The great feast of fraternity, last spring, was, on de Maistre's principles, the natural harbinger of that fraternal massacre in June; and the ineffectual attempt to be festive over the late inauguration of the constitution, has but one redeeming feature to prevent a corresponding augury of disaster. Its miserable failure makes it possible that the constitution will survive its anniversary. Then there will be a demonstration, at any rate, and then the thing will be superannuated. Since 1790, there has been no end to such glorifications; each chased and huzza'd, in turn, by a nation of full-grown children, and all hollow and transient as bubbles. Perpetual beginnings, every one warranted to beno failure this time, and each going out in a stench. What continualChamps-de-MarsandChamps-de-Mai! what wavings of new flags, and scattering of fresh flowers! and all ending in confessed failure, and beginning the same thing over again! "Nothing great has great beginnings"—says Mentor again. "History shows no exception to this rule.Crescit occulto velut arbor ævo,—this is the immortal device of every great institution."
Legitimacy never makes such mistakes, except when permitted byGod, to accomplish its own temporary abasement. It needs not to support itself by tricks and shams. It has a creative power which dignifies everything it touches; which often turns its own occasions into festivals, but makes no festivals on purpose to dignify itself. When Henry V. is crowned at Rheims, or at Notre-Dame, he will not send over the Alps forPio Nono, nor consultSavansto learn how Cæsar should be attired that day. That youth may safely dispense with all superfluous pageantry, for he is notnew Charlemagne, butold Charlemagne. The blood of the Carlovingians has come down to him from Isabella of Hainault, through St Louis and Henry IV. Chateaubriand should not have forgotten this, when (speaking of this prince's unfortunate father, the Duke de Berry) he enthusiastically sketched a thousand years of Capetian glory, and cried—"He bien! la revolution a livré tout cela au couteau de Louvel." Another revolution has thus far relegated the same substantial dignity to exile and obscurity, as if France could afford to lose its past, and begin again, as an infant of days. But besides the evident tendency of things to reaction, there is something about the legitimate king of France which looks like destiny. He was announced to the kingdom by the dying lips of his murdered sire, while yet unborn, as if the fate of empire depended on his birth.Ménagez-vous, pour l'enfant que vous portez dans votre sein," said the unhappy man to his duchess, and the group of bystanders was startled! It was the first that France heard of Henry the Fifth, and it seemed to inspire Chateaubriand with the spirit of prophecy, and he eloquently remarks upon it as adernière espérance. "The dying prince," he says, "seemed to bear with him a whole monarchy, and at the same moment to announce another. OhGod! and is our salvation to spring out of our ruin? Has the cruel death of a son of France been ordained in anger, or in mercy? is ita final restoration of the legitimate throne, or the downfall of the empire of Clovis?" This grand question now hangs in suspense: but, as I said, Chateaubriand must have taken courage before he died, and inwardly answered it favourably. That great writer seems to have felt beforehand,for his countrymen, the loyalty to which they will probably return. To the prince he stood as a sort of sponsor for the future. When the royal babe was baptised, he presented water from the Jordan, in which the last hope of legitimacy received the name ofDieu-donné: when Charles the Tenth was dethroned, he stood up for the young king, and consented to fall with his exclusion; and the last years of France's greatest genius were a consistent confessorship for that legitimacy with which he believed the prosperity of his country indissolubly bound. Now, I should like to ask a French republican—if I could find a sane one,—what would you wish to do with Henry of Bordeaux? Would you wish this heir of your old histories to renounce his birth-right, declare legitimacy an imposition, and undertake to settle down in Paris as one of the people? Why not, if you are all republicans, and see no more in a prince than in agamin? Why should not this Henry Capet throw up his cap for the constitution, and stick up a tradesman's sign in the Place de la Revolution, as "Henry Capet,parfumeur?" Why not let him hire a shop in the lower stories of the Palais Royal and teach the Parisians better manners than to cut off his head, by devoting himself to shaving their beards? Everybody knows the reason why not; and that reason shows the reality of legitimacy. Night and day such a shop would be mobbed by friends and foes alike. Go where he might, theparfumeurwould be pointed at by fingers, and aimed at bylorgnettes, and bored to death by a rabble of starers, who would insist upon it that he was the hereditary lord of France. Mankind cannot free themselves from such impressions, and, what is more conclusive, princes cannot free themselves from the impressions of mankind, or undertake to live like other men, as if history and genealogy were not facts. For weal or for woe, they are as unchangeable as the leopard with his spots. Let Henry Capet come to America, and try to be a republican with us. Our very wild-cats would assert their inalienable right to "look at a king," and he would certainly be torn to pieces by good-natured curiosity.
