder suffered at Tyburn.

Upon the old Westminster market-place a most barbarous event
occurred in the time of that tyrannical, acetous old virgin, Queen
Bess, who assuredly owes her renown and the sort of halo of respect
that surrounds her memory, far less to any good qualities of her
own, than to the galaxy of great men who flourished during her
reign. The glory that encircles her brow is formed of such stars as
Cecil, Burleigh and Bacon, Drake and Raleigh, Spencer, Shakspeare,
and Sydney. Touching this barbarity, however, enacted by order of
good Queen Bess. At the mature age of forty-eight, her majesty took
it into her very ordinary-looking old head to negotiate a marriage
with the Duke of Anjou. Commissioners came from France to discuss
the interesting subject, and were entertained by pageants and
tournaments, in which Elizabeth enacted the Queen of Beauty; and
subsequently the duke came over himself, as a private gentleman, to
pay his court to the last of the Tudors. The duke being a papist,
the proposed alliance was very unpopular in England, and one John
Stubbs, a barrister of Lincoln's-Inn, wrote a pamphlet against it,
entitled, "The Discoverye of a gaping gulphe, whereinto England is
like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid
not the banns, by letting her Majestye see the sin and punishment
thereof." Certain expressions in this imprudent publication greatly
angered the Queen; Stubbs and his servant, Page, were brought to
trial, and condemned to lose their right hands. This cruel and
unusual sentence was carried into effect on the market-place at
Westminster, and witnessed by Camden, who gives an account of it.
Both sufferers behaved with great fortitude and courage. Their hands
were cut off with a butcher's cleaver and mallet, and as soon as
Stubbs had lost his, he pulled off his cap with his left, waved it
in the air, and cried--"God save the Queen!" He then fainted away.
It took two blows to sever Page's hand, but he flinched not, and
pointing to the block where it lay, he exclaimed--"I have left there
the hand of a true Englishman!" And so he went from the scaffold,
says the account, "stoutlie and with great courage."

Amongst spots of sanguinary notoriety, Smithfield, of course, stands
prominent. The majority of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons
burned for heresy during Mary's short reign, suffered there; and
here also, upon two occasions, the horrible punishment of boiling
to death, formerly inflicted on poisoners, was witnessed. In France
this was the punishment of coiners, and there is still a street
at Paris known as the _Rue de l'Echaudé_. In Stow's _Annals_ it
is recorded, that on the fifth of April 1531, "one Richard Rose,
a cook, was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning of divers persons,
to the number of sixteen or more." Two only of the sixteen died,
but the others were never restored to health. If any thing could
reconcile us to torture, as a punishment to be inflicted by man on
his offending brother, it is such a crime as this.

If the punishments of our ancestors were cruel, if trials were
sometimes over hasty, and small offences often too severely
chastised, on the other hand, culprits formerly had facilities of
escape now refused to them. The right of sanctuary was enjoyed by
various districts and buildings in London. Pennant and many other
writers have stigmatised this practice as absurd; Mr Smith defends
it upon very reasonable grounds. "In times when every man went
armed, when feuds were of hourly occurrence in the streets, when the
age had not yet learned the true superiority of right over might,
and when private revenge too often usurped the functions of justice,
it was essential that there should be places whither the homicide
might flee, and find refuge and protection until the violence of
angry passions had subsided, and there was a chance of a fair trial
for him." Not all sanctuaries, however, gave protection to the
murderer, at least in later times. Whitefriars, for instance, once a
refuge for all criminals, except traitors, afforded shelter, after
the fifteenth century, to debtors only. In 1697 this sanctuary was
abolished entirely, at the same time with a dozen others. It is not
well ascertained how it acquired the slang name of Alsatia, which
is first found in a play of Shadwell's, _The Squire of Alsatia_.
Immortalised by the genius of Scott, no sanctuary will longer be
remembered than Whitefriars. It was one of the largest; many others
of the privileged districts being limited to a court or alley, a
few houses or a church. Thus Ram Alley and Mitre Court in Fleet
Street, and Baldwin's Gardens in Gray's Inn Lane, were amongst these
refugees of roguery and crime. Whitefriars was much resorted to by
poets and players, dancing and fencing masters, and persons of the
like vagabond and uncertain professions. The poets and players were
attracted by the vicinity of the theatre in Dorset Gardens, built
after the fire of London, by Sir Christopher Wren, upon the site
of Dorset House, the residence of the Sackvilles. Here Sir William
Davenant's company of comedians--the Duke of York's servants, as
they were called--performed for a considerable time. It appears,
however, that even before the great fire, there was a theatre in
that neighbourhood. Malone, in his _Prologomena_ to Shakspeare,
quotes a memorandum from the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert,
master of the revels to King Charles I. It runs thus:--"I committed
Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th of February 1634, to the
Marshalsey, for lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it
_to the players in Salisbury Court_, to represent a Flamen, a priest
of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission and acknowledgement
of his faults, I released him the 17th of February 1634."

