"'Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit beneath them is not often found.'
"'Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit beneath them is not often found.'
Jasper trembled under hers, though. Yet he still had thought for the honor of the family: he lifted his eyes meaningly to our window; she turned, perceived us; and you should have seen the shame on—Harry's face!"
Thursday, April 11, 1844.
Going home, we made a long circuit. We passed near Piney's plantation. The slaves were in the field. We stopped to look at them. They all seemed to work mechanically,—seemed all of the same low type. We could not have discerned any differences of character or capacity among them. But the overseer, who stood by, whip in hand, evidently distinguished shades of industry or reluctance.
"You see nothing of that at Harvey's," said the Doctor, as we walked on again. "You see nothing like it there," he repeated, as Harry did not reply.
"The force is there, whether we see it or not," said Harry. "Dr. Falter told us that his negroes never thought of running away. Presently we saw the bloodhounds."
"He said that the dogs were never used."
"That their being there was enough."
"Dr. Falter is not an inhuman man, Harry."
"No, indeed. He is only not a free man."
"You mean to say these precautions are a necessity of his position. It is true; and there is his justification. He has a good heart; he would rather be served through love than fear. As things are, he must base his authority on both."
"Is it not terrible, when law and opinion, which should restrain from tyranny, compel to it?"
"Let us talk of something else."
The Doctor himself led the way to a new topic. He stopped to admire the great plain which surrounded us. As we walked on again, he spoke of our magnificent prairies, of the pampas of South America, of the landes of Gascony, of the pusztas of Hungary, all of which he had seen, and of which he discriminated for us the characteristic features. He spoke of the love which the inhabitant of these immense extents feels for them,—equal to that with which the dweller on the coast, or the mountaineer, regards his home; a love, the intensity of which is due to the emotions of sublimity which they, like the ocean and grand highland scenery, excite, and debarred from which, he whose life they have exalted pines with a nameless want. The Doctor passed to the Campagna of Rome, where Harry was at home,—and I, too, through imagination. Our conversation left its record on the scene we were passing through. The Doctor, illustrating his descriptions, pointed out now this, now that feature of our own landscape. The name he associated with it rested there. Fidenæ, Antemnæ, have thus made themselves homes on beautiful undulations of our Campagna, never to be dislodged for me.
The Doctor left us presently, as he was in the habit of doing on our walks, and went on a little before. Harry and I continued to talk of Italy,—of all that it has given to the world of example and of warning. We talked of its ancient fertility and beauty, and of the causes of its decline. We talked of its earlier and later republican days; of its betrayal by the selfish ambition and covetousness of unworthy sons; of the introduction of masses of foreign slaves; of the consequent degradation of labor, once so honorable there; of the absorption of landed property in a few hands; of the gradual reduction of freemen to a condition hopeless as that of slaves; of the conversion of men of high race—and who should have been capable, by natural endowment, of what humanity has shown of best and greatest—into parasites, hireling bravoes, and shameless mendicants; of the revival of its primitive heroism in its early Christians; of its many and strenuous efforts after renovation; of the successes it attained only to be thrown back into ruin by its misleaders and misrulers. Harry has as warm hopes for Italy as I have, and his nearer knowledge of her people has not rendered his faith in them less confident than mine. We talked of the value of traditions, and especially of those which a people cherishes in regard to its own origin and early history. I found that Harry had interested himselfvery much in the ancient history of Italy, and in the questions concerning the origin of its different races. In the morning I had seen the poetical side of his mind, and had received an impression of his general culture. I now became aware of the thoroughness and exactness of his special studies.
We came to Blanty's farm. The Doctor stopped at the gate and we rejoined him there. Blanty was standing before his door, in conference with a tall, strong, self-reliant-looking black man,—a slave, but a slave as he might have been in Africa: the respectful and respected aid, companion, adviser of his master. Blanty, seeing us, came down to the gate and asked us to go in. We had not time; but we had a little talk where we were. Blanty and I discussed the future of our crops. He was well content with the season and its prospects. He had seen Dr. Borrow and Harry on Sunday. A single interview at a common friend's makes intimate acquaintance out here. Blanty was quite unreserved, and praised himself and everything belonging to him as frankly as ever Ulysses did. He is a grand good fellow. Dr. Borrow's eye rested on the black man, who remained where his master had left him, in an attitude for a statue,—so firm was his stand, so easy, so unconscious.
"He would make a good Othello," said the Doctor to Blanty.
"Yes, it is Othello. Mr. Colvil has told you about him?"
"Where did he get his name?" asked the Doctor.
"My mother gave it to him. He will not let himself be called out of it. He never knows himself by it, if it is shortened. He is a native African, though all of his life that he can remember he has passed here. His mother brought him away in her arms. They were carried to Cuba first, and re-shipped. He is more of a man than I am," continued Blanty, who is enough of a man to risk admitting a superior. "If I had his head and his tongue, I would have been in Congress before this."
"Can he read?" asked the Doctor.
"Can and does."
"But how does that agree with your law?"
"He's thirty years old," answered Blanty. "The law hadn't taken hold of reading and writing when he had his bringing up. My mother gave him as careful teaching as she did her own boys, and he got more out of it. 'Search the Scriptures,' she said, was a plain command; and how could a man search the Scriptures, if he couldn't read? But he works as well. Things here look famously, as you say; I see it myself. It's more to his praise than mine. He has done well by me;I should like to do well by him. My farm's larger than I want. I might give him a piece, as you have your German; but I can't, you know. It's hard, in a free country, that a man can't do as he would with his own. I don't want to send him off, and he doesn't want to go. I married late; if I should be taken away, I should leave my children young. I'd as soon leave them to his care as to a brother's. I've talked it over with him; he knows how I feel. And then, he's married his wife on Piney's plantation. Foolish; but I didn't tell him so. I knew marriage was a thing a man hadn't his choice in. I sometimes think it was a providence for the easing of my mind."
"You are a young man, Mr. Blanty," said the Doctor.
"I am forty-five."
"You have thirty good years before you, at least."
"I hope so, and in thirty years a great deal may happen. I mean right, and I hope God will bring things out right for me somehow."
After we left Blanty's, we walked on in silence for a time. Then the Doctor spoke abruptly,—in answer to himself, probably, for neither Harry nor I had said anything:—
"What then? What then? Here is an instance of a slave capable of taking care of himself,—thatis to say, of a man out of place. There are cases of as great hardship elsewhere. Are we not constantly hearing, even with us, of men who have never found their place? A Southern planter would feel himself very much out of place anywhere but where he is,—and very much out of place where he is, in changed relations with his people. Blanty is no example. Blanty has half a dozen slaves perhaps at most, with whom he works himself. He might change them into day-laborers and hardly know the difference. But Harvey, Westlake, Falter,—because they are provided for too well, as you seem to think,—will you dispossess them altogether? Why all sympathy for the black? Have not the whites a right to a share,—our own brothers by blood?"
