The archbishop was expected at Yuste. He had been long known to the Emperor, who had paved the way for his success by sending him to display his lore at the council of Trent. Charles had afterwards offered him the Peruvian bishopric of Cuzco, the post of confessor to the heir-apparent of Spain, and lastly, the bishopric of the Canaries. His refusal of all these pieces of preferment caused his patron some surprise, which was changed into displeasure by his acceptance of the see of Toledo. Reports had also got abroad, which cast a doubt on the orthodoxy of the new prelate,—of all doubts, as Charles thought, the gravest. He was anxious for an opportunity of conversing with him, partly, it seems, to upbraid him with his new honors, and partly in order to ascertain how far these reports were well founded. William, one of his barbers, related that he had heard his majesty say, "When I gave Carranza the bishopric of the Canaries, he refused it; now he accepts Toledo. We shall see what we are to think of his virtue." In this frame of mind, he had been expecting the unconscious prelate for some time; these feelings of dislike being, no doubt, strengthened by his confessor, father Regla, a bitter enemy, and one of the foremost accusers of Carranza.
There can be no doubt that the ruin of this celebrated man was decreed on evidence which would have been listened to only by a secret tribunal of unscrupulous enemies. It may be that some of his printed theology contained—what theology does not?—passages capable of interpretations neither intended nor foreseen by the writer; it may be that he had pillaged the writings of reformers, whose persons he would willingly have given to the flames. But it is certain that he was a man of unambitious nature, of active benevolence, and, according to the notions of that age, of exemplary life; that he was a scholar and theologian of practised and consummate skill, a wary shepherd of the faithful, a relentless butcher of heretics; that he carried his reluctance to the mitre so far beyond the bounds of decent clerical coyness, as to recommend three eminent rivals to Philip II., as more fit and proper than himself for the primacy; and that one of his first acts, as archbishop, was to advise the king to appropriate the revenues of a canonry in every cathedral in Spain to the use of the Inquisition. Setting aside, therefore, the palpable personal hatred which betrayed itself in all the proceedings against him, it seems probable that he spoke the plain truth, when he made his dying declaration, that he had never held any of the heretical opinions of which he had been accused.
In after days, when enduring the sickness of deferred hope in his prison at Valladolid or at Rome, the archbishop perhaps regarded it as one of the mischances which marked the ebb of his fortunes, that he reached Yuste too late either to explain to the emperor the circumstances of his promotion, or to remove the suspicion which had been cast on his faith. On the evening of his arrival, Charles was too ill to receive him, and the day following, although he was thrice admitted into the sick room, he found occasion to utter only a few words. Those words, few and simple as they were, were some weeks after reported to the Holy Office, with, as it seems, gross exaggeration, by the confessor, father Regla.
On the 20th of September, it was evident that the end was approaching. The few friends of the emperor who lived in the neighborhood had assembled at the convent. The count of Oropesa was there from Xarandilla, with severalof the family of Toledo, and Don Luis de Avila had come from Plasencia. They, and the prior and some of the monks, were frequently in the sick-room, in which Quixada kept constant watch. The patient had hardly spoken during the whole day. In the afternoon, when Oropesa introduced the archbishop, he merely told him to be seated, but was unable to hold any conversation. Towards night he grew hourly worse. The physicians, Mathesio and Cornelio, at last announced to the group around the bed, that the resources of their art were exhausted, and that all hope was over. Cornelio, the court doctor from Valladolid, then retired; Mathesio remained, feeling the pulse of the dying man, and saying at intervals, "His majesty has only two hours to live—only one hour—only half an hour." Charles meanwhile lay in a stupor, seemingly unconscious of what was going on around him, but now and then mumbling a prayer, and turning his eyes to heaven. At last he roused himself, and pronounced the name of William Van Male. On the man's coming to his support, he leaned towards him, as if to obtain ease by a change of posture; at the same time uttering a groan of agony. The physician now looked towards the door, and said to the archbishop, who was standing there in the shade, "Domine! jam moritur." The prelate approached, and knelt down by the bed, holding a crucifix in his hand, and saying in a loud tone, "Behold him who answers for sin; sin is no more; all is forgiven!" Sad and swarthy of visage, Carranza had also a hoarse, disagreeable voice. On hearing it, the emperor gave signs of impatience so distinct, that the faithful Quixada thought it right to interfere and say, "Hark, my lord, you are disturbing his majesty." The archbishop took the hint, and retired.
It was near two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of September, St. Matthew's day. Fray Francisco de Villalva, the favorite chaplain, now presented himself at the bedside. Addressing the dying man, he told him how blessed a privilege he enjoyed in having been born on the day of St. Matthias, the apostle, who had been chosen by lot to complete the number of the twelve, and in being about to die on the day of St. Matthew, the evangelist, who, for Christ's sake, had forsaken wealth, as his majesty had forsaken imperial power. For some time he continued to hold forth in the same edifying strain. At length, Charles, rousing himself, said, "The time is come, bring me the candle and the crucifix." These were cherished relics, which he had kept in reserve for this supreme hour. The one was a taper from Our Lady's shrine at Monserrat; the other, a crucifix of beautiful workmanship, which before had been taken from the dead hand of his mother Juana, in the convent of Tordesillas, and which afterwards comforted the last moments of his son Philip, in the convent of the Escorial. When brought by the attendant, he turned eagerly to receive them; and taking one into each hand, he remained silent for some minutes, with his eyes fixed upon the figure of the Saviour. Those who stood nearest the bed then heard him say, quickly, as if replying to a sudden call, "Ya voy, Señor—Now, Lord, I go." A few moments of death-wrestle between soul and body followed; and then, with a voice loud and clear enough to be heard in the other apartments, he cried three times, "Ay, Jesus!" and expired.
In or near the chamber of death were assembled the prior and the chaplains, and the household; the count of Oropesa, his brother Don Francisco, his cousin, Don Juan Pacheco, and his uncle Diego abbot of Cabañas, Don Luis de Avila, and archbishop Carranza. Don Juan of Austria, too, in the quality of page to Quixada, stood by the death-bed of him he was afterwards so proud to call his sire.
On the day of the death, and part of the day following, the physicians and attendants were engaged in embalming the body, and arranging it for the grave. Meanwhile, a leaden coffin was prepared, and likewise a massive outer case of chestnut wood, and a black velvet pall to cover the whole. Sandoval had heard, but gave no credit to the story, of the coffin which the emperor was said to have brought with him to Yuste, and to have kept under his bed. Another version of the tale, he says, made the coffin a winding-sheet, but no mention of either was found in the minute account drawn up by the prior Angulo. When all was ready, the coffin was lowered, by ten or twelve men, through the window which opened from the bedchamber into the church, and placed upon a stage erected in the middle of the isle. These preparations were hardly completed, when the corregidor of Plasencia arrived with his clerks and constables, and asserted that, as the emperor had died within his jurisdiction, it was his duty to see that the remains had been deposited in a place of safety. In spite, therefore, of the remonstrances of the prior, he caused the coffins to be opened, that he might identify the body.
The solemn funeral services, or the honors, as they were called, were commenced the next day, Tuesday, the 27th of October. They were an expansion of the rites in which the emperor had himself taken part a few weeks before, and they lasted for three days. Mass was said each day by the Archbishop of Toledo, the prior of Yuste assisting as deacon, and the prior of Granada as subdeacon, amongst the tears of the whole brotherhood. Funeral services were also preached, on the first day by the eloquent Villalva, on the second by the prior of Granada, and on the third by the prior of Yuste. The imperial dust was then committed to the earth. "Let my sepulchre," said the will of Charles, "be so ordered, that the lower half of my body lie beneath, and the upper half before, the high altar, that the priest who says mass may treadupon my head and breast." But the clergy present being divided in opinion as to the lawfulness of placing under the high altar a corpse not in the odor of sanctity, the matter was compromised by laying the coffin in a cavity made in the wall behind, so that it encroached only on a small portion of the holy ground.
