CHAP. XI.

FOOTNOTES:[38]The national character pierces through.[39]National property to be sold.[40]That would be a little too bad since he is here present.[41]What does it signify? he will not dare to appeal, and he is rich.[42]The revolution is a mine that must be worked.[43]Thou art not a royalist? Thou hast not conspired against the state?[44]See the men who cut through every thing.[45]Thou hast wept for the death of the king.[46]Thou hast conspired against the state.[47]She is deaf?—write, clerk, that she has conspired in a secret way against the state.[48]But that will be for another time.[49]The fish is served quite naturally.

[38]The national character pierces through.

[39]National property to be sold.

[40]That would be a little too bad since he is here present.

[41]What does it signify? he will not dare to appeal, and he is rich.

[42]The revolution is a mine that must be worked.

[43]Thou art not a royalist? Thou hast not conspired against the state?

[44]See the men who cut through every thing.

[45]Thou hast wept for the death of the king.

[46]Thou hast conspired against the state.

[47]She is deaf?—write, clerk, that she has conspired in a secret way against the state.

[48]But that will be for another time.

[49]The fish is served quite naturally.

I found a very good drawing-master at Avignon, an élève of David, one who had studied in Italy, an intelligent man; his conversation pleased and instructed me. I had much difficulty to meet with a master of the French language: no one here wanted to learn French; they were contented with such as they talked: there was no demand for institutors in this branch of education. At last I found a professor of the royal college, an ingenious man, but utterly unpractised in the art of teaching French, which he might suppose "came by nature;" and being besides unacquainted with English, he was unable to explain to his scholars of my family, any rules of grammar, whether general or particular. That I may dismiss him with honour in this my mention of him, I will recite an epigram of his composition at the beginning of the Revolution:

O liberté chérie! en vain je te poursuis:Par tout je vois ton arbre, et nulle part tes fruits.[50]

Of dancing-masters and music-masters I need not speak; their art is at the end of their fingers or of their toes. I had some trouble in managing the temper of the professor of the first of these arts, who was a Gascon; and the natural pride of the professor of music, who was a noble: but, by the help of some tact united with good-will, I obtained my end, which was, that they should depart contented. The climate did not permit dancing lessons to be taken, except in the winter.

I do not advise any one, habituated to the climate of England, and in good health, to come abroad for the sake of climate. Charles II. was certainly right when he said, one may in England be out of doors more days in the year, and more hours in the day, than in any other country. I quoted this saying to a friend, who replied, "Mais c'est toujours en souffrant;"[51]and, being accustomed to heat, he reckoned all suffering from that cause as nothing: he had been in England, and recollected how his nose was bitten, and his fingers benumbed by the frost. A friend at Avignon called on me in the middle of the day, having crept along the shady side of the streets. It is there the custom in summer to keep the windows shut during the heat ofthe day. I complained to my visitant of this practice, as depriving one of air when gasping for it. "Mais que voulez-vous? l'air est en feu."[52]I put the thermometer out at a north window, and it rose two degrees. During the greatest heat of the hot summer of 1820, I observed the thermometer pretty regularly at midnight, and found it to stand at 80 Fahrenheit.

One may rise early, and enjoy the coolness of the morning: true; but for this end it is necessary to go to bed early, and be deprived of the coolness of the evening. I knew, however, one man who had the good-sense and resolution to dispose of his day during summer in the following manner: he went to bed at midnight, rose at four in the morning, took his exercise, transacted his affairs, eat his déjeuné à la fourchette, as may be supposed, with a good appetite, and went to bed again at mid-day: at four p. m. he rose again, made his toilette, eat his dinner, and went into society, till the end of the second of the two days which he thus contrived to form out of twenty-four hours. I have been told that such is the practice of the English in the East Indies.

The plague of bugs may be avoided by careand cleanliness: the defence against gnats is a gause net surrounding the bed; but wo be to those who find one or more gnats enclosed within the net itself, as happens not unfrequently from the carelessness of the femme de chambre: the hum of the insect, and the dread of his attack, deprive you of sleep: there is no remedy but to wait till he settles upon the face; and then, while he is busy with his first bite, with an expectant and prepared hand to crush him. Flies are also very troublesome in these envied regions of the south; but flies are not like those Cassiuses, the gnats;—"they sleep o'nights."

Thebiseor north wind, coming from the frozen Alps, following the course of the Rhone, and spreading wide to right and left, is very delightful and refreshing during the summer at Avignon: but, in the winter, it penetrates even to the marrow of the bones, and sometimes, for several days together, blows with such violence, that people are afraid to walk the streets, lest they should be knocked on the head by falling tiles or chimneys. Thisbiseis supposed to render the climate healthy: the Avignonais have a proverb:—"Avenio ventosa; si ventosa, fastidiosa; si non ventosa, venenosa." How far it is "venenosa," I have but too much reason to know.

The Rhone is sometimes frozen over at Avignon: I have seen people walk across it on the ice. The cold during part of the winter is sometimes greater than that of Paris; and I have seen the cold of thehyver moyen[53]of Paris marked, on a French thermometer, as two degrees of Reaumur lower, that is stronger, than the cold of thehyver moyenof London. All the world knows that in summer it is much hotter at Paris than at London: the vine bears witness to it; but both heat and cold are tempered to England by passing over the sea.