"Yes, to a large share," Harry answered. "But we are made to feel most for those who have fewest to feel for them; we offer our help first to the helpless. And would not Mr. Harvey be happier, if there were no whip or stocks on his plantation, seen or unseen? Would not Dr. Falter be happier, if his bloodhounds were kept only as curiosities? I wish them both happier,—and I wish Blanty happier, who seems all the more like a brother to me, since he can see one in Othello."
"Let Blanty talk, who has a claim. If he can find men enough in his own State who agree withhim, they may be able to do something. We have no part in the matter."
"We take a part, when we give our sympathy to the maintainers of slavery, and withhold it from such as Shaler, our truest brothers,—from such as Blanty, and thousands like him, whom it might strengthen and embolden."
"Harry, you are a Northerner. You belong to a State where you need not know that there is such a thing as slavery, if you don't inquire after it. Take your lot where it has been given to you, and be thankful."
"I am neither a Northerner nor a Southerner: I am an American. If Massachusetts is dearer to me than all other States, it is only as our little farm at Rockwood is dearer to me than all other farms: I do not wish the rain to fall upon it or the sun to shine upon it more than upon others. When we met an Alabamian or a Georgian abroad, was he not our countryman? Did we not feel ourselves good Kentucks, walking through beautiful Kentucky?"
"How is it, Harry, that you, who love your country so passionately, who take such pride in her institutions, such delight in her prosperity, will yet fix your eyes on her one blemish, will insist on suffering pain she hardly feels? There is enough to do. Leave slavery where it is."
"It will not remain where it is."
"The principles on which our national institutions are founded, if they have the vital force you attribute to them, will prevail. Let patience have its perfect work."
"Sloth is not patience."
"The world is full of evils. You have not found that out yet, but you will. You have spied this one, and, young Red-Cross Knight, you must forthwith meet the monster in mortal combat. Every country has its household foe, its bosom viper, its vampire, its incubus. We are blessed in comparison with others; but we are not celestial yet. We are on the same earth with Europe, if we are on the other side of it. We have our mortal portion; but, young and strong, our country can bear its incumbrance more easily than the rest."
"She can throw it off more easily."
"Leave her to outgrow it. Let her ignore, forget it."
"Prometheus could as soon forget his vulture!"
"We will talk of something else."
We talked of something else for about half a mile, and then the Doctor, turning to Harry, said,—
"There is enough to do; and you, of all persons, have laid out enough, without embarking in a crusade against slavery. Write your histories; show the world that it has known nothing about itself up to this time; set up your model farm; aid by wordand example to restore to the culture of the ground its ancient dignity; carry out, or try to carry out, any or all of the projects with which your young brain is teeming; but do not throw yourself into an utterly thankless work. I laugh, but I am in earnest. I do hope something from you, Harry. Do not disappoint us all!"
"It is the work of our time. I cannot refuse myself to it."
"Who calls you to it? Who made you arbiter here? From whom have you your warrant?"
Harry did not answer. I spoke for him:—
"'From that supernal Judge who stirs good thoughtsIn every breast of strong authority,To look into the blots and stains of right.'"
"'From that supernal Judge who stirs good thoughtsIn every breast of strong authority,To look into the blots and stains of right.'"
Harry turned to me with a look, grateful, earnest, nobly humble: he longed to believe an oracle in these words, yet hardly dared.
"I do not know yet whether I am called to it," he said, after a few moments of grave silence; "but I stand ready. I do not know yet what I am worth. It must be years before I am prepared to be useful, if I can be. But when the time comes, if it is found that I have anything to give, I shall give it to that cause."
He spoke solemnly and with a depth of resolution which showed him moved by no new or transient impulse. The Doctor's lips were compressed, as ifhe forbade himself to answer. He walked away and looked at some flowers, or seemed to look at them, and then strolled along slowly by himself. We observed the same pace with him, but did not attempt to join him.
When we came near the grove, Doctor Borrow took his way toward it, and we followed him. He sat down on a bench; I took my place beside him, and Harry his, as usual, on the grass near us. The Doctor, refreshed by the little interval of solitude, was ready to talk again.
"Do not make me out an advocate of slavery. I am not fonder of it than you are, Harry. It has brought trouble enough upon us, and will bring us worse still."
"It can never bring upon us anything worse than itself."
"When you have disposed of slavery, what are you going to do with the slaves?"
"Slavery disposed of, there are no slaves. The men I would leave where they are, to till the ground as they till it now, only better. There has never been a time or a place in which men did not work for their family, their community, their State. The black man will work for his family, as soon as he has one,—for his community, as soon as he is a member of one,—for the State, as soon as we admit him to a share in it."
"You will not dare to say of these poor beings that they are capable of self-government?"
"Which of us would dare to say it of himself?" replied Harry, reverently; "and yet God trusts us."
"If He intends for them what He has bestowed on us, He will grant it to them."
"Through us, I hope."
"In His own time.
"'Never the heavenly fruits untimely fall:And woe to him who plucks with impious haste!'
"'Never the heavenly fruits untimely fall:And woe to him who plucks with impious haste!'
Remember the words of your favorite Iphigenia:—
"'As the king's hand is known by lavish largess,—Little to him what is to thousands wealth,—So in the sparing gift and long-delayedWe see the careful bounty of the gods.'"
"'As the king's hand is known by lavish largess,—Little to him what is to thousands wealth,—So in the sparing gift and long-delayedWe see the careful bounty of the gods.'"
"Those are the words of a Pagan priestess," Harry answered. "The hand of our God is not known by its parsimony. He does not force on us what we will not accept, but His bounty is limited only by our trust in it. Ask large enough!" he exclaimed, springing up, and standing before us,—
"'Ask large enough! and He, besought,Will grant thy full demand!'"
"'Ask large enough! and He, besought,Will grant thy full demand!'"
"Who says that?" asked the Doctor.
"The greatest religious poet of the old time, translated by the greatest of the new,—David, by Milton."
It was I who answered,—for Harry, absorbed in his own thoughts, had not heard the question.
"You uphold him!" cried the Doctor, almost accusingly.
He rose presently and walked off for home. Harry and I followed, but at a little distance, for he had the air of wishing to be alone.
