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B ERKELEy\
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORN^ /
RIDES
AND
REVERIES
OF THE
LATE
M^
JISOP
SMITH.
\
EDITED
BY PETER QUERY, F.S.A.
[MARTIN F,
TUPPER.]
LONDON:
KTJRRT \ND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1858.
The right of Translation is reserved.
NOTICE BY THE EDITOR.
My poor friend ^sop is dead !
What a blow this is to Lucy, whom hie was
within a week of marrying — and to me and Mrs.
Query, who had set our hearts upon the match
— none can tell ; but, things being as they are,
all this and that are over.
Dr. Newsaw tells me that Mr. Smith never
really recovered his last accident, slight as it
seemed at first ; but that, what with the un-
wonted excitements of love, and renewed horse-
exercise, as soon as ever he could leave my
sofa, the concussion brought on a congestion,
whereof, to our great concern, he thus somewhat
suddenly — and, certainly, quite unexpectedly —
died.
Two days before his death he put into my
hands (among some other matters confided to
738
2 NOTICE
1110 as executor) the heap of papers that make
this book : many of them having been ventilated
on the mouths of men already, by help of
iEsop's admirable friend, the Editor of that
Maga of Erin, the " Dublin University Ma-
gazine ;" but there was plenty more beside of a
like character, scraps of hurried thoughts, scrib-
bled, almost illegibly, on backs of letters, fly-
leaves of books, and other odds and ends of
blotted stationery ; in short, it appeared to me
that all these whims and fancies were simply
and truly what they here profess to be — my
poor friend's reveries, out riding. His fables,
as his feelings, would seem to have had facts for
their substrata.
You have, then, before you, " Lector dilec-
tissime," iEsop*s most unguarded meditations.
It vvas not for me to select, or add, or alter ; I
could not do it, if I would, and would not, if I
could ; neither did I care to mould such post-
humous fragments into a connected whole.
They touch many past or passing topics of the
day, as well as other subjects of a more enduring
interest ; and are unconventionally out-spoken
upon several social subjects, not always so boldly
BY THE EDITOR. 3
broached in print. However, let other folks
criticize them ; my duty has been little more
than to correct the proof-sheets of this sug-
gestive book ; which you may love, like, endure,
or detest, according to your " idiosyncrasy,"
without flattery or favour.
Farewell, poor ^sop Smith !
A better fellow, and a kinder, never breathed,
nor one more often misappreciated.
Though somewhat hardened, and not a little
soured (as most of the rest of us are) by worries
and troubles and ill-usage of many sorts, —
treachery from friends, malice from enemies,
the calumniating tongue of neutrals, and other
usual disappointments vexations and negligences
of human life, — he yet kept warm and beating
the affectionate impulsive heart of childhood
under his mediaeval waistcoat, and however
bitter of speech under the harrow of aggravation
(as ever is the case with hunchbacks) was never-
theless both in will and deed the kindliest of
men.
His mental independence, shown character-
istically enough in this record of solitary rides
and shouted reveries, cared little about con-
4 NOTICE BY THE EDITOR.
ciliating the commoner sort of friendships. He
was used to say what he thought, to do what he
chose, to go where he liked, heeding nobody.
Nevertheless, with all his heart and soul he
loved and followed the good,' the pure, the
generous ; and if, as he rides, he contemptuously
touches with his dog-whip a trifle of wicked
wives, bad servants, dull parsons, hypocritical
mercy-mongers, and zoilistical critics, no doubt
they richly deserve it.
p. Q.
Dymsfold Manor.
CONTENTS,
An Introductory Fragment of Autobiography
Pond-Skimming ....
Empty Buckets ....
Bottled Thunder ; and Electric Sauce
Patience
The Mole and its Grandmother
Diamonds
Grammar
Throwing a Fir
Gaps .
Galls
Bliss's Bankruptcy
Harvesting
Bits of Ribbon
iEolian Telegraphs
Dipthongs
Eating Grass
Arachnisms .
Woodcocks
The Mushroom. Lily
In Harness
Football
Fish- Hooks
Wedding-Cards
Coram Non Judice ,
HsandWs .
PACK
1
11
14
16
21
^2
23
26
29
31
32
34
42
44
46
48
50
52
55
56
59
61
64
65
68
70
;
Vlll CONTENTS.
VAnn
Mud 73
Opium 75
Cormorant-Fanciers 77
Iron and Honey 80
Leaps 82
The Dammed Brook 84
Mixed-Madness 86
Follow my Leader 87
The Lizard in the Nest 92
Galloping 94
Puppets and Wires 98
Fattened Toads .100
Bloodsuckers 102
Unravelling 105
The Narrow World 109
My Plum-Stone Ill
The Holly-Bush 114
Horse-Morals . . 115
The Elephant and the Monkey 117
A Smash 122
Critics ... 124
Pariahs 127
The Cold Shade 130
Early and Late 133
Spurs 134
Aesop's Patent Heal- All 130
A Pig in a Poke 137
Burying 141
Yeh's Nay 144
My Ohi-Stick . . 149
Our Kaleidoscope .151
Housekeeping 154
The Frog in a Stone 157
Sunshine 159
Moonshine 162
CONTENTS. IX
PACK
Stars ... 165
Infections * • • 1€8
Autumn Leaves 170
Blinkers 171
The Kind Killer 174
Eyes Right 177
Amusements 178
Hurrah for the Rifle 182
Rust ; and Cuckoos 183
Next-Door 185
Mare and Foal 186
Woman's Rights 189
Ivy 19^
Dress 198
Fashion 201
The Nettle in the Nosegay 203
The Jay and the Nightingale 205
Ticket-of-Leavers 206
Colonel Jade upon Divorce 208
Colonel Jade on Marriage 214
Aesop on Marriage 220
Docking 223
The Little World 225
Editors Aesopized 232
Winding-Up 236
In re Old Newspapers 238
The Ditch and the Well 239
Struggles 241
Hush! 242
Hunting to Heel 244
Educationals 245
Parochial Toothache 248
Old Maids 250
Hammer and Nail 253
The Grumbling Gimlet 255
X C().\Ti:.\'is.
r.\< r.
jjiuppiiig the Ba!t'(.'(io:e ....... 2.')7
Alongside Eden Villa 2G2
Gossi(» . . . . . . , . . . 2Go
Doing 2sothing ........ '2ti J
Addled Eggs 2G7
Circulars ; and Autographs 269
Big Fish and Little Fish 272
Blind Folly 274
Laurel 277
What Better .? 278
The Covetous Ghost 280
Fatalities 283
Peter Query's Introduction 285
The Pole Axe with a Raz^ r Edge 287
The Rock and the ^yave 289
The Breakers 290
Revision 291
Politics and Voting 294
A Next Presentation 296
Air-Plants 298
Regrets 300
Self-Knowledge 302
Zoilism 304
To Sundry of My Malignants 310
Coursing Canzonet 312
Pigeons and Wires . . . . . . . 315
The Sheep and the Bramble 316
The Sun and the Fire 317
The Magic Mirror 317
Universal Suffrage 319
The Ballot 321
The Unsunned Corner 322
American Slavery 324
The Solitary Owl 328
Pull-Up 330
THE
RIDES AND REVERIES
OF THE LATE
MR. ^SOP SMITH,
AN INTR ODUCTORY FRAGMENT OF
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
EiRST, you will wish to know why I was christened
^sop. There is an obvious answer : I was born
Smith. I come of a family that has exhausted inge-
nuity in providing its innumerable scions with dis-
tinctive pre-names ; that has worried its patronymic
with every possible spelling — even unto Smijth,
where the mysterious reduplication of the i, however
zoologically orthodox, totally paralyses the power of
pronunciation ; — of a family that, in utter despair of
being discriminated any otherwise, has resolved at
length to regard the prefix as everything, and the
surname as nothing. That is one reason why I was
christened /Esop.
B
2 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
However, as no living creature naturally possesses
only one leg, so no earthly result is dependent for
all its support upon one only reason ; and the second,
therefore, is the ^ dipthong. For several genera-
tions this ^E has been the distinguishing feature of
our sept; insomuch that among the many clans of
our family, we have come to be known everywhere
as the Dipthong Smiths, — a consummation very
pleasing to my respected grandfather, ^schines.
This worthy man, the founder of my individual for-
tune, was a barrister of considerable powers and
practice ; he had buckled to the law on the strength
of his name, — for he had great faith in names ; per-
haps from the circumstance that his father, iEolus
Smith, had turned out a speculative and therefore
ruined man, — one of the innumerable victims to the
South Sea bubble ; and from the further fact that
his grandfather, -^neas (a schoolmaster, fallen into
imbecility) in his driveUing dotage was perpetually
babbling of the field of Troy. J^olus had named his
son JEschines, by way of a sort of dipthong compli-
ment to John Law, the fascinating bubbler of the
time ; but he httle knew how wise a thing he had
done in giving his child a name which acted perpe-
tually as a hint to be eloquent, and an incentive to
be legal. The consequence came to be, in the course
of years, that my grandfather grew to be eminent and
rich, and thereby to furnish another good reason for
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 3
my dipthong nomenclature; seeing that his service
of plate displayed — perhaps too conspicuously for
modern taste — on every cover, waiter and spoon,
an immense iE dipthong under the hereditary griffon.
It thenceforward became an additional piece of
family pride to find a corresponding initial for the
son and heir.
My father's name — and, as the philosophy of
naming induces me to add, therefore nature, — was
iEsculapius ; a worthy, excellent, and useful member
of society, who, among other cares, had some little
difficulty in keeping up the charter of our diptliongs;
as in my case, his sole male hope, he was hard put
to it, — for there seemed only to remain unused by us
in former generations, some such questionable appel-
latives as Ji^geon, J^ou, iEtna, and ^thiops —
none of them very pleasant titles to be bawled by
from cradle to grave. But one day, happening,
after a visit to St. Bartholomew's, to pass near Snow
Hill, Holborn, he cast his eye at once upon my
name — and nature ; for ^Esop sank into my soul.
Who has not wondered at tlie utter desolation of
that dreary pile of building (is it not in Skinner
Street, nigh unto St. Sepulchre's?) in the best
business situation in all London, and yet so mani-
festly under the dragon eye of Chancery, that nobody
would have it as a gift ? Who has not noticed in
the midst of the dingy edifice, surrounded by
B 2
4 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
broken windows and blackened mud-bespattered
bill-bedizened shutters, my illustrious namesake
modelled in terracotta, not a little damaged by brick-
bats and illustrated by preternatural advertisements,
in the midst of his immovable audience of cattle ?
There sits ^sop, humped and shrewd, preaching to
the strayers from Smithfield ; and there my good
father, accepting the locality as an omen fair for
Smiths, decided upon calling me jEsop. My first-
born son, if ever Tm to marry and so have one, in
order to give him a turn for tragic poetry, shall be
dubbed jEschylus.
I donH wish to be tedious, if I can in anywise
help it ; and, as with my birth and parentage, so also
with my education, will be as short as possible.
Quite naturally, the little jEsop w^as so perpetually
befabled, was so filled up with the gaieties of Gay
and the gravities of Bunyan, — (for I need not, of
course, mention my great sponsor^s fables, imbibed
with mother's milk and pap and nurse's bread and
butter), that he grew to be somewhat of the pundit
everybody seemed to be expecting. Great in riddles,
keen in conundrums, unapproachable in anagram
and rebus, I also came to catch a higher wisdom in
the way of everyday parables. I could look nowhere
but 1 learnt a lesson ; " sermons in stones, books in
the running brooks," and so forth. llaveFs Spiri-
tual Husbandry, and Gurnall's Christian Armour,
OF THE LATE MR. .ESOP S:\riTH. 5
with old Quarles and the like, were my Sunday-
readings; and altogether (not to be, as I hinted
just above, tedious), I found that my education had left
me on the confines of manhood with an allegorical,
parabolical, imaginative, discriminative idiosyncrasy.
These be " hard 'ords ;'' and " Idiosyncrasy" is,
as a climax should be, the very hardest of them all ;
but it happens to be just the one I want at present,
because hereby to be interpreted. We are each of us
a " special mixture;'' and the learned editor of
''Notes and Queries," on the strength of his lexicon,
tells me that is much about the meaning of the
'' hexasyllabical" aforesaid. This special mixture is,
in ray case, as you may gather, a discernment of
truth in her many masqueradings, and a very love of
her, however masqueraded. It is the truth that we
love, not the fable; it is the pleasant surprise of
finding falsehood's weapon turned against itself
which tickles ear and heart ; it is the glorious hint
of a real unity pervading creation in this apparent
chaos of diversities, — the discovery of universal rela-
tionship in smallest and greatest, — the eloquence of
unsuspected harmony, the beauty of recondite adap-
tation ; — these, and many similar possible sentences
of fine writing, if anybody cared to read them, con-
stitute the charm of fable, and keep up the fame o
JSsop. For jEsop (spare these modest blushes!)
even in his Smith phase, shall yet come to be
6 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
famous j and though it may be far from easy to be
novel nowadays — (the learned editor, as above, tells
me this ought to be "in our days," but I dissent) —
though originality in the fabulous is well nigh as
impossible as in the true, Fve come to the good reso-
lution in the premises — to try.
Perhaps, however, it ought first to be made appa-
rent why I wish to try and do this thing. What
possible call or excuse can there be for the iEsopisms
of a Smith ? Is not the world too full of books,
and Paternoster Eow of booksellers ? Can any one
read more per diem than the acre and a half of print
supplied daily by special correspondents, from North,
East, West and South, the four winds ever blowing
NEWS to us ? I don't know ; I don't care ; let my
respected publisher see to all that ; he is a keen man
(this is the idiosyncrasy of a pubHsher), and thinks
there's room for me; — adding some flattering matter
which need not further be alluded to. For all else,
there are flocks of thoughts upon my mind, about
many social matters, whereon I seem to myself to
have something special to say ; and these ever flock-
ing thoughts keep one awake at nights, until they
are pinioned in manuscript ; and wliat's the use of
manuscript unless to feed the printer ?
The wisdom and the pith of most books can be
written on a thumb-nail, with or without a fair
economising of margin, and a delicate crow-quill.
OF THE LATE MR. /ESOP SMITH. 7
But my respected namesake and spiritual progenitor,
^sop, the Phrygian valet aforesaid of Athenian
Xanthus, is all pith and wisdom. How then can I
hope to fill these pages with the like ? It is not
probable, not possible ; yet I am comforted by the
reflection that the genuine ^sop in any type makes
but a scanty booklet ; so, if a modern must dilute to
quantity, it is only fair to put him into an alembic
to distil for quality. ^' Quantula, sapientia V' is a
just suspiration as to other matters beside govern-
ment ; for example, as to books ; for, as no govern-
ing could go on with its bare modicum of wisdom —
shredded away from oratory, ceremony, mystery and
pretension, — so no book can be useful to anybody —
publisher, reader or writer, as a mere undigestible
lump of solid sense ; or still worse, as ethereal es-
sence of intellect. No hungry man can make a meal
off wedding cake or Chutnee sauce.
Therefore it is that I must be discursive ; if now
and then you find ^Esop dull, take it as intended —
a foil for brighter things ; if oftentimes foolish, ditto,
take him for the hunchbacked dwarf to herald in fair
wisdom. Only never judge your honest friend to
mean any definite personalities ; he makes caps, but
does not fit them on heads. How can he possibly
help an adaptation, demonstrably quite as likely to
be the fault of the head as of the cap ?
I have said hunchbacked; a fact which others
8 THE RIDES AND REVEEIES
seem to think of more than I do : for we never see
our own defects so obviously as our friends see them.
But the word has escaped my lips, and the rest of
my body shall confess its truth. I was born a fair and
proper child ; but hardly had my sponsors dubbed me
J^sop, before a careless nurse (under some doom to
carry out the whole idea with a vengeance), sufl'ered me
to crow myself out of her arms, and put my spine awry.
So naturally do we adapt ourselves to a fact, and
consent to it if corroborative of a fancy, that really
nobody seemed much to heed the accident; there
was a propriety in the hunchbacked little ^sop ; and
my mother talked so much about the merciful provi-
dence of my life being spared, that she came to
persuade herself that the mere deformity was a sort
of mercy too; more particularly as grandfather
iEschines immediately announced to my father his
resolution to make the little cripple independent.
So all seemed well that fared so well; beyond the
pain, poor baby knew nothing about his lifelong
misfortune. The nurse cried at her ignominious
dismissal ; but everybody else was comforted, and all
but acquiescent.
At school they called me Trochee Smith ; for I
was a bit of a favourite, and the other fellows hated
^sop in his Phaidrus phase too entirely to call me
Dy such a name ; so, as my spinal bump had necessi-
tated that my left leg should be shorter than tlie
OP THE LATE Mil. JSSOP SMITH. 9
other, their nonsense-verse experience saw me as a
Trochee. This, and Dipthong, which all my family
affect, have been my nicknames through life.
Satire makes many enemies, almost as many as
success— -and .^sop doesn't fear them : seeing that if
such foes do a man no worse turn than mine have
done to me, their enmity is venial indeed. For ^sop
only hears from such, certain hard truths about
himself, which, under their enlightenment, he will
honestly confess to. I am quick-tempered, they
say ; and proud, with small occasion for the senti-
ment ; and, while pretending to a false philanthropy,
far more accusatively a euripidean misogynist. All
this, I, for my part, lay upon my hump. It makes
a man cross to see the straighter simpleton win way
with pretty girls, who must be silly enough them-
selves to scoff at hunchbacked wisdom ; and I don't
see why mental superiority shouldn't reckon as
outnumbering mere bony beauty. So let them
sneer, and let me escape to rides and reveries;
for all these things force me into the saddle, where,
(although no hunter, for I prefer my own com-
pany to that of hounds and their congenial
squires), happily alone, I can think and talk, and
laugh and sing, as I often do on horseback ; and
gallop home when I list to write my reveries. But
then, the number that escape me ! The many tidy
thoughts and pretty turns of speecli that come and
10 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
go in a canter ! Now and then Tve tried to scrib-
ble them in the very saddle, but it wonH do ; the
thoughts live in the pace, and die when we stop for
them. So, then, whatever you happen to get in
these pages, have the justice and the charity to
believe (what is a universal truth indeed) tliat there
is more in every man than he has yet achieved ; and
that the best that any author ever gave to men, is
not half as good as what he knows he could give.
Only there are hitches in daily life ; perpetual hin-
drances and worries, and material obstructions to
the peace-needing crystalhzations of mind. Lucky
Bunyan, with a clear conscience in a quiet prison !
Just the man and just the means to make a Pil-
grim's Progress.
Before I cease this scant preliminary say, I ought
to introduce you to my ponies ; pretty Brenda, a
grey mare with a spirit ; Minna, a bay ditto, with
black legs and a long square tail, a good bit of
stuff enough, nearly as sensible as Brenda; these
are my usefuls : and I may as well mention beside, dear
old Wonder, steady and sturdy, now pensioned out
as an Emerita, — together with her two year old
stallion-colt, light dun, with black legs and mane
and tail, whom I have named Arabesque from his
Arab sire. These may be esteemed my ornamentals ;
at all events, a Suffolk-street artist begged their
portraits lately, as a model mare and colt.
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 11
Without more ado then, take the benefit of these
my reveries ; or, metaphysically, ride with me,
reader, whenever you may please; if and when you
will, you can drop behind or go ahead ; for Fm used
to my own company, and generally like it quite as
well as other people^s. Of course I could weary you
out and make you tail off, if I chose; and very
possibly I shall. My whim will be to ride, or to tell
you that I have been riding, when I like and where
I like ; and stop or have stopped, for a reverie — if
anyhow it pleases me. You may be within earshot
if you will, for I always think aloud; and my
intention (I forewarn you) is to allegorize, fabulize
and moralize without let or hindrance. I shan^t
mind your presence more than if I were alone.
That's our bargain, remember ; one of mutual and
entire freedom.
POND-SKIMMING.
Our beautiful valley has a little silver trout
stream running down the middle of it, whereof more
anon : for the Hippie-burn (so we call our rivulet)
has before this taught me a thought or two. And
now it may truly be said to be accessory to such a
thought, for it is the living cause of the pond
whereto I'm coming. However, this pond, ambitious
12 THE RIDES AND EEVEEIES
of an independent existence, having got well filled
by our stream, has ungratefully suffered it to slip
aside by some trench or other, and remains stagnant.
As my little mare trotted lately down the deep lane,
and brought me near the ruinous mill-head, I
thought I had never seen that large pond look more
unwholesome and unseemly; it was covered with
slime and duckweed : a very filthy-looking miasmatic
piece of green stagnation.
I suppose (thought I to myself) this great acreage
of corruption typifies our poor old world.
Hardly had I said it — for I generally think aloud
— than I saw some cottage children very busily
engaged in a dirty creek, where the old punt rotted ;
they were up to their middles in the green slush,
and diligently skimming the duckweed into the
punt with laurel leaves.
Why, my poor little industrious idlers, thought I,
isn't that very much like the efforts made by our
philanthropists? Don't they go about all in the
mud, skimming the surface with silver teaspoons, and
to pretty nearly as little effect as you, my children ?
Now if, instead of letting that life-giving strcaiulet
waste its precious energies in a bye-way channel, it
were coaxed to run right through the pond, what a
stir there would be among the duckweed — what a
wholesale skimming would perpetually be performing
— what a doing better on the large scale, much about
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 13
what our laurel leaves and teaspoons are failing to
do in the small !
And yet, what more or better can those poor
children do? Are they not benefiting their own
spirits at all events by charity and industry, and by
this diligence in using the laurel leaves of character
and the teaspoons of wealth achieving all they
can of moral cleanliness around them? How can
they, poor weaklings, get the stream through the
pond, to be a pulse of life within it, an electric
current of vitality through it ? The stream is the
Church, flowing from a pure spring, high up among
the hill tops — as the pond is the world, a festering
mass of " life in excrements.'^ Not the Church of
Gregory, nor the Church of Luther, nor the Church
of A¥esley, nor the Church of Irving, nor the Church
of Joe Smith (my perpetual name has bred a new
heresy, as well as contributed to the Wealth of
Nations,) nor any local nor special church at all,
but the Church of Christ — that innumerable band
of blessed good doers on good principles which is
united spiritually as one, but is subdivided materially
into individual millions of driblets. Every effort to
make many men agree as to outward unity must fail,
till the spiritual conquers the material : but, amidst
infinite diversity, there is still a true oneness in the
real Church : and there is a Catholicity everywhere
felt, although invisible. Did you ever know two
14 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
candid Christians who disagreed in the main ? or
two quiet unprejudiced reasoners who did not come
closer^ as tliey found points of controversy melt up
under explanations ? So, there is a pure stream, as
there is an impure pond ; but they want a wedding
to make the one useful, and the other wholesome.
Meanwhile, skim away, children.
And how are we that are men practically to help
matters to be any better? "Thy kingdom come,''
must be the benevolent aspiration of our hearts and
lips ; " Thy will be done" the beneficent exertion of
hands.
EMPTY BUCKETS.
They were mending the mill dam at Luck's-wheel
when I rode by one day : all the water had been let
ofip, and the reservoir was dry. Nevertheless, there
was superannuated Master Cheeseman in his horn
spectacles (through which, even if his eyes had been
serviceable otherwise, it would have been impossible
to see clearly,) baling, as he supposed, water from a
tank into a trough, with plenty of expectant horses
and cattle coming for drink and finding nothing. I
ought to add, that the workmen were gone to dinner;
that old Cheeseman is hard of hearing as well as
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 15
dim-sighted ; and that, as of course the poor dumb
creatures coukln't complain, and no wiser animal, till
jEsop came along, stood by to expostulate, he
thought he was watering them handsomely ; as
indeed he ought for his pay.
Well — and I moralised about those poor dry
brutes, labour-wearied and thirsting in the dusty
noon, crowding round old incapable Cheeseman
busied with his empty buckets. And I thought 1
had far too often been aware of the same sort of
thing in church ; thirsty cattle, empty buckets, and
wells without water — and Established Dullness the
while making believe that all are fed, and none sent
away empty.
I love, (and so do you, reader, when you find
such a one,) the earnest, zealous^ loving minister of
heaven — the faithful shepherd of souls — the holy
friend and teacher of his people — the rare real parish
priest. But, are we not even more indignant than
saddened at the many hirelings, incapable for good,
though crowded about by eager starving souls ?
giving them to drink as nearly nothing as possible,
and for meat, chaff? Some preaching up an eccle-
siastical Deity, as if the Blessed One were merely an
appendage to their idolized own communion : others
a theological Deity, as if He were an aggregation of
ethical problems : others with their straitest code
of forms, and attitudes, and symbols — monotoning.
16 THE rJDES AND rtEYERIES
as old Cliceseman does, when his spring spectacles
press the nose too tightly ; bowiiig, as he does, when
he tips the empty bucket ; and arrayed, like him, in
adiaphanous spectacles, disabling any one from seeing
an inch beyond the narrow circle of near-sighted
prejudice.
Yes, friends, thought I, as I walked Minna up one
of our deep, rocky, overshadowed, fern-covered lanes,
most of us feel much like one one of those thirsty
teamsters on a Sunday. The dust and drought and
toil of the week have need to be washed down ; and
so we come to our troughs for the living water ; and,
behold ! our appointed bucket is, in almost each
case, full of emptiness.
BOTTLED THUNDER; AND ELECTRIC SAUCE.
I only wish, sighed I on another day when I
visited a young chemical friend of mine, bit with the
first rage of experimentalising in modern philosophies,
that those empty buckets would try after a moral
sort \\'hat Jonathan Spicer has been attempting phy-
sically. He has invented a plan for collecting — at
least he asserts as much — the essence of thunder and
lightning. On hot summer afternoons, when the
atmosphere seems to be portending storms, he will
arrange on a grass plot all the old wine bottles he
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 17
can muster, necks up and corkless ; into half he will
set upright long bamboos, pithed- elder wands, and
gutta perclia pipes, all which he takes to be conduc-
tors of sound ; into the other half, rods of iron wire
as condensors of electricity. If a thunder-storm^
comes on, and he can manage by rosin plugs to keep
the inside of the bottles dry from rain, Jonathan is
overjoyed : for when, after it, with all speed he has
corked and waxed the bottles thus charged (having
previously withdrawn the pipes and rods with glass
gloves,) Jonathan feels certain of being the fortunate
possessor of several dozen bottles of thunder and
lightning.
He is a shrewd fellow to boot, and makes it pay :
for he has persuaded two ambitious friends of his —
one of whom long and vainly affected to be a dema-
gogue, and the other of wdiom actually did afterwards
become parliamentary member for a manufacturing
borough — to buy of him and take periodically, ac-
cording to speech-making necessities, his bottled
thunder and electric sauce : they are instructed to
mix the unseen fluids by means of wooden or metal
siphons with wines, soups, stews, or any other gene-
rous food, and so to imbibe them. And whether it
was from faith, or fancy, or the hidden efficacy of the
elements, or of good meats and drinks, certain it has
been that Jonathan's brace of orators have become
more clamorous and more effective from the very
c
18 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
first dose onward : the prescription undoubtedly has
done wonders in their case.
One day, then, as I was passing Dymfold Common
on my nag — it was a dull sultry afternoon in July —
I noted the array of spiked bottles standing like a
cohort of long-lanced Achseans before Jonathan
Spicer's cottage ; and the philosopher himself watch-
ing his barometer, and trying to coax a thunder
storm in his direction by means of a wire-framed
kite.
Rather wondering what it all might mean (for I then
did not know what you know) I stopped, questioned,
ascertained, approved, and meditated ; and it was on
that occasion I conceived the wish initiatory, as
about the buckets.
Why can they not draw from the sublunities of
nature, from the loud language of this world's his-
tory, from the songs of creation, and the echoes of
science, something of a more attractive eloquence ?
"Why do they not strive after the prophetic fire, the
evangelic zeal, the thrilling fervour of primeval
Christianity ? Why can they not put a little thun-
der and lightning into their ministrations ; some of
the Boanerges energy to awaken sleepers, some of
the electric spirit to touch consciences ? All is too
level, too cold, too decently laid out dead : one
drone of unvarying liturgies, and one scheme of
lithographed sermonizing.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 19
For how few of those who '' perform" our service
make its depth of beauty and of eloquence available
to stir hearts as by an electric flash ! How few who
are privileged to teach their fellows in a pulpit raised
six feet (as it has been shrewdly noticed by a relative
of mine, hight Sydney) above all contradiction or
interruption, preach as if they cared to quicken the
spirit, to inform the mind, or to sanctify the affec-
tions !
I, Msop Smith, earnestly desire that many of the
empty buckets and empty bottles I have seen, would
do as Jonathan Spicer does with his tubes and wires.
Let them strive to draw down fire from heaven ; let
them pray more, even if, by possibihty, they read
less. Let them not so systematically despise and
repudiate the outer graces of oratory, the human
interests of anecdote, the attractive allusions to news
of the day. We should then have no empty churches ;
and no talk therefore about pulling them down in
vast towns, such as poor starving London, because
they are so empty. Who can wonder ? The bottles
are not charged with thunder and lightning. Nothing
is in them but the scaly residua of old crusted port
and the dried lees of ancient sherry. Sextons, bea-
dles, pew-openers, vergers, and the like disagreeable
appendages to our orthodox faith ; who will do
nothing whatever without a fee, except exclude the
poor; these, with a pompous old shovel-hat, some
c a
20 THE HIDES AND EEVEHIES
sky-blue cliarity children, and an ill-paid organist,
constitute all the attractions; and if the rich mer-
chants escape to Brighton, having locked up their
carpeted pews, no wonder the old church is empty ;
for the multitudes of poor all round find too cold a
welcome for their rags, too scanty comfort from their
miseries.
So, yearning for excitements, they crowd the gin-
palace, or read the Sunday paper after skittles ; or,
if somewhat better disposed, they join the congrega-
tion of some Latter-day fanatic : and much of all
this, simply because their parish church is cold and
unattractive — there is no thunder and lightning in
the empty old magnum.
Then comes your church and state philanthropist,
totally oblivious of all fault in any official personages,
and votes that the building with all its ungenial
paraphernalia of fee-hungry servitors be decanted
bodily from St. Yerdant Easter's to Mile-End.
As if great London, even on a Sunday, had not
men women and children enough left in its courts
and alleys alone to fill all the holy edifices wherewith
the piety of former times has munificently besprinkled
the city !
bishops, lords, and gentlemen, see that really
good and true men, a missionary and apostolic clergy,
earnest, able, kind, and eloquent, fill those drowsy
pulpits; and you will presently find nave and gal-
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP S:MITH. 21
leries too, well filled with awakened congregations :
but, as things are now, my friend Jonathan Spicer
has taught me that these empty bottles need a charge
of thunder and lightning.
PATIENCE.
Take a lesson from that furze-bush, ^Esop, whis-
pered my better angel.
I was terribly ruffled : some insolent navvies had
mimicked my hump, and made mouths at me ; and,
what was more, a pretty girl passing by at the
moment saw them and me, and then laughed too. I
only wished her the mumps.
Take a lesson from that old horse on the common,
iEsop, again whispered my spiritual comforter.
Winter and summer, in biting cold and scorching
heat, still that furze-bush holds on greenly, and
seldom or never without a golden blossom some-
where hung about it. By night and day, in rain
and sunshine, that old horse stands munching at
the sour marshy pasturage, quite contented at his
lot.
Why shouldn^t I be at least as much of a philoso-
pher as a beast or a bush ? thought I, thanking the
angel.
And there^s plenty of need for such philosophy
S2 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
in this wrongful old world of ours, as most men
know for themselves; and it is an especial wisdom
to keep patient without getting hardened; and a
very singular virtue to sport a flower in all seasons,
like that old weather-beaten furze-bush; and a
strange comfort to go munching on contentedly,
like that old horse.
THE MOLE AND ITS GRANDMOTHER.
There was once a young mole who resolved to
better his condition. So he went and bouj^ht
eye-salve of the snake ; and he took lessons of the
rabbit in running; and consulted Dr. Squirrel as
to the wise expediency of living on nuts, with the
hope of growing a tail ; and hid up his great ugly
splay hands in snail-shells, which he wished to pass
for boofs. But, with all pains taken, nothing
answered as it ought : he couldu^t see — he did little
better than waddle, his tail wouldn^t grow, even if
the nuts were not rank poison to liis stomach ; and
his hands, pinched like Chinese feet, only ached
intolerably, but would not do the walking. He
had merely made himself miserable and ridiculous.
In this dilemma, his grandmother found him,
and, "Child," quoth she, "why can't you be
satisfied with your lot in life? You are fitted for
OP THE LITE MR. JESOV SMITH. 23
itj and it is fitted for you. What should you think
of the wisdom of your friend, Dr. Squirrel, if he
uecame ambitious of your tunnelling powers, even
as you are of his tail ? Come home with me, and be
comfortable without those nasty hard gloves. Your
hands are good for grubbing. If you try to imitate
other folk's virtues and neglect your own natural
excellences, you will only succeed in being the most
wretched mole above ground, instead of a happy and
useful mole beneath it."
That also was a whisper of my angel, due to
Minna having stumbled the same ride, by treading
into a mole-hill on Stonesfield Common; and so,
besides Patience, she helped to teach me Content-
ment.
DIAMONDS.
One good lesson taught in the Hyde Park Crystal
Palace, was the worthlessness of a Koh-i-Noor.
Hardness and glitter are but poor qualities to
command esteem. Beauty of form, usefulness of
characteristic, or (to rise higher) faithfulness, in-
telligence, and love, — these may indeed be gems of
price, but not that shining pebble. I thought of
the Koh-i-Noor from this cause.
As I was jogging along, Minna fell lame; and I
24 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
had to get off, inconveniently enough for my trochaic
understanding (remember my left leg is two inches
shorter tlian my rii^ht, and I have always to
mount on the offj^ide), to knock a troublesome an-
gular bit of flint out of her foot : it was a quartzy
stone, a crystallized mass of so-called Bristol
diamonds : hence, of course, occurred the Koh-i-
Noor, that most excessive humbug of the class;
and so to Koh-i-Noor reputations.
Great generals have very much of the hardness
and glitter of your diamond; I mean certain flashy
disciplinarians, whose blunders are negatived by the
mere pluck of their troops. So also of sundry public
orators; the showy, loud, brow-beating sort; and
not a few magnates of ancient rank minus modern
merit; and here and there a millionaire merchant,
speculating to the brink of bankruptcy; and your
dashing cut-and -thrust reviewers, all glare, malice,
and effrontery; and, in short, any kind of hard-
hearted glittering humbug. All such need recutting,
like the Koh-i-Noor.
How we all despised that pebble : how contempt-
uously our intelligent artisans, our men \vith hard
heads and horny hands, left the gas-lustred bauble
to the ladies; and even in their eyes how disap-
pointing it was : little brighter, if at all, than a
cut-glass drop from a chandelier.
True, quoth iFsop, but it had one charm little
OF THE LATE MR. yESOP SMITH. 25
heeded. Eastern superstition had invested Eunjeet
Singh's armlet with the sovereignty of his posses-
sions; and it were as well that our Queen should
have the magic trinket. Tor all beside, it was like
many a notoriety ; get close and it dims ; reason on
it, and that empty fame comes to be despicable :
nothing but the credulity and homage of thousands
pave it from contempt.
Faith is much everyway ; and faith keeps up the
price of diamonds.
Many a sick man has eaten stewed tench, without
being at all aware that, according to Isaack "Walton,
he ought to be cured by it of everything ; for that
fish is the heal-all. And many an Argentine dame
has marked tricks and honours at whist with four
shining lumps, without at all suspecting they were
rough diamonds : so styled, they were the win-all.
And many a genius in obscurity has bred great
thoughts, ignorant of their rarity and value; but
these are verily the world's true worth-all. Only
that faith in the tench is wanted for the cure :
faith in the pebble for the value : faith in the genius
for the world's true weal.
26 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
GRAMMAR.
''Tip us a copper, yer honour: us poor fellows
ain't got no luck in life."
I tipped the copper, and fell into a dream of
grammar.
Not until I grew to manhood, and could reverie
on horseback, did I come to comprehend my earliest
schoolbook lessons; that "nouns," for example, are
the gnomelike dog-latin for " names'^ of things, and
'' adjectives" their " added" qualities ; that a " verb"
is the important "word," a "declension" a "step"
or "shelf" on wliich to fling the various classes of
names ; and that their fivefold Latin form was hinted
from the five vowels, which also influence the " con-
jugations," or " groups" of verbs.
A poor little trembling schoolboy is dragged or
whipped through philosophical mysteries which his
usher is unable (even if willing) to explain; and
the very hardest lessons of education are stupidly
presented on the threshold of life, to the utter
obfuscation of all after intelligence.
Grammar, the art of " writing" correctly, is never
explained out of its monastic terms to the learner;
and when terms are abstruse, and the reasons for
them unannounced, riglit knowledge is impossible.
We want a simple modern handbook of grammar
— the very science is mediseval.
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 27
I reveried furtlier as to those reduplicated nega-
tives, and tliouglit how right our vulgarian old
English '^ no-nothing^' is when measured by other
old tongues, as Greek and common sense. Double
affirmatives don't weaken themselves : why should
double negatives ? Our common people, in their
talk, continually preserve traditional truths of lan-
guage. Who can mistake the intensity of "ain't
got no luck ?" And the object of language is to
display ideas : not, as a diplomatist shrewdly re-
marked, to conceal them. If such reduplication be
destructive, what think you of
6v firj ck itvu), ovdk bv firj <Te lyicaraXtTrai;
"no, I will not leave thee^ no, nor not forsake
theer
Pure old English is a true tongue; manly, full
of strength, and full of sense. I glory in this, that
ours, almost alone of languages, has no confusion of
genders for things inanimate. Why should I eat
with a masculine knife and a feminine fork ? Why
may not both be neuter? And what a needless
obstruction to the acquisition of a tongue are all
such arbitrary genders ! The very noonday sun,
properly neutral with us, is male among the classics,
and female with the Germans ; and every tongue but
English is full of such absurdities.
Then as to "cases,'' or the accidental " positions"
28 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
of a thing : we boat the ancients there, in all cases
but the " objective." Of, to, by, with, from, are
clearer and more universal intimations of position,
than a special change in every perplexed name of a
thing. So far only as the accusative is concerned,
I could wish we had carried out the difference
between " he" and " him" to the other words.
Nothing's perfect : not even Anglo-Saxon English.
And then, the world of useless lore it saves to
find the tenses universally indicated by those useful
little expletive verbs, to be and to have : instead of
the perpetual metamorphosis of a word aoristic, or
prseterpluperfect, as in almost every other tongue,
plain English uses am, and was, and has, and had,
and will, and must, and may, and can, and might,
should, could and ought ; and is imperative by an
interjection, and infinitive by a universal "to."
How majestically easy in all things but those fickle
changecoats Pronunciation and Spelling, is our dear
frank firm tongue.
But what a very dull reverie old iEsop has fallen
into this time. There was plenty more of it, but
this is too long. I told you I should sometimes be
stupid intentionally : it is to try your patience. The
out-and-out advocates for the coarsest and harshest
public-schoolism vindicate all their shortcomings and
misdoings, by the occasional result of one grand
genius-success among five hundred failures. Educa-
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 29
tion ought to be (say they) subjective, making the
man capable of acquiring and of conquering ; not so
much objective (as say Utilitarians), filling the man
with an encyclopsedia of facts. So then JEsop tries
your patience, as Eton does ; and may it do you
good. Not but that for his part he thinks a happy
mixture of both plans is the right thing ; and he
recommends Winchester (for example) to be con-
scious of some slight progress made in science and
literature since the time of William of AVyckham.
THROWING A FIR.
There you go, destroying in one hour the glorious
product of fifty years !
My neighbour, Simpson, is just that sort of a
man : he'll make a sudden change, then suddenly
change again, and so on, in perpetual self-stultifi-
cations of repentance.
They were sawing away at a very ornamental larch-
fir on Simpson's lawn; and I stopped to U'< to him
in person.
" This will be a wonderful improvement," said he ;
" it will give us the full advantage of the sun on our
windows.""
"AVell," I answered, "so it may just now'' (it
30 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
was November) ; " but surely that graceful tree had
its uses in July ; and how beautiful the pink tufts
must have looked in March/'
" Eh ! AVhat ?" said the rapid Simpson. " Dear
me ! that's very true. Here, you fellows : stop !"
It was too late ; down came the fir with a crash,
overwhelming a most petted border of Chrysanthe-
mums in full flower, and now utterly demolished.
When I next passed that way, I found that the
vacillating Simpson had planted on the same spot the
largest Deodora he could move.
Much about what our great reformers are conti-
nually doing, thought I ; and every one of us in his
own little world has often done the Hke
Did you ever take down a chimney because it was
built awry? I have done so, and built it up
straight, for architectural beauty, and so on. But
for indoor comfort, you'll have to do as I have done,
and build it up awry again. In any other shape the
drawing-room grate smokes miserably. Depend
upon it, the wisdom of our forebears didn't build
that chimney crooked without good cause.
It's easy enough to cut down ; soon done, and
often repented. It's like hanging a man who may
be innocent.
^sop, there's a good practical lesson of life to be
found in Simpson's fir. We have in Church and
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 31
State, and all our home miniatures of the pair, per-
petual need to be humming, '* Woodman, spare that
tree V
GAPS.
Only go on, and the way will show itself before
you. It is astonishing how every difficulty vanishes
as you get near it. Hills at a distance look gigantic :
approach, and where are they ? You have gradually
put tliem under your feet. Courage and enterprize
conquer all things ; and there^s always one good in
the atmosphere about a difficulty, to wit, that the
rarified air exhilarates and helps you to overcome.
As it is in the rambling sort of ride I often take
alone, or with one of my nieces, so it is in life.
However closely pounded in field, or hidden in
copse, there's always a practicable gap to be crept
through, or an easy hindrance to be got over, or
somehow or other a way out. Nothing but a
cowardly stagnation ever fails utterly. If you do
not win what you meant straightforwardly, you
attain to something sideways. It is mighty seldom,
though the path of life be hedged with thorns awhile,
that Providence has not left a gap, " a way to escape
that ye may be able to bear it/'
32 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Jonatlian^s cliaracteristic rule of " Go-ahead/^ codi-
biued with Jolui's as idiosyncratic " AlFs right," is
the great cause wherefore Anglo- Saxonism in both
hemisplieres is such an invincible thing. The " Go-
ahead" ensures man^s effort ; the " All right" implies
God's sanction. All would be wrong in a waiting
idleness, and going ahead is the conquering idea
passim.
GALLS.
How many of us are there, I should like to know,
who do not feel by sharp experience what it is to
have a deep heart-sorrow undivulged and unsus-
pected, a secret thorn festering in the flesh, a hid-
den skeleton under the very hearthstone of home?
And how few of us, envying our neiglibour his
pretty box, or his charming Mrs., or his fine boys,
take into account the tax his inner spirit lias to pay
for all this seeming outer comfort ! "\Yhat with
memories and regrets, and disappointments and vex-
ations, and the universal plague-spot upon every-
thing, and the calamity of what is vaguely called
nervousness in self or partner, and all sorts of other
private ailments, hindrances, and sores, — truly things
are not often what they seem. And I, for my part.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 83
have long ago learnt the small wisdoms of coveting
the lot of nobody, — and of encouraging nobody to
covet mine.
So very humble an incident as a gall on Brenda's
shoulder from a broken saddle-tree provokes this se-
rious bit of prosing. I wondered what made her so
fidgetty and miserable after that last leap ; all so
changed from her usual free and happy paces j " the
galled jade winced'^ at every step.
We all have our galls somewhere, Brenda; the
buckles of our social harness fret most irritating holes
in us; and yet who cares to acknowledge that his
multitudinous semi-comic petty miseries amount to a
real mass of tragedy in life?
A crook is in the lot of every one of us. This
smiling friend has crimes of youth upon his con-
science, — that one is tormented by disease, — another
knows miserably (what the wondering world is to
hear next July) that he is a beggar and a rogue, —
another is burdened with a wife of perilous propensi-
ties, or far oftener, in the feminine condition, with a
reprobate husband, or has brought up a disobedient
set of sons, or haply possesses a choice assortment of
vices all his own ; insult has outraged Jones's sensi-
bilities, Brown hates all mankind because his pet
trustee has robbed him, and Eobinson maligns the
world of females for sake of that capricious Emily
who jilted him for Thomson. Every man you meet
D
34 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
lias his sore place somewhere. Let us all be patient
then and charitable, and reasonably pad our several
saddles clear of our special raws.
BLISS'S BANKRUPTCY.
You know my faith in names ; well, they once in
a very simple manner did a friend of mine a good
turn for life; and as they may assist another poor
body or tw^o, with all philanthropy I will enunciate
them.
Job Bliss kept a little village shop in the general
line, and throve so well that he grew rich, and there-
fore discontented ; to make more gains, he wished to
increase his capital, and the most obvious way to do
that was to take a partner. Accordingly he looked
up and down his little world, and found one.
William Worry, the son of a small farmer, had
just been left enough by a deceased relative to make
him wish to better his condition — for, to say truth,
he was little more than a day labourer — but now
a hundred and thirty pounds clear of all duties and
deductions made him seem a most desirable acquisi-
tion to Job aforesaid in the way of universal chand-
lery. So, then, it came to be littk wonderful, that
in tiie course of ray next ride through the village of
I'enny-Stonesfield, I should have to notice a change
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 35
in the appearance of the shop ; for, in every direction,
gilded or printed, the allied names of "Bliss and
"VYorry^' met my gaze.
A portentous combination, thought I; but it^s
no business of mine, if they can keep the peace;
all's well that ends well; Til wait and see.
N.B. — In the exultation of his heart, Job had
set the church bells a-ringing (by favour of his
partner's father, the churchwarden) when the new
shop front was put up. Poor Job !
Well, I did wait and see; and I saw in that
ominous copartnership what I think I have discerned
elsewhere in another sort of copartnership, not so
dissoluble. Worry didn't hit it at all with Bliss;
the accounts got into confusion ; customers dropped
ofP, because they didn't like Worry's ways ; and Job
soon found that he had need of all his namesake's
patience and nothing to spare. So it went on, till
nothing could go on any longer; bankruptcy super-
vened, and was not superseded ; and, to cut a long
story short, the result is that the firm of " Bliss and
AVorry" has since gone to the dogs.
Now, do you know, when I related these very
simple and far too common facts to my gay young
friend, De Solus of the Albany, he turned pale, rang
for a passport, went to Florence, and was not mar-
ried (as he ought to have been the very next week)
to the fair and expecting Anastasia Naggs.
D %
36 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
I, ^sop am a widower, or, to be more accurate,
a widowed bachelor ; for I lost my first love (and a
very sweet girl she was) before she had attained by
law the privilege of teasing me for life. I felt it
deeply at the time, but, from what I have since
observed in families, I now^ think that even my
once great loss has, on the whole, amounted to a
gain. A dead lover is better than a dead love ; the
one lives in memory, the other dies daily in a con-
tinuous disgust.
To be sure, I might, perchance, have reckoned
on a juvenile ^schylus to succeed to the family
plate ; and the dipthong must not die with me,
whatever penalties come in with matrimony; so some
day, doubtless, I shall find the yoke as heavy as my
neighbours do ; but in reasonable dread thereof, I
put it off as long as I dare.
For, thought I, as I cantered away on my mare,
how oftentimes a Job Bliss comes to utter bank-
ruptcy with a Wilhelmina Worry ! The tongue of a
Naggs, with its million iterations; the variabilities of
a temper-ature from zero to blood heat and back
again; the vacillations of an empty little mind; the
poisoned goadings of a jealous disposition — these
common matrimonials amount to a torment whereof
the Inquisition might be proud.
the aggravations, irritations, provocations of
perpetual worry and unreasoning wilfulness ! the
OF THE LATE MR. JESOV SMITH. 37
rock-eating force of repetition! the misery of
being tied, the living to the dead, susceptibility to
cold endurance. Yoy the contentions of a wife are a
continual dropping, said Solomon the wise : and of
a husband, too, no doubt, sometimes, but such
irritability is seldom masculine as King Solomon
knew.
