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Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest

by George Borrow · English · Gutenberg #452 · 1,266,742 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest

Author: George Borrow

Commentator: Augustine Birrell

Illustrator: Edmund J. Sullivan


        
Release date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #452]
                Most recently updated: September 15, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/452

Credits: Transcribed from the 1900 Macmillian and Co. Edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAVENGRO: THE SCHOLAR, THE GYPSY, THE PRIEST ***





Transcribed from the 1900 Macmillian and Co. Edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org





LAVENGRO
THE SCHOLAR, THE GYPSY, THE PRIEST


BY
GEORGE BORROW

ILLUSTRATED BY E. J. SULLIVAN

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AUGUSTINE
BIRRELL, Q.C., M.P.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1900

_All rights reserved_

_First published in_ "_Macmillan's Illustrated Standard Novel_," 1896
_Reprinted_ 1900

{picture:George Borrow: page0.jpg}




INTRODUCTION


The author of _Lavengro_, _the Scholar_, _the Gypsy_, _and the Priest_
has after his fitful hour come into his own, and there abides securely.
Borrow's books,--carelessly written, impatient, petulant, in parts
repellant,--have been found so full of the elixir of life, of the charm
of existence, of the glory of motion, so instinct with character, and
mood, and wayward fancy, that their very names are sounds of enchantment,
whilst the fleeting scenes they depict and the deeds they describe have
become the properties and the pastimes for all the years that are still
to be of a considerable fraction of the English-speaking race.

And yet I suppose it would be considered ridiculous in these fine days to
call Borrow a great artist.  His fascination, his hold upon his reader,
is not the fascination or the hold of the lords of human smiles and
tears.  They enthrall us; Borrow only bewitches.  Isopel Berners, hastily
limned though she be, need fear comparison with no damsel that ever lent
sweetness to the stage, relish to rhyme, or life to novel.  She can hold
up her head and take her own part amidst all the Rosalinds, Beatrices,
and Lucys that genius has created and memory can muster.  But how she
came into existence puzzles us not a little.  Was she summoned out of
nothingness by the creative fancy of Lavengro, or did he really first set
eyes upon her in the dingle whither she came with the Flaming Tinman,
whose look Lavengro did not like at all?  Reality and romance, though
Borrow made them wear double harness, are not meant to be driven
together.  It is hard to weep aright over Isopel Berners.  The reader is
tortured by a sense of duty towards her.  This distraction prevents our
giving ourselves away to Borrow.  Perhaps after all he did meet the tall
girl in the dingle, in which case he was a fool for all his pains, losing
a gift the gods could not restore.

Quite apart from this particular doubt, the reader of Borrow feels that
good luck, happy chance, plays a larger part in the charm of the
composition than is quite befitting were Borrow to be reckoned an artist.
But nobody surely will quarrel with this ingredient.  It can turn no
stomach.  Happy are the lucky writers!  Write as they will, they are
almost certain to please.  There is such a thing as 'sweet
unreasonableness.'

But no sooner is this said than the necessity for instant and substantial
qualification becomes urgent, for though Borrow's personal vanity would
have been wounded had he been ranked with the literary gentlemen who do
business in words, his anger would have been justly aroused had he been
told he did not know how to write.  He did know how to write, and he
acquired the art in the usual way, by taking pains.  He might with
advantage have taken more pains, and then he would have done better; but
take pains he did.  In all his books he aims at producing a certain
impression on the minds of his readers, and in order to produce that
impression he was content to make sacrifices; hence his whimsicality, his
out-of-the-wayness, at once his charm and his snare, never grows into
wantonness and seldom into gross improbability.  He studied effects, as
his frequent and impressive liturgical repetitions pleasingly
demonstrate.  He had theories about most things, and may, for all I know,
have had a theory of cadences.  For words he had no great feeling except
as a philologist, and is capable of strange abominations.  'Individual'
pursues one through all his pages, where too are 'equine species,' 'finny
tribe'; but finding them where we do even these vile phrases, and others
nearly as bad, have a certain humour.

This chance remark brings me to the real point.  Borrow's charm is that
he has behind his books a character of his own, which belongs to his
books as much as to himself; something which bears you up and along as
does the mystery of the salt sea the swimmer.  And this something lives
and stirs in almost every page of Borrow, whose restless, puzzling,
teasing personality pervades and animates the whole.

He is the true adventurer who leads his life, not on the Stock Exchange
amidst the bulls and bears, or in the House of Commons waiting to clutch
the golden keys, or in South Africa with the pioneers and promoters, but
with himself and his own vagrant moods and fancies.  There was no need
for Borrow to travel far afield in search of adventures.  Mumpers' Dell
was for him as good an environment as Mexico; a village in Spain or
Portugal served his turn as well as both the Indies; he was as likely to
meet adventures in Pall Mall as in the far Soudan.  Strange things happen
to him wherever he goes; odd figures step from out the hedgerow and
engage him in wild converse; beggar-women read _Moll Flanders_ on London
Bridge; Armenian merchants cuff deaf and dumb clerks in London counting-
houses; prize-fighters, dog-fanciers, Methodist preachers, Romany ryes
and their rawnees move on and off.  Why should not strange things happen
to Lavengro?  Why should not strange folk suddenly make their appearance
before him and as suddenly take their departure?  Is he not strange
himself?  Did he not puzzle Mr. Petulengro, excite the admiration of Mrs.
Petulengro, the murderous hate of Mrs. Herne, and drive Isopel Berners
half distracted?

Nobody has, so far, attempted to write the life of George Borrow.  Nor
can we wonder.  How could any one dare to follow in the phosphorescent
track of _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, or add a line or a hue to the
portraits there contained of Borrow's father and mother--the gallant
soldier who had no chance, and whose most famous engagement took place,
not in Flanders, or in Egypt, or on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but
in Hyde Park, his foe being Big Ben Brain; and the dame of the oval face,
olive complexion, and Grecian forehead, sitting in the dusky parlour in
the solitary house at the end of the retired court shaded by lofty
poplars?  I pity 'the individual' whose task it should be to travel along
the enchanted wake either of Lavengro in England or Don Jorge in Spain.
Poor would be his part; no better than that of Arthur in 'The Bothie':--

   And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,
   Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture,
   He to a matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating,
   He to the great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and ideal,
   He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing,
   River to streamlet reducing, and fall to slope subduing:
   So it was told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur.

George Borrow, like many another great man, was born in Norfolk, at East
Dereham, in 1803, and at an early age began those rambles he has made
famous, being carried about by his father, Captain Borrow, who was
chiefly employed as a recruiting officer.  The reader of _Lavengro_ may
safely be left to make out his own itinerary.  Whilst in Edinburgh Borrow
attended the High School, and acquired the Scottish accent.  It is not
too much to say that he has managed to make even Edinburgh more romantic
simply by abiding there for a season.  From Scotland he went to Ireland,
and learnt to ride, as well as to talk the Irish tongue, and to seek
etymologies wherever they were or were not to be found.  But for a famous
Irish cob, whose hoofs still sound in our ears, Borrow, so he says, might
have become a mere philologist.  From Ireland he returned with his
parents to Norwich, and resumed studies, which must have been, from a
schoolmaster's point of view, grievously interrupted, under the Rev.
Edward Valpy at King Edward's School.  Here he seems to have been for two
or three years.  Dr. Jessopp has told us the story of Borrow's dyeing his
face with walnut juice, and Valpy gravely inquiring of him, 'Borrow, are
you suffering from jaundice, or is it only dirt?'   The Rajah of Sarawak,
Sir Archdale Wilson, and the Rev. James Martineau were at school with
'Lavengro.'  Dr. Jessopp, who in 1859 became headmaster of King Edward's
School, and who has been a Borrovian from the beginning, found the school
tradition to be that Borrow, who never reached the sixth form, was
indolent and even stupid.  In 1819,--the reader will be glad of a
date,--Borrow left school, and was articled to a solicitor in Norwich,
and sat for some eight hours every day behind a lofty deal desk copying
deeds and, it may be presumed, making abstracts of title,--a harmless
pursuit which a year or two later entirely failed to engage the attention
of young Mr. Benjamin Disraeli in Montague Place.  Neither of these
distinguished men can honestly be said ever to have acquired what is
called the legal mind, a mental equipment which the younger of them had
once the effrontery to define as a talent for explaining the
self-evident, illustrating the obvious and expatiating on the
commonplace.  'By adopting the law,' says Borrow, 'I had not ceased to be
Lavengro.'  He learnt Welsh when he should have been reading Blackstone.
He studied German under the direction of the once famous William Taylor
of Norwich, who in 1821 wrote to Southey: 'A Norwich young man is
construing with me Schiller's _William Tell_, with a view of translating
it for the press.  His name is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt
German with extraordinary rapidity.  Indeed, he has the gift of tongues,
and though not yet eighteen, understands twelve languages--English,
Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese.  He would like to get into the office for
Foreign Affairs, but does not know how.'

It only takes five years to make an attorney, and Borrow ought therefore,
had he served out his time, to have become a gentleman by Act of
Parliament in 1824 or 1825.  He did not do so, though he appears to have
remained in Norwich until after 1826.  In that year appeared his
_Romantic Ballads from the Danish_, printed by Simon Wilkins of Norwich
by subscription.  Dr. Jessopp opines that the _Romantic Ballads_ must
have brought their translator 'a very respectable sum after paying all
the expenses of publication.'  I hope it was so, but, as Dr. Johnson once
said about the immortality of the soul, I should like more evidence of
it.  When Borrow left Norwich for London, it is hard to say.  It was
after the death of his father, and was not likely to have been later than
1828.  His only introduction appears to have been one from William Taylor
to Sir Richard Phillips, 'the publisher' known to all readers of
_Lavengro_.  Sir Richard was one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex,
and in addition to sundry treatises on the duties of juries, was the
author of two lucubrations, respectively entitled _The Phaenomena called
by the name of Gravitation proved to be Proximate Effects of the
Orbicular and Rotary Motions of the Earth and On the New Theory of the
System of the Universe_.  In Watt's _Bibliotheca Britannica_, 1824, Sir
Richard is thus contemptuously referred to: 'This personage is the editor
of _The Monthly Magazine_, in which many of his effusions may be found
with the signature of "Common Sense."'  It is not too much to say that
but for Borrow this nefarious man would be utterly forgotten; as it is,
he lives for ever in the pages of _Lavengro_, a hissing and a reproach.
Authors have an ugly trick of getting the better of their publishers in
the long run.  After leaving London Borrow began the wanderings described
in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_.  Those concluded, probably in 1829 or
1830, he crossed the British Channel, and like another Goldsmith,
wandered on foot over the Continent of Europe, visiting France, Italy,
Austria, and Russia.  Of his adventures in these countries there is
unhappily no record.  In St. Petersburg he must have made a long stay,
for there he superintended the translation of the Bible into Mandschu-
Tartar, and published in 1835 his _Targum_; _or Metrical Translations
from Thirty Languages and Dialects_.  In 1835 Borrow returned to London,
and being already known to the Bible Society for his biblical labours in
Russia, was offered, and accepted, the task of circulating the Scriptures
in the Spanish Peninsula.  As for his labours in this field, which
occupied him so agreeably for four or five years, are they not narrated
in _The Bible in Spain_, a book first published by 'Glorious John Murray'
in three volumes in 1843?  This is the book which made Borrow famous,
though his earlier work, _The Zincali_; _or an Account of the Gypsies of
Spain_ (two vols. 1841), had attracted a good deal of notice.  But _The
Bible in Spain_ took readers by storm, and no wonder!  Sir Robert Peel
named it in the House of Commons; its perusal imparted a new sensation,
the sensation of literature, to many a pious subscriber to the Bible
Society.  The book, wherever it went,--and it went where such like books
do not often go,--carried joy and rapture with it.  Young people hailed
it tumultuously and cherished it tenderly.  There were four editions in
three volumes in the year of publication.  What was thought of the book
by the Bible Society I do not know.  Perhaps 'he of the countenance of a
lion,' of whom we read in the forty-fifth chapter of _Lavengro_, scarcely
knew what to say about it; but the precise-looking man with the
ill-natured countenance, no doubt, forbade his family to read _The Bible
in Spain_.

In 1840 Borrow married the widow of a naval officer and settled in
Norfolk, where his aged mother was still living.  His house was in Oulton
Broad; and here he became a notable, the hero of many stories, and the
friend of man, provided he was neither literary nor genteel.  Here also
he finished _Lavengro_ (1851), and wrote _The Romany Rye_ (1857), _Wild
Wales_ (1862), and _Romano Lavo-Lil_: _the Word-Book of the Romany_
(1874).  For a time Borrow had a house in London in Hereford Square,
where his wife died in 1869.  He died himself at Oulton in August 1881,
leaving behind him, so it is frequently asserted, many manuscript
volumes, including treatises on Celtic poetry, on Welsh and Cornish and
Manx literature, as well as translations from the Norse and Russ and the
jest-books of Turkey.  Some, at all events, of these works were
advertised as 'ready for the press' in 1858.

_The Bible in Spain_ was a popular book, and in 1843, the year of its
publication, its author, a man of striking appearance, was much feted and
regarded by the lion-hunters of the period.  Borrow did not take kindly
to the den.  He was full of inbred suspicions and, perhaps, of
unreasonable demands.  He resented the confinement of the dinner-table,
the impalement of the ball-room, the imprisonment of the pew.  Like the
lion in Browning's poem, 'The Glove'--

   You saw by the flash on his forehead,
   By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,
   He was leagues in the desert already,
   Driving the flocks up the mountain.

He began to write _Lavengro_ in London in 1843.  His thoughts went back
to his old friend Petulengro, who pronounced life to be sweet: 'There's
night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother,
all sweet things.  There's likewise a wind on the heath.  Life is very
sweet, brother; who would wish to die?'  Yes, or to live cribbed,
cabined, and confined in a London square!  No wonder 'Lavengro' felt
cross and uncomfortable.  Nor did he take much pleasure in the society of
the other lions of the hour, least of all of such a lion as Sir John
Bowring, M.P.  Was not Bowring 'Lavengro' as much as Borrow himself?  Had
he not--for there was no end to his impudence--travelled in Spain, and
actually published a pamphlet in the vernacular?  Was he not meditating
translations from a score of languages he said he knew?  Was he not,
furthermore, an old Radical and Republican turned genteel?  Were not his
wife and daughters more than half suspected of being Jacobites, followers
of the Reverend Mr. Platitude, and addicted to 'Charley o'er the
Waterism'?  Borrow did not get on with Bowring.

When Borrow shook the dust of London off his feet, and returned into
Norfolk with _Lavengro_ barely begun on his hands, he carried away with
him into his retreat the antipathies and prejudices, the whimsical
dislikes and the half-real, half-sham disappointments and chagrins which
London, that fertile mother of megrims, had bred in him, and dropped them
all into the ink with which he wrote his famous book.  Gentility he
forswore.  Whatever else Lavengro might turn out, genteel he was not to
be; and sure enough, when Lavengro made his appearance in 1851 genteel he
most certainly was not.

There was not the same public to welcome the Gypsy as had hailed the
Colporteur.  The pious phrases which had garnished so plentifully the
earlier book had now almost wholly disappeared.  There is no evidence
that Lavengro ever offered Petulengro a Bible.  Even the denunciations of
Popery have a dubious sound.  What is sometimes called 'the religious
world' were no longer buyers of Borrow.  Nor was 'the polite world' much
better pleased.  The polite reader was both puzzled and annoyed.  First
of all: Was the book true--autobiography or romance?  A polite reader
objects to be made a fool of.  One De Foe in a couple of centuries is
enough for a polite reader.  Then the glorification of ale and of gypsies
and prize-fighters--would it not be better at once to dub the book
vulgar, and so have done with it for ever?  An ill-regulated book, a
strange book, a mad book, a book which condemns the world's way.  If I
may judge from the reviews, this is how _Lavengro_ struck many, but by no
means all.  The book had its passionate admirers, its lovers from the
first.  Men, women, and boys took it to their hearts.  Happy day when
_Lavengro_ first fell into boyish hands.  It brought adventure and the
spirit of adventure to your doorstep.  No need painfully to walk to Hull,
and there take shipping with Robinson Crusoe; no need to sail round the
world with Captain Cook, or even to shoot lions in Bechuanaland with that
prince of missionaries, Mr. Robert Moffat; for were there not gypsies on
the common half a mile from one's homestead, and a dingle at the end of
the lane?  But the general verdict was, '"Lavengro" has gone too far.'

Borrow was not the man to whistle and let the world go by.  His advice to
his country men and women was: 'To be courteous to everybody as Lavengro
was, but always independent like him, and if people meddle with them, to
give them as good as they bring, even as he and Isopel Berners were in
the habit of doing; and it will be as well for him to observe that he by
no means advises women to be too womanly, but, bearing the conduct of
Isopel Berners in mind, to take their own parts, and if anybody strikes
them to strike again.'

This is not the spirit which is patient under reproof.  Borrow was not
going to be sentenced by the gentility party.  He would fulfil his
dukkeripen.  _Lavengro_ having ended abruptly enough, Borrow took .up the
tale where he had left it off; and though he kept his admirers on the
tenter-hooks for six years, did at last in 1857 give to the world _The
Romany Rye_, to which he added an Appendix.  Ah! that Appendix!  It is
Borrow's Apologia, and therefore must be read.  It is interesting and
amusing, and is therefore easily read.  But it is a cruel and outrageous
bit of writing all the same, proving, were proof needed, that it is every
whit as easy to be spiteful and envious in dells as in drawing-rooms, and
as vain and egotistical on a Norfolk Broad as in Grosvenor Square.  In
this Appendix Borrow defends 'Lavengro,' both the book and the man, at
some length, and with enormous spirit.  At gentility in all its
manifestations he runs amuck.  The Stuarts have a chapter to themselves.
Jacobites, old and new; Papists, old and new; and, alas! Sir Walter Scott
as the father of 'Charley o'er the Waterism,' all fall by turn under the
lash of Lavengro.  The attack on the memory of Sir Walter is brutal.  Not
so, we may be sure, did Pearce, and Cribb, and Spring, and Big Ben Brain,
and Broughton, heroes of renown, win name and fame in the brave days of
old.  They never struck a man when he was down, or gloated over a rival's
fall.  However, it will not do to get angry with George Borrow.  One
could never keep it up.  Still, the Appendix is a pity.

Next to Borrow's vagabondage, which, though I tremble to say it, has a
decidedly literary flavour, and his delightful _camaraderie_ or
willingness to hob-a-nob with everybody, I rank his eloquence.  Great is
plot, though Borrow has but little, and that little mechanical;
delightful is incident, and Borrow is full of incident--e.g. the
poisoning scene in Chapter LXXI., where will you match it, unless it be
the very differently-treated scene of the robbers' cave in _The Heart of
Midlothian_? and glorious, too, is motion, and Borrow never stagnates,
never gathers moss or mould.  But great also is eloquence.  'If a book be
eloquent,' says Mr. Stevenson, that most distinguished writer, 'its words
run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers.'  Eloquence is
a little unfashionable just now.  We are not allowed very much of it in
our romances and travels.  What are called 'situations' grow stronger
every day, and language is strong too, but outbursts, apostrophes,
rhapsodies no longer abound.  Perhaps they are forbidden by Art.  Nobody
is ever eloquent in real life.  A man's friends would not put up with it.
But a really eloquent book is a great possession.  Plots explode, and
incidents, however varied and delightful, unless lit up by the occasional
lightning-flash of true eloquence, must after a while lose their
freshness.  Borrow was not afraid to be eloquent, nor were other writers
of his time.  The first Lord Lytton is now a somewhat disparaged author,
nor had Borrow any affection for him, considering him to belong to the
kid-glove school; but Lytton's eloquence, though often playing him shabby
tricks, now dashing his head against the rocks of bathos, now casting him
to sprawl unbecomingly amongst the oozy weeds of sentiment, will keep him
alive for many a long day.  As I write, a passage in _The Caxtons_ comes
to my mind, and as it illustrates my meaning, I will take down _The
Caxtons_ and transcribe the passage, and let those laugh who may.  I will
likewise christen it 'By the Fireside':--

   O young reader, whoever thou art, or reader at least who has been
   young, canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
   and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that
   hard, stern world, which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out
   of the threshold of home, come back to the four quiet walls, wherein
   thine elders sit in peace, and seen with a sort of sad amaze how calm
   and undisturbed all is there?  That generation which has gone before
   thee in the path of passion, the generation of thy parents (not so
   many years, perchance, remote from thine own), how immovably far off,
   in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth.  It has in it
   a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks,
   that tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded
   thee have merged, the occupations that they have found sufficing for
   their happiness by the fireside--in the arm-chair and corner
   appropriated to each--how strangely they contrast thy own feverish
   excitement!  And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and
   then resettle to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened!
   Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world
   seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war!  And
   you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no
   more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one,
   you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your
   candle, and creep miserably to your lonely room.