I found that Harry's interest in the question of slavery was not new. In Europe, it had pained him deeply to see the injury done to the cause of freedom by our tolerance of this vestige of barbarism,—in truth, a legacy from the arbitrary systems we have rejected, but declared by the enemies of the people to be the necessary concomitant of republican institutions. He has studied, as few have, the history of slavery in the United States, and its working, political and social. It has not escaped him, that, though limited in its material domain, it has not been so in its moral empire: North, as well as South, our true development has been impeded. His great love for his country, his delight in what it has already attained, his happy hopes for its future, only quicken his sight to the dangers which threaten it from this single quarter. He sees that not only the national harmony is threatened by it, but the national virtue;—for a habit of accepting inconsistencies and silencing scruples must infallibly impair that native rectitude of judgment andsincerity of conscience through which the voice of the people is the voice of God. It is this perception, not less than the strong call the suffering of the weak makes upon every manly heart, that has brought Harry Dudley to the conviction that the obliteration of slavery is the work of our time.
We talked of the slave; of his future, which depends not more on what we do for him than on what he is able to do for himself. We spoke of the self-complacent delusion cherished among us, that he brought his faults with him from Africa, and has gained his virtues here; of the apprehension consequent on this error, that what is original will cleave to him, while that which has been imposed is liable to fall from him with his chain.
We talked of the mysterious charm possessed by the name of Africa, while its wonders and wealth were only divined and still unproved. We talked of Henry the Navigator; of the great designs so long brooded in his brain; of the sudden moment of resolution, followed up by a quarter of a century of patience; of the final success which was to have such results to the world,—in the African slave-trade, which he, of Christian princes, was the first to practise,—in the discovery of America by Columbus, to whose enterprises those of Henry immediately led.
If we could suppose that man ever, indeed, anticipated the decrees of Providence, or obtained by importunity a grant of the yet immature fruits of destiny, it might seem to have been when Henry of Portugal overcame the defences of the shrouded world, and opened new theatres to the insane covetousness of Western Europe. We cannot suppose it. Doubtless mankind needed the terrible lesson; and, happily, though the number of the victims has been immense, that of the criminals has been more limited.
The history of early Portuguese adventure—this strange history, full of the admirable and the terrible, attractive at the same time and hateful—owes nothing of its romance or its horror to the fancy of the poet or of the people. It does not come to us gathered up from tradition, to be cavilled at and perhaps rejected,—nor woven into ballad and legend. It has been preserved by sober and exact chroniclers. The earliest and most ample of its recorders, called to his task by the King of Portugal, was historiographer of the kingdom and keeper of its archives. Long a member of the household of Prince Henry, and the intimate acquaintance of his captains, he heard the story of each voyage from the lips of those who conducted it.
He makes us present at Henry's consultations before the fitting out of an expedition,—at his interviews with his returning adventurers. He gives us the report of the obstacles they met with, and the encouragements. We follow the long disappointment of the sandy coast; gain from the deck of the caravel the first glimpse of the green land, with its soft meadows, quietly feeding cattle, and inviting shade. We receive the first kindly welcome of the wondering inhabitants, and meet their later defiance.
These earliest witnesses to the character of the black man are among the most sincere. They were not tempted to deny to him the qualities they found in him. They had no doubt of the validity of the principle, that the stronger and wiser are called upon to make property of the faculties and possessions of the weaker and simpler; they were as sincerely persuaded that the privileges of superiority were with themselves. They believed in the duty and glory of extirpating heathenism, and with it the heathen, if need were. They acted under the command of "their lord Infant," to whose bounty and favor their past and their future were bound by every tie of gratitude and expectation. They had no occasion, then, to malign their victims in order to justify themselves. They did not call in question the patriotism of the people whom they intended to dispossess, nor its right to defend a country well worth defending. This people was odious to them for itssupposed worship of "the Demon," and for its use of weapons of defence strange to the invaders, and therefore unlawful. But, even while grieving for the losses and smarting under the shame of an incredible defeat, they admitted and admired the courage by which they suffered. If they seized and carried away the children left on the river-side in barbarian security, with as little remorse as any marauders that came after them, they made themselves no illusions in regard to the feelings of the father, who, discovering his loss, rushed down to the beach in a vain attempt at rescue, "without any fear, through the fury of his paternal love." They made no scruple of employing guile, when it served better than force,—the civilized and the Christian are thus privileged in their dealings with the man of Nature and the Pagan,—but their report does justice to the loyalty of primitive society. Nor does their chronicler feel any call to make himself their advocate. Glorying in their exploits, he is not ashamed of their motives. He does, indeed, bestow higher praise on those with whom desire of honor is the more prevailing incentive; but he has no fear of detaching any sympathies by avowing that their courage was fired and fortified by the promise and the view of gain.
I related to Harry some scenes from this narrative. He asked me to write it out, and hereafterto continue it, by gathering from other early witnesses what indications are to be found of the original qualities of the black races; of their condition and civilization, and of the character of their institutions, before they had been demoralized and disorganized by foreign violence and cunning. I had already sketched to him my views on this subject. His historical studies, his knowledge of the laws and customs of primitive peoples, enabled him to draw at once, from the facts I stated, the inferences to which I would have led him, and to see titles to respect where more superficial minds might have found only matter for a condescending, or perhaps a disdainful, curiosity.
Harry's request came to confirm an intention whose execution I had continually put off to a more convenient season. I gave him my promise gladly, and determined to begin while he was still with me, that I might have the pleasure of reading over at least the first pages with him. Dr. Borrow likes to spend two hours or so after breakfast in arranging and labelling his pressed flowers; Harry is pleased to have some active work in his day. It was agreed between us that he should give that time to helping Karl and Fritz, and that I should take it for writing. I resolved within myself, though, that I would not wait for the morning. Dr. Borrow was not in talking vein that evening. We broke upearly. As soon as I found myself in my room, I took out my portfolio and began. It happened to me, however,—as it has often happened to me,—that what I wrote was not what I had meant to write.
Friday, April 12, 1844.
I was to tell the story of the Finding of Guinea. But let us leave the land of mystery and promise still lying in shadow, until we have first informed ourselves a little concerning the world with which the Portuguese explorers are to bring it into relation,—the civilized and Christian world, which is about to rush into the opened road, proposing, in exchange for dominion and gold, to share with its intended tributaries its own moral and spiritual wealth, and to endow them with the fruits of its social and political wisdom.
We must be content to receive our accounts of Africa from Europeans: let us try to look at Europe with the eyes of an African.
Let us suppose that the Moorish traders, whose golden legends drew the eyes of Europe southward, have excited in a Ialof or Fulah prince a desire to see the wonders of the North. Or rather, let the traveller be a Mandingo; for that people is as remarkable for good judgment as for truthfulness, and our observer of Christian manners must be one who will not easily commit injustice. We will give him about a three-years' tour,—more time than most travellers allow themselves for forming an opinionof a quarter of the globe. It is the year 1415 schemes of African expedition are germinating in the brains of the Portuguese Infants. The Mandingo has heard of Portugal from the Moors, and of the young prince who has questioned them of Africa with so keen an interest. Portugal, then, attracts him first. We may take it for granted that the representative of Africa is well received. We may suppose him to be entertained with the superb hospitality that Bemoy, the Ialof prince, actually met with at the Portuguese court something more than half a century later. All its magnificence is displayed for his admiration; and its most delightful entertainments, such as bull-baiting, feats of dogs, tricks of buffoons, and the like, are put in requisition for him as for Bemoy.