Funeral honors also took place in the presence of the regent and her court, in the beautiful church of the Royal Benedictines at Valladolid. A sermon was preached on the occasion by Francisco Borja, from the text, "Ecce longavi fugiens et mansi in solitudine."—"Lo! then would I wander afar off, and remain in the wilderness." (Psalm lv. 7.)[L]It was filled with praise of the emperor for his pious magnanimity in taking leave of the world before the world had taken leave of him—praise which, from the mouth of a Jesuit who had once been a wealthy grandee, must have savored somewhat of self-glorification. Amongst other edifying reminiscences of his friend, Borja told his hearers that he had it from the lips of the deceased, that never, since he was one-and-twenty years old, had he failed to set apart some portion of each day for inward prayer.
Brussels excelled all the other cities of the Austrian dominion in the splendor with which she did honor to the emperor's memory. The ceremonies took place on the 29th and 30th of December. The procession, in which King Philip walked, attended by the dukes of Savoy and Brunswick, and a host of the nobility of Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, was two hours in passing from the palace to the church of St. Gudule. Its principal feature was a huge galley, large enough for marine service, placed on a cunningly devised sea, which answered the double purpose of supporting some isles, emblematic of the Indies, and of concealing the power which rolled the huge structure along. Faith, Hope, and Charity, were the crew of this enchanted bark; and her sides were hung with twelve paintings of Charles's principal exploits, which were further set forth in golden letter-press on the black satin sails. A long line of horses followed, each led by two gentlemen, and bearing on its housings the blazon of one of the states of the emperor. They were led up the aisle of the church past the altar, and the seats occupied by the order of the Golden Fleece. As the last horse, covered with a black foot-cloth, went by, the count of Bossu, one of the knights, the early playmate and dear friend of the emperor, threw himself on his knees, and remained for some time prostrated on the pavement in an agony of grief.
The chapel of Yuste was merely a temporary resting-place of the royal dead. In his will the emperor had confided the care of his bones to his son, expressing a wish, however, to be laid beside his wife and his father in the cathedral of Granada, in that splendid chapel-royal, rich with the tombs and trophies of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip, however, shivering in the rear at St. Quentin, had already vowed to St. Lawrence the great monastery which it was his after delight to make the chief monument of the power and the piety of the house of Hapsburg. At the Escorial, therefore, he united the bones of his father and mother, and placed them, on the fourth of February, 1574, in a vault beneath the jasper shrine, which yet contains their fine effigies, wrought in bronze by Leoni. The occasion was marked by one of those terrific storms, sent, as the monks supposed, by the devil, in the hope of overthrowing that fortress of piety. A grand arch of timber, erected at the door of the church, was blown away, and its hangings of rich brocades, rent into minute shreds, were scattered far and wide over the surrounding chase. Eighty years later, the repose of the emperor was once more broken by his great-grandson, Philip IV. For thirty-three years that prince was engaged in building the celebrated Pantheon, begun by his father, Philip III. On the sixteenth of March, 1654, the dust of the Austrian kings of Spain and of their consorts who had continued the line, was translated from the plain vault of Philip II. to this splendid sepulchral chamber, which gleamed, in the light of a thousand tapers, with its marble and jasper and gold, like a creation of oriental romance. Each coffin was borne by three nobles and three Jeromite friars; the procession being headed by that of Charles V., carried by Don Luis de Haro, the Duke of Abrantes, and the Marquess of Aytona. As the remains were to be deposited in a marble sarcophagus, it became necessary to remove the previous coverings, which enabled Philip IV. to come face to face with his great ancestor. The body of the emperor was found to be quite entire. After looking at it for some minutes in silence, the king turned to Haro, and said, "Honored body, Don Luis." "Very honored," replied the minister; words, brief indeed, but very pregnant; for the prior of the Escorial has left it recorded "that they condensed all that a Christian ought to feel on so solemn an occasion."
Charles did not leave the world without some of those portents in which the men of that age loved to trace the influence of a remarkable death upon the operations of nature. A comet appeared over the monastery at the beginning of his last illness, and was seen no more after the night on which he died. In the spring of 1558, a lily in his garden, beneath his windows, bore two buds, of which one flowered and withered in due course, but the other remained a bud through the summer and autumn, to the great astonishment of the gardener and the friars. But on the night of the twenty-first of September it burst into full bloom, an emblem of the whiteness of the parting spirit, and of the sure and certain hope of its reception into bliss.It was reverently gathered, and fastened upon the black veil which covered the sacramental shrine in the church. In the week following the grand obsequies, a pied bird, large as a vulture, but of a kind unknown at Yuste, perched at night on the roof of the church, exactly over the imperial grave, and disturbed the friars by barking like a dog. For five successive nights it barked there in the clear moonlight, always at the same hour, and always arriving from the east, and flying away towards the west. And four years later, a holy Capuchin of the New World, Fray Luis Mendez, as he knelt in his convent-chapel at Guatemala, was blessed with a vision, wherein he saw the emperor before the judgment-seat of our Lord, making his defence against the accusing demons, with so much success that he received honorable acquittal, and was in the end carried off to heaven by the angels of light.
The codicil of the will of Charles, the only part of the document which belongs to his life at Yuste, is drawn up with a minuteness of detail very characteristic of the careful habits of the man. After a profession of attachment to the church, and hatred of heresy, and after the directions for his burial which have been already noticed, he proceeds to describe a monument and an altar-piece which he wished to be erected in the church of the convent, in the event of Yuste being chosen by his son for the final resting-place of his bones. The altar-piece was to be of alabaster, a copy in relief of Titian's picture of the "Last Judgment," the picture on which he was gazing at the moment when he first felt the touch of death. A custodia, or sacramental tabernacle, was likewise to be made of alabaster and marble, and placed between statues of himself and the empress. They were to be sculptured, kneeling with hands clasped as in prayer, barefoot, and with uncovered heads, and clad in sheets like penitents. For further particulars, he referred the king to Luis Quixada, and the confessor Regla, who were fully instructed in his meaning and wishes. In case of the removal of his body, instead of the altar-piece and monument, the convent was to receive a picture for their altar, of such kind as the king shall appoint. In compliance with this desire, Philip presented the monks with a copy of Titian's "Judgment," which adorned their high altar until the suppression of the convents, in 1823, when it was carried off to the parish church of Texeda.
The emperor next expresses his concern at hearing that the pensions which he had granted to the servants whom he had dismissed at Xarandilla, had been very ill-paid, and he entreats the king to order their punctual payment for the future. He directs that the friars of Yuste and the friars from other convents, who had been specially employed in his service, as readers, preachers, and musicians, shall receive such gratuities as shall appear sufficient to father Regla and Quixada. To the confessor himself he bequeaths an annual pension of four hundred ducats (about 80l.sterling), and four hundred ducats in legacy. Of Luis Quixada he twice speaks in the most affectionate terms, acknowledging his long and good service, and his willing fidelity in incurring the expense and inconvenience of removing his wife and household to Yuste. Lamenting that he has done so little to promote his interest, he earnestly recommends him to the king's favor, and, with a legacy of 2000 ducats, he leaves him a pension to the value of his present appointment (without mentioning the sum), until he is provided with a place of greater emolument. He also desires that the Infanta will cause the amount of fines recovered by his attorney, or that might be recovered in cases still pending against the poachers and rioters of Quacos, to be paid into the hands of a person named by the executors for distribution amongst the poor of the village. The contents of his larder and cellar, and his stores of provisions in general, at the day of his decease, and likewise the dispensary, with its drugs and vessels, he leaves to the brotherhood of Yuste, and to the poor any money which may remain in his coffers after defraying the wages of his servants.
