THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES I ^ I— ' 1-4 00 Or ^ 00 M o o S5 w CO a o *^ *^ > O t-i ^ o 00 o o "^y Till:: LAST FKUIT ()¥¥ AN OLD TREE. t^^/?- pc''Zr-^\,_,y^ J. THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. LONDON: EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. / 1853< LONDOX : BEADBUKY AND EVAN'S, PRINTERS, WHITKKKIARS PR L33 LAUTORE DI QUESTO LIBRETTO HA LA CONFIDENZA DI PRESEKTARLO all' UOJIO PROBO E BENEVOLO, AL MINISTRO DI STATO SAVIO E LIBERALE, AL MARCHESE DI AZEGLIO. I STROVE WITH IS'ONE, FOR NONE WxVS WOKTH MY STRIFE ; NATURE I LOVED, AND, NEXT TO NATURE, ART; I WARMED BOTH HANDS BEFORE THE FIRE OF LIFE ; IT SINKS, AND I AM READY TO DEPART. l^EEFACE. Inferior in execution to those I have abeadj set before the public will perhaps these Imaginary Conversations appear; certainly for the most-part inferior are the materials. No sculptor can work in sandstone so artistically and effectively as in alabaster and marble. In the sight of higher intelligences the Pio-Nonos, the Nicholases, the Louis-PhiHppes,, the Louis-Napoleons, and their domestics in caps and hoods, in flounces and furbelows, in ribbands and cordages, in stars and crosses, are of mis- shapen and friable clay, not even " de meliore hito." In the sight of the Highest Intelligence of all, the poor humble Madiai, we are informed by unerring authority, are far superior to such as "affect the nod" and assume the attributes of deity. Grateful for the gifts that have been imparted to me, and for the few talents, easy of computation, which study and thoughtfulness and industry have added, I have been content to look no higher than the Acropolis of Athens, and to carry back with me, into the libraries of my friends, the impressions I have taken from the physiognomies of Solon and Pericles, of Phocion and Epicurus ; and of placing Diogenes and Plato and Xenophon Vm PREFACE. in tlieir proper light, and where they may be seen distinctly and walkt round. Pleasant as any of my hours, in that most delightful of regions, were those I spent with Aspasia and Leontion, and Theniisto; we called her Ternissa, and she preferred the name. Homely, very homely, are the countenances and figures of the Madiai. But they also have their heroism : they took the same choice as Hercules, preferring virtue to pleasure, labour to ease, rectitude to obliquity; patient of imprison- ment, and worshiping God with unfaltering devotion : unterrified by the menaces of death. May they awaken, if not enthusiasm, at least benevolence ! In which hope, on their behaK and for their sole emolument, I edit this volume. A great part of the prose bears a reference to those persons, and that system, under which the Madiai were deprived of freedom, of health, of air, and, what is also a necessary to life, the consolation of friendship; their crime being the worship of God as God himself commanded, and not as man commands. The poetry, where it refers to the present times, is what I wish the prose could have been, mostly panegyrical. W. S. L. CONTENTS. — — - PAGE EIGHTEEN IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI CORNARO 3 LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA 7 ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE 9 LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT 13 M. THIERS AND M. LAMARTINE 27 NICHOLAS, FREDERICK-WILLIAM, NESSELRODE 30 NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. FIRST CONVERSATION ... 34 BERANGER AND LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN 52 KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO .... 57 GARIBALDI AND MAZZINI 74 CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. FIRST CONVERSATION 76 „ „ „ SECOND CONVERSATION . 81 LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE 87 POPE PIO NONO AND CARDINAL ANTONELLI 91 MARTIN AND JACK 94 ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR 97 NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. SECOND CONVERSATION . . . 132 ARCHBISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI . . . 137 POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN 141 TEN LETTERS ADDRESSED TO HIS EMINENCE THE CARDINAL WISEMAN. BY A TRUE BELIEVER 183 THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS 215 THE POEMS OF CATULLUS 237 FRANCESCO PETRARCA 281 TO LORD BROUGHAM ON THE NEGLECT OP SOUTHEY .... 317 X CONTENTS. rAGE PENSIONS AND ACADEMIES . . . 320 SIB ROBERT PEEL AND MONUMENTS TO PUBLIC MEN .... 321 INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE AT S. IVES 325 SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE 326 THE PROPOSED NEW NATIONAL GALLERY 329 EPITAPH ON LADY BLESSINGTON 330 TO THE REVEREND CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY ON HIS FATHER'S CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES 332 ANECDOTE OF LORD CHANCELLOR THURLOW 338 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 339 THE BENEFITS OF PARLIAMENT 343 COLONISATION, AND BY WHOM PROMOTED 346 TRANQUILITY IN EUROPE 348 WHAT WE HAVE AND WHAT WE OWE 350 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ' . . " . . 352 A DEACON AND CURATE TO HENRY LORD BISHOP OP EXETER . . . 354 PETITION TO PARLIAMENT FROM A BROTHERHOOD OF ANCIENT BRITONS 356 PETITION OF THE THUGS FOB TOLERATION 358 THE SCHOOLMASTER OF THE NORTH 361 TRUE CHARACTER OF SIB CHARLES JAMES NAPIER .... 363 POEMS. EPIGRAMS 365 VARIOUS 401 EPISTLES 451 FIVE SCENES . . . , 487 CORRIGENDA. The reader is requested to make tUe subjoined corrections witli his'pen. I'lige 157, 1. 16, for "acquired," read "accepted." „ 172, 1. 9, /or "factious," jea(i" facetious." „ 174, 1. 25, for " institutions," read " institution." „ 197, I. 16, read " the guidance of." „ 220 (n) 1. 11, /or" hanc,"»-rar?"hac," „ 224, in the Greek, /or " -;; §«," read " H pa" „ 265, 1. 4 from bottom, read "not well admit a spondee tor the lirst fi.,)t : it should be," * &c. „ 300, 1. 32, /or " Giovanni," read " Giovanna." ,, 304, second line of Italian, /or " debole, read " debile." „ 325, 1. 25, af/er " historians," inse>-t " since Gibbon." „ 329, I. 3, o»iu<"and." „ 332, 1. 7, insert comma after " character." „ 333, 1. 7, read " I do not call epic, as I have said before" „ 336, 1. 1, read " Englishmen of our age" „ 353, 1. 37, read " each of ns possesses." „ 372, xxxviii, read " In Cyron." „ 375, liv, for " nerves," read " waves." „ 393, cxli, read " each in each rejoice." „ 397, clii, read "the dying on the dead." ,, 408, 1. 28, " Bitter are," &c, should stand as another poem. „ 431, ccvii, read " whose hand can hurl" „ 446, 1. 6, read " twain." „ 476, 1. 2, dele hut, and insert a semicolon instead. „ 497, 1. 16, for " Santa Ann," read " Santa-Aima." * Yet here, in 235 verses, nine begin nith it. THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI COENAKO. CORNARO. Many are the years, Tiziano, since we were youths together here in Venice ; and I believe that at the present hour we are nearly the oldest of its inhabitants. You indeed are some- what the younger of the two ; not much ; altho the pre- sent autumn is about the fiftieth siiice the truest judges gave you the preference over Giovanni Bellini ; and after that time you surpassed even greater competitors. Your age hath far outstript your youth. TIZIANO. Ah, Don Luigi ! even on the verge of fourscore the ear grows not deaf to flattery. I am charmed by your remem- brance and your praises. CORNARO. What ! after those of kings and emperors ? TIZIANO. I am far, very far, from indifferent to those commendations which have been bestowed on me by the masters of mankind, who happen in our times to be endowed with better judgement, regarding the higher Arts, than the noblest of their subjects. Yet a name which adorns the annals of our republic, a Cornaro, may, without ingratitude toward them, be quite as dear to me. B 2 4 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. CORNARO. The emperor Charles is more generous to artists than to sovrans, altho he had the magnanimity to admire in a rival as great a man as himself. But preeminently shone his mngna- nimity, when he loaded with jewelry and chains and crosses of gold the artist wlio had depicted the prostration of Austria, in the memorable field of Cadore. This I firmly believe to be the greatest work that Italian art ever achieved. TIZIANO. Of mine it certainly is the greatest. CORNARO. Yet how wonderful is the Saint Peter Martyr ! In both pictures you have proved yourself the best adapter of external nature to human and superhuman action. The majestic trees, at the stroke of your pencil, rise up worthy to shade the angels in their walks on earth. Many of your subjects were the productions of your hand after the meridian of life. TIZIANO, Long after. My fancy flies often from our sea-girt city to my native hills of Cadore, and over the intermediate plains and vineyards and olive-plots and chesnut-groves and forests, and inhales the sharp sunniness of the Alpine air : it invigorates me afresh. CORNARO. Yes, Tiziano ! Age never droops into decrepitude while Fancy stands at liis side. To how many have you given an existence for centuries ! Por centuries, did I say ? I should have said for ever. Successions of engravers will fix upon imperishable metal the lineaments you have deemed worthy of preservation. Canvas may decay, colours may fade; but these artists, animated by your genius, will follow one another thro the darkest ages. These are the officers of your household. Cursores, vital lamj^ada tradunt. The time will come, perhaps within a few centuries, when the chief glory of a Yenetian noble will be the possession of an ancestor by the hand of Tiziano. TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI COllNARO. 5 TIZIANO. You greatly overvalue me. There are many in our city wlio deserve to partake in these eulogies; and many others ^yho followed my steps, and have preceded me to the tomb. CORNARO. It belongs to a generous mind to be M'ell pleased with its likeness in its inferiors : you can bear it even in a rival : you waft away your own praises, and often point toward Urbino. TIZIANO. Urbino is richer than Tyre and Sidon ever were : Urbino is more glorified than Troy and Rome. There is only one to whom the Virgin hath confided her Infant : one only to whom the Infant hath manifested his mother : he leans on her bosom ; but she hath not all his love. Nearer to us, while we are conversing on this favorite of heaven, on this purifier of the human heart, on this inspirer of the most tender and most true religion, is Antonio AUegri of Correggio. Angels play with his pencil ; and he catches them by the wing and ■will not let them go. What a canopy hath he raised to himself in the Dome at Parma ! The highest of the departed and of the immortal are guardians of his sepulcher : he deserved it. CORNARO. And deserves he little, deserves he less, wdio raiseth his fellow^ men, lower by nature, to almost the same elevation ? Can the Venetian Senate ever be extinct while it beholds the effigies of those brave, intelligent, and virtuous men, whom you have placed in their ancestral palaces ? There they are seated, or there they stand, according to your disposal and ordinance, the only sovran, the only instructed, the only true nobility in Europe. When I have been contemplating the gravity and grandor of their countenances, and meet afterward a German or frenchman, I acknowledge the genus, but doubt the species : I perceive that I have left the master, and recognise the groom or lackey. TIZIANO. Glorious is indeed our Italy ; and worthy is especially our Venice, of her wide dominion, her long existence, her imperish- able renown. b THE LAST FRUIT OFT" AN OLD TREE. COENARO. The wisdom and the valovu' wliicli have raised her to tlu's eminence, above all the nations of the world, are best comme- morated by you. AVe have industrious and faitliful historians; but History is not always a safeguard against ingratitude and neglect. Now let the most negligent, let the most ungrate- ful, walk in our galleries, and his eyes will open a passage to liis heart. Thanks to Tiziano ! TIZIANO. Peace ! peace ! too generous Don Luigi ! I have scarcely done justice to several of our senators. CORNARO. You have added fresh nobility to the noblest of them, fresh beauty to the most beautiful of their wives and daughters. TIZIANO. Let me confess it frankly : I myself do experience no slight pleasure in looking at them. You smile, Don Luigi. Do you fancy I am liable to be led back into temptation ? CORNARO. Temptations, whether of insane ambition, or any lighter, if lighter there be any, are unlikely to draw us two astray, so near the grave as we are. Monumental brass will shine for ages over yours ; mine will be just as appropriate under the hospitable turf of Padua. I do not wonder that at this season of life you retrace your first steps toward the images you have animated. Our Creator, when he visited for the last time the Paradise he had planted, went not thither at mid-day, but in the cool of evening. Manifest once more to the beautiful pair formed by Him after His own image, moved He, the Uncreated, casting no shadow. LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA. LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA. LEONORA. You have then seen him, father ? Have you been able, you who console so many, you who console even me, to comfort poor Torquato ? PANIGAROLA. Madonna ! the ears of the unhappy man are quickened by his solitude and his sorrow. He seemed aware, or suspicious at least, that somebody was listening at his prison-door ; and the cell is so narrow that everv sound in it is audible to those who stand outside. LEONORA. He might have whispered. PANIGAROLA. It would have been most imprudent. LEONORA. Said he nothing ? not a word ? . . to prove . . to prove that he had not lost his memory ; his memory ? of what ? of reading his verses to me, and of my listening to them. Lucrezia listened to them as attentively as I did, until she observed his waiting for my applause first. When she applauded, he bowed so gracefully : when I applauded, he only held down his head. I was not angry at the diflFerence. But tell me, good father ! tell me, pray, whether he gave no sign of sorrow at hearing how soon I am to leave the world. Did you forget to mention it ? or did you fear to pain liim ? PANIGAROLA. I mentioned it plainly, fully. LEONORA. And was he, was gentle Torquato, very sorry ? PANIGAROLA. Be less anxious. He bore it like a Christian. He said 8 THE LAST FRUIT OrP AN OLD TREE. deliberately^ but lie trembled and sighed^ as Cliristians should sigh and tremble^ that^ altho he grieved at your illness, yet that to write either in verse or prose, on such a visitation of Providence, was repugnant to his nature.*^ LEONORA. He said so ? coiJd he say it ? But I thought you told me he feared a listener. Perhaps too he feared to awaken in me the sentiments he once excited. However it may be, already I feel the chilliness of the grave : his words breathe it over me. I would have entreated him to forget me; but to be forgotten before I had entreated it ! . . O father, father ! PANIGAROLA. Human vanity stil is lingering on the precincts of the tomb. Is it criminal, is it censurable in him, to anticipate your wishes ? LEONORA. Knowing the certainty and the nearness of my departure, he might at least have told me thro you that he lamented to lose me. PANIGAROLA. Is there no voice within your heart that clearly tells you so ? LEONORA. That voice is too indistinct, too troubled with the throbbings round about it. We women want sometimes to hear what we know ; we die unless we hear what we doubt. PANIGAROLA. Madonna ! this is too passionate for the hour. But the tears you are shedding are a proof of your compunction. May the "Virgin, and the Saints around her throne, accept and ratify it. LEONORA. Pather ! what were you saying ? 'V\niat were you asking me ? Whether no voice whispered to me, assured me ? 1 know not. * Mr. Milman, in his Life of Tasso, misinterprets the expression. Genio and ingenio do not always signify genius. His words are " a certain secret repugnance of his genius" but Ta^so meant temper or disposition. Ingenium has the same meaning in latin. Milton was not thinking about his genius when he wrote " Cseteraque ingenio nou subeuuda meo." ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE. 9 I am weary of tliinldng. He must love me. It is not in tlie nature of sucli men ever to cease fro)n loving. "Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tost up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away ; but Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet. PANIGAROLA. Be composed, be calm, be resigned to the will of Heaven, be ready for that journey's end where the happier who have gone before, and the enduring who soon must follow, ^^■ill meet. LEONORA. I am prepared to depart; for I have struggled (God knows) to surmount what is insurmountable ; and the wings of Angels will sustain and raise me, seeing my descent toward earth too rapid, too unresisted, and too prone. Pray, father, for my deliverance : pray also for poor Torquato's : do not separate us in your prayers. ! could he leave his prison as sm-ely and as speedily as I shall mine ! it would not be more thank- fully. O ! that bars of iron were as fragile as bars of clay! O ! that princes were as merciful as Death ! But tell him, tell Torquato . . go again ; entreat, persuade, command him, to forget me. PANIGAROLA. Alas ! even the command, even the command from you and from above, might not avail perhaps. You smile. Madonna ! LEONORA. I die happy. ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHEEY BLAKE. 4 BLAKE. Humphrey ! it hath pleased God, upon this day, to voucli- safe unto the English arms a signal victory. Brother! it grieves my heart that neither of us can rejoice in it as we should do. Evening is closing on the waters : our crews are returning thanks and offering up prayers to the Almighty. Alas ! alas ! that we, who ought to be the most grateful for 10 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. his protection^ and for the spirit he hath breathed into our people, should be the only men in this vast armament whom he hath sorely chastened ! that we of all others should be ashamed to approach the throne of grace among our country- men and comrades ! There are those who accuse you, and they are brave and honest men . . there are those, O Humplirey ! Humphrey ! . . was the sound ever heard in our father's house ? . , who accuse you, brother ! brother ! . . how can I ever find utterance for the word ? . . yea, of cowardice. Stand off : I Avant no help : let me be. HUMPHREY. To-day, for the first time in my Hfe, I was in the midst of many ships of superior force firing upon mine, at once and incessantly. BLAKE. The very position where most intrepidity was required. Were none with you ? were none in the same danger ? Shame ! Shame ! You owed many an example, and you defrauded them of it. They could not gain promotion, the poor sea- men ! they could not hope for glory in the wide world : example they might have hoped for. You would not have robbed them of their prize-money . . HUMPHREY. Brother ! was ever act of dishonesty imputed to a Blake ? BLAKE. . . Until now. You have robbed them even of the chance they had of winning it : you have robbed them of the pride, the just and chastened pride, awaiting them at home: you have robbed their children of their richest inheritance, a father's good repute. HUMPHREY. Despite of calumniators, there are worthy men ready to speak in my favour, at least in extenuation . . BLAKE. I will hear them, as becomes me, altho I myself am cognizant of your defiiult ; for during the conflict how anxiously, as often as I could, did I look toward your frigate ! Especial care could not be fairly taken that aid at the trying moment should be at ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE. 11 liand : oilier vessels were no less exposed than yours ; and it was my duty to avoid all partiality in giving my support. HUMPHREY. Grievous as my short-coming may be, surely I am not precluded from what benefit the testimony of my friends may afford me. BLAKE. Triends . . ah thou hast many, Humphrey ! and many hast thou well deserved. In youth, in boyhood, in childhood, thy honied temper brought ever warm friends about thee. Easiness of disposition conciliates bad and good ahke: it draws affections to it, and relaxes enmities : but that same easiness renders us, too often, neghgent of our graver duties. God knows, I may without the same excuse (if it is any) be impeached of neghgence in many of mine ; but never where the honour or safety of my country was concerned. Wherefor the Almighty's hand, in this last battle, as in others no less prosperous, hath conducted and sustained me. Humphrey ! did thy heart wax faint within thee thro want of confidence in our sole Dehverer ? HUMPHREY. Truly I have no such plea. BLAKE. It were none ; it were an aggravation. HUMPHREY. I confess I am quite unable to offer any adequate defence for my backwardness, my misconduct. Oh ! could the hour return, the battle rage again. How many things are worse than death ! how few things better ! I am twelve years younger than you are, brother, and want your experience. BLAKE. Is that your only want ? Deplorable is it to know, as now I know, that you will never have it, and that you will have a country which you can never serve. ^ HUMPHREY. Deplorable it is indeed. God help me ! 12 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. BLAKE. Worse evil soon may follow ; worse to me, remembering thy cliildhoocl. Mercifnl Tatlier ! after all the blood that hath been shed this day, must I devote a brother's ? HUMPHREY. Eobert ! always compassionate, always kind and generous ! do not inflict on yourself so lasting a calamity, so unavaihng a regret ! listen ! . . not to me . . but listen. I hear under your bow the sound of oars. I hear them drawn into boats : verily do I believe that several of the captains are come to intercede for me, as they said they would do. BLAKE. Intercession is vain. Honorable men shall judge you. A man to be honorable must be strictly just, at the least. Will brave men spare you ? It lies with them. Whatever be their sentence, my duty is (God give me strength !) to execute it. Gentlemen ! who sent for you ? [OJicers come aboard. SE>'IOR OFFICEB. General ! we, the captains of your fleet, come before you upon the most painful of duties. BLAKE (to himself). 1 said so : his doom is sealed. {To Senior Officer.) Speak, sir ! speak out, I say. A man who hath fought so bravely as you have fought to-day ought never to hesitate and falter. SENIOR OFFICER. General ! we grieve to say that Captain Humphrey Blake, commanding a frigate in the service of the Commonwealth, is accused of remissness in his duty. BLAKE. I know it. Where is the accuser ? What ! no answer from any of you ? Then I am he. Captain Humpluey Blake is here impleaded of neglecting to perform his uttermost in the seizure or destruction of the enemy's galloons. Is the crime . . write it, write it down . . no need to speak it here . . capital ? Nedio-ence ? no worse ? but worse can there be ? LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 13 SENIOR OFFICER. We would liumbly represent , .• BLAKE. Representations, if made at all, must be made elsewhere. He goes forthwith to England. Eeturn each of you to his vessel. Delinquency, grave delinquency, there hath been, of what nature and to what extent, you must decide. Take him away. {Alone.) Just God ! am I the guilty man, that I should drink to the very dregs such a cup of bitterness ? Forgive, forgive, O Lord ! the sinful cry of thy servant ! Thy will be done ! Thou hast shown thy power tliis day, Lord ! now show, and make me worthy of, thy mercy ! Various and arduous as were Blake's duties, sucli on all occasions 'were his circumspection and discretion, that no fault could be detected or invented in him. Ilis victories were won against all calculation but his own. Hecollecting, however late, his services ; recollecting that in private life, in political, in military, his purity was ever the same ; England will place Eobert Blake the foremost and the hishest of her defenders. He was the archetype of her Nelsons, CoUiiig- woods, and Pellews. Of all the men that ever bore a sword, none was w'orthier of that awful trust. LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Congratulate me, M. Guizot, on the complete success of our enterprise in Spain. The Infanta is oui"s. Grave as you ordinarily are, M. Guizot, it appears to me that you are graver than usual. A formal bow from you is surely but little on so grand an acquisition. Perhaps I ought to have congratulated you, instead of asking for your con- gratulations, since it was mainly by your dexterity that the business, in despite of impediments, was accomplished. GUIZOT. Sire ! it is much, very much indeed, to have merited your Majesty's approbation. LOUIS PHILIPPE. "Well then, if such are your sentiments, and you always 14 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. have acted so tliat I must believe they are, why this reticence? why this solemnity of countenance and gravity of manner? Diplomatists have always something in reserve, even from their best friends; what is that, may I venture to inquire, which you have now, ever since your enterance, been holding back from yours ? GUIZOT. Sire, there is nothing I can hold back at present. LOUIS PHILIPPE. You have rendered an inestimable service to my family ; and the money you have disbursed among the needy ministers and military gamesters in Spain, secured the marriage of my son, and secures their adherence to my ulterior interests. GUIZOT. The most high-minded of nations, as Spain was two centuries ago, is become the most mercenary. I paid the gentlemen for their performance with no greater reluctance than I would have paid dustmen or nightmen. But, denying to the English minister M'hat I did deny, in regard to the marriage of the Duke and the Infanta, 1 prevaricated most grossly. LOUIS PHILIPPE, No, no, my dear M. Gaizot, not most grossly; quite the contrary; say rather, if the awkward word, prevaricate, will obtrude itself, say rather, most adroitly, most diplomatically. GUIZOT. Tor such an action in private life, were it possible I could have committed it, I should be utterly and forever excluded from society. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Excluded from society ? what society ? the society of myself, of my queen, of my sons, of my dignitaries m church and state ? GUIZOT. I did not mention the dignitaries, or allude to them, or think of tliem, but the society of the manly, the disinterested, the lover of straitforwardness and truth. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Be tranquil, be considerate ; reflect a little. Ministers under arbitrary monarchs may seldom stand quite upright, but they LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GTJIZOT. ]5 are subject to no influences which make them sliuffle, as those under constitutional kings must do occasionally.* England contains a greater number of honest men than all the continents put together. Count me now, if you can, tliree honest prime ministers in her records of three hundred years. Honesty in Trance puts on a demisaison quite early, but soon finds it too cold for wear : Neckar was a strictly virtuous man, clear-sighted and industrious : Roland was the purest and completest type of virtue, not in France only, but in the universe ; his wife, who assisted him in his arduous labours, is justly a partaker of his glory. You yourself have not cleaner hands nor sounder judgment, nor purer style than hers. And what was the fate of all three ? to be depreciated and derided. Now let us go back to the old monarchy. Richelieu and Mazarine could do their business without the necessity of corrupting. He who can hang, imprison, and torture, is above the baseness of a canvas, purse in hand. Richelieu and Mazarine, when Trance contained less than half her present population, expended each on his own account above twenty millions of francs, and left to his heirs about as much. Despotic kings find men already corrupted, constitutional must endure the trouble and the obloquy of making them so. * According to the general run of opinions expres.^ed the other night in the House of Commons, on the disgraceful dockyard affair, the parties implicated have been guilty of " indisci-etion." It may be useful therefor to the public to understand what it is that passes for mere indiscretion, according to the judgement of that very honorable body, the Lower House of Parliament. The evidence given before the Committee on Dockyard Appointments, on the very first day of its sitting, will throw some light on this subject. Mr. Stafford is proved to have denied the existence of a letter which he is proved to have talked about, and which is proved to have been in the hands of one of the parties in the roora while he, Mr. Stafford, was dis- cussing the contents of it. Mr. Stafford is also proved to have cancelled a Minute of the Board of Admiralty, without the consent of the Board. And he is also p'-oved to have asserted that he had the authority of the Board to do so. These are among Mr. Stafford's "indiscretions." The Duke of Northumberland is proved to have asserted that he never had heard of or seen a letter which is proved to have been put into his own hands, and the purport of it explained to him. This is, we suppose, only a ducal "indiscretion." Nee mens hie sermo est, but every word is coi^ied from the most popular of our writers, remarkable for wit, wisdom, temper, and impartiality'. 16 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. Never, my good M. Guizotj was the proverb '^ straining at gnats and swallowing of camels " so well exemplified. Unless you had reverted to my own family affairs, I should abstain from reminding you about Piscatory and K-ougeaux at Athens. By whose advice was it that the adventurer Rougeaux was furnisht with dollars to enlist electors, and to purchase pistols, ready against their adversaries ? By whose advice did Otho forswear the constitution he had solemnly sworn to ? At whose instigation was Kalergis banisht, Church divested of his command, and Lyons received at court contemptuously? GUIZOT. By your Majesty's. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Sir, kings do not advise, do not instigate ; they command. GUIZOT. Your IMajesty is (if I offend not likewise in this expression) the most able and successful of administrators. LOUIS PHILIPPE. And something of the logician. Eeally I see no better reason for your uneasiness about the share you have taken in the matrimonial arrangements at Madrid, than about those equally dehcate at Monte- Yideo. The English were no less dexterously circumvented by you there than here. GUIZOT. I never forfeited my word in that quarter. LOUIS PHILIPPE. If we dude, delude, deceive, over-reach (T am ready to take any one of these synonomes from your book), what matters, when done, whether it be oral or written ? Breach of p-onme is an expression at all times in general use ; often inconsiderately. In fact on these occasions we kings do not break our promises ; we only cut adroitly the corks we are to swim upon, and tie them loosely ; neglecting which process, we should never keep our heads above water and strike out. You are going to England : go by all means. There you will see the most honorable men at the helm of government, who LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 17 never tlioiiglit their worn words wortli keeping any more than their worn cloaths. I refer to no one party ; all are alike in this. Men who would scorn to cheat to the amount of a livre at the whist-table, cheat to the amount of millions at the Speaker's. GUIZOT. Is there never an account to be rendered ? LOUIS PHILIPPE. Many believe there is ; all act as if there is none. GUIZOT. Surely a sense of glory must actuate some among a people so thouglitful, so far-sighted, so desirous of self-esteem, of cordial acceptance at home and abroad, of reputation in hfe and after. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Holy Scripture hath said we are worms; there can be no offence in classing them. Historians, like those in the rich and unctuous soil of churchyards, feed upon the dead ; courtiers and ministers of state, in England as elsewhere, are tape-worms that feed within live bodies, and are too slender and slippery (to say no worse of them) for your fingers to take hold of ; one species draws its sustenance from corruption in the grave, another from corruption on this side of it. Phi- losopher, as I was educated to be, I begin to lean toward the priesthood, and to think their cookery of us the more palatable. We, like tunnies, are kept best under salt and oil ; we are pickled at top and bottom, at birth and death, and are con- signed to the wliolesale dealer, residing at Eome. We must all bend a little for the benefit of our families and our country. Was not I myself exposed to the censure of the inconsiderate on the Duke of Bourbon's death ? I did not hang him ; I did not hire another to do it. The mistress he found in the streets of Brighton came into the possession of much wealth and rich jewelry at his decease. What portion of them she presented to me and to the queen, you know pretty well, and the gratitude we showed toward her, inviting her to a family diimer-party, and seating her at table by the side of royalty. If we can do these things for Erance and the children of JFrance, what may not those do who have only the skirts of our dignity to sup- port ? And what, M. Guizot, was your fault, your oversight ? c 18 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GUIZOT. Neither, sire, neitlier ; but crime, great crime : worse than simple falsehood; there was a falsehood covered over by a fraud, and again a fraud by a falsehood, and borne with a stealthy step into the church. LOUIS PHILIPPE, The church gave its blessing ; so let that pass. Take my word for it, M. Guizot, if you went to liondon this afternoon, you would be visited tomorrow-morning by the identical honest men, ministers of state and subordinates, whose censure you apprehend. I know them perfectly. They would be courteous and conciliating to you, and ashamed and afraid of showing to the people that they ever had been duped and over-reached. Beside, they know, as well as you and I, that they dare not go to war with me whatever I do ; for I have six or seven well-disciplined soldiers for their one undisciplined : I can have two experienced gunners afloat in a fortnight against their one in a month, scattered as their navy is, where it can act to no purpose ; for the constitution of Portugal is worm-eaten already, and two inert bodies, with cumbrous and costly crowns, weigh heavily and intolerably on the people. England is titularly a kingdom : some have gone so far in their folly or their adulation as to call it a monarchy. The main element is properly the opposite of this. I should rather have said was than is ; for the Eeform-bill was only a lasso by which the broken caught tlie unbroken. Instead of close boroughs, England has now close families, which elect, not indeed to the parliament, but to the cabinet. She has neither a democracy nor an aristocracy ; she is subject to an oligarchy. This oligarchy, which knows little else, knows perfectly well tlie pacific and economical spirit of the people ; so that, after providing amply for their families by filling all military and colonial offices with them, they disband all that is efficient. They let the corn rot in the ground, content if it serve as a prop to honeysuckles. Knowing tlie wretched state into which both their army and navy had fallen, and the disinclination and incompetency of the oligarchy to correct any abuses, or to supply any deficiencies in either, it was a favorite scheme with M. Thiers to strike somewhere, any- where, an irritating blow against them. He chose the South Sea. The English spirit would rise against the injustice and LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 19 indignity ; bnt tlic manufacturers and tradespeople in general would exclaim against a war for a matter so trifling and remote. GUIZOT. England never was so rich and prosperous as at present. LOUIS PHIUPPE. True : nor was Tyre the hour before she was in ruins, England at no time was so little inclined and so little prepared for war. With difficulty can she keep Ireland in subjection. GUIZOT. She has no such wish. Jesuits and other incendiaries keep up ancient animosities, religion against religion, race against race. Hereditary bondmen ! such is the key-note ! aye indeed, and not only the key-note, but the burden of the song. These hereditary bondmen enjoy exemption from impositions which weigh heavily on the other subjects of the empire. What they sutler in reality is from the rapacity and exactions of landlords and middlemen. No people is taxt so lightly ; no people leans so heavily on its neighbour. Assistance is given unreluctantly, and received ungratefully. LOUIS PHILIPPE. They who fare best are often the most insurrectionary and rebelhous. High feed and none produce the same effect. Ireland sends a pressing invitation to invaders, not particular about precedency. GUIZOT. It would be imprudent to trust so fickle a people, and ungenerous. . . . LOUIS PHILIPPE. Generosity is to be found in no index to any work on polity : it is only to be lookt for in the last pages of a novel. GUtZOT. The English showed it largely in tlieir last campaign. LOUIS PHILIPPE. The English have virtue ; we have honor. c2 20 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GUIZOT. Sire, I am unable to perceive tlie difference, excepting that honour is only a part, or rather a particle of virtue. LOUIS PHILIPPE. There are questions which it is better to investigate but superficially. We know sufficiently that the beautiful colours on moths and butterflies are feathers : we need not pluck them ; if we do, we are in danger of annihilating the insect's vitality. These feathers are not only its ornament, but its strength : his honour is to a Erenchman what his hair was to Sampson. GUIZOT. But Sampson did not live to be quite bald, Tahiti, and other ilands in the Pacific, had been civihsed by the English, who constantly protected them. LOUIS PHILIPPE. But never having killed or drilled the population, never having imposed tax or tribute, protection is illegitimate. GUIZOT. Sire, the invasion and seizure of that land is both unjust and useless. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Not useless, if it had led to war against an enemy which was never so ill prepared. GUIZOT. But your Majesty has more than once declared to me your determination to remain at peace with all neighbouring states, and especially with England : you have protested it, both in person and by letter to Queen Victoria. LOUIS PHILIPPE. The Erench army is restless for action, the Erench people for changes. It is against changes, against innovations and reforms, that I am resolute. AVar is mischievous, war is dangerous, and ])ossibly disastrous, but carries with it no disaster which may overturn my dynasty, as might eventually be apprehended from reform. You and many others have often praised my foresight. I am circumspect ; , I am mode- LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 21 rate ; but the wants of the soldiery and of the people must be listened to, must be supplied. I march not against the elements ; I strike not at the iron gauntlet of Winter ; but I point toward sunny seas and coral grottoes and umbrageous arbours, where every frenchman may domesticate with his Calypso. It may be long, it may be a century, before we conquer the kingdom of Morocco : Spain is not yet ours completely. GUIZOT. Sire, it appears to me that,witlun half that period, "France may- again be called upon to defend the remainder of her territory. Russia is mistress of Sweden, of Norway, of Germany, of Denmark. She moves at will the armies of all these nations. AU united could not conquer united France. And France will be united under a mild government and moderate taxes, feeling the benefits of commerce, and assured that speculation is not always a mirage. The taxes, I think, might be dimi- nisht a fifth. At least a third of the civil functionaries might go into retirement, and two-thirds of the army. LOUIS PHILIPPE. I believe so. But the Parisians must be dazzled by glory to divert their attention from city-fed chimeras ; and the sol- diery must be attracted by those treasures which lie before them on the surface, and within their grasp. Tradesmen are not always such good politicians as you are, M. Guizot, The Enghsli minister of the colonies will, however, keep you in countenance where you fear the accusation of duplicity. He has promised to the Cape and to Australia a constitution founded on the representative system. Instead of the consti- tution he sent over to the Cajje a cargo of convicts, and he demands in Australia fourfold as much for land as its value is in America. If America, seventy-five years ago, threw oft' allegiance to a government which oppressed her slightly, and with little insult, what may be expected from the indignation of these colonists bound by no ties of consanguinity or of duty ? Difl^ereuces, and more than dift'erences, will spring up and accumulate between the governors and the governed; meanwhile tlie barbarous natives will make forays, carrying off the arms entrusted to them, and the cattle of all parties. There are several regiments of Caffres and Fingoes, enow to excite and to discipline all the tribes for a thousand miles 22 THE LAST PUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. round. Australia is remoter. She may^ however^ be more easily kept under subjection, and continue to support procon- sulsliips and qutestorships, governors and bishops, under the patronage of the ohgarchy. GUIZOT. Tliey conquered Algiers for us : they will not conquer, but they will devastate the country, and alienate the affections of their colonists. They may not be oiu's, perhaps ; they cer- tainly will not be England's. The nation ere long will refuse to supply so vast an expenditure as they demand. It is better that England should suffer by her own folly than by ours. The English I should not fear singly; but there is really cause for apprehension that she may be aided by another great naval power, which, by necessity, must increase. We have taken possession of the Marquesas. America, mistress of Oregon and California, heiress of India and China, will permit no such obstruction. She has found but little inconvenience in the English possessing Canada ; she would never let the Erench recover it. Interest, on many accounts, prompts her to an alliance with England. After her war for independence, a pamphlet was written by Governor Pownall recommending a confederacy of America, England, Sweden, Norway, and Den- mark. Happily for us and for Russia it was much too wise to be adopted, even if the writer had been a member of parliament and of the aristocracy. I would lay any wager that no English minister, whig or tory, possesses a copy. This I know ; the representations of Raffles, incomparably the best and most practical of their later politicians, were found unopened on the accession of the present administration. England is rich ; she can afford such negUgence* LOUIS PHILIPPE. She grasps much, but always lets drop again what is best worth holding. She took possession of Cattaro; and Lord Castlereagh, the most illiterate and ignorant minister, excepting Earrinelli, that ever ruled an European nation, delivered it up, in 1814, to the Austrians. To England it would have been worth greatly more than the Seven lies and Gibraltar; for behind and on every side of it are inexhaustible forests of ancient oaks, and other timber-trees, in a sufficiency to keep up her navy at a moderate expenditure for many centm-ies. Why LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 23 repeat it ? I have already said tliey are inexhaustible. She has lost not only the most commodious and the most defenci- ble harbour in Europe, but incalculable advantages of trade, with Bosnia, Servia, and all the populations on the Save, Drave, and Danube. Her neglect or ignorance of this advan- tage has made the sluggish Austria both active and commer- cial, and has raised the hovels of Trieste over the palaces of Venice and Vienna. If ever France has another war with her (and with what neighbouring state can France continue much longer at peace ?) our first and most important conquest is Cattaro. It ensures to us Turkey ; it replenishes the arsenal of Toulon ; it keeps in agitation Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia, Greece. I would rather have Cattaro than the boundary of the lihine. GUIZOT. We want commerce more than territory. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Therefor we want Cattaro more than Luxembourg. The Parisians, in one quarter or otlier, must be dazzled by glory to divert them from chimeras. GUIZOT. That glory which rests on blood is insecure. L0UI3 PHILIPPE. Our people have never shown a predilection for security, and never are so uneasy as when they are sitting still. GUIZOT. Eather would I see them with Belial than with Moloch ; but surely there is a path between the two temples. LOUIS PHILIPPE. How different are you from M. Thiers ! GUIZOT. Often hath your Majesty been graciously pleased to com- mend me, but never to praise me so highly as now. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Thiers is in the condition of a man who struts about in a 24 THE LAST FUUIT OPP AN OLD TREE, new suit of clothes, yet forgets to change his shirt or wash his hands. Yet, so fond are the Enghsh of any continental clever- ness, that, after all his falsehoods and malignity and aims at war against them, were he to land at Dover, a dozen coronets would be ready on the beach to catch him up. You scorn him with much civility. Indeed he is a knave_, to say the least, and so are all men in some degree, as soon as they enter the cabinet. No one walks quite upright when he mounts an eminence. He meets with obstacles he must bend to ere he removes them. M. Thiers has made a fine fortune; not entirely by his newspaper or liis history ; a little perhaps by his portfolio. Some acquire more by sweeping up the straw and litter than others by threshing out the grain. Opposition in politics did not alienate one of you from the other, for it was only occa- sionally that you were opposite : but similarity of pursuits, which bring other hunters into fellowship, keep asunder the hunters in the fields of literature. GUIZOT. Sire, nobody ever heard me speak disrespectfully of M. Thiers as a hterary man. LOUIS PmLIPPE. You shall hear me then, who must be dispassionate in that quarter. I find in him no accuracy of research, no depth of reflection, no energy of expression, no grace of style : I do find much direct falsehood, and more indirect misrepresentation. He might, and certainly did, consult the best authorities on our battles, especially the naval. Instead of citing or follow- ing them, he hes up to the Moniteur, or, as Voltaire would have said, the Lives of the Saints ! Never repeat this obser- vation of mine to M. de Chateaubriand or to M. de Montalem- bert, altho the former would smile, remembering his ofter to a bookseller of a work against, when the bookseller told liim his customers were bemnnin"" to look Eomeward, and entreated mm to write for ; he did so, and the Genius of Christianity/ slipt five thousand francs into his pocket. At present we will not renew our discourse on peace and war : there is another object close before us, centralization. This was equally the aim of Louis the I'ourteenth and of Napoleon. I begin to find a reminiscence of its importance LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 25 in my own person. Of what service are the best teeth, if the lower and iip])er do not act together and closely ? Mine, as you see, are decentrahzed, disoi'ganized, demoralized, insubor- dinate, and insurgent. They, like my people, want a little of gold wire to unite, and a little of the same metal to stop them. Thirty years of peace ought to have rendered the nation rich and prosperous. GUIZOT. And so indeed it might have done, sire, had the army been duuinished. LOUIS PHILIPPE. This Avould have been imprudent. I have always had enemies on the watch against me, both within and without. GUIZOT. Any aggression would have raised the country, and the invader would have fled as before the armies of Pichegru and Dumourier, in which your Majesty bore so conspicuous a part. LOUIS PHILIPPE. The Ehine would have been French again ; but many of my adherents had probably been detacht from me. GUIZOT. More, and honester, and firmer, had been conciliated. LOUIS PHILIPPE. I can ill afford to be a conqueror of exhausted countries. Money is requisite at home. I rule by the judicious distribu- tion of innumerable offices. Every family in Prance has a near relative in one or other of them ; so that every family has an interest in the continuance of my government. GUIZOT. These are quiet : the more restless are the more dangerous. The man in want will seize by the throat the man who has plenty. One w^olf tears in pieces many sheep ; and the idler who wants a dinner will rush upon the idler who sleeps after it. Already there are indications of discontent. Piles of offices attract the notice of the starving. Our countrymen are always ready to warm their hands at a conflagration, tho many are thiaist too forward and perish. Example and experience are 26 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. without weight to them. jDivision of property^ useful to military despotism which feeds upon full-grown youth, bound and carted off to battle, as calves to market, hath in the third generation so broken up agriculture that farmers are paupers. Clerks look down on them ; they scowl at clerks; I dread the unequal conflict of the pen and mattock. LOUIS PHILIPPE. I am able to keep down the insurgent and refractory. GUIZOT. Sire, you may keep the people down for a while ; but upon a blown bladder there is no firm footing. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Surely you are somewhat nervous tliis morning, ]\I. Guizot. GUIZOT. Perhaps in the apprehension of being more so, before long. What exhausts the wealth, may exhaust the patience of a people. LOUIS PHILIPPE. This is an observation in the form of advice ; and such advice, M. Guizot, I did not at the moment ask of you. I would by no means occupy more of your valuable time at present. GUIZOT (alone). Eoyally spoken ! legitimate Bourbon ! Will France always respect such royalty, such legitimacy ? Craft is insufficient : he must either be more cruel or more economical. With haK his wisdom he might rule more wisely. He never looks aside from the Tuileries, or beyond his family. There is another and a wider circle : it has blood and flames for its boundary, and that boundary is uhdiscernably and incalculably far off. Philippe carries in his hand the fruit of contention : another, yet bitterer, is about to drop from the stem ; he will find it of mortal taste. To-day he is at the Tuileries : to-morrow may decide whether he will be here the day after. M. THIERS AND M. LAMAETINE. 27 M. THIERS AND M. LAMAETINE. THIERS. You look somewhat sliy at me^ M. Lamartine^ now you are in power, and I am out. LAMARTINK. M. Thiers ! we neither of us ever were out of power since we came to years of discretion, if indeed the poet and the pubHc man may be said at any time of their lives to have come to them : for in poetry, imagination leads us astray ; in politics, ambition. THIERS. I never was ambitious. LAMAHTINE. I always was. The love of fame, in other words, of appro- bation, ch'ew me forward not unwillingly. Eeflection comes down to us in the deep recesses where imagination rests, and higher and more substantial forms rise around us and come nearer. The mind, after wandering in distant and in unknown regions, returns home at last and reposes on the bosom of our country. Her agitations render her only the more inviting and the dearer to us. We love her in her tranquiUity, we adore her in her pangs. I do not rejoice, nor do I repent, that the voice of the people has called me to the station I now hold. THIERS. It is an elevated and a glorious, but it is also an uncertain and a dangerous one ; take my word for it. LAMARTINE. Pardon my frankness : I would rather take your word than your example. THIERS. My example in what ? LAMARTINE. May 1 without offence to you speak my mind at large ? THIERS. Speak it unreservedly, as becomes a republican in all his freshness. 28 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. LAMARTINE. First tlien^ I should be sorry to grow rich among the spoliations of my country. Secondly, I scorn to countenance the passion of the vulgar, and more especially in their mad- ness for war. • THIERS. We must put method into this madness. Be sure, M. Lamartine, that no earthly power can withhold for a twelve- month an agitated army of three hundred thousand men, smarting under past disgraces ! We must, whether we will or no, send forty thousand from Algiers to Trieste, and seventy thousand from our southern departments to the Gulphs of Genoa and Spezzia. I am a moderate man : I would leave the duchy of Austria to its ancient duke ; Bohemia to whom- soever the nation may elect as king. Hungary was already free and independent from the moment that Mettcrnich in the phrenzy of his dotage consented to accept the intervention of liussia. She rises both against the hungry and wolfish pack of Russia, and the somnolent and swinish herd that rubs her into intolerable soreness from overgorged Yienna. What- soever was once Poland must be Poland again. She must extend from the Baltic to the Black Sea ; from Dantzic to Odessa, and inclusive. Anything short of this will only cause fresh struggles. Men can never be quiet in the cramp : they will cry out and kick until the paroxysm is over. LAMARTINE. I am afraid you are too precipitate. THIERS. There are many good men who are afraid of hearing, or even of thinking, the truth. They may lie in a ditch with their hats over their faces, nevertheless the light will come in upon them somewhere. LAMARTINE. Probably the king of Sardinia will demand our aid against Austria, and insist on the evacuation of Modena and Parma : we may then, with policy and justice, interfere. Why do you smile ? THIERS. I was thinking at the moment that some laurels grow best on loose soil, M. Lamartine, but neither that laurel which M. THIERS AND M. LAMARTINE, 29 crowns the warrior, nor that oak Avhich crowns the saviour of a citizen. It is our duty not to wait for danger, but to meet it, not to parley with insolent and stupid despots, but to bind them hand and foot with their own indigenous plants. LAMAKTINE. And yet, M. Thiers, you are a royalist ! THIERS. Is any man a royalist when he knows he can be greater ? I had other means of serving my country or (let me speak it frankly) myself. Kings have worn down their high-heeled shoes by their incessant strut and swagger. People would only have laughed at them if they had merely told common lies and practised only ordinary deceptions. But when the slight-of-hand emptied every man's pocket, tlie whole crowd became vociferous; up flew the benches, and the conjuror took to his heels. At first we were tickled, at last we were triturated. LAMARTINE. Not quite into dust, nor into mud, but only into a state, I trust, in which, with some new combinations, we may attain greater solidity and consistency. Democracy is always tlie work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast on. THIERS. You remind me of what happened in England at the com- mencement of our first revolution. The beautiful Duchess de Pienne was solicited too amorously by the Prince of Wales. *' Sir," replied she, " it is princes like you tvlio maJce demo- crats." He never forgave her : indeed he never pardoned any offence, especially when it came from the intelligent and the virtuous. LAMARTINE. Having lived all his life among cheats and swindlers, he would probably have received with courtesy and amity Louis Philippe; and having broken his word until there was not enough of it to be broken again, and having deceived his friends until there was no friend to deceive, perhaps he would have naturalized the good Protestant Guizot, and have given him a seat in the cabinet. At the present day there is a 30 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. Guizot administration in England. The same reckless ex- penditure, the same deafness to the popular reclamations, the same stupid, self-sufficient, subservient, and secure, majority in parliament. It is well for England that in the most vulnerable and unquiet part of her dominions there is a chief magistrate of consummate wisdom, temperate and firm, energetic and humane. Such a functionary is sadly wanted to preside over the counsels of Great Britain. THIERS. He is best where he is. The English are so accustomed to a shuffling trot that they would grow impatient at a steddy amble. They think the roadster must be wanting in spirit and action, unless they see plenty of froth upon the bit. NICHOLAS, FEEDEEICK-WILLIAM, NESSELEODE. NICHOLAS. Welcome to Warsaw, my dear brotlier. [Presents Nessel- RODE.) Count Nesselrode is already known to your Majesty. He admires your military prowess, your political and theological knowledge ; and appreciates the latter qualities so higlily, that he declares you are the greatest professor in Germany. NESSELRODE {aside). These emperors see no point in anytliing but the sword ! NICHOLAS {aside). He bows and murmurs his assent. FREDERICK-WILLIAM. I feel infinitely bound by the favorable opinion of your Imperial Majesty, and can never be indifferent to the approba- tion of so wise a gentleman as Count Nessek'ode. NESSELRODE {oside). If either of them should discover that I intended a witticism, I am a lost man. Siberia freezes mercury. NICHOLAS^ FREDEIUCK-WILLIAM^ NESSELRODE. 31 NICHOLAS. Approach its, Count ! you never were intended for a corner. Let small princes stand behind our chairs : let every man take his due position. Grooms may keep their distance ; but the supports of a throne must be at hand. My brother, you have acted well and wisely in following my advice and indi- cations : so long as the German princes played at constitutions with their people, no durable quiet was to be expected for us. "We permitted you to call out an army, ostensibly to resist the menaces of Austria, and you very dutifully disbanded it at our signal. We thank you. FREDERICK-WILLIAM. The thanks of your Imperial Majesty are greatly more than a sufficient compensation for what the tui'bulent call a loss of dignity and independence. NICHOLAS. Independence ! I am surprised that a crowned head should echo that hateful word. Independence ! we are all dependent; but emperors and kings are dependent on God alone. We are the high and pointed rods that carry down the lightning into the earth, rendering it innoxious. FREDERICK-WILLIAM. I am confident I may rely on your Majesty, in case of any insurrection or disturbance. NICHOLAS. The confidence is not misplaced. At present there is no such danger. We invited the President of France to suppress the insurgents at Rome, the Socialists and Repubhcans in Prance. This has rendered him hateful in his own country and in Italy, where the priesthood, ever selfish and ungrateful, calls aloud for the Austrian to supplant him. This insures to you the Ehenine provinces for several years. FREDERICK- WILLIAM. Surely your Majesty would establish my family in the per- petual possession of them ? NICHOLAS. Alas ! my brother ! what on earth is perpetual ? Nesselrode ! you who see further and more clearly than any other man on earth, tell us what is your opinion. 33 THE LAST PRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE. NESSELRODE. Sire, in this matter there are clouds above us which obstruct the clearest sight. Providence^ no less in its beneficence than in its wisdom, hides from us the far future. Conjecture can help us but a little way onward, and we often slip back when we believe we are near the summit. FREDERICK-WILLIAM (tO himself). I like this man; he talks piously and wisely. (ToNesselrode.) Be pleased, Sir Count, to give us your frank opinion upon a subject very interesting to me personally. Do you foresee the time when what was apportioned to my family by the Holy Alliance, will be taken away from us ? NESSELRODE. Sire ! I do not foresee the time. FREDERICK WILLIAM {tO Mmself). He will speak diplomatically and ambiguously. {To Nesselrode.) Do you believe I shall ever be deserted by my august allies ? NESSELRODE. Sire ! there is only one policy in Europe wliich never wavers. Weak men have succeeded to strong, and yet it has stood the same. Russia and the polar star are alike immovable. NICHOLAS. We owe this to our institutions. We are one : I am ive. NESSELRODE. True, sire ! perfectly true. Your senate is merely a wool- pack to shield the battlement : it is neither worse nor better than a reformed House of Parliament in England. With your Majesty^s permission, I shall now attempt to answer the question proposed to me by his Majesty the King of Prussia. The members of the Holy Alliance, compact and active in 1815, are now dissolved by death. New dynasties have arisen in Prance and Belgium. At one time there was danger that Belgium would be reunited to France. Perhaps it may be found that she is too weak to stand alone ; perhaps in the convulsions which are about to agitate Prance, the most quiescent may lean toward its parent stock, and NICHOLAS^ FREDERICK-WILLIAM, NESSELRODE. 33 separate from the Power to wliicli it was united by violence. Alsace, Lorraine, Tranche Comte, and whatever was seized from the ancient dukes of Burgundy, may coalesce into an united kingdom. Your Majesty's successors, or (if it should soon occur) your Majesty, would be well indemnified for your losses on the Ehine by security in future against French aggression. Germany might then disband her costly armies; until then never. The Trench themselves, after their civil war, would have slaked their thirst for blood, and would retire from a table where they have often lost their last franc. The next war will be a general war; it will be more destructive than any that has ever preceded it, and will be almost equally disastrous to all the parties engaged in it. NICHOLAS. One excepted, Nesselrode. NESSELRODE. Many feathers must inevitably drop, even from the eagle's wings ; and possibly its extremities may be amputated. NICHOLAS. No croaking, no croaking, my good Nesseh-ode ! NESSELRODE. Let us rather pat others on the back, and hold their clothes, and bring them water, and encourage the iighters, than fight. We may always keep a few hundred thousands in activity, or at least in readiness. FREDERICK-WILLIAM. Such forces are tremendous. NICHOLAS. To the disobedient. Li sixty days I could throw a million of soldiers on the shores of the Baltic. FREDERICK-WILLIAM. Might not England interpose ? NICHOLAS. Not in sixty days. ]\Iy naval force is greater than hers; for my ships are manned, hers are not. She is only the third naval power at the present day. America can man more ships with 34 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AT^ OLt) TREE. good English sailors in ten days, tlian England can in forty. Erance lias in the channel a greater force than England has, and every man aboard is well disciplined. All I want at pre- sent is to keep England from intermeddling in my affairs. This I have done, and this I will do. When she stirs, she wakes up others first; I shall come in at the proper time to put down the disturbance and to conciliate all parties. They will be so tired they will be glad to go to sleep. I take but little time for repose, and I grant them the precedency. NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. FIRST CONVERSATION. NICHOLAS. This Manchester Examiner is most audacious. NESSELEODE. "Willingly would I have spared your Majesty the just indig- nation it excites : but your imperial commands were peremp- tory and explicit, that every word spoken against your august person and legitimate authority should be laid before you. NICHOLAS. Of all the speeches I ever red, this from Doctor Yaughan, before the citizens of Manchester, after what had been spoken by the insurgent and traitor Messaros, is the most in- tolerable. Do you really think it will excite Lord Palmerston to interfere with us about the detention of Kossuth ? NESSELEODE. Unhkely; very unlikely. Lord Palmerston loves strong measures. He has recently been defending two unprovoked and unnecessary massacres ; one in Ceylon, the other on the opposite side of the Lidian sea, on boatmen by a sudden metamorphosis turned into pirates for their head-money. Since the Reform in Parliament, the ministers are irresponsible. An impeachment might have been an impediment to the race- course. NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE, 35 NICHOLAS. I wish they would recall from their embassies such men as Sir Echvard Lyons and Sir Stratford Cannings and would place them in the House of Commons, where they could do me no harm. NESSELRODE. It is quite unexampled at the present day that men of such sagacity and such firmness should be employed by either party, Whig or Tory. We need care Httle for speeches. NICHOLAS. Perhaps so. But sometimes a red-hot word, falling upon soft tinder and smouldering there awhile, is blown beyond, and sets towns and palaces on fire. Unaccustomed as I am to be moved or concerned by the dull thumps of honorable gentlemen in the English Parliament, and very accustomed to be amused by the sophisms and trickeries, evolutions and re- volutions, pliant antics and phanter oaths, of the Erencli tribune, I perused with astonishment the vigorous oration of this Doctor Vaughan. I did not imagine that any Englishman, now living, could exert such a force of eloquence. Who in- deed could ever have believed that English clergymen are so (what is called) liberal ! NESSELRODE. Many of them are extremely free in the dissemination of their political tenets, until the upper branches of preferment are within sight, until they snift honey in the rotten tree ; then they show how cleverly and alertly those heavy haunches can cKmb, and how sharp are those teeth, and how loud are those growls, and how ready are those paws to clap the loose muzzle on anybody under. NICHOLAS. We must keep this doctor out of parliament. NESSELRODE. Sire, no clergyman has a seat in the House of Commons. If this doctor had, he would be hooted down : his opponents would imitate the crowing of cocks, the whistle of steam- engines, and shout question, question. NICHOLAS. No, no, no : the English are decorous. D 2 36 THE LAST FRUIT OEF AN OLD TREE, NESSELRODE. At dinner ; and even after ; excepting that they speak to ladies^ I am told, in the same language, and in the same tone, as they speak to jockeys. The lords, for the most-part, even the young and the newly -made, are better. NICHOLAS. Never have I seen more perfect gentlemen than among the English nobiHty. NESSELRODE. The Commons, your Majesty will recollect, are reformed. NICHOLAS. Among these people, here and there a hint is tlirown out that I am vulnerable at the extremities of my dominions. . . Why do not you say something ? NESSELRODE. New acquisitions are not soon consoHdated ; nor heteroge- neous substances, from their inequahties and asperities, firmly cemented. NICHOLAS. No truisms, if you please. NESSELRODE. In a diversity of language and religion there is more repulsion than attraction. NICHOLAS. Nesselrode ! Nesselrode ! if you talk philosophy, moral or physical, I shall think you less practical. NESSELRODE. Usually, sire, those who talk it let run to waste what little they have. Your Majesty has corrected many of my errors both by precept and example. NICHOLAS. Tell me now, in few words, whether you think my empire assailable. NESSELRODE. Sire, your empire, I believe, is larger than the planet which shines at night above us; I wish I could persuade myself NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 37 that it is equally out of harm's way. The extremities both of plants and animals are always the weaker parts ; so is it with dominions; especially those which are the most extensive. May I speak plainly my mind, and attempt a fall answer to your Majesty's inquiry ? NICHOLAS, You may : I desire it. NESSELBODE. And employ such language as a writer, more properly than a courtier or a minister, might use ? NICHOLAS. Yes, yes ; say on. NESSELRODE. Russia, it sometimes has appeared to me, much resembles a great lobster or crab, strong both in the body and claws ; but between the body and claws there is a part easy to be severed and broken. All that can be taken is more than can be held. NICHOLAS. ISotliing is more urgent than to strengthen the center. I have disposed of my brother, liis Prussian Majesty, who appeared to be imprest by the apprehension that a portion of his dominions was in jeopardy. NESSELRODE. Possibly the scales of Europe are yet to be adjusted. NICHOLAS. When the winds blow high they must waver. Against the danger of contingencies, and in readiness to place my finger on the edge of one or other, it is my intention to spend in future a part of my time at Warsaw, that city being so nearly central in my dominions. Good Nesselrode ! there should have been a poet near you to celebrate the arching of your eyebrows. They suddenly dropt down again under the horizontal line of your Emperor's. Nobody ever started in my presence ; but I really do think you were upon the verge of it when I inadvertently said dominions instead of depen- dencies. Well, well : dependencies are dominions ; and of all dominions they require the least trouble. 38 THE LAST FRUIT OIT AN OLD TREE; NESSELRODE, . Your Majesty has found uo difficulty with any^ excepting the Circassians* NICHOLAS. The Circassians are the Normans of Asia; equally brave, more generous, more chivalrous. I am no admirer of military trinkets; but I have been surprised at the beauty of their chain-armour, the temper of their swords, the richness of hilt, and the gracefulness of baldric. NESSELRODE. It is a pity they are not Christians and subjects of your Majesty. NICHOLAS. If they would become my subjects, I would let them, as I have let other Mahometans, become Clu*istians at their leisure. We must brigade them before baptism. NESSELRODE. It is singular that this necessity never struck those religious men who are holding peace conferences in various parts of Europe. NICHOLiS. One of them, I remember, tried to persuade the people of England that if the bankers in London would negotiate no loan with me I could carry on no war. NESSELRODE. Wonderful! how ignorant are monied men of money matters. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to listen to my advice when hostilities seemed inevitable. I was desirous of raising the largest loan possible, that none should be forthcoming to the urgency of others. At that very moment your Majesty had in your coffers more than sufficient for the additional expenditure of three campaigns. \¥ell may your Majesty smile at this computation, and at the blindness that suggested it. Eor never will your Majesty send an army into any part of Europe which shall not maintain itself there by its own prowess. Your cavaby will seize all the provisions that are not stored up within the fortresses ; and in every army those are to be found who for a few thousand roubles are ready to blow NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 39 up tlieir munition-waggons. "We know by name almost every discontented man in Europe. NICHOLAS. To obtain this information, my yearly expenses do not exceed the revenues of half a dozen English bishops. Every table cVhute on the continent,, you tell me, has one daily guest sent by me. Ladies in the higher circles have taken my presents and compliments, part in diamonds and part in smiles. An emperor's smiles are as valuable to them as their's are to a cornet of dragoons. Spare nothing in the boudoir and you will spare much in the field. NESSELRODE. Such appears to have been the invariable policy of the Empress Catharine, now with God. NICHOLAS. My father of glorious memory was less observant of it. He had prejudices and dislikes : he expected to find everybody a gentleman, even kings and ministers. If they were so, how could he have hoped to sway them ? and how to turn them from the strait road into his ? NESSELRODE. Your Majesty is far above the influence of antipathies ; but I have often heard your Majesty express your hatred, and sometimes your contempt^ of Bonaparte. NICHOLAS. I hated him for his insolence, and I despised him alike for his cowardice and falsehood. Shame is the surest criterion of humanity. Where one is wanting, the other is. The beasts never indicate shame in a state of nature : in society some of them acquire it; Bonaparte not. He neither blushed at repudiating a modest woman^ nor at supplanting her by an immodest one. Holding a pistol to the father's ear, he ordered him to dismount from his carriage ; to deliver up his ring, his watch, his chain, his seal, his knee-buckle; stripping off galloon from trouser, and presently trouser too. Caught, pinioned, sentenced, he fell on both knees in the mud, and implored this poor creature's intercession to save him from 40 THE LAST mUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. the hangman. He neither blushed at the robbery of a crown nor at the fabrication of twenty. He was equally ungrateful in public life and in private. He banished Barras, who promoted and protected liim : he calumniated the French admiral, whose fleet for his own safety he detained on the shores of Egypt, and the EngHsh admiral who defeated him in Syria with a tenth of liis force. Baffled as he often was, and at last fatally, and admirably as in many circumstances he knew how to be a general, never in any did he know how to be a gentleman. He was fond of displaying the picklock keys whereby he found entrance into our cabinets, and of twitching the ears of his accomplices. NESSELBODE. Certainly he was less as an emperor than as a soldier. NICHOLAS. Great generals may commit grievous and disastrous mistakes, but never utterly ruinous. Charles V., Gustavus Adolphus, Peter the Great, Frederic of Prussia, Prince Eugene, Marl- borough, William, AYellington, kept their winnings, and never hazarded the last crown-piece. Bonaparte, when he had swept the tables, cried double or quits. NESSELRODE. The wheel of Fortune is apt to make men giddier, the higher it rises and the quicklier it turns : sometimes it drops them on a barren rock, and sometimes on a treadmill. The nephew is more prudent than the uncle. NICHOLAS. You were extremely "wise, my dear Nessehode, in suggesting our idea to the French President, and in persuading him to acknowledge, in the face of the world, that he had been justly imprisoned by Louis Phihppe for attempting to subvert the existing powers. Frenchmen are taught by this declaration what they may expect for a similar crime against his own pretensions. We Avill show our impartiality by an equal coun- tenance and favour toward all parties. In different directions all are working out the designs of God, and producing unity of empire " on earth as it is in heaven.'" Until this consum- mation there can never be universal or indeed any lasting peace. NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 41 NESSELRODE. This lying far remote, I await your Majest/s commands for what is now before us. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to express your satisfaction at the manner in which I executed them in regard to the President of the Trench RepubHck. NICHOLAS. Kepublick indeed ! I have ordered it to be a crime in France to utter the odious name. President forsooth ! we have directed him hitherto ; let liini now keep his Avay. Our object was to stifle the spirit of freedom : we tossed the handkerchef to him, and he found the chloroform. Everything is going on in Europe exactly as I desire : we must throw notliing in the way to shake the machine off the rail. It is running at full speed where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is exasperating his subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to keep them under due controul. What nation on the continent, mine excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war establishment? And without this engine of coercion what prince can be the master of his people ? England is tranquil at home ; can she continue so when a forener would place a tiara over her crown, telling her who shall teach and what shall be taught? Principally, that where masses are not said for departed souls, better it would be that there were no souls at all, since they certainly must be damned. The school which doubts it is denounced as godless. NESSELRODE. England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home ; but that home is a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept with any of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape of Good Hope innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed, have risen up simultaneously against her ; and, to say nothing of the massacres in Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what atrocities her Commissioner has long exercised in the Seven lies. England looks on and applauds, taking a hearty draught of Lethe at every sound of the scourge. NICHOLAS. Nesselrode ! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be drest ; we shall soon sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I 42 THE LAST FEUIT OPP AN OLD TREE. rise from tlie dessert ; I will tlien take my coffee at Constanti- nople. The crescent ere long will become tlie full harvest- moon : our reapers have already the sides in their hands. NESSELRODE. England may grumble. NICHOLAS. So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she for- merly was to fight. She grumbles too early ; she fights too late. Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the hustings higher than the throne ; and^ to make amends^ being resolved to build a new palace, they push it under an old bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the Abbey, may in part disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room ! where many habiliments are changed. Capacious dovecote ! where carrier-pigeons and fantails aiid croppers, intermingle with the more ordinary, bill and coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their versicolor necks to the same corn. It is amusing to look at a playground of striped tops, hum- ming, whirring, wavering, now dipping to tliis side, now to that, whipt from the center to the circumference of the court- yard, and losing all distinctness of colour by the rapidity of their motion. We are consistent, Nesselrode. We can sit quiet and look on. I am fortunate, another may say judicious, in my choice of instruments. The English care more about the organ-loft than the organ, in the construction of which they employ stout bellows, but look little to the keys and stops. M. Pitt could speak fluently for hours together, and that was enough : he was permitted to spend a million a-w^eek in expe- ditions. Canning issued state-papers of sucli elaborate lace- work that ladies might make shrouds of them for their dead canaries. Of Castlereagh you know as much as I do. We blew softly the snuff into his eyes and gave him the boxes to carry home. He has the glory of being the third founder of the French monarchy. Pitt sharpened the sword of Bona- parte and placed the iron crown upon his head. He was the cooper who drew together and compacted the barrel, by setting on fire the chips and shavings and putting them in the center. NESSELRODE. Small is the expenditure of keeping a stop-watch under the NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 43 pillow and an alarum at the bedside. I'or less than ten thousand croAvns yearly, your Majesty knows the movements of every dangerous demagogue on the continent. To gratify your Majesty, no less than his Majesty of Naples, the chevaher Graham, then a minister of England, gave information against the two brothers Eandiera, by which they were seized and shot. NICHOLAS. I hope we shaU see the chevalier once more in office. NESSELRODE. The English are romantic. Some of them were displeased, not so much at his delivering up tlie young men to inevitable death, as at opening the letter. They have an expression of their own; tliey called it ungentlemanhj and continental. Practical as they are in their oAvn private concerns, they much undervalue expediency in their political. I am persuaded that, in general, the betrayal of the Bandieras is more odious to them than the tortures in the Ionian ilands, which it behoves us poHtically, when occasion offers, to commiserate. NICHOLAS. We will keep our commiseration covered up until it is requisite to make the fire burn afresh. At present we must turn our eyes toward Prance, balancing as well as we can the parties now at variance. Democrats, and even socialists, may for a time be permitted to move; Orleanists, Legitimists, Bonapartists, set against one another. I believe I am destined by Providence to render the Greek Church triumphant. The pope is hard at work for me : for infallibility and perfidy can never coexist. He must renew his fealty to the emperor of the east, the Eoman is extinct. NESSELRODE. Yigilant quiescency is uncostly wisdom. Napoleon, the most imprudent of imprudent rulers, assumed to himself not only the title, but the faculties and virtues, of Charlemagne. The present leader of the nation is do less arrogant. NICHOLAS. We must sound the brass once more, and bring again out of our remoter woodlands a stronger swarm. Pumigation has 44 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. not torpified the Prankish ; on tlie contrary, it has rendered it more restless, noisy, and resolved to sting. NESSELRODE. Napoleon^s nephew will assert his hereditary right, not only to the kingdom of Holland, but to the empire of Prance. On this event, wliich I think is imminent, what may be your Majesty^s pleasure ? NICHOLAS. One emperor is sufficient for one planet. There is only one Supreme in heaven, there ought to be only one on earth, in conformity with this manifestation of the divine will. There- for I wonder at your asking me what steps I intend to take in the prevention of an adventurer who should attempt such an elevation. I forbid it. Are these words sufficient ? NESSELRODE. Perfectly, sire. Obstreperous the factions may be, but must submit. Germany will resume her arms; Hungary, Poland, Italy, will resent the prostration of their excited hopes, and the perfidy that called them forward only to dash them down again. The history of human nature, of Trench nature itself, shows no parallel. NICHOLAS. Much is accomplished ; and what is next to be done ? NESSELRODE. Most of it by others, somewhat by ourselves. When the furnace is heated and the metal is poured forth, we may give it its form and pressure. NICHOLAS. Certainly all nations are exasperated against the French; equally sure is it that Austria has lost in great measure the affection of her subjects. There are some things which stick into the memory with all the tenacity and venom of an adder's fang. I wished the Hungarians to be made sensible of two important truths : my power, and their prince's perfidy. NESSELRODE. Never was wish more perfectly accomplished. Yet, pardon NICHOLAS AND NESSELUODE. 