The Mandingo traveller is, of course, very welcome to Prince Henry, as a living evidence of the existence of the hidden world he has dreamed of. The reports he receives of its resources, from so competent a witness, confirm his hopes and inflame his zeal. He expresses to the stranger his strong desire to see these interesting regions brought into communication with Europe, and discloses those projects of maritime adventure whose execution afterwards gained him the surname of the Navigator. The manners and conversation of Henry are very acceptable to his foreign guest, who is especially won by his disinterestedness: for this prince, and his young brother Ferdinand, not less ardent than himself, have the good of Africa as much at heart as that of their own country. They wish, so they tell him, to aid its advance in science and the arts; above all, they wish to carry there a religion which has been revealed to them, and which cannot but prove an inestimable blessing.
The Mandingo is surprised, and at first a little disturbed, by this last announcement; for the account he has heard of the religions of Europe is not such as to make him desire to see any of them transported to Africa. But he learns that he has been grossly misinformed: it is not true, as the Moors have reported, that the Europeans are ignorant of a Supreme Being and worship only idols: they do, indeed, pay homage to the images of tutelary divinities, whom they call saints; but they are perfectly aware that these are subordinate beings. The Africans themselves might, on the same evidence, be accused, by a superficial traveller, of a like deplorable ignorance. Neither is it true that many of the states of Europe worship an Evil Demon who delights in carnage and is propitiated by massacre. On the contrary, the Christian religion, which prevails in the greater part of Europe, teaches especially love to God and love to man; it is opposed to every form of violence, forbiddingeven retaliation, and requiring its followers to love not only friends and strangers, but even enemies. This account he receives from a good priest, who is appointed to give him instruction. He is greatly moved by the exposition of this sublime doctrine. Far from dreading, he now ardently desires to see the influences of the religion of Christendom extended to Africa. He has arrived at a favorable time for studying its precepts; for Portugal is at peace with itself and its neighbors: an unusual state of things, however, and not likely to last, as the stranger cannot but soon perceive,—for preparations unmistakably warlike are going on about him. He observes that the people are agitated by various apprehensions; he hears them murmur at their increased burdens, and at the prospect of having their sons taken from them to die in a foreign land. All this is very puzzling to our traveller. How reconcile it with the religion he was on the point of embracing? At the court he sees elation and mystery on the faces of the younger men; in those of the elder, grave concern. The people, he finds, are as ignorant as himself of the object of the military preparations: some saying that a new war with Castile is impending; others, that the king is about to aid the Father at Rome against the Father at Avignon. He is more and more perplexed; but, mindful of the reserve and delicacy becoming astranger, he is sparing of questions, and waits for time and a wider experience to enlighten him.
In the mean time, he turns his attention to what seems to concern himself more nearly. He believes that Henry, whom he perceives to be as resolute as adventurous, will one day carry out his schemes of maritime enterprise, and that he will thus exercise an influence on the destinies of Africa. Will this influence be exerted for good or evil? He sets himself to study the character of the young prince more carefully, makes diligent inquiry concerning his deportment in childhood, and tries to collect information in regard to his lineage,—for this is a point much considered among the Mandingos. He is so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of an ancient nobleman, versed in the history and traditions of the country, as well as in those of the royal court, and fond of telling what he knows, when he has a safe opportunity,—for he is a man of experience, and does not make either the past or the future a topic of conversation with his brother-courtiers. To him the African addresses his questions, and not in vain. The old man knew the present king when he was only Grand Master of the Order of Avis, and the Infant Henry has grown up under his very eyes. All that the traveller learns in regard to Henry himself is satisfactory; and he finds that King John, his father, is regardedas a just and wise sovereign. But, on nearer inquiry, he discovers that this great king is, in fact, a usurper; for, in Portugal, the successor to the crown must be the son of his father's principal wife, and King John had not this advantage. He learns, with yet more regret, that this sovereign is of a family in which filial impiety is hereditary. The first of the dynasty, King Alphonso, made war against his own mother, and imprisoned her in a fortress, where she died, having first, as the Mandingo heard with horror, bestowed her malediction on her son and his line. She foretold that he should be great, but not happy; that his posterity should live in domestic strife and unnatural hatred; that success should only bring them sorrow, and even their just enterprises should turn to evil.
The African asks anxiously whether the religion of the Christians had already been revealed in the time of Alphonso. His venerable friend replies that it had, and that Alphonso, by his great piety displayed in the building of monasteries and in the slaughter of Moors,—for he did not spare even the tender infants,—averted from himself some of the effects of the curse. But though he obtained the crown of Portugal and was permitted to triumph over the infidels, yet it was remarked that his life was disturbed and unhappy, and that he met with strange disasters in the midst of his successes. Thecurse seemed to deepen with time. His grandson, the second Alphonso, set aside his father's will, and seized on the inheritance of his sisters; a third Alphonso, son to this second one, deprived his elder brother of his throne; the fourth Alphonso rebelled against his father, and was rebelled against, in his turn, by his son Peter, whose wife he had murdered, and who, in revenge, ravaged the country that was to be his own inheritance. When he came to the throne, Peter caused the men who had been the instruments of his father's crime to be put to death by horrible and lingering tortures, which he himself superintended. This Peter, surnamed the Severe, was father to the reigning king, entitled John the Great.
The Mandingo, hearing this history of the royal house of Portugal, is made to feel that he is indeed in a country of barbarians: a fact which the pomp of their court, and the account he has heard of their religion, had almost made him forget. The old courtier becomes more and more communicative, as he sees the surprise and interest his narrative excites, and ventures at last, in strict confidence, to reveal that King John himself, before attaining to the crown, gave evidence of the qualities that marked his house. He assassinated with his own hand a man whom he considered his enemy, after inviting him to an amicable conference; he spreaddevastation and horror through the kingdom on his way to the throne, which, when he seized it, had several other claimants. One of these was, like himself, a son of Peter the Severe, and had the superiority of a legal birth; but he, having murdered his wife, went on foreign travel, and happening, when the throne of Portugal was left vacant, to be in the dominions of the husband of his niece,—another of the claimants,—was seized and thrown into prison. In this state of the family-affairs, John, the Grand Master of Avis, saw a chance for himself. He consented to act, until the true heir should be decided on, as Protector of the kingdom, and in this capacity opened the prisons, offering pardon to all who would enter his service. He thus formed a devoted little army, which he provided for by giving it license to plunder the enemies of order, among whom, it seemed, were dignitaries of Church and State, and holy recluse women: at least, their estates were ravaged, themselves murdered, and their dead bodies dragged through the streets in terror to others. There was no lack of recruits; the reformed convicts found the path of duty as congenial as that of crime, and all the ruined spendthrifts and vagabonds of the country were content to link their fortunes to those of the Protector. No corner of the kingdom was left unschooled by summary executions. In fine, the adherents of theGrand Master played their part so well, that the people, tired of the interregnum, begged him to make an end of it and set the crown on his own head. He complied, and the country had the relief of being ravaged by the armies of his Castilian competitor and of supporting his own forces in a more regular manner.