It is curious to see the natural instinct amusing itself, for the present, with such a merenominis umbraas Louis Napoleon. In some way or other the hereditaryprestigemust be created; nothing less is satisfactory, and the "imperial fetishism" will answer very well till something more substantial is found necessary. Richard Cromwell was necessary to Charles II., and so is Louis Napoleon to Henry V. Napoleon still seems capable of giving France a dynasty; this possibility will be soon extinguished by the incapability of his representative. Louis will reign long enough to exhibit that recompense to Josephine, in the person of her grandson, which heaven delights to allot to a repudiated wife; and then, for his own sake, he will be calledcoquinandpoltron. Napoleon will take his historical position as an individual, having no remaining hold on France; and the imperial fetishism will be ignominiously extinguished. Richard Cromwell made a very decent old English gentleman, and Louis Napoleon may perhaps end his days as respectably, in some out-of-the-way corner of Corsica. Let me again quote the French Mentor. He says, "There never has existed a royal family to whom a plebeian origin could be assigned. Men may say, if Richard Cromwell had possessed the genius of his father, he would have fixed the protectorate in his family; which is precisely the same thing as to say—if this family had not ceased to reign, it would reign still." Here is the formula that will suit the case of Louis Napoleon; but future historians will moralise upon the manner in which Napoleon himself worked out his own destruction. For the sake of a dynasty, he puts away poor Josephine. The King of Rome is born to him, but his throne is taken. The royal youth perishes in early manhood, and men find Napoleon's only representative in the issue of the repudiated wife. Her grandson comes to power, and holds it long enough to make men say—how much better it might have been with Napoleon had he kept his faith to Josephine, and contentedly taken as his heir the child in whom Providence has revealed at last his only chance of continuing his family on a throne! It makes one thing of Scripture, "Yet ye say wherefore?because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; ... therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth, for the Lord, theGodof Israel, saith that he hateth putting away."
A traveller from the south of France says that he saw everywhere the portrait of Henry V. Besides the mysterious hold which legitimacy keeps upon the vulgar and the polite alike, there are associations with it which operate on all classes of men. Tradesmen and manufacturers are for legitimacy, because they love peace, and want to make money. Theroturierssooner or later learn the misery of mobs, and the love of change makes them willing to welcome home the king, especially as they mistake their own hearts, and flatter themselves that their sudden loyalty is proof of remaining virtue. Then the profligate and abandoned, they want a monarchy, in hopes of another riot in the palace. It may be doubted whether theblousescan be permanently contented without a king to curse. The national anthem cannot be sung with any spirit, unless there be a monarch who can be imagined to hear all its imprecations against tyrants: in fact, the king must come back, if only to make sense of the Marseilles Hymn.
Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,De traîtres, de rois conjurés?Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,Ces fers, dès long-tems préparés?
Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,De traîtres, de rois conjurés?Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,Ces fers, dès long-tems préparés?
What imaginable sense is there in singing these red-hot verses at a feast of fraternity, and in honour of the full possession of absolute liberty? Then, where is the sport of clubs, and the excitement of conspiracies, if there's no king to execrate within locked doors? Is Paris to have no more of those nice littleémeutes? What's to be done with the genius that delights in infernal machines? Who's to be fired at in a glass coach? Everybody knows that Cavaignacs and Lamartines are small game for such sport. Your true assassin must have, at least, a duke of the blood. These are considerations which must have their weight in deciding upon probabilities; though, for one, I am not sure but France is doomed, by retributive justice, to be thus the Tantalus of nations, steeped to the neck in liberty, but forbidden to drink, with kings hanging over them to provoke the eye, and yet escaping the hand.
In 1796 de Maistre published hisConsidérations sur la France. They deserve to be reproduced for the present age. Nothing can surpass the cool contempt of the philosophicalréactionnaire, or the confidence with which, from his knowledge of the past, he pronounces oracles for the future. Do you ask how Henry V. is to recover his rights? In ten thousand imaginable ways. See what Cavaignac might have done last July, had the time been ripe for another Monk! There's but one way to keep legitimacy out; it comes in as water enters a leaky ship, oozing through seams, and gushing through cracks, where nobody dreamed of such a thing. As long as even a tolerable pretender survives, a popular government must be kept in perpetual alarm. But you shall hear the Count, my Basil! Let me give you a free translation.
"In speculating about counter-revolutions, we often fall into the mistake of taking it for granted that such reactions can only be the result of popular deliberation.The people won't allow it, it is said;they will never consent; it is against the popular feeling. Ah! is it possible? The people just go for nothing in such affairs; at most they are a passive instrument. Four or five persons may give France a king. It shall be announced to the provinces that the king is restored: up go their hats, andvive le roi! Even in Paris, the inhabitants, save a score or so, shall know nothing of it till they wake up some morning and learn that they have a king. 'Est-il possible?' will be the cry: 'how very singular! What street will he pass through? Let's engage a window in good time, there'll be such a horrid crowd!' I tell you the people will have nothing more to do with re-establishing the monarchy, than they have had in establishing the revolutionary government!... At the first blush one would say, undoubtedly, that the previous consent of the French is necessary to the restoration; but nothing is more absurd. Come, we'll crop theory, and imagine certain facts.