This is not the eloquence of Borrow, though the thought might have been
his; it may not be in that grand style of which we hear so much and read
so little, but--and this is the substance of the matter--it is
interesting, it is moving, and worth pages of choppy dialogue.  You read
it, first of all, it may be in your youth, when your heart burnt within
you as you wondered what was going to happen, but you can return to it in
sober age and read it over again with a smile it has taken a lifetime to
manufacture.  And then Miss Bronte's books! what rhetoric is there!  And
_Eothen_!  Why has not _Eothen_ gone the way of all other traces of
Eastern travel?  It has humour--delightful humour, no doubt, but it is
its eloquence, that picture of the burning, beating sun following the
traveller by day, which keeps _Eothen_ alive.

Borrow's eloquence is splendid, manly, and desperately courageous.  What
an apostrophe is that to old Crome at the end of the twenty-first
chapter!  _Lavengro_ is full of riches.  As for his courage, who else
could begin a passage 'O England,' and emerge triumphantly a page and a
half lower down as Borrow does in _The Bible in Spain_?

   O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath
   the wave of darkness!  Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now
   gathering rapidly round thee, still, still may it please the Almighty
   to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and
   still brighter in renown than thy past!  Or if thy doom be at hand,
   may that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled
   the Old Queen of the water!  May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst
   blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to
   participate in thy downfall!  Of all fates, may it please the Lord to
   preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming ere
   extinct a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though
   they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their
   will, honour and respect thee!

   Arouse thee, whilst yet there is time, and prepare thee for the combat
   of life and death!  Cast from thee the foul scurf which now encrusts
   thy robust limbs, which deadens their force, and makes them heavy and
   powerless!  Cast from thee thy false philosophers, who would fain
   decry what, next to the love of God, has hitherto been deemed most
   sacred, the love of the mother land!  Cast from thee thy false
   patriots, who, under the pretext of redressing the wrongs of the poor
   and weak, seek to promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become
   only terrible to thyself!  And remove from thee the false prophets who
   have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with
   untempered mortar, that it may fall; who have strengthened the hands
   of the wicked, and made the hearts of the righteous sad.  O, do this,
   and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an
   enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou
   old Queen!

George Borrow,--and this is the last of his virtues with which I shall
weary you,--had a true English heart.  He could make friends with anybody
and be at home anywhere, but though he had a mighty thirst he had never,
in the words of the elder Pitt, 'drunk of the potion described in poetic
fictions which makes men forget their country.'

I have the permission of the Rev. A. W. Upcher to reprint the following
letter addressed by him some time ago to the Athenaeum .--

   One summer day during the Crimean War we had a call from George
   Borrow, who had not enjoyed a visit to Anna Gurney so much as he had
   expected.  In a walking tour round Norfolk he had given her a short
   notice of his intended call, and she was ready to receive him.  When,
   according to his account, he had been but a very short time in her
   presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to one of
   her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his
   hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point, which he tried
   to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously; when, said
   he, 'I could not study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the
   same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.'  He
   seems not to have stopped running till he reached Old Tucker's Inn at
   Cromer, where he renewed his strength, or calmed his temper, with five
   excellent sausages, and then came on to Sheringham.  He told us there
   were three personages in the world whom he always had a desire to see;
   two of these had slipped through his fingers, so he was determined to
   see the third.  'Pray, Mr. Borrow, who were they?'  He held up three
   fingers of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of
   the right: the first, Daniel O'Connell; the second, Lamplighter (the
   sire of Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby); the third,
   Anna Gurney.  The first two were dead and he had not seen them; now he
   had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of his visit.  I
   took him up to the Hall, he talking of many persons and occasionally
   doubling his fist, and giving a sort of warning like that of his
   Isopel Berners (in _Lavengro_) to give the Flaming Tinman 'Long
   Melford' with his right hand.  As soon as we reached the Hall a battle-
   piece by Wouvermans was the first thing that caught his eye and
   greatly interested him.  He told me of a descendant of Wouvermans--an
   officer in the Austrian army--whom he knew.  Then entering the drawing-
   room and looking out of the bay-window through the oak wood on the
   deep blue sea beyond, he seemed for some time quite entranced by the
   lovely, peaceful view, till at last I felt I must arouse him, and
   said, 'A charming view, Mr. Borrow!'  With a deep sigh he slowly
   answered, 'Yes!--please God the Russians don't come here.'




PREFACE


In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe a dream, partly of
study, partly of adventure, in which will be found copious notices of
books, and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual
form.

The scenes of action lie in the British Islands;--pray be not displeased,
gentle reader, if perchance thou hast imagined that I was about to
conduct thee to distant lands, and didst promise thyself much instruction
and entertainment from what I might tell thee of them.  I do assure thee
that thou hast no reason to be displeased, inasmuch as there are no
countries in the world less known by the British than these selfsame
British Islands, or where more strange things are every day occurring,
whether in road or street, house or dingle.

The time embraces nearly the first quarter of the present century: this
information again may, perhaps, be anything but agreeable to thee; it is
a long time to revert to, but fret not thyself, many matters which at
present much occupy the public mind originated in some degree towards the
latter end of that period, and some of them will be treated of.

The principal actors in this dream, or drama, are, as you will have
gathered from the title-page, a Scholar, a Gypsy, and a Priest.  Should
you imagine that these three form one, permit me to assure you that you
are very much mistaken.  Should there be something of the Gypsy manifest
in the Scholar, there is certainly nothing of the Priest.  With respect
to the Gypsy--decidedly the most entertaining character of the
three--there is certainly nothing of the Scholar or the Priest in him;
and as for the Priest, though there may be something in him both of
scholarship and gypsyism, neither the Scholar nor the Gypsy would feel at
all flattered by being confounded with him.

Many characters which may be called subordinate will be found, and it is
probable that some of these characters will afford much more interest to
the reader than those styled the principal.  The favourites with the
writer are a brave old soldier and his helpmate, an ancient gentlewoman
who sold apples, and a strange kind of wandering man and his wife.

Amongst the many things attempted in this book is the encouragement of
charity, and free and genial manners, and the exposure of humbug, of
which there are various kinds, but of which the most perfidious, the most
debasing, and the most cruel, is the humbug of the Priest.

Yet let no one think that irreligion is advocated in this book.  With
respect to religious tenets I wish to observe that I am a member of the
Church of England, into whose communion I was baptized, and to which my
forefathers belonged.  Its being the religion in which I was baptized,
and of my forefathers, would be a strong inducement to me to cling to it;
for I do not happen to be one of those choice spirits 'who turn from
their banner when the battle bears strongly against it, and go over to
the enemy,' and who receive at first a hug and a 'viva,' and in the
sequel contempt and spittle in the face; but my chief reason for
belonging to it is, because, of all churches calling themselves Christian
ones, I believe there is none so good, so well founded upon Scripture, or
whose ministers are, upon the whole, so exemplary in their lives and
conversation, so well read in the book from which they preach, or so
versed in general learning, so useful in their immediate neighbourhoods,
or so unwilling to persecute people of other denominations for matters of
doctrine.

In the communion of this Church, and with the religious consolation of
its ministers, I wish and hope to live and die, and in its and their
defence will at all times be ready, if required, to speak, though humbly,
and to fight, though feebly, against enemies, whether carnal or
spiritual.

And is there no priestcraft in the Church of England?  There is
certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of
England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement
against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her because
there is only a modicum of that article in her--were she stuffed to the
very cupola with it, like a certain other Church, they would have much
less to say against the Church of England.

By the other Church, I mean Rome.  Its system was once prevalent in
England, and, during the period that it prevailed there, was more
prolific of debasement and crime than all other causes united.  The
people and the government at last becoming enlightened by means of the
Scripture spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land
instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts,
sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a
pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful
hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about,
around, and above debased humanity.

But Popery still wished to play her old part, to regain her lost
dominion, to reconvert the smiling land into the pestilential morass,
where she could play again her old antics.  From the period of the
Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her
emissaries here, individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but
cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, as much as
in their power has lain, to damp and stifle every genial, honest, loyal,
and independent thought, and to reduce minds to such a state of dotage as
would enable their old Popish mother to do what she pleased with them.

And in every country, however enlightened, there are always minds
inclined to grovelling superstition--minds fond of eating dust and
swallowing clay--minds never at rest, save when prostrate before some
fellow in a surplice; and these Popish emissaries found always some weak
enough to bow down before them, astounded by their dreadful denunciations
of eternal woe and damnation to any who should refuse to believe their
Romania; but they played a poor game--the law protected the servants of
Scripture, and the priest with his beads seldom ventured to approach any
but the remnant of those of the eikonolatry--representatives of
worm-eaten houses, their debased dependants, and a few poor crazy
creatures amongst the middle classes--he played a poor game, and the
labour was about to prove almost entirely in vain, when the English
legislature, in compassion or contempt, or, yet more probably, influenced
by that spirit of toleration and kindness which is so mixed up with
Protestantism, removed almost entirely the disabilities under which
Popery laboured, and enabled it to raise its head and to speak out almost
without fear.

And it did raise its head, and, though it spoke with some little fear at
first, soon discarded every relic of it; went about the land uttering its
damnation cry, gathering around it--and for doing so many thanks to
it--the favourers of priestcraft who lurked within the walls of the
Church of England; frightening with the loudness of its voice the weak,
the timid, and the ailing; perpetrating, whenever it had an opportunity,
that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial--_Deathbed
robbery_; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly.  Yes, it went on
enlisting, plundering, and uttering its terrible threats till--till it
became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool.  Its
plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had
it been common insolence, but it--, and then the roar of indignation
which arose from outraged England against the viper, the frozen viper,
which it had permitted to warm itself upon its bosom.

But thanks, Popery, you have done all that the friends of enlightenment
and religious liberty could wish; but if ever there were a set of foolish
ones to be found under heaven, surely it is the priestly rabble who came
over from Rome to direct the grand movement--so long in its getting up.

But now again the damnation cry is withdrawn, there is a subdued meekness
in your demeanour, you are now once more harmless as a lamb.  Well, we
shall see how the trick--'the old trick'--will serve you.




CHAPTER I


Birth--My father--Tamerlane--Ben Brain--French Protestants--East
Anglia--Sorrow and troubles--True peace--A beautiful child--Foreign
grave--Mirrors--Alpine country--Emblems--Slow of speech--The Jew--Strange
gestures.

On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little
town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light.

My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers.  He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some people
would call them, gentillatres, for they were not very wealthy; they had a
coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a place called
Tredinnock, which being interpreted means _the house on the hill_, which
house and the neighbouring acres had been from time immemorial in their
possession.  I mention these particulars that the reader may see at once
that I am not altogether of low and plebeian origin; the present age is
highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my
pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillatre by birth
with Cornish blood {5} in my veins, of a family who lived on their own
property at a place bearing a Celtic name, signifying the house on the
hill, or more strictly the house on the _hillock_.

My father was what is generally termed a posthumous child--in other
words, the gentillatre who begot him never had the satisfaction of
invoking the blessing of the Father of All upon his head; having departed
this life some months before the birth of his youngest son.  The boy,
therefore, never knew a father's care; he was, however, well tended by
his mother, whose favourite he was; so much so, indeed, that his
brethren, the youngest of whom was considerably older than himself, were
rather jealous of him.  I never heard, however, that they treated him
with any marked unkindness, and it will be as well to observe here that I
am by no means well acquainted with his early history, of which, indeed,
as I am not writing his life, it is not necessary to say much.  Shortly
after his mother's death, which occurred when he was eighteen, he adopted
the profession of arms, which he followed during the remainder of his
life, and in which, had circumstances permitted, he would probably have
shone amongst the best.  By nature he was cool and collected, slow to
anger, though perfectly fearless, patient of control, of great strength;
and, to crown all, a proper man with his hands.

With far inferior qualifications many a man has become a field-marshal or
general; similar ones made Tamerlane, who was not a gentillatre, but the
son of a blacksmith, emperor of one-third of the world; but the race is
not always for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, indeed I ought
rather to say very seldom; certain it is, that my father, with all his
high military qualifications, never became emperor, field-marshal, or
even general: indeed, he had never an opportunity of distinguishing
himself save in one battle, and that took place neither in Flanders,
Egypt, nor on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but in Hyde Park.

Smile not, gentle reader, many a battle has been fought in Hyde Park, in
which as much skill, science, and bravery have been displayed as ever
achieved a victory in Flanders or by the Indus.  In such a combat as that
to which I allude, I opine that even Wellington or Napoleon would have
been heartily glad to cry for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and
even the Blacksmith Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent
with whom, after having had a dispute with him, my father engaged in
single combat for one hour, at the end of which time the champions shook
hands and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's
prowess.  The name of my father's antagonist was Brain.

What! still a smile? did you never hear that name before?  I cannot help
it!  Honour to Brain, who four months after the event which I have now
narrated was champion of England, having conquered the heroic Johnson.
Honour to Brain, who, at the end of other four months, worn out by the
dreadful blows which he had received in his manly combats, expired in the
arms of my father, who read the Bible to him in his latter moments--Big
Ben Brain.

You no longer smile, even _you_ have heard of Big Ben.

I have already hinted that my father never rose to any very exalted rank
in his profession, notwithstanding his prowess and other qualifications.
After serving for many years in the line, he at last entered as captain
in the militia regiment of the Earl of ---, at that period just raised,
and to which he was sent by the Duke of York to instruct the young levies
in military manoeuvres and discipline; and in this mission I believe he
perfectly succeeded, competent judges having assured me that the regiment
in question soon came by his means to be considered as one of the most
brilliant in the service, and inferior to no regiment of the line in
appearance or discipline.

As the headquarters of this corps were at D--- the duties of my father
not unfrequently carried him to that place, and it was on one of these
occasions that he became acquainted with a young person of the
neighbourhood, for whom he formed an attachment, which was returned; and
this young person was my mother.

She was descended from a family of French Protestants, natives of Caen,
who were obliged to leave their native country when old Louis, at the
instigation of the Pope, thought fit to revoke the Edict of Nantes: their
name was Petrement, and I have reason for believing that they were people
of some consideration; that they were noble hearts, and good Christians,
they gave sufficient proof in scorning to bow the knee to the tyranny of
Rome.  So they left beautiful Normandy for their faith's sake, and with a
few louis d'ors in their purse, a Bible in the vulgar tongue, and a
couple of old swords, which, if report be true, had done service in the
Huguenot wars, they crossed the sea to the isle of civil peace and
religious liberty, and established themselves in East Anglia.

And many other Huguenot families bent their steps thither, and devoted
themselves to agriculture or the mechanical arts; and in the venerable
old city, the capital of the province, in the northern shadow of the
Castle of De Burgh, the exiles built for themselves a church where they
praised God in the French tongue, and to which, at particular seasons of
the year, they were in the habit of flocking from country and from town
to sing--

'Thou hast provided for us a goodly earth; thou waterest her furrows,
thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof, thou makest it soft
with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it.'

I have been told that in her younger days my mother was strikingly
handsome; this I can easily believe: I never knew her in her youth, for
though she was very young when she married my father (who was her senior
by many years), she had attained the middle age before I was born, no
children having been vouchsafed to my parents in the early stages of
their union.  Yet even at the present day, now that years threescore and
ten have passed over her head, attended with sorrow and troubles
manifold, poorly chequered with scanty joys, can I look on that
countenance and doubt that at one time beauty decked it as with a
glorious garment?  Hail to thee, my parent! as thou sittest there, in thy
widow's weeds, in the dusky parlour in the house overgrown with the
lustrous ivy of the sister isle, the solitary house at the end of the
retired court shaded by lofty poplars.  Hail to thee, dame of the oval
face, olive complexion, and Grecian forehead; by thy table seated with
the mighty volume of the good Bishop Hopkins spread out before thee;
there is peace in thy countenance, my mother; it is not worldly peace,
however, not the deceitful peace which lulls to bewitching slumbers, and
from which, let us pray, humbly pray, that every sinner may be roused in
time to implore mercy not in vain!  Thine is the peace of the righteous,
my mother, of those to whom no sin can be imputed, the score of whose
misdeeds has been long since washed away by the blood of atonement, which
imputeth righteousness to those who trust in it.  It was not always thus,
my mother; a time was, when the cares, pomps, and vanities of this world
agitated thee too much; but that time is gone by, another and a better
has succeeded; there is peace now on thy countenance, the true peace;
peace around thee, too, in thy solitary dwelling, sounds of peace, the
cheerful hum of the kettle and the purring of the immense angola, which
stares up at thee from its settle with its almost human eyes.

No more earthly cares and affections now, my mother!  Yes, one.  Why dost
thou suddenly raise thy dark and still brilliant eye from the volume with
a somewhat startled glance?  What noise is that in the distant street?
Merely the noise of a hoof; a sound common enough: it draws nearer,
nearer, and now it stops before thy gate.  Singular!  And now there is a
pause, a long pause.  Ha! thou hearest something--a footstep; a swift but
heavy footstep! thou risest, thou tremblest, there is a hand on the pin
of the outer door, there is some one in the vestibule, and now the door
of thy apartment opens, there is a reflection on the mirror behind thee,
a travelling hat, a gray head and sunburnt face.  My dearest Son!--My
darling Mother!

Yes, mother, thou didst recognise in the distant street the hoof-tramp of
the wanderer's horse.

I was not the only child of my parents; I had a brother some three years
older than myself.  He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally
seen in England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance,
in which, by the bye, there is generally a cast of loutishness and
stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of the Celtic character,
particularly in the fire and vivacity which illumined it; his face was
the mirror of his mind; perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever
found amongst the children of Adam, united, however, with no
inconsiderable portion of high and dauntless spirit.  So great was his
beauty in infancy, that people, especially those of the poorer classes,
would follow the nurse who carried him about in order to look at and
bless his lovely face.  At the age of three months an attempt was made to
snatch him from his mother's arms in the streets of London, at the moment
she was about to enter a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate
so powerfully upon every person who beheld him, that my parents were
under continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was
perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts.  He mastered his letters
in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on
the doors of houses and over the shop-windows.

As he grew up, his personal appearance became less prepossessing, his
quickness and cleverness, however, rather increased; and I may say of
him, that with respect to everything which he took in hand he did it
better and more speedily than any other person.  Perhaps it will be asked
here, what became of him?  Alas! alas! his was an early and a foreign
grave.  As I have said before, the race is not always for the swift, nor
the battle for the strong.

