"Rubbed—out—at—last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and looking upwards to take a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned gently on his side and breathed his last sigh.
With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a grave on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps, the trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was then wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on the dead man's breast, laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered—without a word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his companions may have felt, not a word escaped them; although the bitten lip and frowning brow told tale of anger more than sorrow, and vowed—what they thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than sorrow—lasting revenge.
Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they placed upon it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and taking a last look of their comrade's lonely resting-place, they turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known as "Gonneville's Creek."
If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the western country, which detail the features of the regions embracing the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he will not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which feed the larger rivers,—as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa—are called by familiar proper names, both English and French. These are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper, killed there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the lurking savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream. Thus alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least of those whose fate is ascertained: for many, in every season, never return from their hunting expeditions, having met a sudden death from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease in some of the lonely gorges of the mountains, where no footfall save their own, orthe heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the unbroken silence of these awful solitudes. Then, as many winters pass without some old familiar faces making their appearance at the merry rendezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps occasion such remarks, as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have betaken himself, to which the casual rejoinder of "Gone under, maybe," too often gives a short but certain answer.
In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bonté, however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye, as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He could not forget so soon the comrade they had lost, the companionship in the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, and thirst, and from untended wounds, of Indian perils, and of a life spent in such vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and rolled down his cheek—the last for many a long year.
In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the vicinity, while La Bonté, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline, started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all the rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this season (August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having come in with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious to start speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had erected his lodge in the village.
Here, he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade. First, a chief appointed three "soldiers" to guard the trader's lodge from intrusion; and who, amongst the thieving fraternity, can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians were invited to have a drink—a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed possessor of many friends, who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way, with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends. Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small quantity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.
When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor in a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers of the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the less, or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat, with the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never discover the cheat, and once under the influence of the liquor, cannot distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong spirit, and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent, and poisonously drugged to boot.
Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade is over, which in the winter occupies several weeks, during which period the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralising influence of the liquor, of demons rather than men.
Boston, May 1848.
A thousand leagues of ocean, my Basil, are indeed between us, but it is no longer right to reckon distances by leagues. Time is your only measure. I know of a gentleman who had a home in Paris, while Paris was capable of homes, and he came every year across the Atlantic, only to fish for trout. Why do you stare? You know very well that you have often waited a fortnight for a good day to go a-fishing. Come, then, pack up your slender reed, and spend such a fortnight in a steamer. By God's favour you shall be the better for sea air; and in two weeks from Liverpool, you shall find yourself on the shores of a lake in the interior of the State of New York, where, since the fifth day of the creation, the trout have apparently been multiplying in a manner that would astonish a Malthus. Such is now that dissociable ocean, which was once thought too great a waste of waters to be passed by colonial members of parliament representing the provinces of America. "Opposuit Natura;" said Burke, "I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation." But Burke forgot his Greek:—
"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ, κοὐδεν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πελει·τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν πόντου χειμερίῳ νοτῳ χωρεί, περιβρυχίοισι περῶν ἐρ' oἴδμασι·"
"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ, κοὐδεν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πελει·τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν πόντου χειμερίῳ νοτῳ χωρεί, περιβρυχίοισι περῶν ἐρ' oἴδμασι·"
I know it is an old saw, but it is so freshened by the modern instance of steamers every week, that it has become quotable once more; and I have almost a mind to go on with the chorus, and show that Sophocles may be fairly rendered in favour of railways and iron-steeds. But the telegraph, Basil! I must even quote a bit of English for that. As gentle Cowper saith:—
"The tempest itself lags behind,And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"
"The tempest itself lags behind,And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"
The wires are already stretched from Massachusetts, and almost from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark here, and the lettered bulletin is reeling off in Louisiana! The fresh news will, hereafter, be hawked in the streets of Boston and along the wharves of New Orleans in the same hour. It will soon be sent farther still; and a British fleet in the Pacific may be served with orders from the Admiralty Board, not two weeks old. We are fairly in hand-shaking neighbourhood. I remember when European intelligence came to us rather as history than as news. It is not so now. While emotion is yet warm with you, it sets our own hearts throbbing. We, too, are, in the present tense, with Europe; for the revolutions of peace have been more wonderful than those of warfare. They have reunited what strife had sundered, and rendered England and America again one family.
