"The evening of the day on which King Louis of Bavaria was crowned emperor, there was a splendid ball at the town-hall, at which the empress was present. Amongst the guests was a cavalier dressed entirely in black, and having his face covered with a black mask. He invited the empress to dance: she accepted, and, whilst they were dancing together, another mask approached the emperor and asked him if he knew who his wife's partner was. 'No,' replied the emperor, 'but I suppose it is some sovereign prince.'"'Lower than that,' said the mask."'Some nobleman then—a count or baron.'"'Lower than that.'"'Perhaps with a knight.'"'Lower still.'"'With an esquire?'"'Less than that.'"'A page?'"'You have not guessed it—lower still.'"The emperor flushed crimson with anger."'A groom?' "'If that were all!' answered the unknown with a strange laugh."'But who is it then?' cried the emperor."'Tear off his mask and you will see.'"The emperor approached the sable cavalier, and tore off his mask. It was the headsman."'Miscreant!' shouted the emperor, as his sword flashed from the scabbard, 'commend thy soul to God before thou diest.'"'Sire!' replied the headsman, falling on his knees, 'you may kill me if you will; but the empress has not the less danced with me, and the dishonour, if dishonour there be, is already incurred. Do better than that: knight me; and if any one dares to speak evil of her majesty, the same sword that executes justice shall vindicate her fame.'"The emperor reflected for a moment."'The advice is good,' said he at last. 'Henceforward you shall no longer be called the headsman, but the last of the judges.' Then, giving him three blows on the shoulder with his sword flat,"'Rise!' he continued; 'from this hour you are the lowest among nobles, and the first amongst burghers.'"And accordingly since that day, in all public processions and ceremonies, the executioner walks by himself, in rear of the nobles and in front of the commoners."
"The evening of the day on which King Louis of Bavaria was crowned emperor, there was a splendid ball at the town-hall, at which the empress was present. Amongst the guests was a cavalier dressed entirely in black, and having his face covered with a black mask. He invited the empress to dance: she accepted, and, whilst they were dancing together, another mask approached the emperor and asked him if he knew who his wife's partner was. 'No,' replied the emperor, 'but I suppose it is some sovereign prince.'
"'Lower than that,' said the mask.
"'Some nobleman then—a count or baron.'
"'Lower than that.'
"'Perhaps with a knight.'
"'Lower still.'
"'With an esquire?'
"'Less than that.'
"'A page?'
"'You have not guessed it—lower still.'
"The emperor flushed crimson with anger.
"'A groom?' "'If that were all!' answered the unknown with a strange laugh.
"'But who is it then?' cried the emperor.
"'Tear off his mask and you will see.'
"The emperor approached the sable cavalier, and tore off his mask. It was the headsman.
"'Miscreant!' shouted the emperor, as his sword flashed from the scabbard, 'commend thy soul to God before thou diest.'
"'Sire!' replied the headsman, falling on his knees, 'you may kill me if you will; but the empress has not the less danced with me, and the dishonour, if dishonour there be, is already incurred. Do better than that: knight me; and if any one dares to speak evil of her majesty, the same sword that executes justice shall vindicate her fame.'
"The emperor reflected for a moment.
"'The advice is good,' said he at last. 'Henceforward you shall no longer be called the headsman, but the last of the judges.' Then, giving him three blows on the shoulder with his sword flat,
"'Rise!' he continued; 'from this hour you are the lowest among nobles, and the first amongst burghers.'
"And accordingly since that day, in all public processions and ceremonies, the executioner walks by himself, in rear of the nobles and in front of the commoners."
Truly a most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any rate, if not true it isben trovato.
Heidelberg, whither M. Dumas next proceeds, is to our mind one of the pleasantest places near the Rhine, from which river it is now, thanks to the railroad, within half an hour's journey. The country around is delightful, and the town itself, owing to its possessing an university, and to the vast number of strangers who visit and pass through it during the summer months, is far more lively than most small German towns. The kind of liveliness, however, caused by the presence of seven or eight hundred students, is not always of the most agreeable character. It has been the fashion in England to talk and write a vast deal about German universities; and sundry well filled, or at least bulky tomes have been devoted to accounts of the students' mode of life, their duels and drinkings, and peculiarities of all kinds. Friend Howitt favoured us a year or two ago with a corpulent volume—translated in part from the MSS. of somestudiosus emeritus—a sort of life in Heidelberg, entering into great detail concerning university doings, and with illustrations of a very sportive description; wherein mustached and bespurred cavaliers are slashing at each other with broad swords, or cantering over the country mounted upon gallant steeds, and looking something between Dick Turpins and field-marshals in muftee. 'Tis a sad thing to have too much imagination—it tempts a man to mislead his neighbours; and no one who has read friend William's picturesque descriptions ofStudent Leben, but would feel grievously disappointed when he came to investigate the subject for himself. Nothing can be more puerile and absurd, and in many instances disgusting, than the habitual pastimes and amusements of the students; or at least of that large majority of them who attend no lectures and study, nothing that they can possibly avoid, but look upon their residence at the university as three or four years to be devoted to smoking, beer-drinking, and scratching one another's faces in duels. These duels, by the by, are pieces of the most intense humbug that can be imagined. They take place now in the large room of the inn at Ziegelhausen, a village on the banks of the Neckar, about two miles from Heidelberg, and are fought with straight swords, square but sharp at the extremity, and having guards as big as a soup-plate.
