'±1. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
LECTURES ANT) ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 GOLDAVJ]^ SMITH. 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 HUNTER, ROSE & COMPANY. 
 NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & COMPANY. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXI. 
 

 
 Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one 
 thousand eight hundred and eighty-one, by Hunter, Rose & Co., in 
 the Office of the Minister of Agriculture. 
 
These Essays, as the Preface explains, were originally 
 printed for private circulation. The demand for them 
 afterwards led to a small edition being placed on the 
 market. The demand still continues, and in compliance 
 with it, three hundred copies, the balance of the original 
 edition, which were reserved, are now placed in our 
 hands for publication. 
 
 The Copp, Clark Company, Ltd., 
 
 TORONTO. 
 
 565H0: 
 
rHEFATOPiY NOTE. 
 
 These papers liave been reprinted for friends who sometimes 
 ask for the back numbers of periodicals in which they appeared. 
 The great public is sick of reprints, and with good reason. 
 
 The volume might almost have been called Contributions to 
 Canadian Literature ; for of the papers not originally published 
 in Canada several were reproduced in Canadian journals. 
 Political subjects have been excluded, both to keep a volume, 
 intended for friends, free from anything of a party character, 
 and because the writer looks forward to putting the thoughts 
 scattered over his political essays and reviews into a more 
 connected form. 
 
 The papers on " The Early Years of the Conqueror of Que- 
 bec," "A Wirepuller of Kings," "A True Captain of Industry," 
 and " Early Years of Abraham Lincoln," can hardly pretend to 
 be more more than accounts of books to which they relate; but 
 they interested some of their readers at the time, and there are 
 probably not many copies of the books in Canada. All the 
 papers have been revised, so that they do not appear here exactly 
 as they were in the periodicals from which they are reprinted. 
 
 Toronto, Feb. 16, 188]. 
 
 Since the above preface was written the printers have re- 
 ceived, from public libraries and from other quarters in the 
 United States, applications for the volume, which it is incon- 
 venient to meet by sending copies singly across the lines. 
 
 To obviate that inconvenience it has been determined to is- 
 sue a small edition for sale through booksellers in the usual 
 way, and Messrs, Hunter, Rose & Co., Toronto, and Messrs. 
 Macmillan & Co., New York, have arranged to supply any 
 demand there may be for the work. 
 
 Toronto, June, 1881, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Greatness of the Romans 1 
 
 {Contemporary Review.) 
 
 The Greatness of England -- 21 
 
 {Contemj)orary Review.) 
 
 The Great Duel of the Seventeenth Century - - - 42 
 {Canadian Monthly.) 
 
 The Lamps op Fiction 69 
 
 {A Speech on the Centenary of the Birth of Sir Walter Scutt.) 
 
 An Address to the Oxford School of Science and Art - 70 
 
 The Ascent of Man 89 
 
 {Maemillan^s Magazine. ) 
 
 The Proposed Substitutes for Religion 105 
 
 {MacmiUan's Magazine. ) 
 
 The Labour Movement - 118 
 
 {Caioadlan Monthly.) 
 
 What is Culpable Luxury ? - - 147 
 
 {Canadian Monthly.) 
 
 A True Captain of Industry 160 
 
 {Canadian Monthly.) 
 
 A Wirepuller of Kings 182 
 
 {Canadian Montldy.) 
 
 The Early Years of the Conqueror of Quebec - - - 202 
 
 {Toronto JSlation.) 
 
 Falkland and the Puritans 219 
 
 {Coutemporary liec'eir ) 
 
Vlli CONTENTS. 
 
 I'AGK. 
 
 The Early Years of Abraham Lincoln ----- 240 
 
 {'ioronto Mail.) 
 
 Alfredus Rex Fundator --- 267 
 
 {Cwnadian Monthly.) 
 
 The Last Rei-ublicans of Rome ------ 286 
 
 {Macmillan's Magazine.) 
 
 Attsten-Leigh's Memoie of Jane Ax^sten 311 
 
 {New York Nation.) 
 
 Pattison's Milton ---,-..-- 320 
 
 (New YorJc Nation.) 
 
 Coleridge's Life of Keble - 329 
 
 (New Yvrk Nation.) 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Rome was great in arms, in government, in law. This com- 
 bination was the talisman of her august fortunes. But the 
 three things, though blended in her, are distinct from each other, 
 and the political analyst is called upon to give a separate account 
 of each. By what agency was this State, out of all the States 
 of Italy, out of all the States of the world, elected to a triple 
 pre-eminence, and to the imperial supremacy of which it was 
 the foundation ? By what agency was Rome chosen as the 
 foundress of an empire which we regard almost as a necessary 
 step in human development, and which formed the material, 
 and to no small extent the political matrix of modern Europe, 
 though the spiritual life of our civilization is derived from 
 another source ? We are not aware that tliis question has ever 
 been distinctly answered, or even distinctly propounded. The 
 writer once put it to a very eminent Roman antiquarian, and 
 the answer was a quotation from Virgil — 
 
 " Hoc nemns, hunc, inrpiit, fronrloi50 vertice clivum 
 Quia deus incertum est, habitat Deus ; Arcades ipsum 
 Credunt se vidisse Jovem cum avepe nigrantem 
 yEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret." 
 
 This perhaps was the best answer that Roman patriotism, 
 ancient or modern, could give ; and it certainly was given in the 
 best form. The political passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan 
 and Juvenal, had a grandeur entirely Roman with which neither 
 Homer nor any other Greek has anything to do. But historical 
 criticism, without doing injustice to the poetical aspect of the 
 mystery, is bound to seek a rational solution. Perhaps in seek- 
 ing the solution we may in some measure supply, or at least 
 suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency which we venture 
 to think is generally found in the first chapters of histories. A 
 national history, as it seems to us, ought to commence with a 
 
2 TEE GE FATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 survey of the country or locality, its geographical position, cli- 
 mate, productions, and other j)liysical circumstances as they 
 bear on the character of the people. We ought to be presented^ 
 in short, with a complete description of the scene of the historic 
 drama, as well as with an account of the race to which the actors 
 belong. In the early stages of his development, at all events,^ 
 man is mainly the creatui-e of physical circumstances ; and by 
 a systematic examination of physical circumstances we may to 
 some extent cast the horoscope of the infant nation as it lies in 
 the arms of Nature. 
 
 That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow 
 peninsula of Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, 
 and that the situation of Italy was favourable to her dominion 
 over the countries surrounding the Meditei-ranean, has been 
 often pointed out. But we have yet to ask what launched 
 Rome in her career of conquest, and still more, what rendered 
 that career so different from those of ordinary conquerors ? 
 What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable ? What 
 gives it so high an organization ? What made it so tolerable, 
 and even in some cases beneficent to her subjects ? What en- 
 abled it to perform services so important in preparing the way 
 for a higher civilization ? 
 
 About the only answer that we get to these questions is 
 race. The Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly 
 warlike race. " They were the wolves of Italy," says Mr. Meri- 
 vale, who may be taken to represent fairly the state of opinion 
 on this subject. We are presented in short with the okl fable 
 of the Twins suckled by the She-wolf in a slightly rationalized 
 form. It was more likely to be true, if anything, in its original 
 form, for in mythology nothing is so irrational as rationalization. 
 That unfortunate She-wolf with her Twins has now been lono; 
 discarded by criticism as a historical figure ; but she still obtrudes 
 herself as a symbolical legend into the first chapter of Roman 
 history, and continues to aftect the historian's imagination and 
 to give him a wrong bias at the outset. Who knows whether 
 the statue which we possess is a real counterpart of the original ? 
 Who knows what the meaning of the original statue was? If 
 the group was of gi-eat antiquity, we may be pretty sure that 
 it was not political or historic, but religious ; for primaeval art 
 is the handmaid of religion; historic representation and political 
 portraiture belong generally to a later age. We cannot tell with 
 certainty even that the original statue was Roman : it may have 
 been brought to Rome among the spoils of some conquered city. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS 3 
 
 in which case it would have no reference to Roman history at 
 all. We must banish it entirely from our minds, with all the 
 associations and impressions which cling to it, and we must do 
 the same with regard to the whole of that circle of legends 
 woven out of misinterpreted monuments or customs, with the 
 embellishments of pure fancy, which grouped itself round the 
 apocryphal statues of the seven kings in the Capitol, aptly com- 
 pared by Arnold to the apocryphal portraits of the early kings 
 of Scotland in Holyrood and those of the medifeval founders 
 of Oxford in the Bodleian. We must clear our minds altogether 
 of these fictions ; they are not even ancient : they came into 
 existence at a time when the early history of Rome was viewed 
 in the deceptive light of her later achievements ; when, under 
 the influence of altered circumstances, Roman sentiment had 
 probably undergone a considerable change ; and when, conse- 
 quently, the national imagination no longer pointed true to any- 
 thing primaeval. 
 
 Race, when tribal peculiarities are once formed, is a most im- 
 portant feature in history ; those who deny this and who seek 
 to resolve everything, even in advanced humanity, into the in- 
 fluence of external circumstances or of some particular exter- 
 nal circumstance, such as food, are not less one-sided or less wide 
 of the truth than those who employ race as the universal solu- 
 tion. Who can doubt that between the English and the French, 
 between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of char- 
 acter which have profoundly afi:ected and still affect the course 
 of history ? The case is still stronger if we take races more re- 
 mote from each other, such as the English and the Hindoo. But 
 the further we inquire, the more reason there appears to be for 
 believing that peculiarities of race are themselves originally 
 formed by the influence of external circumstances on the primi- 
 tive tribe ; that, however marked and ingrained they may be, 
 they are not congenital and perhaps not indelible. Englishmen 
 and Frenchmen are closely assimilated by education ; and the 
 weaknesses of character supposed to be inherent in the Irish 
 gradually disappear under the more benign influences of the 
 New World. Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Ro- 
 mans to the special qualities of their race, we should not be solv- 
 ing the problem, but only stating it again in other terms. 
 
 But besides this, the wolf theory halts in a still more evident 
 manner. The foster-children of the she-wolf, let them have 
 never so much of their foster-mother's milk in them, do not do 
 what the Romans did, and they do precisely what the Romans 
 
4 TEE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 
 
 did not. They kill, ravage, plunder — perhaps they conquer 
 and even for a time retain their conquests — but they do not 
 found highly organized empires, they do not civilize, much less 
 do they give birth to law. The brutal and desolating domina- 
 tion of the Turk, which after being long artificially upheld by 
 diplomacy, is at last falling into Bnal ruin, is the type of an 
 empire founded by the foster-children of the she- wolf. Plunder, 
 in tlie animal lust of which alone it originated, remains its law ,^ 
 . and its only notion of imperial administration is a coarse divi- 
 sion, imposed by the extent of its territor}^, into satrapies, which, 
 as the central dynasty, enervated by sensuality, loses its force, 
 revolt, and break up the empire. Even the Macedonian, pupil 
 of Aristotle though he was, did not create an empire at all com- 
 parable to that created by the Romans. He overran an im- 
 mense extent of territory, and scattered over a portion of it the 
 seed of an inferior species of Hellenic civilization ; but he 
 did not organize it politically, much less did he give it, and 
 through it the world, a code of law. It at once fell apart into 
 a number of separate kingdoms, the despotic rulers of which 
 were Sultans with a tinge of Hellenism, and which went for 
 nothing in the political development of mankind. 
 
 What if the very opposite theory to that of the she-wolf and 
 her foster-children should be true ? What if the Romans should 
 have owed their peculiar and unparalleled success to their hav- 
 ing been at first not more warlike, but less warlike than their 
 neighbours ? It may seem a paradox, but we suspect in their 
 imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliest and not least im- 
 portant steps in that gradual triumph of intellect over force, 
 even in war, which has been an essential part of the progress 
 of civilization. 'J'he happy day may come when Science in the 
 form of a benign old gentleman with a bald head and spectacles 
 on nose, holding some benelicent compound in his hand, will 
 confront a standing army and the standing army will cease to ex- 
 ist. That will be the final victory of intellect. But in the mean- 
 time, our acknowledgments ai'e due to the primitive inventors of 
 military organization and military discipline. They shivered 
 Goliath's spear. A mass of comparatively unwarlike burghers, un- 
 organized and undisciplined, though the}^ may be the hope of 
 civilization from their mental and industrial qualities, have as 
 littleofcollectiveas they have of individual strength in war; they 
 only get in each other's way, and fall singly victims to the i)row- 
 ess of a gigantic barbarian. He who first thought of combining 
 their force by organization, so as to make their numbers tell, 
 
THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 5 
 
 and who taught them to obey officers, to form regularly for ac- 
 tion, and to execute united movements at the word of command, 
 was, perhaps, as great a benefactor of the species as he who grew 
 the first corn, or built the first canoe. 
 
 What is the special character of the Roman legends, so far as 
 they relate to war ? Their special character is, that they are 
 legends not of personal prowess but of discipline. Rome has 
 no Achilles. The great national heroes, Camillus, Cincinnatus, 
 Papirius, Cursor, Fabius Maximus, Manlius are not prodigies of 
 personal strength and valour, but commanders and disciplinar- 
 ians. The most striking incidents are incidents of discipline. 
 The most striking incident of all is the execution by a com- 
 mander of his own son for having gained a victory against 
 orders. " Bisciplinani Tnihtarem," Mardius is made to say, "qua 
 stetit ad hanc diem Romana res." Discipline was the great 
 secret of Roman ascendency in war. It is the great secret of 
 ail ascendency in war. Yictories of the undisciplined over the 
 disciplined, such as Killiecrankie and Preston Pans, are rare ex- 
 ceptions which only prove the rule. The rule is that in any- 
 thing like a parity of personal prowess and of generalship dis- 
 cipline is victory. Thrice Rome encountered discipline equal 
 or superior to her own. Pyrrhus at first beat her, but there 
 was no nation behind him ; Hannibal beat her, but his nation 
 did not support him ; she beat the army of Alexander, but the 
 army of Alexander when it encountered her, like that of Frederic 
 at Jena, was an old machine, and it was commanded by a man 
 who was more like Tippoo Sahib than the conqueror of Darius. 
 
 But how came military discipline to be so specially cultivated 
 by the Romans ? We can see how it came to be specially cul- 
 tivated by the Greeks : it was the necessity of civic armies, 
 fighting perhaps against warlike aristocracies ; it was the neces- 
 sity of Greeks in general fighting against the invading hordes 
 of the Persian, We can see how it came to be cultivated among 
 the mercenaries and professional soldiers of Pyrrhus and Han- 
 nibal. But what was the motive power in the case of Rome ? 
 Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for 
 a rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which 
 was the cradle of the Roman Empire. 
 
 It is evident that in the period designated as that of the 
 kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, 
 for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. This is 
 proved by the works of the kings, the Capitoline Temple, the 
 excavation for the Circus Maximus, the Servian Wall, and above 
 
6 THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 
 
 all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed undertaken to 
 give us a very disparaging j)icture of the ancient Rome, which 
 they confidently describe as nothing more than a great village 
 of shingle-roofed cottages thinly scattered over a large area. 
 We ask in vain what are the materials for this description. It 
 is most probable that the private buildings of Rome under the 
 kings were roofed with nothing better than shingle, and it is 
 veiy likely that they were mean and dirty, as the private 
 buildings of Athens appear to have been, and as those of most 
 of the greatcities of the Middle Ages unquestionably w^ere. But 
 the Cloaca Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a large 
 population, of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree of civ- 
 ilization. Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing 
 our vision entirely of Romulus and his asylum, w^e seem dimly 
 to perceive the existence of a deep prehistoric background, 
 richer than is commonly supposed in the germs of civilization, 
 — a remark which may in all likelihood be extended to the 
 background of history in general. Nothing surely can be more 
 grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like the Norse 
 pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing in 
 their den the Cloaca Maximja. 
 
 That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. 
 We can hardly doubt that she was a seat of industry and com- 
 merce, and that the theory which represents her industry and 
 commerce as having been developed subsequently to her con- 
 quests is the reverse of the fact. Whence, but from industry 
 and commerce, could the population and the wealth have come ? 
 Peasant farmers do not live in cities, and plunderers do not 
 accumulate. Rome had around her what was then a rich and 
 peopled plain ; she stood at a meeting-place of nationalities ; 
 she was on a navigable river, yet out of the reach of pirates ; 
 the sea near her was full of commerce, Etruscan, Greek, and 
 Carthaginian. Her first colony was Ostia, evidently commer- 
 cial and connected with salt-works, which may well have sup- 
 plied the staple of her trade. Her patricians were financiers 
 and money-lenders. We are aware that a different turn has 
 been given to this part of the story, and that the indebtedness 
 has been represented as incurred not by loans of money, but 
 by advances of farm stock. This, however, completely contra- 
 dicts the whole tenor of the narrative, and especially what is 
 said about the measures for relieving the debtor by reducing 
 the rate of interest and by deducting from the principal debt 
 the interest already paid. The narrative as it stands, moreover, 
 
THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 7 
 
 is supported by analogy. It has a parallel in the economical 
 history of ancient Athens, and in the " scaling of debts," to use 
 the American equivalent for Seisachtheia, by the legislation of 
 Solon. What prevents our supposing that usury, when it first 
 made its appearance on the scene, before peo{)le had learned to 
 draw the distinction between crimes and defaults, presented 
 itself in a very coarse and cruel form ? True, the currency was 
 clumsy, and retained philological traces of a system of barter ; 
 but without commerce there could have been no currency at 
 all. 
 
 Even more decisive is the proof afforded by the early political 
 history of Rome. In that wonderful first decade of Livy there 
 is no doubt enough of Livy himself to give him a high place 
 among the masters of fiction. It is the epic of a nation of poli- 
 ticians, and admirably adapted for the purposes of education as 
 the grand picture of Roman character and the richest treas- 
 ury of Roman sentiment. But we can hardly doubt that in 
 the political portion there is a foundation of fact ; it is too cir- 
 cumstantial, too consistent in itself, and at the same time too 
 much borne out by analogy, to be altogether fiction. The in- 
 stitutions which we find existing in historic times must have 
 been evolved by some such struggle between the orders of pat- 
 ricians and plebeians as that which Livy presents to us. And 
 these politics, with their parties and sections of parties, their 
 shades of political character, the sustained interest which they 
 imply in political objects, their various devices and compromises, 
 are not the politics of a community of peasant farmers, living 
 apart each on his own farm and thinking of his own crops : 
 they are the politics of the quick-witted and gregarious popu- 
 lation of an industrial and commercial city. They are politics 
 of the same sort as those upon which the Palazzo Vecchio 
 looked down in Florence. That ancient Rome was a republic 
 there can be no doubt. Even the so-called monarchy appears 
 clearly to have been elective ; and republicanism may be de- 
 scribed broadly with reference to its origin, as the government 
 of the city and of the artisan, while monarchy and aristocracy 
 are the governments of the country and of farmers. 
 
 The legend which ascribes the assembly of centuries to the 
 legislation of Servius probably belongs to the same class as the 
 legend which ascribes trial by jury and the division of I]ngland 
 into shires to the legislation of Alfred. Still the assembly of 
 centuries existed; it was evidently ancient, belonging apparent- 
 ly to a stratum of institutions anterior to the assembly of tribes; 
 
8 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 and it was a constitution distributing political power and duties 
 according to a property qualification which, in the upper grades, 
 must, for the period, have been high, though measured by a 
 primitive currency. The existence of such qualifications, and 
 the social ascendency of wealth which the constitution implies, 
 are inconsistent with the theory of a merely agricultural and 
 military Rome. Who would think of framing such a constitu- 
 tion, say, for one of the rural districts of France ? 
 
 Other indications of the real character of the prehistoric Rome 
 might be mentioned. The preponderance of the infantry and 
 the comparative weakness of the cavalry is an almost certain 
 sign of democracy, and of the social state in which democracy 
 takes its birth — at least in the case of a country which did 
 not, like Arcadia or Switzerland, preclude by its nature the 
 growth of a cavalry force ; but on the contrary was rather 
 favourable to it. Nor would it be easy to account for the strong 
 feeling of attachment to the city which led to its restoration 
 when it had been destroyed by the Gauls, and defeated the pro- 
 ject of a migration to Veil, if Rome was nothing but a collec- 
 tion of miserable huts, the abodes of a tribe of marauders. We 
 have, moreover, the actual traces of an industrial organization 
 in the existence of certain guilds of artisans, which may have 
 been more important at first than they were wdien the military 
 spirit had become thoroughly ascendant. 
 
 Of course when Rome had once been drawn into the career 
 of conquest, the ascendency of the military spirit would be com- 
 plete ; war, and the organization of territories acquired in war, 
 would then become the great occupation of her leading citizens; 
 industry and commerce would fall into disesteem,and be deemed 
 unworthy of the members of the imperial race. Carthage would 
 no doubt have undergone a similar change of character, had 
 the policy which was carried to its greatest height by the as- 
 piring house of Barcas succeeded in converting her from a trad- 
 ing city into the capital of a great military empire. So would 
 Venice, had she been able to carry on her system of conquest 
 in the Levant and of territorial aggrandisement on the Italian 
 mainland. The career of Venice was arrested by the League of 
 Cambray. On Carthage the policy of military aggrandisement, 
 which was apparently resisted by the sage instinct of the great 
 merchants while it was supported by the professional soldiers 
 and the populace, brought utter ruin ; while Rome paid the in- 
 evitable penalty of military despotism. Even when the Roman 
 nobles had become a caste of conquerors and proconsuls, they re- 
 
THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. (> 
 
 tained certain mercantile habits; unlike the French aristocracy, 
 and aristocracies generally, they were careful keepers of their ac- 
 counts, and they showed a mercantile talent for business, as. 
 well as a more than mercantile hardness, in their financial ex- 
 ploitation of the conquered world. Brutus and his contem- 
 poraries were usurers like the patiicians of the early times. 
 No one, we venture to think, who has been accustomed to study 
 national character, will believe that the Roman character was 
 formed by war alone : it was manifestly formed by war com- 
 bined with business. 
 
 To what an extent the later character of Rome affected na- 
 tional tradition, or rather fiction, as to her original character, 
 we see from the fable which tells us that she had no navy be- 
 fore the first Punic war, and that when compelled to build a 
 fleet by the exigencies of that war, she had to copy a Carthag- 
 inian war galley which had been cast ashore, and to train her 
 rowers by exercising them on dry land. She had a fleet before 
 the war with Pyrrhus, probably from the time at which she 
 took possession of Antium, if not before ; and her first treaty 
 with Carthage even if it is to be assigned to the date to which 
 Mommsen, and not to that which Polybius assigns it, shows, 
 that before 348 B.C. she had an interest in a wide sea-board, 
 which must have carried with it some amount of maritime 
 power. 
 
 Now this wealthy, and, as we suppose, industrial and com- 
 mercial city was the chief place, and in course of time became 
 the mistress and protectress, of a plain large for that part of 
 Italy, and then in such a condition as to be tempting to the 
 spoiler. Over this j)lain on two sides hung ranges of moun- 
 tains inhabited by hill tribes, Sabines, ^quians, Volscians, 
 Hernicans, with the fierce and restless Samnite in the rear. No 
 doubt these hill tribes raided on the plain as hill tribes always 
 do ; probably they were continually being pressed down upon 
 it by the migratory movements of other tribes behind them. 
 Some of them seem to have been in the habit of regularly swarm- 
 ing, like bees, under the form of the Ver Sacrum. On the 
 noi'th, again, were the Etruscan hill towns, with their lords,, 
 pirates by sea, and probably marauders by land ; for the per- 
 iod of a more degenerate luxury and frivolity may be regarded 
 as subsequent to their subjugation by the Romans ; at any rate, 
 when they first appear upon the scene they are a conquering 
 race. The wars with the ^qui and Volsci have been ludic- 
 rously multiplied and exaggerated by Livy ; but even without 
 
10 THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 
 
 the testimony of any historian, we might assume that there 
 would be wars with them and with the other mountaineers, and 
 also with the marauding Etruscan chiefs. At the same time, 
 we may be sure that, in personal strength and prowess, the men 
 of the plain and of the city woiild be inferior both to the moun- 
 taineers and to those Etruscan chiefs whose trade was war. 
 How did the men of the plain and of the city manage to make 
 up for this inferiority, to turn the scale of force in their fav- 
 our, and ultimately to subdue both the mountaineers and Etrus- 
 cans ? In the conflict with themountaineers, something might 
 be done by that superiority of weapons which superior wealth 
 would afford. But more would be done by military oi-ganization 
 and discipli^b. To military organization and discipline the Ro- 
 mans accordingly learnt to submit themselves, as did the English 
 Parliamentarians after the experience of Edgehiil, as did the 
 democracy of the Northern States of America after the experi- 
 ence of the first campaign. At the same time the Romans learned 
 the lesson so momentous, and at the same time so difficult for 
 •citizen soldiers, of drawing the line between civil and military 
 life. The turbulent democrac}'' of the former, led into the field, 
 doffed the citizen, donned the soldier, and obeyed the orders 
 of a commander whom as citizens they detested, and whom when 
 they were led back to the forum at the end of the summer cam- 
 paign they were ready again to oppose and to impeach. No 
 doubt all this part of the history has been immensely embel- 
 lished by the patriotic imagination, the heroic features have been 
 •exaggerated, the harsher features softened though not suppress- 
 ed. Still it is impossible to question the general fact. The re- 
 sult attests the process. The Roman legions were formed in 
 the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to 
 submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay 
 their strength. When, to keep up the siege of Veii, military pay 
 was introduced, a step was taken in the transition from a citizen 
 soldiery to a regular army, such as the legions ultimately be- 
 came, with its standing discipline of the camp ; and that the 
 measure should have been possible is another proof that Rome 
 was a great city, with a well-supplied treasuiy, not a collection 
 of mud huts. No doubt the habit of military discipline react- 
 ed on the political character of the people, and gave it the 
 ■strength and self-control which were so fatally wanting in the 
 case of Florence. 
 
 The line was drawn, under the pressure of a stern necessity, 
 between civil and militar}'- life, and between the rights and 
 
THE GE FATNESS OF THE FO.VAKS. H 
 
 duties of each. The power of the magistrate, jealously limited 
 in the city, was enlarged to absolutism for the preservation of 
 discipline in the field. But the distinction between the king 
 or magistrate and the general, and between the special capaci- 
 ties required for the duties of each, is everywhere of late growth. 
 We may say the same of departmental distinctions altogether. 
 The executive, the legislative, the judicial power, civil authority 
 and military command, all lie enfolded in the same primitive 
 germ. The king, or the magistrate who takes his place, is ex- 
 pected to lead the people in war as well as to govern them in 
 peace. In European monarchies this idea still lingers, fortified 
 no doubt by the personal unwillingness of the kings to let the 
 military power go out of their hands. Nor in early times is 
 the difference between the qualifications of a ruler and those of 
 a commander so great as it afterwards became ; the business of 
 the State is simple, and force of character is the main requisite 
 in both cases. Annual consulships must have been fatal to 
 strategical experience, while, on the other hand, they would 
 save the Republic from being tied to an unsuccessful general. 
 But the storms of war which broke on Bome from all quarters 
 soon brought about the recognition of special aptitude for mili- 
 tary command in the appointment of dictators. As to the dis- 
 tinction between military and naval ability, it is of very recent 
 birth : Blake, Prince Bupert, and Monk were made admirals 
 because they had been successful as generals, just as Hannibal 
 was appointed by Antiochus to the command of a fleet. 
 
 At Preston Pans, as before at Killiecrankie, the line of the 
 Hanoverian regulars was broken by the headlong charge of the 
 wild clans, for which the regulars were unprepared. Taught 
 by the experience of Preston Pans, the Duke of Cumberland 
 at Culloden formed in three lines, so as to repair a broken front. 
 The Romans in like manner formed in three lines — hasfati, 
 principes, and triarii — evidently with the same object. Our 
 knowledge of the history of Roman tactics does not enable us 
 to say exactly at what period this formation began to super- 
 sede the phalanx, which appears to have j^receded it, and which 
 is the natural order of half-disciplined or imperfectly armed 
 masses, as we see in the case of the army formed by Philip out 
 of the Macedonian peasantry, and again in the case of the 
 French Revolutionary columns. We cannot say, therefore, 
 whether this formation in three lines is in any way traceable to 
 experience dearly bought in wars with Italian highlanders, or 
 to a lesson taught by the terrible onset of the Gaul. Again, 
 
12 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 the punctilious care in the entrenchment of the camp, even for 
 a night's halt, which moved the admiration of Pyrrhus and was 
 a material part of Roman tactics, was likely to be inculcated 
 by the j)erils to which a burgher army would be exposed in 
 carrying on war under or among hills where it would be always 
 liable to the sudden attack of a swift, sure-footed, and wily foe. 
 The habit of canying a heavy load of palisades on the march 
 would be a part of the same necessity. 
 
 Even from the purely military point of view, then, the She- 
 wolf and the Twins seem to us not appropriate emblems of 
 Roman greatness. A better frontispiece for historians of Rome, 
 if we mistake not, would be some symbol of the patroness of 
 the lowlands and their protectress against the wild tribes of the 
 highlands. There should also be .something to symbolize the 
 protectress of Italy against the Gauls, whose irruptions Rome, 
 though defeated at Allia, succeeded ultimately in arresting and 
 hurling back, to the general benefit of Italian civilization 
 which, we may be sure, felt very grateful to her for that ser- 
 vice, and remembered it when her existence was threatened by 
 Hannibal, with Gauls in his army. Capua, though not so well 
 situated for the leadership of Italy, might have played the part 
 of Rome ; but the plain which she commanded, though very 
 rich, was too small, and too closely overhung by the fatal hills 
 of the Samnite, under whose dominion she fell. Rome had 
 space to organize a strong lowland resistance to the marauding 
 highland powers. It seems probable that her hills were not 
 only the citadel but the general refuge of the lowlanders of 
 those parts, when forced to fly before the onslaught of the 
 highlanders, who were impelled by successive wars of migra- 
 tion to the plains. The Campagna affords no stronghold or 
 rallying point but those hills, which may have received a popu- 
 lation of fugitives like the islands of Venice. The city may 
 have drawn part of its population and some of its political ele- 
 ments from this source. In this sense the story of the Asylum 
 may possibly represent a fact, though it has itself nothing to 
 do with history. 
 
 Then, as to imperial organization and government. Super- 
 iority in these would naturally How from superiority in civiliza- 
 tion, and in previous political training, the first of which Rome 
 derived from her com])arative wealth and from the mental char- 
 acteristics of a city poi)ulation ; the second she derived from the 
 long struggle through which the rights of the plebeians were 
 equalized with those of the patricians, and which again must 
 
TEE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 13 
 
 have had its ultimate origin in geographical circumstance bring- 
 ing together different elements of population. Cromwell was 
 a politician and a religious leader before he was a soldier ; Na- 
 poleon was a soldier before he was a politician : to this differ- 
 ence between the moulds in which their characters were cast 
 may be traced, in great measure, the difference of their conduct 
 when in power, Cromwell devoting himself to political and 
 ecclesiastical reform, while Napoleon used his supremacy chiefly 
 as the means of gratifjang his lust for war. There is some- 
 thing analogous in the case of imperial nations. Had the Roman, 
 when he conquered the world been like the Ottoman, like the 
 Ottoman he would probably have remained. His thirst for 
 blood slaked, he would simply have proceeded to gratify his 
 other animal lusts ; h'e would have destroyed or consumed 
 everything, produced nothing, delivered over the world to a 
 plundering anarchy of rapacious satraps, and when his sensu- 
 alit}' had overpowered his ferocity, he would have fallen, in 
 his turn before some horde whose ferocity was fresh, and the 
 round of war and havoc would have commenced again. The 
 Roman destroyed and consumed a good deal ; but he also pro- 
 duced not a little : he produced, among other things, tirst in 
 Italy, then in the world at large, the Peace of Rome, indispen- 
 sable to civilization, and destined to be the germ and precursor 
 of the Peace of Humanity. 
 
 In two respects, however, the geographical circumstances of 
 Rome appear specially to have prepared her for the exercise of 
 universal empire. In the first place, her position was such as 
 to bring her into contact from the outset with a great variety 
 of races. The cradle of her dominion was a sort of ethnological 
 microcosm. Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, Campanians, with all 
 the mountain races and the Gauls, make up a school of the 
 most diversified experience, which could not fail to open the 
 minds of the future masters of the world. How different was 
 this education from that of a people which is either isolated, 
 like the Egyptians, or comes into contact perhaps in the way 
 of continual border hostility with a single race ! What the ex- 
 act relations of Rome with Etruria were in the earliest times 
 we do not know, but evidently they were close ; while between 
 the Roman and the Etruscan character the difference appears 
 to have been as wide as possible. The Roman was pre-emin- 
 ently practical and business-like, sober-minded, moral, unmys- 
 tical, unsacerdotal, much concerned with present duties and 
 interests, very little concerned about a future state of existence, 
 
14 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 peculiarly averse from human sacrifices and from all wild and 
 dark superstitions. The Etruscan, as he has portrayed himself 
 to us in his tombs, seems to have been, in his later develop- 
 ment at least, a mixture of Sybaritism with a gloomy and 
 almost Mexican religion, which brooded over the terrors of the 
 next world, and sought in the constant practice of human sac- 
 lifice a relief from its superstitious fear. If the Roman could 
 tolerate the Etruscans, be merciful to them, and manage them 
 well, he was qualified to deal in a statesmanlike way with the 
 peculiarities of almost any race, except those whose fierce 
 nationality repelled ail management whatever. In borrowing 
 from the Etruscans some of their theological lore and their sys- 
 tem of divination, small as the value of the things borrowed 
 was, the Roman, perhaps, gave an earnest of the receptiveness 
 which led him afterwards, in his hour of conquest, to bow to 
 the intellectual ascendency of the conquered Greek, and to be- 
 come a propagator of Greek culture, though partly in a Latin- 
 ized form, more eflfectual than Alexander and his Orientalized 
 successors. 
 
 In the second place, the geographical circumstances of Rome, 
 combined with her character, would naturally lead to the found- 
 ation of colonies and of that colonial system which formed a 
 most important and beneficent part of her empire. We have 
 derived the name colony from Rome ; but her colonies were just 
 what ours are not, military outposts of the em])ire, 'propugn- 
 acula imperii. Political depletion and provision for needy 
 citizens were collateral, but it would seem, in early times at 
 least, secondary objects. Such outposts were the means sug- 
 gested by Nature, first of securing those parts of the plain 
 which were beyond the sheltering range of the city itself, 
 secondly of guarding the outlets of the hills against the hill 
 tribes, and eventually of holding down the tribes in the hills 
 themselves. The custody of the passes is especially marked as 
 an object by the position of many of the early colonies. When 
 the Roman dominion extended to the north of Italy, the same 
 system was pursued, in order to guard against incursions from 
 the Alps. A conquering despot would have planted mere gar- 
 risons under military governors, which would not have been 
 centres of civilization, but probably of the reverse. The Roman 
 colonies, bearing onwards with them the civil as well as the 
 military life of the Republic, were, with the general system of 
 provincial municipalities of which they constituted the core, to 
 no small extent centres of civilization, though doubtless they 
 
THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS, 15 
 
 were also to some extent instruments of oppression. " Where 
 the Roman conquered he dwelt," and the dwelling of the Roman 
 was, on the whole, the abode of a civilizing influence. Repre- 
 sentation of dependencies in the sovereign assembly of the im- 
 perial country was unknown, and would have been impractic- 
 able. Conquest had not so far put off its iron nature. In giv- 
 ing her dependencies municipal institutions and municipal life,. 
 Rome did the next best thing to giving them representation. 
 A Roman province with its municipal life was far above a sat- 
 rapy, though far below a nation. 
 
 Then how came Rome to be the foundress and the great source 
 of law ? This, as we said before, calls for a separate explana- 
 tion. An explanation we do not pretend to give, but merely a 
 hint which may deserve notice in looking for the explanation. 
 In primitive society, in place of law, in the proper sense of the 
 term, we find only tribal custom, formed mainly by the special 
 exigencies of tribal self-preservation, and confined to the par- 
 ticular tribe. When Saxon and Dane settle down in England 
 side by side under the treaty made between Alfred and Guth- 
 urm, each race retains the tribal custom which serves it as a 
 criminal law. A special effort seems to be required in order to 
 rise above this custom to that conception of general right or 
 expediency which is the germ of law as a science. The Greek, 
 sceptical and speculative as he was, appears never to have quite 
 got rid of the notion that there was something sacred in ances- 
 tral custom, and that to alter it by legislation was a sort of 
 impiety. We in England still conceive that there is something in 
 the breast of the judge, and the belief is a lingering sha- 
 dow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Now 
 what conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, 
 so fraught with momentous consequences to humanity ? Ap- 
 parently a union of elements belonging to different tribes such 
 as would compel them, for the preservation of peace and the 
 regulation of daily intercourse, to adopt some common measure 
 of right. In nmst be a union, not a conquest of one tribe by 
 another, otherwise the conquering tribe would of course keep 
 its own customs, as the Spartans did among the conquered peo- 
 ple of Laconia. Now it appears likely that these conditions 
 were exactly fulfilled by the primaeval settlements on the hills 
 of Rome. The hills are either escarped by nature or capable 
 of easy escarpment, and seem originally to have been little 
 separate fortresses, by the union of which the city was ulti- 
 mately formed. That there were tribal differences among the 
 
16 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 inhabitants of the different hills is a belief to which all tradi- 
 tions and all the evidence of institutions point, whether we 
 suppose the difference to have been great or not, and whatever 
 ■special theory we may form as to the origin of the Roman peo- 
 ple. If the germ of law, as distinguished from custom, was 
 brought into existence in this manner, it would be fostered and 
 expanded by the legislative exigencies of the political and 
 social concordat between the two orders, and also by those 
 arising out of the adjustment of relations with other races in 
 the course of conquest and colonization. 
 
 Roman law had also, in common with Roman morality, the 
 advantage of being comparatively free from the perverting 
 influences of tribal superstition.* Roman morality was in the 
 main a rational rule of duty, the shortcomings and aberrations 
 of which arose not from superstition, but from narrowness of 
 perception, peculiarity of sphere, and the bias of national cir- 
 cumstance. The auguries, which were so often used for the 
 purposes of political obstruction or intrigue, fall under the 
 head rather of trickery than of superstition. 
 
 Roman law in the same manner was a rule of expediency, 
 rightly or wrongly conceived, with comparatively little tincture 
 of religion. In this again we probably see the effect of a fusion 
 of tribes upon the tribal superstitions. " Rome," it has been 
 said, " had no mythology." This is scarcely an overstatement ; 
 and we do not account for the fact by saying that the Romans 
 were unimaginative, because it is not the creative imagination 
 that produces a mythology, but the impression made by the 
 objects and forces of nature on the minds of the forefathers 
 of the tribe. 
 
 A more tenable explanation, at all events, is that just sug- 
 gested, the disintegration of mythologies by the mixture of 
 tribes. A part of the Roman religion — the worship of such 
 abstractions as Fides, Fortuna, Salus, Concordia, Bellona, Ter- 
 minus — even looks like a product of the intellect posterior to 
 the decay of the mythologies, which we may be pretty sure 
 were physical. It is no doubt true that the formalities which 
 were left — hollow ceremonial, auguries, and priesthoods which 
 were given without scruple, like secular offices, to the most 
 profligate men of the world — were worse than worthless in a 
 
 * From reli.crious perversion Roman law was eminently free : but it could not be 
 free from perverting influences of a social kind ; so that we ought to be cautious, for 
 instance, in borrowing law on any subject concerning the relations between the 
 sexes from the corrupt society of the lloman Empire. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 17 
 
 religious point of view. But liistorians who dwell on this fail 
 to see that the real essence of religion, a belief in the power of 
 duty and of righteousness, that belief which afterwards took 
 the more definite form of Roman Stoicism, had been detached 
 by the dissolution of the mythologies, and exerted its force, 
 such as that force was, independently of the ceremonial, the 
 sacred chickens, and the dissipated high priests. In this sense 
 the tribute ])aid by Polybius to the religious character of the 
 Romans is deserved ; they had a higher sense of religious obli- 
 gation than the Greeks ; they were more likely than the 
 Greeks, the Phoenicians, or any of their other rivals, to swear 
 and disappoint not, though it were to their own hindrance ; 
 and this they owed, as we conceive, not to an effort of specu- 
 lative intellect, which in an early stage of society would be out 
 of the question, but to some happy conjunction of circumstan- 
 ces such as would be presented by a break-up of tribal my- 
 thologies, combined with influences favourable to tlie formation 
 of strong habits of political and social duty. Religious art was 
 sacrificed ; that was the exclusive heritage of the Greek ; but 
 superior morality was on the whole the heritage of the Roman, 
 and if he produced no good tragedy himself, he furnished char- 
 acters for Shakespeare and Corneille. 
 
 Whatever set the Romans free, or comparatively free, from 
 the tyranny of tribal religion may be considered as having in 
 the same measure been the source of the tolerance which was 
 so indispensable a qualification for the exercise of dominion over 
 a polytheistic world. They waged no war on " the gods of the 
 nations," or on the worshippers of those gods as such. They 
 did not set up golden images after the fashion of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. In early times they seem to have adopted the gods of 
 the conquered, and to have transported them to their own city. 
 In later times they respected all the religions except Judaism 
 and Druidism, which assumed the form of national resistance 
 to the empire, and worships which they deemed immoral or 
 anti-social, and which had intruded themselves into Rome. 
 
 Another grand step in the development of law is the severance 
 of the judicial power from the legislative and the executive, 
 which permits the rise of jurists, and of a regular legal pro- 
 fession. This is a slow process. In the stationary East, as a 
 rule, the king has remained the supreme judge. At Athens, 
 the sovereign people delegated its judicial powers to a large 
 committee, but it got no further ; and the judicial committee 
 was hardly more free from political passion, or more competent 
 B 
 
18 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 to decide points of law, than the assembly itself. In England, 
 the House of Lords still, formally at least, retains judicial func- 
 tions. Acts of attainder were a yet more primitive as well as 
 more objectionable relic of the times in which the sovereign 
 power, whether king, assembly, or the two combined, was ruler, 
 legislator, and judge all in one. We shall not attempt here to 
 trace the process by which this momentous separation of powers 
 and functions was to a remarkable extent accomplished in 
 ancient Rome. But we are pretty safe in saying that the 
 proetor peregrimus was an important figure in it, and that it re- 
 ceived a considerable impulse from the exigencies of a jurisdic- 
 tion between those who as citizens came under the sovereign 
 assembly and the aliens or semi-aliens who did not. 
 
 Whether the partial explanations of the mystery of Roman 
 greatness which we have here suggested approve themselves to 
 the reader's judgm.ent or not, it ma}^ at least be said for them 
 that they are venv caitsce, which is not the case with the story 
 of the foster-wolf, or anything derived from it, any more than 
 with the story of the prophetic apparitions of Jupiter on the 
 Capitoline Hill. 
 
 With regard to the public morality of the Romans, and to 
 their conduct and influence as masters of the world, the language 
 of historians seems to us to leave something to be desired. 
 Mommsen's tone, whenever controverted questions connected 
 with international morality and the law of conquest arise, is 
 affected by his Prussianism ; it betokens the transition of the 
 German mind from the speculative and visionary to the practical 
 and even more than practical state ; it is premonitory not only 
 of the wars with Austria and France, but of a coming age in 
 which the forces of natural selection are again to operate with- 
 out the restraints imposed by religion, and the heaviest fist is 
 once more to make the law. In the work of Ihne we see a 
 certain recoil from Mommsen, and at the same time an occa- 
 sional inconsistency and a want of stability in the principle of 
 judgment. Our standard ought not to be positive but relative. 
 It was the age of force and conquest, not only with the Romans 
 but with all nations ; Jtospes was hostis. A perfectly indepen- 
 dent development of Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, 
 and all the other nationalities, might perhaps have been the 
 best thing for humanity. But this was out of the question; in 
 that stage of the world's existence contact was war, and the 
 end of war was conquest or destruction, the first of which was 
 at all events preferable to the second. What empire then can 
 
THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS 19 
 
 we imagine which would have done less hai'm or more good than 
 the Roman ? Greek intellect showed its superiority in specu- 
 lative politics as in all other departments of speculation, but 
 as a practical politician the Greek was not self-controlled or 
 strong, and he would never have bestowed on the provinces of 
 his empire local self-government and municipal life ; besides, 
 the race, though it included wonderful varieties in itself, was, 
 as a race, intensely tribal, and treated persistently all other 
 races as barbarians. It would have deprived mankind of Ro- 
 man law and politics, as well as of that vast extension of the 
 Roman tedileship which covered the world with public works 
 beneficent in themselves and equally so as examples ; whereas 
 the Roman had the greatness of soul to do homage to Greek in- 
 tellect, and, notwithstanding an occasional Mummius, preserved 
 all that was of the highest value in Greek civilization, better 
 perhaps than it would have been preserved by the tyrants and 
 condottieri of the Greek decadence. As to a Semitic Empire, 
 whether in the hands of Syrians or Carthaginians, with their 
 low Semitic craft, their Moloch-worships and their crucifixions, 
 — the very thought fills us with horror. It would have been a 
 world-wide tyranny of the strong box, into which all the pro- 
 ducts of civilization would have gone. Parcere subjectls was 
 the rule of Rome as well as dehellare superbos ; and while all 
 conquest is an evil, the Roman was the most clement and the 
 least destructive of conquerors. This is true of him on the 
 whole, though he sometimes was guilty of thoroughly primae- 
 val cruelty. He was the great author of the laws of war as 
 well as of the laws of peace. That he not seldom, when his 
 own interest was concerned, put the mere letter of the social 
 law in place of justice, and that we are justly revolted on these 
 occasions by his hypocritical observance of forms, is very true : 
 nevertheless, his scrupulosity and the language of the na- 
 tional critics in these cases prove the existence of at least a 
 rudimentary conscience. No compunction for breach of inter- 
 national law or justice we may be sure ever visited the heart 
 ■of Tiglath-Pileser. Cicero's letter of advice to his brother on 
 the government of a province may seem a tissue of truisms 
 now, though Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey would 
 hardly have found it so, but it is a landmark in the history of 
 civilization. That the Roman Republic should die, and that a 
 colossal and heterogeneous empire should fall under the rule of 
 a military despot, was perhaps a fatal necessity ; but the despot- 
 ism long continued to be tempered, elevated, and rendered more 
 
20 TEE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 
 
 beneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic : the liberalism 
 of Trajan and the Antonines was distinctly republican ; nor did 
 Sultanism finally establish itself before Diocletian. Perhaps 
 we may number among the proofs of the Roman's superiority 
 the capacity, shown so far as we Icnow first by him, of being 
 touched by the ruin of a rival. We may be sure that no As- 
 syrian conqueror even affected to weep over the fall of a hostile 
 city, however magnificent and historic. On the whole it must 
 be allowed that physical influences have seldom done better for 
 humanity than they did in shaping the imperial character and 
 destinies of Rome. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 21 
 
 % 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND * 
 
 Two large islands lie close to that Continent which has hither- 
 to been selected by Nature as the chief seat of civilization. 
 One island is much larger than the other, and the larger island 
 lies between the smaller and the Continent. The larger island 
 is so placed as to receive primaeval immigration from three 
 quarters — from France, from the coast of Northern Germany 
 and the Low Countries, and from Scandinavia, the transit being 
 rendered somewhat easier in the last case by the prevailing ' 
 winds and by the little islands which Scotland throws out, as 
 resting-places and guides for the primaeval navigator, into the 
 Northern Sea. The smaller island, on the other hand, can hardly 
 receive immigration except through the larger, though its south- 
 ern ports look out, somewhat ominously to the eye of history, 
 towards Spain. The western and northern parts of the larger 
 island are mountainous, and it is divided into two very unequal 
 parts by the Cheviot Hills and the mosses of the Border. In 
 the larger island are extensive districts well suited for grain : 
 the climate of most of the smaller is too wet for grain and good 
 only for pasture. The larger island is full of minerals and coal, 
 of which the smaller island is almost destitute. These are the 
 most salient features of the scene of English history, and, with 
 a temperate climate, the chief physical determinants of Eng- 
 lish destin}^ _ \ 
 
 What, politically speaking, are the special attributes of an is- \ 
 land ? In the first place, it is likely to be settled by a bold I 
 and enterprising race. Migration by land under the pressur&i 
 of hunger or of a stronger tribe, or from the mere habit of 
 wandering, calls for no special effort of courage or intelligence 
 on the part of the nomad. Migration by sea does : to go forth 
 on a strange element at all, courage is required ; but we can 
 hardly realize the amount of courage required to go voluntarily 
 out of sight of land. The first attempts at ship-building also 
 
 * The writer some time ago gave a lecture before the Royal Institiition on " The 
 Influence of Gsographical Circumstances on Political Character," using Home and 
 England as illustrations. It may perhaps be right to say that the jjresent paper, 
 which touches here and there on matters of political opinion, is not identical with 
 the latter portion of that lecture. 
 
22 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 imply superior intelligence, or an effort by which the intellig- 
 ence will be raised. Of the two great races which make up the 
 English nation, the Celtic had only to pass a channel which you 
 can see across, which perhaps jiijlietime of the earliest migra- 
 tion did not exist. But ^'e Teuto n^ who are the do mina nt 
 race and have supplied the basis of the English character and 
 institutions, had to pass a wider sea. From Scandinavia, especi- 
 ally, England received, under the form of freebooters, who after- 
 wards became conquerors and settlers, the very core and sinews 
 of her maritime population, the progenitors of the Blakes and 
 Nelsons. The Northman, like the Phoenician, had a country 
 too narrow for him, and timber for ship-building at hand. But 
 the land of the Phoenician was a lovely land, which bound him 
 to itself ; and wherever he i^oved his heart still turned to the 
 pleasant abodes of Lebanon and the .sunlit quays of Tyre. Thus 
 he became a merchant, and the father of all who have made the 
 estranging sea a highway and a bond between nations, more 
 than atoning by the service thus rendered to humanity, for his 
 craft, his treachery, his cruelty, and his Moloch-worship. The 
 land of the Scandinavian was not a lovely land, though it was 
 a land suited to form strong arms, strong hearts, chaste natures,, 
 and, with purity, strength of domestic affection. He was glad 
 to exchange it for a sunnier dwelling-place, and thus, instead of 
 becoming a merchant, he became the founder of Norman dynas^ 
 ties in Italy , France, and England. We are tempted to linger over 
 the story of these primaeval mariners, for nothing equals it in ro- 
 mance. In our day Science has gone before the most adventur- 
 ous barque, limiting the possibilities of discovery, disenchanting 
 the enchanted Seas, and depriving us for ever of Sinbad and 
 Ulysses. But the Phoenician and the Northman put forth in- 
 to a really unknown world. The Northman, moreover, was so 
 far as we know the first ocean sailor. If the story of the cir- 
 cumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians is true, it was an 
 astonishing enterprise, and almost dwarfs modern voyages of 
 discovery. Still it would be a coasting voyage, and the Phoe- 
 nician seems generally to have hugged the land. But the North- 
 man put freely out into the wild Atlantic, and even crossed it be- 
 fore Columbus,if we may believe a legend made specially dear to 
 the Americans by the craving of a new country for antiquities. 
 It has been truly said, that the feeling of the Greek, mariner as 
 he was, towards the sea, remained rather one of fear and aver- 
 sion, intensified perhaps by the treacherous character of the 
 squally ^gean ; but the Northman evidently felt perfectly at 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. £3 
 
 home on the ocean, and rode joyously, like a seabird, on the 
 vast Atlantic waves. v^ 
 
 Not only is a race which comes by sea likely to be peculiarly \ 
 vigorous, self-reliant, and inclined, when settled, to political \ 
 liberty, but the very process of maritime migration can scarcely 
 fail to intensify the spirit of freedom and independence. Timon 
 or Genghis Khan, sweeping on from land to land with the vast 
 human herd under his sway, becomes more despotic as the herd 
 grows larger by accretion, and the area of its conquests is in- 
 creased. But a maritime migration is a number of little joint 
 stock enterprises implying limited leadership, common counsels, 
 and a good deal of equality among the adventurers. We see 
 in fact that the Saxon immio:ration resulted in the foundation 
 of a number of small communities which, though they were 
 afterwards fused into seven or eight petty kingdoms and ulti- 
 mately into one large kingdom, must, while they existed, have 
 fostered habits of local independence and self-government. 
 Maritime migration would also facilitate the transition from 
 the tribe to the nation, because the ships could hardly be man- 
 ned on purely tribal principles : the early Saxon communities 
 in England appear in fact to have been semi-tribal, the local 
 bond predominating over the tribal, though a name with a 
 tribal termination is retained. Room would scarcely be found 
 in the ships for a full proportion of women ; the want would 
 be supplied by taking the women of the conquered country ; 
 and thus tribal rules of exclusive intermarriage, and all barriers 
 connected with them, would be broken down. 
 
 Another obvious attribute of an island is freedom from in- 
 vasion. The success of the Saxon invaders may be ascribed 
 to the absence of strong resistance. The policy of Roman con4 
 quest, by disarming the natives, had destroyed their military! 
 character, as the policy of British conquest has done in India,\ 
 where races which once fou'dit hard against the invader under 
 their native princes, such as the people of Mysore, are now 
 wholly unwarlike. Anything like national unity, or power of 
 co-operation against a foreign enemy, had at the same time 
 been extirpated by a government which divided that it might 
 command. The Northman in his turn owed his success partly 
 to the want of unity among the Saxon principalities, partly 
 and principally to the command of the sea which the Saxon 
 usuall}^ abandoned to him, and which enabled him to choose his 
 own point of attack, and to baffle the movements of the de- 
 fenders. When Alfred built a fleet, the case was changed. 
 
24 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 William of Normandy would scarcely have succeeded, great as 
 his armament was, had it not been for the diversion effected in 
 his favour by tlie landing- of the Scandinavian pretender in the 
 North, and the failure of provisions in Harold's Channel 
 fleet, which compelled it to put into port. Louis of France 
 was called in as a deliverer by the barons who were in arms 
 against the tyranny of John ; and it is not necessary to discuss 
 the Tory description of the coming of William of Orange as a 
 conquest of England b}^ the Dutch. Bonaparte threatened in- 
 vasion, but unhappily was unable to invade : unhappily we say, 
 because if he had landed in England he would assuredly have 
 there met his doom ; the Russian campaign would have been 
 antedated with a more complete result, and all the after-pages 
 ■ in the history of the Arch-Brigand would have been torn from 
 the book of fate. England is indebted for her political liber- 
 ties in great measure to the Teutonic character, but she is also 
 in no small measure indebted to this immunity from invasion 
 which has brought with it a comparative immunity from stand- 
 ing armies. In the Middle Ages the question between absolut- 
 ism and that baronial liberty which was the germ and precursor 
 of the popular liberty of after-times turned in great measure 
 upon the relative strength of the national militia and of the 
 bands of mercenaries kept in pay by overreaching kings. The 
 bands of mercenaries brought over by John proved too strong 
 for the patriot barons, and would have annulled the Great 
 Charter, had not national liberty found a timely and powerful, 
 though sinister, auxiliary in the ambition of the French Prince. 
 Charles I. had no standing army : the troops taken into pay 
 for the wars with Spain and France had been disbanded before 
 the outbreak of the Revolution; and on that occasion the 
 nation was able to overthrow the tyranny without looking 
 abroad for assistance. But Charles II. had learned wisdom 
 from his father's fate ; he kept up a small standing army; and 
 the Whigs, though at the crisis of the Exclusion Bill they laid 
 their hands upon their swords, never ventured to draw them, 
 but allowed themselves to be proscribed, their adherents to be 
 ejected from the corporations, and their leaders to be brought 
 to the scaffold. Resistance was in the same way rendered 
 hopeless by the standing army of James II., and tiie patriots 
 were compelled to stretch their hands for aid to W^illiam of 
 Orange. Even so, it might have gone hard with them if 
 James's soldiers, and above all Churchill had been true to their 
 paymaster. Navies are not political ; they do not overthrow 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND 25 
 
 constitutions ; and in the time of Charles I, it appears that the 
 leading seamen were Protestant, and inclined to the side of the 
 Parliament. Perhaps Protestantism had been rendered fashion- 
 able in the navy by the naval wars with Spain. 
 
 A third consequence of insular position, especially in early 
 times, is isolation. An extreme case of isolation is presented 
 by Egypt, which is in fact a gi'eat island in the desert. The 
 extraordinary fertility of the valley of the Nile produced 
 an early development, which was afterwards arrested by its is- 
 olation ; the isolation being probably intensified by the jealous 
 exclusiveness of a powerful priesthood which discouraged mari- 
 time pursuits. The isolation of England, though comparatively 
 slight, has still been an important factor in her history. She 
 underwent less than the Continental provinces the influence of 
 Roman Conquest. Scotland and Ireland escaped it altogether, for 
 the tide of invasion, having flowed to the foot of the Grampians, 
 soon ebbed to the line between theSolwayand the Tyne. Britain 
 has no monuments of Roman power and civilization like those 
 which have V)cen left in Gaul and Spain, and of the Bi'itish Chris- 
 tianity of the Roman period hardly a trace, monumental or his- 
 torical, i-emains. By the Snxon conquest England was entirely 
 severed for a time from the P^uropean system. The missionary of 
 ecclesrastical Rcime recovered what the legionary had lost. Of 
 the main elements of English character political and general, 
 five were broufjht toG:ether when Ethelbert and Auo-ustine met 
 on the coast of Kent. The king represented Teutonism ; the 
 missionary represented Judaism, Christianity, imperial and 
 ecclesiastical Rome. We mention Judaism as a separate ele- 
 ment, because, among other things, the image of the Hebrew 
 monarchy has certainly entered largely into the political con- 
 ceptions of Englishmen, perhaps at least as largely as the 
 image of Imperial Rome. A sixth element, classical Republi- 
 canism, came in with the Reformation, while the political and 
 social influence of science is only just beginning to be felt. 
 Still, after the conversion of England by Augustine, the 
 Church, which was the main oi-gan of civilization, and almost 
 identical with it in the early Middle Ages, remained national ; 
 and to make it thoroughly Roman and Papal, in other words 
 to assimilate it completely to the Church of the Continent, was 
 the object of Hildebrand in promoting the enterprise of 
 William. Roman and Papal the English Church was made, 
 yet not so thoroughly so as completely to destroy its insular 
 and Teutonic character. The Archbishop of Canterbury was 
 
26 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 still Papa alterius orhis ; and the struggle for national inde- 
 pendence of the Papacy commenced in England long before 
 the struggle for doctrinal reform. The Reformation broke up 
 the confederated Christendom of the Middle Ages, and England 
 was then thrown back into an isolation very marked, though 
 tempered by her sympathy with the Protestant party on the 
 Continent. In later times the growth of European interests, 
 of commerce, of international law, of international intercourse, 
 of the community of intellect and science, has been gradually 
 building again, on a sounder foundation than that of the Latin 
 Church, the federation of Europe, or rather the federation of 
 mankind. The political sympathy of England with Continen- 
 tal nations, especially with France, has been increasing of late 
 in a very marked manner ; the French Revolution of 1880 told 
 at once upon the fortunes of English Reform, and the victory of 
 the Republic over the reactionary attempt of May was pro- 
 foundly felt by both parties in England. Placed too close to 
 the Continent not to be essentially a part of the European 
 system, England has yet been a peculiar and semi-independent 
 part of it. In European progress she has often acted as a 
 balancing and moderating power. She has been the asylum 
 of vanquished ideas and parties. In the seventeenth century, 
 when absolutism and the Catholic reaction prevailed on the 
 Continent, she was the chief refuge of Protestantism and 
 political liberty. When the French Revolution swept Europe, 
 she threw herself into the anti-revolutionary scale. The tri- 
 color has gone nearly round the world, at least nearly round 
 Europe; but on the flag of England still remains the religious 
 symbol of the era before the Revolution. 
 
 The insular arrogance of the Enj^lish character is a common- 
 place joke. It finds, perhaps, its strongest expression in the 
 saying of Milton that the manner of God is to reveal things 
 first to His Englishmen. It has made Englishmen odious 
 even to those who, like the Spaniards, have received liberation 
 or protection from English hands. It stimulated the desper- 
 ate desire to see Fi-ance rid of the " Goddams" which inspired 
 Joan of Arc. For an imperial people it is a very unlucky 
 peculiarity, since it precludes not only fusion but sympathy 
 and almost intercourse with the subject races. The kind heart 
 of Lord Elgin, when he was Governor-General of India, was 
 shocked by the absolute want of sympathy or bond of any 
 kind, except love of conquest, between the Anglo-Indian and 
 the native; and the gulf apparently, instead of being filled up, 
 now yawns wider than ever. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND, 27 
 
 It is needless to dwell on anything so obvious as the 
 effect of an insular position in giving birth to commerce and 
 developing the corresponding elements of political character. 
 The British Islands are singularly well placed for trade with 
 both hemispheres ; in them, more than in any other point, may 
 be placed the commercial centre of the world. It may be said 
 that the nation looked out unconsciously from its cradle to an 
 immense heritage beyond the Atlantic. France and Spain 
 looked the same way, and became competitors with England 
 for ascendancy in the New World ; but England w^as more 
 maritime, and the most maritime was sure to pievail. Canada 
 was conquered by the British fleet. To the commerce and the 
 maritime enterprise of former days, which were mainly the 
 results of geographical position, has been added within the last 
 century the vast development of manufactures produced by 
 coal and steam, the parents of manufactures, as well as the ex- 
 pansion of the iron trade in close connection with manufac- 
 tures. Nothing can bo more marked than the effect of 
 industry on political character in the case of England. From 
 being the chief seat of reaction, the North has been converted 
 by manufactures into the chief seat of progress. The Wars of the 
 Hoses were not a struggle of political principle ; hardly even 
 a dynastic struggle ; they had their origin partly in a patriotic 
 antagonism to the foreign queen and to her foreign councils ; 
 but they were in the main a vast faction-fight between two> 
 sections of an armed and turbulent nobility turned into buc- 
 caneers by the French wars, and, like their compeers all over 
 Europe, bereft, by the decay of Catholicism, of the religious, 
 restraints with which their morality was bound up. Yet the 
 Lancastrian party, or rather the party of Margaret of Anjou 
 and her favourites, was the more reactionary, and it had the 
 centre of its strength in the North, whence Margaret drew the 
 plundering and devastating host which gained for her the 
 second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty of its ravages 
 in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had been 
 kept back in the race of progress by agriciiltural inferiority, 
 by the absence of commerce with the Continent, and by bor- 
 der wars with Scotland. In the South was the seat of pros- 
 perous industry, wealth, and comparative civilization ; and the 
 banners of the Southern cities were in the armies of the House 
 of York. The South accepted the Reformation, while the- 
 North was the scene of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Coming 
 down to the Civil War in the time of Charles I., we find the- 
 
28 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Parliament strong in the South and East, where are still the 
 centres of commerce and manufactures, even the iron trade, 
 which has its smelting works in Sussex. In the North the 
 feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and the sentiment of 
 the past, preserve much of their force ; and the great power in 
 those parts is the Marquis of Newcastle, at once great territo- 
 rial lord of the Middle Ages and elegant grand seigneur of the 
 Renaissance, who brino-s into the field a famous regiment of 
 Ids own retainers. In certain towns, such as Bradford and 
 Manchester, there are germs of manufacturing industry, and 
 these form the sinews of the Parliamentarian party in the dis- 
 trict which is headed by the Fairfaxes. But in the Refoi'm 
 movement which extended through the first half of the pre- 
 sent century, the geographical position of parties was reversed ; 
 the swarmino- cities of the North were then the rrreat centres 
 ■of Liberalism and the motive power of Reform ; while the 
 South, having by this time fallen into the hands of gi^eat 
 landed proprietors, was Conservative. The stimulating effect 
 of populous centres on opinion is a very familiar fact : even in 
 the rural districts it is noticed by canvassers at elections that 
 men who work in gangs are generally more inclined to the 
 Liberal side than those who work separately. 
 
 In England, however, the agricultural element always has 
 been anrl remains a full counterpoise to the manufacturing and 
 commercial element. Ao-ricultural Eno;land is not what Peri- 
 cles called Attica, a mere suburban garden, the embellishment 
 of a queenly city. It is a substantive interest and a political 
 power. In the time of Charles I. it happened that, owing to 
 the great quantity of land thrown into the market in conse- 
 quence of the confiscation of the monastic estates, which had 
 slipped through the fingers of the spendthrift courtiers to whom 
 ithej'' were at first granted, small freeholders were very numer- 
 ous in the South, and these men like the middle class in the 
 towns, being strong Protestants, went with the Parliament 
 against the Laudian reaction in religion. But land in the hands 
 of great proprietors is Conservative, especially when it is held 
 under entails and connected with hereditary nobility ; and in- 
 to the hands of great proprietors the land of England has now 
 entirely passed. The last remnant of the old yeomen freehold- 
 ers departed in the Cumberland Statesmen, and the yeoman 
 freeholder in England is now about as rare as the other. Com- 
 merce has itself assisted the process by giving birth to great 
 fortunes, the owners of which are led by social ambition to buy 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 20 
 
 landed estates, because to land the odour of feudal superiority 
 still clings, and it is almost the necessary qualification for a 
 title. The land has also actually absorbed a large portion of the 
 wealth produced by manufactures, and by the general develop- 
 ment of industry ; the estates of Northern landowners espe- 
 cially have enormously increased in value, through the increase 
 of population, not to mention the not inconsiderable appropria- 
 tion of commercial wealth by marriage. Thus the Conservative 
 element retains its predominance, and it even seems as though 
 the land of Milton, Vane, Cromwell, and the Reformers of 1832, 
 might after all become, politically as well as territorially, the 
 domain of a vast aristocracy of landowners, and the most reac- 
 tionary instead of the most progressive country in Europe. 
 Before the repeal of the Corn Laws there was a strong antag- 
 onism of interest between the landowning aristocracy and the 
 manfacturers of the North : but that antagonism is now at an 
 end ; the sympathy of wealth has taken its place ; the old ar- 
 istocracy has veiled its social pride and learned to conciliate the 
 new men, who on their part are more than willing to enter the 
 privileged circle. This junction is at present the great fact of 
 English politics, and was the main cause of the overthrow of 
 the Liberal Government in 1874. The growth of the great 
 cities itself seems likely, as the number of poor householders 
 increases, to furnish Reaction with auxiliaries in the shape of 
 political Lazzaroni capable of being organized by wealth in op- 
 jjosition to the higher order of workmen and the middle class. 
 In Harrington's " Oceana," there is much nonsense ; but it rises 
 at least to the level of Montesquieu in tracing the intimate 
 connection of political power, even under elective institutions, 
 with wealth in land. 
 
 Hitherto, the result of the balance between the landowning 
 and commercial elements has been steadiness of political pro- 
 gress, in contrast on the one hand to the commercial republics 
 of Italy, whose political progress was precocious and rapid but 
 shortlived, and on the other hand to great feudal kingdoms 
 where commerce was comparatively weak. England, as yet, 
 has taken but few steps backwards. It remains to be seen what 
 the future may bring under the changed conditions which we 
 have just described. English commerce, moreover, may have 
 passed its acme. Her insular position gave Great Britian dur- 
 ing the Napoleonic wars, with immunity from invasion, a mon- 
 opoly of manufactures and of the cariying trade. This ele- 
 ment of her commercial supremacy is transitory, though others, 
 such as the possession of coal, are not. 
 
^ 
 
 so THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 I Let us now consider the effects of the division between the 
 / two islands and of those between different parts of the larger 
 I island. The most obvious effect of these is tardy consolidation, 
 which is still indicated by the absence of a collective name for 
 the people of the three kingdoms. The writer was once re- 
 buked by a Scotchman for saying " England " and " English," 
 instead of saying " Great Britain" and " British." He replied 
 that the rebuke was just, but that we must say " British and 
 Ij'ish." The Scot had overlooked his poor connections. 
 / We always speak of Anglo-Saxons and identify the extension 
 /■of the Colonial Empire with that of the Anglo-Saxon race. But 
 / even if we assume that the Celts of England and of the Scotch 
 I Lowlands were exterminated by the Saxons, taking all the ele- 
 ments of Celtic population in the two islands together, they 
 must bear a very considerable proportion to the Teutonic ele- 
 ment. That large finish settlements are being formed in the 
 •cities of Northern England is proved by election addresses co- 
 quetting with Home Rule. In the competition of the races on 
 the American Continent the Irish more than holds its own. In. 
 the age of the steam-engine the Scotch Highlands, the moun- 
 tains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, of Wales, of Devon- 
 shire, and Cornwall, are the asylum of natural beauty, of poetry 
 and hearts which seek repose from the din and turmoil of com- 
 mercial life. In the primaeval age of conquest they, with sea- 
 girt Ireland, were the asylum of the weaker race. There the 
 Celt found refuge when Saxon invasion swept him from the 
 open country of England and from the Scotch Lowlands. There 
 lie was preserved with his own language, indicating by its var- 
 iety of dialects the rapid flux and change of unwritten speech ; 
 with his own Christianity, which was that of Apostolic Britain ; 
 with his un-Teutonic gifts and weaknesses, his lively, social, 
 sympathetic nature, his religious enthusiasm, essentially the 
 same in its Calvinistic as in its Catholic guise, his superstition, 
 his clannishness, his devotion to chiefs and leaders, his compara- 
 tive indifference to institutions, and lack of natural aptitude 
 for self-government. 
 
 The further we go in these inquiries the more reason there 
 seems to be for believing that the peculiarities of races are not 
 congenital, but impressed by primaeval circumstance. Not 
 only the same moral and intellectual nature, but the same primi- 
 tive institutions, are found in all the races that come under our 
 view ; they appear alike in Teuton, Celt, and Semite. That 
 which is not congenital is probably not indelible, so that the 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 31 
 
 less favoured races, placed under happier circumstances, may 
 in time be brought to the level of tlie more favoured, and no- 
 thmg warrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd 
 to deny that peculiarities of race, when formed, are important 
 factors in history. Mr. Buckle, who is most severe upon the 
 extravagances of the race theory, himself runs into extravagan- 
 ces not less manifest in a different direction. He connects the 
 religious character of the Spaniards with the influence of apo- 
 cryphal volcanoes and earthquakes, whereas it palpably had 
 its origin in the long struggle with the Moors. He, in like 
 manner, connects the theological tendencies of the Scotch with 
 the thunderstorms which he imagines (wrongly, if we may judge 
 by our own experience) to be very frequent in the Highlands, 
 whereas Scotch theology and the religious habits of the Scotch 
 generally were formed in the Lowlands and among the Teutons, 
 not among the Celts. 
 
 The remnant of the Celtic race in Cornwall and West Devon 
 was small, and was subdued and half incorporated by the Teu- 
 tons at a comparatively early period ; yet it played a distinct 
 and a decidedly Celtic part in the Civil War of the seventeenth 
 century. It played a more im])ortant part towards the close 
 of the following century by giving itself almost in a mass ta 
 John Wesley. No doubt the neglect of the remote districts 
 by the Bishops of Exeter and their clergy left Wesley a clear 
 field ; but the temperament of the people was also in his favour. 
 Anything fervent takes with the Celt, while he cannot abide 
 the religious compromise which commends itseK to the practi- 
 cal Saxon. 
 
 In the Great Charter there is a provision in favour of the 
 Welsh, who were allied with the Barons in insurrection against 
 the Crown. The Barons were fighting for the Charter, the 
 Welshmen only for their barbarous and predatory independence. 
 But the struggle for Welsh independence helped those who 
 were struggling for the Charter ; and the remark may be ex- 
 tended in substance to the general influence of Wales on the 
 political contest between the Crown and the Barons. Even 
 under the House of Lancaster, Llewellyn was faintly reproduced 
 in Owen Glendower. The powerful monarchy of the Tudors 
 finally completed the annexation. But isolation survived in- 
 dependence. The Welshman remained a Celt and preserved his 
 language and his clannish spirit, though local magnates, such 
 as the family of Wynn, filled the place in his heart once occupied 
 by the chief. Ecclesiastically he was annexed, but refused to 
 
r, 
 
 32 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 be incorporated, never seeing the advantage of walking in the 
 middle path which the State Church of England had traced 
 between the extremes of Popery and Dissent. He took Metho- 
 dism in a Calvinistic and almost wildly enthusiastic form. In 
 this respect his isolation is likely to prove far more important 
 than anything which Welsh patriotism strives to resuscitate by 
 Eisteddfodds. In the struggle, apparently imminent, between 
 tlie system of Church Establishments and religious equality, 
 Wales furnishes a most favourable battle-ground to the party 
 of Disestablishment. 
 
 The Teutonic I'ealm of England was powerful enough to sub- 
 due, if not to assimilate, the remnants of the Celtic race in Wales 
 and their other western hills of refuge. But the Teutonic 
 I'ealrn of Scotland was not large or powerful enough to subdue 
 the Celts of the Highlands, whose fastnesses constituted in 
 geographical area the greater portion of the country. It seems 
 that in the case of the Highlands, as in that of Ireland, Teu- 
 tonic adventurers found their way into the domain of the Celts 
 and became chieftains, but in becoming chieftains they became 
 .Qelts. Down to the Hanoverian times the chain of the Gram- 
 pians which from the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a 
 wall over the rich plain, divided from each other two nationali- 
 ties, differing totally in ideas, institutions, habits, and costume, 
 as well as in speech, and the less civilized of which still regarded 
 the more civilized as alien intruders, while the more civilized 
 regarded the less civilized as robbers. Internally, the topo- 
 graphical character of the Highlands was favourable to the 
 continuance of the clan system, because each clan having its 
 own separate glen, fusion was precluded, and the progress 
 towards union went no further than the domination of the 
 more powerful clans over the less powerful. Mountains also 
 presei've the general equality and brotherhood which are not 
 less essential to the constitution of the clan than devotion to 
 the chief, by preventing the use of that great minister of aris- 
 tocracy, the horse. At Killiecrankie and Prestonpans the 
 leaders of the clan and the humblest clansman still charged on 
 foot side by side. Macaulay is undoubtedly right in saying 
 that the Highland risings against William III. and the first 
 two Georges were not dynastic but clan movements. They 
 were in fact the last raids of the Gael upon the country which 
 had been wrested from him by the Sassenach. Little cared 
 the clansman for the principles of Filmer or Locke, for the 
 claims of the House of Stuart or for those of the House of 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 33 
 
 Brunswick. Antipathy to the Clan Campbell was the nearest 
 approach to a political motive. Chiefs alone, such as the un- 
 speakable Lovat, had entered as political condottleri into the 
 dynastic intrigues of the period, and brought the claymores of 
 their clansmen to the standard of their patron, as Indian chiefs 
 in the American wars brought the tomahawks of their tribes 
 to the standard of France or England. Celtic independence 
 greatly contributed to the general perpetuation of anarchy in 
 Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to the 
 abortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union 
 with the more powerful kingdom at last supplied the force 
 requisite for the taming of the Celt. Highlanders, at the bid- 
 ing of Chatham's genius, became the soldiers, and are now the 
 pet soldiers, of the British monarchy. A Hanoverian tailor 
 with improving hand shaped the Highland plaid, which had 
 originally resembled the simple drapery of the Irisli kern, into 
 a garb of complex beauty, well suited for fancy balls. The 
 power of the chiefs and the substance of the clan system were 
 finally swept away, though the sentiment lingers, even in the 
 Transatlantic abodes of the clansmen, and is prized, like the 
 dress, as a remnant of social picturesqueness in a proasic and 
 levelling age. The hills and lakes — at the thought of which 
 even Gibbon shuddered — are the favourite retreats of the luxury 
 which seeks in wildness refreshment from civilization. After 
 Culloden, Presbyterianism effectually made its way into the 
 Highlands, of which a great part had up to that time been little 
 better than heathen ; but it did not fail to take a strong tinge 
 of Celtic enthusiasm and superstition. 
 
 Of all the lines of division in Great Britain, the most impor- 
 tant politically has been that which is least clearly traced by 
 the hand of nature. The natural barriers between England 
 and Scotland were not sufficient to prevent the extension of the 
 Saxon settlements and kingdoms across the border. In the 
 name of the Scotch capital we have a monument of a union 
 before that of 1603. That the Norman Conquest did not in- 
 clude the Saxons of the Scotch Lowlands was due chiefly to 
 the menacing attitude of Danish pretenders, and the other 
 military dangers which led the Conqueror to guard himself on 
 the north by a broad belt of desolation. Edward I., in attempt- 
 ing to extend his feudal supremacy over Scotland, may well 
 have seemed to himself to have been acting in the interest of 
 both nations, for a union would have put an end to border war, 
 and would have delivered the Scotch in the Lowlands from 
 
34 TEE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the extremity of feudal oppression, and the rest of the country 
 from a savage anarchy, giving them in place of those curses by 
 far the best government of the time. The resistance came 
 partly from mere barbarism, partly from Norman adventurers, 
 who were no more Scotch than English, whose aims were purely 
 selfish, and who would gladly have accepted Scotland as a 
 vassal kingdom from Edward's hand. But the annexation 
 would no doubt have formidably increased the power of the 
 Crown, not only by extending its dominions, but by removing 
 tliat which was a support often of aristocratic anarchy in Eng- 
 land, but sometimes of rudimentar}^ freedom. Had the whole 
 island fallen under one victoiious sceptre, the next wielder of 
 that sceptre, under the name of the great Edward's wittold son, 
 would have been Piers Gaveston. But what no prescience on 
 the part of any one in the time of Edward I. could possibly 
 have foreseen was the inestimable benefit which disunion and 
 even anarchy indirectly conferred on the whole island in the 
 shape of a separate Scotch Reformation. Divines, when they 
 have exhausted their reasonings about the rival forms of Church 
 government, will probably find that the argument which had 
 practically most effect in determining the question was that of 
 the much decried but in his way sagacious James I., "No bishop, 
 no king !" In England the Reformation was semi-Catholic; 
 in Sweden it was Lutheran; but in both countries it was made 
 by the kings, and in both Episcopacy was retained. Where 
 the Reformation was the work of the people, more popular 
 forms of Church government prevailed. In Scotland the mon- 
 archy, always weak, was at the time of the Reformation prac- 
 tically in abeyance, and the master of the movement was 
 emphatically a man of the people. As to the nobles, they seem 
 to have thought only of appropriating the Church lands, and 
 to have been willing to leave to the nation the spiritual grati- 
 fication of settling its own religion. Probably they also felt 
 with regard to the disinherited proprietors of the Church 
 lands that " stone dead had no fellow." The result was a demo- 
 cratic and thoroughly Protestant Church, which drew into 
 itself the highest energies, political as well as religious, of a 
 strong and great-hearted peo])le, and by which Laud and his con- 
 federates, when they had api)arently overcome resistance in Eng- 
 land w^ere as Milton says, " more robustiously handled." If the 
 Scotch auxiliaries did not win the decisive battle of Marston 
 Moor, they enabled the English Parliamentarians to fight and 
 win it. During the dark days of the Restoration, English re- 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 35 
 
 distance to tyranny was strongly supported on the ecclesiastical 
 side by the martyr steadfastness of the Scotch till the joint 
 effort triumphed in the Revolution. It is singular and sad to 
 find Scotland afterwards becominu^ one vast rotten borough 
 managed in the time of Pitt by Dundas, who ])aid the borough- 
 mongers by appointments in India, with calamitous conse- 
 quences to the poor Hindoo. But the intensity of the local evil 
 perhaps lent force to the revulsion, and Scotland has ever 
 since been a distinctly Liberal element in British politics, and 
 seems now likely to lead the way to a complete measure of re- 
 ligious freedom. 
 
 Nature, to a great extent fore-ordained the high destiny of 
 the larger island ; to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained 
 the sad destiny of the smaller island. Irish history, studied 
 impartially, is a grand lesson in political charity ; so clear is it 
 that in these deplorable annals the more important part was 
 played by adverse circumstance, the less important by the ma- 
 lignity of man. That the stronger nation is entitled by the law 
 of force to conquer its weaker neighbour and to govern the 
 conquered in its own interest is a doctrine which civilized mor- 
 ality abhors ; but in the days before civilized morality, in the 
 days when the only law was that of natural selection, to which 
 philosophy, by a strange counter-i-evolution seems now inclined 
 to return, the smaller island was almost sure to be conquered 
 by the possessors of the larger, more especially as the smaller, 
 cut off from the Continent by the larger, lay completely within 
 its grasp. The map, in short, tells us plainly that the destiny 
 of Ireland w^^ubordinated to that of Great Britain. At the 
 same time, the smaller island being of considerable size and 
 the channel of considerable breadth, it was likely that the re- 
 sistance would be tough and the conquest slow. The unsettled 
 state of Ireland, and the half-nomad condition in which at a 
 comparatively late period its tribes remained, would also help 
 to protract the bitter process of subjugation ; and these again 
 were the inevitable results of the rainy climate, which, while it 
 clothed the island with green and made pasture abundant, for- 
 bade the cultivation of grain. Ireland and Wales alike appear 
 to have been the scenes of a precocious civilization, merely in- 
 tellectual and literary in its character, and closely connected 
 with the Church, though includincj also a bardic element de- 
 rived from the times before Christianity, the fruits of which 
 were poetry, fantastic law-making, and probably the germs of 
 
SG THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 scholastic theology, combined, in the case of Ireland, with mis- 
 sionary enterprise and such ecclesiastical architecture as the- 
 Round Towers. But cities there were none, and it is evident 
 that the native Church with difficulty sustained her higher life- 
 amidst the influences and encroachments of surrounding bar- 
 barism. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland w^as a supple- 
 ment to the Norman conquest of England ; and, like the Nor- 
 man conquest of England, it was a religious as well as a politi- 
 cal enterprise. As Hildebrand had commissioned William to- 
 bring the national Church of England into complete submission 
 to the See of Rome, so Adrian, by the Bull wdiich is the stum- 
 bling-block of Irish Catholics, granted Ireland to Henry upon 
 condition of his reforming, that is, Romanizing, its primitive- 
 and schismatic Church. Ecclesiastical intrigue had already 
 been working in the same direction, and had in some measure 
 prepared the way for the conqueror by disposing the heads of 
 the Irish clergy to receive him as the emancipator of the Church 
 from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in 
 the case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the con- 
 quest was complete and final ; the conquerors formed every- 
 where a new upper class which, though at first alien and op- 
 pressive, became in time a national nobility, and ultimately 
 blended with the subject race. In the case of Ireland, though 
 the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery, and the 
 formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, the con- 
 quest was neither complete nor final. In their hills and bogs- 
 the wandering Septs easily evaded the Norman arms. The Irish 
 Channel was wdde ; the road lay through North Wales, long 
 unsubdued, and, even wdien subdued, mutinous, and presenting 
 natural obstacles to the passage of heavy troops ; The centre 
 of Anglo-Norman power was far away in the south-east of Eng- 
 land, and the force of the monarchy was either attracted to 
 Continental fields or absorbed by struggles with baronial fac- 
 tions. Richard II., coming to a throne which had been 
 strengthened and exalted by the achievements of his grand- 
 father, seems in one of his moods of fitful ambition to have 
 conceived the design of completing the conquest of Ireland^ 
 and he passed over with a great power ; but his fate showed 
 that the arm of the monarchy was still too short to reach the 
 dependency without losing hold upon the imperial country. 
 As a rule, the subjugation of Ireland during the period before 
 the Tudors was in eftect left to private enterprise, wdiich of 
 course confined its efforts to objects of private gain, and never 
 
THE GREATNESS OE ENGLAND. 37 
 
 thought of vindertaking the systematic subjugation of native 
 fortresses in the interest of order and civilization. Instead of 
 a national aristocracy the result was a military colony or Pale, 
 between the inhabitants of which and the natives raged a per- 
 petual border war, as savage as that between the settlers at the 
 Cape and the Knffirs, or that between the American frontier- 
 man and the Red Indian. The religious quarrel was and has 
 always been secondary in importance to the struggle of the races 
 for the land. In the period following the conquest it was the Pale 
 that was distinctively Romanist ; but when at the Reformation 
 the Pale became Protestant the natives, from antagonism of 
 race, became more intensely Catholic, and were drawn into the 
 league of Catholic powers on the Continent, in which they suf- 
 fered the usual fate of the dwarf who goes to battle with the 
 giant. By the strong monarchy of the Tudors the conquest of 
 Ireland was completed with circumstances of cruelty sufficient 
 to plant undj'ing hatred in the breasts of the people. But the 
 struggle for the land did not end there ; instead of the form of 
 conquest it took that of confiscation, and was waged by the in- 
 truder with the arms of legal chicane. In the form of eviction 
 it has lasted to the present hour ; and eviction in Ireland is not 
 like eviction in England, where great manufacturing cities re- 
 ceive and employ the evicted ; it is starvation or exile. Into 
 exile the Irish people have gone by millions, and thus, though 
 neither maritime nor by nature colonists, they have had a great 
 share in the peopling of the New World. The cities and rail- 
 roads of the United States are to a great extent the monu- 
 ments of their labour. In the political sphere they have re- 
 tained the weakness produced by ages of political serfage, and 
 are still the debris of broken clans, with little about them of 
 the genuine republican, apt blindly to follow the leader who 
 stands to them as a chief, while they are instinctively hostile 
 to law and government as their immemorial oppressors in their 
 native land. British statesmen, when they had conceded Catho- 
 lic emancipation and afterwards Disestablishment, may have 
 fancied that they had removed the root of the evil. Bat the 
 real root was not touched till Parliament took up the question 
 of the land, and effected a compromise which may perhaps have 
 to be again revised before complete pacification is attained. 
 
 In another way geography has exercised a sinister influence 
 ■on the fortunes of Irehxnd. Closely approaching Scotland, the 
 northern coast of Ireland in cour.se of time invited Scotch im- 
 migration, which formed as it were a Presbyterian Pale. If the 
 
38 TEE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 antagonism between the English Episcopalian and the Irish 
 Catholic was strong, that Letween the Scotch Presbyterian and 
 the Irish Catholic was stronger. To the English Episcopalian 
 the Iri.^h Catholic was a barbarian and a Romanist ; to the 
 Scotch Presbyterian he was a Canaanite and an idolator. Noth- 
 ing in history is more hideous than the conflict in the north of 
 Ireland in the time of Charles I. This is the feud which has 
 been tenacious enough of its evil life to propagate itself even 
 in the New World, and to renew in the streets of Canadian 
 cities the brutal and scandalous conflicts which disgrace Belfast. 
 On the other hand, through the Scotch colony, the larger island 
 has a second hold upon the smaller. Of all political projects a 
 federal union of England and Ireland with separate Parlia- 
 ments under the same Crown seems the most hopeless, at least 
 if government is to remain parliamentary ; it may be safely 
 said that the normal relation between the two Parliaments 
 would be collision, and collision on a question of peace or war 
 would be disruption. But an independent Ireland might be a 
 feasible as well as natural object of Irish aspiration if it were 
 not for the strength, moral as well as numerical, of the two in- 
 trusive elements. How could the Catholic majority be re- 
 strained from legislation which the Protestant minority would 
 deem oppressive ? And how could the Protestant minority, 
 being as it is more English or Scotch than Irish, be restrained 
 from stretchincr its hands to England or Scotland for aid ? It 
 is true that if scepticism continues to advance at its present 
 rate, the lines of religious separation may be obliterated or be- 
 come too faint to exercise a great practical influence, and the 
 bond of the soil may then prevail. But the feeling against 
 England which is the strength of Irish Nationalism is likely to 
 subside at the same time. 
 
 Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies is not invariably bar- 
 ren. It is interesting at all events to consider what would have 
 been the consequences to the people of the two islands, and hu- 
 manity generally, if a Saxon England and a Celtic Ireland had 
 been allowed to grow u^flnd develop by the side of each other un- 
 touched by Norman conquest. In the case of Ireland we should 
 have been spared centuries of oppression which has profoundly 
 reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of the op- 
 pressor ; and it is diflicult to believe that the Isle of Saints and 
 of primitive Universities would not have produced some good 
 fruits of its own. In the Norman concjuest of England histor- 
 ical optimism sees a great political and intellectual blessing be- 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 39 
 
 neath the disguise of barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The 
 Conquest was the continuation of the process of migratory in- 
 vasions by which the nations of modern Europe were founded, 
 from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased to be 
 beneficent. It was not the superposition of one primitive ele- 
 ment of population on another, to the ultimate advantage, pos- 
 sibly, of the compound ; but the destruction of a nationality, the 
 nationality of Alfred and Harold, of Bedeand^lfric. The French 
 were superior in military organization ; that they had superior 
 gifts of any kind, or that their promise was higher than that 
 of the native English, it would not be easy to prove. The langu- 
 age, we are told, is eniichcd by the intrusion of the French ele- 
 ment. If it was enriched it was shattered ; and the result is a 
 mixture so heterogeneous as to be hardly available for the pur- 
 poses of exact thought, while the language of science is borrow- 
 ed from the Greek, and as regards the unlearned mass of the 
 people is hardly a medium of thought at all. There are great 
 calamity in history, though their effects may in time be worked 
 off, and they may be attended by some incidental good. Perhaps 
 the greatest calamity in history were the wars of Napoleon, in 
 which some incidental good may nevertheless be found. 
 
 To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to be 
 added, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the in- 
 fluence of climate. But in the case of the British Islands we must 
 speak not of climate, but of climates ; for within the compass of 
 one small realm are climates moist and comparatively dry, warm 
 and cold, bracing and enervating, the results of special influences 
 the range of which is limited. Civilized man to a great extent 
 makes a climate for himself ; his life in the Noi'th is spent 
 mainly indoors, where artificial heat replaces the sun. The idea 
 which still haunts us, that formidable vigour and aptitude for 
 conquest are the appanage of Northern races, is a survival from 
 the state in which the rigour of nature selected and hardened 
 the destined conquerors of the Roman Empire. The stoves of 
 St. Petersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the 
 struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America 
 not the least vigoi'ous soldiers were those who came from 
 Louisiana. In the barbarous state the action of a Northern cli- 
 mate as a force of natural selection must be tremendous. Of 
 the races which peopled the British Islands the most important 
 had already undergone that action in their original abodes. 
 They would, however, still feel the beneficent influence of a cli- 
 mate on the whole eminently favourable to health andtoactivity ; 
 
40 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill those tender plants of 
 humanity which often beai' in them the most precious germs of 
 civilization ; neither confining the inhabitant too much to the 
 shelter of his dwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to 
 do, drawing him too much from home. The climate and the 
 soil together formed a good school for the character of the young 
 nation, as they exacted the toil of the husbandman and reward- 
 ed it. Of the varieties of temperature and weather within the 
 island the national character still bears the impress, though in 
 a degree always decreasing as the assimiliating agencies of civ- 
 ilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of 
 special employments, and perhaps even of peculiarity of race, 
 mental vigour, independence, and reasoning power are always 
 ascribed to the people of the North. Variety, in this as in other 
 respects, would naturally produce a balance of tendencies in the 
 nation conductive to moderation and evenness of progress. 
 
 The islands are now the centre of an Empire which to some 
 minds seems more important than the islands themselves. An 
 empire it is called, but the name is really ap])licable only to 
 Inclia. The relation of England to her free colonies is not in 
 the proper sense of the term impeiial ; while her relation to 
 such dependencies as Gibraltar and Malta is military alone. 
 Colonization is the natural and entirely beneficent j-esult of 
 general causes, obvious enough and already mentioned, includ- 
 ing that powerof self-government, fostered by the circumstances 
 of the colonizing country, which made the character and destiny 
 of New England so different from those of New France. 
 Equally natui-al was the choice of the situation for the original 
 colonies on the shore of the New World. The foundation of 
 the Australian Colonies, on the other hand, was dejiermined by 
 political accident, compensation for the loss of the American 
 Colonies being sought on the other side of the globe. It will 
 perhaps be thought hereafter that the quarrel with New Eng- 
 land was calamitous in its consequences as well as in itself, 
 since it led to the diversion of British emigration from Ameiica, 
 where it supplied, in a democracy of mixed but not uncon- 
 genial races, the necessary element of guidance and control, to 
 Australia, where, as there must be a limit to its own multi- 
 plication, it may hereafter have to struggle for mastery Math 
 swarming multitudes of Chinese, almost as incapable of incor- 
 poration with it as the negro. India and the other conquered 
 dependencies are the fruits of strength as a war power at sea 
 combined with weakness on land. Though not so generally 
 
THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. 41 
 
 noticed, the second of these two factors has not been less oper- 
 ative than the first. Chatham attacked France in her distant 
 dependencies when he had faihul to make any impression on 
 her own coasts. Still more clearly was Chatham's son, the 
 most incapable of war ministers, driven to the capture of sugar 
 islands by his inability to take part, otherwise than by sub- 
 sidies, in the decisive struggle on the Continental fields. This 
 may deserve the attention of those who do not think it crim- 
 inal to examine the policy of Empire. Outlying pawns picked 
 up by a feeble chessplayer merely because he could not mate 
 the king do not at first sight necessarily commend themselves 
 as invaluable possessions. Carthage and Venice were merely 
 great commercial cities, which, when they entered on a career 
 of conquest, were compelled at once to form armies of mercen- 
 aries, and to incur all the evil consequences by which the 
 employment of those vile and fatal instruments of ambition is 
 attended. England being, not a commercial city, but a nation, 
 and a nation endowed with the highest military qualities, has 
 escaped the fell necessity except in the case of India; and India, 
 under the reign of the Company, and even for some time after 
 its legal annexation to the Crown, was regarded and treated 
 almost as a realm in another planet, with an army, a political 
 system, and a morality of its own. But now it appears that 
 the wrongs of the Hindoo are going to be avenged, as the wrongs 
 of the conquered have often been, by their moral effect upon 
 the conqueror. A body of barbarian mercenaries has appeared 
 upon the European scene as an integral part of the British 
 army, while the reflex influence of Indian Empire ujion the 
 political character and tendencies of the imperial nation is too 
 manifest to.be any longer overlooked. England now stands 
 where the paths divide, the one leading by industrial and com- 
 mercial progress to increase of political liberty ; the other, by a 
 career of conquest, to the political results in which such a career 
 has never yet failed to end. At present the influences in favour 
 of taking the path of conquest seemed to preponderate,* and the 
 probability seems to be that the leadership of political progress, 
 which has hitherto belonged to Enfjland and has constituted 
 the special interest of her history, will, in the near future, pass 
 into other hands. 
 
 * Written in 1878. 
 
42 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 . THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH 
 CENTURY* 
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 
 
 The Thirty Years' War is an old story, but its interest has 
 been recently revived. The conflict between Austria and Ger- 
 man Independence commenced in the struggle of the Protestant 
 Princes against Chai'les V., aud, continued on those battle-fields, 
 was renewed and decided at Sadowa. At Sadowa Germany 
 was fighting for unity as well as for independence. But in the 
 Thirty Years' War it was Austria that with her Croats, the 
 Jesuits who inspired her councils, and her Spanish allies, sought 
 to impose a unity of death, against which Protestant Germany 
 struggled, preserving herself for a unity of life which, opened 
 by the victories of Frederick the Great, and, more nobly pro- 
 moted by the great uprising of the nation against the tyranny 
 of Napoleon, was finally accomplished at Sadowa, and ratified 
 against French jealousy at Sedan. Costly has been the achieve- 
 ment ; lavish has been the expenditure of German blood, severe 
 the suft'erings of the German people. It is the lot of all who 
 aspire high : no man or nation ever was dandled into greatness. 
 
