XXX

XXXTHE GARTER"Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said——I should uncommonly like to be a Knight of the Garter?" If such there be, let him forswear this column and pass on to the Cotton Market or the Education Bill. Here we cater for those in whom the historic instinct is combined with picturesque sensibility, and who love to trace the stream of the national life as it flows through long-descended rites. Lord Acton wrote finely of "Institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." No institution fulfils this ideal more absolutely than the Order of the Garter. One need not always "commence with the Deluge"; and there is no occasion to consult the lively oracles of Mrs. Markham for the story of the dropped garter and the chivalrous motto. It is enough to remember that the Order links the last enchantments of the Middle Age with the Twentieth Century, and that for at least four hundred years it has played a real, though hidden, part in the secret strategy of English Statecraft.We are told by travellers that the Emperor of Lilliput rewarded his courtiers with three fine silken threads of about six inches long, one of which was blue, one red, and one green. The method by which these rewards were obtained is thus described by an eye-witness: "The Emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over it, sometimes creep under it, backwards and forwards, several times, according as the stick is elevated or depressed. Whoever shows the most agility and performs his part best of leaping and creeping is rewarded with the blue coloured silk, the next with the red, and so on."To-day we are not concerned with the red silk, wisely invented by Sir Robert Walpole for the benefit of those who could not aspire to the blue; nor with the green, which illustrates the continuous and separate polity of the Northern Kingdom. The blue silk supplies us with all the material we shall need. In its wider aspect of the Blue Ribbon, it has its secure place in the art, the history, and the literature of England; though perhaps the Dryasdusts of future ages will be perplexed by the Manichæan associations which will then have gathered round it. "When," they will ask, "and by what process, did the ensign of a high chivalric Order which originated at a banquet become the symbol of total abstinence from fermented drinks?" Even so, a high-toneddamsel from the State of Maine, regarding the Blue Ribbon which girt Lord Granville's white waistcoat, congratulated him on the boldness with which he displayed his colours, and then shrank back in astonished horror as he raised his claret-glass to his lips. In one of the prettiest of historical novels Amy Robsart is represented as examining with childish wonder the various badges and decorations which her husband wears, while Leicester, amused by her simplicity, explains the significance of each. "The embroidered strap, as thou callest it, around my knee," he said, "is the English Garter, an ornament which Kings are proud to wear. See, here is the star which belongs to it, and here is the diamond George, the jewel of the Order. You have heard how King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury——" "Oh, I know all that tale," said the Countess, slightly blushing, "and how a lady's garter became the proudest badge of English chivalry."There are certain families which may be styled "Garter Families," so constant—almost unbroken—has been the tradition that the head of the family should be a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order. Such is the House of Beaufort; is there not a great saloon at Badminton walled entirely with portraits of Dukes of Beaufort in their flowing mantles of Garter-Blue? Such is the House of Bedford, which has worn the Garter from the reign of Henry VIII. till now; such the House of Norfolk, which contrived to retain itsGarters, though it often lost its head, in times of civil commotion. The Dukes of Devonshire, again, have been habitual Garter-wearers; and the fourteenth Earl of Derby, though he refused a dukedom, was proud to accept an extra Garter (raising the number of Knights above the statutory twenty-five), which Queen Victoria gave him as a consolation for his eviction from the Premiership in 1859.Punch, then, as now, no respecter of persons, had an excellent cartoon of a blubbering child, to whom a gracious lady soothingly remarks, "Did he have a nasty tumble, then? Here's something pretty for him to play with." The Percys, again, were pre-eminently a Garter Family; sixteen heads of the house have worn Blue silk. So far as the male line was concerned, they came to an end in 1670. The eventual heiress of the house married Sir Hugh Smithson, who acquired the estates and assumed the name of the historic Percys. Having, in virtue of this great alliance, been created Earl of Northumberland, Sir Hugh begged George III. to give him the Garter. When the King demurred, the aspirant exclaimed, in the bitterness of his heart, "I am the first Northumberland who ever was refused the Garter." To which the King replied, not unreasonably, "And you are the first Smithson who ever asked for it." However, there are forms of political pressure to which even Kings must yield, and people who had "borough influence" could generally get their way when George III. wanted some trustworthy votes in the House of Commons. So Sir Hugh Smithsondied a Duke and a K.G., and since his day the Percys have been continuously Gartered.But it is in the sphere of rank just below that of the "Garter Families" that the Blue silk of Swift's imagination exercises its most potent influence. Men who are placed by the circumstances of their birth far beyond the temptations of mere cupidity, men who are justly satisfied with their social position and have no special wish to be transmogrified into marquises or dukes, are found to desire the Garter with an almost passionate fondness. Many a curious vote in a stand-or-fall division, many an unexpected declaration at a political crisis, many a transfer of local influence at an important election has been dictated by calculations about a possible Garter. It was this view of the decoration which inspired Lord Melbourne when, to the suggestion that he should take a vacant Garter for himself, he replied, "But why should I? I don't want to bribe myself." This same light-hearted statesman disputes with Lord Palmerston the credit of having said, "The great beauty of the Garter is that there's no d—— d nonsense of merit about it;" but it was undoubtedly Palmerston who declined to pay the customary fees to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, and on being gravely told that, unless he paid, his banner could not be erected in St. George's Chapel, replied that, as he never went to church at Windsor or anywhere else, the omission would not much affect him.What made the recent Chapter of the Garter peculiarly exciting to such as have æsthetic as well as historic minds was the fact that, for once, the Knights might be seen in the full splendour of their magnificent costume. No other Order has so elaborate a paraphernalia, and every detail smacks deliciously of the antique world. The long, sweeping mantle of Garter-blue is worn over a surcoat and hood of crimson velvet. The hat is trimmed with ostrich feathers and heron's plumes. The enamelled collar swings majestically from shoulder to shoulder; from it depends the image of St. George trampling down the dragon; and round the left knee runs the Garter itself, setting forth the motto of the Order in letters of gold. It is a truly regal costume; and those who saw Lord Spencer so arrayed at the Coronation of King Edward might have fancied that they were gazing on an animated Vandyke. These full splendours of the Order are seldom seen, but some modifications of them appear on stated occasions. The King was married in the mantle of the Garter, worn over a Field-Marshal's uniform; and a similar practice is observed at ceremonies in St. George's Chapel. The Statutes of the Order bind every Knight, on his chivalric obedience, to wear the badge—the "George," as it is technically called—at all times and places. In obedience to this rule the Marquis of Abercorn, who died in 1818, always went out shooting in the Blue Ribbon from which, in ordinary dress, the badge depends. But thosewere the days when people played cricket in tall hats and attended the House of Commons in knee-breeches and silk stockings. Prince Albert, whose conscience in ceremonial matters was even painfully acute, always wore his Blue Ribbon over his shirt and below his waistcoat; and in his ancient photographs it can be dimly traced crossing his chest in the neighbourhood of his shirt studs. But to-day one chiefly sees it at dinners. A tradition of the Order requires a Knight dining with a brother-Knight to wear it, and after dinner one may meet it at an evening party. The disuse of knee-breeches, except in Royal company, makes it practically impossible to display the actual Garter; unless one chooses to follow the example of the seventh Duke of Bedford, who, being of a skinny habit and feeling the cold intensely, yet desiring to display his Garter, used to wear it buckled round the trouser of his left leg. Lord Beaconsfield, in his later years, used to appear in the evening with a most magnificent Star of the Garter which had belonged to the wicked Lord Hertford, Thackeray's Steyne and his own Monmouth. It was a constellation of picked diamonds, surrounding St. George's Cross in rubies. After Lord Beaconsfield's death it was exposed for sale in a jeweller's window, and eventually was broken up and sold piecemeal. There was an opportunity missed. Lord Rosebery ought to have bought it, and kept it by him until he was entitled to wear it.In picture-galleries one can trace the evolutionof the Blue Ribbon through several shades and shapes. In pictures of the Tudor and Stuart periods it is a light blue ribbon, worn round the neck, with the George hanging, like a locket, in front. In Georgian pictures the ribbon is much darker, and is worn over the left shoulder, reaching down to the right thigh, where the George is displayed. I have heard that the alteration of position was due to the Duke of Monmouth, who, when a little boy, accidentally thrust his right arm through the ribbon, with a childish grace which fascinated his father. The change of colour was due to the fact that the exiled King at St. Germain's affected still to bestow the Order, and the English ribbon was made darker, so as to obviate all possible confusion between the reality and the counterfeit. Of late years, this reason having ceased to operate, the King has returned to the lighter shade.The last Commoner who wore the Garter was Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert Peel refused it. It is the only honour which, I think, Mr. Gladstone could have accepted without loss of dignity. For he truly was a Knightsans peur et sans reproche, worthy to rank with those to whom, in the purer days of chivalry, the Cross of St. George was not the reward of an intrigue but the symbol of a faith.XXXISHERIFFSThe late Mr. Evelyn Philip Shirley, of Ettington, the most enthusiastic and cultured of English antiquaries, was once describing the procedure observed on the rare occasion of a "Free Conference" between the Houses of Parliament. "The Lords," he said, "sit with their hats on their heads. The Commons stand, uncovered, at the Bar; and the carpet is spread not on the floor but on the table, illustrating the phrase 'on thetapis.' Those are the things which make life really worth living."I cannot profess to equal Mr. Shirley in culture, but I yield to no man in enthusiasm for antiquarian rites. Like Burke, I "piously believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." With Mr. Gladstone, I say that "the principle which gives us ritual in Religion gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title."My antiquarian enthusiasm for the Garter must not be allowed to brush aside the more obvioustopic of the Sheriffs. That just now[10]is a topic which, as the French say, palpitates with actuality. November is the Sheriffs' month; in it they bloom like chrysanthemums—doomed, alas! to as brief a splendour. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex—those glorious satellites who revolve round the Lord Mayor of London as the Cardinals round the Pope—are already installed. Their state carriages of dazzling hue, and their liveries stiff with gold bullion, have flung their radiance (as the late Mr. J. R. Green would have said) over the fog and filth of our autumnal climate."Who asketh why the Beautiful was made?A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue,The thistledown that floats along the glade,The lilac blooms of April—fair to view,And naught but fair are these; and such I ween are you.Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boysJoy in your beauty——"But I am becoming rhapsodical, and with less excuse than "C. S. C.," whose poetic fire was kindled by the sight of the Beadles in the Burlington Arcade.On Monday the 12th of November, being the morrow of St. Martin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in clothing of wrought gold and figured silk, attending the ghost of what was once the Court of Exchequer, nominates three gentlemen of good estate to serve the office of High Sherifffor each of the counties of England. Be it remarked in passing that the robe of black and gold which the Chancellor wears on this occasion is that which Mr. Gladstone's statue in the Strand represents, and which, as a matter of fact, he wore at the opening of the Law Courts in December 1882, when, to the astonishment of the unlearned, he walked in procession among the Judges.Early in the new year—on "the morrow of the Purification" to wit—the Lord President of the Council submits the names of the nominated Sheriffs, duly engrossed on parchment, to the King, who then, with a silver bodkin, "pricks" the name of the gentleman who in each county seems the fittest of the three for the august and perilous office of High Sheriff.I love to handle great things greatly; so I have refreshed my memory with the constitutional lore of this high theme. The etymology of "Sheriff" I find to be (on the indisputable authority of Dr. Dryasdust) "Scirgeréfa—the 'Reeve' or Fiscal Officer of a Shire." In the Saxon twilight of our national history this Reeve, not yet developed into Sheriff, ranked next in his county to the Bishop and the Ealdorman, or Earl. In those days of rudimentary self-government, the Reeve was elected by popular vote, but Edward II., who seems to have been a bureaucrat before his time, abolished the form of election except as regards the cities, and from his time onwards the High Sheriff of acounty has been a nominated officer. Until the days of the Tudors, the High Sheriff wielded great and miscellaneous powers. He was the military head of the county. He commanded the "Posse Comitatus," in which at his bidding every male over fifteen was forced to serve; and he was, in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the executant and minister of the law.Quomodo ceciderunt fortes!Henry VIII. at one fell swoop terminated the Sheriff's military power and made the new-fangled Lord-Lieutenant commander of the local forces; and successive Acts of Parliament have, by increasing the powers of courts and magistracies, reduced the civil power of the Sheriff to a dismal shadow of its former greatness. Still, in the person of his unromantic representative, the "Bound Bailiff," he watches the execution of civil process in the case of those who, to use a picturesque phrase, have "outrun the constable"; still, with all the pantomimic pomp of coach and footmen, trumpeters and javelin-men, he conducts the Judges of Assize to and from the court; and still he must be present in court when the capital sentence is pronounced. I believe I am right in stating that there is no such document as a "Death-warrant" known to English jurisprudence. The only warrant for the execution of a felon is the verbal sentence of the Judge pronounced in open court; and, as the High Sheriff is responsible for the due execution of that sentence, he must be present when it is pronounced, in orderthat he may know, by the evidence of his own eyes, that the person brought out for execution is the person on whom the sentence was pronounced. It is probable that many of my readers recollect the first Lord Tollemache, a man who combined singular gifts of physical strength with a delicate humanitarianism. He had been High Sheriff of Cheshire in very early life, and, till he was elevated to the Peerage, it was possible that his turn might come round again. Contemplating this contingency, he said that if he were again charged with the execution of a capital sentence, he should, on his own authority, offer the condemned man a dose of chloroform, so that, if he chose, he might go unconscious to his doom.The duties connected with the capital sentence are, of course, infinitely the most trying of those which befall a High Sheriff; but even in other respects his lot is not an unmixed pleasure. If he is a poor man, the expense of conducting the Assizes with proper dignity is considerable. A sensitive man does not like to hear invidious comparisons between his carriages, horses, and liveries, and those of his predecessor in office. He winces under the imputation of an unworthy economy; and, if his equipage was conspicuously unequal to the occasion, the Judges have been known to express their displeasure by sarcasms, protests, and even fines. The fining power of a Judge on circuit is a mysterious prerogative. I have no notion whether it is restrained by statutorylimitations, by what process the fine is enforced, or into whose pocket it finds its way. Some years ago the High Sheriff of Surrey published a placard at the Guildford Assizes setting forth that the public were excluded from the court by the Judge's order and in defiance of law, and warning his subordinate officers against giving effect to the order for exclusion. The Judge pronounced the placard "a painfully contumacious contempt of the Court," and fined the High Sheriff £500. My memory does not recall, and the records do not state, whether the mulcted officer paid up or climbed down.If the High Sheriff has a friend or kinsman in Holy Orders, the Assizes afford an excellent opportunity of bringing him to public notice in the capacity of Sheriff's Chaplain; for the Chaplain preaches before the Judges at the opening of the Assize, and, if he is ambitious of fame, he can generally contrive to make something of the occasion. But few Chaplains, I should think, have emulated the courage of Sydney Smith, who at the York Assizes in 1824 rebuked the besetting sins of Bench and Bar in two remarkably vigorous sermons on these suggestive themes—"The Judge that smites contrary to the Law" and "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."Broadly, I suppose it may be said that the people who really enjoy being High Sheriffs are not those who, by virtue of long hereditary connexion with the soil, are to the manner born;but rather those who by commercial industry have accumulated capital, and have invested it in land with a view to founding a family. To such, the hospitalities paid and the deference received, the quaint splendour of the Assize, and the undisputed precedence over the gentlemen of the County, are joys not lightly to be esteemed. When Lothair was arranging the splendid ceremonial for his famous Coming of Age, he said to the Duchess, "There is no doubt that, in the County, the High Sheriff takes precedence of every one, even of the Lord-Lieutenant; but how about his wife? I believe there is some tremendous question about the lady's precedence. We ought to have written to the Heralds' College." The Duchess graciously gave Mrs. High Sheriff the benefit of the doubt, and the ceremonies went forward without a hitch. On the night of the great banquet Lothair looked round, and then, "in an audible voice, and with a stateliness becoming such an incident, called upon the High Sheriff to lead the Duchess to the table. Although that eminent man had been thinking of nothing else for days, and during the last half-hour had felt as a man feels, and can only feel, who knows that some public function is momentarily about to fall to his perilous discharge, he was taken quite aback, changed colour, and lost his head. But Lothair's band, who were waiting at the door of the apartment to precede the procession to the hall, striking up at this moment "The RoastBeef of Old England," reanimated his heart, and, following Lothair and preceding all the other guests down the gallery and through many chambers, he experienced the proudest moment in a life of struggle, ingenuity, vicissitude, and success."XXXIIPUBLISHERSThere is a passage in Selden's "Table-Talk" which, if I recollect it aright, may be paraphrased in some such form as this: The Lion, reeking of slaughter, met his neighbour the Sheep, and, after exchanging the time of day with her, asked her if his breath smelt of blood. She replied "Yes," whereupon he snapped off her head for a fool. Immediately afterwards he met the Jackal, to whom he addressed the same question. The Jackal answered "No," and the Lion tore him in pieces for a flatterer. Last of all he met the Fox, and asked the question a third time. The Fox replied that he had a cold in his head, and could smell nothing.Moral: "Wise men say little in dangerous times." The bearing of this aphorism on my present subject is sufficiently obvious; the "times"—notTimes—are "dangerous" alike for authors and publishers, and "wise men" will "say little" about current controversies, lest they should have their heads snapped off by Mr. Lucas and Mr. Graves, or be torn in pieces by Mr. Moberley Bell.Thus warned, I turn my thoughts to Publishersas they have existed in the past, and more particularly to their relations with the authors whose works they have given to the world. How happy those relations may be, when maintained with tact and temper on both sides, is well illustrated by an anecdote of that indefatigable penwoman, "the gorgeous Lady Blessington." Thinking herself injured by some delay on the part of her publishers, Messrs. Sanders & Otley, she sent her son-in-law, the irrepressible Count D'Orsay, to remonstrate. The Count was received by a dignified gentleman in a stiff white cravat, whom he proceeded to assail with the most vigorous invective, until the cravated gentleman could stand it no longer and roundly declared that he would sacrifice Lady Blessington's patronage sooner than subject himself to personal insult. "Personal?" exclaimed the lively Count. "There's nothing personal in my remarks. If you're Sanders, then d—— Otley; if you're Otley, then d—— Sanders."It is to be feared that a similar imprecation has often formed itself in the heart, though it may not have issued from the lips, of a baulked and disillusioned author. Though notoriously the most long-suffering of a patient race, the present writer has before now felt inclined to borrow the vigorous invective of Count D'Orsay. Some six months before American copyright was, after long negotiation, secured for English authors, Messrs. Popgood and Groolly (I borrow the names from Sir Frank Burnand) arranged with me for the publication ofa modest work. It was quite ready for publication, but the experienced publishers pointed out the desirability of keeping it back till the new law of copyright came into force, for there was a rich harvest to be reaped in America; and all the American profits, after, say, five thousand copies were sold, were to be mine alone. A year later I received a cheque, 18s. 6d., which, I imagine, bore the same relation to the American profits as Mrs. Crupp's "one cold kidney on a cheese-plate" bore to the remains of David Copperfield's feast. On enquiry I was soothingly informed by Popgood and Groolly that the exact number of copies sold in America was 