45 me, sire, your Majesty wishes to enforce the legitimacy of the young Austrian usurper. But will Austrians or Hungarians, or any other people, deem that ruler legitimate who deprives his cousin of the throne, and who begins and ends with perfidy and perjury ? NICHOLAS. They must believe what I condescend to teach ; they must believe it as coming from God. NESSELRODE. Eeasonable and just : but they may start and stumble at what is so close before their eyes in the form of a palpable untruth. NICHOLAS. Stumble or start, and we drive a spur into their sides. Whatever we deem necessary must be said and done : upon us alone lies the responsibility, and we feel no weight in it. Holy Church sanctions our acts in peace and war. NESSELRODE. Certainly, the head of the Eomish Church, and all its mem- bers, who ought to possess less power than the Greek, gave recently praise to God for several hundred massacres, and several thousand spoliations of property and violations of women, in Transylvania ; yet . . . NICHOLAS. Cease ; be silent : I would have forbidden them, perhaps, to commit, certainly to praise God for, such enormities. I doubt whether they are altogether pleasing in his sight. NESSELRODE. Such things on such occasions have perpetually been done. NICHOLAS. You reconcile me. Transylvania was rising, or likely to rise. A field, to be fertile, should not only be harrowed, but pulverized. I was moderate and prudent in abstaining from the occupation of a country so disaffected as was Transylvania. NESSELRODE. The longest strides do not always make the greatest 46 THE LAST FRUIT OPP AN OLD TEEE. progress in the whole day^s march. Your Majesty was per- suaded, more by your own singular intuition than by my advice, to be contented \^'itli gaining a little at a time. A small purse well tied may hold more than a larger ill secured. The faults of our neighbours do for us what our own wisdom might fail in. Where others are hated and despised, as in Transylvania, love grows around us without our sowing it, and we shall be called at the due time to gather in the harvest. NICHOLAS. Yes ; yes ; whether we take the field, or sit here in the cabinet, God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nessel- rode ! is it not so ? Speak, and plainly. NESSELRODE. She, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all. NICHOLAS. Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer. NESSELRODE. Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight is an exertion, is violence : the Deity in his omnipotence needs none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting : and they are the instruments of their own punishment for their past misdeeds. NICHOLAS. The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the volumes of the Psalmist. NESSELRODE. No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician, could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the fiends that urge them on. NICHOLAS. Nesselrode ! you grow more and more serious. NESSELRODE. Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious, whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. 47 SO long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all quarters your Majesty superintends and directs) without much cause for seriousness. NICHOLAS. I feel the consciousness of supreme power^ but I also feel the necessity of subordinate help. NESSELRODE. Your Majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Csesars of imperial Rome, who could controll, directly or indirectly, every country in our hemisphere^ and thereby in both. NICHOLAS. There are some who do not see this. NESSELRODE. There were some, and they indeed the most acute and politic of mankind, who could not see the power of the Macedonian king until he showed his full hightli upon the towers of Cherona3a. There are some at this moment in England who disregard the admonitions of the most wary and experienced general of modern times, and listen in preference to babblers holding forth on economy and peace from slippery sacks of cotton and wool. NICHOLAS. Hush ! hush ! these are our men ; what should we do without them ? A single one of them in the parliament or townhall is worth to me a regiment of cuirassiers. These are the true bullets with conical heads wliich carry far and sure. Hush ! hush ! NESSELRODE. They do not hear us : they do not hear Wellington : they would not hear Nelson were he living. NICHOLAS. No other man that ever lived, having the same power in his hands, would have endured with the same equanimity as Wellington the indignities he suffered in Portugal; superseded in the hour of victory by two generals, one upon another, like marsh frogs ; people of no experience, no ability. He might have become king of Portugal by compromise, and have added Gallicia and Biscay. 48 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. NESSELBODE. The English^ out of parliament, are delicate and fastidious. He would have thought it dislionorable to profit by the in- dignation of his army in the field, and of liis countrymen at home. Certainty that Bonaparte wordd attempt to violate any engagement with him, might never enter into the computation ; for Bonaparte could less easily drive him again out of Portugal than lie could drive the usurper out of Spain. We ourselves should have assisted him actively ; so would the Americans ; for every naval power would be prompt at diminishing the pre- ponderance of the English. Practicability was here with Wellhigtou : but, endowed with a keener and a longer foresight than any of his contemporaries, he held in prospective the glory that awaited him, and felt conscious that to be the greatest man in England is somewhat more than to be the greatest in Portugal. He is universally called the duke; to the extinction or absorption of that dignity over all the sui'face of the earth : in Portugal he could only be called king of Portugal. NICHOLAS. Eaith ! that is little : it was not overmuch even before the last accession. I admire his judgment and moderation. The English are abstinent : they rein in their horses where the Erench make them fret and curvett. It displeases me to think it possible that a subject should ever become a sovran. We were angry with the Duke of Sudermania for raising a Erenchman to that dignity in Sweden, although we were willing that Gustavus, for offences and affronts to our family, should be chastised, and even expelled. Here was a bad precedent. Eortunately the boldest soldiers dismount from their chargers at some distance from the throne. What withholds them ? NESSELRODE. Spells are made of words. The word service among the military has great latent negative power. All modern nations, even the free, employ it. NICHOLAS. An excellent word indeed ! It shows the superiority of modern languages over ancient ; christian ideas over pagan ; living similitudes of God over bronze and marble. What an escape had England from her folly, perversity, and injustice ! Her admirals had the same wrongs to avenge : her fleets would NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 49 have anchored in Ferrol and Cormia ; thousands of volunteers from every part of both ilands would have assembled round the same standard ; and both Indies would have bowed before the conqueror. Who knows but that Spain herself might have turned to the same quarter^ from the idiocy of Ferdinand, the immorality of Joseph, and the perfidy of Napoleon ? NESSELRODE. England seems to invite and incite, not only her colonies, but her commanders, to insurrection. Nelson was treated even more ignominiously than Wellington. A man equal in abilities and in energy to either met with every affront from the East India Company. After two such victories in succession as the Duke liimseK declared before the Lords that he had never known or red of, he was removed from the command of his army, and a general by whose rashness it was decimated was raised to the peerage. If Wellington could with safety have seized the supreme power in Portugal, Napier could M'ith greater have accomplished it in India. The distance from home was farther ; the army more confident ; the allies more numerous, more, unanimous. One avenger of their wrongs would have found a million avengers oilds. Affglianistan, Cabul, and Scinde, would have united their acclamations on the Ganges: songs of triumph, succeeded by songs of peace, would have been chanted at Dellii and have re-echoed at Samarcand. NICHOLAS. I am desirous that Persia and India should pour their trea- sures into my dominions. The English are so credulous as to believe that I intend, or could accomplish, the conquest of Hindostan. I want only the commerce ; and I hope to share it with the Americans ; not I indeed, but my successors. The possession of California has opened the Pacific and the Indian seas to the Americans, who must, within the lifetime of some now born, predominate in both. Supposing that emigrants to the amount of only a quarter of a million settle in the United States every year, within a century from the j^resent day their population must exceed three hundred millions. It will not extend from pole to pole, only because there will be room enough without it. NESSELRODE. Eeligious wars, the most sanguinary of any, are stifled in the 50 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. fields of agriculture ; creeds are tlirowii overboard by com- merce. iniCHOLAS. Theological questions come at last to be decided by tbe broadsword; and the best artillery brings forward the best arguments. Montecuculi and Wallenstein were irrefragable doctors. Saint Peter was commanded to put up liis sword ; but the ear was cut off first. NESSELEODE. The blessed saint's escape from capital punishment^ after tliis violence^ is among the greatest of miracles. Perhaps there may be a perplexity in the text. Had he committed so great a crime against a person so highly protected as one in the high- priest's household^ he never would have lived long enough to be crucified at Rome, but would have carried his cross up to Calvary three days after the off'ence. The laws of no country would tolerate it. NICHOLAS. How did he ever get to Rome at all ? He must have been conveyed by an angel, or have slipt on a sudden into a railroad train, purposely and for the nonce provided. There is a con- troversy at the present hour about his delegated authority, and it appears to be next to certain that he never was in the capital of the west. It is my interest to find it decided in the negative. Successor to the emperors of the east, who sanctioned and appointed the earliest popes, as the bishops of Rome are denomi- nated, I may again at my own good time claim the privilege and prerogative. The cardinals and their subordinates are extending their claws in all directions : we must throw these crabs upon their backs again. NESSELRODE. Some among the Italians, and chiefly among the Romans, are venturing to express an opinion that there would be less of false religion, and more of true, if no priest of any description were left upon earth. NICHOLAS. Horrible ! unless are exempted those of the venerable Greek church. All others worship graven images : we stick to pictures. NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. 51 NESSELRODE. One scliolar mentioned^ not witliout an air of derision^ that a picture had descended from heaven recently on the coast of Italy. NICHOLAS. Framed ? varnisht ? imder glass ? on pannel ? on canvas ? What like ? NESSELRODE. The Virgin Mary, whatever made of. NICHOLAS. She must be ours then. She missed her road : she never would have taken her place among stocks and stones and blind worshipers. Easterly winds must have blown her toward a pestilential city, where at every street-corner is very signifi- cantly inscribed its true name at full length, Immondezzalo. But I hope I am guilty of no profaneness or infidelity when I express a doubt if every picture of the Blessed Virgin is sentient; most are ; perhaps not every one. If they want her in England, as they seem to do, let them have her . . unless it is the one that rolls the eyes : in that case I must claim her : she is too precious by half for papist or tractarian. I must order imme- diately these matters. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that I am the visible head of Clu:ist's church. Theologians may be consulted in regard to St. Peter, and may discover a manuscript at Novgorod, stating his martyrdom there, and proving his will and signature. NESSELRODE. Theologians may find perhaps in the Revelatiom some Beast foreshadowing your Majesty. NICHOLAS. How? sir! how? NESSELRODE, Emperors and kings, we are taught, are designated as great beasts in the Holy Scriptures. . . [Aside) , . and elsewhere. E -Z 52 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. BERANGER AND LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Passing by Tours, I could not resist the desire of present- ing my respects to the greatest of our poets. BERANGER. "Were I indeed so, I should be worthy to celebrate the heroism of the noble Eoche-Jaquelins, husband and wife, your nearest relatives, who contended and suffered so heroically in La Vendee. Poetry is envious of history, and feels her inadequacy to a like attempt. Painful as is the retrospect, there is glory to relieve it; can we say the same of the prospect now before us ? LA ROCHE-JAQTJELIN. Let US hope we may, and that the narrow present is alone disgraceful. Loyalty may exist in aU hearts, in aU circum- stances. BERANGER. I was taught in early youth that it is an error to pronounce the word loyalty as if it began with the letter r. Do not smile, M. le Marquis. I have always been a conservative. LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. Indeed ! BERANGER. Yes, indeed and fundamentally. I have always been a conservative of Imo, from which conservatism takes the name of loyalty : have all our kings ? all our rulers ? LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. King Henry has been misguided in his attempt to cast aside many wholesome instructions, and to aUow no other than suited his own good ])leasure. BERANGER. We know, by sad experience, that the fjood pleasure of kings is often stimulated by the evil pleasure of their ministers; hence it is requisite that there should be some legitimate and temperate restraint. \ BEEANGER AND LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. 53 LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. We rrench require a vigilant eye and strong hand over us. Mirabeau himself, the ablest man among us since the administration of Eichelieu, was unable to regulate the tempest he had excited. Do you, M. de Beranger, who are a consistent and staunch republican, think the present order of things at all better than the last or the preceding ? BERANGER. Order of things ! What order of things, M. le Marquis, can you expect in Prance ? We change perpetually from the grub to the butterfly, from the butterfly to the grub. This is our order of things, and this order is invariable. LA ROCHE-JAQUEUN. Perspicacity hke yours discerned long beforehand the inevitable result of our late commotions, and prudence led you into retirement. The wisest and the happiest lead studious and almost soHtary lives. BERANGER. This is the reflection of the ambitious, when Ambition has jilted them. There are extremely few so wise as to know where are the haunts of Happiness. Never have I been acquainted with any man who would not prefer the tumult of high ofiice to the tranquility of domestic peace. I know an Englishman to whom a Lord Chancellor said, "You have made the best choice.''' And the reply was : "You would rather be the highest subject than the happiest.''' LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. You are safe. BERANGER. So are you, M. le Marquis. "The Powers that be," are clear-sighted Powers. They see me and overlook my prin- ciples ; you they treat with high consideration, however they may hate you. They behold in you a lofty stem, a strong deep-rooted trunk, soHtary and august in the ancient forests of Brittainy. They would be appalled, as Lucan describes the soldiers of Ccesar in the sacred grove near Massilia, at 54 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. cutting down the most eminent^ if not the last^ relic of true nobiHty, of inflexible honor, on the soil of Prance. Un- hesitatingly and safely could they send into exile, or into the hulks, a gang of vociferating lawyers and vulgar generals : but a stroke on a La Eoche-Jaquelin would sound and reverberate among your druidical stones with awful and appaUing omen to them. LA EOCHE-JAQUEUN. I neither fear nor respect such people. BEEANGER. Pardon me, M. le Marquis ; but it appears to me that you have no reason to be very weU affected either to the occupant or the claimant. The king of Prohsdorff, Teres atque rotundus in body, is endowed with a mind of similar conformation. ' LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. You compliment him liiglily. BEEANGER. Unwarily then have I slipt into flattery. My meaning is, that, puffed up by vanity, he is only fit to be what he is . . . the football of fortune. LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. Do not be severe on him. If you must be severe, be at least impartial. The possessor of supreme and arbitrary power, in Paris, deserves surely as much acerbity as the prince who, having dismissed his few faithful servants, sits stript of power, shuddering and crouching at Prohsdorff, BEEANGER. There is not a drop of bitterness in me for either. No boat- man on our beautiful Loire, no laundress on its sands below the bridge, is less important to me than those two. Petulance and arrogance are the king's characteristics ; ambition the presi- dent's. One has done, the other would have done, what you approve, and what my intellect and heart ahke denounce. BERANGER AND LA ROCHE- JAQUELIN. 55 LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Indeed ! Avliat can tliat be ? BERANGER. The restoration of darkness ; the striking out of three hun- dred years from the clu'onology of mind ; the resuscitation of Popery, as she sat at Avignon when she was expelled from Rome. Sovrans will bitterly repent of such a step backward : she will fall heavily on them ere long. I heard it reported in this city that when the Trench general landed at Civita Vecchia, with a lie in liis mouth thrust into it by the president, an English gentleman sent back the work on artillery which the president had given to him. This gen- tleman Avas in the habitude of meeting the prince at Lady Blessington's, under whose roof a greater number of remark- able and illustrious men assembled from all nations, than under any other since roofs took the place of caverns. "When he returned to London from his captivity at Ham, he was greeted by Lady Blessington's friend, "as having escaped the two heaviest of misfortunes, a prison and a throne!^ " Whichever of the two may befall me,'" said the prince, " I hope I shall see you." " If a prison," said the other, " the thing is possible ; if a throne, not." LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Let liim beware of visiting Paris. BERANGER. Pifty years ago he spent some time there ; some ten later he resided in this city; and he went into Italy after the Restoration. LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Ah, ]\I. deBeranger ! I imagine he would much prefer Italy or Touraine to Cayenne or Algeria. BERANGER. I do not beHeve he is likely, so late in life, to try the experiment. LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Pardon me : I have been trespassing too far on youi' time. BERANGER. Quite the contrary : you have made it valuable. 56 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. LA ROCHE-JAQtJELIN. Surely as I entered I saw you suddenly lay down your hat. If you were about to walk, not to visit, I should beg permission to accompany you. BERANGEB. Gladly will I attend you, M. le Marquis. You will travel down the Loire on your road homeward : by way of variety shall our promenade be toward the Cher ? LA ROCHE- JAQUELIN, By all means : it runs close to the town. BERANGER. Here we are. The beautiful plain has lately been enclosed. A few years ago it was as nature formed it. LA BOCHE-JAQUELIN. Aye : just as when Charles Martell discomfited and drove out the Saracens. BERANGER. May we never have to curse the memory of Charles Martell. LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. God forbid ! BERANGER. Yet how flourishing was Spain under the Saracens during great part of a millenium ! What pleasure and politeness, what chivalry and poetry, what arts and sciences, in her cities ! what architecture within her walls, and round about ! what bridges ! what fountains ! what irrigation ! Look at her now under her Bourbons. Look off from her, look toward Italy. Who, tell me, who, M. le Marquis, hath held down men un- improved, unprogressive, motionless ? no, not motionless . . . nor was the wheel of Ixion. LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN. Bravo ! M. de Beranger ! But seriously now, do you attribute aU our civilization, all our enlightenment, all our arts and sciences, to these Saracens? BERANGER. M. le Marquis ! if there is a gentleman in Prance, it is KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 57 because tlie Saracens were here or in the neighbourhood, or because his ancestors encountered them under the walls of Ascalon and Acca. However, I do not attribute all our civilization, all our enlightenment, all our arts and sciences, to them. No ; far from it. In their vesture, which is among the earlier signs of civihzation, they never wore, or made their slaves wear, conical caps emblazoned with fiery serpents, surmounted as a crest with spiral flames; they never wore, or made their slaves wear, robes ornamented with open- mouthed dogs and grinning devils. Fanciful as they were in architectural decorations, they did not clear the market-place to erect scaffolds in it, surrounded by stakes and faggots for the concremation of human victims, the virgin, the matron, the bride, the nursing mother. Inventive as they were in mechanics, they did not invent the thumbscrew, the puUey, and many other such elegant articles of furniture. Studious as they were of medicine, adepts as they were in chemistry, it was left for more sagacious heads and for more pious hands to invent and to apply the Acqua Toffana. The only people now that appear to open their eyes, are the people of canvas and marble. KING CAELO-ALBEETO AND PEINCESS BELGIOIOSO.* KING. Permit me. Princess, to offer you my compliment on your entering a new career of conquest. AVhen ladies of such rank and accomplishments condescend to lead the brave volunteers of Lombardy, good fortune must foUow. PRINCESS. Excuse me, sir, it is far from condescension in me : on the contrary, I feel it to be an act of self-elevation; I hope a pardonable one. I was never proud until now ; for never was I so well aware of my duties, and so resolved to perform them. KING. Plattery, wealth, station, beauty, were in a conspiracy against you : surely it was a diflicult matter to resist their united forces. * Printed first for the benefit of the sufferers at Messina. 58 THE LAST FllUIT OPF AN OLD TEEE. PRINCESS. Each of these contingencies has many disadvantages, which its parallel advantages make ns too often overlook. The best of men and women have to fill up certain gaps or discon- tinuities in their character : here is a field for it. KING. I enter it willingly. PRINCESS. Italy, sir, had always her eyes on you : she once abased them in deep sorrow : her confidence now returns. Only one man upon earth enjoys j)ower equal to yours : behold how he employs it . . . the calm, the prudent, the beneficent, the ener- getic, Pio Nono. At your suggestion all the potentates of Italy would engage in their service a proportionate force of Swiss. Your Majesty and the King of Naples could each afford to subsidize twelve thousand for a single year, a second will not be necessary for the expulsion of the Austrians. It is better to accomplish the great work without the intervention of Trance, wliich would create much jealousy in Germany and in Eno'land. KING. I would rather not see the Prench again in Piedemont. Already the apprehension of such an event has induced Lord Palmerston to make me a strong remonstrance. PRINCESS. Sir, Lord Palmerston has lately been very much in the habit of making strong remonstrances ; and strong ridicule has always rebounded to the racket. It was only this week that he made one of his strong remonstrances to the Government of Spain ; which strong remonstrance was thrown back in his teeth (if he has any left) with derision and defiance. ISfarvaez stood aloof with folded arms, and left him to be bufletted and beaten down by poor old Sottomayor. His conduct in regard to Portugal has alienated from England all . . . liberals. KING. Are there many of them in that country? and are they persons of consideration and respectability ? PRINCESS. Many of the clergy, both lower and higher ; nearly all the KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 59 principal mercliants; and not only the best informed, but also the larger part of the nobility ; just as they are in ours. KING. I wonder what could have induced his lordship to abandon his policy and principles ? PRINCESS. Sir, he abandoned no policy, no principles ; his lordship is a whig ; these whigs have neither : protestations serve instead. KING. It must be conceded that, in the multiplicity of parties and interests, and in the conciliation and management of the two Houses, an English minister is placed in circumstances of great difficulty, and where strict integrity is quite impossible. PRINCESS. What is to be thought of that mane's wisdom or prudence who walks deliberately, and with his eyes open, into those circumstances ? KING. Simpler governments have produced honester ministers than the complex. England has never seen her Colbert, her Turgot, her Necker, her Eoland. In the course of the last eighty years, her only minister on whom there was the slightest suspicion of sound principles, was tlie Marquis of Eockingham, patron of the celebrated Burke. The King never spoke witli cordiality to him, excepting on the day of his dismissal. If Lord-Palmerston miscarries, it will not be for incompliancy to the wishes of the Coiu't : he has obtained a firm footing there by trampling on Portugal. But as Austria is no fief of Saxony, he might permit me to regulate my own concerns, and not attempt to trip me up in crossing the frontier. PRINCESS. Your Majesty is defending your own country in defending Italy, and you do not cross the frontier until you cross the Alps. It may be necessary ; for certain I am that the Em- peror of Austria and the King of Prussia are awaiting with earnest anxiety to meet the advance of the Kussian armies. 60 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. KING. They would ruin Hungary and the Baltic provinces. PRINCESS. The more welcome for that. By such devastation the power of resistance would be annihilated in the refractory. Posen has already been treated like Oporto. KING. You appear to doubt the Prussian king's sincerity. PRINCESS. If his Majesty is an honest man, it is a great deal more than his father and his grandfather were ; and indeed to find any such character in the archives of Hohenzollern would require an antiquary the most zealous and the most acute. Certainly in the last reign the heir to the throne was considered to be more anti-democratic than the possessor : and since his acces- sion what he has conceded to the people came from him as an emanation of power and wisdom on indigence and imbecility. There are professors in Germany who declare that the kings and upper classes must be taught a purer language, not with- out an infusion of neology, tlio most of these teachers are involved in their own smoke and can see no further than the library. KING. Princess ! you must acknowledge that kings, at the present day, are placed in an embarrassing situation; I among the rest. PRINCESS. Then extricate yourself, sir, speedily. Unless it is speedily, it aWII never be. You may recover all you have lost of popularity and renown, by valour and determination. Your countryman Alfieri was correct in his assertion that the Italians, both in mental and corporeal power, are superior to all the nations round about. They want only good examples and liberal institutions. KING. I am afraid. Princess, you want a Napoleon and a republick. PRINCESS. If I desired the existence of the one, I must desire the KING CAULO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 61 extinction of the other. Napoleon would permit no other free- dom than his own personal. Never did any sovran, not Louis Philippe himself, so belie his protestations: never did any one enact so many laws restrictive of freedom in so many of its attributes. The most arbitrary of despots never issued so great a quantity of edicts against the press. Not only was it a crime to call in question any of his actions, but it also was one to omit the praise of them. Madame de Stael was exiled for it, and an impression of her work on Germany seized by the pohce, condemning her thereby to a loss of twenty thousand francs. Military men, especially those who beheve that all honor lies in the field of battle, may admire him; but they who abhor selfishness, malice, and (what we women think a crime) vulgarity, abhor Napoleon. He did, however, good service to Italy, be the motive what it may, in extirpathig the Bourbons, sticking in again only one weak twig which never could take root. KING. You see then with satisfaction the difficulties which beset the King of Naples ? PBINCESS. Certainly; and so does your Majesty. It is necessary to expel that family from the nations it has humihated, from the thrones it has disgraced. The Sicilians, the best of our Italian races, have decreed it. KING. Kings must not place it in the power of the people to decide on their destiny. PRINCESS. Kings do not place it in their power, but God does. Kings themselves begin the work of delving under their palaces and preparing the combustibles for explosion. They never know where they are, until they find themselves blown into some foren land. The head grows cooler when the crown is oH' : yet they would run again after it, as a Httle girl after her bonnet which a breeze is rolling in the dust. KING. I am half persuaded that the little girl's loss is the gravest, and that she is the wiser of the two runners. 62 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. PRINCESS. Your Majesty lias inspired me with confidence to proceed in speaking out plainly. You are now in my country, and you can save it. Unless you do, you will lead an unhappy life ; if you do, a happy one. Security of dominion is desiraMe, not extent. There are those who whisper, what I never can believe, that your Majesty is ambitious of being the King of Lombardy. Supposing it practicable, do you imagine that the people of Turin will be contented to see the seat of government trans- ferred to Milan, or tliat the rich and noble and ancient families of ]\Iilan will submit to become the footstools of theTurinese? Never, sir, never, KING. Would you have the whole world republican ? PBINCESS. In due time : at the present, few nations are prepared for it : the best prepared is the Italian. Every one of our cities shows the deep traces of its carroccio, and many still retain their raunici])ality and i\\Q\xpo(lesta. I see no reason why they should not all be restored to their pristine state and vigour, all equally subject to one strict confederation. The causes of their dissidence and decline exist no longer. The Emperor is a powerless crea- ture, tied by the leg to a worm-eaten throne. The Pope, reposing on the bosom of God, inspires the purest devotion, the sublimest virtue. He reigns in the hearts of the most irreligious, and exerts over the most obstinate the authority of paternal love. I have seen proud scoffers lower their heads at the mention of his name : I have heard cold philosophers say, with the hand upon tlie breast. This man is truly God's vicegerent. Pio IMono is with Italy. One shake of the hand-bell on his table would arouse fifty millions of our co-religionists.^ KING. Our family hath always looked up with reverence to the Popes : and without the countenance of Pio Nono toward my people I should perhaps have been slower in approval of their demonstrations. PRINCESS. The English ministry sent over a worthy man to warn the * He soon began to calculate the probable duration of a Pope's life who resists the Sacred College. God had inspired him with all but wisdom, truth, and courage. KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 63 Pope of his clanger in giving so much encouragement to the Hberals. Pio smiled with his usual benignity. He felt that it was not in man to order the sun to stop or the stars to slacken their courses. The plenipotentiary, in the plenitude of his potentiality, could do nothing at Eome; and he struggled with like ill success in the straits of Scylla and Carybdis. KING. It is piteous to observe with how little wisdom and probity the affairs of England are conducted. She hath utterly lost all her influence in Europe. She can not hold her nearest dependencies : her remoter drop off one after another, and grow stronger from that moment. The preservation of her territories in the two Indies, extensive, fertile, wealtliy as they are, brings only debt upon her. PRINCESS. Pardon me, sir, it does much more than that : it not only exhausts her treasures, but, between the West Indies and Africa, it consumes several thousands of soldiers and sailors yearly. KING. Yet England enjoys a free constitution and wise laws. PRINCESS. So it is said by the framers, whose families are cloathed and fed by them : I can only judge by facts. Mythologists tell us that stones were turned into men : perhaps the same metamor- phosis may, after a wliile, be enacted in England. KING. It was even less probable at Vienna. PRINCESS. The blow of the hammer which struck out the kindling spark was given here in Italy. KING. Events may come too suddenly. • PRINCESS. Knowing this, we should be as well prepared as we can be. I myself am a witness to the suddenness of events. One day 64 THE LAST FETJIT OFF AN OLD TREE. I was walking on a wide waste in the maremma of Tuscany : the next, by enterprise and industry, were excavated the magnifi- cent structures of ancient days. Thus suddenly hath all Italy come forth from sterility to within sight of her glorious insti- tutions. KING. Ah princess ! you make me smile. Those tombs which you mention did indeed open again; but it was only to show the semblances of kings. PRINCESS. Sir ! in one moment they had been visible and had dis- appeared ; in one moment the crown was on their heads and off again ; it was hfted up, and only dust was under : but the works of art, of genius, shone down on them bright as ever. It is lamentable that kings should be less powerful than artificers ; they might be greatly more so, and without the exertion of labour or the expenditure of apprenticeship. KING. Lamentable it may be; but is it not equally that people who call themselves liberals should carp at the first shadow of liberalism in princes ? A celebrated man of the Whig party in England, and (by virtue of the office he once held) a member of the peerage, tried to be at once an Englislmian and a Frenchman, a tory and a repubhcan. PRINCESS. The Erench minister made him understand his duties; no minister or man will ever make him perform them. A shallow scholar, an inelegant writer, an awkward orator, he throws himself into the middle of every road where there is the most passing, fond of heat and sunshine as a viper or a flea. In the gazettes he announced his own death, not indeed to excite commiseration, which, if he cared about it, would be hopeless, but curiosity. It is said that foxes, found in places where they had no means of escape, have simulated death : he has had the advantage of being thrown out after detection, and lives to yelp and purloin. Among the whigs themselves there is nowhere to be found so whi})t a deserter, so branded an impostor. There is no party which he has not flattered and cajoled, espoused and abandoned. Possessing a variety of KING CAELO-ALBEllTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. G5 talents, Avitliout tlie ability to make a single one available, tlie learned Lord Stowel said of him on his elevation to office, He knoios a little of everijtli'ing excepting laio. His lordship might have added, if he had thought sncli qualities of any import- ance in his profession, veracity and decorum. He declared it as his opinion that it is the duty of a barrister to defend a client at any expense of truth, even if the crime were shifted off the shoulders of the guilty on the innocent. His opinion was taken by a man as unscrupulous as himself, to screen a murderer. Two virtuous women were inculpated; one was only ruined, the other was driven mad. The same turbulent and malicious man insulted the Italian peo])le in the House of Lords, and condemned the interference of your Majesty. KING. I am little surprised at it, and feel less the indignity of this brawler than the insolence of the minister who replied. He said, and it was true although he said it, that he would have prevented my step if he could. Italy, now resolved on free institutions, must look in another direction than toward England. PRINCESS. She calls upon you, sir, in this crisis of her sufferings. In the old heroic ages one man alone slew many wild beasts : it were strange if, in an age far more heroic, many men should be insufficient to quell a single tame one, with his back broken by a mass of rubbish faUing down on liim in the den. KING. We must not only think of Austria, but also of the other German potentates. The King of Prussia, fond of managing and intermeddling, and having his own way and walking by the light of his own wisdom, has been forced into liberalism. If his people are prudent, they will not allow him to march, as he proposes, at the head of his army into Poland. He might play the same game as the late king of Naples played, when his parliament gave Imn permission to leave his metropolis for Vienna. He has clever men about him, men of pliant principles and lanky purses, unreluctant to leave sour-crout for French cookery, and to exchange a horn snuff- box for a diamond one witli an emperor on the lid. AYe 66 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. want experienced diplomatists capable of coping with their sagacity and wariness. PKlNCESa. The less intelligent sometimes bafRe them by firmness and integrity. I have seen slender girls support an incredible weight on their heads, because they stood quite upright and walked steddily. The ministers of kings would persuade the world of their wisdom by vacillation and obliquity : one false step^ and they are fallen. KING. I see many things to disquiet, and some to endanger me. PKINCESS. The hearts of great men neither collapse in the hour of per- sonal danger nor ossify in that of public distress. It is not to be dissembled that falsehood in the cause of freedom may be apprehended on the side of Prussia : and it is far from impos- sible that the Prussian king and the Austrian emperor are wait- ing with impatience to embrace the Tzar. Tlie massacre of the nobles in Gallicia was organized and rewarded at Vienna : the persecution of all classes in Posen is countenanced and commanded at Berlin. Czartoryski, the humane^ the charitable, the moderate, the just, the patriotic, writes thus to the prime minister of that country : / quit Berlin with a heavy heart. JFhatever he the cause, it is a fact, that tip to this day not one of the promises made to theinhabitantsof the grand-duchy of Tosen, hy the Prussian government, has heenfulflled. To what part of its people has that government been true ? Stript and scourged by Bonaparte, tear after tear fell through the king^'s white eyelashes, and promise after promise from his quivering lips. His nation picked him up, dragged him out of the mire, cloaked him anew, and set him on his horse again. Generals are now sent by liim into Posen, with conflicting autho- rities, to sow dissension, and to exasperate the German invader against his generous host. The Prussian is not contented to occupy the house and the land he hath seized on ; he is not contented with an equal share in the administration of laws and taxes ; he would split into shreds the country he already has broken into sphnters, and would abolish its nationality. KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 67 KING. Uncertainty in respect to Prussia, you must acknowledge, is enough to make me cautious and deliberate. PRINCESS. An English poet says that the woman wJio deliberates is lost ; it may sometimes be said with equal truth of the general and of the prince. Behold, sir, this beautiful city of A^icenza ! Even so small a place, being so lovely, is worth risking life for ; what then our grand and glorious Italy ! Look down only on the portals of the palaces before us. In Paris and London we creep through a crevice in the wall : here a cavalier finds no difficulty in placing his hand under a lady's elbow, at due distance, and in leading her without bruize or contusion through the crowded hall, to the wide and light staircase, where Heroes and Gods and Graces stand forth to welcome them as they ascend. The inanimate world here outvalues the animated elsewhere. It is worth all that remains of life to have lived one year in Italy. No wonder I am enthusiastic : I have lived here many. KING. Many ? you ? the Princess Belgioioso here beside me ? The Graces you speak of seem to contradict you, PRINCESS. I would rather trust the Heroes, as being nearer at hand. KING. It is a relief to change the subject a little from politics and battles. No subject can support a long-continued conversa- tion, excepting love. PRINCESS. Love also is the fresher for a short excursion. Seldom do I read a dialogue, even by the cleverest author, without a sense of weariness. Sentences cut up into question and answer on grave subjects, into repartee on lighter, are intolerable. Such is the worst method of instructing a child, or of attracting a man or woman. And there is something very absurd in the supposition that any abstruse question, or matter of deep thought, can be shuftled backward and forward in tliis off'-hand F 2 68 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. manner. Even where the discourse is upon a subject the most easy and tractable, we are fond of departing from the strait level walk to some narrower alley that diverges out of it : and we always feel the cooler and pleasanter in passing out of one room into another. But the Austrians in Yienna will not allow me to linger here among the orange-trees and myrtles and oleanders of Vicenza, within view of the white uniform. We will revert, sir (with permission) to the serious and sub- stantial. KINO. Of the serious I find quite enough ; the substantial, I trust, is somewhere in reserve. My old ministers have perplexed me almost as much as my old allies. PRINCESS. It is certain that every man in power thinks himself wiser than every man out of poAver ; and the getting into it seems a sort of warrantry for the surmise. Yet it may so happen that these who look over the chairs, and have no seat themselves, shall see somewhat more of the game and of its chances than the gamesters can. Others may be cooler and more disinter- ested, who do not climb the ladder with the hod upon their heads, but stand at the bottom of the building, and look up and round. KINO. If only a few ladies like you would go into Austria and Hungary, you could dissuade and detain the leaders of those nations from the desire of invading ours. * PRINCESS. What does any gain by it ? All must contribute money and men to hold the conquest in subjection. Kings themselves are none the happier or the more powerful for it. A few noble families are enriched, and rendered thereby in a higher condition to dictate to their master. KING. There is something in that. PRINCESS. The greatest victory, the greatest conquest, never brought more pleasm-e to the winner than a game of chess or whist. KING CAllLO-ALBERTO AND PRTNCESS BELGIOIOSO. 