"A courier passes through Bordeaux,Nantes, Lyons, and soen route, telling everybody that the king is proclaimed at Paris; that a certain party has seized the reins, and has declared that it holds the government only in the king's name, having despatched an express for his majesty, who is expected every minute, and that every one mounts the white cockade. Rumour catches up the story, and adds a thousand imposing details. What next? To give the republic the fairest chance, let us suppose it to have the favour of a majority, and to be defended by republican troops. At first these troops shall bluster very loudly; but dinner-time will come; the fellows must eat, and away goes their fidelity to a cause that no longer promises rations, to say nothing of pay. Then your discontented captains and lieutenants, knowing that they have nothing to lose, begin to consider how easily they can make something of themselves, by being the first to set upVive-le-roi! Each one begins to draw his own portrait, most bewitchingly coloured; looking down in scorn on the republican officers who so lately knocked him about with contempt; his breast blazing with decorations, and his name displayed as that of an officer of His Most Christian Majesty! Ideas so single and natural will work in the brains of such a class of persons: they all think them over; every one knows what his neighbour thinks, and they all eye one another suspiciously. Fear and distrust follow first, and then jealousy and coolness. The common soldier, no longer inspired by his commander, is still more discouraged; and, as if by witchcraft, the bonds of discipline all at once receive an incomprehensible blow, and are instantly dissolved. One begins to hope for the speedy arrival of his majesty's paymaster; another takes the favourable opportunity to desert and see his wife. There's no head, no tail, and no more any such thing as trying to hold together.
"The affair takes another turn with the populace. They push about hither and thither, knocking one another out of breath, and asking all sorts of questions; no one knows what he wants; hours are wasted in hesitation, and every minute does the business. Daring is everywhere confronted by caution; the old man lacks decision, the lad spoils all by indiscretion; and the case stands thus,—one may get into trouble by resisting, but he that keeps quiet may be rewarded, and will certainly get off without damage. As for making a demonstration—where is the means? Who are the leaders? Whom can ye trust? There's no danger in keeping still; the least motion may get one into trouble. Next day comes news—such a town has opened its gates. Another inducement to hold back! Soon this news turns out to be a lie; but it has been believed long enough to determine two other towns, who, supposing that they only follow such example, present themselves at the gates of the first town to offer their submission. This town had never dreamed of such a thing; but, seeing such an example, resolves to fall in with it. Soon it flies about that Monsieur the mayor has presented to his majesty the keys of his good city ofQuelquechose, and was the first officer who had the honour to receive him within a garrison of his kingdom. His Majesty—of course—made him a marshal of France on the spot. Oh! enviable brevet! an immortal name, and a scutcheon everlastingly blooming withfleurs-de-lis! The royalist tide fills up every moment, and soon carries all before it.Vive-le-roi!shouts out long-smothered loyalty, overwhelmed with transports:Vive-le-roi!chokes out hypocritical democracy, frantic with terror. No matter! there's but one cry; and his Majesty is crowned, andhas all the royal makings of a king. This is the way counter-revolutions come about. God having reserved to himself the formation of sovereignties, lets us learn the fact, from observing that He never commits to the multitude the choice of its masters. He only employs them, in those grand movements which decide the fate of empires, as passive instruments. Never do they get what they want: they always take; they never choose. There is, if one may so speak, anartificeof Providence, by which the means which a people take to gain a certain object, are precisely those which Providence employs to put it from them. Thus, thinking to abase the aristocracy by hurrahing for Cæsar, the Romans got themselves masters. It is just so with all popularinsurrections. In the French revolution the people have been perpetually handcuffed, outraged, betrayed, and torn to pieces by factions; and factions themselves, at the mercy of each other, have only risen to take their turn in being dashed to atoms. To know in what the revolution will probably end, find first in what points all the revolutionary factions are agreed. Do they unite in hating Christianity and monarchy? Very well! The end will be, that both will be the more firmly established in the earth."