And now, doubtless, after the above portrait of my brother, painted in
the very best style of Rubens, the reader will conceive himself justified
in expecting a full-length one of myself, as a child, for as to my
present appearance, I suppose he will be tolerably content with that
flitting glimpse in the mirror.  But he must excuse me; I have no
intention of drawing a portrait of myself in childhood; indeed it would
be difficult, for at that time I never looked into mirrors.  No attempts,
however, were ever made to steal me in my infancy, and I never heard that
my parents entertained the slightest apprehension of losing me by the
hands of kidnappers, though I remember perfectly well that people were in
the habit of standing still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother;
from which premisses the reader may form any conclusion with respect to
my appearance which seemeth good unto him and reasonable.  Should he,
being a good-natured person, and always inclined to adopt the charitable
side in any doubtful point, be willing to suppose that I, too, was
eminently endowed by nature with personal graces, I tell him frankly that
I have no objection whatever to his entertaining that idea; moreover,
that I heartily thank him, and shall at all times be disposed, under
similar circumstances, to exercise the same species of charity towards
himself.

With respect to my mind and its qualities I shall be more explicit; for,
were I to maintain much reserve on this point, many things which appear
in these memoirs would be highly mysterious to the reader, indeed
incomprehensible.  Perhaps no two individuals were ever more unlike in
mind and disposition than my brother and myself: as light is opposed to
darkness, so was that happy, brilliant, cheerful child to the sad and
melancholy being who sprang from the same stock as himself, and was
nurtured by the same milk.

Once, when travelling in an Alpine country, I arrived at a considerable
elevation; I saw in the distance, far below, a beautiful stream hastening
to the ocean, its rapid waters here sparkling in the sunshine, and there
tumbling merrily in cascades.  On its banks were vineyards and cheerful
villages; close to where I stood, in a granite basin with steep and
precipitous sides, slumbered a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines,
cypresses, and yews.  It was a wild, savage spot, strange and singular;
ravens hovered above the pines, filling the air with their uncouth notes,
pies chattered, and I heard the cry of an eagle from a neighbouring peak;
there lay the lake, the dark, solitary, and almost inaccessible lake;
gloomy shadows were upon it, which, strangely modified, as gusts of wind
agitated the surface, occasionally assumed the shape of monsters.  So I
stood on the Alpine elevation, and looked now on the gay distant river,
and now at the dark granite-encircled lake close beside me in the lone
solitude, and I thought of my brother and myself.  I am no moraliser; but
the gay and rapid river, and the dark and silent lake, were, of a verity,
no bad emblems of us two.

So far from being quick and clever like my brother, and able to rival the
literary feat which I have recorded of him, many years elapsed before I
was able to understand the nature of letters, or to connect them.  A
lover of nooks and retired corners, I was as a child in the habit of
fleeing from society, and of sitting for hours together with my head on
my breast.  What I was thinking about, it would be difficult to say at
this distance of time; I remember perfectly well, however, being ever
conscious of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange
sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I
could assign no real cause whatever.

By nature slow of speech, I took no pleasure in conversation, nor in
hearing the voices of my fellow-creatures.  When people addressed me, I
not unfrequently, especially if they were strangers, turned away my head
from them, and if they persisted in their notice burst into tears, which
singularity of behaviour by no means tended to dispose people in my
favour.  I was as much disliked as my brother was deservedly beloved and
admired.  My parents, it is true, were always kind to me; and my brother,
who was good nature itself, was continually lavishing upon me every mark
of affection.

There was, however, one individual who, in the days of my childhood, was
disposed to form a favourable opinion of me.  One day, a Jew--I have
quite forgotten the circumstance, but I was long subsequently informed of
it--one day a travelling Jew knocked at the door of a farmhouse in which
we had taken apartments; I was near at hand sitting in the bright
sunshine, drawing strange lines on the dust with my fingers, an ape and
dog were my companions; the Jew looked at me and asked me some questions,
to which, though I was quite able to speak, I returned no answer.  On the
door being opened, the Jew, after a few words, probably relating to
pedlery, demanded who the child was, sitting in the sun; the maid replied
that I was her mistress's youngest son, a child weak _here_, pointing to
her forehead.  The Jew looked at me again, and then said: ''Pon my
conscience, my dear, I believe that you must be troubled there yourself
to tell me any such thing.  It is not my habit to speak to children,
inasmuch as I hate them, because they often follow me and fling stones
after me; but I no sooner looked at that child than I was forced to speak
to it--his not answering me shows his sense, for it has never been the
custom of the wise to fling away their words in indifferent talk and
conversation; the child is a sweet child, and has all the look of one of
our people's children.  Fool, indeed! did I not see his eyes sparkle just
now when the monkey seized the dog by the ear?--they shone like my own
diamonds--does your good lady want any--real and fine?  Were it not for
what you tell me, I should say it was a prophet's child.  Fool, indeed!
he can write already, or I'll forfeit the box which I carry on my back,
and for which I should be loth to take two hundred pounds!'  He then
leaned forward to inspect the lines which I had traced.  All of a sudden
he started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he
made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, and showing his
teeth, and shortly departed, muttering something about 'holy letters,'
and talking to himself in a strange tongue.  The words of the Jew were in
due course of time reported to my mother, who treasured them in her
heart, and from that moment began to entertain brighter hopes of her
youngest born than she had ever before ventured to foster.

{picture:All of a sudden he started back, and grew white as a sheet:
page13.jpg}




CHAPTER II


Barracks and lodgings--A camp--The viper--A delicate child--Blackberry
time--_Meun_ and _tuum_--Hythe--The Golgotha--Daneman's skull--Superhuman
stature--Stirring times--The sea-bord.

I have been a wanderer the greater part of my life; indeed I remember
only two periods, and these by no means lengthy, when I was, strictly
speaking, stationary.  I was a soldier's son, and as the means of my
father were by no means sufficient to support two establishments, his
family invariably attended him wherever he went, so that from my infancy
I was accustomed to travelling and wandering, and looked upon a monthly
change of scene and residence as a matter of course.  Sometimes we lived
in barracks, sometimes in lodgings, but generally in the former, always
eschewing the latter from motives of economy, save when the barracks were
inconvenient and uncomfortable; and they must have been highly so indeed,
to have discouraged us from entering them; for though we were gentry
(pray bear that in mind, gentle reader), gentry by birth, and
incontestably so by my father's bearing the commission of good old George
the Third, we were not _fine gentry_, but people who could put up with as
much as any genteel Scotch family who find it convenient to live on a
third floor in London, or on a sixth at Edinburgh or Glasgow.  It was not
a little that could discourage us: we once lived within the canvas walls
of a camp, at a place called Pett, in Sussex; and I believe it was at
this place that occurred the first circumstance, or adventure, call it
which you will, that I can remember in connection with myself: it was a
strange one, and I will relate it.

It happened that my brother and myself were playing one evening in a
sandy lane, in the neighbourhood of this Pett camp; our mother was at a
slight distance.  All of a sudden, a bright yellow, and, to my infantine
eye, beautiful and glorious, object made its appearance at the top of the
bank from between the thick quickset, and, gliding down, began to move
across the lane to the other side, like a line of golden light.  Uttering
a cry of pleasure, I sprang forward, and seized it nearly by the middle.
A strange sensation of numbing coldness seemed to pervade my whole arm,
which surprised me the more, as the object to the eye appeared so warm
and sunlike.  I did not drop it, however, but, holding it up, looked at
it intently, as its head dangled about a foot from my hand.  It made no
resistance; I felt not even the slightest struggle; but now my brother
began to scream and shriek like one possessed.  'O mother, mother!' said
he, 'the viper!--my brother has a viper in his hand!'  He then, like one
frantic, made an effort to snatch the creature away from me.  The viper
now hissed amain, and raised its head, in which were eyes like hot coals,
menacing, not myself, but my brother.  I dropped my captive, for I saw my
mother running towards me; and the reptile, after standing for a moment
nearly erect, and still hissing furiously, made off, and disappeared.  The
whole scene is now before me, as vividly as if it occurred yesterday--the
gorgeous viper, my poor dear frantic brother, my agitated parent, and a
frightened hen clucking under the bushes--and yet I was not three years
old.

It is my firm belief that certain individuals possess an inherent power,
or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to
account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share
in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles.  I have known a
savage and vicious mare, whose stall it was dangerous to approach, even
when bearing provender, welcome, nevertheless, with every appearance of
pleasure, an uncouth, wiry-headed man, with a frightfully seamed face,
and an iron hook supplying the place of his right hand, one whom the
animal had never seen before, playfully bite his hair, and cover his face
with gentle and endearing kisses; and I have already stated how a viper
would permit, without resentment, one child to take it up in his hand,
whilst it showed its dislike to the approach of another by the fiercest
hissings.  Philosophy can explain many strange things, but there are some
which are a far pitch above her, and this is one.

I should scarcely relate another circumstance which occurred about this
time but for a singular effect which it produced upon my constitution.  Up
to this period I had been rather a delicate child; whereas, almost
immediately after the occurrence to which I allude, I became both hale
and vigorous, to the great astonishment of my parents, who naturally
enough expected that it would produce quite a contrary effect.

It happened that my brother and myself were disporting ourselves in
certain fields near the good town of Canterbury.  A female servant had
attended us, in order to take care that we came to no mischief: she,
however, it seems, had matters of her own to attend to, and, allowing us
to go where we listed, remained in one corner of a field, in earnest
conversation with a red-coated dragoon.  Now it chanced to be blackberry
time, and the two children wandered under the hedges, peering anxiously
among them in quest of that trash so grateful to urchins of their degree.
We did not find much of it, however, and were soon separated in the
pursuit.  All at once I stood still, and could scarcely believe my eyes.
I had come to a spot where, almost covering the hedge, hung clusters of
what seemed fruit--deliciously-tempting fruit--something resembling
grapes of various colours, green, red, and purple.  Dear me, thought I,
how fortunate! yet have I a right to gather it? is it mine? for the
observance of the law of _meum_ and _tuum_ had early been impressed upon
my mind, and I entertained, even at that tender age, the utmost horror
for theft; so I stood staring at the variegated clusters, in doubt as to
what I should do.  I know not how I argued the matter in my mind; the
temptation, however, was at last too strong for me, so I stretched forth
my hand and ate.  I remember, perfectly well, that the taste of this
strange fruit was by no means so pleasant as the appearance; but the idea
of eating fruit was sufficient for a child, and, after all, the flavour
was much superior to that of sour apples, so I ate voraciously.  How long
I continued eating I scarcely know.  One thing is certain, that I never
left the field as I entered it, being carried home in the arms of the
dragoon in strong convulsions, in which I continued for several hours.
About midnight I awoke, as if from a troubled sleep, and beheld my
parents bending over my couch, whilst the regimental surgeon, with a
candle in his hand, stood nigh, the light feebly reflected on the
whitewashed walls of the barrack-room.

Another circumstance connected with my infancy, and I have done.  I need
offer no apology for relating it, as it subsequently exercised
considerable influence over my pursuits.  We were, if I remember right,
in the vicinity of a place called Hythe, in Kent.  One sweet evening, in
the latter part of summer, our mother took her two little boys by the
hand, for a wander about the fields.  In the course of our stroll we came
to the village church; an old, gray-headed sexton stood in the porch,
who, perceiving that we were strangers, invited us to enter.  We were
presently in the interior, wandering about the aisles, looking on the
walls, and inspecting the monuments of the notable dead.  I can scarcely
state what we saw; how should I?  I was a child not yet four years old,
and yet I think I remember the evening sun streaming in through a stained
window upon the dingy mahogany pulpit, and flinging a rich lustre upon
the faded tints of an ancient banner.  And now once more we were outside
the building, where, against the wall, stood a low-eaved pent-house, into
which we looked.  It was half filled with substances of some kind, which
at first looked like large gray stones.  The greater part were lying in
layers; some, however, were seen in confused and mouldering heaps, and
two or three, which had perhaps rolled down from the rest, lay separately
on the floor.  'Skulls, madam,' said the sexton; 'skulls of the old
Danes!  Long ago they came pirating into these parts; and then there
chanced a mighty shipwreck, for God was angry with them, and He sunk
them; and their skulls, as they came ashore, were placed here as a
memorial.  There were many more when I was young, but now they are fast
disappearing.  Some of them must have belonged to strange fellows, madam.
Only see that one; why, the two young gentry can scarcely lift it!'  And,
indeed, my brother and myself had entered the Golgotha, and commenced
handling these grim relics of mortality.  One enormous skull, lying in a
corner, had fixed our attention, and we had drawn it forth.  Spirit of
eld, what a skull was yon!

{picture:'Skulls, madam,' said the sexton; 'skulls of the old Danes.':
page18.jpg}

I still seem to see it, the huge grim thing; many of the others were
large, strikingly so, and appeared fully to justify the old man's
conclusion that their owners must have been strange fellows; but,
compared with this mighty mass of bone, they looked small and diminutive
like those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those red-
haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are
told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when
ransacked, occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny
moderns with astonishment and awe.  Reader, have you ever pored days and
nights over the pages of Snorro?--probably not, for he wrote in a
language which few of the present day understand, and few would be
tempted to read him tamed down by Latin dragomans.  A brave old book is
that of Snorro, containing the histories and adventures of old northern
kings and champions, who seemed to have been quite different men, if we
may judge from the feats which they performed, from those of these days;
one of the best of his histories is that which describes the life of
Harald Haardraade, who, after manifold adventures by land and sea, now a
pirate, now a mercenary of the Greek emperor, became king of Norway, and
eventually perished at the battle of Stamford Bridge, whilst engaged in a
gallant onslaught upon England.  Now, I have often thought that the old
Kemp, whose mouldering skull in the Golgotha of Hythe my brother and
myself could scarcely lift, must have resembled in one respect at least
this Harald, whom Snorro describes as a great and wise ruler and a
determined leader, dangerous in battle, of fair presence and measuring in
height just _five ells_, {19} neither more nor less.

I never forgot the Daneman's skull; like the apparition of the viper in
the sandy lane, it dwelt in the mind of the boy, affording copious food
for the exercise of imagination.  From that moment with the name of Dane
were associated strange ideas of strength, daring, and superhuman
stature; and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the
Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a
student I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the
acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects, I can only explain
the matter by the early impression received at Hythe from the tale of the
old sexton, beneath the pent-house, and the sight of the Danish skull.

And thus we went on straying from place to place, at Hythe to-day, and
perhaps within a week looking out from our hostel-window upon the streets
of old Winchester, our motions ever in accordance with the 'route' of the
regiment, so habituated to change of scene that it had become almost
necessary to our existence.  Pleasant were these days of my early
boyhood; and a melancholy pleasure steals over me as I recall them.  Those
were stirring times of which I am speaking, and there was much passing
around me calculated to captivate the imagination.  The dreadful struggle
which so long convulsed Europe, and in which England bore so prominent a
part, was then at its hottest; we were at war, and determination and
enthusiasm shone in every face; man, woman, and child were eager to fight
the Frank, the hereditary, but, thank God, never dreaded enemy of the
Anglo-Saxon race.  'Love your country and beat the French, and then never
mind what happens,' was the cry of entire England.  Oh, those were days
of power, gallant days, bustling days, worth the bravest days of chivalry
at least; tall battalions of native warriors were marching through the
land; there was the glitter of the bayonet and the gleam of the sabre;
the shrill squeak of the fife and loud rattling of the drum were heard in
the streets of country towns, and the loyal shouts of the inhabitants
greeted the soldiery on their arrival, or cheered them at their
departure.  And now let us leave the upland, and descend to the sea-bord;
there is a sight for you upon the billows!  A dozen men-of-war are
gliding majestically out of port, their long buntings streaming from the
top-gallant masts, calling on the skulking Frenchman to come forth from
his bights and bays; and what looms upon us yonder from the fog-bank in
the east? a gallant frigate towing behind her the long low hull of a
crippled privateer, which but three short days ago had left Dieppe to
skim the sea, and whose crew of ferocious hearts are now cursing their
imprudence in an English hold.  Stirring times those, which I love to
recall, for they were days of gallantry and enthusiasm, and were moreover
the days of my boyhood.




CHAPTER III


Pretty D-----The venerable church--The stricken heart--Dormant
energies--The small packet--Nerves--The books--A picture--Mountain-like
billows--The footprint--Spirit of De Foe--Reasoning powers--Terrors of
God--Heads of the dragons--High-Church clerk--A journey--The drowned
country.

And when I was between six and seven years of age we were once more at
D---, the place of my birth, whither my father had been despatched on the
recruiting service.  I have already said that it was a beautiful little
town--at least it was at the time of which I am speaking--what it is at
present I know not, for thirty years and more have elapsed since I last
trod its streets.  It will scarcely have improved, for how could it be
better than it then was?  I love to think on thee, pretty quiet D---,
thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow
streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine
old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch,
with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided thy Lady
Bountiful--she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick,
leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a
respectful distance behind.  Pretty quiet D---, with thy venerable
church, in which moulder the mortal remains of England's sweetest and
most pious bard.

Yes, pretty D---, I could always love thee, were it but for the sake of
him who sleeps beneath the marble slab in yonder quiet chancel.  It was
within thee that the long-oppressed bosom heaved its last sigh, and the
crushed and gentle spirit escaped from a world in which it had known
nought but sorrow.  Sorrow! do I say?  How faint a word to express the
misery of that bruised reed; misery so dark that a blind worm like myself
is occasionally tempted to exclaim, Better had the world never been
created than that one so kind, so harmless, and so mild, should have
undergone such intolerable woe!  But it is over now, for, as there is an
end of joy, so has affliction its termination.  Doubtless the All-wise
did not afflict him without a cause: who knows but within that unhappy
frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might
have called into life and vigour?  Perhaps the withering blasts of misery
nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and
lamentable.  But peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest; the
death-like face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully
looking for a moment through the window-pane upon thy market-place, quiet
and pretty D-; the hind in thy neighbourhood no longer at evening-fall
views, and starts as he views, the dark lathy figure moving beneath the
hazels and alders of shadowy lanes, or by the side of murmuring trout
streams, and no longer at early dawn does the sexton of the old church
reverently doff his hat, as, supported by some kind friend, the death-
stricken creature totters along the church-path to that mouldering
edifice with the low roof, inclosing a spring of sanatory waters, built
and devoted to some saint, if the legend over the door be true, by the
daughter of an East Anglian king.

But to return to my own history.  I had now attained the age of six:
shall I state what intellectual progress I had been making up to this
period?  Alas! upon this point I have little to say calculated to afford
either pleasure or edification; I had increased rapidly in size and in
strength: the growth of the mind, however, had by no means corresponded
with that of the body.  It is true, I had acquired my letters, and was by
this time able to read imperfectly; but this was all: and even this poor
triumph over absolute ignorance would never have been effected but for
the unremitting attention of my parents, who, sometimes by threats,
sometimes by entreaties, endeavoured to rouse the dormant energies of my
nature, and to bend my wishes to the acquisition of the rudiments of
knowledge; but in influencing the wish lay the difficulty.  Let but the
will of a human being be turned to any particular object, and it is ten
to one that sooner or later he achieves it.  At this time I may safely
say that I harboured neither wishes nor hopes; I had as yet seen no
object calculated to call them forth, and yet I took pleasure in many
things which perhaps unfortunately were all within my sphere of
enjoyment.  I loved to look upon the heavens, and to bask in the rays of
the sun, or to sit beneath hedgerows and listen to the chirping of the
birds, indulging the while in musing and meditation as far as my very
limited circle of ideas would permit; but, unlike my brother, who was at
this time at school, and whose rapid progress in every branch of
instruction astonished and delighted his preceptors, I took no pleasure
in books, whose use, indeed, I could scarcely comprehend, and bade fair
to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the
cheeks of anxious and affectionate parents.

But the time was now at hand when the ice which had hitherto bound the
mind of the child with its benumbing power was to be thawed, and a world
of sensations and ideas awakened to which it had hitherto been an entire
stranger.  One day a young lady, an intimate acquaintance of our family,
and godmother to my brother, drove up to the house in which we dwelt; she
stayed some time conversing with my mother, and on rising to depart, she
put down on the table a small packet, exclaiming, 'I have brought a
little present for each of the boys: the one is a History of England,
which I intend for my godson when he returns from school, the other is .
. .'--and here she said something which escaped my ear, as I sat at some
distance, moping in a corner,--'I intend it for the youngster yonder,'
pointing to myself; she then departed, and, my mother going out shortly
after, I was left alone.

