I)f








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1117...4 m  -   -'iAt




FROM   THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR
OF HIS WORKS.
(Published by JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co., successors to TICKNOR AND FIELDS.]
THESE papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your
house, and, so far as regards the- U. S., of your house exclusively;' not with any view to further emolument, but as an
acknowledgment of the services which you have already rendered'me; namely, first, in having brought together so widely
scattered a collection, - a dificulty which in my own hands
by too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be absolutely insurmountable; secondly, m having. made me a participator in.the pecuniary profits of the
American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of.any
expectation on my part, without any'legal claim that I could
plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and
merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these
new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the
eyes' of those who have taken an interest in the original
series. But at all events, good or bad, they are now tendered to the appropriation'of your individual house, the
MESSRS. TICKNOR AND FIELDS, according to- the amplest
extent of any power to make such a transfer that I.may be
found to possess by law or custom in America.
I wish,this transfer were likely to be of more value. But
the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it,
may express my sense -of the liberality manifested throughout
this transaction by your honorable house.
Ever believe me, my dear sir,
Your faithful and obliged,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.




De- Airliacc,'s Worhs.
A UTHOR'S LIBRARY EDITION.
CONFESSIONS
OF AN
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,
AND
AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co.
18.73.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the yeifr 1861, by
TICKNOR     AND   FIELDS,
Ia the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the-District of Massachusetts




CONFESSIONS
0o
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,
BEING AN EXTRACT FROM
THIE LIFE OF & SCHOLAR.








FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
I HERE present you, courteous reader, with th6
record of a rerharkable period of my life; aecordig'to my application of it) I trust that it will
prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a
considerable degree, useful and instructive.  In
that hope it is that I have drawn, it up; and that
must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honorable reserve, which, for the aost
part, restrains us from the public exposure of our
own errors and infiirities. Nothing, indeed, is
mwre revolting to Engliish feelings, than the ipec'
tacle of a human being obtruding on our notice
his moral ulcers, or scars, and tearing away that
"decent drapery-" which time, or indulgence to
human frailty, may have drawn over them:
accordingly, the greater part of our confessions
(that is, spontaneous and'extra-judicial confeis




,V1II   FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
sions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, ot
swindlers; and for any such acts of gratuitous selfhumiliation from those who can be supposed in
sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part
of society, we must look to French literature, or to
that part of the German which is tainted with the
spurious and defective sensibility of the French.
All this I'feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I
alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for
many months hesitated about the propriety of
allowing this,. or any part of my narrative, to come
before the public eye, until after my death (when,
for many reasons, the whole will be published):
and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step, that I have, at last,
concluded on taking it.
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct,
from public notice: they court privacy and solitude;
and, even in the choice of a'grave, will sometimes
sequester themselves from the general population
of the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in
the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
— Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us




FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.      iX
dll, that it should be so; nor. would I willingly,. in
my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings; nor in act or word do anything to
weaken them. But, on the one hand, as my selfacdusation does not amount to a confession of guilt,
so, on the other, it ispossible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done
to the feelings I have noticed, and justify'a breach
of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not,
of. necessity, imply guilt.  They approach, or
recede from, the shades of that dark alliance,
in proportion to the probable motives and pros-.
pects of the offender, and the palliations, known
or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the
temptations to it were potent from the first, and
the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach
of truth or modesty, I may affirm, that my life has
been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from
my birth I was made an intellectual creature; and
intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and
pleasures have been, even from  my- school-boy
days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and
if I am bound to confess that-I have indulged




X        FROM THE AUTHOR TO TIE READER.
in it to ah excess, not yet recorded* of any other
man,, it is no less true, that I have, struggled
against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal,.and have at length accomplished what
I never yet heard attributed to any other man 
have untwisted, almost to. its final links, the
accursed chain which fettered me. Such a. selfconquest may reasonably be set off in.counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not
-o insist-that, in my case, the self-conquest was
unquestionable, the. self-indulgence open to doubts
of casuistry, according as that name shall be
extended to..acts.aiming at the bare relief of pain,
or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt,-therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if
I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the
present. act of confession, in consideration of the
service which I may thereby render to the whole
class of opium-eaters. But who are they l Reader,
I am  sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed.
Of this I became convinced, some years ago, by
computing, at that time,'the number of those in
one small class of English society (the class of men
* " Not yet recorded," I say; for there is one celebrated man of
the present day, who, if all'be true which is reported of him, has
greatly exceeded me in quantity.




FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.    XU
distinguished for talent,.r of eminent station) who
were known to me, directsl or indirectly, as opiumeaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and
benevolent —; the late Dean of —; Lord
A; Mr. -, the philosopher; a- late underseuretary. of state (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the'use of opium, in
the very same words as the Dean of -, namely,
"that he felt as though rats were- gnawing and
abrading the coats of his stomach"); Mr. -—;
and many others, hardly less known, whom   it
would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class,
comparatively so limited, could furnish so many
scores of cases (and that within the knowledge
of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference,
that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of
this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts
became known to me, which satisfied me that it
was not incorrect. I will mention two:: 1. Three
respectable London druggists, in widely remote
quarters of London, from whom I happened lately
to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured
me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as
I may term them) was, at this time, immense; and
that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons
to whom habit had rendered opium necessary




XII     FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
from  such as were purchasing it with a view td.
suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes.  This evidence respected London only.
But, 2 (which will possibly surprise the reader
more), some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was-informed by several cotton manufacturers that their work-people were rapidly
getting into the practice of opium-eating; so miuch
so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of
the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two,
or three grains, in preparation for the known
demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages,
which, at that time, would not allow them to
indulge in ale or spirits; and, wages rising, it may
be thought that this practice would cease: but,
as I do not readily believe that any man, haying
once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will
afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted
That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate now eat the more.
Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium  are
admitted, even by medical writers who are its
greatest enemies: thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in-his " Essay




FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.   XIl
on the Effects of Opium" (published in the year
1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had
not been sufficiently explicit on the properties,
counter-agents, &c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms (~ovovwaavve8oua):. Perhaps he thought the subject of too
delicate a nature to be made common; and an
many people might then indiscriminately use it,
it would take from that necessary fear and caution,
which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug; for there are many properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us
than the Turks themselves; the result of which
knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do
not altogether concur; but upon that point I shall
have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader with the
moral of my narrative.








PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS.'THESE preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after life.
it has been judged proper to premise, for three several
reasons:
1. As forestalling that question, and givingit assatis.
factory answer, which else -Would painfully obtrude itself
in the course of the -Opium Confessions —" How' came
any reasonable being.-to subject himself to such a yoke
of -misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile
and;knowingly to fetter himself with:such a sevenfolr.
chain?-" a question which, if not somewhere plausibly
resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation which it
would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton folly,
to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is
necessary in any case to an author's-purposes.
2. As'furnishing, a key to some parts of' that tremendols scenery which afterwards peopled the, dream:of
the. op'um-eater.'3 As creating -some previous interest of a personal
sort in, the confessing subject, apart from the matter
of the confessions, which cannot' f.al to render the




16                CONFESSIONS OF AN
confessions themselves more interesting.      If a ma a
*"whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium.
etetrtheprobability is,' that (if he is not'too dull to
dream  at all) he will dream  about oxen: whereas, in
the case before him, the reader will find that the opiumeater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accord.
ingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams (waking
or sleeping, day dreams or night dreams) is suitable to
one who, in that character,,Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable.to the sustaining of any claim to the title of.
philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb
intellect in its analytic functions (in which part of the
pretension, however, England'.can for some generations
show but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of'
any.known candidate for this honor who can be. styled
emphatically a subtle; thinker, with the, exception of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, in a narrower departinent of thought, with the recent illustrious exception *
* A third exception might -perhaps.. have been added: and my
reason'for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only
in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly
addressed himself to philosophical themes; his riper powers have
teen dedicated (on very.excusable and very intelligible grounds,
under the present direction of the popular mind in England), to
criticism and the fine'arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt
whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a
subtle one. It is; besides, a great drawback on his mastery over'
philosophical subjects) that he has obviously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic education.: he has not read-, Plato in
his youth.' (which most -likely was. only: his misfortune), but
ueither has he read Kant in his manhood (which s  -his' fault'i




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            17
of David Ricardo),-but also on such a -constitution
of the mo.al faculties as shall give him an inner eye
and power of intuition for the vision and mysteries:of
human nature: that constitution of faculties, in short,
which (amongst all the generations of men that from
the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it
were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest.degree - and Scottish * professors
in the lowest.
I have often been asked how I first came to be a
regular opium-eater; and have suffered, very unjustly,
in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed
to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which 1
shall have to record, by a long. course of indulgence in
this practice, purely for the sake of creating an artificial
state of pleasurable excitement.  This, however, is a
misrepresentation of my case.  True it is, that for
nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the
sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but, so long
as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected
from all material'.bad consequences, by the necessity of
interposing long intervals between the several;acts of
indulgence, in order to -renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure,
but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that.[ first began to use opium as an article of daily diet.
In the twenty-eighth year of my, age, a most painful
affection of the stomach, which Il-ad first experienced
about ten years before, attacked me in great strength.
This affection had originally been caused by the extrem,
* I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of whom
indeed, 1 know only one.
2




1;8             CONFESSIONS OF AN
eties of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During
the season of hope and redundant happiness which
succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-fouir) it had
slumbered: for the three, following years it had revived
at intervals; and now, under unfavorable circumstances;
from depression of spirits, it attacked me with violence
that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful
sufferings which first produced this derangement of the
stomach' were interesting in themselves and in the
circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly
retrace them.
-My father died when I was about seven years old,
and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent
to various schools,-great and small; and was very early
distinguished. for my classical attainments, especially
for my knowledge of Greek.' At thirteen I wrote Greek
with ease:; and at fifteen my command of that language
was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in
lyrlc metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and
without embarrassment —an accomplishment which I
have not since met with in any scholar of my times,'and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of
daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek 1
could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking
my memory and invention for all sorts and combinati6is
of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern
ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me. a com-;pass of diction which would never have been called out.by a dull translation of moral essays, &c.  "That
boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of
a stranger to me, "that boy could haranguean Athenian
inob better than you or I could address an English




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            19
one."  He who honored me with this eulogy was a
scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and, of all my
tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced.
Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to
this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred
to the care, first of a blockhead, Wi-o was in-a perpetual
panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and,'finally,
to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great
school on an - ancient foundation. This man had been
appointed to' his situation by -. College, Oxford; and
was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men
whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy,
and' inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in
my eyes, to the Efonian brilliancy of my favorite
master; and, besides, he could not disguise from myhourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy-to be, and' know
himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or
in power of mind.    This was the case, so far as
regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only; for
the two boys who jointly with myself composed the
first form were better. Grecians tthan the head-master,
though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more
accustomed to sacrifice to, the graces.  When I first
entered, I remember that we read Sophocles; and it.was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned
triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson
before we went up, and laying a regular train, with
lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as
it were) any difficulties.he found in the choruses;
whilst we never condescended to open our books, until




20              CONFESSIONS OF AN,the moment of going up, and were generally employed
in.writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such import
ant matter.  My two class4ellows were poor, and
dependent, for their future prospects at the' university,
on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who
had a small patrimonial property, the income of which
was sufficient to support me at'college, wished to be
sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the'subject to my guardians, but all to no
purpose.  One, who was more reasonable, and had
more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at
a distance; two of the other three resigned all their
authority into the hands of the fourth; and this fourth,
with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his
-way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and
personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope
for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my
guardian: unconditional submission was what he demanded; "nd I prepared myself, therefore, for other
measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty
steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approaching; after which day I had sworn wfthin myself that
I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys.
Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman
of high rank, who, though young herself,. had known
me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great
distinction, requesting that she would (lend-" me five
guineas.  For upwards of a week no answer came;
and I: was beginning to despond, when, at length, a
servant'put into iny hands a double letter,' with a
coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging"




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           2 
the fail writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way
the delay had arisen; she enclosed double of what I
had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should
never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,
then, I was prepared for my scheme: ten guineas,
added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket
money, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length
of time; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary
can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and
pleasure makes it virtually infinite.
It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot
often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one)
that we never do anything consciously for the last
time (of things, that is, which we have long been in
the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This
truth I felt deeply when I came to leave, a place
which I did not love, and where I had not been happy.
On the evening before I left    forever, I grieved
when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with
the evening service, performed for the last time in my
hearing; and at night, when the muster-roll of names
was called over, and mine (as usual) was'called first.
I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who
was standing by, I bowed to him, and lookmg earnestly
in his face, thinking'to myself, "He is old and infirm.
and in this world I shall not see him again." I was
right; I never did see him again, nor never shall
He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly,
returned my salutation (or' rather my valediction), and
we parted (though he knew it not) forever. I could
not reverence him intellectually; but he had been
uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul



99CS            CONFESSIONS OF AN
gences;, and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica.
tion I should inflict upon him.
The morning came, which was to launch me into the
world, and from which my whole succeeding life has,
in many.important points, taken its coloring. I lodged
in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from
my first entrance, the.'indulgence of a private- room,
which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study.
At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion
at the ancient towers of - —, "drest in earliest light,'
and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a
cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in
my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncerta-in danger and troubles;- and if I could have foreseen
the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction, which
soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated.
To this agitation the deep peace of the morning presented' an affecting contrast, and in some degree a
medicine.  The silence was more profound than that
of midnight -and to me.the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the
light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at
other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and
thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures
of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as
the presence of man,.and his restless and unquiet spirit,
are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself,
took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the
room. For the last year and a half this room had been
my "pensive citadel:" here I had read and studied
through all the hours of night; and, though true it Was




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           2OR
that, for the latter part of this time, I, who was framed
for love and gentle affections, had lost my gayety and
happiness, during the strife and fever of contention
with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so
passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intelle~tiial
pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy
hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I
looked round on the chair,- hearth, writing-table, and
other familiar objects, knowing too. certainly that I
looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write
this, it is eighteen years ago; and yet,-at this moment, I
see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments
and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting
gaze: it. was a picture of the lovely -, which hung
over. the mantel-piece; the eyes and mouth of which
were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant
with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a
thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron
saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones
of.     clock. proclaimed that it was four o'clock.- I
went up to the picture, kissed it,.and then gently walked
out, and closed the door forever!
So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions
of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall, without
smiing, an incident which occurred at that time, and
which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution
of my plan. I had a: trunk of immense weight; for,
besides my clothes, it contained.nearly all my library
The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's.
my room was at. an aerial elevation in the house, and




24              CONFESSIONS OF AN
(what was worse) the staircase which communicated
with this angle of the building was accessible only by
a gallery, which passed the head-master's chamberdoor.  I was a favorite with all the servants; and
knowing that any of them would screen me, and. act
confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a
groom  of the head-master's.  The groom  swore he
would do anything I wished; and, when the time
arrived, went up stairs to bring the trunk down. This
I feared was beyond the strength of any one man:
however, the groom was a man
Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies;
and had a back as spacious as SalisburyPlains. AcE
cordingly he persisted  in bringing down the trunk
alone, whilst I stood' waiting. at the foot of the last
flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard
him descending with slow and firm steps; but, unfortunately, from  his trepidation, as he drew -near the
dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery
his foot slipped; and the mighty burden,'falling from
his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each
step of the descent, that, on reaching the bottom,- it
trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noiseof twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the
archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost;
and that my only chance for executing a retreat was
to sacrifice my baggage.  However, od reflection,'
determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the
utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine:
but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the
ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           25
of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous
peal of laughter, that might have Wakened the Seven
Sleepers.  At the sound of this resonant merriment,
within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not
forbear joining in it; subdued-to this, not so much by
the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it
had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter
of course, that Dr. --  would sally out of his room;
for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out
like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had
ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be-heard
in' the bed-room.  Dr. -   had a painful complaint,
which sometimes keeping him awake, made him sleep,
perhaps, when it did come, the deeper.  Gathering
courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden
again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent
without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed
on a wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier's': then,
"with Providence my'guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel, with some articles of dress under
my arm: a favorite English poet in one pocket; and a
small 12mo. volume, containing about nine plays of
Euripides, in the other.
It had been my intention, originally, to proceed to
-Westmoreland, both from the love I bore to that county,
arid on other personal accounts.  Accident,' however,
gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent
my steps towards North Wales.
After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and Caernarvonshire, I took
Lodgngs in a small neat house in B-.  Here I might




26               CONFESSIONS. OF A.
nave staid with great comfort for many weeks; foi
provisions were cheap at B', from the scarcity ot
other markets for'the surplus products of a wide agricultural- district.  An accident, however, in which,
perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to
wander again.   I. know not whether my reader may
have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the
proudest class of people in England (or, at any rate,
the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families
of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about
with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification
of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies
also to the children of many untitled houses) are often,
to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth, or
descent.  Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their' own tale.  Such
persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of
their claims already established, except among those
who are ignorant of the.vorld, by virtue of their own
obscurity; "Not to know them argues one's self unknown",   Their manners take a suitable tone and
coloring; and, for once that they find it necessary to
impress a sense'of their consequence upon others, they
meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and
tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension
With the families of bishops it is otherwise; with them
it is all up-hill work to make known their pretensions;
for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from
noble families is not at any time very,large; and the
succession to these dignities is so rapid, that the public
ear seldom  has time to- become familiar with them
unless where they are connected with some literary




:ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           2'7
reputation.  Hence it is that the children of bishops
carry about with them an austere and repulsive air,
indicative of claims not generally acknowledged,-a' sort
of- noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of
too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man, from all contact with the O no^llo&.
Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will preserve a man.from such weakness;
but, in general, the truth of my representation' will be
acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in such
families, appears, at least, more upon the surface.of their
manners.- This spirit of manners naturally communicates itself to* their domestics, and other dependants.
Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse,
in the family of the- Bishop of —; and had but lately
married away and "settled" (as such people express
) for life. In a little town like B —, merely to have
lived in' the bishop's family conferred -some distinction;
and my good landlady had rather* more than her. share
of the pride i have noticed on that score. What "my
lord" said, and what "my. lord" did, -how useful he
was in parliament, and how indispensable at Oxford,formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore
very well; for I was too good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an ample allowance for
the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however,
I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately
impressed with the bishop's importance; and, perhaps.
to.punish me for my indifference, or, possibly, by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in
which I was indirectly a party concrrned.  She had
seen to the palace to pay her respects to the family




28              CONFESSIONS OF AN
and, dinner being over, was summoned into che dmlnng
room. In giving an account of her household economy
she happened to mention that she had let her apart.
nents.  Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had
taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of
inmates; "for," said' he, "you must recollect, Betty
that this place is m the high road to the Head; so that
multitudes of Irish swindlers, running away from their
debts into England, and' of English swindlers, running
away from their.debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to
take this place in their route."  This advice was certainly not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted;
to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations,
than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat worse:-" 0, my lord," answered
my landlady (according to her own representation of
the matter), "I really don't think this young gentleman
is a swindler; because --—." " You don't think me a
swindler?' said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation; "for the future, I shall, spare you the trouble
of thinking about it."  And without delay I prepared
for my departure. Some concessions the good womanseemed disposed'to make,; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned
dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn; and
reconciliation then became impossible. I was, indeed,
greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any
grands of suspicion; however remotely, against a person
whom he had never seen; and I thought-of letting him
know my mind in' Greek; which, at the same time
that it would furnish some' presumption that I was noswindlei would also (I hoped) c.m'pel: the bishop to




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.             9
reply in tae same language; in which case, I doubted
not to make it appear, that if I was not so rich as his
lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts,
however, drove this boyish design out of my mind: for
1 considered that the bishop was. in the'right to counsel
an old servant; that he could not have designed that
his advice should -be reported to me; and that the same
coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat
the advice at all might have colored it in a way more
agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the
actual expressions of the worthy bishop.
I left the lodging the very same hour; and this turned
out a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because,
living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money
very rapidly.  In a fortnight I was reduced to short
allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal
a day.  From the -keen appetite produced by constant
exercise and mountain air, actingon a youthful stomach,
I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen;
for the single meal which I could venture to order was
coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and, afterwards, so- long as I remained in Wales,
I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on
the casual hospitalities which I now and then received,
in return for such little services as I had an opportunity
of: rendering.  Sometimes I wrote letters of business
for cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liverpool or in London; - more often' wrote love-letters to
their sweethearts for young wpmen who had- lived as.servants in Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English
border  On all such occasions-I gave great satisfaction
to my humble friends, and was generally treated with




0               cCONFESSIONS OF AN
nospitality; and- once, in particular, near the village of
Llan-y-styndwr (or some such name), in a sequestered
part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards
of' three days by a family of young people, with ar
affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired.'The family consisted, at that time, of four sisters and three brothers, al:
grown up, and remarkable for elegance and delicacy of
manners. So much beauty, and so much native good
breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have
seen before or since in any cottage, except- once or
twice in' Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke
English; an accomplishment not often met with in so
many members of one family, especially in villages
remote from the high road. -Here I wrote, on my first
introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the
brothers, who had served on board an English man-ofwar;, and, more privately, two love-letters for two of the'sisters. They were both interesting looking girls, and
one of uncommon loveliness.  In the midst of their
confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving
me general instructions, it did not. require any great
penetration to discover that what they wished was that
their letters should be as kind as was consistent with
pioper maidenly pride.  I contrived so to temper my
expressions as to reconcile- the gratification *of both
feelings; and they.were much pleased with the way in
-vhich I had expressed their thoughts, as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily
discovered them. The reception one meets with from
the women of a- family generally determines the tenor
of one.s whole entertainment. In this case I had dis




E..LJ-SH OPIUM-EATER..1
charged my confidential duties as secretary so much
to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing the n
with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a
cordiality which I had little inclination to resist. I slept
with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing in
the apartment of the young women: but in all other
points they treated me with a respect not usually paid
to purses as light as mine; as if my scholarship were
sufficient evidence that I was of "gentle blood."  Thus
I lived with them for three days, and great part of a
fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they
continued to show me, I believe I might have staid with
them up to this time, if their power had corresponded
with their wishes..  On the last morning, however, I
perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at
breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communication which was at hand; and soon after, one of the
brothers explained to me, that their parents had gone,
the day before -my arrival, to an annual meeting of'
Methodists, held at Caernarvon, and were that day
expected to return; "and if they should not be so civil
as they ought to be," he begged, on- the part of all the
young people, that I would not take it amiss.  The.parents returned with churlish faces, and " Dym Sas.
senach "-(no English) in answer to all my addresses. I
saw how matters stood; and so, taking an affectionate
leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went
my way.'For, though they spoke warmly to their
parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of
the old people, by saying that it was " only their way,'r
yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love.
letters would do as little to recommend me with twa




32               CONFESSIONS OF AN
grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Gree,
Sapphics or Alcaics; and what had been hospitality,
when.offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my
young friends, would become charity, when connected
with the harsh demeanor of these old people.  Certainly;,Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old
age; unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of
opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and.
blighter to the genial charities of the human heart.
Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must
omit for -want of room, to transfer myself to London.
And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long
sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression,
I might say, of my agony.   For I now suffered, for
upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of
hunger in various deg'rees of intensity; but as hitter,
perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered
who, has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my
reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured; foi
extremities such as these, under any circumstances of
heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated,
even in description, without a rueful, pity that is painful
to the natural goodness of the human heart. -Let it
suffice, at least- on this.occasion, to say, that a few
fragments of bread from  the breakfast-table of one
individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know
of my being in utter want),- and these at uncertain
intervals, constituted my whole support. During the
former part of my sufferings (that'is, generally in
Wales, and always for the first two months in London),
I was houseless, and very seldom  slept under a roof.
To. this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            33
mainly, that Idid not sink under my torments. Latterly
bowever, when cold and more inclement weather came
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had
begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was,
no-doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to
whose breakfast-table I had access allowed me to sleep
in a large, unoccupied house, of which he was tenant.
Unoccupied, I call it, for there was-no household or
establishment in it; nor any furnituire, indeed, except a
table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of. my new  quarters, that the house already
contained one single inmate. a poor, friendless child,
apparently ten years old; but she seemed hungerbitten; and sufferings of that sort often make- children
look older than they are.  From this forlorn child I
learned, that she had slept and lived there alone, fbr
some time before I came* and great joy. th< poor creature expressed, when sha fouznd that I was in future to
be her companion through the h'ors of darkness. The
house was large; and, from the- want of furtitrre, the
noise of the rats madea.prodigious echoinFg o  the
spacious staircase and hall and, a.midst the rea fleshly
ills of:cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had
found leisure to suffer still xore (it appeared) from the
self-created one of ghosts.  I promised' her protection
against all ghosts whatsoever  but, alas! I could offer
her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a
bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no,
other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak;
afterwards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old
sofa-cover, a small piece of rur, and some fragments of
other articles, which added a little to our warmthl  The
A




34-              CONFESSIONS OF AN
poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for secu.
rity against her ghostly enemies.  When I -was not
more than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that
in general she was tolerably warm, and often slept
when I could not; for, during the last two months of my
sufferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to
fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep
distressed me more than my watching; for, besides the
tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so
awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter
as produced by opium), my sleep was never.more than
what, is called dog-sleep; so that I could hear myself
moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened
suddenly by my own voice; and, about this time, a
hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell
into a slumber, which has sihce returned upon me, at
different periods of my life, namely, a sort of twitching
(I know not where, but apparently about the region of
the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out
my feet for the sake of relieving it.  This sensation
coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to
relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only
from' exhaustion; and, from increasing weakness (as 1
said becore), I was constantly falling -asleep, and constantly awaking.  Meantime, the master of the house
sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and.very earlyi
sometimes not till ten o'clock; sometimes not at. all.
He was in constant fear of bailiffs; improving on the
plan of Cromwell, every night-he slept in a different
quarter of London; and I:observed that he never failed
to examine, through a private window, the appearance
of those who knocked at the door,- before he woulo




ENGLISH O.FILM-EATER.           35
allow it to be opened.  He breakfasted alone; indeea,
his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his
hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more
than the quantity of esculent material, which, for the
most part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits,
which he had bought on his road from the place where
he had slept.  Or, if he had asked a party, as I once
learnedly and facetiously observed to him, the several
members of it must have stood in the relation to each
other (not sate in any relation whatever) of succession,
as the metaphysicians have it, and not of coexistence;
in the relation of parts of time, and not of the parts
of space.  During his breakfast, 1 generally contrived
a reason for lounging in; and, with an air of as much
indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments
as he had left, -sometimes, indeed, there were none
at all. In doing this, I-committed no robbery, except
upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I be.
lieve), now and then, to send out at noon for an extra
biscuit; for, as to the poor child, she was never admitted
into his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments,'law writings, &c.); that room
was to her the Blue-beard room  of the house, being
regularly locked on his departure to dinner, abcQt six
o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the
night.. Whether this' child was an illegitimate daughter of Mr. -, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certaiil;y shi was
treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did
Mr. -      make his appearance, than'she went below
stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c.; and, except when
she was summoned to run an errand. she never emerged




~~36  ~      CONFESSIONS -O AN
fiom the dismal Tartarus of the kitchens, to the upper
air, until my welcome knock at night called up het
little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life
during the daytime, however, I knew little but w'at
I gathered from her own account at night; for, as soon
as the hours of business commenced, I saw that my
absence would be acceptable; and, in general, therefore, 1 went off and sate in the parks, or elsewhere,
until night-fall.
But..who, and what, meantime, was the-master of the
house, himself? Reader, he was.one of -those anomalous practmitoners in lower departments of the law, who,
-what shall I say - who, on prudential reasons, or.
from necessity, deny themselves.all the indulgence in.the luxury of- too delicate a conscience (a periphrasis
which might be abridged considerably, but that I leave
to- the reader's taste); in- many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive incumbrance than a wife
or.a- carriage; and just as people talk of "laying down"
their carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr, - -, had
"'laid down" his conscience for a time; meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he cbuld afford it. The
inner economy of such a man's daily life would present
a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse
the -reader at. his expense.  Even with my limited
opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many
scenes of London intrigues, and complex chicanery,
"cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes
smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite
of my misery.   My situation, however, at that time,
gave- me little experience, in - my own person, of any
qualities in Mr. —'s character but such as did him




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            31
aoror; and of his whole strange composition, I must
forget everything but that towards mte he was obliging,
and, to the extent of his power, generous.
That power was not, indeed, very extensive. However, in common with the rats, I sate rent free; and as
Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his
life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so -let me
be grateful that, on that single'occasion, I had as large
a choice of: apartments in a London mansion as I could
Dossibly desire. Except the Blue-beard room. which
the poor-child:believed to be haunted, all others, from
the attics to the cellars, were at our service. "(the
world was al before us," and we pitched our tent for
the night in any spot we chose. This house I have
already described as a large one.. It stands in a conspicuous situation, and in a well-known part of London..
Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not,
within a few hours of reading this. For myself, I
never fati to visit it -when business draws- me to. London. About ten o'clock this very night, August 15,
1821, being my birth-day, I turned asidev from' my
evening walk, down Oxford-street, -purposely to take a
glance at it.  It is now occupied by a respectable
family, and, by the lights in the front drawing-room, I
observed a-domestic party, assembled, perhaps, at tea,
and apparently cheerful and gay; -marvellous contrast,
in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desoiation, of. that same house eighteen years ago, when its
nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a
neglected child. Her, by the by, in after years, I' vainly
endeavored to'trace., Apart from her situation, she was
not what: would be called an interesting cnild, She




48              CONFESSIONS OF AN
was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, not
remarkably pleasing in manners _But, thank God!
even in those years I needed not the embellishments of
novel accessories to conciliate my affections.  Plain
human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel,
was enough for. me; and I loved the child because she
was my partner in wretchedne'ss. If she is now living,
she is probably a- mother, with children of her own; but,
as I have said, I could never trace her.
This I regret; but another person there was, at that
time, whom I have since sought to trace, with far deeper
earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at- my failure.
This person was a young woman, and one of: tha:t un.
happy class who subsist upon the wages of rtto
I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing, that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with
many women in that unfortunate condition. The reader
needs neither smile at this avowal, nor frown; for, not
to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb,
"Sine Cerere," &c., it may well be supposed that in
the existing state of my purse my connection with
such women could not have been an impure one. But
the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been
a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or ap.
proach of any creature that wore a human shape. On
the contrary, from my very earliest youth, it has been
my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all
human beings,-man, woman, and child,- that chance;
might fling -in my way: a practice which is friendly to.
the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and
to that frankness of address which becomes a man
-who would be thought a philosopher; for a philosopher




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            39
hhculd not see with the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled
with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and
education, but should look upon himself as a -catholic
creature, and as standing in an equal relation to high
and low, to aducated and uneducated, to the guilty and
the innocent. Being myself, at that time, of necessity,
a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I' naturally
fell in, more frequently, with those female peripatetics,
who are technically called,treet-alkrs. Many of
these women had occasionally taken my part against
watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of
houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them,the one on whose account I have at all introduced this
subject, - yet no tlet me not class thee, oh nobleminded Ann —, with that order of women; -let me
find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate
the condition of her to whose bounty and compassionministering to my necessities' when all the world had
forsaken- me - I owe it that I am at this time alive.
For many weeks, I had walked, at nights, with this
poor friendless girl, up and down Oxford-street, or had
rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself: she told me,
indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.
By such. questions as my interest about her prompted,
I had gradually drawn forth her simple history.'Hers
was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had
reason: to think), and one in which, if London benefit
cence had better adapted its arrangements'to meet it,
the power of the law might. oftener be interposed to
protect and to avenge. But the streaml of London




4C              CONFESSIONS OE AN
charity flows in a channel which, though deep anc
mighty, is yet noiseless and under ground; - not cbv
ous or readily accessible to poor, houseless wanderers
and. it cannot be denied that the outside air and frame.
work df London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive
In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries
might easily have been redressed; and I urged her
often and earnestly to- lay her complaint before a magis
trate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she
would meet with immediate attention; and that English
justice, which was no respecter of persons, would
speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian
who had plundered her little property. She promised
me often that'she would; but she delayed taking the
steps I pointed out, from. time to time; for she was timid
and dejected to a degree which showed how deeply
sorrow had.taken. hold of- her' young':heart; and perhaps. she. thought justly that the most upright judge
and the most righteous tribunals could do nothing to
repair her heaviest wrongs.   Something, however,
would.perhaps have been done; for it had been settled
between us,-at length, -but, unhappily, on the very last
time but one that I was ever to see her,- that in a day
or two we should. speak on her behalf. This little service it was destined, however, that I should never real-.ze. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and
which was greater than I could ever have repaid'her,
was this':- One night, when we were pacing slowly
along Oxford-street, and after a- day when I had felt
unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with
me into Soho-square. Thither we went; and we sate
down en the steps of a house, which,'to this. how




ENGLISH OPIUM-fATER.            4'
never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner act
of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory
of the noble act which she there performed.   Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been
leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I
sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps.
From' the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that without some powerful
and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the
spot, or should, at least, have sunk to-a point of exhaustion from which all reascent, under my friendless circumstances, would soon have become hopeless. iThenit was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan
companion, who had- herself met with little but injuries
in this world, stretched out a-saving hand to me.
Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay,
she ran off into Oxford-street, and in less, time than
could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port,
wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach
(which at that time would have rejected all solid food)
with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for
this glass the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out
of her own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered,
when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the
bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no:
reason- to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse
her. O, youthful benefactress! how   often,. mn succeeding years, standing in solitary places, and thinking
of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, - how often
have I- wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a
father was believed to have a supernatural power, and
to; pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfi



42!             CONFESSIONS OF AN
netlt, -e en so. the benediction of a heart oppressea
with gratitude might have, a like prerogative; might
have power given to it from above to chase,- to haunt,
to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into: the central
darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible)
into the darkness of the grave, there to iawaken thee
with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and
of final reconciliation!
I do not often'weep; for not only do my thoughts on
subjects connected with the chief interests of man daily.
nay, hourly, descend. a thousand fathoms "too deep for
tears;" notonly does the sternness of my habits of
thought present an antagonism to the feelings which
prompt tears,  wanting, of'necessity, to those who.
being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would, by that same levity,
be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of
such feelings; but also, I believe, that all minds which
nave contemplated such objects as deeply as I have
done, must, for their own protection from utter despond.
ency, have early encouraged and cherished-some tranquillizing belief as to the future balances and the
Jhieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On these
accounts I am cheerful'to- this hour; and, as I have
said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, though
not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than
others; and often, when I-walk, at this- time,: in Oxford
street, by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those'airs
played on a barrel-organ- which years ago solaced me
and.. y dear companion (as I must always call her),
[ shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious
dispensation which so suddenly and so critically sepa:




'ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.          43
rated us forever.  How it happened, the reader will
understand- from what remains of this introductory
narration.
Soon after the period of the last incident 1 have
recorded, I met, in Albemarle-street, a gentleman of
his- late Majesty's household.' This gentleman had
received hospitalities, on different occasions- from my
iamily; and he- challenged me upon the strength of
my family-likeness  I did not attempt any disguise;
I answered his.questions ingenuously, and, on his
pledging his word of honor that he would not betray
me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my
friend, the attorney.  The next day I received from
him a ten-pound bank note. The letter enclosing it was
delivered, with other letters of business, to the attorney;
but, though his look and manner informed me that he
suspected its contents, he gave it. up to me honorably
and without -demur.
This present, from the particular service to which It
was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose
which had. allured me up to London, and which I had
been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first
day of my arrival in London, to that of my final departure.
In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my
readers that I should not-have found some means of
staving off the last extremities of penury; and it will
strike them that. two resources, at least, must have been
open to me, namely, either -to seek assistance from the
friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents
and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolu.
ment... As to the first- course, I may observe, generally,




44              CONFESSIONS OF AN
that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the
chance, of being reclaimed by my guardians; not
doubting that whatever power the law   gave them
would have been enforced.against me to the utmost;
that is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the
school which I had quitted; a restoration whkh as it
would, in my eyes, have been a dishonor, even if sub.
mitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from
me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and
efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than
Death, and which would indeed' have terminated in
death. I was, therefore, shy enough' of applying for
assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of
receiving it, at the risk of furnishing my guardians with
any'clue for recovering me. But, as to London in' particular, though doubtless my. father had in his lifetime
had many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed
since his death) I remembered few of them even by
name; and never having, seen London before, except
once -for a few hours, I. knew not the address of even
those few.- To this mode of gaining help, therefore,
in part the difficulty, but much more the paramount
fear which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me.
In regard to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to
join my reader in wondering that I should have over.
looked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in iho'other
way),;I might, doubtless, have gained enough for my'
slender- wants.  Such an'office as this I could. hav.tdischarged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy
that would soon have gained me the confiden.ie of my
employers. But it must not be forgotten that even for
such an office as this, it was necessary that I should




ENGLISH OPIIM-EATER.                  45
first of all hava an introduction to some respectable
publisher; and this I had no means of obtaining.        T
say the truth, however, it had never once occurred to
me- to think of literary labors as a source of profit.  No
mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money -had ever
occurred to me, but that of borrowing it on the'strength
of my future claims and expectations.        This mode I
-sought by every avenue to compass; and amongst other
persons I applied to a Jew named D —. *
* To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I applied again on the same business; and, dating at that
time from a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his
serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen
from any extravagance, or youthful levities (these; my habits and
the nature of my pleasures raised me far above)) but simply from
the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found himself
no longer able to-prevent me from going to-the university, had, as
a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an order for
granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school,
namely, one hundred pounas per. annum. Upon this sum, it was,fin
my time, barely possible to have lived in college; and not possible
to a man, who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious
disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided,
nevertheless, rather too' rIuch in servants, and did not- delight -in
the petty details of minute economy.  I soon, therefore, became
embarrassed; and, at length, after a most voluminous negotiation
with the Jew (some parts of which, ifI -had leisure to rehearse
them, would greatly amtse my readers), I was put in; possessiot
of the sum I asked for, on the " regular " terms of paying the Jew
seventeen and a half per cent. by way. of annuity on all the maoey
furnished;- Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more tnsa
about ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney a
bill -(for -what services, to whom rendered, and when, - whether ai
the siege of Jerusalem, at the building of the Second Temple, ot
on some earlier occasion, -I have not yet been able to discover).
How many perches-this bill measured I really fo'get; but I still
keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities, and some time or othtie
I believe I shall present it to the Arltish Museum.




46               CONFESSIONS OF AN
To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders
(some of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself, with an account of my expectations;
which account, on examining my father's:will at Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct.
The erson'there mentioned as the second son; of
was found to have all the claims (or more than all) tnat
I.had stated: but one question still remained, which the
faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested,- was
I that person?  This doubt had-never occurred to' me
as a possible -one; I had'rather feared,'whenever my
Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I mlight be
too well. known to be that person, and that some
scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping
me and selling me to my guardians.' It was strange to
me to find my own self, materialiter considered (so I
expressed it, for I doted. on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused,' or at least'suspected, of counterfeiting my own self, formaliter considered. However, to
satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my
power. Whilst' I was in Wales, I had received various
letters from' young friends: these I produced,- for I
carried them constantly in. my.pocket,  being, indeed,
by this time,' almost the only relics of my pe"rs: -iricumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore), which I had
not in one; way or other disposed of. Most of these let —
ters were from the Earl of  -,'who was, at that time,
my chief (or rather, only) confidential friend. These
letters. were dated from  Eton.'I had also some from
the Marquis of, his father, who, though absorbed
in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian'
himself, and as good. a scholar as a nobleman needs
to be, still retained'an affection for classical studies,




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.             47
and for youthful scholars. He had, accordingly, -from
the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me;
sometimes upon-the great improvements which he had
made,'or was meditating, in the counties of M  -  and
Sl —, since I had been there; sometimes upon the
merits of a Latin poet; at other times, suggesting sub.
jects to me on which he wished me to write yerses.
On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends
agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my
personal security, provided I could persuade the young
earl, - who was, by the way, not older than myself, - to
guarantee the payment on our coming of age: the
Jew's. final object being, as I now' suppose, not'the
trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the
prospect of establishing a connection with my noble
friend, whose-immense expectations were well known
to him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the
Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received the
ten pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly three
pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending
friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, In
order that, the writings might be prepared whilst I was
away from London. I thought in my heart that he was
lying; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for
charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had
given to my friend the attorney (who was-connected with
the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, indeed,
he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About
fifteen shillings I had employed in reestablishing
(though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the re.
mainder, I gave one-quarter to Ann, meaning, on my
return, to have divided with her whatever might rerain




48              CONFESSIONS OF AN
These airargements made, soon after six o'clock, on
a dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann,
towards Piccadilly; for it was my intention to go down
as far as Salt Hill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our
course lay through a part of the town which has now
all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its
ancient boundaries: Swallow-street, I think it was
called.  Having time enough before us, however, we
bore away to the left, until we came into Golden.
square: there, near the corner of Sherrard-street, we
sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze
of Piecadilly.  I had told her of my plans' some time
before and -now I assured her again that she should
share in my good fortune, if I met with any; and that
I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to
protect her. This I fully intended,as much from inclination as from.a sense of duty; for,. setting aside gratitude, which, in any case, must have made me her debtor
for:life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been
my sister; -and- at this moment with seven-fold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. I
had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because I
was leaving the saviour of my life; yet -I, considering
the shock my health had received, was cheerful and
full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting
with one who had had little means of serving her,- except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome
by sorrow; so- that, when I kissed her at our final
farewell, she put her arms about my neck, and wept,
without speaking a word, I hoped to return in a week
at furthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night
from that, and every night afterwards, she should- wait




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER              49
tor me, at six o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titch,
field-street, which had been our customary haven, as it
were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other
in the great Mediterranean of Oxford-street.  This,
and other measures of precaution, I took: one, only, I
forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter
of no great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It
is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank
in her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women
of higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss Douglass, Miss Montague, &c., but simply by their Christian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, &c. Her surname,
as the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have
inquired; but the truth- is, having no reason to think
that our meeting could, in consequence of a short -interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had
been -for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment
adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my
memoranda against this parting interview; and my
final anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes,
and in pressing upon her the hecessity of getting some
medicine Tor a violent, cough and hoarseness with which
she w'as troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too lato
*o recall her.
It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and' the Bristol Mail being, on the
point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine
fluent motion  of this mail soon laid me asleep. It-is
somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing
* The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom, owing
to the double ad-vantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra
sum for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants.
4




a-              CONFESSIONS OF AN
sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the
outside of a mail-coach, -a bed which, at this day, 1
find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep
was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others
did at that time, to convince me how easily a man,
who has never been in any great distress, may pass
through life without knowing, in.his own person, at
least, anything of the possible goodness of the. human
heart, or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over the
features arid expression of men's natures, that, to the
ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite
field of varieties which lie between them, are all con —
founded, - the vast and multitudinous compass of their
several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of
differences expressed in <the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds. The case was this: for.the first four
or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof, by occasionally falling, against him
when the -coach gave a lurch to-his side;. and, indeed,
if the road had been less smooth and level than it: is, I
should have fallen off, from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as, perhaps,-in the same
circumstances, most people would. He expressed his'nomplaint, however, more morosely than the occasion
seemed to warrant; and if I had parted with him at
that moment, I should.have thought of him (if I had
considered it worth while to think of him at all) as, a
surly and almost brutal fellow.. However, I was- con
scious that 1 had given him some cause for complaint,
and, therefore, I apologized to him, and assured him I
would do what I could to avoid falling asleep for'the




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           51
future, and at the same time, in as few words as possible, I -explained to him that I was. ill, and in a -weak
state from long suffering, and that I could not afford,'at
that time, to take an inside place. The man's manner
changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an instant;
and when I next woke for a minute, from the noise and
lights of Hounslow (for, in spite of my wishes and
efforts, I had fallen asleep again within two minutes
from the time I had spoken to him), I found that he had
put his arm round me to protect me from falling off;
and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with
the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost
lay in his arms; and this was the more kind, as he
could not have known that I.was not going the'whole
way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did
go rather'further than I intended; for so genial and
refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after leav-:ng Hounslow, that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden
pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and,
on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maidenhead,
six or seven miles, I'think, ahead of Salt Hill. Here I
alighted; and for the half-minute that the mail stopped,
I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from
the transient glimpse I had of him in Piccadilly,
seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person
of that rank), to go to bed without delay. This I promised, thougn with no intention of doing so; and, in fact,
I immediately set forward, or, rather, backward,'on
foot. It must then have been nearly midnight; but so
slowly did I creep'along, that I heard a clock in.a
cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from
Slough to Eton.   Ti e air and the sleep had botr




52              CONFESSIONS OF AN
refreshed me; bat I was weary, nevertheless. I relne-i.
ber a thought (obvious enough, and which has been
prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me
some consolation, at that moment, under my poverty.
There haa been, some time before, a murder committed
on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person
was Steele, and that he was the owner of a lavender
plantation' in that neighborhood.  Every step of my
progress was.brnging me nearer to the heath; and it
naturally occurred to me. that I and the accursed murderer, if he were that night abroad, might, at'every
instant, be unconsciously  approaching  each  other
through the darkness; in which case, said I, supposing
I   instead of being (as, indeed, I am) little better than
an outcast,
Lord of my learning, and no land besidewere, like. my friend Lord  —, heir, by general re,
pute, to ~ 70,000 per annum, what a panic should I be
under, at this moment, about my throat! Indeed, it
was not likely that Lord. —  should ever be in my
situation; but, nevertheless, the spirit of the remark
remains true, that vast power and possessions make a
man shamefully afraid of dying; and I am- convinced
that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by,
fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural:ourage, would, if, at the very instant of going into
action, news were brought to them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of ~50,000
a year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sha:'p




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.             53
ened,* and their efforts at perfect equdiiixlity and self
possession proportionably difficult.  So true it is, in the
Ianguage of a wise man, whose own experience had
made him acquainted with both irtunies, that riches are
better fitted
to slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Tian tempt her to do aught may merit praise.
Paradise Regained.
I dally with my subject, because, to myself, the
remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting.
But my reader shall not have any further cause to
complain; for I now hasten to its close. In the road
between Slough and Eton I fell asleep; and, just as
the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the
voice of a man standing over me and surveying me.
I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow,
but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill-meaning fellow;
or, if he were, I suppose he thought that no person
sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing.
In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I
beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers,
that he was mistaken.  After a slight remark, he passed
on. I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me
to pass through Eton before people were generally up.
The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards
the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the
ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I
* It will be objected that many meni of the highest rank anal
wealth, have, in our own day, as well as throughout our history,
jeen amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True
nut -this is not the case supposed..Long familiarity with po*e'
ias, to them, deadened its effect and its attractions.




54              CONFESSIONS OF AN
alipped through Eton unobserved; washed myself, and,
as far as possible, adjusted my dress, at a little public
house in Windsor; and, about eight o'clock, went down
towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys,
of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always -:
gentleman, and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they
answered me civilly. My friend, Lord -—,.was gone
to the University of,. "Ibi omnis effusus labor!"
I had, however, other friends- at Eton; but it' is not
to all who wear that name in prosperity that a man is
willing to present himself in'distress. On- recollecting
myself, however, I asked.'for the Earl of D —, to
whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so
intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk
from presenting myself under any circumstances. He
was still at Eton, though, I believe, on the wing for
Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to
breakfast.
Here let me stop, for a moment, to check my reader
from any erroneous conclusions. Because I have had
occasion incidentally to speak of various patrician
friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any
pretensions to rank or high blood. I thank God that I
have not. I am the son of a plain English merdhant,
esteemed, during his life, for his great integrity, and
strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was
himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived, it
was expected that he would have been very rich; but,
dying prematurely, he left no more than about ~30,000
amongst seven different claimants. My mother' may
mention with honor, as still more highly gifted; for,
tliough unpretending to the name and honors Af a lite.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            55
ary woman, -I shall presume to call her (what many
literary women are not) an intellectual woman; and I
believe that if. ever her letters should be collected and
published, they would be thought- generally to exhibit
as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as
pure "( mother English," racy and fresh. with idiomatic
graces, as any in our language,  hardly excepting those
of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honors of
descent; I have no others; and I have thanked God
sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a
station which raises a man too eminently above the
level of his fellow-creatures, is not the most favorable
to moral or to intellectual qualities.
Lord D   - placed before me a most magnificent
breakfast. It was really so; but in my eyes it seemed
trebly magnificent, from being the first regular meal, the
first "good man's table," that I had sat down to for months.
Strange to say, however, I could scarcely eat anything.
On the day when I first received my ten-pound banknote, I had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple
of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six weeks
before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it
was almost humiliating to me to recollect.  I remembered the story about Otway; and feared that there
might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no
need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I
became sick before I had- eaten half of what I had
nought. This effect, from eating.what approached to a
meal, I continued to feel for weeks; or,.when I did not
experience. any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected,
sometimes with acidity, snmetimnes immediately and
without any acidity.  On the present occasion, at Loid




'56            GCONFESSlONS OF AN
D's table, 1 found myself not at all better than
usual; and, in the midst of luxuries, I had no appetite
I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving
for wine; I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord
D-, and gave him a short account of my late sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and
called for wine.  This gave me a momentary relief
and pleasure; aid on all occasions, when I had ar.
opportunity, I never failed to drink wine, which I
worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium;
I am convinced, however, that this indulgence in wine
continued to strengthen my malady, for the tone of
my stomach was apparently quite sunk; but, by a better
regimen, it might sooner, and, perhaps, effectually, have
been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of
wine that I lingered in the neighborhood of my Eton
friends; I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D —-,:'n whom I was conscious I had not sufficient clairms, the particular service
in quest of which I had come to Eton. I was, however,
unwilling to lose my journey, and,-I asked it. Lord
Di-, whose good nature -was unbounded, and which,'in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his
compassion perhaps for, my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than
by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own
direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He.
acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings
with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction
might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover,
he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations
were sa much more bounded than those of --—; would




ENGLISH OPItMiEATER.            57
avail with my unchristian friends.  However; he did
not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute
refusal; for, after a little consideration, he promised,
under certain conditions, which he pointed out, to give
his security. Lord D —. was at this time not eighteen
years of age; but I have often doubted, on recollecting,
since, the good sense and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an
urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sin:
cerity), whether any statesman —the oldest and the
most accomplished in diplomacy-could have acquitted himself better under the,same circumstances.
Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a
business, without surveying you with looki as austere
and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head.
Raecomforted by this promise, which was not quite
equal to the best, but far above the worst, that I had
pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor
coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And
now I come to the end of my story. The Jews didnot
approve of Lord D —-'s terms; whether they would
in the end have acceded to them, and were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; but
many delays were made,  time passed ion, - the small
fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and
before any conclusion could' have been put to the'usi,
ness, I must have relapsed into my former state of
wretchedness.'Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an
opening was made, almost by accident, for reconcilia.
tion with my friends. I quitted London in haste, for a
remote part of England; after some time, I proceeded
to the university; and it was not until many months




fi8             CONFESSIONS OF AN
had- passed away, that I had it in my power again to
revisit the ground which had become so'interesting to
me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of
my youthful sufferings.
Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her
I have reserved my concluding words; according to oLT
agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every
night, so long as I -stayed in London, at the-corner of
Titchfield-street. I inquired for her of every one who
was likely to know her; and during the last hours of
my stay in London, I put into activity every means of.
tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested,
and the limited extent of my power made possible.
The street where she had lodged I'knew, but not the
house;' and I remembered, at last, some account which
she had given of ill treatment from her landlord, which
made' it probable that, she had quitted those lodgings
before we parted.  She had few acquaintances; most
people, besides, thought that- the earnestness of my
inquiries arose from motives which moved their laugh-.
ter or their slight regard; and others, thinking that 1
was in chase of'a girl who had robbed me of some
trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give
me any clue to her, if, indeed, they had any to give.
Finally, as my despairing resource, on the day I left
London, I put into the hands of the only' person who (1
was sure) must know Anr by sight, from having been
in cormpny with us once or twice, an.address to --
in' -shire, at that time the residence. of my family.
But, to this hour,' I have never heard a syllable about
aer.  This, amongst such troubles as most-men meet
-with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction.  If




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           59
the lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in
search of each other, at the very same moment, through
the mighty labyrinths of London; perhaps even within
a few feet of each other, -a barrier no wider, in a London street, often amounting in the end to a separation
for eternity! During some years, I hoped that she did'live; and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical
use of the word-myriad, I may say, that on my different
visits to London, I have looked into many, many myriads
of female faces, in the hope of meeting her.. I should
know. her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a
moment; for, though not handsome, she had a sweet
expression of countenance, and a peculiar and graceful
carriage' of the head.  I sought her, I have said, in
hope. So it was for years; but now I should fear to
see her; and her cough, which grieved me when I
parted with her, is now my consolation. I now wish to
see her no. longer, but think of her, more gladly, as one
long since laid in the grave; —in the grave, I would
hope, of a Magdalen;-taken away, before injuries
and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had completed
the ruin they had begun.
So then,.Oxford-street, stony-hearted stepmother,
thou that listenest to the sighs of prphans, and drinkest
the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from
thee! - the time was come, at last, that I ro more should
pace in anguish thy never-ending. terraces; no more
should dream, and wake in captivity' to the pangs of
hunger.  Successors, too many, to myself and' Ann,
have, doubtless, since.then trodden in our footsteps,
inheritors of pur calamities; other orphans than Ann




f~6f0        CONFESSIONS OF AN
have sighed; tears have been shed by other cnildren,
and thou, Oxford-street, hast since echoed to the groans
of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm
which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge
of a long fair weather; the premature sufferings which
I had paid down,: to have been accepted as a ransom for
many years to come, as a price of long immunity from
sorrow; and if again I walked in London, a solitary
and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked
for the mos.t part in serenity and peace of mind. And,
although it is true that the calamities of my novitiate in
London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished
afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has
overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these
second -assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude
more confirmed, with the resources of a'mat.urer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathizing affection,
h#iv deep and tender!
Thus, however, with'whatsoever alleviations, years
that were far asunder were bound together by subtile
links of suffering derived from a common root.  And
herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of
human desires, - that oftentimes, oh nmoonlight nights,
during my first mournful abode in London, my consolatiion Was (if such it could be thought) to gaze- from OxfordSstreet up every avenue in succession which pierces
through the heart of- MVary-lebone to the fields and.the
woods; -for that, said I, travelling with. nmy eyes up.the
long vistas which lay part in light and.part in shade,
"that is the road to the- nbrh, and,'-therefore, to --- 
and if I had the wings of a dove, that way I would fi)




ENGLISH OPI0UM-EATER.           61'or comfort."  Thus I said, and thus 1 wished in my
blindness.; yet, even in that very northern region it was,
in that very valley, nay, in that very house to wh'ch
my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of
my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to
besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that
for - years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as
ghastly phantoms, as ever haunted the couch of an
Orestes; and in this unhappier than he,- that sleep,
Which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and
to him especially as a blessed balm for his wounded
heart:and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest
scourge.  Thus blind was I in my desires; yet, if a
veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man
and his future calamities, the same vale hides from
him their alleviations; and a grief which had not been
feared- is met by consolations which had- not been
hoped.  I, therefore, who participated, as it were, in
the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated
conscience), participated no less- in all his supports;;my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and
stared in upon me through the curtains; but, watching
by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me
~co.mpany through the heavy watches of the night, sat
my Electra;- for thou, beloved M., dear companion of
my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in
nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst
bermit- th- a Grecian sister should-excel an English
wife'. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble
offices- of kindness, and to servile ministrations of ten.
derest affection; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lip1




62                CONFESSIONS OF AN
when parched and baked with fever; nor even when
thy own peaceful. slumbers had-by long sympathy be.
come infected with the spectacle of my dread contest
with'phantoms and shadowy -enemies, that oftentimes
bade me "sleep no more!" —onot even        then  didst
tlou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw
thy angelic smiles, nor shrink- from thy service of love,
more.than Electra did of old. For she, too, though she
was a Grecian woman, and the,.daughter of the kings
of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face t in her
robe.
But these troubles are past, and thou wilt read these
records of a period so dolorous to us'both as the
legend of some hideous dream that can return no more.
Meantime I am again in London; and again I pace the
terraces of Oxford-street by night; and oftentimres, -
when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my
philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support,
and yet remember that I am    separated from thee by
three hundred miles, and the length of three dreary
months,- I look up the streets that run northward
from Oxford-street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation of.anguish; and remem* Agamemnon.
t Oluca,ecs etso 7trertOV. The scholar will. know that throughout this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes, -one of
the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which
even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the' English reader,
it maybe necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the
drama is'that of a brother attended'only by his sister during the.demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted- by the furies), and in circumstances of
immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regardfrom nominal friends.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           63
bering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley,
and mistress of that very house to which my heart
turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think-that,
though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds-of late,
the promptings- of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and may be justified if read
in another meaning; j;.i'.fd could allow myself to
descend again to the, impotent wishes of childhood, I
should again say to myself, as I look to the north, "0
that I had the wings of a dove!" and with how just
a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I
add the other half of my early ejaculation, -"And
that way I would fly for comfort! "




THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM.
IT is so long since I first took opiur,-that if it had
been a trifling incident in my life, 1 might have forgotten its date: Lut cardinal events are not to be forgotten;
and, from circumstances connected with it, I remember
that it must be'referred to the- autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither
for the first time since my entrance at college.  And
my' introduction to opium arose in. the- following way:
From an early age I had been accustomed'to wash my
head in cold water at, least once a day; being suddenly
seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relaxation
caused by an accidental intermission of' that practice;
jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of
cold water, and, with'hair" thus wetted, went to
sleep.  The next' morning, as I heed hardly say, I
awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head
and face, from which I had hardly any respite for
about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it
was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets;
rather to run away, if possible, from. my toiments, than
with any distinct purpose. By: accident, I met a college
Acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dreaa




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            65
agent cf unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard.
of it- as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no
further; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time!
what solemn chords- does it now strike upon my heart.!
what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remernmbrances!  Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a
mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place, and the time, and the
man (if man he was), that first laid open to me' the paradise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet
and -cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours
has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My
road homewards lay through Oxford-street; and near
"'the stately Pantheon" (as o Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!), as
if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and
stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected
to look on a Sunday, nd when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other.man
might do:; and, furthermore. out of my shilling. returned
to me what seemed to be a real coppe'r half-penny, taken
ot:t- of a real wooden drawer.  Nevertheless, in spite
of such indications of humanity, he. has ever since
existed.in my mind as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission
to myself.  And it confirms me in this way of considering hin that when I next came up to London; I
sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him
not; and thus to -me, who knew not his name (if, indeed,
he had- one), he seemed rather to have vanished from
Oxfordsstre.et than. to have removed to any bodily
5




.66               CONFESSIONS OF AN
fashion.  The reader may choose to think of him as,
possibly, no more than a sublunary druggist: it may
be so, but my faith is better: I believe him to have,evqano    or evaporated.   So unwillingly would I
connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and
place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted
with the celestial drug.
Arrived at my lodgings, it: may be supposed that t
lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed.. A
was necessarily ignorant of the whole art- and mystery
of opium-taking; and what I took, I took under every
disadvantage.   But I took it; and in an hour,-oh
heavens! what a revulsion! what anupheaving, from
its' lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!     That my pains had
vanished was now. a trifle in my eyes; this negative
effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before' me, in the'abyss
of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was,
a panacea, a paqaeaxov vs8tEvOe, for all- human woes;
here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once- discovered; happiness might noW be bought for a penny, and
* Evanesced:- this way of going off from the stage of life
appears to have been well known in the 17th century, but at that
time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood royal
and by no means t be allowed to druggists. For, about the year
1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by the by,. did
ample justice to his name), namely, Mr. FLAT-MAN, in speaking
of the death of Charles II., expresses his surprise that any prince
should commit so absurd an act as dying.; because, says he,
Kings should disdain to-die, and only disappear;
They should abscond,- that is, into the other world.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            67
carried in the waistcoat-pocket;  portable  ecstasies
might be had corked up. in.a pint-bottle,; and peace of
mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach.
But, if - talk in, this way, the reader will think I am
laughing; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh
long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even
are of a grave a'nd solemn complexion; and, in- his hap.
piest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself ir.
the character of L'Allegro; even then, he. speaks and
thinks as becomes / Penseroso.  Nevertheless, I have
a very reprehensible way of. jesting, at times, in the
midst of my own misery;.;and, unless when I am
checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I
shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in, these
annals of suffering or enjoyment.  The reader must
allow a little to my infirm nature in this, respect; and,
with a'few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor
to be as grave, if not drowsy,. as fits a theme like
opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and. so drowsy
as. it is falsely reputed.
And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects;
fr upon all that has been hitherto written on the- sub
j~t of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who
may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial
right) or by professors.of medicine,. writing ex cathedra
I have. but. one emphatic criticism to pronounce,Lies!- lies! lies!.I remember once, in passing a book
stall, to have caught these words from a page of some
satiric author: "By this., time JI became convinced
that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice
a week, namely, on Tuesday and Saturday, and might
safely. be depended upon for- the list of bankrupts."




68                CONFESSIONS OF'AN
In' like manner, I do by no means deny that* so.itetruths have been delivered to the world'in re'ga'ito
opium; thus, it has been repeatedly affirmedi; by thy
learned, that opium is a dusky broWn^in color,iL-aond
this, take notice, I grant; secondly, that it' is rath
-dear, which also I grant, -for, in my time, East India
opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey,
eight; and, thirdly, that if -you. eat a good deal of: it,
most probably you must do what is particularly, disagreeable to any man of regular habits, namely, —die,*
These weighty propositions are, all and singular,. true;
I cannot gainsay them; and truth ever was, and will
be, commendable.    But, in these three theorems, I.
believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as
yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And,
therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be iroom for
further discoveries, stand aside, and aljow m'e':to ctome
forward and lecture on this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed a " taken:fr
granted, by all who ever mention opium, formallyy or
incidentally,, that it does or can produce: intoxication.
Now, reader, assure yourself, m.eo periculi, that$  *
quantyo ofopium ever did, or could, intoxicate.i.to the tincture of'opium  (commonly cal1di laeudanumfi)
that -might certainly. intoxicate, if a man couald.beiatr 
take enough of:it; but why? because it-R ontains lsof
*. S............. * Of this,. however, the learned appear latterly. to -have doubted.;
for, in a pirated edition of Buchan's DOMESTIC MEDICINE, which
I once saw in the hands-of a farmer's wife, who wasstudying it
for the benefit of her health, the doetor was nade- to s'y, "Be
particularly careful never to take above five-and-twenty ounces. of.
laudanum at once." The true reading being probably five-and-twentl
drops, which arelheld to be equal to about one grain of crudeop!um




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           69
much pr/of spirit, and not because it contains so much
opium    But cruopiupium, I affirm  peremptorily, is
incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in
degree only incapable, but even in kind; it is not in
the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality,
that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine
is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which
it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is
stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a
technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute,
the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flame,
the other a steady and equable glow.  But the main
distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the
mental-faculties, opium, on the-contrary (if taken in a
proper manner), introduces- amongst them  the most
exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs
a man of his self possession; opium greatly invigorates
it., Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and'gives
a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation, to the
contempts and the admirations,:to the loves and the
hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, comr
municates serenity, and equipoise to all the faculties,
active or passive; and, with respect to the temper and
moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of
vital warmth which;?is approved by the judgment, and
which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for
instance, opium, like:wine,. gives an expansion to the
heart and the benevolent affections; but, then, with this
remarkable difference, that in the sudden development
of::kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation,




70               CONFESSIONS OF AN
there is always more or less of a maudlin character
which exposes it to the contempt-'of the bystander
Men shake hands, swear eternal' friendship, and.she&
tears, -no mortal knows why; and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost.  But the expansion-of the
benigner feelings, incident to opium, is no febrile ac.
cess, but a healthy restoration to that.state which the
mind would naturally recover, upon the removal of any
deep-seated irritation?of pain that had disturbed and
quarrelled with the itnpulses of a heart originally just
and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain
point,.and with certain men, rather tends to exalt.,and
to steady, the intellect; I myself, who have never been
a great wine-drinker, used to find'that half a dozen;
glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties,
brightened and intensified the consciousness, and:gave
to the mind a feeling of being "ponderibus librata suiis;"
and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of, any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for,
on the contrary, most' men are disguised by -sobriety;
and it is when they are drinking (as some. old:gentleman says in Athenaeus) that men display themselves in
their true complexion of character; which surely is niot
disguising themselves. But still, iine constantly leads
a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance;
and, beyond a certain point, it is: sure t'o. volatilize' and
to disperse the' intellectual energies;' whereasopium
always seems'to compose what had been agitated, and
to concentrate' what had. been distracted.. In: short,. to
sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or
tending to inebriation,.is, and feels that he is, in a condition' which calls up into supremacy the merely umnan




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.                 71
too  often  the  brutal, part of. his nature; but theopium-eater (I speak of him who~ is not suffering from
any disease, or other remote effects of opium) -'feels
that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that
is, the.: moral affections are in a state of cloudless
serenity; andover all is the great light-of the majestic,
intellect
This is the-doctrine of the true church on the subject
of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to
be the only member,:- the alpha and omega; but then
it is to be recollected, that I speak from  the ground of
a large and profound personal experience, whereas most
of the unscientific* authors who have at all treated of
*Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently
by their stupidity that they never- held any intercourse with opium,
I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of
".Anastasius." This'gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made' it impossible to consider him
in that character,'from the grievous misrepresentation which he has
given of its effects, at page 215-21.7, of'vol. I. Upon consideration,
it must appear.such' to the author himself; for,. waiving the errors
I have insisted on in the text,' which,(and-others) are adopted in
the fullest manner, he willhinmself admit that an old gentleman
with a sinow-white beard,"'wh'eats "ample doses: of opium,"
and.is yet able to deliver what is meant and -received as very
weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an
indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely, or
sends'them into'a mad-house. But, for my part, I see into this
old gentleman and.his motives:; the fact is,-he was enamored ot
"the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug," which Auas
tasius carried about him; aid no. way of obtaining it so safe and
so feasible occurred, as that of frightening its owner out of his
wits (which, by the by, are none of the.strongest).' This commentary throws a new light upoin the.case,. and greatly improves
it as a story; for the old gentleman's speech,'considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly. absurd; but, considered as a hoax tn
Anastasius, it reads excellently.




~7-~2       CONFESSIONS OF AN
opium  and even* of those who have written expressly
on the materia medica, make- it evident, from the hor.
ror they express of it, that their' experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however,
candidly acknowledge that I have met with one. person
who bore evidence'to its intoxicating power, such as
siaggered my own incredulity; for he was a surgeon,
nd had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say
o itim, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him
rlth talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends
apologized for him  by suggesting that he was con6tantly in a staae of intoxication from opium. Now, the
accusation, sais I, is not prima facie, and of necessity,
an absurd one; but the defence is.  To my surprise,
however, he insisted that both his enemies and hil
friends were in the right. t I.will maintain," said he
"that I do talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintair
that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or witr
any view to profit, but solely and simply," said he
" solely and' simply,- solely and simply (repeating it
three times over), because I am  drunk with opiumand that -daily." I replied, that as to'the allegation of
his enemies, as it seemed to be' established:upon such
respectable testimony;, seeing that the three parties
concerned all agreed in it, it did not become me to
questionit; but the defence set up I must demlur to..:H
proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his
reasons; but it seemed to me so impolite to: pursue an
argument which muist have presumed a man mistaken
In -a point belonging to his own profession, that I did
not press him  even when his course of argument
seemed open to objection; not to mention that a mar




ENGLISH OPIUM-E.TER.           73
who.talks nonsense, even though " with rc view to
profit," is not altogether the most agreeable -partner in a
dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess,
dowever, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who
was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to
my prejudice; but still I must plead my experience,
which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand
drops a day; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms ol vinous intoxication, yet it struck me
that he might proceed on a' logical error of using the
word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending
it generically to ail modes of nervous excitement, instead
of restricting it as the expression for a specific sort of
excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. Some
people: have maintained, in my hearing, that they had
been -drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in
London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have
reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day,
that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got
drunk on a beef-steak.
Having dwelt so much on this first and -leading error
m respect to opium, I shall notice very.briefly a second
and a third; which' are, that the elevation of spirits
produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence -of opium is, torpor and stagnation
animal and mental. The first of these errors I shallcontent. mnyself. with simply denying; assuring my
reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium at
intervals,'the day succeeding to that on which I allowed




14!              CONFESSIONS OF AN
myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good
spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or
rather'(if we were to credit' the numerous pictures of
Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of
opium-eating, I deny that also.  Certainly,- opium  is
classed under the head of narcotics, and some i:uch
effect it may produce in the end; but -the primary
effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree,
to excite and.stimulate the. system: this first stage of
its action always listed with me, during my novitiate,
for upwards of eight hours; so that it must be the fault
of the opium-eater himself, if he. does not so time. his
exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that, the
whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend
upon his sleep. / Turkish opium-eaters, it. seems, are
absurd enough to sit, like so. many equestriaLn statue\;,
on logs of wood as stupid as themselves..,But, that th.
reader may judge of the degree in. which opium    is
likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall
(by way of treating the question illustratively;,.. rather
than argumentatively) describe the way. in which 1
myself often passed an' opium   evening,in.  London,
daring the period between.1804 and 1812. It:will lbe,
seen, that at least opium did.- not move me to. seek solitude, and: much less- to seek. inactivity, or, the torpid
state of self-involution ascribed to: the Turks.-  I.give
this- account at the risk of ^ being pronounced a crazy
enthusiast or visionary but I:regard thati little., I'must
desire my reader to bear'in- mind, that. I w.as.  a hard
student, and at severe studies for all — the rest of my
time; and certainly 1 had a right occasionally..to relaxa-'




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            75
tions as will as other people: these, however, I allowed
myself but seldom.
The late Duke of -     used to say, "Next Friday,
by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk;" and
in like manner"I used to fix beforehand how often,
within a given: time, and when, I would commit a
debauch of opium. -This was seldom more than once in
three weeks-; for at that time I could not have ventured
~to call every day (as I did afterwards) for "a glass of.
laudanumr egus, warm, and without sugar."  No; as
I have sa17T. seldom drank laudanum, at that time,
more than once in three weeks: this was usually on a
Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which
was this. In, those days, Grassini sang at the opera, and
her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever
heard. I know not what may be the state-of the operahouse now, having never been within its walls for seven
or eight years; but at that time it was by much the most
pleasant place of resort in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery,'which
was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the.
theatres; the orchestra was distinguished, by its sweet
and melodious grandeur, from all English orchestras, the
composition of which, t confess, is not acceptable to my
ear, from the predominance. of the clangorous instru-,
ments, and the'almost absolute tyranny of the violin.
The choruses were divine to hear L and when Grassini
appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poiured
forth her passionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of
Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that
ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had.
half the pleasure I had.' But, indeed, I honor thedbarba



76                CONFESSIONS OF AN
rians too much by supposing them      capable of aiy
pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an
Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensuapleasure, according to the temperament of him- who
hears it. And, by the by, with the -exception of the
fine extravaganza onr that subject in Twelfth -Night, I
do not recollect more —than one thing said adequately
on the subject of music in all literature; it- is a passage
in the Religio Medici* of Sir T. Brown, an'di though
chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philo:
sophic value, inasmuch as it.points to the true theory
of musical effects. The mistake of most-people lis, to
suppose that it is- by the ear they, communicate with
music,'and therefore that, they, are purely passive to its
effects.  But this is not so; it is. by the:reactin:of the
mind upon the notices of the ear (the matter coming.by
the senses,' the form from the mind) that the pleasure is
oanstructed; and therefore it is that people-of equally
good ear'iffer so much in this point from one another.
Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the
mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular
mode of its activity by which we are able to construct
out of the rasw material of organic sound- an elaborate
intellectual pleasure.  But, says *a friend, a succession
of musical sounds is' to me  like a collection of Aralic
characters: I can attach no ideas:to themr. Ideas!i my
good sir'? there is no occasion for them; t1l: that class
ef ideas which can be available in such a case has a
language of representative feelings.  But this is a sub* I have not the book at this moment -to consult ~but I think the
passage begins, "And even that tavern music, which' makes one
man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of dev tion," &c.




EN.GLISH OPIUM-EATER.          77
(ect foreign to my present purposes; it is sufficient to
say, that a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony, displayed
before me, as in a piece of arras-work, the wlide of my
past life, - not as if recalled by. an act of memory,
but as if present and incarnated in the music; no longer.painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents
removed, or -blended in some hazy abstraction, and ias
passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All'thiswas to be had for five shillings. And over and above
the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around
me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of the
Italian language talked by Italian women,  for the gallery was usually'crowded with Italians, - and I listened
with a pleasure such-as that with which Weld,:the traveller, lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter
of- Indian women; for the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harsh.
ness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was
an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar,
reading it but little,:and not speaking it at all, nor
understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken.
These were my opera pleasures; but another pleasure
I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday
night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera;
fOr, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the
regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall
be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all
mere so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many
other biographers and auto-biographers of fair reputa.
tion. This pleasure, I have said,,was to be had only
on a Saturday night. - What,. then, was Saturday night
to me, more than any other night? I had no labors that




p?8is        CONFESSIONS OF AN'l-rested from; no. wages to receive; what needed'I to
care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons
to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader; what
you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is,
that whereas different men throw  their feelings inte
different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy,
expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses
and sorrows, I, at that time, was disposed to express my
interest by sympathizing with their pleasures. The
pains of poverty I had lately seen. too much of, -more
than I wished to remember; but the pleasures of the
poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from
bodily toil, can never. become oppressive to contemplate..Now, Saturday night is-the season'for the chief regular,and periodic return of rest to the poor; in this point the
most. hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common
link of brotherhood; almost all Christendom rests from
ts, labors. It is a rest introductory to another rest; and
divided. by a whole day and' -two n.ights from  the
renewal of toil. On this account I feel:always, on a
Saturday night, as though I. also were released from
some yoke of. labor, had some- wages to receive,, and
some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake; theretore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible,.a
spectacle with which, my'sympathy was so entire, 1
used often, on Saturday nights,: after ILhad taken opium,
to wander forth, without much regarding the directionor the distance, to all the. markets, and other parts of
London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday'night,
for laying out their wages. Many a family. party, consting ot a man, his wife,. and:sometimes one or two




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            79
of his children, have I listened to, as they stood con.
suiting on thei~ ways and means, or the strength of
their exchequer, or the price of. household articles.
Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their
difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might
be,heard murmurs of discontent; but far oftener
expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of
patience, hope, and tranquillity. And, taken generally,
I must say, that, in this point, at least, the poor are far
more philosophic than the rich; that they show a more
ready and cheefful submission to what they consider as
irremediable- evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I
saw occasion, or could. do it without appearing to be
intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion
upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always
judicious, was always received indulgently.  If wages
were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions
and.butter were expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the
contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of
consoling myself.  For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from  roses and
from  the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings
into a compliance with the master-key. Some of these
rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater
is too happy to observe the motion of time.   And
sometimes, in my attempts to steer homewards, upon
nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star,
and seeking ambitiously for'a north-west passage, instead
of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands, I
had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly
upon such knotty-problems of alleys, sudh enigmatical




80             d-ONFISSIONS OF AN
entries, and such sphinx's riddles of streets without
thoroughfares, as must,. I conceive, baffle the audacity
of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney.
coachmen. -I could almost have believed, at times, that i.'must be the first discoverer of some of. these terrcB (h;..f.nincognitc, and doubted whether they had yet been laid
down. in the modern charts of London. For all this,
however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when
the human face tyrannized over my dreams, and the
perplexities of my steps in -London came back and
haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities
moral or intellectual, that.brought confusion to the
reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience.
Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity,
produce inactivity or-torpor; but that, on the contrary,
it: often — led me into markets and theatres. Yet, i.n
candor, I will admit that markets and theatres are not
the appropriate haunts of the- opium-eater, when in the
divinest state incident to his enjoyment.- In that state,
crowds become an oppression to him; music, even, too
sensual and gross.  He naturally seeks solitude arid
silenc'e,-as indispensable conditions of those' trancesor
profoundest reveries, which are the crownt arnd consummation of what opium can do- for hiuman nature. I,
whose disease" it was to meditate too much and-.to
observe too little,- and who,.upon my first entrance at
college, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy,
from brooding too much onr the sufferings which I had
withessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the
tendencies of my own thoughts to:do all. could to
counteract them.  I was, indeed, like a person who
according to the old legend, had. entered the cave oi



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER             81
Troplhonius; and the remedies I sought were to force
myself into- society, and to keep my understanding in
continual activity upon matters of science. But for
these remedies, I should certainly have become hypo.
chondriacally melancholy.  In after years, however,
when my cheerfulness was more fully reestablished, I
yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life.
And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon
taking opium; and more than -once it has happened to
me, on a summer night, when I have been at an open
window, in a room' from which I could overlook the sea
at a mile belown-e,-and could command a view of the
great town of L —,.at about the same distance, that I
have sat from sunset to sunrise,- motionless, and without,wishis t4 move.
i shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, &c.; but that shall not alarm me.  Sir H. Vane,
the. younger, was one of our wisest men; and let my
readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as
unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often
struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical
of what took place in such a reverie. The town of
L —- represented the earth, with- its sorrows and Its
graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation,
and brooded over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly
typify the: mind, and the mood which then swayed it.
For it seemed to me as if then first-I stood at a distance,
-and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the-tumult, the
fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted
from the- secret burdens of the heart; a sabbath of
repose; a resting from human labors. Here' were the
6




82.   CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with
the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a
halcyon calm; a tranquillity that seemed no product of
inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.
0 just, subtile, and mighty opium! that to the hearts
of' poor and rich alike, for the wounds -that will never
heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to. rebel,"
bringest an assuaging balm; -eloquent opium! that
with thy'potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of
wrath, and,'to the guilty man, for one night givest back
the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from
blood; and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for
Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged;
that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the
triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and
confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of
unrighteous judges; -thou buildest upon the bosom of
darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities
and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, -
beyond the splendor of Babylon and Hekatompylos;
and,. "from  the anarchy of dreaming sleep,"' callest
into sunny light the faces cf lorig-buried beauties, and
the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the
"dishonors of the grave."   Thou only givest these
gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh
ust, subtile, and mighty opium!




INTRODUCTION
TO
THE PAINS OF OPIUM.
COURTEOUS, and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all
my readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I
shall shock them too. much to count on their courtesy),
having accompanied me thus far, now let me request
you to move onwards, for about eight years; that is-to
say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with
opium first began) to 1812. The years of academic
life are now over and gone, -almost forgotten; the
student's cap no longer presses my:temples; if my
cap exists at all, it presses'those of some youthful
scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate
a lovet of knowledge. My gown is, by this timre, I dare
to say, in the same condition with many thousands of
excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, diligently
pe used -by certain studious moths and Worms; -r
departed, however (which is aall that I know  of its
fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which
all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c,,




84               CONFESSIONS.:OF AN
have departed (not to speak of still frailer vessels, suen
as glasses, decanters, bed-rmakers, &c.), which occasional resemblances in. the present generation of teacups, &c.,-remind me of having once possessed, but of
whose departure and final fate, I, in common with
most gownsmen of either university, could give, I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural history.  The
persecutions of the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome
summons to six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers
no longer; the porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation, so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing,
is.dead,- and has ceased to disturb anybody; and I,
and many others who suffered much from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his
errors, and have forgiven him.  Even with. the.bell I
am  now in charity; it rings, I suppose,, as formerly,
thrice a day; and cruelly annoys,'I doubt. not, many
worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind;
but, as to me, in-this year 1812, I regard its treacherous voice no longer' (treacherous I call. it, for by
some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and
silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party);
its- tones have no longer, indeed,, power to:reach'me
let the wind sit as, favorable as the malice of -the beL.
itself could wish; for I am two hundred and fifty miles
away from   it, a:nd buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I doing amongst the, moulttains?
Taking opium. — Yes, but what- else? Why, reader, in
1812, the year we are -now arrived at, as'well as: for
some years previous, I have been chiefly' studyirng
German metaphysics, in the writings of.Kant, ichte,



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           85
Schelling, &c. And how, and in what manner, do 1
live? in short, what class or description of men do 1
belong to? I am at this period, namely, in 1812, living
in a cottage; and with a single female servant (honi soit
qui mal y pense), who, amongst my neighbors, passes by
the name of my "house-keeper."   And, as a scholar
and a man of learned education, and in that sense a
gentleman, I may presume to class myself as an unworty — member of that indefinite -body called gentlemen.
Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps,partly because, from my having no visible calling or
business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on
my private fortune, -I am so classed by my neighbors;
and, by the courtesy of modern England, I am usually
addressed on letters, &c., Esquire, though having, I fear,
in the' rigorous construction of heralds, but slender
pretensions to that distinguished honor;  yes, in popular estimation, I am X; Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice
of the Peace, nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I married?
Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights.
And, perhaps, have'taken it unblushingly ever- since:"'the rainy Sunday," and " the stately Pantheon," and
"the beatific- druggist " of 1804? Even so.'And how
do- I find my health after all' this opium-eating? in
short, how do I do?  Why, pretty well, I thank. you,
reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well
as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the
real and simple truth (it must not be forgotten that
hitherto. I thought, to satisfy the theories of medical
nen, I "ought to be ill), I was never better in my life
than in the spring of 1812:; and I hope sincerely, that
the quantity of claret, port,.or" particular Madeira,"




gS6f   ~    ~CONFESSIONS OF AN
which, in all probability, you, good reader, have taken
and design to take, for every term of eight years, during
your natural life; may as little disorder your health as
mine was disordered.by opium  I had taken for the
eight years between 1804 and.1812. Hence you may
see again the. danger of taking'any medical advice
from Anastasius; in divinity, for aught I know, or law,
he- may be a safe counsellor, but not in medicine.
No; it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan,.as I did; for
I.never forgot- that worthy man's excellent suggestion,
and I was "particularly careful not to take above fivband-twenty ounces of laudanum."  To this moderation
and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I
suppose, that as yet, at least (that is, in 1812), I am
ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which
opium has. in store for those who abuse its lenity. At
the same, time, I have been only a dilettante eater of
opium; eight years' practice, even, with the single pre
caution of allowing sufficient intervals between every
indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium
necessary to me as an -article of daily diet. But now
comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader,
to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just
quitted, I had suffered much in bodily.health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event.
This event, being no ways related to the subject now
ibefore me, further than through bodily illness which it
produced, I neednot more particularly notice. Whether
this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, 1
know not; but.so it was, that, in the latter year, I was
attacled by a most appalling irritation of the stomach,,in all respects the same as that which had caused me




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            87
so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my
narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification,
the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And
nere I find myself in a perplexing dilemma: Either,
on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience,
by such a detail of my malady, and of my struggles
with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my
inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly
over this critical part of my story, I must forego the
benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of
the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and gradual
steps of self-indulging- persons, from the first to the
final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which
there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers,
from. my previous acknowledgments).   This is the
dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to
toss and gore any column of patient readers,. though
drawn uip sixteen deep, and constantly relieved by fresh
men; consequently that. is not to be thought of. It
remains, then, that I postulate so much as is necessary
for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for
what I.postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader;
at the expense of your patience and my own.'Be not
so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion
through my own forbearance and regard for your
comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you, namely, that
I could resist no longer, -believe it liberally, and as
an act of grace, or else in mere prudence; for, if not,
then, in the next edition of my Opium  Cqnfessions




8S               CONFESSIONS OF AN
revised and enlarged, I will make you believe, anc trem,
ble; and, a force d'ennuyer, by mere dint of pandicuia.
tion, I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again
questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make.
This, then, let me repeat: I postulate that, at the time:.began to take opium daily, I could not have done
otherwise. -Whether, indeed, afterwards, I might not
have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when
it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing,
and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I
did make might not have been carried much further,
and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not
have been followed. up much more energetically, -these.
are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might
make out a case of palliation;.but- shall I speak ingenuously? - Iconfess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine,
that I am too.much of an E:-daemonist; I hanker too
much after a state of happiness, both for myself and
others; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not;
with an eye of sufficient firmness; and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any
reversionary benefit. On some other matters, I can
greewithi the gentlemen in'the cotton traded at Manchester in affecting the Stoic-philosophy; but not in
this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher,
and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect
that will condescend more to -the infirm condition of an
* A handsome news-room, of which I was very politely made
free in passing through Manchester, by several gentlemen of that
place, is called, I think, The Porch; whence I, who am-a strangep
in Manchester, inferred that- the subscribers meant. to profess
themselves foliowers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that
mlsis — a mistake.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           89
opium-eatei; that are'( sweet men," as Chaucer says,
"to give absolution," and will show some consciencej the penances they inflict, and the efforts f absti.
nence they exact from  poor sinners like' myself. An
inhuman moralist I can no more endure, in my nervous
state, than opiuan that has not been boiled. At any
rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight
of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage
of moral improvement, must make it clear to my under,
standing that the concern is a hopeful one. -At my
time of life (six-and-thirty years of age),. it cannot be
supposed that I have much energy t, spare; in fact, I
find it all little enough for the intellectual labors I -have.
on my hands; and, therefore, let no man expect to
frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any
part of it upon desperate adventures of morality.
Whether desperate or not, however, the -issue of the
struggle in 1813 was what-I have mentioned; and from
this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and
confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any
particular day he had or had not taken opium, woul[
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration,
or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand
riow, reader, what I am; and you are by this time
aware, that no old gentleman, "with a snow-white
beard," will have any chance of persuading me to sur.
render "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious
drug."  No  I give notice to all, whether moralists or
surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in
their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for
any countenance from me, if they think to begin by
any savage proposition for a'Lent or Ramadam of absti.




90              CONFESSIONS OF AN
nerce from opium. This, then, being all fully under.
stood between us, we shall in future sail before thewind.
Now, then, reader, from 1813, where all this time -we
have been sitting down and loitering, rise uar;f you
please. and walk forward about three years mt.  Now
draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new
character.
If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he'would
tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and,the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all
cry out,. Hear him! hear him!  As to the happiest
day, that must be very difficult for any wise man to
name; because any event, that could occupy so distinguished a place in a man's' retrospect of his life, or
be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one
day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as that
(accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the
same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many
years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or
even to the happiest year, it may be allowed to any man
to point without discountenance from wisdom. This
year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have
now reached; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier, character.. It was a
year of brilliant water. (to speak after the manner of
jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloom
and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may
sound, I had a little before this time descended -suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three hundred and twenty grains of opiur (that is, eight* thou
* I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to
one grain of opium, which, J believe, is the common estimate:




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.             91
sand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, ot
one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic,
the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon
my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll
away from the summits of mountains, drew off in one
day; passed off with its murky.banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded,. and is floated off
by a spring tide,That moveth altogether, if it move at all,
Now, then, I was again happy:'I now took only one
thousand drops of laudanum per day,-and what was
that? A latter spring had come to close up the season
of youth: my brain performed its functions as healthily
as-ever before. I read Kant again, and again I under
stood him, or fancied that I did. -Again my feelings of
pleasure expanded themselves to all around me; and, if
any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither
had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage,
I should have welcomed him    with as sumptuous a
reception as so poor -a man could offer. Whatever
else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished,
and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that-I
speak of giving laudanum   away, I remember, about'
this tilne, a little incident, which I mention, because,
However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude
opium:'arying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I
suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can. be had in such'a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength
Small ones hold ah iut one hundred drps: so that eiglt thousand
drops are about eighty times a tea-  onful. The reade -sees how
much I kept within Dr. Buch j indulgent allowance.
^ ^  -'-^-2-r..~rirille' 
7 /.         f




92              CONFESSIONS OF AN
trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in
my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than
could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my
loor. What business a.Malay could have to transact
amongst English mountains, I cannot conjecture; but
possibly he was on his'road to a seaport about forty
miles distant.
The servant who opened the door to him was a
young girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who
had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban,
therefore, confounded her not a little; and as it turned
out that his attainments in English were exactly of' the
same extent as hers.in the Malay, there seemed to be
an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of
ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In
this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the r-puted learning
of her master (and, doubtless,' giving me credit for a
knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides
perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me
to understand that there was a sort of demon below
whom she clearly imagined. that my art could' exorcise
from the house. I did not immediately go'down; but
when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged
as it was:by accident, though not very elaborate, took
hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of
the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the
opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had
ever done. -In a cottage kitchen, but- panelled on
the wall with dark wood, that from age and'rubbing
resembled oak, and looking more- like a rustic hall of
entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban
and loose trousers of dingy white relieved- upon the;




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            93
dark panelling; he had placed himself nearer to the
girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit
of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of
simple awe which her countenance expressed, as. she
gazed upon the tiger-cat before her.  And.a more
striking picture there could not be imagined, than the
beautiful English face of the girl, and its. exquisite
fairness, together with her erect and independent atti,
tude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the
Malay, enamelled or veneered with   mahogany by
marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips,
slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the
ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child -fronm.a
neighboring cottage, who had crept in after him,'and
was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing
upwards at theuturban and the fiery eyes beneath it,
whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the
young woman for protection.
My, knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two -words,the Arabic -word for barley, and the Turkish for opium
(madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius. And,
as.I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's Mithridates, which might have" helped me to a
few words, I addressed him' in some lines from the
Iliad!; considering that, of such language as I possessed,.the Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped
me in a devout manner, and replied in what I suppose
was Malay. In this way I save'd my reputation wIitb
my neighbors; for the Malay had no means of betray.
ing the secret, He lay down upon the floor for about an




94                CONFESSIONS OF:AN
hour, and then pursued his journey... On his departure
I presented him with a piece of opium.   To him, as an
Orientalist, I concluded that opium  must be familiar,
and the expression of his face convinced me that it was.
Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise. his hand to his
m)uth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the whole,
divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses,
and I felt some alarm' for the poor creature; but what'
could be done?    I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that,. if he
had travelled -on foot from London, it must be nearly
three weeks since he could have exchanged a' thought
with any human being.    I could not think of violating
the  laws of hospitality by having    him   seized and
drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into
a notion that we' Were going to sacrifice him to some
English idol.   No;:there was clearly no-help for it.
He-.took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious;
but, as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I
became convinced that he was used* to opium, and
* This, however, is not a necessary conclusion.; the varieties of
effect produced by opium.on different constitutions are infinite. A
London magistrate (Harriott's " Struggles through Life,":vol. iii.,
p. t91, third edition) has recorded that on the first occasion of his
trying laudanum for the gout, he took FORTY drops; the next night
SIXTY, and on the fifth night BIGHTY, without aly effect whatever;
and this at an advanced age. Ithave an anecdote from a country
surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle.
and, in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will puhlish prcvided the College of Surgeons wiil pay me for enlightening
their benighted understandings upon this subject, I'vill relate it
but it is fai too good a story to be published gratis.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.            95
that I must have done him the service I designed, by
giving him  one night of respite from  the. pains of
wandering.
This incident I have digressed to mention, because
this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he
assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected
with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon
my dreams, and brought other Malays with him worse
than himself, that ran "a-muck "  at me, and. led me!
into a world of troubles. But, to quit this Episode, and
to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have
said already, that on a subject so important to us all as
happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man's
experience or experiments, even though he were but a
ploughboy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed
very deep in such an intractable soil as that of human
pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches
upon any -very enlightened principles. But I, who have,
taken happiness, both in a solid and a liquid shape, both
boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey, —
who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery,-and
have, for the general benefit. of the world, inoculated
myself, as it were, with the poison of eight hundred
drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason
as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with a
cancer,-an English one, twenty years ago, with
plague,-and i third, I know not of'what nation, with
hydrophobia),-I, it will be admitted, must surely
* See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller or voyager,
of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have tak p
opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling.




96              CONFESSIONS OF AN
know what happiness is, if-anybody does. And therefore I will. here lay down an analysis of happiness
and, as the most interesting mode of communicating
it,. I will give it, not didactically, but wrapt up and
involved in a picture of one evening,-as I spent every
evening during the intercalary year when laudanum,
though taken -daily, was to me no more than the elixir
of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of hap
piness altogether, and pass to a very'different one,the pains of opiun.
Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen
miles from ahy town; no spacious valley, but about
two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average.
width, - the benefit of which provision is, that. all the.
families resident within its circuit'will compose, as it
were, one larger household, personally familiar to-your
eye, and more or less interesting to your affections.
Let'the mountains be real mountains, between three and
four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real ottage,
not (as a- witty author has it) "-a cottage with -a double
coach-house;" let it be, in fact'(for I must abide by
the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with
flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of
flowers upon the walls, and clustering a-round.'the w.in:
dows, through all the months of aprinng, summer, and
autumn; beginning, in fact, with May ~roses; and ending
with. jasmine.  Let it, however,- not be;spring, nor
summer, nor autumn; but winter, in its sternes.t.shape.'This is a most important point in the science of happiness.  And I am  surprised to see people, overlook it,
and think it matter of congratulation that,winter is
going, or, if coming, is not likely to be' a severe one.




ENGLISH OP.UM-EATER.             97
On the contrary,.I put up a petition, annually, for as
much snow, hail, frost, or storm of one kind or other,
as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely everybody
is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a win.ter
tireside, — candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs,
tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in,mple draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain,re raging audibly without,
"nd at the doors and windows seem to call
Oes heaven and-earth they would together mell;
Yet the least entrance find they none at all;
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.
Castle of Indolence.
All these are items in the description of a winter
evening which must surely-be familiar to everybody
born in a high latitude. And it is evident that- most of
these delicacies,- like ice-cream, require a very low
temperature of the atmosphere to produce them: they
are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather
stormy or'iclement, in some.way or other. I am not
"particular,' as people say, whether it be snow, or
black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. -   says)
"-you may lean your back against it like a post."  I
can put. up even with rain, provided that it rains cats
and dogs; but something of the sort I must have, and.
if I have not, I think myself in a manner- ill itsec: for
why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in
coals, and candles, and various privations that will occur
even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good
of its kind?  No: a Canadian!winter, for my money 
or a Russian one; where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the. fee-simple of his own
7




*SQ'8  ~     CONFESSIONS OF AN
ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter,
that I -cannot relish a winter night fully, if it be much
past St. Thomas' day, and have degenerated into dis
gusting tendencies to vernal appearances; -- no. it -must
be divided by a thick wall-of dark nights from all return
of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October
to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period during which
happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters.he
room with the tea-tray; fdr tea, though ridiculed by
those who are naturallyof coarse nerves, or are become
so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the
favorite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my pFrt,
I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecznum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person
who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save
myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will
introduce a painter, and give him directions for the res(
of the picture.  Painters do.not like white cottages,
unless a good deal weather-stained;. but, as the readei
now. understands that it is a winter night, his services
will not be required except for the inside of the house.' Paint me, then, a room  seventeen feet by twelve,:aiid nct.more than —seven and a half: feet -high. This,
reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my-family,
the drawing-room; but, being contrived "a: double debt
to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library;
for it happens that books-are the only article of. property
in which I am richer than my neighbors:  Of these I
have about five thousand, collected gradually since my
eighteenth year.  Therefore, painter, put; as many. as
you can into this room. Make it-populous with books




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           99
ind, furthernmore, paint me a good fire; and furniture
plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of
a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table; and
(as it is clear that no creature can come to see one,
such a stormy night) place only: two cups and saucers
pn the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a
thing symbolically, or otherwise, paint, me an eternal
tea-pot, - eternal a parte ante, and a parte post; for
I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four
in the morning. And, as it is very unpleasant to make
tea, or to pour it out for one's self, paint me a lovely
yo'ung woman, sitting at the table. Paint her aras like
Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's;- but no, dear
M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to
illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable
as mere personal beauty; or that the witchcraft of
angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly
pencil,  Pass, then, my good painter, to something
more -within its power; and the next article brought
forward should naturally be myself, -a picture of the
Opium-eater, with his "little golden receptacle of the
pernicious drug " lying beside him on the table. As to
the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that,
though I. would rather see the original; you may paint
it, if you choose; but I: apprize you that no "little"
receptacle.would, even in 1816, answer my purpose,
who was at a distance from the "stately Pantheon," and
all druggists (mortal or otherwise).  No: you may
as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of
gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as
possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-colored
laudanun;, that, and a book of German metaphysics




JO0   CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISht OrIUMTEATEIn.
placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being mn
the neighborhood; but as to myself, there I demur. I
admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground
of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or (if
you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be
had into court. This seems reasonable; but why should
I confess, on this point, to a painter? or, why confess at
all?  If the public (into-whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not-into any
painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable
picture for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior,- should
have ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant person,
or a handsome face, why should I -barbrously tear
from it. so pleasing a delusion, - pleasing both to the
puiblic and to me?  No: paint me, if at all, according
to your own fancy; and, as a painter's fancy should
teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way,
to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through
all.the ten categories of my condition, as it stood about
1816:-1817, up to the middle of which latter year. judge myself to have been a happy man; and the
elements of that happiness I have endeavored to place
before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a
scholar's library,-in a cottage among the mountains,
on- a stormy winter evening.
But now' farewell, a'long farewell, to- happiness,
winter or'summer! farewell to- smiles and laughter!
farewell to peace of mind! farewell to hope and to
tranquil' dreams, and to the blessed consolations of
sleep!  For. more than three years and a half I am
summoned away from these; I am now' arrived at an
Iliad of woes: for IJ have. now to record




THE PAINS OF OPIUM
--- as when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Shelley's Revolt of Islam.
READER,' who have thus far accompanied me, I must
request your attention to a brief explanatory note on
three points:
1. For several reasons, 1 have not been able to cornpose the notes for this part of my narrative into any
regular and connected shape.   I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up
from memory..Some of them point to their own date;
some I have dated; and some are undated. Whenever
it could answer-my purpose to transplant them from the
natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to
do so.  Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes
in the -past tense.  Few-of the notes, perhaps, were
written exactly at the period of time to which they
relate; but this can little affect -their accuracy, as theimpressions were such that they can never fade from
my mind.    Much has been omitted.     I could not.
without effort, constrain myself to the -task of either
recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, tie




102             CONFESSIONS OF AN
whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain..This feeling, partly, I plead in-excuse, and' partly that'l
am now in London, and am ahelpless -sort of person
who cannot even arrange his own papers without
assistance; and I am    separated  from  the  hands
which are wont to perform for me the offices of an
amanuensis.
2. You will think, perhaps, that'I am too confidential
and communicative of my own private history. It may
be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud,
and follow my own humors, than much to consider who
is listening to me; and, if I qtop to consider what is
proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon
come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.' The
fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty
years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to
those who will be interested about me hereafter; and
wishing to have some record of a time, the entire
history of which no one can know but myself, I do it
as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable
of making, because I know not whether 1 can ever find
time to do it again.
3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why did I not
release myself from the horrors of-opium, by leaving
it off, or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly;
it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations
of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any
man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may.be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to
reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed
the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were tile
first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           103
jt a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected o0
trisected a drop?  A thousand drops bisected would
thus have taken.nearly six years to reduce; and that
they would certainly not have answered. But this is
I common mistake of those who know nothing of opium
experimentally; I appeal to those who do, whether it is
ot' always found that down to a certain point it can be
reduced with ease, and even pleasure, but that, after that
point, further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes,
say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they
are talking of, you will. suffer a little low spirits and
dejection, for a few days.  I answer, no; there is
nothing like low spirits;, on the. contrary, the mere
animal spirits are uncommonly raised; the pulse is
improved; the health is better. It is not there that the
suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings
caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable
irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like
dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and
feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without.more space at my.command.
I shall now enter "in medias res," and shall anticipate,
from a time when my opium pains might be said to be
at their acme, an account of their palsying effects on the
intellectual faculties.
My- studies have now been long interrupted. I can
not read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a
rmment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for
the pleasure of others; because reading is an acconim
plishment. of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain
ment,-almost the only one I possess; and formerly it




104             CONFESSIONS OF AN
I had any vanity at all connected with any eLdowment
or attainment of mine, it was with this-; for I had
observed that no accomplishment was. so rare. Players
are. the. worst readers of all: - reads vilely; and
Mrs. —, who is so celebrated, can read.nothing well
but dramatic compositions; Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general either read poetry without
any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of
nature, and. read not- like scholars. Of late, if I have felt
moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand
lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when
read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes
and drinks tea with us; at her request and,M.'s, I now
and then read W   - -'s poems to them. (W., by the
by, is the-only poet I ever met who could read his own'erses; often, indeed, he reads admirably.)
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book
but one; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a
great debt of gratitude, to mention what that' was.
The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as
I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my
proper vocation, as I well knew, was the —exercise of
the' analytic understanding.'Now,' for the most part,
analytic studies are continuous, and not' to be pursued
by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics
for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c., were all be
come insupportable to me'; I shrunk from them with' a
sense of powerless and iIfantine feebleness-that gavmw
me an anguish the greater from remembering. the time
when I grappled with them to my own holrly delight;
and for this further reason, because I had.devoted the




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           105
labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect
blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of
constructing one single work, to which I had presumed
to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's,
namely, De Emendatione Humani Intellectuis. This was
now lying locked up as by frost, like'any Spanish bridge
or aqueduct, begun upon too -great a scale for the
resources of the architect; and, instead of surviving me
as a monument of wishes at- least, and aspirations, and
a life of labor dedicated to the exaltation of human
nature in that way in which God- had best fitted me to
promote so -great an object, it was likely to stand a
memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled
efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure,
of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this
state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned, my
attention to political economy; my- understanding,
which formerly had been as active and restless as a
hyena, could not, I suppose: (so' long as I lived at all),
sink into utter lethargy; and political economy- offers
this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is
eminently an organic science (no-pars, that is to say,
but what acts on' the whole, as the whole again reicts
on each part), yet the several parts may be detached
and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration
of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my
knowledge; and my. understanding had been for too
many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic,
and the great masters of knowledge, not to-be aware of
the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern econo
mists. I had been led- in 1811 to look into- oads of




06              CONFESSIONS OF AN.
books and pamphlets on many branches of economy i,nd, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters
from  more recent works, or parts of parliamentary
debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs
and rinsings of the human intellect; and that.any mnan
of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of
modern economists, and throttle them between heaven
and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their
fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length,
in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr.
Ricardo's book; and, recurring to my own prophetic
anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this
science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter,
Tlnou art the man!"     Wonder and curiosity were
emotions that had long. been dead in me. Yet I won.
dered once more: I wondered at myself that I could
once again be stimulated to the effort of reading; and
iuch more I wondered at the book. Had this profound
work been really written in England during the nineteenth century?  Was it possible? I supposed thinkingo* had been extinct in   England.   Could it be
that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers,
but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had
accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a
century of thought, had failed even to advance by one
The reader must remember'what I here mean by thinking;.
because, else, this would be a very presumptuous expression.
England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the
departments of creative and combining thought; but there is..a sad
dearth of masculine thinkers in ally'analytic path. A. Scotchman
of eminent name has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit eve:,
mathematics, for want of encouragement.