To sum up all that I have to say at present on the subject of climate, I believe lat. 45, half way between the pole and the equator, to be, all other circumstances being equal, the best of the climes that are "mortalibus ægris Munere concessæ Divôm." Habit reconciles both to cold and heat. One consideration may not be unimportant to families that wish to economize: cold is costly. Returning into France from Italy, I find the difference between the rent of a house in Naples and that of a house in a country town, to be filled up by the expense of firing; and, at the beginning of my first winter,am almost ruined in manteaus, great coats, pelisses, blankets, and other flannels.

A country town in France is better supplied with society than a country town in England, inasmuch as the French country gentry do not disdain to live in a country town. All of them have an hotel, an apartment, or at least apied à terre, as they called it, in the largest country town in their neighbourhood, and resort thither during the winter. From the time of the wheat harvest, which in the south is towards the end of June, till the time for planting is ended, they not only live, but are very busy in the country. The practice of letting land for the half of the produce compels them to be on the spot to take charge of their own share: but, in bad weather, and during the long evenings, they seek shelter in the town. Here the members of the ancient noblesse, now without fortune, without privilege, still viewed by the many with sentiments of political dislike,—maintain their superiority over men, their equals in moral honesty, more wealthy and better instructed than themselves. And how do they maintain it? By manners. It is admirable to see with what grace and ease, without arrogating any thing to themselves or derogating from others, without art or design,—they assert their dignity, and contrive that it berecognised by those with whom they have to do. Some of those who have not the advantage, if such it may be called, of noble birth, endeavour to imitate, while others affect to despise, these manners, which throw such a charm over society; but it is impossible to despise, and very difficult to imitate them: they seem to result from an early, an almost perpetual consciousness of self-importance, corrected by a constant intercourse with others entitled to equal respect and deference. The manners of military men, more frank, and open, and manly than those of the noblesse, want the polish attained by the latter: for military men, while they derive confidence from the glory of their profession, are chiefly conversant with those whom they command or obey. "The depôt of good manners is to be found with the nobles of ancient families," said one of them to me.

Before the revolution there were in France twenty-seven thousand families of the noblesse. By the charte the nobles of imperial creation preserve their titles, the ancient nobles resume theirs. Of titles, however, very little use is made in conversation; the little particledeanswers all demands of noble self-love; and even a Duc or Duchesse is contented to be addressed, in familiar parlance, as Monsieur de —— or Madame de ——.This little particledemultiplies itself with astonishing rapidity, like the English addition Esq.; and the act by which it is assumed is no more contested in France, than that which, with us, niches a man of merit between knight and gentleman. Three or fourdewere brought into the world at Avignon, during my stay there.

What shows the practice of unauthorised assumption of thedeto be by no means so novel as its censurers pretended, is, that I found thedesometimes to precede names which signified trades: of these there are many in all countries; whereas thedeought only to indicate theterre, or estate, like the d'Igby of my maternal ancestors, and can with propriety be used for no other purpose.

But the ambition of nominal distinction was not always thus cheaply to be gratified, if I may believe the feeling lament of an old noble, that is a noble of old family, "Such an one fancies, some fine morning, that he is a count or marquis: he calls himself so: the world laughs."—"But the title passes current?" A shrug of the shoulders gave me to understand that the subject was too distressing to be further pursued. O chivalry, thou act fallen on grievous,—on money-loving times!

The title of Baronet is insignificant, having its origin too in a paltry sum of money paid to a needy king. The list (for it is not an order,) contains names that do honour to it: yet I heard in my youth a young man of one of the first families in Ireland, afterwards Marquess of ——, talk peevishly of "a parcel of d——d baronets." In endeavouring to be superior to their equals, or equal to their superiors, they undertake a task which must make them unacceptable to both parties. The ancient noblesse of France has neither feudal rights nor political power; but it has its origin in what may be called the heroic ages of Europe: the peerage of France must look up to the nobles with respect; and the people, that it may honour them, asks only to rank them among its friends.

It is a pity that the nobles should be generally reproached with want of instruction: many of them plead in excuse that they areenfans de la revolution, born at a time when their education was of necessity neglected. I mentioned this excuse to an avocat. "Bah! they well know that their fathers were as ignorant as themselves." The avocat's argument was not conclusive; the nobles of the present day might, but for the unsettled time of their youth, have partaken of the gradual improvement in knowledgewhich pervades all classes; and the remark, "je suis meilleur gentilhomme que mon père, parceque j'ai une génération de plus,"[54]might have applied to other advantages than that of counting one generation more. The French nobles have now no longer that which, according to Juvenal, makes ignorance tolerable: let us hope they will avail themselves of their diminished wealth to acquire that learning, which, according to the proverb, though I do not believe it, is better than house and land.