5005, and that the cheque represented (as per agreement) the royalty on the copies sold, over and above the first five thousand. That the publishers should have so accurately estimated the American sale seemed to me a remarkable instance of commercial foresight.Not much more amiable are the feelings of the author towards the publisher who declines his wares; and I have always felt that Washington Irving must have had a keen and legitimate satisfaction in prefixing to his immensely popular "Sketch-Book" the flummery in which old John Murray wrapped up his refusal of the manuscript:—"I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is onlybecause I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging."Now, surely, as Justice Shallow says, good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable. While Murray dealt in good phrases, his rival Longman expressed himself through the more tangible medium of good cheques. He was the London publisher, and apparently the financier, of theEdinburgh Review, and, according to Sydney Smith's testimony, his fiscal system was simplicity itself. "I used to send in a bill in these words, 'Messrs. Longman & Co. to the Rev. Sydney Smith. To a very wise and witty article on such a subject; so many sheets, at forty-five guineas a sheet,' and the money always came." Here is another passage from the financial dealings of the same great house, which during the last fifty years has caused many a penman's mouth to water. On the 7th of March 1856 Macaulay wrote in his diary: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day.The work had been near seven years in hand."After that glorious instance, all tales of profit from books seem flat and insignificant. As a rule, we have to reckon our makings on a far more modest scale. "Sir," said an enthusiastic lady to Mr. Zangwill, "I admire 'The Children of the Ghetto' so much that I have read it eight times." "Madam," replied Mr. Zangwill, "I would rather you had bought eight copies." Even so, with our exiguous profit on eight copies duly sold, our state is more gracious than that of more deserving men. Here is a touching vignette from a book of travels, which was popular in my youth: "Attable d'hôtethere is a charming old gentleman who has translated Æschylus and Euripides into English verse; he has been complimented by the greatest scholars of the day, and his publishers have just sent him in his bill for printing, and a letter to know what the deuce they shall do with the first thousand."Such are the joys of publishing at one's own risk. Hardly more exhilarating is the experience of knocking at all the doors in Paternoster Row, or Albemarle Street, or Waterloo Place, and imploring the stony-hearted publisher to purchase one's modest wares. Old John Murray's soothing formula about "most tasteful talents" has been reproduced, with suitable variations, from that time to this. No one experienced it oftener than the late Mr. Shorthouse, whose one good book—"John Inglesant"—made the rounds of the Trade, until atlength Messrs. Macmillan recognized its strange power. In their hands, as every one knows, the book prospered exceedingly, and the publishers who had rejected it were consumed by remorse. In this connexion my friend Mr. James Payn used to tell a story which outweighs a great many acrid witticisms about "Barabbas was a Publisher" and Napoleon's one meritorious action in hanging a Bookseller. Payn was "reader" to Smith and Elder, and in that capacity declined the manuscript of "John Inglesant." Some years afterwards this fact was stated in print, together with an estimate of what his error had cost his firm. Payn, who was the last man to sit down patiently under a calumny, told the late Mr. George Smith that he felt bound in self-respect to contradict a story so derogatory to his literary judgment. "If I were you," replied Mr. Smith, "I wouldn't do that, for, as a matter of fact, you did reject the manuscript, and we have lost what Macmillans have gained. I never told you, because I knew it would annoy you; and I only tell you now to prevent you from contradicting 'an ower true tale.'" Payn used to say that, in all the annals of business, considerate forbearance had never been better exemplified. Against this story of his failure to perceive merit Payn was wont to set his discovery of Mr. Anstey Guthrie. The manuscript of "Vice Versa," bearing the unknown name of "F. Anstey," came in ordinary course into his hands. He glanced at the first page, turned over, read to the end, and thenran into Mr. Smith's room saying, "We've got the funniest thing that has been written since Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" And the public gave unequivocal evidence that it concurred in the verdict.Let a "smooth tale of love" close these reminiscences of Publishers. Some forty years ago, when all young and ardent spirits had caught the sacred fire of Italian freedom from Garibaldi and Swinburne and Mrs. Browning, a young lady, nurtured in the straitest of Tory homes, was inspired—it is hardly too strong a word—to write a book of ballads in which the heroes and the deeds of the Italian Revolution were glorified. She knew full well that, if she were detected, her father would have a stroke and her mother would lock her up in the spare bedroom. So, in sending her manuscript to a publisher, she passed herself off as a man. Her vigorous and vehement style, her strong grasp of the political situation, and her enjoyment of battle and bloodshed, contributed to the illusion; her poems were published anonymously; other volumes followed; and for several years the publisher addressed his contributor as "Esquire." At length it chanced that both publisher and poetess were staying, unknown to each other, at the same seaside place. Her letter, written from—let us say—Brighton, reached him at Brighton; so, instead of answering by post, he went to the hotel and asked for Mr. Talbot, or whatever great Tory name you prefer. The porter said, "There is no Mr. Talbot staying here. There is a Miss Talbot, andshe may be able to give you some information." So Miss Talbot was produced; the secret of the authorship was disclosed; and the negotiations took an entirely new turn, which ended in making the poetess the publisher's wife.XXXIIIHANDWRITINGWhen "The Book of Snobs" was appearing week by week inPunch, Thackeray derived constant aid from suggestive correspondents. "'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one estimable gentleman. 'Are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn?' 'Pitch into the University Snobs!' writes an indignant correspondent (who spellselegantwith twol's)."Similarly, if I may compare small things with great, I am happy in the possession of an unknown friend who, from time to time, supplies me with references to current topics which he thinks suitable to my gentle methods of criticism. My friend (unlike Thackeray's correspondent) can spellelegant, and much longer words too, with faultless accuracy, and is altogether, as I judge, a person of much culture. It is this circumstance, I suppose (for he has no earthly connexion with the Army), which makes him feel so keenly about a cutting from a newspaper which he has just sent us:—"In a report just issued by the War Office on the result of examinations for promotion manyofficers are said to be handicapped by their bad handwriting. Some show of 'want of intelligence, small power of expression, poor penmanship—in fact, appear to suffer from defective education.'"On the other hand, the work of non-commissioned officers shows intelligence and power of concise expression, while penmanship is good."But the percentage of failures among the officers shows a large decrease—from 22 per cent. in November 1904 to 13 per cent. in May last. The improvement is particularly noticeable among lieutenants. It is apparent, says the report, that a serious effort is being made by the commissioned ranks to master all the text-books and other aids to efficiency.""This," says my correspondent, "is a shameful disclosure. Cannot you say something about it in print?" Inclining naturally to the more favourable view of my fellow-creatures, I prefer to reflect, not on the "poor penmanship" and "defective education" of my military friends, but on their manly efforts after self-improvement. There is something at once pathetic and edifying in the picture of these worthy men, each of whom has probably cost his father £200 a year for education ever since he was ten years old, making their "serious effort to master the text-books and other aids to efficiency," in the humble hope that their writing may some day rival that of the non-commissioned officers.It was not ever thus. These laudable, thoughlowly, endeavours after Culture are of recent growth in the British Army. Fifty years ago, if we may trust contemporary evidence, the Uneducated Subaltern developed, by a natural process, into the Uneducated General."I have always," said Thackeray in 1846, "admired that dispensation of rank in our country which sets up a budding Cornet, who is shaving for a beard (and who was flogged only last week because he could not spell), to command great whiskered warriors who have faced all dangers of climate and battle."Because he could not spell.The same infirmity accompanied the Cornet into the higher grades of his profession—witness Captain Rawdon Crawley's memorandum of his available effects: "My double-barril by Manton, say 40 guineas; my duelling pistols in rosewood case (same which I shot Captain Marker) £20." And, even when the Cornet had blossomed into a General, his education was still far from complete: "A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir George Tufto is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when he entered the army at fifteen. He never read a book in his life, and, with his purple, old, gouty fingers, still writes a schoolboy hand."But do Soldiers write a worse hand than other people? I rather doubt it, and certain I am that several of my friends, highly placed in Church and politics and law, would do very well to apply themselves for a season to those "text-books andother aids to efficiency" by which the zealous Subaltern seeks to complete his "defective education."Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to say that in public life he had known only two perfect things—Sir Robert Peel's voice and Lord Palmerston's writing. The former we can know only by tradition; the latter survives, for the instruction of mankind, in folios of voluminous despatches, all written in a hand at once graceful in form and absolutely clear to read. "The wayfaring men" of Diplomacy, though sometimes "fools," could not "err" in the interpretation of Palmerston's despatches. The same excellence of caligraphy which Palmerston himself practised he rightly required from his subordinates. If a badly written despatch came into his hands, he would embellish it with scathing rebukes, and return it, through the Office, to the offending writer. The recipient of one of these admonitions thus recalls its terms, "Tell the gentleman who copied this despatch to write a larger, rounder hand, to join the letters in the words, and to use blacker ink."If Lord Palmerston stood easily first among the penmen of his time, the credit of writing the worst hand in England was divided among at least three claimants. First there was Lord Houghton, whose strange, tall, upright strokes, all exactly like each other except in so far as they leaned in different directions, Lord Tennyson likened to "walking-sticks gone mad." Thenthere was my dear friend Mr. James Payn, who described his own hand only too faithfully when he wrote about "the wandering of a centipede which had just escaped from the inkpot and had scrawled and sprawled over the paper," and whose closest friends always implored him to correspond by telegraph. And, finally, there was the "bad eminence" of Dean Stanley, whose lifelong indulgence in hieroglyphics inflicted a permanent loss on literature. The Dean, as all readers of his biography will remember, had a marked turn for light and graceful versification. The albums and letter-caskets of his innumerable friends were full of these "occasional" verses, in which domestic, political, and ecclesiastical events were prettily perpetuated. After his death his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, tried to collect these fugitive pieces in a Memorial Volume, but an unforeseen difficulty occurred. In many cases the recipients of the poems were dead and gone, and no living creature could decipher the Dean's writing. So what might have been a pretty and instructive volume perished untimely.Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, the brilliant dame who raised the Gordon Highlanders and who played on the Tory side the part which the Duchess of Devonshire played among the Whigs, had, like our English Subalterns, a very imperfect education; but with great adroitness she covered her deficiences with a cloak of seeming humour. "Whenever," she wrote to Sir Walter Scott, "Icome to a word which I cannot spell, I write it as near as I can, and put a note of exclamation after it; so that, if it's wrong, my friend will think that I was making a joke." A respected member of the present Cabinet who shares Duchess Jane's orthographical weakness covers his retreat by drawing a long, involuted line after the initial letter of each word. Let the reader write, say, the word "aluminium" on this principle; and he will see how very easily imperfect spelling in high places may be concealed.With soldiers this chapter began, and with a soldier it shall end—the most illustrious of them all, Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Let it be recorded for the encouragement of our modern Subalterns that the Duke, though he spelled much better than Captain Crawley, wrote quite as badly as Sir George Tufto; but that circumstance did not—as is sometimes the case—enable him to interpret by sympathy the hieroglyphics of other people. Is there any one left, "In a Lancashire Garden" or elsewhere, who recalls the honoured name of Jane Loudon, authoress of "The Lady's Companion to her Flower Garden"? Mrs. Loudon was an accomplished lady, who wrote not only on Floriculture, but on Arboriculture and Landscape Gardening, and illustrated what she wrote. In one of her works she desired to insert a sketch of the "Waterloo Beeches" at Strathfieldsaye—a picturesque clump planted to commemorate our deliverance from the Corsican Tyrant. Accordinglyshe wrote to the Duke of Wellington, requesting leave to sketch the beeches, and signed herself, in her usual form, "J. Loudon." The Duke, who, in spite of extreme age and perceptions not quite so clear as they had once been, insisted on conducting all his own correspondence, replied as follows:—"F.M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to the Bishop of London. The Bishop is quite at liberty to make a sketch of the breeches which the Duke wore at Waterloo, if they can be found. But the Duke is not aware that they differed in any way from the breeches which he generally wears."XXXIVAUTOGRAPHSFrom handwriting in general to autographs in particular the transition is natural, almost inevitable. My recent reflections on the imperfect penmanship of the British officer sent me to my collection of letters, and the sight of these autographs—old friends long since hidden away—set me on an interesting enquiry. Was there any affinity between the writing and the character? Could one, in any case, have guessed who the writer was, or what he did, merely by scrutinizing his manuscript? I make no pretension to any skill in the art or science of Caligraphy; and, regarding my letters merely as an amateur or non-expert, I must confess that I arrive at a mixed and dubious result. Some of the autographs are characteristic enough; some seem to imply qualities for which the writer was not famed and to suppress others for which he was notorious.Let us look carefully at the first letter which I produce from my hoard. The lines are level, and the words are clearly divided, although here and there an abbreviation tells that the hand whichwrote this letter had many letters to write; the capitals, of which there are plenty, are long and twirling, though the intermediate letters are rather small, and the signature is followed by an emphatic dash which seems to say more explicitly than words that the writer is one who cannot be ignored. This is the autograph of Queen Victoria in those distant days when she said, "They seem to think that I am a schoolgirl, but I will teach them that I am Queen of England."Surrounding and succeeding Queen Victoria I find a cluster of minor royalties, but a study of their autographs does not enable me to generalize about royal writing. Some are scrawling and some are cramped; some are infantine and some foreign. Here is a level, firm, and rapid hand, in which the exigencies of a copious correspondence seem to have softened the stiffness of a military gait. The letter is dated from "The Horse Guards," and the signature is"Yours very truly,George."But here again we cannot generalize, for nothing can be more dissimilar than the Duke's hurried, high-shouldered characters and the exquisite piece of penmanship which lies alongside of them. This is written in a leisurely and cultivated hand, with due spaces between words and paragraphs, like the writing of a scholar and man of letters;it is dated May 29, 1888, and bears the signature of"Your affectionate Cousin,Albemarle,"the last survivor but one of Waterloo.But soldiers are not much in my way, and my military signatures are few. My collection is rich in politicians. Here comes, first in date though in nothing else, that Duke of Bedford who negotiated the Treaty of Fontainebleau and got trounced by Junius for his pains. It is written in 1767, just as the writer is "setting out from Woburn Abbey to consult his Shropshire oculist" (why Shropshire?), and has the small, cramped character which is common to so many conditions of shortened sight. (I find exactly the same in a letter of Lord Chancellor Hatherley, 1881.) Thirty-nine years pass, and William Pitt writes his last letter from "Putney Hill, the 1st of January, 1806, 2p.m.," the writing as clear, as steady, and as beautifully formed as if the "Sun of Austerlitz" had never dawned. And now the Statesmen pass me in rapid succession and in fine disregard of chronological order. Lord Russell writes a graceful, fluent, rather feminine hand; Charles Villiers's writing is of the same family; and the great Lord Derby's a perfect specimen of the "Italian hand," delicate as if drawn with a crow-quill, and slanted into alluring tails and loops. Lord Brougham's was a vile scrawl, with half theletters tumbling backwards. John Bright's is small, neat, and absolutely clear; nor is it fanciful to surmise that Mr. Chamberlain copied Mr. Bright, and were they not both short-sighted men? And Lord Goschen's writing, from the same cause, is smaller still. The Duke of Argyll wrote a startling and imperious hand, worthy of a Highland chief whose ancestors not so long ago exercised the power of life and death; Lord Iddesleigh a neat and orderly hand, becoming a Private Secretary or Permanent Official. Lord Granville's and Mr. Forster's writings had this in common, that they looked most surprisingly candid and straightforward. The present Duke of Devonshire's writing suggests nothing but vanity, self-consciousness, and ostentation. We all can judge, even without being caligraphists, how far these suggestions conform to the facts. By far the most pleasing autograph of all the Statesmen is Lord Beaconsfield's, artistically formed and highly finished—in his own phrase, "that form of scripture which attracts." With the utmost possible loyalty to a lost leader, I would submit that Mr. Gladstone wrote an uncommonly bad hand—not bad in point of appearance, for it was neat and comely even when it was hurried; but bad morally—a kind of caligraphic imposture, for it looks quite remarkably legible, and it is only when you come to close quarters with it and try to decipher an important passage that you find that all the letters are practically the same, and thatthe interpretation of a word must depend on the context.From my pile of Statesmen's autographs I extract yet another, and I lay it side by side with the autographs of a great author and a great ecclesiastic. All three are very small, exquisitely neat, very little slanted, absolutely legible. Well as I knew the three writers, I doubt if I could tell which wrote which letter. They were Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, and Lord Rosebery. Will the experts in caligraphy tell me if, in this case, similarity of writing bodied forth similarity of gifts or qualities? Another very close similarity may be observed between the writing of Lord Halsbury and that of Lord Brampton (better known as Sir Henry Hawkins), which, but for the fact that Lord Brampton uses the long "s" and Lord Halsbury does not, are pretty nearly identical.If there is one truth which can be deduced more confidently than another from my collection of autographs, it is that there is no such thing as "the literary hand." Every variety of writing which a "Reader's" fevered brain could conceive is illustrated in my bundle of literary autographs.Seniores priores.Samuel Rogers was born in 1763, and died in 1855. A note of his, written in 1849, and beginning, "Pray, pray, come on Tuesday," is by far the most surprising piece of caligraphy in my collection. It is so small that, except under the eyes of early youth, it requires a magnifying-glass; yet the symmetry of every letter is perfect, and,when sufficiently enlarged, it might stand as a model of beautiful and readable writing. I take a bound of sixty years, and find some of the same characteristics reproduced by my friend Mr. Quiller-Couch; but between the "Pleasures of Memory" and "Green Bays" there rolls a sea of literature, and it has been navigated by some strange crafts in the way of handwriting. I have spoken on another occasion of Dean Stanley, Lord Houghton, and James Payn; specimens of their enormities surround me as I write, and I can adduce, I think, an equally heinous instance. Here is Sydney Smith, writing in 1837 to "Dear John," the hero of the Reform Act, "No body wishes better for you and yours than the inhabitants of Combe Florey." Perhaps so; but they conveyed their benedictions through a very irritating medium, for Sydney Smith's writing is of the immoral type, pleasing to the eye and superficially legible, but, when once you have lost the clue, a labyrinth. Perhaps it is due to this circumstance that his books abound, beyond all others, in uncorrected misprints.But there are other faults in writing besides ugliness and illegibility. A great man ought not to write a poor hand. Yet nothing can be poorer than Ruskin's—mean, ugly, insignificant—only redeemed by perfect legibility. Goldwin Smith's, though clear and shapely, is characterless and disappointing. Some great scholars, again, write disappointing hands. Jowett's is a spiteful-lookingangular, little scratch, perfectly easy to read; Westcott's comely but not clear; Lightfoot's an open, scrambling scrawl, something like the late Lord Derby's. These great men cannot excuse their deficiencies in penmanship by pleading that they have had to write a great deal in their lives. Others before them have had to do that, and have emerged from the trial without a stain on their caligraphy. For example—"Albany, December 3, 1854," is the heading of an ideally beautiful sheet, every letter perfectly formed, all spaces duly observed, and the whole evidently maintaining its beauty in spite of breakneck speed. The signature is"Ever yours truly,T. B. Macaulay."Here is a letter addressed to me only last year by a man who was born in 1816. In my whole collection there is no clearer or prettier writing. As a devotee of fine penmanship, I make my salutations to Sir Theodore Martin.