Talking of revolutions,—how hot the noon of the century is growing! You will allow, dear Basil, that we in America, are well situated to be lookers on. With all the security of distance, we have the advantages of nearness. You are on the stage—we are in the boxes. You go behind the scenes, and see the wire-working and machinery, but we get the effect of the spectacle. The great revolutionary drama is before us, and we can behold it calmly; interested, but not involved. For a devout or philosophical spectator, America is the true observatory. Here we can watch "the great Babel, and not feel the crowd." It is our own fault if, with such advantages, we do not anticipate the judgment of future ages, and arrive instinctively at conclusions which those who share the tumult itself must ordinarily learn in the soberness of after-thoughts, or, perhaps, by a dear experience.
Did you ask how the doings in France appear in republican eyes? And pray what do you expect me to answer? You appear to think republicanism a specific instead of a generic term, and to expect us to hail the French as our kindred. As well might I suppose that your monarchical sympathies deeply interest you in the autocracy of Dahomey and Dârfur. A boy may play with a monkey,without admiring him; and although the monkey is a biped without feathers, the boy would not like to have him taken for a younger brother. Believe me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity with the Provisional Government.How we apples swim, seems to be their salutation to America; but, for one, I reject the odorous impeachment. No one is very cordial, as yet, in returning it. There is a general gaping and staring; but the prevailing disposition towards France is to wait and see if she will be decent. You will agree with me, that this caution is creditable to theModel Republic.
In the spectacle before us, believe me, then, we know how to distinguish the harlequin from the hero, and are not in danger of clapping hands at the buffoonery of Paris, when we have just been charmed by the solemn buskin in which London came upon the stage—reluctant to play her part, but prepared to go through it nobly. A French melodrama, of men in smocks chantingMourir pour la Patrie, or priests, in defiled surplices, asperging and incensing May-poles, must of course suit the tastes of the groundlings; but such inexplicable dumb-shows are generally understood to be only the prelude to something tragic that is coming. For one, I look for solemn monologues from Pio Nono and Lamartine; and, by-and-by, expect a scene between the Soldan and the Czar. I do not look without feelings of awe, for I am sure it is the shadow ofGod'sown hand that is now passing over the nations. It is He that says, as of old, "remove the diadem and take off the crown; exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high." I am glad that others recognise his footsteps in the earth, and therefore was pleased with that motto lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine—"Godis patient, because He is eternal."
For seventeen years we have been watching the great political Humpty-Dumpty, in his efforts to come to an equilibrium, and to stand firm in his place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty is fallen, according to the oracular rhyme of Mother Goose. What shall we say of him, except that he was barricaded in, and has been barricaded out? Laugh as we may at the undefinableness of legitimacy, one feels that the lack of it makes a great difference in our disposition towards a discrowned king. Still, Louis-Philippe is treated with much forbearance, and men think of his hoar hairs and his eventful life. In one of our newspapers, a generous word has been spoken for his government, as about the best that France deserved, and his best measures have been reviewed with praise. Still, he is much disliked in America. One of his earliest Claremonts was with us; and when Lafayette made him a king, Americans felt as if they had a right to be pleased with his accession. But his quarrel with his benefactor turned the feeling strongly against him, for Lafayette was revered among us to the hour of his death. I think there is a general satisfaction with the fall of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly has not been malicious or spiteful. An eminent American, who has lived long in Paris, has written two letters in the leading democratic newspaper of New York, in which the fallen monarch is more severely handled than he has been elsewhere. He is there said to be a much overrated man—possessed of no great talents, except those which enable him to dissimulate with the utmost cunning, and to manage with the basest perfidy. The writer, nevertheless, has no confidence in the revolution as having destroyed the monarchy; and quotes with approbation a sentiment which he says was advanced in conversation with himself, so long ago as 1830, by Odillon Barrot,—"Enfin, monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir gouvernée." He thinks two things will work against the Duc de Bordeaux—that he has married an Austrian, and grown fat; yet he confidently predicts that Henry V. will one day ascend the throne of his ancestors. "As for a republic that is to go on harmoniously, and with any thing like tolerable quiet, law, and order," he concludes, "I hold it to be just as impracticable as it would be to set up a Doge of Venice and a Council of Ten in the State of New York.We hear only the voices of the revolutionists, the rest of the nation being temporarily mute. The daywill come, however, when the last will speak."