But all this is now over; the kingdom has enjoyed an interval of peace, and begins to look with pride on the prince who won it so adroitly and governs it so firmly. The curse which hung over the royal line seems to have been baffled, or, at least, suspended, by his irregular accession. He has held his usurped sceptre with a fortunate as well as a vigorous hand. His five sons are dutiful, united, and of princely endowments.
The Mandingo then inquires about the descent of Henry on the maternal side, and learns that his mother is a sister of the late king of England, a great and wise sovereign, whose son Henry, the fifth of the name, now reigns in his stead. He must see the island-kingdom governed by Prince Henry's cousin and namesake. But he postpones this visit,—for he hears that in a certain city of the mainland the most illustrious persons of Europe are assembled to hold a solemn council, whose decrees are to have force in all Christian states. Even the Supreme Pontiff himself is to be there, the headof the Christian world, superior to all potentates. The African will not lose such an opportunity of studying the manners and institutions of Europe. He hastens to Constance, where the concourse and the magnificence surpass his expectations. He inquires earnestly if he may be permitted to see the Great Pontiff, and learns, to his surprise, that three sacred personages claim this title, to the great confusion and misery of Christendom, which has already shed torrents of blood in these holy quarrels and sees new wars in preparation. Nor is this the worst that is to be dreaded. The power of the rightful Pontiff extends into the future life; and as each of the claimants threatens the followers of his rivals with terrible and unending punishment in the next world, the uncertainty is truly fearful. One of the pretenders is compelled by the council to renounce his claims, and is instantly thrown into prison, that he may have no opportunity of resuming them. A second withdraws his pretensions by deputy; and it is understood that the council intends to require a similar resignation of the third, that the anxiety of the world may be put to rest by the election of a fourth, whose rights and powers shall be unquestionable. There seems, however, no prospect of a speedy solution of these difficulties; and our traveller, having seen all the great personages of the assembly, with their equipages and attendants, begins to weary of the noise and bustle. But he hears that a ceremony of a very particular kind is about to take place, and stays to witness it; for he will neglect no opportunity of improvement. He is present, therefore, at the burning of John Huss, which he understands to be a great propitiatory sacrifice. When he hears, the following year, that a holocaust of the same kind has again been offered in the same place, he, of course, feels justified in recording it as an annual celebration. He notes as a remarkable circumstance, that the victim, on both occasions, is taken from the same nation; but he cannot learn that any law prescribes this selection, or that the efficacy of the sacrifice would be affected by a different choice. Another circumstance which seems to him noteworthy is, that, whereas, under their old religions, the people of these countries offered up, in preference, malefactors reserved for the purpose, or captives taken in war, the Europeans of this newer faith, on the contrary, select men without spot or blemish, and possessed of all the gifts and acquirements held in highest honor among them. He hears vaunted, on all sides, the virtue and learning of Huss, and, above all, his extraordinary eloquence,—for this gift is held in as much esteem in Europe as in Africa. He hears the same encomiums pronounced on the second victim, Jerome of Prague, and learns, atthe same time, that the possession of these powers renders his doom the more necessary. He can but infer that the great, though mistaken, piety of the Christians makes them conceive that only what they have of best is worthy to be devoted to so sacred a purpose. But these reflections were made a year later. We must go back to the summer of 1415.
Saturday, April 13, 1844.
It is in the month of August that our African traveller arrives in England. The king is just setting off on a hostile expedition against a country whose inhabitants, though Christian, like the English, are held by them in detestation and contempt. Just before going, the king is obliged to cut off the head of one of his cousins. The cause of this severity is thus explained:—The late king, cousin to his own predecessor, dethroned and killed him; and it being a rule in England that what has been done once is to be done again, the present king lives in great fear of cousins. He finds the people considerate of these royal exigencies. He hears praises bestowed on the clemency of the young Henry, who remits,—so it is reported,—in the case of his kinsman, a grievous part of the punishment which the law awards to treason, only suffering the sentence to be executed in full on a man of inferior rank condemned with him as his accomplice.
Notwithstanding the disturbed state of the times, the stranger is well received, and is questioned with avidity. He is gratified to find that his country is a subject of interest to the English as well as to the Portuguese. They seem, indeed, to be fully awarethat Africa is the most favored portion of the globe. They are never tired of asking about its perpetual summer, its marvellous fertility, its inexhaustible mines. Even the common soldiers in Henry's army "speak of Africa and golden joys." He finds that some of the learned maintain that continent to have been the first home of man, and believe that the terrestrial Paradise lies somewhere hidden among its mountains. When he becomes a little more familiar with his hosts, however, he finds that they entertain some notions not altogether so flattering. They are curious about a certain people of Africa who live in the caves of the earth, whose meat is the flesh of serpents, and who have no proper human speech, but only a grinning and chattering; they ask him whether his travels in his own country have extended as far as the land of the Blemmyes, a people without heads, who have their eyes and mouth set in their breasts. He answers, a little stiffly, that he has no knowledge of any such people. When they go on to inquire whether he ever ventured into the region inhabited by the Anthropophagi, explaining at the same time what peculiarities are intimated by that name, his indignation almost gets the better of him, and he denies, with some vehemence, that such wretches hold any portion of his native soil. His English friends assure him that it is nevertheless very certain that such a peoplelive in the neighborhood of the Mountains of the Moon. When he finds that he cannot otherwise persuade them out of this injurious opinion, he ventures, though with as much delicacy as possible, to tell them, that, while on the mainland of Europe, he heard stories equally wonderful and equally absurd of their own island. In especial, he heard a Frenchman assert that the eating of human flesh was practised in some part of the dominions of the English king. He assures his English friends that he refused to credit this story, as well as some other particulars in regard to their island, which seemed to him too monstrous for belief, though they were given to him on the authority of a Greek traveller of high reputation, who had not long before visited England in company with the Emperor of the East, and who had enjoyed extraordinary opportunities for studying the manners of the most polite society of the kingdom. The Mandingo is here interrupted by his English hosts, who make haste to assure him that the Greeks are everywhere known to be great liars; that the same may be said of Frenchmen; and that, indeed, there is no nation of Europe, except their own, whose word is at all to be relied upon. The Mandingo refrains from passing so severe a judgment on the travellers who brought back such rash reports of his own country, but he permits himself to suppose that they did notthemselves visit the regions whose manners they described, but received with too little examination stories prevalent in other, perhaps hostile, countries; for he is obliged to confess, with regret, that Africa is not, any more than Europe, always at peace within itself. For himself, he protests, that, even if his natural caution did not prevent him from accepting too readily the statements of the enemies of England, he should have been guarded from this error by the favorable accounts he had heard from Henry of Portugal, by whom he had been warned against believing the stories current among the common Portuguese, who held their English allies in ungrateful abhorrence, and regarded their visits in the same light as those of the plague or of famine. His English friends approve the African's candor; but he can perceive, that, so far as his own country is concerned, they remain of their first opinion. They politely turn the conversation, however, from the men of Africa to its animals,—asking, in particular, about that strange creature, shaped like a pig, but having a horse's mane, whose shadow, falling on a dog, takes from him the power of barking, and which, lurking near a sheepfold until it learns the shepherd's name, calls him by it, and, when he comes, devours him. The African does not deny that an animal possessed of these endowments may somewhere exist, but he isnot acquainted with it; neither has he met with the wonderful stone, said to be found in the same creature's eye, which, being placed under a man's tongue, causes him to foretell future events. This ignorance of the natural history of his country does not raise his reputation with the English.