ENGLISH OPIUM-1ATER.           107
hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and
overlaid by the enormous weights of facts and documents; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the
understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light
into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative, discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first
standing on an eternal basis.
Thus did one simple work of a profound understanding- avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which
I had not known for years;-it roused me even to
write, or, at least, to dictate what M. wrote for me.
It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped
even "the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo; and, as
these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I
could express or illustrate them  more briefly and
elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy
and loitering diction of economists, the whole would
not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with
M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as
I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Political Economy. I
hlope it will not be found redolent of opium; though,
indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufficient
opiate.
This exertion, however, was but a _temporary' flash,
as the sequel showed; for I designed to publish my
work. Arrangements were made at aprovincial press,
about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additlonttl compositor was retained for some days, on this
account.  The work was, even twice advertised; and
I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment of my




08        csCONFESSIONS OF AN
ntention. But I had a preface to write; and a dedi.
cation, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr
Ricardo. I found myself ouite unable to accomplish
all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the
compositor dismissed, and my " prolegomena" rested
peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified
brother.
I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual
torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part
of the four years during which I was under the Circean
spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might,
indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I
seldom could prevail on myself to write' a letter; -an
answer of a few words, to any that I received, was
the utmost that I could accomplish; and often that not
until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my
writing-table. Without the aid of M., all records of
bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished; and- my
whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political
Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion.
I shall not afterwards'allude to-this part of the case; it
is one, however, which the opium-eater will, find, in the
end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from
the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the'direct
embarrassments'incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the
remorse which must often exasperate the stings of
these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind.
The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities
or aspirations; he wishes and longs as earnestly as
ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to
be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           109
f what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of
execution only, but even of power to attempt. He. lies
under the weight of incubus and'night-nrare; he lies ill
sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man
forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a
relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or
outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love -
he curses the spells which chain him down from motion;
he would lay down his life if he might but get up and
walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even
attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter
confessions, to the history and journal of what took place
in my dreams; for these were the immediate and proximate cause of. my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going
on in this part of my physical economy, was from the
reawaking, of a state of eye generally incident to
childhood, or: exalted states of irritability. I know not
whether my reader is aware tiat many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon
the darkness, all sorts of phantoms: in some that
power is -simply a mechanic affection of the eye;
others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to
dismiss or summon themn; or, as a child once said to
me, when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell
them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come
whan I don't tell them to come."  Whereupon I told
him that he had almost as unlimited a command over
apparitions as a Roman centurion over his ocldiers.
In the middle of 18.17, I think it was, that this faculty
became positively distressing to me: at night, when I




110             CONFESSIONS OF AN
lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in
mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that
to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were
stories drawn from times before CEdipus or Priam, before
Tyre, before Memphis. And, at the same time, a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre
seemed suddenly opened' and lighted up within my brain,
which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than earthly
splendor. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time:
I. That, as the. creative'state of the eye increased, a
sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the
dreaming states of the brain in one. point,  that'whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer
itself to my dreams; so that I feared to exercise this
faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that
yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires,.
so whatsoever things -capable of being-visually. represented I did but think'of in the darkness, immediately
shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and, by a
process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once
traeed in faint and visionary colors, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were- drawn out, by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that fretted
my heart..II..For this, and all other changes in my dreams,
were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy
melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable. by
words. 1 seemed every night to descend - not metaphorically,'but literally to.descend — intc chasms and'
sunless abysses, depths ybelow depths, fr)m which —it




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATE R.          111
seemed hopeless that I could- ever reiscend. Nor did 1,
by waking, fe.el that I had reascended. This I do not
dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended
these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter
darkness, as'of some suicidal despondency, cannot be
approached by words.
III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of
time, -were boh powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as
the bodily eye is not fitted to receive.- Space swelled,
and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity.
rhis, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast
expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived
kor seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay,
sometimes' had feelings representative of a millennium,
passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyondt
the limits of any human experience.
IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten
scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not
be said to recollect them; -for if I had been told of
them when waking, I should not have' been able to
acknowledge'them. as parts of my past experience.
But placed as they were before me, in dreams like
intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognized them
instantaneously.  I was once told by a near relative
of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a
river, and being on the very verge of death but.for the
critical assistance which. reached her, she saw in'a
momnent her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrnyed
before- her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she-had
a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the




1 ~2s}       CONFESSIONS OF AN
whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can. believe; I have, indeed, seen the
same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely,
that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures
speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual.
Of this, at least, I -feel assured, that there is no such
thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand
accidents may and will interpose a veil between our
present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the
mind.- Accidents of the same sort will also rend away
this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the
inscription remains forever; just as the stars seem to
withdraw before the common light of day, whereas,
in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn
over them as a veil; and that they are waiting to be
revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of- health, I shall now
cite a case illustrative of the first fact; and shall then
cite any others that I remember, either in their chronological order, or any other that may give them more
effect as pictures to the reader.
I had been- in youth, and even since, for occasional
amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom   I confess
fhat I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other
of the Roman historians; and-I had often felt as most
solemn and appalling sounds, and- most emphatically
representative 6f the majesty of the Roman. people, the
two words so often occurring in Livy-  onsul Romaras;- especially when the consul is: introduced in his




ENGLISH 01I WM-EATER.          1.3
military character.  I mean to- say, that- the words
king,. sultan, regent, &c., or any other titles of those
who embody in their own persons the collective majesty
of a great people, had less power overi my reverential
feelings. I had, also, though no great reader cf history,
made myself minutely and. critically familiar with one
period of English history, namely, the period of the Par-.
liamentary War, having been. attracted by the moral.
grandeur of some who figured in that day, and ty the
many interesting memoirs which survive th6se unquiet
times. Both these parts of my lighter reading,.having,
furnished me- often with matter of reflection, now furnish me with matter for my dreams.  Often I used
to see, after painting upon the blank darkness, a sort
of rehearsal.whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps..a festival and dances.. And I heard it said, or
I said to myself, "These are Enaglitshladies from the
unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and
da-ugi.ers-o"f-those-whrmet in. peace, and sat at the
same tabl.esan- were, allied by marriage or by blood;
and yet, after a- cerrtaiii'd.an"d'yi'i"'Xu'gust, 1642, never
smiled upon'each other again, nor met but.in the field
of battle.;- and at Marston Moor, at Newbury,' or at
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre,
and- washed away in'blood the memory of ancient
friendship."  The ladies danced, and looked as lovely
as the court of George. IV. Yet I knew, even in my
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two
centuries. This. pageant would suddenlydissolve; and,,
at a clapping' of' hands, would be heard the heartquaking sound of-Consuli Romanus; and immediately
came  sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus
Q




~14             CONFESSIONS OF AN
or Marius, girt around by a company of centurions, with
the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by
the aZalagmos of the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's
Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing
by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called
his Dreams, and which record' the scenery of his own
visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them
(I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls; on the floor of
which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels,
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c., expressive of
enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome.
Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a
staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was
Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little further, and
you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination,
without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards
to him who had reached the extremity, except into the
depths below.: Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi,
you suppose, at least, that his labors must in some way
terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a
second flight of stairs still higher; on which again
Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the ver'
brink of the abyss.  Again elevate your eye, and a
still more a/erial flight of stairs is beheld; and again is
poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors; and so on,
until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in
the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power
of endless growth and self-reproduction did my archi.tecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage'of my
malady, the splendors of my dreams were. indeed




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.               115
chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities
and palaces. as was never yet beheld by the waking
eye, unless in the clouds.   From a great modern poet
I cite the part of a passage which describes, as, an
appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many
of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city —boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendor- without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars - illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapors had receded - tiking there
Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c.
The sublime    circumstance -"battlements that on
their restless fronts  bore stars "- might have    been
copied.from my architectural dreams, for it often occurred.  We -hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli
in modern times, that they thought proper.to eat-raw
meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how
much, better, for such a purpose, to' have eaten opium,
which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded'to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; and in
ancient.days, Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have
known the virtues of. opium.




116             CONFESSIONS OF AN
To my architecture succeeded' dreams -of lakes,
and silvery expanses of water: these haunted me so
much, that I feared (though possibly it will appeal
ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state oi
tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to
use a metaphysical word) objective, and the sentient
organ project itself as its own object. For two months
I suffered greatly in my head - a part of my bodily
structure which had hitherto been so clear from all
touch or -taint of weakness (physically, I mean), that 1
used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of. his
stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my
person. Till now I irad. never felt a headache even, or
any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused
by my own folly.   However, I got over this attack,
though it must have been verging.on something very
dangerous.
* The waters now   changed their character,- from
translucent lakes, shining'like mirrors, they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous
change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll,
through many months, promised an abiding torment;
and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of
my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in
my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any specia1
power of tormenting.   But now that which I have
called-the tyranny of the human face, began to unfold
itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be
answerable, for this. Be that as it may, now it was
that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human
face began to appear; the sea. appeared paved with
innumerable faces, upturned to the. heavens; faces,




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.           117
imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by
thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries:
my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and surged
with -the ocean.
May, 1818.- The Malay had been a fearful enemy
for months.  l have been every night, through his
means, transported into Asiatic scenes.  I know not
whether others share in my feelings on this point; but
I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego
England, and to live- in China, and among Chinese
manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go
mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of
them must be common to others.    Southern Asia, in.general, is the seat of awful'images and associations.
As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have
a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But
there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the
wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa,
or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way
that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel,
and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c.  The mere
antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories,
modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the
vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of
youth in the individual.  A young Chinese seems to
me an:antediluvian man renewed.    Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the- mystic sublimity
of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix,
through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any
man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the
Euphrates.- It contributes much to these feelings, that




118             CONFESSIONS OF AN
Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years,
the part of the earth most swarming with, human life,
the great oficina gentium.  Man is a weed in those
regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a
further sublimity to the feelings associated with all oriental names or images. In China, over-and above what
it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am
terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the
barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy,
placed between us by'feelings deeper than I can analyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute anitials. All this, and much more than I can say, or
have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he
can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these
dreams of oriental imagery, and mythological tortures,
impressed upon me. Under'the connecting feeling of
tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together
all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants,
usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical
regions, and assembled them. together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt
and all her gods under' the same law. I was stared ai
hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by
paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was
fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms:
I was tfie idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped;
I- was sacrificed.  I fled from  the wrath of Brama
through all the forests. of Asia:'Vishnu hated me;
Seeva laid wait for me.  I came suddenly upon Isis
and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the
ibis and the crocodile trembled at.- I was buried, for a




ENG LISH OPIUM-EATER.           119
thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and
ophinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal
pyramids.  I was kissed, with' cancerous kisses, by
crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable
slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my
oriental dreams, which always filled me with such.
amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror
seemed absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment.
Sooner or' later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed
up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw.
Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim
sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and
infinity that drove me into an oppression as of, madness.
Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight
/  -------—. ~.
exceptions that any circumstances of physical horror
entered. )All befoie had been mnoral and spiritual terrors.  But here the main agents were ugly birds, or
snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The- cursed
crocodile became t6 me the object of more horror than
almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him;
and (as was always the case, almost, in my dreams) for
centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in
Chinese houses with cane tables, &c, All' the feet of
the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life:
the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering
eyes, looked out at me; multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I. stood loathing and fascinated.'And so
often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that
many times the very same dream was broken up in the
very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me




120             CONFESSIONS OF AN
(I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly
I awoke: it was broad' noon, and my children were
standing, -hand in hand, at my bedside; come to show.
me' their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to- let me
see them  dressed for going out.  I protest that so
awful was the transition from-the damned crocodile,
and the other unutterable. monsters and abortions of my
dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of
infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of
mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their
faces.
June, 1819. -I have had occasion to remark, at
various periods' of my' life, that the deaths of those
whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death.generally, is (cceteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And the
reasons are these three, I think: first, that'the visible
heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant,
and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite;
the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the' blue pavilion stretched over our heads are
in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated'
in- far grander and more.towering piles: secondly, the
light-and the -appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much more fitted'to be-types and characters: of the infinite: and, thirdly (which is the main
reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life
naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the
antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility
of the grave. For it may be observed,- generally, that
wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a
law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual




ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.          12.
repulsili, they are apt to suggest each other. On these
accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the
thought of death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not
more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately
and besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this cause, and
a slight incident which I omit, might have been the
immediate dccasions of the following dream, to which,
however, a predisposition must always have existed in
my mind; but having been ohce roused, it never left me,
and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often
suddenly reunited, and composed again the original
dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that
it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the
morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the
door'of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very
scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the
power of dreams. There were the same mountains, and
the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains
were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was
interspace far larger between them of meadows and
forest lawns; the hedges were rich with- white roses;
and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in
the green church-yard there were cattle tranquilly-repos.
ing upon the verdant graves, and particularly rouna
about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved,
just as 1 had really beheld them, a little before sunrise,
in the same summer, when that child died.  gazed
upon the well-known scene, and I said aloud (as,_I
thought) to myself, "It yet wants much of sunrise; and




\1~2  ~     CONpESSIONS OF A N
it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they
celebrate the first fruits of resuarection. I will walk
abroad; old griefs shall be forgotten to-day  for the-ait
is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away
to heaven; and. the forest glades are as quiet as the
church-yard; and with the dew I can wash the fever
from  my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no
longer."  And I turned, as if to open my garden gate;
and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different'; but which yet the powver of dreams had reconciled
into harmony with the other. The scene was an oriental one;' ahd there also it was Easter Sunday, and very
early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible: as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas
o.: a great city -an image or faint: abstractiot, caught,
perhaps, in childhood, from some picture' of Jerusalem.
And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, and sh.aded
by Judean palms, there-sat a woman; and I looked, and
it was - Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly,
and I said to her, at length, "So, then, I have found4 yo.,
at last."  I waited; but she answered me. not a word.
Her face was the same'as when I saw it last, and yet,
igain, how different! Seventeen years ago, when the
lamp'light fell upon her face, as for the last time.I lkissed
bet lips: (lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted-!.), her
eyes were streaming with ttears-  her tears were now
wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was
at that time, but in all other points the same, and not
older.; Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I how gazed upon her with some
awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, anrd, turn
ing to the nloufiltains;  I perceived vapors rolling betweei




ENGLISH OPIUiM-iATiR.          123
-u-; in a moment, all had vanished; -thick- darkness
came- on; ind. in the twinkling of an eye I was far away
from -nouitains, and by lamp-light inh Oxfor'dstreet,
walking again with Ann  just as we walked seventeen
years beforte when we were both children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character
fr6mn 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I
ofte -heard in dreams - -a music of preparation-and
of Awakening sespense; a mtusio like the opening of the
Coronation Anthemj and which, like-tat, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing Off, and
the tread of innumierable armies.. The mornirg was
come of a mighty day -a day of crisis and of-final hope
for huma-an nature, theni stilfering ~ome mysterious
eclipse, and. laboring in some dread extremity,- Soe
where, I knew not where - gomehow, I knew not how
-by somei beings, I knew not whom-a ba ttle'.a; strife,
an agony, was conductinrg,  was evolving like -a gret
drama, or piece' of music; with which my syLmpthy was
the more insupportable from my confusion as to its
place, its cause, its nature aind its possible issue. I, as is
usual. in dreams (where, of necessity a we make'ourselves
central to every mroveiment)-, had the power, and yet had
not the power to decide it. I. had the poweri if I could
raise myself, to will it,; and. yet again had. not: the
power, for the Weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me,
or. the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "peeper than
ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a
chorus, the passion deepened. Some. greater interest
was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the
sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then




124             CONFESSIONS OF AN
came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations
of innumlerable fugitives. I' knew not whether from the
good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest
and. human faces; and at. last, with the sense that all
was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth
all: the world to me, and but:a moment allowed, — and
clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then
— everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh, such as the
caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered
the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated
- everlasting farewells! and          again, and yet againrever
berated -everlasting farewells!
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud - "I will
sleep no more!"
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative
which has already extended to an unreasonabie length'
Within more spacious limits, the materials which I
nave used might have been better unfolded; and much
which I have not used might have been added with
effect. Perhaps, however, enough has -been given. It
now remains that I should say something of the way in
which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to its
crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage
near the beginning of the introduction to the first part)
that the opium-eater has, in some way or other, "unwound, almost to its final links, the accursed chain
which bound him."  By'what means,? To have narrated this, according to the original intention, would
have far exceeded the space which can now be allowed.
It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case, have
been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaf




ENGLISH OPIDM-EATER.           125
fecting details, the impression of the nlstcry itself, as an
appeal to the prudence and the conscience of the yet
unconfirmed opium-eater, or even (though a very inferior
consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The
interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself
chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the
fascinating yower. Not the opium-eater, but the opium,
is the true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on
which the interest revolves..The object was to display
the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or
for pain; if that is done, the action of the piece has
closed..
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the
contrary, will persist in asking what became of the
opium-eater, and in what state he now is, I answer for
him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it
wassolely by the tortures connected with the attempt
to abjure it, that it kept its hold. Yet, as other' tortures, no less, it may be thought, attended the nonabjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was
left;- and' that might as well have been adopted, which,
however terrific in itself, held out a prospect of final
restoration to happiness. This appears true; butt'good
logic gave the author no strength to act upon it.' HIowever, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis
for' other objects still dearer to' him, and which will
always be far dearer to him than his life, even now
that it is -again a happy one. I saw that I must die, if
I continued the opium: I determined, therefore, if that
should be required, to die in throwing it off.  How
much I was at that time taking, I cannot say;; or the




1236            cCONFESSIONS OF 4N
opium which 1 used had been purchased for me byrt
friendw who afterwards refused to let me pay him; s.
that,.aould not ascertain even what quantity I had
used within a year. I.apprehend, however, that I tok
it v.ry irregularly, and that I varied from aboqt; fifty or
sincty gramins to.one hundred and fifty a day, My.frst
task was to reduce it to- fory, to thirty, and, as fast as I
coulq to twelve grain,.
j t   nriumpbed; bNut think not, reader, that there.fore
nmy sfferings were ended; nor think           f e  f ne
sittipg in a dejcted.t state.  Think of me as of one,
even when   four months had passed, still agitated,
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and' moh,
perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked,
-a I oP}llet the torments of that state from -the affecing
ac6ount of them left by the. mot inocent sufferer  (of
the, tite:of James I.). Meantimte, I derivde no be.efit
frpm'oy edi cine, except one pregcribed to, m.  by an
Edinburgh srrgeso of:grat emiranenee, -namely, ainmm-o
nioated tinpture of valerian,  Medi:al account, therefore,
of my i'.nancipaion, I have net much to give;. anid
even that little, as managed by a m:an so ignormat of
mndieine as myself, would, probably tend.only to miis,
lea4d,.  At:all eents, it would be mrisplAeWd in this situa:
tioa, The moral of the narrative is addressed a tte
opi.p'eatetr; and thherefe, of necessity, limited in its
applcatioin. If he.i taught to fear and t.remble, enoughi
hahbeer effected. But. e   y   ay that the issue.of
my case is at lea.t:' prqof that.opium, after -a seven;
* William Lithgow; his book (Travels, &.); is ill and pedanti*
cilay written- but the account of his own' sufferings on the rack at
ilPga: i ove.rpoowerigly afflcting.




ENGLISH OPIUM-EAIER.           12"
teen years' use, and an eight years' abuse of its powers
may still be renounced; and that he may chance tc
bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that
with a stronger constitution than mine, he may obtain
the same results with less. This may be true; I would
not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my
own. I heartily wish him more energy; I wish him the
same success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to
myself which he may unfortunately want; and these
supplied me with conscientious supports, which mere
personal interests'might fail to supply to a mind debilitated by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful
to be born as to die. I think it probable; and, during
the whole period of diminishing the opium, I had the
torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence
into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of
physical regeneration, and, I may add, that ever since,
at intervals, I have had a restoration of more than
youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties,
which, ii a less happy state of mind, I should have
called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains;
my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swel
ana agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the
legions:that encamped in them are drawing off, but not
all departed; my sleep is tumultuous, and like the gates
ao Paradise to our first parents when Poking back from
a;ar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton).Withdreadtul faces thronged and fiery arms.








APPENDIX.








AP.PENDIX.
THE proprietors of this little work having deter.
mined on reprinting it, some explanation seems called
for, to account for the non-appearance of a Third Part,
promised in the London Magazine of December last;
and the more so, because the proprietors, under whose
guarantee that promise was issued, might otherwise be
implicated in the blame -little or much -attached
to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the
author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the
exact amount of the- guilt which he thus appropriates,
is a very dark question to his own judgment, and not
much illuminated by any of the- master,on casuistry
whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one
hand, it seems generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom't is
made: for which reason it is that we see many per.
sons break promises without scruple that are made to a
whole nation, who keep their faith religiously in all pri.
vate engagements,- breaches of promise towards the
stronger party being committed at a man's own peril:
on the other hand, the only parties interested in the
promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a




132                 APPENDIX.
point of modesty in any author to believe as few as possible; or perhaps only one, in which case any pTomise
imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to think of.  Casuistry dismissed, however,- the
author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of
all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay,
in the following account of his own condition from the
end of last year, when the engagement was made, up
nearly to the present time.- For any purpose of selfexcuse, it might be sufficient to say, that intolerable
bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any
exertion of mind, more especially for such as demand
and presuppose a pleasurable and a genial state of feeling; but, as a case that may by possibility contribute iA
trifle to the medical history of opium in a further stage
of its action than can often have been brought under the
notice of professional men, he has judged that it might
be acceptable to some readers to have it described more
at length. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili is a just
rule where there is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may
be, will admit of a doubt; but there can be none as to
the value of the body, for a more worthless body than
his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be.- It is
his pride to believe, that it is the very ideal of a base,
crazy, despicable' human system-, that hardly ever.could
have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under
the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of -'lfe. and,
indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing
of human bodies, he must own that he should almost
be ashamed- to bequeath his wretched structure to any
respectable dog.  But now to the case, which, for the




APPENDIX.                 1 3
sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a cumber
some periphrasis, the author will take the liberty of
giving in the first person.
Those who have read the Confessions will have
closed them with the impression that I -had who:y
renounced the use of opium. This impression I meant
to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the
very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of
surveying his own case as a cool spectator, and a
degree of spirits for adequately describing it, which i;
would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speak
ing from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly,
because I, who had descended from so large a quantity
as eight thousand drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between three
hundred and one hundred and sixty drops, might well
suppose that the victory was in effect achieved.  In
suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a
reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what 
shared myself, and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general tone of
the conclusion, and not from any specific words, which
are in no instance at variance with the literal truth.
In no long time after that paper was written, I becar.e
sensible that the effort which remained would cost me
far more energy than I had anticipated, and the neces.
sit) for making it was more apparent every month




1g34                APPENDI.
Inpa-rticular, I became aware of an incriasing aallous
ness or defect of sensibility in the stomach: and this I
imagined might imply a schirroius state of that organ
either formed or forming.  An eminent physician,
to whose kindness I was, at that time, deeply indebted,
informed me that such a termination of my case was not
impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different
termination, in the event of my continuing the use of
opium.  Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure,
as.soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my
undivided attention and energy to this purpose. It was
not, however, until the 24th of June last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having
previously settled. in my own mind that I- would not
flinch, but would ( stand up to the scratch," under any
possible "punishment."  I must premise, that about
onearindred and seventy or one hundred and eighty
drops had been my ordinary allowance for many
months.   Occasionally I had run up as high as five
hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred.  In repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone
as lQw as one hundred drops,'but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day, which, by the
way, I have always found more difficult to get over
than any of the preceding three.  I went off under
easy sail-one hundred and thirty drops a day for
thrre. days; on the'fourth I plunged at once, to eighty
Tbe misery which I now suffered " took the conceit"
out of me, at, once; and for about a mon-th I continued
off and on about this mark; then I. sunk to sixty, and
the next da   to- -none at all.  This was the first




APBPENDIX.               135
y y- i  A'early tvn years that 1 had existed without
opium    I p rsevered in my abstinence for ninet
hours-; -tat a s, upwards.of haif a' week.  Then I
tok.   a. skx r   not how.much; say, ye severest,
what would ye lave. done? Then I abstained again;
then took about twtnty-five drops; then abstained;
4nd sa on.
M.eantime, the sy1-tr-is which attended my case
far the. first six weeks x. the experiment were these:
enorm. ous irritability and t.qitement of. the whole system; the stomach, in patiIcular, restored to. a full
feeling ol vitality and sens:ifity, but oftenn n great
pain,;.unc~t4i.g restlessness nght and day; sleep — I
scarcely kne., hat it' was-tiree  hours out;of the
weqty-foury wa. Ae -Aitrost I had,, and that so.agitatedand sha.llvow tha- t h'ard every sound that was near
Ae.; loiwer jaw.o.ta.atly swelling; mouth ulcerated;
and- ia-y -oithr dsItssing. symptoms that. would. be
Wdipo to. repea,:amoni t whih, however, 1 must mention one,; because it had never: failead to accompany any
attempt to renounce opium, — namely, violent -sternua
tti.o.i.  This now" became exceedingly troublesome;
somotimes lasting for two hurs at once, and;recurring
at least twice or three times a.day  I was not much
surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewheare
~heard or read, that the membrane which- lines the nose
ri is:a. prolongation of that which lines the stomach;
~ whence, I believe, are explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers.  The,
sud..n restoration pf its original sensibility to the
torach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is
renaarkotblqj,.aio,; hat, durig.; the wole. period of years




136                 APPENDIX
through which 1 had taken opium, I had never fonce
caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest
cough;  But now a violent cold attacked me, and a
cough soon after.  In an unfinished fragment of a
letter begun about this time to -, I find taese
words -"You ask me to write the ~-.. Do
you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of Thierry
and Theodoret?   There you will see my case as to
sleep; nor is it much of an exaggeration. in other
features. I protest to you that I have a greater influx
of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year
under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the
thoughts which had been frozen up for a decade of
years by opium had now, according to the old fable,
been thawed at once, such a multitude stream in upon
me'from all quLarters. Yet such is my impatience and
hideous irritability, that, for one which I detain and
write down, fifty escape me. In spite of my weariness
froni suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or
sit for two minutes together.' I nunc, et versus tecum
meditare canoros."'
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighboring surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see
me. In the-evening he came, and after briefly stating
the case to him, I asked this question: Whether: he
did not think that the opium might have acted as a
stimulus to the digestive- organs; and that the present
state of suffering in the stomach, which manifestly was
the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise from
indigestion? His answer was, —No: on the contrary,
he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion:tself, which -should naturally go on- below the con




Al PENDIX.                137
sciousness, but which, from the unnatural state of the
stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible, and the unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me to think that it was true; for, if it had
been any mere irregular affection of the stomach, it
should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature,
as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is, to withdraw from our notice all the vital motions, such as the
circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction
of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, &c.;
and opium, it seems, is able in this, as in other instances,
to counteract her purposes. By the advice of the surgeon, I tried bitters.  For a short time these greatly
mitigated the feelings under which I labored; but
about' the forty-second day of the experiment the
symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new
ones to, arise of a different and far more tormenting
class; under these, with but a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer.  But I dismiss
them undescribed for two reasons: first, because the
mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is removed by too short or by no
interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make.the review of any use, would be indeed "infandum
renovare dolorem,"' and possibly without a'sufficient
motive: for, 2dly,  doubt whether this iatter state be
any. way- referable to opium, positively considered, or
even' negatively; that'is, whether it is to be numbered
amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium,
or even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a




t38                  APPENDIX.
want of opium  in a system  long deranged by its use
Certainly. one part of the symptoms might be ac
coputed for from  the time of year (August); for
though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case
the sum of all the heat funded (if one may' say so)
during the previous months, added to the existing heat
of that month, naturally renders August in its better
half the hottest part of the year; and it so happened
that the excessive perspiration, which even at Christmas
attends any great reduction in the daily quantum of
opium, taid which in July was so violent as to oblige
me to use a bath five or six times a day, had about the
setting in of the hottest,season wholly retired, on which
account, any bad effect of the heat might be the' more
unmitigated. Another symptom, namely, what in my
ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting
the shoulders, &c., but more often appearing to be seated
i4. the stomach), seemed again less probably attributable
tQ the opium, or the want of,opium, than to the dampness
of the house ~ which I inhabit, which had about that
time attained its maximum, July having been, as usual,
a month x of incessant rain in, our most rainy part of
England,
Under these reasons for doubting whether opium
had any connection with the latter stage of my bodily
* In saying this, I meant no disrespect to the individual house, as
the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception
of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that
have been coated with RoSman cement, I am not acquainted with
any house in this mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on
just principles in this country; but for any other architecture, it is
id a-bavbarous state, and, what is worse, in a ret-ograde state




APPENDIX.                  139
w.retchedness - (except, indeed, as'an occasional cause,
a. hating left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus
predisposed to any mal-influence whatever),-I willingly spare my reader all description of it let it perish
to him; and would that I could as easily say, let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of
tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of
possible human misery!
So much for the sequel of my experiment; as to the
former stage, in which properly lies the experiment and
its application to other cases, I must request my reader
not to forget the reasons for which I have recorded it.
These were two. 1st, a belief that I might add some
trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent; in this
I am aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor of mind, pain of body,
and extreme disgust to the subject, which fbesieged me
whilst writing that part of my paper; which part being
immediately sent off to the press (distant about five
degrees -of latitude), cannot be corrected or improved.
But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evident that th.us much of benefit may arise to the persons
most interested in such a history of opium,- namely,
to opium-eaters in general, -that it establishes, for their
consolation and encouragement, the fact that opium may
be renounced, and without greater sufferings than an
ordinary resolution may support; and by a pretty rapid
course* of descent.
* On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid,
and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps,' it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated.
But, that the reader may judge for himself, and, above all, that




140                     APPENDIX.
To communicate -this result of my experiment, was
my foremost purpose.     2dly, as a purpose collateral tc
the opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may
nave every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary.
FIRST WEEK.                SECOND WEEK.
Drops of Laud.               Drops of Lauc
Mond. June 24...... 130        Mond. July 1......'80
"  26.... 140              2...."        80
"  26...    i130         3" 3.             90
"            27......  80      "4...  100
"  28......     80           "  5... 80
"  29......        80           "  6....        80
" 30.. 80            " 7...80
THIRD WEEK..,               FOURTH WEEK.
Drops of Laud.                   Drops of Laud.
Mond. July 8...        300 Mond. July 15...        76
" 9...... ~0               "  16..... 73
"10                           " 17...          73
" 12        MS.               "  19...        240
" 13 )                        "  20..' 80
". 14.....76               " 21.... 350
FIFTH WEEK.
Drops of Laud.
Mond. July 22......  60
"  23.......none
"  24.....      none
"  25..          none
"  26.......-200
"  27......none
cVhat mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to
such numbers as 300, 350, &c. 7 The impulse to these relapses was
mere infirmity of purpose; the motive, where any motive blended
with this impulse, was eitler the principle of " reculer pour mieux
sauter-(for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a
day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which, on awaking,
found itself uartlv accustomed to this new ration),  or else it was




APPENDIX.                  141
this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible
for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany
this republication: for during the very time of- this
experiment, the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent
to me from London; and such was my inability to
expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear
to read them over with attention enough to notice the
press errors, or to correct any verbal inaccuracies.
These were my reasons for troubling my reader with
any record, long or short, of'experiments relating to so
truly base a subject as my own body; and I am earnest with the reader, that he will not. forget them, or so
far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would
condescend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or,
indeed, for any less object than that of general benefit
to others. Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian, I know there is. I have met him myself,occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imagipable heautontimoroumenos; aggravating and sustaining,
by calling into distinct consciousness, every symptom
that would else, perhaps, under a different direction
given to the thoughts, become evanescent.  But as to
myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and selfish habit, that I could as little condescend
to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor
servant-girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad
or other making love at the back of my house. Is it
for a Transcendental philosopher to feel any curiosity
this principle -that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be
borne test which meet with a mood of anger; now, whenever I
ascended to ay large dose, I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne anything.




l42'                APPENDIX.
on such an occasion   Or can I, whose life is worth
only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed
to have leisure for such trivial employments?  How
ever, to put this out of'question, I shall say one thing
which will, perhaps, shock some readers; but I am
sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on
which I say it. No man, 1 suppose, employs much of
his time on the phenomena of his own body without
some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so
far fiomr looking upon mine with any complacency or
regard, I hate it and make it the object of my bitter
ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased
to' know that the last indignities which the law inflicts
upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might here-,
aftet fall upon it; And in testification of my sincerity
in saying this, I shall make- the following offer. Likeother -men, I have-particular fancies about the -place of
my burial; having lived chiefly in a mountainous ret
gion, -I rather cleave to the conceit that a grave in a
green church-yard amongst the ancient and solitary
hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of
repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous-Gol
gothas of London. Yet, if the gentlemen of Surgeons'
Hall think that any benefit can redound to their science
froml inspecting the appearances Iin the body of an
opium-eatet, let them  speak but a word, and I will
take care that mine shall be legally secured to themr
-that is, as soon as I have done with it myself. Let
them  not hesitate to express their wishes upon any
scruples of false, delicacy and consideration for my
feelings; I assure them that they will do me too much
honor by " demonstrating" on such a crazy body a



APPENDIX.                 143mine; and it will give me pleasure to anticipate this
posthumous revenge and insult inflicted upon that which
has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such bequests are not common; reversionary benefits contingent
upon the death of the testator are indeed dangerous to
announce in many cases. Of this we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a. Roman prince, who used,
upon any notification made to him by rich persons, that
they had left him a handsome estate in their wills, to
express-his entire satisfaction at such arrangements, and
his gracious acceptance of-those royal legacies; but then,
if the testators neglected to give him immediate possession of the property, - if they traitorously "( persisted in
living" (si vivere perseverarent, as Suetonius expresses
it), he was highly provoked, and took his measures
accordingly. In those times, and from one of the worst
of the Ceasars, we might expect such conduct; but I am
sure that, from English surgeons at this day, I need look
for no expressions of impatience, or of any other feelings
but such as are answerable to that pure love of science,
and all its interests, which induces me to make such an
offer. 
Sept. 30th 1822.








SUSPIRIA   DE PROFUNDIS:
BEING A SEQUEL TO THE
(ONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK
f)








SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS:
BEING A SEQUL T T HE
" CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEIL"
INTROPUCTORY NOTICE.
IN 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work,- in
1822, as a separate volume,  appeared the "Confes.
sions of an English Opium-Eatef."' The object of that
work was to reveal something of the grandeur which
belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may
be the number of those in whom this faculty of dream.
ing splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not
perhaps very many in whom    it is developed.  He
whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen,
and the condition of human life, which yokes so vast a
majority to a daily experience incompatible with much
elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of
grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even
for those whose minds are populous with solemn imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must
have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in
the first place, and even this, where it exists strongly




148        A SEQUEL -TO THE CONFESSIONS
is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering
agitation of our present English life. Already, in this
year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years
of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the
earth, what by the continual development of vast
physical agencies,- steam in all its applications, light
getting under harness as a slave for man,* powers
from heaven descending upon education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem,
but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery
and the forces of destruction,- the eye of the calmest
observer is troubled; the brain is haunted as if by
some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us;
and it becomes too evident that, unless: this colossal
pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be
expected), or, which is happily more probable, can be met
by counter forces of corresponding magnitude,.forces in
the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that
shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so
perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely
human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic
a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy,
for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much
-this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too
exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat
the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen
in the ordinary effect from  living -too constantly in
varied company. The word dissipation, in one -of its
uses, expresses that effect; the action of thought and
feeling is: toc much dissipated and squandered. To
* Daguerreotype, &c.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        149
reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity
s: felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring
from'crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities
of his own intellect who does not at least checker his
life-with solitude. How much solitude, so much, power.
Or, if not true in that rigor of expression, to this formula
undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must approxImate.
Among the powers in man which suffer by this too
intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more than
the power of dreaming. -Let no man think this a trifle.
The machinery for dreaming planted in the human
brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in
alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great
tube through which man communicates with the shad,
owy. And the dreaming organ, in connection with the
heart, the eye and the ear, compose the magnificent
apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambern;
of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from
eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping
mind.
But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude,
which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the
other hand, it is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost
preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to
some extent at least, and for some persons; but beyond
all others is opium, which indeed seems to possess a spe
cific power in that direction.; not merely for exalting th&
colors of dream-seenery, but for deepening its shadows,
and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful
-ealities.




150        A SEqUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
The Opium Confessions were written with s;ime slight
secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of
opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much more vith
the. purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a
reader acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated, namely, the revelation of dreaming
to have put this question:
"But how came you to dream more splendidly than
others'?"
The answer would have been
"' Because (praemissis pramittendis) 1 took excessive
quantities of opium."
Secondly, suppose him to say, "Buf how came you
to take opium in this excess?"
The answer to that would be, "Because some early
events in my life had left a weakness in one organ
which required (or seemed to require) that stimulant"'
Then, because the opium dreams could not always
have been understood without a knowledge of these
events, it became necessary to relate them. Now, these
two questions and answers exhibit the law of the work;
that is, the principle which determined its form, but pre.
cisely in the inverse or regressive order.  The work
itself opened with the narration of my early adventures.
These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium
as a resource for healing their consequences; and the
opium as naturally led to the dreams. -But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts; what stood last in
the succession of development stood first in the order of
my purposes




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         151
At the close of this little work, the reader was in
btructed to believe, and truly instructed, that I haa
mastered the tyranny of opium. The- fact is, that
twice I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodigious in the second of these cases than in the-first,
But one.error I committed in both. I did not connect
with the abstinence from opium, so trying to the fortitude under any circumstances, that enormity of excess
which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those
days, the one sine qua non for making the triumph
permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third
time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the oversight as to exercise), partly from other causes,. on which
it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moralize, if I chose; and perhaps he will moralize, whether
I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of
us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of
the case: I, from natural bias-of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission) notat all.
During this third prostration before the dark idol,
and after some years, new and monstrous phenomena
began slowly to arise.  For a time, these were neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as
I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal'from
myself that these dreadful symptoms were moving
forward'forever,' by a' pace steadily, solemnly, and
equably increasing, I endeavored, with some feeling
of panic, for a third time to retrace my steps.  But
[ had not reversed my motions, for many weeks,before 1 became profoundly aware that this was im.




152        A, SEQUEL TO THE CONFEf SIONS
possible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which translated everything into their own language, I saw through
vast' avenues of gloom those towering gates of Ingress
which hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at
last barred against my retreat, and hung-with funeral
crape.
As applicable to this tremendous situation (the situation of one escaping by some refluent current from the
maelstrom roaring for him in the, distance, who finds
suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling
round upon the same maelstrom), I have since remembered a striking incident in a modern novel. A lady
abbess of a convent, herself suspected of Protestant
leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all
effectual power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she
knows to be innocent) accused of an offence leading
to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be
immured alive, if she is found guilty; and there is no
chance that she will not, for the evidence against her is
strong, unless something were made known that cannot
be made known; and the judges are hostile. All follows in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses
depose; the evidence is without effectual contradiction:
the conviction is declared; the judgment is delivered;
nothing remains but to see execution done.  At this
crisis, the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interposition, considers with herself that, according to the regular forms, there will be one single night open, during
which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her. own
separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she
will use, at any hazard to herself, for the salvation of
her friend. At midnight, when all is hushed in' the




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         153
convent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to
the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under
her professional habit. As this will open every door in
everr corridor, already, by anticipation, she feels the
luxury of'holding her emancipated friend within her
arms. Suddenly she has reached the door; she descries
a dusky object; she raises her lamp, and, ranged within
the recess of the entrance, she beholds the. funeral ban.
ner of the holy office, and the black robes of its inexorable officials.
I apprehend that, in a situation such as this, supposing it a real one, the lady abbess would not start, would
not show any marks externally of consternation or
horror.'The case was beyond that. The sentiment
which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost
silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for
gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the
outside. Were the ruin'conditional; or were it in any
point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations,
and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this'is otherwise.
The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the
spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at
least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung
with draperies of woe, as for a death already past,
spoke not, nor started, nor groaned.  One profound
sigh ascended'from  my heart, and I was silent fot
days.
It is the record' of this third or final stage of opium,
as one differing in something more than degree from
the others, that I am now -undertaking. But a scruple




154        A SEQUEL TO /THE CONFESSIONS
arises as to the true interpretation of these final symp
toms. I have elsewhere explained, that it was no
particular purpose of mine, and why it was no par.
ticular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters. Still, as
some few persons may use the record in that way, it
becomes a matter of interest to ascertain how far it
is likely, that, even with the. same excesses, other
apium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do
not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyn.
ctasy in myself. Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he has. For no
manever yet resembled another man so far, as not to
differ from him in features innumerable of his inner
nature. But what I point to are not peculiarities of
temperament or of organization, so much as peculiar
circumstances and incidents through which my own
separate experience had revolved. Some of these were
of a nature to alter the whole economy of my mind.
Great convulsions, from  whatever cause,- from conscience, from  fear, from  grief, from  struggles of the
will,  sometimes, in passing away themselves, do not
carry off the changes which they have worked. All
the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have
threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, nor
could report. But one which affected my childhood is
a privileged exception. It is privileged as a proper
communication for a stranger's ear:; because, though
relating to a- man's proper self, it is a self so far
removed from  his present self as to wound no feel.
Ings of delicacy or just reserve. It is privileged, also
as a proper subject for the sympathy of.the narrator
An adult sympathizes with himself in childhooi




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        155
ecause he is she same, and because (being the same'
yet he is not the same. He acknowledges the deep,
mysterious identity between himself, as adult' and
as infant, for the ground of his sympathy; and yet,
with this general agreement, and necessity of agree,
ment, he feels the differences between his two selves
as the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities
the infirmities, as they arise to light in his young forerunner, which now, perhaps, he does not share; he,oks indulgently upon the errors of the understanding,
OT limitations of view which now he has long survived;
and' sometimes, also, he honors in the infant that rectitude of will which, under some- temptations, he may
since have felt it so difficult to maintain.
The particular case to which I refer in my own.childhood was one of intolerable grief; a trial, in fact,
more severe than many people at any age are called
upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands
to my latter opium experiences is this:- Those vast
clouds of gloomy grandeur which overhung my dreams
at all stages of opium, but which grew into the darkest
of miseries in the last, and that haunting.of the human
face, which ltterly towered into a curse, -were they
not partly derived from.this childish experience? It
is certain that, from the essential solitude in which
my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from the exaltation of this by the resistance of
an intellect too prematurely developed; it resulted that
the terrific grief which I passed through drove a shaft
for me into the worlds of death and darkness which
never again closed, and through which-it might be.said
Vlat I ascended and descended at will, according to the




156         A SEQUEL TO -THE CONFESSIONq
temper of my spirits. Some of the phenomena devek'L
oped in my dream-.;enery, undoubtedly, do but repeat
the experiences of childhood; and others seem likely
to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at
that time sown.
The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account
of a "passage" in childhood to this record of a dreadful visitation from  opium  excess are, 1st, That, in
coloring, it harmonizes with that record, and, therefore, is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly,
That, possibly, it was in part the origin of some features
in that record, and so far is related to it irt logic;
3dly, That, the final assault of opium being of a nature
to challenge the attention of medical men, it is important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can
gather about the roots of such a malady. Was it
opium, or was it opium in combination with something
else, that raised these storms?
Somee cynical reader will object, that for this last
purpose it would have been sufficient to state the fact,
without rehearsing in extenso the particulars of that
case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness
(for a surly reader is always a bad critic) Wvill also have
more discernment; and he will perceive that it is not
for the mere facts that the case is reported, but be
cause these facts move through a wilderness of natural
thoughts or feelings: some in the child who suffers,
some in the man who reports; but all so far interesting
as they relate to solemn objects. Meantime,-the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself
an energetic tourist, who protests everywhere ~ that he




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER          151
comes only to see the lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant'indorser of
a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque.  Yet
this man adjures every landlord, "byAthe virtue of his
oath," to tell him, and, as he hopes for peace in this
world, t6 tell him truly, which is the nearest road to
Keswick.   Next, he applies to the postilions,-the
Westmoreland postilions always fly down hills at full
stretch without. locking,-but, nevertheless, in the full
career of their fiery race, our picturesque man lets
down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postilions, at the risk of six' necks and twenty legs, adjuring'them  to reveal whether they are'taking the shortest
road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon the
road; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he
demands of me (as one whom      he believes to be a
scholar and a man of honor) whether there is not,
in the possibility of things, a shorter cut to Keswick.
Now, the answer which rises to'the lips of landlord,
two postilions, and myself, is this: "Most excellent
stranger, as you come to the lakes simply' to see
their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after
the most beautiful road, rather than the shortest?
Because, if abstract shortness, if To brevity, is your
object, then the shortest of all possible tours would
seem, with submission, never to have left London."
On the same principle, I tell my critic that the whole
course of this narrative resembles, and was meant to
resemble, a caduceus wreathed about' with meandering
ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round
and surmounted with some vagrant-parasitical plant.
The mere medical subject of the opium    answers to




f15i8      A SEQUEL TO THE iCONFESSIONM
the dry, withered pole, which shoots all the rings
of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some
dexterity of its own; whereas, in fact, the plant and
Its tendrils have curled round the sullen cylinder by
mere luxuriance of theirs. Just as in Cheapside, if
you look right and left, the streets so narrow, that lead
off at right angles, seem quarried and blasted out of
some Babylonian brick-kiln; bored, not raised artificialily by the builder's hand. But, if you inquire of
the worthy men who live in that neighborhood, you
will find it unanimously deposed- that not the streets
were quarried out of the bricks; but, on *the contrary
(most ridiculous as it seems), that the bricks have
supervened upon the streets,
The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but
those cursed'bricks came to imprison the streets.
So, also, the ugly pole —hop-pole,. vine-pole, espalier, no matter what — is' there only for support. Not
the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is. for the
flowers,  Upon the same analogy, view me as one
(in the words of a true and most impassioned poet *)
"viridantem  floribus hastas"- making verdant, and
gay with the life of flowers, murderous spears and
halberts-things that express death in their'origin
(being made from dead substances that once had lived
in forests), things that express ruin in their use. The
true object in my "Opium   Confessions" is not the
naked physiological theme, -on the contrary, that is
the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert,-but
those wandering musical variations upon the theme,*Valerius F4accus.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER.        159
those parasitical thoughts, feelings, digressions, which
climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid
stock; ramble away from  it at times with perhaps
too rank a luxuriance; but at the same time,- by the
eternal interest attached to the subjects of these digressions, no matter what were the execution, spread a
glory over incidents that for themselves would be -
lea than nothing.




160(       A SEQUEL'O THE CONFESSIONS
PART I.
THE AFFLICTION OF'HILDHOOD.
IT is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity
that any indirect traits of vanity should even seem to
creep into records of profound passion; and yet, on the
other hand, it is so impossible, without an unnatural
restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent
oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance as did really surround
my childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to
tell him, from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in.
what order of society my family moved at the time
from which this'preliminary narrative- is dated. -Otherwise it would happen that, merely by moving truly
and.faithfully through the circumstances of this early
experience, I could hardly prevent the reader from
receiving an impression as of some higher rank than
did really belong to my family. My father was a
merchant; not in the sense of Scotland, where it
means a man who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the
English sense, a sense severely exclusive- namely,
he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no
other; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no.other,
-which last circumstance it is important to mention,
because -it brings him  within the benefit of Cicero'u




OF &N ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         161
condescending distinction  -as one to be despised,
certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by
a Roman senator.    He - this imperfectly despicable
man —died at an early age, and very soon after the
incidents here recorded, leaving to his family, then
consisting of a wife and six children, an unburthened
estate producing exactly ~1600 a year.    Naturally,
therefore, at the date of my narrative, -if narrative it
can be called, -he had an income still larger, from the
addition of current commercial profits..Now, to any
man who is acquainted with commercial life, but, above
all, with such life in England, it will ieadily occur that
in an opulent English family of that-class,  opulent,
though not rich in a mercantile estimate,- the domestic- economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders
in- foreign -nations. Whether as to the establishment of
servants, or as to the provision made for the comfort of
all its members, such -a household not uncommonly
eclipses the- scale of living even amongst the poorer
classes of our nobility, though the most splendid in
Europe —a fact which, since the period of my infancy,
I have had many personal opportunities:for verifying
both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar
anomaly, affecting the domestic economy of merchants,
there arises a disturbance upon the general scale of
outward signs by which we measure the relations of
rank.  Tie equation, so to speak, between one order
* Cicero, in a well-known passage of his Ethics, speaks of trade
as irredeemably base, if petty; hut as not so absolutely felonious,
if wholesale. He gives a real merchant (one who is such in the
English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small beer.
ii




162        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
of society and another, which usually travels-in the nat
ural line of their comparative expenditure, is here inter,
rupted and defeated, so that one rank would be collected
from the name of the occupation, and —another rank
much higher, from the splendor of the domestic manage..
I warn the reader, therefore (or, rather, my explanation
has already warned him), that he is not to infer, from
any casual gleam of luxury or elegance, a corresponding
elevation of rank.
We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the
very happiest tier in the scaffolding of society for all
good influences.' The prayer of Agar-" Give me
neither poverty nor riches "-was realized for us,
That blessing had we, being neither too high nor too
low: high enough we were to see models of good
manners; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of
solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of
wealth, extra means of health, of intellectual culture,
and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we knew
nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the
consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too abpiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for
pride. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst
luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan
simplicity of diet, - that we fared, in fact, very much
less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the
model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should
return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single
Fout as chiefly worthy to be commemorated — that J
lived in the country; that I lived in solitude, that my




OF AN- ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       16:3
infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters,
not by- horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they
were dutiful children, of a pure, holy, and magnificent
church.'The earliest incidents in my.life which affected me
so deeply as to be rememberable at this day were two,
and both before I could have completed my second year;
namely, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a
favorite nurse, which is interesting for a reason to be
noticed hereafter; and, secondly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance,
very early in the spring, of some crocuses.  This I
mention as inexplicable, for such annual resurrections- of
plants -and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of a higher change, and therefore in connection
with the idea of death; but of death I could, at that
time, have had no experience whatever.
This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two
eldest sisters- eldest of three then living, and also elder
than myself-were summoned to an early death. The
first who died was Jane, about a year older than myself. She was three and a half, I two and a half, plus
or minus some trifle that I do not recollect. But death
was then scarcely intelligible to'me, and I could not
so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad pqrplexity.  There was another death in the house about
the same time, namely, of a maternal grandmother; but
as she had in a manner come to us for the express
purpose of dying in her daughter's.sQciety, and from
illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery party




164        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSION1S
knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by
the death (which I witnessed) of a favorite bird,, namely,
a kingfisher who had been injured by an accident.
With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as
I have said, less sorrowful than unintelligible) there
was, however, connected an incident which made a
most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my
tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond
what would seem credible for my years. If there' was
one thing in this world from which, more than from
any other;-nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the family
that a woman-servant, who by accident was drawn off
from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a
day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly,
if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened
within two days of her death, so that the occasion of it
must,have been. some fretfulness in the poor child
caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense
of awe diffused through the family.  I believe the
story never reached my rnother, and possibly it was
exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I
did not often see the person charged with this cruelty;
but, when I did, my eyes sought the ground; nor
could I have borne to look her in the face -not
through anger; and as to vindictive thoughts, how
could these lodge in a powerless infant? The feeling
which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a
first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil
and -strife. Though born in a large town, I had passed
the whole of my childhood, except for the few earliest
weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        165
sisters for playmates; sleeping always amongst them,
and shut up forever in a-silent garden frorm all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, or outrage, I had not
suspected until this moment the true complexion of the
world in which myself and my sisters were living.
Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have
changed greatly; for so representative are some acts,
that one single:case of the. class is sufficient to throw
open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in
that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused
of this cruelty, took it at all to heart, even after the
event which so immediately succeeded had reflected
upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other hand, I
knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a
mere semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under sim
liar circumstances, inflicted the grief of self-reproach
through the remainder of life. A boy, interesting in
his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, was
attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaint of the
trachea- not precisely croup, but like it.  He was
three years old, and had been ill perhaps for four
days; but at intervals had been in high spirits, and
capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming through
dark clouds, had continued even on the fourth day;
and from nine to eleven o'clock at night he had showed
more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant,
hearing of his illness, had called to see him; and her
mode of talking with him had excited all the joyous
ness of his nature. About midnight, his mother, fancy.
ing that his'-feet felt cold, was muffling them up in
flannels; anc, as he seemed to resist her a little, she
struck lightly on the sole of one foot as a mode of




166        A SEQUEL TO. THE CONFESSIONS
admonishing him to be quiet. He did not repeat his
motion; and in less than a minute his-mother had him
in her arms with his face looking upwards. "What is
the meaning," she exclaimed, in sudden affright, "of
this strange repose settling upon his features?"  She
called loudly to a servant in another ioom; but before
the servant could reach her, the child had drawn two
inspirations, deep, yet gentle- and had died in his
mother's arms! Upon, this, the poor afflicted lady made
the discovery that those struggles, which she had supposed to be expressions of resistance to herself, were the
struggles of departing. life. It followed, or seemed to
follow, that with these final struggles had blended an
expression, on her part, of displeasure.  Doubtless the
child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother
could never look back to that incident without selfreproach. -And seven years after, when her own death
happened, no progress had been made in reconciling her
thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have
viewed as an offence.
So passed away from earth one out of those sisters
that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my
acquaintance (if such it-could be called) commence with
mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality
than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away;
but, perhaps, she would come back. Happy interval of;heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy
from sorrow disproportioned to its strength!  I was
sad for Jane's absence.  But still in my heart I
trusted that she would come again.  Summer and
winter came again- crocuses and roses; why not little
Jane?




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.             16-7
Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my
infant heart.  Not so the second.   For thou, dear, noble
Elizabeth, around whose ample brow,'as often as thy
sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a
tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy
premature intellectual grandeur, - thou whose head, for
its superb developments, was the astonishment of science,   - thou.next, but after an interval of happy
years, thou also wert summoned away from       our nursery; and the night which, for me, gathered upon that
event, ran after my steps far into life; and perhaps at
this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which
else I should have been.     Pillar of fire that didst go
before me to guide and to quicken, -pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God,
* " The astonishment of science." - Her medical attendants were
Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White,
a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced her head
to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had
ever seen, - an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated
in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintnce with the subject may be presumed from this, that he wrote and
published a work on the human skull, supported by many measurements which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of
the human species. Meantime, as I would be loath that any trait
of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will
candidly admit that she died of hydrocephalus; and it has been
often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in.ases.of that class is altogether morbid, -forced on, in fact, by thp
mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a
possibility, the very inverse order of relation between the disease
and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always
have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, on the
contrary, this growth coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the
eapacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease.




168        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my
young heart, - in what scales should I weigh thee? Was
the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence, or the
blight which followed thy departure? Can a man weigh
off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness
of hurricane?  Or, if he could, how is it that, when a
memorable love has been followed by a memorable be.
reavement, even suppose that God would replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience,
and offer to cancel the woe, but so that.the sweet face
which had caused the woe should also be obliterated,
vehemently would every man. shrink from'the exchange!
In the Paradise Lost, this'strong instinct of man, to prefer the heavenly, mixed and polluted with -.the earthly, to
a level experience offering neither one nor the other, is
divinely commemorated. What words of pathos are in
that speech of Adam's - " If God should make another
Eve," &c.; that is, if God should replace'him -in his
primitive state, and should condescend to bring again a
second Eve, one that would listen to no temptation, still
that'original partner of his earliest solitude" Creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet"even now, when she appeared in league with an eternity
of woe, and ministering to- his ruin, could not be dis.
placed for him by any better.or happier Eve. "Loss
of thee!" he exclaims, in this'anguish of trial -
" Loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of natu e draw me; flesh of flesh,




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.              169
Bone of my bone thou art; and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe." *
But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation
so strong, to my sister?  Could a child, little above six
years of age, place any special value upon her intellectual forwardness?    Serene and capacious as her mind
appeared to me upon after review, was that a charm for
stealing away the heart of an infant? 0, no! I think of
it now with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear,
some-justification to the excess of my fondness. But
then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was but dimly
perceived.  Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not
the less I-must have loved thee, having that capacious
heart overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness, and stung, even as mine was stung, by the
necessity of being loved.   This it was which crowned
thee with beauty -
"Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."
*Amongst the oversights in the Paradise Lost, -some of which
have not yet been perceived, it is certainly one- that, by placing
n such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam
to his love for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the
guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say after
wards does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action;
reviewing it calmly, we condemn, but taking the impassioned station of Adam at the moment of temptation, we approve in our
hearts. This was certainly an oversight; but it was one very difficult to redress. I remember, amongst the many exquisit thoughts
of John Paul (Richter), one which strikes meas pajgjcularly touching, upon this subject. He suggests, not as any grave theological
comment, but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart, that, had
Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of
obedience to God, his reward would have been the pardon and
reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration to:.nocence.




170        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me
which shone so steadily in thee; and never but to thee
only, never again since thy departure, durst I utter the
feelings which possessed me. For I was the shyest of
children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held
Mne back at all stages of life, from exposing the least
ray of feelings which -I was not encouraged wholly to
reveal.
It would be painful, and it is needless, to pursue the
course of that sickness which carried off my leader
and companion. She (according to my recollection at
this moment) was just as much above eight years as I
above six.'And:'.-qs.this natural precedency of
authority in judgment, and the tender humility with.
which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the
fascinations of' her presence.  It was upon a Sunday
evening, or so people fancied, that the spark of fatal
fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain
complaint which had/ hitherto slumbered within _her.
She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of
a laboring man, the father of an old female servant.
The sun had set when she returned in the company of
this servant through, meadows reeking with exhalations
after a fervent day.  From  that time she sickened.
Happily, a child in such circumstances feels no anxieties.' Looking upon medical men as people whose
natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is
their natural function to profess it, knowing them only
as ex oai privileged to make' war upon pain and sickness, I never had a misgiving about the result.  I
grieved, indeed, that my sister should lie in bed, I
grieved still more sometimes to hear her moan. But




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,        1l71
41 this appeared to me no more than a night of trouble1
on which the dawn would soon arise. _0! moment
of darkness' and delirium, when a nurse awakened me
from  that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt
at my heart in.the assurance that my sister must die.
Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "'cannot
be remembered."*   Itself, as a remarkable thing, is;
swallowed up in its own chaos. Mere anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I wassas
I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recall the
circ.umstances of that time, when my agony was at its
height, and hers in another sense: was approaching.
Enough to say, that all was sooi-;,r; and the morning
of that day had at last arrived which looked'down upon
her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is
no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which
there is no consolation.
On the day after my sister's death,,whilst the, sweet,
temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme, for seeing her once,more.  Not for the world would I have. made this
known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me.
1 hod never heard of feelings that take the name of' sentimental," nor dreamed of such, a possibility. But
grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from
human eyes. The house was large; there were two
staircases; and by one of these I knew that about
noon, when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her
chamber.   I imagine that it was exactly high noon
*" I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony, which cannot be remembered."
Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse.




172        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
whetn I reached the chamber door; it was locked but
the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the
door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which
ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the
silent walls. Then turning round, I sought my sister's
face. But the bed had been moved, and the back was
now turned.   Nothing met my eyes but one large
window wide open, through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down torrents of splen-.dor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the
blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it
was not possible for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of
life.
Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and revolutionary for my own mind,
and one which (if any earthly remembrance) will survive for me in the hour of death,- to remind some
readers, and to inform  others, that in the original
Opium Confessions I endeavored to explain the reason *
why death, cceteris paribus, is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so
far, at least, as it is liable to any modification  at all
from  accidents of scenery or season. The reason, as
I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark
sterilities of the grave.  The summer we see, the
grave we haunt with our thoughts;- the glory is around
us, the darkness is within us.- And the two coming
into collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief
* Some readers will question the fact, and seek no reason. Bu
did they ever suffer grief at any season of the year?




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER..       1 3
But in my case there was even a subtler reason why
the summer had this intense. power of vivifying the
spectacle or the thoughts ofdeath. And, recollecting
it, often I have been struck with the important truth,
that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass
to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as involutes (if I may coin that word?
in compound experiences incapable of being disen
tangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own
abstract shapes.  It had happened that amongst our
nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated
with many pictures.  And in long dark evenings, as
my three sisters with myself sate by the firelight round
the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in
request amongst us. It -ruled us and swayed us as
mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we
all loved, before any candle was lighted, would often
strain her eye to read it for us; and, sometimes,
according to her simple powers, would endeavor to
explain what we found obscure. We, the children,
were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness;
the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by
firelight suited our evening state of feelings; and
they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and
mysterious beauty which awed us.   Above all, the
story of a just man —man and yet not man, real
above all things, and yet shadowy above all things,
who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine —
slept upon our minds like early dWwn upon the'waters
The nurse knew and explained to'us the chief differ
ences in oriental climates; -and all these differencee
(as it happens) express themselves in the great van




t74-       A SEQUEL TO THE CbIFE10S'1~
sties of summer.  The cloudless sunlights of Syiia
-:those seemed to argue everlasting sumniier; the
Jisciples plucking the ears of corn - that must bi
sutmmer; but, above all, the very'name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the English church) troubled: eA
like an anthem. ":Sunday!" what was that?    That;
was the day of peace which masked another peace
deeper than  the heart of man    can  comprehend,
" Palms! " what were they?   That was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed
the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature,
expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this
explanation does not suffice; it was not merely by the
peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest
below all rest, and of ascending glory, that I had been
haunted,'It was also because Jerusalem stood near to
those deep images both in time and in place.  The
great event of Jerusalem  was at hand when Palm
Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near
in place to Jerusalem. Yet what then Was Jerusalem?
Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) of the earth?
That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem,
and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known.
Yes; but, if not of the earth, foi earth's tenant, Jeruisalem was the omphalos of mortality. Yet how? there,
on the contrary, it wias, as we infants utiderstood, that
mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but,
for that very reason, rhere it was that mortality had
opened its. very glo6miesi crater. There it Was, indeed
that the human had risen on wings from the grave
but, for that reason, there also it was that the divine had




OP AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       175
been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could
not rise, before the greater would submit to eclipse.
Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death,
not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also through
intricate relations to scriptural scenery and events.
Out of this digression, which was- almost necessary
for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feelings and imrages of death were entangled with those
of summer, I return to the bed-chamber of my sister.
From  the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the
corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure; there the
angel face; and, as people usually fancy, it was said
in the house that no features had suffered any change.
Had they not? The forehead, indeed, —the serene and
noble forehead, —that might be the same; but the frozen
eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath
them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to
palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,
-could these be mistaken for life? Had it-been so,
wherefore did I not, spring to those heavenly lips with
tears and never-ending kisses? But so- it'was not. I
stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon
me; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow,
the most mouriful that ear ever heard. Mournful!
that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept
the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many
times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is about
the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and
uttering the same hollow, solemn. Memnonian, but
saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole audible
symbol of'eternity. And three times in my life I have
happened to hear the same sound in the same circum.




176.       A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
stances, namely, when standing between an open win
dow and a dead body on a summer day.
Instantly, when my ear caught this vast lEolian intonation, when my eye filled with the -golden fulness of
life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and
turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread
my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me.  A
vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky,
a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on
billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the
billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that
also ran before us and fled away continually. The
flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and
ever.  Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of
death,' seemed to repel me; I slept-for how   long
I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession,
and found myself standing, as before, close to my
sister's bed.
0* flight of the solitary child to the solitary God
— flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could
not be ruined! — how rich wert thou in truth for after
years!- Rapture of grief that, being too mighty for a
child to sustain?-foundest a happy oblivion in a-heavenborn dream, and within that sleep didst concea a
dream, whose meaning, in after years, when slowly I
deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me new light;
and- even by the grief of a child, as I-will show you,
reader, hereafter, were confounded the falsehoods of
philosophers.t
* "vy,1,uovovv rTQO ytovov. - Plotinus.
t The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes; as at this
point they seemed too much-to interrupt the course o' ie narrative.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER         177
In the Opium Confessions I touched a little upon the
extraordinary power connected with opium (after long
use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space, also,
it amplifies by, degrees that are sometimes terrific. But
time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power
of opium chiefly spends its operation. — Time becomes
infinitely elastic, stretching out to such immeasurable
and vanishing termini, that it seems ridiculous to compute the sense of it, ori waking, by expressions commensurate to human life.   As in starry fields one
computes by diameters of the earth's orbit, or of
Jupiter's, so, in valuing the virtual time lived during
some dreams, the measurement by generations is ridiculou- by millenia is ridiculous; by eons, I should
say, if Mons were more determinate, would be also
ridiculous.  On this single occasion, however, in my
life, the very inverse phenomenon occurred.  But why
speak of it in connection with opium? Could a child
of six years old have been under that influence? No,
but simply because it so exactly reversed the operation
of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding into a
vast one, upon this occasion along one had contracted
into a minute.  I have reason to believe-that a very
long one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself;
there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was
alarmed; for I believed that, if anybody should detect
me, means would be taken to prevent my coming
again.'Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should
kiss no more, and slunk like a guilty thing with stealthy
steps from the room.  Thus perished the vision, love.
liest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed
12




178         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
to me; thus mutilated was- the parting which should
have lasted forever; thus tainted with fear was the
farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and
perfect grief.
0,' Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew!*  fable or not a
fable, thou when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage
of woe, —thou when first flying through the gates of
Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing.
curse behind thee,-couldst not more certainly have read
thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled
brain than I when passing forever from   my sister's
room.   The worm was at my heart; and, confining
myself to that state of life, I may say, the worm,
that could not die. For if, when standing upon the
threshold of manhood, I had: ceased to feel its perpetual
gnawings,. that was because a vast expansion of intellect~ it was because new hopes, new necessities, and
the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me into a
new creature.  Man is doubtless one by some subtle
nexus that we cannot perceive, extending from the newborn infant to the superannuated dotard: but as regards
many affections and passions incident to his nature at
different stages, he is not one; the unity of man in this
respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to
whichthe passion belongs. Some passions, as that of
sexual love, are celestial by one half of their origin,
animaland earthly by the other half. These will not
survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which
is altogether holy, like that between two children, will
* "Everlasting Jew! "-der ewige Jude- which is the commoan
CGerman expression for The Wander'ing Jew, and suhlimer even thay
our ab.6t  




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        179
revisit undoubtedly by glimpses the silence and the darkness of old age: and I repeat my belief- that, unless
bodily torment should forbid it, that final experience in
my sister's bed-room, or some other in which her innocence was concerned, will rise again for me, to illuminate
the hour of death.
On the day following this which 1. have recorded,
came a body of medical men to examine the brain, and
the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of
its symptoms' it had shown perplexing anomalies. Such
is the sanctity of death, and especially of death alight4ng on an innocent child, that eyen gossiping people
do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently, I knew
nothing of the purpose which drew together these surgeons, nor suspected anything of the cruel changes
which might have been wrought in my sister's head.
Long after this, I saw a-similar case; I surveyed the
corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy, eighteen years old,
who had died of the same-complaint) one hour after the
surgeons had laid the skull in ruins; but the dishonors
of this scrutiny Were hidden by bandages, and had not
disturbed' the repose of the countenance. So it might
have been here; but, if it were not so, then I was
happy in being spared the shock, from having that marble image of peace, icy and rigid as it was, unsettled by
disfiguring images. I Some hours after the strangers had
withdrawn, I crept again to the room; but the door was
now locked, the key was' taken away —and I was shut
out forever.
Then came the funeral. I, as a point of decorum,
was carried thither.  I was put into a carriage with
some gentlemen whom I did not know.    They were




180        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
kind to me; but naturally they talked of things dircon.
nected with the occasion, and their conversation was a
torment.  At the church, I was told to hold a white
handkerchief to my, eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What
need had he of masques or mockeries, whose heart died
withinh him at every word that was uttered? During
that part of the service which passed within the church,
I made an effort to attend; but I sank back continually
into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little con%ciously, except some fugitive strains from the sublime
chapter of St. Paul, which in England is always read
at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our
present illustrious laureate.  When I heard those
dreadful words,- for dreadful they were to me,"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption;
it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory;" such
was the recoil of my feelings, that I could even have
shrieked out a protesting' O0, no, no!" if I had
not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion.
In after years, reflecting upon this revolt of my feelings, which, being the voice of nature in a child, must
be as true as any mere opinion of a child'might
probably be false, I saw, at once, the unsoundness of
a passage in The Excursion.  The book is not here,
but the substance I remember perfectly. Mr. Wordsworth argues, that if it were not for.the unsteady
faith which people fix upon the beatific condition after
death of those whom  they deplore, nobody -could be
found so selfish as even secretly to wish for the re
storation. to earth of a beloved object. A mother, fop
instance, could never dream of yearning for her child
and secretly calling it back by her silent aspirations




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        181
from  the arms of God, if she- were but reconciled to
the belief that really it was in those arms. But this 1
utterly deny.  To take my own case, when I heard
those dreadful words of St. Paul applied to my sister, namely, that she should be raised a spiritual body,
nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any other
feeling than that of agonizing love, caused the rebellion of my heart against them. I knew already that
she was to come again in beauty and power.  I did
not now learn this for the first time. And that thought,
doubtless, made my sorrbw sublimer; but also it made
it deeper. For here lay the sting of it, nanlely, in the
fatal words - "We shall be changed."' How was the
unity of my interest in her to be preserved, if she
were to be altered, and no longer to reflect in her
sweet countenance the traces that were sculptured on
my heart? Let a magician ask any woman whether
she will permit him to improve her child, to raise it
even from deformity to perfect beauty, if that must be
done at the cost of its identity, and there is no loving
mother but would reject his~ proposal with horror.
Or, to take a case that has actually happened; if a
mother were robbed of her child, at two years old, by.
gypsies, and the same child -were restored to her at
twenty, a fine young man, but divided by a sleep as
it were of death from  all remembrances that could
restore the broken links of.their once tender connection, —would she not feel her grief unhealed, and her
heart' defrauded?  Undoubtedly she would. All of us
ask not of God for a better thing than that we have
lost; we ask for'the same, even with its faults and its
frailties.  It is true that the sorrowing person will




182        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
also' be changed eventually, but that must be by death.
And'a prospect so remote as that, and so alien from our
present nature, cannot console us in an affliction which
is not remote, but present:- which is not spiritual, but
human.
Lastly came the magnificent service which the English Church performs at the side of the grave. There
i' exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin.
All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age,
and the day of departure from earth, —records how
useless! and dropped into darkness as if messages
addressed to worms.  Almost' at the very last comes
the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart
with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from  the
final artillery of woe.  The coffin is lowered into its
home; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacrista.n stands ready,with His shovel of earth and stones.
The priest's voice is heard once more,-e arth to
earth, and the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the
coffin; ashes to ashes, and again the killing sound is
heard; dust to dust, and- the farewell volley announces
that the grave- the cdffin -the face are sealed up
"or ever and ever.
~0, grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing
Fassions. And true it is, that thou humblest to the
dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest
as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou
sickenest the heart, but also thou healest, its infirmities.
Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And, ten. years afterwards, I used to




OF -AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        183
reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing the
case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a
perishing fellow-creature, and that- I could obtain that
aid only by facing a vast company of critical.or sneering
faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from  the duty
It is true, that no such case had ever actually occurred,
so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt,
was to feel condemnation; and the crime which might
have been was in my eyes the crime which had been.
Now, however, all was changed:; and for anything
which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I
received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a
case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and
abjure her own nature, in; a service of love,- yes,
slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed hiL
skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from
which all escape was hopeless, without the aid of man.
And to a man she advanced boldly, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved.
Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand
sneering faces would not have troubled me in any office
of tenderness to my sister's memory.  Ten legions
would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there
was a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it
was-lost upon me. Laugh at me, as one or two people
did! I valued not their laughter. And when- I was
told insultingly to cease "my girlish tears," that' word
"girlish" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo
to the one eternal thought of my heart,- that-a girf
was the sweetest thing I, in my short life, had known.
— that a gir.t it wuas:who had crowned the earths with




184         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
beauty, and had- opened to my thirst fountains of pure
celestial love,'from which, in this world, I was to drink
no more.
Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep
feelings agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and
are nursed by solitude.( Deep grief, deep love, how
naturally do these ally themselves with religious feel.
ing; and all three - love, grief, religion - are haunters
of solitary places. Love, grief, the passion of reverie,
or the mystery of devotion, - what were these, without
solitude?  All day long, when it' was not impossible
for me to do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house, or in the
neighboring fields. The awful. stillness occasionally of
summer noons,. when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of gray or misty,afternoons,-these
were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods or
the; desert air I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in
them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks.  I tormented the blue depths with
obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes, and
searching them forever after one angelic face that
might, perhaps, have permission to reveal itself for a
moment. The faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after
the yearnings of thel heart, aided by a slight defect in
my eyes, grew upon me at this time. And I recall at,
the present moment one instance of that sort, which
may show how' merely shadows, or a gleam of bright-'
ness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis
for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I was
always taken to church: it was a church on the old




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       I8.^
and natural model of England, having aisles, galleries,
organs, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt
through the long litany, as often as we came to that
passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where
God is supplicated on behalf of "all sick persons and
young children," and that he would "show his pity
upon. all prisoners and, captives," —I wept in secret,
and raising'my streaming eyes to the windows of the
galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a
spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld.
The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass;
through the deep, purples and' crimsons streamed the
golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination
mringling with the earthly emblazonries of what is
grndest —iJman.   There were the apostles that had
trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of
celestial love to man.  There were the martyrs that
had borne witness to the truth through flames, through
torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces.
There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs,'had glorified God by meek submission to his will.
And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field
of the windww, where the glass was uncolored; white
fleecy cloudj/ sailing over the azure depths of the sky;
were' it bt a fragment or a hint of such a cloud,
immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye,
it grew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white
lawny curtains;-and in the beds lay sick children,
dying children, that were tossing in anguish,'and weep.




s186s      A' SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
ing clamorously for death.  God, for some- mysterious
reason, coutd not suddenly release them    from  their
pain; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise
slowly through the clouds; slowly thPebeds ascended
into the chambers of the air; slowly/also, his arms
descended from the heavens, that he and his young
childreni whom  in'Jidea, once and forever, Le had
blessed,'though they must pass slowly-through the
dreadful chasm   of separation, might yet meet'the.ooier,  These visions. were self-sustained.  These
visions needed not that any sound should' speak to me,
or imusic mould my feelings. The hint from the litany,
the fragment from  the clouds,-those and the storied
windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of
the tumultuous organ wrought its own. separate crea.
tions. And oft^-iimes in anthems, when the mighty
instrument thre;/its vast columns of sound, fierce yet
melodious, over the voices of the choir - when it rose
high in arches, as might seem, surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by
strong coercion the total storm into unity,- sometimes
I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds which
so recently I had looked.up to as mementos of prostrate
sorrow, and even as ministers of sorrow in its creations;
yes. sometimes under the transfigurations of music I
fet *-of grief itself as a fiery chariot for mounting vie.
toriously above the causes of grief.
* "I felt "-The reader must not forget, in reading this and
other passages, that, though a child's feelings are spoken of, it is
not the child who speaks. I decipher what the child only felt in
cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from
pbiiiting to anything metaphysical or doubtful, that a man must be




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUMI-EATER.           187
i point so otten to the feelings, the ideas, or the ceren;onies of religion, because there never yet was profound grief nor profound philosophy which       did not
inosculate at many points with profound religion.' But
I request the reader to understand, that of all things 1
was not, and could not have been, a child trained to
talk of religion,.least of all to talk of it controversially
or polemically.  Dreadful is the picture, which in looks
we sometimes find, of children discussing the doctrines
of Christianity, and even teaching their seniors the
boundaries and distinictions between doctrine and doctrine.  And it has often struck me with amazement,
that the two things which God made most beautiful
among his works, namely, infancy and pure religion,
should, by the folly of man (in yoking them    together
on erroneous principles), neutralize each other's beauty,
or even form   a combination positively hateful.   The
religion becomes nonsense, and the child     becomes a
hypocrite. The religion is transfigured into cant, andthe innocent child into a dissembling liar.*
grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing,
nrot as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all
children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to
his own consciousness in mature life, must have preexisted in-germ
during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, consciously
read in my own deep feelings these ideas.'No, not at all; nor
was. it possible for a child to do so. I, the child, had the feelings; I, the man, decipher them. In the child lay the hatidwriting mysterious to him; in me, th-e interpretation and the comment.
* I except, however, one case, - the case of a child dying of an
organic disorder, so, therefore, as to die slowly, and aware of its
own condition. Because such a child is s6lemnized, andsometimes,
in a partial sens', inspired, -inspired by the depth of it. sufferiligs, and by the -'afulness of its'prospect. Such a ciild, having put
off the earthly mind in many things, may naturally have uit off the




188         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
God, be assured, takes care for the religion of chil.
dren, wheresoever his Christianity exists. Wheresoever
there is a national church established, to which a child
sees his friends resorting,c —wheresoever he beholds all
whom   he honors periodically prostrate before those
illimitable heavens which fill to overflowing his young
adoring heart,- wheresoever he sees the sleep of death
falling at intervals upon men and women whom       he
knows, depth as confounding to the plummet of his
mind as those heavens ascend beyond his power to
pursue, —there take you no thought for the religion of
a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be
arrayed, or for the ravens how they shall feed their
young.
God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the
oracles that lurk in darkness.  But in solitude, above
all things, when made vocal by the truths and services
of a national church, God holds "communion undis.
turbed" with children.  Solitude, though silent as light,
-is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is
essential to man.  All men come into this world alone;
all leave it alone.' Even a little child has a dread,
whispering consciousness, that if he should be sum.
moned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse
will be.allowed to lead him by-the hand, nor mother to
carry him  in her arms, nor little sister to share his
trepidations.  King and priest, warrior and maiden,
cnildish mind in all things. I thereby, speaking for myself only,
acknowledge tu have read with emotion a record of a little girl,
who, knowing herself for months to be amongst the elect of death,
~became anxious, even to sickness of heart, for what she called the
conversion of her father. Her filial duty and reverence had been
swallowed- up in filial love.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        189
philosopher and child, all must walk those m ghty
galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this
world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo
of a far deeper solitude through which already he has
passed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through
which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude- prefigur-.
ation of another.
0, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through
every stage of his being! in his birth, which has been,
- in his life, which is,- in his death, which shall be,mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and
art to be; -thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving
upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that
sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast
laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or
less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the
principles of all things, solitude for the child is the
Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the
solitude in life of millions upon millions, who, with
hearts welling forth love, have none to love. them.
Deep is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs,
have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those
who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to
counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these
solitudes is that which broods over childhood, bringing
before it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches
for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death.
Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convince
you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was
nothing, but for a Christian child it has become the
nower of God and the mystery of God. 0, mighty
and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to




190         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
be-! thoL kindling under the torch of Christian reve
lations, art now transfigured forever, and hast passed
from a blank negation into a secret hieroglyphic from
God, shadowing in the hearts. of infancy the very dimmest of his truths! 
"But you. forget her," says the cynic; "you hap.
pened one -day, to forget this sister of yours."  Why
not?  To cite the beautiful words of Wallenstein,"What pang
Is permanent with man? From the highest,
As from the vilest thing of every day,
He learns to wean himself. For the strong hours
Conquer- him." *
Yes, there lies the fountain of human oblivions. It
is TIME, the great conqueror, it is the "strong hours"
whose batteries storm every passion of men. For, in
the fine expression of Schiller, " Was verschmerzte nicht
der mensch?"   What sorrow   is in man that will not
finally fret itself to sleep?  Conquering, at last, gates
of brass, or'pyramids of granite, why should it be a
marvel to us, or a triumph. to Time, that he is able to
oonquer a frail human heart?
However, for this once, my cynic must submit to be
told that he is wrong.  Doubtless, it is.presumption in
me to suggest that his sneers can ever go awry, any
-nore than the shafts of Apollo.   But still, however
Impossible such a thing is, in this one case it happens
that they have.   And when it happens that they do
lot, I will tell you, reader, why, in my opinion, it is.
tnd yol' will see that it warrants no exultation in the
* Death of Wallenstein, Act v. Scene 1 (Coleridge's Transla
ion), relating to his remembrances of the younger Piccolomini.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         191
cynic. Repeatedly I have heard a mother reproaching
herself when the birth-day revolved of the little daughter whom so suddenly she had lost, with her own ipsensibility, that could so soon need a remembrancer of
the day.  But, besides that the majority of people' in
this world (as being people called to labor) have no
time left for cherishing grief by solitude and medita.
tion, always it is proper to ask whether the memory ot
the lost person were chiefly dependent upon a visual
image. No death is usually half so affecting as the
death of a young child from two to five years old.
But yet, for the same reason whi:h makes the grief
more exquisite, generally for such a loss it is likely to
be more perishable. Wherever the image, visually or
audibly, of the lost person, is. more essential to the life
of the grief, there the grief will be more transitory.
Faces begin soon (in Shakspeare's fine expression)
to " dislimn;" features fluctuate; combinations of feature
unsettle. Even the expression becomes a mere idea
that you can describe to another, but not an image that
you can reproduce for yourself.- Therefore it is that
the faces of infants, though they are divine as flowers
in a savanna of Texas, or as the carolling of birds in a
forest, are, like flowers in Texas, and the carolling of
birds in a forest, soon overtaken by the pursuing;
darkness that swallows up all things human. All glo.
ries of flesh vanish; and this, the glory of infantine
beauty seen- in the mirror of the memory, soonest ot
all. But when the departed persons worked upon your.
self by powers that were intellectual and moral,powers in the flesh, though not of the flesh, —the memorials in your own heart become more steadfast, if.less




192        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
affecting at the first. Now, in my sister were combined for me both graces, -the graces of childhood, and
the graces of expanding thought.  Besides that, as
regards merely the personal image, always the smooth
rotundity of baby features must vanish sooner, as
being less individual than -the features in a child of
eight, touched with a pensive tenderness, and exalted
into a characteristic expression by a premature intellect.
Rarely do things perish from my memory that are
worth remembering. Rubbish dies instantly. Hence
it happens that passages in Latin or English poets,
which I never could have read but once (and that
thirty years ago), often begin to blossom  anew when
I am lying awake, unable to sleep. I become a distinguished compositor in the darkness: and, with my
aerial composing-stick, sometimes I "set up" half a
page of verses, that would be found tolerably correcc
if collated with the volume that I never had in my
hand but once. I mention this in no spirit of boasting
Far from it: for, on the contrary, among my mortifications have been compliments to my memory, when,
in fact, any compliment that I had merited was due to
the higher faculty of an electric aptitude for seizing
analogies, and by means of those aerial pontoons passing over like lightning from one topic to another. Still
it is a fact that this pertinacious life of memory for
things that simply touch the ear, without touching the
consciousness, does, in fact, beset me. Said but once,
said but softly, not marked at all, words revive before me
in darkness and solitude; and they arrange themselves
gradually into sentences, but through an effort some



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        193
times of a distressing kind, to which I am in a manner
forced to become a party. This being so, it was no
great instance of that power, that three separate passages in the funeral service, all of which but one had
escaped my notice at the time, and even that one as
to the part I am going to mention, but all of'which
must have struck on my ear, restored themselves perfectly when I was lying awake in bed; and though
struck by their beauty, I was also incensed by what
seemed to me the harsh sentiment expressed in two of
these passages. I will cite all the three in an abbreviated form, both for my immediate purpose, and for the
indirect purpose of givirig to those unacquainted with
the English funeral service some specimens of its
beauty.
The first passage was this: "Forasmuch as it hath
pleased Almighty God,-of his great mercy, to take unto
himself the soul of our dear sister here departed,'9
therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to ea.il,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope -of
the resurrection to eternal life."  * X   *
I pause to remark that a sublime effect arises at this
point through a sudden rapturous interpolation from the
Apocalypse, which, according to the rubric, "shall besaid or sung;" but always let it be sung, and by the.ftl
choir:
"I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write
from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord; even so saith the Spirit;'for they rest from their
labors."
The second passage, almost immediately succeeding
to this awful burst of heavenly trumpets, and the,;m13




194        A. SEQUEL TO TlHE CONFESSIONS
which more particularly offended me, though otherwise
even then, in my seventh year, I could not but be
touched by its beauty, was this:-"Almighty God
with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence
in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful,
after they arie delivered from the burden of the flesh,
are in joy and felicity; we give thee hearty thanks that
it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the
miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee, that it
may please thee of thy gracious goodness shortly to
accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy
kingdom:"   *   *   * 
In what world was I living when a man (calling
hinself a man of God) could stand up publicly and
give God "hearty thanks" that he had taken away
my sister?  But, young child, understand-taken her
away from the miseries of this sinful world. 0 yes,
I hear what you say; I understand that; but that
makes no difference at all. She being gone, this world
doubtless (as you say) is a world of unhappiness.
But for me ubi CCsar, ibi Roma —where my sister
was, there was paradise; no matter whether in heaven
above, or on the earth beneath. And he had taken her
away, cruel priest! of his "great mercy!"  I did not
presume, child though I was, to think rebelliously
against that. The reason' was not any hypocritical or
canting submission where my -heart yielded none, but
because already my deep musing intellect had per.
ceived a mystery and a labyrinth, in- the economies of
this world. God, I saw, moved not as we movedwalked not as'we walked - thought not as we think
Still I saw ho mercy to myself, a poor, frail, dependen




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        195
creature,-torn away so suddenly from  the prop on
which altogether it depended. 0 yes! perhaps there
was; and many years after I came to suspect it.
Nevertheless it was a benignity that pointed far ahead;
such as by a child could not have been perceived,
because then the great arch had not come round; could
not -haye been recognized, if it had come round; could
not have been valued,.if it had even been dimly recucg
nized.
Finally, as the closing prayer in the whole service,
stood this, which I acknowledged then, and now acknowledge, as equally beautiful and consolatory; for in
this was' no harsh peremptory challenge to the infirmities of human grief, as to a thing not meriting notice in
a religious rite. On the contrary,: there was a gracious
condescension from the great apostle to grief, as to a
passion that he might perhaps himself have participated.
"0, merciful God! the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, in whom
whosoever believeth shall live, though he die; who also
taught us by his holy apostle St. Paul not to be sorry,
as men without hope, for them that sleep in him; we
meekly beseech thee, oh Father! to raise us from the
death' of sin unto the life.of righteousness; that, when
we shall depart this life, we may rest in him as our hope
is —that this our sister doth."
Ah, that was beautiful,-that was heavenly!  We
might be sorry, we had leave to be sorry; only not
without hope. And we were by hope to rest in Him,
as this our sister doth. And howsoever a man may
think that he is without hope, I, that have read the
writing upon these great abysses ot grief, and viewed




196        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
their shadows under the correction of mightier bhadows
from deeper abysses since then, abysses cf aboriginal
fear and eldest darkness, in which yet I believe that
all hope had not absolutely died, know that he is in a
natural error. If, for a moment, 1 and so many others,
wallowing in the dust of affliction, could yet rise up
suddenly like the dry corpse* which stood upright in
the glory of life when touched by the bones of the
prophet; if in those vast choral anthems, heard by my
childish ear, the voice of God wrapt itself as in a cloud
of music, saying - "Child, that sorrowest, I command
thee to rise up and ascend for a season into my heaven
of heavens," - then it was plain that despair, that the
anguish of darkness, was not essential to such sorrow,
but might come and go even as light comes and goes
upon our troubled earth.
Yes! the light may come and go; grief may wax
and wane; grief may sink; and grief again may rise,
as in impassioned minds oftentimes it does, even to the
heaven of heavens; but there is a necessity that, if
too much left to itself in solitude, finally it will descend.
into a depth from which there is no reiscent; into a
disease which seems no disease; into a -languishing.which, from its very'sweetness, perplexes the mind, and
is fancied' to be very health. Witchcraft has seized
upon you, -nympholepsy has struck you. Now you
rave no more. You acquiesce; nay, you are passion.
* "LLike the dry corpse which stood upright."- See the Second
Book of Kings, chapter xiii. v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this
impressive incident was made the subject of a large altar-piece
by Mr. Allston, an interesting American artist, then resident in
London.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUMI-EATER.            197
ately delighted in your condition.  Sweet becomes the
grave, because you also hope'immediately to travel
thither: luxurious. is the separation, because only perhaps for a few weeks shall it exist for you; and it will
then' prove but the brief summer night that had retarded
a little, by a refinement of rapture, the heavenly dawn
of reinion.  Inevitable soietimes it is in solitude -that
this should happen with minds morbidly meditative;
that, -when we stretch out our arms in darkness, vainly
striving to draw back the sweet faces that have vanished,
slowly arises a new stratagem of grief, and we say, -
" Be it that they no more come back to us, yet what hinders but we should go to them?"
Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African Obeah,* this sublimer witchcraft of grief will, if left
to follow its own natural course, terminate in the same
catastrophe of death.   Poetry, which neglects no phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man, has
sometimes touched a little
"On the sublime attractions of the grave."
* "African Obeah." - Thirty years ago it would not have been
necessary to say one word of the Obi or Obeah magic; because at
that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth, for instance, in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fictions, and because the remarkable history of Three-fingertd Jack,
a story brought upon the stage, had made the superstition nctorious
as a fact. Now, however, so long after the case has probably
passed out of the public mind, it may be proper to mention, that
when an Obeah man - that is, a professor of this dark collusion
with human fears and human credulity - had once woven his dread.
ful net of ghostly terrors, and had thrown it over h's selected viotim, vainly did that victim flutter, struggle, languish in the meshesi
unless the spells were reversed, he generally perished; and withow a wound, except from his own too domineering fancy.




198        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
But you think that these attractions, existing at times
for the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand
that.you are wrong. Understand that these attractions
do exist for the child; and perhaps as much more
strongly than they can exist for the adult, by the whole
difference between the concentration of a childish love.
an4 the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of
any love that can affect any adult. There is a German
superstition (well known by a popular translation) of the
Erl-king's Daughter, who fixes her love upon some child,
and seeks to wile him away into her own shadowy
kingdom in forests.
" Who is it that rides through the forest so fast "
It is a knight, who carries his child before him on
the saddle. The Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right
hand, and still whispers temptations to the infant audible
only to him.
" If thou wilt, dear baby, with me go away,
We will see a fine show, we will play a fine plav
The consent of the baby is essential to her success.
And finally she does succeed.  Other charms, other
temptations, would have been requisite for me. My
intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But
could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to
mP, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she
might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest
forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at
that time.  Still I languished for things "which" (a
voice from heaven seemed to answer through my own
heart)" cannot be granted;" and which, when again




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       199
I- languished, again the, voice repeated, "cannot be
granted."
Well- it was- for me that, at this crisis, I was sumn
moned to put on the harness of life by commencing my
classical studies under one of my guardians, a clergyman
of the English Church, and (so far as regarded Latin)
a most accomplished scholar.
At the very commencement of my new studies there
happened an incident which afflicted me much for a short
time, and left behind a gloomy impression, that suffering
and wretchedness were diffused amongst all creatures that
breathe. A person had given me a kitten. There are
three animals which seem, beyond all others,- to reflect
the beauty of human infancy in two of its elements -
namely, joy and guileless innocence, though less in its
third element of simplicity, because that requires language for its full expression: these three animals are
the kitten, the lamb, and the fawn.  Other creatures
may be as happy, but they do not show it so much
Great was the love which poor silly I had for this
little kitten; but, as I left home at ten in the morning,
and did not return till near five in the afternoon, I was
obliged, with some anxiety, to throw it for those seven
hours upon its own discretion, as infirm a basis for
reasonable hope as could be imagined. I did not wish
the- kitten, indeed, at all less foolish than it was, except just when I was leaving home, and then its exceeding folly gave me a pang.   Just about that time,
it happened that we had received, as a present from
Lei'estershire, a fine young.Newfoundland dog, who




200        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
was under a cloud of disgrace for crimes of his youth
ful blood committed in that county. One day he hat
taken too great a liberty with a pretty little cousin of
mine, Emma H -, about four years old.- He had, in
fact, bitten off her cheek, which, remaining attached by
a shred, was, through the energy of a governess, re.
placed, and subsequently healed without a scar.  His
name being Turk, he was immediately pronounced by
the best Greek scholar of that neighborhood, Ecwvvuos,
(that- is, named significantly, or reporting his nature in
his name).   But as Miss Emma confessed to having
been engaged in taking away a bone from him, on which
subject no dog can be taught to understand a joke, it
did not strike our own authorities that he was to be
considered in a state of reprobation; and as our gardens (near to a great town) were, on account chiefly of
melons, constantly robbed, it was held that a moderate
degree of fierceness was rather a favorable trait in his
character. My poor kitten, it was supposed, had been
engaged in the same playful-trespass upon Turk's
property as my Leicestershire cousin, and Turk laid
her dead on the spot. It is impossible to describe my
grief when the case was made known to me at five
o'clock in the evening, by a man's holding out the little
creature dead: she that I had left so full of glorious life
— life which even in a kitten is infinite,-was now
stretched in motionless repose. I remember that there
was a large coal-stack in the yard. I dropped my Latin
books, sat down upon a huge block of coal, and burst
into a passion of tears.  The man, struck with my
tumultuous- grief; hurried into the house; and from
the lower, regions deployed instantly the women of the




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       201
aundry and the kitchen. No one subject is sn absolutely sacred, and enjoys so classical a sanctity among
-zervant-girls, as 1. Grief; and 2. Love which is unfortunate.  All the young women took me up in their
aris and'kissed me; and, last of all, an elderly woman,
who was the cook, not only kissed me, but wept so
audibly, from some suggestion doubtless of grief personal to herself,-that I threw my arms about her neck
and kissed her also. It is probable, as I now suppose,
that some account of my grief for my sister had reached.
them. Else I was never allowed to visit their region of
the house. But, however that might be, afterwards it
struck me, that if I had met with so much sympathy,
or with any sympathy at all, from the servant chiefly
connected with' myself in the desolating grief I had
suffered, possibly I should not have been so profoundly
shaken.
But did I in the mean-time feel anger towards Turk?
Not the least. And the reason was this:-My guardian, who taught me Latin, was in the habit of coming
over and dining at my mother's table whenever he
pleased. On these occasions, he, who'ike myself pitied
dependent animals, went invariably irito the yard of the
offices, taking me with him, and unchained the dogs.
There were two,- Grim, a mastiff, and Turk, our
young friend. My guardian was a bold, athletic, man,
and delighted in dogs. He told me, which also my own
heart told me, that these poor dogs languished out
their lives under this confinement. The moment that i
and my guardian (ego et rex meus) appeared in sight of
-the two kennels, it is impossible to express the joy of
the dogs. Turk was usually restless;' Grim slept away




202           SL4UEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
his life in surliness. But at the sight of us,-of my
little insignificant self and my six-foot guardian, - both
dogs yelled with delight. We unfastened their chains
with our own hands, they licking our hands; and as to
myself, licking my miserable little face; and at one
bound they reentered upon their natural heritage of
ioy. Always we took them through the fields, where
they molested nothing, and, closed with giving them a
cold bath in the brook which bounded my father's property. What despair must have possessed our dogs when
they were taken back to their hateful prisons! and I,
for my part, not enduring to see their misery, slunk'away when the rechaining commenced. It was in vain
to tell me that all people, who had property out of doors
Si protect, chained up dogs in the same way. This only
proved'the extent of'the oppression; for a monstrous
oppression it did seem, that creatures, boiling with life
>and-the desires of life, should be thus detained in captivity until they were set free by death. That liberation
visited poor Grim and Turk sooner than any of us expected, for they were both poisoned, within the year that
followed, by a party of burglars. At the end of that year,
I was reading theEneid; and it struck me, who remembered the howling recusancy of Turk, as a peculiarly fine
circumstance, introduced amongst the horrors of Tartarus, that sudden gleam of powerful animals, full of life
and conscious rights, rebelling against' chains:i" Ireque leonum
Vincla recusantum."*
* What follows, I think (for book:I have none of any kind where
his paper is proceeding), namely: et ser sub nocte rudencwn,. is




OF AN -E GLLSH OPIUM-EATER.       203
Virgil. had doubtless picked up that gem in his visits at
feeding-time to the cavecs of the Roman amphitheatre.
But the rights of brute creathres to a merciful forboerance on the part of man could not enter into the
feeblest conceptions of one belonging'to a nation that
(although too noble to be wantonly cruel) yet in the
same amphitheatre manifested so little regard even to
human rights.   Under Christianity the condition of
the brute has Improved, and will improve much more.
There is ample room. For, I am sorry to say, that the
commonest vice of Christian children, too often surveyed
with careless eyes by mothers that in their human rela-,
tions are full of kindness, is cruelty to the inferior creatures thrown upon their mercy.   For my own part,
what had- formed the ground-work of my happiness
(since joyous was my nature, though overspread with
a cloud of sadness) had been from the first a heart
overflowing with love.  And I had drunk in toop profoundry the spirit of Christianity from our many nursery
readings, not to read also in its divine words the justification of my own tendencies. That which I desired
was the thing which I ought to desire; the mercy that
I loved was the mercy that God had blessed.  From
the Sermon on the Mount resounded forever in my
ears-" Blessed are the merciful!"   I needed not to
add-" For. they shall obtain mercy."  By lips so holy,
and when standing in the atmosphere of truths so divine,
stimply to have been blessed -that was a sufficient ratiScation.; every truth so revealed, and so hallowed by
probably a. mistake of Virgil's; the lions did not roar because
night was approaching, but because night brought with it thei
principal meal, and consequently the impatience of hunger




204        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
position, starts into sudden life, and becomes to itself
its own authentication, needing no proof to convince, -
needing no promise to allure.
It may well be supposed, therefore,. that having
so early awakened within me what imay be philosophically called the transcendental justice of Christianity,
I blamed not Turk for yielding to the coercion of his
nature.  He had killed the object of my love.  But,
besides that he was under the constraint of a primary
appetite, Turk was himself the victim  of a, killing
oppression. He was doomed to a fretful existence so
long as he should exist at all. Nothing could reconcile
this to my benignity, which at that time rested upon
two pillars,- upon the deep, deep heart which God had
given to me at my birth, and upon exquisite health.
Up to the age of two, and almost through that entire
space of twenty-four months, I had suffered from ague;
but when that left me, all germs and traces of ill
nealth fled away forever, except only such (and those
how curable!) as I inherited from my school-boy distresses in London, or had created by means of opium
Even the long ague was not without ministrations of
favor to my prevailing temper; and, on the whole, no
subject for pity, since naturally it won for. me the sweet
caresses of female tenderness, both young and old. I
was a little petted; but you see by this time, reader,
that I must have been too much of a philosopher,
even in the year one ab urbe condita of my frail
earthly tenement, to abuse such. indulgence.  It also
won for me a ride on horseback whenever the weather
permitted.  I was placed on- a pillow, in front of a
cankered old man, upon a large white horse not -o




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       205
young as I was, but still showing traces of blood.
And even the old man, who was both the oldest and
the worst of the three, talked with gentleness to
myself, reserving his surliness for all the rest of the
w6rld.
These things pressed with a gracious power of incu
bation upon my predispositions; and in my overflowing
love I did things fitted to make the reader laugh, and
sometimes fitted to bring myself into perplexity. One
instance from  a thousand may illustrate the combi.
nation of both effects. At four years old, I had repeatedly seen the housemaid raising her long broom, and
pursuing (generally destroying) a vagrant spider. The
holiness of all life, in my eyes, forced me to devise
plots for -saving the poor doomed wretch; and thinking intercession likely to prove useless, my policy
was, to draw off the housemaid on pretence of showing her a picture, until the spider, already en route,
should have had time. to escape. Very soon, however,
the shrewd housemaid, marking the coincidence of
these picture exhibitions with the agonies of fugitive
spiders, detected my stratagem; so that, if the reader
will pardon an expression borrowed from the street,
henceforwards the picture was "no go."  However, as
she approved of my motive, she told me of the many
murders that the spider had committed, and next
(which was worse) of the many that he certainly would
commit, if reprieved.  This staggered me.  I could
have gladly forgiven the past;' but it did seem a false
mercy to spare one spider in order to scatter death
amongst fifty flies. I thought timidly, for- moment,
of suggesting that people sometimes repented, and that




WQ6         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
ee, rhght repent; but I checked myself, on considering
hat I had never read any account, and that she might
augh at the idea, of a penitent spider. To desist was a
Aecessity, in these circumstances.  But the difficulty
which- the housemaid had suggested did not depart,. troubled my, musing mind to perceive that tbh wel-;,re of one creature might stand upon the luin of
another; and the case of the spider remained thenceforwards even more perplexing to my understanding
jhan it was painful to my heart.
The reader is likely to differ from me upon the question, moved by recurring to such experiences of childhood, whether much value attaches to the perceptions
and intellectual glimpses of a child.  Children, like
men, range through a gamut that is infinite, of temperaments and characters, ascending from   the very
dust below our feet to highest heaven. I have seen
children that were sensual, brutal, devilish.  But,
thanks be to the vis medicatrix of human nature, and
to the goodness of God, these are as rare exhibitions
as all' other monsters. People.thought, when seeing
such  odious travesties and burlesques upon lovely
human infancy, that perhaps the little wretches might
be kilcrops.*  Yet, possibly (it has since occurred to
me), even these children of the fiend, as they seemed,
might have one chord in their horrible natures that
answered to the call of some sublime purpose. There
is a mimic instance of this kind, often found amongst
ourselves in natures that are not really "horrible," but
* "Kilcrops."- See, amongst Southey's early poems, one upon
this superstition. Southey argues contra, but. for my part,. 
hopuld have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        20.
which seem -such to persons viewing them   from  a
station not sufficiently central:- Always there are
mischievous boys in a neighborhood,-boys who tie
canisters to the tails of cats belonging to ladies,- a
thing which greatly I disapprove; and. who rob orchards,
—'a thing which slightly I disapprove; and, behold!
the next day, on meeting the injured ladies, they say to
me,",    my dear friend, never pretend to argue for
him! This boy, we shall all see, will come to be
hanged."   Well, that seems a disagreeable prospect:for all parties; so I chang e the subject; and, lo!.five
years later, there is an English frigate fighting with.a
frigate of heavier metal (no- matter of what nation).
The noble captain has manceuvred as only his countrymen can manceuvre; -he -has delivered his broadsides as only the proud islanders can deliver them.
Suddenly he sees the opening for, a coup-de main;
through his speaking-trumpet he shouts, "- Where are
my boarders?"    And instantly rise. upon the deck,
with,'the gayety of boyhood, in white shirt-sleeves
bound with black ribands, fifty men, the.elite.of the
crew; and, behold! at the very head of them, cutlass
in hand, is our friend, the tier of canisters to the tails
of ladies' cats, —a thing which-greatly I disapprove,
and also the robber of orchards,-a thing which slightly
I disapprove. But here is a man that will not suffer
you either greatly or slightly to disapprove him. Fire
celestial burns in his eye; his nation-his glorious
nation  is in his mind; himself he regards no more
than the life of a cat, or the ruin of a (anister.  On
the, deck of the enemy he throws himself with rapture;
and if he is amongst the killed, —if he, for an object sa




208        A" SEQUEL TO TIE CONFESSIONS
gloriously unselfish, lays down with joy his life and
glittering youth, - mark this, that, perhaps, he will not
be the least in heaven.
But coming back to the case of childhood, Lmaintain
steadfastly that into all the elementary feelings of man
children look with more searching gaze than adults.
My opinion is, that where circumstances favol, where
the heart is deep, where humility and tenderness exist
in strength, where the situation is favorable as to solitude and as to genial feelings, children have a specific
power of contemplating the truth, which departs as
they enter the world. It is clear to me, that children,
upon elementary paths which require no knowledge
of the world to unravel, tread more firmly than men;
have a more pathetic sense of the beauty which lies
in justice; and, according to the immortal ode of our
great laureate [ode "On the Intimations of Immortality
in Childhood"], a far closer communion with God. I,
if you observe, do not much intermeddle with religion,
properly so called.  My path lies on the interspace
between religion and philosophy, that connects them
both. Yet here, for once, I shall trespass on grounds
not properly mine, and desire you to observe in St.
Matthew, chapter xxi., and verse, 15, who were those
that, crying in the temple, made the first public recognition of Christianity.  Then, if you say,."0, but
children echo what they hear, and are no independent
authorities." I must request you to extend your reading into verse 16, where you will find that the testimony of these children, as bearing an original value,
was ratified by the highest testimony; and the recog
nition-of these children did itself receive a heavenly




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         209
recognition  And this could not have been, unless there
were children in Jerusalem who saw into truth with a
far sharper eye than Sanhedrims and Rabbis.
It is impossible, with respect to any memorable grief
that it can be adequately exhibited so as to.ndicate
the enormity of the convulsion which really it caused,
without viewing it under a variety of aspects,-a thing
which is here almost necessary for the effect of proportion to what follows: 1st, for instance, in its immediate
pressure, so stunning and confounding; 2dly, in its
oscillations, as in its earlier agitations, frantic with
tumults, that borrow the wings of the winds; or in its
diseased impulses of sick languishing desire, through
which sorrow transforms itself to a sunny angel, that
beckons us to a sweet repose. These phases of revolving affection I have already sketched.  And I shall
also sketch a third, that is, where the affliction, seemingly hushing itself to sleep, suddenly soars upwards
again- upon combining with another'mode of sorrow,
namely, anxiety without definite limits, and, the trouble
of a reproaching conscience. As sometimes,* upon the
English lakes, water-fowl that have careered in the air
until the eye is wearied with the eternal wheelings of
their inimitable flight- Grecian simplicities of motion,
amidst a labyrinthine.infinity of curves that would
baffle the geometry of Apollonius  seek the water iat
last, as if with some settled purpose (you imagine) of
reposing. Ah, how   little have you understood the
* In this place I derive my feeling partly from.a lovely sketch
of the appearance, in verse, by -Mr. Wordsworth; partly from my
own experience of the case; and, not having- the poems heie. I
know not how to proportion my acknowledgments
14




210          A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
omnipotence of that life which they inherit!       The3
want no rest: they laugh at resting; all is "make
believe," as when an infant hides its laughing face
behind its mother's shawl. For a moment it is still.
Is it meaning to rest?  Will its impatient heart endure
to lurk there for long? Ask, rather, if a cataract will
stop from fatigue. Will a sunbeam sleep on its travels?
or the Atlantic rest from its labors?  As little can the
infant, as little can.the water-fowl of the lakes, suspend
their play, except as a variety of play, or rest unless
when nature compels them. Suddenly starts off the,infant, suddenly ascend the birds, to new    evolutions
as incalculable as the caprices of a kaleidoscope-; and
the glory of their motions, from the mixed immortalities
of beauty and inexhaustible variety, becomes at least
pathetic to survey.   So also, and with such life of
variation, do the primary convulsions of nature- such,
perhaps, as only primary* formations in the human
system can experience-come round again and again by
reverberating shocks.
* "And' so, then," the cynic objects, "you rank your own mind
(and you tell us so frankly) amongst the primary formations?"
As I love to annoy him, it would give me pleasure to reply" Perhaps I do," But as I never answer more questions than are
necessary, I confine myself to saying, that this is not a necessary
construction of the words. Some minds stand nearer to the
type of the original nature in man, are truer than others to the
great magnet in our dark planet.  Minds that are impassioned
on a more colossal scale than ordinary, deeper in their vibrations,
and more extensive in the scale of their vibrations, whether,
in other parts of their intellectual system, they had or had not
a corresponding compass, will tremble to greater depths from a
fearful convulsion, and will comf round by a longer curve of
undulations.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        211
The new intercourse with my guardian, and the
changes of scene which naturally it led to, were of
use in weaning my mind from the mere disease which
threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my
total solitude.  But out of these changes grew an
incident which restored my grief, though in a more
troubled shape, and now for the first time associated
with sorhething like remorse and deadly anxiety. I
can safely say that this was my earliest trespass, and
perhaps a venial one, all things considered. Nobody
ever discovered it; and but for my own frankness it
would not be known to this day. But that I could not
know; and for years,- that is, from seven or earlier up
to ten,-such was my simplicity, that I lived in.constant
terror.  This, though it revived my grief, did me
probably great service; because it was no longer a state
of languishing desire tending to torpor, but of feverish
irritation and gnawing care, that kept alive the activity
of my understanding. The case was this:-It happened that I had now, and commencing with my first
introduction to Latin studies, a large weekly allowance
of pocket-money,- too large for my age, -but safely
intrusted to myself, who never spent or desired to
spend one fraction of it upon anything but books. But
all proved too little for my colossal schemes. Had the
Vatican, the Bodleian, and the Bibliotheque du Roz,
been all emptied into one collection for my private
gratification, little progress would have been made
towards content in- this particular craving. Very soon
I had run ahead of my -allowance, and was about
three guineas deep-in debt. There I paused; for deep
anxiety now began to oppress me as to' the course'i