Cool, certainly; is it not, my Basil? The legitimists are the only Frenchmen who can keep cool, and bide their time. Chateaubriand has observed, in the same spirit, that there is a hidden power which often makes war with powers that are visible, and that a secret government was always following close upon the heels of the public governments that succeeded each other between the murder of Louis XVI. and the restoration of the Bourbons. This hidden power he calls the eternal reason of things; the justice ofGod, which interferes in human affairs just in proportion as men endeavour to banish and drive it from them. It is evident that the whole force of de Maistre's prophecy was owing to his religious confidence in this divine interference. He wrote in 1796. That year the career of Napoleon began at Montenotte; and, for eighteen years succeeding, every day seemed to make it less and less probable that his predictions could be verified. The Bourbon star was lost in the sun of Austerlitz. The Republic itself was forgotten; the Pope inaugurated the Empire; Austria gave him a princess, to be the mould of a dynasty, and the source of a new legitimacy. France was peopled with a generation that never knew the Bourbons, and which was dazzled with the genius of Napoleon, and the splendour of his imperial government. But the time came for thispuissance occulte, cette justice du ciel! When the Allies entered Paris in 1814, it was suggested to Napoleon that the Bourbons would be restored; and, with all his sagacity, he made the very mistake which de Maistre had foreshown, and said, in almost his very words—"Never! nine-tenths of the people are irreconcilably against it!" One can almost hear what might have been the Count's reply—"Quelle pitié! le peuple n'est pour rien dans les revolutions. Quatre ou cinq personnes, peut-être, donneront un roi à la France." What could Talleyrand tell about that? The facts were, that in four days the Bourbons were all the rage! The Place Vendôme could hardly hold the mob that raved about Napoleon's statue; and, with ropes and pulleys, they were straining every sinew to drag it to the ground, when it was taken under the protection of Alexander![14]What next? In terror for his very life, this Napoleon flies to Frejus, now sneaking out of a back-window, and now riding post, as a common courier, actually saving himself by wearing the white cockade over his raging breast, and all the time cursing his dear French to Tartarus! A British vessel gives him his only asylum, and the salute he receives from a generous enemy is all that reminds him what he once had been in France. Meantime these detested Bourbons are welcomed home again, with De Maistre's own varieties ofVive-le-roi! The Duke d'Angouleme, advancing to the capital, sees the silver lilies dancing above the spires of Bordeaux: the Count d'Artois hails the same tokens at Nancy: not captains and lieutenants, but generals and marshals, rush to receive His Most Christian Majesty; and the successor of the butchered Louis XVI. comes to his palace, after an exile of twenty years, with the title of Louis the Desired! Nor are subsequent events anything more than the swinging of a pendulum, which must eventually subside into a plummet. If the first disaster of Napoleon, in the fulness of his strength, could make France welcome her legitimacy in 1814, why should not the imbecility of the mere shadow of his name produce a stronger revulsion before this century gains its meridian? There is a residuary fulfilment of de Maistre's augury, which remains to the Bourbons, when all of Napoleon that survives has found its ignominiousextinction. Then will the ripe fruit fall into the lap of one who, if he is wise, will make the French forget his kindred with the fourteenth and fifteenth Louises, and remember only that Henry of Bordeaux has before him the example of Henry of Navarre.
There is, indeed, another conceivable end.C'est l'arrêt que le ciel prononce enfin contre les peuples sans jugement, et rebelles à l'expérience.[15]If France does not soon come back to reason, we shall be forced to think her given up ofGod, to become such a country as Germany, or perhaps as miserable as Spain. But we must not be too hasty in coming to conclusions so deplorable. Let the republic have its day. It will work its own cure; for the chastisement of France must be the curse of ancient Judah. "The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and everyone by his neighbour; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." For the mob of Paris, who got drunk with riot, and must grow sober with headache; for the blousemen and the boys who have pulled a house upon their head, and now maul each other in painful efforts to get from under the ruins; and for the miserablephilosopheswho see, in the charming state of their country, the fruit of their own atheistic theories; for all these it is but retribution. They needed government; they resolved on license:Godhas sent them despotism in its worst form. One pities Paris, but feels that it is just. My emotions are very different when I think of what were once "the pleasant villages of France." Miserablecampagnards! There are thousands of them, besides the poor souls starving in provincial towns, who curse the republic in their hearts; and, from Normandy to Provence and Languedoc, there are millions of such Frenchmen, who care nothing for dynasties, or fraternities, or democracy, but only pray the good Lord to give peace in their time, that they may sit under their own vine, and earn and eat their daily bread. For them—mayGodpity them!—what a life Dame Paris leads them! If, with the simplicity of rustics, they were for a moment disposed to be merry last February—when they heard that thereafter loaves and fishes were to fling themselves upon every table, for the mere pleasure of being devoured—how bitterly the simpletons are undeceived! Their present notions of fraternity and equality they get from hunger and from rags. It is not now in France as in the days of Henry IV., when every peasant had a pullet in the pot for his Sunday dinner. That was despotism. It is liberty now—liberty to starve. There is no more oppression, for the very looms refuse to work, and water-wheels stand still; and the vines go gadding and unpruned, and the grape disdains to be trampled in the wine-vat. Yes—and the oldpaysanand his sprightly dame, who used to drive dull care away in the sunshine—she, with her shaking foot and head, and he with his fiddle and his bow, they have liberty to the full; for their seven sons, who were earning food for them in the sweat of their brow, have come home to the old cabin, ragged and unpaid; and they lounge about in hungry idleness, longing for war, but only because war would provide them with a biscuit or a bullet. What care they for glory, or for constitutions? They ask for bread, and their teeth are ground with gravel-stones. Let England look and learn. If she has troubles, let her see how easily troubles may be invested at compound interest, with the certainty of dividends for years to come. Is hard thrift in a kingdom so bad as starvation in a democracy? And whether is it better to wear out honestly, in this work-day world, as good and quiet subjects; or to be thrust out of it, kicking and cursing, behind a barricade of cabs and paving-stones, in the name of equality? These are the common-sense questions, that every English labourer should be made to feel and answer.
It provokes me, Basil, that my letter may be superannuated while it is travelling in the steamer! The changes of democracy are more frequent than the revolutions of a paddle-wheel. Adieu. Yours,
Ernest.
Dalmatia and Montenegro.By SirJ. Gardner Wilkinson. London: Murray.
Dalmatia and Montenegro.By SirJ. Gardner Wilkinson. London: Murray.