And there sits Job, (all the while I have in my
mind my poor friend, Brevet-colonel Jade of the
10th Buffers, whose gallantry is quenched in tlie
presence of his lady,) there he sits, patient enough
to all outward seeming, in the midst of the clamours
of liis wedded paragon ; but within, all affections
blighted, all old feelings blasted, bearing his untold
gi'ief in a very bitter silence, utterly case-hardened-
up at heart, and only longing very heartily to be free
from bondage, and near about the light-breasted
bachelor I myself am !
Who among husbands has ever yet dared to tell
the truth and turn king's evidence against the often
miseries of marriage; wherein the fair and gentle
idols of our youthful fancy prove not seldom to be
termagants, and our besonnetted darlings grow into
tlie phase of your vulgar-minded womankind, in-
tractable, contentious, and capricious ?
A man must live without love then, for love is
killed by clamour.
Yes, my gay young friend De Solus ; you once
38 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
on a while, reverieing in your lonely chambers of
that wretched Albany, compared very originally the
fair Anastasia to a ring-dove; but now, slightly
disenchanted by bright Florence, your memories
incline to regard her as of the hawk tribe. You are
well out of it, my fortunate friend. Beware of
aquiline noses and black eyes ; neither do I know
that the soft-looking mindless Mignon, pink and
flaxen, and blue eyed as a doll, is any safer venture.
The triumphs of temper are more various and famous
than that of Maximilian.
As I soliloquised thus, not remembering exactly
where I was, I touched my nag with the spur,
and in the next moment found myself over a
hedge. She is a grey mare, and the vixen did her
best to throw me, but that's not done as soon as
said.
While on this topic, as I reveried still further,
what a mistake our rulers have been making with
their one-sided law against husbands. Who can
wonder at its failure? King Ahasuerus and liis
counsellors in the matter of Yashti knew better ; but
our modern wisdom has seen fit to pass " an act for
the encouragement of termagant wives."*^ What a
triumph must it be for the beldames of an alley to
see some poor henpecked aggravated tailor pulled up
for " brutality !'' He has dared to have the last
word, or, after miraculous patience, has kicked out
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 39
just that once against prteternatural provocation;
and accordingly all-conspiring wifedom sympathizes
with his persecuted Amazon, and so an injured
husband gets six montlis.
Well, at all events, as more than one such happy
convict has acknowledged openly, he gets peace with
his prison fare ; and some one has somewhere pre-
ferred a dry morsel and quietness therewith, to a
house full of meats and strife.
De Solus, my friend, I congratulate you; don't
lightly walk into the trap. Kemember (as I wot
you will) that ominous copartnership, " Bliss and
Worry.''
And, O you many Mrs. Colonel Jades, you jealous
minds, fiery tempers, and aggravating tongues,
hearken to old ^sop's counsel; it may be that his
own hump makes him fractious, and a trifle queru-
lous at woman's nature; but I want to tell you
a secret, akin to Bliss and Worry. You suppose
that whatever else you choose to do, or to leave
undone, if only you do not commit adultery, you are
virtuous "lawful" wives; and under the shield of
the text which at first sight seems to authorize
divorce for nothing else, you give yourselves im-
punity to make your husbands miserable. You
think that day-long worries and night-long curtain
lectures go for nothing ; and that a wife is privileged
to be as capricious, as vexatious, as unpleasant as
40 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
she can be. TU tell you a secret — no husband
ever yet forgot a tornado of female temper, nor
forgave a deliberate aggravation ; the first he dreads,
and the second he hates.
Then, forsooth, you taunt him with his impossible
and unreasonable vow to love — that which is utterly
unamiable; to cherish — that which is an adder in
his bed. Depend upon it, quoth ^sop, the good
man will do his best; but he is well justified to
God and man that he can do no better.
Ay, Mrs. Colonel Jade, you caught that honest
heart by trickeries, and vanities, and a clear white
skin ; and having caught him, all your pretty seem-
ings flung aside, you only live to tease him. O
"■ virtuous wife, a crown to your husband V — yea,
a crown of thorns ; — inquisitor, that dost all torture
short of killing, — for your own innocence, and for
that poor coloneFs happiness, you had better have
not been born ! The publicans and harlots enter
into joy before you.
Wiiat ! is then honest ^Esop a wholesale calumni-
ator of wives, a blasphemer of holy matrimony?
JS"othing of the sort, gainsayer : no more than noble
old Milton is ; and if you doubt me, read his famous
Tetrachordon on the doctrine of divorce. I speak
of the miserable exceptions (alas ! many enough
not only to prove a rule, but also to fill our clubs'
and in the lower grade our pothouses), the creatures
OF THE LATE MFv. iESOP SMITH. 41
stigmatized in Tennyson^s Princess as " those abomi-
nable" who kill the flowers of home, and growled
against by respectable old Crabbe as the natural
\ death of love. I speak of wicked husbands, too, as
well as bad wives ; and therein not alone of sots and
brutes and all such lowest vermin, but of higher
class elegant profligacy, and the tyranny that smites
with words not bludgeons, and of undeserved deser-
tion. I speak not of the gentle, the affectionate, the
dutiful, the obedient; and many such there be, of
cue sex at all events (thank heaven !) enough per-
chance to more than counterbalance the mass of
misery involved in our social plague of ill-matched
marriages. Full of love and susceptible as Amadou
itself is ^Esop's amatory heart; an eye can still
transfix it like a spiritual arrow — a soft sweet voice
is still the gentle gale to blow its warm old ashes
into flame — a loving pretty girl is still his darling.
But — look you here : there's a bushel of walnuts, all
cut into halves by some mar-match of a schoolboy ;
and the difficulty is to find your proper half — it's
the whole bushel to a gill against you. However,
everybody dips into the hamper, confident of luck ;
and if the fit is not found, well, patience grinds both
faces flat, and a most tenacious and indissoluble glue
makes all hold, and the exterior becomes a decent
walnut. But, all the while that tender nut within
is cut in twain, alas ! for heartwork, and those
42 THE HIDES AND EEVERIES
anatomies doiiH grow together. Confess, clubs,
the truth of ^sop's parable.
HARVESTING.
I often feel for poor Clodpole, reaping thirstily and
wearily tlie heavy golden crops for Farmer Hardfist ;
it's true, there's a little coarse feasting, a trifle of
tough buttock and sour beer, at the finish of the
occasion; but else, what a hopeless succession of
unthanked labours is the poor old fieldserPs lot ! I
often pity him deeply, as I ride by ; but it would be
ill charity to tell him so. Heaven keep him well
contented ; and comfort him with hopes of a better
world, and with the deep sense of duty in this bad
one.
And now putting away sad thoughts, (in especial
the disgust one feels at said Hardfist's normal state
of grumbling), let me gratefully bask in this August
weather, and rejoice with the glad world at harvest
time. I love the smell of ripe barleyfields, all bowing
to the morning sun ; I love the sight of those shocks
of wheat dotting the landscape patternwise ; and the
swathes of yellow oats, lying in curves like ripples
on the eddied sea-sand ; and the gleaning children
with their much-prized bunches ; and the lumbering
waggons piled with sheaves, — and the reaping-men
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 43
well-lielped by their sun-burnt wives, — and all the
rest of it, saving only Hardfist aforesaid.
And so, as I ride by, my heart breaks out into
singing, — and when I get home I write this —
'57 HARYEST-HYMN.
Father, merciful and good,
Giver ever kind.
Who feedest us with daily food,
Por body, soul and mind,
"VVe worship Thee, we bless Thee,
We praise thee evermore
And heartily confess Thee
The God whom we adore !
How thick with corn between the hills
Our laughing valleys stand ;
How plenteously Thy mercy fills
The garners of our land !
And therefore will we raise Thee
Our humble anthem thus.
And sinful children, praise thee
For all Thy love to us !
As year by year in ceaseless love
Thy bounty never fails,
But still The Blessing from above
O'erflows our hills and dales,
So will we all adore Thee,
Thou Giver of all good.
And oifer now before Thee
Thy people's gratitude !
44 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
BITS OF RIBBON.
There's plenty of virtue in a bit of ribbon, I can
tell you ; and I heartily wish we had a well-ordered
Legion of Honour among us.
Old Edwards, who was hit at Waterloo and got a
medal, is quite the gentleman of our workhouse, in
mind, manners and respectability ; and if s owing to
the influence of a little bit of ribbon, (the poor
fellow has pawned away the silver accompaniment
long ago, but its hue of honour is still sported at
his button hole,) and that bit of ribbon has availed
these many years to keep him the good character
he is. Bits of ribbon would similarly keep many
a mortal in good character ; but then how few of our
myriad worthies now alive have had the luck to be
hit at Waterloo, or even to have campaigned in the
Crimea ; how many worthies are not soldiers at all.
If I were a great king, and wished to do good by
wholesale, I would do it very cheaply indeed, but not
the less effectually. I would buy a roll of white
ribbon, cut it into " nails,'' and put one into my own
button hole, just for example's sake, and to royalize
the thing. Then I would watch for merit of every
kind, in all the thousand ways in which humanity
does duty best— the philanthropic surgeon, the zealous
missionary, the keen inventor, the genuine genius in
authorship, the pains-taking schoolmaster, the good
OF THE LATE MU. MSOV SMITH. 45
parson, the painter, the sculptor, the orator, the
linguist ; all the best of their kinds : ay, and I would
search among women too, whereof my queen should
be first decorate ; and not omitting soldier nor sailor,
nor even potentate, nor peer— though hitherto un-
justly made monopolists of honour ; for all such
would I watch, and bring them near me one by one,
and give each of them a priceless " nail" of my
white ribbon.
Nobody can guess how greatly and how widely
through the world such a possible wise shrewd king
would thus stimulate human exertion to all manner
of meritorious exploit; nor how well that roll of
ribbon might bind up class with class, and man with
man; nor how vast an amount of happiness, en-
couragement, and righteous self-respect would be
compassed by my drapery speculation.
I would know further what I would do. I would
refer back to the foundations of my empire; and
would find there a man, who more than all men since
has been the author of my country's huge prosperity ;
I would remember now in his thousandth year of life
my glorious great ancestor. King Alfred ; I would
consider that, till now, his modest worth has never
yet been blazoned by the heralds in an order ; and I
would institute "The order of merit of King Alfred
the Great V Judges, and generals, who are now
forced to put their hands into court or commissary-
46 THE EIDES AND REVEEIES
pockets for a temporary five pound note in cases of
superior virtue, will be glad indeed of a substitute so
lasting, so precious, and so cheap as my simple bit of
ribbon : the worthy fellows that get it will be made
happy for life ; our whole social atmosphere will
feel its influence as a sunbeam ; and our most gra-
cious Queen will attain to a new honour and a new
pleasure as first sovereign of the order of Alfred.
^OLIAN TELEGRAPHS.
When the wind sets one way, what a wretched
wailing it makes in those little wooden boxes on the
top of tall white posts, wherein I have persuaded a
small believing niece of mine that the telegraph
clerks reside.
Did you ever hear that seeming harmony of the
spheres, the musical wail along the wires; Brenda
pricked up her ears as she crossed the railway just
now, for she probably thought it was the hounds ;
and I pricked up mine, for I seemed to hear spirit-
ual messages of many kinds, moaning out all sorts of
interests. There were despair and triumph, blessing
and cursing, and luck and loss, and love and cold-
ness, and joy and sorrow, and life and death, and
all manner of matters, good and evil, in that deso-
late five- fold chord of wailing. I heard therein
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 47
markets, and marriages, and all that can be imagmed
between lowest gains and loftiest affections, travel-
ling along those wires : and all the while Brenda
pricked up her pretty ears, and pawed, and hoped it
was the hounds.
But how wonderfully now, as dear old omniscient
Shakespeare says of his created Puck, we have " put
a girdle round the earth in forty minutes V Was
not that a prophecy of submarine and transterrene
telegraphy ? And is not genius perpetually prophesy-
ing ahead of its age ! Did not Chaucer foresee the
Crystal Palace, and Milton railway trains, and Peter
the Great, as well as Bonaparte, the Cossack invasion,
and Daedalus our balloons, and Glaucus our diving
bells ? Genius of any kind is in the nature of an
inspiration, an " afflatus,^^ a " divinse particula aurse,"
a breath from the mighty Lung of Life.
Study such men's fancies, for they are ^olian
telegraphs. A genuine genius is a man capable of
universal dominion; able, if only the wdll and
the occasion serves, of winning the first prize in
anything and everything he chooses; a spirit over-
whelming circumstance, a mind tlie conqueror of
matter.
Sydney Smith (one of my illustrious cousins,)
thought he jibed Lord John when he announced him
" ready, with or without ten minutes' notice, to per-
form the operation of lithotomy, to rebuild St. PauFs,
48 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
or to take command of the Channel fleet/' but
soliloquized I to Brenda (if that be soliloquy), this
was no jibe, and no flattery, but a mere possible fact ;
I can comprehend it; of course he is ready, and
willing, and able too. Try him. Not that I am
any special admirer of the Lord Little John afore-
said : I distrust many of his class and quality. Only
as gifted with boldness and quickness and shrewd-
ness, I take all such to be telegraph wires; pray
Heaven they be honest ones, and not like the
Viennese.
DIPTHONGS.
As I pick my way among the furze and rabbit
holes, revolving my bachelor fate, and yet the neces-
sity for a future iEschylus, I sometimes ruminate on
the mystery and the wisdom of a dipthong. Did you
ever look upon it as a marriage of letters ? And do
you ever think about the alphabet as a pregnant type
of mortality ? Before Fve done with you and these
my meditative trottings, I may have plenty more to
say about grammar, its wisdom and its folly; just
now my theme is elementary — the alphabet.
The happy, easy, contented creatures, a sort of
aristocrac}^, are /, m, n, r, — the three first you will
notice being natural relatives and therefore given to
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 49
nepotism, — and r, a sturdy plebeian, much rrrung
round the tongue by the vulgar, and much slurred over
as a i^ by the elect.
The vowels are clamourers, in and out of parlia-
ment ; a covetous crew, with all the gift of the gab,
and longing for annexations.
The gutturals find fault with everything and every-
body; unpleasant people, provoking patience itself
into profanity and the Prench sacrrrre.
Consonants are of course the governed ; high and
low, rich and poor, creatures of no independent
quality, and no originality of mind ; well enough to
make a mass cohere, but not to give it character :
almost everybody is a consonant.
Mutes need not be named, as they are nothing;
and of course the lower aspects of society, betyped
by w, Xf y, z, lie in their algebraic fitness of obscurity.
Now then for the dipthongs.
Marriage, as I avouch, is typified in these : A E
(to my comfort) and E I — sounding as a clear E and
I — foreshew the more fortunate wedlocks, harmony
and happiness : every dipthong with an O in it, de-
monstrates woe ; the frequent hypocritically concealed
E, a merely vocal imitation of my blessed A E, but
profoundly diverse in character and fact; and the
less constant but more notorious cases of I and
U, wliich portend ruptures, contradictions, the
Socratic ov, and the Sophoclean «', oi, n ^ocktoj.
E
50 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Nobody but an old Eabbi who discerns all future
revelation in " Baraisheth bara Eloliim/' can declare
the wisdom of the alphabet : and so let Trench's
essay on Words give place to a possibly forthcoming
Smith's dissertation on Letters — or, to be more
esoteric, Dipthongs.
EATING GRASS.
"Nunky/' quoth my little niece, "does Mr.
Peascod eat honey ?"
Mr. Peascod is a strict vegetarian.
"Certainly, Cis; why shouldn't he?''
" Is a bee a vegetable, Nunky ?"
"Not quite, Cis ; but what are you coming to?"
" Why, Nunky, Mr. Peascod wouldn't take milk
with his coffee, nor butter with his muffin, because
he said it was an 'animal production.' Isn't honey
an animal production ?"
" Hardly, Cis : it is the juice of flowers."
" But, Nunky, milk is the juice of grass, and so
is butter; the bees drink flower-juice and make
honey of it. I think Mr. Peascod must be very
wicked to eat that honey, if he thinks it so wrong to
drink the juice our cow sucks out of the grass."
Eeally now, this is a poser for the over scrupu-
lous : Mr. Peascod must see to it, and do as the
OF THE LATE MR. .ESOP SMITH. 51
Pope has done ; get up a grand vegetarian conclave to
decide upon the immaculate conception of honey. I
fear your question, Cis, will reduce poor Peascod^s
dietary still further. Ay, Mr. Peascod, and is not
also mushroom near of kin to flesh, morel to tripe,
and truffle to gizzard ? Who shall draw the line of
demarcation, and fix where the zoophyte ends and
the fungus begins ? Why, they hunt truffles with
dogs in our parts ; and some toad-stools smell villan-
ously putrid. Let Mr. Peascod, if he has a con-
science, tremble at the flavour of such luxuries.
Furthermore, and to starve him out entirely ; let
him recollect Sir William Joneses microscopic talk with
the Brahmin about his strict pomegranate breakfast :
every bit of fruit and every glass of water is a world
of animal life ; and (poor Peascod !) you cannot even
breathe a breath without inhaling hundreds of eggs !
Think of that, and boldly try a bantam^s for break-
fast.
I once had a dog who took to eating grass ; not
medicinally as some dogs do, but after a riglit hungry
fashion, like Peascod, and Peascod's great prototype,
the lunatic Nebuchadnezzar. Well, poor Juno soon
swelled up like a cow among the turnips, and then
lay panting on the dunghill; till the keeper shot her,
to put the poor maddening beast, as he said, out of
her misery. I hope Mr. Peascod may never live to
meet such tender mercies.
£ 2
52 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Push everything to pure extremity, says Folly :
mix all tilings, and take the mean every way,
says "Wisdom, Compromise nothing, is the rule of
human vanity : make compromise with everything
around, is the brotherly providential maxim.
Peace at all price and vegetables for ever ! That^s
your motto, most flatulent Cowardice ; but re-
collect, henceforth you are forbidden to eat honey :
ay, and there are even grave doubts about the pure
vegetarianism of a mushroom.
ARACHNISMS.
How long is it to be, one may reasonably ask in
some prospective apprehension, before such words as
surveillance and espionage come to be accounted Eng-
glish ? Before, instead of printing them in this ap-
propriate Italian type, our compositor would na-
turally set them up in plain, like " omnibus^' or
" opprobrium,'^ as vulgar tongue ?
Yerily, things are converging so strongly and
s'wiftly to some executive centre, that one begins to
feel uncomfortably on the confines of a vast national
maelstrom, or on the outer skirt of some gigantic
cobweb, in the midst of which lurks that horrible
spider, Secret Irresponsible Authority !
" Where'er I take my rides abroad," I always meet
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. ' 53
tlie rural policeman ; " remote, unfriended, melan-
choly, slow ;" and lie, as often and as certainly,
meets me, the fast antagonist of all his adjectives.
Yea, and far more surely than that I make a note of
him, he (to his inspector) makes a note of me. I
more than suspect that ^sop^s rides are gazetted on
the files of the Home Office ; and that, if he were
amiably to invite (as he is very likely to do) Kossuth
or Orsini, or any other such noble refugee to dinner,
W 75 would be deputed to worm out of cook and
butler all our generous toasts and speeches, and to
lay a full and particular account thereof before some
prying chief-commissioner.
But is not this spy-police possibility a terrible one
for a people, whose boast it is that they "never,
never shall be slaves ?'' — that, under the meek guise
of the Peeler, we may anon feel the strong and secret
hand of your Austrian despots and your Neapolitan
sbirri ! This modern system of centralization is as
destructive to individual liberty as the spider to the
fly ; quite antagonistic to our whilome boast, repre^
sentative rule; quite opposite to Alfredian self-
government, and not half so much dreaded as it
should be.
My children [if, as aforesaid, there were yet a Mrs.
JEt-l may come to live in the very mesh of paid
informers, with the Bastille for barracks. My
grandchildren may come to long for tlieir ancestors^
54 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
free times, when constables were created locally, and
a network of policemen did not overlay the land.
I declare even now [Mr. Smith alludes here to a
case in Dublin. P. Q.] one may hardly talk with
four friends at the corner of a street without being
ordered to move on ; and being ignominiously
collared, cuffed, cribbed, cabined, and confined, ay,
and pulled up before Mr. Magistrate if we won't;
and then forsooth publicly scolded and shamed, and
bade to go about our business humbly, and obey in
all things an irresponsible tyrannical police! Proh
pudor ! Isn't this enough to blanch the rubicund
cheek of John Bull with rage, and excite Paddy into
the volcanics !
Now, listen to a learned fable : short, fortunately.
A certain little houseleek (a native of congenial
Italy, in 1699, as Loudon testifies, p. 194, Hortus
Britannicus), once fell in love with a spider; and as
lovers will, too intimately encouraged its caresses.
The consequence of which indiscretion is, that to
tliis hour the Sempervivum Arachnoideum is covered
with a vegetable cobweb.
Ask your nearest botanical friend how truly this
perennial rockplant is — or is nigh and soon about to
be — the type of Great Britain and Ireland under our
new spy -system.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 55
WOODCOCKS.
There : I never crunclied across Wade-moss yet in
December but I was sure to flush a woodcock ; and
snipes and other long-legged longbills are safe to
spring as I canter through these ice-crackling rushes.
How silently and swiftly they wheel round, pretty
certain to come once again within shot before the
final straiglit-away.
All which is an allegory, manifest, of Christmas
bills.
Nature is ever full of parables ; but, that long bills
should always come in about Christmas-tide with the
woodcocks, I hold — who doesnH ? — to be a dreadful
inconvenience. Just when family meetings and
social greetings enjoin on every one a more specific
hilarity, when also the rigorous season urges most
open-house benevolence, and when religion brings
her best anniversary of beneficence to men ; at such
a time intrude unseasonably and unreasonably in
whole flocks these unwelcome true Christmas wood-
cocks, long bills ; hindering digestions, cooling friend-
linesses, and quenching all manner of liberalities.
AVhy let them out at merry Christmas ? Why not
in drear mid- January rather? Or, better still, why
not work Mother Church's maxim fully out, and be
careful to " owe no man anything^'' aftei Advent
56 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Sunday? Who doesn't wish at Christmas that all
his bills were paid a month ago? And wherefore
delay those inevitable payments? If not shot down
in the first wheel, they're off straight for the wilder-
ness; and thereabouts is ruination — "tohu-va-
bohu."
I'm resolved, if only I can flush my woodcocks
timely — that is, if my obsequious tradesmen will but
send them in — to bring them down on their first
still sweep, and so have all clear for hospitalities and
charities and open-heart edness by Christmas.
Now, if it hadn't been for that early December
canter over "VVade-moss, 1 question if this good
resolve had come into me (thanks, Brenny, for yon-
der flushed woodcock !) And let all mankind beside
follow my example; for another year, at all events,
as tliis Christmas is past.
THE MUSHROOM-LILY.
A carriage-load of lady visitors drove up the other
day, just as I was mounting Brenda; of course de-
laying my ride, but, by the way of compensation,
shortening tlieir visit. It was a begging visit ; and
therefore so far demanding compensation. With
many apologies and protestations, my fair friends had
brought a brace of albums for iEsop to extemporize
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 57
therein : and I have half suspected sometimes [see
'^ Fisli-hooks" anonj that these compliments are in
the nature of a challenge ; for I remain a bachelor.
But be this as it may, — and it must be confessed that
in point of good looks they might easily do better —
I am naturally shy of such compliments, and always
beg off if I can ; in the present instance unsuccess-
fully, for I felt myself obliged to improvise the folio w-
iuEc invention : —
"A Queen (bowing to the fairest of my exactors)
commanded a troubadour to sing : now the trouba-
dour was hoarse, and his guitar jingly, and his fancy
somewhat bedimmed bv the fact of havinc^ lost his
diimer; and altogether he couldn^t on the instant
string rhymes and quavers together, even though a
Queen commanded:" (another bow, — and evidently
II Trovatore was producing a sensation :)
'^But, might it please your Majesty," croaked the
unmusical troubadour, " to permit me to write some-
thing in prose in your album— presuming its royal
existence, — I think I could obey you on the in-
stant."
The Qij^en accorded a gracious smile : the velvet
volume was brought in : and the troubadour with a
cold wrote as follows : —
"A gardener wanted a lily at Christmas, to offer to
his fair young mistress at her bridal : so he ])ut the
poor bulb into a hot-bed, and tried to quicken out of
58 THE HIDES AND REVEHIES
time its torpid energies by artificial suns and showers;
then the lily-root whispered from beneath its blanket,
panting with forced heat — ' Alas, I cannot flower
until June ; my season is at midsummer, good mas-
ter.'' But a pert little fungus, starting up on a sudden,
called out, ' Here am I, my master : did you want a
flower in a liurry ?^ "
The awkward troubadour had evidently committed
himself; for the Queen frowned as she read what he
had written : notwithstanding, the incapable poet had
done his best.
Still, the second ruthless creature (with Brenda
waiting all the while !) had another album to be
blotted ; and, all in wrath and haste, I dared to write
thus further :
*' It is too bad to bother a man for poetry when his
favorite mare is catching cold at the door : she longs
to be ofP, and so does he.''
''There!" the glutton's short grace,— was my as-
piration of relief, as I trotted away after handing my
tormentors into their britska ; a good deal is to be
said about doing things in season : and even the
fungus didn't come amiss — for the occasion was
seasonable to him. The genuine article of intellect
has its special times for root-making, leaf-growing,
and flowering. The sham of genius, tact, can imitate
at any time; but it is a cast only, and lacks the
living transparency of marble. 1 know, as you know.
OF THE LATE MH. ^SOP SMITH. 59
if anything of this you do know, there are early-morn-
ing pillow-reveries when one longs for a spiritual
secretary to fix the flying fancies; there are noon-
tide keen inventions and philanthropic plans ; there
are midnight arguments, and strong- winged flights of
mind. Purthermore, there have been seasons wherein
thought would only naturally crystallize in rhyme-
form ; and others wdien, as now, it could only do
that by an effort. The lily has its season, so has the
fungus : let them both, according to their natures,
live their little day.
IN HAENESS.
Tight-girthed, sharply curbed-up, close-blinkered,
buckled, and bound, and strapped in all directions ;
with a heavy load and screaming axles, working
against Time, and with hard old Needs-must for a
driver, — how scant and spare the chances for the
spirited young dare-devil Tree-will !
Talk of conduct and character and responsibilities,
judge keenly and closely of some poor fellow as you
will and do, — but by all means let it be after taking
due account of all his accidents and circumstances.
AVhat chances are left to him to show his paces, or
to prove his many unappreciated points, harnessed
and hindered and driven to death as he is ?
60 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Preedom, the British boast, isnH to be found in
Britain : no, nor anywhere else on this side Heaven.
We begin " bound in swaddling-clothes /' we end
''wrapped in grave-clothes;" and hereafter only
Cometh the " Loose him and let him go."
How many times, friend, have not you and I felt
the rising gorge within us to kick all clear, to break
all bonds, and bear off the fluttering remainder-traces
like the Red man in his streaming war-gear, far away
into some wilderness of freedom ! But it won^t do
to be running such a muck with duties. Patience,
patience, patience.
And let this patience and experience lead on to
charity. If you find your brother morose, look at
his worries ; if changeable, see how his way of will
is hedged against with thorns, and all his best inten-
tions circumstantially vetoed ; if ungenerous, has he
not been frozen out of kindliness ? If close-fisted,
was he not then scoffed at as the too easy liberal
young fool whom any one might cheat and feed on ?
If reserved and holding aloof from friends, bethink
you whether it is so because he has heretofore found
them true and faithful, or traitorous and self-
seeking ?
Look how the collar of a hard livelihood galls liis
neck,— how the bearing-rein of foolish pride hinders
him from putting forth his honest powers for a mere
appearance sake, — how the bit of marriage may haply
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITJI. 61
curb his tongue and fret his temper; or how the
blinkers of some closest sectarian form of religion
may hinder him from broad views of things, till he
comes to think his own most crooked way the straight
one!
Ay, quoth ^sop, look at this young colt of mine
being broken into what is somewhile hence to be a
steady-going roadster; and by all means read the
parable therein of judging others kindly according
to their circumstances.
FOOTBALL.
Football is famous fun for every body but the foot-
ball itself : one rather likes the bustle of life till he
comes to catch a knock or two ; and those knocks
teach him to pity footballs. How many poor fellows
there be, kicked up and down the world, and only
just able to rise high enough to fall again, because
they always happen to be the weakest and the lowest
and the simplest in the crowd.
Why can^t they have the. wisdom to get into com-
pany where they might be the Tritons among min-
nows, in lieu of porpoises among sharks ?
The footbalFs error in life is overhumbleness,
joined to the poor vanity of being made much of for
62 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
a while to serve somebody's purpose : then up he
goes, poor inflated fool, speedily to drop again among
the kickers.
So much, and plenty more of such tiresome mo-
ralising came into my head to-day, as, riding by, I
saw a whole school-yard of happy Nationals hard at
football ; and I thought how truly those merry little
wretciies would hereafter have to enact footballs
themselves.
Look at the poor man's life, — say the agricultural
labourer : from the ragged little bird-scarer, scream-
ing with sore lungs all day long in the wintry fields,
to the poor old used-up road-scraping pauper, — how
far too little joy, and too much hardship ! Kicked
every way, but never to rise, by farmer and bailiff and
squire and guardian, — to say less of want and cold
and heat and accident and disease, — every man and
every thing is by turns his master. And if he has
a liking for social pleasure with his neighbours in
their only room the pot-house, alFs worse, — he
" drinks'' forsooth, and there's an end of him. And
the poor mechanic, — what hope of any bettering a
condition is for him ? What lights in life ? What
solaces? What other than cares fears privations
miseries ? And the little tradesman, how dull and
mean and trivial an existence, only excited by the
dread of bankruptcy ? And so of all these footballs.
OF THE LATE Mil. JESOV SMITH. 63
—little enough to stir the blood from letharg}^, but
pain and fear. A matter to be mended by society's
wisdom.
Recreation is the one great want amongst us : no
wonder those old heathen Eomans united in the cla-
morous cry " Panem et Circenses •/' no w^onder old
Papal Rome held the world together so long by
means of high-days and holidays.
I wish we had more reasonable consideration for
tlie pleasures of the poor, — something other than the
perpetual death's-head and cross-bones of Culvinistic
tractates, whereby to attempt to comfort him ; some
genuine old English jousting, and waking, and
joyful merrymaking. All days are alike now, and
alike dull to the worker : except the Good day, for
which thank God; — but still a man does need what
nature has found out to be essential, — an undrunken
recreative St. Monday, too. Give him the chance
to see a newspaper on week-days as w^ell as a tract
for the Sabbath; raise his mind into a climax of
wonderment at once by a day now and then at the
Crystal Palace ; speak kindly, pay liberally, deal with
him as a man and brother and Christian should, and
do not treat poor Football to nothing but kicks.
64 THE EIDES A:ND EEVEr.IES
FISH-HOOKS.
At Milford pond, one morning, a little nephew of
mine went a-fisliing with bare hooks : it was a whim
of his own, and somewhat of a discovery too; for
the shrewd lad came home with a creelful. All his
bait was a drop of oil.
He had got disgusted wdth the dirty cruelty of
impaling gentles, and caddis, and brandhngs; and,
having remembered in old "Walton the efficacy of
heron's fat, he thought a goose's would do as wellj
and the experiment succeeded. A bare hook, dipped
into a greasy rag of oil, had plenty of charms for
roach and perch.
Didn't I think then, as I w^atched him pulling out
the scaly silly ones, of the redoubtable efficacy of
boldness-plus-blarney ? The bare sheer honesty of
an unmistakeable hook, anointed with a little courtesy,
a little flattery a little good-natured seeming, — this
is, after all said, the best bait for men. Try it.
Frankness, i. e. the bare hook, beats all scheming.
Kiiidluiess, i. e. the oily touch, comes to be the best
bribing.
And that's the reason why so many portionless girls
get married, and so many rich old maids cannot.
The great coarse bait of wealth, however snapt at by
adventurous and therefore rejected gentry, has not
half the charm of the bare hook and the sweet
OP THE LATE MR. JESOV SMITH. 65
anointing; but let would-be niotliers-in-law take care
that the oil be as near old Walton's natural thought
as may be — simple, good-natured goose-fat — for the
fulsomeness of train, or the ajffectation of bergamot,
would only help to drive all fish away.
Nature, in heart and in head, and in all things less
spiritual— with the chrism of a gentle loving happy
disposition, — this beats all baits : and thank you,
nephew Robert, for the hint.
I, ^Esop, if ever I am to be caught at all, will
probably bite at such a hook : no strong obvious
clumsy satisfying baits for me, —but fair and open
fishcraft like yours, Robert ; the touch of oil on the
bare hook. Any otherwise I am the last of the
Dipthongs. Good-bye, and more luck to you.
WEDDING-CARDS.
Wliat a glossy envelope, of purest white and with
a silvery seal! And look at this interior pair of
cards, of the latest polished ivory patent, linked
together like a couple of spaniels, or (considering the
small male and large female) liker to a pair of insects
pinned on cork in an entomological drawer ! How
burnished is that silver heraldry, how lily-white that
flaky stationery, how tasty the true-knot bow of
"love"-tinted satin and artificial orange-blossom,—
V
66 THE EIDES AND REVEEIES
how delicate and pure and charming is the wliole
consomme of those wedding-cards !
Having rested a little month among the scores of
other visitants in our or-molu china-receptacle for
cards, turn them out again to look at their beauty.
Pity ! pity ! what a change is here ; that silvery seal
tarnished to a dirty brown, that fairy-flowered love-
knot begrimed with dust and crushed into dispro-
portion, that falsely-pure envelope, with its snowy
pair of cards, all too evidently so much white-lead
turning poisonously black in the searching eye of
day!
These things are an allegory. How much too soon
is the gloss destroyed, the beauty tarnished, the
delicacy blotted out, the whole charm of wedlock
disenchanted utterly! Take care, young couple —
take good care — or these blighted wedding-cards
will but too truly typify your spoilt affections, and
all the love and loveliness that still should be your
lot. It is an old story this, that everybody knows
by heart, but no one cares to utter : in nineteen
cases out of twenty, wedded bliss fades with its
original wreath of orange-blossoms, and its beauty is
changed and marred in equal race with that of the
wedding-cards.
All of which keeps me in the same mind as to
bachelor freedom ; for how many of my married
friends can call themselves with truth the happy fel-
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 67
lows our after- dinner toasts, our perpetual inquiries
after Mrs. Robinson, and all our other social shallow
compliments affect to think them ?
Ah, De Solus, there are secrets of their prison-
house which you'll not get one of them to confess
to. In patient silent loyalty they " suffer and are
strong.'^
And what ? Can you suppose ^sop incapable of
loving intensely, desperately, madly, the fair sweet
creatures successively made heroines of wedding-
cards ? Can you think him silly enough to deny
that there are thousands of exquisite exceptions to
his sometime censure, — angels ministering upon
earth, through married happiness, to the very verge
of heaven ? Do not exaggerate a poor hunch-back's
bitterness, but hear a sober word of wisdom at his
tongue.
The education of our girls has the great fault of
being too entirely objective. We fill a child with
governess-facts, novel-fancies, display-accomphsh-
ments. "We make no attempt at forming character,
reforming temper, breaking up the fallow-ground of
selfishness, or breaking down the rocky walls of
vanity. We fashion our toy for the marriage
mart, and, as soon as settlements are drawn,
those gildings of accomplishment rub off, and our
May-day Queen of should-be gingerbread, is revealed
a nefarious piece of cast-plaster. With our boys, by
F 2
68 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
the hard subjective process of roughing it, we make
the boy a man, master of himself, subduer of his
native selfishnesses and impudences before others, ca-
pable of wrestling with difficulties, and educated up
to the power of controlling circumstance. But we
coddle our females too exotically.
" Strong-minded women" have come to be a pro-
verb of terror only because wj^ong -minded women
have usurped the better name ; but " weak-minded
w^omen," I wot, are the truer terror to possible
husbands ; who have begun to find out that pampered
susceptibilities, excitable tempers, inordinate attach-
ment to dress, prejudices, follies, and vanities, with
the usual amount of knowledge of crochet and
ignorance of cookery, exacting jealousies and centri-
fugalizing affectations, are not entirely the component
parts of that rare blessing — a good wife.
CORAM KON JUDICE.
Where's the good of all our pretty paces, Brenda ?
"Who sees, or cares to see, the natty way in which
one ])icks one's way, at speed too, over the ruts and
roughnesses of life? the million flowers born to
blush unseen ! O the waste — the seeming waste—
of all manner of unappreciated merits ! AYho is
there to watcli and admire one's delicate management
OF THE LA.TE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 69
of difficulties, one's dutiful adaptation to necessities,
one's clever application of circumstances ?
True, there are the holy angels, and, best of all,
the blessed God Himself, caring for us all minutely.
And let this great thought comfort us;— -any of us
who think of and mourn for such things.
But I speak as a man, of men, and to men ; and
could weep from my heart at the cold neglects that
everywhere ignore excellences.
Never a corner is there in this narrow world but
all sorts of only half-spoilt goodnesses piningly are
striving to flower in the shade ; and no one but God
in heaven knows or heeds the multitude of little
martyrdoms everywhere struggling with their weak
good against giant-strong evil.
And yet, friend, let me drop another thought,
which your own experience will seal true. Did you
ever do good, or do evil, without hearing of it again
—without finding that there have been plentiful
witnesses conversant of both, however secret ?
Depend upon it— as a good man now at rest once
said to me, " Ah, sir, the eye of God is on us
always ; and the eye of man much oftener than the
shrewdest of us fancy." Depend upon it, a man
gets his deserts as a rule, though there be some
savage exceptions; and man's eye, next to the
Omniscient, is in this world nearabout "in every
place beholding the evil and the good." And if
70 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
beholding, somehow either punishing or rewarding.
However, mau^s is but a clumsy judgment, for coarse
externals fill our field of siglit; and every one,
moreover, has his eye pretty singly for self, glad
enough to see his neighbour trip withal.
Ay, — for three score years and ten, a man may
do well, going always easily and steadily ; but let him
once make a false step, and he'll never hear the last
of it. Modest merit glides on, little heeded ; but
let it trip only once, and all the former goes for no-
thing : as they say of the law, break it in the least
part, and you are brought in guilty of all.
H S AND W S.
"Yell, Bill, hif 'taint h^ Til be-"
Happily my pony's "trab, trab'' quenched the cos-
termonger's overstrong assertion ; and it was no busi-
ness of mine to enquire either as to the allegation or
its consequences. All my concern was with hs and
ws ; for it set me athinking.
Mind your ps and qs, is an accepted piece of ad-
monition ; but mind your hs and ws is far more wor-
thy of acceptance. Hs and ws are the very bats
and moles of our alphabet; anomalous quadrupeds,
exhaling into birds or grovelling into reptiles. How
many a flight of oratory has been killed by an un-ex-
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 71
asperated h, like that famous eagle hit with an arrow
plumed from its own wing : a plagiarized compliment,
my Lord Byron, which you lazily paid to poor Kirk
White, having filched both thoughts and words from
another.
How often the sublime is perverted into ridicule
by so slight a tangent. Do I not know a parson
who talks of " wrath burning like a hoven,^' and who
devoutly reads, " This is the hare ; come let us kill
him"*' ? The fact is, those h and w sins are not isolated
errors, but intimate the lower order of mind and
heart and breeding. You'll find all sorts of moral-
lacking so far as taste and sentiment are concerned,
in a lacking h — in the letter so finely described by
Miss Fanshawe (again, my lord, you claimed what
was not yours) : —
'Twas murmured in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell.
There is essential vulgarity in all habitual pro-
vincialisms and other tongue-trips ; and it is a fact
that no true gentleman is ever guilty of them.
My shibboleth w^iereby to test a Perkin Warbeck
would be a good string of sentences, full of initial hs
and ws ; if he stumbled at honor, heir, and hour,
and was a timid enunciator of home and hearth,
hare and hounds, behold, and behind, and behaviour :
if, still worse, w sHpped into a v, or vs grew double
72 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
in his utterance, his royalty is tested and found false ;
the metal will be pinchbeck and not gold. The
same style of man is mean and low in other things—
our costermonger above is his exaggerative type.
The ghost of King Cadmus once made a great
feast in Elysium to the letters of the alphabet ; and
ranged them round him, near or far, after the
fashion of a compositor's desk, according to their use
and value : the vowels, of course, had the chief seats,
as most essential substantives to all the rest ; for who
can utter /without using e, or k independently of a ?
Next came, in a queer, irregular order, all the
consonants ; ms and Is first, and g and k pretty
nearly as low down at table as x and z.
But a dispute arose about the place of A and w ; the
latter declaring itself a double vowel and no consonant
at all, as classic literature testifies ; the former com-
plaining that it knew not what it was, for according
to whim it was a sound or it was not j and if a sound,
was it not a vowel rather than a consonant? In
fact, according to unhappy letter A, existence was a
burden to it. Please King Cadmus, might it ab-
dicate entirely ?
Now Cadmus was in a joyous mood, as after
dinner and surrounded with admiring friends ; so he
thought it a good occasion to do the handsome thing :
and, rising amid a clatter of glasses, he made a
speech : —
OP THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 73
"^/' said he, ''one of my oldest friends! I
never can spare your respectable presence ; your an-
cestor is the throat-uttered Heth of Moses ; even as
you, dear W, are descended of the stately Digamma
of Homer. Believe me, I value botli of you all the
more for graceful ambiguities ; mystery is priceless to
your king, and your usage is obscure ; therefore do I
lay upon you higher honor. Henceforth, ye Vowel
Magnates, and you, my faithful commons Consonants,
take heed that no one be accounted literate or elo-
quent who places these my oldest friends in a di-
lemma. Their right use is a mystery ; so be it : but
woe be unto those whose innate want of taste profanes
that mystery. Honor be to //, and worship be to W;
and let those who misuse their secret excellences,
dread the vengeance of King Cadmus.^'
MUD.
AVhere^s the use of picking one's way daintily when
the roads are muddy, the journey long, and daylight
like enough to fail before it's over? Trot along
through the mud, and don't be fussy.
A thorough change and a dandy-brush makes all
right and clean again within a few minutes, as soon
as you get home ; so meanwhile don't worry, nor be-
moan your forgotten splatter-dashes.
74 THE RIDES AND REVEllIES
So it is with life. You cannot mend the matter,
any more than you could those roads : go merrily on,
and never mind a spot or two of calumny ; wait till
it dries, and then brush it off at leisure.
And there are many meannesses and weaknesses
and conventional absurdities that must be winked at.
Go boldly on, and don't stop at every puddle in the
way. You'll not be more muddy than the rest of the
pilgrimage.
And more than so, — there are many cares, worries,
and evils in the journey quite unavoidable; go
straight on as well as you may, taking things easily.
If you irritate a pimple it becomes a wound ; but it
dies off if you let it alone.
And more than so, — there are sins, shortcomings,
and divers shades of guiltiness — all bad enough, and
to be repented at the soonest, with every true effort
of amendment. But still go on, humbly but steadily,
and not making a misery of overwrought conscien-
tiousness. Do your best ; but if you be not spotless
take comfort from the state of the roads (which is no
fault of yours), and from the utter impossibility of
riding among puddles in the dark immaculate.
At the same time, without being miserably over-
fussy, a source of useless wretchedness to self and
friends, every good rider is as reasonably careful as
he can be; and, as for a roll in the mud, that
would be a shameful fall indeed !
OF THE LATE ME. JESOV SMITH. 75
Many a best iiitentioiied creature, from the sheer
hopelessness of carrying such best intentions into
action, makes life quite burdensome. Your purist
is as miserable as the spinster who has a new carpet,
and friends calling to congratulate on its acquisition
with dirty boots. As in hunting you must forget
fear, harden your heart, and go a-head, so in the
travel of life, the " boldness, boldness, boldness^^ of
Demosthenes the orator, is a recipe for happiness and
good success. Substitute " timidity, ■*' and you get
nothing but personal wretchedness and social failure.
Go on, and never mind the mud.
OPIUM.
The little grocer of our village has just got into
a terrible scrape : he is the hero of an inquest, and
the unhappy object of a poor bereaved mother's rage
and grief; for she accuses him of poisoning her
child. Certain gaudy sugar-plums, yellow and green
and blue and red, too attractive and too readily
accessible to infantine appetite, have killed — so the
chemist says — little Sukey Sanders; for he reason-
ably enough gives it as his professional opinion that
orpiment, copperas of two qualities, and red lead are
the reverse of a wholesome dietary. In vain the grocer
(it is an old acquaintance, Bliss, emancipate from
76 THE RIDES AND REVERTES
Worry and beginning clean again after the whitewash-
ing) protests his innocencj and total ignorances • he
must sell what his wholesale master sends him, —
the great house of Greed and Covet, St. Mary Axe,
having got him under the counter ; he professes the
principles of free trade, and (though unlearned)
argues virtually upon the text ''caveat emptor :''
with sundry other excuses, and much sorrow as to
results.
So far as Mr. Bliss is concerned, — a severe ad-
monition to him, with some money compensation
levied from him for Mrs. Sanders, and the wholesale
destruction of his gaudy sugar-plums, constitute the
end of the inquest; and our coroner and jury wash
their hands of the social wrong inflicted. But the
incident hung about my mind, as I crept up one
of our deep lanes afterwards upon Minna, and I
could not help thinking what a terrible thing it
would have been, if our coroner and his assessors
had — instead of their very proper conduct in the
premises, — openly justified the grocer, encouraged
the sale of the sugar-plums, and, for compensation
to Mrs. Sanders, had fined the poor woman heavily
for presuming to complain !
And yet, this is pretty much what great England
is doing with China: forcing — for only Mammon's
sake — poison wholesale down the throats of a whole
people. Who doesn't know, after a popular sort.
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 77
the statistics of the opium trade? Who doesn't
acknowledge its iniquity, — though the house of
Greed and Covet do get rich thereby? All those
six millions sterling of revenue are the price of
blood, — and the justice of High Heaven will doubt-
lessly demand it of us some day. The very slave
trade of old time was not a viler sin against humanity
than this enormous poison-trade of our honourable
merchants. If we did as conscience bids us, — a
wholesale destruction of that wicked drug would be
forthwith commanded by law; India's poppy fields
would far better yield us cotton, tea, coffee, tobacco,
— anything, everything rather than poison ; the whole-
some fruits of the earth would even pay our mer-
chants more highly, after some needful change of
husbandry, than this vile crop, which only leads to
an unlimited amount of human misery and degrada-
tion ; and England's Christian name would no longer
be the scorn and ridicule of all heathendom.
CORMORANT-FANCIERS.
Pigeons are fancied in Spitalfields, and cormorants
in Belgrave-square. The weaver's birds are on the
roof-tree — the peer's are in the cellar and the larder.
I know many men eaten up by cormorants ; and the
cormorants are drest in plush or gaiters for the male
78 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
bird, — in laces and satins for the female. Everybody
keeps his cormorants : I know I do — don't you ?
A duke once told me that he couldn't afford
what his butler could; and I was on another oc-
casion present at a cabinet-minister's luncheon of a.
crust of bread and a glass of water, knowing well
that the valet who served him would have given
w^arning for cold beef and beer.
I myself, a decent squire, am a very pigeon in my
wants, to those of my cormorants : but there's no use
comj^laining ; it is a philosophic class, that knows
equally well how to lack and how to abound ; out
of place they starve, and in place they gormandize
with a like equanimity of resolution.
Which of us has not been hardened out of charity
and disgusted out of patience by the strange ingra-
titude of cormorants ? Will they do anything out of
their place — or not neglect to do anything in it?
Is not master the common enemy, the pattern fool, to
be used, and cheated, and fed upon, and laughed at ?
