Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOLUME 69, NO. 423, JANUARY 1851 ***
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
Edinburgh
MAGAZINE.
VOL. LXIX.
JANUARY-JUNE, 1851.
[Illustration: portrait]
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
AND
37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
1851.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXXIII. JANUARY, 1851. VOL. LXIX.
CONTENTS.
THE CURRENCY EXTENSION ACT OF NATURE, 1
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART V., 20
BIOGRAPHY, 40
THE LAY OF THE NIEBELUNGEN, 55
ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS FROM THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL, 69
HUNGARIAN MILITARY SKETCHES, 89
THE MESSAGE OF SETH. BY DELTA, 107
THE VOICE OF NATURE, 111
BRITISH LABOUR AND FOREIGN RECIPROCITY, 112
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;
AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXXIII. JANUARY, 1851. VOL. LXIX.
THE CURRENCY EXTENSION ACT OF NATURE.
Whoever has examined with attention the past annals of mankind, must
have become aware that the greatest and most important revolutions
that have occurred in human affairs have originated in the variations
which from time to time have taken place in the supply of the precious
metals which could be obtained for the use of man. As they constitute,
by the universal consent of the world, the common medium of exchange
and measure of value among nations, their plenty or scarcity has an
immediate and powerful influence upon the remuneration of industry and
the activity of the working-classes in all countries. According as they
are increasing or diminishing, abundant or awanting, is the condition
of the people prosperous or calamitous--the national prospects bright
or gloomy. No amount of human exertion, no efforts of human patriotism,
can sustain the national fortunes for any length of time, or diffuse
general and enduring prosperity among the people, if the existing
medium of exchange is below what their numbers and transactions
require; because, in such a case, prices are constantly declining,
credit is liable to periodical and ruinous contractions, and industry,
on an average of years, ceases to meet with its due reward. No
calamities are insuperable, no dangers insurmountable, when a currency
is provided adequate to the wants of men, and capable of extension
in proportion to their necessities; because, in such a case, prices
are rising or remunerative, and individual effort, stimulated by the
prospect of an adequate return, becomes universal, and acts powerfully
and decisively upon the general welfare of society and the issue of the
national fortunes.
The two greatest revolutions which have taken place in the annals of
the species, and which have for ever left their traces on the fortunes
of mankind, have arisen from the successive diminution and increase
in the supply of the precious metals for the use of the world. There
can be no doubt that the decline and fall of the Roman empire--so long
and falsely ascribed to its latter extension, plebeian slavery, and
patrician corruption--was in reality mainly owing to the failure in the
mines of Spain and Greece, from which the precious metals in ancient
times were chiefly obtained, joined to the unrestricted importation of
grain from Egypt and Libya, which ruined the profit of the harvests
and destroyed the agriculture of Italy and Greece, at once paralysing
industry, and rendering taxes overwhelming.[1] We know now to what the
failure of these mines, attended with such portentous results, was
owing. It was to the exhaustion of the auriferous veins in Spain and
Greece near the surface, from long-continued working, and the extreme
_hardness of the rock_ in which they were imbedded farther down, which
seems to be a general law of nature all over the world,[2] and which
rendered working them, to any considerable depth, no longer a source
of profit. On the other hand, the prodigious start which Europe took
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which has implanted
the European race for ever in the new hemisphere, is well known to have
been mainly owing to the discovery of the mines of Mexico and Peru, and
the continual rise of prices during nearly two centuries, which took
place all over the world, from the constant and increasing influx of
the precious metals drawn out of their rich strata.
The greatest and most momentous contests which have taken place among
nations, have been in a great degree determined by the discovery or
use, by one of the belligerents, of an expansive currency, to which
the other was for a time a stranger. The most memorable strife in
antiquity, that between Rome and Carthage, on which depended whether
Europe or Africa was to become the mistress of the civilised world, was
in reality determined by a great extension of the Italian circulating
medium during the second Punic war; and that dreadful contest was less
brought to a successful issue by the firmness of the senate or the
arms of Scipio, than by the wisdom of a decree which virtually, at the
crisis of its fate, doubled the currency of the Roman republic.[3] The
Transatlantic revolution was brought to a successful issue in the same
way; and the independence of the United States is less to be ascribed
to the imbecility of British counsels, or the wisdom of American
generalship, than to the establishment of a paper currency, which
sustained the efforts of the insurgent states when they had no other
resources wherewith to maintain the contest. It was the assignats, as
all the world knows, that set on foot those prodigious armies which,
amidst the destruction of all private fortunes, enabled France, during
the Reign of Terror, to repel the assault of all the European powers;
and the coalition which at last overturned the empire of Napoleon
was sustained by a vast system of paper currency, issued in 1813 in
Germany, which, guaranteed by the four Allied powers, passed as gold
from the Atlantic Ocean to the wall of China, and arrayed all the
armies of Europe in dense and disciplined battalions on the banks of
the Rhine. Of what incalculable importance it was may be judged of by
the dreadful straits to which Wellington, for five previous years,
had been reduced by its want. Great Britain emerged victorious from
the strife, chiefly from the powerful influence of the same omnipotent
agent. Vain would have been the constancy of Pitt, the genius of
Nelson, or the wisdom of Wellington, if the paper currency, established
in 1797, had not given her people the sinews of war, and the means of
illimitable industry, when the Continent was shut to her commerce,
and the whole precious metals were drained away by the necessities
of Continental warfare. Nor have the effects of the opposite system,
pursued since the peace, been less striking and momentous; for the
contraction of British currency to one half of its former dimensions,
by the bills of 1819 and 1844, has brought about the dreadful panics
of 1825, 1837, and 1847, induced by the decline of prices and the
sufferings it occasioned. The English revolution of 1832 transferred
power in the British islands exclusively to the inhabitants of towns,
and spread such misery through the rural population, that _three
hundred thousand_ emigrants now annually leave the British islands for
Transatlantic or Australian shores.
As the expansion or contraction of the circulating medium is thus an
agent of such prodigious power and irresistible weight, both upon the
fortunes of particular states and the general progress of the species,
so it will be found upon examination that it is by a withholding or
letting loose the fertilising flood, that Providence appears often to
act most directly and decisively upon human affairs. When a nation
has performed its mission, and is to make room for other actors on
the great stage of the world, if its power has rendered conquest by
a foreign enemy impossible, a contraction of its domestic currency
paralyses its internal strength, and renders dissolution, at no distant
period, a matter of certainty. If a great start is prepared for human
industry, if new continents are laid open to its energies, and an
unusual impulse communicated to its activity by the development of
social and democratic passions, a vast addition is suddenly made to
its metallic resources, and the increased numbers or enhanced efforts
of mankind are amply sustained by the newly opened treasures of the
reserves of nature. Rome, impregnable to the assaults of undisciplined
barbarians, yielded, at the appointed season, to the contraction of its
domestic currency, which rendered the maintenance of armaments adequate
to the public defence a matter of impossibility in the later days
of the empire; and when the discovery of the compass, of the art of
printing, and of the new hemisphere, had at once given a vast impulse
to European activity, and provided new and boundless fields for its
exertion, the mines of Potosi and Mexico were suddenly thrown open, and
nature provided a suitable reward for all this enhanced effort by the
continually rising price of its produce.
That a period of equal, perhaps greater activity, than that which
followed the discoveries of Columbus, would succeed the outbreak of the
social passions that occasioned the French Revolution, has long been
familiar to the thinking part of men, and unequivocal proofs of the
reality of the change may be seen in every direction around us. But
sufficient attention has not hitherto been paid to the extraordinary
encouragement which this increased mental energy has received, from the
facilities which have been placed at its disposal by the _mechanical_
discoveries of the last half century. Yet are they such as to throw all
past discoveries into the shade, and give an impulse to human affairs
which has scarcely been exceeded since the first separation of the
dwellers in cities and the sojourners in the fields. The steam-engine
has wrought these prodigies. Applied to mechanical invention, and the
moving of machinery, it has multiplied tenfold the powers of urban
industry, elevated the districts possessing the necessary fuel to the
clouds, cast down places once the seats of commercial greatness, but
destitute of that essential element in modern manufacturing energy, to
the dust. Applied to the propelling of vessels, it has more than halved
the breadth of the ocean, rendered navigable against the current the
greatest rivers, sent the colonists of Europe in countless multitudes
_up_ the streams of the New World, and provided an entrance for
civilised man into the greatest continents by the very magnitude of the
waters which flow down from their inaccessible mountains, or are fed in
their marshy plains. Applied to travelling by land, it has diminished
distance to a third--brought the capital of every civilised state into
close proximity to its most distant provinces; while the simultaneous
discovery of the electric telegraph has rendered the communication of
intelligence all but instantaneous, and made the circulation of ideas
and, it is to be feared, also of passions, as rapid over a mighty
empire as heretofore it was in the streets of a crowded capital.
When nature communicated this vast impulse to human activity, and
placed these mighty instruments in the hands of men, she was not
unmindful of the extended field for industry which their enlarged
numbers and increased energies would require. The plain of the
Mississippi, the garden of the world, containing a million of square
miles, or six times the area of France, was thrown open to their
enterprise. Steam power propelled a thousand vessels through the thick
network of natural arteries which in every direction penetrate its
vast and fertile plains. In 1790, five thousand Anglo-Saxons were
settled in this magnificent wilderness; now their numbers exceed _eight
millions_. Australia has opened its vast prairies, New Zealand its
fertile vales, to European enterprise. The boundless plains of Central
Russia and Southern Siberia, afforded inexhaustible resources to the
rapidly increasing Muscovite population; and an empire which already
possesses in Europe and Asia sixty-six million inhabitants, can without
apprehension contemplate a continuance of its present rate of increase
for centuries to come. The Andes even have been passed; the Rocky
Mountains surmounted; and on the reverse of their gigantic piles new
states, peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race, are arising, and increasing
with unheard-of rapidity, in regions rivalling Italy in the variety and
riches of their productions, and exceeding it tenfold in the magnitude
of their extent. Proportionate to the wants and necessities of mankind,
in an age of such intellectual and physical activity, has been the
hitherto untrodden fields which the beneficence of nature has laid open
to their industry.
These advantages, however, great and unbounded as they are, have
been, till very recently, counterbalanced, and perhaps more than
counterbalanced, by the _serious decrease_ which, for the greater part
of the period that has elapsed since the peace of 1815, has been going
on, from the effect of human violence or folly, in the _circulating
medium of the globe_. The South American revolution at once almost
destroyed the working of the mines of Mexico and Peru: the annual
produce of those mines sank from £10,000,000, to which, according to
Humboldt, it had risen prior to 1810, to less than £3,000,000. The
diminution in the supply of the precious metals for the use of the
globe, from the effects of this most calamitous revolution, which
Great Britain did so much to promote, was, during the thirty years
which elapsed from 1810 to 1840, certainly not less than £150,000,000
sterling. Contemporaneous with this immense reduction, took place
the great contraction of the paper currency of Great Britain, the
commercial heart of the globe, which was reduced by the bill of 1819
from £60,000,000, which it had reached in 1814, to little more than
£30,000,000, its average since that time. These two great causes of
decrease, operating simultaneously during a period of general peace,
unbroken industry, great increase in population both in Europe and
America, and a vast addition to the transactions and mercantile
dealings of men in every part of the world, produced that universal and
unlooked-for decline of prices which has been everywhere felt as so
discouraging to industry, and nowhere so much so as in the highly taxed
and deeply indebted realm of Great Britain. It was the exact converse
of the general and long-continued prosperity which the progressive
rise of prices consequent on the discovery of the South American mines
produced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was
apparently the commencement of a long and disastrous period of rise in
the value of money, and fall in the price of every species of produce,
similar to that which, in the first four centuries of the Christian
era, crushed the industry and paralysed the strength of the Roman
Empire, and at length prostrated the dominion of the legions before the
arms of an untutored and barbarous enemy.
It is now ascertained, therefore, by the only sure guide in political
science--experience--that if no addition to the circulating medium of
the globe had been made at a time when so immense an increment was
going forward in the numbers and transactions of the most active part
of mankind, consequences the most disastrous to human industry and
happiness _must_ have taken place. If--when the United States, with
their population of 25,000,000 doubling every twenty-five years, and
Russia, with its population of 66,000,000 doubling every forty years,
and Great Britain, with its population of 29,000,000 doubling in about
the same time, and its exports and imports tripling in thirty years,
were in a state of full and undiminished activity--there had been no
addition made to the circulating medium of the globe, it is difficult
to estimate the amount of embarrassment and distress which must have
become all but universal. If the circulating medium of the earth had
_remained stationary_, or gone on receiving only its wonted annual
increment, when so prodigious an addition was going forward in the
numbers and transactions of men, a universal and progressive fall of
prices must have ensued. The remuneration of industry must have been
halved--the weight of debts and taxes doubled. The fatal increase in
the value and power of riches, so truly felt and loudly complained of
in the declining days of the Roman empire, would have been everywhere
experienced. A _money famine_ would have been universally felt; and,
paradoxical as it may appear, dear-bought experience has now taught
us that such a famine is attended with more disastrous, because more
widely spread and irremovable, consequences, than even a shortcoming
in the supply of food for the use of man. The latter may be removed by
increased rural activity and a good harvest in a single year. But the
former is susceptible of no such remedy. On the contrary, the augmented
activity which it brings on, from the general and pinching suffering
with which it is attended, only tends to aggravate the common distress,
because it multiplies the transactions in which money as a medium of
exchange is indispensable, and consequently makes its scarcity in
proportion to the existing demand be more severely felt.
To this must be added another and most important cause, which operated
since the peace of 1815 in withdrawing the precious metals from the
globe, arising from the very scarcity of these metals themselves. The
addition which their enhanced value made to the riches of the affluent
was so great, that it led to a rapid and most important increase in
the consumption of gold and silver in articles of luxury. Gold and
silver plate, jewels, and other ornaments set in gold, became general
among the richer classes, and to an extent unprecedented since the fall
of the Roman empire. Gilding was employed so much in furniture, the
frames of pictures, the roofs of rooms, carriages, and other articles
of state or show, as to withdraw a considerable part of that the most
precious of the precious metals from the monetary circulation. The
scarcer gold and silver became, the more was this direction of a large
portion of it increased, because the richer did the fortunate few who
possessed amassed capital become from the daily decline in the price
of all other articles of merchandise. This effect was most conspicuous
in ancient Rome in its latter days, where, while the legions dwindled
into cohorts from the impossibility of finding funds to pay them
in large numbers, and the fields of Italy became desolate from the
impossibility of obtaining a remunerating price for their produce, the
gold and silver vases, statues, and ornaments amassed in the hands of
the wealthy patricians in Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and the
other great cities of the empire, so prodigiously increased, that, with
the currency, which formed but a small part of its amount, their value
is estimated by Gibbon at the almost incredible amount of £350,000,000
sterling of our money.
Bills of exchange and paper money, which have become known and
general only in modern Europe, might have gone far to mitigate these
disastrous consequences in particular states, or even, if conducted
with prudence and regulated by wisdom, might in some places have
altogether prevented them. But as paper currency is a new element of
surpassing power and efficacy, but recently introduced into common
use among men, the principles on which it should be regulated are far
from being generally understood. Even if understood, it requires for
its due regulation a combination of wisdom and self-denial that can
rarely be looked for among the rulers of mankind. The fundamental
principles on which its due regulation must be rested--that of being
based on _certain and available property of some kind_, and of being
capable of _extension_ in proportion to the increase in the numbers and
transactions of men, and the abstraction of the precious metals forming
the medium of international circulation, and yet duly restrained and
over-issue prevented--were successively overlooked by the greatest and
most enlightened nations of the world. Issued in unbounded profusion
in France during the fervour of the Revolution and the terrors of
European invasion, with no real basis of available property on which
to rest, the assignats produced, simultaneously with the prodigious
armaments which saved the country, an unheard-of confusion among the
transactions and obligations of men, and destroyed in a few years
the whole capital of that great country, the accumulated savings
of centuries of industry. Contracted with equal rapidity from the
influence of the opposite set of interests in Great Britain after
the peace, the paper circulation of the British Empire was rendered
the instrument of destruction of property as great, and misery as
widespread and universal, among its inhabitants, as the assignats or
confiscations of the Convention. Adopted with heedless eagerness, and
without any adequate safeguards, at one time in America, and checked
at another with precipitate and imprudent severity, four-fifths of
the wealth of the United States were in a few years swept away by the
fearful oscillation of prices consequent on these violent changes. And
although wisdom and prudence could easily have devised a system of
paper currency which, entirely based upon available property of some
kind, and therefore perfectly secure, was yet capable of expansion in
proportion to the increase of the numbers and transactions of men, and
the temporary abstraction of the precious metals from a particular
country by the mutations of commerce or the necessities of war, yet
it was evident that no such wise and patriotic system was to be
anticipated, till a vast amount of general suffering had enlightened
the majority of men on the subject. Least of all could it be hoped
for in Great Britain, where the increase and weight of the moneyed
interests, and the consequent determination to enhance the value
of money, without any regard to its effects on the remuneration of
industry, had become such, that no other interest in the State, nor
even all other interests allied, were able to make head against it.