Before the fight begins, the combatants don their defensive arms, consisting of a strong and broad-brimmed hat protecting the head and eyes, an immense leathern breastplate defending the chest and stomach, a padded case, also of leather, which shields the arm from wrist to shoulder, and an impenetrable cravat which protects the neck up to theears. The nose, and a bit of each cheek, is all that can be possibly wounded. Thus equipped the heroes set to work, slashing away at each other, (it is forbidden to thrust,) shaving off pieces of their padded armour, and looking exceeding fierce and valiant the while; until, after a greater or less time, according as the combatants are equal in skill or not, one of them gets a scratch across the nose, or small eyelet hole in the cheek, which terminates this caricature of a duel. Since "young Germany" finds amusement in so harmless a practice, it might very well be allowed them; provided they afterwards, like good boys, took their books and learned their lessons. But such a proceeding would be by no means consistent with theBurschen-Freiheit—the academic freedom of which these hopeful youths make their boast. To celebrate the valour of the victory, and show sympathy with the sufferings of the vanquished—whose wound is by this time dressed with an inch of sticking plaster—the party repairs to a tavern to breakfast; and there the morning is killed over beer and Rhine wine till one o'clock, by which time some of them are usually more than half tipsy. They then repair to the table-d'hôte, dine, drink more, and finally stagger home to sleep off their libations. We have more than once, in German university towns, seen students reeling-drunk at four in the afternoon.
About seven in the evening, thekneipesor drinking-houses begin to fill. In all of these there are rooms set apart for the different clubs of students to assemble in; and in those sanctuaries they put on the caps and colours of their communities, which they have of late years been forbidden to wear in public. On the ribands which they wear round their necks, are inscribed the date of their various duels. A barrel of beer is now broached, pipes are loaded and lighted, and they sit the whole evening, sotting, smoking, and singing songs about the Rhine, liberty, and fatherland, with ear-splitting and interminable choruses ofViva lera lera. A German student's song generally consists of couplets of two lines, with a chorus that lasts a quarter of an hour.
The quantity of beer consumed by some of these heroes is almost incredible. They become actually bloated with it. One of the most important and respected persons at a German university is the Beer King, who ought to be able to drink, not any given quantity, but an unlimited one; to be perpetually drinking, in short. M. Dumas tells us, that the reigning monarch of malt at Heidelberg is able to absorb twelve schoppens of beer, or six of wine, while the clock strikes twelve. A Heidelberg schoppen is very nearly an English bottle. This is rather hard to swallow, M. Dumas. Either the drinker is very fast, or the clock very slow. We can vouch, however, for the scarcely less astonishing fact, of there being drinkers at the universities who will imbibe twenty-five bottles of beer at a sitting. The German beer is, of course, not of a very intoxicating nature.
From beer to tobacco the transition is natural enough; and we cannot conclude our gossip about the Rhine without a word or two as to the frightful abuse made by the Germans of the Indian weed. We are not of the number of those who condemn the moderate use of tobacco, but, on the contrary, know right well how to appreciate its soothing and cheering effects; but the difference is wide between a limited enjoyment of the habit, and the stupefying, besotting excess to which it is carried by the Germans. The dirty way, too, in which they smoke, renders the custom as annoying to those who live amongst them, as it must be unwholesome and detrimental to themselves. It is possible to smoke much, and yet cleanly: take the Spaniard for instance—unquestionably a great smoker; yet the difference between smoking on the Rhine or Elbe, and on the Manzanares or Ebro, is immense—the one the gluttony and abuse, the other the refinement of the practice. While Don Español, with his fragrantpuro, or straw or paper covered cigarrito, smoketh cleanly, spitteth not, uses his tobacco, as he uses most things, like a gentleman; thewerther Deutschertakes his huge pipe, rarely cleaned and with the essence of tobacco oozing from every joint, and filling itfrom a bag, or rather sack, of coarse and vile-smelling tobacco, puffs forth volumes of smoke, expectoratingad nauseamat intervals of a minute or less. No considerations of place or person hinder him from indulging in his favourite pastime. In steam-boats, in diligences, in the public walks and promenades, into the dining-rooms of hotels, every where does the pipe intrude itself; carried as habitually as a walking-cane; and even when not in actual use, emitting the most evil odour from the bowl and tube, saturated as they are with tobacco juice.