 The Thirty Years' W^ar was a real world-contest. Austria and 
 Spain drew after them all the powers of reaction : all the powers 
 of liberty and progress were arrayed on the other side. The 
 half-barbarous races that lay between civilized Europe and 
 Turkey mingled in the conflict : Turkey herself was drawn 
 diplomatically into the vortex. In the mines of Mexico and 
 Peru the Indian toiled to furnish both the Austrian and Spanish 
 hosts. The Treaty of West])halia, which concluded the strug- 
 gle, long remained the Public Law of Europe. 
 
 Half religious, half political, in its character, this war stands 
 midway between the religious wars of the sixteenth century, 
 and the political wars of the eighteenth, France took the politi- 
 
 * In this lecture free use has been made of recent writers — Mitchell, Chapman, 
 Vehf;e,Freyta^'an(l Ranke, as well as of the older authorities. To Chapman's excel- 
 lent Life of Gustaviis Adolphus we are under special obligations. In some passages 
 it has been closely followed. Colonel Mitchell has also supplied some remarks and 
 touches, such as are to be found only in a military writer. 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 43 
 
 cal view ; and, while she crushed her own Huguenots athome^ 
 supported the German Protestants against the House of Austria. 
 Even the Pope, Urban VIII,, more politician than churchman, 
 more careful of Peter's patrimony than of Peter's creed, went 
 with France to the Protestant side. With the princes, as usual^ 
 political motives were the strongest, with the people religious 
 motives. The politics were to a sad extent those of Machia- 
 velli and the Jesuit ; but above the meaner characters who 
 crowd the scene rise at least two grand forms. 
 
 In a military point of view, the Thirty Years' War will bear 
 no comparison Avith that which has just run its marvellous 
 course. The armies were small, seldom exceeding thirty 
 thousand. Tilly thought forty thousand the largest number 
 which a general could handle, while Von Moltke has handled 
 half a million. There was no regular commissariat, there were 
 no railroads, there were no good roads, there were no ac- 
 curate maps, there was no trained staff. The general had 
 to be everything and to do everything himself. The financial 
 resources of the powers were small : their regular revenues soon 
 failed ; and they had to fly for loans to gieat banking houses,, 
 such as that of the Fuggers at Augsburgh, so that the money 
 power became the arbiter even of Imperial elections. The 
 country on which the armies lived was soon eaten up by their 
 rapine. Hence the feel)leness of the operations, the absence of 
 anything which Von Moltke would call strategy : and hence 
 ae-ain the cruel leno^th of the war, a whole generation of Ger- 
 man agony. 
 
 But if the war was weak, not so were the warriors. On the 
 Imperial side especially, they were types of a class of men, the- 
 most terrible perhaps, as well as the vilest, who ever plied the sol- 
 dier's trade: of those mercenary bands,. so^(7«(Zo.8, in the literal and 
 original sense of the tei'm, free companions, condottieri, lans- 
 quenets, who came between the feudal militia and the standing 
 armies of modern times. In the wars of Italy and the Low 
 Countries, under Alva and Parma and Freundsberg, these men 
 had opened new abysses of cruelty and lust in human nature. 
 They were the lineal representatives of the Great Companies 
 which ravaged France in the time of Edward III. They v^^ere 
 near of kin to the buccaneers, and Scott's Bertram Risingham 
 is the portrait of a lansquenet as well as of a rover of the Spanish 
 Main. Many of them were Croats, a race well known through 
 all history in the ranks of Austrian tyranny, and Walloons, a 
 name synonymous with that of hired butcher and marauder^ 
 
44 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 
 
 But with Croats and Walloons were mingled Germans, Spaniards, 
 Italians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, outcasts of every 
 land, bearing the devil's stamp on faces of ever}^ complexion, 
 blaspheming in all European and some non-European tongues. 
 Their only country was the camp; their cause booty; their king 
 the bandit general who contracted for their blood. Of attach- 
 ment to religious principle they had usually just enough to make 
 them prefer murdering and plundering in the name of the Virgin 
 to murdering and plundering in the name of the Gospel ; but out- 
 casts of all nominal creeds wei'e found together in their camps. 
 Even the dignity of hatred was wanting to their conflicts, for they 
 changed sides without scruple, and the comrade of yesterday w^as 
 the foeman of to-day, and again the comrade of the morrow. 
 The only moral salt which kept the carcass of their villainy 
 from rotting was a military code of honour, embodying the free- 
 masonry of the soldier's trade and having as one of its articles 
 the duel with all the forms — an improvement at any rate upon 
 assassination. A stronger contrast there cannot be than that 
 between these men and the citizen soldiers whom Germany the 
 other day sent forth to defend their country and their hearths. 
 The soldier had a language of his own, polyglot as the elements 
 of the band, and garnished with unearthly oaths : and the void 
 left by religion in his soul was filled with wild superstitions, 
 bullet charming and spells against bullets, the natural re- 
 flection in dark hearts of the blind chance which since the in- 
 troduction of firearms seemed to decide the soldier's f\ite. Having 
 no home but the camp, he carried with him his family, a she 
 wolf and her cvibs, cruel and marauding as himself; and the 
 numbers and unwieldiness of every army were doubled by a 
 train of waggons full of women and children sitting on heaps 
 of booty. It was not, we may guess, as ministering angels that 
 these women "vvent among the wounded after a battle. The 
 chiefs made vast fortunes. Common soldiers sometimes drew 
 a great prize ; left the standard for a time and lived like princes ; 
 but the fiend's gold soon found its way back to the giver through 
 the Jews who prowle<l in the wake of war, or at the gambling- 
 table which was the central object in every camp. When fortune 
 smiled, when pay was good, when a rich city had been stormed, 
 the soldier's life was in its way a merry one ; his camp was full 
 -of roystering revelry ; he, his lady and his charger glittered with 
 not over-tasteful finery, the lady sometimes with finery stripped 
 from the altars. Then, glass in hand he might joyously cry, 
 " The sharp sword is my farm and plundering is my plough ; 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 45 
 
 earth is my bed, the sky my covering, this cloak is my house, 
 this wine my paradise ; " or chant the doggerel stave which said 
 that " when a soldier was born three boors were given him, one 
 to find him food, another to find him a comely lass, a third to 
 go to perdition in his stead." But when the country had been 
 eaten up, wdien the burghers held the city stoutly, when the 
 money-kings refused to advance the war kings any more gold, 
 the soldier shared the miseries which he infiicted, and, unless- 
 he was of iron, sank under his hardships,unpitied by his stronger 
 comrades ; for the rule of that world was w^oe to the weak. Ter- 
 rible then were the mutinies. Fearful was the position of the 
 commander. We cannot altogether resist the romance which 
 attaches to the life of these men, many a one among whom could 
 have told a tale as wild as that with which Othello, the hero of 
 their tribe, won his Desdemona, in whose love he finds the 
 countercharm of his wandering life. But what sort of war such 
 a soldiery made, may be easily imagined. Its ti-eatment of the 
 people and the country wdierever it marched, as minutely de- 
 scribed by trustworthy witnesses, was literally fiendish. Ger- 
 many did not recover the effects for two hundred years. 
 
 A century had passed since the first preaching of Luther. 
 Jesuitism, working from its great seminary at Ingoldstadt, and 
 backed by Austria, had won back many, especially among the 
 jDrinces and nobility, to the Church of Rome : but in the main 
 the Germans, like the other Teutons, were still Protestant even 
 in the hereditary domains of the House of Austria. The rival 
 religions stood facing each other within the nominal unity of 
 the Empire, in a state of uneasy truce and compromise; questions 
 about ecclesiastical domains and religious privileges still open ; 
 formularies styled of concord proving formularies of discord ; 
 no mediating authority being able to make church authority 
 and liberty of private judgment, Reaction and Progress, the 
 Spirit of the Past and the Spirit of the Future lie down in real 
 peace together. The Protestants had formed an Evangelical 
 Union, their opponents a Catholic League, of which Maximilian, 
 Elector of Bavaria, a pupil of the Jesuits, was chief. The 
 Protestants were ill prepared for the struggle. There was fatal 
 division between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, Luther him- 
 self having said in his haste that he hated a Calvinist more than 
 a Papist. The great Protestant princes were lukewarm and 
 weak-kneed : like the Tudor nobility of England, they clung 
 much more firmly to the lands which they had taken from the 
 Catholics than to the faith in the name of which the lands were 
 
4G GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 taken ; and as powers of order, naturally alarmed by the dis- 
 orders which attended the great religious revolution, they were 
 politically inclined to the Imperial side. The lesser nobility 
 and gentry, staunch Protestants for the most part, had shown 
 no capacity for vigorous and united action since their premature 
 atteujpt under Arnold Von Sickingen. On the peasantry, also 
 staunch Protestants, still weighed the reaction produced by the 
 Peasants' war and the excesses of the Anabaptists. In the free 
 cities there was a strong burgher element ready to fight for 
 Protestantism and liberty ; but even in the free cities wealth 
 was Conservative, and to the Rothschilds of the day the cause 
 wliich offered high interest and good security was the cause of 
 Heaven. 
 
 The smouldering fire burst into a flame in Bohemia, a king- 
 dom of the House of Austria, and a member of the Empire ; 
 but peopled by hot, impulsive Sclavs, jealous of their nationality, 
 as well as of their Protestant faith — Bohemia, whither the spark 
 of Wycliffism had passed along the electric chain of common 
 universities by which medieval Christendom was bound, and 
 where it had kindled first the martyr fire of John Huss and 
 Jerome of Prague, then the fiercer conflagration of the Hussite 
 war. In that romantic city by the Moldau, with its strange, 
 half Oriental beauty, where Jesuitism now reigns supreme, and 
 St. John Nepemuch is the popular divinity. Protestantism and 
 Jesuitism then lay in jealous neighbourhood, — Protestantism 
 supported by the native nobility, from anarchical propensity as 
 well as from religious conviction ; Jesuitism patronized and 
 furtively aided by the intrusive Austrian power. From the 
 Emperor Rudolph II, the Protestants had obtained a charter of 
 religious liberties. But Rudolph's successor, Ferdinand II., was 
 the Philip II. of Germany in bigotry, though not in cruelty. 
 In his youth, after a pilgrimage to Loretto, he had vowed at 
 the feet of the Pope to restore Catholicism at the hazard of his 
 life. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, almost worshipped priests, 
 was passionately devoted to the ceremonies of his religion, de- 
 lighting even in the functions of an acolyte, and, as he said, pre- 
 ferred a desert to an empire full of heretics. He had, moreover, 
 before his accession to the throne, come into collision with Pro- 
 testantism where it was triumphant, and had found in its vio- 
 lence too good an excuse for his bigotry. It was inevitable that 
 as King of Bohemia he should j attempt to narrow the Protest- 
 ant liberties. The hot Czech blood took fire, the fierceness of 
 political turbulence mingled with that of religous zeal, and at a 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 47 
 
 council held at Prague, in the old pahice of the Bohemian kings, 
 Martiniz and Slavata, the most hated of Ferdinand's creatures, 
 were thrown out of a window in what was called good Bohem- 
 ian fashion, and only by a marvellous accident escaped with 
 their lives. The first blow was struck, the simal was given 
 for thirty years of havoc. Insurrection flamed up in Bohemia. 
 At the head of the insurgents, Count Thurn rushed on Vienna. 
 The Emperor was saved only by a miracle, as Jesuitism aver- 
 red, — as Rationalism says, by the an-ival of Dampierre's Im- 
 perial horse. He suffered a fright which must have made him 
 more than ever prefer a desert to an empire full of heretics. 
 By a vote of the States of FSohemia the crown was taken fi'om 
 Ferdinand and offered to Frederic, Elector Palatine. Frederic 
 was married to the bright and fascinating Princess Elizabeth of 
 England, the darling of Protestant hearts ; other qualifications 
 for that crown of peril he had none. But in an evil hour he 
 accepted the offer. Soon his unfitness appeared. A foreigner, 
 he could not rein the restive and hard mouthed Czech nobil- 
 ity ; a Calvinist and a pupil of the Huguenots, he unwisely let 
 loose Calvinist iconoclasra among a people who clung to their 
 ancient images though they had renounced their ancient faith. 
 Supinely he allowed Austria and the Catholic League to raise 
 theii' Croats and Walloons with the ready aid, so valuable in 
 that age of unready finance, of Spanish gold. Supinely he saw 
 the storm gather and roll towards him. Supinely he lingered 
 in his palace, while on the White Hill, a name fatal in Protes- 
 tant annals, his army, filled with his own discouragement, was 
 broken by the combined forces of the Empire, under Bucquoi, 
 and of the Catholic League, under Count Tilly. Still there was 
 hope in resistance : yet Frederic fled. He was in great danger, 
 say his apologists. It was to face a great danger, and show 
 others how to face it, that he had come there. Let a man, be- 
 fore he takes the crown of Bohemia, look well into his own 
 heart. Then followed a scaffold scene like that of Egmont and 
 Horn, but on a larger scale. Ferdinand, it seems, hesitated to 
 shed blood, but his confessor quelled his scruples. Before the 
 City Hall of Prague, and near the Thein Church, bearing the 
 Hussite emblems of the chalice and sword, amidst stern mili- 
 tary pomp, the Emperor presiding in the person of his High 
 Commissioner, twenty-four victims of high rank were led forth 
 to death. Just as the executions commenced a bright rainbow 
 spanned the sky. To the victims it seemed an assurance of 
 Heaven's mercy. To the more far-reaching ej^e of history it 
 
48 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 may seem to have been an assurance that, dark as the sky then 
 was, the flood of Reaction should no more cover the earth. But 
 dark the sky was : the counter-reformation rode on the wings 
 of victory, and with ruthless cruelty, through Bohemia, through 
 Moravia, through Austria Proper, which had shown sympathy 
 with the Bohemian revolt. The lands of the Protestant nobil- 
 ity were confiscated, the nobilit}^ itself crushed ; in its place was 
 erected a new nobility of courtiers, foreigners, military adven- 
 turers devoted to the Empire and to Catholicism, the seed of the 
 Metternichs. 
 
 For ten years the tide ran steadily against Protestantism and 
 German Independence. The Protestants were without cohes- 
 ion, without powerful chiefs. Count Mansfeldt was a brilliant 
 soldier, with a strong dash of the robber. Christian of Bruns- 
 wick was a brave knight errant, fighting, as his motto had it, 
 for God and for Elizabeth of Bohemia. But neither of them 
 had any great or stable force at his back ; and if a ray of vic- 
 tory shone for a moment on their standards, it was soon lost in 
 gloom. In Frederick, ex-king of Bohemia, was no help ; and 
 his charming queen could only win for him hearts like that of 
 Christian of Brunswick. The great Protestant Piinces of the 
 North, Saxony and Bi'andenburgh, twin pillars of the cause that 
 should have been, were not only lukewarm, timoi'ous, super- 
 stitously afraid of taking part against the Em]3eror, but they 
 were sybarites, or rather sots, to whose gross hearts no noble 
 thought could find its way. Their inaction was almost justi- 
 fied by the conduct of the Protestant chiefs, whose councils were 
 full of folly and selfishness, whose policy seemed mere anarchy, 
 and who too often made war like buccaneers. The Evangelical 
 Union, in which Lutheranism and political quietism prevailed, 
 refused its aid to the Calvinist and usurping King of Bohemia. 
 Among foreign powers, England was divided in will, the nation 
 being enthusiastically^ for Protestantism and Elizabeth of Bohe- 
 mia, while the Court leant to the side of order and hankered 
 after the Spanish marriage. France was not divided in will : 
 her single will was that of Richelieu, who, to weaken Austria, 
 fanned the flame of civil war in Germany, as he did in Eng- 
 land, but lent no decisive aid. Bethlem Gabor, the Evangeli- 
 cal Prince of Transylvania, led semi-barbarous hosts, useful as 
 auxiliaries, but incapable of bearing the main brunt of the strug- 
 gle ; and he was trammelled by his allegiance to his suzerain, 
 the Sultan. The Catholic League was served by a first-rate 
 general in the person of Tilly ; the Empire by a first-rate general 
 
GREAT DUEL OF TEE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 40 
 
 and first-rate statesman in the person of Wallenstein. The Pal- 
 atinate was conquered, and the Electorate was transferred by Im- 
 perial fiat to Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Gatliolic Lea- 
 gue, whereby a majority was given to theCatholics in the hither- 
 to equally-divided College of Electors. An Imperial Edict of 
 Kestitution went forth, restoring to Catholicism all that it had 
 lost by conversion within the last seventy years. Over all Ger- 
 many, Jesuits and Capuchins swarmed with the mandates of re- 
 action in their hands. The King of Denmark tardily took up 
 arms only to be overthrown by Tilly at Lutter, and again at 
 Wolgast by Wallenstein. The Catholic and Imperial armies 
 were on the northern seas. Wallenstein, made Admiral of the 
 Empire, was preparing a basis of maritime operations against 
 the Protestiint kingdoms of Scandinavia, against the last asy- 
 lum of Protestantism and Liberty in Holland. Germany, with 
 all its intellect and all its hopes, was on the point of becoming 
 a second Spain. Teutonism was all but enslaved to the Croat. 
 The double star of the House of Austria seemed with baleful 
 aspect to dominate in the sky, and to threaten with extinction 
 European liberty and progress. One bright spot alone remain- 
 ed amidst the gloom. By the side of the brave burghers who 
 beat back the Prince of Parma from the cities of Holland, a 
 place must be made in history for the brave burghers who beat 
 back W^allenstein from Stralsund, after he had sworn, in his 
 _gi"and, impious way, that he would take it though it were bound 
 by a chain to Heaven. The eyes of all Protestants were turn- 
 ed, says Richelieu, like those of sailors, towards the North. 
 And from the Nortli a deliverer came. On Midsummer day, 
 1630, a bright day in the annals of Protestantism, of Germany, 
 and, as Protestants and Germans must believe, of human liber- 
 ty and progress, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landed 
 at Penemunde, on the Pomeranian coast, and knelt down on the 
 shore to give thanks to God for his safe passage ; then showed 
 at once his knowledge of the art of war and of the soldier's 
 heart, by himself taking spade in hand, and commencing the 
 entrenchment of his camp. Gustavus was the grandson of that 
 Gustavus Vasa who had broken at once the bonds of Denmark 
 and of Rome, and had made Sweden independent and Luther- 
 an. He was the son of that Charles Vasa who had defeated 
 the counter-reformation. Devoted from his childhood to the 
 Protestant cause, hardily trained in a country where even the 
 palace was the abode of thrift and self-denial, his mind enlarg- 
 ed by a liberal education, in regard for which, amidst her pov- 
 D 
 
50 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 erty, as in general character and haLits of her people, his Swe- 
 den greatly resembled Scotland ; his imagination stimulated by 
 the wild scenery, the dark forests, the starry nights of Scandi- 
 navia ; gifted by nature both in mind and body ; the young 
 king had already shown himself a hero. He had waged gi'im war 
 with the powers of the icy north ; he bore several scars, proofs 
 of a valour only too great for the vast interests which depend- 
 ed on his life ; he had been a successful innovator in tactics, or 
 rather a successful restorer of the military science of the Ro- 
 mans. But the best of his military innovations were discipline 
 and religion. His discipline redeemed the war from savagery^ 
 and made it again, so far as war, and war in that iron age could 
 be, a school of humanity and self-control. In religion he was 
 himself not an ascetic saint : there is one light passage at least 
 in his early life : and at Augsburg they show a I'utf plucked 
 from his neck by a fair Augsburger at the crisis of a very brisk 
 flirtation. But he was devout, and he inspired his army with 
 his devotion. The traveller is still struck with the prayer and 
 hymn which open and close the march of the soldiers of Gus- 
 tavus. Schools for the soldiers' children were held in his camp. 
 It is true that the besetting sin ol' the Swedes, and of all dwell- 
 ers in cold countries, is disclosed by the article in his military 
 code directed against the drunkenness of army chaplains. 
 
 Sir Thomas Roe, the most sagacious of the English diplomat- 
 ists of that age, wrote of Gustavus to James I. : — " The king- 
 hath solemnly protested that he will not depose arms till he 
 hath spoken one word for your majesty in Germany (that was 
 his own phrase) ; and glory will contend with policy in his re- 
 solution ; for he hath unlimited thoughts, and is the Ifkeliest 
 instrument for God to work by in Europe. We have often ob- 
 served great alterations to follow great spirits, as if they were 
 fitted for the times. Certainly, ambit fortunam Ccvsaris : he 
 thinks the ship cannot sink that carries him, and doth thus 
 oblige prosperity." 
 
 Gustavus justified his landing in Germany by a manifesto 
 setting forth hostile acts of the Emperor against him in Poland. 
 No doubt there was a technical casus belli. But, morally, the 
 landing of Gustavus was a glorious breach of the principle of 
 non-intervention. He came to save the world. He was not 
 the less a fit instrument for God to work by because it was 
 likely that he would rule the world when he had saved it. 
 
 "A snow king!" tittered the courtiers of Vienna, "he will 
 soon melt away." He soon began to prove to them, both in 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 51 
 
 war and diplomacy, that his melting would be slow. Richelieu 
 at last ventured on a treaty of alliance. Charles I., now on 
 the throne of England, and angry at having been jilted by 
 Spain, also entered into a treaty, and sent British auxiliaries, 
 who, though soon reduced in numbers by sickness, always 
 formed a substantial part of the armies of Gustavus, and in 
 battle and storm earned their full share of the honour of his 
 campaigns. Many British volunteers had already joined the 
 standard of Mansfeldt and other Protestant chiefs ; and if some 
 of these men were mere soldiers of the Dugald Dalghetty type, 
 some were the Garibaldians of their day, and brought back at 
 once enthusiasm and military skill from German battlefields to 
 Marston and Naseby. Diplomacy, aided by a little gentle 
 pressure, drew Saxony and Brandenburgh to the better cause, 
 now that the better cause was so strong. But while they 
 dallied and haggled one more great disaster was added to the 
 sum of Protestant calamit3^ Magdeburgh, the queen of Pro- 
 testant cities, the citadel of North German liberty, fell — fell 
 with Gustavus and rescue near — and nameless atrocities were 
 perpetrated by the ferocious bands of the Empire on innocents 
 of all ages and both sexes, whose cry goes up against blood- 
 thirsty fanaticism for ever. A shriek of horror rang through 
 the Protestant world, not without reproaches against Gustavus, 
 who cleared himself by words, and was soon to clear himself 
 better by deeds. 
 
 Count Tilly was now in sole command on the Catholic and 
 Imperial side. Wallenstein had been dismissed. A military 
 Richelieu, an absolutist in politics, an indifferent] st in religion, 
 caring at least for the religious quarrel only as it affected the 
 political question, he aimed at crushing the independence of 
 all the princes, Catholic as well as Protestant, and making the 
 Emperor, or rather Wallenstein in the name of the Imperial 
 devotee, as much master of Germany as the Spanish king was 
 of Spain. But the disclosure of this policy, and the towering 
 pride of its author had alarmed the Catholic princes, and pro- 
 duced a reaction similar to that caused by the absolutist en- 
 croachments of Charles V. Aided by the Jesuits, who marked 
 in Wallenstein a statesman whose policy was independent of 
 theirs, and who, if not a traitor to the faith, was at least a bad 
 persecutor, Maximilian and his confederates forced the Emperor 
 to I'emove Wallenstein from command. The great man received 
 the bearers of the mandate with stately courtesy, with princely 
 hospitality, showed them that he had read in the stars the 
 
52 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 predominance of Maximilian over Ferdinand, slightly glanced 
 at the Emperor's weakness, then withdrew to that palace at 
 Prague, so like its mysterious lord, so regal and so fantastic in 
 its splendour, yet so gloomy, so jealously guarded, so full of the 
 spirit of dark ambition, so haunted by the shadow of the dagger. 
 There he lay, watching the storm that gathered in the North, 
 scanninsf the stars and waiting for his hour. 
 
 When the Swedes and Saxons, under Gustavus and the 
 Elector of Saxony, drew near to the Imperial arm}^ under Tilly, 
 in the neighbourhood of Leipsic, there was a crisis, a thrill of 
 worldwide expectation, as when the Armada approached the 
 shores of England; as when the allies met the foices of Louis 
 XIV. at Blenheim ; as when, on those same plains of Leipsic. 
 the uprisen nations advanced to battle against Napoleon. 
 Count Tilly's military genius fell short only of the highest, 
 His figure was one which showed that war had become a science, 
 and that the days of the Paladins were past. He was a little 
 old man, with a broad wrinkled forehead, hollow cheeks, a 
 long nose and projecting chin, grotesquely attii-ed in a slashed 
 doublet of green satin, with a peaked hat and a long red 
 feather hanging down behind. His charger was a grey pony, 
 his only weapon a pistol, which it was his delight to say he 
 had never fired in the thirty pitched fields which he had fought 
 and won. He was a Walloon by birth, a pupil of the Jesuits, 
 a sincere devotee, and could boast that he had never yielded to 
 the allurements of wine or women, as well as that he had never 
 lost a battle. His name was now one of horror, for he was the 
 captor of Magdeburg, and if he had not commanded the massacre, 
 or, as it was said, jested at it, he could not be acquitted of cruel 
 connivance. That it was the death of his honour to survive 
 the butchery which he ought to have died, if necessary, in re- 
 sisting sword in hand, is a soldier's judgment on his case. At 
 his side was Pappenheim, another pupil of the Jesuits, the 
 Dundee of the thirty years' war, with all the devotion, all the 
 loyalty, all the ferocity of the Cavalier, the most fiery and 
 brilliant of cavalry officers, the leader of the storming column 
 at Magdebui'g. 
 
 In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The 
 musket was an unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and with- 
 out a bayonet, so that in the infantry regiments it was necessary 
 to combine pikemen with the musketeers. Cannon there were 
 of all calibres and with a whole vocabulary of fantastic names, 
 but none capable of advancing and manoeuvring with troops in 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 53 
 
 battle. The Imperial troops were formed in heavy masses. 
 Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had intro- 
 duced a more open order — he had lightened the musket, dispens- 
 ed with the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of 
 the flapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of 
 firing their carbines and wheeling, to charge home with the 
 sword. He had created a real field artillery of imperfect struc- 
 ture, but which told on the Imperial masses. 
 
 The harvest had been reaped, and a strong wind blew clouds 
 of dust over the bare autumn fields, when Count Tilly formed 
 the victorious veterans of the Empire, in what was called Span- 
 ish order — infantry in the centre, cavalry on the fianks — upon 
 a rising ground oveilooking the broad plain of Breitenfeldt. On 
 him marched the allies in two columns — Gustavus with the 
 Swedes upon the right, the Elector with his Saxons on the left. 
 As they passed a brook in front of the Imperial position, Pap- 
 penheim dashed upon them with his cavalry, but was driven 
 back, and the two columns deplo3^ed upon the plain. The night 
 before the battle Gustavus had dreamt that he was wrestling 
 with Tilly, and that Tilly bit him in the left arm, but that he 
 overpowered Tilly with his right arm. That dream came 
 through the Gate of Horn, for the Saxons who formed the left 
 wing were raw troops, but victory was sure to the Swede. Sol- 
 diers of the old school j^roudly compare the shock of charging 
 armies at Leipsic with modern battles, which they call battles of 
 skirmishers with armies in reserve. However this may be, all 
 that day the plain of Breitenfeldt was filled with the fierce eddies 
 of a hand-to-hand stru^wle between mail-clad masses, their 
 cuirasses and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst the clouds of 
 smoke and dust, the mortal shock of the charge and the deadly 
 ring of steel striking the ear with a distinctness impossible in 
 modem battle. Tilly with his right soon shattered the Saxons, 
 but his centre and left were shattered by the unconquerable 
 Swede. The day was won by the genius of the Swedish king, 
 by the steadiness with which his troops manoeuvred, and the 
 promptness with which they formed a new front when the 
 defeat of the Saxons exposed their left, by the rapidity of their 
 fire and by the vigour with which their cavalry charged. The 
 victory was complete. At sunset four veteran Walloon regi- 
 ments made a last stand for the honour of the Empire, and 
 with difiiculty bore ofi" their redoubtable commander from his 
 first lost field. Through all Protestant Europe flew the tidings 
 of a great deliverance and the name of a great deliverer. 
 
54 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 " On to Vienna ! " cried hope and daring then. " On to Vi- 
 enna I " history still regretfully repeats the cry. Gustavus 
 judged otherwise, — and whatever his reason was, we may be 
 sure it was not weak. Not to the Danube, therefore, but to 
 the Main and Rhine the tide of conquest rolled. The Thuring- 
 ian forest gleams with fires that guide the night march of the 
 Swede. Frankfurt, the city of empiie, opens her gates to him 
 who will soon come, as the hearts of all men divine, not as a 
 conqueror in the iron garb of w^ar, but as the elect of Germany 
 to put on the imperial crown. In the cellars of the Prince 
 Bishop of Bamberg and Wurtzburg the rich wine is broached 
 for heretic lips. Protestantism everywhere uplifts its head : 
 the Archbishop of Mainz, chief of the Catholic persecutors, be- 
 comes a fugitive in his turn ; Jesuit and Capuchin must cower 
 or fly. All fortres.'^ea are opened by the arms of Gustavus ; all 
 hearts are opened by his gracious manner, his winning words, 
 his sunny smile. To the people, accustomed to a war of mas- 
 sacre and persecution, he came as from a better world, a spirit 
 of humanity and toleration. His toleration was politic, no 
 doubt, but it was also sincere. So novel was it that a monk, 
 finding himself not butchered or tortured, thought the king's 
 faith must be weak, and attempted his conversion. His zeal 
 was repaid with a gracious smile. Once more, on the Lech, 
 Tilly crossed the path of the thunderbolt. Dishonoured at 
 Magdeburg, defeated at Leipsic, the old man seems to have 
 been weary of life ; his leg shattered by a cannon ball, he was 
 borne dying from the field, and left the Imperial cause headless 
 as well as beaten. Gustavus is in Augsburgh, the queen of 
 German commerce, the city of the Fuggers, with their splendid 
 and romantic money-kingdom, the city of the Confession. He 
 is in Munich, the capital of Maximilian and the Catholic League. 
 His allies, the Saxons, are in Prague. A few marches more, 
 and he will dictate peace at Vienna, with nil Germany at his 
 back. A few marches more, the Germans will be a Protestant 
 nation, under a Protestant chief, and many a dark page will be 
 torn from the book of fate. 
 
 Ferdinand and Maximilian had sought counsel of the dying 
 Tilly. Tilly had given them counsel, bitter but inevitable. 
 Dissembling their hate and fear, they called, like trembling 
 necromancers when they invoke the fiend, upon the name 
 of power. The name of Wallenstein gave new life to 
 the Imperial cause, under the very ribs of death. At once 
 he stood between the Empire and destruction, with an army 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 55 
 
 of 50,000 men, conjured, as it were, out of the earth by the 
 spell of his influence alone. All whose trade was war came 
 at the call of the grand master of their trade. The secret of 
 Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave; but the man 
 himself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mer- 
 cenar}^ bands, the arch contractor for the liireling's blood. His 
 character was formed in a vast political gambling house, a 
 world given up to pillage and the strong hand, an Eldorado of 
 confiscations. Of the lofty dreamer portrayed in the noble 
 dramatic poem of Schiller, there is little trace in the intensely 
 practical character of the man. A scion of a good Bohemian 
 house, poor himself, but married to a rich wife, whose wealth 
 was the first ste}) in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wal- 
 lenstein had amassed immense domains by the purchase of con- 
 fiscated estates, a traffic redeemed from meanness only by the 
 vastness of the scale on which he practised it, and the loftiness of 
 the aim which he had in view. Then he took to raising and com- 
 manding mercenary troops, improving on his predecessors in 
 that trade by doubling the size of his army, on the theory, 
 coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its 
 command of the country, where a small army would starve. 
 But all was subservient to his towering ambition, and to a 
 pride which has been called theatrical, and which often wore 
 an eccentric garb, but which his death scene proves to have 
 been the native grand infirmity of the man. He walked in 
 dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on the 
 path of his ambition ; but none can doubt the self sustaining 
 force of his lonely intellect, his power of command, the spell 
 which his character cast over the fierce and restless spirits of 
 his age. Prince-Duke of Friedland, Mecklenburgh, and Sagan, 
 Generalissimo of the armies of the House of Austria, — to this 
 height had the landless and obscure adventurer risen, in envy's 
 despite, as his motto proudly said ; not by the arts of a courtier 
 or a demao^ocrue, but by streno-th of brain and heart, in a con- 
 test with rivals whose brains and hearts were strong. Highest 
 he stood among the uncrowned heads of Europe, and dreaded 
 by the crowned. We wonder how the boisterous soldiers can 
 have loved a chief who was so far from being a comrade, a 
 being so disdainful and reserved, who at the sumptuous table 
 kept by his officers never appeared, never joined in the revelry, 
 even in the camp lived alone, punished intrusion on his haughty 
 privacy as a crime. But his name was victory and plunder; 
 he was lavishly munificent, as one who knew that those who 
 
56 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 play a deep game must lay down heavy stakes ; his eye was 
 quick to discern, liis hand prompt to reward the merit of the 
 buccaneer ; and those who followed his soaring fortunes knew 
 that they would share them. If he was prompt to reward, he 
 was also stern in punishment, and a certain arbitrariness both 
 in reward and punishment made the soldier feel that the com- 
 mander's will was law. If Wallenstein was not the boon com- 
 panion of the mercenaries, he was their divinity ; and he was 
 himself essentially one of tliem, — even his superstition was 
 theirs, and filled the same void of faith in his as in their hearts , 
 though, while the common soldier raised the fiend to charm 
 bullets, or bought spells and amulets of a quack at Nuremburg 
 or Augsburg, Seni, the first astrologer of the age, explored the 
 sympathizing stars for the august destiny of the Duke of Fried- 
 land. Like Uriel and Satan in Paradise Lost, Gustavus and 
 Wallenstein stood opposed to each other. On one side was the 
 enthusiast, on the other the mighty gamester, playing the great 
 game of his life without emotion, by intensity of thought alone. 
 On one side was the crusader, on the other the indifterentist, 
 without faith except in his star. On the one side was as 
 much good, perhaps, as has ever appeared in the form of a con- 
 queror, on the other side the majesty of evil. Gustavus was 
 young, his frame was vigorous and active, though inclined to 
 corpulence, his complexion fair, his hair golden, his eye blue 
 and merry, his countenance frank as day, and the image of a 
 heart which had felt the kindest influences of love and friend- 
 ship. Wallenstein was past his prime, his frame was tall, spare, 
 somewhat bowed by pain, his complexion dark, his eye black 
 and piercing, his look that of a man who trod slippery paths 
 with deadly rivals at his side, and of whose many letters not 
 one is to a friend. But, opposites in all else, the two champions 
 were well matched in power. Perhaps there is hardly such 
 another duel in history. Such another there would have been 
 if Strafibrd had lived to encounter Cromwell. 
 
 The market for the great adventurer's services having risen 
 so high, the jirice which he asked was large — a principality in 
 hand, a province to be conquered, supreme command of the 
 army which he had raised. The court suggested that if the 
 emperor's son, the King of Hungary, were put over Wallen- 
 stein's head, his name would be a tower of strength; but Wallen- 
 stein answered with a blasphemous frankness which must have 
 made the ears of courtiers tingle. He would be emperor of the 
 army ; he would be emperor in the matter of confiscations 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 57 
 
 The last article shows how he won the soldier's heart. Perhaps 
 in framing his terms, he gave something to his wounded pride. 
 If he did, the luxury cost him dear : for here he trod upon the 
 serpent that stung his life. 
 
 The career of Gustavus was at once arrested, and he took 
 shelter against the storm in an entrenched camp protected by 
 three hundred cannon under the walls of Nuremberg — Nurem- 
 berg the eldest daughter of the German Reformation, the Flor- 
 ence of Germany in art, wealth and freedom, then the beautiful 
 home of early commerce, now its romantic tomb. The desolation 
 of her grass-grown streets dates from that terrible day. The 
 Swedish lines were scarcely completed when Wallenstein ap- 
 peared with all his power ; and. sweeping past, entrenched 
 himself four miles from his enemy in a position the key of which 
 were the wooded hill and old castle of the Altenberg. Those 
 who chance to visit that spot may fancy there Wallenstein's 
 camp as it is in Schiller, ringing with the boisterous revelry of 
 its wild and motley bands. And they niay fancy the sudden 
 silence, the awe of men who knew no other awe, as in his well- 
 known dress, the laced buff" coat with crimson scarf, and the 
 grey hat with crimson plume, Wallenstein rode by. Week after 
 week and month after month these two heavy clouds of war 
 hung close together, and Europe looked for the bursting of the 
 storm. But famine was to do Wallenstein's work ; and by 
 famine and the pestilence, bred by the horrible state of the camp^ 
 at last his work was done. The utmost limit of deadly inaction 
 for the Swedes arrived. Discipline and honour gave way, and 
 could scarcely be restored by the passionate eloquence of Gus- 
 tavus. Oxenstiern brought large reinforcements ; and on the 
 24th August Wallenstein saw — with grim pleasure he must 
 have seen — Gustavus advancing to attack him in his lines. By 
 five hundred at a time — there was room for no more in the- 
 narrow path of death — the Swedes scaled the flashing and 
 thundering Altenberg. They scaled it again and again through 
 a long summer's day. Once it was all but won. But at even- 
 ing the Nurembergers saw their hero and protector retiring, for 
 the first time defeated, from the field. Yet Gustavus had not 
 lost the confidence of his soldiers. He had shared their danger 
 and had spared their blood. In ten hours' hard fighting he had 
 lost only 2J,000 men. But Wallenstein might well shower upon 
 his wounded soldiers the only balm for the wounds of men 
 fighting without a country or a cause. He might well write 
 to the emperor : " The King of Sweden has blunted his horns 
 
58 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 a good deal. Henceforth the title of Invincible belongs not to 
 him, but to your Majesty." No doubt Ferdinand thought it 
 did. 
 
 Gustavus now broke up and marched on Bavaria, abandoning 
 the great Protestant city, with the memory of Magdeburg in 
 his heart. But Nuremberg was not to share the fate of Magde- 
 burg. The Imperial army was not in a condition to form the 
 siege. It had suffered as much as that of Gustavus. That 
 such troops sliould have been held together in such extremity 
 proves their general's power of command, Wallenstein soon 
 gladdened the eyes of the Nurembergers by firing his camp, and 
 declining to follow the lure into Bavaria, marched on Saxony, 
 joined another Imperial army under Pappenheim and took 
 Leipsic. 
 
 To save Saxony Gustavus left Bavaria half conquered. As 
 he hurried to the rescue, the people on his line of march knelt 
 to kiss the hem of his garment, the sheath of his delivering 
 sword, and could scarcely be prevented from adoring him as a 
 god. His religious spirit was filled with a presentiment that 
 the idol in which they trusted would be soon laid low. On the 
 14th of November he was leaving a strongly entrenched camp, 
 at Naumberg, where the Imperialists fancied, the season being 
 so far advanced, he intended to remain, when news reached his 
 ear like the sight which struck Wellington's eye as it I'anged 
 over Marmont's army on the morning of Salamanca.* The 
 impetuous Pappenheim, ever anxious for separate command, 
 had jiersuaded an Imperial council of war to detach him with 
 a large force against Halle. The rest of the Imperialists, under 
 Wallenstein, were quartered in the villages around Lutzen, 
 close within the king's reach, and imaware of his approach. 
 '" The Lord," cried Gustavus, " has delivered him into my hand," 
 and at once he swooped ui)on his prey. 
 
 " Break up and march with every man and gun. The enemy 
 is advancing hither. He is already at the pass by the hollow 
 road." So wrote Wallenstein to Pappenheim, The letter is 
 still preserved, stained with Pappenheim's life-bood. But, in 
 that mortal race, Pappenheim stood no chance. Halle was a 
 long day's march off, and the troopers, whom Pappenheim could 
 lead gallantly, but could not control, after taking the town had 
 dispersed to plunder. Yet the Swede's great opportunity was 
 
 * We owe the parallel, we believe, to an article by Lord Ellesmere, in the Quo,r- 
 terly Review. 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 59 
 
 lost. Lutzen, though in sight proved not so near as flattering 
 guides and eager eyes had made it. The deep-banked Rippach, 
 its bridge all too narrow for the impetuous columns, the roads 
 heavy from rain, delayed the march. A skirmish with some 
 Imperial cavalry under Isolani wasted minutes when minutes 
 were years ; and the short November day was at an end when 
 the Swede reached the plain of Lutzen. 
 
 No military advantage marks the spot where the storm 
 overtook the Duke of Friedland. He was caught like a travel- 
 ler in a tempest off a shelterless plain, and had nothing for it 
 but to bide the brunt. What could be done with ditches, two 
 windmills, a mud wall, a small canal, he did, moving from point 
 to point during the long night ; and before morning all his 
 troops, except Pappenheim's division, had come in and were in 
 line. 
 
 When the morning broke a heavy fog lay on the ground. 
 Historians have not failed to remark that there is a sympathy 
 in things, and that the day was loath to dawn which was to be 
 the last day of Gustavus. But if Nature sympathized with 
 Gustavus, she chose a bad mode of showing her sympathy, for 
 while the fog prevented the Swedes from advancing, part of 
 Pappenheim's corps arrived. After prayers, the king and all his 
 army sang Luther's hymn, " Our God is a strong tower " — the 
 Marseillaise of the militant Reformation. Then Gustavus 
 mounted his horse, and addressed the different divisions, adjur- 
 ing them by their victorious name, by the memory of the Brei- 
 tenfeld, by the great cause whose issue hung upon their swords, 
 to fight well for that cause, for their country and their God. 
 His heart was uplifted at Lutzen, with that Hebrew fer- 
 vour which uplifted the heart of Cromwell at Dunbar. Old 
 wounds made it irksome to him to wear a cuirass. " God," he 
 said, "shall be my armour this day." 
 
 Wallenstein has been much belied if he thought of anything 
 that morning more religious than the order of battle, which has 
 been preserved, drawn up by his own hand, and in which his 
 troops are seen still formed in heavy masses, in contrast to the 
 lighter formations of Gustavus. He was carried down his lines 
 in a litter being crippled by gout, which the sui-geous of that day 
 had tried to cure by cutting: into the flesh. But when the 
 action began, he placed his mangled foot in a stirrup lined with 
 silk, and mounted the small charger, the skin of which is still 
 shown in the deserted palace of his pride. We may be sure 
 that confidence sat undisturbed upon his brow ; but in his heart 
 
GO GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 he must have felt that though he liad brave men around hira, 
 the Swedes, fighting for their cause under their king, were 
 more than men ; and that in the balance of battle then held 
 out, his scale had kicked the beam. There can hardly be a 
 harder trial for human fortitude than to command in a trreat 
 action on the weaker side. Villeneuve was a brave man, thouofh 
 an unfortunate admiral ; but he owned that his heart sank with- 
 in him at Trafalgar when he saw Nelson bearing down. 
 
 " God with us," was the Swedish battle cry. On the other 
 side the words " Jesu-Maria," passed round, as twenty-five 
 thousand of the most godless and lawless ruffians the world 
 ever saw, stood to the arms which they had imbrued in the 
 blood not of soldiers only, but of women and children of cap- 
 tured towns. Doubtless many a wild Walloon and savage 
 Croat, many a fierce Spaniard and cruel Italian, who had but- 
 chered and tortured at Mawleburof, was here come to bite the 
 dust. These men were children of the camp and the battle- 
 field, long familiar with every form of death, yet, had they 
 known what a day was now before them, they might have felt 
 like a recruit on the morning of his first field. Some were 
 afterwards broken or beheaded for misconduct before the enemy ; 
 others earned rich rewards : most paid, like men of honour, the 
 price for which they were allowed to glut every lust and revel 
 in every kind of crime. 
 
 At nine the sky began to clear ; straggling shots told that 
 the armies were catching^ sight of each other, and a red 2:lare 
 broke the mist, where the Imperialists had set fire to Lutzen 
 to cover their right. At ten Gustavus placed himself at the 
 head of his cavalry. War has now changed; and the telescope 
 is the general's sword. Yet we cannot helj) feeling that the 
 gallant king, who cast in his own life with the lives of the 
 peasants he had drawn from their Swedish homes, is a nobler 
 figure than the great Emperor who, on the same plains, two 
 centuries afterwards, ordered to their death the masses of youth- 
 ful valour sent by a ruthless conscription to feed the vanity of 
 a heart of clay. The Swedes, after the manner of war in that 
 fierce and hardy age, fell at once with their main force on the 
 whole of the Imperial line. On the left, after a murderous strug- 
 gle, they gained ground and took the enemy's guns. But on the 
 right the Imperialists held firm, and while Gustavus was carry- 
 ing victory with him to that quarter, Wallenstein restored tiie 
 day upon the right. Again Gustavus hurried to that part of the 
 field. Again the Imperialists gave way, and Gustavus, unco\'er- 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Gl 
 
 ing his head, thanked God for his victory. At this moment it 
 seems the mist returned. The Swedes were confused and lost 
 their advantage. A horse, too well known, ran riderless down 
 their line ; and when their cavalry next advanced, they found 
 the stripped and mangled body of their king. According to the 
 most credible witness, Gustavus who had galloped forward to 
 see how his advantage might be best followed up, got too near 
 the enemy, was shot first in the arm, then in the back, and fell 
 from his horse. A party of Imperial cuirassiers came up, and 
 learning from the wounded man himself who he was, finished 
 the work of death. They then strij)ped the body for j^roofs of 
 their great enemy's fate and relics of the mighty slain. Dark re- 
 ports of treason were spread abroad, and one of these reports fol- 
 lowed the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburi7, who was with Gustavus 
 that day, through his questionable life to his unhappy end. In 
 those times a great man could scarcely die without suspicion 
 of foul play, and in all times men are unwilling to believe that 
 a life on which the destiny of a cause or a nation hangs can be 
 swept away b}^ the blind, indiscriminate hand of common death. 
 Gustavus dead, the first thought of his officers was retreat ; 
 and that thought was his best eulogy. Their second thought 
 was revenge. Yet so great was the discouragement that one 
 Swedish colonel refused to advance, and Bernard of Saxe- Wei- 
 mar cut him down with his own hand. Again the struggle be- 
 gan, and wath all the morning's fury. Wallenstein had used 
 his respite well. He knew that his great antagonist was dead, 
 and that he was now the master-spirit on the field. And with 
 friendly night near, and victory within his grasp, he directed in 
 person the most desperate combats, prodigal of the life on which, 
 according to his enemies, his treasonable projects hung. Yet 
 the day was again going against him, when the remainder of 
 Pappenheim's corps arrived, and the road was once more opened 
 to victory by a charge which cost Pappenheim his own life. 
 At four o'clock the battle was at its last gasp. The carnage 
 had been fearful on both sides, and as fearful was the exhaus- 
 tion. For six hours almost every man in both armies had 
 borne the terrible excitement of mortal combat with pike and 
 sword ; and four times that excitement had been strained by 
 general charges to its highest pitch. The Imperialists held their 
 ground, but confused and shattered ; their constancy sustained 
 only by that commanding presence which still moved along their 
 lines, unhurt, grazed and even marked by the storm of death 
 through which he rode. Just as the sun was setting, the 
 
62 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Swedes made the supreme effort which heroism alone cf.n make. 
 Then Wallenstein gave the signal for retreat, welcome to the 
 bravest ; and as darkness fell upon the field, the shattered 
 masses of the Imperialists drew off slowly and sullenly into the 
 gloom. Slowly and sullenly they drew off, leaving nothing to 
 the victor except some guns of position ; but they had not gone 
 far when they fell into the disorganization of defeat. 
 
 The judgment of a cause by battle is dreadful. Dreadful it 
 must have seemed to all who were within siMit or hearinc; of 
 the field of Lutzen when that battle was over. But it is not 
 altogether irrational and blind. Providence does not visibly 
 interpose in favour of the right. The stars in their courses do 
 not now fight for the good cause. At Lutzen they fought 
 against it. But the good cause is its own star. The strength 
 given to the spirit of the Swedes by religious enthusiasm, the 
 strength given to their bodies by the comparative purity of 
 their lives, enabled them, when the bravest and hardiest ruf- 
 fians were exhausted in spirit and body, to make that last effort 
 which won the day. 
 
 Te DeuD% was sung at Vienna and Madrid, and with good 
 reason. For Vienna and Madrid the de?th of Gustavus was 
 better than any victory. For humanity, if the interests of hu- 
 manity were not those of Vienna ' and Madrid, it was worse 
 than any defeat. But for Gustavus himself, was it good to die 
 glorious and stainless, but before his hour ? Triumph and em- 
 pire, it is said, might have corrupted the soul v/hich up to that 
 time had been so pure and true. It was, perhaps, well for him 
 that he was saved from temptation. A deeper morality replies 
 that what was bad for Gustavus' cause and for his kind, could 
 not be good for Gustavus ; and that whether he were to stand 
 or fall in the hour of temptation, he had better have lived his 
 time and done his work. We, with our small philosophy, can 
 make allowance for the greater dangers of the higher sphere ; 
 and shall we arrogate to ourselves a larger judgment and ampler 
 sympathies than we allow to God ? Yet Gustavus was happy. 
 Among soldiers and statesmen, if there is a greater, there is 
 hardly a purer name. He had won not only honour but love, 
 and the friend and comrade was as much bewailed as the de- 
 liverer and the king. In him his Sweden appeared for the first 
 and last time with true glory on the scene of universal history. 
 In him the spirit of the famous house of Vasa rose to the first 
 heroic height. It was soon to mount to madness in Christina 
 and Charles XII. 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 63 
 
 Not till a year had passed could Sweden bring herself to con- 
 sign the remains of her Gustavus to the dust. Then came a 
 hero's funeral, with pomp not unmeaning, with trophies not un- 
 becoming the obsequies of a Christian warrior, and for mourners 
 the sorrowing nations. In early youth Gustavus had loved the 
 beautiful Ebba Brahe, daughter of a Swedish nobleman, and 
 she had returned his love. But etiquette and policy interposed, 
 and Gustavus married Eleanor, a princess of Brandenburg, also 
 renowned for beauty. The widowed Queen of Gustavus, though 
 she had loved him with a fondness too great for their perfect 
 happiness, admitted his first love to a partnership in her grief, 
 and sent Ebba with her own portrait the portrait of him who 
 was gone where, if love still is, there is no more rivalry in love. 
 
 The death of Gustavus was the death of his great antagonist, 
 Gustavus gone, Wallenstein was no longer indispensable, and 
 he was far more formidable than ever. Lutzen had abated 
 nothing either of his pride or power. He went forth again 
 from Prague to resume command in almost imperial pomp. The 
 army was completely in his hands. He negotiated as an inde- 
 pendent power, and was carrying into effect a policy of his own, 
 which seems to have been one of peace for the empire with 
 amnesty and toleration, and which certainly crossed the policy 
 of the Jesuits and Spain, now dominant in the Imperial 
 councils. No doubt the great adventurer also intended that his 
 own grandeur should be augmented and secured. Whether his 
 proceedings gave his master just cause for alarm remains a 
 mystery. The word, however, went forth against him, and in 
 Austrian fashion, a friendly correspondence being kept up with 
 him when he had been secretly deposed and his command trans- 
 ferred to another. Finding himself denounced and outlawed, 
 he resolved to throw himseif on the Swedes. He had arrived 
 at Eger, a frontier fortress of Bohemia. It was a night apt for 
 crime, dark and stormy, when Gordon, a Scotch Calvinist, in 
 the Imperial service (for Wallenstein's camp welcomed adven- 
 turers of all creeds), and commandant of Eger, received the 
 most faithful of Wallenstein's ofhcers, Terzka, Kinsky, lUo and 
 Neumann, at supper in the citadel. The social meal was over, 
 the wine cup was going round ; misgiving, if any misgiving 
 there was, had yielded to comradeship and good cheer, when 
 the door opened and death, in the shape of a party of Irish 
 troopers, stalked in. The conspirators sprang from the side of 
 their victims, and shouting, " Long live the Emperor," ranged 
 themselves with drawn swords against the wall, while the as- 
 
64 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 sassins overturned the table and did their work. Wallenstein, 
 as usual, was not at the banquet. He was, indeed, in no con- 
 dition for revelry. Gout had shattered his stately form, re- 
 duced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probably shaken 
 his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen, for 
 a decisive hour ; and, j^erhaps, if his enemies could have waited, 
 the course of nature might have spared them the very high 
 price which they paid for his blood. He had just dismissed 
 his astrologer, Seni, into whose mouth the romance of history 
 does not fail to put prophetic warnings ; his valet was carrying 
 away the golden salver, on which his night draught had been 
 brought to him, and he was about to lie down, when he was 
 drawn to the window by the noise of Butler's regiment sur- 
 rounding his quarters, and by the shrieks of the Countesses 
 Teizka and Kinsky, who were wailing for their murdered hus- 
 bands. A moment afterwards the Irish Captain Devereux 
 burst into the room, followed by his fellow-assassins shouting, 
 " Rebels, rebels." Devereux himself, with a halbert in his 
 hand, rushed up to Wallenstein, and cried, " Villain, you are to 
 die !" True to his own majesty the great man spread out his 
 arms, received the weapon in his breast, and fell dead without 
 a word. But as thought at such moments is swift, no doubt 
 he saw it all — saw the dark conclave of Italians and Spaniards 
 sittinfj at Vienna — knew that the murderer before him was the 
 hand and not the head — read at once his own doom and the 
 doom of his grand designs for Germany and Friedland. His 
 body was wrapped in a carpet, carried in Gordon's carriage to 
 the citadel, and there left for a day with those of his murdered 
 friends in the court-yard, then huddled into a hastily con- 
 structed coffin, the legs of the corpse being broken to force it 
 in. Different obsequies from those of Gustavus, but perhaps 
 equally appropriate, at least equally characteristic of the cause 
 which the dead man served. 
 
 Did Friedland desire to be more than Friedland, to unite 
 some shadow of command with the substance, to wear some 
 crown of tinsel, as well as the crown of power ? We do not 
 know, we know only that his ways were dark, that his am- 
 bition was vast, and that he was thwarting the policy of the 
 Jesuits and Spain. Great efforts were made in vain to get up 
 a case against his memory ; recourse was had to torture, the 
 use of which always proves that no good evidence is forth- 
 coming ; absurd charges were included in the indictment, such 
 as that of having failed to pursue and destroy the Swedish 
 
GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Go 
 
 army after Lutzen. The three thousand masses which Ferdi- 
 nand caused to be sung for Wallenstein's soul, whether they 
 benefited his soul or not, have benefited his fame, for they 
 seem like the weak self-betrayal of an uneasy conscience, vainly 
 seeking to stifie infamy and appease the injured shade. Assas- 
 sination itself condemns all who take part in it or are accom- 
 plice* in it ; and Ferdinand, who rewarded the assassins of 
 Wallenstein, was at least an accomplice after the fact. Vast as 
 Wallenstein's ambition was, even for him age and gout nmst 
 have begun to close the possibilities of life ; and he cannot 
 have been made restless by the pangs of abortive genius, for 
 he had played the grandest part upon the grandest stage. He 
 had done enough, it would seem, to make repose welcome, and 
 his retirement would not have been dull. Often in his letters 
 liis mind turns from the camp and council to his own domains, 
 his rising palaces, his farms, his gardens, his schools, his manu- 
 factures, the Italian civilization which the student of Padua 
 was trying to create in Bohemian wilds, the little empire in 
 the administration of which he showed that he might have 
 been a good Emperor on a larger scale. Against his Imperial 
 master he is probably entitled at least to a verdict of not 
 proven, and to the sympathy due to vast services requited by 
 murder. Against accusing humanity his plea is far weaker, or 
 rather he has no plea but one of extenuation. If there is a 
 gloomy majesty about him the fascination of which we cannot 
 help owning, if he was the noblest spirit that served evil, still 
 it was evil that he served. The bandit hordes which he led 
 Avere the scourges of the defenceless people, and in making war 
 support war he set the evil example wdiich was followed by 
 Napoleon on a greater scale, and perhaps with more guilt, be- 
 cause in a more moral age. If in any measure he fell a martyr 
 to a policy of toleration, his memory may be credited with the 
 sacrifice. His toleration was that of indifference, not that of a 
 Christian ; yet the passages of his letters in which he })leads for 
 milder methods of conversion, and claims for widows an exenij)- 
 tion from the extremities of persecution, seem preserved by his 
 better angel to shed a ray of brightness on his lurid name. Of 
 his importance in history there can be no doubt. Take your 
 stand on the battle field of Lutzen. To the North all was 
 rescued by Gustavus, to the South all was held till yesterday 
 by the darker genius of Wallenstein. 
 
 Like the mystic bark in the Mort d' Arthur, the ship which 
 carried the remains of Gustavus from the German shore bore 
 
6() GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH. CENTURY. 
 
 away heroism as well as tlie hero. Gtistavus left great captains 
 in Bernard of Weiu^ar, Banner, Horn, Wrangel antl Tortensohn ; 
 in the last, perhaps, a captain eciual to himself. He left in 
 Oxenstierna the greatest statesman and diplomatist of the age. 
 But the guiding light, the grand aim, the ennobling influence- 
 were gone. The Swedes sank almost to the level of the vile 
 element around, and a torture used by the buccaneers to extract 
 confessions of hidden treasure bore the name of the Swedish 
 draught. The last grand figure left the scene in Wallenstein. 
 Nothing remained but mean ferocity and rapine, coarse filibus- 
 tering among the soldiers, among the statesmen and diplo- 
 matists filibustering a little more refined. All high motives 
 and interests were dead. The din of controversy which at the 
 outset accompanied the firing of the cannon, and proved that 
 the cannon was being fired in a great cause, had long since 
 sunk into silence. Yet for fourteen years after the death of 
 Wallenstein this soulless, aimless drama of horror and agony 
 dragged on. Every part of Germany was repeatedly laid under 
 heavy war contributions, and swept through by ])illage, murder, 
 rape and arson. For thirty years all countries, even those of 
 the Cossack and the Stradiot, sent their worst sons to the scene 
 of butchery and plunder. It may be doubted whether such 
 desolation ever fell upon any civilized and cultivated country. 
 When the war began Gemiany was rich and prosperous, full of 
 smiling villages, of goodly cities, of flourishing universities, of 
 active industry, of invention and discovery, of literature and 
 learning, of happiness, of progress, of national energy and hope. 
 At its close she was a material and moral wilderness. In a 
 district, selected as a fair average specimen of the effects of the 
 war, it is found that of the inhabitants three-fourths, of the 
 cattle four-fifths had perished. For thirty years the husbandman 
 nevei' sowed with any confidence that he should reap ; the seed- 
 corn was no doubt often consumed by the reckless troopers or 
 the starving peasantry; and if foreign countries had been able 
 to supply food there were no railroads to bring it. The villages 
 through whole provinces were burnt or pulled down to supi)ly 
 materials for the huts of the soldiery; the people hid them- 
 selves in dens and caves of the earth, took to the woods and 
 mountains, where many of them remained swelling the multi- 
 tude of brigands. When they could they wreaked upon the 
 lansquenets a vengeance as dreadful as what they had suflered, 
 and were thus degraded to the same level of ferocity. Moral 
 life was broken up. The Germany of Luther with its order and 
 
GREAT DUEL OF TEE SEVEXTEENTE CENTURY. G7 
 
 piety and domestic virtue, with its old ways and customs, even 
 with its fashions of dress and furnituie, peiished ahuost as 
 though it had been swallowed by an earthquake. The nation 
 would hardly have survived had it not been for the desperate 
 tenacity with which the peasant clung to his own soil, and the 
 efforts of the pastors, men of contracted views, of dogmatic 
 habits of mind, and of a somewhat narrow and sour morality, 
 but staunch and faithful in the hour of need, who continued to 
 preach and pray amidst blackened ruins to the miserable rem- 
 nants of their flocks, and sustained something of moi-al order 
 and of social life. 
 
 Hence in the succeeding centuries, the political nullity of the 
 German nation, the absence of any strong popular element to 
 make head against the petty despotism of the princes, and 
 launch Germany in the career of |)rogress. Hence the back- 
 wardness and torpor of the Teutonic race in its original scat, 
 while elsewhere it led the world. Hence, while England was 
 producing Chathams and Burkes, Germany was producing the 
 great musical composers. Hence when the movement came it 
 was rather intellectual than political, rather a movement of the 
 universities than of the nation. 
 
 At last, nothing being left for the armies to devour, the 
 masters of the armies began to think of peace. The diplo- 
 matists went to work, and in true diplomatic fashion. Two 
 years they spent in formalities and haggling, while Germany 
 was swarming with disbanded lansquenets. It was then that 
 old Oxenstieriia said to his son, who had modestly declined an 
 ambassadorship on the ground of inexperience : " Thou knowest 
 not, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed." 
 The object of all the parties to the negotiations was acquisition 
 of territory at the expense of their neighbours ; and the treaty 
 of Westphalia, though, as we have said, it was long the Public 
 Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not of principles of justice 
 or of the rights of nations, but of the relative force and cunning 
 of what are happily called the powers. France obtained, as the 
 fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she had prolonged the 
 agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she has 
 recently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved ; 
 and though it was not a national independence, but an inde- 
 ])endence of petty despotisms, it was redemption from Austrian 
 and Jesuit bondage for the present, with the hope of national 
 independence in the future. When Gustavus broke the Imperial 
 line at Lutzen, Luther and Loyola might have turned in their 
 
68 GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 
 
 graves. Luther had still two centuries and a half to wait ; so 
 much difference in the course of history, in spite of all our 
 philosophies and our general laws, may be made by an arrow 
 shot at a venture, a wandering breath of pestilence, a random 
 bullet, a wreath of mist lingering on one of the world's battle- 
 fields. But Luther has conquered at last. Would that he had 
 conquered by other means than war — war with all its suffer- 
 ings, with all its passions, with the hatred, the revenge, the evil 
 pride which it leaves behind it ' But he has conquered ; and 
 his victory opens a new and, so far as we can see, a happier era 
 for Eui'ope. 
 
THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 69 
 
 THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 
 
 Spoken on the Centenary oftJie Birth of Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 RusKiN has lighted seven lamps of Architecture, to guide the 
 steps of the architect in the worthy practice of his art. It 
 seems time that some lamps should })e lighted to guide the ste[)s 
 of the writer of Fiction. Think what the influence of novelists 
 now is, and how some of them use it ! Think of the multitudes 
 who read nothing but novels ; and then look into the novels 
 which they read ! I have seen a young man's whole lihrary 
 consisting of thirty or forty ol those paper-bound volumes, which 
 are the bad tobacco of the mind. In England, I looked over 
 three railway book-stalls in one day. There was hardly a novel 
 by an author of any repute on one of them. They were heaps 
 of nameless garbage, commended by tasteless, flaunting wood- 
 cuts, the promise of which was no doubt well kept within. 
 Fed upon such food daily, what will the mind of a nation be ? 
 I say that there is no flame at which we can light the Lamp of 
 Fiction purer or brighter than the genius of him in honour to 
 whose memor}^ we are assembled here to-day. Scott does not 
 moralize. Heaven be praised that he does not. He does not 
 set a moral object before him, nor lay down moral rules. But 
 his heart, brave, pure and true, is a law to itself; and by study- 
 ing what he does, we may find the law for all who follow his 
 calling. If seven lamps have been lighted for architecture, 
 Scott will light as many for fiction. 
 
 I. The Lamp of Reality. — The novelist must ground his 
 work in faithful study of human nature. There was a po- 
 pular writer of romances, who, it was said, used to go 
 round to the fashionable watering- ]ilaces to pick up cha- 
 racters. That was better than nothing. There is anothei- 
 popular writer who, it seems, makes voluminous indices of 
 men and things, and draws on them for his material. This 
 also is better than nothing. For some writers, and writers dear 
 to the circulating libraries too, might, for all that appears in 
 their works, lie in bed all day, and write by night under the 
 excitement of green tea. Creative art, I suppose, they call this, 
 and it is creative with a vengeance. Not so, Scott. The hu- 
 
70 THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 
 
 man nature which he paints, he had seen in all its phases, gentle 
 and sini])le, in bnrgher and shepherd, Highlander, Lowlander, 
 Borderer, and Islesman ; he had come into close contact with it ; 
 he had opened it to himself by the talisman of his joyous and 
 winning presence : he had studied it thoroughly with a clear 
 eye and an all-embracing heart. When his scenes are laid 
 in the past, he has honestly studied the history. The history 
 of his novels is perhaps not critically accvn'ate, not up to the 
 mark of our present knowledge, but in the main it is sound and 
 true — sounder and more true than that of many professed histo- 
 rians, and even than that of his own historical works, in which 
 he sometimes yields to prejudice, while in his novels he is lifted 
 above it by his loyalty to his art. 
 
 II. Tlce Lanij) of Ideality. — The materials of the novelist 
 must be real ; they must be gathered from the field of hu- 
 manity by his actual observation. But they must pass 
 through the crucible of the imagination ; they must be ideal- 
 ized. The artist is not a photographer, but a painter. He 
 must depict not persons but humanity, otherwise he forfeits 
 the artist's name, and the power of doing the artist's work in 
 our hearts. When we see a novelist bring out a novel with 
 one or two good characters, and then, at the fatal bidding of 
 the booksellers, go on manufacturing his j^early volume, and 
 giving us the same character or the same few characters over 
 and over again, we may be sure that he is without the power 
 of idealization. He has merely photographed what he has 
 seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful what a quan- 
 tity of the mere lees of such wi'iters, more and moi'e watered 
 down, the libraries go on complacently circulating, and the 
 reviews go on complacently reviewing. Of course, this power 
 of idealization is the great gift of genius. It is that which 
 distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott, from or- 
 dinary men. But there is also a moral eftbrt in rising above 
 the easy work of mere description to the height of art. Need 
 it be said that Scott is thoroughly ideal as well as thoroughl}- 
 real ? There are vague traditions that this man and the other 
 was the original of some character in Scott. But who can point 
 out the man of whom a character in Scott is a mere portrait I 
 It would be as hard as to point out a case of servile delineation 
 in Shakespeare. Scott's characters are never monsters or cari- 
 catures. They are full of nature ; but it is universal nature. 
 Therefore they have their place in the universal heart, and will 
 keep that place for ever. And mark that even in his historical 
 
THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 71 
 
 ■novels he is still ideal. Historical romance is a perilous thing. 
 The fiction is apt to spoil the fjict, and the fact the fiction ; the 
 history to be perverted and the romance to be shackled : day- 
 light to kill dreamlight, and dreamliglit to kill daylight. But 
 Scott takes few liberties with historical facts and charac- 
 ters ; he treats them, with the costume and the manners of the 
 period, as the background of the ])icture. The personages with 
 whom he deals freely, are the Peverils and the Nigels ; and 
 these are his lawful property, the offspring of his own imagina- 
 tion, and belong to the ideal. 
 
 III. TIls Lamp of Impartiality. — The novelist must look 
 •on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sym- 
 pathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and 
 untainted by sect or party^ He must see ever3nvhere 
 the good that is mixed with evil, the evil that is mixed 
 with good. And this he will not do, unless his heart is 
 right. It is in Scott's historical novels that his impartiality 
 is most severely tried and is most apparent ; though it is ap- 
 parent in all his woi'ks. Shakespeare was a pure dramatist ; 
 nothing but art found a home in that lofty, smooth, idealistic 
 brow. He stands apart not only from the political and religi- 
 ous passions but from the interests of his time, seeming hardly 
 to have any historical sui'roundings, but to shine like a planet 
 suspended by itself in the sky. So it is with that female Shakes- 
 peare in miniature, Miss Austen. But Scott took the most intense 
 interest in the political struggles of his time. He was a fiery 
 partisan, a Tory in arms against the French Revolution. In 
 his account of the coronation of George IV. a passionate wor- 
 ship of monarchy breaks forth, which, if we did not know his 
 noble nature, we might call slavish. He sacrificed ease, and at 
 last life, to his seignorial aspirations. On one occasion he was 
 ■even carried beyond the bounds of propriety by his opposition 
 to the Whig chief. The Cavalier was his political ancestor, the 
 Covenanter the ancestor of his political enemy. The idols 
 which the Covenanting iconoclast broke were his. He would 
 have fought against the first revolution under Montrose, and 
 against the second under Dundee. Yet he is perfectly, serenely 
 just to the opposite party. Not only is he just, he is sympa- 
 thetic. He brings out their worth, their valour, such gi-andeur 
 of character as they have, with all the power of his art, mak- 
 ing no distinction in this respect between friend and foe. If 
 they have a ridiculous side he uses it for the purposes of his 
 art, but genially, playfully, without malice. If there was a 
 
72 THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 
 
 laugh left in the Covenanters, they would have laughed at 
 their own portraits as painted by Scott. He shows no hatred 
 of anything but wickedness itself. Such a novelist is a most 
 effective preacher of liberality and charity; he brings our hearts 
 neai-er to the Impartial Father of us all. 
 
 IV. Tlie Lamp of Inipersonallty. — Personality is lower 
 than partiality. Dante himself is open to the suspicion 
 of partiality : it is said, not without apparent ground, 
 that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause,. 
 Avhich, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God. A legend 
 tells that Leonardo da Vinci was warned that his divine 
 picture of the Last Supper would fade, because he had 
 introduced his personal enemy as Judas, and thus desecrated 
 art by making it serve personal hatred. The legend must be 
 false, Leonardo had too grand a soul. A wretched woman in 
 England, at the beginning of the last century, Mrs Manley, 
 S3'stematically employed fiction as a cover for personal libel ;. 
 but such an abuse of art as this could be practised or coun- 
 tenanced only by the vile. Novelists, however, often debase 
 fiction by obtruding their personal vanities, favouritisms, fana- 
 ticisms and antipathies. We had, the other day, a novel, the 
 author of which introduced himself almost by name as a heroic 
 character, with a description of his own personal appearance, 
 residence, and habits as fond fancy painted them to himself. 
 There is a novelist, who is a man of fashion, and who makes 
 the age of the heroes in his successive novels advance with his 
 ov^n, so that at last we shall have irresistible fascination at 
 seven score years and ten. But the commonest and the most 
 mischievous way in which personality breaks out is pamphleteer- 
 ing under the guise of fiction. One novel is a pam])hlet against 
 lunatic asylums, another against model prisons, a third against 
 the poor law, a fourth against the government offices, a fifth 
 against trade unions. In these pretended works of imagina- 
 tion facts are coined in support of a crotchet or an antipathy 
 with all the license of fiction; calumny revels without restraint, 
 and no cause is served but that of falsehood and injustice. A 
 writer takes offence at the excessive popularity of athletic 
 sports ; instead of bringing out an accurate and conscientious 
 treatise to advocate moderation, he lets fiy a novel painting the 
 typical boating man as a seducer of confiding women, the be- 
 ti-ayer of his friend, and the murderer of his wife. Religious 
 zealots are very apt to take this method of enlisting imagina- 
 tion, as they think, on the side of truth. We had once a high 
 
THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 73 
 
 Anglican novel in which the Papist was eaten alive by rats, 
 and the Rationalist and Republican was slowly seethed in mol- 
 ten lead, the fate of each being, of course, a just judgment of 
 heaven on those who presumed to differ from the author. Thus 
 the voice of morality is confounded with that of tyrannical petu- 
 lance and self-love. Not only is Scott not personal, but we 
 cannot conceive his being so. We cannot think it possible that 
 he should degrade his art by the indulgence of egotism, or 
 crotchets, or petty piques. Least of all can w^e think it possible 
 that his high and gallant nature should use art as a cover for 
 striking a foul blow. 
 
 V. The Lamp of Piivlty. — I heard Thackeray thank Heaven 
 for the purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity 
 of a greater than Dickens — Thackeray himself. We may all 
 thank Heaven for the purity of one still greater than eithei-. Sir 
 Walter Scott. I say still greater morally, as well as in power 
 as an artist, because in Thackeray there is cynicism, though 
 the more genial and health}' element predominates ; and cyni- 
 cism, which is not good in the great writer, becomes very bad 
 in the little reader. We know what most of the novels were 
 before Scott. We know the impurity, half-i-edeemed, of Field- 
 ing, the unredeemed impurity of Smollett, the lecherous leer 
 of Sterne, the coarseness even of Defoe. Parts of Richardson 
 himself could not be read by a woman without a blush. As to 
 French novels, Carlyle says of one of the most famous of the 
 last century that after reading it you ought to wash seven time* 
 in Jordan ; but after reading the Fi-ench novels of the present 
 day, in which lewdness is sprinkled with sentimental rosewater, 
 and deodorized, but by no means disinfected, j'our washings had 
 better be seventy times seven. There is no justification for 
 this ; it is mere pandering, under whatever pretence, to evil 
 propensities; it makes the divine art of Fiction " procuress to the 
 Lords of Hell." If our established morality is in any way narrow 
 and unjust, appeal to Philosophy, not to Oomus ; and remember 
 that the mass of readers are not philosophers. Coleridge pledges 
 himself to find the deepest sermons under the filth of Rabelais ; 
 but Coleridge alone finds the sermons while everybody finds the 
 filth. Impure novels have brought and are brinvdng much 
 misery on the world. Scott's purity is not that of cloistered in- 
 nocence and inexperience, it is the manly purity of one who had 
 seen the world, mingled with men of the world, known evil as 
 well as good ; but who, being a true gentleman, abhorred filth, 
 and teaches us to abhor it too. 
 
74 THE LAMPS OF FICTION. 
 
 VI. The Lamp of Humanity. — One day we see the walls 
 placarded with the advertising woodcut of a sensation novel, 
 representing a girl tied to a table and a man cutting oft' 
 her feet into a tub. Another day we are allured by a pic- 
 ture of a woman sitting at a sewing-machine and a man 
 seizing her behind by the hair, and lifting a club to knock 
 her brains out. A French novelist stimulates your jaded 
 palate by introducing a duel fought with butchers' knives by 
 the light of lanterns. One genius subsists by murder, as an- 
 other does by bigamy and adultery. Scott would have recoiled 
 from the l)lood as well cis from the ordure, he would have al- 
 lowed neither to defile his noble page. He knew that there 
 was no pretence for bringing before a reader what is merely 
 horrible ; that by doing so you only stimulate ])assions as low- 
 as licentiousness itself — the passions which were stimulated by 
 the gladiatorial shows in degraded Rome, which are stimulated by 
 the bull-lights in degraded Spain, which are stimulated among 
 ourselves by exhibitions the attraction of which really consists in 
 their imperilling human life. He knew that anovelist had no right 
 even to introduce the terrible except for the purpose of exhibit- 
 ing human heroism, developing character, awakening emotions 
 which when awakened dignify and save from harm. It is want 
 of genius and of knowledge of their craft that drives novelists 
 to outrage humanity with horrors. Miss Austen can interest 
 and even excite you as much with the little domestic adven- 
 tures of Emma as some of her rivals can with a whole Newgate 
 calendar of guilt and gore. 
 
 VII. The Lamp of ChAvalry. — Of this briefly. Let the 
 writer of fiction give us humanity in all its phases, the 
 comic as well as the tragic, the ridiculous as well as the 
 sublime ; but let him not lower tlie standard of character 
 or the aim of life. Shakespeare does not. We delight in his 
 Falstaffs and his clowns as well as in his Hamlets and Othel- 
 los ; but he never familiarizes us with what is base and mean. 
 The noble and chivalrous always holds its place as the aim of 
 true humanity in his ideal world. Perhaps Dickens is not en- 
 tirely free from blame in this respect ; perhaps Pickwickianism 
 has in some degree familiarized the generation of Englishmen 
 who have been fed upon it with what is not chivalrous, to say 
 the least, in conduct, as it unquestionably has with slang in 
 conversation. But Scott, like Shakespeare, wherever the 
 thread of his fiction may lead him, always keeps before him- 
 self and us the highest ideal which he knew, the ideal of a 
 
THE LAMPS OF FICTION. ' 75 
 
 gentleman. If anyone says these are narrow bounds wherein 
 to confine fiction, I answer there has been room enough within 
 them for the highest tragedy, the deepest pathos, tlie broadest 
 humour, the widest range of character, the most moving inci- 
 dent that the world has ever enjoyed. There has been room 
 within them for all the kings of pure and healthy fiction, — for 
 Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molicre, Scott. " Farewell, Sir 
 Waller," says Carlyle at the end of his essay, " farewell, Sir 
 Walter, pride of all Scotchmen." Scotland has said farewell 
 to her mortal son. But all humanity welcomes him as Scot- 
 land's noblest gift to her, and crowns him, as on this day, one 
 of the heirs of immortality. 
 
76 -Ay ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL 
 OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THE DISTRIBUTION 
 OF PRIZES. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemex, 
 
 You will not expect me, in complying with the custom which 
 requires your Chairman to address a few words to you before 
 distributing the prizes, to give you instruction about Art or 
 Science. One who was educated, as I was, under the old sys- 
 tem, can hardly see without a pang the improvement tliat lias 
 been made in education since his time. In a public school, in 
 my day, you learned nothing of Science, Art, or Music. Hav- 
 ing received nothing, I have nothing to give. Fortunately, 
 the only thing of importance to be said this evening can be 
 said without technical knowledge of any kind. The School 
 of Art needs better accommodation. The financial details 
 will be explained to you by those who are more conversant 
 with them than I am. I will only say that parsimony in this 
 matter on the part of the government or other public bodies 
 Avill, in my humble opinion, be unwise. I am not for a lavish 
 expenditure of public money, even on education. It would be 
 a misfortune if parental duty were to l>e cast on the State, and 
 parents were to be allowed to forget that tliey are bound to 
 provide their children with education as well as with bread. 
 But it seems that at this moment the soundest and even the most 
 strictly commercial policy would counsel liberality in providing 
 for the National Schools of Art and Science. England is labour- 
 ing under commercial depression. Of the works in the manufac- 
 turing districts, many are running half time, and some, I fear, 
 are likely, if things do not mend, to stop. When I was there 
 the other day gloom was on all faces. Some people seem to 
 think that the bad time will pass away of itself, and that a 
 good time will come again like a new moon. It is a comfort- 
 able but a doubtful doctrine. And suppose the good time does 
 not come again, the outlook for those masses and their em- 
 ployers is dark. A friend of mine, who is a manufacturer, said 
 to me the other day that he had been seeing the ruins of a 
 feudal castle, and that the sight set him thinking if factories 
 should ever, like feudal castles, fall into decay, what their ruins 
 
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 77 
 
 ■would be like ? They would be unroinantic no doubt, even by 
 moonlight. But much worse than the I'uins of buildings would 
 be the ruin among the people. Imagine these swarming multi- 
 tudes, or any large proportion of them, left by the failure of 
 ■employment Avithout bread. It would be something like a 
 chronic Indian famine. The wealth of England is unparalleled, 
 imapproached in commercial histoiy. Add Carthage to Tyre, 
 Venice to Carthage, Amsteixlam to Venice, you will not make 
 anything like a London. Ten thousand pounds paid for a pair 
 of china vases ! A Roman noble under the Empire might have 
 li vailed this ; but the wealth of the Roman nobles was not the 
 fruit of industry, it was the plunder of the world. You can 
 hardly imagine how those who come fresh from a new country 
 like Canada, or parts of the United States — a land just re- 
 deemed from the wilderness, with all its untrimmed roughness, 
 its fields half tilled and full of stumps,, its snake fences, and 
 the charred jiines which stand up gaunt monuments of forest 
 tires — are impressed, I might almost say ravished, by the sight 
 of the lovely garden which unlimited wealth expended on a 
 limited space has made of England. This country, too, has an 
 immense capital invested in the funds and securities of foreign 
 nations, and in this wa}' draws tribute from the world, though, 
 unhappily, we are being made sensible of the fact that money 
 lent to a foreign government is lent to a debtor on whom you 
 cannot distrain. But the sources of this fabulous prosperity, 
 are they inexhaustible ? In part, we may hope they are. A 
 maritime position, admirably adapted for trading with both 
 hemispheres, a race of first-rate seamen, masses of skilled 
 labour, vast accumulations of machinery and capital — these are 
 advantages not easily lost. And there is still in England good 
 store of coal and iron. Not so stable, however, is the advan- 
 tage given to England by the effects of the Napoleonic war, 
 which for the time crushed all manufactures and mercantile 
 marines but hers. Now, the continental nations are developing 
 manufactures and mercantile marines of their own. You go 
 round asking them to alter their tariffs, so as to enable you to 
 recover their markets, and almost all of them refuse ; about the 
 only door you have really succeeded in getting opened to you 
 is that of France, and this was opened, not by the nation, but 
 by an autocrat, who had diplomatic purposes of his own. The 
 Times, indeed, in a noteworthy article the other day, undertook 
 to prove that a great manufacturing and trading nation might 
 lose its customers without being much the worse for it, but 
 
78 ^-^ A DDE ESS DELIVERED A T OXFORD. 
 
 this seems too good to be true ; I fancy Yorkshire and Lanca- 
 shire would say so. Is it not that very margin of profit of 
 which The Times speaks so lightly, which, being accumulated, 
 has created the wealth of England ? Your manufacturers are 
 certainly under the im2:)ression that they want markets, and 
 the loss of the great American market seems to them a special 
 matter of concern. It is doubtful whether that market would 
 be restored to them even by an alteration of the tarifi'. The 
 coal in the great American coal fields is much nearer the sur- 
 face, and consequently more cheaply worked, than the coal in 
 England ; iron is as plentiful, and it is near the coal ; laboui', 
 which has been much dearer there, is now falling to the Eng- 
 lish level. Tariff or no tariff, America will probably keep her 
 own market for the heavier and coarser goods. But there is 
 still a kind of goods, in the production of which the old country 
 will long have a great advantage. I mean the lighter, finer, 
 and more elegant goods, the products of cultivated taste and of 
 trained skill in design — that very kind of goods, in short, the 
 character of which these Schools of Art are specially intended 
 to improve. Industry and invention the new world has in as 
 ample a measure as the old ; invention in still ampler measure, 
 for the Americans are a nation of inventors ; but cultivated 
 taste and its special products will long be the appanage of old 
 countries. It will be long before anything of that kind yviil 
 pass current in the new woild without the old world stamp. 
 Adapt your industry in some degree to changed re(]uirements ; 
 acquire those finer faculties which the Schools of Design aim at 
 cultivating, but which, in the lucrative production of the 
 coarser goods, have hitherto been comparatively neglected, and 
 you may recover a great American market ; it is doubtful 
 whether you will in any other way. Therefore, I repeat, to 
 stint the Art and Science Schools would seem bad policy. I 
 may add that it would be specially bad policy here in Oxford, 
 where, under the auspices of a University which is now extend- 
 ing its care to Art as well as Science, it would seem that the 
 finer industries, such as design applied to furniture, decoration 
 of all kinds, carving, painted glass, bookbinding, ought in time 
 to do particularly well. If you wish to prosper, cultivate your 
 speciality; the rule holds good for cities as well as for men. 
 There are some, perhaps, who dislike to think of Art in con- 
 nection with anything like manufacture. Let us, then, call it 
 design, and keep the name of art for the higher pursuit. Your 
 Instructor presides, I believe, with success, and w^ithout finding 
 
.-liV ADVEESS DELI FEB ED AT OA'EOIiB. 79 
 
 his duties clash, over a school, 'tlie main object of which is 
 the improvement of manufactures, and another school dedi- 
 cated to the higher objects of iiesthetic cultivation. The name 
 manufacture reminds you of machines, and you may dislike 
 machines and think there is something offensive to artists in 
 their products. Well, a machine does not produce, or pretend 
 to produce, poetry or sculpture ; it pretends to clothe thousands 
 of people who would otherwise go naked. It is itself often a 
 miracle of human intellect. It works unrestingly that human- 
 ity may have a chance to rest. If it sometimes supersedes 
 higher work, it far more often, by relieving man of the lowest 
 work, sets him free for the higher. Those heaps of stones 
 broken by the hammer of a poor wretch who bends over his 
 dull task through the weary day by the roadside, scantily clad, 
 in sharp frost perhaps or chilling sho\vers, are they more lovely 
 to a painter's eye than if they had been broken, without so 
 much human labour and suffering, by a steam stone-crusher ? 
 No one doubts the superior interest belonging to any work, 
 however imperfect, of individual mind ; but if we were not tc 
 use a pair of tongs that did not bear the impress of individual 
 mind, millionaires might have tongs, but the rest of us would 
 put on coals with our lingers. After all, what is a machine but 
 a perfect tool ? The Tyrian loom was a machine, though it was 
 worked by hand and not by steam ; and if the Tyrian had 
 known the power loom, depend upon it he would have used it. 
 AVithout machines, the members of this School mio-ht all be 
 grinding their corn with hand mills, instead of learning Art. 
 Common humanity must use manufactured articles ; even un- 
 common humanity will find it dithcult to avoid using them, 
 unless it has the courage of its convictions to the same extent 
 as George Fox, the Quaker, who encased himself in an entire 
 suit of home-made leather, bearing the impress of his individual 
 mind, and defied a mechanical and degenerate world. The 
 only practical question is wdiether the manufactures shall be 
 good or bad, well-designed or ill ; South Kensington answers, 
 that if training can do it, they shall be good and well designed. 
 There are the manufacturing multitudes of England ; they must 
 have work, and find mai'kets for their work ; if machines and 
 the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still. I 
 have no instruction to give you, and you would not thank me 
 for wasting your time with rhetorical praise of art, even if I 
 had all the flowers of diction at my command. To me, as an 
 outer barbarian, it seems that some of the language on these 
 
80 ^^' ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 
 
 fcubjects is already pretty high pitched. I have thought so 
 even in reading that one of Mr. Addington Symond's most 
 attractive volumes about Italy which relates to Italian art. 
 Art is the interpreter of beauty, and perhaps beauty, if we 
 could penetrate to its essence, might reveal to us something 
 higher than itself But Art is not religion, nor is connoisseur- 
 ship priesthood. To happiness Art lends intensity and eleva- 
 tion ; but in affliction, in ruin, in the wreck of aftection, 
 how much can Phidias and Raphael do for you ? A 
 poet makes Goethe say to a sceptical and perplexed world, 
 " Art still has truth, take refuge there." It would be a poor 
 refuge for most of us ; it was so even for the great Goethe ; 
 for with all his intellectual splendoui", his character never 
 rose above a grandiose and statuesque self-love ; he behaved 
 ill to his country, ill to w^omen. Instead of being religion, 
 Art seems, for its own perfection, to need religion — not a 
 system of dogma, but a faith. This, probably, w^e all feel when 
 we look at the paintings in the Church of Assisi or in the 
 Arena Chapel at Padua. Perhaps those paintings also gain 
 something by being in the proper place for religious art, a 
 Church. Since the divorce of religious art from religion, it 
 has been common to see a Crucifixion hung over a sideboard. 
 That age was an age of faith ; and so most likely w^as the glo- 
 rious age of Greek art in its way. Ours is an age of doubt, an 
 age of doubt and of strange cross currents and eddies of opinion, 
 ultra scepticism penning its books in the closet while the eccle- 
 siastical forms of the Middle Ages stalk the streets. Art seems 
 to feel the disturbing influence like the rest of life. Poetry 
 feels it less than other arts, because there is a poetry of doubt 
 and Tennyson is its poet. Art is expression, and to have high 
 expression you must have something high to express. In the 
 pictures at our exhibitions there may be great technical skill ; 
 I take it for granted there is ; but in the subject surely there 
 is a void, an appearance of painful seeking for something to 
 paint, and finding very little. When you come to a great pic- 
 ture of an Egyptian banquet in the days of the Pharaohs, you 
 feel that the painter must have had a long way to go for some- 
 thing to paint. Certainly this age is not indifferent to beauty. 
 The art movement is in every house ; everywhere you see some 
 proof of a desire to possess not mere ornament but something 
 really rare and beautiful. The influence transmutes children's 
 picture books and toys. I turned up the other day a child's 
 picture book of the days of my childhood ; probably it had been 
 
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 81 
 
 thought wonderfully good in its time ; and what a thing it was ! 
 Some day oui' doubts may be cleared up ; our beliefs may be 
 settled ; faith may come again ; life may recover its singleness 
 and certainty of aim ; poetry may gush forth once more as fresh 
 as Homer, and the art of the future may appear. What is most 
 difficult to conceive, perhaps, is the sculpture of the future; be- 
 cause it is hardly possible that the moderns should ever have 
 such facilities as the ancients had for studying the human form. 
 In presence of the overwhelming magnificence of the sculpture 
 in the museums of Rome and Naples, one wonders how Canova 
 and Co. can have looked with any complacency on their own 
 productions. There seems reason by the way to think that 
 these artists worked not each by himself, but in schools and 
 brotherhoods with mutual aid and sympathy ; and this is an 
 advantage equally within the reach of modern art. Meantime, 
 though the Art of the future delays to come, modern life is not 
 all hideous. There are many things, no doubt, such as the 
 Black Country and the suburbs of our cities, on which the eye 
 cannot rest with pleasure. But Paris is not hideous. Theie may 
 be in the long lines of buildings too much of the autocratic 
 monotony of the Empire, but the city, as a whole, is the per- 
 fect image of a brilliant civilization. From London beauty is 
 almost banished by smoke and fog, which deny to the poor ar- 
 chitect ornament, colour, light and shadow, leavino; him nothinir 
 but outline. No doubt besides the smoke and fug there is a 
 fatality. There is a fatality which darkly impels us to place 
 on our finest site, and one of the finest in Europe, the niggard 
 fa9ade and inverted teacup dome of the National Gallery; to 
 temper the grandeurs of Westminster by the introduction of 
 the Aquarium, with Mr. Hankey's Tower of Babel in the near 
 distance ; to guard against any too-imposing effect which the 
 outline of the Houses of Parliament might have by covering 
 them with minute ornament, sure to be blackened and corroded 
 into one vast blotch by smoke ; to collect the art wonders of 
 Pigtail Place ; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like 
 cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope 
 by muscular action, like the lions at Genoa ; to perch a colossal 
 equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in his 
 waterproof cape, and mounted on a low-shouldered hack instead 
 of a charger, on the top of an arch, by way of per|)etual atone- 
 ment to France for Waterloo ; and now to think of planting an 
 obelisk of the Pharaohs on a cab-stand. An obelisk of the Pha- 
 raohs in ancient Rome was an august captive, symbolizing the 
 F 
 
82 ^A' ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD, 
 
 universality of the Roman Eiiij)iic ; but an obelisk of the Pha- 
 raohs in London symbolizes little more than diil the Druidical 
 ring of stones which an English squire of my acquaintance pur- 
 chased in one of the Channel Islands and set up in his English 
 park. As to London, we must console ourselves with the 
 thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days 
 of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper. If the house is 
 less beautiful, the home is more so. Even a house in what 
 Tennyson calls the long unlovely street is not utterly unlovely 
 when within it dwell cultivated intellect, depth of character, and 
 tenderness of affection. However, the beauty of English life is 
 in the country, and there it may challenge that of Italian 
 palaces. America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. 
 There are a good many ugly things there ; and the ugliest arc 
 the most pretentious. As it is in society, so it is in architec- 
 tuie : America is best when she is content to be herself. An 
 American city, with its spacious streets, all planted with aven- 
 ues of trees, with its blocks of buildings, far from unimpeachable 
 prolablyin detail yet stately in the mass,with itswide-spreading 
 suburbs where each artizan has his neat-looking house in his 
 own plot of ground and plenty of light and air and foliage, 
 with its countless church towers and spires far from faultless, 
 yet varying the outline, might not please a painter's eye, but 
 it fills 3-our mind with a sense of well-rewarded industiy, of com- 
 fort and even opulence shared by the toiling many, of a prosper- 
 ous, law-loving, cheerful and pious life. I cannot help fancy- 
 ing that Turner, whose genius got to the soul of everything, 
 would have made something of even an American city. The 
 cities of the Middle Ages were picturesquely huddled within 
 walls for protection from the violence of the feudal era ; the 
 cities of the New World spread wide in the security of an age 
 of law and a continent of peace. At Cleveland, in Ohio, there 
 is a great street called Euclid Avenue, lined with villas, each 
 standing in its own grounds, and separated from each other and 
 from the street only by a light iron fencing, instead of the high 
 brick wall with which the Briton shuts out his detested kind. 
 The villas are not vast, or suggestive of over-grown plutocracy ; 
 they are suggestive of moderate wealth, pleasant summers, 
 cheerful winters, and domestic happiness. I hardly think you 
 would call Euclid Avenue I'evolting. I say it with the diffidence 
 of conscious ignorance, but I should not be much afraid to show 
 you one or two buildings that our Professor of Architecture at 
 Cornell University has put up for us on a bluff over Cayuga 
 
A^^ ADDRESS DELIVER ED AT OXFORD. 83 
 
 Lake, on a site which you would certainly admit to be magni- 
 licent. If I could have ventured on any recommendation con- 
 cerning Art, I should have pleaded before the Royal Commis- 
 sion for a Chair of Architecture here. It might endow us with 
 some forms of beauty ; it might at all events endow us with 
 rules for building a room in which you can be heard, one in 
 which you can breathe, and a chimney which would not smoke. 
 I said that in America the most pretentious buildings were the 
 worst. Another source of failure in buildings, in dress, and not 
 in these alone, is servile imitation of Europe. In northern 
 America the summer is tropical, the winter is arctic. A house 
 ought to be regular and compact in shape, so as to be easily 
 warmed from the centre, with a roof of simple construction, 
 high pitched, to prevent the snow from lodging, and large eaves 
 to throw it off, — this for the arctic winter ; for the tropical sum- 
 mer you want ample verandas, which, in fact, are the summer 
 sitting rooms. An American house built in this way is capa- 
 ble at least of the beauty which belongs to fitness. But as you 
 see Parisian dresses under an alien sky, so you see Italian villas 
 with excrescences which no stove can warm, and Tudor man- 
 sions with o-ables which hold all the snow. It is needless to 
 say what is the result, when the New World undertakes to re- 
 produce not only the architecture of the Old World, but that of 
 classical Greece and Rome, or that of the Middle Ages. Jeffer- 
 son, who was a classical republican, taught a number of his 
 fellow citizens to build their homes like Doric temples, and 
 you may imagine what a Doric temple freely adapted to domes- 
 tic purposes must be. But are these attempts to revive the past 
 very successful anywhere ? We regard as a decided mistake 
 the revive<l classicism of the last generation. May not our re- 
 vived medisevalism be regarded as a mistake by the generation 
 that follows us ? We could all probably point to some case 
 in which the clashing of mediaeval beauties with modern re- 
 quirements has produced sad and ludicrous results. There is 
 our own museum ; the best, I suppose, that could be done in 
 the w^ay of revival ; the work of an architect whom the first 
 judges deemed a man of genius. In that, ancient form and 
 modern requirements seem everywhere at cross purposes. No- 
 body can deny that genius is impressed upon the upper part of 
 the front, which reminds one of a beautiful building in an Ita- 
 lian city ; though the structure at the side recalls the mind to 
 Glastonbury, and the galaxy of chimneys has certainly no par- 
 allel in Italy. The front ought to stand in a street, but as it 
 
84 -^A^ ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 
 
 stands in a field its flanks have to be covered by devices which 
 are inevitably weak. What is to be done with the back always 
 seems to me one of the darkest enigmas of the future. The 
 basement is incongruously plain and bare ; in the street it 
 would perhaps be partly hidden by the passengers. Going in, 
 you find a beautiful mediaeval court struggling hard for its life 
 against a railway station, and a cloister, considerately offering 
 you a shady walk or shelter from the weather, round a room. 
 Listen to the multitudinous voices of Science and you will hear 
 that the conflict extends to practical accommodation. We all 
 know it was not the fault of the architect ; it was the fault of 
 adverse exigencies which came into collision with his design ; 
 but this only strengthens the moral of the building against re- 
 vivals. Two humble achievements, if we had chosen, were cer- 
 tainly within our reach, — perfect adaptation to our object and 
 inoffensive dignity. Every one who hay a heart, however igno- 
 rant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty 
 and poetry of the mediaeval churches. For my part, I look up 
 with admiration, as fervent as any one untrained in art can, to 
 those divine creations of old religion, which soar over the smoke 
 and din of our cities into purity and stillness, and seem to chal- 
 lenge us, with all our wealth and culture and science and mechan- 
 ical power, to produce their peer till the age of faith shall re- 
 turn. Not Greek Art itself, springing forth in its perfection from 
 the dark background of primseval history, seems to me a greater 
 maracle than these. How poor beside the lowliest of them in 
 religious effect, in romance, in everything but size and technical 
 skill, is any pile of neo-paganism, even, I will dare to say, St. 
 Peter's. Yet, for my part, deeply as 1 am moved by the religious 
 architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I 
 ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church. 
 I will even own that, except where restoration rids us of the 
 unchristian exclusiveness of pews, I prefer the unrestored 
 churches, with something of antiquity about them, to the re- 
 stored. There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power 
 to bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancy- 
 ing that they wish to try, or making believe to fancy that they 
 wish to try, to bring back the Middle Ages. You may hear 
 pinings for the return of an age of force from gentle festheti- 
 cists, who, if the a^e of force did return, would certainly be 
 crushed like eggshells. There is a well-known tale by Hans 
 Andersen, that great though child-like teacher, called the 
 " Overshoes of Fortune." A gentleman, at an evening party, 
 
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 85 
 
 has been running down modern society and wishino; he were 
 in the heroic Middle Ages. In going away he unwittingly put.s 
 on the fairy overshoes, which have the gift of transporting the 
 wearer at once to any place and time where he wishes to be. 
 Stepping out he finds his own wish fulfilled — he is in the Mid- 
 dle Ages. There is no gas, the street is pitch dark, he is up to 
 his ankles in mud, he is nearly knocked into the kennel by a 
 mediaeval bishop returning from a revel with his royster- 
 ing train ; when he wants to cross the river there is no bridge ; 
 and after vainly inquiring his way in a tavern full of very rough 
 customers, he wishes himself in the moon, and to the moon ap- 
 propriately he goes. Media^valism can hardly be called any- 
 thing but a rather enfeebling dream. If it were a real effort to 
 live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual pre- 
 varication. You would be drawn by the steam engine to lec- 
 ture against steam ; you would send eloquent invectives against 
 printing to the press ; and you would be subsisting meanwhile 
 on the interest of investments which the Middle Ages would 
 have condemned as usury. If you were like some of the school, 
 you would praise the golden silence of the Dark Ages and be 
 talking all the time. And surely the hourly failure to act up 
 to your principles, the hourly and conscious apostacy from your 
 ideal, could begfet nothing- in the character but hollowness and 
 weakness. No student of history can fail to see the moral in- 
 terest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to 
 see their aesthetic interest. There were some special types of 
 noble character then, of which, when they were done with, na- 
 ture broke the mould. But the mould is broken, and it is 
 broken for ever. Through aesthetic pining for a past age, we may 
 become unjust to our own, and thus weaken our practical sense 
 of duty, and lesisen our power of doing good. I will call the 
 age bad when it makes me so, is a wise saying, and worth all 
 our visionary cynicism, be it never so eloquent. To say the 
 same thing in other words, our age will be good enough for 
 most of us, if there is genuine goodness in ourselves. Rousseau 
 fancied he was soaring above his age, not into the thirteenth 
 century, but into the state of nature, while he was falling 
 miserably below his own age in all the common duties and re- 
 lations of life ; and he was a type, not of enthusiasts, for enthu- 
 siasm leads to action, but of mere social dreamers. Where there 
 is duty, there is poetr}^, and tragedy too, in plenty, though it be 
 in the most prosaic row of dingy little brick houses with clothes 
 hanging out to dry, or rather to be wetted, behind them, in all 
 
86 AX ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 
 
 Lancashire. We have commercial fraud now, too much of it ; and 
 the declining character of English goods is a cause of their ex - 
 elusion from foreign markets, as well as hostile tariffs ; so that 
 everything South Kensing-ton can do to uphold good and genuine 
 work will be of the greatest advantage to the English trade. 
 But if anyone supposes that there was no commercial fraud in 
 the Middle Ages, let him study the commercial legislation of 
 England for that period, and his mind will be satisfied, if he 
 has a mind to be satisfied, and not only a fancy to run away 
 with him. There was fraud beneath the cross of the Crusader, 
 and there was forgery in the cell of the Monk. In comparing 
 the general quality of work we must remember that it is the 
 best work of those times that has survived. I think I could prove 
 from history that mediaeval floors sometimes gave way even 
 when there was no St. Dunstan there. You will recollect that 
 the floor miraculously fell in at a synod, and killed all St. Dun- 
 stan's opponents ; but scejjtics, who did not easily believe in 
 miracles, whispered that the Saint, from his past habits, knew 
 how to handle tools. We are told by those whose creed is em- 
 bodied in " Past and Present " that this age is one vast anarchy, 
 industrial and social ; and that nothing but military discipline — 
 that is the perpetual cry — will restore us to anything like order 
 as workers or as men. Well, there are twenty thousand miles of 
 railway in the three kingdoms, forming a system as complex as 
 it is vast. I am told that at one junction, close to London, the 
 trains pass for some hours at the rate of two in five minutes. 
 Consider how that service is done by the myriads of men em- 
 ployed, and this in all seasons and weathers, in overwhelming 
 heat, in numbing cold, in blinding storm, in midnight dark- 
 ness. Is not this an army pretty well disciplined, though its ob- 
 ject is not bloodshed ? If we see masses full of practical energy 
 and good sense, but wanting in culture, let us take our culture 
 to them, and })erhaps they will give us some of their practical 
 enei'gy and good sense in leturn. Without that Black Country 
 industry, all begrimed and sweaty, our fine culture could not 
 exist. Everything we use, nay, our veriest toy represents lives 
 spent for us in delving beneath the dark and perilous mine, 
 in battling with the wintry sea, in panting before the glow- 
 ing forge, in counting the weary hours over the monotonous 
 and unresting loom, lives of little value, one could think, if 
 there were no hereafter. Let us at least be kind. I go to 
 Saltaire. I find a noble effort made by a rich man who kept 
 his heart above wealth, Titus Salt — he was a baronet, but we 
 
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 87 
 
 will spare him, as we spare Nelson, the derogatory prefix — to 
 put away what is dark and evil in factory life. I find a little 
 town, I should have thought not unpleasant to the eye, and 
 certainly not unpleasant to the heart, where labour dwells in 
 pure air, amidst beautiful scenery, with all the appliances of 
 civilization, with everything that can help it to health, mor- 
 ality, and happiness. I find a man, who might, if he pleased, 
 live idly in the lap of luxury, working like a horse in the 
 management of this place, beai-ing calmly not only toil and 
 trouble, but perverseness and ingratitude. Surely, aesthetic 
 culture would be a doubtful blessing if it made us think or 
 .speak unsympathetically and rudely of Saltaire. Four hundred 
 thousand people at Manchester are without pure water. They 
 propose to get it from Thirlmere. For this they are denounced 
 in that sort of language which is called strong, but the use of 
 which is a sure proof of weakness, for irritability was well de- 
 fined by Abernethy as debility in a state of excitement. Lst 
 us spare, whenever they can be spared, history and beauty ; 
 they are a priceless part of the heritage of a great industrial 
 nation, and one which lost can never be restored. The only 
 difference I ever had with my fellow-citizens in Oxford during 
 a pretty long residence, arose out of my opposition to a measure 
 which would have marred the historic character and the beauty 
 of our city, while I was positively assured on the best authority 
 that it was commercially inexpedient. If Thirlmere can be 
 spared, spare Thirlmere ; but if it is really needed to supply 
 those masses with a necessary of life, the loveliest lake by which 
 poet or artist ever wandered could not be put to a nobler use. 
 I am glad in this to follow the Bishop of Manchester, who is not 
 made of coarse clay, though he cares for the health as well as 
 for the religion of his people. A schism between {esthetic Ox- 
 ford and industrial Lancashire would be a bad thing for both ; 
 and South Kensington, which, while it teaches art, joins hands 
 with industry, surely does well. It is needless to debate before 
 this audience the question whether there is any essential anta- 
 gonism between art or aesthetic culture, and the tendencies of 
 an age of science. An accidental antagonism there may be, an 
 essential antagonism there cannot be. What is science but 
 truth, and why should not truth and beauty live together ? Is 
 an artist a worse painter of the human body from being a good 
 anatomist ? Then why should he be a worse painter of nature 
 generally, because he knows her secrets, or because they are 
 being explored in his time ? Would he render moonlight better 
 
88 AN ADBHESS DELIVERED AT OXFORD. 
 
 if he believed the moon was a green cheese ? Art and Science 
 dwelt together well enough in the minds of Leonardo da Yinci 
 and Michael Angelo. In the large creative mind there is room 
 for both ; though the smaller and merely perceptive mind 
 being fixed on one may sometimes not have room for the other. 
 True, the perfect concord of art and science, like that of reli- 
 gion and science, may be still to come, and come, we hope, both 
 concords will. One word moie before we distribute the prizes. A 
 system of prizes is a system of competition, and to comjietition 
 some ol)ject. We can readily sympathise with their objection. 
 Work done from love of the subject, or from a sense of duty, is 
 better than work done for a prize, and, moreover, we cherish 
 the hope that co-operation, not competition, will be the ultimate 
 jirinciple of industry, and the final state of man. But nothing 
 hinders that, in working for a prize as in working for your 
 bread, you may, at the same time, be working from sense of 
 duty and love of the subject, and though co-operation may be 
 our final state, competition is our present. Here the competi- 
 tion is at least fair. There can hardly be any doubt that the 
 prize system olten calls into activity powers of doing good 
 work which would otherwise have lain dormant, and if it does 
 this it is useful to the community, though the individual needs 
 to be on his guard against its drawbacks in himself In read- 
 ing the Life of Lord Althorp the other day I was struck with 
 the fact, for a fact, I think, it evidently was, that England had 
 owed one of her worthiest and most useful statesmen to a 
 college competition, which aroused him to a sense of his own 
 powers, and of the duty of using them, whereas he would 
 otherwise never have risen above makinij bettino- books and 
 chronicling the performances of foxhounds. Perhaps about the 
 worst consequence of the prize system, against which, I have 
 no doubt, your Instructor guards, is undue discouragement on 
 the part ot those w^ho do not win the prize. And now. Ladies 
 and Gentlemen, I wish }'ou were to receive your rewards from 
 a hand which would lend them any additional value. But 
 though presented by me they have been awarded by good 
 judges ; and as they have been awarded to 3'ou, I have no 
 doubt vou have deserved them well. 
 
