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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, NO. 404, JUNE, 1849 ***

  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCCIV.         JUNE, 1849.        VOL. LXV.




CONTENTS.


  THE CAXTONS.--PART XIII.                                  637

  THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY,                           664

  LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN, AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC,   679

  AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY,                                      697

  FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,                      713

  CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS,                          727

  DIES BOREALES. NO. I. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS,          742

  INDEX,                                                    768




EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.




  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCCIV.         JUNE, 1849.          VOL. LXV.




THE CAXTONS.--PART XIII.


CHAPTER LXVI.

St Chrysostom, in his work on The Priesthood, defends deceit, if for
a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples; ends his first book by
asserting that it is often necessary, and that much benefit may arise
from it; and begins his second book by saying that it ought not to be
called _deceit_, but "good management."

Good management, then, let me call the innocent arts by which I
now sought to insinuate my project into favour and assent with my
unsuspecting family. And first I began with Roland. I easily induced
him to read some of the books, full of the charm of Australian life,
which Trevanion had sent me; and so happily did those descriptions
suit his own erratic tastes, and the free, half-savage man that
lay rough and large within that soldierly nature, that he himself,
as it were, seemed to suggest my own ardent desire--sighed, as the
careworn Trevanion had done, that "he was not my age," and blew the
flame that consumed me with his own willing breath. So that when at
last--wandering one day over the wild moors--I said, knowing his hatred
of law and lawyers--

"Alas, uncle, that nothing should be left for me but the bar!--"

Captain Roland struck his cane into the peat, and exclaimed, "Zounds,
sir, the bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from God before
you!"

"Your hand, uncle--we understand each other. Now help me with those two
quiet hearts at home!"

"Plague on my tongue! what have I done?" said the Captain, looking
aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me
and growled out, "I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for
me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am."

"Oh, sir, if you prefer the bar!--"

"Rogue!"

"Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant's office?"

"If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree!"

"Huzza then for Australasia!"

"Well, well, well," said my uncle,

    "With a smile on his lip and a tear in his eye;"

"the old sea-king's blood will force its way--a soldier or a rover,
there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who
can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?"

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me
as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a
dexterous dose of the old Greek _Cleruchiæ_--cited by Trevanion--which
set him off full trot on his hobby, till, after a short excursion to
Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian
colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into
his favourite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the
origin of the American savages, and considering the rival claims of
Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly,--"And you,
sir, who think that all human improvement depends on the mixture of
races--you, whose whole theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration,
and the transplanting and interpolity of our species--you, sir, should
be the last man to chain your son, your elder son, to the soil, while
your younger is the very missionary of rovers."

"Pisistratus," said my father, "you reason by synecdoche--ornamental,
but illogical;" and therewith, resolved to hear no more, my father rose
and retreated into his study.

But his observation, now quickened, began from that day to follow my
moods and humours--then he himself grew silent and thoughtful, and
finally he took to long conferences with Roland. The result was that,
one evening in spring, as I lay listless amidst the weeds and fern that
sprang up through the melancholy ruins, I felt a hand on my shoulder;
and my father, seating himself beside me on a fragment of stone, said
earnestly--"Pisistratus,--let us talk--I had hoped better things from
your study of Robert Hall."

"Nay, dear father, the medicine did me great good: I have not repined
since, and I look steadfastly and cheerfully on life. But Robert Hall
fulfilled his mission, and I would fulfil mine."

"Is there no mission in thy native land, O planeticose and exallotriote
spirit?[1]" asked my father, with compassionate rebuke.

[1] Words coined by Mr Caxton from [Greek: planêtikos], disposed to
roaming, and [Greek: exallotrioô], to export, to alienate.

"Alas, yes! But what the impulse of genius is to the great, the
instinct of vocation is to the mediocre. In every man there is a
magnet; in that thing which the man can do best there is a loadstone."

"Papæ!" said my father, opening his eyes; "and are no loadstones to be
found for you nearer than the great Australasian Bight?"

"Ah, sir, if you resort to irony, I can say no more!" My father looked
down on me tenderly, as I hung my head moody and abashed.

"Son," said he, "do you think that there is any real jest at my heart
when the matter discussed is whether you are to put wide seas and long
years between us?" I pressed nearer to his side, and made no answer.

"But I have noted you of late," continued my father, "and I have
observed that your old studies are grown distasteful to you; and I have
talked with Roland, and I see that your desire is deeper than a boy's
mere whim. And then I have asked myself what prospect I can hold out at
home to induce you to be contented here, and I see none; and therefore
I should say to you, 'Go thy ways, and God shield thee,'--but,
Pisistratus, _your mother_?"

"Ah, sir, that is indeed the question! and there indeed I shrink. But,
after all, whatever I were--whether toiling at the bar, or in some
public office--I should be still so much from home and her. And then
you, sir--she loves _you_ so entirely, that----"

"No," interrupted my father; "you can advance no arguments like these
to touch a mother's heart. There is but one argument that comes home
there--Is it for your good to leave her? If so, there will be no need
of farther words. But let us not decide that question hastily; let you
and I be together the next two months. Bring your books and sit with
me; when you want to go out, tap me on the shoulder and say 'Come.' At
the end of those two months, I will say to you 'Go,' or 'Stay.' And you
will trust me; and if I say the last, you will submit?"

"Oh yes, sir, yes."


CHAPTER LXVII.

This compact made, my father roused himself from all his
studies--devoted his whole thoughts to me--sought with all his gentle
wisdom to wean me imperceptibly from my own fixed tyrannical idea,
ranged through his wide pharmacy of books for such medicaments as might
alter the system of my thoughts. And little thought he that his very
tenderness and wisdom worked against him, for at each new instance of
either my heart called aloud, "Is it not that thy tenderness may be
repaid, and thy wisdom be known abroad, that I go from thee into the
strange land, O my father?"

And the two months expired, and my father saw that the magnet had
turned unalterably to the loadstone in the great Australasian Bight;
and he said to me, "Go, and comfort your mother. I have told her your
wish, and authorised it by my consent, for I believe now that it _is_
for your good."

I found my mother in the little room which she had appropriated to
herself, next my father's study. And in that room there was a pathos
which I have no words to express; for my mother's meek, gentle, womanly
soul, spoke there, so that it was as the Home of Home. The care with
which she had transplanted from the Brick House, and lovingly arranged,
all the humble memorials of old times, dear to her affections--the
black silhouette of my father's profile cut in paper, in the full pomp
of academics, cap and gown, (how had he ever consented to sit for
it!) framed and glazed in the place of honour over the little hearth;
and boyish sketches of mine at the Hellenic Institute, first essays
in sepia and Indian ink, to animate the walls, and bring her back,
when she sate there in the twilight musing alone, to sunny hours when
Sisty and the young mother threw daisies at each other;--and, covered
with a great glass shade, and dusted each day with her own hand, the
flower-pot Sisty had bought with the proceeds of the domino-box, on
that memorable occasion on which he had learned "how bad deeds are
repaired with good." There, in one corner, stood the little cottage
piano, which I remembered all my life--old-fashioned, and with the
jingling voice of approaching decrepitude, but still associated with
such melodies as, after childhood, we hear never more! And in the
modest hanging shelves which looked so gay with ribbons, and tassels,
and silken cords--my mother's own library, saying more to the heart
than all the cold wise poets whose souls my father invoked in his grand
Heraclea. The Bible over which, with eyes yet untaught to read, I had
hung in vague awe and love, as it lay open on my mother's lap, while
her sweet voice, then only serious, was made the oracle of its truths.
And my first lesson-books were there, all hoarded. And bound in blue
and gold, but elaborately papered up, _Cowper's Poems_--a gift from
my father in the days of courtship--sacred treasure which not even I
had the privilege to touch; and which my mother took out only in the
great crosses and trials of conjugal life, whenever some word less
kind than usual had dropped unawares from her scholar's absent lips.
Ah! all these poor household gods, all seemed to look on me with mild
anger; and from all came a voice to my soul, "Cruel, dost thou forsake
us!" And amongst them sate my mother, desolate as Rachel, and weeping
silently.

"Mother! mother!" I cried, falling on her neck, "forgive me, it is
past, I cannot leave you!"


CHAPTER LXVIII.

"No--no! it is for your good--Austin says so. Go--it is but the first
shock."

Then to my mother I opened the sluices of that deep I had concealed
from scholar and soldier. To her I poured all the wild, restless
thoughts which wandered through the ruins of love destroyed--to her I
confessed what to myself I had scarcely before avowed. And when the
picture of that, the darker, side of my mind was shown, it was with a
prouder face, and less broken voice, that I spoke of the manlier hopes
and nobler aims that gleamed across the wrecks and the desert, and
showed me my escape.

"Did you not once say, mother, that you had felt it like a remorse
that my father's genius passed so noiselessly away, half accusing the
happiness you gave him for the death of his ambition in the content
of his mind? Did you not feel a new object in life when the ambition
revived at last, and you thought you heard the applause of the
world murmuring round your scholar's cell? Did you not share in the
day-dreams your brother conjured up, and say, 'If _my_ brother could be
the means of raising _him_ in the world!' and when you thought we had
found the way to fame and fortune, did you not sob out from your full
heart, 'And it is _my_ brother who will pay back to _his_ son--all--all
he gave up for me?'"

"I cannot bear this, Sisty!--cease, cease!"

"No; for do you not yet understand me? Will it not be better still, if
_your son_--yours--restore to your Austin all that he lost, no matter
how? If through your son, mother, you do indeed make the world hear
of your husband's genius--restore the spring to his mind, the glory
to his pursuits--if you rebuild even that vaunted ancestral name,
which is glory to our poor sonless Roland--if your son can restore the
decay of generations, and reconstruct from the dust the whole house
into which you have entered, its meek presiding angel--ah, mother, if
this can be done, it will be your work; for unless you can share my
ambition--unless you can dry those eyes, and smile in my face, and bid
me go, with a cheerful voice--all my courage melts from my heart, and
again I say I cannot leave you!"

Then my mother folded her arms round me, and we both wept, and could
not speak--but we were both happy.


CHAPTER LXIX.

Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So
I began to prepare myself in good earnest; and I followed Trevanion's
instructions with a perseverance, which I could never, at that young
day, have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good school
amongst our Cumberland sheepwalks, to learn those simple elements
of rural art which belong to the pastoral state. Mr Sidney, in his
admirable _Australian Hand-Book_, recommends young gentlemen who
think of becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months on
Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or I might have taken
the advice; meanwhile I think, with due respect to such authority, that
I went through a preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning
the future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly peasants
and craftsmen, who became my teachers. With what pride I presented my
father with a desk and my mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own
hands! I made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest. And (that last was _my_
magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and absolutely set going
an old turret clock in the tower, that had stood at two P.M.
since the memory of man. I loved to think, each time the hour sounded,
that those who heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks
were my main care. The sheep that I tended and helped to shear, and
the lamb that I hooked out of the great marsh, and the three venerable
ewes that I nursed through a mysterious sort of murrain, which puzzled
all the neighbourhood--are they not written in thy loving chronicles, O
House of Caxton!

And now, since much of the success of my experiment must depend on
the friendly terms I could establish with my intended partner, I
wrote to Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to
join me, and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us.
Trevanion complied, and there arrived a tall fellow somewhat more than
six feet high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away
sporting-coat, with a dog-whistle tied to the button-hole; drab shorts
and gaiters, and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive
pockets. Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast
man;" so "fast" had he lived that there was scarcely a tradesman at
Oxford into whose books he had not contrived to run.

His father was compelled to withdraw him from the university, at which
he had already had the honour of being plucked for the little go: and
the young gentleman, on being asked for what profession he was fit, had
replied with conscious pride, "That he could tool a coach!" In despair,
the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had asked the statesman's
advice, and the advice had fixed me with a partner in expatriation.

My first feeling, in greeting the fast man, was certainly that of deep
disappointment and strong repugnance. But I was determined not to be
too fastidious; and, having a lucky knack of suiting myself pretty well
to all tempers, (without which a man had better not think of loadstones
in the great Australasian Bight,) I contrived, before the first week
was out, to establish so many points of connexion between us that we
became the best friends in the world. Indeed, it would have been my
fault if we had not, for Guy Bolding, with all his faults, was one
of those excellent creatures who are nobody's enemies but their own.
His good humour was inexhaustible. Not a hardship or privation came
amiss to him. He had a phrase "Such fun!" that always came to his lips
when another man would have cursed and groaned. If we lost our way in
the great trackless moors, missed our dinner, and were half-famished,
Guy rubbed hands that would have felled an ox, and chuckled out "Such
fun!" If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunderstorm, if we
were pitched head over heels by the wild colts we undertook to break
in, Guy Bolding's only elegy was "Such fan!" That grand shibboleth
of philosophy only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don't
think that at that time, he could have found "fun" even in Don Quixote.
This hilarious temperament had no insensibility; a kinder heart never
beat,--but, to be sure, it beat to a strange, restless, tarantula
sort of measure, which kept it in a perpetual dance. It made him one
of those officiously good fellows who are never quiet themselves, and
never let any one else be quiet if they can help it. But Guy's great
fault, in this prudent world, was his absolute incontinence of money.
If you had turned an Euphrates of gold into his pockets at morning, it
would have been as dry as the great Sahara by twelve at noon. What he
did with the money was a mystery as much to himself as to every one
else. His father said in a letter to me, that "he had seen him shying
at sparrows with half-crowns!" That such a young man could come to no
good in England, seemed perfectly clear. Still, it is recorded of many
great men, who did not end their days in a workhouse, that they were
equally non-retentive of money. Schiller, when he had nothing else to
give away, gave the clothes from his back, and Goldsmith the blankets
from his bed. Tender hands found it necessary to pick Beethoven's
pockets at home before he walked out. Great heroes, who have made no
scruple of robbing the whole world, have been just as lavish as poor
poets and musicians. Alexander, in parcelling out his spoils, left
himself "hope!" And as for Julius Cæsar, he was two millions in debt
when he shied his last half-crown at the sparrows in Gaul. Encouraged
by these illustrious examples, I had hopes of Guy Bolding; and the more
as he was so aware of his own infirmity that he was perfectly contented
with the arrangement which made me treasurer of his capital, and
even besought me, on no account, let him beg ever so hard, to permit
his own money to come in his own way. In fact, I contrived to gain a
great ascendency over his simple, generous, thoughtless nature; and
by artful appeals to his affections--to all he owed to his father for
many bootless sacrifices, and to the duty of providing a little dower
for his infant sister, whose meditated portion had half gone to pay his
college debts--I at last succeeded in fixing into his mind an object to
save for.

Three other companions did I select for our Cleruchia. The first was
the son of our old shepherd, who had lately married, but was not yet
encumbered with children,--a good shepherd, and an intelligent, steady
fellow. The second was a very different character; he had been the
dread of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dexterous poacher
did not exist. Now my acquaintance with this latter person, named
Will Peterson, and more popularly "Will o' the Wisp," had commenced
thus:--Bolt had managed to rear, in a small copse about a mile from the
house--and which was the only bit of ground in my uncle's domains that
might by courtesy be called "a wood"--a young colony of pheasants, that
he dignified by the title of a "preserve." This colony was audaciously
despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two watchers who,
with Bolt, guarded for seven nights successively the slumbers of the
infant settlement. So insolent was the assault that bang, bang went
the felonious gun--behind, before--within but a few yards of the
sentinels--and the gunner was off, and the prey seized, before they
could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon
proclaimed him, to the experienced watchers, to be Will o' the Wisp;
and so great was the dread of this fellow's strength and courage,
and so complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness and
cunning, that after the seventh night the watchers refused to go out
any longer; and poor Bolt himself was confined to his bed by an attack
of what a doctor would have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage.
My indignation and sympathy were greatly excited by this mortifying
failure, and my interest romantically aroused by the anecdotes I had
heard of Will o' the Wisp; accordingly, armed with a thick bludgeon,
I stole out at night, and took my way to the copse. The leaves were
not off the trees, and how the poacher contrived to see his victims I
know not; but five shots did he fire, and not in vain, without allowing
me to catch a glimpse of him. I then retreated to the outskirt of the
copse, and waited patiently by an angle, which commanded two sides of
the wood. Just as the dawn began to peep, I saw my man emerge within
twenty yards of me. I held my breath, suffered him to get a few steps
from the wood, crept on so as to intercept his retreat, and then
pounce--such a bound! My hand was on his shoulder--prr, prr--no eel was
ever more lubricate. He slid from me like a thing immaterial, and was
off over the moors with a swiftness which might well have baffled any
clodhopper--a race whose calves are generally absorbed in the soles of
their hobnail shoes. But the Hellenic Institute, with its classical
gymnasia, had trained its pupils in all bodily exercises; and though
the Will o' the Wisp was swift for a clodhopper, he was no match at
running for any youth who has spent his boyhood in the discipline of
cricket, prisoner's bars, and hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length,
and brought him to bay.

"Stand back," said he, panting, and taking aim with his gun; "it is
loaded."

"Yes," said I; "but though you're a brave poacher, you dare not fire at
your fellow man. Give up the gun this instant."

My address took him by surprise; he did not fire. I struck up the
barrel, and closed on him. We grappled pretty tightly, and in the
wrestle the gun went off. The man loosened his hold. "Lord ha' mercy, I
have not hurt you!" he said falteringly.

"My good fellow--no," said I; "and now let us throw aside gun and
bludgeon, and light it out like Englishmen, or else let us sit down and
talk it over like friends."

The Will o' the Wisp scratched its head and laughed.

"Well, you're a queer one," quoth it. And the poacher dropped the gun
and sate down.

We did talk it over, and I obtained Peterson's promise to respect the
preserve henceforth, and we thereon grew so cordial that he walked home
with me, and even presented me, shyly and apologetically, with the
five pheasants he had shot. From that time I sought him out. He was a
young fellow not four-and-twenty, who had taken to poaching from the
wild sport of the thing, and from some confused notions that he had a
license from Nature to poach. I soon found out that he was meant for
better things than to spend six months of the twelve in prison, and
finish his life on the gallows after killing a gamekeeper. That seemed
to me his most probable destiny in the Old World, so I talked him into
a burning desire for the New one: and a most valuable aid in the Bush
he proved too.

My third selection was in a personage who could bring little physical
strength to help us, but who had more mind (though with a wrong twist
in it) than all the others put together.

A worthy couple in the village had a son, who being slight and puny,
compared to the Cumberland breed, was shouldered out of the market of
agricultural labour, and went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town.
Now about the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by
a long illness, came home to recover; and in a short time we heard
of nothing but the pestilential doctrines with which he was either
shocking or infecting our primitive villagers. According to report,
Corcyra itself never engendered a democrat more awful. The poor man
was really very ill, and his parents very poor; but his unfortunate
doctrines dried up all the streams of charity that usually flowed
through our kindly hamlet. The clergyman (an excellent man, but of the
old school) walked by the house as if it were tabooed. The apothecary
said "Miles Square ought to have wine," but he did not send him any.
The farmers held his name in execration, for he had incited all their
labourers to strike for another shilling a-week. And but for the old
tower, Miles Square would soon have found his way to the only republic
in which he could obtain that democratic fraternisation for which he
sighed--the grave being, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains
that dead flat of social equality, that life in its every principle so
heartily abhors.

My uncle went to see Miles Square, and came back the colour of purple.
Miles Square had preached him a long sermon on the unholiness of war.
"Even in defence of your king and country!" had roared the Captain; and
Miles Square had replied with a remark upon kings, in general, that
the Captain could not have repeated without expecting to see the old
tower fall about his ears; and with an observation about the country,
in particular, to the effect that "the country would be much better
off if it _were_ conquered!" On hearing the report of these loyal and
patriotic replies, my father said, "Papæ!" and, roused out of his usual
philosophical indifference, went himself to visit Miles Square. My
father returned as pale as my uncle had been purple. "And to think,"
said he mournfully, "that in the town whence this man comes, there are,
he tells me, ten thousand other of God's creatures who speed the work
of civilisation while execrating its laws!"