XXXTHE GARTER"Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said——I should uncommonly like to be a Knight of the Garter?" If such there be, let him forswear this column and pass on to the Cotton Market or the Education Bill. Here we cater for those in whom the historic instinct is combined with picturesque sensibility, and who love to trace the stream of the national life as it flows through long-descended rites. Lord Acton wrote finely of "Institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." No institution fulfils this ideal more absolutely than the Order of the Garter. One need not always "commence with the Deluge"; and there is no occasion to consult the lively oracles of Mrs. Markham for the story of the dropped garter and the chivalrous motto. It is enough to remember that the Order links the last enchantments of the Middle Age with the Twentieth Century, and that for at least four hundred years it has played a real, though hidden, part in the secret strategy of English Statecraft.We are told by travellers that the Emperor of Lilliput rewarded his courtiers with three fine silken threads of about six inches long, one of which was blue, one red, and one green. The method by which these rewards were obtained is thus described by an eye-witness: "The Emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over it, sometimes creep under it, backwards and forwards, several times, according as the stick is elevated or depressed. Whoever shows the most agility and performs his part best of leaping and creeping is rewarded with the blue coloured silk, the next with the red, and so on."To-day we are not concerned with the red silk, wisely invented by Sir Robert Walpole for the benefit of those who could not aspire to the blue; nor with the green, which illustrates the continuous and separate polity of the Northern Kingdom. The blue silk supplies us with all the material we shall need. In its wider aspect of the Blue Ribbon, it has its secure place in the art, the history, and the literature of England; though perhaps the Dryasdusts of future ages will be perplexed by the Manichæan associations which will then have gathered round it. "When," they will ask, "and by what process, did the ensign of a high chivalric Order which originated at a banquet become the symbol of total abstinence from fermented drinks?" Even so, a high-toneddamsel from the State of Maine, regarding the Blue Ribbon which girt Lord Granville's white waistcoat, congratulated him on the boldness with which he displayed his colours, and then shrank back in astonished horror as he raised his claret-glass to his lips. In one of the prettiest of historical novels Amy Robsart is represented as examining with childish wonder the various badges and decorations which her husband wears, while Leicester, amused by her simplicity, explains the significance of each. "The embroidered strap, as thou callest it, around my knee," he said, "is the English Garter, an ornament which Kings are proud to wear. See, here is the star which belongs to it, and here is the diamond George, the jewel of the Order. You have heard how King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury——" "Oh, I know all that tale," said the Countess, slightly blushing, "and how a lady's garter became the proudest badge of English chivalry."There are certain families which may be styled "Garter Families," so constant—almost unbroken—has been the tradition that the head of the family should be a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order. Such is the House of Beaufort; is there not a great saloon at Badminton walled entirely with portraits of Dukes of Beaufort in their flowing mantles of Garter-Blue? Such is the House of Bedford, which has worn the Garter from the reign of Henry VIII. till now; such the House of Norfolk, which contrived to retain itsGarters, though it often lost its head, in times of civil commotion. The Dukes of Devonshire, again, have been habitual Garter-wearers; and the fourteenth Earl of Derby, though he refused a dukedom, was proud to accept an extra Garter (raising the number of Knights above the statutory twenty-five), which Queen Victoria gave him as a consolation for his eviction from the Premiership in 1859.Punch, then, as now, no respecter of persons, had an excellent cartoon of a blubbering child, to whom a gracious lady soothingly remarks, "Did he have a nasty tumble, then? Here's something pretty for him to play with." The Percys, again, were pre-eminently a Garter Family; sixteen heads of the house have worn Blue silk. So far as the male line was concerned, they came to an end in 1670. The eventual heiress of the house married Sir Hugh Smithson, who acquired the estates and assumed the name of the historic Percys. Having, in virtue of this great alliance, been created Earl of Northumberland, Sir Hugh begged George III. to give him the Garter. When the King demurred, the aspirant exclaimed, in the bitterness of his heart, "I am the first Northumberland who ever was refused the Garter." To which the King replied, not unreasonably, "And you are the first Smithson who ever asked for it." However, there are forms of political pressure to which even Kings must yield, and people who had "borough influence" could generally get their way when George III. wanted some trustworthy votes in the House of Commons. So Sir Hugh Smithsondied a Duke and a K.G., and since his day the Percys have been continuously Gartered.But it is in the sphere of rank just below that of the "Garter Families" that the Blue silk of Swift's imagination exercises its most potent influence. Men who are placed by the circumstances of their birth far beyond the temptations of mere cupidity, men who are justly satisfied with their social position and have no special wish to be transmogrified into marquises or dukes, are found to desire the Garter with an almost passionate fondness. Many a curious vote in a stand-or-fall division, many an unexpected declaration at a political crisis, many a transfer of local influence at an important election has been dictated by calculations about a possible Garter. It was this view of the decoration which inspired Lord Melbourne when, to the suggestion that he should take a vacant Garter for himself, he replied, "But why should I? I don't want to bribe myself." This same light-hearted statesman disputes with Lord Palmerston the credit of having said, "The great beauty of the Garter is that there's no d—— d nonsense of merit about it;" but it was undoubtedly Palmerston who declined to pay the customary fees to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, and on being gravely told that, unless he paid, his banner could not be erected in St. George's Chapel, replied that, as he never went to church at Windsor or anywhere else, the omission would not much affect him.What made the recent Chapter of the Garter peculiarly exciting to such as have æsthetic as well as historic minds was the fact that, for once, the Knights might be seen in the full splendour of their magnificent costume. No other Order has so elaborate a paraphernalia, and every detail smacks deliciously of the antique world. The long, sweeping mantle of Garter-blue is worn over a surcoat and hood of crimson velvet. The hat is trimmed with ostrich feathers and heron's plumes. The enamelled collar swings majestically from shoulder to shoulder; from it depends the image of St. George trampling down the dragon; and round the left knee runs the Garter itself, setting forth the motto of the Order in letters of gold. It is a truly regal costume; and those who saw Lord Spencer so arrayed at the Coronation of King Edward might have fancied that they were gazing on an animated Vandyke. These full splendours of the Order are seldom seen, but some modifications of them appear on stated occasions. The King was married in the mantle of the Garter, worn over a Field-Marshal's uniform; and a similar practice is observed at ceremonies in St. George's Chapel. The Statutes of the Order bind every Knight, on his chivalric obedience, to wear the badge—the "George," as it is technically called—at all times and places. In obedience to this rule the Marquis of Abercorn, who died in 1818, always went out shooting in the Blue Ribbon from which, in ordinary dress, the badge depends. But thosewere the days when people played cricket in tall hats and attended the House of Commons in knee-breeches and silk stockings. Prince Albert, whose conscience in ceremonial matters was even painfully acute, always wore his Blue Ribbon over his shirt and below his waistcoat; and in his ancient photographs it can be dimly traced crossing his chest in the neighbourhood of his shirt studs. But to-day one chiefly sees it at dinners. A tradition of the Order requires a Knight dining with a brother-Knight to wear it, and after dinner one may meet it at an evening party. The disuse of knee-breeches, except in Royal company, makes it practically impossible to display the actual Garter; unless one chooses to follow the example of the seventh Duke of Bedford, who, being of a skinny habit and feeling the cold intensely, yet desiring to display his Garter, used to wear it buckled round the trouser of his left leg. Lord Beaconsfield, in his later years, used to appear in the evening with a most magnificent Star of the Garter which had belonged to the wicked Lord Hertford, Thackeray's Steyne and his own Monmouth. It was a constellation of picked diamonds, surrounding St. George's Cross in rubies. After Lord Beaconsfield's death it was exposed for sale in a jeweller's window, and eventually was broken up and sold piecemeal. There was an opportunity missed. Lord Rosebery ought to have bought it, and kept it by him until he was entitled to wear it.In picture-galleries one can trace the evolutionof the Blue Ribbon through several shades and shapes. In pictures of the Tudor and Stuart periods it is a light blue ribbon, worn round the neck, with the George hanging, like a locket, in front. In Georgian pictures the ribbon is much darker, and is worn over the left shoulder, reaching down to the right thigh, where the George is displayed. I have heard that the alteration of position was due to the Duke of Monmouth, who, when a little boy, accidentally thrust his right arm through the ribbon, with a childish grace which fascinated his father. The change of colour was due to the fact that the exiled King at St. Germain's affected still to bestow the Order, and the English ribbon was made darker, so as to obviate all possible confusion between the reality and the counterfeit. Of late years, this reason having ceased to operate, the King has returned to the lighter shade.The last Commoner who wore the Garter was Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert Peel refused it. It is the only honour which, I think, Mr. Gladstone could have accepted without loss of dignity. For he truly was a Knightsans peur et sans reproche, worthy to rank with those to whom, in the purer days of chivalry, the Cross of St. George was not the reward of an intrigue but the symbol of a faith.