212        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS.
which this mysterious (and indeed guilty) current of
debt would finally flow. For the present it was frozen
up; but I had some reason for thinking that Christmas
thawed all debts whatsoever, and set them tn motion
towards innumerable pockets. Now my debt would be
thawed with all the rest; and in what direction would
it flow? There was no river that would carry it off to
sea; to somebody's pocket it would beyond a doubt
make its way; and who was that somebody?     This
question haunted me forever.  Christmas had come,
Christmas had gone, and I heard nothing of the three
guineas. But I waV not easier for that. Far rather I
would have heard of it; for this indefinite approach of
a loitering catastrophe gnawed and fretted my feelings.
No Grecian audience ever waited with more shudder
ing horror for the anagnorisis* of the CEdipus, than I
for the explosion of my debt. Had I been less ignorant, I should have proposed to mortgage my weekly
allowance for the debt, or to form a sinking fund for
redeeming it; for the weekly sum was nearly five per
cent. on the entire debt. But I had a mysterious awe
of ever alluding to it. This arose from my want of
some confidential friend; whilst my grief pointed continually to the -remembrance, that so it had not always
been. But was not the bookseller to blame in suffering a child scarcely seven years old to contract such
a debt   Not in the least. He was both a rich man,
* That is (as on account of English readers is added), the recog.
nition of his true identity, which, in one moment, and by a horrid
flash of revelation, connects him with acts incestuous, murderous,
parricidal in the past, and with a mysterious fatality of woe lurk
ing in the future.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        213
who could not possibly care for my trifling custom,
and notoriously an honorable man. Indeed, the money
which I myself spent every week in books would
reasonably have caused him to presume that so small
a sum as three guineas might well be authorized by my
family. He stood, however, on plainer ground; for
my guardian, who was very indolent (as people chose
to, call it),-that is, like his little melancholy ward,
spent all his time in reading,-often enough would send
me to the bookseller's with a written order for books.
This was to prevent my forgetting.  But when he
found that such a thing as "forgetting," in the case of
a book, was wholly out of the question for me, the
trouble of writing was dismissed.  And thus I had
become factor-general, on the part of my" guardian,
both for his books, and for such as were wanted on my
own account, in the natural course of my education,
My private "little account" had therefore in fact flowed
homewards at Christmas, not (as I anticipated) in the
shape of an independent current, but as a little tributary
rill, that was lost in the waters of some more important river. This I now know, but could not then have
known with any certainty. So far, however, the affair
would gradually have sunk out of my anxieties, as time
wore'n. But there was another item    in the case,
which, from the excess of my ignorance, preyed upon
my spirits far more keenly; and this, keeping itself
alive, kept also the other incident alive. With respect
to the debt, I was not so ignorant as to think it of much
danger by the mere amount, - my own allowance furnished a scale for preventing that mistake; -it was the
principle,- the having presumed to contract debts on




214        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
my own account,   that I feared to have exposed. But
this other case was a ground for anxiety, even as
regarded the amount; not really, but under the jesting
representation made to me, which I (as ever before and
after) swallowed in perfect faith. Amongst the books
which I had bought, all English, was a history of
Great Britain, commencing, of course, with Brutus and
a thousand years of impossibilities; these fables being
generously thrown in as a little gratuitous extra'to the
mass of truths which were to follow. This was to be
completed in sixty or eighty parts, - believe.  But
there was another work. left more indefinite as to its
ultimate extent, and which, from its nature, seemed to'
imply a far higher range. It was a general history of
navigation, supported by a vast body of voyages. Now,
when I considered with myself what a huge thing the
sea was, and that so many thousands of'captains,.commodores, admirals, were eternally running up and down
it, and scoring.lines upon its face so rankly, that in
some of the'main "streets" and "squares" (as one
might call them), their tracts would blend into one
undistinguishable blot; I began to fear that such a
work tended to infinity. What was little England to
the universal sea?  And yet that went perhaps to
fourscore parts. Not enduring the uncertainty that now
besieged my tranquillity, I resolved to know the worst;
and, on a day ever memorable to me,-I went down to:he bookseller's. He was a mild, elderly man, and to
myself had always shown a kind, indulgent manner.
Partly, perhaps, he had been struck by my extreme
gravty; and partly, during the many conversations 1
had with him, on occasion of my guardian's orders for




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       2.15
oooks, with my laughable simplicity.  But there was
another reason which had early won for me his paternal
regard. For the first three or four months I had found
Latin something of a drudgery; and the incident which
forever' knocked away the "shores," at that time preventing my launch upon the general bosom of Latin
literature, was this: -One day, the bookseller took
down a Beza's Latin Testament; and, opening it,
asked me to translate for him the chapter which he
pointed to.  I was struck by perceiving that it was
the great chapter of St. Paul on the grave and resurrection. I had never seen a Latin version; yet, from
the simplicity of the scriptural style in any translation
(though Beza's is far from good), I could not well. have
failed in construing. But, as it happened to be this particular chapter, which in English I had read again and
again with so passionate a sense of its grandeur, I read
it off with a fluency and effect like some great opera
singer uttering a rapturous bravura.  My kind old
friend expressed himself gratified, making me a present
of the book as a mark of his approbation. And it is
remarkable, that from this moment, when the deep
memory of the'English words had forced me into
seeing the precise correspondence of the two concurrent
streams,.-Eatin and English, —never again'did any
difficulty arise to check the velocity of my progress in
this particular language.  At less than eleven years
of age, when as yet I was a very indifferent Grecian,
I had become a- brilliant master of Latinity, as my
alcaics and choriambics remain to' testify; and the
whole occasion of a change so memorable to a boy,
was this casual summons to translate a composition




'16        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
with which my heart was filled. Ever after this, ne
showed me a caressing kindness, and so condescend
ingly, that, generally, he would leave any people, for a
mqment, with whom he was engaged, to come and speak
to me. On this fatal day, however,- for such it provedto me, -he could not do this. He saw me, indeed, and
nodded, but could not leave a party of elderly strangers.
This accident threw me unavoidably upon one of his
young people. Now, this was a market day, and there
was a press of country people present, whom I did not
wish to hear my question. Never did a human creature, with his heart palpitating at Delphi for the solution
of some killing mystery, stand before the priestess of
the -oracle, with lips that moved more sadly than mine,
when now advancing to a smiling young man at a desk.
His answer was to decide, though I could not exactly
know that, whether, for the next two 4ears, I was to
have an hour of peace.  He was a handsome, goodnatured young man, but full of fun and frolic; and I
dare say was amused with what must have seemed to
him the absurd anxiety of my features.  I described
the work to him, and he understood me at once. How
many volumes did he think it would extend to 
There was a whimsical expression, perhaps, of droll
ery about his eyes, but which, unhappily, under my
preconceptions, I translated into scorn, as he replied,'How many volumes? 0! really, I can t say; maybe a matter of 15,000, be the same more or less."
"More?" I said, in horror, altogether neglecting the
contingency of "less."  "Why," he said, "we can't
settle these things to a nicety.  But, considering the
subject" [ay, that was the very thing which I myself




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       211
eonsideredl, "I should say there might be some trifle
over, as, suppose 400 or 500 volumes, be the same
more or less."  What, then,-here there might be
supplements to supplements, -the work might positively never end! On one pretence or another, if an
author or publisher might add 500 volumes, he might
add another round 15,000. Indeed, it strikes one even
now, that by the time all the one-legged commodores
and. yellow admirals of that generation had exhausted
their long yarns, another generation would have grown
another crop of the same gallant spinners. I asked no
more, but slunk out'of the shop, and never again
entered it with cheerfulness, or propounded any frank
questions, as heretofore. For I was now  seriously
afraid of pointing attention to myself as one that, by
having purchased some numbers, and obtained others
on credit, had silently contracted an engagement to
take all the rest, though they should stretch to the
crack of doom. Certainly I-had never heard of a work
that extended to 15,000 volumes; but still there was no
natural'impossibility that it should-; and, if in any case,
in none so reasonably as one upon the inexhaustible
sea.  Besides, any slight mistake as to the letter of
the number could not affect the horror of the final
prospect.  I saw by the imprint, and I heard, that this
work emanated from London, a vast centre of mystery
to me, and the more so, as a thing unseen at any time
by my eyes, and nearly two hundred milesi distant. I
felt the fatal truth, that here was a ghostly cobweb radiating into all the provinces from' the mighty metropolis.
I secretly had trodden upon the outer circumference,had damaged or deranged the fine threads or links, —




218        A SEQULL TO TIE CONFESSIONS
conceaJmont or reparation there could be none. Slowly
perhaps, but surely, the vibration would travel back
to London.  The ancient spider that sat there at the
centre would rush along the net-work through all longi.
tudes an  latitudes, until he found the responsible
caitiff, author of so much mischief.  Even with less
ignorance than mine, there was something to appal a
child's imagination in the vast systematic machinery
by which any elaborate work could disperse itself, could
levy money, could put questions and get answers,
all in profound silence, nay, even in darkness, searching every nook of every town and of every hamlet in
so populous a kingdom. I had some dim terrors, also,
connected with the Stationers' Company. I had often
observed them in popular works threatening unknown
men with unknown chastisements, for offences equally
unknown; nay, to myself, absolutely inconceivable'Could I be the mysterious criminal so long pointed out,
as it were, in prophecy? I figured the stationers, doubtless all powerful men, pulling at one rope, and my
unhappy self hanging at the other end. But an image,
which seems now even more ludicrous than the rest, at
that time, was the one most connected with the revival
of m? grief. It occurred to my subtlety, that the Stationers' Company,. or any other company, could not
possibly demand the money until they had delivered the
volumes. And, as no man could say that I had ever
positively refused to receive them, they would have no
pretence for not accomplishing this delivery in a civil
manner. Unless I should turn out to be no customer
at all, at present it was clear that I had a right to be
considered a most excelle.nt customer; one, in fact




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        219
who hed givelu an order for fifteen thousand volumes.
-Then rose up before me this great opera-house
"scena" of the delivery. There would be a ring at
the front door. A wagoner in the front, with a bland
voice, would ask for "a young gentleman who had
given an order to their house." Looking out, I should
perceive a procession of carts and wagons, all advancing in measured movements; each in turn would present its rear, deliver its cargo of volumes, by shooting
them, like a load of coals, on the lawn, and wheel off to
the rear, by way of clearing the road for its successors.
Then the impossibility of even asking:the servants to
cover with sheets, or counterpanes, or table-cloths, such
a mountainous, such a'" star-y-pointing "record of my.past offences, lying in so conspicuous a situation! Men
would not know my guilt merely, they would see it.
But the reason why this form of the consequences, so
much more than any other, stuck by my imagination
was, that it connected itself with one of the Arabian
Nights which had particularly interested myself and
my sister. It was that tale, where-a young porter,
having his ropes about his person, had stumbled into
the special "preserve" of some old magician.   He
finds a beautiful lady imprisoned, to whom (and not
without prospects of success) he recommends himself
as a suitor more in harmony with her own years than
a withered magician.   At this crisis, the magician
returns.  The young man bolts, and for that day
successfully; but unluckily he leaves his ropes behind.
Next morning he hears the magician, too honest by
half, inquiring at the front door, with much expression
of condolence, for the unfortunate-young man who had




220        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
lost his ropes in his own zenana.  Upon this story
1 used to'amuse my sister by ventriloquizing to the
magician, from the lips of the trembling young man,", Mr. Magician, these ropes cannot be mine! They
are far too good; and one would n't like, you know, tc
rob some other poor young man. If you please, Mr
Magician, I never had money enough to buy so beauti.
ful a set of ropes.'.'But argument is thrown away
upon a magician, and off he sets on his travels with the
young porter, not forgetting to take the ropes along with
him.
Here now was the case, that had once seemed so
impressive to me in a mere fiction from a far distant
age and land, literally -reproduced in myself.  For,
what did it matter whether a magician dunned one
with old ropes for -his engine of torture, or Stationers'
Hall with fifteen thousand volumes (in the rear of which
there might also be ropes)?  Should I have ventrilo*
quized, would my sister have laughed, had either of us
but guessed the possibility that I myself, and within one
twelve months, and, alas! standing alone in the world
as regarded confidential counsel, should repeat within
my own inner experience the shadowy panic of the
young Bagdat intruder upon the privacy of magicians?
It appeared, then, that I had, been reading a legend
concerning myself in the Arabian Nights. I'had been
contemplated in types a thousand years befcxe, on the
-banks of the Tigris.. It was horror and grief that
prompted that thought,
0, heavens! that the misery. of a child should by
possibility become the laughter of adults! -that even
I, the sufferer, should be capable of amusing myself,




OF AN' ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       221
as if it had been a jest, with what for three years had
constituted the secret affliction of my life, and its eternal trepidation-like the ticking of a death-watch to
patients lying awake in the plague!  I durst ask no
counsel; there was no one to ask. Possibly my sister
could have given me none in a case which neither of
us should have understood, and where to seek for info:mation from others would have been at once to betray
the whole- reason for seeking it. But, if no advice, she
would have given me her pity, and the expression of
her endless love; and, with the relief of sympathy,
that heals for a season all distresses, she would have
given me that exquisite luxury  the knowledge that,
having parted with my secret, yet also I had not parted
with it, since it was in the power only of one that could
much less betray me than I could betray myself. At
this time,-that is, about the year when I suffered
most,-I was reading Cesar.     0, laurelled scholar,
sunbright intellect, "'foremost man of all this world,"
how'often did. I make out of thy immortal volume a pi
low to support my wearied brow, as at evening, on my
homeward road, I used to turn into some silent field,
where I might give way unobserved to the reveries
which besieged me! I wondered, and found no en:
of wondering, at the revolution that one short year had
made in my happiness. I wondered that such billows
could overtake me.' At the beginning of that year, how
radiantly happy! At the end, how insupportably alone!
" Into what depth thou seest,
From what height fallen."
Forever I searched the abysseks with some wandering




222        A -SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
thoughts unintelligible to myself.  Forever I dallied
with some obscure notion, how my sister's love might be
made in some dim way available for deliverirg me from
misery; or else how the misery I had suffered and was
suffering might be made, in some way equally dim, the
ransom for winning back her love.
~...
Here pause, reader!   Imagine yourself seated in
some cloud-scaling swing, oscillating under the impulse
of lunatic'hands; for the strength of lunacy may belong
to human dreams, the fearful caprice of lunacy, and the
malice of lunacy,whilst the victim of those dreams
may be all the more certainly removed from lunacy;
even as a bridge gathers cohesion and strength from
the increasing -resistance into which it is forced by
increasing pressure. Seated in such a swing, fast as
you reach the lowest point of depression, may you
rely on racing up' to a starry altitude of corresponding
ascent. Ups and downs you will'see, heights and
depths, in our fiery course together, such as will sometimes tempt you to look shyly and suspiciously at me,
your guide, and the ruler of the oscillations. Here, at
the point where I have called a halt, the reader has
reached the lowest depths in my nursery afflictions.
From  that point, according to the principles of art
which govern the movement of these Confessions, 1
had meant to launch him upwards through the whole
arch of ascending visions which seemed requisite to
balance the-sweep downwards, so recently described in
his course. But accidents of the press have made it
impossible to accomplish this purpose in the present




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        223
month's journal. There is reason to regret that the
advantages of position, which were essential to the full
effect of passages planned for the equipoise and mutual
resistance, have thus been lost. Meantime, upon the
principle of the mariner, who rigs a jury-mast in default
of his regular spars, I find my resource in a sort of'jury" peroration, not sufficient in the way of a balance
by its proportions, but sufficient to indicate the quality
of the balance which I had contemplated. He who has
really read the preceding parts of these present Confessions will be aware that a stricter scrutiny of the past,
such as was natural after the whole economy of the
dreaming faculty had been convulsed beyond all precedents on record, led me to the conviction that not one
agency, but two agencies, had cooperated to the tremendous result. The nursery experience had been the ally
and the natural coefficient of the opium. For that
reason it was that the nursery experience has been narrated. Logically it bears the very same relation to the
convulsions of the dreaming faculty as the opium. The
idealizing tendency existed in the dream-theatre of my
childhood; but the preternatural strength of its action
and coloring was first developed after the confluence
of the two causes. The. reader must suppoe- me at
Oxford; twelve years and a half are gone by; I Em in
the glory of youthful happiness: but I have now first
tampered with opium; and now first the agitations of
my childhood reopened in strength, now first they swept
in -upon the brain with power, and the grandeur of recovered life, under the separate and the concurring inspirations of opium.
Once again, after twelve years' interval, the nursery




224        A SEQUEL -TO THE CONFES' IONS
of my childhood expanded before me: my sister was
moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with
fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse,
but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon
some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like
the superb Medea standing alone with her childrenin the nursery at Corinth,* smote'me senseless to the
ground. Again I was in the chamber with my sister's
corpse, again the pomps of life rose up in silence, the
glory of summer, the frost of death. Dream formed
itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford
dreams remoulded itself continually the trance in my
sister's chamber,-the blue heavens, the everlasting
vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the
thought. (but not the sight) of "Him that sate there.
on;" the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of
my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession
gathered; the priest in his white surplice stood wait'
ing with a book in his hand by the side of an open
grave, the sacristan with his shovel; the coffin sank;
the dust to'dust descended. Again I was in the church
o6 a heavenly Sunday morning. The' golden sunlight
of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his
martyrs, his saints; the fragment from the litany, the
fragment from  the clouds, awoke again the lawny
beds that went up to scale the heavens- awoke again
the shadowy:arms that moved downward to meet
them.'Once again arose the swell of the anthem,
the burst of the Hallelujah' chorus, the storm, the
trampling movement of the choral passion, the agita.
* E.ripides.
*Euripides




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       22b
tion of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult
-of the choir, the wrath of the organ. Once more 1,
that wallowed, became he that rose up to the clouds.
And now in Oxford all was -bound up into unity; the
first state and the last were melted into each other as in
some sunny glorifying haze. For high aboeve my own
station hovered a gleaming host of. heavenly beings
surrounding the pillows of the dying children. And
such beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels
and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the
-children that are languishing in death, and the children
that live only to languish in tears.
T   PALIMPSEST.
Yot know perhaps, masculine reader, better than 1
can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly, you have
one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of others
~who may not- know, or may have forgotten, suffer me
to explain it here, lest any female reader, who honors
these- papers with her notice, should tax me with
explaining it once too seldom; which would be worse
to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve
proud men, that I had explained it three times too often.
X ou therefore, fair reader, understand, that for your
accommodation exclusively, 1 explain the meaning of
this word. It is Greek; and oursex enjoy's the office
and privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all ques
tions of Greek. We are, uneTr favor, perpetual and
15




226         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
hereditary dragomans to you. So that if, by accident
you know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to us, your counsel learned in that matter, you will
always seem not to know it.
A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed of'
its manuscript by reiterated successions.
What was the reason that the Greeks and -the
Romans had not the advantage of printed books? The
answer will be, from ninety-nine persons in a hundred,
-Because the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret
of printing must have been discovered many thousands
of times before it was used, or could be used. The
inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stupidity is divine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the
slow development of the sofa through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise a joint stool into a chair; and-it required
something like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of
elder generations, to reveal the possibility of lengthening
a chair into a chaise-longue, or a sofa.. Yes, these were
inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power.
But.still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the
stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the
task of evading an object which stared him in the face
with so broad a gaze. It did not require an.Athenian
intellect to read the'main secret of printing in many
scores of processes which the ordinary uses of lift
were daily repeating.  To say nothing of analogous
* artifices amongst various mechanicartisans,,all that is
essential in printing.must have been known to every
-nation that struck coins and. medals. Not therefore,




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER         227
any want of a printing art,-that is, of an art for
multiplying impressions,- but the want of a cheap
material for receiving such impressions, was the obstacle
to an introduction of printed books, even as early as
Pisistratus. The ancients did apply printing to records
of silver and gold; to marble, and many other substances cheaper than gold and silver, they did not, since
each monument required a separate effort of inscription. Simply this defect it was of a. cheap material for
receiving impresses, which froze in its very fountains
the early resources of printing.
Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was
luminously expounded by Dr. Whately, the present
Archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe) of
having first suggested it. Since then, this theory has
received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that original scarcity affecting'all materials proper for durable
books, which continued  up to times comparatively
modern, grew the. opening for palimpsests. Naturally, when once a roll of parchment or of vellum had
done its office, by propagating through a series of generations what once had possessed an interest for them,
but which, under changes of opinion or of taste, had
faded. to their feelings or had become obsolete for their
-undertakings, the whole membrana or vellum skin, the
two-fold product of human skill, costly material, and
costly freight of thought, which it carried, drooped in
value concurrently - supposing that each were inalienably associated to the other. Once it had been the
impress of a human mind which stamped its value upon
the vellum; the vellum, though costly, had contributed
out a secondary-element of value to the iotal result




228        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
At length, however, this relation between the vehicle
-and its freight has gradually been undermined. The
vellum, from having been the setting of the jewel, has
risen at length to be the jewel itself; and the burden of
thought, fromn having given the chief value to the
vellum, has now become the chief obstacle to its value;
nay, has totally extinguished its value, unless it can be
dissociated from the connection. Yet, if this unlinking
can be effected, then, fast as the inscription upon the
membrane is sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself
is reviving in its separate importance; and, from bearing
a ministerial value, the vellum has come at last to absorb
the whole value.
Hence the importance fcor our ancestors that the
separation should be effected. Hence it arose-in the
middle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to
discharge the writing from the roll, -and thus to makeit available for a new succession of thoughts. The
soil, if cleansed from what once'had been hot-house
plants, but now were held to be weeds, would be ready
to receive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In tha
object the monkish chemist succeeded; but after a
fashion which seems almost incredible,- incredible not
as regards the extent of their success, but as regards
the Idelicacy of restraints under which it moved, -so
equally adjusted was their success to the immediate
interests of that period, and to the reversionary objects.of'our own. They did the thing; bu' not so radically
as to prevent us, their posterity, from undoing it. They
expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the
new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to make the
traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable for us




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        229
Could magic, could Hermes Trismegistus, have done
more? What would you think, fair reader, of a prob.
lem'such as this,  to write a book which should be
sense for your own generation, nonsense for the next,
should revive into sense for the next after that, but
again become nonsense for the fourth; and -so on by
alternate successions, sinking into night or blazing into
Jay, like the Sicilian river Arethusa, and the English
river Mole; or like the undulating motions of a -flattened stone which children cause to skim the breast of
a river, now diving below the water, now grazing its
surface, sinking heavily into darkness, rising buoyantly
into light, through a long vista of alternations? Such
a problem, you say, is impossible. But really it is a
oroblem not harder apparently than -to bid a generation:kill, but so that a subsequent generation may call
back into life; bury, but so that posterity may command
to tise again.  Yet that was what the rude chemistry
of past ages effected when coming into combination
with the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our
own. Had they been better chemists, had we been worse,
the mixed result, namely, that, dying for them, the'flower should revive for us, could not have been effected.
They did. the thing proposed to them: they- did it effectually, for they founded upon it all that was wanted:
and yet ineffectually, since we unravelled their work,
effacing all above. which they had superscribed; restoring all below which they had effaced.
Here, for instance, is a parchment which contained
some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of JEschylus,
or the Phlenissme of Euripides. This had possessed a
value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplishec




230        ASEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
scholars, contin ially growing rarer through generations
But four centuries are gone by since -the destruction
of the Western Empire. Christianity, with towering
grandeurs of another class, Has founded a different
empire; and some bigoted, yet perhaps holy monk, has
washed away (as he persuades himself) the heathen's
tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend; which
legend'is disfigured with fables in its incidents, and yet
in a'higher sense is true, because interwoven with
Christian morals, and with the sublimest' of Christian
revelations. Three, four, five centuries more, find man
still devout as ever; but'the language has become
obsolete, and even, for Christian devotion a new era has
arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal
or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The membrana is wanted
now for a knightly romance- for "my Cid," or Coeur.de Lion; for Sir Tristrem, or Lybmus Disconus. In
this way, by means of the imperfect chemistry known
to the mediaeval period, the same roll has served as a
conservatory for three separate generations' of flowers
and truits, all perfectly different, and yet all specially
adapted to the' wants of the successive possessors.
The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend; the knightly
romance, each has ruled its own period. One harvest
after another has been gathered into the garners of
-man through ages far apart. And the sane hydraulic
machinery has distributed, through the same marble
fountains, water, milk, or wine, according to the habits
and training of the generations that came to quench
their thirst.. 
Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem.
istry.. But- the more elaborate. chemistry of our awn




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA1ER.           231
days has reversed all these motions of our simple ancestors, which results in every stage. that to them
would have realized the most fantastic amongst the
promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out
of the ashes settling from its combustion -that is now
rivalled in this modern achievement.   The traces of
each successive handwriting, regularly effaced, as had
been imagined, have, in the inverse order, been regularly called back: the footsteps of the game pursued,
wolf or stag, in each several chase, have been unlinked, and hunted back through all their doubles;
and, as the chorus of the Athenian stage unwove
through the antistrophe every step that had been mystically woven through the strophe, so, by our moderr.
conjurations of science, secrets of ages remote from
each other have been exorcised* from     the accumulated shadows of centuries.   Chemistry, a witch as
potent as the Erictho of Lucanto (Pharsalia, lib. vi.
or vii.), has extorted by her torments, from  the dust
and ashes of forgotten centuries, the secrets of a life
extinct for the general eye, but still glowing in the
embers.   Even the fable of the Phoenix, that secular
bird, who propagated his solitary existence, and his
solitary births, along the line of centuries, through
eternal relays of funeral mists, is but a type of what
we have done with Palimpsests.     We    have backed
P
*Some readers may be apt to suppose,tfrom all English experience, that the word exorcise means properly banishment to the
shades. Not so. Citation from the shades, or sometimes, the
torturing coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the primaa
sense.




232           SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
upon each phoenix in'the long regressus, and forced
him to expose his ancestral phoenix, sleeping in the
ashes below his own ashes.'Our good old forefathers
would have been aghast at our sorceries; and, if they
speculated on the propriety of burning Dr. Faustus.
us they would have burned by acclamation.       Trial
there would have been    none; and they could not
otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen profligacy marking our modern magic, than'by ploughing
up the houses of all who had been parties to it, and
sowing the ground with salt.
Fancy not, reader, that this tumult of images, illustrative or allusive, moves under any impulse or -purpose of mirth. It is but the. coruscation of a restless
understanding, often made ten times more so by irritation of the nerves, such as you will first learn to
comprehend (its how and its why) some stage or two
ahead.  The' image, the memorial, the record, which
for'e is derived from  a palimpsest, as to one great'fact in our human being, and which immediately I
will'show  you, is but too repellent of laughter; or,
even if laughter had been possible, it would have been'such laughter as oftentimes is thrown off from   the
fields of ocean,* laughter that hides, or that seems to
*'' Laughter from the fields of ocean.";- Many readers will
recall, though, at the moment of writing, my own thoughts did
not recall, the well-known passage in the Prometheus -
7 TOVTtwVV e XvIOaTtIO
~'.vlqt'lOEv YEsaalrOa.
"0 multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows!" It is not
clear whether AEschyl s contemplated the larghter as addressing
the ear or' the eye.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER;        233
evade mustering tumult; foam-bells that weave garlands of phosphoric radiance for one moment round
the eddies of gleaming abysses; mimicries of earthborn flowers that for the eye raise phantoms of gayety,
as oftentimes for the ear they raise the echoes of fugitive
laughter, mixing with the ravings and choir-voices of an
angry sea.
What else than a natural and mighty pa.flpsest is
tt-e human brain? Such a paiimpsest is my brain; such
a palimpsest, oh reader! is yours. Everlasting layers
o- ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your- brain
softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury
all that went before. And-yet, inr reality, not one has
been extinguished.  And if, in the vellum  palimpsest,
lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives
or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves
to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque
collisions of those successive themes, having no naturai
connection, which' by pure accident -have consecutively
occupied the roll, yet, in our. own heaven-created pa.
linpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain,
there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The
fleeting accidents of a man's life, and its external shows,
may indeed be irrelate and incongruous; but the organ.
izing principles which fuse into harmony, and gather
about fixed predetermined centres, whatever heterogene.
ous elements life may have accumulated fromt v-.thout,
will not permit the grandeur of human unity greatly to
be violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled, in the
retrospect from  dying moments, or from  other great
convulsions.
Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffo'




234         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
cation, as in drowning; and, in the original Opium
Confessions, I mentioned a case of that nature comr
munipated to me by a lady from her own childish
experience. The lady is still living, though now of
unusually great age; and I may mention that amongst
her faults never was numbered any levity of principle,
or carelessness of the - most scrupulous veracity; but,
on the- contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too
harsh, perhaps, and gloomy indulgent neither to others
nor herself. And, at the time of relating tliis incident,
when already very -old, she had become religious to
asceticism. According to my present belief, she had
completed her ninth year, when, playing by the side of
a solitary brook, she fell into one of its deepest pools.
Eventually, but after what lapse of time nobody ever
knew, she was saved from  death by a farmer, who,
riding in some distant lane, had seen her rise to the
surface; but not until she had descended within the
abyss of death, and looked into its secrets, as far, perhaps, as ever human eye can have looked that had
permission to return. At a certain stage of this descent,
a blow seemed to strike her, phosphoric radiance sprang
forth from  her eyeballs; and immediately a mighty
theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, every act, every.design of
her past life, lived again, arraying themselves not as
a succession, but as parts of a coexistence. Such a
light fell upon the whole path of her life backwards
into the shades of infancy, as the light,' perhaps, which
wrapt the destined Apostle on his road to,Iamascus.
Yet-that light blinded for a season; but hers poured
celestial vision upon the brain, so that her consciousness




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.         235
became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in
the infinite review.
This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time
by some critics. But, besides that it has since been
confirmed by other experience essentially the same,
reported by other parties in the same circumstances,
who had never heard of each other, the true point for
astonishment is not the simultaneity of arrangement
under which the past events of life, though in fact
successive, had- formed their dread line of revelation.
This was but a secondary phenomenon; the deeper lay
in the resurrection itself, and the possibility of resurrection, for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall,
deep as -oblivion, had been thrown by life over every
trace of these experiences; and yet suddenly, at a
silent command, at the signal of a blazing rocket sent
up from the brain, the pall draws up, and the whole
depths of the theatre are exposed.  Here was the
greater mystery: now this mystery is liable to no doubt;
for it is repeated, and ten thousand times repeated, by
opium, for those who are its martyrs.
Yes, reader,.countless are the mysterious hand-writings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves
successively upon the palimpsest of your brain; and,
like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the
undissolving snows on the' Himalaya, or light fal.ng
upon light, the endless strata' have covered up each
other in. forgetfulness. But by the hour of death, but
by fever, but by the searchings of opium, all these can
revive in strength. They are pot dead, but sleeping
t. the' illustration imagined by myself, from-the case
some individual palimpsest, the Grecial' tragedy had




236         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
seemed to be displaced, but was not displaced, by the
monkish legend; and the monkish legend had seemed
to be-displaced, but was not displaced, by the krightly
romance.   In some potent convulsion of the system,
all wheels back into its earliest elementary stage.  The
bewildering romance, light tarnished with darkness, the
semi-fabulous legend, truth celestial mixed with human
falsehoods, these fade even of themselves, as life ad.
vances.  The romance has perished that the young
man adored; the legend has gone that deluded the boy;
but the deep, deep tragedies of infancy, as when the
child's hands were unlinked forever from his mother's
neck, or his lips forever from his sister's kisses, these
remain lurking below all, and these lurk to the last.
Alchemy there is none of passion or disease that can
Scotch away these immortal impresses; and the dream
which closed the preceding section, together with the
succeeding dreams-of this (which may be viewed as
in the nature of choruses winding up the overture
contained in Part I.), are but illustrations of this truth,
such as every man probably will meet experimentally
who passes through similar convulsions.of dreaming or
delirium  from any similar or equal disturbance in his
nat.ure.*
*This, it may be said, requires a corresponding duration of
experience'ut, as an argument for this mysterious power lurking
in our nature, I may remind the reader of one phenomenon open to
the notice of everybody, namely, the tendency of very aged persons to throw back and concentrate the light of their memory upon
scenes of early childhood, as to which they recall many traces that
had faded even to themselves in middle life, whilst they ofen for
get altogether the whole intermediate stages of their experience.
This shows that naturally, and without violent agencies the
human brain is by tendency a palimpsest.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       237
LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW.
OFTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams.
I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana!
Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very
much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for
telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that per.
formed for the new-born infant the earliest office of
ennobling kindness,-typical, by its mode, of that
grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that
benignity in powers invisible which even ih Pagan
worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very
moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first
time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid
on the ground. That might bear different interpretatlons. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should
grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal h'nd, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some
near Linsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright,
bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and
presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in
his heart, "Behold what is greater than yourselves!"
This symbolic act represented the function of Leyana.
And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face
(except to me inttreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the
Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft.
This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has
arisen that some peop'le have understood by Levana the
tutellry power that controls the education of the nur.
sery  She, that would not suffer at his birth even a




238-         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward,
far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation
attaching to the non-development of his powers.     She
therefore watches over human education.       f   7"te.(hya. p  roGess-ofte lx;:- edxie i  to
~Jgsangiiaros)r mw'-.re,    JUCO, w   orit  ie t    ate
-bhng~ -hatsoever~t~esh";  -or'develpps, educates.  By
the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, -not the
poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars, but'by that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion,
by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance,
works forever upon children, —resting not day or night,
any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glimtnering* forever as they revolve.
If, then, these are the ministries by which- Levana
works, how profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief!  But you, reader! think, —that children
*" Glimmering." -As I have -never allowed myself to covet any
mans ox nor his ass, nor anything that is- his, still less would it
become a philosopher to covet other people's images, or metaphors.'Here, therefore, I restore'to Mr. Wordsworth this fine
image of the revolving wheel, and the glimmering spokes, as applied
by him to the flying successions of day and night. I borrowed it
for one' moment in. order to -point my own sentence; which.being
done, the reader is witness that I now pay it back instantly by a
note made for that sole purpose. On the same principle I often
-borrow their seals from young ladies, when closing my letters.
Because there is'sure to be some tender sentiment upon them about
"memory," or "hope," or " roses, or " reinion;" and my corre-.
spondent must be a sad brute who is.not touched by the eloquent
of. the seal, even if his taste is so bad that he remains deaf't
mine.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        239
generally are not liable to grief such as mine. q rw
are two ssesi —ta          enerally - thesenseT
~-Enij.twhtere:-tvrnem ~unzversalsy (or in the whole
extent.aoLthe ge7s)'anra'Toollsh sense of this world,
whlejitme      Its.ually' Now, I am far from saying
that children universally are capable of grief like mine.
But there are more than y6u ever heard of who die of
grief in' this island of ours. I will tell you a common
case.  The rules of Eton require that a boy on the
foundation should be there twelve years: he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at
six. Children torn away Trom mothers and sisters at
that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know.
The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief;
but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has
killed more than ever have been counted amongst its
martyrs.' Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the
powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she
dotes upon grief. "These ladies," said-I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was
conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three
in number, as the Grares are three, who dress man's
life.with beauty: the Parcce are three, who weave the
dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always
with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic
crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit
with retributions called from the other side of the grave
offences that walk upon'this; and at once even the
Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or
the lute,.to the great burdens of man's impassioned
creations.: These are the Sorrows, all three of whom 1




2-10       A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
know."'Theilast"iwords I say now; but in Oxford 
said,-'one -of —whomti  I know;', and -the'othJs i too surely
-I:s.ajk..'. Mt. t'FFor already, in my fervent youth, I
saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ground of my
dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters.
These sisters - by what name shall we call them?
If I say simply, "The Sorrows," there will be a
chance of mistaking the term; it might be understood
of individual sorrow,-separate cases of sorrow, —
whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions-that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed
with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies
of SS7ew. I know them thoroughly, and have walked
in al their kingdoms.  Three sisters they are, of onp
mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart;
but of their dominion there is no end.  Them I saw
often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? 0, no! Mighty. phantoms
like these disdain the infirmities of language.  They
may utter voices through the organs of man when they
dweA in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no
voice nor sound; eternal silence' reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke hoti as they talked with Levana;
they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes
methought they might have sung: for I upon earth
had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by
harp and tirmbrel, by dulcimer and organ. j Like God,
whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure
not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray,




OP AN ENGLISH. OPIUM-EATER.        241
but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by
pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness,
and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the, brain.
They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps.   They
telegraphed from afar; I read the signals._ They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my
eye traced the plots.  Theirs were the symbols; mine
are the words.
What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do?
Let me describe their form, and their presence; if form
it were that still fluctuated in its outline; or presence
it were that forever advanced to the front, or forever
receded amongst shades.
The eldest of the three, is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and
day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She
stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation,
-Rachel weeping for her children, and refused to be
comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the
night when Herod's sword-swept its nurseies of Innocents,. aw-lt 1efre3^i ehieh't
-_:,ead.i. ti'ngsa.: they.tottered.~alonfg- floor- overh^d;.woke-. p1dseso- f love.in household- hearts -that-were'l nbt
unamarked-.in-heaven.
Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by
turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challeging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her
head. And I knew by childish memories that she could
go abroad upon-the winds, when she heard that sobbing
opf litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she
beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister,
the elder, it is thatf carries keys more than papal at he
16




242         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
girdle, which open every cottage and every palace
She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by'the bed,
side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly
I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old
with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of
play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty
roads with her afflicted'father. For this did G6d send
her a great reward. In.the, spring-time of the year, and
whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her
to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over
her; Still he dreams at. midnight that the little guiding
hand is locked within his o0wn; and still he wakens to
a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper
-darkness. This Mater LacFrymarum also'has been sitting all this winter of i844-'5 within the bedchamriber
of the Czar, brin'gingbefore his eyes a daughter (not
less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and
left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the
power of her keys it is'that Our Lady of Tears glides
a ghostly intruder into thie chambers of sleepless men,
sleepless women, sleepless children,'from Ganges to: the.Nile, from Nile to Mississippi.  Xnd' her, because she
is the first-born.of h'er hous'e, and has''the widest empire,
let us honor with the title of " Madonnia."
T-he sec'nd sister is called Mater Sitspiriorum, Our
LLdy'of Sighs. Sie never scales the clouds, nor walls'abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And
her'eyes,'if they were'eer seen, would'be neither
itweet nor subt'le'; no man could r'ead their tory;:'they
d  w   t  -:P.' Y~ I rigA
would be, found filled with perishing A.dreams, anrid wth
wrecks of forgotten delirium.' B'ut she raises not'ihdr
eyes;'her ahead on whicl sits'a. dilapidated turban




OF Aq. ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.          243
tioops fo.rever, forever fastens- on the dust:';She weeps,
not.  She groans not.  But she sighs- inaudibly at intervals.  Her. sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy; and
frantic, raging in- the highest against. heayien, and
demanding back her darlings. Bu't, Our Lady of Sighs
never. clamors, never defies, dreamsi not.of rebelliQus
aspirations.  She is humble to abjectness.  Hers is the
meekness,th-at belongs to the hopeles$.,,,Murmx: she
may, but it. is in her sleep.  Whisper she may, buti it.-is
to- herself, in the twilight.  Mutter she, does at; times,
butit is in!solitary places that;are.desolate as; she; is
desolate,.in ruined cities, and, when;the! s hun has gone
down to his rest.. This sister is the visiter of the Pariah,
of.the Jew, of the, bondsman to0the,-ar. o in the Mediterranean galleys;. of the English;criminal in,Norfo'k
Island, blotted.out-, from. the books. of i remembrarce. in
sweet, far-off England;.,: of,the baffled penitent reiverting
his feyes, forever. upon.a solitary; grave', S'I.4ia.im
sjeemsth.e altar r,. 4wn.AL      pa   Stid.Z   ly,sacrifice,.~qLg.tt.ar...:.o.oatixo- s,? camnowbet:-beail-1
in~whetherJ t.Qwrdfpi-n^a^^t.J.t ~d$~.   aiods     U~~   h.at~ tepppti.: EJvely, slavee
tha t,at noonday looks up to the, tropical sunimwith tiimi.d
reproach, as he points. wt-ea.4 n     o the. earth, our
general          t mothers but forhm a step-mother-as.hepoints
J:.'/fg, to,         t he.Bible,- our, generali teaeher,.but against -hZm  sealed -and, sequestered;:   — eye'ry'..,.. -,!..,:::. 
*.This, the reader will be' aware, applies chiefly to!th'e cotton and
tobacco states of North America;, but not to them only: on which
account I have not scrupled to figure the sun, which looks down
upon slavery, as tropical; no ri'atter if'stridtly within the tropi.s'
or: simply saonear to them as tolprod'uce a simtilhaiclifiate. -..




244        A_ SL4UEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter line
head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the
heaven-bora-instincts kindling in her. nature germs of
holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly
bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now
burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst
the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning
May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge;
every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed,
and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary:;w,
and children of hereditary disgrace,- all these waik
with Our Lady of Sighs.   She also carries a key;
but she needs it little. For her kingdom  is chiefly
amongst the tents of -hem, and the houseless vagrant
of every clime. Yet:-'mi:he very highest ranks of man
-she finds chapels otf Teir'own; and- even in glorious
England there are some that, to the world, carry their
heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have
received her mark upon their foreheads.
But the third sister, who is also the youngest --!
Hush.! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom
is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that
kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted. like that
of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She
droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden
byS distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be
hidden; througn the treble veil of crape which she
wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests
not for matins -or for vespers, for noon of day or noon
of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read
from the very ground. Sheis. the defier of God. -Shq
also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEa          245
suicides. Deep. lie the roots of her power; but narrow
is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only
those in whom a —profournd nature has been upheaved
by central. convulsions; in whom  the heart trembles
and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from
without and tempest from   within. Madonna moves
with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic
grace.- Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealth.
ily:.But this youngest sister moves with incalculable
motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men,
she.storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter
at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum,-Our
Lady of Darkness..
These were the- Semnai Theai, or. Sublime Goddesses,* these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies
({s-,eid  by atiquity inandrJL ir   yrg.opmt&T.ft  of
my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by
her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she:beckoned.to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man
reads, was this:
"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to
my altars. This is he that once I made my darling
Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven. I
stole away his young heart to mine..Through me did
ie become, idolatrous; and through me it was, by lan-.*' Sublime Goddesses." - The word aoe/voe is usually rendered
* " Sublime GoddesseS."-:The word aetlog is usually -render~ed
venerable in dictionaries; not a very flattering epithet fcr Temales.
But by weighing a number of passages in which the word is used
pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to oai idea
of'he sublime, as near as a Greek word could come.




24F-         A SEQUEL, TO THE CONFESSIONS
guishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, ana
prayed to. the, wormy grave.     Holy was the grave to
him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption
Him, this young idolator, -JI have seasoned for thee
dear:gentle. Sister of Sighs,!'Do ithou, take him  now
to thy heart, and season -him    for our dreadful sister.
And thou,,"-   turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she
said, —"' wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do
thou  take:-him  from  her.  See that thy    sceptre lie
heavy'on his head.   Suffer not woman and her tenderness_to sit near him in his darkness.   Banish the frailties' of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch' the
fountains of tears, curse him:as only thou canst curse.
-So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall
he see thelthings'that ought'not to be seen' sights that
are: abominable, and secrets that a;re' uriutterable.  So
shall he read elder truths, sad truths,'grand truths, featful truthzs.; -So shall he rise again before'he die&. ~ And
so: shall our. commission'be accomplished:' which; from
God we had,; —to plague his heart until; we had       unm
folded the capacities of his spirit." *
*,The reader, who wishes at all to understand the course of these
Confessions, ought, not to, pass over this. dream-legend. There i;
no great wonder that a vision, which occupied my waking thoughts
in;thoise years,' should'reappear'n my dreams. It; was, in fact, a.egefd recurringin sleep, most of which I had - yself sileritly'wri'itten or! sculptured in my daylightlreveriesi But its. importance to
the present Confessions is this, that it rehearses or prefigures their
course. This FIRST pait belongs to Madonna. The THIRD belongs
to'the "Mater Suspiionium," and: "ill be' entitled The Pariah
Worid6i. The FOURTH, w'hich terminates the work, belongs to the' Mater Tenebrarum," and will be entitled The Kingdom ofDaikness. A'~ t6 the iECOND'b, it is an interpolation requisite to tne
effect of the others, and'wiil.be edplained in its proper place.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.              247
THE APPARITION      OF THE BROCKEN.
ASCEND   with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the
Brocken   of North   Germany.     The dawn opened in
cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but,
as the hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that
sometimes cares little for racing across both frontiers
of May, frets the bridal lady's sunny        temper with
sallies of wheeling and careering showers, flying and
pursuing, opening and closing, hiding and restoring.'On such a morning, and reaching the summits of the
forest mountain    about sunrise, we -shall have one
chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the
Brocken.*. Who and what is he?           He is a solitary
*  Spectre ofthe Brocken." - This very striking phenomenon hat
been continually described by writers, both German and English
for the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met
with these descriptions; and on their account I add a few words in
explanations referring them for the best scientific comment on the
case to Sir David Brewster's " Natural Magic." The spectre takes.he shape of a human figure, or, if the visiters are more than one,
then the spectres multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue
ground of the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in
the right quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a
curtain of rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting
gigantic proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal
size, every spectator supposes the appearance to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own
motions and gestures mimicked; and wakens'to the conviction that
the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This'Titan
amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious vanishing abruptly for reasons best known.to himse4, and-mcrA.,Coy in
coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he
is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence.of conditions
under which only the phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must




248          A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
apparition, in the sense'of loving solitude; else he is
not always solitary-in his personal manifestations, but,
on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a
strength quite sufficieht to alarm  those who had been
insulting him.
Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious
apparition, we will try two or three experiments upon
him.   What we fear, and with some reason, is, that as
ne lived so many ages with foul Pagan sorcerers, and
witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his heart
may have been corrupted; and that even now his faith
may be wavering or impure.    We will try.
Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he
repeats it (as on Whitsunday* he surely ought to do).
be near to the horizon (which of itself implies a time of day inconvenient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbingerode); the spectator must have his back to the sun; and the air
must contain some vapor, but partially distributed. Coleridge.
ascended the Brocken' on the Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of
English students from Goettingen, but failed to see the phantom;
afterwards in England (and under the three same conditions) he saw
a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in the following
eight lines. I give them from a correct copy (the apostrophe in the
beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal conception):
" And art thou nothing? Such thou art as when
The woodman winding westward. up the glen
At wintry dawn,.when o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
This shade he worships for its golden hues,
And'makes (not knowing) that which he pursues."
*  On Whitsunday."- It is singular, and perhaps owing to the
temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of-summer, tnat more appearances of the spectre ha re been witnessed ox
Whitsunday than on any other day.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.          249
Look! he does repeat it; but the driving showers perplex the images, and that, perhaps, it is which gives
him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively.
Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the show.
ers have swept off like squadrons of cavalry to the rear.
We will try him again.
Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones
which once was called the sorcerer's floyer,* and bore
a part, perhaps, in this horrid ritual of fear; carry it to'
that stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar,
and once was called the sorcerer's altar;  then bending your knee, and raising your right hand to God,'
say, -" Father, which art in heaven, this lovely anemone, that once glorified the worship of fear, has
travelled back into thy fold; this altar, which once
reeked with bloody rites to' Cortho, has long been
rebaptized  into thy holy service. The darkness is
gone; the cruelty is gohe which the darkness bred;
the moans have passed away which the victims uttered;
the cloud has vanished which once sate continually upon
their graves, cloud of protestation that ascended forever
to thy throne from the tears o' the defenceless, and' the
anger of the just. And lo! I thy servant, with this dark
phantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make my servant, render thee united worship
in this thy recovered temple."
* " The sorcerer's flower," and "the sorceeer's altar." - These
are names still clinging to the anemone.of the Brocken, and to an
altar-shaped fragment'of granite near one of the summits; and it
is not doubted that they both connect themselves, through links of
ancient.tradition, with the gloomy realities of Paganism, when tie
whole Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time t h last
asylum to a ferocious but perishing idolatry.




250         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
Look now! the apparition plucks an anemone, and
places it on an altar; he also bends his knee, he also
raises his right hand to God., Dumb, he is:; but sometimes. the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it
occurs to you, that perhaps on this:high festival of the
Christian church he may be overruled by supernatural
influence, into confession of his homage, having so
often been made to -bow and bend his knee at murderous. rites. In a service of religion he may be timid.
Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion,
where he will have no bias either from favor or from
fear.
If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affection
that was ineffable, -if once, when powerless to face such
an enemy, you were summoned to fight with the tiger
that couches within the separations of the grave',-in
that. case, after. the example'of Judea (on: the: Roman
coins),- sitting under her palm-tree to:weep, but sitting with her head:. viled, — do you also veil:your
head.'Many years are passed away since then; and
you were a little ignorant thing at that.time, hardly
above six years old; or perhaps-(if you durst tell, all
the truth), not quite so nmuch.' But your heart was
deeper than the Panube; and, as was your love, so was
your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness
settled on your head; many summers, many'wintiers.
yetstill its shadows wheel round upon you at intervals,
like: these April showers, upon this glory of. bridal June,
Therefore now, oln this dovelike. mnorning of Pentecost,
d& you veil your head like J'da in miem'ory of that
transceni(lent woe, and in testimony that, indeed, it surpassed ail utterance.of words.. Immediately you see




,OF AN ENGLISVK OPIUM-EATER.      251
that the apparition of the Brocken veils his head, after
the model of Judaea weeping under her palm-tree,.as if.he also had a human heart, and that he also, in childhood, having suffered an affliction which was ineffable.
wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh towards
neaven in memory of that affliction, and. by way of
record,- though many a year after, that it was indeed
unutterable by words.
This trial is decisive.'You are now satisfied that the
apparition is but a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering
your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the
dark symbolic mirror for reflection to the daylight what
else must be hidden forever.
Such a relation does the Dark Interpreter, whom
immediately the reader will learn to know as an intruder
into my dreams, bear to my own mind.   He is origi'
nally a mere reflex of my inner nature.  But as the
apparition of'the Brocken sometimes is disturbed by
storms or by driving showers, so as to dissemble his.real origin, in like manner the Interpreter sometimes
swerves out of my. orbit, and mixes a little with alien
natures. I do not always'know him in these cases as
my own parhelion.   What he says, generally, is but
that which I have said in daylight, and in meditation.deep enough to sculpture itself on my heart.  But
sometim:es, as'his face.alters, his words alter; and they
do net always seem such as I have used, or could use.
No man can account for all things that occur-in dreams.
Generally I believe this,-that he is a faithful represent.
a'tive of myself; but he also is at times subject to the
action of the good Phdntasus,'fho rules in' dreams,




252        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
Hailstone choruses* besides, and storms, enter my
dreams. Hailstones and fire that run along the ground,
sleet and blinding hurricanes, revelations of glory insufferable pursued by volleying darkness, - these are
powers able to disturb any features that originally were
but shadow, and so send drifting the anchors of any
vessel-that rides upon deeps. so treacherous as those -of
dreams.  Understand, however, the Interpreter to bear
generally the office of -atragic chorus at Athens. The
Greek chorus is perhaps not quite understood by. critics,
any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself.  But
the leading function of both must be supposed this -not
to tell you anything absolutely new, —that was done by
the actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own
lurking thoughts,- hidden for the momept or imperfectly developed,-and to place before you, in immediate
connection with groups vanishing too quickly for any
effort of meditation on your own part, such commentaries, prophetic or looking back, pointing the moral or
deciphering the. mystery, justifying Providence, or mitigating the fierceness of anguish, as would or might have
occurred to your own meditative heart, had only time
been allowed for its motions.
The Interpreter is anchored and stationary in my
dreams; but great storms and driving mists cause him
to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to retire altogether,!ike his gloomy counterpart, the shy phantom of the
Brocken, -and to -assume new   features or strange
* " Hailstone choruses."-I need not tell any lover of-Handel
that his oratorio of " Israel in Egypt" contains a chorus familiarly
know. by this name. The words are: "And he gave them hail
stones tor:rain; fire, mingled with hail, ran along upon the ground'




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       253
features, as in dreams always there is a power not contented with reproduction, but which absolutely creates
or transforms. This dark being the reader will *see
again in a further stage of my opium experience; and I
warn him that he will not always be found sitting inside
my dreams, but at times outside, and in open daylight.
FINALE TO PART I.-SAVANNAH-LA —MAR.
GOD smote,Savannah-la-mar, and in one night, by
earthquake, removed her, with all her towers standing
and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations
of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God
said,-" Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men
through seventeen centuries: this city I will bury, but
not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my
mysterious anger, set in azure light through generations to come; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome
of my tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a mighty
galleon with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying,
and tackling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless
depths of ocean; and oftentimes in glassy calms,
through the translucid atmosphere of water that now
stretches like an air-woven awning above the silent
encampment, mariners from  every clime look down
intoj her courts and terraces, count her gates, and
number the spires of her churches. She is one ample
cemetery, and has been-for many a year; but in the
mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes
she fascinates the eye with a Fata-Morgana revelation,




254        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums
saered from the storms that torment our upper air.
Thither, lured by the' loveliness of cerulean depths,
by the: peace of human   dwellings privileged from
molestation, by the gleam  of marble altars sleeping
in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and
thec Dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided
us from  her streets.  We looked into the belfries,
where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the
summons which should awaken their marriage peals;
together we touched the mighty organ-keys, that sang
no jubilates for'the ear of Heaven, that sang no requiems for the ear of h^iman sorrow; together we
searched the silent nurseries, where the children were
all:asleep, and had been asleep through five generations.  "They are waiting for the heavenly dawn,"
whispered'the Interpreter to himself: "and, when that
comes, the bells and the organs will. utter a jubilate
repeated by the echo'es of Paradise."  Then, turning
-to mie; he said:-" This is sad,' this is piteous; but
less'wotld not have isufficed for the purpose of God.
Look here.'Put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred
drops of water.; let these'run out as the sands in an
hour-glass; every drop measuring the hundredth part
of a second, so that each shall represent but the threehundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour' Now,
count the drops as they race along; and, when the
fiftielh of the hundred is passing, behold! forty-nine
are -not, because already they have.perished; and fifty
are not, because they are yet to come.   You see,
therefore, how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the
Erue sand:actual;present.: Of-.that time- which we c ll




OF AN ENGLISHI OPIUi-EATER.        265
th' present, hardly a hundredth pa'rt but belongs' either
tb a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on'
the Wing,.  It has perished, oi'it is not born.'It was,
or it is inot. Yet even this approximation to the'truth
is inftiitely false.  For again subdivide that' solitary
drop, which only was found to' represent the present,
into a.: ower series of similar fractions, and the actua'
present which youi arrest meastires now but the thirty
sixth-millionth of an hour; and so by infinite declensidns- the true and very present, in which only -we- live
anrid:ejoy, will Vanish'iit-o:'a "ote' of'-a inote, dis.
tinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the
present, which only man possesses, offers less capacity
for his footing than the slenderest film that ever spider
twisted from  her womb.   Therefore, also, even this
incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moonlight is more transitory than geometry can measure, or
thought of angel can overtake.   The time which is
contracts into a mathematic point; and even that point
perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth.
All'is finite in the present; and even that finite is
infinite in its velocity of flight towards death.  But in
God there is nothing finite; but in God there is nothing
transitory; but in God there can be nothing that tends to
death. Therefore, it follows, that for God there can be
no present. The future is the present of God, and to
the future it is that he sacrifices the human present.
Therefore it is that he works by earthquake. Therefore-it is that he works by grief. 0, deep is the ploughing of earthquake'O, deep "- [and his voice swelled
like a sanctus rising from the choir of a cathedral]"0, deep is the ploughing of grief!  But oftentimer




256         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
less would not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon
a night of earthquake he' builds a thousand years of
pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an
infant he raises'oftentimes from human intellects glorious vintages that could not else have been. Less than
these fierce ploughshares would not have stirred'the
stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet.
for earth itself as the dwelling-place of man; but
the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest
instrument, -yes " [and he looked solemnly at myself],
"is needed fori the mysterious children of the earth'"




OF; AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       257
PART      II.
THE Oxford visions, of which some have been given,
were but anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse
opened of childhood (as being its reaction).  In this
SECOND part, returning from that anticipation, I retrace
an abstract of my boyish and youthful days, so far as
they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences
in worlds more shadowy. 
Upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and
twenties over every thousand years, fell too powerfully
and too early the vision of life. The horror'of life
mixed itself already in earliest youth with the heavenly
sweetness of life; that grief, which one in a hundred
has sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect'f life in its closing stage, for me shed its dews as a
prelibation upon the'fountains of life whilst yet sparkling to the morning sun.  I saw from afar and from
before what I was to see from  behind.  Is this the
description of an early youth passed in the shades of
gloom?   No; but of a youth passed' in the divinest
happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have)
the passion, without which there is no reading of the
legend and superscription upon man's'brow, if he is
not (as most are deafer than the grave to every deep
note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves of.
human life, he will know that the rapture of life (or
17




258.      A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
anything which by approach can merit that name) does
not arise, unless as perfect music arises, music of
-Mozart or Beethoven, by the confluence of the mighty
and terrific discords with the subtile concords. Not by
contrast, or as reciprocal'foils, do these elements act,
which is the feeble conception of many, but by union.
rhey are the sexual forces in music: "male and female
created he them " and these mighty antagonists do not
put forth their- hostilities by repulsion, but by deepest
attraction.
As " in to-day already walks to-morrow," so in the
past. experience of a youthful life may be seen dimly
the future. The collisions with alien interests or hostile
views, of a child, boy, or very young man, so insulated
as each of these is sure to be,- those aspects of opposition which' such a person can occupy,- are limited by
the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connection
along which he is able to radiate any essential influence
whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others.
Circumstances may magnify, his importance for the
moment; but, after all, any cable which he carries out
upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud-arising.
Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an
adult or responsible man with the circles around him,
as life advances. The net-work of these relations is a
thousand times moie intricate, the jarring of these intricate relations a thousand times more frequent, and
the vibrations a thousand times harsher which these
jarrings diffuse. This truth is felt beforehand mis.
givingly and in troubled vision, by a young man who
stands upon the threshold of manhood.  One earliest
instinct of fear and horror would darken his spirit, if 4
~;...............;,:,:.......'




OF AN ENGLISHI OPIUM-EATER.       259,ould be revealed to itself and self-questioned at the
moment of birth: a second instinct of the same nature'would again pollute that tremulous mirror, if the
moment were as punctually marked as physical birth is
marked, which dismisses him finally upon the tides of
absolute self-control. A dark ocean would seem. the
total expanse of life from the first; but far darker and
more appalling would seem that interior and second
chamber of the ocean which called him away forever
from  the direct accountability of others.  Dreadful
would be the morning which should say, "Be thou a
human child incarnate;" but more dreadful the morning
which should say, " Bear thou henceforth the sceptre of
thy self-dominion through life, and. the passion of life!"
Yes, dreadful would be both; but without a basis of the
dreadful there is no perfect rapture. It is a part through
the sorrow of life, growing out of dark events, that this
basis of awe and solemn darkness slowly accumulates.
That I have illustrated.  But, as life expands, It is more
through the strife which besets us, strife from conflicting
opinions, positions, passions, interests, that the funereal
ground settles and deposits itself, which sends upward
the dark lustrous brilliancy through the jewel of life,
else revealing a pale and superficial glitter. Either the
human: being must suffer and struggle as the price of a
more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow, and
without intellectual revelation.
Through accident it was. in part, an(; where through
no accident but my own nature, not through features of
it at all painful to recollect, that constantly in early'life
(that is, from boyish days until eighteen, when, by going
to,: Oxford, practically I became my own: master) I uas




260        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle, with some
person or body of persons, that sought, like the Roman
retiarius, to throw a net ot deadly coercion or constraint
over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom.'The
steady rebellion upon my part in one half was a mere
human reaction of justifiable indignation; but in the
-other half it was the struggle of a conscientious nature,
- disdaining to feel it as any mere right or discretional
privilege,- no, feeling it as the noblest of duties to
resist, though it should be mortally, those that would
have enslaved me, and to retort scorn upon those that
would have putmy head below their feet. Too much,
even in later life, I have perceived, in men that pass for
good men, a disposition to degrade (and if possible to
degrade through self-degradation) those in whom unwillingly they feel any weight of oppression to themselves, by commanding qualities of intellect or character.
They respect you: they are compelled to do so, and
they hate to doso. Next, therefore, they seek to throw
off the sense of this oppression, and to take vengeance
for it, by cooperating with any unhappy accidents in
your life, to inflict a sense of humiliation upon you, and
(if possible) to force you into becoming a consenting
party to that humiliation..0, wherefore is it that those
who presume to call themselves the "friends" of this
man or- that woman are so often those, above all others.
whom in the hour of death that man or woman is-most
likely to salute with the valediction-Would God I had
never seen your face?
In citing one or two cases of these early struggles, I
have chiefly in view the effect of these upon my subsequent vibions under the reign of opium. And this induSI




02 AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        26
gent reflection should -accompany the mature readel
through all such records of boyish inexperience. A
good-tempered man, who is also acquainted with the
world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of
servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright
simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in
the science of worldly address, cannot always evade
without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this man
ner may, it is true, be reconciled with firmness in the
matter; but not easily by a young person who wants
all the appropriate resources of knowledge, of adroit
and guarded language, for making his good temper
available. Men are, protected from  insult and wrong,
not merely by their own skill, but also, in the absence
of any skill at all, by the general spirit of forbearance
to which society has trained all those whom they are
likely to meet. But boys meeting with no such forbearance or training in other boys, must sometimes be
thrown upon feuds in. the ratio of-their own-firmness,
much more than in the ratio of any natural proneness
to quarrel. Such a subject, however, will be best illustrated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds.
The first, but merely transient and playful, nor worth
noticing at all, but for its subsequent resurrection undei
other and awful coloring in my dreams, grew out of -an
imaginary slight, as I viewed it, put upon me by one of
my guardians..I had four guardians; and the one of
these- who had the most knowledge and talent of the
whole —a banker, living about a hundred miles from my.~home-had invited me, when eleven years old, to his
house. His eldest daughter, perhaps a year younger
than myself, wore at that time upon her very love[l




262        A: SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
face the most angelic expression of character and temper that I have almost ever seen. Naturally, I fell in
love with her. It seems absurd to say so; and the
more:so, because two children more absolutely innocent
-than we were cannot be imagined, neither of us having
ever been at any school; )but the simple truth is, that in
the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And
the proof that I was so showed itself in three separate
modes: I kissed her glove on any rare occasion whenI I
found it lying on a table; secondly, I looked out for
some excuse to be jealous of her; and,' thirdly, I did
my very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the
quarrel for was the luxury of a reconciliation; a hill
cannot be had, you know, without going to the expense
of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of a
moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet how,
but through such a purgatory, could one win- the -paradise of her returning smiles? All this, however, came
to nothing; and simply because-she positively would
not quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because
there was no decent subject for such a passion, -unless
it had settled upon an old music-master, whom lunacy
itself could not adopt as a rival., The:quarrel, meantime, which never prospered with:the daughter, silently
kindled on my part towards the father. H is' offence was
this. At dinner, I naturally-placed myself by the side
of:M1., and it gave me great pleasure to touch iher hand
at intervals. As M. was, my cousin, though:twice or
even three times removed, I did not feeL it taking too
great a liberty:in this little act of tenderness. No- aattelt
if three thousand times removed, I said-, my cousIP ismy cousin; nor had I very much: designed to conceal the




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER;       263
act;-or if so, rather on her account than my own. Une
evening, however, papa observed my manceuvre. Did
he seem  displeased?  Not at all;  he even (onde
scended to smile. But the next day he placed. M. on
the side opposite to myself. In one respect this was
really an improvement, because it gave.me a better
view of my cousin's sweet countenance.   But then
there was the loss of the hand to be considered, and
secondly there was the affront. It was clear that vengeance must be had. Now, there was but one thing in
this world that I could do even decently; but that I
could do admirably. This was writing Latin hexameters. Juvenal-though it was not very much of him
that I had then read' seemed to me a divine model.
The inspiration of wrath spoke through him as through
a Hebrew.prophet. The same inspiration spoke now'in
me. Facit indignatio versum, said Juvenal.  And it
must be owned that indignation has never made such
good verses since as she did in that day.  But. still,
even to me, this agile passion proved a Muse of genial
inspiration for a couple of paragraphs; and one line I
will mention as worthy to have taken its place. in
Juvenal himself. I say this without. scruple, having
not a shadow of vanity, nor, on the other hand, a shadow
of false modesty connected with such boyish accotmnplish.
ments. The poem opened thus:
"Te nemis austerum sacrse qui foedera mensa
Diruis, insector Satyrw reboante flageilo."
But the line which I insist upon as of Roman strength
was the closing one of the next sentence. The general
Pffect of the sentiment was, that my clamorous wrath




264         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
should make- its way -even into ears that' were past
nearing
"   ---  mea sSva querela
Auribus insidet ceratis, auribus etsi
Non audituris hybhern& nocte procellam."
The power, however, which inflated my verse, soon
collapsed; having been soothed, from the very first, by
finding, that except in this one instance at the dinnertable, which probably had. been viewed as an indecorum,
no further restraint, of any kind whatever, was meditated upon my intercourse with M. Besides, it was too
ainful to lock up good verses in one's own solitary
breast:. Yet how could I shock the sweet'filial heart
of -my cousin by a fierce lampoon or stylites against
ner father, had Latin even figured amongst her accom9lishments? Then it occurred to' me that -the verses
might be shown to:the father.. But:was'there riot
something treacherous in gaining a man's approbation
under a mask to a satire upon himself?  Or would.he
have always understood me'? For one person, a year
after, took the sacrce mensme (by which I had meant the
sanctities of hospitality) to mean the sacramental table. And on consideration, I began to suspect that
many,people would: pronounce myself.the party who:had violated: the. holy, ties of hospitality, which are
equally binding on guest as on host. Inddlence, which
sometimes comes in aid of good impulses as well as
bad, favored these relenting thoughts.i  The society
of M. did still' more to wean me from further efforts
of satire; and, finally, my Latin poem  remained a
torso  But, upon the. whole, nmy. guardian had a narrow escape of descending to posterity in a disad-an



OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        265
tag ousis ight, haa he rolled down to it through my
hexameters.
Here was a,,ase of merely playful feud. But the
same talent of Latin verses soon after connected me with
a real feud, that harassed my mind more than would be
supposed, and precisely by this agency, namely, that it
arrayed one set of feelings -against another. It divided
my mind, as by domestic feud, against itself. About a
year after returning from the visit to my guardian's,
and when I must have been nearly completing my'
twelfth year, I was sent to a great public school.
Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys so great
an advantage.  I condemned,'and do condemn, the
practice of sometimes sending out into such stormy
exposures those who are as yet too young, too dependent on female gentleness, and endowed with' sensibilities too exquisite. But at nine or ten the masculine
energies of the character are beginning to be developed;
or if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the-bracing intercourse of a great English
classical school.  Even -the selfish are forced into
accommodating themselves to a public standard of
generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule
of manliness. I was myself at two public schools; and
I think with gratitude of the benefit which I reaped
from both, as also I think with gratitude cf the upright
guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so
effectually.  But the small private schools which 1
witnessed for brief periods, containing thirty to, forty
boys, were mode.s of ignoble manners as respected
some part, of the juniors, and of favoritism  amongst
the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public jus.




266        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
tice so broadly exemplified as in an English school.
There is not in the universe such an areopagus for fair
play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English mob, or one of the English time-honored public
schools.  But my own first introduction to such an
establishment was under peculiar and contradictory cir.
cumstances. When my "rating," or graduation in the
school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to
speak astronomically) was taken -by the proficiency in
Greek.   But I could then barely construe books so
easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was
considered.quite well enough for my age; but still it
caused me to be placed three steps below the highest
-rank in the school.  Within one week, however, my
talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered
strength and expansion, became known. I was honored
as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Not
properly belonging to the flock of the head master, but
to the leading section of the second, I was now
weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which at first grew nothing but
a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart, still
-brooding upon solitude;  Within six weeks this had.
changed. The approbation, indeed, continued, and the
public testimony of it.  Neither would there, in the
ordinary course, have been any painful reaction from
jealousy, or fretful resistance to the soundness of my
pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to some of
my school-fellows, that I, who had no male relatives but
military men, and those in India, could not have benefited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, the head
master was at that time dissatisfied with some points in




OF AN ENGLJ JH OPIUM-EATER.      267
the progress of his head form; and, as it soon appeared.
was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy
of my verses at twelve, by comparison with theirs at
seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. I had observed him
sometimes pointing to myself; and was perplexed at
seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what
French reporters call "sensation," in these young men,
whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys
that were called young men, men that were reading
Sophocles  (a name that'carried with it the sound of
something seraphic to my ears), - and who never had
vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself.
The day was come, however, when all that would be
changed.  One of these leaders strode, up to me in
the public play-grounds, and delivering a blow on my
shoulder, which was not.intended to hurt me, but as a
mere formula of introduction, asked me "What the
d-1 I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying
other people in that manner? Were other people to
have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all,
were horribly bad?"  There might have been some
difficulty in returning an answer to this address, but
none was required. I was briefly admonished to see
that I wrote worse for the future, or else -. At this
aposiopesis, I looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he
filled up the chasm by saying that he would "annihilate" me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such
a demand-? I was to write worse than my own standard, which, by his account of my verses, must be difficult; and I was to write worse than himself, which
might be impossible. My feelings revolted, it may be
supposed against so arrogant a demand, unless it had




268        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
been far otherwise expressed; and on the next occasio.
for sending up verses, so far from attending to the orders
issued, I double-shotted my guns; double applause de-scended on myself; but I remarked, with some awe
though not repenting of what I had done, that double
confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies.
Amongst them loomed out in the distance my " annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but
with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He
took an early opportunity of paying his respects to
me, saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing
your worst "  " No," I replied; "I call it writing my
best."  The annihilator, as it turned out, was really
a good-natured young man; but he soon went off to
Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I
continued to wage war for nearly a year.  And yet,
for a word spoken with kindness, I would have resigned
the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly praise sounded sweet in my ears
also. But that was nothing Dy comparison with what
btood on the other side.  I detested distinctions that
were connected with mortification to others. And, even
if I could have got over that, the eternal feud fretted
and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long
been a mere reflected ray from  a departed sunset.
Bat peace, and freedom from  strife, if love were no
longer possible (as so rarely it is in this world), was
the absolute necessity of my heart. To contend with
somebody was still my fate; how to escape the con.
tention I could not see; and yet for itsFlf, and the
deadly passions into which it forced me,  hated and




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.       269
loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction
and internal feud of my own mind, that I could not
altogether condemn the upper boys. I was made a
handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time,
if I had an advantage in one accomplishment, which is
all a matter of accident, or peculiar taste and feeling
they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over ma
in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek, and of choral
Greek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at their
hatred of myself. Yet still, as they had chosen to
adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel that I
had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting mny head;
but itlasted nearly a year, and it did not close before
several amongst my public' enemies had become my
private friends. They were much older, but they invited
me to the houses of their friends, and showed me a
respect which deeply affected me, - this respect having
more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had exhibited, than to the splendor of my verses. And, indeed,
these had rather drooped, from  a natural accident;
several persons of my own class had- formed the
practice of asking me to write verses for them.  1
could not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were
the same for all of us, it was not possible to take so
many crops off the ground without starving the quality
of all.
Two years and a half from this time, I was again at
a public school of ancient foundation. Now I was
myself one of the three who formed the highest:lass.
Now 1 myself was familiar with Sophocles. whc once




270        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
had been bo shadowy a liame in my ear. But, strange
to say, now, in my sixteenth year, I cared nothing at
all for the glory of Latin verse. All the business of
school was light and trivial in my eyes. Costing me
not an effort, it could not engage any part of my
attention; that was now swallowed up altogether by the
literature of my native land. I still reverenced the
Grecian drama, as always I must. But. ele I cared
little then for classical pursuits. A deeper spell had
mastered me; and I lived only in those bowers where
deeper passions spoke.
Here, however, it was that began another and more
important struggle. I was drawing near to seventeen,
and, in a year after that, would arrive the usual time
for going to Oxford. To Oxford my guardians made
no objection; and they readily agreed to make the
allowance then universally regarded as the minimum
for an Oxford student, namely, ~200 per'annum. But
they insisted, as' a previous condition, that I shouldmake a positive and definite choice, of a profession.
Now, I was well aware, that, if I did make such a.
choice, no law existed, nor could any obligation be
created through deeds or signature, by which I could
finally be compelled into keeping my engagement. But
this evasion did not suit me. Here, again, I felt indigo
nantly that the principle of the attempt was unjust.
The object was certainly to do me service by saving
moiey, since, if I selected the bar as my profession,
it was contended by- some persons (misinformed, however), that not Oxford, but a special pleader's office
would be my proper destination; but I cared not for
arguments of that sort. Oxford I was determined to




OF AN- ENGLTSH OPIUM-EATER.       271
nake nry home; and also to bear my future course
atterly untrammelled by promises that I might repent,
Soon came the catastrophe of this struggle. A little
before my seventeenth birth-day, I walked off, one
lovely summer morning, to North Wales, rambled there
for months, and, finally, under some obscure hopes of
raising money on my personal security, I went up to
London.   Now -I was in my eighteenth year, and
during this period it was that I passed tlroagh that
trial of severe distress, of which I gave some account
in. my former Confessions. Having a motive, however,
for glancing backwards briefly at that period in -the
present series, I will do so at this point.
I saw in one journal an insinuation that the incidents
in the preliminary narrative were' possibly without
foundation. To such an expression of mere. gratuitous
mndlignity, as it happened to be supported by no one
aigument, except a remark, apparently absurd, but
certainly false, I did not condescend to answer. In
reality, the possibility had never occurred to me that
any person of judgment would seriously suspect me of
taking liberties with that part of the work, since,.though no one of the parties concerned but myself
stood in so central a position to the circumstances as
to be acquainted with all of them, many were acquainted
with each separate section' of the iiemoir.  Relays
of witnesses might have been summoned to mount
guard, as it were, upon the accuracy of, each particular
in the whole succession of incidents; and some' of
these people had an interest, more or less strong,-in
exposing any deviation from the strictest letter of the
truth, had it been- in their power to do so  It is now




272         A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
twenty-two years since I saw the objection here alluded
to; and   in  saying  that I did not condescend      to
notice it, the  reader must not find any reason for
taxing me with a blamable haughtiness.      But every
man is entitled to be haughty when his veracity is
impeached; and still more' when it is impeached by a
dishonest objection, or, if not that, by an objection
which argues a carelessness of attention almost amounting to dishonesty, in a case where it was meant to
sustain an imputation of falsehood.   Let a man read
carelessly, if he will, but not where he is meaning to
use his reading for a purpose of wounding another man's
honor.   Having   thus, by -twenty-two years' silence,
sufficiently expressed my -contempt for the slander,*
I now  feel myself at liberty to draw   it into notice,
for the sake, inter alia, of showing in how rash a spirit
malignity often works.    In the preliminary account
of certain boyish adventures which had exposed me
to suffering of a kind not commonly incident to persons
in my station in life, and leaving behind a temptation
to the use of opium under certain arrears of. weakness,
I had occasion to notice a disreputable attorney in
London, who showed me some attentions, partly on my
* Being constantly almost an absentee from London, and very
often from other great cities, so as to command oftentimes no favorainle opportunities for overlooking the great mass of public jourrals,
it is possible enough that other slanders of the same tenor may
have existed. I speak of what met my own eye, or was accidentally reported to me; but, in fact, all of us are exposed to this evil
of calumnies lurking unseen, for no degree of energy, and no
excess of disposable time, would enable any man to exercise' this
sort of vigilant police over all journals. Better, therefore, tranquillv to leave all such malice to confoiind itself.




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        273
own accouut as a boy of sone expectations, but much
more with the purpose of fastening his professional
grappling-hooks upon the young Earl of A —  t, my
former companion, and my present correspondent. This
man's house was slightly described, and, with more
minuteness, I had exposed some interesting traits in
his household economy. A _question, therefore, naturally arose in several people's curiosity -'Where was
this house situated? and the' more so because I had
pointed a renewed attention to it by-saying, that on
that very evening (namely, the, evening on which that
particular page of the Confessions was written) I had
visited the street, looked up at the windows, and,.instead of the gloomy desolation reigning there when
myself and a little girl were the sole nightly tenants, -
sleeping, in' fact (poor freezing creatures that we both
were), on the floor of the attorney's law-chamber, and
making a pillow out of his infernal parchments, - I had
seen, with pleasure, the evidences of comfort, respectability, and domestic animation, in the lights and stir
prevailing through different stories of the house. Upon
this, the upright critic told -his- readers that I had
described the house as standing in Oxford-street, and
then appealed to their own knowledge of that street
whether such a house could be so situated. Why not
-he neglected to tell us. The houses at the east end
of Oxford-street are certainly of too small an order
to meet my account of the attorney's house; but why
should it be at the east end?  Oxford-street is a mile
and a quarter long, and, being built continuously on bothf
sides, finds room for houses of many classes. Meantime it happens'that, although the true house was
18




274        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
most obscurely indicated, any house whatever in Oxford-street was most luminously excluded. In all the
immensity of London there was but one single street
that. could be challenged by an attentive reader of the
Confessions as peremptorily not the street of the attorney's house, and that one was Oxford-street; for, in
speaking of my own renewed acquaintance with the
outside of this house, I used some expression implying
that, in order to make such a visit.of reconnoissance,
I had turned aside from  Oxford-street. The matter
is a perfect trifle in itself, but it is no trifle in a
question affecting. a writer's accuracy. If in a thing
so. absolutely. impossible to be forgotten as the true
situation of a house, painfully memorable to a man's
feelings, from being the scene of boyish distresses the
most exquisite, nights passed in the misery of cold,
and hunger preying upon him, both night and day, in a
degree which very many would not have survived,he,. when retracing his school-boy annals, could have
shown indecision, even far more dreaded inaccuracy,
in identifying the house, - not one syllable after thati
which he could have said on any other subject,
would have' won any confidence, or deserved any,
from a judicious reader.,1 may now mention-the
Herod being dead whose persecutions I had reason to
fear -that the house in question' stands in Greek
street on the west, and is the house on that side nearest to Soho-square,' but without looking into. the
square.  This it was hardly safe to mention at the
date of the published Confessions. It wasmy private
opinion, indeed, that there were probably twenty-five
chances to one in favor of my friend the attorney




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-Ei.TER.       27J
having been by that tine hanged.    But then this
argued inversely; one chance to twenty-five that my
friend might be unhanged, and knocking about the
streets of London; in which case -it would have been
a perfect god-send to him that here lay an opening (of
my contrivance, not his) for requesting the opinion of
a jury on the amount of solatium due to his wounded
feelings in an action on the passage in the Confessions.
To have indicated- even the street would have been
enough; because there could surely be but- one such
Grecian in Greek-street, or but one that realized the
other conditions of the unknown quantity. There was
also a separate danger not absolutely so laughable as
it sounds. Me there was little chance that the attorney should meet; but my book he might easily have
met (supposing always that the warrant of Sus. per
coll: had not yet on his account travelled down to
Newgate).   For he was literary; admired literature;
and, as a lawyer, he wrote on some subjects fluently;
might he not publish his Confessions?  Or,'which
would be worse, a supplement to mine, printed so as
exactly to match? In which case I should have had
the same affliction that Gibbon the historian dreaded so
much, namely, that of seeing a refutation of himself, and
his own answer to the refutation, all bound up in one
and the same self-combating'volume.  Besides, he
would have cross-examined me before the public, in
Ofd Bailey style; no- story, the most straightforward
that ever was told, could be sure to stand that. And
my readers might be left in a state of painful doubt,
whether he might not, after all, have been a model of
suffering innocence —I (to say the kindest thing posr




276        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
sible) plagued with the natural treacheries of a school.
boy's memory.  In taling leave of this case and the
remembrances connected with it, let me say that,
although really believing in. the probability of the
attorney's having at least found his wav to Australia,
I had no satisfaction in thinking of that result. I knew
my friend to be the very perfection of a scamp. And
in the running account between us (I mean, in the
ordinary sense, as to money), the balance could not be
in his favor; since I, on receiving a sum  of money
(considerable in the eyes of us both), had transferred
pretty nearly the whole of it-to him, for the purpose
ostensibly held out to me (but of course a hoax) of
purchasing certain law "stamps;" for he was then
pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various
Jews who lent money to young heirs, in some trifling
proportion on my own insignificant account, but much
more truly on the account- of Lord A- t, my young
-friend. On the other side, he had given to me simply the relics of his breakfast-table, which itself was
hardly more than a relic. But in this he was- not to
blame. He could not give to me what he had not -for
himself, nor sometimes for the poor_ starving child
whom  I now suppose to have been his illegitimate
daughter. So desperate was the running fight, yard;
-arm to yard-arm, which he maintained with creditors
fierce as famine and hungry as the grave,-so deep
also was his horror (I know not for which bf the various
reasons supposable) against falling into a prison, - that
he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in the
same house. That expense of itself must have pressed
heavily in London, where you pay half a crown at least




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        277
for a bed that would cost only a shilling in the pro.rinces. In the midst of his knaveries, and, what were
even more shocking to my remembrance, his confidential discoveries in his rambling conversations of
knavish designs (not always pecuniary), there was a
light of wandering amisery in his eye, at times, which
affected me afterwards at-intervals, when I recalled it
in the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the
so0emn tranquillities of Oxford.  That of itself was
interesting; the man was worse by far than he had
been meant to be; he had not the mind that reconciles
itself to evil. Besides, he respected scholarship, which
appeared by the deference he generally showed to
myself, then about seventeen; he had an interest in
literature,-that argues' something good.; and was
pleased at any time, or even cheerful, when I turned
the conversation upon books; nay, he' seemed touched
with emotion when I quoted some sentiment noble and
impassioned from  one of the great poets, and would
ask me to repeat it.  He would have been a man ofmemorable energy, and for good purposes, had it not
been for his agony of conflict with pecuniary embarrassments. These probably had commenced in some
fatal compliance with temptation arising out of funds.
confided to him by a client.  Perhaps he had gained
fifty guineas for a moment of necessity, and had sacriiced for that trifle only the serenity and the comfort
of a life.  Feelings of relenting kindness it was not
in my nature to refuse in such a case; and I wished
to      *       *      *        *      *       *
But I.never succeeded in tracing his steps through the'-ilderness of Londr -until some years back, when j




3278       A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
ascertained that he was dead. Generally speaking, thk
few people whom I have disliked in this world were
flourishing people, of good repute. Whereas the knaves
whom 1 have known, one and all, and by no means few,
I think of with pleasure and kindness.
Heavens! when I look back to the sufferings which
I have witnessed or heard of, even from this one br.if
London experience, I say, if life could throw open its
long suites of chambers to our eyes from some station
beforehand,-if, from some secret stand, we could look by
anticipation along its vast corridors, and aside into the
recesses opening upon them from either hand, -halls of
tragedy or chambers of retribution, simply in that small
wing and no more of the great caravanserai which we
ourselves shall haunt,- simply in that narrow tract of
time, and no more, where we ourselves shall range,
and confining our gaze to those, and no others, for
whom personally we shall be interested, -.what a recoil
we should suffer of horror in our estimate of life!
What if those sudden catastrophes, or those inexpiable
afflictions, which have already descended upon the
people within my own knowledge, and almost below my
own eyes, all of them now gone past, and some long
past, had been thrown open before me as a secret exhibition when first I and they stood within the vestibule
of morning hopes, — when the calamities themselves had
hardly begun to gather in their elements of possibility,
and when some of the parties to them were as yet no
more than infants! The past viewed not as. the past
but by a spectator who steps back ten years deeper intc
the rear, in order tnat he may regard it as a future 
the calamity of 1840 contemplated from the station of




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        279
1830, - the doom  that rang the knell of happineas
viewed from a point of time when as yet it-was neither
feared nor would even have been intelligible,-the
name that killed in 1843, which in 1835 would have
struck no vibration upon the heart, - the portrait that
on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have been
admired by you with a pure disinterested admiration,
but which, if sien to-day, would draw forth an involuntary groan, - cases such as these are strangely moving
for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep sensibility.
As the hastiest of improvisations, accept, fair reader
(for you it is that will chiefly feel such an invocation
of the past), three or four illustrations from my own
experience.
Who is this distinguished-looking young woman, with
her eyes drooping, and the shadow of a dreadful shock
yet fresh upon every feature? Who is the elderly lady,
with her eyes flashing fire? Who is the downcast
child of sixteen? What is that torn paper lying at
their feet? Who is the writer? Whom does the paper
concern?  Ah! if' she, if the..central figure in the
group-twenty-two at the moment when she is revealed
to.us -could, on her happy birth-day at sweet seventeen, have seen the image of herself five years onwards,
just as we see it now, would she have prayed for life
as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have!
prayed to be. taken. from the evil'to come - to be taken
aw.y one evening, at least, before this day's sun arose 
It is true, she still wears a look of gentle pride, and a
relic of that noble smile which belongs to her that
suffers-an injury which many times over she would
tiave died sooner than inflict. Womanly prid<e lefuses




280        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
itself before witnesses to the total prostration of the
blow; but, for all that, you may see that she longs to
be'left alone, and that her tears -will flow without
restraint when she is so. This room'is her pretty
boudoir, in which, till to-night - poor thing! - she has
been glad and happy. There stands her miniature conservatory, and there expands her miniature-library; as
we circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to
regard all female libraries in- the light of miniatures.
None of these will ever rekindle a smile on her face;
and there, beyond, is her music, which only of all that
she possesses will now become dearer to her than ever;
but not, as once, to feed a self-mocked pensiveness, or
to cheat a half visionary sadness. She will be -sad,
indeed. But she is one of those that will suffer in'
silence. - Nobody will ever detect her failing in any
point of duty, or querulously seeking the support in
others which she can find for herself in this solitary
room. Droop she will not in the sight of men; and,
for all beyond, nobody has any concern with that,
except God. You shall hear what becomes of her,
before we take our departure; but now let me tell you
what has happened. In the main outline I am sure
you guess already, without aid of mine, for we leadeneyed men, in such cases, see nothing by comparison
with you our quick-witted sisters.  That haughtylooking lady, with the Roman cast of features, who must
once have been strikingly handsome, - an Agrippina,
even yet, in a favorable presentation,-is the younger
lady's aunt.  She, it is rumored, once sustained, in
her younger days, some injury of that same cruel
nature which has this day assailed her niece, and ever




,QF AN ENGLISH OP1UM-EATER..      281
since she has worn an air of disdain, not altogether
unsupported by real dignity towards men.  This aunt
it was that tore the letter which lies upon the floor. It
deserved to be torn; and yet she that had the best right
to do so would not have torn it. That letter was an
elaborate attempt on the part of an accomplished young
man to release himself from sacred engagements. What
need was there to argue the case of such engagements?
Coul4 it have been requisite with pure female dignity to
plead anything, or do more than look an indisposition to
fulfil themn  The aunt is now'noving towards the
door, which I am glad to see; and she is followed by
that pale, timid girl of sixteen, a cousin, who feels the
case profoundly, but is' too young and shy to offer an
intellectual sympathy.
One only person in this world there is who could
to-night have been a supporting friend to our young
sufferer, and that is her dear, loving twin-sister, that
for eighteen years read -and wrote, thought and sang,
slept and breathed, with the dividing-door open forever
between their bed-rooms, and never once a separation
between their hearts; but she is in -a far-distant land.
Who else is there at her call?  Except God, nobody.
Her aunt had somewhat sternly admonished her, though
still with a- relenting in her eye as she glanced aside
et the expression in her niece's face, that she must'call pride to her assistance."  Ay, true; but pride,
though a strong ally in public, is apt in private to turn
ts treacherous as the worst of those against whom she
is invoked. -How could it be dreamed, by a person of
sense that a brilliant young man, of merits various and
enlinent, in spite of his baseness, to whom, for nearly




n2d      A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
two years, this young woman had given her whole con
fiding love, might be dismissed from a heart like hers on
the earliest summons of pride,- simply because she
herself had been dismissed from his, or seemed to have
been dismissed, on a summons of mercenary calculation?
Look! now that she is relieved from the weight of an
unconfidential presence, she has sat for two hours with
her head buried in her hands, At last she rises to look
for something. A thought has struck her; and, taking
a little golden key which hangs by a chain within her
bosom, she searches for something locked up amongst
her few jewels. What is it  It is a Bible exquisitely
illuminated, with a letter attached by some pretty silken
artifice- to the blank leaves at the end. This letter is a
beautifl' record, wisely and pathetically composed, ot
maternal anxiety still burning strong in death, and
yearning, when all objects beside were fast fading from
her eyes, after one parting act of communion with the
twin darlings of her heart. Both were thirteen years
old, within a week or two, as on the night before her
death' they sat weeping by the bedside of their mother,
and hanging on her lips, now for farewell whispers and
now for farewell kisses. They both knew that, as her
strength had permitted during the latter month of her
life, she had thrown the last anguish of love in her
beseeching heart into a letter of counsel to themselves.
Through this, of which each sister had a copy, she
trusted long to converse with her orphans. And the
last promise which she had entreated on this evening
from both was, that in either of two contingencies they
would review her counsels, and the passages to which
shie pointed their attention in the Scriptures; namely




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        283
nrst; in the event of any calamity, that, for one sister or
for both, should overspread their paths with total darkness; and, secondly, in the event of life flowing in too'profound a stream of prosperity, so as to threaten them
with an alienation of interest from all spiritual'objects.
She had not concealed that, of-these two extreme cases,
she'would prefer for her own children the first. And now
had that case arrived, indeed, which she in spirit had
desired to meet. Nine years ago, just as the silvery,
voice of a dial in the dying lady's bed-room was striking nine, upon a summer evening, had the last visual
ray streamed from her seeking eyes -upon her orphan
twins, after which, throughout the night, she had slept,
away into heaven. Now again had come a summer
evening memorable for unhappiness; now again the
daughter thought of those dying lights of love which
streamed at sunset from the closing eyes of her mother;
again, and just as she went back in thought to this
image, the same silvery-voice of the dial sounded nine
o'clock. Again she remembered her mother's dying
request; again her own tear-hallowed promise,- and
with her heart in her-mother's grave she now rose to
fulfil it. Here, then, when this solemn recurrence to a
testamentary counsel has ceased to be a mere office of
duty towards the departed, having taken the shape of a
consolation for herself, let us pause.
Now, fair -companion in this exploring voyage of
inquest into hidden scenes, or forgotten scenes of human
life, perhaps it might be instructive to direct our
glasses upon the false, perfidious lover. It might.. Butdo not let us do so. We might like him better, or pity




284        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
him more, than either of us would desire.  Ilis name
and memory have long since dropped out of every.
body's thoughts.  Of prosperity, and (what is more
important) of internal peace, he is reputed to have had
no gleam from the moment when he betrayed his faith,
and in one day threw away the jewel of good conscience, and "a pearl richer than all his tribe."  But,
however that may be, it is certain that, finally, he
became a wreck; and of any hopeless wreck it is painful to talk, - much more so, when through him others
also became wrecks.
Shall we, then, after an interval of nearly two years
has passed'over the young lady in the boudoir, look in
again upon her? You hesitate, fair friend; and I myself hesitate. For in fact she also has become a wreck;
and it would grieve us both to see her altered. At the
end of twenty-one months she retains hardly a vestige of
resemblance to the fine young woman we' saw on that
unhappy' evening, with her aunt and cousin. -On consideration, therefore, let us do this.-We will direct our
glasses to her room at a point of time about six weeks
further on. Suppose this time gone; suppose her now
dressed for her grave, and placed in' her coffin. The
advantage of that is, that though no change can restore
the ravages of the past,-yet (as often is found to happen
with-young persons) the expression has revived from her
girlish years. The child-like aspect has revolved, and
settled back upon her features.  The wasting away of
the flesh is less apparent in the face; and one. might
imagine that in this sweet marble countenance was
seen the very same upon which, eleven years ago, her
mother's darkening eyes had lingered to the last, uptil




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUDM-EATER.       285
c.ouds had swallowed up the vision of her beloved twins.
Yet, if that wete in part a fancy, this, at least, is no
fancy,.-that not only much of a child-like truth and
simplicity has reinstated itself in the temple of her now
reposing features, but also that tranquillity and perfect
peace, such as are appropriate to eternity, but which
from the living countenance had taken their flight forever, on that memorable evening when we looked in
upon the impassioned group, —upon the towering and
denouncing aunt, the sympathizing but silent cousin,
the poor, blighted niece, and the wicked'letter lying in
fragments at their feet.
Cloud, that hast revealed to us this young creature
and her blighted hopes, close up again.  And now, a
few years later,-not more than four or five,-give
back to us the latest arrears of the changes which thou
concealest within thy draperies.  Once more, "open
sesame!" and show us a third generation. Behold a
lawn islanded with thickets.  How perfect is the verdure; how rich the blossoming shrubberies that screen
with verdurous walls from the possibility of intrusion,
whilst by their own wandering line of distribution they
shape, and umbrageously embay, what one might call
lawny saloons and vestibules, sylvan galleries and
closets! Some of these recesses, which unlink themselves as fluently as snakes, and unexpectedly as the
shyest nooks, watery cells, and crypts, amongst the
shores of a forest-lake, being formed by the mere
caprices and ramblings of the luxuriant shrubs, are so
small and so quiet that one might fancy them meant
for boudoirs. Here is one that in a less fickle climate
would make the loveliest-of studies for a writer of




286        A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS
breathings from some solitary heart, or of suspiri, fr in
some impassioned memory!    And, opening from one
angle of this embowered study, issues a little narrow
corridor, that, after almost wheeling back upon, itself, in
its playful mazes, finally widens into a little circular
chamber; out of which there is no exit (except back
again by the entrance), small or great; so that, adjacent
to. his study, the writer would command how sweet a
bed-room, permitting him to lie the summer through,
gazing, all night long at the burning host of heaven.
How silent that. would be, at the noon of summer nights
- how grave-like in its quiet! And yet, need there be
asked a stillness or a silence more profound than is felt
at this present noon of day?  One reason for such
peculiar repose, over and above the tranquil character
of the day, and the distance of the place from the highroads, is the outer zone of woods, which almost on every,
quarter invests the shrubberies, swathing them (as one
may express it), belting them  and overlooking them,
from a varying distance of two and three furlongs, so as
oftentimes to keep the winds at a distance. But, however caused and supported, the silence of these fancifu.
lawns and lawny chambers is oftentimes oppressive in the
depths' of summer to people unfamiliar with solitudes,
either mountainous or sylvan; and many would be apt
to suppose that the villa, to which these pretty shrubberies form the chief dependencies, must be untenanted.
But that is not the case. The house is inhabited, and
by its own legal mistress, the proprietress of the whole
domain; and not. at all a silent -mistress, but as noisy as
most little ladies of five years old, for that is her age.
Now, and just as we are speaking, you may hear her




OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.        287
nttle joyous clamor, as she issues from the house. This
way she comes, bounding like a fawn; and- soon she
rushes into the little recess which I pointed out as a
proper study for any man who should be weaving the
deep harmonies of memorial suspiria. But I fancy that
she will soon dispossess it of that character, for her suspiria are not many at this stage ofher life. Now she
comes dancing into. sight; and you see that, if she
keeps the promise of her infancy, she will be an interesting creature to the eye in after life. In other respects,
also, she is an engaging child, — loving, natural, and
wild as any one of her neighbors for some miles round
namely, leverets, squirrels, and ring-doves. But what
will surprise you most is, that, although a child of pure
English blood, she speaks very little English; but more
Bengalee than perhaps you will find it convenient to
construe. That is her ayah, who comes up from behind,
at a pace so different from her youthful mistress's. But,
if their paces are different, in other things they agree
most cordially; and dearly they love each other.  In
reality, the child has passed her whole life in the arms
of this ayah. She remembers nothing elder than her;
eldest of things is the ayah in her eyes; and, if the
ayah should insist on her worshipping herself as the
goddess Railroadina or Steamboatina, that made England, and the sea, and Bengal, it is certain that the
little thing would do so, asking no question but this,whether kissing would do for worshipping.
Every evening at nine o'clock, as the ayah sits by the
little creature lying awake in bed, the silvery tongue of
a dial tolls the hour. Reader, you know-who she is
She is the grand-daughter of her that faded away about




288      A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS, ETC.
sunset in gazing at her twin orphans.  Her name is
Grace. And she is the niece of that elder and once
happy Grace, who spent so much of her happiness in
this very room, but whom, in her utter desolation, we
saw in the boudoir, with the toin.letter at her feet. She
is the daughter of that other -sister, wife to a military
officer who died abroad.  Little Grace never saw her
grandmarfma, nor her lovely-aunt, that was her namesake, nor consciously her mamma. She was born six
months after the death of the elder Grace; and her
mother saw her only through the mists of mortal suffering, which carried her off three weeks after the birth of
her daughter.
This view was taken several years ago; and since
then- the younger Grace, in her turn, is under a cloud
of affliction. But she is still under eighteen; and of
her there may be hopes. Seeing such things in so short
a space of years, for the grandmother died at thirty-two,
we say, -Death we can face: but knowing, as some of
us do, what is human life, which of us is it that without
shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned)
face the hour of birth?




AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.




Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1853, by
TIOKNOR, RIEED, AND FIELDS,
lathe Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachu setts.




P RE FACE
TO
THEI    ENGLISH     EDITION.
THE miscellaneous writifigs which I propose to
lay before the public in this body of selections are
in part to -be regarded as a republication of papers
scattered through lseveral British journals twenty or.
thirty years ago, which papers have been reprinted
in a collective form by an American house of highcharacter in Boston; but in part-they are to be
viewed as entirely new, large sections having been
intercalated in the present edition, and other -changes
made, which, even to the old parts, by giving very
great expansion, give sometimes a character of absolute novelty.:Once, therefore, at home, with the
allowance forthe changes here indicated, and once
in -America, it may be said that these writings have
been in some sense published. But publication is a
great idea never even approximated by the utmost
9




10                      PREFACE.
anxieties of man. Not the Bible, not the little
book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in
European diffusion and currency,* viz., the treatise
" De Imitatione Christi," has yet in any generation
been really published.     Where is the printed book
of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be said
that, after all efforts to publish itself, still it remains,
for the world of possible readers, " as good as manuscript"?    Not to insist, howeverq upon any romantic rigor in constructing this idea, and abiding
by the ordinary standard of what is understood by
publication, it is probable that, in many cases, my
own papers must have failed in reaching even this.
For they were printed as contributions to journals.
*, Next to the Bible in currency." - That is, next in the fifteenth
century to the Bible of the nineteenth century. The diffusion of
the' De Imitatione Christi" over Christendom-(the idea of Christendom, it must be remembered, not then including any part of
America) anticipated, in 1453, the diffusion of the Bible in 1853.
But why? Through what causes? Elsewhere I have attempted
to.show that this enormous (and seemingly incredible) popularity
of the, De Imitatione Christi" is virtually to be interpreted as
a vicarious popularity of the Bible.. At that time the Bible itself
was a fountain of inspired truth every where sealed up; but a whisper ran through the western nations of Europe that the work of
Thomas a Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth silently
stealing away into light from that interdicted fountain. - This belief (so at least I read the case) led to the prodigious multiplication
of the book, of which not merely the reimpressions, but the sepa.
rate translations, are past all counting; though bibliographers have
undertaken to count them. The book came forward as -an answer
to thb sighing of Christian Europe for light from heaven.. I speak
of Thomas A Kempis as the author; but his claim was disputed.
Gerson was adopted by France as the author; and other local
saints by other nations.




PREFACE                 11
Now, that mode of publication is unavoidably disadvantageous to a writer, except -under unusual
conditions. By its harsh peremptory punctuality, it
drives a man into'hurried writing, possibly into
saying the thing that is not. They won't wait an
hour for you in a magazine or a review; they won't
wait for truth; you may as well reason with the sea,
or a railway train, as in such a case with an editor; and, as it makes no difference whether that sea
which you desire to argue with is the Mediterranean
or the Baltic, so, with that editor and his deafness, it.matters not a straw whether he belong to a northern
or a southern journal. -— Here is one evil of journal
writing-viz., its overmastering precipitation. A
second is, its effect at times in narrowing your
publicity^  Every journal, or pretty nearly so, is understoQd to hold (perhaps in its very title it makes
proclamatton of holding) certain fixed principles in
politics, or possibly religion.  These distinguishing features, which become badges of enmity and
intolerance, all the more intense as they descend
upon narrower and narrower grounds. of separation;
must, at the very threshold, by warning off those
who dissent from them, so far operate to limit your
audience. To take my own case as an illustration:
these present sketches were published in a journal
dedicated to purposes of political change such -as
many people thought, revolutionary. I thought so
myself, and did not go along with its politics. Inevitably that accident shut them out from the knowledge of a. very-large reading class. Undoubtedly
this journal, being ably and conscientiously con



12                      PREFA.CE.
ducted, had-some circulation amongst a neutral class
of readers; and amongst its own class it was poput
lar.  But its own class did not ordinarily occupy
that position in regard to social' influence which
could enable them rapidly to diffuse the knowledge
of a writer.    A  reader whose social standing       is
moderate may communicate his views upon a book
or a writer to his own circle; but his own circle is a
narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having
more leisure and wealth, the intercourse is incon,
ceivably more rapid; so that the publication of any
book which interests them    is secured at once; and
this publishing   influence passes    downwards; but
rare, indeed, is the inverse process of publication
through an influence spreading upwards.
According to the way here described, the papers
now presented to the public, like many another set
of papers nominally published, were not so in any
substantial sense.    Here, at home, they may         be
regarded as still unpublished.* But, in such a case,
At the same time it must not be denied, that, if you lose by a
journal in the way here described, you also gain by it. The jour.
ial gives you the benefit of its own separate audience, that might
else never have heard your name. On the other hand, in such a
ease, the journal secures to you the special enmity of its own pe.
uiliar antagonists. These papers, for instance, of mine, not being
political, were read possibly in a friendly temper by the regular
supporters of the journal that published them. But some of my
own political friends regarded me with displeasure for connecting
myself at all with a reforming journal. And far mee, who would
have been liberal enough to disregard that objection, naturally lost
sight-of me when under occultation to them in a journal which
they never saw.




PREFACE.               13
wh3 were not the papers at once detached from the
journal, and reprinted? In the neglect to do this,
some there are who will read a blamable carelessness
in the author; but, in that carelessness, others will
read a secret consciousness that the papers were of
doubtful value. I have heard, indeed, that some
persons, hearing of this republication, had interpreted the case thus: Within'the last four or five
years, a practice has arisen amongst authors of
gathering together into volumes their own scattered
contributions to periodical literature. Upon that
suggestion, they suppose me suddenly to have remembered that I also had made such contributions;
that mine might be entitled to their chance as well
as those of others; and, accordingly, that on such a
slight invitation ab extra, I had called back into
life what otherwise I had long since regarded as
having already fulfilled its mission, and must doubtless have dismissed to oblivion.
I do not certainly know, or entirely believe, that
any such thing was really said. But, however that
may be, no representation can be more opposed to.
the facts. Never for an instant did I falter in my
purpose of republishing most of the papers which I
had written. Neither, if I myself had been inclined
to forget them, should I have been allowed to do so
by strangers. For it happens that, during the fourteen last years, I have received from many quarters
in England, in Ireland, in the British colonies,
and in the United States, a series of letters expressing a far profounder interest in papers written by
myself than any which I could ever think myself




14                PREFACE.
entitled to look for. Had I, therefore, otherwise cher.
ished no purposes of republication, it now. became
a duty of gratitude and respect to these numerous
correspondents, that I should either republish the
papers in question, or explain why I did not. The
obstacle in fact had been in part the shifting state
of the law which regulated literary property, and
especially the property in periodical literature. But
a far greater difficulty lay in the labor (absolutely
insurmountable to myself) of bringing together from
so many quarters the scattered materials of the collection. This labor, most fortunately, was suddenly
taken off my hands by the eminent house of Messrs
TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, Boston, U. S. To them
I owe my acknowledgments, first of all, for that service: they have brought together a great majority
of my fugitive papers in a series of volumes now
amounting to twelve. And, secondly, I am bound
to mention that they have made me a sharer in the
profits of the publication, called upon to do so by
no law whatever, and assuredly by no expectation
of that sort upon my part.
Taking as the basis of my remarks this collective
American edition, I will here attempt a rude general
classification of all the articles which compose it.
I distribute them grossly into three classes: First,
into that class which proposes primarily to amuse
the reader; but which, in doing-so, may or may not
happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at
which the amusement passes into an impassioned
interest.  Some papers are.merely playful; but
others have a mixed character. These present Auto




PREFACE.               15
biographic Sketches illustrate what I mean. Generally, they pretend to little beyond that sort of
amusement which attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related, moving through a succession of scenes sufficiently varied, that are not
suffered to remain too long upon the eye, and that
connect themselves at every stage with intellectual
objects. But, even here, I do not scruple to claim
from the reader, occasionally, a higher consideration.
At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key.
Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life
where, of necessity, a severe abstraction takes place
from all that could invest him with any alien interest;
no display that might dazzle the reader, nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity
to the future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the
present; nothing on the stage but a solitary infant,
and its solitary combat with grief- a mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something
of the same interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a- maturer age, when the characteristic
features of the individual mind have been unfolded.
And I contend that much more than amusement
ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is
really confidential. It is singular - but many of my
readers will know it for a truth - that vast numbers
of people, though liberated from  all reasonable
motives to self-restraint, cannot be confidentialhave it not in their power to lay aside reserve; and
many, again, cannot be so with particular people.
I have witnessed more than once the case, that a




16                 PREFACE.
young female dancer, at a certain turn of a peculiar
dance, could not- though she had died for it-sustain a free, fluent motion. Aerial chains fell upon
her at one point; some invisible spell (who could say
what?) froze her elasticity.. Even as a horse, at
noonday on an open heath, starts aside from something his rider cannot see; or as the flame within a
Davy lamp feeds upon the poisonous gas up to the
meshes that surround it, but there suddenly is arrested by barriers that no Aladdin will ever dislodge. It
is because a man cannot see and measure these mystical forces which palsy him, that he' cannot deal
with them effectually.  If he were able really to
pierce the haze which so often envelops, even to
himself, his own secret springs of action and reserve, there cannot be a life moving at all under intellectual impulses that would not, through that
single force of absolute frankness, fall within the
reach of a deep,,solemn, and sometimes even of a
thrilling interest. Without pretending to an interest
of this quality, I have done what was possible on my
part towards the -readiest access to such an interest
by perfect sincerity-saying every where nothing
but the truth; and in any case forbearing to say
the whole truth only through consideration for
others.
Into the second class I throw those papers which
address themselves purely to the,understanding as
an insulated faculty; or do so primarily. Let me call
them by the general name of EssAYs. These, as in
other cases of the same kind, must have their value




PREFACE.                17
measured by two separate questions.  A. What
-is the problem, and of what rank in dignity or in
use, which the essay undertakes?   And next,
that point being settled, B. What is the success
obtained-? and (as a separate question) what is the
executive ability displayed in the solution of the
problem? This latter question isfrnaturally no question for myself, as the answer would involve a verdict upon my own merit. But, generally, there will
be quite enough in the answer to question A for
establishing the value of any essay on its soundest
basis. Prudens interrogatio est dimidium scientie.
Skilfully to frame your question, is half way towards insuring the true answer, Two or three of
the problems treated in these essays I will here re-hearse.
1. ESSENISM.- The essay on this, where mentioned at all in print, has been mentioned as dealing
with a question of pure speculative curiosity: so
little suspicion is abroad of that real question which
lies below. Essenism means simply this - Christianity before Christ, and consequently without Christ.
If, therefore, Essenism could make good its pretensions, there at one blow would be an end of Christianity, which in that case is not only superseded
as an idle repetition of a religious system already
published, but also as a criminal plagiarism. Nor
can the wit of man evade that conclusion. But
even that is not the worst. When we. contemplate
the total orb of Christianity, we see it divide into
two hemispheres: first, an ethical system, differing
centrally from any previously made known to man
2




18                  PREFACE.
secondly, a mysterious and divine machinery for
reconciling man to God; a teaching to be taught,
but also a work to be worked.'Now, the first we
find again in. the ethics of the counterfeit Esseneswhich ought not to surprise us at all; since it is
surely an easy thing for him   who pillages my
thoughts ad libitum to reproduce a perfect resemblance in his own: but what -has become of the
second, viz., not the teaching, but the operative
working of Christianity?- The ethical system is replaced by a stolen system; but what replaces the
mysterious agencies of the Christian faith?  In Essenism we -find again a saintly scheme of ethics;
but where is the scheme of mediation?
In the Romish church, there have    been some
theologians who have also seen reason to suspect
the romance of "' Essenismus."'    And I am  not
sure that the knowledge of this fact may not have
operated to blunt the suspicions of the Protestant
churches. I do not mean that such a fact would
have absolutely deafened Protestant ears to the
grounds of suspicion when loudly proclaimed; but
it is very likely to have indisposed them  towards
listening.  Meantime, so far as I am  acquainted
with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference
between them and my own is broad. They, with* The crime of Josephus in relation to Christianity is the same,
in face as that of Lauder in respect to Milton. It was easy enough
to detect plagiarisms in the " Paradise Lost " from Latin passages
fathered upon imaginary writers, whep these passages had previously been forged by Lauder himself for the purpose of sustaining
such a charge.