Yerily, the cormorants have their revenge for the
indignity of liveries and wages ; and Prometheus is
betyped in Belgrave-square. Tor the vultures
devour his very entrails, whilst he, poor demigod
of rank, is chained to his unproductive rocky man-
sion. Can we not each of us name among our friends
some such parallel Prometheus ?
When will society find means to mend this
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 79
matter ! When shall a clog upon the law of libel, and
a muzzle on the keen attorney, and honesty as
betAveen man and man of equal class, enable us to
stigmatize the worthless with bad characters, that
our neighbours be not plagued as we have been by
" treasures ?" The curse of menial servitude is pretty
nearly as much felt in England now-a-days as that
of pure slavery in the Moridas. Every man that
is a householder feels it for himself, and sees no
cure ; for the class of household servants is entirely
demoralized. The registry -office finds places, ensur-
ing for its own lucre perpetual change; dress
secures admirers, and admirers profligacy; there
is no family attachment, no self-respect, no sense of
duty ; and literally a man's foes are those of his own
household.
I ^sop, rejoice in my club, where the house-
committee take the brunt of everything; but my
poor married sister is worried to death, and they tell
me she is no worse off than her neighbours. Who
can be safe, or happy, or well-ordered, or economical
in his own home now ! And the cormorants are very
much the greedy shameless things they are on account
of cormorant-fanciers. If . the master-class is un-
sympathising, the servant class will be selfish; if
missus is given to fine clothes, and stipulates for finery
in her housemaid, what can she expect but a vain,
dressy, idle baggage ? If our home-inmates are thrust
80 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
aside from the natural position of home-intimates, no
doubt they will have their separate interests ; and I
wonder they are ever capable of attachment where
all is much too repellant. A month, or its equi-
valent in wages, is all their hold upon employers,
and without the bond of kindliness is but a rope of
sand. Wherever I go among my friends, I hear the
cormorants complained of; but I am convinced
much of the mischief is owing to those very friends
being cormorant-fanciers.
IRON AND HONEY.
My young chemist, long aforesaid, is full of
crotchets. He is delightfully original now and then,
say his friends; strangely absurd, say his foes; at
all events he amuses himself (he mutters), and not
seldom helps ^sop to a fancy.
Jonathan Spicer, the aforesaid, has a half-medical,
half-metaphysical notion, that the virtues and quali-
ties of inanimate matter may be transplanted into
humanity. Beef, he avows, is conducive to our
bull-headed pertinacity of courage, and so for feeding
up soldiers and sailors ; mutton being a more peace-
ful repast, w^hereby they keep down the buoyant
spirit of schoolboys; wine makes men generous, as
is well known at public dinners; and gruel induces
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 81
discontent, — ask the Unions : Cayenne pepper pro-
vokes to wrath, — see your East Indian uncle ; milk
to very gentleness, — look at your pretty little sucking
baby.
Accordingly, lie has put himself on a regimen of
steel-wine and honey; desirous of combining the
strength and valour of Mars with the sweet amia-
bility of Yenus.
I cannot say that in his own character he exhibits
the desired success. What's the reason ?
Just the gist of Falstaff's bill— ^^ to a ha'porth of
bread there is an intolerable quantity of sack.'' If
Jonathan Spicer really did live on iron and honey,
or consumed those ingredients largely, it might, for
auglit I know, be otherwise : possibly, an iron will,
a stalwarth frame, and a large logical head, might be
co-partners with a sweet disposition and a feeling
heart. But wliat can one little spoonful in the day
— his dose — avail against the burden of other eat-
ables and drinkables, that enter his much-devouring
maw? The morsel of iron and honey hasn't a
chance.
And isn't it much the same case with all our
homoeopathic doses of wisdom and knowledge, and
virtue and religion ? We feed voraciously on follies,
and get saturated with mammonisms ; and then
expect a drop or two of the wise and the good to
purify and sanctify our whole corrupted mass.
G
8 '2 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Pooh! it's unreasonable to expect such a miracle,
we reap what we sow ; we are what we make our-
selves.
LEAPS.
That hedge makes all the difference : instead of
the exhilarating light gallop over the turf, here we
are blundering and floundering in the roughest and
stiffest of ploughed fields.
Life is full of such leaps, and every leap brings us
to a new position, begirt with new circumstances.
We are each perpetually taking a fence, committing
ourselves blindly enough to all manner of changes.
Not to mention the obvious eras of life, from
first breeching to my whiskers, or from ^^ Welcome
sweet stranger" to the white-plumed debut at court
or the black-plumed ride to Kensal Green, we are
always leaping into quarrels and friendships and
speculations and involvements, each of which makes
all the difference to our pace.
Then there is authorship, — what a bound; if
successful, "sic itur ad astra," a perfectly Bellero-
phontean flight over the heads of all the little folk of
neighbours, looking up at the balloon above them :
if a failure — good bye, Quintus Curtius ! the gaping
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 83
gulph closes over you, and you are dead in obscurity
and ridicule.
And then that blindest leap of all — matrimony;
who can tell what is on the other side ?
There are the most inviting little hedgerows on
our downs, — that fringe the edges of old clialk-pits :
frightful precipices — certain death — the most cruel
mangling and fracturing, prefaced by soft turf and a
pretty little easy fence !
Again — I know a nasty muddy old canal, which
■you can't see till you're close upon it, — and then,
souse ! Well, you may scramble out of that mess,
at all events, — but not out of the other.
Now and then, indeed (to be only just) things
are better ; but, when all's said, you seldom get a
leap from turf to turf : it's generally what I began
with above, from the grass to the clay.
They talk of daily routine, even tenor, common
life, and so forth ; but, for my part, I find existence
to be fairly enough fabulized by a succession of
jumps, continual leapfrog, or a smart run over a
well-enclosed country.
Doesn't the post, every now and then, surprise
one with a letter that is, in fact, a leap in existence
for good or ill, for joy or sorrow ? Do not death,
and luck, and discovery of facts, or a new view of
truths, — doesn't every teeming day land us in some
fresh enclosure ?
Q 2
84 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
And if the day, so the night : often and often one
wakes up years wiser [or worse] tlian yesterday,—
and especially I have noted that the sense of age
comes on by starts in this way : we lie down youths,
and wake up men ; we lie down men, and wake up
ciders. We can comprehend a Rip Van AVinkle's
long nap and all the consequences. It is only at
rare intervals that our eyes are unfilmed to discern
truth, to be conscious of individuality, to see where-
abouts we stand and what we are ; and those inter-
vals of right hallucination are the leaps in our
spiritual life.
As for me, poor humped unperipatetic ^sop, I
seem to learn everything on horseback: so now,
Brenda, as we have struggled bravely through this
tough clay, over that rail, little one ! — and take it
easy in the meadow.
THE DAMMED BBOOK.
Heretofore I have acknowledged my obligations to
our rivulet in the thought line; let me give an
instance of what I mean, in ^sop fashion.
Our two streams— the Rippleburn aforesaid, and
Mudford brook— running down two valleys with a
great wave of hill between them, have very ditlerent
destinies and vocations ; for the Rippleburn is made
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 85
continually both useful and ornamental by spreading
into large sheets of water, the fall-power of which
turns mills, and the placid beauty whereof is in
strange contrast with the clatter of their machinery ;
while poor Mudford-brook makes no better use of
its running-away energies, than to feed a few trout
and drain or saturate some marshy meadows.
All for want of damming.
By the same token, I remember two brothers,
equal inheritors from their father, the one of whom
founded a family, and the other frittered his fortune
away and came to want: all because the first
dammed up his revenue for a while by a wise
economy ; and the last never cared to get before-
hand with the world, but lived on all his means, like
Mudford-brook.
That is to say, like as Mudford-brook used to be,
and to do : for in my last ride that way, I found
that the bright thought of water-power had at last
occurred to an improving tenant : and he had built
a mill, raised a dam, and there was at last a fair
acreage of water, a safely-banked up capital amassed
by prudence and economy.
86 THE EIDES AND EEVERIE3
MIXED-MADNESS.
Visiting the County Lunatic Asylum, not long
since, I saw plenty to set me a thinking ; but it was
mostly of a lugubrious sort, and not much to our
present purpose. However, from a combination of
two queer cases, I seemed to catch a thought, pos-
sibly worth jotting down, as it touches on a new
form of allopathic treatment.
A pair of poor fellows there, then, filled the extra-
ordinary roles of a mad stoker, and a mad model.
The mad stoker had been deranged by express-train
driving, and he was always in rapid motion;
wrapped up (tlie authorities humouring the man) in
all manner of greasy jerseys, and comforters, and fur
cap and mittens. The mad model had lost his
intellects by too rigid an attention to fixed postures,
and he generally sat in his cell, with as little drapery
as might be, in the pleasant contortion of Laocoon.
It occurred to me to suggest to the doctor,— why
not bring these two men together? If they would
only mingle their innocent whims they^ll do each
other good : what^s one man's meat is another man's
poison; and too mucli of one thing is good for
nothing. Let Stoker inoculate Model with motion,
and Model vaccinate Stoker with placidity.
"Well thought,'' said the doctor; "we'll try it."
or THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 87
Tie (lid, and in due time succeeded, at all events
to some extent ; for soon after I saw the mad stoker
seated quietly on Laocoon^s bench, and the mad
model careering round the yard, stoker-fashion.
Now, that character-mingling is what everybody
may do his neighbour good by. We all have our
hobbies, and all need to have our roughnesses rubbed
off; all may give and take, and be the better for
such bartering. Moping alone, we enact either mad
models, lethargized Laocoons, tormented with our
own contortions; or mad stokers, worrying both
selves and neighbours by our fussy and unuseful
energies. A good mixture of quiescence and exer-
tion, both in the superlative, is pleasure in the posi-
tive. ''No storm-tost sailor sighs for slumbering
seas; he dreads the tempest, but invokes the
breeze ;^^ and so, remember my prescription for
curing (by free-trade both ways) the mad stoker and
the mad model.
FOLLOW MY LEADER.
Did you ever know a gig-horse that was not
spirited-up by a neighbour passing him on the road ?
Whip your slug till you're ashamed of yourself or
afraid of Mr. Thomas, you'll not get on half so well
as by working into the wake of some reckless
88 THE RIDES AXD REVErdES
butclier^s cart. Nothing short of positive genius (or
blood) goes quite freely a-head without a leader.
Butchers always knack the last legs of your liigh-
mettled racer; and so, they serve to shame our
slugs.
In harness, Minna is a slug; and the only way to
get her along is to mount one of my nephews upon
Brenda, and send him on as an outrider ; then don't
we powder away ?
Now, the fact is, most of us are slugs, and need a
leader. Example, emulation, sympathy, gregarious-
ness, all are mighty helps to common manhood, to
show us how to do it, and for company on the way.
Not that I myself, J5]sop, care either to have a
leader, or to be one ; it is my wilfulness to prefer
going alone, and metapliysicians tell me I may thank
my hump for this — it is my joy, perhaps my pride,
at all events my peculiarity. Directly I find I am in
the wake of any one, I must twist ofP; I cannot bear
such trailing on an old fox scent; and the moment I
perceive others to be trailing after me, I stop, and
double, and twist off too, if must be ; for I did not
want a following. I dare say it's very wicked to
like to be independent, because it is so pleasant : but
— I am an appendage to my hump.
It's a good English virtue to have a back-bone of
obstinate character; this is what gives to our soldiers
pluck, to our authors originality, to our nobles self-
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 89
possession, and to our humbles boldness ; it enables
us to be pioneers in the wilderness, the happy surly
Anglo-Saxon units, whose courage and resources
always rise with danger ; it makes us alone in a
crowd; calm in a chaos; firm, fearless, truthful.
If you follow, you depend upon a leader ; if you
lead, the following depends on you— the first spells
risk, the second responsibility ; but if you strike
straight on, as honest sense of power and good con-
science guide, there's little risk and less care; if you
stumble you pick yourself up, and the whole pack of
cards doesn't fall flat behind you.
" Follow my leader" is a help to all the second-
rates ; and so let millions bless the adage : but Fd
rather be as near tlie knacker's-yard as that butcher's
used-up racer, and run off with the bit between my
teeth, while there's a leg left.
Fve a mind to give you two instances in w^hich
^sop gained vastly by the neglect of that inferior
and plebeian rule. I rode Brenda over to Epsom on
the Derby day, and sat among the horsemen on the
ground. However, as the race was pending, I
bethought myself of Darius's groom, and — beheld
the morning sun ! while everybody was earnestly
looking at the horses, I turned my head from tliem
and looked at the people— a marvellous sight !
Several acres of anxious human faces, all moving as
one man, and expressive of all manner of passions !
rO THE RIDES AND REVERIES
It was a sight that paid me for my ride, I can tell
you.
By the bye, here's what I jotted down in tlie
very saddle on that same day: you may possibly find
it a change among so much dull prosing, to listen to
MY EPSOM RIDE.
The breezy downs, — and a spirited horse,—
And the honied breath of the golden gorse.
And tinkling bells of the bleating ewes,
And a bright panorama of changing views.
And all that is peaceful and cheerful beside—
these I get in my Epsom Ride !
Fifteen glad miles, road, common, or dell.
My pretty grey Brenda has carried me well,—
And blest be the calms and the solitudes there
Among the young leaves in the sweet spring air.
And — hundreds of happiest thoughts beside
Gallop'd with me in my Epsom Hide !
Nothing reck I for the race itself.
Its rogues with their poison, or fools with their pelf.
And as for its covetous follies and sins,
1 care not a button M'hich horse wins, —
Colours and riders and all beside,
Are nothing to me in my Epsom Ride.
But friends at lunch in their dustv drags.
And gay satin jockeys on swift sleek nags.
And moving acres of human faces
Watching their fate in the feverish races, —
OF THE LATE MR. JESOP SMITH, 91
These are electric flashes beside,
Dotting the day of my Epsom Ride.
Dream not thou that the day's ill-spent,
Tor my heart has been cheer'd and my mind unbent.
And here in the saddle, coming along
I've jotted you, friend, this Derby song.
To prove that Pegasus trotted beside
My pretty grey mare in my Epsom Ride.
Again, one foggy, drizzly autumnal eventide, years
ago, I found myself benighted on Ben Lomond;
there were sundry steamer-comrades with me, who
proposed bivouacking on the mountain, as lost sheep.
Accounting this a certain death by the most inglo-
rious rheumatism, "I intend,^^ quoth JEsop, "to
make for Lhat light, or walk on for ever; good
night.''
They swore I was deserting them, but followed
me. I didn't want their following, except for their
own sakes ; but went on, and on, and on, for ever ;
and after midnight arrived at Baillie Nichol Jarvie's
own Ciachan, wet through, but too warm for rheu-
matism. How joyously then in whiskey toddy their
toast went, *' Follow my leader."
92 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
THE LIZARD IN THE NEST.
A dormouse had the cosiest little nest imaginable,
a soft round ball of down-lined moss, snug and warm
and very peaceful — and a happy charitable creature
was the quiet dormouse.
But it so happened that the lizard wanting a
home, our dormouse was easy enough to let in the
green-eyed little reptile as a lodger, and forthwith all
was wrong. The very warmth of the nest inflamed
to misery that clammy lizard, the chilly touch
whereof utterly discomfited its sleek and snoozing
host. It w^as soon felt to be a mutual mesalliance,
and must be matter of misery so long as they domi-
cile together; lizard and dormouse cannot keep a
happy home. Let the reptile away to its dry sand-
bank, and leave poor Furball to his moss.
Take care, my friend De Solus ; this may further
apply to Anastasia, and your chambers in the Albany.
But we have other morals.
Of course I don't mean other very obvious ones ;
let me leave to your imagination the incompatibility
of a hedgehog mother-in-law guested with a new-
married couple,— the ungeniality of a business-
partner with mean views and sordid practices,
outraging your better nature,— the discord of having
a Jesuit in the house, a slimy, cold-blooded confessor
or THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 93
destroying all home privacies and comforts^ —the
misery any how of being allied with one with whom
it is an impossible thing happily to walk together.
There are other morals liidden in the dormouse and
the lizard.
For instance : regret, pampered in a matter irre-
mediable, is a lizard in the dormouse's nest : turn it
out, the nasty, poisonous, vindictive, chilling rep-
tile ; turn it out forthwith, for it is the touch of
spiritual death freezing up poor Furball in liis moss.
Where's the good of bemoaning the past, and
wishing matters had been otherwise ? Didn't you
act for the best at the time, and meet the symptoms
manfully ? If circumstances hindered, what tlien ?
You are not answerable for circumstances, but for
conduct under them.
Understand me— I'm not talking about crimes,
though mere regret, short of true penitence, is
thereabouts a folly and an evil, and aptly too ; but I
am hinting at all our unlucky hits in life — the
missed chances ; as, e. g. that of the unconscious
Irish captain, when poor Pranklin^s ships were
passed in mid-ocean on the iceberg ; bad investments,
like some of yours and mine ; miserable accidents,
" which might have been" avoided, and like matters
of ill fortune. In no such cases indulge in vain
regrets : they are useless, besides being painful ; you
might as well put stinging nettles inside your flannel
94 THE RIDES AND IIEVERIES
waistcoat. Get rid of the worry, even in thought
— matters are past_, and past mending; alPs for the
best, and at the time you thought so : beUeve it still,
for you cannot help a fact.
Many weak-minded wretches are continually
making themselves and all around them more and
more miserable, by the simple process of wishing
a last yearns deed undone. If you let the matter deep
into your spirit till it preys upon the mind, it will
grow to misery; nay, to another m— madness.
Don't be fool enough to let the lizard in. A man of
self-possession is a dormouse in his nest.
GALLOPING.
Netted about as we all are by laws and ordinances,
responsibilities and conventionalities, it is right
seldom we can sing out heartily and honestly,
" Britons never-never-never shall be slaves V^ But
if ever one does feel free it is in a dashing gallop on
the Downs. Aye, my pretty Brenda, when I give
you the reins and whisper, "Off" in your tremulous
happy ear, what an exulting Bashi-bazouk is then
your master ^sop ! How we leave cares and
worries and all those other misbelieving phantoms far
away behind us, "to bustle up with unsuccessful
speed;"— for when old Horace observed, "Post
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 95
equitem sedet atra cura'^ he must have had in his
poet^s eye a very slow equestriau indeed. Care
always falls off in a gallop.
Talk of danger, too; it^s astonishing how safe
your bunglers and stumblers prseternaturally become
all at once, when once got to the gallop. Muddle
along carefully and you'll soon find them on knees
and noses ; but prick away manfully at headlong-
pace, and winged Pegasus couldn't carry you more
safely. That's the secret of butcher-boys on horse-
back scampering recklessly, and no time to think of
tumbling. That's what the Quicksilver mail— last
of the Mohicans — still does, spinning up and down
the Cornish and Devon hills at the heel of three
bolters and a bad 'un, eleven miles an hour, all too
fast for accidents ; and that's the reason why once I
got a fall, with a moral, as thus : —
After a sharp run with old Morrell's harriers at
Oxford, I was creeping carelessly down Headington
Hill on one of Mr. Eeazely's well-known tumble-
down hacks, when all at once I found your confessor
seated on the ground, with the reins between his
legs, and the animal's head and remainder body " in
linked sweetness long drawn out" behind him, all
fallen flat like a house of cards.
Beyond a trifle of gold salve on each knee to
propitiate the said Beazely, no harm came of it;
but this much, of good in the way of moral.
96 THE raDES and reveries
It's more perilous to be careless as a slow coach
than as a fast one ; speed of any sort is spirit,, and
lifts you, mind or body, through and over obstacles ;
but heedless sloth is ever more degrading, dan-
gerous.
I remember being on the box of the Quicksilver
mail aforesaid, when the roads were all ice — it was
the same famous 7th of January that made Murphy
a meteorologist — and seeing that our Jehu was
driving furiously, I half suggested slower caution :
" Lor' bless your innocence, sir ; they'd all be dov/n
if I didn't keep 'em on the gallop; they haven't time
now to think o' falling :" and off we went faster than
ever.
Sometimes rashness is the truest wisdom; see
Clive and Lake and Gough and Napier passim : and
when it's no use considering because things must be
done, give them their heads.
That same independent daring and dashing spirit
of galloping is in old ^sop's very blood and bones ;
to be a wild Arab, free as the air he breathes,— to
court rather than shun the report of eccentricity,
simply because it leaves him so much the freer to do
as he likes,— to be one of the incomprehensibles of
society, licensed to have his own way and to speak
his own word — to leap your ditches of etiquette,
break your fences of usuality, and make a dash at
the current truth of any sort when and as fast as he
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 97
wills — that's the same spirit which my galloping
Brenda infuses into me when she makes me an exult-
ing Bashi-bazouk !
And here shall follow another of my saddle-lyrics,
although very possibly in print elsewhere. Its
theme is an early cross-country ride to Ascot; for
though no turfite, ^Esop loves horses, and all about
them, too well to neglect our Olympian gatherings.
The stave was pencilled on horseback right happily,
and the very metre proves pace. Be patient then
with
THE EARLY GALLOP,
At five on a dewy morning
Before the blazing day.
To be up and off on a high-mettled horse
Over the hills away —
To drink the rich sweet breath of the gorse.
And bathe in the breeze of the Downs,
Ha ! man, if you can, match bliss like this
In all the joys of towns !
With glad and grateful tongue to join
The lark at his matin hymn.
And thence on faith's own wing to spring
And sing with Cherubim !
To pray from a deep and tender heart
With all things praying anew.
The birds and the bees and the whispering trees.
And heather bedrop't with dew,
H
98 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
To be one witli those early worsliippers.
And pour the carol too !
Then, off af:^aiu with a slackened rein.
And a bounding heart within,
To dash at a gallop over the plain,
Health's golden cup to win !
This, this is the race for gain and grace,
Richer than vases and crowns —
And you that boast your pleasure the most.
Amid the steam of towns,
Come, taste true bliss iu a mornmg like this,
Galloping over the Downs !
PUPPETS AND WIRES.
A poor haggard- cheeked Italian, with a very
antiquated piece of machinery, whereby two dolls
danced together to the music of a primitive drum,
came within my ken as I rode by. He was sur-
rounded by a wondering group of school children,
and seemed born under an affirmative planet; at
least his " Si, signor,^' enunciated from smiling bps,
with a copious illustration of bright eyes and teeth,
was both amiable and incessant.
A small donation at the last, made his " Gracias'^
equally profuse. He changed the tune of his
tambour from the doleful to the happy in my honor,
and the puppets danced merrily forthwith.
OF THE LATE MR. .ESOP SMITH. 99
As for me, I jogged onward a-tliinking.
That acute and needy Neapolitan, I ruminated, is
the Pope ; the dolls, a bedizened female and a gilded
prince, make out church and state ; the drum is
Hudibras^s drum; the machinery of secret strings
being Jesuitical. The school children, thought I
further, constitute this credulous, intelligent age;
the perpetual affirmations, universal philanthropy ;
the donation, our too charitable homage in all silly
liberalities to intolerant Eome ; and the merry doll-
dance typifies the vain triumph of Antichrist.
And yet, I thought still further, does all this
really do worse than amuse those poor work-a-day
children, and avail to instruct me ? Let them laugh,
and let me think ; and beyond my eleemosynary
mercy, is Ambrosio after all any the mightier ? The
Pope's pipe, and "pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, beat
with fist instead of a stick,'' and the courteous
prince, and the flattered lady, and the simple multi-
tude, and the alms, and affirmation, and exultations
and all, are tliey not, when all's said, servants to
right reason ? Will not power, if insolence occur
and need be, take up that meek Italian and make a
goal example of him, supposing the vagrant-amuser
to turn thief, or lewd, or drunken?
There's plenty more, said I as I cantered o£P, in
that fellow with his puppets and wires.
Dear me ! he's an Editor, possibly of the ,
H 2
100 THE EIDES AND EEVEEIES
and lie makes those dolls dance (in capitals) in his
leaders; and all the school children look on and
wonder, and here and there one outsider thinks.
And the Cisalpine takes pay, too, somehow, and his
dolls dance accordingly : and still, the outsider
thinks. Does the Editor remember that ?
In effect, your public puppet-mover is nothing but
a servant to that calm outsider who thinks, even as
those puppets are obedient to him that pulls the
strings : but the paid Italian, influenced both by
largess and enthusiasm, has mighty little self-control,
unless in acquiescence ; and your utterly disin-
terested outsider remains, after all, master of the
position, puppet-watching, meditative, eleemosynary.
FATTENED TOADS.
My nephew Robert pets toads. His humane
fishing with the bare hook will have prepared you
for this congenial point of character. He has taken
it into his head that the toad' has not had justice
among men, and that he will do his school-boy best
to better its condition. So, scorning the gentle
rabbit, the generous dog, the docile pony, and the
graceful array of fowls, pigeons, and the like, my
eccentric nephew pets toads.
Each in its independent garden-pot, covered with
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 101
a tile, iliere Bob's toads grow fat in moss on bread
and milk. One grudges sucli luck to such creatures 3
and moreover, they remain venomous as ever, and
are, after all, by no means happy.
Tm afraid we fatten toads in reformatories and
penitentiaries. Vm afraid that convicted crime is
pampered by many comforts, denied all life through
to industrious and innocent poverty. No sooner
does a wretched rustic become a criminal, than
county ladies and gentlemen begin to pet him ; as a
mere day labourer or parish pauper he would have
starved in his uninteresting virtue ; but crime makes
all the difference, and even the sleepiest of rectors
will hasten to make an impression, if possible, on
one so thoroughly vicious.
What a mercy it is to society, that there is a solid
substratum of honest English worth even beneath the
lowest round of our ladder ! Otherwise, such a
downright premium on crime would tell fearfully
upon us. It is a folly and a blunder, not to say a
sin, to pet toads as we do : but then it's so compla-
cent to one's own virtue to show such charities to
other folk's vices — and what a luxury a convert is !
Nephew Eobert, I wish you would spend your
amiable energies on some less worthless reptiles.
There's plenty of sorrow to be soothed, plenty of
want to be relieved, before you get so far as the
felon's ward : go there, if you will, but by all means
102 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
first make your friendly visit to the garrets and tlie
cellars, overfilled by virtue in affliction.
Turn those toads out of your garden-pots, and
give their bread and milk to poor httle Jem, scaring
birds from the wheat yonder; he hasn^t had a full
hot meal like that this many a day. Such a dietary as
he is used to would occasion a commission of enquiry
against any prison governor; so give the poor lad,
whose innocence otherwise were an earthly loss
however a heavenly gain, — give him the benefit of
that kindliness to his virtue which philanthropy
would be sure to exhibit to his vice.
BLOODSUCKERS.
One great vice in the consti!ution of society
(moralized I, jogging homeward), is that everybody
is bribed to be dishonest ; and one most unexpected
virtue in human nature lies in tliis fact, that, not-
withstanding self-interest, average honesty is a pretty
common quality.
It must be, for instance, the direct advantage of
doctors to disseminate disease, of lawyers to foment
quarrels, of food merchants to encourage waste, of
your tailor to recommend a cloth that soon gets
rusty, of your glazier to put in panes thin enough to
cause a job again, of your boot-maker to take care
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 103
that upper leathers be not tanned to imperish-
ability ; nay, in much higher matters, a total stagna-
tion of religion in the parish promotes the home-
peace of the Eeverend Dr. Drone, — a murrain among
his kith and kin excites delicious hope in the heart
of that far distant possible heir, one's cousin in the
Orkneys; — and a glorious victory, with colonels and
majors well killed off, is to poor old subalterns
prosperity and promotion.
And yet how seldom can we complain of any gross
and avowed selfishness exhibited, in spite of all
temptations. Notwithstanding all, things rub on
pretty fairly, and so give human nature credit;
honesty is the best policy, and we are wise enough
to know it.
But, when all^s said, what a pity it seems that
somehow there cannot be managed a wiser organiza-
tion ; as, to pay the doctor so much a year to keep
one well, or, at all events, to do his best for it ; to
fee the lawyer after a hke fashion, provided you be
not yourself litigiously disposed ; to pay for durables
avowedly twice as much as for perishables ; to infuse
a little lay element of supervision over the results of
Dr. Drone's ministry, that his worldly comfort be
more or less dependent on his righteous exertions, —
to pension the expectant heir into kindliness and
patience ; and as for the poor old subaltern, to shelve
his colonel sooner.
104 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
So should we all feel a confidence in one another,
which now is far too often lacking. "Who does not
suspect his apothecary of over-dosing at the rate of
three-and-sixpence a bottle? or his solicitor of need-
less notes *' in re Smith's trustees/' tempted by six-
and-eightpence a letter? Could country rectors
vegetate with impunity for fifty years of uselessness,
if the blessedness of stagnation were not quite
compatible with their worldly interests ? And who
does not now com])lain of his parson ? Yainly ; for
the Bishop will not hear of missionary zeal nearer
than Timbuctoo, and is too calmly dignified not to
dislike your parochial AYhitfields.
As things are, the scheme of society is, in iEsop's
ken, one of those frightfully magnified drops of dirty
water at the Polytechnic, where all sorts of shocking
creatures are eating each other up alive before our
eyes. When I go down the High Street of my
county town, I seem to recognise a diff'erent sort of
leech in every hungry shopkeeper— all have an
" interest under my waistcoat, " Non missura cutem
nisi plena cruoris hirudo ;" and every one of us
• would make a horrible picture if represented with
our innumerable bloodsuckers, thirsty and dependent.
OF THE LATE MR. JESOB SMIXn. 105
UNRAVELLING.
Our ])leasaiit county town has tliree fair inns —
the Eed Lion^ indelicately rampant; the Queen^s
Head, dubiously loval; and a Forester, claimed
by antiquarians for Eobin Hood, by moderns as-
serted to be in connexion with that old coaching
Piccadilly sign which a literal Trenchman translated
as Uhomme vert et tranquil. At all events, it
represents a stalwart gentleman in green, though
without the still.
Now when the militia w^ere recently populous
and populizing amongst our ruralities, and when
the leash of grumbling licensed victuallers, mine
hosts of these tliree hostelries, duly had unwel-
come guests quartered upon them, it hap])ened
that by favour of a Scotch quarter-master, all his
countrymen received billets for the Red Lion ; which
occasioned the Green man (from some relationship
discovered with the Emerald Isle, I fancy) to be
specially crowded by the Irish contingent of our
forces ; while the Queen's Head was resigned to
the quieter possession of the more stupid and less
impulsively-national Englishmen. It was an in-
dulgence fair enough (as at first supposed) to local
prejudice and home associations. Not a little
Glenlivat whiskey was clamorously consumed in
ancestral recollections by the Eed Lion; while
106 THE racES and reveries
Kinalian's LL was the favourite beverage, similarly
clamorous, with our Green friend : dull gin and
water being thought sufficiently wholesome and ex-
citing for the Queen.
However, it was soon found out and reported
to Colonel Blunt, that private Sandy M'Farlane had
been breaking Donald Roy^s red head, because said
Roy's ancestor had burglariously and uupatriotically
run away from CuUoden with a dragoon's saddle;
that James Ferguson had a deadly feud, five hundred
years old, all about Wallace, with Hector M'lan;
and, as for the Green Man (anything but '^tranquil,''
too), an O'Shane had already nearly battered into his
component anatomies an O'Toole, because their re-
spective grandsires had fought at Kilcuddery fair
about a cow; and Pat Leary, with a faction of
sympathising friends, held the chimney-corner of
right— a right dating from the halls of Tara— as
against every less time-honoured champion. All
was disorganization, disruption, segregation, semi-
mutiny; Colonel Blunt interposed, reprimanded the
over-national quarter-master, and mixed his men less
partially ; whereby instanter, as by a potent spell of
peace, ill-blood and factionism went out at once, and
our county town resumed its dull quiescence.
Now let Professor AYhitie, and a certain eloquent
young Irelander, ponder these small experiences.
Let them take note that if you once begin to divide
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. ]07
the one and indivisible, there^s no end to it. Nations
cut up into counties, and counties into clans, and
clans into families and brothers and cousins individu-
ally find some ancient very good reason for a fight.
There's no end to it. Let Wallace, by all means,
have his statue, and Brian Boroime also, if they
severally deserve one, as no doubt they do; but
never let the debt of ancient honour work or count
as any modern insult : never coax a memory of the
noble dead into spite against the friendly living. A
well-united empire— that unbreakable bundle of
faggots — can well afford to delight in all manner
of national melodies, and garments, and titles of
honour, and tales of old romance, — can appreciate
and commemorate every local worthy of historical
renown, and agree to forget enmities of ages back
in present frieiidships, prosperities, and oneness.
But to make grand old Wull Wallace (for instance
a stalking horse for hatred of the Southron, or
troubles almost coeval with the flood in ould Ireland,
an excuse for discontent in '67, these, Professor
and Enthusiast, are attempts at grumblemongering
really unkind and unwise, and unjust and un-
generous.
This morning my little niece gave me a pretty
pair of tricolor wristcuffs. Now suppose I were to
cut the three colours into three separate wrist-rings,
would they bide or hold together ? Not they.
108 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Directly you cut crochet, or begin to disjoin im-
perial unity, the links melt away like snow-wreaths
before the sun, or tlie string of sand in an hour-glass. ,
That whicli was all orderly complication, holding
together with joints and bands supplied by every
part, soon becomes nothing better than a slovenly
and tangled skein, the very woof and web of
chaos.
Begin to unravel our imperial standard, and all
goes frittering away, bit by bit, till individual selfish-
ness has left the old staff ragless. No, brothers ! we
three — or, if the ^Velchman claims distinctiveness,
we four — are one: and I wot that England, at all
events, deals equal honours all round the table, quite
fairly and impartially. How many penniless Scots,
I should like to know, have won Imperial peerages
and pensions, been judges, chancellors, premiers?
How many Irish, how many Welch, have commanded
fleets and armies, worn mitres, had our chief seats at
feasts, and been set on high in our synagogues ? Is
not Chief- J ustice Campbell, Scotch; Judge ATilliams,
Welch; and First Lord Palmerston, Irish? Eng-
land is impartial enough— her rule is, palmam qui
meruit ftrnt ; or if any limit there be, it Hes in this
— that whereas English honours are freely open to
the children of her co-kingdoms, the legal and eccle-
siastical prizes (speaking of a rule with very possible
exceptions) throughout Ireland and Scotland respec-
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 109
tively, are almost exclusively left to Pat and Sandy,
John Bull may be a surly elder brother, but he is a
liberal giver ; his old hall is hospitably filled, and all
relations heartily welcome there : only do let them
have the common sense and common courtesy to
fling aside obsolete family quarrels and those grudges
of the days lang syne.
THE NARROW WORLD.
"What do they mean by speaking of ours as a
"wide, wide world ?^^ ISTever was there such a
narrow one. Everywhere and every when our old
associations hem us in, and continually are we stum-
bling up against all manner of men and things
touching on our former selves in the character of
present connexions. Tve met just the people I
ought to meet, in all sorts of unlikely places ; and
all such act to me as hints that I am in my proper
orbit, ringing the changes on individuality.
Tor, after all said and professed, in spite of our
boasted wide views and asserted largeheartedness,
catholicity, patriotism, universal brotherhood, and all
the rest of them, the wretched molecule of Self sits
in the very central core like a bad pip ; neither can
it well be otherwise, so long as this inner seed is to
110 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
every one of us, for time and for ever, the pregnant
root of all tilings.
And so also in those perpetual coincidences,
chance meetings, and other like hints at our special
orbits in life : Providence appears to be continually
setting its seal to the idea that our individuality is
everything to each one of us, always reminding our
present of its past, and marking out its future to us,
whether we will or not. Early seeds yield their late
fruits, and old incidents react themselves inevitably.
The tune played upon a street organ, the pattern of
a carpet at an inn, the casual word touching the
thought that just has lit up your eye, the electric
shock that thrills some nerve of memory, the very
smell of a wildflower or of a new school-book, — all
such little providences bind up the ravelled skeins
of self, and prove to us we are what we are, and
where we should be. In many a dark corner of
life I have seen this glow-worm-hint of guidance,
and rejoiced to know that, wide as the world may
be, each man's orbit is narrow enough to be compre-
hensible. You will be sure to meet your own doings
and beings and havings again ; the moral whereof is
— tiJ^e good care of every present duty.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. Ill
MY PLUM-STONE.
In the very middle of the Maelstrom (they tell us)
there's a dead calm ; and the nucleus of a hurricane
is quietude ; and a strong mind^ buffeted by adver-
sity, is just a dove of peace caged within a labyrinth
of fireworks.
Only shut yourself up, and let them rave : pull in
your feelers, turn the spines outwardly, and keep all
snug inside : then let them rave, and call you [but
you're not] hard-hearted.
A friend of mine lives a very pleasant life of
happy reverie in a sturdy thick-ribbed castle. The
walls are strong, the moat deep, the portcullis down,
the drawbridge up; and Peace is his housekeeper
within.
But the walls are covered with so much softening
ivy and so many pretty creepers, and the moat is so
garnished with water-lilies, and the ramparts around
are so daintily laid out in terraced gardens, that the
strength of that castle is masked. And it comes to
pass that, in stormy weather, when the roses are all
blown to tatters, and the gardens look miserable,
folks suppose the storm gets into the castle. But
it doesn't.
My friend, at those times bids his housekeeper
(who is inclined to be timid enough) not to fear, but
112 THE TvlDES AND TvEATlRlES
only look to the fastenings. So long as he^s of the
same calm, cool mind — let them rave at the gate,
and batter at the casement, but they won^t get in.
Be true to yourself, friend.
Some people have no notion that they mustn^t let
the wolf indoors, that there is an inner-innermost
indoors which each man has for himself, and has an
Engh'shmar/s good right to make his castle of; and
that till he himself turns self-traitor, no enemy can
get at him to vex him.
My own heart — if you care to hear ^sop's
account of that organ— is much like a plum,
externally soft enough, fair enough, sweet enough ;
then comes a pretty hard stone, which you won't
easily pierce, or crack, or break ; but in the midst of
it another soft and fair existence, with a smack of
prussic acid and a vigorous vitality.
There are three sorts of heart beside the vulgarly-
known organ that figures on valentines, and is
broken by the love of Alice Gray.
One is like your Australian cherry, that, like other
anomalies in that region, prefers to have the stone
outside and the pulp within, These are your rough
but kindly creatures — fo'castle Jem, who does the
most generous and self-sacrificing action with an ac-
companying volley of oaths terrible to listen to ; Ben
the miner, who kills his mate in a boxing match, and
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 113
forthwith gives a home to his widow and orphans;
and such crab-Hke specimens of humanity, good
creatures with a hard husk.
The second sort is like your AYest Indian tamarind
sweet and yet subacid, glutinous, and glozing ; their
good is all outside; but within is an uncrushable
stone —no kernel in it, no ethereal flavour, but only
a germ of life, that will not perish though you boil
it. Rogues, hawks, hypocrites; your agent and
attorney class of men ; a mixture of bird-lime pickles
and treacle smeared over marbles, like the contents
of a school-boy^s pocket. Yes, you may break your
nut-crackers, but you^ll not make a tamarind-stone
give way ; and if you did, there's nothing of a kernel
in it.
Now the third is JEsop's sort, as above, mingling
the two others with a difference. Wholesome fruit,
for stock jam; crackable stone, for marble; and the
flavorous kernel inside. Tor all ordinary life pur-
poses, a thickish pulp of pleasantness; against
worries and adversities, an inner wall; and, that w^all
entered, the genuine ^sop Smith.
114 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
THE HOLLY-BUSH.
The prickles, look you, are mostly about its
foliage on the lower boughs, and as you get higher,
they are fewer, until, quite at the top, the smooth
green leaves are as harmless and unarmed as bay.
A parable of human society this : nearest the
ground, where hardships gnaw like the teeth of
hungry cattle, there are oaths and blows and all other
roughnesses ; and as you mount, asperities are fined
away, till all at the highest is the polish of luxury in
its cold and perennial livery of green, without one
spine but the topmost one of pride to wound or be
defensive.
And a parable of individual character also. Strife
breeds a contentious spirit all around it — the prickles
cannot but bristle up against the cudgelings of hard-
ship; sharp frost is apt to make things sharp as
itself, and as rigid too.
But let a little sunshine bathe your temples, let
the zephyr of prosperity whisk by, and your leaf
which " doth not wither^^ drops its hard repulsions ;
the hand opens, the heart thrills, and there are
tender unspined leaves on the top of the holly-bush.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 115
HORSE-MORALS.
My dear creatures are really more Ivdmanizecl than
most folks' cliildreii. Vm sure they thinks and feel,
and love, and are grateful. My voice is enough for
them, and their eyes for me. Wonder and Arabes-
que talk to me by a gentle half-breathed neigh of
affection when I near them; Minna lays her ears
back and attempts to kiss — not kick — her evidently
well liked master; and as for Brenda, her playful
bite, that would not harm an infant's finger, her
amiable eye, her instant appreciation of my lightest
wish in the saddle or out of it by a sort of magnetic
impulse, prove to me that what we call Spirit is the
good Beast's prerogative no less than the average
Man's. I hope there is a heaven for them.
Kindness, kindness, kindness, is the Demosthenean
rule for governing animals of all grades. Ay, from
the bitter convict to your own son; from Van
Amburgh's lions to the once obstinate jack-ass;
from zebras and foxes, to my own friendly ponies
and my little niece's aviary of turtle-doves.
Time was when educationals were whipped into
Westminsters by Goodenough, into Etonians by
Keate, into Carthusians by Russell ; and in the same
pervading spirit of harshness, the same time was when
your colt-breaker used jaw-torturers, flank-tearers,
I 2
116 THE HIDES AND EEYEHIES
fork-handles, curses, switches — everything utterly
wrong; tlie results being vicious all in man and
horse alike.
Our tack in these Philadclphic days is wiser:
kindliness taming all things ; as the sun (in my dear
ancient namesake^s parable) is ever potent where the
storm is powerless.
thou malicious costermonger, stop that cruel
cudgeling ! thou silly schoolmaster, burn that
perpetual birch ! 0, fathers and mothers, set a good
example of gentle firmness, of love mingled with
strength, of amiable forbearance and dignified
rebuke; as far better educationals to your trouble-
some nursery than wrath and slaps and sullenness,
1 only know that if I w^ere lucky enough to light
upon a likely Mrs. jEsop, and to attain certain con-
sequent ^sopicles, my stable-morals should be well
reflected in my nursery.
That is, always, n. b., if the future Mrs. ^Esop
would but consent to go along with her liege lord in
the matter; for there's the real educational hitch.
What can be done with children where the parents
are antagonists ? AYhat hope is there for well-formed
character when harsh fathers storm at, and silly
mothers pet and protect, the identical too conscious
little criminals ? when there is division between the
brace of Roman consuls, and the scales of justice are
weighted on both sides ?
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 117
What if I had a brute of a groom, who bela-
boured and swore at my four-footed friends, would
he not utterly counteract all my humanizing amia-
bilities, now so clearly grafted on those grateful
cattle ?
^Esop, /Esop, remain a bachelor, or (if possible)
be well and equally mated ; otherwise those probable
^sopicles may, through motherly mismanagement (so
our male vanity protests), turn out kickers, jibbers,
full of vice and obstinacy ! Absit omen.
THE ELEPHANT AND THE MONKEY.
Eiding by Milford market-place yesterday, I came
upon a sight that forcibly symbolized to my appre-
hensiveness the state of our affairs in India.
A great menagerie was passing through the town,
— and, in their various cages, caravans, or now and
then, as in the instance of the more gigantic animals,
simply led by a tether unhoused, — I saw allegorized
the British colonial empire : all these various crea-
tures, emblems of their several climes and homes,
gallantly escorted by liveried grooms, and other
functionaries; and appearing to be well-fed, con-
tented, and more or less honourably used and waited
on ; but still, in an obvious state of servitude : and
thus, with Mr. Wombweirs fancy-dressed represen-
118 THE EIDES AND HEVEPaES
tative at its head, to the sound of a gay brass band,
and amid the acclamations of the vulgar, passed on a
well-devised masque of England and her depen-
dencies.
However, it was the elephant and his belongings
that taught me all this the clearest.
Two presumptuous grooms were teasing the huge
black brute,— sensitive and proud, however sensible
and docile ; and had set a monkey on its back, that
fidgetted about from ears to tail, in red coat and
epaulettes, worrying the patient giant, and mis-
chievously deranging the barbaric pomp and trap-
pings of its howdah.
There, thought I, was the Honourable East India
Company, and the Right Honourable Board of
Control — there the enormous Sepoy army — there
the cadet-captains — there the petty provocations.
And what did the elephant do ?
Eor one insane moment of Oriental rage, a moment
of terror and peril to all the crowd of Milford, that
terrible beast broke loose from his tethers, trod
furiously and with no gentle emphasis on the grooms
aforesaid, and having seized the monkey with his
trunk, hurled him into a horsepond.
Brenda reared — as well she might, and all the
town was in an uproar; but within a while the
elephant's wrath was appeased; and so he suffered
his grooms (a little tamed down from their former
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 119
insolence) to tetlier him once more, and get liim
home : where, I believe, bj force of fireworks, crow-
bars, and starvation, they entirely subdued the mon-
ster; so as, without danger in future to the public,
they might be sure of being able to lead him quietly
on in the procession.
P.S. I afterwards heard that the elephant, rather
a pet of his keepers, had been injudiciously fed up
and highly pampered, which in the hot season
especially fires his nature : and I thought it most
ungrateful of the brute that he should have so
treacherously turned upon, and rent those who are
only too kind to him.
No doubt, no doubt,— to hold the balance equi-
tably,— we have been negligent, supine, and some-
times contradictorily overbearing. We ought, some
say, to have discountenanced idolatry, and yet, some
others say, we have sinned by lack of tolerance to
it : we place too much confidence in Asiatics, object
some, and with manifest truth as to the past ; we
don't confide enough in them, say others, but keep
them at too great distance.
Anyhow, and in spite of all our governmental
faults and shortcomings, the ferocity and ingratitude
of that pampered elephant justifies its utter destruc-
tion : and the heart of England can have in this
120 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Indian insurrection, no more patience with those
traitors against humanity, the professional humani-
tarians who advocate Sepoy wrongs, and palliate
their most unutterable cruelties, — than it had in the
Crimean war with the white-livered folks, most
probably identicals, who committed equal treason
against right and their country, when in a peace-
mongering spirit they flattered Eussia, and traduced
England.
O, those Indian horrors, intolerable, unpardonable,
unutterable ! whereabout their very hideousness
obhges us to keep silence, scarcely daring even to
think; and the only consolation whereof is, to
account of our outraged women and tortured
children as verily among the Martyrs. But what an
aggravation is it to our honest wrath at those
atrocities to find human beings in our own land,
caUing themselves Englishmen and Irishmen, who
abet or excuse such demoniac murderers ! Advo-
cates like those are mere accomplices ; and will both
here and hereafter be judged coequals in those crimes.
And lest some puling hypocrite who falsely boasts
he has a text to back his heartlessncss, should
murmur, 'Love your enemies/ — let ^sop fling a
word to any such canting hound, — and say, "Yes,
by all means, on the reasonable condition of his re-
pentance ; if my erring brother say, ' I am sorry,^ I
forgive him heartily ; but even so, he gets his lawful
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 121
punishment : the penitent thief on the cross was not
let off from crucifixion and broken limbs in that hot
sun, even when accepted by Mercy Incarnate.
Forgive as you hope to be forgiven ; on repentance
and amendment, and no otherwise.''^
History^ they say, has two eyes, chronology and
geography ; and Christianity has in like manner two
eyes, right reason and right feeling : expound any
text to disproportion against these, and you warp it
to the damage of religion. Who dare be so exact-
ingly literal as to pluck out a right eye, and cut off
a right hand? Where is the modern humanity-
monger who will give even to amj one that asketh
him ? as to '' everyone'^ that is with him, at least,
manifestly out of the question: and what sort of
reply, let ^sop ask, would the needy borrower be
generously sent away withal by such usurious lender ?