These sentiments are not singular among us. I am agreeably surprised by the great moderation of our people and of our press. When the tidings of the outbreak reached us, it produced excitement, of course; but there was no echo of the French howl, and remarkably little enthusiasm, all things considered. You have seen reprinted in England some of the most foolish things that were said in our most worthless prints. The press in general behaved with great reserve and caution. Successive steamers brought continual abatements to the degree of confidence, or hope, that had been inspired in the minds of the more ardent; and so general was the candour of the newspapers, that when those of the Clay party were pettishly accused of a sympathy with tyranny, the charge was easily met by quotations from democratic newspapers, equally liable to the imputation, if a manly reprobation of revolutionary misrule and excess be sufficient to prove it. The truth is, our country was caught in the trap in 1792. Then, the pulpit and the press strove together in glorifying France; and the remorse and burning shame that were the consequence, have left a very salutary impression.
In fact, the violent democracy of Paris is exerting a beneficial effect upon our people. We see the degrading spectacle, and learn to value ourselves for a love of law and order. There is a reluctance to reduce ourselves to the level of such a republic as has sprung up like a mushroom in a night, and is likely to perish in the same way. Our own revolution was not one of drunken riot, and street-singing blouse-men: our constitution is not a mere poetical theory of liberty and equality, nor a socialist's dream of brotherhood. We now learn the secret of our strength, and of that comparative durability which has almost surprised ourselves. We are, after all, a transplanted slip of old England; nor are we so essentially changed, my Basil, as even you imagine. The spirit of our people is indeed democratic; but the spirit of our constitution is imbued with a stronger element. The facts concerning it will enable you to see one secret of our comparative success, and to judge whether France can possibly come to any thing as good. The founders of this republic were not Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean they were of English stock, and had learned all their notions of liberty from the history of England. Each province of America had taken shape under the British constitution; and when the provinces became independent, the general government was organised in such wise as to supply the place of that constitution. Its founders did not frame a new and untried constitution, apriori, according to their own schemes; they simply modified the great principles of British constitutional law to suit a new state of things, and a peculiar people. A monarchy was out of the question; but they did not intend to make a democracy. They only made a republic. The democratic spirit came in with Jefferson and French politics at the beginning of the present century. It has become dominant, but by no means triumphant; and its great obstacle has been the constitution. In the several states it has changed the constitutions one after the other, introducing universal suffrage, and other democratic features. But the national constitution has not been so easily reached; and it is the strength of the great party with which Clay and Webster are identified, and which is a constant check on the popular party. It is republican, but not simply democratic. The executive magistracy is elective; but the electors are not the people, directly, but electoral colleges, appointed by the several states; and the office itself is endowed with prerogatives, some of which are more unlimited than the corresponding rights of the British crown. Our senate is a mere modification of the House of Lords: it is a body more select than the lower house, and not so immediately responsible to constituents; and its practical working shows the great importance of such a balance-wheel in any government. There is no working without it, in spite of what your Roebucks may say. The House of Commons reappears in our House of Representatives, which, like its great original, is the safety-valve of popularfeeling, and gives sonorous vent to a mighty pressure of steam and vapour, which would otherwise blow us to atoms, with a much less endurable noise. The whole fabric of our law is a precious patrimony derived, with our blood, from England. Our new states are filling up with emigrants from the continent of Europe, but they all adopt the law of their older sisters; and thus the institutions of the immortal Alfred may be found among the Swedes and Danes of Wisconsin. These, then, are the elements of our strength; and you observe they partake of the strength of the British empire, which has been legitimately and naturally imparted to us, like the mother's life-blood to the daughter of her womb. We have indeed characteristic peculiarities. We have tried some new experiments; but let not France suppose she can imitate them. We are a new country, a sparse population, and our people have their heads full of subduing the soil, and setting water-wheels in streams, and making roads and canals. We have no natural taste for insurrection and confusion, for we have nobody that is idle enough to want such work. Our new wine, then, has been put into new bottles; and the fool that attempts to decant it into the old vessels of Europe, will ruin it and them together.