THE GARTER

"Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said——

I should uncommonly like to be a Knight of the Garter?" If such there be, let him forswear this column and pass on to the Cotton Market or the Education Bill. Here we cater for those in whom the historic instinct is combined with picturesque sensibility, and who love to trace the stream of the national life as it flows through long-descended rites. Lord Acton wrote finely of "Institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." No institution fulfils this ideal more absolutely than the Order of the Garter. One need not always "commence with the Deluge"; and there is no occasion to consult the lively oracles of Mrs. Markham for the story of the dropped garter and the chivalrous motto. It is enough to remember that the Order links the last enchantments of the Middle Age with the Twentieth Century, and that for at least four hundred years it has played a real, though hidden, part in the secret strategy of English Statecraft.

We are told by travellers that the Emperor of Lilliput rewarded his courtiers with three fine silken threads of about six inches long, one of which was blue, one red, and one green. The method by which these rewards were obtained is thus described by an eye-witness: "The Emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over it, sometimes creep under it, backwards and forwards, several times, according as the stick is elevated or depressed. Whoever shows the most agility and performs his part best of leaping and creeping is rewarded with the blue coloured silk, the next with the red, and so on."

To-day we are not concerned with the red silk, wisely invented by Sir Robert Walpole for the benefit of those who could not aspire to the blue; nor with the green, which illustrates the continuous and separate polity of the Northern Kingdom. The blue silk supplies us with all the material we shall need. In its wider aspect of the Blue Ribbon, it has its secure place in the art, the history, and the literature of England; though perhaps the Dryasdusts of future ages will be perplexed by the Manichæan associations which will then have gathered round it. "When," they will ask, "and by what process, did the ensign of a high chivalric Order which originated at a banquet become the symbol of total abstinence from fermented drinks?" Even so, a high-toneddamsel from the State of Maine, regarding the Blue Ribbon which girt Lord Granville's white waistcoat, congratulated him on the boldness with which he displayed his colours, and then shrank back in astonished horror as he raised his claret-glass to his lips. In one of the prettiest of historical novels Amy Robsart is represented as examining with childish wonder the various badges and decorations which her husband wears, while Leicester, amused by her simplicity, explains the significance of each. "The embroidered strap, as thou callest it, around my knee," he said, "is the English Garter, an ornament which Kings are proud to wear. See, here is the star which belongs to it, and here is the diamond George, the jewel of the Order. You have heard how King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury——" "Oh, I know all that tale," said the Countess, slightly blushing, "and how a lady's garter became the proudest badge of English chivalry."

There are certain families which may be styled "Garter Families," so constant—almost unbroken—has been the tradition that the head of the family should be a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order. Such is the House of Beaufort; is there not a great saloon at Badminton walled entirely with portraits of Dukes of Beaufort in their flowing mantles of Garter-Blue? Such is the House of Bedford, which has worn the Garter from the reign of Henry VIII. till now; such the House of Norfolk, which contrived to retain itsGarters, though it often lost its head, in times of civil commotion. The Dukes of Devonshire, again, have been habitual Garter-wearers; and the fourteenth Earl of Derby, though he refused a dukedom, was proud to accept an extra Garter (raising the number of Knights above the statutory twenty-five), which Queen Victoria gave him as a consolation for his eviction from the Premiership in 1859.Punch, then, as now, no respecter of persons, had an excellent cartoon of a blubbering child, to whom a gracious lady soothingly remarks, "Did he have a nasty tumble, then? Here's something pretty for him to play with." The Percys, again, were pre-eminently a Garter Family; sixteen heads of the house have worn Blue silk. So far as the male line was concerned, they came to an end in 1670. The eventual heiress of the house married Sir Hugh Smithson, who acquired the estates and assumed the name of the historic Percys. Having, in virtue of this great alliance, been created Earl of Northumberland, Sir Hugh begged George III. to give him the Garter. When the King demurred, the aspirant exclaimed, in the bitterness of his heart, "I am the first Northumberland who ever was refused the Garter." To which the King replied, not unreasonably, "And you are the first Smithson who ever asked for it." However, there are forms of political pressure to which even Kings must yield, and people who had "borough influence" could generally get their way when George III. wanted some trustworthy votes in the House of Commons. So Sir Hugh Smithsondied a Duke and a K.G., and since his day the Percys have been continuously Gartered.

But it is in the sphere of rank just below that of the "Garter Families" that the Blue silk of Swift's imagination exercises its most potent influence. Men who are placed by the circumstances of their birth far beyond the temptations of mere cupidity, men who are justly satisfied with their social position and have no special wish to be transmogrified into marquises or dukes, are found to desire the Garter with an almost passionate fondness. Many a curious vote in a stand-or-fall division, many an unexpected declaration at a political crisis, many a transfer of local influence at an important election has been dictated by calculations about a possible Garter. It was this view of the decoration which inspired Lord Melbourne when, to the suggestion that he should take a vacant Garter for himself, he replied, "But why should I? I don't want to bribe myself." This same light-hearted statesman disputes with Lord Palmerston the credit of having said, "The great beauty of the Garter is that there's no d—— d nonsense of merit about it;" but it was undoubtedly Palmerston who declined to pay the customary fees to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, and on being gravely told that, unless he paid, his banner could not be erected in St. George's Chapel, replied that, as he never went to church at Windsor or anywhere else, the omission would not much affect him.

What made the recent Chapter of the Garter peculiarly exciting to such as have æsthetic as well as historic minds was the fact that, for once, the Knights might be seen in the full splendour of their magnificent costume. No other Order has so elaborate a paraphernalia, and every detail smacks deliciously of the antique world. The long, sweeping mantle of Garter-blue is worn over a surcoat and hood of crimson velvet. The hat is trimmed with ostrich feathers and heron's plumes. The enamelled collar swings majestically from shoulder to shoulder; from it depends the image of St. George trampling down the dragon; and round the left knee runs the Garter itself, setting forth the motto of the Order in letters of gold. It is a truly regal costume; and those who saw Lord Spencer so arrayed at the Coronation of King Edward might have fancied that they were gazing on an animated Vandyke. These full splendours of the Order are seldom seen, but some modifications of them appear on stated occasions. The King was married in the mantle of the Garter, worn over a Field-Marshal's uniform; and a similar practice is observed at ceremonies in St. George's Chapel. The Statutes of the Order bind every Knight, on his chivalric obedience, to wear the badge—the "George," as it is technically called—at all times and places. In obedience to this rule the Marquis of Abercorn, who died in 1818, always went out shooting in the Blue Ribbon from which, in ordinary dress, the badge depends. But thosewere the days when people played cricket in tall hats and attended the House of Commons in knee-breeches and silk stockings. Prince Albert, whose conscience in ceremonial matters was even painfully acute, always wore his Blue Ribbon over his shirt and below his waistcoat; and in his ancient photographs it can be dimly traced crossing his chest in the neighbourhood of his shirt studs. But to-day one chiefly sees it at dinners. A tradition of the Order requires a Knight dining with a brother-Knight to wear it, and after dinner one may meet it at an evening party. The disuse of knee-breeches, except in Royal company, makes it practically impossible to display the actual Garter; unless one chooses to follow the example of the seventh Duke of Bedford, who, being of a skinny habit and feeling the cold intensely, yet desiring to display his Garter, used to wear it buckled round the trouser of his left leg. Lord Beaconsfield, in his later years, used to appear in the evening with a most magnificent Star of the Garter which had belonged to the wicked Lord Hertford, Thackeray's Steyne and his own Monmouth. It was a constellation of picked diamonds, surrounding St. George's Cross in rubies. After Lord Beaconsfield's death it was exposed for sale in a jeweller's window, and eventually was broken up and sold piecemeal. There was an opportunity missed. Lord Rosebery ought to have bought it, and kept it by him until he was entitled to wear it.

In picture-galleries one can trace the evolutionof the Blue Ribbon through several shades and shapes. In pictures of the Tudor and Stuart periods it is a light blue ribbon, worn round the neck, with the George hanging, like a locket, in front. In Georgian pictures the ribbon is much darker, and is worn over the left shoulder, reaching down to the right thigh, where the George is displayed. I have heard that the alteration of position was due to the Duke of Monmouth, who, when a little boy, accidentally thrust his right arm through the ribbon, with a childish grace which fascinated his father. The change of colour was due to the fact that the exiled King at St. Germain's affected still to bestow the Order, and the English ribbon was made darker, so as to obviate all possible confusion between the reality and the counterfeit. Of late years, this reason having ceased to operate, the King has returned to the lighter shade.

The last Commoner who wore the Garter was Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert Peel refused it. It is the only honour which, I think, Mr. Gladstone could have accepted without loss of dignity. For he truly was a Knightsans peur et sans reproche, worthy to rank with those to whom, in the purer days of chivalry, the Cross of St. George was not the reward of an intrigue but the symbol of a faith.