The practice of letting farms to amétayer, who retains a share of the produce, and pays his rent with the remainder, is resorted to and continued from necessity. The farmer has not capital enough to stock a farm. If the proprietor, after having made the necessary advances for the occupation of the land, were to let the whole for a money rent, the farmer would soon be in arrears, and would end by running away.MétairieI suppose to be derived from the Italianmetá, which signifieshalf. The landlord's share is however not always in this proportion: on fertile soils, and on account of rich products, he receives more than wheremore labour is required to reap an equal or less benefit. I believe the half to be the minimum.

After having passed through nearly the whole length of Europe, with a taste prepared by a youth passed, as Gibbon says, "in port and prejudice;" and in the same college too, I venture to assert, that wine is good in proportion as the country in which it is produced is near the all-enlivening sun. The wine of Champagne, which cannot remain for a minute and a half in the glass without growing flat; that of Burgundy, which is hardly ever found but in an acid state; that of Bordeaux, "claret for boys;"—not any one of these wines is to be compared (not for strength only, but for flavour also,) to the wines of the Rhone and of Provence. Such is my opinion: experto credat who will.

It may amuse my reader to learn that he may perhaps have been drinking French wine, when he little suspected that it lay concealed in "humble port." A trade, which in its first stage is not contraband, whatever it may be in its second, is carried on between the French shores of the Mediterranean and Portugal: wines are shipped off to Oporto, which, by the help of brandy and other manipulation, become good port wine for the London market.

I was told by a négociant, an intelligent man,not a wine-merchant, that it was the wish of the wine-growers of France, that wine imported into England should pay a dutyad valorem, on the price, not on the quantity. He did not expect that the English government should be content to receive a less amount of duty on the same quantity of wine, the mean quality supposed the same: but he asserted that wines of inferior quality, which could not be imported in the face of the duty per gallon, would then find their way; that the consumption of wine would be much increased; and the English government, as well as the French wine-dealer and proprietor of vineyards, would both be benefited. As fiscal regulations have spoiled our malt liquor, it would be but fair to allow to those who are now ruining their health with rum and water, the pleasure of drinking sometimes a bottle of small French wine. What? A bottle of Burgundy at a farmer's ordinary? Gentlemen travellers drinking claret? So much are men the slaves of habit, that the supposition appears extravagant; and, after a twelvemonth, the thing itself would be no more astonishing than it is now in France.

The French, who have seen the atmosphere of smoke in which London is enveloped, and the sea-coal pouring its volumes of smoke up thechimney, have disseminated throughout France a certain horror of coal fires. There are, near Lyons, mines of coal of a quality superior to any I have yet seen, like the Wednesbury, but better. I had some difficulty in making the blacksmith comprehend what ought to be the form of such machines as grate, poker, fender. "Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis.Mypoker was made with a hook at the end of it; the fender had a handle to it; the bars of the grate were too small and too near each other. The hook of the poker was soon straightened in the fire: of the fender handle I was contented to declare, "il n'y a pas de mal à cela:"[55]as the bars of my grate, though near, were not thick; they did not intercept more heat than usual.

Taking the precaution to have a wood fire in my second salon, I ventured to invite my friends to see my fire de charbon de terre. They were much surprised and pleased. "Il n'y a pas de mauvaise odeur: ce feu se fait respecter: quelle chaleur!"[56]The combined advantages ofgreater heat and less cost, (for the coal fire was maintained at about half the expense of a wood fire,) procured imitators. The general commanding the department had a grate set up: the smith made it after his own faulty model, declaring, no doubt, that it wasà l'Anglaise: the general was, however, well satisfied, telling me that the coal fire warmed the three rooms of his apartment as well as a wood fire in each and every one of them. The woods have been especially ravaged during an æra of insecure possession; and fire-wood, always an expensive article, is generally, throughout France, become dearer than formerly, except in the neighbourhood of great forests.

I will endeavour to enable any one to judge how far it may be worth his while to come to reside in France from motives of economy. With his motives for being economical I have nothing to do: any one may be economical at home who pleases; but it does not please some people to be economical at home: others wish to have more for the same money. The French are sometimes puzzled to make out why the English come abroad; perhaps the English are sometimes equally puzzled themselves: but, with reference to economy, sometimes the Englishseem to them to be travelling for the sake of spending money; sometimes to be staying in France for the purpose of saving it: the riches as well as the high prices of England are exaggerated; the latter to a degree that would make the riches to be merely nominal: then, the difference between French and English prices is supposed to be so great, that the saving, by living in France, must be enormous. Many English have, at first, no clearer notions than the French on these subjects.

The price of almost every article, the produce of agricultural or manufacturing industry, has been increased one-third, some say two-fifths, in France since the beginning of the Revolution: the taxes have been trebled. We know that, within the last thirty years, prices and taxes have been augmented in England at about the same rates; so that, on both sides of the water, the proportion has been preserved: but the English knew very little of France during the war; whereas the French knew England by their emigrants, who reported truly the high prices then prevalent: thus some unsettled or erroneous opinions on domestic economy may be accounted for. I left England while paper currency was still inforce, and before priceswere lowered as since they have been: my estimate must be corrected accordingly.