We must take all these texts reasonably ; doing to
others as, in mutual justice and propriety, we could
wish them to do to us. But, to rejoice the infidel
by forcing Christian precepts to absurdity (as
Humf.nitarianism does) to postpone in one^s affec-
tions kindliness and virtue to cruelty and crime, to
invest enemies flagrante dehcto with a semi-sacred
character, and to pamper the wicked at the expense
of the good, these wise and just and generous senti-
ments provoke honest J^sop to blurt out against
their meek-seeming but really truculent avower some
122 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
certain expressive adjectives, knit together for just
such a man in Canning's famous Sapphic,—
Wretch ! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance !
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless, outcast !
A SMASH.
At an awkward downhill corner near our railway,
Fve just seen a mighty omnibus rush round full
swing upon an unfortunate errand cart, — crashing,
overwhelmingly, and smashing not only shafts and
panels and horseflesh, but also uncounted crockeries
and a superincumbent old woman. A hideous
coUision it was ; but happily untragical, except for
broken knees and a gash or two ; whereby, as a
reactive relief from what I feared to find a death,
my fancy saw in it instanter — a terrible leader of the
*' "f walking into some great victim reputation.
That ponderous omnibus load of anonymous
scribes rushes recklessly into the thick of old di-
plomates, generals, statesmen, and other like ancient
potentates, forcing its huge Juggernaut wheels over
all the china-courtesies and coarser earthenware de-
cencies of civilization.
AYho escapes now without a crack in his fame ?
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 123
Whose honour is undamaged, whose name unblem-
ished ? Yerilj, Mawworm's " I likes to be despised/'
has become a new word of wisdom; for it means
now-a-days " I likes to find myself in the gallant and
calumniated company of all those whom mankind
has hitherto held great, good, or glorious.'''
It is fashionable noAv to wake and find one's self
iwfamous, — that is to say, infamous so far as printed
abuse and secret slander can avail to make a good
man infamous. However, recollect, it is not the
real thunder of public opinion that is hurling this
infamy about so broadcast, but only some one poor-
devil theatrical Salmoneus of the press, imitating our
only real Jupiter, the popular voice.
Let victim reputations take comfort in this, that
the scribe who has indited such murderous leaders is
a mere miserable envious unit, and that his multitu-
dinous readers only read him for amusement, but
believe him not. The license of the press is work-
ing its own cure, forasmuch as nobody now thinks
any the worse of any man (but rather all the better)
for a fierce onslaught of the power usurped by
sundry calumniators who are but the Dantons and
Mirabeaux of our ill-used Pourth Estate.
124j the rides and reveries
CRITICS.
Did YOU ever see a poor scared liare^ flying for
dear life before the grcyliounds ? That's a sensitive
young author hunted by the critics. How they run
him down, double upon him, and try to give him a
tremendous backbite utterly to throw him over !
Those huge, gaunt, fanged, famished hounds, — so
cowardly, too ; a conspiracy of strong foes against
one weak and harmless victim, w4iose very terror
stimulates their cruelty.
Don't fear tliem, young author; they have long
ago over done it, overrun themselves ; nobody heeds
their opinions except in the way of enquiring an-
xiously for books censured, so as to judge for them-
selves ; and as for their praise or blame, the common
fancy is, that it is somehow a matter of booksellers'
interest or authorial envy, of private favour or pique,
of influence or indigestion.
ril tell you here a true story, brother authoret :
and look you forward under the head of Zoilism also.
J^sop had been guilty of a book, — a not unfre-
quent folly, for Smith's works are in everybody's
hands, — and the early copies had elicited, as usual,
plenty of praise and name.
One review, however, overdid all possibilities of
honest commendation : and as Jiisop was reading
OP THE LATE ME,. iESOP SMITH. 125
woiidermgly — for such tickling exceeded pleasure —
the marvel was revealed : an afternoon post brought
a letter from the disinterested writer of that critique,
full of family secrets about debts and children, and
begging the loan of twenty pounds.
As I read (it is a vanity and a folly to confess it)
^sop's heart was misgiving him, and at least, ten,
if not the whole twenty pounds were all but gone ;
however, unluckily for both author and critic,
an overleaf postscript ran thus : " N.B. I may be
pardoned for saying that my gratitude can repay you
sevenfold ; as I have the ear of several editors in our
club, and in especial am a principal writer in the—'"
Of course, this settled the question. That letter
was never answered, as it was impossible for ^sop's
honesty to buy praises. But listen further, friend
authoret ; I am very far from saying that the matter
was more than a coincidence, but the curious result
has been that however favouring aforetime, the
aforesaid '' " and divers fraternal prints, have
been my meanest and bitterest malignants ever since.
I may have deserved their ill opinions justly enough ;
only they had not so been evidenced before : and I
now am honoured by their hate.
So be it : they live by slander, and the public loves
amusement: and when one's friends get tired of
Robinson's perpetual praises, nothing serves him
better than for a quick-witted foe to trim up a few
126 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
lies to his discredit : it polishes the dim mirror of
friendsliip to reflect more truly, and wakes up even
the outer world to judge for itself.
Ay, stab in the dark. Sir ; stab at my back ; stab
away, with feeble malice and envy at what a Lord
Mayor has been heard to denominate '' tlie dignity of
^is 'igh position !" But it may disconcert even your
impudence to be told that you are known, and but
for sheer contempt would be exposed.
So then, brave young author, set less highly by their
praises, and dread their blame less fearfully.
They have long ago overdone it. Week after
week, some feeblest obscure is trumpeted a genius by
his friend the editor ; week after week some vastly
better man is sentenced by the same impartial judge
to scorn and condemnation. All in vain — nobody
cares;— the only one seriously damaged is che poor
bepraised ; his book at all events, falls dead ; whereas
it is a sort of kindness to cut up an author, that he
and his lucubrations may be talked about.
Fly forth, ye many envious, rave and rend, ye
anonymous cowards ! Do your very worst even
against me, hight ^Esop, in the blackest, bitterest ink
you can find, — and I will thank you for the very
best of all advertisements ; there's nothing like venom
for a poster.
Fve known the day when iEsop himself has
played the undignified part of that poor scared hare;
OF THE LATE ME,. iESOP SMITH. 127
but they won't catch me giving them a breather
again ; in my cozy form under the rough shelter of a
furze-bush, Til bide quiet and defy them.
Remember, young autlior, how Nehemiah mag-
nificently asks, Should such a man as I llee ?
PARIAHS.
The antipathy of horses against asses is pretty nearly
as proverbial as that between dogs and cats ; and a
parable has just met me in the way thereanent.
Turning the Warren Corner in my morning''s ride,
we came upon poor Jenny-ass taking a luxurious roll
in the dusty road; Jenny is a costermonger's
donkey, both master and slave being decidedly ill-
conditioned ; and the hideous object put my high-
mettled mare out terribly.
Brenda started, and stopped, and snorted, and
pricked her ears, and couldn^t be induced to pass the
creature ; neither was I able reasonably to persuade
her to go on, after certain proud prancings, until
that poor vulgarian had meekly sneaked into the
wayside gutter, to crop hedgeweeds after its dust-
bath.
Aye, my Lady Brenda, this is just the fashion of
your high-bred virtuous sex with other outcast
females. Scarcely can you bear to tread on the
128 THE RIDES AND HEVERIES
same ground with them ; horror and disgust are all
you have to greet them withal ; and your only refuge
from their presence is utterly to ignore their being.
So it has often come to pass, that when some fair
impulsive warm-hearted girl, the victim to ill-breed-
ing or temptation, longs humbly and penitently to
return again, she finds her whole sex banded toge-
ther against her. No mercy, is woman's motto
against woman; no hope — and so the recklessness
of desperation is her injured sister's practical reply.
And if some larger-hearted man, in a spirit of Chris-
tian brotherhood, listens to any such poor penitent,
and would gladly give her a chance for recovery of
character in his home-establishment, how does his
narrow-minded wife receive the good suggestion ?
Certainly with scorn, fortunately if not also with
suspicion ; but anyhow quite unfavourably : and
shocking to the Great Heart of Merciful Heaven
must be the moral aspect of that virtuous self-
righteous holy-matrimonied Mrs. Yenom !
What is the secret root of such deep, such furious
indignation ? No doubt, no doubt, there are plenty
to be easily enough alleged, for self-complacency is a
tuberous plant, like a potato ; and there are instantly
producible as roots, — religion and morality, rights,
wrongs, legitimacy, honour, and I know not what
else. But iEsop will be base enough to guess at the
very biggest root of all, permanent in the soil of
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 129
female human nature, pervading all its ramifications,
— and of course to be most wrathfully repudiated as
any reason whatever for such righteous " indignation
against sin." It is this. Does not every govern-
ment dealer in some heavily-taxed foreign article
hate and persecute the bold and bare-faced smug-
glers who supply contraband luxuries dirt-cheap and
duty free ? Is there no jealous sense of antipathy
mixed with selfish fear, against wholesale spoilers of
the wedding-market? Would ageing maidens and
eager marrying mothers and that bright-eyed Widow
Wadman really be so always disappointed of tl- ir
hopes, were it not for the detestable social sin wnich
tlieir own pride impolitically increases by utter hate-
fulness and want of mercy ?
I trow that a continuous lack of charity in your
high-bred Lady Brendas, and the contrasting meek-
ness of spirit in poor better-hearted Traviata is one
reason why De Solus retains his chambers in that dull
Albany ; and that, if our artificial hot-bed of corrup-
tion — society— is ever to be purified from its greatest
element of ill, it must be effected by woman's open
heart to woman— by the way of return being ren-
dered less impossible ;— by our numerous unmarrying
De Soluses being attracted through the power of
Christian charity to those their equals as to marriage,
who may become bold enough and good enough to
K
130 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
act upon the word of Him wlio said *' Neither do I
condemn thee V*
THE COLD SHADE.
There is an immense yew tree on my lawn which
gives my little niece no end of care and trouble.
She can^t bear the great^ gloomy, deadly thing ; she
grudges the barren circle of its lowering arms as a
canker on our velvet grass; she is always planting
violets on that blank bare spot, and they continually
sicken there and die.
" "Why doesn't uncle cut it down, that nasty old
tree?''
In vain does uncle urge antiquity, dignity, the
right of still being there because it has been there
so long, and the certain amount of dingy grandeur
in the yew itself; all these arguments are overborne
in little niece's mind by the harm it does and has
done time out of mind, the deadly old thing. Twice,
in our knowledge, it killed cows, and once a pouey,
which had strayed out of bounds and fed upon
forbidden fare; its sickly sweet and slimy berries
had made me, iEsop, ill as a child ; and who knows
how many better children than ^Esop may not in the
ages past have been poisoned by it ? And then there
OF THE LATE MR. JiiSOP SMITH. 131
is the constant destruction of turf, and those beds
of dead violets.
Yes ; Sir Hugh Fitzhugh, now a duke, came over
with the conqueror, and has been a conquering hero
ever since; the yew of a thousand years is his
vegetable type, and the very likeness of his own cold
shade ; nothing can tolerate his hard proud presence,
and all perishes beneath the gloom of his overbearing
hugeness.
Violet-scented modest merit dies of drought and
pride beneath the boughs of rank. Eank! — a
famous word is that Eank, for the idea of overgrown
wortlilessness, the flaunting dock, deep-rooted, huge-
leafed, a bully and a giant among weeds— rank, I
say, thrusts in its ancient claims to all the honours
of the pack, before the struggling player of life's
game born to a bad hand ; rank hinders and treads
down a people by the heels of the children of the
very men whom they are silly enough to lift above
their heads ; rank, not the reward of merit but the
right of Primogeniture. This is the great deadly
yew that overgrows us every way; cut it down, root
it up, why cumbereth it the ground ?
My indignation burns, too, at the cheat practised
on us now by oHgarchs, under the pretence of yielding
to the cry for honour to merit. Merit is a levelling
matter, vulgar and plebeian as religion itself; totally
unexclusive, unconventional, giving trouble, claiming
k2
132 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
unliereditary respect, pushing into our places — even
if not pushing us out of them ; in fact merit is a
bore. But, what^s to be done? The people, aye
and the Queen too, will have it that some of our
cake be given to desert, and needs must that we
seem to yield. But, in the gift of honour to the
common herd let us shrewdly sow it broadcast, that
so honour be no honour at all ; be indiscriminate,
and make medalists ridiculous by appearing in
thousands ; and if needs must again that individuals
be starred, let it be only for brute animal courage,
the very lowest form of human excellence.
Ignore, ignore for ever, and keep down the
honourable claims of science, and invention, and civil
worth, and literature — and if you must reward the
low-born or others unknown to our pale, be it only
for the bulldog quality of pinning an enemy.
That's the Jesuitical thought of an effete oligarchy,
monopolists of stars and garters, dogs in the manger,
over nobler because newer and unsullied honours,
which our good Queen's heart is eager to well out
upon human merit everywhere, but is hitherto let and
hindered in its aspirations by the freezing influences
of too many little-great around, counselling a pru-
dent reserve from such good impulses.
YoT Florence Nightingale, and her delicately-
unique order of nobility, we the people, give God
and the Queen alone all thanks j for we know that
OF THE LATE MR. /ESOP SMITH. 133
our fiill-blood oligarchs abhor such a precedent. The
i idea of rewarding merit is hateful to mere rank.
EAELY AND LATE.
How carefully you coax a seeding plant, or rear
a cutting ; and yet how ruthlessly you cut down the
same rank old geranium in November, or fling it on
the dunghill to rot among the rubbish !
So with us all ; the tender little babe, petted and
doted on, — see it in old age rooted up and flung
away : the waste of love in infancy, and the utter
want of it in second childhood ! J. pity those old
geraniums, remembering their fostered youth; and
sad is the contrast between man as a despised weed,
and the cherished darling he was in childhood.
I never nurse my summer cuttings, nor clear off
winter plants without the thought of this ; it runs
throughout nature ; the young creature everywhere
is loved and loveable, the old a mere incumbrance
and a nuisance. Charles Lamb reasonably grieves
that a sucking pig should grow to be a hog ; it is a
self-experience, a self-sorrow. Aye, and the first
young idea of anything is alike a contrast with its
after dull reality — this is the fondled babe and that
the pushed-out elder, — "Get out of the way, old
Dan \" instead of " Welcome, sweet stranger !"
134 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
See the difference between the artistes first love of
his subject, and its used-up neglected condition in
the loft ; how he thought about every harmonizing
tint in those early days — and now how scornfully is
the whole finished picture hidden away near the roof
with its face to the plaster !
So with us all — the peasant^s fondled first-born
finishes by being a kicked-out union pauper;— the
rooted cutting you are so tenderly transplanting will
grow to be a rank thing to be flung away at potting
time.
Woe, for all such sad chances I Woe for early
beauties, loves, and innocences, blighted into all their
absences or opposites ; woe to us all for cares, and
affections thrown away !
SPURS.
I
Given a manageable mouth, a fair temper, and
moderate age in your bearer, with a firm seat, a kind
heart, and no impatience in yourself, and spurs are a
clear gain— not else.
We have most of us been ridden with spurs in our
time ; and it is well if necessities or other tyrannies
have not been cruel ; and that we have learned to
pick up our feet nattily among the ruts, and have
answered the sharpish rowel with docility unflinch-
ing.
OP THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 135
Then there is that nobler spur touching either
flank continually : — " Fame is the spur that the
clear spirit doth urge," — and no mixt metaphor of
an " infirmity^' either, good Sir John, (who hast been
daring enough also to tell us that "Blind mouths
bold crooks V^ in that same most unequal Lycidas,)
no infirmity, but a right noble force, luring and
driving and winning heavenwards. Mark you, a
clear spirit, pure, unsullied, and sincere, without
the fog of worldliness or self; the wholesome
love of fame well-earned and well-used is just that
gentle spur-touch so warily wise at the crisis of a
leap.
But he must be docile, patient, and spirited ; or
the good intent of Providence in life's continual
spurring will only goad a fretful temper into obsti-
nate hatreds.
Adversities that soften some, harden others ; and I
T\ot of more than one buffetted spirit for whose weal
a merely human wisdom regarding individuals would
prescribe some milder regimen. Nay, this is true
•even of whole classes and nations. Eemember,
however, that we see not all, only some small seg-
ment of our circle; and that we are habitually
omitting from our estimate that mighty makeweight
of Another World. Depend upon it, all these cal-
culated forces and their seeming good or evil influ-
ence upon immortal souls will somehow and some-
loG THE RIDES AND REVERIES
where be vindicated as all having '' worked together
for good/'
AESOP'S PATENT HEAL-ALL.
Haven't you often longed to run a muck, like an
irate gentleman of Japan, smashing all a-head, mad-
bullwise, and taking your fill of vengeance against
all circumstances, men, and things ?
And being, doubtless, utterly interdicted from
such egregious exploit, haven't you suffered the
canker, misnamed Patience, to eat into the very walls
of your heart, drain its generous juices, and leave all
dr}^, hardened, and heated— baked clay instead of
feeling flesh ?
yEsop's patent remedy for this state of evil moral
irritation, is a good wild gallop — a helter-skelter two-
or-three-mile breather on the downs — as decidedly
preferable on the whole (in spite of peril by way of
accident) to slaughtering kith and neighbours, or
stagnating, by reaction of the heart, into a sort of
mummied fiend.
With the sensitive, — and when was a hunchback
otherwise ? — iterated worries either madden or
harden : to the solitary bachelor-worldling, there are
the stingings of evil conscience ; to the speculative
merchant-gauibler, dread and chances of ruin; ay,
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 137
and to the respectable ordinary Benedict, cares of a
household, constant broils about domestics, clatter of
misbehaving children, and, in chief, the universal
fussiness of that aggravating mortal, Mrs. B. ; for all
such miseries of human life, to these I recommend
the panacea of a downright full-cry gallop : " 0,
give me but my Arab steed V
Try it, if you are lucky enough to have old ^sop's
chances of a breezy race-course, a firm seat, and a
sure-footed, high-spirited mare. Cares are distanced,
worries clean forgotten, and all the dull hatefulness
of indignation changed [presto] into cheerfulness,
and buoyancy, and courage, and energetic hope, by
the magic of my patent cure for the blue devils— a
gallop.
A PIG IN A POKE.
Eastern match-making is avowedly conducted in
the dark ; and a young couple seldom can see each
other's faces until the very crisis of matrimony, when
mutual disappointment pretty generally ensues ;
however, they take out their revenge in the plurality
of wives ; their chance is not simply one and indi-
visible.
Now, westwardly here, matrimonials are pretty
much in the dark, too. The Persian and Chinese
138 THE EIDES AND EEVEEIES
only act from theory what we as bluntly carry out in
practice, they having the advantage over us in the
multiplied chances aforesaid. How seldom is a wedding
anything but the discovery of ugly truths, long
sedulously hidden but now revealed too late for cure ;
and marriage itself, any more than the solemn
inauguration of a life-long disappointment !
Ay, ay ; wise was the profane punster who ap-
pended to that time-worn comfort-breathing axiom
— "Matches are made in heaven" —the somewhat
startling qualification, that still sometimes they are
dipped in " ,'^— "Well, the great idea of "brim-
stone" will serve instead of another h—; a fact not
unknown to most husbands and wives from ignition
of temper, and the like sulphureous experiences.
Fortunate iEsop ! to be able, through the bacca-
laurean emancipation consequent upon his hump, to
utter this terrible 7not from others' sorrows only;
that his lying down is unvext by jealousies, his
getting up unworried by the excitability of nerves :
and blessed be that hump of his, which saves him
from such possible tormentings. O, husbands!
which of you will dare to tell the truth about a
certain gentle-looking tigress you wot of? Which
of you will acknowledge the immeasurable difference
between that exquisite earliest courting-love, and its
too frequent sequitur the wedded hatred ? Which
of you will confess to what old ^Esop's keen eye
OF THE LATE MR. MSOP SMITH. 139
has oftentimes detected in families, to wit, that a
patient endurance of irremediable ills is the average
attempted happiness ? Which of you "will be fool
enough to proclaim that your romantic attachment
died or was blown out directly the character- veil was
raised, and that nothing has burnt since but the
indignant sense of having been taken in by lying
prettinesses, and caught by a Tartar disguised as a
shepherdess of Arcady? Which of you will have
the evil hardihood to avow that the happiest day of
your life will be the day of your release from an
intolerable yoke ?
And ye, O many, many good and patient wives !
who with an equal martyrdom of heart and loyalty to
weddingdom are silent, suffering all in secret with a
smile;— which among your loving multitude will
confess the wreck of hope, broken on the rocky
shore of some cold, hard, profligate husband?
Which of you does not rather screen him, and try to
make the world beheve he treats you more than
kindly ? Which of you will care to warn your best
friend against the pains and penalties of marriage,
nor rather by a quasi pious fraud induce her also to
walk straight into the same snare that has so sharply
trapped you ?
1 speak of these perpetual mis-matches. None
seem to meet their mates. The choice is made too
soon and too much at hap-hazard ; yet once only and
l-iO THE RIDES AND REVERIES
for ever it must be — a burden grievous to be borne.
Be content, be content, and make the best of it
always ; for disappointment is your lot and your due, .
idolatrous human, in marriage as in all things else
you set your heart upon. Yet, for all such world-
wide sense of being cheated in the matter, nobody
tells out the truth that everybody feels. All are
found drinking gallant toasts and making fulsome
speeches, replete with false feminine compliment;
whereby, however, no one is deceived.
No one? Well, no one but you, frank young
bachelor, believing all things ; and you, love-sick
maiden, hoping all things, hoodwinked and drawn to
the deco}^, and both like enough to be disenchanted
anon, and disenthralled in spirit, when chains are on
the body.
Well, all these things are mortal fate and human
nature. We cannot mend the matter, and, possibly
enough for mundane paradoxes, would not if we
could; only, my dear frank young fellow, and my
dearer fair young friend, before you consent to barter
your priceless single-blessedness for the perpetual
second presence of another's faults and follies;
before you give up freedom and all its glittering
possibilities for the dull realities of thraldom, take
good heed as to your bargain, and do not buy a pig
in a poke; and when you do (somewhat rashly at
any rate) take your allotted ticket in the perilous
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 141
lottery of marriage, expect a blank; for it's a
thousand to one you'll win it. JGsop's is a bitterish
philosophy— isn't it.P What then? By nature's
teaching, the very taste of health is a bitter— a tonic.
BURYING.
" Heaven deliver us from Oligarchy !" soliloquized
I to Brenda, as we walked by the new cemetery,
"from the centralistic despotism of our Great
Governing United Families, Heaven deliver poor old
England r
So, the workhouses are to have pauper grave-
yards, to carry the shame of poverty as near as false
philanthropy can manage to the very realm of
Hades ! By the new Burial Act, poor-law guar-
dians, are required to provide special cemeteries for
the interment of paupers, — that their insolvent dust
mingle not with anything respectable !
And so, as I jogged along, all this that followeth
crystallized within my brain upon the saddle :
cruel tender mercies of the bad,
O foolish wisdom of the mean and base !
Alas for charities that make men sad.
And harden into brutes the liuman race I
142 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Ei'om sucli philanthropy defend us, Heaven,—
From statesmanship like this for evermore
Rescue, untainted by such bitter leaven,
The wholesome natures of our honest poor !
What, — is it not enough through life to brand
With that un-English word a " pauper's" name
Each aged rural worthy of the land,
Drest in the dull drab livery of shame, —
To tear him from his home and bairns and wife,
And use him in the workhouse as a slave,
Till, having water-gruel'd him from life.
You hide his parish coffin in the grave ?
No ! — now, it seems, to hold our " paupers" dead.
That pauper burial-places must be found, —
To stigmatize, — albeit the spirit's fled, —
The poor man's body rotting underground !
For deeper scorn to make his widow weep,
His cowering orphans shrink for humbler shame,
Because, ay even in his last long sleep.
Your mercies blight their pauper father's name !
Dear English poor ! this wrong shall never be.
Whatever hardship else your lot befall ;
The grave at least from tyrants sliall be free.
An honourable open bed for all :
Six feet in his churchyard, that hallow'd spot.
Is due of common right to every man
Gone to the bourne where Mammon blesses not.
And where Its curses may no longer ban.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITU. 143
Ay ! we will have no Golgothas forsooth.
No potters-fields to bury strangers in.
No skull-places for tyranny's hard tooth,
Where that hyena still may gnaw and grin, —
Death, the Deliverer, shall be sanctified.
In poor men's bodies as in rich men's bones.
And poverty shall lie *'* my lords" beside.
E'en though in life for bread they gave him stones.
Enough ! if indignation fires my heart,
I burn as universal England will.
When, finding out the central spider's art.
We tear to shreds his despot-web of skill :
Hear ! shallow statesman ! differences cease
Where for a soul earth's trial scene is o'er,—
And so our brother, dead at last in peace.
Is Equal Man, a pauper now no more !
But rich folks, too, are tyrannicaUy treated by our
Whig potentates now-a-days : scarce one can use
his family vault without instant special favour of the
Home Office, — which, under the false plea of the
public health, has contrived to dispossess most of us
of our old paternal tombs, in order to serve the ends
of cemetery companies. And I know a certain
desecrated church, deep in a park and handy to a
mansion; where through private influences, this
same false plea of the public health has closed a
churchyard to all the parish under our precious
Burial Act : all except one are thereby robbed, but
that one has the ear of a Whig potentate.
14:4* THE EIDES AND REVERIES
there are unavenged wrongs in plenty every-
where for knight-errantry to whet its steel upon;
and your modern Quixote's steel is — a steel pen.
YEH'S NAY.
Where's the wisdom of forcing weakness into its
cognate principle, obstinacy — of driving unreason-
able irritability into the momentary might of pas-
sion ? Here we are bombarding an empire on a
point of etiquette, and possibly at this very moment
slaughtering helpless thousands, because a pumpkin-
headed mandarin chooses to be not at home to our
domiciliary visits !
All this puts me in mind of the mess our dignified
doctor, Newsaw, lately got into : and he's not well
out of it yet. A certain half-witted hulking tramper,
who hawks oranges, was unluckily discovered by our
pompous friend to be what the vulgar call "span-
ing'' at him publicly, as he was marching down the
high street : the said " spanning" being a modern
adaptation of what antiquarians have found on old
satirical medals, and theologians may still read of
in the inspired prophet, as " putting the branch to
the nose," derisively. Now Doctor Newsaw, having
a vain-glorious sense of his own greatness, unthink-
ingly determined on a public apology from the big
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 145
fool forthwith : the silly demand was of course at
once despised, with additional insult— the little
street-boys, that always collect on such occasions
from some where or other, like eastern vultures,
began to crowd round,— and the lubber was thereby
encouraged to go on more vexatiously than ever
with his insolence. The doctor threatened sticks,
and went at it, too, lustily ; there was an undignified
struggle, in which Newsaw would seem to have had
the best of it ; but that the mob increased, the lout
still kept on spanning and retreated to his home, and
our irate doctor followed manfully. There, up a
close dirty court, the matter amounted to a riot ; for
Newsaw, and his admiring posse of urchins, smashed
windows, broke in the door, and drove lubber
upstairs; where still, notwithstanding, he kept on
grinning and spanning pertinaciously as ever ! But
Newsaw wouldn't give in, not he : he called for
straw and fire to smoke the tramper out— and would
very possibly have burnt down our whole country-
town, in the omnipotent expansiveness of his wrath
—but that the authorities interfered, fining Newsaw
handsomely for the riot; who, in very court, had
the satisfaction of seeing that imbecile hulker
still spanning at him ! What had he gained by
putting up the back of an obstinate fool, — out the
conviction of all mankind, that he himself was just
such another ?
L
146 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
The British lion, or his present avatar thereof,
JP ?*-lm-rst-n, seems to me to have grown over-plucky,
if not indecorously irascible, in old age. Time was
when the prenerous beast was too proud or too sleepy
to mind the yelping of jackals or hyenas ; reserving
its roar and spring for nobler foes. Now, however,
it marches about with every hair on end, and eyes
flashing fire (like Mr. Gordon Cumming's famous
man-eater), to strike terror into curs; but, in the
presence of any mightier neighbours, cares to do
little but exchange assurances of high consideration !
We are fierce enough against Greece, and Naples,
and Persia, and Siam, and Scinde, and Borneo, and
China— braggadocios against idiots; but by way of
make-weight, are as overpolite with all greater states,
— France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia— as the
Kootooing Rigdumfunnidos and Aldiboronti-phosco-
phornio.
A word by way of postscript, ^sop's " indecor-
ously irascible'* of a few months ago, is by no means
now to be made applicable by your war-denouncers
to the British Lion's spring upon the Bengal Tiger.
It was true enough as to the matrimonial wrongs of
Mr. Hassan, the pilfered ladles of Don Pacifico, and
that miserable and unworthy pretext the opium*
lorcha: but now there has arisen a case for energetic
rage and retribution indeed.
It has disturbed many a pious mind to strive to
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 147
interpret the mystery of Providence in this matter of
our Indian massacres: why can Almighty Mercy
have permitted such awful orgies of heathen cruelty,
such utter abominations in the tortures of innocent
babes and Christian men and women ? And what is
to be done with their flayers, their sawers- as under,
their Agag-hewers, their unutterable polluters and
destroyers? The second question answers the first.
Heathendom in the East, — even among the ter-
ritories nominally under our rule, — is fuU of the
dark places of devilry and wickedness ; and Light
and Good must now, at length, before Time come to an
end, be made to penetrate everywhere. We, in our
merchant-princedom, merely reaping and shearing
India for money, were fast asleep about religions and
moralities, heedless even of the cruel ways wlierein
each native tributary levied his dues for our coffer.
We were to be awakened terribly from that opium
torpor in our Hammonds cave, to this bed of pain
and tliis uprising fear, — to the hot haste of a sudden
judgment to be escaped, and of instant duties to be
imperatively done. So, to startle universal man into
one feeling that the abominations of the heathen
must utterly come to an end, some hecatombs of our
purest victims are, with unusual circumstances of
horror, sacrificed to the ruthless shrines of Moloch
and Baal ; as for those victims, God now rewards them
amply and for ever ; even as His good angel supported
L 2
148 THE HIDES AND REVEUIES
each poor fainting mutilated frame tlirougliout its
shocking martyrdom ; and, for their guilty murderers,
there is but one interpretation of that dark saying
echoing in every heart, extermination : as Joshua did
to Ai and her king, utterly destroying with the edge
of the sword, smiting hip and thigh, and lianging
those criminals on the nearest trees, so, some modern
Joshua of our Israel must do to Delhi and her king ;
we must not leave one rebel to exult over England^s
hideous wrongs, or to boast of the triumph of their
devilry over our outraged sisters.
Hitherto we have held India upon sufferance; it
must now be ours by conquest and possession ; our
rule, still benevolent and beneficent to the vast mass
of those peaceable millions, must be more active to
enlighten idolatry and to crush out crime ; teaching
also an open contempt for superstitions and caste-
prejudice, and putting down with strong hand the
stews and styes of Asiatic pollution, the zenana-
secret cruelties, eunuchism, mutism, and all other
horrors of heathendom. If this is the ultimate
result, our martyrs will have died happily for the
vdde interests of the human race ; as they have also
gloriously for themselves, through the compensating
mercies of their King Immortal, Invisible, — Who,
out of that furnace of affliction hath given them an
eternal and exceeding paradise of Glory.
OP THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 149
MY OBI-STICK.
When I do dismount, — and nobody, not even a
Guaclio, positively lives and dies in the saddle— my
shorter limb necessitates the help of a walking-stick ;
and those who do me suit and service (baclielors and
uncles are not often without some sort of court-
following) are apt to make their special matters pay
by adding to my regiment of sticks.
I have them of all sorts, from Arctic sea-unicorn
horns to Niagaran-hickory from Goat Island, from
Abbotsford-birch to Lebanon-cedar— mementoes of
travel and records of incident, tokens of friendliness
and historic morsels. I have sticks suggestive of all
sorts of stories -, that have poked into the sources of
the Nile with Mungo Park, fenced with Charles the
Mad of Sw^eden, been given by the little Frederick
to his monkey Voltaire, and supported the gentle-
manly courtesy of "Washington at Mount Vernon.
But pre-eminently my stick with a story, and an
allegory, and a moral, is my obi-stick. You shall
hear all about it ; and if it teaches you nothing, the
fault must be in some other stick than mine of
Obcah-land.
The hero of this writing is, then, a plain enough
piece of logwood, surmounted by a very hideous
knob — a grinning nigger-head in ebony. It was
given to me with serious cautions by a superstitious
150 THE HIDES A^D EEVERIES
sailor-friend of mine, who warned me that it had
got him into no end of scrapes. He declared that
no sooner had he got ashore anywhere with this stick
(and had taken, of course, a glass or two of grog at
the nearest Hard to clear his vision) than it led him
into all manner of bad company and improper prac-
tices ; he vowed that it winked with its wicked eyes,
lolled out its tongue, wriggled and tugged and pulled
him along to do evil; just as that old hag, the obi-
woman at Lagos, who sold it to him, had predicted.
He was not his own master so long as he had hold
of that bewitched stick ; and so he besought me to
rid him of it. furthermore, he hinted what the obi-
woman had revealed to him, that it was cut from a
tree planted over a cask of doubloons, buried in a
spot known to her, and guarded by the spirit of the
murdered negro whose visage grinned upon the
knob ! Her Spanish-slaver friend of sixty years ago,
Don Alvarez Usted, had often, when she was his
dark darling, told her all about it, just before he
was sailing from Africa to Cuba to dig it up again ;
but he never came back. — However, ill dreams at
night were continually vexing my poor weak sailor
friend, who fancied himself haunted by the negro's
spirit aforesaid. So, would I rid him of it ?
Glad enough to get such a queer addition to my
walking-stick regiment, and more glad still to dis-
enthral poor Jack from liis mental slavery, I relieved
OF THE LATE MR. ^-SOP SMITH. 151
him at once of what he vowed to be the tempter of
his morals and the ruin of his peace : and have since
had the pleasure of hearing from him frequently that
now he has got rid of that detestable sticky he is
quite a reformed character.
Postscript. —I forgot to tell you, that a most
worthy clerical friend of mine induced him to be
more temperate as to his grog, and less indiscrimi-
nate in the choice of his companions ; and was addi-
tionally the happy medium of making him twist his
superstitious feelings into a religious faith. Never-
theless, Jack to this hour thanks me for having
relieved him of that obi-stick, and wonders to find
that it never has done me any harm.
OUU KALEIDOSCOPE.
Friends and fashions, hopes and fears, all the
incidents and accidents of life — how things pass!
How quickly and how utterly ! Just as the fields
and woods, and cottages and wayside matters in one
of ^Esop's fastest rides, so come and go in a con-
tinuous stream our joys and sorrows, our interests
and our anxieties, and all the other changing furniture
of this world.
Look up your old Lettses, and older letters ; what
chilling melancholy autumn-tints of bygone days.
152 THE EIDES AND EEVEEIES
and scenes, and feelings, are enshrined among such
diaries ; what a phantasmagoria of bitter and sweet,
all now mellowed down into a something of vague
sadness for the retrospect. Even while we are
quietly examining any present phase of circumstance
concerning us, the whole gradually alters hke a
dissolving view; or oftener, some violent twist of
Providence changes at once and altogether the field
of our ever-moving life's kaleidoscope.
And what becomes of all this fact-full past ? Its
material things indeed do vanish; not alone in the
case of such minutise as those tons of lost pins, that
ought to make a very hedge-hog or pincushion of
this earth, and so are proverbially among the myste-
ries of statistics; nor only of such destructible
sibyllines as the whilome myriads of (for instance)
Uncle Tom's Cabins, now become well-nigh as scarce
as the first edition of Hamlet; — but as to all those
grosser cart-loads of heavy endurable properties that
are ever passins^ through one's hands. How they
vanish and melt away, and have done so in their
ancestors, through countless generations ! What
can have become of all those breast-plates, and
ruffles, and morions, and wigs ? And what of our
more modern catalogue of so-called indestructible
moveables and personals ? All, by some mysterious
process of self-elimination, are continually being
wizarded away; and there can be no doubt that
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 153
things do make themselves scarce in a strange but
certain manner.
Plow, then, is it with the immaterial ? With
ideas, and facts, and phases, and feelings ? Are
they as evanescent? No. Strangely enough, sub-
stance is shadowy, while shadows, if not substance,
amount to essence. Bishop Berkeley was quite
right. It is just this : even as aforesaid fields, and
woods, and cottages in their hard reality have passed,
but in their memory are present; so, in spite of
men^s and things^ evanishment, their immaterials
survive in thought and are immortal, bringing with
them pleasure or pain in looking back, hope or a
fearful dread in looking forward.
Every scene of our kaleidoscope has been
daguerreotyped by Providence, all the combinations
photographed, all the variations fixed. Yonder
child with his optical fairing at the cottage door, as
he wonders at it in the sun, shadows out for me the
phases of existence, showing how ever-changeable
they be ; for they pass, melt, and become something
else hke chemical magic, and are only agreed in a
persistency of changeableness, never continuing in
one stay. Let this thought keep prosperity humble,
and adversity hopeful, and duty diligent, and con-
science clean.
[The same idea occurs versified by our friend,—
probably after the same ride : and as a sonnet is
154 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
luckily a very small plot of print, xEsop's editor will
reproduce it here :]
I saw a cliild witli a kaleidoscope
Turning at will the tesselatcd field ;
And straiglit my mental eye became unseal'd,
I learnt of life, and read its horoscope :
Behold, how fitfully the patterns change !
The scene is azure now with hues of Hope ;
Now sober'd grey by Disappointment strange ;
With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright ;
Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold ;
Made glorious by Religion's purple light ;
Or sicklied o'er with yeUow lust of gold :
So, good or evil coming, peace or strife,
Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old.
In changeful chanceful phases passeth Life.
HOUSEKEEPING.
As a happy bachelor, ^Esop can hardly be thought
to know much about wife-influences in a house,
except indeed by seeing somewhat, and suspecting
more, of the domestic experiences of neighbours.
But he has read and believes in the "Greatest
plague in Life/' and imagines that vinegar-cruet,
Mrs. Sk — nn — rst — n, to be pretty well the most to
blame in the matter.
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 155
Woe to the dislocated home ruled over by that
centrifugalizing centre, a repulsive female ! Alas
for the meanness, the uncharitableness, the un-
reasonableness, the selfishness of far too many-
mistresses !
By utter contempt of Christian kindliness, by
proud folly, by hateful domineering, by absolute
treatment of our free-born menials worse (short of
very blows) than Uncle Sam uses his niggers, far too
many of our wifely housekeepers richly deserve the
wretchful homes they make.
Why is the husband early at his counting-house
and late at his club ? Why are daughters in haste
to marry away with anybody, pining to be free of the
clamorous old rookery ? Why are sons disobedient,
and scornful, and haters of home ? The last house-
maid shall reply oracularly, " Missus is a dragon \"
Ay ; there may be English missuses, who (if in
the congenial atmosphere of Charleston or New
Orleans) would make pattern models of tyranny and
irrational exaction for Mrs. Beecher Stowe's next
tale; no cold-drawn Mrs. St. Clair could be more
unmerciful on all points of human affections, than
are some of our well-drest charmers in the matter of
their handmaidens' " followers :" and apropos of
horses,— ^sops special pets, for he is all but a
Houhwynnym- worshipper, you know,— I'm quite
sure that no female New Arliner can have less pity upon
156 THE EIDES AND EEVERIES
nigger-flesh than many of our titled dames npon the
frostbitten horse-flesh shivering in the square at their
midnight routs.
However, all these are to be supposed mere
guesses ; but ^sop even in his bachelor capacity has
especial experiences of his own in the matter of
household servants. He must confess, that whether
or not occasioned causa predictd, i. e. by "the
missus,'^ our social condition in the matter of
domestics has degenerated into a very plague- state.
Where are now the happy homes of patriarchal
peace and Christian charity? "Where the family
treasures, servants whose good characters are heir-
looms, and whose affections rooted in the old place
and its owners as the very oaks and elms ? All gone
with Sir Eoger de Coverley. And instead thereof,
what have we ? Wanton, wasteful, wicked women
— (one really cannot help alliterating the w in such
company) — dressy, silly, and contumacious; who,
though born and bred in starving cottages, care for
nothing but finery, luxury, and gaiety; holding
master as the common dupe, and work the common
foe; slighting every duty, slandering every neigh-
bour, pilfering, impertinent, and impracticable. Phi-
losophers withal, if with equal mind " to know how
to want as how to abound'^ be philosophy ; for half a
word of rebuke w^ill suffice to make their proud
untutored spirits spring out of every present com-
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 157
fort, credit, and advantage into the abyss of town-
guilt or lionester starvation! But fools too,— for
tliey forget old age, and illness, and duty, and God.
Next, after Mrs. Sk— nn— rst — n aforesaid, the
Registry Office may have to answer for much of this.
Places to any extent are now-a-days exchangeable for
lialf-a-crown, and so every master gets a loosefish
servant, and every servant a vexed and soured and
suspicious master. Meanwhile, proper housekeeping
becomes yearly more impossible; and we shall soon
be driven into the restaurateur- system of Paris, or
the human hives of America.
And the sooner the better, say I; for so only
shall we be freed from the slavery of keeping
servants.
THE FROG IN A STONE.
To be quite alone, unvext by the antagonism of
any other being, to enjoy one's fancies in a silence
sweeter than the music of all the muses, to be
absolutely free, as you never can be while another^'s
eye is on you, this is Jlisop's spiritual elysium, — to
be quite alone.
And how seldom we can manage it in life ! How
rare a luxury with most men is this same quiet
solitude ! Yerily, the love thereof is one good cause
158 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
why my saddle and I so often keep each other
company. Who can estimate the blessed calm of a
country lane overhung with hazels and fringed with
ferns and mosses? There, unseen, unheard, can
^sop ofttimes revel in thoughts, and shout them
too, no stranger intermeddling witli his joy ; there,
after an exhilarating canter over wild Blackheath,
I love in such a lane to find myself alone. So too,
sometimes in the crowded town, how one hugs
oneself in an ideal solitary blessedness, cased and
all but dominoed in that huge warm and farlined
cloak of many pockets, hiding hump and all, and
winning even upon London-bridge the priceless
luxury of solitude.
iEsop, ^sop, Vm afraid all this is very selfish;
and that you, wrapped in your separate autocracy,
may be much hke that old newspaper frog one
periodically reads of, as "just discovered by a
quarryman in a solid lump of limestone.''
The cold, monastic, self-complacent bachelor
eremite ! The dull unpleasant reptile, useless and
by no means ornamental ! The wonder of gregarious
men, suspected withal and detested by the slirewd
among them. Hop out, old J^sop, expand and
mingle with others ; the more we see of our kind, the
better we like them. Solitude ever breeds uncharit-
able thoughts ; put them and it away ; and however
cozy be your insulated self-containment, remember
OF THE LATE MR. ^ESOP SMITH. 159
the lesson taught you by that lazy, selfish disagree-
able frog.
SUNSHINE.
My philosophical friend, Spicer, has a sun-dial,
which, with his accustomed rage for discovery, he
has been at no small pains to make independent of
sunshine for its horal revelations. He fancies that
the modern German's od-force will be enough for
dial purposes, without any recourse to the genial
smile of day ; but I have not yet heard that he has
made out noon by his invention.
However, friend Jonathan's od-fancy came to my
after-ruminations (for I had seen him over his garden
wall as I trotted by, endeavouring to influence the
gnomon with a magnet)— it came to me, I say, as a
good and true allegory.
Look you, that dial is the Bible — the letter of
revelation — a dead letter if unsunned by heavenly
grace ; a staid and orderly system of codes and
signals indeed, and graduated neatly^ chapter and
verse fashion ; but all to no effect upon the gnomon,
unless the light of life be there, to concentrate the
shadowy doubt and fleeting hope into one fixed form
of faith. So only is the Word a guide to us, when
illumined by the Spirit from on high. So is the
160 THE HIDES AND HEVERIES
dial only useful, when the sunbeam lights upon
it.
Ay, and there are other thoughts here, Jonathan
Spicer. Your German od-force is just that forced
rationalism which expounds miracle by jugglery,
refines fact into myth, and darkens precept to the
utter mystification of duty, by means of that false
mirage, oriental imagery. It won't do, Jonathan.
Galvanism may imitate life — hideously; and ration-
aHsm — which is reason run to seed — may breed a
sort of lurid phosphorescence ; but the life and the
light are in none of your alembics; they are
anywhere, everywhere, excepting in your batteries.
Pure reason, (as they presumptuously call a scheme
neither pure nor rational), can no more discern the
deeper and the higher Bible-truths, than that mys-
tical od-force can extract time from the dial's face,
independently of sunshine.
And yet more is there to be learnt about your
dial, Jonathan. What are all those lines and angles
on the pavement, but the fixed observations of human
experience when enlightened by the sun, wisely set
down and meant to help in days of darkness ? And
what are creeds and forms of faith and prayer, what
are church articles, and the old patristic system of
theology, but the preservation, in a settled shape, of
truths, somewhile revealed through the spiritual sun-
shine flung upon the gnomon of the Bible ?
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 161
Further: whereas the duteous rely wisely and
well on such primitive demarcations of faith, the
more sceptical and self-dependent (such as yourself,
Jonathan), are apt to depend rather on their own
bad watches for true noon, than on those old lines
and angles. And the watches of such men, if they
be fanatical, are always too fast —if immoral, by
many degrees too slow, for our dial. Yet will they
presumptuously judge both the letter- word, and all
ancient experience and interpretation thereof, by
their own heats and ignorances ; refusing that wide
rule — catholic as the sun's empire— which has fixt
all the doctrines and features of truth long of old,
by observations taken ''everywhere, always, and
by all.''
thou dial unsunned, thou Bible of the idler
or profane ! opened, if at all, without a prayer,
and quickly shut with a scoff, or (scarcely latter)
with a yawn; how different in wisdom and in
beauty shalt thou seem, when spirit-light blazes
on thy pages, and '^ the weakness of God " is found
stronger than man !
Old John Adams, the mutineer, had a little book
with him out of the Bounty; for years and years
it was neglected; but in a while, Providence led
him, as a hoary sinner, to read, and grace shed
the sunshine; and so he became the lioly patriarch
of those Christian families of Pitcairn, whom our
162 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
questionable charity has lately transported to Nor-
folk Island.
Change that name of sliame to " New Pit-
cairn/' oh rulers ! Or have you yet an oligarchi-
cal grudge against the poor old penitent, that you
give to the mutineer's descendants no better heri-
tage than this too notoriously sin-curst convict
shore ?
Hearken to ^Esop, betimes, and for the honour
of a sunshone Bible, let the crimes of Norfolk
Island be forgotten in the nobler name of New
Pitcairn.
MOONSHINE.
Look at that reflected moon in the water, the
counterfeit counterpart of the great orb sailing at
her full up aloft.
"When MiLford pond is still, how bright and clear
that image— scarcely less beauteous than the queen
of night herself; but let a breeze ruffle the surface,
or a cloud pass between Terra and Luna, or an idle
boy fling stones into the pond, and that fair reflection
is for the time forthwith hacked up, destroyed, ex-
tii%uished; only for a time, though, and a very
little time ; for even while you wait, the breeze lulls,
the cloud passes, the idler wearies of his mischief;
OP THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 163
and anon the fair image shines out clear and calm
again, unconscious of those lets and hindrances,
from the mirror of that quiet water.
All which things are an allegory; that may not
only avail to comfort the vext spirit of Shakespeare,
the divine bonhomme-Villiams of that feeble de-
nunciator. Monsieur Ponsard, and so lately defrauded
wholesale of his plays by an ingenious cousin of
mine (who will have it that the footman in "High
life below stairs,^' asked sensibly, "Shakspur— who
wrote Shakspur?^' for he answers boldly, "Ba-
con !") ; and that may not merely reconcile Milton
for having his Paradise Lost maliciously attributed
to an Italian original; with many other like huge
calumnies; but haply will help for the consolation
of lower merits, and less world-renowns.