XXXISHERIFFSThe late Mr. Evelyn Philip Shirley, of Ettington, the most enthusiastic and cultured of English antiquaries, was once describing the procedure observed on the rare occasion of a "Free Conference" between the Houses of Parliament. "The Lords," he said, "sit with their hats on their heads. The Commons stand, uncovered, at the Bar; and the carpet is spread not on the floor but on the table, illustrating the phrase 'on thetapis.' Those are the things which make life really worth living."I cannot profess to equal Mr. Shirley in culture, but I yield to no man in enthusiasm for antiquarian rites. Like Burke, I "piously believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." With Mr. Gladstone, I say that "the principle which gives us ritual in Religion gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title."My antiquarian enthusiasm for the Garter must not be allowed to brush aside the more obvioustopic of the Sheriffs. That just now[10]is a topic which, as the French say, palpitates with actuality. November is the Sheriffs' month; in it they bloom like chrysanthemums—doomed, alas! to as brief a splendour. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex—those glorious satellites who revolve round the Lord Mayor of London as the Cardinals round the Pope—are already installed. Their state carriages of dazzling hue, and their liveries stiff with gold bullion, have flung their radiance (as the late Mr. J. R. Green would have said) over the fog and filth of our autumnal climate."Who asketh why the Beautiful was made?A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue,The thistledown that floats along the glade,The lilac blooms of April—fair to view,And naught but fair are these; and such I ween are you.Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boysJoy in your beauty——"But I am becoming rhapsodical, and with less excuse than "C. S. C.," whose poetic fire was kindled by the sight of the Beadles in the Burlington Arcade.On Monday the 12th of November, being the morrow of St. Martin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in clothing of wrought gold and figured silk, attending the ghost of what was once the Court of Exchequer, nominates three gentlemen of good estate to serve the office of High Sherifffor each of the counties of England. Be it remarked in passing that the robe of black and gold which the Chancellor wears on this occasion is that which Mr. Gladstone's statue in the Strand represents, and which, as a matter of fact, he wore at the opening of the Law Courts in December 1882, when, to the astonishment of the unlearned, he walked in procession among the Judges.Early in the new year—on "the morrow of the Purification" to wit—the Lord President of the Council submits the names of the nominated Sheriffs, duly engrossed on parchment, to the King, who then, with a silver bodkin, "pricks" the name of the gentleman who in each county seems the fittest of the three for the august and perilous office of High Sheriff.I love to handle great things greatly; so I have refreshed my memory with the constitutional lore of this high theme. The etymology of "Sheriff" I find to be (on the indisputable authority of Dr. Dryasdust) "Scirgeréfa—the 'Reeve' or Fiscal Officer of a Shire." In the Saxon twilight of our national history this Reeve, not yet developed into Sheriff, ranked next in his county to the Bishop and the Ealdorman, or Earl. In those days of rudimentary self-government, the Reeve was elected by popular vote, but Edward II., who seems to have been a bureaucrat before his time, abolished the form of election except as regards the cities, and from his time onwards the High Sheriff of acounty has been a nominated officer. Until the days of the Tudors, the High Sheriff wielded great and miscellaneous powers. He was the military head of the county. He commanded the "Posse Comitatus," in which at his bidding every male over fifteen was forced to serve; and he was, in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the executant and minister of the law.Quomodo ceciderunt fortes!Henry VIII. at one fell swoop terminated the Sheriff's military power and made the new-fangled Lord-Lieutenant commander of the local forces; and successive Acts of Parliament have, by increasing the powers of courts and magistracies, reduced the civil power of the Sheriff to a dismal shadow of its former greatness. Still, in the person of his unromantic representative, the "Bound Bailiff," he watches the execution of civil process in the case of those who, to use a picturesque phrase, have "outrun the constable"; still, with all the pantomimic pomp of coach and footmen, trumpeters and javelin-men, he conducts the Judges of Assize to and from the court; and still he must be present in court when the capital sentence is pronounced. I believe I am right in stating that there is no such document as a "Death-warrant" known to English jurisprudence. The only warrant for the execution of a felon is the verbal sentence of the Judge pronounced in open court; and, as the High Sheriff is responsible for the due execution of that sentence, he must be present when it is pronounced, in orderthat he may know, by the evidence of his own eyes, that the person brought out for execution is the person on whom the sentence was pronounced. It is probable that many of my readers recollect the first Lord Tollemache, a man who combined singular gifts of physical strength with a delicate humanitarianism. He had been High Sheriff of Cheshire in very early life, and, till he was elevated to the Peerage, it was possible that his turn might come round again. Contemplating this contingency, he said that if he were again charged with the execution of a capital sentence, he should, on his own authority, offer the condemned man a dose of chloroform, so that, if he chose, he might go unconscious to his doom.The duties connected with the capital sentence are, of course, infinitely the most trying of those which befall a High Sheriff; but even in other respects his lot is not an unmixed pleasure. If he is a poor man, the expense of conducting the Assizes with proper dignity is considerable. A sensitive man does not like to hear invidious comparisons between his carriages, horses, and liveries, and those of his predecessor in office. He winces under the imputation of an unworthy economy; and, if his equipage was conspicuously unequal to the occasion, the Judges have been known to express their displeasure by sarcasms, protests, and even fines. The fining power of a Judge on circuit is a mysterious prerogative. I have no notion whether it is restrained by statutorylimitations, by what process the fine is enforced, or into whose pocket it finds its way. Some years ago the High Sheriff of Surrey published a placard at the Guildford Assizes setting forth that the public were excluded from the court by the Judge's order and in defiance of law, and warning his subordinate officers against giving effect to the order for exclusion. The Judge pronounced the placard "a painfully contumacious contempt of the Court," and fined the High Sheriff £500. My memory does not recall, and the records do not state, whether the mulcted officer paid up or climbed down.If the High Sheriff has a friend or kinsman in Holy Orders, the Assizes afford an excellent opportunity of bringing him to public notice in the capacity of Sheriff's Chaplain; for the Chaplain preaches before the Judges at the opening of the Assize, and, if he is ambitious of fame, he can generally contrive to make something of the occasion. But few Chaplains, I should think, have emulated the courage of Sydney Smith, who at the York Assizes in 1824 rebuked the besetting sins of Bench and Bar in two remarkably vigorous sermons on these suggestive themes—"The Judge that smites contrary to the Law" and "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."Broadly, I suppose it may be said that the people who really enjoy being High Sheriffs are not those who, by virtue of long hereditary connexion with the soil, are to the manner born;but rather those who by commercial industry have accumulated capital, and have invested it in land with a view to founding a family. To such, the hospitalities paid and the deference received, the quaint splendour of the Assize, and the undisputed precedence over the gentlemen of the County, are joys not lightly to be esteemed. When Lothair was arranging the splendid ceremonial for his famous Coming of Age, he said to the Duchess, "There is no doubt that, in the County, the High Sheriff takes precedence of every one, even of the Lord-Lieutenant; but how about his wife? I believe there is some tremendous question about the lady's precedence. We ought to have written to the Heralds' College." The Duchess graciously gave Mrs. High Sheriff the benefit of the doubt, and the ceremonies went forward without a hitch. On the night of the great banquet Lothair looked round, and then, "in an audible voice, and with a stateliness becoming such an incident, called upon the High Sheriff to lead the Duchess to the table. Although that eminent man had been thinking of nothing else for days, and during the last half-hour had felt as a man feels, and can only feel, who knows that some public function is momentarily about to fall to his perilous discharge, he was taken quite aback, changed colour, and lost his head. But Lothair's band, who were waiting at the door of the apartment to precede the procession to the hall, striking up at this moment "The RoastBeef of Old England," reanimated his heart, and, following Lothair and preceding all the other guests down the gallery and through many chambers, he experienced the proudest moment in a life of struggle, ingenuity, vicissitude, and success."

SHERIFFS

The late Mr. Evelyn Philip Shirley, of Ettington, the most enthusiastic and cultured of English antiquaries, was once describing the procedure observed on the rare occasion of a "Free Conference" between the Houses of Parliament. "The Lords," he said, "sit with their hats on their heads. The Commons stand, uncovered, at the Bar; and the carpet is spread not on the floor but on the table, illustrating the phrase 'on thetapis.' Those are the things which make life really worth living."

I cannot profess to equal Mr. Shirley in culture, but I yield to no man in enthusiasm for antiquarian rites. Like Burke, I "piously believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." With Mr. Gladstone, I say that "the principle which gives us ritual in Religion gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title."

My antiquarian enthusiasm for the Garter must not be allowed to brush aside the more obvioustopic of the Sheriffs. That just now[10]is a topic which, as the French say, palpitates with actuality. November is the Sheriffs' month; in it they bloom like chrysanthemums—doomed, alas! to as brief a splendour. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex—those glorious satellites who revolve round the Lord Mayor of London as the Cardinals round the Pope—are already installed. Their state carriages of dazzling hue, and their liveries stiff with gold bullion, have flung their radiance (as the late Mr. J. R. Green would have said) over the fog and filth of our autumnal climate.

"Who asketh why the Beautiful was made?A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue,

The thistledown that floats along the glade,The lilac blooms of April—fair to view,And naught but fair are these; and such I ween are you.

Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boysJoy in your beauty——"

But I am becoming rhapsodical, and with less excuse than "C. S. C.," whose poetic fire was kindled by the sight of the Beadles in the Burlington Arcade.

On Monday the 12th of November, being the morrow of St. Martin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in clothing of wrought gold and figured silk, attending the ghost of what was once the Court of Exchequer, nominates three gentlemen of good estate to serve the office of High Sherifffor each of the counties of England. Be it remarked in passing that the robe of black and gold which the Chancellor wears on this occasion is that which Mr. Gladstone's statue in the Strand represents, and which, as a matter of fact, he wore at the opening of the Law Courts in December 1882, when, to the astonishment of the unlearned, he walked in procession among the Judges.

Early in the new year—on "the morrow of the Purification" to wit—the Lord President of the Council submits the names of the nominated Sheriffs, duly engrossed on parchment, to the King, who then, with a silver bodkin, "pricks" the name of the gentleman who in each county seems the fittest of the three for the august and perilous office of High Sheriff.

I love to handle great things greatly; so I have refreshed my memory with the constitutional lore of this high theme. The etymology of "Sheriff" I find to be (on the indisputable authority of Dr. Dryasdust) "Scirgeréfa—the 'Reeve' or Fiscal Officer of a Shire." In the Saxon twilight of our national history this Reeve, not yet developed into Sheriff, ranked next in his county to the Bishop and the Ealdorman, or Earl. In those days of rudimentary self-government, the Reeve was elected by popular vote, but Edward II., who seems to have been a bureaucrat before his time, abolished the form of election except as regards the cities, and from his time onwards the High Sheriff of acounty has been a nominated officer. Until the days of the Tudors, the High Sheriff wielded great and miscellaneous powers. He was the military head of the county. He commanded the "Posse Comitatus," in which at his bidding every male over fifteen was forced to serve; and he was, in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the executant and minister of the law.

Quomodo ceciderunt fortes!Henry VIII. at one fell swoop terminated the Sheriff's military power and made the new-fangled Lord-Lieutenant commander of the local forces; and successive Acts of Parliament have, by increasing the powers of courts and magistracies, reduced the civil power of the Sheriff to a dismal shadow of its former greatness. Still, in the person of his unromantic representative, the "Bound Bailiff," he watches the execution of civil process in the case of those who, to use a picturesque phrase, have "outrun the constable"; still, with all the pantomimic pomp of coach and footmen, trumpeters and javelin-men, he conducts the Judges of Assize to and from the court; and still he must be present in court when the capital sentence is pronounced. I believe I am right in stating that there is no such document as a "Death-warrant" known to English jurisprudence. The only warrant for the execution of a felon is the verbal sentence of the Judge pronounced in open court; and, as the High Sheriff is responsible for the due execution of that sentence, he must be present when it is pronounced, in orderthat he may know, by the evidence of his own eyes, that the person brought out for execution is the person on whom the sentence was pronounced. It is probable that many of my readers recollect the first Lord Tollemache, a man who combined singular gifts of physical strength with a delicate humanitarianism. He had been High Sheriff of Cheshire in very early life, and, till he was elevated to the Peerage, it was possible that his turn might come round again. Contemplating this contingency, he said that if he were again charged with the execution of a capital sentence, he should, on his own authority, offer the condemned man a dose of chloroform, so that, if he chose, he might go unconscious to his doom.

The duties connected with the capital sentence are, of course, infinitely the most trying of those which befall a High Sheriff; but even in other respects his lot is not an unmixed pleasure. If he is a poor man, the expense of conducting the Assizes with proper dignity is considerable. A sensitive man does not like to hear invidious comparisons between his carriages, horses, and liveries, and those of his predecessor in office. He winces under the imputation of an unworthy economy; and, if his equipage was conspicuously unequal to the occasion, the Judges have been known to express their displeasure by sarcasms, protests, and even fines. The fining power of a Judge on circuit is a mysterious prerogative. I have no notion whether it is restrained by statutorylimitations, by what process the fine is enforced, or into whose pocket it finds its way. Some years ago the High Sheriff of Surrey published a placard at the Guildford Assizes setting forth that the public were excluded from the court by the Judge's order and in defiance of law, and warning his subordinate officers against giving effect to the order for exclusion. The Judge pronounced the placard "a painfully contumacious contempt of the Court," and fined the High Sheriff £500. My memory does not recall, and the records do not state, whether the mulcted officer paid up or climbed down.

If the High Sheriff has a friend or kinsman in Holy Orders, the Assizes afford an excellent opportunity of bringing him to public notice in the capacity of Sheriff's Chaplain; for the Chaplain preaches before the Judges at the opening of the Assize, and, if he is ambitious of fame, he can generally contrive to make something of the occasion. But few Chaplains, I should think, have emulated the courage of Sydney Smith, who at the York Assizes in 1824 rebuked the besetting sins of Bench and Bar in two remarkably vigorous sermons on these suggestive themes—"The Judge that smites contrary to the Law" and "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."

Broadly, I suppose it may be said that the people who really enjoy being High Sheriffs are not those who, by virtue of long hereditary connexion with the soil, are to the manner born;but rather those who by commercial industry have accumulated capital, and have invested it in land with a view to founding a family. To such, the hospitalities paid and the deference received, the quaint splendour of the Assize, and the undisputed precedence over the gentlemen of the County, are joys not lightly to be esteemed. When Lothair was arranging the splendid ceremonial for his famous Coming of Age, he said to the Duchess, "There is no doubt that, in the County, the High Sheriff takes precedence of every one, even of the Lord-Lieutenant; but how about his wife? I believe there is some tremendous question about the lady's precedence. We ought to have written to the Heralds' College." The Duchess graciously gave Mrs. High Sheriff the benefit of the doubt, and the ceremonies went forward without a hitch. On the night of the great banquet Lothair looked round, and then, "in an audible voice, and with a stateliness becoming such an incident, called upon the High Sheriff to lead the Duchess to the table. Although that eminent man had been thinking of nothing else for days, and during the last half-hour had felt as a man feels, and can only feel, who knows that some public function is momentarily about to fall to his perilous discharge, he was taken quite aback, changed colour, and lost his head. But Lothair's band, who were waiting at the door of the apartment to precede the procession to the hall, striking up at this moment "The RoastBeef of Old England," reanimated his heart, and, following Lothair and preceding all the other guests down the gallery and through many chambers, he experienced the proudest moment in a life of struggle, ingenuity, vicissitude, and success."