These are all mentioned by name, and for the most part receive pensions, except a few to whom small gratuities are given, it being explained that previous provision has been made for them. The pensions range from four hundred florins (32l.sterling), conferred on the doctor, Enrique Mathesio, to ninety florins, which requite the services of Isabel Plantin, the laundress of the table-linen. The gratuities vary from 150,000 maravedis (about 45l.sterling), left to the secretary Gaztelu, to 7500, given to Jorge de Diana, a boy employed in the workshop of Torriano. That mechanician being already pensioned to the amount of 200 crowns, receives only 15,000 maravedis; he is likewise reminded that he has been paid something to account on the price of a clock which is in hand, and for which his employer is content that the executors shall pay a fair valuation.
These sums were all to be paid at Valladolid. After the funeral service was ended, therefore, on the 29th of October, when the count of Oropesa and the other neighbors returned to their homes, and the archbishop took the road to Toledo, most of the household of the emperor were also ready to depart. Only three Flemings remained behind for a few days to bring up the rear with the heavy baggage. Within about a fortnight after the death of Charles, the Jeromites of Yuste were again alone among the yellow October woods, and the convent relapsed into its ancient obscurity, never more to be remembered, except as the cell of the imperial recluse.
So ended the career of Charles V., the greatest monarch of the memorable sixteenth century. The vast extent of his dominions inEurope, the wealth poured into his coffers by the New World, the energy and sagacity of his mind, and the important crisis of the world's history in which he acted, have combined to make him more famous than any of the successors of Charlemagne. The admiration which was raised by the great events of his reign was sustained to the last by the unwonted manner of its close. In our days, abdication has been so frequently the refuge of weak men fallen on evil times, or the last shift of baffled bad men, that it is difficult for us to conceive the sensation which must have been produced by the retirement of Charles. Now that the "divinity which doth hedge a king" has decayed into a bowing wall and a tottering fence, it is almost impossible to look upon the solemn ceremony which was enacted at Brussels, with the feeling and eyes of the sixteenth century. The act of the emperor was not, indeed, a thing altogether unheard of, but it was known only in books, and belonged, as the Spaniard used to say, to the days of king Wamba. The knights of the Fleece who wept on the platform around their Cæsar, knew little more about Diocletian than was known by the farmers and clothiers who elbowed each other in the crowd below. It was only some studious monk who was aware that a Theodosius and an Isaac had submitted their heads to the razor to save their necks from the bowstring; that a Lothaire had led a hermit's life in the Ardennes; that a Carloman had milked the ewes of the Benedictines at Monte Cassino. The retirement of Charles, therefore, was fitted to strike the imagination of men by the novelty of the occasion, by the solemnity of its circumstances, by the splendor of the resigned crown, and by the world-wide fame with which it had been worn.
There can be no doubt that the emperor gave the true reasons of his act, when, panting for breath, and unable to stand alone, he told the states of Flanders that he resigned the government because it was a burden which his shattered frame could no longer bear. It was to no sudden impulse, however, that he yielded; but he calmly fulfilled a resolve which he had cherished for many years. Indeed, he seems to have determined to abdicate, almost at the time when he determined to reign. For so powerful a mind has rarely been so tardy in giving evidence of power. Until he appeared in Italy in 1530, the thirtieth year of his age, his strong will had been as wax in the hands of other men. Up to that time the most laborious, reserved, and inflexible of princes was the most docile subject of his ministers. But if his mind was slow to ripen, his body was no less premature in its decay. By nature and hereditary habit a keen sportsman, and in youth unwearied in tracking the wolf and the bear over the hills of Toledo and Granada, he was reduced, ere he had turned fifty, to content himself with shooting crows and daws amongst the trees of his gardens. Familiarized by feeble health with images of death, he had determined twenty years before his abdication to interpose some interval of rest between the council and the grave. He had agreed with his empress, who died in 1538, that as soon as the state affairs and the age of their children should permit, they should retire into religious seclusion: he into a cloister of friars, and she into a nunnery. In 1542, he spoke of his design to the duke of Gandia; and in 1546 it was whispered at court, and was mentioned by the sharp-eared envoy of Venice, in a dispatch to the Doge. Since then, decaying health and declining fortune had maintained him in that general vexation of spirit which he shared with king Solomon. His later schemes of conquest and policy had resulted in disaster and disgrace. The Pope, the great Turk, the Protestant princes, and the king of France, were once more arrayed against the potentate who in the bright morning of his career had imposed laws upon them all. The flight from Innsbruck had avenged the cause which seemed lost at Muhlberg; Guise and the gallant townsmen of Metz had enabled the French wits to turn the emperor's proud motto,Plus ultra, intoNon ultra metas. Whilst the Protestant faith was spreading even in the dominions of the house of Hapsburg, the doctors of the church assembled in that council which had cost so much treasure and intrigue, continued to quibble, for the sole benefit of the tavern-keepers of Trent. The finances both of Spain and the other Austrian states were in the utmost disorder, and the lord of Mexico and Peru had been forced to borrow from the duke of Florence. It is no wonder, therefore, that he seized the first gleam of sunshine and returning calm to make for the long-desired harbor of refuge; and that he relieved his brow of its thorny crowns as soon as he had attained an object dear to him as a father, a politician, and a devotee, by placing his son Philip on the rival throne of the heretic Tudors.
His habits and turn of mind, as well as his Spanish blood, and the spirit of his age, made a convent the natural place of his retreat. Monachism seems to have had for him the charm, vague, yet powerful, which soldiership has for most boys; and he was ever fond of catching glimpses of the life which he had resolved, sooner or later, to embrace. When the empress died, he retired to indulge his grief in the cloisters of La Sisla, at Toledo. After his return from one of his African campaigns, he paid a visit to the noble convent of Mejorada, near Olmedo, and spent two days in familiar converse with the Benedictines, sharing their refectory fare, and walking for hours in their garden alleys of venerable cypress. When he held his court at Brussels, he was frequently a guest at the convent of Groenendael; and the monks commemorated his condescensions, as well as his skill as a marksman, by placing a bronze statue of him on the banks of their fish-pond, into which he had brought down a heron, from an amazing altitude, with his gun.Though unable at Yuste to indulge the love of sport, which may have had its influence in drawing him to the chestnut woods of the Vera, we have seen that he continued to the last to take his pleasure in the converse and companionship of the Jeromites.
In the cloister, Charles was no less popular than he had been in the world; for in spite of his feeble health and phlegmatic temperament, in spite of his caution, which amounted to distrust, and his selfishness, which frequently took the form of treachery, in spite of his love of power, and the unsparing severity with which he punished the assertion of popular rights, there was still that in his conduct and bearing which gained the favor of the multitude. A little book, of no literary value, but frequently printed both in French and Flemish, sufficiently indicates in its title the qualities which colored the popular view of his character. "The Life and Actions, Heroic and Pleasant, of the invincible Emperor Charles V." was long a favorite chap-book in the Low Countries. It relates how he defeated Solyman the magnificent, and how he permitted a Walloon boor to obtain judgment against him for the value of a sheep, killed by the wheels of his coach; how he charged the Moorish horsemen at Tunis; and how he jested incognito with the woodmen of Soigne. A similar impression, deepened by his reputation for sanctity, he seems to have left behind him amongst the sylvan hamlets of Estremadura.