The ancient sanctuary at Westminster is of historical and
Shaksperian celebrity, as the place where Elizabeth Grey, Queen of
Edward the Fourth, took refuge, when Warwick the king-maker marched
to London to dethrone her husband, and set Henry the Sixth on the
throne. It was a stone church, built in the form of a cross, and
so strongly, that its demolition, in 1750, was a matter of great
difficulty. The precinct of St Martin's-le-Grand was also sanctuary.
Many curious particulars respecting it are to be found in Kempe's
_Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church, or Royal Free Chapel
and Sanctuary of St Martin's-le-Grand, London_, published in 1825.
In the reign of Henry the Fifth, this right of sanctuary gave rise
to a great dispute between the Dean of St Martin's and the city
authorities. "A soldier, confined in Newgate, was on his way to
Guildhall, in charge of an officer of the city, when on passing
the south gate of St Martin's, opposite to Newgate Street, five
of his comrades rushed out of Panyer Alley, with daggers drawn,
rescued him, and fled with him to the holy ground." The sheriff had
the sanctuary forced, and sent rescued and rescuers to Newgate.
The Dean of St Martin's, indignant at this violation of privilege,
complained to the king, who ordered the prisoners to be liberated.
Thereat the citizens, ever sticklers for their rights, demurred,
and at last it was made a Star-Chamber matter. The dean pleaded his
own cause, and that right skilfully and wittily. He denied that
the chapel of St Martin's formed any part of the city of London,
as claimed by the corporation; quoted a statute of Edward III.
constituting St Martin's and Westminster Abbey places of privilege
for treason, felony, and debt; and mentioned the curious fact,
that "when the King's justices held their sittings in St Martin's
Gate, for the trial of prisoners for treason or felony, the accused
were placed before them, _on the other side of the street_, and
carefully guarded from advancing forward; for if they ever passed
the water-channel which divided the middle of the street, they
might claim the saving franchise of the sacred precinct, and the
proceedings against them would be immediately annulled." The dean
also expressed his wonder that the citizens of London should be the
men to impugn his church's liberties, since more than three hundred
worshipful members of the corporation had within a few years been
glad to claim its privilege. The Star-Chamber decided against the
city, and the prisoners were restored to sanctuary. The Savoy was
another sanctuary; and it was the custom of the inhabitants to tar
and feather those who ventured to follow their debtors thither.