Our newspapers have pointed out another secret of our strength, which France cannot possibly enjoy. In spite of that wild prophecy of Lady Hester Stanhope to Lamartine—so much of which has come true—Paris is France, and will be France while France holds together. The city of Washington is not America; and its great acres of unoccupied building lots are the best thing about it. The State governments, which could not have been planned beforehand, but are a natural product of old events—which dispose of all local matters, and prevent sectional jealousies, which divide and balance power, andsatisfy small ambition,—these are the helps, without which our national existence could not have been prolonged beyond the lifetime of Washington himself. The threatened disturbance of the admirable equilibrium which has heretofore been maintained between North and South, and East and West, by the introduction of Mexican and Texan states, and the power which it will throw into the hands of a few persons at the seat of government, is even now our most alarming danger. We know, from what we see among ourselves, that governments must take form, not from human devices, but fromGod'sprovidences. We ourselves are the results of circumstances: no scheming patriot could have made us what we are; and no imitative Frenchman can give to his country a government like ours; nor, if he could, would it survive beyond the lifetime of some individual, whose popularity would supply a temporary strength to its essential weakness. An imported constitution must be a sickly one, in any country on earth.
For us, then, there is a legitimacy in our institutions which makes them durable, and dear to all classes of our people. But to be loyal to our own republic is by no means to be committed to universal republicanism, far less to be delighted with universal anarchy. You must pardon our tastes. We are young, and we think a jacket and shako becoming. We wear our appropriate costume as gracefully as we can. We are yet the growing, perhaps the awkward, but still the active boy. But when Europe befools itself, in its dotage, with republican attire, we lads have a right to laugh. It will do for us to play leap-frog, or cut any other caper that we choose; but who can restrain derision when corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted coat, and submits its uncovered proportions to hootings and to kicks, or throws a ponderous summersault that less demonstrates agility than exposes nakedness!
I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable. But even they would probably allow that theChinese, for instance, are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less remarkable and astonishing than our own.But there is a solid mass of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire, it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men, is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say, dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.
You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in Æsop—"No, no,—you make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin? Our Plymouth orators—the men who annually glorify our earliest colonists—usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning emotion. We deeplyfelt that, by the mercy of God, the world had been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest, waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag untorn.
I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children! I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy, were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5]The Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals. You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829. It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood. But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one. To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British statesman could say[6]—"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church, Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by anthems to AlmightyGod, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the first time, I believe, that Lord John has set theTe Deumofcathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ. Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I remember what he said in hisReflections on the French Revolution of 1792—for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too, against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil—I honour a Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations. And then—a Jewish gentleman—he makes me think at once of the sons of Maccabæus and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews, those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say—let the Jews in! I could trusttheirconscience; I could appeal to their own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver—but we do not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian who consented to take them at the bargain.
You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at the time—"hear it, ye dry bones,—ye cross-legged effigies—ye Paladins—ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,—hear it, Richard Cœur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it, thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes now come for thine old spurs!" So said I—wondering that no one seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare. There was not even a LondonPunchto laugh at such aJudy, and so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood, that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.