THE ASCENT OF 31 AN. 89 
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 Science and criticism have raised the veil of the Mosaic cos- 
 mogony and revealed to us the physical origin of man. We see 
 that, instead of being created out of the dust of the earth l)y 
 Divine iiat, he has in all probability been evolved out of it by 
 a process of development through a series of intermediate forms. 
 
 The discovery is, of course, unspeakably momentous. Among 
 other things it seems to open to us a new view of morality, and 
 one which, if it is verified by further investigation, can hardl}'- 
 fail to produce a great change in philosophy. Supposing that 
 man has ascended from a lower animal form, there appears to 
 be ground at least for surmising that vice, instead of being a 
 diabolical inspiration or a mysterious element of human nature, 
 is the remnant of the lower animal not yet eliminated ; while 
 virtue is the effort, individual and collective, by which that 
 remnant is being gradually worked off. The acknowledged 
 connection of virtue with tlie ascendency of the social over the 
 selfish desires and tendencies seems to correspond with this view ; 
 the nature of the lower animals being, so far as we can see, al- 
 most entirely selfish, and admitting no regard even for the 
 present interests of their kind, much less for its interests in the 
 future. The doubtful qualities, and " last infirmities of noble 
 minds,' such as ambition and the love of fame, in which the 
 selfish element is mingled with one not wholly selfish, and which 
 commend themselves at least by their refinment, as contrasted 
 with the coarseness of the merely animal vices, may perhaps be re- 
 garded as belonging to the class of phenomena quaintly desig- 
 nated by some writers as " pointer facts," and as marking the 
 process of transition. In what morality consists, no one has 
 yet succeeded in making clear. Mr. Sidg^vick's recent criticism 
 of the various theories leads to the conviction that not one of 
 them afibrds a satisfactory basis for a practical system of ethics. 
 If our lower nature can be traced to an animal origin, and can 
 be shown to be in course of elimination, however slow and in- 
 terrupted, this at all events will be a solid fact, and one which 
 must be the starting-point ofany future system of ethics. Light 
 would be at once thrown by such a discovery on some parts of 
 the subject Avhich have hitherto been involved in impenetrable 
 
90 THE J SCENT OF MAX. 
 
 darkness. Of the vice of cruelty, for example, no rational ac- 
 count, we believe, has yet been given ; it is connected with no 
 human appetite, and seems to gratify no human object of desire ; 
 but if we can be shown to have inherited it from animal pro- 
 genitors, the mystery of its existence is at least in part ex- 
 plained. In the event of this surmise being substantiated, moral 
 phantasms, with their media'val trappings, would for ever dis- 
 appear ; individual responsibility would be reduced within reas- 
 onable limits ; the difficulty of the question respecting free will 
 would shrink to comparatively narrow proportions ; but it 
 does not seem likely that the love of virtue and the hatred of 
 vice would be diminished ; on the contrary, it seems likely that 
 they would be practically intensified, while a more practical 
 direction would certainly be given to the science of ethics as a 
 s3'stem of moral training and a method of curing moral disease. 
 
 It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the 
 doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of inves- 
 tigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of histor}^ 
 especially the history of institutions. Our general histories will 
 apparently have to be almost rewritten from that point of view. 
 It is only to be noted, with regard to the treatment of histor}', 
 that the mere introductionof a physical nomenclature, however 
 elaborate and apparently scientific, does not make an3^thing 
 physical which before was not so, or exclude from human act- 
 ions, of which history is the aggregate, any element not of a 
 physical kind. We are impressed, perhaps, at first with a sense 
 of new knowledge when we ai'e told that human history is " an 
 integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; 
 during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent 
 homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during 
 which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." 
 But a little reflection suggests to us that such a philosophy is 
 vitiated by the assumption involved in the word " matter," and 
 that the philosophy of history is in fact left exactly where it 
 was before. The superior complexity of high civilization is a 
 familiar social fact which gains nothing in clearness by the im- 
 portation of mechanical or physiological terms. 
 
 We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, 
 though it may explain everything else, cannot explain itself. 
 What is the origin of the movement, and by what power the 
 ()rder of development is prescribed, are questions yet unsolved 
 by physical science. That the solution, if it could be supplied, 
 would involve anything arbitrary, miraculous, or at variance 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN. 91 
 
 with the observed order of things, need not be assumed ; but 
 it might open a new view of the universe, and dissipate for ever 
 the merely mechanical accounts of it. In the meantime we may 
 fairly enter a caveat against the tacit insinuation of an uny)roved 
 solution. Science can apparently give no reason for assuming 
 that the first cause, and that which gives the law to develop- 
 ment, is a blind force rather than an archetypal idea. The only 
 origination within our experience is that of human action, where 
 the cause is an idea. Science herself, in fact, constantly assumes 
 an analogous cause for the movements of the universe in her 
 use of the word "law," which necessarily conveys the notion, not 
 merely of observed co-existence and sequence, but of the intel- 
 ligent and consistent action of a higher power, on which we 
 rely in reasoning from the past to the future, as we do upon 
 consistencj^ in the settled conduct of a man. 
 
 Unspeakably momentous, however, we once more admit, the 
 discovery is, and great is the debt of gratitude due to its illus- 
 trious authors. Yet it seems not unreasonable to ask whether 
 in some respects we are not too much under its immediate in- 
 fluence, and whether the revolution of thought, though destined 
 ultimately to be vast, may not at present have somewhat over- 
 passed its bounds. Is it not possible that the physical origin 
 of man may be just now occupying too large a space in our 
 minds compared with his ulterior development and his final 
 destiny ? With our eyes fixed on the " Descent," newly dis- 
 closed to us, may we not be losing sight of the Ascent of man ? 
 
 There seems in the first place, to be a tendency to treat the 
 origin of a being as finally decisive of its nature and destiny. 
 From the language sometimes used, we should almost suppose 
 that rudiments alone were real, and that all the rest was mere 
 illusion. An eminent writer on the antiquities of jurisprudence 
 intimates his belief that the idea of human brotherhood is not 
 coeval with the race, and that primitive communities were 
 governed by sentiments of a very different kind. His words 
 are at once pounced upon as a warrant for dismissing the idea 
 of human brotherhood from our minds, and substituting for it 
 some other social principles, the character of which has not yet 
 been definitely explained, though it is beginning in some 
 quarters pretty distinctly to appear. Butsurely thisis notreason- 
 able. Therecan beno reason why the first estateof man, which all 
 allow to have been his lowest estate, should claim the preroga- 
 tive of furnishing his only real and indefeasible principles of 
 action. Grantin^f that the idea of human brotherhood was not 
 
92 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 aboriginal — granting that it came into the world at a compara- 
 tively late period, still it has corae, and having come, it is as 
 real and seems as much entitled to consideration as inter-tribal 
 hostility and domestic despotism were in their own day. That 
 its advent has not been unattended by illusions and aberrations 
 is a fact which does not cancel its title to real existence under 
 the present conditions, and with the present lights of society, any 
 more than it annuls the great etiects upon the actions of men 
 and the course of history which the idea has undeniably pro- 
 duced. Human brotherhood was not a part of a primteval rev- 
 elation; it may not have been an original institution; but it 
 seems to be a real part of a development, and it may be a part 
 of a plan. That the social principles of certain anti-philanthropic 
 works are identical with those which governed the actions of 
 mankind in a primaeval and rudimentary state, when man had 
 only just emerged fi'om the animal, and have been since worked 
 off by the foremost races in the course of development, is surely 
 lather an argument against the paramount and indefeasible 
 authority of those principles than in favour of it. It tends 
 rather to show that their real character is that of a relapse, or, 
 as the physiologists call it, a reversion. When there is a vast 
 increase of wealth, of sensual enjoyment, and of the selfishness 
 which is apt to attend them, it is not marvellous that such re- 
 versions should occur. 
 
 Another eminent writer appears to think that he has put an 
 end to metaphysical theology, and perhaps to metaphysics and 
 theology altogether, by showing that " being," and the cognate 
 words, originally denoted merely physical perceptions. But so, 
 probably, did all language. So did " spirit," so did " geist," so 
 did " power," so did even " sweet reasonableness," and " the not 
 us which makes for righteousness." Other perceptions or ideas 
 have gi-adually come, and are now denoted by the words which 
 at first denoted physical ])erceptions only. Why have not these 
 hist comers as good a claim to existence as the first ? Suppose 
 the intellectual nature of man has unfolded, and been brought, 
 as it conceivably may, into relations with something in the uni- 
 verse beyond the mere indications of the five bodily senses — 
 why are we bound to mistrust the results of this unfolding ? 
 We might go still further back, and still lower, than to languag-e 
 denoting merely physical perceptions. We might go back to 
 inarticulate sounds and signs ; but this does not invalidate the 
 reality of the perceptions afterwards expressed in articulate 
 language. It seems not very easy to distinguish, in point of 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN. 93 
 
 trustworthiness of source, between the principles of metaphysics 
 and the first principles of mathematics, or to say, if we accept 
 the deductions in one case, why we should not accept them in 
 the other. It is conceivable at least, we venture to repeat, that 
 the development of man's intellectual nature may have enabled 
 him to perceive other things than those which he perceives by 
 means of his five bodily senses ; and metaphysics, once non-ex- 
 istent, may thus have come into legitimate existence. Man, if 
 the doctrine of evolution is true, was once a creature with only 
 bodily senses ; nay, at a still earlier stage, he was matter devoid 
 even of bodily sense ; now he has arrived — through the exer- 
 cise of his bodily senses it may be — at something beyond bodily 
 sense, at such notions as being, essence, existence : he reasons 
 upon these notions, and extends the scope of his once merely 
 physical vocabulary so as to comprehend them. Why should 
 he not ? If we are to be anchored hard and fast to the signifi- 
 cation of primaeval language, how are we to obtain an intellec- 
 tual basis for " the not us which makes for righteousness ? " Do 
 not the anti-metaphysicists themselves unconsciously metaphy- 
 sicize ? Does not their fundamental assumption — that the 
 knowledge received through our bodily senses alone is trust- 
 worthy — involve an appeal to a mental necessity as much as 
 anything in metaphysics, whether the mental necessity in this 
 case be real or not ? 
 
 Again, the great author of the Evolution theory himself, in 
 his Descent of Man, has given us an account of morality which 
 suggests a remark of the same kind. He seems to have come to 
 the conclusion that what is called our moral sense is merely 
 an indication of the superior permanency of social compared 
 with personal impressions. Morality, if we take his explana- 
 tion as complete and final, is reduced to tribal self-preservation 
 subtilized into etiquette ; an etiquette which, perhaps, a scep- 
 tical voluptuary, wishing to remove the obstacles to a life of 
 enjoyment, might think himself not unreasonable in treating as 
 an illusion. This, so far as appears, is the explanation ottered 
 of moral life, with all its beauty, its tenderness, its heroism, its 
 self-sacrifice ; to say nothing of spiritual life with its hopes and 
 aspirations, its prayers and fanes. Such an account even of the 
 origin of morality seems rather difficult to receive. Surely, even 
 in their most rudimentary condition, virtue and vice must have 
 been distinguished by some other characteristic than the rela- 
 tive permanency of two ditt'erent sets of impressions. There is 
 a tendency, we may venture to observe, on the part of eminent 
 
94 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 physicists, when they have carefully investigated and explained 
 what seems to them the most important and substantial sub- 
 jects of inquiry, to proffer less careful explanations of matters 
 which to them seem secondary and less substantial, though pos- 
 sibly to an intelligence surveying the drama of the world from 
 without the distinctly human portion of it might appear 
 more important than the rest. Eminent physicists have been 
 known, we believe, to account summarily for religion as a sur- 
 viving reminiscence of the serpent which attacked the ances- 
 tral ape and the tree which sheltered him from the attack, so 
 that Newton's religious belief would be a concomitant of his 
 remaining trace of a tail. It was assumed that primaeval relig- 
 ion was universally the worship of the serpent and of the tree. 
 This cissumption was far from being correct ; but, even if it had 
 been correct, the theory based on it would surely have been a very 
 summary accout of the phenomena of religious life. 
 
 However, supposing the account of the origin of the moral 
 sense and of moral life, given in TJie Descent of Man., to be true, 
 it is an account of the origin only. Though profoundly signi- 
 ficant, as well as profoundly interesting, it is not more signifi- 
 cant, compared with the subsequent development, than is the 
 origin of physical life compared with the subsequent history of 
 living beings. Suppose a mineralogist or a chemist were to 
 succeed in discovering the exact point at which inorganic matter 
 gave birth to the organic ; his discovery would be momentous 
 and would convey to us a most distinct assurance of the method 
 by which the governing power of the universe works : but 
 would it qualify the mineralogist or the chemist to giv^e a full 
 account of all the diversities of animal life, and of the history 
 of man ? Heroism, self-sacrifice, the sense of moral beauty, the 
 refined affections of civilized men, philanthropy, the desire of 
 realizing a high moral ideal, whatever else they may be, are not 
 tribal self-perservation subtilized into etiquette ; nor are they 
 adequately explained by reference to the permanent character 
 of one set of impressions and the occasional character of another 
 set. Between the origin of moral life and its present manifes- 
 tation has intervened something so considerable as to baffle any 
 anticipation of the destiny of humanity which could have been 
 formed for a mere inspection of the rudiments. We may call 
 this intervening force circumstance, if we please, provided we 
 remember that calling it circumstance does not settle its nature, 
 or exclude the existence of a power acting through circumstance 
 as the method of fulfilling a design. 
 
THE ASCENT OE MAN. 95 
 
 Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are 
 what they are, both in theniselvx\s and in regard to their indi- 
 cations respecting other beings or influences the existence of 
 which may be imjdied in theirs. The connection between the 
 embryo and the adult man, witli his moral sense and intelli- 
 gence, and all that these imply, is manifest, as well as the grad- 
 ual evolution of the one out of the other, and a conclusive argu- 
 ment is hence derived against certain superstitions or fantas- 
 tic beliefs ; but the embryo is not a man, neither is the man an 
 embryo. A physiologist sets before us a set of plates showing 
 the similarity between the endjryo of Newton and that of his 
 dog Diamond. The inference which he probably expects us to 
 draw is that there is no essential difference between the phil- 
 osopher and the dog. But surely it is at least as logical to in- 
 fer, that the importance of the embryo and the significance of 
 embryological similarities may not be so great as the physiolo- 
 gist is disposed to believe. 
 
 So with regard to human institutions. The writer on legal 
 antiquities before mentioned finds two sets of institutions 
 which are now directly opposed to each other, and between the 
 respective advocates of which a controversy has been waged. 
 He proposes to terminate that controversy by showing that 
 though the two rival systems in their development are so dif- 
 ferent, in their origin they were the same. This seems very 
 clearly to bring home to us the fact that, important as the results 
 of an investigation of origins are, there is still a limit to their 
 importance. 
 
 Again, while we allow no prejudice to stand in the way of 
 our acceptance of Evolution, we may fairly call upon Evolution 
 to be true to itself. We may call upon it to recognise the pos- 
 sibility of development in the future as well as the fact of de- 
 velopment in the past, and not to shut up the hopes and aspi- 
 rations of our race in a mundane e^g because the mundane Qg^g 
 happens to be the special province of the physiologist. The 
 series of developments has proceeded from tlie inorganic to the 
 organic, from the organic upwards to moral and intellectual life. 
 Why should it be arrested there .^ Why should it not continue its 
 upward course and arrive at a development which might be de- 
 signated as spiritual life? Surely the presumption is in favour 
 of a continued operation of the law\ Nothing can be more 
 arbitrary than the proceeding of Comte, who, after tracing hu- 
 manity, as he thinks, through the Theological and Metaphysical 
 stages into the Positive, there closes the series and assumes that 
 
96 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 the Positive stage is absolutely final. How can he be sure that 
 it will not be followed, for example, by one in which man will 
 apprehend and commune with the Ruler of the Universe, not 
 through mythology or dogma, but through Science ? He may 
 have had no experience of such a phase of human existence, nor 
 may he be able at present distinctly to conceive it. But had 
 he lived in the Theological or the Metaphysical era he would 
 have been equally without experience of the Positive, and have 
 had the same difficulty in conceiving its existence. His finality 
 is an assumption apparently without foundation. 
 
 By Spiritual Life we do not mean the life of a disembodied 
 spirit, or anything supernatural and anti-scientific, but a life the 
 motives of which are beyond the world of sense, and the aim 
 of which is an ideal, individual and collective, which may be 
 ajiproached but cannot be attained under our present conditions, 
 and the conception of which involves the hope of an ulterior 
 and better state. The Positivists themselves often use the 
 word " spiritual," and it may be assumed that they mean by it 
 something higher in the way of aspiration than what is denoted 
 by the mere term moi"al, though they may not look forward to 
 any other state of being than this. 
 
 We do not presume, of course, in these few pages to broach 
 any great question, our only purpose being to point out a pos- 
 sible aberration or exaggeration of the prevailing school of 
 thought. But it must surely be apparent to the moral philos- 
 opher, no less than to the student of history, that at the time 
 of the appearance of Christianity, a crisis took place in the 
 development of humanity which may be not unfitly described 
 as the commencement of Spiritual Life. The change was not 
 abrupt. It had been preceded and heralded by the increasing 
 spirituality of the Hebrew religion, especially in the teachings 
 of the prophets, by the spiritual ization of Greek philosophy, and 
 perha|)s by tlie sublimation of Roman duty ; but it was ci'itical 
 and decided. So much is admitted even by those who deplore 
 the advent of Christianity as a fatal historical catastrophe, 
 which turned away men's minds from the improvement of their 
 material condition to the pursuit of a chimerical ideal. Faith, 
 Hope, and Charity, by which the Gospel designates the triple 
 manifestation of spiritual life, are new names for new things ; 
 for it is needless to say that in classical Greek the words have 
 nothing like their Gospel signification. It would be difficult, 
 we believe, to find in any Greek or Roman writer an express- 
 ion of hope for the future of humanity. The nearest approach 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN. 97 
 
 to such a sentiment, perhaps, is in the political Utopianism of 
 Plato. The social ideal is placed in a golden age which has 
 irretrievably passed away. Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, even if it 
 were a more serious production than it is, seems to refer to 
 nothing more than the pacification of the Roman Empire and 
 the restoration of its material prosperity by Augustus. But 
 Christianity, in the Apocalypse, at once breaks forth into a 
 confident prediction of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, 
 and of the realization of the ideal. 
 
 The moral aspiration — the striving after an ideal of charac- 
 ter, personal and social, the former in and through the latter 
 — seems to be the special note of the life, institutions, literature, 
 and art of Christendom. Christian Fiction, for example, is per- 
 vaded by an interest in the development and elevationof character 
 for which we look in vain in the Avahian Nights, where there 
 is no development of character, nothing but incident and ad- 
 venture. Christian sculpture, inferior perhaps in workmanship 
 to that of Phidias, derives its superior interest from its constant 
 suggestion of a spiritual ideal. The Christian lives, in a man- 
 ner, two lives, an outward one of necessary conformity to the 
 fashions and ordinances of the present world ; an inner one of 
 protest against the present world and anticipation of an ideal 
 state of things ; and this duality is reproduced in the separate 
 existence of the spiritual society or Church, submitting to exis- 
 ting social arrangements, yet .struggling to transcend them, and 
 to transmute society by the realization of the Christian's social 
 ideal. With this is necessarily connected a. readiness to sacri- 
 fice present to future good, and the interests of the present 
 to future good, and the interests of the present world to those 
 of the world of hope. Apart from this, the death of Christ 
 (and that of Socrates also), instead of being an instance of 
 " sweet reasonableness," would be out of the pale of reason al- 
 together. 
 
 It is perhaps the absence of an ideal that prevents our feel- 
 ing satisfied with Utilitarianism, The Utilitarian definition of 
 morality has been so much enlarged, and made to coincide so 
 completely with ordinary definitions in point of mere extent, 
 that the difierence between Utilitarianism and ordinary Moral 
 Philosophy seems to have become almost verbal. Yet we feel 
 that there is something; wantinof. There is no ideal of charac- 
 ter. And where there is no ideal of character there can hardly 
 be such a thing as a sense of moral beauty. A Utilitarian per- 
 haps would say that perfect utility is beauty. But whatever 
 
 G 
 
98 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 may be the case with material beauty, moral l:)eauty at all events 
 seems to contain an element not identical with the satisfaction 
 ]>roduced by the appearance of perfect utility, but suggestive of 
 an unfulfilled ideal. 
 
 Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a 
 Future State, has physical science anything to say against that 
 expectation ? Physical Science is nothing more than the per- 
 ceptions of our five bodily senses registered and methodized. 
 But what are these five senses ? According to physical science 
 itself, nerves in a certain stage of evolution. Why then should 
 it be assumed that their account of the universe, or of our rela- 
 tions to it, is exhaustive and final ? Why should it be assumed 
 that these are the only possible organs of perception, and that 
 no other faculties or means of communication with the universe 
 can ever in the course of evolution be developed in man ? 
 Around us are animals absolutely unconscious, so far as we can 
 discern, of that universe which Science has revealed to us. A 
 sea anemone, if it can reflect, probably feels as confident that 
 it perceives everything capable of being perceived as the man 
 of science. The reasonable supposition, surely, is that though 
 Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide of our present 
 life, its relation to the sum of things is not much more consider- 
 able than that of the perceptions of the lower orders of animals. 
 That our notions of the universe have been so vastly enlarged 
 Ity the mere invention of astronomical instruments is enough 
 in itself to suggest the possibility of further and infinitely 
 greater enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, and to 
 physical science, which is limited by them, human existence 
 seems to end with death ; but if there is anything in our nature 
 which tells us, with a distinctness and persistency equal to 
 those of our sensible perceptions, that hope and responsibility 
 extend beyond death, why is this assurance not as much to be 
 trusted as that of the bodily sense itself ? There is apparently 
 no ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or moral, except 
 our inability, constituted as we are, to believe otherwise ; and 
 this criterion seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradi- 
 cable moral conviction as well as by a universal and irresistible 
 impression of sense. 
 
 We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching 
 that of ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything 
 which lies beyond the range of experience. By experience is 
 meant the perceptions of our bodily senses, the absolute com- 
 pleteness and finality of which, we must repeat, is an assum- 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN. 99 
 
 ption, the wiirrant for which must at all events be produced 
 from other authority than that of the senses themselves. On 
 thisi^round we are called upon to discard, as worthy of nothing 
 but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge 
 these ideas from our minds is impossible ; just as impossible as 
 it is to dislodge any idea that has entered througli the cliannels 
 of the senses ; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that 
 they may not be mere illusions, but real extensions of our in- 
 telligence beyond the domain of mere bodily sense, indicating 
 an upward progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas 
 correspond to reality, physical science, though true as far as it 
 goes, cannot be the whole truth, or even bear any considerable 
 relation to the whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being 
 as limited by space and time. 
 
 Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our 
 nature will ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from 
 Revelation, to say ; but there seems no substantial reason for re- 
 fusing to believe that it carries us towards a better state. Mere 
 ignorance, arising from the imperfection of our perceptive powers, 
 of the mode in which we shall pass into that better state, or of 
 its precise relation to our present existence, cannot cancel an as- 
 surance, otherwise valid, of our general destiny. A transmuta- 
 tion of humanity, such as we can conceive to be brought about 
 by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and the 
 gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is 
 surely no more incredible than the actual development of 
 humanity, as it is now, out of a lower animal form or out of 
 inorganic matter. 
 
 What the bearing of the automatic theory of human nature 
 would be upon the hopes and aspirations of man, or on moral 
 philosophy generally, it might be difficult, no doubt, to say. 
 But has any one of the distinguished advocates of the automatic 
 theory ever acted on it, or allowed his thoughts to be really 
 ruled by it for a moment ? What can be imagined more strange 
 than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of its own 
 automatic character, reasonino; and debating about it automati- 
 cally, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the auto- 
 matic theory of itself is true ? Nor is there any occasion here to 
 entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. 
 If the race can act progressively on higher and more unselfish 
 motives, as history proves to be the fact, there can be nothing 
 in the connection between our actions and their antecedents in- 
 consistent with the ascent of man. Jonathan Edv/ards is un- 
 
100 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 doubtedly right in maintaining that there is a connection be- 
 tween every human action and its antecedents. But the nature 
 of the connection remains a mystery. We learn its existence not 
 from inspection, but from consciousness, and this same con- 
 sciousness tells us that the connection is not such as to pre- 
 clude the existence of liberty of choice, moral aspiration, moral 
 eflbrt, moral responsibility, which are the contradictories of 
 Necessarianism. The terms cause and ejf'ect, and others of 
 that kind, which the imperfection of p.sychoIogical language 
 com})els us to use in sj)eaking of the mental connection between 
 action and its antecedents, are steeped, from their employment 
 in connection with physical science, in physical association, 
 and they imjiort with them into the moral sphere the notion of 
 physical enchainment, for which the representations of con- 
 sciousness, the sole authority, afford no warrant whatever. 
 
 Another possible sou ice of serious aberration, we venture to 
 think, will be found in the misapplication of the doctrine of 
 survivals. Some lingering remains of its rudimentary state in 
 the .shajje of primaeval superstitions or fancies continue to ad- 
 here to a developed and matured belief ; and hence it is inferred, 
 or at least the inference is suggested, that the belief itself is 
 nothing but a " survival," and destined in the final triumph of 
 reason to pass away. The belief in the immoi-tality of the soul, 
 for example, is found still connected in the lower and less ad- 
 vanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies about 
 ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as 
 well as with funeral rites and m.odes of burial indicating irra- 
 tional notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But 
 neither these nor any special ideas as to the nature of future re- 
 wards and punishments, or the mode of transition from the 
 present to the future state, are really essential parts of the be- 
 lief. They are the rudimentar}^ imaginations and illusions of 
 which the rational belief is gradually working itself clear. The 
 basis of the rational belief in the immortality of the soul, or, 
 to speak more correctly, in the continuance of our spiritual ex- 
 istence after death, is the conviction, common, so far as we know, 
 to all the higher portions of humanit}^, and apparently ineradi- 
 cable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave ; 
 that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our 
 actions, or our lelations to those to whom we have done good 
 or evil ; and that to die the death of the righteous is better than 
 to have lived a life of pleasure even with the approbation of an 
 undiscerning world. 80 far from growing weaker, this con vie- 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN, 101 
 
 tion appears to i^vow practically stronq;er among the most highly 
 educated and intelligent of mankind, though they may have 
 cast off the last remnant of primitive ormedijeval superstition, 
 and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any 
 special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not 
 got rid of it, since they have devised a subjective immortality 
 with a retributive distinction between the virtuous and the 
 wicked ; to say nothing of their singular proposal that the dead 
 should be formally judged by the survivors, and buried, accord- 
 ing to the judgment passed upon them, in graves of honour or 
 disgi'ace. 
 
 With regard to religion generally there is the same tendency 
 to exao-p'erate the significance of " survivals," and to neglect, on 
 the other hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the 
 primitive fables and ilkisions which long adhere to religion are 
 undeniably dying out, it is asserted, or suggested, that religion 
 itself is dying. Religion is identified with mythology. But 
 mythology is merely the primreval matrix of religion. Mytho- 
 logy is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as to the 
 universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for 
 good or evil influence his lot ; and, when analysed, it is found 
 beneath all its national variations to be merely based upon a 
 worship of the sun, the moon, and the forces of Nature. Re- 
 ligion is the worship and service of a moral God and a God who 
 is worshipped and served by virtue. We can distinctly see, in 
 Greek literature for instance, religion disengaging itself from 
 mythology. In Homer the general element is mythology, cap- 
 able of being rendered more or less directly into simple nature- 
 worship, childish, non-moral, and often immoral. But when 
 Hector says that he holds omens of no account, and that the 
 best omen of all is to fight for one's country, he shows an in- 
 cipient reliance on a Moral Power. The disengagement of 
 religion from mythology is of course much further advanced 
 and more manifest when we come to Plato ; while the religious 
 faith, instead of being weaker, has become infinitely stronger, 
 and is capable of supporting the life and the martyrdom of 
 Socrates. When Socrates and Plato reject the Homeric mytho- 
 logy, it is not because they are sceptics but because Homer is a 
 child. 
 
 But it is in the Old Testament that the process of disengage- 
 ment and the gi-owth of a moral out of a ceremonial religion 
 are most distinctly seen : — 
 
102 TEE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 " ' Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh, 
 And bow myself down before God on high ? 
 Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
 With the sacrifice of calves of a year old ? 
 — Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams. 
 With ten thousands of rivers of oil ? 
 Shall I give my first-born for my transgression. 
 The frhit of my body for the sin of my soul ? ' 
 ' — He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, 
 And what Jahveh doth require of thee ; 
 What but to do justly, to love mercy, 
 And to walk humbly with thy God ? ' " 
 
 Here no doubt is a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice, even of 
 liuman sacrifice, even of the sacrifice of the first-born. But it 
 is a receding and dying belief; while the belief in the power 
 of justice, mercy, humility, moral religion in short, is prevailing 
 over it and taking its ]ilace. 
 
 So it is again in the New Testament with regard to spiritual 
 life and the miraculous. Spiritual life commenced in a world 
 full of belief in the miraculous, and it did not at once break 
 with that belief. But it threw the miraculous into the back- 
 ground and anticipated its decline, presaging that it would lose 
 its importance and give place finally to the spiritual. " Though 
 I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not 
 charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 
 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
 mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so 
 that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am no- 
 thing Charity never faileth ; but whether there be pro- 
 phecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall 
 cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For 
 we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that 
 which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done 
 away." Clearly the writer of this believes in prophecies, in 
 tongues, in mysteries. But clearly, also, he regards them as both 
 secondary and transient, while he regards charity as primary 
 and etei'nal. 
 
 It may be added that the advent of spiritual life did at once 
 produce a change in the character of the miraculous itself, di- 
 vested it of its fantastic extravagance, and infused into it a 
 moral element. The Gospel miracles, almost without exception, 
 have a moral significance, and can without incongruity be made 
 the text of moral discourses to this day. An attempt to make 
 Hindoo or Greek miracles the text of moral discouises would 
 produce strange results. 
 
THE ASCENT OF MAN. 103 
 
 Compared with the tract of geological, and still more with 
 that of astronomical time, spiritual life has not been long in our 
 world ; and we need not wonder if the process of disengagement 
 from the environments of the previous state of humanity is as 
 yet far from complete. Political religions and persecution, for 
 instance, did not come into the world with Christ ; they are sur- 
 vivals of an earlier stage of human progress. The Papacy, the 
 great political Church of mediaeval Europe, is the historical con- 
 tinuation of the State religion of Rome and the Pontificate of 
 the Roman emperors. The Greek Church is the historical con- 
 tinuation of the Eastern oflEset of the same system. The na- 
 tional State Churches are the historical continuations of the 
 tribal religions and priesthoods of the Northern tribes. We 
 talk of the conversion of the Barbarians, but in point of fact 
 it was the chief of the tribe that was converted, or rather that 
 changed his religious allegiance, sometimes by treaty (as in the 
 case of Guthrum), and carried his tribe with him into theallegiance 
 of the new God. Hence the new religion, like the old, was 
 placed upon the footing of a tribal, and afterwards of a state, 
 religion ; heresy was treason ; and the state still lent the aid of 
 the secular arm to the national priesthood for the repression of 
 rebellion against the established faith. But since the Reforma- 
 tion the process of disengagement has been rapidly going on ; 
 and in the North American communities, which are the latest 
 developments of humanity, the connection between Church and 
 State has ceased to exist, without any diminution of the strength 
 of the religious sentiment. 
 
 Whether there is anything deserving of attention in these 
 brief remarks or not, one thing may safely be affirmed : it is 
 time that the question as to the existence of a rational basis for 
 religion and the reality of spiritual life should be studied, not 
 merely with a view of overthrowing the superstitions of the 
 past, but of providing, if possible, a faith for the present and 
 the future. The battle of criticism and science against super- 
 stition has been won, as every open-minded observer of the con- 
 test mvist be aware, though the remnants of the broken host 
 still linger on the field. It is now time to consider whcthei* 
 religion must perish with superstition, or whether the death of 
 superstition may not be the new birth of religion. Religion 
 survived the fall of Polytheism ; it is surely conceivable that it 
 may survive the fall of Anthropomorphism, and that the des- 
 perate struggle which is being waged about the formal belief in 
 " Personality," ma}' be merely the sloughing off of something 
 
104 THE ASCENT OF MAN. 
 
 that, when it is gone, will be seen to have not been vital to re- 
 ligion. 
 
 There are some who would deter us from inquiring into any- 
 thing beyond the range of sensible experience, and especially 
 from any inquiry into the future existence of the soul, which 
 they denounce as utterly unpractical, and compare with obsolete 
 and fruitless inquiries into the state of the soul before birth. 
 We have already challenged the exclusive claim of the five 
 bodily sen.ses to be the final sources of knowledge ; and we may 
 surely add that it is at least as practical to inquire into the 
 destiny as it is to inquire into the origin of man. 
 
 If the belief in God and in a Future State is true, it will 
 prevail. The cloud will pass away and the sun will shine out 
 again. But in the meantime society may have " a bad quarter 
 of an hour." Without exas^fjeratino- the influence of the belief 
 in Future Reward and Punishment, or of any form of it, on 
 the actions of ordinary men, we may safely say that the sense 
 of responsibility to a higher power, and of the constant presence 
 of an all-secinff Judge, has exercised an influence, the removal 
 of which would be greatly felt. Materialism has in fact already 
 begun to show its effects on human conduct and on society. 
 They may perhaps be more visible in communities where social 
 conduct depends gi'eatly on individual conviction and motive, 
 than in communities which are more ruled by tradition and 
 bound together by strong class oi'ganizations ; though the decay 
 of morality will perhaps be ultimately more complete and dis- 
 astrous in the latter than in the former. God and future retri- 
 bution being out cf the Ciuestion, it is difiicult to see what can 
 restrain the selfishness of an ordinary man, and induce him, in 
 the absence of actual coercion, to sacrifice his personal desires 
 to the public good. The service of Humanity is the sentiment 
 of a refined mind conversant with history ; within no calculable 
 time is it likely to overrule the passions and direct the conduct 
 of the mass. And after all, without God or spirit, what is 
 " Humanity " ? One school of science reckons a hundred and 
 fifty difierent species of man. What is the bond of unity be- 
 tween all these species, and wherein consists the obligation to 
 mutual love and help ? A zealous servant of science told 
 Agassiz that the age of real civilization would have begun when 
 you could go out and shoot a man for scientific purposes. Ap- 
 parent dirw fades. We begin to perceive, looming through 
 the mist, the lineaments of an epoch of selfishness compressed 
 by a government of force. 
 
THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 105 
 
 THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 
 
 There appears to be a connection between the proposed 
 substitutes for relio-ion and the special training; of their several 
 authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, pro- 
 fessors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism 
 might almost retort the apologue of the spectre of the Brockeu. 
 
 The only organised cultus without a God, at present before 
 lis, is that of Comte. This in all its parts — its high priesthood, 
 its hierarchy, its sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its 
 literary canon, its ritualism, and we may add, in its funda- 
 mentally intolerant and inquisitorial character — is an obvious 
 reproduction of the Church of Rome, with humanity in place 
 of God, great men in place of the saints, the Founder of Comt- 
 ism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even a sort of 
 substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified 
 by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference 
 which would be necessary in order to escape servile imitation. 
 We have ourselves witnessed a case of alternation between the 
 two systems which testified to the closeness of their affinity. 
 The Catholic Church has acted on the imagination of Comte at 
 least as powerfully as Sparta acted on that of Plato. Nor is 
 Comtism, any more than Plato's Republic and other Utopias, 
 exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a flight of 
 the individual imagination. It would .shut up mankind for 
 ever in a stereotyped organization which is the vision of a 
 particular thinker. In this respect it seems to us to be at a 
 disadvantage compared with Christianity, which, as presented 
 in the Go.spels, does not pretend to organize mankind ecclesi- 
 astically or politically, but simply supplies a new type of char- 
 acter, and a new motive power, leaving government, ritual and 
 organization of every kind to determine themselves from age 
 to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry into the composition of 
 the stars, which his priesthood, had it been installed in power, 
 would perhaps have converted into a compulsory article of 
 faith, is only a specimen of his general tendency (the common 
 tendency, as we have said, of all Utopias) to impose on human 
 progress the limits of his own mind. Let his hierarchy become 
 masters of the world, and the effect would probably be like 
 
106 TUE PROrOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION, 
 
 that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy (enhghtened 
 no doubt for its time) in Egypt, a brief start forward, followed 
 by consecrated immobility for ever. 
 
 Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, 
 invented a new religion of Theo-philanthropy, which seems in 
 fact to have been an organized Rousseauism. He wished to 
 impose it on France, but finding that, in spite of his ])assionate 
 endeavours, he made but little progress, he sought the advice 
 of Talleyrand. " I am not surprised," said Talleyrand, " at the 
 tlifficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a 
 new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to 
 do. I recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again on the 
 third day." We cannot say whether Lareveillere made any 
 proselytes, but if he did their number cannot have been much 
 smaller than the reputed number of the religious disciples of 
 Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found its place, and 
 exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of 
 the time ; but as a religious system it appears to make little 
 way. It is the invention of a man, not the spontaneous 
 expression of the beliefs and feelings of mankind. Any one 
 with a tolerably lively imagination might produce a rival sys- 
 tem with as little practical effect. Roman Catholicism was at 
 all events a growth, not an invention. 
 
 Cosmic Emotion, thousrh it does not affect to be an orojanized 
 system, is the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds, 
 set at work apparently by the exigencies of a particular situ- 
 ation, and on that account suggestive j^i'lind facie of misgivings 
 similar to those suggested by the invention of Comte. 
 
 ]Now, is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really 
 a substitute for religion ? That is the only question which we 
 wish, in these few pages, to ask. We do not pretend here to 
 inquire what is or what is not true in itself 
 
 Religion teaches that we have our being in a Power whose 
 character and purj^oses are indicated to us by our moral nature, 
 in whom we are united, and by the union made sacred to 
 each other ; whose voice conscience, however generated, is ; 
 whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts, and sees them 
 as they are morally without reference to worldly success, or to 
 the opinion of the world ; to whom at death we return ; and 
 our relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an 
 assurance that, according as we promote or fail to promote his 
 design by self-improvement, and the improvement of our kind, 
 it will be well or ill for us in the sum of thincfs. This is a 
 
THE mo POSED SUBSTITUTES FOB RELIGION. 107 
 
 hypothesis evidently separable from belief in a revelation, and 
 from any special theory respecting the next world, as well as 
 from all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false in itself, 
 capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned here 
 solely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the 
 proposed substitutes. It is only necessary to remark, that 
 there is nothing about the religious hypothesis as here stated, 
 miraculous, supernatural, or mysterious, except so far as those 
 epithets may be applied to anything beyond the range of bodily 
 sense, say the influence of opinion or affection. A universe 
 self-made, and without a God, is at least as great a mystery as 
 a universe with a God ; in fact the very attempt to conceive it 
 in the mind produces a moral vertigo which is a bad omen for 
 the practical success of Cosmic Emotion. 
 
 For this religion are the service and worshiji of Humanity 
 likely to be a real equivalent in any respect, as motive power,. 
 as resti'aint, or as comfort ? Will the idea of life in God be 
 adequately replaced by that of an interest in the condition and 
 progress of Humanity, as they may affect us and be influenced 
 by our conduct, together with the hope of human gratitude and 
 fear of human rejirobation after death, which the Comtists 
 endeavour to organize into a sort of counterpai't of the Day of 
 Judgment? 
 
 It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must 
 be in the negative as regards the immediate future and the 
 mass of mankind. The simple truths of religion are intelligible 
 to all, and strike all minds with equal force, though they may 
 not have the same influence with all moral natures. A child 
 learns them perfectly at its mother's knee. Honest ignorance 
 in the mine, on the sea. at the forge, striving to do its coarse and 
 perilous duty, performing the lowliest functions of humanity,, 
 contributing in the humblest way to human pi'ogress, itself 
 scarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures 
 would deem happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest philo- 
 sopher the idea of a God who sees and cares for all, who keeps 
 account of the work well done or the kind act, marks the secret 
 fault, and will hereafter make up to duty for the hardness of 
 its present lot. But a vivid interest — such an interest as will 
 act both as a restraint and as a comfort — in the condition and 
 future of humanity can surely exist only in those who have a 
 knowledge of history sufficient to enable them to embrace the 
 unity of the past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to 
 glow with anticipation of the future. For the bulk of man- 
 
108 THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGIOK. 
 
 kind the humanity-worshijiper's point of view seems unattain- 
 able, at least within any calculable time. 
 
 As to posthumous reputation, good or evil, it is, and always 
 must be, the appanage of a few marked men. The plan of giv- 
 ing it substance by instituting separate l:)urial-})laces for the 
 virtuous and the wicked is perhaps not very seriously proposed. 
 Any such plan involves the fallacy of a sharp division where 
 there is no clear moral line, besides postulating not only an un- 
 attainable knowledge of men's actions, but a knowledge still 
 more manifestly unattainable of their hearts. Yet we cannot 
 help thinking that on the men of intellect, to whose teaching 
 the world is listening, this hope of posthumous reputation, or, 
 to put it more fairly, of living in the gratitude and affection of 
 their kind by means of their scientific discoveries and literary 
 works, exercises an influence of which they are hardly con.scious ; 
 it prevents them from fully feeling the void which the annihil- 
 ation of the hope of future existence leaves in the hearts of or- 
 dinary men. 
 
 Besides, so far as we are aware, no attempt has yet been made 
 to show us distinctly what " humanity " is, and wherein its 
 " holiness " consists. If the theological hypothesis is true, and 
 all men are united in God, humanity is a substantial reality ; 
 but otherwise we fail to see that it is anything more than a 
 metaphysical abstraction converted into an actual entity by 
 philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even 
 the unity of the species is far from settled ; science still debates 
 whether there is one race of men, or whether there are more 
 than a hundred. Man acts on man, no doubt ; but he also acts 
 on other animals, and other animals on him. Wherein does the 
 special unity or the special bond consist ? Above all, what con- 
 stitutes the " holiness " ? Individual men are not holy ; a large 
 proportion of them are very much the reverse. VVhy is the 
 aggregate holy ? Let the unit be a " complex phenomenon," an 
 " organism," or whatever name science may give it, what multi- 
 ple of it will be a rational object of wor.ship ? 
 
 For our own part, we cannot conceive worship being offered 
 by a sane worshipper to any but a conscious being, in other 
 words, to a person. The fetish worshipper himself probably 
 invests his fetish- with a vague personality, such as would ren- 
 der it capable of propitiation. But how can we invest with a 
 collective personality the fleeting generations of mankind ? 
 Even the yum of mankind is never complete, much less are the 
 units blended into a personal whole, or, as it has been called, a 
 ■colossal man. 
 
THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 109 
 
 There is a gulf here, as it seems to us, which cannot be 
 bridged, and can barely be hidden from view by the retention of 
 religious phraseology. In truth, the anxious use of that phrase- 
 ology betrays weakness, since it shows that you cannot do with- 
 out the theological associations which cling inseparably to reli- 
 gious terms. 
 
 You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brother- 
 hood of man, an increased sacredness of the human relation^ 
 Some things point that way ; some things point the other way. 
 Brotherhood has hardly a definite meaning without a father ; 
 sacredness can hardly be predicated without anything which con- 
 secrates. We can point to an eminent writer who tells you that 
 he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether ; that there are 
 many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that 
 he would like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. 
 Look again at the severe Prussianism which betrays itself 
 in the ISew Creed of Strauss. Look at the oligarcliy of enlight- 
 enment and enjoyment which Renan, in his Moral Reform of 
 France, proposes to institute for the benefit of a select circle, 
 with sublime indifference to the lot of the vulgar, who, he says, 
 " must subsist on the glory and happiness cf others." Tliis does 
 not look much like a nearer approach to a brotherhood of man 
 than is made by the Gospel. We are speaking, of course,, 
 merely of the comparative moral efficiency of religion and the 
 proposed substitutes for it, apart from the influence exercised 
 over individual conduct by the material needs and other non- 
 theological forces of society. 
 
 For the immortality of the individual soul, with the influences 
 of that belief, we are asked to substitute the immortality of the 
 race. But here, in addition to the difficulty of proving the 
 union and interconnnunion of all the members, we are met by the 
 objection that unless we live in God, the race, in all ])robability, 
 is not immortal. That our planet and all it contains will come 
 to an end appears to be the decided opinion of science. This 
 " holy " being, our relation to which is to take the place of our 
 relation to an Eternal Father, by the adoration of which we are 
 to be sustained and controlled, if it exist at all, is as ephemeral 
 compared with eternity as a fly. We shall be told that we 
 ought to be content with an immortality extending through 
 tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. To 
 the argurtientum, ad verecundiam there is no reply. But will 
 this banish the thought of ultimate annihilation ? Will it pre- 
 vent a man, when he is called upon to make some great sacri- 
 
no THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOP RELIGION. 
 
 fice for the race, from saying to himself, that, whether he makes 
 the sacrifice or not, one day all will end in nothing ? 
 
 Evidently these are points which must be made quite clear 
 before you can, with any prospect of success, call upon men 
 either to regard Humanity with the same feelings with which 
 they have regarded God, or to give up their own interest or en- 
 joyment for the future benefit of the race. The assurance de- 
 rived from the fondness felt by parents for their offspring., and 
 the self-denying efforts made for the good of children, will 
 hardly carry us very far, even supposing it certain that parental 
 love would remain unaffected by the general change. It is evi- 
 dently a thing apart from the general love of Humanity. No- 
 body was ever more extravagantly fond of his children, or made 
 greater efforts for them, than Alexander Borgia. 
 
 It has been attempted, however, with all the fervour of con- 
 viction, and with all the force of a powerful style, to make us 
 see not only that we have this corporal immortality as mem- 
 bers of the " colossal man," but that we may look forward to an 
 actual though impersonal existence in the shape of the pro- 
 longation through all future time of the consequences of our lives. 
 It might with equal truth be said that we have enjoyed an actual 
 though impersonal existence through all time past in our an- 
 tecedents. But neither in its consequences nor in its antece- 
 dents can anything be said to live except by a figure The cha- 
 racters and actions of men surely will never be influenced by 
 such a fanciful use of language as this ! Our being is consci- 
 ousness; with consciousness our being ends, though our physical 
 forces may be conserved, and traces of our conduct — traces ut- 
 terly indistinguishable — may remain. That with which we 
 are not concerned cannot affect us either presently or by antici- 
 pation ; and with that of which we shall never be conscious, we 
 shall never feel that we are concerned. Perhaps if the authors 
 of this new immortality would tell us what they understimd by 
 non-existence, we might be led to value more highly by con- 
 trast the existence which they propose for a soul when it has 
 ceased to think or feel, and for an organism when it has been 
 scattered to the winds. 
 
 They would persuade us that their impersonal and uncon- 
 scious immortality is a brighter hope than an eternity of ]>er- 
 sonal and conscious existence, the very thought of which they 
 say is torture. This assumes, what there seems to be no ground 
 for assuming, that eternity is an endless extension of time ; 
 and, in the same way, that infinity is a boundless space. It is 
 
THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION, m 
 
 more natural to conceive of them as emancipation respectively 
 from time and space, and from the conditions which time and 
 space involve ; and among the conditions of time may appa- 
 rently be reckoned the palling of pleasure or of existence by 
 mere temporal protraction. Even as we are, sensual pleasure 
 palls; so does the merely intellectual: but can the same be said 
 of the happiness of virtue and afi'ection ? It is urged, too, that 
 by exchanging the theological immortality for one of physical 
 and social consequences, we get rid of the burden of self, which 
 otherwise we should drag fo)- ever. But surely in this there is 
 a confusion of self with .selfishness. Selfishness is another 
 name for vice. Self is merely consciousness. Without a self, 
 how can there be self-sacrifice ? How can the most un.selfish 
 motive exist if there is nothing to be moved ? "He that findeth 
 his life, shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life, shall find it," 
 is not a doctrine of selfishness, but it implies a self. We have 
 been rebuked in the words of Frederick to his grenadiers — 
 "Do you want to live for ever?" The grenadiers might have 
 answered, " Yes ; and therefore we are ready to die." 
 
 It is not when we think of the loss of anything to which a 
 taint of selfishness can adhere — it is not even when we think 
 of intellectual effort cut short for ever by death just as the in- 
 tellect has ripened and equipped itself with the necessaiy 
 knowledge — that the nothingness of this immortality of cpn- 
 servated forces is most keenly felt : it is when we think of the 
 miserable end of aflection. How much comfort would it afford 
 anyone bending over the deathbed of his wife to know that 
 forces set free by her dissolution will continue to mingle im- 
 personally and indistinguishably with forces set free by the 
 general mortality ? Affection, at all events, requires personalit}'. 
 One cannot love a group of consequences, even supposing that 
 the filiation could be distinctly presented to the mind. Pressed 
 by the hand of sorrow craving for comfort, this Dead Sea fruit 
 crumbles into ashes, paint it with eloquence as you will. 
 
 Humanity, it seems to us, is a fundamentally Christian idea, 
 connected with the Christian view of the relations of men to 
 their common Father and of their spiritual union in the Chrtrch. 
 In the same way the idea of the progress of Humanity seems 
 to us to have been derived from the Christian belief in the 
 comincr of the Kingdom of God through the extension of the 
 Church, and to that final triumph of good over evil foretold m 
 the imagery of the Apocalypse. At least the founders of the 
 Religion of Humanity will admit that the Christian Church is 
 
112 TEE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 
 
 the matrix of theirs : so much their very nomenclature proves ; 
 and we would fain ask them to review the process of disen- 
 gagement, and see whether the essence has not been left behind. 
 
 No doubt, there are influences at work in modern civilisa- 
 tion which tend to the strengthening of the sentiment of hu- 
 manity by making men more distinctly conscious of their posi- 
 tion as members of a race. On the other hand, the unreflecting 
 devotion of the tribesman, wdiich held together primitive 
 societies, dies. Man learns to reason and calculate ; and when 
 he is called upon to immolate himself to the common interest 
 of the race, he will consider what the common interest of the 
 race, when he is dead and gone, will be to him, and whether he 
 will ever be repaid for his sacrifice. 
 
 Of Cosmic Emotion it wull perhaps be fair to say that it 
 is proposed as a substitute for I'eligious emotion rather than 
 as a substitute for religion, since nothing has been said about 
 embodying it in a cult. It comes to us commended by glow- 
 ing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman, and 
 w^e cannot help admitting that, for common hearts, it stands in 
 need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an 
 all-loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for 
 which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry 
 can supply. Unluckily, we are haunted by the consciousness 
 that the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the same illimit- 
 able mill of evolution which grinds out virtue and affection. 
 We are by no means sure that we understand what Cosmic 
 Emotion is, even after reading an exposition of its nature by 
 no ungifted hand. Its symbola, so to speak, are the feelings 
 produced b}^ the two objects of Kant's peculiar reverence, the 
 stars of heaven, and the moral faculty of man. But, after all, 
 these are only like anything else, aggregations of molecules in 
 a certain stage of evolution. To the unscientific eye they may 
 be awful, because they are mysterious ; but let science analyse 
 them and their awfulness disappears. If the interaction of all 
 parts of the material universe is complete, we fail to see why 
 one object or one feeling is more cosmic than another. How- 
 ever, we will not dwell on that which, as we have already con- 
 fessed, we do not feel sure that we rightly apprehend. What 
 we do clearly see is that to have cosmic emotion, or cosmic any- 
 thing, you must have a cosmos. You must be assured that the 
 universe is a cosmos, and not a chaos. And what assurance of 
 this can materialism or any non-theological system give ? Law 
 is a theological term : it implies a lawgiver, or a governing in- 
 
THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOE RELIGION. 113 
 
 telligence of some kind. Science can tell us nothing but factsv 
 single or accumulated as experience, which would not make a, 
 law though they had been observed through myriads of years. 
 Law is a theological term, and cosmos is equally so, if it may 
 not rather be said to be a Greek name for the aggregate of 
 laws. For order implies intelligent selection and arrangement. 
 Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a number of objects 
 falling by mere chance into a particular figure, however intri- 
 cate and reo^ular. All the arguments which have been used 
 against design seem to tell with equal force against order. We 
 have no other universe wherewith we can compare this, so 
 as to assure ourselves that this universe is not a chaos,, but a 
 cosmos. Both on the earth and in the heavens we see much 
 that is not order, but disorder ; not cosmos, but acosmia. If 
 we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and that there is de- 
 sign beneath the seemingly undesigned, and good beneath the 
 appearance of evil, it is by virtue of something not dreamed of 
 in the philosophy of materialism. 
 
 Have we really come to this, that the world has no longer 
 any good reason for believing in a God or a life beyond the 
 grave ? If so, it is difficult to deny that with regard to the 
 great mass of mankind up to this time Schopenhauer and the 
 Pessimists are right, and existence has been a cruel misadven- 
 ture. The number of those who have suffered lifelong oppres- 
 sion, disease, or want, who have died deaths of torture or 
 perished miserably by war, is limited though enormous ; but 
 probably there have been few lives in which the earthly good 
 has not been outweighed by the evil. The future may bring 
 increased means of happiness, though those who are gone will 
 not be the better for them ; but it will bring also increase of 
 sensibility, and the consciousness of hopeless imperfection and 
 miserable futility will probably become a distinct and growing 
 cause of pain. It is doubtful even whether, after such a raising 
 of Mokanna's veil, faith in everything would not expire and 
 human effort cease. Still we must face the situation : there 
 can be no use in self-delusion. In vain we shall seek to cheat 
 our souls and to fill a void which cannot be filled by the manu- 
 facture of artificial religions and the aflfectation of a spiritual 
 language to which, however persistently and fervently it may 
 be used, no realities correspond. If one of these cults could 
 get itself established, in less than a generation it would become 
 hollower than the hollowest of ecclesiasticisms. Probably not 
 a few of the highest natures would withdraw themselves from 
 H 
 
114. TEE FRO POSED SUBSTITUTES FOE RELIGION. 
 
 the dreary round of self-mockery l)y suicide ; and if a scientific 
 priesthood attempted to close that door by sociological dogma 
 or posthumous denunciation, the result would show the dif- 
 ference between the practical efficacy of a religion with a God 
 and that of a cult of " Humanity " or " Space." 
 
 Shadows and figments, as they appear to us to be in them- 
 selves, these attempts to provide a substitute for religion are 
 of the highest importance, as showing that men of great powers 
 of mind, who have thoroughly broken loose not only from 
 Christianity but from natural religion, and in some cases placed 
 themselves in violent antagonism to both, are still unable to 
 divest themselves of the religious sentiment, or to appease its 
 craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they find it 
 necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one ; not 
 for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesu- 
 itism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of 
 our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenom- 
 ena ; and this apparently ineradicable tendency of the human 
 mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materi- 
 alist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies ; but 
 he does it by denying Humanity as well as God, and reducing 
 the difference between the organism of the human animal and 
 that of any other animal to a mere question of complexity. 
 Still, even in this quarter, there has appeared of late a dispo- 
 sition to make concessions on the subject of human volition 
 hardly consistent with Materialism. Nothing can be more 
 likely than that the impetus of great discoveries has carried 
 the discoverers too far. 
 
 Perhaps with the promptings of the religious sentiment there 
 is combined a sense of the immediate danger with which the 
 failure of the religious sanction threatens social order and 
 morality. As we have said already, the men of whom we 
 specially speak are far above anything like social Jesuitism. 
 We have not a doubt but they would regard with abhorrence 
 any schemes of oligarchic illuminism for guarding the pleasures 
 of the few by politic deception of the multitude. But they have 
 probably begun to lay to heart the fact that the existing 
 morality, though not dependent on any special theology, any 
 special view of the relations between soul and body, or any 
 special theory of future rewards and punishments, is largely 
 dependent on a belief in the indefeasible authority of conscience, 
 and in that without which conscience can have no indefeasible 
 authority — the presence of a just and all-seeing God. It may 
 
TEE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 115 
 
 1)6 true that in primaeval society these beliefs are found only in 
 the most rudimentary form, and, as social sanctions, are very 
 inferior in force to mere gregarious instincts or the pressure of 
 tribal need. But man emerges from the primaeval state, and 
 when he does, he demands a reason for his submission to moral 
 law. That the leaders of the anti-theological movement in the 
 present day are immoral, nobody but the most besotted fanatic 
 w^ould insinuate ; no candid antagonist would deny that some 
 of them are in every respect the very best of men. The fear- 
 less love of truth is usuall}^ accompanied by other high quali- 
 ties ; and nothing could be more unlikely than that natures 
 disposed to ^nrtue, trained under good influences, peculiarly sen- 
 sitive to opinion and guarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse 
 into vice as soon as the traditional sanction was removed. But 
 what is to prevent the withdrawal of the traditional sanction 
 from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the 
 mass of mankind ? The commercial swindler or the political 
 sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, will 
 feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and 
 he knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Mac- 
 beth is ready, provided he can succeed in this world, to "jump 
 the life to come," much more ready will villainy be to "jump" 
 the bad consequences of its actions to humanity when its own 
 conscious existence shall have closed. Rate the practical effect 
 of religious beliefs as low and that of social influences as high 
 as you may, there can surely be no doubt that morality has 
 received some support from the authority of an inward monitor 
 regarded as the voice of God. The worst of men would have 
 wished to die the death of the righteous ; he would have been 
 glad, if he could, when death approached, to cancel his crimes ; 
 and the conviction, or misgiving, which this implied, could not 
 fail to have some influence upon the generality of mankind, 
 though no doubt the influence was weakened rather than 
 strengthened by the extravagant and incredible form in which 
 the doctrine of future retribution was presented by the domin- 
 ant theology. 
 
 The denial of the existence of God and of a Future State, in 
 a word, is the dethronement of conscience ; and society will pass, 
 to say the least, through a dangerous interval before social 
 science can fill the vacant throne. Avowed scepticism is likely 
 to be disinterested and therefore to be moral ; it is among the 
 unavowed sceptics and conformists to political religions that 
 the consequences of the change may be expected to appear. 
 
116 TEE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 
 
 But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the 
 Survival of the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of 
 their own, with the inevitable corollary that the proof of su- 
 perior fitness is to survive — to survive either by force or cun- 
 ning, like the other animals which by dint of force or cunning 
 have come out victorious from the universal war and asserted 
 for themselves a place in nature. The " irrepressible struggle 
 for empire " is formally put forward by public writers of the 
 highest class as the basis and the rule of the conduct of this 
 country towards other nations ; and we may be sure that there 
 is not an entire absence of connection betw^een the private code 
 of a school and its international conceptions. The feeling that 
 success covers everything seems to be gaining ground, and to 
 be overcoming, not merely the old conventional rules of honom-, 
 but moral principle itself. Both in public and private there 
 are symptoms of an approaching failure of the motive jDOwer 
 which has hitherto sustained men both in self-sacrificing effort 
 and in courageous protest against wrong, though as yet we are 
 only at the threshold of the great change, and established sen- 
 timent long survives, in the masses, that which originally gave 
 it birth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second 
 Empire remained at peace, it might have gone on forever ; and 
 in the history of this country the connection between political 
 effort and religion has been so close that its dissolution, to say 
 the least, can hardly fail to produce a critical change in the 
 character of the nation. The time may come, when, as philo- 
 sophers triumphantly predict, men, under the ascendancy of 
 science, will act for the common good, wuth the same mechani- 
 cal certainty as bees ; though the common good of the human 
 hive would perhaps not be easy to define. But in the mean- 
 time mankind, or some portions of it, may be in danger of an 
 anarchy of self-interest, compressed for the purpose of politi- 
 cal order, by a despotism of force. 
 
 That science and criticism, acting — thanks to the liberty of 
 opinion won by political effort — with a freedom never known 
 before, have delivered us from a mass of dark and degrading 
 superstitions, we own with heartfelt thankfulness to the deliv- 
 erers, and in the firm conviction that the removal of false be- 
 liefs, and of the authorities or institutions founded on them, 
 cannot prove in the end anything but a blessing to mankind. 
 But at the same time the foundations of general morality have 
 inevitably been shaken, and a crisis has been brought on the 
 gravity of which nobody can fail to see, and nobody but a 
 
TEE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 117 
 
 fanatic of Materialism can see without the most serious mis- 
 giving. 
 
 There has been nothing in the history of man like the pres- 
 ent situation. The decadence of the ancient mythologies is 
 very far from affording a ])arallel. The connection of those 
 mythologies with morality was comparatively slight. Dull and 
 half-animal minds would hardly be conscious of the change 
 which was partly veiled from them by the continuance of ritual 
 and state creeds ; while in the minds of Plato and Marcus Au- 
 relius it made place for the development of a moral religion. 
 The Reformation was a tremendous earthquake : it shook down 
 the fabric of mediaeval religion, and as a consequence of the 
 disturbance in the religious sphere filled the world with revo- 
 lutions and wars. But it left the authority of the Bible un- 
 shaken, and men might feel that the destructive process had its 
 limit, and that adamant was still beneath their feet. But a 
 world which is intellectual and keenly ali^•e to the significance 
 of these questions, reading all that is written about them with 
 almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the 
 character of which any one may realize by distinctly present- 
 ing to himself the idea of existence without a God. 
 
118 THE LABO UR MO VEMENT. 
 
 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 
 
 {This Lecture was delivered he/ore the Mechanics' Institute of Montreal,, 
 and the Literary Society of Sherhrooke, and published in the Cana- 
 dian Monthly, December, 1872. The allusions to facts and events 
 must be read with reference to the date.) 
 
 We are in the midst of an industrial war "which is extending- 
 over Europe and the United States, and has not left Canada un- 
 touched. It is not wonderful that great alarm should prevail, 
 or that, in panic-stricken minds, it should assume extravagant 
 forms. London deprived of bread by a bakers' strike, or of fuel 
 by a colliers' strike, is a serious prospect ; so is the sudden stop- 
 page of any one of the wheels in the vast and complicated ma- 
 chine of modern industry. People may be pardoned for thinking 
 that they have fallen on evil times, and that they have a dark 
 future before them. Yet, those who have studied industrial 
 history know that the present disturbance is mild compared 
 with the annals of even a not very remote past. The study of 
 history shows us where we are, and whither things are tend- 
 ing. Though it does not diminish the difficulties of the present 
 hour, it teaches us to estimate them justly, to deal with them 
 calmly and not to call for cavalry and grapeshot because one 
 morning we are left without hot bread. 
 
 One of the literary janissaries of the French Empire thought 
 to prove that the working class had no rights against the 
 Bonapartes, by showing that the first free labourers were only 
 emancipated slaves. One would like to know what he supposed 
 the first Bonapartes were. However though his inference was 
 not worth much, except against those who are pedantic enough 
 to vouch parchment archives for the rights and interests of 
 humanity, he was in the right as to the fact. Labour first ap- 
 pears in history as a slave,treated like a beast of burden, chained 
 to the door-post of a Roman master,, or lodged in the under- 
 ground manstables (ergastula) on his estate, treated like a beast, 
 or worse than a beast, recklessly worked out and then cast 
 forth to die, scourged, tortured, flung in a moment of passion to 
 feed the lampreys, crucihed for the slightest offence or none. 
 " Set up a cross for the slave," cries the Roman matron in Ju- 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 119 
 
 venal. " Why, what has the slave done ? " asks her husband. 
 One day labour strikes ; finds a leader in Spartacus, a slave de- 
 voted as a gladiator to the vilest of Roman pleasures ; wages a 
 long and terrible servile war. The revolt is put down at last, 
 after shaking the foundations of the state. Six thousand slaves 
 are crucified along the road from Rome to Capua. Labour had 
 its revenge, for slavery brought the doom of Rome. 
 
 In the twilight of history, between the fall of Rome and the rise 
 of the new nationalities, we dimly see the struggle going on. 
 There is a great insurrection of the oppressed peasantry, under 
 the name of Bagaudte, in Gaul. When the light dawns, a step has 
 been gained. Slavery has been generally succeeded by sei-fdom. 
 But serfdom is hard. The peasantry of feudal Normandy con- 
 spire against their cruel lords, hold secret meetings ; the ominous 
 name commune is heard. But the conspiracy is discovered and 
 suppressed with the fiendish ferocity with which panic inspires 
 a dominant class, whether in Normandy or Jamaica. Amidst 
 the religous fervour of the Crusades again breaks out a wild 
 labour movement, that of the Pastoureaux, striking for equality 
 in the name of the Holy Spirit, which, perhaps, they had as 
 good a right to use as some who deemed their use of it profane. 
 This is in the country, among the shepherds and })loughmen. 
 In the cities labour has congregated numbers, mutual intel- 
 ligence, union on its side ; it is constantly reinforced by fugitives 
 from rural serfdom ; it builds city walls, purchases or extorts 
 charters of liberty. The commercial and manufacturing cities 
 of Italy, Germany, Flanders, become the cradles of free industry, 
 and, at the same time, of intellect, art, civilization, But these 
 are points of light amidst the feudal darkness of the rural dis- 
 tricts. In France, for example, the peasantry are cattle ; in 
 time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens and 
 imposts of all kinds ; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, 
 half -armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, 
 gambling, profligate wars — JacquesBonhomme pays for them all. 
 At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners ; have to 
 provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gam- 
 bling debts, are more binding tlian debts of honesty. But Jacques 
 Bonhorame's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, 
 it will not bear this last straw. The tidings of Flemish freedom 
 have, perhaps, in some way reached his dull ear, taught him that 
 bondage is not, as his priest, no doubt, assures him it is, a change- 
 less ordinance of God, that the yoke, though strong, may be 
 broken. He strikes, arms himself with clubs, knives, plough- 
 
120 THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 shares, rude pikes, brea.ks out into a Jacquerie, storms the castles 
 of the ojDpressor, sacks, burns, slays with the fury of a wild beast 
 unchained. The lords are stupefied. At last they rally and bring 
 their armour, their discipline, their experience in war, the moral 
 ascendency of a master-class to bear. The English gentlemen, 
 in spite of the hostilities, only half suspended, between the na- 
 tions, join the French gentlemen against the common enemy. 
 Twenty thousand peasants are soon cut down, but long after- 
 wai'ds the butchery continues. Guillaume Callet, the leader of 
 the Jacquerie, a very crafty peasant, as he is called by the or- 
 gans of the lords, is crowned with a circlet of red-hot iron. 
 
 In England, during the same period serfdom, we know not 
 exactly how, is breaking up. There is a large body of labourers 
 working for hire. But in the midst of the wars of the great con- 
 queror, Edward III, comes a greater conqueror, the plague called 
 the Black Death, which sweeps away, some think, a third of the 
 population of Europe. The number of labourers is greatly di- 
 minished. Wages rise. The feudal parliament passes an Act 
 to compel labourers, under penalties, to work at the old rates. 
 This Act is followed by a train of similar Acts, limiting wages 
 and fixing in the employers' interest the hours of work, which, 
 in the pages of imaginative writers, figure as noble attempts 
 made by legislators of a golden age to regulate the relations 
 between employer and employed on some higher principle than 
 that of contract. The same generous spirit, no doubt, dictated 
 the enactment prohibiting farm labourers from bringing up their 
 children to trades, lest hands should be withdrawn from the 
 land-owner's service. Connected with the Statutes of Labour- 
 ers, are those bloody vagrant laws, in which whipping, brand- 
 ing,hanging are ordained as thepunishment of vagrancy by law- 
 givers, many of whom were themselves among the idlest and most 
 noxious vagabonds in the countr}-, and the authors of senseless 
 wars which generated a mass of vagrancy, by filling the country 
 with disbanded soldiers. In the reign of Richard II., the poll 
 tax being added to other elements of class discord, labour strikes, 
 takes arms under Wat Tyler, demands fixed rents, tenant right 
 in an extreme form, and the total abolition of serfage. A wild 
 religious communism bred of the preachings of the more vision- 
 ary among the Wycliftites mingles in the movement with the 
 sense of fiscal and industrial wrong. " When Adam delved and 
 Eve span, where was then the gentleman ? " is the motto of the 
 villeins, and it is one of more formidable import than any ut- 
 terance of peasant orators at Agricultural Labourers' meetings in 
 
THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 121 
 
 the present day. Then come fearful scenes of confusion, vio- 
 lence and crime. London is in tlie power of hordes brutalized by- 
 oppression. High offices of state, high ecclesiastics are niur- 
 dered. Special vengeance falls on the lawyers, as the artificers 
 who forged the cunning chains of feudal iniquity. The rulers, 
 the troops, are paralyzed by the aspect of the sea of furious 
 savagery raging round them. The boy king, by a miraculous 
 exhibition of courageous self-]")OSsession, saves the State ; but 
 he is compelled to grant general charters of manumission, which, 
 when the danger is over, the feudal parliament forces him by a 
 unanimous vote to repudiate. Wholesale hanging of serfs, of 
 course, follows the landlords' victor}'. 
 
 The rising under Jack Cade, in the reign of Henry VI., was 
 rather political than industrial. The demands of the insurgents, 
 political reform and freedom of suffrage, show that progress 
 had been made in the condition and aspirations of the labour- 
 ing class. But with the age of the Tudors came the final break- 
 up in England of feudalism, as well as of Catholicism, attended 
 by disturbances in the world of labour, similar to those which 
 have attended the abolition of slavery in the Southern States. 
 This is the special epoch of the sanguinary vagrancy laws, the 
 most sanguinary of which was framed by the hand of Henry 
 VIII. The new nobility of courtiers and upstarts, who had 
 shared with the king the plunder of the monasteries, were hard 
 landlords of course ; they robbed the people of their rights of 
 common, and swept away homesteads and cottages, to make 
 room for sheep farms, the wool trade being the great source of 
 wealth in those days. By the spoliation of the monasteries, the 
 great alms-houses of the Middle Ages, the poor had also been 
 left for a time without the relief, which was given them again 
 in a more regular form by the Poor Law of Elizabeth. Hence 
 in the reign of Edward VI., armed strikes again, in different 
 parts of the kingdom. In the West, the movement was mainly 
 religious ; but in the Eastern countries, under Kett of Norfolk, 
 it was agrarian. Rett's movement after a brief period of success, 
 during which the behaviour of the insurgents and their leader 
 was very creditable, was put down by the disciplined mercenar- 
 ies under the command of the new aristocracy, and its suppres- 
 sion was of course followed by a vigorous use of the gallows. 
 No doubt the industrial conservatives of those days were as 
 frightened, as angry, and as eager for strong measures as their 
 successors are now : but the awkardness of the newly liberated 
 captive, in the use of his limbs and eyes, is due not to his re- 
 
122 TBE LABO UR MO VEMENT. 
 
 covered liberty, but to the narrowness and darkness of the 
 dungeon in which he has been immured. 
 
 In Germany, at the same epoch, there was not merely a local 
 rising, but a wide -spread and most terrible peasants' war. The 
 German peasantry had been ground down beyond even an here- 
 ditary bondsman's power of endurance by their lords generally, 
 and by the Prince Bishop and other spiritual lords in particular. 
 The Reformation having come with a gospel of truth, love, 
 spiritual brotherhood, the peasants thought it might also have 
 brought some hope of social justice. The doctors of divinity 
 had to inform them that this was a mistake. But they took the 
 matter into their own hands and rose far and wide, the fury of 
 social and industrial war blending with the wildest fanaticism, 
 the most delirious ecstacy, the darkest imposture. Once more 
 there are stormings and burnings of feudal castles, massacring 
 of their lords. Lords are roasted alive, hunted like wild beasts 
 in savage revenge for the cruelty of the game laws. Munze)*, 
 a sort of peasant Mahomet, is at the head of the movement. 
 Under him it becomes Anabaptist, Antinomian, Communist. 
 At first he and his followers sweep the country with a whirl- 
 wind of terror and destruction : but again the lords rally, bring 
 up regular troops. The peasants are brought to bay on their 
 last hill side, behind a rampart formed of their waggons. Their 
 prophet assures them that the cannon-balls will fall harmless 
 into his cloak. The cannon-balls take their usual course : a 
 butchery, then a train of torturings and executions follows, the 
 Prince Bishop, among others, adding considerably to the white- 
 ness of the Church's robe. Luther is accused of having incited 
 the ferocity of the lords against those, who, it is alleged, had 
 only carried his own principles to an extreme. But in the first 
 place Luther never taught Anabaptism or anything that could 
 logically lead to it ; and in the second place, before he denounced 
 the peasants, he tried to mediate and rebuke the tyranny of the 
 lords. No man deserves more sympathy than a great reformer, 
 who is obliged to turn against the excesses of his own party. 
 He becomes the object of tierce hatred on one side, of exulting 
 derision on the other ; yet he is no traitor, but alone loyal to 
 his conscience and his cause. 
 
 The French Revolution was a political movement among the 
 middle class in the cities, but among the peasantry in the coun- 
 try it was an agrarian and labour movement, and the disman- 
 tling of chateaux, and chasing away of their lords which then 
 took place were a renewal of the struggle which had given 
 
THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 123 
 
 birth to the Jacquerie, the insurrection of Wat Tyler, and the 
 Peasants' War. This time the victory remained with the peas- 
 ant, and the lord returned no more. 
 
 In Engiand, long after the Tudor period, industrial disturb- 
 ances took place, and wild communistic fancies welled up from 
 the depths of a suffering world of labour, when society was 
 stirred by political and religious revolution. Under the 
 Commonwealth, communists went up on the hill-side, and be- 
 gan to break ground for a poor man's Utopia ; and the great 
 movement of the Levellers, which had in it an economical as 
 well as a political element, might have overturned society, if it 
 had not been quelled by the strong hand of Cromwell. But in 
 more recent times, within living memory, within the memory of 
 many here there were labour disturbances in England, compared 
 with which the present industrial war is mild.* In 1816, there 
 were outbreaks among the suffering peasantry which filled the 
 governing classes with fear. In Sutiblk nightly fires of incen- 
 diaries blazed in every district, thrashing machines were broken 
 or burnt in open day, mills were attacked. At Brandon large 
 bodies of workmen assembled to prescribe a maximum price of 
 grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and 
 bakers. They bore flags with the motto, " Bread or Blood." 
 Insurgents from the Fen Country, a special scene of distress, as- 
 sembled at Littleport, attacked the house of a magistrate in 
 the night, broke open shops, emptied the cellars of public-houses, 
 marched on Ely, and filled the district for two days and nights 
 with drunken rioting and plunder. The soldiery was called 
 in ; there was an affray in which blood flowed on both sides, 
 then a special commission and hangings to close the scene. 
 Distressed colliers in Stafibrdshire and Wales assembled by 
 thousands, stopped works, and were with difficulty diverted from 
 marching to London. In 1812, another stain of blood was 
 added to the sanguinary criminal code of those days by the Act 
 making death the penalty for the destruction of machinery. 
 This was caused by the Luddite outrages, which were carried 
 on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scale in 
 INottingham and the adjoining counties. Bodies of desperadoes, 
 armed and disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General 
 Ludd, who divided them into bands, and assigned to each band 
 its work of destruction. Terror reigned around ; the inhabi- 
 tants were commanded to keep in their houses and put out 
 
 * For the following details, see Miirtineau's " History of the Peace." 
 
1 2-i THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 their lights, on pain of death. In the silence of night houses 
 and factories were broken open, machines demolished, un- 
 finished work scattered on the highways. The extent and 
 secrecy of the conspiracy baffled the efforts of justice, and the 
 death penalty failed to put the system down. Even the at- 
 tempts made to relieve distress became new sources of discon- 
 tent, and a soup kitchen riot at Glasgow led to a two days' con- 
 flict between the soldieiy and the mob. In 1818, a threatening 
 mass of Manchester spinners, on strike, came into bloody col- 
 lision with the military. Then there were rick burnings, farmers 
 patrolling all night long, gibbets erected on Pennenden heath, 
 and bodies swinging on them, bodies of boys, eighteen or nine- 
 teen yeare old. Six labourers of Dorsetshire, the most wi-etched 
 county in England, were sentenced to seven years' transporta- 
 tion nominally for administering an illegal oath, really for 
 Unionism. Thereupon all the trades made a menacing demon- 
 stration, marched to Westminster, thirty thousand strong, with 
 a petition for the release of the labourers. London was in an 
 agony of fear, the Duke of Wellington prepared for a great con- 
 flict, pouring in troops and bringing up artillery from Woolwich. 
 In 1840, again there were formidable movements, and society 
 felt itself on the crust of a volcano. Threatening letters were 
 sent to masters, rewards offered for firing mills ; workmen were 
 beaten, driven out of the country, burned with vitriol, and, 
 there was reason to fear, murdered. Great masses of operatives 
 collected for purposes of intimidation, shopkeepers were pil- 
 laged, collisions again took place between the people and the 
 soldieiy. Irish agrarianism meanwhile prevailed, in a far more 
 deadly form than at present. And these industrial disturbances 
 were connected with political disturbances equally formidable, 
 with Chartism, Socialism., Cato Street conspiracies, Peterloo 
 massacres, Bristol riots. 
 
 Now the present movement, even in England, where there is 
 so much suffering and so much ignorance, has been marked by 
 a comparative absence of violence, and comparative respect for 
 law. Considering what large bodies of men have been out on 
 strike, how much they have endured in the conflict, and what 
 appeals have been made to their passions, it is wonderful how 
 little of actual crime or disturbance there has been. There w^ere 
 the Sheffield murders, the disclosure of which filled all the 
 friends of labour with shame and sorrow, all the enemies of 
 labour with malignant exultation. But we should not have 
 heard so much of the Sheffield murders if such things had been 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 125. 
 
 common. Sheffield is an exceptional place ; some of the work 
 there is deadly, life is short and character is reckless. Even at 
 Sheffield, a very few, out of the whole number of trades, were 
 found to have been in any way implicated. The denunciation 
 of the outrages by the trades through England generally, was 
 loud and sincere : an attempt was made, of course, to fix the 
 guilt on all the Unions, but this was a hypocritical libel. It 
 was stated, in one of our Canadian journals, the other day, that 
 Mr. Roebuck had lost his seat for Sheffield, by protesting 
 against Unionist outrage. Mr. Roebuck lost his seat for. Shef- 
 field by turning Tory. The Trades' candidate, by whom Mr. 
 Roebuck was defeated, was Mr. Mundella, a representative of 
 whom any constituency may be proud, a great employer of 
 labour, and one who has done more than any other man of his 
 class in England to substitute arbitration for industrial war, 
 and to restore kindly relations between the employers and the 
 employed. To Mr. Mundella the support of Broadhead and the 
 criminal Unionists was offered, and by him it was decisively 
 rejected. 
 
 The public mind has been filled with hideous fantasies, on the 
 subject of Unionism, by sensation novelists like Mr. Charles- 
 Reade and Mr. Disraeli, the latter of whom has depicted the 
 initiation of a working man into a Union with horrid rites, in 
 a lofty and spacious room, hung with black cloth and lighted 
 with tapers, amidst skeletons, men with battle axes, rows of 
 masked figures in white robes, and holding torches; the novice 
 swearing an awful oath on the Gospel, to do every act which 
 the heads of the society enjoin, such as the chastisement of 
 " nobs," the assassination of tyrannical masters, and the demoli- 
 tion of all mills deemed incorrigible by the society. People may 
 read such stufi'for the sake of amusement and excitement, if they 
 please ; but they will fall into a grave error if they take it for a- 
 true picture of the Amalgamated Carpenters or the Amalgamated 
 Engineers. Besides, the Sheffield outrages were several years old 
 at the time of their discovery. They belong, morally, to the time 
 when the unions of working men being forbidden by unfair 
 laws framed in the masters' interest were compelled to assume 
 the character of conspiracies ; when, to rob a union being no 
 theft, unionists could hardly be expected to have the same re- 
 spect as the better protected interests for public justice ; when,, 
 moreover, the mechanics, excluded from political rights, could 
 scarcely regard Government as the impartial guardian of their 
 interests, or the governing classes as their friends. Since the 
 
126 THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 legalization of the unions, the extension of legal security to 
 their funds, and the admission of the mechanics to the suffrage, 
 there has been comparatively little of unionist crime. 
 