The future destinies of mankind, and of this country in particular,
seemed, therefore, to be involved in clouds and darkness; nor did
any means appear to be within the bounds of possibility by which the
difficulties which beset or awaited industry could be obviated. The
greater the efforts made by industry, it was plain the greater would be
the distress in which it would be involved; because an increase in the
transactions of men required an augmentation in the circulating medium
by which they were to be conducted; and an addition to the produce of
labour, while the currency was fixed or declining, only rendered its
remuneration less. The whole object of statesmen and legislators, both
in Great Britain and America, had come to be to cheapen everything,
and raise the value of money by contracting its amount--augmenting
instead of relieving the general distress arising from the inadequacy
of the existing circulating medium for the enlarged wants and numbers
of men. The evil seemed to be beyond the reach of human remedy; for
in the only country in which a remedy could be effectually applied,
the moneyed interests had become so powerful, that Government was
set chiefly on measures which, for the sake of private profit, most
grievously aggravated it. But Providence is wiser than man: Nature
is seldom awanting in the end to those who are suffering from the
faults of others. A few bands of American squatters wandered into
Texas--a war of aggression on the part of the United States succeeded
to make good the settlement--a serious contest took place with
Mexico--the Anglo-Saxon race asserted their wonted superiority over
the Castilian--CALIFORNIA was wrested from them--and by the ultimate
effects of that conquest some of the greatest evils inflicted by human
selfishness or folly were alleviated, and the destinies of the world
were changed!
It is a striking proof how much the fortunes of men are in their own
hands, and how vain are the choicest gifts of nature if not seconded by
the vigour and industry of those for whom they are intended, that the
rich auriferous veins, the discovery of which has been attended with
such important effects, and is destined to avert so many evils arising
from the absurd legislation or selfish desires of men in recent times,
had been for three hundred years in the possession of the Spaniards,
but they had never found them out! The gold was there, under their
feet, in such quantities that its excavation, as will immediately
appear, is adequate to double the annual supply of the precious metals
for the use of man over the whole world; but they never took the
trouble to turn it up! It was so near the surface, and so accessible,
being mixed with the alluvial sand and gravel of the country, that it
was first discovered in the cutting a common mill-course through a
garden, and has since been obtained almost entirely by common labourers
digging holes not deeper than ordinary graves through the level surface
of the alluvial deposit of the mountains. They had never attempted
agricultural operations, nor thought of an improvement which would have
led to its detection. The Spaniards, as all the world knows, and as
their history in every age has demonstrated, were passionately desirous
of gold; and from the days of Columbus they had been familiar with a
tradition or report among the native Indians, that there existed beyond
the mountains in the far west a country in which gold was as plentiful
as the sand on the seashore, and was to be had simply for the trouble
of taking it. It was all true it was there, mixed in large quantities
with the alluvial deposit of the mountains; yet during three hundred
years that they held the country, they never found it out! A single
ditch in any part of the flat region, which is above three hundred
miles long and forty or fifty broad, would have revealed the treasure,
but they never took the trouble to cut it. Before the Anglo-Saxons had
been there three months, they had discovered the riches lying below
their feet. Such is the difference of races! It is easy to see to which
is destined the sceptre of the globe.
It is impossible as yet to say with positive certainty what is the
amount of gold which may be obtained for a long period from this
auriferous region; but it is already evident that it will be very
great--much greater than was at first anticipated. The following
extract, from the great and able Free-Trade organ, the _Times_, of Nov.
19, 1850, will show what amount has been realised and exported from San
Francisco last year, and what may be anticipated in the next:--
"Some estimates have lately been formed of the shipments of
gold received in Europe from California to the present time,
which, we believe, may be regarded as tolerably accurate,
and according to which the amount is about £3,300,000. On
the other side, up to the end of September, the receipts at
the two mints of the United States had been about 31,000,000
dols., or £6,200,000. Since that time we have had advices
of farther arrivals at New York and New Orleans amounting
to £500,000. An aggregate is consequently formed of exactly
£10,000,000. To this must be added, in order to estimate the
total production, not only the amounts which have found their
way to China, Manilla, Australia, Oregon, the Sandwich Islands,
the States of Spanish America, &c., but also the total which
has been retained in California for the purposes of currency.
The population in that country now ranges somewhere between
200,000 and 300,000, and although a considerable amount of
silver dollars have been imported, the bulk of the circulation
is believed still to be in the form of gold-dust or of gold
tokens. If the 250,000 persons possess, on an average, £10
a-piece, we have a sum of £2,500,000; and, looking at the
expense of a week's maintenance in the country, as well as
the large quantities constantly in transit, as well as the
reserves, which, as was shown by the last advices, the various
deposit-houses are compelled to retain to meet sudden runs,
it is probable that this is under the real total. Taking all
points into consideration, it may, therefore, be assumed
that the whole which has been raised is equal to at least
£13,000,000 sterling. Of this production, according to recent
official returns from the United States, nearly four-fifths
have taken place during the present year. Of 25,966,817 dols.
received in the United States Mint at Philadelphia, up to the
end of September last, only 44,177 dols. had arrived in 1848,
and 5,481,430 dols. in 1849, while the quantity in 1850 had
been 20,441,210 dols. The same proportions would probably
prevail with regard to the sums distributed to other places;
and we are, therefore, led to the supposition that the export
this year has already actually reached upwards of £10,000,000,
although the results of two additional months have yet to be
known. It will be observed, consequently, that the unexpected
feature which has hitherto attended the progress of this new
region--namely, that almost all the accounts from it, although
deemed exaggerations at first, have proved ultimately to have
been understatements--is still presented. At the commencement
of 1850 the most sanguine expectations that were formed in any
direction fixed its probable yield at £10,000,000; and not only
has this been exceeded, but each quarter of the year has thus
far shown an increase of nearly half upon the amount gathered
in the preceding one. Thus the receipts at Philadelphia, for
the first three months, were 4,370,714 dols., while they were
6,920,496 dols. for the second, and again 9,250,000 dols. for
the third. This rate of augmentation coincides with the influx
of population, and, as the emigration to the country is certain
to be continued until the remuneration it affords for labour is
brought to a level with the advantages offered elsewhere, there
is no reason, so long as we are without accounts of an apparent
limit to the field of operations, to anticipate anything else
than a steady continuance of an improving ratio. So far from a
limit having yet been found, each fresh exploration seems to
develope new and more favourable localities, and an extended
discovery of dry diggings lately alleged to have been made,
together with the steps in progress elsewhere to crush the
mountain ore by machinery, appears to hold out the prospect
that, even with the approach of winter, there will scarcely be
a suspension of the prevailing activity."--_Times, Nov. 19,
1850._
By the last accounts there was no less than a million sterling
exported from California in _six days_. This amount of gold, great
as it is, however, is by no means the whole of the supply which has
been obtained. It is the regular measured amount only--what entered
the custom-house books, and was exported in the entered traders. But
who can estimate the amount which in those vast and desolate regions
has been amassed by individuals, and made its way out of the country
in their private possession, or secretly in shipments of which no
account was kept? It is incalculable: like the plunder amassed during
the sack of a capital or province, it may be guessed at, but cannot
be ascertained with anything approaching to accuracy. Probably the
amount thus acquired, but not entering any public records, may equal
all that is ascertained from the custom-house books. But call it only
a half, or fifty per cent, it will follow that last year the amount
raised was upwards of £15,000,000, and this year (1851) may be expected
to reach £17,000,000 or £18,000,000! If so, it will nearly double the
annual supply of the precious metals for the use of the globe, which at
present, from all sources, is between £16,000,000 and £17,000,000. It
may with confidence be anticipated, that how secretly soever great part
of this treasure may be smuggled or conveyed out of California, none,
or at least very little of it, will be lost. It will all be carefully
preserved, and sooner or later find its way into the circulation of the
world, or be manufactured into the gold ornaments and vessels which
minister to its luxury or magnificence. Nothing more is required to
show the prodigious influence of this great change; beyond all question
it will, in its ultimate effects, alter the face of the globe.
Mr M'Culloch observes in his _Commercial Dictionary_--"Should _eight
or ten millions_ yearly, in addition to the present supply, be
obtained from any other source, it will produce a gradual alteration
of prices, similar to that which took place three centuries ago on the
discovery of the mines of Mexico and Peru." No one can doubt that this
observation is well founded; but if the effect of eight or ten millions
annually added to the treasures of the world would be so considerable,
what must the effect of the addition of sixteen or eighteen millions?
Yet this addition is just _now going on_. In the month of August
last, the gold shipped at San Francisco alone was 2,984,000 dollars,
or about £800,000; and supposing a half more was raised, of which no
account is kept, this is £1,200,000 in a single month! In five weeks
from September 1, the quantity shipped was 5,000,000 dollars, or above
£1,200,000; which implies at least £1,800,000 altogether obtained. This
is from the labour of 40,000 or 50,000 persons only, who are at present
engaged in the diggings; but it is known that from 80,000 to 90,000
will be engaged in them next year, so that the supply raised may be
expected to be nearly doubled. There is great inequality in the amount
obtained by individual persons employed in that laborious occupation;
but taking the average, it is about four and a half dollars a day.
Call it four only, and suppose they work 250 days in the year, each
person at this rate will raise 1000 dollars' worth of gold, or nearly
£250. At that rate, 50,000 persons would raise £12,500,000 in a year;
and 75,000, £18,750,000;--which coincides very nearly with the result
derived as above from other sources of information.
The bullionists, struck with terror at so prodigious an addition
annually to their darling gold, and consequent diminution in its
exchangeable value, are beginning to exert themselves to decry it. They
say that there is a "_Currency Restriction Act of Nature_;" that the
supply of gold from the alluvial washings will soon be exhausted; and
that when the excavation comes to be made from the rocks and mountains
in which the veins are embedded, it will cease to be profitable, from
the hardness of the strata of rock in which the veins are found.[4] The
plea in abatement of the supply of gold thus likely to be obtained is
very remarkable. The fact of its appearing in the highly respectable
journal where it first was ushered to the world, and from the pen of
the eminent geologist from whom it is said to have proceeded, are
alike ominous. It shows at once how marvellously strong has been the
hold which the mania for raising the value of gold and cheapening
that of everything else prevailing during the last thirty years, from
the influence of the holders of realised wealth, has got of the most
influential classes in this country; and how deep is their alarm at the
prospect of all their measures being at once blown into the air by the
augmented supply _of this very gold_ from the shores of California! A
"Currency Restriction Act of Nature!" What a commentary on the measures
of Sir R. Peel, so vehemently lauded and strenuously supported by all
the capitalists whose fortunes, from the Currency Restriction Act of
the right hon. baronet, were every day increasing in value! They would
fain enlist Nature in the same crusade against labour and in favour of
riches; but they may save themselves the trouble. There is no Currency
Restriction Act of Nature: her beneficence, unlike that of man, is
equally distributed over all her children. The CURRENCY EXTENSION ACT
of Nature will only stand forth in brighter relief from having been
immediately preceded by the Currency _Restriction_ Act of Man.
To show how chimerical are the hopes of a Currency Restriction Act of
Nature, which is to limit and interrupt the blessings with which an
increased supply of the precious metals for the general service of the
world cannot fail to be attended, it is sufficient to observe that
the auriferous region where the gold is found in alluvial deposit, is
said to be a tract of country between three and four hundred miles
long and from thirty to forty miles broad. It is therefore as long as
from London to Berwick, and as broad as the average breadth of the
plains of Yorkshire. What is the scraping or excavations of sixty or
eighty thousand men on so immense a surface? Conceive every one of
these persons _daily digging his own grave_ in this auriferous region:
how long will it take them to go over the whole surface and exhaust
its treasures? Only apply to it the test of the rudest calculation.
A square mile contains above 3,000,000 square yards. Supposing each
digging occupies two square yards, there will be 1,500,000 diggings
in a square mile; and if each person excavates a digging a-day, which
is probably as much as can be calculated upon at an average, as the
operation is so much impeded by water, 100,000 persons will take
fifteen days to turn up and exhaust one square mile. In the gold
region, however, there are at least 9000 square miles. Supposing that
the 100,000 persons work 300 days in the year, which is more than can
be calculated upon, they will only turn over and thoroughly search
twenty square miles in a year. At this rate, it would take above
four hundred years for even that large army of labourers to exhaust
the _alluvial_ gold region. We are aware the diggings do not go on
regularly as is now supposed; that one man tries his fortune here, and
another there; and that the earth is perforated at the same time in a
great variety of places, many of them at a considerable distance from
each other. We know, too, that the real extent of the gold region is
hitherto the object of speculation and hope, rather than actual survey
or knowledge. It is quite probable, too, that our calculation, which
is a mere rough guess, may be above the mark in some particulars,
and below it in others. Still, enough, making allowance for all such
errors, remains to show that, in the alluvial gold region alone, if the
accounts of its extent and riches are at all to be relied on, there is
ample room for a vast annual addition to the treasures of the earth for
a great many generations to come. The circumstance which makes it all
but certain that the gold region must be very extensive, is its being
found in the _alluvial_ deposits of the mountain rivers, such as the
Sacramento, along their whole course. If you find granite or mica slate
particles in the beds of rivers and the level fields they overflow near
the sea, you are sure of finding the same deposits up to the mountain
regions from which they are brought down.
But what is the alluvial gold region to the mountain region from
which the precious metals with which it abounds have been torn down
by the storms and wintry torrents of thousands of years! If you find
a _detritus_ of a certain description in the mixed sand and gravel of
a plain, you may predicate with perfect certainty the existence of
mountains and rocks of the same formation in the higher regions from
which it has been brought down. Granite or mica-slate _debris_ in the
beds of rivers or the level fields which they occasionally overflow,
imply granite or mica-slate in the hilly region from which they take
their rise. Whence has all the gold come which in the alluvial plains
of California is producing such treasures, and changing prices over
the whole world? It has come down from the mountains. And what must be
the metallic riches with which they are charged, when the washed-down
gravel at their feet is so prolific of mineral wealth! The bullionists,
influenced by dread of a general rise of prices, and depreciation of
the exchangeable value of their realised fortunes from this rise, say
there is a "Currency Restriction Act of Nature;" that gold at any depth
is unworkable at a profit; that Providence is niggardly of its bounty;
and they in secret indulge the hope that it will continue permanently
that contraction of the currency which they have contrived to force
upon mankind, and which, while it lasted, has proved so eminently
profitable to themselves. But a little consideration must show that
their hopes in this respect are entirely fallacious. Granting that the
veins of gold, when they go deep, are embedded in very hard rock, what
is to be said to the cropping out of the veins over the vast extent of
the auriferous Rocky Mountains? If the wasting away of wintry storms on
the tops and sides of these mountains brings down such quantities of
gold with the streams which furrow their sides, must not the laborious
hand of industry prove equally efficacious in removing it? If the
expansive force of a rapid thaw, following severe frost, can rend the
rocks in which the gold is embedded, is not the power of gunpowder
or steam equally great? Already a company, composed of English
capitalists, has been formed to explore the mountain treasures; and
without supposing that they are to find an El Dorado in every hill, and
admitting that there may be several failures before the right one is
hit on, it is morally certain that in the end the mountain reserves of
treasure must be discovered.
The additions to the currency of the earth, hitherto considered, have
been those coming from these auriferous regions of North America, now
for the first time brought into view only; but this is by no means
the whole of the provision made by nature for the extended wants of
mankind in this age of transition, vehement excitement, extended
transactions, and rapidly-increasing numbers. The URAL AND ALTAI
MOUNTAINS have brought forth their treasures at the same time, and
provided as amply for the wants of the Sclavonic race in the Old, as
the Californian hills have done for the growth of the Anglo-Saxon in
the New World. Gradually, for twenty years past, the Russian treasures
have been brought to light; and their progressive increase has done
more to alleviate the distress and sustain the industry of western
Europe than all the wisdom of man in her aged monarchies has been to
effect. Grievous as have been the calamities which the contraction of
the currency of the world by the reduction of paper in Great Britain,
simultaneously with the ruin of the South American mines by the
revolutions of its vast regions, which we laboured so assiduously to
promote, have produced, they would have been doubly severe if the Ural
and Altai Mountains had not provided treasures at the very time when
the other supplies were failing, which in part at least supplied their
place. Their influence was long felt in Europe before their amount was
suspected, and even now the wisdom or terrors of the Russian Government
have prevented it from being accurately known; but it is generally
understood to have now reached five or six millions sterling annually;
and, like the Californian gold, it is susceptible of an indefinite
increase, in the event of the influx of that metal from America not
lowering its value so as to render it unworkable in Asia at a profit.
Assuming it, then, as certain that for a very long period, and for
many successive generations, a vast addition is to be made to the
annual supply of the metallic treasures of the earth, it becomes
of the highest importance to the interests of industry in all its
branches, agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing, to consider
what _the effects of the change_ thus induced must be--what benefits
it will confer upon mankind--what dangers, if any, it will remove,
especially in the great commercial community in which we are placed.