But neither father nor uncle made any opposition when, with a basket
laden with wine and arrowroot, and a neat little Bible, bound in brown,
my mother took her way to the excommunicated cottage. Her visit was
as signal a failure as those that preceded it. Miles Square refused
the basket; 'he was not going to accept alms, and eat the bread of
charity;' and on my mother meekly suggesting that, 'if Mr Miles
Square would condescend to look into the Bible, he would see that
even charity was no sin in giver or recipient,' Mr Miles Square had
undertaken to prove 'that, according to the Bible, he had as much a
right to my mother's property as she had--that all things should be in
common--and that, when things were in common, what became of charity?
No; he could not eat my uncle's arrowroot, and drink his wine, while
my uncle was improperly withholding from him and his fellow-creatures
so many unprofitable acres: the land belonged to the people.' It
was now the turn of Pisistratus to go. He went once, and he went
often. Miles Square and Pisistratus wrangled and argued--argued and
wrangled--and ended by taking a fancy to each other; for this poor
Miles Square was not half so bad as his doctrines. His errors arose
from intense sympathy with the sufferings he had witnessed, amidst the
misery which accompanies the reign of _millocratism_, and from the
vague aspirations of a half-taught, impassioned, earnest nature. By
degrees, I persuaded him to drink the wine and eat the arrowroot, _en
attendant_ that millennium which was to restore the land to the people.
And then my mother came again and softened his heart, and, for the
first time in his life, let into its cold crotchets the warm light of
human gratitude. I lent him some books, amongst others a few volumes on
Australia. A passage in one of the latter, in which it was said "that
an intelligent mechanic usually made his way in the colony, even as
a shepherd, better than a dull agricultural labourer," caught hold of
his fancy, and seduced his aspirations into a healthful direction.
Finally, as he recovered, he entreated me to let him accompany me. And
as I may not have to return to Miles Square, I think it right here to
state, that he did go with me to Australia, and did succeed, first as
shepherd, and, on saving money, as landowner; and that, in spite of
his opinions on the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in possession
of a comfortable log homestead, than he defended it with uncommon
gallantry against an attack of the aborigines, whose right to the soil
was, to say the least of it, as good as his claim to my uncle's acres;
that he commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment,
with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on
the _Sanctity of the Rights of Property_; and that, when I left the
colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps" that he had
added to his establishment, he had just distinguished himself by a very
anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers.
What would the Old World have done for this man!


CHAPTER LXX.

I had not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, for, independently
of my wish to render myself acquainted with the small useful crafts
that might be necessary to me in a life that makes the individual
man a state in himself, I naturally desired to habituate my kindred
to the idea of our separation, and to plan and provide for them all
such substitutes or distractions, in compensation for my loss, as my
fertile imagination could suggest. And first, for the sake of Blanche,
Roland, and my mother, I talked the Captain into reluctant sanction of
his sister-in-law's proposal, to unite their incomes and share alike,
without considering which party brought the larger proportion into
the firm. I represented to him that, unless he made that sacrifice
of his pride, my mother would be wholly without those little notable
uses and objects--those small household pleasures--so dear to woman;
that all society in the neighbourhood would be impossible, and that my
mother's time would hang so heavily on her hands that her only resource
would be to muse on the absent one and fret. Nay, if he persisted in
so false a pride, I told him, fairly, that I should urge my father to
leave the tower. These representations succeeded; and hospitality had
commenced in the old hall, and a knot of gossips had centred round
my mother--groups of laughing children had relaxed the still brow of
Blanche--and the Captain himself was a more cheerful and social man.
My next point was to engage my father in the completion of the Great
Book. "Ah, sir," said I, "give me an inducement to toil, a reward for
my industry. Let me think, in each tempting pleasure, each costly
vice--No, no; I will save for the Great Book! and the memory of the
father shall still keep the son from error. Ah, look you, sir! Mr
Trevanion offered me the loan of the £1500 necessary to commence with;
but you generously and at once said--'No; you must not begin life under
the load of debt.' And I knew you were right, and yielded--yielded the
more gratefully, that I could not but forfeit something of the just
pride of manhood in incurring such an obligation to the father of--Miss
Trevanion. Therefore I have taken that sum from you--a sum that would
almost have sufficed to establish your younger and worthier child in
the world for ever. To that child let me repay it, otherwise I will
not take it. Let me hold it as a trust for the Great Book; and promise
me that the Great Book shall be ready when your wanderer returns, and
accounts for the missing talent."

And my father pished a little, and rubbed off the dew that had gathered
on his spectacles. But I would not leave him in peace till he had given
me his word that the Great Book should go on _à pas du géant_--nay,
till I had seen him sit down to it with good heart, and the wheel went
round again in the quiet mechanism of that gentle life.

Finally, and as the culminating acme of my diplomacy, I effected the
purchase of the neighbouring apothecary's practice and good-will for
Squills, upon terms which he willingly subscribed to; for the poor man
had pined at the loss of his favourite patients, though, Heaven knows,
they did not add much to his income. And as for my father, there was no
man who diverted him more than Squills, though he accused him of being
a materialist, and set his whole spiritual pack of sages to worry and
bark at him, from Plato and Zeno to Reid and Abraham Tucker.

Thus, although I have very loosely intimated the flight of time, more
than a whole year elapsed from the date of our settlement at the tower
and that affixed for my departure.

In the meanwhile, despite the rarity amongst us of that phenomenon
a newspaper, we were not so utterly cut off from the sounds of the
far-booming world beyond, but what the intelligence of a change in the
administration, and the appointment of Mr Trevanion to one of the great
offices of state, reached our ears. I had kept up no correspondence
with Trevanion subsequent to the letter that occasioned Guy Bolding's
visit; I wrote now to congratulate him: his reply was short and hurried.

Intelligence that startled me more, and more deeply moved my heart,
was conveyed to me some three months or so before my departure, by
Trevanion's steward. The ill health of Lord Castleton had deferred his
marriage, intended originally to be celebrated as soon as he came of
age. He left the university with the honours of "a double-first class;"
and his constitution appeared to rally from the effects of studies
more severe to him, than they might have been to a man of quicker and
more brilliant capacities--when a feverish cold, caught at a county
meeting, in which his first public appearance was so creditable as
fully to justify the warmest hopes of his party, produced inflammation
of the lungs, and ended fatally. The startling contrast forced on
my mind--here sudden death, and cold clay--there youth in its first
flower, princely rank, boundless wealth, the sanguine expectation of
an illustrious career, and the prospect of that happiness which smiled
from the eyes of Fanny--that contrast impressed me with a strange awe:
death seems so near to us when it strikes those whom life most flatters
and caresses. Whence is that curious sympathy that we all have with the
possessors of worldly greatness, when the hour-glass is shaken and the
scythe descends? If the famous meeting between Diogenes and Alexander
had taken place not before, but after, the achievements which gave to
Alexander the name of Great, the cynic would not, perhaps, have envied
the hero his pleasures or his splendours, the charms of Statira, or
the tiara of the Mede; but if, the day after, a cry had gone forth,
"Alexander the Great is dead!" verily I believe that Diogenes would
have coiled himself up in his tub, and felt that, with the shadow of
the stately hero, something of glory and of warmth had gone from that
sun, which it should darken never more. In the nature of man, the
humblest or the hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the
Beautiful or the Fortunate, which hope and desire have appropriated,
even in the vanities of a childish dream.


CHAPTER LXXI.

"Why are you here all alone, cousin? How cold and still it is amongst
the graves!"

"Sit down beside me, Blanche; it is not colder in the churchyard than
on the village green."

And Blanche sate down beside me, nestled close to me, and leant her
head upon my shoulder. We were both long silent. It was an evening in
the early spring, clear and serene--the roseate streaks were fading
gradually from the dark gray of long, narrow, fantastic clouds. Tall,
leafless poplars, that stood in orderly level line, on the lowland
between the churchyard and the hill, with its crown of ruins, left
their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled
dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so
that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in
their gloomy stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from
the lower bushes, and the thick laurel leaves stirred reluctantly,
and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the
evenings of early spring which is among those influences of nature the
most universally recognised, the most difficult to explain. The silent
stir of reviving life, which does not yet betray signs in the bud and
blossom--only in a softer clearness in the air, a more lingering pause
in the slowly lengthening day; a more delicate freshness and balm in
the twilight atmosphere; a more lively yet still unquiet note from
the birds, settling down into their coverts;--the vague sense under
all that hush, which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of
winter--of the busy change, hourly, momently, at work--renewing the
youth of the world, reclothing with vigorous bloom the skeletons of
things--all these messages from the heart of Nature to the heart of
Man may well affect and move us. But why with melancholy? No thought
on our part connects and construes the low, gentle voices. It is not
_thought_ that replies and reasons: it is _feeling_ that hears and
dreams. Examine not, O child of man!--examine not that mysterious
melancholy with the hard eyes of thy reason; thou canst not impale it
on the spikes of thy thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted circle by
problems conned from thy schools. Borderer thyself of two worlds--the
Dead and the Living--give thine ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the
shadows, that steal, in the season of change, from the dim Border Land.

BLANCHE (_in a whisper_.)--What are you thinking of?--speak,
pray!

PISISTRATUS.--I was not thinking, Blanche; or, if I were, the
thought is gone at the mere effort to seize or detain it.

BLANCHE (_after a pause_.)--I know what you mean. It is the
same with me often--so often, when I am sitting by myself, quite still.
It is just like the story Primmins was telling us the other evening,
how there was a woman in her village who saw things and people in a
piece of crystal, not bigger than my hand:[2] they passed along as
large as life, but they were only pictures in the crystal. Since I
heard the story, when aunt asks me what I am thinking of, I long to
say, "I'm not thinking! I am seeing pictures in the crystal!"

[2] In primitive villages in the west of England, the belief that the
absent may be seen in a piece of crystal is, or was not many years
ago, by no means an uncommon superstition. I have seen more than one
of these magic mirrors, which Spenser, by the way, has beautifully
described. They are about the size and shape of a swan's egg. It is not
every one, however, who can be a crystal-seer; like second-sight, it is
a special gift.

PISISTRATUS.--Tell my father that; it will please him. There
is more philosophy in it than you are aware of, Blanche. There are
wise men who have thought the whole world, "its pride, pomp, and
circumstance," only a phantom image--a picture in the crystal.

BLANCHE.--And I shall see you--see us both, as we are sitting
here--and that star which has just risen yonder--see it all in my
crystal--when you are gone!--gone, cousin!

And Blanche's head drooped.

There was something so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this poor
motherless child, that it did not affect one superficially, like a
child's loud momentary affection, in which we know that the first toy
will replace us. I kissed my little cousin's pale face, and said,
"And I too, Blanche, have my crystal; and when I consult it, I shall
be very angry if I see you sad and fretting, or seated alone. For you
must know, Blanche, that that is all selfishness. God made us, not to
indulge only in crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, pine alone, and
mourn over what we cannot help--but to be alert and active--givers
of happiness. Now, Blanche, see what a trust I am going to bequeath
you. You are to supply my place to all whom I leave. You are to bring
sunshine wherever you glide with that shy, soft step--whether to your
father, when you see his brows knit and his arms crossed, (that,
indeed, you always do,) or to mine, when the volume drops from his
hand--when he walks to and fro the room, restless, and murmuring to
himself--then you are to steal up to him, put your hand in his, lead
him back to his books, and whisper, 'What will Sisty say if his younger
brother, the Great Book, is not grown up when he comes back?'--And my
poor mother, Blanche!--ah, how can I counsel you there--how tell you
where to find comfort for her? Only, Blanche, steal into her heart and
be her daughter. And, to fulfil this threefold trust, you must not
content yourself with seeing pictures in the crystal--do you understand
me?"

"Oh yes," said Blanche, raising her eyes, while the tears rolled from
them, and folding her arms resolutely on her breast.

"And so," said I, "as we two, sitting in this quiet burial-ground,
take new heart for the duties and cares of life, so see, Blanche,
how the stars come out, one by one, to smile upon us, for they too,
glorious orbs as they are, perform their appointed tasks. Things seem
to approximate to God in proportion to their vitality and movement. Of
all things, least inert and sullen should be the soul of man. How the
grass grows up over the very graves--quickly it grows and greenly--but
neither so quick and so green, my Blanche, as hope and comfort from
human sorrows."


CHAPTER LXXII.

There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante, (which has not
perhaps attracted the attention it deserves,) wherein the stern
Florentine defends Fortune from the popular accusations against her.
According to him, she is an angelic power appointed by the Supreme
Being to direct and order the course of human splendours; she obeys the
will of God; she is blessed, and, hearing not those who blaspheme her,
calm and aloft amongst the other angelic powers, revolves her spheral
course, and rejoices in her beatitude.[3]

[3] Dante here evidently associates Fortune with the planetary
influences of judicial astrology. It is doubtful whether Schiller ever
read Dante, but in one of his most thoughtful poems, he undertakes the
same defence of Fortune, making the Fortunate a part of the Beautiful.

This is a conception very different from the popular notion which
Aristophanes, in his true instinct of things popular, expresses by the
sullen lips of his Plutus. That deity accounts for his blindness by
saying, that "when a boy he had indiscreetly promised to visit only
the good," and Jupiter was so envious of the good that he blinded the
poor money-god. Whereon Chremylus asks him, whether, "if he recovered
his sight, he would frequent the company of the good?" "Certainly,"
quoth Plutus, "for I have not seen them ever so long." "Nor I either,"
rejoins Chremylus pithily, "for all I can see out of both eyes!"

But that misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither here nor there,
and only diverts us from the real question, and that is, "Whether
Fortune be a heavenly, Christian angel, or a blind, blundering, old
heathen deity?" For my part, I hold with Dante--for which, if I were
so pleased, or if, at this period of my memoirs, I had half a dozen
pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. One thing, however, is
quite clear--that, whether Fortune be more like Plutus or an angel, it
is no use abusing her--one may as well throw stones at a star. And I
think if one looked narrowly at her operations, one might perceive that
she gives every man a chance, at least once in his life; if he take
and make the best of it, she will renew her visits; if not--_itur ad
astra_! And therewith I am reminded of an incident quaintly narrated by
Mariana in his "History of Spain," how the army of the Spanish kings
got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at the pass of Losa, by
the help of a shepherd, who showed them the way. "But," saith Mariana,
parenthetically, "some do say the shepherd was an angel; for after he
had shown the way, he was never seen more." That is, the angelic nature
of the guide was proved by being only once seen, and disappearing after
having got the army out of the hobble, leaving it to fight or run away,
as it had most mind to. Now I look upon that shepherd, or angel, as a
very good type of my fortune at least. The apparition showed me my way
in the rocks to the great "Battle of Life;" after that,--hold fast and
strike hard!

Behold me in London with Uncle Roland. My poor parents naturally wished
to accompany me, and take the last glimpse of the adventurer on board
ship; but I, knowing that the parting would seem less dreadful to them
by the hearthstone, and while they could say, "He is with Roland--he
is not yet gone from the land"--insisted on their staying behind; and
so the farewell was spoken. But Roland, the old soldier, had so many
practical instructions to give--could so help me in the choice of the
outfit, and the preparations for the voyage, that I could not refuse
his companionship to the last. Guy Bolding, who had gone to take leave
of his father, was to join me in town, as well as my humbler Cumberland
colleagues.

As my uncle and I were both of one mind upon the question of economy,
we took up our quarters at a lodging-house in the City; and there it
was that I first made acquaintance with a part of London, of which few
of my politer readers even pretend to be cognisant. I do not mean any
sneer at the City itself, my dear alderman; that jest is worn out. I am
not alluding to streets, courts, and lanes; what I mean may be seen at
the west end, not so well as at the east, but still seen very fairly; I
mean--THE HOUSE-TOPS!


CHAPTER LXXIII.

BEING A CHAPTER ON HOUSE-TOPS.

The house-tops! what a soberising effect that prospect produces on
the mind. But a great many requisites go towards the selection of the
right point of survey. It is not enough to secure a lodging in the
attic; you must not be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the
street. First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic; secondly,
the house in which it is located must be slightly elevated above its
neighbours; thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is
common with attics--in which case you only catch a peep of that leaden
canopy which infatuated Londoners call the sky--but must be a window
perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse
called the gutter; and, lastly, the sight must be so humoured that you
cannot catch a glimpse of the pavements: if you once see the world
beneath, the whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking it
for granted that you have secured these requisites, open your window,
lean your chin on both hands, the elbows propped commodiously on the
sill, and contemplate the extraordinary scene which spreads before you.
You find it difficult to believe that life can be so tranquil on high,
while it is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing stillness!
Eliot Warburton (seductive enchanter) recommends you to sail down the
Nile if you want to lull the vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to
hire an attic in Holborn! You don't have the crocodiles, but you have
animals no less hallowed in Egypt--the cats! And how harmoniously the
tranquil creatures blend with the prospect--how noiselessly they glide
along at the distance, pause, peer about, and disappear. It is only
from the attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belongs to
our domesticated tiger-kin! The goat should be seen on the Alps, and
the cat on the house-top.

By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail: and first, what
fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some
all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting;
others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking
the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers
that it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke;
whereon Imagination steps in, and represents to you all the fretting,
and fuming, and worry, and care, which the owners of that chimney,
now the tallest of all, endured, before, by building it higher, they
got rid of the vapours! You see the distress of the cook, when the
sooty invader rushed down, "like a wolf on the fold," full spring on
the Sunday joint. You hear the exclamations of the mistress, (perhaps
a bride,--house newly furnished,) when, with white apron and cap,
she ventured into the drawing-room, and was straightway saluted by a
joyous dance of those monads, called vulgarly _smuts_. You feel manly
indignation at the brute of a bridegroom, who rushes out from the door,
with the smuts dancing after him, and swears, "Smoked out again--By
the Arch-smoker himself, I'll go and dine at the club!" All this might
well have been, till the chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer
heaven; and now perhaps that long-suffering family owns the happiest
home in the Row. Such contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not
every one who merely heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow
tormentor all sorts of odd headgear and cowls. Here patent contrivances
act the purpose of weathercocks, swaying to and fro with the wind;
there others stand as fixed as if by a "_sic jubeo_" they had settled
the business. But of all those houses that, in the street, one passes
by, unsuspicious of what's the matter within, there is not one in a
hundred but what there has been the devil to do, to cure the chimneys
of smoking! At that reflection, Philosophy dismisses the subject; and
decides that, whether one lives in a hut or a palace, the first thing
to do is to look to the hearth--and get rid of the vapours.

New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents: here a slant, there a zig-zag! With what
majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left!--Doubtless, a palace
of Genii or Gin, (which last is the proper Arabic word for those
builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin.) Seeing only
the roof of that palace boldly breaking the skyline--how serene your
contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft
eyes far away; while below, at the threshold--No, phantoms, we see you
not from our attic! Note, yonder, that precipitous fall--how ragged and
jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge. He who would travel on foot
through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque
summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and
hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But
seen _above_, what a noble break in the skyline! It would be sacrilege
to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull roof-tops. Look
here--how delightful!--that desolate house with no roof at all--gutted
and skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green and
white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was
a cupboard, and the shadows gathering black on the aperture that once
was a hearth! Seen below, how quickly you would cross over the way!
That great crack forbodes an avalanche; you would hold your breath, not
to bring it down on your head. But seen _above_, what a compassionate
inquisitive charm in the skeleton ruin! How your fancy runs
riot--repeopling the chambers, hearing the last cheerful good-night
of that destined Pompeii--creeping on tiptoe with the mother, when
she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and
silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath;
hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and coils; now he
soars up erect--crest superb, and forked tongue--the beautiful horror!
Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run
here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the
window, and the knock at the door, and the spring of those on high
towards the stair that leads to safety below, and the smoke rushing
up like the surge of a hell! And they run back stifled and blinded,
and the floor heaves beneath them like a bark on the sea. Hark! the
grating wheels thundering low; near and near comes the engine. Fix the
ladders!--there! there! at the window, where the mother stands with
the babe! Splash and hiss comes the water; pales, then flares out, the
fire: foe defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But
the ladder, the ladder!--there at the window! All else are saved: the
clerk and his books; the lawyer, with that tin box of title-deeds; the
landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes
and gold: all are saved--all, but the babe and the mother. What a crowd
in the streets! how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on
hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a man mounts
the ladder. Yes, there--gallant fellow! God inspires--God shall speed
thee! How plainly I see him!--his eyes are closed, his teeth set. The
serpent leaps up, the forked tongue darts upon him, and the reek of the
breath wraps him round. The crowd has ebbed back like a sea, and the
smoke rushes over them all. Ha! what dim forms are those on the ladder?
Near and nearer--crash come the roof-tiles. Alas, and alas!--no; a cry
of joy--a "Thank heaven!" and the women force their way through the men
to come round the child and the mother. All is gone, save that skeleton
ruin. But here, the ruin is seen from _above_. O Art, study life from
the roof-tops!