 I do not say that there has been none. I do not say that 
 there is none now. Coi-porate selfishness, of which Trade Unions 
 after all are embodiments, seldom keeps quite clear of crimin- 
 ality. But the moral dangers of corporate selfishness are the 
 same in all associations, and in all classes. The Pennsylvanian 
 iron master, who comes before our Commissions of Inquiry, to 
 testify against Unionist outrage in Pennsylvania, where a very 
 wild and roving class of workmen are managed by agents who 
 probably take little thought for the moral condition of the 
 miner — this iron master, I say, is himself labouring through his 
 paid organs in the press, through his representatives in Con- 
 gress, and by every means in his power to keep up hatred of 
 England, and bad relations between the two countries, at the 
 constant risk of war, because it suits the interest of his Pro- 
 tectionist Ring. The upper classes of Europe, in the same 
 spirit, applauded what they called the salvation of society by 
 the coup d'etat, the massacre on the Boulevards, and the law- 
 less deportation of the leaders of the working men in France. 
 In the main, however, I repeat, the present movement has been 
 legal and pacific ; and so long as there is no violence, so long as 
 no weapons but those of argument are employed, so long as law 
 and reason reign, matters are sure to come right in the end. 
 The wesult may not be exactly what we wish, because we may 
 wish to take too much for ourselves, and to give our fellow- 
 men too little ; but it will be just, and we cannot deliberately 
 desire more. If the law is broken by the Unionists, if violence 
 or intimidation is employed by them instead of reason, let the 
 Government protect the rights of the community, and let the 
 community strengthen the hands of the Government for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Perhaps you will say that I have forgotten the International 
 and the Commune. There is undoubtedly a close connection 
 between the labour movement and democracy, between the 
 struggle for industrial, and the struggle for political emancipa- 
 tion ; as there is a connection between both and Secularism, 
 the frank form assumed among the working men by that 
 which is concealed and conformist Scepticism among the upper 
 class. In this respect the present industrial crisis resembles 
 those of the past, which, as we have seen, were closely con- 
 nected with religious and political revolutions. In truth, the 
 
TEE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 1 27 
 
 whole frame of humanity generally moves at once. With the 
 International, however, as an organ of political incendiarism, 
 labour had very little to do. The International was, in its 
 origin, a purely industrial association, born of Prince Albert's 
 International Exhibition, which held a convention at Geneva, 
 where everybody goes pic-nicing, for objects which, though 
 chimerical, were distinctly economical, and fi'ee from any taint 
 of petroleum. But a band of political conspirators got hold of 
 the organization and used it, or at least, so much of it as they 
 coald carry with them, for a purpose entirely foreign to the ori- 
 ginal intent. Mark, too, that it was not so much labour or 
 even democracy that charged the mine which blew up Paris, as 
 the reactionaiy Empire, which, like reaction in countries more 
 nearly connected with us than France, played the demagogue for 
 its own ends, set the labourers against the liberal middle class, 
 and crowded Paris with operatives, bribed by employment on 
 public works. I detest all conspiracy, whether it be that of 
 Ignatius Loyola, or that of Karl Marx — not by conspiracy, not 
 by dark and malig-nant intrigue, is society to be reformed, but 
 by open, honest and kindly appeals to the reason and conscience 
 of mankind. Yet, let us be just, even to the Commune. The 
 destruction of the column at the Place Vendome was not a good 
 act ; but if it was in any measure the protest of labour against 
 war, it was a better act than ever was done by the occupant of 
 that column. On that column it was that, when Napoleon's 
 long orgy of criminal glory was drawing to a close, the hand 
 of misery and bereavement wrote " Monster, if all the blood 
 you have shed could be collected in this square, you might 
 drink without stooping." Thiers is shooting the Communists ; 
 perhaps justly, though humanity will be relieved when the 
 gore ceases to trickle, and vengeance ends its long repast. But 
 Thiers has himself been the literary arch-priest of Napoleon and 
 of war : of all the incendiaries in France he has been the worst. 
 The Trade Unions are new things in industrial history. The 
 guilds of the Middle Ages, with which the unions are often iden- 
 tified, were confederations of all engaged in the trade, masters 
 AS well as men, against outsiders. The Unions are confedera- 
 tions of the men against the masters. They are the offspring 
 of an age of great capitalists, employing large bodies of hired 
 workmen. The workmen, needy, and obliged to sell their la- 
 bour without reserve, that they might eat bread, found them- 
 selves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their mas 
 ters, and resorted to union as a source of strength. Capital, by 
 
128 THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 collecting in the centres of manufacture masses of operatives 
 who thus became conscious of their number and their force, 
 gave birth to a power which now countervails its own. To talk 
 of a war of labour against capital generally would, of course, 
 be absurd. Capital is nothing but the means of undertaking 
 any industrial or commercial enterprise ; of setting up an Allan 
 line of steamships, or setting up a costermonger's cart. We 
 might as well talk of a war of labour against water power. 
 Capital is the fruit of labour past, the condition of labour pre- 
 sent ; without it no man could do a stroke of work, at least of 
 work requhing tools or food for him who uses them. Let us 
 dismiss from our language and our minds these impersonation* 
 which, though mere creatures of fancy playing with abstract 
 nouns, end by depraving our sentiments and misdirecting our 
 actions ; let us think and speak of capital impersonally and 
 sensibly as an economical force, and as we would think and 
 speak of the force of gravitation. Relieve the poor word of the 
 big c, which is a greatness thrust upon it ; its tyranny, and the 
 burning hatred of its tyranny will at once cease. Nevertheless, 
 the fact remains that a working man, standing alone, and with- 
 out a breakfast for himself or his family, is not in a position to 
 obtain the best terms from a rich employer, who can hold out 
 as long as he likes, or hire other labour on the spot. Whether 
 Unionism has had much effect in producing a general rise of 
 wages is very doubtful. Mr. Brassey's book, " Work and 
 Wages," goes far to prove that it has not, and that while, on 
 the one hand, the unionists have been in a fool's paradise, the 
 masters, on the other, have been crying out before they were 
 hurt. No doubt the general rise of wages is mainly and funda- 
 mentally due to natural causes, the accumulation of capital, 
 the extension of commercial enterprise, and the opening up of 
 new countries, which have greatly increased the competition 
 for labour, and coiLsequently, raised the price ; while the nomi- 
 nal price of labour, as well as of all other commodities, has been 
 raised by the influx of gold. What Unionism, as I think, has 
 evidently effected, is the economical emancipation of the work- 
 ing man. It has rendered him independent instead of de- 
 pendent, and, in some cases, almost a serf, as he was before. It 
 has placed him on an equal footing with his employer, and 
 enabled him to make the best terms for himself in every re- 
 spect. There is no employer who does not feel that this is so, 
 or whom Mr. Brassey's statistics, or any statistics, would con- 
 vince that it is not. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT, 129 
 
 Fundamentally, value determines the price the community will 
 give for any article, or any kind of work ; just so much as it is 
 worth. But there is no economical deity who, in each indivi- 
 dual case, exactly adjusts tlie price to the value ; we may make 
 a good or a bad bargain, as many of us know to our cost. One 
 source of bad bargains is ignorance. Before unions, which 
 have diffused the intelligence of the labour market, and by so 
 doing have equalized prices, the workman hardly knew the rate 
 of wages in the next town. If this was true of the mechanic, 
 it was still more true of the farm labourer. Practically speak- 
 ing, the farm labourers in each parish of England, ignorant of 
 everything beyond the parish, isolated and, therefore, dependent, 
 had to take what the employers chose to give them. And what 
 the employers chose to give them over large districts was ten 
 shillings a week for themselves and their families, out of which 
 they paid, perhaps, eighteen-pence for rent. A squire the other 
 day, at a meeting of labourers, pointed with pride, and no 
 doubt, with honest pride, to a labourer who had brought up a 
 family of twelve cLildren on twelve shillings a week. I will 
 venture to say the squire spent as much on any horse in his 
 stables. Meat never touched the peasant's lips, though game, 
 preserved for his landlord's pleasure, was running round his 
 cottage. His children could not be educated, because they were 
 wanted, almost from their infancy, to help in keeping the family 
 from starving, as stonepickers, or perambulating scarecrows. 
 His abode was a hovel, in which comfort, decency, morality 
 could not dwell ; and it was mainly owing to this cause that, as 
 I have heard an ex]oerienced clergyman say, even the people in 
 the low quarters of cities were less immoral than the rural 
 poor. How the English peasants lived on such wages as 
 they had, was a question which puzzled the best informed. How 
 they died was clear enough ; as penal paupers in a union work- 
 house. Yet Hodge's back, like that of Jacques Bonhomrae, in 
 France, bore everything, bore the great war against Republican 
 France; for the squires and rectors, who made that war for class 
 purposes, got their taxes back in increased rents and tithes. 
 How did the peasantry exist, what was their condition in 
 those days when wheat was at a hundred, or even a hundred 
 ■tmd thirty shillings ? They were reduced to a second serfage. 
 They became in the mass parish paupers, and were divided, 
 like slaves, among the employers of each parish. Men may be 
 made serfs, and even slaves by other means than open force, 
 in a country where, legally, all are free, where the impossibility 
 I 
 
130 THE LA nOVR MO VEMENT. 
 
 of slavery is the boast of the law. Of late benevolence has 
 been abroad in the English parish, almsgiving and visiting have 
 increased, good landlords have taken up cottage improvements. 
 There have been harvest-homes, at which the young squires 
 have danced with cottagers. But now Hodge has taken the 
 matter into his own hands, and it seems not without effect. In 
 a letter which I have seen, a squire says, " Here the people are 
 all contented ; we (the employers) have seen the necessity of 
 raising their wages." Conservative journals begin to talk of 
 measures for the compulsory improvement of cottages, for lim- 
 iting ground game, giving tenant right to farmers, granting the 
 franchise to rural householders. Yes, in consequence, paitly, 
 at least of this movement, the dwellings and the general condi- 
 tions of the English peasantry will be improved, the game laws 
 will be abolished ; the farmers pressed upon from below, and 
 in their turn pressing upon those above, will demand and ob- 
 tain tenant right ; and the country, as well as the city house- 
 holders will be admitted to the franchise, which, under the elec- 
 tive system, is at once the only guarantee for justice to him 
 and for his loyalty to the State. And when the country house- 
 holder has the suffrage there will soon be an end of those laws 
 of primogeniture and entail, which are deemed so Conservative, 
 but are in fact most revolutionary, since they divorce the na- 
 tion from its own soil. And then there will be a happier and 
 a more United England in country as well as in town : the 
 poor law, the hateful, degrading, demoralizing poor law will cease 
 to exist ; the huge pooi'-house will no longer darken the rural 
 landscape with its shadow, in hideous contrast with the palace. 
 Suspicion and hatred will no more cower and mutter over the 
 cottage hearth, or round the beer-house fire : the lord of the 
 mansion will no longer be like the man in Tennyson slumbering 
 while a lion is always creeping nearer. Lord Malmesbury is 
 astonished at this disturbance. He always thought the relation 
 between the lord and the pauper peasant was the happiest pos- 
 sible ; he cannot conceive what people mean by proposing a 
 change. But then Lord Malmesbury was placed at rather a 
 delusive point of view. If he knew the real state of Hodge's 
 heart he would rejoice in the prospect of a change, not only for 
 Hodge's sake, but, as he is no doubt a good man, for his own. 
 England will be more religious, too, as well as happier and more 
 harmonious, let the clergy be well assured of it. Social in- 
 justice especially when backed by the Church, is unfavourable 
 to popular religion. 
 
TEE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 131 
 
 The general rise of wages may at first bring economical dis- 
 turbance and pressure on certain classes ; but, in the end, it 
 brings general prosperity', diffused civilization, public happi- 
 ness, security to society, which can never be secure while the 
 few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it 
 brings an increase of production, and greater plenty. Not that 
 we can assent, without reserve, to the pleasant aphorism, 
 that increase of wages, in itself, makes a better workman, 
 which is probably true only where the workman has been 
 iinder-fed, as in the case of the farm labourers of England. But 
 the dearness of labour leads to the adoption of improved 
 methods of production, and especially to the invention of 
 machinery, which gives back to the community what it has 
 paid in increased wages a hundred or a thousand fold. In 
 Illinois, towards the close of the war, a large proportion of the 
 male population had been drafted or volunteered ; labour had 
 become scarce and wages had risen ; but the invention of 
 machinery had been so much stimulated that the harvest that 
 year was greater than it had ever been before. Machinery 
 will now be used to a greater extent on the Englisli farms ; 
 more will be produced by fewer hands ; labourers will be set 
 free for the production of other kinds, perhaps for the cultiva- 
 tion of our North- West ; and the British peasant will rise from 
 the industrial and intellectual level of a mere labourer to that 
 of the guider of a machine. Machinery worked by relays of 
 men is, no doubt, one of the principal solutions of our indus- 
 trial problems, and of the social problems connected with them. 
 Some seem to fancy that it is the universal solution ; but we 
 cannot run reaping machines in the winter or in the dark. 
 
 High wages, and the independence of the labourers, compel 
 economy of labour. Economize labour, cries Lord Derby, the 
 cool-headed mentor of the rich ; we must give up our second 
 under-butler. When the labourer is dependent, and his wages 
 are low, the most precious of commodities, that commodity the 
 husbanding of which is the chief condition of increased produc- 
 tion, and of the growth of national wealth, is squandered with 
 reckless prodigality. Thirty years the labourers of Egypt 
 wrought by gangs of a hundred thousand at a time to build the 
 gi'eat Pyramid which was to hold a despot's dust. Even now, 
 when everybody is complaining of the dearness of labour, and 
 the insufferable independence of the working class, a piece of 
 fine lace, we are told, consumes the labour of seven persons, 
 each employed on a distinct portion of the work ; and the 
 
132 TEE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 
 
 thread,'of exquisite fineness, is spun in dark rooms underground, 
 not without injury, we may suppose, to the eyesight or health 
 of those employed. So that the labour movement does not 
 seem to have yet trenched materially even on the elegancies of 
 life. Would it be very detrimental to real civilization if we 
 were forced, by the dearness of labour, to give up all the trades 
 in which human life or health is sacrificed to mere fancy ? In 
 London, the bakers have struck. They are kept up from mid- 
 night to noon, sometimes far even into the afternoon, sleepless, or 
 only snatching broken slumbers, that London may indulge its 
 fancy for hot bread, which it would be much better without. 
 The result of the strike probably will be, besides relief to the 
 bakers themselves, which has already been in part conceded, a 
 more wholesome kind of bread, such as will keep fresh and 
 palatable through the day, and cleaner baking ; for the 
 wi-etchedness of the trade has made it vile and filthy, as is the 
 case in other trades besides that of the bakers. Many an 
 article of mere luxury, many a senseless toy, if our eyes could 
 be opened, would be seen to bear the traces of human blood 
 and tears. We are like the Merchant Brothers in Keats : — 
 
 "With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, 
 Enriched from ancestral merchandize, 
 And for them many a weary hand did swelt 
 
 In torch-lit mines and noisy factories, 
 And many once proud-quivered loins did melt 
 In blood from stinging whip ; with hollow eyes 
 Many all day in dazzling river stood 
 To take the rich-ored drif tings of the flood. 
 
 "For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, 
 
 And went all naked to the hungry shark ; 
 For them his ears gushed blood ; fur them in deaih 
 
 The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark 
 Lay pierced with darts ; for them alone did seethe 
 
 A thousand men in troubles wide and dark : 
 Half ignorant, they turned an easy wheel 
 
 That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel." 
 
 Among other economies of labour, if this movement among 
 the English peasantry succeeds and spreads to other countries, 
 then will come an economy of soldiers' blood. Pauperism has 
 been the grand recruiting serjeant. Hodge listed and went to 
 be shot or scourged within an inch of his life for sixpence a 
 day, because he was starving ; but he will not leave five 
 shillings for sixpence. Even in former days, the sailor, being 
 somewhat better oif than the peasant, could only be forced into 
 ihe service by the press gang, a name the recollection of which 
 
THE LABOUR MO YEMENT, " 1 33 
 
 ought to mitigate our strictures on the encroaching tendencies 
 of the working class. There will be a strike, or a refusal of 
 service equivalent to a strike in this direction also. It will be 
 requisite to raise the soldier's pay ; the maintenance of stand- 
 ing armies will become a costly indulgence. I have little 
 faith in international champagne, or even in Geneva litigation 
 as a universal antidote to war : war will cease or be limited 
 to necessary occasions, when the burden of large standing 
 armies becomes too great to be borne. 
 
 The strike of the English colliers again, though it causes 
 great inconvenience, may have its good effect. It may be a 
 strong indication that mining in England is getting very deep, 
 and that the nation must exercise a strict economy in the use 
 of coal, the staple of its wealth and greatness. The lot of the 
 colliers, grabbling all day underground and begrimed with 
 dirt, is one of the hardest ; the sacrifice of their lives by acci- 
 dents is terribly large ; and we may well believe that the com- 
 munity needs a lesson in favour of these underground toilers, 
 which could be effectually taught only by some practical 
 manifestation of their discontent. 
 
 To the labour movement, mainly, we owe those efforts to 
 establish better relations between the employer and the em- 
 ployed, which are known by the general name of co-operation. 
 The Comtists, in the name of their autocrat, denounce the 
 whole co-operative system as rotten. Their plan, if you get to 
 the bottom of it, is in fact a permanent division of the in- 
 dustrial world into capitalists and workmen ; the capitalists 
 exercising a rule controlled only by the influence of philoso- 
 phers; the workmen remaining in a perpetual state of tutelage, 
 not to say of babyhood. A little acquaintance with this continent 
 would probably dissipate notions of a permanent division of 
 classes, or a permanent tutelage of any class. It is true that 
 great commercial enterprises require the guidance of superior 
 intelligence with undivided counsels as well as a large capital, 
 and that co-operative mills have failed or succeeded only in 
 cases where very little policy and very little capital were re- 
 quired. As to co-operative stores, they are co-operative only 
 in a very different sense : combinative would be a more ac- 
 curate term ; and the department in which they seem likely to 
 produce an alteration, is that of retail trade, an improvement 
 in the conditions of which, economical and moral, is assuredly 
 much neede 1. Bat if we are told that it is impossible to give 
 the workmen an interest in the enterprise, so as to make him 
 
134 THE LA B UE MO YEMEN T. 
 
 work more willingly, avoid waste and generally identify him- 
 self with his employer, the answer is, that the thing has been 
 done both in England and here. An artisan working for him- 
 self, and selling the produce of his individual skill, has an in- 
 terest and a pride in his work, for which it would seem 
 desirable to find, if possible, some substitute in the case of 
 factory hands, whose toil othei-wise is mere weariness. The in- 
 creased scale of commercial enterprise, however, is in itself ad- 
 vantageous in this respect. In great works, where an army of 
 workmen is employed, at Saltaire, or in the Piatt works at 
 Oldham, there must be many grades of promotion, and many 
 subordinate places of trust and emolument to which the work- 
 men may rise by industr}' and probity without capital of 
 his own. 
 
 The general effect of the labour movement has been, as I 
 have said, the industrial emancipation of the workmen. It 
 has perhaps had an effect more general still. Aided by the 
 general awakening of social sentiment and of the feeling of 
 social responsibility, it has practically opened our eyes to the 
 fact that a nation, and humanity at large, is a community, the 
 good things of which all are entitled to share, while all must 
 share the evil things. It has forcibly dispelled the notion, in 
 which the rich indolently acquiesced, that enjoyment, leisure, 
 culture, refined affection, high civilization are the destined lot 
 of the few, while the destined lot of the many is to support 
 the privileged existence of the few, by unremitting, coarse and 
 joyless toil. Society has been taught that it must at least en- 
 deavour to be just. The old ecclesiastical props of privilege 
 are gone. There is no use any longer in quoting or misquoting 
 Scripture to prove that God wills the mass of mankind to be 
 always poor and alwaj'S dependent on the rich. The very 
 peasant has now broken that spell, and will no longer believe 
 the rector if he tells him that this world belongs to the squire, 
 and that justice is put off to the next. The process of mental 
 emancipation has been assisted by the bishop, who was so 
 rash as to suggest that i-ural agitators should be ducked in a 
 horse pond. Hodge has determined to find out for himself, by 
 a practical experiment, what the will of God really is. No 
 doubt, this is an imperfect world, and is likely to remain so for 
 our time at least ; we must all work on in the hope that if 
 we do our duty it will be well for us in the sum of things, and 
 that when the far-off goal of human efibrt is at last reached, 
 every faithful servant of humanity will have his part in the 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 135 
 
 result ; if it were not so, it would be better to be a brute, 
 with no unfulfilled asj^irations, than a man. But I repeat, the 
 religion of privilege has lost its power to awe or to control ; 
 and if society wishes to rest on a safe foundation, it must show 
 that it is at least trying to be just. 
 
 Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to com- 
 plain of any encroachment of the labour movement on its 
 rights. When did it command such means and appliances of 
 pleasure, such satisfaction for every appetite and every fancy, 
 as it commands now ? When did it rear such enchanted palaces 
 of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present day? Well 
 do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous ob- 
 ject for miles round. Its lord was, I daresay, consuming the 
 income of some six hundred of the poor labouring families 
 round him. The thought that you are spending on j^ourself 
 annually the income of six hundred labouring families seems 
 to me about as much as a man with a heart and a brain can 
 bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the 
 biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social 
 homage, public honours, political power, is ready at his com- 
 mand. Does he fancy a seat in the British House of Commons, 
 the best club in London, as it has been truly called ? All other 
 claims, those of the public service included, at once give way. 
 I remember a question arising about a nomination for a certain 
 constituency (a working man's constituency, by the way), 
 which was cut short by the announcement that the seat was 
 wanted by a local millionaire. When the name of the million- 
 aire was mentioned, surprise was expressed. Has he, it was 
 asked, any political knowledge or capacity, any interest in 
 public affairs, any ambition ? The answer was " None." "Then 
 why does he want the seat ? " " He does not want it." "Then 
 why does he take it ? " " Because his wife does." Cleopatra, 
 as the story goes, displayed her mad prodigality by melting a 
 pearl in a cup, out of which she drank to Antony. But this 
 modem monej^-queen could throw into her cup of pleasure, to 
 give it a keener zest, a share in the government of the greatest 
 empire in the world. 
 
 If the movement, by transferring something from the side of 
 profits to that of wages, checks in any measure the growth of 
 these colossal fortunes, it will benefit society and diminish no 
 man's happiness. I say it without the slightest feeling of as- 
 ceticism, and in the conviction that wealth well made and well 
 spent is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side. 
 
136 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 
 
 Real chiefs of industry have generally a touch of greatness in 
 them, and no nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel 
 than do nature's noblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey, 
 with his millions, never could be induced to increase his estab- 
 lishment : his pride and pleasure were in the guidance of in- 
 dustry and the accomplishment of great works. But in the 
 hands of the heirs of these men colossal fortunes become social 
 nuisances, waste labour, breed luxury, create unhappiness by 
 propagating factitious wants, too often engender vice, and are in- 
 jurious, for the most part, to real civilization. The most malig- 
 nant feelings which enter into the present struggle have been 
 generated, especially in England, by the ostentation of idle 
 wealth, in contrast with surrounding poverty. No really high 
 nature covets such a position as that of a luxurious and useless 
 millionaire. Communism, as a movement, is a mistake : but 
 there is a communism which is deeply seated in the heart of 
 every good man, and which makes him feel that the hardest 
 of all labour is idleness in a world of toil, and that the bitterest 
 of all bread is that which is eaten by the sweat ^of another 
 man's brow. 
 
 The pressure is hardest, not on those who are really rich, but 
 on those who have hitherto, on account of their education, and 
 the intellectual character of their callings, been numbered with 
 the rich, and who are still clinging to the skirts of wealthy so- 
 ciety. The best thing which those who are clinging to the 
 skirts of wealthy society can do is to let go. They will find 
 that they have not far to fall, and they will rest on the fii'm 
 ground of genuine respectability and solid comfort. By keep- 
 ing up their culture they will preserve their social grade far 
 better than by struggling for a precarious footing among those 
 whose habits they cannot emulate, and whose hospitalities they 
 cannot return. Their income will be increased by the whole 
 cost of the efforts which they now make, at the sacrifice of com- 
 forts, and often of necessaries, to maintain the appearances of 
 wealth. British grandees may be good models for our million- 
 aires ; but what most of us want are models of the art of en- 
 joying life thoroughly and nobly without ostentation, and at a 
 moderate cost. It is by people of the class of which I am 
 speaking that the servant difficulty, that doleful but ever re- 
 curring theme, is most severely felt. Nor would I venture to 
 hold out much hope that the difficulty will become less. It is 
 not merely industrial, but social. There is a growing repug- 
 nance to anything like servitude, which makes the female de- 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. ]37 
 
 mocracy prefer the independence of the factory to tlie subor- 
 dination of the kitchen, however good the wa^es and however 
 kind the mistress may be. We must look to inventions for 
 saving labour, which might be adopted in houses to a greater 
 extent than they are now. Perhaps when the work has been 
 thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find " help," 
 in the true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a 
 home, who would be members of the family circle. Homes and 
 suitable employment might thus be afforded to women who are 
 now pining in enforced idleness, and sighing for Protestant nun- 
 neries, while the daily war with Bridget would be at an end. 
 
 I would not make light of these inconveniences or of the 
 present disturbance of trade. The tendency of a moment may 
 be good, and yet it may give society a very bad quarter of an 
 hour. Nor would I attempt to conceal the errors and excesses 
 of which the unions have been guilty, and into which, as organs 
 of corporate selfishness, they are always in danger of running. 
 Industrial history has a record against the workingman as well 
 as against the master. The guilds of the Middle Ages became 
 tyrannical monopolies and leagues against society, turned call- 
 ings open to all into mysteries confined to a privileged few, 
 drove trade and manufactures from the cities where they reign- 
 ed to places free from their domination. This probably was 
 the cause of the decay of cities which forms the burden of com- 
 plaint in the preambles to Acts of Parliament, in the Tudor 
 period. Great guilds oppressed little guilds : strong commer- 
 cial cities ruled by artisans oppressed their weaker neighbours 
 of the same class. No one agency has done so much to raise 
 the condition of the workingman as machinery ; yet the work- 
 ingman resisted the introduction of machinery, rose against it, 
 destroyed it, maltreated its inventors. There is a perpetual 
 warning in the name of Hargreaves, the workingman who, by 
 his inventive genius, provided employment for millions of his 
 fellows, and was by them rewarded with outrage and persecu- 
 tion. 
 
 Flushed with confidence at the sight of their serried pha- 
 lanxes and extending lines, the unionists do like most people 
 invested with unwonted power ; they aim at more than is pos- 
 sible or just. They fancy that they can put the screw on the 
 community, almost without limit. But they will soon find out 
 their mistake. They will learn it from those very things which 
 are filling the world with alarm — the extension of unionism, and 
 the multiplication of strikes. The builder strikes against the 
 
138 THE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 rest of the community, including the baker : then the baker 
 strikes against the builder, and the collier strikes ao^ainst them 
 both. At first the associated trades seem to have it all their 
 own way. But the other trades learn the secret of associa- 
 tion. Everybody strikes against everybody else : the price of 
 all articles rises as much as anybody's wages ; and thus, when 
 the wheel has come full circle, nobody is inuch the gainer. In 
 fact, long before the wheel has come full circle, the futility of a 
 universal strike will be manifest to all. The world sees before 
 it a terrible future of unionism, ever increasing in power and 
 tyranny ; but it is more likely that in a few years unionism, as 
 an instrument for forcing up wages, will have ceased to exist. 
 In the meantime the working classes will have impressed upon 
 themselves, by a practical experiment upon the grandest scale 
 and of the most decisive kind, the fact that they are consumers 
 as well as producers, payers of wages as well as receivers of 
 wages, members of a community as well as workingmen. 
 
 Tlie unionists will learn also, after a few trials, that the com- 
 munity cannot easily be cornered ; at least, that it cannot easily 
 be cornered more than once by unions, any more than by gold 
 rings at New York, or pork rings at Chicago. It may appar- 
 ently succumb once, being unable to do without its bread or its 
 newspapers, or to stop buildings already contracted for and 
 commenced ; but it instinctively prepares to defend itself 
 against a repetition of the operation. It limits consumption or 
 invents new modes of production ; improves machinery, encour- 
 ages non-union men, calls in foreigners, women, Chinese. In the 
 end the corner results in loss. Cornering on the part of work- 
 ingmen is not a bit worse than cornering on the part of great 
 financiers ; in both cases alike it is as odious as anything can 
 be, which is not actually criminal : but, depend upon it, a bad 
 time is coming for coi'ners of all kinds. 
 
 I speak of the community as the power with which the 
 strikers really have to deal. The master hires or organizes the 
 workmen, but the community purchases their work ; and 
 though the master, when hard pressed, may, in his desperation, 
 give more for the work than it is worth rather than at once 
 take his capital out of the trade, the community will let the 
 trade go to ruin without compunction rather than give more 
 for the article than it can afford. Some of the colliers in Eng- 
 land, we are informed, have called upon the masters to reduce 
 the price of coal, offering at the same time to consent to a re- 
 duction of their own wages. A great fact has dawned upon 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 139 
 
 their minds. Note too tliat democratic communities have more 
 power of resistance to unionist extortion than others, because 
 they are more united, have a keener sense of mutual interest, 
 and are free from poHtical fear. The way in which Boston, 
 some years ago, turned to and beat a printers' strike, was a re- 
 markable proof of this fact. 
 
 Combination may enable, and, as I believe, has enabled the 
 men in particular cases to make a fairer bargain with the mas- 
 ters, and to cet the full market value of their labour ; but nei- 
 ther combination nor any other mode of negotiating can raise 
 the value of labour or of any other article to the consumer ; 
 and that which cannot raise the value cannot permanently raise 
 the price. 
 
 All now admit that strikes peaceably conducted are lawful. 
 Nevertheless, they may sometimes be anti-social and immoral. 
 Does any one doubt it ? Suppose by an accident to machinery, 
 or the falling in of a mine, a number of workmen have their 
 limbs broken. One of their mates runs for the surgeon, and 
 the surgeon puts his head out of the window and says — " the 
 surgeons are on strike." Does this case much differ from that of 
 the man who, in his greed, stops the wheel of industry which he 
 is turning, thereby paralysing the whole machine, and spread- 
 ing not only confusion, but suffering, and perhaps starvation, 
 among multitudes of his fellows ? Language was held by some 
 unionist witnesses, before the Trades Union Commission, about 
 their exclusive regard for their own interests, and their indif- 
 ference to the interests of society, which was more frank than 
 philanthropic, and more gratifying to their enemies than to 
 their friends. A man who does not care for the interests of 
 society will find, to his cost, that they are his own, and that he 
 is a member of a body which cannot be dismembered. I spoke 
 of the industrial objects of the International as chimerical. 
 Tliey are worse than chimerical. In its industrial aspect, the 
 International was an attempt to separate the interests of a par- 
 ticular class of workers throughout the world from those of 
 their fellow workers, and to divide humanity against itself. 
 Such attempts can end only in one way. 
 
 There are some who say, in connection with this question, 
 that you are at liberty to extort anything you can from your 
 fellow men, provided you do not use a pistol ; that 3'ou are at 
 liberty to fleece tlie sailor who implores you to save him from 
 a wreck, or the emigrant who is in danger of missing his ship. 
 I say that this is a moral robbery, and that the man would say 
 so himself if the same thing were done to him. 
 
1 40 THE LABO Uli MO VEMENT. 
 
 A strike is a war ; so is a lock-out, which is a strike on the 
 other side. They are warrantable, like other wars, when justice 
 cannot be obtained, or injustice prevented by peaceful means, 
 and in such cases only. Mediation ought always to be tried 
 first, and it will often be effectual ; for the wars of carpenters 
 and builders, as well as the wars of emperors, often arise from 
 passion more than from interest, and passion may be calmed by 
 mediation. Hence the magnitude of the unions, formidable as 
 it seems, has really a pacific effect : passion is commonly per- 
 sonal or local, and does not affect the central government of a 
 union extending over a whole nation. The governments of 
 great unions have seldom recommended strikes. A strike or 
 lock-out, I repeat, is an industiial war ; and when the war is 
 over there ought to be peace. Constant bad relations between 
 the masters and the men, a constant attitude of mutual hostility 
 and mistrust, constant threats of striking upon one side, and of 
 locking out upon the other, are ruinous to the trade, especially 
 if it depends at all upon foreign orders, as well as destructive 
 of social comfort. If the state of feeling, and the bearing of 
 the men towards the masters, remain what they now are in some 
 English trades, kind-hearted employers, who would do their 
 best to improve the condition of the workman, and to make him 
 a partaker in their prosperity, will be driven from the trade, 
 and their places will be taken by men with hearts of flint, who 
 will fight the workman by force and fraud, and very likely win. 
 We have seen the full power of associated labour ; the full 
 power of associated capital has yet to be seen. We shall see it 
 when, instead of combinations of the employers in a single 
 trade, which seldom hold together, employers in all trades learn 
 to combine. 
 
 We must not forget that industrial wars, like other wars,how- 
 ever just and necessary, give birth to men whose trade is war, 
 and who, for the purpose of their trade, are always inflaming 
 the passions which lead to war. Such men I have seen on both 
 sides of the Atlantic, and most hateful pests of industry and 
 society they are. JNor must we forget that Trade Unions, like 
 other communities, whatever their legal constitutions may be, 
 are apt practically to fall into the hands of a small minority of 
 active spirits, or even into those of a single astute and ambi- 
 tious man. 
 
 Murder, maiming, and vitriol throwing are offences punish- 
 able by law. So are, or ought to be, rattening and intimida- 
 tion. But there are ways less openly criminal of interfering 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 141 
 
 with the liberty of non-union men. The liberty of non-union 
 men, however, must be protected. Freedom of contract is the 
 only security which the community has against systematic ex- 
 tortion ; and extortion, practised on the community by a Trade 
 Union, is just as bad as extortion practised by a feudal baron 
 in his robber hold. If the unions are not voluntary they are 
 tyrannies, and all tyrannies in the end will be overthrown. 
 
 The same doom awaits all monopolies and attempts to inter- 
 fere with the free exercise of any lawful trade or calling, for the 
 advantage of a ring of any kind, whether it be a great East India 
 Company, shutting the gates of Eastern commerce on mankind, 
 or a little Bricklayers' Union, limiting the number of bricks to 
 be carried in a hod. All attempts to restrain or cripple pro- 
 duction in the interest of a privileged set of producers ; all 
 trade rules preventing work from being done in the best, cheap- 
 est and most expeditious way ; all interference with a man's 
 free use of his strength and skill on pretence that he is beating 
 his mates, or on any other pretence ; all exclusions of people 
 from lawful callings for which they are qualified ; all appren- 
 ticeships not honestly intended for the instruction of the ap- 
 prentice, are unjust and contrary to the manifest interests 
 of the community, including the misguided monopolists tliem- 
 seives. All alike will, in the end, be resisted and put down. 
 In feudal times the lord of the manor used to compel all the 
 people to use his ferry, sell on his fair ground, and grind their 
 corn at his mill. By long and costly efibrt humanity has 
 broken the yoke of old Privilege, and it is not likely to bow its 
 neck to the yoke of the new. 
 
 Those who in England demanded the suffrage for the work- 
 ing man, who urged, in the name of public safety, as well as in. 
 that of justice, that he should be brought within the pale of 
 the constitution, have no reason to be ashamed of the result. 
 Instead of voting for anarchy and public pillage, the working 
 man has voted for economy, administrative reform, army 
 reform, justice to Ireland, public education. But no body of 
 men ever found political power in their hands without being 
 tempted to make a selfish use of it. Feudal legislatures, as we 
 have seen, passed laws compelling workmen to give more work, 
 or work that was woi'th more, for the same wages. Working 
 men's legislatures are now disposed to pass laws compelling 
 employers, that is, the community, to give the same wages for 
 less work. Some day, perhaps, the bakers will get power into 
 their hands and make laws compelling us to give the same 
 
142 TEE LABOUR MO VEMENT. 
 
 price for a smaller loaf. What would the Rochdale pioneers, 
 or the owners of any other co-operative store, with a staff of 
 servants, say if a law were passed compelling them to give the 
 same wages for less service ? This is not right, and it cannot 
 stand. Demagogues who want your votes will tell you that it 
 can stand ; but those who are not in that line must pay you 
 the best homage in their power by speaking the truth. And if 
 I may venture to offer advice, never let the cause of labour be 
 mixed up with the game of politicians. Before you allow a 
 man to lead you in trade questions, be sure that he has no eye- 
 to your votes. We have a pleasing variety of political rogues; 
 but, perhaps, there is liardly a greater rogue among them thacs 
 the working man's friend. 
 
 Perhaps you will say as much or more work is done witb 
 the short hours. There is reason to hope that in some cases it 
 may be so. But then the employer will see his own interest ; 
 free contract will produce the desired result ; there will be no 
 need of compulsory law. 
 
 I sympathize heartily with t4ie general object of the nine 
 hours' movement, of the early closing movement, and all mfove- 
 ments of that kind. Leisure, well spent, is a condition of civ- 
 ilization ; and now we w^ant all to be civilized, not only a few. 
 But I do not believe it possible to regulate the hours of work 
 by law with any approach to reason or justice. One kind of 
 work is more exhausting than another ; one is carried on in a 
 hot room, another in a cool room ; one amidst noise wearing to 
 the nerves, another in stillness. Time is not a common mea- 
 sure of them all. The difficulty is increased if you attempt to 
 make one rule for all nations, disregarding differences of race 
 and climate. Besides, how, in the name of justice, can we say 
 that the man with a wife and children to support, shall not 
 work more if he pleases than the unmarried man, who chooses 
 to be content with less pay, and to have more time for enjoy- 
 ment ? Medical science pronounces, we are told, that it is not 
 o-ood for a man to work more than eight hours. But suppos- 
 ino- this to be true, and true of all kinds of work, this, as has 
 been said before, is an imperfect world, and it is to be feared 
 that we cannot guarantee any man against having more to do 
 than his doctor would recommend. The small tradesman, 
 whose case receives no consideration because he forms no 
 union, often, perhaps generally, has more than is good for him 
 of anxiety, struggling and care, as well as longer business 
 hours, than medical science would prescribe. Pressure on the 
 
THE LA HOUR MO VEME^ T. I45 
 
 weary brain is, at least, as painful as pressure on the weary 
 muscle ; many a suicide proves it ; yet brains must be pressed 
 or the wheels of industry and society would stand still. Let 
 us all, I repeat, get as much leisure as we fairly and honestly 
 can ; but wath all due respect for those who hold the opposite 
 opinion, I believe that the leisure must be obtained by free ar- 
 rangement in each case, as it has already in the case of early 
 closing, not by general law. 
 
 I cannot help regarding industrial war in this new world, 
 rather as an importation than as a native growth. The spirit 
 of it is brought over by British workmen, who have been fight- 
 ing the master class in their former home. In old England,, 
 the land of class distinctions, the masters are a class, economi- 
 cally as well as socially, and they are closely allied with a 
 political class, which till lately engrossed power and made laws 
 in the interest of the employer. Seldom does a man in Eng- 
 land rise from the ranks, and when he does, his position in an 
 aristocratic society is equivocal, and he never feels perfectly 
 at home. Caste runs from the peerage all down the social 
 scale. The bulk of the land has been engrossed by wealthy 
 families, and the comfort and dignity of freehold pro- 
 prietorship are rarely attainable by any but the rich. Every- 
 thing down to the railway carriages, is regulated by aristo- 
 cracy; street cars cannot run because they would interfere 
 with carriages, a city cannot be drained because a park is in 
 the way. The labourer has to bear a heavy load of taxation, 
 laid on by the class wars of former days. In this new world 
 of ours, the heel taps of old-world flunkeyism are sometimes 
 poured upon us, no doubt ; as, on the other hand, we feel the 
 reaction from the old-world servility in a rudeness of self asser- 
 tion on the part of the democracy which is sometimes rather 
 discomposing, and which we should be glad to see, exchanged 
 for the courtesy of settled self-respect. But on the whole, class 
 distinctions are veiy faint. Half, perhaps two-thirds, of the 
 rich men you meet here have risen from the ranks, and they 
 are socially quite on a level with the rest. Everything is 
 really open to industiy. Every man can at once invest his 
 savings in a freehold. Everything is arranged for the convenience 
 of the masses. Political power is completely in the hands of 
 the people. There are no fiscal legacies of an oligarchic past. 
 If I were one of our emigration agents, I should not dwell so 
 much on wages, which in fact are being rapidly equalized, as 
 on what wages will buy in Canada — the general improvement 
 
144 TEE LABOUR MOVEMENT. 
 
 of condition, the brighter hopes, the better social position, the 
 enlarged share of all the benefits which the community affords. 
 I should show that we have made a step here at all events to- 
 wards being a community indeed. In such a land I can see 
 that there may still be need of occasional combinations among 
 the working men, to make better bargains with their em- 
 ployers, but I can see no need for the perpetual arraying of 
 class against class, or for a standing apparatus of industrial 
 war. 
 
 There is one more point which must be touched with tender- 
 ness, but which cannot be honestly passed over in silence. It 
 could no where be mentioned less invidiously, than under the 
 roof of an institution, which is at once an effort to create high 
 tastes in working men, and a proof that such tastes can be 
 ci-eated. The period of transition from high to low wages, and 
 from incessant toil to comparative leisure, must be one of peril 
 to masses whom no Mechanics' Institute or Literary Society, as 
 yet, counts among its members. It is the more so because 
 there is abroad in all classes a passion for sensual enjoyment 
 and excitement, produced by the vast development of wealth, 
 and at the same time, as I suspect, by the temporary failure of 
 those beliefs, which combat the sensual appetites, and sustain 
 our spiritual life. Colliers drinking champagne ! The world 
 stands aghast. Well, I see no reason why a collier should not 
 drink champagne if he can afford it, as well as a Duke. The 
 collier wants, and perhaps deserves it more, if he has been 
 working all the week underground, and at risk of his life. 
 Hard labour naturally produces a craving for animal enjoy- 
 ment, and so does the monotony of the factory, unrelieved by 
 interest in the work. But what if the collier cannot afford the 
 champagne, or if the whole of his increase of wages is wasted 
 on it, while his habitation remains a hovel, everything about 
 him is still as filthy, comfortless and barbarous as ever, and 
 (saddest of all) his wife and children are no better off, perhaps 
 are worse off, than before ? What if his powers of work are being 
 impaired by debauchery, and he is thus surely losing the foot- 
 ing which he has won on the higher round of the industrial 
 ladder, and lapsing back into penury and despair ? What if 
 instead of gaining, he is really losing, in manhood and real 
 independence ? I see nothing shocking, in the fact that a 
 mechanic's wages are now equal to those of a clergyman, or an 
 officer in the army, who has spent, perhaps, thousands of dol- 
 lars on his education. Every man has a right to whatever his 
 
THE LABOUR MO YEMEN T. ] 45 
 
 labour will fetch. But I do see something shocking in the ap- 
 pearance of the highly paid mechanic, whenever hard times 
 come, as a mendicant at the door of a man really poorer than 
 himself. Not only that English poor-law, of which we spoke, 
 but all poor-laws, formal or informal, must cease when the 
 labourer has the means, with proper self-control and prudence, 
 of providing for winter as well as summer, for hard times as 
 well as good times, for his family as well as for himself. The 
 tradition of a by-gone state of society must bo broken. The 
 nominally rich must no longer be expected to take care of the 
 nominally poor. The labourer has ceased to be in any sense a 
 slave. He must learn to be, in every sense, a man. 
 
 It is much easier to recommend our neighbours to change 
 their habits than to change our own; yet we must never forget, 
 in discussing the qviestion between the working man and his 
 employer, or the community, that a slight change in the habits 
 of the working men, in England at least, would add more to 
 their wealth, their happiness and their hopes, than has been 
 added by all the strikes, or by conflicts of any kind. In the 
 life of Mr. Brassey, we are told that the British workman in 
 Australia has great advantages, but wastes them all in drink. 
 He does this not in Australia alone. I hate leefislative inter- 
 ference with private habits, and I have no fancies about diet. 
 A citizen of Maine, who has eaten too much pork, is just as 
 great a transgressor against medical rules, and probably just 
 as unamiable, as if he had drunk too much whisky. But 
 when I have seen the havoc — the ever increasing havoc — 
 which drink makes with the industry, the vigour, the character 
 of the British workman, I have sometimes asked myself 
 whether in that case extraordinary measures might not be 
 justified by the extremity of its dangers. 
 
 The subject is boundless. I might touch upon perils dis- 
 tinct from Unionism, which threaten industry, especially that 
 gi'owing dislike of manual labour which prevails to an alarm- 
 ing extent in the United States, and which some eminent 
 economists are inclined to attribute to errors in the system of 
 education in the common schools. I might speak of the duties 
 of government in relation to these disturbances, and of the 
 necessity, for this as well as other purposes, of giving ourselves 
 a government of all and for all, capable of arbitrating im- 
 partially between conflicting interests as the recognised organ 
 of the common good. I might speak, too, of the expediency of 
 introducing into popular education a more social element, of 
 K 
 
146 THE LABO UE MO VEMENT. 
 
 teaching less rivaliy and discontent, more knowledge of the 
 mutual duties of different members of the community and of 
 the connection of those duties with our happiness. But I must 
 conclude. If I have thrown no new light upon the subject, I 
 trust that I have at least tried to speak the truth impartially, 
 and that I have said nothing which can add to the bitterness of 
 the industrial conflict, or lead any of my hearers to forget that 
 above all Trade Unions, and above all combinations of every 
 kind, there is the great union of Humanity. 
 
WE A T IS CULPA BLE LUX UR Y ? 1 47 
 
 "WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXUEY?" 
 
 A PHRASE in a lecture on " The Labour Movement," published 
 in the Canadian Monthly, has been the inconsiderable cause 
 of a considerable controversy in the English press, and 
 notably of a paper by the eminent economist and moralist Mr, 
 W. K. Greg, entitled " What is Culpable Luxury ? " in the Con- 
 temporary Review. 
 
 The passage of the lecture in which the phrase occurred was : 
 " Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to com- 
 plain of any encroachment of the Labour Movement on its 
 rights. When did it command such means and appliances of 
 pleasure, such satisfaction for every appetite and every fancy,, 
 as it commands now ? When did it rear such enchanted pal- 
 aces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present day ? 
 Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous 
 object for miles round. Its lord was, I dare say, consuming 
 the income of sovie six hundred of the poor labouring families 
 round him. The thought that you are spending on yourself 
 annually the income of six hundred labouring families, seems 
 to me about as much as a man with a heart and a brain can 
 bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the 
 biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social hom- 
 age, public honour, political power, is ready at his command." 
 &c., &c. 
 
 The words in italics have been separated from the context 
 and taken as an attack on wealth. But the whole passage is a 
 defence of labour against the charge of encroachment brought 
 against it by wealth. I argue that, if the labouring man gets 
 rather more than he did, the inequalities of fortune and the 
 privileges of the rich are still great enough. In the next para- 
 graph I say that " wealth well made and well spent is as pure 
 as the rill that runs from the mountain side." An invidious 
 turn has also been given to the expression " the income of six 
 hundred labouring families," as though it meant that the 
 wealthy idler is robbing six hundred labouring families of their 
 income. It means no more than that the income which he is 
 spending on himself is as large as six hundred of their incomes 
 put together. 
 
148 WHA T IS CULPA BLE LUXURY f 
 
 Mr. Greg begins with what he calls a " retort courteous." 
 He says that " if the man with £30,000 is doing this sad thing, 
 so is the man with £3,000 or £300, and everyone who allows 
 himself anything beyond the necessaries of life ; nay, that the 
 labouring man when he liglits his pipe or drinks his dram, is, 
 •as well as the rest, consuming the substance of one poorer than 
 Tiimself." This argument ajjpears to its framer irrefutable, and 
 ■a retort to which there can be no rejoinder. I confess my diffi- 
 culty is not so much in refuting it as in seeing any point in it 
 at all. What parallel can there be between an enormous and a 
 very moderate expenditure, or between prodigious luxury and 
 ordinary comfort ? If a man taxes me with having squandered 
 fifty dollars on a repast, is it an irrefutable retort to tell him that 
 he has spent fifty cents ? The limited and rational expenditure 
 of an industrious man produces no evils, economical, social or 
 moral. I contend in the lecture that the unlimited and irra- 
 tional expenditure of idle millionaires does ; that it " wastes 
 labour, breeds luxury, creates imhappiness by propagating fac- 
 titious wants, too often engenders vice, and is injurious for the 
 most part to real civilization." I have observed, and I think 
 with truth, that the most malignant feelings which enter into 
 the present struggle between classes have been generated by 
 the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding 
 poverty, It would, of course, be absurd to say this of a man liv- 
 ing on a small income, in a modest house, and in a plain way. 
 
 If I had said that property, or all property beyond a mere sus- 
 tenance, is theft, there would be force in Mr. Greg's retort ; but 
 as I have said, or implied, nothmg more than that extravagant 
 luxury is waste, and, contrasted with surrounding poverty, 
 gi'ates on the feelings, especially when those who waste are idle, 
 and those who want are the hardest working labourers in the 
 world, I repeat that I can see no force in the retort at all. 
 
 Mr. Greg proceeds to analyse the expenditure of the million- 
 aire, and to maintain that its several items are laudable. 
 
 . First, he defends pleasure-grounds, gardens, shrubberies and 
 deer-paiks. But he defends them on the ground that they are 
 good things for the community, and thereby admits my principle. 
 It is only against wasteful self-indulgence that I have anything 
 to say. " No doubt," says Mr. Greg, " if the land of a country is 
 all occupied and cultivated, and if no more land is easily acces- 
 sible, and if the produce of other lands is not procurable in re- 
 turn for manufactured articles of exchange, then a proprietor 
 who shall employ a hundred acres in growing wine for his own 
 
WHA T IS CUL FABLE L VXUR 7t 149 
 
 drinking, which might or would otherwise be employed in grow- 
 ing wheat or other food for twenty poor families who can find 
 no other field for their labour, maj^ fairly be said to be consum- 
 ing, spending on himself, the sustenance of those families. If, 
 again, he, in the midst of a swarming population unable to find 
 productive or remunerative occupation, insists upon keeping a 
 considerable extent of ground in merely ornamental walks and 
 gardens, and, therefore, useless as far as the support of human 
 life is concerned, he may be held liable to the same imputation 
 — even though the wages he pays to the gardeners in the one 
 case, and the vine-dressers in the other, be pleaded in mitigation 
 of the charge." Let the writer of this only allow, as he must, 
 that the moral, social and political consequences of expenditure 
 are to be taken into account as well as the economical conse- 
 quences, and he will be entirely at one with the writer whom 
 he supposes himself to be confuting. I have never said, or im- 
 agined, that " all land ought to be producing food." I hold that 
 no land in England is better employed than that of the London 
 parks and the gardens of the Crystal Palace, though I could not 
 speak so confidently with regard to a vast park from which all are 
 excluded but its owner. Mr. Greg here again takes up what seems 
 to me the strange position that to condemn excess is to condemn 
 moderation. He says that whatever is said against the great 
 parks and gardens of the most luxurious millionaire may equally 
 l3e said against a tradesman's little flower-garden, or the plot of 
 ornamental ground before the cottage windows of a peasant. T 
 must again say that, so far from regarding this argument as ir- 
 refutable, I altogether fail to discover its cogency. The trades- 
 man's little bit of green, the peasant's flower-bed, are real neces- 
 sities of a human soul. Can the same thing be said of a pleasure- 
 ground which consumes the labour of twenty men, and of which 
 the object is not to refresh the weariness of labour but to distract 
 the vacancy of idleness ? 
 
 Mr. Greg specially undertakes the defence of deer-parks. But 
 his ground is that the deer-forests which were denounced as un- 
 productive have been proved to be the only mode of raising the 
 condition and securing the well-being of the ill-fed population. 
 If so, "humanitarians" are ready to hold up both hands in favour 
 of deer-forests. Nay, we are ready to do the same if the plea- 
 sure yielded by the deer-forests bears any reasonable proportion 
 to the expense and the agricultural sacrifice, especially if the 
 sportsman is a worker recruiting his exhausted brain, not a 
 sybarite killing time. 
 
150 WE A T IS CULPA BLE L UXUR Y ? 
 
 From parks and pleasure-grounds Mr. Greg goes on to horses ; 
 and liere it is the same thing over again. The apologist first 
 sneers at those who object to the millionaire's stud, then lets in 
 the interest of the community as a limiting principle, and ends 
 by saying : " We may then allow frankly and without demur, 
 that if he (the millionaire) maintains more horses than he needs 
 or can use, his expenditure thereon is strictly pernicious and in- 
 defensible, precisely in the same way as it would be if he burnt 
 so much hay and threw so many bushels of oats into the fire. 
 He is destroying human food." Now Mr. Greg has only to de- 
 termine whether a man who is keeping a score or more of car- 
 riage and saddle horses, is "using" them or not. If he is, " huma- 
 nitarians " are perfectly satisfied. 
 
 Finally Mr. Greg comes to the case of large establishments of 
 servants. And here, having set out with intentions most ad- 
 verse to my theory, he "blesses it altogether." " Perhaps," he 
 says, " of all the branches of a wealthy nobleman's expenditure, 
 that which will be condemned with most unanimity, and de- 
 fended with most difiiculty, is the number of ostentatious and 
 unnecessary servants it is customary to maintain. For this prac- 
 tice I have not a word to say. It is directly and indirectly bad. 
 It is bad for all parties. Its reflex action on the masters them- 
 selves is noxious; it is mischievous to the flunkies who are main- 
 tained in idleness, and in enervating and demoralizing luxury ; 
 it is pernicious to the community at large, and especially to the 
 middle and upper middle classes, whose inevitable expenditure 
 in procuring fit domestic service — already burdensomely great 
 is thereby oppressively enhanced, till it has become difticult not 
 only to find good household servants at moderate wages, but to 
 find servants who will work diligently and faithfully for any 
 wages at all." 
 
 How will Mr. Greg keep up the palaces, parks, and studs, 
 when he has taken away the retinues of servants ? If he does 
 not take care, he will find himself wielding the bosom of sumptu- 
 ary reform in the most sweeping manner before he is aware of 
 it. But let me respectfully ask him, who can he suppose objects 
 to any expenditure except on the ground that it is directly and 
 indirectly bad ; bad for all parties, noxious to the voluptuary 
 himself, noxious to all about him, and noxious to the commun- 
 ity ? So long as a man does no harm to himself or to anyone 
 else, I for one see no objection to his supping like a Roman Em- 
 peror, on pheasants' tongues, or making shirt-studs of Koh-i- 
 noors. 
 
WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? 151 
 
 ^It is cliarity," says Mr. Greg, hurling at the system of great 
 estabhshments his Last and bitterest anathema — " It is charity, 
 and charity of the bastard sort — charit}' disguised as ostentation. 
 It feeds, clothes, and houses a number of people in strenuous 
 and pretentious laziness. If almshouses are noxious and offen- 
 sive to the economic mind, then, by parity of reasoning, super- 
 fluous domestics are noxious also." And so it would seem, by 
 parity of reasoning, or rather a fortiori, as being fed, clothed, 
 and housed far more expensively, and in far more strenuous and 
 pretentious laziness, are the superfluous masters of flunkeys. 
 The flunkey does some work, at all events enough to prevent him 
 from becoming a mere fiittened animal. If he is required to 
 grease and powder his head, he does work, as it seems to me, 
 for which he may fairly claim a high remuneration. 
 
 As I have said already, let Mr. Greg take in the moral, poli- 
 tical, and social evils of luxury, as well as the material waste, 
 and I flatter myself that there will be no real difterence between 
 his general view of the responsibilities of wealth and mine. 
 He seems to be as convinced as I am that there is no happiness 
 in living in strenuous and pretentious laziness by the sweat of 
 other men's brows. 
 
 Nor do I believe that even the particular phrase which has 
 been deemed so fraught with treason to plutocracy would, if 
 my critic examined it closely, seem to him so very objectionable. 
 His own doctrine, it is true, sounds severely economical. He 
 holds that " the natural man and the Christian " who should 
 be moved by his natural folly and Christianity to forego a bottle 
 of champagne in order to relieve a neighbour in want of actual 
 food, would do a thing " distinctly criminal and pernicious." 
 Still I presume he would allow, theoretically, as I am very sure 
 he would practically, a place to natural sympathy. He would 
 not applaud a banquet given in the midst of a famine, although 
 it might be clearly proved that the money spent by the ban- 
 queters was their own, that those who were perishing of famine 
 had not been robbed of it, that their bellies were none the 
 emptier because those of the banqueters were full, and that the 
 cookery gave a stimulus to gastronomic art. He would not 
 €ven think it wholly irrational that the gloom of the work- 
 house should cast a momentary shadow on the enjoyments of 
 the palace. I should also expect him to understand the impres- 
 sion that a man of " brain," even one free from any excessive 
 tenderness of " heart," would not like to see a vast apparatus 
 of luxury, and a great train of flunkeys devoted to his own 
 
152 WHA T IS CULPA BLE LUXURY ? 
 
 material enjoyment — that he would feel it as a slur on his good 
 sense, as an impeachment of his mental resources, and of his. 
 command of nobler elements of happiness, and even as a 
 degradation of his manhood. There was surely something re- 
 spectable in the sentiment which made Mr. Brassey refuse, 
 however much his riches might increase, to add to his estab- 
 lishment. There is surely something natural in the tendency, 
 which we generally find coupled with greatness, to simplicity 
 of life. A person whom I knew liad dined with a millionaire 
 tete-d-tete, with six flunkeys standing round the table. I sus- 
 pect that a man of Mr. Greg's intellect and character, in spite of 
 his half-ascetic hatred of plush, would rather have been one of 
 the six than one of the two. 
 
 While, liowever, I hope that my view of these matters coin- 
 cides practically with that of Mr. Greg far more than be sup- 
 poses, I must admit that there may be a certain difference of 
 sentiment behind. Mr. Greg describes the impressions to which 
 I have given currency as a confused compound of natural sym- 
 pathy, vague Christianity, and dim economic science. Of the 
 confusion, vagueness and dimness of our views, of course we 
 cannot be expected to be conscious ; but I own that I defer, in 
 these matters, not only to natural feeling, but to the ethics of 
 rational Christianity. I still adhere to the Christian code for 
 want of a better, the Utilitarian system of morality being, so 
 far as I can see, no morality at all, in the ordinary sense of 
 the term, as it makes no appeal to our moral nature, our con- 
 science, or whatever philosophers choo.se to call the deepest 
 part of humanity. Of course, therefore, I accept as the funda- 
 mental p»rinciple of human relations, and of all science concern- 
 ing them, the great Christian doctrine that " we are every one 
 members one of another." As a consequence of this doctrine I 
 hold that the wealth of mankind is morally a common store ; 
 that we are morally bound to increase it as much, and to waste 
 it as little, as we can ; that of the two it is happier to be 
 underpaid than to be overpaid ; and that we shall all find it so 
 in the sum of things. There is nothing in such a view in the 
 least degree subversive of the legal rights of property, which 
 the founders of Christianity distinctly recognised in their 
 teaching, and strengthened practically by raising the standard 
 of integrity ; notliing adverse to active industry or good busi- 
 ness habits ; nothing opposed to economic science as the study 
 of the laws regulating the production and distribution of 
 wealth ; nothing condemnatory of pleasure, provided it be 
 
WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? 155 
 
 pleasure which opens the heart, as I suppose was the case with 
 the marriage feast at Cana, not the pleasure which closes the- 
 heart, as I fear was the case with the " refined luxury " of the 
 Marquis of Steyne. 
 
 If this is superstition, all that I can say is that I have read 
 Strauss, Renan, Mr. Greg on the "Creed of Christendom," and all 
 the eminent writers I could hear of on that side, and that I am 
 not conscious of any bias to the side of orthodoxy ; at least I 
 have not given satisfaction to the orthodox classes. 
 
 Christianity, of course, in common with other systems, craves 
 a reasonable construction. Plato cannot afford to have his 
 apologues treated as histories. In " Joshua Davidson," a good 
 man is made to turn away from Christianity because he finds 
 that his faith will not literally remove a mountain and cast it 
 into the sea. But he had omitted an indispensable prelim- 
 inary. He ought first to have exactly compared the bulk of his 
 faith with that of a grain of Palestinian mustard seed. Mr, 
 Greg makes sport of the text " He that hath two coats let him 
 impart to him that hath none," which he says he heard in his 
 youth, but without ever considering its present applicability. 
 Yet in the next paragraph but one he gives it a precise and a 
 very important application by pronouncing that a man is not 
 at liberty to grow wine for himself on land which other people 
 need for food. I fail to see how the principle involved in this 
 passage, and others of a similar tendency which I have quoted 
 from Mr. Greg's paper, differ from that involved in Gospel 
 texts which, if I were to quote them would grate strangely 
 upon his ear. The texts comprise a moral sanction ; but Mr. 
 Greg must have some moral sanction when he forbids a man to 
 do that which he is permitted to do by law. Christianity, 
 whatever its source and authority^ was addressed at first to 
 childlike minds, and what its antagonists have to prove is not 
 that its forms of expression or even of thought are adapted to 
 such minds, but that its principles, when rationally applied to 
 a more advanced state of society, are unsound. Rightly under- 
 stood it does not seem to me to enjoin anything eccentric or 
 spasmodic, to bid you enact primitive Orientalism in the streets 
 of London, thrust fraternity upon writers in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, or behave generally as if the " Kingdom of God " were 
 already come. Your duty as a Christian is done if you help 
 its coming according to the circumstances of your place in 
 society and the age in which you live. 
 
 Of course, in subscribing to the Christian code of ethics, one? 
 
154 WHA T IS CULPA BLE L UXUR Y ? 
 
 lays oneself open to " retorts corteous " without limit. But so 
 one does in subscribinof to any code, or accepting any standard, 
 whether moral or of any other kind. 
 
 I do not see on what principle Mr. Greg would justify, if he 
 does justify, any sort of charitable benefactions. Did not Mr, 
 Peabody give his glass of champagne to a man in need ? He 
 might have spent all his money on himself if he had been 
 driven to building Chatsworths, and hanging their walls with 
 Raffaelles. How will he escape the reproach of having done 
 what was criminal and pernicious ? And what are we to say 
 of the conduct of London plutocrats who abetted his proceed- 
 ings by their applause though they abstained fi-om following 
 his example ? Is there any apology for them at all but one 
 essentially Christian ? Not that Christianity makes any great 
 fuss over munificence, or gives political economy reasonable 
 ground for apprehension on that score. Plutocracy deifies Mr. 
 Peabody ; Christianity measures him and pronounces his mil- 
 lions worth less than the widow's mite. 
 
 In my lecture I have applied my principles, or tried to apply 
 them, fairly to the mechanic as well as to the millionaire. I 
 have deprecated, as immoral, a resort to strikes solely in the 
 interest of the strikers, without regard to the ijeneral interests 
 of industry and of the community at large. Wliat has my 
 critic to say, from the moral point of view, to the gas stokers 
 who leave London in the dark, or the colliers who, in strug- 
 gling to raise their own wages, condemn the ironworkers to 
 " clamm " for want of coal ? 
 
 I would venture to suo-o;est that Mr. Greef somewhat over- 
 rates in his paper the beneficence of luxury as an agent in the 
 advancement of civilization. " Artificial wants," he says, 
 " what may be termed extravagant wants, the wish to possess 
 something beyond the bare necessaries of existence ; the taste 
 for superfiuities and luxuries first, the desire for refinements 
 and embellishments next ; the craving for the higher enjoy- 
 ments of intellect and art as the final stage — these are the 
 sources and stimulants of advancing civilization. It is these 
 desires, these needs, which raise mankind above mere animal 
 existence, which, in time and gradually, transform the savage 
 into the cultured citizen of intelligence and leisure. Ample 
 food once obtained, he begins to long for better, more varied, 
 more succulent food ; the richer nutriment leads on to the well- 
 stored larder and the well-filled cellar, and culminates in the 
 French cook." The love of truth, the love of beauty, the effort 
 
WE A T IS C UL PA BLE L UXUE Y? 155 
 
 to realize a high type of individual character, and a high social 
 ideal, surely these are elements of progress distinct from gas- 
 tronomy, and from that special chain of gradual improvement 
 which culminates in the French cook. It may be doubted 
 whether French cookery does always denote the acme of civil- 
 ization. Perhaps in the case of the typical London Alderman, 
 it denotes something like the acme of barbarism ; for the barbar- 
 ism of the elaborate and expensive glutton surely exceeds that 
 of the child of nature who gorges himself on the flesh which he 
 has taken in hunting : not to mention that the child of nature 
 costs humanity nothing, whereas the gourmand devours the 
 labour of the French cook and probably that of a good many 
 assistants and purveyors. 
 
 The greatest service is obviously rendered by any one who 
 can improve human food. " The man is what he eats," is a 
 truth though somewhat too broadly stated. But then the im- 
 provement must be one ultimately if not immediately accessi- 
 ble to mankind in general. That which requires a French cook 
 is accessible only to a few. 
 
 Again, in setting forth the civilizing effects of expenditure, 
 ]\tr. Greg, I think, rather leaves out of sight those of frugality. 
 The Florentines, certainly the leaders of civilization in their 
 day, were frugal in their personal habits, and by that frugality 
 accumulated the public wealth which produced Florentine art, 
 and sustained a national policy eminently generous and benefi- 
 cent for its time. 
 
 Moreover, in estimating the general influence of great fortunes, 
 Mr. Greg seems to take a rather sanguine view of the probable 
 character and conduct of their possessors. He admits that a broad- 
 acred peer or opulent commoner " may spend his £30,000 a-year 
 in such a manner as to be a curse, a reproach, and an object of 
 contempt to the community, demoralizing and disgusting all 
 around him ; doing no good to others, and bringing no real en- 
 joyment to himself." But he appears to think that the normal 
 case, and the one which should govern our general views and 
 policy upon the subject, is that of a man " of refined taste and 
 intellect expanded to the requirements of his position, manag- 
 ing his property with care and judgment, so as to set a feasible 
 example to less wealthy neighbours ; prompt to discern and to 
 aid useful undertakings, to succour striving merit, unearned 
 suffering, and overmatched energy." " Such a man," he says, 
 in a concluding burst of eloquence, " if his establishment in 
 horses and servants is not immoderate, although he surrounds 
 
156 WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? 
 
 himself with all that art can offer to render life beautiful and 
 elegant ; though he gathers round hiin the best productions of 
 the intellect of all countries and ages ; though his gardens and 
 his park are models of curiosity and beauty ; though he lets his 
 ancestral trees rot in their picturesque inutility instead of con- 
 verting them into profitable timber, and disregards the fact 
 that his park would be more productive if cut up into potato 
 plots ; though, in fine, he lives in the very height of elegant, 
 refined and tasteful luxury — I should hesitate to denounce as 
 consuming on himself the incomes of countless labouring fami- 
 lies ; and I should imagine that he might lead his life of tem- 
 perate and thoughtful joy, quietly conscious that his liberal 
 expenditure enabled scores of these families, as well as artists 
 and others, to exist in comfort, and without either brain or 
 heart giving way under the burdensome reflection. " 
 
 It must be by a slip of the pen, such as naturally occurs 
 amidst the glow of an enthusiastic description, that the writer 
 speaks of people as enabling others to subsist by their expendi- 
 ture. It is clear that people can furnish subsistence to themselves 
 or others only by production. A rich idler may appear to give 
 bread to an artist or opera girl, but the bread really comes not 
 from the idler, but from the workers who pay his rents : the 
 idler is at most the channel of distribution. The munificence 
 of monarchs, who generously lavish the money of the tax- 
 payer, is a familiar case of the same fallacy. This is the illusion 
 of the Ii-ish peasant, whose respect for the spendthrift " gen- 
 tleman " and contempt for the frugal " sneak " Mr. Greg 
 honours with a place among the serious elements of an econo- 
 mical and social problem. 
 
 But not to dwell on what is so obvious, how many, let me ask, 
 of the possessors of inherited wealth in England, or in any other 
 country, fulfil or approach Mr. Greg's ideal ? I confess that, as 
 regards the mass of the English squires, the passage seems to 
 me almost satire. Refined taste and expanded intellect, prompt- 
 ness to discern and aid striving merit and unearned suffering, 
 life surrounded with all that art can do to render it beautiful 
 and elegant, the best productions of intellect gathered from all 
 intellects and ages — I do not deny that Mr. Greg has seen all 
 this, but I can hardly believe that he has seen it often, and I 
 suspect that there are probably people, not unfamiliar with the 
 abodes of great landowners, who have never seen it at all. Not 
 to speak of artists and art, what does landed wealth do for 
 popular education ? It appears, from the Popular Education 
 
WE A T IS CULPABLE L UXUR Y ? 1 57 
 
 Beport of 18G1 (p. 77) that in a district taken as a fair speci- 
 men, the sum of £4,518, contributed by voluntary subscription 
 towards the support of 168 schools, was derived from the fol- 
 lowing sources : 
 
 1C9 clergymen contributed £1,782 or £10 10 each 
 
 399 landowners " 2,127 " 5 6 0" 
 
 217 occupiers " 200 " 18 G " 
 
 102 householders " 181 " 1 15 G " 
 
 141 other persons " 228 " 1 12 4 " 
 
 The rental of the 399 landowners was estimated at XG50,000 
 a year. Judging from the result of my own observations, I 
 should not have been at all surprised if a further analysis of 
 the return had shown that not only the contributions of the 
 clergy but those of retired professional men and others with 
 limited incomes were, in projjortion, far greater than those of 
 the leviathans of wealth. 
 
 To play the part of Mr. Greg's ideal millionaire, a man must 
 have not only a large heart but a cultivated mind ; and how 
 often are educators successful in getting work out of boys or 
 youths who know that they have not to make their own bread ? 
 
 In my lecture I have drawn a strong distinction, though Mr. 
 Greg has not observed it, between hereditary wealth and that 
 which, however great, and even, compared with the w^ages of 
 subordinate producers, excessive, is earned by industry. Wealth 
 earned by industry is, for obvious reaisons, generall}' much 
 more wisely and beneficially spent than hereditary wealth. 
 The self-made millionaire must at all events, have an active 
 mind. The late Mr. Brassey was probably one man in a hun- 
 dred even among self-made millionaires ; among hereditary 
 millionaires he would have been one in a thousand. Surely 
 we always bestow especial praise on one who resists the 
 evil influences of hereditary wealth, and surely our praise is 
 deserved. 
 
 The good which private wealth has done in the way of 
 patronizing literature and art is, I am convinced, greatly over- 
 rated. The beneficent patronage of Lorenzo di M edici is, like 
 that of Louis XIV., a chronological and moral fallacy. What 
 Lorenzo did was, in effect, to make literature and art servile, 
 and in some cases to taint them with the propensities of a 
 magnificent debauchee. It was not Lorenzo, nor any number 
 of Lorenzos, that made Florence, with her intellect and beauty, 
 but the public spirit, the love of the community, the intensity 
 
158 WHA T IS CULPA BLE L U.YUR 7 ? 
 
 of civic life, in which the interest of Florentine histoiy lies. 
 The decree of the Commune for the building of the Cathedral 
 directs the architect to make a desimi " of such noble and ex- 
 treme magnificence that the industry and skill of men shall be 
 able to invent nothing grander or more beautiful," since it had 
 been decided in Council that no plan should be accepted " un- 
 less the concepti(m was such as to render the work worthy of 
 an ambition which had become very great, inasmuch as it 
 resulted from the continued desires of a great number of 
 citizens united in one sole will." 
 
 I believe, too, that the munificence of a community is gener- 
 ally wiser and better directed than that of private benefactors. 
 Nothing can be more admirable than the munificence of rich 
 men in the United States. But the drawback in the way of 
 personal fancies and crochets is so great that I sometimes doubt, 
 whether future generations will have reason to thank the pre- 
 sent, especially as the reverence of the Americans for property 
 is so intense that they would let a dead founder breed any 
 pestilence rather than touch the letter of his will. 
 
 Politically, no one can have lived in the New World without 
 knowing that a society in which wealth is distributed rests on 
 an incomparably safer foundation than one in which it is con- 
 centrated in the hands of a few. British plutocracy has its 
 cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens to take fancies into 
 his head the " whiff" of grapeshot " goes the wrong way. 
 
 Socially, I do not know whether Mr. Greg has been led to 
 consider the extent to which artificial desires, expensive fash- 
 ions, and conventional necessities created by wealth, interfere 
 with freedom of intercourse and general happiness. The 
 Saturday Review says : 
 
 " All classes of Her Majesty's respectable subjects are always doing their 
 best to keep up appearances, and a very hard struggle niauy of us make 
 of it. Thus a mansion in Belgrave Square ought to mean a corpulent 
 hall-porter, a couple of gigantic footmen, a butler and an under-butler at 
 the very least, if the owner professes to live up to his social dignities. If 
 our house is in Baker or Wimpole street, we mvist certainly have a man- 
 servant in sombre raiment to open our door, with a hobbledehoy or a. 
 buttons to run his superior's messages. In the smart, although somewhat 
 dismal, small sc(uares in South Kensington and the Western suburbs, the- 
 parlourmaid must wear the freshest of ribbons and trimmest of bows, and 
 be resjjlendent in starch and clean coloured muslins. So it goes on, as 
 we run down the gamut of the social scale ; our ostentatious expendi- 
 tiu-e must be in harmony throughout with the stuccoed fa^;ade behind 
 which we live, or the staff of domestics we parade. We are aware, of 
 course, as our incomes for the most part are limited, and as we are all of 
 
WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? 159* 
 
 us upon our mettle in the battle of life, that we must pinch somewhere if 
 appearances are to be kept up. We do what we can in secret towards 
 balancing the budget. We I'etrench on our charities, save on our coals,, 
 screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of more gener- 
 ous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable, and 
 systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger success- 
 fully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with the most of 
 us, if our position is an anxiovis one, it is of our own making, and if we 
 dared to be eccentrically rational, it might be very tolerable." 
 
 Nor is this the worst. The worst is the exclusion from 
 society of the people who do not choose to torture and degrade 
 themselves in order to keep up appearances, and who are prob- 
 ably the best people of all. The interference of wealth and its 
 exigencies with social enjoyment is, I suspect, a heavy set-off 
 against squirearchical patronage of intellect and art. 
 
 Those who believe that the distribution of wealth is more 
 favourable to happiness and more civilizing than its concentra- 
 tion, will of course vote against laws which tend to artificial 
 concentration of wealth, such as those of pi-imogeniture and 
 entail. This they may do without advocating public plunder, 
 though it suits plutocratic writers to confound the two. For 
 my own part I do not feel bound to pay to British plutocracy 
 a respect which British plutocracy does not pay to humanity. 
 Some of its organs are beginning to preach doctrines revolting 
 to a Christian, and to any man who has not banished from his 
 heart the love of his kind ; and we have seen it, when its class 
 passions were excited, show a temper as cruel as that of any 
 Maratist or Petroleuse. But so far from attacking the institu- 
 tion of property,* I have as great a respect for it as any mil- 
 lionaire can have, and as sincerely accept and uphold it as the 
 condition of our civilization. There is nothing inconsistent 
 with this in the belief that among the better part of the race 
 property is being gradually modified by duty, or in the sur- 
 mise that before hum.anity reaches its distant gaol, property 
 and duty will alike be merged in affection. 
 
 * The Saiurdau Review some time ago chari^'ed me with proposing to confiscate the 
 increase in the value of lanrl. I never said anything of the kind, nor anything, I 
 believe, that could easily be mistaken for it. 
 
IGO ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY, 
 
 A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 The vast works of the railway and steamboat age called into 
 existence, besides the race of great engineers, a race of great 
 organizers and directors of industry, who may be generally 
 termed Contractors. Among these no figure was more con- 
 spicuous than that of Mr. Brassey, a life of whom has just been 
 published by Messrs. Bell and Daldy. Its author is Mr. Helps, 
 whose name is a guarantee for the worthy execution of the 
 work. And worthily executed it is, in spite of a little Privy 
 Council solemnity in the reflections, and a little " State Paper" 
 in the style. The materials were collected in an unusual way 
 — by examining the persons who had acted under Mr. Brassey, 
 or knew him well, and taking down their evidence in short- 
 hand. The examination was conducted by Mr. Brassey, jun., 
 who prudently declined to write the biography himself, feeling 
 that a son could not speak impartially of his father. The re- 
 sult is that we have materials for a portrait, which not only is 
 very interesting in itself but, by presenting the image of bene- 
 ficence in an employer, may help to mediate between capital 
 and labour in a time of industrial war. 
 
 Mr. Helps had been acquainted with Mr. Brassey, and had 
 once received a visit from him on official business of difficulty 
 and importance. He expected, he says, to see a hard, stern, 
 soldierly sort of person, accustomed to sway armies of working- 
 men in an imperious fashion. Instead of this he saw an elderly 
 gentleman of very dignified apjDearance and singularly graceful 
 manners — " a gentleman of the old school." " He stated his 
 case, no, I express myself wrongly ; he did not state his case, 
 he understated it ; and there are few things more attractive in 
 a man than that he should be inclined to understate rather 
 than overstate his own case." Mr. Brassej^ was also very 
 brief, and when he went away, Mr. Helps, knowing well the 
 matter in respect to which his visitor had a grievance, thought 
 that, if it had been his own case, he should hardly have been 
 able to restrain himself so well, and speak with so little regard 
 to self-interest, as Mr. Brassey had done. Of all the persons 
 whom Mr. Helps had known, he thought Mr. Brassey most re- 
 
A TRUE CA FT A IN OF IND US TR Y. Id 
 
 sembled that perfect gentleman and excellent public man, Lord 
 Herbert of Lea. 
 
 Mr, Helps commences his work with a general portrait. 
 According to this portrait, the most striking feature in Mr. 
 Brassey's character was trustfulness, which he carried to what 
 might appear an extreme. He chose his agents with care, but, 
 having chosen them, placed implicit confidence in them, trust- 
 ing them for all details, and judging by results. He was very 
 liberal in the conduct of business. His temperament was sin- 
 gularly calm and equable, not to be discomposed by success or 
 failure, easily throwing otf the burden of care, and, when all 
 had been done that could be done, awaiting the result with 
 perfect equanimity. He was very delicate in blaming, his 
 censure being always of the gentlest kind, evidently reluctant, 
 and on that account going more to the heart. His generosity 
 made him exceedingly popular with his subordinates and work- 
 men, who looked forward to his coming among them as a fes- 
 tive event ; and, when any disaster occurred in the works, the 
 usual parts of employer and employed were reversed — the 
 employer it was who framed the excuses and comforted the 
 employed. He was singularly courteous, and listened to every- 
 body with respect ; so that it was a marked thing when he 
 went so far as to say of a voluble and empty chatterer, that 
 " the peas were overgrowing the stick." His presence of mind 
 was great ; he had in an eminent degree, as his biographer re- 
 marks, what Napoleon called " two o'clock in the morning- 
 courage," being always ready, if called up in the middle of the 
 night, to meet any urgent peril ; and his faculties were stimu- 
 lated, not overcome, by danger. He had a perfect hatred of 
 contention, and would not only refuse to take any questionable 
 advantage, but would rather even submit to be taken advan- 
 tage of — a generosity which turned to his account. In the 
 execution of any undertaking, his anxiety was that the work 
 should be done quickly and done well. Minor questions, un- 
 provided for by specific contract, he left to be settled after- 
 wards. In his life he had only one regular law-suit. It was 
 in Spain, about the Mataro line, and into this he was drawn 
 by his partner against his will. He declared that he would 
 never have another, "for in nineteen cases out of twenty you 
 either gain nothing at all, or what you do gain does not com- 
 pensate you for the worry and anxiety the lawsuit occasions 
 you." In case of disputes between his agents and the engineers, 
 he quietly settled the question by reference to the " gangers." 
 L 
 
162 -4 TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 In order to find the key to Mr. Brassey's character, his bio- 
 grapher took care to ascertain what was his " ruling passion." 
 He had none of the ordinary ambitions for rank, title, or social 
 position. " His great ambition — his ruling passion — was to 
 win a high reputation for skill, integrity, and success in the 
 difficult vocation of a contractor for public works ; to give 
 large employment to his fellow-countrymen ; by means of 
 British labour and British skill to knit toofether foreijyn coun- 
 tries ; and to promote civilization, according to his view of it, 
 throughout the world." " Mr. Brassey," continues Mr. Helps, 
 " was, in brief, a singularly trustful, generous, large-hearted, 
 dexterous, ruling kind of personage ; blessed with a felicitous 
 temperament for bearing the res])onsibiIity of great afiairs." 
 In the military age he might have been a great soldier, a Tu- 
 rcnne or a Marlborough, if he could have broken through the 
 aristocratic barrier which confined high command to the piivi- 
 leged few ; in the industrial age he found a more beneficent road 
 to distinction, and one not limited to the members of a caste. 
 Mr. Brassey's family is stated by his biographer to have 
 come over with the Conqueror. If Mr. Brassey attached 
 any importance to his pedigree (of which there is no appear- 
 ance) it is to be hoped that he was able to make it out more 
 clearly than most of those who claim descent from companions 
 of the Conqueror. Long after the Conquest — so long, indeed, 
 as England and Normandy remained united under one crown — 
 there was a constant flow of Norman immigration into Eng- 
 land, and England swarms with people bearing Norman or 
 French names, whose ancestors were perfectly guiltless of the 
 bloodshed of Hastings, and made their entrance into the country 
 as peaceful traders, and, perhaps, in even humbler capacities. 
 What is certain is that the great contractor sprang from a line 
 of those small landed proj)rietors, once the pillars of England's 
 strength, virtue and freedom, who, in the old country have been 
 "improved ofi'the face of the earth" by the great landowners, 
 while they live again on the happier side of the Atlantic. A 
 sound morality, freedom from luxury, and a moderate degree 
 of culture, are the heritage of the scion of such a stock. Mr. 
 Brassey was brought up at home till he was twelve years old, 
 when he was sent to school at Chester. At sixteen he was 
 articled to a surveyor, and as an initiation into great works, he 
 helped, as a pupil, to make the surveys for the then famous 
 Holyhead road. His master, Mr. Lawton, saw his worth, and 
 ultimately took him into pai'tnership. The firm set up at 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. I63 
 
 Birkenhead, then a very small place, but destined to a great- 
 ness which, it seems, Mr. Lawton had the shrewdness to discern. 
 At Birkenhead Mr. Brassey did well, of course ; and there, after 
 a time, he was brought into contact with George Stephenson, 
 and by him at once appreciated and induced to engage in rail- 
 vv^ays. The first contract which he obtained was for the Pem- 
 bridge Viaduct, between Stafford and Wolverhampton, and for 
 this he was enabled to tender by the liberality of his bankers, 
 whose contidence, like that of all with whom he came into con- 
 tact, he had won. Railway-making was at that time a new 
 business, and a contractor was required to meet great demands 
 upon his organizing power ; the system of sub-contracts, which 
 so much facilitates the work, being then only in its infancy. 
 From George Stephenson Mr. Brassey passed to Mr. Locke, 
 whose great coadjutor he speedily became. And now the ques- 
 tion arose whetlier he should venture to leave his moorings at 
 Birkenhead and launch upon the wide sea of railroad enterprise. 
 His wife is said, by a happy inspiration, to have decided him 
 in favour of the more important and ambitious sphere. She 
 did so at the sacrifice of her domestic comfort ; for in the pro- 
 secution of her husband's multifarious enterprises they changed 
 their residence eleven times in the next thirteen years, several 
 times to places abroad ; and little during those years did his 
 wife and family see of Mr. Brassey. 
 
 A high place in Mr. Brassey's calling had now been won, and 
 it had been won not by going into rings or making corners, but 
 by treading steadily the steep path of honour. Mr. Locke 
 was accused of unduly favouring Mr. Brassey. Mr. Helps re- 
 plies that the partiality of a man like Mr. Locke must have 
 been based on business grounds. It was found that when Mr. 
 Brassey had undertaken a contract, the engineer-in-chief had 
 little to do in the way of supervision, Mr. Locke felt assured 
 that the bargain would be not only exactly but handsomely 
 fulfilled, and that no excuse would be pleaded for alteration or 
 delay. After the fall of a great viaduct it was suggested to 
 Mr. Brassey that, by representing his case, he might obtain a 
 reduction of his loss, " No," was his reply, " I have contracted 
 to make and maintain the road, and nothing shall prevent 
 Thomas Brassey from being as good as his word." 
 
 As a contractor on a large scale, and especially as a contractor 
 for foreign railroads, Mr. Brassey was Jed ra[)idly to develop 
 the system of sub contracting. His mode of dealing with his 
 sub-contractors, however, was peculiar. They did not regularly 
 
164 ^ TRVE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 contract with him, but he appointed them their work, telling 
 them what price he should give for it. They were ready to 
 take his word, knowing that they would not suffer by so doing. 
 The sub-contractor who had made a bad bargain, and found 
 himself in a scrape, anxiously looked for the coming of Mr. 
 Brassey. " Mr. Brassey," says one of the witnesses examined 
 for this biography, " came, saw how matters stood, and invari- 
 ably satisfied the man. If a cutting taken to be clay turned 
 out after a very short time to be rock, the sub-contractor would 
 be getting disheartened, yet he still persevered, looking to the 
 time when Mr. Brassey should come. He came, walking along 
 the line as usual with a number of followers, and on coming to 
 the cutting he looked round, counted the number of waggons at 
 the work, scanned the cutting, and took stock of the nature of 
 the stuff. " This is very hard," said he to the sub-contractor. 
 " Yes, it is a pretty deal harder than I bargained for." Mr. 
 Brassey would linger behind, allowing the others to go on, and 
 then commence the following conversation : " What is your 
 price for this cutting ? " " So much a yard. Sir." " It is very 
 evident you are not getting it out for that price. Have you 
 asked for any advance to be made to you for this rock?" "Yes, 
 sir, but I can make no sense of them," " If you say that your 
 price is so much; it is quite clear that you do not do it for that. 
 I am glad that you have persevered with it ; but I shall not 
 alter your price ; it must remain as it is ; but the rock must be 
 measured for you twice. Will that do for you ? " " Yes, very 
 well indeed, and I am very much obliged to you. Sir." " Very 
 well, go on ; you have done very well in persevering, and I 
 shall look to you again. One of these tours of inspection would 
 often cost Mr. Brassey a thousand pounds. 
 
 Mr. Brassey, like all men who have done great things in the 
 practical world, knew his way to men's hearts. In his tours 
 along the line he remembered even the navvies, and saluted 
 them by their names. 
 
 He understood the value of the co-operative principle as a 
 guarantee for hearty work. His agents were made partakers 
 in his success, and he favoured the butty-gang system — that of 
 letting work to a gang of a dozen men, who divide the pay, 
 allowing something extra to the head of the gang. 
 
 Throughout his life it was a prime object with him to collect 
 around him a good staff of well-tried and capable men. He 
 chose well, and adhered to his choice. If a man failed in one 
 line, he did not cast him off, but tried him in another. It was 
 
A TR UE CA FTAIN OF IND USTR T. 165 
 
 well known in the labour market that he would never give a 
 man up if he could help it. He did not even give men up 
 when they had gone to law with him. In the appendix is a 
 letter written by him to provide employment for a person who 
 " had by some means got into a suit or reference against him," 
 but whom he described as " knowing his work well." In hard 
 times he still kept his staff together by subdividing the em- 
 ployment. 
 
 Those social philosophers who delight in imagining that 
 there is no engineering skill, or skill of any kind, in Eng- 
 land, have to account for the fact that a large proportion of the 
 foreign railways are of British construction. The lines built 
 by Mr. Brassey form an imposing figure not only on the map 
 of England, but on those of Europe, North and South America 
 and Australia. The Paris and Rouen Railway was the first of the 
 series. In passing to the foreign scene of action new difficulties 
 had to be encountered, including that of carrying over, managing 
 and housing large bodies of British navvies; and Mr. Brassey's 
 administrative powers were f urthertriedand more conspicuously 
 developed. The railway army, under its commander-in-chief, 
 was now fully organized. "If," says Mr. Helps, "we look at 
 the several persons and classes engaged, they may be enume- 
 rated thus : — There were the engineers of the company or of 
 the government who were promoters of the Vne. There were 
 the principal contractors, whose work had to satisfy these 
 engineers ; and there were the agents of the contractors, to 
 whom were apportioned the several lengths of the line. These 
 agents had the duties, in some respects, of a commissaiy-general 
 in an army ; and for the work to go on well, it was necessary 
 that they should be men of much intelligence and force of 
 character. Then there were the various artizans, such as 
 bricklayers and masons, whose work, of course, was principally 
 that of constructing the culverts, bridges, stations, tunnels and 
 viaducts, to whicli points of the work the a^ttention of the 
 agents had to be carefully directed. Again, there were the 
 sub-contractors, whose duties I have enumerated, and under 
 them were the gangers, the corporals, as it were, in this great 
 army, being the persons who had the control of small bodies of 
 workmen, say twenty or more. Then came the great body of 
 navvies, the privates of the army, upon whose endurance and 
 valour so much depended." 
 
 There is a striking passage in one of the Erckmann-Chatrian 
 novels, depicting the French army going into action, with its 
 
1G6 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 vast bodies of troops of all arms moving over the whole field, 
 marshalled by perfect discipline, and wielded by the single will 
 of Napoleon. The army of industry when in action also pre- 
 sented a striking appearance in its way. " I think," says one 
 of Mr. Brassey's time-keepers, with professional enthusiasm, 
 " as fine a spectacle as any man could witness, who is accus- 
 tomed to look at work, is to see a cutting in full operation, 
 with about twenty waggons being filled, every man at his post, 
 and every man with his shirt open, working in the heat of the 
 day, the ganger walking about, and everything going like clock- 
 work. Such an exhibition of physical power attracted many 
 French gentlemen, who came on to the cuttings at Paris and 
 E-ouen, and, looking at the English workmen with astonish- 
 ment, said, ' Mon JJieu, les Anglais comnie Us travaillent ? ' 
 Another thing that called forth remark was the complete 
 silence that prevailed amongst the men. It was a fine sight 
 to see the Englishmen that were there, with their muscular 
 arras, and hands hairy and brown." 
 
 The army was composed of elements as motley as ever met 
 under any commander. On the Paris and Rouen Railway 
 eleven languages were spoken — English, Erse, Gaelic, Welsh, 
 French, German, Belgian, (Flemish), Dutch, Piedmontese, Span- 
 ish and Polish. A common lingo naturally sprang up, like the 
 Pigeon English of China. But in the end it seems many of 
 the navvies learnt to speak French pretty well. We are told 
 that at first the mode in which the English " instructed" the 
 French was " of a very original charactei." " They pointed to 
 the earth to be moved, or the wago-on to be filled, said the 
 
 word ' d n' emphatically, stamped their feet, and somehow 
 
 or other their instructions, thus conveyed, were generally com- 
 prehended by the foreigners." It is added, however, that " this 
 form of instruction was only applicable in very simple cases." 
 
 The English navvy was found to be the first workman in the 
 world. Some navvies utterly distanced in working power the 
 labourers of all other countries. The French at first earned 
 only two francs a day to the Englishman's four anda-half ; but 
 with better living, more instruction, and improved tools fforthe 
 French tools were very poor at first), the Frenchmen came to 
 earn four francs. In the severe and dangerous work of mining, 
 however, the Englishman maintained his superiority in nerve 
 and steadiness. The Piedmontese were very good hands, espe- 
 cially for cutting rock, and at the same time well-conducted, 
 sober and saving. The Neapolitans would not take any heavy 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 167 
 
 work, but they seem to have been temperate and thrifty. The 
 men from Lucca ranked midway between the Piedraontese and 
 the Neapolitans. The Germans proved less enduring than the 
 French ; those employed, however, were mostly Bavarians. 
 The Belgians were good labourers. In the mode of working, 
 the foreign labourers had of course much to learn from the Eng- 
 lish, whose experience in railway-making had taught them the 
 most compendious processes for moving earth. 
 
 Mr. Havvkshaw, the engineer, however says, as to the relative 
 cost of unskilled labour in different countries : " I have 
 come to the conclusion that its cost is much the same in all. I 
 have had personal expei'ience in South America, in Russia, and 
 in Holland, as well as in my own country, and, as consulting 
 engineer to some of the Indian and other foreign railways. I am 
 pretty well acquainted with the value of Hindoo and other 
 labour ; and though an English labourer will do a larger amount 
 of work than a Creole or a Hindoo, yet you have to pay them 
 proportionately higher wages. Dutch labourers are, I think, 
 as good as English, or nearly so ; and Russian workmen are 
 docile and easily taught, and readily adopt every method 
 shown to them to be better than their own." 
 
 The " navvies," though rough, seem not to have been un- 
 manageable. There are no trades' unions among them, and 
 they seldom strike. Brandy being cheap in France, they were 
 given to drink, which was not the French habit : but their good 
 nature, and the freedom with which they spent their money, 
 made them popular, and even the gendarmes soon found out 
 the best way of managing them. The}^ sometimes, but not 
 generally, got unruly on pay day. They came to their foreign 
 work without wife or family. The unmarried often took for- 
 eign wives. It is pleasant to hear that those who had wives 
 and families in England sent home money periodically to them ; 
 and that they all sent money often to their parents. They 
 sturdily kept their English habits and their English dress, with 
 the high-low boots laced up, if they could possibly get them 
 made. 
 
 The multiplicity of schemes now submitted to Mr. Brassey 
 brought out his powers of calculation and mental arithmetic, 
 which appear to have been very great. After listening to a 
 multitude of complicated details, he would arrive mentally in 
 a few seconds at the approximate cost of a line. He made little 
 use of notes, trusting to his memory, which, naturally strong, 
 was strengthened by habit. Dealing with hundreds of people, 
 
108 A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 he kept their affairs in his head, and at every halt in his jour- 
 neys, even for a quarter of an hour at a railway station, he 
 would sit down and write letters of the clearest kind His 
 biographer says that he was one of the greatest letter- writers 
 ever known. 
 
 If he ever got into serious difficulties, it was not from mis- 
 calculation, but from financial embarrassment, which in 1866 
 pressed upon him in such a manner and with such severity, 
 that his property of all kinds was largely committed, and he 
 weathered the storm only by the aid of the staunch friends 
 whom his high qualities and honourable conduct had wedded 
 to his person and his fortunes. In the midst of his difficulties 
 he pushed on his works to their conclusion with his character- 
 istic rapidity. His perseverance supported his reputation, and 
 turned the wavering balance in his favour. The daring and 
 vigorous completion of the Lemberg and Czarnovitz works, es- 
 pecially, had this good effijct ; and an incident, in connection 
 with them, showed the zeal and devotion which JVIr. Brassey's 
 character inspired. The works were chiefly going on at Lem- 
 berg, five hundred miles from Vienna, and the difficulty was, 
 how to get the money to pay the men from Vienna to Lem- 
 burg, the intervening country being occupied by the Austrian 
 and Prussian armies. Mr. Brassey's coadjutor and devoted friend, 
 Mr. Ofenheim, Director-General of the Company, undertook to 
 do it. He was told there was no engine : but he found an old 
 engine in a shed. Next he wanted an engine-driver, and he 
 found one ; but the man said that he had a wife and children, 
 and that he would not go. His reluctance was overcome by 
 the promise of a high reward for himself, and a provision, in 
 case of death, for his wife and family. The two jumped on 
 the old engine and got up steam. They then started, and ran 
 at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour between the sentinels 
 of the opposing armies, who were so sui^prised, Mr. Ofen- 
 heim says, that they had not time to shoot him. His only fear 
 was that there might be a rail up somewhere. But he got to 
 Lemberg, and paid the men, who would othei'wise have gone 
 home, leaving the line unfinished for the winter. The Emperor 
 of Austria might well ask, " Who is this Mr. Brassey, the Eng- 
 lish contractoi', for whom men are to be found who work with 
 such zeal and risk their lives ? " In recognition of a power 
 which the Emperor had reason to envy, he sent Mr. Brassey 
 the Cross of the Iron Crown. 
 
 It was only in Spain, " the land where two and two make 
 five," that Mr. Brassey's powers of calculation failed him. He 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 1G9 
 
 and his partners lost lai-gely upon the Bilbao railway. It 
 seems that there was a mistake as to the nature of the soil, 
 and that the climate proved wetter than was expected. But 
 the firm also forgot to allow for the ecclesiastical calendar, and 
 the stoppage of work on the numberless fete days. Thei-e 
 were, however, other difficulties peculiarly Spanish, — antedi- 
 luvian finance, antediluvian currency, the necessity of sending 
 pay under a guard of clerks armed with revolvers, and the 
 strange nature of the people whom it was requisite to employ 
 — one of them, a Carlist chief, living in defiance of the Gov- 
 ernment with a tail of ruffians like himself, who, when you 
 would not transact business as he wished, " bivouacked" with his 
 tail round your office and threatened to " kill you as he would 
 a fly." Mr. Brassey managed notwithstanding to illustrate the 
 civilizing power of railways by teaching the Basques the use of 
 paper mone}^. 
 
 Minor misfortunes of course occurred, such as the fall of the 
 Barentin Viaduct on the Rouen and Havre railway, a brick 
 structure one hundred feet high and a third of a mile in 
 length, which had just elicited the praise of the Minister of 
 Public Works. Rapid execution in bad weather, and inferior 
 mortar, were the principal causes of this accident. By extra- 
 ordinary efibrt the viaduct was built in less than six months, a 
 display of energy and resource which the company acknow- 
 ledged by an allowance of £1,000. On the Bilbao railway some 
 of the works were destroyed by very heavy rains. The agent 
 telegraphed to Mr. Brassey to come at once, as a bridge had 
 been washed down. There hours afterwards came a telegraph 
 announcing that a large bank was carried away, and next 
 morning another saying that the rain continued and more 
 damage had been done. Mr. Brassey, turning to a friend, said, 
 laughing : " I think I had better wait till I hear that the wind 
 has ceased, so that when I do go I may see what is left of the 
 works, and estimate all the disasters at once, and so save a 
 second journey." 
 
 Mr. Brassey's business rapidly developed to an immense ex- 
 tent, and, instead of being contractor for one or two lines, he 
 became a sort of contractor-in-chief, and a man to be consulted 
 by all railway proprietors. In thirty-six years he executed no 
 less than one hundred and seventy railway and other contracts. 
 In his residence, as in his enterprises, he now became cosmo- 
 politan, and lived a good detil on the 2'ail. He had the physi- 
 cal power to bear this life. His brother-in-law says, "I have 
 
170 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 known him come direct from France to Rugby, having leffc 
 Havre the night before — he would have been engaged in the 
 office the whole day. He would then come down to Rugby 
 by the mail train at twelve o'clock, and it was his common 
 practice to be on the works by six o'clock the next morning. 
 He would frequently walk from Rugby to Nuneaton, a dis- 
 tance of sixteen miles. Having arrived at Nuneaton in the 
 afternoon, he would proceed the same night by road to Tam- 
 worth ; and the next morning he would be out on the road so 
 soon that he liad the reputation among his staff of being the 
 first man on the works. He used to proceed over the works 
 from Tam worth to Statford, walking the greater part of the 
 distance ; and would frequently proceed that same evening to 
 Lancaster, in order to inspect the works there in progress un- 
 der the contract which he had for the execution of the railway 
 from Lancaster to Carlisle." 
 