They give him, on their part, every opportunity of forming a correct judgment of their own country,—not concealing or extenuating things liable to be found fault with by a stranger. Indeed, he cannot enough admire the contented and cheerful character of this people, who find advantages where others would have seen deficiencies or evils, and account by latent virtues for disagreeable appearances on the surface. They congratulate themselves that their sun never oppresses them with its rays,—that their soil has not that superabundant fertility which is only a temptation to laziness. They tell him, with pride, that it is necessary, in travelling in their country, to go in strong parties and well armed: for such is the high spirit and great heart of their people, that they cannot bear to see another have more than themselves; and such is their courage, that what they desire they seize, unless the odds are plainly too great against them. One special subject of gratulation among the English he finds to be the possession of a king whose passion is military glory; inasmuch as the foreignwars in which he engages the country have the double advantage of keeping up a warlike spirit in the nation, and of clearing off the idle hands, which might become too formidable, if their natural increase were permitted. The Mandingo, seeing so much land in the island left to itself, cannot help thinking that the hands might find employment at home. But he suppresses this reflection, and, turning the conversation upon agriculture, inquires how so energetic a people as the English can be contented with so scanty a return from their land; for he has remarked that the meagreness of their crops is not wholly due to the poverty of the soil, but likewise, and in great measure, to very imperfect tillage. Many reasons are given for this neglect of their land, all more or less creditable to the English people, but not very satisfactory to the mind of the stranger. At last, however, one is brought forward which he at once accepts as sufficient: namely, the insecurity of possession. It seems that property in England often changes owners in the most unexpected manner; so that a common man, who has hired land for cultivation of its noble proprietor, is liable to be suddenly ejected, and to lose all the fruits of his industry, to say nothing of the risk he runs of laying down his life with his lease. For it appears that the nobles of the country are equally remarkable for courage with the other idlepersons, and display it in the same manner. If they think themselves strong enough to add their neighbor's estate to their own, they will—so one of the Mandingo's English friends tells him—"make forcible entry and put out the possessor of the same, and also take his goods and chattels, so that he is utterly disinherited and undone."
The African dismisses his surprise on the subject of agriculture, and gives his attention to the cities, expecting to see the national industry turned to arts which might offer a more certain reward. He finds that the most skilful artisans are foreigners. It occurs to him, seeing the great demand for weapons of all sorts among the English, and their love of golden ornaments, that some of the skilful cutlers and ingenious goldsmiths of his own country might find encouragement. But he gives up this hope, when he sees the hatred borne to the foreign artisans by the natives, who need their skill, but grudge them the profit they draw from it. It is not an unheard-of thing for a foreign artisan or merchant, who has begun to be a little prosperous, to have his house pulled down about his ears. And well for him, if he escape with this! Besides, the jealousy of the people obliges the kings to be always making regulations for the injury of these foreigners; thus the laws are perpetually changing, so that by the time the unlucky men have adaptedthemselves to one set they find they are living under another. The restrictions and heavy exactions of the law are not enough: foreign artisans and traders are further subjected to the capricious extortions of the collectors. The Mandingo congratulates himself on the more liberal policy of his own country, and on the great respect paid there to the professors of useful arts, whose persons are inviolable even in time of war; above all, he reflects with satisfaction on the sacredness of the common law there, which, having been handed down through centuries, is known to all and admits of no dispute,—whereas, under this system of written enactments, continually varied, a man may spend his life in learning the rules he is to live by, and after all, perhaps, become a law-breaker before he knows it.
Notwithstanding some drawbacks, the African enjoys his visit to the English highly, and finds much to praise and admire among them. He does not neglect to note that they have the choicest wool in the world. This possession, he finds, has endowed them with a branch of manufacture which may be regarded as national. Their woollen cloths are not very fine, it is true, but they are much prized, both in England and in foreign countries, for their strength and durability.
He is much impressed by the religious architecture of the Christians. Before their sacred edifices, he feels his soul lifted into a sublime tranquillity, as in the presence of the grandest objects in Nature. He is much moved at recognizing in the rich stone carving a resemblance to the ornamental cane-work of African houses. This reminds him of what he once heard said by a learned Arab,—that Africa was the first home of the arts, as of man himself, and that they had gone forth from their too indulgent mother to be perfected in sterner regions, where invention is quickened by necessity. He cannot but bow before the wisdom of the superintending Providence which has caused the rigors of climate and the poverty of soil so to act on the mind of man, that, where Nature is less great and exuberant, his own works are the more transcendent, so that his spiritual part may never lack the food it draws from the view of sublime and genial objects.
He admires less the arrangements of private dwellings. He finds that in England, as in Africa, the habitations of families in easy circumstances consist of several houses; but, instead of being all placed on the ground at a little distance from each other, the square in which they stand surrounded by a pretty palisade, as is the case in Africa, they are here piled one upon another, sometimes to a considerable height, so that it is necessary to mountby long flights of uneasy steps; and then, in the cities, houses occupied by different families often adjoin each other, having a partition-wall in common, and their doors opening on a common way, so that it would seem the people living in them can have no proper notion of home or of domestic retirement. He finds that the houses of the common people in the country are not of more durable material than African houses. Those of the great are very commonly of stone, and, unless ruined by violence, are capable of serving for centuries. The African does not think this an advantage, as in the case of the temples; for these damp stone houses, so long used as human abodes, become unwholesome; and what is even worse, when evil deeds have been committed in them,—and this is too often the case with the houses of the powerful,—the contagion of guilt hangs round the walls, and the same crime is repeated in after-generations.