CHAPTER LXXIV.

I was again foiled in seeing Trevanion. It was the Easter recess, and
he was at the house of one of his brother ministers, somewhere in the
north of England. But Lady Ellinor was in London, and I was ushered
into her presence. Nothing could be more cordial than her manner,
though she was evidently much depressed in spirits, and looked wan and
careworn.

After the kindest inquiries relative to my parents, and the Captain,
she entered with much sympathy into my schemes and plans, which
she said that Trevanion had confided to her. The sterling kindness
that belonged to my old patron (despite his affected anger at my
not accepting his proffered loan) had not only saved me and my
fellow-adventurer all trouble as to allotment orders, but procured
advice, as to choice of site and soil, from the best practical
experience, which we found afterwards exceedingly useful. And as Lady
Ellinor gave me the little packet of papers with Trevanion's shrewd
notes on the margin, she said with a half sigh, "Albert bids me say,
that he wishes he were as sanguine of his success in the cabinet as
of yours in the Bush." She then turned to her husband's rise and
prospects, and her face began to change. Her eyes sparkled, the colour
came to her cheeks--"But you are one of the few who know him," she
said, interrupting herself suddenly; "you know how he sacrifices all
things--joy, leisure, health--to his country. There is not one selfish
thought in his nature. And yet such envy--such obstacles still! and"
(her eyes dropped on her dress, and I perceived that she was in
mourning, though the mourning was not deep,) "and," she added, "it has
pleased heaven to withdraw from his side one who would have been worthy
his alliance."

I felt for the proud woman, though her emotion seemed more that of
pride than sorrow. And perhaps Lord Castleton's highest merit in her
eyes had been that of ministering to her husband's power and her own
ambition. I bowed my head in silence, and thought of Fanny. Did she,
too, pine for the lost rank, or rather mourn the lost lover?

After a time, I said hesitatingly, "I scarcely presume to condole with
you, Lady Ellinor; yet, believe me, few things ever shocked me like
the death you allude to. I trust Miss Trevanion's health has not much
suffered. Shall I not see her before I leave England?"

Lady Ellinor fixed her keen bright eyes searchingly on my countenance,
and perhaps the gaze satisfied her, for she held out her hand to me
with a frankness almost tender, and said--"Had I had a son, the dearest
wish of my heart had been to see you wedded to my daughter."

I started up--the blood rushed to my cheeks, and then left me pale as
death. I looked reproachfully at Lady Ellinor, and the word "cruel"
faltered on my lips.

"Yes," continued Lady Ellinor, mournfully, "that was my real thought,
my impulse of regret, when I first saw you. But, as it is, do not think
me too hard and worldly, if I quote the lofty old French proverb,
_Noblesse oblige_. Listen to me, my young friend,--we may never meet
again, and I would not have your father's son think unkindly of me
with all my faults. From my first childhood I was ambitious--not as
women usually are, of mere wealth and rank--but ambitious as noble
men are, of power and fame. A woman can only indulge such ambition
by investing it in another. It was not wealth, it was not rank, that
attracted me to Albert Trevanion; it was the nature that dispenses with
the wealth, and commands the rank. Nay," continued Lady Ellinor, in a
voice that slightly trembled, "I may have seen in my youth, before I
knew Trevanion, one (she paused a moment, and went on hurriedly)--one
who wanted but ambition to have realised my ideal. Perhaps, even when
I married--and it was said for love--I loved less with my whole heart
than with my whole mind. I may say this now, for _now_ every beat of
this pulse is wholly and only true to him with whom I have schemed, and
toiled, and aspired; with whom I have grown as one; with whom I have
shared the struggle, and now partake the triumph--realising the visions
of my youth."

Again the light broke from the dark eyes of this grand daughter of
the world, who was so superb a type of that moral contradiction--_an
ambitious woman_.

"I cannot tell you," resumed Lady Ellinor, softening, "how pleased I
was when you came to live with us. Your father has perhaps spoken to
you of me, and of our first acquaintance?"--

Lady Ellinor paused abruptly, and surveyed me as she paused. I was
silent.

"Perhaps, too, he has blamed me?" she resumed, with a heightened colour.

"He never blamed you, Lady Ellinor!"

"He had a right to do so--though I doubt if he would have blamed me on
the true ground. Yet, no; he never could have done me the wrong that
your uncle did, when, long years ago, Mr de Caxton in a letter--the
very bitterness of which disarmed all anger--accused me of having
trifled with Austin--nay, with himself! And _he_, at least, had _no_
right to reproach me," continued Lady Ellinor warmly, and with a curve
of her haughty lip, "for if I felt interest in his wild thirst for
some romantic glory, it was but in the hope that, what made the one
brother so restless, might at least wake the other to the ambition that
would have become his intellect, and aroused his energies. But these
are old tales of follies and delusions now no more: only this will I
say, that I have ever felt in thinking of your father, and even of
your sterner uncle, as if my conscience reminded me of a debt which
I longed to discharge--if not to them, to their children. So when
we knew you, believe me that your interests, your career, instantly
became to me an object. But, mistaking you--when I saw your ardent
industry bent on serious objects, and accompanied by a mind so fresh
and buoyant; and, absorbed as I was in schemes or projects far beyond
a woman's ordinary province of hearth and home--I never dreamed, while
you were our guest--never dreamed of danger to you or Fanny. I wound
you, pardon me; but I must vindicate myself. I repeat that, if we had
a son to inherit our name, to bear the burthen which the world lays
upon those who are born to influence the world's destinies, there is
no one to whom Trevanion and myself would sooner have intrusted the
happiness of a daughter. But my daughter is the sole representative of
the mother's line, of the father's name: it is not her happiness alone
that I have to consult, it is her duty--duty to her birthright, to the
career of the noblest of England's patriots--duty, I may say, without
exaggeration, to the country for the sake of which that career is run!"

"Say no more, Lady Ellinor; say no more. I understand you. I have
no hope--I never had hope--it was a madness--it is over. It is but
as a friend that I ask again, if I may see Miss Trevanion in your
presence, before--before I go alone into this long exile. Ay, look in
my face--you cannot fear my resolution, my honour, my truth. But once,
Lady Ellinor, but once more! Do I ask in vain?"

Lady Ellinor was evidently much moved. I bent down almost in the
attitude of kneeling; and, brushing away her tears with one hand, she
laid the other on my head tenderly, and said in a very low voice--

"I entreat you not to ask me; I entreat you not to see my daughter. You
have shown that you are not selfish--conquer yourself still. What if
such an interview, however guarded you might be, were but to agitate,
unnerve my child, unsettle her peace, prey upon"--

"Oh, do not speak thus--she did not share my feelings!"

"Could her mother own it if she did? Come, come, remember how young
you both are. When you return, all these dreams will be forgotten;
then we can meet as before--then I will be your second mother, and
again your career shall be my care; for do not think that we shall
leave you so long in this exile as you seem to forbode. No, no; it
is but an absence--an excursion--not a search after fortune. Your
fortune--confide that to us when you return!"

"And I am to see her no more?" I murmured, as I rose, and went silently
towards the window to conceal my face. The great struggles in life are
limited to moments. In the drooping of the head upon the bosom--in the
pressure of the hand upon the brow--we may scarcely consume a second in
our threescore years and ten; but what revolutions of our whole being
may pass within us, while that single sand drops noiseless down to the
bottom of the hour-glass.

I came back with a firm step to Lady Ellinor, and said calmly, "My
reason tells me that you are right, and I submit. Forgive me! and do
not think me ungrateful, and over proud, if I add, that you must leave
me still the object in life that consoles and encourages me through
all."

"What object is that?" asked Lady Ellinor, hesitatingly.

"Independence for myself, and ease to those for whom life is still
sweet. This is my twofold object; and the means to effect it must be my
own heart and my own hands. And now convey all my thanks to your noble
husband, and accept my warm prayers for yourself and _her_--whom I will
not name. Farewell, Lady Ellinor."

"No, do not leave me so hastily; I have many things to discuss with
you--at least to ask of you. Tell me how your father bears his
reverse?--tell me, at least, if there is aught he will suffer us to do
for him? There are many appointments in Trevanion's range of influence
that would suit even the wilful indolence of a man of letters. Come, be
frank with me!"

I could not resist so much kindness; so I sat down, and, as collectedly
as I could, replied to Lady Ellinor's questions, and sought to convince
her that my father only felt his losses so far as they affected me,
and that nothing in Trevanion's power was likely to tempt him from
his retreat, or calculated to compensate for a change in his habits.
Turning at last from my parents, Lady Ellinor inquired for Roland, and,
on learning that he was with me in town, expressed a strong desire to
see him. I told her I would communicate her wish, and she then said
thoughtfully--

"He has a son, I think, and I have heard that there is some unhappy
dissension between them."

"Who could have told you that?" I asked in surprise, knowing how
closely Roland had kept the secret of his family afflictions.

"Oh, I heard so from some one who knew Captain Roland--I forget when
and where I heard it--but is it not the fact?"

"My uncle Roland has no son."

"How!"

"His son is dead."

"How such a loss must grieve him!"

I did not speak.

"But is he sure that his son is dead! What joy if he were mistaken--if
the son yet lived!"

"Nay, my uncle has a brave heart, and he is resigned;--but, pardon me,
have you heard anything of that son?"

"I!--what should I hear? I would fain learn, however, from your uncle
himself, what he might like to tell me of his sorrows--or if, indeed,
there be any chance that"--

"That--what?"

"That--that his son still survives."

"I think not," said I; "and I doubt whether you will learn much from
my uncle. Still there is something in your words that belies their
apparent meaning, and makes me suspect that you know more than you
will say."

"Diplomatist!" said Lady Ellinor, half smiling; but then, her face
settling into a seriousness almost severe, she added, "It is terrible
to think that a father should hate his son!"

"Hate!--Roland _hate_ his son! What calumny is this?"

"He does not do so, then! Assure me of that; I shall be so glad to know
that I have been misinformed."

"I can tell you this, and no more--for no more do I know--that if ever
the soul of a father were wrapt up in a son--fear, hope, gladness,
sorrow, all reflected back on a father's heart from the shadows on a
son's life--Roland was that father while the son lived still."

"I cannot disbelieve you," exclaimed Lady Ellinor, though in a tone of
surprise. "Well, do let me see your uncle."

"I will do my best to induce him to visit you, and learn all that you
evidently conceal from me."

Lady Ellinor evasively replied to this insinuation, and shortly
afterwards I left that house in which I had known the happiness that
brings the folly, and the grief that bequeaths the wisdom.


CHAPTER LXXV.

I had always felt a warm and almost filial affection for Lady Ellinor,
independently of her relationship to Fanny, and of the gratitude
with which her kindness inspired me: for there is an affection very
peculiar in its nature, and very high in its degree, which results
from the blending of two sentiments not often allied,--viz., pity
and admiration. It was impossible not to admire the rare gifts
and great qualities of Lady Ellinor, and not to feel pity for the
cares, anxieties, and sorrows which tormented one who, with all the
sensitiveness of woman, went forth into the rough world of man.

My father's confession had somewhat impaired my esteem for Lady
Ellinor, and had left on my mind the uneasy impression that she _had_
trifled with his deep, and Roland's impetuous, heart. The conversation
that had just passed allowed me to judge her with more justice--allowed
me to see that she had really shared the affection she had inspired
in the student, but that ambition had been stronger than love--an
ambition, it might be, irregular and not strictly feminine, but still
of no vulgar nor sordid kind. I gathered, too, from her hints and
allusions, her true excuse for Roland's misconception of her apparent
interest in himself: she had but seen, in the wild energies of the
elder brother, some agency by which to arouse the serener faculties
of the younger. She had but sought, in the strange comet that flashed
before her, to fix a lever that might move the star. Nor could I
withhold my reverence from the woman who, not being married precisely
from love, had no sooner linked her nature to one worthy of it, than
her whole life became as fondly devoted to her husband's as if he had
been the object of her first romance and her earliest affections. If
even her child was so secondary to her husband--if the fate of that
child was but regarded by her as one to be rendered subservient to the
grand destinies of Trevanion--still it was impossible to recognise
the error of that conjugal devotion without admiring the wife, though
one might condemn the mother. Turning from these meditations, I felt
a lover's thrill of selfish joy, amidst all the mournful sorrow
comprised in the thought that I should see Fanny no more. Was it true
as Lady Ellinor implied, though delicately, that Fanny still cherished
a remembrance of me--which a brief interview, a last farewell, might
re-awaken too dangerously for her peace? Well, that was a thought that
it became me not to indulge.

What could Lady Ellinor have heard of Roland and his son? Was it
possible that the lost lived still? Asking myself these questions, I
arrived at our lodgings, and saw the Captain himself before me, busied
with the inspection of sundry specimens of the rude necessaries an
Australian adventurer requires. There stood the old soldier, by the
window, examining narrowly into the temper of hand-saw and tenor-saw,
broad axe and drawing-knife; and as I came up to him, he looked at me
from under his black brows, with gruff compassion, and said peevishly--

"Fine weapons these for the son of a gentleman!--one bit of steel in
the shape of a sword were worth them all."

"Any weapon that conquers fate is noble in the hands of a brave man,
uncle!"

"The boy has an answer for everything," quoth the Captain, smiling, as
he took out his purse and paid the shopman.

When we were alone, I said to him--"Uncle, you must go and see Lady
Ellinor; she desires me to tell you so."

"Pshaw!"

"You will not?"

"No!"

"Uncle, I think that she has something to say to you with regard
to--to--pardon me!--to my cousin."

"To Blanche?"

"No, no--to the cousin I never saw."

Roland turned pale, and, sinking down on a chair, faltered out--"To
him--to my son!"

"Yes; but I do not think it is news that will afflict you. Uncle, are
you sure that my cousin is dead?"

"What!--how dare you!--who doubts it? Dead--dead to me for ever! Boy,
would you have him live to dishonour these gray hairs!"

"Sir, sir, forgive me--uncle, forgive me: but, pray, go to see Lady
Ellinor; for whatever she has to say, I repeat that I am sure it will
be nothing to wound you."

"Nothing to wound me--yet relate to _him_!"

It is impossible to convey to the reader the despair that was in those
words.

"Perhaps," said I, after a long pause, and in a low voice--for I was
awestricken--"perhaps--if he be dead--he may have repented of all
offence to you before he died."

"Repented!--ha, ha!"

"Or, if he be not dead"--

"Hush, boy--hush!"

"While there is life, there is hope of repentance."

"Look you, nephew," said the Captain, rising and folding his arms
resolutely on his breast--"look you, I desired that that name might
never be breathed. I have not cursed my son yet; could he come to
life--the curse might fall! You do not know what torture your words
have given me, just when I had opened my heart to another son, and
found that son in you! With respect to the lost, I have now but one
prayer, and you know it--the heartbroken prayer--that his name never
more may come to my ears!"

As he closed these words, to which I ventured no reply, the Captain
took long disordered strides across the room; and suddenly, as if
the space imprisoned, or the air stifled him, he seized his hat, and
hastened into the streets. Recovering my surprise and dismay, I ran
after him; but he commanded me to leave him to his own thoughts, in a
voice so stern, yet so sad, that I had no choice but to obey. I knew,
by my own experience, how necessary is solitude in the moments when
grief is strongest and thought most troubled.


CHAPTER LXXVI.

Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned home. I began to feel
uneasy, and went forth in search of him, though I knew not whither to
direct my steps. I thought it, however, at least probable, that he
had not been able to resist visiting Lady Ellinor, so I went first to
St James's Square. My suspicions were correct; the Captain had been
there two hours before. Lady Ellinor herself had gone out shortly after
the Captain left. While the porter was giving me this information, a
carriage stopped at the door, and a footman, stepping up, gave the
porter a note and a small parcel, seemingly of books, saying simply,
"From the Marquis of Castleton." At the sound of that name I turned
hastily, and recognised Sir Sedley Beaudesert seated in the carriage,
and looking out of the window with a dejected, moody expression of
countenance, very different from his ordinary aspect, except when the
rare sight of a gray hair, or a twinge of the toothache, reminded him
that he was no longer twenty-five. Indeed, the change was so great
that I exclaimed, dubiously--"Is that Sir Sedley Beaudesert?" The
footman looked at me, and touching his hat said, with a condescending
smile,--"Yes, sir--now the Marquis of Castleton."

Then, for the first time since the young lord's death, I remembered Sir
Sedley's expressions of gratitude to Lady Castleton, and the waters of
Ems, for having saved him from "that horrible marquisate." Meanwhile,
my old friend had perceived me, exclaiming,--

"What, Mr Caxton! I am delighted to see you. Open the door, Thomas.
Pray come in, come in."

I obeyed; and the new Lord Castleton made room for me by his side.

"Are you in a hurry?" said he; "if so, shall I take you anywhere?--if
not, give me half an hour of your time, while I drive to the City."

As I knew not now in what direction, more than another, to prosecute my
search for the Captain, and as I thought I might as well call at our
lodgings to inquire if he had not returned, I answered that I should
be very happy to accompany his lordship; "though the City," said I,
smiling, "sounds to me strange upon the lips of Sir Sedley--I beg
pardon, I should say of Lord--"

"Don't say any such thing; let me once more hear the grateful sound of
Sedley Beaudesert. Shut the door, Thomas; to Gracechurch Street--Messrs
Fudge and Fidget."

The carriage drove on.

"A sad affliction has befallen me," said the marquis, "and none
sympathise with me!"

"Yet all, even unacquainted with the late lord, must have felt shocked
at the death of one so young, and so full of promise."

"So fitted in every way to bear the burthen of the great Castleton
name and property, and yet you see it killed him! Ah! if he had been
but a simple gentleman, or if he had had less conscientious desire
to do his duties, he would have lived to a good old age. I know what
it is already. Oh, if you saw the piles of letters on my table! I
positively dread the post. Such colossal improvements on the property
which the poor boy had begun, for me to finish. What do you think takes
me to Fudge and Fidget's? Sir, they are the agents for an infernal
coal mine which my cousin had reopened in Durham, to plague my life
out with another thirty thousand pounds a-year! How am I to spend the
money?--how am I to spend it! There's a cold-blooded head steward,
who says that charity is the greatest crime a man in high station
can commit; it demoralises the poor. Then, because some half-a-dozen
farmers sent me a round-robin, to the effect that their rents were
too high, and I wrote them word the rents should be lowered, there
was such a hullabaloo--you would have thought heaven and earth were
coming together. 'If a man in the position of the Marquis of Castleton
set the example of letting land below its value, how could the poorer
squires in the county exist?--or, if they did exist, what injustice to
expose them, to the charge that they were grasping landlords, vampires,
and bloodsuckers. Clearly, if Lord Castleton lowered his rents, (they
were too low already,) he struck a mortal blow at the property of
his neighbours, if they followed his example; or at their character,
if they did not.' No man can tell how hard it is to do good, unless
fortune gives him a hundred thousand pounds a-year, and says,--'Now, do
good with it!' Sedley Beaudesert might follow his whims, and all that
would be said against him would be, 'Good-natured, simple fellow!' But
if Lord Castleton follow his whims, you would think he was a second
Catiline--unsettling the peace, and undermining the prosperity, of the
entire nation!" Here the wretched man paused, and sighed heavily; then,
as his thoughts wandered into a new channel of woe, he resumed,--"Ah,
if you could but see the forlorn great house I am expected to inhabit,
cooped up between dead walls, instead of my pretty rooms, with the
windows full on the park; and the balls I am expected to give, and the
parliamentary interest I am to keep up; and the villanous proposal
made to me to become a lord steward, or lord chamberlain, because it
suits my rank to be a sort of a servant. Oh, Pisistratus! you lucky
dog--not twenty-one, and with, I dare say, not two hundred pounds
a-year in the world!"