And a little consideration must be sufficient to demonstrate to every
impartial and disinterested mind what these effects will be--and to
prevent, on the one hand, chimerical or unfounded hopes being formed,
and, on the other, undue or unmanly depression from the effects of
recent calamities being felt. Fortunately we are not driven to theory
or speculation to ascertain what these effects will be--experience,
the only sure guide in political science, points to them with unerring
certainty: the great monetary revolution of the sixteenth century is
the precursor and the monitor of that of the nineteenth.
The first effect of a great addition being made to the annual supply
of a particular metal in general use and high estimation all over the
world, is that the exchangeable value of _that metal_, in comparison
with other metals or articles of consumption, will undergo an immediate
alteration, which will prove lasting and considerable if the increased
supply turns out to be great and permanent. This is no more than takes
place every day with all the articles of commerce. According as the
crop of wheat, or oats, or barley, or cotton proves abundant, so surely
does the price of these articles rise or fall in the market. If gold
is produced in much greater quantities than heretofore, its price, as
compared with everything else, and in particular with the precious
metal in common use, next to it in value, silver, must ere long
change. If the increased supply proves very great, it may in time come
to reduce the price of gold, as compared with silver, fifty, eighty,
or even a hundred per cent. Gold is more valuable than silver, only
because it is more scarce: if it becomes equally plentiful, its value
will gradually sink; and if the quantity afloat in the earth should
ever come to be as great as that of silver, it would come to be of no
greater value. This effect may appear either in the fall of the value
of gold as compared with silver, or notes exchangeable into gold, or
in the _rise_ in the value of silver as compared with that of gold,
or notes exchangeable into that metal. This effect has already taken
place. Silver is 3 per cent dearer as compared with gold than it was a
year ago: and this change will doubtless continue. This is the first
and obvious effect of a great addition to the gold treasures of the
earth; and even this is a considerable benefit; because, as it has been
produced by the augmentation of the amount of the circulating medium of
mankind, it must facilitate the acquisition of it for the purposes of
commerce, or for sustaining the undertakings of industry.
But though this is the first, it is by no means either the only or the
most important effect of a great addition to the gold treasures of
the earth. By far the most important and beneficial effect is to be
found in _the gradual but certain rise of prices_, whether measured in
gold, silver, or paper, which inevitably results from any considerable
addition to the circulating medium of mankind. This effect is precisely
analogous to the great rise of prices which took place during the
war, in consequence of the extended issue of paper which was made
after 1797 to sustain its expenses. It is well known that it more than
doubled the cost of every article of consumption: it raised the price
of wheat, in fifteen years, from 55s. to 110s.[5] This effect resulted
from the extension of the issues of the Bank of England from twelve to
twenty-eight millions a-year. A result precisely the same must take
place over the whole world from a lasting and considerable addition to
the metallic treasures by which its exchanges are conducted. If the
gold in circulation, or which may be put into circulation, is greatly
augmented, the price of everything must rise, whether it is paid in
_gold or silver_, just as the price of everything rose during the war,
whether paid in specie or in paper. Gold then bore such a monopoly
price, from its being so much in request for the necessities of war,
that the guinea at last came to be worth twenty-eight shillings. That
was the enhanced price of gold, as compared with silver; it had risen
thirty per cent in consequence of the absorption of gold specie in the
Peninsular, German, and Russian campaigns. But the change of prices
resulting from the extended issue of paper was much more considerable;
it had increased not thirty, but a hundred per cent, and that equally,
whether the price was paid in gold, silver, paper, or copper.
This change will be universal. It is a mistake to suppose that it
will be limited to the countries, such as England, in which gold is
the established standard of value. It will affect equally, certainly,
though perhaps somewhat more indirectly, the nations, such as France,
where silver is the standard and great medium of exchange. The reason
is, that by adding considerably to the general circulating medium of
the globe, it brings a larger quantity to be balanced against every
article which forms the subject of commerce, and consequently raises
its price when measured by any part of that circulating medium. This
effect may be seen every day in ordinary life. A plentiful crop of
wheat, especially if it continues for several years in succession,
lowers the price not only of wheat, _but of every other grain crop in
the country_, and consequently raises the price of every article of
commerce when measured by the amount given for it in any of these grain
crops. And the same effect took place on a great scale, over the whole
world, for centuries together, when the mines of Mexico and Peru were
discovered, which, although chiefly productive of silver only, yet, by
the large quantity of that metal which they yielded, raised prices to
a very great degree universally, and that equally whether those prices
were paid in gold, silver, or copper.
The effects hitherto considered are those on the value of the precious
metals themselves from a considerable and continued increase in their
supply in any part of the world. But in a commercial and opulent
community such as Great Britain, where the greater part of its
undertakings are carried on by means of money advanced by banks in
their own notes or those of the Bank of England, on the security of
bills or other obligations, the effect of a considerable increase in
the supply of gold or silver is far more extensive. Such an increase
diminishes the great weakness of a paper circulation, that of being
dependent on the supply of the precious metals, and liable to be
contracted when they are withdrawn. An inconvertible paper, issued in
reasonable and not excessive quantities, and adequately guaranteed,
would answer the purpose just as well in a particular country, and
effectually secure it against the terrible disasters consequent on
the alternate expansion and contraction of the currency; the former
inducing the commencement of undertakings of which the latter disabled
the performance. But the world is not wise enough yet to perceive how
easy and effectual a remedy this simple expedient would provide against
the greatest and most extensive calamities which now afflict humanity;
and so great is the power of vested capital which such calamities
benefit, that it is probable several generations must descend to
their graves, or become insolvent, before it is generally adopted.
But the extension of the metallic currency of the globe, though it
cannot altogether remove, materially lessens this dreadful danger. _It
inspires confidence among moneyed men._ It diminishes the terror of the
withdrawal of the precious metals, which, when it once seizes them, is
productive of such unbounded calamities; and thus renders the granting
of accommodation on their part both more abundant and more regular.
Paper becomes more plentiful, because gold, on which it is based, has
flowed into the coffers of the banks in larger quantities, and thus at
once augmented their own treasures, and diminished the risk of their
being drained away by the necessities of other men. The effect of this
change in a commercial and manufacturing community is incalculable.
We can form a clear idea from woeful experience, of what it is. It is
precisely the converse of Sir R. Peel's measure.
It is impossible to give a better picture of what this great Currency
Extension Act of Nature will do for industry in all countries, and
especially the commercial, than by saying that it will as nearly as
possible _reverse_ the effects which Mr Cobden, the great advocate for
the cheapening system, said, in his evidence before the Committee on
Bank Issues in 1840, he had experienced in the preceding years in his
own business from the contraction of the currency consequent on the
great importation of grain in 1838 and 1839:--
"I could adduce a fact derived from my own experience that
would illustrate the heavy losses to which manufacturers were
exposed in their operations, by those fluctuations (in 1837)
in the value of money. I am a calico printer. I purchase the
cloth, which is my raw material, in the market; and have
usually in warehouse three or four months' supply of material.
I must necessarily proceed in my operations, whatever change
there may be--whether a rise or a fall in the market. I employ
six hundred hands; and those hands must be employed. I have
fixed machinery and capital which _must_ also be kept going;
and, therefore, whatever the prospects of a rise or fall in
price may be, I am constantly obliged to be purchasing the
material, and contracting for the material on which I operate.
In 1837 I lost by my stock in hand L.20,000, as compared with
the stock-taking in 1835, 1836, and 1838; the average of
those three years, when compared with 1837, shows that I lost
L.20,000 by my business in 1837; and what I wish to add is,
that the whole of this loss arose from the depreciation in the
value of my stock.
"My business was as prosperous; we stood as high as printers
as we did previously; our business since that has been as
good, and there was no other cause for the losses I then
sustained, but the depreciation of the value of the articles
in warehouse in my hands. What I wish particularly to show,
is the defenceless condition in which we manufacturers are
placed, and how completely we are at the mercy of these
unnatural fluctuations. Although I was aware that the losses
were coming, it was impossible I could do otherwise than
proceed onward--with the certainty of suffering a loss on the
stock; to stop the work of six hundred hands, and to fail to
supply our customers, would have been altogether ruinous; that
is a fact drawn from my own experience. I wish to point to
another example of a most striking kind, showing the effect of
these fluctuations on merchants. I hold in my hand a list of
thirty-six articles which were imported in 1837, by the house
of Butterworth and Brookes of Manchester, a house very well
known; Mr Brookes is now borough-reeve of Manchester. Here is a
list of thirty-six articles imported in the year 1837, in the
regular way of business, and opposite to each article there is
the rate of loss upon it as it arrived, and as it was sold. The
average loss is 37-1/2 per cent on those thirty-six articles,
and they were imported from Canton, Trieste, Bombay, Bahia,
Alexandria, Lima, and, in fact, all the intermediate places
almost. This, I presume, is a fair guide to show the losses
which other merchants incurred on similar articles."
It was these disastrous losses which made Mr Cobden a Free-trader. He
wished to cheapen everything as his own produce had been cheapened.
The contraction of the currency, and its being made dependent on the
retention of gold, was the origin and root of the whole evil and all
the disasters the nation has since undergone.
Such a change, however, the reverse of all this, like all those
produced by nature, is so gradual as to the vast majority of men to be
imperceptible. Like the gradual extension of the day in spring, or the
change of temperature, the change is so slight from day to day that
it eludes even the closest observation. From one month to another,
however, the alteration is great and striking. The addition, first,
of six or eight millions of gold, annually raised, rising by degrees
to sixteen or eighteen millions--which doubles the annual supply of
the precious metals for the use of the globe--being diffused over an
immense surface, and finding its way more or less into the coffers of
all nations, may not produce a great or even visible start of prices at
any one time. But the change will be incessant; and before many years
have elapsed, the result, if the increased supply continues, will be
great and apparent. In the first instance, the effect will appear in
arresting the fall of prices which has so long been going on, and which
our legislative measures have all been calculated to increase. But
after arresting the fall, it will speedily induce a rise; and this rise
will for a long period be so steady and considerable as to produce a
very great increase in the remuneration of the labouring classes, and
immensely to benefit them. There is no speculation in this: it is only
supposing that the increase of gold is to produce the same effect as
the increase of silver, from the discovery of the South American mines,
did three centuries ago.
The effect of the same change, by diminishing the weight of debt and
taxes, will be still more signal and beneficial. Among the many and
appalling evils of which a rise in the value of the circulating medium,
and consequent fall in that of everything else, is productive, there is
perhaps none so widespread and calamitous in its effects, as the adding
to the weight of debts and taxes, and thus weighing down the energies
of the productive classes, upon whose efforts the whole prosperity
of society depends. It is that which has been the great cause of the
long-continued depression and agony, interrupted only by fleeting
gleams of prosperity, of the last thirty years, as the sudden expansion
and contraction of the currency consequent on its being made dependent
on the presence or absence of the precious metals, has been of its
frightful oscillations. The taxes now paid by the nation, as measured
by the price of wheat--the true measure--are, after, five-and-thirty
years of peace, twice as heavy as they were in 1815, after twenty
years of a costly war. This is what renders it so difficult for any
government to maintain armaments, either at sea or land, at all
commensurate to the public necessities; which has weakened our national
influence, and degraded our national character, and exposed us to the
deplorable state of weakness against foreign aggression, to the dangers
of which, the Duke of Wellington has said he has found it impossible
to awaken any Administration for thirty years. The Government see the
public dangers, but they are disabled from guarding against them,
because Parliament, stimulated by suffering constituencies whom the
fall of prices has involved in constant difficulties, will not vote
the necessary supplies. It is the same with the weight of mortgages,
jointures, family provisions, bonds, bills, and debts of every
description. They have all been doubled in weight since the bill of
1819 contracted the currency; and hence the inextricable embarrassments
into which nearly all classes of the community have been precipitated,
except the moneyed, whose fortunes have every day been increasing in
real amount, from the same cause which has spread ruin so generally
around them.
When it is said that the effect of Californian gold will be to reverse
all this--to reduce gradually, and probably before twenty years have
elapsed, _half the weight of debt and taxes_ now felt as so grievous a
burden by the community--it is affirmed that it will confer, perhaps,
the greatest blessing which a beneficent Providence could confer on a
suffering world. In England it will gradually and to a certain extent,
so far as average prices are concerned, undo all that the Bullionists
and Free-traders have been doing for the last thirty years. It will
remove a large part of the frightful evils consequent on the monetary
measures of Sir Robert Peel; and if seconded by a revision of our
import duties, and a moderate tax for fiscal purposes on all foreign
articles brought into the country, it would go far to repair the
devastation produced by the selfish legislation of the last thirty
years. In France it will arrest that dreadful fall of wages which, ever
since the peace, has been felt to be increasing, from the constant
reduction of prices arising from the destruction of the South American
mines, and the simultaneous measures adopted for the contraction of
the currency in Great Britain. The unjust monopoly of realised capital
will be arrested, at least for a long period. The unjust depression
of industry, by the continued fall of prices, will be gradually
terminated. But so gradual will be the change, and so unseen the
operation of the vivifying element thus let into society, that even the
classes most benefited by it will, for the most part, be ignorant of
the cause to which their improved circumstances have been owing. They
will be blessed by the hand of Nature, they know not how or by whom,
as, under the former system, they were cursed by the hand of man, they
knew not how or by whom.
Already the beneficial effects of Californian gold have been felt over
the whole world, and nowhere more strongly than in this country. It
is well known that prices of all articles of commerce, except corn
and sugar, have risen twenty or thirty per cent within the last year;
and the Free-traders consider that as being entirely owing to their
measures. If so, it is singular how _corn and sugar_, on which the
inundation of Free Trade has been chiefly let in since 1846, should
be the _only exceptions_ to the general rise. It is singular what
contradictory effects they ascribe to their system: at one time it is
lauded to the skies, because it tends to lower prices, and cheapen
every article of consumption; at another, because it is said to raise
prices, and encourage every branch of industry. Both effects cannot be
owing to the same system: to ascribe them both to it is to say that a
certain combination of gases produces alternately fire and water. At
all events, if Free Trade brings about a rise of prices, what comes of
all the arguments which went to recommend it on the score of reducing
them? The truth is, however, Free Trade has nothing whatever to do
with the recent rise of prices of manufactured articles, nor with the
extension of the national exports which has taken place. These happy
results, the passing gleam of sunshine, have been entirely owing to
other causes, among which Californian gold bears a prominent place.
Free Trade has tended only to continue and perpetuate the misery and
depression which attended its first introduction.
This argument of the increase of our exports last year (1850) having
been owing to Free Trade, has been so admirably disposed of by that
able and intrepid man to whom the nation is under such obligations
for the light he has thrown on these subjects, and the courageous way
in which he has everywhere asserted them, in a late public meeting at
Rugby, that we cannot do better than quote his words:--
"The Free-traders had boasted much of their system as having
increased the amount of our exports; and he (Mr Young) had
been continually trying for a long period to get from them
the names of the countries to which those increased imports
went. At length he had the fact; and the result would be most
startling as applied to the arguments and predictions of
that party before the corn law was repealed. The countries
he would take were Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia,
Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France; and he found that in
the year 1845 the quantity of corn imported from all these
countries, comprising, as they did, the whole of northern and
central Europe, amounted to 1,741,730 quarters, whilst the
declared value of British and Irish manufactures exported
to those countries was L.17,504,417. But last year the corn
imported from those countries had increased in quantity to
6,857,530 quarters, whilst our exports to them had decreased
to L.15,274,639. These figures showed that from the whole of
northern and central Europe we took last year no less than
5,115,800 quarters of corn more than in 1845, and that there
was a decrease in the value of our exports of L.2,229,778.
Again, last year the declared value of our _gross_ exports
amounted to L.63,596,025, but in 1845 it reached the sum of
L.60,111,082; so that in the course of these four years the
increase was only L.3,484,943. He found also that our exports
in 1830 were L.35,842,623, and in 1835, L.47,372,270, being an
increase on the five years of L.11,529,647, or 32 2-10ths per
cent. That was an increase under the operation of protection.
In 1840 the exports amounted to L.51,406,430, or an increase
upon 1835 of L.4,634,160, or 8 5-10ths per cent. In 1845 they
were L.60,111,082--an increase on 1840 of L.8,704,652, or
16 9-10ths per cent. In 1849, L.63,596,025, an increase on
1845 of L.3,484,943; and in the present year, supposing the
increase continued in the same ratio, he calculated that that
increase would on the year 1845 be about L.4,350,000, or 7
2-10ths per cent. Would Free-traders boast of their exports
after that? They talked upon this question as if the country
had, under the system of protection, been in a perfectly dead
and stagnant condition, and that the agriculturists were like
the clods of the earth, and less capable of improvement. Why,
it was under protection that our ships were employed to go to
the island of Ichaboe, from which guano was first imported into
this country; and it was under protection that that island
had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and every cwt. of
its guano had been brought here and spread upon the soil. He
rejoiced and exulted in the march of science as much as any
man; but it was an arrogant and an unfounded assumption on
the part of the Free-traders to monopolise to themselves, as
the result of their system, those improvements in agriculture
which were going on under protection with railroad speed, and
to which, in truth, their measures had only given a check, and
not an impetus. But then he was asked, what have you to say
to the United States? He would tell them. He found that the
exports to the United States amounted to L.11,971,028 in 1849;
but in 1836 they were not less than L.12,425,605; so that the
exports in the former exceeded those in the latter year by
L.454,577. Surely facts like these would dispose of a few of
the Free-trade fallacies, and we should not hear them again
repeated, at all events."--_Morning Herald_, Nov. 28, 1850.