XXXIIPUBLISHERSThere is a passage in Selden's "Table-Talk" which, if I recollect it aright, may be paraphrased in some such form as this: The Lion, reeking of slaughter, met his neighbour the Sheep, and, after exchanging the time of day with her, asked her if his breath smelt of blood. She replied "Yes," whereupon he snapped off her head for a fool. Immediately afterwards he met the Jackal, to whom he addressed the same question. The Jackal answered "No," and the Lion tore him in pieces for a flatterer. Last of all he met the Fox, and asked the question a third time. The Fox replied that he had a cold in his head, and could smell nothing.Moral: "Wise men say little in dangerous times." The bearing of this aphorism on my present subject is sufficiently obvious; the "times"—notTimes—are "dangerous" alike for authors and publishers, and "wise men" will "say little" about current controversies, lest they should have their heads snapped off by Mr. Lucas and Mr. Graves, or be torn in pieces by Mr. Moberley Bell.Thus warned, I turn my thoughts to Publishersas they have existed in the past, and more particularly to their relations with the authors whose works they have given to the world. How happy those relations may be, when maintained with tact and temper on both sides, is well illustrated by an anecdote of that indefatigable penwoman, "the gorgeous Lady Blessington." Thinking herself injured by some delay on the part of her publishers, Messrs. Sanders & Otley, she sent her son-in-law, the irrepressible Count D'Orsay, to remonstrate. The Count was received by a dignified gentleman in a stiff white cravat, whom he proceeded to assail with the most vigorous invective, until the cravated gentleman could stand it no longer and roundly declared that he would sacrifice Lady Blessington's patronage sooner than subject himself to personal insult. "Personal?" exclaimed the lively Count. "There's nothing personal in my remarks. If you're Sanders, then d—— Otley; if you're Otley, then d—— Sanders."It is to be feared that a similar imprecation has often formed itself in the heart, though it may not have issued from the lips, of a baulked and disillusioned author. Though notoriously the most long-suffering of a patient race, the present writer has before now felt inclined to borrow the vigorous invective of Count D'Orsay. Some six months before American copyright was, after long negotiation, secured for English authors, Messrs. Popgood and Groolly (I borrow the names from Sir Frank Burnand) arranged with me for the publication ofa modest work. It was quite ready for publication, but the experienced publishers pointed out the desirability of keeping it back till the new law of copyright came into force, for there was a rich harvest to be reaped in America; and all the American profits, after, say, five thousand copies were sold, were to be mine alone. A year later I received a cheque, 18s. 6d., which, I imagine, bore the same relation to the American profits as Mrs. Crupp's "one cold kidney on a cheese-plate" bore to the remains of David Copperfield's feast. On enquiry I was soothingly informed by Popgood and Groolly that the exact number of copies sold in America was 5005, and that the cheque represented (as per agreement) the royalty on the copies sold, over and above the first five thousand. That the publishers should have so accurately estimated the American sale seemed to me a remarkable instance of commercial foresight.Not much more amiable are the feelings of the author towards the publisher who declines his wares; and I have always felt that Washington Irving must have had a keen and legitimate satisfaction in prefixing to his immensely popular "Sketch-Book" the flummery in which old John Murray wrapped up his refusal of the manuscript:—"I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is onlybecause I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging."Now, surely, as Justice Shallow says, good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable. While Murray dealt in good phrases, his rival Longman expressed himself through the more tangible medium of good cheques. He was the London publisher, and apparently the financier, of theEdinburgh Review, and, according to Sydney Smith's testimony, his fiscal system was simplicity itself. "I used to send in a bill in these words, 'Messrs. Longman & Co. to the Rev. Sydney Smith. To a very wise and witty article on such a subject; so many sheets, at forty-five guineas a sheet,' and the money always came." Here is another passage from the financial dealings of the same great house, which during the last fifty years has caused many a penman's mouth to water. On the 7th of March 1856 Macaulay wrote in his diary: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day.The work had been near seven years in hand."After that glorious instance, all tales of profit from books seem flat and insignificant. As a rule, we have to reckon our makings on a far more modest scale. "Sir," said an enthusiastic lady to Mr. Zangwill, "I admire 'The Children of the Ghetto' so much that I have read it eight times." "Madam," replied Mr. Zangwill, "I would rather you had bought eight copies." Even so, with our exiguous profit on eight copies duly sold, our state is more gracious than that of more deserving men. Here is a touching vignette from a book of travels, which was popular in my youth: "Attable d'hôtethere is a charming old gentleman who has translated Æschylus and Euripides into English verse; he has been complimented by the greatest scholars of the day, and his publishers have just sent him in his bill for printing, and a letter to know what the deuce they shall do with the first thousand."Such are the joys of publishing at one's own risk. Hardly more exhilarating is the experience of knocking at all the doors in Paternoster Row, or Albemarle Street, or Waterloo Place, and imploring the stony-hearted publisher to purchase one's modest wares. Old John Murray's soothing formula about "most tasteful talents" has been reproduced, with suitable variations, from that time to this. No one experienced it oftener than the late Mr. Shorthouse, whose one good book—"John Inglesant"—made the rounds of the Trade, until atlength Messrs. Macmillan recognized its strange power. In their hands, as every one knows, the book prospered exceedingly, and the publishers who had rejected it were consumed by remorse. In this connexion my friend Mr. James Payn used to tell a story which outweighs a great many acrid witticisms about "Barabbas was a Publisher" and Napoleon's one meritorious action in hanging a Bookseller. Payn was "reader" to Smith and Elder, and in that capacity declined the manuscript of "John Inglesant." Some years afterwards this fact was stated in print, together with an estimate of what his error had cost his firm. Payn, who was the last man to sit down patiently under a calumny, told the late Mr. George Smith that he felt bound in self-respect to contradict a story so derogatory to his literary judgment. "If I were you," replied Mr. Smith, "I wouldn't do that, for, as a matter of fact, you did reject the manuscript, and we have lost what Macmillans have gained. I never told you, because I knew it would annoy you; and I only tell you now to prevent you from contradicting 'an ower true tale.'" Payn used to say that, in all the annals of business, considerate forbearance had never been better exemplified. Against this story of his failure to perceive merit Payn was wont to set his discovery of Mr. Anstey Guthrie. The manuscript of "Vice Versa," bearing the unknown name of "F. Anstey," came in ordinary course into his hands. He glanced at the first page, turned over, read to the end, and thenran into Mr. Smith's room saying, "We've got the funniest thing that has been written since Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" And the public gave unequivocal evidence that it concurred in the verdict.Let a "smooth tale of love" close these reminiscences of Publishers. Some forty years ago, when all young and ardent spirits had caught the sacred fire of Italian freedom from Garibaldi and Swinburne and Mrs. Browning, a young lady, nurtured in the straitest of Tory homes, was inspired—it is hardly too strong a word—to write a book of ballads in which the heroes and the deeds of the Italian Revolution were glorified. She knew full well that, if she were detected, her father would have a stroke and her mother would lock her up in the spare bedroom. So, in sending her manuscript to a publisher, she passed herself off as a man. Her vigorous and vehement style, her strong grasp of the political situation, and her enjoyment of battle and bloodshed, contributed to the illusion; her poems were published anonymously; other volumes followed; and for several years the publisher addressed his contributor as "Esquire." At length it chanced that both publisher and poetess were staying, unknown to each other, at the same seaside place. Her letter, written from—let us say—Brighton, reached him at Brighton; so, instead of answering by post, he went to the hotel and asked for Mr. Talbot, or whatever great Tory name you prefer. The porter said, "There is no Mr. Talbot staying here. There is a Miss Talbot, andshe may be able to give you some information." So Miss Talbot was produced; the secret of the authorship was disclosed; and the negotiations took an entirely new turn, which ended in making the poetess the publisher's wife.

PUBLISHERS

There is a passage in Selden's "Table-Talk" which, if I recollect it aright, may be paraphrased in some such form as this: The Lion, reeking of slaughter, met his neighbour the Sheep, and, after exchanging the time of day with her, asked her if his breath smelt of blood. She replied "Yes," whereupon he snapped off her head for a fool. Immediately afterwards he met the Jackal, to whom he addressed the same question. The Jackal answered "No," and the Lion tore him in pieces for a flatterer. Last of all he met the Fox, and asked the question a third time. The Fox replied that he had a cold in his head, and could smell nothing.Moral: "Wise men say little in dangerous times." The bearing of this aphorism on my present subject is sufficiently obvious; the "times"—notTimes—are "dangerous" alike for authors and publishers, and "wise men" will "say little" about current controversies, lest they should have their heads snapped off by Mr. Lucas and Mr. Graves, or be torn in pieces by Mr. Moberley Bell.

Thus warned, I turn my thoughts to Publishersas they have existed in the past, and more particularly to their relations with the authors whose works they have given to the world. How happy those relations may be, when maintained with tact and temper on both sides, is well illustrated by an anecdote of that indefatigable penwoman, "the gorgeous Lady Blessington." Thinking herself injured by some delay on the part of her publishers, Messrs. Sanders & Otley, she sent her son-in-law, the irrepressible Count D'Orsay, to remonstrate. The Count was received by a dignified gentleman in a stiff white cravat, whom he proceeded to assail with the most vigorous invective, until the cravated gentleman could stand it no longer and roundly declared that he would sacrifice Lady Blessington's patronage sooner than subject himself to personal insult. "Personal?" exclaimed the lively Count. "There's nothing personal in my remarks. If you're Sanders, then d—— Otley; if you're Otley, then d—— Sanders."

It is to be feared that a similar imprecation has often formed itself in the heart, though it may not have issued from the lips, of a baulked and disillusioned author. Though notoriously the most long-suffering of a patient race, the present writer has before now felt inclined to borrow the vigorous invective of Count D'Orsay. Some six months before American copyright was, after long negotiation, secured for English authors, Messrs. Popgood and Groolly (I borrow the names from Sir Frank Burnand) arranged with me for the publication ofa modest work. It was quite ready for publication, but the experienced publishers pointed out the desirability of keeping it back till the new law of copyright came into force, for there was a rich harvest to be reaped in America; and all the American profits, after, say, five thousand copies were sold, were to be mine alone. A year later I received a cheque, 18s. 6d., which, I imagine, bore the same relation to the American profits as Mrs. Crupp's "one cold kidney on a cheese-plate" bore to the remains of David Copperfield's feast. On enquiry I was soothingly informed by Popgood and Groolly that the exact number of copies sold in America was 5005, and that the cheque represented (as per agreement) the royalty on the copies sold, over and above the first five thousand. That the publishers should have so accurately estimated the American sale seemed to me a remarkable instance of commercial foresight.

Not much more amiable are the feelings of the author towards the publisher who declines his wares; and I have always felt that Washington Irving must have had a keen and legitimate satisfaction in prefixing to his immensely popular "Sketch-Book" the flummery in which old John Murray wrapped up his refusal of the manuscript:—

"I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is onlybecause I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging."

Now, surely, as Justice Shallow says, good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable. While Murray dealt in good phrases, his rival Longman expressed himself through the more tangible medium of good cheques. He was the London publisher, and apparently the financier, of theEdinburgh Review, and, according to Sydney Smith's testimony, his fiscal system was simplicity itself. "I used to send in a bill in these words, 'Messrs. Longman & Co. to the Rev. Sydney Smith. To a very wise and witty article on such a subject; so many sheets, at forty-five guineas a sheet,' and the money always came." Here is another passage from the financial dealings of the same great house, which during the last fifty years has caused many a penman's mouth to water. On the 7th of March 1856 Macaulay wrote in his diary: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day.The work had been near seven years in hand."

After that glorious instance, all tales of profit from books seem flat and insignificant. As a rule, we have to reckon our makings on a far more modest scale. "Sir," said an enthusiastic lady to Mr. Zangwill, "I admire 'The Children of the Ghetto' so much that I have read it eight times." "Madam," replied Mr. Zangwill, "I would rather you had bought eight copies." Even so, with our exiguous profit on eight copies duly sold, our state is more gracious than that of more deserving men. Here is a touching vignette from a book of travels, which was popular in my youth: "Attable d'hôtethere is a charming old gentleman who has translated Æschylus and Euripides into English verse; he has been complimented by the greatest scholars of the day, and his publishers have just sent him in his bill for printing, and a letter to know what the deuce they shall do with the first thousand."

Such are the joys of publishing at one's own risk. Hardly more exhilarating is the experience of knocking at all the doors in Paternoster Row, or Albemarle Street, or Waterloo Place, and imploring the stony-hearted publisher to purchase one's modest wares. Old John Murray's soothing formula about "most tasteful talents" has been reproduced, with suitable variations, from that time to this. No one experienced it oftener than the late Mr. Shorthouse, whose one good book—"John Inglesant"—made the rounds of the Trade, until atlength Messrs. Macmillan recognized its strange power. In their hands, as every one knows, the book prospered exceedingly, and the publishers who had rejected it were consumed by remorse. In this connexion my friend Mr. James Payn used to tell a story which outweighs a great many acrid witticisms about "Barabbas was a Publisher" and Napoleon's one meritorious action in hanging a Bookseller. Payn was "reader" to Smith and Elder, and in that capacity declined the manuscript of "John Inglesant." Some years afterwards this fact was stated in print, together with an estimate of what his error had cost his firm. Payn, who was the last man to sit down patiently under a calumny, told the late Mr. George Smith that he felt bound in self-respect to contradict a story so derogatory to his literary judgment. "If I were you," replied Mr. Smith, "I wouldn't do that, for, as a matter of fact, you did reject the manuscript, and we have lost what Macmillans have gained. I never told you, because I knew it would annoy you; and I only tell you now to prevent you from contradicting 'an ower true tale.'" Payn used to say that, in all the annals of business, considerate forbearance had never been better exemplified. Against this story of his failure to perceive merit Payn was wont to set his discovery of Mr. Anstey Guthrie. The manuscript of "Vice Versa," bearing the unknown name of "F. Anstey," came in ordinary course into his hands. He glanced at the first page, turned over, read to the end, and thenran into Mr. Smith's room saying, "We've got the funniest thing that has been written since Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" And the public gave unequivocal evidence that it concurred in the verdict.

Let a "smooth tale of love" close these reminiscences of Publishers. Some forty years ago, when all young and ardent spirits had caught the sacred fire of Italian freedom from Garibaldi and Swinburne and Mrs. Browning, a young lady, nurtured in the straitest of Tory homes, was inspired—it is hardly too strong a word—to write a book of ballads in which the heroes and the deeds of the Italian Revolution were glorified. She knew full well that, if she were detected, her father would have a stroke and her mother would lock her up in the spare bedroom. So, in sending her manuscript to a publisher, she passed herself off as a man. Her vigorous and vehement style, her strong grasp of the political situation, and her enjoyment of battle and bloodshed, contributed to the illusion; her poems were published anonymously; other volumes followed; and for several years the publisher addressed his contributor as "Esquire." At length it chanced that both publisher and poetess were staying, unknown to each other, at the same seaside place. Her letter, written from—let us say—Brighton, reached him at Brighton; so, instead of answering by post, he went to the hotel and asked for Mr. Talbot, or whatever great Tory name you prefer. The porter said, "There is no Mr. Talbot staying here. There is a Miss Talbot, andshe may be able to give you some information." So Miss Talbot was produced; the secret of the authorship was disclosed; and the negotiations took an entirely new turn, which ended in making the poetess the publisher's wife.