69 Yet what crimes, wliat miseries, what mortal anguish, not only in the field of battle, but in the far-oft' home ! what curses ! what misgiving's of a watchful, a just, and a protecting Provi- dence ! The Austrians are Httle better than meal-magots : but surely the brave Hungarians will espouse our cause, instead of denouncing it. They themselves have been contending for the same, and have won it ; not against us, but against the very same enemy. Hungary, Switzerland, Tyrol, are the natural allies of Italy : she wants no other. KINO. I am happy to find you delivering this opinion. You have lived much among the Trench, and perhaps may entertain toward the nation the sentiments of esteem due only to the best societies. You seem to take it little to heart or to con- sideration, that, if you stand too near the focus of democracy, the flounces and feathers of nobility may be caught and shriveled. PRINCESS. In France the titles of nobility are abolished. Important or unimportant, I do not believe the lower orders in Italy Avill discard the use of them. They address one another as we address your Majesty, by the title of S'ujnore. It comprehends alike the lowest and the highest. If a marquis has twenty sons, they are aU marquises. Many, indeed most of them, are sadly poor : it is a comfort, no doubt, to receive the whole of the patrimonial title where there is only a fraction of the estate. Already one Italian is on a parity Avitli another. They are the least invidious of mankind, and unite the most of courtesy and cordiality. The scientific and learned, the patriotic and eloquent, are treated in our societies with much higher distinction thau persons of birth and title. The French, who have learnt so much from us, have learnt this also ; later indeed, but not less perfectly. It will penetrate to Germany and England. In Germany the nobility is ignorant and ancient : in England it is well-informed and new. There are few families in the peerage whose name, even as kniglit's or gentleman's, existed on the accession of the Tudors. False shame, trying to support and strengthen the sufferer with a stiff and defiant carriage, snaps asunder the titled new nobiUty from the untitled old. In our country no clever advocate is caught up by a patron, and seated first in the lower house, presently in 70 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. the higher. Ancient services to the state^ ancient benefits to the people, are the only true and recognised titles of oiu' nobility : those are neither to be taken away nor to be con- ferred, by a less active hand, a less energetic intellect. I should be what I am whether I were called so or not ; the same when my camariera has taken off my gown as when she put it on ; the insertion or the removal of a pin makes all the difference. KING. This is talking more jihilosophically than, by what I com- prehend of it, men talk generally. PRINCESS. Eew men are ashamed of mounting upon stilts, in order to raise their heads above the multitude. They are most sup- ported wdien they are most unsteddy, and are most listened to when they speak in a feigned voice through masks. KING. But where there are ladies there should be courts, distinc- tions, and festivals. PRINCESS. "We ladies of Milan can do extremely well without them. Happy in our circles, in our conversations, in our music, ready to receive instruction and grateful to our instructors, many of us seldom leave the city but for the vintage-season, or leave it for no fui'ther an excursion than to the lake of Como or Yarese. KING. Tranquil is the scene and beautiful round Yarese ; redundant in the profusion of gifts and exalted in the graces of majesty is the Lario ; but eminent over your Lago Maggiore we behold the awful benignity of Saint Carlo Borrommeo. At his prayers and before his omnipresence, Tamine and Pestilence lied from Milano ; and Gustavus Adolphus, conqueror of Germany, recalled his advancing and irresistible army from the marshes of Gravedona. PRINCESS. Sir ! his descendant is worthy of his name and his protection. Unless the bravery of my friend and the intercession of our KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 71 patron saint be efficient, we may perhaps ere long be seen pitching our tents in Piedemont. KING. It is a comfort to believe that you prefer us to our neighbours, and that Prance is not about to win you from us. I do confess to you, princess, that tlie remembrance of what happened in the first revolution disquieted me a little at the early rumours of the last. PRINCESS. The first Prench revolution was a very vile preface to a very noble volume. Opening the introduction of the second, we may augur better, but with fear at the side of hope, for its continuation. KING. It is remarkable that the sober-minded Germans should have committed much greater excesses and much more glaring injustice : and it is not only in these countries of ours, but equally in their own, and along the whole extent of the Baltic. It is seldom or never tliat hounds worry one another while the prey is before them and the huntsmen are sounding the horn. Eeally and truly I wish you would compose a manifesto, which I may address to the Austrians and Hungarians. PRINCESS. Perhaps in some places there might be an objectionable word. KING. You must be less inflammatory than Lord Palmerston. PRINCESS. I could neither be more hasty nor more inefficient. Touch- wood makes but an inditterent torch. KING. Give lis a specimen of appeal. PRINCESS. It would be like this ; " Austrians and Hungarians ; why do you wish to impose on others a yoke which you yourselves have shaken off ! If they whom you persist in your endeavours 72 THE LAST FllUlT OFF AN OLD TREE. of reducing to servitude, liad attempted tlie same against you, tlien indeed resentment miglit warrant jou, and retributive justice would be certainly on your side. It may gi'atify the vanity of a family to exercise dominion over distant states : and the directors of court-pageants may be loth to drop the fruits of patronage. These fruits are paid for with your blood. Of what advantage is it to any citizen of Buda or Yienna to equip an arch-duke and trumpet him forth to Milan ? Extent of territory never made a nation the happier, unless on its own natal soil, giving it room for enterprise and industry. On the contrary, it always liath helped its ruler to become more arbitrary. Supposing you were governed by the wisest, instead of the weakest, in the universe, could he render you more prosperous by sending you from your peaceful homes to scare away order from others ? Hungarians ! is not Hungary wide enough for you ? Austrians ! hath Heaven appointed you to control much greater, much more numerous, much more war- like nations than you ever were; Hungary for instance, and Lombardy ? Be contented to enjoy a closer union with Moravia and (if she will listen to it) with Bohemia. Leave to Hungary what she will take, whether you will or no, Stiria, lllyria, and Croatia. You are not a maritime power, and you never can be, for you are without a sea-board ; but Hungarian generosity will open to you the Adriatic as freely as the Danube. Be moderate while moderation can profit you, and you will soon cease to smart under the wounds of war, and to struggle under the burden of debt.'^ KING. This appeal is very impressive, because it terminates at the proper place. Taxation is more intolerable than cruelty and injustice. The purse is a nation's panoply ; and when you strike through it, you wound a vital part. Kefusal to reduce taxation by the aboHtion of inutilities, may shake the broad and solid edifice of the English constitution, which the socialist and chartist have assailed in vain. The debts of Italy are light. PRINCESS. The lands and palaces of the king of Naples would pay off the heaviest : the remainder is barely sufficient to serve as a keystone to consolidate our interests. There are far-sighted KING CAKLO-ALBEHTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 73 men in England who would not gladly see the great debt of that country very much diminished. KING. Part of ours will disappear now we are no longer to give out ratioiis to the hordes of Austria. I hope they may be convinced that they can be happier and safer in their own houses than in the houses of other men. PRINCESS. If they believe^ as it seems they do^ that they are incapable of governing themselves, and that an idiot is their proper head, let them continue to enjoy the poppy crown, but leave the iron one behind at Monza. Is'othing more will be required of them than cooperation with the other states of Germany against liussia. A force no greater than the peace-establish- ment will secure the independence and integrity of Poland. Nay, if Germany sends only 150,000 men, Hungary 40,000, Italy 40,000, France 50,000, Eussia will break down under them, and Moscow be again her capital. Great states are great curses, both to others and to themselves. One such, however, is necessary to the equipoise of the political world. Poland is the natural barrier of civilisation against barbarism, of freedom against despotism. No potentate able to coerce the progress of nations must anywhere exist. All that ever was Poland must again be Poland, and much more. Power, predominant power, is necessary to her for the advantage of Europe. She must be looked up to as an impregnable out- work protecting the nascent liberties of the world. KING. Eussia is rich and warlike and hard to manae:e. "G" PRINCESS. Her Cossacks and Tartars, of various denominations, might nearly all be detacht from her by other means than arms. Her empire will split and splinter iiito the infinitesimals of which its vast shapeless body is composed. The south breathes against it and it dissolves. 74 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GAEIBALDI AND MAZZINI. MAZZINI. It was in vain that I represented to you, Garibaldi, the imprudence of letting the ^French army debark unopposed at Civita Yeccliia. GARIBALDI. I now acknowledge the imprudence of it : but I believed at the time that the French soldiers were animated by a love of freedom, the French officers by a sentiment of honour and veracity ; and I doubted not that they came for our support. Do you laugh at me, Mazziui? Can there be a laugh or a smile in any Italian at the present hour, M'hen after our citizens had driven from our walls, and rolled on the plain, the most courageous and confident of the hostile army, we experience in turn grave disasters every day, from the supe- riority of their weapons and the advantages of their experience ? Every day their rifles strike down from om- cannon on the walls our best artillerymen. True, there are ardent youths who supply their places instantly : but how long can this last ? MAZZINI. Believe me, brave and generous Garibaldi, I did not laugh at any thing but what all Europe laughs at ; Erench honour, Erencli veracity. Is this the first tune they have deceived us ? is this the first time our youth have paid the price of their blood for their credulity? Never more can they deceive, never more can they conciliate us. Italy henceforth is divided from Erance by a stronger and loftier barrier than the Alps. GARIBALDI. Ingratitude is more flagitious in them even than perfidy. Look into our hospitals : three-fourths of the wounded are Erench soldiers. They were abandoned by their officers and comrades on their ignominious field of battle, partly from indifference toward those who had served and could serve no longer; partly on the calcidation of our humanity and the knowledge of our deficiency in provisions. GA.11IBALDI AND MAZZINI. 75 MAZZINI. Even the wildest of the beasts are calculators : the serpent^ the tiger, make no spring without a calculation; but neither makes it wantonly ; the one must be offended or frightened, the other must be in search of food. GARIBALDI. The ambition of one man is the fountain-head of our calamity. Fallen we may be; but never so fallen as the French themselves : we resisted ; they succumbed. Can any one doubt the ulterior views of this impostor ? MAZZINI. He will not rest here : he will claim the kingdom of Rome and the empire of France. He has proved liis legitimacy by his contempt of law ; in this alone he bears a resemblance to Napoleon. Napoleon, upon several occasions, showed the obtuser part of liis triangular hat, but never until he had shown the pointed. The hatter at Strasburg would have taken back at small discount the imitation of it, which he forwarded to liis customer for the expedition toward Paris. Already his emissaries have persuaded the poor ignorant population of the proviiices that he is the Emperor Napoleon just escaped from an English prison. GARIBALDI. Presently, I repeat it, he will assume the title. The Dutch are more likely than the French to hold it in derision. They know that his mother did not cohabit with her husband; and they might have expected one much honester from the Admiralty than they received from it. MAZZINI. Garibaldi ! we have other occupations than reference to paternities, to similitudes, and verisimilitudes. The French are at the gates of our city : fire no longer from the walls : let them enter : let Eome be a Saragoza : within the ramparts we have defensible positions, none upon them : all weapons are equal, or nearly so, hand to hand, Roman women have displayed the same courage and devotion as Saragozan : lloman artizans are as resolute as Numantian. 76 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TKEE. GARIBALDI. Neither in Numantia nor in Saragoza was there any woman Avho, coming from afar, incited by admiration of freedom and valour, abandoned a luxurious home, the society of the learned, the homage of the chivalrous, to spend her days and nights in administering comfort to the wounded, in tasting the bitter medicine that the feverish lip might not reject it, in swathing with delicate hand the broken and festered limb, in smoothing the pallet that agony had made uneven and hard. Man's courage is of earth, however high ; woman's angelic, and of heaven. A Suetonius and a Tacitus may tell the world hereafter what are our pontifical princesses ; a Belgioiso stands before us, and shows by her magnanimity and beneficence what is a Milanese. Learned men ! inquisitorial professors ! cold sceptics ! violators of the tomb ! stumblers on the bones and ashes ye would kick aside ! ye who doubt the realities of our ancient glory, of our ancient self-devotion, come hither, bathe your weak eyes and strengthen your wavering belief. CAEDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. FIRST CONVERSATION. • » CARDINAL AXTONELLI. General ! on the eve of your departure GENERAL GEMEAU (ciSlde). Sacre ! what does the man mean ? CARDINAL ANTONELLL . in the name of the Holiness of our Lord, of the Sacred College, of the bishops, of the clergy at large. . . GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence ! come, if you please, to the point. "What the devil is implied in this superfine tissue of verbiage and fanfaronade ? CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 77 CARDINAL ANTONELLI. . it is incumbent on me (and never was any duty more gratifying to my licart) to declare to your Excellency the satisfaction of his Holiness at the assistance you have rendered his Holiness^ in upholding, under the banner of the Church, and under the Pontifical blessing, the rights and authority of the Holy See. GENERAL GEMEAU. Parbleu ! well may you thank us ; but if you take it into your head that we are going, your thanks, supposing them final, my brave Eminence, are somewhat premature. CARDINAL ANTONELLL . And I am commanded by his Beatitude to place at your disposal one thousand medals and one thousand crosses, decorated with appropriate ribbands, that your Excellency may distribute them among those officers and soldiers most distin- guished for their devotion to our true religion. GENERAL GEMEAU. If your Eminence talks of sending off your deliverers in this manner, they will throw your ribbands and crosses to the Jews and to the smelting-pot. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. I speak from authority, and with the voice of a prophet, in declaring to your Excellency that such a sacrilege would be most detrimental to the perpetrators. But out of evil cometh good : such invariably is the order of Divine Providence. Tlie laws of nature in this instance will bend before it, and a miracle will be the result, to the edification of the believer, and the conversion or the confusion of the unbeliever. GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence ! you gentlemen are always quite enough of prophets to foresee a miracle. Eavor me with a vision of that which is now impending, that I may either keep the soldiers in the barracks or order them to take up a position, according to the exigency. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. If such a profanation were offered to those crosses and medals whicli have received a benediction from the Holiness 78 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. of our Lordj the fire over which they should be placed in the crucible would totally change their properties, and the metal would be only base metal. GENERAL GEMEAU. INTame of God ! I thought as much. But every metal is base metal which turns a citizen into a satellite, the defender of his freedom into the subverter of another's. Eminence ! we were not born to be Mamelukes, we were not educated to be Janisaries. Shall those orders of men which are abolished in Turkey and Egypt be maintained in France, for the benefit of Eome ? CARDINAL ANTONELLI. General ! with due submission, this language is novel and unintelligible to me. GENERAL GEMEATJ. Plahily then; you and your master are ungrateful. We have endured your clerical insolence and your Koman climate long enough. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. His Holiness is quite of your opinion, and therefor would graciously bestow on you, in the hour of your departure, liis benediction and valediction. GENERAL GEMEAU. His Holiness, it seems to me, reckons without his host. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. We are most sensible of the great benefits the Erencli government and the Erencli army have conferred upon us. GENERAL GEMEAU. Truly so it seems ! We do not want more of this sensibility; we will grant you gratuitously more of these benefits. Have we not sacrificed to you our oaths as citizens, our honour as soldiers ? Did we not SAvear that we entered the Eoman States to defend the liberty of the Eoman people ? And did we not, without delay, bombard the city ? CARDINAL ANTONELLI. To the danger of the palaces and of the churches. CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 79 GENERAL GEMEAU. Which of the princes, which of the cardinals, ever once entered the hospitals where our wounded, to the number of above a thousand, lay dying ? The Koraan ladies, old and young, attended them, drest their wounds, sat at the side of their couches day and night, administered their medicines, assuaged their thirst, and frequently, from heat and inanition, fainted on the floor. Often have the tears of our brave soldiers fallen on their inanimate nurses. Nature was exhausted, beneficence flowed on. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. In Austria they would have been severely whipt for it, and imprisoned among the prostitutes: our government is clement. We are deeply indebted to your President for his succour and support. But we can not dissemble . GENERAL GEMEAU (aside). Odd enough that ! CARDINAL ANTONELLL . we can not dissemble from ourselves that we greatly owe his interference to a pressure from without. GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence ! be pleased to explain. CARDINAL ANTONELLL The President was anxious to conciliate the Potvers that be. He was the head of his nation, and naturally leaned to the heads of other nations, irrespective alike of Roman and of Prenchman. If instead of sending eighteen thousand men to chastise a rebellious city, which his wisdom has ensnared, he had sent only half the number to encourage and protect it, all Europe, long before the present hour, had been cursed with constitutions. Heaven had showered down no more miracles, no saintly eyes compassionately rolling from the painted canvas, but had abandoned the sinful world to its own devices. America will soon be left alone to the popular will : Europe is well-nigh freed from it. 80 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GEXERAL GEMEAU. A spoke is shattered in the wheel of tlie Kevoliition : we must substitute another and stronger : \^ must swear again^ and keep our oaths better. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. In the opinion of many (God forbid that I should entertain it) the climate of the Erench heart is too hot and intemperate for anything to keep sweet and sound in it. According to them, your honor is quite satisfied by bloodshed ; to be proved a liar is no disgrace ; to be called one is inexpiable. GENERAL GEMEAU. Pardon me, Eminence, pardon me : the offender's blood expiates it. The pain of being caught in a lie, take my word for it, is bad enough ; it shows such clumsiness and stupidity; but to be called a liar in consequence of it . . bah ! and without a moral power of shot or sabre to rebutt the chnrge . . bah ! a Mediterranean of blood is insufiicient to staunch the wound. CARDINAL ANTONELLL Christianity teaches us . . GENERAL GEMEAU. Don't tell me what Christianity teaches us. Christianity holds the book in her hand, but can neither thrust it nor conjure it into men's heads. Christianity says that her first officers shall not call themselves lords : yet even those who pretend to purity and reformation take the title. Christianity commands them to forbear from lucre : yet I read in the English journals that several English bislmps, judges in their own cause, adjudicators of their own claims, are convicted of seizing what they had voluntarily renounced in behalf of their poorer brethren. Kobbers of the industrious and necessitous, prevaricators and swindlers, as they are proved to be in Parlia- ment, there is nobody at hand to knock the marrow-bone out of their jaws, and to drive them back to kennel. The High- priest of Jerusalem scoffed at Christ, but he would liave scorned to filch a farthing from under the rags of Lazarus. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. We shall be indebted to these abuses for a large accession CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 81 to our holy cliurcli. Wliat man would pay a dollar to hear a hurdy-gurdy who may hear the finest chorus for a soldo ? Again, let me repeat, sir, the expression of the Supreme PontifF^s benevolence for the services you and your army have rendered to our Holy Faith. At present liis Majesty the king of Naples and his ]\Iajesty the emperor of Austria are suffi- ciently able and disposed to aid us against the rebels and infidels of Italy. GENERAL GEMEAU. It was only that they might have no such duty to perform we entered the papal states. It vexes me to be reminded not oidy of the reverses we endured under your walls, but also of the equal ignominy of having marched against them. Dis- honored for ever are the names of several generals Avliose fathers were signalised under the republiclc and under the emperor. Oui" soldiers have fallen unprofitably ; but never, sir, be persuaded that they have been garnering the harvest for the benefit of Austrians and Neapolitans. CARDINAL ANTONELLL Your Excellency will recollect that the Austrian and Neapolitan sovrans have territories and allies in Italy : the French have none. These potentates have an unquestionable right to secure their own tlirones in this country ; the French have no throne and no allies to defend in it, no people which calls or which in future will ever call to them for aid. GENERAL GEMEAU (asicle). Pardie ! priest as he is, he speaks the truth. A pretty game hath our President been playing ! The chair is an unlucky one ; yet there are those behind who are ready enough to cut for it. SECOND CONVERSATION. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. I AM charmed to find your Excellency in so much better health than I expected. GENERAL GEMEAU. Many thanks to your Eminence. I have taken no medicine 8a THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. since my arrival in Eome, and I brouglit my cook with me from Paris. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. We also have excellent cooks in Rome. GENERAL GEMEAU. Sometimes they deal too largely with the chemist and druggist. Even the wine at the altar, and administered by prelates, has been found sometimes to disagree with the stomach. Stories therfor have been buzzed into the ears of the studious and inquisitive, and have been related by grave historians, of secret doors discovered, which opened from the church into the laboratory, and of strong prescriptions under the hand and seal . . CARDINAL ANTONELU. False, Sir, false altogether. No pope . . GENERAL GEMEAU. Did I name any ? CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Permit me to express my confidence that your Excellency means nothing more than what your words in their simplest and most obvious form convey. GENERAL GEMEAU. Notliing more, nothing more whatever. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. With equal simphcity and with equal truth, I wiU now interpret Avhat the Holiness of our Lord in liis benignity hath deigned to impart. Apprehensive that some malady, and hoping that notliing worse than a slight indisposition, had detained your Excellency, at this unhealthy season of the year, within the walls of Eome . . GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence! you may at your own good time return and inform the Holiness of our Lord that his Beatitude ought to lie no longer under any such apprehension. Assure him that, whatever he had reason to believe, you found me perfectly CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 83 hale and liearty : that my apartments are well ventilated^ my cellar well filled with french Avines, which agree with me much better than the Italian might do, and that, out of reverence to Holy Church, I present to my chaplain his cup of coffee in the evening, and of chocolate in the morning, before I drink a drop. Indeed it is thought dangerous to remain in Rome during the lieats of July and August : but there is nothing wliich I would not endure in the service of his Holiness. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Neighbouring potentates are quite willing to relieve your Excellency from so incommodious and dangerous a service. GENERAL GEMEAU. It would be uupoUte and unfriendly to impose on a neighbour any incommodity or danger which we ourselves decline. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. His Holiness is very anxious to calm animosities and obviate collisions. GENERAL GEMEAU. The sword best calms animosities, best obviates collisions. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Your Excellency means assuredly the sword of the spirit. GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence ! the spirit of theologians and religionists is shown clearly, though unconsciously, by their customary phraseology. You borrow our swords, practically and efficiently, when your own daggers are too short ; but, metaphorically and virtually, every word you utter is drawn from our military vocabulary. Shield, buckler, standard, conflict, blood, spmiing, rebuffing, repulsing, overthrowing, trampling down tmder foot, rising victorious, all these expressions and more such, echo from church to chiu-ch, and mingle somewhat inharmoniously, methinks, with prayers and exhortations. Good Christians have a greater variety of them, and utter them with greater intensity, than the wildest Cherokee or Australian. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. We are calm and considerate wliile we employ them. G 2 84 THE LAST mUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GENERAL GEMEAU. Considerate too and calm is the Thug of India while he mui'ders or excites to murder ; he also is rehgious and devout. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Sir, I did not expect this language from a general who, if I mistake not, hath served in Africa. GENERAL GEMEAU. Perhaps your Eminence may have mistaken ; but, whether or no, every Trench officer is bound in honor to maintain the character of every other. We are consistent : what one is all are; what one says all say; what one does all do. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. I am too well aware of the fact for any dispute or disceptation on any part of it. But, General, to avoid the possibiHty of irritating or displeasing you, with my natural frankness and well-known sincerity I will lay open to you the whole heart of his Hohness. It is wounded profoundly at the dissensions of his sons. GENERAL GEMEAU. If the question be not indiscreet, how many has he, poor man? CARDINAL ANTONELLI. More than ever, now your glorious President hath taken to his bosom the Society of Jesus. GENERAL GEMEAU. I thought they never quarrelled. Wolves never do while they hunt in packs ; and foxes at aU times know how little is to be got by fighting. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Your Excellency has misunderstood me. Austria and Naples look with an evil eye upon your arms in Italy. GENERAL GEMEAU. Then let them stand farther off and look another way. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Impossible to persuade them. 1 CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 85 GENERAL GEMEAU. We rrenclimen have often used such arguments as con- vinced them perfectly. Austria sacrificed at another Tauris another Ipliigenia ; Saint Jauuarius found us so true believers that he sweated blood for us, and Cristo Bianco and Cristo Nero* paraded the streets to our Marseillese hymn. CARDINAL ANTONEUjI. Happily those days are over. GENEBAL GEMEAU. I am not so sure of that. I would advise the Saint to sweat wdiile he has any blood in his veins. We Frenchmen know how to treat liim ; but among the Italians there are many Avho would use liim to roast their chesnuts, or would stir their polenta over liim. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Alas ! too true. But the pious spirit wliich animates the French soldier will render him ever obedient to the commands of the Holy Father. GENERAL GEMEAU. The French soldier is possest by another spirit beside the pious one, the spirit of obedience to his commander. The Holiness of our Lord may command in the Yatican, but, Emi- nence ! I command here. The Castle of St. Angelo is nigh enough to the Vatican for me to hear any cry of distress from His Beatitude ; the Austrians and Neapolitans are more distant. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. They may approach. GENERAL GEMEAU. Let them, if they dare. At their advance I seize upon certain hostages of the liighest rank and office. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. It would be sacrilege. * Two idols carried in opposition about tlie streets of Naples, tlie devout often beating the head of one against the head of the other. 86 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. GENERAL GEMEAU. Tlie Pope will be close at hand to absolve me from it. He holds the keys of Heaven and Hell ; I hold those of Castel- Sant-Angelo. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. The Holiness of our Lord might forbid any resistance. GENERAL GEMEAU. In snch an events I would dehver him from fi-esh ignominy, such as what liis HoHness bore, casting off his slipper for jack- boots, liis triple crown for jockey-cap, and arrayed in the dress livery of the French embassador, fain to take up a position at a pretty good distance from the Cross of Christ, mindless of his promises and of liis flock, and shouting aloud to King Bomba for help. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. He flew to the faithful. GENERAL GEMEAU. And, seeing liis ui'gency, they delivered up to liim all the faith they had about them. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Excellency ! Eeally I distrust my senses ; never will I believe that in a Trench general I have found a scoffer. GENERAL GEMEAU. Eminence ! I yield ; I give up the point ; you have beaten me fairly at dissembling. I kept my countenance and my temper as long as I could. I ought only to have laught at the threat of being superseded, by the only king existing who has been (in the field at least) convicted of cowardice, and moreover at the instigation of the only Pope in modern times who has been caught blowing bubbles to the populace, and exerting his agility at a maskerade. LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE. 87 LOUIS BONAPAETE AND COUNT MOLE. LOUIS BONAPARTE. M. DE Mole ! I have often been desirous of profiting by your wisdom and experience ; let me hope tliat the hour is arrived. COUNT MOLE. Experience, M. le President, is baffled, trampled, trodden down, and run over, by the rapid succession and blind conflict of events : its utility is lost, is annihilated. Wisdom has had no share in the creation of them, and can hope to exercise but little control in their management. LOUIS BONAPARTE. We must now appeal to French courage and Trench honor. COUNT MOLE. We must sound the bell to silence the courage : on the other hand, we must call a huissier with the loudest voice to read an appeal to the honor. Are there twenty men of high station in Erance who are unforsworn ? are there among her representatives half the number who have not violated three oaths in the last three months ? LOUIS BONAPARTE. But honor is left at the bottom of the heart. COUNT MOLE. If not there, yet under it, on the same side. The scabbard holds it : and quite sufficiently capacious for the whole of it would be a much narrower receptacle. Call a man a liar, and out it flies upon you. He proves the contrary by a clear . . I was about to say demoiutration . . the word is detonation. !For one who enters a picture-gallery, fifty enter a pistol- gallery : for one who has learnt the rudiments of grammar, fifty have learnt the rudiments of gunnery. I should never have made these remarks, M. le President, if you had not invited me to converse with you upon the state of the nation^ 88 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. upon wliat led to it^ and upon what may^ under Providence, lead it again to security and peace. These are never to be attained while no man holds sacred liis own word, or believes in any other's. LOUIS BONAPARTE. I am entirely of your opinion, M. de Mole; so was my uncle the Emperor. Tor which reason he restored to the Pope his primitive authority, and hglited anew the candles on our altars. This was the first step he took after his recall of the emigrants. I have brought around me not only six or seven of the old nobihty, but even such names as Penelon and Turgot. COUNT MOLE. Easily done. Poverty, sir, is no phantom : she is the most importunate of the Euries, and has the appetite of a Harpy. She looks for her larder through the windows of the Treasury, and, if she sees only empty dishes there, she screams and flies away to another quarter. Be pleased, sir, to consider that I cast a reflection on nobody. LOUIS BONAPARTE. I am aware of it, ]\I. de ]\Iole. If in any slight degree I differ from you in opinion, it is in my general estimate of Erench honor : it appears to me large and cathoKc. COUNT MOLE, Very large indeed, and truly catholic : I only wish we could limit and define it, bringing it back -uithin its ancient boundary. M. le President knows that a fortification is the stronger for a wide extent of rotten ground about it. Cardinal de Eichelieu, the wisest of politiciaus, knew it hkewise. Therfor he drew into Paris, by offices and preferments, the ancient nobility of the realm. The poorer he enriched by giving them places : the richer he impoverished by leading them tlu-ough their vanity to a vast expenditure. He took especial care that the ladies, from the hour they left the convent, should be taught the secrets of gaming. And what chevalier, worthy of his spurs, could decline the acknowledgment of their smiles at the tournay of green cloth ? Luxury, by which I mean good cookery and good wine, seldom hurts the bodily frame. Late hours, and the mortification of loss, cast down corporeal and LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE. 89 mental power alike. At tlie close of these days, and at the commencement of our own, external commerce had begun to ramify widely; and commerce will always introduce cosmo- polite opinions. Turgot fostered it, and could not exclude the sequel. He died too early for the prosperity of France. No minister who united such integrity with such intellect is recorded in the annals of any nation. Perhaps he was for- tunate in living Avhile the government was simply monarchal, thus having the fewer men to converse with and deceive. In fact, he never deceived any one. Had he lived under a con- stitutional system, he must have given up half his principles or all liis power. LOUIS BONAPARTE. These, ]\I. de Mole, are serious considerations. We ought to take good care how men may keep their principles. You will assist me in this arduous undertaking, I am confident. COUNT MOLE. To the best of my poor abilities. LOUIS BONAPARTE. By this promise the uttermost scope of my ambition is attained. I am resolved to extinguish the flame that would consume all that is venerable in Eome, giving my solemn word to citizen and soldier that I come frankly and loyally to their assistance. The high clergy, with few exceptions in this country, and fewer in Italy, are unanimous in recommending it. COUNT MOLE. In recommending, sir, a breach of promise ? a falsehood ? LOUIS BONAPARTE. M. de Mole ! the head of a state can commit no falsehood. The preamble to all decrees runs . . "After hearing the Council of Ministers," the President, or whatever may be the title of the executive, decrees, &c. Beside which, it is acknowledged by every true catholic that on emergencies a word, or oath, or contract, may be broken and cast aside. In courts the ties of consanguinity are relaxt j uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, intermarry, not simply with the consent, but also with the benediction, of the Chui'ch. Shall not we, 90 THE LAST FRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE. her sons, ever called the most Christian, be grateful to the Holy Father for granting such indulgences, and lay every snare to entrap the vermin that would undermine them ? M. de Montalembert, a most religious man, together with every member of the Society of Jesus, approves of my decision. The Holy Father himself, when he bestowed on his people from the balcony of the Quirinal his constitution and benedic- tion, lowered his head, and in the same breath, with liis hand upon his heart, called the Virgin to witness that he would revoke all his promises. He who can take from his girdle and turn round the keys of heaven, can surely turn round as easily a hght and empty word. He has done it. AVe surely can never err in following the course of Infallibility. Incest is no incest, if he says it is none ; and oath, if he wills it, is no oath. COUNT MOLE. There may indeed be some danger of Roman republicanism flying across the Alps. The flame of a burning candle leans toward the smoke of a candle half extinguisht, and relumes it. This consideration has greater weight ^vith me than casuistry. In France within a few months nothing will be left of repubhck but the name : yet the name, if we hear it too frequently, or too near, may evoke the spirit. M. de Montalembert would not let the Romans burn their fetiches, and would rather burn the Romans : I would rather let them alone if we could but keep them quiet. LOUIS BONAPARTE, Precisely : that is all I wish. I woidd moderate the intem- perate zeal of conflicting parties ; in which service to humanity, M. de Mole, I entreat your counsel and co-operation. POPE PIO NONO AND CAUDINAL ANTON ELII. 91 POPE PIO NONO AND CAEDINAL ANTONELLI. PIO NONO. Cardinal Antonelli ! Cardinal Antonelli ! I begin to fear we shall be convicted of lying by the unbeliever. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Holiness! we have hed: but it was for the glory of God and of His Blessed Mother, and for the exaltation of the Church. Need I recapitulate to your Beatitude the number of learned casuists who have inculcated the duty of so doing ? Need I bring before you the princes of the present day who have broken their promises and oaths to their subjects ? If we were bound to them^ we should be the subjects, and not they. PIO NONO. Nevertheless, I have had certain quahns of conscience from time to time : insomuch as to have humiliated myself before my confessor. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. And what said he ? PIO NONO. I am ashamed to repeat what he said, he almost said it approached to sin. But, as in duty bound, he absolved me ; on condition of eating a tench for supper, an isinglass jeUy, and two apricot tarts, preceded by a basin of almond soup, and followed by a demi-flask of Orvieto. I begged hard against the tench, and pleaded for a mullet. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Indignity ! was the beast so stupid as to be unaware that your HoHness, who can absolve fifty nations at the erection of a finger, could absolve yourseK ? PIO NONO. But it is easier and more commodious to procure another to scratch our back and shoulder when they itch. 93 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. True, most true. But the business wliicli has brought me tliis evening into the presence of your Beatitude is somewhat worse than itcliing. The French Emperor is peremptory that your Beatitude should crown liim. PIO NONO. I promised it. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Indefinitely ; with evasions. And has not the French Emperor done somewhat more than evade liis promises ? Has he not broken them over and over again ? PIO NONO. I must not play tight and loose with liim : I must not turn suddenly from hot to cold. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. The armourer, who makes a strong sword-blade, turns it first in fire, then plunges it in water. PIO NONO. He might do me harm. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. The Austrians are always at hand to prevent it. PIO NONO. I am advised that twenty thousand more French with a hundred thousand stand of arms for the malcontents, could sweep Italy clear of the Austrians in six weeks, from Livorno to Mantua. Louis Napoleon is "wdser and warier than his uncle. Europe has never seen a prince more capable of ruhng, more resolved to be obeyed. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. He has given great offence to Austria by the Declaration he made preparatory to his marriage. PIO NONO. Doubtless : but what can Austria do against him ? Her POPE PIO NONO AND CARDINAL ANTONELLI. 93 fleet in the Adriatic could not preserve Dalmatia to her. Hungary would lie open : Piedemont and Switzerland would rise simultaneously, and revenge tlie wrongs and insults they daily are receiving. The Austrian empire would dissolve ere autumn. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Kussia would step forward again. PIO NONO. So much the worse for Austria. The Eussians would bring Tamine with the sword. A Eussian army of eighty tliousand men, I am credibly informed by a sound strategist, would perish from inanition. Two hundred thousand Hunga- rians, one hundred thousand ItaHans, and (say only) tliree hundred thousand French, in addition to an Austrian army, of perhaps a hundred thousand, after the desertion of Hungarians, Italians, and Bohemians, would find but scanty provisions for three months. AU the rich country of Lombardy and Austria would be overrun by the enemy; and Prussia would take Bohemia and Moravia under her protection. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. So long as your Holiness defers the coronation, Louis Napoleon will be moderate. PIO NONO. I am aware of it. Between ourselves, there is nothing I so much admhe in him as his choice of a consort. His uncle was ruined by the Austrian alliance. History, close at hand, in vain admonished him. The unfortunate Maria Antoinette, the most amiable of her family and the best, was hated by the Trench, not only for her extravagance, but for her country. CARDINAL ANTONELLI. Louis Napoleon's misalliance tends Little to conciliate them. PIO NONO. Gently, my good Cardinal ! The house of Guzman is as ancient and noble as the house of Hapsburg. I have half a mind to start directly and to pronounce my benediction on the crown in Notre-Dame. 94 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. MAETIN AND JACK. [Lord Peter, Martin, and Jack, brouglit the people much about them in a disturbance long ago. Lord Peter, the proudest, most intolerant, most exclusive, of his order, suddenly grew condescend- ing and bland. Martin had little confidence in this demonstration; so little indeed that he ordered the locksmith to alter the locks of his cellar and larder, well knowing that, however different in stature and features, there was a marvellous family-likeness in appetite and quickness of digestion. Jack, whose house was smaller, was contented with a cellar of proportionate dimensions ; and, if you only sent him a simple calf's head toward the close of January, cared little for any other delicacy of the larder. When Peter spoke to him, which was seldom, he pretended that he was ignorant of his language, and avowed that neither father nor mother had taught it to any of their children. Martin had caught a few words of it from Peter, and was somewhat fond of display- ing his acquisition. Jack, who kept aloof from both brothers, was more scandalised at Martin. At last, taciturn as was his nature, he zealously burst forth in this brotherly expostulation.] JACK. Brother Martin^ friends we have met, whatever were our feuds formerly, and friends, in God's name, let us part. We have been somewhat too much given to the holding forth of long discourses; and perhaps I, in this particular, have been the more censurable of the two. Let me now come to the point and have done with it. I always knew that Peter was an impostor and a bastard : I always knew he was neither our father's son nor our mother's son. Had he been, would he ever have attempted to strangle us in our cradles ? Would he not rather have helped us in our sickness and infirmity ? would he not rather have fed us with pure fresh milk and unfermented bread in it ? would he not rather have taken us by the hand, and guided our tottering steps, patiently and cautiously? Instead of which, he blew out the rush-light, because it was only a rush-light ; he set fire to our cribs, and burnt us cruelly. MARTIN. I have heard all this story from our nurse ; but, Jack ! Jack ! thou wert always a froward child. MARTIN AND JACK. 95 JACK. Too true, brother ! but age hath sobered and softened me : I trust it continues to render me, day by day, a little more like our father. If this aspiration be too high, if tliis expression be too presumptuous, permit me to correct it, and only to say that, as I advance in life, I do heartily hope, I do anxiously desire, that my steps be more prone and more direct toward him. MARTIN. Give me thy hand, brother Jack ! This is manly ; this is true-hearted. JACK. Can you then bear questioning and reproof, brother ? MARTIN. Not very well, as you know, my old boy. But come ; let me try ; out with it ; out at once. JACK. Martin ! Martin ! the hottest air taints and corrupts our viands no more certaiidy, nor more intimately, nor more per- niciously, than the lukewarm. So is it, my brother, with the sustenance of the spirit. I have lived where the flocks are scattered and healthy, and where the life of the shepherd is innocent and laborious. You have been spending your days where there is no true shepherd at all, and where the crowded fold is a sad congestion of ordure, scab, and foot-rot. You are grown angry, I hear, at certain new impertinences of the proud bastard whom you never have ventured to disclaim as iDrother. Shall I reveal to you the secret of this anger ? MARTIN {yawning). With all my heart. JACK. Indifferent as usual ! Well then ; continue this indifference until the close of our conversation. The audacious bastard, who dared to spit in our father's face when he forbade any to call him lord, sees many of his spawn grown recently, from wriggling black little tadpoles, into party-coloured, puffy, croaking frogs; and he claims the whole fat marsh for liis own property. The neighbouring lords assumed the livery of our Lord Peter, and imitated liis voice and bearing. But no 96 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. sooner had lie laid claim to the whole fat marshy and had driven into it their cattle for his own use, than they raised an outcry tlu'oughout the land. MARTIN. Methinks it was time, brother Jack. JACK. Brother Martin ! it was time long before. The dissolute old bastard collected those spies and assassins who had, even when nations were thought to be less civiUzed, been driven forth from every kingdom. He now stocks every kingdom with them again, and mounts every throne with them vica- riously. Well do I remember the time, my brother, when I reproved you for a tendency to what is called philosophy. It is true, you laught in my face : certainly you will never laugh in it again for any similar reproof. If priests there must be, let them keep their proper station : let the king have liis palace, not the priest. When you have assigned to the endowment of schools the many millions which pamper your hierarchs, those burly beUies, swaying some one way, some another, then, Martin, we shall meet in brotherly love, and shall say (what I wish we could say sooner, instead of the contrary), " Tliis is verily God's work, and it is marvellous in our eyes." MARTIN. There is only one set of men in Europe who are avowedly adverse to the propagation of knowledge, aware that the propagation of knowledge is adverse to their dominion. My friends, I am sorry to say it, are almost as much given to lying as these are. Both parties call themselves catJiolic, which neither is. Nor indeed, my dear Jack, between our- selves, is it desirable that either should be. Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in rehgion as in commerce. We must bid high for heaven ; we must surrender much ; we must strive much, we must suffer much ; we must make way for others, in order that in our turn we may succeed. There is but one guide : we know him by the gentleness of his voice, by the serenity of his countenance, by the wounded in spirit who are clinging to his knees, by the children whom he hath called to him, and by the disciples in whose poverty he hath shared. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 97 AECHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. ARCHDEACON HARE. In some of your later writings, I perceive, you have not strictly followed the line you formerly laid down for spelling. WALTER LANDOR. I found it inexpedient ; since whatever the pains I took, there was, in every sheet almost, some deviation on the side of the compositor. Inconsistency was forced on me against all my struggles and reclamations. At last nothing is left for me but to enter my protest, and to take the smooth path instead of the broken-up highway. ARCHDEACON HARE. It is chiefly in the preterites and participles that I have followed you perseveringly. We are rich in having two for many of our verbs, and unwise in corrupting the spelling, and thereby rendering the pronunciation difficult. We pronounce "astonisht/' we write astonished or astonished; an unnecessary harshness. Never was spoken dvoipped, or lo'pped, or ho^^ped, or prop/9«/; but dropt, &c.; yet with the choice before us, we invariably take the wrong. I do not resign a right to " asto- mshed " or " diminish(?f/." They may, with many hke them, be useful in poetry ; and several such terminations add dignity and solemnity to what we read in our church, the sanctuary at once of our faith and of our language. WALTER LANDOR. In more essential things than preterites and participles I ought rather to have been your follower than you mine. No language is purer or clearer than yours. Vigorous streams from the mountain do not mingle at once with the turbid lake, but retain their force and their colour in the midst of it. We are sapt by an influx of putridity. ARCHDEACON HARE. Come, come ; again to our spelling-book. 98 . THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. WALTER LANDOR. Well then, we differ on the spelling of honour , favour , &c. You would retain the u : I would eject it, for the sake of con- sistency. We have dropt it in author, emperor, amhassador. Here again, for consistency and compliancy, I write " embas- sador/^ because I write, as all do, "embassy." I write theate;-, sepulche'r, meter, in their english form rather than the french. The best authors have done it ; all write " hexa- vxtier" and " pentameter." ARCHDEACON HARE. It is well to simplify and systematize wherever we can do it conveniently. WALTER LANDOR. And without violence to vested rights ; which words have here some meaning. Why "amend," if "emendation ?" Why not " pont?/;" if " cait^/"." ARCHDEACON HARE. Why then should grandeur be left in solitary state ? The Englishman less easily protrudes his nether jaw than the Prenchmau, as "grandeur" seems to require. Grandeur (or grander, if you will have it so) sounds better. WALTER LANDOR. I will have it so ; and so will you and others at last. ARCHDEACON HARE. ]\Ieanwhile, let us untie this last knot of Norman bondage on the common-law of language in our land. WALTER LANDOR. Set about it : no authority is higher than yours : I will run by the side of you, or be your herald, or (what better becomes me) your pursuivant. There is an affectation of scholarship in compilers of spelling- books, and in the authors they follow for examples, when they bring forward phenomena and the like. They might as well bring forward mysteria. We have no right to tear greek and latin declensions out of their grammars : we need no vortices when we have vortexes before us ; and while M'e have memorandums, factotums, %dthnatmns, let our shepherd-dogs ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 99 bring back to us by the ear such as have wandered from the flock. ARCHDEACON HARE. We have " stimul^w^! ;" why "stimulw^?" why "stimuli ?" Wliy "recipe?" why "receipi?" we might as reasonably write " deceipt" and " conceijii." I believe we are the only people who keep the Dramatis Personce on the stage^ or announce their going off by "exeunt:" "eant" for departure, is endurable, and kept in countenance by transit: let us deprecate the danger of hearing of a friend's obit, which seems imminent : a "post-obit " is bad enough : an item I would confine to the ledger. I have no mind for animus. WALTER LANDOR. Beside these there are two expressions either of which is quite enough to bring doAra curses and mortality on the poet. "Stand confest" (even if not written "confe^/^/") is one: "unbidden tears" the other. I can imagine no such nonsense as unbidden tears. Why do we not write the verb control with an e at the end, and the substantive with u as soul ? we might as reasonably write ivhol for whole : very unreasonably do we write wliolly with a double 1 ; ivholy and soly might follow the type of holy. We see printed, befal with one 1, but Tieverfal, and yet in the monosyllable we should not be doubtful of the accentuation. It is but of late that we controi^, reca/, appam freebooter. In our fondness for making verbs out of substantives, we even go to the excess oijiibustering. And now from coarse vulgarity let us turn our eyes toward inconsiderate refinement. When I was a boy every girl among the poets was a nymph, whether in country or town. Johnson countenanced them, and, arm-in- arm with Pope, followed them even into Jerusalem. "Ye nymphs of Solyma, kc," H 2 loo THE LAST PRUIT OFI' AN OLD TREE. WALTER LANDOR. Pity tliey ever found their way back ! ARCHDEACON HARE. Few even now object to Muse and Bard. WALTER LANDOR. Nor would I in their proper places : the Muse in Greece and Italy ; the Bard on our side of the Alps, up almost as far as Scandinavia, quite as far as the Cimbrian Chersonese. But the Bard looks better at nine or ten centuries off than among gentlemen in roquelaures or paletots. Johnson, a great reprehender, might fairly and justly have reprehended him in the streets of London, whatever were his own excesses among the " Nymphs of Solyma." In the midst of his gravity he was not quite impartial, and, extraordinary as were his intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that iland, his very words are these : " Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere." At the commencement of his Satire on the Vanity of Human wishes (a noble specimen of declamation), he places China nearer to us than Peru. ARCHDEACON HARE. The negligences of Johnson may easily be forgiven, in con- sideration of the many benefits he has conferred on literature. A small poet, no great critic, he was a strenuous and lofty moralist. Your pursuers are of another breed, another race. They will soon tire themselves, hang out their tongues, and drop along the road. Time is not at all misapplied by you in the analysis and valuation of Southey^s and Wordsworth's poetry, which never has been done scrupulously and correctly. But surely gravel may be carted and shot down on the highway without the measure of a Winchester bushel. Consider if what you have taken in hand is worthy of your workmansliip. WALTER LANDOR. The most beautiful tapestry is workt on extremely coarse canvas. Open a volume of BayW s Biographical JJictionary ; and how many just and memorable observations will you find on people of no " note or likeHhood." ARCHDEACON HAllE AND WALTER LANDOR. 101 ARCHDEACON HARE. Unliappily for us, we are insensible of the corruptions tliat creep yearly into our language. At Cambridge or Oxford (I am ignorant which of them claims the glory of the invention) some undergraduate was so facetious as to say, " Well, while you are discussing the question, I will discuss my wine/' The gracefulness of this witticism was so captivating, that it took possession not only of both universities, but seized also on ''men about town." Even the ladies, the vestals who preserve the purity of language, caught up the expression from those who were Hbertines in it. WALTER LANDOR. Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, who are among the most refined of our senators, have at present no more authority in language than in dress. By what we see, we might imagine that the one article is to be cast aside after as short a wear as the other. It occurs to me at this moment, that, when we have assumed the habiliments of the vulgar, we are in danger of contracting their coarseness of language and demeanour. ARCHDEACON HARE. Certainly the Eomans were (offati in their tongue, as well as in their wardrobe. Purity and gravity of style were left uncontaminated and unshaken by the breath of Tiberius and his successor. The Antonines spoke better latin than the Triumvir Antonius ; and Marcus Aurelius, altho on some occasions he preferred the greek, was studious to maintain his own idiom strong and healthy, "When the tongue is paralyzed, the limbs soon follow. No nation hath long survived the decrepitude of its language. There is perpetually an accession of slang to our vernacular, which is usually biennial or triennial. WALTER LANDOR. I have been either a fortunate or a prudent man to have escaped for so many years together to be "pitched into" among *' giant trees," ^'monster meetings," " glorimis ivmi," ''splendid cigars, dogs, horses, and bricks," "palmi/ days," "rich oddities ;" to owe nobody a farthing for any other fashionable habits of rude device and demi-saison texture ; and above all, to have never come in at the " deventli hour" wliich has been 102 . THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE. sounding all day long the whole year. They do me a little injustice who say that such a good fortune is attributable to my residence in Italy. The fact is, I am too cautious and too aged to catch disorders, and I walk fearlessly through these epidemics. ARCHDEACON HARE. Simply to open is insufficient : we " open %jp " and " open out. A gentleman indues a coat ; it will be difficult to ex2ie if he tries ; he must lie down and sleep in it. ''Foolery" was thought of old sufficiently expressive: nothing short of tomiooXtx'^ will do now. To repudiate was formerly to put away what disgraced us : it now signifies (in America at least) to reject the claims of justice and honour. We hear people re-read, and see them re-write ; and are invited to a spread, where we formerly went to a dinner or collation. We cut down harracks to a single barrack; but we leave the " stocks " in good repair. We are among ambitions, and among peoples, until Sternhold and Hopkins caU us into a quieter place, and we hear once again "All people that on earth do dwell." Shall we never have done with " rule and excepition" " ever and anon" " many a time and oft ? " WALTER LANDOB. It is to be regretted that Home Tooke and Bishop Lowtli were placed so far apart, by many impediments and obstruc- tions, that they never could unite in order to preserve the fiuials and pinnacles of our venerable fabric, to stop the inno- vations and to diminish the anomalies of our language. Southey, altho in his youth during their time, might have assisted them ; for early in life he had studied as sedulously the best of our old authors as they had, and his judgement was as mature at twenty-five as theirs at fifty. He agreed with me that mind,fi7id, kind, blind, behind, should have a final e, in order to signify the sound, and that the verb wind should like- wise for the same reason. I brought Fairfax's " Tasso " with me, and showed him that Fairfax had done it, and had spelt many other words better than our contemporaries, or even tlian the most-part of his own. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 103 ARCHDEACON HAHK. There are two expressions of freqvient occurrence, equally wrong : " incorrect orthography " and " vernacular idiom." Distempers in language, as in body, which rise from the crowded lane, creep up sometimes to where the mansions are higher and better ventilated. I think you once remarkt to me that you would just as properly write pill(2??ger for pillager, as messeii?ger for messager. The more excusable vulgar add to these dainties their sausenger. Have you found anything more to notice where you have inserted those slips of paper in your Fairfax ? WALTER LANDOR. Much : to run over all would be tedious. He writes M'ith perfect propriety dismaid, applle, chefe, hart, imsht, hnsht, spred, Southey was entirely of my opinion that if lead in the present is led in the preterite, read should be red. There is no danger of mistaking the adjective for the verb by it. He ridiculed the spelling of Byron redde ; which is quite as ridiculous as the conceit of that antiquarian society which calls itself the " Eoxburghe Club ;" e was never added to burgh. Howell, a very careful writer, an excellent authority, writes forren, frend, Mahometism, totmg, extemporal, shipwracJc, cole, onely, sutable, plaid, asM, hegger, apparance, brest, yeer, plaid, lanch, peece, tresure, scepter, incertain, kinde, perle. Drayton and Daniel may be associated with Howell. Drayton in his prose wrote red, and there is no purer or more considerate author. He writes also ransacks, distinguish/^, dispers;^, worship/", admonish/5, tax/5, deck/!, wrack/5, profes/5, extols?, purchasif. He writes /ained, tuch, yeers, onely, dore. Sir Thomas More writes lerned, clereness, preste (priest), sholde, wolde, leve, yere, harte, mynde, here (hear), herer, (hearer), appere, speher, seJce, grevoHS,fynde, doiite, viherof, seme, dede, nede, tethe [i&Qth), precher, peple, sene (seen), erg* (ears), toJce, therfor, mete (meat), frend, therin, fere (fear), a wever, rede (read). A host of these words only show that the best authors avoided the double vowel. Spenser, in consecutive verses, writes were (wear), and bere (bear), and heven daidi foule. " Upon her thombe or in her purse to bere." " There is no foule that flieth under heaven." Camden vrntesforraine and iland^ 104 THE LAST FKUIT Oi'F AN OLD TREE. It was late before ea was employed in place of the simple vowel e. Chaucer writes " eny pecock." Shal and wil, so written by him, are more proper than shall and toill, by avoiding the form of substantives. Caxton writes, as many of his time, werk not "work.''' Tyndal, long after, writes doo for do. Spenser writes dore instead of door. Sackville writes psarst. Dryden is less accurate than Cowley, and Waller, and Sprat. Speaking of Cowley, he says "he never could forgive a conceit," meaning forego. In our own age many, Burke among the rest, say " By this means." It would be affecta- tion to say By this mean, in the singular ; but the proper expression is "By these means." ARCHDEACON HARE. In regard to terminations, it is difficult to account for the letter e when we say " by and bye. There is none in account- ing for it in " Good 3ye," which is the most comprehensive of all contractions : it is " Good be with ye ! " or " God be with ye ! " which in effect is the same. Formerly ye was more universal than you. Ignorant critics reprehend it wrongly in such a position as " I would not hurt ye." But it is equally good english as " Ye would not hurt me." No word is more thoroughly vernacular, from of old to this present day, among the people throughout the land. We should keep our homely well-seasoned words, and never use the grave for light purposes. Among the many we misapply is the word destiny. We hear of a man controling the destiny of another. Nothing on earth can controle the ^e^^^i?^^^/, whether the term be apphed strictly or laxly. Element is another, meaning only a consti- tuent. Graver stil is incarnation. We hear about the mission of fellows whose highest could be only to put a letter into the post-office. We usually set ' before 'neath : improperly : the better spelling is nethe, whence nether. We also prefix the same ' to yhre. We say (at least those who swear do) " yhre God ;" never " before God." Cause in like manner is a word of itself, no less than " because." But this form is properer for poetry. Chaucer writes peple, as we pronounce it. Skelton writes sault and mault, also in accordance with the pronunciation, and there is exactly the same reason for it as in ARCHDEACON IIAEE AND WALTEE LANDOll. 105 fault. It woiild not be going far out of our way to bring them back again^ and then cry haidt, which we do only with the pen in hand. We are in the habitude of writing onwards, backwards, toward*, afterwards; he more gracefully drops the final s. We write strip?^, whip^^^ yet hesitate at trip^! and worship^. We possess in many cases two for one of the preterites, and, to show our impartiality and fairness, we pronounce the one and write the other. We write said and laid, but never staid or plaid. We write official ; why not influencial, circum- stan(?fal, differencial ? We write entrance the substantive like entrance the verb. Shakspeare wisely wrote "That sounds the fatal enterance of Duncan." &c. Wond^rous is a finer word than ivondrous. It is not every good scholar, or every fair poet, who possesses the copiousness and exhibits tlie discrimination of Shakspeare. Even when we take the hand he offers us, we are accused of innovating. ■WALTER LANDOR. So far from innovating, the words I propose are brought to their former and legitimate station ; you have sanc- tioned the greater part, and have thought the remainder worth your notice. Every intelligent and unprejudiced man will agree with you. I prefer high authorities to lower, analogy to fasliion, a Restoration to a Usitrpation. Innovators, and worse than innovators, were those Reformers called, who disturbed the market-place of manorial Theology, and went back to Religion where she stood alone in her original purity. We English were the last people to adopt the reformed style in the kalendar, and we seem determined to be likewise the last in that of language. We are ordered to please the public ; we are forbidden to instruct it. Not only publishers and booksellers are against us, but authors too; and even some of them who are not regularly in the service of those masters. The outcry is, " IFe have not ventui'ed to alter what we find in use, and why should he ? " ARCHDEACON HARE. If the most learned and intelligent, in that age which has been thought by many the most glorious in our literature, were desirous that the language should be settled and fixt. 106 THE LAST PEUIT OFP AN OLD THEE. liow mucli more desirable is it tliat its accretion of corrup- tions should be now removed ! It may be difficult ; and stil more difficult to restore the authority of the ancient dynasty. WALTER LANDOR. We never have attempted it. But there are certain of their laws and usages which we would not willingly call obsolete. Often in the morning I have lookt among your books for them, and I deposit in your hands the first fruits of my research. It is only for such purposes that I sit hours together in a library. Either in the sunshine or under the shade of trees, I must think, meditate, and compose. ARCHDEACON HARE. Thoughts may be born in a room above-stairs or below, but they are stronger and healthier for early exercise in the open air. It is not only the conspirator to whom is appro- priate the " modo citus modo tardus incessus ;" it is equally his who follows fancy, and his also who searches after truth. WALTER LANDOR. The treasures of your library have sometimes tempted me away from your pictures ; and I have ceast for a moment to regret that by Selections and Compendiums we had lost a large portion of the most noble works, when I find so accurate a selection, so weighty a compendium, carried about with him who is now walking at my side. ARCHDEACON HARE. I would have strangled such a compliment ere it had attained its full growth : however, now it is not only full- grown but over-grown, let me ofl'er you in return not a com- phment, but a congratulation, on your courage in using the plural compendi?/;;^,$ " where another woidd have pronounced " compendia." WALTER LANDOR. Would that other, whoever he may be, have said musea ? All I require of people is consistency, and rather in the right than in the wrong. When we have admitted a greek, or latin, or french word, we ought to allow it the right of citizenship, and induce it to comply and harmonize with the rest of the vocular community. " Pindari^^^e " went away with ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 107 Cowley, and died in the same ditch with him ; but '' obh*^?^^ " is inflexible, and stands its ground. He would do well who should shove it away, or push it into the ranks of the new militia. " kiitigjie " is the worst portion of Gray^s heritage. His former friend, Horace Walpole, had many antiques, and other trifles at Strawberry-hill, but none so worthless as this. In honest truth, we neither have, nor had then, a better and purer writer than he, although he lived in the time of the purest and best. Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, and Inchbald. He gave up his fashionable french for a richer benefice. He would not use " roiige " but " red ;" very different from the ladies and gentlemen of the present day, who bring in entremets, and lardes, casting now and then upon the lukewarm hearth a log of latin, and in the sleeping-room they have prepared for us, spread out as counterpane a remnant of etruscan from under a courier's saddlebag. Chaucer, who had resided long in France, and much among courtiers, made english his style. Have you patience to read a list of the words he spelt better than we do? and not he only but liis remote successors. ABCHDEACON HARE. I have patience, and more than patience, to read, or hear, or see, whatever is better than ourselves. Such investigations have always interested me, you know of old. WALTER LANDOR. Eare quality ! I scarcely know where to find another who possesses it, or whose anger would not obtain the mastery over his conscience at the imputation. Let your eyes run down this catalogue. Here are swete and swote, Jinde, ther, ivel, kerken, herk, gilt (guilt), shal, don (done), werks (works), weping, dene, defaidte, therof, speking, erthe, hereth (bearetli), seate, mete (meat), shuld (should), hevi/, hevn, grevous, grete, hete, yere, fode (food) ; we stil ?,?ij fodder, not fooder ; ete (eat), lede, throt, wel, drede, shal, gess (guess), fid, wheras, trespas, hetwene, repe, slepe, sliete, frend, dedhj, delites, teres, kering, clereness, jiige, plese, speke, tvold (would), ded, tred, bereve, thred, peple, dore, dreme, denie, reson, indede, meke, fehle, wede, nede, fele, cese, pece, dedly, deme, resonable, slepe, titel, refrein, preeste. 108 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. AKCHDEACON HAKE. In adding the vowel^ he makes it available for verse. Covetise, how much better than covetiousness ! Among the words wliich might be brought back again to adorn our poetical diction is beforne, before. Here is cllstemperament (for inclemency of season) •,forlet, forgive, another good word ; so is wanhope, despair. Has no poet the courage to step forth and to rescue these maidens of speech, unprotected beneath the very castle-walls of Chaucer? WALTER LAXDOR. If they are resolved to stitch up his rich old tapestry with muslin, they would better let it stay where it is. ARCHDEACON HARE. Several more words are remaining in which a single vowel is employed where we reduplicate. Sheres, ajojjere, specTie, wele, hereth, reson, onening, pleasance, stele, coles, mekeness, reve (bereave), rore, long, corageous, forbere, hepe, othe (oath), cese, shepe, clreme, werse (worse), reken (reckon). Certainly this old spelling is more proper than its substitute. To reken is to look over an account before casting it up. Here are grevance, lerne, bete, seke, speke, freze (freeze), cJiese, dense, tretise, meke. Here I find axe (ask), which is now a vulgarism, though we use tax for task. With great propriety he writes persever ; we, with great impropriety, persevere. He uses the word spiced for overnice, which in common use is gingerly. I think you would not be a stickler for the best of these, whichever it may be. WALTER LANDOR. No indeed : but there are in Chaucer, as there are in other of our old, yet somewhat later writers, tilings which with regret I see cast aside for worse. I wish every editor of an author, whether in poetry or prose, would at least add a glossary of his words as he spelt and wrote them, without which attention the history of a language must be incomplete. Heine in his Virgil, Wakefield in his Lucretius, have preserved the text itself as entire as possible. Greek words do not appear in their spelling to have been subject to the same vicissitudes as latin. I have not been engaged in composing a grammar or ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 109 vocabulary, nor is a conversation a treatise ; so with your usual kindness you will receive a confused collection of words, bearing my mark on them and worthy of yours. They are somewhat like an Italian pastry, of heads and necks and feet and gizzards off a variety of birds of all sorts and sizes. If my simily is undignified, let me go back into the Sistine Chapel, where Michel Angiolo displays the same thing more gravely and grandly in his Last Judgment. ARCHDEACON HAKE. Do not dissemble your admiration of this illustrious man, nor turn into ridicule what you reverence. Among the hardy and false things caught from mouth to mouth is the apothegm that " there is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous/' There was indeed but a step from Bonaparte's. • WALTER LANDOR. I perceive you accept the saying as his. It was uttered long before his birth, and so far back as the age of Louis the Fourteenth. Another is attributed, to him, wluch was spoken by Barrere in the Convention. He there called the English " cette nation houtiqimre." ARCHDEACON HARE. Well, now empty out your sack of words, and never mind which comes first. WALTER LANDOR. Probably there are several of them which we have noticed before. Here are a few things which I have markt with my pencil from time to time ; others are obliterated, others lost. There is a very good reason why rarel and travel should be spelt with a single I, pronunciation requires it ; equally does pronunciation require a double 1 in befell, expell, compell, rebell. We often find kneeled instead of knelt, yet I do not remem- ber /ee/er/ iovfelt. Shaftesbury, and the best writers of his age and later, wrote cou'd, shou'd, wou'd: we do not, although in speaking we never insert the I. Hurd writes, " Under the circumstances." Circumstances are about us, not above us. " Master of the situation," is the only expression we have borrowed lately of the Spanish, and it is not worth having. I have observed rent as preterite oirend: improper : as nient would be of mend. 110 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE, All too well, &C.J the word all used needlessly. All the greater, &c. These expressions are among the many which have latterly been swept out of the servants' hall, who often say (no doubt), "I am all the better for my dinner/' Daresay is now written as one word. Egotist should be egoist: to doze should not be written dose, as it often is. I once was present when a scholar used the words vexed question : he was not laughed at, altho he was thought a pedant for it ; many would willingly be thought pedants who never can be ; but they can more cheaply be thought affected, as they would be if they assumed this latinism. In oui" english sense, many a question vexes, none is vext. The sea is vexatum when it is tost hither and thither, to and fro ; but a question, however unsettled, has never been so called in good english. *' Sought his bedchamber;" improper, because he knew where it was. To seek is to go after what may or may not be found. Firstly is no Enghsh. To gather a rose is improper. To gather two roses would be proper. Better to cull, which may be said of choosing one out of several; cull is from the italian cogllere, originally in latin colligare. But to us in our vernacular, the root is invisible : not so to gather, of which we are reminded by " together." There is a bull of the largest Irish breed in nearly the most beautifid of Wordsworth's poems. " I lived upon what casual bounty yields, Now coldly given, now utterly refv^ed^' The Irish need not cry out for their potatoes, if they can live upon what they can not get. " The child is father of the man," says Wordsworth, well and truly. The verse animadverted on must have been written before the boy had begotten his parent. What can be sillier than those verses of his wliich many have quoted with unsuspicious admiration ? " A maid whom there was none to praise, And very few to love." He might have written more properly if the rhyme and meter had allowed it, " A maid whom there were none to love, And very few to praise." ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. Ill Por surely the few who loved her would praise her. Here he makes love subordinate to praise : there were some who loved her, none (even of these) who praised her. Eeaders of poetry hear the bells, and seldom mind what tliey are ringing for. Where there is laxity there is inexactness. Frequently there are solid knolls in the midst of Words- worth's morass, but never did I expect to find so much animation, such vigour, such succinctness^ as in the paragraph beginning with " All degrees and shapes of spurious form," and ending with " Left to herself, unheard of and unknown." Here indeed the waggoner's frock drops off, and shows to our surprise the imperial purple underneath it. Here is the brevity and boldness of Cowper ; here is heart and soul ; here is the €iKMV l3a(nkLKri of Poetry. I beUeve there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily than I do, the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have com- mended them both in private and in public with less parsimony and reserve. Several of them, as you know, are personally my friends, altho we seldom meet. Perhaps in some I may desiderate the pure ideal of what is simply great. If we must not always look up at Theseus and the Amazons, we may however catch more frequent ghmpses of the Graces, witli their zones on, and their zones only. Amplification and diffuseness are the principal faults of tliose who are now standing the most prominent. Dilution does not always make a thing the clearer ; it may even cause turbidity. ARCHDEACON HARE. Stifness is as bad as laxness. Pindar and Horace, Milton and Shakspeare, never caught the cramp in their mountain- streams : their movements are as easy as they are vigorous. WALTER LANDOR. The strongest are the least subject to stifness. Diffuseness is often the weakness of vanity. The vain poet is of opinion that nothing of his can be too much : he sends to you basket- ful after basketful of juiceless fruit covered with scentless flowers. 