The restoration of peace on the Continent was the principal cause
which again raised the amount of our exports to the Old World. This
appears decisively in the returns: the exports of Great Britain to
Germany alone, which, in 1848, had sunk to less than £4,000,000, rose,
in 1850, to £6,078,355. The cessation of purchases to the Continent,
during the two preceding years, in consequence of the alarm consequent
on the French and German revolutions, only made the rush for English
manufactures greater when the restoration of tranquillity reopened the
Continent to our industry. In America the change was equally great, and
equally irrespective of Free Trade: our exports to the United States,
in 1850, exceeded £12,000,000. This extension arose from the general
rise of prices, and extension of credit, from the opening of the
treasures of California. It not only created a new market for exports
on the reverse of the Rocky Mountains, but so vivified and animated
every part of the Union, as rendered them capable of purchasing a much
larger quantity of the manufactured articles of this country than they
had done for a great number of years.[6]
But by far the most important and beneficial effect of Californian gold
hitherto experienced has been in the extension of credit and increase
of accommodation at home. This effect is obvious and important. The
notes of the Bank of England in circulation, have risen in the last
year to L.20,000,000 or L.21,000,000 from L.16,500,000, which they had
fallen to during the panic. The circulation of every other bank has,
as a matter of course, been proportionably augmented. What produced
this great increase in the circulating medium? The influx of bullion
into the country, which augmented the treasure in the Bank of England
to above L.16,000,000. There is the secret of the whole thing; of the
activity in the manufacturing districts, and the general extension of
credit and rise of prices through the districts. It is Californian gold
which has done the whole; for it has at once filled to overflowing the
vaults of the Bank of England, and relieved its officers, and those of
all similar establishments, from all dread of a drain of specie setting
in. Gold was abundant; the banks no longer feared a collapse: therefore
notes were abundant also; the terrors of the holders of them were
abated. Prices rose, and credit was extended. We are far from thinking
that it is a wise and judicious system to make credit of every kind
entirely dependent on the amount of metallic treasure in the vaults of
the Bank of England: we only say, having done this by Sir R. Peel's
monetary system, we have to thank California for having put at least
_a temporary stop to the evils with which it was pregnant_. It is not
surprising that the addition of even so small a sum to the metallic
circulation of the commercial world should produce, in a single year,
so great a result. The discovery of two millions of bank-notes, in an
old chest of the Bank of England, stopped the panic of December 1825;
the mere issuing of Lord J. Russell's letter, announcing the temporary
repeal of the Bank Charter Act, put a period to the far severer crash
of 1847. The addition of five millions to the metallic treasure of this
country is quite sufficient to vivify every branch of industry, for it
will probably put fifty millions, in bank-notes and private bills, into
circulation.
As the influx of Californian gold, however, is an element of such
immense importance thus let into the social world, it is material
to observe what evils it is adequate to remedy, and to what social
diseases it can be regarded as a panacea. This is the more necessary,
because, while it tends by its beneficent influence to conceal for
a time the pernicious effects of other measures, it is by no means
a remedy for them; nor has it a tendency even, in the long run, to
lessen their danger. It induces immediate prosperity, by the extension
of credit and rise of prices with which it is attended; but it has no
tendency to diminish the dreadful evils of Free-Trade and a currency
mainly dependent on the retention of the precious metals at all times
in the country.
On the contrary, it may, under many circumstances, materially aggravate
them.
As the effect produced by a great addition of the metallic treasures
of the earth is _universal_, it must affect prices equally in every
part of the world. The largest part of the bullion, indeed, will be
brought to the richest country, which is best able to buy it, and has
most need of it to form the basis of its transactions. But still, some
part will find its way into every country; prices will be everywhere
raised, and _the relative proportion between them in different
countries will remain the same, or even be rendered more unfavourable
to the richer state_. That is the material circumstance; for it shows
that it must leave the greatest and most lasting evils of Free Trade
untouched. Supposing gold to become so plentiful that the sovereign
is only worth ten shillings, and the effect on general prices to be
such that the average price of the quarter of wheat is raised from
forty to sixty shillings--which, in a course of years, is by no means
improbable--still the relative position of the British with the Polish
and American cultivator will remain the same. The price of the wheat
may be raised from 15s. to 25s. a-quarter, on the banks of the Vistula
or the Mississippi; but still the _ability of their cultivators to
undersell our farmers will remain the same_, or rather be augmented.
Prices will still be so much higher in the old rich and heavily-taxed
country, which absorbs the largest part of the metallic circulation
of the earth, than in the young poor and untaxed one, that in the
production of the fruits of the earth, to which machinery can never be
made applicable, the inability to carry on the competition will only
be rendered the more apparent by the increasing, or at all events,
permanent difference of the prices.
In the next place, how cheap soever gold, from its augmented plenty,
may become, there will be no cessation, as long as our paper
circulation remains on its present footing, of those dreadful monetary
crises which now, at stated periods recurring every five or six years,
spread such unheard-of ruin through the industrious classes. Let gold,
from its greater plenty, become of only half its value, or a sovereign
be only worth ten shillings, and prices, in consequence, rise to double
their present amount, the danger of a monetary crisis, as long as our
currency is based on its present footing, will remain the same. Still,
any considerable drain of the metallic treasure of the country, such as
it is--either from the necessities of foreign war, the adverse state of
foreign exchanges, or a great importation, occasioned by a deficient
home harvest--will send the specie headlong out, and, by suddenly
contracting the currency, ruin half of the persons engaged in business
undertakings. It is the _inconceivable folly_ of making the paper
circulation dependent on the retention of the metallic; the enormous
error of enacting, that, for every five sovereigns that are drawn out
of the country, a five-pound note shall be drawn in by the bankers; the
infatuated self-immolation arising from the gratuitous negation of the
greatest blessing of a paper circulation--that of supplying, during the
temporary absence of the metallic currency, its want, and obviating all
the evils thence arising--which is the real source of the evils under
which we have suffered so severely since the disastrous epoch of 1819,
when the system was introduced. The increased supply of gold, so far
from tending to obviate this danger, has a directly opposite effect;
for, by augmenting the metallic treasures of the country, and thus
raising credit during periods of prosperity, it engages the nation in
a vast variety of undertakings, the completion of which is rendered
impossible when the wind of adversity blows, by the sudden contraction
of its currency and credit. And to this danger _the mercantile classes
are exposed beyond any other_; for as their undertakings are always far
beyond their realised capital, and supported entirely by credit, every
periodical contraction of the currency, recurring every five or six
years, exposes one-half of them to inevitable ruin.
Let not the Free-traders, therefore, lay the flattering unction
to their souls, that California is to get them out of all their
difficulties, and that after having, by their ruinous measures, brought
the nation to the very brink of ruin, and destroyed one-half of its
wealth engaged in commerce, they are to escape the deserved execration
of ages, by the effects of an accidental discovery of metallic
treasures on the shores of the Pacific. Californian gold, a gift of
Providence to a suffering world, will arrest the general and calamitous
fall of prices which the Free-traders have laboured so assiduously
to introduce, and thus diminish in a most material degree the weight
of debts and taxes. So far it will undoubtedly tend to relieve the
industrious classes, _especially in the rural districts_, from much
of the misery induced on them by their oppressors; but it cannot work
impossibilities. It will leave industry in all classes, and in none
more than the manufacturing, exposed to the ruinous competition of
foreigners, working, whatever the value of money may be, at a cheaper
rate than we can ever do, because in poorer and comparatively untaxed
countries. It will leave the commercial classes permanently exposed to
the periodical recurrence of monetary storms, arising out of the very
plenty of the currency when credit is high, and its sudden withdrawal
from the effect of adverse exchanges, or the drain consequent on vast
importations of food. It will leave the British navy, and with it
the British colonial empire and our national independence, gradually
sinking from the competition, in shipping, of poorer states. Nature
will do much to counteract the disasters induced by human folly; but
the punishment of guilty selfishness is as much a part of her system
as the relief of innocent suffering; and to the end of the world those
who seek to enrich themselves by the ruin of their neighbours will work
out, in the very success of their measures, their own deserved and
memorable punishment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See "Fall of Rome," Alison's _Essays_, vol. iii. p. 440.
[2] See a very able article on California, _Quarterly Review_, Oct.
1850.
[3] "Quum Censores ob inopiam ærarii, se jam locationibus abstinerent
ædium sacrarum tuendarum, curuliumque equorum præbendorum, ac similium
his rerum: convenere ad eos frequentes, qui hastæ hujus generis
assueverant; hortatique censores, _ut omnia perinde agerent, locarent,
ac si pecunia in ærario esset_. NEMINEM, NISI BELLO CONFECTO, PECUNIAM
AB ÆRARIO PETITURUM ESSE."--LIVY, lib. xxiv. c. 19. "The censors,"
says Arnold, "found the treasury unable to supply the public services.
Upon this, trust monies belonging to widows and minors, or to widows
and unmarried women, were deposited in the treasury; and whatever
sums the trustees had to draw for, were paid by the quarter _in
bills on the banking commissioners_, or _triumvirs mensarii_. It is
probable that these bills were actually a _paper currency_, and that
they circulated as money on the security of the public faith. In the
same way _the government contracts were also paid in paper_; for the
contractors came forward in a body to the censors, and begged them to
make their contracts as usual, _promising not to demand payment till
the end of the war_. This must mean, I conceive, that they were to be
paid in orders upon the treasury, which orders were to be converted
into cash when the present difficulties of the government should be
at an end."--ARNOLD'S _History of Rome_, ii. 207, 208. This was just
an inconvertible paper currency; and its issue immediately after the
battle of Cannæ saved the Roman empire. We have heard, from a gentleman
who was present, that, in a political Whig party many years ago, when
the conversation turned on the service of a paper currency in bringing
a state through a pecuniary crisis, and some one said it was that which
enabled the Romans to surmount the Second Punic war, Lord Melbourne,
who was present, immediately repeated, from memory, the words above
quoted from Livy in capitals.
[4] _Quarterly Review_, October 1850.
[5] AVERAGE PRICES OF WHEAT:--
_s._ _d._
1792, 47 1
1793, 49 6
1794, 54 0
1795, 81 6
1796, 80 3
1809, 106 0
1810, 112 0
1811, 108 0
1812, 118 0
1813, 120 0
[6] Exports to the United States from Great Britain:--
1837, £4,695,225
1838, 7,585,760
1839, 8,839,204
1840, 5,283,020
1841, 7,098,842
1842, 3,528,807
1849, 11,971,028
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.--PART V.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
BOOK III.--INITIAL CHAPTER, SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED "MY
NOVEL."
"I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my
father graciously; "though as for The Sermon--"
Here I trembled; but the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson
Dale under their special protection; and, observing that my father
was puckering up his brows critically, they rushed boldly forward in
defence of The Sermon, and Mr Caxton was forced to beat a retreat.
However, like a skilful general, he renewed the assault upon outposts
less gallantly guarded. But as it is not my business to betray my weak
points, I leave it to the ingenuity of cavillers to discover the places
at which the Author of _Human Error_ directed his great guns.
"But," said the Captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit,
Pisistratus, to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of
Hazeldean--you will march us out into open service before you have done
with us?"
PISISTRATUS, magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr
Caxton's remarks--and he puts on an air of dignity, in order to awe
away minor assailants.--"Yes, Captain Roland--not yet awhile, but all
in good time. I have not stinted myself in canvass, and behind my
foreground of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose, hereafter, to open
some lengthened perspective of the varieties of English life--"
MR CAXTON.--"Hum!"
BLANCHE, putting her hand on my father's lip.--"We shall know better
the design, perhaps, when we know the title. Pray, Mr Author, what is
the title?"
MY MOTHER, with more animation than usual.--"Ay, Sisty--the title?"
PISISTRATUS, startled.--"The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have
never yet thought of a title!"
CAPTAIN ROLAND, solemnly.--"There is a great deal in a good title. As a
novel reader, I know that by experience."
MR SQUILLS.--"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but
what goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness 'Old Parr's
Life Pills.' Sell by the thousand, sir, when my 'Pills for Weak
Stomachs,' which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for
the advertising."
MR CAXTON.--"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius! It is not
every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it, if he have.
But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"
PISISTRATUS, stirring the fire in great excitement.--"My title! my
title!--what shall be my title!"
MR CAXTON, thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most
didactic of tones.--"From a remote period, the choice of a title has
perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their
invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced.
To begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping,' (_Labia
Dormientium_)--what book do you suppose that title to designate?--A
Catalogue of Rabbinical writers! Again, imagine some young lady of
old captivated by the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its
Flower,' and opening on a treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us
turn to the Romans. Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossiping
'Noctes' with a list of the titles in fashion in his day. For instance,
'_The Muses_' and '_The Veil_,' '_The Cornucopia_,' '_The Beehive_,'
and '_The Meadow_.' Some titles, indeed, were more truculent, and
promised food to those who love to sup upon horrors--such as '_The
Torch_,' '_The Poniard_,' '_The Stiletto_'--"
PISISTRATUS, impatiently.--"Yes, sir; but to come to My Novel."
MR CAXTON, unheeding the interruption.--"You see, you have a fine
choice here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar to a
classical reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early Dramatic
Writers."
PISISTRATUS, more hopefully.--"Ay! there is something in the Drama akin
to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea."
MR CAXTON.--"For instance, the author of the _Curiosities of
Literature_ (from whom, by the way, I am plagiarising much of the
information I bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who
wrote a Comedy, by which he intended to serve what he took for Moral
Philosophy."
PISISTRATUS, eagerly.--"Well, sir?"
MR CAXTON.--"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'"
PISISTRATUS.--"Very comic indeed, sir."
MR CAXTON.--"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things
are now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance
itself at your disposal--'Theagenes and Chariclea,' or 'The Ass' of
Longus, or 'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic
Romance, such as 'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and
delightful History of Perceforest, King of Great Britain,'"--And
therewith my father ran over a list of names as long as the Directory,
and about as amusing.
"Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a
girl, (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say,)--"
MR CAXTON.--"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty."
MY MOTHER, proceeding.--"Were much more inviting than any you mention,
Austin."
THE CAPTAIN.--"True."
MR SQUILLS.--"Certainly. Nothing like them now-a-days!"
MY MOTHER.--"'_Says she to her Neighbour, What?_'"
THE CAPTAIN.--"'_The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery_'--"
MR SQUILLS.--"'_There is a Secret; Find it Out!_'"
PISISTRATUS, pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting
tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.--"What nonsense you are talking, all
of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we
are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very
respectable works which issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to
remember--it is to invent a title for mine--My Novel!"
MR CAXTON, clapping his hands gently.--"Excellent--capital! Nothing can
be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise--"
PISISTRATUS.--"What is it, sir--what is it! Have you really thought of
a title to My Novel?"
MR CAXTON.--"You have hit it yourself--'My Novel.' It is your
Novel--people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the
English language as you will--be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek,
Roman--Fabulist or Puritan--still, after all, it is your Novel, and
nothing more nor less than your Novel."
PISISTRATUS, thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways.--"'My
Novel'--um--um! 'My Novel!' rather bald--and curt, eh?"
MR CAXTON.--"Add what you say you intend it to depict--Varieties in
English Life."
MY MOTHER.--"'_My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life_'--I don't
think it sounds amiss. What say you, Roland? Would it attract you in a
catalogue?"
My Uncle hesitates, when Mr Caxton exclaims imperiously--
"The thing is settled! Don't disturb Camarina."
SQUILLS.--"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is
Camarina?"
MR CAXTON.--"Camarina, Mr Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then
liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb
derived from an Oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no
doubt, comes the origin of the injunction, '_Quieta non movere_,' which
became the favourite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The
Greek line, Mr Squills, (here my father's memory began to warm,) is
preserved by STEPHANUS BYZANTINUS, de _Urbibus_--
®'Mê kinei Kamarinan, akinêtos gar ameinôn.'®
ZENOBIUS explains it in his Proverbs; SUIDAS repeats ZENOBIUS; LUCIAN
alludes to it; so does VIRGIL in the Third Book of the ÆNEID; and
SILIUS ITALICUS imitates Virgil--
'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.'
Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these
authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote them,"
quoth my father; "but, to be sure, he is represented as a mild man,
and so might not wish to humble the Squire over much in the presence
of his family. Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that that
matter is settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked
up, the children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart
upon the future dignities of the Neogilos, taking care, nevertheless,
to finish the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may
cast up his account-book, Mr Squills have his brandy and water, and
all the world be comfortable, each in his own way. Blanche, come away
from the screen, get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself.
®Mê kinei Kamarinan®--don't disturb Camarina. You see, my dear,"
added my father kindly, as, after settling himself into his slippers,
he detained Blanche's hand in his own--"you see, my dear, every house
has its Camarina. Man, who is a lazy animal, is quite content to let it
alone; but woman, being the more active, bustling, curious creature, is
always for giving it a sly stir."
BLANCHE, with female dignity.--"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had
not called me, I should not have--"
MR CAXTON, interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he
has already taken.--"Certainly you would not. I am now in the midst of
the great Puseyite Controversy. ®Mê kinei Kamarinan®--don't disturb
Camarina."
A dead silence for half an hour, at the end of which
PISISTRATUS, from behind the screen.--"Blanche, my dear, I want to
consult you."
Blanche does not stir.
PISISTRATUS.--"Blanche, I say."
Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr Caxton.
MR CAXTON, laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his
spectacles mournfully.--"I hear him, child; I hear him. I retract my
vindication of Man. Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman
on the other side of the screen,--it is all up with Camarina!"
CHAPTER II.
It is greatly to be regretted that Mr Stirn was not present at the
Parson's Discourse--but that valuable functionary was far otherwise
engaged--indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the
afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at--not
he: Mr Stirn would have snapped his finger at the thunders of the
Vatican. But the fact was, that Mr Stirn chose to do a great deal
of gratuitous business upon the day of rest. The Squire allowed all
persons, who chose, to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came
from a distance to stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms.
These visitors were objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive
annoyance, to Mr Stirn--and, indeed, not altogether without reason,
for we English have a natural love of liberty, which we are even more
apt to display in the grounds of other people than in those which
we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inexpressible and fierce
satisfaction, Mr Stirn fell upon a knot of boys pelting the swans;
sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it in felonious hands,
converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a hulking fellow
scrambling up the ha-ha! to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from
one of poor Mrs Hazeldean's pet parterres; not unfrequently, indeed,
when all the family were fairly at church, some curious impertinents
forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in order to peep in at
the windows. For these, and various other offences of like magnitude,
Mr Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the Squire to withdraw
a permission so villanously abused. But though there were times when
Mr Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he would shut up the
park, and fill it (illegally) with man-traps and spring-guns," his
anger always evaporated in words. The park was still open to all the
world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted into a
day of travail and wrath to Mr Stirn. But it was from the last chime of
the afternoon service bell until dusk that the spirit of this vigilant
functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that gathered
from the little hamlets round to the voice of the Pastor, there were
always some stray sheep, or rather climbing desultory vagabond goats,
who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special
purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr Stirn. As soon
as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a
scene animated with red cloaks, or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats,
and hats stuck full of wild-flowers--which last Mr Stirn often stoutly
maintained to be Mrs Hazeldean's newest geraniums. Now, on this Sunday
especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of
vigilance on the part of the superintendent--he had not only to detect
ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the
authors of the conspiracy against the Stocks; and secondly, to "make an
example."
He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morning; and
just as the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged
upon the village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at
watch to observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the
stocks. At that moment the place was deserted. At a distance, the
superintendent saw the fast disappearing forms of some belated groups
hastening towards the church; in front, the Stocks stood staring at him
mournfully from its four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the
mud, but still looked bleared and stained with the marks of the recent
outrage. Here Mr Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows.
"If I had sum un, to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by
the water-side, praps summat might come out; praps them as did it ben't
gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their willany!
as they says murderers are always led back to the place where they
ha' left the body. But in this here willage there ben't a man, woman,
nor child, as has any consarn for Squire or Parish, barring myself."
It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr
Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home.
The superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo.
"Hollo, you sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you
going at that rate?"
"Please, sir, I be going to church."
"Stop, sir--stop, Master Lenny. Going to church!--why, the bell's
done; and you knows the Parson is very angry at them as comes in late,
disturbing the congregation. You can't go to church now!"
"Please, sir"--
"I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to think a little of
others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve the Squire! and you must
serve him too. Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost
rent free: you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and
feel for his honour! Poor man! _his_ heart is wellnigh bruk, I am sure,
with the goings on."
Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr Stirn dolorously wiped
his own.
"Look at that ere dumb cretur," said Stirn suddenly, pointing to the
Stocks--"look at it. If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard
Fairfield? Answer me that!--'Damn the Stocks, indeed!'"
"It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny
gravely. "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it, this morning."
MR STIRN.--"I dare she was, considering what she pays for the
premishes: (insinuatingly,) you does not know who did it--eh, Lenny?"
LENNY.--"No, sir; indeed I does not!"
MR STIRN.--"Well, you see, you can't go to church--prayers half
over by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks under your
'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em. I've half
a mind to,"--
Mr Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the Stocks.
"Please, sir," began Lenny again, rather frightened.
"No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives you this
time, only keep a sharp look-out, lad, in future. Now you just stay
here--no, there,--under the hedge, and you watches if any persons
come to loiter about or looks at the Stocks, or laughs to hisself,
while I go my rounds. I shall be back either afore church is over or
just arter; so you stay till I comes, and give me your report. Be
sharp, boy, or it will be worse for you and your mother: I can let the
premishes for four pounds a year more, to-morrow."
Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and
not staying for an answer, Mr Stirn waved his hand, and walked off.
Poor Lenny remained by the Stocks, very much dejected, and greatly
disliking the neighbourhood to which he was consigned. At length he
slowly crept off to the hedge, and sate himself down in the place of
espionage pointed out to him. Now, philosophers tell us that what is
called the point of honour is a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst
the higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to
prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered
peculiarly honourable; neither would it have seemed so to the more
turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of
honour of their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in
defiance of all lawful authority. But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up
much apart from other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence
for the Squire instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of
honour bounded themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth;
and as he cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional
authority, so it did not appear to him that there was anything
derogatory and debasing in being thus set to watch for an offender.
On the contrary, as he began to reconcile himself to the loss of the
church service, and to enjoy the cool of the summer shade, and the
occasional chirp of the birds, he got to look on the bright side of
the commission to which he was deputed. In youth, at least, everything
has its bright side--even the appointment of Protector to the Parish
Stocks. For the Stocks, themselves, Leonard had no affection, it is
true; but he had no sympathy with their aggressors, and he could well
conceive that the Squire would be very much hurt at the revolutionary
event of the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his simple heart--"so
if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous boys, or letting
him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud day for
mother." Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously Mr
Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment
to him--showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his
contemporaries as the sober moral pattern boy; and Lenny had a great
deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character.
All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined in his
lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture,
at least with tolerable content and some complacency.
Mr Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came
through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in
the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat
of the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced
under the shade of the great tree which overhung the Stocks.
Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously.
He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him.
Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague
belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the
Stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank? Was he
of that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not
consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon Stocks? On that Lenny
Fairfield did not feel quite assured. According to all the experience
of the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman.
Leonard's notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally
fashioned upon the model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him
a dazzling vision of snow-white trousers, and beautiful blue coats,
and incomparable cravats. Now the dress of this stranger, though not
that of a peasant nor of a farmer, did not in any way correspond with
Lenny's notions of the costume of a young gentleman: it looked to him
highly disreputable; the coat was covered with mud, and the hat was all
manner of shapes, with a gap between the side and crown.
Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate
through which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the
park from a small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad
odour at the Hall--they had immemorially furnished the most daring
poachers to the preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the
park, the most unprincipled orchard-robbers, and the most disputatious
assertors of various problematical rights of way, which, according to
the Town, were public, and, according to the Hall, had been private
since the Conquest. It was true that the same path led also directly
from the Squire's house, but it was not probable that the wearer of
attire so equivocal had been visiting there. All things considered,
Lenny had no doubt in his mind but that the stranger was a shop-boy
or 'prentice from the town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of
that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny
now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the Stocks. As
if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a
rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to
convey it, the boy, now standing right before the Stocks, bent down and
read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read
it, he repeated it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile--such a
smile!--so disagreeable and sinister! Lenny had never before seen the
smile Sardonic.
But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous
stranger fairly seated himself on the Stocks, rested his heels
profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, and, taking out a
pencil and a pocket-book, began to write. Was this audacious Unknown
taking an inventory of the church and the Hall for the purposes of
conflagration? He looked at one, and at the other, with a strange,
fixed stare as he wrote--not keeping his eyes on the paper, as Lenny
had been taught to do when he sate down to his copy-book. The fact is,
that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the shock of his
fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he was glad
to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to write a
line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending to
tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book, and leave it at
the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.
While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with
the firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may,
to do his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so
the anger he felt, and the suspicions he entertained, only exhibited
themselves in the following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of
propriety,--
"Ben't you ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the Squire's new Stocks! Do
get up, and go along with you!"
Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would
have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false
position, yet, _Nemo mortalium_, &c. No one is always wise. And Randal
was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors,
for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for
impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.
Therefore, eyeing Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,--
"You are an insolent young blackguard."
So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded
before that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad,
he was now more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so
uncivil, but by the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which
certainly did not derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated,
rakish, hang-dog, ruinous hat, under which it shot its sullen and
menacing fire.
Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there
is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the
top-covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat,
put on with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to
the whole exterior; whereas a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy
sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards
transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St James's
Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp.
Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to
your peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions,
the rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the
trading town-class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat.
Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there
is something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and
boy when their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit
of green. Something of the game-cock feeling--something that tends to
keep alive, in the population of this island, (otherwise so lamb-like
and peaceful,) the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over
the four fingers, and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous
symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in
Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing
stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew
more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed and more vigilant.
"You get off them Stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the
coarse expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the
word, he gave the intruder what he meant for a shove, but which Randal
took for a blow. The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his
movement, aided but by a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his
balance, and sent him neck-and-crop over the Stocks. Burning with rage,
the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out
right and left.
CHAPTER III.
Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirised his
contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his
own behalf--aid me to describe that famous battle by the Stocks, and
in defence of the Stocks, which was waged by the two representatives
of Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and
delegated trust--_pro aris et focis_; there, haughty invasion, and
bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person,
which we call honour. Here, too, hardy physical force--there, skilful
discipline. Here--The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a
stone! Plague take the jades!--I can do better without them.
Randal was a year older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so
strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the
two boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight
form and hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from
Randal's lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse.
"It was not fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so
easily." So, retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his
side, he said mildly--"There, let's have no more of it; but go home and
be good."
Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality
called physical courage; but he had all those moral qualities
which supply its place. He was proud--he was vindictive--he had
high self-esteem--he had the destructive organ more than the
combative;--what had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to
sweep away. Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot
tears were in his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a
gladiator, and said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back
the sob of rage and pain--
"You have struck me--and you shall not stir from this ground--till I
have made you repent it. Put up your hands--I will not strike you
so--defend yourself."
Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition: for
if before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the
surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong.
Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper
had involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms,
and he had learned something of the art as well as the practice in
pugilism--an excellent thing, too, I am barbarous enough to believe,
and which I hope will never quite die out of our public schools. Ah,
many a young duke has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to
with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord
more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the
sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle.
So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside
those heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and
sharp--supplying the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics to the
natural feebleness of his arm. Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so
feeble: so strange is the strength that comes from passion and pluck!
Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his
sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them
distinctly: he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent
rush--of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable
light--of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp
pangs--here--there--everywhere; and then all he could remember was,
that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his
adversary bent over him with a countenance as dark and livid as Lara
himself might have bent over the fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was
not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to the noble English
maxim--"Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost him a strong if
brief self-struggle, not to set his heel on that prostrate form. It
was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage within him, as,
muttering something inwardly--certainly not Christian forgiveness--the
victor turned gloomily away.
CHAPTER IV.
Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr Stirn! For, in
fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped
that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission
intrusted to him; and the Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if
that amiable expectation were realised. He now beheld Lenny rising with
some difficulty--still panting hard--and with hysterical sounds akin to
what is vulgarly called blubbering--his fine new waistcoat sprinkled
with his own blood, which flowed from his nose--nose that seemed
to Lenny Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen,
gigantic, mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence,--in fact, he felt all
nose! Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr Stirn surveyed, with no
more respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again
seated himself on the Stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether
to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights
of possession.) "Hollo," said Mr Stirn, "what is all this?--what's the
matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"
"He _will_ sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has
beat me because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added
the villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I'm ready again
for him--that I am."
"And what do you do, lolloping, there on them blessed Stocks?"
"Looking at the landscape: out of my light, man!"
This tone instantly inspired Mr Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so
disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect: who
but a gentleman could speak so to Mr Stirn?
"And may I ask who you be?" said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined
to touch his hat. "What's your name, pray, and what's your bizness?"
"My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's
family--that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr
Hazeldean's ploughman!"
So saying, Randal rose; and, moving on a few paces, turned, and
throwing half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny,--"Let that pay
you for your bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a
gentleman. As for you, fellow,"--and he pointed his scornful hand
towards Mr Stirn, who, with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly
off, stood bowing to the earth--"as for you, give my compliments to Mr
Hazeldean, and say that, when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood
Hall, I trust that the manners of our villagers will make him ashamed
of Hazeldean."
O my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had
ever been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again!
With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led
into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his
nose, and Mr Stirn still bowing to the earth.
CHAPTER V.
Randal Leslie had a very long walk home: he was bruised and sore from
head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than
his body. But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the Squire's
gardens, without walking backwards, and indulging in speculations
suggested by Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have
passed a most agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the
Squire's wealth by going home in the Squire's carriage. But because he
chose to take so intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a
ditch; because he tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because
he spoiled his clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave up his
visit, he got into the village green, and sate on the Stocks with a
hat that gave him the air of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he
sate on the Stocks--with that hat, and a cross face under it--he had
been forced into the most discreditable squabble with a clodhopper, and
was now limping home, at war with gods and men;--_ergo_, (this is a
moral that will bear repetition)--_ergo_, when you walk in a rich man's
grounds, be contented to enjoy what is yours, namely, the prospect;--I
dare say you will enjoy it more than he does.
CHAPTER VI.
If, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his
experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr Stirn
would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantry, and in
sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That
truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps,
pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved
advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the
credit of the chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic
offences--an ill-timed, stupid, overzealous obedience to orders, which,
if it established the devotion of the _employé_, got the employer into
what is popularly called a scrape! And though, by those unversed in
the intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial
hearts of prime-ministers and Right-hand men, it might have seemed
natural that Mr Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle
of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he
had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that
young gentleman was the proper object of his resentment; yet such a
breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards
a superior power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to
the profound intellect of the Premier of Hazeldean. Still, as rage like
steam must escape somewhere, Mr Stirn, on feeling--as he afterwards
expressed it to his wife--that his "buzzom was a burstin," turned with
the natural instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided
for the explosion; and the vapours within him rushed into vent upon
Lenny Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus
relieved his "buzzom."
"You young willain! you howdacious wiper! and so all this blessed
Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your
marrow bones, a-praying for your betters, you has been a-fitting with
a young gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the werry place
of the parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and
a-bloodying it all over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!"
Thus saying, and as if to mend the matter, Mr Stirn aimed an additional
stroke at the offending member; but, Lenny mechanically putting up both
his arms to defend his face, Mr Stirn struck his knuckles against the
large brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve--an
incident which considerably aggravated his indignation. And Lenny,
whose spirit was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education
conceived to be a signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree
between Mr Stirn and himself, began that task of self-justification
which it was equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute,
since, in such a case, to justify was to recriminate.
"I wonder at you, Master Stirn,--if mother could hear you! You know it
was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to--"
"Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr Stirn,
interrupting him with a withering sneer. "O yes! I told you to disgrace
his honour the Squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us all
into trouble. But the Squire told me to make an example, and I will!"
With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr Stirn's mind the
luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very Stocks which he had too
faithfully guarded. Eureka! the "example" was before him! Here, he
could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a
selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror
into the worst; here he could appease the offended dignity of Randal
Leslie; here was a practical apology to the Squire for the affront
put upon his young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to
the Squire's own wish that the Stocks should be provided as soon as
possible with a tenant. Suiting the action to the thought, Mr Stirn
made a rapid plunge at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his
jacket, and, in a few seconds more, the jaws of the Stocks had opened,
and Lenny Fairfield was thrust therein--a sad spectacle of the reverses
of fortune. This done, and while the boy was too astounded, too
stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity for the resistance he might
otherwise have made--nay, for more than a few inaudible words--Mr Stirn
hurried from the spot, but not without first picking up and pocketing
the half-crown designed for Lenny, and which, so great had been his
first emotions, he had hitherto even almost forgotten. He then made
his way towards the church, with the intention to place himself close
by the door, catch the Squire as he came out, whisper to him what had
passed, and lead him, with the whole congregation at his heels, to gaze
upon the sacrifice offered up to the joint Powers of Nemesis and Themis.