In one point alone did Charles in the cell differ widely from Charles on the throne. In the world, fanaticism had not been one of his vices; he feared the keys no more than his cousin of England; and he confronted the successor of St. Peter no less boldly than he made head against the heir of St. Louis. When he held Clement VII. prisoner in Rome, he permitted at Madrid the mockery of masses for that pontiff's speedy deliverance. Against the Protestants he fought rather as rebels than as heretics; and he frequently stayed the hand of the triumphant zealots of the church. At Wittenberg, he set a fine example of moderation, in forbidding the destruction of the tomb of Luther—saying, that he contended with the living, and not with the dead. But once within the walls of Yuste, and he assumed all the passions, and prejudices, and superstitions of a friar. Looking back on his past life, he thanked God for the evil that he had done in the matter of religious persecution, and repented him, in sackcloth and ashes, of having kept his plighted word to a heretic. Religion was the enchanted ground whereon that strong will was paralyzed, and that keen intellect fell groveling in the dust. Protestant and philosophic historians love to relate how Charles, finding that no two of his time-pieces could be made to go alike, remarked that he had perhaps erred in spending so much blood and treasure in the hope of compelling men to uniformity in the more difficult matter of religion. We fear the anecdote must have been invented by some manufacturer of libels or panegyrics, such as Sleidan and Jovius, whom Charles was wont to call his liars. No remark of equal wisdom can be brought home to the lips of the Spanish Diocletian; nor was the philosophy "of him who walked in the Salonian garden's noble shade" ever heard amongst the litanies and the scourges which resounded through the cloisters of Yuste.
To those who have perused this brief record of the recluse and his little court, it may be agreeable to know the subsequent fortunes of the personages who acted upon that miniature stage.
Queen Mary of Hungary died at Cigales on the 28th of October, 1558, four weeks after the death of her brother. So passed away, in the same year, and within a few months of one another, the royal group who landed at Laredo.
From Yuste, Luis Quixada and his wife returned to their house at Villagarcia, near Valladolid, taking Don Juan with them. When Philip II. arrived in Spain, in 1559, he received his brother and his guardian at the neighboring convent of San Pedro de la Espina. They afterwards followed the court to Madrid, where Quixada had an opportunity of signalizing his devotion to his master's son, by rescuing him from a fire, which burnt down their house in the night, before he attended to the safety of Doña Magdalena. This, and his other services, were not neglected by the king, who made him master of the horse to the heir-apparent, and president of the council of the Indies, and gave him several commanderies in the order of Calatrava. When Don Juan was sent to command against the Moriscos, whom Christian persecution and bad faith had driven to revolt in the Alpuxarras, the old major-domo went with him as a military tutor. They were reconnoitring the strong mountain fortress of Seron, when a bold sally from the place threw the Castilians into disorder bordering on flight, in the course of which a bullet from an infidel gun finished the campaigns of the comrade of Charles V. He fell, shot through the shoulder, by the side of his pupil; and he died of the wound at Canilles, on the 25th of February, 1570, in the arms of his wife, who had hurried from Madrid to nurse him. Don Juan buried him with military honors, and mourned for him as for a father.
The good Doña Magdalena retired to Villagarcia, and employed her childless widowhood in works of charity and piety, in prayers for the soul of her husband, and for the success of her darling young prince. For the latter she also engaged in a work of a more practical and secular kind; for the hero of Lepanto wore no linen but what was wrought by her loving hands. His sad and early death severed her chief tie to the world, and left religion no rival in her heart. The companions of Francis Borja, who had first kindled the holy flames of her devotion at Yuste, became her guides and counsellors;and she built and endowed no less than three Jesuit colleges at Villagarcia, Santander, and Oviedo. Her life of gentle and blameless enthusiasm ended in 1598, when she was laid beside her lord in the collegiate church of Villagarcia. Amongst the relics of that temple, two crucifixes were held in peculiar veneration,—one being that which she had pressed to her dying lips, the other a trophy rescued by Luis Quixada from a church burned by the Moors in the war of the Alpuxarras.
William Van Male, the gentle and literary chamberlain, returned to Flanders, with a slender annual pension of 150 florins, which was to be reduced one half on his becoming keeper of the palace at Brussels, an office of which the king had given him the reversion. He died in 1560, and was buried in the church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, where his widow, Hippolyta Reynen, was laid by his side in 1579.
Father Borja continued to teach and to travel with unflagging zeal. Soon after preaching the emperor's funeral sermon, he was again in Portugal, visiting the colleges at Evora, Coimbra, and Braga, and aiding in the foundation of the college of Porto. Called to Rome by Pope Pius IV., to advise on affairs of the church, he was twice chosen vicar-general of the company; and finally, in 1565, he received the staff of Loyola. During his rule of seven years, the order lengthened its cords and strengthened its stakes in every part of the world, and in every condition of mankind. Its astute politicians gained the ear of princes and prelates who had hitherto been cold, or adverse; its colleges rose amid the snows of Poland, and the forests of Peru; Barbary, Florida, and Brazil, were watered with the blood of its martyrs; and its ministers of mercy moved amongst the roar of battle, on the bastions of Malta and the decks at Lepanto. The general of this great army visited his native Spain, for the last time, in 1571, when he was sent by Pope Pius V. to fan the anti-Turkish flame in the bosom of Philip II., and to add a morsel of the true cross to the relics of the Escorial. Of the offers to build houses for the company, which now poured in, the last that he accepted was Doña Magdalena de Ulloa's college at Villagarcia, thus finding, after many days, the bread which he had cast upon the waters at Yuste. From Spain, he went to preach the crusade at the courts of Portugal and France—an arduous journey, which proved fruitful of royal caresses, but fatal to his enfeebled frame. Falling ill by the way, he had barely strength to reach Rome to die. In the year 1572, the sixty-second of his age, he was laid beside his companions in toil and glory, and his predecessors in power, Loyola and Laynez.
"After long experience of the world," says Junius, "I affirm before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy." Very likely: another author had intimated before the observations of Junius, that even the righteous "is of few days and full of trouble."
FOOTNOTES:[K]Nicolas Antonio.[L]Psalm liv. 7. The Vulgate Psalm liv. is our Psalm lv.
[K]Nicolas Antonio.
[K]Nicolas Antonio.
[L]Psalm liv. 7. The Vulgate Psalm liv. is our Psalm lv.
[L]Psalm liv. 7. The Vulgate Psalm liv. is our Psalm lv.