Let tliem rave, let them rave, young author;
never mind the pelting critic, nor the popular gale
of some merely superhcial rivalry, nor the clouds of
undeserved neglect : only wait — bide your time.
Patience is the motlier of justice.
If that your merits be truly sphered in heaven,
they shall faithfully be witnessed on earth. A
marsh meteor, a fii'eball, an ignis-fatuus may, indeed,
worthily fear for its transient reflection on a pond-
face ; because it has no longer life than the flitting
gleam, the coruscation: these are notorieties, not
fames. But the real desert lives on for ever and
M 2
164 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
unchangeably, and its imaged reputation shines
out always the same, bright and beautiful, whenever
earth's often turbid atmosphere is clear enough,
and the swollen waters of her peoples calm enough
to reflect that everlasting fame of a sphered and
constellated merit.
(Amongst ^sop's papers— though not of my
bundle — I found a pencil manuscript with this same
moonshine idea rather tidily expressed in verse : and,
although it has a-top our poor friend's monogram
for "printed,'' I judge it may very well find an
appropriate page in this volume by way of a change
from prose : P.Q.)
MOON AND MOONSHINE.
AN ALLEGORY.
Upon a slumbering lake at night
The moon looks down in love ;
And there, in chasten'd beauty bright
A sister sphere of silver light
Seems bathing from above.
Anon, a wanton boy comes near,
And a rude stone he flings
Half in hate and half in fear
To crush the calm accusing sphere
That looks such lovely things.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 165
He flung, and struck ; and in swift race
Eound ran the startled waves ;
He triumph'd for a little space ;
But, see ! how soon that same calm face
Again her beauty laves.
So, friend, if envy hits thy name,
Be still, — it passes soon j
Thy lamp is burning all the same.
And, even for that moonshine, Fame,
It must reflect its Moon.
STABS.
Belated again— and this time bright starlight—
a crisp, clear, frosty night, with a sparkling hemis-
phere above me of burnished silver studs, twinkling
in an enamelled setting of azure. How beautiful
and exhilarating !
But my first reverie was quite opposite to beauty
and exhilaration. I was wondering about the zoo-
logy of a celestial globe, recently purchased from
Mr. Wyld, of the Strand ; and as I looked upon that
starry wilderness, I understood its graven reason-
ableness at a glance.
If you want to map out the stars — spots upon
a sheet of paper— you will be puzzled how to
indicate position or to specify particulars, unless you
draw some arbitrary figures to enclose them. These
1G6 THE EIDES AND EEVERIES
may be a network of squares, numbered ; or honey-
combed pens, alphabetically designated ; or irregular
shapes, like continents, seas, islands, &c. ; or why
not heroic or animal forms, as suggested by the
position of the stars themselves, and handed down
by the legends and imagination of old poetry
In this view, how wise, and still how childlike,
is the common celestial globe ; enabling us to specify
every particular star, and allusive therein to the
observations alike of Chaldean shepherds, to the
world's dynastic records, and to the fame of sages.
Next, I mused about that glorious all-time super-
stition as to each man havnig his star. Well, there
are plenty of them, perhaps (if we could count all,
space beyond space, universe beyond universe, for
ever and ever), enough ; man for world and world
for man. And for our individual immortality, and
expansibility, and ambition, and potentiality, nothing
too much. Where is the limit that would not cramp
us? Terra is already used up. Why should not
Jupiter and all the other planets be soon explored,
early in eternity ?
Are we not (I speak of Christian men and women,
capable of all things highest) to be holy kings,
judging angels ? If so, those blessed hosts of so-
called angels may inhabit yonder worlds; and we,
poor martyrs and confessors, after our trials here
and in union with the Lord, mav each ascend those
OF THE LATE MU. ^SOP SMITH. 167
thrones, with the acclaiming love of such inhabitants,
and at the will and by the grace of our God. This
seems reason, if He will.
Those calm, innumerable, enormous, wonderful
worlds ; are they not, then, thrones for the blessed ?
Is not Earth and her poor off-cast satellite, Luna,
the only spot of dark where evil has intruded ? Or
possibly our whole system may be thus, sun and
planets; but not further. I doubt the permission
of evil into other systems. One example was enough
—and one nursery of holy kings.
Just at that moment of high musing, I was
brought to lower thoughts by a shooting star. It
looked at first like any brightest sun or planet
among them all, blazed up, traversed its span, and
went out ; no true world at all, but only a lump of
gas, a mid-air sham, a meteor. Wholesome, humb-
ling thought! Am I, then, so to roam hopefully
among the stars, and yet die down in darkness ?
God forbid ! give Thou to me the morning star ;
and let me not be one of those wandering stars, to
whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for
ever!
168 THE RIDES AND REVEEIES
INFECTIONS.
My friend Doctor Newsaw, a great philanthropist,
and;, as of course, a staunch believer in the perfecti-
bility of man, is very crotchetty about health and
disease; for he will have it that the former is as
contagious as the latter; or, to be more accurate,
disputing contagion in both cases, he asserts that
health is as much a matter of imitativeness or
educationalism as disease. Carrying out this theory
(countenanced by the general ruddiness and fleshiness
of butchers from their pervading atmosphere of fresh
meat), he isolates not even typhus nor small-pox,
but sends all his sick patients, as freely as the fears
of others will permit, among the wholesome ; the
consequence being not health to the diseased, but
diseases broadcast among the healthy ; until, indeed,
the Board of Health having at last interfered, this
absurdity no longer is permitted; and Newsaw has
been threatened with prosecution under the Inocula-
tion Act, if he persists in his folly.
I wish another sort of Board of Health would
similarly interpose for all sorts of moralities' sake,
between our mass of common humanity —frail enough,
but tolerable — and those polluting and infecting items
suffered to go at large amongst us, with tickets of
leave. I wish we could fill some desert island with
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 169
our incorrigiblesj and there oblige them to some
sort of reformation, from having no body to practise
on but one another.
Ages ago, ^sop had an ancestor who killed the last
wolf in Lancashire ; a truth evidenced in the Herald's
College by the grant of three wolves' heads, ovy on a
field gules ; and the reason of his prowess was mainly
this. His father, a most humane man, commiserating
the near extinction of any of God's creatures — his
own phrase in the premises — had been quite a
preserver of the terrible vermin for some fifty years
of his King- John- time residence at Preston. He had
nourished up the then scarce wolf-puppies on bread
and milk, taught them, as he thought, good morals,
and hoped he had converted their blood-thirsty
propensities to an innocent eating of straw, like
the ox. So he was wont to loose them, as adults,
into the forest; and became duly tremendously
astonished to hear anon that they persisted to feed
on mutton, varied occasionally by the smaller sort
of children. The poor man (it appears) died of this
ungrateful discovery; and his son, my illustrious
ancestor, as some amends to society, made it his
business to avenge certain grumbling parents, by
devoting life and blood-hounds to the extermination
of his father's pets. That society appreciated his
efforts, let the Herald's College prove.
I cannot boast to be that illustrious man ''the
170 THE RIDES AND EEVERTES
London Scoundrel ;" but a somebody far less witty,
and more unworthy. I do, however, sympathize
entirely with my clever cousin's " plea for the
gallows '/' and, like him, resolve to keep my re-
volver loaded, and my cutlass sharp as any razor;
for use, too, if it must be, and not for ornament.
Look out, ye convicts and philanthropists !
AUTUMN LEAVES.
Woe for the waste in nature! What bitter
thoughts of doubt it breeds in us! How shall
infinitesimal I be singled out among the multitude ?
And what utter vanity seems every sort of mortal
culture, — arts and sciences, and handicrafts, and
excellences — when so many exquisite creations are
born, and bloom, and perish all unseen !
Autumn leaves by millions rotting in heaps
unheeded, and yet each one a microscopic wonder of
contrivance. And this snow-wreath that half en-
velops them, made up of myriads of crystals, melting
while I look at them. What an utter waste it
seems 1 Wisdom and beauty flung wholesale into
the pit of corruption. Until the day of resurrection
we shall never comprehend this melancholy mystery.
Then shall atoms all be portioned out, and every
organized particle of earth's crust be found to be
OP THE LiTE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 171
a part of some souFs tabernacle. Then shall we
understand how Csesar^s dust has also lived in the
leaf, and his moisture effloresced in the snow ; duly
to be restored and reproduced, when time and its
uses are no longer ; but meanwhile used everywhere,
and nothing lost, mislaid, wasted, or forgotten.
A musician— /awa^ico per la w2M5ic?«— lamented
grievously that his sweet sounds died away; for-
getting that they only gave place to other sweet
sounds in their succession ; and not considering that
they dwelt lastingly in his skill and on his viol,
and that he could reproduce them at his will. Suc-
cessions necessarily involve changes, and every
change, to its extent, is a destruction. But all
these are for time; the staidness of eternity will
display aU the parts of every whole, at once,—
showing in one focus of completion the preparatory
details of imperfect time. Then shall we know as
we are known. Meanwhile, faith, hope, charity, and
—patience.
BLINKERS.
I hate blinkers — a mistake entirely— like most
of our ancient traditionary harness ; the folly whereof
it were superfluous to expound. But do let your
animal, from colthood, have the full use of his
172 THE RIDES AND REVETllES
eyesiglit. Thousands of accidents, due to bad driv-
ing, might have been avoided but for blinkers.
There is a parable in the stereoscope. If thine
eye be single— that is, if thy focus of sight be
concentrated as one; if thine aim be one and
uniform — not several and multiform ; if thine efforts
be straight, firm, continuous— not crooked, weak,
and vacillating; then all is light, clearness, and
success.
Genius stereoscopes everything. Religion, in its
better intensity, realizes things unseen, with the like
substantial stereoscopic power. Will moulds up
the fleecy shadows of possibility hovering all around
us, in the same strong magnetism. Energy of every
sort grasps its object and establishes it as a hard
fixed fact in like manner, before the wondering eyes
of men.
The stereoscope crystallizes vision, and adds crea-
tion to the eyesight. Nothing is more startling
than the instant fixture of the scene from a super-
ficial painting to the bodily statuary. AVell might
a savage suspect a mighty magic there; and a
rustic exclaim, as he has to me, "Why, sir, that
isn't a picture, it's wax-work."
But the stereoscope does more : it vindicates the
Maker's wisdom in having given us two eyes, and
not one only, after Cyclops' fashion. Time was
when shallow philosophers of the Yoltaii'e school.
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 173
daring to find fault with the only wise God for many-
other like matters, complained of His superfluous
goodness in having given us a pair of eyes. Why
not one ? And when to this, Eeason made answer,
—was it not well to give us a duplicate of so
important an organ, in the case of accident depriving
us of the one?— rejoinder was made— why not also
give us two hearts? One is bodkined, and all's
over. To this the best reply was silence — the silence
of a pity near akin to contempt for the wicked
foolish gainsayer, who said in his heart, there is
no God ; or presumed to add with his tongue, if so
He might be wiser !
Now, however, this same simple little instrument
has vindicated, even to infidel reason, the wisdom of
a pair of eyes ; for the duplicate pictures are essential
to a perfect resemblance. And though you can
stereoscopize the scene with one eye, after a fashion
and less forcibly than with both, still the very notion
of the double picture is due to our having double
eyes. Neither would it do to blinker us up from
all sidelong glances, as the bad old-fashion does
with horses, making bolters of the nervous, and
jibbers of the obstinate, by giving us only one eye,
the terrible sentinel on Polyphemus' forehead.
174 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
THE KIND KILLER.
Phil Andrews is tlie paragon of sportsmen, as
anyone would say who saw him among his dogs and
friends and keepers^ going out pheasant shooting as
I met him yesterday ; but lie has one strange whim,
which is somewhat detrimental to his energies afield.
If he happens to wing a bird, or otherwise to wound
without killing, he will send home a keeper with it,
and bind up the broken limb, and pick out the
shots. His poultry -yard at home is full of such
wild convalescents.
He has even been known to rescue a fox from the
hounds, by dint of hard flogging off, and bag him,
and get his wounds drest, and try to make a pet of
the beast as a yard-dog; but it wouldn^t do;
Eeynard slipped collar, and got away one night,
with PhiFs most famous Dorking rooster.
He carries his humanity so far that he never eats
the game he shoots ; though T, for one, prefer a tin
cover to a brushwood one. He benefits all his friends,
but is himself inclined to be a vegetarian.
"Well, Phil,^' said I, as he brought me a leash
of birds this morning, ^'stay and dine;'' for he
pretty well keeps my larder in game all the shooting
season, and I was going to make a nice bachelor
dinner off his last- week's partridges.
OF THE LATE ME. iESOP SMITH. 175
"I canH/' said he; "I must make haste home
to my patients ; there^s a pretty pen-full of the ,
wounded, and I couldn't stop."*'
" But, my dear fellow/' I replied " why not w^ing
their necks, and add them to the game bag?'' — He
looked at me a most grave rebuke on his hobby of
humanity, and was off in a moment. I shall be
very sorry if I have lost Phil Andrews' friendship,
and its pleasant corollary of pheasants.
The possibility vexed me ; so I went out riding,
as usual, to freshen my mind. Somehow I felt
he was right. And yet why go out sporting if you
don't mean to kill? Then, of course, I bethought
me of war— for who can think of much else now-
a-days?— and seemed to see absurdities in our new
play of killing no murder. The cannons are in
earnest and rage horribly; the guards are in
earnest obstinately; the hussars cleave skulls like
Paladins ; and yet no sooner have we knocked an
enemy over, than w^e pick him up, and poultice him,
and pension him. There goes the deadly line, full
charge ; and behind it a row of surgeons, to stultify
their exertions by endeavouring to repair mischiefs
done; and then a string of nurses, with keep and
comforts in prospective. Eeally, our philanthropy
goes too far; is it not enough to tend our own
wounded — and have we not, alas ! more than we
176 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
can well do for hecatombs of such, our kith and
kin? If we must pay prisoners, and not rather
make them do somewhat for their living, is there
any reason why we should be so profuse as to
induce our poor folk at home to long for the
luck of foreign prisoners ? No doubt, it seems all
very generous ; but it is very unjust, and therefore very
foohsh. We are over-doing those philanthropies;
and, as in the case of all excess, will have to repent
of them.
It seems to me, ^Esop, that if, after a battle, we
sent our wounded enemies under a flag of truce to
their own quarters ; and when we made prisoners,
if we set them some hardish work to do, by way
of earning their bread, humanity would be satisfied^
and reason too. As it is, our best luck lies in
killing all before us ; leaving no wounded to crowd
our hospitals, nor prisoners to fatten in our jails.
No quarter, is the corollary to over- philanthropy ;
and, proving too much, it leaves our wisdom to fall
back upon what well satisfied our more prudent
forefathers — common humanity.
OF THE LATE ME. ^ESOP SMITH. 177
EYES RIGHT.
My nephew Robert has just had a tumble ; I
told him it must happen, and it did; there were
abundant moral causes for it : he would make his
pony, Wonder, look one way while trotting another,
by holding his reins unequally ; and so at the first
rolling stone down she came. Pick yourself up.
Bob, — and let it be a lesson to you: look always
straight on the way you're going, between the
ears, (which is an allegory too, for reason helps
himself by neighbours' tongues as well as by his
own organs,) and don't give your bridle of overt
conduct any hypocritical twists. Forward is the
motto of life, and straight forward.
Some folks live a life of sculling, they look
one way and go another: now and then lazily
and recklessly dashing up against a pier, and
damaging their cranky craft. Some others like to
have a steerer to boot, a spiritual director to make
all safe; that so they may be more systematically
lazy and reckless without equal seeming peril of
foundering. But the wisest of life's boatmen sit
frontwise, looking out ahead for themselves to bow-
wards, rowing backhanded, and trusting to no
human steerer but, under Providence, their own
reasonable guidance.
178 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
A ]\I U S E ]\I E K T S.
Cricketing ! all alive on Mudford Cominon ; a
groat niatcli going on ; booths, flannel-jackets, and
])lcnty of bad beer.
No doubt it is a noble game, that same cricket;
a masculine, healthful, and exciting, and all the
nobler for its intimate mingling of class with class;
that Jem Bent the huntsman's son, young Jem, the
best overhand bowler we have, has just stumped
out the Honourable George; and that the champion
batters on either side are avowedly Dick Jones the
tanner, and George's elder brother. Lord Goyle.
Vm heartily glad of such a mixture; and the only
])ossible word against cricket is that it's too hard
work for sport, especially to the labouring man,
with his daily bread to be dug to-morrow^ ; the
more if, as usual, there has been too bountiful
libation of aforesaid bad beer.
To my mind, an even better mode both of class-
mixing and manly recreation is to be found in the
rifle- club ; incidentally training thereby our people
ro be ready against possible invaders; and giving
them the physical advantages of drill, and the
moral qualities involved in military obedience. I
wish our rulers would only trust the people with
their undoubted Magna-Charta privilege, and not
be suspicious of an Englishman who can handle
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 179
Ms weapon skilfully. I wish that^ as of old with
Archery Butts, every county had its rifle-range,
every landlord kept an armoury for his tenants
starred on the walls of his great hall, and all the
gentlemen subscribed together for prizes to be shot
for at monthly meetings, by duly-taught neighbours
in every rank.
Is it not a shame that we alone among the
nations should remain unarmed? that the self-
relying sons of our imperial three kingdoms should
be dependent for protection upon the perilous,
centralizing, despotic expedients of paid policemen
and a governmental army ? that the descendants of
England's bowmen shouldn't know how to shoot ?
and that — solely from a lack of rifles and the skill
to use them — our well-inclosed country, with every
lane a possible Thermopylae and every hedge-row
convertible into a Torres Vedras, would be safely
open to the flrst horde of pirates who thought fit
to scare our helplessness ?
Again — and with less allusion to the bugbear —
is it not a sad omission in our Protestant patriot
islands that we consider so little our humbler sort
in the matter of systematic recreation ? Popery has
its holidays, and despotism knows how to amuse
serfs cunningly ; but there is nothing beyond the
tipsy clubday, or profligate fair, or boozing pot-
house for our poor man's holiday. Unless a young
N 2
ISO THE RIDES AM) REVERIES
squire comes of age once in a ploughman's lifetime,
poor Thomas may never have a chance for whole-
some fun or un drunken jollity. Holidays are the
great want of our toiling classes; real uncareful
holidasy, I mean, wherein poor folks should not
feel they were starving themselves by the loss of
a day^s work ; but wherein (as in my rifle-club)
every unsubscribing free-member is paid by the
club for his orderly following, as well as inspirited
to super-excellence by the hope of a prize. And
what nonsense it is to say all this would multiply
poachers; as if every ploughboy, scaring birds,
didn't know how to load his gun; and as if our
manorial rifles were available against pheasants,
even supposing they were not always housed in the
great hall, and only handed out to the trust-
worthier.
And there are other recreations which a wise
government (if ever we are to have one) will en-
courage. The JMaypole dance, the race, the wrestle,
the pole-climbing (ungreased though, for filth is
a degradation, and we would elevate our rustic
athletes), the quoit, the hurling, the leaping, the
honest humour of any sort that is not loose nor
cruel— these ends, great rulers, are quite as worthy
of your high-mightinesses' wisdom as sharpening
wits with Russia or trying to browbeat Naples.
The real reformer has yet to be found, who will
OF THE LATE ME,. ^ESOP SMITH. 181
dare to make rational recreation a national institu-
tion. Schools are all very well, and so are sermons,
and so are lectures on dynamics or geology ; but
dull Jack pines for fun; and the greatest philan-
thropist that ever has been (say, the great B. B.
C-bb-11, or the equally great and alliterative Jametsee
Jeejebhoy), will yet be extinguished by any jovial
minister who will practically adopt iEsop Smithes
suggestion of Wholesome Amusement for the People.
[Postscript, by P. Q.] Amusement, quotha ! when
our poor dear ^sop wrote as above, he little
suspected how truly such an amusement as volun-
teer rifle-practice would come to be regarded as
a necessary instruction for our people. Who can
tell how soon, denuded of her army, England's
continental foes may not pick a quarrel with her?
how soon all the beasts of the forest may not
assemble to torment the lion in his sickness ? We
are defenceless, and may be taken at unawares :
then would there be arming in hot haste; and
England as usual would still be found Athelstan
the Unready. Why not quickly provide against
untoward accidents ? not as alarmists, or provokers
of strife ; but just as getting us the weapons, and
learning how to use them betimes in case of need.
And if the same white-livered hypocrisy which now as
ever doats on criminals and crime of any sort,—
182 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
reducing the majesty of Christian beneficence to
the maudlin absurdity of Humanitarianism,—
ventures in that coming hour of need to try if
it cannot weaken the hands of our patriotism by
preaching non-resistance, let us reasonably search
our earlier statute books, and see whether we cannot
find a clause or two strong enough to imprison
with hard labour sundry such quaking traitors,
enemies to their kind and country, as they are.
Meanwhile, and to help JEsop^s rifle-plan (which
I know he entertained and advocated almost alone
for years,) I choose to add here as appropriate to
the subject the well known
HURHAH FOR THE RIFLE :
A SONG FOR OUR NATIONAL RIFLE CLUBS.
Hurrah for the rifle ! In days long ago
Our fathers were fear'd for the bill and tlie bow,
And Edwards and Harrys in battles of old
Were proud of their archers so burlj and bold ;
While Agincourt, Cressy, and Poictiers long since,
And great John of Gaunt, and tlie gallant Black Prince
Tell out from old pages of history still
What Englishmen did with the bow and the bill.
Hurrah for tlic rifle ! In lands over sea
The rifle is fear'd in tlie liands of the free ;
America guards her glad homes by its aid.
Daring creation to make her afraid, —
OF THE L.iTE Mil. ^SOP SMITH. 1S3
And Switzerland stands on her ramparts of snow,
A rilleman ready for friend or for foe, —
And Englishmen ought to be taught to defend
Our homes from the foe, wliile we welcome the friend.
Hurrah for the rifle 1 When England requires
She still shall be proud of the sous of our sires ;
And rifle and bayonet then shall do more
Than ever did bill-hook or long-bow of yore ;
From hedgerow and coppice, and cottage and farm.
Invaders shall meet with a welcome so warm
That the crack of the rifle shall hint to the foe
How terrible once was the twang of the bow.
RUST; AND CUCKOOS.
Once upon a time, — but not many hundred years
ago either, — a locomotive engine resolved to strike
for a month^s holiday. It was hard worked, it said,
— ill-used, perpetually sworn at; and was deter-
mined on a good long rest ; if only to prove to the
directors in general, and to that persecuting blas-
phemous stoker in particular, that it was after all
of some use in the world, and would have a will
of its own. Accordingly, the engine being entirely
wrongheaded and cantankerous, they gave it the
month it struck for.
Meanwhile the directors provided a less reluctant
184 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
substitute for the public use; and meanwhile also,
our striker improved its month of idleness by grow-
ing so perilously rusty, that when the month was
over it was fit for nothing but to be broken up.
I wonder, thought ^Esop within me, as I crossed
the rails one day, — whether the men of Preston,
and other such obstinate strikers, have anything
in common with that rusty engine.
At any rate, 1 think I can discern in that bird
yonder (a blueish half-pigeon half-hawk that greeted
me with ' cuckoo !' as it flew by) the character of
their arch deluders.
The poor humble hedge-sparrow finds a speckled
largish egg miraculously dropped among her half-
dozen little coeruleau nurselings : she fosters it,
hatches it along with them, feeds the greedy
stranger; and, when too late, repents the credulous
hospitality that has pampered such a selfish, peril-
ous glutton : for the demagogue, to feed his own
maw, has starved out the hedge-sparrow and her
children.
OP THE LATE MR. /ESOP SMITH. 185
NEXT-DOOR.
Miss Miggs, an ancient spinster, lived a most
cleanly and exact existence at No. 12, Paradise
Row, a recent suburb of our county town. No,
13 unluckily became vacant, and the new neighbour
from the very hour of his occupancy seemed to be
her 'crook in the lot.^ He was that perilous
character an improving tenant. His first act was
to heighten his chimneys : filling Miss Miggs's
tidy sitting-room with smoke ; his next, to deepen
his well : draining hers effectually ; his third, to
build out a great bow-window : destroying her view
down the road ; his fourth, to lay on gas from the
main : which vexed Miss Miggs with the perpetual
fear of fire and explosion. In short. No. 13, with
the very best intentions, continued to make No. 12
so miserable, that by the next quarter-day the Para-
disaic abode was broken up ; and when I last
passed by — there was a bill ' To Let^ in the window.
Yes, Miss Miggs, I soliloquized, you thought to
live alone in a blessed isolation, entirely indepen-
dent of your neighbours : but it will not do ; we are
too gregarious not to be for ever at the mercy of
Next-door.
And how loudly this consideration preaches
brotherly kindliness even to the most selfish
186 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
natures; nobody can long continue to hold aloof,
and be the quiet unit amidst our unive-'SP- chaos of
cares, and schemes, and disturbances. Manage as
we may, we are mixed up with other people ; and
what they do, and what they are, are matters that
re-act upon our happiness. ^Esop, thou frog in a
stone, remember this.
MARE AND POAL.
A vicious mare will breed a vicious foal ; partus
sequiiur ventrem : I nothing doubt that ^Irs. Lear
was a termagant, Goneril and Regan being filial
witnesses to their mother's character; and if sweet
Cordelia seems to testify otherwise, well — the gene-
rous sire crops out in her, and small thanks to the
dam.
My poor friend Colonel Jade has been much in
my confidence from youth up ; and, indeed, it is to
his experience, and my own good note thereof, that
I am mainly indebted for matrimonial and domestic
knowledge. He has often complained to me, dear
frank fellow that he is, about his wedded vixen,—
and takes it especially to heart that temper is he-
reditary. Talk of gout, consumption, madness, —
those are ills enough truly, neither curable nor en-
durable : but, verily, the vice of a parent breaking
out in children, — ^ the family failing,' as Buck-
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 1S7
stone^s last farce has it, — is an evil even worse and
less bearable than that bad leash above, as one of
heart and morals, not only of the frail bodily frame.
Often has Jade (you remember him in "Bliss and
Worry,^^) groaned over the terrible reproduction of
his awful mistress in the nurselings ; and the older
they grew, the worse it seemed to get. Not, I will
be bold to swear, from any harm or even neglect in
him as to correction or example : for he has been
doggedly thwarted every way, poor good fellow ;
his blessed helpmate invariably taking part with the
naughty child, always nullifying whatever slight
bitterness there might have been in his just and
paternal reproof, by the silly maternal sugarplum ;
or worse, by a frantic counter-scolding at her pa-
tient husband.
There was a fine old-time coachman of my ac-
quaintance in years gone, who never could abide to
have a woman on the box-seat with him ; and a fair
enough reason he alleged for such aversion. Driv-
ing a fast young team one day on the Falmouth
Road, the leaders took fright, and all four setting
off at full speed rushed frightfully down a genuine
Devonshire hill. Tom could have managed them,
he said, and would have cleared the corner safely,
and so mastered them again in tearing up; but
unluckily there was a nervous female beside him,
who, seizing the reins, and flinging herself upon
188 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Tom for protection^ occasioned the most frightful
coach accident ever recorded in the " Exeter Flyinj^
Post'^ to this hour. Tom (now long since reduced
to driving a Paddington omnibus) lifts his hat off
and can show you deep scars on his respectable
bald pate, in proof of the value of female frenzy
under difficulties.
Have I not seen fathers made just such mummied
Jehus by the foolish interference of mothers ? Do
I not know at this very moment of writing of more
than one fine high-spirited team of youngsters,
rushing to ruin through such thwarted or usurped
authority? It is not merely the weakness of affec-
tion, nor the false kindness of indulgence ; but, far
more, the selfish craft of wishing to secure to her-
self—as the mother vainly thinks — a son^s or
daughter's love exclusively, just when the father
would correct some fault, — that makes the misery.
And is she loved more? All the less. Give a
child his will, and he will scorn thee ; hinder him
from punishment in early sin, and he will grow to
hate thee with his manhood. Aye, and more; for
that son will then with all the strength of reason
love the one whom he remembers hindered and
railed against for having wished and attempted his
best weal ; the grown-up child shall love thee, dear
and noble-hearted friend, with a respectful sense of
something near akin to pity for the difficulties flung
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 189
in the way of his education, — difficulties superadded
to the heap of common cares, vexations, worries,
and responsibilities, — by that bad loud helpmate,
whom society upholds in all her rights and wrongs
as Mrs. Colonel Jade.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
I have introduced you very slightly to Miss
Miggs. You will now be called upon to make that
distinguished woman's more particular acquaintance.
I say, Woman's, advisedly, not Lady's. Aspasia
Miggs is proud of being a woman, and affects to be
offended when addressed even by the common title
of Miss — ^' affects'' being here again uttered most
advisedly, seeing that her secret soul rejoices in the
youthful imputation.
That love of juvenility crops out in the Miggs's
Bloomer costume ; which (1 will do her the justice
to say, with no small courage) she dared to adopt
some two years ago, and has persisted in to this
hour of our present history. It is an amusing, if
not exactly a pleasing, spectacle to see the fair
creature, as I have often seen her, marching in our
High Street ; where, folks having at length become
accustomed to the sight, she now daily masquerades
190 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
unmolested. Time was when there were titters
though, and rude boys would follow in her wake,
as the virgin of fifty-live trotted manfully along
in shortest skirt and trouserettes ; while her severe
features, intellectually lamped with spectacles, and
flanked by flaxen plaits of purchased hair, were
topped and shaded by that most hideous of hats,
a whole Leghorn. And then the commanding
elevation of her angular figure, and the sepulchral
depths of her voice, and the mysterious rudeness
(she remembered once to have heard it called by
a sarcastic flatterer, majesty) of her manners; and
altogether, the all-overishness (English for tout-
ensemble) of Aspasia Miggs must be admitted, as
above, to be more amusing than positively pleasant.
My heading will have prepared you for the great
Miggsian hobby, glory, and vocation — her cham-
pionship of woman's rights. She did not at all
hold with a certain excited poetess, who thought
fit to depose before the magistrate, some while ago,
that she had " no rights — nothing but wrongs ;" —
whereat the crowd acclaimed immensely. No ! the
Miggs stood up stoutly for her sex's public, private,
political, and universal equal rights with man. She
wasn't to be put ofi" with such shams as the
woman's special sphere of home, motherly duties,
wifelike aff'ections, nursing the nasty sick, or
teaching stupid children : delicacy is an imposture.
OF THE LATE MR. yESOP SMITH. 191
retirement a cowardice, refinement hypocritical,
and gentleness lazy. Active duty, sir, for the
citizen ; mental discipline, sir, for the moral being,
&c., &c., &c. — I never could stand Aspasia's
eloquence.
Once, however, and very lately, Fve had a full
feed of it; and I really think it has extinguished
all hope, even in the Miggs^s mind, of a resuscita-
tion of the woman's rights' topic in our county
town for all time to come. Hear what has hap-
pened.
That naughty flatterer alluded to above — Charles
Larkins, — persuaded our fair champion to give a
lecture in our Music Hall on her favourite theme ;
a little soft-sawder as to the hereditary genius
of an Aspasia, a few delicate hints about the
grandeur of her personal appearance, a respectful
approbation of her views, and a warm appeal to
her manifest responsibility as her sex's champion in
the premises, — and actually the wicked dog had
succeeded in getting Miss Miggs to exhibit her
beauty and her eloquence before that most critical
and unpleasant of all audiences— one's friends and
neighbours.
We all went; and such a crowd was never before
seen in Milford, nor such an evening's discordant
entertainment ever provided in that hall of har-
mony.
192 THE ETDES AND REVERIES
The Miggs, — I will be just, — stood up like a
hero ; the bare platform (for Larkins had feloni-
ously removed the usual table, substituting a small
dumb-waiter at side, with a water-jug and glass on
it) — that bare, green-baized platform had not a
shred of charitable screen to hide the masculine
habiliments. The strong gas-lamps, just over her
head, shed a ghastly glare on those stern
features, revealing every imperfection all too
faithfully; the crowd, breathlessly hushed, and
(I will say) respecting her courage as more than
they had calculated on, w^ere nevertheless quite up
to the fun of the thing; and the orator, nothing
daunted, with a proud gleam upon her lips as
trouserice master of the position, firmly and se-
pulch rally began thus, with occasional glances at a
manuscript on the waiter : —
"Citizens of Milford,^^ said she — "fellow-beings !
I stand here to vindicate my sex^s honour, to claim of
tyrant man the long forgotten rights of woman [hear).
Too truly has he styled himself her master, degrading
into his domestic drudge, by the merest brute
force, her lofty spirit and her mind superior [hear,
hear). "What? Does he not demean her noble
moral power and intellectual might to the cares
of his cookery and the bringing up of his babies ?
What? I say, does he not deny her that highest
prerogative of humanity — a seat in Parliament?
OF THE LATE ME. yESOP SMITH. 193
{hear, hear, loudly, from Larkins, and universally
great enthusiasm) — a seat in the glorious halls of
Parliament, I say, — where, with the greatness of
offended majesty, she might legislate for nations
yet unborn, in all the dignity and grandeur of calm
womanhood, and in the self-controlling, self-forget-
ting moral beauty of ^^ —
" Twig her trousers V' squealed a little boy :
Instantly, like a shell from a mortar, the elevated
Aspasia had hurled the heavy water-jug, tantaliz-
ingly too near her offended right hand, in the
direction of that small offender; but missing aim,
it lighted on the reverend baldness of her most
enthusiastic votary. Dr. Newsaw, cutting his head
open !
Such a scene of mingled terror, and laughter,
and utter confusion as ensued passes belief. The
Miggs, frantically excited, leapt upon the crowd
like an amazon of Dahomey, and all the male
philosopher was merged in the feminine fury.
Right and left she dealt no bloodless blows,
thoroughly roused to a tornado of passion by the
shouts and jibes and tumult ; and finally made her
way through the mob, with her torn garments
fluttering behind like a Red Indian in his war
gear, — so rushing homewards, the unvanquished
champion of woman^s rights !
"^sop," whispered Charles Larkins to me,
o
191< THE HIDES AND EEVERIES
^' what a splendid companion-picture in history
for the Justum et tenacem propositi virum ^liss
Miggs's self-controlling womanhood suggests, eh ?^^
"My mischievous friend/^ said I, *' Brutus's
dignified death was nothing to this finale. How
much the gentle sex must feel obliged to sweet
Aspasia ! Fll tell you a very short story in point,
Charles. My sister^s lap-dog, a long-eared little
female spaniel, was ambitious of succeeding to old
Thunderer, the yard-dog mastiff, lately deceased.
His bright brass collar, his rattling chain, his
extensive kennel had attractions for self-confident
Fatima ; and, through the mediation of Nephew
Robert, who intuitively perceived the spaniel's
whim, and always likes to be kind to his mother's
pets, the candidate was successful, and duly in-
stalled, however ridiculously. But a poaching felon
who robs hen-roosts hereabouts, and whom Thun-
derer^s deep-mouthed bay had often diverted from
felony, watching his chance, coaxed Fatima with
a merry-thought, wrung her neck, and safely
cleared the hen-house."
OF THE LA.TE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 195
IVY.
Simpson (he that so rashly threw the fir a while
ago,) has an avenue of larches, which, with charac-
teristic disregard to any future consequence, he
has in many places allowed to be gapped, by
letting luxuriant ivy climb and grow till it has
killed the trees.
What must be the feelings of some such choked
strong tree, destroyed by the tenacity of that weak,
nervous, unwelcome, affectionately -fatal ivy ?
I'll ask my patient friend, Colonel Jade, whether he
can form any idea of such feelings ; for I have a notion
that even in the bliss of married life a man may
be leant upon so heavily as to be pushed down;
and (just as by the little innumerable fretting
centipede roots of ivy,) he may be positively
worried to death by the nagging over-anxiety of
a morbid pseudo-love.
" Well, and what said the Colonel ?"
'^ Msop/' said he, "youVe just hit it. That
dead larch, forlornly waving its grey mossed arms all
around, as if to feel in vain for sympathy and
help, because strangled in the constrictor-grasp
of this merciless, close-clinging, sap-draining ivy,
is really more like your gallant friend and Mrs. J.
than I could have had any notion of. Time was
o 2
19G THE RIDES AND REVErtlES
when his affections were green and tender as larch-
tufts— ay, and there may be a green spot still
for such as you, yEsop — but that querulous ex-
acting ivy has killed every twig for itself; leaf
and tuft shall never be green together again.
Duncan murdered sleep, they say, '' the innocent
sleep /^ Mrs. Colonel Jade has done her sex the
honour to kill love — husband's love. iEsop, my
dear fellow, take warning.^'
"Come, come, Colonel,'^ said I, "this is really
too bad in a respectable married man ; why, it's
downright queen's evidence against wedlock, and
that before bachelors !"
"Not altogether, ^sop ; judge me truly, and
listen therefore to me patiently. Wedlock is a
noble, charming, enchanting theory; ay, and if
the blessed departure of Mrs. J. ever gives me a
second chance, depend upon it your dead larch
(dead only as far as that poisonous ivy is con-
cerned,) is more than likely to sprout out green
again, and love some tender wood-nymph in old
age. No, my boy, it is the practice I complain
of, not the theory. What refuge is there for
mated misery but impossible divorce, or felonious
polygamy? And what more happy rest for every
home affection than dear, delightsome, harmonious
marriage ? "
" Hallo, Jade ! Why, how could I have expected
such an uxorious wind-up from you ?"
OF THE LATE MR. JDSOP SMITH. 197
"Why not, friend ^sop ? You should have
known me better by this time. What can be
more beautiful than the ideal of grey-haired Psyche
living to sing 'John Anderson my Jo/ and young
love growing old in everything but the still fresh,
constant, warm young heart? One swallow (your
great namesake teaches) doesn^t make a summer ;
and, I am happy to avow, the career of a single
Mrs. J. has not extinguished Hymen's torches
everywhere. For what she has been, is, and will
be, — woe to her and small comfort for your gallant
friend, no doubt; but there'll be cakes and ale
yet, ^sop. Look about you, and take notice how
few are the widowers, and, in the face of settlements,
how few the widows also, who do not make all
haste to seize the blest occasion, —and usually to
how little improvement ! Ah well, we poor mortals
must remember that perfection is a scarcish com-
modity, and sinners rather abundant. And so
far am I from warning such a shrewd follow
as you generally against marriage, that I posi-
tively exhort you to it ; only be very careful
of being nipt by a cray-fish when you're tickling
under the banks for a trout. I kuow I shall
rejoice with the old love song of the heart
when my sons and daughters find lovers ; and
I think, JEsop, I shall not then forget my own
hot youth, nor how generously I ought to foster
198 THE RIDES A>'D EEVERIES
all their happiness, even while I warn them by your
fabled larch and ivy/''
DRESS.
When, if ever, is the grand picturesque revolu-
tion to come about in our male attire ? When
ever again, as erst in the Pamela days, will noble-
men and gentlemen be privileged to wear their own
heraldic colours, or otherwise appear garmented
more gaily for social seasons than in the " niger, vel
subfuscus^^ of modern fashions? I protest, at a
recent male dinner party, each of us looked like
an undertaker, all in black with a white choker;
and I took a marquis for a w^aiter, innocently and
ignorantly claiming of him in the hall my hat
and cloak. How should my rusticity have discerned
his lordship ? Let us wear our crests for some
token of distinguishment — gold bullion w^aistcoat
buttons surcharged with the Smithian griffon wdll
do for me — and not be afraid of coming out in
our family colours ; this puritanical perpetual black,
however suited to a funeral, should be excluded
from our festival occasions. We laugh at vain
little Noll Goldsmith^s peach coloured suit, and
think scorn even of a more modern blue coat with
brass buttons; but verily we must quickly work
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 199
back to some such livelinesses, or the whole civilized
world will go melancholy mad. Why don^t our
ladies command us to dress less gloomily? I
will say, though, the fair butterflies preach gaily
enough by example, and we their duller male
insects ought really to benefit by it. But the
British public is a slow and dreary people.
Tailors and hosiers should invent a model man,
a model case I mean for man, something gayer,
more convenient, more distinguishing than our
modern garments. How needlessly we are bridled
up about the neck; how straightened tight in every
one of our four limbs ; how be-chimney-potted
above, how beheeled below, how begirt and be-
buttoned all around ! Everything's wrong, if you
come to judge it rightly ; and in these free days,
when a tyrannical Brummel is an antiquarian im-
possibiHty, we want the bold inventor to arise
who shall find us fitting garments.
First, however, let us claim the natural honours
of the beard — the noble, masculine, becoming, com-
fortable beard. 0, the mean flunkeys of custom
we have all been these many generations, to have
shaved all sorely away, and endured to look like
monkeys rather than men, all because a French
king couldn't grow a beard, and so set the false
fashion of smoothness ! England is always a
centuiy behind the continent for fashions.
20O THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Some of us will live to see great changes, and
for my part, the simply comfortable is my law.
If my nephew Robert, as more juvenile, thinks
fit to consult the picturesque also, he is quite
right, and I hope he'll invent it.
And how about our ladies? Happily, the short
red petticoat movement does restore to us Astr?ea^s
sweet suggestive ancle, and redeems our fairer
moieties from the unworthy work of scavengers;
but that redundant crinoline is the feminine ab-
surdity of the day. However, what can one expect
from those picturesque martyrs who prefer head
rheumatism to wearing a bonnet? Or, even less
becomingly, who carry an extinguisher mushroom
hat ? There are a thousand graceful and convenient
head-garnitures, which none of our modistes are
classical enough to remember, nor sufficiently
tasteful to discover. But beauty remains beautiful
anyhow, and that^s a comfort at all events.
Then for our poor artizans and rusticals, how
much better and wiser everyway were the blouse
and old needleworked smock-frock, than, as now,
the affectation of a higher class suit in our cast-off
garments. Till you come to the vulgar face and
coarse hands, and note the general awkward bear-
ing, our ploughmen of a Sunday might, for cut
and broadcloth, be momentarily taken for gentles ;
but it is all a bad sham, and they're not comforta-
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 201
ble in such a dishonesty. It's no charity in a gen-
tleman, giving away his old clothes to the country
poor ; there are plenty of needy gentlemen — honest
poor clerks in especial — to whom such gifts would
be more welcome as more fitting. I, fac simile.
FASHION.
Who on earth can this be, sailing down the
town, in all the last extremes of feminine fashion ?
Our strong-mind friend, Aspasia Miggs? Im-
possible !
Yet, as usual in such cases, our moral impossi-
bility is a physical fact, nevertheless.
She has utterly abjured Bloomerism ever since
that luckless lecture ; and behold her now in the
most extensive steel-springed petticoat, sweeping
the streets, while her stern facial outline with the
yellow locks is exhibited in fearful prominence,
backed by the ghost of a bonnet !
Miracles do sometimes happen ; and fact is, now
and then, stranger than fiction.
What an extraordinary thing fashion is, to be
sure I How could a lover^s eye have ever tolerated
his beloved's beauty in the hideous high-waist and
coal-scuttle head-dress of the Regent's day ? Or
later, in the waspish boddice and shoulder-of-mut-
20^ THE HIDES AND IIEVERIES
ton sleeves of our fourth Wiiliam ? And what will
our grand-children think of our taste now, in de-
stroying all proportions of the female form, and
making of our charmers a mere mass of distended
millinery ?
We males usually consult the comfortable, or the
useful, or the cheap, or the unobtrusive in our gar-
ments ; with, of course, a sprinkling of exceptional
cases, which how^ever never become to us a rule.
The follies and affectations of a few tailorized effemi-
nate youths die out with men. But, as far as I can
judge, extremes are absolutely and always epidemic
with our weaker moieties, and no absurdity has
been invented which has not been followed by them
universally, and pronounced the very flower of
fashion. If a foolish young fellow chooses to sport
a red waistcoat, we do not find all his friends, the
surrounding clerks and counter-jumpers, robin-
breasted too; but let one female innovate in the
matter of a scarlet petticoat, and forthwith the
whole sex affects the livery of Babylon. Certainly,
this abject imitativeness is the reverse of creditable
to the mental capacity of our fair enslavers ; arguing
the dependent spirit, gregariousness, love of praise,
fear to stand uncircled by the multitude, &c. &c.
Tm afraid Aspasia^s hobby of woman^s majesty is
as much scandalised by her present vain-gloriously
inflated muslin, as lately by those Bloomer conti-
OP THE LATE MR. yESOP SMITH. 203
nuations, and the hurricane of temper that blew up
her eloquence.
THE NETTLE IN THE NOSEGAY.
A nettle asked the gardener to put it into a nose-
gay. Our learned Scot (with an early dram of
whisky disposing him to good-nature) remembered
kindly how his childhood had liked it as green-
meat in his mother's kail -pot, considered medici-
nally how good its yellow roots are against spring-
rash, and looked back antiquarianly to the primeval
days when the Romans warmed their Italian hides,
by rubbing themselves hot with nettles, against our
chilling British fogs. The nettle had many excel-
lent and interesting qualities, so, as gardener wanted
a bit of lively green just there, and was slightly
obfuscated as usual, he placed a tidy leaf or two at
the apex of his young mistress's bouquet. The
consequence may safely be predicted : a stung nose,
the then reigning Anastasia's own imperious
Roman, in the middle of a ball-room too, looked to
the irate young lover, De Solus, so entirely a pre-
meditated outrage, that the peccant nosegay was
forthwith burnt ; and, no doubt, Macdougall got
his discbarge next morning.
Ay, put dandelion into your salad, on the plea
204 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
of wholesomeness, or a little pinch of rue to be
tonical ; and see how inevitably you spoil the mix-
ture.
And now, after the fashion of those antique pic-
tures which have legends dotted over them to de-
scribe what's what, let us clumsily interpret our
parable. How many schools are spoilt by one
loose boy ; how many youngsters in the 10th Buf-
fers have been corrupted by its incorrigible major;
how many small social clubs owe their rude bad
character to one overbearing bully ; how many
home-circles are vext and every disposition therein
soured by some one uncongenial ingredient. The
nosegay is utterly spoilt, in spite of its many other
beauties ; the salad must be flung away, with all
else of excellence quite wasted. Be it from nettle-
some irritability, or the calumniating tooth of con-
stitutional uncharitableness in a frequent dent- de-
lion, or the hopeless neighbourhood of a rueful
melancholy— that " broken spirit'^ pronounced upon
the highest authority to be intolerable ; the whole
mass is made unpleasant by one morsel, whereof
the evil influences pervade its every part. That
school becomes tainted throughout; the 10th Buf-
fers is the most dissolute in the service ; those U.K.,
i. e. rough-rider, club-members, carry with them
into every circle the manners of their over-crowing
bullying-president ; these home-circles are thorough-
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 205
ly infected by the ill-temper, ceasoriousness, or
selfishness of some one presiding evil genius in
each.
Alas ! that good is never so catching as evil : alas,
that bad examples are ever so prolific of imitators,
while the better breed but few disciples.
THE JAY AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
Millions of ages ago (for I suspect all this sort
of thing took place somewhere about the just-hither-
side of Never), the little bird we now call a night-
ingale had a bright blue tuft upon its head and no
idea of singing ; while the jay was robed all in russet
as a thrush, but sang far more sweetly. One day,
in a great assembly of the birds, the jay fell in love
with that same skyblue bonnet of the nightingale,
and the latter being wise rather than vain (qualities
reversed in jay aforesaid), it w^as mutually agreed
after the meeting that, in consideration of night-
ingale's tuft being grafted into jay's wings, their
voices also should be interchanged. So it comes to
pass in these latter days of ornithology, that the
nightingale's song is so sweet, and the jay's wing
so gay. And wisdom ever since has justified the
modest little brown bird's choice, making her
sought out by princes ; casting scorn upon the silly
206 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
jay, who for all her gaiety is bat counted as one
among the vermin nailed upon barn-doors. And I
think I know a certain Swedish nightingale, and a
certain Spanish jay, whose guardian fays at birth
must have similarly interchanged advantages ; the
one taking all hearts with her sweet song ; the
other, with her cachuca, luring eyes only ; the one
loveable in plainness, the other having blue feathers
in her wings enow, but voiced and charactered like
yonder jay.