It is really astonishing that our want of information respecting Dalmatia, and its neighbourhood, has not long ago been supplied. It is by no means easy, now-a-days, to hit upon a line of country that may afford subject-matter for acceptable illustration. Travellers are so numerous, and authorship is so generally affected, that the best part of Europe has been described over and over again. You may get from Mr Murray a handbook for almost any place you will. Manners and customs, roads, inns, things to be suffered, and notabilities to be visited—in short, all the probable contingencies of travel between this and the Vistula, are already noted and set down. We take it upon ourselves to say, that it is one of the most difficult things in life to realise the sense of desolation and unwontedness that are poetic characteristics of the traveller. How can a man feel himself strange to any place where he is so thoroughly up to usages that nolocandièrecan cheat him to the amount of azwanziger? And, thanks to the books written, it is a man's own fault if he wend almost anywhither except thus μύστης γενόμενος.
In truth, European travelling is pretty nearly reduced to the work of verification. Events are according to prescription; and there remains very little room for the play of an exploring spirit. The grand thing to be explored is a matter pysychological rather than material; it is to prove experimentally what are the emotions that a generous mind experiences, when vividly acted upon by association with the world of past existences. Beyond doubt, this is the highest range of intellectual enjoyment; and to its province may be referred much that at first sight would appear to be heterogeneous, as, for instance, delights purely scientific. But at any rate, we must all agree that the main privilege of a traveller is, that he is enabled to test the force of this power of association. It is an enjoyment to be known only by experiment. No power of description can give a man to understand what is the sensation of gazing on the Acropolis, or of standing within Ἁγία Σοφία. It is as another sense, called into existence by the occasion of exercise.
To any but the uncommonly well read, there has hitherto been meagre entertainment in travelling among the Slavonian borderers on the Adriatic. It has been impossible to realise on their subject these high pleasures of association, because so little has been known of the facts of their history; rather should we perhaps say, that, of what has been known, so little has been generally accessible. But we are happy to find that the right sort o' "chiel has been amang them, takin' notes." The way is now open; and henceforth it will be easy to follow with profit. The book which Sir Gardner Wilkinson has given us seems to be exactly the thing which was wanted; and certainly the use of it will enable a man to travel in Dalmatia as a rational creature should. No mere dotter down of events could have passed through the course of this country without producing a document of considerable value. The widespread family of which its inhabitants are a branch have been intimately mixed up with the history of the Empire and of Christendom; and now again we behold them playing a conspicuous part in European politics. Modern Panslavism deepens the interest to be felt in this family, and quickens the anxiety to know what they are doing and thinking now, as well as what they have done in days of old. In the present volumes we have, besides the memoranda of things existing, a compendium of Slavonian history and antiquities, and an exhibition of the degree in which the race have been mixed up with European history. Besides this, an account is given of their more domestic traditions, of which monuments survive; and it must be a man's own fault if, having this book with him, he miss extracting the utmost of profit from a visit to the country.
In one way, we can surely prophesy that this book will prove the means of bringing to us increase of lore from out of that land of which it treats.It will naturally be taken on board every yacht that, when next summer shall open skies and seas, may find its way into the Mediterranean. Among these birds of passage, it can scarcely be but that some one will shape its course for this land of adventure, thus, as it were, newly laid open. It is a little, a very little out of the direct track, in which these summer craft are apt to be found, plentiful as butterflies. They may rest assured that in no place, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pharos of Alexandria, can they hope to find such provision of entertainment. The stories they may thence bring will really be worth something—a value much higher than we can vote ascribable to much that we hear of the well-frequented shores of the French lake.
We prophesy, also, that an inspiriting effect will be produced on men better qualified even than the yachtsmen for the work of travel—we mean on the gallant officers who garrison the island of Corfu. They occupy a station so exactly calculated to facilitate excursions in the desirable direction, that it will be too bad if some of them do not start this very next spring. We do not recommend the Adriatic in winter time, and so give them a few months' grace, just to keep clear of the Bora. Let them, as soon as possible after the equinox, avail themselves of one of those gaps which will be occurring in the best-regulated garrison life. Times will come round when duty makes no exaction, and when the indigenous resources of the island afford no amusement. Should such occasion have place out of the shooting months—or when, haply, some row with the Albanians has placed Butrinto under interdict—woful are the straits to which our ardent young fellow-countrymen are reduced. A ride to the Garoona pass, or a lounge into Carabots; or, to come to the worst, an hour or two'sflanéround old Schulenberg's statue, are well in their way, but cannot please for ever. All these things considered, it is, we say, but likely that we shall reap some substantial benefit from the leisure of our military friends, so soon as their literary researches shall have carried them into the enjoyment of this book. Dalmatia is almost before their very eyes. If hitherto they have not drifted thither, under the combined influences of a long leave and an uncertain purpose, it is because they have not been in a condition to prosecute researches. We must not blame them for their past neglect, any more than we blame the idleness of him who lacks the implements of work. Give a man tools, and then, if he work not,monstrare digito. Henceforth they must be regarded as thoroughly equipped, and without excuse. Let us hope that some two or three may be roused to action on the very next opportunity—that is to say, on the very next occasion of leave. Let us hope that, instead of sloping away to Paxo, or Santa Maura, they may shape their course through the North Channel, and begin, if they please, by exploring the Bocca di Cattaro.