Our impression of the difference between the two authors in the matter of style is very much what it has always been from a general reading acquaintance with their works, namely, that Mr. Thackeray is the more terse and idiomatic, and Mr. Dickens the more diffuse and luxuriant writer. Both seem to be easy penmen, and to have language very readily at their command; both also seem to convey their meaning as simply as they can, and to be careful, according to their notions of verbal accuracy; but in Mr. Dickens's sentences there is a leafiness, a tendency to words and images, for their own sake; whereas, in Mr. Thackeray's, one sees the stem and outline of the thought better. We have no great respect for that canon of style which demands in English writers the use of Saxon in preference to Latin words, thinking that a rule to which there are natural limitations, variable with the writer's aim and with the subject he treats; but we should suppose that critics who do regard the rule would find Mr. Thackeray's style the more accordant with it. On the whole, if we had to choose passages at random, to be set before young scholars as examples of easy and vigorous English composition, we would take them rather from Thackeray than from Dickens. There is a Horatian strictness, a racy strength, in Mr. Thackeray's expressions, even in his more level and tame passages, which we miss in the corresponding passages in Mr. Dickens's writings, and in which we seem to recognize the effect of those classical studies through which an accurate and determinate, though somewhat bald use of words becomes a fixed habit. In the ease, and at the same time thorough polish and propriety with which Mr. Thackeray can use slang words, we seem especially to detect the university man. Snob, swell, buck, gent, fellow, fogy—these, and many more such expressive appellatives, not yet sanctioned by the dictionary, Mr. Thackeray employs more frequently, we believe, than any other living writer, and yet always with unexceptionable taste. In so doing he is conscious, no doubt, of the same kind of security that permits Oxford and Cambridge men, and even, as we can testify, Oxford and Cambridge clergymen, to season their conversation with similar words—namely, the evident air of educated manliness with which they can be introduced, and which, however rough the guise, no one can mistake. In the use of the words genteel, vulgar, female, and the like—words which men diffident of their own breeding are observed not to risk; as well as in the art of alternating gracefully between the noun lady and the noun woman, the Scylla and Charybdis, if we may say so, of shy talkers—Mr. Thackeray is also a perfect master, commanding his language in such cases with an unconscious ease, not unlike that which enables the true English gentlemanhe is so fond of portraying, either to name titled personages of his acquaintance without seeming a tuft-hunter, or to refrain from naming them without the affectation of radicalism. In Mr. Dickens, of course, we have the same perfect taste and propriety; but in him the result appears to arise, if we may so express ourselves, rather from the keen and feminine sensibility of a fine genius, whose instinct is always for the pure and beautiful, than from the self-possession of a mind correct under any circumstances by discipline and sure habit. Where Mr. Dickens is not exerting himself, that is, in passages of mere equable narrative or description, where there is nothing to move or excite him, his style, as we have already said, seems to us more careless and languid than that of Mr. Thackeray; sometimes, indeed, a whole page is only redeemed from weakness by those little touches of wit, and those humorous turns of conception which he knows so well how to sprinkle over it. It is due to Mr. Dickens to state, however, that in this respect his "Copperfield" is one of his most pleasing productions, and a decided improvement on its predecessor "Dombey." Not only is the spirit of the book more gentle and mellow, but the style is more continuous and careful, with fewer of those recurring tricks of expression, the dread remnants of former felicities, which constituted what was called his mannerism. Nor must we omit to remark also, that in passages where higher feeling is called into play, Mr. Dickens's style always rises into greater purity and vigor, the weakness and the superfluity disappearing before the concentrating force of passion, and the language often pouring itself forth in a clear and flowing song. This, in fact, is according to the nature of the luxuriant or poetical genius, which never expresses itself in its best or most concise manner unless the mood be high as well as the meaning clear,—for maintaining the excellence of the style of a terse and highly reflective writer, such as Thackeray, on the other hand, the presence of a clear meaning is at all times sufficient, though, of course, here also the pitch and melody will depend on the mood....
There is one piece of positive doctrine, however, in which both Pen and Warrington agree, and of which Mr. Thackeray's writings are decidedly the exponents in the present day, as Mr. Dickens's are of the doctrine of kindliness. This doctrine may be called the doctrine of anti-snobbism. Singular fact! in the great city of London, where higher and more ancient faiths seem to have all but perished, and where men bustle in myriads, scarce restrained by any spiritual law, there has arisen of late years, as there arose in Mecca of old, a native form of ethical belief, by which its inhabitants are tried and try each other. "Thou shall not be a snob;" such is the first principle at present of Cockney ethics. And observe how much real sincerity there is in this principle, how it really addresses itself to facts, and only to facts, known and admitted. It is not the major morals of human nature, but what are called the minor morals of society, and these chiefly in their æsthetic aspect, as modes of pleasant breeding, that the Cockney system of ethics recognizes. Its maxims and commands are not "Thou shalt do no wrong," "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," "Thou shalt not covet,"—but, "Thou shalt pronounce thy H's," "Thou shalt not abuse waiters as if they were dogs," "Thou shalt not falsely make a boast of dining with peers and members of Parliament." He who offends in these respects is a snob. Thus, at least, the Cockney moralist professes no more than he really believes. The real species of moral evil recognized in London, the real kind of offence which the moral sentiment there punishes, and cannot away with, is snobbism. The very name, it will be observed, is characteristic and unpretentious—curt, London-born, irreverent. When you say that a man is a snob, it does not mean that you detest and abhor him, but only that you must cut him, or make fun of him. Such is anti-snobbism, the doctrine of which Mr. Thackeray, among his other merits, has the merit of being the chief literary expounder and apostle. Now it is not a very awful doctrine, certainly; it is not, as our friend Warrington would be the first to admit, the doctrine in the strength of which one would like to guide his own soul, or to face the future and the everlasting; still it has its use, and by all means let it have, yes, let it have its scribes and preachers.
Work away!For the Master's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Work away!Keep the busy fingers plying,Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying;See that never thread lie wrong;Let not clash or clatter round us,Sound of whirring wheels, confound us;Steady hand! let wool be strongAnd firm, that has to last long!Work away!Keep upon the anvil ringingStroke of hammer; on the gloomSet 'twixt cradle and 'twixt tombShower of fiery sparkles flinging;Keep the mighty furnace glowing;Keep the red ore hissing, flowingSwift within the ready mould;See that each one than the oldStill be fitter, still be fairerFor the master to behold:Work away!Work away!For the leader's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Wide the trackless prairies round us,Dark and unsunned woods surround us,Steep and savage mountains bound us;Far awaySmile the soft savannahs green,Rivers sweep and roll between:Work away!Bring your axes, woodmen true;Smite the forest till the blueOf Heaven's sunny eye looks throughEvery wild and tangled glade;Jungle swamp and thicket shadeGive to-day!O'er the torrents fling your bridges,Pioneers! Upon the ridgesWiden, smoothe the rocky stair—They that follow, far behindComing after us, will findSurer, easier footing there;Heart to heart, and hand with hand,From the dawn to dusk o' day,Work away!Scouts upon the mountain's peak—Ye that see the Promised Land,Hearten us! for ye can speakOf the country ye have scanned,Far away!Work away!For the Father's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Work and Pray!Pray! and Work will be completer;Work! and Prayer will be the sweeter;Love! and Prayer and Work the fleeterWill ascend upon their way!Fear not lest the busy fingerWeave a net the soul to stay;Give her wings—she will not linger;Soaring to the source of day;Cleaving clouds that still divide usFrom the azure depths of rest,She will come again! beside us,With the sunshine on her breast,Sit, and sing to us, while quickestOn their task their fingers move,While the outward din wars thickest,Songs that she hath learned above.Live in Future as in Present;Work for both while yet the dayIs our own! for Lord and Peasant,Long and bright as summer's day,Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant,Cometh soon our Holiday;Work away!
Work away!For the Master's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Work away!Keep the busy fingers plying,Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying;See that never thread lie wrong;Let not clash or clatter round us,Sound of whirring wheels, confound us;Steady hand! let wool be strongAnd firm, that has to last long!Work away!
Keep upon the anvil ringingStroke of hammer; on the gloomSet 'twixt cradle and 'twixt tombShower of fiery sparkles flinging;Keep the mighty furnace glowing;Keep the red ore hissing, flowingSwift within the ready mould;See that each one than the oldStill be fitter, still be fairerFor the master to behold:Work away!
Work away!For the leader's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Wide the trackless prairies round us,Dark and unsunned woods surround us,Steep and savage mountains bound us;Far awaySmile the soft savannahs green,Rivers sweep and roll between:Work away!
Bring your axes, woodmen true;Smite the forest till the blueOf Heaven's sunny eye looks throughEvery wild and tangled glade;Jungle swamp and thicket shadeGive to-day!O'er the torrents fling your bridges,Pioneers! Upon the ridgesWiden, smoothe the rocky stair—They that follow, far behindComing after us, will findSurer, easier footing there;Heart to heart, and hand with hand,From the dawn to dusk o' day,Work away!Scouts upon the mountain's peak—Ye that see the Promised Land,Hearten us! for ye can speakOf the country ye have scanned,Far away!
Work away!For the Father's eye is on us,Never off us, still upon us,Night and day!Work and Pray!Pray! and Work will be completer;Work! and Prayer will be the sweeter;Love! and Prayer and Work the fleeterWill ascend upon their way!Fear not lest the busy fingerWeave a net the soul to stay;Give her wings—she will not linger;Soaring to the source of day;Cleaving clouds that still divide usFrom the azure depths of rest,She will come again! beside us,With the sunshine on her breast,Sit, and sing to us, while quickestOn their task their fingers move,While the outward din wars thickest,Songs that she hath learned above.