However unpleasant all this may be to foreigners, especially to English ladies accustomed to the more cleanly habits of their own countrymen, the German dames are perfectly reconciled to it. Had we to draw a picture of domestic felicity on the Rhine, we would sketch it thus:—a summer evening—a flower garden—a table with tea or coffee—a dozen chairs occupied by persons of both sexes—the women big-feeted, blue-eyed, placid creatures, knitting stockings—the men heavy and awkward, each with a monstrous signet-ring on the dirty forefinger of his right hand, smoking unceasingly, and puffing the vapour into the faces of their better halves, who heed it not, and occasionally may even be seen replenishing with their own delicate digits the enormous porcelain or meerschaum bowls of the pipes. If you doubt the accuracy of our description, reader, go and judge for yourself. The distance is short, and summer is at hand. Put yourself on board a steamboat, whisk over to Ostend or Antwerp, and thence rail and rattle it down to the Rhine. You shall not be three days on German soil without encountering a score such groups as the one we have just sketched.
Be under no apprehension, gentle public, that you are about to be kept in suspense touching the moral of our argumentation, as too often in the pamphlets addressed in Johnsonian English to Thompsonian understandings, wherein a pennyworth of matter is set forth by a monstrous quantity of phrase. We mean to speak to the point; we mean to enlighten your understanding as by the smiting of a lucifer-match. Refrain, therefore, from running your eye impatiently along the page, as you are doing at this moment, in hopes of discovering, italicized, the secret of the enigma; for we have no intention of keeping you another moment ignorant that the monster-misery of literature is—guess! Which of you hath hit it? The monster-misery of literature is—The Circulating Library!
In this devout conviction, devote we to the infernal gods the memory of the Athenian republic—the first keeper of a circulating library. Every tyro is aware that this Sams or Ebers of antiquity lent out to Ptolemy of Egypt, for a first-rate subscription of fifteen talents, the works of Euripides, Eschylus, and Sophocles; thereby affording a precedent for the abominable practice, fatal to bookmakers and booksellers, which has converted the waters of Castalia into their present disgraceful puddle!
Every scribbler of the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, of the few standard critics of the age, directed towards the monstrous abuse of public patience which will render the Victorian age the sad antithesis of the Elizabethan, in the literary history of the land! Content so long as they can get a new work,tale quale, as a peg whereon to hang the rusty garments of their erudition, not a straw care they for the miserable decline and fall of the great empire of letters; an empire overrun by what Goths—what Huns—what Vandals!—by the iniquitous andbarbarous hosts of circulating libraries!
It has been agreed for some centuries past, that the only modern Mæcenas is the publisher. The days of patrons are past; and the author is forced to look for the reward of his labour to the man who, by selling the greatest number of copies to the public, can bestow the greatest number of pounds upon his pains. In order to augment this amount, the bibliopole naturally consults the taste of his customers; and nearly the sole remaining customers of the modern bookseller are—the circulating libraries. For what man in his senses who, for an annual mulct of half-a-dozen sovereigns, commands the whole range of modern literature, would waste his substance in loading his house with books of doubtful interest? Who that, by a message of his servant into Bond Street, procures the last new novel cut and dry, instead of wet from the press, and demanding the labour of the paper-knife, would proceed to the extremity of a purchase? And the result is, that Messrs Folio and Duodecimo, in order to procure satisfactory orders from the circulating libraries of the multitudinous cities of this deluded empire, issue orders to their helots, Mr Scribblescrawl and Mrs Wiredrawn, requiring them to produce per annum so many sets of three volumes, adapted to the atmosphere wherein they are fated to flourish.
It is an avowed fact, that the publishers of the day will purchase the copyrights of only such works as "the libraries will take;" which libraries, besotted by the mystic charm of three volumes, immutable as the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo probation. "Robinson Crusoe" or "Paul and Virginia" would be returned unread to their authors, with a civil note of "extremely sorry to decline," &c. "The Man of Feeling" would be made to feel his insignificance. "Thinks I to Myself" might think in vain; and the "Cottagers of Glenburnie" retain their rural obscurity. So much for the measure of the maw of the circulating library. Of its taste and palate it is difficult to speak with moderation; for those of Caffraria or Otaheite might be put to the blush.
The result, however, of this fatal ascendancy is, that not a publisher who has the fear of theGazettebefore his eyes, presumes to hazard a guinea on speculations in the belles-lettres. Poetry is seldom, if ever, published except at the cost of the poet; and the foreman of one of the leading London houses is deputed to apprize aspiring rhymesters, that "his firm considers poetry a mild species of insanity"—Anglice, that it does not suit the appetite of the circulating library! For behold! this despot of bookmakers must have length, breadth, and thickness, to fill the book boxes dispatched to its subscribers in the country, as well as satisfy in town the demands of its charming subscriber, Lady Sylvester Daggerwood, and all her daughters.