The result of between three and four years experience is, that about one-sixth is saved by living, not in Paris, but in a provincial town in France, or that a franc will go as far as a shilling. Set against this saving the expenses of the journey, and the saving will not be great to those who do not retrench in their mode of life, but live in France in the same style as at home. The exchange on bills drawn on England may be favourable; but some little money sticks in every hand through which money passes, which balances this advantage.

House-rent is higher in France than in England; fuel much dearer: some manufactured articles, as woollen cloth for coats, and linen or cotton for shirts, are equally dear: colonial produce, as sugar and coffee, is of a variable price, but not much cheaper: tea is cheaper, as the Americans supply it, or England with a remission of the duty. But there are no assessed taxes, no poor-rates: provisions I found to be cheaper by about one-third than I had left them in England; and my younger children, instead of small beer, with half a glass of wine each after dinner, now drank wine, with discretion indeed, butat discretion. The more numerous my family, the greater was the advantage to me of this diminution of the daily expense of food.

Yet I calculate that at the end of forty-two months, including what the journey to Avignon cost me, and the difference between the price at which my furniture was bought, and that at which it was sold,—I had spent, within one twentieth, as much as it would have cost me to live in my county town in England with the the same establishment and in the same manner. The smaller the income annually expended, the greater in proportion will be the saving; because it is chiefly on the necessary articles of living, that expense is spared; but a man of large, or even of moderate fortune, will hardly think it worth his while to dwell many years in a foreign country merely for the sake of saving five pounds in a hundred. The less the distance to which he travels, and the longer his stay; the more he becomes acquainted with the mode of dealing, and learns what are just prices;—the greater proportionably will be the savings of the economizing resident. A saving of five per cent is at least not a loss. Wise men should not entertain extravagant expectations, and prudent men should know what they are about to undertake. Those who are neither wise nor prudent hadbetter stay at home: I do not write for such; but to give to family men such advice as I found no one capable of giving me; but which, through much toil and cost and peril, I had obtained the faculty of offering to others.

FOOTNOTES:[50]O cherished liberty! in vain I follow after thee:I see thytreeevery where, and thy fruits no where.[51]But it is in suffering continually.[52]But what would you have? the air is on fire.[53]A mean or medium winter.[54]I am a better gentleman than my father, because I have one generation more.[55]There is no harm in that.[56]There is no bad smell. This fire makes itself respected. What a heat!

[50]O cherished liberty! in vain I follow after thee:I see thytreeevery where, and thy fruits no where.

[50]

O cherished liberty! in vain I follow after thee:I see thytreeevery where, and thy fruits no where.

[51]But it is in suffering continually.

[52]But what would you have? the air is on fire.

[53]A mean or medium winter.

[54]I am a better gentleman than my father, because I have one generation more.

[55]There is no harm in that.

[56]There is no bad smell. This fire makes itself respected. What a heat!

Excepting only Rome and its immediate neighbourhood, no part of Italy can exhibit so many remains of Roman antiquity as are to be found within a short distance of Avignon. The Romans seem to have united Provence to Italy, as the French have since united Piedmont to France. Our English travellers, who, according to the plan mentioned in the first chapter, pass one summer in going to Italy and another in returning from it, will do well to make Avignon their head quarters for some time, and visit the curiosities around. There is Nismes with the Pont du Gard, Arles, St. Remy, Orange, already mentioned, and other places. There is also the far-famed fountain of Vaucluse. A commission of antiquarian research is established within the department; at Nismes also much attention is paid to these objects, and with good reason; for no town in Europe, Rome excepted, possesses such precious remains.

In the beginning of the month of September of my second year, I hired a coach with threehorses again, (for no god of them all is so fond of an uneven number as these coach-masters,) and, with part of my family, took the road to Vaucluse. It passes first over a fertile alluvial plain, formed, in remote ages, by the Rhone and Durance when they overflowed their banks, as the Oby and Tobol do now. Then we traversed a country of corn, wine, and oil, and descended to Lisle, a little town on the Sorgues, the river of Vaucluse, from whose fountain it is distant about four miles. For three of these four miles as far as the village, we were able to proceed in our carriage; but, from this point, the Naiad requires to be reverentially approached on foot. We ascended a gentle steep, the Sorgues on our right-hand,—a stream, which, even here, so near its head, has force to turn several mills that harmonise well with the landscape. Above the mills it began to assume more and more a torrent-like appearance; the rocks approached nearer on each side, and confined us within a still closer valley. Whither has the nymph of the stream retired? At length the termination of the valley appeared before us; a lofty curtain of rock, at half the height of which was seen a wide and dusky arch, overshadowed by a fig-tree growing out of the precipice above.Over a shelving rock, at the foot of this arch, the water throws itself.

But there was at this time no cascade; the fountain was more than ordinarily low; streams gushed through fissures at the foot and sides of the rock below the arch, and indicated their source. The shelf or lip, at the mouth of the cavern, forms a natural bridge over these streams: we ascended to this shelf, and went down into the cavern a considerable depth before we arrived at the water: here, a rock projecting into the water prevented us from going into a second cavern; but we could see, (for the opening above afforded sufficient light,) that this second cavern was the last.