Live in Future as in Present;Work for both while yet the dayIs our own! for Lord and Peasant,Long and bright as summer's day,Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant,Cometh soon our Holiday;Work away!
We may as well go by the North-west passage as by any other, on our phantom voyage to Japan. Behring Straits shall be the door by which we enter the Pacific Ocean. We are soon flitting between islands; from the American peninsula of Alaska runs a chain of islands,—the Aleutian,—which lie sprinkled upon our track, like a train of crumbs dropped by some Tom Thumb among the giants, who may aforetime have been led astray, not in the wood, but on the water. If he landed on Kamtchatka, from the point of that peninsula he made a fresh start, dropping more crumbs,—the Kurile Islands,—till he dropped some larger pieces, and a whole slice for the main island of Japan, before he again reached the continent and landed finally on the Corea. In sailing by these islands, we have abundant reason to observe that they indicate main lines of volcanic action. From Behring Strait, in fact, we enter the Pacific, between two great batteries of subterranean fire. Steering for Japan, we pass, on the Kamtchatkan coast, the loftiest volcano in the old world, Kamtchatskaja (fifteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three feet). Following the course of the volcanic chain of Kurile Islands, of which the most northerly belong to Russia, the southern Kuriles are the first land we encounter subject to Japan. We do not go ashore here, to be sent to prison like Golownin, for we are content, at present, to remember that the natives of these islands are the hairiest among men. We sail on, too polite to outrage Japanese propriety by landing, even from a Phantom Ship, on the main island; so we sail to Kiusiu, and run into the bay of Nagasaki. The isles of Japan, calling rocks islands, are in number three thousand eight hundred and fifty. The main island, Nippon, is larger than Ireland, and is important enough to have been justly called the England of the Pacific Ocean.
Only there is a mighty difference between this England, talking about liberty, or cherishing free trade, and that Dai Nippon; in which not a soul does as he pleases, and from which the commerce of the whole world is shut out. Dai (or great) Nippon is the name of the whole state, which the Chinese modify into Jih-pun, and which we have further altered to Japan. On Kiusiu, a large southern island, Nagasaki is the only port into which, on any possible excuse, a foreign vessel is allowed to enter. This port we are now approaching; the dark rocks of the coast line are reflected from a brilliant sea; we pass a mountain island, cultivated to the very summit, terrace above terrace; green hills invite us to our haven, and blue mountains in the distance tempt us to an onward journey. There are white houses shining among cedars; there are pointed temple roofs; boats with their sails up make the water near us lively; surely we shall like Japan. We enter the bay now, and approach Nagasaki, between fruitful hills and temple groves, steeps clothed with evergreen oak, cedars, and laurels, picturesque rocks, attacked by man, and wheedled out of practicable ground for corn and cabbages. There is Nagasaki on a hill side, regularly built, every house peeping from its little nest of greens; and there is the Dutch factory, named Dezima. Zima in Japanese means "island," for this factory is built upon an island. No Europeans but the Dutch; no Dutch except these managers of trade who are locked up in Dezima, may traffic with Japan; and these may traffic to the extent only of two ships yearly, subject to all manner of restrictions. As for the resident Dutch, they are locked up in Dezima, which is an island made on purpose for them. As if three thousand, eight hundred and fifty were not enough, another little island, fan-shaped, was built up out of the sea a few yards from the shore of Nagasaki. There the Dutchmen live; a bridge connects their island with the mainland, but a high gate and a guard of soldiers prevent all unseasonable rambles. In another part of the town there is a factory allowed to the Chinese. Other strangers entering this port are treated courteously, are supplied gratuitously with such necessaries as they want, but are on no account allowed to see the town, still less to penetrate into the country, and are required to be gone about their business as soon as possible. Strangers attempting entry at any other port belonging to Japan, are without ceremony fired upon as enemies. The admitted Dutch traders are rigorously searched; every thing betraying Christianity is locked up; money andarms are removed, and hostages are taken. Every man undergoes personal scrutiny. The Dutch are allowed no money. The Japanese authorities manage all sales for them; pay the minutest items of expenditure, and charge it on the profits of their trade, which are then placed on the return vessel, not in money, but in goods. The Japanese deal justly, even generously, in their way; but it is their way to allow the foreigners no money power. They restrict their exports almost wholly to camphor and copper, and allow no native workmanship to go abroad. Yet among themselves, as between one island and another, commerce is encouraged to the utmost. The Japanese territories range in the temperate zone through a good many degrees, and include all shades of climate between that of Liverpool and that of Constantinople. Between island and island, therefore, busy interchange takes place by means of junks, like these which now surround us in the Nagasaki harbor. You can observe how weak they look about the sterns, with rudders insecure. The law compels them to be so; for that is an acute device by which they are prevented from travelling too far; they dare not trust themselves too boldly to the mercy of the sea, and as it is, many wrecked men accuse the prudence of their lawgivers. But life is cheap; the population of Japan is probably near thirty million,—and who should care for a few dozen mariners?
If you please, we will now walk up into Nagasaki, with our phantom cloaks about us. Being in a region visited by earthquakes, of course we find the houses of one story lightly built; they are built here of wood and clay with chopped straw,—coated over, like our town suburban villas, with cement. Paper, instead of glass, for window panes, Venetian blinds, and around each house a verandah, we observe at once. But our attention is attracted from the houses to the people. How very awkwardly they slip along! With so much energy and vigor in their faces, how is it that they never thought of putting reasonable shoes upon their feet? They wear instead of shoes mere soles of wood or matting, held to the foot each by a peg which runs between the great toe and its neighbor, through a hole made for that purpose in the sock. These clouts they put away on entering a house, as we should put away umbrellas, and wear only socks in-doors. Nevertheless the people here look handsome in their loose, wide gowns, bound by a girdle round the waist, with long sleeves, of which, by the bye, you may perceive that the dependent ends are Japanese coat-pockets. Thence you see yonder gentleman drawing his nose-paper,—one of the little squares of clean white paper always ready in the sleeve-pocket to serve the purpose of our handkerchief. That little square when used is, you see, thrown away; but if the gentleman were in a house he would return it to his pocket, to be got rid of in a more convenient place. The women's robes are like those of the men in form, but richer in material, more various with gold and color. As to the head equipment, we observe, however, a great difference between the sexes. The men shave their own heads, leaving hair only at the back part and upon the temples, which they gather forward, and tie up into a tuft. The women keep their entire crop of hair standing, and they make the most of it; they spread it out into a turban, and stick through it not a few pieces of polished tortoise-shell, as big as office rulers.[M]Inviting admiration, the young beauty of Japan paints her face red and white, and puts a purple stain upon her lips; but the remaining touches are forbidden to a damsel till her heart is lost. The swain who seeks to marry her, fixes outside her father's house a certain shrub; if this be taken in-doors by the family, his suit he knows to be accepted; and when next he gets a peep at his beloved, he watches with a palpitating heart the movement of her lips, to see whether her teeth be blackened; for by blackened teeth she manifests the reciprocal affection. Only after marriage, however, is the lady glorified with a permission not only to have black teeth, but also to pull out her eyebrows.
Those are not little beggars yonder trotting by that lady who is so magnificently dressed; they are her children. The children of the Japanese are all dressed meanly, upon moral grounds. Notice those gentlemen who bow to one another; the ends of a scarf worn by each of them exactly meet the ground, yet one bows lower than another, and they go on walking in the bowed position until each has lost the other from his sight. Those scarfs are regulated by the law; each man must bow so that his scarf shall touch the ground, and it is so made long or short, that he may humble himself more or less profoundly in exact accordance with his rank.