Thus bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortunes, the poor marquis ran on,
till at last he exclaimed, in a tone of yet deeper despair,--

"And everybody says I must marry, too!--that the Castleton line must
not be extinct! The Beaudeserts are a good old family eno'--as old, for
what I know, as the Castletons; but the British empire would suffer no
loss if they sank into the tomb of the Capulets. But that the Castleton
peerage should expire, is a thought of crime and woe, at which all
the mothers of England rise in a phalanx! And so, instead of visiting
the sins of the fathers on the sons, it is the father that is to be
sacrificed for the benefit of the third and fourth generation!"

Despite my causes for seriousness, I could not help laughing; my
companion turned on me a look of reproach.

"At least," said I, composing my countenance, "Lord Castleton has one
comfort in his afflictions--if he must marry, he may choose as he
pleases."

"That is precisely what Sedley Beaudesert could, and Lord Castleton
cannot do," said the marquis gravely. "The rank of Sir Sedley
Beaudesert was a quiet and comfortable rank--he might marry a curate's
daughter, or a duke's--and please his eye or grieve his heart as the
caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, not for a wife,
but for a marchioness,--marry some one who _will wear his rank_ for
him,--take the trouble of splendour off his hands, and allow him to
retire into a corner, and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more!
Yes, it must be so--the crowning sacrifice must be completed at the
altar. But a truce to my complaints. Trevanion informs me you are going
to Australia,--can that be true?"

"Perfectly true."

"They say there is a sad want of ladies there."

"So much the better,--I shall be all the more steady."

"Well, there's something in that. Have you seen Lady Ellinor?"

"Yes--this morning."

"Poor woman!--a great blow to her--we have tried to console each
other. Fanny, you know, is staying at Oxton, in Surrey, with Lady
Castleton,--the poor lady is so fond of her--and no one has comforted
her like Fanny."

"I was not aware that Miss Trevanion was out of town."

"Only for a few days, and then she and Lady Ellinor join Trevanion
in the north--you know he is with Lord N----, settling measures on
which--but alas, they consult me now on those matters--force their
secrets on me. I have, heaven knows how many votes! Poor me! Upon
my word, if Lady Ellinor was a widow, I should certainly make up to
her: very clever woman--nothing bores her." (The marquis yawned--Sir
Sedley Beaudesert never yawned.) "Trevanion has provided for his Scotch
secretary, and is about to get a place in the Foreign Office for that
young fellow Gower, whom, between you and me, I don't like. But he has
bewitched Trevanion!"

"What sort of a person is this Mr Gower?--I remember you said that he
was clever, and good-looking."

"He is both, but it is not the cleverness of youth; he is as hard and
sarcastic as if he had been cheated fifty times, and jilted a hundred!
Neither are his good looks that letter of recommendation which a
handsome face is said to be. He has an expression of countenance very
much like that of Lord Hertford's pet bloodhound, when a stranger
comes into the room. Very sleek, handsome dog, the bloodhound is
certainly--well-mannered, and I dare say exceedingly tame; but still
you have but to look at the corner of the eye, to know that it is
only the habit of the drawing-room that suppresses the creature's
constitutional tendency to seize you by the throat, instead of giving
you a paw. Still this Mr Gower has a very striking head--something
about it Moorish or Spanish, like a picture by Murillo: I half suspect
that he is less a Gower than a gipsy!"

"What!"--I cried, as I listened with rapt and breathless attention to
this description. "He is then very dark, with high narrow forehead,
features slightly aquiline, but very delicate, and teeth so dazzling
that the whole face seems to sparkle when he smiles--though it is only
the lip that smiles, not the eye."

"Exactly as you say; you have seen him, then?"

"Why, I am not sure, since you say his name is Gower."

"_He_ says his name is Gower," returned Lord Castleton, drily, as he
inhaled the Beaudesert mixture.

"And where is he now?--with Mr Trevanion?"

"Yes, I believe so. Ah! here we are--Fudge and Fidget! But perhaps,"
added Lord Castleton, with a gleam of hope in his blue eye,--"perhaps
they are not at home!"

Alas, that was an illusive "imagining," as the poets of the nineteenth
century unaffectedly express themselves. Messrs Fudge and Fidget were
never out to such clients as the Marquis of Castleton: with a deep
sigh, and an altered expression of face, the Victim of Fortune slowly
descended the steps of the carriage.

"I can't ask you to wait for me," said he; "heaven only knows how long
I shall be kept! Take the carriage where you will, and send it back to
me."

"A thousand thanks, my dear lord, I would rather walk--but you will let
me call on you before I leave town."

"Let you!--I insist on it. I am still at the old quarters, under
pretence," said the marquis, with a sly twinkle of the eyelid, "that
Castleton House wants painting!"

"At twelve to-morrow, then?"

"Twelve to-morrow. Alas! that's just the hour at which Mr Screw, the
agent for the London property, (two squares, seven streets, and a
lane!) is to call."

"Perhaps two o'clock will suit you better?"

"Two!--just the hour at which Mr Plausible, one of the Castleton
members, insists upon telling me why his conscience will not let him
vote with Trevanion!"

"Three o'clock?"

"Three!--just the hour at which I am to see the Secretary of the
Treasury, who has promised to relieve Mr Plausible's conscience! But
come and dine with me--you will meet the executors to the will!"

"Nay, Sir Sedley--that is, my dear lord--I will take my chance, and
look in, after dinner."

"Do so; my guests are not lively! What a firm step the rogue has! Only
twenty, I think--twenty! and not an acre of property to plague him!" So
saying, the marquis dolorously shook his head, and vanished through the
noiseless mahogany doors, behind which Messrs Fudge and Fidget awaited
the unhappy man,--with the accounts of the great Castleton coal mine.


CHAPTER LXXVII.

On my way towards our lodgings, I resolved to look in at a humble
tavern, in the coffee-room of which the Captain and myself habitually
dined. It was now about the usual hour in which we took that meal, and
he might be there waiting for me. I had just gained the steps of this
tavern, when a stage coach came rattling along the pavement, and drew
up at an inn of more pretensions than that which we favoured, situated
within a few doors of the latter. As the coach stopped, my eye was
caught by the Trevanion livery, which was very peculiar. Thinking I
must be deceived, I drew near to the wearer of the livery, who had
just descended from the roof, and, while he paid the coachman, gave
his orders to a waiter who emerged from the inn--"Half-and-half, cold
without!" The tone of the voice struck me as familiar, and, the man now
looking up, I beheld the features of Mr Peacock. Yes, unquestionably
it was he. The whiskers were shaved--there were traces of powder
in the hair or the wig--the livery of the Trevanions (ay, the very
livery--crestbutton, and all) upon that portly figure, which I had
last seen in the more august robes of a beadle. But Mr Peacock it
was--Peacock travestied, but Peacock still. Before I had recovered my
amaze, a woman got out of a cabriolet, which seemed to have been in
waiting for the arrival of the coach, and, hurrying up to Mr Peacock,
said in the loud impatient tone common to the fairest of the fair sex,
when in haste--"How late you are--I was just going. I must get back to
Oxton to-night."

Oxton--Miss Trevanion was staying at Oxton! I was now close behind the
pair--I listened with my heart in my ear.

"So you shall, my dear--so you shall; just come in, will you."

"No, no; I have only ten minutes to catch the coach. Have you any
letter for me from Mr Gower? How can I be sure, if I don't see it under
his own hand, that"--

"Hush!" said Peacock, sinking his voice so low that I could only
catch the words, "no names, letter, pooh, I'll tell you." He then
drew her apart, and whispered to her for some moments. I watched the
woman's face, which was bent towards her companion's, and it seemed
to show quick intelligence. She nodded her head more than once, as if
in impatient assent to what was said; and, after a shaking of hands,
hurried off to the cab; then, as if a thought struck her, she ran back,
and said--

"But in case my lady should not go--if there's any change of plan?"

"There'll be no change, you may be sure: Positively to-morrow--not too
early; you understand?"

"Yes, yes; good-by"--and the woman, who was dressed with a quiet
neatness, that seemed to stamp her profession as that of an abigail,
(black cloak, with long cape--of that peculiar silk which seems spun
on purpose for ladies'-maids--bonnet to match, with red and black
ribbons,) hastened once more away, and in another moment the cab drove
off furiously.

What could all this mean? By this time the waiter brought Mr Peacock
the half-and-half. He despatched it hastily, and then strode on towards
a neighbouring stand of cabriolets. I followed him; and just as, after
beckoning one of the vehicles from the stand, he had ensconced himself
therein, I sprang up the steps and placed myself by his side. "Now,
Mr Peacock," said I, "you will tell me at once how you come to wear
that livery, or I shall order the cabman to drive to Lady Ellinor
Trevanion's, and ask her that question myself."

"And who the devil!--Ah, you're the young gentleman that came to me
behind the scenes--I remember."

"Where to, sir?" asked the cabman.

"To--to London Bridge," said Mr Peacock.

The man mounted the box, and drove on.

"Well, Mr Peacock, I wait your answer. I guess by your face that you
are about to tell me a lie; I advise you to speak the truth."

"I don't know what business you have to question me," said Mr Peacock
sullenly; and, raising his glance from his own clenched fists, he
suffered it to wander over my form with so vindictive a significance
that I interrupted the survey by saying, "Will you encounter the house?
as the Swan interrogatively puts it--shall I order the cabman to drive
to St James's Square?"

"Oh, you know my weak point, sir; any man who can quote Will--sweet
Will--has me on the hip," rejoined Mr Peacock, smoothing his
countenance, and spreading his palms on his knees. "But if a man does
fall in the world, and, after keeping servants of his own, is obliged
to be himself a servant,

    ---- 'I will not shame
    To tell you what I am.'"

"The Swan says, 'To tell you what I _was_,' Mr Peacock. But enough of
this trifling: who placed you with Mr Trevanion?"

Mr Peacock looked down for a moment, and then, fixing his eyes on me,
said--"Well, I'll tell you: you asked me, when we met last, about a
young gentleman--Mr--Mr Vivian."

PISISTRATUS.--Proceed.

PEACOCK.--I know you don't want to harm him. Besides, "He hath
a prosperous art," and one day or other,--mark my words, or rather my
friend Will's--

    "He will bestride this narrow world
    Like a Colossus."

Upon my life he will--like a Colossus,

    "And we petty men--"

PISISTRATUS (_savagely_.)--Go on with your story.

PEACOCK (_snappishly_.)--I am going on with it! You put me
out; where was I--oh--ah yes. I had just been sold up--not a penny in
my pocket; and if you could have seen my coat--yet that was better
than the small-clothes! Well, it was in Oxford Street--no, it was in
the Strand, near the Lowther--

    "The sun was in the heavens; and the proud day
    Attended, with the pleasures of the world."

PISISTRATUS, (_lowering the glass_.)--To St James's Square?

PEACOCK.--No, no; to London Bridge.

    "How use doth breed a habit in a man!"

I will go on--honour bright. So I met Mr Vivian, and as he had known me
in better days, and has a good heart of his own, he says--

    "Horatio,--or I do forget myself."

Pisistratus puts his hand on the check-string.

PEACOCK.--I mean, (_correcting himself_)--"Why, Johnson, my
good fellow."

PISISTRATUS.--Johnson!--oh that's your name--not Peacock.

PEACOCK.--Johnson and Peacock both, (_with dignity_.) When you
know the world as I do, sir, you will find that it is ill travelling
this "naughty world" without a change of names in your portmanteau.

"Johnson," says he, "my good fellow," and he pulled out his purse.
"Sir," said I, "if, 'exempt from public haunt,' I could get something
to do when this dross is gone. In London there are sermons in stones,
certainly, but not 'good in everything,'--an observation I should take
the liberty of making to the Swan, if he were not now, alas! 'the
baseless fabric of a vision.'"

PISISTRATUS.--Take care!

PEACOCK--(_hurriedly_.)--Then says Mr Vivian, "If you don't
mind wearing a livery, till I can provide for you more suitably, my old
friend, there's a vacancy in the establishment of Mr Trevanion." Sir, I
accepted the proposal, and that's why I wear this livery.

PISISTRATUS.--And, pray, what business had you with that young
woman, whom I take to be Miss Trevanion's maid?--and why should she
come from Oxton to see you?

I had expected that these questions would confound Mr Peacock, but
if there really were anything in them to cause embarrassment, the
_ci-devant_ actor was too practised in his profession to exhibit it. He
merely smiled, and smoothing jauntily a very tumbled shirt-front, he
said, "Oh sir, fie!

                      'Of this matter,
    Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made.'

If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, as the vulgar
say, my sweetheart."

"Your sweetheart!" I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and acknowledging
at once the probability of the statement. "Yet," I added
suspiciously--"yet, if so, why should she expect Mr Gower to write to
her?"

"You're quick of hearing, sir; but though

          'All adoration, duty, and observance;
    All humbleness, and patience, and impatience,'

the young woman will not marry a livery servant--proud creature, very
proud!--and Mr Gower, you see, knowing how it was, felt for me, and
told her, if I may take such liberty with the Swan, that she should

      ----'Never lie by Johnson's side
    With an unquiet soul,'

for that he would get me a place in the Stamps! The silly girl said she
would have it in black and white--as if Mr Gower would write to her!"

"And now, sir," continued Mr Peacock, with a simpler gravity, "you
are at liberty, of course, to say what you please to my lady, but I
hope you'll not try to take the bread out of my mouth because I wear
a livery, and am fool enough to be in love with a waiting-woman--I,
sir, who could have married ladies who have played the first parts in
life--on the metropolitan stage."

I had nothing to say to these representations--they seemed plausible;
and though at first I had suspected that the man had only resorted to
the buffoonery of his quotations in order to gain time for invention,
or to divert my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the
close, as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to believe
that the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I contented myself
therefore with asking--

"Where do you come from now?"

"From Mr Trevanion, in the country, with letters to Lady Ellinor?"

"Oh, and so the young woman knew you were coming to town?"

"Yes, sir; some days ago. Mr Trevanion told me the day I should have to
start."

"And what do you and the young woman propose doing to-morrow, if there
is no change of plan?"

Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce perceptible,
alteration in Mr Peacock's countenance, but he answered readily,
"To-morrow? a little assignation, if we can both get out;--

    'Woo me, now I am in a holiday humour,
    And like enough to consent.'

Swan again, sir!"

"Humph!--so then Mr Gower and Mr Vivian are the same person."

Peacock hesitated. "That's not _my_ secret, sir; 'I am combined by a
sacred vow.' You are too much the gentleman to peep through the blanket
of the dark, and to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes--I mean the
plush small-clothes and shoulder-knots--the secrets of another gent, to
whom 'my services are bound.'"

How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty!--what superiority
the mere fact of living-on gives to the dullest dog! I bit my lip, and
was silent.

"And," pursued Mr Peacock, "if you knew how the Mr Vivian you inquired
after loves you"! When I told him incidentally, how a young gentleman
had come behind the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe
you, and then said, quite mournfully, 'If ever I am what I hope to
become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand once more,'--very
words, sir!--honour bright!

    'I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom
    Can lesser hide his hate or love than he.'

And if Mr Vivian has some reason to keep himself concealed still--if
his fortune or ruin depend on your not divulging his secret for
awhile--I can't think you are the man he need fear. 'Pon my life,

    'I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,'

as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was a wish often on
the Swan's lips in the privacy of his domestic life!"

My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much profaned and
desecrated Swan, but by Mr Peacock's unadorned repetition of Vivian's
words; I turned my face from the sharp eyes of my companion--the cab
now stopped at the foot of London Bridge.

I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy curiosity in my
mind, which I could hardly define to myself,--was it not jealousy?
Vivian, so handsome and so daring--_he_ at least might see the great
heiress; Lady Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But--I--I was
a lover still, and--nay, such thoughts were folly indeed!

"My man," said I to the ex-comedian, "I neither wish to harm Mr Vivian
(if I am so to call him,) nor you who imitate him in the variety of
your names. But I tell you, fairly, that I do not like your being in Mr
Trevanion's employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as
possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time to consider
well what you have told me."

With that I hastened away, and Mr Peacock continued his solitary
journey over London Bridge.


CHAPTER LXXVIII.

Amidst all that lacerated my heart, or tormented my thoughts, that
eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion, when, on entering our
little drawing-room, I found my uncle seated there.

The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed
from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own
Bible, but the print of that was small, and the Captain's eyes began
to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type; and a
candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leant his
elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his
forehead--tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and _force_ his
whole soul upon the page.

He sate, the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form
there was resolution. "I will _not_ listen to my heart; I _will_ read
the Book, and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man."

There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer's attitude, that it spoke
those words as plainly as if his lips had said them.

Old soldier! thou hast done a soldier's part in many a bloody field;
but if I could make visible to the world thy brave soldier's soul, I
would paint thee as I saw thee then!--Out on this tyro's hand!

At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had
gone through was written upon his face.

"It has done me good," said he simply, and he closed the book.

I drew my chair near to him, and hung my arm over his shoulder.

"No cheering news then?" asked I in a whisper.

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.


CHAPTER LXXIX.

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever
their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in
me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet, as "restless I roll'd around my weary bed," and revolved the
renewal of Vivian's connexion with a man of character so equivocal as
Peacock, the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his
own in the service of Trevanion, the care with which he had concealed
from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to
which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his
creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid, the words
that had passed between them--plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet
still suspicious--and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's
reckless ambition, and unprincipled sentiments--nay, the effect that
a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an
heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious
temper: when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the
darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the
world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue.
Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what?--the character of a servant,
or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say,
if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss
him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without, not indeed
betraying his confidence--for that he had never given me--but without
belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly
made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever
were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin
his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore
reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not
myself analyse--suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had
already been seemingly explained away? Still, when morning came, I
was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance,
and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care, that I had no
option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong
understanding and unerring sense of honour, I wandered out, hoping that
in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts, and solve the problem
that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my
voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And,
this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as
it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon
Lady Ellinor, and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about
Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by
post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement--scattering to the
right and left all humbler equipages--and hurried, as if on an errand
of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland
Place. But, rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the
face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage, and that face wore a strange
expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and, by
her side--was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not
see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognised the cloak, the
bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I
was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking
back at a butcher's boy, who had just escaped being run over, and was
revenging himself by all the imprecations the Diræ of London slang
could suggest, the face of Mr Peacock was exposed in full to my gaze.

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after
the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried "Stop!" But the
carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air.
After pausing for a moment, full of presentiments of some evil--I
knew not what--I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found
myself, panting and out of breath, in St James's Square--at the door of
Trevanion's house--in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand
as he admitted me.

"Where is Lady Ellinor? I must see her instantly."

"No worse news of master, I hope, sir?"

"Worse news of what?--of whom?--of Mr Trevanion?"

"Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir; that a servant came
express to say so last night. Lady Ellinor went off at ten o'clock to
join him."

"At ten o'clock last night?"

"Yes, sir; the servant's account alarmed her ladyship so much."

"The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr Gower?"

"Yes, sir--Henry," answered the porter staring at me. "Please, sir,
here is an account of master's attack in the paper. I suppose Henry
took it to the office before he came here, which was very wrong in him;
but I am afraid he's a very foolish fellow."

"Never mind that, Miss Trevanion--I saw her just now--_she_ did not go
with her mother; Where was she going, then?"

"Why, sir--but pray step into the parlour."

"No, no--speak."

"Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out, she was afraid that there
_might_ be something in the papers to alarm Miss Trevanion, and so she
sent Henry down to Lady Castleton's, to beg her ladyship to make as
light of it as she could; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to
Mrs Mole,--"

"Who is Mrs Mole?"