I remember for some time sitting motionless in my corner, with my eyes
bent upon the ground; at last I lifted my head and looked upon the packet
as it lay on the table.  All at once a strange sensation came over me,
such as I had never experienced before--a singular blending of curiosity,
awe, and pleasure, the remembrance of which, even at this distance of
time, produces a remarkable effect upon my nervous system.  What strange
things are the nerves--I mean those more secret and mysterious ones in
which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will,
has its habitation; how they occasionally tingle and vibrate before any
coming event closely connected with the future weal or woe of the human
being.  Such a feeling was now within me, certainly independent of what
the eye had seen or the ear had heard.  A book of some description had
been brought for me, a present by no means calculated to interest me;
what cared I for books?  I had already many into which I never looked but
from compulsion; friends, moreover, had presented me with similar things
before, which I had entirely disregarded, and what was there in this
particular book, whose very title I did not know, calculated to attract
me more than the rest? yet something within told me that my fate was
connected with the book which had been last brought; so, after looking on
the packet from my corner for a considerable time, I got up and went to
the table.

The packet was lying where it had been left--I took it up; had the
envelope, which consisted of whitish brown paper, been secured by a
string or a seal, I should not have opened it, as I should have
considered such an act almost in the light of a crime; the books,
however, had been merely folded up, and I therefore considered that there
could be no possible harm in inspecting them, more especially as I had
received no injunction to the contrary.  Perhaps there was something
unsound in this reasoning, something sophistical; but a child is
sometimes as ready as a grown-up person in finding excuses for doing that
which he is inclined to.  But whether the action was right or wrong, and
I am afraid it was not altogether right, I undid the packet: it contained
three books; two from their similarity seemed to be separate parts of one
and the same work; they were handsomely bound, and to them I first turned
my attention.  I opened them successively, and endeavoured to make out
their meaning; their contents, however, as far as I was able to
understand them, were by no means interesting: whoever pleases may read
these books for me, and keep them, too, into the bargain, said I to
myself.

I now took up the third book: it did not resemble the others, being
longer and considerably thicker; the binding was of dingy calf-skin.  I
opened it, and as I did so another strange thrill of pleasure shot
through my frame.  The first object on which my eyes rested was a
picture; it was exceedingly well executed, at least the scene which it
represented made a vivid impression upon me, which would hardly have been
the case had the artist not been faithful to nature.  A wild scene it
was--a heavy sea and rocky shore, with mountains in the background, above
which the moon was peering.  Not far from the shore, upon the water, was
a boat with two figures in it, one of which stood at the bow, pointing
with what I knew to be a gun at a dreadful shape in the water; fire was
flashing from the muzzle of the gun, and the monster appeared to be
transfixed.  I almost thought I heard its cry.  I remained motionless,
gazing upon the picture, scarcely daring to draw my breath, lest the new
and wondrous world should vanish of which I had now obtained a glimpse.
'Who are those people, and what could have brought them into that strange
situation?' I asked of myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had
so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become
speedily acquainted with the whole history of the people in the boat.
After looking on the picture till every mark and line in it were familiar
to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a
new source of wonder--a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was
breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament,
which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were
toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening
waves--'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!'  I exclaimed, as my eyes
fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore;
he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine;
high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for
ever.  'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!'  I almost shrieked, and
dropped the book.  I soon snatched it up again, and now my eye lighted on
a third picture: again a shore, but what a sweet and lovely one, and how
I wished to be treading it; there were beautiful shells lying on the
smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on
marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of
wondrous crayfish, a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and
partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while
blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it;
there was a human figure upon the beach, wild and uncouth, clad in the
skins of animals, with a huge cap on his head, a hatchet at his girdle,
and in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare; he stood in an
attitude of horror and surprise; his body was bent far back, and his
eyes, which seemed starting out of his head, were fixed upon a mark on
the sand--a large distinct mark--a human footprint. . . .

Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand,
and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had
produced within me emotions strange and novel?  Scarcely--for it was a
book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence
certainly greater than any other of modern times--which has been in most
people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read
are to a certain extent acquainted--a book from which the most luxuriant
and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration--a book,
moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the
spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken,
England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land,
and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory.

Hail to thee, spirit of De Foe!  What does not my own poor self owe to
thee?  England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could
spare them easier far than De Foe, 'unabashed De Foe,' as the hunchbacked
rhymer styled him.

The true chord had now been touched; a raging curiosity with respect to
the contents of the volume, whose engravings had fascinated my eye,
burned within me, and I never rested until I had fully satisfied it;
weeks succeeded weeks, months followed months, and the wondrous volume
was my only study and principal source of amusement.  For hours together
I would sit poring over a page till I had become acquainted with the
import of every line.  My progress, slow enough at first, became by
degrees more rapid, till at last, under 'a shoulder of mutton sail,' I
found myself cantering before a steady breeze over an ocean of
enchantment, so well pleased with my voyage that I cared not how long it
might be ere it reached its termination.

And it was in this manner that I first took to the paths of knowledge.

About this time I began to be somewhat impressed with religious feelings.
My parents were, to a certain extent, religious people; but, though they
had done their best to afford me instruction on religious points, I had
either paid no attention to what they endeavoured to communicate, or had
listened with an ear far too obtuse to derive any benefit.  But my mind
had now become awakened from the drowsy torpor in which it had lain so
long, and the reasoning powers which I possessed were no longer inactive.
Hitherto I had entertained no conception whatever of the nature and
properties of God, and with the most perfect indifference had heard the
divine name proceeding from the mouths of people--frequently, alas! on
occasions when it ought not to be employed; but I now never heard it
without a tremor, for I now knew that God was an awful and inscrutable
Being, the Maker of all things; that we were His children, and that we,
by our sins, had justly offended Him; that we were in very great peril
from His anger, not so much in this life as in another and far stranger
state of being yet to come; that we had a Saviour withal to whom it was
necessary to look for help: upon this point, however, I was yet very much
in the dark, as, indeed, were most of those with whom I was connected.
The power and terrors of God were uppermost in my thoughts; they
fascinated though they astounded me.  Twice every Sunday I was regularly
taken to the church, where, from a corner of the large spacious pew,
lined with black leather, I would fix my eyes on the dignified
High-Church rector, and the dignified High-Church clerk, and watch the
movement of their lips, from which, as they read their respective
portions of the venerable liturgy, would roll many a portentous word
descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High.

_Rector_.  Thou didst divide the sea, through thy power: thou brakest the
heads of the dragons in the waters.

_Philoh_.  Thou smotest the heads of Leviathan in pieces: and gavest him
to be meat for the people in the wilderness.

_Rector_.  Thou broughtest out fountains, and waters out of the hard
rocks: thou driedst up mighty waters.

_Philoh_.  The day is thine, and the night is thine: thou hast prepared
the light and the sun.

Peace to your memories, dignified rector, and yet more dignified
clerk!--by this time ye are probably gone to your long homes, and your
voices are no longer heard sounding down the aisles of the venerable
church--nay, doubtless, this has already long since been the fate of him
of the sonorous 'Amen!'--the one of the two who, with all due respect to
the rector, principally engrossed my boyish admiration--he, at least, is
scarcely now among the living! Living! why, I have heard say that he blew
a fife--for he was a musical as well as a Christian professor--a bold
fife, to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines, as they marched with
measured step, obeying an insane command, up Bunker's height, whilst the
rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick
amidst the red-coated ranks; for Philoh had not always been a man of
peace, nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had
even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before
his six-foot form required rest, and the gray-haired veteran retired,
after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and
respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day'; and well did his
fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and
with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they
made him clerk and precentor--the man of the tall form and of the audible
voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife.  Well, peace
to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of
papists, as became a dignified and High-Church clerk; if thou art in thy
grave, the better for thee; thou wert fitted to adorn a bygone time, when
loyalty was in vogue, and smiling content lay like a sunbeam upon the
land, but thou wouldst be sadly out of place in these days of cold
philosophic latitudinarian doctrine, universal tolerism, and
half-concealed rebellion--rare times, no doubt, for papists and
dissenters, but which would assuredly have broken the heart of the loyal
soldier of George the Third, and the dignified High-Church clerk of
pretty D---.

We passed many months at this place: nothing, however, occurred requiring
any particular notice, relating to myself, beyond what I have already
stated, and I am not writing the history of others.  At length my father
was recalled to his regiment, which at that time was stationed at a place
called Norman Cross, in Lincolnshire, or rather Huntingdonshire, at some
distance from the old town of Peterborough.  For this place he departed,
leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days.  Our journey was a
singular one.  On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country,
which, owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen, was
completely submerged.  At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-
boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and those were
not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by
horses.  Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which
highly surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular
scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom.
The country was, as I have already said, submerged--entirely drowned--no
land was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood,
whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated; the horses which
drew us were up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind pools and
'greedy depths,' were not unfrequently swimming, in which case, the boys
or urchins who mounted them sometimes stood, sometimes knelt, upon the
saddle and pillions.  No accident, however, occurred either to the
quadrupeds or bipeds, who appeared respectively to be quite _au fait_ in
their business, and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from
places in which Pharaoh and all his host would have gone to the bottom.
Nightfall brought us to Peterborough, and from thence we were not slow in
reaching the place of our destination.




CHAPTER IV


Norman Cross--Wide expanse--_Vive l'Empereur_--Unpruned woods--Man with
the bag--Froth and conceit--I beg your pardon--Growing timid--About three
o'clock--Taking one's ease--Cheek on the ground--King of the
vipers--French king--Frenchmen and water.

And a strange place it was, this Norman Cross, and, at the time of which
I am speaking, a sad cross to many a Norman, being what was then styled a
French prison, that is, a receptacle for captives made in the French war.
It consisted, if I remember right, of some five or six casernes, very
long, and immensely high; each standing isolated from the rest, upon a
spot of ground which might average ten acres, and which was fenced round
with lofty palisades, the whole being compassed about by a towering wall,
beneath which, at intervals, on both sides, sentinels were stationed,
whilst outside, upon the field, stood commodious wooden barracks, capable
of containing two regiments of infantry, intended to serve as guards upon
the captives.  Such was the station or prison at Norman Cross, where some
six thousand French and other foreigners, followers of the grand
Corsican, were now immured.

What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their blank
blind walls, without windows or grating, and their slanting roofs, out of
which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be
protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the
wide expanse of country unfolded from that airy height.  Ah! there was
much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a
wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France.  Much had the
poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of
England be it said--of England, in general so kind and bountiful.  Rations
of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds
occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most
ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare
in those casernes.  And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads,
called in the slang of the place 'strawplait-hunts,' when in pursuit of a
contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a
few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the habit of
making, red-coated battalions were marched into the prisons, who, with
the bayonet's point, carried havoc and ruin into every poor convenience
which ingenious wretchedness had been endeavouring to raise around it;
and then the triumphant exit with the miserable booty; and, worst of all,
the accursed bonfire, on the barrack parade, of the plait contraband,
beneath the view of the glaring eyeballs from those lofty roofs, amidst
the hurrahs of the troops, frequently drowned in the curses poured down
from above like a tempest-shower or in the terrific warw-hoop of '_Vive
l'Empereur_!'

It was midsummer when we arrived at this place, and the weather, which
had for a long time been wet and gloomy, now became bright and glorious;
I was subjected to but little control, and passed my time pleasantly
enough, principally in wandering about the neighbouring country.  It was
flat and somewhat fenny, a district more of pasture than agriculture, and
not very thickly inhabited.  I soon became well acquainted with it.  At
the distance of two miles from the station was a large lake, styled in
the dialect of the country 'a mere,' about whose borders tall reeds were
growing in abundance, this was a frequent haunt of mine; but my favourite
place of resort was a wild sequestered spot at a somewhat greater
distance.  Here, surrounded with woods and thick groves, was the seat of
some ancient family, deserted by the proprietor, and only inhabited by a
rustic servant or two.  A place more solitary and wild could scarcely be
imagined; the garden and walks were overgrown with weeds and briers, and
the unpruned woods were so tangled as to be almost impervious.  About
this domain I would wander till overtaken by fatigue, and then I would
sit down with my back against some beech, elm, or stately alder tree,
and, taking out my book, would pass hours in a state of unmixed
enjoyment, my eyes now fixed on the wondrous pages, now glancing at the
sylvan scene around; and sometimes I would drop the book and listen to
the voice of the rooks and wild pigeons, and not unfrequently to the
croaking of multitudes of frogs from the neighbouring swamps and fens.

{picture:I frequently passed a tall elderly individual, dressed in rather
a quaint fashion: page31.jpg}

In going to and from this place I frequently passed a tall elderly
individual, dressed in rather a quaint fashion, with a skin cap on his
head and stout gaiters on his legs; on his shoulders hung a moderate
sized leathern sack; he seemed fond of loitering near sunny banks, and of
groping amidst furze and low scrubby bramble bushes, of which there were
plenty in the neighbourhood of Norman Cross.  Once I saw him standing in
the middle of a dusty road, looking intently at a large mark which seemed
to have been drawn across it, as if by a walking stick.  'He must have
been a large one,' the old man muttered half to himself, 'or he would not
have left such a trail, I wonder if he is near; he seems to have moved
this way.'  He then went behind some bushes which grew on the right side
of the road, and appeared to be in quest of something, moving behind the
bushes with his head downwards, and occasionally striking their roots
with his foot: at length he exclaimed, 'Here he is!' and forthwith I saw
him dart amongst the bushes.  There was a kind of scuffling noise, the
rustling of branches, and the crackling of dry sticks.  'I have him!'
said the man at last; 'I have got him!' and presently he made his
appearance about twenty yards down the road, holding a large viper in his
hand.  'What do you think of that, my boy?' said he, as I went up to
him--'what do you think of catching such a thing as that with the naked
hand?'  'What do I think?' said I.  'Why, that I could do as much
myself.'  'You do,' said the man, 'do you?  Lord! how the young people in
these days are given to conceit; it did not use to be so in my time: when
I was a child, childer knew how to behave themselves; but the childer of
these days are full of conceit, full of froth, like the mouth of this
viper'; and with his forefinger and thumb he squeezed a considerable
quantity of foam from the jaws of the viper down upon the road.  'The
childer of these days are a generation of--God forgive me, what was I
about to say?' said the old man; and opening his bag he thrust the
reptile into it, which appeared far from empty.  I passed on.  As I was
returning, towards the evening, I overtook the old man, who was wending
in the same direction.  'Good evening to you, sir,' said I, taking off a
cap which I wore on my head.  'Good evening,' said the old man; and then,
looking at me, 'How's this?' said he, 'you aren't, sure, the child I met
in the morning?'  'Yes,' said I, 'I am; what makes you doubt it?'  'Why,
you were then all froth and conceit,' said the old man, 'and now you take
off your cap to me.'  'I beg your pardon,' said I, 'if I was frothy and
conceited; it ill becomes a child like me to be so.'  'That's true,
dear,' said the old man; 'well, as you have begged my pardon, I truly
forgive you.'  'Thank you,' said I; 'have you caught any more of those
things?'  'Only four or five,' said the old man; 'they are getting
scarce, though this used to be a great neighbourhood for them.'  'And
what do you do with them?' said I; 'do you carry them home and play with
them?'  'I sometimes play with one or two that I tame,' said the old man;
'but I hunt them mostly for the fat which they contain, out of which I
make unguents which are good for various sore troubles, especially for
the rheumatism.'  'And do you get your living by hunting these
creatures?' I demanded.  'Not altogether,' said the old man; 'besides
being a viper-hunter, I am what they call a herbalist, one who knows the
virtue of particular herbs; I gather them at the proper season, to make
medicines with for the sick.'  'And do you live in the neighbourhood?' I
demanded.  'You seem very fond of asking questions, child.  No, I do not
live in this neighbourhood in particular, I travel about; I have not been
in this neighbourhood till lately for some years.'

From this time the old man and myself formed an acquaintance; I often
accompanied him in his wanderings about the neighbourhood, and, on two or
three occasions, assisted him in catching the reptiles which he hunted.
He generally carried a viper with him which he had made quite tame, and
from which he had extracted the poisonous fangs; it would dance and
perform various kinds of tricks.  He was fond of telling me anecdotes
connected with his adventures with the reptile species.  'But,' said he
one day, sighing, 'I must shortly give up this business, I am no longer
the man I was, I am become timid, and when a person is timid in viper-
hunting, he had better leave off, as it is quite clear his virtue is
leaving him.  I got a fright some years ago, which I am quite sure I
shall never get the better of; my hand has been shaky more or less ever
since.'  'What frightened you?' said I.  'I had better not tell you,'
said the old man, 'or you may be frightened too, lose your virtue, and be
no longer good for the business.'  'I don't care,' said I; 'I don't
intend to follow the business: I daresay I shall be an officer, like my
father.'  'Well,' said the old man, 'I once saw the king of the vipers,
and since then--'  'The king of the vipers!' said I, interrupting him;
'have the vipers a king?'  'As sure as we have,' said the old man--'as
sure as we have King George to rule over us, have these reptiles a king
to rule over them.'  'And where did you see him?' said I.  'I will tell
you,' said the old man, 'though I don't like talking about the matter.  It
may be about seven years ago that I happened to be far down yonder to the
west, on the other side of England, nearly two hundred miles from here,
following my business.  It was a very sultry day, I remember, and I had
been out several hours catching creatures.  It might be about three
o'clock in the afternoon, when I found myself on some heathy land near
the sea, on the ridge of a hill, the side of which, nearly as far down as
the sea, was heath; but on the top there was arable ground, which had
been planted, and from which the harvest had been gathered--oats or
barley, I know not which--but I remember that the ground was covered with
stubble.  Well, about three o'clock, as I told you before, what with the
heat of the day and from having walked about for hours in a lazy way, I
felt very tired; so I determined to have a sleep, and I laid myself down,
my head just on the ridge of the hill, towards the field, and my body
over the side down amongst the heath; my bag, which was nearly filled
with creatures, lay at a little distance from my face; the creatures were
struggling in it, I remember, and I thought to myself, how much more
comfortably off I was than they; I was taking my ease on the nice open
hill, cooled with the breezes, whilst they were in the nasty close bag,
coiling about one another, and breaking their very hearts, all to no
purpose: and I felt quite comfortable and happy in the thought, and
little by little closed my eyes, and fell into the sweetest snooze that
ever I was in in all my life; and there I lay over the hill's side, with
my head half in the field, I don't know how long, all dead asleep.  At
last it seemed to me that I heard a noise in my sleep, something like a
thing moving, very faint, however, far away; then it died, and then it
came again upon my ear as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I
heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead
asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time
without hearing it.  All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on
the ridge of the hill, with my cheek on the ground towards the stubble,
with a noise in my ear like that of something moving towards me amongst
the stubble of the field; well, I lay a moment or two listening to the
noise, and then I became frightened, for I did not like the noise at all,
it sounded so odd; so I rolled myself on my belly, and looked towards the
stubble.  Mercy upon us! there was a huge snake, or rather a dreadful
viper, for it was all yellow and gold, moving towards me, bearing its
head about a foot and a half above the ground, the dry stubble crackling
beneath its outrageous belly.  It might be about five yards off when I
first saw it, making straight towards me, child, as if it would devour
me.  I lay quite still, for I was stupefied with horror, whilst the
creature came still nearer; and now it was nearly upon me, when it
suddenly drew back a little, and then--what do you think?--it lifted its
head and chest high in the air, and high over my face as I looked up,
flickering at me with its tongue as if it would fly at my face.  Child,
what I felt at that moment I can scarcely say, but it was a sufficient
punishment for all the sins I ever committed; and there we two were, I
looking up at the viper, and the viper looking down upon me, flickering
at me with its tongue.  It was only the kindness of God that saved me:
all at once there was a loud noise, the report of a gun, for a fowler was
shooting at a covey of birds, a little way off in the stubble.  Whereupon
the viper sunk its head, and immediately made off over the ridge of the
hill, down in the direction of the sea.  As it passed by me, however--and
it passed close by me--it hesitated a moment, as if it was doubtful
whether it should not seize me; it did not, however, but made off down
the hill.  It has often struck me that he was angry with me, and came
upon me unawares for presuming to meddle with his people, as I have
always been in the habit of doing.'