Of rank there are eight classes after the Mikado and the Ziogoon, whom we shall come to visit in our travels presently. There are, one, the princes; two, the nobles, who owe feudal service to the prince, or the empire; three, the priests; and four, the soldiers; these four form the higher orders, and enjoy the privilege of wearing two swords and petticoat trousers. Class five counts as respectable; inferior officials and doctors constitute this class, and wear one sword with the trousers. Merchants and respectable tradesmen form class six, whose legs may not pollute the trousers, though, by entering themselves as domestics to a man of rank, they may enjoy the privilege of carrying one sword. These are the only people by whom wealth can be accumulated. Class seven—artists, artisans, and petty shopkeepers. Class eight—day laborers and peasants. Tradesmen who work on leather, tanners, &c., are excluded from classification. They are defiled, and may not even live withother men; they live in villages of their own, so thoroughly unrecognized, that Japanese authority, in measuring the miles along a road, breaks off at the entrance of a currier's village, leaves it excluded from his measurement, which is resumed upon the other side. So, if we travel post, we get through leather-sellers' villages for nothing.
These houses in Nagasaki, which at a distance looked so much like mansions, are the store-rooms wherein tradesmen keep their valuable stock, and families their valuable furniture. For desolating fires are common in the towns and cities of Japan; so common, that almost every house is prudently provided with a fire-proof store-room, having copper shutters to the windows, and the walls covered a foot thick with clay. Attached to each is a large vessel of liquid mud, with which the whole building is smeared on an alarm of fire; and this method of fire-insurance is exceedingly effective, where there is nothing like a Sun or Atlas Company to fall upon, and the most abstemious of fires eats up, at any rate, a street.
That door is open, and there is no horseshoe over it—there's not an iron horseshoe in Japan,—so two ghosts slip into the house unperceived. First, here is a portico for palanquins, shoes, and umbrellas; into this the kitchens open. In the back apartments we shall find the family. We walk into the drawing-room, and there the master sits. It is most fortunate that we are now invisible; for, did we visit in the flesh, we should be teased by the necessities of Japanese civility. That gentleman would sit upon his heels before us; we should sit on our heels before him; we should then all bow our heads as low as possible. Then we should make compliments to one another, the answer to each being "He, he, he!" Then pipes and tea would be brought in; after this we might begin to talk. Before we left we should receive sweetmeats on a sheet of white paper, in which it would be our duty to fold up whatever we did not eat, and put it in our pockets. Eat what you like, and pocket what remains, is Japanese good-breeding. At a dinner-party the servant of each guest brings baskets, that he may take away his master's portion of the feast. This master, however, is unconscious of our shadowy appearance, and continues busy with his book. It is Laplace, translated into Japanese, through Dutch. The Japanese are thoroughly alive to the advanced state of European science, and on those fixed occasions when the Dutchmen from the factory visit the capital, the Dutch physician is invariably visited by the native physicians, naturalists, and astronomers, who display on their own parts wonderful acumen, and most dexterously pump for European knowledge. Scientific books in the Dutch language they translate and publish into Japanese. The country has not been shut up out of contempt for foreigners, and native men of science have so diligently profited by opportunities afforded from without, that they construct by their own artificers, barometers, telescopes, make their own almanacks, and calculate their own eclipses. Hovering about this gentleman, our eyes detect at once that the impression on his page is taken from a wood-cut imitation of handwriting; movable types are not yet introduced into Japan. The writing, like Chinese, is up and down the page, and not across it. Three or four different characters seem to be used indiscriminately, and some of them are certainly Chinese. The good folks of Dai Nippon are indebted to the Chinese for the first strong impulse to their civilization; not being themselves of Chinese origin, but a distinct branch of the Mongolian family. Their language is quite different, and has exceedingly long words, instead of being built up, like Chinese, of mono-syllables. Japanese written in Chinese character is understood by any Chinaman; but so would English be, since Chinese writing represents ideas. So, if a Spaniard writes five, an Englishman reads it as "five," and understands correctly, yet the Spaniard would tell you that he wrote not "five," but "cinco."
Hovering still about this gentleman, and beguiled by the strangeness of all things we see into a curiosity like that of children, we admire his sword. The hilt is very beautiful, composed of various metals blended into a fine enamel. This enamel is used in Japan where Europeans would use jewels, because the art of cutting precious stones is not known to the Japanese. For the blade of this sword it is not impossible that a sum has been given not unlike a hundred pounds; the tempering of steel is carried to perfection in Japan, where gentlemen are connoisseurs in sword-blades. Young nobles lend their maiden swords to the executioner (who is always chosen from the defiled leather-selling race) that they may be tried upon real flesh and blood; as executions in Japan are generally cruel, and some criminals are hacked to death, rather than killed outright, the swords on such occasions are refreshed with a fair taste of blood. The mats upon the floor are the next things we notice. A thick matting of straw forms a substratum, over which are spread the fine mats, elegantly fringed. To see that lackered work inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which we familiarly call Japan, in its perfection, we must evidently visit it at home. Any thing of the kind so exquisitely beautiful as this little table, is not to be found in Europe. Whatever trinkets pass out of these islands into Europe, do sonayboen—that is, with secret connivance—but the first-rate manufactures are in no way suffered to come to us. Withoutnayboen, life would be insupportable in a minute wilderness of rules and customs. People even dienayboen—that is, a man lies unburied, and is said to be alive, when his death otherwise would lead to disagreeable results. Here, as elsewhere, when rules are made intolerably strict, evasion is habitual. The amount that cannot be evaded is astonishing enough, as we shall see ere wereturn to England. Now we are in the house of this gentleman at Nagasaki. His wife enters, and by their mutual behavior it is evident that ladies in Japan are to their husbands very much what ladies are in England. This lady passes to the garden; the room ends with a projecting angle open to the garden on each side, a sort of bay, which every house has; and if there be no more ground than just the supplementary triangles on each side to complete the square, still there is always that, and that is always quite enough, for want of more. It is enough to spend a fortune upon, in dwarf trees and vegetable curiosities. The Japanese shine like the Chinese in monstrosities. They can dwarf trees so well, that in a little box four inches square, President Meylan saw growing a fir, a bamboo, and a plum-tree, in full blossom. Or they hypertrophy plants if they please, until a radish is produced as large as a boy six years old. Their gardens, however small, are always laid out in landscape style, and each is adorned with a temple, not a mere ornamental summerhouse, but the real shrine of a household god. Into this garden walks the lady, and returns with a few flowers. She takes these to an elegant shelf fixed in a recess of the apartment, upon which a bouquet stands, and is engaged upon her nosegay. An act of taste? O dear, no; every drawing-room in Japan has such a shelf, with flowers placed upon it; every lady entering who found her husband there, and meant to talk with him, would in the first place make the nosegay talk, and say, "The wife and husband are alone together." If company arrive, the flowers must be otherwise adjusted; the position of every flower, and even of green leaves in that bouquet, is fixed by custom, which is law, to vary with the use to which the room is put. One of the most difficult and necessary parts of female education in Japan is to acquire a perfect knowledge of the rules laid down in a large book on the arrangements of the drawing-room nosegay, in a manner suitable to every case. It is the Japanese "use of the globes" to ladies' schools. To boys and girls, after reading and writing, which are taught (hear, England!) to the meanest Japanese, the most necessary part of education is an elaborate training in the ceremonial rules of life. Bows proper for every occasion, elegant kotoos, the whole science and practice of good-breeding, have to be learned through many tedious years. To boys there is given special training in the hara-kiri, or the art of ripping one's self up. Many occasions present themselves on which it as much concerns the honor of a Japanese to cut himself open, as it concerned an Englishman some years ago to fire a pistol at his friend. The occasions are so frequent, that a Japanese boys' school would be incomplete in which instruction was not given in this art of suicide. Boys practise all the details in dramatic fashion, and in after life, if a day come when disgrace, caused often by the deeds of other men, appears inevitable, he appoints a day, and according to the exigencies of the case, before his family or his assembled connections, ceremoniously cuts open his own belly at a solemn dinner. Dying in this way, he is said to have died in the course of nature; dying before shame came to him, he is said to have died undisgraced, and so has saved his family from that participation in his fall which otherwise was imminent. Now we must leave this house, in which we have spent perhaps a little too much time: yet in the whole time we did not once hear the squalling of a baby, though a baby was there certainly. If this should meet the eye of Mr. Meek, he is informed that in Japan, children, until they are three years old, are not allowed to wear any thing tight about their persons.