 In constructing the Great Northern Railway the difficulties 
 of the Fen Country were met and surmounted. Mr. Brassey's 
 chief agent in this was Mr. Ballard, a man self raised from the 
 ranks of labour, but indebted for the eminence which he ulti- 
 mately attained to Mr. Brassey's discrimination in selecting 
 him for the arduous undertaking. He has borne interesting: 
 testimony to his superior's comprehensiveness and rapidity of 
 view, the directness with which he went to the important 
 point, disregarding secondary matters, and economizing his 
 time and thought. 
 
 The Italian Railway enterprises of Mr. Brassey owed their 
 origin to the economical genius of Count Cavour, and their 
 execution drew from the Count the declaration that Mr. Bras- 
 sey was " one of the most remarkable men he knew ; clear- 
 headed, cautious, yet very enterprising, and fulfilling his en- 
 gagements faithfully." " We never," said the Count, " had a 
 difficulty with him." And he added that " Mr. Brassey would 
 make a sj^lendid minister of public works. Mr. Brassey took 
 shares gallantly, and, when their value had risen, most gener- 
 ously resigned them, with a view to enabling the government to 
 interest Piedmontese investors in the undertaking. So far was 
 he from being a maker of "corners." It is justly remarked 
 that these Piedmontese railroads, constructed by English en- 
 terprise, were a most important link in the chain of events 
 which brought about the emancipation and unification of Italy. 
 
 Mr. Brassey has left on record the notable remark that the 
 railway from Turin to Novara was completed for about the 
 
A TR UE CA PTAIN OF IND USTRY. 171 
 
 same money as was spent in obtaining the Bill for the railway 
 i'rom London to York. If the history of railway bills in the 
 British Parliament, of which this statement gives us an ink- 
 ling, could be disclosed, it would probably be one of the 
 most scandalous revelations in commercial history. The con- 
 tests wdiich led to such ruinous expense and to so much demor- 
 alization, both of Parliament and of the commercial world, were 
 a consequence of adopting the system of uncontrolled competi- 
 tion in place of that of government control. Mr. Brassey 
 was in favour of the system of government control. " He 
 was of opinion that the French policy, which did not admit the 
 principle of free competition, was not only more calculated 
 to serve the interests of the shareholders, but more fa- 
 vourable to the public. He moreover considered that a mul- 
 tiplicity of parallel lines of communication between the same 
 termini, and the uncontrolled competition in regard to the 
 service of trains, such as exists in England, did not secure so 
 efficient a service for the public as the system adopted in 
 France." Mr. Thomas Brassey says that he remembers that 
 his father, when travelling in France, would constantly point 
 out the superiority of the arrangements, and express his regi'et 
 that the French policy had not been adopted in England. 
 " He thought that all the advantage of cheap service and of 
 sufficiently frequent communication, which were intended to 
 be secured for the British public under a system of free compe- 
 tition, would have been equally well secured by adopting the 
 foreign system, and giving a monopoly to the interest of rail- 
 way communication in a given district to one company ; and 
 then limiting the exercise of that monopoly by watchful super- 
 vision on the part of the State in the interests of the public." 
 With regard to extensions, he thought that the government 
 might have secured sufficient compulsory powers. There can 
 be no sort of doubt that this sort of policy would have saved 
 England an enormous amount of pecuniary loss, personal 
 distress and public demoralization. It is a policy, it will be 
 observed, of government regulation, not of government sub- 
 sidies or construction by government. It of course implies the- 
 existence of an administration capable of regulating a railway 
 system, and placed above the influence of jobbery and corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 For the adoption of the policy of free competition Sir Robert 
 Peel was especially responsible. He said, in his own defence, 
 that he had not at his command power to control those under- 
 
172 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 takings. Mr. Helps assumes rather characteristically that he 
 meant official power ; and draws a moral in favour of the ex- 
 tension of the civil service. But there is no doubt that Peel 
 really meant Parliamentary power. The railway men in the 
 Parliament were too strong for him, and compelled him to 
 throw overboard the scheme of government control framed by 
 his own committee under the presidency of Lord Dalliousie. 
 The moral to be drawn therefore is not that of civil service 
 extension, but that of the necessity of guarding against Parlia- 
 mentary rings in legislation concerning public works. 
 
 Of all Mr. Brassey's undertakings not one was superior in im- 
 portance to that with which Canadians are best acquainted — 
 the Grand Trunk Railway, with the Victoria Bridge. It is 
 needless here to describe this enterprise, or to recount the tra- 
 gic annals of the loss brought on thousands of shareholders, 
 which, financially speaking, was its calamitous sequel. The 
 severest part of the undertaking was the Victoria Bridge. 
 " The first working season there," says one of the chief agents, 
 '■ was a period of difficulty, trouble and disaster." The agents 
 of the contractor had no experience of the climate. There 
 were numerous strikes among the workmen. The cholera com- 
 mitted dreadful ravafres in the neighbourhood. In one case, 
 out of a gang of two hundred men, sixty were sick at one time, 
 many of whom ultimately died. The shortness of the working 
 season in this country involved much loss of time. It was sel- 
 dom that the setting of the masonry was fairly commenced be- 
 fore the middle of August, and it was certain that all work 
 must cease at the end of November. Then there were the shov- 
 ing of the ice at the beginning and breaking up of the frosts, 
 and the collisions between floating rafts 250 feet long and the 
 staging erected for putting together the tubes. Great financial 
 difficulties were experiei:iced in consequence of the Crimean 
 war. The mechanical difficulties were also immense, and called 
 for extraordinary efibrts both of energy and invention. The 
 bridge, however, was completed, as had been intended, in De- 
 cember, 1859, and formally opened by the Prince of Wales in 
 the following year. " The devotion and energy of the large 
 number of workmen employed," says Mr. Hodges, " can hardly 
 be praised too highly. Once brought into proper discipline, 
 they worked as we alone can work against difficulties. They 
 have left behind them in Canada an imperishable monument 
 •of British skill, pluck, science and perseverance in this bridge, 
 which they not only designed but constructed." 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 173 
 
 The whole of the iron for the tubes was prepared at Birken- 
 head, but so well prepared that, in the centre tube, consisting 
 of no less than 10,809 pieces, in which nearly half a million of 
 holes were punched, not one plate required alteration, neither 
 was there a plate punched wrong. The faculty of invention, 
 however, was developed in the British engineers and workmen 
 by the air of the New World. A steam-traveller was made and 
 sent out by one of the most eminent firms in England, after 
 two years of experiments and an outlay of some thousands of 
 pounds, which would never do much more than move itself 
 about, and at last had to be laid aside as useless. But the 
 same descriptions and drawings having been shown to Mr. 
 ChafFey, one of the sub-contractors, who " had been in Canada a 
 sniRcient length of time to free his genius from the cramped 
 ideas of early life," a rough and ugly machine was constructed, 
 which was soon working well. The same increase of inventive- 
 ness, according to Mr. Hodges, was visible in the ordinarj^ 
 workman, when transferred from the perfect but mechanical 
 and cramping routine of British industrj', to a country where 
 he has to mix trades and turn his hands to all kinds of work. 
 " In England he is a machine, but as soon as he gets out to the 
 United States he becomes an intellectual being." Comparing 
 the German with the British mechanic, Mr. Hodges says — " I 
 do not think that a German is a better man than an English- 
 man ; but I draw this distinction between them, that when a 
 German leaves school he begins to educate himself, but the 
 Englishman does not, for, as soon as he casts ofl" the thraldom 
 of school, he learns nothing more unless he is forced to do it, 
 and if he is forced to do it, he will then beat the German. An 
 Englishman acts well when he is put under compulsion by 
 circumstances." 
 
 Labour being scarce, a number of French-Canadians were, at 
 Mr. Brassey's suggestion, brought up in organized gangs, each 
 having an Englishman or an American as their leader. We 
 are told, however, that they proved useless except for very 
 light work. " They could ballast, but they could not excavate. 
 They could not even ballast as the English navv^^ does, continu- 
 ously working at filling for the whole day. The onl}^ Avay in 
 wdiich they could be useful was by allowing them to fill the 
 waggons, and then ride out with the ballast train to the place 
 where the ballast was tipped, giving them, an opportunity of 
 resting. Then the empty waggon went back again to be filled 
 and so alternately resting during the work ; in that way, they 
 
17J! A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 did very much more. They would work fast for ten minutes 
 and then they were ' done.' This was not through idleness 
 but physical weakness. They are small men, and they are a 
 class who are not well fed. They live entirely on vegetable 
 food, and they scarcely ever taste meat." It is natural to sup- 
 pose that the want of meat is the cause of their inefficiency. 
 Yet the common farm labourer in England, who does a very 
 hard and long day's work, hardly tastes meat, in many coun- 
 ties, the year round. 
 
 In the case of the Crimean railway, private enterprise came, 
 in a memorable manner, to the assistance of a government 
 overwhelmed by administrative difficulties. A forty years' peace 
 had rusted the machinery of the war department, while the 
 machinery of railway construction was in the highest working 
 order. Sir John Burgoyne, the chief of the engineering staff", 
 testified that it was impossible to overrate the seiwices ren- 
 dered by the railway, or its effects in shortening the time of 
 the siege, and alleviating the fatigues and sufferings of the 
 troops. The disoi-ganization of the government department 
 was accidental and temporary, as was subsequently proved by 
 the success of the Abyssinian expedition, and, indeed, by the 
 closing period of the Crimean war itself, when the British army 
 was well supplied, while the French administration broke down. 
 On the other hand the resources of private industry, on which 
 the embarrassed government drew, are always there ; and 
 their immense auxiliary power would be at once manifested if 
 England should become involved in a dangerous war. It should 
 be remembered, too, that the crushing war expenditure in time 
 of peace, which alarmists always advocate, would prevent the 
 growth of those resources, and deprive England of the " sinews 
 of war." 
 
 The Danish railways brought the British navvy again into 
 comparison with his foreign rivals. Mr. Rowan, the agent of 
 Messrs. Peto and Brassey, was greatly pleased with his Danish 
 labourers, but, on being pressed, said, " No man is equal to the 
 British navvy ; but the Dane, from his steady, constant labour, 
 is a good workman, and a first-class one wall do nearly as much 
 work in a day as an Englishman." The Dane takes time : his 
 habit is in summer to begin work at four in the morning, and 
 continue till eight in the evening, taking five intervals of rest. 
 
 The Danish engineers, in Mr. Rowan's judgment, are over- 
 educated, and, as a consequence, wanting in decisiveness. 
 " They have been in the habit of applying to their masters for 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY, 175 
 
 everything, finding out nothing for themselves ; the conse- 
 quence is that they are children, and cannot form a judgment. 
 It is the same in the North of Germany ; the great difficulty is 
 that you cannot get them to come to a decision. They want 
 always to inquire and to investigate, and they never come to a 
 result." This evidence must have been given some years ago, 
 for of late it has been made pretty apparent that the investiga- 
 tions and inquiries of the North Germans do not prevent their 
 coming to a decision, or that decision from leading to a result. 
 Mr. Helps seizes the opportunity for a thrust at the sj^stem of 
 competitive examination, which has taken from the heads of 
 departments the power of " personal selection." The answer to 
 him is Sedan. A bullet through your heart is the strongest 
 proof which logic can afford that the German, from whose rifle 
 it comes, was not prevented by his knowledge of the theory of 
 projectiles from marking his man with promptness and taking 
 a steady aim. That over-exertion of the intellect in youth 
 does a man harm, is a true though not a very fruitful proposi- 
 tion ; but knowledge does not destroy decisiveness : it only 
 turns it from the decisiveness of a bull into the decisiveness of 
 a man. Which nations do the great works ? The educated 
 nations, or Mexico and Spain ? 
 
 The Australian railways brought out two facts, one grati- 
 fying, the other the reverse. The gratifying fact was that 
 the unlimited confidence which Mr. Brassey reposed in his 
 agents was repaid by their zeal and fidelity in his service. The 
 fact which was the reverse of gratifying was, that the great 
 advantage which the Enfrlish labourer gains in Australia, from 
 the higher wages and comparative cheapness of living, is coun- 
 teracted by his love of drink. 
 
 The Argentine Railway had special importance and interest, 
 in opening up a vast and most fruitful and salubrious re- 
 gion to European emigration. Those territories offer room and 
 food for myriads. " The population of Russia, that hard-fea- 
 tured country, is about 75,000,000 ; the population of the Ar- 
 gentine Republic, to which nature has been so bountiful, and 
 in which she is so beautiful, is about 1,000,000." If ever gov- 
 ernment in the South American States becomes more settled, 
 we shall find them formidable rivals. 
 
 The Indian Railways are also likely to be a landmark in the 
 history of civilization. They unite that vast country and its 
 people, both materially and morally, break down caste, bring 
 the natives from all parts to the centres of instruction, and dis- 
 
176 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY, 
 
 tribute the produce of the soil evenly and rapidly, so as to 
 mitigate famines. The Orissa famine would never have oc- 
 curred, had Mr Brassey's works been there. What effect the 
 railways will ultimately have on British rule is another ques- 
 tion. They multiply the army by increasing the rapidity of 
 transport, but, on the other hand, they are likely to diminish 
 that division among the native powers on which the Empire is 
 partly based. Rebellion may run along the railwa}^ line as 
 well as command. 
 
 There were periods in Mr. Brassey's career during which he 
 and his partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons, 
 upon works requiring seventeen millions of capital for their 
 completion. It is also satisfactory to know, that in the foreign 
 countries and colonies over which his operations extended, he 
 was instrumental in raising the wages and condition of the 
 working class, as well as in affording, to the elite of that class 
 opportunities for rising to higher positions. 
 
 His remuneration for all this, though in the aggregate very 
 large, was by no means excessive. Upon seventy-eight millions 
 of money laid out in the enterprises which he conducted, he 
 retained two millions and a half, that is as nearly as possible 
 three per cent. The rest of his fortune consisted of accumula- 
 tions. Three per cent, was not more than a fair payment for 
 the brain-work, the anxiety and the risk. The risk, it must be 
 recollected, was constant, and there were moments at which, if 
 Mr. Brassey had died, he would have been found comparatively 
 poor. His fortune was made, not by immoderate gains upon any 
 one transaction, but by reasonable profits in a business which 
 was of vast extent, and owed its vast extent to a reputation 
 fairly earned by probity, energy and skill. We do not learn 
 that he figured in any lobby, or formed a member of any ring. 
 Whether lie was a Norman or not, he was too much a gentle- 
 man, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by low 
 and petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a cap- 
 tain of industry. 
 
 Nor when riches increased did he set his heart upon them. 
 His heart was set on the work rather than on the pay. The 
 monuments and enterprise of his skill were more to him than 
 the millions. He seems even to have been rather careless in 
 keeping his accounts. He gave away freely — as much as £200,- 
 000, it is believed — in the course of his life. His accumulations 
 arose not from parsimony but from the smallness of his per- 
 sonal expenses. He hated show and luxury, and kept a mod- 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 177 
 
 erate establishment, which the increase of his wealth nevei* 
 induced him to extend. He seems to have felt a singular diffi- 
 dence as to his capacity for aristocratic expenditure. The con- 
 versation turninor one day on the immense fortunes of certain 
 noblemen, he said, " I understand it is easy and natural enough 
 for those wl-.o are born and brought up to it, to spend £50,000 or 
 even £150,000 a year; but I should be very sorry to have to under- 
 go the fatigue of even spending £30,000 a year. I believe such a 
 job as that would drive me mad." He felt an equally strange 
 misgiving as to his capacity for aristocratic idleness. " It re- 
 quires a special education," he said, " to be idle, or to employ 
 the twenty-four hours, in a rational way, without any calling 
 or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman, one must have 
 been brought up to it. It is impossible for a man who has been 
 engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life to re- 
 tire ; if he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a great 
 mistake. I shall not retire ; but if for some good reason, I 
 should be obliged to do so, it would be to a farm. There I 
 would bring up stock which I would cause to be weighed every 
 day, ascertaining at the same time their daily cost, as against 
 the increasinof wei^jht. I should then know when to sell and 
 start again with another lot." 
 
 Of tinsel, which sometimes is as corrupting to vulgar souls 
 as money, this man seems to have been as regardless as he was 
 of pelf. He received the Cross of the Iron Crown from the 
 Emperor of Austria. He accepted what was graciously offered, 
 but he said that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good 
 Crosses were to him. The circumstance reminded him that he 
 had received other Crosses, but he had to ask his agent what 
 they were, and where they were. He was told that they were 
 the Legion of Honour of France, and the Chevaliership of 
 Italy ; but the Crosses could not be found. Duplicates were 
 procured to be taken to Mrs. Brassey, who, her husband re- 
 marked, would be glad to possess them all. 
 
 Such millionaires would do unmixed good in the world ; but 
 unfortunately they are apt to die and leave their millions, and 
 the social influence which the millions confer, to " that unfea- 
 thered two-legged thing, a son." This is by no means said 
 with a personal reference. On the contrary, it is evident 
 that Mr. Brassey was especially fortunate in his heir. 
 We find some indication of this in a chapter towards the 
 close of Mr. Helps' volume, in which are thrown together the 
 son's miscellaneous recollections of the fathei\ The chapter 
 M 
 
178 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 affords further proof that the great contractor was not made of 
 the same clay as the Fisks and Vanderbilts — that he was not a 
 mere market-rigger and money-grubber — but a really great 
 man, devoted to a special calling. He is represented by his sou 
 as having taken a lively interest in a wide and varied range of 
 subjects — engineering subjects especially as a matter of course, 
 but not engineering subjects alone, hie studied countries and 
 their people, evincing the utmost interest in Chicago, speculating 
 on the future industrial prosperity of Canada, and imparting 
 the results of his observations admirably when he got home. 
 Like all great men, he had a poetic element in his character. 
 He loved the beauties of nature, and delighted in mountain 
 scenery. He was a great sight-seer, and when he visited a city 
 on business, went through its churches, public buildings, and 
 picture-galleries, as assiduously as a tourist. For half an hour 
 he stood gazing with delight on the Maison Carrie, at Nisnies. 
 For sculpture and painting he had a strong taste, and the Venus 
 of Milo " was a joy to him." He had a keen eye for beauty, 
 shapeliness and comeliness everywhere, in porcelain, in furni- 
 ture, in dress, in a well built yacht, in a well aj)pointed regiment 
 of horse. Society, too, he liked, in spite of his simplicity of 
 habits ; loved to gather his friends around his board, and was 
 always a genial host. For literature he had no time, but he 
 enjoyed oratory, and liked to hear good reading. He used to 
 test his son's progress in reading, at the close of each half year, 
 by making him read aloud a chapter of the Bible. His good 
 sense contined his ambition to his proper sphere, and prevented 
 him from giving ear to any solicitations to go into politics, 
 which he had not leisure to study, and which he knew ought 
 not to be handled by ignorance. His own leanings were Con- 
 servative ; but his son, who is a Liberal, testifies that his father 
 never offered him advice on political matters, or remonstrated 
 with him on a single vote which he gave in the House of Com- 
 mons. It is little to the discredit of a man so immersed in 
 business that he should have been fascinated, as he was, by the 
 outward appearance of perfect order presented by the French 
 Empire and by the brilliancy of its visible edifice, not discern- 
 ing the explusive forces which its policy was all the time 
 accumulating in the chirk social realms below ; though the fact 
 that he, with all his natural sagacity, did fall into this tremen- 
 dous error, is a warning to railway and steamboat politicians. 
 
 Mr. Brassey's advice was often sought by parents who had 
 sons to start in the world. " As usual, a disposition was shewn 
 
A TBUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 179 
 
 to prefer a career which did not involve the apparent degrada- 
 tion of learning a trade practically, side by side with operatives 
 in a workshop. But my father, who had known, by his wide 
 experience, the immense value of a technical knowledge of a 
 trade or business as compared with general educational advan- 
 tages of the second order, and who knew how much more easy 
 it is to earn a living as a skilful artisan than as a clerk, posses- 
 sing a mere general education, always urged those who sought 
 liis advice to begin by giving to their sons a practical know- 
 ledge of a trade." 
 
 " My father," says Mr. Brassey, junior, " ever mindful of his 
 own struggles and efforts in early life, evinced at all times the 
 most anxious disposition to assist young men to enter upon a 
 •career. The small loans which he advanced for this purpose, 
 and the innumerable letters which he wrote in the hope of ob- 
 taining for his young clients help or employment in other 
 quarters, constitute a bright and most honourable feature in his 
 life." His powers of letter-writing were enormous, and, it seems 
 to us, were exercised even to excess. So much writing would, 
 ■at least, in the case of any ordinary man, have consumed too 
 much of the energy wdiich should be devoted to thought. His 
 •correspondence was brought with his luncheon basket when he 
 was shooting on the moors. After a long day's journey he sat 
 down in the coffee room of the hotel, and wrote thirty-two 
 letters before he went to bed. He never allowed a letter, even 
 a begging letter, to remain unanswered ; and, says his son, "the 
 same benignity and courtesy which marked his conduct in 
 every relation of life, pervaded his whole correspondence." "In 
 the many volumes of his letters which are preserved, I venture 
 to affirm that there is not the faintest indication of an unofener- 
 ■ous or unkindly sentiment — not a sentence which is not in- 
 spired by the spirit of equity and justice, and by universal 
 charity to mankind." 
 
 By the same authority we are assured that " Mr. Brassey was 
 •of a singularly patient disposition in dealing with all ordinary 
 affairs of life. We know how, whenever a hitch occurs in a 
 railway journey, a great number of passengers become irritated, 
 almost to a kind of foolish frenzy. He always took these 
 matters most patiently. He well knew that no persons are so 
 anxious to avoid such detentions as the officials themselves, and 
 never allowed himself to altercate with a helpless guard or dis- 
 tracted station-master." 
 
 The only blemish which the son can recollect in the father's 
 character, is a want of firmness in blaminsf when blame was 
 
180 ^ TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 flue, and an incapacity of refusing a request or rejecting a 
 proposal sttongly urged by others. The latter defect was, in 
 his son's judgment, the cause of the greatest disasters which he 
 experienced as a man of business. Both defects were closely 
 allied to virtues — extreme tenderness of heart and considera- 
 tion for the feelings of others. 
 
 " He was graceful," says Mr. Brassey, junior, in conclusion, 
 " in every movement, always intelligent in observation, with an 
 excellent command of language, and only here and there 
 betrayed, by some slight provincialisms, in how small a degree, 
 he had in early life enjoyed the educational advantages of those 
 with whom his high commercial position in later years placed 
 him in constant communication. But these things are small in 
 comparison to the greater points of character by which he 
 seemed to me to be distinguished. In all he said or did, he 
 showed himself to be inspired by that chivalry of heart and 
 mind which must truly ennoble him who possesses it, and 
 without which one cannot be a perfect gentleman." 
 
 Mention has been made of his great generosity. One of his 
 old agents having lost all his earnings, Mr. Brassey gave him 
 several new missions, that he might have a chance of recovering 
 himself. But the agent died sudddenly, and his wife nearly at 
 the same time, leaving six orphan childien without provision. 
 Mr. Brassey gave up, in their favour, a policy of insurance 
 which he held as security for several thousands, and, in addi- 
 tion, headed a subscription list for them with a large sum. It 
 seems that his delicacy in giving was equal to his generosity ; 
 that of his numberless benefactions, very few were published 
 in subscription lists, and that his right hand seldom knew 
 what his left hand did. 
 
 His refinement was of the truly moral kind, and of the kind 
 that tells on others. Not only was coarse and indecent langu- 
 age checked in his presence, but the pain he evinced at all out- 
 breaks of unkind feeling, and at manifestation of petty jealou- 
 sies, operated strongly in preventing any such displaj^s from 
 taking place before him. As one who was the most intimate, 
 with him observed, " his people seemed to enter into a higher 
 atmosphere when they were in his presence, conscious, no 
 doubt, of the intense dislike which he had of everything that 
 was mean, petty, or contentious." 
 
 Mr. Helps tells us that the tender-heartedness which per- 
 vaded Mr. Brassey 's character was never more manifested than 
 on the occasion of any illness of his friends. At the busiest 
 
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. 181 
 
 period of his life he would travel hundreds of miles to be at the 
 bedside of a sick or dying friend. In his turn he experienced, 
 in his own last illness, similar manifestations of affectionate soli- 
 citude. Many of the persons, we are told, who had served him 
 in foreign countries and at home, came from great distances 
 solely for the chance of seeing once more their old master 
 whom they loved so much. They were men of all classes, 
 humble navvies as well as trusted agents. They would not in- 
 trude upon his illness, but would wait for hours in the hall, in 
 the hope of seeing him borne to his carriage, and getting a 
 «hake of the hand or a sign of friendly recognition. " The 
 world," remarks Mr. Helps, " is after all not so ungrateful as it 
 is sometimes supposed to be; those who deserve to be loved 
 generally are loved, having elicited the faculty of loving which 
 exists to a great extent in all of us." 
 
 " Mr. Brassey," we are told, " had ever been a very religious 
 man. His religion was of that kind which most of us would 
 desire for ourselves — utterly undisturbed by doubts of any sort, 
 entirely tolerant, not built upon small or even upon great 
 •differences of belief He clung resolutely and with entire 
 hopefulness to that creed, and abode by that form of worship, 
 in which he had been brought up as a child." The religious 
 element in his character was no doubt strong, and lay at the 
 root of his tender-heartedness and his charity as well as of the 
 ■calm resignation with which he met disaster, and his indiffer- 
 ence to gain. At the time of a great panic, when things were 
 at the worst, he only said : " Never mind, we must be content 
 with a little less, that is all." This was when he suppo.sed 
 himself to have lost a million. The duty of religious inquiry, 
 which he could not perform himself, he would no doubt have 
 recognised in those to whose lot it falls to give their fellow- 
 men assurance of religious truth. 
 
 Mr. Brassey's wife said of him that " he was a most un- 
 worldly man." This may seem a strange thing to say of a great 
 ■contractor and a millionaire. Yet, in the highest sense, it was 
 true. Mr. Brassey was not a monk ; his life was passed in the 
 world, and in the world's most engrossing, and, as it proves in 
 too many cases, most contaminating business. Yet, if the pic- 
 ture of him presented to us be true, he kept himself " unspot- 
 ted from the world." 
 
 His character is reflected in the portrait which forms the 
 frontispiece to the biography, and on which those who pursue 
 his calling will do well sometimes to look. 
 
182 ^1 WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 A WIREPULLER OF KINGS.* 
 
 Some of our readers will remember that there was at one time 
 a great panic in England about the unconstitutional influence 
 of Prince Albert, and that, connected with Prince Albert's name 
 in the invectives of a part of the press, was that of the inti- 
 mate friend, constant guest, and trusted adviser of the Royal 
 Famil}^, Baron Stockmar. The suspicion was justified by the 
 fact in both cases ; but in the case of Baron Stockmar, as well 
 as in that of Prince Albert, the influence appears to have been 
 exercised on the whole for good. Lord Aberdeen, who spoke his 
 mind with the sincerity and simplicity of a perfectly honest 
 man, said of Stockmar ; " I have known men as clever, as dis- 
 creet, as good, and with as good judgment; but I never knew 
 any one who united all these qualities as he did." Melbourne 
 was jealous of his reputed influence, but testified to his sense 
 and worth. Palmerston disliked, we may say hated, him ; but 
 he declared him the only disinterested man of the kind he had 
 ever knoAvn. 
 
 Stockmar was a man of good family, who originally pursued 
 the profession of medicine, and having attracted the notice of 
 Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, the husband of Princess Char- 
 lotte, and afterwards king of the Belgians, was appointed phy- 
 sician in ordinary to that Prince upon his marriage. When, in 
 course of time, he exchanged the functions of ph3\sician in or- 
 dinary for those of wirepuller in ordinary, he found that the 
 time passed in medical study had not been thrown away. He 
 said himself, " It was a clever stroke to have originally studied 
 medicine ; without the knowledge thirs acquired, without the 
 psychological and physiological experiences thus obtained, 
 my savoir faire would often have gone a-begging." It seems 
 also that he practised politics on medical principles, penetrat- 
 ing a political situation, or detecting a political disease, by the 
 help of single expressions or acts, after the manner of medical 
 diagnosis, and in his curative treatment endeavouring to remove 
 
 * Memoirs of Baron Stockmar. By his son, Baron E. Von Stockmar. Transla- 
 ted from the German by G. A. M. Edited by F. Max Miiller. In two volumes. 
 London : Longmans, Green and Co. 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 183 
 
 as far as possible eveiy pathological impediment, so that the 
 liealing moral nature might be set free, and social and human 
 laws resume their restorative power. He might have graduated 
 as a politician in a worse school. 
 
 He was not able to cure himself of dyspepsia and afl'ections of 
 the eye, which clung to him through life, the dyspepsia produ- 
 cing fluctuation of spirits, and occasional hypochondria, which, 
 it might have been thought, would sericnisly interfere with his 
 success as a court favourite. " At one time he astonished the 
 observer by his sanguine, bub])ling, provoking, unreserved, 
 quick, fiery or humorous, cheerful, even unrestrainedly gay 
 manner, winning him by his hearty open advances where he 
 felt himself attracted and encouraged to confidence ; at other 
 times he was all seriousness, placidity, self-possession, cool cir- 
 cumspection, methodical consideration, prudence, criticism, even 
 irony and scepticism." Such is not the portrait which imagi- 
 nation paints of the demeanour of a court favourite. But Stock- 
 mar liad one invaluable qualification for the part — he had con- 
 scientiously made up his mind that it is a man's duty in life to 
 endure being bored. 
 
 The favour of a Prince of Saxe Coburg would not in itself 
 have been fortune. A certain Royal Duke was, as everybody 
 who ever had the honour of being within earshot of him 
 knew, in the habit of thinking aloud. It was said that at 
 the marriage of a German prince with an English princess, at 
 which the Duke was present, when the bridegroom pronounced 
 the words : •' With all my worldly goods I thee endow," a voice 
 from the circle responded, " The boots you stand in are not paid 
 for." But as it was sung of the aggrandizement of Austria in 
 former days — 
 
 " Let others war, do thou, blest Austria, wed," 
 
 so the house of Saxe Coburg may be said in later days to have 
 been aggrandized by weddings. The marriage of his patron 
 with the presumptive heiress to the Crown of England was the 
 beginning of Stockmar's subterranean greatness. 
 
 The Princess Charlotte expressed herself to Stockmar with 
 regard to the character of her revered parents in the following 
 "pithy" manner: — " My mother was bad, but she could not have 
 become as bad as she was if my father had not been infinitely 
 worse." The Regent was anxious to have the Princess married 
 for two reasons, in the opinion of the judicious author of this 
 memoir — because he wanted to be rid of his daughter, and be- 
 
184 ^ WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 cause when she married she would form less of a link between 
 him and his wife. Accordingly, when she was eighteen, hints 
 M^ere given her through the court physician, Sir Henry Halford 
 (such is the course of royal love), that if she would have the 
 kindness to fix her afi'ections on the hereditary Prince of 
 Orange (afterwards King William II. of the Netherlands), 
 whom she had never seen, it would be exceedingly convenient. 
 The Prince came over to England, and, by the help of a " cer- 
 tain amount of artful precipitation on the part of the father," 
 the pair became formally engaged. The Princess said at first 
 that she did not think her betrothed " by any means so dis- 
 agreeable as she had expected." In time, however, this ar- 
 dour of affection abated. The Prince was a baddish subject, 
 and he had a free-and-easy manner, and wanted tact and refine- 
 ment. He returned to London from some races seated on the 
 outside of a coach, and in a highly excited state. Worst 
 of all, he lodged at his tailor's. The engagement was ultimately 
 broken off by a difiiculty with regard to the future residence of 
 the couple, which would evidently have become more compli- 
 cated and serious if the Queen of the Netherlands had ever 
 inherited the Crown of England. The Princess was passion- 
 ately opposed to leaving her country. The Regent and his 
 ministers tried to keep the poor girl in the dark, and get her 
 into a position from which there would be no retreat. But she 
 had a temper and a will of her own ; and her recalcitration was 
 assisted by the Parliamentary Opposition, who saw in the mar- 
 riage a move of Tory policy, and by her mother, who saw in it 
 something agreeable to her husband. Any one who wishes to 
 see how diplomatic lovers quarrel will find insti"uction in these 
 pages. 
 
 The place left vacant by the rejected William was taken by 
 Prince Leopold, with whom Stockmar came to England. In 
 Stockmar's Diary of May 5th, 1806, is the entry : — " I saw the 
 sun (that of royalty we presume, not the much calumniated sun 
 of Britain) for the first time at Oatlands. Baron Hardenbroek, 
 the Prince's equerry, was going into the breakfast-room. I 
 followed him, when he suddenly signed to me with his hand to 
 stay behind ; but she had already seen me and I her. ' Alia, 
 dodeur', she said, ' entrez.' She was handsomer than I had ex- 
 pected, with most peculiar manners, her hands generally folded 
 behind her, her body always pushed forward, never standing 
 quiet, from time to time stamping her foot, laughing a great 
 deal and talking still more. I was examined fi-om head to foot, 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 185 
 
 without, however, losing my countenance. My first impression 
 was not favourable. In the evening she pleased me more. 
 Her dress was simple and in good taste." The Princess took to 
 the doctor, and, of course, he took to her. A subsequent entry 
 in his Diary is : — " The Princess is in good humour, and then 
 she pleases easily. I thought her dress particularly becoming ; 
 dark roses in her hair, a short light blue dress without sleeves, 
 with a low round collar, a white puffed out Russian chemisette, 
 the sleeves of lace. I have never seen her in any dress which 
 was not both simple and in good taste." She seems to have 
 improved under the influence of her husband, whom his physi- 
 cian calls " a manly prince and a princely man." In her 
 manners there was some room for improvement, if we may 
 judge from her treatment of Duke Prosper of Aremburg, who 
 was one of the guests at a great dinner recorded in the Diary : 
 — " Prosper is a hideous little mannikin, dressed entirely in 
 black, with a large star. The Prince presented him to the 
 Princess, who was at the moment talking to the Minister 
 Castlereagh. She returned the duke's two profound continen- 
 tal bows by a slight nod of the head, without looking at him 
 or saying a word to him, and brought her elbow so close to him 
 that he could not move. He sat looking straight before him 
 with some, though not very marked, embarrassment. He ex- 
 changed now and then a few words in French with the massive 
 and mighty Lady Castlereagh, by whose side he looked no 
 larger than a child. When he left, the Princess dismissed him 
 in the same manner in which she had welcomed him, and broke 
 into a loud laugh before he was fairly out of the room." 
 
 Stockmar's position in the little court was not very flattering 
 or agreeable. The members of the household hard!}' regarded 
 the poor German physician as their equal ; and if one or two of 
 the men were pleasant, the lady who constituted their only 
 lawful female society, Mrs. Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to the 
 Prince.ss, was, in her ordinary moods, decidedly the i^everse, 
 Stockmar, however, in drawing a piquant portrait of her, has 
 recorded the extenuating circumstances that she had once been 
 pi-etty, that she had had bitter experiences with men, and that, 
 in an illness during a seven months' sea-voyage, she had been 
 kept alive only on brandy and water. Col. Addenbrooke, the 
 equerry to the Princess, is painted in more favourable colours, 
 his only weak point being " a weak stomach, into which he 
 carefully crams a mass of the most incongruous things, and 
 then complains the next day of fearful headache." VVhat a 
 power of evil is a man who keeps a diary ! 
 
18G ^ WIRF.rULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 Greater personages than Mrs. Campbell and Colonel Adden- 
 lirooke passed under the quick eye of tiie humble medical 
 attendant, and were photographed without being aware of it. 
 
 ''The Queen Mother (Charlotte, wife of George III). 'Small and 
 crooked, with a true mulatto face.' 
 
 " The Regent. ' Very stout, though of a fine figure ; distinguished man- 
 ners ; does not talk half as much as his brothers ; speaks tolerably good 
 French. He ate and drank a good deal at dinner. His brown scratch wig 
 not particularly becoming. ' 
 
 " The Duke of York, the eldest son of the Regent's brothers. ' Tall, 
 with immense embonpoint, and not proportionately strong legs ; he holds 
 himself in such a way that one is always afraid he will tumble over back- 
 wards ; veiy bald, and not a very intelligent face : one can see that 
 eating, drinking, and sensual pleasure are everything to him. Spoke a 
 good deal of French, with a bad accent.' 
 
 "Duchess of York, daughter of Frederick William II. of Prussia. 'A 
 little animated W(nnan, talks immensely, and laughs still more. No 
 beauty, mouth and teetli bad. She disfigures herself still more by dis- 
 torting her mouth and blinking her eyes. In spite of the Duke's various 
 infidelities^ their matrimonial relations are good. She is quite aware of 
 h«r husband's embarrassed circumstances, and ia his prime minister and 
 truest friend ; so that nothing is done without her help. As soon as she 
 entered the room, .she looked round for the Banker Green v\ood, who im- 
 mediately came up to her with the confidentially familiar manner which 
 the wealthy go-between assumes towards grand people in embarrassed 
 circumstances. At dinner the Duchess related that her royal father had 
 forced her as a girl to learn to shoot, as he had observed she had a great 
 aversion to it. At a grand chasse she had always fired with closed eyes, 
 because she could not bear to see the sufferings of the wounded animals. 
 When the hiuitsmen told her that in this way she ran the risk of causing 
 the game more sufl'ering through her uncertain aims, she went to the King 
 and asked if he would excuse her from all sport in fiiture if she shot a stag 
 dead. The King promised to grant her request if she could kill two deer, 
 one after the other, without niissing ; which she did.' 
 
 " Dnke of Clarence (afterwards King William IV.). 'The smallest and 
 least good-looking of the brothers, decidedly like his mother ; as talkative 
 as the rest.' 
 
 " Duke of Kent (father of Queen Victoria). ' A large, powerful man ; 
 like the King, and as bald as any one can be. The quietest of all the 
 Dukes I have seen ; talks slowly and deliberately ; is kind and courteous.' 
 
 " Duke of Cumberland (afterwards King Ernest Augustus of Hanover). 
 ' A tall, powerful man, with a hideous face ; can't see two inches before 
 liim ; one eye turned quite out of its place.' 
 
 " Duke of Cambridge ('the youngest son of George III.). ' A good-looking 
 man, with a blonde wig ; is partly like his father, partly like his mother. 
 Speaks French and German very well, but like English, with such rapidity, 
 that he carries off" the palm in the family art.' 
 
 "Duke of Gloucester. 'Prominent, meaningless eyes; without being 
 actually ugly, a very unpleasant face, with an animal expression ; large 
 and stout, but with weak, helpless legs. He wears a neckcloth thicker 
 than his head.' 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 187 
 
 " Wellhujton. ' Middle height, iieithei- stout nor thin ; erect figure, not 
 stiff, not very lively, though more so than I expected, and yet in every 
 movement rejaose. Black hair, simply cut, strongly mixed with grey : 
 not a very high forehead, immense hawk's nose, tightly compressed lips, 
 strong massive under jaw. After he had spoken for some time in the 
 anteroom with the Royal Family, he c une straight to tlie two French 
 singers, with whom he talked in a very friendly manner, and then going 
 round the circle, shook hands with all his acquaintance. He was dressed 
 entirely in black, with the Star of the Order of the Garter and the Maria 
 Theresa Cross. He spoke to all the ofticers present in an open friendly 
 way, though but briefly. At table he sat next the Princess. He ate and 
 drank moderately, and laughed at times most heartily, and whispered 
 many things to the Princess' ear, which made her blush and laugh.' 
 
 " Lord Anglesea, (the General). ' Who lost a leg at Waterloo ; a tall, 
 well-made man ; wild, martial face, high forehead, with a large hawk's 
 nose, which makes a small deep angle where it joins the forehead. A 
 great deal of ease in his manners. Lauderdale* told us later that it was 
 he who brought Lady Anglesea the intelligence that her husband had lost 
 his leg at Waterloo. Contrary to his wishes she had been informed of his 
 arrival, and, before he could say a word, she guessed that he had brought 
 her news of her husband, screamed out, "He is dead ! " and fell inta 
 hysterics. But when he said, " Not in the least ; here is a letter from 
 him," she was so wonderfully relieved that she bore the truth with great 
 composure. He also related that, not long before the campaign, Anglesea 
 was having his portrait taken, and the picture was entirely finished except 
 one leg. Anglesea sent for the painter and said to him, "You had better 
 finish the leg now. I might not bring it back with me." He lost that 
 very leg. ' 
 
 " The Mhi'utter, Lord Casflereagh. ' Of middle height ; a very striking 
 and at the same time handsome face ; his manners are very pleasant and 
 gentle, yet perfectly natural. One misses in him a certain culture which 
 one expects in a statesman of his eminence. He speaks French badly » 
 in fact execrably, and not very choice English. t The Princess rallied 
 him on the part lie played in the House of Commons as a bad speaker, as 
 against the brilliant orators of the Oppo.sition, which he acknowledged 
 merrily, and witli a hearty laugli. I am sure there is a great deal of 
 thoughtless indifference in him, and that this has sometimes been reckoned 
 to him as statesmanship of a liigh order.' " 
 
 In proof of Castlereagli's bad French we are told in a note 
 that, having- to propo.se the health of the ladies at a great din- 
 ner, he did it in the words — " Le bel sexe partoutte dans le 
 monde." 
 
 Though looked down upon at the second table, Stockmar 
 had thoroughly established himself in the confidence and affec- 
 
 * Lord Lauderdale, d. 18.S9 ; the friend of Fo.x ; since 1807, under the Tories, an 
 active member of the Opposition. 
 
 t Lord Byron, in the introduction to the sixth and the eighth cantos of " Don 
 Juan " says, " It is the first time since the Normans that England has been insulted 
 by a minister (at least) who could not speak English, and that Parliament permit- 
 ted itself to be dictated to in the language of Mrs. Malaprop." 
 
188 ^ WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 tion of the Prince and Princess. He had become the Prince's 
 Secretary, and in Leopold's own words " the most vakied phy- 
 sician of his soul and body " — wirepuller, in fact, to the destined 
 wirepuller of Royalty in general. 
 
 Perhaps his gratification at having attained this position 
 may have lent a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the 
 Royal couple, which he paints in ra])turous terms, saying that 
 nothing was so great as their love — except the British National 
 Debt. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of 
 Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the 
 general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged 
 a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which 
 perhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused 
 to have anything to do with the treatment of the Princess from 
 the commencement of her pregnancy. He thought he detected 
 mistakes on the part of the English physicians, arising from 
 the custom then prevalent in England of lowering the strength 
 of the expectant mother by bleeding, aperients, and low diet, a 
 regimen which was carried on for months. The Princess, in 
 fact, having been delivered of a dead son after a fifty hours' 
 labour, afterw%ards succumbed to w^eakness. It fell to Stock- 
 mar's lot to break the news to the Prince, who was over- 
 whelmed with sorrow. At the moment of his desolation Leo- 
 pold exacted from Stockmar a promise that he would never 
 leave him. Stockmar gave the promise, indulging at the same 
 time his sceptical vein by expressing in a letter to his sister his 
 doubt whether the Prince would remain of the same mind. 
 This scepticism how^ever did not interfere with his devo- 
 tion. " My health is tolerable, for though I am uncommonly 
 shaken, and shall be yet more so by the soitow of the Prince, 
 still I feel strong enough, even stronger than I used to be. I 
 only leave the Prince when obliged by pressing business. I 
 dine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes 
 in the night I get up and sit talking by his bedside till he falls 
 asleep again. I feel increasingly that unlooked for trials are 
 my portion in life, and that there will be many more of them 
 before life is over. I seem to be here more to care for others 
 than for myself, and I am well content with this destiny." 
 
 Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur of the Princess, over- 
 whelmed by the calamity, committed suicide. " Poor Croft," 
 exclaims the cool and benevolent Stockmar, " does not the whole 
 thing look like some malicious temptation, which might have 
 overcome even some one stronger than you ? The first link in 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 189 
 
 the chain of your misery was nothing but an especially honour- 
 able and desirable event in the course of your profession. 
 You made a mistake in your mode of treatment ; still, indivi- 
 dual mistakes are here so easy. Thoughtlessness and excessive 
 reliance on your own experience, prevented you from weighing 
 deeply the course to be followed by you. When the catastrophe 
 had happened, doubts, of course, arose in your mind as to 
 whether you ought not to have acted differently, and these 
 doubts, coupled with the impossibility of proving your inno- 
 cence to the public, even though you were blameless, became 
 torture to you. Peace to thy ashes ! on which no guilt rests 
 save that thou wert not exceptionally wise or exceptionally 
 strong." 
 
 Leopold was inclined to go home, but remained in England 
 by the advice of Stockmar, who perceived that, in the first place, 
 there would be something odious in the Prince's spending his 
 English allowance of £50,000 a year on the Continent, and in 
 the second place, that a good position in England would be his 
 strongest vantage ground in case of any new opening present- 
 ing itself elsewhere. 
 
 About this time another birth took place in the Royal Family 
 under happier auspices. The Duke of Kent was married to the 
 widowed Princess of Leiningen, a sister of Prince Leopold. 
 The Duke wasa Liberal in politics, on bad terms with his brothers, 
 and in financial difficulties which prevented his living in Eng- 
 land. Finding, however, tliat his Duchess was likely to present 
 him with an heir who would also be the heir to the Crown, and 
 being very anxious that the child should be born in England, he 
 obtained the means of coming home through friends, after ap- 
 pealing to his brothers in vain. Shortly after his return " a 
 pretty little princess, plump as a partridge," was born. In the 
 same year the Duke died. His widow, owing to his debts, was 
 left in a very uncomfortable position. Her brother Leopold en- 
 abled her to return to Kensington, where she devoted herself 
 to the education of her child — Queen Victoria. 
 
 The first opening which presented itself to Leopold was the 
 Kingdom of Greece, which was offered him by " The Powers." 
 After going pretty far he backed out, much to the disgust of 
 " The Powers," who called him " Marquis Peu-a-peu (the nick- 
 name given him by George IV.) and said that " he had no colour," 
 and that he wanted the English Regency. The fact seems to be 
 that he and his Stockmar, on further con.-5ideration of the enter- 
 prise, did not like the look of it. Neither of them, especially 
 
190 -4 WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 ■Stockuiar, desired a " crown of thorns," whicli their disinterested 
 advisers would have had them take on heroic and ascetic prin- 
 ciples. Leopold was rather attracted by the poetrj- of the thing : 
 Stockmar was not. " For the poetry which Greece would have 
 afforded, 1 am not inclined to give very much. Mortals see only 
 the bad side of things they have, and the good side of the things 
 they have not. That is the whole difference between Greece 
 and Belgium, though I do not mean to deny that when the first 
 King of Greece shall, after all manner of toils, have died, his 
 life may not furnish the poet with excellent matter for an epic 
 poem." The philosophic creed of Stockmar was that "the most 
 valuable side of life consists in its negative conditions," — in other 
 words in freedom fi-om annoyance, and in the absence of " crowns 
 of thorns." 
 
 The candidature of Leopold for the Greek Throne coincided 
 with the Wellington Administration, and the active part taken 
 by Stockmar gave him special opportunities of studying the 
 Duke's political character which he did with great attention. 
 His estimate of it is low. 
 
 " The way in which Wellington would preserve and husband the rewards 
 of his own services and the gifts of fortune, I took as the measure of the 
 higher capabilities of his mind. It required no long time, however, and 
 no great exertion, to perceive that the natural sobriety of his temperament, 
 founded upon an inborn want of sensibility, was unable to withstand the 
 intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he was surrounded. The 
 knowledge of himself became visibly more and more obscured. The rest- 
 lessness of his activity, and his natural lust for power, became daily more 
 ungovernable. 
 
 " Blinded by the language of his admirers, and too much elated to esti- 
 mate correctly his own powers, he impatiently and of his own accord aban- 
 doned the proud position of the victorious general to exchange it for the 
 most painful position which a human being can occupy — viz., the manage- 
 ment of the affairs of a great nation with insufficient mental gifts and in- 
 adequate knowledge. He had hardly forced himself upon the nation as 
 Prime Minister, intending to add the glory of a statesman to that of a 
 warrior when he succeeded, by his manner of conducting business, in shak- 
 ing the confidence of the people. With laughable infatuation he sedulously 
 employed every opportunity of proving to the woi-ld the hopeless incapacity 
 which made it impossible for him to seize the natural connection between 
 cause and effect. With a rare na'ivele he confessed publicly and without 
 hesitation the mistaken conclusions he had come to in the weightiest affairi 
 of State ; mistakes with the commonest understanding could have dis- 
 covered, which filled the impartial with pitying astonishment, and caused 
 terror and ccmsternation even among the host of his flatterers and partisans. 
 Yet, so great and so strong was the preconceived opinioii of the people in 
 his favoui , that only the irresistible proofs furnished by the man's own 
 actions could gradually shake this opinion. It required the full force and 
 obstinacy of this strange self-deception in Wellington, it required the full 
 
A WIREPULLER OE KINGS. 191 
 
 measure of his activity and iron persistency, in order at last, by a per- 
 petual reiteration of errors and mistakes, to create in the people the firm 
 conviction that the Duke of Wellington was one oi the least adroit and 
 most mischievous Ministers that England ever had. " 
 
 Stockmar formed a more favourable opinion afterwards, when 
 the Duke had ceased to be a party leader, and become the Nestor 
 •of the State. But it must be allowed that Wellini^on's most 
 intimate associates and warmest friends thought him a failure as 
 a politician. To the last he seemed incapable of understanding 
 the position of a constitutional minister, and talked of sacrific- 
 ing his convictions in order to support the Government, as though 
 he were not one of the Government that was to be supported. 
 Nor did he ever appreciate the force of opinion or the nature 
 of the great European movement with which he had to deal. 
 
 It seems clear from Stockmar's statement, that Wellington 
 used his intluence over Charles X. to get the Martignac Ministry, 
 which was moderately liberal, turned out and Polignac made 
 ]\linister. In this he doubly blundered. In the first place 
 Polignac was not friendly but hostile to England, and at once 
 began to intrigue against her ; in the second place he was a fool, 
 and by his precipitate rashness brought on the second French 
 Revolution, which overthrew the ascendency of the Duke's policy 
 in Europe, and had no small infiuence in overthrowing the as- 
 cendency of his party in England. It appears that the Duke 
 was as much impressed with the " honesty " of Talleyrand, as 
 he was with the " ability " of Polignac. 
 
 A certain transitional phase of the European Revolution cre- 
 ated a brisk demand for kings who would " reign without 
 governing." Having backed out of Greece, Leopold got Belgium. 
 And here we enter, in these Memoirs, on a series of chapters 
 giving the history of the Belgian Question, with all its supple- 
 mentary entanglements, as dry as saw-dust, and scarcely readable, 
 "we should think, at the present day, even to diplomatists, much 
 less to mortal men. Unfortunately the greater part of the two vol- 
 umes is taken up with similar dissertations on various European 
 questions, while the personal touches, and details which Stock - 
 mar could have given us in abundance, are few and far between. 
 We seldom care much for his opinions on European questions 
 even when the questions themselves are still alive and the sand- 
 built structures of diplomacy have not been swept away by the 
 advancing tide of revolution. The sovereigns whose wirepuller 
 he was were constitutional, and themselves exercised practically 
 very little influence on the course of events. 
 
192 A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 In the Belgian question however, he seems to have really 
 played an active part. We get from him a strong impression 
 of the restless vanity and unscrupulous ambition of France. 
 We learn also that Leopold practised very early in the day the 
 policy which assured him a quiet leign — that of keeping his 
 trunk packed, and letting the people understand that if they 
 were tired of him he was ready to take the next train and leave 
 them to enjoy the deluge. 
 
 Stockmar found employment especially suited to him in set- 
 tling the question of Leopold's English annuity, which was 
 given up on the Prince's election to the Crown of Belgium, but 
 with certain reservations, upon which the Radicals made attacks, 
 Sir Samuel Whalley, a physician, leading the van. In the 
 course of the struggle Stockmar received a characteristic letter 
 from Palmerston. 
 
 " March 9, 1834. 
 
 " My DEAR Baron, — T have many apologies to make to you for not hav- 
 ing sooner acknowledged the receipt of the papers you sent me last week, 
 and for which I am much obliged to you. The case seems to me as clear 
 as day, and without meaning to question the omnipotence of Parliament, 
 which it is well-known can do anything but turn men into women and wo- 
 men into men, I must and shall assert that the House of Commons have 
 no more right to enquire into the details of those debts and engagements, 
 which the King of the Belgians considers himself bound to satisfy before 
 he begins to make his payments into the Exchequer, than they have to ask 
 Sir Samuel Whalley how he disposed of the fees which his mad patients 
 used to pay him before he began to practise upon the foolish constituents 
 who have sent him to Parliament. There can be no doubt whatever that 
 we must positively resist any such enquiry, and I am very much mistaken 
 in my estimate of the present House of Commons if a large majority do 
 not concur in scouting so untenable a proposition. 
 
 " My dear Baron, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Palmerston. 
 " The Baron de Stockmar." 
 
 That the House of Commons cannot turn women into men is 
 a position not so unquestioned now as it was in Palmerston's 
 day. 
 
 Stockmar now left England for a time, but he kept his eye 
 on English affairs, to his continued interest in which we owe, it 
 seems, the publication of a rather curious document, the exis- 
 tence of which in manuscript was, however, well known. It is 
 a Memoir of King William IV., purporting to be drawn up by 
 himself, and extending over the eventful years of 1830-35. 
 " King William's style," says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds 
 to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary cir- 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 193 
 
 cuinlocutiou, in which, instead of direct, simple expresBions, 
 bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the 
 end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a for- 
 eigner to despair." The style is indeed august ; but the real 
 penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammati- 
 cal composition, but some confidant, very likely Sir Herbert 
 Taylor, who was employed by the King to negotiate Avith the 
 " waverers " in the House of Lords, and get the Reform Bill 
 passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoir con- 
 tains nothing of the slightest historical importance. It is in- 
 structive only as showing how completely a constitutional king 
 may be under the illusion of his office — how complacently he 
 may fancy that he is himself guiding the State, when he is in 
 fact merely signing what is put before him by his advisers, 
 who are themselves ,;the organs of the majority in Parliament. 
 Old William, Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, being rather 
 weak in intellect, was called " Silly Billy." When King Wil- 
 liam IV. gave his assent to the Reform Bill, the Duke, who 
 knew his own nickname, cried " Who's Silly Billy now ? " It 
 would have been more difficult from the Conservative point of 
 view to answer that question if the King had possessed the 
 liberty of action which in his Memoir he imagines himself to 
 possess. 
 
 The year 1836 opened a new field to the active beneficence 
 of Stockmar. " The approaching majority, and probably not 
 distant accession to the throne, of Princess Victoria of England, 
 engaged the vigilant and far-sighted care of her uncle, King 
 Leopold. At the same time he was already making prepara- 
 tions for the eventual execution of a plan, which had long- 
 formed the subject of the wishes of the Coburg family, to wit, 
 the marriage of the future Queen of England with his nephew, 
 Prince Albert of Coburg." Stockmar was charged with the 
 duty of standing by the Princess, as her confidential adviser, 
 at the critical moment of her coming of age, which might also be 
 that of her accession to the throne. Meanwhile King Leopold con- 
 sulted with him as to the manner in which Prince Albert should 
 make acquaintance with his cousin, and how he " should be 
 prepared for his future vocation." This is pretty broad, and a 
 little lets down the expressions of intense affection for the 
 Queen and unbounded admiration of Prince Albert with which 
 Stockmar overflows. However, a feeling may be genuine though 
 its source is not divine. 
 
 N 
 
194 ^ WIREPULLER Oi KINGS 
 
 Stockmar played his part adroitly. He came over to Eng- 
 land, slipped into the place of private Secretaiy to the Queen, 
 and for fifteen months " continued his noiseless, quiet activity, 
 without any publicly defined position." The marriage was 
 brought about and resulted, as we all know, in perfect happi- 
 ness till death entered the Royal home. 
 
 Stockmar was evidently very useful in guiding the Royal 
 couple through the difficulties connected with the settlement of 
 the Prince's income and his rank, and with the Regency Bill. 
 His idea was that questions affecting the Royal family should 
 be regarded as above party, and in this he ap])arently induced 
 the leaders of both parties to acquiesce, though they could not 
 perfectly control their followers. The cctnnection with the 
 Whigs into which the young Queen had been drawn by attach- 
 ment to her political mentor. Lord Melbourne, had strewn hei 
 path with thorns. The Tory party was bitterl}'^ hostile to the 
 Court. If Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Odger wish to provide 
 themselves with material for retorts to Tory denunciations of 
 their disloyalty, they cannot do better than look up the speeches 
 and writings of the Tory party during the years 1835-1841. 
 What was called the Bedchamber Plot, in 1839, had rendered 
 the relations between the (Jourt and the Conservative leaders 
 still more awkward, and Stockmar appears to have done a real 
 service in smoothing the way for the formation of the Conser- 
 vative Ministry in 1841. 
 
 Stockmar, looking at Peel from the Court point of view, was 
 at first prejudiced against him, especially on account of his hav- 
 ing, in deference probably to the feelings of his party against 
 the Court, cut down the Prince Consort's allowance. All the 
 more striking is the testimony which, after long acquaintance, 
 the Baron bears to Peel's character and merits as a statesman. 
 
 " Peel's mind and character rested on moral foundations, which I have 
 not seen once shaken, either in his private or his public life. From these 
 foundations rose that never-failing spring of fairness, honesty, kindness, 
 moderation and regard for others, which Peel showed to all men, and 
 under all circumstances. On these foundations grew that love of country 
 which pervaded his whole being, which knew of but one object — the true 
 welfare of England : of but one glory and one reward for each citizen, 
 viz., to have contributed something towards that welfare. Such love of 
 country admits of but one ambition, and hence the ambition of that man 
 was as pui'e as his heart. To make every sacrifice for that ambition, 
 which the fates of his country demand from evex'yone, he considered his 
 most sacred duty, and lie has made these sacritices, however dithcult they 
 might have been to him. Wherein lay the real difficulty of those sacri- 
 fices will perhaps hereafter be explained by those who knew the secret of 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS, 195 
 
 the political circumstances and the personal chai-acter of the men with 
 whom he was brought in contact ; and who would not think of weighing 
 imponderable sacrifices on the balance of vulgar gain. 
 
 " The man whose feelings for liis own country rested on so firm a foun- 
 dation could not be dishonest or unfair towards foreign countries. The 
 same right understanding, fairness, and moderation, which he evinced in 
 his treatment of internal affairs, guided Peel in his treatment of all foreign 
 questions. The wish frequently expressed by him, to see the welfare of 
 all nations improved, was thorou'^dily sincere. He knew France and 
 Italy from his own observation, and he had studied the political history of 
 the former with great industry. For Germany he had a good will, nay, a 
 predilection, particularly for Prussia. 
 
 " In his private life, Peel was a real pattern. He was the most loving, 
 faithful, conscientious husband, father, and brother, unchanging and in- 
 dulgent to his friends, and always ready to help his fellow-citizens accord- 
 ing to his power. 
 
 " Of the vulnerable parts of his character his enemies may have many 
 things to tell. What had been observed by all who came into closer con- 
 tact with him, could not escape ray own observation. £ mean his too great 
 prudence, caution, and at times, extreme reserve, in important as well as 
 in unimportant matters, which he showed, not only towards more distant, 
 but even towards his nearer acquaintances. If he was but too often spar- 
 ing of words, and timidly cautious in oral transactions, he was naturally 
 still more so in his written communications. The fear never left him that 
 he might have to hear an opinion once expressed, or a judgment once 
 uttered by him, repeated by the wrong man, and in the wrong place, and 
 misapplied. His friends were sometimes in despair over this peculiarity. 
 To his opponents it supplied an apparent groundfor suspicion and incrimina- 
 tion. It seemed but too likely that there was a doubtful motive for such 
 reserve, or that it was intended to cover narrowness and weakness of 
 thought and feeling, or want of enterprise and courage. To me also this 
 jDeculiarity seemed often injurious to himself and to the matter in hand ; 
 and I could not help being sometimes put out by it, and wishing from the 
 bottom of my heart that he could have got rid of it. But when one came 
 to weigh the acts of the man against his manner, the disagreeable impres- 
 sion soon gave way. I quickly convinced myself, that this, to me, so ob- 
 jectionable a trait was but an innate peculiarity ; and that in a sphere of 
 activity where thoughtless unreserve and laisser aller showed themselves 
 in every possible form. Peel was not likely to find any incentive, or to 
 form a resolution to overcome, in this point, his natural disposition. 
 
 " 1 have been told, or I have read it somewhere, that Peel was the most 
 successful type of political mediocrity. In accepting this estimate of my 
 departed friend as perfectly true, I ask Heaven to relieve all Ministers, 
 within and without Europe, of their superiority, and to endow them with 
 Peel's mediocrity : and I ask this for the welfare of all nations, and in the 
 firm conviction that ninety-nine hundredths of the higher political affairs 
 can be properly and successfully conducted by such Ministers only as pos- 
 sess Peel's mediocrity : though I am willing to admit that the remaining 
 hundredth may, through the power and boldness of a ti'ue genius, be 
 brought to a particularly happy, or, it may be, to a particularly unhappy, 
 issue." 
 
 Of the late Lord Derby, on the other hand, Stockraar speaks 
 with the greatest contempt, calling him " a frivolous aristocrat 
 
196 ^ WIREPULLEIi OF KIJSGS, 
 
 who delighted in making mischief." It does not appear whether 
 the two men ever came into collision with each other, but if 
 they did, Lord Derby was likely enough to leave a sting. 
 
 Stockmar regularly spent a great part of each year with the 
 English Royal Family. Apartments were appropriated to 
 him in each of the Royal residences, and he lived with the 
 Queen and Prince on the footing of an intimate, or rather of a 
 member, and almost the father, of the family. Indeed, he used 
 a familiarity beyond that of any friend or relative. Having 
 an objection to taking leave, he was in the habit of disappear- 
 ing without notice, and leaving his rooms vacant when the 
 fancy took him. Then we are told, letters complaining of his 
 faithlessness would follow him, and in course of time others 
 urging his return. Etiquette, the highest of all laws, was dis- 
 pensed with in his case. After dining with the Queen, when 
 Her Majesty had risen from table, and after holding a circle 
 had sat down again to tea, Stockmar would generally be seen 
 walking straight through the drawing-room and returning to 
 his apartment, there to study his own comfort. More than this. 
 When Mordecai became the King's favourite, he was led forth 
 on the royal steed, apparelled in the royal robe, and with the 
 royal crown upon his head. A less demonstrative and pic- 
 turesque, but not less signal or significant, mark of Royal favour 
 was bestowed on Stockmar. In his case tights were dispensed 
 with, and he was allowed to wear trousers, which better suited 
 his thin legs. We believe this exemption to be without parallel ; 
 though we have heard of a single dispensation being granted, 
 after many searchings of heart, in a case where the invitation 
 had been sudden, and the mystic garment did not exist ; and 
 also of a more melancholy case, in which the garment was 
 split in rushing down to dinner, and its wearer was compelled 
 to appear in the forbidden trousers, and very late, without the 
 possibility of explaining what had occurred. 
 
 Notwithstanding the enormous power indicated by his privi- 
 leged nether limbs, Stockmar remained disinterested. A rich 
 Englishman, described as an author and member of Parliament, 
 called upon him one day, and promised to give him £10,000 if 
 he would further his petition to the Queen for a peerage. 
 Stockmar replied, " I will now go into the next room, in order 
 to give you time. If upon my return I still find you here, I 
 shall have you turned out by the servants." 
 
 We are told that the Baron had little intercourse with any 
 circles but those of the court — a circumstance which was not 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 197 
 
 Likely to diminish any ]>ad impressions that might prevail with 
 refjard to his secret influence. Among his intimate friends in 
 the household was his fellow-countryman Dr. Pratorius, " who 
 ever zealously strengthened the Prince's inclinations in the 
 sense which Stockmar desired, and always insisted upon the 
 highest moral considerations." Nature, in the case of the doctor, 
 had not been so lavish of personal beauty as of moral endow- 
 ments. The Queen was once reading the Bible with her 
 daughter, the little Princess Victoria. They came to the passage, 
 " God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
 created He him." " O Mamma," cried the Princess, " not Dr. 
 Pratorius ! " 
 
 Stockmar's administrative genius effected a reform in the 
 Royal household, and as appears from his memorandum, not 
 before there was occasion for it. " The housekeepers, pages, 
 housemaids, &c., are under the authority of the Lord Chamber- 
 lain ; all the footmen, livery-porters and under-butlers, by the 
 strangest anomaly, under that of Master of the Horse, at whose 
 office they are clothed and paid; and the rest of the servants, 
 such as the clerk of the kitchen, the cooks, the porters, &c., are 
 under the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward. Yet these ludic- 
 rous divisions extend not only to persons, but likewise to things 
 and actions. The Lord Steward, for example, finds the fuel 
 and lays the fire, and the Lord Cliamberlain lights it. It was 
 under this state of things that the writer of this paper, having 
 been sent one day by Her present Majesty to Sir Frederick 
 Watson, then the Master of the Household, to complain that 
 the dining-room was always cold, was gravely answered : ' You 
 see, properly speaking, it is not our fault; for the Lord Steward 
 iays the fire only, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it.' In the 
 same manner the Lord Chamberlain provides all the lamps, and 
 the Lord Steward must clean, trim and light them. If a pane 
 of glass or the door in a cupboard in the scullery requires 
 mending, it cannot now be done without the following process : 
 A requisition is prepared and signed liy the chief cook, it is 
 then countersigned by the clerk of the kitchen, then it is taken 
 to be signed by the Master of the Household, thence it is taken 
 to the Lord Chamberlain's office, where it is authorized, and 
 then laid before the Clerk of the Works under the office of 
 Woods and Forests ; and consequently many a window and 
 cupboard have remained broken for months." Worse than this 
 — " There is no one who attends to the comforts of the Queen's 
 guests on their arrival at the Royal residence. When they 
 
198 ^ WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 arrive at present there is no one prepared to show them to or 
 from their apartments ; there is no gentleman in the palace 
 who even knows where they are lodged, and there is not even 
 a servant who can perform this duty, which is attached to the 
 Lord Chamberlain's department. It frequently happens at 
 Windsor that some of the visitors are at a loss to find the draw- 
 ing-room, and, at night, if they happen to forget the right 
 entrance from the corridor, they wander for an hour helpless- 
 and unassisted. There is nobody to apply to in such a case, for 
 it is not in the department of the Master of the Household, 
 and the only remedy is to send a servant, if one can be found,, 
 to the porter's lodge, to ascertain the apartment in question." 
 People were rather surprised when the boy Jones was discov- 
 ered, at one o'clock in the morning, under the softx in the room 
 adjoining Her Majesty's bedroom. But it seems nobody was- 
 responsible — not the Lord Chamberlain, who was in Stafford- 
 shire, and in whose department the porters were not; not the 
 Lord Steward, who was in London, and had nothing to do with 
 the pages and attendants nearest to the royal person ; not the 
 Master of the Household, who was only a subordinate officer in 
 the Lord Steward's department. So the King of Spain, who was. 
 roasted to death because the right Lord-in-Waiting could not be 
 found to take him from the fire, was not without a parallel in 
 that which calls itself the most practical of nations. Stockmar 
 reformed the system by siuiply inducing each of the three great 
 officers, without nominally giving up his authority (which 
 would have shaken the foundations of the Monarchy), to dele- 
 gate so much of it as would enable the lire to be laid and lighted 
 by the same power. We fancy, however, that even since the 
 Stockmarian reconstruction, we have heard of guests finding'- 
 themselves adrift in the coriidors of Windsor. There used tO' 
 be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed that in the abode of 
 Royalty servants were always within call, a theory which would 
 have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, who, on 
 the approach of the royal dinner hour, might happen to find 
 himself left with somebody else's small clothes. 
 
 In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince 
 Albert and Stockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we 
 have referred at the beginning of this article. The Prince's la- 
 mented death caused such a reaction of feeling in his favour 
 that it is difficult now to recall to recollection the degree of un- 
 popularity under which he at one time laboured. Some of the 
 causes of this unpopularity are correctly stated by the author 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS: 199 
 
 of the present memoii". The Prince was a foreigner, his ways 
 were not those of Englishmen; he did not dress like an English- 
 man, shake hands like an Englishman. He was suspected of 
 " Germanizing" tendencies, very offensive to high churchmen, 
 especially in philosophy and religion, He displeased the Con- 
 servatives by his Liberalism, the coarser Radicals by his pietism 
 and culture. He displeased the fast set by his strict morality ; 
 they called him slow, because he did not bet, gamble, use bad 
 language, keep an opera dancer. With more reason he dis- 
 pleased the army by meddling, under the name of a too courtly 
 Commander-in-Chief, with professional matters which he could 
 not understand. But there was a cause of his unpopularity 
 scarcely appreciable by the German author of this memoir. He 
 had brought with him the condescending manner of a German 
 Prince. The English prefer a frank manner ; they will bear a 
 high manner in persons of sufficient rank, but a condescending 
 manner they will not endure ; nor will any man or woman but 
 those who live in a German Court. So it was, however, that the 
 Prince, during his life, though respected by the people for his vir- 
 tues, and by menof intellect for his culture, was disliked and dis- 
 paraged by "Society,' and especially by the great ladies who 
 are at the head of it. The Conservatives, male and female, had 
 a further grudge against him as the i-eputed friend of Peel, who 
 was the object of their almost demoniac hatred. 
 
 The part of a Prince Consort is a very difficult one to play. 
 In the case of Queen Anne's husband. Prince George of Den- 
 mark, nature solved the difficulty by not encumbering his Royal 
 Highness with any brains. But Prince Albert had brains, and 
 it was morally impossible that he should not exercise a power 
 not contemplated by the Constitution. He did so almost from 
 the first, with the full knowledge and approbation of the Min- 
 isters, who had no doubt the sense to see what could not be 
 avoided had better be recognised and kept under control. But 
 in 1851 the Court quarrelled with Palmer.ston, who was dis- 
 missed from office, very properly, for having, in direct violation 
 of a recent order of the Queen, communicated to the French 
 Ambassador his approval of the coup d'etat, without the know- 
 ledge of Her Majesty or the Cabinet, in 1854- came the ru})- 
 ture with Russia, which led to the Crimean war. Palmerston, 
 in correspondence with his friend the French Emperor, was 
 working for a war, with a separate French alliance. Prince 
 Albert, in conjunction with Aberdeen, was trying to keep the 
 Four Powers together, and by their combined action to avert a 
 
200 ^ WIREFULLER OF KINGS. 
 
 war. Palmerstonand his partizans appealed through the press 
 to the people, among whom the war feeling was growing strong, 
 against the unconstitutional intiuence of the Prince Consort 
 and his foreign advisers. Thereupon arose a storm of insane 
 suspicion and fury which almost recalled the fever of the Popish 
 Plot. Thousands of Londoners collected round the Tower to see 
 the Prince's entry into the State Prison, and dispersed only upon 
 being told that the Queen had said that if her husband was 
 sent to prison she would go with him. Reports were circulated 
 of a pamphlet drawn up under Palmerston's eye, and containing 
 the most damning proofs of the Prince's guilt, the publication 
 of which it was said the Prince had managed to prevent, but of 
 which six copies were still in existence. The pamphlet was at 
 last printed in extenso in the Times, and the bottled lightning 
 proved to be ditchwater. Of course Stockmar, the " spy," the 
 " agent of Leopold," did not escape denunciation, and though it 
 was proved he had been at Coburg all the time, jDcople per- 
 sisted in believing he was concealed about the Court, coming 
 out only at night. The outcry was led by the Mo7-ning Post, 
 Lord Palmerston's personal organ, and the Morning Advertiser, 
 the bellicose and truly British journal of the Licensed Victual- 
 lers ; but these were supported by the Consei-vative press, and 
 by some Radical papers. A debate in Parliament broke the 
 waterspout as quickly as it had been formed. The people had 
 complained with transports of rage that the Prince Consort ex- 
 ercised an influence unrecognised by the Constitution in affairs 
 of State. They were officially assured that he rfirf; and they 
 at once declared themselves perfectly satisfied. 
 
 Our readers would not thank us for takins; them afjain 
 through the question of the Spanish marriages, a transaction 
 which Stockmar viewed in the only way in which the most cri- 
 minal and the filthiest of intrigues could be viewed by an honest 
 man and a gentleman ; or through the question of German 
 unity, on which his oi)inions have been at once ratified and de- 
 prived of their practical interest by events. The last part of his 
 life he passed in Germany, managing German Royalties, espec- 
 ially the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia, for 
 whom he had conceived a profound affection. His presence, 
 we are told, was regarded by German statesmen and magnates 
 as " uncanny," and Count K., on being told that it was Stock- 
 mar with whom an acquaintance had just crossed a bridge, 
 asked the acquaintance why he had not pitched the Baron into 
 the river. That Stockmar did not deserve such a fate, the 
 
A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. 201 
 
 testimony cited at the beginning of this paper is sufficient to 
 prove. He was the unrecognised Minister of Constitutional 
 Sovereigns who wanted, besides their regular Parliamentary ad- 
 visers, a personal adviser to attend to the special interests of 
 royalty. It was a part somewhat clandestine, rather equivo- 
 cal, and not exactly such as a very proud man would choose. 
 But Stockmar was called to it by circumstances ; he was admir- 
 ably adapted for it, and if it sometimes led him further than 
 he was entitled or qualified to go, he played it on the whole 
 very well. 
 
202 THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC 
 
 A DISCUSSION which was raised some time ago by a very 
 pleasant article of Professor Wilson in the Canadian Monthly 
 disclosed the fact that Wi'ight's " Life of Wolfe," though it had 
 been published some years, was still very little known. It is 
 not only the best but the only complete life of the soldier, so 
 memorable in Canadian annals, whom Chatham's hand launched 
 on our coast, a thunderbolt of war, and whose victory decided 
 that the destiny of this land of great possibilities should be 
 shaped not by French but by British hands. Almost all that 
 is known about Wolfe is here, and it is well told. Perhaps the 
 biogra])her might have enhanced the interest of the figure by a 
 more vivid presentation of its historic surroundings. It is when 
 viewed in comparison with an age which was generally one of 
 unbelief, of low aims, of hearts hardened by vice, of blunted 
 affections, of coarse excesses, and in the military sphere one of 
 excesses more than usually coarse, of professional ignorance and 
 neglect of duty among the officers, while the habits of the rank 
 and file were those depicted in Hogarth's March to Finchley 
 that the life of this aspiring, gentle, affectionate, pure and con- 
 scientious soldier shines forth against the dark background 
 like a star. 
 
 Squerryes Court, near Westerham, in Kent, is an ample and 
 pleasant mansion in the Queen Anne style, which has long been 
 in the possession of the Warde family — they are very particu- 
 lar about the e. In later times it was the abode of a memor- 
 able character in his way — old John Warde, the " Father of 
 Fox-hunting." There it was that the greatest of all fox-hunters, 
 Asheton Smithe, when on a visit to John Warde, rode Warde's 
 horse Blue Ruin over a fiozen country through a fast run of 
 twenty-five minutes and killed his fox. On the ten^ace stands 
 a monument. It marks the spot where in 1741, James Wolfe, 
 the son of Lieut.-Col. Wolfe, of Westerham, then barely four- 
 teen years of age, was playing with two young Wardes, when 
 the father of the playmates approached and handed him a large 
 letter " On His Majesty's Service " which, on being opened, was 
 found to contain his commission in the army. We may be sure 
 that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion. There 
 
TEE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 20^ 
 
 cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impul- 
 sive features, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe pre- 
 sent to the power expressed in the commanding brow, the 
 settled look, and the evil eye* of Napoleon. 
 
 James Wolfe was a delicate child, and though he grew energe- 
 tic and fearless, never grew strong, or ceased to merit the interest 
 which attaches to a gallant spirit in a weak frame. He escaped a 
 public school, and without any forfeiture of the manliness which 
 public schools are supposed exclusively to produce, retained his 
 home affections and his tenderness of heart. He received the chief 
 part of his literary education in a school at Greenwich, where 
 ins parents resided, and he at all events learned enough Latin 
 to get himself a dinner, in his first campaign on the Continent, 
 by asking for it in that language. He is grateful to his school- 
 master, Mr. Stebbings, and speaks of him with affection in after- 
 life. But no doubt his military intelligence, as well as his mili- 
 tary tastes, was gained by intercourse with his father, a real 
 soldier, who had pushed his way by merit in an age of corrupt 
 patronage, and was Adjutant-General to Lord Cathcart's forces- 
 in 1740. Bred in a home of military dutj^ the young soldier 
 saw before him a worthy example of conscientious attention to- 
 all the details of the profession — not only to the fighting of 
 battles, but to the making of the soldiers with whom battles are 
 to be fought. 
 
 Walpole's reign of peace was over, the " Patriots " had 
 driven the nation into war, and the trade of Colonel Wolfe and 
 his son was again in request. Before he got his commission, 
 and when he was only thirteen years and a-half old, the boy's 
 ardent spirit led him to embark with his father as a volunteer 
 in the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena. Happily, though he 
 assured his mother that he was "in a very good state of 
 health," his health was so far from being good that they were 
 obliged to put him on shore at Portsmouth. Thus he escaped 
 that masterpiece of the military and naval administration of 
 the aristocracy, to the horrors of which his frail frame would 
 undoubtedly have succumbed. His father saw the unspeakable 
 things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned 
 his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint expeditions 
 of the two services — a precept which the soldier of an island 
 power would have found it difficult to observe. 
 
 *The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba, used to say that there 
 was something very evil in his eye. 
 
204 TEE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 Wolfe's mother liad struggled to prevent her boy fi'om going, 
 .and appealed to his love of hei". It was a strong appeal, for 
 he was the most dutiful of sons. The first in the series of his 
 letters is one written to her on this occasion, assuring her of 
 his affection and promising to write to her by every ship he 
 meets. She kept all his letters from this one to the last written 
 from the banks of the St. Lawrence. They are in the stiff old 
 style, beginning " Dear Madam," and signed " dutiful ; " but 
 they are full of warm feeling, scarcely interrupted by a little 
 jealousy of temper which there appears to have been on the 
 mother's side. 
 
 Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines, 
 but he never served as a marine. He could scarcely have done 
 so, for to the end of his life, he suffered tortures from sea-sick- 
 ness. He is now an Ensign in Duroure's regiment of foot. We 
 see him a tall slender boy of fifteen, in scaiiet coat, folded back 
 from the breast after the old ffishion in broad lapels to display 
 its white or yellow lining, breeches and gaiters, with his young 
 face surmounted by a wig and a cocked hat edged with gold 
 lace, setting off, colours in hand, with his regiment for the war 
 in the Low Countries. If he missed seeing aristocratic manage- 
 ment at Carthagena, he shall see aristocratic and royal strategy 
 at Dettingen. His brother Ned, a boy still moi^e frail than 
 himself, but emulous of his military ardour, goes in another 
 regiment on the same expedition. 
 
 The regiment was accidentally preceded by a large body of 
 troops of the other sex, who landing unexpectedly by themselves 
 .at Ostend caused some perplexity to the Quartermaster. The 
 home affections must have been strong which could keep a 
 •soldier pure in those days. 
 
 The regiment was at first quartered at Ghent, where, amidst 
 the din of garrison riot and murderous brawls, we hear the 
 gentle sound of Wolfe's flute, and where he studies the fortifi- 
 -cations, already anxious to prepare himself for the higher 
 walks of his profession. From Ghent the army moved to the 
 actual scene of war in Germany, suffering of course on the 
 march from the badness of the commissariat. Wolfe's body 
 feels the fatigue and hardship. He " never comes into quarters 
 without aching hips and thighs." But he is " in the greatest 
 spirits in the world." " Don't tell me of a constitution " he 
 said afterwards, when a remark was made on the weakness of 
 a brother ofHcer, "he has good spirits, and good spirits will carry 
 a man through eveiything." 
 
TEE COI^QVEEOB OF QUEBEC. 205> 
 
 All the world knows into what a position His Martial Ma- 
 jesty King George II. with the help of sundry persons of qual- 
 ity, styling themselves generals, got the British army at Det- 
 tingen, and how the British soldier fought his way out of the 
 scrape. Wolfe was in the thick of it, and his horse was shot 
 under him. His first letter is to his mother—" I take the very 
 first opportunity I can to acquaint you that my brother and self 
 escaped in the engagement we had with the French, the 16th 
 June last, and, thank God, are as well as ever we were in 
 our lives, after not only being canonnaded two hours and 
 three quarters, and fighting with small arms two hours and 
 one quarter, but lay the two following nights upon our arms, 
 whilst it rained for about twenty hours in the san^e time ; yet 
 are ready and as capable to do the same again." But this letter 
 is followed by one to his father, which seems to us to rank 
 among the wonders of literature. It is full of fire and yet as 
 calm as a dispatch, giving a complete, detailed, and masterly ac- 
 count of the battle, and showing that the boy kept his head, and 
 played the part of a good officer as well as of a brave soldier in 
 his first field. The cavalry did indifierently, and there is a 
 sharp soldiery criticism on the cause of its failure. But the 
 infantry did better. 
 
 " The third and last attack was made by the foot on both sides. We ad- 
 vanced towards one another ; our men in high spirits, and very impatient 
 for fighting, being elated with beating the French Horse, part of which 
 advanced towards us, while the rest attacked our Horse, but were soon 
 driven back by the great fire we gave them. The Major and I (for we 
 had neither Colonel nor Lieutenant-Colonel), before they came near, were 
 employed in begging and ordering the men not to fire at too great a dis- 
 tance, but to keep it till the enemy should come near us ; but to littJe 
 purpose. The whole fired when they thought they could reach them, 
 which had like to have ruined us. We did very little execution with 
 it. As soon as the French saw we presented they all fell down, and 
 when we had fired they got up and marched close to us in tolerable 
 good order, and gave us a brisk fire, which put us into some disorder and 
 made us give way a little, particularly ours and two or three more regiments 
 who were in the hottest of it. However, we soon rallied again, and at- 
 tacked them again with great fury, which gained us a complete victory, 
 and forced the enemy to retire in great haste." 
 
 Edward distinguished himself, too. " I sometimes thought I 
 had lost poor Ned, when I saw arms and legs and heads beat oft* 
 close by him. He is called ' The old Soldier,' and very deservedly." 
 Poor " Old Soldier," his career was as brief as that of a shooting- 
 star. Next year he dies, not by sword or bullet, but of con- 
 sumption hastened by hardships — dies alone in a foreign land. 
 
206 THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 " often calling on those wlio were dear to him ; " his brother, 
 though within reach, being kept away by the calls of duty and 
 by ignorance of the danger. The only comfort was that he 
 had a faithful servant, and that as he shared with his brother 
 the gift of winning hearts, brother officers were likely to be 
 kind. James, writing to their mothei', some time after, shed 
 tears over the letter. 
 
 Though only sixteen, Wolfe had acted as Adjutant to his reg- 
 iment at Dettingen. He was regularly appointed Adjutant 
 a few days after. His father, as we have seen, had been an 
 Adjutant-General. Even under the reign of Patronage there 
 was one chance for merit. Patronage could not do without 
 adjutants. From this time, Wolfe, following in his father's 
 footsteps, seems to have given his steady attention to the ad- 
 ministrative and, so far as his very scanty opportunities per- 
 mitted, to the scientific part of his profession. 
 
 Happily for him, he was not at Fontenoy. But he was at 
 Lafi'eldt, and saw what must have been a grand sight for a sol- 
 dier — the French infantry coming down from the heights in 
 one vast column, ten battalions in front and as many deep, to 
 attack the British position in the village. After all, it was not 
 by the British, but by the Austrians and Dutch, that Lafifeldt 
 was lost. We have no account of the battle from Wolfe's pen. 
 But he was wounded, and it is stated, on what authority his 
 biographer does not tell us, that he was thanked by the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. Four years afterwards he said of his old ser- 
 vant, Roland : " He came to me at the hazard of his life, in the 
 last action, with offers of his service, took off my cloak, and 
 brought a fresh horse, and would have continued close by me 
 had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he was slightly 
 wounded just at that time, and the horse he held was shot like- 
 wise. Many a time has he pitched my tent and made the bed 
 ready to receive me, half dead with fatigue ; and this I owe 
 to his diligence." 
 
 But between Dettingen and Lafieldt, Wolfe had been called 
 to serve on a different scene. The Patriots, in bringing on a 
 F^uropean war, had renewed the Civil War at home. Attached 
 to the army sent against the Pretender, Wolfe (now major), 
 fought under " Hangman Hawley," in the blundering and dis- 
 astrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day, under Cum- 
 berland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited the 
 field of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there 
 also " somebody blundered," though he refrains from saying 
 
THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 207 
 
 who. The mass of the rebel army, he seems to think, ought not 
 to have been allowed to escajje. These campaigns were a mili- 
 tary curiosity. The Koman order of battle, evidently intended 
 to repair a broken front, was perhaps a lesson taught the 
 Homan tacticians on the day when their front was broken by 
 the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced the 
 same effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it 
 at Killiecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk. At 
 Culloden the Duke of Cumberland formed so as to repair a 
 broken fi'ont, and when the rush came, but few of the High- 
 landers got beyond the second line. Killiecrankie and Preston 
 Pans tell us nothing against Discipline. 
 
 There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and 
 of Wolfe's humanity towards the wounded after the battle, — 
 " Wolfe_, shoot me that Highland scoundrel who thus dares to 
 look on us with such contempt and insolence." " My commis- 
 sion is at 3'our Royal Highness's disposal, but I never can con- 
 sent to become an executioner." The anecdotist adds that 
 from that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of 
 the Commander-in-Chief But it happens that Wolfe did noth- 
 ing of the kind. On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not 
 doubt, nor is there any ground for doubting, the identity of 
 the Major Wolfe who, under orders, relieves a Jacobite lady, 
 named Gordon, of a considerable amount of stores and miscel- 
 laneous property accumulated in her house, but according to 
 her own account belonging partly to other people ; among other 
 things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as she 
 said, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing 
 at that critical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, 
 by Mrs. Gordon's own account, not to have been harshly per- 
 formed. If any property that ought to have been restored was 
 kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by " Hangman Hawley." 
 Still one could wish to see Wolfe fightincf on a brio-hter field 
 than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting a soldier 
 than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued. 
 
 The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his pro- 
 fession. " A battle gained," he says, " is, I believe the highest 
 joy mankind is capable of receiving to him who commands ; 
 and his merit must be equal to his success if it works no change 
 to his disadvantage." He dilates on the value of war as a 
 school of character. " We have all our passions and affections 
 roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted 
 their proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us 
 
208 TUE CONQUEROR 01 QUEBEC. 
 
 to exert them. Few men are acquainted with the degrees of 
 their own courage till danger prove them, and are seldom justly 
 informed how far the love of honour and dread of shame are 
 superior to the love of life." But now peace comes, the sword is 
 consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronage resumes its sway. 
 " In these cooler times the parliamentary interest and weight 
 of particular families annihilate all other pretensions." The 
 consequence was, of course, that when the hotter times re- 
 turned they found the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its 
 path, as Napier says, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" 
 thi'ough chaos to death. 
 
 Wolfe would fain have gone abroad (England affording no 
 schools) to complete his military and general education ; but 
 the Duke of Cumberland's only notion of military education 
 was drill ; so Wolfe had to remain with his regiment. It was 
 quartered in Scotland, and besides the cankering inaction to 
 which the gallant spirit was condemned, Scotch quarters were 
 not pleasant in those days. The country was socially as far 
 from London as Norway. The houses were small, dirty, unven- 
 tilated, devoid of any kind of comfort ; and habits and manners 
 were not much better than the habitations. Perhaps Wolfe 
 saw the Scotch society of those days through an unfavourable 
 medium, at all events he did not find it charming. " The men 
 here," he writes from Glasgow, " are civil, designing, and trea- 
 cherous, with their immediate interest always in view ; they 
 pursue trade with warmth and a necessary mercantile spirit, 
 arising from the baseness of their other qualifications. The 
 women coarse, cold and cunning, for ever enquiring after men's 
 circumstances ; they make that the standing of their good 
 breeding." Even the sermons failed to please. " I do several 
 things in my character of commanding officer which I should 
 never think of in any other ; for instance, I'm every Sunday 
 at the Kirk, an example justly to be admired. I would not 
 lose two houis of a day if it would not answer some end. 
 When I say ' lose two hours,' I must complain to you that the 
 generality of Scotch preachers are excessive blockheads, so 
 truly and obstinately dull, that they seem to shut out know- 
 ledge at every entrance." If Glasgow and Perth were bad, still 
 worse were dreary Banfi'and bai-barous Inverness. The Scotch 
 burghers, their ladies, and the preachers are entitled to the ben- 
 efit of the remark that the Scotch climate greatly aftected 
 Wolfe's sensitive frame, and that he took a wiong though es- 
 tablished method of keeping out the cold and damp. When 
 
THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 200 
 
 there is nothing in the way of action to lift the soul above the 
 clay, his spirits, as he admits, rise and fall with the weather 
 and his impressions vary with them. " I'm sorry to say that 
 my writings are greatly influenced l)y the state of my body or 
 mind at the time of writing ; and I'm either hnppy or ruined 
 by my last night's rest, or fi-om sunshine, or light and sickly 
 air : such infirmity is the mortal frame subject to." 
 
 Inverness was the climax of discomfort, coarseness and dul- 
 ness, as well as a centre of disaffection. Quarters taere in 
 those days must have been something like quarters in an In- 
 dian village^ with the Scotch climate superadded. The houses 
 were hovels ; worse and more fetid than those at Perth. Even 
 whenitwas fine there was noamusement but shooting woodcocks 
 at the risk of rheumatism. When the rains poured down and 
 the roads were broken up, there was no society, not even a news- 
 paper ; nothing to be done but to eat coarse food and sleep in bad 
 beds. If there was a laird in the neighbourhood, he was apt to be 
 some " Bumper John " whose first act of hospitality was to make 
 you drunk. " I wonder how long a man moderately inclined 
 that way, would require, in a place like this, to wear out his 
 love for arms, and soften his martial spirit. I believe the pas- 
 sion would be something diminished in less than ten years, and 
 the gentleman be contented to be a little lower than Cnesar in 
 the list to get rid of the encumbrance of greatness." 
 
 It is in his dreary quai ters at Inverness, at the dead of night, 
 perhaps with a Highland tempest howling outside, that the 
 future conqueror of Quebec thus moralizes on his own condition 
 and j)rospects in a letter to his mother : 
 
 " The winter wears away, so do our years, and so does life itself ; and 
 it matters little where a man passes his days and what station he fills, or 
 whether he be great or considerable ; but it imports him something to 
 l(jok to his manner of life. This day am I twenty-five years of age, and 
 all that time is as nothing. When I am fifty (if it so happens) and look 
 back, it will be the same ; and so on to the last hour. But it is worth a 
 moment's consideration that one may be called away on a sudden, \\n- 
 guarded and unprepared ; and the oftoner these thoughts are entertained, 
 the less will be the dread or fear of death. You will judge by tliis sort of 
 discourse that it is the dead of night, when all is quiet and at rest, and one 
 of those intervals whei'ein men think of what they really are, and what 
 they really should be ; how much is expected, and how little performed. 
 Our shortduration here, and the doubts of thehereaftershould awe the most 
 flagitious, if they reflected on them. The little taken in for meditation is 
 the best employed in all tlieir lives ; for if the uncertainty of our state 
 and 1)eing is then brought before us, who is there that will not immedi- 
 ately discover the inconsistency of all his behaviour and the vanity of all 
 his pursuits ] And yet, we are so mixed and compounded that, though 
 O 
 
210 THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 I think seriously tliis minute, and lie down with good intentions, it i» 
 likely I may rise with my old nature, or perhaps with the addition of 
 some new impertinence, and be the same wandering lump of idle errors 
 that I have ever been. 
 
 " You certainly advise me well. You have pointed out the only way 
 ■where there can be no disappointment, and comfort that will never fail 
 us, carrying men steadily and cheerfully in their journey, and a place of 
 rest at the end. Nobody can be more persiiaded of it than I am ; but 
 situation, example, the current of things, and our natural weakness, draw 
 me away with the herd, and only leave me just strength enough to resist 
 the worst degree of our iniquities. There are times when men fret at 
 trifles and quarrel with their toothpicks. In one of these ill-habits I ex- 
 claim against the present condition, and think it is the worst of all ; but 
 coolly and tempeiately it is plainly the best. Where there is most em- 
 ployment and least vice, there one should wish to be. There is a mean- 
 ness and a baseness not to endure with patience the little inconveniencea 
 we arestibject to ; and to know no happiness but in one spot, and that in 
 ease, in luxury, in idleness, seems to deserve our contempt. There are 
 young men amongst us that have great revenues and high military sta- 
 tions, that repine at three months' service with their regiments if they go- 
 fifty miles from home. Soup and venaison and turtle are their supreme 
 delight and joy, — an effeminate race of coxcombs, the future leaders of 
 our armies, defenders and protectors of our great and free nation ! 
 
 "You bid me avoid Fort William, because you believe it still worse 
 than this place. That will not be my reason for wishing to avoid it ; 
 but the change of conversation ; the fear of becoming a mere ruffian ; 
 and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or, 
 giving way insensibly to the temptations of power, till 1 become proud^ 
 insolent and intolerable ; — these considerations will make me wish to 
 leave the regiment before the next winter, and always if it could be so 
 after eight months duty ; that by frequenting men above myself I may 
 know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn 
 some civility and mildness of carriage, but never pay the price of the last 
 improvement with the loss of reason. Better be a savage of some use 
 than a gentle, amorous pup^jy, obnoxious to all the world. One of Xh& 
 wildest of wild clans is a worthier being than a perfect Philander." 
 
 Wolfe, it must be owned, does not write well. He has reason 
 to envy, as he does, the grace of the female style. He is not 
 only ungrammatical, which, in a familiar letter, is a matter of 
 very small consequence, but somewhat stilted. Perhaps it was 
 like the " Madam," the fashion of the Johnsonian era. Yet 
 beneath the buckram you always feel that there is a heart. 
 Persons even of the same profession are cast in very ditierent 
 moulds ; and the mould of Wolfe was as different as possible 
 from that of the Iron Duke. 
 
 Woll'e's dreary garrison leisures in Scotland, however, were 
 not idle. His books go with him, ;ind he is doing his best to 
 cultivate himself, both professionally and generally. He after- 
 wards recommends to a friend, evidently from his own expe- 
 rience, a long list of military histories and other works ancient 
 
TEE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 211 
 
 antl modern. The ancients he read in translations. His range 
 is wide and he appreciates military genius in all its forms. 
 " There is an abundance of military knowledge to be picked out 
 of the lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, King of 
 Sweden, and of Zisca the Bohemian ; and if a tolerable account 
 could be got of the exploits of Scanderbeg, it would be ines- 
 timable, for he excels all the officers ancient ard modern in 
 the conduct of a small defensive army." At Louisburg, Wolfe 
 put in practice, with good effect, a manoeuvre which he had 
 learned from the Carduchi in Xenophon, showing perhaps by 
 this reproduction of the tactics employed two thousand years 
 before by a barbarous tribe, that in the so-called art of war 
 there is a large element which is not progressive. Books will 
 never make a soldier, but Wolfe, as a military student, had the 
 advantage of actual experience of war. Whenever he could 
 hnd a teacher, he studied mathematics, zealously though appa- 
 rently not with delight. " I have read the mathematics till 
 I am grown perfectly stupid, and have algebraically worked 
 away the little portion of understanding that was allowed to me. 
 They have not even left me the qualities of a coxcomb : for I 
 can neither laugh nor sing nor talk an hour upon notching. The 
 latter of these is a sensible loss, for it excludes a gentleman 
 from all good company and makes him entirely unfit for the con- 
 versation of the polite world." " I don't know how the mathe- 
 matics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency 
 to make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in 
 my gaiety, am the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly 
 to produce sprightliness is neither the aim nor the general effect 
 of mathematics. That while military education was carried 
 on, general culture was not wholly neglected, is proved by the 
 famous exclamation about Gray's Elegy, the most signal homage 
 perhaps that a poet ever received. At Glasgow, where there 
 is a University, Wolfe studies mathematics in the morning ; in. 
 the afte)-noon he endeavours to regain his lost Latin. 
 