PREFACE.                19
out suspecting any subtle, fraudulent purpose, simply
recoil from the romantic air of such a statement
which builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an
important sect, such as could not possibly have escaped-the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on
the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting
incompatibility of such a sect with the absence of
all attention to it in the New Testament, but (which
is far more important) the incompatibility of such
a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality and heavenly revelation of Christianity. Here
is my first point of difference from the'Romish objectors. The second is this: not content with exposing the imposture,:I go on, and attempt to show
in what real circumstances, fraudulently disguised,
it might naturally have arisen. In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when struggling
with Jewish persecution at some period of the generation between the crucifixion and the siege of
Jerusalem, arose probably that secret defensive society of Christians which suggested to Josephus his
knavish forgery. We must remember that Josephus did not write until after the great ruins effected
by the siege; that he wrote at Rome, far removed
from the criticism of those survivors who could have
exposed, or had a motive for exposing, his malicious
frauds; and, finally, that he wrote under the patron.
age of the Flavian family: by his sycophancy he
had'won their protection, which would have overawed any Christian whatever from'coming forward
to unmask Lim, in the very improbable case of a
work so large, costly, and, by its title, merely archa



20                      PREFAC].
ological, finling  its way, at such     a period, into
the hands of any poor hunted Christian.*
2. THE CESARS. -      This, though written hastily,
and in a situation where I had no aid from       books,
is yet far from being what some people have supposed it-   a simple recapitulation, or'resume, of the
Roman imperatorial history.      It moves rapidly over
the ground, but still with an exploring eye, carried
right and left into the deep shades that have gathered so thickly over the one solitary road tj traversing that part of history.  Glimpses of moral truth, or
suggestions.of what may lead to it; indications of
neglected difficulties, and   occasionally conjectural
solutions of such difficulties, -  these.are what this
essay offers.  It was meant as a specimen of fruits,
gathered hastily and without effort, by a vagrant
but thoughtful mind: through the coercion of its
theme, sometimes it became ambitious; but I did
not give to it an ambitious title.     Still I felt that
the meanest of these suggestions merited a valua* It is a significant fact, that Dr. Strauss, whose sceptical spirit,
left to its own disinterested motions, would have looked through
and through this monstrous fable of Essenism, coolly adopted it,
no questions asked, as soon as he perceived the value of it as an
argument against Christianity.' " Solitary road." - The reader must remember that, until the
seventh century of our era, when Mahometanism arose, there was
no collateral history. Why there was none, why no Gothic, why no
Parthian history, it is for Rome to explain. We tax ourselves, and
are taxed by others, with many an imaginary neglect as regards
India; but assuredly we cannot be taxed with that neglect. No
part of our Indian empire, or of its adjacencies, but has occupied
the researches of our Oriental scholars.




PREFACE.               21'
tion: derelicts they were, not in the sense of things
wilfully abandoned by my predecessors on that road,
but in the.sense of things blindly overlooked. And,
summing up in one word the pretensions of this
particular essay, I will venture to claim for it so
much, at least, of originality as ought not tb.have
been left open to any body in the nineteenth cen
tury.
3. CICERo. - This is not, as might be imagined,
any literary valuation of Cicero; it is a new reading of Roman history in the most dreadful and comprehensive of her convulsions, in that final stage of
her transmutations to which Cicero was himself a
party'-and, as I maintain, a most selfish and un-.
patriotic party. He was governed in one half by
his own private interest as a novus homo dependentupon a wicked oligarchy, and in the other. half by
his blind hatred of Caesar; the grandeur of whose
nature he could not comprehend, and the real patriotism of whose policy could never be appreciated
by one bribed to a selfish course. The great mob
of historians have but one way of constructing the
great events of this era -they succeed to it as to
an inheritance, and chiefly under the misleading of
that prestige which is attached to the name of
Cicero; on which account it was that I gave this
title to my essay. Seven years after it was published, this essay, slight and imperfectly developed
as is the exposition of its parts, began to receive
some public countenance.
I was going on to abstract the principle involved
in some other essays. But I forbear. These speci



22                  PREFACE.
mens are sufficient for the purpose of informing the
reader that I do not write without a thoughtful
consideration of my subject; and also, that to
think reasonably upon any question has never been
allowed by me as a sufficient ground for writing
upon it, unless I believed myself able to offer some
considerable novelty. Generally I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the merit of rectification
applied to absolute errors or to injurious limitations
of the truth.
Finally, as a third class, and, in virtue of their
aim, as a far higher class of compositions included
in the American collection, I rank The Confessions
of an Opium Eater, and also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis. On these, as modes
of impassioned prose ranging, under no precedents
that I am aware of in any literature, it is much
more difficult to -speak justly, whether in a hostile
or a friendly character. As yet, neither of these two
works has ever- received the least degree of that cor;
rection and pruning which both require so extensively; and of the Suspiria, not more than perhaps one
third has yet been printed. When both have been
fully revised, I shall feel myself entitled to ask for a
more determinate adjudication on their claims as
works of art. At present, I feel authorized-to make
haughtier pretensions in right of their conception
than I shall venture to do, under the peril of being
supposed to characterize their execution. Two remarks only I shall address to the equity of my
leader. First, I desire to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to clothe in




PREFACE.                23
words the visionary scenes derived from the world
of dreams, where a single false note, a single word
in a wrong key, ruins the whole music; and, secondly, I desire hiim to consider the utter sterility of uriiversal literature in this one department of impassioned prose; which certainly argues some singular
difficulty suggesting a singular duty of indulgence
in criticizing any attempt that even imperfectly succeeds.  The sole Confessions, belonging to past
times, that have at all succeeded in engaging the
attention of men, are those of St. Augustine and of
Rousseau. The very idea of breathing a record of
human passion, not into the ear of the random
crowd, but of the saintly confessional, argues an
impassioned theme. Impassioned, therefore, should
be the tenor of the composition.  Now, in St.
Augustine's Confessions is found one most impassioned passage, viz., the lamentation for the
death of his youthful friend in the fourth book;
one, and no more. Further there is nothing. In
Rousseau there is not even so much. In the whole
work there is nothing grandly affecting but the character and the inexplicable misery of the writer.
Meantime, by what accident, so foreign to my
nature, do I find myself laying foundations towards
a highel -valuation of my own workmanship? O
reader, I have been talking idly. I care not for any
valuation that depends upon comparison -with others. Place me where you will on the scale of comparison: only suffer me, though standing lowest in
your catalogue; to rejoice in the recollection of-letters expressing the most fervid interest in particular




24                 PREFACE.
passages or scenes of the Confessions, and, by rebound-from them, an interest in their author: suffer
me also to anticipate that, on the publication of
-some parts yet in arrear of the Suspiria, you yourself may possibly write a letter to me, protesting
that your disapprobation is just where it was, but
nevertheless that you are disposed to shake hands
with me — by way of proof that you like me better
than I deserve.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.              a
FEE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD,...f
DREAM ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES,. 51
DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER,....
CHAPTER I1.
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE,..  8
CHAPTER III.
INFANT LITERATURE,.....37
CHAPTER IV.
THE FEMALE INFIDEL,..... 
CHAPTER \
i AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A PUBLIC
SCHOOL,......                      170
25




26           CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
I EN1ER THE WORLD,....... 184
CHAPTER VII.
THE NATION OF LONDON,....
CHAPTER VIII.
DUBLIN,........ 
CHAPTER IX.
wIRST REBELLIONN INIELAND,....
CHAPTER X.
FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND. AND SECOND REBELLION,.......... 
CHAPTER XI.
TRAVELING,.... 90
CHAPTER XII.
KY BROTHER,.,.        3..
CHAPTER XIII.
PREMATURE MANHOO,...s




AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
CHAPTER I.
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD...ABOUT the close of my- sixth year, suddenly the firs
chapter of my life came to a violent termination; tha'
chapter. which, even within the gates of recovered para.
dise, might merit a remembrance. "Life is finished!"
was the secret misgiving of my heart; for. the heart of
infancy is as apprehensive as that of maturest wisdom in
relation to any capital wound inflicted on the happiness.
":Life is finised! Finished it is " was the hidden
meaning that, half unconscibusly to myself, lurked within my sighs; and, as bells heard from a distance on a
summer evening seem charged at times with an articulate
form of words, some monitory message, that rolls round
unceasingly, even so for nie some noiseless and subterraneous voice seemed to chant continually a secret word,
made audible only to my own heart- that "now is the
blossoming of life withered forever."  Not that such
words formed: themselves vocally within my ear, or issued
audibly from my lips but such a whisper stole silently to
my heart. Yet in what sense could that be true?  For
an infant not more than six years old, was it possible that
27




28              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the promises of life had been really      blighted, or its
golden pleasures exhausted? Had I seen Rome? Had
I read Milton? Had I heard Mozart? No. St. Peter's,
the " Paradise Lost," the divine melodies of " Don Giovan.
ni," all alike were as yet unrevealed to me, and not more
through the accidethts of my position than through the
necessity of my yet imperfect sensibilities.  Raptures there
might be in arrear; but raptures are modes of troubled
pleasure.  The peace, the rest, the central security which
belong to love that is past all understanding,- these could
return no more.' Such a love, so unfathomable,- such a
peace, so unvexed by storms, or the fear of storms, -  had
brooded over those four latter years of my infiancy, which
brought me into special relations to my elder sister; she
being at this period three years older than myself.   The
circumstances which attended the sudden dissolution of this
most tender connection I will here rehearse.   And,-thatl
may do so more intelligibly, I will first describe that serene
and sequestered position which we occupied in life.*
* As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the pur
poses of intelligibility. it becomes requisite to call into notice such
personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to their Order of succession; and Miltonically I include'yself; having surely as much logical right to count myself in the series
of my own brothers as Milton could have to pronounce Adam the
goodliest of his own sons. First and last, we counted as eight children, viz., four brothers and four sisters, though never counting more
than six living at once, viz., 1. William, older than myself by more
than five years; 2 Elizabeth; 3. Jane, who died in her fourth year;
4. Mary; 5. myself, certainly not the goodliest man of men since
born my brothers; 6. Richard, known to us all by the household
name of Pink, who in his after years tilted up and down what might
then be called his Britannic majesty's oceans (viz., the Atlantic and
Pacific) in the quality of midshipman, until Waterloo in one day put
an extinguisher on that whole generation of midshipmen, by extin



THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          29
Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned records, is fatal to their effect-as being incompatible with that absorption of spirit and that self.
oblivion in which only deep passion originates or can find
a genial home. It would, therefore, to myself be exceedingly painful that even a shadow, or so much as a seeming
expression of that tendency, should creep into these reminiscences. And yet, on the other hand, it is.so impossible,
without laying an injurious restraint upon the natural
movement of such a narrative, to prevent oblique gleams
reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or
aristocratic elegance as surrounded my childhood, that on
all accounts I think.it better to tell him, from the first,
with the simplicity of truth, in what order of society my
family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it might happen that, merely
by reporting faithfully the facts of this early experience, I
could hardly prevent the reader from receiving.an impression as of some higher rank than did really belong to my
family. And this impression might seem  to have been
designedly insinuated by myself.
My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland,
where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells
groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense
rigorously exclusive; that is, he was a man engaged in
foreign commerce, and no other; therefore, in wholesale
commerce, and no other —which last limitation of the
idea is important, because it brings him within the benefit
of Cicero's condescending distinction* as one who ought
guishing all further call for their services; 7. a second Jane; 8. Henry,
a posthumous child, who belonged to Brazennose College, Oxford,
and died about.his twenty-sixth year.
* Cicero, in a well-known passage of his " Ethics," speaks of trade
as irredeemably base, if petty, but as not so absolutely felonious it
wholesale.




30            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
to be despised certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He - this imperfectly
despicable man -died at an early age, and very soon after
the incidents recorded in this chapter, leaving to his family,
then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened
estate producing exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year.
Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative,- whilst
he was still living,- he had an income very much
larger, from the addition of current commercial profits.
Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life
as it exists in England, it will readily occur that in an
opulent English family of that class  opulent, though not
emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate -the domestic
economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in
foreign nations. The establishment of servants, for instance, in such houses, measured even numerically against
those establishments in other nations, would somewhat surprise the foreign appraiser, simply as interpreting the rela.
tive station in society occupied by the English merchant.
But this same establishment, when measured by the quality
and amount of the provision made for its comfort and even
elegant accommodation, would fill him with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the social valuation of the
English merchant, and also the social valuation of the
English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the
paradise of household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in
fact, as extending itself to the meanest servants, and the
disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar to England. And
in this respect the families of English merchants, as a
class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not
only amongst the corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst the-poorer sections of our own
nobility - though confessedl) the most splendid in Eu



THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         31
rope; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have
had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affect
ing the domestic economy of English merchants, there
arises a disturbance upon the usual scale for measuring
the relations of rank.  The equation, so to speak, be.
tween rank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which
usually runs parallel to the graduations of expenditure, is
here interrupted and confounded, so that one rank would
be collected from the name of the occupation, and another
ranl,. much higher, from  the splendor of the domestic
menage. I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer,
from any casual' indications of luxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation of rank.
We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, ppon the
very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur -" Give me neither poverty nor riches "-was realized for us. That blessing we
had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we
were to seemodels of good manners, of self-respect, and
of simple dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual
culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we
knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by
the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring,
we had no' motives for shame, we'had none for pride.
Gtrteful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all
things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of
diet  that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously
than the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Provi.




*32           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
dence for all the separate blessings of my early situation,
these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration - that I lived in a ruiti.'solitude, that this solitude
was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded
by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic
brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving
members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church.
The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings innmy
memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two,
and both before I could have completeted my second year;
namely, 1st, a remarkable dream   of terrific grandeur
about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for
this reason -that it demon'strates my dreaming tendencies
to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum;   and, 2dly, the fact of having connected a pro>
found sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early
in the spring, of some crocuses. This I mention as.inexplicable: for such annual resurrections of' plants and
flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some
higher change, and therefore in connection with the idea
of death; yet of death I could, at:that time, have had no
experience whatever.
This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest
sisters-eldest of three then living, and also elder than
myself- were summoned to an early death. The first
* It is true that in those days paregoric.elixir was occasionally
given to children in colds; and in this medicine there is a small proportion of laudanum. But no medicine was ever administered to any
member of our nursery except under medical sanction; and this,
assuredly, would not have been obtained to the exhibition.of laudanum in a case such as mine. For I was then not more that twen
ty-one months old; at which age the action'of opium is capricious,
and therefore perilous.




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         33
who - died was Jane; about two years older than myself.
She was three and a half, I one and a half, more or less
by some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then
scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be
said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity.  There was
another.death in the house about the same time, namely,
of a maternal grandmother; but, as she had come to us
for the express purpose of dying in her daughter's society,
and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery
circle knew her but little, and were certainly more affected
by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz.,
a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With
my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have" said,
less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression
upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness
and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my
years. If there was one thing in. this world from which,
more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt,
it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in'the
family that a female servant, who by accident was drawn
off from her proper duties to attend.my sister Jane for a
day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not
brutally; and as this ill treatment happened within three or
four days of her death, so that the occasion of it must have
been some fretfulness in the poor child caused.'by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense of awe and indignation
diffused through the family.  I believe the story never
reached my mother, and possibly it was exaggerated; but
upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the
person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes
sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in
the face; not, however, in any spirit that could be called
anger.' The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering
3




34            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
horror, as upon a first glimpse of the truth that I was in a
world of evil and strife.- Though born in, a large town,
(the town of Manchester, even then amongst the largest
of the island,) I had passed the whole of my childhood,
except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion.
With three innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping
always amongst them, and shut up forever in a silent
garden from all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, or
outrage, I1 had not suspected until this moment the true
complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters
were living. Henceforward the character of my thoughts
changed,greatly;. for so representative are some acts, that
one single case of the class is sufficient to throw open
before you the whole: theatre' of possibilities in that direct
tion, I never heard that the woman accused of this cruelty
took it. at all. to heart, even after the event which so: imM
mediately succeeded had- reflected upon it a more. painful
emphasis." But for myself, that incident had a lasting
revolutionary power in, coloring my estimate of life.
So passed away from earth one of. those three sisters
that, made up my nursery. playmates; and so did my
acquaintance (if such it could be: called) commence with
mortality. Yet,. in fact, I knew little more of mortality
than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but
perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven.
born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sor!
row disproportioned to its strength! I was sad: for Jane's
absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would
colme again. Summer and winter came again - crocuses
and roses; why not little Jane?
Thus easily was' healed, then, the first wound in my
infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble
Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy
sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara




THE AFFLICTION O O   CHILDHOOD.            35
of light or a gleaming aureola * in token of thy premature
intellectual grandeur,-thou whose head, for its superu
developments, was the astonishment of science,t -thou
riext, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert
summoned away from      our nursery; and the night, which
for me gathered upon that event,:ran after my steps far
into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good
or for ill that which else I should have been.  Pillar of fre
that didst go before- me to guide and to quicken, -   pillar
of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to
God, that didst too truly reveal to imy dawning fears the
*   Aureola." - The aureola is the name given in the " Legends of
the Christian Saints" to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatual light (th'at glory, as it:is icommonly called in' English which,
amongst the great masters -of painting in Italy, sUtirotunded;h'ie liehadfs
of Christ and of distinguished saints.
t " The astonishment of science?-'i Her medical' attendants were
Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician', ho had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White,
the imost distiniguished surgeon at that time "in the north of Englaid.
It was, he who-pronounced her head to be the finest in its development
ofjtny that he had ever seen - an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That hehad
some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that,
at'so -early a stage of such inquiries, he had published a work on
hfmanl craniology, supported by measurement of heads selected
frome all:arieties of the human species: Meantime, as it.would, grieve
me. that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this
record, I will admit that my sister died of hydrocephalus; and it has
been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect
in cases of that class is altogether morbid- forced on, in fact, by
the:-mere stimulation of the disease. I would,: however, suggest, as
a pqssibility, the very opposite order of relation between the disease
and.the intellectual manifestations. Not.the disease may. always
have.,caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely,
this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the
disease




36            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
secret shadow of death,-by what mysterious gravitation was
it that my heart had been drawn to thine? Could a child
six years old, place any special value upon intellectual forwardness?  Serene and capacious as my sister's mind
appeared to me upon after review, was thdt a charm: for
stealing away the heart of an infant? O, no! I think of'
it now. with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear,
some justification to the excess of my fondness. -But then
it. was lost upon me.; of, if not lost, was perceived only
through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister,
not the less. I must have loved thee, having that capacious
heart-overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderesss,; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity-of
loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee
with beauty and power.
" Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God,. in thee was most intense."
That lamp of paradise was, for myself, kindled by
reflection from the living light which burned so steadfastly in thee; and never but to thee, never again since
thy departure, had I power or temptation, courage or desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was
the shyest of children; and, at all stages of life, a natural
sense of personal dignity held me back from exposing the
least ray of feelings which I was not encouraged wholly to
reveal..It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the. course of
that sickness which carried, off my leader and-+ companion.
She (according to my recollection at this moment) was just
as near to nine years as I to six. And perhaps this natural
precedency in authority of years -and judgment, united tc
the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had
been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was upor




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         37
a Sunday evening, if such conjectures can be trusted, that
the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions
to a brain complaint which had hitherto slumbered within
her. She had been perrr. tted to drink tea at the house
of a laboring man, the father of a favorite female servant.
The sun had set when she returned, in the company of this
servant, through meadows reeking with exhalations after a
fervent day. From that time she sickened. In such circumstances, a child, as young as myself, feels no anxieties.
Looking upon medical men as people privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war upon pain and sickness, 1
never had a misgiving about the result.. I grieved, indeed,
that my sister should lie in bed; I grieved still more to
hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than
as a night of trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise.
0  moment of darkness and delirium, when the elder
nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's
thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister
MUST die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that
it "cannot be remembered."  Itself, as a rememberable
thing,.is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy
and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I
was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wisn not to recall
the.circumstances of that time, when my agony was at
its height, and hers, in another sense, was approaching.
Enough it is to say that all was soon over; and the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon
her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is
no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which
there is no. consolation.
Or the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet
* "I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony which cannot be remembered."
Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remore.




38           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scru
tiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more.
Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have
suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard
of feelings that take the name of" sentimental," nor
dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, even in a child,
hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house
was large enough to have two staircases; and by one of
these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet,
(for the servants dined at one o'clock,) I could steal up into
her chamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after
high. noon when I reached the chamber door: it was locked,
but the key was not taken away. Entering, I cosed the
door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which
ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the.ilent walls. Then, turning round, I sought my sister's
_ace. But the bed had been moved and the back was
now turned towards myself. Nothing net my eyes but
one large window, wide' open, through which the sun of
midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of
splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless,
the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and
it-was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to
conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and the'glory'
of life.
Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remem.
brance so affecting for my own mind, to mention, that, in
the "' Opiun Confessions," I endeavored to explain the
reason why death, other conditions remaining the same, is
more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts
of the year- so ar,:at least, as it is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season. The reason,
as 1 there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical: re dundancy:tf life in summer and the frozen




rHE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          39
sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the grave we
haunt with our:thoughts; the glory is around us, the dark.
ness is within us; and, the two coming into collision, each
exalts the other into stronger relief. But, in my case,
there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this
intense power: of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of
death. And, recollecting it, I am  struck with the truth,
that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to
us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass
to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound
experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever
reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes. It had
happened, that amongst our vast nursery collection of
books was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures. And
in long dark evenings, as my three sisters, with myself, sat
by the firelight round the guard * of our nursery, no book
Was so much in request among us. It ruled us.and
swayed us as mysteriously as music. Our younger nurse,
whom we all. loved, would sometimes, according to her
simple powers, endeavor to explain what we found obscure,
We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with
penisiveness: the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of
the room by'firelight suited our evening state of feelings;
anid they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and
mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the stor of
a just man,- man, and yet not man, real above all things,
and yet-shadowy above all things,- who had suffered the
passion of death in Palestine, slept upon our minds like
early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and
* " The guard." - I know not whether the word is a local one in
this sense. What I mean is a sort of fender, four or five feet high,
which locks up the fire from too near an approach on the part of
children.




40            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES,
ail these differences (as it happens) express themselves
more or less, in varying relations to the great accidents
and powers of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria
- those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples
plucking the ears of corn-that must be summer;but,
above all, the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in-the
English church) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!"
what was that? That was the day of peace which masked
another peace deeper than. the heart of man can comprehen.: "Palms!" what were they?  That was an equivocal. word; palms,.in the sense of trophies, expressed the
pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed
the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does
not suffice; it was not merely by the peace and by the
summer, by the deep sound of rest below all rest and of
ascending glory, that I had been haunted. It was also be.
cause Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in
time..and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at
hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that
Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. What then was
Jerusalem.?  Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) or
physical centre of the earth? Why should that affect me?
Such a pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and
once for a Grecian city; and both pretensions had become
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known.
Yes;. but if not of the earth, yet of mortality; for earth's
tenant, Jerusalem, had now become the omphalcs and
absolute centre.  Yet how -r There, on the contrary,
it was, as we'infants understood, that mortality had been
trampled under foot. True; but, for that very reason,
there it wasthat mortality had opened its very gloomiest
crater. There it-was, indeed, that the human had risen oa
wings from the grave; but, for that reason,'there also it
was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abvss;




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          41
the lesser star could not rise before the greater should submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself
with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also
as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with death
by scriptual scenery and events.,
Out of this digression, for the purpose of showing how
inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, as connected with Palestine
and Jerusalem, let me come back to the bed chamber of
my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to
the corpse. There lay the sweet.childish figure; there
the angel face; and, as people usually fancy, it was said
in the house that no features had suffered any change.
Had they not? The forehead, indeed,- the serene and
noble forehead, -- that might be the same.; but the frozen
eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath
them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to
palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,
- could these be mistaken for life?  Had it been so,
wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears
and never-ending kisses? But so it was not. I stood
checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and,
whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow -the saddest
that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept
the'fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many
times since, upon summer days, when the sun is about the
hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian,* but saintly
* "Memnonian."-For the sake of many readers, whose hearts
may go along earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose
course of life has not allowed thememuch leisure for study, I pause to
explain —that the head of Memn6n, in the British Museum, that
sublime head which wears upon its lips a smile coextensive with all
time and all space, an Eoonian smile of gracious love and Pan-like




42              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC    SKETCHES.
swell: it is in this world the one great audible symbol of
eternity.  And three times in my life have I happened to
hear the same sound in the same circumstances -namely,
when standing between an open window and a dead body
on a summer day.
Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Aolian intona.
tion, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life,
mystery the most diffusive and pathetically divine that the hand of
man has created, is represented, on the authority of ancient traditions,
to have uttered at sunrise, or soon after as the suns rays had accumulated heat enough to rarefy the air within certain cavities in the bust,
a solemn and dirge-like series of intonations; the simple explanation
being, in its general outline, this- that sonorous currents of air
were produced by causing chambers of cold and heavy air to press
Upon other collections of air, warmed, and-therefore rarefied, and
therefore yielding readily to'the pressure of heavier air. Currents
being thus established by artificial arrangements of tubes, a certain
succession of notes could be concerted and sustained. Near the Red
Sea lies a chain of sand hills, which, by a natural system of grooves
inosculating with each other, become vocal under changing circumstances in the position. of the sun, &c. I'knew a boy who, upon ob
serving steadily, and reflecting upon a phenomenon that met him in
his daily experience, viz., that- tubes, through which a stream of
water was passing, gave out a very different sound according to the
varying slenderness or fulness of the current, devised an instrument
that yielded a rude hydraulic gamut of sounds; and, indeed, upon
this simple phenomenon'is founded the use and power of the stethoscope. For exactly as a thin thread of water, trickling through a
leaden tube, yields a stridulous and plaintive sound compared with
the full olume of sound corresponding to.the full volume of water,
on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of
blood pouring through the tubes of' the human frame will utter to. the
learned ear, when arnmed with the stethoscope, an elaborate gamut or
compass of music recording the. ravages of disease, or the glorious
plenitudes of health, as faithfully as the cavities within this ancient
Memnonian bust reported this'mighty event- of sunrise to' the rejoicing world of light and life or, again, under the.'sad passion of the
dying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged to its departure.




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          43
the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers
below,-and turning when it settled upon the frost which
overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me.
A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a
shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows
seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran be.
fore us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit
seemed to go on forever and ever.  Frost gathering frost,
some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some
mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to
evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them;
shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and tornent, in dreams, the deciphering'oracle within me. I slept
-for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my selfpossession; and, when I woke, found myself standing, as
before, close to my sister's bed.' have'reason to believe that a very long interval had
elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect
mind.' When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I
fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed; for, if any body
iad detected me me ans would have been taken to prevent
my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed-the lips that
I should kiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with
stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision,
loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has-revealed to
me;'thus mutilated was the parting which should- have
lasted forever; tainted thus with fear was that farewleP
sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that
could not be healed.
0 Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew! * fable or not a fable,
*  Ererlasting Jew." — Der ewige. Jude - which is the common
Germnan expression for " The Wandering Jew," and sublimer even
tharin our: own.




44           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
thou, when first starting on aly endless pilgrimage of woe,thou, when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem, and
vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,couldst not more certainly in the words of Christ have read
thy doom of endless sorrow, than I when passing forever
from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart; and,
I may say, the worm that could not die. Man is doubtless
one by some subtle nexus, some system of links, that we
cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the
superannuated dotard; but, as regards many affections and
passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not
one, but an intermitting creature, ending and beginning
anew: the unity of man, in this respect, is coextensive
only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs.
Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one
half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other half.
These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But
love, which is altogether holy, like that between two
children, is privileged to revisit by glimpses the silence and
the darkness of declining years; and, possibly, this final
experience in my sister's bed room, or some other in which
her, innocence was concerned, may rise again for me to
illuminate the clouds of death.
On the day following this which I have recorded came
a body of medical men to examine the brain and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. An hour after
the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the room;
but the door was now locked, the key had been taken
away,'and I was shut out forever.
Then came the funeral. I, in the ceremonial character
of mourner, was carried thither. I was put into a carriage
with some gentlemen whom I' did not know. They were
kind and attentive to me; but naturally they talked of




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.           45
things.disconnected with the occasion, and their conversation was a torment. At the church, I wastold to hold
a white handkerchief to my eyes.    Empty hypocrisy!
What need had he of masks or mockeries, whose heart
died within him at every word that was uttered?  During
that part of the service which passed within the church,
I made an effort to attend; but I sank back continually
into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some fugitive strains from  the sublime
cha     of St. Paul, which in England is always read at
bur lcas.,
Lastly came that magnificent liturgical service which
the English church performs at the side of the grave;
for this church does not forsake her dead so long as they
continue in: the upper air, but waits for her last "sweet
and solemn t farewell" at the side of the grave. There is
exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. All
eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the
day of departure from earth - records how shadowy! and
dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms.
Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing
and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal
after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The ccffin is
lowered into its home; it has disappeared from all eyes
but those that look down into the abyss of the grave.
The sacristan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and
stones. The priest's voice is heard once more,- earth to
* First Epistle to Corinthians, chap. xv., beginning at ver. 20.
t This beautiful expression, I am pretty certain, must belong to
Mrs. Trollope; I read it, probably, in a tale of hers connected with
the backwoods of America, where the absence of such a farewell
must unspeakably aggravate the gloom at any rate belonging to a
household separation of that eternal character occurring amongst the
shadows of those mighty forests.




46           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
earth, -and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the
lid of the coffin;ashes to ashes -and again the killing
sound is heard; dust to dust -and the farewell volley announces Athat the grave, the coffin, the face are sealed up
forever and ever.
Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions.
And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also
thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague,
but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the
heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the
very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame.'-id;'- tei years afterwards, I used to throw my selfreproaches with- regard. to that infirmity into this shape,
viz., that if I. were summoned to seek aid for a perishing
fellow-creature, and that I. could obtain that aid only by
facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I
might, perhaps, shrink- basely from the duty. It is true
that no such case had ever actually occurred; so that it
Was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime that might have been was, in
my eyes, the crime that had been. -Now, however, all was
changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's
memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in
Westmoreland I saw a case. resembling it.'- I saw a ewe
suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service
of love -yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent
sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench,
from which all escape was hopeless without the aid.of man.
And' to a man she advanced, bleating clamorously, until
he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less was
the change in myself.  Fifty thousand sneering faces
would not have troubled me now in any office of tenierness to my sister's memory. Ten legions would no




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         47
have. repelled me- from seeking her, if there had been
a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost
upon me. Laughter! I valued it not; And when I was
taunted insultingly with" L my girlish tears," that word
t"girlish" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo
to -the bone eternal thought of my heart -that a girl was
the sweetest thing which I, in my short life, had known;
that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty,
and had opened: to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love,
from which, in this world, I was to drink no more.'N.'Tow began to unfold themselves the consolations of
solitude, those consolations which only I was destined: to
taste; now, therefore, began to open upon-me those fascinations of solitude, which, when acting as a co-agency with
unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical result of making
out of grief itself a luxury; such a luxury as finally- becomes a snare, overhanging life itself, and the energies of
life, with' growing menaces. All deep feelings of a chronic
class agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are' fed
by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these
ally- themselves with religious feeling! and all three —
love, grief, religion- are haunters of solitary places.
Love, grief, and the mystery of devotion, - what were
these.without solitude?  All day long, when it was not,
impossible for me to do so; I sought the most silent and.
sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house or in the
neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of sum-mer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing
silence of gray or misty afternoons, - these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods, into the desert air,
I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied
the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny,
sweeping them forever with my eyes, and searching them




48            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for one angelic face that might, perhaps, have permission
to reveal itself for a moment.
At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief,
that grasped at what it could not obtain, the faculty ofshaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and
grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon
me in-morbid excess. And I recall at the present moment
one instance of that sort, which may show how merely
shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could
furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty.
On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church: it was a church on the ancient model of
England,.having aisles, galleries,* organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the'proportions majestic.- Here,
whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as
often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst
many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of
"all sick persons and young children," and that he would
"show his pity upon all prisoners and captives," I wept in
secret; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shin.
ing, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have
beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied
glass; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the
golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from
the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art
and its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man.
There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and
the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man.  There
*" Galleries." - These, though condemned on some grounds by
the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless,
this one advantage - that, when the height of a church is that dimen
sion which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries ex
pound and interpret that height.'




THE AFFLICTION. OF CHILDHOOD.       40
were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through
flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce,
insulting faces. There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek. submission to his
will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords.from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the
window, where the glass was uncolored, white, fleecy
clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky: were it
but a fragment: or a -hint of such a cloud, immediately
under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and
shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains;
and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were
tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for death.
God, for some mysterious reason, could not, suddenly release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds, as it
seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds
ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, his
arms descended from the heavens, that he and, his young
children, whom in Palestine, once and. forever, he, had
blessed, though they must pass slowly through the dread.
ful chasm of separation, might yet meet the sooner._ These
visions were self-sustained. These visions needed not
that any sound should speak to me, or music mould
my feelings. The hint from the litany, the fragment
from the clouds, — those and the storied windows were
sufficient. But not the less the blare of the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes
in anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast
columns of sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of
the choir,.- high in arches, when it seemed to rise, sur-:
mounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and
gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unity,sometimes I seemed to rise and walk triunphantly.upon.
4




50             UTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
those clou's which, but a moment before, I had looked up
to as mementoes of prostrate sorrow; yes, sometimes' under
the; transfigurations of music, felt of grief itself as of a
fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes
of- grief.
God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by. the
oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all
things, when made vocal to the meditative heart" by the
truths and services of a national church, God holds with
children " communion undisturbed."  Solitude, though'it
may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of
agencies; for solitude is essential to'man. All men come
into this world alone; all leave'it alone. Even a little
child has a dread, whis'pering consciousness, that, if he
should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no
gentle nurse will be allowed to lead. him; by the hand, nor
mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share
his trepidations. King and'priest, warrior and maiden,
philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries
-alone.-'The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls
or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper
solitude, through which' already he has passed, and of
another solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass:
reflex of -one solitude - prefiguration of another.
-0'burden -of solitude, that cleavest to man through
every stage of his being! in his birth, which has beenin- -h:life, which is  in his death, which shall bemighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art
to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon
the surface of the deeps, over every'-heart that sleeps'in
the nurseries of'Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of
the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the
shadow of a shade, -hides within itself the principles of all
~things, solitude- for the meditating child is -the Agrippa'a




DREAM E-3HOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES.       51
mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude of
millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to
love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, under secret
griefs, have none to pity them.  Deep is the solitude of
those' who; fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to
counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood under the passion
of sorrow —:bringing before it, at intervals, the final soli,
tude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the,
gates of death.   0  mighty and essential solitude, that
wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom is made perfect
in the grave;/ but even over those that keep watch outside
the' grave, like myself, an infant of six years old, thou
stretchest out a sceptre of fascination.DREAM    ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES.
[Notice to the reader.- The sun, in rising or setting, would- produce
little effect if he were. defrauded of his rays and their infinite reverb
berations. l Seen through a fog," says -Sara Coleridge, the. noble
daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,- "the golden, beaming sun
looks like a dull orange, or a red billiard ball." -'Introd. to Biog. Lit,
p. clxii. And, upon this same analogy, psychological experiences of;
deep suffering or joy first attain their entire fulness of expression
when they are reverberated from dreams. The reader. must, therefore, suppose me at Oxford; more than twelve years are gpne by i
am' in the glory of youth; but I have now first tampered with opium i
and now first the agitations of my childhood reopened in strength; 
now first they swept in upon the brain with power, and the grandeur
of, recovered lifd.]
ONCE again, after twelve years' interval, the nursery of
my childhood expanded before me: my sister was moaning
in bed; and I was beginning to be restless with fears no'




52            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
intelligible to myself. Once again the elder rx.rse, but nodilated to colossa. proportions, stood as upon some Grecian
stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medea
towering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth,*
smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in the
chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life
rise up in'silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death.  Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulds
itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber!- the
blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows,
the throne' steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of
W' ho might sit thereon;" the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the
funeral- procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplus,
stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave;
the sacristan is waiting wtth his shovel; the coffin has sunk;
the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church
on a heavenly Sunday morning. The' golden sunlight of
God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs,
his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from
the clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to
scale the heavens -awoke again the shadowy arms that
moved downward to meet them. Once again arose the
swell of the anthem, the burst of the hallelujah chorus,
the storm, the trampling movement of the choral passion,
the agitation of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult of
the choir, the wrath of the organ.  Once more 1, that
wallowed in the dust, became he that rose up to the clouds.
And now all was bound up into unity; the first state and
the last were melted into each other as in some sunny
glol ifying haze. For high in heaven hovered a gleaming
host of fh' es, veiled with wings, around the pillows of the
* Euripides.




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.             53
tying children. And such beings sympathize equally with
sorrow  that grovels and with sorrow    that soars.  Such
beings pity alike the children that are languishing in death,
and the children that live only to languish in tears.
DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.
[In this instance the echoes, that rendered back the infant experience, might be interpreted by the reader as connected with a.real
ascent of the Brocken; which was not the case. It was an ascent
through all its circumstances executed in dreams, which, under adranced stages in the development of opium, repeat with marvellous
accuracy the longest succession of phenomena derived either from
reading or.fiom actual experience. That softening and spiritualizing
haze which belongs at any rate to the action of dreams, and to the
transfigurings worked upon troubled remembrances by retrospects so
vast as those of fifty years, was in this instance greatly aided to my
own feelings by the alliance with the ancient phantom of the forest
mountain in North Gerrmany. The playfulness of the scene is the
very evoker of the solemn remembrances that lie hidden below'The half-sportive interlusory revealings of the symbolic tend to the
same effet. One part of the effect from the symbolic is dependent
upon, the great catholic principle of the Idem in alio. The symbol
restores the theme, but under.new combinations of form or coloring
gives back, but changes; restores, but idealizes.]
ASCEND with     me  on- this dazzling   Whitsunday the
Brocken of North Germany.      The dawn opened in cloud.
less beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but, as the
hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that sometimes
cares little fdr racing across both frontiers of May,-  the
rearward frontier, and the vanward frontier, —frets the
bridal lady's sunny temper with sallies of wheeling and
careering show v's, flying and, pursuing, opening- and clos.
ing, hiding  and   restoring.  On such a morning, and




AUTOBIQORAPHIC SKETCHES.
reaching the summits of the forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have one chance the more for seeing: the
famous Spectre of the Brocken.*      Who and what. is he?
* "Spectre of the Brocken." — This very striking phenomenon has
been continually described by writers, both German and English, for
the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met with
these descriptions; and on their account I add a few words in explanation, referring them- for the best scientific comment on the case to
Sir David' Brewster's " Natural. Magic." The spectre takes the shape
of a human figure, or, if the visitors-are more than one, then-the
spectre's multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of
the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that' may be in the right
quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a curtain ofi
rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting gigantic
proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal size, every
spectator supposes the appearances to be quite independent of himself.'But very soon he is surprised to observe his own motions and
gestures: mimicked, and wakens to the conviction that the phantom
is but a: dilated' reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the appa.
ritions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for
reasons best known to. himself, and more coy in coming' forward thanthe Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must
ble ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the
phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizoi,
(which, of itself, implies a time of day inconvenient to a person starting -from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator must.
have his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapor, butpartially distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of English students from Goettingen,
but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the
three same: conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon, which he:
described in the following lines:"Such thou art as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow mist weaves a' glistening haze,'
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its hdad;
This shade he worships for its golden hues,
And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues."




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.          55
He is a solitary apparition, in the sense of loving solitude;
else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations,
but, on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a
strength quite sufficient to alarm  those who had been
insulting him.
Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious
apparition, we will try two or three experiments upon
him. What we fear, and with some reason, is, that, as he
lived so many ages with foul pagan sorcerers, and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his heart may
have been corrupted, and that even now his faith may be
wavering or impure. We will try.
Make the sign of the -cross, and observe whether he
repeats it, (as on Whitsunday*'he surely ought to do.)
Look! he does repeat it; but these driving April showers
perplex the images, and that, perhaps, it is which gives
him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively.
Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the showers
have all swept off like squadrons of cavalry to the rear.
We will'try him again.
Pluck'an anemone, one of these many anemones which
once was called the sorcerer's flower,f, and bore a part.
perhaps, in this horrid ritual of fear; carry it to that
stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar, and
once was called the sorcerer's altar;t then, bending your
* " On'Whitsunday." —It is singular, and perhaps owing to the
temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of summer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on,
Whitsunday than on any other day.
t "The sorcerer's flower," and " The sorcerer's altar."- These are
names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altarshaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and there is no
doubt that they both- connect themselves, through links of ancient
tradition, with the gloomy realities of paganism, when the whole
Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum
to a ferocious but perishing idolatry.




56           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCIES.
knee, and raising your right hand to God, say, "Fathei
which art in heaven', this lovely anemone, that once glorified the worship of fear, has travelled back into thy fold';
this altar, which once reeked with bloody rites to Cortho,
has long been re-baptized into thy holy service. The
darkness is gone; the cruelty is gone which the darkness
bred; the moans have passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished which once sat continually
Upon their graves - cloud of protestation that ascended forever to thy throne from'the tears of the defenceless, and
from the anger of the just. And lo! we- I thy servant,
and this dark phantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make my servant - render thee united
"worship in this thy recovered temple."
Lo! the apparition plucks an anemone, and places it on
the altar; he also bends his knee,- he also raises his right
hand to God. Dumb he is; but sometimes the dumb serve
God acceptably. Yet still it occurs to you, that perhaps on
this high-festival of the Christian church he may have been
overruled by supernatural influence into confession of his
homage, having so often beern made to bow and bend his
knee at murderous rites. In a service of religion he may
be timid. Let us' try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, where he will have- no bias either from favor or
from fear.
If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that
was ineffable, - if once, when powerless to face such an
enemy, you were-summoned to fight with the tiger that
couches within -the separations of the grave,- in that case,
after the example of Judaea,* sitting under her palm tree to
weep, but sitting with her head veiled,-do you also veil
vour head. Many years are passed away since then; and
* On the Roman coins.




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.        57
perhaps you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly
above six years old. But your heart was deeper than the
Danube; and, as was your love, so was your grief. Many
years are gone since that darkness settled on-your head;
many summers, many winters; yet still its shadows wheel
round upon you at intervals, like these April showers. upon
this glory of bridal June. Therefore now, on this dovelike morning of Pentecost,. do you veil your head like
Judsea in memory of that transcendent woe, and in testimony that, indeed, it surpassed all utterance of words.
ImmediatdeLy you see that the apparition of: the Brocken
veils his head, after the model of Judsea weeping under
her palm tree, as if he also had a human heart; and as if
he also, in childhood, having suffered an affliction which
was ineffable, wished by these mute symbols to breathe a
sigh towards heaven in memory of that transcendent woew
and by way of record, though. many a- year aftr, that it
was indeed unutterable by words.




CHAPTER IIL
INTRODUCTION TO' THE WORLD OF STRIFE.
So, then, one chapter' in my life had finished. Already,
before ithe completion of. my sixth year, this first chapter
had: run. its circle, had!rendered- up ipts music to the final
chord,.-might: seem even, like ripe fruit from a tree,;to
have.,d'tached, itself forever from, all the rest of the.. arras
that was, shaping itself within my. loom, of life.';No Eden
of lakes and forest lawns, such as the mzrage suddenly
evokes in Arabian sands,'-no pageant of air-built battlements and towers, that ever burned in dream-like silence
amongst the vapors of summer sunsets, mocking and
repeating with celestial pencil "the fuming vanities of
earth,"- could leave behind it the mixed impression of so
much truth combined with so much absolute delusion.
Truest of all things it seemed by the excess of that happiness which it had sustained-: most fraudulent it seemed of
all things, when looked back upon as some mysterious
parenthesis in the current of life, " self-withdrawn into a
wonderous depth," hurrying as if with headlong malice to
extinction, and alienated by every feature from the new
aspects of life that seemed to awalt me. Were it not in
the bitter corrosion of heart that I was called upon to face,
I should have carried over to the present no connecting link
58




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      59
whatever from the past, Mere reality in this fretting it
was, and the undeniableness of its too potent remembrances,
that forbade me to regard this burned-out inaugural chapter
of my life as no chapter at all, but a pure exhalation of
dreams. Misery.is a guaranty of truth too substantial to
be refused; else, by its determinate evanescence, the total
experience would have worn the character of a fantastic
illusion.
Well it was for me at this period, if well it were for me
to live at al, that from any continued contemplation of my
misery  was forced to wean myself, and suddenly to
assume the harness of life. Else under the morbid lan.
guishing of grief, and of wha' the Romans called desiderium,
(the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable face,)
too probably I should have pined away into an early grave.
Harsh was my awaking; but the rough febrifuge which
this awaking administered broke the strength of my sickly
reveries through'a period of more than two years; by
which time, under the natura, expansion of my bodily
strength, the danger had passed over.
*In the first chapter I have rendered solemn thanks fox
having been trained amongst the gentlest of sisters, and not
under " horrid pugilistic brothers."  Meantime, one such
brbther I had, senior by much to myself, and the stormiest
of his class: him I will immediately present t6 the reader;
for;up to this point of my narrative he may be described as
a!stranger even to myself. Odd as it sounds, I had at this
time both a brother and-a father, neither of whom would
have been: able to challenge me as a relative, nor I him,
had we happened to meet on the public roads.
In my father's case, this arose from the accident of his
having lived abroad for a space that, measured against my
life, was a very long one. First, he lived for months in
Portugal, at Lisbon, and. at Cintra3 next in Madeira-;: then




60           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETOCHES
in thte-West Indies; sometimes in Jamaica, sometimes in.
St. -Ki'ttt; courting the supposed benefit of hot climates in
hisa complaint of pulmonary consumption. He. had, indeed,
repeatedly returned to England, and met my mother at
watering-places on the south coast of Devonshire, &re.
But I, as a younger child, had not been one of the. party
selwted for such exciursions from home, And now, at last,
when all had proved unavailing, he was coming home to
die amongst his family, in..his thirty-ninth year.  My
mother had gone to await his arrival at the port (whatever
port) to which the West India packet should bring him;
and amongst the deepest recollections which I connect
with- that period, is one derived from the night of his
arrival at Greenhay.
It was a summer evening of unusual solemity, The
servants, and four of us children, were gathered for hours,
on the lawn before the house, listening for the sound of
wheels. Sunset came-nine, ten, eleven o'clock, and
nearly another hour had passed - without:a warning sound;
for Greenhay, being so solitary a house, formed a terminus
ad;que., beyond which was nothing but a cluster of cottage.s, composing the little hamlet of Greenhill; so that any
sound of wheels coming from the winding lane which ther
connected us with the Rusholme Road, carried with it,-of
necessity, a warning summons to prepare for visitors at
Greenhay, No such summons had yet reached us; it was
nearly midnight; and, for the last time, it was determined
that we should move, in a body out of the grounds, on the
chance of meeting the travelling party, if, at so late an
hour, it could yet oe expected to arrive. In fact, to our
general surprise, we met it almost immediately, but coming
at so slow a pace,,that the fall of the horses' feet was not
audble until we were close upon them. I mention the
case for the -sake of the undying impressions which




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     64
connected themselves with -the circumstances. The first
nptice of the approach was the sudden emerging of horses'
heads from the deep gloom of the shady-lane; the next
was the mass of white pillows against which the dying
patient was reclining. The hearse-like pace at which the
carriage moved recalled the overwhelming spectacle of
that funeral' which had so lately formed part in the most
memorable event of my life. But these elements of awe,
that might at any rate have struck forcibly upon the- mind
of a child, were for me, in- my condition of morbid
nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the antecedent
experiences of that particular summer night. Thelistening for hours-to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant,roads, rising and falling, caught and, lost, upon the gentle
undulation of such fitful airs as might be stirring  the
peculiar solemnity of the hours succeeding to sunset -the
glory.of.. the dying day — the gorgeousness which, by
description, so well I knew of sunset in those West Indian
islands from which my father was returning- the knowledge that he returned only to die -the almighty pomp in
which- this great idea of Death apparelled itself to my
young sorrowing heart- the corresponding pomp in which
the antagonistic idea, not.less mysterious, of life, rose, as
if on wings, amidst tropic glories and floral pageantries
that seemed even more solemn and pathetic than the
vapory plumes and trophies of mortality, -all this chorus
of restless images, or of suggestive thoughts, gave to my
father's return, which else had been fitted only to interpose
one transitory red-letter day in the calendar of a child, the
shadowy power of an   ineffaceable agency among my
dreams. This, indeed, was the one sole memoiial which
restores my father's image to me as a personal reality;
otherwise he would have been for me a bare nominis
umbra. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon a sofa;




62             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SILTCHES.
and, during that interval, it happened naturally, from my
repose of manners, that I was a privileged visitor to him
throughout his waking hours. I was also present at his
bedside in the closing hour of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of delirious conversation with some
imaginary visitors.'-My brother was a stranger from causes quite as little to
be foreseen, but seeming quite as natural after they had
really occurred. In an early stage of his career, he had
been found wholly unmanageable.    His genius for mischief amounted to inspiration; it was a divine afflatus
which drove him in that direction; and such was his capacity for riding in whirlwinds and directing'storms, that
he. made it his trade to create them, as a vEpeysyeeTa
Zevg, a cloud-compelling Jove, in order that he might direct them. For this, and other reasons, he had been sent
to the Grammar School'of Louth, in Lincolnshire — one
of those many old classic institutions which form the peculiar* glory of England. To box, and to' box under the
severest restraint of honorable laws, was in those days a
mere necessity of schoolboy life at public schools; and
hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control
of those generally who had benefited by such disciplineso systematically hostile to all meanness, pusillanimity, or
indirectness. Cowper, in his "Tyrocinium," is far from
doing justice to our great public schools. Himself disqual* "Peculiar." - Viz., as endowed foundations to which those resort
who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay,
or cannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst
the services of England from ancient times to the interests of educa
tion- a service absolutely unapproached by-any one nation of Chris.
tendom - is amongst the foremost cases of that' remarkable class
which make England, whilst often the most aristocratic, yet also for
many noble purposes, the most democratic of lands.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STTIFE.    63
ified, by delicacy of temperament, for reaping the benefits
from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his
own Westminster experience, he could not judge them
from an impartial station; but I, though ill enough adapted
to an atmosphere so stormy, yet having tried both classes
of schools, public and private, am compelled in mere conscience to give my vote (and, if I had a thousand votes, to
give aZl my votes) for the former.
Fresh from such a training as this,;and at a time when,
his additional five or six years availed nearly'to make'his
age the double of nine, my brother very naturally de,
spised me; and, from his exceeding frankness, he took no
pains to conceal that he did. Why should he? Who was
it that could have a right to feel aggrieved by his contempt? Who, if not myself?   But.it happened, on the
contrary, that I had a perfect craze for being despised. I
doted on it, and considered contempt a sort of luxury that
I was in continual fear of losing. Why not? Wherefore
should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it haps
pen: to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in
life? The cases which are cited from comedy of such a
yearning after contempt, stand upon a footing altogether
different: there the contempt is wooed as a service'able ally
and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that era
of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested
repose; and security there was not, on any lower terms,
for the latentis semita vita. The slightest approach to
any favorable construction of my intellectual pretensions
alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledged me in a
manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by a
second, by a third, by a fourth -0 Heavens I there is nc
saying how far the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands, upon me. I groaned under the weight'of
his expectations; ar d, if I laid but the first round of such a




*64           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
staircase, why, then, I saw m vision a vast Jacob's ladde
towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league
after league; and myself running up and down this ladder,
like any fatigue party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any
Babel which my wretched admirer might choose to build.
But I nipped the abominable system of extortion in the
very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man
could have no pretence, you know, for. expecting me ta
~efib the third or fourth round, when I had seemed quite
unequal to the first. Professing the most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the man no sort.of
hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, I
never could be made miserable by unknown respon.
sibilities,
Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was
$o essential to my peace of mind, l found at times an altitude -a starry altitude  in the station of contempt for
me assumed by my brother that nettled me. Sometimeb,
indeed, the mere necessities of,.dispute carried me, before
I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase of Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment
in. the. infinity of his contempt; and before long, when my
superiority in some bookish accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirely dissembled, mere
foolish human nature forced me into some trifle of exul-tation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was
disposed to grieve over them. They tended to shake that
solid.-foundation of utter despicableness upon which I relied
Po much for my freedom from anxiety; and therefore,
np.on the whole, it was satisfactory to my mind that my
brother's opinion of me, after any little trar ient oscillation,
gravitated determinately back towards that settled con.
tempt which'had been the result of his original inquest.
The pitlars of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    65
of his scorn, were these two- 1st, my physics; hJ denounced me for effeminacy: 2d, he assumed, and even
postulated as a datum, which I myself could never have
the face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, ne looked upon me as below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a
written character of the very best description, whenever I
chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; " you're
willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the
strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you
don't run away."  My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they'might have been. The
idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that 1 was not
uniformly an' idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really was, and there were more reasons
for thinking so than-the reader is yet aware of. But, as to
the effeminacy, I denied it in toto; and with good reason,
as will be' seen. Neither did my brother pretend to have
any experimental proofs of it. The ground he went upon
was a mere a priori one, viz., that I had always been tied
to the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at'most to this  that, by training and the natural tendency
of circumstances, I ought to be effeminate; that. is, there
was reason to expect beforehand that I should be so; but,
then, the more merit in me, if, in spite of such reasonable
presumptions, I really were not. In fact, my buother soon
learned, by a daily experience, how entirely he might depend upon me for carrying out the most audacious f his
own warlike plans  such plans, it is true, that I abomi.
nated; but that made no difference in the fidelity with
which I tried to fulfil them.
This eldest brother of mine was in all respects a rertarkable boy. Haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably
active, fertile in resources as R.-binson Crusoe; but also
5




0t;           At rOBlOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
full of quarrel as itis possible to imagine; and, in default
of any other opponent, he would have fastened. a quarrel
lipon his own shadow for presuming to run before him
when going westwards in the morning, whereas, in all rea.
son, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the
autho0 of its existence. Books he detested, one and all,
excepting only such as he happened to write himself.
And.hese were not a few. On oall subjects known to man,
from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down
to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white,
thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world
(which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my
sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject especially-of necromancy-he was very great: witness
his profound work,.though but a fragment, and, unfortu
nately, long since departed to the bosom of Cinderella, ens
titled " How to raise a Ghost; and when you've got him
down, how to keep him down."  To which work he as.
sured us that some most learned and enormous' man
whose name was a foot and a half long, had promised-hin
an appendix, which appendix treated of the Red Sea and
Solomon's signet ring, with forms of mittimus for ghosts
that might be refractory, and probably a riot act, for any
eAmeute amongst ghosts inclined to raise barricades; since
he often thrilled our young hearts by supposing the case,
(not at all unlikely, he affirmed,) that a federation, a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place amongst the
infinite generations of ghosts against the single generation
of men at any one time composing the garrison of earth.
The Roman phrase for expressing that a man had died,
viz., "Abiit- ad plures," tHe has gone over to the majority,) my brother explained to us; and we easily compre.
hended that any one generation of the living human race,




iNTRODJCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      67
even if combined, and acting in concerts must be in a
frightful minority, by comparison wil e' tic;ncalculable,enlePstions that had trod this earth beiore us.''ne Parlia-aent of living men, Lords and Commons united, what a
miserabte array against the Upper and Lower House composing the Parliament of ghosts! Perhaps the Pre-Adamites would constitute one wing in such a ghostly army.
My brother, dying in his sixteenth year, was far enough.t'm seeing or foreseeing Waterloo; else he might have
lustuated this dreadful duel of the living human race with
its ghostly psitdessors, by the awful apparition which at
tnree o'clock in the afernoon, on the 18th of June, 1815,
the mighty contest at Watt:'-.o must have assumed to eyes
that watched over the trembling interests of man. The
English army, about that time in the great agony of its
strife, was thrown into squares; and under that arrangement, which condensed and contracted its apparent numbers within a few black geometrical diagrams, how frightfully narrow, how spectral, did its slender quadrangles
appear at a distance, to any philosophic spectators that
knew the amount of human interests confided to that army,
and the hopes for Christendom that even then were trembling in the balance! Such a disproportion, it seems,
might exist, in the case of a ghostly war, between the harvest of possible results and the slender band of reapers that
were to gather it  And there was even a worse peril than
any analog6us one that has been proved to exist at Waterloo. A British surgeon, indeed, in a work of two octavo
volumes, has;endeavored to show that a conspiracy was
traced at Waterloo, between two or three foreign regiments, for kindling a panic in the heat of the battle, by flight,
and by a sustained blowing up of tumbrils, under the mis.
erable purpose of shaking the British steadiness. But the
evidences ars not clear; whereas my brother insisted that




ui8             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SI! TCHES.
the presence of sham men, distributed extensively amongst
the human race, and meditating treason against us all, had
been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all true philoso
phers,  Who were these shams and make-believe men?
They were, in fact, people that had been dead for centu
ries, but that, for reasons best known to themselves, had
returned to this upper earth,- walked about amongst us, and
were undistinguishable, except by the most learned of nee.
romancers, from authentic men of flesh and blood. I mention this for the sake of illustrating the fact, of which the
reader will find a singular instance in the foot note attached, that the same crazes are everlastingly revolving
upon men.*
This hypothesis, however, like a thousand others, when
it happened that they engaged no durable sympathy from
* Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equally
amongst doers'and thinkers, a closely-printed' pamphlet was publislied with this title, "A New Revelation, or the Communion of the
Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living.  Important Fact,
without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he wite like a
man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry
with Swedenborg, as might be expected for his chimeras; some of
which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect;' but'
as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be occupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) "'he has met with some who have acknowledged
the fact of their having come from the dead"-  abes confitentem
reum. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and in
particular, for the honor of -literature, it-grieves me to find, by p. 10,
that the.largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid, are to be looked for amongst " publishers and printers," of whom,
iteems,'' the great majority " are mere forgeries.: a very few creak
frankly about the matter, and say they don't care who knows it,
which, to my thinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section
doggedly deny it, and' call a policeman, if you persist' in charging
them with being shams. Some differences there are between my
brother and HIM. but in the great outline of their views they coincid




INTRODUCT ON TO THEN W*.;RT.'-'F STRIFE.  69:s nursery audience, he did not pursue. For some time
he turned his'thoughts to philosophy, and read- lectures
to us every.night upon some branch or other of physics.
This undertaking arose upon some one of us envying or
admiring flies for their power of walking upon the ceiling.' Pohr!" he said, "they are impostors; they pretend to
do it, but they can't do it as it ought to be done. Ah I
you should see me standing upright on the ceiling, with my
head downwards, for half an hour together, and meditating
profoundly."  My sister Mary remarked, that we should all
be very glad to see him in that position. "If that's the
case," he replied, "it's very well that all is ready, except
as to a strap or two,"'Being an excellent skater, he had
first imagined that, if held up until he had started, he
might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead, keep himself
in position through the continued impetus of skating. But
this he found not to answer; because, as he observed,
"the friction was too retarding from the plaster of Paris,
but the case would be very different if the ceiling were
coated with ice."  As it was not, he changed his plan.
The true,,secret, he now discovered, was this: he would
consider himself in the light of a-humming top'; he would
make an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself
launched, like a top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun.
Then the vertiginous motion of the human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, of course,
spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axisperhaps he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at' those scoundrels, the flies," that never improved in their
pretended art, nor made any thing of it.'The principle
was now discovered; " and, of course," he said, if a man
can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from
doing so for five months?"  "Certainly, nothing that I
can think of," was the reply of my sister, whose sceptic ism,




70            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
in fact, had not settled upon the five months, but altogeJe~.
upon the five minutes. The apparatus for spinning h:m
however, perhaps from its complexity,.would not work - a
fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On
reconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointinent of some amongst us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete, he saw a moral difficulty. It
was not a humming top that was required, but a peg top.
Now, this, in order to keep up the vertigo at full stretch,
without which, to a certainty, gravitation would prove too
much for him, needed to be whipped incessantly. But
that was precisely what a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly on the legs by any
grub of a gardener, unless it were father Adanm himself,
was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face.
However, as some compensation, he proposed to improve
the art of flying, which was, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful to civilized society. As
he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeeded in
some attempts at bringing down cats by parachutes, it was
not very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he was.reproached by my sister for never
flying back again,- which, however, was a far different
thing, and not even attempted by the philosopher in "Ras.
selas" - (for
"Revocare gradum, et superas evadere ad auras,
Hic labor, hoc opus est,")
he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his
winged parachutes any more, either " aloft or alow," till
he had thoroughly studied Bishop Wilkins * on the art of
* " Bishop Wilkins." - Dr. W., Bishop of Chester, in the reign of
Charles II., notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyage




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.       71
translating right reverend gentlemen to the moon; and. in
the mean tnie, he resumed his general lectures on physics.
From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might
say shelled out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's,
He had been'in the habit of lowering the pitch of his
lectures with ostentatious condescension to tne presumed
level of our poor understandings. This superciliousness
annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two
young female visitors, and my next younger brother,.- in
subsequent times a little middy on board many a ship of H.
M., and the most predestined rebel upon earth against all
assumptions, small or great, of superiority, - she arranged
a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenly extinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say,
what was no unusual thing with him, that he flattered' himself he had made the point under discussion -tolerably clear;
" clear," he added, bowing round the half circle of us, the
audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and then he repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean
of capacities."  Upon which, a voice, a female voice,but whose voice, in the tumult that followed, I did not
distinguish, — retorted, "-No, you haven't; it's as dark as
sini;" and then, without a moment's interval, a second voice
exclaimed," Dark as night;" then came my young brother's
to the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to the
moon, and perhaps it was his name in combination with his book that
suggested the-" Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It is unfair, however, to mention him in connection with that single one of his works
which announces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientffic
man, and already in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that Royal Society of London which was afterwards realized
and presided over by Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also
a learned man, but still with a veil of romance about him, as may be
aoeeB in his most elaborate work - " The Essay towards a Philosophic
or Universal Language.'




72            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
insurrectionary yell, " Dark as midnight;" then another fe
male voice chimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch; "-a4?
so the peal continued to come round like a catch, the whol
being so well concerted, and the rolling fire so well sus
tained, that it was- impossible to make head. against it
whilst the abruptness of the interruption gave to it the protecting character of an oral "round robin," it being impossible to challenge any one in particular as the ringleader.
Burke's phrase of "the swinish multitude," applied to
Ynmbs, was then in every body's mouth; and, accordingly,
after bmy brother had recovered from his first,astonishmenti
at this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweet *ng bows
that looked very much like tentative rehearsals of" weepingfusillade, and then addressed us in a very briur speech,
of which we could distinguish the words pearls and swinish
mnultitude, but uttered in a very low key, perhaps out of
some lurking consideration for the,vo young strangers.
We all laughed in chorus at this i,rting salute; my brother
himself condescended at last tt join us; but there ended
the course of lectures on natural philosophy.
As it was impossible, however, that he should remain,quiet, he announced to us, that for the rest of his life he
meant to dedicate himself to the intense cultivation of the
tragic drama.. He got to work instantly; and very soon
he had composed the first act of his "Sultan Selim;" but,
in defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to
""Sultan Amurath," considering that a much fiercer name,
more bewhiskered and beturbaned. It was no part of his
intention that we should sit lolling on chairs like ladies
and gentleman that had paid opera prices for private boxes.
He expected every one of us,'he said, to pull an oar. We
were to act the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars
to pull. There were so many characters, that each of us
took four at the least, and the future middy had six  He,




INTRODUCTION TO TItE WORLD OF STRIFE.      73
this wicked little.middy, caused the greatest affliction to
Sultan Atnurath, forcing him to order the- amputation of
his head six several times (that is,.once in ever) one of his
six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though
otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the
bowstring, and wha: by the cimeter, he had,so thinned
the population with which he commenced business, that
scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end
of, act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an
awkward situation. Large arrears of work remained, and
hardly any body to do it but the sultan himself. In com.
posing act the second, the author had' to proceed -like
Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely new
generation. Apparently this young generation, l'at ought
to have been so good, took no warning by what  ad hap,
pened to their ancestors in act the first: one mr  conclude
that they were quite as wicked, since the poor sultan had
found himself reduced to order them all for execution ir
the course of this acf the second. To the brazen age had
succeeded an.iron age; and the prospects were becoming
sadder and sadder as the tragedy advanced..: But here the
author_ began to' hesitate. He felt it hard to resist the in
stinct of carnage. And was it right to do so?  Which of
the felons whom he had cut of prematurely could pretend
that a court of appeal would have reversed his setltence?
But the consequences were distressing. A no:- set of
characters in every act brought with it the necessxy of f
* a. Middy.":'_- I call him so simply to avoid confusion, *i.  f way
of anticipation; else he was. too young at this time to serve r n the
navy. Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety
cf service in every class of ships belonging to our navy. At one
time, when yet a boy, he was capt,red ty- pirates, and compelled te
sail with theim and the end of I. adventurous career was, that fo
many a year be has ieen lying  the bottom of the Atlantic.




74            AUTOBIOG".,tIC SKETCH.Rt.
new plot; for people could not succeed to the arrears of
old actions, or inherit ancient motives, like a landed estate
Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground in each
separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragedies in.
vYlved'in one.
Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this mo.
ment my memory furnishes, was the brother who now first'
-'id open to me the gates of war. The occasion was this.
ied had resented, with a shower of stones, an affront'offered to us by an individual boy, belonging.'to a cotton;ictory: for more than two years afterwards this became
t.h teterrima causa of a skirmish or a battle as often as we
passed the factory; and, unfortunately, that was twice
a;day on every day except Sunday. Our situation in
respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country house newly built by my father, at that time was a
clear mile from the outskirts of Manchester; but in after
years Manchester, throwing out the tentacula of its vast
expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and, for any
hing.I know, the grounds and gardens which then insudated the house may have long disappeared. Being a
modest mansion, which (including hot walls, offices''and
gaidener's house) had cost only six'thousand pounds, I do
not know how it should have risen to the distinction of
giving name to a region of that great town;.however, it
has done so;* and at this time, therefore, after changes
so great, it will be difficult for the' habitue of that region
to understand how my brother and myself could have -a
solitary road to traverse between Greenhay and Princess
Street, then the termination, on that side, of Manchester.
* " Greenheys," with a slight variation in the spelling, is the name
given to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus
probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing
rc- ot'rier grouuds of denomination) raised it to this privilege.




INTROLIJCTION'.'E <'.-tLD OF STRIFE.   75
But so: it was. Oxo'rd Street, i-ike its namesake in  on
don1 ras then called the Oxford — Road; and during the
cua -ency of our acquaintance with it, arose the first three
bouses in its neighborhood; of which the third was built
for the Rev. S. H., one of our guardians, for whop. bia
friends had also built the Church of St. Peters  nct a
bowshot- from the house. At present, howr- er, he lesided
in'Salford, nearly two miles from Greeana; anc' v.im
we went, over daily, for the benefit of his classical instructions. One sole cotton factory had then risen along the
line of Oxford Street; and this was close to a bridge,
which also was a new creation; for previously all passengers to Manchester went round by Garrat. This factory became to us the officina gentium, from which swarmed forth
those Goths and Vandals that continually threatened our.
steps; and this bridge became the eternal arena of combat,
we taking good care to be on the right side of the bridge
for retreat, i. e., on the town side, or the country side,
accordingly as we were going out in the morning, or returniig in the afternoon. Stones were the implements of,
warfare; and -by continual practice both parties became
expert in throwing them.
The origin of the feud it is scarcely requisite to rehearse, since the particular accident which began it was
nct the true efficient cause of our long warfare, but simply
the casual occasion. The cause lay in our aristocratic
dress.'As children of an opulent' family, -where all prov isions were liberali and all appointments elegant, we were
uniformly well dressed; and,, in particular, we wore troussers, (at that time unheard of, except among sailors,) and
we also wore Hessian boots  a crime that could not ie
forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because it expressed
hhe doubl- offence of being aristocratic and being outland.
*h. We were aristocrats and it was vain to deny it:




TOU           AUrOBIOGRAPHIC SKF' ruCHi'i
co.id -we deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not
absolutely sans culottes, were slovenly and forlorn in their
dress, often unwashed, with hair totally neglected, and
always covered with flakes of cotton. Jacobins they were
not, as regarded any sympathy wtth. the Jacobinism that
then desolated France.;- for, on the contrary, they detested
every t ing French, and answered with. brotherly signals to
the cry of" Church and king," or' King and constitutiaf"  But, for all that, as they were perfectly independeit,
getting very high wages, and these wages in a mode of
industry that was then taking vast strides ahead, they ccttrived to reconcile this patriotic anti-Jacobinism with a
personal Jacobinism of that sort which is native to the heart
of man, who is by natural impulse (andnot without a root
of nobility, though also of base envy) impatient of inequality, and submits to it only through a sense of its necessity,- or under a long experience of its benefits.
It was on an early day of our new tyrocinium, or pel haps
on the very first, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue from the factory * sang out to us derisively,
" Hollo, bucks!' In this the reader may fail to perceive
any atrocious insult commensurate to-the long war which
followed. But the reader is wrong. The word " dandies," f
which was what the villain meant, had not then been born,
so that he could not have called us by that name, unless
through the spirit of prophecy. Buck was the nearest word
at hand in his Manchester vocabulary: he gave all he
could, and let us dream the rest. But in- the next moment
lfe discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime by
*  Factory." - Such was the designation technically at that time.
At present, I believe that a building of that class would be called a
mill."
f This word, however, exists in Jfack-a landy - a Vety old Engliad
word. But what does that mean.




I-'TRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      77
saluting us as " Boots! boots! "  My brother made a dead
stop, surveyed him witL. intense disdain, and bade him draw
near, that he might " give his flesh to the fowls of the air.'
The boy declined to accept this liberal invitation, and con.
veyed his answer by a most contemptuous and plebeian
gesture,* upon which my brother droye him in with a
shower of stones.
During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my
part, remained inactive, and therefore apparently neutralh
But this was the last time that I did so: for the moments
indeed, I was taken by surprise. To be called a buck by
one that had it in his choice to have called me a coward,
a.thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable
offence; and as to boots, that rested upon a flagrant fact
that could not be denied; so that at first I was green enough
to regard the boy as very considerate and indulgent. But
my brother soon rectified my views; or, if any doubts
remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of my
paramount duty to himself, which was threefold.  First,
it seems that I owed military allegiance to him, as my commander-in-chief, whenever we " took the field;" secondly,
by the law of- nations, I, being a cadet of my house, owed
suit and service to him. who was its head; and he assured
me, that twice in a year, on my birthday and on his, he had
a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and ti set
his.foot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorouss,
bit valid amongst gentlemen, —viz., "by the comity of
xiations,"' -it seems I owed eternal deference to cne so
much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger, traver,
* Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebeian as it was, by which
the English commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when
civilly inviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of
Lieutenant Southey his brothers who communicated to me this an
eclote.




78           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something like
all this in tendency I had already believed, though I had
not so minutely investigated the modes and grounds of my
duty. By temperament, and through-atural dedication to
despondency, I fiet resting upon me always too deep ara
gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life, that I
never should be able to fulfil; a burden which I could not
carry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off.
Glad, therefore, I was to find the whole tremendous weight
of obligations- the law and the prophets-all -crowded
into this one pocket command, "Thou shalt obey,thy
brother- as God's vicar upon earth.'? For now, if, by any
future stone levelled at-him who had called me a "buck,"
I should chance to draw blood, perhaps I might noL have
committed so serious a trespass on any rights which he
could plead; but if I had, (for on this subject my convictions
were still cloudy,) at any rate, the duty I might have violated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam,
was cancelled when it came into collision with my para.
mount duty to this liege brother of my own individual
house.
From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military -commands with the utmost docility;. and happy it
made me that every sort of doubt, or question, or opening
for demur was swallowed up in the unity of this one papal
principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all rights and
duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself.
His was the judgment- his was the responsibility; and to
me belonged only the sublime obligation of unconditional
faith in him.  That faith I realized. It is true that he'
taxed me at times, in his reports of particular fights, with
"horrible cowardice," and even with " a cowardice that
seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery."  But this was only afapon de parler with him: the




INTRODUCTION TO THE. WORLD OF STRIFE.    79
idea of secret perfidy, that was constantly moving under
ground, gave an interest to the progress of the war, which
else tended to the monotonous.:t was a dramatic artifice
for sustaining the interest, where the incidents might happen to be tot slightly diversified. But that he did not
believe his own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his " General History of the Campaigns,'
which was a resume, or recapitul'iting digest, of his daily
reports.'
We fought every day, and, generally speaking, twice
every day; arid the result was pretty uniform, viz., that
my brother and I terminated the battle by insisting upon
our undoubted right to run away. Magna Charta, I should
fancy., secures that great right to every man; else, surely,
it is:sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most
of our skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one,
grew a standing schism between my brother and myself.
My unlimited obedience had respect to action, but not ito
opinion.  Loyalty to- my brother did not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow that.-I
must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And
these opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice,
at the least; in-every week, but sometimes every night, my
brother insisted -on singing- " Te Deum": for supposed vic-.
tories' which he had won; and he insisted also on my
bearing a part in these' ( Te Deums."  Now, as I knew of
no such victories, but resolutely asserted the truth,- viZ.,
that -we ran away, - a slight jar was thus given to the else
triumphal effect of these musical ovations.. Once having
uttered`my protest, however, willingly I gave- my aid to the
chanting; forI loved unspeakably the grand and-varied
system of chanting in the Romish and English churches.
And, looking back at this day to the ineffable benefits
which I derived from the church of my childhood, I account




80            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC: SKETCTES.
among the very greatest those which reached me through
the various chants connected with the' Q0, Jubilate," the'"Magnificat," the "Te Deum," the " Benedicite," &c,
Through these chants it was that the sorrow which laid
waste my infancy, and the devotion which nature had
made a necessity of my being, were profoundly interfused:
the sorrow gave reality and depth to the devotion; the de,
votion gave grandeur and idealization to the sorrow. Neither was my love for chanting altogether without knowledge. ~A son of my reverend guardian, much older than
myself, who possessed a singular faculty of producing a
sort of organ accompaniment with one half of his mouth,
whilst' he sang with the other half, had given me some in,
structions in the art of chanting; and, as: to my brother,
he, the hundred-handed Briareus, could do all things; of
eourse,- therefore, he could chant.
Once having begun, it followed naturally that the war
should deepen in bitterness. Wounds that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults that rankled in the heart,?-these
were not features of the case likely to be forgotten by our
eanneies, and far less by my fiery brother. I, for my part,
entered not into any of the' passions that. war may be sup,
posed to kindle, except only the chronic passion of anxiety.
Fear it was not; for experience had taught me that, under
the random firing of our undisciplined enemies, the chances
were not many of being wounded. But the uncertainties
of the war; the doubts in every separate action whether I
could keep up the requisite connection with my brother,
and, in case I could not, the utter darkness that surrounded
my fate; whether, as a trophy won from Israel, I should
be dedicated to the service of some Manchester Dagon, or
pass through fire: to Moloch,-all these contingencies, for
me that had no friend to consult, ran too violently into the
master current of my constitutional despondency ever to




INTRODUCTION: TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.           &]
give:ay under any casual- elation iof suceess..'Sucese,
k0ywever, we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pre.
ty often; and once, at least, as the reader will find to'hi
mo0rtificatiiio   if he is wicked enough to. take the side, of the.Philistines, a most smashing victory in'.pitched batte.;Bt;t even then,.and whilst the hurrahs were yet ascending
fromi our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance icari
back: to m-y heart of that deadly depression which, duly'i
the conming round of the morning. and evening watchea
travelled with.me like -my shadow on our apprioach to fte
miemorable bridge. A: bridge of sighs; * to. sirely it was
* " Bridge. of.shs." -.Two men of memorable geRepis, lQ. laat
and Lord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriate4 thi
phrase, and'reissued it as English'currency, that many resaiers sup
pose ift'be' theirs.- But fte genealogies Of' fine ekxpfssions sh6ild
be-;more carefully'preserved. T he expression belongs o riginally, t:
Yemni_. Thi jus pQostliminii becomes, of, rq;,mporinea, inmapy
caes, but especially in the case of Shakspeare.. Cquld;9neaYeav,b
Ieved it possible beforehand, And yet It  fact:that  is made to
se'ma itbber of'the lowest' o rder, by m'ee dant o f suft'eritg ribberi.
Purely through their wown jewelly'pleador have: faia' htiadrds of'hisephrases forFced themselves into. ag. so genal,: uider thae vnfga
ifirnlry of seeking to strengthen weak prose by, sAreds qfpteqflu
tation, tha at length the majority of careless readers come tp, l.oo
upon these phrases as belonglng to the'laingage, aand traceable to no
distint proprietor any more than proiertib: and'thas, 6i'Ifetiwiard
observing itiem In. Sheakspeaie, -they regad^ hit;i'n ithe lighti bfit'6a
qwcep, t.g a. s (like so many.xtWeaner personis) fommathe:ommQonireas
of,:i.e u     niversal m ind, on whbch, treasu, ime aptime, h. i   himn
self confQrred, these phiases.as origi-nal donations of his own. Many
expreons fri thde "' aradise'ost.' in "1 Penseroso,' anid inm'AI
le)io,, fare'n the sai, e'ptedictament. A ind uhiisVthe ailfdt irie'dbid
ease, is, realized which I have described, viz., that simply by, bhaving
ssaerd. a r9bbeqry;through. two ~enturie.' (for the -irsst ttempt at
plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shaksp.are and Milton come to be, taxed as rrobbers. N. B.-.In, speaking
q8,o.d. as ha ing approprigted,the, phjrae aidge,of, BX  ua
not be understood to represent him as by possibility aiming at..ul
6




82            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for me; and even for my brother it formed an object of
-fierce yet anxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise, as we first came in sight of it; for, if it happened to
be occupied in strength, there was an end of all hope that
we could attempt the passage; and that was a fortunate
solution of the difficulty, as it imposed no evil beyord:a
circuit; which, at least, was safe, if the world should
choose to call it inglorious. Even this shade of ignominy,
however, my brother contrived to color favorably, by calling us-that is, me and himself-'- a- corps:of observation;" and he condescendingly explained to'me,-that, although making "a lateral movement," he had his eye
upon the enemy, and "might yet'come round upon his left
flank in a'way that wouldn't, perhaps, prove very agreeable.". This, from the nature of the ground, never happened.;We crossed the.river'at Garrat -out of sight from,the enemy's position; and, on our return in the evening,
when we reached that point of our route from which the
retreat was secure to Greenhay, we took such revenge for
the'morning insult as might. belong to extra liberality in
our: stone donations. On this line of policy there was,
therefore, no cause for anxiety; but the common case was,
that the numbers might not be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough for mischief. To my brother,
however, stung. and.carried headlong into hostility by the
martia. -instincts of his nature, the uneasiness of doubt or
insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation
of victory or even of. contest; whilst to-myself, whose exultation was purely official and ceremonial, as due by lo.y
alty from a cadet to the head of his house, no such compensation existed. The enemy was no enemy. in my eyes;
concealment. He was as far above such a meanness by'is nobility
of heart, as he was raised above all need for it by the (verflowinjg
opulence of his genius.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD t) -STRIFE.     3
his'affronts were but- retaliations;' and his insults were so
inapplicable to my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclu-'
sively meant for the use of my brother,-that from me they
recoiled, one and all, as cannon shot'from cotton bags.
The; ordinary course of our day's warfare was this': between nine and ten in the morning occurred'ouir first transit, and, consequently, our earliest opportunity for' doing
business. But at this time the great sublunary interest of
breakfast, which swallowed up all nobler considerations of
glory and ambition, occupied the work people of the factory-, (or what in the pedantic diction of' this day are termed
the l'operatives,") so that very. seldom any serious business was transacted. Without any formal -armistice, the
paramount convenience of such an arrangement silently
secured its own recognition. Notice there needed none of
truce, when the one side yearned for breakfast, and the
other for a respite': the groups, therefore, on or about the
bridge, if any at all, were loose in their array, and careless.
We passed through them rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily; exchanging a few snarls, perhaps, but seldom or ever
snapping at each other. The tameness was almost shocking;of those who, in the afternoon, would inevitably resume
their natural characters of tiger cats andwolves. Sometimes, however, my brother felt it to be a duty that we
should fight in the morning; particularly when any expression of public joy for a victory,  bells ringing in the distance,-or when a royal birthday, or some traditional com.
meimoration of ancient feuds, (such as the 5th of November,) irritated his martial propensities.: Some of' these
being religious festivals, seemed to require of us an extra
homage, for which we knew not how to find any:natural
or significant expression, except through sharp discharges
of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew or San.
scrit, and universally intelligible. But, excepting these




S    ~:AUTOBIOGRA.PHIC SKETCHIES.
ighidays- of religious solemnity, when a man is v.ailed
upon /to show that he is not a -paga.n or a miscreant,i th.
eldest of senses, by thumping, or. trying to thumpi somebody who is accused or accusable of being: heterodox, the
great ceremony of breakfast was allowed. to sanctify the
hour, Somei natural growls we uttered, but hushed them:
sooq, regardless
i' Of the sweeping whirlpool's sway,:hat, th;u shed in grim repose, looked for hig evenifig prey."
That came. but too surely. Yes, evening; never forgot to
coQme; this odious necessity of fighting never missed its
road back,    e     or fell asleep,orlotered by the way, morethar
a bitl of exchange or a tertian fever. Five times,a week
(Saturday, sometimes, and Sunday always, were:;days of
rest) the same scene rehearsed itself. in, pretty nearly<the
sa-me isuccession of circumstances. Between.four and fivee
o'clock we had crossed the bridge to.the safe, or Green-.
hay side; then we paused, and waited for the,enermy.
Sooner, or later a bell rang, and from the smoky hive is4
sue4, the hornets that night and iday stung incurably my
peae o.f mind.. The order and procession; of the incidents
after: this were -odiously monotonous. My, brother occu
pied the main high road, preciselyat the. point where.,a
very. gentle rise of the ground attained its summit; for the
bridge lay in a slight valley, and the main military -posi:,
tion'was fifty ior eighty yards above the bridge.: then -but
haying first examined..my pockets,. in order to be sure that
my.8 stpclhk of ammunition, stones, fragments of. plate, with
a.-reasopable proportion of brickbats,iwas all;.orrect and
ready: for action —  e detached me about forty yards to the
right:, y orders being. invariable, and liable to. no doubts
or." quibbling."  Detestable in. my ears was that word
"quibbling," by which, for a thousand; years, if the wan




NTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.         89
had happened to last so long, he would have fastened upon
me:the imputation of meaning, or wishing, at least, to do
wht he called " pettifogulizing" - that is;to plead some
distinction, or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under
some colorable pretence that, according to their literal cong
struction, they really did not admit -of being fulfilled, or
perhaps that they admitted it too much as being capable of
fulfilment in two senses, either of them a practicable senses
True it was that my eye was preternaturally-keen for flaws
of language, -not from. pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish
to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt
to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize " — i. e.,
to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tor,
tuosities of construction — exactly in the opposite direction,
from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I founid, in
altmost every body's -words, an unintentional opening left
for double interpretations.  Undesigned equivocation prevails every Where; *' and it is not the cavilling hair splitter,
but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that
is- most likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions
too wide or, too vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentially double. Not in order to resist
or evade my brother's directions, but for the very opposite
* Geometry (it.has been said) would not evade. disputation, if a
man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil.
But t, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page
of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English
language (far leSs- ii tihe German) which, upon a sufflcieiht ifiteres
arisingi would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in. precision, for a suit in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true,
because the doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of prop
erty; but what does arise is this - that something more valuable
thin i' pecuniry interest is continnally suffering, viz., the interesti
of truthi




86            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
purpose - viz., that I might fulfil them to the letter;.thus
and no otherwise it happened that I showed so much
scrupulosity abdut the exact value and position of his words,
as finally to draw upon myself the vexatious reproach of
being habitually a " pettifogulizer."
Meantime, our campaigning continued to rage. Overtures of pacification were never mentioned on either side.
And I,-for my part, with the passions only of peace at my
heart, did the works of war faithfully and with-distinction.
I presume so, at least, from the results. It is true, I was
continually falling into treason, without exactly knowing
how I got into it, or how I got out'of it.' My brother also,
it is true, sometimes assured me that he could, according to
the rigor of martial justice, have me hanged on the first
tree we passed; to which my prosaic answer had been,
that of trees there were none in Oxford Street - [which, in
imitation of Von Troil's famous chapter on the snakes of
Lapland, the reader may accept, if he pleases, as a complete'course of lectures on the "dendrology " of Oxford
Street.]  But, notwithstanding such little stumblings in my
career, I continued to ascend in the service; and, I am
sure, it will gratify my friendly- readers to hear, that, before
my eighth birthday, I was promoted to the rank of major
general. O:er this sunshine, however, soon swept a train
of clouds. Three times I was taken prisoner, and with
different results. The first time I was carried to the rear,
and not molested in any way. Finding myself thus:gnominiously neglected, I watched my opportunity.; ar,'oy
making a-wide circuit, easily effected my escape. In the
next case, a-brief council was held over' me; but I was not
allowed to hear the deliberations; the result only being
communicated to me- which result consisted in a message
not very complimentary to my brother, and a small present
of kicks to myself. This present was paid down without




.NTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     87
any discount, by means of a general subscription amongst
the party surrounding me - that party, luckily, not being
very-numerous; besides - which, I must, in honesty, acknowledge myself, generally speaking, indebted to their
forbearance. They were not disposed to be too hard upon
me. But, at the same time, they clearly did not:think, it
right that'I should escape altogether from tasting the calamities of war. And this translated the estimate of my:guilt
from the public jurisdiction to that of the individual; some.
times capricious and harsh, and carrying out the' public
award by means of legs that ranged through. all gradations.df weight and agility. One kick differed exceedingly from
another kick' in dynamic value; and, in some cases, this
difference was so distressingly conspicuous as to imply
special malice, unworthy, I conceive, of all generous
soldiership.
On returning to our own frontiers, I had an opportunity
of'displaying my exemplary greenness. That message to
my brother, with all its virus of insolence:I repeated as
faithfully for the spirit, and as literally for the expressions,
s: my memory allowed me to do; and in that troublesome
effort,'simpleton that I was, fancied myself:exhibiting a
soldier's loyalty to his commanding officer. "My brother
thought otherwise: he was more angry, with me than with
the enemy. I; ought, he said, to have refused all participation in such sans cullotes insolence; to carry''it' Was to acknofledge' it as fit to'be carried.  One- grows wiser every
day; and on this particular day I made a resolution that, if
again made prisoner, I would bring no more "jaw" (so my
brother-called it) from the Philistines. If these people would
send" jaw," I settled that, henceforwards, it must go through
the post office.
In my former captures, there had been nothing:special
or worthy of commemoration' in the circumstadnes.




88-           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHE-S.
Neither was there in the third, excepting that, by accident,,
in.the second stage of the case, I was delivered over to the
oustody of young.women and girls; whereas, the ordinary
course wouald have thrown.me uponthe vigilant attentions
(reliev.ed from monotony by the experimental kicks) of
boys.,: oSo. far, the chiange was very much for the better. I
had. a feeling myself, on first being presented to my new
young. mistresses, of a distressing.sort. Having.al.ways,.up
to. the completion of my sixth. year,.been a privileged pet,
and almost, I might say, ranking amongst the sanctities of
the household, with all its female sections, whether young
or,; ld,. (an advantage: which-I -owed originally to a long illness, an: ague, stretching over two entire years.,of my: infrany,) naturally I had learned to appreciate the indulgent
tender.ness of women.;.and. my heart thrilled with love and
gratitude, as often as they took me up into their arms and
klissedme. Here it would have been as everywhere else';
but,- unfortunately, my introduction to these,: young women
was iin the very worst of characters. I had.been? taken in.
arms..-.-in arms against their.own broathers,, cousins,, sweet..
haerts, and on pretexts too frivolous to. mention, If asked,,the. iquestion, it-wuould, be, found that. I- should not myself
dery,;the fact of being; at war with their whole. order.,
W ihat was the meaning of that. What was it to which wai
pledg,a mp man?  It pledged him, in case, of opportunity,,.tc,::burn., ravagr,, and depopulate the housesand lands of the
nermy; which-, enemy was these fair girls. The warrior
stood, committed. to universal destruction. Neither sex nor.
asge,(neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray
hairs..of -the venerable patria.rch, neither.the sanctity of
th.; matrpn nor the loveliness of the youthful' brid.e would
confer any privilege with the warrior, consequently not
vith. me..
Maay other hideous features in the military eharacter




INTRODUCTION TO TETE WORILD OF STRIFE.    89'
will be found in books innumerable -levelled at those who
make war, and therefore at myself. And it appears finally
by these books, that, as one of my ordinary practices, I
make a wilderness, and call it a pacification; that I hold it
a duty to put people to the sword; which d&ne, to plough
up the foundations of their hearths and altars, and then to
sow the ground with salt.
All this was passing through my brain, when suddenly
one young woman snatched me up in her arms, and kissed
me. from her, I was passed round to others of the party,
who all in turn caressed me, with no allusion to that warlike mission against them and theirs, which only had procured me the honor of an introduction to themselves in the
character of captive. The too palpable fact that I was not
the person meant by nature to exterminate their famiiliess,
or to- make wildernesses, and call them pacifications, had
withdrawn!from their minds the counterfact - that whatever had been my performances, my intentions had been
hostile, and that in such a character only I could have become their prisoner. Not only did these young people
kiss me, but I (seeing no military reason against it), kissed
them. Really, if young women will insist on kissing major
generals, they must expect that the generals will retaliate.
One onlyof the crowd adverted to the character in which
f came before them: to be a lawful prisoner, it struck her
too logical mind that I must have been caught in some ag.
gressive practices. "'Think," she said, "of this little dog
fighting, and fighting our.Jack."  " But," said another il a
propitiatory tone,'' perhaps he'll not do so any more."  I
was touched by the kindness of her suggestion, and the
sweet merciful sound of that same "Not do so any more,"
which, really was prompted, I fear, much more by that
charity in her which hopeth all things than by any signs
of amendment in myself. Well was it for me that no time




90            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
was- allowed for an investigation into my morals: by point
blank:questions as to my future intentions. In which case
it would have appeared too undeniably, that the same sad
necessity which had planted me hitherto ini a position of
hostility to their estimable families would continue to persecute'me; and that,- on the very next day, duty to my
brother, howsoever it might struggle with gratitude to themselves, would range me in martial attitude, with a pocketful of stones, meant, alas! for the exclusive use of their
respectable kinsmen.  Whilst I was preparing myself,
however, for this painful exposition, my female friends
observed issuing from the factory a crowd of boys not
likely at all to improve my prospects. Instantly setting me
down on my feet, they formed a sort of cordon sanitaire
behind me, by stretching out their petticoats or aprons, as
in dancing, so as to touch; and then crying out, "'Now,
little dog, run for thy life," prepared themselves (I doubt
not)' for rescuing- me, should my recapture be effected.
But this was not effected, although attempted with an
energy that alarmed me, and even perplexed me with' a
vague thought (far too ambitious for my years) that one or
two of.the pursuing party might be possessed by some
demon of jealousy, as eye witnesses to my revelling
amongst the lips of that fair girlish bevy, kissing and being
kissed, loving and being loved;' in which case, from all that
ever I had read about jealousy; (and I had read a great
deal — viz.,' Othello,"-and Collins's "Ode to the Passions,"-I was satisfied that, if again captured, I had very
little chance for my life. That jealousy was a green-eyed
monster, nobody::could know better than -I did.' "0, my
lord, beware-of' jealousy! "  Yes and my lord couldn't
possibly have more reason for bewaring of it than myself;
indeed, well it would have been had his lordship run away
from all the ministers of jealousy- Iago, Cassio, and'




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     91
embroidered handkerchiefs — at the same pace of six miles
an.'hour which kept me ahead of my infuriated pursuers.
Ah, that maniac, white as a leper with flakes of cotton, can
I ever forget him - him that ran so far in advance of his
party?  What passion but jealousy could have sustained
him in -so hot a chase? There were some lovely g;rls in
the" fair company that had so condescendingly caressed
me;. but, doubtless, upon that sweet creature his love must
have settled, who suggested, in her soft, relenting voice, a
penitence in me that, alas! had not dawned, saying, "Yes:;
but perhaps he will not do so any more."  Thinking, as I
ran, of her beauty, I felt that this jealous demoniac must
fancy himself justified in committing seven times seven
riurders upon me, if he should- have it in' his power. But,
thank Heaven, if jealousy can run six miles an hour, there
are other passions- as, for instance, panic- that can run,
upon occasion, six and a half; so, as I had the start of him,
(you know, reader,) and not.a very short start, -thanks
be' to the expanded petticoats of my dear female friends!
-'naturally it happened that the green-eyed monster came
in' second best. Time, luckily, was'precious'with him;
and, accordingly, when he had' chased me into the'by-road
le'ading down to Greenhay, he turned back. For the moment, therefore, I found myself suddenly released' from
danger. But this counted for nothing. The same scene
would probably revolve upon me continually; and, on the
next rehearsal, Green-eyes might have better luck.  It
saddened me,- besides, to find myself under the political
necessity of numbering amongst the Philistines, and as
daughters of Gath, so -many kind-hearted girls, whom, by
personal proof, I knew to be such. In the profoundest
sense, I was unhappy; and, not from any momentary accident of distress, but from deep glimpses which now, and
heretofore', had opened themselves, as occasions arose, into




92            AUTOPIOGRAPHIC SKETGHES..
the; inevitable conflicts of life.. One of the saddest among
such; conflictss  the necessity, wheresoever it occurs, of
adoptiong.  though the heart should disown -the enmities
of one's own family, or country, or religious sect. In.frms how afflicting must that necessity have sometimes
occurred during the Parliamentary war!  And, in after
years, amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances!.I found the same impassioned complaint uttered
by,a knight, Sir Ywain, as early as A. D. 1240" But now, where'er I stray or go,
My heart SHE has that is my foe! "
L, knew -- Ianticipated to a. certainty - that my. brother
yould not hear of any merit belonging to the factory
population whom every day we had to meet in battle; on
the.contrary, even. submission on their part, and'willingness to. walk penitentially through the Furcce Caudinw,
would hardly have satisfied his sense of their criminality.
Often, indeed,'as we came in view of the factory, he would
shake his fist at. it, and say, in a ferocious tone of voice,'".elenda.est Carthago!"  And certainly, I thought. to
myself, it must be admitted by every. body, that the factouy.
people are.inexcusable in raising a rebellion against my
brothers':But still rebels were men, and sometimes were
women;, and rebels, that stretch out their petticoats like
fans for the sake of screening one from the hot pursuit of
eemies with fiery eyes, (green or otherwise,) really are not
the sort of people that one.wishes to hate.,Hoenewards,. therefore, I drew in sadness, and little
doubting that hereafter I, might have verbal feuds with my
brother on. behalf of my fair friends, but, not dreaming. how
much displeasure I had already incurred by my treasonable collusion with their caresses. That part of the affair
he had seen: with his own, eyes, from his position.on the




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      9&
field;'and then it was that he left me indignantly to my,
fate-, which, by my first reception, it was easy to see would.
not prove very gloomy. When I came into our own study,
I found him engaged in preparing a bulletin, (which:word
was just then travelling into universal use,) reporting; briefly
the events.of the day. The art of drawing; as I shall again
have occasion to mention, was amongst his foremost acdomplishments.; and.round the margin of the border;ran, a
black border, ornamented with cyprus and other.fnereal
emblems.. When finished,, it was carried into the room of
Mrs. Evans.. This Mrs. Evans was an important person in
our-affairs.  My mother, who never chose to have.any
direct communication with her servants,, always had..a
housekeeper for the regulation of all domestic business,,
a'nd the housekeeper,: for some years, was this Mrs. Evans.
Into- her private parlor, where she sat aloof from tlhe under
servants, my brother and I had the entree at all -times, but
upon very different terms of:acceptance: he as a favorite
of the first class; I, by sufferance, as a sort of gloomy
shadow that ran after hid person, and' could -not. well be
shaut out:if-he were let in. Him she: admired in the very
highest. degree;. myself, on the contrary, she detested,
whie& made. me unhappy. But then,:in some measu;r,
she. made amends for this, by despising me in extremity;
and for that. I was truly thankful — I need not-.say why, as
the. reader already knows. Why she detested me,: so fat
as I. know, Arose in part out of my thoughtfulness indis.
posed to garrulity,, and in part out.of my savage, Orson-.
like sincerity...I had a great deal to say, btut then I coutld
say it only to a very few people, amongst whom. Mrs.
Evans was certainly not one; and,, when:-I did say any
thing, I fear that dire ignorance prevented my laying the
proper restraints upon my too liberal candor; and that
could,nt lprove -anceptable to..onte Whoi thought. nothing. of




94            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
working for any purpose, or for no purpose, by petty tricks,
or even falsehoods  all which I held in stern abhorrence
that I was at no pains to conceal. The bulletin on this
o0casion, garnished with this pageantry of woe, cypress
wreaths, and arms reversed, was read aloud to Mrs. Evans,
indirectly, therefore, to me. It communicated, with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but: not sad to Mrs. E)
"that the major general had forever disgraced himself, by
submitting to the     caresses of the enemy.". I leave
a'blank for the epithet affixed to " caresses," not because
there was any blank, but, on the contrary, because my
brother's wrath had boiled over in such a hubble-bubble of
epithets, some only'half erased, some'doubtfully erased,
that it was impossible, out of the various readings, to pick
out the true classical tct'l "i.nfamous," "disgusting,"
and " odious.' struggled for precedency; and infamous
they might be:; but on the other affixes: I held my.own
private opinions. For some days. my brother's displeasure
continued to roll in reverberating thunders; out at length
it growled itself to rest; and at last he: descended to mild
expostulations with me, showing clearly, in a series of
general orders, what frightful consequence's must ensue, if
major generals (as a general principle) should allow themselves to be kissed by the enemy.
About this time my brother began to issue, instead of
occasional bulletins, through which hitherto he had breathed
his -opinions into the ear of the public, (viz., of Mrs. Evans,)
a-regular gazette, which, in imitation of the London: Ga.
zette, was published twice a week. I suppose that no.
creature ever led such a life as [ did in. that gazette.
Run up to the giddiest heights of promotion on one day, for
merits which I could -not myself discern, in a week or two
I was brought to a court martial for offences equally obscure..I was cashiered; I was restored " on the interces



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.        95
sion'ofa' distinguished lady;" (Mrs. Evans, to wit;)' was
threatened with being drummed out of the army, to- the
music of the "Rogue's March;' and then, in the midst of
all this misery and degradation, upon the discovery of some
supposed'energy that I had manifested, I was decorated
with the Order of the Bath. My reading had been extensiie enough to give me some vague: aerial sense of the
honor'involved in such a..decoration, whilst I was profoundly ignorant of the channels through which it could
e'ach an individual, and of the sole fountain from which it
could flow. But,'in this enormity of disproportion between
the cause and the effect, between-the agency and the result
I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many
other-cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects,
by all that I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial.  The dreadful taint of scrofula,'according
to the belief -of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch
of'a Stuart* sovereign: no miracle in the -Bible, from
Jordan: or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more
astbundingly victorious. By my own experience, again, I
kniew: that a styan -(as it is called) upon- the eyelid could be
easi'ly reduced, though not instantaneously, by the slight
application of any golden trinket..Warts upon the fingers
of children I had myself known to vanish under the verbal
charm of a gypsy woman, without any medicinal application whatever. -And I well knew, that'almost all nations
* "Of a Stuart sovereign," and by no means of a Stuart only.
Queen Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the
last of our princes who touched for the king's evil, (as scrofula was
generally called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on'the
thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of
Savoy, claimed and exercised the same superpatural privilege down
to a much later eriod than the year 1714 - the last of Queen Anne:
according to their own and the popular faith, they coula have
vleansed Naaman the Syrian, and (Gehazi too.




9i6       AVUITOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
believed in the dreadful mystery of the evil eye; some require
ingi as acondition of the evil agency, the co-presence of
rialic in,the agent; but others, as appeared from my
father's Portuguese recollections, ascribing the same horrid
power to the eye of certain select persons, eveni though
innocent of all malignant purpose, and absolutely uncon,
sei<ums of their own fatal gift, until awakened to it by the
results; Why, therefore, should there be any thing to
shock-, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my
brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in
certain select- families, of conferring knightly honors?
The red. ribbon -of the Bath he certainly did confer upon
me;,and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he
promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that:
I-swerved from my duty by no atrocious delinquency, the
Garter itself  This, I knew, was a far loftier distinction
than the Bath. Even then it was so; and since those days
it has become much more:so; because the long roll of
martial services in the great war with Napoleon compelled
oilrigovernment greatly to widen the basis of the Bath.
This; promise was'never fulfilled; but not for any want
of clamorous persecution on my part addressed to my
brother's Wearied ear and somewhat callous sense of
honor, Every fortnight, or so, I took care that he should receive a " refreshere" as lawyers call it- a new and-revised
brief, — rtemorializing my pretensions. These it was my
brother's policy to parry, by alleged instances of recent
misconduct on my part. But all such offences, I insisted,
were thoroughly washed away by subsequent services in
moments of peril, such as he himself could not always
deny. In reality, I believe his real motive for withholding
th'e Garter was, that he had.nothing better to bestow upon
himselft.
"Now, look here," he would say, appealing to Mrs.




INTRODUOTON -TO THE, WORLD OF. SrRIFE.   97
vans;- "I suppose there's a matter of half a dozen kings
oncthe. continent, that would consent to lose three of theii
fingers, if:by such a- sacrifice they..could purchase the, blue
ribbon, and here is this little scamp, conceiting himself
entitled to it before he has finished two -campaigns,"  But
I:.w,:sroit.:the person to be beaten off in this fashion. I
topk kmy stand upon the promise,. A promise wis ~a prom'ise, even if'made to a scamp; and then, besides, —: but
there I hesitated; awful thoughts interposed to check me;
else.;wished to suggest that, perhaps, some twor or three
among;that half dozen kings might also be scamps, How.
e.yer, I reduced thb case to this plain dilemma:- These.six
kings had received a promise, or they had not, If they had
not, my case was better than theirs, if they had1 then, said
I,: all seven of us " —, - was going to add, "' ae sailing
in,the same boats". or something to that effectt though not
so picturesquely expressed; but I was interrupted by his
deadly frownat my audacity in thus linking myself on. asa
seventh to tthis attelage of:kings, and Tthat such an absoluto
grub should dream of ranking as one in a bright pleiad of
pretenders to, the Garter,: Ihad not particularly <thought; fof
that;, but now, that such:a demur: was offered'to my. con,
sj4eration,'I.thought of reminding him that, in a,certain
sha'dowy sense, I also might presume.to-class myself asia
king, the meaning of which was this;B Both my broth.r arnd
myself, for. the: sake of. varying our intellectual,amuse,
ments, occupied ourselves at times in governing imaginary
kingdoms. I do not mention this as any thing unusual; it
is:a common resource of mental activity and of aspiring
energies: amorigst boys. Hartley.Coleridget for, example,
ha-id-kingdomnwhich he governed fof maty years, whether
~,dllor ill, is more than I can say. Kindly, I am -sure,'he
would govern it; but, unless a machine had been invented
for enabling him to write without effort, (as was real:ty done
7




98             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for our' fourth George during the pressure of illness,): feal
that the public service must have languished deplorablv for
want of the royal signature. In sailing past his own dominions, what. dolorous outcries would have.saluted him from
the shore-"' Hollo, royal sir! here's the deuse to. pay: a
perfect lock there is, as tight as locked-jaw, upon the course
of our public business; throats there are to be cut, from the
product of ten jail deliveries, and nobody dares to cut them,
for want of the proper warrant;:archbishoprics there are to be
filled; and, because they are not filled, the whole nation is
running helter skelter into heresy -and all in consequence
of your majesty's sacred laziness."'Our governnients
were less remissly administered; since each of us, by,ontinued reports of improvements and gracious concessions
to'the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the
zeal of his rival. And here, at least,' there seemed to be
noi reason why I -should come into collision with my
brother. At any rate, I took pains not to do so. But all
was in vain. My destiny was, to live in one eternal element of feud.
My own kingdom was an island called Gofnbroon. But
in what parallel of north or south latitude it lay,: I concealed for a time, as rigorously as ancient Rome through
every-century concealed her real name.*  The object in
this provisional concealment was, to regulate the positron of my own territory by that of my brotheris;- for I
*' One reason, I believe, why it was'held'a point of wisdom in ancient days that the metropolis of a warlike' state should have a secret
name hidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of evocation,
applied to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities migbhbe lured by certain rites and briberiqe into a transfer of their favors
to the besieging army. But; in order to make such an evocation
effectual, it was necessary to know the original and secret name of
the beleag'uered city; and this, therefore, was religi-usly concealed.