In the theatrical district of London, Mr Smith lingers long
and fondly; for there each house, almost every brick, is rich
in reminiscences, not only of players and playhouses, but of
wits, poets, and artists. In the burial-ground of St Paul's,
Covent-Garden, repose not a few of those who in their lifetime
inhabited or frequented the neighbourhood. There lies the author of
Hudibras. "Mr Longueville, of the Temple, Butler's steady friend,
and who mainly supported him in his latter days, when the ungrateful
Stuart upon the throne, whose cause he had so greatly served, had
deserted him, was anxious to have buried the poet in Westminster
Abbey. He solicited for that purpose the contributions of those
wealthy persons, his friends, whom he had heard speak admiringly of
Butler's genius, and respectfully of his character, but none would
contribute, although he offered to head the list with a considerable
sum." So poor Butler was buried in Covent-Garden, privately but
decently. He is in good company. Sir Peter Lely, the painter of
dames, the man who seemed created on purpose to limn the languishing
and voluptuous beauties of Charles the Second's court, is also
buried in St Paul's; as are also Wycherley and Southerne, the
dramatists; Haines and Macklin, the comedians; Arne, the musician;
Strange, the engraver; and Walcot, _alias_ Peter Pindar. Sir Peter
Lely lived in Covent-Garden, in very great style. "The original name
of the family was Vandervaes; but Sir Peter's father, a gallant
fellow, and an officer in the army, having been born at a perfumer's
shop, the sign of the Lily, was commonly known by the name of
Captain Lily, a name which his son thought to be more euphonious
to English ears than Vandervaes, and which he retained when he
settled here, slightly altering the spelling." Wycherley, a dandy
and a courtier, as well as an author, had lodgings in Bow Street,
where Charles II. once visited him when he was ill, and gave him
five hundred pounds to go a journey to the south of France for the
benefit of his health. When he afterwards married the Countess of
Drogheda, a young, rich, and beautiful widow, she went to live with
him in Bow Street. She was very jealous, and when he went over to
the "Cock" tavern, opposite to his house, he was obliged to make the
drawer open the windows, that his lady might see there was no woman
in the company. This "Cock" tavern was the great resort of the rakes
and mohocks of that day; of Buckhurst, Sedley, Killigrew, and others
of the same kidney. In fact, Bow Street was then the Bond Street of
London; and the "Cock," its "Long's" or "Clarendon." Dryden, in an
epilogue, talks of the "Bow Street beaux," and several contemporary
writers have similar allusions. Like most places where the rich
congregate, this fashionable quarter was a fine field for the
ingenuity of pick-pockets, and especially of wig and sword-stealers,
a class of thieves that appeared with full-bottomed periwigs and
silver-hilted rapiers. In those days, to keep a man's head decently
covered, cost nearly as much as it now does to fill his belly and
clothe his back. Wigs were sometimes of the value of forty or fifty
pounds. Ten or fifteen pounds was an exceeding "low figure" for
these modish incumbrances. Out of respect to such costly head-dress,
hats were never put on, but carried under the arm. The wig-stealers
could demand no more. Mr Smith quotes a passage from Gay, describing
their manoeuvres:--

    "Nor is thy flaxen wig with safety worn:
     High on the shoulder, in a basket borne,
     Lurks the sly boy, whose hand, to rapine bred,
     Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."

Will's coffeehouse was in Bow Street, and "being the grand resort
of wits and critics, it is not surprising," says Mr Smith, "that
it should become also the headquarters of envy, slander, and
detraction." There was then a lack of printed vehicles for the
venting of the evil passions of rival _literati_; lampoons were
circulated in manuscript, and read at Will's. As the acknowledgment
of the authorship might sometimes have had disagreeable consequences
for the author, a fellow of the name of Julian, who styled himself
"Secretary to the Muses," became the mouthpiece of libeller and
satirist. He read aloud in the coffee-room the pasquinades that were
brought to him, and distributed written copies to all who desired
them. Concerning this base fellow, Sir Walter Scott gives some
curious particulars in his edition of Dryden's works. There is no
record of cudgelings bestowed upon Julian, though it is presumed
that he did not escape them. "He is described," says Malone, "as
a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel."
Dryden was a great sufferer from these violent and slanderous
attacks--a sufferer, indeed, in more senses than one; for, besides
being himself made the subject of venomous lampoons, he was
suspected unjustly of having written one, and was waylaid and beaten
on his way from Will's to his house in Gerrard Street. A reward of
fifty pounds was offered for the apprehension of his assailants, but
they remained undiscovered. Lord Rochester was their employer: Lord
Mulgrave the real author of the libel.

In James Street, Covent-Garden, where Garrick lodged, there
resided, from 1714 to 1720, a mysterious lady, who excited great
interest and curiosity. Malcolm, in his _Anecdotes of London
during the Eighteenth Century_, gives some account of her. She
was middle-sized, dark-haired, beautiful and accomplished, and
apparently between thirty and forty years old. She was wealthy,
and possessed very valuable jewels. Her death was sudden, and
occurred after a masquerade, where she said she had conversed with
the King. It was remembered that she had been seen in the private
apartments of Queen Anne; but after that Queen's death, she lived
in obscurity. "She frequently said that her father was a nobleman,
but that, her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct;
adding, that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least
recommendation. It seems likely enough that she was connected in
some way with the Stuart family, and with their pretensions to the
throne."

Dr Arne was born in King Street. His father, an honest upholsterer,
at the sign of the "Two Crowns and Cushions," is said to have been
the original of Murphy's farce of _The Upholsterer_. He did not
countenance his son's musical propensities; and young Arne had to
get up in the night, and practise by stealth on a muffled spinet.
The first intimation received by the worthy mattress-maker of his
son's proficiency in music, was one evening at a concert, where he
quite unexpectedly saw him officiating as leader of the orchestra.