 Nor in training himself did he neglect to train his soldiers. 
 He had marked with bitterness of heart the murderous conse- 
 (juence to which neglect of training had led in the beginning 
 of every war. Probably he had the army of Frederick before 
 his e3''es. His words on musketry practice may still have an 
 interest. " Marksmen are nowhere so necessary as in a moun , 
 tainons country ; besides, firing at ol)jects teaches the soldiers 
 to level incomparably, makes the recruit steady, and removes, 
 the foolish apprehension that seizes 3'oung soldiers when they 
 
212 THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 first load their arms witli bullets. We fire, first singly, then 
 by files, one, two, three, or more, then by ranks, and lastly by 
 platoons ; and the soldiers see the effects of their shots, espe- 
 cially at a mark or upon water. We shoot obliquely and in 
 different situations of ground, from heights downwards and 
 •contrariwise." 
 
 Military education and attention to the details of the profes- 
 sion were not very common under the Duke of Wellington. 
 They were still less common under the Duke of Cumberland. 
 Before he was thirty, Wolfe was a great military authority, 
 •and what was required of Chatham, in his case, was not so 
 much the eye to discern latent merit, as the boldness to pro- 
 mote merit over the head of rank. 
 
 In a passage just quoted Wolfe expresses his fear lest com- 
 ?nand should make him tyrannical. He was early tried Ijy the 
 temptation of power. He became Lieut.-Colonel at twenty- 
 iive ; but in the absence of his Colonel he had already been in 
 -command at Stirling when he was only twenty-three. This 
 was in quarters where he was practically despotic. He does not 
 fail in his letters to pour out his heart on his situation. " To- 
 morrow Lord George Sackville goes away, and I take upon me 
 the difficult and troublesome employment of a commander. You 
 can't conceive how difficult a thing it is to keep the passions 
 within bounds, when authority and immaturity go together : 
 to endeavour at a character which has every opposition from 
 within, and that the very condition of the blood is a sufficient 
 obstacle to. Fancy you see me that must do justice to good and 
 'l)ad ; reward and punish with an equal unbiassed hand ; one that 
 is to reconcile the severity of discipline with the dictates of hu- 
 manity ; one that must study the tempers and dispositions of 
 many men, in order to make their situation easy and agreeable 
 to them, and should endeavour to oblige all without partiality ; 
 a mark set up for everybody to observe and judge of ; and last of 
 all, sujipose one employed in discouraging vice, and recommend- 
 ing tlie reverse, at the turbulent age of twenty-three, when it is 
 l)0ssil >le I may have as great a propensity that way as any of the 
 men that I converse with." He had difficultiesuf character tocon- 
 tend with, as well as difficulties of age. His temper was quick ; 
 he knew it. " My temper is much too warm, and sudden resent- 
 ■inent forces out expressions and even actions that are neither 
 justifiable nor excusable, and perhaps I do not conceal the 
 natural heat so much as I ought to do." He even felt that he 
 was apt to misconstrue the intentions of those around him, and 
 
THE CONQUEROR OE QUEBEC. 213 
 
 to cheiish groundless prejudices. " I have that wicked dispo- 
 sition of mind that whenever I know that people have enter- 
 tained a very ill opinion, I imagine they never change. From 
 whence one passes easily to an indifference about them, and then 
 to dislike ; and though I flatter myself that I have the seeds of 
 justice strong enough to keep from doing wrong, even to an 
 enem}^, yet there lurks a hidden poison in the heart that it is dif- 
 ficult to root out. It is my misfortune to catch fire on a sudden, 
 to answer letters the moment I receive them, when they touch me 
 sensibly, and to suffer passion to dictate my expressions more 
 than my reason. The next day, perhaps, would have changed 
 this, and carried more moderation with it. Every ill turn of 
 my life has had this haste and first impulse of the moment for 
 its cause, and it proceeds from pride." Solitary command and 
 absence from the tempering influences of general society were, 
 as he keenly felt, likely to aggravate his intirmities. Yet he 
 proves not only a successful but a popular commander, and he 
 seems never to have lost his friends. The " seeds of justice " 
 no doubt were really strong, and the transparent frankness of 
 his character, its freedom from anything like insidiousness or 
 malignity, must have had a powerful effect in dispelling resent- 
 ment. 
 
 His first regimental minute, of which his biographer gives us 
 an abstract, evinces a care for his men which must have been 
 almost startling in the days of " Hangman Hawley." He de- 
 sires to be acquainted in wiiting with the men and the com- 
 panies they belong to, and as soon as possible with their char- 
 acters, that he may know the proper objects to encourage, and 
 those over whom it will be neces-ary to keep a strict hand. 
 The officers are enjoined to visit the soldiers' quarters fre- 
 quently ; now and then to go round between nine and eleven 
 o'clock at night, and not trust to sergeants' reports. They are 
 also requested to watch the looks of the privates, and observe 
 whether any of them were paler than usual, that the reason 
 might be inquired into and proper means used to restore them 
 to their former vigour. Subalterns are told that " a young 
 officer should not think ho does too much." But firmness, and 
 great firmness, must have Iteen required, as well as watchful- 
 ness and kindness. His confidential expi-essions with regard 
 to the state of the army are as strong as words can make them. 
 " I have a very mean opinion of the Infantiy in general. I know 
 their discipline to be bad and their valour precarious. They 
 are easily put into disorder and hard to recover out of it. They 
 
214 TUE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 frequently kill their officers in their fear and murder one an- 
 other in their confusion." " Nothing, I think, can hurt their 
 discipline — it is at its worst. They shall drink and swear, 
 plunder and murder, with any troops in Europe, the Cossacks 
 and Calmucks themselves not excepted." " If I stay mucli 
 longer with the regiment I shall be perfectly corrupt ; the of- 
 ficers are loose and profligate and the soldiers are very devils." 
 He brought the OVth, however, into such a condition that it 
 remained a model regiment for years after he was gone. 
 
 Nor were the duties of a commanding officer in Scotland at 
 that period merely military. In the Highlands especially, he 
 was employed in quenching the smoking embers of" rebellion, 
 and in re-organizing the country after the anarchy of civil war. 
 Disarming had to be done, and suppression of the Highland 
 costume, which now marks the Queen's favourite regin ent, but 
 then marked a rebel. This is bad, as well as unworthy, work 
 for soldiers, who have not the trained self-command which be- 
 longs to a good police, and for which the Irish Constabulary 
 are as remarkable as they are for courage and vigour. Even 
 Wolfe's sentiments contracted a tinge of cruelty from his occu- 
 pation. In one of his subsequent letters he avows a design which 
 would have led to the massacre of a whole clan. " Would you 
 believe that I am so bloody ? " We do not believe that he was 
 i>o bloody, and are confident that the design, if it was ever 
 leally formed, would not have been carried into effect. But 
 the passage is the most painful one in his letters. The net i"e- 
 .sult of his military administration, however, was that the peo- 
 ple at Inverness were willing to celebrate the Duke of Cumber- 
 land's birthday, though they were not willing to comply with 
 the insolent demand of Colonel Lord Bury, who had come down 
 to take the command for a short time, that they should cele- 
 larate it on the anniversary of Culloden. It is a highly prob- 
 able tradition that the formation of Highland regiments was 
 suggested by Wolfe. 
 
 In a passage which we have quoted Wolfe glances at the 
 .awkward and |)erilous position in which a young commander 
 was placed in having to control the moral habits of officers his 
 equals in age, and to lebuke the passions which mutinied in 
 his own blood. He could hardly be expected to kee}) himself 
 immaculate. But he is always struggling to do right and re- 
 pentant when he does wrong. " We use a very dangerous free- 
 dom and looseness of speech among ourselves ; this by degrees 
 inakes wickedness and debauchery less odious than it should 
 
THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 215 
 
 \)e, if not familiar, and sets truth, religion, and virtue at a great 
 distance. I hear things every day said that would shock your 
 ■ears, and often say tilings myself that are not lit to be re- 
 peated, perhaps without any ill intention, but merely by the 
 force of custom. The best that can be offered in our defence is 
 that some of us see the evil and wish to avoid it." Among the 
 very early letters there is one to his brother about " pretty 
 mantua makers," etc. ; but it is evidently nothing but a nomi- 
 nal deference to the military immorality of the age. Once 
 when on a short visit to London, and awa}' from the restrain- 
 ing responsibilities of his command, Wolfe, according to his own 
 account, lapsed into debauchery. " In that short time I com- 
 mitted more imprudent acts than in all my life befoi'e. I 
 lived in the idlest, [most] dissolute, abandoned manner that 
 could be conceived, and that not out of vice, which is the most 
 ■extraordinary part of it. I have escaped at length and am once 
 more master of my reason, and hereafter it shall rule my con- 
 duct ; at least I hope so." Perhaps the lapse may have been 
 ■worse by contrast than in itself. The intensity of pure affec- 
 tion which pervades all Wolfe's lettei's is sufficient proof that 
 he had never abandoned himself to sensuality to an extent suf- 
 ficient to corrupt his heart. The age was profoundly sceptical, 
 and if the scepticism had not spread to the army the scof- 
 fing had. Wolfe more than once talks lightly of going to 
 church as a polite form ; but he appears always to have a prac- 
 tical belief in God. 
 
 It is worth}^ of remark that a plunge into London dissipa- 
 tion follows very close upon the disap[)ointment of an honour- 
 able passion. Wolfe had a certain turn of mind which fav- 
 oured matrimony " prodigiously," and he had fallen very much 
 in love with Miss Lawson, Maid of Honour to the Princess of 
 Wales. But the old General and Mrs. Wolfe opposed the match' 
 apparently on pecuniary grounds. " They have their eye upon 
 one of £30,000." Miss Lawson had only £12,000. Parents 
 bad more authority then than they have now ; Wolfe was ex- 
 ceedingly dutiful, and he allowed the old people, on whom, 
 from the insufficiency of his pay, he was still partly dependent 
 to bi-eak off' the affair. Such at least seems to have been the 
 history of its termination. The way in which Wolfe records 
 the catastrophe, it must be owned, is not very romantic. " This 
 last disappointment in love has changed my natural disposition 
 to such a degree that I believe it is now possible that I mights 
 prevail upon myself not to refuse twenty (>r thirty thousand 
 pounds, if pro[)erly offered. Rage and despair do not com- 
 
21 G IJJE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 monly produce such reasonable effects ; nor are they the- 
 instruments to make a man's fortune by but in particular 
 cases." It was long, however, before he could think of Miss^ 
 Lawson without a pang, and the sight of her portrait he telLs- 
 us takes away his appetite for some days. 
 
 At seven and twenty Wolfe left Scotland, having already to 
 seven years' experience of wai-fare added five years' experience 
 of difficult command. He is now able to move about a little 
 and open his mind, wliich has been long cramped by confine- 
 ment in Highland quarters. He visits an old uncle in Ireland^ 
 and, as one of the victors of CuUoden, views with special inter- 
 est that field of the Boyne, where in the last generation Liberty 
 and Progress had triumphed over the House of Stuart. " I 
 had more satisfaction in looking at this spot than in all the 
 variety that T have met with ; and perhaps tliere is not an- 
 other piece of ground in the world that I could take so much 
 pleasure to observe." Then, though with difficulty, he obtained 
 the leave of the pipe-clay Duke to go to Paris. There he saw 
 the hollow grandeur of the decaying monarchy and the inuno- 
 ral glories of Pompadour. "I was yesterday at Versailles, a 
 cold spectator of what we commonly call splendour and magni- 
 ficence. A multitude of men and women were assembled to 
 bow and pay their compliments in the most submissive manner 
 to a creature of their own species." He went into the great 
 world, to which he gains admission with an ease which shows 
 that he has a good position, and tries to make up his leeway 
 in the graces by learning to fence, dance, and ride. He wishes 
 to extend his tour and see the European armies; but the Duke 
 inexorably calls him back to pipe-clay. It is proposed to him 
 that he should undertake the tutorship of the young Duke of 
 Richmond on a military tour through the Low Countries. But 
 he declines the offer. " I don't think myself quite equal to the 
 task, and as for the pension that might follow, it is very cer- 
 tain that it would not become me to accept it. I can't take 
 money from any one but the King, my master, or from some of 
 his blood," 
 
 Back, therefore, to England and two years more of garrison 
 duty there. Quartered in the high-perched keep of Dover 
 where " the winds rattle pretty loud " and cut off" from the 
 world without, as he says, by the absence of newspapers- 
 or coffee houses, he employs the tedious hours in reading 
 while his officers waste the:n in pi([uet. Tlie ladies in the 
 town below complain through Miss Biett to Mrs. Wolfe of the 
 unsoeiality of the garrison. " Tell Nannie Brett's ladies," 
 
THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 217" 
 
 "Wolfe replies, " that if tliey lived as loftily and as much in the 
 clouds as we do, their appetites for dancing or anything else 
 would not be so keen. If we dress, the wind disorders our 
 curls ; if we walk, we are in danger of our legs ; if we ride, of 
 our necks." Afterwards, however, he takes to dancing to please- 
 the ladies and apparently grows fond of it. 
 
 Among the High Tories of Devonshire he has to do a little 
 more of the work of pacification in which he had been em- 
 ployed in the Highlands. " We are upon such terms with the 
 people in general that I have been forced to put on all my ad- 
 dress, and employ my best skill to conciliate matters. It be- 
 gins to work a little favourably, but not certainly, because the 
 perverseness of these folks, built upon their disattection, makes- 
 the task very difficult. We had a little ball last night, to celebrate 
 His Majesty's birthday — purely military ; that is the men were 
 all officers except one. The female branches of the Tory fami- 
 lies came readily enough, but not one man would accept the 
 invitation because it was the King's birthday. If it had not 
 fallen in my way to see such an instance of folly I should not 
 readily be Brought to conceive it." He has once more to sully 
 a soldier's sword by undertaking police duty against the poor 
 Gloucestershire weavers, who are on strike, and, as he judges, 
 not without good cause. " This expedition carries me a little out 
 
 of my road and a little in the dirt I hope it will 
 
 turn out a good recruiting party, for the people are so op- 
 pressed, so poor and so wretched, that they will perhaps hazard 
 a knock on the pate for bread and clothes and turn soldiers 
 through sheer necessity." 
 
 Chatham and glory are now at hand ; and the hero is ready 
 for the hour — Sad mors atra caput nigra circunivolat unihxi.. 
 " Folks are surprised to see the meagi'e, decaying, consumptive 
 figure of the son, when the father and mother preserve such 
 good looks ; and people are not easily persuaded that I am one 
 of the family. The campaignsof 1743, '4/5, 'G, and '7 stripped me- 
 of my bloom, and the winters in Scotland and at Dover have 
 brought me almost to old age and infirmity, and this without 
 any remarkable intemperance. A few years more or less are 
 of very little consequence to the common rvni of men, and there- 
 fore I need not lament that I am perhaps somewhat nearer my 
 end than others of my time. I think and write upon these 
 points without being at all moved. It is not the vapours, but 
 a desire I have to be familiar with those ideas which frighten 
 and terrify the half of mankind that makes me speak upoa 
 the subject of my dissolution." 
 
218 THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC. 
 
 The biographer aptly compares Wolfe to Nelson. Both were 
 frail in body, aspiring in soul, sensitive, liable to fits of des- 
 pondency, sustained against all weaknesses by an ardent zeal 
 for the public service, and gifted with the same quick eye and 
 the same intuitive powers of command. But it is also a just 
 remark that there was more in Nelson of the love of glory, 
 more in Wolfe of the love of duty. " It is no time to think of 
 what is convenient or agreeable ; that service is certainly the 
 best in which we are the most useful. For my part I am de- 
 termined never to give myself a moment's concern about the 
 nature of the duty which His Majesty is pleased to oi'der us 
 upon ; and whether it is by sea or by land that we are to act 
 in obedience to his commands, I hope that we shall conduct 
 ourselves so as to deserve his approbation. It will be sutii- 
 -cient comfort to you, too, as far as my person is concerned, at 
 least it will be a reasonable consolation, to reflect that the Power 
 which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be his pleasure, 
 •continue to do so ; if not, that it is but a few days or a few 
 years more or less, and that those who perish in their duty 
 and in the service of their country die honourably. I hope I 
 shall have resolution and firmness enough to meet every ap- 
 pearance of danger without great concern, and not be over 
 solicitous about the event." " I have this day signified to Mr. 
 Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as be pleases ; 
 and that I am ready for any undertaking within the reach and 
 ■compass of my skill and cunning. I am in a very bad condition 
 both with the gravel and rheumatism ; but I had much rather 
 ■die than decline any kind of service that offers itself: if I fol- 
 lowed my own taste it would lead me into Gerniany ; and if 
 my poor talent was consulted they should place me in the cav- 
 •alry, because nature has given me good eyes and a warmth of 
 temper to follow the first impressions. However, it is not our 
 part to choose but to obey." 
 
 All know that the way in which Mr. Pitt pleased to dis- 
 pose of the " slight carcass " was by sending it to Rochefort, 
 Louisburg, Quebec. Montcfdm, when he found himself dying, 
 ^hut himseif up with his Confessor and the Bishop of Quebec, 
 .and to those who came to him for orders said " I have business 
 that must be attended to of greater moment than your ruined 
 garrison and this wretched country." Wolfe's last words were, 
 " Tell Colonel Baxter to march WeV)b's regiment down to 
 Oharles River, to cut off their retreat from the Bridge. Now, 
 •God be praised, I will die in peace." 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PUB I TANS. 219 
 
 FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS.* 
 
 We have the most unfeig-ned respect for the memory of Falk- 
 land. Cai'lyle's sneer at him has always seemed to us aljout 
 the most painful thing in the writings of Carlyle. Our know- 
 ledge of his public life is meagre, and is derived mainly from 
 a writer under whose personal influence he acted, who is specially 
 responsible for the most questionable step that he took, and on 
 whose veracity, with regard to this portion of the history not 
 much reliance can be placed. But we cannot doubt his title to 
 our admiration and our love. Of his character as a friend, as a 
 host, and as the centre of a literary circle, we have a picture 
 almost peerless in social history. He seems to have presented 
 in a very attractive form the combination — rare now, though 
 not rare in that age, especially among the great Puritan chiefs 
 — of practical activity and military valour with high culture 
 and a serious interest in great questions. Of his fine feelings 
 as a man of honour we have more than one proof. We have 
 proof equally strong of his self-sacrificing devotion to his 
 country ; though in this he stood not alone : with his blood on 
 the field of Newbury mingled that of many an English yeoman, 
 whose cheeks were as wet wdien he left his Puritan home to die 
 for the religion and liberties of England as were those of Lord 
 Falkland when he left the "lime-trees and violets" of Great 
 Tew. 
 
 Of political moderation, if it means merely steering a middle 
 course between two extremes, the praise is cheap, and would be 
 shared by Falkland with many weak and with many dishonest 
 men. It may, without disparagement, be remarked of him that 
 his rank as a nobleman was almost sufHeient in itself, without 
 any special soundness of understanding or calmness of temper- 
 ament, to prevent him from throwing him>,elf headlong either 
 into an absolutist reaction which was identified with the as- 
 cendency of upstart favourites, and contemners of the old nobil- 
 ity, or into a popular revolution wdiich soon disclosed its ten- 
 dency to come into collision with the privileged order, and which 
 ended its parricidal career by leaving England.duringsomeof the 
 
 •Published iu thd Contemporary Review as a reply ti) Mr. Matthew Arnold's 
 Essay on Falkland. 
 
220 FALKLAND AND THE I'l'ElTANS. 
 
 most glorious years of lier history, destitute of a House of Lords. 
 But as an adherent, and no doubt a delilierate adherent, of Con- 
 stitutional Monarchy, Falkland was in that which in the upshot 
 proved to be the right line of English progress, though by no 
 means the right line of progress for the whole world. The 
 Commonwealth is the ideal of America, where it is practicable, 
 and it alone. Constitutional Monarchy, as Falkland rightly 
 judged, was the highest attainable ideid for England, at any rate 
 in that day. Of attaining that ideal, of doing anything con- 
 siderable towards its attainment, or towards its defence against 
 the powers of absolutist reaction whose triumph would have 
 rendered its attainment for ever impossible, he was no more 
 capable than he was of performing the labours of Hercules. 
 
 In this he bears some resemblance to a man of incomparably 
 greater intellect than his. The fame of Bacon as a philosopher 
 has eclipsed his importance as a politician. But his ideal of 
 an enlightened monarchy, invested wdth plenary power, but al- 
 waj^susingitspowerin conformity with law, and havingaVerulam 
 at its right hand, not only is grand and worthy of the majestic 
 intelligence from which it sprang, but is entitled to a good deal 
 of sympathy, when we consider how wanting in enlightenment, 
 how rough, how uncertain, how provoking to a trained and in- 
 structed statesman the action of parliaments composedof country 
 gentlemen and meeting at long intervals, in an age when there 
 were no political newspapers or other general organs of political 
 information, could not fail sometimes to be. But Bacon, ham- 
 pered by enfeebling selfishness,as Falkland was by more generous 
 defects, was incapable of taking a single step toward the reali- 
 zation of his august vision, and the result was a miserable fall 
 from the ethereal height to the feet of a Somerset and a Buck- 
 ingham. 
 
 As a theologian, Falkland appears to have been a Chilling- 
 worth on a very small scale. It does not seem to us tliat Prin- 
 cipal Tulloch, in his interesting chapter on hira, succeeds in 
 putting him higher. But he shared, with Chillingworth and 
 Hales, the spirit of liberality and toleration, for which both 
 wei'e nobly conspicuous, though Hales did not show himself a 
 very uncompromising champion of his principles when he ac- 
 cepted preferment from the hands of their arch-enemy, Laud. 
 The learned men and religious philosophers whom Falkland 
 gathered round him at Tew, w^ere among the best and foremcjst 
 thinkers of their age : the beauty of the group is marre<l, per- 
 haps, only by the sinister intrusion of Sheldon. 
 
FALKLAND AND THE DURITANS. 221 
 
 Mr. Matthew AnioUl, in the very graceful sketch of Falk- 
 land's life published by him in aid of the Falkland Memorial, 
 has endowed his favourite character with gifts far rarer and 
 more memorable than those of which we have spoken; with an 
 extraordinary largeness and lucidity of mind, with almost di- 
 vine supeiiority to party narrowness and bias, with concej)tioMs 
 anticipative of the most advanced ])hilosophy of modern times. 
 He quotes the Dean of Westminster as afhrming that " Falk- 
 hmd is the founder, or nearly the founder, of the best and most 
 enlightening tendencies of the Chui-ch of England" — a state- 
 ment which breeds reflection as to the character of the Church 
 of England during the previous centur}-, in the course of which 
 its creed and liturgy were formed. The evidence of these trans- 
 actions lies wide ; much of it is still in the British Museum ; 
 and it may be possible to produce something sufficient to sus- 
 tain Falkland on the ])innacle on which Mr. Arnold and the 
 Dean of Westminster have i)laced him. But we cannot help 
 surmising that he has in some measure undergone the process 
 which, in an age prolific in historic fancies as well as pre-eminent 
 in historic research, has been undergone by almost every 
 character in history — that of being transmuted by a loving bio- 
 grapher, and converted into a sort of ventriloquial apparatus 
 through which the biographer preaches to the present from the 
 pulpit of the past. The philosophy ascribed to Falkland is, we 
 suspect, partly that of a teacher who was then in the womb of 
 time. We should not be extreme to mark this, if the ju-aise of 
 Falkland had not been turned to the dispraise and even to the 
 vilification of men who are at least as much entitled to reverent 
 treatment at the hands of Englishmen as he is, and at the same 
 time of a large body of English citizens at the present day, who 
 are the objects, we venture to think, of a somewhat fanciful 
 and somewhat unmeasured antipathy. Those who subscribe to 
 the Falkland Testimonial are collectively set down by Mr. 
 Arnold as the "amiable" — those who do not subscribe as the 
 " unamiable." Few, we trust, would be so careful of their money 
 and so careless of their reputation for moral beauty as to refuse 
 to pay a guinea for a certificate of amiability countersigned by 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold. Yet even the amiable might hesitate to 
 take part in erecting a monument to the honour of Falkland, 
 if it was at the same time to be a monument to the dishonour 
 of Luther, Gustavus, Walsingham, Sir John Eliot, Pym, Hamp- 
 den, Cromwell, Vane, and Milton. As to the Nonconfuraiists, 
 their contributions are probably not desired : otherwise, accus- 
 
222 FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 tomed to not very courteous treatment though they are, it 
 would still be imprudent to warn them that their own "hid- 
 eousness" was to be carved in the same marble with the beauty 
 of Lord Falkland. 
 
 On Luther, Hampden, and Cromwell, Mr. Arnold expressly 
 bestows the name of " Philistine ;" and if he bestows it on these 
 he can hardly abstain frcm bestowing it on the rest of those we- 
 have named. Milton, at all events, has identified himself with 
 Cromwell as thoroughly as one man ever identified himself with 
 another ; and whatever aspersion is cast on " Worcester's laur- 
 eate wreath" must fall equally on the intermingling bays. We 
 may say this without pretending to know what the exact mean- 
 ing of " Philistine " now is. Originally, no doubt, it pointed to 
 some specific defect on the part of those with regard to whom it 
 was used, and possibly also on the part of those who used it. But 
 with the fate which usually attends the cantphraseof a clique,, 
 it seems to be degenerating, by lavish application, into some- 
 thing which irritates without conveying any definite instruc- 
 tion. As Luther did not live under the same conditions as 
 Heinrich Heine, perfect ethical identity was hardly to be ex- 
 pected. " Simpleton" and " savage" have the advantage of being- 
 intelligible to all, and when introduced into discussion with 
 grace, perhaps they may be urbane. 
 
 It is useless to attempt, without authentic materials, to fill 
 in the faint outline of an historic figure. But, judging from 
 such indications as we have, we should be inclined to say that 
 Falkland, instead of being a man of extraordinarily serene and 
 well-balanced mind, was rather excitable and impulsive. His 
 tones and gestui-es are vehement ; where another man would be 
 content to protest against what he thought an undeserved act 
 of homage by simply keeping his hat on, Falkland rams his^ 
 down upon his head with both his hands. He goes most ar- 
 dently with the pojudar party through the early stages of the 
 i-evolution ; then he somewhat abruptly breaks away from it, 
 disgusted with its defects, though they certainly did not exceed 
 those of other parties under the same circumstances, and feeling- 
 in himself no power to control it and keep it in the right path. 
 He is under the infiuence of others, first of Hampden and then 
 of Hyde, to an extent hardly compatible with the possession of 
 a mind of tirst-rate power. When he is taxed with inconsistency 
 for going round upon the Bill for removing the Bishops from 
 Pai'liament, his plea is that at the time when he voted for the 
 Bill " he had been persuaded by that worthy gentleman (Hamp- 
 
FALKLAND AND TEE PURITANS. 22S 
 
 den) to believe many things which he had since found to be 
 untrue, and therefore he had changed his opinion in many par- 
 ticulars as well to things as persons." Hampden himself would 
 hardl}' have been led by anybody's persuasions on the great 
 question of the day. Clarendon tells us that his friend, from 
 his experience of the Short Parliament, " contracted such a 
 reverence for Parliaments that he thought it really impossible 
 they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the king- 
 dom." We always regard with some susj)icion Clarendon's 
 artful touches ; otherwise we should say that there is a pretty 
 brus([ue change from this unbounded reverence for the Short 
 Parliament to an appearance in arms against its successor, 
 especially as the leader and soul of both Parliaments was Pym. 
 In the prosecution of Strafford, Falkland showed such ar- 
 dour that, as Clarendon intimates, those who knew him not 
 ascribed his behaviour to personal resentment. His lips formu- 
 lated the very doctrine so fatal to the great accused, that a 
 number of acts severally not amounting to high treason might 
 cumulatively support the chai'ge. " How many haires' breadths 
 makes a tall man and how many makes a little man, noe man 
 can well say, yet we know a tall man when we see him from a 
 low man ; soe 'tis in this, — how many illegal acts make a trea- 
 son is not certainly well known, but we well know it w^hen we 
 see." Mr. Arnold says that " alone amongst his party Falkland 
 raised his voice against pressing forward Strafford's impeach- 
 ment with unfair or vindictive haste." That is to say, when 
 Pym proposed to the House, sitting with closed doors, at once 
 to carry up the impeachment to the Lords and demand the ar- 
 rest of Strafford without delay, Falkland, moved by his great, 
 and, in all ordinary cases, laudable respect for regularity of pro- 
 ceeding, proposed first to have the charges formally drawn up 
 by a committee. Falkland's proposal was almost fatuous ; it 
 proves that the grand difference between him and Pym was 
 that Pym was a great man of action and that he was not. It 
 would have been about as rational to sucwest that the lifj-hted 
 match should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes 
 till a committee had formally reported on the probable effects 
 of gunpowder if ignited in large quantities beneath the cham- 
 ber in which the Parliament w^as sitting. Strafford would not 
 have respected forms in the midst of what he must have well 
 known was a revolution. He would probably have struck at 
 the Commons if they had not struck at him ; certainly he would 
 have placed himself beyond their reach; and the promptness. 
 
22-i FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 ■of Pyni's decision saved the party and the countiy. No prac- 
 tical injustice was done by wresting the sword out of Straf- 
 ford's hand and 2:)utting hiui in safe keeping till the charges 
 •could be drawn u[) in form, as they immediately w^ere. Falk- 
 land himself in proposing a committee avowed his conviction 
 that the gi'ounds for the impeachment were perfectly sufficient. 
 His name does not appear among the Strafibidians ; and had he 
 opposed the Bill of Attainder it seems morally certain that 
 Clarendon would have told us so. The strength of this pre- 
 sumption is not impaired by any vague words of Baxter coup- 
 ling the name of Falkland with that of Digby as a seceder from 
 the party on the occasion of the Bill. Had Falkland voted 
 with Uigby, his name would have appeared in the same list. 
 "That he felt qualms and wavered at the last is very likely ; but 
 it is almost certain that he voted for the Bill. There is some 
 reason for believing that he took the sterner, though probably 
 more constitutional, line, on the question of allowing the ac- 
 cused to be heard by counsel. But the evidence is meagre and 
 doubtful ; and the difficulty of reading it aright has been in- 
 creased by the discoveiy that Pym and Hampden themselves 
 were against proceeding by Bill, and in favour of demanding 
 judgment on the impeachment. It seems certain, however, that 
 Falkland pleaded against extending the consequences of the 
 Act of Attainder to StraffiDrd's children, and in this he showed 
 himself a true gentleman. 
 
 Ao-ain, in the case of Laud, Mr. Arnold wishes to draw a 
 strong line between the conduct of his favourite and that of 
 the savage " Puritans." He says that Falkland " refused to 
 concur in Laud's impeachment." If he did, we must say he 
 acted very inconsistently, for in his speech in favour of the 
 Bishops' Bill he violently denounced Laud as a participator in 
 Strafford's treason : — 
 
 " We shall find both of them to have kindled and blown the common 
 fire of both nations, to have both sent and maintained that book (of Canons) 
 of which the author, no doubt, hath long since wished with Nero, Utiiiam 
 nescissem literas ! and of which more than one kingdom hath cause to wish 
 that when he wrote that he had rather burned a library, though of the 
 value of Ptolenij^'s. We shall find them to have been the tir.st and jirin- 
 ■cipal cause of the breach, I will not say of, but since, the pacification of 
 Berwick. We shall find them to have been the almost sole abettors of my 
 Lord Strafford, whilst he was practising upon another kingdom that man- 
 ner of government which he intended to settle in this ; where he com- 
 mitted so nianj' mighty and so manifest enormities and oppressions as the 
 like have not been committed by any goxernor in any government since 
 Yerias left Sicily ; and after they had called him over from being Deputy 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 225 
 
 of Ireland to be in a manner Deputy of Engkind (all things here being 
 governed by a junctillo and the junctillo governed by him) to have assisted 
 him in the giving such counsels and the pursuing such courses, as it is a 
 hard and measuring cost whether they were more unwise, more unjust, or 
 more unfortunate, and which had infallibly been our destruction if by the 
 grace of God their share had not been as small in the subtilty of serpents 
 as in the innocency of doves." 
 
 We are not aware, however, of the existence of any positive 
 ])roof that Falkland did "refuse to concur " in the impeach- 
 ment of Laud. There is nothing, we believe, but the general 
 statement of Clarendon that his friend regarded with horror 
 the storm gathering against the archbishop, which the words of 
 Falkland himself, just quoted, seem sufficient to disprove. Mr. 
 Arnold tells us that " Falkland disliked Laud ; he had a na- 
 tural antipathy to his heat, fussiness, and arbitrary temper." 
 He had an antipathy to a good deal more in Laud than this, 
 <ind expressed his dislike in language which showed that he 
 was himself not deficient in heat when his religious feelings 
 were aroused. He accused Laud and the ecclesiastics of his 
 party of having " destroyed unity under pretence of unifor- 
 mity ; " of having " brought in Superstition and Scandal under 
 the titles of Reverence and Decency ; " of having " defiled the 
 -Church by adorning the churches ; " of having " destroyed as 
 much of the Gospel as they could without themselves being 
 destroyed by the law." He compared them to the hen in ^sop, 
 fed too fat to lay Qgg'^, and to dogs in the manger, who would 
 neither preach nor let others preach. He charged them with 
 checkino^ instruction in order to introduce that religion which 
 accounts ignorance the mother of devotion. He endorsed the 
 common belief that one of them was a Papist at heart, and 
 that only regard for his salary prevented him from going over 
 to Rome. All this uttered to a Parliament in such a mood 
 would hardly be in favour of gentle dealing with the arch- 
 bishop. But Pym and Hampden, as Clarendon himself admits, 
 never intended to proceed to extremities against the old man ; 
 the}' were satisfied with having put him in safe keeping and 
 removed him from the councils of the King. When they were 
 gone, the Presbyterians, to whom the leadership of the Revo- 
 lution then passed, took up the impeachment and brought Laud 
 to the block. 
 
 The parts were distributed among the leaders. To Falkland 
 
 was entrusted the prosecution of the Lord Keeper Finch ; and 
 
 this part he pei-formed in a style which thoroughly identifies him 
 
 with the other leaders, and with the general spirit of the move- 
 
 p 
 
22G FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 ment at this stage of the Revokition. No man, so far as we 
 can see, did more to set the stone rolling ; it was not likely 
 that, with his slender force, he would be able to stop it at once 
 in mid caj'cer. 
 
 In contrasting Falkland's line of conduct with that of the 
 " Puritans," on the question of the Bislx^ps' Bill and of the 
 impeachment of Laud, Mr Arnold indicates his impression that 
 all Puritans were on principle enemies, and as a matter of 
 course fanatical enemies, of Episcopacy. But he will find that 
 at this time many Puritans were Low Church Episcopalians, 
 wishing only to moderate the pretensions and curb the au- 
 thority of the Bishops. Episcopacy is not one of the grievances 
 protested against in the Millenary Petition. Sir John Eliot 
 appears to have been as strong an Erastian as Mr. Arnold could 
 desire. 
 
 It seems to us hardly possible to draw a sharp line of dis- 
 tinction in any respect, except that of practical ability, be- 
 tween Falkland and Hampden. Falkland failed to understand, 
 while Hampden understood, the character of the King and the 
 full peril of the situation ; that was the real difference between 
 the two men. The political and ecclesiastical ideal of both in 
 all probability was pretty much the same. Mr. Arnold chooses 
 to describe Hampden as " seeking the Lord about militia or 
 ship-money," and he undertakes to represent Jesus as " whis- 
 pering to him with benign disdain." Sceptics, to disprove the 
 objective reality of the Deity, allege that every man makes 
 God in his own image. They might perhaps find an indirect 
 confirmation of their remark in the numerous lives and por- 
 traitures of Christ which have appeared of late years, each en- 
 tirely different from the rest, and each stamped clearly enough 
 with the impress of an individual mind. But where has Hamp- 
 den spoken of himself as " seeking the Lord about militia or 
 ship-money ? " He appears to have been a highly-educated 
 man of the world. In one of his few remaining letters there 
 are recommendations to a friend, who had consulted him about 
 the education of his sons, which seem to blend regard for re- 
 ligion with enlightened liberality of view. If he prayed for 
 support and guidance in his undertakings, surely he did no 
 more than Mr. Arnold himself practically recommends people 
 to do when he urcres them to ioin the Established Church of 
 England. Even should Mr. Arnold light on an authentic in- 
 stance of Scripture phraseology used by Hampden, or any 
 other Puritan chief, in a way which would now be against good 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PUJilTANS. 227 
 
 taste, his critical and historical sense will readily make allow- 
 ance for the difference between the present time and the time 
 when the Bible was a newly-recovered book, and when its lan- 
 guage, on the believer's lips and to the believer's ears, was still 
 fresh as the dew of the morning. 
 
 It would be even more difficult to separate Falkland's gen- 
 eral character from that of Pym, of whose existence Mr. Arnold 
 has shown himself conscious by once mentioning his name. 
 The political philosophy of Pj^m's speeches is most distinctly 
 constitutional ; and we do not see that in point of breadth or 
 dignity they leave much to be desired, while they unquestion- 
 ably express, in the fullest manner, the mind of a leader of the 
 Puritan party. 
 
 Whoever contrasts Falkland with the Puritans will have to 
 encounter the somewhat untoward fact that in his speech 
 against the High Church Bishops, Falkland, if he does not ac- 
 tually call himself a Puritan, twice identifies the Puritan cause 
 with his own. Among the bad objects which he accuses the 
 clergy of advocating in their sermons is " the demolishing of 
 Puritanism and propriety." Again he cries : — 
 
 " Alas ! they whose ancestors in the dirkest times excommunicated tlie 
 breakers of Magna Charta do now by themselves, and their adherents, 
 both write, preach, plot, and act against it, by encouraging Dr. Beale, by 
 preferring Dr. Mainwaring, appearing forward for moncjpolies and ship- 
 money, and, if any were slow and backward to comply, blasting both them 
 and their preferment with the utmost exj^ression of their hatred — the title 
 of Puritans." 
 
 These words may help to make Mr. Arnold awai-e, when he 
 mows down the Puritan party with some trenchant epithet, 
 how wide the sweep of his scythe is ; and the same thing will 
 be still more distinctively brought before him by a perusal (if 
 he has not already perused it) of the chapter on the subject in 
 Mr. Sandford's " Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebel- 
 lion." It can hardly be necessary to remind him, or any one 
 else, of the portrait of one who was a most undoubted Puritan, 
 drawn by Lucy Hutchinson. If this portrait betrays the hand 
 of a wife. Clarendon's portrait of Falkland betrays the hand of a 
 friend ; and even a beloved husband is not more likely to be the 
 object of exaggerated, though sincere praise, than the social head 
 and the habitual host of a circle of literary men. At all events 
 Lucy Hutchinson is painting what she thought a perfect Puritan 
 would be ; and her picture presents to us, not a coarse, crop- 
 eared, and snuffling fanatic, but a highly accomplished, refined, 
 
228 FALKLAND AND THE mUTANS 
 
 gallant, and most "amiable," though religious and seriously- 
 minded gentleman. The Spencerian school of sentiment seems 
 to Mr. Arnold very lovely compared with the men of the New 
 Model Army and thei)" ways. In the general of the New Model 
 Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, he has a distinct, and we venture to 
 say very worthy, pupil of that school. 
 
 Over the most questionable as well as the most momentous 
 jiassage in Falkland's public life, his admirer passes with a grace- 
 ful literary movement. Falkland was sworn in as a Privy 
 Councillor three days before, and as Secretary of State, four 
 days after, the attempt of the King to seize the Five Members. 
 He was thus, in outward appearance at least, brought into 
 calamitous connection with an act which, as Clarendon sees, 
 was the signal for civil war. Clarendon vehemently disclaims 
 for himself and his two friends any knowledge of the King's 
 design. So far as the more violent part of the proceeding is 
 concerned, we can easily believe him ; a woman mad with vin- 
 dictive arrogance inspii'ed it, and nobody except a madman 
 would have been privy to it ; but it is not so easy to believe him 
 with I'egard to the impeachment, which was in fact an attempt 
 to take the lives of the King's enemies by airaigning them be- 
 fore a political tribunal, hostile to them and favourable to their 
 accuser, instead of bringing them to a fair and legal trial before 
 a jury. By accepting the Secretaryship, Fulkland at all events 
 assumed a certain measure of responsibility after the fact for a 
 proceeding which, we repeat, rendered civil war inevitable, be- 
 cause it must have convinced the pojDular leaders that to put 
 faith in Charles with such councillors as he had about him would 
 be insanity ; and that if they allowed Parliament to rise and the 
 King to resume the power of the sword, not only would all their 
 work of reform be undone, but the fate of Sir John Eliot would 
 be theirs. Clarendon owns that Hampden's carriage from that 
 day was changed, implying that up to that day it had been 
 temperate ; and the insinuation that, beneath the cloak of ap- 
 parent moderation, Hampden had been secretly breathing coun- 
 sels of violence into the minds of others deserves no attention, 
 when it comes from a hostile source. Of the purity of Falk- 
 land's motives we entertain not the shadow of a doubt ; but we 
 venture to think that it is very questionable whether he did 
 right, and this not only on grounds of technical constitutionalism, 
 which in the present day would render imperative the retire- 
 ment of a Minister whose advice had been so flagrantly 
 disregarded, but on grounds of the most broadlj' practical 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS 22!) 
 
 kind. He forfeited for ever, not only any influence which he 
 might have retained over the popular leaders, and any access 
 which he might have had to them in their more pacific mood, but 
 probably all real control over the King. Charles was the very 
 last man whom you could aftbrd to allow in the slightest degree 
 to tamper with your honour. It is surely conceivable that the 
 recollection of an unfoi'tunate step, and the sense of a false posi- 
 tion, may have mingled with the sorrow caused by the public 
 calamities in the melancholy which drove Falkland to cast 
 away his life. 
 
 In the Civil War Falkland was always " ingeminating Peace, 
 Peace." Our hearts are with him, but it was of no use. It is 
 an unhappy part of civil wars that there can be no real peace 
 till one party has succumbed : compromise only leads to a re- 
 newal of the conflict. There is sense as well as dignity in the 
 deliberate though mournful acceptance of necessity, and the 
 determination to play out the part which could not be declined, 
 expreseed in the letter written at the outbreak of the con- 
 flict by the Parliamentarian, Sir William Waller, to a personal 
 friend in the other camp : 
 
 " My affections to you are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannot 
 violate my friendship to your person ; but I must be true to the cause 
 wherein 1 serve. The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows 
 with what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what pei'fect hatred 
 I look upon a war without an enemy. The God of peace, in His good time, 
 send us peace, and in the meantime tit us to receive it ! We are both on 
 the stage, and we must act the parts tliat are assigned us in this tragedy. 
 Let us do it in a way of honour, and without pergonal animosities." 
 
 A man in this frame of mind, we submit, was likely to get to 
 the end of a civil war more speedily than a man in the mood, 
 amiable as it was, of Falkland. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the failure, the inevitable failure of Falk- 
 land's passionate pleadings for peace may have saved him from 
 a worse doom than death on the field even of civil war. In 
 the case of the Five Members, the King had shown how little 
 regard he had, at least how little regard the mistress of his 
 councils had, for the honour of his advisers. The pair might 
 have used Falkland to lure by the pledge of his high character 
 the leaders of the Parliament into the acceptance of a treaty 
 which the King, with his notions of divine right, and the Queen 
 with her passionate love of absolute power, would, there can be 
 little doubt, have violated as soon as the army of the Parliament 
 .had been disbanded, and the power of the sword had returned 
 into the King's hands. Falkland mio-ht have even seen the 
 
230 ^'^ LKLA ND A ND THE PUB IT A KS. 
 
 scaffold erected, through the prostitution of his own honour, for 
 the men whose ardent associate he had been in the overthrow of 
 (Tovernraent by prerogative and in the impeachment of Straf- 
 ford. 
 
 Flinging epithets at Cromwell is a very harmless indulgence 
 of sentiment. His memory has passed unscathed even through 
 the burning eloquence which, from the pulpit of the Restoration, 
 denounced him as " wearing a bad hat, and that not paid for." 
 Since research has {)laced him before us as he really was, the 
 opinion has been gaining ground that he was about the greatest 
 human force ever directed to a moral purpose ; and in that 
 sense, about the greatest man, take him all in all, that ever troil 
 the scene of history. If his entire devotion to his cause, his 
 valour, his magnanimity, his clemency, his fidelity to the pub- 
 lic service, his domestic excellence and tenderness are not "con- 
 duct," all we can say is, so much the worse for " conduct." 
 The type to which his character belonged, in common with 
 the whole series of historic types, had in it something that 
 was special and transitory, combined with much that, so far 
 as we see, was universal and will endure for ever. It is in 
 failino- to note the special and transitory element, and the 
 limitations which it imposed on the hero's greatness, that Cai-- 
 lyle's noble bio_i;raphy runs into poetry, and departs from historic 
 truth. To su[>ply this defect is the proper work of rational 
 criticism ; but the criticism which begins with " Philistine " is 
 not likely to be very rational. 
 
 The objection urged by Bolingbroke against ( Cromwell's 
 foreign policy, on the ground that to unite with France, which 
 was gaining strength, against Spain, which was beginning to 
 decline, was not the way to maintain the balance of power in 
 Europe, is once more reproduced as though it had not been often 
 brought forward and answered. Cromwell was not bound to 
 trouble his head about such a figment of a special diplomacy as 
 the balance of power any more than Shakespeare was bound to 
 trouble his head about Voltaire's rules for the drama. He was 
 the chief and the defender of Protestantism, and as such he was 
 naturally led to ally himself with France, which was compara- 
 tively liberal, against Spain, which was the great organ of the 
 Catholic reaction. An alliance with Spain was a thing impossible 
 for a Puritan. Looking to the narrower interest of England, 
 much more was to be gained by a war with Spain than by a war 
 with France,becaiiseby a warwith Spain an entrance was forced 
 for English enterprise through the barriers which Spanish 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 231 
 
 •inonopoly had raised against commercial enterprise in Ameiica. 
 The security of England appears, in Cromwell's judgment, to 
 have depended on her intrinsic strength, which no one can doubt 
 that, under extraordinary disadvantages, heimmensely increased, 
 rather than on the maintenance of a European equilibrium 
 which, as the number of the powers increased, became palpably 
 impracticable. It may be added, that the incipient decline of 
 the double-headed House of Austria, if it is visible to our eyes 
 as we trace back the course of events, can hardly have been 
 visible to any eye at that time ; and, what is still more to the 
 purpose, that the dangerous ascendency of Louis XIV. resulted 
 in great measure from the betrayal of England by Charles II., 
 and would have been impossible had, we will not say a second 
 Cromwell, but a Protestant or patriotic monarch, sat on the 
 Protector's throne. 
 
 Bolingbroke suc^cjests, and Mr. Arnold embraces the sucfp-es- 
 tion, that Charles I., by making war on France, showed himself 
 more sagacious with regard to foreign policy than Cromwell. 
 But Mr. Arnold, in recommending Bolingbroke's philosophy to 
 a generation which he thinks has too much neglected it, has 
 discreetly warned us to let his history alone. Charles I., or 
 rather Buckingham, in whose hands Charles was a puppet, made 
 war on Spain, though in the most incapable manner, and with 
 a most ignominious result : he at one time lent the French 
 Government English ships to be used against the Protestants 
 of Rochelle, whose resistance, apart from the religious question, 
 was the one great obstacle to the concentration of the French 
 power ; and though he subsequently quarrelled with France, 
 few will believe — -assuredly Clarendon did not believe — that 
 among the motives for the change, policy of any kind predomi- 
 nated over the passions and the vanity of the favourite. That 
 Cromwell would have lent a steady and effective support to the 
 Protestants, and thus have prevented the concentration of the 
 French power, is as certain as any unfulfilled contingency can 
 be. 
 
 Mr. Arnold is evidently anxious to bring Bolingbroke into 
 fashion. " Hear Bolingbroke upon the success of Puritanism." 
 Hear Lovelace on Dr. Johnson ; one critic would be about as 
 edifying as the other. Bolingbroke, a sceptical writer and a 
 scoffer at Anglican doctrine, to say nothing about his morals, 
 allied himself for party purposes with the fanatical clergy of 
 the Anglican Establishment, well represented by Sachevei'el, 
 And, to gratify his allies, passed as Minister persecuting laws. 
 
232 FALKLAND AND THE P^RITA^S. 
 
 about the last of the series, against Nonconformists. This, per 
 haps, is a proof in a certain way, of philosophic largeness of 
 view. But if Bolingbroke is to be commended to ingenuous 
 youth as a guide superior to pai'ty narrowness or bias, it may 
 be well to remember the passage of his letter to Sir William 
 Wyndham, in which he very frankly describes his own aims- 
 and those of his confederates on their accession to office, admit- 
 ting that " the principal spring of their actions was to have the 
 government of the State in their hands, and that their principal 
 views were the conservation of this power, great employments to 
 themselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had 
 helped to raise them, and of hurting those who stood in oppo- 
 sition to them ; " though he has the grace to add that with these 
 considerations of party and private interest were intermingled 
 some which had for their object the public good. In another 
 place he avows that he and his party designed " to till the em- 
 ployments of the kingdom down to the meanest with Tories," 
 by which they would have anticipated, and, indeed, by antici- 
 pation outdone, the vilest and most noxious proceeding of the 
 coarsest demagogue who ever climbed to power on the shoulders 
 of faction in the United States. It may be instructive to com- 
 pare with this the principles upon which public emjiloyments 
 were distributed by Cromwell. 
 
 It would be out of place to discuss the whole question of the 
 Protector's administration by way of rejdy to a passing thrust 
 of antipathy. But when judgment is pronounced on his exter- 
 nal policy, his critics ought not to leave out of consideration the 
 Union of Scotland and Ireland with England, successfully ac- 
 complished by him, repealed by the Restoration, and, like not 
 a few of his other measures, revived and ratified by posterity, 
 after a delay fraught with calamitous consequences in both cases, 
 and which, in the case of Ireland, may perhaps even yet prove 
 fatal. 
 
 We cannot help remarking, however, that the ecclesiastical 
 policy of the Protectorate was one which it would be most in- 
 consistent on the part of Mr. Arnold and those who hold the 
 same view with him to decry. It was a national church (to 
 prevent the hasty abolition of which, seems to have been Crom- 
 well's main reason for dissolving the Barebones Parliament) 
 with the largest possible measure of comprehension. To us the 
 weak points of such a policy appear manifest enough, but by 
 My. Arnold and those of his way of thinking it ought, if we 
 mistake not, to be respected as an anticipation of their own 
 deal. 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PUEITANS. 2S^ 
 
 Of one great and irretrievable error Cromwell was guilty — 
 he died before his hour. That his (government was taking root 
 is clear from the bearing of Mazarin and Don Lewis De Haro, 
 sufficiently cool judges, towards the Stuart Pretender. The 
 Restoration was a reaction not against the Pi'otectorate but 
 against the military anarchy which ensued. Had Cromwell 
 lived ten years longer, or had his marshals been true to his suc- 
 cessor, to his cause, and to their own fortunes, there would have 
 been an end of the struggle against Stuart prerogative; the 
 spirit of Laud would have been laid for ever ; the temporal 
 ]»ower of ecclesiastics would have troubled no more ; the Union 
 Math Scotland and Ireland would have remained unbroken ; 
 and the genuine representation of the people embodied in the 
 Listrument of Government would have continued to exist, in 
 the place of rotten boroughs, the sources of oligarchy and cor- 
 ruption, of class government and class wars. Let us philoso- 
 phize about general causes as much as we will, untoward acci- 
 dents occur : the loss of Pym and Hampden in the early part 
 of the Revolution, and that of Cromwell at its close, may be 
 fjiirly reckoned as accidents, and they were untoward in the 
 highest degree. 
 
 No doubt, while Falkland fits perfectly into the line of Eng- 
 lish progress and takes his place with obvious propriety among 
 the Saints of Constitutionalism in the vestibule of the House 
 of Commons, while even Hampden finds admission as the op- 
 ponent of ship-money, the kind veil of oblivion being drawn 
 over the part he played as a leader in the Revolution, Cromwell, 
 though his hold over the hearts of the English people is grow- 
 ing all the time, remains in an uncovenanted condition. The 
 problem of his statue is still, and, so far as England is concerned, 
 seems likely long to be, unsolved. Put him high or low, in the 
 line of kings or out of it, he is hopelessly incongruous, incom- 
 mensurable, and out of place. He i« in fact the man of the New 
 World ; his institutions in the main embody the organic princi- 
 ples of New World society : at Washington, not at Westminster, 
 should be his statue. 
 
 What Puritanism did for England, and what credit is due to it 
 as an element of English character, are questions which cannot 
 be settled by mere assertion, on our side at least. In its highest 
 development, and at the period of its greatest men, it was mili- 
 tant, and everything militant is sure to bear evil traces of the 
 battle. For that reason Christianity has always been in favour 
 of peace and goodwill ; let the Regius Professor of Theology 
 
234 FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 <\i Oxford, in his Christian philosophy of war, he as ingenious 
 •and as admirable as he may. But sometimes it is necessary to 
 accept the arbitrament of the sword. It was necessary at 
 Marathon, on the plain of Toui's, on the waters which bore the 
 Armada, at Lutzen, at Marston, at Leipsic, at Gettysburg-. 
 Darius, the Moors, Philip II., Wallenstein, Prince Rupert, 
 Bonaparte, the Slave-owners, did not offer you the opportunity 
 which you would so gladly have embraced, of a tranquil and 
 amicable discussion among lime-trees and violets. On each occa- 
 sion the cause of human progress drew along with it plenty of 
 mud and slime ; nevertheless it was the cause of human progress. 
 On each occasion the wrong side no doubt had its Falklands : 
 mevertheless it was the wrong side. 
 
 In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Reforma- 
 tion was brought to the verge of destruction. When Wallen- 
 stein sat down before Stralsund everything was gone but 
 England, Holland, Sweden, and some cantons of Switzerland. 
 In England the stream of reaction was running strong ; Holland 
 -could not have stood by herself ; Sweden was nothing as a 
 power, though it turned out that she had a man. Fortunately 
 the Lambeth Popedom and the Royal Supremacy prevented 
 the English division of the army of Reaction from getting into 
 line with the other divisions and compelled it to accept decisive 
 battle on a separate held against the most formidable soldiers 
 of the Reformation. These soldiers saved Protestantism, which 
 was their first object, and they saved English liberty into the 
 bargain. We who have come after can stand by the battle- 
 iiehl, pouncet-box in hand, and sniff and sneer as much as we 
 will. 
 
 Great Tew was an anticipation, for ever beautiful and mem- 
 orable, of the time when all swords .shall be sheathed, and the 
 world shall have entered into final peace. But in its philosophy 
 there were, as the world then was, two defects ; it did not reach 
 the people, and it was Incapable of protecting its own existence. 
 Laud hinjself did not care to crush it ; he was an ecclesiastical 
 despot rather than a theological bigot; he had a genuine re- 
 spect for learned men ; he preferred winning them by gracious 
 words and preferment to coercing them with the pillory and the 
 shears. But had Laud's system prevailed, there would soon 
 have been an end of the philosophy of Great Tew. Mr. Arnold 
 points to the free thought of Bacon. Nobod}^ in those days 
 scented mischief in the inductive philosophy, while in politics 
 • and religion Bacon ^\'as scrupulously orthodox. Cromwell's 
 
FALKLAND AND TUB PURITANS. 235 
 
 faith was a narrower and coarser thing by far than that of the 
 inmates of the " college in a purer air ; " but it brought religion 
 and moralit}^ — not the most genial or rational morality, but 
 still morality — into the cottage as well as into the manor-house, 
 and it was able to protect its own existence. When it had 
 mounted to power in the person of its chief, the opinions of 
 Great Tew, and all opinions that would abstain from trying to 
 overthrow the Government and restore the tyranny, enjoyed 
 practically larger and more assured liberty than they had ever 
 enjoyed in England before or were destined to enjoy for many 
 a year to come. Falkland, says Mr. Arnold, was in the grasp 
 of fatality, hence the transcendent interest that attaches to 
 him. Cromwell, happily for his cause and for his country, was, 
 or felt himself to be, not in the grasp of fatality but in the 
 liand of God. 
 
 Might we not have done just as well without Puritanism ? 
 Might not some other way have been found of preserving the 
 serious element in English character and saving English liberty 
 from those who were conspiring for its destruction ? Such 
 questions as these may be asked without end, and they may 
 be answered by any one who is endowed with a knowledge of 
 men who were never born, and of events that have never hap- 
 pened. Might not a way have been found of rescuing the great 
 interests of humanity without Greek resistance to Persian 
 invasion, or German resistance to the tyranny of Bonaparte :? 
 Suppose in place of the Puritan chiefs there had been raised 
 up by miracle a set of men at once consummate soldiers and 
 perfect philosophers, who wouhl have fought and won the battle 
 without being heated by the conflict. Suppose, to prevent the 
 necessity of any conflict at all, Charles, StrafForcl, and Laud 
 had voluntarily abandoned their designs. As it was, Puritan- 
 ism did, and alone could do, the work. What the Renaissance 
 would have been without Puritan morality we can pretty well 
 guess from the experience of Italy. It would have probably 
 been like the life of Lorenzo — vice, filthy vice, decorated with 
 art and with elegant philosophy ; an academy under the same 
 roof with a brothel. There were ages before moralit}^, and 
 there have been ages between the moralities. There was, in 
 England, an age between the decline of the Catholic morality 
 and the rise of the Puritan, marked by a laxity of conduct, 
 public and private, which was partly redeemed but not neutral- 
 ized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when 
 the revival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan 
 
236 FALKLAND AND THE PUlilTANS. 
 
 morality, and that fact ought always to be home in mind ; but 
 the High Church morality was inextricably bound up with 
 sacerdotal superstition and with absolute government; it had 
 no hold on the people ; and it found itself suspiciously at home 
 in the Court of James, in the liouseliolds of Somerset and 
 Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to the 
 divorce of Essex. 
 
 That the Puritan Revolution was followed by a sacerdotal 
 and sensualist reaction is too true : all revolutions are followed 
 Ijy reactions ; it is one great reason foi" avoiding them. But 
 let it be remend^ered, first, that the disbanded soldiers of the 
 Commonwealth and the other relics of the Puritan party still 
 remained the most moral and respectable element in the 
 country ; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which 
 follows great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not alto- 
 gether the condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness 
 of humanity. Nations as well as men, if they aim high, must 
 sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. 
 Nor did the Commonwealth of Enefland come to nothinof, thouo'h 
 in a society not half emancipated from feudalism it was pre- 
 mature, and therefore, at the time, a failure. It opened a 
 glimpse of a new order of things : it was the first example of a 
 great national republic, the republics of antiquity having been 
 at once city republics and republics of slave-owners : it not 
 only heralded but, to some extent, prepared the American and 
 even the French Revolution. In its sublime death-song, 
 chanted by the great Puritan poet, our ears catch the accents of 
 a hope that did not die. 
 
 The Restoration was the end of the Puritan party, which 
 thenceforth separated into two portions, the high political ele- 
 ment taking the form of Whiggism, while the more religious 
 element was represented in subsequent histoiy by the Noncon- 
 formists. Under the Marian reaction Protestantism had been 
 saved, and the errors which it had committed in its hour of as- 
 cendency had been redeemed by the chamftions, drawn mostly 
 from the humbler classes, who suffered for it at the stake. 
 Under the Restoration it was again saved, and the errors which 
 it had once more committed in the hour of political triumph 
 were once more redeemed by martyrs of the same class, whose 
 sufferings in the noisome and pestilential prisons of that day 
 were probably not much less severe than the pangs of those who 
 died by fire. Both in the Marian and in the Restoration 
 martyrs of Protestantism there was no doubt much that was 
 
FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 237 
 
 irrational and unattractive ; yet the record of their services to 
 humanity remains, and will remain ; let the free-thought of 
 modern times, for which their self-devoting loyalty to such 
 truth as they knew made way, be grateful or ungrateful to them 
 as it will. 
 
 The relations of Nonconformity, with which we must couple 
 Scotch Presbyterianism, its partner i i fundamental doctrine, its 
 constant ally in the conflict, and fellow-sufferer in the hour 
 of adversity, to English religion, morality, industry, education, 
 jjhilanthropy, science, and to the English civilization in general, 
 would be a most important and instructive chaptar in English 
 history ; but we are hardly called upon to attempt to write it 
 in refutation of jocose charges of " hideousness" and "immense 
 ennui." A suflicient answer to such quips and cranks will be 
 found, we believe, within the same covers with Mr. Arnold's 
 " Falkland," in the shape of an article on the PuljDit, by Mr. 
 Baldwin Brown, which in tone and culture appears to us a fit 
 companion for any other paper in the journal. 
 
 That Nonconformity has been political is true. Fortunately 
 for the liberties of England it has had to struggle for civil right 
 in order to obtain religious freedom. No doubt in the course 
 of the conflict it has contracted a certain gloominess of char- 
 acter, and shown an unamiable side. Treat men with persistent 
 and insolent injustice, strip them of their rights as citizens, put 
 on them a social brand, compel them to pay for the mainten- 
 ance of the pulpits from which their religion is assailed, and 
 you will run a very great risk of souring their tempers. But 
 without rehearsing disagreeable details, we may say generally 
 that whoever should undertake to prove that the Established 
 Church had not been, from the hour of her birth down to the 
 last general election, at least as political as the Free Churches, 
 and at least as responsible for the evils which political religion 
 has brought upon the nation, would show considerable confidence 
 in his powers of dealing with history. Could he find a parallel 
 on the side of the Established Church to the magnanimous 
 loyalty to national interests shown by Nonconformists, in re- 
 jecting the bribe offered them by James II., and supporting their 
 persecutors against an illegal toleration ? Could he find a 
 parallel on the side of the Nonconformists to the conduct of the 
 Established Church, in turning round, the moment the victory 
 had been won by Nonconformist aid, and recommencing the 
 persecution of the Nonconformists ? 
 
238 FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 We fully agree with Mr. Arnold, however, in thinking that 
 political Nonconformity is an evil. There are two known modes 
 of getting rid of it — the Spanish Inquisition and religious 
 equality. Mr. Arnold seems to think that there is yet a third 
 — general submission, in matters theological and ecclesiastical, 
 to the gentle sway of Beau Nash. 
 
 Religious equality in the United States may not be perfect 
 unity, it may not be the height of culture or of grace, but at all 
 events it is peace. Ultramontanism there, as everywhere else, 
 is aggressive, and a source of disturbance ; and, on the other 
 hand, in the struggle against slavery, political and religious ele- 
 ments were inevitably intermingled ; but as a rule politics are 
 kept perfectly clear of religion. Saving in the case of Roman 
 Catholicism, we cannot call to mind a single instance of a ser- 
 ious appeal in an election to sectarian feeling. Much as we have 
 heard of the two candidates for the Presidency, we could not at 
 this moment tell to what Church either of them belongs. 
 Where no Church is privileged, there can be no cause for jeal- 
 ousy. The Churches dwell side by side, without disturbing the 
 State with any quarrels ; they are all alike loyal to the govern- 
 ment ; they unite in supporting a system of popular education 
 which generally includes a certain element of unsectarian re- 
 ligion ; they combine for social and philanthropic objects ; they 
 testify, by their common celebration of national thanksgivings 
 and fasts their unity at all events as portions of the same 
 Christian nation. So far as we know, controversy between them 
 is very rare ; there is more of it within the several Churches 
 between their own more orthodox and more liberal members. 
 In none does it rage more violently than in the Episcopal 
 Church, though, under religious equality, irreconcilable dis- 
 agreement on religious questions leads to seccession, not to 
 mutual lawsuits and imprisonments. 
 
 Mr. Arnold says in praise of Falkland that "he was profoundly 
 serious." We presume he means not only that Falkland treated 
 great questions in a serious way, without unseasonable quiz- 
 zing, but that he was, in the words quoted from Clarendon in 
 the next sentence, " a precise lover of truth, and superior to all 
 possible temptations for its violation." The temptations, we 
 presume, would have included those of taste or fancy, as well as 
 those of the more obvious kind ; and Falkland's paramount re- 
 gard for truth would have extended to all his fellow-men as 
 well as to himself and his own intellectual circle. He would 
 never, we are confident, have advised any human being to sep- 
 
FALKLAND AND THE J'UIUTANS. 239 
 
 arate religion from truth ; he would never have suffered 
 himself to intimate that truth was the property of a select circle, 
 while " poetry" was good enough for the common people ; he 
 would never have encouraged thousands of clergymen, educated 
 men with sensitive consciences, to go on preaching to their 
 flocks from the pulpit, on grounds of social convenience, 
 doctrines which they repudiated in the study,and derided in the 
 company of cultivated men ; he would never have exhorted 
 people to enter from aesthetic considerations a sjdritual society 
 of which, in the same breath, he proclaimed the creeds to be fig- 
 ments, the priesthood to be an illusion, the sacred narratives to 
 be myths, and the Triune God to be a caricature of Lord Shaftes- 
 bury multiplied by three. If he had done so, and if hi.s 
 propagandism had been successful, we suspect he would soon 
 have produced an anarchy, not only religious but social, com- 
 pared with which the most chaotic periods of the Revolution 
 would have been harmony and order. In the days of the An- 
 tonines, to which Gibbon looks back so wistfully, opinion had 
 little influence ; the organic forces of society were of a more 
 primitive and a coarser kind. In modern times if a writer 
 could succeed in separating truth from religion, he would shake 
 the pillars of the moral and social as well as the intellectual 
 world. 
 
 That religion is inseparable from truth is the strong and 
 special tradition of the Nonconformists. Their history has 
 been a long struggle for the rights of conscience against spuri- 
 ous authority, an authority which we believe Mr. Arnold holds 
 to be spurious as well as they. This is not altogether a bad 
 start in the pursuit of the truth for which the world now craves, 
 and which, we cordially admit, lies beyond the existing creed 
 of any particular Church. At all events, it would seem im- 
 provident to merge such an element of religious inquiry in that 
 of which the tradition is submission to spurious authority, 
 whatever advantages the latter may have in social, literary, and 
 aesthetic respects. Not a generation has yet passed since the 
 admission of Nonconformists to the Univei'sities ; and more 
 than a gfeneration is needed in order to attain the hiofhest cul- 
 ture. Give the Free Churches time, and let us see whether 
 they have not something better to give us in return than 
 " hideousness" and "immense ennui." 
 
240 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Our readers need not be afraid that we are going to bore 
 tliem with the Slavery Question or the Civil War. We deal 
 here not with the Martyr President, but with Abe Lincoln in 
 embryo, leaving the great man at the entrance of the grand 
 scene. Mr. Ward H. Lamon has published a biography * 
 which enables us to do this, and which, besides containing a 
 good deal that is amusing, is a curious contribution to politi- 
 cal science, as illustrating, by a world-renowned instance, the 
 origin of the species Politician. The materials for it appear to 
 be drawn from the most authentic sources, and to have been 
 used with diligence, though in point of form the book leaves 
 something to be desired. We trust it and the authorities 
 quoted in it for our facts. 
 
 After the murder, criticism, of couise, was for a time im- 
 possible. Martyrdom was followed by canonization, and the 
 popular heart could not be blamed for overflowing in hyper- 
 bole. The fallen chief " was Washington, he was Moses, 
 and there were not wanting even those who likened him to the 
 God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latter thought they 
 discovered in his early origin, his kindly nature, his benevolent 
 precepts, and the homely anecdotes in which he taught the 
 people, strong points of resemblance between him and the 
 Divine Son of Mary." A halo of myth naturally gathered round 
 the cradle of this new Moses — for we will not pursue the more 
 extravagant and offensive parallel which may serve as a set- 
 off against that which was drawn by English Royalists between 
 the death of Charles I. and the Crucilixion. Among other fables, 
 it was believed that the President's family had fled from Ken- 
 tucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas 
 Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the 
 course of Ids migrations was not determined by high moral 
 motives, and we may safely affirm that had he ever found him- 
 self among the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, 
 however deep the moral darkness might have been. He was a 
 
 * The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth to his Inauguration as President. 
 By Ward H. Lamon. Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 241 
 
 thriftless " ne'er do weel," who had very commonplace reasons for 
 wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm in Kentucky, 
 on which his child first formed a sad acquaintance with life and 
 nature, and which, as it happened, was not in the slave-owning- 
 region of the State. His decision appears to have been hastened 
 by a " difficulty," in which he bit off his antagonist's nose — an 
 incident to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the 
 family histories of Scripture heroes, or even in those of the 
 Sainted Fathers of the Republic. He drifted to Indiana, and in 
 a spot which was then an almost untrodden wilderness, built a 
 casa santa, which his connection, Dennis Hanks, calls " that 
 darned little half -faced camp " — a dwelling enclosed on three 
 sides and open on the fourth, without a floor, and called a camp, 
 it seems, because it was made of poles, not of logs. He after- 
 wards exchanged the " camp" for the more ambitious " cabin ;" 
 bnt his cabin was "a rouofh, rough log one," made of unhewn 
 timber, and without floor, door or window. In this " rough, 
 rough," abode, his lanky, lean-visaged, awkward and somewhat 
 pensive though strong, hearty and patient son Abraham had a 
 " rough, rough " life, and underwent experiences which, if they 
 were not calculated to form a Pitt or a Turgot, were cal- 
 culated to season an American politician, and make him a 
 winner in the tough struggle for existence, as well as to 
 identify him with the people, faithful representation of whose 
 aims, sentiments, tastes, passions and prejudices was the one 
 thing needful to qualify him for obtaining the prize of his 
 ambition. " For two years Lincoln (the father) continued to 
 live alone in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he 
 never got much of his land under cultivation. His principal 
 crop was corn ; and this, with the game which a rifleman so ex- 
 pert would easily take from the woods around him, supplied his 
 table." It does not appear that he employed any of his mecha- 
 nical skill in completing and furnishing his own cabin. It has 
 already been stated that the latter had no window, door or 
 floor. " But the furniture, if it might be called furniture, was 
 even worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for 
 chairs. A bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of 
 the logs in one corner of the cabin, while the other end rested in 
 the crotch of a forked stick stuck in the earthen floor. On these 
 were laid some boards, and on the boards a shake-down of 
 leaves, covered with skins and old petticoats. The table was a 
 hewed puncheon supported by four legs. They had a few 
 pewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inven^ 
 Q 
 
242 THE EARLY TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 tory of their effects makes no mention of knives or forks. Their 
 cooking utensils were a Dutch oven and a skillet. Abraham 
 slept in the loft, to which he ascended by means of pins drivers 
 into holes in the wall." Of his father's disposition, Abraham 
 seems to have inherited at all events the dislike to labour- 
 though his sounder moral nature prevented him from being an 
 idler. His tendency to politics came from the same element of 
 character as his father's preference for the rifle. In after life we 
 are told his mind " was filled with gloomy forebodings and 
 strong apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extra- 
 vagant visions of personal grandeur and power." His melan- 
 choly, characterized by all his friends as " terrible," was closely 
 connected with the cravings of his demagogic ambition, and the 
 root of both was in him from a boy. 
 
 In the Indiana cabin Abraham's mother, whose maiden name 
 was Nancy Hanks, died, far from medical aid, of the epidemic 
 called milk sickness. She was preceded in death by her rela- 
 tives, the Sparrows, who had succeeded the Lincolns in the 
 "camp," and by many neighbours, whose coffins Thomas Lincoln 
 made out of " green lumber cut with a whip saw." Upon 
 Nancy's death he took to his green lumber again and made a box 
 for her. "There were about twenty persons at her funeral. They 
 took her to the summit of a deeply wooded knoll, about half a 
 mile south-east of the cabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. 
 If there were any burial ceremonies, they were of the briefest. 
 But it happened that a few months later an itinerant preacher, 
 named David Elkin, whom the Lincolns had known in Ken- 
 tucky, wandered into the settlement, and he either volunteered 
 or was employed to preach a sermon, which should commemorate 
 the many virtues and pass over in silence the few frailties of the 
 poor woman who slept in the forest. Many years later the bodies, 
 of Levi Hall and his wife (relatives), were deposited in the 
 same earth with that of Mr. Lincoln. The graves of two or 
 three children, belonging to a neighbour's family, are also near 
 theirs. They are all crumbled, sunken and covered with wild 
 vines in deep and tangled mats. The great trees were originally 
 cut away to make a small cleared space for this primitive grave- 
 yard ; but the young dogwoods have sprung up unopposed in 
 great luxuriance, and in many instances the names of pilgrims, 
 to the burial place of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are 
 carved on their bark. With this exception, the spot is wholly 
 unmarked. The grave never had a stone, nor even a board, at 
 its head or its foot , and the neighbours still dispute as to which 
 
THE EARLY TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 243 
 
 of these unsightly hollows contains the ashes of Nancy Lincoln." 
 If Democracy in the New World sometimes stones the pro- 
 phets, it is seldom guilty of building their sepulchres. Out of 
 sight, off the stump, beyond the range of the interviewer, heroes 
 and martyrs soon pass from the mind of a fast-living people ; 
 and weeds may grow out of the dust of Washington. But in 
 this case what neglect has done good taste would have dic- 
 tated ; it is well that the dogwoods are allowed to grow un- 
 checked over the wilderness fjrave. 
 
 Thirteen months after the death of his Nancy, Thomas Lin- 
 coln went to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and suddenly presented 
 himself to Mrs. Sally Johnston, who had in former days i-ejected 
 him for a better match, but had become a widow. " Well, Mrs. 
 Johnston, I have no wife and you have no husband, I came a pur- 
 pose to marry you. I knowed you from a gal and you knowed 
 me from a bo}-, I have no time to lose, and if you are willin', 
 let it be done straight off." " Tommy, I know you well, anrl 
 have no objection to marrying you ; but I cannot do it straight 
 off, as I owe some debts that must first be paid." They were 
 married next morning, and the new Mrs. Lincoln, who owned, 
 among other wondrous household goods, a bureau that cost forty 
 dollars, and who had been led, it seems, to believe that her new 
 husband was reformed and a prosperous farmer, was conveyed 
 with her bureau to the smiling scene of his reformation and 
 prosperity. Being, however, a sensible Christian woman, she 
 made the best of a bad bargain, got her husband to put down 
 a floor and hang doors and windows, made things generally 
 decent, and was very kind to the children, especially to Abe, 
 to whom she took a great liking, and who owed to his good 
 stepmother what other heroes have owed to their mothers. 
 " From that time on," according to his garrulous relative, Dennis 
 Hanks, " he appeared to lead a new life." It seems to have been 
 difficult to extract from him "for campaign purposes" the inci- 
 dents of his life before it took this happy turn. 
 
 He described his own education in a Congressional handbook 
 as " defective." In Kentucky he occasionally trudged with his 
 little sister, rather as an escort than as a school-fellow, to 
 a school four miles off, kept by one Caleb Hazel, who could teach 
 reading and writing after a fashion, and a little arithmetic, but 
 whose great qualification for his office lay in his power and 
 readiness " to whip the big boys." So far the American respect 
 for popular education as the key to success in life prevailed even 
 in those wilds, and in such a family as that of Thomas Lincoln. 
 
244 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Under the auspices of his new mother, Abraham began attend- 
 ing school again. The master was one Crawford, who taue^ht 
 not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but " manners." One 
 of the scholars was made to retire, and re-enter " as a polite 
 gentleman enters a drawing room ; " after which he was led 
 round by another scholar and introduced to all " the young la- 
 dies and gentlemen." The polite gentleman who entered the 
 drawing room and was introduced as Mr. Abraham Lincoln, is 
 thus depicted. " He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two 
 years later attained his full height of six feet four inches. He 
 was long, wiry and strong ; while his big feet and hands and 
 the length of his arms and legs were out of all proportion to his 
 small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and 
 Mr. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even 
 then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey woolsey 
 shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The 
 breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, but parted by a large 
 space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained 
 uncovered, and exposed that much of shinbone, sharp, blue and 
 narrow." At a subsequent period, when charged by a Demo- 
 cratic rival with beino- " a Whif^ aristocrat," he gave a minute 
 and touching descri})tion of the breeches. " I had only one 
 pair," he said, " and they were buckskin. And if you know the 
 nature of buckskin when wet and dried by the sun they will 
 shrink : and mine kept shrinking until they left several inches 
 of my legs bare between the tops of my socks and the lower 
 part of my breeches ; and whilst I was growing taller they 
 were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a 
 blue streak around my legs, which can be seen to this day." 
 
 Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and one 
 day he was going to punish a whole class for failingto spell defied, 
 when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by 
 putting his linger with a significant smile to his eye. Many 
 years later, however, and after his entrance mto public life, Lin- 
 coln himself spelt apology with a double p, planning with a 
 single n, and very with a double r. His seliooling was very ir- 
 regular, his school days hardly amounting to a year in all, and 
 such education as he had was picked up afterwards by himself. 
 His appetite for mental food, however, M^as always strong, and 
 he devoured all the books, few and not very select, which couhi 
 be found in the neighbourhood of " Pigeon Creek." Equally 
 strong was his passion for stump oratory, the taste for which 
 pervades the American people, even in the least intellectual 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 245 
 
 districts, as the taste for church festivals pervades the people of 
 Spain, or the taste for cricket the people of England. Abe's 
 neighbour, John Romine, says, " he was awful lazy. He worked 
 for me ; was always reading and thinking ; used to get mad at 
 him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe 
 was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all 
 the time ; didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He 
 liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin 
 and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light 
 of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump ora- 
 tory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching 
 himself to his brothers and sister. His o-ifts in the rhetorical 
 line were high ; when it was announced in the harvest field 
 that Abe had taken the stump, work was at an end. The 
 lineaments of the future politician distinctly appear in the dis- 
 like of manual labour as well as in the rest. We shall pre- 
 sently have Lincoln's own opinion on that point. 
 
 Abe's first written composition appears to have been an essay 
 against cruelty to animals, a theme the choice of which was at 
 once indicative of his kindness of heart and practically judici- 
 ous, since the young gentlemen in the neighbourhood were in 
 the habit of catching terrapins and putting hot coals upon their 
 backs. The essay appears not to have been preserved, and we 
 cannot say whether its author succeeded in explaining that 
 ethical mystery — the love of cruelty in boys. 
 
 In spite of his laziness, Abe was greatly in demand at hog- 
 killing time, notwithstanding, or possibly in consequence of 
 which, he contracted a peculiarly tender feeling towards swine, 
 and in later life would get off" his horse to help a struggling hog 
 out of the mire or to save a little pig from the jaws of an un- 
 natural mother. 
 
 Society in the neighbourhood of Pigeon Creek was of the 
 thorough backwoods type ; as coarse as possible, but hospitable 
 and kindly, free from cant and varnish, and a better school of 
 life than of manners, though, after all, the best manners are 
 learnt in the best school of life, and the school of life in which 
 Abe studied was not the worst. He became a leadinof favour- 
 ite, and his appearance, towering above the other hunting shirts, 
 was always the signal for the fun to begin. His nature seems 
 to have been, like many others, open alike to cheerful and to 
 gloomy impressions. A main source of his popularity was the 
 fund of stories to which he was always adding, and to which in 
 after life he constantly went fur solace, under depression or 
 
246 THE EARLY TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 responsibility, as another man would go to his cigar or snuff 
 box. The taste was not individual but local, and natural to 
 keen-witted people who had no other food for their wits. In 
 those circles " the ladies drank whiskey -toddy, while the men 
 drank it straight." Lincoln was by no means fond of drink, but 
 in this, as in every thing else, he followed the great law of his 
 life as a politician, by falling in with the humour of the people. 
 One cold night he and his companions found an acquaintance 
 lying dead-drunk in a puddle. All but Lincoln were disposed 
 to let him lie where he was, and freeze to death. But Abe 
 " bent his mighty frame, and taking the man in his long arms, 
 carried him a great distance to Dennis Hanks' cabin. There he 
 built a fire, warmed, rubbed and nursed him through the entire 
 night, his companions having left him alone in his merciful 
 task." His real kindness of heart is always coming out in the 
 most striking way, and it was not impaired even by civil war. 
 Though sallow-faced, Lincoln had a very good constitution, 
 but his frame hardly bespoke great strength : he was six feet 
 four and large-boned, but narrow chested, and had almost a con- 
 sumptive appearance. His strength, neverthele:-s, was great. 
 We are told that harnessed with ropes and straps he could lift 
 a box of stones weighing from a thousand to twelve hundred 
 pounds. But that he could raise a cask of whiskey in his arms 
 standing upright, and drink out of the bung-hole, his biogi'apher 
 does not believe. The story is no doubt a part of the legendary 
 halo which has gathered round the head of the martyr. In 
 wrestling, of which he was very fond, he had not his match 
 near Pigeon Creek, and only once found him anywhere else. 
 He was also formidable as a pugilist. But he was no bully ; 
 on the contrary, he was peaceable and chivalrous in a rough 
 way. His chivalry once displayed itself in a rather singular 
 fashion. He was in the habit, among other intellectual exer- 
 cises, of writing satires on his neighbours in the form of chroni- 
 cles, the remains of which, unlike any known writings of 
 Moses, oreven of Washington, are "too indecent for publication." 
 In one of these he assailed the Grigsbys, who had failed to in- 
 vite him to a brilliant wedding. The Grigsby blood took fire, 
 and a fight was arranged. But when they came to the ring, 
 Lincoln, deeming the Grigsby champion too much overmatched, 
 magnanimously substituted for himself his less puissant step- 
 brother, John Johnston, who was getting well pounded when 
 Abe, on pretence of foul i)lay, interfered, seized Grigsby by 
 the neck, fiung him off and cleared the ring. He then " swung 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN^. 247 
 
 a whiskey bottle over his head, and swore that he was the big 
 buck of the lick,"— a ])rop()sition which it seems, the other 
 bucks of the lick, there assembled in large numbers, did not feel 
 themselves called upon to dispute. 
 
 That Abraham Lincoln should have said, when a bare-legged 
 boy, that he intended to be President of the United States, 
 is not remarkable. Every boy in the United States says it ; 
 soon, perhaps, every girl will be able to say it, and then human 
 happiness will be complete. But Lincoln was really carrying 
 -on his political education. Dennis Hanks is asked how he and 
 Lincoln acquired their knowledge. " We learned," he replies, 
 ^' by sight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, and 
 talked over and over the questions heard ; wore them slick, 
 greasy and threadbare. Went to political and other speeches 
 .and gatherings, as you do now ; we would hear all sides and 
 ■opinions, talk them over, discuss them, agreeing or disagreeing. 
 Abe, as I said before, was originally a Democrat after the order 
 of Jackson ; so was his father, so we all were. . . . He 
 preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us, &c. , . . 
 Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy ; was humorous always ; 
 .sometimes would get sad, not very often. . . . Lincoln 
 would frequently make political and other speeches ; he was 
 calm, logical and clear always. He attended trials, went to 
 court always, read the Revised Statutes of Indiana, dated 1824, 
 heard law speeches, and listened to law trials. Lincoln was lazy, 
 a very lazy man. He was always reading, scribbling, writing, 
 ciphering, writing poetry, and the like. ... In Gentry- 
 ville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln's farm, Lincoln 
 would go and tell his jokes and stories, &c., and was so odd, 
 original and humorous and witty, that all the people in town 
 would gather around him. He would keep them there till mid- 
 night. I would get tired, want to go home, cuss Abe most 
 heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and was a kind 
 of newsboy." One or two articles written by Abe found their 
 way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot 
 was on the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that 
 his culture was not solely political, and that he was able to 
 astonish the natives of Gentryville by explaining that when 
 the sun appeared to set, it " was we did the sinking and not 
 the sun." 
 
 Abe was tired of his home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln might 
 he, without disparagement to his filial piety ; and he was glad 
 to get oft' with a neighbour on a commercial trip down the 
 
248 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 river to New Orleans. The trip was successful in a small way, 
 and Abe soon after lepeated it with other companions. He 
 shewed his practical ingenuity in getting the boat off a dam^ 
 and perhaps still more signally in quieting some restive hogs- 
 by the simple expedient of sewing up their eyes. In the first 
 trip the great emancipator came in contact with the negro in a 
 way that did not seem likely to prepossess him in favour of 
 the race. The boat was boarded by negro robbers, who were 
 repulsed only after a fray in which Abe got a scar which he 
 carried to the grave. But he saw with his own eyes slaves- 
 manacled and whipped at New Orleans ; and though his sym- 
 pathies were not fa]--reaching, the actual sight of sufiering- 
 never failed to make an impression on his mind. " In 1841,"^ 
 he says, in a letter to a friend, " you and I had together a 
 tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. 
 Louis. You ma}^ remember, as I well do, that from Louisville- 
 to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on board ten or a dozen 
 slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a con- 
 tinued torment to me, and I see something like it every time- 
 I touch the Ohio or any other slave border." A negrophilist 
 he never became. " I protest," he said afterwards, when 
 engaged in the slavery controversy, " against the counterfeit 
 logic which concludes that because I do not want a black 
 woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I 
 need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In 
 some respects she certainly is not my equal ; but in her natural 
 right to eat the bread which she earns with her own hand.s. 
 she is my equal and the equal of all others." It would b& 
 difficult to put the case better. 
 
 While Abraham Lincoln was trading to New Orleans his. 
 father, Thomas Lincoln, was on the move again. This time he 
 migrated to Illinois, and there again shifted from place to place,, 
 gathering no moss, till he died as thriftless and poor as he had 
 lived. We have, in later years, an application from him to his 
 son for money, to which the son responds in a tone which im- 
 plies some doubt as to the strict accuracy of the ground on 
 which the old gentleman's request was preferred. Their rela- 
 tions were evidently not very affectionate, though there is noth- 
 ing unfilial in Abe's conduct. Abraham himself drifted to Salem 
 on the Sangamon, in Illinois, twenty miles north-west of Spring- 
 field, where he became clerk in a new store, set up by Denton 
 Offutt, with whom he had formed a connection in one of his. 
 trips to New Orleans. Salem was then a village of a dozen 
 
TUE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 249 
 
 houses, and the little centre of a society very like that of Pigeon 
 Creek and its neighbourhood, but more decidedly western. We 
 are told that " here Mr. Lincoln became acquainted with a class 
 of men the world never saw the like of before or since. They 
 were large men, — large in body and large in mind ; hard to 
 whip and never to be fooled. They were a bold, daring and 
 reckless set of men ; they were men of their own mind, — be- 
 lieved what was demonstrable, were men of great common 
 sense. With these men Mr. Lincoln was thrown ; with them 
 he lived and with them he moved and almost had his being. 
 They were sceptics all — scoffers some. These scoffers were good 
 men, and their scoffs were protests against theology, — loud pi'O- 
 tests against the follies of Christianity; they had never heard of 
 theism and the new and better religious thoughts of this age. 
 Hence, being natural sceptics and being bold, brave men the}^ ut- 
 tered their thoughts freely They were on all occa- 
 sions, when opportunity offered, debating the various questions of 
 Christianity among themselves ; they took their stand on com- 
 mon sense and on their own souls ; and though their arguments- 
 were rude and rough, no man could overthrow their homely 
 logic. They riddled all divines, and not unfrequently made 
 them sceptics, — disbelievers as bad as themselves. They were 
 a jovial, healthful, generous, true and manly set of people." It 
 is evident that W. Herndon, the speaker, is himself a disbeliever 
 in Christianity, and addicted to the "newer and better thought 
 of this age." He gives one specimen, which we have omitted 
 for fear of shocking our readers, of the theological criticism of 
 these redoubtable logicians of nature ; and we are inclined tO' 
 infer from it that the divines whom they " riddled " and con- 
 verted to scepticism must have been children of nature as well 
 as themselves. The passage, however, is a life-like, though 
 idealized, portrait of the Western man ; and the tendency to 
 religious scepticism of the most daring kind is as truly ascribed 
 to him as the rest. 
 
 It seems to be proved by conclusive evidence that Mr. Lincoln 
 shared the sentiments of his companions, and that he was never 
 a member of any Church, a believer in the divinity of Christ, or 
 a Christian of any denomination. He is described as an avowed, 
 an open freethinker, sometimes bordering on atheism, going 
 extreme lengths against Christian doctrines, and " shocking " 
 men whom it was probably not very easy to shock. He even 
 wrote a little work on " Infidelity," attacking Christianity in 
 general, and especially the belief that Jesus was the Son of God ; 
 
250 TEE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 V)ut the manuscript was destroyed by a prescient friend, who 
 knew that its publication would ruin the writer in the political 
 market. There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to 
 Lincoln's scepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, 
 Paine, Hume and Gibbon. His fits of downright atheism ap- 
 pear to have been transient ; his settled belief was theism with 
 a morality which, though he was not aware of it, he had really 
 derived from the Gospel. It is needless to say that the case had 
 never been rationally presented to him, and that his decision 
 against Christianity would prove nothing, even if his mind had 
 been more powerful than it was. His theism was not strong 
 enough to save him from deep depression under misfortune ; 
 and we heard, on what we thought at the time good authority, 
 that after Chancellorsville, he actually meditated suicide. Like 
 many sceptics, he was liable to superstition, especially to the 
 superstition of self-consciousness, a conviction that he was 
 the subject of a special decree made by some nameless and 
 mysterious power. Even from a belief in apparitions he was 
 not free. "It was just after my election, in 1860," he said to 
 his Secretary, John Ha}^, " when the news had been coming 
 in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great ' hur- 
 rah, boys ! ' so that I was well tired, I went home to rest, 
 throwing mj'self upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to 
 where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it ; and, 
 on looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full 
 length ; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct 
 images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from 
 the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, 
 and got up and looked in the glass ; but the illusion vanished. 
 On lying down again I saw it a second time — plainer, if pos- 
 sible, than before ; and then I noticed that one of the faces was 
 a little paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up and 
 the thing melted away ; and I went ofl" and in the excitement 
 of the hour forgot all about it, — nearly, but not quite, for the 
 thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as 
 though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went 
 homeltold my wife about it; and in a few days afterwards I tried 
 the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back 
 again ; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after 
 that, though I once tried veiy industriously, to show it to my 
 wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 
 ' a sign ' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and 
 that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 251 
 
 not see life through the last term." The apparition is, of course, 
 easily explained by reference to a generally morbid temperament 
 and a specially excited fancy. The impression which it made on 
 the mind of a sceptic, noted for never believing in anything 
 "which was not actually submitted to his senses, is an instance 
 of the tendency of superstition, to creep into the void left in 
 the heart by faith, and as such may be classed with the astro- 
 logical superstitions of the Roman Empire, and of that later 
 age of religious and moral infidelity of which the prophet was 
 Machiavelli. But if Mr. John Hay has faithfully repeated 
 Lincoln's words, a point upon which we may have our doubts 
 without prejudice to Mr. Hay's veracity, Mrs. Lincoln's inter- 
 pretation of the vision is, to say the least, a very curious 
 coincidence. 
 
 The flower of the heroic race in the neighbourhood of Salem, 
 were the " Clary's Grove boys," whose chief and champion was 
 Jack Armstrong. " Never," we are assured, " was there a more 
 generous parcel of ruffians than those over whom Jack held 
 sway." It does not appear, however, that the term ruffian is al- 
 together misplaced. The boys were in the haljit of "initia- 
 ting" candidates for admission to society at New Salem. "They 
 first bantered the gentleman to run a foot race, jump, pitch the 
 mall, or wrestle; and if none of these propositions seemed 
 agi-eeable to him, they would request to know what he would 
 do in case another gentleman should pull his nose or squirt to- 
 bacco juice in his face. If he did not seem entirely decided in 
 his views as to what should be done in such a contingency, per- 
 haps he would be nailed in a hogshead and rolled down New 
 Salem hill, perhaps his ideas would be brightened by a brief 
 ducking in the Sangamon ; or perhaps he would be scoffed, 
 kicked and cuffed by a great number of persons in concert, un- 
 til he reached the confines of the village, and then turned adrift 
 as being unfit company for the people of that settlement." If 
 the stranger consented to race or wrestle, it wa.s arranged 
 that there should be foul play, which would lead to a fight ; a 
 proper display of mettle in which was accepted as a proof of 
 the " gentleman's " fitness for society. Abe escaped initiation ; 
 his length and strength of limb being apparently deemed satis- 
 factory evidence of his social respectability. But Clary's Grove 
 was at last brought down upon him by the indiscretion of his 
 friend and admirer, Oftutt, who was already beginning to run 
 him for President, and whose vauntings of his powers made a 
 trial of strenofth inevitable. A wrestlinff match was contrived 
 
252 TEE EARLY ] EARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, and money, jackknivos 
 and whiskey were freely staked on the result. Neither com- 
 batant could throw the other, and Abe proposed to Jack to 
 " (juit." But Jack, goaded on by his partisans, resorted to a 
 " foul," upon which Abe's righteous wrath blazed up, and tak- 
 ing the champion of Clary's Grove by the throat he " shook 
 him like a child." A fight was impending, and Abe, his back 
 planted against Offutt's store, was facing a circle of foes, when 
 a mediator appeared. Jack Armstrong was so satisfied of the- 
 strength of Abe's arm, that he at once declared him the best 
 fellow that ever came into the settlement, and the two thence- 
 forth reigned conjointly over the roughs and bullies of New 
 Salem. Abe seems always to have used his power humanely 
 and to have done his best to substitute arbitration for war. A 
 strano:e man coming into the settlement, on beino- beset as usual 
 by Clary s Grove and insulted by Jack Armstrong, knocked the 
 bully down with a stick. Jack being as strong as two of him 
 was going to " whip him badly," when Abe interposed, "Well 
 Jack, what did you say to the man ? " Jack repeated his words. 
 " And what would you do if you were in a strange place and 
 you were called a d — d liar ?" " Whip him, by — ." "Then 
 that man has done to you no more than you have done to him." 
 Jack acknowledged the golden rule and " treated " his intended 
 victim. If there were ever dissensions between the two 
 "Caesars" of Salem, it was because Jack " in the abundance of 
 his animal spirits " was addicted to nailing people in barrels 
 and rolling them down the hill, while Abe was always on the 
 side of mercy. 
 
 Abe's popularity grew apace ; his ambition grew with it ; it 
 is astonishing how readily and freely the plant sprouts upon that 
 soil. He was at this time carrying on his education evidently 
 with a view to public life. Books were not easily found. He 
 wanted to study English Grammar, considering that accom- 
 jilishment desirable for a statesman; and, being told that there 
 was a grammar in a house six miles from Salem, he left his 
 breakfast at once and walked oft' to borrow it. He would 
 slip away into the woods and spend hours in study and think- 
 ing. He sat up late at night, and as light was expensive, 
 made a blaze of shavings in the cooper's shop. He waylaid 
 every visitor to New Salem who had any pretence to scholar- 
 ship, and extracted explanations of things which he did not 
 understand. It does not appear that the work of Adam Smith, 
 or any work upon political economy, currency, or any financial 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLK. 253 
 
 subject fell into the hands of the student who was destined to 
 conduct the most tremendous operations in the whole histoiy 
 of finance. 
 