112 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. ARCHDEACON HARE, Many an unlucky one is like the big and bouncing foot-baU^ which is blown up in its cover by unseemly puffing, and serves only for the game of the day. I am half-inchned to take you to task, my dear friend, feeling confident and certain that I should do it without ofl'ence. WALTER LANDOR. Without offence, but not without instruction. Here I am ready at the desk, with both hands down. ARCHDEACON HARE. To be serious. Are you quite satisfied that you never have sought a pleasure in detecting and exposing the faults of authors, even good ones ? WALTER LANDOR. I have here and there sought that pleasure, and found it. To discover a truth and to separate it from a falsehood, is surely an occupation worthy of the best intellect, and not at all unworthy of the best heart. Consider how few of our countrymen have done it, or attempted it, on w^orks of criticism : how few of them have analyzed and compared. Without these two processes there can be no sound judgement on any production of genius. We are accustomed to see the beadel limp up into the judge's chair ; to hear him begin with mock gravity, and to find him soon dropping it for liis natural banter. He condemns with the black cap on, but we discover through its many holes and dissutures the uncombed wig. Southey is the first and almost the only one of our critics who moves between his intellect and his conscience, close to each. ARCHDEACON HARE. How much better would it be if our reviewers and magazine- men would analyze, in this manner, to the extent of their abilities, and would weigh evidence before they pass sentence. Eut they appear to think that unless they hazard much they can win little; while in fact they hazard and lose a great deal more than there is any possibility of their recovering. One rash decision ruins the judge's credit, which twenty correcter never can restore. Animosity, or perhaps some- thing more ignoble, usually stimulates rampant inferiority against high desert. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 113 I have never found you disconcerted by any injustice toward yourself; not even by the assailants of this our lleformation. WALTER LANDOR. If we know a minor, whose guardians and trustees have been robbing him of his patrimony, or misapplying it, or wearing out the land by bad tillage, would we not attempt to recover for him whatever we could ; and especially if we were intimate with the family, if we had enjoyed the shade of its venerable woods, the refreshing breezes from its winding streams, and had in our early days taken our walks among them for study, and in our stil earlier gone into tlie depths of its forests for our recreation ? ARCHDEACON HARE. Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language. In this he is a true patriot, and somewhat beside, " Qui consulta patrum qui leges juraque servat." Byron is among the defaulters. On Napoleon he says " Like he of Babylon.^' '^The annal of Gibbon." '' I have eat" &c. There is a passage in Tacitus on a vain poet, Luterius, remarkably applicable to our lately fashionable one. " Studia ilia, ut plena vecordia?, ita inania et fiuxa sunt : nee quidquam grave ac serium ex eo metuas qui, suorum ipse flagi- tiorum proditor, non virorum animis sed muliercularum adrepit." WALTER LANDOR. It suits him perfectly. I would however pardon him some false grammar and some false sentiment, for his vigorous appli- cation of the scourge to the two monsters of dissimilar con- figuration who degraded and disgraced, at the same period, the two most illustrious nations in the world. The Ode against Napoleon is full of animation : against the other there is less of it ; for animation is incompatible with nausea. Byron had good action, but he tired by fretting, and tossing his head, and rearing. ARCHDEACON HARE. Let reflections for a moment give way to recollections. In the morning we were interrupted in some observations on the aspirate. 114 THE LAST ERUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. WALTER LANDOB. . Either I said, or was about to say, that the aspirate, wherever it is written, should be pronounced. If we say '■'a house,^' M'hy not say " a hour ?" if ^' a horse,^' why not " a honour ? ^' J\^obody says " an heavy load," " an heavenly joy," " an holy man," " an hermit," '' an high place," " an huge monster," " an holly-bough," '^ an happy day." Let the minority yield here to the majority. Our capriciousness in admitting or rejecting the service of the aspirate was con- tracted from the Trench. The Italians, not wanting it, sent it off, and called it back merely for a mark discriminatory, for instance in the verb Ho, hai, ha. AECHDEACON HARE. You have been accused oi pJionetic spelling. WALTER LANDOR. Inconsiderately, and with even less foundation than false- hood has usually under it. Nothing seems to me more grossly absurd, or more injurious to an ancient family, the stem of our words and thoughts. Such a scheme, about fourscore years ago, was propounded by Elphinstone : it has lately been reproduced, only to wither and die down again. ARCHDEACON HARE. I always knew, and from yourself, that you are a " good hater" of innovation, and that your efforts were made strenu- ously on the opposite side, attempting to recover in our blurred palimpsests what was written there of old. We have dropt a great deal of what is good, as you just now have shown, and we have taken into our employment servants without a character, or with a worthless one. We adorn our new curtains with faded fringe, and embellish stout buck- skiu with point-lace. WALTER LANDOR. After this conversation, if it ever should reach the public ear, I may be taken up for a brawl in the street, more serious than an attack on the new grammar-school. ARCHDEACON HARE. What can you mean ? Taken up ? Eor a brawl ? ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 115 WALTER LANDOR. Little are you aware that I have lately been accused of a cfraver oli'ence, and one committed in the dark. ARCHDEACON HARE. And in the dark you leave me. Pray explain. WALTER LANDOR. I am indited for perpetrating an J^?'*?. ARCHDEACON HARE. Indeed ! I am glad to hear the announcement. And when does the cause come into court ? And who is the accuser ? And what are his grounds ? WALTER LANDOR. Longer ago by some years than half a century, I wrote Geblr. The cause and circumstances I have detailed elsewhere. ARCHDEACON HARE. Is tliis the epic ? WALTER LANDOR. It appears so. ARCHDEACON HARE. Already you look triumphant from that ancient car. WALTER LANDOR. No truly ; I am too idle for a triumph : and the enemy's forces were so small that none could legitimately be decreed. " Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor Qui face barbaricos calamoque sequare colonos." " Surely sball some one come, alert and kind, With torch and quill to guide the blundering hind." ARCHDEACON HARE. Clowns and boys and other idlers, if they see a head above a garden-wall, are apt to throw a pebble at it, which mischief they abstain from doing when the head is on their level and near. WALTER LANDOR. Nobody reads this poem, I am told; and nothing more likely. I 2 116 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. ARCHDEACON HARE. Be that as it may. The most disappointed of its readers would be the reader who expected to find an epic in it. To the epic not only its certain spirit, but its certain form, is requisite ; and not only in the main body, but likewise in the minute articulations. I do not call epic that which is in lyric meter, nor indeed in any species of rhyme. The cap and bells should never surmount the helmet and breastplate; Ariosto and Tasso are lyrical romancers. Your poem, wliich Southey tells us he took for a model, is in blank verse. WALTER LANDOR. Southey, whom I never had known or corresponded with, hailed it loudly in the Critical Beview, on its first appearance* He recommended it to Charles Wynne, Charles Wynne to the Hebers; they to your uncle Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph's. Southey's splendid criticism, whatever may be the defects and deficiencies of the poem, must have attracted at the time some other readers; yet I believe (tho I never heard or inquired) that they were not numerous. Frere, Canning, and Bobus Smith were among them. Enough for me. Within these few months, a wholesale dealer in the brittle crockery of market criticism has pickt up some shards of it, and stuck them in his shelves. Among them is my Sea-shell, which Wordsworth clapt into his pouch. There it became incrusted with a compost of mucus and shingle ; there it lost its " pearly hue within/' and its memory of where it had abided. ARCHDEACON HARE. But Wordsworth had the industry and skill to turn every- thing to some account. WALTER LANDOR. Perfectly true. And he is indebted to me for more than the value of twenty Shells : he is indebted to me for praise, if not more profuse, yet surely more discriminating, than of those critics who were collected at wakes and hired by Party. Such hospital-nurses kill some children by starving, and others by pampering with unwholesome food. ' ARCHDEACON HARE. I have often heard you express your admiration of Words- worth; and I never heard you complain, or notice, that he owed any tiling to you. AUCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LAN DOR. 117 WALTKR LA.NDOR. Truly lie owes me little. My shell may be among tlie prettiest on liis mantelpiece, but a trifle it is at best. I often wish, in liis longest poem, he had obtained an Inclosure-act, and subdivided it. What a number of delightful Idyls it would have afforded ! It is pity that a vapour of metaphysics should overhang and chill any portion of so beautiful a plain; of which, however, the turf would be finer and the glebe solider for a moderate expenditure in draining and top-dressing. ARCHDEACON HARE. Your predilections led you to rank Southey higher. WALTER LANDOR. Wordsworth has not written three poems so excellent as Tkalaba, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderic ; nor indeed any poem exhibiting so great a variety of powers. Southey had abundance of wit and humour, of which Wordsworth, like greater men, such for instance as Gothe and Milton, was destitute. The present age will easily pardon me for placing here the German and the Englishman together : the future, I sadly fear, would, without some apology, be inexorable. If Wordsworth wants the diversity and invention of Southey, no less than the humour, he wants also the same geniality belonging in the same degree to Cowper, with terseness and s uccinctness. ARCHDEACON HARE. You have often extolled, and in the presence of many, the beauty of his rural scenes and the truth of his rural characters. WALTER LANDOR. And never will I forego an opportunity. In the delineation of such scenes and characters, far, infinitely far beneath him are Virgil and Theocritus. Yet surely it is an act of grievous cruelty, however unintentional, in those who thrust him into the same rank and file with Milton. He wants muscle, breadth of shoulder, and highth. ARCHDEACON HARE. Sometimes he may be prosaic. WALTER LANDOR. He slithers on the soft mud, and can not stop himself until 118 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. he comes down. In his poetry there is as much of j^rose as there is of poetry in the prose of Milton. But prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry : on the other handj poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose; and neither fan nor burnt feather can bring her to herself again. It is becoming and decorous that due honours be paid to Wordsworth ; undue have injured him. Discriminating praise mingled with calm censure is more beneficial than lavish praise without it. Eespect him ; reverence him ; abstain from wor- shiping him. Eemember, no ashes are lighter than those of incence^ and few things burn out sooner. ARCHDEACON HARE. It appears that you yourself, of late, have not suffered materially by the wafting of the thuiible. WALTER LANDOR. Paith ! I had quite forgotten what we were speaking about last. It was about myself, I suspect, and the worthy at Edinburgh who reviews me. According to him, it appears that only two had read Gebvr, namely, Southey and Mr. De Quincey. I have mentioned a few others ; I might have added Coleridge, to whom Southey lent it, and who praised it even more enthusi- astically, until he once found Southey reciting a part of it in company : after which, I am told, he never mentioned it, or slightly. In the year of its publication Carey, translator of Dante, had praised it. His opinion of it I keep to myself, as one among the few which I value. This was long before Mr. De Quincey knew Southey. It is marvelous that a man of so retentive a memory, as Southey, should have forgotten a thing to which he himself had given its importance : it is less so that Mr. De Quincey imagined it, under the influence of that narcotic the effects of which he so ingenuously and so well described, before he exhibited this illustration. He had another imaginary conversation with Southey, in which they agree that Gehir very much resembled the Ao'go- iiautics of Valerius Flaccus. Hearing of this, about a twelvemonth ago, I attempted to read that poem, but was unsuccessful. Long before, and when my will was stronger, I foundered in the midst of Statins. Happily in my school- days, I had mastered Lucan and Juvenal. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 119 ARCHDEACON HARE. They are grandly declamatory : but declamatioii overlays and strangles poetry, and disfigures even satire. WALTER LANDOR. Eeserving the two mentioned, and Martial, I doubt whether the most speculative magazine-man would hazard five pounds for the same quantity of englhli poetry (rightly called letter- press) as all the other post-Ovidian poets have left behind. After the banisliment of Ovid hardly a breath of pure poetry breathed over the Cmnpagna di Roma. Declamation was spouted in floodgate verse : Juvenal and Lucan are high in that school, in which, at the close of the poetical day, was heard the street cow-horn of Statins. ARCHDEACON HARE. Even for the company of such as these, I think I would have left the E-eeker in Auld Reekie. Flies are only the more troublesome and importunate for being driven off, and they wiU keep up with your horse, however hard you ride, without any speed or potency of their own. WALTER LANDOR. True : but people who sell unsound wares, and use false scales and measures, ought to be pointed out and put down, altho we ourselves may be rich enough to lose an ounce or two by their filching. ARCHDEACON HARE. No one ever falls among a crowd of Kterary men without repenting of it sooner or later. You may encounter a single hound outside the kennel, but there is danger if you enter in among them, even with a kind intention and a bland countenance. WALTER LANDOR. Tt must be a dog in the distemper that raises up his spine at me. I have spoken favorably of many an author, unde servedly of none : therfor both at home and abroad I have received honorary visits from my countrymen and from foreners. ARCHDEACON HARE. Possibly there may be some of them incontinent of the acri- monious humour pricking them in the paroxism of wit. I 120 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. know not whether there be any indication of it in the soil under your shovel. Grains of wit^ however^ may sometimes be found in petulance, as grains of gold in quartz ; but petulance is not wit, nor quartz gold. Are you aware how much thought you have here been throwing away ? WALTER LANDOR. My dear friend ! thought is never thrown away : wherever it falls, or runs, or rests, it fertilizes. I speak not of that thought Avhich has evil in it, or which tends to evil, but of that which is the exercise of intellect on the elevated and healthy training-ground of truth. We descend; and as we descend, we may strike off the head of a thistle, or blow away the wandering seed of a dandelion which comes against the face, but, in a moment forgetting them totally, we carry home with us freshness and strength. ARCHDEACON HARE. I have never knoM^i you, at any former time, take much trouble about your literary concerns. WALTER LANDOR. Never have I descended to repell an attack, and never will ; but I must defend the understanding and consistency of a wiser and better man in Southey. Never have I feared that a little and loose petard would burst or unhinge the gates of my fortress, or that a light culverine at a vast distance below would dismantle or reach the battlements. ARCHDEACON HARE. It is dangerous to break into a park where the paling is high, for it may be difficult to find the way out again, or to escape the penalty of transgression. You never before spoke a syllable about your Shell. WALTER LANDOR. The swallow builds her nest under a Doric architrave, but does not build it of the same materials. ARCHDEACON HARE. It is amusing to observe the off-hand facility and intrejDid assurance with which small writers attack the greater, as small AUCHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 121 birds do, pursuing tlicm the more vociferously the higher the flight. Milton stoopt and struck down two or three of these obstreperous chatterers, of which the feathers he scattered are all that remains ; and these are curiosities. It is moroseness to scowl at the levity of impudence ; it is affabihty, not without wisdom, to be amused by it. Graver men, critics of note, have seen very indistinctly, where the sun has been too bright for them. Giflbrd, the translator of Juvenal, who was often so grave that ordinary people took him for judicious, thought wit the better part of Shakespeare, and in which alone he was superior to his contemporaries. Another finds him sadly deficient in his female characters. Johnson's ear was insensible to Milton's diapason ; and in his Life of Somervile he says, " If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose." WALTER LANDOR. Johnson had somewhat of the medlar in his nature; one side hard and austere, the other side unsound. We call him qfected for his turgidity : this was not afl'ected ; it was the most natural part of him. He hated both affectation and tameness. ARCHDEACON HARE. Two things intolerable, whether in prose or poetry. Wordsworth is guiltless at least of affectation. WALTER LANDOR. True ; but he often is as tame as an abbess's cat, which in kittenhood has undergone the same operation as the Holy Father's choristers. ARCHDEACON HARE. Sometimes indeed he might be more succinct. A belt is good for the breath, and without it we fail in the long run. And yet a man will always be more lookt at wdiose dress flutters in the air than he whose dress sits tight upon him : but he will soon be left on the roadside. Wherever there is a word beyond what is requisite to express the meaning, that word must be peculiarly beautiful in itself or strikingly harhionious; either of which qualities may be of some service in fixins; the attention and enforcing the sentiment. But the proper word in the proper place seldom leaves anythnig to be 122 THE LAST FRUIT OIT AN OLD TREE. desiderated on the score of harmony. The beauty of health and strength is more attractive and impressive than any beauty conferred by ornament. I know the dehght you fee], not only in Milton's immortal verse, but (altlio less) in Wordsworth's. WALTER LANDOR. A Mozart to a Handel ! But who is not charmed by the melody of Mozart ? Critics have their favorites ; and, like the same rank of people at elections, they chair one candidate and pelt another. ARCHDEACON HARE. A smaller object may be so placed before a greater as to intercept the view of it in its just proportions. This is the favorite manoeuvre in the Eeview-field. Fierce malignity is growing out of date. Nothing but fairness is spoken of; regret at the exposure of faults, real or imaginary, has taken place of derision, sarcasm, and arrogant condemnation. Nothing was wanting to Byron's consistency when he had exprest his contempt of Shakspeare. WALTER LANDOR. Giffords, who sniffed at the unsavory skirts of Juvenal, and took delight in paddling among the bubbles of azote, no longer ply the trade of critics to the same advantage. Generosity, in truth or semblance, is expected and required. Chattertons may die in poverty and despair ; but Keatses are exposed no longer to a lingering death under that poison which paralyzes the heart, contempt. ARCHDEACON HARE. In youth the appetite for fame is strongest. It is cruel and inhuman to withold the sustenance which is necessary to the growth, if not the existence, of genius ; sympathy, encou- ragement, commendation. Praise is not fame ; but the praise of the intelligent is its precursor. Vaticide is no crime in the statute-book ; but a crime, and a heavy crime, it is : and the rescue of a poet from a murderous enemy, altho there is no oaken crown decreed for it, is among the higher virtues. WALTER LANDOK. Many will pass by ; many will take the other side ; many will cherish the less deserving ; but some one, considerate and ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 123 compassionate, will raise up tlie neglected : and, where a strong hand does it, several less strong will presently be ready to help. Alas ! not always. There is nothing in the ruins of Eome which throws so chilling a shadow over the heart as the monument of Keats. Our field of poetry at the present time is both wider and better cultivated than it has ever been. But if the tyrant of old who walked into the growing corn, to inculcate a lesson of order by striking off the heads of the higher poppies, were to enter ours, he would lay aside his stick, so nearly on a level is the crop. Every year there is more good poetry written now, in this our country, than was written between the Metamorjjlioses and the Bivina Commedia. We walk no longer in the cast-off clothes of the ancients, often ill sewn at first, and now ill fitting. We have pulpier flesh, stouter limbs, we take longer walks, explore wider fields, and surmount more craggy and more lofty eminences. From these let us take a leisurely look at Pancy and Imagination. Your friend Wordsworth was induced to divide his minor Poems under the separate heads of these two; probably at the suggestion of Coleridge, who persuaded him, as he himself told me, to adopt the name of Lyrical Ballads. He was sorry, he said, that he took the advice. And well he might be ; for lyre and hallad belong not to the same age or the same people. It would have puzzled Coleridge to have drawn a strait boundary -line between the domains of Fancy and those of Imagination, on a careful survey of these pieces ; or perhaps to have given a satisfactory definition of their qualifies. ARCHDEACON HARE. Do you beHeve you yourself can ? WALTER LANDOR. I doubt it. The face is not the same, but the resemblance is sisterly ; and, even by the oldest friends and intimates of the family, one is often taken for the other, so nearly are they alike. Fancy is Imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive ; Imagination, not seldom, is sedate. It is the business of Imagination, in her maturity, to create and animate such Beings as are worthy of her plastic hand ; certainly not by invisible wires to put marionettes in motion, nor to pin butterflies on blotting-paper. Yigorous thought. 124 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. elevated sentiment, just expression, developement of character, power to bring man out from the secret haunts of liis soul and to place him in strong outline against the sky, belong to Imagination. Fancy is thought to dwell among the Faeries and their congeners ; and they frequently lead the weak and ductile poet far astray. He is fond of playing at little-go among them ; and, wdien he grows bolder, he acts among the Witches and other such creatures ; but his hankering after the Faeries stil continues. Their tiny rings, in which the intelligent see only the growth of fungusses, are no arena for action and passion. It was not in these circles that Homer and iEschylus and Dante strove. ARCHDEACON HARE. But Shakspeare sometimes entered them, who, with infinitely greater power, moulded his composite and consistent Man, breathing into him an immortality never to be forfeited. WALTER LANDOR. Shaks])eare's fuU strength and activity were exerted on Macbeth and Othello : he trifled wdth Ariel and Titania ; he played with Caliban: but no other would have thought of playing with him, any more than of playing with Cerberus. Shakspeare and Milton and Chaucer have more imagination than any of those to whom the quality is peculiarly attributed. It is not inconsistent witli vigour and gravity. There may be a large and effuse light without " the motes that people the sunbeams." Imagination foUow's the steps of Homer throughout the Troad, from the ships on the strand to Priam and Helen on the city-waU : Imagination played with the baby Astyanax at the departure of Hector from Andromache, and was present at the noblest scene of the Iliad, where, to repeat a verse of Cow^per's on Acliilles, more beautiful than Homer's own, " his hand he placed On the old man's hand, and xiusht it gently away.'''' No less potently does Imagination urge JEschylus on, from the range of beacons to the bath of Agamemnon ; nor expand less potently the vulture's wing over the lacerated bosom on the rocks of Caucasus. With the earliest flowers of the freslily created earth Imagination strewed the nuptial couch of Eve. ARCHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 125 Not Ariel, nor Caliban, nor Witches who ruled the elements, but Eve, and Satan, and Prometheus, are the most wonderous and the most glorious of her works. Imagination takes the weaker hand of Yirgil out of Dante^s who grasps it, and guides the Florentine exile thro the triple world. ARCHDEACON HARE. Whatever be your enthusiasm for the great old masters, you must often feel, if less of so strong an impulse, yet a cordial self-congratulation in having bestowed so many eulogies on poetical contemporaries, and on others whose genius is apart from poetry. WALTER LANDOR. Indeed I do. Every meed of Justice is delivered out of her own full scale. The poets, and others who may rank with them., indeed all the great men, have borne toward me somewhat more than civility. The few rudenesses I have ever heard of, are from such as neither I nor you ever meet in society, and such as warm their fingers and stomachs round less ornamental hearths. A¥hen they to whom we have been unknown, or indifferent, begin to speak a little well of us, we are sure to find some honest old friend ready to trim the balance. I have had occasion to smile at this. ARCHDEACON HARE. We sometimes stumble upon slyinvidiousness and smouldering mahgnity, quite unexpectedly, and in places which we should have believed were above the influence of such malaria. When Prosperity pays to Wisdom her visit in state, would we not, rather than halloo the yard-dog against her, clear the way for her, and adorn the door with garlands ? How fond are people in general of clinging to a great man's foibles ! they can climb no higher. It is not the solid, it is the carious, that grubs feed upon. WALTER LANDOR. The practice of barring out the master is stil continued in the world's great schoolroom. Our sturdy boys do not fear a flogging ; they fear only a book or a lectui'e. ARCHDEACON HARE. Authors are like cattle going to a fair ; those of the same field can never move on without butting one another. 126 THE LAST FRUIT OFF Ali OLD TREE. WALTER LANDOB. It has been my fortune and felicity, from my earliest days, to liave avoided all competitions. My tutor at Oxford could never persuade me to write a piece of latin poetry for the Prize, earnest as he was that his pupil should be a winner at the forth-coming Encaenia. Poetry was always my amusement, prose my study and business. I have publisht five volumes of Imaginary Conversations: cut the worst of them thro the middle, and there will remain in this decimal fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I shall dine late ; but the diningroom will be well lighted, the guests few and select. In this age of discovery it may haply be discovered, who first among our Cisalpine nations led Greek to converse like Greek, Eoman like Eoman, in poetry or prose. Gentlemen of fashion have patronized them occasionally, have taken them under the arm, have recommended their own tailor, their own perfumer, and have lighted a cigar for them from their own at the door of the Traveler's or Athenmim : there they parted. ARCHDEACON HARE. Before we go into the house again, let me revert to what you seem to have forgotten, the hasty and inaccui'ate remarks on Gebir. WALTER LANDOR. It is hardly A^^orth our while. Evidently they were written by a very young person, who with a little encouragement, and induced to place his confidence in somewhat safer investment than himself, may presently do better things. ARCHDEACON HARE. Southey too, I remember, calls the poem in some parts obscure. WALTER LANDOR. It must be, if Southey found it so. I never thought of asking him where lies the obscurity : I would have attempted to correct whatever he disapproved. ARCHDEACON HARE. He himself, the clearest of writers, professes that he imitated your versification : and the style of his Colloquies is in some degree modified by yours. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 127 WALTER LANDOR. Little cause had lie for preferring any other to his own. Perhaps the indictmn ore alio is my obscurity. Gothe is acknowledged by his highest admirers to be obscure in several places; which he thinks a poet may and should be occasion- ally. I differ from him, and would avoid it everywhere : he could see in the dark. This great poet carries it with him so far as into Epigram. I now regret that I profited so little by the calm acuteness of Southey. In what poet of the last nineteen centuries, who has written so much, is there less intermixture of prose, or less contamination of conceit? in what critic, who has criticized so many, less of severity or assumption ? I would never fly for shelter under the strongest wing : but you know that commentators, age after age, have found obscurities in Pindar, in Dante, and in Shakspeare. ARCHDEACON HARE. And it is not in every place the effect of time. You have been accused, I hear, either by this writer or some such another, of turgidUi/. WALTER LANDOR. Certainly by this : do not imagine there is anywhere such another. ARCHDEACON HARE. "Without a compliment, no poet of ours is less turgid. Guests may dispense with potage and puff-paste, with radishes and water-cresses, with salad and cream-cheese, who "implentur veteris bacclii pinguisque ferinse." WALTER LANDOR, Encouraged by your commendation, let me read to you (for I thiidi I placed it this evening in my pocket) what was transcribed for me as a curiosity out of the same Article. Yes ; here it is. " His great defect is a certain crudeness of the judgment, implied in the selection of the subject matter, and a further want of skill and perspicuity in the treatment. Except in a few passages, it has none of those peculiar graces of style and sentiment which render the writings of our more prominent modern authors so generally delightful." 128 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. ARCHDEACON HARE. Opinion on most matters, but chiefly on literary, and above all on poetical, seems to me like an empty eggshell in a cluck- pond, turned on its stagnant water by the slightest breath of air ; at one moment the crackt side nearer to sight, at another the sounder, but the emptiness at all times visible. Is your detractor a brother poet ? WALTER LANDOR. An incipient one he may be. Poets in that stage of exist- ence, subject to sad maladies, kick hard for life and scratch the nurse^s face. Like some trees, fir trees for instance, they must attain a certain highth aiid girth before they are serviceable or sightly. ARCHDEACON HARE, The weakest wines fall soonest into tlie acetous fermenta- tion; the more generous retain their sweetness with their strength. Somewhat of this diversity is observable in smaller wits and greater, more especially in the warm climate where poetry is the cultivation. WALTER LANDOR. The ancients often hung their trophies on obtruncated and rotten trees : we may do the like at present, leaving our enemies for sepulture. ARCHDEACON HARE, Envy of pre-eminence is universal and everlasting. Little men, whenever they find an opportunity, follow the steps of greater in this dark declivity. The apple of Discord was full- grown soon after the Creation, It fell between the two first brothers in the garden of Eden : it fell between two later on the plain of Thebes. Narrow was the interval, when again it gleamed portentously on the short grass of Ida. It roUed into the palace of Pella, dividing Philip and "Pliilip's godlike son \' it followed that insatiable youth to the extremities of his conquests, and even to his sepulcher; then it broke the invincible jihalanx and scattered the captains wide apart. It lay in the gates of Carthage, so that they could not close against the enemy : it lay between the generous and agnate families of Scipio and Gracchus, Marius and Sulla, Julius and Pompeius, Octavius and Antonius, were not the last who experienced its fatal malignity. King imprisoned king, emperor ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 129 stabbed emperor, pope poisoned pope, contending for God's vicegerency. Tlie rollcall of their names, with a cross against each, is rotting in the lumber-room of History. Do not wonder then if one of the rabble runs after vou from the hustings, and, committing no worse miscliief, snatches at the colours in your hatband. WALTER LANDOR. Others have snatcht more. My quarry lies upon a high common a good way from the public road, and everybody takes out of it what he pleases " witli privy paw, and nothing said " beyond " a curse on the old fellow ! how hard his granite is, one can never make it fit." This is all I get of quitrent or acknowledgment. I know of a poacher who noosed a rabbit on my warren, and I am told he made such a fricassee of it that there was no taste of rabbit or sauce. I never had him taken up : he is at large, drest in new clothes, and worth money. ARCHDEACON HARE. Your manors are extensive, comprehending " Prata, arva, iugentes sylvas, saltusque paludesque Usque ad oceanum." WALTER LANDOR. I never drive the poor away if they come after dry sticks only, but they must not with impunity lop or burn my plantations. ARCHDEACON HARE. I regret that your correspondent was sickened or tired of transcribing. WALTER LANDOR. Here is another slip from the same crabtree. It is objected that most of my poems are occasional. ARCHDEACON HARE. In number they may be, but in quantity of material I doubt whether they constitute a seventh. We will look presently, and we shall find perhaps that the gentleman is unlucky at his game of hazard. WALTER LANDOR. Certainly his play is not deep. We who are sober dare not E 130 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE. sit down at a table where a character may be lost at a cast : they alone are so courageous who have nothing to be seized on. ARCHDEACON HARE. The gentleman sweeps the cloth wdth little caution and less calculation. Of your poems the smaller alone are occasional : now not only are the smaller, but the best, of Catullus and Horace, and all of Pindar. Were not the speeches of Lysias, TEschines, Demosthenes, occasional ? Draw nearer home. What bat occasional were the Letters of Junius ? Materiem superabat opus. WALTER LANDOR. True. The ministers and their king are now mould and worms ; they w^ere little better w^hen above-ground ; but the bag-wig and point-lace of Junius are suspended aloft upon a golden peg for curiosity and admiration. ARCHDEACON HARE. Eegarding the occasional in poetry ; is there less merit in taking and treating what is before us, than in seeking and wandering through an open field as we would for muslu-ooms ? WALTER LANDOR. I stand out a rude rock in the middle of a river, with no exotic or parasitical plant on it, and few others. Eddies and dimples and froth and bubbles pass rapidly by, without shaking me. Here indeed is Kttle room for pic-nic and polka. ARCHDEACON HARE. Praise and censure are received by you with nearly the same indifference. WALTER LANDOR. Not yours. Praise on poetry, said to be the most exhila- rating of all, affects my brain but little. Certainly I never attempted to snatch " the peculiar graces so generally delight- ful.'''' My rusticity has at least thus much of modesty in it. ARCHDEACON HARE. The richest fiowers have not most honey-cells. You seldom find the bee about the rose, Oftener the beetle eating into it. The violet less attracts the noisy hum Thau the minute and poisonous bloom of box. ARCHDEACON IIAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 131 Poets know this ; Nature's invited guests Draw near and note it down and ponder it ; The idler sees it, sees unheedingly, Unheedingly the rifler of the hive." Is your critic wiser, more experienced, and of a more poetical mind tlian Southey? Utri liorum creditis, Quirites ? Vanity and presumption are not always the worst parts of the man they take possession of, altho they are usually the most prominent. ]\'Ialignity sticks as closely to him, and keeps more cautiously out of sight. Sorry I have often been to see a fellow Christian, one of much intellect and much worth, one charitable to the poor, one attendant on the sick, one compas- sionate with the sufferer, one who never is excited to anger but by another^s wrongs, enjoying a secret pleasure in saying unpleasant things at no call of duty ; inflicting wounds which may be long before they heal; and not only to those who are unfriendly or unknown, but likewise to the nearest and the friendliest. Meanwhile those who perhaps are less observant of our ritual, not only abstain from so sinful an indulgence, but appear to be guided in their demeanour by the less imperative and less authoritative dictate of Philosophy. I need not exhort or advise you, who have always done it, to disregard the insignificant and obscure, so distant from you, so incapable of approaching you. Only look before you at this instant ; and receive a lesson from Nature, who is able and ready at all times to teach us, and to teach men wiser than we are. Unwholesome exhalations creep over the low marshes of Pevensey, but they ascend not to Beachy-head nor to Hurstmonceaux. K 2 ]32 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. SECOND CONVERSATION. NICHOLAS. It seems. Count Nesselrode, that you have not a word to say. NESSELRODE. Your Majesty had not spoken. NICHOLAS. Indeed ! I thought I had. NESSELEODE. Your Majesty seemed preoccupied. NICHOLAS. No wonder. These cursed Turks, Medjid at the head of them, affront me. I did believe the young man was effeminate. NESSELEODE. The effeminate are sometimes unwieldy, the weak intractable. NICHOLAS, I did believe that the concessions he had already surrendered to me in favour of my protectorate, or rather my headsliip of the Greek Church, would have alienated from him all devout Mahometans, Instead of which, tolerant and generous as they always are wherever the Government is concerned, the miscreants applaud him for his exercise of these virtues, and are rabid against me for demanding more and greater con- cessions. NESSELEODE. Certainly they are roused, and even exasperated. NICHOLAS. That would be nothing ; I might indeed have desired it ; but the voice of Europe is encouraging them in their obstinacy. NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 133 NESSELBODE. Too true. NICHOLAS.) Too true ! is that all ? Has a minister of state, a prime minister, to say nothing but too true ? NESSELRODE. May it please your Majesty, it seldom has happened that Ministers have been censured for the objectionable too true. NICHOLAS. I do believe thou hast by nature a grain or two of wit in the vortexes of thy brain. The smallest of these quantities is enough to undo a poKtician. Speak seriously ; for matters and times are serious. NESSELRODE. Sire ! it is in such matters and times that a single thought of less gravity than the rest is a godsend. NICHOLAS. Worse and worse ! First a witticism, now a reflection ! Nesselrode ! I can well believe that you are growing old, but not in a court. What is to be done ? No, I do not ask you what is to be done, but how to do it. I am resolved to execute my design, to continue my operations. Consistency and firmness have always been among my attri- butes ; never must I lose them in the eyes of my people and of the world. NESSELRODE. It would indeed be disgraceful, and, what is worse than dis- graceful, it would be difficult and detrimental to retract. NICHOLAS. If France had been silent and quiet about the Eoly Places, I might have been too. NESSELRODE. Louis Napoleon wanted to conciliate the pope, and to bring him for his coronation to Paris round by Jerusalem. Louis Napoleon is long-sighted, and never puts out an arm without 134 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. an object which he is certain he can seize. If the pope refuses him now^ he will bring His Holiness by the ear into Notre-Dame. NICHOLAS. I admire the man's resolute character, and only wish I may never have to deal with it. I ought to have entertained a suspicion that he would, directly or indirectly^ thwart me in my steps against the Ottoman empire. NESSELRODE. Sire ! It might have been seen easily and clearly. I was not encouraged by your Majesty to deliver my opinion at full length upon this subject ; military men, and nobles of ancient family, your Majesty deigned to assure me, had set their hearts upon it. NICHOLAS. Scarcely was there a courtier who had not fixt upon the site of palace and villa and garden round Constantinople. NESSELRODE. This I knew; but I likewise knew that those hearts, whether light ones or heavy ones, must be cast down from the pleasant places they were set upon, and that the Turks will continue to lie along them at full length, or with legs crost under them, for some time yet. NICHOLAS. This is vexatious to think of. It may not be. Rather would I hazard a war with half Europe. NESSELRODE. Perhaps your Majesty might encounter more than half Europe in this enterprize. NICHOLAS. Impossible. Austria is under my thumb. NESSELRODE. Under the soft part of it, may it please your Majesty. Austria is greatly more interested to prevent the absorption or the partition of Turkey than any other Power is. The Danube NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 135 rolls indolently now along her dominions ; it miglit swell into formidable activity against her under the steam and the fortresses of your Majesty. NICHOLAS. France has always turned her eyes toward the East : England will counteract her interference. NESSELBODE. England has even a greater interest in maintaining the Ottoman empire than Erance has. England will never be so insane as to take an active part in hostihties on this question : but the Catholic Powers and the conterminary Powers will unite, if necessary, in active opposition to your Majesty's progress. NICHOLAS. Has Erance forgotten that we once spared her? Has Austria that we lately saved her ? NESSELRODE. No, sire, and neither of them ever will forget or forgive it. NICHOLAS, I am not the man to eat my words ; and my tlireats are the least indigestible of any. NESSELEODE. We may so masticate our words, and remove so much, by a dexterous use of the fingers, of what is gristle or husk, that the operation is far from difficult or unpleasant. NICHOLAS. Erance and England can never act together. NESSELRODE. They did at Navarino. NICHOLAS.