And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing? Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made good,—"we shall never be such foolsas to call in an enemy to the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction." I readThe Times, but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have indeed been ventured amid cries ofoh, oh!and vociferations of buck-toothed laughterfrom the benches that support the honourable members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him, my Basil:—
"This sceptred isle,This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,Renownèd for her deeds as far from home(ForChristian serviceandtrue chivalry)As is the sepulchre in stubborn JewryOf the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,Dear for her reputation through the world,Is now—paun'd out to Jews!"
"This sceptred isle,This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,Renownèd for her deeds as far from home(ForChristian serviceandtrue chivalry)As is the sepulchre in stubborn JewryOf the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,Dear for her reputation through the world,Is now—paun'd out to Jews!"
This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at the death,"—but nothing more.
But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the talk. The elections are over; theModéréshave triumphed; the National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is at an end.Vive Lamartine!Of course the stock of the republic takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen, theémeutesat Elbœuf and Limoges, and the threats of theCommunistes, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails, the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one, it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth. As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature, would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth. Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their tricoloured sashes—was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of liberty, equality, and fraternity!
The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us, about thepietythat has been displayed in this revolution. In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery, deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean; and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to see a celebrateddanseuse, and excited general attention by his somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible. As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "Ah, that is poetry!" As she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "That's divinity!" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the climax—"That's religion!" If this be caricature, the Emersonians richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is an archbishopof Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a cry, "Save it—save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches." "Ah, that's religion!" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses, with crosses and censers,that's divinity, at least. Was ever hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy, it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel fraternity.
Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to Chateaubriand?Quantum mutatus!I knew him, till lately, only as a poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.
How Frenchy—how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping and sighing,—a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep, and told him he should be very important in the history of the world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady Hester generally tellonly half, leaving the rest to imagination and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins, is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and hisCommunistes,—what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a sight of thedrapeau blanc, and a prince of the sons of St Louis: and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known asHenri le Désiré.
Yours ever, my dear Basil,
Ernest.
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning, day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom, and purity, and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called 'old' so long as he is an early riser, and an earlywalker. And oh, youth!—take my word of it,—youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over breakfast at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly image of that youth which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming hedgerows.
Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows unclosed—surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over his books—for I had never before known him study till after the morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students, alas! whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes; the great work must be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with learning: this was work.
I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were giving signs of returning life; but it was not yet the hour for labour, and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn, which an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came full upon my Uncle Roland.
"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than four miles to —— and back."
"You have been to ——: not on business? No soul would be up."
"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Ostlers never sleep! I have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you to day, nephew."
"Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly—that cursed print—"
"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy! I defy you!" and he pressed my hand roughly.
"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father to C—— Castle."
"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London to-night."
"And return to morrow?"
"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he continued—"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open saucy brow of yours, on which nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those clear eyes that look man manfully in the face. I must know more of you—much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your ancestor's ruined keep."
"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower—"
"And the traces of the out-works;" cried my uncle, flourishing his stick.
"And the pedigree—"
"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armour, which he wore at Marston Moor—"
"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
"The deuce is in the boy! Come here—come here; I've three minds to break your head, sir!"
"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why should the ghosts jostle us?"
"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the way. The dead never die, especially since—"
"Since what, boy? you speak well."
"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
My uncle whistled "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre."
I had not the heart to plague him further.
"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
"No! I forewarn you—"
"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty daughter—for pretty I am sure she is."
"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for yourself."
Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to him the cause of his displeasure with his son,—a mystery which much haunted me,—my father was mute on that score, both to my mother and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr Caxton was evidently unsettled. He did not even take to his great work; but walked much alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, and roved impatient by the shore.