 The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded as 
 Sb part of his training was the command of a company of militia 
 in the " Black Hawk " war. Black Hawk was an Indian Chief 
 of great craft and power, and, apparently, of fine character, who 
 had the effrontery to object to being improved off the face of 
 creation, an ofience which he aggravated by an hereditary at- 
 tachment to the British. At a nmster of the Sangamon com- 
 pany at Clary's Grove, Lincoln was elected captain. The elec- 
 tion was a proof of his popularit}' ; but he found it rather hard 
 to manacre his constituents in the field. One morning: on the 
 march the Captain commanded his orderly to form the company 
 for parade ; but when the orderly called " parade," the men 
 called " parade " too, but could not fall into line. They had 
 found their way to the officers' liquor the evening before. 
 The regiment had to march and leave the company behind. 
 About ten o'clock the company set out to follow ; but when it 
 had marched two miles " the drunken ones lay down and slept 
 their drink off'." Lincoln, who seems to have been perfectly 
 blameless, was placed under arrest and condemned to carry a 
 wooden sword ; but it does not appear that any notice was taken 
 of the conduct of that portion of the sovereign people which lay 
 down drunk on the march when the army was advancing against 
 the enemy. Something like this was probably the state of 
 things in the Northern army at the beginning of the civil war, 
 before discipline had been enforced by disaster. The campaign 
 opened with a cleverly- won victory on the part of Black Hawk, 
 and a rapid retrograde movement on the part of the militia, as 
 to which we will be content to say with Mr. Lamon : "of drunk- 
 enness no public account makes any mention, and individual 
 cowardice is never to be imputed to American troops." Ulti- 
 mately, however. Black Hawk v;as overpowered and most of 
 his men met their doom in attempting to retreat across the Mis- 
 sissippi. " During this short Lidian campaign," says one who took 
 part in it, " we had some hard times, often hungry ; but we hail a 
 great deal of sport, especially at nights — footracing, some horse 
 racing, jumping, telling anecdotes, in which Lincoln beat all, 
 keeping up a constant laughter and good humour all the time ; 
 among the soldiers some card-playing and wrestling in which 
 Lincoln took a prominent part. I think it safe to say he was 
 never thrown in a wrestle. While in the army he kept a 
 
254 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 handkerchief tied around him all the time for wrestling pur- 
 poses, and loved the sport as well as any one could. He was 
 seldom if ever beat jumping. During the campaign Lincoln 
 himself was always ready for an emergency. He endured hard- 
 ships like a good soldier ; he never com})lained, nor did he fear 
 dangers. When fighting was expected or danger apprehended, 
 Lincoln was the first to say ' Let's go.' He had the confidence 
 of every man of his company, and they strictly obeyed his 
 orders at a word. His company was all young men, and full 
 of sport." The assertion as to the strict and uniform obedience 
 of the company at its captain's word, requires, as we have seen, 
 some qualification in a democratic sense. Whether Lincoln was 
 ever beaten in wrestling is also one of the moot points of his- 
 tory. In the course of this campaign one Mr. Thompson, whose 
 fame as a wrestler was great throughout the west, accepted 
 Lincoln's challenge. Great excitement prevailed, and Lincoln's 
 company and backers " put up all their portable property and 
 some perhaps not their own, including knives, blankets, toma- 
 hawks, and all the necessary articles of a soldier's outfit." As 
 soon as Lincoln laid hold of his antagonist he found that he 
 had got at least his match, and warned his friends of that un- 
 welcome fact. He was thrown once fairly, and a second time 
 fell with Thompson on the top of him. " We were taken by 
 surprise," candidly says Mr. Green, "and being unwilling to 
 part with our property and lose our bets, got up an excuse as 
 to the result. We declared the fall a kind of a dog-fall — did so 
 apparently angrily." A fight was about to begin, when Lincoln 
 rose up and said, " Boys, the man actually threw me once fair, 
 broadly so ; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me 
 fairly, though not so apparently so." This quelled the distur- 
 bance. On the same authority we are told that Lincoln gal- 
 lantly interfered to save the life of a poor old Indian who had 
 thrown himself on the mercy of the soldiers, and whom, not- 
 withstanding that he had a pass, they were proceeding to slay. 
 The anecdote wears a somewhat melodramatic aspect ; but 
 there is no doubt of Lincoln's humanity, or of his readiness to 
 protest against oppression and cruelty when they actually fell 
 under his notice. It was also in keeping with his character to 
 insist firmly on the right of his militiamen to the same rations 
 and pay as the regulars, and to draw the legal line sharply and 
 clearly when the regular officers exceeded their authority in 
 the exercise of command. 
 
THE EARLY TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 255 
 
 Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his appren- 
 ticeship as a clerk, commenced storekeeping on his own account. 
 An opening was made for him by the departure of Mr. Radford, 
 the keeper of a grocery, who, having oti'ended the Clary's Grove 
 boys, they " selected a convenient night for breaking in his win- 
 dows and gutting his establishment." From his ruins rose the 
 tirm of Lincoln k, Berry. Doubt rests on the great historic ques- 
 tion whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on that question 
 still more agonizing to a sensitive morality — whether he sold it 
 by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever 
 remain undetermined. The only fact in which history can re- 
 pose with certainty is that some liquor must have been given 
 away, since nobody in the neighbourhood of Clary's Grove 
 could keep store without offering the customary dram to the 
 patrons of the place. When taxed on the platform by his rival, 
 Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied that if he 
 tifjured on one side of the counter, Douo-las ficrured on the other. 
 "As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore Hax and tow 
 linen pantaloons — I thought about five inches too short in the 
 legs — and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. 
 He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War ; 
 coarse brogues, tan-colour ; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old 
 style, and without a band." It is recorded that he preferred 
 dealing with men and boys, and disliked to v/ait on the ladies. 
 Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described, the ladies, 
 even the Clary's Grove ladies, may have reciprocated the 
 feeling. 
 
 In storekeeping, however, Mr. Lincoln did not prosper; neither 
 storekeeping nor any other regular business or occupation was 
 congenial to his character. He was born to be a politician. 
 Accordingly he began to read law, with which he combined 
 surveying, at which we are assured he made himself " expert " 
 V»y a six weeks' course of study. They mix trades a little in 
 the West. We expected on turning the page to find that Mr. 
 Lincoln had also taken up surgery and performed the Ctesarean 
 operation. The few law books needed for Western practice 
 were supplied to him by a kind friend at Springfield, and ac- 
 cording to a witness who has evidently an accurate memory 
 for details, "he went to read law in 1832 or 1833 barefooted, 
 seated in the shade of a tree and would grind around with the 
 shade, just opposite Berry's grocery store, a few feet south of 
 the door, occasionally lying fiat on his back and putting his 
 feet up the tree." Evidently, whatever he read, especially 
 
256 'rilE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of a practical kind, he made thoroughly his own. It is 
 needless to say that he did not become a master of scien- 
 tific jurisprudence ; but it seems that he did become an 
 effective Western advocate. What is more, there is conclu- 
 sive testimony to the fact that he was — what has been scan- 
 dalously alleged to be rare, even in the United States — an hon- 
 est lawyer. " Love of justice and fair play," says one of his 
 "brothers of the bar, " was his predominant trait. I have often 
 listened to him when I thought he would state his case out of 
 Court. It was not in his nature to assume or attempt to bol- 
 ster up a false position. He would abandon his case first. He 
 did so in the case o^ Bitchnaster for the use of Durham v. Bee- 
 ner & Arthur, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to 
 be opposed to him. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took 
 Mr. Lincoln's place and gained the case." His power as an ad- 
 vocate seems to have depended on his conviction that the right 
 was on his side. " Tell Harris it's no use to waste money on me 
 in that case ; he'll get beat." In a larceny case he took those 
 who were counsel with him for the defence aside and said, "If 
 you can say anything for the man do it. I can't. If I attempt 
 it, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and convict him 
 of course." In another case he proved an account for his client, 
 who, though he did not know it, was a rogue. The counsel on 
 the other side proved a receipt. By the time he had done Lin- 
 coln was missing ; and on the Court sending for him, he replied, 
 " Tell the judge I can't come ; my hands are dirty, and I came 
 over to clean them." Mr. Herndon, who visited Lincoln's office 
 on business, gives the following reminiscence : — ' Mr. Lincoln 
 was seated at his table, listening very attentively to a man who 
 was talking earnestly in a low tone. After the would-be client 
 had stated the facts of the case, Mr. Lincoln replied, ' yes, there 
 is no reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. 
 I can set a whole neighbourhood at logger heads ; I can distress a 
 widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get 
 for you six hundred dollars, which rightly belongs, it appears 
 to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to 
 you. You must remember that some things that are legally 
 right are not morally right. I shall not take your case but 
 will give you a bit of advice, for which I will charge you no- 
 thing. You seem to be a spiightly, energetic man. I would 
 advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in 
 some other way.'" On one occasion, however, Lincoln, we be- 
 lieve it must be admitted, resorted to sharp practice. William 
 
THE EARLY TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 257 
 
 Armstrong, the son of Jack Armstrong, of Clary's Grove, in- 
 heriting, as it seems, the " abundant animal spirits " of his 
 father, committed, as was universally believed, a very brutal 
 murder at a camp meeting, and being brought to trial was in 
 imminent peril of the halter. Lincoln volunteered to defend 
 him. The witness whose testimony bore hardest on the pri- 
 soner swore that he saw the murder committed by the light of 
 the moon. Lincoln put in an almanac, which, on reference 
 being made to it showed that at the time stated by the witness 
 there was no moon. This broke down the witness and the pri- 
 soner was acquitted. It was not observed at the moment that 
 the almanac was one of the year previous to the murder; 
 and therefore morally a fabrication. Herculean efforts are 
 made to prove that two almanacs were produced and that Mr. 
 Lincoln was innocent of any deception. But the best plea, we 
 conceive, is, that Mr. Lincoln had rocked William Armstrong 
 in the cradle. 
 
 There is one part of Lincoln's early life which, though scan- 
 dal may batten on it, we shall pass over lightly ; we mean 
 that part which relates to his love affairs and his marriage. 
 Criticism, and even biography, should respect as far as pos- 
 sible the sanctuary of affection. That a man has dedicated 
 his life to the service of the public is no reason why the public 
 should be licensed to amuse itself by playing with his heart- 
 strings. Not only as a storekeeper, but in every capacity, 
 Mr. Lincoln was far more happy in his relations with men 
 than with women. He however loved, and loved deeply, Ann 
 Rutledge, who appears to have been entirely worthy of his 
 attachment, and whose death at the moment when she would 
 have felt herself at liberty to marry him threw him into a 
 transport of grief, which threatened his reason and excited the 
 gravest apprehensions of his friends. In stormy weather 
 especially he would rave piteously, crying that " he could 
 never be reconciled to have the snow, rains and storms to beat 
 upon her grave." This first love he seems never to have for- 
 gotten. He next had an affair, not so creditable to him, with 
 a Miss Owens, of whom, after their rupture, he wrote things 
 which he had better have left unwritten. Finally, he made a 
 match of which the world has heard more than enough, though 
 the Western Boy was too true a gentleman to let it hear any- 
 thing about the matter from his lips. It is enough to say that 
 this man was not wanting in that not inconsiderable element 
 of worth, even of the worth of statesmen, strong and pure 
 affection. 
 
^258 THE EARLY YEAES OF ABJRABAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " If ever," said Abraham Lincoln, " American society and the 
 United States Government are demoralized and overthrown, it 
 will come from the voracious desiie of office — this wriggle to 
 live without toil, from which I am not free myself." These 
 Vords ought to be written up in the largest characters in every 
 schoolroom in the United States. The confession with which 
 they conclude is as true as the rest. Mr. Lincoln, we are told, 
 took no part in the promotion of local enterprises, railroads, 
 schools, churches, asylums. The benefits he proposed for his 
 fellow men were to be accomplished by political means alone. 
 " Politics were his world — a world filled with hopeful enchant- 
 ments. Ordinarily he disliked to discuss any other subject." 
 " In the office," says his partner, Mr. Herndon, " he sat down or 
 spilt himself (sic) on his lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked 
 politics — never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, col- 
 leges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress — noth- 
 ing that interested the world generally, except politics." " He 
 seldom," says his present biographer, " took an active part in 
 local or minor elections, or wasted his power to advance a 
 friend. He did nothing out of mere gratitude, and forgot the 
 devotion of his warmest partisans, as soon as the occasion for 
 their services had passed. What they did for him was quietly 
 appropriated as the reward of superior merit, calling for no re- 
 turn in kind." We are told that while he was " wriggling," he 
 was in efiect boarded and clothed for some years by his friend, 
 Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power, he re- 
 fused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On 
 that occasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his 
 patronage a solemn trust. We give him credit for a conscien- 
 tiousness above the ordinary level of his species on this as well 
 as on other subjects. But his sense of the solemn character of 
 his trust, thougli it prevented him from giving a petty place 
 to the old friend who had helped him in the day of his need, 
 did not prevent him, as President, from sometimes paying for 
 support by a far more questionable use of the highest^^atron 
 age in his gift. 
 
 The fact is not that the man was by nature wanting in grati- 
 tude or in any kindly quality ; on the contrary, he seems to 
 have abounded in them alj. But the excitement of the game 
 was so intense that it swallowed up all other considerations 
 and emotions. In a dead season of politics, his depression 
 was extreme. " He said gloomily, despairingly, sadly, ' How 
 hard, oh ! how hard it is to die and leave one's country no 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 259 
 
 better than if one had never lived for it. This world is dead 
 to hope, deaf to its own death-struggle.' " Possibly this is the 
 way in which " wriggling " politicians generally put the case to 
 themselves. 
 
 Lincoln's fundamental principle was devotion to the popu- 
 lar will. In his address to the peo[)le of Sangamon County, he 
 says, " while acting as their representative I shall be governed 
 by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of 
 knowing what their will is, and upon all others I will do what 
 my own judgment teaches me will advance their interests." 
 " ' It is a maxim,' with many politicians, just to keep along 
 even with the humour of the people right or wrong." " This 
 maxim," adds the biographer, " Mr. Lincoln held then, as ever 
 since, in very high estimation." It may occur to some enquir- 
 ing minds to ask what, upon those principles, is the use of 
 having representation at all, and whether it would not be better 
 to let the people themselves vote directly on all questions 
 without interposing a representative to diminish their sense of 
 responsibility, to say nothing of the sacrifice of the representa- 
 tive's conscience, which, in the cases of the statesmen here 
 described, was probably not very great. With regard to 
 Slavery, however, Mr. Lincoln showed forecast, if not con- 
 scientious independence. He stepped forth in advance of the 
 sentiments of his party, and to his joolitical friends appeared 
 rash in the extreme. 
 
 Lincoln's first attempt to get elected to the State Legislature 
 was unsuccessful. It however brought him the means of 
 ■" doing something for his country," and partly averting the 
 " death-struggle of the world," in the shape of the postmaster- 
 ship of New Salem. The business of the office was not on a 
 large scale, for it was carried on in Mr. Lincoln's hat — an in- 
 tegument of which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to 
 A conjurer to |)lay the egg trick in, " not from respect for his 
 own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President 
 <lidnot fail to signalize his first appearance as an administrator 
 by a sally of the jocularity which was always struggling with 
 melancholy in his mind. A gentleman of the place, whose 
 education had been defective, was in the habit of calling two 
 or three times a day at the post-office, and ostentatiously inquir- 
 ing for letters. At last he received a letter, which, being un- 
 able to read himself, he got the postmaster to read for him 
 before a large circle of friends. It proved to be from a negro 
 lady engaged in domestic service in the South, recalling the 
 
260 THE EARLl YEABS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 memory of a mutual attachment, with a number of incidents 
 more delectable than sublime. It is needless to say that the 
 postmaster, by a slight extension of the sphere of his office, 
 had written the letter as well as delivered it. 
 
 In a second candidature the aspirant was moie successful, and 
 he became one of nine representatives of Sangamon County, in 
 the State Legislature of Illinois, who, being all more than six feet 
 high, were called "The Long Nine." With his Brobdingnagian 
 colleagues Abraham plunged at once into the " internal improve- 
 ment system," and distinguished himself above his fellows by 
 the unscrupulous energy and strategy with which he urged 
 through the Legislature a series of bubble schemes and jobs. 
 Kailroads and other improvements, especially improvements of 
 river navigation, were voted out of all proportion to the means- 
 or credit of the then thinly-peopled State. " To set these 
 little matters in motion, a loan of eight millions of dollars was 
 authorized ; and to complete the canal from Chicago to Peru, 
 another loan of four millions of dollars was voted at the same 
 session, two hundred thousand dollars being given as a gratuity 
 to those counties which seemed to have no special interest in 
 any of the foregoing projects. Work on all these roads was 
 to commence, not only at the same time, but at both ends of 
 each road and at all the river-crossings. There were as yet no 
 surveys of any route, no estimates, no reports of engineers, or 
 even unprofessional viewers. "Progress was not to waiton trifles; 
 capitalists were supposed to be lying in wait to catch these 
 precious bonds ; the money would be raised in a twinkling, and 
 being applied with all the skill of a hundred De Witt Clintons 
 — a class of gentlemen at that time extremely numerous and 
 obtrusive — the loan would build railroads, the railroads would 
 build cities, cities would create farms, foreign capital would 
 rush in to so inviting a field, the lands would be taken up with 
 marvellous celerity, and the land tax going into a sinking fund, 
 that, with some tolls and certain sly speculations to be made by 
 the State, would pay principal and interest of debt without 
 even a cent of taxation upon the people. In short, everybody 
 was to be enriched, while the munificence of the State in sell- 
 ing its credit and spending the proceeds, would make its empty 
 cotfers overflow with ready money. It was a dark stroke of states- 
 manship, a mysterious device in finance, which, whether from be- 
 ingmisunderstood or mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits 
 the very reverse of those it had promised." We seem here 
 to be reading the history of more than one great railway 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 261 
 
 enterprise undertaken by politicians without the red tape 
 preliminaries of surveying or framing estimates, progress not 
 deigning to wait upon trifles. This system of policy gave 
 fine scope for the talents of the " log-rollei-," here defined 
 as an especially wily and persuasive person, who could de- 
 pict the merits of his scheme with roseate but delusive elo- 
 quence, and who was said to carry a gourd of " possum fat " — 
 wherewith he " greased and swallowed" his prey. One of the 
 largest of these gourds was carried by " honest Abe," who was 
 especially active in " log-rolling" a bill for the removal of the seat 
 of government from Vandalia to Springfield, at a virtual cost to 
 the State of about six millions of dollars, which we were told 
 would have purchased all the real estate in the town three times 
 ■over. " Thus by log-rolling on the loud measure ; by multiply- 
 ing railroads ; by terminating these roads at Alton, that Alton 
 might become a great city in opposition to St. Louis ; by dis- 
 tributing money to some of the counties to be wasted by the 
 •County Commissioners ; and by giving the seat of government 
 to Springfield — was the whole State bought up and bribed 
 to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which 
 •ever crippled the energies of a young country." We are 
 told, and do not doubt, that Mr. Lincoln shared the popu- 
 lar delusion ; but we are also told, and are equally sure, 
 that " even if he had been unhappily afflicted with individual 
 scruples of his own he would have deemed it but simple duty to 
 •obey the almost unanimous voice of his constituency." In other 
 words, he would have deemed it his duty to pander to the 
 popular madness by taking a part in financial swindling. Yet 
 he and his principal confederates obtained afterwards high 
 places of honour and trust. A historian of Illinois calls them 
 "" spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe it is 
 to be a politician, but how disastrous it may be to the country 
 to keep along with the present fervour of the people." It is 
 instructive as well as just to remember that all this time the 
 man was strictly, nay sensitively, honourable in his private 
 dealings, that he was regarded by his fellows as a paragon of 
 probity, that his woi'd was never questioned, that of personal 
 •corruption calumny itself, so far as we are aware, never dared 
 to accuse him. Politics, it seems, may be a game apart, with 
 inles of its own which supersede morality. 
 
 Considering that, as we said before, this man was destined to 
 preside over the most tremendous operations in the whole his- 
 tory of finance, it is especially instructive to see what was the 
 
262 TUE EARLY TEAES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 state of his mind on economical subjects. He actually proposed 
 to pass a usury law, having arrived, it appears, at the sage con- 
 viction that while to pay the current rent for the use of a house 
 or the current fee for the services of a lawyer is perfectly pro- 
 per, to pay the current price for money is to " allow a few in- 
 dividuals to levy a direct tax on the community." But this 
 is an ordinary illusion. Abraham Lincoln's illusions went far 
 beyond it. He actually proposed so to legislate that in cases 
 of extreme necessity there might " always be found means to 
 cheat the law, while in all other cases it would have its intended 
 effect." He proposed in fact absurdity qualified by fraud, 
 the established practice of which would, no doubt, have had a 
 most excellent effect in teaching the citizens to reverence and 
 the Courts to uphold the law. As President, when told that 
 the finances were low, he asked whether the printing machine 
 had given out, and he suggested, as a special temptation to- 
 capitalists, the issue of a class of bonds which should be 
 exempt from seizure for debt. It may safely be said that the- 
 burden of the United States debt was ultimately increased 
 fifty per cent, through sheer ignorance of the simplest prin- 
 ciples of economy and finance on the part of those by whom 
 it was contracted. 
 
 Lincoln's style, both as a speaker and a writer, ultimately 
 became plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused 
 by imperfect education, pure as well as effective. His Gettys- 
 burg address and some of his State Papers are admirable in 
 their way. Saving one very flat expression, the address has 
 no superior in literature. But it was impossible that the 
 oratory of a rising politician, especially in the West, should be 
 free from spread-eagleism. Scattered through these pages we 
 find such gems as the following : — 
 
 " All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with 
 all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their mili- 
 tary chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by 
 force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue 
 E-idge in a trial of a thousand years !",.." Accounts of out- 
 rages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. 
 They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisi- 
 ana ; they are neither peculiar to the eternal (?) snows of the for- 
 mer,nor to the burningsun of the latter." . . . "Thatweimprov- 
 to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during 
 his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass or desecrate- 
 his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump' 
 
THL EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 2G3 
 
 shall awaken our Washington." Washington's mind, when he 
 rises from his grave at the Last Da^"-, will be immediately 
 relieved by the information that no l^ritisher has ever trodden 
 on his bones. 
 
 In debate he was neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, 
 though he had a good deal of caustic humour and knew how to 
 make an effective use of it. 
 
 Passing from State politics to those of the Union, and elected 
 to Congress as a Whig, a party to which he had gradually found 
 his way from his original position as a " nominal Jackson man,' 
 Mr. Lincoln stood forth in vigorous though discreet and tempe- 
 rate opposition to the Mexican War. 
 
 Some extra charges made by General Cass upon the Treasury 
 for expenses in a public mission, afforded an opportunity for a 
 hit at the great Democratic " war-horse." " I have introduced," 
 said Lincoln, " General Cass's name here chiefly to show the 
 "wonderful physical capacity of the man. They show that he 
 not only did the labour of several men at the same time, but 
 that he often did it at several places, many hundred miles 
 apart at the same time. And in eating, too, his capacities are 
 shown to be quite as wonderful. From October, 1821, to May, 
 1822, he ate ten rations a day in Michigan, ten rations a day 
 here in Washington, and nearly five dollars' worth a day be- 
 sides, partly on the road between the two places. And then 
 there is an important discovery in his example, the art of being 
 paid for what one eats, instead of having to pay for it. Here- 
 after if any nice young man should owe a bill which he cannot 
 pay in any other way, he can just board it out. Mr. Speaker, 
 we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt between 
 two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that 
 could never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thou- 
 sand miles apart, he would stand stock still midway between 
 them, and eat them both at once; and the ffreen t^rass alono- 
 the line would be apt to suffer some at the same time. By all 
 means make him President, gentlemen. He will feed you 
 bounteously, if — if there is any left after he has helped him- 
 self." 
 
 Great events were by this time beginning to loom on the 
 political hoi-izon. The Missouri Comju-omise was broken. 
 Parties commenced slowly but surely to divide themselves into 
 Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery. The " irrepressible conflict" was 
 coming on, though none of the American politicians — not even 
 the author of that famous phrase — distinctly recognised its 
 
264 THE EAELT TEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 advent. Lincoln seems to have been sincerely opposed to 
 slavery, though he was not an Abolitionist. But he was evi- 
 dently led more and more to take anti-slavery ground by his an- 
 tagonism to Douglas, who occupied a middle position, and tried to 
 gain at once the support of the South and that of the waverers 
 at the North, by theoretically supporting the extension of 
 .slavery, 3'et practically excluding it from the territories by 
 the doctrine of squattens' sovereignty. Lincoln had to be 
 very wary in angling for the vote of the Abolitionists, who 
 had recently been the objects of univer.sal obloquy, and were 
 still offensive to a large section of the Republican party. 
 On one occasion, the opinions which he propounded by no 
 means suited the Abolitionists, and " they required him to 
 change them forthwith. He thought it vjovld he wise to do so 
 considering the jjecidiar circumstances of his case; but, before 
 committing himself finally, he sought an understanding with 
 Judge Logan. He told the judge what he was disposed to do, 
 and said he would act upon the inclination if the judge would 
 not regard it as treading on his toes. The judge said he was 
 opposed to the doctrine proposed, but for the sake of the cause 
 on hand he would cheerfully risk his toes. And so the Abol- 
 itionists were accommodated. Mr. Lincoln quietly made the 
 pledge, and they voted for him." He came out, however, square 
 enough, and in the very nick of time with his "house divided 
 against itself" speech, which took the wind out of the sails of 
 Seward with his "irrepressible conflict." Douglas, whom Lin- 
 coln regarded with intense personal rivalry, was tripped up by 
 a string of astute interrogations, the answers to which hope- 
 Ic-sly embroiled him with the South. Lincoln's campaign 
 against Douglas for the Senator-ship greatly and deservedly en- 
 hanced his reputation as a debater, and he became marked out 
 as the Western candidate for the Republican nomination to the 
 Presidency. A committee favourable to his claims sent to him 
 to make a speech at New York. He arrived " in a sleek and 
 shining suit of new black, covered with very apparent creases 
 and wrinkles acquired by being packed too closely and too 
 long in his little valise." Some of his supporters must have 
 nioralized on the strange apparition which their summons 
 had raised. His speech, however, made before an immense 
 audience at the Cooper Institute, was most successful. And 
 as a display of constitutional logic it is a very good speech. 
 It fails, as the speeches of these practical men one and all did 
 fail, their " common sense" and " shrewdness " notwithstand 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 265 
 
 ing, in clear perception of the great facts that two totally 
 different systems of society had been formed, one in the Slave 
 States and the other in the Free, and that political institutions 
 necessarily conform themselves to the social character of the 
 people. Whether the Civil War could, by any men or means, 
 have been arrested, it would be hard to say; but assuredly 
 stump orators, even the very best of them, were not the men 
 to avert it. At that great crisis no saviour appeared. On 
 May 10th, in the eventful year 1860, the Republican State Con- 
 vention of Illinois, by acclamation, and amidst great enthusiasm, 
 nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. One who saw him re- 
 ceive the nomination says, " I then thought him one of the 
 most diffident and most plagued of men I ever saw." We may 
 depend upon it, however, that his diffidence of manner was 
 accompanied by no reluctance of heart. The splendid prize 
 which he had won had been the object of his passionate de- 
 sire. In the midst of the proceedings the door of the wigwam 
 opened, and Lincoln's kinsman, John Hanks, entered, with 
 " two small triangular ' heart-rails,' surmounted by a banner 
 with the inscription, 'Two rails from a lot made by Abraham 
 Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon bottom, in the 
 3'ear 1830.'" The bearer of the rails, we are told, was met 
 " with wild and tumultuous cheers," and " the whole scene 
 was simply tempestuous and bewildering." 
 
 The Democrats, of course, did not share the delight. An old 
 man, out of Egypt, (the southern end of Illinois) came up to 
 Mr. Lincoln, and said : " So you're Abe Lincoln ?" " That's my 
 name, sir," "They say you're a self-made man." "Well, yes 
 what there is of me is self-made." " Well, all I have got to 
 say," observed the old Egyptian, after a careful survey of the 
 statesman, "is, that it was a d — n bad job." This seems to be 
 the germ of the smart reply to the remark that Andrew John- 
 son was a self-made man, " that relieves the Almighty of a 
 very heavy responsibility." 
 
 The nomination of the State Convention of Illinois was ac- 
 cepted after a very close and exciting contest between Lincoln 
 and Seward by the convention of the Republican party as- 
 sembled at Chicago. The proceedings seem to have been dis- 
 graceful. A large delegation of roughs, we are told, headed by 
 Tom Shyer, the pugilist, attended for Seward. The Lincoln 
 party, on the other side, spent tiie whole night in mustering 
 their " loose fellows," and at daylight the next morning packed 
 *he wigwam, so that the Seward men were unable to get in. 
 
266 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Another politician was there nominally as a candidate, but 
 really only to sell himself for a seat in the Cabinet. When 
 he claimed the fulfilment of the bond, Lincoln's conscience, 
 or at least his regard for his own reputation, struggled 
 hard. "All that I am in the world — the Presidency and all 
 else — I owe to that opinion of me which the people express 
 when they call me ' honest old Abe.' Now, what will they 
 think of their honest Abe when he appoints this man to be his 
 familiar adviser ? " What they might have said with truth 
 was that Abe was still honest but politics were not. 
 
 Widely different was the training undergone for the leader- 
 ship of the people by the Pericles of the American Republic 
 from that undergone by the Pericles of Athens, or by any 
 group of statesmen before him, Greek, Roman, or European. 
 In this point of view, Mr. Lamon's book is a most valuable 
 addition to the library of political science. The advantages and 
 the disadvantages of Lincoln's political education are manifest 
 at a glance. He was sure to produce something strong, 
 genuine, practical, and entirely in unison with the thoughts 
 and feelings of a people which, like the Athenians in the days 
 of Pericles, was to be led, not governed. On the other hand, 
 it necessarily left the statesman without the special knowledge 
 necessary for certain portions of his work, such as finance, 
 which was detestably managed during Lincoln's Presidencj^ 
 without the wisdom which flows from a knowledge of the 
 political world and of the past, without elevation and com- 
 prehensiveness of view. It was fortunate for Lincoln that the 
 questions with which he had to deal, and with which his 
 country and the world proclaiu) him to have dealt, on the 
 whole, admirably well, though not in their magnitude and 
 importance, were completely within his ken, and had been 
 always present to his mind. Reconstruction would have made 
 a heavier demand on the political science of Clary's Grove. 
 But that task was reserved for other hands. 
 
ALFREDUS REX FUND A TO H. 2G7 
 
 ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 A FEW weeks ago an Oxford College celebrated the thou- 
 sandth anniversary of its foundation by King Alfred.* 
 
 The college which claims this honour is commonly called 
 University College, though its legal name is Magna Aula Unl- 
 versitatis. The name " University College " causes much per- 
 plexity to visitors. They are with difficulty taught by the friend 
 who is lionizing them to distinguish it from the University. 
 But the University of Oxford is a federation of colleges, of 
 which University College is one, resembling in all respects the 
 rest of the sisterhood, being, like them, under the federal 
 authority of the University, retaining the same measure of 
 college right, conducting the domestic instruction and dis- 
 cipline of its students through its own officers, but sending 
 them to the lecture rooms of the Universit}^ Professors for the 
 higher teaching, and to the University examination rooms to 
 be examined for their degrees. The college is an ample and 
 venerable j)ile, with two towered gateways, each opening into 
 a quadi-angle, its front stretching along the High Street, on the 
 side opposite St. Mary's Church. The darkness of the stone 
 seems to bespeak immemorial antiquity ; but the style, which 
 is the later Gothic characteristic of Oxfoixl, and symbolical 
 of its history, shows that the buildings really belong to the 
 time of the Stuarts. " That building must be very old. Sir," 
 said an American visitor to the master of the college, pointing 
 to its dark front. " Oh, no," was the master's reply, " the col- 
 our deceives you ; that building is not more than two hundred 
 years old." In invidious contrast to this mass, debased but im- 
 posing in its style, the pedantic mania for pure Gothic which 
 marks the Neo-catholic reaction in Oxford, and which will per- 
 haps hereafter be derided as we deride the classic mania of the 
 last century, has led M.r. Gilbert Scott to erect a pure Gothic 
 library. This building, moreover, has nothing in its form to be- 
 speak its purpose, but resembles a chapel. Over the gateway of 
 the larger quadrangle is astdtue,in Roman costume, of James II ; 
 
 * We keep the common spelling, thout^h yElfred is more correct. It is impos- 
 sible, in deference to antiquarian preciseness, to change the spelling of alltheie 
 names, which are now imbedded in the English classics. 
 
268 ALFREDVS REX FUND ATOR. 
 
 ■one of the few memorials of the ejected tyrant, who in his 
 career of reaction visited the college and had two rooms on the 
 east side of the quadrangle fitted up for the performance of 
 mass. Obadiah Walker, the master of the college, had turned 
 Papist, and became one of the leaders of the reaction, in the 
 overthrow of which he was involved, the fall of his master and 
 the ruin of his party being announced to him by the boys sing- 
 ing at his window — " Ave Maria, old Obadiah." In the 
 same qurdrangle are the chambers of Shelley, and the 
 room to which he was summoned by the assembled college 
 authorities to receive, with his friend Hogg, sentence of ex- 
 pulsion for having circulated an atheistical treatise. In the 
 ante-chapel is the florid monument of Sir William Jonns. But 
 the modern divinities of the college are the two great legal 
 brothers. Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, whose colossal statues 
 fraternally united are conspicuous in the library, whose por- 
 traits hang side by side in the hall, whose medallion busts greet 
 you at the entrance to the Common Room. Pass by these me- 
 dallions, and look into the Connnon Room itself, with panelled 
 walls, red curtains, polished mahogany table, and generally cozy 
 aspect, whither after the dinner in hall the fellows of the col- 
 lege retire to sip their wine and taste such social happiness as 
 the rule of celibacy permits. Over that ample fire-place, round 
 the blaze of which the circle is drawn in the winter evenings, 
 you will see the marble bust, carved by no mean hand, of an 
 ancient king, and underneath it are the words Alfredus Rex 
 Fundator. 
 
 Alas ! both traditions — the tradition that Alfred founded the 
 University of Oxford, and the tradition that he founded Uni- 
 versity College — are devoid of historical foundation. Univer- 
 sities did not exist in Alfred's days. They were developed cen- 
 turies later out of the monastery schools. When Queen Eliza- 
 beth w^as on a visit to Cambridge, a scholar delivered before 
 her an oration, in which he exalted the antiquity of his own 
 university at the expense of that of the University of Oxford, 
 The University of Oxford was roused to arms. In that uncrit- 
 ical age any antiquarian weapon which the fury of academical 
 patriotism conld supply was eagerly grasped ; and the reputa- 
 tion of the great antiquary Camden is somewhat compromised 
 with regard to an interpolation in Asscr's Life of Alfred, which 
 formed the chief documentary support of the Oxford case. The 
 historic existence of both the English universities dawns in 
 the reign of the scholar king, and the restorer of order and 
 
ALFREDVS REX FUNDATOR. 269 
 
 prosperity after the ravages of the conquest and the tyranny of 
 Rufus — Henry I. In that reign the Abbot of Croyhind, to 
 gain money for the rebuilding of his abbey, set up a school 
 where, we are told, Priscian's grammar, Aristotle's logic, with 
 the commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, Cicero and Quin- 
 tilian as masters of rhetoric, were taught after the manner of 
 the school of Orleans. In the following reign a foreign profes- 
 sor, Vacarius, roused the jealousy of the English monarchy and 
 baronage by teaching Roman law in the schools of Oxford. The 
 thirteenth century, that marvellous and romantic age of mediae- 
 val religion and character, mediaeval art, media3val philosophy, 
 was also the palmy age of the universities. Then Oxford gloried 
 in Groseteste, at once paragon and patron of learning, churcli 
 reformer and champion of the national church against Roman 
 aggression ; in his learned and pious friend, Adam de Marisco ; 
 and in Roger Bacon, the pioneer and proto-martyr of physical 
 science. Then, with Paris, she was the great seat of that 
 school philosophy, wonderful in its subtlety as well as in its 
 aridity, which, albeit it bore no fruit itself, trained the mind 
 of Europe for more fruitful studies, and was the original pro- 
 duct of meditBval Christendom, though its forms of thought were 
 taken from the deified Stagyrite, and it was clothed in the Latin 
 language, though in a form of that language so much altered and 
 debased from the classical as to become, in fact, a literary 
 vernacular of the Middle Ages. Then her schools, her church 
 porches, her very street corners, every spot where a professor 
 could gather an audience, were thronged with the aspiring 
 youth who had flocked, many of them begging their way out 
 of the dark prison-house of feudalism, to what was then, in the 
 absence of printing, the sole centre of intellectual light. Then 
 Oxford, which in later times became from the clerical charac- 
 ter of the headships and fellowships the great organ of reac- 
 tion, was the great organ of progress, produced the political 
 songs which embodied, with wonderful force, the principles of 
 free government, and sent her students to fight under the ban- 
 ner of the university in the army of Simon de Montf ort. 
 
 It was in the thirteenth century that University College was 
 really founded. The founder was William of Durham, an Eng- 
 lish ecclesiastic who had studied in the University of Paris. 
 The universities were, like the church, common to all the 
 natives of Latin Christendom, that ecclesiastical and literary 
 federation of the European States, which, afterwards broken up 
 by the Reformation, is now in course of reconstruction through 
 
270 ALFRED US REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 unitinsf influences of a new kind. William of Durham be- 
 queatlied to the University a fund for the maintenance of stu- 
 dents in theology. The university purchased with the fund a 
 house in which these students were maintained, and which was 
 styled the Great Hall of the University, in contra-distinction to 
 the multitude of little private halls or hospices in which students 
 lived, generally under the superintendence of a graduate who 
 was their teacher. Tlie hall or college was under the visitor- 
 ship of the University ; but this visitorship being irksome, and 
 a dispute having arisen in the early part of the last century 
 whether it was to be exercised by the University at large, in 
 convocation, or by the theological faculty only, the college set 
 up a claim to be a royal foundation of the time of King Alfred, 
 the reputed founder of the University, and thus exempt from 
 any visitorship but that of the Crown. It was probably not 
 very difficult to convince a Hanoverian court of law that the 
 visitorship of an Oxford college ought to be transferred from 
 the Jacobite university to the Crown; and so it came to pass 
 that the Court of King's Bench solemnly ratified as a fact what 
 historical criticism pronounces to be a baseless fable. The case 
 in favovu' of William of Durham as the founder is so clear, that 
 the antiquaries are ready to burst with righteous indignation, 
 and one almost enjoys the intensity of their wrath. 
 
 The Great Hall of the University was not, when first founded, 
 a perfect college. It was only a house for some eight or ten 
 graduates in arts who were studying divinity. The first per- 
 fect college was founded by Walter de Merton, the Chancellor 
 of Henry III., to whom is due the conception of uniting the 
 anti-monastic pursuit of secular learning with monastic seclu- 
 sion and discipline, for the benefit of that multitude of young 
 students who had hithei'to dwelt at large in the city under 
 little or no control, and often showed, by their faction fights 
 and other outrages, that they contained the quintessence of 
 the nation's turbulence as well as of its intellectual activity and 
 ambition. The quaint old quadrangle of Merton, called, nobody 
 seems to know why, " Mob " Quad, may be regarded as the 
 cradle of collegiate life in England, and indeed in Europe. 
 
 Still University College is the oldest foundation of learning 
 now existing in England ; and therefore it may be not inap- 
 propriately dedicated to the memory of the king who was the 
 restorer of our intellectual life as well as the preserver of our 
 religion and our institutions. Mr. Freeman, as the stern 
 minister of fact, would, no doubt, cast down the bust of 
 
ALFRED US REX FUND A TOR. 27 1 
 
 Alfred from the C-ommon Room chimney-piece and set up that 
 of William of Durham, if a likeness of him could be found, in 
 its place. But it may be doubted whether William of Durham, 
 if he were alive, would do the same. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, Alfred, and St. Louis, are the three ex- 
 amples of perfect virtue on a throne. But the virtue of St. 
 Louis is deeply tainted with asceticism ; and with the subli- 
 mated selfishness on which asceticism is founded, he sacrifices 
 ■everything and everybody — sacrifices national interests, sacri- 
 fices the lives of the thousands of his subjects whom he drags 
 with him in his chimerical crusades — to the good of his own 
 soul. The Reflections of Marcus Aurelius will be read with 
 ■ever increasing admiration by all who have learned to study 
 ■character, and to read it in its connection with history. Alone 
 in every sense, without guidance or support but that which he 
 found in his own breast, the imperial Stoic struggled serenely, 
 though hopelessly, against the powers of evil which were 
 'drajTirinfi^ heathen Rome to her inevitable doom. Alfred was a 
 Christian hero, ami in his Christianity he found the force 
 which bore him, through calamity apparently hopeless, to 
 victory and happiness. 
 
 It must be owned that the materials for the history of the Eng- 
 lish king are not very good. His biography by Bishop Asser, his 
 counsellor and friend, which forms the principal authority, is 
 paneg3a'ical and uncritical, not to mention that a doubt rests 
 on the authenticity of some portions of it. But in the general 
 picture there are a consistency and a sobriety, which, combin- 
 ■ed with its peculiarity, commend it to us as historical. The 
 leading acts of Alfred's life are, of course, beyond doubt. 
 And as to his character, he speaks to us himself in his works, 
 and the sentiments which he expresses perfectly correspond 
 with the physiognomy of the portrait. 
 
 We have called him a Christian hero. He was the vic- 
 torious champion of Christianity against Paganism. This is 
 the real significance of the struggle and of his character. The 
 Northmen, or, as we loosely term them, the Danes, are called 
 by the Saxon chroniclers the Pagans. As to race, the North- 
 man, like the Saxon, was a Teuton, and the institutions, and 
 the political and social tendencies of both, were radically the 
 same. 
 
 It has been said that Christianity enervated the English and 
 gave them over into the hands of the fresh and robust sons of 
 nature. Asceticism and the abuse of monachism enervated the 
 
272 ALIREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 English. Asceticism taught the spiritual selfishness which flies 
 from the world and abandons it to ruin instead of serving God 
 by serving humanity. Kings and chieftains, under the hypo- 
 critical pretence of exchanging a worldly for an angelic life, 
 buried themselves in the indolence, not seldom in the sensu- 
 ality, of the cloister, when they ought to have been leading 
 their people against the Dane. But Christianity formed the 
 bond which held the English together, and the strength of 
 their resistance. It inspired their patriot martyrs, it raised 
 up to them a deliverer at their utmost need. The causes of 
 Danish success are manifest ; superior prowess and valour, sus- 
 tained by more constant practice in war, of which the Saxon 
 had probably had comparatively little since the final subjection 
 of the Celt and the union of the Saxon kingdoms under 
 Egbert ; the imperfect character of that union, each kingdom 
 retaining its own council and its own interests ; and above all 
 the command of the sea, which made the invaders ubiquitous, 
 while the march of the defenders was delayed, and their junc- 
 tion prevented, by the woods and morasses of the uncleared 
 island, in which the only roads worthy of the name were those 
 left by the Romans. 
 
 It would be wrong to call the Northmen mere corsairs, or 
 even to class them with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, 
 or Barbary in more recent times. Their invasions were rather 
 to be regarded as an after-act of the great migration of the 
 Germanic tribes, one of the last waves of the flood which over- 
 whelmed the Roman Empire, and deposited the germs of mo- 
 dern Christendom. They were, and but for the defensive 
 energy of the Christianized Teuton would have been, to the 
 Saxon what the Saxon had been to the Celt, whose sole monu- 
 ments in England now are the names of hills and rivers, the 
 usual epitaph of exterminated races. Like the Saxons the 
 Northmen came by sea, untouched by those Roman influences, 
 political and religious, by which most of the barbarians had 
 been more or less transmuted before their actual irruption into 
 the Empire. If they treated all the rest of mankind as their 
 prey, this was the international law of heathendom, modified 
 only by a politic humanity in the case of the Imperial Roman, 
 who preferred enduring dominion to blood and booty. With 
 Christianity came the idea, even now imperfectly realized, of 
 the brotherhood of man. The Northmen were a memorable 
 race, and English character, especially its maritime element, 
 received in them a momentous addition. In their northern 
 
ALFREDUS REX FUND A TOR. 273 
 
 abodes they had undergone, no doubt, tlie most rigorous pro- 
 cess of national selection. The sea-i'oving life, to which they 
 were driven by the poverty of their soil, as the Scandinavian 
 of our day is driven to emigration, intensified in them the 
 vigour, the enterprise, and the independence of the Teuton. 
 As has been said before, they were the first ocean sailors ; 
 for the Phoenicians, though adventurous had crept along the 
 shore ; and the Greeks and Romans had done the same. The 
 Northman, stouter of heart than they, put forth into mid 
 Atlantic. American antiquarians are anxious to believe 
 in a Norse discovery of America. Norse colonies were 
 planted in Greenland beyond what is now the limit of 
 human habitation ; and when a power grew up in his 
 native seats which could not be brooked by the North- 
 man's love of freedom, he founded amidst the unearthly 
 scenery of Iceland a community which brought the image 
 of a republic of the Homeric type far down into historic 
 times. His race, widely dispersed in its course of adventure, 
 and everywhere asserting its ascendancy, sat on the thrones of 
 Normandy, Apulia, Sicily, England, Ireland, and even Russia, 
 and gave heroic chiefs to the crusaders. The pirates were not 
 without heart towards each other, nor without a rudimentary 
 civilization, which included on the one hand a strong rec^ard 
 for freehold property in land, and on the other a passionate 
 love of heroic days. Their mythology was the universal story 
 of the progress of the sun and the changes of the year, but in 
 a northern version, wild with storms and icebergs, gloomy with 
 the darkness of Scandinavian winters. Their reliction was a 
 war religion, the lord of their hearts a war god ; their only 
 heaven was that of the brave, their only hell that of the 
 coward ; and the joys of Paradise were a renewal of the fierce 
 combat and the fierce carouse of earth. Some of them wound 
 themselves up on the eve of battle to a frenzy like that of a 
 Malay running amuck. But this was, at all events, a religion 
 of action, not of ceremonial or spell ; and it quelled the fear of 
 death. In some legends of the Norse mythology there is a 
 humorous element which shows freedom of .spirit; while in 
 others, such as the legend of the death of Balder, there is a 
 pathos not uncongenial to Christianity. The Northmen were 
 not priest-ridden. Their gods were not monstrous and over- 
 whelming forces like the hundred-handed idols of the Hindu, 
 but human forms, their own high qualities idealized, like the 
 
274) ALFREDVS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 gods of the Greek, though with Scandinavian force in phxce of 
 Hellenic grace. 
 
 Converted to Christianity, the Northman transferred his en- 
 thusiasm, his martial prowess, and his spirit of adventure from 
 the service of Odin to that of Christ, and became a devotee and 
 a crusader. But in his unconverted state he was an extermi- 
 nating enemy -of Cliristianity ; and Christianity was the civili- 
 zation as well as the religion of England. 
 
 Scarcely had the Saxon kingdom been united by Egbert, 
 when the barks of the Northmen appeared, filling the English 
 Charlemagne, no doubt, with the same foreboding sorrow with 
 which they had filled his Frankish prototype and master. In 
 the course of the half century which followed, the swarms of 
 rovers constantly increased, and grew more pertinacious and 
 darino- in their attacks. Leaving their ships they took horses, 
 extended their incursions inland, and formed in the interior of 
 the country strongholds, into which they brought the plunder 
 of the district. At last they in effect conquered the North and 
 Midland, and set up a satrap king, as the agent of their extor- 
 tion. They seem, like the Franks of Clovis, to have quartered 
 themselves as " guests " upon the unhappy people of the land. 
 The monasteries and churches were the special objects of their 
 attacks, both as the seats of the hated religion, and as the 
 centies of wealth; and their sword never spared a monk. 
 Croyland, Peterborough, Huntingdon and Ely, were turned to 
 blood-stained ashes. Edmund, the Christian chief of East 
 Anglia, found a martyrdom, of which one of the holiest and 
 most magnificent of English abbeys was afterwards the monu- 
 ment. The brave Algar, another East Anglian chieftain, hav 
 ing taken the holy sacrament with all his followers on the eve 
 of battle, perished with them in a desperate struggle, overcome 
 by the vulpine cunning of the marauders. Among the leaders 
 of the Northmen were the terrible brothers Ingrar and Ubba, 
 fired, if the Norse legend may be trusted, by revenge as well 
 as by the love of plunder and horror ; for they were the sons 
 of that Ragnar Lodbrok who had perished in the serpent tower 
 of the Saxon Ella. When Alfred appeared upon the scene, 
 Wessex itself, the heritage of the house of Cerdic and the 
 supreme kingdom, was in peril from the Pagans, who had 
 firmly entrenched themselves at Reading, in the angle between 
 the Thames and Kennet, and English Christianity was threa- 
 tened with destruction. 
 
ALFREDUS REX FUND A TOR. 
 
 ^H.y 
 
 A younger but a favourite child, Alfred was sent in his in- 
 fancy by his fathei" to Rome to receive the Pope's blessing. He 
 was thus affiliated, as it were, to that Roman element, ecclesias- 
 tical and political, which, combined with the Christian and 
 Teutonic elements, has made up English civilization. But he 
 remained through life a true Teuton. He went a second time, 
 in company with his father, to Rome, still a child, yet old 
 enough, especially if he was precocious, to receive some im- 
 pressions from the city of historic grandeur, ancient art, eccle- 
 siastical order, centralized power. There is a pretty legend 
 denoting the docility of the boy and his love of learning, or at 
 least of the national lays ; but he was also a hunter and a 
 warrior. From his youth he had a thorn in his flesh, in the 
 shape of a mysterious disease, perhaps epilepsy, to which 
 monkish chroniclers have given an ascetic and miraculous turn; 
 and this enhances our sense of the hero's moral energy in the 
 case of Alfred, as in that of William IH. 
 
 As "Crown Prince," to use the phraseof a German writer, Alfred 
 took part with his elder brother, King Ethelbert, in the mortal 
 struggle against the Pagans, then raging around Reading and 
 along the rich valley through which the Great Western Railway 
 now runs, and where a Saxon victory is commemoi'ated by the 
 White Horse, which forms the subject of a little work by 
 Thomas Hughes, a true representative, if any there be, of the 
 liegemen and soldiers of King Alfred. When Ethelbert was 
 showing that in him at all events Christianity was not free 
 from the ascetic taint, by continuing to hear mass in his tent 
 when the moment had come for decisive action, Alfred charged 
 up-hill " like a wild boar " against the heathen, and began a 
 battle which, his brother at last coming up, ended in a great 
 victory. The death of Ethelbert, in the midst of the crisis, 
 placed the perilous crown on Alfred's head. Ethelbert left in- 
 fant sons, but the monarchy was elective, though one of the 
 line of Cerdic was always chosen ; and those were the days of 
 the real king, the ruler, judge, and captain of the people, not of 
 what Napoleon called the cochon d I'engrals a cinq millions 
 'par an. In pitched battles, eight of which were fought in 
 rapid succession, the English held their own ; but they were 
 worn out, and at length could no longer be brought into the 
 held. Whether a faint monkish tradition of the estrangement 
 of the people by unpopular courses on the part of the young 
 king has any substance of truth we cannot say. 
 
276 ALFRED VS SEX EV^VA TOR. 
 
 Utter gloom now settled down upon the Christian king and 
 people. Had Alfred yielded to his inclinations, he would pro- 
 bably have followed the example of his brother-in-law, Buhred 
 of Mercia, and sought a congenial retreat amidst the churches 
 and libraries of Rome ; asceticism would have afforded him a 
 pretext for so doing ; but he remained at the post of duty. 
 Athelney, a little island in the marshes of Somersetshire — 
 then marshes, now drained and a fruitful plain — to which 
 he retired with the few followers left him, has been aptly 
 compared to the mountains of Asturias, which foinied the 
 last asylum of Christianity in Spain. A jewel with the 
 legend in Anglo-Saxon, "Alfred caused me to be made," 
 was found near the sjDot, and is now in the University 
 Museum at Oxford. A similar island in the marshes of Cam- 
 bridgeshire formed the last rallying point of English patriotism 
 against the Norman Conquest. Of course, after the deliver- 
 ance, a halo of legends gathered around Athelney. The legends 
 of the king disguised as a peasant in the cottage of the herds- 
 man, and of the king disguised as a harper in the camp of the 
 Dane, are familiar to childhood. There is also a legend of the 
 miraculous appearance of the great Saxon Saint Cuthbert. The 
 king in his extreme need had gone to fish in a neighbouring 
 stream, but had caught nothing, and was trying to comfort 
 himself by reading the Psalms, when a poor man came to the 
 door and begged for a piece of bread. The king gave him half 
 his last loaf and the little wine left in the pitcher. The beg- 
 gar vanished ; the loaf was unbroken, the pitcher brimful of 
 wine ; and fishermen came in bringing a rich haul of fish from 
 the river. In the night St. Cuthbert a]>peared to the king in 
 a dream and promised him victory. We see at least what 
 notion the generations nearest to him had of the character of 
 Alfred. 
 
 At last the heart of the oppressed people turned to its king, 
 and the time arrived for a war of liberation. But on the mor- 
 row of victory Alfred compromised with the Northmen. He 
 despaired, it seems, of their final expulsion, and thought it bet- 
 ter, if possible, to make them Englishmen and Christians, and 
 to convert them into a barrier against their foreign and hea- 
 then brethren. We see in this politic moderation at once a 
 trait of national character and a proof that the exploits of Al- 
 fred are not mythical. By the treaty of Wedmore, the north- 
 eastern pai-t of England became the portion of the Dane, where 
 he was to dwell in peace with the Saxon people, and in alle- 
 
ALFREDUS HEX FUND ATOE. 277 
 
 criance to their king, but under his own laws — an arrange- 
 ment which had nothing strange in it when law was only the 
 custom of the tribe. As a jjart of the compact, Guthorm led 
 over his Northmen from the allegiance of Odin to that of Christ, 
 and was himself baptized by the Christian name of Athelstan. 
 When i"eligions were national, or rather tribal, conversions were 
 tribal too. The Northmen of East Anglia had not so far put 
 off their heathen propensities or their savage perfidy as to re- 
 main perfectly true to their covenant : but, on the whole, Al- 
 fred's policy of compromise and assimilation was successful. A 
 new section of heathen Teutonism was incorporated into Chris- 
 tendom, and England absorbed a large Norse population whose 
 dwelling-place is still marked by the names of places, and per- 
 haps in some measure by the features and character of the peo- 
 ple. In the fishermen of Whitby, for example, a town with a 
 Danish name, there is a peculiarity which is probably Scandi- 
 navian. 
 
 The transaction resembled the cession of Normandy to Eolf 
 and his followers by the Carlovingian King of France. But 
 the cession of Normandy marked the dissolution of the Carlo- 
 vingian monarchy : from the cession of East Anglia to Guthorm 
 dates a regeneration of the monarchy of Cerdic. 
 
 Alfred had rescued the country. But the country which he 
 had rescued was a wreck. The Church, the great organ of 
 civilization as well as of spiritual life, was ruined. The mon- 
 asteries were in ashes. The monks of St. Cuthbert were wan- 
 dering from place to place, with the relics of the great northern 
 Saint. The worship of Woden seemed on the point of return- 
 ing. The clergy had exchanged the missal and censer for the 
 battle-axe, and had become secularized and brutalized by the 
 conflict. The learning of the Order was dead. The Latin lan- 
 guage, the tongue of the Church, of literature, of education, 
 was almost extinct. Alfred himself says that he could not re- 
 collect a priest, south of the Thames, who understood the Latin 
 service or could translate a document from the Latin when he 
 became king. Political institutions were in an equal state of dis- 
 organization. Spiritual, intellectual, civil life — everything was 
 to be restored ; and Alfred undertook to restore everything. 
 No man in these days stands alone, or towers in unapproach- 
 able superiority above his fellows. Nor can any man now 
 play all the parts. A division of labour has taken place in all 
 spheres. The time when the missionaries at once converted 
 and civilized the forefathers of European Christendom, wiien 
 
278 ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 Charlemagne or Alfred was the master spirit in everything, 
 has passed away, and with it the day of hero-worship, of ra- 
 tional hero-worship, has departed, at least for the European 
 nations. The more backward races may still need, and have 
 reason to venerate, a Peter the Great. 
 
 Alfred had to do everything almost with his own hands. He 
 was himself the inventor of the candle-clock which measured his 
 time, so unspeakably ])recious, and of the lantern of transpa- 
 rent horn which protected the candle-clock against the wind in 
 the tent, or the lodging scarcely n\ore impervious to the wea- 
 ther than a tent, which in those times sheltered the head of 
 wandering royalty. Far and wide he sought for men, like a 
 bee in quest of honey, to condense a somewhat prolix trope of 
 his biographer. An embassy of bishops, priests and religious 
 laymen, with great gifts, was sent to the Archbishop of Rheims, 
 within whose diocese the famous Grimbald resided, to persuade 
 him to allow Grimbald to come to England, and with difficulty 
 the ambassadors prevailed, Alfred promising to treat Grimbald 
 with distinguished honour during the rest of his life. It is 
 touching to see what a price the king >",et upon a good and able 
 man. " I was called," says Asser, " from the western extremity 
 of Wales. I was led to Sussex, and first saw the king in the 
 royal mansion of Dene. He received me with kindness, and 
 amongst other conversation, earnestly besought me to devote 
 myself to his service, and to become his companion. He begged 
 me to give up my preferments beyond the Severn, promising 
 to bestow on me still richer pieferments in their place." As- 
 ser said that he was unwilling to quit, merely for worldly hon- 
 our, the countiy in which he had been brought up and ordained. 
 " At least," replied the king, " give me half your time. Pass 
 six months of the year with me and the rest in Wales." Asser 
 still hesitated. The king repeated his solicitations, and Asser 
 promised to return within half a year ; the time was fixed lor 
 his visit, and on the fourth day of their interview he left the 
 king and went home. 
 
 In order to restore civilization, it was necessary above all 
 things to reform the Church. " I have often thought," says 
 Alfred, "what wise men there weie once among the English 
 })eople, both clergy and laymen, and what blessed times those 
 were when the people were governed by kings who obeyed 
 God and His gospels, and how they maintained peace, virtue 
 and good order at home, and even, extended them beyond their 
 own country ; how they prospered in battle as well as in wis- 
 
ALFREDUS REX FUND A TOE. 279 
 
 dom, and how zealous the clero-y were in teaching,' and learn- 
 ing', and in all their sacred duties ; and how people came hither 
 from foreign countries to seek for instruction, whereas now, 
 when we desire it, we can only obtain it from abroad." It is 
 clear that the king, unlike the literar}^ devotees of Scandina- 
 vian paganism, looked upon Christianity as the root of the 
 greatness, and even of the military force, of the nation. 
 
 In order to restoi'e the Church, again, it was necessar}^ above 
 all things to refound the monasteries. Afterwards — society hav- 
 ing become settled, religion being established, andthe Church her- 
 self having acquired fatal wealth — these brotherhoods sank into 
 torpor and corruption ; but while the Church was still a mis- 
 sionary in a spiritual and material wilderness, waging a death 
 struggle with heathenism and barbarism, they were the in- 
 dispensable engines of the holy war. The re-foundation of 
 monasteries, therefore, was one of Alfred's fii'st cares ; and he 
 did not fail, in token of his pious gratitude, to build at Athel- 
 ney a house of God which was far holier than the memorial 
 :abbey afterwards built by the Norman Conqueror at Battle. 
 The revival of monasticism among the English, however, was 
 probably no easy task ; for their domestic and somewhat ma- 
 terial nature never was well suited to monastic life. 
 
 The monastery schools, the germs, as has been already said, 
 •of our modern universities and colleges, were the King's main 
 •organs in restoring education ; but he had also a school in his 
 palace for the children of the nobility and the royal household. 
 It was not only clerical education that he desired to promote. 
 His wish was " that all the free-born 3'outh of his people, who 
 possessed the means, might persevere in learning so lono- as 
 they had no other work to occupy them, until they could per- 
 fectly read the English scriptures ; while such as desired to 
 devote themselves to the service of the Church might be taught 
 Latin." No doubt the wish was most imperfectly fulfilled, but 
 :still it was a noble wish. We are told the King himself was 
 often present at the instruction of the children in the palace 
 school. A pleasant calm after the storms of battle with the 
 Dane ! 
 
 Oxford (Ousen-ford, the ford of the Ouse) was already a 
 royal city ; and it may be conjectured that, amidst the gen- 
 eral restoration of learning under Alfred, a school of some sort 
 "would ])e opened there. This is the only particle of historical 
 foundation for the academic legend which gave rise to the 
 recent celebration. Oxford was desolated by the Norman 
 
280 ALFBEDUS REX FUN DA TOE 
 
 Conquest, and anythinor that remained of the educational insti- 
 tution of Alfred was in all probability swept away. 
 
 Another measure, indispensable to the civilizer as well as to- 
 the church reformer in those days, was to restore the inter- 
 course with Rome, and through her with continental Christen- 
 dom, wdiich had been interrupted by the troubles. The Pope, 
 upon Alfred's accession, had sent him gifts and a piece of the 
 Holy Cross. Alfred sent embassies to the Pope, and made a 
 voluntary annual offering, to obtain favourable treatment for 
 his subjects at Rome. But, adopted child of Rome, and. natur- 
 alh^ attached to her as the centre of ecclesiastical order and its- 
 civilizing influences though he was, and much as he was sur- 
 rounded by ecclesiastical friends and ministers, we trace in him 
 no ultramontanism, no servile submission to priests. The Eng- 
 lish Church, so far as we can see, remains national, and the 
 English King remains its head. 
 
 Not only with Latin but with Eastern Christendom, Alfred,. 
 if we may trust the contemporary Saxon chronicles, opened 
 communication. As Charlemagne, in the spirit partly perhaps 
 of piety, partly of ambition, had sent an embassy with proofs- 
 of his grandeur to the Caliph of Bagdad ; as Louis XIV., in the 
 spirit of mere ambition, delighted to receive a embassy from. 
 Siam ; so Alfred, in a spirit of piety unmixed, sent ambassadors 
 to the traditional Church of St. Thomas in India : and the ambas- 
 sadors returned, we are told, with perfumes and precious stones 
 as the memorials of their journey, which were long preserved 
 in the churches. " This was the first intercourse," remarks- 
 Pauli, " that took place between England and Hindostan." 
 
 All nations are inclined to ascribe their primitive institutions 
 to some national founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, a Romulus. 
 It is not necessary now to prove that Alfred did not found 
 trial by jury, or the frank-pledge, or that he was not the first 
 who divided the kingdom into shires, hundreds, or tithings. 
 The part of trial by jury which has been politically of so much 
 importance, its popular character, as opposed to arbitrary trial 
 by a royal or imperial officer — that of which the preservation, 
 amidst the general prevalence of judicial imperialism, has been 
 the glory of England — was simply Teutonic ; so was the frank- 
 pledge, the rude machinery for preserving law and order by 
 mutual responsibility in the days before police ; so were the 
 hundreds and the tithings, rudimentary institutions marking 
 the transition from the clan to the local community or canton. 
 The shiies probably marked some stage in the consolidation of 
 
ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 281 
 
 the Saxon settlements ; at all events they were ancient divi- 
 sions which Alfred can at most only have reconstituted in a 
 revised form after the anarch3^ 
 
 He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous 
 innovation by appointing special judges to administer a more- 
 regular justice than that which was administered in the local 
 courts of the earls and bishops, or even in the national assembly. 
 In this respect he was the imitator, probably the unconscious- 
 imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor of Henry H., the 
 institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers and functions 
 of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, lie at first 
 enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king,, 
 or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assem- 
 bly. It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary 
 is separated from the i-est. It is a great step also when uni- 
 formity of justice is introduced. Probably, however, these- 
 judges, like the itinerant justices of Henry II., were adminis- 
 trative as well as judicial officers ; or, in the terms of our mod- 
 ern polity, they were delegates of the Home Office as well as- 
 of the Central Courts of Law. 
 
 In his lav/s, Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which 
 the statesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the 
 character of an innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innova- 
 tions might not be accepted by those who would come after 
 him. His code, if so inartificial a document can be dignified 
 with the name, is mainly a compilation from the laws of his 
 Saxon predecessors. We trace, however, an advance from the 
 barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and 
 other crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of crim- 
 inal justice. In totally forbidding composition for blood, and 
 asserting that indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the 
 essential basis of civilization, the code of Moses stands con- 
 trasted with other primeval codes. Alfred, in fact, incorpor- 
 ated an unusually large amount of the Mosaic and Christian 
 elements, which blend with Germanic customs and the relics of 
 Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the various 
 codes of the early Middle Ages, called theLaws of the Barba- 
 rians. His code opens with the Ten Commandments, followed 
 by extracts from Exodus, containing the Mosaic law respecting 
 the relations between masters and servants, murder and other 
 crimes, and the observance of holy days, and the Apostolic 
 Epistle from Acts xv. 28-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12,. 
 •' Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even. 
 
:282 ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 80 to them." " By this one Commandment," says Alfred, " a 
 man shall know whether he does right, and he will then require 
 no other law-book." This is not the form of a modern Act of 
 Parliament, but legislation in those days was as much preach- 
 ing as enactment ; it often resembled in character the Royal 
 Proclamation against Vice and Immorality. 
 
 Alfred's laws unquestionabl}' sliow a tendency to enforce 
 loyalty to the king, and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, 
 in the case of an attempt on the king's life, is punished with 
 
 ■ death and confiscation, instead of the old comjDosition by pay- 
 ment of the royal weregeld. }Ience he has been accused of 
 imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies ; he had even the 
 •misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxford advocates 
 ■of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for the 
 
 charge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known 
 measure of his government is concerned. The kingly power 
 was the great source of order and justice amidst that anarchy, 
 the sole rallying point and bond of union for the imperilled 
 nation ; to maintain it, and pi'otect from violence the life of its 
 holder, was the duty of a patriot law-giver : and as the author- 
 ity of a Saxon king depended in great measure on his personal 
 character and position, no doubt the pei'sonal authority of 
 Alfred was exceptionally great. But he continued to govern 
 by the advice of the national council ; and the fundamental 
 principles of the Teutonic polity remained unimpaired by him, 
 and were transmitted intact to his successors. His writings 
 breathe a sense of the responsibilities of rulers and a hatred of 
 tyranny. He did not even attempt to cairy further the incor- 
 poration of the subordinate kingdoms with Wessex ; but ruled 
 Mercia as a separate state by the hand of his bi'other-in-law, 
 and left it to its own national council or witan. Considering his 
 ■circumstances, and the chaos from which his government had 
 emerofed, it is wonderful that he did not centralize more. He 
 was, we repeat, a true Teuton, and entirely worthy of his place 
 in the Germanic Walhalla. 
 
 The most striking jtroof of his multifarious activity of mind, 
 and of the unlimited extent of the task which his circumstan- 
 ces imposed upon him, as well as of his thoroughly English 
 
 ■ character, is his undertaking to give his people a literature in 
 their own tongue. To do this he had first to educate himself — 
 to educate himself at an advanced age, after a life of fierce dis- 
 traction, and with the reorganization of his shattei-ed kiny'dom 
 ■on his liands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxon lays, 
 
ALFEEDUS REX FUNDATOR. 283 
 
 vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous ; he had learned to read, 
 but it is thought that he had not learned to wiite. " As we were 
 one day sitting in the i-oyal chamber," says Asser, " and were 
 conversing as was our wont, it chanced that I read him a pas- 
 sage out of a certain book. After he had listened with fixed 
 attention, and expressed great delight, he showed me the little 
 book which he always carried about with him, and in which the 
 daily lessons, psalms jind ]ii-ayers, were written, and begged me 
 to transcribe that passage into his book." Asser assented, but 
 Ibund that the book was already full, and proposed to the king 
 to begin another book, which was soon in its turn filled with 
 extracts. A portion of the process of Alfred's education is re- 
 corded by Asser. " I was honourably received at the royal 
 mansion, and at that time stayed eight months in the king's 
 court. I translated and read to him whatever books he wished 
 Avhich were within our reach ; for it was his custom, day and 
 night, amidst all his afllictions of mind and body, to read books 
 himself or have them read to him by others." To original com- 
 jDOsition Alfred did not aspire ; he was content with giving his 
 people a body of translations of what he deemed the best au- 
 thors ; here again showing his royal good sense. In the selec- 
 tion of his authors, he showed libei'ality and freedom from Ro- 
 man, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. On the one hand 
 he chooses for the benetit of the clergy whom he desired to re- 
 form, the " Pastoral Care " of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, 
 the author of the mission which had converted England to 
 Christianity ; but on the other hand he chooses the " Consola- 
 tions of Philosophy," the chief work of Boethius, the last of 
 tlje Romans, and the victim of the cruel jealous}' of Theodoric. 
 Of Boethius Hallam says : " Last of the classic wiiters, in style 
 not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic exuber- 
 ance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centu- 
 ries ; in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers ; 
 and mingling a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks 
 from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The 
 philosophy which consoled him in bonds was soon required in 
 the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the 
 lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light ; 
 the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be spoken ; and 
 many ages were to pass away before learned diligence restored 
 its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few 
 modern writers to ' surpass in eloquence the Latinity of Boe- 
 thius. " Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the high- 
 
284. ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR. 
 
 est product of that memoraLle burst of Saxon intellect which 
 followed the conversion, and a work, iiot untainted by mir- 
 acle and legend, yet most remarkable for its historical qualities 
 as well as for its mild and liberal Christianity, is Ijalanced in the 
 king's series of translations by the work of Orosius, who wrote 
 of general and secular history, though with a religious object. 
 In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted a sketch of 
 the geography of Germany, and the reports of explorations 
 made by two mai'iners under his auspices among the natives 
 dwellingr on the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea — fur- 
 ther proof of the variety of his interests and the reach of his 
 mind. 
 
 In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations 
 of the philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an inde- 
 pendent author, and shows us something of his own mind on 
 theology, on philosof^hy, on government, and generally as to the 
 estate of man. To estimate these passages rightly, we must 
 put ourselves back into the anarchical and illiterate England of 
 the ninth century, and imagine a writer, who, if we could see 
 him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all his 
 equipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days 
 in a desperate struggle with wolfish Danes, seated at his literary 
 work in his rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected 
 by the horn lantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred 
 will then appear altogether worthy of his character and his 
 deeds. He always emphasizes and expands passages which 
 speak either of the responsibilities of rulers or of the nothing- 
 ness of earthly power ; and the refiections are pervaded by a 
 pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. The politi- 
 cal world had not much advanced when, six centuries after 
 Alfred, it arrived at Machiavelli. 
 
 There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words re- 
 specting the estate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised 
 only by their royal trains, the mutual dread that exists between 
 them and those by whom they are surrounded, the drawn sword 
 that always hangs over their heads, " as to me it ever did." 
 We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, and perhaps errors, 
 not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers. 
 
 In hi.s private life Alfred appears to have been an example of 
 conjugal fidelity and manly purity, while we see no traces of 
 the asceticism which wasrevei-ed by the superstition of the age 
 of Edward the Confessor. His words on the value and the 
 
A LFRED US REX FUND A TOR . 285 
 
 claims of a wife, if not up to the standard of modern sentiment, 
 are at least instinct with genuine affection. 
 
 The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms 
 came again, in the latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, 
 whence they had been repulsed, and from France, which they 
 had exhausted by their ravages. But the king's generalship 
 foiled them and compelled them to depart. Seeing where their 
 strength lay, he built a regular Heet to encounter them on their 
 own element, and he may be called the founder of the Royal 
 Navy. 
 
 His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from 
 the ground in renewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of 
 greatness. A line of able kings followed Alfred. His son and 
 successor, Edward, inherited his vigour. His favourite grand- 
 son, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scot together at Brun- 
 anburgh, and. awoke by his glorious victory the last echoes of 
 Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy 
 reached its highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island un- 
 der its imperial ascendancy. At last its hour came ; but when 
 Canute founded a Danish dynasty he and his Danes were Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 " This I can now truly say, that so long as T have lived I have 
 striven to live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory 
 to my descendants in good works. " If the king who wrote 
 those words did not found a university or a polity, he restored 
 and perpetuated the foundations of English institutions, and 
 he left what is almost as valuable as any institution — a great 
 and inspiring example of public duty. 
 
286 THE LAST BEPVBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 "Has linmanity such forces at its command wherewith to com- 
 bat vice and baseness, that each school of virtue can afford to repel 
 the aid of the rest, and to maintain that it alone is entitled to 
 the praise of courage, of goodness, and of resignation?" Such is 
 the rebuke administered by M. Renan to the Christians who 
 refuse to recognise the martyrs of Stoicism under the Roman 
 Empire. My eye fell upon the words when I had just laid 
 down Professor Mommsen's harsh judgment of the last defen- 
 ders of the Republic, and they seemed to me applicable to this 
 case also. 
 
 It is needless to say that there has been a curious change of 
 opinion as to the merits of these men who, a century ago, were 
 political saints of the Liberal party, but whom in the present 
 dayLiberal writers are emulously striving, with Dante, to thrust 
 down into the nethermost hell. Dante puts Brutus and Cassius 
 in hell not because he knows the real history of their acts, or 
 because he is qualified to judge of the moral and political con- 
 ditions under which they acted, but simply because he is a 
 Ghibelin, and they slew the head of the Holy Roman Empire ; 
 and the present change of opinion arises, in the main, not from 
 the discovery of any new ftict, or from the better sifting of those 
 already known, but from the prevalence of new sentiments — 
 Imperialism of different shades, Bonapartist or Positivist, and 
 perhaps also hero-worship, w^hich of course fixes upon CcBsar. 
 Positivism and Hero-worship are somewhat incongruous allies, 
 for Hero-worship is evidently the least scientific, while Positivism 
 aims at being the most scientific, of all the theories of history. 
 
 We ai-e judging the opponents of Cresar, it seems to me, 
 under the dominion of exaggerated notions of the beneficence 
 of the Empire which Csesar founded, of its value as a political 
 model, of its connection with the life of modern civilization, 
 and of the respect, not to say devotion, due to the memory 
 of its founder. Let us try to cast off for an hour the influence 
 of these modern sentiments, and put the whole group of an- 
 cient figures back into its place in ancient history. 
 
 The Empire was a necessity at the time when it came — 
 granted. But a necessity of what sort ? Was it a necessity 
 created by an upward eflbrt, by an elevation of humanity, or 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 287 
 
 by degradation and decline ? In tlie former case you may 
 pass the same sentence upon those who opposed its coming 
 which is passed upon those who crucified Christ, or who, Hke 
 Philip II., opposed the Reformation in the spirit of bigoted 
 reaction. But in the latter case they must be charged, not with 
 moral blindness or depravity, but only with the lack of that 
 clearness of sight which leads men and parties at the right mo- 
 ment, or even in anticipation of the right moment, to despair : 
 and such perspicacity, to say the least, is a highly scientific 
 quality, requiring perhaps, to make it respectable and safe, a 
 more exact knowledge of historical sequences than we even 
 now possess. Even now we determine these historical neces- 
 sities by our knowledge of the result. It was a necessity, 
 given all the condition.s — the treachery of Ephialtes included 
 — that the Persians should force the pass of Thermopylae. 
 But the Three Hundred could not know all the conditions. 
 Even if they had, wovUd they have done right in giving way ? 
 They fell, but their spirits fought again at Salamis. 
 
 To me it appears that the Empire was a necessity of the 
 second kind ; that it was an inevitable concession to incurable 
 evil, not a new development of good. The Roman morality, 
 the morality which had produced and sustained the Republic, 
 was now in a state of final and irremediable decay. That 
 morality was narrow and imperfect, or rather it was rudi- 
 mentary, a feeble and transient prototype of the sounder and 
 more enduring morality which was soon to be born into the 
 world. It was the morality of devotion to a single com- 
 munity, and in fact consisted mainly of the performance of 
 duty to that community in war. But it was real and energetic 
 after its measure and its own time. It produced a type of char- 
 acter, which, if reproduced now, would be out of date and even 
 odious, but which stands in history dignified and imposing even 
 to the last. Nor was it without elements of permanent value. 
 It contributed largely to the patriotism of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, a patriotism which has now perhaps become obsolete in its 
 turn, and is superseded in our aspirations by an ideal with less of 
 right and self-assertion, with more of duty and of social affec- 
 tion, yet did good service against the Stuarts, The Roman 
 morality, together with dignity of character, produced as usual 
 simplicity of life. It produced a revei'ence for the majesty of 
 law, the voice of the community. It produced relations between 
 the sexes, and domestic relations generally, far indeed below the 
 ideal, yet decidedly above those which commonly existed in the 
 
288 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 pagan world. It produced a high degree of self-control and of 
 abstinence from vices which prevailed elsewhere. It produced 
 fruits of intellect, some original, especially in the political 
 sphere, others merely borrowed from Greece, yet evincing on 
 the part of the borrower a power of a.ppreciating the superior 
 excellence of another, and that a conquered nation, the value 
 of which, as breaking through the iron boundary of national 
 .self-love, has perhaps not received sufficient notice. What was 
 of most consequence to the world at large and to history, it 
 produced, though probably not so much in the way of obedience 
 to recognised principle as of noble instinct, a signal mitigation 
 of Conquest, which was then the universal habit, but from being 
 extermination and destruction, at best slavery or forcible trans- 
 plantation, became under the Romans a supremacy, imposed 
 indeed by force, and at the cost of much suffering, yet, in a 
 certain sense civilizing, and not exercised wholly without regard 
 for the good of the subject races. Thus that political unity of 
 the nations round the Mediterranean was brought about, w^hich 
 "was the necessary precursor and protector of a union of a better 
 kind. A measure of the same praise is due to Alexander, who 
 was a conquei'or of the higher order for a similar reason — 
 namely, that though a Macedonian prince, he was imbued with 
 the ideas and the morality of the Greek republics. But Alex- 
 ander was a single man, and he could not accomplish what was 
 accomplished in a succession of generations by the corporate 
 energies and virtues of the Roman Senate. 
 
 The conditions under which this morality had maintained 
 itself were now gone. It depended on the circumstances of a 
 small community, long engaged in a struggle for existence with 
 powerful and aggressive neighbours, the Latin, the Etruscan, 
 the Samnite, and the Gaul ; entering in turn, wdien its own 
 safety had been secured, on a career of conquest, still in a cer- 
 tain sense defensive, since every neighbour was in those days an 
 enemy ; and continuing to task to the utmost the citizen's de- 
 votion to the State, the virtues of command and obedience neces- 
 sary to victory, and the frugality necessary to supply the means 
 of great national efforts ; while luxury was kept at bay, though 
 the means of indulging it had begun to flow in, by the check 
 of national danger and the counter-attraction of military glory. 
 But all this was at an end when Carthage and Macedon were 
 overthrown. National danger and the necessity for national 
 effort being removed, self-devotion failed, egotism broke loose, 
 and began to revel in the pillage and oppression of a conquered 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 289 
 
 world. TliG Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartan 
 character was coiTupted when Sparta, from being- a camp in tlic 
 midst of hostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out 
 governors to subject states ; though the corruption in the case of 
 Sparta was far more rapid, because Spartan excellence was 
 more exclusively military, more formal and more obsolete. 
 The mass of the Romans ceased to perform military duty, and 
 there being no great public duty except military duty to be 
 performed, there remained no school of public virtue. Such 
 public virtue as there was lingered, though in a degraded form, 
 round the eagles of the standing armies, to which the duties of 
 the citizen-soldier were now consigned ; and the soldiery thus 
 acquired not only the power but the right of electing the emperors, 
 the best of whom, in fact, after Augustus, were generally soldiers 
 The ruling nation became a city rabble, the vices of which 
 were but little tempered by the fitful intervention of the en- 
 franchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble, political adven- 
 turers bought the consulships, which led to the government of 
 provinces, and wrung out of the unhappy provincials the pur- 
 chase money and a fortune for themselves besides. These for- 
 tunes begot colossal luxury and a general reign of vice. Vio- 
 lence mingling with corruption in the elections was breeding a 
 complete anarchy in Rome. Roman religion, to which, if we 
 believe Polybius, we must ascribe a real influence in the main- 
 tenance of morality, was at the same time undermined by the 
 sceptical philosophy of Greece, and b}^ contact with conflicting- 
 religions, the spectacle of which had its effect in producing 
 the scepticism of Montaigne. 
 
 The empire itself was on the point of dissolution. In em- 
 pires founded by single conquerors, such as those of the East, 
 when corruption has made the reigning family its pre}', 
 the satraps make themselves independent. The empire of 
 Alexander was divided among- his generals. The empire of the 
 conquering republic of Rome, the republic itself having suc- 
 cumbed to vices analagous to the corruption of a reigning 
 family, was about to be broken up by the great military chiefs. 
 Pompey had already, in fact, carved out for himself a separate 
 kingdom in Spain, which with its legions he had got perman- 
 ently into his own hands. Thus the unity of the civilized por- 
 tion of humanity, so indispensable to the future of the race, 
 would have been lost. Nor was there any remedy but one. 
 Representation of the provinces was out of the question. Sup- 
 posing it possible that a single assembly could have been 
 T 
 
290 THE LAST BEFUBL1CA:NS OF ROME. 
 
 formed out of all these different races and tongues, the repre- 
 sentation of the conquered would have been the abdication of 
 the conqueror ; and abdication was a step for which the lazza- 
 roni of the so-called democratic party were as little prepared 
 as the haughtiest aristocrat in Rome. A world of egotism, 
 without faith or morality, could be held together only by 
 force, which presented itself in the person of the ablest, most 
 daring, and most unscrupulous adventurer of the time. If 
 faith should again fail, and the world again be reduced to a 
 mass of egotism, the same sort of government will again be 
 needed. In fact, we are at this moment rather in danger of 
 something of the kind, and these revivals of CiTesarism are not 
 wholly out of season. But in any other case to propose to so- 
 ciety such a model would be treason to humanity. 
 
 The abandonment of military duty by the Roman people had, 
 among other things, made slavery more immoral than ever, be- 
 cause there was no longer any semblance of a division of la- 
 bour : the master could no longer be said to defend the slave in 
 war while the slave supported him by labour at home. Be- 
 coming more immoral, slavery became more cruel. The six 
 thousand crosses erected on the road from Capua to Rome after 
 the Servile War were the terrible proof. 
 
 As to the existence of an oligarchy in the bosom of the dom- 
 inant republic, this would in itself have been no great evil to the 
 subject world, to which it mattered little whether its tyrants 
 were a hundred or a hundred thousand ; just as to the unenfran- 
 chised in modern communities it matters little whether the 
 enfranchised class be large or small. In fact, the broader the 
 basis of a tyranny, the more fearless and unscrupulous, gener- 
 ally speaking, the tyranny is. 
 
 We need not overstate the case. If we do we shall tarnish 
 the laurels of Cassar, who would have shown no genius in 
 killing the republic had the republic been already dead. 
 There was still respect for the law and the constitution. Pom- 
 pey's hesitation when supreme power was within his grasp, 
 Caesar's own pause at the Rubicon, are proofs of it. The civil 
 wars of Marius and Sulla had fearfully impaired, in the eyes of 
 Romans, but they had not utterly destroyed, the majesty of 
 Rome. There were still great characters — characters which 
 you may dislike, but of which you can never rationally speak 
 with contempt — and there must have been some general element 
 of worth in which these characters were formed. If the recent 
 administration of the Senate had not been glorious, still, from a 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 291 
 
 Roman point of view, it had not been disastrous : the revolt of 
 the slaves and the insurrection in Spain had been quelled ; 
 Mithridates had been conquered ; the pirates, though for a time 
 their domination accused the feebleness of the government, 
 had at length been put down. The only great military calamity 
 of recent date was the defeat of Crassus, whose unprovoked 
 and insane invasion of Parthia was the error, not of the Senate, 
 but of the Triumvirate. Legions were forthcoming for the 
 conquest of Gaul, and a large reserve of treasure was found in 
 the sacred treasure-house when it was broken open by Csesar. 
 Bad governors of provinces, Verres, Fonteius, Gabinius, were 
 impeached and punished. LucuUus, autocrat and voluptuary 
 as he was, governed his province well. So did Cicero, if we may 
 take his own word for it. We may, at all events, take his 
 own word for this, that he was anxious to be thought to 
 have ruled with purity and justice, which proves that purity 
 and justice were not quite out of fashion. The old Roman 
 spirit still struggled against luxury, and we find Cicero suffer- 
 ing from indigestion, caused by a supper of vegetables at the 
 house of a wealthy friend, whose excellent cook had developed 
 all the resources of gastronomic art in struggling with the re- 
 strictions imposed by a sumptuary law. There was intellec- 
 tual life, and all the civilized tastes and half-moral qualities 
 which the existence of intellectual life implies. In spite of the 
 sanguinary anarchy which often broke out in the Roman 
 streets, Cicero, the most cultivated and the least combative of 
 men, when in exile or in his province, sighs for the capital as a 
 Frenchman sighs for Paris. In short, if we consider the case 
 fairly, we shall admit, I believe, that, besides the force of 
 memory and of old allegiance, there was enough of worth and 
 of apparent hope left, not only to excuse republican illusions, 
 but probably to make it a duty to try the issue with fate. I 
 say probably, and, after all, how can we presume to speak with 
 certainty of a situation so distant from us in time, and so im- 
 perfectly recorded ? 
 
 The great need of the world was public virtue — the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice for the common good. This the empire could not 
 possibly call into being. The public virtue of the ancient world 
 resided in the nationalities which the conquering republic had 
 broken up, and of which the empire only sealed the doom. The 
 empire could never call forth even the lowest form of public vir- 
 tue, loyalty to the hereditary right of a royal family, because 
 the empire never presented itself as a right, but merely as a 
 
^<)2 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF POME. 
 
 |)ei'sc>tial power. The idea of legitimacy, I appreliend, never 
 •connected itself with these dynasts, who were, in fact, a series 
 ■of usui-pers, veiling their usui-pation under republican forms. 
 When the spirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the 
 good of the community appeared again, it appeared in asso- 
 ciations, and notably in one great association foi'ined, not by the 
 "empire, but independently of it, in antagonism to its immo- 
 rality, and in sj)ite of its persecutions. Accidentally the empire 
 ii^sisted the extension of the great Christian association, by com- 
 pleting the overthrow of the national religions ; but the main 
 part of this woik had been done by the republic, and it was 
 the merit neither of the republic nor of the empire. 
 
 It is said with confidence that the empire vastly improved 
 the government of the provinces, and that on this account it 
 was a great blessing to the world. I do not believe that 
 any nation had then attained, I do not believe that any 
 nation has now attained, and I doubt whether any nation ever 
 Avill attain, such a point of morality, as to be able to gov- 
 ern other nations for the benefit of the governed. I will 
 say nothing about our Christian policy in India, but let those 
 who rate French morality so highly, consider what French 
 tutelage is to the people of Algeria. But supposing the 
 task undertaken, the question, which is the best organ of 
 imperial government — an assembly or an autocrat — is a curi- 
 ous one. I am disposed to think that, taking the average 
 of assemblies and the average of autocrats, there is more hope 
 in the assembly, because in the assem_bly opinion must have 
 some force. The autocrat is, in a certain sense, raised above 
 the dominant nation and its interests ; but, after all, he is one 
 of that nation, he lives in it, and subsists by its support. Even 
 in the time of Augustus, if wo may trust Dion Cassius, Licinius, 
 the Governor of Gaul, was guiUy of corruptions and pecula- 
 tions curiously resembling those of Verres, from whom lie 
 seems to have borrowed the device of tampering with the 
 calendar for the purpose of fiscal fraud ; and when the provinces 
 complained, the Emperor hushed up the matter, partly to avoid 
 scandal, partly because Licinius was cunning enough to pre- 
 tend that his peculations had been intended to cut the sinews 
 of revolt, and that his spoils were reserved for the imperial 
 exchequer. The rebellions of Vindex and Civilis seem to prove 
 that even C»e.sar's favourite pi'ovince was not happy. Spain was 
 misgoverned by the deputies both of Julius and Augustus. In 
 Britain, the history of the revolt of the Iceni shews that 
 
tup: last RErVBLICAKS OF ROME. 293 
 
 neither the extortions of Roman usurers, nor the brutaKti^.s of 
 Roman officers, had ended with the repubhc. The blood tax 
 of the conscription appears also to have been cruelly exacted. 
 The tribute of largesses and shows which the empire, though 
 supposed to be lifted high above all partialities, paid to the 
 Roman populace, was drawn almost entirely from the pro- 
 vinces. Emperors who coined money with the tongue of the 
 informer and the sword of the executioner, were not likely to 
 abstain from selling governorships ; and, in fact, Seneca inti- 
 mates that under bad emperors governorships were sold. Of 
 course, the tyranny was felt most at Rome, where it was 
 present ; but when Caligula or CViracalla made a tour in the 
 provinces, it was like the march of the pestilence. The absence 
 of a regular bureaucracy, practically controlling, as the Russian 
 bureaucracy does, the personal will of the Emperor, must have 
 made government better under Trajan, but much worse under 
 Nero. The aggregation of land in the hands of a few great 
 land -holders evidently continued, and under this system the 
 garden of Italy became a desert. The decisive fact, however, is 
 that the provinces decayed, and that when the barbarian.s ar- 
 rived, all power of resistance was gone. That the empire 
 was consciously levelling and cosmopolitan, surely cannot be 
 maintained. Actium was a Roman victory over the gods of the 
 nations. Augustus, who must have known somethincj about the 
 system, avowedly aimed at restoring the number, the purity, the 
 privileged exclusiveness of the dominant race. His legislation 
 was an attempt to regenerate old Rome ; and the political odes 
 of the court poet are full of that purpose. That the empire 
 degraded all that had once been noble in Rome is true ; but the 
 degradation of what had once been noble in Rome was not the 
 regeneration of humanity. The vast slave population was no 
 more elevated b}' the ascendency of the freedmen of the im- 
 perial household than the female sex was elevated by the 
 ascendancy of Messalina. 
 
 That intellect declined under the emperors, and that the great 
 writers of its earlier period, Tacitus included, were really 
 legacies of the Republic, cannot be denied ; and surely it is a 
 pregnant fact. The empire is credited with Roman law. But 
 the Roman law was ripe for codification in the time of the 
 first CVesar. The leading principles of the civil law seem by 
 that time to have been in existence. Unquestionably the great 
 step had been taken of separating law as a science from con- 
 secrated custom, and of calling into existence regular law courts 
 
291 TUE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 and what was tantamount to a legal profession. The mere evo- 
 lution of the system from its principles rec^uired no transcendant 
 effort ; and the idea of coditication must have been something- 
 less than divine, or it could not have been compassed by the 
 intellect of Justinian. The criminal law of the empire, with 
 its arbiti-ary courts, its secret procedure, its elastic law of ti'ea- 
 son, and its practice of torture, was the scourge of Europe till 
 it was encountered and overthrown by the jury system, a char- 
 acteristic offspring of the Teutonic mind. 
 
 Tolerant the enipire was, at least if you did not object to 
 having the statue of Caligula set up in your Holy of Holies ; 
 and this toleration fostered the growth of a new religion. 
 But it is needless to say that, in this respect, the politicians of 
 the empire only inherited the negative virtue of those of the 
 republic. 
 
 As to private morality, we may surely trust the common 
 authorities — Juvenal, Suetonius, Petronius Arbiter — supported 
 as they are by the evidence of the museums. There was one 
 family, at least, whose colossal vices and crimes afforded a pic- 
 ture in the deepest sense tragic, considering their tremendous 
 effect on the lot and destinies of humanity. 
 
 It is a glorious dream this of an autocrat, the elect of hu- 
 manity, raised above all factions and petty interests, armed 
 with absolute power to govern well, agreeing exactly with all 
 our ideas, giving effect to all our schemes of benelicence, and 
 dealing summarily with ovir opponents ; but it does not come 
 through the " horngate " of histor}^ at least not of the history 
 of the Roman empire. 
 
 The one great service which the empire peiformed to hu- 
 manity was this : it held together, as nothing else could have 
 held together, the nations of the civilized world, and thus ren- 
 dered possible a higher unity of mankind. 
 
 I ventured to note, as one of the sources of illusion, a 
 somewhat exaggerated estimate of the amount and value of 
 theHoman element transfused by the empire into modern civiliza- 
 tion. The theory of continuity, suggested by the discoveries of 
 physical science, is prevailing also in history. A historical theory 
 is to me scientific, not because it is suggested by physical sci- 
 ence, but because it fits the historical facts. It may be true 
 that there are no cataclysms in history, but still there are great 
 epochs. In fact, there are great epochs, even in the natural 
 history of the world ; there were periods at which organization 
 and life began to exist. There may have been a time at which 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 295 
 
 a still further effort was made, and spiritual life also was 
 brought into being. Things which do not come suddenly or 
 abruptly, may nevertheless be new, A great sensation has 
 been created by an article in the Quarterly, on "The Talmud," 
 which purports to shew that the teachings of Christianity were, 
 in tact, only those of Pharisaism. The organ of orthodoxy, in 
 pul)lishing that article, was rather like our great mother Eve 
 an Milton, who " knew not eating death."' But after all, Phari- 
 saism crucified Christianity, and probably it was not for pla- 
 giarism. Supposing we adopt the infiltration theory of the 
 Barbarian conquests, and discard that of a sudden deluge of in- 
 vasion, it remains certain, unless all contemporary writers were 
 much mistaken, that some very momentous change did, after all, 
 occur. Catholicism and Feudalism were the life of the Middle 
 Ages. Catholicism, though it had grown up under the Empire, 
 and at last subjugated it, was not of it. As to Feudalism, it is 
 possible, no doubt, to find lands held on condition of military 
 service under the Roman empire as well as under the Otto- 
 man empire, and in other military states. But is it possible 
 to find anything like the social hierarchy of Feudalism, its code 
 of mutual rights and duties, or the political and social charac- 
 ters which it formed :' 
 
 In France and Spain, much of the Roman province survived ; 
 but in England, not the least infiuential of the group of modern 
 nations, it was, as we have every reason to believe, completely 
 erased by the Saxon invaders, who came fresh from the seats 
 of their barbarism, hating cities and city life, and ignorant of 
 the majesty of Rome. If a Roman element afterwards found 
 its way into England with the Norman conquest, it was rather 
 ecclesiastical than imperial, and those who brought it were 
 Scandinavians to the core. Alfred had been at Rome in his 
 boyhood, it is true, and may have brought away some ideas 
 -of central dominion ; but his laws open with a long quo- 
 tation, not from the Pandects, but from the New Testament : 
 his character is altogether that of a Christian, not of a 
 Roman ruler ; and if he had any political model before him, it 
 was, probably, at least as much the Hebrew monarchy as the 
 military despotism of the Ctesars. Many of the Roman cities 
 remained, and with them their municipal governments, and 
 hence it is assumed that municipal government altogether is 
 Roman. But there was a numicipal government in the Saxon 
 capital, and evidently there must be wherever large cities exist 
 with any degree of independence. The Roman law was, at all 
 
29G THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 events, so far lost in the early part of the Middle Ages, when 
 Christendom was in process of formation, that the study of it 
 afterwards seemed new. Roman literature influenced that of 
 mediaeval Christendom down to about the end of the twelfth 
 century. Our writers of the time of Henry II. compose in half- 
 classical Latin, and affect classical elegancies of style. But 
 then comes a philosophy which, in spite of its worship of 
 Aristotle, is essentially an original creation of the mediaeval 
 and Catholic mind, couched in a language, Latin indeed, but 
 almost as remote from classical Latin as German itself, the 
 tongue, in truth, of a new intellectual world. Open Aquinas, 
 and ask yourself liow^ much is left of the language or the roind 
 of Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the 
 Cathedral ; but what essential resemblance does the Roman 
 place of judicature and business bear to that marvellous and 
 fantastic poetry of religion writing its hymns in stone ? In the 
 same manner, the Roman castra are traceable in the form as 
 well as the designation of the mediaeval castella. But what 
 resemblance did the feudal militia bear to the legionaries ? 
 And what became of the Roman art of war till it was revived 
 by Gustavus Adolphus ? The outward mould of Christendom 
 the Roman empire was, and that it Avas so, gives it great dignity 
 and interest: but it was no more. The life came from the 
 Gennan forest, the life of life from the peasantry of Galilee, 
 the least Romanized, perhaps, of the populations beneath the 
 sway of Rome. 
 