"Miss Trevanion's maid, sir--a new maid; and Mrs Mole blabbed to my
young lady, and so she took fright, and insisted on coming to town.
And Lady Castleton, who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her,
I suppose--especially as Henry said, though he ought to have known
better, 'that she would be in time to arrive before my lady set off.'
Poor Miss Trevanion was so disappointed when she found her mamma gone.
And then she would order fresh horses, and would go on, though Mrs
Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very angry with Mrs Mole,
who encouraged Miss; and--"

"Good heavens! Why did not Mrs Bates go with her?"

"Why, sir, you know how old Mrs Bates is, and my young lady is always
so kind that she would not hear of it, as she is going to travel night
and day; and Mrs Mole said she had gone all over the world with her
last lady, and that--"

"I see it all. Where is Mr Gower?"

"Mr Gower, sir!"

"Yes! Can't you answer?"

"Why, with Mr Trevanion, I believe, sir."

"In the north--what is the address?"

"Lord N----, C---- Hall, near W----"

I heard no more.

The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as with the swiftness
and force of lightning. Why, if Trevanion were really ill, had the
false servant concealed it from me? Why suffered me to waste his
time, instead of hastening to Lady Ellinor? How, if Mr Trevanion's
_sudden_ illness had brought the man to London--how had he known so
long beforehand (as he himself told me, and his appointment with the
waiting woman proved) the day he should arrive? Why now, if there were
no design of which Miss Trevanion was the object--why so frustrate the
provident foresight of her mother, and take advantage of the natural
yearning of affection, the quick impulse of youth, to hurry off a
girl whose very station forbade her to take such a journey without
suitable protection--against what must be the wish, and what clearly
were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor? Alone,--worse than alone!
Fanny Trevanion was then in the hands of two servants, who were the
instruments and confidants of an adventurer like Vivian; and that
conference between those servants--those broken references to the
morrow, coupled with the name Vivian had assumed--needed the unerring
instincts of love more cause for terror--terror the darker, because the
exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct?

I sprang from the house.

I hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, drove home as fast
as I could (for I had no money about me for the journey I meditated;)
sent the servant of the lodging to engage a chaise-and-four,
rushed into the room, where Roland fortunately still was, and
exclaimed--"Uncle, come with me!--take money, plenty of money!--Some
villany I know, though I cannot explain it, has been practised on the
Trevanions. We may defeat it yet. I will tell you all by the way--come,
come!"

"Certainly. But villany!--and to people of such a
station--pooh--collect yourself. Who is the villain?"

"Oh, the man I have loved as a friend--the man whom I myself helped to
make known to Trevanion.--Vivian--Vivian!"

"Vivian!--ah, the youth I have heard you speak of. But how?--villany to
whom--to Trevanion?"

"You torture me with your questions. Listen--this Vivian (I know
him)--he has introduced into the house, as a servant, an agent capable
of any trick and fraud; that servant has aided him to win over her
maid--Fanny's--Miss Trevanion's. Miss Trevanion is an heiress, Vivian
an adventurer. My head swims round, I cannot explain now. Ha! I will
write a line to Lord Castleton--tell him my fears and suspicions--he
will follow us, I know, or do what is best."

I drew ink and paper towards me, and wrote hastily. My uncle came round
and looked over my shoulder.

Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm, "Gower, Gower. What name is
this? You said 'Vivian.'"

"Vivian or Gower--the same person."

My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural that he should leave
me to make our joint and brief preparations for departure.

I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes afterwards,
the chaise came to the door, I gave it to the ostler who accompanied
the horses, with injunctions to deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton
himself.

My uncle now descended, and walked from the threshold with a firm
stride. "Comfort yourself," he said, as he entered the chaise, into
which I had already thrown myself. "We may be mistaken yet."

"Mistaken! You do not know this young man. He has every quality that
could entangle a girl like Fanny, and not, I fear, one sentiment of
honour that would stand in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as
by a revelation--too late--oh Heavens, if it be too late!"

A groan broke from Roland's lips. I heard in it a proof of his sympathy
with my emotion, and grasped his hand; it was as cold as the hand of
the dead.




THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY.[4]

[4] _Histoire des Conspirations et des Executions Politiques,
comprenant l'Histoire des Sociétés Secrètes depuis les temps les plus
reculés jusqu'à nos jours._ Par A. BLANC. 4 Vols. Volume the Third:
RUSSIA.


Professor Shaw, in the preface to his translation of Lajetchnikoff's
striking and interesting romance, _The Heretic_, notices the shyness
of English novelists in approaching Russian ground. "How happens it,"
he says, "that Russia, with her reminiscences of two centuries and a
half of Tartar dominion--of her long and bloody struggles with the
Ottoman and the Pole, whose territories stretch almost from the arctic
ice to the equator, and whose semi-oriental diadem bears inscribed upon
it such names as Peter and Catherine--should have been passed over
as incapable of supplying rich materials for fiction and romance?"
The question is hard to answer, and appears doubly so after reading
the third volume of Monsieur A. Blanc's recent work on political
conspiracies and executions,--a volume sufficient of itself to set
those romance-writing who never wrote romance before. It is a trite
remark, that romances, having history for their groundwork, derive
their attraction and interest far more from the skill and genius of
their authors than from the importance of the period selected, and
from the historical prominence of the characters introduced. It is
unnecessary to name writers in whose hands a Bayard or a du Guesclin, a
Cromwell or a Charles of Sweden, would appear tame and commonplace. Our
readers need not to be reminded of others of a different stamp,--and
of one, great amongst all, the rays of whose genius have formed a halo
of grandeur, glory, or fascination around persons to whom history
accords scarcely a word. But such genius is not of every-day growth;
and to historical romance-writers of the calibre of most of those with
whom the British public is now fain to cry content, the mere devising
of a plot, uniting tolerable historical fidelity with some claim to
originality, is an undertaking in which they are by no means uniformly
successful. To such we recommend, as useful auxiliaries, M. Blanc's
octavos, and especially the one that suggests the present article.
English and Scottish histories, if not used up, have at least been very
handsomely worked, and have fairly earned a little tranquillity upon
their shelves: the wars of the Stuarts, in particular, have contributed
more than their quota to the literary fund. The same may be said of the
history of France, so fertile in striking events, and so largely made
use of by purveyors to the circulating libraries. Italy and Spain, and
even Poland, have not escaped; whilst the East has been disported over
in every direction by the accomplished Morier, and a swarm of imitators
and inferiors. But what Englishman has tried his hand at a Russian
historical romance? We strive in vain to call to mind an original novel
in our language founded on incidents of Russian history--although the
history of scarcely any nation in the world includes, in the same space
of time, a greater number of strange and extraordinary events.

M. Blanc's book, notwithstanding a certain air of pretension in the
style of its getting up, in the very mediocre illustrations, and in
the tone of the introductory pages, is substantially an unassuming
performance. It is a compilation, and contains little that is not to
be found printed elsewhere. At the same time, perhaps in no other
work are the same events and details thrown together in so compact
and entertaining a form. The author troubles us with few comments of
his own, and his reserve in this respect enhances the merit of his
book, for when he departs from it his views are somewhat strained
and ultra-French. But his narrative is spiritedly put together; and
although it will be found, upon comparison, that he has, for the most
part, faithfully adhered to high historical authorities, to the
exclusion of mere traditionary matter and of imaginative embellishment,
yet the dramatic interest of the subject is itself so vivid, that the
book reads like a romance.

The Russian history, even to our own day, is a sanguinary and cruel
chronicle. Its brevity is its best excuse. The youth of the country
extenuates the crimes of its children. For if the strides of Russia
have been vast and rapid in the paths of civilisation, we must bear
in mind that it is but very recently the progress began. "At the
commencement of the eighteenth century," says M. Blanc, "it had
certainly been very difficult to foresee that fifty years later a
magnificent and polite court would be established on the Gulf of
Finland; that soldiers raised on the banks of the Volga and the Don
would rank with the best disciplined troops; and that an empire, of
itself larger than all the rest of Europe, would have passed from a
state of barbarism to one of civilisation as advanced as that of the
most favoured European states." This is overshooting the mark, and
is an exaggeration even a hundred years after the date assigned. If
the civilisation of St Petersburg has for some time vied with that of
London or Paris, Russia, as a country, has even now much to do before
she can be placed on a footing with England or France in refinement and
intellectual cultivation. It is difficult to institute a comparison
in a case where the nature of the countries, the characters of the
nations, and the circumstances of their rise, are, and have been,
so dissimilar. The investigation might easily entail a disquisition
of a length that would leave very little room for an examination of
the book in hand. And all that we seek in the present instance to
establish will be readily conceded--namely, that in the throes of a
country accomplishing with unprecedented rapidity the passage, usually
so gradual, from barbarism to civilisation, some palliation is to be
found for the faults and vices of her nobles and rulers, and for the
blood-stains disfiguring her annals.

The early history of Russia, from the foundation of the empire by Rurik
to the reign of Ivan IV.--that is to say from the middle of the ninth
to the middle of the sixteenth century--is a chaos of traditions and
uncertainties, which M. Blanc has deemed unfavourable to the project
of his book, and which he accordingly passes over in an introductory
chapter. His business, as may be gathered from his title-page, is
with the internal convulsions of the country; and these are difficult
to trace, until Ivan Vassilivitch threw off the Tartar yoke, and his
grandson Ivan IV., surnamed the Tyrant, or the Terrible, began, with an
iron hand, it is true, to labour at the regeneration of his country. A
bloodthirsty despot, Russia yet owes him much. The people, demoralised
by Tartar rule, needed rigid laws and severe treatment. Ivan
promulgated a code far superior to any previously in use. He invited
to Russia foreign mechanics, artists, and men of science; established
the first printing-press seen in the country; and laid the foundation
of Russian trade, by a treaty of commerce with our own Elizabeth. By
the conquest of Kazan, of the kingdom of Astracan, and of districts
adjacent to the Caucasus, he extended the limits of the Russian
empire. But his wise enactments and warlike successes were sullied by
atrocious acts of cruelty. In Novogorod, which had offended him by its
desires for increased liberty, he raged for six weeks like an incensed
tiger. Sixty thousand human beings, according to some historians, fell
victims on that occasion. Similar scenes of butchery were enacted in
Tver, Moscow, and other cities. His cruel disposition was evident at
a very early age. He was but thirteen years old when he assembled his
boyarins to inform them that he needed not their guidance, and would
no longer submit to their encroachments on his royal prerogative. "I
ought to punish you all," he said, "for all of you have been guilty of
offences against my person; but I will be indulgent, and the weight of
my anger shall fall only on Andrew Schusky, who is the worst amongst
you." Schusky, the head of a family which had seized the reins of
government during the Czar's minority, endeavoured to justify himself.
Ivan would not hear him. "Seize and bind him," cried the boy-despot,
"and throw him to my dogs. They have a right to the repast." A pack of
ferocious hounds, which Ivan took pleasure in rearing, were brought
under the window, and irritated by every possible means. When they
were sufficiently exasperated, Andrew Schusky was thrown amongst them.
His cries increased their fury, and his body was torn to shreds and
devoured.

Ivan dead, his son Feodor, who should have been surnamed the Feeble,
as his father was the Terrible, ascended the Russian throne. He was
the last of Rurik's descendants who occupied it. Even during his reign
he recognised as regent of the empire his brother-in-law, the insolent
and ambitious Boris Godunof. Possessed of the real power, this man
coveted the external pomp of royalty. The crown was his aim, and to its
possession after the death of Feodor, who, as weak of body as of mind,
was not likely to be long-lived, only one obstacle existed. This was
a younger son of Ivan IV., a child of a few years old, named Dmitri
or Demetrius. The existence of this infant was a slight bar to one so
unscrupulous as Godunof, a bar which a poniard soon removed. Feodor
died, and his brother-in-law accepted, with much show of reluctance,
the throne he had so long desired to fill. For the first time for many
years he breathed freely; his end was attained; he thought not of the
many crimes that had led to it, of the spilt blood of his child-victim,
or of that of two hundred of the inhabitants of Ouglitch, judicially
murdered by his orders in revenge of the death of Demetrius' assassins,
whom the people had risen upon and slain; the tears of Ivan's widow,
now childless and confined in a convent, and of her whole family,
condemned to a horrible captivity, troubled not his repose or his
dreams of future prosperity. But whilst he exulted in security and
splendour, his joy was suddenly troubled by a strange retribution.
Demetrius was dead; of that there could be no doubt; his emissary's
dagger had done the work too surely--but the name of the rightful heir
survived to make the usurper tremble. It is curious to observe in how
many details Godunof's own crimes contributed to his punishment. His
manoeuvres to suppress the facts of Demetrius' death, by stopping
couriers and falsifying despatches, so as to make it appear that the
young prince had killed himself with a knife in a fit of epilepsy, had
thrown a sort of mystery and ambiguity over the whole transaction,
favourable to the designs and pretensions of impostors. One of the many
dark deeds by which he had paved his way to the supreme power was the
removal of the metropolitan of the Russian church, who was deposed and
shut up in a convent, where it was pretty generally believed he met a
violent death. In lieu of this dignitary, previously the sole chief of
the Russian church, Godunof created a patriarchate, and Jeremiah of
Constantinople went to Moscow to install the first patriarch, whose
name was Job. This prelate, whilst visiting the convent of Tchudof, was
struck by the intelligence of a young monk named Gregory Otrepief or
Atrepief, who could read, then a rare accomplishment, and who showed
great readiness of wit. The patriarch took this youth into his service
as secretary, and often carried him with him when he went to visit
the Czar. Dazzled by the brilliancy of the court, and perceiving the
ignorance and incapacity of many high personages, Otrepief conceived
the audacious design of elevating himself above those to whom he felt
himself already far superior in ability. He was acquainted with the
details of the death of young Demetrius; and from some old servants of
the Czarina Mary he obtained particulars of the character, qualities,
and tastes of the deceased prince, all of which he carefully noted
down, as well as the names and titles of the officers and attendants
who had been attached to his person. Having prepared and studied his
part, he asked leave to return to his convent. This was granted.
His fellow-monks wondered to see him thus abandon the advantageous
prospects held out to him by the favour of the patriarch.

"What should I become by remaining at court?" replied Otrepief, with a
laugh: "a bishop at most, and I mean to be Czar of Moscow."

At first this passed as a joke; but Otrepief, either through bravado,
or because it formed part of his scheme, repeated it so often, that it
at last came to the ears of the Czar himself, who said the monk must
be mad. At the same time, as he knew by experience that the usurpation
of the throne was not an impossible thing, he ordered, as an excessive
precaution, that the boaster should be sent to a remote convent.
Otrepief set out, but on the road he seduced his escort, consisting of
two monks. By large promises he prevailed with them to accompany him to
Lithuania, where many enemies of Godunof had taken refuge. According to
the custom of the times, the travellers passed the nights in roadside
monasteries, and in every cell that he occupied Otrepief wrote upon
the walls--"I am Demetrius, son of Ivan IV. Although believed to be
dead, I escaped from my assassins. When I am upon my father's throne
I will recompense the generous men who now show me hospitality." Soon
the report spread far and wide that the Czarowitz Demetrius lived,
and had arrived in Lithuania. Otrepief assumed a layman's dress, left
his monkish adherents--one of whom agreed to bear the name his leader
now renounced--and presented himself as the son of Ivan IV. to the
Zaporian Cossacks, amongst whom he soon acquired the military habits
and knowledge which he deemed essential to the success of his daring
schemes. After a campaign or two, which, judging from the character
of his new associates, were probably mere brigand-like expeditions in
quest of pillage, Otrepief resumed the cowl, and entered the service of
a powerful noble named Vichnevetski, whom he knew to have been greatly
attached to Ivan IV. Pretending to be dangerously ill, he asked for a
confessor. After receiving absolution: "I am about to die," he said to
the priest; "and I entreat you, holy father, to have me buried with
the honours due to the son of the Czar." The priest, a Jesuit, (the
Jesuits were then all-powerful in Poland) asked the meaning of these
strange words, which Otrepief declined telling, but said they would
be explained after his death by a letter beneath his pillow. This
letter the astonished Jesuit took an opportunity to purloin, and at the
same time he perceived on the sick man's breast a gold cross studded
with diamonds--a present received by Otrepief when secretary to the
patriarch. In all haste the Jesuit went to Vichnevetski; they opened
the letter, and gathered from its contents that he who had presented
himself to them as a poor monk was no other than Demetrius, son of
Ivan IV. Vichnevetski had in his service two Russians who had been
soldiers of Ivan. Led to the sick man's bedside, these declared that
they perfectly recognised in him the Czarowitz Demetrius; first, by
his features--although they had not seen him since his childhood--and
afterwards by two warts upon his face, and by an inequality in the
length of his arms.

The Jesuits, never negligent of opportunities to increase their
power, saw in the pretender to the czardom a fit instrument for the
propagation of Romanism in Russia. They enlisted Sigismund king of
Poland in the cause of the false Demetrius, who was treated as a
prince, and lodged in a palace. Thence he negotiated with the pope's
nuncio, who gave him assurance of the support of all Catholic Europe in
exchange for his promise to unite Russia to the Latin church. An army
of Poles and Russian refugees was raised, and the southern provinces of
Russia were inundated with florid proclamations, in which the joys of
an earthly paradise were offered to all who espoused the cause of their
legitimate sovereign, Demetrius. The Don Cossacks, whose robberies had
been recently checked by Godunof, flocked to the pretender's banner,
and so formidable was the army thus collected, that the Czar began
heartily to regret having paid such small attention to the words of the
monk Otrepief. The Ukraine declared for the self-styled son of Ivan
IV.; the voevóda of Sandomir, whose daughter he had promised to marry,
acknowledged him as his prince; towns submitted, and fortresses opened
their gates to the impostor, now in full march upon Moscow. Blinded
by success, Otrepief fancied himself invincible; and, with scarcely
fifteen thousand soldiers, he hurried to meet the Muscovite army, fifty
thousand strong, and provided with a formidable artillery. Beaten,
his undisciplined forces dispersed, and he himself escaped death by
a miracle; but his courage was still undaunted. After a few days,
during which he slept upon the snow, and subsisted upon a few grains of
barley, he succeeded in rallying his scattered bands. These became the
nucleus of a new army; and at the very moment that Godunof, rejoicing
at his victory, prepared to chastise the nobles compromised in the
rebellion, he heard that his enemy was again afoot, more formidable
than ever. Furious at the news, the Czar addressed reproaches and
menaces to his generals, whom he thus completely alienated; and
thenceforth he was surrounded by enemies. A sudden illness soon
afterwards carried him off, giving him scarcely time to proclaim his
son Feodor his successor. Court and clergy, people and army, paid
homage to the young Czar. Amongst others, the general-in-chief of the
army took the oath of fidelity; but no sooner was he again at the head
of his troops, than he negotiated with Otrepief, and went over to him
with all his forces. A few days afterwards the pretender was in Moscow.
He strangled Feodor, and proclaimed himself Czar. Never had an impostor
played his part with greater skill and such complete success. He had
the art even to obtain his recognition from Ivan's widow. He recalled
her relations, exiled since Godunof's usurpation, restored them their
property and loaded them with honours, and then sent word to Mary that
he would be to her a good son or a severe master, as she chose. The
Czarina acknowledged him as her son, and was present at his coronation.

Notwithstanding the strength of this evidence, a noble, named Basil
Shusky or Zulski,--of the family whose chief Ivan IV. had thrown to his
hounds,--still contended against the usurper. He had himself seen the
corpse of Ivan's son Demetrius, and he declared as much to his friends
and partisans, whom he offered to head and lead against the impostor.
Before his plans were ripe, however, he was arrested and brought to
trial. Otrepief offered to pardon him if he would name his accomplices,
and publicly admit that he had lied in stating that he had seen the
dead body of the son of Ivan IV.

"I will retract nothing," was Shusky's firm reply; "for I have spoken
the truth: the man who now wears the crown of the Czar is a vile
impostor. I know the fate reserved for me; but those you uselessly urge
me to betray will revenge my death, and the usurper shall fall."