The African learns, while in England, what was the real aim of the warlike preparations he saw going on in Portugal. He hears of the taking of Ceuta,—an event which excites almost as much interest in England as in Portugal; for the English are supposed to have had a great part in this success. He hears, however, the chief merit ascribed to a beneficent being who bears the title of "TheLady of Mercy." It seems, the besiegers landed on a day especially consecrated to her; and to her kind interposition is referred the taking of the city and the terrible slaughter of the Moors who defended it. The African asks how favors of this kind can be made consistent with the character ascribed to this divinity, and is answered, that her mercies are for those who reverence her,—that the unbelieving Moors have no claim on her grace. He is pained; for the lovely qualities he has heard attributed to this gracious being had drawn his heart to her as to one well fitted to be a dispenser of the bounties of Heaven. But it does not appear that she is consistent even in the protection of Christians; for he hears it mentioned as an auspicious augury, that the English king effected his landing in the Christian kingdom of France on the eve of her chosen day; and later, when the Battle of Agincourt fills England with rejoicing, he hears the circumstance again referred to, and the Merciful Lady invoked as a benefactress.
He is daily more and more perplexed in regard to the religion of the Christians. He obtains instruction of an English priest, and finds he has made no mistake as to its tenets: it is understood to teach universal love and ready forgiveness in England as in Portugal. Yet he observes that nothing is considered more shameful among Christians than to pardon an injury; even the smallest affront is to be atoned by blood; and so far from the estimation in which a man is held depending on the good he has done, he is the greatest man who has slain the greatest number of his fellow-creatures.
As he stands one day before a cathedral, marvelling how people so selfish and narrow in their religious views could imagine this grand temple, which seems, indeed, raised to the Universal Father, his attention is drawn to a man of noble aspect, who is observing him with a look so kind and pitiful that he is emboldened to give the confidence which it seems to invite.
"I cannot understand the religion of the Christians!"
"The time will come when they will understand it better themselves. They are now like little children, who do, indeed, reverence the words of their father, but have not yet understanding to comprehend and follow them."
The Mandingo has no time to thank his new instructor. A party of ruffians, who have been for some moments watching the venerable man, now seize upon him, put irons on his hands and feet, and drag him away, amid the shouts and cries of the people, who crowd round, some insulting the prisoner, others bemoaning his fate, othersasking his blessing as he passes. The wondering traveller can get no other reply to his questions than, "A Lollard! a Lollard!" uttered in different tones of disgust or compassion.
He learns, upon inquiry, that the Lollards are people who hold opinions disagreeable to the king and to the great generally. For they pretend to understand the doctrines of the Christian religion after a manner of their own; and it is thought this interpretation, if disseminated among the common people, would cause serious inconvenience to their superiors. In order to prevent the spread of these dangerous doctrines, open and notorious professors of them are shut up in prison. Yet, notwithstanding the severities which await the adherents of this sect, such is the hard-heartedness of its leaders, that, when they can manage to elude justice for a time, they use unceasing efforts to persuade others to their ruin. There are among them some men of eloquence, and their success in making converts has been so great that the prisons are filled with men of the better condition, who look for no other release than death; while, in the dungeons below them, people of the common sort are heaped upon each other, perishing miserably of fevers engendered by damp and hunger.
In spite of this unfavorable account of the Lollards, the African is glad when he hears that theonly one of them he knows anything about has escaped from prison,—for the second or third time, it seems.
The words of the fugitive have sunk deep into the heart of the Mandingo. But the distant hope, that the Christians may in time grow up to their religion, cannot revive the delight which, when he first became acquainted with its doctrines, he felt in the thought that this divine revelation was to be carried to Africa. What teachers are those who themselves know not what they teach! His heart is heavy, when he sees how the Christians triumph over the fall of Ceuta. Their foot once set on African soil, their imagination embraces the whole continent. He sees the eyes of the narrators and the listeners alternately gleam and darken with cupidity and envy over the story of the successful assault, and of the immense booty won by the victors, who "seem to have gathered in a single city the spoil of the universe." He is not reassured by the admiration bestowed on the craft of the Portuguese, who contrived to keep their intended prey lulled in a false security until they were ready to fall upon it. They sent out two galleys, splendidly equipped and decorated, to convey a pretended embassy to another place. The envoys, according to private instructions, stopped on the way at Ceuta, as if for rest and refreshment, and, while receivingits hospitality, found opportunity to examine its defences and spy out its weak points. The King of Portugal himself, arriving near the devoted place with the fleet that brought its ruin, deigned to accept civilities and kind offices from the Infidels, in order the better to conceal his designs until the moment came for disclosing them with effect. The Mandingo recalls with less pleasure than heretofore the kind words of the Infant Henry and his brother. When he hears that the terrible first Alphonso of Portugal has made himself visible in a church at Coimbra, urging his descendants to follow up their successes, he shudders with foreboding.
We will not follow our explorer through all his voyages and experiences. They are numerous and wide. He carries his investigations even to the far North, where Eric of Pomerania wears the triple crown, placed on his head by the great Margaret. His wife is Philippa of England, niece and namesake of the mother of Henry of Portugal. It is, in part, interest in the family of that prince, his first intimate acquaintance in Europe, which leads the African on this distant journey. But he soon finds that neither pleasure nor profit is to be had in the dominions of Eric, an untamed savage, who beats his wife and ruins his subjects. The great men who rule under him are as bad as himself.Some of them have been noted sea-robbers; even the prelates are not ashamed to increase their revenues by the proceeds of piracy. The traveller gives but a glance to the miseries of Sweden, where the people are perishing under Eric's officials, who extort tribute from them by the most frightful tortures, and where women, yoked together, are drawing loaded carts, like oxen.
He returns to England, where he finds preparations making for a solemn sacrifice. He hears, not without emotion, that the victim selected for this occasion is the stately man who once stood with him in front of the great cathedral. He visits the place chosen for the celebration, and sees the pile of wood prepared to feed the fire, over which the victim is to be suspended by an iron chain. He cannot bring himself to witness the sacrifice, but he afterwards hears that it was performed with great pomp in the presence of many illustrious persons. The king himself, it seems, once superintended a similar ceremony in the lifetime of his father, by whom this species of sacrifice had been reinstituted after a very long disuse. It is customary to choose the victim from among the Lollards, as it is thought that the chance of serving on these occasions will contribute to deter people from adopting, or at least from proclaiming, the unsafe opinions of that sect.