I thought it very fortunate that the fountain was so low: had it been full, we should have seen a water-fall; but I had now seen the Helicon of Petrarch,—had penetrated to the source of his inspiration,

———atque sacri libamina palleo fontis,

as was written by a young man of genius at Oxford, in my time, whose name I do not remember, though I have not forgotten this striking and beautiful expression. In sober sadness, I think it an advantage to understand the nature and situation of the fountain better than I shouldhave done had I seen only a picturesque cascade. I do not believe the immediate source of the fountain to be within the cavern, but that its waters are supplied in subterranean courses by the surrounding country: this is proved, I think, by their quantity being so much affected by rain or drought. St. Winifred's well at Holywell, in Flintshire,—a fountain as copious as that of the Sorgues,—is not at all increased or diminished by any change of the seasons.

We loitered for two hours on the bank of the tumbling torrent, sat under the shade of walnut trees, and eat of their fallen fruit; drank water from the fountain, talked about Petrarch and Laura, and refused, from incredulity, and on account of the heat of the sun, to mount a hill to a house which, we were assured, had been inhabited by the bard. At the village of Vaucluse, we took into our carriage some delicious grapes, and returned to Lisle, where we dined on eels and trout, the boasted fare of the place, prepared in three several ways. As the landlord at Lisle is said sometimes to over-charge, I will do his reputation the justice to observe that, for a déjeuné à la fourchette, and dinner for five persons, with good vin du pays, he demanded twenty-five francs,—perhaps ten sous a head too much. We got into our coach as the sun set andthe moon rose, and our three horses took us back to Avignon in two hours.

In the very heart and centre of the romantic scenery of the Vallis Clausa, a little to the right of the cavern out of which issues the fountain, on the ledge over which it falls, is stuck a mean ugly pillar, put there by somebody to commemorate something. I mention this pillar only in the hope that good taste will command its demolition. Even if it were fine and rare, it would be there misplaced: "fortasse cupressum scis simulare," but what has that to do with a shipwreck?

My younger son had accompanied to Vaucluse the lady whose visit of fifteen days had so much astonished the Avignonais a few months before. Our excursion thither was made under the conduct of my elder son, and was rendered more agreeable by his frank manners and cheerful attentions. As the fate of this young man, now in his nineteenth year, is the occurrence the most important to me, and, I am persuaded, the subject most interesting to my readers in the contents of this narrative,—I will give some account of the infancy of this son, that he may be introduced to their acquaintance, and the last scene of his life in some sort prepared for. Alas! within two years, on the anniversary ofour journey to Vaucluse, the delirium of his fever deprived me for the remainder of my life of the comfort of his society, excepting only one short and consoling conversation immediately before his death. I trust, in the divine mercy, to rejoin him in the abodes of the just.

His birth was announced to me at three o'clock in the morning of the 5th of May 1801. In anxious expectation of this news I had forborn to retire to rest. It was still necessary for me to wait some little time before I could be admitted to see my first-born. I then lived at Bath, in the west wing of Lansdown Crescent: behind each house of this building is a long strip of garden, of the breadth of the house. In the tumult of new affections I went out into my garden: the twilight of the morning was visible: I offered to God this child, who, by the ancient law, would have been consecrated to him, to serve at the altar, if such were the divine will; praying that, in whatever state, he might so live as to secure his own salvation, and contribute to the edification of others: that if he were not to fulfil this only worthy purpose of existence, he might now die in infancy; but that rather his days might be prolonged, if that were to the glory of God, and the increase of his own merit and reward. My prayer was heard:I returned into the house, and gave a father's blessing to the stranger.

He received in baptism the names Henry Kenelm; the former adopted in his family for the last four generations, the latter derived from my maternal grandfather. His sponsors were Sir Thomas Fletewood, the last of an ancient and pious family of Cheshire; and his lady, afterwards married to the Count St. Martin de Front, Sardinian ambassador at London. To her it is no doubt a source of Christian consolation to know, even in this life, that her godson fulfilled the engagement contracted in his name.

They who have attentively observed the early years of children must be convinced that each and every one of them is born with a distinct and individual character. Two men of fifty, "stained with the variation of each soil," will differ from each other in manners and opinions more than two children of the same family: but two children of the same family will, in character, differ from each other as much as two men of fifty. Pascal suggests a doubt whether, as custom is called a second nature, nature itself may not be a former custom. This profound thought leads to the question whether human souls have existed previously to their imprisonment in this "body of our humiliation."That they have so existed I think extremely probable for many very cogent reasons: it is an opinion which I could defend, merely as an opinion, by many powerful arguments. I am contented "not to be wise beyond what is written." Yet it is written that, when the disciples asked our Lord, "Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?" our Lord, without reproving the supposition that the man might have sinned before his birth, simply answered, "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents."

Henry Kenelm manifested, as early as the natural character can be manifested, a proud, impetuous, obstinate, angry temper: that he wanted any thing was, with him, a reason why he should have it; that any other child was younger or weaker than himself, entitled him, as he thought, to domineer. He had also the good qualities usually opposed to these faults in the same character; he was generous, grateful, confiding, compassionate. As no one, in so short a life, ever more completely subdued than he did the faults of his natural temper, I record them for the sake of doing homage to that religion by the aid of which he was enabled to correct them.