- It was but for the day. You are grown over-cautious and somewhat timid ; I would not willingly say conscientious ; I would not hint at incapacity in a minister who has served me so long and faithfully. You seem abuost to apprehend a coalition against me. 136 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. NESSELRODE. God forbid! Luckily for us, there is only one vigorous mind among the arbiters of human affairs. NICHOLAS. Nesselrode ! Nesselrode ! no flattery ! What makes you start ? NESSELRODE. Sire, my incomplete meaning was, that at present there is only one vigorous mind among all the Powers of Europe which could inspire the fear of our humiliation. Certainly, too cer- tainly, the time is advancing when the chief continental Powers will unite in that confederacy. Already there is not a single one of them which does not see distinctly that Eussia is too formidable for Europe : Persia has long seen it. While the kings of Christendom bring Greek and Latin close toge- ther, Persia and Turkey will unite their sects in one common cause, chaunting " There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet/' NICHOLAS. You shall never be mine. You are capable of managing the weak ministers of Potentates round about me, but not me. Constantinople is already in flames before me. NESSELRODE. The Greeks deprecate the degradation of their Church in its transfer to Moscow or Petersburg; and tlie Muscovite nobility, in the city of their ancestors, are happier round the Kremlin than they ever will be round the Seven Towers. Those fires of Constantinople will crack and split your empire. AECHBISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI. 137 ARCHBISHOP OF FLOEENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI. ARCHBISHOP. It grieves my heart, unfortunate man ! to find you reduced to tliis condition. FRANCESCO MADIAI. Pity it is, my lord, that so generous a heart should be grieved by anything. ARCHBISHOP. Spoken like a Christian ! There are then some remains of faith and charity left witliin you ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. Of faith, my lord, there are only the roots, such as have often penetrated ere now the prison-floor. Charity too is among those plants which, altho they tluive best under the genial warmth of heaven, do not wither and weaken and die down deprived of air and sunsliine. I might never have thought seriously of praying for my enemies, had it not been the will of a merciful and all-wise God to cast me into the midst of them. ARCHBISHOP. Prom these, whom you rashly caU enemies, you possess the power of dehvering yourseK. Confess your crime. FRANCESCO MADIAI. I know the accusation, not the crime. ARCHBISHOP. Disobedience to the doctrines of the Church. FRANCESCO MADIAI. I am so ignorant, my lord, as never to have known a tenth or twentieth part of its doctrines. But by God's grace I know and understand the few and simple ones which His blessed Son taught us. ]o8 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. AECHBISHOP. Ignorant as joii acknowledge yourself to be^ do you presume that you are able to interpret them ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. 'No, my lord. He has done that Himself, and intelligibly to all mankind. ARCHBISHOP. By whose authority did you read and expound the Bible ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. By His. ARCHBISHOP. By His? To Thee? FRANCESCO MADIAI. Wliat He commanded the Apostles to do, and what they did, surely is no impiety. ARCHBISHOP, It may be. FRANCESCO MADIAI, Our Lord commanded his Apostles to go forth and preach the Gospel to aU nations. ARCHBISHOP. Are you an Apostle, vain foolish man ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. Alas ! my lord ! how far, how very far, from the least of them ! But surely I may follow where they lead ; and I am more likely to follow them in the right road if I listen to no directions from others far belund. ARCHBISHOP. Go on, go on, self-willed creature ! doomed to perdition. FRANCESCO MADIAI. I have ventured to repeat the ordinances of Christ and the Apostles ; no more ; I have nothing to add, nothing to interpret. ARCHBISHOr. I shall look into the matter ; I doubt whether He ever gave AECIIUISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI. 139 them such an ordinance . . I mean in sucli a sense . . for I remember a passage which may lead astray the unwary. Any- thing more ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. My lord, there is also another. ARCHBISHOP. What is that ? FBANCESCO MADIAI. " Seek truth, and ensue it.'" ARCHBISHOP. There is only one who can tell us, of a surety, what truth is, namely our Holy Pather. FRANCESCO MADIAI. Yes, my lord, of this I am convinced. ARCHBISHOP. Avow it then openly and you are free at once. FRANCESCO MADIAI. Openly, most openly, do I, and have I, and ever wiU I avow it. Permit me, ray lord archbishop, to repeat the blessed words which have fallen from your lordship. " There is only one lolio can tell us of a certaintij what truth is : " " our Holy Father,'^ our Father which is in Heaven. ARCHBISHOP. Scoffer ! heretic ! infidel ! No, I am not angry ; not in the least ; but I am hurt, Avounded, wounded deeply. It becomes not me to hold a longer conference with one so obstinate and obdurate. A lower order in the priesthood has this duty to perform. FRANCESCO MADIAJ. My lord, you have conferred, I must acknowledge, an unmerited distinction upon one so humble and so abject as I am. Well am I aware that men of a lower order are the most proper men to instruct me. They have taken that trouble, with me and thousands more. 140 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. ARCHBISHOP. Indeed ! indeed ! so many ? His Imperial Highness, well- informed, as we thought, of what passes in every house, from the cellar to the bedchamber, had no intelligence or notion of this. Denounce the culpable, and merit liis pardon, his protection, his favour. Do not beat your breast, but clear it. Give me at once the names of these teachers, these Listeners ; I will intercede in their behalf. FRANCESCO MADIAI, The name of the first and highest was written on the cross in Calvary ; poor fishermen were others on the sea of Galilee. I could not enumerate the Hsteners; but the foremost rest, some venerated, some forgotten, in the catacombs of Eome. ARCHBISHOP. Francesco Madiai ! there are yet remaining in you certain faint traces of the Church in her state of tribulation, of the blessed saints and martyrs in the catacombs. But, coming near home, Madiai, you have a wife, aged and infirm ; would not you help her ? FRANCESCO MADIAL God will ; I am forbidden. ARCHBISHOP. It is more profitable to strive than to sigh. I pity your distress ; let me carry to her an order for her liberation. FRANCESCO MADIAI. Your lordship can. ARCHBISHOP. Not without your signature. FRANCESCO MADIAI. The cock may crow ten times, ten mornings, ten years, before I deny my Christ. wife of my early love, persevere, persevere. ARCHBISHOP. This to me ? FRANCESCO MADIAI. No, my lord ! but to a martyr ; from one unworthy of that POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 141 glory ; in tlie presence of Him who was merciful and found no mercy, my crucified Eedeemer. ARCHBISHOP. After such perverseness, I declare to you, with all the frankness of my character, there is no prospect of your Kberation. FRANCESCO MADIAI. Adieu, adieu, Rosa ! Light and enlivener of my earlier days, solace and support of my declining ! We must now love God alone, from God alone hope succour. We are chastened but to heal our infirmities ; we are separated but to meet inseparably. To the constant and resigned there is always an Angel that opens the prison-door; we wrong liim when we caU him Death. POPERY : BEITISH AND FOEEIGN. " Maxima Taurus Victima." Virg. — CHAPTER I. Somewhat more than a century ago, a dignitary of the Anglican Church published a clever and facetious book, entitled A Tale of a Tub. Outcries were raised against it as irreverent and profane. Irreverent it certainly was toward the Church of Eome and the Church of Geneva ; not profane however. Our gracious Queen's ministers, I mean her par- Hamentary, omitting her ecclesiastical, have profited by the liint of tliis title, and have lately thrown out a tub to the mighty occupant of the northern and southern seas, which he now is tossing over and over, and certainly will never swallow. Lord John Eussell, in a letter both undignified and unwise, addressed to the Prince-bishop of Durham, protests his indigna- tion against the audacity of the Pope's encroachments. Does any man beUeve liis lordship feels the slightest? Does any man doubt that he is heartily glad at seeing public attention turned toward the Vatican, and aside from his relative at Ceylon, from the torturer and murderer of the Cephalonians he retains and protects in Corfu, and from the Jesuit he enthroned at 142 THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE. Malta ? At any other period of our liistory, from the accession of the fourth Henry to the abdication of the last James, upright men would have been found in parliament to impeach these satraps of high crimes and misdemeanors. Even in the parliament now about to sit, surely the dignity of the nation will somewhat stimulate the slumbering and supine. Our justice ought to be visible to all ; our rehgion is safe in our own bosoms, and the healthier for quiescency and repose. But agitation is necessary, it seems, in a distant quarter; and minis- ters are of opinion that it is better the wind should blow off shore. Patronage else would be in danger of diminution by the reclamations of the people against domestic popery ; a great and grievous anomaly in the English constitution. Charles II. and his brother James cherished it fondly and consistently. It was a prodigious engine of power in their hands ; it was desirable to their patron the French king ; it was more desirable to the Roman pontif. No doubt was entertained by them that the English stray sheep could be whistled or barked into the fold again ; and proof sufficient had already been afforded that bishops are readier to change their faith than lose their benefices. The Prince of Orange, no friend to the order, deemed it politic to tolerate and maintain it. His ministers bribed their adherents from the spoils of the Roman altar : Queen Yictoria's do the same. The smoke of this altar is now partially bloAvn away : cardinals^ shallow lials are flapping on one side of it, succincter shovels curl up on the other. People are surprised at the resemblance of the features underneath, and will discover when they have stripped them (which they soon will do) that in what lies out of sight they are stil more similar. CHAPTER II. The wisest and most important letter that has yet been written on the Popish Question is Sir Benjamin Hallos. Reasonably may we hope and entreat that he will follow up the Archbishop of Canterbury into parliament. In which belief and confidence I beg permission to ofi'er him a few sug- gestions. Let me ask, 1. Whether a great body, both of the laity and the clergy, have not lost much of their faith and trust in their Episcopal Guides, by the Ecclesiastical Commission, wliich these Episcopal Guides mainly influenced ? POPEiiY : BiirrisH and foueign. 143 2. "VYhetlierj since the establislimeut of Christianity in England, tliere is any other instance of such fraudidence, ejffrontery, and rapacity, as theirs ? 3. Whether the Queen's ministers did not countenance and support them tlu'oughout ? 4. Whether, under these Eeformers, the Bishop of London has not received from his diocese (being himself a principal one among the said Eeformers) much nearer a million than half a million within the last twenty years, after all deduc- tions ? 5. Whether the Cardinals of Eome, one with another, receive from their Church one (piarter of that money ? 6. Whether the hierarchs of the Keformed Ohm'ch in England ought to be eudoAved, as they are, with tenfold the property of what is granted to the hierarchs of any other Reformed Clim-ch in Christendom ? 7. Whether Parliament has not the same right to diminish the pay of any prelate novj, as it had lately, when it divided one see into two, and when it diminished it in some othei's which were not divided ? These questions come home to the breasts and (what lie very near the breasts) the pockets of Englishmen. Leaving to English and Irish bishops a tldnl more than is enjoyed by the bishops of Erance, where religion would sit in sad j)light without splendour, from the church-lands which belong to the State, and of wliich the State always has disposed at its good pleasure, enough would remain for the establishment of parochial schools throughout both countries. I disagree with Sir Benjamin Hall, that every clergyman should receive two hundred pounds a-year. In Wales the most efficient preachers have often much less than one : the same in Scotland : but my opinion is, that whoever keeps a curate should be obliged, under forfeiture of liis Kving, to give him at least two hundred, and never less than a third of the benefice, whatever be its amount. In every part of Europe the richest clergymen are usually the least influential over theu' congregations. On the contrary, there is neither schism nor dissatisfaction where the pastor stands not high above the sympathies. There are no ferments, because there is no leaven, hi Protestant Germany, in Protestant Switzerland, in Protestant Denmark, in Protestant Sweden, in Protestant Scotland. Men throughout these 144 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. countries mind alike their teacher and their business. Exactly in proportion to its distance from popery is a nation industrious, free, and moral. CHAPTER III. Napoleon said that the Papacy was worth fifty thousand men to him : it was so : he might have ruled the world with it : but he never could rest in a soft bed : he grew delirious, threw himself out upon the floor, and could not find liis way back again. His nephew, a warier man, stifled under the triple crown the last gasps of Italy, Hungary, and Austria. And now was the time to try the experiment whether any blood or breath was left in the body of England. Methodism had reclaimed from turbulence and crime the most profligate of the people. The gentle and vii'tuous Wesley brought about him as great multitudes as ever surrounded the earlier apostles, and worked as great marvels in their hearts. The beneficed clergy set their faces against him; and angry faces they were ; partly from old prejudices and partly from old port. The nation was divided into high church and low church : the church of Clirist is neither : few clergymen know that ; none preach it. In the present day the Papists call themselves Catholics: the Protestants in England call themselves the same. Both lie ; and both know they lie ; yet neither will give up the point. If there is a schism, as the Papists insist there is, that very schism is a fraction broken off something : the Protestants, being in a minority, are less Catholic, if Catholic means universal. Would it not be wiser and better to simplify the matter ? The Protestant may fairly claim to be a member of the church established by Christ, if church it can be called; a member of that community in which were his disciples and apostles. But there indeed none was greater than another ; so it would not do now. We are off-shoots from the fruit-tree transplanted to Rome ; " Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." The older the tree the smaller the fruit. The nations which separated themselves from Popery protested against the pontif, but did not pronounce for Christ. Small communities, and only very small ones, did ; principally the Moravians. It was much however to protest against the sale of indulgences, the POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 145 dominion over consciences, the permission of falsehood, and the duty of torturing or of slaying for dissent. Plain enough it appeared that such authority was not of God. Tlieologians, occupied in their own peculiar studies, had little time or inclination for historical research. There did arise however some few who fancied they perceived a very close affinity between papal and pagan Rome. A learned language veiled their investigation from the people. In another ^ place I have cited the authors out of which Dr. Conyers Middleton com- piled his celebrated letter. Neither he nor Gibbon, neither Voltaire nor Bayle, have enlarged on the prime question. There is the strongest circumstantial evidence that the claims of the Bishop of Rome are founded on forgery and falsehood ; that St. Peter was never bishop there, and never saw the city. I will render these pages valuable, by transcribing into them what is contained on this subject in the Exmuiner of December 28, 1850. ST. PETER NEVER AT ROME. Sir, The Pope is the supreme head or governor in spirituals of a large number of our fellow-subjects, who are taught to believe that their condition in a future state is dependent upon their obedience to his behests in this. In pursuance, he says, of his duty to consult for their future bbss, he has done a thing which is most insulting to the feelings of the majority of her Majesty's subjects ; and thus his influence over the minds of our Catholic brethren becomes the source of dissension between them and ourselves, a thing which neither they nor we desire. Although there seems to be some difficulty in fixing on the course which it will be best to take in this conjuncture, yet there is one thing which certainly ought to be done. The Uueen, acting for the community at large, and peculiarly for her Catholic subjects, is called upon to place before them the state of the facts, on the alleged reality of which the Pope claims from them that obedience which constitutes the strength that he employs to do that which must draw them and ourselves into a quarrel. Now their attention has never been authoritatively called to the facts to which I am about to refer ; and such is their character when examined, that it is highly probable the Catholics will clearly perceive that it does not justify him in claiming from them that obedience which he demands and perverts. At all events, as sub- jects, from whom a divided allegiance is now claimed by a foreign potentate on what he calls spiritual grounds, they are entitled to the most indulgent consideration from their natural sovereign, and * Imag. Convers. Middletou and Magliabepchi, 146 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. to receive every aid from her in the embarrassing situation in which their spiritual sovereign has placed them, towards her and their fellow-subjects. No aid promises to be more useful to them than that which I now suggest. One of the facts, — and this the most important of all, as being that on which the validity of all the other associated facts, were they realities, would depend — on which the Pope grounds his claim to the obedience he has so arrogantly demanded from the English Catholics, can easily be shown to be wholly fictitious. The fact I mean is the affirmed presence at any time whatever of Simon Peter at Eome. There is not a particle of evidence to prove that he was ever there, while there is very strong evidence indeed to prove that he never was there. The Popes assert that he resided there twenty-five years as bishop, that he had certain peculiar prerogatives — Begalia — which he transmitted to his successors, and that they are his successors. The Pope — albeit, one of us poor weak miserable human worms — claims to be, as the successor of Simon Peter, the vicegerent of the Supreme of Beings — the vicar of the Creator of innumerable suns with their planets — the lieutenant of this immeasurable Being — and to be, like Him, infallible. As to this world in particular, we learn from the Council of Lateran, that he is the prince of it — Orbis Princejjs — that he is Hex Regum et Orbis terrarum Monarcha — the king of all kings, and the monarch of the whole globe : and as to the next world, he is denominated " Virum in quo erat potestas mpra ovmes potestates tam cceli quam terra '^ the being whose power is above all other powers, whether of heaven or earth. He possesses the power of determining thebhss or torment of his fellow-creatures in the next world : he holds the keys of heaven. The foundation ought indeed to be sure on which is raised such an immense superstructure as this. Now the keystone of the arch of all this horrible blasphemy is the alleged fact, " that Simon Peter was Bishop of Eome." I do not propose to invite the Catholics to any polemical or theological controversy, but I do propose that under the authority of a commission from the Queen to some of our greatest lawyers, and two or three historians, like Mr. Grote, Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Hallam, and the Bishop of St. David's, the whole of the evidence touching the fact of Simon Peter's alleged presence at Kome, and the counter-evidence, should be collected, analysed, and reported. It will turn out that, while there is just as much evidence to show that St. Peter was at Delhi, Pekin, or Nishni Novgorod, as at Eome — that is to say, just none at all — there is really no evidence to show that he might not have been at any one of the three first cities I have named, although there is very strong evidence to show that he never could have been at Eome. When this report shall be made to her Majesty, it will become her part to lay it particularly before her Catholic subjects, with an exhorta- POPEHY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 147 tion to them not to sufftn- one wliom tliey must clearly perceive to be a gross impostor to lead them into a quarrel with their fellow- subjects. Her proclamation would draw a clear line between the theology of the Catholics and their actions as members of our community. Her Majesty might say, that under her sceptre all men are permitted to adopt what theological views they like, and that she should not think it a duty on her part to inquire into the reasons why the Catholics believe in transubstantiation, practise Maryolatry, &c., &c., &c. ; and that it is by no means her intention now to disturb their belief in, or practice of, those or any other of the distinctive points of their faith or their customs ; but that, finding that the head of their religion by means of the opinion which they entertain, that he is successor to Simon Peter in the bishopric of Eome, works upon them to disturb the civil harmony in which they are living with the rest of her subjects, she had thought it her duty, as their temporal Sovereign, to ascertain for their behoof how the facts stand regarding the successorship in question ; that the investigation clearly shows that the successorship is a fiction, because the fact of Simon Peter's ever having been at Eome at all turns out to be a fiction. That under these circumstances, while they will continue to enjoy every protection in the belief and prac- tice of their religion, they must abstain from supporting any action of an impostor hke the Pope which shall interfere, nominally or really, with her prerogatives. The course which I have proposed may at first sight appear to partake of what is ludicrous ; and I confess that the idea, when it first suggested itself, made me smile myself. But it has repeatedly recurred to my mind ; and each time it has appeared to be more and more susceptible of useful application. It is rather remarkable that the controversies to which the Keformation gave rise, turned entirely on what is called dogma — doctrine — interpretation, &c. ; and that no one seems to have clearly perceived, on the Protestant side, that the actual presence of St. Peter at Eome was the key of the Papal position, that it was most easy to carry this position, and that, if that were done, the whole fabric of Papal usurpation and imposition would vanish Like an enchanted palace in a fairy tale, when the knight to whom its overthrow is destined comes at last to deliver its long imprisoned and metamorphosed inmates. It is true that Frederick Spanheim denied it in a specific treatise ; and others have denied it ; but the controversy with the Papal power might far better have been placed on this one issue, when the eye of the world would have necessarily concentrated itself on this, the vital point. It is curious to see how Barrow, in his noble work on the Papal Supremacy, overlooks its importance, unconscious that, had he properly handled it, he might have spared himself the trouble of writing his learned and instructive volume. The truth I imagine l2 148 . THE LAST TRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. to have been that men, when they first broke off from the Papacy, attended wholly to what they thought were its abuses. Laud and the high-Church party had, and continue to have, a tenderness for it ; and the Puritans arose afterwards and identified it with " Anti- christ;" their attention did not turn to the fact of its being a baseless unreality, as their theory rather led them to take its reality for granted. Hence this portion of the foundation of the Papal power has never yet been critically examined. But the time has fortunately arrived when such an examination is demanded, and when there is strong ground for hoping that its results, authoritatively and irrefragably showing that the tale of St. Peter's ever being at Kome is a pure invention, will produce the most salutary effect throughout Christendom. The papal power is the most monstrous, and by far the most degrading, imposition that ever outraged and deformed the human intellect ; it must, some day or other, in the order of a benevolent Providence, be destroyed ; it has now provoked chastisement — the eye of the world, in breath- less expectation, looks for the issue of the contest — and here, close at hand and challenging employment, lies the simple and hitherto neglected instrument which has power to terminate its evil existence. And the hand of her gracious Majesty would seem to be the one appointed to hurl the pebble that shall destroy the monster, for she is clearly called upon by the Pope's audacious assumption of regal authority in her dominions in virtue of his impostrous heirship of the royal prerogatives — the Regalia — of St. Peter, to cause the minds of her Catholic svibjects to be enlightened as to the absolute nullity of that title on which he impiously claims their obedience. I hope, therefore, that her Majesty will be advised to appoint such a commission as I suggest ; and I will venture to remark that, as the cpiestion " whether Simon Peter was ever in the city of Eome" is not a theological one, the investigation should not be submitted to clergymen, for their decision, as liable to the suspicion of par- tizanship, would command the less consideration. It should be entrusted to lawyers and men familiar with examinations of evidence and historical research. The question sliould be kept separate from every collateral point, and thoroughly exhausted ; and the results should be laid before the world with that calmness and im- partiality that ought to characterise all judicial investigations, without the slightest tinge of partiality and partizanship ; and how- ever the conclusions may be disputed by the Catholics in the heat and irritation of the moment, yet in a few years it will probably be ditficult to find a Catholic, unless he should either be a priest or a brutified serf of that communion unable to read or to write, who shall believe that the Pope is a whit more the successor of St. Peter in the bishopric of Rome, than he is of Fo in the Foship of China. One word more. Our bishops, by complaining that the Pope POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN, 149 "ignores their existence — disallows their Orders — pretends to take possession of England as a spiritual waste — is guilty of schism in the church, &c., kc, &c." — appear to me very much to strengthen in the eyes of the Catholics the position which he assumes, for this strain involves an admission that he has a general right of some sort in these matters. It tends no less to confuse the mind of the Protestant laity ; and it is high time that an authority, superior to that of our bishops in ecclesiastical matters, should extend her pro- tecting shield over the laity, while the Medussean loveliness of the Truth which she wiU reveal shall look into eternal stone the wretched impostor who has so long deluded mankind. Anglic ANUS. Geiiius_, in the form of Paxton, lias erected an edifice of stupendous magnificence and unrivalled beauty, wherein all the nations of the world are invited to exhibit the products of their industry. Nothing so costly is required for a congress of learned men. Indeed no congress of them is necessary. Twelve or thirteen in England and Germany might be selected to inquire into the Pope's pretensions; and first into the authority he assumes as successor to St. Peter. If we only trim a few boughs, and prune off a branch or two, the sap will rise again the more vigorously and rankly into the same places; strike at the root, strike through it, and down falls the tree. But take heed you do not crush or maim the poor creatures that are basking under it : they are asleep ; wake them, and gently. CHAPTER IV. Anglicanus, in the last chapter, thinks it " curious to see how Barrow overlooks the importance '^ of the inquiry. Barrow feared that, had he touched the tiara, he might have stuck his finger at the same time through the apostolical succession. A little thorn may tear to rags a loose lawn sleeve. No bishop will ever venture to say all he knows or all he thinks on these matters. The simple-hearted Hooker was also cautious lest his foot offended. As in politics a fault has been called worse than a crime, so in religion is indiscretion held worse than a perjury. All bishops swear that they are unwilling to be bishops ; their modesty at last is prevailed on to be frocked ; to unfrock it, would make it shudder and scream : the one is courtship, the other is violation. The most eloquent work in our language, or perhaps in 150 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. anjj is Milton's Discourse on Frelaty. Mucli as he liatli said about it, he might have said much more; and probably he would, if the nation had not already been sickened by the smoking and rancid snuff of those candles which are now relighted. He might have walked straightforward up to Eome, and have emptied into the streets the satchel of forgeries stored in the Vatican. It must now be done by others. Although there is little chance that the world will ever hear again such eloquence, ever be warmed by such fervency, ever guided by such united zeal and wisdom, there are men in existence who Avill compensate for these deficiencies, by the steddiness of their steps and the clearness of their demonstrations. Let such men come forward, called or uncalled; the Hallams, the Macaulays, and the Grotes; Germany will for a while forget her humiliation in the exercise of her sagacity ; the endurance of her own bondage in break- ing the bondage of mankind. CHAPTER V. The Church-of-England-man, at the present hour, is seen limping between two lame guides ; one kicking liim, the other leaning on him so heavily that he would rather be kicked than bear it. He remembers the cruelties of Popery, and how one bishop feasted his Christianity upon the stake that roasted another. Of these things he has only heard; but he has seen, with his own eyes, bishops, at the beck of Pitt, taking their seats in our House of Lords, opposite to Marat and Eobespierre, on precisely the same level, and voting year after year for war. People will no longer let them sit upon those benches: gouty feet must find other remedies than blood-baths. Exercise among the needy and afflicted, visits to the hospital and the school, are more healthy, and may tend to prolong their days. Perocious as have been many sects of Protestants, they have all, after a while, relaxed their strife. Popery alone marks out and claims her victims : she alone is always the same, and boasts of it. The cities of Eome and Naples bear witness, at this hour, to the validity of her claim. Hundreds are imprisoned, and have been for all the last year, on suspicion of heterodoxy; some avowedly, others ostensibly, on different charges, but certaiidy for the same offences. Hundreds more have fled from those cities, knowing what would await them if POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 151 they staid. At Rome the sun stil turns round the earth; whatever was^ is; whatever is, must be. Civilization must for ever keep clear of the Holy Office. Both Papists and Protestants, among the ignorant and unreflecting, are per- suaded that tortures and burnings are never more to be inflicted on heretics ; and this conclusion they draw from the enlightenment and liberality of the age. What do they mean by enlightenment ; by liberaHty ; by the age ? Those whom they call enlightened, admit no other light than what they themselves have placed upon the altar, to be kindled or extinguished, as they appoint. The men whom the fools call liberal forbid them imperatively to read those books on which the Christian faith is founded The age ! In regard to learn- ing, it has rolled far back. Learning was never so highly cidtivated in Italy as when ]\Iuretus delivered an oration in praise of Catherine de^ Medici, in celebration of the massacre on St. Bartholomew's day. Give the same priests the same power, and nothing Aiill be wanting but latinity for the oration. CHAPTER VI. Let us have cheap bread, whether we have it from our own country or from abroad : let us have cheap religion, whether it comes from Lambeth or Geneva. The religion of Eome is found to contain more impurities in the barrel; but though it is apt to get into the head, it agrees very well with most stomachs. The great capitalist who sends it over has a prodigious number of customers; he gives long credit, and takes smaU interest, having a mortgage on every article in the house, from the baby's whistle to the mother's nightcap. His factors must be admitted at all houi's, whether of the day or of the night, at the ringing of the bell ; so that presently the wife is not the husband's, nor the husband the wife's, nor the children cither's. If the flour is to be bolted at aU, it must be bolted at such mills as he appoints; and a pretty good quantity of bran is thought to make it wholesomer. How- ever, by paying more, you may be scoured less. At last, the factors in many places grew too numerous for the consumers, and so insolent that they partitioned the land among them- selves, and assumed the names and titles of the landlords. The farmers cared not a straw who took the tithes, until it occurred to them that after one party had taken them, another 152 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. miglit come and do the same. It had pleased them lately to see the children of theu" old curates made lords^ and sitting in Parliament with black aprons over their knees, as decent and orderly as their good housewives at home. Ultimately they began to grow suspicious that somewhat was in the wind, when they found candlesticks and candles and artificial flowers on the communion-tables in their parish churches. Stroking their hair for\\'ard, and drawing one foot backward, they " made so bold " as to ask the reason of this fashion ; and they were informed, by a priest at each end and another in the middle, that it was no communion-table, but an altar. At last a whole detachment in sable was landed upon the coast, and surveyors with long poles began their measurements. Then assembled all classes to consult together what was to be done. Some of the elders took up the Booh of Life, and examined it attentively. It soon appeared to them, not only that nothing could be found in recommendation of bees-wax as a salve for the soul, or of stone altars to nail their faith to, or of another man's garment wherewithal to cover their naked- ness and conceal their uncleanliness and unsoundness, but they also found a passage in which it is forbidden to make long prayers, and an ordinance by which only one prayer is sanctioned, and every word of it plainly written down. The ordinance is from the Son of God himself; the prayer is from his own dictation. They then met daily and said that prayer, after which they consulted the best educated, the most moral, the fittest to instruct them in regard to their interests, temporal and eternal. Ere long, the inquiry went so far as into the signification of lords spiritual. Again the Book of Life was opened ; but its oracles here were mute. Nothing of the kind could be found in it from beginning to end; but sundry denunciations to shock the sincere believer, sadly troubled for those who, whether from unbelief or from indifference, took openly to themselves what had been so solemnly interdicted. Suddenly there was a great tumult in the country. One body of lords spiritual was tearing to rags the habiliments of other lords spiritual. At this sight the quieter of the old men stood apart, and warned their sons and daughters fi'om going too near the conflict. Some of them called off' their dogs, lest they should contract a bad habit of barking inopportunely. When the fighters had torn off the clothes from one another's backs and loins, it was discovered that the Hneu of the last POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGX. 153 arrived was generally the finer ; the skin of the native, here and there, the cleanlier. Contagious diseases had, however, been caught mutually ; and it was deemed convenient to place the patients in separate wards of the general hospital. CHAPTER VII. Our century seems to have been split asunder; one half rolling forward, the other half backward : inquiry closed by icebergs; credulity carried to the torrid zone. Oxen no longer speak in the cow-market ; but wooden images roll their eyes in the shrine. Even we Englishmen are the fools of fashion. Inigo Jones and Wren and Vanbrugh had built houses fit for gentlemen to inhabit. We could look out of the windows and see the country ; we coidd look at the walls and see the paintings hung against them. Suddenly the plumber and glazier divide the panes equally, and we must mount upon chairs if we would see the other side. Old benches, old tables, old wainscoting, decorate the chambers; old missals and breviaries, opened for the miniatures, displace Voltaire and Montesquieu. Have these follies been quite without their consequences ? I wish I could speak in the affirmative. Here again we find splitting and discrepancy ; water-sprinklers and scoui'ges, steam-vessels and railroads; engineers who would carry us rapidly across the globe, and mischievous and malignant idlers who would throw in their rubbish to obstruct the velocity of the train. We must keep the way clear; we must carefully watch the electric wire; we must preserve it unbroken in our country. Protestantism, the assertor no less of civil than of religious rights, has been rooted out fi'om among the nations which first nui'tured it. Had violence and perfidy been inactive against it, had the princes of Germany upheld it manfully, had their emperor and the French king never been taught by the ministers of their religion that oaths with heretics were invalid, and ought to be broken for the benefit of the faith, we may fairly calculate that forty millions of Protestants would be now existing where scarcely two millions have been left ; such was their industry and prosperity, in Prance, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. The world never sustained so grievous a loss as in Gustavus Adolphus, or so grievous a disgrace as in the empire of Napoleon. He estabKshed such schools as were suitable only 154 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. to tlie darkest ages, and lie restored such a religion as had caused their darkness. The same lust of domination, the same fraudulence and treachery, the same meekness of aspect in conflagrations and murders, as when the olive-yards and vine- yards of the Vaudois and Albigenses were insufficient to supply the faggots for burning the father, the mother, and tlie babe. No Popish priest dares hesitate to execute the Pope's commands. The Pope declares in word and deed that his religion is now what it was always. Whoever is desirous of knowing more about it, may be referred to James's Bark Scenes of History, and may read the exploits of Simon de Montfort and of Wallenstein. If ever a pope casts his slipper over England, I trust we shall return it him with a full attendance of his own servants in their richest liveries. Christ says, '' Ye can not serve two masters." The Pope says, "ye can;" he says more ; he says, "whomsoever you serve, unless you serve me in preference, and obey my orders in despite of his : I, who have the power of doing it, will send you to the devil." In Piedemont a refractory bishop was sentenced to a mild punish- ment for open disobedience of the laws. The Pope threatened to throw the whole nation into disorder because the bishop was not allowed to be disorderly. The weak and dying were to be deprived of life's last comforts and hopes, unless an ovation, or indeed a triumph, were granted to a criminal and a rebel. Yet there are found among us men of learning who would permit their easy chairs to be wheeled round, and who would sit readily and unsuspiciously with any gentlemanly guest who claims relationship. So far no harm is done. But beware, old gentleman, of letting your guest's servants have possession of your servants' hall, make the men drunk, and pump many secrets out of the women, and some in. CHAPTER VIII. It is better to wear our own home-woven clothes than to throw over our shoulders those which others have left behind them, unventilated, moth-eaten, and soUed. And yet the wearing of these loose ill-fitting habiliments has made the fortune of many, by giving them a venerable air out of their very mustiness. Even in the works of some wise men there is little which is applicable to our present modes of life, much as there is which keeps us above these modes, and which holds us high and erect amid the conflict of creeds and passions. The POPERY: BEITISH AND POllEIGN. 