XXXIIIHANDWRITINGWhen "The Book of Snobs" was appearing week by week inPunch, Thackeray derived constant aid from suggestive correspondents. "'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one estimable gentleman. 'Are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn?' 'Pitch into the University Snobs!' writes an indignant correspondent (who spellselegantwith twol's)."Similarly, if I may compare small things with great, I am happy in the possession of an unknown friend who, from time to time, supplies me with references to current topics which he thinks suitable to my gentle methods of criticism. My friend (unlike Thackeray's correspondent) can spellelegant, and much longer words too, with faultless accuracy, and is altogether, as I judge, a person of much culture. It is this circumstance, I suppose (for he has no earthly connexion with the Army), which makes him feel so keenly about a cutting from a newspaper which he has just sent us:—"In a report just issued by the War Office on the result of examinations for promotion manyofficers are said to be handicapped by their bad handwriting. Some show of 'want of intelligence, small power of expression, poor penmanship—in fact, appear to suffer from defective education.'"On the other hand, the work of non-commissioned officers shows intelligence and power of concise expression, while penmanship is good."But the percentage of failures among the officers shows a large decrease—from 22 per cent. in November 1904 to 13 per cent. in May last. The improvement is particularly noticeable among lieutenants. It is apparent, says the report, that a serious effort is being made by the commissioned ranks to master all the text-books and other aids to efficiency.""This," says my correspondent, "is a shameful disclosure. Cannot you say something about it in print?" Inclining naturally to the more favourable view of my fellow-creatures, I prefer to reflect, not on the "poor penmanship" and "defective education" of my military friends, but on their manly efforts after self-improvement. There is something at once pathetic and edifying in the picture of these worthy men, each of whom has probably cost his father £200 a year for education ever since he was ten years old, making their "serious effort to master the text-books and other aids to efficiency," in the humble hope that their writing may some day rival that of the non-commissioned officers.It was not ever thus. These laudable, thoughlowly, endeavours after Culture are of recent growth in the British Army. Fifty years ago, if we may trust contemporary evidence, the Uneducated Subaltern developed, by a natural process, into the Uneducated General."I have always," said Thackeray in 1846, "admired that dispensation of rank in our country which sets up a budding Cornet, who is shaving for a beard (and who was flogged only last week because he could not spell), to command great whiskered warriors who have faced all dangers of climate and battle."Because he could not spell.The same infirmity accompanied the Cornet into the higher grades of his profession—witness Captain Rawdon Crawley's memorandum of his available effects: "My double-barril by Manton, say 40 guineas; my duelling pistols in rosewood case (same which I shot Captain Marker) £20." And, even when the Cornet had blossomed into a General, his education was still far from complete: "A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir George Tufto is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when he entered the army at fifteen. He never read a book in his life, and, with his purple, old, gouty fingers, still writes a schoolboy hand."But do Soldiers write a worse hand than other people? I rather doubt it, and certain I am that several of my friends, highly placed in Church and politics and law, would do very well to apply themselves for a season to those "text-books andother aids to efficiency" by which the zealous Subaltern seeks to complete his "defective education."Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to say that in public life he had known only two perfect things—Sir Robert Peel's voice and Lord Palmerston's writing. The former we can know only by tradition; the latter survives, for the instruction of mankind, in folios of voluminous despatches, all written in a hand at once graceful in form and absolutely clear to read. "The wayfaring men" of Diplomacy, though sometimes "fools," could not "err" in the interpretation of Palmerston's despatches. The same excellence of caligraphy which Palmerston himself practised he rightly required from his subordinates. If a badly written despatch came into his hands, he would embellish it with scathing rebukes, and return it, through the Office, to the offending writer. The recipient of one of these admonitions thus recalls its terms, "Tell the gentleman who copied this despatch to write a larger, rounder hand, to join the letters in the words, and to use blacker ink."If Lord Palmerston stood easily first among the penmen of his time, the credit of writing the worst hand in England was divided among at least three claimants. First there was Lord Houghton, whose strange, tall, upright strokes, all exactly like each other except in so far as they leaned in different directions, Lord Tennyson likened to "walking-sticks gone mad." Thenthere was my dear friend Mr. James Payn, who described his own hand only too faithfully when he wrote about "the wandering of a centipede which had just escaped from the inkpot and had scrawled and sprawled over the paper," and whose closest friends always implored him to correspond by telegraph. And, finally, there was the "bad eminence" of Dean Stanley, whose lifelong indulgence in hieroglyphics inflicted a permanent loss on literature. The Dean, as all readers of his biography will remember, had a marked turn for light and graceful versification. The albums and letter-caskets of his innumerable friends were full of these "occasional" verses, in which domestic, political, and ecclesiastical events were prettily perpetuated. After his death his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, tried to collect these fugitive pieces in a Memorial Volume, but an unforeseen difficulty occurred. In many cases the recipients of the poems were dead and gone, and no living creature could decipher the Dean's writing. So what might have been a pretty and instructive volume perished untimely.Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, the brilliant dame who raised the Gordon Highlanders and who played on the Tory side the part which the Duchess of Devonshire played among the Whigs, had, like our English Subalterns, a very imperfect education; but with great adroitness she covered her deficiences with a cloak of seeming humour. "Whenever," she wrote to Sir Walter Scott, "Icome to a word which I cannot spell, I write it as near as I can, and put a note of exclamation after it; so that, if it's wrong, my friend will think that I was making a joke." A respected member of the present Cabinet who shares Duchess Jane's orthographical weakness covers his retreat by drawing a long, involuted line after the initial letter of each word. Let the reader write, say, the word "aluminium" on this principle; and he will see how very easily imperfect spelling in high places may be concealed.With soldiers this chapter began, and with a soldier it shall end—the most illustrious of them all, Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Let it be recorded for the encouragement of our modern Subalterns that the Duke, though he spelled much better than Captain Crawley, wrote quite as badly as Sir George Tufto; but that circumstance did not—as is sometimes the case—enable him to interpret by sympathy the hieroglyphics of other people. Is there any one left, "In a Lancashire Garden" or elsewhere, who recalls the honoured name of Jane Loudon, authoress of "The Lady's Companion to her Flower Garden"? Mrs. Loudon was an accomplished lady, who wrote not only on Floriculture, but on Arboriculture and Landscape Gardening, and illustrated what she wrote. In one of her works she desired to insert a sketch of the "Waterloo Beeches" at Strathfieldsaye—a picturesque clump planted to commemorate our deliverance from the Corsican Tyrant. Accordinglyshe wrote to the Duke of Wellington, requesting leave to sketch the beeches, and signed herself, in her usual form, "J. Loudon." The Duke, who, in spite of extreme age and perceptions not quite so clear as they had once been, insisted on conducting all his own correspondence, replied as follows:—"F.M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to the Bishop of London. The Bishop is quite at liberty to make a sketch of the breeches which the Duke wore at Waterloo, if they can be found. But the Duke is not aware that they differed in any way from the breeches which he generally wears."

HANDWRITING

When "The Book of Snobs" was appearing week by week inPunch, Thackeray derived constant aid from suggestive correspondents. "'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one estimable gentleman. 'Are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn?' 'Pitch into the University Snobs!' writes an indignant correspondent (who spellselegantwith twol's)."

Similarly, if I may compare small things with great, I am happy in the possession of an unknown friend who, from time to time, supplies me with references to current topics which he thinks suitable to my gentle methods of criticism. My friend (unlike Thackeray's correspondent) can spellelegant, and much longer words too, with faultless accuracy, and is altogether, as I judge, a person of much culture. It is this circumstance, I suppose (for he has no earthly connexion with the Army), which makes him feel so keenly about a cutting from a newspaper which he has just sent us:—

"In a report just issued by the War Office on the result of examinations for promotion manyofficers are said to be handicapped by their bad handwriting. Some show of 'want of intelligence, small power of expression, poor penmanship—in fact, appear to suffer from defective education.'

"On the other hand, the work of non-commissioned officers shows intelligence and power of concise expression, while penmanship is good.

"But the percentage of failures among the officers shows a large decrease—from 22 per cent. in November 1904 to 13 per cent. in May last. The improvement is particularly noticeable among lieutenants. It is apparent, says the report, that a serious effort is being made by the commissioned ranks to master all the text-books and other aids to efficiency."

"This," says my correspondent, "is a shameful disclosure. Cannot you say something about it in print?" Inclining naturally to the more favourable view of my fellow-creatures, I prefer to reflect, not on the "poor penmanship" and "defective education" of my military friends, but on their manly efforts after self-improvement. There is something at once pathetic and edifying in the picture of these worthy men, each of whom has probably cost his father £200 a year for education ever since he was ten years old, making their "serious effort to master the text-books and other aids to efficiency," in the humble hope that their writing may some day rival that of the non-commissioned officers.

It was not ever thus. These laudable, thoughlowly, endeavours after Culture are of recent growth in the British Army. Fifty years ago, if we may trust contemporary evidence, the Uneducated Subaltern developed, by a natural process, into the Uneducated General.

"I have always," said Thackeray in 1846, "admired that dispensation of rank in our country which sets up a budding Cornet, who is shaving for a beard (and who was flogged only last week because he could not spell), to command great whiskered warriors who have faced all dangers of climate and battle."Because he could not spell.The same infirmity accompanied the Cornet into the higher grades of his profession—witness Captain Rawdon Crawley's memorandum of his available effects: "My double-barril by Manton, say 40 guineas; my duelling pistols in rosewood case (same which I shot Captain Marker) £20." And, even when the Cornet had blossomed into a General, his education was still far from complete: "A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so old, and Sir George Tufto is a greater ass at sixty-eight than he was when he entered the army at fifteen. He never read a book in his life, and, with his purple, old, gouty fingers, still writes a schoolboy hand."

But do Soldiers write a worse hand than other people? I rather doubt it, and certain I am that several of my friends, highly placed in Church and politics and law, would do very well to apply themselves for a season to those "text-books andother aids to efficiency" by which the zealous Subaltern seeks to complete his "defective education."

Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to say that in public life he had known only two perfect things—Sir Robert Peel's voice and Lord Palmerston's writing. The former we can know only by tradition; the latter survives, for the instruction of mankind, in folios of voluminous despatches, all written in a hand at once graceful in form and absolutely clear to read. "The wayfaring men" of Diplomacy, though sometimes "fools," could not "err" in the interpretation of Palmerston's despatches. The same excellence of caligraphy which Palmerston himself practised he rightly required from his subordinates. If a badly written despatch came into his hands, he would embellish it with scathing rebukes, and return it, through the Office, to the offending writer. The recipient of one of these admonitions thus recalls its terms, "Tell the gentleman who copied this despatch to write a larger, rounder hand, to join the letters in the words, and to use blacker ink."

If Lord Palmerston stood easily first among the penmen of his time, the credit of writing the worst hand in England was divided among at least three claimants. First there was Lord Houghton, whose strange, tall, upright strokes, all exactly like each other except in so far as they leaned in different directions, Lord Tennyson likened to "walking-sticks gone mad." Thenthere was my dear friend Mr. James Payn, who described his own hand only too faithfully when he wrote about "the wandering of a centipede which had just escaped from the inkpot and had scrawled and sprawled over the paper," and whose closest friends always implored him to correspond by telegraph. And, finally, there was the "bad eminence" of Dean Stanley, whose lifelong indulgence in hieroglyphics inflicted a permanent loss on literature. The Dean, as all readers of his biography will remember, had a marked turn for light and graceful versification. The albums and letter-caskets of his innumerable friends were full of these "occasional" verses, in which domestic, political, and ecclesiastical events were prettily perpetuated. After his death his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, tried to collect these fugitive pieces in a Memorial Volume, but an unforeseen difficulty occurred. In many cases the recipients of the poems were dead and gone, and no living creature could decipher the Dean's writing. So what might have been a pretty and instructive volume perished untimely.

Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, the brilliant dame who raised the Gordon Highlanders and who played on the Tory side the part which the Duchess of Devonshire played among the Whigs, had, like our English Subalterns, a very imperfect education; but with great adroitness she covered her deficiences with a cloak of seeming humour. "Whenever," she wrote to Sir Walter Scott, "Icome to a word which I cannot spell, I write it as near as I can, and put a note of exclamation after it; so that, if it's wrong, my friend will think that I was making a joke." A respected member of the present Cabinet who shares Duchess Jane's orthographical weakness covers his retreat by drawing a long, involuted line after the initial letter of each word. Let the reader write, say, the word "aluminium" on this principle; and he will see how very easily imperfect spelling in high places may be concealed.

With soldiers this chapter began, and with a soldier it shall end—the most illustrious of them all, Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Let it be recorded for the encouragement of our modern Subalterns that the Duke, though he spelled much better than Captain Crawley, wrote quite as badly as Sir George Tufto; but that circumstance did not—as is sometimes the case—enable him to interpret by sympathy the hieroglyphics of other people. Is there any one left, "In a Lancashire Garden" or elsewhere, who recalls the honoured name of Jane Loudon, authoress of "The Lady's Companion to her Flower Garden"? Mrs. Loudon was an accomplished lady, who wrote not only on Floriculture, but on Arboriculture and Landscape Gardening, and illustrated what she wrote. In one of her works she desired to insert a sketch of the "Waterloo Beeches" at Strathfieldsaye—a picturesque clump planted to commemorate our deliverance from the Corsican Tyrant. Accordinglyshe wrote to the Duke of Wellington, requesting leave to sketch the beeches, and signed herself, in her usual form, "J. Loudon." The Duke, who, in spite of extreme age and perceptions not quite so clear as they had once been, insisted on conducting all his own correspondence, replied as follows:—

"F.M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to the Bishop of London. The Bishop is quite at liberty to make a sketch of the breeches which the Duke wore at Waterloo, if they can be found. But the Duke is not aware that they differed in any way from the breeches which he generally wears."