It happens that the said Lady Sylvester does not like Travels, unless "nice little ladylike books of travels," such as the Quarterly informed us last year, in a fit of fribbledom, were worthy the neat little crowquills of lady-authors. Nor will she hear of Memoirs, unless light, sparkling, and scandalous, as nearly resembling those of Grammont as decency will allow. Essays she abominates; nor can she exactly understand the use of quartoes, unless, as Swift describes the merit of
"A Chrysostom to smooth his band in"—
"A Chrysostom to smooth his band in"—
to serve for flattening between the leaves her rumpled embroidery or netting!
Now you are simply and respectfully asked, beloved public, what must be the feelings of a man of genius, or of any sensible scholarly individual, when, after devoting years of his life to a work of standard excellence—a work such as in France would obtain him access to the Academy, or in Russia or Prussia a pension and an order of merit—he is told by the publisher, who in Great Britain supplies the place of these fountains of honour and reward, that "the public of the present day has no taste for serious reading;" for Messrs Folio and Duodecimo cannot, of course, afford to regard a few dons of the universities, or a few county bookclubs, parsonically presided, as representatives of the public! Whatthe disappointed man, thus enlightened, must think of "glorious Apollo" when he goes to bed that night, we should be sorry to conjecture!
"The public of the present day"—Ang.the subscribers to the circulating libraries—constitute, to his cultivated mind, a world unknown. The publichehas been wasting his life to address, is such a public as was addressed by Addison, by Swift, by Steele, or by the greater writers of the days of Elizabeth. "Bless his fine wits," we could laugh at his misconception, were we not rather inclined to cry! In instances easy to be cited, (but that there were miching malecho in the deed,) insult has been added to injury, and the anguish depicted in the face of the mortified man of letters been assuaged by friendly advice to "try his hand at something more saleable—something in the style of Harrison Ainsworth or Peter Priggins!"
O ye Athenians! to what base uses have we come, by the influence of your malpractices of old!
But all this is far from the blackest side of the picture. You have seen only the fortunes of the rejected of the circulating libraries; wait till you have studied the fate of their favourites—victims whom, like the pet-dogs of children, the publishers force to stand on their hind-legs, and be bedizened in their finery; or pet pussy-cats, whom they fondle into wearing spectacles and feeding on macaroones, instead of pursuing their avocations as honest mousers. The favourite author of the circulating libraries has a great deal to envy in the treadmill!
In the days when there existed a reading, in place of a skimming public—in the days when circulating libraries were not—the writer who followed his own devices in the choice of the subject, plot, title, treatment, and extent of his book, and made his labour a labour of love, had some chance of being cherished as the favourite of the fireside; installed on the shelf, and taken down, like Goldsmith or Defoe or Bunyan, for an hour's gossip; cried over by the young girl of the family, diverting the holiday of the schoolboy, and exercising the eyesight of the good old grandmother. But how is this ever to be achieved nowadays? Who will be ever thumbed over and spelled over as these have been?
"Invent another Vicar or another Crusoe," say the critics, "and you will see."
We shouldnotsee! No bookseller would publish them, because "no circulating library would take them;" for these bibliopoles know to a page what will be taken. Several of them have got, and several others have had, the conduct of a circulating library on their hands; and so far from venturing to present a single-volumed or double-volumed work to their subscribers, they would insist upon the dilution of the genius of Oliver or Daniel into the adequate number of pages ere they risked paper and print. O public! O dear, ingenuous public! Think how you might have ceased to delight in even the cosmogony-man, if his part had been a hundred times rehearsed in your ears; or what the matchless Lady Blarney and the incomparable Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs (I love, as old Primrose says, to repeat the whole name) might have become, as the "light conversationists" of three octavo volumes! Shakspeare was forced to kill Mercutio early in the play, lest Mercutio should killhim. We feel a devout conviction that Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs would have burked Goldsmith!
And then the incomparable Robinson! Conceive the interlarding of a funny Mrs Friday to eke out the matter, with a comical king of the Cannibal islands "to lighten the story"—according to circulating library demand! Unhappy Defoe! thy standing in the pillory had been as nothing compared with such a condemnation!
We beseech you, therefore, deluded public, when assured by critical misleadment that such writers no longer exist, do, as you are often requested to do by letters in the newspapers—from parties remanded by the police-offices for some hanging matter—"suspend your judgment," or you will deserve credit for very little. We promise you that therearegiants on the earth in these days, ay, and famous giants of their cubits! But when a giant is made to drivel, his drivelings are very little better than those of a pigmy. And we swear to you, (undercorrection from the parish vestry, which is entitled to half-a-crown an oath,) that the circulating libraries would make a driveler of Seneca! Under the circulating library tyranny, Johnson himself would have been forced to break up his long words into smaller pieces, to supply due volume for three volumes.