As he persisted in his courageous assertions, the judges ordered him to
be put to the torture. The executioner tied his hands behind him and
placed upon his head an iron crown, bristling internally with sharp
points; then, with the palm of his hand, he struck the top of the
crown, and blood streamed over the victim's face.

"Confess your guilt!" said the judge.

The intrepid Shusky repeated his asseveration of Otrepief's imposture.
The judge signed to the executioner, who again clapped a heavy hand
upon the iron diadem. But suffering only augmented the energy of the
heroic Muscovite, who continued, as long as consciousness remained in
his tortured head, to denounce the false Czar. At last, when the whole
of the forehead and the greater part of the skull were bared to the
bone, he fainted and was removed. The terrible crown had been pressed
down to his eyes. He was condemned to decapitation; but Otrepief
pardoned him upon the scaffold, and, sometime afterwards, was imprudent
enough to take him into favour and make him his privy counsellor.
Shusky had vowed revenge, and waited only for an opportunity. This
was accelerated by Otrepief's fancied security. One morning the false
Demetrius was roused by alarm-bells, and, on looking from a window,
he beheld the palace surrounded by a host of armed conspirators. The
doors were speedily forced; pursued from room to room by overwhelming
numbers, his clothes and the doors through which he fled riddled with
balls, the Czar at last leaped from a window, and, notwithstanding
serious injuries received in falling, he reached a guardhouse occupied
by the Strelitz. The post was soon surrounded by an armed and menacing
crowd; but the officer commanding declared he would defend his
sovereign with his life.

"He whom you call your sovereign is a monk who has usurped the crown,"
said Shusky to the officer.

"He is the son of the Czarina Mary," was the reply.

"The Czarina herself declares him an impostor."

"Show me her written declaration to that effect, and I will give him
up; but only on that condition."

Shusky ran to the convent where Mary lived in a kind of semi-captivity,
told her what was passing,--that the capital was in his power, and that
she could not now refuse to proclaim the imposture of the wretch who
had compelled her to recognise him as her son. Mary yielded the more
easily that her timorous conscience reproached her with the falsehood
by which she had confirmed an adventurer in the imperial dignity; she
signed and sealed the declaration demanded, and Shusky hastened with
it to the officer of Strelitz. Otrepief was given up. Shusky assembled
some boyarins and formed a tribunal, of which he himself was president,
and before which the Czar, thus rapidly cast down from the throne to
which his address and courage had elevated him, was forthwith arraigned.

"The hour of expiation is come," said Shusky. "The head you so
barbarously mutilated has never ceased to ponder vengeance. Monk
Otrepief, confess yourself an impostor, that God, before whom you are
about to appear, may have pity on your soul."

"I am the Czar Demetrius," replied Otrepief, with much assurance: "it
is not the first time that rebellious subjects, led astray by traitors,
have dared lay hands on the sacred person of their sovereign; but such
crimes never remain unpunished."

"You would gain time," replied Shusky; "but you will not succeed; the
Czarina Mary's declaration is sufficient for us to decide upon your
fate, and, so doing, we doom you to die."

Thereupon four men seized the culprit and pushed him against a wall;
two others, armed with muskets, went close up to him and shot him. He
struggled an instant, and then expired. His corpse, dragged by the mob
to the place of common execution, was there abandoned with outrage
and mutilation. His death was the signal for the massacre of the
Poles, whom Otrepief had always favoured, affecting their manners, and
selecting them for his body-guard. Moscow just then contained a great
number of those foreigners; for Marina, daughter of the voevóda of
Sandomir, had arrived a few days before for her nuptials with the Czar,
and had been closely followed by the King of Poland's ambassadors,
with an armed and numerous suite. After an orgie at the palace, the
Poles had committed various excesses, beating peaceable citizens and
outraging women, which had greatly exasperated the people. Besides
this, their religion rendered them odious; and scarcely had the false
Demetrius fallen when the Russian priests and monks raised the cry
of massacre. With shouts of "Down with the Pope!" and "Death to the
heretics!" they spread through the city, pointing out to the people
the dwellings of the Poles, whose doors were already marked by the
conspirators. It was a St Bartholomew on a small scale. Blood flowed
for six hours in the streets of Moscow: more than a thousand Poles were
slaughtered; and, when the work was done, the murderers repaired to the
churches to thank God for the success of their enterprise. Shusky was
proclaimed Czar by the will of the people, which, at that moment, it
would not have been safe to thwart.

The brilliant success of one impostor, temporary though it had proved,
soon raised up others. Shusky was no sooner on the throne than the
report spread that Czar Demetrius had not been shot--that a faithful
adherent had suffered death in his stead. And a runaway serf, Ivan
Bolotnikof by name, undertook to personate the defunct impostor.
But although he collected a sort of army of Strelitz, Cossacks,
and peasants, glad of any pretext for pillage, and although he was
recognised by two powerful princes, one of whom, strange to say, was
his former owner, Prince Téliatevski, his abilities and his success
were alike far inferior to those of Otrepief. Astracan and several
other towns revolted in his favour; but Shusky marched against him,
won a battle, in which Téliatevski was killed, and besieged Toula, in
which Bolotnikof and the other chiefs of the revolt had shut themselves
up. "The besieged," says M. Blanc, "defended themselves vigorously";
but Shusky, by the advice of a child, who was assuredly born with
the genius of destruction, stopped the course of the Oupa, by means
of a dike made below the town, through which the river flowed. The
topographical position of the town was such that in a few hours it was
completely under water. Many of the inhabitants were drowned; defence
became impossible; and Bolotnikof, seized by his mutinous followers,
was given up to Shusky. This second false Demetrius was forthwith
shot; but his fate did not discourage a third impostor, who, like his
predecessor, commanded armies, but never reached the throne. From
first to last, no less than seven candidates appeared for the name and
birthright of Ivan's murdered son. Three of them were promptly crushed;
the seventh audaciously asserted that he united in his person not only
the true Demetrius, whom Godunof had assassinated, but also the one
whom Shusky had dragged from the throne, and two of the subsequent
impostors. This was rather a strong dose even for Cossacks to swallow;
but these gentlemen rejoiced at the prospect of booty, affected to
credit the tale, and bore the pretender's banner to within a short
distance of Moscow. There his career terminated. A Cossack chief, who
had often seen Otrepief, finding himself in the presence of the seventh
Demetrius, declared aloud that he was not the Czar he had served,
arrested the impostor with his own hand, and hung him on a neighbouring
tree.

The annals of this period of Russian history are painful from the
atrocities they record; and M. Blanc is prodigal of horrors. The
interval of a quarter of a century between the extinction of the line
of Rurik and the accession of the Romanoff dynasty, still paramount
in Russia, was occupied by constant struggles between usurpers and
pretenders, none of whom dreamed of a milder fate than death for the
foe who fell into their hands. And happy was the vanquished chief who
escaped with a prompt and merciful death by axe or bullet. The most
hideous tortures were put in practice, either for the extortion of
confessions, or for the gratification of malice. Even Shusky, whom we
have shown enduring with noble fortitude the agonising pressure of
the iron crown, learned not mercy from suffering. His treatment of an
enthusiastic boyarin, sent by the third false Demetrius to summon him
to vacate the throne, was such as Red Indians or Spanish inquisitors
might have shuddered to witness. It is recorded, in all its horrible
details, at page 52 of the _Histoire des Conspirations_, &c. The
torture of individuals, which was of frequent occurrence, was varied
from time to time by the massacre of multitudes. We have mentioned
that of the Poles. In 1611, after Shusky's dethronement, it was the
turn of the Muscovites. The Poles having seized Moscow, insisted that
Vladislaus, son of the King of Poland, should be elected Czar. The
nobles consented, but the patriarch steadily refused his consent;
and, by the law of the land, his opposition nullified the election.
Thereupon the Poles ran riot in the city, plundering, murdering, and
ravishing; and at last, unsheathing the sword for a general slaughter,
twenty thousand men, women, and children fell in one day beneath the
murderous steel. A Muscovite army then closely blockaded the place:
and the Poles were reduced to the greatest extremity of famine.
They at last surrendered on condition of their lives being spared,
notwithstanding which compact many were massacred by the Cossacks.
"And yet," says M. Blanc, "the aspect of the town was well calculated
to excite compassion rather than hatred. In the streets the cadaverous
and emaciated inhabitants looked like spectres; in the houses were the
remains of unclean animals, fragments of repasts horrible to imagine;
and what is still more frightful, perhaps unprecedented, salting tubs
were found, _filled with human flesh_."

It was under the reign of Alexis, the second Romanoff and father of
Peter the Great, that there appeared in Russia the most extraordinary
robber the world ever saw. He claimed not to be a Czar or the son of
a Czar; the Demetrius mask was out of date, and one real and another
pretended son of Otrepief and Marina had been executed by order of
Alexis. The new adventurer was a common Cossack from the Don, who went
by his own name of Stenka Razin, and to whom M. Blanc attributes,
perhaps with a little exaggeration, the ambition, courage, and ferocity
of a Tamerlane. In those days the Russian territory was by no means
free from robbers, who pillaged caravans of merchandise, but generally
respected the property of the Czar and the principal nobles, lest they
should make themselves powerful enemies. Razin's first act was to
throw down the glove to his sovereign. He seized a convoy belonging to
the court, and hung some gentlemen who endeavoured to defend it. The
fame of his intrepidity and success brought him many followers, and
soon he was at the head of an army. "He embarked on the Caspian Sea,
and cruised along its shores, frequently landing and seizing immense
booty. At the mouth of the Yaik he was met by an officer of the Czar's,
sent by the voevóda of Astracan to offer him and his companions a free
pardon on condition of their discontinuing their robberies. Razin
replied that he was no robber, but a conqueror; that he made war, and
suffered none to fail in respect towards him. And to prove his words,
he hung the officer, and drowned the men of his escort. A numerous
body of Strelitz was then sent against him. Razin beat the Strelitz,
seized the town of Yatskoi, massacred the garrison and the inhabitants,
and passed the winter there unmolested. In the spring he marched into
Persia." There he accumulated immense booty, but was at last expelled
by a general rising of the population. On his return to Russia he was
soon surrounded by troops; but even then, such was the terror of his
name, the Russian general granted him a capitulation, by which he and
his men were permitted to retire to their native provinces, taking
their plunder with them; and their security was guaranteed so long as
they abstained from aggression. This scandalous convention was ratified
by Alexis, but was not long adhered to by the bandit with whom the Czar
thus meanly condescended to treat as an equal. Stenka's next campaign
was even more successful than the previous one. Bodies of troops
deserted to him, and several towns fell into his power; amongst others,
that of Astracan, where frightful scenes of violence and murder were
enacted--Razin himself parading the streets, intoxicated with brandy,
and stabbing all he met. He was marching upon Moscow, with the avowed
intention of dethroning the Czar, when he sustained a reverse, and,
after fighting like a lion, was made prisoner, and sent in fetters to
the city he had expected to enter in triumph. Taken before Alexis, he
replied boldly and haughtily to the Czar's reproaches and threats.
The only anxiety he showed was to know what manner of death he was to
suffer. He had heard that, in the previous year, an obscure robber and
assassin, who pillaged convents and churches, had been cut into pieces
of half a finger's breadth, beginning at the toes. This barbarous
punishment, of which several instances are cited in M. Blanc's book,
was known as the "torture of the ten thousand pieces." "But," exclaimed
Stenka Razin, with a sort of terror, so horrible did this death appear
to him, "I am no robber of monks! I have commanded armies. I have made
peace with the Czar, therefore I had a right to make war upon him.
Is there not a man amongst you brave enough to split my head with a
hatchet?" The Strelitz guards, to whom these words were addressed,
refused the friendly office, and Razin heard himself condemned to be
quartered alive. He seemed resigned, as if he considered this death an
endurable medium between the decapitation he had implored of his judges
and the barbarous mincing he had been led to expect. But his energy
forsook him on the scaffold, and the man who had so often confronted
and inflicted death, received it in a swooning state.

The characters of few sovereigns admit of being judged more variously
than that of Peter I. of Russia, surnamed the Great. According to the
point of view whence we contemplate him, we behold the hero or the
savage; the wise legislator or the lawless tyrant; the patient pursuer
of science or the dissolute and heartless debauchee. In the long
chapter given to his romantic and eventful reign, M. Blanc shows him
little favour. In a work treating of conspiracies and executions, the
characters of the sovereigns introduced are naturally not exhibited
under their most amiable aspect, especially when those sovereigns are
Russian czars and czarinas, to whom lenity has generally been less
familiar than severity, and pardon than punishment. The pen of Voltaire
has done much for the reputation of Peter the Great, who to us has
always appeared an overrated personage. Historians have vaunted his
exploits and good deeds, till his crimes and barbarities have been lost
sight of in the glitter of panegyric. The monarch who could debase
himself to the level of an executioner, beheading his rebel subjects
with his own hand, and feasting his eyes with the spectacle of death
when he himself was weary of slaying; who could condemn his wife,
repudiated without cause, to the frightful torture of the knout, and
sign the order, which it is more than suspected he himself executed,
for the death of his own son--may have been great as a warrior and a
legislator, but must ever be execrated as a man. Peter was certainly
an extraordinary compound of vices and virtues. His domestic life will
not bear even the most superficial investigation, and M. Blanc has
ripped it up unmercifully. The great reformer--we might almost say
the founder--of the mighty empire of Russia, the conqueror of Charles
of Sweden, was a drunkard and gross sensualist, a bad father, a cruel
and unfaithful husband. Indeed some of his acts seem inexplicable
otherwise than by that ferocious insanity manifest in more than one
of his descendants. Even his rare impulses of mercy were apt to come
too late to save the victim. As illustrating one of them, an incident,
nearly the last event of Peter's life, is given by M. Blanc, in more
minute detail than we ever before met with it. Peter's whole life was
a romance; but this is assuredly one of its most romantic episodes.
A short time before his death, according to M. Blanc, although other
writers fix the date some years earlier, Peter was violently smitten by
the charms of a young girl named Ivanowa. Although tenderly attached,
and about to be married to an officer of the regiment of Schouvaloff,
she dared not oppose the Czar's wishes, but became his mistress. Peter,
who took her repugnance for timidity, fancied himself beloved, and
passed much of his time in her society, in a charming cottage in which
he had installed her at one of the extremities of St Petersburg. He had
enriched her family, who were ignorant, however, of her retreat. Her
betrothed, whose name was Demetrius Daniloff, was in despair at her
disappearance, and made unceasing efforts to discover her, but all in
vain, until Ivanowa, having made a confidant of a Livonian slave, had
him conducted to her presence. The lovers' meetings were then frequent,
so much so, that Peter received intelligence of them. "His anger was
terrible; he roared like a tiger.

'Betrayed! betrayed everywhere and always!' cried he, striding wildly
about the room, and striking his brow with his clenched fist. 'Oh!
revenge! revenge!'

Before the close of day he left the palace, alone, wrapped in a coarse
cloak, his feet in nailed shoes whose patches attested their long
services, his head covered with a fox-skin cap which came down over
his eyebrows and half concealed his eyes. He soon reached Ivanowa's
house, where the lovers deemed themselves perfectly secure, for the
Czar had spread a report of his departure for Moscow. Moreover, the
faithful Livonian slave kept watch in the antechamber, to give an alarm
at the least noise. Peter knew all this, and had taken his measures
accordingly. Opening an outer door with a key of his own, he bounded
into the anteroom, upset the slave, and, with a kick of his powerful
foot, burst the door that separated him from the lovers. All this
occurred with the speed of lightning. Daniloff and Ivanowa had scarce
time to rise from their seats, before the Czar stood over them with his
drawn sword in his hand. Ivanowa uttered a cry of terror, fell on her
knees, and fainted. Prompt as the Czar, Daniloff bared his sabre and
threw himself between his mistress and Peter. The latter lowered his
weapon.

'No,' he said, 'the revenge were too brief.'

He opened a window and cried _hourra_! At the signal, a hundred
soldiers crowded into the house. Mastering his fury, the Czar ordered
the young officer to be taken to prison, there to receive one hundred
blows of the _battogues_ or sticks. Ivanowa was also confined until the
senate should decide on her fate. The next day Daniloff received his
terrible punishment. Before half of it had been inflicted, his back,
from, the loins to the shoulders, was one hideous wound," &c. &c. We
omit the revolting details. "Nevertheless the executioners continued to
strike, and the hundred blows were counted, without a complaint from
the sufferer. The unfortunate Daniloff had not even fainted; he got up
alone,[5] when untied, and asked to have his wounds carefully dressed.

[5] The victim is placed upon his belly (and tied down so that he
cannot change his position) to receive this terrible punishment, in
severity inferior only to the knout.

'I have need to live a short time longer,' he added."

Meanwhile Ivanowa was brought before the senate, and accused of high
treason and of trying to discover state secrets--a charge of Peter's
invention. The supple senate, created by the Czar, condemned her to
receive twenty-two blows of the knout in the presence of her accomplice
Daniloff, already punished by the emperor's order. On the day appointed
for the execution, Peter stood upon the balcony of his winter palace.
Several battalions of infantry marched past, escorting the unfortunate
Demetrius, who, in spite of the frightful sufferings he still endured,
walked with a steady step, and with a firm and even joyful countenance.
Surrounded by another escort, was seen the young and lovely Ivanowa,
half dead with terror, supported on one side by a priest and on the
other by a soldier, and letting her beautiful head fall from one
shoulder to the other, according to the impulse given it by her painful
progress. Even Peter's heart melted at the sight. Re-entering his
apartment, he put on the ribbon of the order of St Andrew, threw a
cloak over his shoulders, left the palace, sprang into a boat, and
reached the opposite side of the river at the same time as the mournful
procession which had crossed the bridge. Making his way through the
crowd, he dropped his cloak, took Ivanowa in his arms, and imprinted
a kiss upon her brow. A murmur arose amongst the people, and suddenly
cries of "pardon" were heard.

"The knights of St Andrew then enjoyed the singular privilege that a
kiss given by them to a condemned person, deprived the executioner of
his victim. This privilege has endured even to our day, but not without
some modification.

"Daniloff had recognised Peter. He approached the Czar, whose every
movement he had anxiously watched, stripped off his coat, and rent the
bloody shirt that covered his shoulders.

"'The man who could suffer thus,' he said, 'knows how to die. Czar,
thy repentance comes too late! Ivanowa, I go to wait for thee!' And
drawing a concealed poniard, he stabbed himself twice. His death was
instantaneous. Peter hurried back to his palace, and the stupified,
crowd slowly dispersed. Ivanowa died shortly afterwards in the convent
to which she had been permitted to retire."

If we are frequently shocked, in the course of M. Blanc's third volume,
by the tyrannical and brutal cruelty of the Russian sovereigns, we are
also repeatedly disgusted by the servility and patient meanness of
those who suffered from it. We behold Muscovite nobles of high rank
and descent, cringing under the wanton torments inflicted on them by
their oppressor, and submitting to degradations to which death, one
would imagine, were, to any free-spirited man, fifty times preferable.
As an example, we will cite the conduct of a Prince Galitzin, who,
after long exile in Germany, where he had become a convert to the
Romish church, solicited and obtained permission to return to his
country. This was in 1740, under the reign of the dissolute and cruel
Czarina Anne. The paramours and flatterers who composed the court of
that licentious princess, urged her to inflict on the new-made papist
the same punishment that had been suffered by a noble named Vonitzin,
who had turned Jew, and had been burned alive, or rather roasted at a
slow fire. Anne refused, but promised the courtiers they should not be
deprived of their sport.

"The same day, Galitzin, although upwards of forty years old, was
ordered to take his place amongst the pages: a few days later he
received a notification that the empress, contented with his services,
had been pleased to raise him to the dignity of her third buffoon.
'The custom of buffoons,' says an historian, 'was then in full force
in Russia; the empress had six, _three of whom were of very high
birth_, and when they did not lend themselves with a good grace to the
tomfooleries required of them by her or her favourites, she had them
punished with the _battogues_.' The empress appeared well satisfied
with the manner in which the prince fulfilled his new duties; and,
as he was a widower, she declared she would find him a wife, that so
valuable a subject might not die without posterity. They selected,
for the poor wretch's bride, the most hideous and disgusting creature
that could be found in the lowest ranks of the populace. Anne herself
arranged the ceremonial of the wedding. It was in the depth of one
of the severest winters of the century; and, at great expense, the
empress had a palace built of ice. Not only was the building entirely
constructed of that material, but all the furniture, including the
nuptial bed, was also of ice. In front of the palace were ice cannons,
mounted on ice carriages.