'But,' said I, 'how do you know that it was the king of the vipers?'

'How do I know!' said the old man, 'who else should it be?  There was as
much difference between it and other reptiles as between King George and
other people.'

'Is King George, then, different from other people?' I demanded.

'Of course,' said the old man; 'I have never seen him myself, but I have
heard people say that he is a ten times greater man than other folks;
indeed, it stands to reason that he must be different from the rest, else
people would not be so eager to see him.  Do you think, child, that
people would be fools enough to run a matter of twenty or thirty miles to
see the king, provided King George--'

'Haven't the French a king?' I demanded.

'Yes,' said the old man, 'or something much the same, and a queer one he
is; not quite so big as King George, they say, but quite as terrible a
fellow.  What of him?'

'Suppose he should come to Norman Cross!'

'What should he do at Norman Cross, child?'

'Why, you were talking about the vipers in your bag breaking their
hearts, and so on, and their king coming to help them.  Now, suppose the
French king should hear of his people being in trouble at Norman Cross,
and--'

'He can't come, child,' said the old man, rubbing his hands, 'the water
lies between.  The French don't like the water; neither vipers nor
Frenchmen take kindly to the water, child.'

{picture:'There we two were, I looking up at the viper, and the viper
looking down upon me, flickering at me with its tongue.': page36.jpg}

When the old man left the country, which he did a few days after the
conversation which I have just related, he left me the reptile which he
had tamed and rendered quite harmless by removing the fangs.  I was in
the habit of feeding it with milk, and frequently carried it abroad with
me in my walks.




CHAPTER V


The tent--Man and woman--Dark and swarthy--Manner of speaking--Bad
money--Transfixed--Faltering tone--Little basket--High opinion--Plenty of
good--Keeping guard--Tilted cart--Rubricals--Jasper--The right sort--The
horseman of the lane--John Newton--The alarm--Gentle brothers.

One day it happened that, being on my rambles, I entered a green lane
which I had never seen before; at first it was rather narrow, but as I
advanced it became considerably wider; in the middle was a driftway with
deep ruts, but right and left was a space carpeted with a sward of
trefoil and clover; there was no lack of trees, chiefly ancient oaks,
which, flinging out their arms from either side, nearly formed a canopy,
and afforded a pleasing shelter from the rays of the sun, which was
burning fiercely above.  Suddenly a group of objects attracted my
attention.  Beneath one of the largest of the trees, upon the grass, was
a kind of low tent or booth, from the top of which a thin smoke was
curling; beside it stood a couple of light carts, whilst two or three
lean horses or ponies were cropping the herbage which was growing nigh.
Wondering to whom this odd tent could belong, I advanced till I was close
before it, when I found that it consisted of two tilts, like those of
waggons, placed upon the ground and fronting each other, connected behind
by a sail or large piece of canvas which was but partially drawn across
the top; upon the ground, in the intervening space, was a fire, over
which, supported by a kind of iron crowbar, hung a caldron; my advance
had been so noiseless as not to alarm the inmates, who consisted of a man
and woman, who sat apart, one on each side of the fire; they were both
busily employed--the man was carding plaited straw, whilst the woman
seemed to be rubbing something with a white powder, some of which lay on
a plate beside her; suddenly the man looked up, and, perceiving me,
uttered a strange kind of cry, and the next moment both the woman and
himself were on their feet and rushing out upon me.

I retreated a few steps, yet without turning to flee.  I was not,
however, without apprehension, which, indeed, the appearance of these two
people was well calculated to inspire: the woman was a stout figure,
seemingly between thirty and forty; she wore no cap, and her long hair
fell on either side of her head like horse-tails half-way down her waist;
her skin was dark and swarthy, like that of a toad, and the expression of
her countenance was particularly evil; her arms were bare, and her bosom
was but half concealed by a slight bodice, below which she wore a coarse
petticoat, her only other article of dress.  The man was somewhat
younger, but of a figure equally wild; his frame was long and lathy, but
his arms were remarkably short, his neck was rather bent, he squinted
slightly, and his mouth was much awry; his complexion was dark, but,
unlike that of the woman, was more ruddy than livid; there was a deep
scar on his cheek, something like the impression of a halfpenny.  The
dress was quite in keeping with the figure: in his hat, which was
slightly peaked, was stuck a peacock's feather; over a waistcoat of hide,
untanned and with the hair upon it, he wore a rough jerkin of russet hue;
smallclothes of leather, which had probably once belonged to a soldier,
but with which pipeclay did not seem to have come in contact for many a
year, protected his lower man as far as the knee; his legs were cased in
long stockings of blue worsted, and on his shoes he wore immense
old-fashioned buckles.

Such were the two beings who now came rushing upon me; the man was rather
in advance, brandishing a ladle in his hand.

'So I have caught you at last,' said he; 'I'll teach ye, you young
highwayman, to come skulking about my properties!'

Young as I was, I remarked that his manner of speaking was different from
that of any people with whom I had been in the habit of associating.  It
was quite as strange as his appearance, and yet it nothing resembled the
foreign English which I had been in the habit of hearing through the
palisades of the prison; he could scarcely be a foreigner.

'Your properties!' said I; 'I am in the King's Lane.  Why did you put
them there, if you did not wish them to be seen?'

'On the spy,' said the woman, 'hey?  I'll drown him in the sludge in the
toad-pond over the hedge.'

'So we will,' said the man, 'drown him anon in the mud!'

'Drown me, will you?' said I; 'I should like to see you!  What's all this
about?  Was it because I saw you with your hands full of straw plait, and
my mother there--'

'Yes,' said the woman; 'what was I about?'

_Myself_.  How should I know?  Making bad money, perhaps!

And it will be as well here to observe, that at this time there was much
bad money in circulation in the neighbourhood, generally supposed to be
fabricated by the prisoners, so that this false coin and straw plait
formed the standard subjects of conversation at Norman Cross.

'I'll strangle thee,' said the beldame, dashing at me.  'Bad money, is
it?'

'Leave him to me, wifelkin,' said the man, interposing; 'you shall now
see how I'll baste him down the lane.'

_Myself_.  I tell you what, my chap, you had better put down that thing
of yours; my father lies concealed within my tepid breast, and if to me
you offer any harm or wrong, I'll call him forth to help me with his
forked tongue.

_Man_.  What do you mean, ye Bengui's bantling?  I never heard such
discourse in all my life: playman's speech or Frenchman's talk--which, I
wonder?  Your father!  Tell the mumping villain that if he comes near my
fire I'll serve him out as I will you.  Take that-- Tiny Jesus! what have
we got here?  Oh, delicate Jesus! what is the matter with the child?

{picture:'Tiny Jesus! what have we got here?  Oh, delicate Jesus! what is
the matter with the child?': page40.jpg}

I had made a motion which the viper understood; and now, partly
disengaging itself from my bosom, where it had lain perdu, it raised its
head to a level with my face, and stared upon my enemy with its
glittering eyes.

The man stood like one transfixed, and the ladle, with which he had aimed
a blow at me, now hung in the air like the hand which held it; his mouth
was extended, and his cheeks became of a pale yellow, save alone that
place which bore the mark which I have already described, and this shone
now portentously, like fire.  He stood in this manner for some time; at
last the ladle fell from his hand, and its falling appeared to rouse him
from his stupor.

'I say, wifelkin,' said he, in a faltering tone, 'did you ever see the
like of this here?'

But the woman had retreated to the tent, from the entrance of which her
loathly face was now thrust, with an expression partly of terror and
partly of curiosity.  After gazing some time longer at the viper and
myself, the man stooped down and took up the ladle; then, as if somewhat
more assured, he moved to the tent, where he entered into conversation
with the beldame in a low voice.  Of their discourse, though I could hear
the greater part of it, I understood not a single word; and I wondered
what it could be, for I knew by the sound that it was not French.  At
last the man, in a somewhat louder tone, appeared to put a question to
the woman, who nodded her head affirmatively, and in a moment or two
produced a small stool, which she delivered to him.  He placed it on the
ground, close by the door of the tent, first rubbing it with his sleeve,
as if for the purpose of polishing its surface.

_Man_.  Now, my precious little gentleman, do sit down here by the poor
people's tent; we wish to be civil in our slight way.  Don't be angry,
and say no; but look kindly upon us, and satisfied, my precious little
God Almighty.

_Woman_.  Yes, my gorgeous angel, sit down by the poor bodies' fire, and
eat a sweetmeat.  We want to ask you a question or two; only first put
that serpent away.

_Myself_.  I can sit down, and bid the serpent go to sleep, that's easy
enough; but as for eating a sweetmeat, how can I do that?  I have not got
one, and where am I to get it?

_Woman_.  Never fear, my tiny tawny, we can give you one, such as you
never ate, I daresay, however far you may have come from.

The serpent sank into its usual resting-place, and I sat down on the
stool.  The woman opened a box, and took out a strange little basket or
hamper, not much larger than a man's fist, and formed of a delicate kind
of matting.  It was sewed at the top; but, ripping it open with a knife,
she held it to me, and I saw, to my surprise, that it contained candied
fruits of a dark green hue, tempting enough to one of my age.  'There, my
tiny,' said she; 'taste, and tell me how you like them.'

'Very much,' said I; 'where did you get them?'

The beldame leered upon me for a moment, then, nodding her head thrice,
with a knowing look, said, 'Who knows better than yourself, my tawny?'

Now, I knew nothing about the matter; but I saw that these strange people
had conceived a very high opinion of the abilities of their visitor,
which I was nothing loth to encourage.  I therefore answered boldly, 'Ah!
who indeed!'

'Certainly,' said the man; 'who should know better than yourself, or so
well?  And now, my tiny one, let me ask you one thing--you didn't come to
do us any harm?'

'No,' said I, 'I had no dislike to you; though, if you were to meddle
with me--'

_Man_.  Of course, my gorgeous, of course you would; and quite right too.
Meddle with you!--what right have we?  I should say, it would not be
quite safe.  I see how it is; you are one of them there;--and he bent his
head towards his left shoulder.

_Myself_.  Yes, I am one of them--for I thought he was alluding to the
soldiers,--you had best mind what you are about, I can tell you.

_Man_.  Don't doubt we will for our own sake; Lord bless you, wifelkin,
only think that we should see one of them there when we least thought
about it.  Well, I have heard of such things, though I never thought to
see one; however, seeing is believing.  Well! now you are come, and are
not going to do us any mischief, I hope you will stay; you can do us
plenty of good if you will.

_Myself_.  What good could I do you?

_Man_.  What good? plenty!  Would you not bring us luck?  I have heard
say that one of them there always does, if it will but settle down.  Stay
with us, you shall have a tilted cart all to yourself if you like.  We'll
make you our little God Almighty, and say our prayers to you every
morning!

_Myself_.  That would be nice; and, if you were to give me plenty of
these things, I should have no objection.  But what would my father say?
I think he would hardly let me.

_Man_.  Why not? he would be with you; and kindly would we treat him.
Indeed, without your father you would be nothing at all.

_Myself_.  That's true; but I do not think he could be spared from his
regiment.  I have heard him say that they could do nothing without him.

_Man_.  His regiment!  What are you talking about?--what does the child
mean?

_Myself_.  What do I mean!--why, that my father is an officer-man at the
barracks yonder, keeping guard over the French prisoners.

_Man_.  Oh! then that sap is not your father?

_Myself_.  What, the snake?  Why, no!  Did you think he was?

_Man_.  To be sure we did.  Didn't you tell me so?

_Myself_.  Why, yes; but who would have thought you would have believed
it?  It is a tame one.  I hunt vipers, and tame them.

_Man_.  O-h!

'O-h!' grunted the woman, 'that's it, is it?'

The man and woman, who during this conversation had resumed their former
positions within the tent, looked at each other with a queer look of
surprise, as if somewhat disconcerted at what they now heard.  They then
entered into discourse with each other in the same strange tongue which
had already puzzled me.  At length the man looked me in the face, and
said, somewhat hesitatingly, 'So you are not one of them there after
all?'

_Myself_.  One of them there?  I don't know what you mean.

_Man_.  Why, we have been thinking you were a goblin--a devilkin!
However, I see how it is: you are a sap-engro, a chap who catches snakes,
and plays tricks with them!  Well, it comes very nearly to the same
thing; and if you please to list with us, and bear us pleasant company,
we shall be glad of you.  I'd take my oath upon it, that we might make a
mort of money by you and that sap, and the tricks it could do; and, as
you seem fly to everything, I shouldn't wonder if you would make a prime
hand at telling fortunes.

'I shouldn't wonder,' said I.

_Man_.  Of course.  And you might still be our God Almighty, or at any
rate our clergyman, so you should live in a tilted cart by yourself, and
say prayers to us night and morning--to wifelkin here, and all our
family; there's plenty of us when we are all together: as I said before,
you seem fly, I shouldn't wonder if you could read?

'Oh yes!' said I, 'I can read'; and, eager to display my accomplishments,
I took my book out of my pocket, and, opening it at random, proceeded to
read how a certain man, whilst wandering about a certain solitary island,
entered a cave, the mouth of which was overgrown with brushwood, and how
he was nearly frightened to death in that cave by something which he saw.

'That will do,' said the man; 'that's the kind of prayers for me and my
family, aren't they, wifelkin?  I never heard more delicate prayers in
all my life!  Why, they beat the rubricals hollow!--and here comes my son
Jasper.  I say, Jasper, here's a young sap-engro that can read, and is
more fly than yourself.  Shake hands with him; I wish ye to be two
brothers.'

With a swift but stealthy pace Jasper came towards us from the farther
part of the lane; on reaching the tent he stood still, and looked fixedly
upon me as I sat upon the stool; I looked fixedly upon him.  A queer look
had Jasper; he was a lad of some twelve or thirteen years, with long
arms, unlike the singular being who called himself his father; his
complexion was ruddy, but his face was seamed, though it did not bear the
peculiar scar which disfigured the countenance of the other; nor, though
roguish enough, a certain evil expression which that of the other bore,
and which the face of the woman possessed in a yet more remarkable
degree.  For the rest, he wore drab breeches, with certain strings at the
knee, a rather gay waistcoat, and tolerably white shirt; under his arm he
bore a mighty whip of whalebone with a brass knob, and upon his head was
a hat without either top or brim.

'There, Jasper! shake hands with the sap-engro.'

'Can he box, father?' said Jasper, surveying me rather contemptuously.  'I
should think not, he looks so puny and small.'

'Hold your peace, fool!' said the man; 'he can do more than that--I tell
you he's fly: he carries a sap about, which would sting a ninny like you
to dead.'

'What, a sap-engro!' said the boy, with a singular whine, and, stooping
down, he leered curiously in my face, kindly, however, and then patted me
on the head.  'A sap-engro,' he ejaculated; 'lor!'

'Yes, and one of the right sort,' said the man; 'I am glad we have met
with him, he is going to list with us, and be our clergyman and God
Almighty, ain't you, my tawny?'

'I don't know,' said I; 'I must see what my father will say.'

'Your father; bah!'--but here he stopped, for a sound was heard like the
rapid galloping of a horse, not loud and distinct as on a road, but dull
and heavy as if upon a grass sward; nearer and nearer it came, and the
man, starting up, rushed out of the tent, and looked around anxiously.  I
arose from the stool upon which I had been seated, and just at that
moment, amidst a crashing of boughs and sticks, a man on horseback
bounded over the hedge into the lane at a few yards' distance from where
we were: from the impetus of the leap the horse was nearly down on his
knees; the rider, however, by dint of vigorous handling of the reins,
prevented him from falling, and then rode up to the tent.  ''Tis Nat,'
said the man; 'what brings him here?'  The new-comer was a stout burly
fellow, about the middle age; he had a savage determined look, and his
face was nearly covered over with carbuncles; he wore a broad slouching
hat, and was dressed in a gray coat, cut in a fashion which I afterwards
learnt to be the genuine Newmarket cut, the skirts being exceedingly
short; his waistcoat was of red plush, and he wore broad corduroy
breeches and white top-boots.  The steed which carried him was of iron
gray, spirited and powerful, but covered with sweat and foam.  The fellow
glanced fiercely and suspiciously around, and said something to the man
of the tent in a harsh and rapid voice.  A short and hurried conversation
ensued in the strange tongue.  I could not take my eyes off this
new-comer.  Oh, that half-jockey, half-bruiser countenance, I never
forgot it!  More than fifteen years afterwards I found myself amidst a
crowd before Newgate; a gallows was erected, and beneath it stood a
criminal, a notorious malefactor.  I recognised him at once; the horseman
of the lane is now beneath the fatal tree, but nothing altered; still the
same man; jerking his head to the right and left with the same fierce and
under glance, just as if the affairs of this world had the same kind of
interest to the last; gray coat of Newmarket cut, plush waistcoat,
corduroys, and boots, nothing altered; but the head, alas! is bare, and
so is the neck.  Oh, crime and virtue, virtue and crime!--it was old John
Newton, I think, who, when he saw a man going to be hanged, said, 'There
goes John Newton, but for the grace of God!'

But the lane, the lane, all was now in confusion in the lane; the man and
woman were employed in striking the tents and in making hurried
preparations for departure; the boy Jasper was putting the harness upon
the ponies and attaching them to the carts; and, to increase the
singularity of the scene, two or three wild-looking women and girls, in
red cloaks and immense black beaver bonnets, came from I know not what
direction, and, after exchanging a few words with the others, commenced
with fierce and agitated gestures to assist them in their occupation.  The
rider meanwhile sat upon his horse, but evidently in a state of great
impatience; he muttered curses between his teeth, spurred the animal
furiously, and then reined it in, causing it to rear itself up nearly
perpendicular.  At last he said, 'Curse ye for Romans, how slow ye are!
well, it is no business of mine, stay here all day if you like; I have
given ye warning, I am off to the big north road.  However, before I go,
you had better give me all you have of that.'

'Truly spoken, Nat, my pal,' said the man; 'give it him, mother.  There
it is; now be off as soon as you please, and rid us of evil company.'

The woman had handed him two bags formed of stocking, half full of
something heavy, which looked through them for all the world like money
of some kind.  The fellow, on receiving them, thrust them without
ceremony into the pockets of his coat, and then, without a word of
farewell salutation, departed at a tremendous rate, the hoofs of his
horse thundering for a long time on the hard soil of the neighbouring
road, till the sound finally died away in the distance.  The strange
people were not slow in completing their preparations, and then, flogging
their animals terrifically, hurried away seemingly in the same direction.

The boy Jasper was last of the band.  As he was following the rest, he
stopped suddenly, and looked on the ground appearing to muse; then,
turning round, he came up to me where I was standing, leered in my face,
and then, thrusting out his hand, he said, 'Good-bye, Sap, I daresay we
shall meet again, remember we are brothers; two gentle brothers.'

Then whining forth, 'What a sap-engro, lor!' he gave me a parting leer,
and hastened away.

I remained standing in the lane gazing after the retreating company.  'A
strange set of people,' said I at last; 'wonder who they can be?'

{picture:Then whining forth, 'What a sap-engro, lor!' he gave me a
parting leer, and hastened away: page47.jpg}




CHAPTER VI


Three years--Lilly's grammar--Proficiency--Ignorant of figures--The
school bell--Order of succession--Persecution--What are we to
do?--Northward--A goodly scene--Haunted ground--Feats of
chivalry--Rivers--Over the brig.