Above all, we have no hesitation in declaring that the circulating libraries are indictable for manslaughter, in the matter of the death of Scott. They killed him, body and soul! In better times, when books were bought, not hired, the sale of the first half dozen of his mighty novels would have sufficed both the public and the author for thrice as many years. They would have been purchased by all people of good condition, as the works of Richardson were purchased, and read, and conned, and got by heart. But behold! the circulating libraries "wanted novelty." It suited them better to invest their capital in half a dozen new and trashy books—such as extend their catalogue from No. 2470 to 2500—instead of half a dozen copies of the one sterling work, which increases their stock in trade and diminishes their stock in consols, but leaves the catalogue, which is the advertisement of their perfections, halting at No. 2470.
Now, as it happened that the same boss of constructiveness which has endowed our language with such a world of creations from the pen of Scott, betrayed him also into inventivenessperforce of brick and mortar—just as the same bent of genius which created theCastle of Otranto, created also that other colossus of lath and plaster,Strawberry Hill—the author of the Scotch novels was fain to sacrifice to the evil genius of the times; and behold! as the assiduous slave of the circulating libraries, he extinguished one of the greatest spirits of Great Britain. But for the hateful factory system of the twice three volumes per annum, he would have been still alive among us—happy and happy-making, in a green old age—watching over the maturity of his grandchildren, and waited upon by the worship of the land.
Therefore again we say, as we said a short time ago,—O ye Athenians! what have ye not to answer for in the consequence of your malpractices of old!
The only great success of the day in works of fiction, (for the laurels of Bulwer have been spindled among the rest by the factitious atmosphere of the circulating libraries), is that of Boz. And we attribute, in a great measure, the enormous circulation of his early works, to their having set at defiance the paralysing influence of the monster-misery. Shilling numbers were as the dragon's teeth. They rose up like armed men, and slew the circulating librarians. People were forced to buy them if they wanted to read them; and they were bought. Those who desired to read "Night and Morning," were not forced to purchase it, and it was not bought; and the circulation of the two works consequently remains as 2000 to 35,000 copies.
The state and prospects of authors, however, concerns you less, dear public, than the state and prospects of literature. You are a contemplative body of men, and can see into a millstone as far as most nations. You make leagues and anti-leagues for the sake of your morsel of bread; and teach the million to sing to your own tune; and, weary of keeping your heads above water, tunnel your way below it; nor will you allow the suffering shirtmakers of your metropolis to be put upon, nor Don Carlos, nor Queen Pomaré, nor any other victim of oppression. You applauded Alice Lowe, and shook hands with Courvoisier at the gallows; and it is clear you stand no nonsense, and bear no malice.
Be so good, therefore, as seriously to consider what sort of figure you will cut in the eyes of posterity, if this kind of thing is suffered to go on.
There is not one publisher in the three kingdoms (we throw down the gauntlet) who would give an adequate sum of money for any new historical work. There is not one publisher in the three kingdoms who would give even a moderate sum for a poem. We state the case liberally; for our conviction is, that they would refuse one poor half-crown. So much for theprospects; for, without a premium production is null.
As regards the state of literature, take out your pencils, (you all carry pencils, to calculate either the long odds or the odds on 'Change,) and make out a list of the works published during the last five years, likely to be known,even by name, a hundred years hence! It is some comfort to feel, thatby sightthey cannot be known—that few of them will survive to disgrace us—that the circulating libraries possess the one merit of wear and tear for the destruction of their filthy generation, like Saturn of old; for it would grieve us to think of even the trunks of the two thousandth century being lined with what lines the brains of our contemporaries. So that in the year of grace two thousand and forty-four, we shall have the Lady Blarney of Kilburn Square (the Grosvenor Square of that epoch,) enquiring of the Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs of Croydon Place (the Belgium Square)—"My dear soul, whatcouldthose poor people do to amuse themselves? They had positivelynobooks! After Scott's time till the middle of the nineteenth century not a single novelist; after the death of Byron, not a poet! I believe there was an historian of the name of Hallam, not much heard of; and the other day, at a book-stall, I picked up an odd volume of an odd writer named Carlyle. But it is really curious to consider how utterly the belles-lettres were in abeyance."
To which, of course, Miss C. W. A. S.—(even Dr Panurge could not get through the whole name again!)—"My dear love! they had Blackwood's Magazine, which, like the Koran after the burning of the Alexandrian library, supplied the place of ten millions of volumes!"
But, alas! some Burchell may be sitting by, to exclaim "fudge!" Some groper into archives will bring forth one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-abominated catalogues of Bond and other streets, showing that, on a moderate calculation, twenty books were published per diem, which, at the end of three months, possessed the value of so many bushels of oyster-shells!
And then, pray, what will you have to say for yourselves, O public! from your tombs in Westminster Abbey or your catacombs at Kensal Green? Which among you will dare come forward, with blue lights in his hand and accompanied by a trombone, like the ghost of Ninus in Semiramide, and say—"We warned these people to write for immortality. We told them it was their duty to stick in a few oaks for posterity, as well as their Canada poplars and Scotch firs. It was not our fault that they chose to grow nothing but underwood. It was the fault of the circulating libraries, which, instead of allowing the milk of human genius to set for cream, diluted it withmalice prepense, and drenched us with milk and water even to loathing!"