Out of a gigantic holly on our downs, a pair of
jays sprang croaking as I trotted by ; whence this
fable : and the next was born of the same ride ; for
I crossed the Rippleburn, and, in doing so, nearly
rode over a swimming water-rat.
TICKET-OF-LEAVERS.
Modern naturalists {teste Professor Bell, British
Quadrupeds, page 321) vindicate the common
water-rat from the ignominy of being a rat at all,
vowing that it should be called the "vole,^^ and
giving it credit for belonging absolutely to the
Beaver family, tlie Castorida;, and not at all to that
of the Rat, the Murid?e. It is harmless, cleanly,
and lives upon a vegetable diet. After, then, this
learned preface, hear a short fable for the times.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 207
A poor little persecuted Yole came to the ooly
known representative of King Lion now recognized
in England, the Mastiff, and complained before his
viceregal throne of the evils it was undeservedly
suffering, from being confounded with the foul land-
rat; everybody, cats, dogs, and men, and all, aimed
at its destruction, and sins were laid to its charge
whereof it was quite innocent.
But Viceroy Mastiff, gazing full at the complai-
nant, said : " Really, Mr. Vole, I don^t see what
can be done for you; we are certainly bound to
believe you not a rat upon such most respectable
testimony ; but, as certainly, you look so like one,
that I myself for instance can scarcely resist the
pleasurable duty of nipping you on the spot. This
is a world wherein appearances go a very great way;
and as you are so like the real rogue, our common
filthy scavenger rat ; so very like, that only scienti-
fic eyes can tell the differences between you twain ;
my best advice to you is get out of the way as soon
as possible. We cannot pause for nice distinctions
— war is proclaimed universally against rats; and if
you are so hardly distinguishable from that vile
race, you must take the consequences, or make
yourself scarce at the speediest/^
When I heard Lord Mastiff deliver that judg-
ment, I wondered whether it might not be quite as
applicable to reformed Ticket-of-leavers, and their
80^ THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
obvious wisdom as to emigration forthwith. No
one doubts there may be voles among the rats,
but seeing that they all, the well-disposed no less
than the incorrigible, bear that foul rat-like badge
of convictism, society^s undiscriminating prudence
resolves to banish them all wholesale, only favour-
ing the reformed by giving them a new colonial
home, while the hopelessly incurable shall get
instead a new colonial prison.
COLONEL JADE UPON DIVORCE.
"About divorces,^' said Jade to me one day,
quite abruptly as we were riding together, '^ my
judgment is just this : directly two married people
arrive at the pleasant point of thoroughly hating
one another, the bill has been given spiritually —
where there^s no love there^s no more wedded life;
and it is a far less evil to separate utterly, and to
live apart in indifference, or by law to find a better
mate, than to be continuously linked together for
bed and board in loathing.
"The fact is^ ^sop, that like every other good
institution in this spoilt world, wedlock has far too
frequently proved a failure; in theory excellent, as
most other admirable things it has failed in practice :
the church, the sacraments, the priesthood, govern-
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 209
ment, passive obedience, universal philanthropy,
and all beside, help to prove, in their corrnptions,
how overcome of evil are all our goods : and so here
in wedlock, the perilous expedient of binding toge-
ther for life a pair casually charmed with each
other, generally issues either in avowed disappoint-
ment, or the more conventional form of decent en-
durance. Of ten married couples, one may be
happy, and two others passively content ; while the
remainder seven are positively (though in all shades
of degrees, and every one such couple, mark you.
Sir, sturdily bent on denying this truth) —wretched.
That which was appointed good in the days of
man^s innocency, and seems so exquisite to theore-
tic lovers, becomes a severe (though stoutly dis-
owned) source of human misery, now that men and
women are no better than the wicked, and when
the sensitive torch of Hymen has been once well
blown out by profligacy or temper. Ah, Master
iEsop, if you^-e looking at last for a mate — take
warning by me : for in nineteen cases out of twenty
the most certain cure for love is matrimony ; the
hottest form of that sweet fever seldom survives a
few years of its infallibly febrifugal antidote. I
suppose though, that there is a religious — or rather
theological — consolation in the just remembrance
that the Great Bridegroom Himself has in His es-
p
210 THE HIDES AND REVEUIES
poused Church a most wayward, disobedient, and
unfaithful wife/^
Jade took breath after this serious effusion, and
then went on in his unuxorious tirade thus inex-
orably.
"It is the most frightful crisis of a mortaFs life
this marriage : for here is well-nigh the only step in
human existence quite irrevocable. Whatever
changes happen, this connection, at all events,
must be a fixture ; a blot or a glory on the family
scutcheon, a help or hindrance for either world, a
blessing or a cursing to the uttermost. Your ruined
gambler may possibly recover all by another throw ;
your lost sinner may repent and be a saint ; your
wrecked reputation may weather yet all storms, and
get to haven merrily : but for the poor hoodwinked
girl or boy who has once said ' I wilP to some rash
life-partnership with a reprobate, there is no hope,
no second chance, no help till Death has cancelled
those hard articles V^
\V>e it remembered, I always let Jade talk on :
one can^t stop him till he has run himself well
down.]
"I judge,^"* went on the excited Colonel, no
doubt thinking of his own thraldom, "tliat society
will yet, for its own sake, consent to loosen by a
link or two our galling chains of mediseval priest-
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 211
craft in this matter : for these chains^ strangely
enough relaxable for the lowest and shamefullest
sensual causes, (not only moral ones but physical)
are yet tightened and for ever rivetted on the
necks of the outraged pure and the persecuted good,
binding to their oars, as galley slaves, the noblest
men and women !
" Chancellors and Bishops with your Marriage
Bills, how lightly do you touch with one of your
fingers the unspeakable, intolerable yoke of a
wretched marriage. Is it fitting or credible that
whereas, in the avowedly divorceable cases, an ill-
directed heat of nature, some human love though
in an illegal quarter, some warmth amiable in itself
though guilty as to its object, that whereas these
may be potent with lawyers to break a yoke not
otherwise perhaps heavy nor bitter, the life-trials
due to the contentions of a wicked wife or of a bad
husband, are to go for nothing: the * happiness'
spoilt by an adulterer is recognized as a valuable
property, but there are no damages recoverable for
the misery intiicted by your own fireside tormentor ;
no help, no mercy, no deliverance there. What?
is nothing ever to be done in the interests of society
to divide the many mismatched couples, whose
constant contentions are the ruin of their children ?
Whose bickerings make home a school for hell,
instead of a nursery for heaven ? where hate is
p -z
212 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
house-angel, and discord the marriage-music ?
Should not the very State, as guardian of such
worse than orphaned sons and daughters, step in
and separate that fettered pair? Should not in
chief the Church, as watcher over morals, break
the yoke off the necks of those whose tameless
quarrels are too usually the symptom as the conse-
quence of ill-assorted matrimony ?
"How tcuchingly true is 'Locksley HalV as to
the misery occasioned by an unequal mating —
' Could I dwell with narrow foreheads V And how
deep is Arthur Helps^s note — ' In marriage the
whole diapason of joy and sorrow is sounded, from
perfect congeniality, if there be such a thing (which
I doubt) to the uttermost extent of irritable uncon-
geniality/ And how spiritually unendurable their
lot whose minds and hearts, ' like the dyer^s hand
subdued to what it works in,^ become insensibly
imbued with colours from which their innate taste
and nat'ire shrink, through the thraldom cast upon
the married body. But these are the commoner
cases, (Jade went on to say), and because so com-
mon, a kind of scarce-serious comedy to all men
round, however deeply tragic to the pair so un-
equally yoked together. I leave them with a touch,
a touch of true compassion and sympathy, and turn
to yet stronger instances.
"Look at this poor generous lad, barely out of
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 213
his teens, caught in the hottest youth of his affections
and cheated into marriage with a Lais or Jezebel :
should not such a match as tliis be ab initio null and
void ? Look again at yonder fair young girl, whose
heart has long been given to another, while now her
hand is forced for mammon- sake to wedlock with
some detested and detestable profligate : ought not
this to be annulled ? Or take the common case of
patient temperance linked with the raving drunkard,
or to positive or commencing madness : is there to
be no reasonable deliverance here ? No ! shouts
tyrannical Church law : everything must be endured,
and all abuses tolerated. A wife or a husband may
be as wicked, as impure, as outrageous against all
that is good and right and happy, may be as slan-
derous vindictive and determinately aggravating as
an ill-mind will, and (if only the pair are average
animals) there is no help for any wretched partner :
none ! unless indeed the shrewder bad one of the
twain is caught in downright adultery ; whereof it is
a mere matter of social ruin even to attempt the
costly legal proof!"
" I guess," said the Colonel '' our bonds must be
somewhat relaxed ere long; the Miltonians of
either sex are a vast and a noble army of martyrs.''^
214 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
COLONEL JADE ON MARRIAGE.
Ill our very next ride^ — for my friend Jade has no
quieter opportunity of pouring out liis matrimonial ex-
periences into any safe ears than when on horseback
beside me, — we stumbled upon the delicate topic
usually uppermost in his mind, if he has anything
of a sympathizer near him ; and I jot down his
sentiments, not as mine, nor as what 1 would
avowedly endorse without more care and considera-
tion than a bachelor can give the matter, but simply
as what he said to me; with now and then my
comments thereanent.
Said then the Colonel quite suddenly as usual,
— "I believe it to be merely a life-partnership,
iEsop ; an arrangement of this world only, made for
certain mundane ends; indefeasible however, except
where those ends fail utterly. I looked it out in
Cruden's concordance this morning — I suppose you
know Vm talking of marriage, — and find it defined 'a
civil contract -/ with every text to corroborate tliis."
''But, my good fellow," I objected, "its a
religious contract too, surely, not to say a holy
ordinance."
" Right enough it must ever be to consecrate to
Heaven every change in life," responded Jade; "I
like a service at the foundation of a house, and the
rearing of its roof-tree ; I think that when a man is
OF THE LA.TE MR. ^ESOP SMITH. 215
called to the bar, or gets his commission, or enters
into a mercantile partnership, or in any other way
makes a direct move on the chess-board of life, it
would be well to dedicate the matter specially to the
God of providence ; and so with marriage ; by all
means let so serious a step be sanctified and stab-
lished by prayers and good resolutions at the Holy
Table."
" No more than so. Jade ?"
*' Superstition has made plenty more of it, as usual
with human nature, by contriving to mix up signs
with things signified, and in order to give power to
priests ; but, to my mind, marriage is a civil contract
consecrated by a religious rite.'''
" What, then, do you make of the ' great mystery'
iu St. Paul to the Ephesians ?''
" That it is strictly applicable to Christ and the
Church, as the Apostle distinctly tells us; not to
man and woman; nevertheless,' he adds, 'let them
do their duty, and love one another.'
" We shan't agree, I see, Jade ; however, I let a
man have his opinions : you admit though that
marriage is indissoluble ?"
"Except, as I said, when its ends fail utterly.
Mother Church, a very stepmother in these matters
as you know, with all her straitlacedness cannot
help but pronounce marriage void ab initio where
certain of its mundane ends are physically im-
216 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
possible, or relationally incongruous : and in such
cases as Napoleon and Josephine and their like,
there^s equitably another side to be heard in the
matter of issue too : while, where mutual society
and companionship have become notoriously hateful,
there also, I protest with dear old Milton, whole-
some relaxation should be possible; if only to
frighten some folks into better conduct.
*^As to anybody thinking marriage a sacrament
of eternal obligation, my dear ^Esop,^^ [I was
dumb all the while, only willing to hear Jade out
without contradicting him,] ''the notion is a most
gratuitous exaggeration : contrived by those who are
perpetually confounding symbols with their anti-
types, similitudes with realities, images with ac-
tualities. The bond is loosed at all events by
death, if not by wickedness ; there is no marrying
nor giving in marriage Elsewhere, no male nor
female, no world to be peopled, no crosses to be
carried, no temptations to be guarded against, no
patience to be tried : a man or still oftener a
woman is at last set free from the consequences of
the commonest great mistake in life; and there
is no peril of being claimed in any other world
by the too often uncongenial partner of this one.
True, if folks happen to love each other here,
they will love all the better there ; but so will
spirits anyhow, wedded or not ; marriage is no
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 217
such jealous bond in the eternal world, no exclusion,
no specialty, — nothing in fact, except for its pleasant
or unpleasant memories. Once dead, the human
being is free again and individual ; and well will
it be for parents and children, husbands and wives,
sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbours, if all
these relationships of life are ratified and glorified
by the individual love of the enfranchised spirit
hereafter.
*'The utter nonsense some folks talk about
marriage being spiritual, a thing for ever, would
operate with all thinking men in an abrogation
of the state altogether; it's a serious thing enough
to choose for life, but imagine the terror of choosing
for eternity ! No ^sop, — Mrs. Jade and I part
company there at all events.^'
''But, my dear fellow,^' I interposed, "let us
hope better things of all emancipated spirits : it is
impossible to say how thoroughly amiable even
Mrs. Jade for instance (seeing you are so frank
about her) may become, the moment she is free
from the susceptibilities of sex and other weaknesses
of human nature. Perhaps, there'll be no need,
as no inclination, to part company."
" Amen !'' gasped the colonel ; though it seemed
with a sort of fear too at the prospect of such a
perpetuation of his earthly copartnership, —for he
quickly added, — "but, with my experience I can't
218 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
credit it. Spirits are magnetically diversified; and
I suspect that I am married positively to my
neii:ative pole. That's why Fm so resolute in
clinging to the hope of separation. Who knows?
spirits may segregate hereafter according to their
kind : the morose with the morose in Saturn ; the
lively with the lively in Mercury ; the fiery with
the fiery all to be striving happily together in
a contentious Mars; the gentle with the gentle
swimming ecstatically in a most luxurious planet
Yenus.'^
"Indifferent tlieology this, friend Jade, at all
events."
" Well, — I don't know : beyond the scheme of
salvation, which I don't touch, — and the especial
bride, Christ's Church, — there is large latitude
for speculation as to the crowds of independent
spirits, not likely to be toned down to any sort
of uniformity, good or evil; and each sort well
enough in its way and with its kind, but not so
easily consorting with other kinds. There'll be a
segregation among spirits, like to like, depend upon
it; and Mrs. Jade and I will do as the stars do,
and dwell apart."
I saw it was of no use to attempt conviction of
the merits of ^Irs. Jade : and so, to change the
venue, I asked Jade whether he really meant to
argue that the dissolubility of marriage was to be
OF THE LATE MR. ^ESOP SMITH. 219
insisted on not for better or worse, but solely
pendente bene-merito ?
"Yes!'^ — to my surprise responded the pertina-
cious Colonel — "I suppose it amounts to that. I
don^t know where the service borrowed such a phrase
as "for better or worse;" in one extreme point of
demerit at any rate we have the Highest Authority
for pronouncing a divorce.''^
" I don^t know that, quoth ^Esop : to my own
mind, the text applies in chief to betrothal, and not
wedlock; on proof of certain gross previous mis-
conduct, you may put her away and marry another,
without breach of promise; but otherwise in truth
and honour slie is your wife. That is how I read
the text, especially in the Greek."
"Bless me, JEsop !" — and the colonel must have
stung his mare's flank with the spur in the excite-
ment of his feelings, for the creature reared again,
— " Bless me, — why then you're not for divorce even
for That?"
" I didn't say so, Jade ; possibly I am, even for
something less than what you call That: but at
all events we want a text to show that wives may
never be forgiven, but husbands may; and another
to prove that continuous evil in everyway short of
That, is not only venial, but must be acquiesced in
for life ; while a one sin acted in the midst of a very
possible twenty years of the utmost amiability makes
220 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
the erring creature execrable, and is in itself
unpardonable ! I do not so understand, * go, and
sin no more. '
" You take away my breath,^^ he gasped ; " why,
on you of all men I depended for mercy to the
married/^
" And rightly. Jade ; I would if I could and knew
how, scripturally and socially, set free this moment
all the miserable of both sexes : but, as I desire
with equal Quixotism to destroy all evil of this earth
and elsewhere, it seems to me, friend, that we had
better wait till (so far as we are concerned) death
cuts these knots for us."
And so we parted at the sign -post.
^SOP ON MARRIAGE.
And I trotted slowly on alone in a reverie.
What a charming theory it is ! v^hat a beautiful
arrangement, worthy alike of the benevolence of God,
and of all acceptation by His thankful creatures.
That young love's earliest thrill, the rising of the
sap to the very end of our first dry branches, should
waken the bud of hopeful aflection, expand the
leaves of recognized happy courtship, blow into the
flower of open wedlock, and swell to the fruitfulness
of teeming marriage! That the young couple so
OF THE LATE ME. ^SOP SMITH. 221
linked together by mutual genialities, equal condi-
tion, approving friends, and the Heavenly Benedic-
tion, should grow up, body and soul as one, not
only helping one another in trouble, rejoicing in
the day of prosperity, cheering the common dullnesses
of life, and (whatever frowns there be elsewhere) at all
events having a mutual smile and kiss at home ; —
but likewise should yield genially from year to year
their blessed human fruit, the cherished little dar-
lings, Christ^s own pet-lambs, man and woman in
their beauteous phase of infancy !
And so the years pass ; and life vrith all its
changes has ever one sure haven of rest and peace at
Home, where the tender gentle wife is always loving,
and the brave good husband always kind ; and the
sons grow up, as the Lord^s young plants, for sturdy
outdoor service, and the daughters, in their more
feminine delicacy, become as the polished corners of
His spiritual temple.
And so the years pass : and middle age has crept
up over our youthful married lovers, — and grey
hairs are here and there upon them, and outward
beauty (saving of the dear kind eyes) is no longer
tlieirs; and the good wife^s many children have
rent her body, and the good man^s many cares [God-
sent for good purposes] have shadowed his never-
theless brave and cheerful mind ; and the curly-headed
boys and sparkling girls have started seemingly
222 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
all at once into manhood and womanhood, rivalling
their comely father and their pretty mother of some
twenty five years back ; and then comes love again,
and courtship, and wedlock into that happy family;
and the old couple live over once more in their
children all those early delights ; — and when the
sweet little babe is born, who can love him dearer
than tlie doting grandsire? whose eyes overflow
with tears of happier joy than those of the mother's
mother ?
Ay : how touchingly and sweetly does the poet sing.
And when with Envy time transported
Seeks to rob us of our joys
You'll in your girls again be courted
And ril go wooing in my boys, —
for there is nothing more beautiful in life, than aged
happy wedlock blest with marrying children.
And so the years pass, and venerable age is here ;
and the dear old folks are still as ever, one in spirit,
loving and beloved by all : beautiful too in all the
silver hair and cheerful dignity of an honoured old
age, the product of a useful maturity, an innocent
youth, a docile childhood, with Love ever shining in
them and on them from the star of their cradle to
broad sunset of their graves !
Is not such a scheme of life worthy of God's
benevolence, and Man's most grateful acceptation ?
OF THE LATE MK. ^SOP SMITH. Z%6
And yet, men and women, to what have yoa
profaned in bitter practice this most sweet theory ?
Well, — well ; the wise old Greeks called wedlock KJl^of,
a name which also means vexation : and that there
is a marring thought in the very name marriage, let
us sadly confess. However, for to-day, and not to fall
perforce into Jade's less lovely views of matters as they
are too commonly shewn, ^Esop cares not to paint in
dimmer reverie the counterpart of this liis pleasant
picture. Only, before he leaves his meditative saddle,
he would drop one roadside word: husbands and
wives, consider what you might be and you are not ;
mourn and mend ; designed for each other^'s blessing,
strive to fulfil that kind intention of your Heavenly
Father: and do not so often let Him find you
appealing to Him against each other.
DOCKING.
Time was when your farrier docked your horse's
tail, and time is when you yourself with suicidal hand
still sheer off the honours of your own beard ; both
being manifest barbarisms, as shall be seen anon;
but the horse has had natural justice done to his
proportions before the rider. The man's turn will
soon come too.
In the Sir Charles Grandison era of novels, one
224 THE EIDES AND EEVERIES
reads of the hero, remarkably enough '^ wearing his
own hair ;'' and that, by way of mystery, " in a
buckle/' And, now-a-days, if a scamp is taken up
for swindling, his appearance before the beak is
pretty usually announced in the ' Times' as '' wearing
his moustachios," as if that should be any way more
scampish or wonderful than wearing his eye-brows !
I hope to live to see the day when men may really
look masculine without attracting notice, and Anglo-
Saxondom universally assert its ancient privilege of
a thatched upper lip, instead of the conventional
bareness fit alone for eastern eunuchs.
How foolishly, too, and in what strange diverse-
ness have men shaved in all times and places !
Tartary and the Eed men nourish exclusively the
scalplock ; just Avhere Popish priesthood as ex-
clusively shaves. The Medicean fashion was to clear
away all but a round poll-cap ; while friars suffer
only that same circular fringe to stand : all the East
honours the beard and cherishes it, even in hottest
climates : all the west and northerly scrape and hew
it away, to the manifest consumptiveness of nations;
who, by millions, make necks and noses bare against
our wintry rheums and catarrhs, — an especially
English folly, now in slow process of dying out.
Comb and trim with all duteous care in cleanliness,
and make some reasonable change in the fashion of
vestments, — and really for health's sake, and for
OP THE LATE ME. iESOP SMITH. 225
more or less of manly dignity and decoration, the
beard movement ought rapidly to sweH to a re-
volution. But we are a very slow people; and a
cowardly too, as to imputed affectations ; so (except
in the rarer cases of moral courage or its brassy
imitation, impudence) everybody still goes on sorely
shaving away his neck-and-ear-glands' comforter, his
natural respirator, his chapt-lips' protector, his
toothache's anodyne ; and all this not for goodlooks'
sake, but just the opposite. Foolish fashion ! Louis
was beardless by nature, and so the cringing cour-
tiers shaved ; and my great namesake must have had
premonition of all this when he wrote his parable of
the fox that had lost his tail. Do let us all abjure
docking: ^sop's precept herein shall not, at all
events, be quit of Smith's example.
THE LITTLE WORLD,
When astronomers calculate an orbit, they take
all due account of perturbations. The little world,
newly found out by them, ought (they know it
exactly) to travel just in such a curve and just at
such a pace, but it doesn't ; in spite of weights and
measures and forces and quantities and gravities
and all, it doesn't; simply because those petty
226 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
independent arrangements are constantly being dis-
turbed by the influence of other bigger worlds all
round it.
Now, 1 wish biographers would act upon the same
true principle. They judge the certain little world
which their telescopes are prying at far too strictly
as a self-poised, untrammelled, unvext sphere;
an.^werable inexcusably for every halting and hasten-
ing, for every liability to attraction and repulsion,
for every inclination to the right hand or to the
wrong ; taking no account of the strange combination
of influences, good or bad, which, after all said, go
far to make each one of us what we are.
O, friends ! let us not judge hastily nor harshly ;
the Omniscient alone sees truly of us all : He only
can discern how different we might each be under
other skies and mixt with other men : He can make
allowance for the wretched offspring of depravity,
swaddled in sheer want or w^anton drunkenness ; for
how can that poor infant help its evil growing-up ?
He can calculate advantages showered on the child
of wealthy piety ; and it were shame and sin indeed,
to counteract such happy influences.
Well, thought I, jogging home late one night,
with the breathing earth fast asleep all round me,
and the bright eyes of the star-lit heaven wide awake
above — I wonder whether any one of my friends
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 2^7
takes any such kindly wise count of ^^sop ; and I
wonder whether I myself ever thought of any one so
reasonably.
Consider perturbations : rank, pride ; infamy,
hate ; wealth, inordinate self-indulgence ; want,
theft, meanness, and misery ; peace, an efflorescence
of all the virtues ; w^orry, an irritation boiling up all
manner of bitternesses. These, as per sample, are in
each case cause and consequence.
Consider perturbations. Every man is his own
little world — a fearful whole, but inextricably bound,
and meshed, and netted up with others. Talk of
liberty ! As well might one of those stars up above
w^altz out of its orbit, as one of us escape from tlie
fetters of circumstance. And there is a spiritual
circumstance, quite as trammelling as the physical :
not to rise to highest themes, as graces, ministrations,
inspirations ; nor to dive down to lowest, as evil
eyes, magisms, or magnetisms : not to trench also
on such material physics as influences of health and
complexion and weather, wherein the digestive and
meteorological forces stand the far-off, nay, the very
present causes of most present consequences ; there
is also and specially about every one of us an
atmosphere of spiritual circumstance centrifugally or
centripetally all but omnipotent in matters of human
affection.
Peij:urbations, — quotha! what sort of allowances
Q2
22S THE EIDES AND REVERIES
(let a happy bachelor ask) is not the just biographer
called upon to make for evil bed and board com-
panions of either sex? for your meek-hearted Moses
wedded to a vixen Zipporah, or tlie gentle Eli crushed
by his bad wife's consequently wicked children?
Your incorrigible female scold or profligate male is a
malign comet that throws the most heavenly ordered
system into chaos. She or he has heretofore pro-
voked partner and children to suicide, as Coroner^s
inquests have shown; and more than once has
woman's evil specialty of tongue been recorded on
tombstones, preaching still to passers by on that
fearful text for termagants, James iii. 6.
How different in the way of perturbation is the
intimate companionship of a calm good loving
friend, from that of one, however affectionate in his
way, contentious, irritable, selfishly impulsive !
How many wives, how many husbands, how many
fathers, how many children, do not at once perceive
(if only the discontented fancy strikes them) that
they would as individuals be entirely different in
spirit and in life, but for their constraining bonds of
spiritual circumstance : for good or for evil, there
would be wonderous changes, were such influences
otherwise.
O the unwritten martyrdoms of patience of many
holy wives, of many duteous children ! And let not
common gallantry be false enough to flinch from
OF THE LATE MR. JDSOP SMITH. 229
testifying also to some small patience of tlie men.
My hump, and other sorts of luok, have mercifully
saved shrewd jEsop hitherto; but he has heard of
and believes in wonderful exploits of temper. Some-
body has somewhere suggested the expediency of
writing (by way of counterpicture to the lives of
great men) the lives of the wives of great men. For
the honour of womanhood — and ^sop dearly prizes
and loves and esteems it highly, when, and as, and
as much as he possibly can,— I implore that mis-
chievous suggester to bold his stupid tongue ; for I
would not have the sex disparaged ; seeing that
however fortunate we are glad to suppose ordinary
men may have been in wedlock, geniuses, at all
events, have proved unlucky. Have we not pro-
verbially on our tongues the furious Xantippe of
noble old Socrates, the capricious Mary Powell of
Milton, Eichard Hooker's wicked wife who burnt
half the Ecclesiastical Polity for spite, Palissy's
plague, and Wesley's, — ay, and Job's, and Moses',
and David's, and Abraham's too, and Adam's?
"Why did Shakspeare, think you, leave to his wife,
in his last will and testament, nothing whatever
except " my brown best bed with the furniture ?" A
barren jointure, it would seem; but inquire of Mr.
Caudle. It was a biting legacy that, suggestive of a
thousand curtain-lectures happily then relinquished
to the enemy — where, all alone, she might lie awake
230 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
o'niglits, and ruminate on the glorious acliievement
of Shakspeare^s great love killed by Ann Hathaway^s
vociferated logic ! yes — truly yes, — all these
great names, as well as sundry others not entirely so
famous, were verily most great in this ; that each of
that highly respectable multitude achieved greatness
in spite of the continuous perturbation of a terrific
wife — a more frightful comrade than my happy
bachelorship knoweth. And yet, as I jog along
musing, my thought can easily realize such wedded
worry ; and my charity may well account thereby for
divers aberrations as to social amiability and use-
fulness among some certain of the many little worlds
I wot of. Even as nothing is nearer Paradise than
married happiness — the gentle, loving, pure, and
sensible wife, mated with the noble, kind, honest,
and wise husband ; so can notliing be liker to its
hot antithesis than wedded worry : the loud, un-
charitable, jealous, and silly woman, or man (for
there be such in the male, too, I doubt not), linked
with all sorts of the opposite qualities. A true and
exquisite martyrdom this ; for if both are bad, and
therefore neither cares, there is less worldly misery,
though more other-worldly punishment : for in that
case both go to the devil separately or together.
My " little world,'' however, is supposed to be a
redeemed one, and subject only in its tidal and such
lunatic affairs to a lost and rebel moon. I would
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 231
judge, therefore, fairly of its hindrances, its impulses,
its many variations only under influence.
What, ^Esop ! would you be the quiet, well-
conditioned, true-hearted, and right-minded fellow
you vainly boast yourself, if your midnight couch
were scared by lying jealousies, or your waking pillow
made headachy by worries, repetitions, and tempers ?
Could you be wise, if perpetual tongue made study
impossible, or holy, if ditto banished quiet, and caused
prayer to be impracticable ?
I am not a father-confessor ; but my humpbacked
shrewdness discerns without a wink that many of my
married friends could (but they won't) acknowledge
to at least as much as this ; but, as I said, they won't.
There is a league. Not a man among them, nor
woman either — (honour to the martyrs — honour to
such holy men and women — patient, patient, often
beyond endurance !) not one will turn queen^s
evidence. Their loyalty is silent.
However, remember, every one of you, that I,
^sop Smith, am but a snarling cripple whom the
girls despise, full of riddles, fables, and other silly
matters nobody listens to, and of not even common
sense : O dear, no ! having neither experience, nor
worldly wisdom, nor discernment. Judge me, ye
that, to superadded money cares, and haply toothache,
or dread of disgrace, or sense of responsibility, or
worst of all, the over-wrought literary brain with
232 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
touches of angina pectoris, have, moreover, and as
an additional cross lo bear, the excruciating appen-
dix of a bed-and-board companion, privileged to
worry without stint ! Judge old ^sop, and say
whether he can be right or wrong in his estimate of
unqualified charity with reference to the perturbations
of most men's little worlds.
EDITORS AESOPIZED.
I never meet the gallant master of our county
fox-hounds — that fresh old ever-green. General
Hulme — without being reminded of some of the
cares and hindrances of a certain editorial friend of
mine. His difficulty always is the crowd of volun-
teers. His pink and well-appointed regulars, a
good score of them, are really quite field enough for
him without danger of riding over the hounds ; but
invariably there assemble at the meet (nominally to
see the throw off, but in bitter practice to hinder all
sport by too often heading back the fox when
otherwise he would liave broken out of cover) the
same sort of posse of male and female equestrians as
in the Pegasus-riding way overwhelm my friend the
editor witli their needless contributions.
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 233
Now and then, too, some Cockney horseman, in
Napoleon boots and a cut-away, will volunteer a
solo on his horn (stupid animal !) to the utter
discomfiture of the hounds, and signal execration of
old Hulme and his huntsmen. Isn't this that fre-
quent bore, a bad poet, Mr. Editor ?
Again, some helpless woman, with her draggled
skirt, will be sure to have got irrevocably in every
body's way, while her skittish canterer has lamed
Jangler or Wrangler, or poor old Juno. Isn't this
your long-winded flowery prosaist, with her Pene-
lopean web of tamest '' True story '^ to be continued,
—no end to the chapters of possible accidents and
untimely incidents ?
Again, two or three schoolboys will be making a
first essay (small blame to them though, and I like
the boys the better for such spirit), and on their
little Shetlanders usually get run over. These are
juvenile authors, feathering their quills ; perhaps a
necessary evil (for the breed must be kept up), but
no use for this hunt at all events, and no small care
to look after.
And last of all, it must be confessed that, besides
yonder awkward squad of volunteers, there can be
muffs even in the elect band of these pink and
well-appointed regulars ! All promise and small
performance — better to look at than to go — who
raise expectation only to disappoint it, and with the
234 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
jauntiest of external appliances, are utterly void of
pluck or genius. How should our hale, hearty old
General have the tact and patience to please every
body ? Impossible. He won^t even try to do it, if
he's as wise as I take him to be.
Then, again, the same or like thoughts as to
editorial bothers and duties come into my mind when
I contemplate Jem Bent, the huntsman, and his
pack. The meet is periodical, and cyclical; the
hounds drafted from the kennel for their individual
qualities, according to the line of country to be
crossed that day : every good dog has his name and
fame, his peculiarity of temperament and talent, his
specialty for the cover or the run; the fox, we'll
style what we hunt — Success, — must have all the old
earths stopped beforehand, in the way of adversaries
conciliated, rivals to dinner, laudatory notices ex-
changed, and so forth ; and, depend upon it, Jem
Bent has to make plaint of many a half-broke hound
or lagging puppy among his pack, who will either
give tongue after vermin, or ignominiously tail off.
But there is one disagreeable duty of my friend
the editor, to be likened, I am safe to say, to
nothing at all in so noble a science as hunting
(tliough, as you see, contrary to the Latin proverb,
most of my " similes do go upon all-fours") ; nor,
indeed, can that duty be fabled at all savourily.
It is likest to a process, too familiarly known to
OF THE LATE MR. ^ESOP SMITH. 235
housewives as washing dirty linen, and mending it,
too.
Imagine having to polish up, and point off, and
prepare against time for the expectant printer some
dull essay, or illegible, even if really good matter,
or vapid or ill-tempered critique, or wire-drawn story
evidently written for space sake; to put in the
pungencies, and cut out the clumsinesses, modify
the spleen, amend the cacography, correct the errors
of genius, and inspire the drowsiness of mere
painstaking with something like vitality. To do all
this, I say, and not only get no thanks for your
pains, but positive ill-will from the piqued and
conceited authorets, who ought, on the contrary, to
have acknowledged such a purifying and amending
process with the truest gratitude.
To finish however with a grander image : those
characteristics uttered above of the periodical and the
cyclical hint at a nobler similitude: our editor may
wtII be likened to that sublimest among the students,
an astronomer.
Are not his chief care the monthly phases of a
sphere, which to his individuality is no less than
'Welut inter ignes Luna minores ?" Doth not the
ebb or flow of the world^s great tides, popular
opinion and literary glory, considerably depend
(according to his complacent theory) on the influence
of that moon aforesaid ? Must he not habitually
236 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
outwatcli the Bear o' niglits, and be a most cliligent
consumer both of midiiiglit oil and small-hours' ink ?
And do they not, both astronomer and editor, zeal-
ously work as hard as if all motions, earthly and
heavenly, wouldn't go on just as well without them,
and feel as proudly happy in their toil as if
indeed their knowledge lit the moon, their power
influenced the tides ?
WINDING-UP.
What a pace we are going at !
Fm not thinking of the literal gallop though,
often as it quickens my fancies ; but of this whirling
world of ours, and its events, matters and things in
general. What a pace it is ! What a hard run to
the death cry of Time.
Folks differ strangely about this mighty question.
One man will discern human progress barely emanci-
pate, just developing in the incipience of a com-
parative freedom, and hopeful to run a more and
more glorious course for myriads of future years.
Another will judge that everything about us appears
to be nearing its great wind-up, approaching the
uttermost ne plus ultra, and leaving next to nothing
now for men to do or discover, but simply to wait
awhile and see the End of All things !
OP THE LATE MU. iESOP SMITH. 237
Where is the spot of earth untrodden, of sea
uncharted, of literature unliackneyed, of science
uncultivated, of reality unknown, of romance un-
imagined ?
From the North-AVest passage to central Africa,
from Formosa to Enderby's Land, from Hammer-
fest to Patagonia, alFs known, and done, and used-
up ; nothing remains for enterprize to accomplish or
adventure to find out. Every shelf of every book-
case is full, and not one topic left unindexed ; and
with far more intensity tlian the wise king of old
we may in truth murmur about there being nothing
new now under the sun.
Is not the topstone set to every old beginning ; and
are not all the ravelled skeins of Nature and Provi-
dence being gathered up neatly, as with housewife^s
care?
Ay; we live in a time that looks very like the
consummation of times ; though very possibly every
Christian age in its hope or its ignorance has thought
the very same thought about itself; there is a com-
placent self-importance in the fancy. Of dates, signs,
and seasons, none dare speak confidently, forasmuch
as prophets' years are of an uncertain length, and
there may be many typical fore-shadows of the one
final consummation. But the world^s harvest does
seem to be ri])ening speedily ; chronology tells us
that we are in the Saturday evening of our poor old
238 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
Eartli^s six working-days of her misery, each such
day being a tliousand years, before the grand forth-
coming Sabbath of millftiial rest.
And faster is the pace we rush at even while we
talk of it. Some short twenty years ago, the world's
wheels drave heavily in comparison of their rapid
rushing now. The trains of circumstance are going
at express speed, and Time's quickest gallop seems
likely to be his last.
IN RE OLD NEWSPAPERS.
"What a sucked orange is a read newspaper;
what an undiscovered country an unread one ! You
take it up with the luxurious expectancy of an
Epicurean, and you fling it down, all known, a sated
Stoic. AYlio could live intelligently now-a-days
without that high-spiced morning cup to wash his
eyes withal, or mingle equally amongst his fellows,
unposted up to the last minute in all the busy world's
histories ? For a newspaper has well been called,
" The history of the world for to-day ;" and every-
body recognizes it as the great necessity of civilized
existence.
I always give away newspapers among our rustics,
excepting only the advertisement sheet ; for no one
knows how sadly this last (usually supposed to be
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 239
the least objectionable) is apt to unsettle mere sim-
plicity. In the list of Wanted, each supposes him-
self especially called; and where folks advertise
enormous wages, as they are apt to do for clubs and
botanical gardens, my cook forthwith accounts her-
self ill-used if she has not sixty pounds a-year, and
my gardener believes himself a cheated man if he
gets not the head Scots price of a hundred and fifty;
while, as to ample fortunes in return for twelve
postage stamps, our rural population evidently keep
the town-rogues' bladders well afloat by credulity.
So, mind you never give away the '^ Times"
advertisement-acre ; nor on the other hand ever
selfishly destroy its often noble leaders ; let poor
Clodpole raise himself thereby, if anyhow he can;
but not, for humanity's sake, upon the inflated wind-
bags of its advertisement sheet. Young girls
especially have often walked straight into the most
villainous mousetrap, on the bait of some so-called
situation.
So, then, when you do give away your papers, it
will be well that you remember zEsop's caution to
make fire paper of the advertisements.
THE DITCH AND THE TVELL.
A certain ditch became proud of its popularity
with the cattle who thronged to it for drink, and
240 THE HIDES AND EEVERIES
it loudly despised a neighbouring well that was too
deep for such popular watering. "Nay, but/'
remonstrated the well, "please remember, good ditch,
(whose usefulness I won't presume to dispute,) that
all your water comes draining from other places, but
mine springs solely from myself; ay, and you'll be
dry enough in hot summer, ditch, when the thirsty
beasts most need you; but just at that critical season
my virtues are most valued, for I never fail of my
supplies, as all the flocks know."
Here is the difference, friends, between your
surface lecturer and your deep philosopher; though
every now and then you get the noble combination
of a Faraday, a running stream from a well-head,
equally amusing to the young and instructive to the
old.
But in most other cases, (we name no names, for
courtesy's sake,) the waters of our profoundest wells
are too roughly walled, too deeply sunk, to be
accessible to the vulgar. Was ever any publication
so utterly unreadable as the Pellowsophical Transac-
tions ? Any method of oral elucidation more incom-
prehensible than that of the illustrious astronomer,
M'Fungus ? Or, were any manners ever more repul-
sive than those of Professor Growl ?
Your rapid facile itinerant too, who lectures here
and there for lucre, how very like he is in boastful-
ness (as well as a certain sort of usefulness admitted)
to this ditch Fve just had to jump.
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 241
STRUGGLES.
Your strength is to sit still. To keep one's seat
quiet in the racing riot of life, patient courage is the
quality, just as in the literal saddle.
I once saw a poor fellow drowned ; he was bath-
ing in a pond and got out of his depth, floundering
frantically ; in a few minutes (for there was no help
near, and I was but a child,) he was quite under
water, and then a gaunt hand grasping at nothing
came up, and clutched thrice, and sank !
Now, if that struggling unfortunate had but kept
his hands down, everybody knows he might have
floated, and so have tarried for the help that came
speedily, but all too late.
Thus with the troubles of life ; don't straggle, take
things easily and calmly and firmly ; there^s always
time enough and space enough and chance enough,
yes, and good strong providential help when sought
for, if the quietness of courage be but ready at hand
to take advantage of untoward no less than toward
circumstances. Presence of mind is just this, the
making a man equal to all emergencies, master of
every position, king of men and things.
Look at yonder nervous tyro taking a fence, fuss-
ing his hunter with his own fearfulness, and by no
means unlikely to be left ignominiously in the ditch ;
look again at the steady man whose motto is " keep
B
242 THE RIDES AND EEVEHIES
cool/^ mesmerically taming down the fury of his
animal, and leaving all behind him in a business-
like way. You have the same in life. Success is not
with the undignified struggler, habitually timid, and
only daring by fits and starts ; but it abides with
the constant hero of quiet persevering unobtruded
effort, who resolutely (however slowly,) wins the goal
he makes for.
HUSH!
Holy silence ; what a rare and beauteous blessing
in this turmoily world of everlasting clatter and talk !
"Whither can one turn to win its gentle influences,
and be free from the irritations of perpetual tongue ;
How Hke a dream, an exhalation, an opening flower,
the intellect expands in silence — how lulled, as in a
lazy morning doze, the spirit rests and thinks ; how
happily the glad heart basks in that sweet sunshine
of the silent noon.
Never yet have I thought music more melodious
than to my sohtude is the utter absence of all sound :
never has eloquence so trapped me as deep ecstatic
silence.
Old Pythagoras was quite right in teaching his
pupils for wisdom and comfort's sake to hold their
tongues habitually. And the anchorites, each in
I
OF THE LATE MR. .ESOP SMITH. 243
liis t^till cavern, liad a pleasure all their own, which
your giddy chatter-box is utterly incapable even of
appreciating.
Ay, ay, Brenda, you and I taste it in this quiet
wood, where even finches and thrushes are still as
death in the hot shade of high summer. There^s
nothing like noontide in an old wood for the true
unbroken silence.
Silence ! It is the very atmosphere of rest ; and
rest, what is it but the best idea we have of heaven,
" entering into rest," even as the beatification of the
Creator Himself is called a Sabbatism ? O ! what a
balm is silence, after that so frequent storm of cla-
mour. Go from the law-courts into the deep green
lane ; or from the strife of Mrs. Jade into tlie peaceful-
ness of solitude; or from the Babel of a conver-
sazione into the still moon-light. What a blessed
exchange !
They pretend that solitary cells make people mad.
Nothing of the sort. Crimes and conscience may,
but not the rest and loneliness ; these by themselves
would help an innocent's heaven ; these amount to
joyfulness and wisdom, to the ecstasy of saints and
tlie meditation of sages. Now you understand why
^Esop so seldom cares to ride in company, and is so
often glad to get away all alone to deep woods and
unfrequented byeways. But how diff*erently folks
are constituted, to be sure. I know men who can't
K 2
24-4 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
bear a quarter of an hour of their own company;
and women who will chatter down a nightingale,
unchecked by even your indignant " Hush \"
^sop was once with an Alpine party threading a
difficult pass on mules in early summer, when
avalanches are most perilous. One overhung the
path fearfully, and our guide in a hoarse whisper
exhorted Silence for very life's sake: all obeyed, —
except one wretched female, a lady's-maid, who
so energetically promised not to say a single word,
that — down came the thundering mass with a rush
close in front of us ! and (thanking Heaven for such
an escape from the consequences of untimely
eloquence,) we had ignominiously to retrace our steps
thinking no small scorn of that talking Abigail.
HUNTING TO HEEL.
Who can detect religion or philosophy in a fox-
hunt? Well, if Unitarians and Materialists do not
illustrate the sportsman's dilemma of hunting to heel,
I never met a parable on horseback.
"When hounds hit the scent, it's everything to
know which way to follow it; for if you foolishly
hunt to heel, the farther you go the more distance
you put between the hounds and the fox.
And so, a truth may be found, and diligently
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 245
tracked, too ; but, alas for results ; it may all along
be hunted the wrong way.
Tm not going to be theological in pink, but just
drop the hint, how evidently the Unitarian's truth
of our Lord's humanity, from being tracked the
wrong way, unchristianizes man and undeifies God :
and how surely the subtle Materialist, the brain-
anatomizer, goes all the further from the Maker, the
more closely he follows up the made. They hunt
effects and not causes ; the scent gets fainter at
every onward step; and the fated issue is error at
the wrong end of the trail of truth.
EDUCATIONALS.
Before my nephew Eobert went to a certain
celebrated public school (but they're all alike, so one
needn't be particular as to the " certain") the then
little fellow could write a fair boy's hand, and spoke
a speech trippingly on the tongue; his modern
geography was respectable, he had an inkling of
English history, and could do a rule-of-three sum.
Now, after five expensive years at that seat of
learning (where, by-the-bye, he has been half his
time in hospital from hardships and fagging), we find
the educational result of some seven hundred pounds
in cash, and the pick of his youth in time, to be pro
and con as follows.
246 TLIE RIDES A?^D REVERIES
For the pros — he can compose an Alcaic ode in
imitation of Horace pretty indifferently ; is a fair
judge of the corruptions in a Greek chorus ; knows
the name of every village in ancient Attica; has a
gentlemanly self-confident manner; and, amongst a
lot of commoner acquaintances, has been fortunate
enough to secure, as especial intimates, three youths
of family and fortune, whose connexion may possi-
bly grow to value in after life.
For the cons — it must be confessed that his hand-
writing is illegible; he is quite unable to keep
account of his pocket-money ; he reads like a charity-
child ; tells me that Vienna is in Sweden, and Cal-
cutta in South America; is full of extravagant no-
tions and follies ; has a profound contempt for
modern literature ; and says that chemistry and the
ologies are all bosh. As his prudent parent has
educated him with an especial view of becoming a
doctor of medicine, I fear these results are the
reverse of satisfactory.
And will Oxford be any better, supposing that he
turns to the church, as his mother wishes ? I trow
not. If the lad escapes the slang set, with immoral
accompaniments; and the ultra high churchers,
with Popish ditto ; and the utter hard-readers,
(whose aim is a double-first, and not knowledge for
its own sake, whose destiny a college tutorship in
useless lore, not the duties and utilities of life ;) — if
he escapes the tufts and their following, with inordi-
I
OF THE LATE MR. ^.SOP SMITH. 247
nate expense ; or the low-church pious, witli their
average humble birth and dissenting connexions;
at all events, Eobert will not escape the gentlemanly
set, and their rigid Oxford etiquette; whicli alone
will thoroughly disable him from becoming an
earnest zealous unpragmatical parson for the masses !
This collegiate pride and chilliness are to cling to
the man for life ; he caimot herd heartily with his
inferiors ; he waits, even witli the gospel message at
his tongue, for a formal introduction to his listeners ;
is too high-bred and classically nurtured for ordinary
parish work ; and altogether amounts to that spoilt
missionary, the average church divine.
AVhat's to be done, then with Robert? Let us
forget the classics a while, as a little out of date, how-
ever admirable ; and let us try instead to inoculate
the lad with a love for the natural sciences and their
Designer, the great and good God of nature provi-
dence and grace, — to interest him in astronomy,
geology, chemistry, botany — to stir up his benevolence
for the starving sinful masses — to lead his heart to
Christ his Saviour, his energies to active good-doing,
his recreations to nature and art, his amenities to
universal charity ; and so, with a strong touch of
such practical matters as anatomy, nosology and so
forth, whereby he, as a doctor of medicine, is to earn
his bread, we shall, I trow, compass in our nephew
most of the ends of education.
248 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
PAROCHIAL TOOTHACHE.