The African traveller's last visit is to France. He made an earlier attempt to see that country, but, finding it ravaged by invasion and by civil war, deferred his design to a quieter time. Such a time does not arrive; but he cannot leave one of the most important countries of Europe unseen. On landing in France, he finds the condition of things even worse than he had anticipated. But he resolves to penetrate to Paris, in spite of the dangers of the road. He passes through desolated regions, where only the smoke rising from black heaps gives sign of former villages, and where the remaining trees, serving as gibbets, still bear the trophies of the reciprocal justice which the nobles and gentlemen of the country have been executing on each other.
It is on this journey through France that the Mandingo learns to be truly grateful for having been born in a civilized country. The unfortunate land in which he now finds himself has at its head a young prince who has robbed his own mother and sent her to prison. Such impious guilt cannot, the African feels, fail to draw down the vengeance of Heaven. Accordingly, when he reaches the capital, he finds the inhabitants engaged in an indiscriminate slaughter of their friends and neighbors. It almost seems to a stranger that the city is built on red clay, so soaked are the principal streetswith blood. The traveller meets no one sane enough to give an explanation of this state of things. Nor does he require one. It is plain that this people is afflicted with a judicial madness, sent upon it for the crimes of its chiefs. He finds his way to a street where the work seems completed. All is quiet here, except where some wretch still struggles with his last agony, or where one not yet wounded to death is dragging himself stealthily along the ground towards some covert where he may perhaps live through to a safer time. The stranger stoops compassionately to a child that lies on its dead father; but, as he raises it, he feels that the heaviness is not that of sleep, and lays it back on the breast where it belongs. In a neighboring quarter the work is still at its highest. Where he stands, he hears the yell of fury, the sharp cry of terror, the burst of discordant laughter, rise above the clang of weapons and the clamor of threatening and remonstrance; while, under all, the roar of a great city in movement deepens with curse and prayer and groan. And now a woman rushes from a side-street, looks wildly round for refuge, then runs, shrieking, on, until, stumbling over the dead bodies in her way, she is overtaken and silenced forever.
He has made his way out of France, and is planning new journeys, when he receives, throughsome travelling merchants, a peremptory summons from his father, who has heard such accounts of the barbarous state of Europe that he regrets having given him leave to go out on this dangerous exploring expedition.
Our Mandingo did not meet the tragic fate of Bemoy, to whom the friendship of the whites proved fatal. He returned in safety to his country.
The house of the renowned traveller became a centre of attraction. The first question asked by his guests was, invariably, whether, in his long residence among the Christians, he had learned to prefer their manners to those of his own people. He was happy to be able to assure them that this was not the case. He had met in Europe, he said, some admirable men, and he thought the people there, in general, quite as intelligent as those of his own country, but far less amiable; they were, perhaps, even more energetic, especially the Portuguese and English; but he was obliged to add, that their energies were not as constantly employed in the service of mankind as their professions gave reason to expect. What he had found very displeasing in the manners of the Europeans was their disregard of cleanliness. Their negligence in this respect was a thing inconceivable to an African who had not lived among them.
He was much embarrassed, when called upon tospeak of the religion of the Europeans and their mode of professing it. His audience was indignant at the hypocrisy of the Christians. But he was of opinion that their enthusiasm for their creed and their zeal for its propagation were undoubtedly genuine. Why, then, did they allow it no influence on their conduct? He could only conclude that they knew it to be too good for them, and that, though they found it, for this reason, of no use at all to themselves, they were perfectly sincere in thinking it an excellent religion for other people.
The result of his observations on the Christian nations was, that their genius especially displayed itself in the art of war, in which they had already attained to great eminence, and yet were intent on new inventions. Indeed, he gave it as his unqualified opinion, that the European had a great natural superiority over the African in everything which concerns the science of destruction.
The Mandingo had news, from time to time, through the travelling merchants, of what was going on in the North. He heard, in this way, of the captivity and miserable end of the Infant Ferdinand, of the accession of a fifth Alphonso, and of the revival of the bloody dissensions of the royal house of Portugal. He waited long for tidings of Henry's expeditions, although the year of his ownreturn from Europe was the same in which John Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz set off on the search for Guinea. But the looked-for news came at last, to bring with it a revival of his old foreboding.
You must allow that I have been tender of Europe. I might have introduced our traveller to it at a worse moment. Instead of going to England in the time of a chivalrous, popular prince, like Henry the Fifth, he might have seen it under Richard the Third; or I might have taken him there to assist at the decapitation of some of the eighth Henry's wives, or at a goodly number of the meaner executions, which went on, they say, at the rate of one to every five hours through that king's extended reign. Instead of making him report that human burnt-offerings, though not unknown in England, were infrequent, and that only a single victim was immolated on each occasion, I might have let him collect his statistics on this subject in the time of the bloody Mary. I am not sure that he could have seen France to much less advantage than in the days of the Bourgignon and Armagnac factions; but perhaps he would not have formed a very different judgment, if, going there a century and a half later, he had happened on the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
The African traveller sometimes a little misapprehended what he saw, no doubt; but he noted nothing in malice. If he did not see our English ancestors precisely with their own eyes or with ours, at least he did not fall into the monstrous mistakes of the Greek historian Chalcondyles, of whose statements in regard to English manners Gibbon says,—"His credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson: to distrust accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of Nature and the character of man."
Sunday Morning, April 14, 1844.
Yesterday was the day my journal should have gone; and my delay has not the usual excuse, for here was already a heavy budget. It is my love of completeness which has detained it. Next Saturday I can send you, together with the account of Harry's arrival and visit here, that of our leave-taking at Omocqua. You will thus have this little episode in my life entire.
The solicitude we had felt beforehand about Dr. Borrow's entertainment was thrown away. He has his particularities certainly, but we soon learned to accommodate ourselves to them. Harry, with perfect simplicity and directness, all along as on the first day, kept us informed of the Doctor's tastes and warned us of his antipathies, so that we had no difficulty in providing for his general comfort. As to his little humors and asperities, we accepted them, in the same way that Harry does, as belonging to the man, and never thought of asking ourselves whether we should like him better without them. One thing I will say for the Doctor: if, when he feels annoyance, he makes no secret of it, on the other hand, you can be sure that he is pleased when he appears to be,—and this is a great satisfaction. He is not inconsiderate of the weaknesses of others, either. I do not know how he divined that I disliked his blue glasses, but after the second day they disappeared. He said our pure air enabled him to do without them. Then the umbrella,—it attended us on the Saturday's walk. I supposed it was to be our inevitable companion. But on Sunday it came only as far as the door; here the Doctor stopped, held it up before him, considered, doubted, and set it down inside. Harry carried it up-stairs in the evening. I expected to see it come down again the next morning,—but it had no part in our pleasant Monday rambles. I had not said a word against the umbrella.