His understanding was quick and lively, andhe learned readily and with pleasure. A cause of hindrance and delay that occurred to him in learning to read shall here be mentioned as a caution to parents, institutors, and governesses. To play at learning to read is regarded as a great improvement on the "Reading-made-easy," of less enlightened times. A lady made him a present of a cylindrical ivory box containing counters, on which were inscribed the letters of the alphabet. He trundled the box on the carpet, he threw the letters on the carpet, and viewed them in all directions, sometimes sideways, sometimes topsy-turvy; so that he no longer knew them again when he saw them upright in a book: b and q and d and p more especially puzzled him: besides, the place of letters in words is of great use towards learning their power, and this help his counters did not afford him. To impose on him the task of arranging the letters inverbalorder, would have included all the restraint of a formal lesson. The conclusion is, that if children play, they do not learn; and while they learn, they must not play: there is a time for all things: their lessons must be short on account of the softness of the brain, but attention must be insisted on; they cannot be cheated as to the nature of the occupation,but they have sense enough to find pleasure in the consciousness of improvement.

When Kenelm was little more than five years and a half old, his elder sister died: she was thirteen months younger than himself. Never was child more lovely in death than this little girl. I gazed on her with the feeling, since portrayed in the inimitable lines of the Giaour, beginning

He who hath bent him o'er the dead.

These lines I read fourteen years afterwards at Avignon; they thrilled and electrified me: the touch of genius recalled the scene I had witnessed. Yet it should seem that associations supplied by reason and experience are requisite to the contemplation of such an object with the sentiments described by Lord Byron. I led Kenelm to see his sister two hours after her death: terror was his predominant emotion; the immobility of what still so much resembled life appalled him. He burst into tears. "If I had thought she would have lookedso, I would not have come to see her;" nor could he for some time pass the door of that chamber without shuddering.

When he was twelve years old, I placed him at Stoneyhurst college in Lancashire. Thissociety of English Jesuits, the dreadful Jesuits of St. Omers, of the Popish plot, had, within half a century, suffered three removes ordéménagemens, which both the French and English proverb says are worse than a fire. They had been expelled from St. Omers by the French government, had been obliged by Joseph II. to quit Bruges, and had been driven from Liege by the approach of the French armies. They had now been established for some years in a country-seat of the family of Lulworth castle. Mr. Weld had given them a beneficial lease of the house and domain of Stoneyhurst, for which they expressed much gratitude. It is good to be grateful: gratitude is a Christian virtue, and well-becoming those who by their missions, their literary labours, and their institutions for education, have acquired so much glory to themselves, and rendered such signal services to the Christian world. Let them always be grateful.

An account of their plan of education may not be unacceptable, and may furnish some hints to the heads of our great schools. I am inclined to think that the Jesuits, though as much spoken against, are very little more known in England than at the time when I left it.

The whole number of boys, about two hundredand fifty, is divided into six schools or classes, to each of which a master is appointed, who, in the course of six years, conducts his set of boys, from the elements of grammar in the French, Latin, and Greek languages, to rhetoric, or the reading of the best classical authors. The fifth year, or that before rhetoric, is set apart for the study of the poets only. After this course of six years, lectures are given by the professors of moral and natural philosophy.

The masters have no intercourse with their scholars except during the holding the class or saying the lesson: prefects are appointed to superintend them at all other times. They study in a large room destined to this use only: a prefect, in a lofty tribune, enforces application: a prefect attends them while at play to prevent violence, quarrelling, or indecorous language: a prefect sleeps in a little room with a glass door at the end of the dormitory.

The play-ground is divided into two equal portions, one of which is allotted to the boys of the three higher, the other to the boys of the three lower schools, and no one is allowed to cross the bisecting line. Thus the tyranny of the great boys over the little ones, and the requisition of petty, irregular, or mischievous servicesis prevented: thus also the years and strength of those who play together are generally more equal.

No master or other superior, who conceives that a boy has deserved punishment, is allowed to inflict that punishment himself, but is obliged to send such boy to the prefect appointed for the time administrator of the ferula: the boys, either from custom or the point of honour, or the fear of worse, always ask for the number of strokes of the ferula which they may be ordered by the superior to receive. A whimsical result of subordination, that a lad of seventeen shall go to a man of five and twenty, and say, "Please, Sir, to give me nine ferulas." Horace talks of the ferula; he does not say that he petitioned for it himself; and I saw, by an al fresco at Portici, that boys were flogged, two thousand years ago, just as they now are in our country schools.

The dormitory is a lofty room, in which each boy has his bed-place to himself, separated from his neighbours by a wainscot partition six feet high; a curtain, with a number upon it, is drawn at the foot of the bed-place, which is open at the top. During the day-time the dormitory is locked, and none but the servantsof the house are, on any account, permitted to go into it.