INTRODUCTION TO THIE WORLD OF STRIFE.   99
was determined to place a mons.rous world of waters be.
tween us as the only chance (and a very poor one it
proved) for compelling my brother to keep the peace. At
length, for some reason unknown to mne, and much to my astonishment, he located his capital city in the high latitude of'5 deg. N. That fact being once published and settled, in.
stantly I smacked my little kingdom of Gombroon down into
the tropics, 10 deg., I think, south of the line. Now, at
least, I was on the right side.of the hedge, or so I flattered
myself; for it struck me that my brother never would degrade himself by fitting out a costly: nautical expedition
against poor little Gombroon; and how else could, he get
at me   Surely the very fiend himself, if he happened to
be in a- high arctic latitude, would not indulge his' malice
so far as to follow its trail into the tropic of Capricorn
And what was to be got by such a freak? There was no
Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or:my brother
fancied that, for once they were in the wrong box:; and
there was no variety of vegetable produce, for I never deaied that the poor little island was only 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75,deg. of latitude
only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. But
my brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his
c:apitar lay in lat. 65 deg. N., not the less his dominions
swep' southwards through a matter of 80 or 90 deg.; and
as to the tropic of Capricorn, much of it' was his own, private property. I was aghast at hearing that. It seemed
that vast horns and' promontories ran down from all parts
ofhis dominions towards any country whatsoever, in either
hemisphere, -empire or republic, monarchy,; polyarchy,
o:anarchy, - that he might have reasons for assaulting.
Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on
for protection: distance I had relied on, and suddenly I
was found ir Oose neighborhood''to my most'formidable




]QO           AUTOBIOGRAPHIlC SKETCHES.,enemy. Poverty I had relied on, and that was not denied
ie granted the poverty, but it was dependent on the barbaris. of the Gombroonians. It seems that in the central
foresta of Gombroonia there were diamond mines, which
my people, from their low condition of civilization, did not
value, nor h.ad any means Qf working. Farewell, there
fore,; on my side, to all hopes of enduring peace, for here
was established, in legal -hrase, a lien forever upon my
island, and not upon its margin, but its very. entre, in favor of any invaders better, able:than the nativ.e to, make.
its treas$res available. For, of old, it was an,. article in
my biother'a code of- morals, that, supposing a contest
between any two parties, of w:hich one possessed an article,
whilst the other was -btter able to,use it, the rightful, prop'
erty vested in the latter. As if you met a man with a
musket, then you might justly-,challenge:himto -a trial in
the art of -making gunpowder; whivh if you ~cad make,
and he could- not, in- that case the mulsket was. de jre
yours,. For w.ht.shat-hdow.of a right had tha efellow to a
noble.instrument which he could not O' main;tain " in; a serviceable.condition, and.- "feed"' with. its dgi!y rations of,
powder and shot?'titL, it may he fangeie  thhat, sincP
all thti reations, between us; a  indepepdent sqyereignj
whether of war, Or peace, or treaty),-rsted upon our ow.r
-epre.se!ntatiops.and official reports,,, iti,was surely witbin
amy competence. to deny or qualify. as. much:, a withi his
Qo assert,' But, in reality, the f t he -:; conmtest letween
us, as uggested4,by ome instic ot;Qf, proprie.ty.  i my, qw
mindl, wojld. not allow m.., to. prce.ed. in.uch;,^. method,
What e sai4 w-aa lik a. m. ve at:.hess por raughs,..which
it wasa.hildis.h to -dispute. The. move:bqi:g.ma ademy
business wa:s - to face it, to parry it, to evaje, it, and, if 1
could, to ovoerthrow it, I proceeded,as a,,,lawyer whp
m^o~e's: long as he eai, not by bylank den:al of tw.s, o,




INTRODUCTION TO THHE WQRLP OF. STRIFE.  l0o:miag to an issue,) but by demurring,, (i. e., admittihg the.llega.tions of fact, but otherwise interpreting their cons
struct.on.) It was the understood, necessity of the cas
that I must passively accept my rother's, stateenrtsl sq fat
as regarded their verbal expression; and, if I would etri
cate my poor islanders from their troubles, it must, b- by
some distinction or evasion lying within this expression, 01
not blankly contradicting it.
" How, and to what extent," my brother asked, did 1
raise taxes upon my subjects? "  My first impuls was to
say, that I did not tax them at all, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would not allow of my saying that; because it was. too probable he would dema nd to
know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and
if'I once allowed it to be supposed that I had none, there
was an end forever to the independence of my people,
Poor things! they would have been invaded and dragooned
in a month. I took some days, therefore to consider that
point; but at last replied, that my people, being maritime,
supported themselves mainly by a herring fishery, from
which I deducted a part of the produce, and afterwards
sold it for manure to neighboring nations. This last hint 1
borrowed from the conversation of a stranger who happened to dine one day at Greenhay, and mentioned that in
Devonshire, or at least on the western coast of that county,
near Ilfracombe, upon any excessive take of herrings, beyond what the markets could absorb, the surplus was applied to the land as a valuable dressing. It might be in.
terred from this account, however, that the arts must be in
a languishing state amongst a people that did not understand:the process of salting fish'; and my brother observed
derisively, ml,ch to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous people must make shocking soldiers, weak as water,
and liable to be knocked over like ninepins; whereas, in




102           AUTOBIO'RAPHIC SKETCHES.
his -army, not a man ever ate herrings, pilchards, mackerels, or, in fact, condescended to any thing worse than surloins of beef.
At every step I had to contend for the honor and independence: of my islanders;'so that early I came to under.
stand the weight of Shakspeare's sentiment -
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"
0 reader, do not.laugh! I lived forever under the terror
3f two separate wars in two separate worlds: one against
he' factory boys, in a real world of flesh and blood, of
stones and brickbats, of flight,and pursuit, that were any
thing but figurative; the other in a world purely aerial,
where'all the combats and the sufferings were absolute
moonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety
and distress of'mind, the reality (which almost every morning's light brought round) was as nothing in comparison of
that dream kingdom which rose like a vapor from my own
brain, and which'apparently by thefiat of'my will could be
forever dissolved.  Ah! but no; I had contracted obligations to Gombroon; I had submitted my conscience to a
yoke; -'and in secret truth my will had no such autocratic
power. Long contemplation of a shadow, earnest study
for the welfare of that shadow, sympathy with the wounded
sensibilities' of that shadow under accumulated wrongs,
these bitter experiences, nursed by brooding thought, had
gradually frozen that shadow into a rigor of reality far denser than the material realities of brass or granite. Who
buil'ds the most durable dwellings? asks the laborer in
Hamlet;" and the answer is, The. gravedigger.  He
builds for corruption; and yet his tenements are incorruptinle:' "the'houses which he makes last to'doomsday."*
* Hamlet, Act.v., scene 1.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.             103
Who is it that seeks for concealment?    Let him hide him,
self. -in the unsearchable chambers of light,-of -light
which at noonday, more effectually than any gloom, cont Hice imnself in- light.'?- The greatest scholar, by far, that
this island ever produced, viz., Richard Bentley, published (as is well
known) a 4to volume that in some respects is the-very worst 4to now
extant in the world -viz., a critical edition of the "Paradise Lost."
I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,)
that a learned critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a
"practical je9t." Not at all. Neither. could the critic hoae fancied
Wuch t po ssibilty, if he had taken the trouble (which I did many a
year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly isand the most
prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by
the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and
does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right
abou. the proper functions. of the book, though wrong about the-inention of e uthor. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error,
and always ip error, as regarded the ultimate or poetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth apparent, he often had
theair of being furiously in the right;- an.example of which I will
cite; Milton, in the First Book of the "' Paradise Lost," had said,"That from the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"
upo which Bentley comments in effect thus: " How I -the exspose.
summit of a rmountain secret? Why, it's like Charing Cross-always the. least secret place in the whole county."  So one might fancy; since the summit of a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris
ini Wales, like Skiddaw or Helvellyn in England, constitutes a central object of attention and gaze for the whole circamjacent district,
nmetsured'hy a radius sometimes of 15 to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to substitute as the true reading —
" That on. the sacred top," &c. Meantime, an actual experiment will
demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secret and hidden as
the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, in respect to an
eye stationed in the valley,immediately below. A whole party of
men, women, hors?s, and even tents, looked at under those circun:
stances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of glasses: and it becomes evident tht a murder might be committed on' the bare. open
summit of such a mountain with more assurance of absolute secrecv
than any where eIse in. the whole surrounding district.




104          AUTOBIOGRAYHIC SKETCHIEd
ceals the ei-y brightest stars, — rather than in labyrintns of
darkness the thickest. What criminal is that who wishes to
abscond fiom public justice? Let him hurry into the fran.
tic publicities of London, and by no means into the quiet
privacies of the country. So, and upon the analogy of these
cases, we may understand that, to make a strife overwhelming by a thousand fold'to the feelings, it must not deal with
gross material interests, but with such as rise into the world
of dreams, and act upon the nerves through spiritual, and
not through fleshly torments. Mine, in the present case,
rose suddenly, like a rocket, into their meridian altitude, by
means of a hint furnished to my brother from a Scotch advocate's reveries.
This advocate, who by his writings became the remote
cause of so much affliction to my childhood, and struck a
blow at the dignity of Gombroon, that neither my brother
nor all the forces of Tigrosylvania (my brother's kingdom)
ever could have devised, was the celebrated James Burnett,
better known to the English public- by his judicial title of
Lord Monboddo. The Burnetts of Monboddo, I have often
heard, were a race distinguished for their intellectual accomplishments through several successive generations; and
the judge in question was eminently so. It did him no injury that many people regarded him as crazy. In England, at the beginning of the last century, we had a saying,* in reference to the Harveys of' Lord Bristol's family,
equally distinguished for wit, beauty, and eccentricity, tha'
at the creation there had been three kinds of people made,
viz., men, women, and Harveys; and by all accounts,
something of the same kind might plausibly have been
said in Scotland about the Burnetts. Lord Monboddo's
nieces, of whom one perished by falling from a precipice,
* Which "saying " is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly
o Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.          10l
(arid, as I have heard; through mere -tbsence of mind,
whilst musing upon a book which'she carried in her hand,)
still survive in the affection of many friends, through the
interest attached to their intellectual gifts; and Miss Burnett, the daughter of the judge, is remembered in all the
imemorials of Burns the poet, as the moost. beautiful, and
otherwise:the most interesting, of his female aristocratic
friends in Edinburgh.   Lord. Monboddo himself trod. an
eccentric path in literature and- philosophy; and our tutor,
who spent his. whole life in reading, withdrawing himself in
that way from the anxieties incident to a narrow income
and a large family, found, no doubt, a vast fund: of interesting suggestions in Lord M.'s "     Dissertations on the Origin
of Language;" but to us he communicated only one section of the work.  It was a long passage, containing some
very useful illustrations of a Greek idiom'; useful I call
therm, because four years afterwards, when I had made
great advances in my knowledge of Greek, they so'ap,
peared to me.*   But then, being scarcely seven years old,
* It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom,
which Lord Monboddo illustrated as regarded the Greek language,
merits a momentary notice; and for this reason  that it flays a part
not at -all less conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin.'Here is an
instance of its use'in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in
the, Miad:"--— yrOeras S6 roqirvos irop,
And the heart of the shepherd rejoices; where the'verb p/ie a  is'h
the indefinite or;aorist tense, and is meant to indicate: a conditicn of
feeling not limited to any time whatever- past, present,.or future.
In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive,
if not more so., At this moment, I remember two cases of this in
Horace: —
1." Rarb ante'cedentem scelestum
Deseruit pede pcena claudo;"
2.            ":sape Diespiter.
Neglectus incesto addidit integrum."




Ann            ATQOBIOGRAPHIW 8IETIP  3t!Is Aon as our tutor iad fpishge. his long extract from; th
S.ottish judgen' prelection, I c.uld express my thankf4o
nss,.   hvr.tt.I had rec.ived pnly by cqmposing my fta
trgs t- a dee.per solemnity -apd sadnea than usual-po
y~ry.asy task, I havy bee.:.ld; otherwise,, I really had
ot thq reqmote.st. con:ption of what his. lovdship meiant,
I knw yry wel the thirng     lle  a th   a ten.e; I kAneq  eY
then by ja.me the A4'rist  Prin.mus, as a repnctabll tne'
in.the.ek lnuago,'. It. (o  shall wv. s.ay h.?.  w
-n4own. to th, whe nl,C, WhritiT4wrld by this. Aisntintin  fS
Pinuz', -leorly, thereforn, tere mInst be some Ipw, vylgr. ttae, in the ba.clkgroupnd,,pret6ndjing also to the naml.f A'oriph, hut t.miyrsally seou ted'as the 4Ars;- $.cus
og.o Birqingham,     i nterfeit.  Sp, th, unablqe asI way,
icnm, ig'ao.mn^e, tq gp, along with Lord M.' appreeiatiQn'Ff hi pwttensionnsti, sti, hd it beea p.sibla. q' ee[t. a
A.iitq.a Pri m.s i theP fleh, I s.hpuld hyve b:wd tO hig
bro..silvPlyv aP tp oe app4lapty 9pdowei with. ti e'ya,
terioua. iglh  of priF  Pge;it:roe..' NO t so my blrQe:o
thkaois<"F~,f8^ 4te~to  thu p isp^,^             pgrj%  w reei e 9ettp  lgect,
co94f.i4s 9r, qpiten (n9ot -  wit nifd,  tiq tyre!gqj  hqg1 thp.:ipA n. M,. with the upr glht ip, ip,mmon fat... "
ec90[ipgly eqmipn: is tlb'is gage in Lti. pqet.y, whea tlp!>
ject jiC - gqerpl  r a. Sa, qp a   eA 9e4 wi4 9tq i94 eqf
time more than another. In reality, all three modes of tie - pa^
present, future- are uqed (tlough not equally used) in all languages
fqr this prpoase of generalization. Thus,.
1. TheAfiture; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris;
2, The present; as, Fortes fortunajuvat;
3. The past; as in the two- cases, cited from Horaee
But this practice holds equally in English: as to -the futqre, A
the present, nobody iill. -doAubt it; an4 here is p eaqe from the past:
"The fool hath said in his leart, There is no. God;" not meaning,
that in some past time p, he  s-sid. so, but that geneally in all times
he does say so, and will.sa sso




INTRODUCTION   T TH Wat'ILft O.F STRIFE.  1it
&frist, ifided! Pftiu.s 6'- Siec'ndus, what hatltei'd- it?
PlVing — i'tWi s   wei- Soietthiig. tbfi.Ei'itO  w'ie'om'thifig'
buft wa  old tiiperattithatbd tbi~d! Thit tfiy grdWi htrir
should t-ubli hifiebl t about -th't! Ideid, the'fe 6'somiie
thfivg 4ktt66rdirity thi6.; FJir it is hot A.iifigst thi -ati,
n-iy f&nibtionb  f lawttys td takte.6 -h'lrg oif Giik  tfait
less, one might suppose, of lawyers in Scotland, where the
general system of education has moved for two centuries
upon a principle of slight regard'to classical literatuire
Latin literature wasvBry nimeh nerglbcted, and Gfefek heafly
altogEth."E Thi rftbie Was th6 a'stabAhthiit it t fitditig iA
rie delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sagacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish
lawyer, viz., that same eccentric judge, first itade known
to us by oir tittor:
To the tiajority o 0f faders, niiiaiitiie, at this dAy, Lord
M.is iemoirable chiefyi for his craze about the degeneracy
oi us poor moderns5 when compared with the men of pagan
antiquity  which craze itself might possibly not have. been
gefierally knowni.except irl eohinebti6n with the little ksfti
niith bht*beiii hliri aitd Df. J6htisbii, ibticed ifi' Bi6sw'ells
ad6curt Tlf ihe idoctos Scottish tour.' Ah, doctor," said
Lord M,, upon some casual suggestion of that topic, "poor
creatures are we of this eighteenth cetitury  oir fathers
w'te better men than we!"-    "0, B fid my lOrd," Wia
Jd6h'itfis rbply; cI w*6 ir" qlite' at stroibi as 6ibu foreathers,
anid a -igeat deal wiser i )' Such a craze, however, is too
widely difrused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception * in the human race, which has in every age hypdelhon,
of "    oBOtSb k dl pireconcetie.n - Tii; t atl t6 sitth of 8dotbgy, sind
of'fo6il aldotitdolgy, o6ncurring' with.vast tftidi afhead in.thd
scilide dOf co'iiparative6 hiatoliy, it is. i'll-establihed fatt, thit
eftyn.tifiesa thl most Sciefitifi6 musiithi gidmniited'a g'eiirier frhgigieit
d iB  h'Ui fii dbteology *hAt iii fct b6elongied th the gigitiii bir




OS8             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
driacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessit. ot'
dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As:
real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually
to. the word paradox) have often no falsehood in them, so
here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothing paradoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history
of our earth in her earliest stages of development. This mistake
would go some way in accotunting for the absurd disposition in all
generations to view themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers,:. Added to which, as a separate.cause of error, there can be
little'doubt, that intermingled with the human race there has at mcst
periods:of the world been a separate and Titanic race, such as' the
Aiiakim amongst the peoples of Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused. over the Mediterranean in' the elder ages of Greece'and certain
tribes amongst the Alps, known to Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwells time) by an unpleasant travelling experience. -These gigantic
races, however, were no arguments for a degeneration amongst the
rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety of man, coexistent
with' the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and gradually lost
byintermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary stand:ard. Octasional: exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthen the
common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety,.but
for an antediluvian or'prehistoric type, from which the present races
of man had arisen by gradual degeneration.
These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same
time that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice,
would also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable
origin, so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though
erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational
and' even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to
stand upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examiination dof the. several cases had begun to read them into a different con-'
struction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses
h.at may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all,'here is in human nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate
-raze ofthis nature. Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have
asserted or even assumed the downward tendency of the ljuman race
in all that regards moral qualities. For the physical degeneration,f




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.          109
ana experience, which uniformly had pointed in the very
opposite direction; and so far it ought to have been para.
doxical, (that is, revolting to popular opinion,) but was not
so; for it fell in with prevailing opinions, with the oldest,
blindest, and most inveterate of human -superstitions.  If
extravagant, yet- to the multitude it did not seem extrava
gant.  So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless,
would never have carried Lord Monboddo's name into that
meteoric notoriety and atmosphere of astonishment which
soon invested it in England.  And, in that case, my child,
hood would have escaped the deadliest blight of mortification and despondency that could have been incident to a
man there really were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments;
but, for the moral degeneration, no argument at all, small or great.
Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed
amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example,
informs us that
"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores - mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem."
The last generation was worse,,it seems, than the penultimate, as tho
present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as
we may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation,
which will prove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermons through the last three centuries, if traced back
through decennial periods, so as t9 form thirty successive strata, will
be found regularly claiming the precedency in wickedness for the
immediate period of the writer. Upon which theories, as men ought
physically t6 have dwindled long ago into pygmies, so, on the other
hand, morally they must by this time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must man upon this
scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by graduated
process, through every century, until at last he. would not rise an
inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany,
towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf!
what a giant! Why, the very crows would combine to destroy
such a little monster.




1.]'0        AUTOBIOGSAPHIC SKETCHES..-fst morbid temperament concurring with a situation of
visionary (yes!if you please, of fantastic) but still of most
real distress..How much it would have astonished Lord Monboddo to
find himself made answerable, virtually made anhswerable,
by the' evidence of secret tears('for the misery of.ar unknoWn child in Lancashire. Yet night and day these
silent: memorials of siffering were accusing him- as the
founder of a wound that could not be healed. It happehed
that the several volumes of his work lay foe weeks in thb
study of our tutor. Chance directed the eye of my brothei',
one day, upon that part of the work in Which Lord M. unfolds his hypothesis that originally the human race had been
a variety of the ape. On which hypothesis, by the way,
Dr. Adam Clalke's substitution of ape for serpent, in translating the word nachash, (the brute tempter of Eve,) would
have fallen to the ground, since this would simply havb
been the case of one- human being tempting another. It
followed inevitably, according to Lord M., however painful
it might be to human dignity, that iti this, their early stage
of brutality, men must have had tails. My brother mused
ipobi this revery, and, in a few days, published an extract
from some scoundrel's travels in Gombroon, according to
which the Gombroonians had not yet emerged from this
eirly condition of apedom. TheyS it seems, were still
tiinies -eiudati. OverWhelming to me and tunninig was
the ignominy of this horrible discovery. Lord M. had not
overlooked the natural question - In what way did men get
rid of their tails? To speak the truth, they never would
have:got rid of them had they continued to run Wild; but
grbwing civilization introduced arts, antd the arts introduced
sedentary habits. By these it was, by the mere necessity
of continually sitting down, that men gradually wore off
their tails. Well and what should hinder the GombroofW




INTRODUCTION. TO THE WORLD Of STRIFE.     Il1
ians ftMni siffting: down?  Thiir ftilors' and sho6ernikei
wiiold ad n  utld, I hbpe, sit ddWn as Well as. th6os  6f
Tigrdsylvaiiia. Why not?' Ay, but ty brotheif had in"
si'ted already that they had nto tailrs, thit they-' a&  h6
h06ihiakers; Wfhih, Wthi I did not' cat iu8d abo6ut's - it
rmierely put baek tIiih elok of diur hiitoy — 6 th-winiig it
inti6 af eMflier; abd thiefei ord, perihaps into & ritore o ritlltt
stdag off so6diet. But, as, the'as~'.toood ito*, thii Wa:it Of
t"il6i; &, & h'o*, 6ea dlearly that thi p"?oces 6of iittiig dwii.
gd ^WgeHtial i tMh fifniblinrig df the ira6, hWad nbt 66mriicdcd. My broth, with, afh  n hir' of -edoisblat.i-i, ^ug-i
g8ited'it I migh eVe6n nhow, withufdt:' hous delay,compel the whole nation t6b it ddw'n for six h6ti. ii. dtay
Whih Wbdild illWays " liake a bBegiaiiiig."  Biu thl trith
*uttd ili.ahin as bt'fotr, viz., that I * tls h kiig df it pye^
ple hat- hl'aitaA i1; andthe I low, slow p'rotes6s y "hi-, ihi
a oei    "of:ifia-iy cenrtuies, theif positerity iiight F~ilth'i:
off,- a.i hidp of iiaages neveiV to TbM'joyed by ari-n &^iv
i-tit^os that ate yet heavii`g-in i ght —,F dhdt-4vas fo iiW' th'
*6ti3t f&6ri of despair.
Still- thift'as oie rii6'ae it if,I didn't like it" mean.
ift tie'ta'te of things m GbOnibiron, I Mi.lght u "ididat.';
V4', I klW.'/hdt. t might abdiatd; iid, 6hee h'gMn...t
int iinnjiftidit beten myself and the pbr a'bjedt ilaaider&,
I tniighl:s^ i lb have nOd fuither iiife'6st iin tfldi ddgrda
tio    " thiat afi6ted thiiem. After suc i a ditiiptfi6i BW6til
t.,.hait Wa. it to ime if the-y ha!d e've threi.tl   taiis apiiee &?
Aih, that.a: fiie talking; bat ths'6ioniecti6hi With.'
pbor sutibjets- had groWn up so 9slhWly-;and so g-!i&lly, it
tlhi' id.t of trhggles sd 6o6iitai. agaitit. thie  t6r6adhi',it^'fi' of ihy bteothebi anid his' iaseOalWy peopled *we had  uiffrfed so iftiuh tf6gther,'; aAnd the filarienifs connrcting thei
ifih my heart Were so'aerially fine and fantastic, but fuiP'fl  i. h' 66 is -ieid ab 6, thiat i abated hnhiiing of imy




1l-'2         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
anxiety on their account; making this difference only in
my legislation and administrative. cares, that, I. pursued
them.more.in a-spirit of despondency, and retreated more
shyly from communicating them. Itiwas in vain that my
brother counselled me to dress my people in the Roman
toga; as the best means of concealing their ignominious appendages:, if he meant this as comfort, it was none. to me;
the disgrace lay in the fact, not in its publication; and in
my heart, though I continued to honor Lord Monboddo
(whom.I heard my guardian also daily delighting to honor)
as a good Grecian, yet secretly-I cursed the Aoristus. Primus, as.the indirect occasion of a misery which was not
and could not be comprehended.
From this deep degradation of myself and my. people,: I
was drawn off at intervals to contemplate a different mode
of degradation affecting two persons, twin sisters, whom I
saw intermittingly; sometimes.once a week, sometimes
frequently on each separate day. You have heard, reader,
of pariahs. The pathos of that great idea possibly never
reached you. Did it ever strike you how far that idea had
extended? Do not. fancy it peculiar to Hindostan. Before Delhi was, before Agra, or Lahore, might the.pariah
say, I was. The mostinteresting, if only as the most mysterious, race of ancient days, the Pelasgi, that overspreadr
in early times of Greece, the total Mediterranean,-a  te
distinguished for beauty and for intellect, and sornwful
beyond all power of.man to read the cause that.could lie
deep enough for so imperishable an impression,-they
were, pariahs. The Jews that, in the twenty-eighth.chap.
ter of Deuteronomy, were cursed in a certain contingency
with a sublimer curse than. ever rang through the passionate wrath of prophecy, and that afterwards, in Jerusalem,
cursed themselves, voluntarily taking on their own heads,
and on the heads of their children's children forever and.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.         113
ever, the guilt of innocent blood,-they are pariahs to this
hour.- Yet for them there has ever shone a sullen light of
hope.  The. gypsies, for whom no conscious or acknowl-:edged hope burns through the mighty darkness that surrounds them,-they are pariahs of pariahs.   Lepers were
a race of medieval pariahs, rejected of men, that now have
gone to rest. But travel into the forests of the Pyrenees,
and there you will find their modern representatives in the
Cagots. Are these Pyrenean Cagots pagans?    Not at all.
They are good Christians. Wherefore, then, that low door
in the Pyrenean churches, through which the Cagots are
forced to enter, and which, obliging them to stoop almost
to the ground, is; a perpetual memento of their degradation?  Wherefore is it that men of pure Spanish blood will
hold no intercourse with the Cagot?  Wherefore is it that
even the shadow of a Cagot, if it falls across a fountain, is
held to have polluted that fountain?  All this points to
some dreadful taint of guilt, real or imputed, in ages far
remote.*
But in ages far nearer to -ourselves, nay, in our own
generation and our own land, are many pariahs, sitting
* The name and the history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally
obscure. Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic
warfare with. the Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christian cause and interests at a critical moment. But
all is conjecture. As to the name, Soutley has somewhere offered a
possible interpretation of it; but it struck me as far from felicitous,
and not what might have been expected from Southey, whose vast
historical research and' commanding talent should naturally have unlocked.this most mysterious of modern secrets, if any unlocking does
yet lie within the resources of human skill and combining power,
tow that so many ages divide us from the original steps of the case.
[ may here mention, as a fact accidentally made known to myself,
and apparently not known to' Southoy, that the Cagots, under a name
rery slightly altered, are found in France also, as, well as Spain, and
Ti provinces of France that have no connection at all with Spain.
8




114          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
amongst us all, nay, oftentimes sitting (yet not.recognized
for'what they re.ally are) at good men's tables. How
general is -that sensuous dulness, that d'eafress of the
heart, which the Scriptures attribute to hiumhn' beings!
W Having ears, they hear not; and, seeing, they do hot
understand." In the very act of facing or touching a
dread'ful'object, they will utterly deny its existence. Men
say to mei daily, when I ask them, in passing, " Any tiing
in this morning's paper?" " 0, rno; nothing at all."'  nd,
as I neveri had any other answer, I am bound to suppose
that there never was any thing in a daily newspaper; and,
therefore, that the horrible burden of misery and of change,
which a century accumtulates.as itsfacit or total result, has
-not been distributed at all amongst its thirty-six thousand
five huindred and twenty-five days: every day, it seems,
was separately a blank day, yielding absolutely nothing -
wVhat children call a deaf nut, offering no kernel;' and yet
the total product has' caused angels to weep and trem'ble.
Meantime; when'I come to look at the newspaper with my
oWn'byes, I am astonished at the misreport of my informants. Were there no other section in it than simmply that
allotted to the police reports, oftentimes I stand aghast at
the revelations there made of human life and the human
heart; at its colossal guilt, and its colossal misery; at
the suffering which oftentimes throws its shadow over
palaces, and the grandeur of mute endurance which
sometimes glorifies a cottage. Here transpires the dreadful'truth of what is going on forever under the thick
curtains of domestic life, close behind us, and before uSi
and all, around us. Newspapers are evanescent, and are
too rapidly recurrent, and'people see nothing great in what
is familiar, nor can ever be trained to read the silent and
the shadowy in what, for the moment, is covered with the
babbling garrulity of daylight. I suppose riows that, in




INTROtICTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.   115
the next generation after that which-is here concerned,
had'any neighbor of our'tutor been questioned on the subject of a domestic tragedy, which travelled through its"
natural stages in a leisurely.way, and under' the eyes ofgood Dr: S —, he would have replied,' Tragedy! IO;
sir, nothing of tffe hind! You ha' 6 been misled; the
gentleman must iie under a mistake: perhaps! wa;s in
the next street."  No, it was not in the niext'stheet i  and
the gentleman does not lie under a mistake, br, iinfact, lie
at all'. t'he simple truth is, blind old neighbori that you;
being rarely in the house, and, when there, only- i one
paiticular room, saw no more of-what was hourly goini.
6n than if you had beeh residing with the Sultan'of Bokhira. But I, a child'between seven and eight years bid,
hadi access every where. I was priviieged, anid had the
enreie even of the female apartments; one consequence
Of which was, that put this and that t together. A'iiiu
ber of syllables, that each for. itsei'f sepaiately i/iight haive!
m'eant nothiing at all, did yet, whien put togeth'er; tfhrough
weiek's and months, read for m. eyes intio'enteinces, as
deadly and significant as Tekel, upharsin. And indther
consequence was, that, being, on account of -imiy age,:
nobody at. all, or ve-r   neari it, I sonmetimtnes.'wltifeseid
things that perhaps it had not been meiant for an-y bodys
to witiness, or perhaps some half-consciou's negligence
ove'rlooked jny presence. S' Saw' things! What w'was it
now? Was it a man at mridhight-, with a dark -lantern
and a six-barilel revolver?"  No, that was not in the least
iiite what I saw- it was a great deal more like what I will
endeavor to describe.  lmagine two young girls', of what
exactt age I really do not know, but apparently frdm twe-ir
to fourteen, twins, remarkably plain in person and features;
unhealthy, and obscurely reputed to.be idiots. Whether
mey ireally were suich'was mtorP tlini I kne'w, oi ciiid




1-16         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
devise any plan for learning.  Vithout dreaming of any
thing unkind or uncourteous, my original impulse had been
to say, "If you please, are you idiots?"  But I felt that
such a.question had an air of coarseness about it, though,
for my. own part, I had long reconciled myself to being
called an idiot by my brother. There, was, however, a
further difficulty: breathed as a gentle murmuring whisper,
the question might possibly be reconciled to an indulgent
ear as confidential and tender. Even to take a liberty,
with those you love is to show your trust in their affection,
but, alas! these poor girls were deaf; and to have shouted
out," Are you idiots, if you please? " in a voice that would
have rung down three flights of stairs, promised (as I felt,
without exactly seeing why) a dreadful exaggeration to
whatever incivility might, at any rate, attach to the question; and some did attach, that was clear, even if warbled
through an air of Cherubini's and accompanied on the
flute..Perhaps they were not idiots, and only seemed to
be such from the slowness of apprehension naturally connected with deafness. That 1 saw them but seldom, arose
from their peculiar position in the family.'Their father
had no private fortune; his income from the church was
very slender; and, though considerably increased by the
allowance made for us, his two pupils, still, in a great
town,,and, withso large a family, it left him little room for
luxuries. Consequently, he never had more than two servants, and at times oply one. Upon this plea rose the
scheme of the mother for employing these two young girls
in menial offices of the household economy. One reason
for that was, that she thus" indulged her dislike for them,
which she took no pains to conceal; and thus, also, she
withdrew them from the notice of -strangers. In this way,
it happened that I saw them myself but at-uncertain intervals. Gradually, however, 1 came to te aware of their




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    117
forlorn condition, to pity them, and to love them. The
poor twins were undoubtedly plain to' the degree which is
called, by unfeeling people, ugliness.  They were also
deaf, as I have said, and they were scrofulous;. one of
them was disfigured by the small pox; they had glimmering.;eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half
open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along.
There, you have the worst of them. Now, hear something
ah the other side. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness;
secondly, a notion which had crept into my head, probably
de'rived from something said in'my presence by elder people, that they'were destined to an early death; and, lastly,
the incessant persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, by birth, to a more elevated rank than that of her
husband, and she was remarkably well bred as regarded
her manners. But she had probably a weak understanding;;she was shrewish in her temper; was a severe ec.nomist; a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty;
and, in persecuting her two unhappy'daughters, though she
yielded blindly to her unconscious dislike of them, as.creatures that disgraced her, she was not aware, perhaps, of
ever having: put forth more expressions of anger and severity than were absolutely required to rouse the constitutional
torpor of her daughters' nature; and where disgust has
once rooted itself, and been habitually expressed. in tones
of harshness, the mere sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth the'eternal tones of anger, Without distinct
consciousness or. separate' intention in the speaker. Loud
speaking, besides, or even shouting, was required by the
deafness of the two girls. From anger so constantly dis.
charging its thunders, naturally they did not show open
signs of recoiling; but that they felt it deeply,'may be presumed from their sensibility to'kindness. My own experi-.




1~18.AUTOBIOGRAPHTC SKETCH$ES.,rice showed tldti; for, as often as I met them  we exehahged kisses; and my wish had always been td beg
them, if they really were idiots, not to mind it4 sihed I
should not like them the less on that account. This wis1h
of mine never came to utterance; but not thke less they
Were aware- by my manner of salutation4 thdt one- person
at least, ainong~t those who might be donsidered strangers,
did hot find any thing repulsive about then; arid the plea.
tire'-thdy felt was expressed broadliy upon their kindling
faces.
Such was the outline of their position; and4 that being
explainedF what I saw was simply this.: it composed a sil
lent and symbolic scene, a momentary interlude in dumb.
show,. which: interpreted itself,; andi settled forever in, my
reebllectioti, as if it had prophesied and interprbeted the
vrent which soon followed. They were resting from toilI
ahd both sitting down. This bad lasted for perhaps ten or
fifteen. minates. Suddenly from beldw staiis the voice of
angry sumlmons rang up to their ears. Both rose, in an
intafit, as if the echoing scdurge of some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted ab0oe their heads; both opehbed their
arms5; flupg them round each other's necks; and theng.uw
elasping them, parted to their separate labors.; Thi's was
my last rememberable inteiview with the two sisters; in a
week both were coipses. They had died,, I believe' of
scarlatina, and- very niearly at: the samre moment.But surely it was no matter for grief, that thd tWo i seibf
iltoud idiots were dead and! buried  O0, no!  Call themn
idiots ait your pleasure, serfs'or slavesi strulbrugs;* or pa*' Strulbrugs." —Hardly strulbrugs, will be.the thought of the learned reader, who knows that young women could not be strulbrugs;
siin'e tihe truib stilbrul aug was one who,'from basb' feari of' lyi'ng, ha'
lingei oni into' ai old ag-, 6iAiords'o kW4y genial d +i.r  1wfi




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.            119
rnhs; their case was certainly not worsened by beifig
b6oked for plactes in the grave.     Ididoy, fbir ani  thiiig I
kho'W, may, in that vast kingdom, enjoy a iiattiral precedeinci; scrofula and leprosy mhay have some mnystic pri!vilee in a coffin; and the paiahs -of the uppbi eath mao   y
fdimi thi'aristoiracy of the dead.  That the idiots, reil or
repftitd, were at rest,-tthat theiri Watfai b was acco6Mplih.ed, -  miight, if ai mani happened t'kiihtd*  nough, bb interi
pieted i  s a glorious festival. The sisteis iere seen'no imo
upidi staircases br ini bed rsoms, &iid dbadly silene   had
sdu6e6eded to the sound of continiuail upiroars.  Memo6iials
of therth were none sdtrviving  ii earth.  Not thAy it. wai
that furisihed mementoes o'f thelnselves.    The mother it
was, th'father it was- that moftheri whob by pr'se6iition
had avenged the wounds ofeied     t t her pride' that fithei,
piuls. Tihe strulbrug of Srift (and Swift, beinii his horrid creator,
ought to understand his own horrid' creation) was a wreck. a bhell,
that had been burned hollow, and cancered by the fierce furnace of
life. His clockwork was gone, or carious; only some miserable fragment of a pendulum continued to oscillate paralytically from mere incapacity of aiiy thihi so abrupt, and ther'fore io vigoiouii, ai ba decided HRILT! IHoiweV'er, the use of this direidful- brd liiay: b  easiinably extended to the young who happen to have becih'e essentially bid
in misery. Intensity of a suffering existence may compensate the
want of extension; and a boundless depth of misery may be a transformed expression for a boundless duratiion o' misery.'ihe most
aged person, to all appearance, that ever caiie undber mye eyes, was
an infant -hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son
of a poor idiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and
the poor infant, falling, under the care of an enraged grandmother,
who felt herself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not
better tre'ateid. He was dying, wh'en I siw himi, of a lingering imiady, with feat'ures expressive of fraitic iisery; aid. it'seeimed fo ni
that he looked at the least three centuries old. One might have fan'
cied him one of Swift's strulbrugs, that, through long attenuation and
decay, had dwindled back into infancy, with one organ only left perfectt -the organ of fear and misery.




l120         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
who had tolerated this persecution; she it was, he At was,
that by.the altered glances of her haunted eye, that by the
altered character of his else stationary habits, had revived
for me a spectacle, once real, of visionary twin sisters, moving forever up and down the stairs —sisters, patient, humble, silent, that snatched convulsively at a loving. smile, or
loving gesture, from a child, as at some message of.remembrance from God, whispering to them, "You are not forgotten"-sisters born. apparently for the single purpose
of. suffering, whose trials, it is true, were over, and could
not be repeated, but (alas for her who. had been their
cause!) could not be recalled. Her face grew thin, her
eye sunken and hollow, after the death of her daughters;
and, meeting her on the staircase, I sometimes fancied that
see did not see me so much as something beyond me. Did
any misfortune befall her after this double funeral? Did
the Nemesis that waits upon the sighs of children pursue
her steps? Not apparently: externally, things went well;
her sons were reasonably.prosperous; her handsome
daughter-for she had a, more youthful daughter, who
really was handsome- continued to improve in personal
attractions; and some years after, I have heard, she married happily. But from herself, so long as I continued to
know her, the altered character of countenance did not depart, nor the gloomy eye, that seemed to converse with secret and visionary objects.
This result from the irrevocable past'was not altogether
confined to herself. It is one evil attached to chronic and
domestic oppression, that it draws into its vortex; as unwilling, or even as loathing, cooperators, others who
either see but- partially the wrong they are abetting, or,
in cases where they-do see it, are unable to make head
against it, through the inertia of their own nature, or
through the coercion of circumstances. Too clearly, by




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.   121
the restless irritation of his manner for some- time after the
children's death, their father testified, in a language -not
fiilly, perhaps, perceived by himself, or meant to be understood by others, that to his inner conscience he also was not
clear of blame. Had he, then, in any degree sanctioned
the injustice which sometimes he must have witnessed?
Far from it;.he had been roused from his habitual indolence.into energetic expressions of anger; he had put -an
end to the wrong, when it came openly before him. I. had
myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal
fervor, "Woman, they are your children, and God. made
them. Show mercy to them, as you expect it for yourself."
But he must havr been aware, that, for any three instances
of tyrannical usage that fe!l under his notice, at least five
hundred would escape it.  That was the sting of the
case.-that was its poisonous aggravation.  But with a
nature that sought for peace before all things, in this very
worst of its aggravations was found a morbid cure- the
effectual temptation to wilful blindness and forgetfulness.
The. sting became the palliation of the wrong, and the
poison became its anodyne.  For together with the five
hundred hidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must
be hidden. Could he be pinned on, morning, noon, and
night, to his wife's apron? And'if not, what else should
he do by angry interferences'at chance times than add
special vindictive impulses to those'of general irritation
and dislike?  Some truth there was in this, it cannot be
denied: innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most
just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that
injustice' is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt
to intercept' it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the
insuperable obstacles of household necessities.  Dr. S.
therefore surrendered himself, as under a-coercion that




122           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
*as iori.e of his deating, to a passiv- a6eqiidiscene  afid *
bliadfi~es that sbothed his 6onstititibonal indoleiinde ahd hit
rIcociled hi feelitigs to ia tyratinay Whiiti h ih toblrated,
ufideir ibe self-flatt6ring idaba of submitting With r'igitas
titb to a calamity that he suffered.'"iihb yearbii ater this, I -iead tte t"Againmhiifibi' Bo
Ai.echyibs and theft, in thie prophetic horior Witih irhih
CGssaii.hdir surveyh the regal ab6db ih Myeftiie, dlstiin.d
to be the cenrie of inurdei s i ffihmoiablu thrtibh thd ti.a.
tthditibfis of th6 Gretbian stage, Miirdb'N that, hiany c6'et
tiries afte aill the pafties t6 themf -- perpt'at.rs, s'isuffrers, avinigerfs~-a —ad  C d  b duc e  du hd adahe', kfiidld' agiiil
itod fiighty life through a thousahad yearA up'ob thie vast
thiatirs of Athens and R6mne, I tetraced the h6ri'bs, hot
pfiophetic bit memorial, With which I fMiyeelf had ilvested
that hUmblid dwelling bf Di. S.; atld read aaiiri, fepeat6d
iii-VisiOtfiaty piropoitions, thL su~ffelin  *whiih thiire h&ad
darkened the days of people khowtien  mys to molf thigro h t
distiait suieessiohs —  ot, as was itatuaia to "eipbat, 6o
parents first ad then of childiren, but iairersely btf childitti and paiehts. Mailchestei war not Myb6hi. No,
bit.by mahy deg'rees nobler. In so6ib of the feittiiu
ritost favorable t6 tragic effe6ts, it was ~o; and Wiatea
oilyt thode idealizing advantages fof withdaitinga:  mnirt
details which are iti the gift of dititine afid hiaty antiquity,
Eceh iat that day Manchester vwa fia largeiF, teeming Witl
rnire and With stionger hb'aft f aid it contained a populati-io thei rost energetic evehi in the madeii i W6Od a- h6W
miuch more s6, therefore, by cdoiparisao  with dhy eiie in
afcitd t.reece, inevitably hiedeied effiehiiniat by depeiid
ehdU too generally upon sla'ves.  Add to tohis supetibi
eihegy in Lancashire, the imriieasuiably pbofodndii r feelings generated by the mrysterties which stafid behihid Ohliii
tiatnily, as Betipared with the-.hialldw- Mysttrii'es that fteod




INTRODUCTION TQ THE WQRLDB  F STRIFE.   12V
behind paganism, and it would be easy to draw the in.
ferenee, that, in the cpaacity for the infinite and the impassioned, for horror and for pathos, Mycenme. ould have
had no pretensions to measure herself against Manchester,
Not that-I had drawn such an inference myself, Why
hould -I. there being nothing to. suggest the poirts in
which the two cities differed, but only the. single one in.
~hich they agreed, viz., the dusky veil- that overshadow.d
i lpth the noonday tragedies haunting their houasehld
Tecesses; which veil was raised only to the gifted eyes, of
a Cassandra, or to eyes that, like my own, had exp^er
mentally become acquainted with them as facts. Pitiably
mean is he that measures the relations of such eases by
the. scenie al apparatus of purple and gold. That which.eer l Ags been; apparelled in royal robes, and hung with
theatrieal jewels, is but suffering from an accidental fraud,.
havitng the samep right to them that any similar misery eaa
have, or calamity upon an equal scale. These prop.ortion
ore bes measured from the fathoming ground of a real
-uiacun.t.erfit sympathy.,
1; hawv mnetiQned a!ready that we had four male guar
4ians, (a fifth being my mother.) These four werea., E,'.,.4~ H,. T"he tvWQ consonants, B. and G., gave us ~jttl.
t,;uble..,, the wisest Qf the. w hole band, lived at a. id
tanQe p~ mp. e than one hundred miles: him, therefore, wra.y saw; but B., living wvithin fWr miles of fQrenbay,
ws4hd his hands of us by inviting us, every now aad thea,
to spnd a few days at his house.
at Athi~ hbouse, which stood in the, ountry,. there.as 
f.miry of ann4ile chkiidrn, who wre. mor:e kilfully triaine.
i their mpsiqal stadies than at, that day was usual. Thbey
sang the old. ^glijsh glees and madrigals, and correctly
eanogffh.for:m., who, having, even at that childish age, a
pi:.trnatural sensibility to musio, had also, as may be




124           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
supposed, the most entire want of musical knowledge. No
blunders could do much to mar my pleasure. There first
I heard the concertos of Corelli; but also, which far more
profoundly affected me, a few selections from Jomelli and
Cimarosa. With Handel I had long been familiar, for the
famos chorus singers of Lancashire sang continually at
churches the most effective parts from his chief oratorios.
Mozart- was yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera
in London, even at this time, his music was most imper.
fectly diffused through England. But, above. all, a thing
which to my dying day I could never forget at the house
of this'guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's.
Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung;ibut at
that time I needed nothing better. It was sung by four
male voices, and rose into- a region of:thrilling. passion,
such as my heart had always dimly craved' and. hungered'
after,. but vwhich now- first interpreted -itself, as- a physical
possibility, to my:ear.
My- brother did not share my inexpressible delight; his
taste ran in a different channel; and the. arrangements of'
the house did not meet his approbation; particularly this,
that either — Mrs. B. herself, or else the governess, was
always present when! the young ladies joined. our society,
which my brother'considered particularly vulgar,' since'
natural propriety and decorum should have whisperedi to
an old lady that a young gentleman might have'"things"
to say to'her daughters which he could not; ipossibly intend
for the general ear of eavesdroppers — things tending to
the-confidential.or the sentimental, which none' but a shameless old lady would seek to' participate; by that means
compelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were
addressing a mob. at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot
Act.. There were other out-of-door amusements, amongst
which a swing - which I mention for the sake o:' illustrat..




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    125
ng tho passive obedience which my brother levied upon
me, either through my conscience, as mastered by his doctrine of primogeniture, or, as in this case, through my sensibility to shame under his taunts of cowardice. It was a
most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any
that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror
was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most
aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the
swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in
which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of
the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to
the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I
continued to swing whenever he tauntingly invited me. It
was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coin'cide with my own, else I should infallibly have broken my
neck in confronting perils which brought me neither honor
nor profit, and in accepting defiances which, issue how they
might, won self-reproach from myself, and sometimes a
gayety of derision from him. One only of these defiances
I declined. There was a horse of this same-guardian B.'s,
who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew
irritable to excess; and,-if any body mounted him, would
seek relief to his wounded feelings in kicking, more or less
violently, for an hour. This habit endeared him to my
brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the same
amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking
seized him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking?
But of kicking what or twhom? I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without exception, but
also as many of the debtors as might be found at large;
doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute
immunity for the majority of their patients; Jacobins, but
not the less anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems




1l26          4UTOCBOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
reasonblee; but then also, which is intolerable, eyery
Arm jnian, Is philosophy able to account for this morbid
affectinp, and particularly when it takes the restricted form
(as spmetimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furi9oully t:qo kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this
cas4, my brother was'urgent with me to mQunt en croupe
behipd himself.  But wealk as I usually was, thiq proposal
I resistesd- as n inmediate. suggestion of the fiend; for I
Jiad heard, and havet since known proofs of it, that a horse,
when he is ingeniously vicious, spmetimes has the power,
in lashing put, of curving round his hoofs,so as.to lodge
the,,,3 bly way of indorseme nt, in the s rall of his riders
back-, ind, of coqrse, e would have an advantage for such.
a p.urpoe, in the case pf. a rider siting on the crupper.
That Pse invitation I persisted in declinig.
A4.qqg geptlemaq had joined ua as, a fellqw-stude. t
p.4er; the care f.ur tpr.t.He,psg an pply son indeea,
he, only c,:ild f an;ianble, widow, whose ilqve and hopes
1. cjeptre4 jin 4nim. HeI was d.estind. to in.erjit several
s.rqe qtte, pd.q a, great pal ha4 beep done tq spoil
himb'.5 y -i1.plgent aupts; but his good natural dispositi9
dfpd4te d  p11 thesq effor-t; ancd, upon, joinmig is, he proved
tQ bhe a.yey amibhleq  oy,:cleve r, q:ik at earqing, and
bPrpqdatly cqragopus,-. In the summer mqnths, his, mther
lasaljly took a house put ip the.,country, getimes on on,
dtf     anc4e ser_, sometimeq on pot, her., At. t OW
ticq.ing seaso, i.   hap often ni'c. fartber ta come thi.a
ourSlYees, and on tha aqcount Fie roo4,...lprsektl -
G.erally.. it w.w  a fier,e mauntin pp ny that,he roade;, an4
i. was wth. while to cultitvaet the pon y's afquia nc,,; for
tbel, aake. of uqdera, nding the, extet to which the fiend can
sqpmetimes inearnatte.himself. in. a. horse. I do. not trouble
ip Yra der with any account-of his tricks, and drolleries.nd, scoundrelisms; but this I may mention, that he had the




INTRODUCTION TO TIE' WORLD OF STRIFE.     127
propensity ascribed many centuries ago to the Scandinavia n
horses for sharing anid practically asserting his share in the:
angry passionsi of a battle. He would fight, or attempt to
fight, on his' rider's side, by biting, rearing, and suddenly:
Wheeling- round, for the' purpose of lashing out whenr he(
found himself within kicking range.*  This little- monster
Wasi coa:l black; and, in virtue of his:carcass, would not havei
seemed very formidable; but his head made amends -- it
was the head of a. buffalo, or of a bison, and his vast jungle
of mane Was, the mane of a lion.: His eyes, by reason of
this intolerable and' unshorn mane, one did not often see,?
excepts as lights that sparkled in the rear of a thicket; -but?
6rice seen, they were: not easily fdrgotten, for their malig'
nity:: was diabolic. A few miles more or less being a matter!
of indifference to one who was so well mou.nted,O.:would.
someitiles -ride out with us to the' field of battle; and;,by
manouvring' so as to' menace the enemy on the flanks,:i.
skirmishesi he' did good service., But at length came: a day'
of pitched battle. The enemy' had mustered in; unusualf
stirength',-and would certainly Have accomplished the usual
resultt of putting us to flight with more than usual ease,
but, -uhder the turn which things took, their very numbers'
aided; their, overthrow, by deepening: their confusion..0.
had, oin this- occasion, accompanied us; and, as he:had
hitherto, taken no very decisive part in -the war; confining
himself; to distant "demonstrations,?' the enemy did not
iiuech regard his presence in the field'. This carelessness
thretw them into a'dense mass,.upon which my brother's
rapid; eye saw instantly the opportunity offered for operate
ing most' effectually by a charge. 0. saw it too; and,
* This was a manceuvre regularly taught to the Austrian cavalry
in the middle of the last century, as a ready way of opening the doors
od cottages.




128          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
happening to have his spurs on, he complied cheerfully
with my brother's suggestion. He had the advantage of a
slight descent: the wicked pony went down " with a will; "
his echoing hoofs drew the general gaze upon him; his
head, his leonine mane, his diabolic eyes, did the rest; and
in a momeent the whole hostile array had broken, and was
in rapid'flight across the brick fields. I leave the reader
to judge whether " Te Deum" would be sung on that night.
A Gazette Extraordinary was issued; and my brother had
really some reason for his assertion, " that in conscience
he could not think of' comparing Cannae to this smashing
defeat;" since at Cannme many brave men had refused to
fly -the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them;
but, in the present rout, there was no Terentius Varroevery body fled.
The victory, indeed, considered in itself, was complete.
But it had consequences which we had not looked for. In
the ardor of our conflict, neither my brother nor myself
had remarked a stout, square-built man, mounted on an un-.
easy horse, who sat quietly'in his saddle- as spectator of
the battle, and, in fact, as the sole non-combatant present.
This man, however, had -been observed by 0., both before
and after'his own brilliant charge'; and, by the description,
there could be no doubt that it had been our guardian B.,
as also, by the description of the horse, we could as little
doubt that he had been mounted on Cherubini.   My
brother's commentary was in.a tone of bitter complaint,
that so noble an opportunity should have been' lost: for
strengthening O.'s charge. But the consequences of.this
incident were graver than we anticipated.. A  general
board of our guardians, vowels and consonants, was summoned to investigate the matter. The origin of the.,feud
or " war," as my brother called it, was inquired.into. Ai
well might the war of Troy or the purser's accounts from




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORTID OF STRIFE.    129
the Argonautic expedition have been overhauled. Ancient
night and chaos had closed over.the"- incunabula belli;"
and that point was given up in despair. But.what hindered
a.general pacification,. no matter in how many-wrongs
the. original dispute had arisen? Who stopped the way
which led to peace? Not we, was our firm declaration;s
we: were most pacifically inclined, and ever had been;
we were, in fact, little saints. But the.enemy could not
be brought to any terms of accommodation..', That:,we
will try," said the vowel amongst our guardians, Mr. E.
He, being a magistrate, had naturally some weight with the
proprietors of the cotton factory. The foremen of the
several floors were summoned, and.gave it as their humble
opinion that we, the aristocratic party. in.the. war, were! as
bad as the sazns culottes-"'not a pin.to choose. between us.";
Well, but no matter for the past: could any plan be devised
-for a pacific future? Not easily. The.workpeople were so
thoroughly independent of'their:employers, and -so car.r
less of their displeasure, that.finally this. only settlement
was available as wearing any- promise: of permanence: viz.,
that we. should.alter our hours, so as not to come into coil.
lision with the -exits: or returns of the boys.
Under this arrangement, a sort of.hollow armistice prevailed for some time; but it was: beginning to give way,
when suddenly an internal change, in our: own home put an
end to the war forever. My brother, amongst.his many
accomplishments, was distinguished for his, skill indrawing.
Some. of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Lonther.;
bourg, an academician well known in those, days, esteemed
even in these days, after he has been dead for forty or fity
years, and personally a distinguished favorite with the king,
(Geoige III.). He pronounced a very. flattering opinion
upon my brother's' promise of excellence.-.This,being
known,'a fee:of a thousand guineas was offered to Mr. L.
9




130           ABTOBIOGRiAPHIC SKETCHES*
by the guardians; and, finalllythat- gentleanri totk-o fet-arge
of my brother as a pupil. Now, therefore,, "my: brothleY;
ing- of Tigrosylvania, scourge of -Gormbroon, separate4
filomi mei; and, as; it turned out, freve:l.-  I never saw hin
iagain;, and, at Mr. De L.'s: house in: Hammersmn ith,; befoav
het had,.ompleted: hisd sixteenth year, he died of typhus
fevwrs And thus, it- happened thaet a' alittle gold dust' sldfl
fhilyr arpplied, putz an. endr to wars that else threatened. to ear.
tend. into a Carthaginian.length,. jin one'week's time
" Hii motus. ainmorum, atque haec, certamina, tanta
Pulveris exiguijactu comnpressa qui6runt."
etrer I': had terminated this chapter as as a, natuilal
pfause, which,: whilst shutting out forever- my eldest brother
from' the reader's sight- andi from my own, necessarily dt
the same? moment w.orlted.a' permanent revolutionf ini thea
eihraeter of my 4aily life. Two sueh: changesj a;di both
so_:abrupt; indicated imperiously the close;.of o ne, era andl
thei';opening of another.n  T he advantages,; indeed.; which'
~y    brother had' over me in years,; in physical activities'of
every kind, in decision of' p'urpose,.and' in energy of will-,alli which advantages, besides, borrowed ai ratification; from
an obseureo' sense;oni my part, of nduty as incidentlto;whatr
seemeds an- appointment of. Providence, - inevitably had'
contolled, andi for: years t6 come~ would have controllbed
th.e free spontaneous movements'of a con templative dreanier.
like: myself. Consequently, this separationj,which:proveoI
an. eternal.one; and. contributed toedeepen my constitutionali
propensity to gloomy meditation, had for me; (partly on,
that:account, but; much more through the sudden-birth'of
perfeet'independence which so unexpectedly it opened) tn'e
value of a revolutionary experience;. Ar new dateia new'
startinigp'int. a redemptiona(as' it might be:called)- into. th




INTRODUCTiIOi TO TI'WOIbLD"  OF'SI'RIFE.  1l1
gill8en: sleep of halcyon quiet, -after eveflastng is'tint
suddeily dawned upon me; and inot as any casual intersaliation -f holidays -that would,come tQ an end, but, fbr
anything thati appeared to the:cMrary, as the perpetual
tenor of:y ifuture  areer. No longer was the factoiry:a
Oarhage for me: if. any obdu;rate old Cato there were;who
foutd hisariuse'ent in denoin ng -it with a daily-"'Deentd
el,"'a take notice, (I saiid silently to miyseif,) that I atfhtioil
edge to such'tiger -fr a friend of wmine. Nevermore'Was
thel a brige across,theIrWe  a brig of sihs-for me. And
the meanest of ihe factory population - thanks be to fheir
discrimination - despised;my-pretensibns too -entiSrly to
waste a thought or a menace upon a cipher so abject.'This dhainge, therefore, being so sudiden and so /tbtal,
ought to signalize itself externaty by a commensurat6
break in.the narrative. A new chapter, at the,Jast, with
a hugh interspace of blank white paper, or even a new
book, ought rightfully to solemnize so pro.funda a revosal
tioni And virtual:ly it shbaL  But, according.to.the:eneral
agreemeat of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to
the -unity of that event which winds -up the "4 Iliad,'" tvij,the death- of Hector, that Homer -expands it cireumstana.
tiitly into the - whole eeremonial of his funeral -obsequsis;
and upon thatsamte principle I —when looking back ito this
albriipt close of all connection with my brother,:w -w hert
in iny char g aeter of major general o.r:of: ipotenite -tremblig idaily for my people — a -m reminded that the v.ery la.t
m'~ning of this connection had its own separate distinction
irom all other.mornings, ina way ttha ientitles it to; its awn
sep.rate.shae in the general commemoration. - A shadow:
fell upon this particular morning as fr9m a- loud of.danger,
thlt lingered for a moment over our heads, -might seem
evena to muse and hesitate, and thenr sullenly iassed away
mnto idistaat iqrters  It is notice.able that a danger which




132- AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
approaches, but wheels away, — which threatens, bat finally
forbears to:strike,- is more.interesting; by much on:a distant retrospect than the danger which accomnplishes: its
mission. The Alpine precipice, down which:many pilgrims have fallen, is passed without much attention.; but,
that,precipice, within one inch of which. a:traveller. has
piassed,unconsciously in the dark, first tracing his peril
along I the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes
invested with an. attraction: of horror for all who hear.th
s-to. The dignity of mortal danger ever after consecrates
thle,spot; and, in this, particular case which I am,now
recalling, the remembrance of such: a danger consecrates
the day.
That day was amongst the most:splendid in a splendid
June:,.it was -- to borrow, the line of Wordsworth"One of those he'avenly days which cannot die;"
and; early as it was at that moment, we children, all sir
of;us that then..survived,.were already abroad'upon the
lawn.-,There were two- lawns at Greenhay in;the; shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one of these,
whiich ran along one side of the house, extended; to a little
bridge, traversed by the gates of entrance. The; central
gateadnmitted carriages: on each side of this was a smaller
gate for foot passengers; and, in a family containing so
many' as six children, it may be supposed that often; enough
one or other of the gates was'open; which, most fortunate.
ly, on.this day was- not' the case. Along: the; margin of
this:side lawn ran: a little' brook, which had'been raised: to a
uniform level, and kept up by mneans of a wear at the point
where it quitted the premises;     after which it resumed its
natural character of-wildness, as it trotted on to the little
hamlet of Greenhill.. This brook my brother was at one
timie idisposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    133
Rome; but, on maturer thoughts,'having -built a fleet of
rafts, he treated it more'respectfully; and this morning, as
will. be seen, the breadth of the little brook did us "yeo.
man's service."  Me at one'time he had meant to put on
board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo.  But it happened that the current carried his
rafts and himself over the wear; which, he assured us, was
no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in the art of
contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other
Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was prohibited from trying such experiments
with me. On the centre of the lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William. Round him,
attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought
ahd fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister,
a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthunious child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this
morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day.
Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly
abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard.
he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible
morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary
thoughts - whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the'
edge of-the brook, looking back at intervals to the group
of five children and two nurse maids who occupied the
centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before our breakfast; or about two hours before the world's breakfast,- i. e.,
a little after seven, - when as yet in' shady parts of the
grounds the dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. So standing, and so occupied, suddenly we
were alarmed by shouts as of some great mob manifestly




134          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
im rapid motion, and probably, at this instant, taking the
right-angledd turn into the lane connecting Greenhay'with
ihe Oxford Road. The shouts indicated hostile and headtoing pursuit: within one minute another right-angled-turn
m: the lane itself brought the uproar fully upon the ear;
ipd it became evident that some imminent danger — of
hbtt nature it was impossible to guess.- must be hastily:aring us. We were all rooted to the spot; and all
inped anxiously to the gates, which hAppily seemed to be
c:loed. Had this been otherwise, we' should have. had ro'in.e to apply any remedy whatever, and the consequences
Pfustprobably have involved us.all. In a few seconds,:a
powerful dog, not' much above. a furlong ahead. of his purrSers, wheeled into sight. We all saw him pause.at the
gajes; but, finding no ready.access through the iron lat-,ice'Work that protected the side battlements of the little
oidige, and the pursuit being so hot, he resumed his cp.erse
along the outer margin of the brook. Coming opposi.te
tQ piy.aliy, be made a dead stop. I had thus a.n opportunity of. ioqking him steadily in the face; which I did, without n      roxc far than belonged naturally to a case of so much
hurry, aiia to me, in particular, of mystery. I had never
heiard.ol hydrophobia. But necessarily,onnecting the
fqrio.lis. pmuiuiwsith the dog that now gazed at me,fromt
th-eopposi'e.si.d of the water, and feeling obliged to.rpr.
sg.q that.hr ha.l miade an assault upon somebody or other,
I Iqlked searci'mgy i, to his eyes, and observed thait they
s6mped g!azq, zana as hi in a'dreamy state, but at the same
time,uffsec with eonie watery discharge, while his mouth
was covered with nmasses of. white foam. He looked most
earnestly at nysetf anu the group beyond me  but.e
mace no effort waltever tc cross the brook,.and apparently
had not:the energy to attempt it by a flying leap. My
brother William, who did not in the least suspect'the real




INTRODUCTION TO THE' WORLD OF STRIFE.    1
danger,'invited the dog to try his chance in a leap -as.
suring him -that, if he succeeded, he would knight him on
the spot, The temptation -of a knighthood, however, did
not prove sufficient. -A very few seconds brought his put:
suers within sight; and steadily, without sound or gesture
of any kind, he resumed his flight in the only direction
Qpen to him, viz., by a field path across stiles to Greenhill'
Half anh hour later he would have- met a bevy of children
going to a dame's, school, or carrying milk to rustic neighs
brs.: As it was, the early morning kept the road clear in
front. But behind immense was the; body of agitated purw
suers. Leading the chase came, probably, half a troop of~
light cavalry, all on foot, nearly all in their stable dtresses,
and armed generally with pitchforks, though some-.eight or
ten carried carabinids. Half mingled with these, and very
little in the rear, succeeded a vast miscellaneous mobs that
bad gathered on the chase as: it hurried through the purlieus
of Deansgate, and all that. populous suburb of Manchestei.
From some of these, who halted to recover breath,,wev 6obe
tained an explanation of the affair. About. a: mile: andi a
hilf from Greenhay stood some horse. barrac!ks, occupied
usually by an entire regiment of cavalry. A large; deg'oe:! of a multitude that haunted the -barracks;-,-had ffir,some days manifested! an increasing sullenness, snapping
occasionally at dogs and horses, but finally at men4 ~poUp
thisi he had been tied up; but ihi some wayhe hadd this
morning liberated himself: two troop horses he had. immnae
diately bitten; and had made attacks upon several of the
men, who fortunately parried these attacks by means of
the pitchforks standing ready to their hands. On this evidence, coupled with the knowledge of his previous illness,
he was summarily condemned as mad; and the general
pursuit commenced, which brought all parties (hunters and
game) sweeping so wildly past the quiet grounds of Green



136          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
hay. The sequel of the affair was this: none of the carabineers succeeded in getting a shot at:the dog; ini'consequence of which, the chase lasted for 17 miles nominally;
but, allowing for all the doublings and headings back of
the dog,. by: computation.for about 24; and finally, in a
state of; utter exhaustion, he was run into and killed, somewhere in Cheshire. Of the two horses whom he had bitten,
both treated alike, one died in a state of furious hydrophobia: some two months later,-but the lother (though the more
seriously wounded of the;.two) manifested no.symptoms
whatever of constitutional derangement. And thus it happened that for me this general event of separation, from my
eldest brother, and the particular morning on which it occurred, were each for itself separately and equally memorable.
Freedom won, and death escaped, almost in the. same hour, —
freedom; from a yoke of such secret and'fretful annoyance
as'i none'could measure: but myself, and death probably
through the fiercest of -torments, - these double: cases of
deliverance, so sudden and so unlookedfor, signalized'by
what heraldically -might.have' been described as a two-headed'memorial, the, establishment of an epoch in; my lifeJ
Not' only was the- chapter of IINFANCY thus solemnly fin.
isrfed forever, and the record closed, but:-which cannot
often\ happen- the chapter was closed; pompously and
eonspicuously by-.what the early printers through:the 15th
atid 16th centuries would have oalled a bright and illumi-~
nated'colophon.




CHAPThR III.
INFANT LITERATURE.
L'The child," says Wordsworth," is father of the man;"
thus-calling into conscious notice the fact, else faintly or
not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen in'the maturest
adult, blossoming and bearing fruit, must have preexisted
by way of germ in' the infant. Yes; all that is now broadly.
emblazoned in the man once Was latent -seen or not seen
-as a vernal bud in the child. But not, therefore, is it
true inversely, that all which preexists in the child finds
its development in the man. Rudiments and tendencies,
which might have found, sometimes by accidental, do not
find, sometimes under the killing frost of'counter forces,
cannot find, their natural. evolution. Infancy, therefore, is
to be viewed, not only as part of a larger world that waits
for its final complement in old age, but also as.a"separate
vworid itself;. part of a continent, but also a distinct penin.
sula. Most of what he has, the grown-up man inherits
from his infant self; but it does not follow that he always
enters upon the whole of his natural'inheritance.
Childhood, therefore, in the midst of its intellectual weak-:,ss, and sometimes even by means of this weakness, enjoys a limited privilege of strength. The heart in this season of life is apprehensive, and, where its sensibilities are
137




138           AUTOBIOGRAPtIIC SKETCHES.
profound, is, endowed with a special power of listening for
the tones of truth — hidden, struggling, or remote; for the
knowledge being then narrow, the interest is narrow in the
objects of knowledge; consequently the sensibilities are
not scattered, are not multiplied, are not crushed and confounded (as afterwards they are) unde'r the burden cf that
distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.
That mighty silence which infancy is thus privileged
by nature and by position to enjoy cooperates with another source of power,- almost peculiar to'youth and
youthful circumstances, - which Wordsworth also was the
first person to notice. It belongs to a profound experience. of the relations subsisting between ourselves and
nature - that not always are we called upon to seek;
sometimes, and in childhood above all, we are sought.
"Think you,'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'"
And apgin —
"Nor less I deem that there are powers,
Which of themselves our minds impress;
And we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness."
These cases of infancy, reached at intervals by special
revelyations, or creating for itself, through its privileged
silence of heart, authentic whispers of truth, or- beauty. or
power, have some analogy to. those other cases, more directly supernatural, in which (according to the old traditionqal faith of our ancestors) deep messages of admonition
reached an individual through sudden angular deflexions
of words, uttered or written, that had not been originally
addressed to. himself. Of the.e there were two distinct




INFANT LITERATURE.                139
classes-those where the     person. concerned had been
purely passive; and, secondly, those in which he himself
had: to some extent cooperated.  The first class have been
noticed by Cowper, the poet, and by George Herbert, the
well-known pious brother of the still better-known infidel,
Lord Herbert, (of Cherbury,) in a memorable sonnet; scintillations they are of what seem nothing less than providential lights oftentimes arresting our attention, from the
very centre of what else seems the blank darkness of'
chance and blind accident. "Books lying open, millions
of surprises,"- these are among the cases to which Herbert (and to which Cowper) alludes,-books, that is to
say, left casually open without design or consciousness,
from which some careless passer-by, when throwing the'
most negligent of glances upon the page, has been startled
by a solitary word lying, as it were, in ambush, waiting
and lurking. for him, and looking at him steadily as an eye
searching the haunted places in his conscience. These cases
are in principle identical with those of the second class,
where the inquirer himself cooperated, or was not entire.
ly passive; cases such as those, which the.Jews called
Bath-col, or daughter of a voice, (the. echo g augury.,) viz,.
* " Echo augury."- The daughter of a voice meant an echo, the
original sound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or
secbndary sound, as the daughter. Analogically, therefore, the direct
and original meaning of any word, or sentence, or counsel, was the
mother meaning"; but the secondary, or mystical meaning, created by
peculiar circumstances for one separate and peculiar ear, the daugh~
ter meaning, or echo meaning. This mode of augury, through secondary interpretations of chance words, is not, as some readers may
fancy, an old, obsolete, or merely Jewish form of seeking the divine
pleasure. About a century ago, a man so famous, and' by repute so
unsuperstitious, as Dr. Doddridge, was guidd'in a primary act of
choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a
A.hild'reading aloud to his mother. With the other mode of augury,




140            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
where a man, perplexed in judgment and sighing for some
determining counsel, suddenly heard from    a stranger'in
some unlooked-for quarter words not meant for himself,
but clamorously applying to the difficulty besetting him.
In these instances, the mystical word, that carried a secret
meaning and message to one sole ear in the world, was
unsought for: that constituted its virtue and its divinity;
and to arrange means wilfully for catching at such casual
words, would have defeated the purpose.     A well-known
variety of augury, conducted. upon this principle, lay in the
" Sortes Biblicse," where the Bible was the oracular book
consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the"Sortes' Virgilianwe,"* where the.Eneid was the oracle
consulted.
viz., that noticed by Herbert, where not the ear but the eye presides,
catching at some word that chance has thrown upon the eye in some
book left open by negligence, or opened at random by one's self,
Cowper, the poet, and his friend Newton, with scores of others that
could be mentioned, were made acquainted through practical results.and personal. experiences that. in their belief were memorably im.portant.
* "Sortes Virgiliance." - Upon what principle could it have been'that'Virgil was adopted as the oracular fountain in such a case? -An
author so limited even as to bulk, and much more limited as regards
compass of thought and variety of situation or character, was about
the worst that pagan literature.offered. But I myself once threw out
a suggestion, which (if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such
a choice that would be likely to overrule the strong motives against
it. That motive was, unless my whole speculation is. groundless, the
very same.which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil
as his guide in Hades. The seventh son of a seventh son has always
traditionally been honored as the depositary of magical and. other
supernatural gifts.. And the same traditional privilege attached to
any. man whose maternal grandfather was a sorcerer. Now, it happened that Virgil's maternal grandfather bore the name of Magus.;This, by the ignorant multitude in Naples, &c., who had been taught
to reverence his tomb, was translated from its true acceptation as a




INFANT LITERATURE.               141
Sometning analogous to these spiritual transfigurations
of a word or a sentence, by a bodily organ (eye or ear)
that has been touched with virtue for evoking the spiritual
echo lurking in its recesses, belongs, perhaps, to every im.
passioned mind for the kindred result of forcing out the
peculiar: beauty, pathos, or grandeur that may happen:-to
lodge' (unobserved by ruder forms of sensibility) in special
passages-scattered' up and down literature.  Meantime, I
wish ther reader to understand that, in- putting forward the
peculiar power with which': y childish eye detected a
grandeur or a pomp of beauty not seen by others in some
special: instances, I am not arrogating more'than it' is lawful for every man' the very humblest to arrogate, viz., an
individuality of mental constitution. so far applicable to
special and exceptionable cases as to reveal in them a life
and" power of beauty which others' (and sometimes which
al others) had missed.
The first case belongs to the- march (or boundary) line
betweenii my eighth and -ninth years; the others to a- period
earlier by two and a half years.  But I notice "the'. latest
case before the others, as it connected itself. with a great
epoch in the movement of my intellect. There is a dignity'
to every man in the'mere historical assigning, if accurate-ly. he can assign, the first dawning-'uporn his mind of any.
godlike:faculty or:apprehension, and more especially if that
first dawning happened to connect itself with' circumstances
of individual'or incommunicable splendor.' The passage
proper name, to a false one as an appellative: it was supposed to indicate, not the name, but the profession of the old gentleman. And
thus, according to the belief of the lazzaroni, that excellent Chris
tian, P. Virgilius Maro, had stepped by-mere succession aid right of
inheritance into his wicked old grandpapaas infernal powers and
knowledge;, both of which he exercised, doubtless, %or centuries without blame, and for the benefit of the faithful.




142            AUTOBIOGRAPHti   SKETCHES.
which: am going to cite first of all revealed.to me the
immeasurableness of the morally sublime.' What was it,
and where was it?, Strange the reader will think it,'and
strange * it is, that a case of colossal sublimity should first
emerge from such a writer as Phaedrus, the Aesopian.fabu.listi A great mistake it was, on the part of -Doctor:S.,
that the second book in the Latin language which I was
s4mmoned' to study should have been Phedrus-a writer
ambitious, of investing the simplicity, or rather homelinesof.2Esop with aulic graces and satiric brilliancy. Bat s,
it, was; and Phaedrus naturally towered into enthusiasm
w!hen he had occasion to mention that, the most intjellectual
f all r a~e  amongst men, viz., t hethenians, had raised
j mjgh.ty. statue to one who balonged to the same 1asp iAn.s~ocial sense as himself, viz., the class of slaves, and rose,
oovqv that lass by the:same initejlectual power applyig
itself to the same object, viz., the mporal:polqguie. These
wq. the: two, lines in which that glory of the subJirep, so
Birring to my childish sense, seemed to, burn as in. om
mijghty. pharos:" Esopp statuam ingentem posuere Attici;
Servumque collocAru-nt eternd in basi: 
A: colossal.tatue did the Athenian.s raise to Esop; a.. d -a
por pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedes.,tal.I have not scrupled, to introduce the. word, pariah
lbeC-aus in that way only could I dpcipher to, the readerby
what particular avenue it was that the sublimity which I fancy
in the passage reached my heart. This sublimity originaitd
*  Strange &c - Yet I remember. that, in "The Pursuits of
Literature," -a satirical poem once universally famous, -the lines
about Mnemqsyne. and her daughters, the Pierides, are cited as ex.
-hibiting matchless sublimity. Perhaps, therefore, if carefully searched,
this writer may contain other jewels no~t yet appreciated.




'INFANT LITERATURE.            14
in the awful chasm, in the abyss- that no eye could -bridge,
between- the pollution of slavery,-the being a man, yet
without right or lawful power belonging to a man,;- he-'tween this unutterable degradation and the starry altitude
o- he'slave at. that moment when, upon the unveiling iof
his everlasting statue, all the armies.of.the earth might be
conceived as presenting arms to the emancipated man,
the cymbals and.kettledrums of kings as drowning the
w-hispers of his ignominy, and the harps of all his sisters
that wept over slavery yet joining in one choral gratula —
tion' to the regenerated slave. I assign the elements of
what I did in reality feel at that time, which to ithe eader
may seem, extravagant, and by no means of what it was
reasonable to feel.'But, in order that full justice may be
done to- my childish self, I must point out to ithe -reader
another'source of what strikes me as reatr grandeur.
Horace, that exquisite master of the lyre, and that most
shallow of critics, it is needless to say that in those' days I
had not read. Consequently I knew nothing rof his idle
canon, that the opening of poems must be humble and
sibdued. But my own sensibility told me how much of
additional grandeur accrued to these two lires as being the
imrediate' and all-pompous opening of the poep. The
same. feeling I had received from theecrashing overture to
the grand chapter of Daniel-" Belshazzar the king made
a-great feast to a thousand of his lords."'But, above all,
I'lt''this effect produced in the two opening lines of
-", acbeth-: 
"WHEN -(but watch that an emphasis of thunder dwells upon that
word'when')
WHE'N shall we three meet again -
In thunder, lightning, or in rain "
What an orchestral crash bursts upon the ear in that all.
shattering question! And one syllable of apologetic prep.




144            ATJTOBOQCRAPHl; SKJ TCHES.
aration,-so as to meet the suggestion of Horace, would have
the effect of emasculating the whole tremendous alaruni.
The -passage in Phmdrus differs thus far from     that in
"-Macbeth," that the first line, simply stating a matter of
act, with no more of sentiment than belongs to the word
ingentem, and to the antithesis between the two parties so
enormously divided, —.]Esop the slave:and the Athenians,
-:must be-read as an appoggiatura, or hurried note of introduction flying forward as ifon wings to descend with
the fury and weight of a thousand orchestras upon the
immortal passion of the second line-"Servumque collocarunt ETERNA IN BASI." This passage from Phoedrus,
which might be briefly designated The Apotheosis of the
Slave,:gave to me my first grand and jubilant sense of the
moral. sublime.
Two other experiences of' mine of the same class had
been earlier, and these I had shared with my sister Elizabeth. The first was derived from the " Arabian' Nights."
Mrs. Barbauld, a lady now very nearly forgotten,* then
* " Very nearly forgotten."- Not quite, however. It must be
hard upon eighty or eighty-five yeats since she first commenced
authorship-a period which allows time for a great deal of forgetting; and yet, in the very week when I am revising this passage, I
observe advertised a new editi6n, attractively illustrated, of the! Evenings at Home" — a joint work of Mrs. Barbauld's and her
brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin.) Mrs. Barbauld was eiceedingly
clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style was the:best of all that
exist. Her blank verse " Washing Day," descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under-the affliction
of a family washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. And her
prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a
deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, who
scattered his sneering compliments very liberally up and down the
world, used to call the elder Dr. Aikin (allusively to Pope's wellknown line
"No craving void left aching in the breast ")




INFANT LITERATURE.              145
filled, a la. ge,' space in the public eye; in fact, as a:writer
for:childrena, she occupied the place from about 1780 tod
1805 which, from  1805 to 1835, was. occupied by Miss'
Edgeworth.; Only, as unhappily Miss Edgeworth' is also
now very nearly forgotten, this is to explain igniotum per
ignotius, or at* least one ignotum' -by another ignotum..
However, since it cannot be helped, this.unknown and also.
most.well-known: woman, having occasion, in the days of
her:glory, to speak of the "Arabian Nights,"! insisted. on
Aladdin, and, secondly, on Sinbad',as the two jewels of the
collection.: Now, on: the contrary, my sister and myself
pronounced Sinbad to. be very bad, and Aladdin' to- be.
pretty nearly the worst, and upon grounds that still strike
me as just:. For, as to Sinbad, it is not a story. at all, but
a.mere succession of adventures,. having no unity of interest. whatsoever; and in Alladin, after-the possession of the
lamp has been once secured by- a pure accident,.the story
ceases to move. All the rest is a mere record of. upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and that windowu
on the next day, with no. fresh. incident whatever, except
the single and transient misfortune arising out of the
advantage given to the magician- by the unpardonable
stupidity of Aladdin. in regard to the; lamp.. But, whilstmy sister- and I agreed in despising'Aladdin- sO much as
almost to beon' the verge of despising the queen of all the
bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary'
section there was. of that -tale which fixed and fascinated'
my. gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards forgot, and
did:not at that time comprehend.';The sublimity which it
involved was mysterious and unfathomable as regarded
an aching void; and the nephew, Dr. Arthur Aikin, by way of variety,
a void aching; whilst Mrs. Barbauld he designated as that pleonasm
of nakedness; since, as if it were not enough to be bare, she was also
bald.
10




14;6          AUTOMBtIOAPfieiC SKETOeES.
any key which I possessed for deciphering -it law Or origin
Made restless by the blind sense which I had of -its~ gran
deur, I could not for a moment succeed in finding out uihy
It Should be grand. Unable to-explain my own impressions
in" A laddin," I did not the less dbstinately persist in be.
limeing ca sublimity which I could not understand: It was,
in fact, one of those many important cases- which else
where I have called intolutes of human sensibility;: combinations in which the materials of future thought or feelinig
are carried as imperceptibly into the mind as vegetable
seeds'are carried variously combined through the. atmosphere, or by means of rivers, by birds, by winds, by
waters, inito remote countries. But the reader shall judge
for himself. At the opening of the atale, a magician living
in the central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one
made:-aware by his secret art of an.enchanted.lamp'endowed with'supernatural powers available for the service
of any man whatever who should get it into his. keeping.
But there lies the difficulty. The lnamp is imprisoned -in
subterraneous chambers, and from these it can be releasee
only'by the hands of an innocent child. But this is' no
enough: the child must have a spedial horoscope writte.
in the stars, or else a peculiar destiny written in his'consti.
tutioi, entitling him to take possession of the lamp. Where
shall such a child be found? Where shall he be sought?
The magician knows: he applies his ear to the earth; hhe
listens to the innumerable sounds of footsteps that at the
moment of his experiment are tormenting the surface of
the globe; and amongst them  all, at a distance of six
thousand.miles, playing in the streets of Bagdad, he distin,
guishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin. Through
this mighty labyrinth of sounds, which Archimnedies, aided
by his arenarius, could not sum or disentangle, one solitary
infant's feet are distinctly recognized on the banks of th'




INFANT LITERATURE.               14Ad
Tigrm,j distant by four hundred and forty days' march of
aii army or a caravan. These' feet, these- steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart as the feet, as the
steps; of that; innocent boy, through: whose hands only hecould have; a chance for reaching the lamp.
It: follows, therefore, that the wicked magician exercises;
two demoniac gifts. First, he has the power to disarm,
Babel itself of its confusion. Secondly, after having. laidr
aside as) uselessi many billions' of earthly sounds, and aftei
having fastened his- murderous * attention upon one insu,
lated tread, he has the power,.still- more unsearchable, of
readingi in, that: hasty movement, an; alphabet of new and;
infinite symbols; for, in order that the sound of the. child's"
feet, should:;be significant and, intelligible, that. sound; must
opena into, a gamut- of infinite compass.: The pulses' of the
heart,, the,.motions, of the will, the, phantoms: of the brain
must. repeat themselves ini secret, hieroglyphics uttered: by
the flying; footsteps.  Even  the inarticulate or brutal
sounds- of.the, globe must be all so many languages- andt
ciphers that somewhere. have their c6rikesponding keys- 
have' their own' grammar and' syntaux; andy thus. the' leastthingsi in- the; universei must be secret- mirrors to the; ge.atest.
Palmistry has something of the same dark sublimity.  All'
this,, by rude efforts at explanation that mocked my feeble!
command of words, I communicated to. my sister;.: and
she,i whose, sympathy with my, meaning was; alwaysi sit
q.uiik and true,, often outrunning- electrically my imperfect
expressions, felt. the passage in the. same way as myselft,*."XMrderous.; " for it; was his intention to leave Aladdin immuredl
in the subterraneous chambers.
t The reader will not understand me as attributing to the Arabian
originator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endearv
ored, to.disentangle. it.'He spoke what he did not understand; for,
as to sentiment; of any kiid, all Orientals are obtuse and: impassive.




148           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
but not, perhaps, ih the same degree. She was much beyond me in velocity of apprehension and many other qualities of,intellect. Here only, viz., on cases of the' dark
sublime, where it rested upon dim' abstractions, and when
no particular trait of moral grandeur came forward, we dif
fered - differed, that is to say, as by more or by less. Else
even as to the sublime, and numbers of other intellectual
questions which rose up tb us from our immense reading, we
drew together with a perfect fidelity of sympathy; and therefore Ipass willingly from a case which exemplified one of our
rare differences to another, not less interesting for itself,
which illustrated (what occurred so continually) the intensity
of our agreement.
No instance of noble revenge that ever I heard of seems
so effective, if considered as applied to a noble-m;inded
wrong doer, or in any case as so pathetic. From what
quarter the story comes originally, was unknown to us at
the time, and I have never met it since; so that possibly
it may be new to the reader. We found it in a:book written for the use of his own children by Dr. Percival, the
physician who attended at Greenhay. Dr. P. was a literary
man,,of elegant tastes and philosophic habits. Some of his
papers may- be found in the "Manchester PhilosophicTransactions;" and these I have heard mentioned. with
respect, though, for myself, I have no personal knowledge
of: them.' Some presumption meantime! iarises in their
favor from the fact that he had been a favored correspondent of the most eminent Frenchmen at that time who cultivated literature jointly with philosophy. Voltaire, Diderot
Maupertuis, Condorcet, and D'Alembert had all treated him
There are other sublimities (some, at least) in the: "Arabian Nights?"
which first become such- a gas that first kindles - when entering
into combination with new elements in a Christian atmosphere.




INFANT LITERATURE.             1.9
with distinction; and I have heard my mother say that, in,
days. before I or my sister could have known him, he
attempted vainly to interest her in these French luminaries
by reading extracts from their frequent letters; which,
however, so far from reconciling her to the letters, or to
the writers of the letters, had the unhappy effect of riveting her dislike (previously budding) to the doctor, as their
receiver, and the proneur of their authors. The tone of
the letters- -hollow, insincere, and full of, courtly civilities
to Dr. P., as a known friend of "the tolerance " (meaning,
of toleration) — certainly was not adapted to the English
taste; and in this respect was specially offensive to my.
mother, as always assuming of the doctor, that, by mere
necessity, as being a philosopher, he must be an infidel.
Dr. P. left that question, I believe, ""in medio,. neither
assenting nor denying; and undoubtedly there was no particular call upon him to p!ublish- his Confession of Faith
before one who, in the midst of her rigorous politeness,
suffered it to be too transparent that.she did not like him.:
It is always a pity to see any thing lost and wasted, especially love; and, therefore, it was no subject for lamentation, that too probably the philosophic doctor did not
enthusiastically like her. But, if really so, that made no
difference in his feelings towards my sister and myself. Us
he did like; and, as one proof of his regard, he:presented us
jointly with such of his works as could be, supposed interesting to two young literati, whose combined ages made no
more at this period than a baker's dozen. These presentation copies amounted to two at the least, both octavoes,
and one of them  entitled The Father's-something or
other; what was it? - Assistant, perhaps. How much
assistance the doctor might furnish to the fathers upon this'wicked little planet, I cannot say. But fathers are a stubborn race, it is very little use trying to assist them. Better




1e50          AUTOBIOGRA-PHIC SKETCHES.
always to prescribe for the rising generation. And cerftinly the impression which he made; upon us-  my sister
and myself —by the story in' question was deep and;
memorable:'my sister wept over it, and: wept over the
remembirance of it.; and, not long after, carried its sweet
ar6mra off with her to heaven; whilst I, for my part, have
-neveer forgotten it. Yet,: perhaps, it isi injudicioust to have
too much: excited the reader's expectations'.; therefore,
reader,: understand what it is that you are invited to' hbar' 
not; much of a story, but simply a noble sentiment, such as
that"': of Louis XII. when he -efused, as King of France, to
avenge his own injuries as Duke of Orleans;-such as that
of HitadEiiari, wihen:be said thata Ro'man imperatbr ought
to die -standiing, mieaning that: Caesar, as the man who rep.:
reseitedd' almfighty Rom'4, should face the: last enemy as the
first' in- an attitude of' unconquerable: defiance. Here is'Dr.
Percival's' story, which ('again I warn you) will collapse
into nothing at all, unless you yourself are able to dilate it:by expansive sympathy with its sentiment.'A youtig officer (in what army, no matter)' had' so far
fdrgottein hi'emself, in a- nmomenit'f iiriotation,.as' to'strike; k a
pivate soldier,, full of personal dignity, (assdmrhetimes happens in all ranks,) and distinguished for his coureage. The'
inexorable laws of military discipline foibade to'the: injured'
soldier any practical redress' — he' could look for no retail'
atioii' by acts. Words' only' were at his command';' and, it'
a tumult' of indighation, as he turned away;, the: sdldief said,
to his officer that he would." 4make' him repent it."  This,
wearing the shape of: a menace, naturally rekindled the'
dfficersa anger, arind intercepted ahy disposition whicht might
be rising' within hiii' towardis a  sentiment of remorse:;' and
thus the' irritation between the two young men grew hotter
than' before. Some weeks after' this a partial action took
place with'the enemy. Suppose yourself a spectator, and'




INFANT LITERATURE.             151
looking aown into a valley occupied by the two armies.
They are facing each other, you see, in mrartial array.
But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on; in
the course of which, however, an occasion suddenly arises
for a desperate service. A redoubt, which has fallen into
the enemy's hands, must be' recaptured at any price, and
uitder circumstances of all but hopeless difficulty. A strong
party has volunteered for the service; there is a cry for
somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from
the ranks to assume this dangerous leadership; the party
moves rapidly forward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up
from your eyes in clouds of smoke; for one half hour,
from behind these clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports
of bloody strife - fierce repeating signals, flashes from the
guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing:or
receding, slackening or redoubling. At length all is over;
the redoubt has been recovered; that which was lost is
found again; the jewel which had been made captive is
ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with glorious gore, the
wreck of the conquering party is relieved, and at liberty to
return. From the river you see it ascending. The plumecrested officer in command rushes forward, with his left
hand raising his hat in homage to the blackened fragments
of what once was a flag, whilst, with. his right hand, he
seizes that of the leader, though no more than a private from
the ranks. That perplexes you not; mystery you see none
in that. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded, "high and low" are words without a meaning,
and to wreck goes every notion or feeling that divides the
noble from the noble, or the brave man from the brave. But
wherefore is it that now, when suddenly they wheel into
mutual recognition, suddenly they pause? This. soldier,
this officer.- who are they? 0 reader! once before they
had stood face to face - the soldier it is that was struck;




152          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the -officer it is that struck him. Once again they a d
meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for
moment a- doubt divides them,' in a moment the doubt has
perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes
the forgiveness that is sealed forever. As one who recovers a brother whom he had accounted dead, the officer sprang
forward, threw his arms around the heck of the soldier,
and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by
that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst,
on his part, the? soldier, stepping back, and carrying his
open hand through the beautiful motions of the military
salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer -that
answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even whilst for the last time alluding to
it "Sir," he said, " I told you before that I would mSk.
you repent it."




CHAPTER IV.
THE FEMALE INFIDEL.
AT the time of my father's death, I was nearly seven
years old.. In the next four years, during which we c,Q9otinued to live.at Greenhay, nothing memorable occurred,
except, indeed, that troubled parenthesis in my life which
connected me with my brother William,- this certainly
was, memorable to myself,-and, secondly, the visit of' a
most eccentric young woman,. who, about. nine years later,
drew the eyes of all England upon herself by her unprinr
cipled conduct in an affair affecting the life of two: Oxonian
undergraduates. She was the daughter of Lord Le Despencer, (known previously as Sir Francis Dashwood;) and
at this time (meaning the time of her visit to. Greenhay)
she was about twenty-two years. old,. with a face and, a
figure classically beautiful, and with the reputation of extraordinary accomplishments; these accomplishments being
not only eminent in their degree, but rare and interesting in
their kind., In particular, she astonished every person by her
impromptu, performances on the organ, arid by her powers
of disputation. These last she applied entirely to attacks
upon Christianity; for she openly professed infidelity in the
most audacious form; and at my mother's table she certainly proved more than a match for all the clergymen of
153




154             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the neighboring towns, some of whom (as the most intel.
lectual persons of that neighborhood) were daily invited to
meet her.   It was a mere accident which hadintroduced
her to my mother's house.      Happening to hear from   my
sister Mary's governess * that she and her pupil were going
on a visit to an old Catholic family in the county of Durham, (the family of Mr. Swinburne, who was known advantageously to the public by his " Travels in Spain and
Sicily," &c.,) Mrs. Lee, whose education in a French convent, aided by her father's influence, bad introduced her
extensively to the knowledge of Catholic'families. in Eng* "My sister Mary's governess."-This governess was a Miss
Wesley, niece to John Wesley,'the founder of Methodism. And the
mention of her recalls to me a fact, which was recently revived and
misstated by the whole newspaper press of the island. It had been
always known that some relationship existed between the Wellesleys
and John Wesley. Their names had, in fact, been originally the
same;,and the Duke of Wellington himself, in the earlier part of his
career, when sitting in the Irish House of Commons, was always
known to the Irish journals as Captain Wesley. Upon this arose a
natural belief that the aristocratic branch of the house had improved
the name into Wellesley. But the true process of change had been
precisely the other way.  Not Wesley-had been expanded into
Wellesley, but, inversely, Wellesley had been contracted by household
usage into Wesley. The name must have been Wellesley in its earliest
stage, since it was founded upon a connection with Wells Cathedral
It had obeyed the same process as prevails in many hundreds of other
names:' St. Leger, for instance, is always pronounced as if written
Sillinger; Cholmondeley as Chumleigh; Marjoribanks as Marchbanks; and the illustrious name of Cavendish was for centuries familiarly pronounced Candish; and Wordsworth has even introduced'this name into verse so as to compel the reader, by a metrical coercion, into calling it Candish. Miss Wesley's family had great musical- sensibility aVd skill. This led the family.into giving. musical
parties, at which was constantly to be found Lord Moqrnington, the
father of the Duke of Wellington. For these parties it was, as Miss
Wesley informed me, that the earl comrosed his most celebrated glee




THE FEMALE INFIE L.                155
land, and who had herself an invitation to the same house
at the same time, wrote to offer the use of hei carriage to
convey all three.- i. e., herself, my sister, and her governess- to Mr. Swinburne's.   This naturally drew  forth
from my mother an invitation to Greenhay; and to Green.
hay she came.   On the imperial of her carriage, and elsewhere, she described herself as the Hon. Antonina Dash*wcod Lee. But, in fact, being only the illegitimate daughter
of Lord Le Despencer, she was not entitled to that designation. She had, however, received a bequest even more enviable from her father, viz., not less than forty-five thousand
pounds.' At a very early age, she had married a young
Oxonian, distinguished for nothing but a very splendidperson, which had procured him    the distinguishing title of
Handsome Lee; and from him she had speedily separated,
on the agreement of dividing the fortune.
My mother little guessed what sort of person it was
whom she had asked into her family. So much, however,
she had understood from'Miss Wesley- that Mrs. Lee was
a bold thinker'; and that, for a woman, she had an astonishing command of theological learning.   This it was that
suggested the clerical invitations, as in such a case likely to
furnish the most appropriate society.  But this led to a
painful result. It might easily have happened that a very
Here also it was, or'in similar musical circles gathered about himself
by the first Lord Mornington, that the Duke of Wellington had
formed and cultivated his unaffected love for music of the highest
class, i. e., for the impassioned music of the -serious opera. And it
occurs to me as highly probable, that-Mrs. Lee s connection with the
Wesleys, through which it was that she became acquainted with my
mother, must have rested upon the common interest which she and
the Wesleys had in the organ and in the class of music suited to that
instrument. Mrs. Lee herself was an' improvisatrice Of -the first class
apon the organ; and the two brothers of Miss Wesley, Samuel and
Charles; ranked for very many years as the first organists in Europe.




1?54          AUTOBIb6RAP&IIC S1MIT'IS.
learned clergyman should not specially have qualified him
self for -the service of a theological tournament; and my
mothetr' range of acquaintance was hnot very extensive.
amongst the -'clerical body. But of these the two leaders,
as regarded public consideration, weie Mr. H  —, my
giuatdiaq- and Mr. Clowes, who for more than fifty years
officiated as rector of St. John's Church in Manchester.
Ih'fact, the golden * jubilee of his pastoral Connection With
-St John's was gcelebrated many yearss after with much
demonstrative expression of public sympathy on the part
of universal. Manchester- the most important city itn the
island 1eXt after London. No men could have been found
who:were less fitted to act:as champions in a duei on behalf
of' Chistianity. Mr. H.  was dreadfully commonplace 
dull, dreadfully dull; and, by the'necessity of his nature,
incapable of being in deadly earnest, which his splendid
antagonist at all times was. His encounter, therefore, with
Mrs. Lee presented the distressing spectacle of an old,
toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for the household to
which he oWed allegiance against a young leopardess fresh
fromh the forests. Every touch from her, every Velvety pat,
dire  blood. And something comic mingled with what my
rmther felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different Wai
Mr;.. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be
treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him. a qualified
homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste,
the training, and the particular sort of erudition required.
Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to
-* "The goldn jubilee. - This, in Germany, is used popularly as a
technical expression: a Imarried couple, when celebrating the fiftieth
anniiersary of their marriage day, are said to keep their golden
jubilee; but on the twenty-fifth anniversary they have credit only for
a silver jubilee.