 The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. 
 With such genius and such fortune it is not surprising that he 
 should be made an idol. In intellectual stature he was at least 
 an inch higher than his fellows, which is in itself enough 
 to confound all our notions of right and wrong. He had 
 the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldier, 
 whereas Napoleon was a soldier befoie he was a statesman. 
 His ambition coincided with the necessity of the world, wdiich 
 required to be held together b}^ force ; and, therefore, his em- 
 pire endured for four hundred, or, if we include its eastern offset, 
 for fourteen hundred years, while tliat of Napoleon crumbled to 
 pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition was the root of his- 
 character. It was necessary, in fact, to enable him to trample 
 down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. 
 To connect him with any principle seems to me impossible. 
 He came forward, it is true, as the leader of what is styled the 
 democratic party, and in that seirse the empire which he 
 
TUh LAST B/'J PUBLICANS OF HOME. 297 
 
 founded may be called democratic. But to the gamblers who 
 brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, the democratic 
 and aristocratic parties were merely rou<je and noir. The 
 social and political equity, the reign of which we desire to see, 
 was, in truth, unknown to the men of Ciesar's time. It is im- 
 possible to believe that there was an essential difference of 
 principle between one member of the triumvirate and another. 
 The great adventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, 
 and had thus in fact bound himself to ovei'throw^ the republic. 
 He fomented anarchy to prepare the way for his dictatorship. 
 He shrank from no accomplice however tainted, not even from 
 Catiline; from no act however profligate or even inhuman. Abus- 
 ing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, he tries to 
 put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius,an aged and help- 
 less man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. 
 The case of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all 
 events, seems to have little doubt that Oai^sar was privy to the 
 subornation of this perjurer, and when his perjuries had broken- 
 down, to his assassination. Dr. Mommsen owns that there was 
 a dark period in the life of the great man ; in that darkness it 
 could scarcely be expected that the Republicans should see 
 light. 
 
 The noblest feature in Csesar's character was his clemency.. 
 But we are reminded that it was ancient, not modern clemency, 
 when we find numbered among the signal instances of it his 
 having cut the throats of the pirates before he hanged them, 
 and his having put to death without torture (siinidici iii.orte 
 [ninivit) a slave suspected of conspiring against his life^ 
 Some have gone so far as to speak of him as the incarnati(jn of 
 humanity. But where in the whole history of Roman concpiest 
 will you find a more ruthless conqueror ? A million of Gauls,^ 
 we are told, perished 1)}^ the sword. Multitudes were sold into 
 slavery. The extermination of the Eburones went to the verge 
 even of ancient license. The oallant Yercinoetorix, who had 
 fallen into Ctesar's hands under circumstances which would 
 have touched any but a depraved heart, was kept by him a 
 captive for six years, and butchei-ed in cold blood on the day 
 of the triumph. The sentiment of humanity was at that time- 
 undeveloped. Be it so, but then we must not call Ciiesar the 
 incarnation of humanity. 
 
 Vast plans are ascribed to (Jtesar at the time of his death, 
 and it seems to be thought that a world of hopes for humanity 
 perished when he fell. But if he had lived and acted for an- 
 
f>r|8 THE LAST REPUBLICAN'S OF ROME. 
 
 other century, wliat could he have done with those moral and 
 political materials but found, what he did found, a military 
 and sensualist empire ? A multitude of projects aie attri- 
 buted to him by writers, who, we must remember, are late, and 
 Avdio make him ride a fairy charger with feet like the hands of 
 a man. Some of these projects are really great, such as the 
 codification of the law, and measures for the encouragement of 
 intellect and science ; others are questionable, such as the re- 
 storation of commercial cities from which commerce had re- 
 tired ; others, great works to be accomplished by an unlimited 
 command of men and money, are the common dreams of eveiy 
 Nebuchadnezzar. What we know, if we know anything, of his 
 intentions, is that he was about to set out on a campaign against 
 the Parthians, in whose plains this prototype of Napoleon might 
 perhaps have found a torrid Moscow. No great advance of 
 humanity can take place without a great moral effort, excited 
 by higher moral desires. The masters of the legions can only 
 set in action by their fiat material forces. Even these they 
 often misdirect ; but if the empire could have given every man 
 Nero's golden house, the inhabitants might still have been as 
 unhappy as Nero. 
 
 It is not doubtful that Cjesar was a type of the sensuality of 
 his age. His worshippers even feel it necessary to gird at chai-- 
 acters deficient in sensual passion with a friskiness which is a 
 little amusing when you connect it with the spectacles and the 
 blameless life of a learned professor. So gifted a nature will 
 al)sorb a good deal of mere sensual vice it is true ; but a sen- 
 sualist could hardly be a pure and noble organ of humanity. 
 In this, I have the Positivists with me. Even in Ca'sar's lifetime 
 the world had a taste of the vicissitudes of empire, while he was 
 revelling in the palace of Cleopatra, and leaving affairs to 
 Antony and Dolabella. Perhaps the satiety of the voluptuary 
 had something to do with the recklessness with which at the last 
 he neglected to guard his life. He was the greatest patron of 
 gladiatorial shows, and signalized his accession to power by 
 magnificent scenes of carnage in the arena — a strange dawn for 
 the day of a new civilization ! Must we not a little doubt the 
 consistency of his policy, and even his insight, when we find 
 him, after all this, enacting sumptuary laws ? 
 
 Still (Ia\sar was a very great man, and he played a daz- 
 zling part, as all men do who come just at the fall of an 
 old system, when society is as clay in the hands of the 
 potter, and found a new system in its place ; while the less 
 
THE LAST EEPUBLICAKS OF HOME. 299 
 
 dazzling task of making the new s3'steni Avoik, by pro- 
 bity and industry, and of restoiing the sliattered allegi- 
 ance of a people to its institutions, descends upon unlaurelled 
 heads. But that the men of his time were bound to recognise 
 in him a Messiah, to use the phrase of the Emperor of the 
 French, and that those who opposed him were Jews crucifying 
 their Saviour, is an impression which I venture to think will in 
 time subside. No golden scales were hung out in heaven to 
 shew the republicans that the l)alance of Divine will had 
 turned, and that their duty was submission. "Moinentumque 
 fuit mutatus Curio rerum — " The only sign vouchsafed to 
 them was the conversion of an unjirincipled debauchee. 
 
 They have, therefore, a fair claim to be judged each upon the 
 merits of his case, and not in the lump as enemies of the human 
 race ; and to judge them fairly is a good exercise in historical 
 morality. The three principal names in the party ai'e those 
 of Cato, Cicero, and Marcus Brutus. Ponijiey, though the 
 nominal chief of the republicans, ma}' rather, as Dr. Momm- 
 sen truly saj's, be called the first militar}^ monarch of 
 Rome. There is a A'igorous portrait of him, from the re- 
 })ublican ])oint of view, by Lucan, who, though detestable 
 as an epic poet, sometimes in his . political passages, and 
 especially in his characters, shews himself the countryman of 
 Tacitus. Pompey is there described with truth as combining 
 the desire of supreme power with a lingering respect for the 
 constitution. The great aristocrat is painted as simple in his 
 habits of life, and his household as uncorrupted by the fortunes 
 of its lord — the last relics of the control imposed by the spirit 
 of the republic on private luxury, which was soon to be re- 
 leased by the Empire from all restraint and carried to the most 
 revolting height. 
 
 Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Csesar 
 evidently dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memor}^ in 
 a brace of pamphlets entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of 
 which we have one or two specimens in Plutarch, from which 
 we should infer that they were scurrilous and slanderous to the 
 last degi-ee ; a proof that even CtBsar could feel fear, and 
 that in Cresar, too, fear was mean. Dr. Moinmsen throws 
 himself heartily into Cse.sar's antipathy, and can scarcely 
 speak of Cato without something like loss of temper. The 
 least uncivil thing which he says of him, is that he was a 
 Don Quixote, with Favonius for his Sancho. The phrase 
 is not a happy one, since Sancho is not the caricature but the 
 
300 THE LAST liEFUBLlCANS 01- ROME. 
 
 counterfoil of Don Quixote ; Don Quixote bein_n' spirit without 
 sense, and Sanclio sense without s])irit. lni[)('ii<ilism, if it could 
 see itself, is in fact, a world of Sanclios, and it would not be 
 the less so, if every Sancho of the number were master of 
 the whole of physical science, and used it to cook his food. 
 Of the two court poets of Cfiesar's successor, one makes C'ato 
 preside over the spirits of the good in the Elysian fields, while 
 the other speaks with respect, at all events, of the soul which 
 remained unconquered in a con([uered world — "Et cuncta terra- 
 rum subacta pr.t'ter atrocem aniuuim Oatonis." Paterculus, 
 an officer of Tiberius, and a thorough Caesarian, calls Cato a 
 man of ideal virtue ("homo virtuti simillimus") who did right 
 not for appearance sake, but because it was not in his nature 
 to do Yv-rong. When the victor is thus overawed by the shade 
 of the vanquished, the vanquished can hardly have been a 
 " fool," Contemporaries may be mistaken as to the merits of a 
 character, but they cannot well be mistaken as to tl)e space 
 which it occupied in their own eyes. Sallust, the partizan of 
 Marius and CsBsar, who had so much reason to hate the sena- 
 torial party, speaks of Ca'sar and Cato as the two mighty 
 opposites of his time, and in an elaborate parallel ascribes to 
 Cai'sar the qualities which secure the success of the adventurer ; 
 to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. 
 It is a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an un- 
 seasonable repetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration came 
 not from a Roman, but from a Greek school, which, with all its 
 errors and absurdities, and in spite of the hypocrisy of many 
 of its professors, really aimed highest in the formation of 
 character ; and the practical teachings and aspirations of which, 
 embodied in the ReHections of Marcus Aurelius, it is impossible 
 to study without profound respect for the force of moral con- 
 ception and the depth of moral insight which they sometimes 
 display. Cato went to Greece to sit at the feet of a Greek 
 teacher in a spirit veiy different from the national pride of his 
 ancestor. It is this which makes his character interestino; : 
 it was an attempt at all events to grasp and hold fast a high 
 rule of life, in an age when the whole moral world was sinking 
 in a vortex of scoundrelism, and faith in morality, public or 
 private, had been lost. Of course the character is formal, and 
 in some respects even grotesque. But you may trace for- 
 malism, if you look closely enough, in every life led by a 
 rule ; in everything in fact between the purest spiritual im- 
 pulse on one side and abandoned sensuality on the other. 
 
THE LAST RF.PUBJACANS OF ROME. 301 
 
 Attempts to revive old Roman simplicity of dre.ss and habits in 
 the age of Lucullus, were no doubt futile enough : yet this is 
 ■only the symbolical garb of the Hebrew prophet. The scene is 
 in ancient Rome, not in the smoking-room of the House of Com- 
 mons. The character as painted by Plutarch, who seems to have 
 drawn from the writings of contemporaries, is hard of course, 
 but not cynical. (Jato was de^'oted to his brother C;epio, and 
 when Ca^pio died, forgot all his Stoicism in the passionate in- 
 dulgence of his grief, and all his frugality in lavishing gold 
 and perfumes on' the funeral. C;iesar in " Anti-Cato" accused him 
 of sifting the ashes for the gold, which, says Plutarch, is like 
 charging Hei'cules with cowardice. Where the sensual appe- 
 tites are repressed, whatever may be the theory of life, the 
 affections are pretty sure to be strong, unless they are nipped 
 by some such process as is undergone by a monk. Cato's re- 
 signation of his fruitful wife to a childless friend, revolting as 
 it is to our sense, betokens not so much brutality in him as 
 coarseness of the conjugal relations at Rome. Evidently the 
 man had the power of touching the hearts of others His sol- 
 <liers, though he has given them no largesses, and indulged them 
 in no license, when he leaves them, strew their garments under 
 his feet. His friends at Utica linger at the peril of their lives 
 to give him a sumptuous funeral. He affected conviviality 
 like Socrates. He seems to have been able to enjoy a joke too 
 at his own expense. He can laugh when Cicero ridicules his 
 Stoicism in a speech ; and when in a province he meets the 
 inhabitants of a town turning out, and thinks at first that it 
 is in his own honour, but soon finds that it is in honour of a 
 much greater man, the confidential servant of Pompey, at first his 
 dignity is outraged, but his anger soon gives place to amusement. 
 That his public character was perfectly ]>ure, no one seems 
 to have doubted ; and there is a kindliness in his dealings with 
 the dependants of Rome which shews that had he been an 
 emperor he would have been such an emperor as Trajan — a 
 man whom he probably resembled, both in the goodness of his 
 intentions and in the limited powers of his mind. Impractic- 
 able, of course, in a certain sense he was ; but his part was that 
 ■of a reformer, and to compromise with the corruption against 
 which he was contendincf would have been to lose the onh- 
 nicans of influence, which, having no military force and no 
 party, he possessed — the unquestioned integrity of his charac- 
 ter. He is said by Dr. Mommsen to have been incapable of 
 •even conceiving a policy. By policy I suppose is meant one ot 
 
302 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 those brilliant schemes of ambition with which some literary 
 men are fond of identifying themselves, fancying, it seems, ti)at 
 thereby they themselves after their measure play the Ctesar. 
 The policy which Cato conceived was simply that of purifying 
 and preserving the Republic. So far, at all events, he had an 
 insight into the situation, that he knew the real malady of 
 the State to be want of puV)lic spirit, which he did his best to 
 supply. And the fact is, that he did more than once succeed in 
 a remarkable way in stemming the tide of corruption. Though 
 every instinct bade him struggle to the hist, he had sense enougli 
 to see the state of the case, and to advise that, to avert anarchy, 
 supreme power should be put into the hands of Pompey, whose 
 political superstition, if not his loyalty, there was good reason 
 to trust. When at last civil war broke out, Cato went into it like 
 Falkland, crying " peace ; " he set his face steadily against the 
 excesses and cruelties of his party ; and when he saw the field 
 of Dyrrhacium covered with his slain enemies, he covered his 
 face and wept. He wept a Roman over Romans, but humanity 
 will not refuse the tribute of his tears. After Pharsalus he 
 cherished no illusion, as Dr. Mommsen himself admits, and 
 though he determined himself to fall fighting, he urged no one 
 else to resistance : he felt that the duty of an ordinary citizen was 
 done. His terrible march over the African desert shewed high 
 powers of command, as we shall see by comparing it with the 
 desert march of IMapoleon. Dr. Mommsen ridicules his pedantry 
 in refusing, on grounds of loyalty, to take the commander- 
 ship-in-chief over the head of a superior in rank. Cato was 
 fighting for legality, and the spirit of legality was the soul of 
 his cause. But besides this, he was himself without expe- 
 rience of war ; and by declining the nominal command he 
 retained the real control. He remained master to the last of 
 the burning vessel. Our morality will not approve of his volun- 
 taiy death ; but then our morality would give him a sufficient 
 motive for living, even if he was to be bound to the car of the 
 conqueror. Looking to Roman opinion, he probably did what 
 honour dictated ; and those who prefer honour to life are not so 
 numerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. " The 
 fool," says Dr. Mommsen, when the drama of the republic closes 
 with Cato's death — "The fool spoke the Epilogue." Whether 
 Cato was a fool or not, it was not he that spoke the Epilogue. 
 The Epilogue was spoken by Marcus Aurelius, who.se principles, 
 political as well as philosophical, were identical with those for 
 which Cato gave his life. All that time the Stoic and Repub- 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 303 
 
 lican party lived, sustained by the memory of its martyrs, and 
 above them all by that of Cato. At first it struggled against 
 the Empire ; at last it accepted it, and when the world was 
 weary of Cffsars, assumed the government and gave humanity 
 the respite of the Antonines. The doctrine of continuity is 
 valid for all parties alike, and the current of public virtue was 
 not cut off by Pharsalus. On the whole, remote as the char- 
 acter of Cato is in some respects from our sympathies, absurd 
 as it would be if taken as a model for our imitation, I recog- 
 nise it as a proof of the reality and indestructibility of moral 
 force, even when pitted against the masters of thirty legions. 
 Against Cicero, again, Dr. Mommsen is so bittei-, he is so deter- 
 mined to suppress as well as to degrade him, that it would be dif- 
 ficult even to make out from his pages who and what the once 
 divine Tully was. Much of Dr. Mommsen's dashing criticism on 
 Cicero's writings appears just, though we might trust the critic 
 more if we did not find him in the next page evading the un- 
 welcome duty of criticising Cfesar's " Bellum Civile," under 
 cover of some sentimental remarks about the difference be- 
 tween hope and fultilment in a great soul. Cicero was no 
 philosopher, in the highest sense of the term ; yet it is not cer-. 
 tain that he did not do some service to humanity by promul- 
 gating, in eloquent language, a pretty high and liberal morality, 
 which both modified monkish ethics, and, when monkish 
 ethics fell, and brought down Christian ethics in their fall, did 
 something to supply the void. The Orations, even the great 
 Philippic, I must confess I could never enjoy. But all ora- 
 tions, read long after their delivery, are like spent missiles- 
 wingless and cold : they retain the deformities of passion 
 without the fire. A speech embodying great principles 
 may live with the principles which it embodies ; otherwise 
 happy are the orators whose speeches are lost. The Letters it 
 is not so easy to give up, especially when we consider of how 
 many graceful and pleasant compositions of the same kind, 
 of how many self -revelations, wdiich have brought the hearts 
 of men nearer to each other, those letters have been the model. 
 That, however, which pleases most in Cicero is that he is, for 
 his age, a thoroughly and pre-eminently civilized man. He 
 hates gladiatorial shows; he despises even the tasteless pageantry 
 of the Roman theatre ; he heartily loves books ; he is saving 
 up all his earnings to buy a coveted library for his old age ; 
 he has a real enthusiasm for great writers ; he breaks through 
 national pride, and feels sincerely grateful to the Greeks as the 
 
:304 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME 
 
 -authors of civilization, rogues though he knew them to be in his 
 time ; he movu-ns, alljeit with an apology, over the death of a 
 slave; his slaves evidently are attached to him, and are faithful 
 to him at the hist ; he writes to his favourite freedman with all 
 the warmth of equal friendship. In his writings — in the " De 
 Legibus," for instance — 3'ou will find principles of humanity far 
 more comprehensive than those by which tiie policy of the empire 
 was moulded. His tastes were pure and lefined, and thoiigh he 
 multiplied his villas, and decorated them with cost and ele- 
 gance, it is certain that he was perfectly free alike from the 
 prodigal ostentation and from the debaucheiy of the time : 
 indeed his vast intellectual industry implies a temperate life. 
 For the game-preserving tendencies of the great oligarchs, he 
 had a hearty dislike and contempt ; in spite of the ill-looking, 
 though obscure, ejiisode of his divorce from his wife Terentia, 
 he was evidently a man of strong family afiections, the na- 
 tural adjuncts of moral purity; he is inconsolable for the 
 <leath of his daughter, spends days in melancholy wandering 
 in the woods, and finds consolation only in erecting a temple 
 to the beloved shade. His faults of character, both in private 
 and ]')ublic, are glaring, and the only thing to be said in excuse 
 of his vanity is that it is so frank, and says plainly, " Puff me,"' 
 not " Puff me not." As a political adventurer of the higher class, 
 ])ushing his way under an aristocratic government by his talents 
 and his training, received in course of time into the ranks of 
 the aristocracy, yet never one of them, he will bear comparison 
 with Burke. He resembles Bui'ke, too, in his relioious consti- 
 tutionalism and reverence for the wisdom of political ancestors : 
 and perhaps his hope of creating a party at once conservative 
 and reforming, by a combination of the moneyed interest with 
 the aristocracy, was not much more chimerical than Burke's 
 hope of creating a party at once conservative and reforming- 
 out of the materials of Whiggism. Each of the two men affected 
 a balanced, and in the literal sense, a trimming policy, as op- 
 posed to one of abstract principle, Burke, perhaps, from tem- 
 ]»erament, Cicero from necessity. Impeachments at Rome in 
 Cicero's time were no doubt the regular stepping-stones of ris- 
 ing politicians; nevertheless, the accuser of Yerres may fairly 
 be credited with some, at least, of the genuine sentiment 
 Avhich impelled the accuser of Warren Hastings. We must 
 couple with the Yerrines the admiraljle letter of the orator to 
 his brother Quintus on the government of a province, and his 
 own provincial administration, which, as was said before, appears 
 
THE LAST FEPUBLICANS OF ROME. 805 
 
 to have Ijeen excellent. Cicero rose, not as an adherent of the 
 aristocracy, but as their opponent, and the assailant, a bold as- 
 sailant, of the tyranny of Sulla. He was brought to the front 
 in ])olitics, as Sallust avers, by his merit, in spite of his 
 birth and social position, when the mortal peril of the Catili- 
 narian conspiracy was gathering round the state, and necessity 
 called for the man, and not the game-preserver. Misconduct 
 in that hour of supreme peril is ridiculously overpraised by him- 
 self. Not only so, but he begs a friend in plain terms to write 
 a history of it and to exaggerate. Now, it is denounced as 
 brutal tyranny and judicial murder. But those who hold this 
 language have new lights on the subject of Catiline. I confess 
 that on me these new lights have not dawned ; I still believe 
 Catiline to have been a terrible anarchist, coming forth from 
 the abyss of debauchery, ruin, and despair, which lay beneath 
 the great fortunes of Rome. The land of Csesar Bore^ia has 
 produced such men in more than one period of history. 
 The alleged illegality of the execution was made the stalk- 
 ing-horse of a party move, and scrupulous legality found a 
 champion and an avenger in Clodius. On his return from 
 exile, Cicero was received with the greatest enthusiasm by 
 the whole population of Italy, a fact which Dr. Mommsen 
 is inclined to explain away, but which we should, perhaps, 
 accept as the key to some other facts in Cicero's history. The 
 Italians were probably the most respectable of the political 
 elements, and it seems they not only looked up to their fellow- 
 provincial with pride, but saw in him a statesman who was 
 saving their homesteads from a reign of terror. That Cicero 
 had the general support of the Italians was quite enough to 
 make his adherence an object of serious consideration to 
 Ceesar, though Dr. Mommsen persists in interpolating into 
 the relations of the two men the contempt which he feels, and 
 which he fancies Caesar must have felt, for an advocate. 
 Surely, however, it is a mistake to think that oratory was 
 not even in those days a real power at Rome. Can a greater 
 platitude be conceived than railing at a statesman of antiquity 
 for having been a rhetorician ? Was not Pericles a rhetorician ? 
 Was not Caesar himself a rhetorician ? Did he not learn rhe- 
 toric from the same master as Cicero ? Some day we may be 
 ruled by political science ; but rhetoric was, at all events, an 
 improvement on mere force. The situation at Rome had now 
 become essentially military ; and Cicero having no military 
 force at his command could not really control the situation. 
 U 
 
30G THE LAST REPVBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 His attempts to control it exposed him to all the miscarriages 
 and all the indignities which such an attempt is sure to 
 entail. He was a vessel of earthenware, or rather of very 
 fragile porcelain, swimming among vessels of brass. Self-re- 
 spect would perhaps have prescribed retirement from public 
 life ; but, to say nothing of his egotism, he had done too 
 much to retire. Egotistical he was in the highest degree, and 
 that failing made all his humiliations doubl}^ ignominious ; but 
 still, I think, if you judge him candidly, you will see that he 
 really loved his country, and that his greatest object of desire 
 was, as he himself says, to live in the grateful memory of after- 
 times ; not the highest of all aims, but higher than that of the 
 political adventurer. When the civil war came, his perplexity 
 was painful, and he betrayed it with his usual want of reti- 
 cence. In that, as in other respects, his character is the direct 
 opposite of that of the " gloomy sporting man," whose ways 
 Louis Napoleon, it is said, avowed that he had studied during 
 his exile in England, and followed with profit as a conspirator 
 in France. Cicero and Cato knew too w^ell that Pompey had 
 " licked the sword of Sulla ;" but they knew also, by long ex- 
 perience of his political character, that he shrank from doing 
 the last violence to the constitution. On the other hand, 
 all men expected that Caesar, who had formerly given him- 
 self out as the political heir of Marius, who had restored 
 the trophies of Marius, and had undertaken the conquest 
 of Gaul, evidently as a continuation of the victories of Marius, 
 descending upon Ital}^ with an army partly consisting of bar- 
 barians and trained in the most ferocious warfare, would renew 
 the Marian reign of terror. This fear put all Italy at first on 
 Pompey's side. C?esar had not yet revealed his nobler and more 
 glorious self. Even Curio told Cicero, in an interview, the 
 object of which was to draw Cicero to the Caesarian side, that 
 Csesar's clemency was merely policy, not in his nature. The 
 best security against the bloody excesses of a victorious party 
 at that moment, undoubtedly, was the presence of Marcus Cato 
 in the camp of Pompey. After Pharsalus, Cicero submitted like 
 many men of sterner mould. This departure of the advocate 
 from the Pompeian camp is surrounded by Dr. Mommsen with 
 circumstances of ridicule, for which, on reference to what I 
 suppose to be the authorities, I can find no historical founda- 
 tion. The fiercer Pompeians very nearl}^ killed him for refusing 
 to stay and command them ; his life was in fact only saved by 
 the intrepid moderation of Cato : and this is surely not a proof 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 307 
 
 that they deemed his presence worthless. Once more, orators 
 were not ridiculous in the eyes of antiquity. Cicero accepted, 
 and, in a certain sense, served under the dictatorate of Ca?sar ; 
 though he afterwards rejoiced when it was overthrown, and the 
 constitution, the idol of his political worshij), was restored ; just 
 as we may suppose a French constitutionalist, not of stern 
 mould, yet not dishonest, accepting and serving under the 
 empire, yet rejoicing at the restoration of constitutional govern- 
 ment. In the interval, between the death of Caesar and Phi- 
 lippi, he M^as really the soul and the main support of the Res- 
 toration. I have said what I think of the Philippics ; but 
 there can be no doubt that they told, or that Brutus and 
 Cassius thought them, worth at least a legion. 
 
 Cicero met death with a physical courage, which there is no 
 reason to believe that he wanted in life. His cowardice was 
 political ; his fears were for his position and reputation. If 
 Cato survived in the tradition of public virtue, so did Cicero 
 in the tradition of culture, which saved the empire of the 
 Ca?sars from being an empire of Moguls. The culture of a 
 republic saved Ca?sar himself from being a mere Timur, and set 
 him after his victory to reforming calendars and endowing 
 science, instead of making pyramids of heads. Is it absurd to 
 suppose that the great soldier, who was also a great man of 
 letters, had more respect for intellect without military force 
 t han his literary admirers, and that he really wished to adorn 
 h s monarchy by allying to it the leading man of intellect of 
 the time ? 
 
 'Our accounts of Marcus Brutus are not very clear, Appian 
 confounds Marcus with Decimus ; and it appears not unlikely 
 that " Et tu Brute," if it was said at all, was said to Decimus, 
 who was a special favourite of Ctesar, and was named in his will. 
 Marcus seems to have been a man of worth after his fashion ; 
 a patriot of the narrow Roman type, reproduced in later days 
 by Fletcher of Saltoun, whose ideal republic was an oligarchy, 
 and who did not shrink from proposing to settle the proletariat 
 difficulty by making the common people slaves. This is quite 
 compatible with the fact revealed to us in the letters of Cicero, 
 that Brutus was implicated, through his agents, in the infamous 
 practice of lending money to provincials at exorbitant interest, 
 and abusing the power of the Imperial Governments to exact 
 the debt. One can imagine a West Indian slave-ownei-, 
 dealing with negroes through his agent according to the 
 established custom, and yet being a good citizen in England, 
 
308 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 Cicero, though he suffered from the imperious temper of 
 Brutus, speaks of him as one of those, the sight of whom 
 banished his fears and anxieties for the republic. That 
 the most famous and most terrible act of this man's life was 
 an act of republican fanaticism, not of seltish ambition, is 
 proved by his refusing, witli magnanimous imprudence, to make 
 all sure, as the more worldly spirits about him suggested, by 
 cutting off Antony and the other leading partisans of Caesar, 
 and by his permitting public honours to be done to the corpse 
 of the man whom he had immolated to civil duty. One almost 
 shrinks from speaking of the death of Ciesar ; so much modern 
 nonsense on both sides has been talked about this, the most 
 tragic, the most piteous, and at the same time the most inevit- 
 able event of ancient story. Peculiar phases of society have 
 their peculiar sentiments, with reference to which events 
 must be explained. The greased cartridges were the real 
 account of the Indian mutiny. Caesar was slain because 
 he had shown that he was going to assume the title of 
 king. Cicero speaks the literal truth, when he says: that 
 the real murderer was Antony, and the fatal day the day 
 of the Lupercalia, when Antony offered and Csesar faintly 
 put aside the crown. A dictator they would have borne, a 
 king they would not bear, neither then nor for ages after- 
 wards ; because the title of king to their minds spoke not of a 
 St. Louis, or an Edward I., or even a Louis XIV., but of the 
 unutterable degradation of the Oriental slave. To use a 
 homely image, if you put your leg in the way of a can- 
 non ball which seems spent, but is still rolling, you will 
 suffer by the experiment. This is exactly what C?esar, in 
 the giddiness of victory and supremacy, did, and the conse- 
 quence was as certain as it was deplorable. The republican sen- 
 timent seemed to him to have entirely lost its force, so that he 
 might spurn it with impunity ; whereas, it had in it still 
 enough of the momentum gathered through centuries of repub- 
 lican training and glory to destroy him, to restore the republic 
 for a brief period, and to make victory doubtful at Phillipi. 
 He began by celebrating a triumph over his fellow-citizens, 
 as^ainst the generous tradition of Rome : in that triumph he 
 displayed pictures of the tragic deaths of Cato and other Roman 
 chiefs, which disgusted even the populace ; he sported with the 
 curule ofhces, the immemorial objects of republican reverence, 
 so wantonly that he might almost as well have given a consul- 
 ship to his horse ; he flooded the Senate with soldiers and 
 
THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 309 
 
 barbarians ; he forced a Roman knight to appear upon the 
 stage : at hist, craving, as natures destitute of a high con- 
 trolling principle do crave, for the form as well as the sul- 
 stance of power, he put out his hand to grasp a crown. 
 The feeling on that subject was not only of terrible strength, 
 but was actually embodied in a law by which the state solemn- 
 ly armed the hand of the private citizen against any man who 
 should attempt to make himself a king. How completel}' 
 Cajsar's insight failed him is proved by the general acquies- 
 cence or apathy with which his fall was received, the subdued 
 tone in which even his warm friend Marius speaks of it, and 
 the readiness with which his own soldiers and officers served 
 under the restored republic. We have nothing to do here with 
 any problem of modern ethics respecting military usurpation 
 and tyrannicide, two things which must always stand together 
 in the court of morality. Tyrannicide, like suicide, was the 
 rule of the ancient world, and would have been acknowledged 
 by Ca3sar himself, before he grasped supreme power, as an 
 established duty. And certainly morality would stretch its 
 bounds to include anything really necessary to protect the 
 Greek and Italian republics, with the treasures which they 
 bore in them for humanity, from the barbarous lust of power 
 wdiich was always lying in wait to devour them. I have said 
 that the spirits of Cato and Cicero lived and worked after their 
 deaths. So I suspect did that of Brutus. The C?esars had no 
 God, no fear of public opinion at home, no general sentiment 
 of civilized nations to control their tyranny. They had only 
 the shadow of a hand armed with a dagger. One shrewd 
 observer of the times at least, if I mistake not, had profited by 
 the lesson of CcPsar's folly and fate. To the constitutional 
 demeanour and personal moderation of Augustus the world 
 owes an epoch of grandeur of a certain kind, and an example 
 of true dignity in the use of power. And Augustus, I suspect, 
 had studied his part at the foot of Pompey's statue. 
 
 Plutarch parallels Cato with Phocion, Demosthenes with 
 Cicero, Brutus with Dion — the Dion whose history inspired the 
 poem of Wordsworth. Greek republicanism, too, had its fatal 
 hour ; but we do not pour scorn and contumely on those who 
 strove to prolong the life of Athens beyond the term assigned 
 by fate. The case of Athens, a single independent state, was 
 no doubt different from that of Rome with so many subject 
 nations under her sway. Still in each case there was the com- 
 monwealth, standing in glorious contrast to the barbarous des- 
 
310 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME. 
 
 potisms of other nations, the highest social and political state 
 which humanity had known, or for ages afterwards was to 
 know. And this light of civilization was, so far as the last 
 republicans could see, not only to be eclipsed for a time, or put 
 out, as now, in a single nation, while it burns on in others, but 
 to be swallowed up in hopeless night. 
 
 Mr. Charles Norton, in the notes to his recent translation of 
 the "Vita Nuova," of Dante, quotes a decree made by the 
 commonwealth of Florence for the building of the cathedral : 
 
 " Whereas it is the highest interest of a people of illustrious 
 " origin so to proceed in their aifairs that men may perceive 
 " from their external works that their doings are at once wise 
 " and magnanimous ; it is therefore ordered that Arnulf, archi- 
 " tect of our commune, prepare the model or design for the re- 
 " building of Santa Reparata with such supreme and lavish 
 " magnificence, that neither the industry nor the capacity of 
 " man shall be able to devise anything more grand or more 
 " beautiful ; inasmuch as the most judicious in this city have 
 " pronounced the opinion, in public and private conferences, 
 " that no work of the commune should be undertaken unless- 
 " the design be such as to make it correspond with a heart 
 " which is of the greatest nature, because composed of he 
 " spirit of many citizens united together in one single will."* 
 
 Let Imperialism, legitimist or democratic, match that ! Flo- 
 rence, too, had her political vices, many and grave ; she tyran- 
 nized over Pisa and other dependants ; there was faction in her 
 councils ; anarchy, bloody anarchy, in her streets ; for her, too, 
 the hour of doom arrived, and the conspiracy of the Pazzi was 
 as much an anachronism as that of the republicans who slew 
 Caesar. But Florence had that heart composed of the united 
 spirits of many citizens, out of which came all that the world 
 adnnres and loves in the works of the Florentine. She pro- 
 duced, though she exiled, Dante. That which followed was. 
 more tranquil, more orderly, perhaps, materially speaking, not 
 less happy ; but it had no heart at all. 
 
 * In his later and very valuable work on Church Building in the Middle Ages,. 
 Mr. Norton casts doubt on the authenticity of tlie decree. It is genuine, at all 
 events, as an expression of Florentine sentiment, if not as an extract from the 
 archives. 
 
AUSTEN LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JAKE AUSTEN. 311 
 
 AUSTEN-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN * 
 
 The walls of our cities were placarded, the other day, with 
 an advertisement of a new sensational novel, the flaring wood- 
 cut of which represented a girl tied down upon a table, and a 
 villain preparing to cut off her feet. If this were the general 
 taste, there would be no use in talking about Jane Austen. 
 But if you ask at the libraries you will find that her works are 
 still taken out ; so that there must still be a faithful few who, 
 like ourselves, will have welcomed the announcement of a 
 Memoir of the authoress of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield 
 Park," and "Emma." 
 
 If Jane Austen's train of admirers has not been so large as 
 those of many other novelists, it has been first-rate in quality. 
 She has been praised — we should rather say, loved by all, from 
 Walter Scott to Guizot, whose love was the truest fame. Her 
 name has often been coupled with that of Shakespeare, to whom 
 Macaulay places her second in the nice discrimination of shades 
 of character. The ditference between the two minds in degree 
 is, of course, immense ; but both belong to the same rare kind. 
 Both are really creative ; both purely artistic ; both have the 
 marvellous power of endowing the products of their imagina- 
 tion with a life, as it were, apart from their own. Each holds 
 up a perfectly clear and undistorting mirror — Shakespeare to 
 the moral universe, Jane Austen to the little world in which 
 she lived. In the case of neither does the personality of the 
 author ever come between the spectator and the drama. Vul- 
 gar criticism calls Jane Austen's work Dutch painting. Minia- 
 ture painting would be nearer the truth : she speaks of herself 
 as working with a fine brush on a piece of ivory two inches 
 wnde. Dutch painting implies the selection of subjects in them- 
 selves low and uninteresting, for the purpose of displaying the 
 skill of a painter, who can interest by the mere excellence of his 
 imitation. Jane Austen lived in the society of English country 
 gentlemen and their families as they were in the last cen- 
 tury — a society affluent, comfortable, domestic, rather mono- 
 tonous, without the interest which attaches to the struggles of 
 
 * " A Memoir of .Tane Austen. By her nephew. .F. E, Austen-Leigh, Vicar of 
 Bray, Berks." London : Richard Bentley ; New York : Scribner, Welford & Co. 
 
312 AUSTEK-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 
 
 labour, without tragic events or figures, seldom, in fact, rising 
 dramatically above the level of sentimental comedy, but pre- 
 senting, nevertheless, its varieties of character, its vicissitudes, 
 its moral lessons — in a word, its humanity. She has painted 
 it as it was, in all its features, the most tragic as well as the 
 most comic, avoiding only melodrama. " In all the important 
 preparations of the mind, she (Miss Bertram) was complete ; 
 being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint, 
 and tranquillity ; by the misery of disappointed affection and 
 contempt of the man she was to marry : the rest might wait." 
 This is not the touch of Gerard Douw. An undertone of irony, 
 never obtrusive but everywhere perceptible, shows that the 
 artist herself knew very well that she was not painting gods 
 and Titans, and keeps everything on the right level. 
 
 Jane Austen, then, w^as worthy of a memoir. But it was al- 
 most too late to write one. Like Shakespeare, she was too 
 artistic to be autobiographic. She was never brought into con- 
 tact with men of letters, and her own fame was almost post- 
 humous, so that nobody took notes. She had been fift}'- 
 years in her grave when her nephew, the E.ev. J. E. Austen- 
 Leigh, the youngest of the mourners who attended her funeral, 
 undertook to make a volume of his own recollections, those of 
 one or two other surviving relatives, and a few letters. Of 
 230 pages, in large print, and with a margin the vastness of 
 which requires to be relieved by a I'ed rubric, not above a third 
 is really biography ; the rest is genealogy, description of places, 
 manners, and customs, critical disquisition, testimonies of ad- 
 mirers. Still, thanks to the real capacity of the biographer, 
 and to the strong impression left by a character of remarkable 
 beauty on his mind, we catch a pretty perfect though faint out- 
 line of the figure which was just hovering on the verge of 
 memoiy, and in a few years more would, like the figure of 
 Shakespeare, have been swallowed up in night. 
 
 Jane Austen was the flower of a stock, full, apparently, 
 through all its branches, of shrewd sense and caustic humour, 
 which in her were combined with the creative imagination. 
 She was born in 1775, at Steventon, in Hampshire, a country 
 parish, of wdiich her father was the rector. A village of cottages 
 at the foot of a gentle slope, an old church with its coeval yew, 
 an old manor-house, an old parsonage all surrounded by tall 
 elms, gi'een meadows, hedgerows full of primroses and wdld 
 hyacinths — such was the scene in which Jane Austen grew. It 
 is the picture which rises in the mind of every Englishman 
 
AUSTEK-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 313 
 
 when he thinks of his country. Around dwelt the gentry, 
 more numerous and, if coarser and duller, more home-loving 
 and less like pachas than they are now, when the smaller 
 squires and yeomen have been swallowed up in the growing 
 lordships of a few grandees who spend more than half their 
 time in Loudon or in other seats of politics or pleasure. Not 
 far off was a country town, a " Meriton," the central gossi ping- 
 place of the neighbourhood, and the abode of the semi-genteel. 
 If a gentleman like Mr. Woodhouse lives equivocally close to 
 the town, his "place" is distinguished by a separate name. 
 There was no resident squire at Steventon, the old manor-house 
 being let to a tenant, so that Jane's father was at once parson 
 and squire. " That house (Edmund Bertram's parsonage) may 
 receive such an air as to make its owner be set down as the 
 great landowner of the parish by every creature travelling the 
 road, especially as there is no real squire's house to dispute the 
 point, a circumstance, between ourselves, to enhance the value 
 of such a situation in point of privilege and advantage beyond 
 all calculation." Her father having from old age resigned 
 Steventon when Jane was six and twenty, she afterwards lived 
 for a time with her family at Bath, a great watering-place, and 
 the scene of the first part of " Northanger Abbey ; " at Lyme^ a 
 pretty little sea-bathing place on the coast of Dorset, on the 
 " Cobb" of which takes place the catastrophe of " Persuasion;" 
 and at Southampton, now a great port, then a special seat of 
 gentility. Finally, she found a second home with her widowed 
 mother and her sister at Chawton, another village in Hamp- 
 shire. 
 
 " In person," says Jane's biogi*apher, " she was very attract- 
 ive. Her figure was rather tall and slender, her step light and 
 firm, and her whole appearance expressive of health and anima- 
 tion. In complexion, she was a clear brunette, with a rich 
 colour; she had full round cheeks, with mouth and nose small 
 and well formed ; bright hazel eyes (it is a touch of the woman, 
 then, when Emma is desciibed as having the true hazel eye), and 
 brownhair forming natural curls close roundher face." The sweet- 
 ness and playfulness of " Dear Aunt Jane " are fresh after so 
 many years in the memories of her nephew and nieces, who also 
 strongly attest the sound sense and sterling excellence of char- 
 acter which lay beneath. She was a special favourite with 
 children, for whom she delighted to exercise her talent in im- 
 provising fairy-tales. Unknown to fame, uncaressed save by 
 family affection, and, therefore, unspoilt, while writing was her 
 
314 A VSTEK-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JAKE A USTEK, 
 
 delight, she kept it in complete subordination to the duties of 
 life, which she performed with exemplary conscientiousness in 
 the house of mourning as well as in the house of feasting. Even 
 her needlework was superfine. We doubt not that, if the truth 
 was known, she was a good cook. 
 
 She calls herself " the most unlearned and uninformed female 
 who ever dared to be an authoress ; " but this is a nominal 
 tribute to the jealousy of female erudition which then prevailed, 
 and at which she sometimes olances, though hei'self verv far 
 from desiring a masculine education for women. In fact, she 
 was well versed in English literature, read French with ease, 
 and knew somethino- of Italian — German was not thought of 
 in those days. She had a sweet voice, and sang to her own 
 accompaniment simple old songs which still linger in her 
 nephew's ear. Her favourite authors were Johnson, whose 
 strong sense was congenial to her, while she happily did not 
 allow him to infect her pure and easy style, Cowper, Richard- 
 son and Crabbe. She said that, if she married at all, she should 
 like to be Mrs. Crabbe. And besides Crabbe's general influence, 
 which is obvious, we often see his special touch in her writings : 
 
 "Emma's spirits were mounted up quite to happiness. Everj-thing 
 wore a different air. James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as 
 before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least 
 must soon be coming out ; and, when she turned round to Harriet, she 
 saw something like a look of spring — a tender smile even there." 
 
 Jane was supremely happ}' in her family relations, especially 
 in the love of her elder sister, Cassandra, from whom she was 
 inseparable. Of her four brothers, two were officers in the 
 Royal Navy. How she watched their career, how she welcomed 
 them home from the perils not only of the sea but of war (for 
 it was the time of the great war with France), she has told us 
 in painting the rece])tion of William Price b}' his sister Fanny, 
 in " Mansfield Park." It is there that she compares conjugal 
 and fraternal love, giving the preference in one respect to the 
 latter, because with brothers and sisters " all the evil and good 
 of the earliest years can be gone over again, and every former 
 united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection: 
 an advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the 
 conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal." It was, perhaps, because 
 she was so happy in the love of her brothers and sisters, as well 
 as because she was wedded to literature, that she was content, 
 in spite of her good looks, to assume the s^'mbolic cap of per- 
 petual maidenhood at an unusually early age. 
 
AUSTEN-LEIGE'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 315 
 
 Thus she grew in a spot as sunny, as sheltered, and as holy as 
 do the violets which her biographer tells us abound beneath the 
 south wall of Steventon church. It was impossible that she 
 should have the experiences of Miss Bronte or Madame Sand ; 
 and without some experience the most vivid imagination can- 
 not act, or can act only in the production of mere chimeras. 
 To forestall Miss Braddon in the art of criminal phantasmagoria 
 might have been within Jane's power by the aid of strong green 
 tea, but would obviously have been repugnant to her nature. 
 We must not ask her, then, for the emotions and excitements 
 which she could not possibly afford. The character of Emma 
 is called commonplace. It is commonplace in the sense in which 
 the same term might be applied to any normal beauty of nature 
 — to a well-grown tree or to a perfectly developed flower. She 
 is, as Mr. Weston says, " the picture of grown-up health." 
 " There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her 
 gait, her glance." She has been brought up like Jane Austen 
 herself, in a pure English household, among loving relations 
 and good old servants. Her feet have been in the path of do- 
 mestic and neighbourly duty, quiet as the path which leads to 
 the village church. It has been impossible for strong tempta- 
 tions or fierce passions to come near her. Yet men accustomed 
 to the most exciting struggles, to the most powerful emotions 
 of parliamentar}^ life, have found an interest, equal to the 
 greatest ever created by a sensation novel, in the little scrapes 
 and adventures into which her weakness betrays her, and in 
 the process by wliich her heart is gradually drawn away from 
 objects apparently more attractive to the robust nature in 
 union with which she is destined to find strength as well as 
 happiness. 
 
 With more justice may Jane Austen be reproached with 
 having been too much influenced by the prejudices of the some- 
 what narrow and somewhat vulgarly aristocratic, or ratherpluto- 
 cratic, society in which she lived. Her irony and her complete 
 dramatic impersonality render it difficult to see how far this 
 goes ; but certainly it goes further than we could wish. De- 
 cidedly she believes in gentility, and in its intimate con- 
 necticn with affluence and good family ; in its incompatibility 
 with an}^ but certain very refined and privileged kinds of labour; 
 in the impossibility of finding a gentleman in a trader, much 
 more in a yeoman or mechanic. " The yeomanry are pre- 
 cisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing- 
 to do; a degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance, might 
 
316 AUSTEK-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 
 
 interest me ; I niiglit hope to be useful to their families in some 
 way or other ; but a farmer can need none of my help, and is, 
 therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice as in every 
 other he is below it." This is said by Emma — by Emma when 
 she is trying to deter her friend from marrying a yeoman, it is 
 true, but still by Emma. The picture of the coarseness of 
 poverty in the household of Fanny's parents in " Mansfield 
 Park" is truth, but it is hard truth, and needs some counter- 
 poise. Both in the case of Fanny Price and in that of Frank 
 Churchill, the entire separation of a child from its own home 
 for the sake of the worldly advantages furnished by an adopt- 
 ive home of a superior class, is presented too much as a part of 
 the order of nature. The charge of acquiescence in the low 
 standard of clerical duty prevalent in the Establishment of that 
 day is well founded, though perhaps not of much importance. 
 Of more importance is the charge which might be made, with 
 equal justice, of acquiescence in somewhat low and coarse ideas 
 of the relations between the sexes, and of the destinies and 
 proper aspirations of young women. " Mr. Collins, to be sure, 
 was neither sensible nor agreeable ; his society was irksome, 
 and his attachment to her must be imaginary; but still he would 
 be her husl)and. Without thinking highly either of men or 
 matrimony, marriage had always been her object ; it was the 
 only honourable provision for well-educated young women of 
 small fortune ; and, however uncertain of giving happiness, 
 must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This pre- 
 servative she had now attained ; and at the age of twenty- 
 seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the 
 good-luck of it." This reflection is ascribed to Charlotte Lucas, 
 an inferior character, but still thought worthy to be the hero- 
 ine's bosom friend. 
 
 Jane's first essays in composition were burlesques on the 
 fashionable manners of the day ; whence grew " Northanger 
 Abbey," with its anti-heroine, Catharine Morley, " roving and 
 wild, hating constraint and cleanliness, and loving nothing so 
 much as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house," 
 and with its exquisite travestie of the " Mysteries of Udolpho." 
 But she soon felt her higher power. Marvellous to say, she be- 
 gan " Pride and Prejudice" in 1796, before she was twenty-one 
 years old, and completed it in the following year. " Sense and 
 Sensibility " and " Northanger Abbey " immediately followed ; 
 it appears, with regard to the latter, that she had already 
 visited Bath, though it was not till afterwards that she resided 
 
A USTEN-LEIGETS MEMOIR OF JANE A USTEN. 317 
 
 there. But she published nothing — not only so, but it seeni.s 
 that she entirely suspended composition — till 1809, when her 
 family settled at Chawton. Here she revised for the press what 
 she had written, and wrote " Mansfield Park," " Emma." and 
 " Persuasion." " Persuasion," whatever her nephew and bio- 
 grapher may say, and however Dr. Whewell may have fired up 
 at the suggestion, betrays an enfeeblement of her faculties, and 
 tells of approaching death. But we still see in it the genuine 
 creative power multiplying new characters ; whereas novelists 
 who are not creative, when they have exhausted their original 
 fund of observations, are forced to subsist by exaggeration of 
 their old characters, by aggravated extravagances of plot, by 
 multiplied adulteries and increased carnage. 
 
 " Pride and Prejudice," when first olf'ered to Cadell, was de- 
 clined by return of post. The fate of " Northanger Abbey " 
 was still more ignominious : it was sold for ten pounds to a 
 Bath publisher, who, after keeping it many years in his drawer, 
 was very glad to return it and get back his ten pounds. No 
 burst of applause greeted the works of Jane Austen like that 
 which greeted the far inferior works of Miss Burney. Grevit 
 occulto velut arbor cvvo fama. A few years ago, the verger of 
 Winchester cathedral asked a visitor who desired to be shown 
 her tomb, " what there was so particular about that lady that 
 so many people wanted to see where she was buried ? " Never- 
 theless, she lived to feel that " her own dear children " were 
 appreciated, if not by the vergers, 3'et in the right quarters, and 
 to enjoy a quiet pleasure in the consciousness of her success. 
 One tribute she received which was overwhelming. It was in- 
 timated to her by authority that His Royal Highness, the Prince 
 Regent, had read her novels with pleasure, and that she was at 
 liberty to dedicate the next to him. More than this, the Royal 
 Librarian, Mr. Clarke, of his own motion apparently, did her 
 the honour to suggest that, changing her style for a higher, she 
 should write " a historical romance in illustration of the august 
 house of Cobourg," and dedicate it to Prince Leopold. She an- 
 swered in effect that, if her life depended on it, she could not 
 be serious for a whole chapter. Let it be said, however, for the 
 Prince Regent, that underneath his royalty and his sybaritism, 
 there was, at first, something of a better and higher nature, 
 which at last was entirely stifled by them. His love for Mrs. 
 Fitzherbert was not merely sensual, and Heliogabalus would 
 not have been amused by the novels of Miss Austen. 
 
 Jane was never the authoress but when she was writing her 
 novels ; and in the few letters with which this memoir is en- 
 
318 AUSTEN-LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 
 
 riched there is nothing of point or literary effort, and very little 
 of special interest. We find, however, some pleasant and char- 
 acteristic touches. 
 
 " Charles has received £30 for his share of the privateer, and expects 
 £10 more ; but of what avail is it to take prizes if ho lays out the produce 
 in presents to liis sisters ? He has l)een buying gold chains and topaz 
 crosses for us. He must be well scolded." 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Stent ! It has been her lot to be always in the way ; but 
 we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs. Stents 
 ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody." 
 
 " We (herself and Miss A.) afterwards walked together for an hour on 
 the Cobb ; she is very conversable in a common way ; I do not perceive 
 wit or genius , but she has sense and some degree of taste, and her man- 
 ners are very engaging. She seems to like people rather too easily." 
 
 Of her own works, or rather of the characters of her own 
 creation, her Elizabeths and Emmas, Jane speaks literally as a 
 parent. They are her " dear children." " I must confess that 
 I think her (Elizabeth) as delightful a creature as ever appeared 
 in print, and hov/ I shall be able to tolerate those who do not 
 like her at least I do not know." This is said in pure play- 
 fulness ; there is nothino,' in the letters like real egotism or 
 impatience of censure. 
 
 At the age of forty-two, in the prime of intellectual life, with 
 " Emma " just out and " Northanger Abbey " coming, and in 
 the midst of domestic affection and happiness, life must have 
 been sweet to Jane Austen, She resigned it, nevertheless, with 
 touching tranquillity and meekness. In 181G, it appears, she 
 felt her inward malady, and began to go round her old haunts 
 in a manner which seemed to indicate that she was bidding 
 them farewell. In the next year, she was brought for medical 
 advice to a house in the Close of Winchester, and there, sur- 
 rounded to the last by affection and to the last ardently return- 
 ing it, she died. Her last words were her answer to the ques- 
 tion whether there was anything she wanted — " Noticing hut 
 death." Those who expect religious language in season and 
 out of season have inferred from the absence of it in Jane 
 Austen's novels that she was indifferent to religion. The testi- 
 mony of her nephew is positive to the contrary; and he is a 
 man whose word may be believed. 
 
 Those who died in the Close were buried in the cathedral. 
 It is therefore by mere accident that Jane Austen rests among 
 princes and princely prelates in that gloiious and historic fane. 
 But she deserves at least her " slab of black marble in the pave- 
 
AUSTEN-LElGirS MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN. 319 
 
 incnt " there. She possessed a real and rare gift, and she ren- 
 dered a good account of it. If the censer which she held amon<^'- 
 the priests of art was not of the costliest, the incense was of 
 the purest. If she cannot be ranked with the very greatest 
 masters of fiction, she has delighted many, and none can draw 
 from her any but innocent delight. 
 
320 FATTJSON'S MILTON. 
 
 PATTISON'S MILTON.* 
 
 John Bright once asked a friend who was the greatest of 
 Englishmen ; and, the friend hesitating, answered his own ques- 
 tion by saying, " Milton, because he, above all others, combined 
 the greatness of the writer with the greatness of the citizen." 
 Professor Masson in his " Life and Times of Milton," has em- 
 bodied the conception of the character indicated by this remark ; 
 but he has run into the extreme of incorporating a complete 
 narrative of the Revolution with the biography of Milton, so that 
 the historical portion of the work overlays instead of illuminat- 
 ing the biographical, and the chapters devoted specially to the 
 life seem to the reader interpolations, and not always welcome 
 interpolations, in an intensely interesting history of the times. 
 But now comes a biographer in whose eyes the life of Milton 
 the citizen is a mere " episode," and not only a mere episode, 
 but a lamentable and humiliating episode, in the life of Milton 
 the poet. " Milton's life," says Mr. Pattison, " is a drama in 
 three acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful 
 retirement of Horton, of which ' L' Allegro,' ' II Penseroso,' and 
 ' Lycidas ' are the expression. In the second act he is breath- 
 ing the foul and heated atmosphere of party passion and relig- 
 ious hate, generating the lurid tires which glare in the battailous 
 canticles of his pi-ose pamphlets. The three great poems — 
 ' Paradise Lost,' ' Paradise Regained,' and ' Samson Agonistes ' 
 — are the utterance of his final period of solitary and Prome- 
 thean grandeur, when, blind, destitute, friendless, he testified 
 of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, alone 
 before a fallen world." As to the struggle to which Milton, 
 with Cromwell, Vane, Pym, Hampden, Selden, and Chilling- 
 worth, gave his life, it is, in the eyes of his present biographer, 
 an ignoble " fray," a " biblical brawl," and its fruits in the way 
 of theological discussion aie nothino- but " oarbafje." To write 
 his " Defence of the English People " Milton deliberately sacri- 
 ficed his eyesight, his doctoi' having warned him that he would 
 lose his one remaining eye if he persisted in using it for book 
 
 _ * "English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley. Milton. By Mark Pat- 
 tison, B D. , Hector of I-incoln College, O.xford." London: Macmillan ; New 
 York : Harper & Bros. 1879. 
 
PATTISON'S MILTON. 321 
 
 work. " The choice lay before me," he says, " between dere- 
 liction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight. In such a case 
 I could not listen to the physician, not if ^sculapius himself 
 had spoken from his sanctuary ; I could not but obey that in- 
 ward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from Heaven. 
 I considered with myself that many had purchased less good 
 with worse ill, as they who gave their lives to reap only glory, 
 and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eye- 
 sight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the 
 common weal it was in my power to render." Mr. Pattison 
 has quoted this passage, and no doubt he silently appreciates 
 the heroism which breathes through it ; but the " supreme 
 duty " of which it speaks appears to him only a " prostitution 
 of faculties " and a " poor delusicm." Milton, he thinks, ought 
 to have kept entirely aloof from the brawl and remained quiet 
 either in the intellectual circles of Italy or in the delicious se- 
 clusion of his library at Horton, leaving liberty, truth, and 
 righteousness to drown or to be saved from drowning by other 
 hands than his. In " plunging into the fray " the poet miser- 
 ably derogated from his superior position as a literary man, 
 and the result was a dead loss to him and to the world. We 
 are sure that we do not state Mr. Pattison's view more strongly 
 than it is stated in his own pages. 
 
 The views of all of us, including Professor Masson, on such 
 a question are sure to be more or less idiosyncratic, and those 
 of the present biographer have not escaped the general liability. 
 They seem, at least, aptly to represent a mood prevalent just 
 now among eminent men of the literary class in England, particu- 
 larly at the universities. These men have been tossed on the 
 waves of Ritualism, tossed on the waves of the reaction from 
 Ritualism ; some of them have been personally battered in both 
 controversies ; they have attained no certainty, but rather ar- 
 rived at the conclusion that no certainty is attainable ; they are 
 weary and disgusted ; such of them as have been enthusiasts 
 in politics have been stripped of their illusions in that line also, 
 and have fallen back on the conviction that everything must 
 be left to evolve itself, and that there is nothing to be done. 
 They have withdrawn into the sanctuary of critical learning 
 and serene art, abjuring all theology and politics, and, above 
 all, abjuring controversy of all kinds as utterly vulgar and de- 
 grading, though, as might be expected, they are sometimes 
 controversial and even rather tart in an indirect way, and with- 
 out being conscious of it themselves. Mr. Pattison's air when 
 W 
 
322 PATTISON'S MILTOK. 
 
 lie comes into contact with the politics or theology of Milton's 
 days is like that of a very seasick j^assenger at the sight of a 
 pork-chop. Nor does he fail to reflect the Necessarianism of 
 the circle. "That in selecting a scriptural subject," he says, 
 '■ Milton was not, in fact, exercising any choice, but was deter- 
 mined by his circumstances, is only w^hat must be said of all 
 choosing." Criticism fastidiousl}^ erudite, a study of art relig- 
 iously and almost mystically profound, are fruits of this intel- 
 lectual seclusion of chosen spirits from the coarse and ruffling 
 world for which that world has reason to be grateful. It is 
 not likely Milton would have chosen a writer of this school as 
 his biographer; but few men would choose their own biographers 
 well. 
 
 Milton has, at all events, found in Mr. Pattison a biographer 
 whose narrative is throughout extremely pleasant, interesting, 
 and piquant ; the picjuancy being enhanced for those who have 
 the key to certain sly hits, such as that at " the peculiar form 
 of credulity w^hich makes perverts (to Roman Catholicism) 
 think that everyone is about to follow their example," which 
 carries us back to the time when the head of Tractarianism, 
 lixving gone over to Rome, was waiting anxiously, but in vain, 
 for the tail to join it. The facts had already been collected by 
 the diligence of Piofessor Masson, but Mr. Pattison uses them 
 in a style w^hich places beyond a doubt his own familiarity 
 with the subject. Through the moral judgments there runs, 
 as w^e think, and as we should have expected, a somewhat lofty 
 conception of the privileges of intellect and of the value of lit- 
 e -ary objects compared with others; but with this qualifica- 
 tion the reflections will probably be deemed sensible and sound. 
 The unfortunate relations between Milton and his first wife are 
 treated, as we think all readers will say, at once with delicacy 
 and justice. The literary criticisms are of a high order, and such 
 as only comprehensive learning combined wdth trained taste 
 CO lid produce ; whether you entirely enter into all of them or 
 n )t (and criticism has not yet been reduced to a certain rule), 
 y ;u cannot fail to gain from them increase of insight and enjoy- 
 ment. They ai'e often expressed in language of great beauty : 
 
 " The rapid purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by com- 
 paring ' L'Allegro ' and ' II Penseroso ' of uncertain date but written after 
 1032, with the ' Ode on the Nativity,' written 1G29. The Ode, notwith- 
 standing its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits, 
 from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written 
 in winter within the four walls of a college-chamber. The two idyls breathe 
 the free air of spring and summer and of the fields around Horton. They 
 
J'ATTISON'S MILTOX. 323 
 
 are thoroughly naturalistic ; the choicest expression our languagi has yet 
 found of the first charm of country life, not as that life is lived by the 
 peasant, but as it is felt by a young and lettered student, issuing at early 
 dawn or at sunset into the fields frura his chamber and his books. All 
 rural si^'hts and sounds and smells are here blended in that inefiable com- 
 bination which once or twice perliaps in our lives has saluted our young 
 senses, before their perceptions were blunted by alcohol, by lust or am- 
 bition, or diluted by the social distractions of great cities." 
 
 This will not be found to be a 'purpureus pannus. Nor 
 does it much detract from the grace of the work that of the 
 *" asyntactic disorder " of which Mr. Pattison accuses Milton's 
 prose, some examples nlay be found in his own. Gram- 
 matical irregularities in a really good writer, as iVtr. Pattison 
 undoubtedly is, often prove merely that his mind is more intent 
 on the matter than on the form. 
 
 "Paradise Lost " is the subject of a learned, luminous, and to 
 us very instructive dissertation. It is truly said that of the ad- 
 verse criticism which we meet with on the poem " much resolves 
 itself into a refusal on the part of the critic to make that initial 
 abandonment to the conditions which the poet demands : a de- 
 termination to insist that liis heaven, peopled with deities, 
 dominations, pi'incipalities, and powers, shall have the same 
 material laws which govern our planetary system." There is 
 one criticism, however, which cannot be so resolved, and on 
 which, as it appears to us the most serious of all, we should 
 have liked very much to hear Mr. Pattison. It is said that 
 Lord Thurlow and another lawyer were crossing Hounslow 
 Heath in a post-chaise when a tremendous thunder-storm came 
 •on ; that the other lawyer said that it reminded him of the 
 battle in " Paradise Lost " between the devil and the angels ; 
 and that Thurlow roared, with a blasphemous oath, " Yes, and 
 I wish the devil had won." Persons desirous of sustaining 
 the religious reputation of the legal profession add that his 
 companion jumped out of the chaise in the rain and ran away 
 over the heath. For our part, we have never found nearly so 
 much difficulty in any of the incongruities connected with the 
 relations between spirit and matter, or in any confusion of the 
 Oopernican with the Ptolemaic system, as in the constant 
 wrenching of our moral sympathies, which the poet demands 
 for the Powers of Good, but which his own delineation of Satan, 
 as a hero waging a Promethean war against Omnipotence, com- 
 pels us to give to the Powers of Evil. Perhaps a word or two 
 might have been said about the relations of " Paradise Lost " 
 to other " epics." It manifestly belongs not to the same class 
 
324 PA TTl SON'S MILTON. 
 
 of poems as the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," or even the- 
 " vEneid." Dobson's Latin translation of it is about the greatest 
 feat ever performed in modern Latin verse, and it shows by a 
 crucial experiment how little Milton really has in common, 
 with Virgil. " Paradise Lost " seems to us far more akin to th& 
 Greek tragedy than to the Homeric poems or the " JEneid." In 
 the form of a Greek drama it was first conceived. Its verse is- 
 the counterpart of the Greek iambic, not of the Greek or Latin 
 hexameter. Had the laborious Dobson turned it into Greek 
 iambics instead of turning it into Latin hexameters, we suspect 
 the real affinity would have appeared. 
 
 Looking upon the life of Milton the politician merely as a 
 sad and ignominious interlude in the life of Milton the poet, 
 Mr. Pattison cannot be expected to entertain the idea that the 
 poem is in any sense the work of the politician. Yet we can- 
 not help thinking that the tension and elevation which Milton's 
 nature had undergone in the mighty struggle, together with 
 the heroic dedication of his faculties to the most serious objects,, 
 must have had not a little to do both with the final choice of 
 his subject and with the tone of his poem. " The great Puritan, 
 epic " could hardly have been written by any one but a mili- 
 tant Puritan. Had Milton abjured the service of his cause, as 
 his biographer would have had him do, he might have given 
 us an Arthurian romance or some other poem of amusement. 
 We even think it not impossible that he might have never 
 produced a great poem at all, but have let life slip away in 
 elaborate preparation without being able to fix upon a theme 
 or brace himself to the effort of composition. If Milton's par- 
 ticipation in a political battle fought to save at once the 
 political and spiritual life of England was degrading, Dante's- 
 participation in the faction fight b^.tween the Guelphs and 
 Ghibellines must have been still more so ; yet if Dante had been. 
 a mere man of leisure would he have written the " Divina Com- 
 media " ? Who are these sublime artists in poetry that are 
 pinnacled so high above the " frays " and " brawls " of vulgar 
 humanity ? The best of them, we suppose (writers for the 
 stage being out of the question) is Goethe. Shelley, Words- 
 worth, and Byron were all distinctly poets of the Revolution, or 
 of the Counter-Revolution and if you could remove from them 
 the political element, you would rob them of half their force and 
 interest. The great growths of poetry have coincided with the 
 great bursts of national life, and the great bursts of national life 
 have hitherto been generally periods of controversy and struggle. 
 
PATTISOK'S MILTON. 325 
 
 Art itself, in its highest forms, has been the expression of faith. 
 We have now people who profess to cultivate art as art for its own 
 sake ; but they have hardly produced anything which the world 
 accepts as great, though they have supplied some subjects for 
 Punch. " He that loseth his life shall preserve it." Milton was 
 ready to lose his literary life by sacrificing the remains of his eye- 
 ,sight to a cause which, upon the whole, humanity has accepted as 
 its own ; and it was preserved to him in a work which will never 
 die. Mr.Pattison points to a short poem written by Milton when 
 his pen was chiefly employed in serving the Commonwealth 
 as indication that Milton " did not inwardly forfeit the peace 
 which passeth all understanding." Why should a man forfeit 
 that peace when he is doing with his whole soul that which he 
 conscientiously believes to be his highest duty ? 
 
 Over Milton's pamphlets Mr. Pattison can of course only 
 wring his hands. He is at liberty to wring his hands as much 
 as he pleases over the personalities which sullied the contro- 
 versy with Salmasius ; but these are a small part of the matter, 
 particularly when they are viewed in connection with the 
 habits of a time which was at once much rougher in phrase, 
 though perhaps not more malicious, than ours, and given to 
 servile imitation of Greek and Latin orator}^ To point his 
 moral more keenly Mr. Pattison denies that Milton was ever 
 effective as a political writer. Yet the Council of State, who 
 can have looked to nothing but effectiveness, and were pretty 
 good judges of it, specially invited Milton to answer " Eikon 
 Basilike " and to plead the cause of the Regicide Republic 
 against Salmasius in the court of European opinion. Mr. Pat- 
 tison himself (p. 135) allows that on the Continent Milton was 
 renowned as the answerer of Salmasius and the vindicator of 
 liberty ; and he proceeds to quote the statement of Milton's 
 nephew that learned foreigners could not leave London without 
 seeing his uncle. But the biographer has evidently laid down 
 beforehand in his own mind general laws which are fatal to all 
 pamphlets as pamphlets, without consideration of their particu- 
 lar merits. " There are," he says, " examples of thought having 
 been influenced by books. But such books have been scientific, 
 not rhetorical." If it were not rude to contradict, we should 
 have said that the influence exercised in politics by scientific 
 treatises had been as nothing in the ago^reij^ate compared with 
 that exercised by pamphlets, speeches, and, in later times, by 
 the newspaper press. What does Mr. Pattison say to Burke's 
 " Reflections on the French Revolution," to Paine's " Common 
 
32G PATTISOKS MILTON. 
 
 Sense," to the tracts written l)y Halifax and Defoe at the time 
 of the Revolution ? " Neither thought nor action " is his epi- 
 grammatic condemnation of Milton's political writings ; but an 
 appeal which stirs men to action is surely both. Again, of 
 " Eikonoklastes " we are told that " it is, like all anstvers^ 
 Avorthless as a book." Bentley's " Phalaris " is an answer ; 
 Demosthenes' " De Corona " is an answer. As a rule, no doubt^ 
 the form is a bad one ; but an answer may embody principles 
 and knowledge, as well as show literary skill, reasoning power, 
 and courteous self-control, which, after all, are not worthless, 
 though they are worth far less than some other things. These 
 discussions, so odious and contemptible in Mr. Pattison's eyes, 
 what are they but the processes of thought through which a 
 nation or humanity works its way to political truth ? Even 
 books scientific in form, such as Hobbes's " Leviathan " or Har- 
 rington's "Oceana," are but registered results of a long discus- 
 sion. " Eikon Basilike " was doing infinite mischief to the 
 cause of the Commonwealth ; and how could it have been met 
 except by a critical reply ? " Eikonoklastes " was thought, 
 though it was not exact science ; and so far as it told, it was 
 action, though it was not a pike or a musket. 
 
 This portion of Mr. Pattison's w^ork is thickly sown with 
 aphorisms to which no one wdio does not share his special mood 
 can without qualification assent. " No good man can, with im- 
 punity, addict himself to party ; and the best men will suffer 
 most because their conviction of the goodness of their cause is 
 deeper. But when one with the sensibility of a ])oet throws 
 himself into the excitements of a struggle he is certain to lose 
 his balance. The endowment of feeling and imagination which 
 qualifies him to be the ideal interpreter of life, unfits him for 
 participation in that real life through the manoeuvres and com- 
 promises of which reason is the only guide, and where imagin- 
 ation is as much misplaced as it would be in a game of chess," 
 In this there is an element of truth, but there is also something- 
 to which we are inclined to demur. If by party is meant mere 
 faction, plainly no man can addict himself to it with impunity. 
 But when the English nation was struggling in the grasp of a 
 court and a prelacy which sought to reduce it to the level of 
 Spain, no Englishman, as it seems to us, could with impunity 
 perch himself aloft in a palace of art while peasants were shed- 
 ding their blood to make him free. Especially do we question 
 the soundness of the sentiment expressed in the last clause. 
 Why is real life to be abandoned by every man of feeling and 
 
PATTISO^^\S MILTON. 327 
 
 imagination and given over to the men of manreiivre and compro- 
 mise ? Is not this the sentiment of the monkish ascetic comino; 
 back to us in another form and enjoining us to make ourselves 
 eunuchs for the Kingdom of Art's sake ? Cromwell, Vane, 
 Hampden, and Pym were not men of manoeuvre and compro- 
 mise ; they had plenty of feeling and imagination, though in 
 them these qualities gave birth not to poetry, but to high polit- 
 ical or religious aspirations and grand social ideals. The theory 
 of Milton's biographer is that an active interest in public affairs 
 is fatal to excellence in literature or in art ; and this theory 
 seems to be confuted as signally as possible by the facts of 
 Milton's life. 
 
 It is curious to see how completely at variance Milton's own 
 sentiment is with that of his biographer and how little he fore- 
 saw what Mr. Pattison would say about him. In the Defensio 
 Secunda he defends himself ao^ainst the charge not of over 
 activity but of inaction. " I can easily repel," he says, " any 
 imputation of want of courage or of want of zeal. For though 
 I did not share the toils or perils of the war I was engaged in 
 a service not less hazardous to myself and more beneficial to 
 my fellow citizens ; nor in the adverse turns of our affairs, did 
 I ever betray any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejection ; or 
 show myself more afraid than became me of malice or of death : 
 For since from my youth I was devoted to the pursuits of liter- 
 ature, and my mind has always been stronger than my body, 
 I did not court the labours of a camp, in which any common 
 person would have been of more service than myself, but re- 
 sorted to that employment in which my exertions were likely 
 to be of most avail. Thus, with the better part of my frame I 
 contributed as much as possible to the good of my country, and 
 to the success of the glorious cause in which we were engaged; 
 and I thought that if God willed the success of such glorious 
 achievements, it was equally agreeable to his will that there 
 she Ad be others by whom those achievements should be re- 
 corded with dignity and elegance ; and that the truth, which 
 had been defended by arms, should also be defended by reason ; 
 which is the best and only legitimate means of defending it. 
 Hence, while I applaud those who were victorious in the field, 
 I will not complain of the province which was assigned me ; 
 but rather congratulate myself upon it, and thank the author 
 of all good for having placed me in a station, which may be an 
 object of envy to others rather than of regret to myself" Here 
 is a culprit who entirely mistakes the nature of his offence and 
 instead of apologizing for what he has done apologizes for not 
 
328 FATTISOK'S MILTOK. 
 
 having done more. Nor so far as we are aware is there in 
 Milton's writings the slightest trace of sorrow for the misem- 
 ploynient of his best years or consciousness of the ruin which 
 it liad wrought in his genius as a poet. 
 
 In the same spirit Mr. Pattison continually represents the 
 end of Milton's public life as " the irretrievable discomfiture 
 of all his hopes, aims, and aspirations " ; his labour as " being 
 swept away without a trace of it being left " ; and the latter 
 part of his life as utter " wretchedness." The failure of selfish 
 schemes often makes men wretched. The failure of unselfish 
 aspirations may make a man sad, but can never make him 
 wretched ; and Milton was not wretched when he was writing 
 " Paradise Lost." He would not have been wretched even if 
 the discomfiture of his hopes for the Commonwealth had been 
 as final and as irretrievable as his biographer supposes. But 
 Milton knew that, though disastrous, it was not final or irre- 
 trievable. He had implicit confidence in the indestructibility 
 of moral force, and he " Ijated no jot of heart or hope." He 
 could see the limits of the reaction and he knew that, though 
 great and calamitous in proi)ortion to the errors of the Republi- 
 can party, it had not changed in a day the character and funda- 
 mental tendencies of the nation. He would note that the 
 Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, the Council of 
 the North, the legislative functions once usurped by the Privy 
 Council, were not restored, and that no attempt was made to 
 govern without a parliament. He found himself, the defender 
 of regicide, not free from peril, indeed, yet protected by public 
 opinion, while, in general, narrow bounds were set to the }3lood- 
 thirsty vengeance of the Cavaliers. He lived to witness the 
 actual turn of the tide. Six years before his death the Triple 
 Alliance was formed, and in the year of his death the Ca]3al 
 Ministry fell. At worst, his case would have been that of a 
 soldier killed in an unfortunate crisis of a battle which in the 
 end was won ; but he fell, if not with the shout of victory in 
 his ears, with the inspiring signs of a general advance around 
 him. If we take remoter ages into our view, the triumph of 
 Milton is still more manifest. The cause to which he gave his 
 life and his genius is for ever exalted and dignified by his name. 
 The notion that the Cavaliers were the men of culture and that 
 the Puritans were the uncultivated has been a hundred times 
 confuted, though it reappears in the discourses of Mr Matthew 
 Arnold, and, what is much more astonishing, in this work of 
 Mr. Pattison. But in a party of action great defect of culture 
 would be amply redeemed by the possession of a Milton. 
 
COLEBIDGKS LIFE OF KEBLE. 329 
 
 COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE.* 
 
 Sib John Coleridge, the writer of this " Life of Keble," 
 was for many years one of the Judges of the Court of Queen's 
 Bench, is now a Privy Councillor, and may be regarded almost 
 as the lay head of the High Church party in England. Sharing 
 Keble's opinions, and entering into all his feelings, he is at the 
 same time himself always a man of the world and a man of 
 sense. Add to these C[ualitications his intimate and lifelong 
 friendship with the subject of his work, and we have reason to 
 expect a biography at once appreciative and judicial. Such a 
 biography, in fact, we have ; one full of sympathy, yet free 
 from exaggeration, and a good lesson to biographers in general. 
 The intimacy of the friendship between the writer and his sub- 
 ject might have interfered with his impartiality and repelled 
 our confidence if the case had been more complex and had 
 made greater demands on the inflexibility of the judge. But 
 in the case of a character and a life so perfectly simple, pure, 
 and transparent as the character and the life of Keble, there 
 was but one thino- to be said. 
 
 The author of " The Christian Year " was the son of a country 
 clergyman of the Church of England, and was educated at 
 home by his father, so that he missed, or, as he would probably 
 have said himself, escaped, the knowledge of minds differently 
 trained from his own which a boy cannot help picking up at an 
 English public school. At a very early age he became a scholar 
 of Corpus Christi, a veiy small and secluded college of the 
 High Church and High Tory University of Oxford. As the 
 scholarships led to fellowships — the holders of which were re- 
 quired to be in holy orders — and to church preferment, almost 
 all the scholars were destined for the clerical profession. . Of 
 Keble's student friendships one only seems to have been formed 
 outside the walls of his own college, and this was with Miller, 
 a student of Worcester College, who afterwards became a High 
 Church clergyman. Among the students destined for the 
 Anglican priesthood in the Junior Common Room of Corpus 
 Christi College, there was indeed one whose presence strikes us 
 like the apparition of Turnus in the camp of vEneas — Thomas 
 Arnold. Arnold was already Arnold, and he succeeded in draw- 
 ing the young champions of the divine right of kings and priests 
 
 *A Memoir of the Rev. J. Keble, M. A., late Vicar of Hursley,,bythe Righf Hon- 
 Sir J. T. Coleridge, D.C.L., Oxford and London : James Parker & Co.,X869. 
 
330 COLERIDGE S LIFE OF KEBLE. 
 
 into a struggle against the divine right of tutors, which "secured 
 the liberty of the suV)ject" at Corpus— the question at issue be- 
 tween the subject and the ruler being by which of two clocks^ 
 one of which was always five minutes before the other, the re- 
 citations should begin. The friendship between Arnold and 
 Keble, however, was merely personal ; Arnold evidently never 
 exercised the slightest influence over Keble's mind ; and even 
 in this "great rebellion" — the only rebellion, great or small, 
 of his life — Keble was induced to take part, as he has expressly 
 recorded, at the instigation of Coleridge, a middle term between, 
 Arnold and himself. The college teachers were all clergymen ; 
 and the university curriculum in their days was regulated and 
 limited by clerical ascendancy, and censisted of the Aristotelian 
 and Butlerian philosophy, classics, and pure mathematics, with- 
 out modern history or physical science. The remarkable pre- 
 cocity of Keble's intellect enabled him to graduate with the 
 highest honours both in classics and mathematics at an age al- 
 most miraculously early, even when allowance is made for the 
 comparative youthfulness of students in general in those days. 
 He was at once elected a Fellow of Oriel, and translated to the 
 Senior Common Room of the College — another clerical society 
 consisting of men for the most part considerably his seniors, 
 among whom, in spite of the presence of Whately, High Church 
 principles probably predominated already, and were destined 
 soon to predominate in the most extreme sense, for the col- 
 lege presently became the focus of the Ritualistic and Rom- 
 anizing movement. Thus, up to twenty-three, Keble's life had 
 been that of a sort of acolyte, and though not ascetic (for his na- 
 ture appears to have been always genial and mirthful), entirely 
 clerical in its environments and its aspirations. At twenty- 
 three he took orders, and \mt round his neck, with the white 
 tie of Anglican priesthood, the Thirty-nine Articles, the whole 
 contents of the Anglican Praj^er-Book, and all the contradic- 
 tions between those two standards of belief. For some time he 
 held a tutorship in his college : then he went down to a countiy 
 living in the neighbourhood of a cathedral city, where he spent 
 the rest of his days. His character was so sweet and gentle 
 that he could not fail to be naturally disposed to toleration. He 
 even goes the length of saying that some profane libellei-s 
 whom his friend Coleridge was going to prosecute, were not 
 half so dangerous enemies to religion as some wicked worldly- 
 minded Christians. But it is no wonder, and implies no deroga- 
 tion from his charity, that he should have regarded the progress 
 
COLEBIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 331 
 
 of opinions different from his own as a medijeval monk would 
 have regarded the progress of an army of Saracens or a horde of 
 Avars. liis poetic sympathies could not hinder him from 
 dislikinc; the rebel and Puritan Milton. 
 
 Thus it was impossible that he should be in a very broad 
 sense a poet of iiumanity. His fundamental conception of 
 the world was essentially mediaeval ; his ideal was that of 
 cloistered innocence, or, still better, the innocence of untempted 
 and untried infancy. For such perfection his " Lyra Innocen- 
 tium" was strung. When his friend is thinking of the profes- 
 sion of the law, he conjures him to forego the bi'illiant visions 
 which tempted him in that direction for " visions far more 
 brilliant and more certain too ; moi'e brilliant in their results, 
 inasmuch as the salvation of one soul is worth more than the 
 framing the Magna Charta of a thousand worlds ; more certain 
 to take place, since temptations are fewer and opportunities 
 everywhere to be found." These words remind us of a passage 
 in one of Massillon's sermons, preached on the delivery of 
 colours to a regiment, in which the bishop, after dwelling on 
 the hardships and sufferings which soldiers are called upon tO" 
 endure, intimates that a small part of those hardships and suf- 
 ferings, undergone in performance of a monastic vow, would' 
 merit the kingdom of heaven. If souls are to be saved by real 
 moral influences. Sir John Coleridge has probably saved a good 
 many more souls as a religious judge and man of the world 
 than ho would have saved as the rector of a country parish ;. 
 and if character is formed by moral effort, he has probably 
 formed a nmch higher character by facing temptation than he 
 would have done by flying from it. Keble himself, in his^ 
 Morning Hymn, has a passage in a different strain ; but the 
 sentiment which really prevailed with him was probably that 
 embodied in his advice to his friend. 
 
 Whatever of grace, worth, or beneficence there could be in 
 the half-cloistered life of an Oxford fellow of those days, or 
 in the rural and sacerdotal life of a High Church rector, there 
 was in the life of Keble at Oriel, and afterwards at Hursley 
 The best spirit of such a life, together with the image of a 
 character rivalling in spiritual beauty, after its kind, that of 
 Ken or Leighton, is found in Keble's poetry, and for this we 
 may be, as hundreds of thousands have been, thankful. 
 
 The biographer declines to enter into a critical examinationt 
 of the " Christian Year," but he confidently predicts its indefi- 
 nite reign, founding his prediction on the causes of its original 
 
532 COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEDLE. 
 
 success. He justly describes it, in effect, as rather a poetical 
 manual of devotion than a book of poetry for continuous read- 
 ing. It is, in truth, so completely out of the category of ordi- 
 nary poetry, that to estimate its poetic merits would be a very 
 difficult task. Sir John Coleridge indicates this, when he cites 
 as an appropriate tribute to the excellence of the book the 
 practice of the clergyman who used, eveiy Sunday afternoon, 
 instead of a sermon, to read and interpret to his congregation 
 the poem of the "Christian Year" for the day. " The object 
 of the present publication," says the Preface, " will be at- 
 tained if any person find assistance from it in bringing his own 
 thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recom- 
 mended and exemplified in the Prayer Book." This connection 
 with the Prayer Book and with the Anglican Calendar, while 
 it has given the book an immense circulation, necessarily limits 
 its range and interest. Yet those who care least for being- 
 brought into unison with the Prayer Book, fully admit that the 
 ^'Christian Year" gives proof of real poetic power. Keble him- 
 self, as his biographer attests, had a very humble opinion of 
 his own work, seldom read it, hated to hear it praised, con- 
 sented with great difficulty to its glorification by sumptuous 
 editions. It was his saintly humility, suggests the biographer, 
 which made him feel that the book which flowed from his own 
 heart would inevitably be taken for a faithful likeness of him- 
 self; that he would thus be exhibiting himself in favourable 
 <iolours, and be in danger of incurring the woe pronounced on 
 those who win the good opinion of the world. If this account 
 be true, it is another proof of the mediaeval and half-monastic 
 mould in Avhich Keble's religious character was cast. 
 
 The comparative failure of the " Lyra Innoeentium" is pro- 
 bably to be attributed not only to its inferiority in intrinsic 
 merit, but to the fact that whereas the "Christian Year" has 
 as little of a paity character as any work of devotion written 
 by an Anglican and High Church clergyman could have, the 
 " Lyra Innoeentium" was the work of a leading party man. 
 The interval between the two publications had been filled by 
 a great reactionary movement among the clergy, one of the back- 
 streams to that current of Liberalism, which setting in after the 
 termination of the great French war, not only swept away the 
 Botten boroughs and the other political bulwarks of Tory domin- 
 ion, but threatened to sweep away the privileges of the Es- 
 tablished Church, and compelled Churchmen to look out for 
 a basis independent of State sujiport. Keble was the associ- 
 
COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 33$ 
 
 ate of Hurrell Froude, Newman, Pusey, and the other 
 great " Tractai'ians." A sermon which he preached before the 
 University of Oxford w^s regarded by Newman as the begin- 
 ning of the movement. He contributed to the " Tracts for 
 the Times," though as a controversalist he was never powerful ; 
 sweetness, not strength, being the characteristic of his mind- 
 He gradually embraced, as it seems to us, all the principles 
 which sent his fellow Tractarians over to Rome. The posthu- 
 mous alteration made in the " Christian Year" by his direction 
 shows that he held a doctrine respecting the Eucharist not 
 practically distinguishable from the Roman doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation. A poem intended to appear in the " Lyra A])03- 
 tolica," but suppressed at the time in deference to the wishes of" 
 cautious friends, and now published by his biographer, proves 
 that he was, as a Protestant putting it plainly would say, an 
 advanced Mariolater. He was a thoroughgoing sacerdotalist 
 and believer in the authority of the Church in matters of 
 opinion. He mourned over the abandonment of auricular confes- 
 sion. He regarded the cessation of prayers for the souls of dead 
 founders and benefactors as a lamentable concession to Protes- 
 tant prejudice. Like his associates, he repudiated the very 
 name of Protestant. He deemed the state of the Church of 
 England, with regard to orthodoxy, most deplorable — " two pre- 
 lates having distinctly denied an article of the Apostles' Creed," 
 and matters going on altogether so that it was very difficult 
 for " a Catholic Christian " to remain in that communion. Why 
 then did he not, with Newman and the rest, accept the logical 
 conclusions of his premises, and go to the place to which his 
 principles belonged ? His was not a character to be influenced 
 by any worldl}" motives, or even by that sense of ecclesiasti- 
 cal position, which perhaps has sometimes had its influence 
 in making Romanizing leaders of the Anglican clergy unwilling 
 to merge their party and their leadership in the Church of 
 Rome. There was nothing in his nature which would have re- 
 coiled from any self-abnegation or submission. The real answer 
 is, we believe, that Keble was a married man. We can hardly 
 imagine him making love. His marriage was no doubt one not 
 of passion but of affection, as small a departure from the sacerdo- 
 tal ideal as it was possible for a marriage to be ; still he was. 
 married, and tenderly attached to his good wife. This it was. 
 probably — not any subtle distinction between Real Presence 
 and Transubstantiation, not misgivings as to the exact degi'ee 
 of worship to be paid to the Virgin, not doubts as to the limits. 
 
334 COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 
 
 of the personal infallibility of the Pope, or objections to prac- 
 tical abuses in the Church of Rome, — which kept Keble, and 
 has kept many a Romanizing cleig^'iuan of the Anglican 
 Church, from becoming a Roman Catliolic. Nor is the reason, 
 when analysed, one of which Anglican philosophy need be 
 ashamed ; for to the pretentions of sacerdotal asceticism the 
 best answer is domestic love. 
 
 Keble stopjied his ears with wax against the siren appeal of 
 lais seceding chief, John Henry Newman, and refused at first to 
 read the " Essay on Development." When at last he was drawn 
 into the controversy, he constructed for his own satisfaction, and 
 that of other waverers who looked up to him for support and 
 guidance, an argument founded on the Butlerian ijrinciple of 
 probability as the guide of life. But Butler, with all defer- 
 ence to his great name be it said, imports into questions of con- 
 science and into the spiritual domain a principle i-eally applicable 
 only to worldly concerns. A man will invest his money, or 
 take any other step in relation to his worldly affairs, if he 
 thinks the chances are in his favour; but he cannot be satisfied 
 with a mere preponderance of chances that he possesses vital 
 truth and that he will escape ev^erlasting condemnation. The 
 analogy drawn by Keble between the late recognition of the 
 Prayer Book, instead of the too Protestant Articles, as the real 
 canon of the Anglican faith, and the lateness of the Christian 
 Revelation in the world's history, was an application of the 
 analogical method of reasoning which showed to what strange 
 uses that method might be put. 
 
 It is singular, but consistent with our theory as to the real 
 nature of the tie which prevented Keble from joining the seces- 
 sion, that he should have determined, if compelled to leave the 
 Church of England (a contingency which, from the growth of 
 heresy in that Church, he distinctly contemplated), to go not 
 into the communion of the Church of Rome, but out of all 
 communion whatever. He would have gone, we suppose, 
 into some limbo like the phantom Church of the Nonjurors. It 
 is difficult to see how such a course can have logically com- 
 mended itself to the mind of any member of the theological 
 school which held that the individual reason aflbrded no sort of 
 standing-ground, and that the one thing indispensable to 
 salvation was visible communion with the true Church. 
 
 Sir John Coleridge deals with the question as to the posthu- 
 mous alteration in " The Christian Year," the discovery of 
 which caused so much scandal among its Protestant admirers, 
 
COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 835 
 
 a.nd brought to a stainl, it was said, the subscription for a me- 
 morial college in honour of its author. It is made clearly to 
 appear that the alteration was in accordance with Keble's ex- 
 ]n'essed desire, and the suspicion which was cast upon his execu- 
 tors and those who were about him in his last moments is pi'oved 
 to be entirely unfounded. But, on the other hand, we cannot 
 think that the biographer (or rather Keble, who speaks for him- 
 self in this matter) will be successful in convincing many people 
 that the alteration was merely verbal. The mental interpola- 
 tion of " only " after " not " in the words " not in the hands," 
 is surely a tour de force; and it must be remembered that the 
 passage occurs in the lines on the " Gunpowder Treason," and 
 is evidently pointed against the Roman Catholic doctrine of the 
 Eucharist. The Roman Catholics do not deny that the Eucharist 
 is received " in the henrt ;" but the Protestants deny that it is 
 as receive^] " in the hands " at all ; and the vast majority of 
 Keble's readers could not fail to construe the pa'^sage as an as- 
 sertion of the Protestant doctrine. Sir John Coleridge does 
 not confront the real difficulty, because he does not give the two 
 versions side by side, or exhibit the passage in its context. A 
 more natural account of the matter is suggested by a letter of 
 Keble, written when he was contemplating the publication of 
 the " Lyra Innocentium," and included in the present memoir. 
 In that letter he says : 
 
 " No doubt, there would be the diflerence in tone which you take notice 
 ■of between this and the former book ; for when I wrote that, 1 did not 
 understand (to mention no more points) either the doctrine of Repentance 
 or that of the Holy Eucharist, as held, e. g., by Bishop Ken, nor that of 
 Justitication ; and such points as these must surely make a great diflerence. 
 But may it please (Jod to preserve me from writing so luireally and de- 
 •ceitfully as I did then ; a'ld if I could tell you the whole of my shameful 
 history, you would join with all your heart in this prayer. " 
 
 The biographer, while he proves his integrity by giving us 
 the letter, of course protests against our taking sei-iously the 
 self-accusations of a saint. We certainly shall not take seri- 
 ously any charge of deceitfulness against Keble, whether made 
 by himself or by any other human being ; but he was liable, to 
 a certain extent, like all other human beings, to self-deception. 
 His opinions, like those of his associates, on theological ques- 
 tions in general and on the question of the P]ucharist in parti- 
 cular, had been moving rapidly in a Romanizing direction dur- 
 ing the interval between the publication of " The Christian 
 Year" and that of the " Lyra Innocentium." In the passage 
 just quoted, we see that he was conscious of this; but it was 
 
336 COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. 
 
 not unnatural that he should sometimes forget it, and that he 
 should then put upon the words in " The Christian Year" a 
 construction in conformity with his opinions as they were in 
 their most advanced stage. It is strange, however, that he and 
 the rest of his party, if they were even dimly and at intervals^ 
 conscious of the fact that their own creed had undergone so 
 much change, should still have been able to take the ground of 
 immutability and infallibility in their controversies with other 
 parties and churches. 
 
 It has been almoat forgotten that Keble held for ten years a 
 (non-resident) Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. His lectures 
 wei^e unfortunately written, as the rule of the Chair then was, 
 in Latin. He thought of translating them, and Sir John Cole- 
 ridge seems still to hold that the task would be worth under- 
 taking. For the examples, which are taken from the Greek and 
 Latin poets, it would be necessary to substitute translations or 
 examples taken from the modern poets. Mr. Gladstone chooses 
 the apt epithet when he calls the lectures " refined." Refine- 
 ment rather than vigour or depth was always the atti-ibute of 
 Keble's productions. His view of poetry, however, as the 
 vent for overcharged feelings or an imagination oppressed by 
 its own fulness — as a vis niedica, to use his own expression — if 
 it does not cover the whole ground, well deserves attention 
 among other theories. 
 
 To the discredit, perhaps, rather of the dogmatic spirit than 
 of either of the persons concerned, religious differences were al- 
 lowed to interfere with the personal friendship formed in youth 
 between Keble and Arnold. With this single and slight excep- 
 tion, Keble's character in every relation — as friend, son, husband, 
 tutor, pastor — seems to have been all that the admirers of " The 
 Christian Year" can expect or desire. The current of his life, 
 but for the element of theological controversy and perplexity 
 which slightlydisturbed his later days, would have been limpid 
 and tranquil as that of any rivulet in the quiet scene where the 
 years of his Christian ministry were passed. He and his wife, 
 the partner of all his thoughts and labours, and the mirror and 
 partaker of the beauty of his character, died almost on the same 
 day ; she dying last, and rejoicing that her husband was spared 
 the pain of being the survivor. 
 
 " Within these walls [of the Church] each fluttering guest 
 la gently lured to one safe nest — 
 Without 'tis moaning and unrest." 
 
 The writer of those lines perfectly as well as beautifully 
 realized his ideal. 
 
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