No, dear public! you will put your hand in your breeches' pocket like a crocodile, as you do now, and say nothing. Yon are fully aware how much of the fault is your own; but you are stultified and hardened to shame. With the disgrace of your National Gallery, and National Regency Buildings, and Pimlico Palace, and all your other vulgarisms and trivialities on your shoulders, you bully your way out of your disgrace of duncehood, like Mike Lambourne on forgetting his part in the Kenilworth pageant. "For your part, you can do very well without book-learning. You've got Shakspeare, and if with that a nation can't face the literature of Europe, the deuce is in it! With Cocker's arithmetic and Shakspeare, any public that knows what it's about, may snap its fingers at the world!"
Such, such are the demoralizing results of the ascendancy of the circulating libraries! Such is the monster-misery of literature!
Again, therefore, we say, confound those fifteen talents! What have ye not to answer for, O ye Athenians! in the consequences of your malpractices of old!
"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And Heavens artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And Heavens artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
Shakspeare
Our procession had more than the usual object of those dreadful displays: it was at once an act of revenge and an act of policy. During the period while the gates of the convent shut out the living world from us, a desperate struggle had been going on between the two ruling factions. In this contest for life and death, the more furious, of course, triumphed; such is the history of rabble revolution in all ages. The Girondist with his eloquence naturally fell before the Jacobin with his libel; the Girondist, affecting a deference for law, was trampled by the Jacobin, who valued nothing but force; the tongue and the pen were extinguished by the dagger; and this day was the consummation. A debate in the Convention, of singular talent and unexampled ferocity, had finished by the impeachment of the principal Girondists. Justice here knew nothing of the "law's delay;" and the fallen orators now headed our melancholy line, bound, bareheaded, half naked, and more than half dead with weariness, shame, and the sense of ruin;—there could scarcely be more in the blow which put an end to all their perturbations on this side of the grave.
We had frequent halts, and I had full leisure to gaze around; for, rapidly as the guillotine performed its terrible task, our procession had been extended by some additional victims from every prison which we passed; and we passed so many that I began to think the city one vast dungeon. What strange curiosity is it that could collect such myriads to look upon us? Every street was crowded with a living mass; every casement was filled; every roof presented a line of eyes straining for a glance below. Instead of the crowd of a populous city, I could have believed that I saw the population of a kingdom poured in and compressed into the narrow streets through which we wound our slow way. From time to time a shout arose, as some conspicuous member of the Convention made his appearance in the vehicle of death: then execrations, scoffs, and insults, of every bitterness, were poured upon the unfortunate being; who seldom attempted to retaliate, or make any other return but a gesture of despair, or a supplication to be suffered to die in peace. Yet all was not cruelty nor insensibility. I saw instances, where friends, bold enough to brave the vengeance of the government, rushed forward to take a last grasp of the hand that must so soon be cold; and my heart was wrung by partings between still dearer objects and the condemned;—wives rushing forward through the multitude; children held up to their father's arms; beautiful and graceful young women, forcing their wild way through the line of troops, to take a last look, and exchange a last word, with those whom they would have rejoicingly followed to the tomb.
Our progress lasted half the day, and the sun was already near its setting, when the waggon in which I sat turned into the Place de Grève. But I must, I dare, describe no more. I shall not say what I saw in that general receptacle of the day of horror—the range of low biers which lay surrounding the scaffold, now the last resting-place of men who had but a few hours before flourished in the full possession of every faculty of our being; and, still more, with all those faculties in the full ardour of public life—with brilliant ambition to stimulate, withprospects of boundless power to reward, and with that most exhilarating and tempting spell of human existence, popular acclamation, resounding in their ears. I had known some of them, I had seen then all; and now I saw those highly gifted, vigorously practised, and fiery-souled men, shaken down in an instant like a shock of corn; swept to death as if they were but so many weeds; extinguished in a moment, and in another moment flung aside, a heap of clay, to make room for other dead. And this was Republicanism—this the reign of knowledge, the triumph of freedom, the glory of political regeneration! Even in that most trying moment, when I saw the waggon, in which I remained the last survivor but one, give up my unfortunate companion to the executioner, my parting words to him, as I shook his cold hand, were—"Better the forest and the savage than republicanism! Doubly cursed be murder, when it takes the name of freedom!"
I then resolved to see and hear no more; gave a brief and still a fond recollection to England; and, committing my spirit to a still higher care, I bowed my forehead on my hands, like one laying down his head for the final blow!
But while I was still thus absorbed I heard a sudden shout, the trampling of cavalry, and the sound of trumpets. I again raised my eyes. A strong body of French troopers, covered with the dust of the high-road, and evidently exhausted by a long journey, were passing along thequaiwhich bordered the scene of execution. In the midst of these squadrons were seen Austrian standards surmounted by the tricolor, and evidently carried as trophies. The rumour now ran quickly through the spectators, that Flanders had been entered, that the enemy had been routed, and that a column of Austrian prisoners was passing through the streets, of which those squadrons formed the escort.