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             151
possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this.
Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a
young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom God
-had adorned so eminently with gifts of person and of mind,
breathing sentiments that to him seemed fresh from the
mintage of hell. He could have apostrophized her (as
long afterwards he himself told me) in the words of Shak.
speare's Juliet -
" Beautiful tyant! fieind angelical! 
for he -was one of those Who never think of Christianity as
the subject of defence. Could sunshine, could light, could
the glories of the dawn call for defence?  Not as a thing
to be defended, but as a thing to be interpreted, as a thing
to -be illuminated, did Christianity exist for him.  He,
therefore, was even more unserviceable as a champion
against the deliberate impeacher of Christian evidences
than my reverend guardian.
Thus it was that he himself explained his own position
in after days, when I had reached my sixteenth year, and
visited him upon terms of friendship as close as can ever
have-existed between a boy and a man already gray headed.
Hitm and his noiseless parsonage, the pensive abode for sixty
years of religious revery and anchoritish self denial, I have
described farther on. In sorme limited sense he belongs to
our literature, for he was, in fact, the introducer of Swedenborg -to this country; as being himself partially the
translator of Swedenborg; and still more, as organizing a
patronage to other people's translations; and also, I believes
as republishing the original Latin works of Swedenborg.
To say that of Mr. Clowes, was, until lately,, but another
way of describing him as a delirious dreamer. At present,
(1853,) I presume the reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even




158           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one
amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates
cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him
only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years
ago, supposed him. Assuredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler
but, lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of
religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions  To him,
being such a man by nature and by habit, it was in effect
the lofty Lady Geraldine from Coleridge's ".Christabel"
that stood before him in this infidel lady. A magnificent
witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having the same
superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over
the. ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to
some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink
of.a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive.
of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to. all
others seemed the form of a.lady, armed with incomparable
pretnsions - one that was
" Beautiful exceedingly,
Like a lady from a far countrie."
The scene, as I heard it sketched long years afterwards
by more.than one of those who had witnessed it, was painful in excess. And the shock given to my mother. was
memorable. For the first and the last time in her long
and healthy-life, she suffered an alarming nervous attack.
Partly this arose from the conflict between herself in the
character of hostess, and herself as a loyal daughter of
Christian faith; she shuddered, -in a degree almost incontrollable and beyond her power. to dissemble, at the unfeminine intrepidity with which "the leopardess" conducted, her assaults upon the sheepfolds of orthodoxy;
and partly, also, this internal conflict arose from concern




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            159
on behalf of her own servants, who waited at dinner, and
were inevitably -liable to impressions from what they
heard. My mother, by original choice, and by early training under a very aristocratic father, recoiled as austerely
from all direct communication with her servants as the
Pythia at Delphi from the attendants that swept out the
temple. But not the less her conscience, in all stages of
her life, having or not' having any special knowledge of
religion, acknowledgeu a pathetic weight- of obligation to
remove from her, household all confessedly corrupting influences. And here was one which s.e could not remove.
What chiefly she feared, on behalf of her servants, was
either, 1st, the danger from the simple fact, now suddenly
made known to them, that it was possible for a person
unusually gifted to deny Christianty.; such a denial and
haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when
the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay
feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This
general fact was appreciable by those who would forget,
and never could have understood, the particular arguments
of the infidel. Yet, even as regarded- these particular arguments, 2dly, my mother feared that some one —brief,
telling, and rememberable- might be singled out from the
rest, might transplant itself to the servants' hall, and take
root for life in some mind sufficiently thoughtful to invest it
with interest, and yet far removed from any opportunities,
through books or society, for disarming the argument of
its sting. Such a danger was quickened by the character
and pretensions of Mrs. Lee's footman, who was a daily
witness, whilst standing behind his mistress's chair at din;
ner, to the confusion which she carried into the hostile
-camp, and might be supposed to renew such discussions in
the servants' hall with singular advantages for a favorable




160           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
attention. For he was a showy and most audacious Lon.
doier, and what is technically known in..the language of
setrants' hiring offices as "a man of figure."  He might,
thteefore, be considered as one dangerously armed for
shaking religious principles, especially amongst the female
servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother Was
nmistaken. Women of humble station, less than any bther
class, have any tendency to sympathize with boldness that
ranifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion, PerAtaps a natural instinct tells them that levity of that nature
will pretty Surely extend itself contagiously to other modes
df coiscientious obligation.; at any rate, my Own exgerience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance
were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regarding infidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, or interesting4 or in any way as favorably distinguishing a man.
Meantime, this conscientious apprehension on account of
the servants applied to contingencies that were remote.
But the pity on account of the poor lady herself applied to
a dangertthat seemed imminent and deadly. This beautiful
aid splendid young creature, as my mother knew, Was
floating, without anchor or knowledge of any anchoring
grounds, tipon the unfathomable ocean of a London world,
which, for her, was wrapped in darkness as regarded its dangers, and thus for her the chances of shipwreck were seven
times multiplied. It was notorious that Mrsd Lee had no
protector or guide, natural or legal. Her marriage had, in
fact, instead of imposing new restraintsi released her from
old ones. For the legal separation of Doctors' Commons -
technically called a divorce simply d mensd et thoro, (from
bed and board,) and not a vinczlo matrimonii (from the
very tie and obligatio of marriage) - had removed her by
law from the control of her husband; Whilst, at the same
ttnfe, the matrimonial condition, of course, enlarged that




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             161
liberty of action which else is unavoidably narrowed by
the reserve and delicacy natural to a young woman, whilst
yet unmarried. Here arose one peril more; and, 2dly, arose
this most unusual aggravation of that peril - that Mrs Lee
was deplorably ignorant of English life; indeed, of life
universally.'Strictly speaking, she was even yet a raw,
untutored novice, turned suddenly loose from the twilight of
a monastic seclusion. Under any circumstances, such a
situation lay open to an amount of danger that was afflicting to contemplate. But one dreadful exasperation of these
fatal auguries lay in the peculiar temper of Mrs. Lee, as
connected with her infidel thinking. Her nature was too
frank and bold to tolerate any disguise; and my mother's
own experience had now taught her that Mrs. Lee would
not be content to leave to the random call of accident the
avowal of her principles. No passive or latent spirit of
freethinking was hers- headlong it was, uncompromising, almost fierce, and regarding no restraints of place
or season. Like Shelley, some few years later, whose day
she would have gloried to welcome, she looked upon her
principles not only as conferring rights, but also as imposing duties of active proselytism. From this feature in
her character it was that my mother foresaw an instant
evil, which she urged Miss Wesley to press earnestly on
her attention, viz., the inevitable alienation of all her female friends.  In many parts of the continent (but too
much we are all in the habit of calling by the wide name
of  the continent," France, Germany, Switzerland, and
Belgium) my mother was aware that the most flagrant
proclamation of infidelity would not stand in the way of a
woman's favorable reception into society. But in England,
at that time, this was far otherwise., A display such as Mrs.
Lee habitually forced upon people's attention would at
once have the effect of banishing from  her house all
11




162          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
women of respectability. She would be thrown upon the
society of'men -bold and reckless, such as either agreed
with herself, or, being careless on the Whole subject of religion, pretended to do so. Her income, though diminished
now by the partition with Mr. Lee, was still above a thousand
per anntm; which, though trivial for any purpose of display in a place so costly as London, was still importantenough to gather round her unprincipled adventurers, some
of whom might be noble enough to obey no attraction but
that which lay in her marble beauty, in her Athenian grace
and eloquence, and the wild, impassioned nature of her accomplishments. By her acting, her dancing, her conversation, her musical improvisations, she was qualified to attract the most intellectual men; but baser attractionswould exist for baser men; and my mother urged Miss
Wesley, as one whom Mrs. Lee admitted to her confidence,
above all things to act upon her pride by forewarning her
that such men, in the midst of' lip homage to her charms,
would be-sure to betray its hollowness by declining to let
their wives and daughters visit her. Plead.what excuses
they would, Mrs. Lee might rely upon it, that the true
ground for this insulting absence of female visitors would
be found to lie in her profession of infidelity. This aliena-tion of female society would,' it was clear, be precipitated
enormously by Mrs. Lee's frankness. A result that might
by a dissembling policy have been delayed indefinitely
would now be hurried forward to ah immediate crisis.
And in this result went to wreck the very best part of. Mrs.
Lee's securities against ruin.
It is scarcely necessary to say, that all the evil followed
which had been predicted, and through the channels which
had been predicted. Some time was required on so vast a
stage as London to publish the facts of Mrs. Lee's freethinking- that is, to publish it as a matter of systemnatie




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             163
purpose. Many persons had at first made a liberal allowance for her, as tempted by some momentary impulse into
opinions that she had not sufficiently considered, and
might forget as hastily as she had adopted them. But no
sooner was it made known as a settled fact, that she had
deliberately dedicated her energies to the interests of an
anti-Christian system, and that she hated Christianity, than
the whole body of her friends within the pale of social
respectability fell away from her, and forsook her house.
To them succeeded a clique of male visitors, some of whom
were doubtfully respectable, and others (like Mr. Frend,
memorable for his expulsion from Cambridge on account
of his public hostility to Trinitarianism) were distinguished
by a tone of intemperate defiance to the spirit of English
society. Thrown upon such a circle, and emancipated
from all that temper of reserve which would have been impressed upon her by habitual anxiety for the good opinion
of virtuous and high-principled women, the poor lady was
tempted into an elopement with two dissolute brothers; for
what ultimate purpose -on either side, was never made
clear to the public. Why a lady should elope from her
own house, and the protection of her own servants, under
whatever impulse, seemed generally unintelligible. But
apparently it was precisely this protection from her own
servants which presented -itself to the brothers in the light
of an obstacle to their objects. What' these objects might
ultimately be, I do not entirely know; and I do not feel'
myself authorized, by any thing which of my own knowl.
edge.I know, to load either of them with mercenary im-:putations. One of them  (the younger) was, or fancied
himself, in love with Mrs. Lee. It was impossible for him
to marry her; and possibly he may have fancied that in
some- rustic retirement, where the parties were unknown,
it'would be easier than in London to appease the lady's




114          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
scruples in respect to the sole mode of connection which
the law left open to them. The frailty of the will in Mrs.
Lee was as manifest in this stage of the case as subsequently, when she allowed herself to be over-clamored
by Mr. Lee and his friends into a capital prosecution of
the brothers. After she had once allowed herself to be
put into a post chaise, she was persuaded to believe (and
such was her ignorance of English society, that possibly
she did believe) herself through the rest of the journey
liable at any moment to summary coercion in the case of
attempting any resistance. The brothers and herself left
London in the evening. Consequently, it was long after
midnight when the party halted at a town in Gloucestershire,-two stages beyond Oxford. The younger gentleman
then persuaded her, but (as she alleged) under the impres..
sion on her part that resistance was unavailing, and that
the injury to her reputation was by this time irreparable, to
allow of his coming to her bed room. This-was perhaps
not entirely a fraudulent representation in Mrs. Lee. The
whole circumstances of the case made it clear, that, with
any decided opening for deliverance, she would have
caught at it; and probably would again, from wavering of
mind, have dallied with the danger.
Perhaps at this point, having already in this last paragraph shot ahead by some nine years of the period when
she visited Greenhay, allowing myself this license in order
to connect my mother's warning through Miss Wesley with
the practical sequel of the case,'it may be as well for me
to pursue the arrears of the story down to its final incident.
In 1804, at the Lent Assizes for the county of Oxford, she
appeared as principal witness against two brothers, L  t
G —   n, and L-n G     -n, on a capital charge of having forcibly carried her off from her own house in London
and afterwards of havingi at some place in Gloucestershire




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             165
by collusion with each other and by terror, enabled one of
the brothers to offer the last violence to her person. The
circumstantial accounts published at the time.by the newspapers were of a nature to conciliate the public sympathy
altogether to the prisoners; aud the general belief accorded
with what was, no doubt, the truth-that the lady had
been driven into a false accusation by the overpowering
remonstrances of her friends, joined, in this instance, by
her husband, all of whom were willing to believe, or willing to-have it believed by the public, that advantage had
been taken of her little acquaintance with English usages.
I was present at the trial. The court was opened at eight
O'clock in the morning; and such was the interest in the
case, that a mob, composed chiefly of gownsmen, besieged
the doors for some time before the moment of admission.
On this occasion, by the way, I witnessed a remarkable
illustration of the profound obedience which Englishmen
under all circumstances pay to the law. The constables~
for what reason I do not know, were very numerous and
very violent. Such of us as happened to have gone in our
academic dress had our caps smashed in two by the constables' staves  why, it might be difficult for the officers to
say, as none of us were making any tumult, nor had any
motive for doing so, unless by way of retaliation. Many
of these constables were bargemen or petty tradesmen, who
in their ex-official character had often been engaged in
rows with undergraduates, and usually had had the worst
of it. At present, in the service of the blindfold goddess,
these equitable men were no doubt taking out their ven.
geance for past favors. But, under all this wanton display'
of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance.' The presure from behind made it impossible to
forbear pressing ahead; crushed, you were obliged to
crush; but, beyond that, there was no movement or ges



166          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ture on our part to give any colorable warrant to the bru.
tality of the officers. For nearly a whole hour, I saw this
expression of reverence to the law triumphant over all. provocations. -It may be presumed, that, to prompt so much
crowding, there must have been some commensurate interest. There was so, but.that interest was not at all in Mrs.
Lee. She was entirely unknown; and even by reputation
or rumor, from so vast a wilderness as London, neither her
beauty nor her intellectual pretensions had travelled down
to Oxford. Possibly, in each section of 300 men, there
might be one individual whom accident had brought acquainted, as it had myself, with her extraordinary endowments. But the general and academic interestbelonged
exclusively to the accused. They were both Oxoniansone belonging to University College, and the other, perhaps, to Baliol; and, as they had severally taken the degree of A. B., which implies a residence of at least three
years, they were pretty extensively known. But, known
or not known personally, in virtue of the esprit de corps,
the accused parties would have benefited in any case by a
general brotherly interest. Over and above which, there;
was in this case the interest attached to an almost unintelligible accusation. A charge of personal violence, under the
roof of a -respectable English posting house, occupied always by a responsible master and mistress, and within call
at every moment of numerous servants,- what could that
mean?   And, again, when it became understood that this
violence was alleged to have realized itself under a delusion, under a preoccupation of the victim's mind, that resistance to it was hopeless, how, and under what profound
ignorance of English society, had such a preoccupation
been:possible? To the accused, and to the incomprehensible accusation, therefore, belonged the whole weight of
the interest; and it was-a very secondary interest indeed




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            167
and purely as a reflex interest from the main one, which
awaited the prosecutress. And yet, though so little curios,
ity " awaited" her, it happened of necessity' that, within a
few moments after her first coming forward in the witness
box, she had created a separate one for herself-first,
through her impressive appearance; secondly, through the
appalling coolness of her answers. The trial began, I
think, about nine o'clock in the morning; and, as some
time was spent on the examination of Mrs. T ee's servants,
of postilions, hostlers, &c., in pursuing the traces of the affair from London.to a place seventy miles north of London, it was probably about eleven in the forenoon before
the prosecutress was summoned. My heart throbbed a
little as the court lulled suddenly into the deep stillness of
expectation, when that summons was heard: " Rachael
Frances Antonina Dashwood Lee" resounded through all
the passages; and immediately in an adjoining anteroom,
through which she was led by her attorney, for the purpose of.evading the mob that surrounded the public approaches, we heard her advancing steps. Pitiable was the
humiliation expressed by her carriage, as she entered the
witness box. Pitiable was the change, the world of distance, between this faltering and dejected accuser, and that
wild leopardess that had once worked her pleasure amongst
the sheepfolds of Christianity, and had cuffed my poor
guardian so unrelentingly, right and left, front and rear,
when he attempted the feeblest of defences. However,
she was not long exposed to the searching gaze of the
court and the trying embarrassments of her situation. A
single question. brought the whole investigation to a close
Mrs. Lee had been sworn. After a few questions, she was
suddenly asked by the counsel for the defence whether she
believed in the Christian religion? Her answer was brief
and peremptory, without distinction or circumlocution



168          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC -SKETCHES
No. rOr, perhaps, not in God? Again she replied, No.
and again her answer was prompt and sans phrase. Upon
this the judge declared that he could not permit the trial to
proceed. The jury had heard what the witness said: she
only could give evidence upon the capital part of the
charge; arid she had openly incapacitated herself before
the whole court. The jury instantly acquitted the prisons
ers. In the course of the day I left my name at Mrs. Lee's
lodgings; but her servant assured me that she was too
much agitated to see any body till the evening. At the
hour assigned I called again. It was dusk, and a mob had
assenmbled&  At the moment I came up to the door, a lady
was issuing, muffled up, and in some measure disguised.
It was Mrs. Lee. At the corner of an adjacent street a
post chaise was drawn up. Towards this, under the protection of the attorney who had managed her case, she
made her way as eagerly as possible. Before she could
reach it, however, she was detected; a savage howl was
raised a  and a rush made to seize her. Fortunately, a body
of gownsmen formed round her, so as to secure her from
personal assault: they put her rapidly into the carriage;
and then: joining the mob in their hootings, sent off the
horses at a gallop. Such was the mode of her exit from
Oxford.
Subsequently to this painful collision with Mrs. Lee at
the Oxford Assizes, I heard nothing of hei for many years,
excepting only this —that she was residing in the family
of an English clergyman distinguished for his learning and
piety. This account gave great pleasure to my mother —
not only as implying some chance that Mrs. Lee might be
finally teclaimed from her unhappy opinions, but also as a
proof that, in submitting to a rustication so mortifying to a
woman of her' brilliant qualifications, she must have fallen
under some influences more promising for her respectabil



THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            169
it3 and happiness than those which had surrounded her in
London. Finally, we saw by the public journals that she
had written and published a book. The title I forget; but
by its subject it was connected with political or social philosophy. And one eminent testimony to its merit I myself
am able to allege, viz., Wordsworth's. Singular enough it
seems, that he who read so very little of modern literature,
in fact, next to nothing, should be the sole critic and reporter whom I have happened to meet upon Mrs. Lee's
work. But so it was: accident had thrown the book in his
way during one of his annual visits to London, and a second time at Lowther Castle.  le paid to Mrs. Lee a compliment which certainly he paid to no other of her contemporaries, viz., that of reading her book very nearly to the
end; and he spoke of it repeatedly as distinguished for vigor and originality of thought.




CHAPTER V.
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A
PUBLIC SCHOOL.
FOUR years after my father's death, it began to be perceived that there was no purpose to be answered in any
longer keeping up the costly establishment of Greenhay.
A head gardener, besides laborers equal to at least two
more, were required for the grounds and gardens. And
no motive existed any longer for being near to a great
trading town, so long after the commercial connection with
it, had ceased. Bath seemed, on all accounts, the natural
station for a person in my mother's situation; and thither,
accordingly, she went. I, who had been placed under the
tuition of one of my guardians, remained some time longer
under his care. I was then transferred to Bath. During
this interval the sale of the house and grounds took place
It may illustrate the subject of guardianship, and the or.
dinary execution of its duties, to mention the result. The
year was in itself a year of great depression, and every
way unfavorable to such a transaction; and the particular
night for which the sale had been fixed turned out remark.
ably wet; yet no attempt was made to postpone it, and it
proceeded.  Originally the house and grounds had cost
170




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.        171
about ~6000. I have heard that only one offer was made,
viz., of ~2500  Be that as it may, for the sum of ~2500
it was sold; and I have been often assured that, by waiting
a few years, four to six times that sum' might have been
obtained with ease. This is not improbable, as the house
was then out in the country; but -since then the town of
Manchester has gathered round it and enveloped it. Meantime, my guardians were all men-of honor and integrity;
but their hands were filled with their own. affairs. -One
(my tutor) was a clergyman, rector of a church, and
having his parish, his large' family, and three pupils to
attend. He was, besides, a very sedentary and indolent
man-loving books, hating business. Another was a merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with
official business: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth
was a banker in a distant county, having more knowledge
of the world, more energy, and more practical wisdom
than all the rest united, but too remote for interfering
effectually.
Reflecting upon the evils which befell me, and the gross
mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune,
and that of my brothers and sisters, it has often.occurred to
me that so important an office, which, from the time of De.
mosthenes, has been proverbially maladministered, ought
to be put upon a new footing, plainly guarded by a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long
period, the guardian should be made responsible in law,
and should give security from the first for the due performance of his duties. But, to give him a motive for doing
this, of course he must be paid. With the new obligations
and liabilities will commence commensurate emoluments.
If a child is made a ward in Chancery, its property is managed expensively, but always advantageously. Some great
change is imperatively called for  no duty in the —whole




172             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
compass of human life being so scandalously treated as
this.
In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered upon
the arena-of a great public school, viz., the Grammar
School * of Bath, over which at that time presided a most
accomplished Etonian -    Mr. (or was he as yet Doctor?)
Morgan.    If he. was not, I am sure he ought to have been;
and, with the reader's concurrence, will therefore create
him  a doctor on the spot.     Every   man has reason to
* "Graqmmar School." -By the way, as the grammnar schools of
England are amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to the.innumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that
hate England "worse than toad or asp," have never been rivalled by
any corresponding institutions in other lands, I may as well take thisopportunity of explaining the word grammar, which most people mis,
apprehend. Men suppose a grammar school to mean a school where
~they teach grammar. But this is not the true meaning, and ten4s to
calumniate such schools by ignoring their highest functions. Limiting by a false limitation the earliest object contemplated by such
schools, they obtain a plausible pretext for representing all beyond
grammar as something extraneous and casual that did not enter into
the original or normal conception of the founders,. and that, may
therefore have been due to alien suggestion. But now, when Suetonius writes a little book, bearing this title, "De Illustribus Grammaticis," what does he mean 1 What is it that he promises? A memoir
upon the eminent grammarians of Rome? Not at all, but a memoir
upon the distinguished literati of Rome. Gramnmac'co does certainly
mean sometimesgrammar; but it is also the best Latin word for liters
ature. A grammaticus -is what the French express by the word litterateur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English:
a man of letters is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt,
as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the
plural we resort to the Latin word literate, The school which professes to teach grammatica, professes, therefore, the culture, of literature in the widest and most liberal extent, and is opposed generically
to schools for teaching mechanic arts; and, within its own sub-genus
of schools dedicated to liberal objects, is opposed to schools for teaching
mathematics, or, more widely, to schools for teaching science.




WARFARE OF A PULIC SOROOL.        l?'
jejoice who enjoys the advantage of a public training.. 
condemned, and do condemn,. the practice of sending out
intco such stormy exposures those who are as yet too. young,
too dependent on feniale gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originally too exquisite for such a warfare. But
at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are
beginning, to. develop themselves; or, if not, no discipli.n
will better aid in their development than the'bracing inter,
course of a great English classical school. Even the self,
ish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a
public standard of generosity, and the effeminate insconforming to a rule. of manliness. I was myself at two pub,.lie schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which
I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that
guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so, effectually. But the small private schools, of which I had opportunities for gathering some brief experience,- schools
containing thirty to forty boys, -were models. of ignoble
manners as regarded part.of the juniors, and of, favoritism
as regardre the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of pub-:
liH justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public
school op the old Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth foundation.
There is not in the universe. such an Areopagus for fair
play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English
mob, or one of the time-honored English "foundation"
schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory clrcumstances. When my " rating," or graduation in the school, was
to be settled, naturally my altitude. (to speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency in Greek. But here I
had no advantage over others of my age. My guardian
was a feeble Grecian,'and had not excited my ambition;
so that I could barely construe Looks as easy'as the Greek
Testament and the Iliad.'IThis was considered. quite well




174           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
enough for my age; but stilt It caused me to be placed under
the care of Mr. Wilkins, the-second master out of four, and
not under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, however, my talent for Latin verses,-which had by this time
gathered strength and expansion, became known. Suddenly I was honored as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to the doctors jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded for distinction
at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which, at
first, grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation delightful
to my heart. Within six weeks all this had changed.' The
approbation indeed continued, and the public expression of
it.' Neither would there, in the ordinary course, have been
any painful reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to
the soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently
known to such of my school-fellows as stood on my own
level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives but
military men, and those in India, could not have benefited
by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, Dr. Morgan was
at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of
his head class;* and, as it soon appeared, was continually
throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at
eleven or twelve, by comparison with theirs at seventeen,
eighteen, and even nineteen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself, and was perplexed at seeing this
gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French report.
ers call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally
I viewed with awe as my leaders - boys that were called
young men, men'that were reading Sophocles, (a name that
carried with it the, sound. of something.seraphic to" my
ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on
* "( ass," or "form."- One knows not how to make one's self
intelligible, so different are the terms locally.




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         175
such a child -as myself  The day was come, however,
when all that would be changed. One of these leaders
strode up to me in the public playground, and delivering
a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to. hurt me
but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me " what
the devil I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoy.
ing other people in that manner.  Were'other people' to
have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, were
horribly bad?"  There might have been some dificulty
in returning an answer to this address, but none was required. I was briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse
for the future, or else -. At this aposiopesis I looked
inquiringly at the speaker, and he filled up the chasm by
saying that. he would " annihilate" me.  Could any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write
worse than my own standard, which, by his account of my
verses, must be difficult; and I was to write worse than
himself, which might be impossible. My feelings revolted
against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been far otherwise expressed; if death on the'spot had awaited me, I
could not have controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses to the head master, so far from.
attending to the orders issued, I double-shotted my guns;
double applause descended on myself; but I remarked
with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done,
that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my
enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my'' annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but
with something like a grim smile about his eyes. I-e took
an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again,
saying, "You little devil,, do you call this writing your
worst?" "No," I replied; "I call it writing my.best."
The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a good-natured
young man; but he was on the wing for Cambridge; and




176          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for
more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had. it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in
my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise
sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by
comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested
distinctions that were connected with mortification toothers;
and, even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud
fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been- so mere a necessity to me, that had long
been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace,
and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible,
(as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous necessity of my nature. To contend with somebody was still
my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see;
and yet, for itself, and for the deadly passions into which it
forced me, I hated and loathed it more than-death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my mind, that I
could not altogether condemn the upper boys. I was made
a handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time,
if I had an undeniable advantage in one solitary accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or sometimes
of peculiar direction given to the taste, they, on the other
hand, had a great advantage over me in the more elaborate
difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. I could.
not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still,
as they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me,
I did not feel that I had any choice'but to resist. The contest was terminated for me bymy removal from the school,
in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my
head; -but it lasted more than a year, and it did not close
before several among my public enemies had become my
nrivate friends. They were much older, but they invited




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         177
me. to the houses of their friends, and showed me a respect
which affected me - this respect having more reference
apparently, to the firmness I had- exhibited, than to any
splendor in my verses.  And, indeed, these had rather
drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my
own class had formed the practice of asking me to write
verses for them. I could not refuse. But, as the subjects
given out were the same for the entire class, it was not pos
sible to take so many crops off the ground without starving
the quality of all.
The most interesting public event which, during my stay
at this school, at all connected itself with Bath, and indeed
with the school itself, was the sudden escape of Sir Sidney
Smith from the prison of the Temple in Paris. The mode
of his escape was as striking as its time was critical.  Having accidently thrown a ball beyond _the prison bounds in
playing at tennis, or some such game, Sir Sidney was surprised to observe that the ball thrown back was not the
same. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to dissemble his sudden - surprise. He retired, examined the
ball, found it stuffed with letters; and, in the same way, he
subsequently conducted a long correspondence, and arranged the whole circumstances of his escape; which, remarkably enough, was accomplished exactly eight days
before the sailing of Napoleon with the Egyptian expedition; so that Sir' Sidney was just in time to confront, and
utterly to defeat, Napoleon in the breach of Acre. But
for Sir Sidney, Bonaparte would have' overrun Syria, that
is certain. What would have followed from that event is
a far more obscure problem.
Sir Sidney Smith, I must explain to readers of this gen.
eration, and Sir Edward Pellew, (afterwards Lord Exmouth,) figured as the two * Paladins of the first war with
* To them in the next stage of the war succeeded Sir' Michael
12




178           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETChES.
revolutionary France. Rarely were these two names men.
tioned but in connection with some splendid, prosperous,
and unequal contest. Hence the whole nation was saddened by the account of Sir Sidney's capture; and this
must be understood, in order to make the joy of his sudden
return perfectly intelligible. Not even a rumor of Sir
Sidney's escape had or could have run before him; for, at
the moment of reaching the coast of England, he had
started with post horses to Bath. It was about dusk when
he arrived: the postilions were directed to the square in
which his mother lived: in a few minutes'he was in his
mother's arms, and in fifty' minutes more the news had
flown to the remotest suburb of the city. The agitation of
Bath on this occasion was indescribable. All the troops
of the line then quartered in that city, and a whole regiment of volunteers, immediately got under arms, and
marched to the quarter in which Sir Sidney lived. The
small square overflowed with the soldiery; Sir Sidney
went out, and was immediately lost to us, who were watching for him, in the closing ranks of the troops. Next
morning, however,,I, my younger brother, and-a schoolfellow of my own age, called formally upon the.naval hero.
Why,-I know not, unless as alumni of the school at which
Sir Sidney Smith had received his own education, we were
admitted without question or demur; and I may record it
as an amiable trait in Sir Sidney, that he received us then
with great kindness, and took us' down with him to the
pump room. Considering, however, that we must have
Seymour, and Lord Cochrane, (the present Earl of Dundonald,) and
Lord Camelford. The two last were the regular fireeaters of the
day. Sir Horatio Nelson being already an admiral, was no longer,
looked to for insulated exploits of brilliant adventure: his name was
now conne( ted with larger and combined attacks, less dashing and adventurous, because including heavier responsibilities.




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.        179
been most afflicting bores to Sir Sidney, — a fact which no
self-esteem could even then disguise from us, -it puzzled
me at first to understand the principle of his conduct.
Having already done more than enough in courteous acknowledgment of our fraternal claims as fellow-students
at the Bath Grammar School, why should he think it necessary to burden himself further with our worshipful
society? I found out the secret, and will explain it. A
very slight attention to.Sir Sidney's deportment in public
revealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous
sensibility and'with mauvaise honte. He thai had faced so
cheerfully'crowds of hostile and threatening eyes, could
not support without trepidation those gentle eyes, beaming
with gracious admiration, of his fair young countrywomen.
By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaint
ances in Bath,* a fact which' is not at all to be'wondered
at. Living so much abroad and. at sea, an English sailor,
of whatever rank, has few opportunities for making friends
at home. And yet there was a necessity that Sir Sidney
should gratify the. public interest, so warmly expressed, by
presenting himself somewhere or other to the public eye.'But how trying a service'to the most practised and otherwise most callous veteran on such an occasion, that he
should step forward, saying in effect, "So you are wanting to see me: well, then, here I am: come and look at
me I "  Put it into what language you please, such a summons was written on all faces, and countersigned by his
worship the mayor, who began to whisper insinuations of
riots if Sir Sidney did not comply. Yet, if he did, inevitably his own act of obedience to the public pleasure took
the shape Of an ostentatious self-parading under the con.
* Lord Camelford was, I believe, his first cousin; Sir Sidney's
mother and Lady Camelford being sisters. But Lord Camelford Ham
then absent from Bath.




180           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
struction of those numerous persons who knew nothing of
the. public importunity, or -of Sir Sidney's unaffected and
even morbid reluctance to obtrude himself upon the public
eye. The thing was unavoidable; and the sole palliation
that it admitted was - to break the concentration of the
public gaze, by associating Sir Sidney with some alien
group, no matter of what cattle. Such a group would
relieve' both parties — gazer and gazee — from  too distressing a consciousness of the little business on which they
had met. We, the schoolboys, being three, intercepted and
absorbed part of the enemy's fire, and, by furnishing Sir
Sidney with real bona fide matter of conversation, we released him from the most distressing part of his sufferings, viz., the passive and silent acquiescence in his own,
apotheosis-holding a lighted candle, as it were, to the
glorification of his own shrine.' With our help, he weathered
the storm of homage silently ascending. And we, in fact,
whilst seeming to ourselves too undeniably a triad of bores,
turned out the most serviceable allies that Sir Sidney everhad by land or sea, until several moons later, when he
formed the.invaluable acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher," viz., Djezzar, the Pacha of Acre. I record this little trait
of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little
service through which I and my two comrades contributed
materially to'his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity
which besieges the nervous system of our nation.. It is a
sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and
sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself
known it to exist in both, and, particularly in a man that
might be said. to live in the street, such was the American
publicity which circumstances threw around his life; and
so far were his habits of life removed from  reserve, or




WARFARE'OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         181
from any predisposition to gloom. And at this moment I
recall a remarkable illustration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George
Beaumont. To him I had been sketching the distressing
sensitiveness of Sir Sidney pretty much as I have sketched
it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach
at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk,
shrank back-me ipso teste-from    the gentle, though
eager- from the admiring, yet affectionate -glances of
three very young ladies in Gay Street, Bath, the oldest (1
should say) not more than seventeen. Upon which Sir
George mentioned, as a parallel experience of his own,
that Mr. Canning, being ceremoniously introduced to himself (Sir George) about the time when he had reached the
meridian of his fame as an orator, and should therefore
have become blas' to the extremity of being absolutely
seared and case-hardened against all impressions whatever
appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely (credite
posteri.!) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And that
this was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation,
no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us
most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness
(not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and
most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist, in oratory, as the time approached —was comingwas going, at which the private signal should have been
shown for proposing his health. Mr. P. (who had been, I
think, the mayor on the particular occasion indicated) described the restlessness of his manner; how he rose, and
retired for half a minute into a little parlor behind the
chairman's seat; then came back; then whispered, Not
yet, I beseech you; I cannot face them yet; then sipped a




182           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
little water, then moved uneasily on his chair, saying, 3On
moment, if you please: stop, stop: don't hurry: onemoment, and I shall be up to the mark: in short, fighting with
the necessity of taking the final plunge, like one who lin
gers on the scaffold.
Sir Sidney was at that time slender and thin; having an
appearance of emaciation, as though he had suffered hardships and ill treatment, which, however,-I do not remember,
to-have heard. Meantime, his appearance, connected with
his recent history, made him a very interesting person to
women; and to this hour it remains a mystery with me,
why and how it came. about, that in every distribution of
honors Sir Sidney Smith was overlooked.'In the Mediterranean he made many enemies, especially amongst those
of his own profession, who used to speak of him as far too
fine a gentleman, and above his calling. Certain it is that
he liked better to be doing business on shore, as at Acre,
although he' commanded a fine 80 gun ship, the Tiger.
But however that may have been, his services, whether
classed as military or naval, were memorably splendid.
And, at that time, his connection, of whatsoever nature,
with the late Queen Caroline had not occurred. So that
altogether, to me, his case is inexplicable.
From the Bath Grammar School I was removed, in consequence of an accident, by which at first it was supposed
that my skull had been fractured; and the surgeon who attended me at one time talked of trepanning. This was an
awful word; but at present I doubt whether in reality any
thing very serious had happened. In fact, I was always
under a nervous panic for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internal feelings without meaning to do so;
and this misled the medical attendants. During a long
illness which succeeded, my mother, amongst other books
past all counting, read to me, in Hoole's translation, the




WARFARE- OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.        183
whole of the ".Orlando Furioso;" meaning by the whole
the entire twenty-four books into'which Hoole had'condensed the original forty-six of Ariosto; and, from my own
experience at that time, I am disposed to think that the
homeliness of this version is an advantage, from not calling
off the attention at all from the narration to the narrator.
At this time also I first read the " Paradise Lost;" but,
oddly enough, in the edition of Bentley, that great navcaoQvowrTgS, (or pseudo-restorer of the text.) At the close' of
my illness, the head master called upon my mother, in
company with his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain
Irish Colonel Bowes, who had sons at the school, requesting -earnestly, in terms most flattering. to myself, that I
might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates my
mother's moral austerity, that she was shocked at my hear-ing compliments to my own merits, and was'altogether disturbed at what doubtless these gentlemen expected to see
received with maternal pride. She declined to.let me continue at the Bath School; and I went to another, at Winkfield, in the county of Wilts, of which the chief recommen
dation lay in the religious character of the master.




CHAPTER VI.
I ENTER THE WORLD.
YEs, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth year
and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped
into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or
not much more, when-I received a letter from a young
friend of my own age, Lord Westport,* the son of Lord
Altamont, inviting me to accompany him to Ireland for the
ensuing summer and autumn. This invitation was repeated by his tutor; and my mother, after some consideration,
allowed me to accept it.
In the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to Eton,
for the purpose of joining my friend. Here I several times
visited the gardens of the queen's villa at Frogmore; and,
privileged by my young friend's introduction, I had oppor.
tunities of seeing and hearing the queen and all the prin.
cesses; which at that time was a novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord Westport's mother -had
been, before her marriage, Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to
the great admiral, Earl Howe, and intimately known to the
* My acquaintance with Lord Westport was of some years' stand.
Ing. My father, whose commercial interests led him often to Ireland
had many friends there. One of these was a country gentleman con
nected with the west; and at his house I first met Lord Westrort.
-184




I ENTER THE WORLD.             185
royal family, who, on her account, took a continual and
especial notice of'her'son.
On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief inlerview with the king. Madame De Campan mentions, as
dn amusing incident in her early life, though terrific at the
time, and overwhelming to her sense of-shame, that,not
long after her establishment at Versailles, in the service of
some one amongst the daughters of Louis XV., having as
yet never seen the king, she was one day suddenly introduced to his particular notice, under the following circumstances: The time was morning; the young lady was not
fifteen; her spirits were as the spirits of a fawn in May;
her tour of duty for the day was either not come, or was
gone; and, finding herself alone in a spacious room, what
more reasonable thing could she do than amuse herself
with making cheeses? that is, whirling round, according to
a fashion practised by young ladies. both in France and
England, and pirouetting until the petticoat is inflated like
a balloon, and then sinking into a courtesy. Mademoiselle
was very solemnly rising from one of these courtesies, in
the.centre of her collapsing petticoats, when a slight noise
alarmed her. Jealous of intruding eyes, yet not dreading
more than a servant at worst, she turned, and, 0 Heavens.!
whom should she behold but his most Christian majesty
advancing upon her, with a brilliant suite of gentlemen,
young and old, equipped for the chase, who had- been all
silent spectators of her performances? From the king to
the last of the train, all bowed to her, and all laughed without restraint, as they passed the abashed amateur of cheese
making. But she, to speak Homerically, wished in that
hour that the earth might gape and cover her confusion.
Lord Westport and I were about the age of mademoiselle,
and not much more decorously engaged, when a turn
brought us full in view of a royal party coming along one




186             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
of the walks at Frogmore.     We were, in fact, theorizing
and practically commemnting on the art of throwing stones.
Boys have a peculiar contempt for female attempts in that
way.   For, besides that girls fling wide'of the mark, with a
certainty that might have wonn the applause of Galerius,*
there is a peculiar sling and rotary motion of the arm   in
launching a stone, which no girl ever can attain.     From
ancient practice, I was somewhat of a proficient in this art,
and was discussing the philosophy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happened to
demand; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the wrist with a shilling; when suddenly he
turned the head of the coin towards me with a significant
glance, and in a low voice he muttered some words, of
which I caught" Grace of God," "France t and Ireland,"
* "Sir," said that emperor to a soldier wh6 had missed the target
in succession I know not how many times, (suppose we say fifteen,)'allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable
skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit
once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing."
t France was at that time among the royal titles, the act for altering the king's style and title not having then passed. As connected
with this subject, I may here mention a project (reported to have been
canvassed in council at the time when that alteration did take place)
for changing the title from king to emperor. What then occurred
strikingly illustrates the general character of the British policy as to
all external demonstrations of pomp and national pretension, and its
strong opposition to that of France under correspondilig circumstances. The principle of esse quam videri, and the carelessness about
names when the thing is unaffected, generally speaking, must- command praise and respect. Yet, considering how often the reputation
of power becomes, for international purposes, nothing less than power itself, and that.~rids, in. many relations of human life, are emphatically things, and sometimes are so to the exclusion'of the most
absolute things themselves, men of all qualities being often governed
by names, the policy of France seeins the-wiser, viz., se faire zaloir
even at the price of ostentation. But, at all events, no man is enti




I ENTER THE WORLD.                   187' Defender of the F itht and soforth.'    This solemn recitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a fanciful
way of apprising me that the king was approaching; for
Lord W. had himself lost somewhat of the awe natural to
tied to exercise that extreme candor, forbearance, and spirit of ready
concession in re aliena, and, above all, in re politica, which, on his own
acc6unt, might, be altogether honorable. The council might give
away their own honors, but not yours and mine. On a public' (or at
least on a foreign) interest, it is tlhe duty of a good citizen to be lofty,
exacting, almost insolent. And, on this principle, when the ancient
style-and title of the kingdom fell under revision, if-as I do not
deny - it was advisable to retrench -all obsolete pretensions as so
many memorials of a greatness that in that particular manifestation
was now extinct, and therefore, pro tanto, rather presumptions of
weakness than of strength, as being mementoes of our losses, yet, on
the other hand, all countervailing claims which had since arisen, and
had far more than equiponderated the declension in that one direction,
should have been then adopted into the titular heraldry of the nation.
It was neither wise nor just to insult foreign nations with assumptions which no longer stood upon -anj basis of reality. And on that
ground France was, perhaps, rightly omitted. But why, when the
crown was thus remoulded, and its jewelry unset, if this one pearl
were to be surrendered as an ornament no longer ours, why, we may
ask, were not the many and gorgeous jewels, achieved by the national
wisdom and power in later times, adopted into the recomposed tiara'
Upon what principle did the Romans, the wisest among the children
of this world, leave so many inscriptions, as records of their power or
their triumphs, upon columns, arches, temples, basilivce, or medals?
A national act, a solemn and deliberate act, delivered to history, is a
more imperishable monument than any made by. hands; and the
title, as revised, which ought to have expressed a change. in the dominion simply as to the mode and form of its expansion, now remains as a false, base, abject confession of absolute contraction: once
we had A, B, snd C; now we'have -dwindled into A and B: true,
most unfaithful guardian of the national honors, we had'lost C, and
that you were careful to remember. But we hippened to have gained
D, E, F, - and so downwards to Z, - all of which duly you forgot,
On this argument, it was urged at the time, in high quarters, that
the new re-cast of the crownw and sceptre should come out of the




188:AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
a young person in a first situation of this nature, through
his frequent admissions to the royal-presence. -For my
own part, I was as yet a stranger even to the king's person.
I had, indeed, seen most or all the-princesses in the way I
furnace equably improved; as much for what they were authorized to
claim as for-what they were compelled to disclaim. And, as one
mode of effecting this, it was proposed that the king should become
an emperor. Some, indeed, alleged that an emperor, by its very idea,
as received in the Chancery of Europe, presupposes a king paramount over vassal or tributary kings. But it is a sufficient answer to
say that an emperor is a prince, uniting in his own person the thrones
of several distinct kingdoms; and in effect we adopt that view of the
case in giving the title of imperial to the parliament, or common as
sembly of the three kingdoms. However, the title of the prince'was
a matter trivial in comparison of the title of his ditio, or extent of
jurisdiction.  This point admits of a striking illustration: in the
" Paradise Regained," Milton has given us, in close succession, three
matchless pictures of civil grandeur, as exemplified in three different
modes by three different states. Availing himself of the brief scriptural
notice, -" The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain,
and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,"
-he causes to pass, as in a solemn pageant before us, the two military empires then coexisting, of Parthia and Rome, and finally (undel
another idea of political greatness) the intellectual glories of Athens
From the picture of the Roman grandeur I extract, and beg thi
reader to weigh, the following lines: -
"Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see -at
What conflux issuing forth or entering in;
Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces
Hasting, or on return in robes of state;
Lict6rs and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions or cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits on the Appian road,
Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south
Syene, and where the-shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle: and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea,
From India and the Golden Chersonese,




ENTER THE WORLD.                   189
have mentioned ibove; and occasionally, in the streets of
Windsor, the sudden disappearance of all hats from all
heads had admonished me that some royal personage or.other was then traversing (or, if not traversing, was crossAnd utmost Indian isle, Taprobane,
- Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west,
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north,
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."
With this superb picture, or abstraction of the Roman pomps and
power, when ascending to their utmost altitude, confront the following representative sketch of a great English levee on some high solemnity, suppose the king's birthday: "Amongst the presentations
to his' majesty, we noticed Lord 0. S., the governor general of India. on his departure for Bengal; Mr. U. Z., with an address from the
Upper and Lower Canadas; Sir L. V., on his appointment as commander of the forces in Nova Scotia; General Sir -, on his return from the Burmese war, [" the. Golden Chersonese,"] the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet; Mr. B. Z, on his appointment to the chief justiceship at Madras; Sir R. G., the late
attorney general at the Cape of Good Hope; General Y. X., on
taking leave for the governorship of Ceylon, ["the utmost Indian
isle, Taprobane;"] Lord F. M., the bearer of the last despatches
from head quarters in Spain; Col. P., on going out as captain general of the forces in New Holland; Commodore St. L., on his return
from a voyage of discovery towards the north pole; the King of
Owhyhee, attended' by chieftains from the other islands of that cluster; Col. M'P., on his return from the war in Ashantee, upon which
occasion the gallant colonel presented the treaty and tribute from that
country; Admiral -, on his appointment to the Baltic fleet; Captain O. N., with despatches from the Red Sea, advising the-destruction of the piratical armament and settlements in that quarter, as
also in the Persian Gulf; Sir T. (ON., the late resident in Nepaul, to
n)resent his report of the war in that territory, and in adjacent re
gions-names as yet unknown in Europe; the governor of the
Leeward Islands, on departing for the West Indies,; various deputa
tions with petitions, addresses, &c., from islands in remote quarters
of the globe, amongst which we distinguished those from Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from the Mauritius, from




190             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ing) the street; but either his majesty had never been ot
the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distinguish him.
"Now, for the first time, I was meeting him   nearly face tc
face; for, though the walk we occupied was not that in
which the royal party were moving, it ran so near it, and,
was connected by so many cross walks at short intervals,
that it was a matter of necessity'for us, as we were now
observed, to go and'present ourselves.     What happened
Java, from the British settlement in Terra del Fuego, from the Christian churches in the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands - as
well as other groups less known in the South Seas; Admiral H. A,
on. assuming the command of the Channel fleet; Major Gen. X. L.,
on resigning the lieutenant governorship of Gibraltar; Hon. G. F., on
going. out as secretary to the governor' of Malta," &c.
This sketch, too hastily made up, is founded upon a base of a very
few years; i. e., we have, in one or two instances, placed in juxtaposition, as coexistences, events separated by a few years. But if (like
Milton's picture of the Roman grandeur) the abstraction had been
made from a base of thirty years in extent, and had there been added
to the picture (according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth,
with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded.
and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque deline-,
ation" Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed"!
As it is, I have noticed hardly any places but such as lie absolutely
within our jurisdiction. And yet, even under that limitation, how
vastly more comprehensive is the chart of British dominion than of
the Roman! To this gorgeous empire, some corresponding style and
title should have been adapted at the revision of the old title, and
should yet be adapted.
Apropos of the proposed change-in the king's title: Coleridge, on
being assured that the new title of the king was to be Emperor of
the British Islands and their dependencies, and on the coin lnmpera.
tor Britanniarum, remarked, that, in' this remanufactured form, the
title might he said to be japanned; alluding to this'fact, that amongst
insular sovereigns, the only one known to Christian diplomacy by the
title of emperor is the Sovereign of Japan.




I ENTER THE WORLD              191
was pretty nearly as follows: The king, having first
spoken with great kindness to my companion, inquiring
circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly well known to himself, then turned his
eye. upon me. My name, it seems, had been communicated to him; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was
I of Eton? This was his first question. I replied that I was
not, but hoped I should be. Had I a father living? I had
not: my father had been dead about eight years. " But
you have a mother?"  I had. "And she thinks of sending you to Eton?     "  I answered, that she had expressed
such an intention in my hearing; but I was not sure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with
the person to whom she spoke, who happened to have been
an Etonian. "'0, but all people think highly of Eton;
every body praises Eton. Your mother does right to inquire; there can be no harm in that; but the more she inquires, the more she will be satisfied -that I can answer
for."
Next came a question which had been suggested'by my
name. Had my family come into England with the Huguenots at the'revocation of the edict of Nantz?  Thiswas a tender point with me: of all things I could not endure to be supposed of French descent; yet it was a vexationI had constantly to face, as most people supposed that
my name argued a French origin; whereas a Norman
origin argued pretty certainly an origin not French. I replied, wi'th some hase, " Please your majesty, the family
has been in England since the conquest." It is probable
that I colored, or showed some mark of discomposure, with
which, however, the king was not displeased, for-he smiled,
and said, " How do you know that?"  Here I was at a
loss for a moment how to answer; for I was sensible that it
did not become me to occupy the king's attention with any




192.         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
long stories or traditions about a subject so unimportant a?
my own family; and yet it was necessary that-I should
say something, unless I would be thought to have denied
my Huguenot descent upon no reason or authority. After
a moment's hesitation, I said, in effect, that the family from
which I traced my descent had certainly been a great and
leading one at the era of the barons' wars, as also in one
at least of the crusades; and that I had myself seen many
notices of this family, not only in books of heraldry, &c.,
but in the very earliest of all English books. " And what
book was that?"    "Robert of Gloucester's'Metrical
Chronicle,' which I understood, from  internal evidence,
to have been written about 1280."  The king smiled
again, and said, "I know, I know."  But what it was that
he knew, long afterwards puzzled me to conjecture. I
now imagine, however, that he meant to claim a knowledge of the book I referred to-a thing which at that
time I thought improbable, supposing the king's acquaintance with literature not to be very extensive, nor likely to
have comprehended any knowledge at all of the blackletter peiriod. But in this belief I was greatly mistaken, as
I was afterwards fully convinced by the best evidence from
various quarters. That library of 120,000 volumes, which
George IV. presented to the nation, and which has since
gone to swell the collection at the British Museum,. had
been formed (as I was often assured -by persons to whom
the whole history of the library, and its growth from small
rudiments, was familiarly known) under the direct personal superintendence of George III. It was a favorite and
pet creation; and his care extended even to the dressing of the books in appropriate bindings, and.(as one man
told me) to their health; explaining himself to mean, that
in any case where a book was worm-eaten, or touched
however slightly with the worm, the king was anxious to




I ENTER THE WORLD.             193
prevent the injury from extending, or from infecting others
by close neighborhood.; for it is supposed by many that
such injuries spread rapidly in favorable situations. One
of my informants was a German bookbinder of great respectability, settled in London, and for many years employed* by the Admiralty as a confidentia; binder of records
6or journals containing secrets of office, &c. Through this
connection he had been recommended to the service of his
majesty, whom he used to see continually in the course of
his attendance at Buckingham House, where the books
were deposited. This artist had (originally in the way of
his trade) become well acquainted with the money value
of English books; and that knowledge cannot be acquired
without some concurrent knowledge of their subject and
their kind of merit. Accordingly, he was tolerably well
qualified to estimate any man's attainments as a reading
man; and from him I received such circumstantial accounts of many conversations he had held with the king,
evidently reported with entire good faith and simplicity,
that I cannot doubt the fact of his majesty's very general
acquaintance with English literature. Not a day passed,
whenever the king happened to be at Buckingham House,
without his coming into the binding room, and minutely inspecting the progress of the binder and his allies - the gilders, toolers, &c. From the outside of the book the transition
was natural to its value in the scale of bibliography; and
in that way my informant had ascertained that the king
was well acquainted, not only with Robert of Gloucester,
but with all the other early chronicles, published by Hearne,
and, in-fact, possessed that entire series which rose at one
period to so enormous a price. From this person I learned
afterwards that the king prided himself especially. upon
his early folos of Shakspeare; that is to say, not merely
upon the excellence of the individual copies in a biblio13




194           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCIEM.
graphical sense, as "'tall copies" and having large margins, &c., but chiefly from their value in relation to the
most authentic basis for the text of the poet. And thus
it appears, that at least two of our kings, Charles I. and
George III., have made it their pride to profess a reverential esteemfor Shakspeare. This bookbinder added his
attestation to the truth (or to the generally reputed truth)
of a' story which I had heard from other authority, viz.,
that the librarian, or, if not officially the librarian, at least
the chief director in every thing relating to the books, was
an illegitimate son of Frederic, Prince of Wales, (son to
George II.,) and therefore half-brother of the king. His
own taste' and inclinations, it seemed, concurred with his
brother's wishes in keeping him in a subordinate rank
and an obscure station; in which, however, he enjoyed
affluence without anxiety, or trouble, or courtly envy, and
the luxury, which he most valued, of a superb library.
He lived and died, I have heard, as plain Mr. Barnard.
At one time I disbelieved the story, (which possibly may
have been long known to the public,) on the ground that
even George III. would not have differed so widely from
princes in general as to leave a brother of his own, how.
ever unaspiring, wholly undistinguished by public honors.
But having since ascertained that a naval officer, well
known to my own family, and to a naval brother of my
own in particular,. by assistance rendered to him repeatedly when- a nidshipman in changing his ship, was undoubtedly an illegitimate son of George'III, and yet that
he never rose higher than the rank of post captain, though
privately acknowledged by his father and other members
of the royal family, I found the insufficiency of that ob.
jection. The' fact is, and it does honor to the king's memory, he -reverenced the moral'feelings of his country
which are, in this and in all points of domestic morals,




I ENTER THE WORLD.              195
Revere and high toned, (I say it in defiance of writers, such
as Lord Byron, Mr. Hazlitt, &c., who hated alike the justand the unjust pretensions of England,) in- a degree absolutely incomprehensible to Southern Europe. He had his,
frailties like other children of Adam; but he did not seek
to fix the public attention upon them, after the fashion of
Louis Quatorze, or our Charles II., and so many other
continental princes. There were living witnesses (more
than one) of his aberrations as of theirs; but he, with
better feelings than they, did not choose, by placing these
witnesses upon a pedestal of honor, surmounted by heraldic trophies,' to emblazon his own transgressions to
coming generations, and to force back the gaze of a remote posterity upon his own' infirmities. It was his ambition to be the father of his people in a sense not quite so
literal. These were things, however, of which at that time
I had not heard.
During the whble dialogue, I did not even once remark
that hesitation and-iteration of words generally attributed
to George III.; indeed, so generally, that it must often have
existed; but in this case, I suppose that the brevity of his
sentences operated to deliver him from any embarrassment
of utterance, such as might'have'attended longer and more
complex sentences, where some anxiety was natural to
overtake the thoughts as they arose. MWhen we observed
that the king had paused in his stream of questions, which
succeeded rapidly to each other, we understood it as a signal of dismissal; and making a profound obeisance, we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled in a very
gracious manner, waved his hand towards us, and said
something (I did not know-what) in a peculiarly kind accent; he then turned round, and the whole party along with
him; which set us at liberty without impropriety to turn to
the right about ourselves, and make our egress from the
gardens.




196           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally one.
of considerable interest., One reflection it suggested after
wards, which was this: Could it be likely that much truth
of a general nature, bearing upon man and social interests,
could ever reach the ear of a king, under the etiquette of a
court, and under that one rule which seemed singly sufficient to foreclose all natural avenges to truth? - the rule, I
mean, by which it is forbidden to address a question to the
king. I was well aware, before I saw him, that in the
royal presence, like the. dead soldier in Lucan, whom the
mighty necromancing witch tortures back into a momentary life, I must have no voice except for answers:"Vox illi linguaque tantum
Responsura datur." *
I was to originate nothing myself; and at my age, before
so exalted a personage, the mere instincts of reverential
demeanor would at any rate have dictated such a rule.
But what becomes of that man's general condition of mind
in relation to all the great objects moving on the field of
human experience, where it is a law generally for almost
all' who approach him, that they shall confine themselves
to replies, absolute responses, or, at most, to a prosecution
or carrying forward of a proposition delivered by the protagonist, or supretne leader of the conversation? For it
must be remembered that, generally speaking, the effect
of putting no question is to transfer into the other party's
hands the entire originating movement of the dialogue;
and thus, in a musical metaphor, the great man is the sole
modulator and determiner of the key in which the conversation proceeds, ~ It-is true, that sometimes, by travelling a
* For the sake of those who are no classical scholars, I explain:
Voice and language are restored to him only to the extent of replying




ENTER THE WORLD               197
little beyond the question in your answer, you may enlarge
the basls, so as to bring up some new train of thought
which you wish to introduce, and may suggest fresh matter as effectually as if you had the liberty of more openly
guiding the conversation, whether by way of question or by
direct origination of a topic; but this depends on skill to
improve an opening, or vigilance to seize it at the instant,
and, after all, much upon accident; to say nothing of the
crime, (a sort of petty treason, perhaps, or, what is it?) if
you should be detected in your " improvements" and "enlargements of basis."  The king might say, "Friend, I
must tell my attorney general to speak with you, for I detect a kind of treason in your replies. They go too far.
They include something which tempts my majesty to a notice;. which is, in fact, for the long and the short of it, that
you have been circumventing me half unconsciously into
answering a question which has silently been insinuated by
you.". Freedom of communication, unfettered movement
of thought, there can be none under such a ritual, which
tends violently to a Byzantine, or even to a Chinese result
of freezing, as it were, all natural and healthy play of the
faculties under the petrific mace of absolute ceremonial
and -fixed precedent. For it will hardly be objected, that
the privileged condition of a few official councillors and
state ministers, whose hurry and oppression of thought
from public care will rarely allow them to speak on any
other subject than business, can be a remedy large enough
for so large an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank-or
jovial temperament in a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserve and ungenial con3traint; but that is an- accident, and personal to an individual. And, on- the other hand, to balance even this, it may
be remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society,
where there happens to be  pride in sustaining what is




198          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
deemed a good tone in conversation, it is'peculiarly aimed
at, (and even artificially managed,) that no lingering or loitering upon. one theme, no protracted discussion, shall be
allowed. And, doubtless, as regards merely the treatment
of convivial -or purely social communication of ideas,
(which also is a great art,) this practice is right. I admit
willingly that an uncultured brute, who is detected at an
elegant table in the atrocityof absolute discussion or disputation, ought to be summarily removed by a police officer;
and possibly the law will warrant his being held to bail for
one-or two years, according to the enormity of his case.
But men are.not always enjoying, or seeking to- enjoy, social pleasure; they seek also, and have need to seek continually, both through books and men, intellectual growth,
fresh power, fresh strength, to -keep themselves ahead or
abreast of this moving, surging, billowing world of ours;
especially in these modern times, when society revolves
through so many new phases, and shifts its aspects with so
much more velocity than in past ages. A king, especially
of this country, needs, beyond most other men, to keep
himself in a continual state of communication, as it were,
by some vital and organic sympathy, with the most essential of these changes. And yet this punctilio of etiquette
like some vicious forms of law or technical fictions grown
too narrow for the age, which will not allow of cases coming before the court in a shape desired alike by the plaintiff and the defendant, is so framed as to defeat equally the
wishes of a prince disposed to gather knowledge wherever
he can find it, and of those who may be best fitted to give it.
For a few minutes on three other occasions, before we
finally quitted Eton, I again saw the king, and always
with renewed interest. He was kind to every body - condescending and' affable in a degree which I'am bound to
remember with personal gratitude; ano one thing I had




ENTER THE WORLD.                199
heard of him, which even then, and much more as my
mind opened to a wider compass of-deeper reflection, won
my respect. i have always reverenced a man of whom it
could be truly said that he had once, and once only, (for
-more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality
of the passion;) been desperately in love; in love, that is to
say, in a terrific excess, so as to dally, under suitable circumstances, with the thoughts of cutting his own throat, or
even (as the case might be) the throat of her whom he loved
above all- this world.  It will be understood that I am not
justifying such. enormities; on the contrary, they are
wrong, exceedingly wrong; but it. is evident that people in
general feel pretty much as I do, from the extreme. sympathy with which the public always pursue the fate of any
criminal who has committed a murder of this class, even
though tainted (as generally it is) with jealousy, which, in
itself, wherever it argues habitual mistrust, is an ignoble
passion.*
Great passions, (do not understand me, reader, as though
I meant great appetites,) passions moving in a great orbit,
and transcending little regards, are always arguments of
some latent nobility. There are, indeed, but few men and
few women capable of great passions, or (properly speaking) of passions at all. Hartley, in his mechanism of the
human mind, propagates the sensations by means of viblations, and by miniature vibrations, which, in a Roman form
* Accordingly, Coleridge has contended, and I think with truth,
that the passion of Othello is not jealousy. So much I know by report, as the result of a lecture which he read at.the Royal Institution.
His arguments I did not hear. To me it is evident that Othello's
state of feeling was not that of a degrading, suspicious rivalship, but
the state of perfect misery, arising out of this dilemma, the most affecting, perhaps, to contemplate of any which can.exist, viz., the dire
necessity of loving without limit one whom the heart pronounces to
he unworthy of that love




200           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for such miniatures, he terms vibratiuncles. Now, of men
and women generally, parodying that terminology, we
ought to say - not that they are governed by passions, or
at-all capable of passions, but of passiuncles. And thence
it is that few men go, or can go, beyond a little love-liking,
as it is called; and hence also, that, in a world where so
little conformity takes place between the ideal speculations
of men and the gross realities of life, where marriages are
governed in so vast a proportion by convenience, prudence,
self-interest, —any thing, in short, rather than deep sym'
pathy between the parties,-and, consequently, where so
many men must be crossed in their inclinations, we yet
hear of so few tragic catastrophes on that account. The
kilg, however, was certainly among the number of those
who are susceptible of a deep passion, if every thing be
true that is reported of him. All the world has heard that
he was passionately devoted to the beautiful sister of the
then Duke of Richmond. That was before his marriage;
and I believe it is certain that he not only wished, but sincerely meditated, to have married her. So much is matter
zf notoriety. But other circumstances of the case have
been sometimes reported, which imply great distraction
of mind and a truly profound possession of his heart
by that early passion; which, in a prince whose feelings
are liable so much to the dispersing and dissipating power
of endless interruption from new objects and fresh claims
on th6 attention, coupled also with the fact that he never,
but in this one case, professed any thing amounting to extravagant or frantic attachment, do seem to argue that the
king was truly and passionately in love with Lady Sarah
Lennox. He had a demon upon him, and.was under a real
possession. If so, what a lively expression of the mixed
condition of human fortunes, and not less of another truth
equally affecting, viz., the dread conflicts;with the will,




I ENTER THE WORLD.              201
the mighty agitations which silently and in darkness are
convulsing many a heart, where, to the external eye, all is
tranquil,-that this king, at the very threshold of his public
career,:at.the very moment when he was binding about his
brows the golden circle of sovereignty, when Europe
watched him with interest, and the kings of the earth with
envy, not one of the vulgar titles to happiness -being wanting,-youth, health, a throne the most splendid on this
planet, general popularity amongst a nation of freemen,
and the hope which belongs to powers as yet almost untried,- that, even under these most flattering auspices,.he
should be called upon to make a sacrifice the most bitter of
all to which human life is liable! He made it; and he
might then have said to his people, " For you, and to my
public duties, I have made a sacrifice which none of you
would have made for me." In years long ago, I have
heard a woman of rank recurring to the circumstances of
Lady Sarah's first appearance at court after the king's
marriage. If I. recollect rightly, it occurred after that
lady's own marriage with Sir Charles Bunbury. Many
eyes were upon-both parties at that moment, -female eyes,
especially,-and the speaker did not disguise the excessive
interest with which she herself observed them. Lady
Sarah'was -not agitated, but the king was. He seemed
anxious, sensibly trembled, changed color, and shivered, as
Lady S. B. drew near. But, to quote the one single
eloquent sentiment, which I remember after a lapse of
thirty years, in Monk Lewis's Romantic Tales, "In.
this world all things pass away; blessed be Heaven, and
the bitter pangs' by which sometimes it is pleased to recall
its wanderers,-even our passions pass away!"  And thus.t happened that this storm also was laid asleep and-forgotten, together with so many others of its kind that have
been, and that shall be again, so long as man is man, and




202              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
woman woman.      Meantime, in justification of a passioft so
profound, one would be glad to think highly of the lady
that -inspired it; and, therefore, I heartily hope that the in,
sults offered to her memory in the scandalous " Memoirs
of the Due de Lauzun      are mere calumnies, and records
rather of his presumptuous wishes than of any attual
successes.*
* That book, I am  aware, is generally treated as a forgery; but
internal evidence, drawn from the tone and quality of the revelations
there made, will not allow me to think it altogether such. There is
ai aindofn and caiirelessness in parts which mark its sincerity. Its
authenticity I cannot -doubt. But that proves nothing for the truth
of the particular stories which it contains. A book of scandalous
and defamatory stories, especially where the writer has had the baseness to betray the confidence reposed in his honor by women, and to
btost of favors alleged to have been granted him, it is always'fair to
conisider as ipso facto a tissue of falsehoods; and on the following
argument, that these are exposures which, even if true, none bat the
basest of men would have made. Being, therefore, on the hypothesis
most favorable to his veracity, the basest of men, the author is selfdenounced as vile enough to have forged the stories, and.cannot complain if he shoild be roundly accused of doing that which he has
taketi pains to prove himself capable of doing. - This way of arguing
might be applied with fatal effect to the Duc de Lauzun's "Memoirs,'
supposing them- written with a view to publication. But, by possibility, that was not the case. The Duc de L. terminated his profligate life, as is well known, on the scaffold, during the storms of the
French revolution; and nothing in his whole career won him so
much' credit as the way in which he closed it; for he went to his
death with a romantic carelessness, and even gayety of demeanor.
His "Memoirs" were not published by himself: the publication'was
posthumous; and by whom authorized, or for what purpose, is not
exactly knowf. Probably the manuscript fell into mercenary hands,
atid was-published merely on a speculation of pecuniary gain. From,some passages, however, I cannot but infer that the writer did not
mean to bring it before the public, but wrote it rather as a series of private memoranda, to aid his own recollection of circumstances and
dates. The Due de Lauzun's account of his intrigue with Lady
Sarah goes so far as to allege, that he rode down in disguise, from




I ENTER THE WORLD.                  203
However, to leave dissertation behind me, and to re
sume the thread of my narrative, an incident, which about
this period impressed me even more profoundly than my
introduction to a royal presence, was my first visit to
London.
London to Sir Charles B.'s country seat, agreeably to a previous assignation, and that he was admitted, by that lady's confidential attendant, through a back staircase, at the time when Sir Charles (a
fox hunter, but a man of the highest breeding and fashion) was himself at home, and occupied in the duties of hospitality.




CHAPTER VII.
THE NATION OF LONDON.
IT was a most heavenly day in May of this year (1800)
when I first beheld and first entered this mighty wilder.
ness, the city- no, not the city, but the nation - of London. Often since then, at distances of two and three hundred miles or more from this colossal emporium of men,
wealth, arts, and intellectual power, have I felt the sublime
expression of her enormous magnitude in one simple form
of ordinary occurrence, viz., in the vast droves of cattle,
suppose upon the great north roads, all with their heads directed to London, and expounding the size of the attracting
~body, together with the force of its attractive power, by the
never-ending succession of these droves, and the remoteness from the capital of the lines upon which they were
moving. A suction so powerful, felt along radii so vast,
and a consciousness, at the same time, that upon other
radii still more vast, both by land and by sea, the same
suction is operating, night and-.day, summer and winter,
and hurrying forever into one centre the -infinite means
needed for her infinite purposes, and the endless tributes to
the skill or tc the luxury of her endless population, crowds
the imagination with a pomp to which there is nothing
corresponding upon this planet, either amongst the things
204




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  205
that have been or the things that are.   Or, if any exception there is, it must be sought in ancient Rome.*     We,
upon this occasion, were in an open carriage, and, chiefly
(as I imagine) to avoid the dust, we approached London
X " Ancient Rome." - Vast, however, as the London is of.this day, I
incline to think that it is below the Rome of Trajan. It has long
been a settled opinion amongst scholars, that the computations of Lipsius, on this point, were prodigiously overcharged; and formerly I'
shared in that belief. Butrcloser study of the question, and a laborious collation of the different data, (for any single record, independently considered, can here establish nothing,) have satisfied me that
Lipsius was nearer the truth than his, critics; and that the Roman
population of every class - slaves, aliens, peoples of the suburbs, included - lay between four and six millions; in which case the London
of 1833, which counts more than a million' and a half, but less than
-two millions, [Note. - Our present London of 1853 counts two millions,
plus as many thousands as there are days in the year,] may be taken,
xara.ir.aroc, as lying -between one fourth and one third of Rome..To
discuss this question thoroughly would require a separate memoir,
for which, after all, there are not sufficient materials: meantime I
will make this remark: That the ordinary computations of a million,
or a million and a quarter, derived from the surviving accounts of the
different "regions," apply to Rome withini the Potlnrinm, and are,
therefore, no more valid for the total Rome of-Trajan's time, stretching so many miles beyond it, than the bills of mortality for what is
technically " Iondon within the walls " can serve at this day as a base
for esSmating the population of that total London which we mean and
presume in our daily conversation. Secondly, even for the Rome
within these limits the computations are not commensurate, by not
allowing for the prodigious height of the houses in Rome, which much
transcended that of modern cities. On this last point I will translate
a remarkable sentence from the Greek rhetorician Aristides, [Note.A.elius Aristides, Greek by his birth, who flourished in the time of the
Antonines;] to some readers it will be new and interesting: "And,
as oftentimes we see that a man who greatly excels others in bulk and
strength is not content with any display, however ostentatious, of his
powers, short of that where he is:exhibited surmounting himself with
a pyramid of other men, one set standing upon the shoulders of another, so also this city, stretching forth her foundations -over areas so




206              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
by rural lanes, where any such could be found, or, at least,
along by-roads, quiet and- shady, collateral to the mair
roads.   In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimity    belonging to any    of the   cornvast, is yet not satisfied with those superficial dimensions; thatcontents
her not; but upon one city rearing another of corresponding proportions, and upon that another, pile restingupon pile, houses overlaying
houses, in aerial succession; so, and by similar steps, she achieves a
character of architecture justifying, as it were, the very promise of
her name; apd with reference to that name, and its Grecian meaning,
we may say, that here nothing meets our eyes in any direction but
mere Rome! Rome!"    [Note.-This word'PPwon, (Rome,) on which
the' rhetorician plays, is the common Greek term for strength.] " And
hence," says Aristides, " I derive the followving conclusion: that if
any one, decomposing this series of strata, were disposed to unshell, as
it were, this existing Rome from its present crowded and towering
coacervations, and, thus degrading these aerial Romes; were to plant
them on the ground, side by side, in' orderly succession, according to
all appearance, the whole vacant area of Italy would be filled with
these dismantled stories of Rome, and we should be presented with
the spectacle of one continuous city, stretching its labyrinthine pomp
to the shores of the Adriatic."  This is so far from being meant as a
piece of rhetoric, tfiat, on the very contrary, the whole purpose is' to
substitute for a vague-and rhetorical expression of the'Roman grandeur one of a more definite character - viz., by presenting its dimensions in a new form, and supposing the city to be uncrested, as it were;
itsupper'tiers to be what the sailors call unshipped; and the dethroned
stories to be all drawn up in rank and file upon the ground; according to which assumption he implies that the city would stretch from
the mare Superum to the mare Inferum, i. e., fiom the sea of Tuscany
to the Adriatic.
The fact is, as Casaubon remarked, upon occasion of a ridiculous
blunder in estimating the largesses of a Roman emperor, that the
error on most questions of Roman policy or institutions tends not, as:is usual, in the direction of excess, but of defect.'All things were
colossal there; and the probable, as estimated upon our modern scale,
is not unfrequently the impossible, as regarded Roman habits. Lipsins certainly erred extravagantly at times, and was a rash speculator
on many subjects; witness his books on the Roman amiphitheatres;-but




THE NATION OF LOND6N.              207
nmon approaches upon a main road'; we missed the whirl
and the uproar, the tumult and the agitation, which continually thicken and thicken throughout the last dozen
miles before you reach the suburbs.- Already at three
stages' distance, (say 40 miles from London,) upon some
of. the greatest roads, the dim presentiment -of some vast
capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving  Thisblind sympathy with a mighty.but unseen object, some vast
magnefic range of Alps, in your neighborhood, continues
to:increase you know not how. Arrived at the last station
for changing horses, Barnet,.suppose, on one of the north
roads, or Hounslow on the western, you ho. longer think
(as in all other places) of naming the next.stage; nobody
says, on pulling up, " Horses on to London" - that would
sound ludicrous; one mighty idea broods over all minds,
making it impossible to suppose -any other destination.
Launched upon this final stage, you soon begin to feel
yourself entering the stream  as it were of a Norwegian
maelstrom; and the stream at length becomes the rush of
a cataract. What is meant by the. Latin word trepidatio. 
Not any thing peculiarly connected with panic; it belongs
as much to the hurrying to and fro of a coming battle as
of: a coming flight;; to a marriage festival as much as to a
massacre; agitation is the nearest English word. This
#repidation increases both audibly and visibly at every half
tot.on the magnitude of Rome, or the amount of its population. I
ri1l add, upon this subject, that the, whole political economy of the
ancients, if we except Boeckh's accurate investigations,. (Die Staatskaus.;altung der Athener,) which, properly speaking, cannot be called
political economy, is a mine into which scarce a single shaft has, yet
ben sUtn.. But I must also add, that. every thing will depend upon
collation o' facts, and the bringing of indirect notices into immediate
juxtaposition, so as to throw light on each other. Direct and positive
informalcu there is little on these topics; and that little has been
gleaned.




208           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
mile, pretty much as one may suppose the roar of Niagara
and the thrilling of the ground to grow upon the senses in
the last ten miles of approach, with the wind in its favor,
until at length it would absorb and extinguish all other.sounds whatsoever. Finally, for miles before you reach a
suburb of London such as Islington, for instance, a last
great sign and augury of the immensity which belongs to
the coming metropolis forces itself upon the  dullest
observer, in the growing sense of his own utter insignificance. Every where else in England, you yourself,
horses, carriage, attendants, (if you travel with any,) are
regarded with attention, perhaps even curiosity; at all
events, you aro seen. But after passing the final posthouse
on every avenue to London, for the latter ten or twelve
miles, you become aware that you are no longer noticed:
nobody.sees you; nobody hears you; nobody regards you;
you do not even regard yonrself. In fact, how should you,
at the moment of first ascertaining your own total unimportance in the sum of things? -a poor shivering unit in
the aggregate of human life. Now, for the first time,
whatever manner of man you were, or seemed to be, at
starting, squire or  squireen," lord or lordling, and however related to that city,- hamlet, or solitary house from
which yesterday or to-day you slipped your cable, beyond'disguise you find yourself but one wave in a total At.
lantic, one plant (and a parasitical plant besides, needing
alien props) in a forest of America.
These are feelings which do not belong by preference
to thoughtful people- far less to people merely sentimental. No man ever wqs left to himself for the first
time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he
must have been saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified,
by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belong
tt his situation. No loneliness can be like that which




THE NATION OF LONDON.             209
weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending,
without voice or.utterance for him; eyes innumerable, that
have' no speculation" in their orbs which he can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving
to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a
stranger, seeming like a mask of maniacs, or, oftentimes,
like a pageant of phantoms. The great length of the
streets in many quarters of London; the continual opening
of transient glimpses into other vistas equally far stretching, going off at right angles to the one which you are
traversing; and the murky atmosphere which, settling upon
the remoter end. of every long avenue, wraps its termination in gloom and uncertainty,- all these are circumstances
aiding that sense of vastness and illimitable proportions
which forever brood over the aspect of London.in its interior. Much of the feeling which belongs to the outside
of London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had
lost, in consequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, lying near Uxbridge and Watford, through which we crept
into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more abrupt and
startling had been the effect of.emerging somewhere
into the Edgeware Road, and soon afterwards into the very
streets of London itself; through what streets, or even
what quarter. of London, is now totally obliterated from -my
mind, having perhaps never been comprehended. All that
I-remember is one monotonous awe and blind sense-of
mysterious grandeur and Babylonian confusion, which
seemed to pursue and to invest the whole equipage of human
life,. as we moved for nearly two * hours through streets;
sometimes brought to anchor for ten minutes or more by
* "Two hours." -This slow progress must, however, in part be
ascribed to Mr. Gr-'s non-acquaintance with the roads, both town
and rural, along the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge.
14




2i10          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHEb.
what is technically called a "C locki" that is, aline of car
riages of every description inextricably massed, and obstructing each other, far as the eye could stretch; and then,
as if under an enchanter's rod, the "lock" seemed to
thaw; motion spread with the fluent race of light or soundthrough the whole ice-bound mass, until the subtile influence
reached us also, who were again absorbed into the great
rush of flying carriages; or, at times, we turned off into
some less tumultuous street, but of the same mile-long
character, and, finally, drawing up about noon, we alighted
at some place, which is as little within my distinct remembrance as the route by which we reached it.
For what had we come? To see London. And what
were the limits within which we proposed to crowd that
little feat? At five o'clock we were to dine at Porters. -,
a seat of Lord Westport's grandfather; and, from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London at
half past three; so that a'Iittle more than three hours were
all We had for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor,
was summoned away from us on business until that hour;
and we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to
our own skill in, turning the time to the best account, for
contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do something
or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively,
s6 as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a
wager, might be taken and received for having "seen
London."
What could be done?  We sat down, I remember, in a
mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles were
too many by thousands; inopes nos copia fecit; our very
wealth made us poor; and the choice was distracted. But
which of them all could be thought general or representative enough to stand for the universe of London? We
could not traverse the whole circumference of this mighty




THE NNATION OF LONDON.           211
orb; that was clear; and, therefore, the next best thing was
to place ourselves as much as possible in some relation to the
spectacles of London, which might answer to the centre.
Yet how? That.sounded well and metaphysical; but what
did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London
for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or -longitudinaran,
literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical,
or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) diabolical?  Apparently that we should'stay at our inn; for in that way we
seemed best to distribute our presence equally amongst.all, viz., by going to none in particular.
Three times in my life I have had my taste - that is, my
sense of proportions - memorably outraged. Once was by
a painting of Cape Horn, which seemed almost treasonably
below its rank and office in this world, as the terminal
abutment of our mightiest continent, and also the hinge, as
it were,,of our greatest circumnavigations-of all, in fact,
which can be called classical circumnavigations. To have
"' doubled Cape Horn  - at one time, what a sound it had!
yet how ashamed we should be if that cape were ever to
be seen from the moon! A party of Englishmen, I have
heard, went up Mount AEtna, during the night, to be ready
for sunrise — a common practice with tourists'both in Switzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c.-; but, as all must see
who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay -the
trouble; seeing that every thing which offers a picture, when
viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a mere
map to an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it;
and so thought, in the sequel, the XEtna party. The sun,
indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds
than was desirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so
disgusted with the sun in particular, that they unanimously
hissed him; though, of ( )urse, it was useless to cry "Off!
off! "  Here, however, the fault was in.their own erroneous




212.AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
expectations, and- not in the sun, who, doubtless, did his
best.  For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to he
seen from the valley, or at most horizontally.* But as to
Cape Horn, that (by comparison with its position and its
functions) was really a disgrace to the planet;. it is not the
spectator that is in fault here, but the object itself, the
Birmingham cape. For, consider, it is not only the "specular' mount," keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity
of oceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate
of entrance to the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the
god Terminus for all the Americas.    So that, in relation to
such dignities, it seemed to me, in the drawing, a makeshift, put up.by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn
should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera
house. This was one case of disproportion: the others.
were - the final and ceremonial valediction of Garrick, on
retiring from his profession; and the Pall Mall inauguration of George IV. on the day of his accession t to the
* Hence it may be said,. that nature regulates our position for such
spectacles, without any intermeddling of ours. When, indeed, a
mountain stands, like Snowdon or'Great Gavel in Cumberland,at the
centre of a mountainous region, it is not denied that, at some' seasons,
when the early beams strike through great vistas in the hills, splendid
effects of light and shade are produced; strange, however, rather
than beautiful. But from an insulated mountain, or one upon the
outer ring of the hilly tract, such as Skiddaw, in Cumberland, the
first effect is to translate the landscape from a picture into a map,
and the total result, as a celebrated author once said, is the infinity of
littleness.
t Accession was it, or his proclamation? The' case was this
About the middle of the day, the king came out into the portico of
Carlton House; and addressing himself (addressing his gestures, 
mean) to the assemblage of people in Pall Mall, he bowed repeatedly
to the right and to the left, and then. retired. I mean' no disrespect
to th it prince in recalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted
upon the suggestion of others, and perhaps, also, under a sincere




THE NATION OF LONDON.              21 
throne. The atter irrela'tion, in both cases, of the audience
to the scene, (audience, I say, as say we must, for the. sum
of the spectators in the -second instance, as well as of the
auditors in the first,) threw upon each a ridicule not to be
effaced. It is in any case impossible for an actor to say
words of farewell to those for whom  he really designs his
farewell.. He cannot bring his true object before himself.
To whom is it that he would offer his last adieus?  We
are told by one - who, if he loved Garrick, certainly did not
love Garrick's profession, nor would even, through him,
have paid it any:undue compliment -that the retirement of
this great artist had "eclipsed -the gayety.of nations."  To
nations, then, to his own generation, it was that he owed
bis farewell; but, of a generation, what organ is theie
which can sue or be sued, that can thank or be thanked'?
Neither by fiction nor by delegation can. you bring their
bodies into court.  A king's audience, on the other hand,
might be had as an authorized'epresentative body. But,
when we consider the composition of a casual and chance
auditory, whether in a street or.a theatre, - secondly, the
small size of a modern audience, even in Drury Lane, (4500
at the most,) not by one eightieth part the complement of'the Circus Maximus, -most of all, when we consider the
want of symmetry or commensurateness, to any extended
duration of time, in the acts of such an audience, which
acts lie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions, - acts so essentially fugitive, even when organized
emotion on witnessing the enthusiasm of those outside; but that could
not cure the original absurdity of recognizing as a representative
audience, clothed with the national functions of recognizing himself, a
chance gathering of passengers through a single street, between whom
andany mob from his own stables and kitchens there could be no
essential difference which logic, or law, or constitutional principle
could recognize.




214           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SIETCHES.
into an art and a tactical system of imbrices-and bombi, (as
they were at Alexandria, and afterwards at the Neapolitan
and Roman theatres,) that they could not protect them,
selves from dying in the very moment of their birth, -lay-.
ing together all thes'e considerations, we see the incongruity
of any audience, so constitued, to any purpose less evanescent than their own tenure of existence.
Just such in disproportion as these cases had severally
been. was our present problem in relation to our time or
other means for accomplishing it. In debating the matter,
we lost half an hour; but at length we reduced the question
to a choice between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's
Cathedral. I know not that we could have chosen better.
The rival edifices, as we understood from the waiter, were
about equidistant from our own station; but, being too remote from each other to allow of our seeing both, "we
tossed up," to settle the question between the elder lady
and the younger. " Heads"' came up, which'stoodfor the
abbey. But, as neither of us was quite satisfied with this
decision, we agreed to make another appeal to the wisdom
of chance, second thoughts being best. This time the
cathedral turned up; and so it came- to pass that, with us,
the having seen London meant having seen St. Paul's.
The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, overwhelmed us with awe; and I did not at that time imagine
that the sense of magnitude could be more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure. The superb
objects of curiosity within the cathedral were shown for
separate fees, There were seven, I think; and any one
could be seen independently of the rest for a few pence.
The.whole amount was a trifle; fourteen pence, I think.
but we were followed by a sort of persecution —" Woulc
we not see the bell?"  "Would we not see the model?'
"Surely we would not go away without visiting the whis.




THE NATION OF LONDON.            21.
pering gallery? "- solicitations which troubled the silence
and sanctity of the place, and must tease others as it then
teased us, who wished to contemplate in quiet this great
monument of the national grandeur, which was at that very
time * beginning to take a station also in the land, as a depository for the dust of her heroes. What struck us most
n-the whole interior of the pile was the view taken from
the spot immediately under the dome, being, in fact, the
very same which, five years afterwards, received the re.
mains of Lord Nelson. In one of the aisles going off from
this centre, we saw the flags of France, Spain, and Holland
the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and
expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the
upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals. by currents
of air. At this moment we were-provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of "Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and
so on, until we left the place. The same complaint has
been often made as to Westminster Abbey;  Where the
wrong lies, or where it commences,_I know not. Certainly
I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor
men who attended us should give up their time for nothing, or even to be angry with them for a sort of persecution,
on the degree of which possibly might depend the comfort
of their own families. Thoughts of famishing children at
home leave little room for nice regards of delicacy abroad.
The individuals, therefore, might or might not be blamable.
But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The nation
is entitled- to a free enjoyment of its own public monuments; not free only in the sense of being gratuitous, but
free also from the molestation of showmen, with their imperfect knowledge and their vulgar sentiment.
* Already monuments had been voted by the House of Commons
in this cathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed,
to two captains who had fallen at the Nile;




216            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Yet, after all, what' is this system  of restriction ank
annoyance, compared with that which operates on the use of
the national libraries? or that, again, to the system of exclusion from some of these, where an absolute interdict lies
upon any'use at all of that which is confessedly national
property?  Books and manuscripts, which were originally
collected and formally bequeathed to the public, under the
generous and noble idea of giving to future generations
advantages which the collector had himself not enjoyed,
and liberating them from obstacles in the pursuit of know!.edge which experience had bitterly imprinted upon his
own mind, are at this day locked up as absolutely against
me, you, or any body, as collections confessedly private.
Nay, far more so; for most private collectors of eminence,
as the late Mr. Heber, for instance, have been distinguished
for liberality in lending.the rarest of their books to those
who knew how to use them with effect. But, in the cases
I now contemplate, the whole funds for supporting the
proper offices attached to a-library, such as librarians, sub-librarians, &c., which of themselves (and without the express verbal evidence of the founder's will) presume apublic
in the daily use of the books, else they are superfluous,
have been applied to the creation of lazy sinecures, in behalf of persons expressly charged with the care of shutting
out the public. Therefore, it is true, they are not sinecures,; for that one care, vigilantly to keep out the public,*
* This place suggests the mention of another crying abuse connected with this subject. In the year 1811 or 1810 came under parliamentary notice and revision the law of copyright. In some excellent pamphlets drawn forth by the occasion, from Mr. Duppa, for
instance, and several others, the whole subject was well probed, and
many aspects, little noticed by the public, were exposed of that
extreme injustice attached to the law as it then stood. The several
monopolies connected with books were noticed a little; and not a
little notice eras taken of the oppressive privilege with which certain public libraries (at that time, I think, eleven) were invested,




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  217
they do take upon themselves; and why?        A man loving
books, like myself, might suppose that tE-.ir motive was
the ungenerous one of keeping the books to themselves.
Far from   it.  In several instances, they will as little use
of exacting, severally, a copy of each new book' published. This.
downright robbery was palliated' by some members of the House in
that day, under the notion of its being a sort of exchange, or quid
pro quo in return for the relief obtained by the statute of Queen
Anne - the first which recognized literary property. " For," argued
they, "previously to that statute, supposing your book pirated, at
common law you could obtain redress only for each copy proved to
have been sold by the pirate; and that might not be a thousandth
part of the actual loss. Now, the, statute of Queen Anne granting.
you a general redress, upon proof that a piracy had been committed, you, the party relieved, were.bound to express your sense
of this relief by a' return made to the public; and the public is here
represented by the great. endowed libraries of the seven universities,
the British Museum," &c., &c. But prima facie, this was that selling
of justice which is expressly renounced in Magna Charta; and why
were proprietors of copyright, more than-other proprietors, to make an
"acknowledgment." for their rights? But supposing that just, why,
especially, to the. given public bodies? Now, for my part, I think
that this admits of an explanation: nine tenths of the authors in
former days lay amongst the class who had received a college education; and most of these, in their academic life, had benefited largely
by old endowments. Giving up, therefore, a small tribute froin their
copyright, there was some color of justice in supposing that they
were making a slight acknowledgment for past benefits received, and
exactly for those benefits which enabled -them to'appear with any
advantage as authors.. So, I am convinced, the "servitude " fist arose,
and under this construction; which, even for those days, was often a
fiction; but now is generally such. H owever, be the origin what it'may, the ground upon which the public mind in 1811-(that small
part of it, at least, which the question attracted) reconciled itself to
the'abuse was this-for a trivial wrong, theyalleged (but it was
then. shown that the wrong was not always trivial) one great good is
achieved, viz., that all over' the kingdom are dispersed eleven great
depositories, in which all persons interested may, at all times, be sure
of finding one copy of every book published. That did seem a great




218             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the books as suffer them to be used.   And ihus the whole
plans and cares of the good (weighing his motives, I will
say of the pious) founder have terminated in locking up and
sequestering a large collection of books, some being great
advantage, and a balance in point of utility (if none in point of justice) to the wrong upon which it grew. But now mark the degree in
which this balancing'advantage is made available. 1. The eleven
bodies are not equally careful.to exact their copies; that can only be
done by retaining an agent in London; and this agent is careless about
books of slight money value. 2. Were it otherwise, of what final
avail would a perfect set of the year's productions prove to a public
not admitted freely to the eleven libraries. 3. But, finally, if they
were admitted, to what purpose (as regards this particular advantage)
under the following custom, which, in some of these eleven libraries,
(possibly in all,) was, I well- knew, established: annually the principal librarian weeded the annual crop of all such books as displeased
himself; upon which two questions arise: 1. Upon what principle?
2. With what result'? I answer as to the first, that in this lustration
he went upon'no principle at all, but his own caprice. or what he
called his own discretion; and accordingly it is a fact known to many
as well as myself, that a book, which some people (and certainly-not
the least meditative of this age) have pronounced the most original
work of modern times, was actually amongst the books thus degraded;
it was one of those, as the phrase is, tossed "into the basket;" and
universally this fate is more likely to befall a work of original merit,
which disturbs the previous way of thinking and feeling, than one of
timid compliance with ordinary models. Secondly, with what result?
For the present, the degraded books, having been consigned'to the
basket, were forthwith consigned to a damp cellar. There, at any
rate, they were in no condition to be consulted by the public, being
piled up in close bales, and in a place not publicly accessible. But
there can be no doubt. that, sooner or later, their mouldering condition.would be made an argument for selling them. And such, when we
trace the operation. of this law to its final stage, is- the ultimate
result of an infringement upon private rights almost unexampled in
any other part of our civil economy. That sole beneficial result, for
the sake of which some legislators were willing to sanction a wrong
otherwise admitted to be indefensible, is so little protected and secured
to the public, that it is first of all placed at the mercy of'an agent in




THE NATION OF LONDON.              219
rarities, in situations where they.are not accessible.  Had
he bequeathed them to the catacombs of Paris or of Naples,
he could not have better provided for their virtual extinction. I ask, Does no action at common law lie against the
promoters of such enormous abuses?  0 thou fervent reformer, - whose fatal tread he that puts his ear to the ground
may hear at a distance coming ~onwards upon every road, -
if too surely thou wilt work for me and others irreparable
wrong and suffering, work also for us- a little good; this
way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thy wrath;
winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners
of pure wheat laid -up in elder days for our benefit, and
which for two centuries have been. closed against our use!
London we left in haste, to keep an engagement of some
standing at the Earl Howe's, my friend's grandfather.
This great admiral, who had filled so large a station in the
public eye, being the earliest among the naval'heroes of
England in the first war of the revolution, and the only
one of noble birth, I should have been delighted to see; St;
Paul's, and its naval monuments to Captain Riou and Captain --, together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having awakened within me, in a form of
peculiar solemnity, those patriotic remembrances of past
glories, which all boys feel so much more vividly than men
can do, in' whom'the sensibility to such impressions is
blunted. Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see;
he had died about a year before. Another death there had
London, whose negligence or indifference may defeat the provision
altogether, (I know a publisher of a splendid botanical work, who told
me that, by forbearing to attract notice to'it within the statutable
time, he saved his eleven copies;) and placed at the mercy of a librarian, Who (or any one'of his successors) may, upon a motive of malice
to the author or an impulse of false taste, after all proscribe any part
of the books thus dishonorably acquired.




220           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
-been, and very recently, in the family, and under circumstances peculiarly startling; and the spirits of the whole
house were painfully depressed by that event at the time
of our visit. O One of the daughters, a younger sister of my
friend's mother, had been engaged for:some time to a
Scottish nobleman, the Earl of Morton, much esteemed
by the royal family. The day was at length fixed for the
marriage; and about. a fortnight before that day arrived,
some particular dress or ornament was brought to Porters,
in which it was designed that the bride should appear at
the altar. The fashion as to-this point has often varied;
but at that time, I believe the custom was'for bridal parties
to be in full dress. The lady, when' the dress arrived,
was,-to all appearance, in good health; but, by one of those
unaccountable. misgivings which are on record in so many
well-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marvell's father,) she said, after gazing for a minute or two at
the beautiful dress, firmly and pointedly, " So, then, that i's
my wedding dress; and it is expected that I shall wear it
on the 17th; but I shall not; I shall never wear it. On
Thursday, the 17th, I shall be dressed in a shroud!"  All
present were shocked at such a declaration, which the
solemnity of the lady's manner made it impossible to receive as a jest. The countess, her mother, even reproved
her with some severity for the words, as an expression of
distrust in the goodness of God. The bride elect made no
answer but by sighing heavily. Within a fortnight, all
happened, to the letter, as she had predicted. She was
taken suddenly ill; she died about three days before the
marriage day, and was finally dressed in her shroud
according to the natural course of the funeral arrangements,. on the morning that was to have been the wedding
festival.
Lord Morton, the nobleman thus suddenly and remark



THE NATION OF LONDON.           221
ably bereaved of his bride, was the only gentleman who
appeared at the dinner table. He took a particular interest in literature; and it was, in fact, through his kindness
that, for the first time in my life, I Sfound myself somewhat
in the situation of a "lion."  The occasion of Lord Morton's flattering notice was a particular copy of verses which
had gained for me a public distinction; not, however, I
must own, a very brilliant one; the' prize awarded to. me
being not the first, nor even the second, - what on the
continent is called the accessit, - it was simply the third;
and that. fact, stated nakedly, might have left it doubtful
whether I were to be considered in the light of one honored
or of one stigmatized. However, the judges in this case,
with more honesty, or more self-distrust, than belongs to
most adjudications of the kind, had printed the first three
of the successful essays. Consequently, it was left open
to each of the less successful candidates to benefit by any
difference of taste amongst their several friends; and-my
friends in particular, with the single and singular exception
of-my mother, who always thought her own children infe&
rior to other people's, had generally assigned the palm to
myself. Lord Morton protested loudly that the case' admitted of no doubt; that gross injustice had been'done me;
and, as the ladies of the family were much influenced by
his opinion, I thus came, not only to wear the laurel in
their estimation, but also with the advantageous addition
of having suffered some injustice. I was not only a victor
but a victor in misfortune.
At this moment, looking back from a distance of fifty
years upon those trifles, it may well be supposed that I do
not attach so much importance to the subject of my fugitive honors as to have, any very decided opinion one way
sr the other upon my own proportion of merit. I do not
even recollect the major part of the verses:.that which




~222      AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
do recollect, inclines me to think that, in the structure of
the metre and in the choice of the expressions, I had some
advantage over my competitors, though otherwise, perhaps
my verses were less finished; Lord Morton migh therefore, in a partial sense, have been just, as well as kind.
But, little as that may seem likely, even, then, and at the
moment of reaping some advantage from my honors, which
gave me a consideration with the family I was amongst
such as I could not else have had, most unaffectedly I
doubted in my own mind whether I were really entitled to
the praises which I received. My own verses had not at
all satisfied myself; and though I felt elated by the notice
they had gained me, and gratified by the generosity of
the earl in taking my part so warmly, I was so more in a
spirit of sympathy with the kindness thus manifested in
my behalf, and with the consequent kindness which it procured me from others, than from any incitement or support
which it gave to my intellectual pride. In fact, whatever
estimate I might make of those intellectual gifts which!
believed or which I knew myself to possess, I was inclined,
even in those days, to doubt whether my natural vocation
lay towards poetry. Well, indeed, I knew, and I know
that, had I chosen to enlist amongst the Isoi disant poets
of the day,  amongst those, I mean, who, by mere force
of talent and mimetic skill, contrive to sustain the part of
poet in a scenical sense and with a scenical effect, -I also
could have won such laurels as are won by such merit; I
also could have taken and sustained a place taliter qualiter
amongst the poets of the time. Why not then? Simply
because I knew that me, as'them, would await the certain
destiny in reversion of resigning that place in the next
generation to some younger candidate having equal or
greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old
traditionary language of passion spread through books, but




THE NATION OF LONDON.              223
having also the advantage of novelty, and, of a closer
adaptation — to the prevailing taste: of the day. Even at
that early age, I was keenly alive, if not so keenly as at
this moment, to the fact, that by far the larger proportion
of what is received in every age for poetry, and for a
season usurps that consecrated name, is not the spontaneous
overflow of real unaffected passion, deep, and at the same
time original, and also forced into public manifestation of
itself from the necessity which.cleaves to all passion alike
of seeking external sympathy: this it is not; but a counterfeit assumption of such passion, according to the more
or less accurate skill of the writer in distinguishing the key
of passion suited to the particular age; and a.concurrent
assumption of the language of passion, according to his
-more or less skill in separating the spurious from  tie
native and legitimate diction of genuine emotion. Rarely
tindeed, are the reputed poets of any age men who groan,
like prophets, under the burden of a message which they
have to deliver, and must deliver, of a mission which they
must discharge. Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are
merely simulators of the part they sustain; speaking not
out of the' abundance of their own hearts, but by skill and
artifice assuming or personating emotions at second hand;
and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even of
great talent,) but not of original power, of genius,* or
authentic inspiration.
* The words genius and talent are frequently distinguished from
each other. by those who evidently misconstrue the true distinction
entirely, and sometimes so.grossly as to use them by way of expressions for a mere difference in degree. Thus, "a man of great talent,
absolutely a genius," occurs in a very well-written tale at this moment
before me; as if being a man of genius impliedr only a greater than
ordinary degree of talent.




224             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SK-ETCHES.
From   Porters, after a few   days' visit, we returned  to
Eton.   Her majesty about this time gave some splendid
fetes at Frogmore, to one or two of which she had directed
that we should be invited.   The invitation was, of course,
Talent and genius are in no one point allied to each other, except
generically - that both express modes of intellectual power. But the
kinds of power are not merely different; they are in polar opposition
to each other. Talent is intellectual power of every kind, which acts
and manifests itself by and through the will and the'active forces.
Genius, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual power which is derived from the genial nature, - from the
spirit of suffering and enjoying, - from the spirit of pleasure and pain,
as organized more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the
will. It is a function of the passive nature. Talent is conversant with
the adaptation of- means to ends., But genius is conversant only with
ends. Talent has -no, sort of connection, not the most remote or
shadowy, with the moral nature or temperament; genius is steeped
and saturated with this moral nature.
This was written twenty years ago. Now, (i853,) when revising it,
1 am tempted to add three brief annotations: -
1st. It scandalizes me that,.in the occasional comments upon this
distinction which have reached my eye, no attention should have been
paid to the profound suggestions as to the radix of what is meant by
genius latent in the word genial. For instance, in an extract made
by "The Leader," a distinguished literary journal, from a recent
work entitled "Poetics," by Mr. Dallas, there is not the slightest
notice taken of this subtile indication and leading towards the truth.
Yet surely that is hardly philosophic. For could Mr. Dallas suppose
that the- idea involved in the word genial had no connection, or
none but an -accidental one, with the idea involved in -the. word
genius? It is clear that from the Roman conception (whencesoever
emanating) of the natal genius, as the secret and central representative of what is most characteristic and individual in the nature of
every human being, are derived alike the notion of the genial and our
modern notion of genius as contradistinguished from talent.
2d. As another broad character of distinction between. genius and
talent, I would observe, that genius differentiates a man from all
other men-; whereas talent is the same in one man as in another'
that is, where it exists at all, it is the mere echo and reflex of the




THE NATION OF LONDON.              225
on my friend's account;.but her majesty had condescended to.direct that I,-as his visitor, should be specially included.
Lord Westport, young as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about such things; but to me. such a scene was a
novelty; and, on that account, it was settled'we should go
as early as was permissible. We did go; and I was not
sorry to have had the gratification of witnessing (if it were
but for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But,
after- the first edge of expectation was taken off, - after the
vague uncertainties of rustic ignorance had given place to
absolute' realities, and the eye had become a little familiar
with.the flashing of the jewelry, -I began to suffer under
the constraints incident to a young person in such a situation-the   situation, namely, of sedentary passiveness,
where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in
fact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for that,
I-belieye I shouldhave had some difficulty in avoiding so
monstrous an indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty
expression, however, on the. spot; not the music only it
was, but the music combined with the dancing, that so
deeply impressed me. The ball room - a temporary erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about
it - wore an elegant and festal air; the part allotted to the
dancers being fenced off by a gilded lattice work, and ornamented beautifully from  the upper part with drooping
same talent, as seen in thousands of other men, differing only by more
and less, but not at all in quality. In genius, on the contrary, no
two men' were ever duplicates of each other.
3d. All talent, in'whatsoever class, reveals itself as an effort —as
a counteraction to an opposing difficulty or hinderance; whereas
genius universally moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence
with spontaneous power. Talent works universally bv intense re.
sistance to an antagonist force; whereas genius works under a rapture
of necessity and spontaneity.
15




q2i6            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
festoons of flowers.  But all the luxury that spoke to the
eye merely faded at once by the side of impassioned dancing sustained by impassioned music.     Of'all the scenes
which this world offers, none is to me so profoundly in,
teresting" none (I say it deliberately) so affecting, as the
spectacle of men and women floating through the mazes of
a dance; under these conditions, however, that the music
shall be rich, resonant, and festal, the execution of the
dancers perfect, and the dance itself of a character to ad.
mit of free, fluent, and continuous motion. But this last
condition will be sought vainly in the quadrilles, &.., which
have for so many years banished the truly beautiful country
dances native to England.    Those whose taste and sensibility were so defective as to substitute for the beautiful in
dancing the merely difficult, were sure, in the end, to transfer the depravations of this art from the opera house to the
floors of private ball rooms, The tendencies even then
were in that direction; but as yet they had not attained
their final stage; and the English country dance * was still
* This word, I am well aware, gtew out of the French word conte
danse; indicating the regular contraposition of male and female partners in the first arrangement of the dancers. The word country dance
Was therefore originally a corruption; but, having once arisen and
taken root in the language, it is far better to retain it in its colloquial
form; better, I mean, on the general principle concerned in such
cases. For it is, in fact, by such corruptions, by offsets upon an old
stock, arising through ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that
every language is frequently enriched; and new modifications of
thought, unfolding themselves in the progress of society, generate for
thenmelves concurrently appropriate expressions. Many words in the
Latin can be pointed out as having passed through this process,. It
must not be allowed to weigh against the validity of a word once fairly
naturalized by use, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case
of this nature as it is in-law. And the old axiom is applicable -  ieri
non debuit, factum valet. Were it-otherwise, languages would be




TEE NATION OF LONDON.                227
in esti.nation at the courts of princes. Now, of all dances,
this is the only one, as a class, of which you can truly describe the motion to be continuous, that is, not interrupted
or fitful, but unfolding its fine mazes with the equability of
light in its diffusion through free space. And wherever
the music happens to be not of a light, trivial character,
but charged with the spirit of festal pleasure, and the performers in the dance so far skilful as to betray no awkwardness verging on the ludicrous, I believe that many people feel as I feel in such circumstances, viz., derive from
the spectacle the very grandest form of passionate sadness
which can belong to any spectacle whatsoever.    Sadness
is not the exact word; nor is there any word in any language (because none in the finest languages) which exactly expresses the state; since it is not a depressing, but a
most elevating state.to which I allude.  And, certainly, it
is easy to understand, that many states of pleasure, and in
particular the highest, are'the most of-all removed from
merriment. The day on which a Roman triumphed was
the most gladsome day of his existence; it was the crown
and consummation of his prosperity; yet assuredly it wan
als to him the most solemn of his days. Festal music, of
a rich and passionate character, is the most remote of an
robbed of much of their wealth. And, universally, the class of pursta
in matters of language, are liable to grievous suspicion, as almost con
stantly proceeding on half knowledge and on insufficient principles
For example, if I have read one, I have read twenty letters, addressed
to newspapers, denouncing the name of a great quarter in London
Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had'learned
(or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that
neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right foQ
the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name
arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that- in out
Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as
well as masculine, and bone was then the true form for the adjective.




228           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
from vulgar hilarity. Its very gladness and pomp is im.
pregnated with sadness, but sadness of a grand and aspir;
ing order  Let, for instance, (since without individual illus
trations there is the greatest risk of being misunderstood,)any person of musical sensibility listen to the exquisite music composed by Beethoven, as an opening for Burger's
"Lenore," the running idea of which is the triumphal return
of a crusading host, decorated with laurels and with palms,
within the gates of their native city; and then say whether
the presiding feeling, in the midst of this tumulfuous festivity, be not, by infinite degrees, transcendent to any thing so
vulgar as hilarity.- In fact, laughter itself is of all things
the most.equivocal; as the,organ of the ludicrous, laughter
is allied to the trivial and the mean; as the organ of joy, it
is allied to the passionate and the noble. From all whiche
the reader may comprehend, if he should not happen experimentally to have felt, that -a spectacle of young men.
and women, flowing through. the mazes of an intricate
dance under a full volume of music, taken with all the circumstantial adjuncts of such a scene in rich men's halls;
the blaze of'lights and jewels, the life, the motion, the sealike undulation of heads, the interweaving of the figures,
the. a    waxvxlear.s or self-revolving, both of the dance and
the music, "never ending, still beginning," and the continual regeneration of order from a system of motions which
forever touch the very brink of confusion-; that such a spectacle, with such circumstances, may happen to be capable
of exciting and sustaining the very grandest emotions' of
philosophic -melancholy to which the human spirit is open.
The reason is,:in part,.that such a scene presents a sort of
mask of human life, with its whole equipage of pomps and
glories, its luxury of sight and- sound, its hours of golden.
youth, and the interminable revolution of ages hurrying
after ages, and one. generation treading- ipon the flying foot



TIE NATION OF LONDON.            229
steps of another; whilst all the while the overruling music
attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject to the object,
the beholder to the vision. And, although this is known to
be but one phasis of life, - of life culminating and in ascent,
- yet the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the
hidden or averted side of the. golden arras, known but not
felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding into indistinct
proportions. The effect of the music is, to place the mind
in a state of elective attraction for every thing in harmony
with its own prevailing key.
This pleasure, as always on similar occasions, I had at
present; but naturally in a degree corresponding to the
circumstances of royal splendor through which the scene
revolved; and, if I have spent rather more words than
should reasonably have been requisite in describing any
obvious state of emotion, it is not because, in itself, it is
either vague or doubtful, but because it is difficult, without
calling upon a reader for a little reflection, to convince
him that there is not something paradoxical in the assertion, that joy and festal pleasure, of the highest kind, are
liable to a natural combination with-solemnity, or ever
with melancholy the most profound. Yet, to speak in th,
mere simplicity of truth, so mysterious is human nature
and so little to be read by him who runs, that almost every
weighty aspect of truth upon that theme will be found'aw
first sight to be startling, or sometimes paradoxical. Ana
so little need is there for chasing or courting paradox,
that, on the contrary, he who is faithful to his own ex
periences will find all his. efforts little enough to keep
down the paradoxical air besieging much of what he knows
to be the truth. No man needs to search for paradox in
this world of ours. Let him simply confine himself to the
truth, and he will find paradox growing every where under
his hands as rank as weeds. For new truths of impor




230            AUTOBIOGRAPRIC SKETCHES.
tance are rarely agreeable to any preconceived theories
that is, cannot be explained by these'theories; which are
insufficient, therefore, even' where they are true. And
universally, it must be borne in mind, that not that is
paradox which, seeming to be true, is upon examination
false, but that which, seeming to be false, may upon examination be found true.*
The pleasure of which I have been speaking belongs to
all such scenes; but on this particular occasion there was
also something more. To see persons in "the body " of
whom you have been reading in newspapers from the very
earliest of your reading days, - those, who have hitherto
been great ideas in your childish thoughts, to see and to
he'ar moving aand talking'as carnal existences amongst
other human beings,- had, for the first half hour or so,
a singular and strange effect. But this naturally waned
rapidly after it had once begun to wane. And when these
first startling impressions of novelty had worn off, it must
be confessed that the peculiar circumstances attaching
to a royal ball were not favorable to its joyousness or
genial spirit of enjoyment. I am'not going to repay hei
majesty's condescension so ill, or so much to abuse the
privileges of a guest, as to draw upon my recollections
of.- what passed for the materials of a cynical critique.
Evety' thing was done, I doubt not, which court etiquette
permitted, to thaw those ungenial restraints which gave to
* And therefore it was with strict propriety that Boyle, anxious
to fix public attention upon some truths of hydrostatics, published
them atowedly as paradoxes. According to the false popular notion
of what it is that constitutes a paradox, Ioyle should be taken to
mean that'these hydrostatic theorems were fallacies. Bat far from
it. Boyle solicits attention to these propositions - not as seeming to
be true and turning out false, but, reversely, as wearing an air of
falsehood and turning out true.




THE NATION OF LONDON.            231
the whole too much of a ceremonial and official. character,
and to each actor in the scene gave too much of the air
belonging to one who is discharging a duty, and to the
youngest even among the principal' personages concerned
gave an apparent anxiety and jealousy of manner — jealousy, I mean, not of others, but a prudential jealousy of
his own possible oversights or trespasses. In fact, a great
personage bearing a state character cannot be regarded,
nor regard himself, with the perfect freedom which-belongs
to social intercourse; no, nor ought to be. It is not rank
alone which is here concerned; that, as being his own, he
might lay aside for an hour or two; but he bears a representative character also.  He. has not his own rank
only, but the rank of others, to protect; he (supposing him
the sovereign or a prince near to the succession) embodies
and impersonates the majesty of a great people; and this
character, were you ever so much encouraged to do so,
you, the Aoiyjs, the' lay spectator or "assister," neither
could -nor ought to dismiss from your thoughts. Besides
all which, it must be acknowledged, that to see brothers
dancing with sisters  as too often occurred in those dances
to which the princesses were parties - disturbed the appropriate interest of the scene, being irreconcilable with the
allusive meaning of dancing in general, and laid a weight
upon its gayety which no condescensions from the highest
quarter- could remove.  This infelicitous arrangement
forced the thoughts of all present upon the exalted rank
of the parties which could dictate and exact so unusual
a;n assortment. And that rank, again; it presented to us
under one of its least happy aspects;'as insulating a
blooming young woman amidst the choir of her coevals,
and surrounding her with'dreadful solitude amidst a vast
crowd of the young, the brave, the beautiful, and the
accomplished.




232           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Meantime, as respected myself individually, Ihad reason
to be grateful: every kindness and attention were shown
to me. My invitation I was sensible that I owed entirely'to my noble friend. But, having been invited, I felt assured, from what passed, that it was meant and provided
that I should not, by any possibility, be suffered to think
myself overlooked. Lord Westport and I communicated
our. thoughts occasionally by means of a language which
we, in those days, found useful enough at times, and which
bore the name of Ziph. The language and the name were
both derived (that is,. were immediately so derived, for
remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from
Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who at-,
tended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon,
during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to
have had three sons at Winchester and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates, the well-,
known system of fagging. One or more of them showed
to the quick medical eye of Dr. Mapleton symptoms of
declining health; and, upon cross questioning, he found
that, being (asjuniors)fags (that is, bondsmen by old prescription) to appointed seniors; they were under the necessity of going out nightly into the town for the purpose of
executing, commissions; but this was not easy, as all the
regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a
dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible
except one; and this one communication happened to have
escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. That of. itself was not so extraordinary a fact: the wonder lay in the number, viz.,
seventeen. Such were the actual amount of sacred edifices




rHE NATION OF LONDON.             233
which, through all their dust, and garbage, and mephitic
morasses, these miserable vassals had to.-thread all but
every night of the week. Dr. Mapleton, when he had
made this discovery, ceased to wonder at the medical symptoms; and, as fJggery was an abuse too venerable and
sacred to be touched by profane hands, he lodged no idle complaints, but simply removed his sons to a school where the
Serbonian bogs of the subterraneous goddess might not intersect the nocturnal line of march so very often. Ode day, during the worst of my illness, when the kind-hearted doctor
was attempting to amuse me with this anecdote, and asking me whether I thought Hannibal would have attempted
lis march over the Little St. Bernard,- supposing that he
and the elephant which he rode had been summoned to
explore a route through seventeen similar nuisances,- he
went on to mention the one sole accomplishment which his
sons had imported from Winchester. This was the Ziph
language, communicated at Winchester to any aspirant
for a fixed fee of one half guinea, but which the doctor
then communicated to me- as I do now to the reader —
gratis. I make a present of this language without fee, or
price, or entrance money, to my- honored reader; and let
him understand that it is undoubtedly a bequest of elder
times. Perhaps it may be coeval with the pyramids. For
in the famous " Essay on a Philosophical Character," (I forget whether that is the exact title,) a large folio written by
the ingenious Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester,* and pub.
lished early in the reign of Charles II., a folio which I, in
youthful days, not only read but studied, this language is
* This Dr. Wilkins was related by marriage to Cromwell, and is
better known to the world, perhaps, by his Essay on the possibility
of a passage (or, as the famous author of the "Pursuits of Literature" said, by way of an episcopal metaphor, the possibility of a
translation) to the moon.




234           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETGHES.
recorded and accurately described amongst many other
modes of cryptical communication, oral and visual, spoken,
written, or symbolic. And, as the bishop does not speak
of it as at all a recent invention, it may probably at that
time have been regarded as an antique device for conducting' a conversation in secrecy amongst bystanders; and
this advantage it has, that it is applicable to all languages
alike; nor can it possibly be penetrated by one hot initiated
in the mystery.  The secret is this -(and the grandeur
of simplicity at any rate it has)  repeat the vowel or
diphthong of every syllable, prefixing to the vowel so
repeated the letter G. Thus, for'example: Shall we go
away in an hour? Three-hours we have already staid.
This in Ziph becomes: Shagall wege gogo agawagay
igin agan hougour?   Threegee hougours wege hagave:agalreageadygy stagaid.* It must not be supposed that
Ziph proceeds slowly. A very little practice gives the:greatest fluency; so that even now, though certainly I
cannot have practised it for fifty years, my power of speaking the Ziph remains unimpaired. I forget whether in the
Bishop of Chester's account of this cryptical language the
consonant intercalated be G or not. Evidently any consonant will' answer the purpose. F or L would be softer,
and so far better.
In this learned tongue it was that my friend and I
communicated our feelings; and, having staid nearly four
hours, a time quite sufficient to express a proper sense of
the honor, we departed; and, on emerging into' the open
high road, we threw up our hats and huzzaed, meaning
* One omission occurs to me on reviewing this account of the
Ziph, which is -that I should have directed the accent to be placed
on the intercalated syllable: thus, ship becomes shigip, with the em
phasis on gip; run becomes rugqin, &c.