Sir Gardner speaks of difficulties and vexatious delays interposed between the traveller and his purpose by the Austrian authorities. These scrutineers of passports seem to grow worse; and with them bad has long been the best. We used to think that the palm of pettifogging was fairly due to the officials of his Hellenic majesty. It was bad enough, we always thought, to be kept waiting and watching for a license to move from the Piræus to Lutraki, by steam; but we confess that Sir Gardner makes out a case, or rather several cases, that beat our experience hollow. We should like to commit the passport system to the verdict to be pronounced by common-sense after perusal of the two or three pages he has written on this subject. But common-sense must be far from us, or the mob would not be raving for liberty while still tolerant of passports.
There is another point in respect of which a change for the worse appears to have taken place, and that is in the important point ofbienveillancetowards English travellers. We learn that, at present, Austrian officers are shy of English companionship; and that it is even enjoined on them authoritatively that they avoid intimacy with stragglers from Corfu. The reason assignable is found in the late sad and absurd conspiracy hatched inthat island—a conspiracy which would have been utterly ridiculous, had it not in the event proved so melancholy. It will freely be admitted that the English would deserve to be sent, as they are, to Coventry, were it fact that the insane project of the young Bandieras had found English partisans, and that such partisanship had been winked at by the authorities. But the real state of the case is exactly contrary to this supposition. Humanity must needs have mourned over the cutting off of the young men, and the sorrow of their father, the gallant old admiral. But common-sense must have condemned the undertaking as utterly absurd and mischievous. It is a pity that any misunderstanding should be permitted to qualify the good feeling towards us, for which the Austrians have been remarkable. This good feeling has been observable eminently among their naval officers, who have got up a strong fellowship with us, ever since they were associated with our fleet in the operations on the coast of Syria. That particular service has done much towards the exalting of them in their own estimation; and, of course, the increase of friendship for us has been in the direct proportion of the lift given to them. The Austrianmilitaires, also, used to be a very good set of fellows, and only too happy to be civil to an Englishman. At their dull stations an arrival is an event, and any considerable accession of visitors occasions quite a jubilee. These gentlemen, however, cannot have among them much of the spirit of enterprise, or they would take more trouble than they do to learn something of the condition of their neighbours. They will complain freely of the dulness of the place of their location, but at the same time will evince little interest in the condition of the world beyond their immediate ken. Many of them who live almost within hail of the Montenegrini, have never been at the trouble of ascending the mountains. Nothing seems to astonish them more than the erratic disposition which leads men in quest of adventure; they cannot conceive such an idea as that of volunteering for a cruise. Yachts puzzle them: the owners must be sailors. Of any military officers who may chance to visit them in yachts, they cannot conceive otherwise than that they belong to the marine. Nevertheless they are, or used to be, kind and hospitable; and would treat you well, although they could not quite make you out.
That this country is a neglected portion of the Austrian empire is very evident. The officials sigh under the very endearments of office. Thesanitàman, who comes off to greet your arrival, will tell you how insufferably dull it is living in the Bocca,—and how he longs to be removed anywhither. Place, people, climate, all will be condemned. Yet, to a stranger, many of the localities seem exquisitely beautiful. The same cause seems to mar enjoyment here that spoils the beauty of our own Norfolk Island. The Austrian residents regard themselves as being in a state of banishment, and take up their abode only by constraint: the constraint, that is to say, of mammon. By the government, its possessions in this quarter have been neglected in a manner most impolitic. The value of this strip of coast to an empire almost entirely inland, yet wishing to foster trade, and to possess a navy, is obvious. Yet even the plainest use of it they seem, till lately, to have missed. Promiscuous conscriptions were the order of the day, and men born sailors were enrolled in the levies for the army. Of course they were miserable and discontented, and the public service suffered by the use of these unfit instruments. Recently it seems that a change has been made in this respect, and we doubt not that the navy has consequently been greatly improved. But many glaring instances of neglect in the administration of the affairs of the country continue to astonish beholders, and to prove that the paternal government is not awake to its own interests.