CHAPTER VII.
Unaffectedly I say it--upon the honour of a gentleman, and the
reputation of an author, unaffectedly I say it--no words of mine can
do justice to the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as he
sate alone in that place of penance. He felt no more the physical
pain of his bruises; the anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all
corporeal suffering--an anguish as great as the childish breast is
capable of holding. For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt,
was the burning sense of injustice. He had, it might be with erring
judgment, but with all honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the
commission intrusted to him; he had stood forth manfully in discharge
of his duty; he had fought for it, suffered for it, bled for it. This
was his reward! Now, in Lenny's mind there was pre-eminently that
quality which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race--the sense of justice.
It was perhaps the strongest principle in his moral constitution; and
the principle had never lost its virgin bloom and freshness by any of
the minor acts of oppression and iniquity which boys of higher birth
often suffer from harsh parents, or in tyrannical schools. So that it
was for the first time that that iron entered into his soul, and with
it came its attendant feeling--the wrathful galling sense of impotence.
He had been wronged, and he had no means to right himself. Then came
another sensation, if not so deep, yet more smarting and envenomed for
the time--shame! He, the good boy of all good boys--he, the pattern
of the school, and the pride of the parson--he, whom the Squire, in
sight of all his contemporaries, had often singled out to slap on the
back, and the grand Squire's lady to pat on the head, with a smiling
gratulation on his young and fair repute--he, who had already learned
so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable name--he, to be made,
as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for opprobrium, a butt
of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his life were poisoned
at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of his mother! of
the shock this would be to her--she who had already begun to look up
to him as her stay and support: he bowed his head, and the tears, long
suppressed, rolled down.
Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from
that hateful bondage;--for he heard steps approaching. And he began
to picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church,
the sad gaze of the Parson, the bent brow of the Squire, the idle
ill-suppressed titter of all the boys, jealous of his unblotted
character--character of which the original whiteness could never, never
be restored! He would always be the boy who had sate in the Stocks! And
the words uttered by the Squire came back on his soul, like the voice
of conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth. "A sad disgrace,
Lenny--you'll never be in such a quandary." "Quandary," the word was
unfamiliar to him; it must mean something awfully discreditable. The
poor boy could have prayed for the earth to swallow him.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?" cried the tinker.
This time Mr Sprott was without his donkey; for, it being Sunday, it is
to be presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the Common.
The tinker was in his Sunday's best, clean and smart, about to take his
lounge in the park.
Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal.
"You in the wood, my baby! Well, that's the last sight I should
ha' thought to see. But we all lives to larn," added the tinker
sententiously. "Who gave you them leggins? Can't you speak, lad?"
"Nick Stirn."
"Nick Stirn! Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that: and cos vy?"
"'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on
these very Stocks; and he beat me--but I don't care for that; and that
boy was a young gentleman, and going to visit the Squire; and so Nick
Stirn--" Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation.
"Augh," said the tinker, staring, "you fit with a young gentleman,
did you? Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad! Sit there, and be
thankful you ha' got off so cheap. 'Tis salt and battery to fit with
your betters, and a Lunnon justice o' peace would have given you two
months o' the treadmill. But vy should you fit cos he trespassed on
the Stocks? It ben't your natural side for fitting, I takes it."
Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the
Squire, and doing as he was bid.
"Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great
contempt, "you be one o' those who would rayther 'unt with the 'ounds
than run with the 'are! You be's the good pattern boy, and would peach
agin your own border to curry favour with the grand folks. Fie, lad!
you be sarved right: stick by your horder, then you'll be 'spected when
you gets into trouble, and not be 'varsally 'espised--as you'll be
arter church-time! Vell, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are
in this here drogotary fix; it might hurt my cracter, both with them as
built the Stocks, and them as wants to pull 'em down. Old kettles to
mend! Vy, you makes me forgit the Sabbath. Sarvent, my lad, and wish
you well out of it; 'specks to your mother, and say we can deal for the
pan and shovel all the same for your misfortin."
The tinker went his way. Lenny's eye followed him with the sullenness
of despair. The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had
only watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the thorns. Yes,
if Lenny had been caught breaking the Stocks, some at least would have
pitied him; but to be incarcerated for defending them, you might as
well have expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror
would have pitied Dr Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his
own deadly machine. And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond
as he was, felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy! Lenny's head
sank again on his breast, heavily as if it had been of lead. Some few
minutes thus passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the
presence of another spectator to his shame: he heard no step, but he
saw a shadow thrown over the sward. He held his breath, and would not
look up, with some vague idea that if he refused to see he might escape
being seen.
CHAPTER IX.
"_Per Bacco!_" said Dr Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's
shoulder, and bending down to look into his face--"_Per Bacco!_ my
young friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had
hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer
to his question, "that, though the situation is charming, you did
not select it yourself. What is this?"--and the irony of the tone
vanished--"what is this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see
that those tears which you try to cheek come from a deep well. Tell me,
_povero fanciullo mio_, (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not
understand them, sounded softly and soothingly,)--tell me, my child,
how all this happened. Perhaps I can help you--we have all erred; we
should all help each other."
Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself
a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but
he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,--
"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault--and 'tis that which kills
me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
"You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out
his pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the
ground--"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over
sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their
general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the
Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief,
"I have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been
afflicted in my day: yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.'
_Cospetto!_" (and here the Dr seated himself deliberately, resting
one arm on the side column of the Stocks, in familiar contact with
the captive's shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene
around)--"_Cospetto!_ my prison, if they had caught me, would not have
had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one: there
are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons!"
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native
Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations
to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in
the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the
foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives
which had induced Mr Stirn to incarcerate his agent, (barring only that
of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clue.) That a
man high in office should make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an
unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the
wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the
task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by
reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances
of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred
to his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when
in slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his
leg, which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse
than the Stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant
countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's
celebrated witticism, "_En Angleterre on tue un amiral pour encourager
les autres_." ("In England they execute one admiral in order to
encourage the others.") Many more illustrations, still more pertinent
to the case in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of
history. But on seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree
consoled by these memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and,
reducing his logic to the strict _argumentum ad rem_, began to prove,
1st, that there was no disgrace at all in Lenny's present position,
that every equitable person would recognise the tyranny of Stirn and
the innocence of its victim; 2dly, that if even here he were mistaken,
for public opinion was not always righteous, what was public opinion
after all?--"A breath--a puff," cried Dr Riccabocca--"a thing without
matter--without length, breadth, or substance--a shadow--a goblin of
our own creating. A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he
should care no more for that phantom 'opinion' than he should fear
meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark."
Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his
head very mournfully. Dr Riccabocca was about to enter into a third
course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have
settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the Stocks till
doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and
calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation
in a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary
hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite
all the excellence of his spectacles--heard phantasmal rustlings and
murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical
experience in plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made
the Italian's ear as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And, with
another violent but vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed,--
"Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out--let me out.
O, kind sir, have pity--let me out!"
"_Diavolo!_" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that never
occurred to me before. After all, I believe he has hit the right
nail on the head;" and, looking close, he perceived that though the
partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which
defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked, (for,
indeed, the padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the
Squire, who never dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally
and summarily as to dispense with all formal appeal to himself.) As
soon as Dr Riccabocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that
all the wisdom of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile
man or boy to a bad position, the moment there is a fair opportunity
of letting him out of it. Accordingly, without more ado, he lifted up
the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield darted forth like a bird from
a cage--halted a moment as if for breath, or in joy; and then, taking
at once to his heels, fled, fast as a hare to its form--fast to his
mother's home.
Dr Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up
his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some
curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which
had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim.
"Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage,
soliloquising, "and is frightened by strange bugaboos! 'Tis but a piece
of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are
but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this
green bank to sit upon--under the shade of the elm-tree--verily the
position must be more pleasant than otherwise! I've a great mind--"
Here the Doctor looked around, and, seeing the coast still clear,
the oddest notion imaginable took possession of him; yet not indeed
a notion so odd, considered philosophically--for all philosophy is
based on practical experiment--and Dr Riccabocca felt an irresistible
desire practically to experience what manner of thing that punishment
of the Stocks really was. "I can but try!--only for a moment," said
he apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. "I have
time to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the partition again:
but Stocks are built on the true principle of English law, and don't
easily allow a man to criminate himself--it was hard to get into them
without the help of a friend. However, as we before noticed, obstacles
only whetted Dr Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a
withered bit of stick under the tree--this he inserted in the division
of the Stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick under
a sieve for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows: the fatal wood thus
propped, Dr Riccabocca sate gravely down on the bank, and thrust his
feet through the apertures.
"Nothing in it!" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation.
"The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With
that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from
their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and
the partition fell back into its clasp. Doctor Riccabocca was fairly
caught--"_Facilis descensus--sed revocare gradum!_" True, his hands
were at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they
kept the hands from the rescue; and as Dr Riccabocca's form was by no
means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that
firmness of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after
some vain twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not
without a stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding
the clasp and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash
experiment resigned himself to his fate. Dr Riccabocca was one of those
men who never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I
mean not only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position
was not quite so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he
resolved to make himself as comfortable as he could. And first, as
is natural in all troubles to men who have grown familiar with that
odoriferous comforter which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have
bestowed upon the Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to
extract from his pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After
a few whiffs he would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but
for the discovery that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens,
and was no longer shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The Doctor
again looked round, and perceived that his red silk umbrella, which
he had laid aside when he had seated himself by Lenny, was within
arm's reach. Possessing himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its
friendly folds. And thus doubly fortified within and without, under
shade of the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr
Riccabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native
proverbs, "'possesses all things!'--if one despises freedom, one is
free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed,
soliloquising, after a pause--"I am not sure that there is not
something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national
proverb of mine which I quoted to the _fanciullo_, that there are
no handsome prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman,
surnamed _Bras de Fer_, write a book not only to prove that adversities
are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities
a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?[7] But is not this
condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type
of my life? Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a
hobble?--and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame
the gods?"
Upon this Dr Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time
and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in
the Parish Stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser
that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.--Dr
Riccabocca was in the clouds.
CHAPTER X.
The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, _entre nous_, reader--but
let it go no farther--we have a good many dogs among the fraternity
that are not Munitos,[8]) might have seen with half an eye that the
Parson's discourse had produced a very genial and humanising effect
upon his audience. When all was over, and the congregation stood up to
let Mr Hazeldean and his family walk first down the aisle, (for that
was the custom at Hazeldean,) moistened eyes glanced at the Squire's
sun-burned, manly face with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of
many a generous benefit and ready service. The head might be wrong now
and then--the heart was in the right place after all. And the lady,
leaning on his arm, came in for a large share of that gracious good
feeling. True, she now and then gave a little offence when the cottages
were not so clean as she fancied they ought to be--and poor folks don't
like a liberty taken with their houses any more than the rich do; true,
that she was not quite so popular with the women as the Squire was,
for, if the husband went too often to the alehouse, she always laid
the fault on the wife, and said, "No man would go out of doors for his
comforts, if he had a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;"
whereas the Squire maintained the more gallant opinion, that "if Gill
was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her
mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions
on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the
handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened
tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely,
beaming countenance of Mrs Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of
soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter,
cheering words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts
afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which,
as the Squire, who preferred productive labour, justly complained,
"would never finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran
grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in
a family that "came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little
behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of neckcloths--with
a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted
his assumed stateliness of mien--without his portion of the silent
blessing. Not that he had done anything yet to deserve it; but we all
give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her
trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility,
too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak, whereon to entwine her
tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural lovingness
of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to find
a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse;
notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage
gift,--viz., that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his
ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be
all one in the approaching crash." So that she had her warm partisans,
especially amongst the young; while the slim Captain, on whose arm she
rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken gentleman, who had
never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he
belonged to the parish. Nay, even the fat footman, who came last with
the family Prayerbook, had his due share in the general association of
neighbourly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present
to whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship, with a full
horn of October in the clasp of it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too,
born and bred, as two-thirds of the Squire's household (now letting
themselves out from their large pew under the gallery) were.
On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was 'moved withal,' and
a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow
and curtsey as matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head
somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced
upward and round him--shyly, as it were--and his eye met those friendly
looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something
touching as well as cordial--an eye that said, as well as eye could
say, "I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours; but I thank you for
your goodwill with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance of
the eye understood, that I think, if that scene had taken place out of
doors instead of in the church, there would have been an hurrah as the
Squire passed out of sight.
Scarcely had Mr Hazeldean got well out of the churchyard, ere Mr Stirn
was whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered, the Squire's face grew
long, and his colour changed. The congregation, now flocking out of
the church, exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction
between Squire and man chilled back all the effects of the Parson's
sermon. The Squire struck his cane violently into the ground. "I
would rather you had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young
gentleman, coming to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean;
a young gentleman--'sdeath, sir, a relation--his grandmother was a
Hazeldean. I do believe Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an
end! But Leonard Fairfield in the Stocks! What will the Parson say? and
after such a sermon! 'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow
too; and poor Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart
of stone! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce
gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean
without trial, sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any
one sees him: run, or I shall."--The Squire elevated the cane, and his
eyes shot fire. Mr Stirn did not run, but he walked off very fast. The
Squire drew back a few paces, and again took his wife's arm. "Just wait
a bit for the Parson, while I talk to the congregation. I want to stop
'em all, if I can, from going into the village; but how?"
Frank heard, and replied readily--
"Give 'em some beer, sir."
"Beer! on a Sunday! For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs Hazeldean.
"Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you, Frank," said the Squire, and his
brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. I doubt if Riccabocca
could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had
done.
"Halt there, my men--lads and lasses too--there, halt a bit. Mrs
Fairfield, do you hear?--halt! I think his reverence has given us a
capital sermon. Go tip to the Great House all of you, and drink a
glass to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of
the casks kept for the haymakers. Harry, [this in a whisper,] catch the
Parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."
"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? you are mad."
"Don't bother--do what I tell you."
"But where is the Parson to find you?"
"Where, gad zooks, Mrs H.,--at the Stocks to be sure!"
CHAPTER XI.
Dr Riccabocca, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of
footsteps--was still so little sensible of the indignity of his
position, that he enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of
his natural humour, the astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn,
when that functionary beheld the extraordinary substitute which fate
and philosophy had found for Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping,
crushed, broken-hearted captive whom he had reluctantly come to
deliver, he stared, speechless and aghast, upon the grotesque but
tranquil figure of the Doctor, enjoying his pipe and cooling himself
under his umbrella, with a _sang-froid_ that was truly appalling
and diabolical. Indeed, considering that Stirn always suspected the
Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight
business, in which the Stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned
to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling
in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had
incarcerated was transformed into the Doctor he found, conjoined with
the peculiarly strange, eldritch, and Mephistophelean physiognomy and
person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious
dismay into the breast of the parochial tyrant. While to his first
confused and stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca
replied with so tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such
mysterious, equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every
moment felt more and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to
the Powers of Darkness; and that he himself, prematurely, and in the
flesh, stood face to face with the Arch-Enemy.
Mr Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do
him justice, was usually prompt enough--when the Squire, followed hard
by the Parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs Hazeldean's report of
the Squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled
invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's
ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the Squire, sharing
Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from
the stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Doctor Riccabocca,
under the majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only
being his mind could identify with the tenancy of the Stocks, Mr Dale,
catching him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance
he had never before been known to display--except at the whist-table,--
"Mr Hazeldean, Mr Hazeldean, I am scandalised--I am shocked at you.
I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask
my whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and
guzzle ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon
had been a speech at a cattle-fair! I am ashamed of you, and of the
parish! What on earth has come to you all?"
"That's the very question I wish to heaven I could answer," groaned the
Squire, quite mildly and pathetically--"What on earth has come to us
all! Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't
you hear?--what on earth has come to us all?"
"The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of
all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all."
"A mortal fiddlestick--where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?"
"_Him_ knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically, for
safety's sake, behind the Parson, and pointing to Dr Riccabocca.
Hitherto, though both the Squire and Parson had indeed recognised the
Italian, they had merely supposed him to be seated on the bank. It
never entered into their heads that so respectable and dignified a
man could by any possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of
the Parish Stocks. No, not even though, as I before said, the Squire
had seen, just under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted
in the apertures--that sight had only confused and bewildered him,
unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and face of Lenny
Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical delusions, phantoms of the
overheated brain; but now, catching hold of Stirn, while the Parson in
equal astonishment caught hold of him--the Squire faltered out, "Well,
this beats cock-fighting! The man's as mad as a March hare, and has
taken Dr Rickey-bockey for little Lenny!"
"Perhaps," said the Doctor, breaking silence, with a bland smile, and
attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position
would permit--"perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you
proceed to explanations,--you will just help me out of the Stocks."
The Parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a
smile, as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the
purpose of extricating him.
"Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr Stirn. "Don't be
tempted--he only wants to get you into his claws. I would not go a-near
him for all the--"
The speech was interrupted by Dr Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks
to the Parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller
than all present--even than the tall Squire--approached Mr Stirn, with
a gracious wave of the hand. Mr Stirn retreated rapidly towards the
hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently.
"I guess whom you take me for, Mr Stirn," said the Italian, lifting
his hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is certainly a great
honour; but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman
in question admits you to a personal interview in another and--a hotter
world."
CHAPTER XII.
"But how on earth did you get into my new Stocks?" asked the Squire,
scratching his head.
"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
"Did he, and what for?"
"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca.
The Squire burst out a-laughing.
"And so you got into the Stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't
wonder--it is a very handsome pair of Stocks," continued the Squire,
with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed
of being seen in those Stocks--I should not mind it myself."
"We had better move on," said the Parson drily, "or we shall be having
the whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in
the same predicament as that from which we have just extricated the
Doctor. Now pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't
understand a word of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good
Lenny Fairfield (who was absent from church by the bye) can have done
anything to get into disgrace?"
"Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. "Stirn, I say--Stirn." But
Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to
his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr Hazeldean now told all
he had to communicate: the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt
punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to
his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the
culprit from the addition of public humiliation.
The Parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the
beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr Hazeldean, forgive
me," he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was
only some ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of
decorum. But this is a sad story about Lenny, brawling and fighting on
the Sabbath-day. So unlike him, too--I don't know what to make of it."
"Like or unlike," said the Squire, "it has been a gross insult to young
Leslie; and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just
the best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued
Mr Hazeldean, musingly, "but it seems that there must be always some
association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine.
There was I, son of his own mother--who might have been shot through
the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder--and now his wife's
kinsman--my kinsman, too--grandmother a Hazeldean--a hard-reading sober
lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest
parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was
seen--makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!" cried the
Squire solemnly.
"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain
houses," observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops--and
Polynices and Eteocles--the sons of OEdipus!"
"Pshaw," said the Parson; "but what's to be done?"
"Done?" said the Squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie.
And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public
disgrace--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs Fairfield's;--yet a good
caning in private--"
"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then,
with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor
protégé, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal
for the Squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received
from Mr Stirn.
"That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened; "and all that is
necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
"Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson; "but I still don't learn how
he got out of the Stocks."
Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own
principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's
shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried
the Athenians, when they heard Demosthenes--
"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the Parson, before
Riccabocca could finish.
With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their pace, and
soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of
their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of
Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson was come to upbraid, and the
Squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the
woods, and lay there _perdu_ all the evening. Nay, it was not till
after dark that his mother--who sate wringing her hands in the little
kitchen, and trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs Dale, who
(after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console
the mother--heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the
latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom,
and there buried his face, sobbing loud.
"No harm, my boy," said the Parson tenderly; "you have nothing to
fear--all is explained and forgiven."
Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen.
"Sir," said he sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven--I ain't done no
wrong. And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no
more."
"Hush, Carry!" said the Parson to his wife, who, with the usual
liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good night,
Mrs Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that
time you will think better of it."
The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to
report Lenny's safe return; for the Squire was very uneasy about him,
and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny
was safe--"Well," said the Squire, "let him go the first thing in the
morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be
right and smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet;
"to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on
_me_! But I wonder Randal let him off so well--any other boy in the
sixth form would have killed him!"
"Frank," said the Parson sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what
should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own
wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of
another's?"
The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed
abashed--while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for
when the Parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the
Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's
inquisitive eye, Mr Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered
to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny
to beg Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the
pattern-boy would not digest the Stocks with as much ease as a long
regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss
Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor respecting the
number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident)
that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
"Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away, to look at
a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting
subject--"ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember
the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural
temptation is to forget its existence."
Miss Jemima blushed scarlet. Certainly that deceitful heartless
compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such
is human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous
and too confiding soul.
"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped
majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy
for the garden now!"
Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean
whirligig.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] "_Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus
profitable!_"
[8] Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a
dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.
BIOGRAPHY.[9]
Although history and biography both relate to the affairs of men, and
are employed in the narrative of human events, they are governed by
opposite principles, and require, for their successful prosecution,
different powers and habits of thought. The main object of history is
the tracing out the growth of nations, the great events which lead to
their rise or fall, the causes operating on the social body, which at
one period conduct to power and greatness, at another induce weakness
and decay. Biography is concerned with individual life. Its aim is to
trace the annals, not of nations, but of persons; to portray, not the
working of general causes on the progress of empires, but the influence
of particular characters on their most interesting episodes. The former
requires habits of general thought, and the power of tracing one common
principle through a great variety of complicated details; the latter,
close attention to individual incidents, and a minute examination of
the secret springs of human conduct. The first is closely allied to
the generalisations of the philosopher; the latter requires the powers
of the dramatist. The two branches of composition, however, are nearly
allied, and frequently run into each other. History generally finds its
most interesting episodes, often its most important subjects, in the
narrative of individual greatness; biography is imperfect unless, in
addition to tracing the achievements of the individuals it records, it
explains their influence upon the society among whom they arose.
What we call the histories of antiquity were, for the most part,
only biographies, and they owe their principal interest to that
circumstance. The _Cyropædia_ of Xenophon is a philosophical romance,
clothed with the eloquence of an orator; the fragments which remain of
Sallust, the rhetorical narrative of Quintus Curtius, are the avowed
biographies of individual men. Even the regular histories of classical
times owe their chief charm to the simplicity of the subject, in
which one state or contest stands prominently forward, and the others
are thrown into a shade which only renders the more striking the
light thrown on one particular subject, or the efforts of individual
greatness. Herodotus has earned his deathless fame by the narrative
he has given of the great war between Persia and Greece, on which the
destinies of mankind depended; Thucydides by his profound exposition
of the strife of aristocracy and democracy in the contest between
Lacedæmon and Athens. The long narrative of Livy has survived the
floods of Time almost entirely from the charming episodes descriptive
of character or manners which he has introduced, and the dramatic
power with which he has narrated the exploits of individual men; and
what has given Tacitus immortality, is neither any luminous views on
the progress of mankind, nor any just appreciation of the causes of
greatness in particular states, but the depth to which he has fathomed
the real springs of action in particular men, and the terrible truth
with which he has unveiled that most appalling of all spectacles--a
naked human heart.
The great difficulty of history, as it must be written in modern
times, arises from the multitude and complication of the events
which have to be recorded. So intimately connected have the States
of Europe been since the rise of modern civilisation, that he who
writes the annals of one must write the history of all. The progress,
internal and external, of all its powers must be brought forward
abreast; and such is their number and importance, that not only is
the historian oppressed with the variety and complication of his
materials, but he finds it next to impossible to produce interest in
the reader amidst such a sea of details; and often fails, from the
impossibility of attaining that essential requisite in the rousing of
human sympathy--unity of emotion. Add to this the infinity of subjects
a historian even of an individual state must now embrace, and which
almost overwhelm the exploits of particular men by their multitude
and complication. Strategy, statistics, trade, navigation, commerce,
agriculture, taxation, finance, currency, paper credit, poor laws,
agriculture, socialism, chartism, form a few of the topics, any one
of which would require volumes for its elucidation, yet none of which
can be omitted without exposing the historian to the imputation, from
some one or other, of having overlooked the most important part of his
subject. So great is this difficulty, so extensive the embarrassment it
produces, that it may safely be pronounced to be insurmountable by any
effort, how great soever, unless the endeavours of the historian are
aided by unity of interest in the subject, or overpowering greatness
of influence in the characters with whom he has to deal. But it is,
perhaps, only in the wars of the Crusades, of the Succession in Spain,
and of the French Revolution, that such unity of interest is to be
looked for, or such surpassing grandeur of character is to be found,
from the achievements of a Richard Coeur-de-Lion, a Marlborough, or a
Napoleon.
From this great difficulty, biography is entirely free, and thence
the superior interest with which, when properly treated, works of
that description are attended. We are so constituted that we must
concentrate our interest; dispersion is fatal to its existence. Every
novelist and romance-writer knows this; there must always be a hero and
a heroine; but two or three heroes and heroines would prove fatal to
the interest. Ariosto tried to divide the interest of the reader among
the adventures of a dozen knights-errant; but even his genius proved
unequal to the task, and he was obliged to concentrate the whole around
the fabulous siege of Paris to restore the broken unity of his power.
The great and signal advantage of biography is, that, from its very
nature, it possesses that personal interest and individual character
which the epic poet and novelist feel to be essential to the moving of
the human heart, but which the historian so often finds himself unable
to attain, without omitting some important parts of his subject, or
giving undue prominence to the characters of individual men.
For this reason it is, that the most popular works which ever have been
written have been biographies of illustrious men. No one would think of
comparing the intellect of Plutarch to that of Tacitus, his eloquence
to that of Cicero's, yet he has made perhaps a greater impression on
the imagination of subsequent ages than either of these illustrious
men. If we examine the images of the mighty of former days which
are engraven on our minds, we shall find that it is not so much the
pictured pages of Livy or Quintus Curtius, as the "Lives of Plutarch,"
which have given them immortality. We complain of his gossip, we lament
his superstition, we smile at his credulity, but we devour his pages;
and, after the lapse of seventeen hundred years, they remain one of the
most generally popular works in existence. It is the same in modern
times. No one would think of comparing Boswell, in point of intellect,
to Johnson; in point of eloquence to Burke; in point of genius to
Gibbon; yet he has produced a work superior in general interest to any
of these illustrious men, and which is daily read by thousands, to whom
the "Reflections on the French Revolution," the moral essays of the
"Rambler," and the "History of the Decline and Fall," will for ever
remain unknown.
To render biography, however, thus generally attractive, it is
indispensable that its basis should be that first element in the
narration of human action--TRUTH. Without this, it wants the great
superiority of the narrative of real event over fictitious creations,
how interesting soever they may be--that of recording what has actually
occurred in real life. How important an element this is in awakening
the sympathies of the human heart, may be seen even in children who,
when particularly fascinated by any story they are told, invariably
end by asking, "But is it all true?" The value of truth, or rather of
what is "_vraisemblable_," is felt even in imaginary conceptions, which
it is well known are never so attractive, or interest so powerfully,
as when they most closely resemble the events and characters of actual
existence. The real is, and ever must be, the only sure foundation
of the ideal. Novels are most delightful when they approach nearest
to what we behold around us in real life, while yet containing
a sufficient blending of romance and sentiment, of heroism and
magnanimity, to satisfy the higher aspirations of our being. Biography
is most charming when it depicts with fidelity those characters,
and records with truth those events, which approach nearest to that
imaginary perfection to which every generous mind aspires, but to which
none ever has attained, or ever will.
It has been said with truth, that the events which are suitable for
epic poetry are such as are "probable but yet elevating." We are so
constituted by our bonds to earth, that our chief interest must ever be
derived from the virtues or the vices, the joys or sorrows, of beings
like ourselves; but we are so filled with more ennobling thoughts and
aspirations, by our destiny in Heaven, that we can be satisfied only
by what points to a higher state of existence, and feel the greatest
enjoyment by being elevated, either by the conceptions of fancy or
the records of reality, to a nearer view of its perfection. If novels
depict merely imaginary existences, they may charm for a season, like
the knights of Ariosto, or the heroes of Metastasio; but they are too
much in the clouds permanently to interest sublunary mortals. If they
record merely the adventures of low, or the vulgarity of middle life,
they may amuse for a season, like the characters of Smollett; but they
will sink ere long, from the want of that indispensable lifeboat in
the sea of time, an elevating tendency. It is characters like those
of the _Iliad_, of Shakspeare, of Scott, and Schiller, which combine
the well-known and oft-observed characteristics of human nature with
the oft-imagined but seldom seen traits of heroism and magnanimity
which border on the realms of the ideal that for ever fascinate the
imagination, and dwell in the heart of man. The reason is, they contain
enough of reality to tell us it is of humanity that the story is told,
and enough of the ideal to make us proud of our connection with it.
The great and chief charm of biography is to be found in this, that
it unites, from its very nature and object, those two indispensable
requisites to durable popularity in works of fiction, and combines
them with the value and the solid information of truthful narrative.
It possesses the value of history, without its tedium--the interest
of romance, without its unsubstantiality. It culls the flowers from
the records of time, and casts into the shade all the accompanying
weeds and briars. If a judicious and discriminating selection of
characters were made--if those persons were selected for the narrative
who have been most illustrious by their virtues, their genius, or
their magnanimity, or, as a contrast, by their vices, and who have
made the greatest and most durable impression on human affairs, a work
might be produced exceeding any one of history in its utility, any
of romance in its popularity. David Hume strongly advised Robertson,
eighty years ago, instead of writing the _Life of Charles the Fifth_,
to write a series of biographies, on the plan of Plutarch, for modern
times; and it is, perhaps, to be regretted that the advice was not
followed. Yet were the abilities of the Scotch Principal, great as they
were, not such as peculiarly fitted him for the task. His mind was too
philosophical and discursive to give it its chief interest. He wanted
the dramatic turn, the ardent soul, the graphic power, the magnanimous
disposition, which was essential to its successful accomplishment. A
work in three thousand pages, or six volumes, recording the lives of
fifty of the greatest and most illustrious men in Europe, from the days
of Alfred to those of Napoleon, executed in the right spirit, and by a
man of adequate genius, would be the most popular and elevating book
that ever appeared in Modern Europe. Many such have been attempted, but
never with any success, because they were not set about by the proper
minds. To do justice to such an undertaking would require a combination
of opposite qualities rarely to be met with in real life.
As biography deals with individual characters, and is relieved from
the extended and perplexing subjects which overwhelm the general
historian, it admits, in return, of an expansion into many topics
which, although often in the highest degree amusing, and sometimes not
a little interesting, would yet be felt to be misplaced in the annals
of the great changes of nations or of the world. As the delineation
of character is its avowed object, and the events of individual
life its principal subject, it not only admits of but requires a
thousand incidents and descriptions, which are essential to a right
understanding of those characters, and form, as it were, the still
life of the picture in which their features are to be portrayed.
Such descriptions are not unsuitable to general history. Mr Macaulay
has shown in his History that his observations on that head in the
_Edinburgh Review_ were founded on a just appreciation of the object
and limits of his art. But they must be sparingly introduced, or they
will become tedious and unprofitable: if any one doubts this, let him
_try_ to read Von Hammer's _History of the Ottoman Empire_, one-half
of which is taken up with descriptions of dresses, receptions, and
processions. But in biography we readily give admission to--nay,
we positively require--such details. If they are not the jewels of
history, they are the setting which adds to their lustre. They fill up
our conception of past events; they enable us to clothe the characters
in which we are interested in the actual habiliments in which they were
arrayed; they bring before our eyes the dwellings, the habits, the mode
of life, the travelling, the occupations of distant ages, and often
give more life and reality to the creatures of our imaginations than
could have been attained by the most laboured general descriptions, or
the most emphatic assertions of the author.
For this reason, as well as on account of the known influence of
individual character, rather than abstract principle, on the fair sex,
there is no branch of historical composition so suitable for woman
as biography; and Miss Strickland has shown us that there is none
which female genius can cultivate with greater success. The general
bent of the female mind, impressed upon it for the wisest purposes by
its Creator, is to be influenced in its opinions, and swayed in its
conduct, by individual men, rather than general ideas. When Milton said
of our first parents--
"Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed:
For valour he and contemplation formed;
For beauty she, and sweet attractive grace;
_He for God only, she for God in him_;"
He foreshadowed man as the appropriate historian of the general march
of human events--woman, as the best delineator of individual character,
the most fascinating writer of biography. The most gifted of her sex
is a proof of this; for if a few men have exceeded Madame de Stael in
the broad view she takes of human affairs, none have equalled her in
the delineation of the deepest feelings and most lasting passions of
the human heart. As it is the nature of woman's disposition to form an
idol, (and it is for that very reason that she proves so attractive to
that of man,) so, when she comes to composition, we rejoice to see her
form idols of her heroes, provided only that the limits of truth are
observed in their delineation, and that her enthusiasm is evinced in
depicting the real, not in colouring the imaginary.
As graphic and scenic details are so valuable in biography, and
give such life and animation to the picture which it exhibits, so
we willingly accept from a female biographer, whether of her own or
others' life, details which we could not tolerate in the other sex.
When the Duchess of Abrantes, writing after the fall of Charles X.,
recounts in her charming memoirs the enchanting _Schall de Cachemire_,
which excited her envy on the shoulders of Josephine--or tells us that
at a certain ball in Paris, in 1797, she wore her blue satin dress
and pearl ornaments, and at another, her pink silk, and diamonds, we
perhaps smile at the simplicity which made her recount such things
of herself; but still we gratefully accept them as characteristic
of the costume or manners of the time. But we would never tolerate a
male biographer of Murat, who should tell us that at a certain ball
at Naples he wore his scarlet trowsers and black furred jacket, and
on his coronation looked irresistible in his blue and silver uniform
and splendid spare jacket;--not even though we know that in Russia he
often returned to his lines with his sabre dripping wet with the blood
of the Cossacks whom he had challenged and slain in single combat,
and although the experience of all ages has confirmed the truth of
Philopoemen's observation, that "to soldiers and women, dress is a
matter of no small consequence."