XXXIVAUTOGRAPHSFrom handwriting in general to autographs in particular the transition is natural, almost inevitable. My recent reflections on the imperfect penmanship of the British officer sent me to my collection of letters, and the sight of these autographs—old friends long since hidden away—set me on an interesting enquiry. Was there any affinity between the writing and the character? Could one, in any case, have guessed who the writer was, or what he did, merely by scrutinizing his manuscript? I make no pretension to any skill in the art or science of Caligraphy; and, regarding my letters merely as an amateur or non-expert, I must confess that I arrive at a mixed and dubious result. Some of the autographs are characteristic enough; some seem to imply qualities for which the writer was not famed and to suppress others for which he was notorious.Let us look carefully at the first letter which I produce from my hoard. The lines are level, and the words are clearly divided, although here and there an abbreviation tells that the hand whichwrote this letter had many letters to write; the capitals, of which there are plenty, are long and twirling, though the intermediate letters are rather small, and the signature is followed by an emphatic dash which seems to say more explicitly than words that the writer is one who cannot be ignored. This is the autograph of Queen Victoria in those distant days when she said, "They seem to think that I am a schoolgirl, but I will teach them that I am Queen of England."Surrounding and succeeding Queen Victoria I find a cluster of minor royalties, but a study of their autographs does not enable me to generalize about royal writing. Some are scrawling and some are cramped; some are infantine and some foreign. Here is a level, firm, and rapid hand, in which the exigencies of a copious correspondence seem to have softened the stiffness of a military gait. The letter is dated from "The Horse Guards," and the signature is"Yours very truly,George."But here again we cannot generalize, for nothing can be more dissimilar than the Duke's hurried, high-shouldered characters and the exquisite piece of penmanship which lies alongside of them. This is written in a leisurely and cultivated hand, with due spaces between words and paragraphs, like the writing of a scholar and man of letters;it is dated May 29, 1888, and bears the signature of"Your affectionate Cousin,Albemarle,"the last survivor but one of Waterloo.But soldiers are not much in my way, and my military signatures are few. My collection is rich in politicians. Here comes, first in date though in nothing else, that Duke of Bedford who negotiated the Treaty of Fontainebleau and got trounced by Junius for his pains. It is written in 1767, just as the writer is "setting out from Woburn Abbey to consult his Shropshire oculist" (why Shropshire?), and has the small, cramped character which is common to so many conditions of shortened sight. (I find exactly the same in a letter of Lord Chancellor Hatherley, 1881.) Thirty-nine years pass, and William Pitt writes his last letter from "Putney Hill, the 1st of January, 1806, 2p.m.," the writing as clear, as steady, and as beautifully formed as if the "Sun of Austerlitz" had never dawned. And now the Statesmen pass me in rapid succession and in fine disregard of chronological order. Lord Russell writes a graceful, fluent, rather feminine hand; Charles Villiers's writing is of the same family; and the great Lord Derby's a perfect specimen of the "Italian hand," delicate as if drawn with a crow-quill, and slanted into alluring tails and loops. Lord Brougham's was a vile scrawl, with half theletters tumbling backwards. John Bright's is small, neat, and absolutely clear; nor is it fanciful to surmise that Mr. Chamberlain copied Mr. Bright, and were they not both short-sighted men? And Lord Goschen's writing, from the same cause, is smaller still. The Duke of Argyll wrote a startling and imperious hand, worthy of a Highland chief whose ancestors not so long ago exercised the power of life and death; Lord Iddesleigh a neat and orderly hand, becoming a Private Secretary or Permanent Official. Lord Granville's and Mr. Forster's writings had this in common, that they looked most surprisingly candid and straightforward. The present Duke of Devonshire's writing suggests nothing but vanity, self-consciousness, and ostentation. We all can judge, even without being caligraphists, how far these suggestions conform to the facts. By far the most pleasing autograph of all the Statesmen is Lord Beaconsfield's, artistically formed and highly finished—in his own phrase, "that form of scripture which attracts." With the utmost possible loyalty to a lost leader, I would submit that Mr. Gladstone wrote an uncommonly bad hand—not bad in point of appearance, for it was neat and comely even when it was hurried; but bad morally—a kind of caligraphic imposture, for it looks quite remarkably legible, and it is only when you come to close quarters with it and try to decipher an important passage that you find that all the letters are practically the same, and thatthe interpretation of a word must depend on the context.From my pile of Statesmen's autographs I extract yet another, and I lay it side by side with the autographs of a great author and a great ecclesiastic. All three are very small, exquisitely neat, very little slanted, absolutely legible. Well as I knew the three writers, I doubt if I could tell which wrote which letter. They were Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, and Lord Rosebery. Will the experts in caligraphy tell me if, in this case, similarity of writing bodied forth similarity of gifts or qualities? Another very close similarity may be observed between the writing of Lord Halsbury and that of Lord Brampton (better known as Sir Henry Hawkins), which, but for the fact that Lord Brampton uses the long "s" and Lord Halsbury does not, are pretty nearly identical.If there is one truth which can be deduced more confidently than another from my collection of autographs, it is that there is no such thing as "the literary hand." Every variety of writing which a "Reader's" fevered brain could conceive is illustrated in my bundle of literary autographs.Seniores priores.Samuel Rogers was born in 1763, and died in 1855. A note of his, written in 1849, and beginning, "Pray, pray, come on Tuesday," is by far the most surprising piece of caligraphy in my collection. It is so small that, except under the eyes of early youth, it requires a magnifying-glass; yet the symmetry of every letter is perfect, and,when sufficiently enlarged, it might stand as a model of beautiful and readable writing. I take a bound of sixty years, and find some of the same characteristics reproduced by my friend Mr. Quiller-Couch; but between the "Pleasures of Memory" and "Green Bays" there rolls a sea of literature, and it has been navigated by some strange crafts in the way of handwriting. I have spoken on another occasion of Dean Stanley, Lord Houghton, and James Payn; specimens of their enormities surround me as I write, and I can adduce, I think, an equally heinous instance. Here is Sydney Smith, writing in 1837 to "Dear John," the hero of the Reform Act, "No body wishes better for you and yours than the inhabitants of Combe Florey." Perhaps so; but they conveyed their benedictions through a very irritating medium, for Sydney Smith's writing is of the immoral type, pleasing to the eye and superficially legible, but, when once you have lost the clue, a labyrinth. Perhaps it is due to this circumstance that his books abound, beyond all others, in uncorrected misprints.But there are other faults in writing besides ugliness and illegibility. A great man ought not to write a poor hand. Yet nothing can be poorer than Ruskin's—mean, ugly, insignificant—only redeemed by perfect legibility. Goldwin Smith's, though clear and shapely, is characterless and disappointing. Some great scholars, again, write disappointing hands. Jowett's is a spiteful-lookingangular, little scratch, perfectly easy to read; Westcott's comely but not clear; Lightfoot's an open, scrambling scrawl, something like the late Lord Derby's. These great men cannot excuse their deficiencies in penmanship by pleading that they have had to write a great deal in their lives. Others before them have had to do that, and have emerged from the trial without a stain on their caligraphy. For example—"Albany, December 3, 1854," is the heading of an ideally beautiful sheet, every letter perfectly formed, all spaces duly observed, and the whole evidently maintaining its beauty in spite of breakneck speed. The signature is"Ever yours truly,T. B. Macaulay."Here is a letter addressed to me only last year by a man who was born in 1816. In my whole collection there is no clearer or prettier writing. As a devotee of fine penmanship, I make my salutations to Sir Theodore Martin.

AUTOGRAPHS

From handwriting in general to autographs in particular the transition is natural, almost inevitable. My recent reflections on the imperfect penmanship of the British officer sent me to my collection of letters, and the sight of these autographs—old friends long since hidden away—set me on an interesting enquiry. Was there any affinity between the writing and the character? Could one, in any case, have guessed who the writer was, or what he did, merely by scrutinizing his manuscript? I make no pretension to any skill in the art or science of Caligraphy; and, regarding my letters merely as an amateur or non-expert, I must confess that I arrive at a mixed and dubious result. Some of the autographs are characteristic enough; some seem to imply qualities for which the writer was not famed and to suppress others for which he was notorious.

Let us look carefully at the first letter which I produce from my hoard. The lines are level, and the words are clearly divided, although here and there an abbreviation tells that the hand whichwrote this letter had many letters to write; the capitals, of which there are plenty, are long and twirling, though the intermediate letters are rather small, and the signature is followed by an emphatic dash which seems to say more explicitly than words that the writer is one who cannot be ignored. This is the autograph of Queen Victoria in those distant days when she said, "They seem to think that I am a schoolgirl, but I will teach them that I am Queen of England."

Surrounding and succeeding Queen Victoria I find a cluster of minor royalties, but a study of their autographs does not enable me to generalize about royal writing. Some are scrawling and some are cramped; some are infantine and some foreign. Here is a level, firm, and rapid hand, in which the exigencies of a copious correspondence seem to have softened the stiffness of a military gait. The letter is dated from "The Horse Guards," and the signature is

"Yours very truly,

George."

But here again we cannot generalize, for nothing can be more dissimilar than the Duke's hurried, high-shouldered characters and the exquisite piece of penmanship which lies alongside of them. This is written in a leisurely and cultivated hand, with due spaces between words and paragraphs, like the writing of a scholar and man of letters;it is dated May 29, 1888, and bears the signature of

"Your affectionate Cousin,

Albemarle,"

the last survivor but one of Waterloo.

But soldiers are not much in my way, and my military signatures are few. My collection is rich in politicians. Here comes, first in date though in nothing else, that Duke of Bedford who negotiated the Treaty of Fontainebleau and got trounced by Junius for his pains. It is written in 1767, just as the writer is "setting out from Woburn Abbey to consult his Shropshire oculist" (why Shropshire?), and has the small, cramped character which is common to so many conditions of shortened sight. (I find exactly the same in a letter of Lord Chancellor Hatherley, 1881.) Thirty-nine years pass, and William Pitt writes his last letter from "Putney Hill, the 1st of January, 1806, 2p.m.," the writing as clear, as steady, and as beautifully formed as if the "Sun of Austerlitz" had never dawned. And now the Statesmen pass me in rapid succession and in fine disregard of chronological order. Lord Russell writes a graceful, fluent, rather feminine hand; Charles Villiers's writing is of the same family; and the great Lord Derby's a perfect specimen of the "Italian hand," delicate as if drawn with a crow-quill, and slanted into alluring tails and loops. Lord Brougham's was a vile scrawl, with half theletters tumbling backwards. John Bright's is small, neat, and absolutely clear; nor is it fanciful to surmise that Mr. Chamberlain copied Mr. Bright, and were they not both short-sighted men? And Lord Goschen's writing, from the same cause, is smaller still. The Duke of Argyll wrote a startling and imperious hand, worthy of a Highland chief whose ancestors not so long ago exercised the power of life and death; Lord Iddesleigh a neat and orderly hand, becoming a Private Secretary or Permanent Official. Lord Granville's and Mr. Forster's writings had this in common, that they looked most surprisingly candid and straightforward. The present Duke of Devonshire's writing suggests nothing but vanity, self-consciousness, and ostentation. We all can judge, even without being caligraphists, how far these suggestions conform to the facts. By far the most pleasing autograph of all the Statesmen is Lord Beaconsfield's, artistically formed and highly finished—in his own phrase, "that form of scripture which attracts." With the utmost possible loyalty to a lost leader, I would submit that Mr. Gladstone wrote an uncommonly bad hand—not bad in point of appearance, for it was neat and comely even when it was hurried; but bad morally—a kind of caligraphic imposture, for it looks quite remarkably legible, and it is only when you come to close quarters with it and try to decipher an important passage that you find that all the letters are practically the same, and thatthe interpretation of a word must depend on the context.

From my pile of Statesmen's autographs I extract yet another, and I lay it side by side with the autographs of a great author and a great ecclesiastic. All three are very small, exquisitely neat, very little slanted, absolutely legible. Well as I knew the three writers, I doubt if I could tell which wrote which letter. They were Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, and Lord Rosebery. Will the experts in caligraphy tell me if, in this case, similarity of writing bodied forth similarity of gifts or qualities? Another very close similarity may be observed between the writing of Lord Halsbury and that of Lord Brampton (better known as Sir Henry Hawkins), which, but for the fact that Lord Brampton uses the long "s" and Lord Halsbury does not, are pretty nearly identical.

If there is one truth which can be deduced more confidently than another from my collection of autographs, it is that there is no such thing as "the literary hand." Every variety of writing which a "Reader's" fevered brain could conceive is illustrated in my bundle of literary autographs.Seniores priores.Samuel Rogers was born in 1763, and died in 1855. A note of his, written in 1849, and beginning, "Pray, pray, come on Tuesday," is by far the most surprising piece of caligraphy in my collection. It is so small that, except under the eyes of early youth, it requires a magnifying-glass; yet the symmetry of every letter is perfect, and,when sufficiently enlarged, it might stand as a model of beautiful and readable writing. I take a bound of sixty years, and find some of the same characteristics reproduced by my friend Mr. Quiller-Couch; but between the "Pleasures of Memory" and "Green Bays" there rolls a sea of literature, and it has been navigated by some strange crafts in the way of handwriting. I have spoken on another occasion of Dean Stanley, Lord Houghton, and James Payn; specimens of their enormities surround me as I write, and I can adduce, I think, an equally heinous instance. Here is Sydney Smith, writing in 1837 to "Dear John," the hero of the Reform Act, "No body wishes better for you and yours than the inhabitants of Combe Florey." Perhaps so; but they conveyed their benedictions through a very irritating medium, for Sydney Smith's writing is of the immoral type, pleasing to the eye and superficially legible, but, when once you have lost the clue, a labyrinth. Perhaps it is due to this circumstance that his books abound, beyond all others, in uncorrected misprints.

But there are other faults in writing besides ugliness and illegibility. A great man ought not to write a poor hand. Yet nothing can be poorer than Ruskin's—mean, ugly, insignificant—only redeemed by perfect legibility. Goldwin Smith's, though clear and shapely, is characterless and disappointing. Some great scholars, again, write disappointing hands. Jowett's is a spiteful-lookingangular, little scratch, perfectly easy to read; Westcott's comely but not clear; Lightfoot's an open, scrambling scrawl, something like the late Lord Derby's. These great men cannot excuse their deficiencies in penmanship by pleading that they have had to write a great deal in their lives. Others before them have had to do that, and have emerged from the trial without a stain on their caligraphy. For example—"Albany, December 3, 1854," is the heading of an ideally beautiful sheet, every letter perfectly formed, all spaces duly observed, and the whole evidently maintaining its beauty in spite of breakneck speed. The signature is

"Ever yours truly,

T. B. Macaulay."

Here is a letter addressed to me only last year by a man who was born in 1816. In my whole collection there is no clearer or prettier writing. As a devotee of fine penmanship, I make my salutations to Sir Theodore Martin.

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