Anne and all her court conducted the newly-married pair to this
palace, their destined habitation. The guests were in sledges drawn
by dogs and reindeer; the husband and wife, enclosed in a cage, were
carried on an elephant. When the procession arrived near the palace,
the ice cannons were fired, and not one of them burst, so intense was
the cold. Several of them were even loaded with bullets, which pierced
thick planks at a considerable distance. When everybody had entered the
singular edifice, the ball began. It probably did not last long. On its
conclusion, Anne insisted on the bride and bridegroom being put to bed
in her presence: they were undressed, with the exception of their under
garments, and were compelled to lie down upon the bed of ice, without
covering of any kind. Then the company went away, and sentinels were
placed at the door of the nuptial chamber, to prevent the couple from
leaving it before the next day! But when the next day came, they had
to be carried out; the poor creatures were in a deplorable state, and
survived their torture but a few days."

This patient submission to a long series of indignities on the part of
a man of Galitzin's rank and blood is incomprehensible, and pity for
his cruel death is mingled with contempt for the elderly prince who
could tamely play the page, and caper in the garb of a court jester.
But the Russian noble of that day--and even of a later period--united
the soul of a slave with the heart of a tyrant. To the feeble a
relentless tiger, before the despot or the despot's favourite he
grovelled like a spiritless cur. The memoirs of the eighteenth century
abound in examples of his base servility. We cite one, out of many
which we find recorded in an interesting _Life of Catherine II. of
Russia_, published at Paris in 1797. Plato Zouboff, one of Catherine's
favourite lovers, had a little monkey, a restless, troublesome
beast, which everybody detested, but which everybody caressed, by
way of paying court to its master. Amongst the host of ministers,
military men, and ambassadors, who sedulously attended the levees of
the powerful favourite, was a general officer, remarkable for the
perfection and care with which his hair was dressed. One day the monkey
climbed upon his head, and, after completely destroying the symmetry of
his hyacinthine locks, deliberately defiled them. The officer dared not
show the slightest discontent. There are not wanting, however, in the
history of the eighteenth century, instances of heroism and courage to
contrast with the far more numerous ones of vileness afforded by the
aristocracy of Russia. The dignity and fortitude of Menzikoff--that
pastrycook's boy who became a great minister--during his terrible
exile in Siberia, are an oft-told tale. Prince Dolgorouki, the same
to whom Anne owed her crown, and whom she requited by a barbarous
death, beheld his son, brother, and nephew broken on the wheel. When
his turn came, and the executioners were arranging him suitably upon
the instrument of torture: "Do as you please with me," he said, "and
without fear of loading your consciences, for it is not in human power
to increase my sufferings." And he died without uttering a complaint.
But perhaps the most extraordinary instance of coolness and self
command, at the moment of a violent and cruel death, to be found in
the annals of executions, is that of Pugatscheff, who, however, was no
nobleman, but a Cossack of humble birth, who deserted from the Russian
army after the siege and capture of Bender by General Panim, and fled
to Poland, where he was concealed for a time by hermits of the Greek
church. "Conversing one day with his protectors," says a French writer
already referred to, "he told them, that once, during his service in
General Panim's army, a Russian officer said to him, after staring him
very hard in the face, 'If the emperor Peter III., my master, were not
dead, I should think I now stood before him.' The hermits paid little
attention to this tale; but some time afterwards one of their number,
who had not yet met Pugatscheff, exclaimed, on beholding him, 'Is not
that the emperor, Peter III.?' The monks then induced him to attempt
an imposture they had planned." M. Blanc's account differs from this,
inasmuch as it asserts the resemblance to the defunct Czar to have been
very slight. Whatever the degree of likeness, Pugatscheff declared
himself the husband of Catherine II. (murdered some time previously,
by Prince Bariatinski and by Alexis Orloff, the brother of Catherine's
lover), and thousands credited his pretensions. The Cossacks of the
river Yaik (afterwards changed to the Ural by Catherine, who desired
to obliterate the memory of this revolt) were just then in exceedingly
bad humour. After patiently submitting to a great deal of oppression
and ill usage, they had received orders to cut off their beards. This
they would not do. They had relinquished, grumbling but passive, many
a fair acre of pasturage; they had furnished men for a new regiment of
hussars; but they rebelled outright when ordered to use a razor. The
Livonian general, Traubenberg, repaired to Yaitsk with a strong staff
of barbers, and began shaving the refractory Cossacks on the public
market-place. The patients rose in arms, massacred general, barbers,
and aide-de-camps; recognised Pugatscheff as Peter III., and swore to
replace him on his throne, and to die in his defence. The adventurer
was near being as successful as the monk Otrepief. Catherine herself
was very uneasy, although she published contemptuous proclamations,
and jested, in her letters to Voltaire, on the Marquis of Pugatscheff,
as she called him. It was rather a serious subject to joke about. The
impostor defeated Russian armies, and slew their generals; took towns,
whose governors he impaled; burned upwards of two hundred and fifty
villages; destroyed the commerce of Siberia; stopped the working of the
Orenberg mines; and poured out the blood of thirty thousand Russian
subjects. At last he was taken. On his trial he showed great firmness;
and, although unable to read or write, he answered the questions of
the tribunal with wonderful ability and intelligence. He was condemned
to death. According to the sentence, his hands were to be cut off
first, then his feet, then his head, and finally the trunk was to be
quartered. When brought upon the scaffold, and whilst the imperial
ukase enumerating his crimes was read, he undressed quickly and in
silence; but when they began to read the sentence, he dexterously
prevented the executioner from attending to it, by asking him all
manner of questions--whether his axe was in good order, whether the
block was not of a less size than prescribed by law, and whether he,
the executioner, had not, by chance, drank more brandy than usual,
which might make his hand unsteady.

"The sentence read, the magistrate and his assistant left the scaffold.

'Now, then,' said Pugatscheff to the executioner, 'let us have no
mistakes; the prescribed order must be strictly observed. So you will
first cut off my head----'

'The head first!' cried the executioner.

'So runs the sentence. Have a care! I have friends who would make you
dearly expiate an error to my prejudice.'

It was too late to call back the magistrate; and the executioner, who
doubted, at last said to himself that the important affair, after all,
was the death of the criminal, and that there was little difference
whether it took place rather sooner or rather later. He grasped his
axe; Pugatscheff laid his head on the block, and the next moment it
rebounded upon the scaffold. The feet and hands were cut off after
death; the culprit escaping torture by his great presence of mind."

It has been asserted that an order from the empress thus humanised
the cruel sentence; but this is exceedingly improbable, for she was
bitter against Pugatscheff, who, ignorant Cossack as he was, had made
the modern Semiramis tremble on her throne; besides, it is matter of
history that, after his execution, the headsman had his tongue cut
out, and was sent to Siberia. Catherine, who had affected to laugh at
Pugatscheff during his life, was so ungenerous as to calumniate him
after death. "This brigand," she said, in one of her letters quoted by
M. Blanc, "showed himself so pusillanimous in his prison, that it was
necessary to prepare him with caution to hear his sentence read, lest
he should die of fear." It is quite certain, M. Blanc observes, that to
his dying hour Pugatscheff inspired more fear than he felt.

The misfortunes of the unhappy young Princess Tarrakanoff supply M.
Blanc with materials for the most interesting chapter in this volume
of his work. The Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, and
predecessor of Peter III.--whose marriage with the Princess of Anhalt
Zerbest, afterwards Catherine the Great, was brought about by her--had
had three children by her secret marriage with Alexis Razumoffski.
The youngest of these was a daughter, who was brought up in Russia
under the name of the Princess Tarrakanoff. When Catherine trampled
the rights of Poland under foot, the Polish prince, Charles Radzivil,
carried off the young princess, and took her to Italy, thinking to
set her up at some future day as a pretender to the Russian throne.
Informed of this, Catherine confiscated his estates; and in order to
live, he was compelled to sell the diamonds and other valuables he
had taken with him to Italy. These resources exhausted, Radzivil set
out for Poland to seek others, leaving the young princess, then in
her sixteenth year, at Rome, under the care of a sort of governess or
duenna. On reaching his native country he was offered the restoration
of his property if he would bring back his ward to Russia. He refused;
but he was so base as to promise that he would take no further trouble
about her, and leave her to her fate. Catherine pardoned him, and
forthwith put Alexis Orloff on the scent. He was a keen bloodhound,
she well knew, capable of any villany that might serve his ambition.
Gold unlimited was placed at his disposal, and promise of high reward
if he discovered the retreat of the princess, and lured her within
Catherine's reach. Orloff set out for Italy; and on arriving there
he took into his employ a Neapolitan named Ribas, a sort of spy,
styling himself a naval officer, who pledged himself to find out the
princess, but stipulated for rank in the Russian navy as his reward.
M. Blanc asserts that he demanded to be made admiral at once; and
that Orloff, afraid, notwithstanding the extensive powers given him,
to bestow so high a grade, or compelled by the suspicions of Ribas to
produce the commission itself, wrote to Catherine, who at once sent
the required document. Whether this be exact or not, more than one
historian mentions that Ribas subsequently commanded in the Black Sea
as a Russian vice-admiral. When certain of his reward, Ribas, who
then had spent two months in researches, revealed the retreat of the
unfortunate princess. With some abridgment we will follow M. Blanc,
whose narrative agrees, in all the main points, with the most authentic
versions of this touching and romantic history.

The princess was at Rome. Abandoned by Radzivil, she was reduced to the
greatest penury, existing only by the aid of a woman who had been her
servant, and who now served other masters. Alexis Orloff visited her in
her miserable abode, and spoke at first in the tone of a devoted slave
addressing his sovereign; he told her she was the legitimate empress
of Russia; that the entire population of that great empire anxiously
longed for her accession; that if Catherine still occupied the throne,
it was only because nobody knew where she (the princess) was hidden;
and that her appearance amongst her faithful subjects, would be a
signal for the instant downfall of the usurper. Notwithstanding her
youth, the princess mistrusted these dazzling assurances; she was even
alarmed by them, and held herself upon her guard. Then Orloff, one of
the handsomest men of his time, joined the seductions of love to those
of ambition; he feigned a violent passion for the young girl, and swore
that his life depended on his obtaining her heart and hand. The poor
isolated girl fell unresistingly into the infamous snare spread for her
inexperience: she believed and loved him. The infamous Orloff persuaded
her that their marriage must be strictly private, lest Catherine should
hear of it and take precautions. In the night he brought to her house a
party of mercenaries, some wearing the costumes of priests of the Greek
church, others magnificently attired to act as witnesses. The mockery
of a marriage enacted, the princess willingly accompanied Alexis
Orloff, whom she believed her husband, to Leghorn, where entertainments
of all sorts were given to her. The Russian squadron, at anchor off the
port, was commanded by the English Admiral Greig. This officer, either
the dupe or the accomplice of Orloff, invited the princess to visit
the vessels that were soon to be commanded in her name. She accepted,
and embarked after a banquet, amidst the acclamations of an immense
crowd: the cannon thundered, the sky was bright, every circumstance
conspired to give her visit the appearance of a brilliant festival.
From her flag-bedecked galley she was hoisted in a splendid arm-chair
on board the admiral's vessel, where she was received with the honours
due to a crowned head. Until then Orloff had never left her side for an
instant. Suddenly the scene changed. Orloff disappeared: in place of
the gay and smiling officers who an instant previously had obsequiously
bowed before her, the unfortunate victim saw herself surrounded by
men of sinister aspect, one of whom announced to her that she was
prisoner by order of the Empress Catherine, and that soon she would
be brought to trial for the treason she had attempted. The princess
thought herself in a dream. With loud cries she summoned her husband
to her aid; her guardians laughed in her face, and told her she had
had a lover, but no husband, and that her marriage was a farce. Her
despair at these terrible revelations amounted to frenzy; she burst
into sobs and reproaches, and at last swooned away. They took advantage
of her insensibility to put fetters on her feet and hands, and lower
her into the hold. A few hours later the squadron sailed for Russia.
Notwithstanding her helplessness and entreaties, the poor girl was kept
in irons until her arrival at St Petersburg, when she was taken before
the empress, who wished to see and question her.

Catherine was old; the Princess Tarrakanoff was but sixteen, and of
surpassing beauty; the disparity destroyed her last chance of mercy.
But as there was in reality no charge against her, and as her trial
might have made too much noise, Catherine, after a long and secret
interview with her unfortunate prisoner, gave orders she should be kept
in the most rigorous captivity. She was confined in one of the dungeons
of a prison near the Neva.

Five years elapsed. The victim of the heartless Catherine, and of the
villain Orloff, awaited death as the only relief she could expect; but
youth, and a good constitution, struggled energetically against torture
and privations. One night, reclining on the straw that served her as
a bed, she prayed to God to terminate her sufferings by taking her
to himself, when her attention was attracted by a low rumbling noise
like the roll of distant thunder. She listened. The noise redoubled:
it became an incessant roar, which each moment augmented in power. The
poor captive desired death, and yet she felt terror; she called aloud,
and implored not to be left alone. A jailer came at her cries; she
asked the cause of the noise she heard.

"'Tis nothing," replied the stupid slave; "the Neva overflowing."

"But cannot the water reach us here?"

"It is here already."

At that moment the flood, making its way under the door, poured into
the dungeon, and in an instant captive and jailer were over the ankles
in water.

"For heaven's sake, let us leave this!" cried the young princess.

"Not without orders; and I have received none."

"But we shall be drowned!"

"That is pretty certain. But without special orders I am not to let you
leave this dungeon, under pain of death. In case of unforeseen danger I
am to remain with you, and to kill you should rescue be attempted."

"Good God! the water rises. I cannot sustain myself."

The Neva, overflowing its banks, floated enormous blocks of ice,
upsetting everything in its passage, and inundating the adjacent
country. The water now plashed furiously against the prison doors: the
sentinels had been carried away by the torrent, and the other soldiers
on guard had taken refuge on the upper floors. Lifted off her feet by
the icy flood which still rose higher, the unfortunate captive fell
and disappeared; the jailer, who had water to his breast, hung his
lamp against the wall, and tried to succour his prisoner; but when he
succeeded in raising her up, she was dead! The possibility anticipated
by his employers was realised; there had been stress of circumstances,
and the princess being dead, he was at liberty to leave the dungeon.
Bearing the corpse in his arms, he succeeded in reaching the upper part
of the prison.

If we may offer a hint to authors, it is our opinion that this tragical
anecdote will be a godsend to some romance-writer of costive invention,
and on the outlook for a plot. Very little ingenuity will suffice
to spread over the prescribed quantity of foolscap the incidents
we have packed into a page. They will dilute very handsomely into
three volumes. As to characters, the novelist's work is done to his
hand. Here we have the Empress Catherine, vindictive and dissolute,
persecuting that "fair girl" the Princess Tarrakanoff, with the
assistance of Orloff, the smooth villain, and of the sullen ruffian
Ribas. The latter will work up into a sort of Italian Varney, and may
be dispersed to the elements by an intentional accident, on board the
ship blown up by Orloff's order, for the enlightenment of the painter
Hackert. With the exception of the dungeon-scene, we have given but a
meagre outline of M. Blanc's narrative; and there are a number of minor
characters that may be advantageously brought in and expanded. "This
event," says M. Blanc, referring to the kidnapping of the Princess,
"caused a strong sensation at Leghorn. Prince Leopold, Grand-duke of
Tuscany, complained bitterly of it, and would have had Alexis Orloff
arrested; but this vile assassin of Peter III. maintained that he
had only executed the orders of his sovereign, who would well know
how to justify him. He was supported, in this circumstance, by the
English consul, who was his accomplice; and the Grand-duke, seeing
he was not likely to be the strongest, suffered the matter to drop."
"Some Englishmen," another French writer asserts, "had been so base
as to participate in Alexis Orloff's plot; but others were far from
approving it. They even blushed to serve under him, and sent in their
resignations. Admiral Elphinstone was one of these. Greig was promoted
in his place." An Italian prince, indignant, but timid; a foreign
consul, sold to Russian interests; a British sailor, spurning the
service of a tyrant. We need say no more; for we are quite sure that
before they get thus far, the corps of historical novelists will be
handling their goose-quills.




LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN,

AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC.


LETTER FIRST.

You object to being called a Puseyite, or a Tractarian; and as I
believe you never read any of the Tracts, nor were lucky enough to
comprehend any of Dr Pusey's writings, you are right to decline the
names. But it is easy to perceive, even from your outward man, that
some great change has taken place upon you. It is not for nothing that
you wear so very tight a neckcloth, and so very low-collared a coat;
your buttons also are peculiarly placed, and there is a solemnity in
your manner of refusing an invitation to pot-luck on a Friday which
it is edifying to behold. But all this surely must have a name. You
were intended by your father to be a clergyman of the Church of
England--that worthy gentleman toasted church and king, till a female
reign and premonitory symptoms of apoplexy reduced him to silence and
water-gruel; but he is as true a defender of the faith, in his easy
gown and slippers, as ever, and looks with still increasing surprise
at the appearance of his eldest son, as often as occasional help in
your curacy enables you to run home. But don't fancy, for a moment,
that I attribute these frequent visits to your regard for the fifth
commandment alone: no, dear Charles; for though I grant you are an
excellent son and praiseworthy brother, I consider you shine with
still greater lustre in the character of a neighbour, especially to
the family at Hellebore Park. Gradually I have seen a change almost
equal to your own in the seven fair daughters of that house; and it
is very evident that, with this change, in some way or other, you are
very intimately connected. The five daughters of our neighbour in
the Lodge are also very different from what they were; and only Miss
Lathpins--who is fifty years old, and believes good works to be such
filthy rags that she would be quite ashamed if she were seen putting
half-a-crown into the plate, or sending coal and flannel to the poor,
and therefore never does it--continues the even tenor of her way,
and sighs for a gospel ministry to tell her how few will achieve the
kingdom of heaven. Every other house in the parish feels the effects of
your visits. We must have a new almanac if you come among us much more;
for the very days of the week are no longer to be recognised. Tuesday,
instead of being the lineal descendant of Monday, is now known as the
heir presumptive of Wednesday, and does duty as the eve of something
else. The wife of our physician invited us to dinner on the Feast of
St Ollapod, which, after great inquiry, we found meant Monday the 22d.
The months will not long escape--the weeks are already doomed--and, in
a few years, our parish registers will be as difficult reading as the
inscriptions of Nemroud. Have you taken this result of your crusade
against the High and Dry into your consideration? Is it right to leave
a worthy man like our rector--who conducted his little ecclesiastical
boat with great comfort to himself and others, keeping a careful middle
channel between the shoals of Dissent and the mudbanks of contented
Orthodoxy--to struggle in his old age against rocks which you and your
female allies have rolled into the water; with fast-days rearing their
sharp points where there used to be such safe navigation, and saint's
days and festivals so blocking up the passage that he can't set his
skiff near enough the shore, to enable him to visit his parishioners
when they are sick or hungry? You would pin the poor old fellow for
ever into his pulpit or reading-desk, and he never would have time to
go to the extremity of his parish, which, you remember, is five miles
from the church; and, at the Doctor's rate of riding, occupies him a
good part of the day.