Do what one will, try what you please — milk-
poultices, mesmerism, camomile-bags, brandy, cre-
osote, chloroform — there's no cure for the real strong
throbbing toothache but extraction; for you'll find
after that excruciating tug which seems to tear
asunder soul and body, that there's a fiendish little
abscess at the root of your hollow grinder, not to be
charmed away by any less severe process than the
actual death-wrench.
jEsop's recent experience in this matter, and a
consequent reverie thereon, convince him that a parish
may have the toothache as truly as a parishoner ;
and that there is no remedy from the plague but
excision.
Here we are at Milford in the thirtieth year of a
bad parson, the dull dry pompous Dr. Drone ; who,
however deep in the Greek Theatre, is the densest of
preachers ; whose ticket for heaven is the bare certi-
ficate of baptism; in whose scheme of theology he
(the priest) is a vice-god upon earth to absolve or to
damn ; and who never yet has done an atom of
spiritual good to the starving souls around him.
Patiently indeed have we borne our parochial
toothache — this dull, worrying, chronic pain, varied
OF THE LATE MU. ^SOP SMITH. 249
by an hebdomadal fit of fiercer anguish ; and dili-
gently have many of us tried all the anodynes in
vain. Now and then Drone goes to the seaside, and
then we have the respite of some brighter neigh-
bour — but he returns refreshed unto superior heresy
and dullness; he falls ill — and forthwith gets and
forces on us a curate the very double of himself;
my sister inundates the parish with religious tracts ;
Dr. Newsaw even invites the hyper-eloquent Sturgeon
to be the Triton amongst our minnows here-
abouts; — but do what w^e will, the self-complacent
Dr. Drone is still the fatal incubus of his incum-
bency, and is probably destined to remain so for
twenty years more. Extraction is the only cure.
Who'll give him a bishopric? Or when, O when,
shall Milford church bells joyously ring in his suc-
cessor ?
Now, if there were not hundreds of parishes
amongst our ten thousand livings similarly afflicted
with a chronic parochial toothache, the gentle ^sop
would not thus have bored mankind with the useless
knowledge of a Drone's existence ; but in the hope
that some few of Drone's quality may comprehend
the estimation wherein their priestcraft presumptions
are held by lay folk, and may haply take a hint as to
neglected duties and everlasting responsibilities, this
is to remind them, without flattery, how sorely their
parishes are troubled with the toothache.
250 TUE RIDES AND EEVERIES
OLD MAIDS.
I've just passed the four Misses Larkins, taking
their forlorn constitutional on Milford Common ; the
age-ing maiden-aunts of that mad-cap Charles, and
too often made the butts of his ridicule, although
they love him dearly.
Poor things ! I remember them all years ago
graceful enough, and prettyish girls ; and Fve seen
them in succession wane away, till thus they have
subsided into hopeless old maidenhood. Who can
tell the weariness of spirit, the disappointment and
dejection, wherewith each one has seen her youth
glide by, and all its charms and hopes and yearnings
vanish? Who can estimate their respective heart-
martyrdom of blighted and ignored affections ? Who
can guess the pain that has dried up in them all
those natural gushing feelings of womanhood, and
changed the once warm girls so absolutely into frigid
spinsters ? Charles, Charles, forbear that silly jesting :
it is heartless, unjust, ungrateful. All such deserve
of us men respectful pity and love ; and more than
indulgence for any pettiness and frettiness of temper
we may find in them.
Society is ever harsh and witheringly scornful to
any whose chances are past; never considering that
OP THE LATE MR. JESOV SMITH. 251
an old maid often represents the romantic constancy
of a young but unfortunate attachment, or the de-
voted sacrifice of love and duty. And how usually
in country homes, or the sometimes deeper solitude
of cities our brightest beauties blush unseen, and
grow up and grow old with scarce a chance of happy
love and marriage. You and I know scores of likely
girls, with nobody coming to woo — a wallfull of
over-ripening peaches, with no hand to pluck them,
and only heaven^s universal sun to kiss them on the
willing cheek : a pity, an utter pity, and a waste of
human happiness.
Alas, for the difficulties heaped by our social
tyrannies in the path of youthful attachments : for, a
universal mammon-worship has set the standard of
so-called competence so high, that few young folks
can reach its lowest fold. And thus they wait and
pine till youthfulness and sometimes early love with
it have perished : whereby in middle life Society
reaps many a sheaf of the ordinary comfortless mar-
riages : and whereby the youth and manhood of the
bulk of men become infected by our Greatest Social
Evil, while our gentlewomen pine away by hundreds,
unwilling nuns.
And have not you and I often wondered how it
should happen perpetually that so many vixens win
the prizes of the marriage-mart, while so many kind
and charming women die unwooed and unwon^
252 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
really think it must be that an over-exquisite modesty
of these latter makes not sign enough for our mas-
culine vanity ; as we men are too often carried off ,
captive by the sheer impudence of amazons who
flatter and wink, and give us no trouble in the
seeking; but are apt to pass by the sweet retiring
girl, whose unobtrusiveness repels advances. Con-
cealing everything, these are themselves concealed —
forgotten ; and, if old J^^sop may whisper a word in
any such good girl's ear, he would say to Phyllis,
" Give Corydon more encouragement : the average
dullness of human life yearns for such a pleasant and
unguilty stimulus : and great is the potency of truth
in an unconcealed affection/^
Would that there were among fathers and mothers
a more expansive liberality as to love-matches !
Nothing elevates humanity like Love : but what
with legal settlements and the social treadmill, and
the folly of insisting that a young couple should begin
life with much about the same competence where-
with their parents end it, all manner of vexations
interpose to delay, and years pass, and hearts cool,
and disappointment sours, and the happy time for
union goes by : and the woman has long lost her
gentleness and loveliness, and the man has grown
either covetous or dissolute, and so the middle-aged
couple wed because they cannot help it; and the
ordinary stage of married misery sets in. How
[
OF THE LATE MH. -^ESOP SMITH. 253
different it miglit have been with that dull pair, had
hearts and bodies been united before attractions had
withered in the girl, and innocence been sacrificed to
worldly prudence in the boy : those ten lean years of
waiting have starved them for each other, and now
that their fathers have died out and marriage is
within their power, one or other very likely hopes it
still impossible. As all things else in this life, love and
wedlock have their seasons ; pass the good time, and
all the crop is spoilt before its harvesting. If ^sop
has the chance with niece or nephew he will not "to
the union of true hearts admit impediments." A
christian lovematch is a wise and happy and holy
blessing.
HAMMER AND NAIL.
When to leave off is no small part of wisdom.
Look at that carpenter^s apprentice. The ten-a-
penny nail was fixed firm enough right up to the.
head, but fussy over-hammering must give just three
more blows to make all surer, and the whole shank
is loosened in its socket by the jar.
Again ; a neighbour artistes very clever sketch
had just exactly dashed off nephew Robert's likeness.
It was quite unmistakeable — the exact twist of his
mouth and wink of his eye. Nothinsj could be better.
254 THE RIDES AND EEVERTF9
" Think not ?" knowingly asked Mr. Stipple : and
so he took the drawing home, worked hard at it for five
days, and after due diligence in fining and polishing,
brings me back the tame, gentlemanlike, and fashion-
able misresemblance which we all barely recognize
as our bluff Bob subdued into a dancing-master !
Again; and mingling gravity with our gaieties.
DonH commentators (invariably profuse where mat-
ters are evident, but close enough in the really difficult
passages,) always omit to tell us the reason why ^' the
Lord was angry with Balaam because he went, albeit
he had been told to go T' It is understandable on
the same principle as this, that after a wise father
has interdicted some wrong request of a son obstinate-
ly bent thereon, if that son asks again, he will say,
" Do it, and take 'the consequences.'' Ask once,
and take your answer of denial ; ask twice, and you
get what you desired of permission, with its punish-
ment. One good answer should suffice. To human feel-
ings what can be more worrying than iteration ? All
our nature uprises in shouts of "Spoke, Spoke T'
indignant at fretful repetitions.
Further, one of the wisest of ancients gave it as
his tit-bit of experience, that life should be conducted
on this identical principle of Ne quid nimis. Over-
doing it is to vault into the saddle so violently as to
fall over on the off-side. Overdoing it is to demon-
strate practically that too much of anything is good
OF THE LATE MR. MSOP SMITH. 255
for nothing ; the old proverbial evil of excess, capable
of infinite and most wearisome illustrations, — teeto-
talism, asceticism, libertinism, and all other isms
moral, physical, and metaphysical; but just now-
brought most simply home to my mind by that
clumsy apprentice and his over-vehement hammer.
THE GRUMBLING GIMLET.
I had hardly left that apprentice before a fable-
seed dropped among my thoughts, as I jogged home-
ward ; and it came, like a flying parachute of dan-
delion, out of the same young carpenter's basket,
lying there by the palings in a corner.
To this effect. A gimlet grew exceedingly discon-
tented with its vocation ; it envied all the other tools,
thinking scorn of its own mean duty of perpetual
boring and picking holes everywhere. The saw and
the axe had grand work to do ; and the plane got
praise always ; so did the chisel for its carving ; and
the happy hammer was always ringing merrily upon
the clenching nail. But for it, a wretched, poking
paltry gimlet, its work was hidden away, and the
little use it seemed to be of, was all soon put to the
credit of that stout interloper the nail.
However, a little unseen fairy, hovering about the
grease- pot, kindly took occasion to comfort poor
gimlet, as thus : —
256 THE RIDES AND REVEPJES
" Is there one tool in the whole kit of them that
our master, Mr. Teak, makes more use of than of
you ? And which of them can he forego less easily ?
(for, of course, your brother Bradall is with you ia
this plaint.) Though every tool has its special ex-
cellence, still many of those you envy might be
superseded by neighbours. The axe will hew down
an oak pretty nearly as well as the saw will cut it ;
the adze will smooth away roughnesses at least half
as neatly as the plane ; the knife (if our worshipful
guild of carpenters did not unreasonably repudiate
such an instrument) could carve a cornice better than
the chisel : but nothing would compensate for your
absence — no, not even your cousin the augur ; for
neither nail nor screw will hold after him. Be
content; nay, more, be happy. Though your work
seems mean and secret, though there is nothing
of outward show, nothing of open praise, still,
gimlet, you are the most useful, and therefore, I need
scarcely add, not the least honourable of the work-
man's tools. It is to your good oflices that he
chiefly looks for coherence without splitting ; and to
your quiet influences, the neatness, the solidity, the
comfort of his structure may greatly be ascribed/^
And are there not m.any pining gimlets in society,
ambitious of the honour given to the greater-seeming
tools of our Architect, but unconscious that in His
hands they are quite as useful? The loving little
OF THE LATE MR. ^ESOP SMITH. 257
child, tlie gentle woman, tlie patience of many a
moral martyr, the diligence of many a duteous drudge,
thougli their works may be unseen and their virtues
operate in obscurity, yet are these main helpers to the
very joints and bands of our body corporate, the quiet
home-influences whereby the great edifice Society is
so nicely wainscoted and floored without spHt boards.
DROPPING THE BATTLEDORE.
As I was passing Eden Yilla, I heard high words,
apparently a domestic argument between the voci-
ferous pair, who were once our billing and cooing
Jeannette and Jeannot. And soon after, as I skirted
Dr. Blacklook's school-playground, 1 was reminded
of them again; battledore and shuttlecock — there
they go ; never let a word drop, but worry and
wrangle, and exasperate utterly, and duteously make
the most of it !
I seldom knew a downright quarrel yet, where
two people were not in the wrong ; drop your battle-
dore and the shuttlecock will fall. "A soft answer
turneth away wrath." ]N"o doubt it does, in nine
cases out of ten.
But not quite always ; some unreasonable quarrel-
lers there be, who will batter the peacemaker when
he drops his battledore; and it's manifestly better
258 THE HIDES AND REVEEIES
that the shuttlecock be battered. With such folks
it^s always wiser to give than to take. Yfisdom hates
a quarrel; but a man must be either very dull or
very dishonest who can go through life, meekly and
mutely as Broadbrim counsels ; under some circum-
stances it^s not to be done without a compromise of
every good thing. Woe to the spiritless varlet who
buys his present quiet by such a spendthrift mort-
gage !
And here, in this common case of a discordant
Jeannette and Jeannot, what's to be done ? If the he
drops the battledore, it's all over with him, henceforth
and to the end of the chapter, henpecked ; and as to
any probability of battledore-dropping by the her,
that's as far distant as Alcyone. Inextinguishable
tongue will doubtless gain the day ; and Jeannot,
though unvanquished still, by taking refuge in a
wiser silence, will seem to his clamouring foe to have
succumbed.
The battle is not equal. A wliole sex for sym-
pathy, and half the other sex for gallantry, side at
once with the vociferating Jeannette, witliout a
doubt ; while, as for poor Jeannot, he dares not tell
his trouble even to a brother, without the risk of
being thought a weak fool for it ; or carry his rea-
sonable quarrel out a I'outrance with Jeannette, with-
out earning with all respectable ignoramuses the
character of a brute. Meanwhile, his innocence is
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 259
likely enough to be slandered by the foul mouth of
jealousy, his patient spirit bruised by the vituper-
ations of rage ; and all this aggravated by the fact
of Mrs. Jeannette's hypocritical gentleness and
graciousness to strangers, while for the enduring
Jeannot she reserves these perpetual storms of
perverted affection that form the atmosphere of Eden
Villa.
And, as to other sorts of warfare, Mr. Silas Pump,
our grocer, with his prim friends, affects to drop the
battledore on principle, does he ? Not exactly : relying
on the innate generosity of Englishmen, who strike
ao fallen foe, and on their good nature in sparing
aon-resisters, these meek and shrewd spirits make
their merchandize by the dodge of quietness and
keeping out of harm^s way. But I for one wouldn't
wish to fall within the scope of those men's tender
mercies, if the law or any other such strong chance
gave tliem the advantage without risk. No more
inexorable enemy can be found than your Silas
Pump, if only quite sure of his victim ; but he
shrinks against the slightest chance of encounter ; and
his cowardice is sported not without gain or credit by
this pattern hypocrite for conscientiousness.
What worse than nonsense also some folks (par-
liamentarians too) are so often, just now, spouting
•but
about Vengeance.
"Retribution,"
say
they,
"is
for
s
man,
2
260 THE HIDES AND REVEEIES
vengeance belongeth to a Higher Power !" Do they
then really intend to imply that their Higher Power
is what we moderns call vindictive, that is, meanly
cruel? They cannot, they dare not: the fact is,
they are ignorantly battling with an obscure tit-bit of
etymology, and do not seem to know that in old
English vengeance and justice were convertible terms.
Ey ' vengeance ' no scripture-quoter properly means
anything but righteous retribution; which in an
especial manner is the ultimate prerogative of tbe
Judge of the whole earth. And when iEsop lately,
in the heat of his spirit, longed for vengeance on
those Indian torturers, he did but echo the Psalmist's
holy aspiration: "Let the vengeance for thy servants'
blood that is shed, be openly shewed upon the
heathen in Thy sight !'' Let these murderers be
wiped out of the book of the living, as speedily
and effectually as possible. And they will be, too,
or have been by this time, that's one comfort, in
spite of Silas Pump's advocacy : nay, I am not sure
that the humanitarian howl has not added an
exasperation to our outraged human nature, if any
addition were possible after those nnspeakablo
cruelties. So, every way, Silas Pump had better
have held his tongue.
The most extreme of democrats, professing to
desire liberty and equality to every man woman and
child of the human race, and preaching theoretically
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 2G1
the greatest happiness of the greatest number in liis
public mission, is known, as a rule, to be at home
the meanest of domestic tyrants, the very centre of
social misery wherever he shows himself : and so, if
you wish to find a pattern private enemy, your
search is pretty sure to be successful, possibly to a
wholesale extent, among the ranks of our professed
philanthropists. Silas Pump, though I never did or
cared to do him any harm, is the most rancorous foe
I have : it is true, JEsop does not worship his idols,
mercenary peace, morbid humanity, and unlimited
cold water : it is true, that my Christianity has not
dried up in me — as in him — every drop of human
feeling, nor quenched every spark of English ge-
nerosity ; it is true, that I despise Silas, and de-
nounce him as a feeble sort of traitor to his country
and his kind, damaging Eeligion by his hypocrisy,
and infecting our mercantile masses with his cow-
ardice. Therefore doth Silas Pump, that preacher
of universal charity, hate in particular honest iEsop:
and, therefore, is our breakfast table perpetually
gladdened with the anonymous calumnies of a
wretched but clamorous party, to the extreme
amusement of J^ sop's little nieces, and to the in-
dignation of that one personage in whose eyes ^Esop
to his glory really is a hero — his valet !
262 THE BIDES AND REVERIES
ALONGSIDE EDEN VILLA.
Depend upon it, the special experiences of any
man would, if fairly made known, advantage every
other man. Evils have not been endured in vain
by the individual, nor without an ulterior design of
Providence for the benefit of his social sphere.
"None of us liveth for himself" alone, nor dieth
for himself. Each is one little tessera in the vast
and elaborately-patterned tesselated pavement of
society; and without his particular quahties of
character and incident, his form and colour, the
mighty total of God^s Mosaiced floor would be by so
much incomplete. When a man, like Colonel Jade
or Jeannot, has haply endured vexations himself,
or witnessed better men suffering adversities, it is
well for such an one to consider truly, — All this
worry, all this evil is not sent for nothing, either as
to me or to my brethren; for self, the lesson is
chiefly patience, with accessories of conquest over
difficulty, and prayerful faith in trouble; but for
others, the man has his moral tale to tell, his con-
fession, his sympathetic open-heartedness, whereby,
under similar wretched circumstances, " some forlorn
and shipwreckM brother haply may take heart
again.^'
Hence, even ^sop's bachelor revelations of the
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 263
cases of liis poor friend Colonel Jade and others
shall, unknown to him, be the mouthpiece of many
a case of wedded martyrdom, the daguerreotyped
picture of many a dislocated home ; comforting some
by the very fact of finding in imperishable print
domestic truths that few have ventured to utter
to his friend, if even he try not to conceal them
from himself. It is not by every one that terma-
gants are put into the stocks, and the too-frequent
fact of married misery limned truly ; it is not every
writer who will dare to speak a pitying word for
such a pariah as Traviata; nor will qui que ce soit
dash, with the contemptuous force of an iron knight
charging a mob of leather-jacketed churls, into the
very thick of the critics. These things, friends
unseen, has jEsop tilted at for you. The hump is
in his spirit more truly than on his back — a hump
that makes him independent, rash, censorious.
Quixotic. Like mad Lear, his acme of happiness
would be to head a charge of ten thousand horse !
Was not Alexander a hunchback ?
GOSSIP.
How glad all those little boys round a bonfire are
of the grand chance of flinging firebrands about!
261 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
and with what an innate love of mischief-making
every small society circulates its calumnies !
Our Little Pedlington seems to be a spiritual
glutton that lives on gossip ; its maw must be cram-
med with news, true or false ; the hint becomes a
surmise, and the surmise a rumour, and the rumour
a fact, and the fact known in all its details to every
family in the parish, long before those whom it
chiefly may concern have any notice of its existence.
Dr. Newsaw, I'll be bound, hasn^t the least idea
that there were dreadful stories afloat, relative to his
totally unconscious Mrs. N., wdien Colonel Blunt
was hereabout with his militia ; Simpson is probably
to this hour ignorant that he has been several times
indubitably ruined, solely because he has seen fit
from time to time to curtail the more obvious ex-
travagances of his household ; whilst I myself, — I
know this well enough and chuckle at the news, — I,
iEsop Smith the hunchback, have been by common
and undoubted authority reported an engaged man
over and over again to every expectant spinster in
the county. There's no end to it ; and the more
you deny a lie, the faster and farther it spreads.
And who can fend off calumnies ? Possibly at this
moment, you yourself, friend, or I myself, may be
the most innocent victim of some malignant or
ridiculous story ; that may (if Providence so will)
prove the hinge of our destiny. AVho can help it ?
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 265
As well may the way- side hedgerow help itself, so as
to keep clear of splashes in muddy weather ! There^s
nothing to be done, but to let it dry on, and then it
will anon blow off clean in sunshine from the vigour-
ous healthy leaves. And remember, for comfort in
things serious, maligned one, that through a little
patience and courage and discretion and timely ex-
planation, this very storm shall turn anon to blow
you the monsoon of prosperity; only wait and be
duteous, and bide your coming chance.
DOING NOTHING.
Often when I look about me, and take note what
trouble most folks are at diligently to gain losses, I
jump into my meditative saddle and rejoice in the
wisdom of doing nothing.
Only look at the results of certain other people's
labours. There^s my conscientious friend, ,
for instance, w4io by dint of hard reading of the
Fathers has just made shipwreck of Protestant faith
and Established prospects by devoutly going over to
Eome ; what a premium on theological study !
And there''s the spirited commercial B , whose
brave invention (with the patents and contracts there-
anent) has issued, after years of anxious toil and cost
266 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
and care, in utter ruin to himself and friends ; what
encouragement to enterprize !
And there^s that fine fellow, A , whose life-
long work, a most unreadable many-cantoed epic,
has left him mad and starved in his old age ; and
there^s the pleasure-hunting gallant, G , whose
evil diligence has woven an iron" net for his poor
sensual soul, stronger and closer than ever caught
his cousins-german Mars and Venus ; and there^s
my hard-reading Oxford cousin, S , who has
toiled his brain into a total incapacity for all the
useful occupations of life; all these and hundreds
more of the like over-active workmen are continually
getting ruined by sheer industry ! TU none of it ;
better far to be idling on horseback, doing nothing.
And look you at the wrecks of reputation now-a-
days; every man wlio moves is lost. Diplomatists
and generals, statesmen and prelates, and all sorts of
mighty names in literature, and science, and art,
and commerce, and rank, each hard at work in damag-
ing his own fame and everybody else^s welfare.
Verily, Minerva is a, staid old maid, and never
runs nor wrestles ; isnH her owl the very type of
meditative indolence, silent and idle as a Trappist?
Is not wisdom to be found with hermits, proverbially
as do-nothing a set of gentlemen as are to be found
within the clerical directory ? Isn't laissez /aire
OP THE LATE ME. MSOV SMITH. 267
accepted as the very motto of good government, and
obstruction to activity regarded as the highest
modern administrative praise ?
Suppose, for example, instead of these harmless
ramblings, your J^sop^s energy overflowed in the hot
industry of leaders for the Thunderer — whereM be
the good of it ? His wrath at all manner of wrongs,
his scorn against no ends of snobs and upstarts, would
only amount to a fierce stirring-up of the mud of
uncharitableness. He'd better do nothing.
ADDLED EGGS.
If to think upon two legs is oratory, to think upon
four legs must be eloquence indeed ; and hundreds
of times has ^sop been — imaginatively — not perhaps
a beggar on horseback, though an author.
rU tell you some of his latest fancies, waifs, and
estrays, for you or any one to capture and make the
best of as you may ; for, truly, such addled eggs are
numerous as peas in a bin to my fecundity, and
little enough count do I ever take of them.
Here then followeth, as in loyalty and gallantry
the first, an epic — The Victoriad !
What letteth (saving genius, quotha !) but that
one might reasonably emulate the Iliad — or the
^neid say — by setting twenty years or forty (may
2GS THE EIDES AND llEVERIES
it be a hundred !) of the annual register to blank
verse, and so spinning out Macaulay poetice to to-
morrow ? Ten cantoes : all modern heroes, histories,
inventions, wonders; Victorians reign, and all its
incidents and accidents, from table-turning to the
north-west passage ; a right notable era of the world,
hitherto unepicized and worthy of ten laureates.
And only conceive, as canto after canto came out,
how contemporary celebrities would tremble; liow
they must cringe to the herald of fame !
Again : here's another royal theme unsung ; a
tragedy founded on the sorrows of that ill-used,
innocent, and slandered wife, the Princess Sophia of
Zell : call it Konigsmark. Take, as characters, that
mean little pestilent imp, the first of our Georges ;
liis loosefish father, the Prince Bishop of Osna-
burgh; his fiend-mistress. Yon Platen; and these
noble victims — the murdered Konigsmark, and the
martyred Sophia, a close prisoner for thirty years !
This, with plentiful and picturesque episode, would
work into a very pretty tragedy ; on delicate ground
withal, and popular for curiosity, as touching royal
ancestors : a theme wherein the heroic Thackeray has
led a forlorn hope gallantly.
Again; Oftentimes, by nights, have I dreamt
about " Azouriel : a story of the stars ;" imagining
other worlds, senses, sympathies, and marvels ; every
source of fiction seeming used-up but the stars, but
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 259
there all mysteries and interests still intact. I
wonder whether ever I shall blunder out this story.
Once on a time, wearied of my brainful, ^sop
wrote and printed, and some of you have read a
whole bookful of other possible books; there were
five-and-thirty mortal themes in that same Saturnian
volume; which gobbled up then and there nearly
two score novels, essays, poems, histories, arguments ;
with schemes, contents, and specimens suppHed.
Here was a hatful of addled eggs ; but I won't repeat
the list, nor invent more of them. They were all
smashed that their breeder might forget them;
Eequiescant. These brain-maggots are apt to w'orry
fi man, if he can't crush them.
In fact, one always feels like the wizard's inex-
haustible bottle, which, after having satisfied the
curious thirst of a multitude, has still enough re-
maining to run over (by some marvel of trickery) the
hands and caps of astonished schoolboys.
CIRCULARS; AND AUTOGRAPHS.
I much wonder whether or not all the rest of the
world can get as many printed circulars, book ca-
talogues, and lithographed begging letters, as ^sop
Smith does ; and whether or not such efforts are in
those other cases equally unproductive. My waste
270 THE HIDES AND HEVERIES
paper basket is the ever yawning-gulf for such im-
pertinencies unread : and in especial, certain fraudfui
forgeries of handwriting avail to raise one's right-
eous wrath. If intended to deceive, it is downright
cheatery of unwary benevolence ; if not, why should
one be pestered with some secretary's individual
cacography in printer's ink, when plain type would
serve all purposes far better than such a false affec-
tation of personality ? The sort of thing does positive
harm instead of good to charities and asylums :
really, (for example), if my own indignation had not
been hot against a particular recent epistle, apparent-
ly specially levelled at myself, full of appeals to
conscience, feeling, reason, responsibility, and all be-
side ; with underlined emphaseis and numerous notes
of admiration {but in that fatal printer's ink, which
proved the doctor's hand-writing a forgery), ^sop
might have been enrolled by this time among the
life governors of that needlessly palatial affair, the
bankrupt Hospital for Illegitimates.
I have no patience with these authographic circu-
lars of lithography : shams all : and I wish that
everybody would serve them as ^sop does : the
more, because there has lately been nefariously in-
vented for the special purpose of helping such mean
deceptions, a printer's ink in black, not brown ; so
as to look as near as can be like to 'MYalkden's
registered :'' a cheat which Church-societies, Asy-
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 271
lums; and testimonial-hunters ought to be ashamed
of.
I wonder also whether any ''distinguished indi-
viduals^' are so continually solicited as ^Esop is for an
autograph. At a very moderate computation, in the
course of years, and in two hemispheres, there must
be ten thousand such .^E dipthongs already extant ;
and every post adds to the myriad. Only think how
many collectors there must be, who (if inclined to
forgery) might draw a cheque over such autograph !
and what a strange epidemic such hand-writing-
worship must amount to. Are these people palm-
istry-mad? Does not a steel pen spluttering, or a
quill one, freely blotty, make all the difference ? Is
any due consideration given to the date — as a chilled
cramped hand in bitter January, a flowing flourish in
August ? All these things, as all else in iEsop's rides
and reveries, are experiences ; and being experiences,
are providences ; and being providences, are in some
sort worth recording. This is the excuse throughout,
for self-revealings : heart speaks to heart, even (and
also chiefly) in the chronicling of trifles.
272 THE TvIDES AND REVERIES
BIG FISH AND LITTLE FISH.
Looking over Milford Bridge the other day, I saw
a great lot of chub and barbel, feeding on weeds and
flies in the clear water : they were all big fish and
kept together.
A little way off", nearer the bank, I noted the small
fry, moving about in squadrons ; they were all little
fish, and kept together.
Though all, both big and little, were much of a
sort, they would not mix, but the big consorted with
the big, and the little with the httle.
That's near about the way the grandees segregate
and the lesser folk hold together, thought I ; and
further, the small folk will come anon to be grandees
in their turn, when death makes room for them, and
time and circumstance have helped their growing:
and then, be sure they too shall be found consorting
with their great compeers, and will certainly despise
the shoal of little ones : and so on, to the end of the
chapter.
Let a poor man stand up against a rich man, and
it will soon be made a war of classes ; wealth, and
rank, and power hang together, when one of their
order is assailed by the vulgarity of any fellow who
clamours for his right, or protests against a wrong :
in such a case, Herod and Pontius Pilate suddenly
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 273
become friends, however foes aforetime. Nothing
binds magnate to magnate half so well as an invaded
privilege ; and seclusion is the first of privileges.
They talk of caste in India as a barbarous matter
and entirely reprehensible : but they act upon caste
in England as the tiptop point of civilization. In-
dividually, males may be found simple enough to be
philosophers and philanthropists and reformers, and
they try to break it down, teaching the big fish to
mix with the little ; but the females never heartily
second them ; and the exclusive son and heir, taking
his cue from the dam, goes the extreme on the old
tack, and repudiates his radical sire.
We are essentially caste-ridden everywhere, from
St. James's to St. Giles's; "Stand by thyself, I am
holier than thou art,'' is the word of unbrotherly
pride, spoken by every class to tliat immediately
below it ; there is plenty of condescension and affa-
bility beyond, plenty of soup poured bountifully
into the kennel ; but you won't easily catch butlered
Baker-street calling friendly at Providence Cottage ;
anymore than courtly Portman Square would recog-
nise a friend round the corner in Baker-street.
Proud Sir Hildebrand Pursang is consistently
affable with underlings ; but to those who rise above
these, and come nearer and nearer to his eminence,
he is proportionally repulsive; saving only to his
own supernal clique. Let him beware, and be wise
274 THE HIDES AND EEVERIES
iu time ; or he shall perish in his unpopularity ; for
■\ve are fast coming to the day when pride shall be
found a rather expensive luxury for its unfortunate
possessor. Those big chub and barbel, if silly enough
to be basking with their noses out of water, will one
day be bob-hooked out of their astounded coteries,
and the small fry shall crowd upon their weed banks.
big fish, remember you are sure either to be
caught, or utterly to die : make friends while you
have the chance, big fish ! there are plenty ready to
admire you, excuse you, and love you, and help you,
if you^ll only be aff'able and friendly.
O little fish, consider those big ones will ere long
be clean put out, and you^ll come to be the big
ones; show mercy and do homage, as you would
have it shown and done to you. 1 wish though, you
would mix more brotherly together, and help one
another.
BLIND FOLLY.
Lord Golofty passed me ten days ago ; and as he
was coming on, I saw he was resolved to cut me.
AYe don't agree in anything, I am happy to say ; we
are antagonistic at quarter sessions, on the hustings,
at church, everywhere ; in politics, and morals, I
hope, contradictories. Eeading, therefore, his small
Oi- THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 275
mind at a glance, my resolve was to humble him,
and I succeeded : it was by the good old rule of doing
right. As I trotted by, I bowed courteously; he
was walking, and pretended not to see me : but my
arrow went home ; he felt himself disgraced.
Again, three days after, Lord Golofty passed me,
riding, with a groom behind him ; iEsop was walk-
ing in his awkward dot-and-go-one fashion by help
of his Obi-stick as usual, and saluted, as a gentle-
man should : the groom returned it, but not the
lordship. I had now another triumph, for his very
servincr-man had seen him humbled.
Once more, while taking a similar hopping ramble
with two friends, I saw Lord Golofty on foot too,
coming before us. The poor, misguided creature,
buoyed by the windbag of pride and ballasted by
shame, would gladly have sunk any whither, were it
even into the earth; but it would not open before
him, and my lord inevitably come on.
Take notice, said I to Jones ; and observe, Eobin-
son.
I bowed with the utmost courtesy and reverence ;
and, as expected, the unhappy man shambled by
without a trace of recognition. That^s unfortunate
Lord Golofty, said I to Jones and Robinson, heir to
the Marquisate of Iceburgh ; pocr fellow, he^s blind
of both eyes !
T 2
276 THE EIDES AND EEVERIES
Blind ? shouted the duet of friends ; why, he sees
well enough ; look how he steams along.
Nevertheless, said I, the poor demented creature's
bhnder than Bartimseus; for he has not the wit to
discern either his duty or his interest. The only trace
of perception in his vision lies in this : he has the
modesty to see that I am far above his notice.
Ay, ay, Eobinson, I continued, just now it's
more than men of that sort can afford : these days
are the age of Philadelphia, — wlien brotherly love is
wisdom; and they herald in the age of Laodicea,
when the people come to be masters. Our poor
lordling there has been born too late; his fellows
are wiser every one of them — getting up model
lodging-houses, lecturing at mechanic's institutes,
patronizing cricket-clubs, and becoming one of us.
But here's an old-world isolation — a Queen- Anne
anomaly — a prse-Bastile Louis-Quinze-ism — and
what'll become of him ? Proud, hard-featured
and sarcastic, — Golofty never had a friend; and
it's a losing game to be continually making enemies.
He is thoroughly miserable, for his own part ; and on
the part of others, his own class ought to pull him
down for safety sake; he stands on the top of a
tower — a bullet-headed wrath-conductor — to dare the
withering crash of social unpopularity.
OP THE LATE MR. JESOV SMITH. 277
LAUREL.
The glory attaching of old time to the laurel, as
Fame's own wreath-grower, at last has provoked the
discontented envy of our annuals. They bitterly
complain of their own far superior beauties spurned,
or only worn by girls, and epergned at feasts for-
sooth; they are indignant too that a mere rank
shrub, producing nothing to speak of as a flower,
and bearing a fruit little short of poisonous, should
have so much honour undeservedly put upon it.
Now hear how the laurel answers them, '' Things
of a day — or at the best, changers with every sea-
son ! How would our Queen Fame be obeyed, I
should like to know, if her Majesty commanded of
any of you a wreath of merit for one of her worthies
in winter ? What could you do in the way of furn-
ishing the chaplet, all being either dead or utterly
sapless and leafless, denuded of your passing boast of
flowers? Summer glories fade, but Fame's wreath
mustn't ; so when Minerva chose a royal plant for
our Queen, she purposely made search in winter :
and when all your beauties lay decayed, or your
very beings perished, behold I alone was found green
and well-liking. My merit stood in this — unchange-
ableness."
The laurel's true reply brought other like fancies
278 THE RIDES AND REVEllIES
to my thinking. Is not all honour bound up in the
attributes of Deity ?
What makes an Original so valued, in spite of
many excellent copies ? Why should a coin be more
and more estimated for its rarity, until the real
Unique becomes invaluable? Wherefore has any
mystery such magical power over our minds, but for
the Incomprehensible ? Any act of superior prowess,
but for Omnipotence ? Any constant course of firm-
nessj but for the liglit reflected from Him who chang-
eth not ?
It's worth while having got my laurels cut this
morning; for, though here not half thought out
(every one of old ^sop's reveries might be wiredrawn
into a volume, but it is hateful to be tedious), there's
a spark of truth in this, alive enough to light the
pipe of meditation by, and smoke it for hours.
WHAT BETTER?
"An innocent idleness/' so you blame humped
jEsop for his hours wasted on horseback ; as if your
industrious folks are not perpetually found busying
themselves fussily about many things twenty times
idler, not to say worse and more mischievous. Why ;
I know worthy enough students of philosophy, who
have industriouslv read themselves throu^li German-
1 o
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SIMITH. 279
ism into atheism ; honest though too fervid politicians,
who have diligently written up the world by flar-flash-
ing leaders into extremes of chartism their sober judg-
ment deprecates; business-men, so wrapt in mam-
mon-worship day and night perpetually, as to ignore
all better heart and head religions : pleasure-men,
so hard- worked in winning their ill-losses as to shame
the more slothful zealots of virtue. All industrious
enough in their several ways ; but, alas ! to what
end ? Vanitas vanitatum.
Gallop ofp after ^sop; you cannot easily do
better ; breed your own thinkings — not lazily feed
so continually, as most men do, on the printed
thoughts of others : drink in originalities of mind
and speech with the fresh breath of the downs this
breezy morning ; and rejoice that you are kept from
doing worse by following after the thousand sorts
of pernicious industry always epidemic among men.
Ay, friend, believe me, many a common acquaint-
ance of ours is best employed when positively doing
nothing, dozing in bed o' mornings, or napping it
after dinner, — well out of harm's way : and now you'll
hardly be grudging a cripple his canter : cheerful-
ness, healthy vigour, quick thoughts and pure feel-
ings — if these are the results of a country ride, call
it innocent as much as you may, but by no means,
friend, an idleness.
What in the world could one do to be doing better ?
280 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
Shall I spin my heartstrings into that oft-mused epic
poem, which even if I could write it, Jiobody would
read ? or wear away my brain on the ever-exacting
grindstone of periodical literature, working nervously
against time ? or waste my substance in some har-
rowing speculation, dependent upon humbleness to
others? or court a feverish popularity (as many do,
and often have folks asked the like of iEsop,) by
lecturing, and speechifying, and other sorts of self-
advertisement? or should I read encyclopsedias be-
wilderingly ? or write them ? wdiereof there is no end.
No, my Brenda, ^sop's strength, and it is most
other men's too, is to sit still ; right seldom can he
do anything better than keep a good foothold in the
stirrup, and canter away after health and happiness.
THE COVETOUS GHOST.
Once upon a time, iEsop saw a ghost ; and learnt
something from it, too. If you wish to know how
and when, and where and what, courteously listen.
You'll find out, when all's told, that there may be a
propriety in setting even so gloomy an experience
among my rural rides.
Know then that my old house was once upon a
time occupied by so careful an ancient kinsman, that
he fairly enough passed for a miser ; and as now and
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 281
then hoards of guineas have been found in odd
corners behind tlie wainscot, and we are troubled
with rats to boot ; be assured it has not escaped the
respectable credit of being haunted. AVell, not very
long ago I actually saw and talked with this walking
gentleman ; and here is all about it.
I was in my arm-chair lolling alone after a pretty
hearty dinner, and just going to settle down into the
siesta state, when (without any warning) I suddenly
became aware of a small, pale, seedy-looking person-
age in a snuff-coloured suit, seated at an old desk-
book-case in the corner of the room, diligently count-
ing out his money.
I looked very hard at him — could neither speak
nor stir — but very distinctly heard the chink of
gold, and saw to my astonishment guinea after
guinea passing through his bony fingers. It never
struck me that he was a ghost ; all seemed too real
for that; and somehow or other my judgment was
not active enough to enquire who he was, nor how
he came there. So I stared, and he counted.
All at once, he gave a deep groan, — and I found
myself able to enuntiate — "Whafs the matter,
sirr
Quoth he, in a sepulchral tone, " Will you have
this hoards
" How was it gotten ?" I was sage enough to ask.
" Meanly enough/' he muttered.
282 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
" And how shall I use it ?^^ I had the caution to
enquire.
" Badly enough," said he.
Then I rather valiantly responded (it was after
dinner, you know), *' Til have none of your money,
sir : thank you though for your offer and your can-
dour."
With that, to my astonishment, the old gentleman
looked quite pleased; I had expected just the op-
posite; and, as he was evidently preparing to go
away, I felt emboldened to ask him, " Pray, sir, are
you our ghost ?"
'' I am," groaned he.
"And why then do you walk in this unpleasant
manner, and count out these ghosts of guineas in my
dining-room ?"
" Because I loved money too well," quoth he.
"Do you love it now ?" I rejoined.
A deep groan was his reply.
"If not, sir, why come here to disturb me by
counting it out ? Iladn^t you better rest, and let me
rest too ?''
" Good ! why not ? Yes, and thank you, Til try :
it never occurred to me that I could, but TU try ;
farewell, friend ^Esop." While he was speaking, he
seemed to melt away; and I shook off the nightmare,
or got shaken off myself in that uncongenial rural
ride, with a sudden start and a loud cry.
or THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 283
" Very well '^ — I caught myself soliloquizing — and
that was all I did soliloquize — for a confused jumble
of resolutions never to turn miser, never to walk,
and never to believe in walkers, is an aggregate of
morals too obvious to utter.
FATALITIES.
Who can tell what an hour may bring forth ?
One looks with commiseration on the unconscious
pig squealing voraciously for his breakfast, denied to
him on system, because he is to perish at half-past
eight.
As if also our own special butcher — hight death —
were not ordered at a set hour, and ourselves also
disappointedly complaining at the uncomfortableness
of being made ready for him !
It is not alone the stupid ox who is busied on his
way to the shambles in picking up mouthfuls that
may never be digested. Higher intelligences look
as pityingly on the thoughtless human, hasting to his
doom, as our children do on poultry fatting in their
pens for speedy killing ; but it is as merciful in our
case as in theirs, that none of us may suspect the fate
awaiting us, and that most commonly death is a sur-
prise.
A terrible accident too, just short of death, is con-
284 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
tinually in human histories the matter of a minute ;
the whole career of (Hope's) Anastasius, and his
everlasting change frovn good to evil, was the work
of a crooked nail ; and, if in squeezing through that
nasty iron swing gate, near Holmbury, Brenda had
not been in too great a harry, and so cut my knee-
cap with the cruel sharp corner, I should not now
have been meditating on a coucli under poultices and
bandages.
But the angel of destiny stood in the gap of that
gate ; and as we were cantering up to it, I no more
could guess his presence than yonder squealing pig
wots of butcher Buster's arrival, and the attendant
clod pole's zeal in getting ready the copper; said
zeal being stirred by hope of pig's interiors.
jEsop's two worst accidents hitherto [heaven send
him safety always] —but accidents ending in the
happy anti-climax of no ill results — were as thus,
and I tell them for their morals' sake.
For number one— I was riding as a youth a mon-
strous yellow mare at half a crown an hour from a
London stable : never do that, for the brutes have all
manner of vices, and perils flit about them like
spirits about Prospero's wand — but youth ever will
be venturesome and conceited. Well, we were pro-
gressing jauntily up Parliament Street, when full-tilt
down the hill, from Charing-cross, came thundering
a runaway cart, driverless, and scattering all before
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 285
it : my yellow monster couldn^t be coaxed to get out
of the way — and, on the instant of the collison un-
shipping my right foot from the stirrup, I flung my
leg over the horse's neck and sat ladywise, thanking
God for his mercy, for the next moment the cart-
wheel ripped otY the saddle flap ! Cultivate your
presence of mind, as Msoip does and be grateful.
For number two — scampering carelessly on a
mountain-pony over rough places (never do that,
however sure- foot-warranted) head over heels over
she went, and my hat was crushed flat on my hair :
always wear a hat out-riding, not a cap, unless it be
steel-ribbed; it's as well sometimes to have a super-
fluous skull.
But, the plain fact is, all of us carry about our
lives with us, lightly and loosely as ever knight-
errant carried glove on spear ; and heaven ever help
us, horsemen especially, from the constant peril of
" one step further."
PETER QUERY'S INTRODUCTION.
By a whimsical fatality the very next ride taken by
my friend ^sop, after his recovery from the knee-
scratch alluded to in this last paper, had nearly killed
him outright. So small a matter as a weasel was the
cause. Turning a sharp corner on Dymsfold
286 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
Common, just where tlie road was " mended'' with a
long acre of rough stones, the warmint ran across,
Minna shied, stumbled, fell ; and poor ^Esop's
bridle-arm and collar-bone were severely fractured;
to say less of ^linna's knees.
Now, as this happened close to my park-gate, and
my lodge-keeper brought Mr. Smith in such a di-
lapidated condition to the hall, needs must that I
should take him in; and, seeing that Dr. Newsaw
counselled perfect rest — a trifling concussion of the
contents of his cranium being added to broken
bones — friendship and hospitality alone commanded
me to keep him till recovered ; not to add that I felt
it no small honour to have as my inmate so distin-
guished an individual ; with some ulterior considera-
tions.
AYell, after about a week of bed, burnt vinegar
and leeches, the drawing-room sofa has for the past
month been the bearer of our convalescent iEsop ;
a quiet old quadruped enough. And oftentimes, to
while away the time, has our quaint and shrewd
friend amused himself and our juveniles (not to add
instructed us oldsters also) by babbling fables, some
of which I have jotted down as I best could manage
it unobserved. They have dropped from him inci-
dentally — but I cannot comment on them as he
would. Further (to let you into a delicate secret
only whispered at our home-hearth), Mrs. Query and
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 287
I are not without hopes that he is falling in love
with our eldest daughter ! What a feather in her
cap, if she is indeed destined to convert this satirical
misogynist — who is perpetually maligning himself as
old ^sop, whereas he's not thirty-three; to draw
out his latent amiabilities, and win the cross-grained
bachelor to the pleasant love of women and pater-
nal thoughts. Moreover, the Smithwood estate joins
mine of Dymsfold, and cripple as jEsop has made
himself out to be, he is a good-looking and good-
hearted fellow enough, and neither Mrs. Query nor I
will say ' no ' to the match, if our Lucy doesn't.
But this is a hint by the way — may we yet live to
see ^sop married ! [Alas ! that I should have
written in this strain while jotting down our ^sop's
talk, without a thought how soon the good fellow
was to be taken from us ! However, as things are, I
will take leave to save out of the fire the following
little batch of ^sopisms, taken down by me from
time to time as morsels of our friend's wise talk
when on that sofa.]
We had been exchanging a few thoughts about
education of the clod-poles. Suddenly, after our
friend's staccato fashion^ he broke out thus : —
THE POLE-AXE AYITH A RAZOR EDGE.
An axe went to be ground. Now the woodman
288 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
sent it foolishly to a cutler's used to razor-work, and
not to the blacksmitl/s, with his rough grindstone.
So the poor oversharpened axe got a keen fine
face ; wliicli, the moment it was used for hewing, was
chipped and notched all to pieces.
Yery likely : and I should be glad to know what
sort of mercy you show to our labouring class by
over-education. A road-mender or field-serf, or mere
brute-force tree-feller, is made quite wretched,
unnerved in his vocation, spoilt for his work in life,
by your sharpening his intellects, and so quickening
his indignation against enslaving circumstances.
A very bitter charity that — and the poor en-
lightened has not much to thank you for it. You
might as well soften and whiten his brown horny
hand with amandine, as make his humbled spirit sen-
sitive, his dim eye keen to see how sorry is his
state.
My small experience, Peter, goes to prove that the
happiest, most trusty, and least changeable servant,
is the one not given to book-learning ; and that, if
you wish to make a poor farming-man or any other
of our white slaves quite miserable, you had best
give him (having learned to read at the school in
youth of course) voyages and travels, fairy tales,
biographies, or almost any sort of literature, except
the duller staid and holy, and you will probably
succeed in unsetthng him for life ; so as to make poor
Eoger utterly discontented.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 289
It^s very bad policy and indifferent kindness to
oversliarpen your axe. What's meant for hard rough
work should have a hard rough edge.
Mrs. Query is a good affectionate creature enough,
but a little hasty at times; and J^sop, who had
grown to be quite intimate with us all, of course was
well acquainted with her in both phases. Now, my
manner is quiet and reserved ; and so one day ^sop
kindly came to my assistance after a certain tiff with
l^Irs. Q., on that perpetual bone of contention, the
punishment of a naughty child. The tiff was over,
and she was amiably trying to get a smile of recon-
ciliation out of me ; which I refused on principle,
seeing that it's Mrs. Q's. policy to take an ell for
every given inch, ^sop was pretending to be telling
a story to our youngest, Jenny; but it told else-
where, as you shall see.
THE ROCK AND THE WAVE.
It was a dead calm.
And the coaxing Sea said to the Cliff— Why stand
up there so firm, sir, so strong and grand ? Surely,
Mr. C, Tm gentle enough— why be so stern and
hold the reins so tight ?