What could now detain the multitude? The public curiosity would probably have defied grape-shot; with one burst they poured from the square. When the populace went, why should the National Guard stay behind?—were they not as much entitled to satisfy their curiosity? Three-fourths of the guard instantly piled their muskets, leaving them in care of their less zealous or more lazy fellow warriors, and ran after the multitude. The executioners were like other men; equally touched by their "country's glory," and fond of a spectacle. They dropped by twos and threes quietly from the sides of the scaffold, and made their way to thequai. In the mean time I was left disregarded; but I was still fettered, or I should have jumped from the waggon, and taken my chance for escape. All had evidently come to a full stop, and even that horrible machine, above my head, had ceased to clank and crush; for what is a spectacle in France without an audience? The chief headsman, with two or three of his assistants, true to their post, alone remained—waiting for the return of the people; yet even they cast many a lingering glance towards the pageant, whose plumes, flags, and kettledrums, passing across the entrance of the square, made their patriotism more difficult from minute to minute. At length the trumpets died away, and, to my renewed despondency, I saw the crowd again thicken towards me and the few remaining vehicles, which that day, now sinking into twilight, was to empty of their victims.
But I was again respited. While I awaited the summons to mount the fatal steps, a party of dragoons rode into the square, seized every waggon without a moment's delay, and ordered the whole to be driven out for the reception of a column of wounded, both French and Austrians; who, having been brought to the city gates, now waited the means of transport to the great military hospital at Vincennes.
In this country of expedients, the first suggestion is always the best. The colonel of dragoons in charge of the column, had applied to the government for the means of carriage; they referred him to the municipality, who referred him to the staff of the National Guard; who referred him to the subprefect; who referred him to his subordinate functionaries; who knew nothing on the subject; until the colonel, indignant at the impertinences of office, accidentally heard that the requisite conveyances were to be seen in front of the Hotel de Ville. Regarding it as the natural right of the soldier to be first served inall cases, he sent off a squadron at full speed to make his seizure. Nothing could be more complete. The affair was settled at once. The remonstrances of the civil officers against our being thus withdrawn from their grasp, were answered by bursts of laughter at their impudence, and blows with the flat of the sabre for their presumption; for, next to the open reprobation of the army for the civic cruelties, was their scorn of the civic functionaries. The National Guard made some feeble display of resistance, but soon showed that they had no wish to try their bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of the garrison of Paris.
I had seen Vincennes before, and under trying circumstances; its frowning physiognomy had not been altered, nor, as a prison, was it more congenial to my feelings than before. Yet, on hearing the hollow tread of our horses' feet over its drawbridge, and seeing myself actually within its massive walls, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction which I had never expected to enjoy within bolts and bars. In this world contrast is every thing. I had been so fevered with alternate peril and escape, so sick of doubt, and so perplexed with the thousand miseries of flight; that, to find myself secure from casualty for the next twenty-four hours, and relieved from the trouble of thinking for myself, or thinking of any thing, was a relief which amounted almost to a pleasure. I never laid myself down to sleep with greater thankfulness, than when, stretched on the wooden guard-bed of the barrack-room, where the whole crowd of prisoners were packed together, I listened to the beat of the night-drum and the changing of the guard. They told me that, for once at least, I might sleep without a police-officer, to bid me, like Master Barnardine, "arise and be hanged."
Time in a garrison is the most lingering of all conceivable things, except time in a prison. I had it, loaded with the double weight. There was no resource to be found in the fractured and bandaged portion of human nature round me. The Austrians were brave boors, who spoke nothing but Styrian or Carinthian, or some border dialect, which nothing but barbarism had ever heard of, and which nothing but Austrian organs could have ever pronounced. The French recruits were from provinces which had their own "beloved patois," and which, to the Parisian, held nearly the same rank of civilized respect as the Kingdom of Ashantee. Besides, it was to be remembered, that all round me was a scene of suffering—the dismal epilogue of a field of battle; or rather the dropping of the curtain on the royal stage, when the glitter and the noise were gone by, and the actors reduced from their pomps and vanities, and sent home to the shivering necessities of poor human existence.
Life to me was now as stagnant as the ditch round the fortress; all feeling was as languid as the heavy air of our casemates. The mind lost all curiosity relative to the external world; and, beyond the casual knowledge which dropped, with all official mystery, from the lips of our worthy governor, and which told us that the war still continued, and that the armies of the Republic were "invincible beyond all power of human resistance;" we could not have been much more separated from sympathy, even with the capital itself, if we had been transported to one of the belts of Jupiter.