Now we are once more in the streets of Nagasaki, and observe, that for a gentleman to turn his back upon a friend, is true politeness in this most original of lands. It signifies that he who so turns is unworthy to behold the face, &c. A bridal procession passes us; the bride in her long white veil. There is a touch of poetry connected with that veil—it literally is the shroud in which she will be buried.
We are out of town, now, and delighting in the open country. Exquisite views of hill, and dale, and wood, and water, tempt the sight. Rice fields, of course, we pass; rice is a staple article of diet to the Japanese, as to so many other millions of the human race. It is the vegetable food that finds its way into more mouths than any other. There is wheat also in Japan, used chiefly for making cakes and soy; barley for feeding cattle. The cattle being used as beasts of draught and burden, it is thought improper to kill them, or to deprive the young calves of their milk; the Japanese, therefore, refrain from milk and beef. They eat great quantities of fish, poultry, and venison. In the country gardens we see quinces, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, oranges, and citrons too; bean-fields abound, and farms, of which the hedges are all tea. Where soil and climate favor, many a hillside in Japan is cultivated as a tea plantation; but beyond this the tea-plant is used by the farmers generally as a hedge from which they gather their own leaves, and dry tea for home use, just as our farmers brew their own October beer. Now we are flitting under cedar groves, now under firs, now under mulberry plantations for the silkworm; every good point in the landscape is occupied by a temple, which is composed of one large edifice and many little ones. The little ones are used by pleasure-parties. There is a snake, and there you see in the tree a long-tailed monkey (Inuus speciosus); there is no other kind of monkey in these islands, and the snakes are all of a species found nowhere else. The tree frog and the eatable frog live in the north of Nippon. Here we have squirrels.There are no lions and tigers; there is not a single animal of the cat tribe known upon these islands; you can meet with nothing worse than a wild boar. Great pains are taken to destroy the foxes. Here are pheasants without game-laws, and the peacock yonder looks as if he felt himself at home. Several palanquins have passed us on the road, varying much in shape and minor details. The shape of the palanquin, the length of the poles, their position, the way in which they are held, and the number of holders, all are fixed so as to accord precisely with the rank of the good gentleman inside. The number of attendants in the train, even of an inconsiderable man, is startling; and as for a prince, he might be setting out to conquer China. The roads are good, and there is no lack of horsemen, but we have not seen draught carriages; perhaps these hills are an impediment to travelling by such conveyance; roads over hills and mountains being simply flights of steps.
Hollo! What couple scampers by in such a hurry? 'Tis the post: the greatest princes must get out of its way. One man runs with the letters, and another keeps pace with him, to supply his place in case of illness or accident; if both posts fail, the nearest man, whatever be his dignity, must do their work for them. These posts are never horsed; but each pair, at the conclusion of a stage, finds the next couple waiting to catch the important bundle thrown to them, and set off instantly, before the spent runners have reached the spot where they may halt and get their wind again. Goods are conveyed on packhorses or oxen over land, but water transit by lakes, rivers, or canals, is much more common. The roads are well swept, for the farmers on each side diligently scrape up all manure; and as men with brooms clear all away before a traveller of rank, the highway is kept in a very neat condition. Men selling straw clouts for travellers, and straw shoes for the horses, which require, of course, frequent renewal, pick up a living by the roadside, and we pass them frequently. Observe that mighty camphor-tree, which every traveller has mentioned. To Kæmpfer it was venerable for its age in the year 1691; still it is healthy, and so large that fifteen men can stand within its hollow. Hot-springs, of course, we pass in a volcanic country. There is a coal-mine also here, though charcoal is the fuel usually burned.
We have now crossed Kiusiu, and reached the seaport of Kokura, where we find our Phantom Ship in readiness to take us through a sea covered with islets, to the large island of Nippon. We shall disembark, and travel very rapidly through Ohosaka to Miyako, where the divine Mikado holds his court. We pass some strange-looking men covered with matting, each of whom has in his hand a long wooden spoon. The spoon is their cockle-shell, for they are pilgrims travelling in the most pious form, as beggars, to the shrine of their own goddess. This pilgrimage is made by all good Japanese—the oftener the better, especially as they grow old, because they get each time full absolution from the priests for their past sins.
The sun goddess and the Mikado are allied together; and as we now are journeying towards a seat of government, we can do nothing better than discuss the Japanese religion. It begins with an Oriental "once upon a time," of gods who reigned for a few millions of years apiece, above whom there was, and is, and ever will be, one supreme God, free from care. The last of seven royal gods said to his wife one day, "There's earth somewhere, I'm sure!" and so he poked about with his spear in the water, feeling for it. Drops falling from his spear-point made the islands of Japan. Then this god made eight millions of other gods, and also created the ten thousand things. Having ordered matters to his satisfaction, he made a present of his Japanese earth to his pet daughter, the sun goddess. The sun goddess reigned only two hundred and fifty thousand years, and her four successors filled the next two million; the last of the four, being the great-great-grandson of the sun goddess, fancied a mortal life, and left a mortal boy, who reigned on earth, and was the first Mikado: from him all Mikados are descended. This is the native Japanese religion, called Sintoo; worshipping the sun goddess, andKami, which are minor gods or saints. The Sintoos bow before no images, but put as emblems in their temples a sheet of white paper and a mirror, to denote the soul pure and incapable of stain. The worshipper kneels, gazes at the mirror, offers sacrifice of fruit or rice, deposits money, and retires. Upon this creed Buddhism has been grafted; but the religion of the learned Japanese is Sintoo—a philosophic moral doctrine which they cherish secretly, while outwardly observing rites prescribed by custom.
Butrevenons à nos Mikados: the first Mikado, though of fabulous descent, is an historical person, Zin-mu-teen-woo, and with him Japanese history begins—at a period from whence we date rational annals in some other countries, about 660b.c.We will note those points of history that are essential to a comprehension of the present government. Mikados followed each other, sole rulers and powerful, until they fell into a trick of abdicating in favor of their children, and then doing the duty without being annoyed by the ceremonies of their office. That had its inconvenient results, for presently came one Mikado who married the daughter of a powerful papa; and when the time came for retirement, and he had abdicated in favor of a son three years old, the powerful papa thrust him aside into a prison, and usurped the regency. A civil war was the result of this; Yoritomo leaped up as champion of the imprisoned man, so recently a king, released him, and restored him to the regency over his infant son. For this essential service good Yoritomo was made a sortof field-marshal, or Ziogoon. The ex-Mikado dying, left Yoritomo the guardian of his son; and so for twenty years the Ziogoon was regent. Infant Mikados still continuing to be the fashion, regency became hereditary to the Ziogoons; and these last being men, it eventually came to pass that the Mikado was stripped of all power, and converted into a magnificent doll, while the real court was transferred to Jeddo, where the Ziogoons reside. Retributive justice we shall meet with in a little while, but we have now reached Miyako, the Mikado's residence, and nominally still the capital of Nippon.