But perhaps you don't know what occurs as soon as your stay is
over, and we see the skirts of your departing surtout disappear over
Hitherstone Hill. Immediately the whole coterie (which, in this
instance, is an undiluted petticoatery) assembles for consultation.
Pretty young girls, who would have been engaged ten years ago in the
arrangements of a pic-nic, now lay their graceful and busy heads
together, to effect an alteration in the height of the pews. My dear
Charles, young ladies are by nature carpenters; they know all about
hinges, and pannellings, and glue, by a sort of intuition: and it is
clear to me that, before you return to us again, the backs of the
seats will be lowered at least a foot, and I shall have the pleasure
of seeing the whole extent of Tom Holiday's back, and the undulations
of the three Miss Holiday's figures during the whole of the lessons.
The rector can't hold out long--as indeed who could, against such
petitioners? And, after all, it is only so much wood; an his wife,
who has retained her shape with very little aid from padding, has no
objection to stand up during the psalms, nor any inclination to put
her light under a bushel at any time; and some of the younger people,
who have not attained the stature of the Venus de Medici, complain
that the present elevation of the backs, if it doesn't make dints in
their bonnets, at all events cuts them off in the very middle; and my
opposition, I am sorry to say, ever since I fell asleep at your sermon
on the holiness of celibacy, is attributed to interested motives, and
therefore you may fairly expect to find our pews reduced to the height
and appearance of a row of rabbit-hutches, when you come back. This
point they seem to consider already gained, and now they have advanced
their parallels against the Doctor on another side of his defences.

The Doctor, even in his youth, can never have run much risk of being
mistaken for Apollo--his nose was probably never of a Grecian pattern,
as that ingenious people would certainly have rounded the point with
a little more skill, and have placed the nostrils more out of sight.
I have heard his front teeth were far from symmetrical, and reminded
old Major M'Turk of the charge of Mahratta irregular horse, by which
that heroic gentleman lost his eye; but as he has got quit of those
spirited, though straggling defenders, and supplied their place with a
straight-dressed militia of enamel or bone, which do duty remarkably
well, in spite of the bright yellow uniform they have lately assumed, I
conclude that he has been a gainer by the exchange. And, on the whole,
I have no doubt, if there are some handsomer fellows in the Guards, and
at the universities, there are several much uglier people to be seen in
this very parish. It can't, therefore, be for the express purpose of
escaping the sight of his face that they have begun their operations to
force him to turn his back on them during the prayers. But this they
are thoroughly resolved on achieving. They have already once placed
the Bible surreptitiously on the side of the reading desk, towards the
people, leaving the Prayer-Book on the side towards the south; and as
the Doctor, in the surprise of the moment, began with his face in that
direction, his elocution was wasted on the blank wall of the chancel
and the empty pulpit; and we had the pleasure of an uninterrupted view
of his profile, and a side-hearing also of his words, which gave us as
complete a silhouette of the prayers as of the rector. When we come to
the enjoyment of his full-face reversed, and can leisurely contemplate
his occiput, and the nape of his neck--in which, I am sorry to see,
number one so powerfully developed--we shall have the farther advantage
of not having our own meditations interrupted by hearing a syllable he
says. He resists, indeed, at present; and even told a deputation of
ladies that he would consult common sense on the occasion, and read
so that the poor folks under the west gallery could join in every
petition. Miss Araminta--your Araminta, Charles--lifted her beautiful
eyes to the Doctor in surprise, and asked "if he really prayed _to_
John Simpkins and Peter Bolt, for surely he could pray _for_ them, and
_with_ them better, with his face to the altar;" and the Doctor said
something about "girls minding their own business, and leaving him to
his," which would have led to very unpleasant consequences, if the
rest of the ambassadors had not interfered, and smoothed the raven
down of the Doctor's temper by some judicious declarations of respect
for his office, and contempt for some unfortunate evangelical brethren
in the neighbourhood; till at last the old man took Araminta by the
hand, and told her, with great truth, that she was one of the nicest
girls in the world, and that he would ride fifty miles at a moment's
warning, to save her an instant's discomfort. So they retired for that
time, hinting that they were rather surprised that _their_ rector
should have used the same argument which had been employed by the Rev.
Ebenezer Snuffle, the low church vicar of the adjoining village. A
telling blow this, Charles, as you are well aware; for I verily believe
the Doctor would soften towards the Koran, if his neighbour made an
attack on Mahommed; so I wait the issue without much uncertainty as to
what it will be. For all this, I can't help holding you, in a great
measure, responsible; for there is no shutting one's eyes to the fact,
that a decided step in advance is taken after every one of your runs
into our parish. Your father, and Major M'Turk, and I, sink lower and
lower in the estimation of your followers every day. Instead of the
nice little parties we used to have, where the girls, most of whom we
remember as infants, used to sing "Lizzie Lindsay" for the amusement
of the old ones, or play magic music, or games at forfeits, to please
themselves, they now huddle up in a corner--if, perchance, no eve or
fast prevents them from coming out to tea--and hold deep consultations
on the state and prospects of the Church. And yet there is something
so innocent and pretty in the way they manage their plots, and such a
charming feeling of triumph fills their hearts, when they have achieved
a victory over the habits and customs of the village, that I hardly
wonder they never pause in their career, or give ear to the warnings of
stupid old people like the trio I have named. In the mean time, they
certainly have it all their own way,--in the injunctions they have
laid on the poor people, to turn round at some parts of the service,
stand up at others, and join in the most wonderful responses, in a
set key, which they call entoning; and they have tormented the band
so much with practising anthems, that half the population have turned
dissenters in self-defence; and while the front seats are filled with
satin bonnets and India shawls, and the rustle of silks is like the
flight of a thousand doves when the altitude needs to be changed, there
isn't a poor person to be seen in the church except John Simpkins and
Peter Bolt, and they, I am sorry to say, are far from being the same
quiet humble paupers they used to be; for our feminine apostles have
been telling them of the honour and dignity of the poor, till there
is no bearing their pride and self-conceit. Sometimes, out of respect
to the Doctor, and a reverence for the old church, the grocer, the
carpenter, and a few of the shopkeepers, still make their appearance
in the afternoon, but they are like children the first time they go
to Astley's, and stare with wonder at all the changes they see; and
even our rector himself has become so confused, that he doesn't feel
altogether sure that he hasn't turned a dissenter, for the mode, if not
of conducting, at least of joining in the service, is something quite
different from what he has been used to.

Now dissent, as you know, has been the bugbear of the Doctor through
life. The very name carries with it something inexpressibly dreadful,
and among the most terrifying to him of all the forms of dissent was
that of Rome. But lately, a vast number of bright eyes have been
lifted to the ceiling, and a great many beautiful lips opened, and a
great many sweet voices raised in opposition to any hostile allusion
to the objects of his abhorrence. "The church of Fenelon," says one
in a reverential tone, "can surely not be altogether apostate." "The
church of the two Gregories, the church of A'Beckett and Dunstan, of
St Senanus, St Januarius, and the Seven Champions of Christendom,
can never have fallen away from the faith," exclaims Miss Tinderella
Swainlove in a very contemptuous tone, when the Doctor contrasts the
great and ambitious names of Rome with the humility required in a
Christian pastor. "In short, Dr Smiler, we wish to know," she said
not a week ago, when she had gone up to the parsonage to practise a
Gregorian chant on Christina Smiler's concertina--"we wish to know,
Doctor Smiler, whether religion consists in bare plaster walls and a
cassock?" "Certainly not, my dear Tinderella, but you will observe"--

"Oh, we only want an answer to that question," said the young lady,
interrupting; "for, allow me to tell you, we feel our devotion greatly
excited by the noble solemnity of a service decently conducted with
albe and chasuble, in a building fitted for its high destination by the
richest combination of architecture and the arts."

Tinderella is nineteen years of age, and as decided in her manner as a
field-marshal. "May I ask, my dear, who the 'we' are in whose name you
speak?" inquired the rector.

"Not Mr Ruggles the grocer, nor Chipper the carpenter, but all who
are qualified by their fortune, and position in life, to judge on the
subject," was Tinderella's spirited rejoinder.

"Really," said the Doctor, "you young ladies are very much changed
from what you were. Two years ago, I used to have great difficulty in
keeping you from balls and archeries, and had frequent occasion to
lecture you for inattention in church. What, in the name of wonder, has
come over you all?"

"Do you find fault with us for having given up frivolities, and turned
reverent and attentive during the service?" inquired his questioner
with a sneer.

"Far from it, my dear,--very far from it; but I should like very much
to know what is the cause of the change. I trust, my dear Tinderella,
it isn't connected with the marriage of Lieutenant Polker, with whom I
remember you danced every night last winter."

"Lieutenant Polker," replied Tinderella, "has married a dissenter, or a
person of low church principles, and that is as bad, and he has nothing
whatever to do with our duty to the Holy Catholic Church I assure you,
sir."

"Then it must be that silly, ignorant coxcomb, Charles Fustian, my
own godson, my favourite from his youth--an excellent fellow, but a
conceited ass--I wish he had never gone into the diocese of Vexer."

This is the tender way in which you are spoken of, my dear Charles;
and I feel sure you will appreciate the compliment paid to you by the
Doctor, losing his temper, but retaining his affection.

There was a blush on Tinderella's cheek as she entered into a defence
of "the Reverend Charles Fustian, a priest of our church;" and she
almost curtsied in reverence for your name and office; and I advise
Araminta to keep watch over her friend's proceedings, for I don't think
Tinderella is so deeply attached to the doctrine of celibacy as she
pretends. And I take this opportunity also, my dear Charles, to tell
you that I shall keep watch over YOU; and if I find you casting your
smiles at Tinderella, and holding her by the hand, and recommending her
to enter into the privileges of confession, in the summer-house in her
father's garden--and holding forth all the time on the blessings of a
conventual life and penance, and hair shirts and a cat-o'-nine-tails--I
shall be greatly inclined to recur to the discipline that used to
improve your manners greatly when you were a little boy, and use the
scourge with more effect than when you apply it to your shoulders with
your own hand.

The Doctor has just been here, and as I know you will be rejoiced to
hear the news he gave me, I will transmit it to you at once.

"Buddle," he said to me, "you have perhaps seen how vainly I have tried
to resist the parish, at least the young ladies of the parish; for I
am sorry to say, that, with the exception of yourself and two or three
others of the seniors, the parish has left me to fight the battle
alone."

"My dear Smiler," I replied, "what can we do? Surely, if we lie quiet
on our oars, the fancy for that sort of thing will go off."

"Not at all; as they get older it will get worse. There is some hope
for them when they are very young, but in a few years there is no
chance of escaping a universal passing over to the Pope; and between
ourselves,"--and here the Doctor looked at the door, as if he wished
to bolt it with a twist of his eye--"I am in great anxiety of mind lest
they carry me with them. Yes, my good Buddle, it would not surprise me
if I awoke some morning and found myself a monk."

"How? Haven't you signed the articles and repeated the creed, and the
oath of abjuration, and all that?"

"That is no defence. Those girls go to work so scientifically, carrying
one object first, and then another; and they are so good, and active,
and amiable, and so useful in the parish, and so clever, and defer so
respectfully to my judgment in all things, that I find there is not an
alteration which has taken place in the parish that I did not at first
oppose, and end in a very short time by ordering on my own authority.
Yes, my dear friend, I feel that, if not supported by some person of
stout uncompromising church principles, I shall probably find myself
eating fish on Fridays, and administering castigation to myself in
my old age, and listening to young ladies' confessions, and flogging
Araminta or Tinderella in atonement for their tasting a mutton-chop on
a fast-day."

"It would do them both a great deal of good."

"No doubt of it, my dear Buddle; and if they were five or six years
younger, such things would soon be put out of their heads." And here he
clenched his hand on his riding switch, and looked like the picture of
Doctor Busby. "But, as it is, I think I have stolen a march on them.
Look at that."

So saying, he pointed to an advertisement in the _Record_ newspaper,
which stated that "a curate was wanted for a country parish; he must be
under thirty, an eloquent preacher and reader; and, finally, that no
Tractarian need apply."

"And he's coming, sir; the Reverend Algernon Sidney Mount Huxtable; a
man of good family, tolerable fortune, and highly orthodox principles,
is coming! I expect him next week, and as he is only eight-and-twenty,
and unmarried, I think he will be an excellent assistant in repelling
these attacks on our admirable Establishment."

So, with this piece of information, my dear Charles, I conclude, as I
am anxious to go through the houses in the village, and see the effect
of the announcement on the charming little army which Major M'Turk
irreverently calls St Ursula's dragoons.


LETTER SECOND.

On Monday last, our new curate came; a most gentlemanly-mannered
good-looking young man, with very dark eyes and very white teeth;
and I was pleased to observe, when I dined with him the first day at
the parsonage, that he did not consider these advantages as merely
ornamental, but made excellent use of both. He did yeoman's service
upon the fish and mutton, and cast glances on Miss Christina Smiler
that made her at once give up the opposition she had made to her
father's proposal of keeping a curate, and proved, to his entire
satisfaction, that it was the best arrangement in the world. A pleasant
good-humoured companion, a man of the world, and an unflinching son and
servant of the Church, gaining the rector's confidence by an attack on
Popery, and winning the ladies' affection by a spirited tirade on the
vulgarity of dissent.

"The fact is," said the Doctor, after the ladies had withdrawn, and we
had filled our glasses with the first bumper of port,--"the fact is, my
dear Mount Huxtable, that our parish is in a very curious condition. We
are all devoted members of the Church, and yet we are very suspicious
of each other. The inhabitants, especially the young lady part of them,
have taken such an interest lately in the affairs of the parish, and
are so unanimous in enforcing their own wishes, both on me and the
churchwardens--not to mention my stanch and kind friends Major M'Turk
and Mr Buddle--that we feel as if the revolutionary spirit had extended
to this village, and the regular authorities had been deposed by a
Committee of Public Safety."

"Do they _enforce_ their wishes?" inquired the new curate, with a
frown, and laying great emphasis on the word enforce.

"Well," replied the Rector, a little puzzled, "that's rather a strong
word. Do you think we can call it enforce, Major M'Turk?"

"They say they'll do it, and it's done," was the reply of the military
commander.

"And you, Buddle?"

"No; you can't call it enforce," said I; "for they are the meekest,
sweetest, and most submissive people I ever met with."

"That's right; I'm glad to hear it," said Mount Huxtable. "And do they
really succeed in all the efforts they make?"

"Not a doubt of it," said the Rector, looking rather confused. "The
church is entirely different from what it was a year ago; even the
service, by some means or other, has got into quite a different
order; I find myself walking about in my surplice, and standing up at
doxologies, and sometimes attempting to sing the Jubilate after the
second lesson, though I never had a voice, and it does not seem to be
set to any particular tune. And, in confidence between ourselves, I
think they could make me of any religion they chose."

"They're the fittest missionaries for the Mahommedan faith," said Major
M'Turk; "such Houris may always count on me for a convert."

The Curate sank into silence.

"You're not afraid of such antagonists, Mount Huxtable?" inquired the
Rector.

"I don't think they are at all to be feared as antagonists," he
replied, with a smile, as if assured of the victory.

And when we looked at his handsome face, and the glow of true orthodox
determination that brightened in his eyes, we were all of the same
opinion.

"But we won't let them see the battery we have prepared against them,"
continued the jubilant Rector, "till we are in a position to take the
field. I have applied to the bishop for a license for you for two
years, so that, whatever complaints they make against your proceedings,
nothing can get you removed from the parish; the whole onus of the
fight will be thrown on your shoulders; and all I can say to them,
when they come to me with their grievances, will be, my dear Araminta,
my dear Sophronia, my charming little Anastasia, Mr Mount Huxtable is
in the entire charge of the parish, and from his decision there is no
appeal."

The happiest man in England that night was the Reverend Doctor Smiler
of Great Yawnham, for he had now the assurance of preserving the
orthodoxy of his parish, without the pain of quarrelling with his
parishioners.

"Good night, good night," he said, as M'Turk and I walked away, while
Mount Huxtable got into his phaeton and whisked his greys very showily
down the avenue, "I think that ewe-necked donkey, Charles Fustian,
won't be quite so popular with the Blazers at Hellebore Park, in spite
of Araminta's admiration of his long back and white neckcloth."

"Mount Huxtable will cut him out in every house in the parish," replied
Major M'Turk; and I said,

"I know Charles very well, and like him immensely; he won't yield
without a struggle, and, in fact, I have no doubt he will proceed to
excommunication."

Pardon us all, my dear Charles, for the free-and-easy way we speak of
you. I don't believe three old fellows in England are fonder of you
than we; and no wonder--for haven't we all known you from your cradle,
and traced you through all your career since you were hopelessly the
booby of the dame's school, till you were twice plucked at Oxford, and
proved how absurdly the dons of that university behaved, by obtaining
your degree from Dublin by a special favour. Would a learned body have
treated a very decided fool with special favour? No; and therefore I
think Dr Smiler and M'Turk are sometimes a great deal too strong in
their language; but you must forgive them, for it proceeds from the
fulness of their hearts.

The license arrived next day, and a mighty tea-drinking was held last
night at the parsonage, to enable the Doctor to present his curate to
the parish. The Blazers came in from Hellebore Park, Araminta looking
beautiful in a plain nun-like white gown, with a cross and rosary of
jet falling tastefully over her breast. The Swainloves came from the
Lodge, the spirited Tinderella labouring under two prodigious folios of
Gregorian chants. Sophronia and her grandmamma came up from the vale;
and, in short, the whole rank and beauty of the village assembled.
The manly dignity of that charming district was represented by myself
and Major M'Turk; your father, who came down in his wheel-chair; Dr
Pulser and his son Arthur, who has lately settled down here, with a
brass plate on the surgery door, announcing that he is attorney-at-law.
Arthur, you remember, has a beautiful voice, and he entones the
responses like a nightingale.

We were all assembled before the guest of the evening arrived. For
the thousandth time we admired the garden and lawn, and heard how the
Doctor had altered the house, and levelled the grounds, and thrown out
bow-windows, and made the whole thing the perfect bijou it is. The
fuschias were in full bloom, the grass nicely mown, and the windows
being open, we could sally forth on to the terrace walk, and admire the
pleasure-grounds as we chose. But nobody moved. Christina Smiler sat
at the piano, but did not play; she kept her eyes constantly fixed on
the door,--as indeed did several of the other young ladies; and when at
last wheels were heard rapidly approaching, and a loud knock resounded
through the house, the amount of blushing was immense; the bloom of so
many cheeks would have recalled to an original-minded poet a bed of
roses, and old M'Turk kicked my shins unobserved, and whispered, "We
shall get quit of the female parliament very soon: this is the Cromwell
of the petticoats."

As he felt that he made his appearance, on this occasion, in his
professional character, Mr Mount Huxtable was arrayed in strictly
clerical costume. Your own tie, my dear Charles, could not have been
more accurately starched, nor your coat more episcopally cut. There was
the apostolic succession clearly defined on the buttons; and, between
ourselves, we were enchanted with the fine taste that showed that a
man might be a good stout high churchman without being altogether
an adherent of the Patristics. His introduction was excellently got
over, and the charming warmth with which he shook hands with the young
people, after doing his salutation to us of the preterite generation,
showed that his attention was not confined to the study of the fathers,
but had a pretty considerable leaning to the daughters also.

"So much the better, my boy," said M'Turk, "he'll have them all back to
the good old ways in a trice; we shall have picnics again on Fridays,
and little dances every day in the week." Tea was soon finished, and
Tinderella Swainlove, without being asked by anybody, as far as I could
see, walked majestically to the piano, and laying open a huge book,
gave voice with the greatest impetuosity to a Latin song, which she
afterwards (turning round on the music-stool, and looking up in Mr
Mount Huxtable's face) explained to be a hymn to the Virgin. But the
gentleman did not observe that the explanation was addressed to him,
and continued his conversation with Christina Smiler. In a few minutes
he accompanied her out of the window into the garden, and the other
young ladies caught occasional glimpses of the pair as they crossed
the open spaces between the shrubs. The Doctor rubbed his hands with
delight, and Mrs Smiler could scarcely conceal her gratification. But
these feelings were not entertained by the Swainloves. Tinderella
looked rather disappointed to her mother; and that lady addressed Major
M'Turk in rather a bitter tone of voice, and said it was a pity the
curate was so awkward, and asked how long he had been lame.

"He is by no means lame," replied the Major; "you'll learn that before
long, by the dance he'll show you."

"Does he dance?" inquired Mrs Swainlove, anxiously. "As you're at the
piano, my dear Tinderella, will you play us that charming polka you
used to play last year?"

A polka!--it was the first tha

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