THE NATION OF LONDON.            235
no sort of disrespect, but from uncontrollable pleasure in
recovered liberty.
Soon after this we left Eton for Ireland. Our first
destination being Dublin, of.course we went by Holyhead.
The route at that time, from Southern England to Dublin,
did not (as in elder and in later days) go round by Chester.
A few miles after leaving Shrewsbury, somewhere about
Oswestry, it entered North Wales; a stage farth6r Drought,us to the celebrated vale of Llangollen; and, on reaching
the approach to this about sunset on a beautiful evening
of June, I first found myself amongst the mountains -a
feature in natural scenery for which, from. my earliest
days, it was not extravagant to say that I had hungered and
thirsted. In no one expectation of my life have I been
less disappointed; and I may add, that no one enjoyment
has less decayed or palled upon my continued experience.
A mountainous region, with a slender population, and'that of a simple pastoral character; behold my chief conditions of a pleasant permanent dwelling-place! But,
thus far I have altered, that now I should greatly prefer
forest scenery- such as the New Forest, or the Forest of
Dean in Gloucestershire. The mountains of Wales range
at about the same elevation as those of Northern England;
three thousand and four to six hundred feet being the
extreme limit which they reach.  Generally speaking,
their forms are less picturesque individually, and they are
less happily grouped than their English brethren. I have
since also been made sensible by'Wordsworth of lone
grievous defect in the structure of the Welsh valleys; too
generally they take the basin shape  the level area a't
their foot does not detach itself with sufficient precision
from the declivities that surround them. Of this, however,
I.was not aware at the time'of first seeing Wales; although
the striking effect from the opposite foim of the Cumber.




236           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKET('IES.
land and Westmoreland valleys, which almost universally
present a flat area at the base of the surrounding hills,
level,'to use Wordsworth's expression,'' as the floor of a
temple," would, at any rate, have arrested my eye, as a
circumstance of impressive beauty, even though the want
of such a feature'might not, in any case, have affected me
as a fault. As something that had a positive value, this
characteristic of the Cumbrian valleys had fixed my atten.
tion, but not as any telling point of contrast against the
Cambrian valleys. No faults, however, at that early age
disturbed my pleasure, except that, after one whole day's
travelling, (for so long it cost us between Llangollen and
Holyhead,) the want of water struck me upon review as
painfully remarkable. From Conway to Bangor (seventeen
miles) we were often in sight of the sea; but fresh water
we had seen hardly any; no lake, no stream much beyond
a brook. This is certainly a conspicuous defect in North
Wales, considered as a region of fine scenery. The few
lakes I have since become acquainted with, as that near
Bala,'near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not
attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments;
the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the -otbers as
it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with their furniture
of wood.
At the Head (to call it by its common colloquial name)
we were detained a few days in those unsteaming times
by foul winds. - Our time, however, thanks to the hospitality of a certain Captain Skinner on that station, did aot
hang heavy on our hands, though we were imprisoned,
as it were, on a dull rock; for Holyhead itself is a little
island of rock, an insulated dependency of Anglesea;
which, again, is a little insulated dependency of North
Wales. The packets on this'station were at that time




THE NATION OF LONDON.            237
lucrative comrr ands; and they were given (perhaps are 
given?) to post captains in the navy. Captain Skinner
was celebrated for his convivial talents; he. did the
honors of the place in a-hospitable style; daily:asked us
to dine with him, and seemed. as inexhaustible in his wit
as in his hospitality.
This answered one purpose,,at least, of special convenience to our party at that moment: it kept:us from
all necessity of meeting each other during the day, except
under circumstances where we escaped the necessity of
any familiar communication.  Why that should have
become desirable, arose upon the. following mysterious
change of relations between ourselves and the Rev. Mr.
Gr -, Lord Westport's tutor. On the last day.of-our
journey, Mr. G.,, who had accompanied us thus far, but
now at Holyhead was to' leave us, suddenly took offence
(or, at least, then first showed his offence) at something
we had said, done, or omitted, and never spoke one
syllable to either of us again. Being both'of.us. amiably
disposed, and incapable of having seriously meditated
either word or deed likely to wound any person's feelings,
we were much hurt at the time, and often retraced the
little incidents upon the road, to discover, if possible,
what it was that had laid us open to misconstruction.
But it. remained to both of us a. lasting mystery. This
tutor was an Irishman, of Trinity College, Dublin, and, I
believe, of considerable pretensions as a scholar;.but,
being reserved and haughty, or else presuming in us a
knowledge of our offe'rce, which we really. had not, he
gave us no opening for any explanation. To the last
moment, however, he manifested a punctilious regard to
the duties of his charge. He accompanied us in our
boat, on a dark and gusty night, to the packet, which
* Written twenty years ago.




238           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
lay a little out at sea. He saw us on board; and then,
standing up for one moment, he said, " Is all right on
deck?"   "All right, sir," sang out the ship's steward.
"Have you, Lord Westport, got your boat cloak with
you?"    "Yes, sir."  "Then, pull away, boatmen."
We listened for a time to the measured beat of his retreating oars, marvelling more and more at the atrocious
nature of our crime which could thus avail to intercept
even his last adieus. I, for my part, never'saw him again;.nor, as I have reason to think, did. Lord Westport. Neither
did we ever unravel the mystery.
As if to irritate our curiosity still more, Lord Westport
showed me a torn fragment of paper in his tutor's handwriting, which, together with others, had been thrown (as
he believed) purposely in his way. If he was right in that
belief, it appeared that he had missed the particular frag.
ment which was designed to raise the veil' upon our guilt;
for the one he produced contained exactly. these words:
"With respect to your ladyship's anxiety to know how far
the acquaintance with Mr. De Q. is likely to be of service
to your son, I think I may now venture to say that" —There the sibylline fragment ended; nor could we torture
it into any further revelation. However, both of us -saw
the propriety of not ourselves practising any mystery, nor
giving. any advantage to Mr. G. by imperfect communications; and accordingly, on the day after we reached.Dublin, we addressed a circumstantial account of our journey and our little mystery to Lady Altamont in England;
for to her it was clear that the tutor had confided his
mysterious wrongs.  Her ladyship answered with kindness; but did not throw any light on the problem which
exercised at once our memories, our skill in conjectural
interpretation, and our sincere regrets.  Lord Westport
and I regretted much that there had not been a -wider




THE NATION OF LONDON             239
margin attached to the fragment of Mr. G.'s letter to
Lady Altamont; in which case, as I cou\d readily have
mimicked his styfe of writing, it would have been easy for
me to fill up thus: " With respect to your ladyship's
anxiety, &c., I think I may now venture to say that, if tho
solar system were searched, there could not be found a
companion more serviceable to your son than Mr. De Q.
He speaks the Ziph most beautifully. He writes it, I am
to.d, classically. And if there were a Ziph nation as well
as a Ziph language, I am satisfied that he would very soon
be at the head of it; as he already is, beyond all competition, at the head of the Ziph literature."  Lady Altamont,
on receiving this, would infallibly have supposed him
mad; she would have written so to all her Irish friends,
and would have commended the poor gentleman to the
care of his nearest kinsmen; and thus we should have had
some little indemnification for the annoyance he had
caused us. I mention this trifle, simply because, trifle ar
it is, it involved a mystery, and furnishes an occasion for
glancing at that topic. Mysteries as deep, with results a
little more important and foundations a little sounder, have
many times crossed me in life; one, for instance, I recol.
lect at this moment, known pretty extensively to the neighborhood in which it occurred. It was in the county of
Si —-..  A lady married, and married well, as was thought.
About twelve months afterwards, she returned alone in a
post- chaise to her father's house,;. paid, and herself dismissed, the postilion at the gate; entered the house; ascended to the room in which she had passed'her youth, and
known in the family by her name; took possession.ofit again;
intimated by signs, and by one short letter at her first
arrival, what she would require; lived for nearly twenty
years in this state of La Trappe seclusion and silence; nor
iver, to the hour of her death, explained what circumn




240          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
stances had dissolved the supposed happy connection she had
formed, or what had become of her husband. Her looks
and gestures were of a nature to repress all questions in
the spirit of mere curiosity; and the spirit of affection
naturally respected a secret which was guarded so severely. This might be supposed a Spanish tale; yet it
happened in England, and in a pretty populous neighborhood. The romances which occur in real life are too
often connected with circumstances of criminality in some
one among the parties concerned;.. on that account, more
than any other, they are often suppressed; else, judging by
the number which have fallen within my own knowledge,
they must be of more frequent occurrence than is usually
supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps,
form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and
high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of
some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person
to whom  they had surrendered their entire- affections.
That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting,
in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of
at once overthrowing the balance'of life or of reason. Instances I.have known of both; and such afflictions are-the
less open to any alleviation, that sometimes they are of a
nature so delicate as to preclude all confidential communication of them to- another; and sometimes it would be even
dangerous, in a legal sense, to communicate them.
A sort of adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant
to recall,' even on this short voyage. The passage to
Dublin from the Head is-about sixty miles, I believe; yet,
from baffling winds, it cost us upwards of thirty hours.
On the second day, going upon deck, we found that our
only fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celeorated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely
creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had




THE NATION OF LONDON.            241
been, as usual, unslung from the "carriage," (by which is
technically meant the wheels and the perch,) and placed
-upon deck. This she used as a place of retreat from the
sun during the day, and as a resting-place at night. For
want of more interesting companions, she invited us, during
the day, into her coach; and we taxed our abilities to
make ourselves as entertaining as we could, for we were
greatly fascinated by the lady's beauty. The second night
proved very sultry; and Lord Westport and myself, suffering from the oppression of the cabin, left our berths, and
lay, wrapped up in'cloaks, upon- deck. Having talked for
some hours, we were both on the point of falling asleep,
when a stealthy tread near our heads awoke us. It was'starlight; and we traced between ourselves and the sky the
outline of a man's figure. Lying upon a mass of tarpaulings, we were ourselves: undistinguishable, and the figure
moved in the direction of the coach. Our first thought
was to raise an alarm, scarcely doubting   thate purpose
of the man was to rob the unprotected lady'of her watch
or purse. But, to our. astonishment, we saw the coach
door silently swing open under a touch from within. All
was as silent as a dream; the figure entered, the door
closed, and we were left to interpret the case as we might.
Strange it was that this lady could permit herself to calculate upon absolute concealment in such circumstances.
We recollected afterwards to have heard some indistinct
rumor buzzed about the packet on the day preceding,
that a gentleman, and some even spoke of him'by name
as a Colonel, for some unknown purpose, was concealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicated that the affair was not entirely a secret
even amongst the lady's servants. To both of us the story
proclaimed a moral already sufficiently current, viz., that
women of the highest and the very lowest rank are alike
16




242           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
thrown too much into situations of danger and temptation.
I might mention some additional circumstances of criminal
aggravation in this lady's case; but, as they would tend to'
point out the real person to those acquainted with her
history, I'shall forbear. She has since made a noise in
the world, and has maintained, I believe, a tolerably fair'
reputation.  Soon after sunrise the  next morning, a
heavenly morning of June, we dropped our anchor in the
famous Bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm; the sea
was like a lake; and, as we were some miles from the
Pigeon House, a boat was manned to put us on shore. The
lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to her guilty
secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and' hardly less innocent,
than an angel. Long afterwards, Lord Westport and I
met her, hanging upon the arm of her husband, a manly
and good-natured man; of polished manners, to whom she
introduced us; for she voluntarily challenged us as her
fellow.voyagers, and, I suppose, had no- suspicion which
pointed in our direction. She even joined her husband in
cordially pressing us to visit them  at their magnificent
chateau. Upon us, meantime, whatever might be her levity,
the secret of which accident had put us in possession
pressed with a weight of awe; we shuddered at our own
discovery; and we both agreed to drop no hint of it in any
directionf
* But see the note on this point at the end of the volume.
t Lord Westport's age at that time was the same as my own; that
is, we both wanted a few months of being fifteen. But I had the
advantage, perhaps, in thoughtfulness and observation of life. Being
thoroughly free, however, from opinionativeness, Lord Westport
readily came over to any views of mine for which I could show sufficient grounds. And on this occasion I found no difficulty in convincing him that honor and fidelity did not form sufficient guaranties




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  243
Landing about three miles from Dublin, (according to my
present remembrance at Dunleary,) we were not long in
reaching Sackville Street.
for the custody of secrets. Presence of mind so as to revive one's
obligations in time, tenacity of recollection, and vigilance over one's
own momentary slips of tongue, so as to keep watch over indirect
disclosures, are also requisite. And at that time I had an instance
within my own remembrance where a secret had been betrayed, by a
person of undoubted honor, but most inadvertently betrayed, and in
pure oblivion of his engagement to silence.'Indeed, unless where the
secret is of a nature to affect some person's life; I do not believe that
most people would remember beyond a period of two years the most
solemn obligations to secrecy. After a lapse of time, varying of
course with the person, the substance of the secret will remain upon
jhe tnind; but how he came by the secret, or under what circumstances, he will very probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely
upon the'most religious or sacramental obligation to secrecy, unless,
together with the secret, you could transfer also a magic ring that'should, by a growing pressure or puncture, stinq a man into timely
alarm and warning.




CHAPTER VIII.
DUBLIN.
IN Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Altamont; and here, in the breakfast room, we found the earl
seated. Long and intimately as I had known Lord Westport, it so happened that I had never seen his father, who
had, indeed, of late almost pledged himself to a continued
residence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an
agricultural improver; whilst for. his. son, under the diffi.
culties and delays at that time of all travelling, any residence whatever in England seemed preferable, but'especially a residence with his mother amongst the relatives of
his' distinguished English grandfather, and in such close,
neighborhood to' Eton.  Lord Altaplont once told me,
that the journey outward and inward between Eton and
Westport, taking into account all the unavoidable deviations from the direct route, in compliance with the claims
of kinship, &c., (a case which in Ireland forced a traveller
often into a perpetual zigzag,) counted up to som(thing
more than a thousand miles.  That is, in effect, when
valued in loss of time, and. allowance being made for the
want of continuity in those parts of the travelling system
that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less
than one entire fortnight must be arsually sunk upon a
244




DUBLIN.                  2145
labor that yielded no commensurate fruit.  Hence the
loiLg\three-years' interval which had separated father and
son; and hence my own nervous apprehension, as we were
racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that I should unavoidably lay a freezing restraint upon that reunion to
which, after such a separation, both father and son must
have looked forward with anticipation so anxious. Such
cases of unintentional intrusion are at times inevitable;
but, even to the least sensitive, they are always distressing;
most of all they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels
himself in the odd position of a criminal without a crime.
He is in the situation of one who might have happened to
be chased by a Bengal tiger (or, say that the'tiger were a
sheriff's officer) into the very centre of the Eleusinian
mysteries. Do not tease me,:my reader, by alleging that
there were no sheriffs' officers at Athens or Eleusis. Not
many, I admit; but perhaps quite as many as there were
tf Bengal tigers. In such a case, under whatever compulsion, the man has violated a holy seclusion. He has
seen that which he ought not to have seen; and he is
viewed with horror by'the privileged spectators. Should
he plead that this was his misfortune, and not his fault, the
answer would. be,- "True; it was your misfortune; we
know it; and it is our misfortune to be under the necessity
of hating you for it."  But there was no cause for similar
fears at present; so uniformly considerate in his kindness
was Lord Altamont. It-is true, that Lord Westport, as an
only child, and a child.to be proud of,- for he was at
that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good
will by his engaging manners,  was-viewed by his father
with an anxiety of love that sometimes became -almost
painful to witness.  But this natural self-surrender to a
first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not suffer to
usurp any such lengthened expression as might too pain




246          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
fully have reminded me of being" one too many."  One
solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the
sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw me,
the stranger, from any oppressive feeling of strangership.
And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense of being
an intruder, in one minute under his courteous welcome
I had come to feel that, as the companion of his one
darling upon earth, me also he comprehended within his
paternal regards.
It must have been nine o'clock precisely when we entered the breakfast room. So much I know by an a priori
argument, and could wish, therefore, that it had been
scientifically important to know it -as important, for instance, as to know the occultation of a star, or the transit
of Venus to a second. For the urn was at'that moment
placed on the table; and though Ireland, as a whole, is
privileged to be irregular, yet such was our Sackville
Street regularity, that not so much nine o'clock announced
this periodic event, as inversely this event announced nine
o'clock. And I used to affirm, however shocking it might
sound to.'poor threadbare metaphysicians incapable of
transcendental truths, that not nine o'clock was the cause
of revealing the breakfast urn, but, on the contrary, that
the revelation of the breakfast urn was the true and secret
cause of nine o'clock -a phenomenon which otherwise
no candid reader will pretend that he can satisfactorily
account for, often as he has known it to come round. The
arn was- already throwing up its column of fuming mist;
and the breakfast table was covered with June flowers sent
by a lady on the chance of Lord Westport's arrival, It
was clear, therefore, that we were expected; but so'we
tiad been for three or four days- previously; and it illustrates the enormous uncertainties of travelling at this
closing era of the eighteenth century, that for three or




DUBLIN.                  247
four days more we should have been expected without the
least anxiety in case any thing had occurred to detain us
on the road. Ir fact, the possibility of a Holyhead packet
being lost had no place in the catalogue of adverse contingencies-not even when calculated by mothers. To
come by way of Liverpool or Parkgate, was not without
grounds of reasonable fear: I myself had lost acquaintances (schoolboys) on each of those lines of transit.
Neither Bristol nor Milford Haven was entirely cloudless
in reputation. But from Holyhead only one packet had
ever been lost; and that was in the days of Queen Anne,
when I have good reason to think that a villain was on
board, who hated the Duke of Marlborough; so that this
one exceptional case, far from being looked upon as a
public calamity, would, of course, be received thankfully
as cleansing the nation from a scamp.
Ireland was still smoking.with the embers of rebellion;
and Lord Cornwallis, who had been sent expressly. to extinguish it, and had won the reputation of having fulfilled this
mission,with energy and success, was then the lord
lieutenant; and at that moment he was regarded with
more interest than any other public man. Accordingly I
was not sorry when, two mornings after our arrival, Lord
Altamont said to us at breakfast, "Now, if you wish to see
what I call a great man, go with me.this morning, and you
shall see Lord Cornwallis; for that man. who has given
peace -both to the east and to the west-taming a tiger in
the Mysore that hated England as much as Hannibal hated
Rome, and in Ireland pulling up by the roots a French
invasion, combined with an Irish insurrection- will always
for me rank as a great man."  We willingly accompanied
the earl to the Phoenix Park, where the lord lieutenant
was then residing, and were privately presented to him. I




248           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
had seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day)
of Lord Cornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as
hostages at Seringapatam; and. knew the outline of his
public services. This gave me.an additional interest in
seeing him; but I was disappointed to find no traces in his
manier of the energy and activity I presumed him to
possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy
but benevolent and considerate in a degree which won the
confidence at once. Him we saw often; for Lord Altamiont took us with him wherever and whenever we wished
and me in particular (to whom the Irish leaders of society
were as yet entirely unknown by sight) it gratified highly
to see persons of historical names — names, I mean, historicaily connected with the great events of Elizabeth's of
Crommwell's era - attending at the Phcenix Park. But the
persons whom I remember most distinctly of all whom I
was then in the habit of seeing, were Lord Clare, the
chanrcellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (then Castlereagh,)
lit that time the Irish chancellor of the exchequer, and the
speaker of the House of Commons, (Mr. Fosterince, I
believe, created -Lord Oriel.) With the speaker, indeed,
Lord Altamont had more in'fi'tate grounds of connection
than with any other public man; both being devoted to the
rncouragement and personal superintendence of great
agricultural improvements.  Both weie bent on intro-'ducing, through models diffused extensively ir on their wn
estates, English husbandry, English improved breeds of
cattle, and, Where that was possible, English capital and
skill, into the rural economy of Ireland.
Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, as
the m'st splendid I may mention an installation of the
Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights installed
on this occasion, one of the six being Lord Altamont. He
had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his




DUBLIN.                  249
parliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the union;
-yet, from all his conversation upon that question, and from
the general conscientiousness of his private life, I am cor
viiced that he.acted all along upon patriotic motives, and
in obedience to his real views (whether right or wrong) of
the Irish interests. One chief reasonj indeed, which::detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this
particular installation. At one time, Lord Altamont had
designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires
who attend the new-made knight, according to the ritual
of this ceremony; but that plan was laid aside, on learning that the other five knights were to be attended by
adults:; and thus, from being partakers as actors:-my friend
and I became simple spectators. of this splendid scene
which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. So
easily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory
as to all its circumstantial items, leaving behind nothing
beyond the general impression, that at this moment I remember no one incident of the whole ceremonial, except
that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knights went
up with their offerings to the altar;the object of this'un-.feeling laughter being apparently Lord Altamont. who happened to be lame - a singular instance of levity to exhibit
within the walls of such a building, and at the most solemn
part of such a ceremony, which to my mind had a threefold grandeur: 1st, as symbolic and shadowy; 2d, as repare
senting the interlacings of chivalry with religion in the
highest aspirations of both; 3d, as national; placing the
heraldries and. military pomps of a people, so memorably
faithful to St. Peter's chair, at. the foot of the altar. Lord
Westport and I sat with Lord and Lady Castlereagh. They
were both young at this time, and both wore an impressive
appearance of youthful happiness;. neither, happily for
their peace of- mind,'able to pierce that cloud of years,




250           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
lot much more than twenty, which divided them from the
day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both.
We had met both on other occasions; and their conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the most:
interesting circumstance to me, and the one which I
remember with most distinctness of all that belonged to
the installation. By the way, one morning, on occasion
of some conversation arising about Irish bulls, I made an
agreement with Lord Altamont to note down in a memo.
randum book every thing throughout my stay in Ireland,
which, to my feeling as an Englishman, should seem to
be, or should approach to, a bull. And this day, at dinner,
I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation'what
struck me as such. Lord Altamont laughed, and said,
" Mydear child, I am sorry that it should so happen, for it
is bad to stumble at the beginning; your bull is.certainly
a bull * but as certainly Lady Castlereagh is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all."  Lady Castlereagh,
it seems, was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and
her,maiden name was Lady Emily Hobart.
One other public scene there was, about this time, in
Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a
* The idea of a bull is even yet undefined; which is most extraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tact and
illustrative power to furnish the matter for such a definition, and
Coleridge all his philosophic subtlety (but in this instance, I think,
with a most infelicitous result) to furnish its form. But both have
been too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example,
Miss Edgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story,
that, upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was
still twelve miles to London, one of them remarked, " Ah just six
miles apace." This, says Miss E., is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim, that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of
the kind': Miss Edgeworth cannot have understood it. The bull is a
true representative and exemplary specimen of the genus.




DUBLIN.                  251
moral sense; more significant practically, more burdened
with hope and with fear. This was the final ratification
of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. I do not
know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity,
in my time, did, 6r could, so much engage my profoundest
sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction
of the Venetian republic had not then been published,
else the last two lines would have expressed my feelings.
After admitting that changes had taken place in Venice,
which in a manner challenged and presumed this last and
pnortal change, the poet goes on-to say, that all this long
preparation for the event could not break the shock of it.
Venice, it is true, had become a shade; but, after all," Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of-that which once was great has passed away."
But here the previous circumstances were far different
from those of Venice.  There we saw a superannuated and
paralytic state, sinking at any rate into the grave, and
yielding, to the touch of military violence, that only which
a brief lapse of years must otherwise have yielded to
internal decay. Here, on the contrary, we saw a young
eagle, rising into power, and robbed prematurely of her
natural honors, only because she did not comprehend their
value, or because at this great crisis she had no champion.
Ireland, in a political sense, was surely then in her youth,
considering the prodigious developments she has since
experienced in population and in resources of all kinds.
This great day of UNION had been long looked forward
to.by me; with some mixed feelings also by my young
friend, for he had an Irish heart, and was jealous of what.
ever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. But it was
not for him to say any thing which should seem to impeach
h*s father's patriotism in voting for the union, and promol.




252           AUTOBIORAHPHIC SKETCHES.
inag it through his borough influence. Yet oftentimes it
seene.ed to me, when I introduced the subject, and sought to
learn from Lord Altamont the main grounds which had
reconciled him and other men, anxious for the welfare of
Ireland, to. a measure which at least robbed her of some
spl.ndor, and, above'all, robbed he.r of a name and place
amongst the independent states of Europe, that neither
father nor son was likely to be displeased, should some
gre.at popular violence put force upon the recorded will of
Parliament, and compel the two Houses to, perpetuate them-.
selves. Dolorous they must of course have looked, in mere,
consistency; but IT fancied that inteynally they would have
laughed. Lord Altamont, I am certain, believed (as. multitudes believed) that Ireland would be betteredby the commercial advantages conceded to her as an integral province
of the empire, and would have benefits which, as an independent. kingdom, she had not. It is notorious that this
expectatioan was partially realized. But let us ask, Could
not a large part of these benefits have been secured to Ireland, remaiinig as she was?  Were they, in any sense,
dependent.on the sacrifice of her separate parliament?
For my part, believe that. Mr. Pitt's motive for insisting
on a legislative union was, in a small proportion, perhaps,
the somewhat elevated,dsire to conneet his own name' with
the historical changes of the empire; to have it stamped,
not on.events so fugitive as those of war and peace, liable
to oblivion or eclipse, but on the permanent relations of its
integral parts. In a still larger proportion I believei his
miotive to have been one of pure convenience, the wish to
exonerate. himself from the intolerable vexation of a double
parliament. In a government such as ours, so care-laden
at any rate, it is certainly most:ha'rassing to have the task
of soliciting a measure by management and influence twice
ouver: —two trials to organize, two storms of anxiety to




DUBLIN.                  205
face, and two refractory gangs to discipline, instead of one.
It must also be conceded that no treasury influence could
always avail to prevent injurious collisions between acts of
tle Irish and the British Parliaments. In Dublin, as in
London, the government must lay its account with being
occasionally outvoted; this would be likely to happen peculiarly upon Irish questions. And acts-of favor or protection would at times pass on behalf of Irish interests,
not only clashing with more general ones of the central
government, but indirectly also (through the virtual consolidation of the two islands since the era of steam) opening
endless means for evading British acts, even within their
own separate sphere of operation. On these considerations,
even an Irishman must grant that public convenience called
for the absorption of all local or provincial supremacies
into the central supremacy. And there were two brief
arguments which gave weight to tose considerations: First,
that the evils likely to arise (and which in France have
arisen) from what is termed, in modern politics, the principle of centralization, have been for us either evaded or
neutralized. The provinces, to the very farthest nook of
these "nook-shotten" islands, react upon London as powerfully as London acts upon them; so that no counterpoise is re-,quired with us, as in France it is, to any inordinate influence at,the centre. Secondly, the very pride and jealousy
which could avail to dictate the retention of an independeiqt
parliament would effectually preclude any modern "Poyning's Act," having for its object to prevent the collision of
the local with the central. government. Each would be
supreme within its own sphere, and those spheres could not
but clash. The'separate Irish Parliament was originally n.p
badge of honor or independence: it began in motives of
convenience, cr perhaps necessity, at a period when the
communication was difficult, slow, and interrupted. Any




254           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
parliament, which arose on that footing, it was possible to
guard by a -Poyning's Act, making, in-effect, all laws nul,
which should' happen to contradict the'supreme or central
will. But what law, in a corresponding temper, could
avail to limit the jurisdiction of a parliament which con
fessedly had been retained"on a principle of national hon.
or? Upon every consideration, therefore, of convenience,
and were it only for the necessities of public business, the
absorption of the local into the central parliament had now
come to speak a language that perhaps could no longer be
evaded;. and that Irishman only could consistently oppose
the measure who should take, his stand upon principles
transcending convenience; looking, in fact, singly to the
honor and dignity of a country which it' was annually becoming less absurd to suppose capable of an independent
existence.
Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark.
Refractory as they were, they moved within the paling of
order and decorum; they were not the Titans for a war
against the heavens. When the public feeling beckoned
and loudly supported them, they could follow a lead which
they appeared to head; but they could not create such a
body of public feeling, nor, when created, could-they throw
it into a suitable organization. What they could do, was
simply as ministerial'agents and rhetoricians to prosecute
any general movement, when the national arm had cloven
a channel and opened the road before them. Consequently,
that great opening for a turbulent son of thunder passed
unimproved; and the great day drew near without symptoms of tempest.. At last it arrived; and I remember
nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public
mind as I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial
by comparison,- in London. Lord Westport and I were




DUBLIN.                  255
determined to lose no part of the scene, and we went down
with Lord Altarnont to the house.  It was about the
middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space
about the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up
to the steps of that splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious
hissing and hooting; and I was really agitated to think that
Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably
have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath'
— a situation more terrific to him than to others, from his
embarrassed walking. I found, however,- that I might
have spared my anxiety; the subject of commotion was,
simply, that Major Sirr, or Major Swan, I forget which,
(both being celebrated in those days for their energy, as
leaders of the police,) had detected a person in the act of
mistaking some other man's pocket handkerchief for his
own -a most natural mistake, I should fancy, where people
stood crowded together so thickly. No storm of any kind
awaited us, and yet at' that moment there was no other
arrival to divide the public attention; for, in order that we
might see every thing from first to last, we were amongst
the very earliest parties. Neither did our party escape
under any mistake of the crowd: silence had succeeded to
the uproar caused by the tender meeting between the thief
and the major; and a man, who stood in a conspicuous
situation, proclaimed aloud to those below him, the name
or title of members as they drove up. "That,?" said he,
is the Earl of Altamont; the lame gentleman, I mean."
Perhaps, however, his knowledge did not extend so far as
to the-politics of a nobleman who had taken no violent or
factious part in public -affairs. At least, the dreaded insults did not follow, or only in the very feeblest manifestations.'We entered; and, by way of seeing every thing, we
went even to the robing room. The man who presented
his robes to Lord Altamont seemed to me, of all whom I




256           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
saw on that day, the one who wore the face of deepest depression. But whether this indicated the loss of a lucrative situation, or was really disinterested sorrow, growing
out of a patriotic trouble, at the knowledge that he was
now officiating for the last time, I could not guess. The
House of Lords, decorated (if I remember) with hangings,
representing the. battle of the Boyne, was nearly empty
when we entered —an accident which furnished to Lcrd
Altamont-the opportunity required for-explaining to us the
whole course and ceremonial of public business on ordinary
occasions.
Gradually the house filled; beautiful women sat intermingled amongst the peers; and, in-one party of these, sur.
rounded by a bevy of admirers, we saw our fair but frail
enchantress of the packet. She, on her part, saw and recognized us by an affable nod; no.stain upon her cheek, indicating that she suspected to what extent she was indebted
to our discretion; for it is a proof of the unaffected sorrow
and.the solemn awe which oppressed us both, that we had
not. mentioned even to Lord Altamont, nor ever did mention,.the scene which chance had revealed to us. Next
came.a stir within the house, and an uproar'resounding
from. without, which announced the arrival of his excellency. Entering the house, he also, like the other peers,
wheeled round'to the throne, and made to that mysterious
seat: a profound homage. Then commenced the public
business, in which, if I recollect, the chancellor played'the
most'.conspicuous part-that chancellor (Lord Clare) of.whom;it was affirmed in those days, by a political oppo-'n,,t.that.he might swim in the innocent blood which he
nad.caused-to be shed. But nautical men, I suspect, would
have demurred to that estimate. Then were summoned to
the bar- summoned for the last time -the gentlemen of
the,o.use of Com.mons; in the van of whom, and drawing




DUBLIN.                  257
all eyes upon himself, stood Lord Castlereagh.  Then
came the recitation of many acts passed during the session,
and the sounding ratification, the Jovian
"Annuit, et nutu totum tremefecit Olympum,"
contained in the Soit fait comme il est desire, or the more
peremptory Le roi le veut. At which point in the order;of succession came the royal assent to the union bill I
cannot distinctly recollect.'But one thing I do recollect -.that no audible expression, no buzz, nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless, lay
rankling in many bosoms. Setting apart all public or patriotic considerations, even then I said to myself, as I surveyed the whole assemblage of ermined peers, "How is it,
and by what unaccountable magic, that William Pitt can
have prevailed on all these hereditary legislators and heads
of patrician houses to renounce so easily,' with nothing
worth.the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the
name of an indemnification, the very brightest jewel in
their coronets?  This morning they all rose from their
couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars of the realm
indispensable parties to every law that could pass. To
morrow they will be nobody- men of straw - terra flii.
What madness has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier themselves and their children forever
into mere titular lords? As to' the commoners at the bar,
their case was different: they had no life estate at all
events in their honors; and they might have the same
chance for entering the imperial Parliament amongst the
hundred Irish members as for reintering a native parliament. Neither, again, amongst the- peers was the case
always equal. Several of the.higher had English titles,
which would, at any rate, open the central Parliament tu
their ambitiod. That privilege, in particular, attached' to
17




258.          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Lord Altamont.*  And he, in any case, from his large
property, was tolerably sure of finding his way thither (as
in fact for the rest of his life he did) amongst the twentyeight representative peers. The wonder was in the case
of petty and obscure lords, who had no weight personally
and none in right of their estates. Of these men, as they
were notoriously not enriched by Mr. Pitt, as the distribution of honoirs was not very large, and as no honor could
countervail the one they lost, I could not, and' cannot,
fathom the policy. Thus much I am sure of —that, had
such a measure been proposed by a political speculator
previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have been
scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon
men being generally somewhat- worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights, and without the mess of pottage.
However, on this memorable day, thus it was the union
was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without a
muttering, or awhispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh.'Perhaps there might be a little pause-a silence like that
which follows an earthquake; but there'was no plain-spoken
Lord'Belhaven, as on the corresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with" So, there's an end of an
auld sang! "  All was, or looked courtly, and free from
vulgar emotion. One person only I remarked whose features were suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic
smile, as I read it; which, however, might be all a fancy.
It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at. the moment when the ir
revocable words were pronounced, looked with a penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was
one of that party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his smile had settled. After this I had no
* According. to my remembrance,. he was Baron Mounteagle in thea
English peerage.




DUBLIN.                  259
leisure to be interested in any thing which followed. " You
are all," thought I to myself, "a pack of vagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to be
here than myself. I am an intruder; so are you." Apparently they thought so themselves; for, soon after this solemn fiat of Jove had gone forth, their lordships, having no
further title to their robes, (for which I could not help wishing that a.party of Jewish old clothes men would at this moment have appeared, and made a loud bidding,) made what
haste they could to lay them aside forever. The house
dispersed much more rapidly'than it had assembled. Major Sirr was found outside, just where we left him, lay:.g'down the law (as before) about pocket handkerchiefs to old.
and young practitioners; and all parties adjourned to find
what consolation they might in the great evening event of
dinner.
Thus we were set at liberty, from Dublin. Parliaments,
and installations, and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration of primary splendors,
refex glories that reverberated original glories, at length
had ceased to shine- upon the Irish metropolis. The
"season," as it is called in great cities, was over; unfortunately the last season that was ever destined to illuminate
the society or to stimulate- the domestic trade of Dublin.
It began to be thought scandalous to be found in town;
nobody, in fact, remained, except some two hundred thou-'and people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine;
and in all Ireland there remained nothing at all to attract,
except that whic l no king, and no two houses, can by any
conspiracy. abolish, viz., the beauty of her most verdant
scenery. I speak of that part which chiefly it is that I
know,-the- scenery of the west,-Connaught beyond
other provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other
Iounties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining,




260           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
that Lord Altamont's large estates were situated, the fam
i]y mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. Thither,
as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, in
fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer,
and throughout the magnificences of the capital, at length
we set off by movements as slow and circuitous as those
of any royal progress in the reign of Elizabeth. Making
but siort journeys on each day, and resting always at the
house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunity of seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more
extensively,'and on a more intimate footing, than I had
hoped for. No experience of this kind, throughout my
whole life, so much interested me. In a little work, not
much known, of Suetonius, the most interesting record
which survives of the early Roman literature, it comes out
incidentally that many books, many idioms, and verbal
peculiarities belonging to the primitive ages of Roman culture were to be. found still lingering in the old Roman
settlements, both Gaulish and Spanish, long after they had
become obsolete.(and sometimes unintelligible) in Rome.
From the tardiness and the difficulty of commurnication,
the want of newspapers, &c., it followed, naturally enough,
that th'e distant provincial towns, though not without their
own separate literature' and their own literary professors,
were always two or three generations in the rear of the
metropolis; and thus it happened, that, about the' time of
Augustus, there were some grammatici'in Rome, answering to our black-letter critics, who sought the material
of their researches in Boulogne, (Gessoriacum;) in Aries,
(Arelata,) or in Marseilles, (1Vassilia.)  Now, the old
Irish. nobility- that part, I mean, which might be called
the rural nobility - stood in the same relation to English
manners and.customs. Here might be found old rambling
houses in the style of antique English manorial chateaus.




DUBLIN.                   261
ill planned, perhaps, as regarded convenience and economy, with.long rambling galleries, and windows innumerable, that evidently had never looked for that severe audit
to which. they were afterwards summoned by William
Pitt; but displaying, in the dwelling rooms, a comfort and
" cosiness," combined with magnificence, not always so
effectually attained in modern times.  Here were old
libraries, old butlers, and old customs, that seemed all
alike to belong to the era of Cromwell, or even an earlier
era than his; whilst the ancient names, to one who had
some acquaintance with the great events of Irish history,
often strengthened the illusion. Not that I could pretend
to be -familiar with Irish history as Irish; but as a conspicuous chapter in the difficult policy of Queen Elizabeth, of
-Charles I., and of Cromwell, nobody who had read'the
English history could be a stranger to the O'Neils, the
O'Donnells, the Ormonds, (i. e., the Butlers,) the Inchiquins,
or the De Burghs, and many scores beside. I soon found,
in fact, that.the aristocracy of Ireland might be divided
into two great sections: the native Irish-territorial fixtures, so powerfully described- by Maturin; and those, on
the other hand, who spent so much of their time and revenues at Bath, Cheltenham, Weymouth, London, &c., as
to have become almost entirely English. It was the
former whom we chiefly visited; and I remarked that, in
the midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the
amplest comfort, some of these were conspicuously in the
rear of the English commercial gentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same time an
apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to
interest a stranger profoundly, and to impress themselves
on his recollection.




CHAPTER IX.
FIRST REBELLION.
IN our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground ren.
dered memorable, not only by historical events, but more
recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its
horrors or its calamities. On reaching Westport House,
-we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood which
had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and
which, to the people of England, and still more to the
people of the continent, had offered a character of interest
wanting to the inartificial movements of Father Roche and
Bagenal Harvey.
In the year 1798, there were two great popular insurrections in Ireland.  It'is usual to talk of the Irish
rebellion, as though there had been one rebellion and no
more; but it must satisfy the reader of the inaccuracy
pervading the common reports. of this period, when he
hears that there were two separate rebellions, separate
in time, separate in space, separate by the character of
their events, and separate even as regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in the vernal part
of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexford, in the centre of the kingdom. The second arose in
262




FIRST REBELLION.              263
the autumn, and was confined entirely to the western prov
ince of Connaught. Each, resting (it is true) upon causes
ultimately the same, had yet its own separate occasions
and excitements; for the first arose upon a premature'explosion from a secret society of most subtle organization;
and the second upon the encouragement of a French invasion.  And each of these insurrections had its own
separate leaders and its own local agents.  The first,
though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries
on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also
ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing
causes to rebellion were dotibtless the same in both cases;
but the exciting causes of the moment were different in
each. And, finally, they were divided'by a complete interval of two months.
One very remarkable feature there was, however, in
which these two separate rebellions of 1798 coincided;
and that was,-the narrow range, as to time, within which
each ran its course. Neither of them outran the limits of
one lunar month. It is a fact, however startling, that each,
though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent
in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed
through all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extiiction within one single revolution of the moon. For
all the rebel movements, subsequent to the morning of
Vinegar Hill, are to.be viewed not at all in the light of
manceuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the
light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the
spirit of absolute despair, as regarded the'original pur.
poses of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes
whatever beyond that of instant safety.  The solitary
object contemplated was, to reach some district lonely




2.64          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
en ough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested
dispersion.
A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I
begin with the first. The war of American separation
touched and quickened the dry bones that lay waiting as
it were for life through the west of Christendom. The
year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and the
same year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish
volunteers. These volunteers came forward as allies of
England against French and Spanish invasion; but once
embattled, what should hinder them from detecting a flaw
in their commission, and reading it as valid against England herself? In that sense they did read it. That Ireland had seen her own case dimly reflected in that of
America, and that such a reference was stirring through
the national mind, appears from a remarkable fact in the
history of the year which followed. In 1783, a haughty
petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself
the style and title of a congress. No man could suppose
that a designation so ominously significant had been chosen
by accident; and by the English government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace.
What came next?    The French revolution.  All flesh
moved ugder that inspiration. Fast and rank now began
to germinate the seed sown'for the ten years preceding in
Ireland; too fast and too rankly for the policy that suited
her situation.- Concealment or delay, compromise or temporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by
the.fiery temperament of Ireland, had it not been through
the extraordinary composition of that secret society into
which the management of her affairs now began to de.
volve. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and
in 1795 was finished, the famous. association of United,




FIRST REBELLION.              265
Irishmen. By h.ese terms, commenced and finished, we are
to understand, not the purposes or the arrangements of
their conspiracy against the existing government, hut that
network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and
strong as the harness' of artillery horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting the
strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable di.
visions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795.  In a
complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in proportion
to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediate
links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated,
angd in such nice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards and downwards, laterally or
obliquely, of any impulse whatever; and' yet so effectually
shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or three
individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself,
by whom.he. communicated with those above his head or
below his feet. This organization, in fact, of the United
Irishmen, combined the best features, as to skill, of the
two most elaborate and most successful of all secret societies -recorded in history; one of' which went before the
Irish Society by centuries,: and one followed it after an interval of five-and-twenty years. These two are the Fehme'
Gericht, or c,ourt of ban and extermination, which, having
taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal'of Westphalia, and which reached its full development
in the fourteenth century. The other is- the Hellenistic
IHetseria,.('Etatel).x) ---  a society which, passing for one of
pure literary dilettanti, under the secret countenance of
the late Capo d'Istra, (then a confidential minister of the
czar,) did actually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets
of Europe, that one third of European kings put down




266          -AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
their names, and gave their aid, as conspirators against the
Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing themselves
honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving
the arts and literature'of Athens. -These two I call. the
-most successful of all secret societies, because both were
arrayed against the existing administrations throughout the
entire lands upon which they sought to operate.  The
German society disowned the legal authorities as too weak
for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance of crimes within its own secret yet consecrated
usurpation. The Grecian society made the existing pow
ers the final object of its hostility; lived unarmed amongst
the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicated to the
sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished.
The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts
in the organization of both these secret fraternities,' and
obtained their advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor would the government, though
armed with all the powers of the Dublin police and of state
thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on
the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised
dnd mastered the government, had it not been undermined
by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument
for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is applicable to any cause,
and may be used with much greater effect in an age when
every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers on
a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being
placarded against the walls. This expedient had probably
been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often
placarded, and generally for the bloodiest purposes. But
Louvet, in his "Memoirs," mentions one conducted by
himself on better principles: it was printed at the public




FIRST REBELLION.              267
expense; and sometimes mcr:e than twenty thousand copies
of a single number were attached to the corners of streets.
This was called the " Centinel;" and those who are acquainted with the " Memoirs of Madame.Roland' will remember that she cites Louvet's paperas a model for all of its
class. The " Union Star " vas the paper which the United
Irishmen published upon this plan; previous papers, on the
ordinary plan, viz., the " Northern Star" and the " Press,"
having been violently put down by the government. The
"Union Star," however, it must be acknowledged, did not
seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through
their understandings; it was merely a violent appeal to
their passions, and directed against all who had incurred
the displeasure of the society. Newspapers, meantime, of
every kind, it was easy for the government to suppress.
But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and
all blows.dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed
at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain
generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the
excise; and it is certain that the society was obeyed, in a
degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland.
The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon
the people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which
were then on sale.; and not to receive bank notes in paynent, because (as the proclamation told them) a " burst"
was coming, when such paper, and the securities, for such
purchases, would fall to a ruinous' discount. In this case
after much distress to the public service, government obtained a partial triumph bythe law which cancelled the
debt on a refusal to receive the state paper,' and which
quartered soldiers upon all tradesmen who demurred to
such a tender. But, upon the whole, t was becoming pain
fully evident, that in Ire and there were two coordinate




268           AUTOBlOtTRAP1HIC SKETCHES.
governments coming into collision at every step, and thathe one which more generally:had the upper hand in the
struggle was the secret society of United Irishmen; whose
members individually, and whose local head quarters, were
alike screened from the attacks of its rival, viz., the state
government at the Castle, by a cloud of impenetrable
darkness.
That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak
brother, high in the ranks of the society, and deep in their
confidence, happened, when travelling up to Dublin in com.
pany with a royalist, to speak half mysteriously, half
ostentatiously, upon the delicate position. which he held in
the councils of his dangerous party.  This weak man,
Thomas Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea
Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish,
treasurer for Kildare, and in other offices of trust for the
secret society, was prevailed on by Mr. William Copes a
tich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by pictures
of the horrors attending a revolution under- the circumstances of Ireland, tobetray all he knew to the government.
His treachery was first meditated in the last week of Feb.
ruary, 1798; and, in consequence of his depositions, on
March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the
government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading conspirators. The whole committee ofLeinster, amounting to thirteen members, was captured on this occasion; but' still more valuable prize-was made in the persons of th-ose
who presided over the Irish Directory, viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names
went, their places were immediately filled up; and a handbill was issued, on the same day, with the purpose of in.
tercepting the effects of despondency amongst the great
body of the conspirators. But Enmmet and O'Connor were'not men'to be effectually replaced': government had struck




FIRST REBELLION.               269
a fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own
good luck. On the 19th of May following, in consequence
of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds
for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended
at the.house of Mr:. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance.  The leader of
the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his efiergy, was Wounded by Lord Edward;
and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died
within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for
some time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June,
ftom a pistol shot Which took effect on his shoulder. Lord
Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as an injured man.
-From the exuberant, generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at ah
early-stage of their revolution; and having, with great
indiscretion, but an indiscretion that admitted of some
palliation in so young a man and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy
of one who, on several girounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his powers of selfcontrol, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself
beloved: he had considerable talents; his very name, as. a
son-of the only* ducal' house in Ireland, was a spell ana
a rallying word for a day of battle to the Irish peasantryand, finally, by his marriage with a natural daughter of the
then Duke of Orleans, he had. founded some important con:
nections and openings to secret influence in France. The
* "The only ducal house." —That is, the only one not royal.
There are four provinces in- Ireland - Ulster, Connaught; Munster,
which three give old traditional titles to three personages of the
blood royail Remains only einster, which gives. the- title of duke
to the-Fitzgeralds.




270             AUTOBIO3rRAPHIC SKETCHES.
young lady whom he had married was generally known by
the name of Pamela;; and it has been usually supposed
that she is the person described by Miss Edgeworth, under
the name of Virginia, in.the latter part of'her "B elinda."
How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela was
certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was
said to have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which
seems to argue the seme sort of ignorance, and the same
docility to any chance impressions, which characterize the
Virginia of Miss Edgeworth.   She was a reputed daughter
(as I- have said) of Philippe Egalite; and her putative
mother was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in
that prince's family, as governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present * French king.  Lord
Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity and
noble feeling.'Far better to have pardoned t such a man,
and (if that were.ossible) to have conciliated his support;
* "Present French king."- Viz., in the year 1833.
t "To havepardoned," &c. — This was written under circumstances
of- great hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusably thoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far the
government could have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudential sense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizing drama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain
limits a very influential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending
to treason, and at war with the constitutional system of the land which
fed him and which claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point
of prudence or in point of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilst neither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowedl
Was this possible, regard being thad to the inevitable effect of such
unearned forgiveness upon the army at large? But secondly, in a
merely logical sense of practical self-consistency, would it have been
rational or even intelligible to pardon a man who probably would not
be pardoned; that is, who must (consenting or not consenting) benefit
by the concessions of the pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal
obligations X




FIRST REBELLION.              271
but, says a contemporary Irishman, " those were not times.of conciliation.
Some days after this event were arrested the two broth-.
ers.named Shearer, men of talent, who eventually suffered
for treason. These discoveries were due to treachery of a
peculiar sort; not to the treachery of an apostate brother
breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brother simulating
th echaracter of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaining a
key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy, therefore, consisted,.not' in any betrayal of secrets,
but in the fraud by which he obtained them. Government,
without having yet penetrated to the very heart of the.mystery, had now discovered enough to guide:them in their.
most energetic precautions; and the result was, that the
conspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the
cooperation of a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that;policy: their fear was, that the ground would be
cut from beneath their feet if they waited any longer. More
wvas evidently risked by delay than by dispensing altogether
with'foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to wait
for.it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence
the insurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract the. government, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all the military posts-,in the neighborhood of
Dublin. This plan was discovered, but.scarcely, in time to
prevent -the effects of a surprise. On the 21st, late in the
evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lord
lieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day,'by a message from his excellency to. both
Houses:of Parliament.
The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, began at the appointed hour.' The skirmishes were
many, and in many places; but, generally speaking, they
were not favorable in their results to the insurgents. The




272           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan, had all
been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understood by the conspirators as a silent signal that the war
had commenced. Yet this summons to the more distant
provinces, though truly interpreted, had not been truly
answered. The communication between the capital and
the interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been
at length fully restored; and a few days saw the main
strength (as it was supposed) of the insurrection suppresses
without much- bloodshed. But hush! what is that in the
rear?
Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to
think the whole affair quietly composed, the flame burst
out with tenfold fury in a part of the country from which
government, with some reason, had turned away their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county of Wexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the
government as so entirely well affected to the loyal cause,
that he had personally pledged himself for its good conduct.
On the night before Whitsunday, however, May 27, the
standard of revolt was there raised by John Murphy, a
Catholic priest, well known henceforwards under the title
of Father Murphy.
The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists.
The rebels. had posted themselves on two eminencesKilthomas, about ten miles to the westward of Gorey; and
the Hill of Oulart, half way (i. e., about a dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at each
point on Whitsunday. From the first point they were
driven easily, and with considerable loss; but at Oulart the
issue was very different. Father Murphy commanded here
in person; and, finding that his men gave way in great.
confusion before a picked body of the North Cork. militia,
under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived te




FIRST REBELLION.              273
persuade them that their flight was leading them right upon
a body of royal cavalry posted to intercept their retreat.
This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through
a. prejudice natural to inexperience, had an unreasonable
dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about
to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came
of necessity, and without design; full upon their pursuers,
whom unhappily the. intoxication of victory had by this
time brought into the most careless. disarray. These, al.
most to a man, the rebels annihilated-: universal consternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led
them- to Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy.
Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the
sudden burst- the explosion, one might say- ly which a
Swedish winter passes into spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptre of winter does not
there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it is broken,
it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence
brought home to every sense. No second type of resurrection,.so mighty or so affecting, is manifested by.nature in
southern: climates.  Such is the headlong tumult, such
"the torrent rapture," by which life is let loose amongst
the air, the earth, and the waters under the earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is- in manifestations of
power and life, by comparison with climates that: have no
winter, such, and marked with features as distinct, was
this Irish insurrection; when. suddenly surrendered to the
whole contagion of politico-religious fanaticism, by comparison with vulgar martinet strategics and the pedantry
of. technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy
have presented on the 27th of May'! Fugitives, crowding
in from Ferns, announced the rapid advance of the rebels,
now, at least, 7000 strong, drunk with victory, and mad.
dened with vindictive fury. Not long after midday, their
18




274           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
advanced guard, well:armed with muskets, (pillaged, be it
observed, from  royal magazines hastily deserted,) commenced a tumultuous assault..Less than 300 militia. and
yeomanry formed the garrison of the,place, which had no
sort of defences.except the natural one of the River Slaney.
This, however, was fo'rdable, and that the assailants knew.
The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from the little
caution they exhibited, and their total defect of military
skill, was murderous... Spite.of their immense numerical
advantages, it is probable they would have been defeated.
But in Enniscorthy, (as where not?) teason from within
was emboldened to raise its crest at the very crisis of suspense;' incendiaries were at work; and'flames began to
issue from -many houses at once. Retreat itself became
suddenly doubtful, depending, as it did;, altogether upon
the state of the wind. At the right ha-nd of every royalist
stood a traitor; in his own house oftentimes lurked other.traitors, waiting for the signal to begih; in the front was.the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing'streets.
Three hours the'battle had raged;; it was now four,:P. M.,,and at this,moment the garrison'hastily.gave way, and fled,to Wexford.
Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct.or
separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All
4the.loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around,
who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security,
were summoned at that moment, not to'an orderly retreat,.but to instant flight. At one end of the:street were seen
the rebel pikes; and bayonets, and fierce faces, already
~gleaming through the smoke; at the other.end, volumes of,fire, surging and'billowing from the thatched roofs and.blazing rafters, beginning-to block up the avenues of escape.
Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is
worst and what is best in human' nature. Then was to be




FIRST REBELLION.      2"75
jeen the very delirium of -fear, and the: very dblirium of'
vindictive; malice; private- and' ignoble hatred, of ancient
origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic: wrath; the
tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs
and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal. degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess;
flight,, eager' or stealthy, according to' the temper and the
means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation,
under- every mode of excitement; and; here and there,
towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious
and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and
gather. under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reported by those who were on that day present in
Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and deeply interested.
in all those transactions, I had private; friends, intimate
participators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and'joinv
sufferers with. those who suffered.. most. Ladies were ther
seen in. crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the' nearest
asylum, though fourteen miles distant,- many in slippers,
bareheaded, and without any supporting arm; for the
flight of their defenders, having been determined by a
sudden angular movement of the assailants, coinciding with
the- failure of their own ammunition, had' left. no: time foi
warning; and" fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives,
that the confusion of burning streets, concurring with the
seductions of pillage, drew aside so many of the victors as.
to break. the unity of a pursuit else- hellishly unrelenting.'Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more!
than, a momentary shelter. Orders had been already issued
to extinguish all' domestic fires throughout the town, and to
unroof all the thatched houses; so great was the jealousy
of. internal treason. From without, also,. the alarm was
every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the
rebel. army advanced from Enniscorthy to' a. post; called




276           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Three Rocks, not much: above two miles from Wexford
Their strength was now increased to at least 15,000 men
Never was there a case requiring more energy in thedisposers of the royal forces; never one which met with less,
even in the most responsible quarters. The nearest military
station was the fort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles
distant. Thither, on the 29th, an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting their situation,
and calling immediate aid. -General Fawcet replied, that
he would himself march that same evening with the 13th
-regiment,. part of the Meath militia, and sufficient artillery.
Relying upon, these assurances, the small parties of militia
and yeomanry then in Wexford gallantly threw themselves
upon the most trying services in advance. Some companies
of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men,
marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp
and Wexford; whilst others-of the North Cork militia and
the local yeomanry, with equal cheerfulness, undertook the
defence of that town.  Meantime, General Fawcet had
consulted his personal comfort by halting for the night,
though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteen
miles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however,
with part of his artillery,' he sent forward'; these were the
next morning intercepted by the rebels at Three Rocks,
and massacred almost to a man. Two officers, who escaped
the slaughter, carried the intelligence to the advanced post
of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened,
marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as
was the disproportion, with the.purpose of recapturing the
artillery. A singular contrast this to the conduct'of General
Fawcet, who retreated hastily to Duncannon upon the first
intelligence of this disaster. Such a regressive movement
v as so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they
coatinued to advance against the enemy, until' the precision




FIRST REBELLION.              277
with which the captured artillery was served against them-,
selves, and the non-appearance  of the promised aid,
warned them to retire. At Wexford, they found all in
confusion and the hurry of retreat. The flight, as it n.ay
be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and, as
the. local position of Wexford made it indefensible against
artillery,.the whole body of loyalists, except those whom
insufficient warning'had thrown into the rear, now fled
from the wrath of the rebels to Duncannon.  It is a
shocking illustration (if truly reported) of the thoughtless
ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops,
that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to
burn the cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre.
in cold -blood, the unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful
of the many hostages whom the insurgents now. held in
their power, and careless of the dreadful provocations which
they were thus throwing out to the bloodiest reprisals.
Thus it'was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or through torpor thus unaccountably base,
that actually, on the 30th of May, not having raised their
standard before the 26th, the rebels had already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford in
its whole southern division -Ross and Duncannon only
excepted; of which the latter was not liable to capture by
coup de main, and the other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern division of the county
was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style, and
through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of
plans. Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels
had taken up a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station
from which they could march with advantage upon the town
of Gorey, lying seven miles to the northward. On the 1st
of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place between a
mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of




278           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Gorey and a strong detachment from the rebel camp.
Many persons at the time regarded this as the best fough
action in the whole war. The two parties had met about
two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain that, if the
yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at
the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most
murderous one to the rebels. As it was, they escaped,
though with considerable loss of honor.' Yet even this they
were allowed to retrieve within a few days, in a remarkable
way, and with circumstanees of still greater scandal to the
military discretion in high quarters than had attended the
movements of General Fawcet in the south.
On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under
the command of Major General Loftus, had assembled at
Gorey. The plan was, to march by two different roads
upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and this plan
was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel
army had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this
counter movement full and timely information had been
given by a farmer at the royal head quarters; but such
was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer of rank would
condescend to give him a hearing. The consequences may
be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of
courage, but presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led
a division upon one of the two roads; having no scouts, nor
taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly he found his line
of march crossed by the enemy in great- strength: he refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head;- and
a great part of the advanced' detachment was slaughtered
on the spot, and his artillery captured. General Loftus,
advancing on the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim militia to the
aid of Walnole. These, to the amount of seventy men
were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who




FIRST REBELLION.              279
0ould not cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the encumbrance of his'aTtillery, had at length
reached the scene of action by a long circuit, he found
himself in the following truly ludicrous position: The
rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey,
and possessed therdselves of that. place; the general had
thus lost his head quarters, without having seen the army
whom he had suffered to slip past him; in the dark.  Hee
marched back disconsolately to Gorey, took a look at the
rebel posts which now occupied- the town in strength, was
saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally
retreated out of the county.
This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one
of General Fawcet, circumstantially illustrate the puerile
imbecility with which the royal cause was then conducted.
Both movements. foundered in an hour, through surprises,
against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately for the government,, the affairs of the rebels were
managed even worse. Two sole enterprises were under-.
taken by them after this, previously to the closing battle
of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmost importance
to their interests, and both sure of success if they had been
pushed forward ii time. The first was'the attack upon
tRoss,- undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the
3apture -of Enniscorthy. Had: that attack been pressed
borward without delay, there never were two opinions as to
he. certainty of its success;:and, having succeeded, it
Aould have laid open to the rebels the important counties
of Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th
of June, the assault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter.
The other was the attack upon-Arklow, in the north. On
the capture of Gorey, on the night of June 4, as the imlnediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat, had the eb
els: advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it fo




280           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SIITCHES.
some -days totally undefended; the whole garrison having
retreated in panic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important place would have laid open the whole
road to the capital; would probably have caused a rising in
that great city; and, in any event, would have' indefinitely
prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination, however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th,
and then advanced with what seemed the overpowering
force of 27,000 men. It is a striking lesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on that morning of
June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless.  Until
then,, the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitahts whatsoever. Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison
had been ordered back from Wicklow, and reinforced by
a crack English regiment, (the Durham  Fencibles,) on
whom   chiefly at this -critical hour had devolved the
defence, which was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but brilliant, masterly, and perfectly
successful.
This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow
was indeed, by general consent, the hinge on which the
rebellion turned. Nearly 30,000 men, armed every man
of them with. pikes, and 5000 with muskets, supported
also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to do considerable execution at a most important point in the line
of defence, could not be defeated without a very trying
struggle. And here, again, it is worthy of record, that
General Needham, who commanced on this day, would
have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus,
and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately
opposed by Colonel Skerret, of the Durham  regiment.
Much was the -imbecility, and'the want of moral courage,
on the part of the military leaders; for it would be unjust




FIRST REBELLION.                281
to impute any defect in animal courage to the feeblest of
these leaders.  General Needham, for exanple, exposed
his person, without reserve; throughout the whole of this
difficult day. Any amount of cannon shot he could face
cheerfully, but not a trying responsibility.
From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired,
between the 9th and the 20th of June, to their main military position of Vinegar Hill, which lies immediately above
the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen into their hands,
concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here
their whole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000,
who attacked General Moore (ten and a half years later,
the Moore of Corunna) when marching on the 26th
towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to- this
point, therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13,000
strong, with a respectable artillery, under the supreme
command of General.Lake, converged in four separate
divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June. The great
blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that
the royal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position
upon four lines at right* angles to each other, (as if, for
instance, from the four cardinal points to the same centre,)
should surround their encampment, and shut up every
avenue to escape.  On this plan, the field of battle would
have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter'was not
granted on either side.*  But the quadrille, if it were ever
* "For quarter was not granted on either side." - I repeat, as all
Clong and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told
at the time, or which subsequently I.have read in published accounts.
But the reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction,
that more easily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than
a reporter, fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and
that partisanship representing ancient and -hereditary feuds, could by
possibility cleanse himself from the virus of such a prejudice.




282            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
seriously concerted, was entirely defeated by the failure of
General Needham, who did not present himself with his
division unti nine o'clock, a full half hour after the battle
was over, andt thus earned the sobriquet of the late  General Needham. Whether the failure were really in this
officer, or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been
already preconcerted in the inconsistent orders issued to
him by General Lake, with the covert intention, as many
believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme of
wholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure.  The
effect of that delay, in whatever way caused, was for once
such as must win every body's applause. The action had
commenced at seven o'olock in the morning; by half past
eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturally
making for the only point left unguarded, it' escaped with
no great slaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and
a good deal of valuable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards Needham's -Gap.  A'fter
this' capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel army day by
day mouldered away.    A  large body, however, of the
fiercest. and most desperate continued for some time to
makel flying marches in all directions, according to the
positions of the king's forces and the momentary favor of
accidents.  Once or twice they were brought to action by
Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously
enough, once,: more they were suffered to escape'by
the eternal delays of the "late Needham."   At length,
however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of local
* The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's' brother. When first
lord of the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even' 10 or 11,
P. M;, Were told.that his lordship was- riding in the park. On this account, partly, but more pointedly with a" malicious reference to the
contrast between his languor and the fiery activity of his father, the
first earl, he was locularly called the late Lord Chatham.




FIRST REBELLION.              283
success, they finally dispersed- upon a bog in the county
of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however took up their
quarters for a long time in the dwarf woods of Killaughrim,
near E-nniscorthy, assuming the trade of marauders, but
ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood.
It is an'inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the
militia regimehts, who had behaved well throughout the'
campaign, and adhered faithfully to their colors, now re.
sorted to this confederation of.the woods'; from which it
co'st some trouble to dislodge them. Another party, in the
woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more
formidable, and continued to infest the adjacent country
through the ensuing winter. These were not finally ejected'
from their lairs until after one of their chiefs had been
killed in a night skirmish by-a young man defending his
house, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had
surrendered himself to transportation.
It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that,
on'the very day before the final engagement of Vinegar
Hill, Lord Cornwallis made his'entry into Dublin as the
new lord lieutenant.  A  proclamation, issued early in
July, of general. amnesty to all who had shed no blood
except on the field of battle, notified to the country'the
new spirit of policy which now distinguished the governiment; and, doubtless, that one merciful change worked
marvels in healing the agitations of the land. Still it was
thought necessary that severe justice should take its course
amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in the insurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and'under that
law we know, through a speech of the Duke of Wellington's, how entirely the very elements of justice are dependent upon individual folly or caprice. Many of those who
had shown the. greatest generosity, and with no slight risk
-^ themselves, were now selected  suffer. Bagenal Har



284            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKE PCHES.
vey, a Protestant gentleman, who had held the supreme
command of the rebel -army for some time with infinite
ve'xation to himself, and taxed with no one instance of
cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed to execution.
He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand per
annum; and at, the same time with him was executed another gentleman, of more,than three times that estate,
Cornelius Grogan.  Singular'it was, that men of this condition and property, men of'feeling and refinement, should
have staked the happiness of their families upon a contest
so forlorn.'Some there were, however, and possibly these
gentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelli.
gibly enough: they had- been forced by persecution, and
actually baited into the ranks of the rebels.  One picturesque difference in the deaths of these two gentlemen was
remarkable, as contrasted with'their previous habits. Grogan was'constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaffold and the trying preparations of the'executioner with
fortitude.  On the other hand, Bagenal Harvey, who had
fought several duels with coolness, exhibited considerable
trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, in both, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accident
of health'or momentary nervous derangement.*
* iPerhaps also not. Possibly enough there may be no call for any
such exceptional solution; for, after all,, there may be nothing to
solve - no dignus vindice nodus. As regards the sudden interchange
of characters on-the scaffold,- the constitutionally brave man all at
ance becoming timid, and the timid man becoming brave, - it must be.
remembered, that the particular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger is much more of a fugitive and momentary
order than that which invests a battle lasting for hours, depends
almost entirely upon a man's confidence in his own luck -a pecu.
liarity of mind which exists altogether apartfrom native resources of
courage, whether moral or physical: usually this moce of courage is
but a transformed expression for a sanguine, temperament. A man




FIRtST REBELLION.                  285
Among th. crowd, however, of persons who suffered
death at this disastrous era, there were two that merit a
special commemoration for their virtuous resistance, in disrbgard of all personal risk, to a horrid fanaticism of cruelty.
One was a butcher, the other a seafaring man-both rebels.  But they must have been truly generous, brave, ard
who is habitually depressed by a constitutional taint of despondency
may carry into a duel a sublime principle of calm, self-sacrificing
courage, as being possibly utterly without hope - a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internal resistance, to which there may
be nothing corresponding in a cheerful temperament.'But there is another and separate agency through which the
fear of death may happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewed in relation to moral courage and strength of- mind.
This anomalous force is the imaginative and shadowy terror with
which different minds recoil from death - not considered as an agony
or torment, but considered as a mystery, and, next after God, as the
most infinite of mysteries. In a brave man this terror may happen
to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and
original feebleness of imagination, may happen to be" scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating between death as an agony
and death as a mystery, not only exists with a corresponding set of con
sequences accordingly as one or other prevails, but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales of comparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Caesars reviewed the
case thus: " Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil cestumo: From death as
the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death, viewed as a
permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw." What this
-particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, was death
the agony - death the physical torment. As to death the mystery,
want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed that
of its terrors for himr. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there.
who face the mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference!
But'death the mystery,- death that, not satisfied with changing our
objective, may attack even the roots of our subjective, - there lies the
mute, ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is
abashed, even as all human resistance becomes childish when measur.
ing itself against gravitation.




286           AUTOBIOGRA'"PHIC SKXETCHES.
noble-minded men.' Duri.g, the occupation of Wexford by
the rebel army, they were repeatedly the sole opponents,
at: great personal risk, to the general massacre then meditated. by some few Popish.bigots.- And, finally, when allb
resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both demanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious
policy that he should fight themselves, armed in whatever
way he might prefer, and, as they expressed it, "prove
himself a man," before he should be at liberty to sport in
this wholesale way with innocent blood.
One painfulfact I will state in taking leave of this subiect; and that, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain
any thing I have said in disparagerment of the government;
by. which, however, I mean, in justice, the local administrationr of Ireland. For, as to the supreme government in
England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to
have passively acquiesced in the recommendations of the
Irish cabinet, even when it interfered so far. In particular,. the scourgings and flagellations resorted to in.Wexford
and Kildare, &c., must have — been originally suggested by
minds familiar with the habits of the Irish aristocracy in
the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admit
that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in
coffee houses or other menial dependants,-a habit which,
in England, would be met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery, -is not yet altogether; obsolete in Ireland.* Thirty years ago it- was still more
prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in the
treatment of menial dependants,. ou f which, doubtless.
arose the practice of judicial (i. e., tentative) flagellations.
Meantime, that fact with which I propcsed to close my rec.
ollections of this great tumult, and which seems to be a
* n Not yet altogether obsolete." — Written in 1833




FIRST REBELLION.              287
sufficient guaranty for the very severest reflections on the
spirit of the government, is expressed significantly in the
terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in
prudeptial exculpation of themselves, when threatened with
inquiry for their conduct during these times of agitation.
"I thank my God that no man can charge me justly with
having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house from
pillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs."  How!
Did men boast of collusion with violencq and the spirit of
massacre! What did that mean? It meant this: Some
Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleadedi truly, as a reason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence
which might belong to them, on the score of religion or of
private friendship, with the rebel! authorities, had been used
by them on behalf' of persecuted Protestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their doom. But,
to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from
being entertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on
the contrary, an argument was built upon it, dangerous in,
the last degree to the pleader.  You admit, then," it was
retorted, "having had this very considerable influence
upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the
saving of lives; in that case we must suppose you to have
beent known, privately as their friend and supporter."
Thus to have delivered an innocent' man from murder, argued that thie deliverer must have been an accomplice of
the murderous party. Readily it may be' supposed that
few would be disposed to urge such a vindication, when it
becamne kncwn in what way it was likely to operate. The
government itself had made it perilous to profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in' his
callousnesqs and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to
himself on a path so closely beset with rocks.




CHAPTER X.
FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND
REBELLION.
THE decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at mid.
summer; and with that battle terminated the First Rebellion. Two months later, a French force, not making fully
a thousand men, under the command of General Humbert,
landed on the west coast of Ireland, and again roused the
Irish peasantry to insurrection. This latter insurrection,
and the invasion which aroused it, naturally had a peculiar
interest for Lord Westport and myself, who, in our present
abode of Westport House, were living in its local centre.
I, in particular, was led, by hearing on every side the
conversation reverting to the dangers and tragic incidents
of the era, separated from us by not quite two years, to
make inquiries of every body who had personally participated in the commotions. Records there were on every
side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, of this French
visit; for, at one time, they had occupied Westport House
in-some strength. The largest town in our neighborhood
was Castlebar, distant about eleven Irish miles. To this it
was that the' French addressed their very earliest efforts.
Advancing rapidly, and with their usual style of theatrical
confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of success
288




SECOND REBELLION.             289
which was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity,
and which, long afterwards, became a subject-of bitter
mortification to our own army. Had there been at this
point any energy at all corresponding to that of the enemy,
or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of our own
troops in steadiness, the French would have been compelled
to lay down their arms. The experience of those days,
however,-showed how deficient is the finest composition
of an army, unless where its martial qualities have been
developed by practice; and how liable is all courage, when
utterly inexperienced to sudden panics. This gasconading
advance, which would have foundered utterly against a
single battalion of the troops which fought in 1812-13
amongst the Pyrenees, was here for the moment successful.
The bishop of this see, Dr. Stock, with his whole household, and, indeed, his whole pastoral charge, became, on
this occasion, prisoners to the enemy. The republican
head quarters were fixed for a time in the episcopal palace; and there. it was that General Humbert and his staff
lived in familiar intercourse with the bishop, who thus
became well qualified to record (which he soon afterwards
did in an anonymous pamphlet) the leading circumstances
of the French incursion, and the consequent insurrection in
Connaught, as well as the most- striking features in the
character and deportment of the republican officers. Riding over the scene of these transactions daily for some
months, in company with Dr. Peter Browne, the Dean of
Ferns, (an illegitimate son of the late Lord Altamont,.and,
therefore, half brother to the present,) whose sacred character had not prevented him. from taking that military part
which seemed, in those difficult moments, a duty of ele.
mentary patriotism laid upon all alike, I enjoyed many
opportunities for checking the statements of the bishop.
The small body of French.troop.s which undertook this
19




290           AUTOBit,GRAPHIC SKETCHES.
remote' service had been detached in one half from the
army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign
of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern
Italy. Those from Germany showed, by their lbooks and
their meagre condition, how much they had suffered;; and
some of them, in describing their hardships, told their Irish
acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had
occurred in the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in
holes made four feet below the surface of the snow. One
officer declared solemnly that he hadd' not once undressed,
further than by taking off his coat, for a period of twelve
months. The private soldiers had all the essential qualities
fitting them for a difficult and trying service: "' intelligence,
activity, temperance, patience to a surprising degree, together w.ith the exactest discipline."' This is the statement of
their candid and' upright' enemy. " Yet," says tte bishop,
"with all these martial qualities, if you except the grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature,
for the most part, was low, their complexionr pale and
yellow, their clothes much the worse for wear: to a superficial observer, they Would have appeared incapable of
enduring any hardship. These were the men, however,
of whom it was presently observed, that they could';  e well
contdnt to Iiveo on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to
make- the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in
their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven.'
"How vast," says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!'
and, by a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is'the' strength that descends upon the feeble through Temperance!
It may well be imagined in what terror the families of
Killalla heard of a French invasion, and the necessity of
immediately receiving a republican army. As sans culottes




SECOND REBELLION.               2991
these men,-all over Europe, had.the reputation of pursuing
a ferocious marauding policy; in fact, they were held little
better than sanguinary brigands.. In candor, it-must be
admitted that their conduct at Killala belied these reports;
though, on the other hand, an obvious interest obliged them
to a more pacific demeanor in a land which they saluted as
friendly, and designed to raise into extensive insurrection.
The French army, so much dreaded, at length' arrived.
The general and his staff entered the palace; and the first.act of one officer, on coming into the dining room, was to
advance to the sideboard, sweep all the plate into a basket,
and deliver it to the bishop's butler, with a charge to carry
it off to a place of security.
The French officers, with the detachment left under their
orders by the commander-in-chief, staid about one month
at Killala. This period allowed opportunities enough for
observing individual differences of character and the gen:
eral tone of their manners.'These:opportunities were not
thrown'away upon the bishop; he noticed with a critical
eye, and he recorded on the spot, whatever fell within'his
own experience. Had he, however, happened, to be. a
political or courtier bishop, his record,would, perhaps,
have been suppressed; and, at any rate, it would have.been colored by prejudice. As it was, I believe it to.have
*'As this happened to be the truth, the bishop did right to report
it. Otherwise, his lordship does not seem to have had much acquaintance with the French scenical mode of arranging their public acts
for purposes of effect. Cynical people (like myself, when looking
back to this anecdote'from the year 1833) were too apt to.remark
that this -plate and, that basket were carefully numbered;;that the
episcopal butler (like Pharaoh's) was liable, alas.! to be hanged in
case the plate were not forthcoming on a summons from head
quarters; and that the Killala "place of security" was kindly'strengthened, under the maternal anxiety of the French republic, by
-doubUng:the French sentries.




292           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
been the honest testimony of an honest man; and, con
sidering the minute circumstantiality of its delineations, I
do not believe, that, throughout the revolutionary war, any
one document was made public which. throws so much
light on the quality and composition of the French republican armies. On this consideration I shall extract a few
passages from the bishop's personal sketches.
The commander-in-chief of the French armament is
thus delineated by the bishop:" Humbert, the leader of this singular body of men, was
himself as extraordinary a personage as any in his army.
Of a good height and shape, in the full vigor of life, prompt
to decide, quick in execution, apparently master of his art,
you could not refuse him the praise of a good officer, while
his physiognomy forbade you to like him as a man. His
eye, which was small and sleepy, cast a sidelong glance
of insidiousness and even'of-cruelty; it was the eye of a
cat preparing to spring upon her prey. His education and
manners were indicative of a person sprung from the lower
orders of. society; though he knew how to assume, when
it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. For
learning, he had scarcely enough to enable him to write
his name. His passions were furious; and all his be,
havior seemed marked with the character of roughness and
insolence. A narrower observation of him, however, seemed
to discover that much of this roughness was' the result of
art, being assumed with the view of extorting by terror a
ready compliance with his commands. Of this truth the
bishop himself was one of the first who had occasion to be
made sensible."
The particular occasion here alluded to by the bishop
arose out of the first attempts to effect the disembarkation of
the military stores and equipments from the French shipping, as also to foiward them when landed. The case, was




SECOND REBELLION               293
one )f extreme urgency;. and proportionate allowance
must be made for the French general. Every moment
might bring the British cruisers in sight,-two important
expeditions had already been baffled in that way, - and the
absolute certainty known to all parties alike, that delay,
under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin; that
upon a difference of ten or fifteen minutes, this way or that,
might happen to hinge the whole issue of the expedition:
such a consciousness gave unavoidably to every demur
at this critical moment the color of treachery. Neither
boats, nor carts, nor horses could be obtained; the owners
most imprudently and selfishly retiring from that service.
Such being the extremity, the French. general made the.
bishop responsible for the execution of his orders; but the
bishop had really no means to enforce this commission,
and failed. Upon that, General Humbert threatened to
send his lordship, together with.his whole family, prisoners
of war to France, and assumed the air of a man violently
provoked. Here came the crisis for determining the bishop's
weight amongst his immediate flock, and his hold upon
their affections. One great bishop, not far off, would, on
such a trial, have been exultingly consigned to his fate:
that I well know; for Lord Westport and I, merely as his
visitors, were attacked in the dusk so fiercely with stones,
that we were obliged to forbear going out unless. in broad
daylight.'Luckily the Bishop of Killala had shown'himself
a Christian pastor, and now he reaped the fruits of his
goodness.  The public selfishness gave way when the
danger of the bishop was made known. The boats, the
carts, the horses were now'liberally brought in fr6m their
lurking-places; the artillery and stores were landed; apd
the drivers of. the carts, &c., were paid in drafts upon the
Irish Directory, which (if it were an aerial coin) served at
least to mark an unwillingness in' the enemy to adopt




294           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
violent md' es of hostility, and ultimately became available in
the very character assigned to them by the French general;
not, indeed, as drafts upon the rebel, but as claims upon
the equity of the English government.
The officer left in command at Killala, when the presence of the commander-in-chief was required elsewhere,
bore the name of Charost. He was a lieutenant colonel,
aged forty-five years, the son of a Parisian watchmaker.
Having been sent over at an early age to the unhappy
Island of St. Domingo, with a view to some connections
there by which he hoped to profit, he had been fortunate
enough to marry a young woman who brought him      a
plantation for her dowry, which was reputed to have yielded him a revenue of -2000 sterling per annum. But this,
-of course, all went to wreck in ooe'day, upon that mad
decree of the French convention which proclaimed liberty,'without distinction, without restrictions, and without gradations, to the unprepared and ferocious negroes.*  Even his
~wife and daughter would have perished simultaneously with'his property'but for English protection, which delivered:them from the black sabre,'.and transferred them to Jamaica.
There, however, though safe, they were, as respected Col-'onel Charost, unavoidably captives; and ";his eyes would
fill," says the bishop,' when he told the ifamily that he had
not seen these dear relatives for sii years past, nor even
had tidings of them for the last three years."  On his'return to France, finding'that to have been a watchmaker?
son was no longer a bar to the -honors of the military profession, he had entered the army, and had risen by merit to
* I leave this passage as it was written originally under an impression then universally current. But, from what I have since read
on this subject, I beg to be considered as speaking very doubtfully on
the true causes of the St. Domingo disasters.




SECOND REBELLION.              295
the rank which he now held. "He had a plain, good understanding. He seemed careless or doubtful of revealed religion, but said that he believed in God;' was inclined to
think that there must be a future state; and was very sure
that, while he lived in this world, it was his duty to do all
the good'to his fellow-creatures that he could. Yet what
he did not exhibit in his own conduct he appeared to respect
in others; for he took care that no noise or disturbance
should be made in the castle (i. e., the bishop's palace) on
Sundays, while the family, and many Protestants from the
town, were assembled in the library at their devotions.
"Boudet, the next in command, was a captain of foot,
twenty-eight years old. His father, he said, was still living, though sixty.seven years old when he was born. His
height was six feet two inches. In person, complexion, and,
gravity, he was no inadequate representation of the Knight
of La Mancha, whose example he followed in a recital of
his own prowess and wonderful -exploits, delivered in measured language and an imposing seriousness of aspect."
The bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer
was- Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively
and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering a
i'outrance. "He was hardy," says the bishop, "and patient to- admiration of labor and want of rest."  And of
this last quality the following wonderful illustration is
given.: "A'continued watching of five days and nights
together, when the rebels were growing desperate for prey
and mischief, did not appear to sink his spirits in the
smallest degree."
Contrasting with the known rapacity of the French republican army in all its ranks the severest honesty of these
particular officers, we must come to the conclusion, either
that they had bees selected for their tried qualities of




i96           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
abstinence and self-control, or else that the perilous tenure
of their footing in Ireland had coerced them into forbearance.
Of this same Ponson, the last described, the bishop declares
that "he was strictly honest, and could not bear-the absence
of,this quality in others; so that his patience was pretty
well tried by his Irish allies."  At the same time, he expressed his contempt for religion in a way which the bishop
saw reason for ascribing to vanity -" the miserable affectation of appearing worse than he really was." One officer
there was, named Truc, whose brutality recalled the impression, so disadvantageous to French republicanism, which
else had been partially effaced by the manners and conduct
of his comrades. To him the bishop (and not the bishop
only, but many of my own informants, to whom Truc had
been familiarly known) ascribes "a fiont of brass, an
incessant fraudful smile, manners altogether.vulgar, and in
his dress and person a neglect of cleanliness, even beyond
the affected negligence of republicans."
True, however, happily, was not leader; and the prin.
ciples or the policy of his superiors prevailed. To them,
not merely in their own conduct, but also in their way o0
applying that influence which they held over their moss
bigoted allies, the, Protestants of Connaught were under
deep obligations. Speaking merely as to property, the honest bishop renders. the following justice to the enemy:
":And here it would be an act of great injustice to the
excellent discipline constantly maintained by these invaders
while they remained in our town, not to remark, that, with
every temptation to plunder, which the time ahd the number
of valuable articles within their reach presented to them in
the bishop's palace, from a sideboard of plate and glasses
a hall filled with hats, whips, and greatcoats, as well of the
guests as of the family, not a single parti ular. of private
property was found to have been carried away, when the




SECOND REBELLION.             297
owners, after the first fright, came to look for their effects,
which was not for a day or two after the landing."  Even
in matters of delicacy the same forbearance was exhibited:
"Beside the entire use of other apartments, during the
stay of the French in Killala, the attic story, containing a
library and three bed chambers, continued sacred to the
-bishop and his family. And so scrupulous was the delicacy
of the French not to disturb the female part of the house,
that not one of them was ever seen to go higher than the
middle floor, except on the evening of the success at
Castlebar, when two officers begged leave to carry to -the
family the news of the battle; and seemed a little mortified that the news was received with an air of dissatisfaction."  These, however, were not the weightiest instances of that eminent service which the French had it in
their power to render on this occasion. The royal army
behaved ill in every sense. Liable to continual panics in
the field,- panics which, but for the overwhelming force
accumulated, and the discretion of Lord Cornwallis, would
have been fatal to the good cause,-the royal forces erred
as unthinkingly, in the abuse of any momentary triumph.
Forgetting that the rebels held many hostages in their hands,
they once recommenced the old system practised in Wexford and Kildare- of hanging and shooting without trial,
and without a thought_ of the horrible reprisals that might
be adopted. These reprisals, but for the fortunate influence
of the French commanders, and but for their great energy
in applying that influence according to the exigencies of
time and place, would have been made:: it cost the whole
weight of the French power, their influence was stretched
almost to breaking, before they could accomplish their purpose of neutralizing the senseless cruelty of the royalists,
and of saving the trembling Protestants. Dreadful were
the anxieties of these moments; and I myself heard per




298          AUT )BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
sons, at a distance of nearly two years, declare that their
lives hung at that time by a thread'; and that, but for the
hasty approach of the lord lieutenant by forced marches,
that thread would have snapped. "We heard with panic,'
said they, "of the madness which characterized the pro.
ceedings of our soi-disant friends; and, for any chance of
safety, unavoidably we looked only to our nominal enemies
the staff of the French army."
One story was still current, and very frequently repeated,
at the time of my own residence upon the scene of these
transactions. It would not be fair to mention it, without
saying, at the same time, that the bishop, whose discretion
was so much impeached by the affair, had the candor to
blame himself most heavily, and always applauded the
rebel for the lesson he had given him. The case was this:
Day after day the royal forces had been accumulating
upon military posts in the neighborhood of Killala, and
could be descried from elevated stations in that town.
Stories travelled simultaneously to Killala, every hour, of
the atrocities which marked their advance;' many, doubtless, being fictions, either of blind hatred, or of that ferocious policy which sought to make the rebels desperate, by
tempting them into the last extremities of guilt, but, un.
happily, too much countenanced as to their general outline,
by excesses on the royal part, already proved, and undeniable. The ferment and the anxiety increased every hour
amongst the rebel occupants of Killala. The French had
no power to protect, beyond the moral one -of their infu-.
ence as — allies; and, in the very crisis of this alarming
situation, a rebel came to the bishop with the news that
the royal cavalry was at that moment advancing from
Sligo, and could be traced along the country by the line of
blazing houses which accompanied their march.  The
bishop doubted this, and expressed his doubt. "Come with




SECOND REBELLION.             299
mre," said the rebel. It was a matter of policy to yield,
and his lordship went.  They ascended together the Needle Tower Hill, from the summit of which the bishop now
discovered that the fierce rebel had. spoken but too truly.
A, line of smoke and fire ran -over the country in' the rear
of a strong patrol detached from the king's forces.  The
moment was critical; the rebel's eye expressed the unsettled state of his.feelings; and, at that instant, the imprudent, bishop utterred a sentiment which, to his dying
day, he could not forget.  "They," said he, meaning the
ruined houses, "are only wretched cabins."  The rebel
mused, and for a few moments seemed in self-conflict- a
dreadful interval to the bishop, who became sensible of his
own extreme imprudence the very moment after the words
had escaped him.  However, the man contented himself
with saying, after a pause, " A poor man's cabin is to hini
as dear as a palace." It is probable. that this retort was
far from expressing the deep moral indignation at his heart,
though his readiness of mind failed to furnish him with any
other more stinging; and, in such cases, all depends upon
the first movement of vindictive feeling being broken. The
bishop, however, did not forget the lesson he had received;
nor did -he fail to blame himself most heavily, not so much
for his imprudence as for his thoughtless adoption of a language expressing an aristocratic hauteur that did not belong to his real character. There was, indeed, at that
moment no need that fresh fuel should be applied to the
irritation of the rebels; they had already declared their
intention of plundering the town; and, as they added, "in
spite of the French," whom they now regarded, and
openly denounced, as "abetters of the Protestants," much
more than as their own allies.
Justice, however, must be done to the rebels as well as to
aeir., military associates. If they were disposed to plunder




300           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
they were found generally to shrink from bloodshed and
cruelty, and yet from no want of energy or determination.
"The peasantry never appeared to want animal courage,"
says the bishop, ",for they flocked together to meet danger
whenever it was expected. Had it pleased Heaven to be
as liberal to them of brains as of hands, it is not easy to
say to what length of mischief they might have proceeded;
but they were all along unprovided with leaders of any
ability."  This, I believe, was true;,and yet it would be
doing poor justice to the Connaught rebels, nor would it be
drawing the moral truly as respects this aspect of the rebellion, if their abstinence from mischief, in its worst form, were
to be explained out of this defect in their leaders. Nor is
it possible to suppose that the bishop's meaning, though his
words seem to tend that way. For he himself elsewhere
notices the absence of all wanton bloodshed as a feature of
this Connaught rebellion most honorable in itself to the
poor misguided rebels, and as distinguishing it very remarkably from the greater insurrection so recently crushed in
the centre and the east. "It is a circumstance," says he,
"worthy of particular notice, that, during.the whole time of
this civil commotion, not a single drop of blood was shed by
the Connaught rebels, except in the field of war. It is true,
the example and influence of the French went a great way
to prevent sanguinary excesses. But it will not be deemed
fair to ascribe to this cause alone the forbearance of which
we were witnesses, when it is considered what a range of
country lay at the mercy of the rebels for several days after
the French power was known to be at an end."
To what, then, are we to ascribe the forbearance of the
Connaught men, so singularly contrasted with the hideous
excesses of their brethren in the east? Solely to the differ.
ent complexion (so, at least, I was told) of the policy pur.
sued by government. In Wexford, Kildare, Meath, Dublin,




SECOND REBELLION.             n 01
&c., it had been judged advisable to adopt, as a sort of
precautionary policy, not for the punishment, but for the discovery of rebellious purposes, measures of the direst severity; not merely free quarterings of the soldiery, with liberty
(or even an express commission) to commit outrages and
insults upon all who were suspected, upon all who refused
to countenance such measures, upon all who presumed to
question their justice, but even, under color of martial
law, to inflict croppings, and pitch cappings, half hangings,
and the torture of " picketings;." to say nothing of houses
burned, and farms laid waste -things which were done daily,
and under military orders; the purpose avowed b.eing either
vengeance for some known act of insurrection, or the determination to extort confessions. Top often, however, as
may well be supposed, in such utter disorganization of
society, private malice, either personal or on account of old
family feuds, was the true principle at work. And many
were thus driven, by mere frenzy of just indignation, or,
perhaps, by mere.desperation, into acts of rebellion which
else they had not meditated.' Now, in Connaught, at this
time, the same barbarous policy was no longer pursued;
and then it was seen, that, unless maddened by ill usage,
the peasantry were capable of great self-control. There
was no repetition of the Enniscorthy massacres; and it was
impossible to explain honestly why there was none, without,
at the same time, reflecting back upon that atrocity some
color of palliation.
These things considered, it must be granted that theie
was a spirit of unjustifiable violence in the royal army on
achieving theirtriumph. It is shocking, however, to observe
the effect of panic to irritate the instincts of cruelty and
sanguinary violence, even in the gentlest minds. I remember well, on occasion of the memorable tumults in Bristol,
(auttmn of 1831,) that I, for my part, could not read, with



302           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
out horror and indignation, one statement, (made, I believe
officially at that time,) which yet won the cordial approbation of some ladies who had participated in the panic. I
allude to. that part of the report which represents several of
the dragoons as having dismounted, resigned the care of
their horses to persons in the street, and pursued the unhappy
fugitives, criminals, undoubtedly, but no longer dangerousl
up stairs and down stairs, to the last. nook of their retreat.
The worst criminals could not be known and identified as
such; and even in a case where they could, vengeance so
hellish and so unrelenting was not justified by houses burned
or by momentary panics raised. Scenes of the same description were beheld upon the first triumph of the royal
cause in Connaught; and but for Lord Cornwallis, equally
firm before his success and moderate in its exercise, they
would have prevailed more extensively. The poor rebels
were pursued with a needless ferocity on the recapture, of
Killala. So hotly, indeed, did some- of the conquerors hang
upon the footsteps of the fugitives, that both rushed almost
simultaneously-pursuers and pursued.-:into' the terrorstricken houses of Killala; and, in some instances, the ball
meant for a rebel told with mortal effect upon a royalist.
Here, indeed, as in other cases of this rebellion, in candor
it should be mentioned, that the royal army was composed
chiefly of militia regiments. Not that militia, or regiments
composed chiefly of men who had but just before volunteered for the line, have not often made unexceptionable sol.
diers  but in this case there was no reasonable proportion
of veterans, or men who had seen any service. The Bishop
of Killala was assured by an intelligent officer of the king's
army that the victors were within a trifle of being beaten.
I was myself told by a, gentlemen who rode as, a volunteer
on that day, that, to the best of his belief, it was merely a
mistaken order of the rebel chiefs causing a false application




SECOND t-'BELLION.             303
of a select reserve'at a very critical moment, which had
&aved his own party from  a ruinous defeat.  It may be
added, upon almost universal testimony, that the recapture
ot Killala was abused, not only as respected the defeated
rebels, but also as respected the royalists of that town.'" The regiments that came to their assistance, being all imili.
tia, seemed to think that they had a right to talW the prop.
erty they had been the means of preserving, and to use it as
their own whenever they stood in need of it. Their rapacity differed in no respect from that of the rebels, except
that they seized upon things with less of ceremony and
excuse, and that his majesty's soldiers were incomparably
saperior to the Irish traitors in dexterity at stealing.. In
c6nsequience, the town grew very weary of their guests,
and were glad to see them march off to other quarters."
Themilitary operations in this brief campaign were discreditable, in the.last degree, to the energy, to the vigilance,
and to the steadiness of the Orange army. Humbert had
been a leader against the royalists of La Vendee,,as well
as on the Rhine; consequently he was an ambidextrous
enemy-fitted equally for partisan warfare, and for the
tactics of regular armies. Keenly alive to the necessity,
an-der- his circumstances, of vigor and despatch, after ocSupying Killala on the evening of the 22d August, (the day
)f his disembarkation,) where the small garrison of 50
nen (yeomen and fencibles) hal made a toleratle resistihce, and after other trifling affairs, he had, on the 26th,
Marched against Castlebar with about 800 of his own men,
Ind perhaps 1200 to 1500 of the'rebels. Here was the
advanced post of the royal army. General Lake (the Lord
iak'e of India) and Major General Hutchinson (the Lord
Hlutchinson of Egypt) had assembled upon this point a
respectable force'; some say-upwards of 4000, others not
irtre thian 1100. The disgraceful result is well known':




304           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the French, marching all night over mountain roads, and
through one pass which was thought impregnable, if it had
been occupied by a battalion instead of a captain's guard,
surprised Castlebar on the morning of the 27th. Surprised,
I say, for no word short of that can express the circumstances of the case. About two o'clock in the morning, a
courier had brought intelligence of the French advance.;
but from some unaccountable obstinacy, at head quarters,
such as had proved fatal more than either'once or twice in
the Wexford campaign, his news was disbelieved; yet, if
disbelieved, why therefore neglected? Neglected,-however, it was; and at seven, when the news proved to be'
true, the royal army was drawn out in hurry and confusion
to meet the enemy. The French, on their part, seeing our
strength, looked for no better result to themselves than
summary surrender; more especially as our artillery was
well served, and soon began to tell upon their ranks.
Better hopes first arose, as they afterwards declared,. upon
observing that many of the troops fired in a disorderly way
without waiting for -the word of command; upon this they
took new. measures: in a few minutes a panic arose 
(general Lake ordered a retreat; and then, in spite of all
that could be done by the indignant officers, the flight became irretrievable. The troops reached Tuam, thirty miles
distant, on that sanme day; and one small party of mounted
men actually pushed on to Athlone, which is above sixty
miles from the field of battle. Fourteen pieces of artillery
were lost. on this occasion. However, it ought to be mentioned that some serious grounds appeared afterwards for
suspecting treachery; most of those who had been reported
"missing " having been afterwards observed in the ranks
of the enemy, where it is remarkable. enough (or perhaps
not so' remarkable, as simply implying how little they
were trusted by their new allies, and for that reason how




SECOND REBELLION.             305
naturally they were put forward on the mosr dangerous services) that these deserters perished to a man. Meantime,
the new lord lieutenant, having his foot constantly in the
stirrup, marched from Dublin without a moment's delay.
By means-of the grand canal, he made a forced march of
fifty-six English miles in two days; which brought him
to Kilbeggan on the 27th. Very early on the following
morning, he received the unpleasant news from Castlebar.
Upon this he advanced to Athlone, meeting every indication of a routed and panic-struck army. Lord Lake was
retreating upon that town, and thought himself (it is said)
so little secure, even at this distance from the enemy, that
the road. from Tuam was covered with strong patrols. On
the other hand, in ludicrous contrast to these demonstrations
of alarm, (supposing them to be related without exaggeration,) the French had never stirred from Castlebar. On
the 4th of September, Lord Cornwallis was within fourteen
miles of that place. Humbert,.however, had previously
dislodged towards the county of Longford. His motive
for this movement was to cooperate with an insurrection
in that quarter, which had just then broken out in-strength.
He was now, however, hemmed in by a large army of perhaps 25,000 men, advancing from all points; and a few
moves were all that remained of the game, played with
whatever skill. Colonel Vereker, with about 300 of the
Limerick militia, first came up with him, and skirmished
very creditably (September 6) with part, or (as the colonel
aways maintained) with the whole of the French army.
Other affairs of trival:importance followed; and atWlength,
on the 8th of September, General Humbert surrendered with
his whole army, now reduced to 844 men, of whom 96
were officers; having lost since their landing at Killala
exactly 288 men. The rebels were not admitted to any
terms; they were pursued and cut down without mercy.
20




306           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
However, it is pleasant to know, that, from' their agility in
escaping, this cruel policy was defeated: not much above
500 perished; and thus were secured to the royal party the
worst results of vengeance the fiercest, and of clemency
the most' undistmnguishing, without any one advantage of
either. Some districts, as Laggan -and Eris, were treated
with martial rigor; the cabins being burned, and their
unhappy tenants driven out into the mountains for the winter. Rigor, therefore, there was; for the most humane
politicians, erroneously, as one must believe, fancied it necessary for the army to leave behind some impressions of
terror amongst the insurgents. It is certain-, however, that,
under the- counsels of Lord Cornwallis, the standards of
public severity were very much lowered, as compared with
the previous examples in Wexford.
The tardiness and slovenly executi6h of the whole ser
vice, meantime, was well illustrated in what follows: -
Killala was not delivered from rebel hands until the 23d
of September, notwithstanding the general surrender had
occurred on the 8th; and then only in consequence of an
express from the bishop to General Trench, hastening his
march. The situation'of the Protestants was indeed critical. Humbert had left three French officers to protect the
place, but their influence. gradually had sunk to a shadow.
And plans of pillage, with.all its attendant horrors, were
daily debated. Under these- circumstances, the French
officers behaved honorably and courageously.  Yet,"
says the bishop, "' the poor commandant had no reason to
be pleased with the treatment he had received immediately
after the action. He had returned to the castle for his
sabre, and advanced with it to the gate, in order to deliver
it up to some English'officer, when it was seized arid
forced from his hand by a common soldier of Fraser's
He came in, got another sword, which he surrendered to




SECOND REBELLION.                   307
an officer, and turned- to reenter the hall.  At this moment
a second Highlander burst through the gate,,in spite of the
sentinel placed there by the general, and fired at the commwndant with an aim    that was near proving fatal, for the
ball sassed under his arm, piercing a very thick door entire. y through, and lodging in the jamb.  Had we lost the
worthy man by such an accident, his death would have
spoiled the whole relish of our- present enjoyment.      He
complained, and received an apology for the soldier's be.
havior from  his officer.  Leave was immediately grtnted
to the three French officers (left behind by Humbert at
Killala) to keep their swords, their effects, and even their
bed chambers in the house."
i    NVote applying generally to this chapter on the Second Irish Rebellion.- Already- in 1833, when writing this 10th chapter, I felt a
secret jealously (intermittingly recurring) that possibly I might have
fallen under a false bias at this point of my youthful memori.als. I
myself had seen reason to believe -indeed, sometimes I knew for certain -that, in the personalities of Irish politics from Grattan downwards, a spirit of fiery misrepresentation prevailed, which made it
hopeless to seek for any thing resembling truth. If in any quarter
you found candor and liberality, that was because no interest existed
in any thing Irish, and consequently no real information. Find out
any iman that could furnish you with information'such as presupposed
an interest in Ireland, and inevitably he turned out a bigoted partisan.
There cannot be a stronger proof of this than the ridiculous libels and
literary caricatures current even in England, through one whole generation, against the late Lord Londonderry - a most able and faithful manager of our English foreign interests in times of unparalleled
difficulty. Already in the closing years of the last century, his Irish
policy had been inextricably falsified: subsequently, when he came to
assume a leading p art in the English Parliament, the efforts to calum.
niate him became even more intense; and it is only within the last
five years that a reaction of public opinion on this subject has been
strong enough to reach even those among his enemies who were enlightened men. Liberal journals (such, e. g., as the "North British
Review") now recognize his merits. Naturally it was impossible that




308             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the civil war of 1798 in Ireland, and the persons conspicuously *onnected with it, should escape this general destiny of Irish politics. I
wrote, therefore, originally under a jealousy-that partially I might have
been duped. At present, in reviewing what I had written twenty
years ago, I feel this jealousy much more keenly. I shrink from the
bishop's malicious portraitures of our soldiers, sometimes of their
officers, as composing a licentious army, without discipline, without
humanity, without even steady courage. Has any man a right to ask
our toleration for pictures so romantic as these? Duped perhaps I
was myself; and'it was natural that I should be so under the over
whelming influences oppressing any right that I could have at my early age to a free, independent judgment." But I will not any longer
assist in duping the reader; and I will therefore suggest to him two
grounds of vehement suspicion against all the insidiofis colorings
given to his statements by the bishop:1st. I beg to remind the reader that this army of Mayo, in 1798, so
unsteady and so undisciplined, if we believe the bishop, was in part
the army of Egypt in the year 1801: how would the bishop have answered that?
2dly. The bishop allows great weight in treating any allegations
whatever against the English army or the English government, to'the
moderation, equity, and self-control claimed for the Irish peasanty
as notorious elements in their character. Meantime he forgets this
doctrine most conspicuously at times; and represents the safety of
the Protestants against pillage, or even against a spirit of massacre,
as entirely dependent on the influence of the French. Whetherfor
property or life, it was to the French that the Irish Protestants looked
for protection: not I it is, but the bishop, on whom that representation
will be found to rest.




CHAPTER Xi.
TRAVELLING.
IT was la-e in October, or early, in November, that i
quitted Conrnught with Lord Westport; and very slowly,
making mary leisurely deviations-from the direct route,
travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after some little stay,
we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed at Holyhead,
and then, by exactly the same route as we had pursued-in
early June, we posted through Bangor, Conway, Llanrwst,
Llangollen,\until once again we found ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, making for Birmingham.
But why making for Birmingham? Simply because Birmingham, under the old dynasty of stage coaches and post
chaises, was the centre of our travelling system; and hed
in England something of that rank which the golden milestone of Rome held in the Italian peninsula.
At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside,'had traversed a score of times without ever yet having
visited it as a terminus ad quem) that I parted with my
friend Lord Westport. His route lay through Oxford;
and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to
harness fresh horses,- an operation, however, which was
seldom accomplished: in less than half an- hour at that era,
-he went on directly to Stratford. My own destination
309




310           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in Dublin, to in,
quire at the Birmingham  post office for a letter which
would guide my motions. There, accordingly, upon sending for it, lay the expected letter from my mother; from
which I learned that my sister was visiting at Laxtbn, in
Northamptonshire, the seat of an old friend, to which I
also had an invitation.' My route to this lay through Stamford. Thither I could not go by a stage coach until the
following day; and of necessity I prepared to make the
most of my present day in gloomy, noisy, and, at that
time, dirty Birmingham.
Be not offended, compatriot of Birmingham, that I salute
your natal town with these disparaging epithets, It is not
my habit to indulge rash impulses of contempt towards
any man or body of men, wheresoever collected, far less
towards a race of high-minded and most intelligent citi-:
zeps, such as. Birmingham has exhibited to the admiration
Qf all Europe. But as to the noise and the gloom which
I ascribe to you, those features of your town will illustrate.
what the Germans mean by a one-sided* (ein-seitiger)
judgment. There are, I can well believe, thousands to
whom Birmingham is another name for domestic peace,
and for a reasonable share of sunshine. But in my case,
who have passed through Birmingham a hundred times, it.
always happened to rain, except once; and that once the
Shrewsbury mail carried me so rapidly away, that I had,
not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might
not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know,
men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit- such is
* It marks the-rapidity with which new phrases float themselves
into currency under our present omnipresence of the- press, that this
word, nowt (viz., in 1853) familiarly used in every newspaper, then
(viz.,:in 1833) required a sort of'apology to warrant its introdtition.