But of all objections to be made to the wisdom of the government, the strongest may be grounded on the condition of the agricultural population in various parts of Dalmatia. Nothing is done to improve their knowledge of the primary art of civilisation. Their implements of husbandry are described as being on a par withthose used by the unenlightened inhabitants of Asia Minor. The waggons to be encountered in the neighbourhood of Knin are referable to the same date in the progress of invention, as are the conveniences in vogue in the plains about Mount Ida. The mode of tillage is like that followed in the remote provinces of Turkey; the ploughs of the rustic population are often inferior to those to be seen in the neighbouring Turkish provinces. Lastly—most incredible of all!—we learn that there is not to be found in the whole district of the Narenta such a thing as a mill, wherein to grind their corn. Will it be believed that the rustics have to send all the corn they grow into the neighbouring province of Herzegovina to be ground? The inconvenience of such an arrangement may easily be conceived. Their best of the bargain—i. e.the being obliged to seek from across the frontier all the flour they want—is bad enough, and must be sufficiently expensive; but their predicament is apt to be much worse than this. In that part of the world, people are subject to stoppages of intercommunication. The plague may break out in the Turkish province, and thus a strict quarantine be established, to the interdiction even of provisions that generally pass unsuspected; or the country may be flooded, and the ways impassable. What are the poor people to do then for flour? Why, the only thing they can do is, to send their corn to their nearest neighbours possessed of mills—that is to say, to Salona, or to Imoschi. As these places are distant, the one about thirty-five miles, and the other about seventy miles, we may fancy how serious must be the pressure of this necessity. The ordinary expense of grinding their corn is stated to be about 13 per cent. What it must be when the seventy miles' carriage of their produce is an item in the calculation, we are left to conjecture. Now these poor folks are not to be blamed—they have no funds to enable them to build mills; but that they are left to themselves in this inability is a reproach to the government under which they live. This inconvenience so intimately affects their social wellbeing, that we cannot put faith in the benevolence of the rulers who allow them to remain so destitute.
Despite, however, of the disadvantages under which the people of Dalmatia labour, it will be seen that pictures chiefly pleasurable are to be met by him who shall travel amongst them. Their honest nature seems to comprise within itself some compensating principle, which makes amends for the damage of circumstances. The Morlacci, especially, seem to be a simple, hardy set, of whom one cannot read without pleasure. These are the rustic inhabitants of the agricultural districts, who eschew the great towns. They made their entry into the roll of the peasantry of Dalmatia at a comparatively late date. The first notice of them, we are told, is about the middle of the fourteenth century. After that time they began to retire with their families from Bosnia, as the Turks made advances into the country. They are of the same Slavonic family as the Croatians; though their hardy manner of life, and the purity of the air in which they have dwelt, on the mountains, have co-operated to confer on them superiority of personal appearance, and of physical condition. On a general estimate of the people of the land, and of their mode of receiving strangers, we are disposed to rank highly their claims to the title of hospitable and honest.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson certainly travelled amongst them most effectually. North, south, east, and west, he intersected the country. One part of his travels possesses especial interest, because, so far as we know, no denizen of civilised Christendom has ever before been so completely over the ground. We refer to his expedition into, and through the territory of the Montenegrini. Others—some few only, but still some others—have been far enough to get a peep at these wild children of the mountains; and more than once of late years, Maga has given notices concerning them:[16]but only scanty knowledge of their domestic condition has been attainable.Sir Gardner went right through their country to the Turkish border, and tarried amongst them long enough to form pretty accurate notions of their state. . In the account of our author's first journey, no serious stop is made till we come alongside of the island of Veglia: apropos to the passage by which, we have given to us, at some length, an interesting extract from the report of a Venetian commissioner sent to the island, in 1481, to inquire into its state. Of this document we will say no more than that it is exceedingly curious, and will well reward the pains of reading. A passing notice is given to Segna, situated on the mainland, near Veglia, for the memory's sake of those desperate villains the Uscocs, to whom it belonged of old. A good deal of their history is given in the last chapter of the second volume, which serves as a documentary appendix to the work. Everything necessary to beget interest in the islands scattered hereaway is told; but we pass them by, and are brought to Zara. What of antiquities is here discoverable is rooted out for our benefit, but not much remains. The most interesting relic in the place, to our mind, is the inscription recording the victory of Lepanto. As Zara is the capital of Dalmatia, occasion is taken, while speaking of the city, to give some account of the government of the province, and of the general condition of the people.
An incident mentioned by Sir Gardner displays, in a painful light, the kind of feeling entertained by the Austrian government towards these its subjects, and permitted by its officials to find expression before the natives. We cannot take it as a case of isolated insolence: because men in responsible situations, especially where the social system comprises an indefinite supply of spies, do not ostentatiously commit themselves, unless they have a foregone conviction, that what they say is according to the authorised tone. Men under inspection of the higher powers do not put themselves out of their way to make a display of bitterness, unless they think thereby to conciliate the good-will of their superiors. This is the incident in question: On a certain occasion, the conversation happened to turn on the subject of a then recent disturbance in a Dalmatian town. The soldiery and the people had quarrelled, and in theémeutetwo of the soldiers had been killed. On these data forth spake a Jack in office. He knew not, nor did he care to know, how many of the peasants had fallen, nor does he appear to have entered at all curiously into the question of thecasus belli. He simply recommended, as the disturbance had taken place, and as the actual perpetrators of the violence were not forthcoming, that the whole population of the town should be "decimated and shot." "The butchery of any number of Dalmatians," says our author, "was thought a fit way of remedying the incapacity of the police." One would hardly imagine that this counsel could have been met by the applauses of persons holding official situations; but so, we are assured, it was in fact received. This manifestation of feeling is a sort of thing which, when emanating from a group of merely private individuals, may be disregarded. Idle people will talk, and their hard words will break no bones. But the hard words of the ministers of government do break bones; and such words must be accepted as serious indications of subsistent evil. Such receipts for keeping people in peace and quietness are consistent enough with the genius of their neighbours the Turks. Retrenchment of heads, and of causes of complaint, are to their apprehension one and the same thing—πολλων ὀνομάτων, μορφὴ μία. We know this, and expect it. It is not so very long ago since the Capitan Pasha gave the word to heave the officer of the watch overboard, because his ship missed stays in going about in the Black Sea. But the Austrians are civilised and Christian; we expect better things of them, and can but mourn over their misapprehension of the true principles of polity. The Englishman who stood by rebuked the promoters of these atrocious sentiments, and for this act of championship he was subsequently thanked by the Dalmatians who were present. They could not have ventured to undertake their own defence, but must have listened in silence to this outrageous language.Our author doubts not that this exhibition of simple humanity on his part, had the effect of causing him to be forthwith placed under the surveillance of the police; and that such a consequence should be so very likely to follow the honest expression of a common-sense opinion in society is a fact that shows clearly enough howunsoundthat state of things must be. Assuredly one of the best effects of intercourse with civilised nations is, that we thereby become enabled to institute a comparison between their social condition and our own. Even those unhappy Chartists, who lately have acquired the habit of addressing one another as "brother slaves," would learn to value British freedom, if they knew something of the social condition of their European brethren: they would see some difference between the security of their own hours of relaxation, and the degree in which a man's freedom in Austria is invaded by the espionage of the police.