Though details of this description, however, are valuable and
admissible in biography, and come with peculiar propriety and grace
from a female hand, it must be observed, on the other hand, that there
is a limit, and a very obvious one, to the introduction of them, and
that, if not inserted with caution, they may essentially injure the
popularity or utility of a work. In particular, it is seldom safe
to carry to any considerable length in the text the introduction of
quotations from old histories or chronicles of the period, which
often are filled with them to the exclusion of all other subjects. We
know that such original documents have a great charm in the eyes of
antiquarians or antiquarian biographers, the more especially if they
have brought them to light themselves; but such persons learned in
ancient lore constitute but a small fraction of the human race. The
great body of readers, at least nineteen out of twenty, care nothing
at all for such original authorities, but wish to see their import
condensed into a flowing easy narrative in the author's own words. For
this reason it is generally safest to give such original documents
or quotations in notes or an appendix, and to confine quotations in
the text to characteristic expressions, or original words spoken on
very important occasions. Barante and Sismondi in France, Tytler in
Scotland, and Lingard in England, have essentially injured the general
popularity of their great and learned works, by not attending to this
rule. The two Thierrys have chiefly won theirs by attending to it.
The great popularity and widely extended sale of Miss Strickland's
_Queens of England_, almost equalling, we believe, that of any living
author in this country, and much exceeding that of any prior writer,
whether of her own or the other sex, in the same period in biography,
is a proof both of the intrinsic excellence of that work, and the
thirst which exists in the public mind for works of that description.
We have long been of opinion that the narrative of human events
might be rendered as popular in the outset, and far more and durably
interesting in the end, than any works of fiction; and that the only
reason why this has so seldom taken place, was because historical works
were in general constructed on wrong principles. The great success
which has recently attended historical composition in this country,
especially in the case of Mr Macaulay's History and Miss Strickland's
Lives, is a proof that this view of the subject is well founded. And of
the two, biography, when supported by learning, and handled by genius
such as both these learned writers possess, is much more likely to be
generally popular than extended history, because it partakes more of
the character of Romance, and possesses in a higher degree that _unity_
of interest which is the most essential element in all arts which aim
at pleasing or fascinating mankind.
Scotland is a country peculiarly fortunate in the characters it
presents for biographical genius. This arises from its physical
weakness when compared to the strength of its formidable neighbour,
and the resources which it has ever found in the persevering and
indomitable character of its inhabitants. The former in every age
of the wars with England has made its plains the seat of conflict;
while the latter has always secured their success in the end, though
often after fearful reverses, and always against tremendous odds. The
proof of this is decisive. Scotland, after three centuries of almost
incessant conflict, first with the arms, and then, more formidable
still, with the gold of England, was still unsubdued when her monarchs
ascended the English throne, and the rivalry of two noble nations was
turned into the blissful emulation of peace. It is this combination
of circumstances which has caused her history to be so prolific of
incident, and has rendered, as strangers so often have remarked, every
step in her surface historical. Her physical weakness filled it with
incident--her moral strength with heroic incident. Go where you will,
you meet with some traces of the great or the beautiful, the gifted
or the fascinating, of former days. The ancient walls and castellated
rocks of Edinburgh teem with historical recollections of the highest
interest, which the kindred spirit of modern chivalry has done so much
to illustrate.[10] In the short space of twenty miles--between Falkirk
and Stirling--are four battlefields,[11] on each of which the fate
of Britain was determined, or armies as numerous as those which met
at Waterloo encountered each other. Lochleven exhibits the mournful
prison of beauty: Niddry Castle, of her evanescent joys; the field of
Langside, of her final overthrow. Cartlan Crags still show the cave of
Wallace; Turnberry Castle the scene of Bruce's first victory; Culloden,
the last battle-field of generous fidelity. Every step in Scotland is
historical: the shades of the dead arise on every side: the very rocks
breathe--
"Yet, Albyn, yet the praise be thine,
Thy scenes and story to combine!
Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays,
List to the tale of other days;
Midst Cartlan Crags thou show'st the cave,
The refuge of the champion brave;
Giving each rock its storied tale,
Pouring a lay for every dale,
Knitting, as with a moral band,
Thy native legends with thy land,
To give each scene the interest high,
Which Genius lends to Beauty's eye."
Miss Strickland's talents as a writer, and turn of mind as an
individual, in a peculiar manner fit her for painting a historical
gallery of the most illustrious or dignified female characters in that
land of chivalry and of song. Her disposition is at once heroic and
pictorial. She has the spirit of chivalry in her soul, and the colours
of painting in her eye. She sympathises with all the daring spirit, the
bold adventure, the chivalrous devotion, of the cavaliers of former
days; and she depicts with not less animation and force the stately
scenes of departed times--the dignified processions, the splendid
ceremonials, the imposing pageants. She has vast powers of application,
and her research is unbounded; but these qualities, so necessary as the
foundation of a historian's fame, are in her united with the powers
of painting and the soul of poetry, and dignified by the elevated
objects to which they are directed. The incidents of individual life
are of peculiar importance in Scottish annals, because, with the
exception of two periods--the war of independence under Wallace and
Bruce, and the national struggle for emancipation from Popish tyranny
at the Reformation--there have seldom been what we now call _popular_
movements in Scotland. Everything, or next to everything, depended
on individual character; the great game of the world was played by
kings and queens, nobles and knights. On this great theatre the queens
played, as they do everywhere, a most important part. The instruction
of man in childhood, the object of his adoration in youth, of lasting
influence in manhood, woman has, in modern Europe where her destiny was
first fully developed, exercised an important sway, and more so than is
generally supposed on national affairs. But nowhere has this influence
been more strongly felt than in Scotland, where queens have appeared,
whose beauty and misfortunes have become immortal in story, and been
for ever engraven on the human heart by the hand of genius, and where
the chivalrous and daring disposition of the country, the _perfervidum
Scotorum ingenium_, at once penetrated some with the most devout
adoration of their charms, and inspired others with the most vehement
jealousy of their ascendency.
In her delineation of individual character, Miss Strickland evidently
takes the greatest pains to be impartial; and the multitude of new
documents and facts which she has brought on both sides of the
question in regard to her heroines, is a sufficient proof that this
most laudable principle is a ruling one in her mind. But she would
be something more or something less than mortal, if no trace of
predilection was to be found in her pages. It is rather, however, in
regard to families than individuals that this leaning is apparent.
She is evidently inimical to the Tudor and friendly to the Stuart
race. In this she only shares the feelings of the chivalrous and the
enthusiastic of every age and country; for the leading qualities of
the one were as calculated, on a retrospect, to inspire aversion as
those of the other were to awaken sympathy. The first was selfish,
overbearing, cruel, but often exceedingly able: the latter generous,
unsuspecting, heroic, but sometimes sadly imprudent. Success at
the time crowned the worldly wisdom of the one, and disaster,
long-continued and crushing, at length punished the unhappy want of
foresight of the other. But the results of the time are not always
indicative of the opinion of futurity: and already the verdict of
mankind has been secured in regard to the rival Queens who brought
their fortunes into collision, by two pleaders of surpassing power in
swaying the human heart. Scotland may be proud that one of these was
found in the most gifted of her sons, whose genius has, in one of his
most perfect historical novels, immortalised the prison of Lochleven
and the field of Langside; and Germany may well exult in the reflection
that the other appeared in that matchless genius who three centuries
after her death imbibed, on the banks of the Saale, the very soul and
spirit of the age of Mary in England, and has for ever engraven her
heroic death, and the imperishable scenes of Fotheringay, on the hearts
of men.[12]
Miss Strickland's partiality for the Stuart and aversion to the
Tudor race, may be explained by another and still more honourable
circumstance. It is the inevitable effect of a long course of
injustice, whether in the rulers of men, or the judges of those rulers,
the annalists of their lives, to produce in the end a reaction in
the general mind. This is more particularly the case in persons like
Miss Strickland, actuated by generous and elevated feelings, and who
feel conscious of power to redress much of the injustice which the
long-continued ascendency of a particular party, whether in religion
or politics, has inflicted on the characters of History. Nowhere has
this injustice been more strongly experienced than in Great Britain
during the last two centuries. The popular party in politics, and
the reformed in religion, having in both these countries, after a
sanguinary struggle, been successful, and a family seated on the throne
which embodied, and in a manner personified, both these triumphs,
nearly the whole historians who treated of the period for a century and
a half were entirely one-sided. When Hume wrote his immortal history,
he complained, with justice, that for seventy years power, reward, and
emolument had been confined to one party in the state, and that the
sources of History had in consequence been irremediably corrupted. His
rhetorical powers and impartial spirit did much to remedy the evil, but
he had not industry and research sufficient to do the whole. Much was
left to the just feelings, and generous because disinterested effort,
of the high-minded who succeeded him in the path of historical inquiry.
Mr Tytler's great and authentic _History of Scotland_, and Lingard's
able and valuable, though one-sided, _History of England_, have gone
far to give the opposite side of the picture which Malcolm Laing
and Burnet had painted in so vehement a party spirit, and Macaulay
has since continued with such remarkable historical power. But much
remained yet to be done. Antiquarian industry, chivalrous zeal, have of
late brought many of the concealed or suppressed treasures of History
to light; and it is those which Miss Strickland proposes to embody in
her _Queens of Scotland_.
Of the general plan which she proposes to adopt in this work, our
author gives the following admirable account:--
"As long as Scotland, in consequence of bad roads and tedious
travelling, remained a sort of _terra incognita_, vulgar
prejudice prevailed among the ignorant and narrow-minded
portion of society in England; but Scotland only required to be
seen to be appreciated. Strong in native talent, rich in native
worth, valiant, persevering, and wise, her sons have been ever
foremost in the field of honourable enterprise, whether in
deeds of arms, science, jurisprudence, or the industrial arts
of peaceful life. In poetry, music, and song, she has certainly
never been surpassed. It was, however, reserved for the genius
of Sir Walter Scott to draw English hearts and English gold to
Scotland, and to knit those bonds of brotherly regard which no
act of legislature could do. His graphic pictures of Scotland
and the Scotch acted like a spell of enchantment on the
imaginations of the English. Those who were able to indulge the
enthusiastic feelings which his writings had excited, crossed
the Border, rushed into Highland glens, scaled Highland hills,
congregated at Scotch hostelries, peeped into Scotch cottages,
were invited to partake of Scotch hospitality--and found
themselves in a land flowing with milk and honey, not merely
in its festive character, but in its kindliness to strangers,
which is the glory of all lands.
"Yet among the numerous visitors whom the sight-seeing
instincts of this age of locomotion have rendered familiar
with the ancient seats of Scottish regality, how few know
anything about the Queens who once held their courts within
the now deserted walls of Dunfermline, Falkland, Linlithgow,
and Stirling!--gems which, even in their desolation, are
surviving monuments of the graceful tastes of their founders,
and incline the musing antiquary, who realises in fancy for a
moment their pristine glory, to smite his breast and exclaim
'Ichabod!' With the exception of Windsor Castle, England has
certainly no vestige of palatial architecture which may compare
with the royal homes of Scotland, of whose former tenants a few
particulars may be no less acceptable to the sons and daughters
of the land, than to the southern stranger who visits them.
"The Maiden Castle, sitting enthroned on her dun rock, the
Acropolis of Edinburgh, at once a relic and a witness of
the immutable Past, is full of memories of eventful scenes
connected with Queens whose hearts would have leaped with
exultation could their eyes have looked on such a vision of
national prosperity as the bright New Town, with its gay
streets, and shops full of costly merchandise; its spacious
squares, crescents, and noble public buildings, rising on
the outer _ballium_ of that grim fortress whose base is now
surrounded by green flowery gardens, for the joyance of a
peace-loving generation. Mons Meg and her brethren have lost
their vocation through the amended temper of the times, and
hold sinecure posts in silence--their destructive thunders
being superseded by the din of the railway trains bringing
hourly freights of wealth and wisdom to the good town of
Edinburgh and its inhabitants.
* * * * *
"Many original royal letters will be embodied in these volumes,
with facts and anecdotes carefully verified. Local traditions,
not unworthy of attention, have been gathered in the desolate
palaces and historic sites where every peasant is an oral
chronicler, full of spirit-stirring recollections of the past.
These are occasionally connected with themes which were the
fountains whence Sir Walter Scott drew his inspiration for
the chivalric poetry and romance which has rendered Scotland
classic ground. The tastes of those who were the rising
generation, when the Waverley romances were the absorbing
theme of interest in the literary world, have become matured.
They require to have history rendered as agreeable without
the mixture of fiction as with it; they desire to have it so
written, without sacrificing truth to fastidiousness, that they
may read it with their children, and that the whole family
party shall be eager to resume the book when they gather round
the work-table during the long winter evenings.
"Authors who feel as they ought to feel, should rejoice in
seeing their productions capable of imparting pleasure to the
simple as well as the refined; for a book which pleases only
one grade of society may be fashionable, but cannot be called
popular. That which interests peasants as well as peers, and is
read with equal zest by children and parents, and is often seen
in the hands of the operative classes, speaks to the heart in a
language intelligible to a widely-extended circle of humanity,
has written its own review, and needs no other."
In the last lines of these admirable observations, we doubt not Miss
Strickland has, without intending it, foreshadowed the destiny of her
own undertaking.
The work begins with the Life of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII.
of England, and married at the early age of fourteen to James IV., the
heroic and brilliant King of Scotland. This choice, in many respects,
was fortunate, as it commences with the period when the fortunes of the
two kingdoms became closely interlaced, and with the princess whose
marriage with James was the immediate cause of the union of the two
crowns on the same head, and the placing of the Stuart, and through it
of the Hanoverian family, on the British throne.
The first chapter is occupied with the details of the journey of
the royal bride from London to Edinburgh, which was somewhat a more
tedious and fatiguing undertaking than it is now when performed by her
descendant Queen Victoria, for it took above _three weeks_ to perform.
The reception of the youthful princess at York, Newcastle, and Durham,
where she was met and attended by the whole nobility and gentry of the
northern counties, who accompanied her on her progress northward on
horseback, gives occasion for several faithful and animated pictures.
Her first day's journey in Scotland, however, brought her into ruder
scenery, characteristic of the stormy life which lay before her; and
she rested the first night at _Fastcastle_, then a stronghold of the
Home family, now belonging to Sir John Hall of Dunglass, which modern
genius, under a feigned name, has done so much to celebrate.
"Fastcastle is no other than the veritable Wolf-Crag Tower,
celebrated in Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ as the abode of the
Master of Ravenswood. It is seated on a lofty promontory, which
commands the lonely indented bay of which St Abb's Head forms
the extreme point to the right, with a wild array of rifted
rocks terminating in the Wolf-Crag, which soars high in mid air
above the fortress--black, gloomy, and inaccessible. The way by
which the southern bride and her company reached this rugged
resting-place lay across the Lammermuir, several miles of wild
heath and treacherous bog, which no stranger might traverse in
safety without guides well acquainted with the track. Before
they entered on this pass, they had to descend a hill which was
so steep and precipitous that, even within the last century,
it was customary for the passengers by the mail-coach between
Berwick and Edinburgh to alight and cross it on foot, while
the carriage was taken off the wheels and carried over by a
relay of men, stationed on the spot for that purpose. Of course
the roads were not better in the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Fastcastle is approached by one or two descents and
ascents of this kind, and is separated from the mainland by a
cleft between the rocks, which has to be crossed by a natural
bridge formed of a ledge of rock, without rail or guard, with
the vexed billows boiling and thundering sixty feet below.
"When the young Tudor Queen made her passage across this Al
Arat of the Caledonian coast, she had the German Ocean before
her, which beats against the rocky battlements and defences
with which the basement of the castle is surrounded. One of
these masses resembles the upturned keel of a huge man-of-war
stranded among other fragments, which, like the relics of a
former world, lay scattered at the foot of the precipice, with
the wild breakers rushing through their clefts, forming a grand
_jet-d'eau_, and tossing the light feathery foam on high. The
larger rocks are the haunt of innumerable sea-birds. Fastcastle
had formerly been the stronghold of some of those ferocious
feudal pirates who may be regarded as the buccaneers of the
Caledonian coast. Many a bloody deed had been perpetrated
within its isolated and inaccessible circuit; but the festive
solemnities and ceremonials that surrounded the royal bride
allowed no leisure or opportunity for whispers of the dark
tales and romantic traditions connected with its history."
Hitherto the Tudor princess had not seen her royal lover. Their
first interview, and his personal appearance, are described in these
characteristic lines:--
"James entered the presence of Margaret Tudor with his
hawking-lure flung over his shoulder, dressed simply in a
velvet jacket; his hair and beard, curling naturally, were
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