Years passed on, even three years; during this period I had increased
considerably in stature and in strength, and, let us hope, improved in
mind; for I had entered on the study of the Latin language.  The very
first person to whose care I was intrusted for the acquisition of Latin
was an old friend of my fathers, a clergyman who kept a seminary at a
town the very next we visited after our departure from 'the Cross.'  Under
his instruction, however, I continued only a few weeks, as we speedily
left the place.  'Captain,' said this divine, when my father came to take
leave of him on the eve of our departure, 'I have a friendship for you,
and therefore wish to give you a piece of advice concerning this son of
yours.  You are now removing him from my care; you do wrong, but we will
let that pass.  Listen to me: there is but one good school-book in the
world--the one I use in my seminary--Lilly's Latin grammar, in which your
son has already made some progress.  If you are anxious for the success
of your son in life, for the correctness of his conduct and the soundness
of his principles, keep him to Lilly's grammar.  If you can by any means,
either fair or foul, induce him to get by heart Lilly's Latin grammar,
you may set your heart at rest with respect to him; I, myself, will be
his warrant.  I never yet knew a boy that was induced, either by fair
means or foul, to learn Lilly's Latin grammar by heart, who did not turn
out a man, provided he lived long enough.'

My father, who did not understand the classical languages, received with
respect the advice of his old friend, and from that moment conceived the
highest opinion of Lilly's Latin grammar.  During three years I studied
Lilly's Latin grammar under the tuition of various schoolmasters, for I
travelled with the regiment, and in every town in which we were
stationary I was invariably (God bless my father!) sent to the classical
academy of the place.  It chanced, by good fortune, that in the
generality of these schools the grammar of Lilly was in use; when,
however, that was not the case, it made no difference in my educational
course, my father always stipulating with the masters that I should be
daily examined in Lilly.  At the end of the three years I had the whole
by heart; you had only to repeat the first two or three words of any
sentence in any part of the book, and forthwith I would open cry,
commencing without blundering and hesitation, and continue till you were
glad to beg me to leave off, with many expressions of admiration at my
proficiency in the Latin language.  Sometimes, however, to convince you
how well I merited these encomiums, I would follow you to the bottom of
the stair, and even into the street, repeating in a kind of sing-song
measure the sonorous lines of the golden schoolmaster.  If I am here
asked whether I understood anything of what I had got by heart, I
reply--'Never mind, I understand it all now, and believe that no one ever
yet got Lilly's Latin grammar by heart when young, who repented of the
feat at a mature age.'

And, when my father saw that I had accomplished my task, he opened his
mouth, and said, 'Truly, this is more than I expected.  I did not think
that there had been so much in you, either of application or capacity;
you have now learnt all that is necessary, if my friend Dr. B---'s
opinion was sterling, as I have no doubt it was.  You are still a child,
however, and must yet go to school, in order that you may be kept out of
evil company.  Perhaps you may still contrive, now you have exhausted the
barn, to pick up a grain or two in the barn-yard.  You are still ignorant
of figures, I believe, not that I would mention figures in the same day
with Lilly's grammar.'

These words were uttered in a place called ---, in the north, or in the
road to the north, to which, for some time past, our corps had been
slowly advancing.  I was sent to the school of the place, which chanced
to be a day school.  It was a somewhat extraordinary one, and a somewhat
extraordinary event occurred to me within its walls.

It occupied part of the farther end of a small plain, or square, at the
outskirts of the town, close to some extensive bleaching fields.  It was
a long low building of one room, with no upper story; on the top was a
kind of wooden box, or sconce, which I at first mistook for a
pigeon-house, but which in reality contained a bell, to which was
attached a rope, which, passing through the ceiling, hung dangling in the
middle of the school-room.  I am the more particular in mentioning this
appurtenance, as I had soon occasion to scrape acquaintance with it in a
manner not very agreeable to my feelings.  The master was very proud of
his bell, if I might judge from the fact of his eyes being frequently
turned to that part of the ceiling from which the rope depended.  Twice
every day, namely, after the morning and evening tasks had been gone
through, were the boys rung out of school by the monotonous jingle of
this bell.  This ringing out was rather a lengthy affair, for, as the
master was a man of order and method, the boys were only permitted to go
out of the room one by one; and as they were rather numerous, amounting,
at least, to one hundred, and were taught to move at a pace of suitable
decorum, at least a quarter of an hour elapsed from the commencement of
the march before the last boy could make his exit.  The office of bell-
ringer was performed by every boy successively; and it so happened that,
the very first day of my attendance at the school, the turn to ring the
bell had, by order of succession, arrived at the place which had been
allotted to me; for the master, as I have already observed, was a man of
method and order, and every boy had a particular seat, to which he became
a fixture as long as he continued at the school.

So, upon this day, when the tasks were done and completed, and the boys
sat with their hats and caps in their hands, anxiously expecting the
moment of dismissal, it was suddenly notified to me, by the urchins who
sat nearest to me, that I must get up and ring the bell.  Now, as this
was the first time that I had been at the school, I was totally
unacquainted with the process, which I had never seen, and, indeed, had
never heard of till that moment.  I therefore sat still, not imagining it
possible that any such duty could be required of me.  But now, with not a
little confusion, I perceived that the eyes of all the boys in the school
were fixed upon me.  Presently there were nods and winks in the direction
of the bell-rope; and, as these produced no effect, uncouth visages were
made, like those of monkeys when enraged; teeth were gnashed, tongues
thrust out, and even fists were bent at me.  The master, who stood at the
end of the room, with a huge ferule under his arm, bent full upon me a
look of stern appeal; and the ushers, of whom there were four, glared
upon me, each from his own particular corner, as I vainly turned, in one
direction and another, in search of one reassuring look.

But now, probably in obedience to a sign from the master, the boys in my
immediate neighbourhood began to maltreat me. Some pinched me with their
fingers, some buffeted me, whilst others pricked me with pins, or the
points of compasses.  These arguments were not without effect.  I sprang
from my seat, and endeavoured to escape along a double line of benches,
thronged with boys of all ages, from the urchin of six or seven to the
nondescript of sixteen or seventeen.  It was like running the gauntlet;
every one, great or small, pinching, kicking, or otherwise maltreating
me, as I passed by.

Goaded on in this manner, I at length reached the middle of the room,
where dangled the bell-rope, the cause of all my sufferings.  I should
have passed it--for my confusion was so great that I was quite at a loss
to comprehend what all this could mean, and almost believed myself under
the influence of an ugly dream--but now the boys, who were seated in
advance in the row, arose with one accord, and barred my farther
progress; and one, doubtless more sensible than the rest, seizing the
rope, thrust it into my hand.  I now began to perceive that the dismissal
of the school, and my own release from torment, depended upon this
selfsame rope.  I therefore, in a fit of desperation, pulled it once or
twice, and then left off, naturally supposing that I had done quite
enough.  The boys who sat next the door no sooner heard the bell, than,
rising from their seats, they moved out at the door.  The bell, however,
had no sooner ceased to jingle, than they stopped short, and, turning
round, stared at the master, as much as to say, 'What are we to do now?'
This was too much for the patience of the man of method, which my
previous stupidity had already nearly exhausted.  Dashing forward into
the middle of the room, he struck me violently on the shoulders with his
ferule, and, snatching the rope out of my hand, exclaimed, with a
stentorian voice, and genuine Yorkshire accent, 'Prodigy of ignorance!
dost not even know how to ring a bell?  Must I myself instruct thee?'  He
then commenced pulling at the bell with such violence that long before
half the school was dismissed the rope broke, and the rest of the boys
had to depart without their accustomed music.

But I must not linger here, though I could say much about the school and
the pedagogue highly amusing and diverting, which, however, I suppress,
in order to make way for matters of yet greater interest.  On we went,
northward, northward! and, as we advanced, I saw that the country was
becoming widely different from those parts of merry England in which we
had previously travelled.  It was wilder, and less cultivated, and more
broken with hills and hillocks.  The people, too, of these regions
appeared to partake of something of the character of their country.  They
were coarsely dressed; tall and sturdy of frame; their voices were deep
and guttural; and the half of the dialect which they spoke was
unintelligible to my ears.

I often wondered where we could be going, for I was at this time about as
ignorant of geography as I was of most other things.  However, I held my
peace, asked no questions, and patiently awaited the issue.

Northward, northward, still!  And it came to pass that, one morning, I
found myself extended on the bank of a river.  It was a beautiful morning
of early spring; small white clouds were floating in the heaven,
occasionally veiling the countenance of the sun, whose light, as they
retired, would again burst forth, coursing like a race-horse over the
scene--and a goodly scene it was!  Before me, across the water, on an
eminence, stood a white old city, surrounded with lofty walls, above
which rose the tops of tall houses, with here and there a church or
steeple.  To my right hand was a long and massive bridge, with many
arches, and of antique architecture, which traversed the river.  The
river was a noble one; the broadest that I had hitherto seen.  Its
waters, of a greenish tinge, poured with impetuosity beneath the narrow
arches to meet the sea, close at hand, as the boom of the billows
breaking distinctly upon a beach declared.  There were songs upon the
river from the fisher-barks; and occasionally a chorus, plaintive and
wild, such as I had never heard before, the words of which I did not
understand, but which, at the present time, down the long avenue of
years, seem in memory's ear to sound like 'Horam, coram, dago.'  Several
robust fellows were near me, some knee-deep in water, employed in hauling
the seine upon the strand.  Huge fish were struggling amidst the
meshes--princely salmon,--their brilliant mail of blue and silver
flashing in the morning beam; so goodly and gay a scene, in truth, had
never greeted my boyish eye.

And, as I gazed upon the prospect, my bosom began to heave, and my tears
to trickle.  Was it the beauty of the scene which gave rise to these
emotions?  Possibly; for though a poor ignorant child--a half-wild
creature--I was not insensible to the loveliness of nature, and took
pleasure in the happiness and handiworks of my fellow-creatures.  Yet,
perhaps, in something more deep and mysterious the feelings which then
pervaded me might originate.  Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without
experiencing something of the sorcery of the place?  Flee from Elvir
Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and you
will go elf-wild!--so say the Danes.  I had unconsciously laid myself
down upon haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then
experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams
than with what I actually saw and heard around me.  Surely the elves and
genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the
principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod!
Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the past, as connected
with that stream, the glories of the present, and even the history of the
future, were at that moment being revealed!  Of how many feats of
chivalry had those old walls been witness, when hostile kings contended
for their possession!--how many an army from the south and from the north
had trod that old bridge!--what red and noble blood had crimsoned those
rushing waters!-what strains had been sung, ay, were yet being sung, on
its banks!--some soft as Doric reed; some fierce and sharp as those of
Norwegian Skaldaglam; some as replete with wild and wizard force as
Finland's runes, singing of Kalevala's moors, and the deeds of
Woinomoinen!  Honour to thee, thou island stream!  Onward may thou ever
roll, fresh and green, rejoicing in thy bright past, thy glorious
present, and in vivid hope of a triumphant future!  Flow on, beautiful
one!--which of the world's streams canst thou envy, with thy beauty and
renown?  Stately is the Danube, rolling in its might through lands
romantic with the wild exploits of Turk, Polak, and Magyar!  Lovely is
the Rhine! on its shelvy banks grows the racy grape; and strange old
keeps of robber-knights of yore are reflected in its waters, from
picturesque crags and airy headlands!--yet neither the stately Danube nor
the beauteous Rhine, with all their fame, though abundant, needst thou
envy, thou pure island stream!--and far less yon turbid river of old, not
modern renown, gurgling beneath the walls of what was once proud Rome,
towering Rome, Jupiter's town, but now vile Rome, crumbling Rome,
Batuscha's town, far less needst thou envy the turbid Tiber of bygone
fame, creeping sadly to the sea, surcharged with the abominations of
modern Rome--how unlike to thee, thou pure island stream!

And, as I lay on the bank and wept, there drew nigh to me a man in the
habiliments of a fisher.  He was bare-legged, of a weather-beaten
countenance, and of stature approaching to the gigantic.  'What is the
callant greeting for?' said he, as he stopped and surveyed me.  'Has
onybody wrought ye ony harm?'

'Not that I know of,' I replied, rather guessing at than understanding
his question; 'I was crying because I could not help it!  I say, old one,
what is the name of this river?'

'Hout!  I now see what you was greeting at--at your ain ignorance, nae
doubt--'tis very great!  Weel, I will na fash you with reproaches, but
even enlighten ye, since you seem a decent man's bairn, and you speir a
civil question.  Yon river is called the Tweed; and yonder, over the
brig, is Scotland.  Did ye never hear of the Tweed, my bonny man?'

'No,' said I, as I rose from the grass, and proceeded to cross the bridge
to the town at which we had arrived the preceding night; 'I never heard
of it; but now I have seen it, I shall not soon forget it!'




CHAPTER VII


The Castle--A father's inquiries--Scotch language--A determination--Bui
hin Digri--Good Scotchman--Difference of races--Ne'er a haggis--Pugnacious
people--Wha are ye, man?--The Nor Loch--Gestures wild--The bicker--New
Town champion--Wild-looking figure--Headlong.

It was not long before we found ourselves at Edinburgh, or rather in the
Castle, into which the regiment marched with drums beating, colours
flying, and a long train of baggage-waggons behind.  The Castle was, as I
suppose it is now, a garrison for soldiers.  Two other regiments were
already there; the one an Irish, if I remember right, the other a small
Highland corps.

It is hardly necessary to say much about this Castle, which everybody has
seen; on which account, doubtless, nobody has ever yet thought fit to
describe it--at least that I am aware.  Be this as it may, I have no
intention of describing it, and shall content myself with observing that
we took up our abode in that immense building, or caserne, of modern
erection, which occupies the entire eastern side of the bold rock on
which the Castle stands.  A gallant caserne it was--the best and roomiest
that I had hitherto seen--rather cold and windy, it is true, especially
in the winter, but commanding a noble prospect of a range of distant
hills, which I was told were 'the hieland hills,' and of a broad arm of
the sea, which I heard somebody say was the Firth of Forth.

My brother, who, for some years past, had been receiving his education in
a certain celebrated school in England, was now with us; and it came to
pass, that one day my father, as he sat at table, looked steadfastly on
my brother and myself, and then addressed my mother:--'During my journey
down hither, I have lost no opportunity of making inquiries about these
people, the Scotch, amongst whom we now are, and since I have been here I
have observed them attentively.  From what I have heard and seen, I
should say that upon the whole they are a very decent set of people; they
seem acute and intelligent, and I am told that their system of education
is so excellent that every person is learned--more or less acquainted
with Greek and Latin.  There is one thing, however, connected with them,
which is a great drawback--the horrid jargon which they speak.  However
learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and
yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was.  I was in company, the other
day, with an Englishman who has resided here many years.  We were talking
about the country and the people.  "I should like both very well," said
I, "were it not for the language.  I wish sincerely our Parliament, which
is passing so many foolish acts every year, would pass one to force these
Scotch to speak English."  "I wish so, too," said he.  "The language is a
disgrace to the British Government; but, if you had heard it twenty years
ago, captain!--if you had heard it as it was spoken when I first came to
Edinburgh!"'

'Only custom,' said my mother.  'I daresay the language is now what it
was then.'

'I don't know,' said my father; 'though I daresay you are right; it could
never have been worse than it is at present.  But now to the point.  Were
it not for the language, which, if the boys were to pick it up, might
ruin their prospects in life,--were it not for that, I should very much
like to send them to a school there is in this place, which everybody
talks about--the High School I think they call it.  'Tis said to be the
best school in the whole island; but the idea of one's children speaking
Scotch--broad Scotch!  I must think the matter over.'

And he did think the matter over; and the result of his deliberation was
a determination to send us to the school.  Let me call thee up before my
mind's eye, High School, to which, every morning, the two English
brothers took their way from the proud old Castle through the lofty
streets of the Old Town.  High School!--called so, I scarcely know why;
neither lofty in thyself nor by position, being situated in a flat
bottom; oblong structure of tawny stone, with many windows fenced with
iron netting--with thy long hall below, and thy five chambers above, for
the reception of the five classes, into which the eight hundred urchins
who styled thee instructress were divided.  Thy learned rector and his
four subordinate dominies; thy strange old porter of the tall form and
grizzled hair, hight Boee, and doubtless of Norse ancestry, as his name
declares; perhaps of the blood of Bui hin Digri, the hero of northern
song--the Jomsborg Viking who clove Thorsteinn Midlangr asunder in the
dread sea battle of Horunga Vog, and who, when the fight was lost and his
own two hands smitten off, seized two chests of gold with his bloody
stumps, and, springing with them into the sea, cried to the scanty relics
of his crew, 'Overboard now, all Bui's lads!'  Yes, I remember all about
thee, and how at eight of every morn we were all gathered together with
one accord in the long hall, from which, after the litanies had been read
(for so I will call them, being an Episcopalian), the five classes from
the five sets of benches trotted off in long files, one boy after the
other, up the five spiral staircases of stone, each class to its
destination; and well do I remember how we of the third sat hushed and
still, watched by the eye of the dux, until the door opened, and in
walked that model of a good Scotchman, the shrewd, intelligent, but warm-
hearted and kind dominie, the respectable Carson.

And in this school I began to construe the Latin language, which I had
never done before, notwithstanding my long and diligent study of Lilly,
which illustrious grammar was not used at Edinburgh, nor indeed known.
Greek was only taught in the fifth or highest class, in which my brother
was; as for myself, I never got beyond the third during the two years
that I remained at this seminary.  I certainly acquired here a
considerable insight in the Latin tongue; and, to the scandal of my
father and horror of my mother, a thorough proficiency in the Scotch,
which, in less than two months, usurped the place of the English, and so
obstinately maintained its ground, that I still can occasionally detect
its lingering remains.  I did not spend my time unpleasantly at this
school, though, first of all, I had to pass through an ordeal.

'Scotland is a better country than England,' said an ugly, blear-eyed
lad, about a head and shoulders taller than myself, the leader of a gang
of varlets who surrounded me in the playground, on the first day, as soon
as the morning lesson was over.  'Scotland is a far better country than
England, in every respect.'

'Is it?' said I.  'Then you ought to be very thankful for not having been
born in England.'

'That's just what I am, ye loon; and every morning, when I say my
prayers, I thank God for not being an Englishman.  The Scotch are a much
better and braver people than the English.'

'It may be so,' said I, 'for what I know--indeed, till I came here, I
never heard a word either about the Scotch or their country.'

'Are ye making fun of us, ye English puppy?' said the blear-eyed lad;
'take that!' and I was presently beaten black and blue.  And thus did I
first become aware of the difference of races and their antipathy to each
other.

'Bow to the storm, and it shall pass over you.'  I held my peace, and
silently submitted to the superiority of the Scotch--_in numbers_.  This
was enough; from an object of persecution I soon became one of patronage,
especially amongst the champions of the class.  'The English,' said the
blear-eyed lad, 'though a wee bit behind the Scotch in strength and
fortitude, are nae to be sneezed at, being far ahead of the Irish, to say
nothing of the French, a pack of cowardly scoundrels.  And with regard to
the English country, it is na Scotland, it is true, but it has its gude
properties; and, though there is ne'er a haggis in a' the land, there's
an unco deal o' gowd and siller.  I respect England, for I have an auntie
married there.'

The Scotch are certainly a most pugnacious people; their whole history
proves it.  Witness their incessant wars with the English in the olden
time, and their internal feuds, highland and lowland, clan with clan,
family with family, Saxon with Gael.  In my time, the schoolboys, for
want, perhaps, of English urchins to contend with, were continually
fighting with each other; every noon there was at least one pugilistic
encounter, and sometimes three.  In one month I witnessed more of these
encounters than I had ever previously seen under similar circumstances in
England.  After all, there was not much harm done.  Harm! what harm could
result from short chopping blows, a hug, and a tumble?  I was witness to
many a sounding whack, some blood shed, 'a blue ee' now and then, but
nothing more.  In England, on the contrary, where the lads were
comparatively mild, gentle, and pacific, I had been present at more than
one death caused by blows in boyish combats, in which the oldest of the
victors had scarcely reached thirteen years; but these blows were in the
jugular, given with the full force of the arm shot out horizontally from
the shoulder.