But a new alarm now seized me. The extreme indifference with which I had begun to regard all things, at length struck the eye of one of the military surgeons, who had been sent from Paris in consequence of the influx of prisoners. He seemed to take some interest in my consumptive visage and lack-lustre eye; asked me whether "some of my family had not died early in life," and offered to dictate my pursuits and regimen. The French are by nature a kindly people, with this one proviso, that, though every Frenchman on earth is more or less apersifleur, you mustnever practise the art upon himself. M. Rossignol Perigord Pantoufle would have been an incomparable subject for the exercise, for he was eccentricity from top to toe. But the state of my spirits prevented my taking any share in the burlesque which too frequently befell this worthy person; and he attached himself to me as a sort of refuge from the sly, but stinging, persecution of his fellow-officers. When the hen-wife plucks the goose's bosom it makes her nestle more closely to her goslings. It was the calamity of my friend Pantoufle to be born with what the novelists call a "too feeling heart;" he was always in love with some one or another, and always jilted. But misfortune was thrown away upon him; he was still a complete sensitive plant, shivering and shrinking at every new touch: a dish ofblancmangecould not have shaken with a slighter impulse, nor a shape of jelly more easily dissolved. He was now past fifty; and, never much indebted to nature in his youth, time, the foe to beauty, had been more than a foe to the doctor. I never recollect to have seen a figure or physiognomy less fitted to disturb the female soul. But he made me the confidant of his woes; and if I did not, like Desdemona, "to him seriously incline," at least I never laughed, amusing as were his agonies, and diverting as was his despair. I had either the presence of mind, or the feebleness of pulse, to look and listen;—the art has succeeded in higher places than prisons.
Yet all was not sentimentality with him. He was an honest and high-spirited man in the main. He questioned me—and no question could then be a bolder one at the time—in what manner he could best serve me. My answer was immediate—"Find out the commercial house of Elnathan, and tell the head of the family that I am here." The service was done, and I received for answer, on my friend's return from his ride to the Rue Vivienne—"That the firm kept no account with any person of my name; and that they had no desire to have any further application on the subject." The doctor, too, had been received with such gathering of black brows, and such murmurs between indignation and astonishment; that if Rabbi Elnathan had not been deemed altogether beneath the vengeance of "an officer in the service of the Republic," the consequence would have been a proposal to choose his own time to be run through the body in the Champs Elysées.
It was late when my ambassador had returned, and I had begun to feel some alarm for his peril by other than the shafts of Cupid in the rashness of exposing him to the jealous eye of his government, or perhaps to the denunciation of the Jewish firm, who, to screen themselves, might hasten with the intelligence to the first police-office. And I had an uneasy walk of a couple of hours, gazing from the ramparts, for every movement in the direction of the capital. The night was calm, and the glow of the lamps in the streets strikingly marked their outline; when on a sudden the sky was filled with flame of every colour, shot up in all directions, the cannon round the barriers began to roar, and Montmartre was in a perpetual blaze. It was plain that some extraordinary event had occurred; but whether this were the fall of the triumvirate or of their enemies, a new revolution or a new monarch, was beyond our knowledge; we were all hermetically sealed up in Vincennes; and if Paris had been buried in its own catacombs at the moment, the news would have been doled out to us only in the segments which suited the dignity of the governor.
But Pantoufle for once was popular in the fortress. If he had brought nothing to raise my spirits, his tidings threw the garrison into ecstasy. The Republic "had gained a great victory," whose value was enhanced by the previous disasters of the campaign. The favourite of the French armies, too, had gained that victory. This was another feature of the rejoicing. Dumourier was one of the people; "no noble, no aristocrat, no son of landed wealth, no lord of forests and feeder on privileges." He had been a simple captain of engineers; he was now conqueror of those Austrian provinces on which France had cast an eager eye for centuries. That prize, which all the monarchs of France, with all their titled marshals, had never been able to seize, "the Republic,with a republican army and a republican general, had won in the first month of her first invasion."
The garrison, of course, had its fireworks, its salute from the ramparts, and itsfeu de joie. But, in the midst of the festivity, I observed Pantoufle's countenance loaded with some mighty secret. He broke it to me with the air of a man revealing a conspiracy. Taking me on one side, while the ramparts were blazing with blue-lights, and every man, woman, and child of the garrison were chattering, huzzaing, and waltzing round us; he communicated to me the solemn fact, that his heart had been pierced again. This execution had been done while he was waiting in Elnathan's counting-house: a young Rachel or Rebecca had accidentally glanced across his sight, with such inimitable eyes, that his fate was decided for life. The world was valueless without her; and my particular advice was requested as to the way in which he was to make his approaches. I advised a sonnet. He smiled, and acknowledged that he had anticipated my advice, and had spent an hour of that twilight, dear to love and the muses, during which he had kept me in all the discomforts of suspense, devoting all the energies of his soul to the composition of a song to the beauties of the irresistible Israelite. Boileau has told the world, that a poet once insisted on his listening to an ode of his composition, while they were kneeling together at high mass. Our situation might not be quite as solemn, but the doctor was quite as pressing; and seated on the corner of a bastion, while the guns were roaring above our heads, I listened to an effusion in the most established style of sexagenarian poetry.