At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's, and an-unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of "the great Work." I cannot express the feelings this lecture created—they were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so immense—and towards its execution, a learning so vast and various had administered—that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which all these materials had been collected year after year—the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius, they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system—the unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of a laborious life;—all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father, which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or theFasti Helleniciof Clinton,—it was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast, but from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the indulgence of hisnaïve, peculiar irony of humour—so quiet, yet so profound. My father's book was the "History of Human Error." It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth and earnestness, yet with an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes, indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humour lies its germ, pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was at home in his theme! He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers, to the vague myths of antiquity, and the dreams of speculators on our pristine state. From Australia and Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilisation, when friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He showed both analogy and contrast betweenthis specimen of our kind, and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and the cultured. The Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car. Up sprang the rude gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the Phœnicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners; how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress; how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their brethren, was told with a precision clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher—my father brought to bear on all these grave points, the various speculations involved in the distinctions of race. He showed how race in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture: how all mixed races have been the most intelligent—how, in proportion as local circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of differing tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilisation. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly; and showed how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters—the flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbours, and rigidly preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became, fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows not through what channels—French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch, and Irish—he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the hut of the Bushman—that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man,—viz. admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father got into the marrow of his theme—when, quitting these preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise; when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;—when he showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics, the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;—when, following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with his calm smile, into thesalonsof the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. He provedhow, in vast cycles, age after age, the human mind marches on—like the ocean, receding here, but there advancing. How from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honour, and the sweet harmonising influences of woman. He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote—of original illustration—of those niceties of learning which spring from a taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish—the book amused, and allured, and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyère. He lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in him. Ah, what a writer of romances he would have been, if—if what? If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions, as he had the happy intuition into their humours. But he who would see the mirror of the shore, must look where it is cast on the river, not the ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree, and the pausing herd, and the village spire, and the romance of the landscape. But the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland, and the lights of the eternal heaven.
"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
"Are the odds in favour of fame against failure so great? You do not speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father, as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a scholar, a genius, a wond—"
"Stop," cried my father.
"After all," said Mr Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets is not so far out.... That part of your book which compares the crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr Pritchard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets that you should publish as soon as possible."
"It is one thing to write and another to publish," said my father irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have published; when one thinks one is going to intrude one's-self audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder—of all the grave philosophers who bend over nature with brows weighty with thought—one may well pause, and—"
"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack; "science is not a club, it is an ocean. It is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps of philosophy are preoccupied?"
"Admirable!" cried Squills.
"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration, "that I should desert my household gods; remove to London, since my own library ceases to supply my wants; take lodgings near the British Museum, and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently."
"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir; but I have observed that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent or it oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being abstracted, he grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects the nerves. I would not even guarantee you from a stroke of paralysis."
"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round my father's neck.
"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do yougo with us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the meanwhile I will stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
"All alone?" said my mother.
"No. All alone! Why Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I hope."
Uncle Jack shook his head.
"No, my boy—I must go to town with your father. You don't understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of interest I know. My Journal will suffer. But friendship and my country's good before all things!"
"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.
"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good income. You are doing well where you are; and as to seeing the booksellers—why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a week, and settle that affair."
"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
But my father continued obstinate and Uncle Jack at last ceased to urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled; but my father would not hear of my staying behind.
No; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the duck would take care of itself.
We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due complement of places—four in all (including one for Mrs Primmins)—in, or upon, the fast family coach called the Sun, which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the neighbourhood.
This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My father, with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on the Primitive World" for light reading under his arm; my mother, with a little basket, containing sandwiches and biscuits of her own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a new umbrella, purchased for the occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary, endeared to her not more by song than age, and a severe pip through which she had successfully nursed it—and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman, who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising eminence to watch the dawning of the expected planet, and apprise us of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a stick.
The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted windows. The litter before its threshold, and in its open hall; wisps of straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and boxes that had been examined and rejected; others, corded and piled, reserved to follow with the footman: and the two heated and hurried serving-women left behind standing half-way between house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and looking as if they had not slept for weeks—gave to a scene, usually so trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment and desolation. The genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt the omens were against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with a sigh, as the coach now drew up in all its grandeur. An important personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in a vast superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt fox, andwho rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our orders were received.