But the Scotch--though by no means proficients in boxing (and how should
they box, seeing that they have never had a teacher?)--are, I repeat, a
most pugnacious people; at least they were in my time.  Anything served
them, that is, the urchins, as a pretence for a fray, or, Dorically
speaking, a _bicker_; every street and close was at feud with its
neighbour; the lads of the school were at feud with the young men of the
college, whom they pelted in winter with snow, and in summer with stones;
and then the feud between the old and new town!

One day I was standing on the ramparts of the Castle on the south-western
side which overhangs the green brae, where it slopes down into what was
in those days the green swamp or morass, called by the natives of Auld
Reekie the Nor Loch; it was a dark gloomy day, and a thin veil of mist
was beginning to settle down upon the brae and the morass.  I could
perceive, however, that there was a skirmish taking place in the latter
spot.  I had an indistinct view of two parties--apparently of urchins--and
I heard whoops and shrill cries: eager to know the cause of this
disturbance, I left the Castle, and descending the brae reached the
borders of the morass, where were a runnel of water and the remains of an
old wall, on the other side of which a narrow path led across the swamp:
upon this path at a little distance before me there was 'a bicker.'  I
pushed forward, but had scarcely crossed the ruined wall and runnel, when
the party nearest to me gave way, and in great confusion came running in
my direction.  As they drew nigh, one of them shouted to me, 'Wha are ye,
man? are ye o' the Auld Toon?'  I made no answer.  'Ha! ye are o' the New
Toon; De'il tak ye, we'll moorder ye'; and the next moment a huge stone
sung past my head.  'Let me be, ye fule bodies,' said I, 'I'm no of
either of ye, I live yonder aboon in the Castle.'  'Ah! ye live in the
Castle; then ye're an auld tooner; come gie us your help, man, and dinna
stand there staring like a dunnot, we want help sair eneugh.  Here are
stanes.'

For my own part I wished for nothing better, and, rushing forward, I
placed myself at the head of my new associates, and commenced flinging
stones fast and desperately.  The other party now gave way in their turn,
closely followed by ourselves; I was in the van, and about to stretch out
my hand to seize the hindermost boy of the enemy, when, not being
acquainted with the miry and difficult paths of the Nor Loch, and in my
eagerness taking no heed of my footing, I plunged into a quagmire, into
which I sank as far as my shoulders.  Our adversaries no sooner perceived
this disaster, than, setting up a shout, they wheeled round and attacked
us most vehemently.  Had my comrades now deserted me, my life had not
been worth a straw's purchase, I should either have been smothered in the
quag, or, what is more probable, had my brains beaten out with stones;
but they behaved like true Scots, and fought stoutly around their
comrade, until I was extricated, whereupon both parties retired, the
night being near at hand.

'Ye are na a bad hand at flinging stanes,' said the lad who first
addressed me, as we now returned up the brae; 'your aim is right
dangerous, mon, I saw how ye skelpit them, ye maun help us agin thae New
Toon blackguards at our next bicker.'

So to the next bicker I went, and to many more, which speedily followed
as the summer advanced; the party to which I had given my help on the
first occasion consisted merely of outlyers, posted about half-way up the
hill, for the purpose of overlooking the movements of the enemy.

Did the latter draw nigh in any considerable force, messengers were
forthwith despatched to the 'Auld Toon,' especially to the filthy alleys
and closes of the High Street, which forthwith would disgorge swarms of
bare-headed and bare-footed 'callants,' who, with gestures wild and
'eldrich screech and hollo,' might frequently be seen pouring down the
sides of the hill.  I have seen upwards of a thousand engaged on either
side in these frays, which I have no doubt were full as desperate as the
fights described in the _Iliad_, and which were certainly much more
bloody than the combats of modern Greece in the war of independence: the
callants not only employed their hands in hurling stones, but not
unfrequently slings; at the use of which they were very expert, and which
occasionally dislodged teeth, shattered jaws, or knocked out an eye.  Our
opponents certainly laboured under considerable disadvantage, being
compelled not only to wade across a deceitful bog, but likewise to
clamber up part of a steep hill, before they could attack us;
nevertheless, their determination was such, and such their impetuosity,
that we had sometimes difficulty enough to maintain our own.  I shall
never forget one bicker, the last indeed which occurred at that time, as
the authorities of the town, alarmed by the desperation of its character,
stationed forthwith a body of police on the hill-side, to prevent, in
future, any such breaches of the peace.

It was a beautiful Sunday evening, the rays of the descending sun were
reflected redly from the gray walls of the Castle, and from the black
rocks on which it was founded.  The bicker had long since commenced,
stones from sling and hand were flying; but the callants of the New Town
were now carrying everything before them.

A full-grown baker's apprentice was at their head; he was foaming with
rage, and had taken the field, as I was told, in order to avenge his
brother, whose eye had been knocked out in one of the late bickers.  He
was no slinger or flinger, but brandished in his right hand the spoke of
a cart-wheel, like my countryman Tom Hickathrift of old in his encounter
with the giant of the Lincolnshire fen.  Protected by a piece of wicker-
work attached to his left arm, he rushed on to the fray, disregarding the
stones which were showered against him, and was ably seconded by his
followers.  Our own party was chased half-way up the hill, where I was
struck to the ground by the baker, after having been foiled in an attempt
which I had made to fling a handful of earth into his eyes.  All now
appeared lost, the Auld Toon was in full retreat.  I myself lay at the
baker's feet, who had just raised his spoke, probably to give me the
_coup de grace_,--it was an awful moment.  Just then I heard a shout and
a rushing sound; a wild-looking figure is descending the hill with
terrible bounds; it is a lad of some fifteen years; he is bare-headed,
and his red uncombed hair stands on end like hedgehogs' bristles: his
frame is lithy, like that of an antelope, but he has prodigious breadth
of chest; he wears a military undress, that of the regiment, even of a
drummer, for it is wild Davy, whom a month before I had seen enlisted on
Leith Links to serve King George with drum and drumstick as long as his
services might be required, and who, ere a week had elapsed, had smitten
with his fist Drum-Major Elzigood, who, incensed at his inaptitude, had
threatened him with his cane; he has been in confinement for weeks, this
is the first day of his liberation, and he is now descending the hill
with horrid bounds and shoutings; he is now about five yards distant, and
the baker, who apprehends that something dangerous is at hand, prepares
himself for the encounter; but what avails the strength of a baker, even
full grown?--what avails the defence of a wicker shield?--what avails the
wheel-spoke, should there be an opportunity of using it, against the
impetus of an avalanche or a cannon-ball?--for to either of these might
that wild figure be compared, which, at the distance of five yards,
sprang at once with head, hands, feet and body, all together, upon the
champion of the New Town, tumbling him to the earth amain.  And now it
was the turn of the Old Town to triumph.  Our late discomfited host,
returning on its steps, overwhelmed the fallen champion with blows of
every kind, and then, led on by his vanquisher, who had assumed his arms,
namely, the wheel-spoke and wicker shield, fairly cleared the brae of
their adversaries, whom they drove down headlong into the morass.




CHAPTER VIII


Expert climbers--The crags--Something red--The horrible edge--David
Haggart--Fine materials--The greatest victory--Extraordinary robber--The
ruling passion.

Meanwhile I had become a daring cragsman, a character to which an English
lad has seldom opportunities of aspiring; for in England there are
neither crags nor mountains.  Of these, however, as is well known, there
is no lack in Scotland, and the habits of individuals are invariably in
harmony with the country in which they dwell.  The Scotch are expert
climbers, and I was now a Scot in most things, particularly in language.
The Castle in which I dwelt stood upon a rock, a bold and craggy one,
which, at first sight, would seem to bid defiance to any feet save those
of goats and chamois; but patience and perseverance generally enable
mankind to overcome things which, at first sight, appear impossible.
Indeed, what is there above man's exertions?  Unwearied determination
will enable him to run with the horse, to swim with the fish, and
assuredly to compete with the chamois and the goat in agility and
sureness of foot.  To scale the rock was merely child's play for the
Edinbro' callants.  It was my own favourite diversion.  I soon found that
the rock contained all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses,
where owls nestled, and the weasel brought forth her young; here and
there were small natural platforms, overgrown with long grass and various
kinds of plants, where the climber, if so disposed, could stretch
himself, and either give his eyes to sleep or his mind to thought; for
capital places were these same platforms either for repose or meditation.
The boldest features of the rock are descried on the northern side,
where, after shelving down gently from the wall for some distance, it
terminates abruptly in a precipice, black and horrible, of some three
hundred feet at least, as if the axe of nature had been here employed
cutting sheer down, and leaving behind neither excrescence nor spur--a
dizzy precipice it is, assimilating much to those so frequent in the
flinty hills of Northern Africa, and exhibiting some distant resemblance
to that of Gibraltar, towering in its horridness above the Neutral
Ground.

It was now holiday time, and having nothing particular wherewith to
occupy myself, I not unfrequently passed the greater part of the day upon
the rocks.  Once, after scaling the western crags, and creeping round a
sharp angle of the wall, overhung by a kind of watch-tower, I found
myself on the northern side.  Still keeping close to the wall, I was
proceeding onward, for I was bent upon a long excursion which should
embrace half the circuit of the Castle, when suddenly my eye was
attracted by the appearance of something red, far below me; I stopped
short, and, looking fixedly upon it, perceived that it was a human being
in a kind of red jacket, seated on the extreme verge of the precipice
which I have already made a faint attempt to describe.  Wondering who it
could be, I shouted; but it took not the slightest notice, remaining as
immovable as the rock on which it sat.  'I should never have thought of
going near that edge,' said I to myself; 'however, as you have done it,
why should not I?  And I should like to know who you are.'  So I
commenced the descent of the rock, but with great care, for I had as yet
never been in a situation so dangerous; a slight moisture exuded from the
palms of my hands, my nerves were tingling, and my brain was somewhat
dizzy--and now I had arrived within a few yards of the figure, and had
recognised it: it was the wild drummer who had turned the tide of battle
in the bicker on the Castle Brae.  A small stone which I dislodged now
rolled down the rock, and tumbled into the abyss close beside him.  He
turned his head, and after looking at me for a moment somewhat vacantly,
he resumed his former attitude.  I drew yet nearer to the horrible edge
not close, however, for fear was on me.

'What are you thinking of, David?' said I, as I sat behind him and
trembled, for I repeat that I was afraid.

_David Haggart_.  I was thinking of Willie Wallace.

_Myself_.  You had better be thinking of yourself, man.  A strange place
this to come to and think of William Wallace.

_David Haggart_.  Why so?  Is not his tower just beneath our feet?

_Myself_.  You mean the auld ruin by the side of the Nor Loch--the ugly
stane bulk, from the foot of which flows the spring into the dyke where
the watercresses grow?

_David Haggart_.  Just sae, Geordie.

_Myself_.  And why were ye thinking of him?  The English hanged him long
since, as I have heard say.

_David Haggart_.  I was thinking that I should wish to be like him.

_Myself_.  Do ye mean that ye would wish to be hanged?

_David Haggart_.  I wadna flinch from that, Geordie, if I might be a
great man first.

_Myself_.  And wha kens, Davie, how great you may be, even without
hanging?  Are ye not in the high road of preferment?  Are ye not a bauld
drummer already?  Wha kens how high ye may rise? perhaps to be general,
or drum-major.

_David Haggart_.  I hae nae wish to be drum-major; it were nae great
things to be like the doited carle, Else-than-gude, as they call him;
and, troth, he has nae his name for naething.  But I should have nae
objection to be a general, and to fight the French and Americans, and win
myself a name and a fame like Willie Wallace, and do brave deeds, such as
I have been reading about in his story book.

_Myself_.  Ye are a fule, Davie; the story book is full of lies.  Wallace,
indeed! the wuddie rebel!  I have heard my father say that the Duke of
Cumberland was worth twenty of Willie Wallace.

_David Haggart_.  Ye had better sae naething agin Willie Wallace,
Geordie, for, if ye do, De'il hae me, if I dinna tumble ye doon the
craig.

Fine materials in that lad for a hero, you will say.  Yes, indeed, for a
hero, or for what he afterwards became.  In other times, and under other
circumstances, he might have made what is generally termed a great man, a
patriot, or a conqueror.  As it was, the very qualities which might then
have pushed him on to fortune and renown were the cause of his ruin.  The
war over, he fell into evil courses; for his wild heart and ambitious
spirit could not brook the sober and quiet pursuits of honest industry.

'Can an Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?' I cries the fatalist.
Nonsense!  A man is not an irrational creature, but a reasoning being,
and has something within him beyond mere brutal instinct.  The greatest
victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those
unruly passions which are not convenient to the time and place.  David
did not do this; he gave the reins to his wild heart, instead of curbing
it, and became a robber, and, alas! alas! he shed blood--under peculiar
circumstances, it is true, and without _malice prepense_--and for that
blood he eventually died, and justly; for it was that of the warden of a
prison from which he was escaping, and whom he slew with one blow of his
stalwart arm.

Tamerlane and Haggart!  Haggart and Tamerlane!  Both these men were
robbers, and of low birth, yet one perished on an ignoble scaffold, and
the other died emperor of the world.  Is this justice?  The ends of the
two men were widely dissimilar--yet what is the intrinsic difference
between them?  Very great indeed; the one acted according to his lights
and his country, not so the other.  Tamerlane was a heathen, and acted
according to his lights; he was a robber where all around were robbers,
but he became the avenger of God--God's scourge on unjust kings, on the
cruel Bajazet, who had plucked out his own brothers' eyes; he became to a
certain extent the purifier of the East, its regenerator; his equal never
was before, nor has it since been seen.  Here the wild heart was
profitably employed, the wild strength, the teeming brain.  Onward, Lame
one!  Onward, Tamur--lank!  Haggart . . . .

But peace to thee, poor David! why should a mortal worm be sitting in
judgment over thee?  The Mighty and Just One has already judged thee, and
perhaps above thou hast received pardon for thy crimes, which could not
be pardoned here below; and now that thy feverish existence has closed,
and thy once active form become inanimate dust, thy very memory all but
forgotten, I will say a few words about thee, a few words soon also to be
forgotten.  Thou wast the most extraordinary robber that ever lived
within the belt of Britain; Scotland rang with thy exploits, and England,
too, north of the Humber; strange deeds also didst thou achieve when,
fleeing from justice, thou didst find thyself in the Sister Isle; busy
wast thou there in town and on curragh, at fair and race-course, and also
in the solitary place.  Ireland thought thee her child, for who spoke her
brogue better than thyself?--she felt proud of thee, and said, 'Sure,
O'Hanlon is come again.'  What might not have been thy fate in the far
west in America, whither thou hadst turned thine eye, saying, 'I will go
there, and become an honest man!'  But thou wast not to go there,
David--the blood which thou hadst shed in Scotland was to be required of
thee; the avenger was at hand, the avenger of blood.  Seized, manacled,
brought back to thy native land, condemned to die, thou wast left in thy
narrow cell, and told to make the most of thy time, for it was short: and
there, in thy narrow cell, and thy time so short, thou didst put the
crowning stone to thy strange deeds, by that strange history of thyself,
penned by thy own hand in the robber tongue.  Thou mightest have been
better employed, David!--but the ruling passion was strong with thee,
even in the jaws of death.  Thou mightest have been better employed!--but
peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty's grace and pardon.




CHAPTER IX


Napoleon--The storm--The cove--Up the country--The trembling
hand--Irish--Tough battle--Tipperary hills--Elegant lodgings--A
speech--Fair specimen--Orangemen.

Onward, onward! and after we had sojourned in Scotland nearly two years,
the long continental war had been brought to an end, Napoleon was humbled
for a time, and the Bourbons restored to a land which could well have
dispensed with them; we returned to England, where the corps was
disbanded, and my parents with their family retired to private life.  I
shall pass over in silence the events of a year, which offer little of
interest as far as connected with me and mine.  Suddenly, however, the
sound of war was heard again, Napoleon had broken forth from Elba, and
everything was in confusion.  Vast military preparations were again made,
our own corps was levied anew, and my brother became an officer in it;
but the danger was soon over, Napoleon was once more quelled, and chained
for ever, like Prometheus, to his rock.  As the corps, however, though so
recently levied, had already become a very fine one, thanks to my
father's energetic drilling, the Government very properly determined to
turn it to some account, and, as disturbances were apprehended in Ireland
about this period, it occurred to them that they could do no better than
despatch it to that country.

In the autumn of the year 1815 we set sail from a port in Essex; we were
some eight hundred strong, and were embarked in two ships, very large,
but old and crazy; a storm overtook us when off Beachy Head, in which we
had nearly foundered.  I was awakened early in the morning by the howling
of the wind and the uproar on deck.  I kept myself close, however, as is
still my constant practice on similar occasions, and waited the result
with that apathy and indifference which violent sea-sickness is sure to
produce.  We shipped several seas, and once the vessel missing
stays--which, to do it justice, it generally did at every third or fourth
tack--we escaped almost by a miracle from being dashed upon the foreland.
On the eighth day of our voyage we were in sight of Ireland.  The weather
was now calm and serene, the sun shone brightly on the sea and on certain
green hills in the distance, on which I descried what at first sight I
believed to be two ladies gathering flowers, which, however, on our
nearer approach, proved to be two tall white towers, doubtless built for
some purpose or other, though I did not learn for what.

We entered a kind of bay, or cove, by a narrow inlet; it was a beautiful
and romantic place this cove, very spacious, and, being nearly
land-locked, was sheltered from every wind.  A small island, every inch
of which was covered with fortifications, appeared to swim upon the
waters, whose dark blue denoted their immense depth; tall green hills,
which ascended gradually from the shore, formed the background to the
west; they were carpeted to the top with turf of the most vivid green,
and studded here and there with woods, seemingly of oak; there was a
strange old castle half-way up the ascent, a village on a crag--but the
mists of morning were half veiling the scene when I surveyed it, and the
mists of time are now hanging densely between it and my no longer
youthful eye; I may not describe it;--nor will I try.

Leaving the ship in the cove, we passed up a wide river in boats till we
came to a city, where we disembarked.  It was a large city, as large as
Edinburgh to my eyes; there were plenty of fine houses, but little
neatness; the streets were full of impurities; handsome equipages rolled
along, but the greater part of the population were in rags; beggars
abounded; there was no lack of merriment, however; boisterous shouts of
laughter were heard on every side.  It appeared a city of contradictions.
After a few days' rest we marched from this place in two divisions.  My
father commanded the second, I walked by his side.

Our route lay up the country; the country at first offered no very
remarkable feature, it was pretty, but tame.  On the second day, however,
its appearance had altered, it had become more wild; a range of distant
mountains bounded the horizon.  We passed through several villages, as I
suppose I may term them, of low huts, the walls formed of rough stones
without mortar, the roof of flags laid over wattles and wicker-work; they
seemed to be inhabited solely by women and children; the latter were
naked, the former, in general, blear-eyed beldames, who sat beside the
doors on low stools, spinning.  We saw, however, both men and women
working at a distance in the fields.

I was thirsty; and going up to an ancient crone, employed in the manner
which I have described, I asked her for water; she looked me in the face,
appeared to consider a moment, then tottering into her hut, presently
reappeared with a small pipkin of milk, which she offered to me with a
trembling hand.  I drank the milk; it was sour, but I found it highly
refreshing.  I then took out a penny and offered it to her, whereupon she
shook her head, smiled, and, patting my face with her skinny hand,
murmured some words in a tongue which I had never heard before.