The élèves of Stoneyhurst wear an uniform: this regulation, I am persuaded, has a better moral influence on their minds than ferulas and disciplines: "their feet are accommodated," as a fine writer once expressed it, with very thick shoes; "and their heads are protected" by a leathern cap: this cap is made to shade the face or to be turned up at pleasure; it is trimmed with fur, and, while fresh, looks very smart: but it is soondegraded, as the French phrase is, by the various uses to which caprice or convenience induces the boys to apply it: they sit upon it; they kneel upon it; they blow, or rather fan the fire with it; they use it for a bag, and perhaps sometimes, when unseen by the prefect, they give each other slaps on the face with it;—a trait d'écolier for the which its form, when folded, is admirably well adapted. A blue jacket and red waistcoat of coarse cloth, dark velveteen pantalon, and worsted stockings, a black velvet stock round the collar of a very coarse shirt, complete the habiliments of the Stoneyhurst collegian. "Forsan et hæc olim," &c.

The boys rise at half past five in the morningand go to bed at half past eight in the evening. Prayers in the chapel begin and end every day, and they assist at mass daily. Those who are of sufficient age confess and communicate once a fortnight.

Such are, in the main, the regulations of this Jesuits' college. During their unsettled state, the society had admitted but few new members; in consequence, the education of their youth was, at this time, conducted chiefly by old men without activity, and young men without experience. The course of a few years has remedied this evil.

When Kenelm arrived at Stoneyhurst, his heart bounded within him at the sight of the spacious buildings, and of between two and three hundred playfellows: he immediately procured a cap and black collar, and was as vain of them as a young ensign of his cockade and sword. The superior led me over the college; Kenelm followed and considered all as provided for his use and convenience. I tried to persuade him that his visits to the library, the academy-room, the strangers' apartment, and the garden of the superiors, would not hereafter be very frequent; that his repasts in the refectory, though sufficient and wholesome, would not be luxurious. I was unable to moderatehis transport: hardly could I prevail on him to show some signs of regret at parting from me. I appealed to "Philip when sober."

The next summer, I found him sober enough: he had discovered that he was only one of a crowd; he felt the want of domestic affections, and of those comforts which home only can supply. I consoled him however, and left him, after three days spent at Whalley, in a disposition to endure all that his duty and the destined course of his studies might require.

"O Athenians," said Themistocles, "how much do I suffer to gain your applause!" Children have but too much reason to exclaim, "O Themistocles, how much do we suffer to be able to read your history!"

The next summer, I sent for him to Park Gate, where he rejoined his brother and sisters after two years absence. To the number of his sisters was added one, whose infancy, unsuited for travelling, delayed my journey to France. At this time he was gay and cheerful: he did not know the world, and was not afraid of it; yet his behaviour was directed by an ever sure sense of propriety. I was pleased and satisfied with him:—he passed five weeks with us. I had given him the meeting at Liverpool, whither he had been conducted by a prefect: I nowtook him back to the same town, where we found a prefect with whom he returned to his college.

In the month of July of the following year, 1816, I received a letter from one of the superiors of the college, informing me that my son, with thirty-six other boys, had fallen ill of the measles; that my son had recovered, but, having been allowed to go out too soon, had again fallen ill. The letter was couched in terms so ambiguous, and implying so much doubt of the event, that it caused great alarm. I set off immediately: no other letter was written, and Kenelm's mother was kept in a state of fearful anxiety, till I wrote to her from Stoneyhurst that her son was recovered from the relapse. He was however so much weakened, that I thought it advisable to take him to the sea-coast. I passed ten days with him alone, and had an opportunity of appreciating his character, of observing his unaffected good sense, his gentle and amiable manners, his watchfulness over his conscience, his dutiful affection to his father, his piety towards God.

We returned to college to be present at the academy-day, and the distribution of the prizes. Kenelm had been assured that, but for his illness, one of these prizes would have fallen tohis share. I comforted him as well as I could, quoting—"satis est potuisse videri."

In the spring of the following year, I took my younger son to Stoneyhurst, in the hope that the brothers would find present pleasure in each others' company, and hereafter talk over together the scenes of their boyhood. I observed that Kenelm's spirits appeared depressed: I questioned him; he assured me he had nothing to complain of: I interrogated the master: he spoke of Kenelm with great regard, and knew not that any cause of uneasiness existed for him. I passed three days with my sons, during which time Kenelm's cheerfulness returned, or seemed to return; and I left them together.

Towards the end of this year, I finally resolved to put in execution my long-projected, long-delayed, continental plan. I advised the brothers of my purpose, who were, of course, delighted with the news. A kind and much-esteemed friend, who wished to see Stoneyhurst college, brought them back with him into Lincolnshire at the end of March following.

In the month that intervened between the return of my sons and our arrival in Paris, the expectation of the journey, the preparation for the journey, and the journey itself, so far occupiedthe mind of Kenelm, that I had not remarked in him any extraordinary want of gaiety: I perceived only that he was more serious, that his manner was less frank, and even his carriage less easy than heretofore. At Paris, the first discovery I made respecting him was that he was become short-sighted. As we were viewing the statues of the Louvre, he exclaimed, "I see nothing but blocks of marble;" and he went off immediately to Chevalier's, the optician, to buy himself a lorgnette. I sympathized with him, knowing by experience that a short sight deprives us of a great part of the pleasure of existence, besides being an incalculable disadvantage in society. He imputed his short-sightedness to his having imprudently given himself up to study, before his health was fully re-established after the measles, in the hope of gaining, at the next academy-day, the medal which he had lost by his illness; that he had read a great deal by the flaring gas lights with which the college is illuminated.