I have my reasons, said the Cliff, with a sly wink
u
290 THE EIDES AND EEVERIE9
at his neighbour, Wind, who was just busthng round
the corner.
Now, if there was one creature alive more vex-
atious to Mrs. Sea than another it was just that
meddlesome busybody, Wind; and she no sooner
caught sight of his red face than she flew into a
terrific passion.
I think, my dear, said the patient Cliff, that I
have still some need of my good qualities.
Mrs. Query didnH half hke the moral of this;
however, her good -nature getting the mastery over
wrathfulness — or possibly from an instinctive appre-
hension that the fable would be only all the truer if
she flew into a passion about it — she turned kindly
to ^sop and said. Dear Mr. Smith, you really are
too hard on us sometimes. Now do give Peter a hit
too, he^s often cross enough to vex one, and Tm
sure if he were a little kinder and more cheering he
should never have to complain of me.
On the moment our ready friend gave me the
whip, as thus : —
THE BREAKERS.
Peter, you and I have yachted together before
now, and we've seen some escapes round headlands,
hugging the shore too closely and wearing among
OP THE liATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 291
reefs ; you remember how rough it always is in the
calmest weather in such neighbourhoods — now tell
me did it ever occur to you whose fault the turmoil
was, the rock's or the wave's ?
I see it all, said I, self-convinced and kissing Mrs.
Query.
REVISION.
^sop had been reading his Bible, according to
daily wont, as he lay nursing those broken bones
upon the sofa, — and, all at once, — " Peter/' said
he, " I've conceived an idea about this vexed matter
of scriptural revision worth making a note of. Any-
thing in the nature of a new translation I take to be
needless, liarmful, and in effect nationally impossible.
The English Bible is the very soil out of which our
mind sucks its sap, the mother earth in which our
oak is rooted : its vigorous Anglo-Saxon is a nature
to us ; and anything like modernizing it, or touching
it up with so-called literary gracefulness or scientific
accuracy, would be wormwood to our popular taste.
Again, consider the multitude of Bibles in existence,
— not so much the tons of unsold stock and vast
properties in stereotype, as the sacred phalanx of
family Bibles, heir looms, and personal treasures
sown thick in every home: what a folly, what an
xj 2
292 THE RIDES AND REVERIES
evil, what a waste, what an impossibility would it be
even to attempt to make these obsolete !
" Something, however, mj dear Peter,^' he went
on to say after a pause, "ought to be done in the
way of revising some half dozen passages which are
admitted errors, and a few score of others manifestly
amendable : due chiefly (as in such words as ' hell '
and 'damnation,' signifying only two centuries ago
'the grave ^ and 'chastisement,') to a modern
change in our living tongue. Now, this is what I
would propose if I had the ear of an archbishop.
Let six of our most orthodox and learned scholars be
authoritatively commissioned to make lists of such
errata and corrigenda: with books of good reasons
for each list. Let such errata, Avith a short sketch
of tlie reasons for them, be printed on a fly-leaf, of
all sizes so as to match all Bibles, and be given
gratis to all applicants : let similarly the corrigenda,
with a more extended account of the reasons for all
the changes and the social need for them, be printed to
match, and be sold at a cheap rate. Let nothing
be done for mere ornament or fashion's sake; but
every word worked at sedulously, as if cut out of
the antique rock of truth itself. In the course
of a generation, I judge that the alterations would
grow into the national heart and life; and it might
then, say some fifty years hence, become expedient
to incorporate such fly-leaves of errors and amend-
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 293
ments into the text. Thus, without any violence
done to piety, or to prejudice, or even to monied
interest, the cause of Truth would be reasonably
served, and the British public would have a perfect
Bible. No chance would be given to conflicting
sects and heresies, so as to edge in false texts; no
discredit would be cast on our dear old Book,
by universal acclamation the Book of English Litera-
ture no less than of National Religion ; no occasion
would be left to the infidel to point at acknowledged
errors or defects in our sacred volume ; no distressing
doubts as to the inspiration of this text or of that
would vex the soul of young believers; no sense
of having neglected to take the best care of that tree
of life whose leaves are for the healing of the world
would oppress the national conscience; but we
should easily, by slow and sure degrees, offending
none, and to the joy and help of many, replace a few
mouldered stones in the walls of our Zion, and
eradicate a few weeds from the Lord's garden.^'
We had been discussing the merits of the half-
dozen candidates who contested our popular Borough
of Milford ; and iKsop, after his blunt fashion, (and
remember that I am a bad Boswell of his talk)
delivered at a burst this opinion about
294 THE EIDZS AND EEYEEIES
POLITICS AND VOTING.
'^Everything's unhinged, men and measures are all
at dislocation, and each candidate gives us but a
complex choice of evils. ^' Quot homines, tot sen-
tentise/^ is the electioneering motto now : and jou
must do as well as you can to find a representative
of the merest cantle of your mind : it's not possible
to secure a human pier-glass now, to reflect your
whole man ; so you must be content with the very
small circle-mirror inside your shaving box.
" Tor my own part,'' went on ^Esop, " I am glad
that parties and partisanship are blown up : personal
character is so much better than faction. I prefer a
man to his so-called party, a character to votes or
measures; and claim to be of no school, neither
wishing to be a leader, nor ambitious of adding to
any body's following. Toryism— well, that is now
commonly understood to be a synonyme with cor-
ruption, superstition, serfdom, and is well-nigh de-
funct; Conservatism is easily confounded with
stagnation, obstruction, selfishness ; Whiggism—
what is it but a mixture of meanness, pride, cheaterj,
and treason; Liberalism, Kadicalism, Chartism —
are they not all slopes on the side of the precipice
down to ruination ?
"So I'll have none of them neat; mix me my
posset of politics, Peter.
OF THE LATE ME,. ^SOP SMITH. 295
'^So much Toryism as may recognise the divini
aliquid in authorities ; so much Conservatism as may
stand in a cricketer's spiked shoe on the slippery
sward ; so much Whiggism, as may be wisely econ-
omic, decently dignified,, and universally tolerant;
so much Liberalism as may reconcile the absolutely
patriotic with the resolutely philanthropic to the
brotherhood of men ; so much Radicalism as consists
with eradication of all evils possible; and so much
Chartism as will serve to speed the wheels of pro-
gress ; but carrying a downhill drag of right reason,
and a dead lock to all that tends to ungodliness and
wrong. Now then, Peter, what do you call me ?
could any minister reckon on my vote? I rejoice,
for ray part, in PeeFs break-up of factions; and in
this, that the old odious spirit of party is so nearly
dead among neighbours now. For example, the
other day I went to the polling-booth with a friend
on each arm, and we all three voted for different
candidates ; each giving credit to the other for
country^'s love and pure motives, and honouring each
other all the more for honesty and the consciousness
of freedom.''
296 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
A NEXT PRESENTATION.
"And so Dymsfold is to have anotlier spiritual
pastor and master forced upon it, ey ? without one
check upon the patron's whim, or one thought
about the parish's good. Ah, Peter, in the matter
of a presentation to a cure of souls, how cruelly
we church-laymen, poor parochial serfs, are used !
The last thing ever thought of, — nay, the very
thought is systematically abjured,— is the a priori
liking of a parish for its parson ; and as to our having
any voice in a successor, if we get the chance of a
change once in life, so reasonable and primitive a
notion as that of congregational election of the pastor
is denounced, derided, and stigmatised as ' disseutery/
So, the next rusty Fellow of a College succeeds in
rotation to the spiritual heritage for which he is so
totally unfit ; or the squire's veteran tutor is put in
hastily as a warming-pan, till young Hopeful (half-
witted and a precocious profligate) is old enough to
take orders ; or the capitalist who bought the living
fifteen years ago at Garra way's, at last realizing his
indifferent speculation, presents some creditor's son
with a clear understanding as to "that balance
between us;" or, — anyhow and come what may, —
the wishes and feelings of tbe parish are totally
ignored and despised ; and so the new parson reads
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 297
himself in and assumes the master more or less
imperially. Isn't it too bad? Probably, some
ancient and well liked curate, who has kept the flock
together for many years, and whom they gladly have
among them still to the end, is suddenly dismissed in
spite of the round robin to the Patron; and as
probably, an entirely new set of doctrines and prac-
tices will be forced upon the writhing parish:
wealthier neighbours may indeed let their houses, and
escape elsewhere ; but what are the poor to do, the
ascripti glebes/' They must put up with the
Eomanism, or Mormonism, or Rationalism of the
new parson, remembering in sorrow be-like the sober
evangelism of the old one. They are sold at auction
with the rectory ; descend by will to the heir ; are
given together with the tythes and other easements
and emoluments to Mr. Omnium's friend's son. It
is a serfdom of souls, — a very slave-trade this, of so-
called free Englishmen. Why may we not choose
our ministers, or at least have a veto on any wrong
choice thrust upon us ?"
"We had been alluding to the brainless gossip of
Milford and its neighbourhood, and happened at the
time to be sauntering in my conservatory ; when
^sop took up his parable about
298 THE BIDES AND EEVERIES
AIR-PLANTS.
" Yes : these queer-leaved vegetals, lialf-plant,
half-fungus, hanging in their cradles of damp sticks,
or anchored mid-air on some wire-hung block of
wood, — always put me in mind of calumnies, Peter.
Eooted in nothing at all but some dead bough, some
branch cut off and rotten, — feeding on nothing at all
but air, tlie nitrogenic exhalation of wholesome
plants around them,— these things notwithstanding
live and grow and are green of leaf, and curious in
flower, ay, and sometimes come to bear their own
especial poison-fruits and seed for future genera-
tions.
" And so with all this so frequent calumny, born
of a lie, nurtured by gossip, it clings a poisonous
living lichen to the falsehood that begat it, and neigh-
bours watch the oddness of its leaf and the monstro-
sity of its flower, and never (if they can help it any-
how) let the queer amusing evil creature die ! The
stinking wonder of the green-house mustn^t perish,
and shan^tj if their tongues can help the matter.
"It was Lord Melbourne, I think, who gave
parliamentary recognition to his dread as Premier of
the power of falsehood; a lie is not a thing to be
despised : let every man in wisdom and in calmness
answer calumny on occasion ; not going far out of
his way to do so, but as Providence offers ; and not
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 299
anxious about results, but as Providence wills : let
him judge truly that the God of Truth is better
served when falsehood is crushed than when it is let
live ; even though this should be for utter scorn's sake.
There may be a humility in answering, as there is a
pride in silence : and we know Who is always on the
side of him that humbleth himself. Nature''s ever-
teaching parable declares, that the airy orchids are
among the most poisonous tropical weeds, growing
in deadly marshes where the cobra sucks its venom,
and the fatal wourali-berries hang in clusters over
miasmatic pools. Let us dread such moral air-plants,
— those uncharitable rumours of neighbours where-
with universal Little Peddlington is ever gladly rife :
for though so feebly rooted in some dead and rotten
lie, our breath may give them leave to live and help
their poison to do harm.'^
Mrs. Query is in a normal and continuous condi-
tion of Eegret. Whatever happens, or doesn't
happen, she always is wishing the matter otherwise,
and arguing unreasonably about the might-have-
beens. This querulous spirit is a source of no small
domestic trouble to me, as vEsop knows : and so, one
day after dinner, I got him well primed to give my
worrying partner a bit of his mind about
800 THE RIDES AND EEVERIES
REGRETS.
" Short of the great idea of Religious Repentance,
and limited to the view of this one world, there never
was a more unreasonable source of wretchedness than
your silly habit of regretting, Peter.
" Why, man, you might as well regret the Trojan
war as this present cast of the dice ; as well make
yourself miserable about the possibilities to England,
if WelKngton had lost Waterloo, as about the change
in your own career, if you had been brought up a
barrister instead of a merchant. A fact is a fixed
thing ; a pyramid, a mountain : there it stands, you
can't move it, nor melt it up, nor anyhow away with
it : so make the best of the big fact you can, for
cozy shade or shrewd self-elevation. There is no
small amount of solid peace in the idea of this con-
stant iron present : a plain sure field of duty and
trial; and so never mind what might, would, could,
or ought to have been, if only matters had been
otherwise. They are thus, and that's fate ; accept it
without a Lot's-wife looking back ; do the best you
can for this same fate as it stands, and never indulge
the idle enervating folly of regret. What silly castle-
building one almost habitually engages in ! What
painful fears, what heated hopes one conjures up
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 301
continually, a very phantom host to worry or amuse
oneself withal ! what vain speculations based upon
the airy nothing of a past possibility ! The very
rashest speech just uttered, the grandest chance this
minute flung away, the bet now made or lost, the
present shame or honour, or folly or wisdom, must
be accepted as a granite fact, and treated accord-
ingly, as a base for operations at once to mend the
evil, or speed the good, as best may be. Present
facts — and present ones are virtually past ones,
constitute the firm-fixed stepping-stones in the morass
of possibility : only there is no going back, no re-
tracing them : we must take the present as it is, and
make the best of it. An American friend of mine
taught me a comfortable bit of wisdom by his con-
stantly cheerful phrase, " O, don^t mind that ; that's
past/' There is indeed a sense, the sense of metanoia
or spiritual step-retracing, which is wise and good so
far as moral evil is concerned, and with reference to
our Great Judge : but for tilings hun^an and pro-
vidential, away with your idle regrets, friend Peter ;
for nothing can be more irrational and more enervat-
ing than this pestilent, foolish, aud vexatious habit/'
Mrs. Query heard him to the end with exact at-
tention ; and then, to my chagrin, turned triumph-
antly to me, with a " there now, Peter, that's what
I'm always telling you !"
^sop, immediately seeing how the land lay, went
802 THE HIDES AKD REVERIES
off again on the talking hobby of a Coleridge, and,
adroitly alluding to a neighbouring incumbent^s
death, and his probable enlightenment in a spiritual
■world as to the real value of his past ministrations,
gave us this lecture on
SELE KNOWLEDGE.
" When, if ever, are we to be privileged with the
sight of ' ourselves as others see us ?* AVheu is the
conceit to be taken out of some folks, and other folks^
dull consciences and dim perceptions to be rubbed
clear and bright ? AYhen are systematic wrong-
headedness and wrong-heartedness to be made turn
Queen's evidence against a man's self, and life-long
duplicity to stand openly convicted ?
" Seldom, seldom indeed, few and far between are
Truth's domiciliary visits to some folks : and rarer
far than swan's song, the scarce heard murmurs of
that angel's 'tongue. There are people, Peter, the
most unpleasant, censorious, and annoying in the
world, who have no idea that they are not general
favourites with all folks ; there are men intolerably
mean, who would be astonished to hear they are not
specially laudable for liberality ; women, of exasper-
ating tempers, who verily believe themselves most
gracious and desirable ; and even children, Peter, as
our little Jenny there knows, who suppose themselves
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 303
infallible judges of every knotty point. Therefore,
dear Burns heartily prays
' Would but kind fate the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us !'
" And no small help thereto, let me tell you, is to
be surprised in a tailor's glass with your own side-
view and backview: wdiat is your opinion now of
that obstinately prominent nose, those round
shoulders, and that indifferent Antinous altogether?
Thence look inwardly a moment : wake up for just
that time, glance from your usual dream of self-
complacency : what a very ordinary mortal Mr. Self
is, and how distinctly inferior to many of his neigh-
bours. Of course, Peter, as to all this sort of thing
my hump is a continual reminder, and thaf s why I
recommend the tailor's double pier-glass to your
notice."
" There now, Peter,'' unluckily added the indom-
itable Mrs. Query, "I hope that's a sufficient
answer to your constant finding fault with me for
spending so much time at my toilette. Mr. Smith
himself recommends a double pier-glass.'^
How can one argue about colours with the blind?
My well meant attempts to give Mrs. Q. a lesson or
two, were thus turned by her utter stolidity and self-
ignorance only to her supremer conceit and my defeat
as usual.
804 THE BIDES AND REVERIES
ZOILISM.
" Ball V' roared iEsop, glancing at tlie notice of a
new book, and flinging down the Acridaean with con-
tempt.
" These fellows know that in our ill-natured world
it pays to slander everybody : jealousy and envy de-
light in having a kick at Aristides ; and our blessed
law of libel which (gives your attorney heavy
damages, if you call him truly enough a rogue) takes
no count of the painstaking author's character, pub-
lished by some unprincipled rival for a fool. Now,
Peter, Fll admit to the full the admirable qualities of
many of our first-rate reviewers. It is a wonderful
modern invention of theirs, so thoroughly to give the
running reader all the cream and pith of a book, as
to save him the trouble of ever inquiring for it
further ; for a work, fully reviewed, is cheaply and
easily thus mastered, and (hurried as all mankind are
now-a-days) the world saves itself all further care
about the genuine diluted volume. But I want to
give you my mind about certain other and inferior
critics, whose ill opinions, by the way, have a directly
opposite tendency, so far as the sale of a book is
concerned : seeing that everybody inquires for the
authors they malign. And hasn't this modern phase
of criticism very considerable cause to be ashamed of
OP THE LATE MR. JESOV SMITH. 305
itself? The rule of those literary Arabs seems to be,
hands and pens against everybody in turn whom the
whole world, nevertheless, pronounces worthiest !
Has any real genius hitherto escaped their castiga-
tion ? any greatest name been unlucky enough to
win their unanimous praise ? Nay more, has barely
one of their own belauded, the biggest Triton of their
petty shoal of sprats, come to be a leviathan, a world-
wonder ? Has any single favourite of the literary
cliques ever been even 'placed' in the world's
grand race of fame ? Send me, Peter, the sourest
censure of your Extinguisher, your Cynic, your
Freezer, your Flagellist, and other like small scribes
if ever Fve the luck to publish ; for then I shall
have good assurance (the experience of all the
wisest, to wit,) that my hypothetical book's a good
one, and pretty sure to live and to sell. It's well,
too, that those editors and their ink-satellites keep
their names so close ; for Brown or Jones, up some
three-pair back, are not nearly so suggestive of
their truer characters and capabilities as Mr. Disap-
pointed Ignorance, or Mr. Envious Conceit — the
trumpery " we," who presume so usually to con-
demn truth and to sneer at wisdom."
"Ay" — went on ^Esop, in his contemptuous
eloquence, while he looked out the passages as in*
dicated from a Mudie's Club-book on my table —
" hear, ye nameless slanderers, how fiercely old Kit
X
806 THE PtlDES AND REVERIES
North (too often, by the way, no small sinner in
the same line of business himself) gives evidence
against you : turn to his just-collected Recreations,
II. 340, and hsten to your Gypsey King^s own slang :
^ Let the dunce with diseased spleen, who edits one
obscure review, revile and rail at you to his heart's
content, in hollow league with his black-biled brother,
who, sickened by your success, has long laboured
in vain to edit another still more unsaleable,' &c., &c.
That's Professor Wilson's opinion of you, recollect,
and in his own words too — not entirely so scrui)ulous
as ^sop's might have been ; and he tells us pretty
clearly where the shoe pinches — authorial success
treading on the toes of editorial failure ; so let them
rave, young author. Hear a little more from brazen-
tongued old Christopher, a thief set to catch a thief
— ibidem : — ^VLq who knows that he writes in the
fear of God and in the love of man, will not arrest
the thoughts that flow from his pen because he also
knows they may — will— be insulted and profaned.
Eidicule, in the hands either of cold-blooded or of
infuriated mahce, is harmless as a birch-rod in the
palsied fingers of a superannuated beldame, who in
her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school.'
Yes, beldames, you are palsied ; and your scholars,
once so full of fears, only mock at you now. Your
reigu is over, I can tell you, once-mighty Anonymous
Zoihsm : you have no more fawning flatterers, no
OF THE LATE MR. -ESOP SMITH. 307
more humble subjects ! the veriest fledgling author-
ship is now-a-days neither frightened at your frown
nor elated by your favour; no mother's heart is
wrung by your censure of her dear boy's book ; no
maiden looks less kindly on her lover because you
have vindictively published him a dunce; no poet
thinks more meekly of himself because you scorn
him ; and you'll never get a Keats to die of your
cruelty any more ! Othello's occupation's gone ;
books win their way — or don't win it— for them-
selves, and no thanks to the Zoili ; even advertising
is a thing that scarcely pays any one now, but Pro-
fessor Holloway and Messrs. Moses; and as for
laudatory notices from ' Evening Papers,^ or strings
of extracts from leading periodicals, they are positive
hindrances to success ; cut me up, but pray don't
praise me ; I would not have any book of mine so
feebly and so falsely recommended. The thing's
efi'ete ; you have overdone it ; the surfeited public
are sick of you.
Your dishonest system of cramming for an article,
so as to denounce presumptuously some scholar's
lifelong work, by dashing allusions to sciences your
criticism never heard of till the week before tliis,
is entirely understood and well appreciated. You
condemn books without reading them, and pronounce
upon translations without knowing a word of the
originals. Minos is envious, or accessible to bribes ;
X 2
308 THE EIUES AND REVERIES
iEacus is a bookseller's liack^ and given to drinking;
Ehadamantlius, a sturdy political or ecclesiastical
partisan; and all withal are rending one another
viciously, and fighting tooth and nail against opposite
sects or hostile publishers ; yet these three, our lite-
rary judges forsooth, dream of a usurped authority
over the minds of half mankind, and think they can
build up reputations or destroy them at their will.
A vain conceit, as all men know; except, indeed, the
muddled scribes themselves ; for sooth to say, we
have found out long ago that when you have sub-
tracted from modern book-notices the interests of
publishers, the influence of parties, the favour of
friends, and the malice of enemies, a very small
residuum is left of honest, wise, and worthy criticism.
" In this age,'' ^sop went on to say, " there co-exist
(amongst other memorabilia), the best authorship
and the worst criticism ; and these are contrary the
one to the other. The system of your professional
critics is never to allow any one too much success
without an envious attempt to tear him down.
Whether a writer deserves it or not, he must not be
praised twice : if his first work has happened to
surprise even cynicism into a laudation, the generous
impulse must be repudiated with a vengeance on his
second effort : and the bitterest extract of detraction
is poured out wholesale by your trade reviewers on
the often noble and always too seiisitive spirit whose
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 309
rising fame seems likely to endanger those of some
certain witlings in the literary clubs. But your
modern critic is essentially a narrow-chested waspish
thing : the habit of depreciation demoralizes his
heart as effectually as the system of swift book-
skimming bewilders his head : and, fameless himself,
(for, unshielded by the anonymous, he knows himself
to be nothing) with the envy indigenous to contracted
minds, he busies himself perpetually and gains dis-
graceful bread through amusing the idle world, like
the lower sort of bull-fighters, by worrying men of
mark and character with barbed and streamered
fireworks.
''However, Peter — and by way of saving clause —
there really is sometimes a very pretty bead of pure
gold at the bottom of the crucible after all : there
actually are some writers, even in these Zoilist ranks,
incorruptible and able; some reviewers, even if
severe, unbiassed ; some judgments, though damna-
tory, worthily so : but I seldom chanced to light oti
such in the Cynic, or the Freezer, or tliat generous
print you patronise hebdomadally, the Acridaean.
"Tell me, Peter, what's done with a coUey-dog
who takes to worrying the sheep ?''
" I suppose, friend ^Esop, you mean me to
answer, that the only cure for such a cur is a rope
on the nearest bough : but who's to hang a Maga-
zine?''
310 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
" Itself, Peter ; already, some folks' character for im-
partiality and temper is long forfeit, and no one heeds
his verdict; but, further than this and to drop particu-
larities, the day is not far off when our precious law
of libel shall be amended so as to protect quiet folks,
(thougli they do write books), from the public and
calumnious attacks of anonymous scoundrels. Such
fellows will be classed with our garotters and served
accordingly. Pair criticism, however hostile, is a
very different thing from personal insolence, the
inditer whereof should be made when brought up
for judgment to drink in court a pint of his own
ink ; and though the shirking scamp, who dares,
under cover of the anonymous, to vihfy honest men
by name, isn't wortli a kick in reply, if near enough
for such an honour, nor a tliought of anything but
scorn so long as he is unseen, yet he may find him-
self caught some day, in the noose of libel ; and so
be hung as he deserves, like that colley-dog."
By way of apposite appendix to this prose essay
on Zoilism, I have found the following rhymes;
which, as iEsop's post-obit editor, I have had no
small difficuUy in decyphering, liastily and cacogra-
])hically scribbled as they are in pencil, on some torn
envelopes, under circumstances of seemingly rapid
locomotion. In fact, I suspect, that like some that
precede and follow, these indignation-verses were
written on horseback ; at all events, and in order to
OF THE LATE MR. yESOP SMITH. 311
be able to classify them amongst our yEsop^s rides,
we may well enough consider that, whenever and
wherever our irate friend indited them, he was in
spirit riding pretty roughly on the high horse of
contempt.
^sop has headed this fifty-liner,
TO SUNDRY OF MY MALIGNANTS.
Bravo, Detraction ! hbel worse and worse, —
Blessed is he whom you delight to curse ;
Go on, go OQ, — you serve my purpose so, —
The more you slander me the more I grow ;
Spit scorn, spout hate ! I glory in your blame.
These dulcet whispers do but speed my fame.
One envious foe stirs up a million friends,
A wasp attacks me, and a world defends !
Go on. Detraction ! take a mile of rope.
You'll hitch the noose e'er long, I more than hope ;
And if meanwhile it please you, scorpion-like,
My naked foot with venom'd sting to strike.
Well, — dare it ! and I'll crush you as you lie
Under my heel till in your hes you die !
Yes, — Arabs of the press, mean Zoilists,
Shake at me still your jealous little fists !
I can afford, like Palmerston, to keep
An Opposition, not to fall asleep
312 THE TvIDES AND EEVERIES
Smother'd with praise (which I may well wish less)
And almost overhumbled by success ;
So, be my antidote to too much balm.
My teapot-tempest in my world of calm.
The capsicum to stimulate my meats.
The toss of bitter to correct my sweets, —
Be still, poor envious foes, my useful friends.
As battledores to serve your shuttle's ends !
From far-ofP lands indignant at your spleen,
Sometimes I hear how spiteful you have been ;
That, months ago, you whipped my volumes well,
(Joy to my publisher, — you made them sell !)
That, months ago, you lash'd me, as you thought,
(Joy to myself! — ^you hate me as you ought — )
But — it was pity so to waste your rage ;
Eor, quite unconscious of your gentle page.
In rustic innocence I had not known
Till your scorn came, how famous I had grown.
And how that, unaware of all your wrath,
I trampled toads upon my daily path.
Ay, slanderous scribes ! you nameless shameless men,
Who dare to prostitute the sacred pen
By sticking characters, as boys stick flies.
Upon its cank'rous nib, gall'd black with lies, —
Contempt, contempt, is all I fling to you, —
Dogs of Detraction ! bay me as you do :
Hound me, for honour's sake, with all your spite.
Bark, as ;you will, for no one fears your bite.
Echo my praises on your bitterest blame.
With louder clamours glorify my name^
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 313
Uutil, by good men's plaudits long made glad,
You stablisli it by censure of the bad !
And in this connection of rhymes, it may be as
well to place in our ^Esop^s rides and reveries,
another fresh and hearty lyric which he wrote literally
in the saddle. I have the illegible originals of many
such, pencil-scribbled all over old envelopes, and they
bear internal evidence of having been jotted down
during the breathers of galloping. I suspect this
may have heretofore seen daylight somewhere in
print, (as somehow most spicy things do), but that is
no reason why I should not now re-produce it if I
choose, as the strictly poetical phase of our friend''s
hobby-horsing; and in some sort Sui generis:
saving it all the more gladly amongst our friend
^sop^s rides, because it shrines in print his old pet-
pony Wonder and his loved dead deer-hound Gael.
Hearken then to this
COURSING CANZONET.
Cool and sweet is the breath of the morn.
And dewbeads glitter on thistle and thorn.
And linnets and larks are beginning to trill
Their psabi to the sun just over the hill.
314 THE HIDES AND REVERIES
And all things pleasant, and pure, and fair,
Bathe in the bahnj morning air.
Hist ! the turf is under thy feet,
Over it steadily, — sure and fleet !
Steadily, Wonder ! — quietly now ;
Why, what a hot little fool art thou !
Wild and wanton ! — it's very unkind
To leave poor Gael so panting behind ; —
Ho ! ray greyhound ! Soho ! — a hare !
Good dog : after her ! — soft and fair ;
Off does she fly, and away does he bound, —
Glorious ! how we are skimming the ground !
Heels above head, — over she goes !
And pussey squeals at my greyhound's nose.
Home : hark back ! — the games are done.
Though Caesar's self has barely begun ;
Look ! let him change the spur for the pen,
To hunt and to harry the hearts of men, —
Possibles do, and impossibles dare,
And gallop in spirit everywhere !
Jenny keeps pigeons and often brought in some
iridescent pet for Mr. Smith to feed with a pea or
two. Now I had been echoing the Queen^s-Head^s
grumble about custom having so dropped off since
tlie railroad ; hereupon ^Esop opened thus :
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 315
PIGEONS AND WIRES.
A carrier-pigeon, once accustomed to bear financial
tickets between the Eoyal Exchange and the Bourse,
came to its master for compensation, now that the
electric telegraph has completely ruined its livelihood.
But the master answered that petition with a
firm — "No!— it wiU never do to be systematically
pensioning off everybody whom the march of mind
is continually leaving in the rear. There^s no end
to it. You yourself, my fleet Van- Hamburg, have
superseded the slower mail, which again had made
the packhorse obsolete; and, no doubt, this also, in
its day, threw many a creeping packman out of
employ. People must keep up with the race of
invention and innovation, and pace it with their
times, or be left alone in the wilderness to starve.
For you, Yan-Hamburg, there's plenty of room still
left ; ay, and for all such seeming obsoletisms. Try
your powers to the right and left of these electrical
arteries; and I doubt not you'll pick up a living
cleverly, just as every station now uses up the old
coaches and chaises for side traffic, while ostlers and
helpers rise into guards or stokers, and even the
ruined inn-keeper on a grass-grown turnpike-road
recovers himself anon by a railway liotel. On
principle, good pigeon mine, I decline your notion of
316 THE raDES and eeveries
compensation as by anything like right; but, seeing
you're a faithful and sharp bird, you shall now by
my favour and kindness take my messages to
Stockholm ; and, meanwhile, look you out shrewdly
after some further employment for your peculiar
talents, before we get a submarine line also to
Sweden."
But iEsop was always breaking out in his quaint
vein : only as Vm a poor hand at Boswellizing, the
morsels come to you without the benefit of a setting,
like unframed pictures; however, here are two or
three more.
THE SHEEP AND THE BRAMBLE.
" A bramble-bush one day surreptitiously filched a
few flocks of wool from a sheep's flank — who forth-
with went and complained about it to the farmer.
Now the farmer, busied among his roots and crops,
and a little oblivious of his live stock, was immediately
thereby reminded of shearing-time; and the sheep
that went to complain of the bramble returned bare
and shorn.
" Did you ever consult your lawyer about some petty
piece of cheatery, and not find yourself very consider-
ably fleeced before the consultations and their
consequences ceased ?"
OF THE LATE MR. iESOP SMITH. 317
THE SUN AND THE FIRE.
Our breakfast-room fire is always in danger of
being put out by the morning sun, unless tlie
east-wing of the bow-window has its blind down.
" Now," quoth ^sop, " there^s a parable in this.''
"I once knew a very worthy young man in humble
life, in fact a footman, who produced some really
pretty poems; he w^as modest withal and sensible.
But in an unlucky hour his mistress did him the
injury to patronize the genius, and catered far and
wide amongst her fashionable friends for subscriptions
to his forthcoming volume; which she was silly
enough to entitle " Gleams of the Glorious, by John
Jeemes, Esq.'' Well, ever since the publication of
that pink and gilt booklet, Jeemes's star has waned.
He won't be a footman, and he certainly isn't a poet;
but has evaporated rather than subsided into a
conceited idle fellow, spoilt by silly glorification.
The sun has quite put out that fire."
THE MAGIC MIRROR.
Seeing my little youngest, Jenny, admiring herself
and figuring before a glass, my ready friend, to
frighten her out of vanity, excited her most round-
eyed wonder by this tremendous invention.
318 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
" Hark ! I once picked up at a sale in Chelsea
an old-fashioned oval mirror, queerly framed, and
the plate of the true gloomy Yauxhall-tvpe, bevilled ;
but I fancied it for the frame, where skeleton death
and laughing love held round a carved wreath of
flowers and fetters. The bargain was a rare one as I
bought it ; but I hadn^t had it in my lodgings a
night before I found out that it possessed a most
startling, not to ..say terrible, quality. Only think,
little Jenny, I happened to go up to this magic
mirror in the dusk without a candle, and there was
a whole crowd of ghastly silly iast-century faces,
strangely coifed, and wigged, and ribboned, and
patched, and painted, looking at me out of the glass
as through a fog ! I was staggered enough, I
can tell you, Jenny, (and, by the way, Peter,
said jEsop, affecting to believe his own fable, and to
give rational grounds for it, I suspect those Yaux-
hall glabswork-men must have accidentally anticipated
the camera and photography), and so, Jenny, I
came straightway to a resolution never to indulge in
ogling or attitudinizing before a looking-glass. Who
knows whether in certain electrical states of the air your
face or mine might not be fixt for ever in some silly
leer over this mantel-piece for instance— just as is
well-known to happen in the similar case of a change
of wind when you make faces ?"
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 319
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.
"And wliy/' broke out JEsop to me lately at
election time, " sbouldn^t every tax-payer have a vote ?
Every man — and, for auglit I can see, every woman
too who is an independent householder — of full age,
of reasonable intellect, and that has not lost social
rights by conviction of guilt ? Universal suffrage is
the born privilege of freemen.
" However, wdiile I am quite ready to grant that
every citizen in a representative government ought to
liave his one vote as of birthright, it seems to me
that it should be open to him to be able to gain more
than one, by good conduct; or on such average
evidences of good conduct, either in himself or his
ancestors, as success of any kind in this world may
supply. I contend that while the lowest, and the
meanest, and the idlest (if not legally criminal)
should not be mulcted of his born vote, all the steps
on the ladder of social eminence (as rank, or wealth,
or fame, or office) ought to be privileged with votes
additional. Let Jack, Tom, and Harry have their
one vote each, as of course; but if Jack — a
rustical recruit— by spirit and conduct wins a
Queen's commission ; or Tom, a shrewd lad in an
attorney's office, gets called to the bar ; or Harrv,
out of the parish school, takes a degree at college,
and orders after it — add a second vote; if they any-
320 THE RIDES AXD RE^TIRIES
how attain to a thousand pounds of stock, or ten
acres of land — add a third : if they gain some high
distinction at the hand of their Sovereiscn — a fourth :
and so on, limiting the aggregate of votes to ten.
Thus, Tm thinking, while we deny to no one his born
privilege of voting, until, and unless, he forfeits it
by crime ; we give to every higher class of excellence
in the social sphere its proper graduated influence,
and represent fully and actually the industry wisdom
wealth and virtue of the state. At present nothing
is fairly represented ; and the common cry for
universal suffrage is one that is meant only to
represent our numbers, and by means of the lowest
sort to overwhelm the higher. It is as much a gross
injustice to refuse any freeman his one vote, as to
equalize by an only one the noblest and the meanest,
the best and the worst.
"Nothing would tend more to defeat the aim of
the Chartist than a free grant of his just demand ;
extending that same justice of additional votes for
merit or eminence, as hinted above. But we are
a slow people, Peter, and it will take generations to
convince the public of tlie wisdom and propriety of
jEsop Smith's suggestion.'"
or THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 321
It was quite natural that this topic should suggest
THE BALLOT.
Whereupon ^sop delivered himself thus :
" And are we to become by law a sneaking set of
underhand caitiffs, ashamed to avow our conscien-
tious likings, and afraid to stand up for our rea-
sonable principles ? Englishmen — and I always speak
of England as heading up three brotherly nations in
one— have been accounted from all times frank, open,
free, and bold: what has come over us that any
popularity can be catered for, and gained by, advo-
cating a mean disfranchisement of our national name
from these noble characteristics ? Where's the call
for it? Aristocratic Westminster, full of palaces,
lords, ambassadors, and church dignitaries, never
finds a difficulty in returning democrats, if so the
people will : and if a good country squire is usually
brought in for his county by an attached tenantry,
do you suppose those old tenants would be base
enough to vote for his agent in his stead, if the
ballot hid their names?
" ril tell you, Peter, whom only the secret plan
would lielp : voters, who take bribes with both
hands, and would gladly cheat the pair of givers by
voting for neither : fellows, whose delight at the very
ballot would be to deceive him whom they pretend to
be serving , wanton caitiffs, whom the merest caprice
Y
323 THE RTDES AND REVERIES
might induce, at the last moment, to fling the pellet
light or left, reckless of consequence, and scoffing at
responsibility.
"IsnH it always a dangerous thing for human
nature to find itself in the dark, Peter ? Evil dwells
with secresy. Even a minute in the dark tunnel of
a railroad puts wicked thoughts into way-farinsf
minds : and what would not be the effect of a legal
banishment of light and truth, of openness, honesty,
and honour, from the polling-booths of our nation's
representatives ?
THE UNSUNNED CORNER.
Ireland came on the tapis, and jEsop said, when
his turn came to speak : " One of my fields, on the
wrong slope of a hill-side, and surrounded by trees,
scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its
crops are short when arable, and when otherwise its
grass sour, and the hay musty."
" And why then," he went on to say, " shouldn't
Ireland have a palace— -a Balmoral at Killarney —
or anotlicr Osborne at Killiney ?
" Poor Erin is that unsunned corner of our
Empire's field ; and it seems a thousand pities that
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. oV^
the kingdom of Ireland should be denied some
such special royal home as is even found rather
superfluously at the Camp of Aldershot. What if
one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the
foot of M'Gillicuddy^s Eeeks were fitted with a
Swiss cottage for the Queen? Or if Bantry Bay
supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape
Clear ? Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied
with a gilt carriage or two to waft Majesty and chil-
dren to some western palace in Connemara ?
"Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn^t
fertilize that poor neglected field, nor make its crops
abundant, and its peasants happy ? Think you that
the gold mine of Eoyal bounty, and the graciousness
of Royal favour, would not work a blessed cliange
for grateful Ireland ? Try it, good Queen ! A
Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a
sorry substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for
silver, electro-typed plate instead of the real golden
buffet : not without snobbism, too, and toadyism,
and vulgarism, and other detestable small heresies.
If but once in three years Victorian's rural court were
heused in an Irish palace, her presence would do
more for liappiness, prosperity, and patriotism, than
all the Maynootli grants have ever hindered.
324 THE EIDES AND EEVEEIES
AMERICAN SLAVEllY.
One day after dinner, we started this vexed
subject. I couldn't well collect, nor recollect the
dialogue ; but as soon as I could get away to the
library, I jotted down what iEsop seemed to say
upon the matter, nearly as he spoke it thus ora-
cularly :
^' Slavery is still the world's great puzzle.
Paradoxical as such a kinship may appear, the
thraldom of man to man is nothing more nor less
than the poison-fruit of freedom run rank, the
native growth, as the opprobrium, of an over-
indolent civilization. Every old republic hitherto,
whose liberty has been let to grow to licence, has
bred this parasitic evil as a natural disease, sooner
or later sure to kill the patient : high-bred Athens,
luxurious Rome, and proudly-independent Sparta,
all carried this plague-spot on their foreheads.
How, then, should America escape the common
doom ?
" Now, this reasonably,'' (^sop went on to say),
" is the state of the case. A vast community of
free and equal citizens, each too proud or too rich
to stoop to servile labour, can yet manifestly,
none of them, do without such mundane necessities
as field- serfs and domestic drudges. In the North-
ern States^ while immigration supplies farm la-
OF THE L.VTE MR. /ESOP SMITH. 325
bourei's to the country, the utter hopelessness of
obtaining decent servants for the town home
drives whole neighbourhoods to herd together in
hotels, where the master, with his five hundred
negro waiters, is virtually carrying out in secret
for the advantage of abolitionists the very " domestic
institution '^ they abhor. In the Soutli, and hourly
spreading far into the West, as all men bitterly
now know, the domineering white openly makes a
brute beast of his coloured brother, and by a
miserable Nemesis, seems urged, perforce, not only
to do so himself, but also to quarrel with every
one, whose more humane suffrage is against the
extension of such tyranny.
"Well, and what are we to do or say about
all this ? Beyond charity and kindliness, and
such help as good advice can give, we have nation-
ally neither business nor desire to interfere with
this our Transatlantic cousins' normal condition of
disease. Those evils of his may either be mollified
and held back, and rendered tolerable ; or, growing
to a crisis from irritation, must work out their own
fierce cure. The great individual fault of pride,
culminating in the fatal national sin of a legalized
and wide-spread slave-holding, must breed its
punishment, and bear it to the uttermost ; unless
there happen a very Ninevite miracle of repentance,
which may Heaven in mercy send ! but as for
o26 THE EIDES AND EEVERIES
Euj^liind meddling in the matter, we may not in-
terfere until the moral canker grows and spreads
so as to threaten us or our belongings.
" Unhappily, Peter, this looms upon the future ;
if, indeed, the very present is not already within
its oncoming shadow. To re-open the African slave-
trade, to steal men even from our own AVest
Indies, to commit piracy on the Spanish Main,
in no private nor underhand way, but openly,
nationally, outrageously, — these bold aims are
pretty sure to be attempted, if not somehow or
other fulfilled.
" And England must be prepared for such emer-
gency ; and fight, for self-protection, if need be.
Meanwhile, our policy should in every wise be
guided so as to avert this dire extremity, a civil
war between two Anglo-Saxon brothers.
"There is a clear course open to us. Liberia,
stemming the slave-trade along hundreds of miles
of African seaboard, and carrying civilization inland
to an extent we cannot guess, is growing free
cotton for our markets, and only asks patience and
indulgence to be able to undersell New Orleans.
Let it be the wisdom of England to help that
noble youngest of the nations; let us crush the
barracoons of slavery by building up the strong-
hold of emancipation ; let us betimes, by a liberal
tarill", encourage to the utmost the producing
OP THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 327
powers of the freed man, and transfer to him our
custom taken from the slaveholder.
"ThuSj while America's domestic evils must
be left to work their own internal kill or cure,
the external world beyond will by commerce rather
than cannon accomplish the downfall of slavery.
My daughter Lucy is a very pretty girl, and I
don't a bit wonder at JEsop's admiration of her.
The very heart of good-nature, cheerfulness, self-
forgetfulness, and charity ; with no consciousness of
her beauty, and so devoid of affectation that other
girls declare that she has " no tournure " — not but
that she has a fine figure, a well-filled bust, well-
groomed and redundant hair, while somehow or
other every style of dress becomes her. But her
eyes — those are the piercers — grey, with full black
pupils, and long black lashes : I watched ^sop one
day as he sat on the sofa, and was looking at them
side-ways, and I declare he seemed quite rapt,
drawing in his breath and unconsciously changing
colour ; at last he said, abruptly —
" Lucy, my dear, will you please to go and call
mamma ; your father and I have something to ask
her.''
328 THE EIDES AND REVERIES
When she had innocently tripped away^ ^Esop
said to me, "Peter, I'm going to be married, and
want to have your advice about it ; O, here comes
Mrs. Query, too, and Lucy ; well, now, all you three
advise me. This is the state of the case : —
THE SOLITARY OWL
Is (we are told by our veracious natural-history
makers) always alone, melancholy, miserable ; as
they insist much on his solitariness, it is to be sup-
posed that he is unique and perpetual, a sort of
Wandering Jew among birds ; but I have my doubts
whether, after all, he isn^t a maligned and misappre-
hended creature, capable of happy socialities, and long-
ing for a nest and mate : don't you think so, Peter ?"
Mrs. Q., had a curious look in her eyes, Lucy
flashed brilhant loveliness, and I said simply —
"Well, jEsop, no doubt the moping fowl would
be all the happier for a mate ; but whereas he to find
her r
" Here, Peter ! Lucy, will you take pity upon a
poor owl?"— this he asked so touchingly, in spite of
the characteristic dash of the ridiculous in it, that
our dear child burst into a flood of happy tears and
kissed his forehead heartily.
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 329
Mrs. Query and I, chiming in harmony, approved
all ; blessed them both, and (I need not add) remem-
bered enough of our own young days to leave the
])air of turtle doves to themselves awhile, just by way
of contrast with the solitary owl,
I nothing doubt that JEsop will make a rare lover
and rarer husband. At present let us leave him
alone with his glory.
Alone with his glory. Yes; for in its purest
highest phase. Love is indeed the glory of humanity,
a beautiful, a delicious, and an elevating glory. And
even at the lowest, every dog has his day, and a
happy dog is he therein. And in the common
medium phase. Love is the very charm, the delirium
of life.
What a sweet, soft, luxurious, enervating, unrea-
sonable, imaginative, — and withal, most harassing
mere dream it is : 0, this Love ! we have all had our
wings singed in the flame ; all have asked ourselves
Shall I, wastynge in despayre
Pyne because a woman's fayre — ?
and have each of us practically supplied the silly
answer. Yea. How many of us men are there who may
heretofore have idolatrously worshipped some pretty
carved and painted doll ; and after a world of pains
and perseverance and the majestic sacrifice to boot
330 THE RIDES AND HEVERIES
of every good thing have possibly eaougli (in some
cases even too actually) at length succeeded in com-
mitting matrimony with a scold or a fool ! How-
many poor fond women also, full of love and gentle-
ness, have exchanged their ardent courting worship-
pers for selfish married tyrants ! Alas for human life
and mortal nature ! But meanwhile, and anterior to
all such discoveries consequent on wedlock, what a
distracting enchanting fever of silly pleasantness in
the wooing time is this same Love ! How charming
are those reveries of hope, how exquisitely intoxica-
ting these memories of favour ! when a glance, nay,
the mere remembrance of that dear soft eye, avails to
pierce your marrow ; and the tone of a sweet voice
can thrill your very heartstrings ; and the touch of
a precious little hand is most potent electricity : O
this Love ! we all of us know all about it ; the locks
of hair, tlie happy stolen mom.ents, the passionate
but indifferent poetry and all beside. Ay : and some
of our friends, Peter, have long ago found out how
utterly Lovers lamp can be extinguished by the
caprices of fo%, and the tornadoes of temper; or
how gradually it may die away to the condition of
an expiring rushlight under the endless worries
of modern matrimony."
OF THE LATE MR. ^SOP SMITH. 331
PULL-UP.
Well, I might in my awkward way go on to no
end with my friend iEsop's parabolic sayings, but to
tell truth, after he got quite well, and Lucy^s wed-
ding-day drew nigh, I had neither mind nor memory
for anything but making my dear daughter Mrs.
iEsop. And don^t let it be fancied that my noble
son-in-law, that-is-to-be, is any worse than a very
good-looking young fellow : his modesty, indeed,
made him out an old humped grump ; but (for
Lucy's taste and honour's sake) I avow he's very
little more of a cripple than I am, his years don't
reach thirty-five, and as for his misanthropy or
misogyny it was all a mere mask to enable his
benevolence to blurt out boldly a few truths whereof
society is or affects to be somewhat unconscious.
Then he's good, and rich, and clever, and well-born,
and Lucy and he love each other dearly; and our
manors are contiguous; and, altogether, I'm very
glad he did break his collarbone — and nothing
more.
[Thus far had I written in my diary of things
notable, when (as you have known all along, from
332 THE EIDES AND REVERIES OP ^SOP SMITH.
my introductory , notice) our poor dear ^sop sud-
denly got worse, and died. I would not, however^
destroy the few notes I had taken of his friendly talk
amongst us, more especially as they seemed to har-
monize fairly enough with the papers he committed
to me ; but have thus added them to the roll ; and
so I leave you, Lector Benevole. P. Q.]
END.
LONDON:
PriRted by Schulze and Co., 13, Polaad Street.
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