155 brutal part of a man^s nature (and there is a brutal part in most men) is usually the stronger for a time. It is exer- cised the first ; it has most ground under it. The head of the Centaur is disproportionate to the body : but there may be in the elevation and aspect of this head so much comeliness and grandor that the inferior parts are overlooked. The arts and sciences have made wonderful progress within our memory ; has moral philosophy made any ? Compare the writings, compare the conduct, of those who occupy the highest seats in the Christian synagogue, both at home and abroad, with the writings and conduct of Epictetus and Seneca and Plutarch and Marcus Antoninus. On which side lies Christianity ? It lies invariably on the side of those who knew not Christ. No persecution, no strife, no intolerance, on their part; no cessation or remission on the opposite. Not contented with aU the body and aU the bones of contention which ultramontane bigotry and superstition had furnished, our pastors come to buflets with each other about a few drops of water ; some insisting that an infant on whom they never have been sprinkled has no right or pretence to enter the kingdom of heaven, altho the omission of so momentous a duty be no fault of his : others would more kindly give the infant a free ticket, but insist that grown men should be soused over head and ears. Again, so angry are people at what they call innovations in their church, that Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floiibus angit. The Bishop of London thinks there may be a httle too much of them at one time upon the altar : liis lordsliip has no objection to a trim discreet posey, but he must look into it, and pick out here and there a constituent. Herb-of-grace, marjoram, fennel, sage, and other useful domestic condiments, may enter and remain. A rose bears too near an af&nity to a rosary : in regard to rosemary there are serious doubts lest the multitude should mistake its derivation, and believe it denoted the mother of God. Therefor it is deemed prudent at the present juncture to suspend the rosemary. Similar hesitation I once remember at a dinner in Paris. A gentleman of ancient family, high rank, and distinguished services, was appointed by the lady of the house to superintend the salad. He felt at once the honor and the responsibility, wliich he avowed, but he manfully undertook the charge. After a 156 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. coup d'oeil and a short reconnoissance, lie placed three plates before him^ and then selected the 7nateriel, which he tlirew forward in detachments. Everything went on smoothly and successfully, only there was one little herb that perplexed him, on which hung the key of the position, the success of the operation. He had already mixed up a small part of it in the bowl, another part much smaller was suspended between his thumb and finger : doubt hung over his brow : at last, with desperate resolution, after detaching a single leaf and tossing aside the residue, he committed that leaf irrevocably to its doom. His heart was now at ease ; he had performed his duty. In our country, where incense for the present is unused, a few sweet herbs may be innocently and advantageously indulged in. Abroad I have often been in the midst of a desperate conflict between gum and garlic, and have been constrained to fly for protection, as near as possible, to the priest and thurible. The " dura messorum ilia" imparted no strength to my stomach, but tried it cruelly. Historians have not recorded the exact time when the Romans and other Italians ceased to be fond of flowers. Probably it happened in the midst of some epidemic, when the nerves could ill support the odour. Many things are left off unseasonably, and many unseasonabl}'' continued. A¥e deem it no sin to decorate our churches on the most festive day of the year, altho the decorations are druidical : surely the sin is no greater to decorate them all the year round, with beautiful and fresh and fragrant flowers, as was the custom of that milder paganism from which, with •little change, we have received our rites and ceremonies, through our step-mother at Eome. Let the two kings on the Tiber and Thames, cognate as they are, smell at the same nosegay. We already owe Popery too much : if we are induced to borrow more from her, be it rather what she never makes use of; what was bequeathed to her by her brave and frugal ancestors, and not what she holds in common with the brotherhood of the Thugs. If she comes to tickle our ears in order to cut our throats, beyond a doubt it is entirely for our good, and not for her aggrandisement : if she comes to pick our pockets, it is only that notliing may be left in them which could do us harm in falling. She finds in our purses snares fabricated by the devil, and she melts them into indulgences to give him a specimen how two can play at that game. She is POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 157 lotli to spill our blood, unless we are refractory and contu- macious; and then it is purely and simply to show others, straying after us, what dangerous paths we misguided sinners have taken. Arminianism is popery, with a leaden thumb- screw instead of an iron one, and with seven wires to the cat instead of nine. Archbishop Laud was the most celebrated of its pontifs : Charles the Martyr was the only one canonised of its saints. He well merited this distinction, for the number of ears and noses with which he tesselated the pavement of Whitehall, and for the number of perjuries with which he con- secrated the chapel of St. Stephen. Eor these the wisdom and virtue of a reformed parliament declared he should be ever- more its patron : for these, and these only, he merged the inferior dignities of king and saint, assuming at one step the supreme command in the glorious army of martyrs ; which command, as long as he could, he decHned; and he aoquircd-''^^'^^^ it only at the urgent intercession of Cromwell. Laus Deo. CHAPTER IX. There is a proverb which begins, " Between two stools." Our most gracious Queen, if this proverb hold good, may soon be somewhat worse off than merely genihus minor, with the thorough-bred Papist on one side of her, and the hybrid on the other. The Holy Pather sets a bad ensample to his children, legitimate and illegitimate. Beyond a question, the impudence of his Holiness exceeds the impudence of any other Holiness that ever wore the Babylonian scarlet. Has the Pope of Eome a better right to exercise authority in the British dominions, than the head of the Anglican church has to exercise it in the Roman? The Queen of England most graciously permits to every Papist the exercise of his religion, not only in private but in public, inasmuch as it interferes not with civic order ; while the Pope not only prohibits it even in its last offices at the grave, but forbids in private houses the followers of Jesus Christ to introduce that Gospel which he commanded his apostles to preach openly in all lands. And this gentleman forsooth is delegated by the Prince of Apostles ! Nay, he goes beyond, far beyond, this assumption. He not only is Christ's messager, but Christ's viceregent. Not only does he come forward under a false name, but 158 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. lie forges title-deeds to a vast estate; wliicli estate never belonged to the pretended owner. St. Peter^s patrimony is the name inscribed on the endorsement. Now St. Peter has never been proven, and never pretended^ to have possessed an acre of land; no, nor ev^en a bank of bulrushes on the sea of Gahlee. Yet this gentleman lays claim, not only to so vast an estate as no other gentleman on earth possesses, but he pretends to show you the very seal under which it was signed and delivered. He caUs it, probably in jest, the Fisherman's Seal. Unluckily for the joke, if he intends it as one, in the days of this fisherman no person of his quality and condition had a seal to seal with : none under the rank of knight enjoyed such privilege. This seal-ring is quite as miraculous as that of Gyges : it turns a fisherman into a prince ; it can make visible what is invisible; it can make invisible what is clear as day. Children, and other than children, say, let tliose laugh who win. Whatever rights our fisherman may fail in establishing, he has established this. Surely he must have caught Proteus in liis drag-net, and have learnt from hun all his tricks. There must have been a prodigious shoal of miirices taken at the same draught, enough of them to dye of the finest pui'ple the dirtiest coats abroad. The fisher- man now grown wealthy, altho he had not yet taken to the forgery of title-deeds, chose to change his mode of life a little for one easier and more comfortable, and became a shepherd. He soon grew very skillful in shearing, and not only in shearing, but equally in flaying; so that aU the butchers round were ready to employ him. Whenever he wanted a piece of mutton for his table, he quarreled with his butcher, and kept the sheep for himself. There was notliing at last to which he would not tui-n his hand. Nowhere was there a rotten tree, for miles and miles round about, from which he failed to extract a pot of honey, after fumigating and paralysing the bees. Several swarms by natural instinct betook themselves elsewhere; but a part was allui'ed back arain bv tin kettles, and other loud instruments, into their old hives. If anybody intercepted them, coming or going, it was at his peril. Some who attempted it were poisoned, others were stabbed ; and the shepherd-fisherman was often heard to curse heartily the luckier ones he never could reach. He always had about liim a great number of noisy fish-M^omen in old-fashioned caps and blood-coloured stockings, who bandied POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 159 curses and dealt blows wherever he directed them. Por a time the constables only laughed ; at last they grew serious, and thought it high time to repair the stocks. He has left a large number of natural sons behind him, to enjoy what is called Pete/s patr'monij even unto this day, together with the valuable receipts of innumerable medicaments, provocative and sedative, together with others for anointing swords and scenting gloves. In the present age, conjurors must have recourse to novelties in shght of hand, if they expect success. The swallowing of daggers and Hve coals, the catching of bullets on the rapier's point, are stale tricks: images of absent friends, in liquid ink in the palm of a boy's hand, are sought no longer. Gulls rise up before us, hatched in the shmy beds of the old shepherd-fisherman, a few miles up the Tiber. Our cHmate is uncongenial to that particular brood. Many people burst into loud outcries the moment they begin to settle on our shores ; and certainly they will be pelted at their first pounce upon our soles and turbots. Already we have plenty, and more than plenty, of the same genus, though of a smaller species, whose maws are propor- tionally capacious. These however are little more than king- fishers in comparison; yet even these are so noisy and so voracious that we must clip their wings, confine them within walls, and make them feed simply on grubs, worms, and beetles. CHAPTER X. Ministers have brought upon the Queen and country the greater part, if not the whole, of the- Pope's insolence. His priests have been acknowledged under the titles he conferred upon them. If our Protestant bishops had been divested of baronial dignities and seats, nothing of the kind would have been assumed in this country by the papal. There is no reason why either papal or protestant should be called other than doctor. Such is the ordinary style and title, and as such the professors of both creeds may be admitted into the pre- sence of royalty. Nobody can suppose that the dignitaries of our religion will be permitted much longer to possess vast principalities. Prince Albert must know many princes in Germany whose revenues fall greatly short of our poorest bishopric. We have the same right to curtail them as we have to reduce our military to half-pay. Indeed it is more 160 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. just that a bishop's salary should be reduced to a thousand a-year than an admiral's to three hundred, A captain in the army, who has bought his commission^ may, after twenty years' service and suffering from infirmities and wounds, receive less than a seventieth part of a bishopric. Let it never more be objected that the property of the church was granted or bequeathed by pious benefactors, lest the Pope seize it ; for these pious benefactors left it to his church. Parliament has acted repeatedly on wiser notions, dissolving some bishoprics, annexing others. It has done it anciently, it has done it . lately, it will do it soon again. Ours is not much longer to continue the only unreformed church in Christendom, unre- formed in its vital parts, in equity, moderation, and diffusion of knowledge. People are no longer to be blinded, or to have their eyes diverted, by the dust thrown into them through the riotous wrestling of overfed ecclesiastics. The patrons of prelaty and pluralities do not afi'ect, as they do most things, indignation at the Pope's audacity. Lord J. Eussell, in his letter to the Prince-bishop of Durham, says that anger pre- dominates over all his other feelings on this forener's most insolent encroachment. Reasonably in part we may believe him ; for his patronage is in jeopardy when an old church is turned into an extinguisher on a newer, which seems moulded on purpose to receive it. Infallibility comes forward with great advantage while our bishops are scuffling in the market- place, and, where dead infants are lying before their feet, are debating which of the poor innocents are to be buried as chil- dren, and which as dogs. She sprinkles with salt water those she favors, and straightway they mount into heaven. It is painful to think, with Infallibility, that the others are at best in limbo; and worse to believe, with Infallibility's twin- brother and claimant of her estate, that very probably they are even worse off. Between these two we shall never live peaceably, and perhaps if either should be left alone to have his own way, it would nowise mend the matter. A strong man was troubled with two fierce mastifs quarrel- ing daily in his court-yard. His own being the stronger and quieter, he looked on with indifference at first, and indeed until the strange dog took to the kitchen and larder. His own only growled at this intrusion : but when the adversary leaped up against the stable-door and seized a horse's hind- quarter, patience was exhausted, the combat was renewed, and POTERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 161 more resolutely than ever before. The master had more conlidence in his dog's fierceness than in his fidelity, and began to surmise that he fought only to fill his belly : so, when they were both exhausted, and their tongues were a span- length out of their mouths, he plucked up courage, took each together by the scutt' of the neck, and threw them into the stone- quarry from which the mansion was built. Incredible how quiet was the house, how orderly the domestics, after these two quarrelsome beasts were gone. Until then they could never say their prayers without the one barking and the other howling ; and the maids as they knelt fancied the strange dog perpetually at their heels. CHAPTER XI. The new dignitary who comes under orders from the papal court, to supersede the Hierarchy of England, has been graciously pleased to offer the shelter of his wing to the Dissenters. " We are accustomed," says a Dissenter in reply, " we are accustomed to read the Gospels ; and there we find the blessed Founder of our religion forbidding those around him to call him Lord, although the acknowledged Son of God. Among the many reasons which have compelled us to separate our- selves from the main body of our fellow Christians, is the violation of this positive and oral ordinance."' But it now appears that to be a lord, is to be too little : we must have a prince to lead us Godward ; and such a prince as pushes aside all others, even the royal. Our kingdom is minished into parts and parcels smaller than our heptarchies; but greater men than the heptarchs are come among us from over-sea; stouter and bolder men than Danish and Saxon kings ; meii invested with authority by superhuman hands. Cardinals are not only far superior to these chieftains, but distance the Apostles. !Pestus would not have been with them "most noble Festus;" and Csesar himself, instead of receiving tribute, would have been called upon to pay it. Emperors and kings are servants of the servant. The attendants and disciples of our Saviour were poor fishermen : they would have stared at any gentleman leaping into their boat in a lappeted cap and flounced petticoat ; no preface of " with your leave, or by your leave ; " fhst taking the helm. 162 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE. then seizing and dragging the net^ simply and solely for his own emolument. They were plain, honest, peaceable men; but one or other might have had his choler stirred thereby; and peradventure the intruder might have been fain to find his way back again by fairly swimming for it. It is not to be dissembled that there are many who rejoice in the conflict of prelate with prelate; that there are many who tliink them well matched ; and there are many who care little whether the rat kills the weazel, or the weazel kiUs the rat ; for in that light they hold them. But as an Englishman, I must declare my opinion that the thieves should be driven out of the house, before we look to see what is missing or damaged. In this inquiry, we may presently find that our own head-servants have wasted much of our substance, and that one or other has left the door open for the depredators. We must have them up, in open court, before those who administer justice. I hear from several of my neighbours who have travelled in foren parts, that Popery is injurious to industry; that among the Germans and Switzers the naked eye readily distinguishes the line of demarcation between the Papist and the Protestant ; that no country is so iL. cultivated, no people so immoral, as where dominates the gentleman who styles liimself "God's vicegerent." There are causes for everything. Now, what and whence are the causes why an intemperate religion, long ago repudiated by the manlier and calmer nations of Enrope, for caprices, immoralities, and violences; for cheating, and swearing, and blaspheming; for housebreaking, and arson, and assassination; all clearly proven against it . . should be brought home again triumphantly through the streets of our metropolis ? There is a reason ; there are many reasons : all of them ought to have been, and might have been, removed. But from the Church of England, as from the mistress of Horace, •' Fugit juventus et verecundus coloi-." It is painful to find the bishops simmering and seething so long over the coals. The fault is entirely their own : they might have crept out of the hot water while it was somewhat less hot : tliey now begin to turn red, and some of them are shpping their shells. The conduct of the prelates on one side, and of the people POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 163 on the other, may be described, by a slight variation in some verses of Pindar : " One Mortal shall Vain-glory cast From the good things wheron his heart relies ; Another let his foe run past Where he might seize him : but are these the wisel" After our long and heavy sleep, half broken by a dream of mysterious fountains and magical fingers dripping over them, and of wailing infants transfixt by the horns of devils ; here comes before us a figure in scarlet, with a fine embroidered kerchef in its hand, which, muttering an incantation and a prayer, it dips in chloroform and ties across our noses. Questions on baptism led the minds of men to questions on apostolical succession. The humane and judicious Gorham says " Infants baptised, and dying before actual sin, are certainly saved. "As ignorance, if not wilful, is a plea ever admitted in rigJiteous human tribunals, so, we are taught, will due weight be allowed to it at the seat of Divine Judgment." Alas ! ignorance not wilful is far from admission to the plea at (what are called) righteous human tribunals. And now to the second point of the position. If due weight will be allowed to it at the seat of Divine Justice, surely due weight will also be allowed to the ignorance of the infant, whose parents may have been negligent, or whose death, by the dispensation of that Divine Justice, of that Providence ever merciful, was immature. There are many sound and earnest Christians, who believe that sprinkling a few drops of water on an infant's face is no more baptism than a sandwich is a dinner, and that such sprinkling has exactly the same effect, here and hereafter, whether the grace is prevenient or not, and whatever the priest may think about the matter. His opinion can nowise alter the destiny of the infant in the dispensations of its Maker. Why not let it pass then for what it is worth, whether much or little ? The creature is saved, that is clear ; and enjoys thenceforward as much grace, and exercises (let us hope) quite as much discretion, as they who litigate and militate in the church about him, whether under the black ensign, or the white, or the scarlet. The best tactician can never see with clearness and certainty to what results the first skirmish may lead. Apostohcal suc- M 2 J 64 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE. cession, in all its branches, must be demonstrated or disproved. The earliest authorities quoted by the Papists are quoted falsely. Protestants are no sufferers by the deception : but Eoman Catholic gentlemen are deeply interested in a thorough inquiry whether St. Peter ever was at Rome? to whom he gave authority there or elsewhere ? what power he had to give it ? whether the Holy Spirit, which he is believed by them to have imparted, directed the murderous and incestuous Popes, who, all and equally, claimed their descent from liim, and (what he never did) assumed the title and office of God's sole vice- gerents. If such rights and privileges can be established, then indeed it will be wiser in our own bishops to touch Pio Nono reverentially; wiser to let the thread of succession lie broken in two or three places, and to bow their heads before Him alone who, despoiled even of that garment for which two wrangling soldiers are now drawing lots, has left no other heritage than his example. CHAPTER XII. PoRMEELY the Dissenters were clamorous against Popery and Prelaty. How happens it that the sour presbyterian is sour no longer, but soft and mealy ? Not only is he loyal, but he is courtly. This loyalty and courtliness are suspicious in the eyes of the more petted. Some of them, nearest to royalty, presuming on the favours they have received from her Majesty, have ventured not only to expostulate, but to reprove. The same persons have, both covertly and openly, countenanced the ceremonies of Popery. The oily tongue of Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, can easily turn itself round in the wards of the privy-closet, while the bishop of London, laden with the treasures torn formerly from the spoliation of his predecessors, kicks at the royal chapel-door and insists upon an audience, talking so loud that people bear it throughout the country. What would Queen Elizabeth have said on such an occasion ? She who called the bishop of Ely a " proud prelate,^' and, as manfully as ever her father could have done, swore hy God she would 7cvfrocJc him. We recommend at the present day no such hasty and intemperate measures; we would not quite unfrock; but it might be "of good ensample^' to turn up just as much of the tucks and trimmings as should be necessary in administrating a moderate and lenient castigation. POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 165 Rome and London are brought near together by other machinery than radroads and steamers. The fashionable wear of the winter is scarlet, genuine Babylonian, with broad sleeves and broader bustles. Lord John was permitted by Lord Peter to call him insolent, &c., on the understanding that he should send to him as ministers, in his several dependent states throughout Italy, those who profess his doctrines and acknow- ledge his supremacy, especially those who abolish from the coinage of the British realm the Queen's title, style, and dignity, as Defender of the Faith. After this humiliation, we may expect to find in the court calender of 1851, that the contracting parties have smoothed every difficulty in the union of two persons so close in consanguinity; and that this marriage in high life wiU be, with permission of Pio Nono who promises to sign it, celebrated by the bishop of London. There is a rumour, the gazettes will say, wliich we hope we shall soon be able to contradict by authority, that the bride's guardians have embezzled a large part of her property; on the other hand, certain title-deeds are not forth-coming. However, to accomplish so desirable an event, and to silence all other claimants, it is suggested that these irregularities win be overlooked by both parties, and that defalcations on one sheet of the ledger and excrescences on the opposite will be compromised. All we know at present in regard to the late differences is tliis : that Lord Minto is declared, on grave authority, to have been cognisant of the Pope's inclinations, and without remon- strance. His instructions from home, and his despatches in return, must have obviated the surprise of Lord John Eussell; which surprise must therefor be fictitious; a mask appropriate to the domino. He caught up the pattern of Ms indignation from the people. If they never had stirred, he would never have pasted on the broad conspicuous shoulders of the Prince- bishop a Manifesto in form of a Letter. In an English minister, the alternative of two things is requisite; strict silence or strict veracity. Lord John Eussell chose rather to be vociferous ; and, although he writes to a Prince-bishop, he uses sundry expressions which are almost as coarse in their texture as the pieces of common slang which lately have been running from mouth to mouth, and replacing the cigar. His Lordship is more offensive; the terms of his assumed surprise and dehberate indignation more calculated to "astonish the 166 THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE; natives/^ Never was there written a Letter, whether from a jealous mistress or a detected adulteress, so indecorous or so indiscreet. CHAPTER XIII. Now the fox has broken cover and the dogs are in full cry after him, it is curious to see animals so similar as the dog is to the fox, in such hot pursuit and enmity, and passing the other beasts of the field without molesting them. Prelaty is one and the same in all countries ; and there is just enough of difl'erence in doctrine to keep up excitement and animosity in their partisans. There are thousands in England who have never seen an English bishop ; and there are thousands more who have not seen one since their con- firmation. Probably their lordships will not make themselves quite so scarce now other candidates are in the field, now the canvas is growing hot, now the rival chairs of St. Peter and St. Paul, decorated with their favours and banderoles, are clashing. Whatever may be the aggression, whosoever the enemy, and whencesoever the invasion, John Bull is equally angry. He now sees the scarlet opposite to him, rushes blindly with his head down against it, and never suspects that under the flowing robe there is concealed the imperial uniform. While he tramples on the weak audacity of a bewildered priest, a dozen of kings and their ministers are laughing at him, amused at the manakin they have puffed out and protruded into the ring. Heartily glad must be our own Prince-bishops that the public attention is diverted from them. The palace of the Yatican will stand longer than the solidest of theirs. The Pope is consistent in his perfidy : they waver in theirs ; and instead of a bold straight-forward lie, repair to the lower and the weaker subterfuge of prevarication. CHAPTER XIV. We are resolved (it appears) to show how far we are removed from the practices of the Papists. Instead of tying a recusant to the stake and surrounding him with fire and faggots, we only pelt him with the putrid offal of the most offensive words. This is principally done from the higher' booths, on which gilded ribbons are waving, and where certain lords are sitting just over the winning-post. Meanwhile a POPERY : BEITISH AND FOREIGN. 167 crowd of people is bursting into the newly-furnished old house, calling the occupant an intruder, and entreating the Queen's Majesty to kick him out again. Looking round narrowly, I find the stump of the charred stake yet standing where it stood formerly. We have no fire at hand ; and only just enough of the timber is above-ground to produce a crop of funguses. Our Church, willing to hold her own, but holding much faster to the broad lands, the prelatical palaces, the baronial benches, the thrones on a level with the royal, than to corroded theories built upon shifting sands and^ exposed to every gust in every quarter, turned from side to side, entreated, exhorted, expostulated : at one time meek as a dove, at another erecting her crest and threatening Hke a basilisk. Lord Peter, a great quoter of latin, whispered in her ear, " Nos hsec novimus esse nihil." She simpered, and said nothing in reply. At last she drew nearer and nearer to him, requesting him however to keep liis hands off, and promising if he would not sit upon her skirts, to hold a correspondence with him secretly and con- fidentially. This was done with the fingers, but not upon paper. Jack Avas outrageous at hearing the whisper. He tlirew the seducer on the ground : the seducer soon got up again, shook his embroidered uniform, replaced his pistols in the holster, aud marched off, according to his own report, insulted indeed, but never thrown down ; assailed by a legion, of devils, but victorious and triumphant. The merits of the combatants, the rights of primogeniture, the advantages of the feudal system, the obligations of its serfs to the mitre, may be brought under discussion in open court. We have only to declare at present that what is set apart for the public service is public property. Such is a clmrch, and everything appertaining to a church. The State has a right to alter it, to enlarge it, to contract it, to demolish it. The State may remove a bishopric as legally as an organ- loft, a bishop as a chorister. It may competently say to either, " I consider your services worth so much to me : if you are discontented with it, go your way and do better for yourself." Many would murmur; few would move. It is difficult for reverend corpulency to rise from a well-padded elbow-chair ; and greatly less pleasant for gouty feet to walk 168 THE LAST rUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. between two crutches than between two liverjTnen in plush and powder. In the next chapter I shall adduce the authority of a churchman,, who has taken a nearer and a more accurate survey of this interesting subject. We may deduce from his arguments and demonstrations that a thread which has long been twisted carries with it wdien untwisted the tortuosity of its entanglement ; that you may indeed pull it straight again ; but that, if it is to continue so, it must be pulled fairly out and held tight. Will what has happened in the present age be credited in the next ? Will it ever be believed that the Reformed Parliament, soon after its Eeformation, appointed men to be judges in their own cause ? Will it be believed that so little was left of Christianity, of equity, of decency, that the bishops of England, who had long enjoyed vast revenues, should vote for themselves the same revenues for life, declaring them to be too much for their successors ? They did indeed, how- ever reluctantly, pluck off some little : just as much as a clever cook plucks off a stick of celery, to make it look somewhat handsomer and more eatable. That the people may not turn back their eyes on these enormities, small questions are raised, small offences are taken and made greater. They know very well that it is only from among the rich and luxurious, who have lived in such society as their own, that Popery shoots and ramifies. It is not with Popery they are angry, it is with the Pope. He claims what they hold, and what they have taken from him ; and he claims only a part of this. It belongs to neither ; it belongs to the people at large ; to the people belong both spirituals and temporals ; and to their benefit, and theirs only, must both be, ere long, converted. As there are many prayers in common with the two pre- • latical churches, there is also one canticle, "If the world is worth thy winning, Think, think it worth enjoying." The senses of no man can be so seduced from him that he shall admit the supposition of a quarrel on articles of faith. " Hsec prius fuere, nirnc reconclita Senent quiete." It would be the greatest of absurdities to quan'el for an POPERY : BRITISH AND PO REIGN. 169 absiu-dity; and above all where there are more of them at home with each party than he can manage. There will always be in the Anglican Church, and peculiarly among the occupants of thrones under canopies, many loth to ascend into a purer atmosphere, and to leave beliind them " Furuum et opes strepitumque Komae." Doctrines and dogmas are hardly worth our notice. Let the Pope have his own, and all his own; but let him show liis claim. Again I repeat it, if St. Peter had the power to grant, and did actually grant, under his seal, in the presence of witnesses, the spirituals and temporals wliich the Bishop of Home claims, both from this tes- tamentary and hereditary right, our bishops must hold their tongues. Meanwhile the wiry-haired, long-backed, indefatigable German terriers are questing among the intricate caverns and bramble-covered ruins of Eome, and will unearth and drive the old badger from under the palace of the Caesars. CHAPTER XV. No rehgion hath ever done so much mischief in the world as that which falsely, among innumerable other falsehoods, calls itself the catholic. It never was the catholic, and, let us trust in the mercies of God, it never will be. There was a tiiiie when the Arians out- numbered the papists; and it was only by the exercise of imperial power, by the sword in the balance, that the scale flew up and scattered its contents. Again did imperial power, by similar means, obstruct the progress of the Pteformation, when the more civilised and intel- ligent, not only in Germany and Holland and Prance, but also in Italy, among those who had no personal interests to consult, and among many who had them, preferred the plain doctrine and pure authority of the Gospel to the glosses and assumptions of the papacy. At the present day the question turns less about the doctrinal points of Popery, than about the influence which its ministers again are exercising on the social condition of Europe. Prance has begun to renew her dracjonnades, not indeed within her own territories, but within those 170 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. territories where in right and justice she can pretend to no controul. Neither tlie Pope nor the King of Naples has displayed more perfidy than the Erencli president. Each of the Italian potentates had kept within his dominions, tirst cajoling and then oppressing what he was permitted to call his own people. But the other came in the guise of a friend and a protector, and took away all the valuables of the house he entered, leaving his host to he tied up in a surplice and suffocated in the Tiber. The Emperor of Austria has followed, although with unequal paces, the Erench president; and the Jesuits have trampled out the last vestiges left by Jerome of Prague. Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, had enjoyed in peace the liberty of worship. No zealot proclaimed it unchristian to bend the knee before Clirist alone, without his mother, without his followers, near or remote. Schools were not declared to be godless, for no other reason than because the scholars were required to join their classes at lecture and their family at prayer. Nothing is now to be taught, in that part of our dominions where both the people and the priesthood is the most ignorant, but under the eye of the blind and the guidance of the lame. The same ordinances, it seems, are now to be observed in other places. Tell me which of our sovrans in better times w^ould have endured or have tolerated this ? what minister ? w' ould even the lesser Pitt ? would Eox ? would Wyndham ? would Burke ? Certain I am that neither "VYalpole nor Chatham, neither Harley nor Bolingbroke, would place the crozier above the sceptre, or across it. Different as are tlie ministers of Queen Victoria, both in energy and in intellect, from the ministers of Queen Anne, even they, surely even they, never will permit the streets of London and Westminster to be infested by the surpliced Hnkboys of popish processions : surely the police will turn the horses' heads in another direction when the Cardinal of Westminster's carriage stops the way. Eirmly do I believe that many Eoman Catholic gentlemen, both in England and in Ireland, are, as they have been for centuries in Prance, unfriendly to the inordinate claims of the Pope. Eirmly do I believe that, if the Reformation had never been established in these realms, they would have been among the fu-st of the Reformers. POPEUY : BUITISH AND FOREIGN. 171 What gentleman of either country lias exhibited more enlight- ened zeal in the cause of education, more liberality in every department, then he who so worthily represents our Queen at Athens ? The oldest and best families of Roman CathoHcs, both in England and in Ireland, have ever been distinguished for manhness and patriotism. The stem of chivalry is as strong as ever ; and if some of the flowers are fallen off, the mule^s hoof must not trample them into the earth. The dregs of society, in ferment and commotion, are beginning to foam through the bunghole, and there are certain persons whose bread is to be raised by the yeast. Already they hold the spigot in their hands, and, unless you are prompt and reso- lute, they can either stop it or let it run waste as they will. There are unholy incantations known and practised by them, wliich, to their consternation and dismay, shall perhaps evoke the spirit of Nassau, perhaps the more awful one of Cromwell. There is a line wliich if they cross, other stars will shine above their heads, and other pilots will be required to steer them into port. CHAPTER XVI. The following words are Sydney Smithes : " The Arclibishop of Canterbury, at his consecration, takes a solemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the Church of Canterbury. He seizes two-thirds of its revenues and abolishes two-thirds of its members." Surely the latter part of the sentence is incorrect ; he must mean dignitaries ; not rectors, vicars, and curates. Doubtless, the archbishop did always maintain the rights he swore he would maintain ; and if he has tlie power of abolishing any offices and of removing any official of the chui'ch. Parliament and the supreme head of the church must possess a power quite equal to his Grace's. The dignitary Sydney Smith declares his Grace has taken away what he solemnly swore he would maintain in its place. This sounds oddly to uumitred ears ; but much may depend upon the sounding-board. There are things incomprehensible to the laity which are plain enough to the clergy round about them. Thus for instance the bodies of St. Simon and St. Jude are deposited in the Church of St. Peter's at Eome : the same bodies are likewise deposited in the Church of St. John's at Verona. Heretics may hereupon 172 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE. be captious and incredulous; true believers can entertain no doubt. Tra Filippo Perraris tells us expressly that these same bodies may exist contemporaneously in separate places ; and Cardinal Valerio explains most satisfactorily liow it may be so : it is by a pia estensione. Now the archbishop does this tangibly. He soars above the metaphor, and pounces down on his prey like a taloned angel. The pia estensione of his talons reminds the learned C^tco