Something remained behind, a reserve, a sadness even, which I entreated him to account for. He gave me his full confidence; and I learned, with very great sorrow, that, for the last eighteen months of his stay in college, his mind had been a prey to scruples. This "pious awe, and fearto have offended," carried to excess through inexperience and a want of due apprehension that it is by the will only that we offend,—had destroyed his gaiety, retarded his improvement, and doubtlessly much injured his health.

I asked him, "What advice did your director give you?"—"None."—"Any other superior?"—"None." Yet his state was sufficiently evident: he joined in no play; he did not seek the company of his brother. Alone, or with one or two companions, he employed the time allowed for play in walking up and down, indulging the workings of his own mind. I regretted that I had not taken him home when he requested, after his illness: I regretted that, instead of taking his brother to college,—a measure so inefficient for his consolation,—I had not come to France a twelvemonth sooner: I regretted the time lost, and the time that was still to be lost in regaining it. But Kenelm's mind was now at ease; feelings, originating probably in a weak state of health, and continued only through want of good counsel and sympathy, were at an end, when he found himself with those whom he loved, by whom he was beloved: his understanding was too clear for him to persevere either in inadequate notions of the divine goodness, or in false judgments respecting duty.

Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of divine mercy,) of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm.

Yet this fear, "the beginning of wisdom," acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, "If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend." A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence,—said to him, "Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession." I will own that the vigour and prudenceunited in this counsel struck me with awe. The saints are men of great minds: philosophers are mistaken in thinking them fools.

A kind and discreet priest, at Avignon, talked to Kenelm in the same sense, reminding him of the saying of St. Francis of Sales, "that scruples are the worst things in the world except sin." Kenelm's mind recovered its wonted cheerfulness and activity: family affections, change of scene, and new occupations soon completed what good advice had begun. He was yet too young to enter into society: he laboured to perfect himself in the French language; he was delighted with drawing, declaring that, were it consistent with duty, he could pass the whole day in that amusement. He continued his classical studies from the point at which they had been interrupted by his leaving college, where he was in his fifth or poetical year. I read with him Homer and Virgil.

Of the Iliad he said, that, a few well-known sublime passages excepted, the rest, was vulgar: and when I mouthed forth the Greek, in order to impose on him the conviction that it was very fine,—"I grant you that Homer has the advantage of a sonorous language and the hexameter line; but there is very little grace in the expression, nor is the thought deserving ofit." He admired the delicacy of sentiment in the Æneid: he discovered in it traces of more advanced civilization and more improved knowledge than are to be found in Homer, as well as a more correct and refined taste. I recommended the Odyssey to him, not only on account of its varied fable and "specious wonders," but for the justness with which human character and natural feeling are there rendered. We also read together that Machiavel of historians, Tacitus, who, as I endeavoured to persuade Kenelm, has treated the fame of Tiberius with great injustice, by representing him, on every occasion, as a cunning and cruel tyrant; whereas he was always wise, habitually just, and often beneficent. Let any one fairly and impartially analyse the actions of this sovereign and the comments of the historian, and he will perhaps be inclined to allow that my opinion is not altogether unreasonable. Concerning the personal vices of Tiberius there is here no question.

I was delighted with one of the results of my continental plan,—that my children were now all of them under my own care. To what purpose subject boys to all the privations, restraints, and severities,—all the consequences of the ignorances and negligences of themanagers of great schools,—that they may acquire a very moderate knowledge of two dead languages, which they generally neglect during the rest of their lives; and this for six years or more? Who doubts but that he could learn to read French in six months? And why should he not be equally capable of learning Latin in the same space of time? And in six months more he may learn to read Greek, which is rather the easier language of the two: he may thus obtain admission to the treasures of wisdom and good taste contained in those languages, in one-sixth of the time now usually thrown away in a vain attempt to that purpose; for, I repeat it, boys are compelled to employ the time of their education innotlearning what is of no use to them.

Latin is no longer the language of literary composition, diplomatic intercourse, or epistolary correspondence. It is sufficient that a few men, in every generation, write Latin, like Bishop Louth, or Dr. Martin Joseph Routh. The principal nations of Europe have their classics, formed indeed upon the ancient classical model; and these, therefore, will be better understood and more enjoyed by those who cultivate an acquaintance with that model. Still, however, such previous acquaintance is not indispensable:its advantage consists chiefly in being able to note allusions and institute comparisons.

Let me not be understood to express a wish that the Greek and Latin authors were less read than they are at present; on the contrary, I hope that they will always be considered as an essential part of the studies of a literary man. That the Greek especially should be so little known as now it is, is to me a cause of regret. This language has the singular privilege of having been, during twelve centuries, the language of the most ingenious and enlightened people of all that existed during that long æra. We have their authors from Hesiod to Photius, and still lower down; a library superior to that of any modern nation; for the trash has been swept away.

Far, very far from me, be the desire, that it should be said of such a people in any sense, literary or political,

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