Now, as I knew that Mrs Primmins was indispensable to the comforts of my honoured parents, (the more so, as she had once lived in London, and knew all its ways,) I suggested that she should take the outside seat, and that I should perform the journey on foot—a primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my mother little time to oppose this proposition, to which my father assented with a silent squeeze of the hand. And, having promised to join them at a family hotel near the Strand, to which Mr Squills lad recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved my last farewell to my poor mother, who continued to stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes, I turned within, to put up a few necessary articles in a small knapsack, which I remembered to have seen in the lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather; and with that on my shoulder, and a strong staff in my hand, I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon, I was both tired and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sate down at a table under some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple fare, with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks his own dinner, and pays for it out of his own pocket.
While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and, induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to my years.
The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-coloured, and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a "life-preserver." As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord's ale, in that wig there was "no mistake:" it was brought—(in the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in his youth)—low over his forehead and raised at the top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain drollery in the corners of his eyes.
The younger man was apparently about my own age, a year or two older perhaps—judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to demand the attention even of the most careless observer. It had not only the darkness but the character of the gipsy face, with large brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling; the features were aquiline but delicate, and when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of the countenance; and yet, it had that expression at once stealthy and fierce, which war with societyhas stamped upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket, or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist, loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently and with some haughtiness from his companion, he surveyed me with a quick observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to doze or muse, till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass into his right eye. "Beef;—mottled, cowey—humph. Lamb;—oldish—rawish—muttony, humph. Pie;—stalish, veal?—no, pork. Ah! what will you have?"
"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up, looked disdainfully at the viands, and after a long pause, tasted first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up and called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a composure that spoke of habitual use.
"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats of stomach soon wear out, with that kind of clothes' brush. Better stick to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbour thus saluted. I was not deceived. "Any thing to temptyou, sir?" asked this social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife.
"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the swan recommends—swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well then, I charge you with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask?"
"To London, when I can get there!"
"Oh!" said the traveller—while his young companion lifted his eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy.
"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life there; 'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
"I never saw one!"
"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally: "then, young man," he added solemnly, "you have, but I won't say what you have to see. I won't say—no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim with the generous ardour so engaging in youth 'Mr Peacock, these are yours, if you will only say what I have to see!'"
I laughed outright—may I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew dark at the sound: he pushed back his plate and sighed.
"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who I suppose is about your own age,hecould tell you what a play is! he could tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town: 'perused the traders,' as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?"
Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on his lips. "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has strange bedfellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say—"
"A farce?" put in his comrade.
"No, a tragedy—or comedy as Congreve wrote it."
"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the tone of my contemporary.
"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend hee has no chance!"
"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem—yes—Hal Peacock maybe witty, but he is no rogue."
"That was not exactly my meaning," said the boy dryly.
"'A fico for your meaning,'" as the swan says. "Hallo, you, sir! Bully Host, clear the table, fresh tumblers—hot water—sugar—lemon, and the bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr Peacock offered me a cigar.
Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen of some fabulous havannah—moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition; bit off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith, the young gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance, being of velvet, embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very legibly worked thereon—selected a cigar of better appearance than that in favour with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
"Fast, sir—fast lad that!" quoth Mr Peacock, in the short gasps which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone permitted—"nothing but—(puff, puff)—your true—(suck—suck,) syl—syl—sylva—does for him. Out, by the Lord! 'the jaws of darkness have devoured it up;'" and again Mr Peacock applied to his phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded, and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardour of its wooer.
This feat accomplished, Mr Peacock exclaimed triumphantly, "And now what say you, my lads, to a game at cards?—three of us—whist and a dummy?—nothing better—eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his coat-pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap, a toothbrush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the remains of a bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last, and returning its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they had emerged, he turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the knave of clubs, and, placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the cards emphatically on the table.