From Zara the course of the narrative takes us to Sebenico, a town situated on the inner side of the lake or bay into which the waters of the Kerka debouch. It is one of the coaling stations of the steamer; and, when the time of arrival will allow such concession, the passengers are permitted to take a trip in a four-oared boat, to visit the falls of the Kerka. Here the costume of the women is noticed as being singularly graceful. In coasting along from Sebenico to Spalato, the headland of la Planca is remarkable. Near it is a little church which is famous in local chronicle for having once upon a time served as a trap, wherein an ass caught a wolf. How this marvellous feat was accomplished, we will not just now stop to tell, but must refer the curious to the book itself. This point is also remarkable, because here begins abruptly a change in the climate. Some plants unknown to the northward begin to appear; and henceforward, to one proceeding southward, the dreaded Scirocco will be a more frequent infliction. To the southward of la Planca, this objectionable wind is constantly blowing; and at Spalato, we are told, it assumes for its allowance 100 days out of the 365. Apropos to the Scirocco, we have an episode onanemology, and are taught how the old Greeks and Romans used to box the compass—at least how they would have done so, had they had compasses to box. In the distance, to the south of the promontory of la Planca, is the island of Lissa, famous in modern history for Sir William Hoste's action in 1811. "Such an action," says James, "stands unrivalled in the annals of the naval history of Great Britain, or that of any other country, from the great disproportion in numerical force, as well as the beauty and address of its manœuvres; it stands surpassed by none in the spirit and enterprise with which it was encountered, and carried through to a successful issue." There is not much risk in making this assertion, when we consider that on that occasion the French squadron consisted of four forty-gun frigates, two of a smaller class, a sixteen-gun corvette, a ten-gun schooner, one six-gun xebec, and two gunboats; and that the English squadron was of three frigates, and one twenty-two gunship. Lissa was also famous in the time of the Romans, being then called Issa. We have a notice of its history, and then pass on to Bua, and so to Spalato.
Concerning Spalato details are given, as might be expected, at some length. Much is told us of its past and present condition; in fact, there is presented to us a very sufficient assemblage ofindiciaconcerning it. We recommend any one who wishes to enjoy a visit to Spalato to take with him this book, and chapter 13th of Gibbon. The extract from Porphyrogenitus, given by Gibbon, tells us what the palace of Diocletian was; and Sir Gardner Wilkinson tells us what it is now, and what has been its history. Besides verbal description, his pencil affords some apt illustrations of the actual condition of the buildings. We see by these, and by his account, that the treasures of Spalatine architecture have been obscured by the building up of modern edifices on their sites. "The stranger," he says, "is shocked to see windows of houses through the arches of the court, intercolumniations filled up with petty shops, and the peristyle of the great temple maskedby modern houses." Doubtless, many a precious relic has been appropriated by modern barbarians to common uses, and so perished out of sight. But with joy we learn that the government has taken measures to prevent the continuance of such destruction, and that the remaining monuments are safe, however they may be mixed up with the houses and shops of the present generation. We are told that, under the care of the present director of antiquarian researches, there is good reason to hope that the collection at Spalato may become truly valuable. The high character of Professor Carrara is a sure warrant that all will be done which is within scope of the means afforded. But as the government allowance for excavations at Salona is only £80 yearly, we cannot think that the work is likely to proceed rapidly. While we condemn as barbarous this carelessness on the part of the Austrians, we must bear in mind that we are open to a retort of the censure. We neglect altogether the remains of Samos in Cephalonia, and nothing at all is allowed for the expense of operations there; yet these remains are very extensive, and there is every reason to believe that their actual condition would amply repay a diligent search.
We must stop here a moment to congratulate Sir Gardner, on his rencontre with the sphinx.