Voltaire, when in England, after his release from the Bastille,
whither he had been sent for libel, lodged in Maiden Lane, at the
White Peruke, a wigmaker's shop. When walking out, he was often
annoyed by the mob, who beheld, in his spare person, polite manners,
and satirical countenance, the personification of their notion of
a Frenchman. "One day he was beset by so great a crowd that he
was forced to shelter himself against a doorway, where, mounting
the steps, he made a flaming speech in English in praise of the
magnanimity of the English nation, and their love of freedom.
With this the people were so delighted, that their jeers were
turned into applauses, and he was carried in triumph to Maiden
Lane on the shoulders of the mob." From which temporary elevation
the arch-scoffer doubtless looked down upon his dupes with glee,
suppressed, but immeasurable.

Quitting the abodes of wit and the drama for those of legal
learning, we pass from Covent-Garden to Lincoln's Inn Fields,
through Great Queen Street, in the Stuarts' day one of the most
fashionable in London. Here dwelt Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and
here he wrote the greater part of his treatise _De Veritate_,
concerning the publication of which he believed himself, according
to his own marvellous account, to have had a special revelation
from heaven. A strange weakness, or rather madness, on the part of
a man who disbelieved, or at least doubted, of general revelation.
For himself, he thought an exception possible. Insanity alone could
explain and excuse such illogical vanity. Near to this singular
enthusiast lived Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose next-door neighbour
and friend was Radcliffe the physician. "Kneller," says Horace
Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, "was fond of flowers, and had
a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the
physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his gardens;
but Radcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers,
Kneller sent him word he must shut up the door. Radcliffe replied
peevishly, "Tell him he may do any thing with it but paint it." "And
I," answered Godfrey, "can take any thing from him but his physic."
Pope and Gay were frequent visitors at the painter's studio. At the
wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, Ben Jonson is by some asserted to have
laboured as a bricklayer. "He helped," says Fuller, "in the building
of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowel in his
hand, he had a book in his pocket." Aubrey tells the same story,
which is discredited by Mr Gifford, who denies that the poet ever
was a bricklayer. Lord William Russell was executed in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, it being, Pennant tells us, the nearest open space from
Newgate, where he was confined.

Passing through Duke Street, where Benjamin Franklin lodged, when
working as a journeyman printer in the adjacent Great Wyld Street,
into Clare Market, the scene of Orator Henley's holdings-forth, we
thence, by Drury-Lane, the residence of Nell Gwynne and Nan Clarges
before they became respectively the King's mistress and a Duke's
wife, get back to the Strand and move Citywards. But to refer,
although merely nominally, to one half the subjects of interest
met with on the way, and suggested by Mr Smith, would be to write
an index, not a review. Here, therefore, we pause, believing that
enough has been said to convince the reader of the vast amount of
information and amusement derivable from the bricks and stones of
London, and able to recommend to him, should he himself set out
on a street pilgrimage, an excellent guide and companion in the
_Antiquarian Ramble_.




MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES.

1711-1712.


After the reduction of Bouchain, Marlborough was anxious to
commence without delay the siege of Quesnoy, the capture of which
would, in that quarter, have entirely broken through the French
barrier. He vigorously stimulated his own government accordingly,
as well as that at the Hague, to prepare the necessary supplies
and magazines, and expressed a sanguine hope that the capture of
this last stronghold would be the means of bringing about the grand
object of his ambition, and a general peace.[5] The ministry, to
appearance, went with alacrity into his projects, and every thing
bore the aspect of another great success closing the campaign with
honour, and probably leading to a glorious and lasting peace. Mr
Secretary St John, in particular, wrote in the warmest style of
cordiality, approving the project in his own name as well as in that
of the Queen, and reiterating the assurances that the strongest
representations had been made to the Dutch, with a view to their
hearty concurrence. But all this was a mere cover to conceal what
the Tories had really been doing to overturn Marlborough, and
abandon the main objects of the war. Unknown to him, the secret
negotiation with the French Cabinet, through Torcy and the British
ministers, through the agency of Mesnager, had been making rapid
progress. No representations were made to the Dutch, who were fully
in the secret of the pending negotiation, about providing supplies;
and on the 27th September, preliminaries of peace, on the basis of
the seven articles proposed by Louis, were signed by Mesnager on
the part of France, and by the two English secretaries of state, in
virtue of a special warrant from the Queen.[6]

  [5] "The siege, so far as it depends on me, shall be pushed with
  all possible vigour, and I do not altogether despair but that, from
  the success of this campaign, we may hear of some advances made
  towards that which we so much desire. And I shall esteem it much the
  happiest part of my life, if I can be instrumental in putting a good
  end to the war, which grows so burdensome to our country, as well as
  to our allies."--_Marlborough to Lord Oxford_, Aug. 20, 1711; Coxe,
  vi. 92.