I walked on by my father's side, holding the stirrup-leather of his
horse; presently several low uncouth cars passed by, drawn by starved
cattle: the drivers were tall fellows, with dark features and athletic
frames--they wore long loose blue cloaks with sleeves, which last,
however, dangled unoccupied: these cloaks appeared in tolerably good
condition, not so their under garments.  On their heads were broad
slouching hats: the generality of them were bare-footed.  As they passed,
the soldiers jested with them in the patois of East Anglia, whereupon the
fellows laughed, and appeared to jest with the soldiers; but what they
said who knows, it being in a rough guttural language, strange and wild.
The soldiers stared at each other, and were silent.

'A strange language that!' said a young officer to my father, 'I don't
understand a word of it; what can it be?'

'Irish!' said my father, with a loud voice, 'and a bad language it is, I
have known it of old, that is, I have often heard it spoken when I was a
guardsman in London.  There's one part of London where all the Irish
live--at least all the worst of them--and there they hatch their
villainies and speak this tongue; it is that which keeps them together
and makes them dangerous: I was once sent there to seize a couple of
deserters--Irish--who had taken refuge amongst their companions; we found
them in what was in my time called a ken, that is a house where only
thieves and desperadoes are to be found.  Knowing on what kind of
business I was bound, I had taken with me a sergeant's party; it was well
I did so.  We found the deserters in a large room, with at least thirty
ruffians, horrid-looking fellows, seated about a long table, drinking,
swearing, and talking Irish.  Ah! we had a tough battle, I remember; the
two fellows did nothing, but sat still, thinking it best to be quiet; but
the rest, with an ubbubboo like the blowing up of a powder-magazine,
sprang up, brandishing their sticks; for these fellows always carry
sticks with them even to bed, and not unfrequently spring up in their
sleep, striking left and right.'

'And did you take the deserters?' said the officer.

'Yes,' said my father; 'for we formed at the end of the room, and charged
with fixed bayonets, which compelled the others to yield notwithstanding
their numbers; but the worst was when we got out into the street; the
whole district had become alarmed, and hundreds came pouring down upon
us--men, women, and children.  Women, did I say!--they looked fiends,
half naked, with their hair hanging down over their bosoms; they tore up
the very pavement to hurl at us, sticks rang about our ears, stones, and
Irish--I liked the Irish worst of all, it sounded so horrid, especially
as I did not understand it.  It's a bad language.'

'A queer tongue,' said I; 'I wonder if I could learn it.'

'Learn it!' said my father; 'what should you learn it for?--however, I am
not afraid of that.  It is not like Scotch, no person can learn it, save
those who are born to it, and even in Ireland the respectable people do
not speak it, only the wilder sort, like those we have passed.'

Within a day or two we had reached a tall range of mountains running
north and south, which I was told were those of Tipperary; along the
skirts of these we proceeded till we came to a town, the principal one of
these regions.  It was on the bank of a beautiful river, which separated
it from the mountains.  It was rather an ancient place, and might contain
some ten thousand inhabitants--I found that it was our destination; there
were extensive barracks at the farther end, in which the corps took up
its quarters; with respect to ourselves, we took lodgings in a house
which stood in the principal street.

'You never saw more elegant lodgings than these, captain,' said the
master of the house, a tall, handsome, and athletic man, who came up
whilst our little family were seated at dinner late in the afternoon of
the day of our arrival; 'they beat anything in this town of Clonmel.  I
do not let them for the sake of interest, and to none but gentlemen in
the army, in order that myself and my wife, who is from Londonderry, may
have the advantage of pleasant company, genteel company; ay, and
Protestant company, captain.  It did my heart good when I saw your honour
ride in at the head of all those fine fellows, real Protestants, I'll
engage, not a Papist among them, they are too good-looking and honest-
looking for that.  So I no sooner saw your honour at the head of your
army, with that handsome young gentleman holding by your stirrup, than I
said to my wife, Mistress Hyne, who is from Londonderry, "God bless me,"
said I, "what a truly Protestant countenance, what a noble bearing, and
what a sweet young gentleman.  By the silver hairs of his honour"--and
sure enough I never saw hairs more regally silver than those of your
honour--"by his honour's gray silver hairs, and by my own soul, which is
not worthy to be mentioned in the same day with one of them--it would be
no more than decent and civil to run out and welcome such a father and
son coming in at the head of such a Protestant military."  And then my
wife, who is from Londonderry, Mistress Hyne, looking me in the face like
a fairy as she is, "You may say that," says she.  "It would be but decent
and civil, honey."  And your honour knows how I ran out of my own door
and welcomed your honour riding in company with your son, who was
walking; how I welcomed ye both at the head of your royal regiment, and
how I shook your honour by the hand, saying, I am glad to see your
honour, and your honour's son, and your honour's royal military
Protestant regiment.  And now I have you in the house, and right proud I
am to have ye one and all; one, two, three, four, true Protestants every
one, no Papists here; and I have made bold to bring up a bottle of claret
which is now waiting behind the door; and, when your honour and your
family have dined, I will make bold too to bring up Mistress Hyne, from
Londonderry, to introduce to your honour's lady, and then we'll drink to
the health of King George, God bless him; to the "glorious and
immortal"--to Boyne water--to your honour's speedy promotion to be Lord
Lieutenant, and to the speedy downfall of the Pope and Saint Anthony of
Padua.'

Such was the speech of the Irish Protestant addressed to my father in the
long lofty dining-room with three windows, looking upon the high street
of the good town of Clonmel, as he sat at meat with his family, after
saying grace like a true-hearted respectable soldier as he was.

'A bigot and an Orangeman!'  Oh yes!  It is easier to apply epithets of
opprobrium to people than to make yourself acquainted with their history
and position.  He was a specimen, and a fair specimen, of a most
remarkable body of men, who during two centuries have fought a good fight
in Ireland in the cause of civilisation and religious truth; they were
sent as colonists, few in number, into a barbarous and unhappy country,
where ever since, though surrounded with difficulties of every kind, they
have maintained their ground; theirs has been no easy life, nor have
their lines fallen upon very pleasant places; amidst darkness they have
held up a lamp, and it would be well for Ireland were all her children
like these her adopted ones.  'But they are fierce and sanguinary,' it is
said.  Ay, ay! they have not unfrequently opposed the keen sword to the
savage pike.  'But they are bigoted and narrow-minded.'  Ay, ay! they do
not like idolatry, and will not bow the knee before a stone!  'But their
language is frequently indecorous.'  Go to, my dainty one, did ye ever
listen to the voice of Papist cursing?

The Irish Protestants have faults, numerous ones; but the greater number
of these may be traced to the peculiar circumstances of their position:
but they have virtues, numerous ones; and their virtues are their own,
their industry, their energy, and their undaunted resolution are their
own.  They have been vilified and traduced--but what would Ireland be
without them?  I repeat, that it would be well for her were all her sons
no worse than these much-calumniated children of her adoption.




CHAPTER X


Protestant young gentlemen--The Greek letters--Open chimney--Murtagh--Paris
and Salamanca--Nothing to do--To whit, to whoo!--The pack of cards--Before
Christmas.

We continued at this place for some months, during which time the
soldiers performed their duties, whatever they were; and I, having no
duties to perform, was sent to school.  I had been to English schools,
and to the celebrated one of Edinburgh; but my education, at the present
day, would not be what it is--perfect, had I never had the honour of
being _alumnus_ in an Irish seminary.

'Captain,' said our kind host, 'you would, no doubt, wish that the young
gentleman should enjoy every advantage which the town may afford towards
helping him on in the path of genteel learning.  It's a great pity that
he should waste his time in idleness--doing nothing else than what he
says he has been doing for the last fortnight--fishing in the river for
trouts which he never catches; and wandering up the glen in the mountain,
in search of the hips that grow there.  Now, we have a school here, where
he can learn the most elegant Latin, and get an insight into the Greek
letters, which is desirable; and where, moreover, he will have an
opportunity of making acquaintance with all the Protestant young
gentlemen of the place, the handsome well-dressed young persons whom your
honour sees in the church on the Sundays, when your honour goes there in
the morning, with the rest of the Protestant military; for it is no
Papist school, though there may be a Papist or two there--a few poor
farmers' sons from the country, with whom there is no necessity for your
honour's child to form any acquaintance at all, at all!'

And to the school I went, where I read the Latin tongue and the Greek
letters, with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk,
with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him, in a long gloomy kind of hall,
with a broken stone floor, the roof festooned with cobwebs, the walls
considerably dilapidated, and covered over with strange figures and
hieroglyphics, evidently produced by the application of burnt stick; and
there I made acquaintance with the Protestant young gentlemen of the
place, who, with whatever _eclat_ they might appear at church on a
Sunday, did assuredly not exhibit to much advantage in the schoolroom on
the week days, either with respect to clothes or looks.  And there I was
in the habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the
huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young
gentlemen of my own age, seated on similar stones, with extraordinary
accounts of my own adventures, and those of the corps, with an occasional
anecdote extracted from the story-books of Hickathrift and Wight Wallace,
pretending to be conning the lesson all the while.

And there I made acquaintance, notwithstanding the hint of the landlord,
with the Papist 'gossoons,' as they were called, the farmers' sons from
the country; and of these gossoons, of whom there were three, two might
be reckoned as nothing at all; in the third, however, I soon discovered
that there was something extraordinary.

He was about sixteen years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a
gray suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him
some ten years before.  He was remarkably narrow-chested and
round-shouldered, owing, perhaps as much to the tightness of his garment
as to the hand of nature.  His face was long, and his complexion swarthy,
relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was
plentifully studded.  He had strange wandering eyes, gray, and somewhat
unequal in size; they seldom rested on the book, but were generally
wandering about the room, from one object to another.  Sometimes he would
fix them intently on the wall, and then suddenly starting, as if from a
reverie, he would commence making certain mysterious movements with his
thumbs and forefingers, as if he were shuffling something from him.

One morning, as he sat by himself on a bench, engaged in this manner, I
went up to him, and said, 'Good-day, Murtagh; you do not seem to have
much to do?'

'Faith, you may say that, Shorsha dear!--it is seldom much to do that I
have.'

'And what are you doing with your hands?'

'Faith, then, if I must tell you, I was e'en dealing with the cards.'

'Do you play much at cards?'

'Sorra a game, Shorsha, have I played with the cards since my uncle
Phelim, the thief, stole away the ould pack, when he went to settle in
the county Waterford!'

'But you have other things to do?'

'Sorra anything else has Murtagh to do that he cares about and that makes
me dread so going home at nights.'

'I should like to know all about you; where do you live, joy?'

'Faith, then, ye shall know all about me, and where I live.  It is at a
place called the Wilderness that I live, and they call it so, because it
is a fearful wild place, without any house near it but my father's own;
and that's where I live when at home.'

'And your father is a farmer, I suppose?'

'You may say that; and it is a farmer I should have been, like my brother
Denis, had not my uncle Phelim, the thief, tould my father to send me to
school, to learn Greek letters, that I might be made a saggart of, and
sent to Paris and Salamanca.'

'And you would rather be a farmer than a priest?'

'You may say that!--for, were I a farmer, like the rest, I should have
something to do, like the rest--something that I cared for--and I should
come home tired at night, and fall asleep, as the rest do, before the
fire; but when I comes home at night I am not tired, for I have been
doing nothing all day that I care for; and then I sits down and stares
about me, and at the fire, till I become frighted; and then I shouts to
my brother Denis, or to the gossoons, "Get up, I say, and let's be doing
something; tell us the tale of Finn-ma-Coul, and how he lay down in the
Shannon's bed, and let the river flow down his jaws!"  Arrah, Shorsha!  I
wish you would come and stay with us, and tell us some o' your sweet
stories of your own self and the snake ye carried about wid ye.  Faith,
Shorsha dear! that snake bates anything about Finn-ma-Coul or Brian
Boroo, the thieves two, bad luck to them!'

'And do they get up and tell you stories?'

'Sometimes they does, but oftenmost they curses me, and bids me be quiet!
But I can't be quiet, either before the fire or abed; so I runs out of
the house, and stares at the rocks, at the trees, and sometimes at the
clouds, as they run a race across the bright moon; and, the more I
stares, the more frighted I grows, till I screeches and holloas.  And
last night I went into the barn, and hid my face in the straw; and there,
as I lay and shivered in the straw, I heard a voice above my head singing
out "To whit, to whoo!" and then up I starts, and runs into the house,
and falls over my brother Denis, as he lies at the fire.  "What's that
for?" says he.  "Get up, you thief!" says I, "and be helping me.  I have
been out into the barn, and an owl has crow'd at me!"'

'And what has this to do with playing cards?'

'Little enough, Shorsha dear!--If there were card-playing, I should not
be frighted.'

'And why do you not play at cards?'

'Did I not tell you that the thief, my uncle Phelim, stole away the pack?
If we had the pack, my brother Denis and the gossoons would be ready
enough to get up from their sleep before the fire, and play cards with me
for ha'pence, or eggs, or nothing at all; but the pack is gone--bad luck
to the thief who took it!'

'And why don't you buy another?'

'Is it of buying you are speaking?  And where am I to get the money?'

'Ah! that's another thing!'

'Faith it is, honey!--And now the Christmas holidays is coming, when I
shall be at home by day as well as night, and then what am I to do?  Since
I have been a saggarting, I have been good for nothing at all--neither
for work nor Greek--only to play cards!  Faith, it's going mad I will
be!'

'I say, Murtagh!'

'Yes, Shorsha dear!'

'I have a pack of cards.'

'You don't say so, Shorsha ma vourneen?--you don't say that you have
cards fifty-two?'

'I do, though; and they are quite new--never been once used.'

'And you'll be lending them to me, I warrant?'

'Don't think it!--But I'll sell them to you, joy, if you like.'

'Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no money at
all!'

'But you have as good as money, to me, at least; and I'll take it in
exchange.'

'What's that, Shorsha dear?'

'Irish!'

'Irish?'

'Yes, you speak Irish; I heard you talking it the other day to the
cripple.  You shall teach me Irish.'

'And is it a language-master you'd be making of me?'

'To be sure!--what better can you do?--it would help you to pass your
time at school.  You can't learn Greek, so you must teach Irish!'

Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis,
and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken Irish.




CHAPTER XI


Templemore--Devil's Mountain--No companion--Force of circumstance--Way of
the world--Ruined castle--Grim and desolate--The donjon--Old woman--My
own house.

When Christmas was over, and the new year commenced, we broke up our
quarters, and marched away to Templemore.  This was a large military
station, situated in a wild and thinly inhabited country.  Extensive bogs
were in the neighbourhood, connected with the huge bog of Allen, the
Palus Maeotis of Ireland.  Here and there was seen a ruined castle
looming through the mists of winter; whilst, at the distance of seven
miles, rose a singular mountain, exhibiting in its brow a chasm, or
vacuum, just, for all the world, as if a piece had been bitten out; a
feat which, according to the tradition of the country, had actually been
performed by his Satanic majesty, who, after flying for some leagues with
the morsel in his mouth, becoming weary, dropped it in the vicinity of
Cashel, where it may now be seen in the shape of a bold bluff hill,
crowned with the ruins of a stately edifice, probably built by some
ancient Irish king.

We had been here only a few days, when my brother, who, as I have before
observed, had become one of his Majesty's officers, was sent on
detachment to a village at about ten miles' distance.  He was not
sixteen, and, though three years older than myself, scarcely my equal in
stature, for I had become tall and large-limbed for my age; but there was
a spirit in him which would not have disgraced a general; and, nothing
daunted at the considerable responsibility which he was about to incur,
he marched sturdily out of the barrack-yard at the head of his party,
consisting of twenty light-infantry men, and a tall grenadier sergeant,
selected expressly by my father, for the soldier-like qualities which he
possessed, to accompany his son on this his first expedition.  So out of
the barrack-yard, with something of an air, marched my dear brother, his
single drum and fife playing the inspiring old melody,

   Marlbrouk is gone to the wars,
   He'll never return no more!

I soon missed my brother, for I was now alone, with no being, at all
assimilating in age, with whom I could exchange a word.  Of late years,
from being almost constantly at school, I had cast aside, in a great
degree, my unsocial habits and natural reserve, but in the desolate
region in which we now were there was no school; and I felt doubly the
loss of my brother, whom, moreover, I tenderly loved for his own sake.
Books I had none, at least such 'as I cared about'; and with respect to
the old volume, the wonders of which had first beguiled me into common
reading, I had so frequently pored over its pages, that I had almost got
its contents by heart.  I was therefore in danger of falling into the
same predicament as Murtagh, becoming 'frighted' from having nothing to
do!  Nay, I had not even his resources; I cared not for cards, even if I
possessed them and could find people disposed to play with them.  However,
I made the most of circumstances, and roamed about the desolate fields
and bogs in the neighbourhood, sometimes entering the cabins of the
peasantry, with a 'God's blessing upon you, good people!' where I would
take my seat on the 'stranger's stone' at the corner of the hearth, and,
looking them full in the face, would listen to the carles and carlines
talking Irish.

Ah, that Irish!  How frequently do circumstances, at first sight the most
trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and permanent influence on our
habits and pursuits!--how frequently is a stream turned aside from its
natural course by some little rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt
turn!  On a wild road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first
time; and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition of
which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other languages.  I had
previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but neither Latin nor Lilly
made me a philologist.  I had frequently heard French and other
languages, but had felt little desire to become acquainted with them; and
what, it may be asked, was there connected with the Irish calculated to
recommend it to my attention?

First of all, and principally, I believe, the strangeness and singularity
of its tones; then there was something mysterious and uncommon associated
with its use.  It was not a school language, to acquire which was
considered an imperative duty; no, no; nor was it a drawing-room
language, drawled out occasionally, in shreds and patches, by the ladies
of generals and other great dignitaries, to the ineffable dismay of poor
officers' wives.  Nothing of the kind; but a speech spoken in out-of-the-
way desolate places, and in cut-throat kens, where thirty ruffians, at
the sight of the king's minions, would spring up with brandished sticks
and an 'ubbubboo like the blowing up of a powder-magazine.'  Such were
the points connected with the Irish, which first awakened in my mind the
desire of acquiring it; and by acquiring it I became, as I have already
said, enamoured of languages.  Having learnt one by choice, I speedily,
as the reader will perceive, learnt others, some of which were widely
different from Irish.

Ah, that Irish!  I am much indebted to it in more ways than one.  But I
am afraid I have followed the way of the world, which is very much wont
to neglect original friends and benefactors.  I frequently find myself,
at present, turning up my nose at Irish when I hear it in the street; yet
I have still a kind of regard for it, the fine old language:

   A labhair Padruic n'insefail nan riogh.

One of the most peculiar features of this part of Ireland is the ruined
castles, which are so thick and numerous that the face of the country
appears studded with them, it being difficult to choose any situation
from which one, at least, may not be descried.  They are of various ages
and styles of architecture, some of great antiquity, like the stately
remains which crown the Crag of Cashel; others built by the early English
conquerors; others, and probably the greater part, erections of the times
of Elizabeth and Cromwell.  The whole speaking monuments of the troubled
and insecure state of the country, from the most remote periods to a
comparatively modern time.

From the windows of the room where I slept I had a view of one of these
old places--an indistinct one, it is true, the distance being too great
to permit me to distinguish more than the general outline.  I had an
anxious desire to explore it.  It stood to the south-east; in which
direction, however, a black bog intervened, which had more than once
baffled all my attempts to cross it.  One morning, however, when the sun
shone brightly upon the old building, it appeared so near, that I felt
ashamed at not being able to accomplish a feat seemingly so easy; I
determined, therefore, upon another trial.  I reached the bog, and was
about to venture upon its black surface, and to pick my way amongst its
innumerable holes, yawning horribly, and half filled with water black as
soot, when it suddenly occurred to me that there was a road to the south,
by following which I might find a more convenient route to the object of
my wishes.  The event justified my expectations, for, after following the
road for some three miles, seemingly in the direction of the Devil's
Mountain, I suddenly beheld the castle on my left.

I diverged from the road, and, crossing two or three fields, came to a
small grassy plain, in the midst of which stood the

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