TRAVELLING.                     311
your cleverness-all things in heaven and earth, fromn
Jove's thunderbolts down-to a tailor's bodkin.   Therefore,
the gloom  is to be charged to my bad luck.     Then, as to
the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and
Chiekens,* to which usually my destiny brought me, but I
* A well-known hotel, and also a coach inn, which we English in those
days thought colossal. It was in fact, according to the spirit of Dr
johnson'i witty reply to Miss Knight, big enough for an island. But
our transatlantic brothers, dwelling upon so mighty a continent, have
gradually enlarged their scale of inns as of other objects into a size of
commensurate grandeur. In two separate New York journals, which,
by the kindness of American friends, are at this moment (April 26)
lyiig before me, I read astounding illustrations of this. For instance:
(1.) In " Putnam's Monthly" for April, 1853, the opening article, a
very amusing one, entitled'"New York daguerreotyped,' estimates
the hotel population of that vast city as "not much short of ten thousand; " and one individual hotel, apparently far from being the most
conspicuous, viz., the Metropolitan, reputed to have " more than twelve
miles of water and gas pipe, and two hundred and fifty servants,"'
offbrs " accommodations for one thousand guests." (2.) Yet even this
Titanic'streuture dwindles by comparison with Thee Mount Vernon
Hotel at Cape May, N. J., (meant, I suppose, for New Jersey,). which.
advertises itself in the "New York Herald," of April 12, 1853, under
the authority of Mr. J. Taber, its aspiring landlord, as offering accommodations, from the 20th of next June, to the romantic number of
three thousand five hundred guests. The Biimingham Hen and CRickens
undoubtedly had slight pretensions by the side of these behemoths
and mammoths. And yet, as a street in a very little town may happeh to be quite as noisy as a street -in London, I can tistify that any
single gallery in this Birmingham hotel, if measured in importance
by the elements of discomfort which it could develop, was entitled to,
an American rating. But alas I Fuit Ilium; I have not seen the
ruins of: this ancient hotel; but an instinct tells me that the railroad
has run right through it; that the hen has ceased to lay golden eggs,
and that her chickens are dispersed. (3.) As another illustration, I
may mention that, in the middle of March, 1853, I received, as a present from New York, the following newspaper. Each page contained
eleven columns, whereas our London "Times "- ontains only six. It




312            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather
her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours.  Till two
or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring,
and about three commenced the morning functions of the
porter, or of" boots," or of" underboots," who began their
rounds for collecting the several freights for the Highflyer,
or the Tally-ho, or the Bang-up, to all points of the com.
pass, and too often (as must happen in such immense establishments) blundered into my room with that appalling,
"Now, sir, the horses are coming out."    So that rarely,
indeed, have I happened to sleep in Birmingham.   But the
dirt!-that sticks a little with you, friend of Birmingham.
How do I explain away that?    Know, then, reader, that
at the time I speak of, and in the way I speak of, viz., in
streets and inns, all England was dirty.
Being left therefore alone for the whole of a rainy day
in Birmingham, and Birmingham     being as yet the centre
of our travelling system, I cannot do better than spend my
Birmingham day in reviewing the most lively of it' reminiscences.
The revolution in the whole apparatus, means, machinery,
was entitled "The New York Journal of Commerce," and was able to
proclaim itself with truth the largest journal in the world. For 25&
years it had existed in a smaller size, but even in this infant stage had
so far outrun all other journals in size (measuring, from the first, 816
square inches) as to have earned the name of " the bldnket sheet'but
this thriving baby had continted to grow, until-at last, on March 1,
1853, it came out in a sheet "comprising an area of 2057~ square
inches, or 161 square feet." This was the monster sent over the Atlantic to myself; and I really felt it as some relief to my terror, when
I found the editor protesting that the monster should not be allowed
to grow any more. I presume that it' was meant to keep the hotels in
countenance; for a journal on the old scale could not expect to make
itself visible in an edifice that offered accommodations to an army




TRAVELLING.                 3.13
and dependences of that system - a revolution begun,
carried through. and perfected within the period of my own
personal experience —merits a word or two of illustration
in the most cursory memoirs that profess any attention at
all to the shifting scenery and moving forces of the age,
whether manifested in great effects or in little. And these
particular effects; though little, when regarded in their
separate details, are not little in their final amount. On the
contrary, I have always maintained, that under a-representative government, where the great cities of the empire
must naturally have the power, each in its proportion, of
reacting;upon the capital and the councils of the nation ip
so conspicuous a way, there is a.result waiting on the-final
improvements-of the arts of travelling, and of transmitting
intelligence with velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the -absence of all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication between the centre and the
extremities of a great people, kept up with a uniformity of
reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing and
ebbing'of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human
heart; day and night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding
to each other with more absolute certainty than the acts of
the metropolis and the controlling notice of the provinces,
whether in the way of support or of resistance. Action
and reaction from every point of the compass being thus
perfect and instantaneous, we should then first begin to understand, in a practical sense, what is meant by the unity of
a political body, and we should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers which are latent in organ?
ization. For it must be considered that hitherto, under the
most complex organization, and that which has best attained its purposes, the national will has never been able to
express itself upon one in a thousand of thetpublic acts,
simply beceause'the national voice was lost in the distance,




314           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
and could not collect itself through the time and the space
rapidly enough to connect itself- immediately with the
evanescent measure of the moment. But, as the system
of intercourse is gradually expanding, these bars of space
and time are in the same degree contracting, until finally
we may expect them altogether to vanish; and then every
part of the empire will react upon the whole with the power,
life, and-effect of immediate conference amongst parties
brought face to face. Then first will be seen a political
system truly organic- i. e., in which each acts upon all,
and all react upon each; and a new earth will arise frori
the indirect agency of this merely physical revolution.
Already, in this paragraph, written twenty years ago, a
prefiguring instinct spoke within me of some great secret
yet to come in the art of distant communication. At present I am content to regard the electric telegraph as the
oracular response to that prefiguration, But I still look for
some higher and transcendent response.
The-reader whose birth attaches him to this present gen.
eration, having known only macadamized roads, cannot
easily bring before his imagination the antique and almost
aboriginal state of things which, marked our travelling systerm-down to the end of the eighteenth century, and nearly
through the first decennium of the present. A very few
lines will suffice for some broad notices of our condition, in
this respect, through the last two centnries. In the Parliament war, (1642-6,) it is an interesting fact, but at the
same time calculated to mislead the incautious reader, that
some officers of distinction, on both sides, brought closecarriages to head quarters and sometimes they went even
upon the field of battle in these carriages, not mounting on
horseback until. the preparations were beginning for some
important manceuvre, or for a general movement. The
same thing had been done throughout the Thirty Years




TRAVELLING.                315
war, both: by the Bavarian, imperial, and afterwards by
the Swedish officers of rank.  And it marks the great
diffusion of these luxuries about this era, that, on occasion'
of the reinstalment of two princes of Mecklenburg, who
had been violently dispossessed by Wallenstein, upwards of
eighty-coaches mustered at a short notice,. partly from the
territorial nobility, partly from the camp. Precisely, however, at military head quarters, and on the route of' an
army, carriages of this description were an available and a
most usefil' means of transport. Cumbrous and unwieldy
they were, as we-know by pictures; and they could not
have been otherwise, for they were built to meet the roads.
Carriages of our present light and reedy (alm'ost, one might
say, corky) construction would, on the roads of Germany
or of England, in that age, have foundered within the first
two hours. - To our ancestors, such: carriages would have
seemed playthings for children.  Cumbrous as the car.riages of that day were, they could not be more so than artilery or baggage wagons: where these could go, coaches
could go. So that, in the march of an army, there was a
perpetual guaranty to those who had coaches for the possibility of their transit. And hence, and not because the
roads were at all better than they have been generally
described in those days, we are to explain the fact, thai
both in the royal camp, in Lord Manchester's, and after.
wards in General Fairfax's and Cromwell's, coaches were
an ordinary part of the camp' equipage.  The roads
meantime, were as they have been described, viz., ditches
morasses, and sometimes channels_ for the course of small
brooks. Nor did they improve, except for short reaches
and under peculiar local advantages, throughout that century. Spite of the roads, however, public carriages' began to pierce England, in various lines, from the era of
1660. Circumstantial notices of these mav be' found in




316           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Lord Auckland's (Sir Frederic Eden's)' large work on the
poor laws. That to York, for example, (two hundred
miles,) took a fortnight in the journey, or about fourteen
miles a day.  But Chamberlayne, who had a personal
knowledge of these public carriages, says enough to show
that, if.slow, they were cheap; half a crown being the
usual rate for fifteen miles, (i. e., 2d. a mile.) Public conveyances, multiplying rapidly, could not but diffuse a general call for improved roads; improved both in dimensions
and also in the art of construction.  For it is observable,
that, so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, England, the
most equestrian of nations, already presented to its inhabitants a general system of decent bridle roads. Even at
this day,.it is doubtful whether any man, taking all hin-,derances into account, and having laid no previous relays'of horses, could much exceed the exploit of Carey, (after.
wards Lord Monmouth,) a younger son of the first Lord
Hunsden, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Yet we must not
forget that the particular road concerned in this. exploit
was the Great North Road, (as it is still-called by way of
distinction,) lying through Doncaster and York, between
the northern and southern capitals of the island. But
roads less frequented were tolerable as bridle roads; whilst
all alike, having been originally laid down with no view to
the broad and ample coaches, from 1570 to 1700, scratched
the panels on each side as they crept along.'Even in the
nineteenth centqry, I have known a case in the sequestered
district of Egremont,. in Cumberland, where a post chaise,
of the common narrow-dimensions, was obliged to retrace
its route of fourteen miles, on coming. to a bridge built in
some remote'age, when as yet post chaises were neither
known nor anticipated, and, unfortunately, too narrow by
three or'four inches. In all the provinces of England
when the soil was deep and a dhesive, a worse evil beset the




TRAVELLING.                 317
ltatel) equipage. Arn Italian of rank, who has left a record
of his perilous adventure, visited, or attempted to visit,
Petworth, near London, (then a seat of the. Percys, now of
Lord Egremont,) about the year 1685. I forget how many
times he was overturned within one particular stretch of
five miles; but I remember that it was a subject of gratitudel (and, upon meditating a return by the same route, a
subject of pleasing hope) todwell upon the soft lying which
was to be found in that good-natured morass. Yet this was,
doubtless, a pet road, (sinful punister! dream not that I
glance at Petworth,) and.an improved road. Such as this,
I have good reason to think, were most of the roads in
England, unless upon the rocky strata which stretch northwards from Derbyshire to Cumberland and Northumberland.
The public carriages were the first harbingers of a change
for the better; as these grew and prospered, slender lines
of improvement began to vein and streak the map. And
Parliament began-to show their zeal, thought not always a
corresponding knowledge, by legislating backwards and
forwards on the breadth of- wagon wheel tires, &c. But
not until our cotton system began to put forth blossoms, not
until our trade and our steam engines began to stimulate
the coal mines, which in their turn stimulated them, did any
great energy apply itself'to our roads. In my childhood,
standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the
front windows of my mother's carriage, I remember one
unvarying set of images before us. The postilion (for so
were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by
fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering*i. e., in crossing from side to side - according to the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length
* Elsewhere I have suggested, as the origin of this term, the French
word cartayer, to manoeuvre so as' to evade the ruts.




818           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
-of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a
horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain water;
and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called
lirc, to maintain the footing upon whidh lirce, so as not to
swerve, (or, as the Romans would say, delirare,) was a trial
of some skill both for the horses and. their postilion. It
was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a
narrow crust of separation, not to grow delirious. in the
Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety,-which haunted
me when a child, was much fed by this very image so often
before my eye, and the sympathy with which I followed
the motion of the docile creature's legs. Go to sleep at
the beginning of.a stage, and the last thing you saw - wake
up, and the. first thing you saw -was the line of wintry
pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the
cautious postilion gently applying his spur, whilst manceuvring across this system of grooves with some sort of science
that looked like a gypsy's palmistry; so equally unintelligible
to me were his'motions, in what he sought and in what he
avoided.
Whilst reverting to these remembrances of my childhood,
I may add, by way of illustration, and at the risk of gossiping, which, after all, is not the worst of'things, a brief notice
of my very first journey. I might be then seven years
old. A young gentleman, the son of a wealthy banker,
1had to return home- for the Christmas holidays to a town in
Lincolnshire, distant from the public school where he was
pursuing his education about a hundred miles. The school
was,in the neighborhood of Greenhay, my father's house.
There were at that time no. coaches in that direction; now
(1833) there are many every day. The young-gentleman
advertised for a person to share the, expense of a post
cl lise. By accident, I had an invitation of some standing




TRAVELLING.                 319
to the same tovn, where I happened to have s;me.female
relatives of mature age, besides some youthful cousins.
The two travellers elect soon heard of each other, and
the arrangement was easily completed.  It was my earliest migration from the paterna roof; and the anxieties
of pleasure, too tumultuous, with some slight sense of
undefined fears, combined to agitate' my childish feelings.
I had a vague, slight apprehension of my fellow-traveller,
whom I had never seen, and whom my nursery maid, when
dressing me, had described in no very amiable colors.
But a good deal more I thought of Sherwood Forest, (the
forest of Robin Hood,) which, as I had been told, we should
cross after the night set in. At six o'clock I descended,
and not, as usual, to the children's room, but, on this special morning of my life, to a room called the breakfast room; where I found a blazing fire, candles lighted,
and the whole breakfast equipage, as if for my mother,
set out, to my astonishment, for no greater personage
than myself. The scene being in England, and on a December morning, I need scarcely say that it rained: the
rain beat violently against the windows, the wind raved;
and an aged servant, who did the honors of the breakfast
table, pressed me urgently to eat. I need not say that I
had no appetite: the fulness of my heart, both from busy
anticipation, and-from the parting which was at hand, had
made me incapable of any other thought, or attention but
such as pointed to the coming journey. All circumstances'in travelling, all scenes and situations of a representative
and recurring character, are indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so many myriads of minds,
more especially in a land which is sending off forever its
flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of' India,
with heart-rending separations,'and with farewells never to
be. repeated. But, amongst them all, none cleaves to my




320           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
own.feelings more indelibly, from having repeatedly been
concerned, either as witness or as a principal party in its
little drama, than the early breakfast on a wintry morning
long before the darkness has given way, when the golden
blaze of the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, with
female ministrations of gentleness more touching than on
common occasions, all conspire to rekindle, as it were-for
a farewell gleam, the holy memorials of household affections. And many have, doubtless, had my feelings-; for, I
believe, few readers will ever forget the beautiful, manner
m which Mrs. Inchbald. has treated such a scene in winding.
up the first part of her "' Simple Story," and the power
with which she has invested it.
Years, that seem innumerable, have passed since that
December morning in-my own life to which I am now
recurring; and yet, even —to this moment, I recollect the
audible throbbing of heart, the leap and rushing of blood,
which suddenly surprised me during a deep lull of the wind,
when the aged attendant said, without hurry or agitation,
but with something of a solemn tone, "That is the sound
of wheels. I hear the chaise. Mr. H — will be here
directly." The road ran, for some distance, by a course
pretty nearly equidistant from the house, so that the groaning of the wheels continued to catch the ear, as it swelled
upon the wind, for some time without much alteration. At
letgth a right-angled turn brought the road continually and
rapidly nearer to the gates of the grounds, which had purposely been thrown open; At this point, however, a long
career of raving arose; all other sounds were lost; and,
for some time, I began to think we had been mistaken, when
suddenly the loud trampling of horses' feet, as they whirled
up the sweep below the windows, followed by a peal long
and:loud uponi the bell, announced, beyond question, the
summons for my departure. The door being thrown open,




TRAVELLING.                321
steps were heard loud and fast; and in the next moment.
ushered by a servant, stalked -forward, booted and fully
equipped, my travelling companion  if such a word can
at all express the relation between the arrogant young
blood, just fresh from assuming the toga virilis, and a
modest child of profound sensibilities, but shy and reserved
beyond even English reserve. The aged servant, with
apparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments to him, with a request that he would take breakfast
This he hastily and rather peremptorily declined. Me,
however, he condescended to notice with an approving nod,
slightly inquiring if I were the young gentleman who shared
his post chaise.. But, without allowing time for an answer,
and striking his boot impatiently with a riding whip, he
hoped I was ready. "Not until he has gone up to my
mistress," replied my old protectress, in a tone of some
asperity. Thither I ascended. What counsels and directions I might happen to receive at the maternal toilet,
naturally I have forgotten. The most memorable circumstance to me was, that I, who had never till that time
possessed the least or most contemptible coin, received, in
a network purse, six glittering guineas,,with instructions
to put three immediately into Mr. H —-'s hands, and the
others when he should call for them.
The rest of my mother's counsels, if deep, were not
long; she, who had always something of a Roman firmness,
shed more milk of roses, I believe, upon my cheeks than
tears; and why not? What should there be to her corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a little
iourney of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, how-,ever, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of
course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen,
who gave, and who received, those fervent kisses which
wait only upon love without awe and without disguise,
21




322           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Heavens! what rosaries might be strung for the memory
of sweet female kisses, given without check or art, before
one is of an age to value: them! And again, how sweet
is the. touch of female hands as they array one for a
journey! If any thing needs fastening, whether by pinning
tying, or any other contrivance, how perfect is one's confidence in female skill; as if, by mere virtue of her sex and'feminine instinct, a woman could not possibly fail to know
the best and readiest way of adjusting every case that could
arise in dress..Mine was hastily completed amongst them:
each had a pin to draw from her bosom, in order' to put
something to rights about my throat or hands; and a chorus
of "God bless hims!" was arising, when, from below,
young Mephistopheles -murmured an impatient groan, and
perhaps the horses snorted. I found myself lifted into the
chaise; counsels about the night and -the cold flowing in
upon me, to which Mephistopheies listened with derision or
astonishment. I and he had each our separate corner; and,
except to request that I would draw up one of the glasses,
['do not think he condescended to address one word to
me until dusk, when we found ourselves rattling into Ches
terfield, having barely accomplished four stages, or forty o0
forty-two miles, in about nine hours. This, except on th(
Bath or great north roads, may be taken as a standarc
amount- of performance, in 1794, (the year I am recording,)
and even ten years later.*  In these present hurrying ant
tumultuous days, whether time is really of more value, i
cannot say; but all people on the establishment of inns anr
required to suppose it of-the most awful value. Nowadays
* It arpears, however, from the Life of Hume, by my distinguished
friend Mr. Hill Burton, that already, in the middle of the last century,
the historian accomplished without difficulty six miles an hour with
only a pair of horses. But this- it should be observed, was on the
great North Road.




TRAVELLING.                323
(1833,) no soLner have the horses stopped at the gateway
of a posting house than a-summons is passed downto'the
stables; and in less than one minute, upon-a great road, the
horses next in rotation, always ready harnessed when expecting to come on duty, are heard trotting down the yard. " Putting to " and transferring the luggage, (supposing your conveyance a common post chaise,) once a work of at least
thirty minutes, is now easily accomplished in three. And
scarcely have you paid the ex-postilion before his successor
is mounted; the hostler is standing ready with the steps in
his hands to receive his invariable sixpence; the door is
closed; the representative waiter bows his acknowledgment
for the house, and you are off at a pace never less than ten
miles an hour; the total detention at each stage not averaging
above four minutes. Then, (i. e.,.at the latter end of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century,) half
an hour was the minimum of time spent at each change of
horses. Your arrival produced a great bustle of unloading
and unharnessing; as a matter of course, you alighted and
went into the inn; if you sallied out to report.progress, after waiting twenty minutes, no signs appeared of any stir
about the stables. The most choleric person could not much
expedite preparations, which loitered not so'much from any
indolence in the attendants, as from faulty arrangements and
total defect of forecasting. The pace was such as the roads
of thatf day allowed; never so much as six miles an hour,
except upon a very great road, and then only by extra payment -to the driver. Yet, even under this comrparatively miserable system, how superior was England, as a land.for the
traveller, to all the rest of the world, Sweden only excepted!
Bad as were the roads, and defective as were all the arrange.
ments, still you had these advantages: no town so insignificant, no posting house so solitary, but that at all seasons
except a contested election, it could furnish horses without




324           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
delay, and without license to distress the neighboring farm.
ers. On the worst road, and on a winter's day, with no: more
than a single pair of horses, you generally made out sixty
miles; even if it were necessary to travel through the night.
you could continue to make way, although more slowly; and
finally, if you were of a temper to brook delay, and did not exact from all persons the haste or energy of Hotspurs, the whole
system in those days was full of respectability and luxurious
ease, and well fitted to renew the image of tle home you
had left, if not in its elegances, yet in all its substantia)
comforts. What cosy old parlors in those days! low roofed,
glowing with ample fires, and fenced from the blasts of
doors by screens, whose foldings were, or seemed to be, infinite. What motherly landladies! won, how readily, to
kindness the most lavish, by the mere attractions of sim.
plicity and youthful innocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of being a traveller at a childish age,.Then what blooming young handmaidens! how
different from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern
high roads! And sometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters,
how sincere: and how attentive, by comparison with their
flippant successors, the eternal "coming, sir, coming," of
our improved generation!
Such an honest, old, butler-looking servant waited on us
during dinner-at Chesterfield, carving for me, and urging
me to eat. Even Mephistopheles found his pride relax
under the influence of wine; and when loosened from this
restraint, his kindness was not deficient. To me he showed
it in pressing wine upon me, without stint or measure. The
elegances which he had observed in such parts.of my
mother's establishment as could be supposed to meet his
eye on so hasty a visit, had impressed him perhaps favorably towards myself; and could I have a little altered my
age, or dismissed my excessive reserve, I doubt not that he




TRAVELLING.                325
would have admitted me, in default of a more suitable
comrade, to his entire confidence for the rest of the road.
Dinner finished, and myself at least, for the first time in
my childish life, somewhat perhaps overcharged with wine,
the bill was called for, the- waiter paid in the lavish style
of antique England, and we heard our chaisedrawing up
under the gateway,- the invariable custom of those days,
-by which you were spared the trouble of going into the
street; stepping from the hall of the inn right into your
carriage. I had been kept back for a minute or so by the
landlady and her attendant nymphs,, to be dressed and
kissed; and, on seating'myself in the.chaise, which was
well lighted with lamps, I found my lordly yQung principal
in conversation with the landlord, first upon the price of
oats,- which youthful horsemen, always affect to inquire
after with interest, - but, secondly, upon a topic more immediately at his heart- viz., the reputation of the road.
At that time of day, when gold had not yet disappeared
from the circulation, no traveller carried any other sort of
money about him; and there -was consequently a rich en7
couragement to highwaymen, which vanished almost entirely
with Mr. Pitt's act of 1797 for restricting cash payments.
Property which could be-identified and traced was a perilous
sort of plunder; and fromn that time the free trade of the
road almost perished as a regular occupation. At this
period it did certainly maintain a languishing existence;
here and there it, might have a casual run of success;. and,
as these local ebbs and flows were, continually shifting,,
perhaps, after all, the trade might lie amongst a small number of hands. Universally, however, the landlords showed
some. shrewdness, or even sagacity, in qualifying, according
to the circumstances of the inquirer, the sort of credit which
they allowed to the exaggerated ill fame of the roads.
Returning. on this very road, some months after, with a




32~6 AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHtS.
timid female relative, who -put her questions with undis
guised and distressing alarm, the very same people, one
and all, assured her that the danger was next to nothing.
Not so at present: rightly presuming that a haughty cavalier
of eighteen, flushed with wine and youthful blood, would
listen with disgust to a picture too amiable and pacific of
the roads before him, Mr. Spread Eagle repliedwith the
air of one who knew more than he altogether liked to tell;
and looking suspiciously amongst the strange faces lit up by
the light of the carriage lamps-" Why, sir, there have
been ugly stories afloat; I cannot deny it; and sometimes,
you know, sir,"- winking sagaciously, to which a knowing
nod. of assent was returned,-" it may not be quite safe
to tell all one knows. But you can understand' me. The
forest, you are well aware, sir, is the forest: it never was
much to be trusted, by all accounts, in my father's time,
and I suppose will not be better in mine. But you must
keep a sharp lookout; and, Tom," speaking to the postilion, " mind, when'you pass the third gate, to go pretty
smartly by the thicket."  Tom replied in a tone of importance to this professional appeal.  General valedictions
were exchanged, the landlord bowed, and we moved off'for
the forest. Mephistopheles had his travelling case of pistols.
These he began now to examine; for sometimes, said he,
I have known such a trick as drawing the charge whilst one
happened to be taking a glass of wine. Wine had unlocked
his heart,-the prospect of the forest and the advancing
night excited him, -and even of such a child as myself
he was now disposed to make a confidant.  "Did you
observe," said he,' that ill-looking fellow, as big as a camel,
who stood on the landlord's left hand.? " Was it the man,
I asked timidly, who seemed by his dress to be a farmer?
" Farmer, you call him! Ah! my young friend, that shows
your.little knowledge of the world. He is a scoundreli




TRAVELLING.                 327
the bloodiest of scoundrels. And so I trust to convince
him before many hours are gone over our heads."  Whilst
saying this, he employed himself in priming his pistols;
then, after a pause, he went on thus: -"No, my young
friend, this alone shows his.base purposes - his calling
himself a farmer.. Farmer he is. not, but a desperate highwayman, of which I have full proof,   I watched his
malicious glances whilst the landlord was talking; and I
could swear to his traitorous intentions."  So speaking, he
threw anxious glances on each side as we continued to advance": we were both somewhat excited; he by the spirit
of adventure, I by sympathy with him - and both by wine.
The wine, however, soon applied a remedy to its own
delusions; six miles from the town we had left, both of us
were in a bad condition for resisting highwaymen with
effect- being fast asleep. Suddenly a most abrupt halt
awoke us, -Mephistopheles felt for his pistols,- the door
flew open, and the lights of the assembled group announced
to us that we had reached Mansfield. That night we went
on to Newark, at which place about forty miles of our
iourney remained. This distance we performed, of course,
on the following day, between breakfast and dinner. But it
serves strikingly to illustrate the state of roads in England,
whenever your affairs led you into districts a little retired
from  the capital routes of the public travelling, that, for
one twenty-mile stage, - viz., from Newark to Sleaford,-'they refused to take us forward with less than four horses.
This was neither a fraud, as our eyes soon convinced us,
(for even four horses could scarcely extricate the chaise
from the deep sloughs which occasionally'seamed the, road
Ihrough tracts. of two or three miles in succession,) nor was
it an accident of the weather. In all seasons the same
demand was enforced, as my female protectress found:in
conducting me back at a fine season of the year, and had




828          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
always found in traversing the same route. The England
of that date. (1794) exhibited many similar cases.  At
present I know of but one stage in all England where a
traveller, without regard to weight, is called upon to take
four horses; and that is at. Ambleside, in going by the direct
road to Carlisle. The first stage to Patterdale lies over the
mountain of Kirkstone, and the ascent is not only toilsome,
(continuing for above three miles, With occasional intermissions,) but at times is carried over summits too steep for
a road by all the rules of engineering, and yet too little
frequented to offer any means of repaying the cost of
smoothing the.difficulties.
It was not until after the year 1715 that the main improvemnent took place in the English- travelling system, so
far as regarded speed.'It is, in reality, to Mr. Macadam
that we owe it. All the roads in England, within a, few
years, were remodelled, and upon principles of Roman
science. From mere beds of torrents and systems of ruts,
they were raised universally to the condition and appearance of gravel walks in private parks or shrubberies.
The average rate of velocity was, in consequence, exactly
doubled-ten miles an hour being now generally accomplished, instead of five. And at the moment when all
further improvement upon this system had become hopeless,
a new prospect was suddenly opened to. us by railroads;
which again, considering how much they have already exceeded the maximum of possibility, as laid down by all
engineers during the progress of the Manchester and Liverpool line, may soon give way to new moles of locomo.
tion still more astonishing to our preconceptions.
One point of refinement, as regards the comfort of travellers, remains to be mentioned, in which the improvement
began a good deal earlier, perhaps by ten years, than in the
construction of the roads. Luxurious as was the system




TRAVE7LLING.                329
of English travelling at all periods, after the general.estab,
lishment of post chaises, it must be granted that, in the
circumstance of cleanliness, there was far from being that
attention, or that provision for the traveller's comfort, which.
might have been anticipated from the general habits of the
country. I, at all periods of my life a great traveller, was
witness to'the first steps and the whole struggle of this-revolution. Marechal Saxe professed always to look under
his bed, applying his caution chiefly to the attempts of robbers. Now, if at the greatest inns of England you had,
in the days I speak of, adopted this marechal's policy of
reconnoitring, what would you have seen?   Beyond a
doubt, you would have seen what, upon all principles of
seniority, was entitled to your veneration, viz., a dense accumulation of dust far older than yourself. A foreign
author made some experiments upon the deposition of dust,
and the rate of its accumulation, in a room left wholly undisturbed. If I recollect, a century would produce a stratum about half an inch in depth. Upon this principle, I
conjecture that much dust which I have seen in inns, dur.
ing the first four or five years of the present century, must
have'belonged to the reign of George II. It was, however
upon travellers by coaches that the full oppression of the
old vicious system operated. The elder Scaliger mentions,
as a characteristic of the English in his day, (about 1530,)
a horror of' cold water; in which,; however, there must
have been some mistake.*   Nowhere could he and his
"Some mistake."-The mistake was possibly this: what little
water for ablution, and what little rags called towels, a foreigner ever
sees at home will at least be always within reach, from the continental
practice of using the bed room for the sitting room. But in England
our plentiful smeans of ablution are kept in the background. Scaliger
should have asked for,a bed room: -the surprise was, possibly, not af
hi$ s wating water, but at his wanting it- in a dining room.




330           AUTOBIOG APHIC SKETCHES.
foreign companions obtain the luxury of cold water for wasn
ing their hands either before or after dinner. One day he
and his party dined with the lord chancellor; and now,
thougnt he, for very shame they will allow us some means
of purification. Not at all; the chancellor viewed this
outlandish novelty with the same jealousy as others. However, on the earnest petition of Scaliger, he made an order
that a basin or other vessel -of cold water should be produced. His household bowed to this judgment, and a slop
basin was cautiously introduced. "What! " said, Scaliger,
"only one,,and we so many?"  Even that one contained
but a, teacup full of water: but the great scholar soon
found that he must be thankful for what he had got. It
had cost the whole strength of the English chancery to produce- that single cup of water; and, for that day, no
man in his senses could look for a second. Pretty much
the same struggle, and for the'same cheap reform, comr
menced about the year 1805-6.   Post-chaise travellers
could, of course, have what they liked; and generally they
asked for a bed room. It is of coach travellers I speak.
And the particular innovation in question commenced, as
was natural, with the mail coach, which, from the much
highe: scale of its fares, commanded a much more select
class of company. I was a party to the very earliest attempts at breaking ground in this alarming revolution.
Well do I remember the astonishment of some waiters, the
indignation of others, the sympathetic uproars which spread
to the bar, to the kitchen, and even to the stables, at -the
first opening of our extravagant demands.' Sometimes
even the landlady thought the case worthy of her interference, and cam'e forward to remonstrate with us upon our
unheard-of conduct.. But gradually we made way. Like
Scaliger, at first we got but one basin amongst us, and that,ne was-brought into the'breakfast room; but scarcely had




TRAVELLIA G.               331
two years rev(lved before we began to see four, and all
appurtenances, arranged duly in correspondence to the number of inside passengers by the mail; and, as outside travelling war continually gaining ground amongst the wealthier classes, more comprehensive arrangements were often
made; though, even to tlis day, so much influence survives, from  the original aristocratic principle.upon which
public carriages were constructed, that on the mail coaches
there still prevails the most scandalous inattention to the
comfort, and even to the security, of the outside passengers:
a slippery glazed roof frequently makes the sitting a matter
of effort and anxiety, whilst:the little iron side rail of four
inches in height serves no one purpose but that of bruising
the thigh. Concurrently with these reforms in the system
of personal cleanliness, others were silently making way
through all departments of the household economy. Dust,
from the reign of George II., became scarcer; gradually it
came to bear an antiquarian value: basins lost their grim
appearanc6, and looked as clean as in gentlemen's houses,
And at length the whole system was so thoroughly ventilated
and purified, that all good inns, nay, generally speaking,
even second-rate inns, at this day, reflect the best features,
as to.cleanliness and neatness, of well-managed rxivate
establishments




CHAPTER     XI.
MY BROTHER.
THE reader who may have accompanied me in these
wandering memorials of my own life and casual experi.
ences, will be aware, that in many cases the neglect ot
chronological order is not merely permitted, but is in fact
to some degree'inevitable: there are cases, for instance,
which,.as a whole, connect themselves with my own life at
so many different eras, that, upon any chronological principle of position, it would have been difficult to assign them
a proper place; backwards or forwards they must have
leaped, in whatever place they had been introduced; and
in their entire compass, from first to last, never could have
been represented as properly belonging to any one present
time, whensoever that had been selected: belonging to
every place alike, they would belong, according to the
proverb, to no place at all; or, (reversing that proverb,)
belonging to no place by preferable -right, they would, in
fact, belong to every place, and therefore to this place.
The incidents I am now going to relate come under this
rule; for they form part.of a story which fell in with my
own life at many different points. It is a story taken from
the life of my own brother; and I dwell on it with the
more willingness, because it furnishes an'indirect lesson
332




MY BROTHER.                 333
upon a great principle of social life, now and for many
years back struggling for its just supremacy — the principle
that all corporal punishments whatsoever, and'upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful,.and an indignity to our common
nature, which (with or without our consent) is enshrined in
the person of the sufferer. Degrading him, they degrade
us. I will not here add one word-upon the general thesis,
but go on to the facts of this case; which, if all its incidents,
eou.d be now recovered, was perhaps as romantic as any
thats ever yet has tried the spirit of fortitude and patience
in a child. But its moral interest depends upon this - that,
simply out of one brutal chastisement, arose naturally the
entire series of events which so very nearly made shipwreck of all hope for one individual, and did in fact poison
ibe tranquillity of a whole family for seven years.
My next brother, younger by about fouryears than myself, (he, in fact, that caused so much affliction to the Sultan
Amurath,) was a boy of exquisiteand delicate beaufty -delicate, that is, in respect to its feminine elegance and bloom;
for else (as regards constitution) he turned out -remarkably
robust, In such excess did his beauty flourish during childhood, that those who remember him and myself at the public school at Bath will also remember the ludicrous molestation in the streets (for to him it was molestation) which it
entailed upon him-ladies stopping continually to kiss him.
On first coming up to Bath from Greenhay, my mother occupied the very apartments on the North Parade just quitted
by Edmund Burke; then in a decaying condition, though he
did not die(I believe) till 1797. That state ofBurke's health,
connected with the expectation of finding him still there,
brought for some weeks crowds of inquirers, many of whom
saw the childish Adonis, then scarcely seven years old,
and inflicted upon him what he viewed -as the martyrdom
of their caresses. Thus began a persecution which con




334           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
tinued as. long as his-years allowed it. The most brilliant
complexion that could be imagined, the features of an Antinous, and perfect symmetry of figure at that period of his
life, (afterwards he lost it,) made him the subject of never.
ending admiration to the whole female population, gentle
and simple, who passed him in the streets. In after days,
he'had the grace to regret his own perverse and scornful
coyness. But, at that time,'so foolishly insensible was he
to the honor, that he used to kick and struggle with all his
might to liberate. himself from the gentle'violence which
was continually.offered; and he renewed the scene (so elab-'
orately painted by Shakspeare) of the conflicts'between
Venus and Adonis. For-two years this continued a subject
of irritation the keenest on the one side, and of laughter on
the other, between my brother and his plainer schoolfellows. Not'that we had the slightest jealousy on the subject-far from it; it struck us all (as it generally does
strike boys) in the light of an attaint-upon the dignity-of a
male; that he should be subjected to the caresses of women,
without leave asked; this was felt to be a badge of-childhood, and a proof that ~the object of such caressing tenderness, so public and avowed, must be regarded in the light
of a baby -not to mention that the very- foundation of all
this. distinction, a beautiful fade, is as a male distinction regarded in a very questionable light by multitudes, and often
by those most who are the possessors of that distinction.
Certainly that was the fact in my brother's case. Not one
of us could feel so pointedly as himself the ridicule of his
situation; nor; did he cease, when increasing years had liberated him from that female expression'of delight in his
beauty, to regard. the beauty itself as a degradation; nor
could'he bear to be flattered upon it; though, in reality, it
did him service in after distresses, when no other endowment whatsoever would have been availing. Often, in fact,




MY BROTHER.                 335
do men's natures sternly-contradict the promise of their
features; for no person would have believed that, under the
blooming loveliness of a Narcissus, lay shrouded a most
heroic nature; not merely an advent irous courage, but with
a capacity of patient submission to hardship', and of wrestling with calamity, such as is rarely found amongst the'endowments of youth. I have reason, also, to think that the
state of degradation in which he believed- himself to have
passed'his childish years, from the sort of public petting
which I have described, and his strong recoil from it as an
insult, went much deeper than was supposed, and had mucto do in his subsequent conduct, and in nerving him to the
strong resolutions he adopted. He seemed to resent, as an
original insult of nature, the having given him a false index
of character in his feminine beauty, and to take a pleasure
in contradicting it. Had it been in his power, he would
have spoiled it. Certain it is, that, from the time he reached
his eleventh birthday, he had begun already to withdraw
himself from the society of all other boys,  to fall into long
fits of abstraction, -and -to throw himself upon his own resources in a way nfeither usual nor necessary. Schoolfellows of'his own age and staning —those, even, who were
the most amiable - he shunned; and, many years after his
disappearance, I found, in his handwriting, a collection of
fragments, couched in a sort of wild lyrical verses, presenting, unquestionably, the most extraordinary evidences of a
proud, self-sustained mind, consciously concentrating his
own hopes in himself, and abjuring the rest of the world,
that can ever have emanated from so young a person; since,
upon the largest allowance,.and supposing them to have been
written on the eve of his-quitting England, they must have
been written at'the age of twelve. I have often speculated
on the subject of these mysterious compositions; they were
of a nature to have proceeded rather from some'mystical




336           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
quietist, such as Madame Guyon, if with this rapt devotion
one can suppose the union of a rebellious and murmuring
ambition. Passionate apostrophes there were to nature and
the powers of nature; and what seemed strangest of all
was, that, in style, not only were they free from all tumor
and inflation which might have been looked for in so young
a writer, but were even wilfully childish and colloquial in a
pathetic degree -in fact, in point of tone, allowing for the
differencebetween a narrative poem and a lyrical, they
somewhat resemble that beautiful poem * of George Herbert, entitled LOVE UNKNOWN, in whichhe describes symbolically to a friend, under the formn of treacherous ill
usage he had experienced, the religious processes by which
his soul had been weaned from the world.  The rmost obvious solution of the mystery would be, to suppose these fragments to have been copied from some obscure author; but,
besides that no author.could have remained, obscure in this
age of.elaborate research,, who had been capable of sighs
(for such I may call them) drawn up from such well-like
depths of feeling, and expressed with such fervor and simplicity of language, there was another testimony to their
being the productions of him who owned the penmanship;
which was, that some of the papers exhibited,the whole
process of creation-and growth, such as erasures, substitutions, douabts expressed as to this and that form of expression,
togetherwith references backwards and forwards., Now,
that the handwriting ivas my brother's, admitted of no doubt
whatsoever. I go on with his story. In 1800, my visit to
Ireland, and visits to other places subsequently, separated
me from him for above a year, In.1801, we were at very
* This poem; from great admiration of its mother English, and to
illustrate some ideas upon style, Mr. Coleridge republished in his' Bilpgraphia Literaria,"




MY BROTHER.:337
different schools  I in the highest class of a great public
school, he at a very sequestered parsonage on a wild moor
(Horwich Moor) in Lancashire. This situation, probably,
fed and cherished'his melancholy habits; for he had no
society except that of a younger brother, who would give
him no disturbance at all. The development of our national
resources had not yet gone so far as absolutely to exterminate from the map of England every thing like a heath, a
breezy down, (such as gave s6 peculiar a character to the
counties of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, &c.,) or even a village
common. Heaths were yet to be, found in England, not so
spacious, indeed, as the landes of France, but equally wild
and romantic. In such a situation my brother lived, and
under-the tuition of a clergyman, retired in his habits, and
even-ascetic; but gentle in his manners. To that I can speak
myself; for in the winter of 1801-I dined with him, and
found that his yoke was, indeed, a mild one;* since, even
to my youngest brother H., a headstrong child of seven, he
used no stronger remonstrance, in urging him to some essential point of duty, than''Do be persuaded, sir."  On another occasion I, accompanied by a friend, slept at Mr. J.'s:
we were accidentally detained there through the greater
part of the following day by snow; and, to the inexpressible
surprise of my companion, a mercantile man from Man,
chester, foi a considerable time after breakfast the reverend
gentleman persisted in pursuing -my brother from room fo
room,"and at last from the ground floor up to the attics, holding a book open, (which turned out to be a Latin grammar;)
each of them (pursuer and pursued) moving at a tolerably
slow pace, my brother H. silent; but Mr. J., with a voice 
of adjuration, solemn and even sad, yet kind and conciliatory,. singing out at intervals, "Do be persuaded, sir!"
" It i your welfare I seek]?' " Let your own interest, sir,
plead in this'matter between us!  And so the chase
22




338            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
continued, ascending and descending, up to the very garrets
down to the very cellars, then steadily revolving from fron
to rear of the house; but finally with no result at all. The
spectacle reminded me of a groom attempting _to catch a
coy pony by holding out a sieve containing, or pretending
to contain, a bribe of oats. Mrs. J., the reverend gentleman's wife, assured us that the same process went on
at intervals throughout the week; and in any case it was
clearly good as a modd of exercise. Now, such a-master,
though little adapted for the headstrong H., was the very
person for the thoughtful and too sensitive' R. Search -the
island thro.ugh, there could not have been found another situation so suitable to my brother's wayward and haughty
nature. The clergyman was learned, quiet, absorbed in
his studies; humble and modest beyond the proprieties of
his situation, and treating my brother in all points as a
companion; whilst, on the other hand, my brother was not
the person to forget the respect due, by a triple title, to a
clergyman, a scholar, and his own preceptor - one, besides,
who so little thought of exacting it.- How happy might all
parties have been - what suffering, what danger, what years
of miserable anxiety might hav'e been spared to all who
were interested - had the guardians and executors of my
father's will thought fit to " let well alone "! But, "per star
meglio,"* they chose to remove my brother from this gentle
recluse to an active, bustling man'of the world, the very anti.
pole in. character. What might be the pretensions of this
gentleman' to scholarship,.I never had any means of judging;
and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance of thirty-six years, be- gray headed, I shall respect his
* From the well-known Italian epitaph - " Stava bene; ma, per star
meglio, sto qui "-I was well; but, because I would be better than
well, I am — where-you see.




MY BROTHER.                 339
age so far as to suppress his name. He was of a class now an.
nually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks
be to God, in this point at least, for-the dignity of human
nature, that, amongst the many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at least,
never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows
more intellectual, the power of managing him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals
to his mere-animal instincts of pain, must go on pari passu.
And, if a "Te Deum," or an "0, Jubilate!" were to be
celebrated by all nations and languages for any one advance,
and' absolute conquest over wrong and error won by human
nature in our times, -yes, not excepting
"The bloody- writing by all nations torn "the abolition of the commerce in slaves, - to my thinking,
that festival should be for the mighty progress made towards
the suppression of brutal, bestial modes of punishment.
Nay, I may call them worse than bestial; for a man of any
goodness of nature does not willingly'or needlessly resort
to the spur or the lash with his horse or with his hound.
But, with respect to man, if he will not be moved or won
over by conciliatory means,-by means that presuppose'him a reasonable creature, - then let him die, confounded
in his own vileness; but let not me, let not the man (that
is to say) who has him in his power, dishonor himself by
inflicting punishments, violating that grandeur of human
nature which, not in any vague rhetorical sense, but upon
a religious principle of duty, (viz., the scriptural doctrine
that the-human person is " the temple of the Holy Ghost,")
ought to be a consecrated thing in the eyes of all good men
and of this we may be, assured, - this is more sure than day
or night, - that, in proportion.as man is honored, exalted,




340           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
trus.ed, in that proportion will he become more worthy of
honor, of exaltation, of trust.
This schoolmaster had very different views of man and
his nature. He not only thought that physical coercion
was the one sole engine by which man could, be rmanaged,
but -on the principle of that common maxim which declares that, when two schoolboys meet, with'powers at all
near to a balance, no peace can be-expected between them
until it is fairly settled which is the master-on that same
principle he fancied that no pupil could adequately or proportionably reverence his master until he had settled the
precise proportion of superiority in animal powers by which
his master was in advance of. himself. Strength of blows
only could ascertain that; and, as her was not very nice
about creating his opportunities,- as he plunged at once
"in medias res," and more especially when he saw or suspected any rebellious tendencies, he soon picked a quarrel
with my unfortunate brother. Not, be it observed, that he
much cared for a well-looking or. respectable quarrel. No.
I have'been assured that, even when the most fawning obsequiousness had appealed to his clemency, in the person
of some timorous new-comer, appalled by the reports he
had heard, even in such cases, (deeming it wise to impress, from the beginning, a salutary awe of his'Jovian
thunders) he made a practice of doing thus: He would
speak loud, utter some order, not very clearly, perhaps, as
respected the sound, but with perfect perplexity as regarded
the sense, to the timid, sensitive boy upon whom he intended
to fix a charge of disobedience. "Sir, if you please, what
was it that you said?" "What was it that I said? What 
playing upon my words? Chopping logic?    Strip, sir;
strip this instant."  Thenceforward this timid boy became
a serviceable instrument in his equipage. Not only was
he a proof, even without cooperation on the master's part,




MY BROTHER.                   341
/hat extreme cases of submission could not insure mercy
but also he, this boy, in his own person, breathed forth, at
intervals, a dim sense of awe and worship -the religion
of fear-towards the grim Moloch of the scene. Hence,
as by electrical conductors, was conveyed throughout every
region of the establishment a tremulous sensibility that
vibrated towards the centre. Different, 0 Rowland Hill I
ure the laws of thy establishment; far other are the echoes
heard amid the ancient halls of Bruce.*  There it is possible for the timid child to be happy  for the child destined
to an early grave to reap his brief harvest in peace. Wherefore were there no such asylums in those days?    Man
flourished then, as now, in beauty and in power. Wherefore did he not put forth his power upon establishments that
might cultivate happiness as well as knowledge?  Wherefore did no man cry aloud, in the spirit of Wordsworth, -
"Ah, what avails heroic deeds?
What liberty? if no defence
Be won for feeble innocence.
Father of all! though wilful manhood read
His punishment in'soul distress,
Grant to the morn of life its natural blessedness "?
Meantime, my brother R., in an evil hour, having been removed from that most quiet of human sanctuaries, having
forfeited that peace which possibly he Was never to retrieve,
felF(as I have said) into the power of this Moloch. And
this Moloch upon him illustrated the laws of his establish* This was not meant assuredly as any advertisement of an estab -
lishment, which could not by all reports need any man's praise, but
was written under a very natural impulse derived from a recent visit
to the place, and under an unaffected sympathy with the spirit.of free,
domr and enjoyment that seemed to reign amongst the young people




342'          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ment; him also, the gentle,-the beautiful, but also the
proud, the haughty, he beat, kicked, trampled on!
In two hours from that time, my brother was on the road
to Liverpool. Painfully he made out his way, having not
much money, and with a sense of total abandonment which
made him feel that all he might have would prove little
enough-for his purposes.
My brother went to an inn, after his long, long journey
to Liverpool, footsore -(for he had valked through. four
days, and, from ignorance of the world, combined with excessive shyness, - O, how' shy do people become from
pride!-had not profited by those well-known incidents
upon English high roads -return post chaises, stage
coaches, led horses, or wagons) - footsore, and eager for
sleep. Sleep, supper, breakfast in the morning, -all these
he had; so far his slender finances reached; and.for these
he paid the treacherous landlord; who then proposed to
him that they should take a walk out together, by way of
looking at the public buildings and the docks. It seems
the- man had noticed my brother's beauty, some circumstances about his dress inconsistent with his mode of travelling, and also his style of conversation. Accordingly, he
wiled him along from street to street, until they reached
the Town Hall. " Here seems to be a fine building,'" said
this jesuitical guide, - as if it had been some new Pompeii,
some Luxor or Palmyra, that he,had unexpectedly lit upon
amongst the undiscovered parts of Liverpool, -" here seems
to be a fine building; shall we- go in and ask leave to look
at* it?"  My-brother, thinking less of the spectacle than
the spectator, whom, in a wilderness of man, naturally he
w ished to make his friend, consented readily. In they
went; and, by the merest accident, Mr. Mayor and the town
council- were then sitting. To them the insidious landlord
communicated privately an account of his suspicions. -He




MY BROTHER.                 343
himself conducted my brother, under pretence of discovering the best station foi picturesque purpcses, to the particular box for prisoners at the bar. This was, not suspected
by the poor boy, not even when Mr. Mayor began to question him. He still thought it an accident though doubtless
he blushed excessively on being questioned, and questioned
so impertinently, in public..The object of the mayor and
of other Liverpool gentlemen then present was, to ascertain
my brother's xeal rank and family; for he persisted in representing himself as a poor wandering boy. Various means
were vainly tried to elicit this information; until at length
-like the wily Ulysses, who mixed with his peddler's budget of female ornaments and attire a few arms, by way of
tempting Achilles to a self-detection in the court of Lycomedes- one gentleman counselled the mayor to send.for a Greek Testament. This was done; the Testament
was presented open at St. John's Gospel to my brother, and
he was requested to say whether he knew in what language
thatbook was written; or whether, perhaps, he could furnish:them with a translation from the page before him. R., in
his confusion, did not read the meaning of this'appeal, and
fell into the snare; construed a few verses; and immediately was consigned to the care of a gentleman, who won
from him by kindness what he had refused to importunities
or menaces. His family he confessed at once, but not his
school. An express was therefore forwarded from Liverpool to-our nearest male relative- a military man, then by
accident on leave of absence from India. He came over,.took my brother back, (looking upon the whole as a boyish
frolic o'fno permanent. importance,) made some stipulations
in his behalf for indemnity from punishment, and immediately returned-home. Left to himself, the grim tyrant of
the school easily evaded the stipulations, and repeated hia
brutalities more- fiercely than before - now acting in the
double spirit of tyranny and revenge.




344           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
In a few hours, my brother was again on the road to
Liverpbol. But not on this occasion did he resort to anj
inn., or visit any treacherous hunter of the picturesque., Hi
offered himself to no temptations now, nor to any risks
Right onwards he went to the docks, addressed himself te
a grave,:elderly master of a- trading vessel, bound upol
a distant voyage, and instantly procured an engagement
The skipper was a good-and sensible man, and (as it
turned out) a sailor accomplished in all parts of his profession. The ship which he commanded was a South Sea
whaler, belonging to Lord Grenville - whether lying a
Liverpool or in the Thames at that moment, I am not sure
However, they soon afterwards sailed.
For somewhat less than three years my brother continued
under the care of'this good man, wh6 was interested by hia
appearance, and by some resemblance which he fancied in
his features to a son whom he had lost. Fortunate, in'deed, for the poor boy was this interval of fatherly superintendence-; for, under this captain, he was not only
preserved from the perils which afterwards beseiged him,
until his years had made him more capable of confronting
them, but also he had thus an opportunity, which he
improved to the utmost, of making himself acquainted with
the two,separate branches of his profession - navigation
and seamanship, qualifications which -are not very often
united.
After the death of this captain, my brother ran through
many wild adventures; until at length, after a severe
action, fought off the coast'of Peru, the armed merchantman in which he then served was captured..- pirates.
Most of the crew were massacred. My brother, ton. ccount
of tne important services he could render, was spaied; and
with these pirates, cruising under a black flagy and perpetrating unnumbered atrocities, he was obliged to sail for




MY BROTHER.                 345i
the next two years; nor could he; in all that period, find
any opportunity for effecting his escape.
During this long expatriation, let any thoughtful reader
imagine the perils of every sort which beseiged one soyoung, so inexperienced, so sensitive, and so haughty;
perils to his life; (but these it was the very expression of
his unhappy situation, were the perils least to be.mourined
for;) perils to his good name, going the length of absolute
infamy -since, if the piratical ship had been captured -by
a British man-of-war, he might have -found it. impossible to
clear himself of a -voluntary participation in the bloody
actions of his shipmates; and, on.the'other hand,!(a case
equally probable in the regions which they ifrequented,).supposing him to have been captured.by: a Spanish guarda
costa, he would scarcely have been able, from his ignorance of the Spanish language, to draw seven a momentary,attention- to the special circumstances of his own situation.;'he would have'been involved in the'general presumptionS
-of the case, and would- have been executed.in a summary
way, upon the prima facie evidence against him, that he
did not appear to be in the condition of a;prisoner; and, if
-his name had ever again reached his country, it woduld.have. been in some sad list of ruffians, murderers, ttraitors
to their country; iand even these titles,:-asif ot enoiugh in
-themselves, aggravated by the name.of pirate, which;at
-once includes them all, and surpasses-them all. Thes.e
were perils sufficiently distressing at.any rate; but:last of
-all came others even mrore appalling.-.the perrls of worrl
contamination, in that excess which.might hAe looked for
from such associates; not," be it recollected, -a few -wild
notions or lawless principles adopted into his creed of
practical ethics, but that brutal transfiguration of the entire
character, which occurs, for instance, in the case.of thoe
young gypsy son of Effie Deans; a change'.making -it




316          A. rOBIOGRAPHIC' SKETCHES.
impossible to rely upon the very holiest instincts of the
moral nature, and consigning its victim to hopeless reprobation. Murder itself might have lost its horrors to one
who must have been but too familiar with the spectacle
of massacre by wholesale upon unresisting crews, upon
passengers enfeebled by sickness, or.upon sequestered villagers, roused from their slumbers by the glare of conflagration, reflected from gleaming cutlasses and from the
faces of demons. This fear it was - a fear like this, as I
have often thought  which must, amidst her other woes,
have been the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to
the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the
sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount
the - crowning" grief - the prospect, namely, that her
royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of
royalty to peace and humble innocence; but that his fair
cheek would be ravaged by vice as well as sorrow; that
he would be tempted into brutal orgies, and every mode of
moral pollution; until, like poor Constance with her young
Arthur, but for a sadder reason, even if it were possible
that the royal mother should see her son in " the courts of
heaven," she would not know again -one so fearfully trans.
figured. This prospect for the royal Constance of revolutionary France was but too painfully fulfilled, as we are
taught to guess even from the faithful records of the
Duchesse d'Angouleme. The young dauphin, (it has'been
said, 1837,) to the infamy of his keepers, was so trained
as to become loathsome forcoarse brutality, as well as for
habits of uncleanliness, to all who approached him -one
purpose of' his guilty tutors being to render royalty and
august descent contemptible in his person. And,'in fact,
they were so far likely to succeed in this purpose, for the
moment, and to the extent of an individual case, that, upon
that account alone, but still more for the sake of the poor




MY BROTHER.                      347
child, the most welcome news with respect to him —him
whose birth * had drawn anthems of exultation from twenty-five millions of men -  was the news of his death.  And
what else can well. be ex bected, for children suddenly with* To those who are open to the impression of omens, there is a most
striking one on record with re spect to the birth of this ill-fated prince,
not less so than the falling off of the head from the cane of Charles I.
at his trial, or the same king's striking a medal, bearing an oak tree,
(prefiguring the oak of Boscobej,) with this prophetic inscription," Seis
nepotibus umbram." At the very moment when (according to immemorial usage) the birth of a child was in the act of annunciation to
the great officers of state assembled in the queen's bed chamber, and
when a private signal from a lady had made known the glad tidings
that it was a dauphin, (the first child having been a princess, to the
signal disappointment of the nation; and the second, who was a boy,
having died,) the whole frame of carved woodwork at the back of
the.queen's bed, representing the crown and other regalia of France,
with the Bourbon lilies; came rattling down in ruins.. There is
another and more direct ill omen connected, apparently, with the
birth of this prince; in fact, a distinct prophecy of his ruin, -a prophecy that he should survive his father, and yet not reign, - which is so
obscurely told, that one knows not in what light. to view it; and
especially since Louis XVIII., who is the original authority for it,
obviously confounds the first dauphin, who died before the calamities
of his family commenced, with the second. As to this second, who is
of course the prince concerned in the references of the text, a new
and most extraordinary interest has begun to invest his tragical story
in this very month of April, 1853; at least, it is now first brought
before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal of-Putnam,
(published in New York,) the No. for April contains a-most interesting
memoir upon the subject, signed T. H. Hanson. Naturally, it indisposed most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of this nature,
that at least one false dauphin had been pronounced such by so undeniable a judge as the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Meantime, it is made
probable enough by Mr. -Hansor that the true dauphin did not die in
the year 1795 at the Temple, bur was personated by a boy unknown;
that two separate parties had an equal interest in sustaining this fraud,
and did sustain it; but one wou.d hesitate to believe whether at the
price of murdering a celebrated physician; that they had the prince




348             AUTOBIOG] APHIC SIETCHES.
drawn from    parental tenderness, and tirown upon their
ownI guardianship at such an age as nine or ten, and under
the wilful misleading of perfidious guides?     But, in my
brother's case, all'the adverse chances, overwhelming as
conveyed secretly to an Indian settlement in Lower Canada, as a
situation in which French, being the prevailing language, would
attract no attention, as it must have done in most other parts of North
America; that the boy was educated and trained as a missionary clergyman; and finally, that he is now acting in that capacity under the
name of Eleazar Williams - perfectly aware of the royal pretensions
put forward on his behalf, but equally, through age (being about 69)
and through absorption in spiritual views, indifferent to these pretensions. It is admitted on all hands that the Prince de Joinville had an
interview with Eleazar Williams a dozen years since - the prince
alleges. through mere accident; but this seems improbable; and Mr
Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visit to have been a preconcerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test the reports current,
so far as they were gounded upon resemblances in Mr. Williams's features to those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. The most
pathetic fact is that of the idiocy common to the dauphin and Mr.
Eleazar Williams. It is clear from all the most authentic accounts
of the young prince that idiocy was in reality stealing over himdue, doubtless, to the stunning nature of the calamities that overwhelmed
his family; to the removal from him by tragical deaths, in so rapid a
succession, of the Princesse de Lamballe, of his aunt, of his father,
of his mother, and others whom most-he had loved; to his cruel separation from his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturally
incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the
language of nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself
and his family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a
causeless and demoniac conspiracy would be more likely tb melt away
under the sudden transfer to kindness and the' gayety of forest life
than any idiocy belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams
describes his own confusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth year, and all things which had happened in earlier years as
gleaming through clouds of oblivion, and as painfully perplexing; but
otherwise he shows no desire to'strengthen the pretensions made for
nimself by any reminiscences piercing these clouds that could poia
specially to France or to royal experiences.




MY BROTHER.                349'hey seemed, were turned aside by some good angel; all
had, filed to harm him; and from the fiery furnace he
came out unsinged.
I have said that he would not have appeared to any
capturing ship as standing in the situation of prisoner
amongst the pirates, nor was he.such in the sense of being
confined. He moved about, when on board ship, in freedom; but he was watched, never trusted on showe, unless
under very peculiar circumstances; and tolerated at all
only because one accomplishment made him indispensable.
to the prosperity of the ship. Amongst the various parts
of nautical skill communicated to my brother by his first
fatherly captain, was the management of chrono.qeters.
Several had been captured, some of the highest value, in
the many prizes,. European or American.  My brother
happened to be perfect in the skill of managing them;
and, fortunately for him, no other person amongst them
had that skill, even in its lowest degreea. To this one
qualification, therefore, (and ultimately to this only,) he
was indebted for both safety and freedom; since, though
he might have been spared in the first moments of carnage from other considerations, there is little doubt that,
in some one of the innumerable brawls which followed
through the years of his captivity, he would have fallen
a sacrifice to hasty impulses of anger or wantonness, had
not his safety been made an object of interest and vigilance
to those in command, and to all who assumed any care for
the general welfare. Much,, therefore, it was that he owed
to this accomplishment. Still, there is no.good thing with.
out its alloy; and this great blessing brought along with it
something worse than a dull duty - the necessity,- in fact,
of facing fears and trials to which the.sailor's heart is pre.
eminently sensible. All sailors, it is notorious, are superstitious; partly, I suppose, from looking,out so much upon




350           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the wilderness of waves, empty of all human life, for
mighty solitudes are generally fear-haunted and fearpeopled; such, for instance, as the solitudes of forests,
where, in the absence of human forms and ordinary human
sounds, are discerned forms more dusky and vague, not
referred by the-eye to any known type, and sounds imperfectly intelligible. And, therefore, are all German coal
burners, woodcutters, &c., superstitious.  Now, the sea is
often peopled, amidst its ravings, with what seem ilnnumerable human voices —such voices, or as ominous, as what
were heard by KubIa Khan -  ancestral voices prophesying war;" oftentimes laughter mixes, from a distance
(seeming to come also from distant times, as well as distant places,) with the uproar of waters; and doubtless
shapes of fear, or shapes of beauty not less awful, are a
times seen upon the waves- by the diseased eye of the
-sailor, in other' cases besides the somewhat rare one of
calenture. This vast solitude of the sea being taken,
therefore, as one condition of the superstitious fear found
so commonly among sailors, a second may be the perilous
insecurity of their own lives, or (if the lives of sailors,
after all, by means of large immunities.from. danger in
other shapes are not so insecure, as is supposed, though,
by the way, it is enough for this result that to themselves
they seem so) yet, at all events, the insecurity of the ships
in which they sail. In' such a case, in the case of battle,
and in others where the empire of chance seems absolute,
there the temptation is greatest to dally with supernatural
oracles and supernatural means of consulting them. Finally, the interruption habitually of all ordinary avenues
to information about the fate of their dearest relatives; the
consequent agitation which must often possess those who
are reentering upon home waters; and the sudden burst,
upon stepping ashore, of heart-shaking news in long accu



MY BROTHER.                 351
mulated arrears, -these are circumstances which dispose
the mind to look out for relief towards signs and omens as
one way of breaking the shock by dim anticipations. Rats
leaving a vessel destined to sink, although the political
application of it as a name of. reproach is purely modern,
must be ranked among the oldest of omens; and —perhaps
the most sober-minded of men might have leave to be
moved with any augury of an ancient traditional order,
such as had won faith for centuries, applied to a fate so.
interesting asthat of the ship to which he was on the point
of committing himself. Other causes might be assigned,
causative of nautical- superstition, and tending to feed it.
But enough. It is well known that the whole family of
sailors is superstitious. My brother, poor Pink, (this was
an old household name which he retained-amongst us from
an incident of his childhood,) was so in an immoderate degree. Being a great reader, (in fact, he had read every
thing in his mother tongue that was of general interest,)
he was pretty well aware how general was the ridicule
attached in our times to the subject of ghosts. But thisnor the reverence he yielded otherwise to some of those
writers who had joined in that ridicule —any more had
unsettled his faith in their existence than the submission
of a sailor in a religious sense to his spiritual'counsellor
upon the false and fraudulent pleasures of luxury can ever
disturb his remembrance of the virtues lodged in rum or
tobacco.'His-own unconquerable, unanswerable experience, the blank realities of, pleasure and pain, put to flight
all arguments whatsoever that anchor only in his understanding  Pink used, in arguing the case with me, to admit that. ghosts might be questionable realities in our
hemisphere; but "it's a different thing to the suthard of
the line."  And then he would go on to tell me of- his own
fearful experience; in particular of on' many times re



352           AUTOBIOGRAPIHIC SKETCHES.
newed, and investigated to no purpose by parties of men
communicating from a distance upon a system of concerted
signals, in one of the Gallapagos Islands... These islands,
wnich were visited, and I think described, by Dampier,
and therefore must have been an asylum to the buccaneers
and flibustiers * in the latter part of the seventeenth century, were so still to their more desperate successors, the
pirates, at the beginning of the nineteenth; and for the
same reason - the facilities they offer (rare in those seas)
for procuring wood and.water. Hither, then, the black flag
often.resorted; and here, amidst these romantic solitudes,islands untenanted by man, —oftentimes it lay furled up for
weeks together; rapine and murder had rest for a season
and the bloody cutlass slept within its scabbard. When
this happened, and when it became known beforehand tha
it would happen, a tent was pitched on shore for my brother,
and.the chronometers were transported thither for the period
of their stay.
The island selected for this purpose, amongst the many
equally open to their choice, might, according to circumstances, be that which offered the best anchorage, or that
from which the reembarkation was easiest, or that which
allowed the readiest access to wood and water. But for
some, or all these advantages, the particular island most
generally honored by the piratical custom and "good will"
was one known'to American navigators as "The Woodcutter's Island."  There was some old tradition -and I
* " Flibustiers." -Thi word, which is just now revolving upon us
in connection with the attempts on Cuba,:&c., is' constantly.spelt by
our own and the American journals as fillibustiers and fillibusteros.
But the true word of nearly two centuries back amongst the old original
race of sea robbers (French and English) that made irregular war
upon the Spanish shipping and maritime towns was that which;
have here retained.




XY BROTHER.                 353
know not but it was a tradition datihg from the times of
Dsmpier - that a' Spaniard. or an Indian settler in this
island (relying, perhaps, too entirely upon the protection of
perfect solitude) had been murdered -ip ppre wantonness
by some of the lawless rovers who frequented this solitary
archipelago. Whether it were from some peculiar atrocity
of bad faith in the act, or from the sanctity of the man, or
the deep solitude of the island, or with a view to the peculiar
edification of mariners in these semi-Christian seas? sQ,
however, it was, and attested by generations of sea vagabonds, (for most of the armed roamers in-hese ocean Zaaras
at one time were of a suspicious order,) that every night,
duly as the sun went down and the twilight began to prevail,
a s9und arose - audible to other islands, and to every ship
lying quietly at anchor in that neighborhood -of a wood!
cutter's axe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which they followed: some even fancied they,pould hear that sort of groaning respiration which is made
by men who use an axe, or by those who in towns ply the
"three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes they
certainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods
and the sylvan precipices on the margin of the shores;
which, however, should rather indicate that the sounds were
zQot supernatural, since, if a visual object, falling under
hyper-physical or cata-physical laws, loses its shadow, by
parity of argument, an audible object, in the same circumstances, should lose its echo. But this was the story; and
amongst sailors there is as little variety of versiors in telling
any true sea story as there is in a log book, (r -in "The
Flying Dutchman:" literatim fidelity is, with. a sailor, a
point at once of religious ~Nith and worldly honor. The
close of the story was - that after, suppose, ten or twelve
minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash was heard,
announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet was
23




354           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old
woodman's persecution. It was exactly the crash, so familiar
to many ears on board. the neighboring vessels, which expresses the harsh tearing asunder of the fibres, caused by
the weight of the trunk in falling; beginning slowly, increasing rapidly, and terminating in one rush of rending.
This over, - one tree felled " towards his winter store," --
there was an interval; man must have rest; and the old
woodman, after working for more than a century, must want
repose. Time enough to begin again after a quarter of an
hour's relaxation.- Sure enough, in that space of time,
again began, in the words of Comus, " the wonted roar
amid the woods."  Again the blows became quicker, as the
catastrophe drew nearer; again the final crash resounded;
and again the mighty echoes travelled through the solitary
forests, and were taken up by all the islands near and far,
like Joanna's laugh amongst the Westmoreland hills, to the
astonishment of-the silent ocean. Yet, wherefore should
the ocean be astonished? -he that had heard this nightly
tumult, by all accounts, for more than a century. My
brother, however, poor Pink, was astonished, in good earnest, being, in that respect, of the genus attonitorum; and
as.often as the gentlemen pirates steered their course for
the Gallapagos, he would sink in spirit before the trials he
might be summoned to face. No second person was ever
put on shore with Pink, lest poor Pink and he might become
jovial over the liquor, and the chronometers be broken or
neglected; for a considerable quantity of spirits was necessarily landed, as well as of provisions, because sometimes a sudden change of weather, or. the sudden appearance of a suspicious sail, might draw the ship off the
island for a fortnight. My brother could have pleaded his
fears without shame; but he had a character to maintain
with the sailors: he was respected equally for his seaman'




MY BROTHER.                     355
ship and his shipmanship.*   By the way, when it is considered that one half of a sailor's professional science refers
him to the stars, (though it is true the other half refers him
to the sails and shrouds of a ship,) just as, in geodesical
operations, one part is referred to heaven and one to earth,
when this is considered, another argument arises for the
superstition of sailors, so far as it is astrological.  They
who know (but know the ort without knowning the Sca, -)
that the stars have much to do in guiding their own movements, which are yet so far from    the stars, and, to all
appearance, so little connected with them, may be excused
for supposing that the stars are connected astrologically
with human destinies. But this by the way. The sailors,
looking to Pink's-double skill, and to his experience on shore,
(more astonishing than all beside, being experience gathered amongst ghosts,) expressed an admiration which, to
one who was also a sailor, had too genial a sound to be
sacrificed, if it could be maintained at any price.  Therefore it was that Pink still clung, in spite of his terrors, to
his'.hore appointment.   But hard was his trial; and many
a time has he described to me one effect of it, when too.t.'* Seamanship and shipmanship." - These are - vo functions of a
sailor seldom separated in the mind of a landsman. The conducting
a ship (causing her to choose a right path) through the ocean; that
is one thing. Then there is the management of the ship within her-,
self, the trimming of her sails, &c., (causing her to keep the line
chosen;) that is another thing. The first is called seamanshi$p; the
second might be called shipmanship, but is, I believe, called navigation. They-are perfectly distinct; one man rarely has both in perfection. Both may be illustrated from the rudder. The question is,
suppose at the Cape of Good Hope, to steer for India: trust the
rudder to him, as a seaman, who knows the passage whether within
or without Madagascar.  The question -is to avoid a sunk rock:
trust the rudder to him, as a navigator, who understands the art of
steering to a nicety.




356           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
long continued, or combined with darkness too intense  The
woodcutter would begin his operations soon after the sun
had set;'but uniformly, at that time, his noise was less.
Three hours after sunset it had increased; and generally
at midnight it was greatest, but not always. Sometimes
the case varied thus far: that it greatly increased towards
three or four o'clock in the morning, and, as the sound
grew louder, and thereby seemed to draw nearer, poor Pink^
ghostly panic grew insupportable; and he absolutely crept
from his pavilion, and its luxurious comforts, to a point of
rock - a promontory - about half a mile off, from which
he could see the ship. The mere sight.of a human abode,
though an abode of ruffians, comforted his panic. With
the approach of daylight, the mysterious sounds ceased.
Cockcrow there happened to be none, in those islands of
the Gallapagos, or none in that particular island; though
many cocks are heard crowing in the woods of America,
and these, perhaps, might be caught by spiritual senses;
or the woodcutter may be supposed, upon Hamlet's principle, either scenting the morning air, or catching the
sounds of Christian matin bells, from some dim convent, in
the depth of American forests. However, so it was; the
woodcutter's axe began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn.; and, as light strengthened, it ceased
entirely. At nine, ten, or eleven o'clock in the forenoon
the whole appeared to have been a delusion; but towards
sunset it revived in credit; during twilight it strengthened;
and, very'soon afterwards, superstitious panic was again
seated on her throne. Such were the fluctuations of the
case. Meaptime, Pink, sitting on his promontory in early
dawn, and consoling his terrors by looking away from the
mighty woods to the tranquil ship, on board of which (in
spite of her secret black flag) the whole crew, murderers
and all, were sleeping peacefully - he, a beautiful English




MY BROTHER.                 357
boy, chased away to the antipodes from one eer.y home
by his sense of wounded honor, and from his immediate
home by superstitious fear, recalled to my mind an image
and a. situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss
Bannerman in " Basil," one. of' the striking (though, to
rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled "Tales of Superstition and Chivalry."  Basil is a " rude sea boy," desolate
and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound
from nature,'and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a.rocky cave; but, in -consequence of some supernatural
terrors connected with a murder, arising in some way (not
very clearly made out) to trouble the repose of his home,
he leaves it in horror, and rushes in the gray dawn to the
seaside rocks; seated on which, he draws a, sort of consolation for his terrors, or of sympathy with his wounded
heart, from that mimicry of life which goes on forever
amongst the raving waves.
From the Gallapagos, Pink went often to Juan (or, as he
chose to call it, after Dampier and others, John) Fernandez. Very lately, (December, 1837,) the newspapers of
America informed us, and the story was current for full
nine days, that this fair island had been swallowed up by
an earthquake; or, at least, that in some way or other it had
disappeared. Had that story proved true, one pleasant
bower -would have perished, raised by Pink as a memorial
expression of his youthful feelings either towards De Foe,
or his visionary creature, Robinsofn Crusoe -but rather,
perhaps, towards the substantial Alexander Selkirk; for it
was raised-on some spot known or reputed by tradition to
have been one of those mot. occupied as a home by Selkirk
1 say,' rather towards Alexander Selkirk;"' for there is
a difficulty to the judgment in associating Robinson Crusoe with this lovely island of the Pacific, and a-.difficulty




358           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
even to the fancy.  Why, it is hard to guess, or through
what perverse contradiction to the facts, De Foe chose to
place the shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe upon the eastern
side of the American continent. Now, not only was this
in direct opposition to the realities of the case upon which
he built, as first reported (I believe) by Woodes Rogers,
from the log book of the Duke and Duchess,- (a privateer
fitted out, to the best of my remembrance, by the Bristol
merchants, two or three years before the peace of Utrecht,)
and so far the mind of any man acquainted with these
circumstances was staggered, in attempting to associate
this eastern wreck of Crusoe with this western island,- but
a-worse obstacle than that, because a moral one, is this,
that,'by thus perversely transferring the scene from the
Pacific to the Atlantic, De Foe has transferred it from a
quiet and sequestered to a populous and troubled sea, - the
Fleet Street or Cheapside of- the navigating world, the
great throughfare of nations,- and thus has prejudiced the
moral' sense and the fancy against his fiction still more
inevitably than.his judgment, and in a way that was perfecly
needless; for the change brought along with it no shadow
of compensation.
My brother's wild adventures amongst these desperate
sea rovers were afterwards communicated in long letters to
a female relative; and, even as letters, apart from the fearful burden of their contents, I can bear witness that they
had very extraordinary merit. This, in fact, was the happy
result of writing from'his heart; feeling profoundly what
he communicated, and anticipating the profoundest sympathy with all that he uttered from her whom he addressed.
A than of business, who opened some of these letters, in
his character of agent for my brother's five guardians, and
who had n'ot any special interest in the affair, assured me
that, throughout the whole course of his life, he had never




MY BROTHER.                 359
real any thing so affecting, from the factsthey contained,
and from the sentiments which they expressed; above all,
the yearning for that England which he remembered as
the land of his youthful pleasures, bat also of his youthful
degradations. Three of the guardians were present at the
reading of these letters, and were all affected to tears, notwithstanding they had been irritated to the uttermost by the
course which both myself and my brother had pursued -a
course which seemed to argue some defect of judgment, or
of reasonable kindness, in themselves. These letters, I
hope, are'still preserved, though they have been long removed from my control. Thinking of them, and their extraordinary merit, I have often been led to believe that every
post town (and many times in the course of a- month)
carries out numbers of beautifully-written letters, and more
from women than from men; not that men are to be supposed less capable of writing good letters, -and, in fact,
amongst all'the celebrated letter writers of past or present
times, a large overbalance happens to have been men, - but
that more frequently women write from their hearts; and
the very same cause operates to make female letters good
which operated at one period to make the diction of Roman
ladies more pure than that of orators or professional cultivators of the Roman language —and which, at another
period, in the Byzantine court, operated to preserve the
purity of the mother idiom within the nurseries and the
female drawing rooms of the palace, whilst it was corrupted- in the forensic -standards and the academic- in the
standards of the pulpit and the throne.
With respect to Pink's yearning for England, that had
been partially gratified in some part of his long exile:
twice, as we- learned long afterwards, he had- landed in
England, but such was his haughty adherence to his purpose, and such his consequent terror of being discovered




360           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
and reclaimed by his guardians, that he never attem[ ted to
communicate with any of his brothers or sisters. There
he was wrong; me they should have cut to pieces before.1
would have betrayed him. I, like him, had: been an obsti.
nate recusant to what I viewed as- unjust pretensions of
authority; and, having been the first to raise the standard
of revolt, had been taxed by my guardians with having
seduced Pink by my example. But that was untrue  Pink
acted for himself. However, he'could know little of all
this; and he traversed England twice, without making
an overture towards any communication with his friends.
Two circumstances of these journeys he used to mention;
both were from the port of London (for he never contemplated London but as a port) to Liverpool; or, thus far I
may be wrong, that one of the two might be (in the return
order) from Liverpool to.London. On the first of these
journeys, his route lay through Coventry; on the other
through Oxford-and Birmingham. In neither case had he
started with much money; and he was going to have retired
from the coach at the place of supping on the first night,
(the journey then occupying two entire days and two
entire-nights,) when the passengers insisted on paying for
him: that was a tribute to his beauty-not yet extinct.
He mentioned this part of his adventures somewhat shyly,
whilst- going over them with a sailor's literal accuracy'
though, as a reord belonging to what he viewed as childish years, he- had ceased to care about it. On the other
journey his experience was different, but equally testified
to the spirit of kindness that is every where abroad. He
had no money, on this occasion, that could purchase even
a momentary lift by a stage coach: as a pedestrian, he had
travelled down to Oxford, occupying two days- in the fiftyfour or fifty-six miles which then measured the road from
London, and sleeping in a farnaer's barn, without leave




MY BROTHER.                 361
asked. Wearied and depressed in spirits, he had reached
Oxford, hopeless of any aid, and with a deadly shame at
the thought of asking it. But, somewhere in the High
Street,- and, according to his very accurate sailor's description of that noble street, it must have been about- the
entrance of All Souls' College, - he met a gentleman, a
gowrisman, who (at thevery moment of turning into the
college gate) looked at Pink earnestly, and then gave him
a guinea, saying at the time, " I know what it is to be in
your situation. You are a schoolboy, and you have run
away from your school. Well, I was once in your situation, and I pity you." -The kind gownsman, who wore a
velvet cap with a silk gown, and must, therefore, have
been what in Oxford is called a gentleman commoner, gave
him an.address at some college or other, (Magdalen, he
fancied, in after years,) where he instructed him to-call
before he quitted Oxford. Had Pink done- this, and had he
frankly- communicated his whole. story, very probably he
would have received, not assistance merely, but-the best
advice for g'uiding his future motions. His reason for not
keeping the appointment was simply that he was nervously
shy, and, above all things, jealous of being entrapped by
insidious kindness into revelations that might prove dangerously circumstantial. Oxford had a mayor; Oxford had a
corporation; Oxford had Greek Testaments past all counting; and so, remembering past experiences, Pink held it
to be the wisest counsel that he should pursue his. route on
foot to Liverpool. That guinea, however, he used to say,
saved him from despair.
One circumstance affected me in this part of Pink's
story. I was a student in Oxford at that time. By comr
paring dates, there was no doubt whatever that I, who held
my guardians in abhorrence, and, above all things, admired
amy brother for his conduct, might have rescued him at this




362           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
point of his youthfil trials, four years before the fortunate
catastrophe of his case, from the calamities which awaited
him. This is felt generally to be the most distressing form
of human blindness  the case when accident brings two
fraternal hearts, yearning for reunion, into almost touching
neighborhood, and then, in a moment after, by the difference, perhaps, of three inches in space, or three seconds in
time, will separate them again, unconscious of their brief
neighborhood, perhaps forever. In the present case, however, it may be doubted whether this unconscious rencontre
and unconscious parting in Oxford ought to be viewed as
a misfortune. Pink, it is true, endured years of suffering,
four, at least, that might have been saved by this seasonable
rencontre; but, on the other hand, by travelling through his
misfortunes with unabated spirit, and to their natural end,
he won' experience and distinctions that else he would have
missed. His further history was briefly this:Someiewhere in the River of Plate he had effected his
escape from the pirates; and a long time after, in 1807, 1
believe, (I write without books to consult,) he joined the
storming party of the English at Monte Video. Here he
happened fortunately to fall under the eye of Sir Home
Popham; and Sir Home forthwith rated my brother as a
midshipman on board his own ship, which was at that time,
I think, a fifty-gun ship - the Diadem. Thus, by merits
of the most appropriate kind, and without one particle of
interest, my brother passed into the royal navy. His
nautical accomplishments were now of the utmost importance to him; and, as often as he shifted his ship, which
(to say the truth) was far too often,- for his temper was
fickle and delighting in change,- so often these accomplishments were made the basis of very earnest eulogy. I
have read i vast heap of certificates vouching for Pink's
qualifications as a sailor in the highest terms, and from




MY BROTHER.                 363
several of the most distinguished officers im the service.
Early in his career as a midshipman, he suffered a mortifying interruption of the active life which had long since
become essential to his comfort.:He had contrived to get
appointed on board a fire ship, the Prometheus, (chiefly
with a wish to enlarge his experience by this variety of
naval warfare,) at the time of the last Copenhagen expedi-,
tion and he obtained his wish; for the Prometheus had'a
very distinguished station assigned her on the great night
of bombardment, and from her decks, I believe, was made
almost the first effectual trial of the Congreve rockets.
Soon after the Danish capital had fallen, and whilst the
Prometheus was still cruising in the Baltic, Pink, in company with the purser of his ship, landed on the coast of
Jutland, for'the purpose of a morning's sporting. It seems
strange that this should.have been allowed upon a hostile
shore; and perhaps it was not allowed, but might have
been a thoughtless abuse of some other mission shorewards. So it was, unfortunately;- and one at least of the.
two sailors had reason to rue the sporting of that day for
eighteen long months of captivity; They Were perfectly
unacquainted with the localities, but conceived themselves
able at any time to make good their retreat to the boat, by
means of fleet heels, and arms sufficient to deal with any
opposition of the sort they apprehended. Venturing, however, too far into the country, they became suddenly aware
of certain sentinels, posted expressly for the benefit of
chance English visitors. These men did not pursue,:but
they did worse, for they fired signal shots; and, by tte
time our two thoughtless Jack tars had reached the shore,
they saw'a detachment of Danish cavalry trotting their
horses pretty coolly down in a direction for the boat.
Feeling confident of their power to keep ahead of the
pi rsuit, the sail rs amused themselves with various sallies




364           AUT'OBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
of nautical wit; and Pink, in particular, was just telli-r
them to present his dutiful respects to the crown prince.,
and assure him that, but for'this lubberly interruption, he
trusted to have improved his royal dinner by a brace of
birds, when - O sight of blank confusion! - all at once
they became aware that between themselves and their
boat lay a perfect network of streams, deep watery holes,
requiring both time and local knowledge to unravel. The
purser hit upon a course which enabled him to regain the
boat; but I am not sure whether he also was not captured.
Poor Pink was, at all events; and, through seventeen or
eighteen months, bewailed this boyish imprudence. At
the end of that time there was an exchange of prisoners,
and he was again serving on board various and splendid
frigates. Wyborg, in Jutland, was the seat of his:Danish
captivity; and such was the amiableness of the Danish
character, that, except for'the loss of his time, to one who.
was- aspiring to distinotion and professional honor, none
of the prisoners who were on parole could-have had much
reason for complaint. The street mob, excusably irritated
with.England at that time, (for, without entering on the
question of right or of expedience as regarded thatw.ar,
it is notorious that such arguments as we had for our
unannounced hostilities could not be.pleaded openly by the
English cabinet, for fear of compromising our, private
friend and informant, the Killgof Sweden,) the mob, therefore, were rough in their treatment of the British prisoners:
at night, they would pelt them with stones;- and here and
there some honest burgher, who might have suffered grievously in his property, or in the person of his nearest
friends, by the ruin- inflicted upon the Danish commercial
shipping, or by the dreadful havoc made in Zealand, would
show something of the same bitter spirit. But the great
body of the-richer and more educated inhabitants showed




MY BROTHER.                   365
the most hospitable attention to all who justified that sort.f notice by their conduct. And their remembrance of
these English friendships was not fugitive; for, through
long years after my brother's death, I used to receive let.
ters, written in the Danish, (a language which I had at.
tained in the course of my studies, and which I have since
endeavored to turn to account in a public journal, for some
useful purposes of research,) from young men as well as
women in Jutland -  letters couched in the most friendly
terms, and recalling to his remembrance scenes and.inci.
dents which sufficiently proved the terms of fraternal
affection upon which he had lived' amongst these public
enemies; and some of them I have preserved to this day,
as memorials that do hbnor, on different considerations,' to
both parties alike.*
* For'this little parenthetical record of my brother's early history,
the exact chronology of'the several items in the case may possible be
now irrecoverable; but any error must be of trivial importance. His
two'pedestrian journeys between London and Liverpool occurred, I'believe, in the same year —- viz., after the death of the friendly captain,'and during the last visit of his ship to England. The capture of Pink
by the pirates took place after the ship's return to the Pacific




CHAPTER XIII.
PREMATURE MANHOOD.
MY last two chapters, very slenderly connected with
Birmingham, are yet made to rise out of-it; the one out
of Birmingham's own relation to the topic concerned, (vit.,
Travelling,) and the other (viz., My Brother) out of
its relation to all possible times in my earlier life, and,
therefore, why not to all possible places? Any where introduced, the chapter was partially out of its place; as
well then to introduce it in Birmingham as elsewhere.
Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore, are these two
last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in a work
confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the
pleasant paths of vagrancy.. Pretending only to amuse my
reader, or pretending chiefly to that, however much I may
have sought, or-shall seek, to interest him occasionally
through his profounder affections, I enjoy a privilege of
neglecting harsher logic, and connecting the separate sections of these sketches, not by ropes and cables, but by
threads of aerial gossamer.
This present chapter, it. may seem', promises something
of the same episodical or' parenthetic character. But in
reality it does not. I am now returning into the main current of my narrative, although' I may need to linger for a
366




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              36
moment upon a past anecdote. I have mentioned already.
that, on inquiring at the Birmingham post office for a letter
addressed to myself, I found one directing me to join my
sister Mary at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in North
amptonshire, and giving me to understand, that, during my
residence at this -place, some fixed resolution would be
taken and announced to me in regard to the future disposal
of my time, during the two or three years before I should
be old enough on the English system for matriculating at
Oxford or Cambridge. In the poor countries of Europe,
where they cannot afford double sets of scholastic establishments,- having, therefore, no splendid schools, such as
are, in fact, peculiar to England,- they are compelled to
throw the duties of such schools. upon their universities;
and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or
even younger, crowding such institutions, which, in fact,
they ruin for all higher functions. But England, whose
regal establishments of both classes emancipate her from
this dependency, sends her young men to college not until
they have ceased to be boys  not earlier, therefore, than
eighteen.
But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence? Physically by one criterion, legally by
another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourthand all indefinite. Equator, absolute-equator, there is
none; Between the two spheres of youth.and age, perfect
and imperfect manhood, as in all aralogous cases, there is
no strict line of bisection. The change is a large process,
accomplished within a large and corresponding space;
having, perhaps, some central or equatorial line, but lying,
like that of our earth, between certain tropics, or limitb
videly separated. This intertropical region may, and
generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it
s hard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolerable




368           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
approximation at what precise era it would be reasonable
to describe the individual as having ceased to be a boy,
and as having attained his inauguration as a man. Physi.
cally, we know that there is a very large latitude of differences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely
between individual and individual, but also between nation
and nation; differences so great, that, in some southern
regions of Asia, we hear of matrons at the age of twelve.
And though, as Mr. Sadler rightly insists, a romance of
exaggeration has been built upon the facts, enough remains
behind of real marvel to irritate the curiosity of the physi.
ologist as to its efficient, and, perhaps, of the philosopher
as to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have. seen senators
of mark and authority, nay,- even a prime minister, the
haughtiest,* the most despotic, and the most irresponsible
oj his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient
and modern, would have operated, as a ground of absolute
challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very large proportion of men
never attain maturity. Nonage is their final destiny; and
manhood, in this respect, is for them a pure idea. Finally,
as regards the moral development,- by which I mean the
whole system and economy of their love and hatred, of
their admirations and contempts, the total organization of
their pleasures and their pains — hardly any of our species
ever attain manhood. It would be unphilosophic to say
that intellects of the highest order were, or could be, devel*'" The haughtest."- Which, however, is very doubtft 1. Such,
certainly, was the popular impression. But people'who knew Mr.
Pitt intimately have always ascribed to him a nature the' jist amiable
and, social, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the
contrary, Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in ls principles and frank in his
address, wmas repulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies.




PREMATURE MANHOOD.             369
oped.fuily without a corresponding development of the
whole nature. But of such intellects there do not appear
above two or three in a thousand years. It is a fact, forced
upon one by the whole experience of life, that almost all
men are children,- more or less, in their tastes-and admirations. Were it not for man's latent tendencies,- were it
not for that imperishable grandeur which exists by way of
-germ.and ultimate ppssibility in his nature, hidden though
it is, and often all but effaced,- how unlimited would be
the.contempt amongst all the wise for his species! and
misanthropy would, but for the angelic ideal buried and
imbruted in man's sordid race, become amongst the noble
fixed, absolute, and deliberately cherished.
But, to resume my question, how, under so variable a
standard, both natural and conventional, of every thing
almost that can be received for a test or a presumption of
manhood, shall we seize upon any characteristic -feature,
sufficiently universal to serve a practical use, as a criterion
of the transition from-the childish mind to the dignity (relative dignity at least) of that mind which belongs to conscious
maturity?  One such criterion, and one only, as I believe,
there is  all others'are variable and uncertain. It —lies
in the reverential feeling, sometimes suddenly developed,
towards woman, and the idcea of woman. From that moment when women. cease to be regarded with carelessness,
and when the ideal of womanhood, in its'total pomp of
loveliness- and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon.
the mind, boyhood has ended;'childish thoughts and incli.
nations have passed away forever; and the gravity of
manhood, with the self-respecting views of manhood, have
commenced." Mentemque priorem
Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jassit
Pectore." - Lucan.
24




'870          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
These feelings, no doubt, depend. for their development in
~part upon physical causes; but they are also determined
by- the. many retarding or accelerating forces enveloped in
cilcumstances of position, and sometimes in pure accident.
For myself; I. remember most distinctly the very day -the
scene and its- accidents- when that mysterious awe fell
upon me which belongs to woman in her ideal portrait;,mnd from. that hour a profounder gravity colored all my
thoughts, and. a "beauty still more beauteous" was lit up
tbr; me in this agitating world.; Lord Westport and my,
self had been on a visit to'.a noble family about fifty miles
from Dublin-; and we were. returning from Tullamore by a
public passtage boat, on the splendid canal which connects
that. place wiih the metropolis. To avoid attracting an
unpleasant attention to ourselvesin public situations, I observed a rule of never addressing Lord Westport by his
title: but. it so Happened that the canal carried us along the
margin of an estate belonging to:the Earl'(now Marquis)
of: Westmeath; and, on turning an angle, we came suddenly
in- view of this nobieman taking his morning lounge in the
sun. Somewhat loftn;y he reconnoitred the miscellaneous
party of clean and unciean beasts, crowded on. the deck of
OUTr ark, ourselves amongst the -number, whom' he chalb
lenged gayly as young acquaintances from Dublin; and
my friend he saluted more than once as " My lord."  This
accident-made known to the. assembled mob of our fellowtravellers. Lord Westport's rank, and led to a scene rather
too broadly exposing' the. spirit of this world.  Herded
together on the deck (or roof of. that den denominated the
"state cabin") stood a party of young ladies, headed by
their governess. In the cabin below was mamma, who as
yet had not condescended to illuminate our circle, for she
was. an awful personage' a wit,. a bluestocking, (I.call
her by the name then current,) and a leader of ton in Dub



PREMATURE MANHOOD.             371
lin and:Belfnst. The fact, however, that a young lord, and
ono of great expectations, was on board;, brought her up.
A short cross examination of Lord Westport's French
valet had confirmed the flying report, and at the same
time (I suppose) put her in possession of my defect in all
those advantages of title, fortune, and expectation which so
brilliantly distinguished my friend.  Her admiration of
him, and her contempt for myself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon cleared out for
public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the
very equitable stations which she assigned to us in her
regard.,She was neither very brilliant, nor altogether a
pretender, but might be described as a-showy woman, of
slight but popular accomplishments. Any woman, how.
ever, has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company; and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturally have gathered in a talking
practice of such duration, can find little difficulty in\ mortifying a boy, or sometimes, perhaps, in tempting him to
unfortunate sallies of irritation. Me it was clear that she
viewed in the light of a humble friend, or what is known
in fashionable life by the humiliating name of a "toad.
eater."  Lord Westport, full of generosity in what regarded
his dwn pretensions, and who never had violated the per.
fect equality which reigned in our deportment to each
other, colored with as much confusion as myself at her
coarse insinuations. And, in reality, our ages scarcely
allowed of that relation which she supposed to exist between us.'Possibly, she did not suppose it; but it is
essential to the wit and the display of some people that it
should have a foundation in malice. A victim  and a
sacrifice are indispensable. conditions in every exhibition.
In such a case, my natural sense of justice would generally
have armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at




372          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectua ally, and
could count upon no sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond.the power of retort, and became a passive
butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowy sleet
of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck
made it not easy to get beyond talking range; and thus it
happened, that for two hours I stood the worst of this
bright lady's feud. At length the tables turned. Two
ladies appeared slowly ascending from the cabin, both in
deepest mourning, but else as different in aspect as summer and winter. The elder was the Countess of Errol,
then mourning an affliction which had laid her life desolate,
and admitted of no human consolation. Heavier griefgrief more self-occupied and deaf to all voice of sympa.
thy - I have not happened to witness.  She seemed
scarcely aware of our presence, except. it were by placing
herself as far as was possible from the annoyance of our
odious conversation. The circumstances of her loss are
now forgotten; at that time they were known to a large
circle in Bath and London, and I violate no confidence in
reviewing them. Lord Errol had been privately intrusted
by Mr. Pitt with an official secret, viz., the outline and
principal details of a foreign expedition; in which, according to Mr. Pitt's original purpose, his lordship was to have
held a high command. In a moment of intoxication, the
earl confided this secret to some false friend, who published
the communication and its author. Upon this, the unhappy
nobleman, under too keen a sense of wounded honor, and
perhaps with an exaggerated notion of the evils attached
to his indiscretion, destroyed himself. Months had passed
since that calamity-when. we met his widow; but time
appeared to have done nothing in mitigating her sorrow.
The younger lady, on the other hat, who was Lady
Errol's — sister, — Heavens! what t spirit of joy and




PREMATURE MANHOOD.                     373
festal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice,
her manner!     She was Irish, and the veiy impersonation
of innocent gayety, such      as we find oftener, perhaps,
amongst Irish women than those of any other country.
Mourning, I have said, she wore; from      sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that sole expression-there was
about her of gloom or solemn feeling, -
"But allthings else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn."
Odious bluestocking* of Belfast and Dublin! as some
* I have sometimes had occasion to. remark, as a noticeable phenomenon of our present times, that the order of ladies called bluestockings,
by way of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except
only here and there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. The reason of this change is interesting; and I do not
scruple to call it honorable to our intellectual progress. In the last'(but still more in the penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal curiosity about science, or of ennobling interest in
books, carried with it an air of something unsexual, mannish, and
(as it was treated by the sycophantish satirists that for ever. humor
the prevailing folly) of something ludicrous. This mode of treatment
was possible so long as the literary class of ladies formed a feeble
minority. But now, when two vast peoples, English and American,
counting between themf forty-nine millions, when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germ any and France)behold
their entire educated class, male and female alike; calling out, not fo
Panem et circenses, (Give us this day our daily bread and our games
of the circus,) but for Panem et literas, (Give us this day our daily
bread and literature,) the universality of the call has swept away the
very name of bluestocking; the very possibility of the ridicule has
been undermined by stern realities; and the verbal expression of the
reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, but even unintelligible
to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term bluestocking has
never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless the reader should incline to think my.account satisfactory. I incline to that opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly to a sobriquet




374              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
would call you, how I hated you up to that moment! half
an hour after, how grateful I felt for the hostility which had
procured me such an alliance'!    One minute sufficed to put
the quick-witted young Irish woman in possession of our
imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of her circle, upon
a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole masculine assistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and chose, upon some
inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. The translation, however,
of this name from the doctor's legs to the ladies' legs is still unsolved.
That great hiatus needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously
or not, in reviewing'a German historical work of some pretensions,
where this problem emerges, rejected the Portman Square doctor
altogether, and traced the' term to an old Oxford statute-one of the
many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of
conscience upon loyal scholastic' students that they shall wear cerulean socks.' Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn'by
females, they;would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would
be regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an'objector, no rational
female would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being
too good. But as such socks would symbolize such a'profession of
pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs
expressed, would'be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of
wearing- erulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic
pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion of literature as a
sort of daily bread has made all ridicule of female literary culture not
less ridiculous than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily
bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, substance and shadow;
is'melting away frorf amongst us.'Something of the same kind has
happened in the history of silver forks. Frjs of any kind, as is well
known, were first introduced into Italy; thence by a fantastic (but,'in this instance, judicious) English traveller' inmmdiately (and not
mediately through France) were introduced into England. This elegant
revolution occurred about 240 years ago; and never since that day
have there been' wanting English protesters against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the'last 160 years, at least, against the
paganism of using steel forks; or, 2dly, two-pronged forks; or, 3dly,-of
tutting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years -ago, the Duchess
of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek




PREMATURE MANHOOD.                   375
little drama and the several parts we were playing.      To
look was to understand, to wish was to execute, with this
ardent child of nature.   Like Spenser's Bradamant, with
martial scorn she couched her lance on the side of the party
suffering wrong. Her rank, as sister-in-law to the constable
of Scotland, gave her some advantage for winning a favorable audience; and throwing her egis over me, she extended
that benefit to myself. Road was now made perforce for
me also; my replies were- no longer stifled in noise and
laughter.  Personalities were banished; literature was extensively discussed; and that is a subject which, offering
little room to argument, offers the widest to eloquent disout, on. seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable
mouth- on the point of a knife, " 0, stop him, stop him! that man's
going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good defence.
Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver
forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages to any
elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver forks,
came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which forks
first superseded -viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the knife
between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain select hacks
of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a civilized
dinner, arid fancying that their own obscene modes of feeding prevailed every where, got up the name of the Silver-fork School, (which
should have indicated the school of decency,) as, representing some
ideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however
when cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged
fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed?
Why, this - that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless
any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this -strict analogy between " the silver fork" reproach and " the bluestocking" reproach
- that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal,
af the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle
attempts to throw ridicule upon it-upon literature, in the one case,
as a most appropriate female ornament; and upon silvei forks, on
the other, as an element of social decorum.




376          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
play. I had immense reading; vast command of words,
which somewhat diminished as ideas and doubts multiplied;
and, speaking no longer to a deaf audience, but to a generous and indulgent protectress, I threw out, as from a cornucopie, my illustrative details and recollections; trivial
enough, perhaps, as I might now think, but the more intelligible to my present circle. It might seem too much the
case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend any
words upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I
remained the lion of that company which had previously
been most insultingly facetious at my expense;.and the
intellectual lady finally declared the air of the deck unpleasant.
Never, until this hour, had I thought of women as objects
of a possible interest or of a reverential love. I had known
them either in their infirmities and their unamiable aspects,
or else in those sterner relations which made them objects
of ungenial and uncompanionable feelings. Now first it
struck me that life might owe half its-attractions and all its
graces to female companionship. Gazing, -perhaps, with
too earnest an admiration at this generous and spirited young
daughter of Ireland, and in that way making her those acknowledgments for her goodness which I couldriot properly
clothe in words, I was aroused to a sense of my indecorum
by seeing her suddenly blush. I believe that Miss. B —
interpreted my admiration rightly; for she was not offended,
but, on the contrary, for the rest of the day, when not atLending to her sister, conversed almost exclusively, and in
a confidential way, with Lord Westport and myself. The
whole, in fact, of this conversation must have convinced
ner that I, mere boy as I was, (viz., about fifteen,) could not
nave presumed to direct my admiration to her, a fine young
woman of twenty, in any other character than that of a generous champion, and a very adroit mistress in the dazzling




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              877
fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, in reality,
been addressed-to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her
spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it
was,   the mere possibility that I, so very a child,. should
have called up the most transitory sense of bashfillness or
confusion upon any female cheek, first,- and suddenly, as
with a flash of lightning, penetrating some utter darkness,
illuminated to my own startled consciousness, neveeagain
to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhood
and womanly excellence.'This Was, in a proper sense, a
revelation; it fixed a great era of change in my life;'and
this new-born idea, being agreeable to the uniform tendencies of my own nature, —that is, lofty and aspiring, -it
governed my life with great power, and with most salutary
effects. Ever after, throughout the period of youth, I was
jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in
the presence of women; reverencing, often, not so much
them as my own ideal of woman latent in them. For I
carried about with me the idea, to which often I seemed to
see an approximation, of
"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, to command."
And from this day I was an altered creature, never again
relapsing into the careless, irreflective mind of childhood.
At the same time I do not wish, in paying my homage to
the other sex, and in glorifying its possible power over ours,
to be confounded with those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians Avho flatter woman with a false lip worship; and,
like Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold-out to them a picture
of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowy excellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm,
a mere bacchanalian inebriation, on behalf of woman, put
forth by modern verse writers, expressly at the expense of




378           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCLES.
the other sex, as though woman could be of porcelain, whilst
man Was of-common earthern ware. Even the testimonies of
Ledyard and Park are partly false (though amiable) tributes
to female excellence; at least they are merely one-sided
truths —aspects of one phasis, and under a peculiar angle.,
For, though the sexes differ characteristically, yet they
nevei fail to reflect each other; nor can they differ as to
the geUral amount of development; never yet was woman
in one stage of elevation, and man-(of the same community) in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of God and
man, all-potent woman! reverence thy own ideal; and in
the wildest of the homage which is paid to thee, as also in
the most real aspects of thy wide dominion, read no trophy
of idle vanity, but a silent indication of the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to the extent
of thy power," And show us how divine a thing
A woman may become."
For what purpose have I repeated this story  The
reader may, perhaps, suppose it introductory to some tale
of boyish romantic passion for some female idol clothed
with imaginary perfections. But in that case he will be
mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. I
was preoccupied by other passions. Under the disease -
for disease it was - which at that time mastered me, one
solitary desire, one frenzy, one demoniac fascination,
stronger than the fascinations bf calenture, brooded over
me as the moon over the tides -forcing me day and night
into speculations upon great intellectual problems, many
times beyond my strength, as indeed often beyond all
human strength, but not the less provoking me to pursue them. As a prophet in days of old had no power to
resist the voice which, from hidden worlds, called him to a




PREMATURE MANHOOD.             379
mission, sometimes, perhaps, revolting to his human sensibilities, as he must deliver, was under a coercion to deliver the burning word that spoke within his heart, — or as
a ship on the Indian Ocean cannot seek rest by anchoring,
but must run before the wrath of the monsoon, -such in its
fury, such in its unrelentingness, was: the persecution that
overmastered me. School tasks under these circumstances,
it may well be supposed, had become a torment to me.
For a long time they had lost even that slight power of
stimulation which belongs to the irritation of difficulty.
Easy and simple they had now become as the elementary
lessons of, childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek
studies, if pursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall
so far into the rear as a palcestra for exercising both strength
and skill; but, in a school where the exercises are pursued
in common by large classes, the burden must be adapted
to the powers of the weakest, and not of the strongest.
And, apart from that objection, at this period, the'hasty
unfolding of far different intellectual interests than such
as belong to mere literature had, for a time, dimmed in
my eyes the lustre of classical studies, pursued at whatsoever depth and on whatsoever scale. For more than a
year, every thing connected with schools and the business
of schools had been growing more and more hateful tome.
At'first,:however, my disgust had been merely the disgust
of weariness and pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis
it was.virtually to me,) when a premature development of
my whole mind was rushing in like a cataract, forcing
channels for itself and for the new tastes which it introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, but
had deepened into a moral sense as of some inner dignity
continually violated. Once the petty round of school tasks
had been felt as a molestation;, but now, at last, as a
degradation. Constant conversation with grown-up men




3SO          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for the last half'year, and upon topics oftentimes of the
gravest order, -the responsibility that had always in some
slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the
eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much more
so when circumstances had thrown me as an English stranger upon the society of distinguished Irishmen,- more,
however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound and countergrowth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce
with lofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbittered my school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Precisely at this culminating point
of my self-conflict did that scene occur which I have described with Miss B1-. In that hour' another element,
which assuredly was not wanted, fell into the seething,
caldron of new-born impulses, that, like the magic caldron
of Medea, was now transforming me into,a new creature.
Then first and suddenly I brought powerfully before myself the change which was worked in the aspects of society
by the presence of woman - woman,. pure, thoughtful,
noble, coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections.- Right over against this ennobling spectacle, with
equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of school!
boy society -no matter in what region of the earth;
schoolboy society, so frivolous in.the matter of its disputes,
often so brutal in the manner; so childish, and yet so
remote from simplicity; so foolishly careless, and yet so'revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and
yet beyond any section of human beings so corispicuously
ignorant. Was'it indeed that heavenly which I was soon
to.exchange for this earthly? It seemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet have nearly
three years to pass in such. society as this, that I heard
some irresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy fleshly robes
of humanity, and enter for a season into some brutal incarnation.




PREMATURE MANHOOD.             381
But what connection had this painful prospect with Lax.
ton? Why should it press upon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had done at Westport?
Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought me
nearer to,the horror from which I recoiled: my return to
England would recall the attention of my guardians to the
question, which as yet had slumbered; and the knowledge
that I had reached Northamptonshire would precipitate
their decision. Obscurely, besides, through a hint which
had reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to
be, and it took the very worst shape, it could have taken.
All this increased my agitation from hour to hour. But all'this was quickened and barbed by the certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, and to
her only, that I could look for any useful advice or any
effectual aid.'She over my mother, as in turn my mother
over her, exercised considerable influence; whilst my
mother's power was very seldom disturbed by'the other
guardians.  The mistress of' Laxton it was, therefore
whose opinion upon the case would virtually be decisive
since, if she saw no reasonable encouragement to any con
test with my guardians, I felt too surely that my own un
countenanced and unaided energies, drooped too much for.
such an effort. Who Lady Carbery was, I will explain in
my next chapter, entitled Laxton. -Meantime, to me, individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I could
regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable
friendship.  She had known me from infancy: when'I
was in my first year of life, she, an orphan and a great
heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh; and on her occasional visits to "the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an
ague, which lasted from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy




382           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
that could breathe and talk. Every year our intimacy had
been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it.  But,
after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her household to Bath, in that city we frequently
met again; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as
for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Carbery's
health was supposed to benefit by the waters. Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one; but, in general, it
was calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was
masculine and austere, with very little toleration for sentiment or romance. But to myself she had always been
indulgently.kind; I was protected in her regard, beyond
any body's power to dislodge me, by her childish rmemebrances; and of late years she had begun to entertain the
highest opinion -of my intellectual promises. Whatever
could be done to assist my views, I most certainly might
fount upon ler-doing; that is to say, within the limits of
her conscientious judgment upon the propriety of my own
plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the
world than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely
from my own view of what was expedient as well as what
was right; in which case I was well assured that, in the
-midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy, she would
firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In any circumstances she would have done so. But at present a
new element had begun to mix with the ordinary influences
which governed- her estimates of things: she had, as 1
knew from my sister's report, become religious; and her
new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact,
and tending to what is now technically known in England
as "Low Church," or "Evangelical Christianity."  These
views, being adopted in a great measure from my mother,
were naturally the same as my mother's; so that I could
form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exact




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              83
direction; in which her counsels would flow. It is singular
that, until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery
under any relation whatever to female intellectual society.
My early childish knowledge of her had shut out that
mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, under the' new
born sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss B1 —,
I became aware of the distinguished place she was qualified
to fill in such'society. In that Eden-for such it had now
consciously become to me - I had no necessity to cultivate
an interest or solicit an admission; already, through Lady
Carbery's too flattering estimate of my own pretensions,
and through old, childish memories, I held the most distin.
guished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenly to my new-born powers of -appreciation in all its
dseadful points of -.ontrast with the ~killiqg.society'of
sch-oolboys. She it-was, fitted to.be the >glory of suOh an
Elen,tho. prdbably would assirt:in'banishing me for heo
present to the wilderness outside. My distress df fmind
wiasi nepressible. And, in the midst otf,glitterirng,saloons,
at4imes talso.in athe, midstof'itoiety the vmost fascinating,
I — contemplating the idea of that gloomy academicddun.
geon to which for three long years I anticipated too certainly a sentence of exile -felt very much as in the
middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny,
inheritor of a false, fleeting prosperity, that suddenly, in a
moment of time, by signs blazing out past all concealment
on his forehead, was detected as —a leper; and in that
character, as a public nuisance and universal horror, was
summoned instantly to withdraw from society; prince or
peasant, was indulged with no time for preparation or
evasion; and, from the midst of any society, the sweetest
or the most dazzling, was driven violently-to take up his
abode amidst the sorrow-haunted chambers of a lazar
house.




The author has exerted himself every where to keep the text accurate; and he is disposed to believe that his own care, combined with
the general accuracy of the press, must have enabled him to succeed
in that object. But if it should appear that any errors have after all
escaped him, he must request his readers to excuse them, after explaining that he suffers under the oppression of a nervous distraction,
which renders all labors exacting any energy of attention inexpressi
bly painful.