  [6] Coxe, vi. 93.

The conditions of these preliminaries, which were afterwards
embodied in the Treaty of Utrecht, were the acknowledgement of the
Queen's title to the throne, and the Protestant succession, by
Louis; an engagement to take all just and reasonable measures that
the crowns of France and Spain should never be united on the same
head,--the providing a sufficient barrier to the Dutch, the empire,
and the house of Austria; and the demolition of Dunkirk, or a proper
equivalent. But the crown of Spain was left to the Duke of Anjou,
and no provision whatever made to exclude a Bourbon prince from
succeeding to it. Thus the main object of the contest--the excluding
the Bourbon family from the throne of Spain, was abandoned: and
at the close of the most important, successful, and glorious war
ever waged by England, terms were agreed to, which left to France
advantages which could scarcely have been hoped by the Cabinet of
Versailles as the fruit of a long series of victories.

Marlborough felt deeply this clandestine negotiation, which not
only deprived him of the main object for which, during his great
career, he had been contending, but evinced a duplicity and want of
confidence on the part of his own government at its close, which
was a melancholy return for such inappreciable public services.[7]
But it was of no avail; the secession of England proved, as he
had foreseen from the outset, a deathblow to the confederacy.
Finding that nothing more was to be done, either at the head of the
army, or in direction of the negotiations, he returned home by the
Brille, after putting his army into winter-quarters, and landed at
Greenwich on the 17th November. Though well aware of the private
envy, as well as political hostility of which he was the object, he
did nothing that could lower or compromise his high character and
lofty position; but in an interview with the Queen, fully expressed
his opinion on the impolicy of the course which ministers were
now adopting.[8] He adopted the same manly course in the noble
speech which he made in his place in Parliament, in the debate on
the address. Ministers had put into the royal speech the unworthy
expression--"I am glad to tell you, that notwithstanding _the arts
of those who delight in war_, both place and time are appointed for
opening the treaty of a general peace." Lord Anglesea followed this
up, by declaring, in the course of the debate, that the country
might have enjoyed the blessing of peace soon after the battle of
Ramilies, if it had not been deferred by some person whose interest
it was to prolong the war.

  [7] "As you have given me encouragement to enter into the strictest
  confidence with you, I beg your friendly advice in what manner I am
  to conduct myself. You cannot but imagine it would be a terrible
  mortification for me to pass by the Hague when our plenipotentiaries
  are there, and myself a stranger to their transactions; and what
  hopes can I have of any countenance at home if I am not thought fit
  to be trusted abroad?"--_Marlborough to the Lord Treasurer_, 21st
  Oct. 1711.

  [8] I hear, that in his conversation with the Queen, the Duke of
  Marlborough has spoken against what we are doing; in short, his fate
  hangs heavy upon him, and he has of late pursued every counsel which
  was worst for him.--_Bolingbroke's Letters_, i. 480. Nov. 24, 1711.

Rising upon this, with inexpressible dignity, and turning to where
the Queen sat, Marlborough said, "I appeal to the Queen, whether I
did not constantly, while I was plenipotentiary, give her Majesty
and her Council an account of all the propositions which were made;
and whether I did not desire instruction for my conduct on this
subject. I can declare with a good conscience, in the presence of
her Majesty, of this illustrious assembly, and of God himself, who
is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before
whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear to
render account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe,
honourable, and lasting peace, and was very far from wishing to
prolong the war for my own private advantage, as several libels
and discourses have most falsely insinuated. My great age, and my
numerous fatigues in war, make me ardently wish for the power to
enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity. As to other
matters, I have not the least inducement, on any account, to desire
the continuance of the war for my own interest, since my services
have been so generously rewarded by her Majesty and her parliament;
but I think myself obliged to make such an acknowledgment to her
Majesty and my country, that I am always ready to serve them,
whenever my duty may require, to obtain an honourable and lasting
peace. Yet I can by no means acquiesce in the measure

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